Paul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman
The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and Drew Friedman), sets many targets in its sights in this sharply drawn, occasionally tedious 90-minute piece. The story, such as it is, follows the rise and fall of broadcast news rivals James and K. Mann, father and daughter (the "K" stands for Katherine, but she never refers to herself by that name). Their head-to-head battle for ratings supremacy is also a stand-in for the passion play of a bitter father/daughter battle, with K. accusing James of his loving her "like cancer loves cells." During K.'s premiere broadcast, terrorists attack the United States, cutting off all electrical power. Within the space of ten minutes the US declares war, then wins the war it has declared, and, as power is restored, K. beats James to the usual insipid end-of-broadcast eulogy/paean delivered by news anchors about victory and heroism. The overnight ratings declare K. the winner, and James resigns (to be replaced by his assistant Andrew). But Andrew, not content with his victory, brings down K. by exposing photographs of K. in a leather S&M mask, photographs taken by K.'s assistant Spence (who is also K.'s sex partner), who is angling for his own rise up the corporate food chain. The play ends with Andrew and Spence co-anchoring the nightly newscast that James had run for 30 years, while a chastened K. and James (now doing the weather report) work for a local TV station somewhere in America's heartland. Each has his or her own "victory at the dirt palace," the lowest kind of victory, as K. points out. Shaplin's satiric dissection of celebrity culture, the vapidity of the news media ("all news is jokes," James says at one point), and the operatics of family dysfunction are all intelligent and presented with humor and flair (thanks to Whit MacLaughlin's tight direction). Yet Shaplin also has a love of his own voice and pours out metaphor-laden word-streams that often strain too hard for significance and delay or divert the story's unfolding. And the choice to have the actors direct almost all their lines to the audience and the air (only rarely do the characters interact with each other) in essence makes the play a monologue and denies it the opportunity to build the kind of gravitational attraction among characters that creates dramatic tension. "Victory at the Dirt Palace" is cerebrally interesting and sometimes culturally provoking, but it never goes beyond its own cleverness and bombast, in the end not looking or sounding very different from the celebratized superficial culture which it aims to demolish by parody.
Michael Bettencourt
