Description

No Strings Theatre Company presents the entertaining comedy Laughing Wild, written by Christopher Durang and directed by Ceil Herman. Laughing Wild, opens Friday, September 24 and runs through Sunday, October 10 at the Black Box Theatre, 430 N Main Street in Las Cruces.

Director Herman enjoys the absurd humor in Durang's playwriting and is pleased to direct another Durang play at the Black Box Theatre. "We have previously produced Durang’s Beyond Therapy, directed by Bradd Howard and Baby with the Bathwater, which I directed, both audience favorites. Durang has such a strange and wacky way of looking at the world. Even though this play was written in 1988, and we are setting it in 1987, the subject matter is very current."

It’s just an average day in the grocery store. A man is examining some cans of tuna fish when suddenly, an off-beat woman appears behind him exuding some odd energy. He tries to ignore her, she tries to get by him but they reach an impasse - until she conks him and he falls to the floor. Flustered, the woman runs out into the streets of New York to hail a taxi, the man, perplexed and with a throbbing head is left to reflect on how he *should* have behaved and things begin to take a turn for the weird… AHAHAHAHA! Then for the weirder…

The first act of the play consists of two extended monologues, one by the woman and one by the man who recount their experience in the supermarket from their own perspectives and proceed to take you on a journey through their thoughts and experiences, covering everything from paying a street musician with a nickel bag of coke AHAHAHAHA - to the Harmonic Convergence, which was the world's first global peace meditation.

In the second act, the man and woman enter a series of strange dream sequences. They play through many possibilities of what could have happened in the tuna fish aisle, go on a talk show in order to interview a religious figure and find themselves in the middle of the Harmonic Convergence itself.

Laughing Wild, is a story about communication, empathy and tuna fish. It’s raucous, rollicking and thoughtful. Set in 1987, the play tackles themes of nuclear proliferation, sexual identity, AIDS and mental health - all wrapped up in smart, biting humor.

Come join us and Laugh WILD as we transport you back in time to 1987. This is one show you don’t want to miss. AHAHAHAHA!

Jamie Bronstein (Woman) started early doing theatre. Her first role, as Anne, in The Diary of Anne Frank as an eighth grader at the Pax Amicus Castle Theatre in Budd Lake, NJ. was followed several years later at in the same play LCCT as Mrs. Van Daan. She has been seen at LCCT in Belles, The Foreigner, Shadowlands, and the Female Odd Couple. At NSTC she has been seen in Dead Man's Cell Phone, The Birthday Party, Alice in Wonderland, Boy Gets Girl, Rocket Man, The Real Thing, Seagulls in a Cherry Tree, and Bosoms and Neglect.

Brad Martinez (Man) graduated from Oñate High School where he studied with Sherry Aland. He went on to study at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, Bath Spa University and finally received his BFA in Acting from Columbia College Chicago. His theatrical training comes from various pedagogies including classes with Jon Jory, founder of the Humana New Play Festival, Dr. Ellie Nixon, who graduated from the Lecoq School in Paris, and Dawn Arnold, founder of The Moving Dock Theatre Company and Chekhov Studio Chicago. Some of his favorite stage credits are LCCT's Recreational Living by David Spence, directed by Mark Medoff, as well as Subpoena and The Shape of Things. His most recent credit is You, Me and the Cat with Perceptions Theatre Company in Chicago,

Reservations (575) 523-1223 or online at www.no-strings.org.
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Credits

Reviews

'Laughing Wild' will make you laugh - and make you think
- Mike Cook, Las Cruces Bulletin

"Laughing wild amid severest woe" is a line Irish playwright Samuel Beckett borrowed from English poet Thomas Gray. American playwright Christopher Durang uses the first two words as the perfect title and theme of his play that is now in production at Black Box Theatre (BBT), 430 N. Main St. Downtown.
I was in BBT's first Durang production, "Beyond Therapy," about 20 years ago, and well remember that he isn't afraid of strong language or dark themes. But Durang also knows where to find the humor in the strangest and most disturbing circumstances and places - hence the comedy and tragedy of "Laughing Wild."
Director Ceil Herman and actors Jamie Bronstein and Brad Martinez take the audience on a wild ride through the tuna fish aisle of a supermarket, a couple of gut-wrenching taxi rides through the streets of New York City and even onto the set of the "Sally Jessy Rafael Show."
But it is the darkest and scariest corners of the minds of Bronstein and Martinez's characters that are by far the most disturbing - and hilarious element of the play.
Bronstein's "woman" hates Sally Jessy, Mother Teresa and happy teenagers from New Jersey, and seems only to have sympathy for her doctors. Martinez's "man" regularly falls to his knees to invoke the power of positive affirmations to overcome the deeply trying experiences of his life - sexuality, career, faith and family.
It all comes full circle, as only Durang could make it, with a can of tuna serving as both a lethal weapon and an ice breaker.
Credit Bronstein and Martinez for their fearless 30-minute monologues that open this 95-minute play, which is performed without an intermission. With simple costumes, no set and very few props, they have only Durang's timeless script and their own talent to connect with the audience and make this show work.
I also must credit costume designer Robert "Bobcat" Young for his costume for Martinez's brief performance as the Infant of Prague. It's one of the few, but really funny (and violent), interactions between the two characters in the play.
Remaining performances of "Laughing Wild" are at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Oct. 1-2 and 8-9; 2:30 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 3 and 10; and 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7.
Tickets are $15 regular admission, $12 for students and for seniors over age 65 and $10 for the Thursday, Oct. 7, show only. Call 575-523-1223 to reserve tickets or buy tickets online at www.tktassistant.com/Tix/?u=NSTC.

