Pot times
'MADness' Has Raw, Unrefined Impact
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1097/a06.htmlNewshawk: chip
Pubdate: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 'MADNESS' HAS RAW, UNREFINED IMPACT
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The Charlotte Observer
Contact:
opinion@charlotteobserver.com
Website: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/78
Author: Julie York Coppens
Growing up in Concord, Tommy Foster was one of the good kids. He went to
church. He wore glasses. He did theater. Offered a drink or a
cigarette, Tommy just said no.
But by his mid-20s, this aspiring actor was selling his body, shooting up
crystal meth and contemplating suicide. And then he tested positive for
HIV.
Foster's one-man cabaret show, "The METHod to my MADness," offers only
hints as to how the life of this clean-cut Southern boy so rapidly came to
illustrate two growing, and related, public health crises: the alarming rates of
HIV transmission among young gay men and the scourge of crystal meth in urban,
rural and now suburban communities across the United States. A toxic,
highly potent form of the stimulant methamphetamine, crystal meth is
overwhelmingly addictive and, thanks to its ease of manufacture, readily
available.
The performance at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte is one part musical revue, one
part public service announcement and two parts personal expose -- a potent mix
that mirrors the "recipe" for crystal meth revealed on one of the
cautionary posters that adorn the "METHod" set. ( Sinus
medication, paint thinner and Drano are among the ingredients poured into a
scary-looking martini glass, a "cup of poison" like another Foster
sings about. )
The actor's steps to hell and back reverberate in a series of show tunes, both
classic ( Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" ) and contemporary ( Andrew
Lippa's songs from "The Wild Party," Adam Guettel's "How Glory
Goes" from "Floyd Collins" ). The songs' moods match
Foster's feelings of isolation, disillusionment and loss, and their lyrics
present still more striking parallels.
Foster opens, for instance, with "Heaven on Their Minds" from
"Jesus Christ Superstar," whose ominous lines -- "Listen, Jesus,
to the warning I give/Please remember that I want us to live" -- take on a
new meaning in this context. And he closes with "How Did We Come to
This?" from "The Wild Party," whose bitter observations of people
"Filling up with frenzy/Killing with a kiss" perfectly capture the
collision between crystal meth and HIV in the gay subculture.
With "When the Earth Stopped Turning," from William Finn's
"Elegies," Foster recalls the loss of a beloved grandmother; and with
Guettel's "How Glory Goes," he shows how he once yearned for death
himself.
Foster calls the show "an evening of raw musical theater," and it is -
-- both raw in the emotional sense, as Foster revisits some pretty harrowing
places, and raw in the sense of unfinished. Foster gives us a capsule
history of methamphetamine, which is fascinating as far as it goes; but the
monologue trails off, and viewers are left to fill in the blanks both in this
saga and in Foster's.
The show's staging, too, could be more refined. Chip Decker has designed
an intimate but hard-edged playing space that Foster never entirely owns.
The low-tech video that intermittently fills four screens behind him has its
moments ( we like seeing Foster's sweetly nerdy schoolboy photos ), but it's
more often just a distraction.
With 16 showstoppers sung back-to-back, the program is a vocal marathon -- and
Foster, talented as he is, seems to have trained for a 10K. But even when
his tenor falters, the actor holds us; in fact, if we had the sense that "METHod"
were easy to perform, the hour would lose much of its impact.
REVIEW
The METHod to my MADness
Concord native Tommy Foster relives his addiction to crystal meth in "an
evening of raw musical theater." Mature content. About 1 hour.
WHEN: 9 p.m. today and Thursday, Friday and July 16.
WHERE: Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, 650 E. Stonewall St. ADMISSION:
$20.
DETAILS: ( 704 ) 342-2251 or www.actorstheatrecharlotte.org
