Tag Archives: Sarah Lemp

NEW COUNTRY

Sharon (Sarah Lemp) takes aim at Uncle Jim (Mark Roberts) in Roberts’s sharpshooting dark comedy (photo by Clay Anderson)

Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 27, $35
212-989-2020
www.rattlestick.org
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

As you enter the small, intimate Cherry Lane Studio Theatre to see New Country, a flat-screen in the hotel-room set is playing climactic clips from such classic Westerns as High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, Pale Rider, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as well as the recent needless remake of 3:10 to Yuma. About two-thirds of the way through the viciously funny seventy-five-minute play, Uncle Jim (Roberts) says, “See, I like old country. Everything new is shit,” which just about sums up the world view of television veteran Roberts, a former stand-up comic who created, executive-produced, and wrote Mike and Molly for three seasons, was the head writer and executive producer for Two and a Half Men for seven years, was an executive consultant for The Big Bang Theory for three seasons, and has appeared on such shows as Friends and Seinfeld. He is now carving out quite a career for himself on the stage as a playwright and actor. Employing a sharp cynicism and wicked sense of humor from his years in Hollywood, Roberts went behind the scenes at a television network in The Gyre: Enter at Forest Lawn and examined the darker side of human nature in the brilliant black comedy Rantoul and Die, both for the adventurous Amoralists company and featuring the ultra-talented Sarah Lemp, who appeared in each of those productions, opposite Roberts in the former. In New Country, David Lind plays the aptly named Justin Spears, a self-obsessed country music superstar partying in Nashville on the eve of his wedding. He is being watched closely by his longtime handlers, the all-business Paul (Malcolm Madera) and his sidekick, the roly-poly Chuck (Jared Culverhouse), who are also dealing with the jealous and nervous fiancée via cell phone. Justin has let his fame go to his head, ordering around everyone, making them cater to his every whim, including Uncle Jim, a grizzled old coot who is the only relative Justin claims to care about. Meanwhile, Ollie (Stephen Sheffer), the hotel bellboy and wannabe country singer, is trying to get his demo to Justin. Things really kick into high gear when Sharon, Justin’s former fiancée, arrives like a house on fire, metaphorical six-guns blazing as she attempts to claim her just deserts. Evoking a screwball drawing-room comedy, albeit with quite a cynical bite, New Country skewers such high-falutin’ concepts as love, loyalty, and creativity as everyone states their case for why they matter — or why they don’t.

The price of fame and fortune in skewered in NEW COUNTRY (photo by Clay Anderson)

The centerpiece of New Country is a marvelous scene between Sharon, a bitter, leather-clad, motorcycle-riding cop, and Uncle Jim, a hippie Walter Brennan who mumbles hysterical asides while guzzling alcohol and hanging out with his companion, a blow-up doll named Wanda June Whitmore who “is up for anything and everything.” Lemp gives what might be her best performance yet as Sharon, a whirlwind of energy and bile, while Roberts has a ball as Uncle Jim, who’s never met a vice he isn’t willing to try. But neither of them is happy with the hands they’ve been dealt. “Live in your own little world, don’t you, pal?” Sharon says to him at one point. “Well. Beats the one they give us,” he responds, to which she adds, “True enough. Everything sure looked better in the catalogue.” Madera and Culverhouse are like a modern-day Abbott and Costello as Paul and Chuck, who are not about to let their golden goose flit away. Lind is excellent as the smug, oily Justin, hiding more than a few secrets that could ruin him, while Sheffer is sweetly likable as Ollie, who is no mere swishy bellboy. Director and set designer David Harwell sustains the craziness with just the right balance of anarchy and order, giving plenty of room for Roberts’s acidic, incisive dialogue to shine. There might not be a violent shootout à la Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper at the end, but the sharpshooting Roberts hits his many targets over and over, leaving behind a metaphorical, and hilarious, bloodbath of winners and losers.

