“A Woman of a
Certain Age”
Annie Golden, now 67, may have a deep and abiding place in
the hearts of veteran theatregoers with offbeat inclinations but it’s probably
safe to say, along with Wikipedia, that “she is best known for playing mute
Norma Romano” on the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black.” Readers not
familiar with her should really take a look at the aforesaid Wikipedia page, and
also Google
the images of her changing appearance to get a clear perspective of just
how diverse her career has been. As with all of us, she’s changed physically
over the years, which is itself part of the self-deprecating humor that infuses
her current, name-above-the-title, Off-Broadway show, Broadway Bounty Hunter,
at the Greenwich House Theater.
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| Company of Broadway Bounty Hunter. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
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| Jared Joseph, Jasmine Forsberg, Annie Golden, Christina Sajous. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Let’s be clear: Broadway Bounty Hunter is a defiantly
silly and campily over-the-top vehicle. It’s also very funny, and, if you go
with its flow, performed with such persistent pizzazz by its unbeatably versatile
ensemble that you may not believe you’re liking it so much. Broadway Bounty Hunter is probably too limited in appeal to be Broadway bound but it deserves an extended Off-Broadway life when its run at Greenwich House expires.
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| Omar Garibay, Jasmine Forsberg, Jared Joseph, Badia Farha, Christina Sajous. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
I’m fully aware that, like even the best of Charles Ludlam’s
old Theatre of the Ridiculous productions, some audiences won’t tune in to its wavelength.
Others, like most of the audience when I attended, will give it their hearts,
if not their minds. I’ll put it this way: the show, which originated at the
Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires, has a score by Joe Iconis, whose Be
More Chill will soon be closing its Broadway run. That show, too, had an
exaggerated book, based on a popular young adult’s novel, but, apart from one
or two numbers, it failed to engage me.
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| Annie Golden. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Broadway Bounty Hunter’s charmingly preposterous
book, by Iconis, Lance Rubin, and Jason Sweettooth Williams, had me from the start,
maybe because it’s so filled with inside theatre stuff. Golden plays Annie
Golden—a cartoon version of herself—not as the successful star she’s currently
become, but as an aging actress who’s lost her popularity. As she laments in a
song that becomes almost an anthem of self-assertion, she keeps getting turned
down for parts because she’s “A Woman of a Certain Age.” It doesn’t help that
she lives in the past, even attending auditions with dated headshots from the
time of her cutest glory.
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| Company of Broadway Bounty Hunter. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
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| Jared Joseph, Badia Farha, Annie Golden, Jasmine Forsberg, Christina Sajous. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Shiro recruits the frumpy Annie, who quickly masters the
required martial arts techniques, not only because she’s surprisingly
physically adept but because she’s able to invest her methods with theatrical
knowhow, finding stage-related analogies and characters she’s played to solve
each problem that arises.
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| Annie Golden, Alan H. Greene. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
She’s partnered by Shiro with the superfly hunter, Lazarus
(Alan H. Greene), so swaggeringly cool you’d probably stick to him if your skin
and his came in contact. Although initially resentful of the pairing, Lazarus leaves
with his new partner for the jungles of Ecuador to bring back the villainous
Mac Roundtree (Brad Oscar, The Producers), a pimp and drug pusher. Shiro
wants him because he caused her actor brother, Hiro, to die from an overdose.
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| Emily Borromeo, Christina Sajous, Omar Garibay, Annie Golden, Jasmine Forsberg, Alan H. Greene. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Mac’s goal is to produce shows on Broadway with casts juiced
up on a drug he’s created called Fierce, whose potency will increase their
talents multifold and give them so much energy they’ll be able to break the
union rules of no more than eight shows a week by doing 15! Like a dedicated union
deputy, Annie will not stand for such rule-breaking, although she’ll have to
reconcile her bounty hunting duties with what she discovers about Mac’s
identity.
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| Badia Farha, Jasmine Forsberg, Christina Sajous, Brad Oscar. Photo; Matthew Murphy. |
Sit back and let the players do the work for you as the company—five
playing multiple roles with clever wigs and a panoply of Sarafina Bush’s marvelously
imagined costumes—takes you along to Ecuador and back on Michael Schweikardt’s
adaptable set. Helping it all click are the continuously imaginative video
projections of Brad Peterson and the first-class lighting effects by the great
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer.
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| Alan H. Greene, Brad Oscar. Photo: Matthew Murphy, |
Director Jennifer Weiner’s staging and inventive choreography—much
of it based on kung fu moves (watch out for those amazingly well-handled nunchucks!)
and some done in hilarious slo mo—never flag as the action barrels along, with
one rousing, rock-inspired show-stopper after the other. This is one of the
most talented ensembles around, each with dancing, singing, acting, and comic
skills so good they practically shout for wider recognition.
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| Annie Golden, Emily Borromeo. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
I salute Badhia Farha as Sienna and others; Jasmine Forsberg
as Indigo and others; Omar Garibay as Spark Plug and others; Jared Joseph as
Felipe and others; and Christina Sajous as Claudine Machine and others. They
comprise a bodacious, booty-shaking team for the ages, especially when the shaking
happens in Mac Roundtree’s “Ho House,” whose sex workers Annie wants to
unionize.
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| Annie Golden, Alan H. Greene. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Brad Oscar’s Mac Roundtree is as good as you’d expect from
this musical comedy veteran. Alan H. Greene may have the name of someone you’d
hire to do your taxes but he’s a strappingly striking dude—think an
African-American Dwayne Johnson—whose powerhouse presence, physical and
vocal, delivers time and again. Emily Borromeo is a dream of exotic mystery and
control. Finally, Annie Golden’s comedic and musical glow, as she calls for
women to rise up and smash the male patriarchy, shows that all that glisters is
indeed golden.
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| Company of Broadway Bounty Hunter. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Which leaves us with the burning question: what happens when,
at Saturday matinees, Anne L. Nathan takes over for Annie Golden?
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| Company of Broadway Bounty Hunter. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St., NYC
Through September 15
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