Review: Anna the Slut and the (Almost) Chosen One

Critic’s Pick

Hormones rampage through a pair of college boys’ bloodstreams in Andrew Hungerford's new Fringe Festival comedy. Playwright Hungerford, who also has a graduate degree in theater design from the University of Cincinnati, travels back to the myth of a sex goddess for inspiration. The comedy, performed at Mr. Pitiful’s (1323 Main St., Over-the-Rhine), is presented by Hunger Warrior Theatre, a group Hungerford founded at UC in 2004 with fellow grad student Chad Bonaker.

Anna the Slut is the retelling of Ianna’s dangerous adventures in the underworld. She has gone down under seeking the whereabouts of her deceased husband. But her jealous sister Ereshkigal, who rules Hades, has Ianna crucified. She is revived, but the price for the return of breath is that she must send a replacement for herself in this underworld. She decides to send her lover.

(Photo: Jeff Berkle)

The second track for the show has Ianna, showing up in contemporary times, now called Anna. It’s 5,000 years after her creation and there’s a nary a hint of gray hair in her raven Prince Valiant haircut. Anna (Stephanie Brait) still is on the prowl for men she must send to the underworld, where they will eventually expire and have to replaced.

Thoroughly Modern Anna swaggers into a college bar, where she promptly announces that she'll select someone to go home with her. Little does nerdish, shy Greg (Kyle Nunn) and his sort-of-friend and rival Mason (a smooth Jonathan Silver) realize the depths where Anna’s home is located.

Their competition for the sex goddess is interrupted by the bartender (Michael Burnham), who steps out occasionally from behind the bar to read lyric sections from the Sumerian myth. Apparently the bartender has been one of Anna’s beaus centuries before. But he's survived as a kind of referee who brings a certain restraint and justice to Anna’s wholesale campaign to add yet another male to her fold.

Despite Burnham’s weighty, dramatic presence declaiming Ianna’s story, Anna the Slut smacks too much of the impressions that Hungerford’s past English and classical literature classes have had upon him. While the device of accompanying Burnham’s readings with a rather amusing shadow puppet show pantomiming the myth has its charm, it’s too much of a segue from Greg and Mason’s spirited braggadocio in their pursuit of Anna.

The college boys’ rivalries over the hot co-ed are conventional material in ivy-walled college comedies. Yet Hungerford has achieved some engaging characterizations, despite the fact they're drawn from the usual gallery of stock student types. Nunn’s Greg is full of self-doubts and insecurities despite the passion that pushes him toward direct competition with Mason. Greg’s bursts of honesty about his shortcomings are quite winning.

Brait’s Anna is a difficult portrait to pull off. Anna must be sultry, but we must never quite forget the emotional fatigue that lies just below all the sexuality. After all, Anna, like a female version of Marley’s Ghost, has been traveling the world for thousands of years, seducing men to send them to the underworld so she doesn't have to return there herself.

There is a poignant sadness in knowing that this is the goddess of sex who will never experience fulfilling emotional love, and Brait manages glimpses of this spiritual fatigue. She tells the boys during one of their many conflicts, “You must fight over me,” but she says it in a way that suggests she's been through this ritual many times before.

The standout performance, though, comes from Emily Matlack as the wise, pragmatic graduate student Julia. She uses her mezzo-toned voice to bring great authority and considerable wry humor to Julia’s disengaged assessments of personalities and situations. It’s impressive work.

Mr. Pitiful’s is not the most ideal venue for a play. A cornfield would provide better sight lines than what is offered in this Main Street bar, where the stage has only a slight elevation on a deck. Nevertheless, while the dialogue can be a bit wooden before some bright lines reassert themselves, this comedy is a work in progress that surely will be more crisp by the time the company takes the show to Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

— Jerry Stein

Comments

[Phillip Markou]

I've seen my weakest Fringe production in three years.
Anna is reminiscent of a High School play.

[OSUDM9293]

I understand art for the sake of art - but this show is just not good. It's a self indulgent attempt to be funny and cute. The puppets are cute. The acting (by all the actors under the age of 40) is unfortunate and one dimensional, probably due to a script that gives the actors nothing of note and is neither witty, creative or even 'fringy'.

