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Tear it Off. Get to it. See it. Experience it. Mike Geither hit a homerun with this play about two lonely sisters who pass their time recording their enactments of romance novels that they’re writing. Like the playful games and skits children enact, the two sisters, Beth (Lucy Bredeson-Smith) and Bridget (Lauren B. Smith), create the stories in three dimensional space: sneaking, exploring, eating, paddling canoes, and scaling the terrain of their imaginations. It’s like watching a devised theater piece being created, except the lonely sisters actually know how to tell a story.

It’s conceivable that the two sisters could have gone on like this forever, but for the visitation of Charles, the handyman/plumber (Terrence Cranendonk) who becomes the object of obsession for both sisters, who don’t miss a beat in including him in their story. Tensions rise. Shirts are torn off. Sex is in the air.

Charles has a brother, Tim (Beau Reinker), who quickly comes to the aid of this bodice-ripping plot by filling the role of the sinister brother. A petty crook all his life, Tim quickly complicates things for Charles and the sisters.

I’m not going to spoil the story for those of you reading this by revealing the turns of Geither’s tale, but it is sufficiently entertaining for you to go and watch it yourselves. Geither creates a magnificent landscape of the mind while using a sparse set. Limited props are used effectively: glasses, pitcher, water, tape recorder, a coin, a shirt, a book, a phone. But perhaps most effective is the braids of two stories: one imagined and one real, that entwine to tangle the lives of the people in Geither’s play.

Directed by Karin Randoja (who directed Mike’s hilarious play Living Tall) many years back, and who does a fantastic job keeping this story moving along while letting the fantastic actors make their choices in dynamic splendor.

Well worth the time and money. Get to convergence and Tear it Off. Runs through September 5.

Vaudevillian Craziness

Took my kids to see Wizbang: Variety Circus Mayhem at Mahalls: Twenty Lanes in Lakewood on Saturday. It. Was. Awesome.

The organizers for Wizbang are the great duo of Pinch and Squeal, whom I’ve seen in any number of locations, with their enormously energetic creations of vaudeville, burlesque, humor, and magic. Here, the production was lifted by an entourage of similarly-minded artists who were amazing as much for their individual talents and the level of energy they maintained throughout their performance.

For the kids, Wizbang was just about as stimulating at you’d want a theatrical experience to be–especially in the conspicuously over-stimulated world in which they exist today. At Wizbang, things were happening everywhere. That is, everywhere you looked there was something to engage the eye and interest: costumes, lights, balloons, exceptional performance. On the stage there was a fantastic mix of sexual appeal, fear, glory of color and execution of feats, and the downright creepy. The show is a glorious vaudevillian circus with the promise of great joy and the threat of death that all children desire: magic, juggling, jump-roping, hoola-hooping, egg-cracking, dancing, romping, clowning.

And yes, later at night, there is an Adult version.

When it comes around again, Wizbang is a must see.