Congrats to Arianna for HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: The Remount!

Arianna Movassagh was named one of the "Outstanding Female Performers of 2010" by Alexandra Bonifield on TheaterJones.com for her work in Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: The Remount last January.
Mucho thanks to Arianna and the rest of the cast (Becca Shivers, Jeff Swearingen, Jeremy Whiteker, Tyson Rinehart and Johnny Sequenzia) as well as playwright Matt Lyle, lighting designer Jaymes Gregory and director/designer Brad McEntire.
Read about it here.

Blork in a Jar!

Candice at the blog non*sense really liked Blork in the Audacity Theatre Lab production of HELLO HUMAN FEMALE. In fact, she even made her very own adorable Blork dolls. These are awesome!

HHF at the Columns

Yesterday, March 8th was the DFW Column Awards, celebrating local theatre here in Dallas. Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE was up for six 2010 Column Awards and took home two. Jeff Swearingen won Best Actor in Dallas (Non-Equity) for his portrayal of Blork and Arianna Movassagh won Best Actress in Dallas (Non-equity) for playing Tamela.


We also put on the "Somewhere Out There" number at the Awards ceremony. We were delighted, too, that HHF was the only "straight" play represented in the evening's entertainment.

HHF: REMOUNT pics

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: THE REMOUNT - Notes On the Play

 About the Play
 

(From the program insert)

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE is set in motion when an online dating service connects Tamela, a guileless 37 year-old virgin looking for love, with Dr. Gorn, an evil scientist with ambitions of world domination. Things don't go according to Dr. Gorn's dastardly plan when Tamela falls instantly in love with his henchman, Blork, a simple, misshapen creation of the evil scientist's. When Tamela takes Blork home to Mother, Blork is quickly sent away on what ultimately becomes a journey of self-discovery. The play follows Blork on his trek, with Tamela hot on his trail. 

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE is a whimsical and heart-warming tale with the message that being full of love, kindness, and understanding can make up for a lot of our apparent shortcomings. 

The play was originally commissioned in the summer of 2008 when ATL Artistic Director Brad McEntire went to Chicago to take a long-weekend Improv Intensive. Matt and Kim Lyle graciously offered their couch at their cozy apartment and McEntire enjoyed, not just a place to sleep, but good company and cold beverages with the Lyles on their second story wooden patio. Asked if he had anything he might want to write for ATL, Lyle handed McEntire a few sketches he'd written. One really stood out. It was the first scene of Gorn and Tamela e-mailing about their Match.com compatibility. McEntire immediately commissioned a full-length play from Lyle to produce through Audacity.

Lyle worked on the piece for the rest of the summer and autumn of 2008. A full-draft came about bringing into the world Blork, Mother, Homeless Harry, Gramps and Timmy. 

The play was produced in February and March of 2009 and went over well with critics and audiences alike. Since the original world-premiere production the play has shown up on several Top Ten Lists and garnered awards for some of the performers as well as Mr. Lyle. That production also introduced the Metroplex to the groovy little performance space in Exposition Park run by Matt Posey - The Ochre House. 

 Enough people came out of the woodwork after the play ended who hadn't had a chance to see it that Lyle, McEntire and the cast decided they'd take a shot at remounting HELLO HUMAN FEMALE in the future.

And that's what you are looking at tonight… HHF 2.0. The Remount.

Audacity Theatre Lab: A Second Helping, Dishing it up
Critical Rant & Rave: Alexandra Bonifield
Posted: January 21, 2010

Gimme dat LUV! Dallas’ sweetest, funniest on stage romance springs back to life, this time at Teatro Dallas’ space off I-35. Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello, Human Female regales its audience with farce, drag performance, true love, weird science and a hilarious twisted plot as the trials and tribulations of 37 year old virgin Tamela (Arianna Movassagh) and her man of many parts (35 different humans), Blork, played by hyperkinetic, deadpan comic maniac Jeff Swearingen, unfold.

If attending live theatre is like sitting down to a prix-fixed meal of the imagination, then Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female is gourmet grilled potluck, peppered plumb full enough of implausible characters and wacky situations to sate the humor-seeking palate. It’s like watching Joaquin Phoenix on David Letterman, except these folks mean to be funny and are aware they have an audience. Soap opera plot meets Lost in Space meets Young Frankenstein meets Lassie, Come Home and Wizard of Oz, Whew. In retrospect, the chaotic concatenation somehow channels Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its over-riding theme of amor omnia vincit (LUV conquers all). In this case, LUV certainly does. Clean your plate, honey bun, and go back for seconds. 

