Indy Theatre Habit

At 3:00 on the first Saturday of the 2008 Indy Fringe Festival, I walked over to the Phoenix Theatre to see “Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana,” a one-man multi-media show created and performed by “Sinclair” and produced by WTE Theatre out of New York, New York.  The managing producer of WTE is Fritzie Andrade.  Adam Goldstein directed this particular piece.  Elizabeth Gordon stage managed it.  Goldstein and Gordon were both provided by the Drawing Board Arts Project.  

If you went to the Fringe Opening Night Preview Party last Thursday night, this is the little nerdy guy with the Clark Kent glasses who snapped his fingers as he sang in warning.  “Don’t go near the stinky flowers…”

His full-length Fringe show is even more whimsical, and richly layered. 

I was not the only audience member wiping away tears at the end.

The frame of the show is that we, the audience, have suddenly and mysteriously appeared in the attic retreat of a third grader named Sinclair.  He looks over his shoulder from where he has been playing with a couple of tiny bird puppets at an overhead projector, making their shadows speak to each other in a written dialogue.  He is amazed and delighted to see us; nothing like this has ever happened to him before!  He calls downstairs to ask his mom to bake some cookies for us.

While we are waiting, he tells us some magical stories that his grandfather told him.  He can hardly contain his excitement over this opportunity.

His telling style, therefore, is very energetic.  He bounces all over the stage like a real third grader, but in a controlled way, like a professional storyteller who has made good artistic choices.

He deftly incorporates some active audience participation elements.  At one point in a story about warring monkey tribes, for example, he divides the audience into two groups and teaches each group a chant.  Then, when both groups are going strong, he tells the climax of the story.

It is fun!

Most of the “multi-media” elements in his show are deceptively simple and old-fashioned: a flashlight, a series of hand-drawn transparancies on the overhead projector…but they embellish his fairytale-like stories perfectly.  There is also a mysterious (to me, anyway) ”wow” technology piece towards the end.

And the real chocolate chip cookies that Sinclair offers the audience as they exit are a just-right, tasty final ingredient, reminiscent (sp?) of childhood.  When asked if his mother had really made them for us, he replied, “No, but I thought of her as I baked them.”

The only thing that didn’t work for me in this show was the fact that Sinclair hardly pauses between stories.  Sometimes the audience wants to clap for a particular story, and he glares at them when they try.  Sometimes the audience just needs to breathe and absorb one story before moving on to the next. I got the feeling that Sinclair thought he would lose us if he let us do that.  I don’t think he would.

Later in the day, I was standing in line for another show.  The woman in front of me turned around and said, “You were with us at that show at the Phoenix.”  She meant the “Stinky Flowers” show.  She loved it, too.  “I saw myself in his stories,” she said.  “It was spiritual…wonderful…He had such great command of his voice…There were so many layers of meaning.”

She told me that her name was Ingrid and that she was a cellist.  Her friend turned around…and was Marion Garmel, retired theatre critic from The Indianapolis Star!  One of my heroes!  She said the “Stinky Flowers” piece was like a Stephen Sondheim show, full of magic.  Oh, I really do hope she writes a book some day.

“Stinky Flowers” continues at the Phoenix through Friday, August 29, 2008 as part of the Indianapolis Fringe Festival.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com