THE GYRE: ENTER AT FOREST LAWN

Jack (Mark Roberts) proves to Jessica (Sarah Lemp) that there’s no business quite like show business in ENTER AT FOREST LAWN (photo by Russ Rowland)

Walkerspace
46 Walker St. between Church St. & Broadway
July 14 – August 9, $40 ($65 Gyre ticket package with The Qualification of Douglas Evans)
www.theamoralists.com

Last year, playwright Mark Roberts and director Jay Stull teamed up with the Amoralists for one of 2013’s best shows, the outrageously funny black comedy Rantoul and Die, which we called “a brilliantly conceived and executed play that examines the darker side of human nature in beautifully bizarre ways.” Pretty much the same can be said about their latest collaboration, Enter at Forest Lawn, which opened at Walkerspace on July 14, kicking off the Amoralists’ (HotelMotel, The Bad and the Better) eighth season as part of “The Gyre,” which is being billed as “a two play repertory exploring man’s vicious cycles.” (The second work is Derek Ahonen’s intricately self-reflexive and complex The Qualification of Douglas Evans, which opens July 15.) In Enter at Forest Lawn, Roberts delves into something he knows rather well, network television — he is the creator of the CBS comedy Mike & Molly — starring as Jack Story, the show runner for a hit comedy on the verge of a major syndication deal. But the program’s star, Uncle Danny, a Charlie Sheen-like madman prone to violence, drugs, alcohol, and underage women, is out of control, turning publicist Stanley (David Lanson) into a whimpering fool. Jack sends his mousey assistant, Jessica (Sarah Lemp), to get Danny’s signature on the syndication contract, giving her explicit instructions on how to approach him. Meanwhile, Jack’s former assistant, Marla (Anna Stromberg), now a network executive, wants Jack to find a job for her nephew, Clinton (Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Matthew Pilieci), which turns out to be a little more complicated than expected, leading to a surprising conclusion for all involved.

Roberts and Stull (The Capables) pack a whole lot into seventy edge-of-your-seat minutes, highlighted by the actors’ heavily stylized, exaggerated movements that define their characters. Roberts, a former stand-up comedian, is sensational as Jack, dancing around David Harwell’s spare set — essentially an odd desk surrounded by doors — like a herky-jerky boxer, ready to throw proverbial punches at every chance, willing to do whatever it takes to get the syndication deal done. The rest of the cast also works with oversized physical presentation and quirky motion: Stanley is bent over protecting his balls and looking like he has to go to the bathroom; Jessica holds her hands like little paws, evoking a frightened forest creature, and occasionally twirling like a young innocent; Clinton is stooped as if ready to pounce at any moment; and Marla sinuously winds about the set, a strong sexual being who knows the power her body holds and is not afraid to use it. Enter at Forest Lawn is a biting, cynical behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood, confirming some of our worst nightmares about what really goes on backstage. “Stanley, I have been in this business, man and boy, for over twenty-five years,” Jack says early on, “and one of the few undeniable facts I’ve learned is that if it ain’t on the screen, it never fucking happened.” Thankfully for those of us not in the business, Roberts, Stull, and the ever-adventurous Amoralists have brought this frantic craziness to the stage for all of us to experience.

THE CHEATERS CLUB

The Amoralists explore infidelity and haunted spirits in world premiere at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Russ Rowland)

A SAVANNAH GHOST STORY
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Friday – Tuesday through September 21, $50
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.amoralists.com

