“Now you
better watch this and try to understand what’s going on…”
If that’s not a perfect dictate – coming from a 56-year-old
movie – for the world premiere of Love Bomb, the fifth and latest collaboration between Brian Jucha and
The Catastrophic Theatre, then I don’t know what is. It’s not even a dictate.
It’s just about all you can do: Watch and try to understand.
So, here’s what I understood.
Love Bomb begins with fanfare – literally, the
fanfare Alfred Newman composed to accompany the 20th Century Fox logo at the
beginning of their films, its epic-ness perfectly rendered by sound designer
Andrew Archer. An aptly dramatic reading of Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle
into that good night” follows, and then we meet seven characters about to have a
séance, the goal of which is to “summon the spirit of love.”
Each character proclaims a different goal: One is
“skeptical and looking for love.” One says they are “just here for the laughs
and hopefully the love.” And another claims they are “not sure” why they’re
there, but they are “definitely not looking for love.” They hold their séance, and in short order, one of the characters “disappears,” and we hear that there’s
a serial killer (later deemed to be serial killers) outside the dancehall.
Oh, did I mention that the seven characters in Love Bomb are taxi dancers? Taxi dancing, that profession of yore Tina Turner sang about
in “Private Dancer,” refers to people who dance with strangers for money. The
taxi dancers in Love Bomb trip the light fantastic with patrons in the
form of half-bodied mannequins in coats and wigs – quirkily done by prop
designer Lauren Davis – on an elevated stage designed by Moon Papas Art (Matt
Fries, Julian Luna, Boston Kassidy, and Cam Rowe).
And that concludes the “synopsis” part of the review. From
here, the less said the better, but I will note that Love Bomb gets a
generous assist from George Romero and John Russo – not to mention Jeff Dunham,
S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, Judy Blume, Nevzat Çiftçi, Donna Summer, Valley
of the Dolls, KATSEYE, a bucket of chicken from KFC, etc. – and, of course,
singer-songwriter Melanie, whose songs Jucha utilizes throughout the show.
Art is subjective, so it’s up to each individual audience
member to make meaning from what they experience at the theater. It’s true wherever
you go, but no theater in town demands meaning-making from their audience quite
like Catastrophic, and no show you see this season – until the next one at
Catastrophic, probably – will allow for such an array of wildly disparate, mileage-may-vary
interpretations than Love Bomb.
And for fun, here’s one of them.
Though it may seem par for the course in a show devised by
Jucha and The Catastrophic Theatre for seven grownups to hold a kooky séance
looking for love, maybe it’s just as desperate an act for these characters as
it would be for anyone outside the walls of the theater – and maybe even more
so.
The characters in Love Bomb are trying to summon
love in a world where, as taxi dancers, they only experience relationships as transactional.
In the dancehall, every bit of intimacy and companionship is commodified. And their
disillusionment comes through loud and clear in the Melanie song each character
sings.
Raven Flowers, played by Miika Stewart, sings about “leftover
emotion from a couple of nights ago” during “Leftover Emotions” with a center-of-gravity
finesse that they use to anchor the whole production.
Karina Pal Montaño-Bowers, bathed in blue light with a
destructive tornado projected behind her (courtesy of the always first-rate
Roma Flowers), beautifully asks, “Is she as pretty as me, huh?” seven different
ways as Miss Ara Leon in “Any Guy.”
With some jaunty footwork, Noel Bowers’s Jack Merridew
calls out people who are “building the halls with the outer walls” though they “haven’t
got a thing within” during “The Good Guys,” while Kyle Sturdivant brings his about-to-burst
energy to Jay Poulet as he sings “if I had a nickel for each time that I’ve
been put on / I would be their nickel man” in “Nickel Song.”
Bryan Kaplún deftly delivers as the unlucky loser,
embittered and dejected, as Billy when muses that he “never thought you’d find
another he / You liked as well as me / But I guess I was wrong” during “I’m
Back in Town.”
And Tamarie Cooper (who may claim “moment of the night” with
her aggressive attempt to “love bomb” the audience) point blank says, “in my
line of work a person could get hurt / A person could get worse / A person
could get burned” as Francine Trotter in “The Champagne Song.”
It also may seem par for the course for there to be the
sudden appearance of “serial killers.” But the “serial killers” outside the dancehall
are described as ordinary-looking. They are predators wreaking havoc, though maybe
not entirely unlike the emotional predators who have done their damage to the characters.
At one point, a character even says if they don’t dance, maybe the “serial
killers” will leave them alone (an example of masterfully borrowed text, by the
way).
But the final performance of the evening is by Amy Bruce’s
Annie, who sings “Take Me Home.” Bruce captures the song’s almost uncomfortable
vulnerability perfectly, imploring someone to take her home with them. It’s a
melancholic note showing that, much like when the group gathered
for their séance at the beginning, they are still seeking love, even if it hurts them. They refuse
still to go gentle into that good night.
So, are the “serial killers” patrons affected by radiation
from the Venus probe? Is the unexpected appearance of a new character at the
end a payoff to Raven asking, “Did she say NASA” earlier? Mercifully, Jucha
left out Melanie’s “Brand New Key,” but what about the key on an oversized chain
labeled “Brand New” that made its way around the cast?
I still have plenty of questions, but one you may be
wondering is, “But were you not entertained?”
Yes, entertained and compelled by this deeply introspective
mediation on love and what we bear for it, its poignancy ensconced in an absurd,
weirdly familiar, and inexplicably funny package. But it’s Brian Jucha and The
Catastrophic Theatre. Would you expect any less?
Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8
p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through December 7 at the
MATCH, 3400 Main. For more information, call 713-521-4533 or visit catastrophictheatre.com. Pay-what-you-can
(with a suggested price of $35).
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