The secret to this effervescent, no-holds-barred romp? Matt Lyle, the playwright, currently resides in Chicago, where he’s studying comedy writing at The Second City and screenwriting with Chicago Dramatists. Director of the play and artistic director of the company, Brad McEntire, mounted and produced over fifty plays here in Big D then toured successfully to New York and Austin Fringe Festivals, before sallying forth in 2006 on an artistic sojourn to Hong Kong and other exotic, inspirational locales. There’s a brazen confidence herein, born of endless dribbling of ink on paper and much time spent clamoring to earn and keep the attention of maddeningly fickle audiences. These boys got it down to a science from the heart. 

On stage, in the kick-ass dual role of codependent overbearing Mother in jog-suited drag and equally overbearing, smarmy Mad Scientist in gaiters is Jeremy Whiteker, with as much meritorious experience in performing in quirky, absurdist one-act originals as he has in straight ahead musical comedy. S/he is a hoot and a holler, a medium rare sight to behold and savor. Becca Shivers endears herself like a locomotive in overdrive in the gender-bending role of pre-teen boy “Timmy”, returns in Act II as the Mad Scientist’s humanoid sweetheart, a real honey-bee of a waspish creation. The star-crossed lovers, Jeff Swearingen as hump-backed humanoid Blork and Arianna Movassagh as perpetual innocent virgin in search of true love or an unreasonable facsimile, play off each other effortlessly with a fine balance of physical humor, crisp verbal repartee and droll song. Their duet version of “Somewhere Out There” ought to be filmed and posted on YouTube. Worth a reprise at play’s end! Stirring in a classical whiff to the madcap hilarity, Audacity regular Tyson Rinehart plays Homeless Harry (shades of Everyman) and Timmy’s aw-shucks, loveable Gramps. He lends a sober grounding to the enterprise, in a bizarre but comforting way. The narrator, seated stage right, adds the spicing of dry humor and perspective. Alas, the actor was not listed in the program handout, so I can not credit him. *

Audacity Theatre Lab’s remount of Hello Human Female runs through January 23 at the Teatro Dallas space, 1331 Record Crossing Rd. Dallas TX 75235. It’s a challenge to find the space but well worth the effort. The show will keep you smiling for an hour or two after you drive away and chuckling for days. Reservations and tickets: 469-236-2726
 

* NOTE: The Narrator, played by Johnny Sequenzia, was clearly listed - in two places - in the program. This statement is a incorrect on the part of the reviewer.

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE is gay friendly and vice versa...

From Gay List Daily
Dallas 01.19.2010

Hello Muddah, Hello Human Female
Jeremy Whiteker wears his falsies well

There’s nothing quite like an elaborate Broadway production with exotic costumes, intricate sets and a live orchestra.

Yet sometimes, a memorable theatre experience can be found at a hidden venue with modest costumes, a mostly naked set and a CD player on stage providing the soundtrack and necessary effects.

It’s what many affectionately call “fringe.” We like to think of it as “theatre in the raw.”

And there’s nothing more raw than Audacity Theatre Lab’s production of Hello Human Female at Teatro Dallas, one of the tiniest venues you’re likely to ever visit in Dallas.

The story follows an evil scientist (Jeremy Whiteker) looking for love on the Internet. When a 37-year-old virgin (Arianna Movassagh) shows up from his ad, she falls for his Igor-like assistant, Blork (Jeff Swearingen) instead. But it’s not until she takes him home to meet dear-old Ma (Whiteker) that the stage comes alive with an uproarious creative spark.

Whiteker in a wig and velour track suit is comedy gold. He’s a man channeling Barbra Streisand channeling Mike Myer’s Linda Richman with a dash of uptight televangelist Jan Crouch thrown in for good measure. We’d be happy to come back next year for a one-“woman” show, Hello Human Shemale, starring Whiteker. We’re thinking roller-skating musical, and possibly puppets and monkeys.

Movassagh has long been one of our favorite actresses and her wide-eyed blank slate of an expression is the perfect foil to Whiteker’s zesty, over-the-top creation. She can garner laughs with simply a stare.

As for Blork, we think we have a crush on him, too. As portrayed by Swearingen, we sense a sultry hotness beneath that hunched back. But we’re kinky that way.
The play itself is consistently funny, but this is one you go to see simply to feel connected to the actors’ energy in a way that’s completely impossible in an overly produced show on a giant stage. Here, you’re close enough to smell Mother’s White Diamonds.

And that’s just the way we like it.

