Catastrophic Theatre thrives on weird. Weird is its mother’s milk. Edgy stuff, cult status, the avant-garde, the cutting edge is always elevated by its highly polished efforts. Different, thy name is Catastrophic.
So why, heavens why, have they selected Candice D’Meza’s buffo play – a world premiere no less – Miss LaRaj’s House of Dysfunctional Futures?
The play is a vaudeville (nothing wrong with that), but it is a minor one, a sketch comedy better served by one of Tamara Cooper’s summer comic extravaganzas. It is a much lesser effort by a distinguished Houston writer, superlative actor, film maker, community activist, Afrofuturist, spiritualist. Silly and slight, this work doesn’t seem worthy of her.
It wants to be grave, as it is set in some post-apocalyptic time. The detritus of civilization is all around in Afsaneh Aayani’s fragrant design (sink besmirched with mushrooms and moss, broken window frames, walls cracked in half, electric lines limned in neon, bricks littering the floor). Myriad video screens are placed around the stage, each with National Geographic-inspired films of mushroom spores ejected in puffs of rejuvenation, or with tendrils entwining, or time lapse pictures of buds flowering. It’s springtime in this hellhole. But at least these movies allow us some relief whenever the play goes sour; we can watch nature in action and be awed by its beauty. We can forget the action before us and watch a PBS documentary to while away the time.
D’Meza’s play is a plea for us to get our act together before we destroy everything. Miss LaRaj, or “Mutha” Earth is not happy. As played by Abraham Zeus Zapata, tightly sheathed in gold lamé or, later, swathed in ruffles of blue tulle, she wants to know why humans can’t learn to get along. Why do they destroy, annihilate, pollute her beautiful planet? She summons her compatriots: Flora (Dillon Dewitt), Mami Mami Wata (Indigo Dewdrop Ghonima), Fye (Jarred Tettey), Fauna (Brandon McCormick), Ms. Minnie (Magdalen Vaughn) to assist her on her quest. Each proceeds to enlighten her as best they can. Water, the animal kingdom, plants, minerals, and fire have none-too-brief individual acts. None of this is very funny, but the opening night audience, filled with Catastrophic groupies, guffawed with glee at the antics and tired theatrics.
When you leave the theater and whistle the costumes, you know something has gone terribly wrong. Juan Saracay’s eye-catching costumes are the best in show. You can’t take your eyes off them. Fye’s red turban, bustier, boa, cape, and glittery lipstick befit Tettey’s fey reading of bitchy fire; Fauna’s black-and-white-striped greatcoat is a wonder of zoology and swirled with abandon by McCormick. He also starts the show with monkey howls and parrot squawks, but unfortunately gets less to do as the show proceeds. Ghonima’s water gown is flowing and appropriately ocean blue; Dewitt’s Flora is naturally green with a gigantic ruff of petals; and Vaughn’s metal is all silvery sheen like a vein of newly-minted ore. She later appears as a homeboy rapper with a blindingly spangled backward baseball cap. Perfection.
The play teeters on and on, even with an extended surreal dream sequence by Miss LaRaj in which she hears – and we see through James Templeton’s expressionistic video design – a Moist Human on Ayahuasca and Zeta Reticuli pontificating on the human condition. These two don’t move their mouths when they talk, we hear and watch D’Meza in voice-over as she plays both characters. Her dual faces pulsate with each syllable, a bit out of focus, strange, but mighty effective, if much too long.
Zapata works the crowd with hammy infectiousness, and always has us in the palm of his lacquered hands. He can purr, boast, shout, prance, whisper in conspiratorial tones, or even sing off-key, but he’s the other thing we can’t take our eyes off of. He’s a commanding presence, as is Tettey’s bitch-slap Fye, snapping open his blood-red fan like one of his snippy retorts. And Vaughn’s silvery thug-like homie slinks with macho conviction.
Every sequence lasts too long, each small monologue wears out its welcome, and an intermission is not welcomed. Cut this down to one act! We get it twice the first time.
D’Meza sees only disaster in mankind; sees only the worst: war, atrocities, the Bomb. Her thesis is what? Don’t pollute? Don’t kill each other? Be kind? Is that all? Will this wan overused message save our planet from destruction? All I know is that this overly broad but inconsequential comedy won’t.
Miss LaRaj’s House of Dystopian Futures continues through March 1 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, February 24. (Fridays are Free Beer Nights.) MATCH, 3400 Main. For more information, call 713-521-4533 or visit matchhouston.org. Pay-what-you will.
