Bitter Sauce (Eric Bogosian) & Hydraulics Phat Like Mean (Ntozake Shange)

Although I often get frustrated at the mainstream theatrical community’s dismissal of sketch comedy there is a qualitative difference between sketch comedy and a proper “short play” (although I find the term short play is often applied when sketch would do better.)

A proper short play could theoretically take as long to discuss and dissect as a full-length piece, and so a collection of short plays takes a tremendous amount of thought to analyze, especially if they are by different authors with differing styles.

Love’s Fire is a collection of seven individual works each inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet. I read the first two, which are a short play and a sketch respectively, if you care.

Bitter Sauce sets a tone of tense and damaged love which I hope suffuses the other pieces. Rengin is marrying Herman tomorrow, but she has to confess to carrying on an affair. She claims it’s because Herman is so good and pure that she needed something rough and wrong to sort her out, but when her lover, Red, visits, he puts doubts in Herman’s head. By the end of the short piece we imagine a life of qualified happiness for Herman and we’re not entirely sure if Rengin is sincere when she says why she did what she did.

With the exception of its small cast size it’s a classic opening piece: quick, easy to understand, has humor, but also holds gravitas. The images Bogosian gives us are strong, and the symbols are quick to understand. A strong, but not amazing opening, but it has a lot of promise for what is to come.

I had more trouble with Ntozake Shange’s Hydraulics Phat Like Mean, but I don’t feel too bad, because the director said in his notes that he didn’t really understand the piece until several weeks into rehearsal. It’s all movement and music, which is hard to feel off the page, and the language Shange uses is evocative but hard to parse.

If Bitter Sauce is about love tested and weakened, then Hydraulics is about new lovers discovering each other. Our two characters explore each other’s music and bodies in a sensual dance punctuated by evocative language. I can see how this piece could come alive in rehearsal and with original music, but it’s hard for me to imagine as-is.