MARY-ARRCHIE BLOG

Our Bad Magnet

Critical Evaluation: **** out of ****

A few seasons ago everyone was rushing to New York to see Cynthia Nixon in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. She was wonderful, elegant, slender and no matter how low her character sunk, she still emerged a lady. She was able to shine, but the rest of the cast was choking on that Scottish brogue and the dialogue was nearly unintelligible. The fearless young director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia was not overwhelmed by the Scottish pronunciation and all its limitations. When Garcia came across “Our Bad Magnet,” he seized a good story and set it into motion with very pleasing results.

Jason Feriend has constructed a beautiful set that truly gusts the chill of the Scottish moors through the audience. Three men meet near a dangerous cliff where they used to play as kids. Fraser (Dan Behrendt), Paul (Layne Manzer) and Alan (John Wilson) are here today to make good on a promise they made to publish the stories of a playmate they called Giggles (Kevin V. Smith).

Turning the clock back to when they all wore short pants, the three boys are all frolicking and giving each other grief when Giggles shows up. He’s standing far apart from them, but Fraser, the Good Samaritan of the bunch, invites him to join in. Giggles has little to offer the group until he reveals that he has an uncanny talent for telling outlandish stories that border on science fiction. One day he disappears. The town believes him dead, but the boys, particularly Fraser, aren’t completely sure.

Fraser got the closest to him and learned that his father was a ventriloquist who seemed to love his dummy more than his son. He used the dummy to tell him whatever was on his mind and Giggles never had anyone to turn to. He believed the only way to get his dad’s attention was to be a criminal. He was forever picked up for setting fires and any other mayhem he could create. After his disappearance, his stories are found. Paul and Alan believe they’ll make a fortune selling his work, but Fraser knows that these brilliant stories were Giggles’ only outlet for any kind of sanity.

“Our Bad Magnet” is a really intriguing look at the rules of attraction and how much and how little people care about each other. Fraser, the only human being Giggles even remotely was able to connect with, is overwhelmed with guilt. Alan and Paul only see the tragedy as an enterprise and want to cash in.

“Our Bad Magnet” runs through December 21, 2008 at the Mary Arrchie Theatre at Angel Island, 735 N. Sheridan Road. Phone 773-871-0442 for tickets and information or visit www.maryarrchie.com. There is parking available at the Mobil station across the street for a fee. The theatre is accessible by the #151 Sheridan or #36 Broadway buses.

Childhood fantasies produce an adult mystery for three rural Scottish lads

Director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia from Mary-Arrchie Theatre found four young adult actors adapt at playing nine year-olds, teens and adults for his entertaining production of Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell’s Our Bad Magnet. The play is located on the west coast of Scotland in a rural village near cliffs. Three nine year-old pals begrudgingly befriend a sadly troubled boy who never smiles or laughs but has a talent for storytelling. Alan (John Wilson), Fraser (Dan Behrendt) and Paul (Layne Manzer) have fun acting out Giggles’ (Kevin V. Smith) magical, often fable-like fairy tales. Much dark humor pours out from these stories. We witness the effects of isolation, child abuse and mental illness on these children.

Spanning two decades, Our Bad Magnet moves from childhood to the teen years as the four now search for sex and fame and glory by forming a rock band as a way out from the doldrums of their village. Alan, Fraser and Paul decide that Giggles must be removed from the band. Several mysterious events occur that shakes the crew. Flash foreword another ten years where Alan and Paul summon Fraser to the village in order to piece together the circumstances that led to the mystery of what happened to Giggles. Is he dead or missing? Why did he leave all his stories to these three guys?

Douglas Maxwell cleverly weaves back and forth through the three timelines to present a darkly funny and poignantly moving drama. This suspenseful work is a fresh take on childhood bonding and its effects on shaping the adults we become. Despite the up and down Scottish brogues, this cast deftly moved from little boys to teens to adults producing innocent charm, teen angst and adult trauma. John Wilson and Kevin V. Smith were particularly strong. For a well done off-beat drama, Our Bad Magnet will attract. Mary-Arrchie Theatre continues to mount stage worthy plays.

Recommended

Tom Williams

Source: http://chicagocritic.com/html/our_bad_magnet.html

Centerstage Show Review
Reviewer: Rory Leahy
Thursday Nov 27, 2008

Time Out Chicago / Issue 196 : Nov 27–Dec 3, 2008

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company . By Douglas Maxwell. Dir. Carlo Lorenzo Garcia. With Dan Behrendt, Layne Manzer, John Wilson, Kevin V. Smith.

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BOYS’ LIFE Smith, left, narrates a nasty tale.

Photo: Kirstie Shanley

Scottish playwright Maxwell’s dark comedy follows three friends from a go-nowhere town on Scotland’s western coast over two decades. We see Fraser, Paul and Alan at ages nine, 19 and 29 (portrayed throughout by Behrendt, Manzer and Wilson, respectively), but as Maxwell darts back and forth through time, it’s revealed that the relationship among them is largely defined by their grudging attachment to a fourth: a morose young lad, ironically nicknamed Giggles (Smith), who possesses an uncanny gift for storytelling. Giggles appears only at age nine, and as Maxwell slowly parcels out details at Fraser, Alan and Paul’s reunion at age 29, it becomes clear that Giggles’s absence has become a driving force in each of their lives.

Maxwell has a strong ear for the wayward boredom of small-town adolescence, and Giggles’s parabolic fables (acted out by the other three boys) are affectingly charming. But the script’s winning elements never quite cohere into a whole. Magnet veers in many directions: Domestic abuse, adultery, mental illness and the relative merits of ’80s indie music are all lightly touched upon. Maxwell may be the current theater’s most authentic writer of capricious kid-speak, which is something, but Magnet still feels like a play in search of a thesis. The drama’s U.S. premiere is helped by Garcia’s note-perfect cast, playing out unruly lives marked by the jagged Scottish cliffside. While Behrendt in particular compels as the ringleader turned outsider, all four actors shine amid the gloom.

Three 29-year-old childhood friends reunite on a bleak bluff in Girvan, Scotland, to remember a fourth–strange, unhappy Giggles, who wrote wonderful stories and killed himself at 19. Or did he? Despite the plot’s dark underpinnings, Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell milks considerable mirth from the characters’ interactions, especially in a flashback to their nine-year-old days. Carlo Lorenzo Garcia’s four performers do a great job of embracing their inner boys (though sometimes they drop their brogues), and the fantasy scenes enacting Giggles’s stories are believably childlike, funny and touching. But Maxwell trumps up a conflict that takes over the end of the play only to muddy the waters–and the final, lovely moment.

–Laura Molzahn

Source: http://events.chicagoreader.com/events/Event?oid=859309

‘Our Bad Magnet’ has been Jeff Recommended!!

*The designation of “Jeff Recommended” is given to a production when at least ONE ELEMENT of the show was deemed outstanding by the opening night judges of The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee. The entire production is then eligible for nomination for awards at the end of the season.

www.jeffawards.org