3 stars
Stage 7, Yardbird Suite
It doesn’t take long for the deaths to mount up in this gross, foul-mouthed, repelling and gleeful cabaret by San Francisco’s fearless Naked Empire Bouffon Company. A minute in, and “already we’ve had about 15!” gloat Shreds and Patches, two taunting, unwholesome-looking celebrants who bound from the stage to the audience and back again with invasive playfulness.
The former (Ross Travis) is an exo-skeleton with a cringe-making tumorous growth quivering on his head; the latter (Nathaniel Justiniano) is mounded with terraces of gelatinous flesh that can’t quite stay put. And they’ve never met a euphemism, an avoidance mechanism, a political correctness gag order, or any other evasive delicacy they didn’t want to jump up and down on until something vile squirts out.
As one exchange points out, you can’t get a restraining order against Death — just try breaking up with Death! — so all the proprieties of human denial are ridiculous. That seems to be the point here; this isn’t subtle satire. Shreds and Patches are all over random shooting, the decrepitudes of old age, botched suicides, the coagulation of blood around fatal wounds, flesh-eating disease … ah yes, and Hamlet, since there was a guy thrown for a loop by death.
“The only reason you came was Hamlet was in the title,” says one of the jesters mockingly to a woman in the audience. Ooo, that stings. Just before the end, when they start to run out of steam, they appoint a “lucky” audience member to star in Hamlet. They cut right to the chase in their interpretation: rigor mortis.
In their own gross-me-out way, Travis and Justiniano are playful and mischievous miscreants. They ricochet through skits, charades, incantations, songs, high-speed replays — all of them unprintable, so that we acknowledge the universal subtext. The what then? isn’t their department.
Liz Nicholls
Venue: Stage 07 – Yardbird Suite – Chianti Cafe & Restaurant
Naked Empire Bouffon Company
Winner of BEST OF THE FRINGE SAN FRANCISCO this original production features two prophetic pranksters celebrating the ridiculous ways we avoid death. It’s a disturbing and hilarious funhouse mirror built to make you laugh, cringe, and think.
60 minutes
http://www.nakedempirebouffon.org
