BABYLON SISTERS
at Angel Island
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That said, let me state that Babylon Sisters isn’t really bad. Certainly for audiences with a taste for Kramer’s music–glossy jazz pop of the sort one heard on records by Steely Dan, Gino Vannelli, and Stevie Wonder in the mid-1970s–this is an enjoyable, if unfulfilled, display of potential by an emerging young writer. And it’s by no means the disaster many first-night observers found it to be; seen a week after its premature opening, it exhibited signs of having improved considerably and of being likely to continue improving. A laconic bemusement toward the absurdity of its story seemed to be emerging during the performance, a diverting attitude that can go a long way toward bridging the gap between the script’s intentionally and unintentionally funny passages.
The ludicrous story involves two sisters–one a sweet young office worker, the other an older, worldly wise narcotics cop–who are in love with the same man. The older sister, Angela, is having an affair with Leo, a jack-of-all-underworld-trades; when their relationship falls apart because of Leo’s small-time cocaine business, Angela dies mysteriously. She then returns from the dead, though only her sister Danny can see her. Angela coaches Danny into seducing Leo as the first step toward nailing him for Angela’s murder. But Danny and Leo start developing a closer relationship, and Angela becomes possessed by jealousy–even in death the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Meanwhile, Danny is also being courted by Jerry, the cop who’s investigating Angela’s death.
The title of All Eight Die is a giveaway of the ending of this two-act comedy from Cardiff Giant, which previously gave local audiences LBJFKKK and Love Me. It also suggests the darkness this improvisationally trained company means to convey in the skits and character portraits that make up the play, which was written by director Bob Fisher and the eight-person cast through an improv process. I don’t know whether or not the writer-actors set out knowing that comprehensive carnage was the final destiny of everyone in this eight-character show. I do know that improvising material for which you know the ending is generally an unproductive approach; predictably, the ending of the play is its weakest and least convincing part.
Which is why the ending is so disappointing. Nothing these peo- ple do has any meaning if we know from the get-go that all eight die. If Cardiff Giant is trying to pass off some statement about the inevitability of death, it’s contradicted too well by the sense of life that permeates the rest of this intriguing and diverting little show.