Human Nurture
Audacity Theatre Lab offers another sip of Matt Lyle's comedy that features his most endearing character yet. Who doesn't heart Blork?
By Perry Stewart - TheatreJones.com
Published Sunday, January 17, 2010
permalink

If the frantic and fickle world of pop culture would somehow evolve correctly, the romantic duo of Hello Human Female would be elevated to icon status and Blorkspeak would become the New Slang.

Audacity Theatre Lab premiered Matt Lyle's witty outrage of a comedy 11 months ago. Now the Dallas troupe is staging a slightly altered version that Lyle calls "The Remount." On the snug stage of Teatro Dallas, Blork and Tamela, the oddest couple in the solar system, launch anew their quest for love, compassion and pronouns. 

Tamela, 37, is a virgin who has "never even been kissed by a boy." As naive as she is desperate, Tamela responds to an online dating service pitch and is mismatched with Dr. Gorn, a B-movie-style mad scientist who hopes to inseminate Tamela with various strains of devil seed as part of his plan for world domination. 

But, wait: In lurches Blork, the lab assistant whom the good doctor has stitched together with parts from more than 30 human bodies. It's love at first leer, and Tamela takes Blork home to meet Mother. 

Director Brad McEntire's cast is uniformly excellent. Playwright Lyle has invested Tamela with a series of ridiculous quirks that become thoroughly endearing when brought to life by Arianna Movassagh. Her dollplay/foreplay is a charming example. Jeff Swearingen is nothing short of amazing as he stumbles through Blork's journey of self-discovery. This has to be one of the most actor-punishing roles in local theater history. 

Jeremy Whiteker excels as Dr. Gorn and Tamela's mother, with the Greater Tuna-esque latter character delivering bravo-worthy hilarity. Tyson Rinehart, one of two new cast members, appears as a homeless former astronaut and a dotty grandfather who mistakes Blork for a canine. That leads to a delightful parody of those rescue scenes from the Lassie TV series. ("Is Timmy in trouble? Take me to him.") 

Timmy, meanwhile, is played with shrill conviction by Becca Shivers, who reappears later as the Yakbeesapien, a sexually supercharged creation by Dr. Gorn. 

Johnny Sequenzia composed music for the earlier production, and this time he joins the cast as the narrator. 

McEntire's "dungeonesque" (Tamela's word) set is as spare as his direction is lively. Costume design (by Joyous Israel Keller) is full of whimsy. In particular: Movassagh's jumper and accessories, and Shivers' Yakbeesapien look. 

The most apparent updating in this remount is a Sarah Palin reference. Even she couldn't shoot down the lovable creations in Lyle's comedy.

Blork: The Interview

Read the article and see the original post on TheatreJones.com

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE returns!

Audacity Theatre Lab is proud to present the return of playwright Matt Lyle's twisted and heart-warming tale of misfits in love. Back by popular demand!
 
An online dating service connects Tamela, a guileless 37 year-old virgin looking for love, with Dr. Gorn, an evil scientist with ambitions of world domination. Things don't go according to Dr. Gorn's dastardly plan when Tamela falls instantly in love with his henchman, Blork, a simple, misshapen, noodle-armed creation. When Tamela takes Blork home to Mother, Blork is quickly sent away on what ultimately becomes a journey of self-discovery. The play follows Blork on his trek, with Tamela hot on his trail as they come across a cavalcade of eccentric individuals. HELLO HUMAN FEMALE is an odd and whimsical tale with the message that being full of love, kindness and understanding can make up for pretty much all of our apparent shortcomings.

Returning for the remount are four of the original cast memebers: Arianna Movassagh as Tamela, Jeff Swearingen as Blork, Jeremy Whiteker as Dr. Gorn and Mother, Becca Shivers as Timmy and Mandy. They will be joined by Audacity regular Tyson Rinehart as Homeless Harry and Gramps.  
Matt Lyle offers a new updated script and Brad McEntire returns to the director's helm.

Playing at the Teatro Dallas Space, 1331 Record Crossing Road, Dallas TX 75235. January 13-23, 2010.

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE makes Top 10

The Dallas Voice recently announced the Top 10 Productions of 2009 in the DFW area. Audacity's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE made the list! In celebration, we are bringing it back. That's right, back by popular demand, Matt Lyle's delightfully skewered tale of misfit love.

Check out the ATL website. Click here.

Congrats to, well, us!

Both the Dallas Observer's Best of Dallas 2009 and the DFW Theatre Critics Forum Awards were released recently.

