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The New Bohemia

nytheatre.com review by Eric Winick
August 15, 2005

Epicurean Productions’ The New Bohemia is billed as “a burlesque murder mystery musical.” I can’t help but feel that there are a few too many words in that tag. Had Epicurean chosen to narrow-cast, they might have hit the mark. As it stands, the show’s unwieldy melding of striptease, slapstick comedy, magic, erotic choreography, opera, and, oh yeah, a whodunit, is a bit more than its company can handle.Given that we never really get to know the characters or their motivations, the wafer thin plot—a traveling company’s diva is poisoned, leaving everyone to ponder which performer had the nerve/foresight to do her in—is negligible. Which leaves the burlesque, performed in high camp fashion by players ranging from fairly talented to amateurish—which begs the question: with much of The New Bohemia performed in a winking, we’re-all-in-this-together style, how much of it is intentionally “bad”? Are we supposed to snicker when body mikes crackle, feedback blows out the audience’s ears, or costumes malfunction mid-frolic? There’s value in purposeful awfulness, but only when it’s performed artfully. Director Dennis Hinson, who apparently encouraged his cast to act as broadly as possible, wants to have his camp, and eat it too. And there’s the rub.Playwright Patrick Bonomo and playwright-lyricist-composer-musical director Shelly Watson get one thing right, assuming that, as long as you’ve got flesh, audiences will forgive a nonsensical plot, characters that don’t register, and jokes that continually fail to land. Which does little to dull the veneer of vanity surrounding the project. Watson, who also plays the ill-fated diva, seems to have crafted her character primarily as a showcase for her operatic talents—at one point, after the character has expired, she mysteriously reappears to warble a song that serves no dramatic purpose. Most offensive is the creators’ failure to credit the authors of the published songs utilized throughout the production.The show has its highlights, namely the witty costume design of M’Arion Talan, the antics of gum-smacking, hula-hooping comediennes Carmen Armillas and Krista Amigone, and the show’s bizarre “Serengeti” dance sequence, a Busby Berkeley-esque number complete with skintight cat suits and palm fronds. It’s moments like these that make you believe The New Bohemia could have been something more; by focusing on the burlesque, and leaving the drama at the door, the show might have made for an enjoyable, if workmanlike, evening at the theatre.