debtFollowing the trajectory of mavericks over the past few years has been as much fun as that of Natalie Palamides. From her 2017 Best Newcomer Oscar win to the brilliant cross-dressing comedy “Nate” (available on Netflix), the outrageously bold L.A. clown’s new show is now a must-see event. And say what you will about “Weir,” a chronicle of the 34-year-old transvestite comedy, but when it comes to thrills of anticipation, it doesn’t disappoint.
Encompassing the Travers Main Stage for over 75 minutes, the comedy is a tumultuous clown romantic comedy with Palamides playing both sides of a three-year relationship. In a twist, Mark is one half of Palamides’ body and Christina is the other. She faces stage left. Dressed in a plaid shirt, Mark begs Christina to stay for a New Year’s Eve party in the woods. She turns to stage right. Christina, all dressed up, tearfully accuses Mark of cheating on her with another girl. Christina leaves, an accident occurs, and then the show flashes back to tell the tale of their romance so far.
At this point, the stage resembles a bomb site. Palamides has a Catholic, chaotic approach to theatrical performance, capable of building and tossing out any cheesy device for an effect. The discipline of her double-acting soon breaks down, and she invites the absurd into destruction. It’s fun, but this mayhem might have been better contained within a tighter storytelling framework. Weir lacks Nate’s conciseness, and the romance veers dizzyingly between encounters, love, abuse, betrayal, and, with Palamides’s characteristic explicitness, throes of sexual ecstasy.
No one knows why their relationship is so sordid, or what Palamides is trying to convey by inviting us into Mark and Christina’s company. The show’s string of cartoonish false endings suggests that emotional significance isn’t high on its priorities. But the cartoon is genuinely fun and endlessly inventive. Palamides dances with himself, kisses himself, and animating his dying breath with talcum powder, intimately involving the audience and affectionately satirizing the clichés of the 1990s and romantic comedies. It’s heavy, but also rather haunting.
