Patient: The Lesbian Play, by Riley McCarthy [Dr. 2's Diagnosis]

Patient: The Lesbian Play

Parents: Riley McCarthy

Insurance: PagePay Plus

Symptoms: guns, lipstick, sass, ass

Diagnosis: Nuts

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Bio:

Riley McCarthy is a recent graduate from the Marymount Manhattan College. Their plays draw out the conflicts and differing interests between the colors of the QLGBT rainbow. McCarthy's plays have had live performances at the Hudson Guild Theater and the Marymount Manhattan College.

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Patient Description:

Before this play, I was never informed that the politically correct term for lesbian is "vagitarian." The Lesbian Play is a kinda-definitive guide on the art of women, loving women.

Club president Mimi is getting ready for a special meeting at their college’s Women Loving Women club. Laurel helps prepare the party for member Beatrice’s surprise birthday party. One by one, the lady-loving members step in, eager to surprise Beatrice before Beatrice surprises them:

Beatrice comes out to everyone as a non-binary member of the Women Loving Women club.

We join the college party to drop in on typical lesbian irreverence: chick talk without boundaries, heavy liquor, and weed-smokey f-bombs. McCarthy’s characters are unstoppable from the start: with jokes that are timely—and actually funny. The banter amongst fellow lesbs is true, college level, lesbiology.

Play quality got kinky during its polarizing debates on gay authenticity, female authenticity, versus QLGBT diversity. I was hardly enriched or convinced by any single line from any single character. 

Mimi is a straw (wo)man who barks her concerns to her Women Loving Women club. The club barks back. Beez is coming out as non-binary. That mere fact meanders throughout the story without much competition. The playwright is young, but apparently winning public praise for being an effective QLGBT voice. 

Brute authenticity and black nail polish bring this play to life. Without fruitful dialectics, however, this play is a political rant that’s all puckered up with not much to say.

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Recently Healed Patients

Patient Refugee Rhapsody, by Yussef El Guindi, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: Refugee Rhapsody

Parents: Yussef El Guindi

Insurance: Paperkutz

Symptoms: star-struck, poverty-stricken

Diagnosis: It came from the bargain bin.

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Bio:

Playwright Yussef El Guindi won the American Blues Theater, Blue Ink Award for 2021. Out of 820 submissions, it's hard to imagine how poor the runner ups were if Guindi was the paid champion. The American Blues Theater should be charged a fine by the drama police for quadruple the amount, under the charges of praising false talent.

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Patient Description:

Sakinah and Fouad are callused lovers, working at the second-hand shop, Goodwill. One fateful day, they stumble upon some fancy dresses that turn out to belong to a local aristocrat, Emily. Emily voices sympathy and action for the current affairs of the Middle East at one of her parties. Sakinah and Fouad crash one of these parties—with Fouad in drag—wearing one of Emily's old dresses found at Goodwill.

The party was over quick. Emily is an impossibly magnanimous white devil, while Fouad is the starving, kicked puppy she's been looking to nurse into a show dog. Guindi intended to portray this personality contrast, but both characters are saccharine off the charts: Emily breastfeeding Fouad thousand dollar caviar along Fouad's simpleton monologues of gratitude. 

It was a consistent cringefest. I literally just kept cringing and cringing and cringing, every time Fouad congratulated Emily on being rich, and when Emily apologized for it. These characters had zero impact.

The play script had a horrible case of the maybies in the directing parentheticals. (X and Y do Z—maybe?) (Lights dim for X's entrance—maybe?)

The only character of merit is Sakinah. She's used to a hard life; so she was pre-conditioned to handle the story's rigor. She stands in-between the two worlds Guindi means to collide: the irreverent white world that knows nothing of third world suffering, and the scrappy world itself that prefers not to talk about it at glamorous fundraising parties. 

For a play that attempts to mock racial fawning from white America, Guindi is ironically his own target. There is nothing more than faint mentions of Middle Eastern struggles that have brought this incomplete play to an adoring limelight. What is there to observe, in a play merely requesting we observe?

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New Patients

Patient It's Always the Quiet Ones, by Sharai Bohannon, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: It’s Always the Quiet Ones

Parents: Sharai Bohannon

Insurance: BookMarx Medical

Symptoms: swipe left, swipe right,

Diagnosis: meant to swipe left

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Bio:

Sharai Bohannon is a playwright, theatre enthusiast, and recovering coffee addict living in Chicago, Illinois. Sharai Bohannon has had work produced in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and North Carolina. In her play, It’s Always the Quiet Ones, Andy gets a lot more than he bargained for after swiping right on Tinder. A lot more...

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Patient Description:

When the main character was humming baroque, I thought, of course, the environment would be classic. It quickly inverted into a modern comedy with Tyler, literally opening the door to a total stranger to come have sexual relations with his sister. Via Tinder matchmaking love sequence.

His sister has an imaginary friend, a puppet named Mr. Wiggles. Mr. Wiggles is the blunt projection of Laney’s thoughts. Comedy ensues.

On my taste, the story is amusing, but not funny. Considering it's impromptu, it is forgivable: repetition is the soft flaw that buys one time on the fly.

Language was going in circles: “What is wrong with you people,” ad infinitum. Dry on paper, likely more refreshing live with the tense entrapment of e-love and creepy ventriloquy.

The story is creative! Not a stock scenario after all, but still missing zest before one can raise it higher as a comedy. This patient receives 3 stars for mainstream theater, 4 stars for impromptu.