[Elizabeth]

I completely disagree! This show is a real crowd pleaser. The talented cast makes the most of this witty re-imagination of a lesser-known myth. I highly recommend Anna, that is, if you can get tickets. Last night's show sold out.

[Lauren]

This show is great! Charming, funny and fun. GO SEE IT!!! If you can...

[Sam]

No, I'm sorry.... great stab at it, good concept. But it really was like watching college kids "do art". Which is totally Fringey, and totally fine. I enjoyed the show, but certainly nothing to write home about.
I would certainly recommend it to people, but not sure why it's such a big seller. that's just me....

[McFringe]

Lighten up! I was able to see the show on the second (sold-out)night and was thoroughly entertained. The fringe is supposed to be a place in which shows can and should be experimental. Keep in mind that the actors, (even the one above 40, Mr Markou), most likely didn't have a finished script until after they were on-board. To make commentary as a blatant attempt to dissuade others rather than make even one constructive point is to make it clear that you are simply trying to re-route traffic to other shows...In short, I question the legitimacy of the comments. The review itself seems to miss the mark in that the character of Anna, although a goddess, was reincarnated as a perpetual college sophomore and she is relating to college coeds in a bar, so the dialog, befitting regular coeds, seems to fit. Ms Brait's portrayal of Anna was smoldering and she conveyed more with the arch of one of her perfect eyebrows than most actors can manage with a whole arsenal of "heightened" dialog.

[OSUDM9293]

I'm not trying to get anyone to go to anything else - I hope everyone gets to all the shows! and these 'kids' all go to ccm, (unless i'm mistaken) - so i'm quite sure they are all super talented. and the idea of re-writing a classical story into a modern day bar is a novel idea. BUT - the script stunk and the actors tried to over-compensate for that. sold out houses, especially at a fringe festival, does not equal good. sorry, but this show was negative good.

[Geoffry]

yeah - I'm gonna go ahead and agree that the script left something to be desired. I can't blame the actors, I really think they did an admirable job trying to make something out of nothing. I don't think they were trying to "do art". This show really doesn't seem like it presumes to be "art" - I really think it's supposed to be nothing more than funny- as Hungerford has been quoted as saying "Thinking is good, but laughing comes first"...an unfortunate idea in practice in seems. Hopefully he will consider this should he choose to pen another comedy.

I'll agree with the comments that commend the actors for trying. McFringe is right in recognizing that they're supposed to be playing into the idea of college kids as juvenile...so I don't fault them for that. Maybe the purpose of the show is to address stereotypes and laugh at the increasing one dimensionality of youth? It's nothing new and it's not necessarily the "fringiest" but the night I went audiences responded in a big way.

The characters could certainly use a little more rich developement (particularly Anna. The original review is right in recognizing that the portrait, as written, is a huge challenge to pull off. And the beautiful Stephanie Brait does capitalize on the few lines which offer her all-too-brief moments of dimension).

Students of CCM (many of whom I've seen do lovely work before like York, Brait and Nun), they are most likely (I can't speak for all of them) capable of mature work - but this show didn't call for that, and I think they did what the writing called for.

Don't go to this show expecting "art" in a fringey sense (though the puppet sequences were neat). Go to laugh, to maybe learn a less well known (but interesting) myth, to see talented up and comings. I found some of the moments hilarious, some of it highly creative (though not enough to compensate for some of the recycled dialogue and situation) and I did, in fact, care about Mr. Nun's character so he must have done something right.

I'm glad I saw it and recommend it. But DO go and decide for yourself.

And Why is this particular thread so long??

[Andrew]

Hi everyone. This is the writer/director of Anna.

Thanks for the comments on the show. It's gratifying to have received such a wide response, in both positive and negative posts.

It would be great to have an actual conversation about these things: come find me if you're at the Fringe Bar Series at the Know in the next few days, or send me an e-mail at HungerWarriorTheatre@gmail.com .

I look forward to hearing what you have to say. And thanks for coming to the show.