Lessons Learned
Jena Friedman is a gifted stand up comic with a fondness for deadpan delivery and shocking punchlines. It is less than surprising, then, that her brainchild, Refugee Girls Revue, is a musical parody with a fondness for deadpan delivery and shocking punchlines.
Populated by a cast of stand ups, the play wanders through tragedy after natural disaster, leaving no funny fodder unmolested. The Refugee Girls club (think a gathering of American Girl doll lovers on steroids) invites Katrina and Rita, internally displaced kids from New Orleans, to join as they act out the stories of their favorite dolls and learn valuable life lessons in the process.
Except this time, its all in drag. By casting overgrown, facial-hair covered comics as his refugee girls, director Scott Illingworth manages to get away with musical murder. Ben Lerman is woefully under-talented at plucking tunes on the electric piano, and should have played the whole thing on his ukulele ... but thats okay, hes a dude in pigtails! Jeff Ashworth cant sing a mellodious note that sounds the least bit like a little girl, but cut him some slack, hes prancing around in a dress!
Beyond the overabundance of lines sung out in a chorus, pot bellies protruding from cropped shirts and mini skirts, and an unmemorable tantrum thrown by Chance Blakeley, the show is a superficial treatment of serious subject matter. Refugee Girls is backyard, budget camp without enough heart to make laughing at exploitation feel anything less than greasy. The singular hysterical moment, when Alexis Guererros delights in beating a bongo drum using the head of his refugee girl as a mallet, stole the show, perhaps because it was the only honest bit of fun in the whole production.
With comics so thick on the ground, it is surprising that improvisation was so wanting. The actors stuck to the script to the point of idiocy, refusing to capitalize on the Freudian slip of Osama to Obama and make what could have been the best joke of the night. Each comic tried the same gag of throwing away his precious doll in a fit of dramatics, just to see which guy could pull it off the best.
For overgrown man-boys playing little girls, Refugee Girls Revue is adequate at best. The price of a ticket will buy you a few laughs in a theater where the legroom is more generous than most. But your money would probably be better spent at the actors original homes, laughing for an hour straight as they strut the stage with their own comical anecdotes. Friedman should learn a lesson from the Refugee Girls: a stand up comic fails when delivering a colleague's material.
Refugee Girls Revue
Through October 30, Theatre 80, 80 St. Marks Place (betw. 1st and 2nd Aves.), 212-388-0388; $10.