Four Easy Pieces

by David Guaspari

Review by Bryan VanCampen

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Lots of good things happened last night at the premiere of the first Ithaca Fringe Festival for new theater. I only wish I could have switched the order I saw the shows in, so I could have gone home with the Looney Tunes high I got from David Guaspari’s “Four Easy Pieces” as opposed to driving home after A.J. Sage’s “No” feeling like every asshole male I’ve always tried never to emulate.

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“Four Easy Pieces” is, as described, four short comedy scenes verging on sketches. I liked the gradual reveal in the first scene that the three actors are white mice or rats in a maze. Clayton Dubin and Lisa Villamel’s physicality added a lot to the piece’s humor, but Alek Osinski was lacking some of the authority needed to really run the scene.

 

“Roger and Juliet” is a delightful two-hander between two eminent suicides on opposite ledges between Michael Donato’s frustrated Everyman and Paige Anderson as a beaming free spirit that maybe hangs out on building ledges to meet guys. “Speed Mating” looks at the mating instincts of insects that won’t be around long; with just a few costume pieces, boy bugs Dubin and Leo Stohlwag and ladybugs Villamel and Melanie Uhlir flitted onto the stage suggesting an alien life lived. I especially liked Uhlir’s exuberant insect dance.

 

Finally, Kristen Sad strides in as a goofy, vindictive poetess and annihilates. The material, and the way she handles it and the audience, makes you want more from this character. Growing up with more than my share of pretentious poet laureates who were more show than go, Guaspari and Sad have clearly defined a riot of a character who sweeps onto the stage having lived an amazing, absurd life, with a whole ridiculous poetic framework that supports her delusions as much as anything else. I think there’s more to this character, and I hope the genius Sad – whose abilities for real comedy are the opposite of her surname – keeps burrowing into that character and keeps talking.

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-Bryan VanCampen, 4/25/14