Fresh Fruit Festival Runs Both Sweet and Sour

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This year's annual Fresh Fruit Festival, which delivers a cornucopia of theatrical offerings at the Cherry Lane Theatre, was regrettably plagued at the outset with bad news, namely the untimely death of festival founder Harry Weider. A "little person" (aka dwarf) who also happened to be a lifelong champion of causes for both the LGBT and Jewish communities, besides a thespian known far and wide for his tremendous command of the stage and screen, as well as unending charisma. Weider met his premature end in mid-spring at he age of fifty-nine, when he was struck by a moving taxi on a street in the East Village.

This unto itself would have precluded such an event from taking place, but all were in agreement that the show had to go on, and so it did. Its season began unofficially in early June with the Fresh Fruit Short Play Competition at Nuyorican Poets Cafe on East 3rd Street (where the critically-acclaimed and award-winning comedy troupe The Mistake nabbed second prize for their delivery of a sketch about same-sex marriage, entitled Davenport), and once the festival was under way by July 10th, it seemed that a marvelous array of dramatic skill was about to take shape, not the least of which was Call Me William by Prudence Wright Holmes, one of the many genius artists who portrayed nuns in the movie Sister Act and its subsequent sequel, besides understudying the brilliant Bette Henritze on Broadway in Peter Shaffer's Lettuce and Lovage,  which was a glorious treatment of the private life of legendary authoress Willa Cather. Unfortunately, not every production weighed in with the same stealth or strength.

Gentle readers, your humble writer is truly loathe to admit, after a lifetime spent reviewing theatre in venues large and small, that when confronted with a Gay play with an audience virtually filled to bursting with Gay men, in which a two-character piece features an absolutely beautiful studlet on stage for ninety-percent of the action, and yet,, somehow, more than half the audience manages to fall asleep even while confronted with such a splendid specimen of manhood, that it's simply not a viable script. So it went with DJ Salisbury's Perfect European Man, also directed by the gentleman. This is not to remotely say that this tale of an insecure artist (embodied by Thom Christopher Warren) and his model (Xander Chauncey) was poorly acted. In point of fact, both were glorious and given a perfectly dreamy opportunity to switch to several other characters with a variety of different accents and motivations. The point, however, is that no character evokes any sympathy whatsoever or even remote interest in who or what they are. There is no kinder means of saying such a thing, and even this writer found himself dozing off more than once. The entire idea of it was a travesty and should not be repeated in any form.

On the flip side, however, and equally and relievedly more promising to report, is Sarah Was Mine. A semi-autobiographical piece penned by the late Joseph Fletcher (who, unfortunately, didn't survive the health crisis long enough to see the production through its various incarnations around the country in workshops). Paul Anthony Hanegan was perfectly spectacular as David, a Gay man so consumed with the need to be normal, that he marries his closest friend Sarah, played gorgeously by Mary Lauren. Once he reverts back to his practices of haunting the Gay bars and clubs, he unwittingly passes AIDS onto her and is left bereft, while Roberto A. Dominguez (who portrays all the other men in Sarah's life) suffers no choice, but to simply sit and watch it happen. The end result is a vibrant evening of the theatrical presentation that is never anything less than utterly electric, and one can only hope that it might go on to bigger and better things.

We have no choice but to sit and wait for the next Fresh Fruit Festival, to see what's to come. Again, this year's season started off with a downer. The happier portion is that there's nowhere for them to go but up. See you there.