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Sandwich
- Banana, Bag & Bodice
article by Silke Tudor in SF Weekly April
7, 2004
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- A Bacon and Ants Sandwich, Please
- A very small fan has been diabolically positioned in front of the hotplate
to spread the smell of bacon throughout the Exit Theatre. I am hungry,
and the smell is maddening. I try to pay attention to the buffalo, the
one with the bad Russian accent, playing piano; or to the large black cat
with the red crinoline, painted toenails, and half-lidded eyes cleaning
herself at the front of the stage; or to the giant blue bunny sitting in
the audience behind me with a fifth of Jack Daniels between his knees.
But the buffoons from Banana, Bag & Bodice are making a sandwich and
they are captivating -- with their tall red fezzes, their pale, lumpy bodies,
and their bacon. Their bacon. They watch it fry, expectancy and buoyancy
animating their limbs as they cut the bread, slice the tomato, and tear
the lettuce in time with the piano man/buffalo who teases the ivories under
a rickety latticework of cutlery. The knives aren't the only dubious objects
hanging above the players' heads. There are bundles, large plastic bundles
dangling from the ceiling like body bags. I wonder ... about bacon. Then
the cat stirs.
- "My friend was the pig/ The pig," she intones with a sympathetic
tilt of her great feline head. "But the pig is gone/ Is gone/ Gone
to the pan/ Gone to the sandwich/ The pig was my pal/ Now my pal is the
pork/ Hairless and faceless/ Oinkless and charred."
- "Bacon Bacon," chant the Bodice buffoons from behind their
kitchen counter. "Thin meat fat treat/ Had a pound, sliced it down/
Thin meat that I eat."
- "Listen to their songs/ Listen to their chatter/ Listen to their
bellies/ As the bellies get fatter," sings the Russian buffalo as
he pounds the piano keys.
- Sandwich, the latest offering from BB&B's Barmecidal playwright,
co-founder, and star, Jason Craig, is a surreal musical about meat, love,
and birthday knives.
- "We want a birthday knife for birthday sad cat," explains
the lumpy, expertly odd Jessica Jelliffe after she and Craig realize that
Cat, played by Parnell Klug, has no claws with which to shred her sweet
birthday bunny.
- "I have birthday knife for birthday sad cat," assures the
oily, piano-playing buffalo/knife-man created by David Malloy.
- Dressed in their Sunday best rubber bands, Jelliffe and Craig return
home with the shiny, new birthday knife to lure sad Cat down from the top
of a ladder where she has been sulking. Then things get strange. Cat guts
her giant birthday rabbit and eats the unborn babies she finds in its belly;
Jelliffe crawls inside the rabbit's skin and sings the story of its life
before it is pulled into the rafters; Cat and Rabbit dance; Jelliffe and
Craig kill bugs, eat lettuce heads, and consider cannibalism; Malloy threatens
a carrot; Jelliffe tortures a butterfly; Craig is transformed into a giant
armadillo; and all song and dance routines end in a sandwich.
- "No more nasty piggie," assures Jelliffe. "Here, just
birdie, nice birdie sandwich."
- Despondent, Cat lets her head fall across her paws.
- "Nope. Is fish," corrects Craig. "Dumb senseless fish
without sleepers or feelers."
- Cat is unmoved as Jelliffe makes a grand gesture to replace the contents
of the sandwich.
- "Oh, ho ho!!" she cries. "Bug sandwich! Yes. Yes?"
- "Worm?" suggests Craig.
- "Would you liken lichen?" asks Jelliffe with fading hope.
- Grotesque, whimsical, and bone-achingly funny, the final scene is delivered
with an absurdist staccato that nestles inside my skull like ... the smell
of bacon clinging to my clothes.
- Tiny tiny parameces?
- Matato and lettuce?
- Mushroom and griss-grass?
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