“Sunday in LIC With
Alice” ***
By Elyse Orecchio (guest
reviewer)
 |
| Tana Sirois, Meghan Ginley. |
To get to the performance space for Painted Alice involves
winding through multiple exhibits at the Plaxell Art
Gallery in Long Island City; pretty cool
to get a free art show along with your theatre tickets. The show is performed
in an enormous room in the back of the 12,000 square-foot gallery (eat your
heart out, Manhattan) where there’s ample stage space and the audience watches
from chairs set up on bleachers.
Presented by Long Island City Artists, Inc. by special arrangement
with Greg Schaffert, Painted Alice is a love letter to LIC, where
warehouses converted into art galleries neighbor waterfront high-rises with
skyline views and the beautiful Gantry
Plaza State Park, and where struggling artists walk their dogs
alongside the wealthy. The titular character Alice (Tana Sirois) paints with
the Citi building as a
backdrop, as seen through her window (original art created for the show by
Eileen Coyne).
The concept is nifty: a modern-day Alice In Wonderland where
Alice is an uninspired artist who falls through her canvas and enters an
alternate universe in which she encounters odd characters who must teach her
life lessons before she can return home. A zany show about art in an eclectic
art gallery: great start.
Painted Alice features some fun ideas:
Alice’s childhood drawings come to life and lecture her, she dances a duet with
an Italian painter in which they both wear one roller skate, the audience gets
to munch on brownies, there’s exercise-ball choreography, and the front row
acts as a jury by holding up paddles of famous paintings (I had Girl With a Pearl Earring).
William Donnelly’s (book and lyrics) and Michael Mahler’s (music
and lyrics) songs are upbeat and entertaining, led by music director Jonathan
Bauerfeld at the piano and enhanced by Conor Keelan’s orchestrations. Guillermo
Laporta’s lighting and projections bring gusto to Alice’s wonderland. Director
Edjo Wheeler’s staging makes creative use of the space, though the show’s
pacing needs more snap.
The many characters in Alice’s orbit are played by Jack Bowman,
Molly Kelleher, Adam B. McDonald, and Jamie Shapiro, who all have a lot of work
to do and do it very well. Kelleher is given the bulk of the larger-than-life
roles, including the flamboyant art agent who channels Frasier
Crane’s agent Bebe, and an insult-hurling
incarnation of a mermaid Alice drew as a kid, costumed by Olivia Vaughn
Hern.
The piece refreshingly focuses on a female artist, and I don’t
even want to make it a thing that the primary romantic relationship is between
two women, because the show doesn’t. Unfortunately, what begins as the
progressive story of a young woman’s career as a painter surprisingly
devolves into typical romcom trappings. Alice’s girlfriend Dinah (Meghan
Ginley) is strangely unsupportive of the time Alice puts into her work and
wishes she’d be more of a priority for her partner. It was hard to appreciate
the pretty song imploring Alice to “make room in your life for love” when I was
distracted wondering what the heck she did wrong other than try to meet a
deadline.
As plot events get “curiouser and curiouser,” so does clarity on
what the production is aiming to achieve. It seems that Alice goes through a
whole lot of trouble just to learn that love is more important than her work
(huh?), and that it’s no big deal to back out of a job commitment if it means
being true to yourself (huh??).
The prevalent phrase I heard whispered among the crowd on my way
out was “that was fun.” You may not leave the theatre with any more meaningful
revelations than Alice had, but chances are you’ll have had a pretty good time.
The Plaxall Gallery
5-25 46th Ave., Long
Island City, NYC
Through Dec 1
Elyse Orecchio studied musical theatre at Emerson College, acting at CUNY
Brooklyn College, and English Linguistics & Rhetoric at CUNY Hunter
College. She has worked in nonprofit communications for more than a decade. She
lives in Sunnyside, Queens, with her husband Joe, kids Theo and Melody, and
three cats. eorecchio@gmail.com @elyseorecchio