The “Summer of the Amoralists,” which began with the ever-inventive New York-based theater company’s outstanding Rantoul and Die, comes to a disappointing close with the rather mundane southern Gothic ghost story The Cheaters Club. It’s all the more frustrating because it’s written and directed by resident playwright and company cofounder Derek Ahonen, who gave a virtuoso performance in Rantoul and Die and has previously scripted the gripping detective noir The Bad and the Better and wrote and directed the wickedly funny sex comedy Pink Knees on Pale Skin for the Amoralists. Bookended by tipsy Dickensian tour guide Vladimir Anton (Zen Mansley), The Cheaters Club is set in Savannah, Georgia, America’s Most Haunted City. Geist Ubernachtung is approaching for the first time in 333 years, a night when the spirits of the dead will cross over from the other side and take corporeal form. Siblings Tommy (Matthew Pilieci), Jimmy (Byron Anthony), and Cathy Mayola (Cassandra Paras) have arrived at the Chaney Inn for their annual family vacation, during which they take off their wedding rings and immerse themselves in a celebration of infidelity; this year they have brought along a friend, Vonn (Jordan Tisdale), who is looking to get even with his wife, Linda (Anna Stromberg), who recently betrayed him. The inn is run by the creepy Mama Chaney (Sarah Lemp), with her creepy teenage son, Lee (James Rees), working as the bellhop, older son Lawrence (David Nash) selectively serving drinks behind the bar, and sexy daughter Lana (Kelley Swindall) performing songs with an oddball piano player (Ben Reno) in the lounge. Soon strange, unexplainable things are happening, leading to a second act in which the four protagonists’ spouses — Charlie (James Kautz), Susan (Vanessa Vaché), Pat (Wade Dunham), and Linda — show up, looking for their loved ones. The Cheaters Club feels like an unfinished genre exercise thrown together quickly to primarily entertain the Amoralists themselves and their deservedly loyal followers. The night we attended, there were random belly laughs and echoing guffaws emanating from individual audience members at unusual moments, as if there were inside jokes and references the rest of us weren’t quite privy to. Even the acting, generally a strong point for the Amoralists, is surprisingly flat, getting no help from a bumpy narrative that never achieves any kind of flow. The cast appears to be having a lot of fun onstage, but this production by one of the city’s best troupes will leave you feeling cheated.

RANTOUL AND DIE

Rallis (Derek Ahonen) and Debbie (Sarah Lemp) are at the end of their ropes in RANTOUL AND DIE (photo by Russ Rowland)

Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Through July 20, $51
212-989-2020
www.amoralists.com
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

One of the city’s best, most adventurous and unpredictable theater companies is currently presenting the first must-see show of the summer. The Amoralists, whose recent successes include The Bad and the Better, which squeezed twenty-six actors playing thirty-three characters onto one set, and HotelMotel, a pair of plays that took place around a bed in a room in the Gershwin Hotel, are now dazzling audiences in the tiny Cherry Lane Studio Theatre with the outrageously funny Rantoul and Die. Written by Mike & Molly creator and executive producer Mark Roberts, the play begins as sad-sack Rallis (Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Derek Ahonen) is being chastised by his best friend, Gary (Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Matthew Pilieci), for having tried to kill himself because his wife, Debbie (Sarah Lemp), is divorcing him. “I’m just looking for the sufferin’ to end. Can you understand that?” the depressed, tenderhearted Rallis says in a hysterically funny and pathetically whiny singsong voice. “I got nine kinds of misery livin’ inside of me right now.” When Debbie returns from her job at the local Dairy Queen, she laces into poor Rallis as well. “It’s very simple, Rallis,” she says. “I see your face and I think of the time I have wasted. The life I have pissed away on you. That fills me with hatred and rage, and therefore my interactions with you are less than nurturing. You get it?” In the second act, the trio is joined by cat lover Callie (Vanessa Vaché), Debbie’s boss at the DQ, a young woman with a rather sickeningly sweet view of life. “We all got stuff we ain’t proud of. And we have things that we are proud of,” Carrie tells Debbie. “Which one you choose to focus on is the difference between a smile and a frown.” As plot twists ensue, this black comedy about so-called white trash grows both deeper and darker, but the belly laughs never stop coming.

Debbie (Sarah Lemp) learns a little too much about her cat-loving DQ boss, Callie (Vanessa Vaché), in new Amoralists show (photo by Russ Rowland)

Over the course of about ninety minutes (plus intermission), director Jay Stull (Strange Heart, The Capables) includes four interludes in which each of the characters get their own moment to step out of the story and address the audience directly, sharing something personal or absurd that reveals more about them. The play is set in a ramshackle trailer-park-like house designed by Alfred Schatz, with garbage strewn all around and most of the action occurring on a couch at front and center. Each of the two acts starts with the lights out, with dialogue that ultimately equates sex with violence in clever, funny ways. The cast, all of whom have performed in multiple Amoralist productions previously — Ahonen also has written and/or directed several of the company’s shows — is clearly comfortable with one another, adding an involving intimacy in the already intimate Cherry Lane space. Roberts and Stull also avoid belittling the “white trash” setting, finding plenty of humor without being mean-spirited or obvious. Rantoul and Die is a brilliantly conceived and executed play that examines the darker side of human nature in beautifully bizarre ways.

