Bay Windows, September 13, 2001 (Boston, MA)

Dr. Frockrocket's Vivifying (Re-Animatronic) Menagerie and Medicine Show
Out On The Edge Queer Theater Festival, Boston Center For The Arts
The Beasts We Harbor Within
By R.J. Grubb

For centuries, there's been a tradition of traveling quack medicine men or "doctors" who enter small communities with a flashy mix of entertainment, prophecy, folk medicine, and claims of miraculous cures. Such is Doctor Frockrocket. But his snake oil - or elixir as he'd like you to call it - isn't restorative. Rather it's designed to transform ordinary people into mythological creatures. Of course audiences didn't see a Pegasus or a Cyclops trot across the stage in "Dr. Frockrocket's Vivifying (Re-Animatronic) Menagerie and Medicine Show," which opened for a four-day run at the Theater Offensive by kicking off its 10th annual Out on the Edge Festival on September 5. Rather what they saw were a handful Of Disparate women who ranged from a visually penetrating Princess Poofta Una Cornea to a scantily clad Irish Imp. The Imp even invited select people from the audience to paint her bare ass green so she could stamp her butt cheeks into the shape of four-leaf clovers upon a white canvas. Hell, you don't see that every day. Written and directed by nine "queer" women and a drag queen from the Pacific Northwest, "Frockrocket" comes on the heels of The Transfused, a radical Political rock opera that was conceived by many of the same artists. This time, "Frockrocket" lets the troupe engage in a musical theater/cabaret built around a sideshow doctor (played by Jody Bleyle, co-founder of the legendary Team Dresch) who suffers from a bit of scientific hubris. Comprising the larger, looser plot were the big themes of transformation, women, body representation, the fragility of identity, and the constant invention and reinvention of visual self-expression...the play offered two mesmerizing and highly emotive performances from artist/activist Nomy Lamm and another actor who goes simply by the moniker of Spider. Besides opening the play with an a capella rendition of "Amazing Grace," Lamm gave a riveting and mesmerizing performance in "Dance of Mystery." There, she performed an intoxicating belly dance that culminates with her removing her prosthetic left leg. (Born with proximal femoral focal deficiency, at three years of age Lamm had her left foot amputated so that she could wear a prosthesis.) Balancing herself on one leg with the remains of the prosthetic strewn on the stage, Lamm looked wrenchingly vulnerable yet commandingly strong.

Similarly, the character Emily played by Spider erupts in the scene "Delight In the Haze." There she provides an aching monologue while a serious of stark black and white self-portraits displaying her oft-naked body in various poses screens on the wall behind her. As a magnetic orator, she delivered what felt like a fantastic and chilling postmodern/post feminist take on Hamlet and the ghost. Gripped in a banquet of despair, Emily hauntingly spoke about how she "built a monster" within while hurling a barrage of words delivered in a sort of song-speech. These scenes alone were well worth the ticket price. But more importantly, both demonstrate what's precisely so wonderful about a theater unafraid to take risks and run alternative programs, which continuously challenge your assumptions.