Posted on: Saturday, August 18, 2001

Stage Review
Insightful performers know their mischief inside out

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek

Performers are literally stopping traffic over at Marks Garage in downtown Honolulu.

The ground-level room is tucked into a corner under an elevated parking structure and is only into its first year as a performance space. The place is still flexing and stretching to find a comfortable fit, and the current offering of "Monkey on My Back" gives it a fine workout.

Directed by Yukie Shiroma and her associate Ben Moffat, the piece is a blend of dance and pantomime to recorded music. It's an eclectic evening featuring contributions from Frank Sinatra and k.d. lang; Kronos Quartet and the London Symphony Orchestra; Pizzicato Five and English Baroque Soloists.

Everyone is masked, and the resulting skits seem to draw inspiration equally from the music and the plastic faces.

While the show might be subtitled "Street Scene," it has no immediately identifiable theme, but works as a loose collection of vignettes created by distinct characters that flow in and out of the ensemble. Program notes say the broad concept is to consider addictions in their many forms.

The playing area is turned inside out, with the audience at the back of the room and the performers on both sides of the plate-glass windows that face the street. This naturally attracts curious pedestrians and motorists to pull over and unwittingly become blended into the action.

Waiting for the curtain to drop (literally), our attention goes to the red-haired woman seated on a tall platform at the side of the audience. She's knitting to music and creating what must be the world's longest neck scarf. That's all she does throughout the hour-long performance — just knit. But lest you think it's a thankless part, watch her mask carefully. Impossible, but you'd swear it changes expression. She's concentrating thoughtfully. Next she's smiling over some secret joke. Then she's sad and a bit wistful. Still it's the same mask. Impossible, isn't it?

The performance is filled with many such tiny treasures.

A man in a raincoat washes himself behind a shower curtain while a woman in a gold lamé gown furiously scrawls on a chalkboard. Two stagehands focus portable spotlights on the action, and a camera man gets it all on videotape. Walls dissolve and the space becomes a city street filled with colorful characters.

A gaunt and lanky man flounders on a pile of metal bars, struggling to stand on a pair of artificial legs. A couple in underclothes engage in a love/hate struggle in a small cubicle backed by a vertical bed.

A cleaning woman loses control in an antiseptic frenzy — first scrubbing the floor, then herself, then sniffing and swallowing bleaches and sprays until she grabs the first passer-by to become her partner in a spirited Spanish dance. In a final flurry she collapses and is dragged offstage on her own spotless plastic tarp.

Perhaps the wildest piece has a classical dancer express contempt for her small bosom and begin to strap on increasingly large and grotesque artificial breasts. In a determined fury, she attaches them front and back, top and bottom — then repeats the process with male sexual organs until she fairly bristles with shocking pink body parts.

Another dancer does battle with an electrical cord and — in a capitulating gesture — plugs it into her own mouth.

The big finale is a full-cast conga line out into the street, where everyone piles into the back of a pickup truck and drives away.

This puts all attention back on the knitting lady, who earns a big hand by closing the show.

The evening is filled with humor, insight, inventiveness and cocky daring. Michael Harada is credited with creating the masks and body parts; Kurt Wurmli with designing the set and lights.

Cast members disappear behind their masks, but we will give them much credit here: Ana Paula Hofling, Blake Kushi, Betsy Fisher, Layla Schuster, Ben Moffat, Ed Duncan, Melissa Teodoro, Emily Dres Brand, T. Allen Matsumura, Kim Warren, Angela Leonardo, Andrew Rosenberger, John-Robert Watson and Janie Angell.

Get yourself a ticket and see it all from the inside.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek is The Advertiser's drama critic.