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Hop Fro is a delicious beer. Very delicious. A quick, seasonal from Fat Heads brewery; and a damn fine brewery it is. It makes delicious sandwiches. And delicious beer. And you know what else is delicious? Snake Oil at Ohio City Theatre Project. Very delicious. I think if you re-read this and think in your mind of Will Ferrell acting the part of George W, it works. It’s in the cadence.

Snake Oil is awesome. It was good fun. Mostly clean fun. Okay, not really. Arwen Mitchell’s piece is a Brechtian delight: overthetop costuming, outrageous plot, songs, placards, audience intimidation, with archetypal characters dashing about. And Sade Wolfkitten (Yay!!) of convergence fame stroking the accordion: adding the ooompah to the frivolity. The play has the subdued spirit of Wizbang in it’s vaudevillian shorts, but the plot is as risqué as any ca. 2015 bit of reality tv naughtiness. All of which is captivatingly captured by Kilbride (Amy Schwabauer), who dances and strides around the countryside (Canopy Collective) with a pair of torpedoes blazing across her bow. Apologies for slipping into pirate speak, of a sort. Schwabauer is a fiery streak of silk energy in a Moulin Rouge dress: kicking, dancing, and fighting her way across the landscape. Stuart Hoffman steals the show, seriously, in a bit of acting that absolutely should not be missed. Hoffman shows a strong mastery of facial expression, farcical energy, and crash characterization that carries some sections of the production. His devilish character (Dryeth) is the trickster at the crossroads and Hoffman wears all the masks. The devil has put his finger on poor Delacourt (Kyle Adam) who is only trying to sell his elixir of life, with the help of his sweet Kilbride. I’ve not seen Adam in anything before, but I see he’s in something coming up at Dobama. He does a great job of selling the huxter shtick: the song, the cadence, the energy, and the spontaneous oratory. He does a good drunk as well… in the play. I’ve no knowledge of how good a drunk he is (or isn’t!) elsewhere.

I’ll not give away the plot except to say that Kilbride and Delacourt claim themselves to be from Nice, France—which they pronounce like Midwesterners discussing the decision to bring Old Aunt Edna some flowers up in Eastern Star nursing facility earlier today. The emissaries from Nice are glad to meet their host country folk in a town they call “Best.” They sell their elixir, which turns out to be a liquid that induces somnolence in the “Johns” that Kilbride has made arrangements with. Once out, Kilbride robs the men blind inside their own houses, or offices, or whatever. A brilliant bit of New World grifting. In steps the menacing yet, strangely, happy-go-lucky journalist, Dryeth, who squeezes a story from our daring duo. Dryeth promises a sale, but instead delivers destruction, splitsville. A tale as old as the Moses testament and dangerous as God’s wrath. Angels and Insects, baby.

Sarah Greywitt directs and does excellent work using the space and no doubt the design aspects. She explains at the outset where the stage is (dashed lines of red tape in a discrete rectangle to the ‘front’ of the house). But she continues that the space will be broken. The actors will be out of the lines and about. She invites us, as audience, to move around too. Change perspective. (But don’t interfere with the actors.) The life of the wandering Snake Oil salesman is invoked, the set is excellent with highlights that create an impression, a reference to the whole. Greywitt keeps the play rolling and balances the energy of the actors and the energy of the script.

I’m not telling how the story ends. But see it. Experience it. Have fun. Laugh, cry, rejoice. Saw Peter Roth there, and his lovely wife Olivia. A wonderful eve of thee in cle. Buy some cool shit from Canopy Collective, too.

My good friend Peter Roth did something quite exceptional yesterday, well, he had probably been working on it and thinking about it for a bit longer, nevertheless, yesterday evening he convened the first meeting of the Manhattan Project.

By his own description:

Between 1942 and 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer gathered the most brilliant minds of the age at Los Alamos, New Mexico to create something magnificent and terrifying. The Manhattan Project – Cleveland Lab seeks to do the same for the Cleveland stage.

Based on the Theatre Lab model taught at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and inspired by The Brooklyn Generator in New York, The Manhattan Project wants to introduce Cleveland actors and playwrights to each other by organizing a monthly production of brand new 10-minute plays.

Participating artists will meet early in the month and will be broken into teams, each with one playwright. The playwright will then be given a writing prompt to write a new 10-minute play based on the prompt and including all the team’s actors. The rest of the evening the team members will get to know each other and get a feel for each other’s skills and voices.

The teams will reconvene later in the month to perform these plays for each other.

These 10-minute plays are not an end in themselves. Through these small collaborations we hope to build relationships between the two most vulnerable artists in theatre; the actors who put themselves on stage and the playwrights who pour themselves onto the page. Perhaps these 10-minute plays will grow into longer works or maybe these collaborations will become partnerships on larger projects.

I am pleased that Peter invited me and that I am one of six inaugural writers. Upwards of twenty people showed up last night and all were enthusiastic. This is an exciting project and will only grow with time.

If you want to participate, please RSVP at TrinityCrater@gmail.com.

The first performance will be Monday, May 6, at 8:00pm at Mahall’s on Madison Avenue, which is a kick-ass venue with a good beer selection.

Rock-on, Peter!