Berzerk!!!

In the hours I spent watching the snow fall in Green Bay, I’d forgotten that the relatively quiet streets of Milwaukee’s East Side weren’t filled with snow. In something very much resembling a good mood, I caught the #15 bus to Bay View for my second evening of high-pressure theatre. I was headed to The Alchemist Theatre for Berzerk!!! — an evening of ten-minute plays presented by Alamo Basement and Insurgent Theatre. Last year’s event at the Turner Hall Ballroom had been an exceedingly good time, and I had no reason to think this year’s show would be any different.

There were only a few people at the theatre’s bar when I got there, but a couple of beers into the evening, the place began to fill. Alamo Basement co-founder Mike Q. Hanlon introduced the sold-out show by way of explanation: for Berzerk!!!, Hanlon took lines from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and sent them to local playwrights, who were then given 10 self-enforced minutes to write a short script. Eleven shorts were performed by Insurgent and Alamo Basement cast members, mostly dressed in simple black. Two of the shows had been pre-selected for longer re-writes to be performed at the end of the show, and to complicate things further, during Hanlon’s introduction, a pair of playwrights worked alone on a pair of 10-minute shorts that would receive staged readings during the evening.

The 15 shorts performed here were an interesting contrast to the show I’d seen the previous evening – Bunny Gumbo’s Combat Theatre. Combat Theatre is a different kind of theatre under pressure: playwrights pull a topic and a location out of hats. Twenty-four hours later, a series of shorts hit the stage. Everything involved in each of the eight productions must be completed in the same 24-hour period of time. The Bunny Gumbo shows tended to be light comedy sketches with a minimum of innovation. Berzerk!!! ranged from intense drama to absurdist comedy, in settings vague and abstract, clearly defined and realistic. Berzerk!!!’s diversity probably came form the process: playwrights worked alone on their own time before handing scripts over to Hanlon and company, who had a substantial amount of time to construct a dozen or so mini-productions. Perhaps working in a combative environment tends to produce sketch comedy the way a writer working alone tends to produce less predictable work. Maybe it’s just the writers that were available for each project. It’s all speculation from the outside, but Berzerk!!! seemed a lot edgier than the first night of Bunny Gumbo’s pleasantly commercial Combat Theatre.

The show opened with one of the plays written during the opening monologue, a reasonably clever piece by Rex Winsome. Winsome’s near-comic over-emphasis on philosophy and politics was the basis for a unique tone. Taken too far, this could have come across like an empty gimmick, but Winsome’s voice was sharp enough to keep this from happening.

Chelsea Bernard’s Marty and Maryann was a fun little domestic conversation rendered in respectably heavy shades by Tracy Doyle and Jason Hames playing husband and wife.

Doyle’s own Never See Me Again was an impressively executed romantic break-up conversation by Dana Melanz and John Porter.

Jenne Doyle’s Headlights cleverly used a couple of clip lights in the dark to render the eerie atmosphere of a conversation about a dead body in front of a car at night. David Bohn and John Porter starred in what felt like an outtake from a Scorcese movie.

Something to Wait For, Hanlon’s piece, played on anticipations and expectations in a smart, abstract piece featuring nearly everyone in the cast.

In Wes Tank’s Your Wife’s Money, Hanlon and John Porter had a remarkably intense conversation apparently set at an uneasy moment in a much larger story. This was one of plays that was expanded and restaged at the end of the show. It was even more sinister and cryptic when Tank was allowed to elaborate on his original 10 minutes.

The Bunny One was a suitably bizarre piece by Peter J. Woods, in which Tracy Doyle only wants to be alone but neither Dana Melanz nor a strangely be-wigged Rex Winsome seem to want to leave her alone.

After intermission we saw the play written by the other audience during the opening monologue. When it was finished, Hanlon asked the writer if she was happy with what she had written. She said no. He asked her if she would have preferred a chance to work on it further. She said no. The show then continued with Winsome’s Preoccupation, a lofty philosophical discussion between bank robbers and one of the men they hold hostage.

Darrel Cherney’s In Defense of Man followed. I talked with Cherney before the show, who said that the idea he wanted to convey in 10 minutes took the form of a speech delivered to a jury. Hanlon starred. After the piece ended, I heard Cherney in the first row mention that Hanlon delivered the monologue exactly as he’d envisioned it.

John Manno’s Questionnaire was exactly what the title implies: an interview, specifically, an exit interview in a dystopian world. Manno’s decision to quit his day job and exclusively freelance may have been an inspiration here. The piece, delivered by David Bohn and Jason Hames, felt like a thematic sequel to Cured — a full-length play Manno wrote for Insurgent that was performed at the Astor Theatre some time ago. The show ended with a more fleshed-out treatment of the short as performed by Bohn and Melanz. Manno felt the dark tone of his extended piece might not have been the best way to end the show. I agree; the ending felt abrupt.

Bialystock and Bloom co-founder Jonathan West wrote the next piece — a tightly written bar-side comedy called The Spider Pour. Hanlon and Hames played bartender and drunk, respectively. Judging from this, West really needs to write more stuff. It’s good.

The final short was an offbeat piece by Jake Minton called Stabby O’Leary. It was set in a rather strange sports bar. Hames, Chrapko, Bohn and Porter starred.

The whole evening was one of the single most entertaining evenings of theatre in what has already been a very long season. Visit Insurgent Theatre, Alamo Basement or Alchemist Theatre online for more information.