ANN & ABBY: OFF THE PAGE AND LIVE ON STAGE!
Annoyance Theatre
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Given that statement, what you’ve got here is a couple of quick-witted, zany women with big cardboard wigs on their heads who sing and dance their way through a couple of whiz-bang numbers and then try to offer advice to the audience. The first half of this production, conceived, written, and performed by Michele Cole and Teria Gartelos (with Randy Herman playing piano) comes off as a clever parody of that Mitzi Gaynor/Bob Hope-style sentimentality and false morality that went out of style in the late 1950s. Ann and Abby, a personable pair, tell about how they always wanted to get into show business: Their father used to own a chain of vaudeville houses in Sioux City, Iowa, where they used to hang out with the showgirls. That was where they learned about sex, and also how they got their start in the advice business. And then they try to entertain us.
The audience, too, seems a bit confused: were they supposed to fabricate a caricature of a problem for characters who were obviously caricatures of advice columnists? Cole and Gartelos don’t seem to have a view of the larger picture: what purpose advice columnists serve, or more interestingly what the existence of advice columnists tells us about American society. So the audience is left to wonder what it all means–this combination of advice, jokes, and song and dance.
In between scenes Finn and Howard play the guitar and sing a couple of tunes about growing up gay. The two are accomplished performers. They seem comfortable onstage, and they thoroughly enjoy performing. At times their attitudes seem almost too light: the penultimate monologue is a pretty fiery piece, one that ends with the two of them exclaiming “Fuck you” to the audience even though their anger doesn’t seem to run that deep. But this is a play that offers more honey than vinegar, and in doing that makes a controversial subject a little easier to swallow.
