A cute Bug infests the Coterie, and Corrie Van Ausdal hits redial
On rare occasions, we’re treated to shows that we don’t want to end. U:Bug:Me, the new, bug-themed rock musical premiering at the Coterie Theatre, is one that I didn’t want to start. As the audience settles in, a four-piece band in shades and mop-top wigs bangs out sunny, bouncing instrumentals in a loose surf-garage style. Tapping Be/Non’s Brodie Rush to play lead guitar was an inspiration: I’d happily pay to see these guys do this same set in a club.
The cast, done up like thrift-store insects in Megan Turek’s wonderful catch-as-catch-can costumes, skims and skitters through the crowd and over the stage, boogieing, bugging out, sometimes grabbing kids to dance along. The high spirits, along with set designer P.J. Barnett’s expanse of papery grass stalks behind the performers, give this opening the feel of summer play — amusement, not theater — at its best.
But after that strong opening number, the exhilaration gets squashed under a big dump of plot. Young Pico the fly and his earwig buddy, Esteban, are crafting a formula for champion crab grass so they can win first prize at a festival. Meanwhile, a bullying, pompadoured horsefly schemes to steal the formula, and — aw, man, can’t we get back to the party?
Jeremiah Neal’s script would benefit from sharper focus. In the first couple of songs, protagonist Pico (K.C. Comeaux) sings about how this crab grass is going to make him and Esteban famous and how all you need is a friend, and then how tight he is with his caterpillar gal pal, whose upcoming metamorphosis is something of a public event, like a quinceañera. This is all cute enough, especially Comeaux’s duet with the sprightly Katie Karel, who glows as the caterpillar.
Still, nothing prepares us for the chief dramatic development. Pico runs away from home after the earwig chews him out for screwing up the crab-grass formula, a decision that should seem inevitable rather than a surprise. We discover too late just how much Pico yearns for greater acceptance from his friends. He wants to be respected and not be so clumsy, real kid feelings that are more compelling than any crab-grass festival and deserve a separate song. Instead, Pico is the rare musical-theater hero lacking that strong, clear “I want” number. (Imagine if the Little Mermaid never sang about her desire to be where the people were.) Without it, his heart — and the show’s — is distant.
The big moments accumulate toward the end, which is when director Ernie Nolan’s production shines. A late encounter with a spider is persuasively spooky, and Rush’s turn as a guitar-slinging caterpillar, complete with insectoid plinks tapped on his fretboard, exemplify the Coterie’s art: creative play with a homemade feel designed to inspire creativity in its young audience.
With music in their every line, Francisco Javier Villegas and Arelie Gil delight as Spanish-speaking cockroaches. Jennie Greenberry, dressed like a sexy bee secretary, tears the roof off with “New Attitude,” which blends folk, rock, soul and a funky sing-along. Too bad another song in there didn’t make me care more about Pico, crab grass and just what this new attitude entails.
While the Coterie takes chances with new plays, Corrie Van Ausdal and friends are taking a chance with one of the hoariest of shows yet still finding novelty — and substance. For her new Fishtank Performance Studio’s inaugural production, Van Ausdal stars in a Sorry, Wrong Number, staged entirely in display windows. Glassed in, speaking in brittle patrician tones and rendered gauzy in a 1940s housecoat that suggests a full set of drapes, Van Ausdal plays a lonely, wealthy woman who, thanks to the carelessness of a telephone operator, overhears two killers plotting the murder of someone like her. For a half-hour, theatergoers — seated in chairs on Wyandotte, with cars occasionally passing right behind them — are treated to the voyeuristic discomfort of a peep through the windows of a woman melting into panic.
Lucille Fletcher’s script (from her radio play, not the Barbara Stanwyck film) offers little suspense, but it’s witty and inventive, especially in its clever utilization of every quirk of midcentury telephone technology. (Cell phones have yet to inspire a top-flight thriller.) Sound designer David Kiehl is likewise clever about tech. Here he re-creates the sound and feel of an old-time radio drama to charming effect. A tension develops between that gentle corniness and Van Ausdal’s descent into helplessness as operators and police prove unable or unwilling to help. Though it offers few surprises, there’s still some sting to Fletcher’s story, especially in this production for the Internet age, when greater connectivity and exposure rarely lead to greater communication.
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