THE BAD AND THE BETTER

Detective Lang (William Apps) and Miss Hollis (Sarah Lemp) get caught up in a dangerous conspiracy in THE BAD AND THE BETTER (photo by Monica Simoes)

The Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West 42nd St.
Through July 21, $49.95
www.thebadandthebetter.com

Last summer the Amoralists squeezed twenty audience members into a small, makeshift bedroom in the Gershwin Hotel for a double feature of original plays by Adam Rapp (Animals and Plants) and company associate artistic director and cofounder Derek Ahonen (Pink Knees on Pale Skin). This year the innovative theater group is squeezing no fewer than 26 actors playing 33 characters onto the stage in the intimate 128-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater for Ahonen’s delightfully gripping detective noir The Bad and the Better. David Nash stars as Venus, an earnest undercover cop posing as a playwright who embeds himself with a radical New York City anarchist group to supposedly study them for the sequel to his previous work, The Sad Singers on Stanton Street — a sly reference to Ahonen’s own downtown hit, The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side. Led by twins Justice (James Kautz) and Charity (Selene Beretta), the anarchists are causing some minor mayhem, but bigger plans await. Meanwhile, Venus’s brother, hero cop Ricky Lang (William Apps), has been exiled to a far-off part of Long Island with a secretary (Sarah Lemp) who has the hots for him, but he soon becomes suspicious when people in his usually calm district start killing themselves. And somewhere in the middle of all this, slimy developer Richard Zorn (Clyde Baldo) is manipulating candidate Eugene Moretti (David Lanson) into highlighting the war on terror in an important upcoming election. The multiple story lines weave in and out of one another before coming together for an explosive climax, all expertly directed by Obie winner Daniel Aukin, who keeps the continuous stream of characters moving around Alfred Schatz’s set in clever ways, as if imaginary borders exist as one scene morphs into the next. The pulpy play takes on such themes as loyalty, honesty, violence, corruption, courage, betrayal, and, most of all, family, with a liberal dose of humor and even a few tugs at the heartstrings. “It’ll really just be a story about love but it’ll be somewhat disguised as a cautionary tale about the hypocrisies of extreme principals,” Venus says to the radical anarchists at one point in a self-referential explanation that doubles for Ahonen talking about The Bad and the Better itself, an engaging production that once again shows off the many talents of the somewhat radical and anarchic Amoralists.

HotelMotel

Sarah Lemp is cold and calculating as a dark sex therapist in Derek Ahonen’s PINK KNEES ON PALE SKIN (photo by Monica Simoes)

The Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through September 19, $60 (extended through October 10, $35)
www.theamoralists.com

Over the last several years, hotels have become more than just a place for tourists to rest their weary bones in New York City. During Armory Week, the Dylan Hotel hosts the Verge Art Fair, while the PooL Art Fair fills rooms in the Gershwin Hotel with site-specific installations. Last fall, Swiss theater architect Dominic Huber set his adaptation of Joseph Roth’s Hotel Savoy in the Goethe-Institut, transforming the 1014 Fifth Ave. building into a ghostly hotel. And Punchdrunk’s dazzling Sleep No More, in the old McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, has been extended yet again, this time through September 24. Joining the trend is the daring Brooklyn-based Amoralists theater company, which is currently putting on a double feature in a specially designed room in the back of the lobby of the Gershwin Hotel. Standing by its decree to be “fearless, courageous, dangerous, uncomfortable, and rattled . . . to get dirty . . . and to bleed, sweat, and cry,” the company is presenting HotelMotel, two full-length productions that provide lots of thrills and chills for adventurous theatergoers — twenty people at a time.

