Tina Alexis Allen (seated) and Joshua Koehn in Fire Island.

photo by Diego Bresani

How little it takes for a great evening of theater! A brilliant author, Charles Mee, to create you a play; a Tuvan throat singer, Albert Kuvezin to add an exotic atmosphere; a director like Kevin Cunningham; a freak clown; and over 100 people to work on a multi-media project that marries high-tech video and lighting to 19^th century stage tricks. Of course, Mee is the cat’s meow this year--featured as Playwright-in-Residence at the Signature Theatre Company--making his new work, Fire Island, more than a one-trick pony. So even if you don‘t follow all the twists and turns of the spectacle, this piece is something to hold on to.
Fire Island premiered this month at the 3-Legged Dog Art and Technology Center. But the seeds of the production were planted back in 2007 when artistic director Kevin Cunningham took 70 people--actors and crew--out to Fire Island. Once on site at Cherry Grove, they shot the entire script in HD video, an amalgam of “scenes that involve all different aspects of love.” This open-ended blueprint was later reworked, refashioned, and fine-tuned by Mee and the creative team.

Now writ large, the multi-dimensional play fills the 6,000 square-foot area of Studio A at the Center. Fortunately, Cunningham makes good use of the character and mechanics of the large studio space. He has transformed the room into a faux-beachfront property, complete with simulated fauna, flora, and the sights and sounds of Fire Island.

When attendees enter, they immediately see the huge, curving HD panoramic screen, which serves as the in-your-face backdrop for the play. Add ”2 Eyeliner panels” in 3-D, and you get total cinematic force. Spectators have their choice of sitting on a beach chair, swivel-cushion, or simply sprawling on an animal-print beach blanket. And, incidentally, if you tuck into your seat early, there’s plenty of free beer, soda, wine, and refreshments.

Be it said that when it comes to imagination, Mee is a master mind. After only five minutes into the first scene, the magic ambushes you everywhere. On screen butterflies emerge from their chrysalis, and deer dart into full view from their natural habitat. And it’s amazing how little it takes the playwright to create character: a couple of sentences, a gesture, an attitude, and, presto, there’s a person.

Although the production is a bit of sensory overload--characters rushing on from any corner of the studio, multiple dancing sequences, musical jams, live actors playing opposite their screen images--the controlling intelligence of the author makes the multi-media event congeal. Curiously, the imaginary “fourth wall” disintegrates in this show. Characters plunk down beside spectators, and sometimes involve them in the action. Sound scary? Not at all. You are considered equals with the actors here, if not in talent, then in interests and passions.

No theatrical trifle, this! Almost every scene resonates with a major confession, or a genuine cri de coeur. All the characters are portrayed at vulnerable moments in a romantic relationship. There are long-winded deliberations, passionate disagreements, false starts, dead ends, and in one scene, a woman threateningly holds a knife. But no blood is spilled, and ultimately nothing gets sliced except for the vegetables on the cutting board.

Mee is often viewed as our American Aristophanes. And this new play confirms he is joined at the hip with the famous Greek playwright. And why? The “freak clown” in this show could be dropped into the pages of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata in a wink. The clown irreverently circulates through the performance space from the getgo. He not only manages to steal the attention of spectators (with his bawdy advances), but literally steals the beach dress off one female character, sashaying near him in an early scene. Of course, the crime is finessed off-stage. But you get the full impact of his feisty personality when he later bursts back onstage with the beach dress, brandishing it in the air like a trophy from love‘s battlefields.

Balancing his antics, the rest of the characters represent the more earnest face of love. In fact, each couple seems intent on making sense of their complex situations and unique romantic issues. Lovers of all stripes are portrayed. Various actors insinuate themselves into the skins of straight, gay, off-beat, cool, awkward, or just plain vulnerable human beings. The age bracket for lovers? It changes from scene to scene, suggesting that Cupid is rather random in his hitting sprees. Curiously, the vignette involving folks far past their prime turned into one of the most heart-felt of the evening.

Because Mee strongly supports the ethos of the ensemble, you don’t get show-bizy glamour in this cast. But that doesn’t keep any scene from being sensuously compelling. The cast exudes “good chemistry,” and some performances are heartbreakingly fine. Moreover, the 50 denizens of Fire Island playing various roles (mostly on screen) give the show a home-spun, and very sincere, quality.

No, not everything works like clockwork. But, occasionally by some baffling miracle, everything seems to drop, or veer gracefully, into its appointed place. In many ways the message of the show is simply “to go with the flow.” Physically and psychologically, this work hints that good love, and healthy relationships, can survive on the shifting sands of truth.

Few playwrights have the spectacular range of Mee. The celebrated author began as an historian, morphed into playwright, and earned his theatrical reputation with his new versions of Greek classics. He first sparked interest in the fringe theater world with his innovative techniques, and gradually established himself in mainstream theater. His signature? It depends on the individual work. But he’s well-known for incorporating “moving collage” techniques, and juxtaposing art mediums in his projects. His bobrauschenbergamerica was presented in high-profile venues like The Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 2003, and later taken out of mothballs for a European premiere at Biennale Bonn in June 2004. All of his works share that anything-can-happen feeling. And, not surprisingly, he continues to redefine the nature of contemporary theater, and the new directions it might take in the future.

Mee, in creating Fire Island, has become an acrobat of the heart. And if there is any epiphany to report, it’s that Mee doesn’t need a proscenium stage, a Greek classic, or a pat moral to make a piece of theater come alive.

Salty, shrewd, tough, tender, skeptical, the romantic vignettes add up to more than the sum of their parts. Granted, some scenes don’t end
happily-ever-after. Others smack of being too good to be true. But the author has slithered in where angels fear to tread. And under the aegis of Cunningham, you can put away the prayer shawls and phylacteries--and simply relax at this multi-media event.

Address of Theater: 3LD Art and Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, 212
(212) 352-3101 or http://www.3LDNYC.org .