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As one of the small number of 197 theatre pieces selected from this summer’s International New York Fringe Festival to have extra performances, one has high hopes for The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival…or any show so anointed for the Fringe Encores series. This Festival from the Festival had good buzz.
It wasn’t on my list of assigned/chosen shows to review, so I confess I did what I do NOT do before seeing a show I know I will be reviewing: read what other critics had to say. But, lo and behold, I was suddenly asked to review it when it became one of those chosen for more dates.
The reviews I saw were very positive. I wasn’t positive. I was positively surprised that I didn’t feel myself, pardon 
the expression, swept away. I knew what to expect: that it was a series of monologues taken from first-person accounts of those who braved the storm and its aftermath. There would be some respites therein of character-specific humor, dark or “human foible type” quirky. There was all that. The misleading title was not an issue: having heard what I heard and having read what I read, I knew it was misleading, not what some might have presumed: an irreverent, insensitive making light of a dark time in our history. Not that I’d want that! The title had turned me off when I first perused the list and jumped to that conclusion myself. I was ready to be touched by the personal, pull-at-the-heart stories. And they were personal, but they didn’t pull me in. I believe they were real stories, but they didn’t feel real or seem full of real insights into heroic or ordinary folks. Several of the others in the Encores series I’d seen, reviewed, and rather loved: Pope, Jurassic Parq, Just in Time: The Judy Holiday Story, Bunked!, The Secretaries. Granted, most were big-fun, big, lively musical goofs, but I certainly appreciate a moving drama and was ready to move on to one.
One doesn’t want to be dismissive of the struggles and strains of anyone in the horrors of this devastating hurricane, where insult was added to injury when the government failed them. Indeed, those real people deserve the dignity of having their stories told in a way that is somehow more involving, more thorough, more universal, more than just a self-consciously “theatrical because it’s on a stage” recreation. We’ve seen those TV interviews with the real people and the real settings and they are burned in our minds. On the stage, it felt to me like a pale shadow. The theatre needs to compensate for that comparison we all have by being uniquely theatrical with all the power of the theatre. Please. It’s not that the play is cavalier or without colorful characters or integrity at its real heart. Clearly, other observers --- critics and audiences – were far more moved and involved. My companion and I –and some around us – were not. Perhaps the show works better in a more intimate space, where actors can be more intimately sharing hushed stories and recollections. Indeed, instead of feeling like the people on stage were talking TO me, I felt they were talking AT me. They didn’t drink in pauses often. They often seemed to be “acting” despite some effective moments. Waiting their turns by being omnipresent on stage, occasionally supporting others’ monologues by playing incidental characters in addition to their main ones, only sections of rooftops as suggested set pieces all contributed to distracting from suspension of disbelief.
These main New Orleans people are, thankfully, very different types so that their stories and energies are not 
redundant from person to person. One is a high-spirited, gutsy, life-loving determined grandmother; another woman is fragile and at loose ends. One man is solid and practical, helping others. We hear about riding out the storm and staying put or traveling far away to seek shelter in private places or the very public mega-shelter. Rarely do the individuals have a chance to interact with each other, so it is mostly a take-your-turn set of revolving monologues. We pick up where we left off or hear another incident from one of the 
protagonists, with little change in their tone or perspective; it feels like flipping back and forth and back and forth among five TV dramas when your attention-deficit kind of companion is frequently pushing buttons on the TV remote control. And now back to the grandmother. These are intermittently semi-engaging, semi-endearing slice-and-dice slices of life, and at least they aren’t homogenized slices or laced with extra melodrama. Reality is more than enough, and I’m sure writer Rob Florence of New Orleans had plenty from which to draw. But I just wish he and director Dann Fink and the others drew me in more.
The hurricane continues through September 19. See www.fringenyc.org or www.katrinacomedy.net for more.
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