HotelMotel begins with the world premiere of Pink Knees on Pale Skin, written and directed by Derek Ahonen. After checking in and being given a key card, “guests” are escorted to their room, actually one of approximately twenty folding chairs lined up in one row around three sides of a bed draped in luscious red. A pianist plays in one corner of the room, which features a rose-wallpapered ceiling and four Gershwin Hotel bathrobes hanging on hooks. Soon Dr. Sarah Bauer (Sarah Lemp) and her boyfriend, Leroy (Jordan Tisdale) enter, preparing for the arrival of two married couples who have come to them because of sexual problems in their relationships. Heart surgeon Robert Wyatt (James Kautz) has cheated on his wife, lawyer Caroline (Vanessa Vache), while comedian Allison Williams (Anna Stromberg) is unable to achieve orgasm with her spouse, playwright Ted (Byron Anthony). The cold, manipulating, very direct Bauer has promised to cure them all — via a group-sex orgy (which could potentially involve Leroy as well). Bauer masterfully handles the two couples even as it slowly becomes apparent that she has some of her own deep-seated demons haunting her. The well-developed characters and believable story line build to a hot and heavy climax as spectators are turned into voyeurs who will be hard-pressed not to be titillated by the events unfolding right in front of them. Ahonen flawlessly navigates the emotional spectrum, resulting in a penetrating, insightful, and wickedly funny sex comedy that is not afraid to pull at the heartstrings.

William Apps has a thing for putting odd things down his pants in Adam Rapp’s ANIMALS AND PLANTS (photo by Monica Simoes)

After a twenty-minute break, the audience is ushered back inside for the New York premiere of writer-director Adam Rapp’s Animals and Plants. Set designer Alfred Schatz has turned the space into a messy low-budget motel room in Boone, North Carolina, with pizza boxes, beer cans, and men’s toiletries strewn all over the place. This time people can sit wherever they want, either in the two rows on one side of the white-covered bed or in one of several chairs within the set; we strongly recommend the seat by the windowed door if you don’t mind being more in the middle of things. As the audience enters, the curly haired Dantly (William Apps) is sitting on the bed, staring at the television, which is showing nothing but static, while the pianist tinkles away right behind him (and remains there silently once the play kicks in). The room is filled with a multitude of stuffed birds and animals, evoking a Norman Bates–like atmosphere. Dantly’s partner in crime, Burris (Matthew Pilieci), soon emerges, a fast-talking muscle man who can’t stop exercising or using three-dollar words that both impress and confound the not-too-bright Dantly (who spends most of the first half of the play with one hand down his pants, where he likes to put such odd objects as an ice scraper, which turned out to be not such a great idea). The two men are in Boone to pull off a deal for an unseen boss in the midst of a blizzard, but mysterious phone calls and a singing man (Brian Mendes) in a grizzly bear outfit lighting matches lead to surreal situations that might or might not actually be happening, all coming together for a powerful, action-packed finale. Animals and Plants is more experimental than its predecessor, challenging the audience by subverting convention and delving into fantastical narrative. Near the beginning, Burris sits down on the toilet and goes to the bathroom (rather convincingly) in full view of many of the spectators, announcing that this will be something different, and indeed it is. And when Cassandra (Katie Broad) later shows up, the play takes off in yet another unanticipated direction. Animals and Plants is more theatrical in general than the more intimate Pink Knees on Pale Skin, but both create riveting situations that make inventive use of the limited space, which never feels claustrophobic. Both shows also include full-frontal male nudity, which can be both funny and disconcerting in such close quarters. Whereas Ahonen tempts the audience to consider their own personal relationships, Rapp invites them to consider the relationship between audience and performer; taken as a whole, HotelMotel is an exciting, well-rounded, unique theatrical experience that is well worth checking in to. [Ed. note: The production has been extended once more, through October 10, with all tickets now just $35; in addition, Michael Cerveris and Loose Cattle will perform on September 30 in the hotel lounge from 6:00 to 7:00.]