nytheatre.com review
by Martin Denton · July 11, 2003

Like Lewis and Clark, Studs Terkel, Simon & Garfunkel, and so many others before him, Frank Cwiklik has gone off to look for America. What he's found, in all its loud, vulgar glory, is on stage for your perusal at The Red Room, in a brilliantly lurid and spectacular epic-melodrama-pastiche called Sugarbaby. Whether you, too, are in search of America or merely a good old time, or, like me, the most exciting damn theatre of the summer, you need to see it.

Through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl from the heartland named Bailey Sugarman, Cwiklik surveys the American landscape in two hilarious, hyperkinetic hours. He visits trailer trash territory and the great mecca of kitsch, Las Vegas; he dips into the culture wars via a pair of battling journalists, righteous TV newsman Rod Butane and obnoxious crusading documentary filmmaker Mitch Common. Theatrically, he honors the great American tradition of acquisitiveness by grabbing with both hands from all imaginable sources, putting It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on stage, by way of Chicago, in a tiny East Village space with just a few chairs and tables for scenery. Thus Sugarbaby celebrates two more American traditions, ingenuity and in-your-face wiseacre-ness. All of which, along with a socko surprise finale, somehow makes Sugarbaby the most heartfelt and genuinely patriotic work of art that I've seen in I don't know how long.

I need to start at the beginning. Bailey Sugarman, nicknamed Sugarbaby, is a fairly average American teenager. Her mother is the chronically low-brow Ginger Sugarman-Malveaux; her stepfather is a large, loud, beer-swilling armchair reactionary named Aron Malveaux; the two fight like Jerry Springer guests whenever they get near each other (and Cwiklik has the happy idea of putting them on a TV talkfest to duke it out in public in Act Two). Sugarbaby works at McMullan's, a purveyor of unhealthy fast food (don't miss the on-stage menu card, more truth than parody, I'm afraid). Her only friend in this oh-so-limited world is a car mechanic named Jesus with an Elvis fixation; when she impulsively quits her job, she asks Jesus to take her on a roadtrip. She wants to get away; she wants to see America.

So off they go; only nothing's ever simple, right? A pair of stoner-losers whose apparent only vocation is peeping through the Sugarmans' windows report that Sugarbaby has been kidnapped by a Moose-lem terrorist (their pronunciation). That story finds its way to the USNC television network, where anchorman Rod Butane, embroiled in a campaign to make "God Bless America" the national anthem, quickly realizes that Sugarbaby is going to be our country's next national media heroine. Self-appointed champion of the people Mitch Common, meanwhile, who had briefly interviewed Sugarbaby at the McMullan's right before she quit, is determined to make her the heroine of his next film documentary. And then there's Sheriff Rufus J. Miranda, whose objectives are to bring Sugarbaby back home and to bring whatever lawless ruffians took her away to justice.

Breathlessly, at breakneck speed, the chase is on; or more accurately, the chases are on: from Sugarbaby's home to Las Vegas, where the Sheriff, Butane, and Common pursue Jesus and Sugarbaby through a casino full of Elvis impersonators, down the glittering Vegas Strip, and eventually at the airport, where our hero and heroine pay off a pilot to fly them to safety. The action continues relentlessly to Florida, where Sugarbaby and Jesus have another close call with the Sheriff (while a telecast of the aforementioned talk show, plugging Ginger and her new book and Aron and his new foundation and website, goes on blissfully in the background). Sugarbaby has a near-death experience that sends her temporarily to the gates of Heaven, where the real Jesus, Elvis, and Uncle Sam are playing cards and talking philosophy; and then back to Earth in time for a protest march on Washington, D.C.

How it all plays out—almost never significantly more foolish or far-fetched than what actually happens in real life these days—I leave for you to discover. How Cwiklik accomplishes all of these shenanigans in an off-off-Broadway theatre is what makes Sugarbaby not merely dead-on timely satire but the inspired masterwork of a budding theatrical genius. The climax of the show's first act, which catapults from the Tropicana Hotel to the highway to the airport, is a miracle of staging, with Cwiklik quick-cutting among pop culture reference points to depict, with remarkable economy and precision, a pair of thugs trying to tip over a car, a gunman taking over an air traffic control tower, and a hit-and-run car accident, all in about three minutes in a space no larger than 10x10. Wow.

Of course one of the secrets of Cwiklik's success is his choice of collaborators. His company, Danse Macabre Theatrics, has built up quite a stock company over the years, and many of its members are shown here to outstanding effect. Michele Schlossberg (also responsible for the very impressive fight scenes) is smashingly funny as Ginger and in a variety of cameos, notably a slot machine junkie whose resolve to joylessly and endlessly spin the reels is tested—but not defeated—by the casino chase sequence I mentioned earlier). Dan Maccarone takes on numerous guises, most memorably Uncle Sam and Rod Butane's overworked assistant, Jerry. Adam Swiderski is a compelling and then commanding Jesus, delivering a formidable Elvis impression for the show's finale. And Josh Mertz does his finest work ever, in my opinion, as the self-interested, hypocritical newsman Rod Butane.

Company newcomers Amanda Allan, Erik Bowie, Angela Madaline and Jonathan Wise (all of whom take many roles apiece) and Brandon Kalbaugh (as Sheriff Miranda) are terrific; ditto Alexander R. Warner, who is masterful as Aron and, briefly, as Jesus H. Christ. Kevin Myers gets Mitch Common's smugness exactly right, as well as his quivering cowardice. And, at the center of it all, newcomer Marguerite French is smart, sassy, passionate, and perfectly ordinary in the title role, the young girl who runs away from home and inadvertently creates America's newest media circus.

Bravo to them all, and especially to ringmaster Frank Cwiklik—director, designer, writer, and co-producer—who orchestrates enough drama, comedy, and mayhem here to fill every one of Barnum & Bailey's rings, and then some. Sugarbaby deserves to be Cwiklik's breakthrough; attention, savvy producers: the next big thing may well be happening at The Red Room. Theatre just doesn't get more vital, or entertaining, or exuberantly in-your-face than Sugarbaby.

And I haven't even mentioned the voice-over pizza commercial, or the automaton airport security worker, or the Polish gangster-immigrant who spouts poetry about his new homeland, or... you get the idea. Hurry up. Get tickets.