Review: Escape to 1980s NYC in witty, weird 'Laughing Wild'
- Erik Anderson, for the Las Cruces Sun News

The No Strings Theatre Company’s production of “Laughing Wild,” a monologue comedy by Christopher Durang, well lives up to its name while offering Las Cruces residents a brief escape to 1980s New York City, but is not for the faint of heart.
The show opens on an unnamed disheveled woman, portrayed by well-known local actor Jamie Bronstein, who tells the audience about a recent disturbing encounter she had at the grocery store. Frustrated by a man who was obstructing her path to canned tuna, she angrily grabbed a can, walloped him on the head with it and ran out into the street.
The audience gets a few early “wild” laughs from Bronstein’s somewhat understated narrative lead-up to the surprise assault. While she is clearly frazzled from a bad shopping experience, her carefully crafted demeanor suggests the everyday type of annoyance that one might feel in a grocery store. It’s not until the moment she reveals her crime with a big comical pantomime striking gesture that the audience can tell they’re in for a wild ride.
The humor of Bronstein’s character depends on these well-executed cycles of understated build-ups to big reveals about her fraught and unusual life; a device that persist throughout her portions of the show.
Bronstein is also very skilled at drawing the audience into her character’s world. Though the show’s barebones tech relies on simple background projections of NYC to set the stage, Bronstein’s expressive cadence and body language paired with Durang’s vivid script create a clear portal to that world 1,900 miles away and 30 years in the past. Her commitment to character kept the audience with her even when the projector displayed an unintended low battery warning shortly into opening night.
Local residents may find it hard to relate to the woman’s big-city life full of near misses with bike messengers and fights with taxi drivers. It might feel strange trying to connect with her forgotten pop-culture references to 1980s daytime television and politics. But after enduring a year of pandemic lock-down measures in Las Cruces, even a brief pretend trip to another time and place strikes a refreshing note.
As her story progresses, however, it slowly dawns on the audience that the evening’s entertainment is not all laughs. The show’s title is ultimately taken from a poem by Thomas Gray, the full line of which reads, “And moody Madness laughing wild / Amid severest woe.” Both madness and woe begin to show themselves in increasing proportion. The laughs never stop coming, but it becomes apparent the woman suffers from some kind of mental illness and existential dread. In the middle of her opening monologue, she says in sincerity, “I wish I had been killed when I was a fetus.”
In Act II we finally meet the man she assaulted in the grocery store, portrayed by Brad Martinez, a graduate of Oñate High School (now Organ Mountain) who earned a BFA in acting from Columbia College of Chicago. His character is also very funny, though the laughs are tempered by the fact he doesn’t seem to share in the joke.
The humor of his character stems from his constantly trying to embrace the power of positive thinking and consistently failing under pressure. Perpetually incapable of following his own advice, he is terrified of social interaction and only finds himself in a grocery store being trounced by a tuna can because he lives in a time before grocery delivery apps.
With his explanatory tone and thoughtful pauses, Martinez is really good at bringing to life the calm analytical empathy Durang writes for his character. Though justly angry about being violently struck for the crime of taking too long to read a tuna can, he tries really hard to put himself in the woman’s shoes, rightly concluding that she “probably had some really horrible life story.”
There is no getting around the fact that the third act was intentionally written to be very strange and a little uncomfortable, likely meant to resemble the experience of mental illness. The two characters seem to have a shared dream in which they relive multiple versions of the tuna can assault (including some versions involving gun shots). They also encounter alternate versions of each other on a mock talk show and experience some kind of universal harmonic convergence of the planets in Central Park.
Perhaps the strangest part was when Martinez dressed as The Infant of Prague, a 16th-century Czech statue representation of the Christ child. Neither character had previously mentioned a connection to Christianity or to Eastern Europe, so a very particular ethnic expression of a particular branch of a religion seems like an odd choice to use as straw man in a serious argument over sexual morality.
The inexplicability of the situation is evident because the character has to recite paragraphs of encyclopedic introduction just so the audience can even know what he’s supposed to be. He also highlights the weirdness by stating the obvious: “I’m an infant. What’s more, I’m the infant of Prague; I can’t sit down, let alone have sex.”
But because Martinez and Bronstein both show an understanding of the moment’s oddness, more humor does come through, most especially when Bronstein ends up pummeling the “infant.”
After lots of high-energy slapstick and attempts at cosmic awareness, the characters seem to find some kind of peace that they are able to impart on the audience with a joint breathing exercise. Though one is left with a feeling that none of the characters’ big problems have been solved, the audience at least has enjoyed a bit of fun, if weird, escapism.
If you go
"Laughing Wild"
• Where: Black Box Theatre, 430 N Main St.
• Remaining shows: 8 p.m. Fridays, Oct 1 and 8 and Saturdays, Oct. 2 and 9; 2:30 p.m. Sundays Oct. 3 and 10; and 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7
• Info and tickets: http://no-strings.org/, 575-523-1223
• Also: Patrons must be vaccinated and masked
Erik Anderson is a freelance features and entertainment writer. Reach him at erikanderson07@gmail.com.

Seating