KICKING IT: Spilling out |
“What is not creation is graham crackers,” waxes Maxwell, beat-poet-in-residence at the boho Yellow Door coffee shop. “Let it all crumble to feed the creator!” He elaborates: Stretch the skin of the non-creators for the artist’s canvas; grind up the bones of their hands to make the artist’s clay. “The artist is; all others are not,” goes the gist of it. “Let them die!”Of course, Maxwell (Rick Dalton) is jiving in what we call a figurative manner, and most of the Yellow Door’s chain-smoking patronage, for all their withering black-clad egoism, can dig. Then there’s Walter (Joshua Douglas). Shuffling, simpering, chipmunk-cheeked, despised, and utterly unchic busboy Walter Paisley has a little problem with literalism. His desire for respect, artistic success, and the heart of lovely artist Carla (Jana Regan) comes to bring out the more unfortunate culturo-fascist readings of Maxwell’s snappy verse, in a production that could only have come from the camp-masters of Running Over Productions. Their latest, a must-see black-comic horror show, is Bucket of Blood, at the Presumpscot Grange Hall.
Walter is back home, in a funny-sad apartment that works well looking like it was sketched on bar napkins, when he hears meows and realizes that the landlady’s cat has been trapped within his newly repaired wall. His intentions are good but not his aim when he tries to hack the drywall out of the way. Maxwell’s words return to him as he cradles the knifed creature, and of — or rather over — the tragedy, Walter makes clay art. Suddenly, he’s too cool for school. But what — in the eternal fear of the artist — will he do next? Adapted by director Will Stewart from Charles Griffith’s screenplay for the 1959 Roger Corman film, Bucket of Blood sends up the plight of the creator, the questionable ethics of the agent, and the laughable susceptibility of the art-gulping public.
Adapted as it is from a movie script, Bucket of Blood has an ambitiously cinematic pace to its scene-changes, and for the most part handles them admirably, shifting efficiently between scenes on the floor (where the café is set), the strip of stage in front of the closed curtain, and the upstage area of Walter’s apartment. Sluggishness is not a problem; in fact, the last ten fraught minutes of the play should be slowed down considerably. The play’s movement also rides the momentum of its great jazz soundtrack, designed and spun live by Jake Millet, as well as some gothic beatsy-folksy interludes on guitar by Pigboat frontman Mark Belanger. And naturally, Running Over reprises the pulse-quickening stage magic that its burgeoning fan base has come to expect — watch particularly for the title scene, when a bludgeoned narc dribbles like a slum ceiling, and for Walter’s chilling succession of “statues.”
