by Geoff Hoff

Full disclosure:  I am good friends with one of the cast members of Land of the Tigers, Tim Sheridan.

Land of the Tigers is two plays.  Sort of.  The first is an exquisitely silly parody of important, symbolic, avant guard, political, socially conscious and wholly pretentious theatre.  The second is not quite so exquisite, a parody of the process by which such a play as the first might come to be.

In the first part, the audience is brought to the time when the tigers stood on two legs, donned wigs and stately clothing and learned to speak English.  The tag on the posters for the play say, “It’s as stupid as it sounds.”  And it is.  And I cannot begin to portray how delightful and funny and profane it is, so I suppose I shouldn’t try.

In the land of the tigers, all is not well.  Sabertooth (played by Hugo Armstrong) is becoming dissatisfied with the status quo (one in which, among other things, there is a nightly ritual in which procreation is achieved to arrive at the greatest chance of the species moving forward.)  Against all law and tradition, he has fallen in love with Sheba (Devin Sidell), sister to Fang Stalkington (Tim Sheridan) and daughter of the resident scientist, Professor Clawman Furworthy.  Yes, their last names don’t match.  That’s dealt with.

Besides that, the good professor has discovered that the tigers’ ritual sacrifices to the volcano are causing global cooling, something that the governing body refuses to listen to.  At their peril, of course.  We are told, ominously, that this is an analogy for global warming.

The set, by Donna Marquet, is a wonderfully absurd motley, using strips of cloth to evoke forests and chambers and rivers and a volcano.  Things fall from the ceiling in startlingly funny ways to bring the audience from one place to another, from one time to another.

The lighting (Chris Wojcieszyn) and sound design (Matt Almos) go beyond showing what is possible in a good small theatre.  The costumes (Ann Closs-Farley) and makeup (Heather Hopkins) bring together the nonsensical reality of the tigers with the pretentious, portentous guise of the foppish French Restoration in a sublime non-sequitur.

The cast is uniformly good with a couple of notable standouts – Ruth Silveira as the High Priestess Cava and Hugo Armstrong as Sabertooth.  Ms. Silveira brings a wonderfully regal presence to the stage and Mr. Armstrong has a sense of comedy throughout, but especially with the physical demands after his arm has been “altered” by a strange laboratory accident.  His use of the prosthetic is amazingly subtle, elegant and funny.

Although the whole is completely illogical, it creates and holds its own internal logic completely, a substantial accomplishment.  And it all crescendos in a fever pitch that brings us to the second part of the play.

Act two takes place in a rehearsal hall where several actors, led by Brian Johnson (Cody Henderson) decide to hire a famous director to help them mount a new, powerful, experimental play.  For which they have no script.  The parody here is spot on, but less subtle, and, although it is funny, it is a little less so than the first half.  It also seems a bit limited in that it may specifically be geared toward the theatre community rather than the public at large.  There is the gaunt, pretentious, starving director (Dean Gregory), the ingenue (Devin Sidell) who is more than a little too fawning towards the director, the non-ingenue (Rebecca Metz) who sleeps with the director.

Then there’s the clueless but earnest clown (again an extremely funny Hugo Armstrong), the seasoned veteran,  (Ms. Silveira, again doing an exemplary job) and Brian Johnson, the ineffectual guy trying to be in charge, a sort of tall, thin Charlie Brown, who does it all for love.

The parody is painful for anyone who has suffered through the process of developing “new” theatre under the guidance of an arrogant, pretentious, over-sexed and under-talented despot, although I suspect that creature resides more in fiction and the minds of actors than he does in reality.  The real joy, here, however, is in finding the clues to the piece we’ve just seen, how all the pieces came together, or didn’t come together to form The Land of the Tigers.  And remember, it’s an analogy for global warming.

Although the absurd first half kept its environment and action completely in line, there is one glaring leap of logic in the more “real” second half.  I won’t give too much detail, it hinges on a major plot point, but in the final scene there is someone on stage who simply shouldn’t be there.  Perhaps I missed something, but it pulled me right out of what was otherwise a wonderful scene.

The rest of the cast included Larry Biederman as Chairman Longstripe, Corey Klemow as Panther, Catbox McFeely, Cub #1 and Todd and JJ Meyers as Bumbletip and Cub #2.

It was directed by Matt Almos and written/produced/co-directed by the Burglars of Hamm (Carolyn Almos, Matt Almos, Jon Beauregard & Albert Dyan), who gave us such other theatrical delights as the sock throwing play, Easy Targets.

The play is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 7 pm through May 3rd, 2009.

Sacred Fools Theater is located at 660 N. Heliotrope, Hollywood, CA  90004, just south of Melrose between Vermont and Normandie.

Ticket prices: $25.00

Reservations online at www.sacredfools.org or by phone at (310) 281-8337