Cowboy Mouth
Written by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith
Directed by Anthony DeMarco
Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport (map)
thru July 14 | tickets: $21 | more info
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Seventy-five minutes feels like an eternity
Black Ribbon Theater presents
Cowboy Mouth
Review by Keith Glab
CAVALE has kidnapped SLIM off the streets with an old .45. (She wants to make him into a rock-and-roll star, but they fall in love).
So begins the stage direction for Cowboy Mouth, a semiautobiographical play penned by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith. Those two sentences contain the makings of a very interesting and dramatic play, but Shepard and Smith instead take us to the aftermath of that action in a one-act that is hard to follow and goes nowhere.
Three memorable moments nevertheless stand out from the nebulous script, but Black Ribbon Theater’s inaugural production fails to land these. Cavale (Amy Geist) interacts with her dead crow, Raymond, throughout. This should result in a lot of laughs, but a rushed delivery from the cast instead makes the humor fall flat. The arrival of the Lobster Man (Jovan King) is meant to be ambiguous as to how much of his presence is real and how much a collective hallucination, but King’s costume does not even fit what is clear from the script. Slim (John Wehrman) mentions that the Lobster Man has claws, but King only wears dirty gray coveralls with a lobster tail sewn to the back. Finally, Cavelle’s touching speech about how she played the ugly duckling in a school play doesn’t work on physical appearance. The beautiful, fair-haired Geist is completely miscast as Cavale, who is supposed to look like a crow.
The rest of the action is convincingly conveyed as a drug-induced haze, but the audience isn’t given cause to care what happens to these characters. The lovers go through sudden mood swings, the motivations for which are unclear. Obviously, the actors have to honor what is in the script, but you rarely get the impression that the actors understand why their character behaves the way they do at a given moment. Wehrman and Geist do perform the physicality of their roles well, believable as edgy lovers who aren’t grounded in reality.
The play’s climax comes when the couple serenades the Lobster Man, causing him to come out of his shell. We can’t understand Geist’s vocals, though, primarily because she holds the microphone too close to her mouth. Geist then closes the play with brief exposition on how the French poet Nerval influences the imagery of what we just saw. But the audience isn’t yet released. Black Ribbon Theater keeps us there for a half-dozen amateur rock songs performed by a five-person band. Geist remains mostly inaudible on the vocals, so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the songs expound on the evening’s themes.
Black Ribbon Theater does little to elucidate a rough script and tacks a mini-concert onto the end of it that drags. Because the audience isn’t given enough reason to become invested in the characters and the action, the 75-minute performance feels like an eternity.
Rating: ★½
Cowboy Mouth continues through July 14th at Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays 7:30pm. Tickets are $21, and are available by phone (773-935-6875) or online through OvationTix.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at BlackRibbonTheater.com. (Running time: 75 minutes, NO intermission)
artists
cast
Amy Geist (Cavale), John Wehrman (Slim), Jovan King (Lobster Man), Travis Barnhart (Slim u/s)
band
Amy Geist (vocals), John Wehrman (lead guitar), Chris Yearwood (keyboard), Gabrielle Cauchon (bass), Keith Tenbusch (drums), Travis Barnhart (lead guitar u/s)
behind the scenes
Anthony DeMarco (director), Moira Begale (asst. director, producer), Amy Geist (producer, composer), Chris Yearwood (music director, composer), Patti Smith (lyrics), Ally Wetz (stage manager), Raquel Adorno (costumes), Lewie Long (technical director), Matt Kahler (composer)
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