Two Elizas at Hermann-Grima House
I didn’t know quite what to expect as I approached Two Elizas at Hermann-Grima House on the last day of its too brief, four-day run. Purposefully, that is, as I like to encounter new works knowing as little about them as possible.
I did know it was written and performed by Jenny Mercein who I’m acquainted with from Tulane’s theater faculty; I had never previously, however, seen her perform or attended any of her other works. I now hope that I’ll have the pleasure of seeing her again along with any other stories she has to tell. For Two Elizas is an engrossing tale of history, both personal and of American jurisprudence, which Mercein weaves together to fascinating effect.
Jenny Mercein and Amanda Duffin (playing cello) in Two Elizas
Mercein tells how she discovered a previously unknown relative, Eliza, who, facing spinsterhood in 1830s New York (at the advanced age of 29!), married a man who then took her to his home in Nova Scotia, Canada. Things went downhill between them and she returned to NYC with their children. He instituted a lawsuit to compel her to return to him. She countersued and eventually, after 8 years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor recognizing a woman’s autonomy over her body (well, at least in terms of that a man can’t compel her to live with him).
Mercein’s use of Eliza’s actual letters, included as evidence in her Supreme Court case, adds an extra level of verisimilitude to the proceedings. As crazy as the events sound, we realize they’re too detailed, too “real”, for any of it to be made up.
The other strand of Two Elizas is Mercein’s own story of looking for love, the wild encounters she had in pursuit of it, eventually finding a man, and the challenges they faced as they tried to start a family. It’s more or less familiar stuff, though one admires Mercein for bravely revealing her mental health issues and it’s told so well that the entire account comes off as fresh and captivating.
What allows Two Elizas to transcend mere narrative is Mercein’s alchemical ability to bring dramatic tension to her story. As she switched seamlessly between characters, we always wanted to find out what happened next, no small achievement, especially in a one-person show. Add to that a highly interesting subject and self-deprecating humor, and 80 minutes went by in a flash.
Co-directors Lori Elizabeth Parquet and Ryder Thornton nicely staged Two Elizas, simply but smoothly, in the sumptuous parlor of Hermann-Grima House with its crystal chandelier and burgundy-colored drapes and upholstered furniture. Cellist Amanda Duffin, off to the side, assuredly played composer Maxim Samarov’s music which provided appropriate aural underscoring.
Two Elizas could have been a smidge shorter (true of most shows) or, conversely, could have included a bit more of Eliza and her enthralling history. That said, I suspect Mercein has already mined her ancestor’s tale for every bit of drama she could extract.
And the other Eliza? Well, you’ll just have to hope that Mercein & Co. bring back Two Elizas for a more extended run, but I can assure you she’s doing very well indeed.
The Bermuda Can Company at The Music Box Village Schoolhouse
I admire Bennett Kirschner and his Intramural Theater. Over the past few years, they have almost singlehandedly provided New Orleans with the quirky productions that were once a mainstay of the theater scene here.
I have fond memories of Chet’s Summer Vacation which featured a young man who has a sexual relationship with an air conditioner. Apostles of Everest dealt with issues of capitalism run amok and environmental disaster in a worthy and provocative manner. In Cave, the title character took on a life of its own. And 2022’s The Cluck, Sam Mayer’s retelling of Euripides’s Electra, was simply, on every level, one of the most memorable and profound works I’ve seen in many a season.
I wish I could say something similar about The Bermuda Can Company (TBCC), Intramural’s latest production. By the time its overlong conclusion arrived, however, I desperately needed a good stiff drink. Fortunately, Bar Redux is not far from The Music Box Village where TBCC played in its comfortably air-conditioned Schoolhouse building.
The Bermuda Can Company gave us a rising New Orleans startup that’s set to release “the world’s first fully resealable, recyclable can.” We initially meet Beverly (Madi Zins) an intern, who seems like a decent sort (“Interns are the outfielders of the office”, is one of the play’s better lines.).
Then Doc (Ricky Ostry), the garrulous maintenance man, is introduced, followed by the uber-ebullient HR person Harper (Mary Langley), Hedy (Topher Johnson) who helped develop the can, Vera (Mary Davis) from marketing, and, finally, Kiefer (Lauren Wells) who runs the company and is the child of the firm’s founder.
It seemed, at first, as tho the focus would be on Beverly, a cousin of Kiefer’s, and we would see how she’s forced to deal with all the office crazies; she, however, kinda faded into the background as the play progressed. It’s left to Tiffany (Samille Ganges), “a famous TikToker” who’s covering the can’s launch to view the shenanigans from a more objective perspective and she gets some of TBCC’s few truly funny lines as she tries to make sense of it all.
Mary Davis, Samille Ganges, Mary Langley, Topher Johnson, and Lauren Wells in The Bermuda Can Company
TBCC’s devised script (lead playwright–Kirschner with additional writing by T Clark and Zins), verbose without being sharp, never developed the feeling of an authentic workplace; characters were defined by one or two qualities (Harper’s a “Karen” type, Kiefer an insecure narcissist, with Hedy and Vera less well-defined), rather than by an organic sense of how they function within the company.
In style and atmosphere, wackiness prevailed, and maybe it was meant to be a parody of office politics, but, mostly, juvenile, throw-in-the-kitchen-sink humor ruled. Woyzeck, Büchner’s classic playthat keenly deals with anomie and alienation, got referenced subtly. There’s a talking heart. And a Bridge Operator, played by Philip Yiannopoulos, who eventually serves as a kinda deus ex machina. Like a Saturday Night Live skit that goes on and on and on, by the end, I felt like I had been assaulted by wet blankets of noodles for 2 hours.
In fairness, TBCC does address some environmental concerns and turns somewhat serious & even kinda touching in its final moments, but it’s too little, too late. And I could never figure out (nor could a friend who was also in the audience with whom I wound up at Bar Redux) why Hedy was a drag role when any number of local actresses could have easily fulfilled the requirements of the part.
While Kirschner’s direction of The Cuck was nothing short of sublime, here his staging was sometimes muddy; it might’ve helped if (a) someone else had directed who could have brought some discipline to the script and (b) Stephen Thurber’s lighting and Adam Tourek’s set had more precisely defined the various playing areas.
All that said, while the entire cast adroitly did what was required of them (Ganges, an actress new to me, brought an especially droll aspect to her TikTok celeb), two stood out.
Langley, who in The Cuck conveyed subdued passion, brilliantly, with few words, here made Harper a caffeinated bundle of exuberant boosterism, fueled, no doubt, but some white powdery stuff in a bag. The character may have been more or less one dimensional, but Langley found endless variations with which to put that dimension across.
And then there was Wells who reminded me of SNL’s Kate McKinnon playing Rudy Giuliani among other miscreants. Wells’ advanced pregnancy doubled for middle age paunch and in her wildly imaginative performance, she made the bizarre seem normal by grounding Kiefer in finely etched details and taking them to an extreme. Two years ago, I described Wells as Zelda Fitzgerald in Tennessee Williams’ Clothes for a Summer Hotel as “effortlessly jaunty, bubbly, and sexy.” In The Bermuda Can Company, she was effortlessly nerdy, pompous, and decidedly unsexy.
So that’s my take on The Bermuda Can Company. Perhaps it just went over my head. Cause on a recent Monday, the rest of the mostly youthful audience–a full house–was laughing steadily throughout the evening in seeming enjoyment.
Maybe I’m just a glass bottle in a fully resealable, recyclable can world.
