Cast members start building this South Beach Babylon by bowing, scraping waving to the audience. They disappear as Jonas Blodgen, down center, imitates flying into Miami. Fresh out of Pratt Institute, he’s a narrator who descends naively (well exemplified by Matt DeCapua) into a job and relation to the big South Beach Art Basel event that makes and breaks artists.
The theme here is commercial (and lucrative) ”art” vs. personal and political Creations of Integrity (not recognized or paid well, if at all). The message seems to be author Michael McKeever’s self-defense for going along with the former, even as he satirizes excesses in the commercial art world.
Jonas’ commitment kind of gets lost except for scenes giving insight -- through his encounters -- into the characters who illustrate the theme. At the real center of the action, Semira Mann is a planner and promoter for Art Basel and events and campaigns that bring fame or send an artist to famish. The stage lights up every time Priscilla Fernandez appears, always a force in a gorgeous red outfit (showing Sarah Bertolozzi’s real artistry), with extended heels and hoopla. Semira’s all-out responsible for the success of Graciany Miranda’s perfectly outrageous Chillie Zangora, untalented to the max. Dictatorial and prescriptive, Chillie is a by-the-numbers painter who takes on Jonas to actually fill in numbered abstractions. At one point, Jonas also takes on Chillie’s paramour, Lennox Montel. Larissa Klinger is agile not only performing Lennox’s bed-hopping to get ahead, but in her near-nude poses holding her breasts with no bra through numerous changes of position.
Jeffrey Plunkett, as photographer Tony Everette, who has finally had his artistic ability recognized, represents a viable middle; he takes pix to be used on billboards but escapes to home and family where he can also do non-commercial work and still make a living.
Chillie’s antithesis, Roger Clark as Simon Gardner seems almost as silly, always railing against trivial exhibitionism instead of art embodying great thinking. The importance of their being competitors for grants doesn’t quite come through in the play’s overall mish-mash.
What does speak more than dialogue is a special piece of performance art created (as if Simon’s) by Octavio Campos. It gives the audience a chance to consider its nature and worth, without comment by McKeever or slant by director Kate Alexander. She should have been relieved after a superb attempt -- and the work it must have required -- to shape order out of a Babylonian bash.
