Lowering the Bar for Musical Absurdity

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The New York Sun

Over-the-top television shows “jump the shark.” Now it seems theater has “hopped the dolphin.”


In a barely believable belly flop over at the Vineyard, the musical “Miracle Brothers” lowers an already low bar for musical absurdity. In a misguided bid for “magic realism,” Kirsten Childs populates her piece with talking, shape shifting, time-traveling dolphins. Dramaturgically, the thing is an ad hoc mess of shoddy plot points. Musically, it’s repetitive, forgettable, and lyrically lame. And this production directed by Tina Landau isn’t even funny. This is a musical about homoerotic dolphins doing martial arts, and it isn’t funny.


For about a minute at the top of the show you cross your fingers for them – the cast may not wear a lot of clothes, but they do have their hearts on their sleeves. Dressed in tight white clam-diggers, they bounce around pretending to be fresh-water dolphins with nearly intimidating energy. Hey, they don’t even use their arms (except for jazz hands, clapping, and the occasional “freak.”) If Pangaea hosted a dolphin night, this would be the crowd. But bouncing alone won’t hold back the tide – Ms. Childs’s words must be spoken, her songs must be sung. And that’s when you start looking around for a tuna net.


Ms. Childs starts with a sweet premise, one found in Brazilian mythology. According to legend, river dolphins can become human at will, making mischief in our world until they dive back into their rightful home. Sadly, once the dolphins in this pod begin discussing their plans (some would rather be rabbits so they’ll get more action), the premise gets tangled in a morass of cheesy embellishments.


Chief among the pod-people are two brothers, Green Eyes (Clifton Oliver) and Fernando (Tyler Maynard), whose bare-chested affection for each other seems a little fishy. But as much as they enjoy each other’s company, they too want to jump through the mystical portal in search of the human experience. A gaffe (ahem) results in an accidental trip through time, so instead of visiting modern-day Brazil (they would have gone over well at Carnival), they wind up on a 17th-century slave plantation. Since Green Eyes’s human form is black, Carnival would have seriously been a better idea.


As boys, the brothers have only the vaguest memory of their watery past. Luckily, they are still blood brothers – the lecherous plantation owner Lascivio (Jay Goede) acknowledges Fernando as his heir, but he also fathered Green Eyes. His wife Isabel (Kerry Butler) bemoans his brutality and infidelities; his foreman Rancor (William Youmans) just wants to outdo him. The tension approaches the breaking point, and when Fernando tries to get his papa’s attention by learning capoeira, the plantains really hit the ceiling fan.


Capoeira, as every character mentions at least once, is the fighting style developed by slaves in Brazil. Disguising their martial art as a dance (with a lot of high kicks), slaves could train for combat under an overseer’s nose. When white-boy Fernando asks Green Eyes to teach it to him, he crosses racial boundaries, violates taboos, and accidentally winds up killing his dad. Soon, everyone is on the run, joining up with pirates, and singing endless, indistinguishable duets.


Somehow, despite big campy revelations (You aren’t the same earless pirate that my mother talks so much about …?), the action doggedly refuses to get “madcap.” Instead it just grinds on and on, desperate (and unable) to amuse. Some of the blame lies with Ms. Landau – she has a leaden sense of timing. Much has been made of her game-playing, improvisational rehearsal style – something which still fails to sponsor spontaneity in performance. But Ms. Childs so crams the show with superfluous songs, all of which have identical dance breaks and choruses, that even a technical master couldn’t goose this show up to speed.


Sadly, tons of effort, money, and talent vanish beneath the waves of “Miracle Brothers.” G.W. Mercier’s set does as much as it can with big pieces of sugarcane, and Scott Zielinski’s lights strike the sole poetic note of the evening. (He is sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by Jan Hartley’s uneven projections.)


The cast, too, deserves a flipper up. Mr. Maynard, fresh from “Altar Boyz,” still has his dazed, Lolita-act in place, and several of the supporting women have big, belting voices. In particular, Anika Larsen’s cross-dressing pirate actually manages to squeeze some salty laughs out of her predicament. But, trust me, you should wait to see them in other productions.


Until October 2 (108 E. 15th Street, between Union Square East and Irving Place, 212-353-3366).


The New York Sun

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