By Bart Greenberg***Downtown’s Party Clown of the Rich and Famous/The Hungry Mind Buffet is the rather unwieldy title for a full evening of short plays presented by Crystal Field for the Theater for the New City. As with most such assemblies, the quality was as wide-ranging as the topics and genres included. From memoir to opera to ruminations on God to the tragedy of a war torn city to a visit to the strangest of restaurants, it was all on view. Some of it was well worth seeing. And some of it…
The program began with Party Clown of the Rich and Famous, an autobiographical solo show written by and performed by Stan Baker. With a great deal of wit and charm, he charted his career as a participant in a troupe of entertainers available for hire for high-end events from teen birthday parties to grand openings to bacchanales. Most of the time, he was encased in one of those giant heads that resemble personages such as Ed Koch or Donald Trump or Bob Hope or the notorious Robin Leach, host of the reality series that suggested the title of the show. And it so happened that Baker encountered many of these people, often to hysterical and sometimes troubling effects.
Baker made a real connection with the audience, continually interacting with them, from the dance party opening to a silly poll that didn’t alter the course of the play one moment. He also dealt well with being upstaged by a cat that decided to stroll across the stage at an inopportune moment. Where he was less successful in his presentation was in dealing with tales of the devastation of AIDS on his troupe and his personal battle with drugs. 
These sections, delivered well into the show, were highly personal to him but seemed out of balance with the first part of the monologue. And then there was a very abrupt ending.
The second half of the evening began awkwardly when director Lissa Moira began chatting with the audience without introduction and while the house lights were still on. At first her identity was unclear as was her attempt to tie the disperate parts of the evening’s presentations together. Eventually she introduced of the first piece, The Afterdeath, a short opera written by Peter Dizozza. It was very much a contemporary opera, sung through with often pleasant and even passionate music, but little attempt to provide the emotional release of a full aria. The romantic triangle depicted was interpreted by Alisa Ermolaev, Jonathan Fox Powers and William Broderick, the latter proving the most valuable player of the program. Here, he played the villain, the jealous husband, who sends the young lovers to hell, or rather Dante’s Inferno. All three demonstrated beautiful voices and emotive clarity, though much of the material 
was abstract and difficult to follow dramatically. Wisely, the staging made use of the entire playing space. Projections by Roy Chang and lighting design by Alexander Bartrnieff helped to define the opera’s multitude of locations.
The low point of the evening came in Trips Out, written, directed and performed by Richard West. Perhaps if he had worked with a director the result might have been more effective. Essentially, West sat at a small desk, reading his rambling work about an encounter with God. Some of the language was quite impressive, but it was delivered in a monotone, with little differentiation between himself and the deity. Wearing a cap that shaded his eyes caused even more of a distance from his audience.
The dramatic highlight of the program, the perhaps awkwardly but accurately titled The Colonel and the Woman Take Tea in the Rubble, written and directed by Moira. In a war-torn unnamed town, a weary Colonel (Broderick in a powerful performance) and his younger Lieutenant (Powers proving himself as fine an actor as singer) share a complicated relationship of shifting power. The older officer encounters an exotic woman among the ashes (Moira in a marvelous grand dame performance), a once famous 
actress who clings to her past as she pours tea from an elaborate service and flirts and entrances him despite the surroundings. To say any more would give away the satisfying twists and turns of the piece.
Bringing the evening to a close was the darkly comic Yum by Georgia James, directed by Moira. Set in a strange restaurant with a glamorous waitress/hostess (Amelia Sasson–watching her navigate in a gorgeous but impractical gown was a show in itself) and an expert violinist (Susan Mitchell), the constant flow of music shifted with the moods of the diners: a young woman (Ermolaey) who truly enjoys her food and a mature man (Broderick in a very different performance) who seems terrified at anything that hints at indulgence. The piece doesn’t go very far dramatically; it’s more a situation than a story, but it still serves as a witty dessert.
Party Clown of the Rich and Famous/The Hungry Mind Buffet runs through June 16, 2024 at the Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th St.). Tickets may be purchased at the theater box office or via their website at theaterforthenewcity.net.
