"Application Approved"
Proof
that the Internet can help rocket someone to stardom can be found in the career
of Christine Bianco, a petite actress-singer-impressionist whose YouTube videos
often show her rapidly transforming from one famous diva to another. Go ahead,
Google her! (She's also performed in FORBIDDEN BROADWAY.) Her notable gift for chameleonlike characterizations is the
impetus for APPLICATION PENDING, an 80-minute, one-woman farce by Greg Edwards
and Andy Sandberg, directed by Mr. Sandberg, in which she plays all of the 40 or so characters, male and female, old and young (including children), and almost
all of them non-singing.
APPLICATION
PENDING, at the Westside Theatre (Downstairs), satirizes the crazy desperation
of parents trying to get their kids into a kindergarten at Edgely Preparatory
Academy, an exclusive private school in Manhattan. The play is set in a
well-appointed office (nicely designed by Colin McGurk and lit by Jeff
Croiter), where it’s the first day on the job for the new pre-primary
admissions officer, Christine, a sweet young divorcée with a little boy of her
own, a Catholic parochial school pre-K student.
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| Christina Bianco. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
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| Christina Bianco. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Anyone
in their right mind, no matter how needy, would quickly have told her employer
to take this job and shove it, but Christine—who really wants to be a
kindergarten teacher—bravely soldiers on, doing her best to satisfy everyone’s
demands, remaining pleasantly accommodating regardless of the rising tide of
insanity in which she’s struggling to swim. Ultimately, of course, the worm
turns, and the plot finds reasons to allow her to go from victim to victor and
give her tormentors the shaft they all richly deserve.
 |
| Christina Bianco. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
APPLICATION
PENDING is basically an excuse for Ms. Bianco to demonstrate her extreme versatility as
she makes lightning fast transitions, usually during phone conversations
between Christine and whoever she’s talking to, morphing instantaneously into
Southern belles, macho dudes, Jewish housewives, snooty one percenters, good
old boy politicians, haughty nuns, smarmy bureaucrats, ditzy dames, and even
George Clooney. Each is clearly defined, not only by vocal tone, rhythm, and
accent, but by physical alterations in the way Ms. Bianco holds her head,
changes her position, gestures, stands or sits, or otherwise changes her
behavior. The characters, of course, are all broad cartoons, just as the play
itself is little more than an extended but quite meaty“Saturday Night Live” sketch..
Some of
it is truly comical, and the preview audience laughed frequently and even raucously
at many points. One of the funniest characters is Edgeley’s self-described
Native American administrator, a politically correct fanatic who bridles at
every word Christine speaks that might somehow be considered ethnically offensive,
such as “warpath” or even “chief.” A comment she delivers about “heritage enriched”
kids made me blow a laugh gasket; otherwise, while the show is consistently amusing and often
chuckle-worthy, the phone business begins to get repetitive and there are a few laugh-starved stretches. Nonetheless, it cracked this hard nut frequently enough to rate it one of the funniest pieces of the season.
Christine
Bianco’s ability to juggles multiple plot balls in the air as she shifts effortlessly
from role to role, using her phones and other props with split second timing, is
a tour de force that will certainly lead to even wider attention. Her material
in APPLICATION PENDING may not be for the ages, but it would be tough to find
someone else who could make it work as well. Decision on applicant Christine Bianco: Application Approved.
Westside Theatre (Downstairs)
407 West 43rd Street,
NYC
Open run
