38. THE BANANA MONOLOGUES (June 21, 2013)
The
title of this one-man play, now on view at the Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row, is
surely intended as a male takeoff on Eve Ensler's THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, but the play itself
is something else entirely. It is essentially the story of a character named
Gus Weiderman, living in Charleston, SC, and his mostly long-distance relationship with his girlfriend,
Alexis, in St. Louis. To tell the story, an actor named John R. Brennan plays four roles: Gus,
a pharmacist, and the character whose story this is; Alexis, also a pharmacist; a guy named Darby, of whom Gus is
jealous; and, I regret to say, his penis, which he refers to as Sgt. Johnson. Brennan
changes his voice and physical behavior for each character.
Gus is a nice-looking guy who refers to himself as a “poor man’s Patrick Swayze,” which is not far from the mark (DIRTY DANCING, Gus and Alexis’s favorite movie, is referred to frequently); Alexis, despite her profession, is a somewhat ditzy dame with a high-pitched, breathy voice, and other ultra-femme attributes (translation: she's hot); Darby is mostly seen as a sort of crouching, screechy, nightmarish troll; and Sgt. Johnson is a super-macho, gravelly-voiced, drill instructor type. Sgt. Johnson is frequently in conflict with Gus because, to this upstanding penis, sex—represented by the soldier’s firing his automatic rifle, with a grenade explosion as the climax—is the only mission worth fighting for, while Gus is always searching for something deeper. Sorry about that, but the play does advertise itself as "A penetratingly funny show about love."
Gus is a nice-looking guy who refers to himself as a “poor man’s Patrick Swayze,” which is not far from the mark (DIRTY DANCING, Gus and Alexis’s favorite movie, is referred to frequently); Alexis, despite her profession, is a somewhat ditzy dame with a high-pitched, breathy voice, and other ultra-femme attributes (translation: she's hot); Darby is mostly seen as a sort of crouching, screechy, nightmarish troll; and Sgt. Johnson is a super-macho, gravelly-voiced, drill instructor type. Sgt. Johnson is frequently in conflict with Gus because, to this upstanding penis, sex—represented by the soldier’s firing his automatic rifle, with a grenade explosion as the climax—is the only mission worth fighting for, while Gus is always searching for something deeper. Sorry about that, but the play does advertise itself as "A penetratingly funny show about love."
The Acorn Theatre, on Theatre Row.
In the course of the play's intermissionless 80-minutes, Brennan gives an athletic performance (including disco dancing and pushups),
shifting rapidly from role to role, often in rapid-fire repartee between
characters. A trim and pleasant-looking man of around 30, he definitely has
talent, but the material he is performing, written by himself, Jason C. Cooper,
and Mary Cimino, and directed by Debra Whitfield, mixes a determinedly earnest performance with devastatingly unfunny, often uncomfortably juvenile, scatological humor. A few spectators in
the one-third filled house laughed valiantly, either because they actually
thought this material was funny or because they were friends or relatives of the
performer. I hope the latter.
As I've intimated, there is a considerable amount of no-holds-barred but ridiculously sophomoric sex talk (I lost
count of all the references to “blue balls”) and mimed sexual action (both with
a partner and otherwise); the double entendres fly about as wildly as the
indiscriminate bullets spraying out of Sgt. Johnson’s "gun." At one point, Sgt.
Johnson says of himself, “I’m a dick.” (Har!)Another of his lines goes: “Women need
labels. Men need labia.” (Har, har!) And then there’s: “Don’t talk to me about being hard.
I wrote the book.” (Hardy har har!) Among the frequently embarrassing scenes is one where Gus
roams the audience, asking, “When was the last time you got laid?,” and
actually gets some women to recite cringe-inducing, sexually explicit comments after him.
Roman Tatarowicz’s set is a fairly elaborate system of
platforming, with criss-crossed poles decorating the upstage area. Deborah
Constantine’s lighting, too, is rather complex, since the piece is staged with
high-intensity theatricality as Brennan moves swiftly from place to place and
level to level across the Acorn’s stage. And sound effects of guns shooting, grenades
exploding, and many other things fill your ears at every gap in the action. But for all its strenuous efforts, THE BANANA MONOLOGUES remains as funny as someone slipping on a peel.