WE’RE JUST ONE HAWAIIAN DANCER
After they left, I examined the candy wrappers under their seats. There was even one intact Perky there, licorice, no doubt lost in the darkness and chaos. A young woman who had sat in front of me commented, “They were just going to town.” They sure were. They reminded me of those dull Lutherans who play minor roles in Garrison Keillor’s monologues. God only knows where that couple came from, whoever they were, the missing link in audience-development campaigns. Perhaps they were lured by the title of the show, with visions of Don Ho in their sugar-glazed eyes. And, just as mysteriously, they were gone, with only a pile of litter to mark their passage. At first they annoyed me, but after sitting through Hawaiian Dancer, I admired them.
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Not that the whole play is this bad. Most of it? You bet–as bad as a warm, flat Old Style with a cigarette butt floating in it. But I did really like one of the songs. I’m not sure if this was one of the nightmare sequences, but Frankie (a punk friend of Sib’s) appears wearing an alligator mask. He sings, “I’m a hungry gator,” and tries to persuade Daisy to offer herself up as lunch. He has a noose around her neck and drags her toward him as Sib pulls and entreats from the other side. Daisy, in her white nightgown, struggles operatically in the middle, as if she were in a musical spoof of The Perils of Pauline. I loved it. If this is an example of what playwright Ellen Boscov can do when she doesn’t take herself too seriously, then maybe she should lighten up.
Good luck.