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New Patients

This play review of Sharai Bohannon’s It’s Always the Quiet Ones is by Mr. Bohemian.

Patient Shadows by Laurie Goodwoman, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: Shadows

Parent: Laurie Goodwoman

Insurance: Paperkutz

Symptoms: lights on, lights off

Diagnosis: lights out

Bio:

In 2016, the then called Shadow Puppets was produced by UCLA's Undergraduate Theater Council. Laurie Goodwoman’s plays tackle ideas such as identity and familial relations by challenging the form in which they are presented. She has worked with The Play Company, New Georges, and Pipeline Theatre Company.

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Patient Description:

Two kiddies, both alike in dignity. In one bedroom, we lay our short scene. The sister, Pollux, “Plans” as the brother, Castor, “Goes.” That’s pretty much as far as the plot “Goes.”

The intro was a diva-strutting banger that promised the audience a world of under-the-sheets meaning. The playwright demanded the setting incorporate a pillow fort, lest one have to “omit the Shadows from the production”. Lest the play, Shadows, be unplayable?

The unconventional, two-sided writing structure of the script was a convincing, new feature. The Doctor appreciates all deviations from Samuel French’s crusty, Christian, centered pages. The dual format was essentially clever: as it was a projection of the visual staging during the ping-pong dialogue.

After that, there’s no story onstage. It’s likely in the peripheral room next door, where the parents “are supposed to be asleep.” The kid characters become drunk with telling: never clever, even at a standard for kids. Instead of living out the story, it’s consistently and briefly mentioned. To add to the pain of decoding a second-hand story, it’s s u r r e a l.

Castor “Goes.” Pullox “Plans” something else. There is an assumption conflict, but never a play of it. The lullaby duet was the last time the unique format shone. The denouement was a tumble that finally welcomed a fashionably late plot. Meaningful cues from the playwright parent such as crossed out text had zero impact because of the lack of story leverage.

While the patient was well grounded on a creative platform, the story described is an abyss that no bedtime flashlight can pierce through.

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New Patients

This play review of Laurie Goodwoman’s Shadows is by Mr. Bohemian.

Patient Deadheads by Ali Viterbi, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: Deadheads

Parent: Ali Viterbi

Insurance: BookMarx Medical

Symptoms: damn hippies, damn doobies, damn boats, damn hippies with doobies on boats

Diagnosis: One More Hit

Bio:

The patient, Deadheads, received its first live production at The Owl and Cat Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, in 2016. It has had staged readings at The Barrow Group, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, the Paul Enger Memorial Play Reading Series, with a workshop at the Lyra Theater Company.

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Patient Description:

“TIME & PLACE Various crappy motel rooms across America.”

Good. It’s in the budget.

I came up with a new ring of Purgatory for damned hippies: Highmen’s Height. The concerts are average. The weed is average. The sex is average. “It’s Okay.”

I was cautious when the patient took me to Highmen’s Height. The weed-kissed bagpipes of “Amazing Grace,” of course, were part of the aesthetic, but the largest suspicion I had was simplicity. “It’s Okay,” though.

Sadie and Ethan are livin’ some-sort-of American Dream in some-sort-of motel room with some sort-of-concert stuff and some-sort-of atom bomb stuff going on. It’s a walk-on love story within the interims of their quest to see as many bands as their young hearts please. This nothing-new spine of the patient was at medical risk of being dangerously basic, but they silently unnerved my caution with a steady stream of authenticity. This second hand smoke blew me away.

I can’t help it: The character couple are the Darlings of Grass Town. “Not I, said the fly.” “Yes me, said the bee.”

Hey now.

Ethan is handsome and righteous, but still completely pathetic with his daddy-o contempt against his beggarly, hippie finances. His father was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, but his son is kinda-sorta a piece of doobie. Sadie is the feminine but competent mommy-o babysitter that light’s her man’s cigarettes while delivering a firm spanking and boring poem on occasion. Despite both of their thoroughly groovy lifestyles, the main aggregators of the adventure are the random fever dreams for a white picket fence and domestic stability, with Sadie being greater afflicted by the rhythm of the daddy-o.

Viterbi, herself, must necessarily be a part time Deadhead to give birth to the patient. The things Ethan says and the things Ethan does can only come from a live encounter with the verbatim nonsense/curiousity of a psychedelic stream of consciousness. I.e., “That’s soooo high, lol.” This realistic vein the story drew from detracted the patient from a simplistic diagnosis.

The Grateful Dead band is the hippies’s religious point of reference for the Universe’s plans. When it came time for Viterbi to express The Grateful Dead’s spirit within the play, with a lack of tact, they tell: e.g., “I think I’ve figured something out, homes. [The Plot. It’s guiding us.]” Uh. While the organic characters smoothed it over, it was brusque. Sadie may babysit her hubby, but she doesn’t need to babysit the audience.

We see these characters grow into daddy-os by the motel. The patient pleased with their broad transitions without causing a polite train wreck of unbelievability, “Honey, I’m home! I was at A; now, I’m here at B!”

After some trippy stage directions, "Ethan realizes the soup is a portal for the green people,” the patient dives into very intense territory. Against the average optimism of Highmen’s Height, a sweaty, modern sickliness appears, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the 25/25 Anniversary Show at the delightfully grotesque Trap Door Theatre.

What does the Universe have in store for Her Mr. and Mrs. Homey? The Grateful Life, with a sploof to take care of Her every spliff.

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New Patients

This play review of Ali Viterbi’s Deadheads is by Mr. Bohemian.