Cue the thunder, fill up the buckets of blood, and plug in the fog machine. Dennis Monn has unleashed a grotesque: the tale of La Sirenahas come to his Allways Lounge.
On the orders of the murderously jealous gangster Giancarlo, notorious human vivisectionist Dr. Trenton Crane, played by a deliriously unhinged Vatican Lokey, kidnaps his client’s Opera Diva wife Marina, Samantha Hubbs. Crane’s purpose is to end Marina’s affair with fellow performer Richard, a fey Ren French. From there, it is off to the doctor’s underground lair where monstrous creations and lava lamps await. Dr. Crane has a nefarious plan to transform the lovely singer into one of his sexualized abominations for showcase at an international SexPosition. But the not-so-good doctor, like any card carrying mad scientist, is a secretly twisted romantic who may have a heart after all, even if that heart is hidden in a jar.
La Sirena
Where: Allways Lounge, 2240 St. Claude
When: August 25-28
But that is only the tip of the depravity that awaits patrons of actor and playwright Hubbs’ new schlock-horror musical La Sirena: just the tip of this bona-fide lab accident. Currently entering the second and final week of its premiere run at The Allways, the twisted tale of mutilated love has a degeneracy for just about everyone. Shadowbox proprietor Richard Mayer lurks as Crane’s algolagnic Man-Friday Azmodious; the indefatigable Otter pecks her way through scenes as the hysterical crow/wife of the mad scientist, and Jackie Freeman is a giant snark-machine as the tabloid reporter out to expose it all. Under Zalia Beville’s spotty but energetic rock-and-roll lights, Sintaurs, Pig Ladies, Medusas, and Chimera Strippers proclaim their teratoid condition while Ratty Scurvics pounds out musical notes from his own stage right laboratory.
Tickets: $12 online, $15 at the door
Director Monn seems hellbent on giving his author the full treatment. It feels like directing as a heroic, last-minute rescue. La Sirena is fueled by a glorious Seventies/Spencers’ retro-sensibility, and it is framed by a set, designed by Monn and Tory Decote, that looks like an inspired teenagers’ suburban-garage haunted house. With a collection of one-note songs, the production is a controlled mess of an evening. It is not good by any normal definition, suspends itself for long stretches in a narrative stasis, and eventually entropies before our very eyes. Nevertheless, due to its director’s ferocious commitment, La Sirena has the ability to arrest the senses, and if it is not viewed as a final unalterable product, it can be enjoyed for the wicked spark of possibility it contains.
On a level of personal taste, I dig what the play’s lead and writer is attempting. Since Richard O’Brien handed Jim Sharman They Came From Denton High at The Royal Court Theatre in 1973, hopeless romantics have been telling their dreams through the filter of blood, gore and rock. And by choosing to tell the story of scientific experimentation and desire run amok, Hubbs has broken into fertile earth. After all, new play creation is itself an act of mad science. Working in isolation, the dark dreamer concocts a formula of dismembering followed by the sutures of remembering. Dangerous chemicals are mixed and added until the creation is lifted up to the heavens in search of the spark of life. It is only then the monster can be unleashed to wreak destruction through the countryside. And just as quickly as the threat came into existence, torch bearing peasants with pitchforks make a quick, vicious end to it. It is the nature of creation. And in case you did not notice, I have just described writing, rehearsing and production.
But the problem with La Sirena is that Hubbs has not properly tested her formula through the controlled experiments of readings, workshops, and test audiences. If she had, she might have noticed details like Marina sitting in a cell awaiting an operation that seems to have no discernible deadline. Crane’s lack of action in this regard is so glaring that another character points to his puzzling procrastination. And that character does it without a lick of irony. A series of readings might have demonstrated the need to have the clock act against the character’s desires. A lack of time is the core element of suspense, but the dramatis personae of La Sirena seem to have it in abundance. Even the looming SexPo is an afterthought for the movement of time. It only becomes an issue when Giancarlo is reintroduced into the action.
Finally, thorough workshops and test audiences might have highlighted that while the characters spend a great deal of time articulating, singing, and indicating their desires, they are given few opportunities to bring those dreams into collision. A process of development would have given Hubbs the dangerous alchemic mixture of clearly defined characters driven by urgency. Nothing gives life to theatrical mayhem like that combination.And as strange as this may sound, the play is too profane. Go back and listen to other work in this genre, and you will see that, along with a certain lingerie naughtiness, there is a sweet innocence to the proceedings. Do a curse word count of Rocky Horror, Phantom of the Paradise, Little Shops of Horrors, and Evil Dead: The Musical; you will see what I am talking about. I am no prude, but curse words in work like this are nuclear bombs. They have to be used selectively and not with wild abandon. The characters in La Sirena unleash an orgy of curse words from beginning to end, and it wrecks the fun. This is particularly true with the character of Giancarlo. The language he uses turns Nino Mazzaro’s character into a quite real misogynist. As written, he is not a B-Movie villain but a genuinely ugly creation that kills laughs. It tonally strikes the wrong note and deprives the evening of some of its latenight double-feature energy.
Still, you have to admire the outrageous ambition on display from the creator. It is a labor of love that aches with genuine emotion. Despite not being earned with an arc, I was still moved when Marina articulated in song her strange equivocation of feeling for her torturer. However, Hubbs is trying to create a fully realized beast before discovering if she could bring a limb to life. Some of the parts are fascinating and the overall schematic has the grand ambitions of Doctor Phibes or Edward Lionheart.However, the bolts, stitches, and mechanical insertions are not properly fitted. Rhyme schemes land flat, the lyrics fail to drive plot, and there is no variance to the structure of the songs. The show simply is not ready to take stage. We get flickers of what could be in Monn’s energizing imagination, Lokey’s committed hamming, and Don Corbitt’s insanely inventive costumes. You can feel those three mad scientists straining to bring the creature to life. But despite their efforts, this monster continues collapsing before it can come fully to its feet. All that work is no substitute for a completed draft with a solid spine. So, back to the laboratory, Ms. Hubbs, and dust off the journals, textbooks, and ancient tomes.
You may find there is life in the monster yet. Pitchfork in hand, I am rooting for it.