Original Article from Backstage by Jesse Dienstag
The Company of Angels has taken great risk staging this world premiere of Paula Mitchell Manning’s first play. It revolves around death and incest, breaks the fourth wall, and includes loads of fantasy sequences, dancing and original music. And it’s three acts long. It’s a recipe for disaster. Yet this tremendous cast bravely attacks every word of a complicated, thoughtful script for an unsettling but exceptional show.
Morty is a creepy man who dresses in black and doesn’t speak. He is death. A young woman, Baby Hunter, “flirts” with Morty and mortality as she slowly commits suicide in her grubby apartment.
Baby has had an awful life, to say the least. She is a victim of incest and molestation, as is her mother and her mother’s mother. She has also recently lost the only two things that bring her happiness: her husband and their daughter, who are killed in a radically motivated attack. We see all of this, some in graphic detail, through a series of monologues and flashbacks.
The lead actors are fantastic. LaDon Drummond as the tormented Baby Hunter and Holly Jenkins as her equally fucked-up mother are superb. Drummond’s performance is raw, desperate, and beautiful, making it torturous for us to watch her relive her past and take away her future. Jenkins is terrific, stealing every scene she’s in. She is completely believable, likable, and unpredictable: a fantastic combination of bravado, vulnerability, and cruelty, not to mention razor-sharp timing. Layla Lyons as Young Baby and Jon Malmed as Baby’s Father give deceptively good performances in what evolves into complex characters. Also turning in exceptional work – some in multiple role – are Joyce Matlock, Barbara Mealy, and John Del Regno, Dean Cleverdon isn’t bad as Morty, but he should be much smoother and more sure of his physicality. It’s a truly fine, spirited, hard-working ensemble.
And then there’s the work of John Lathan, excellent in the role of Baby’s husband. He also has the daunting task of singing all of the show’s original music, 99 percent of which he wrote. The music, mostly soulful ballads and R&B tunes a’ la Marvin Gaye, is marvelous. Lathan has a remarkable voice, and somehow the music woven into the storyline works. Credit Lathan and director Phil Ramuno with this small miracle.
There’s so much going on onstage that it easily could have gotten out of control. But Ramuno does extraordinary work juggling moods and balancing the many layers of this piece. Manning’s script is difficult, power, and unconventional, through the first two acts seem long compared with the third, in which all questions are answers at a rapid-fire pace.
The fourth-wall-breaking sequences are hit or miss, as are attempts to lighten the mood. the audience has a hard time laughing during this play, which, thought beautifully rendered, gets uglier and uglier. And a few elements of the production succumb to melodrama and pretension: the full title (Flirty With Morty, A Life Retrospective in Three Acts), the arrogant “Director’s Notes” (“…the subject matter of this story is a potential directorial land-mine. I had to recognize the impact this can have on viewers…”), a superfluous smooth machine, slow-motion sequences, and lengthy dances with death. Once again women are half-naked while men are not. The choreography of Frit and Frat Fuller is sometimes effective, sometimes overdone. The same can be said for Ronald F. Nieve’s cluttered set, John Prince’s lights, and Marc Antonia Pritchett’s sound.
Flirting With Morty Address unspeakable acts with brutal frankness. Not exactly a family show, it is a terrific piece of theatre.