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Eitzel's reputation rests on his songwriting; his music opens brooding, sullen rooms where you can muse on double-bladed lyrics like, "Those who haven't seen the death of love don't know what to believe in." At the show, his deadpan manner between tunes balanced the brooding nicely. It would be irresponsible to print the gossip he related, but one part had to do with the sexual history of a certain famous actor in a certain current movie about being or maybe not being gay. "This is gonna end up in some rag somewhere," he lamented.
Sean San Jose Blackman is the other local artist who deserves more attention: He performed a few short works from the Pieces of the Quilt project. The Alma Delfina Group -- "Teatro Contra el SIDA" -- has been gathering skits on AIDS-related themes to perform at benefits. So far Pieces has pieces by 18 writers, including Edward Albee and Tony Kushner, and Blackman gave eight of them an electric performance on Solo Mio's final weekend. The funniest skit was "Clinica," by Danny Hoch, which showed a nervous Dominican homeboy arguing with his friend in an AIDS clinic. He was nervous about how the neighborhood would talk if someone saw him in the waiting room; he was full of race and class prejudice; he thought maple syrup could kill HIV. "It's like the acids or some shit," he said. "I heard it from some dude." Blackman wore a rolled wool cap and a thin goatee, talked with a faintly Latino accent, and brought the right dose of comedy and feeling to every skit. "Ya Vas, Carnal" was a sharply unsentimental portrait by Herbert Siguenza of the Mission artist Rodrigo Reyes, who died of AIDS, and "Silica," by Octavio Solis, brought to life not just an unnamed high-energy queer, but also his friends Paul, Sonja, and Freddie, during a joy ride through San Francisco. The main character wore glasses -- "the double trance of horn-rimmed silica stuck to his face," as his lover put it, a little effusively -- and with the frames on his nose Blackman became a whole cast of seamlessly defined characters. His sense of silence was masterful; he segued between pieces without begging for applause, and I think the audience held back only out of respect for the silence.
-- Michael Scott Moore
Whistle Blowers
Caribou Tribute. By Mark Romyn and Philip Worman. Directed by Lissy Walker. Starring Romyn, Worman, Eric Nelson, and Steve Bellinger. At the Exit Theater, 156 Eddy (at Turk), Oct. 3-25. Call 673-3847.
Caribou Tribute won this year's "Best of the Fringe" award, which is a dubious honor based on a chaotic and uncontrolled system of voting. Not that Caribou hands-down doesn't deserve the award; but it also doesn't necessarily deserve a revival at the Exit any more than a few other Fringe performances. "Most Unusual of the Fringe" might be a better billing, since about half of the hourlong performance is devoted to showcasing two men -- Mark "Toots" Romyn and "Whistlin' Phil" Worman -- who really know how to whistle.
They're known as the Whistleaires, and they seem to have written a farce about an all-male community club like the Elks or the Lions for the sole sake of getting their whistling act onto a stage. The community club is "The Royal Order of Caribou," and six of its members file on at the beginning dressed like purple-robed druids with antlers. When the Grand Exalted Buck calls roll, it's clear that most of the club is absent. They declare their purpose -- "duty to God and country and to obey the laws of the herd" -- and then give an extended tribute to a passed-on Caribou named Ray "Cappy" Morris, a grown-up frat boy who's honored stage left with a large black-and-white portrait. You get the idea after a sobbing eulogy or two that Cappy was kind of a jerk. The satire is sometimes funny, sometimes not; one good line comes from a dense Caribou who declares, "There is no 'I' in 'community.' "
Cappy was the Whistleaires' fictional manager, so the tribute from Toots and Whistlin' consists of a four- or five-song set. They whistle along with ABBA, the Partridge Family, and a few equally cheesy bands, not just matching the tunes but harmonizing with each other and even improvising solos, I think, during one song. The whistling is phenomenal. Toots and Whistlin' can warble and tweet like birds. Whistlin' plays straight man to Toots, who ingratiates his lanky, eccentric self to the audience and gets carried away at one point with a story about a dirty Latin American revolutionary with "disgusting, rippling muscles." He wears a plaid jacket over bright red polyester pants, and smiles by squinting and baring his teeth, like William F. Buckley Jr. Romyn's grasp of his satirical character is so complete it feels out of place in the show. The Whistleaires seem to have a cult following. The night I saw them three drunk women sat in one corner and giggled, even when the show wasn't funny. They whistled long before any whistling was to be done and they talked out loud to the actors. No one onstage seemed to know who they were. My friend thought they were part of the show, but since the cast ignored them for the duration it was clear by the end that they were just drunk.
-- Michael Scott Moore
