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'Brainpeople' is crazy times three
(by Herb Hammer - November 17, 2010)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
'Brainpeople' is crazy times three
Jose Rivera's sizzling successes make it difficult to tear apart his latest effort, "Brainpeople," when Clyde Simon's Convergence-Continuum recently gave it a wild swing.
By the time "Brainpeople" heads for its loony conclusion, you begin believing Mr. Rivera to be as crazy as the three women who occupy the stage.
As we have learned, the tiny Tremont theater stages only the kinds of work that require audiences to listen and learn. In this case, we learn an awful lot more than we want to.
Mayannah roams the local Los Angeles gin joints, choosing two strangers to join her for dinner. Mayannah is a lonely Puerto Rican heiress who offers her guests $20,000 each if they stick around through dessert. It appears she has intentionally chosen two nut cases.
On the set, Mr. Simon places an elegant dinner table with three chairs. He has covered the walls with eerie religious symbols. One wall is a huge greeting card that doesn't appear to mean anything at all.
Mr. Simon also directs and has cast three women who work their brains out but are only close to fitting the roles they are playing.
Mr. Rivera gives each of the three women the opportunity to take over the stage one at a time. Actually, each spends a lot of time showing off how crazy she is.
Rosemary, with a multitude of personalities, is so overbearing it appears she might come charging into the audience to knock heads.
Ani is ready to run, fearful of the other two, and might have left if Mayannah hadn't upped the ante from $20,000 to $50,000. Of course, Ani is just as crazy as the other two. She has fallen in love with a television newsman and believes he hears her and sees her right through the screen.
The sanest is Mayannah, but that's not saying much. At least there is a point to her story. Much to her dismay, her parents went to Africa when she was a child, only to be devoured by a tiger. Tonight, she is serving tiger meat, as she always does on the anniversary of her parents' death. Through some convoluted writing by Mr. Rivera, his Mayannah is trying somehow to bring her parents back.
While all this is going on, there are street noises and the illusion that we are in the middle of some kind of a Los Angeles revolution where voting rights have been abolished.
Lovely, statuesque Laurel Johnson plays Mayannah, the Puerto Rican heiress. Aside from throwing in a Spanish word here and there, Miss Johnson doesn't do anything to lead us to believe she's Puerto Rican. You wonder though why Mr. Rivera wrote the part this way.
Kristi Little is amazing as the crazed Rosemary. If Clyde Simon would have reined her in a little, she would have been far more interesting.
Laura Starnik, as Ani, is the least interesting. Though she appears to be doing all she can with the part, she isn't the Ani she might have been.
"Brainpeople" finally comes together at the conclusion. But the 1 1/2-hour one-act, as crazy as it is, takes too long to keep its grip on the audience.
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