Observer's BEST OF DALLAS 2009
Best Comic Actor: Jeff Swearingen from HELLO HUMAN FEMALE
Best Comic Actress: Beccas Shivers from HELLO HUMAN FEMALE
Best Place to See a Weird Play: The Ochre House, brought to the attention of the masses by ATL's HELLO HUMAN FEMALE

FW Theatre Critics Forum Awards
Best new Play/Musical: HELLO HUMAN FEMALE by Matt Lyle

So, this is nice.

Blork enters...

HHF: Somewhere out there...

HHF photos

HHF reviews keep rolling in

Stage Frankenshtick
By Arnold Wayne Jones
Staff Writer - DallasVoice.com
Feb 26, 2009

Monsters! Virgins! Men in dresses! ‘Hello Human Female’ goes camping

When you open the door to Ochre House — the Fair Park-adjacent performance space (it hardly qualifies as a theater even in the most generous of moods) where Audacity Theatre Lab is presenting its new show, “Hello Human Female” — you step directly into the action: 50 seats scattered in front of a unraked “stage” barely six feet deep. The set: Two cruddy folding chairs and a few painted panels hiding the actors and some props. If you use the bathroom during the show, the curtain speech warns, be sure to turn off the light before you exit to avoid disrupting the performance.

This is guerrilla theater in its most charmingly downscale incarnation.It’s also a great example of how, in live theater, you really don’t need a huge fly-space or perfectly tailored costumes and state-of-the-art sound if you have heart and a point of view that connects with the audience.

About that last part: I’m not sure I have the slightest idea what the playwright, Matt Lyle, had in mind in writing “Hello Human Female.” Point-of-view? Maybe in a psych ward. Lyle’s last play, “The Boxer,” was a sentimental paean to silent films. This one sort of takes on the sci-fi genre, but does so with more camp. A coda at the end of “deleted scenes” seems to pay homage to the DVD era, but I’m not quite sure why.

Actually I am sure: Because Lyle wants to make you laugh, whether with references to a 1970s-era Riunite ad, a gag about how many shoes an octopus would need to steal or a hoard or marauding cats. All is fair game.

A pastiche of bits from “Young Frankenstein,” “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and “The Rocky Horror Show,” “Hello Human Female” is self-mocking and intentionally clunky in parts, unintentionally in others. All I know is, I laughed out loud. A lot.

Jeff Swearingen, Dallas’ preeminent comic genius at the moment, plays Blork, the Igor to Dr. Gorn’s Frankenstein. The creepy, Dr. Evil-like Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker) starts online dating in order to find a woman to spawn his intended army of yak-bee-human hybrids. He lures Tamela (Arianna Movassagh), a 37-year-old virgin who has spent her life under the oppressive thumb of her mother (Whiteker again), to his lair but she falls for Blork instead.

Mother disapproves (“He’s a patchwork of corpses!” she chides Tamela; “If his hands worked, they’d be all over you!”), so she sends Blork on a quest until he can prove his worth. During his travels, Blork meets a small boy (Becca Shivers) and a dotty old man (Scott Milligan) who mistake him for a dog.

In some ways, that’s the least weird of the many weirdnesses in this play … and I mean that in the best possible way. There’s nothing subtle about any of this, unless you count some of the slippery allusions to such diverse pop culture topics as “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Lassie,” Abbott & Costello, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Top Gun,” “Mommie Dearest” and “South Park.” Indeed, “South Park’s” balls-to-the-wall absurdity seems to have been the inspiration for this commedia dell’arte picaresque.

The cast is fearless with giddy brilliance. As the mother, Whiteker looks and sounds like Garth Brooks in drag: Southern trailer-trash with a cheap wig and inappropriate sexual energy. Shivers channels an enraged, spoiled tween given to tantrum with eerie intensity (and later creates wonderfully goofy “dialogue” while costumed as a yakbeesapien). Movassagh, North Texas’ reigning comedic soprano, get to sing “Somewhere Out There” while playing air guitar.

It’s Swearingen, though, who commands the audience’s focus. His lower lip perpetually askew, his shoulders held in a Chaplinesque slump, Swearingen is the most physical of actors, clowning and capering around recklessly while maintaining a sweet smirk on his empty face.

Swearingen’s endearing audaciousness is reminiscent of what made Adam Sandler stand out before he got so smug about his success. And it’s 10 feet away from you in a storefront on Exposition. Can’t beat that.

Ochre House, 825 Exposition Ave. Through March 7. Wednesdays–Saturdays at 8:15 p.m. $10–$15. 469-236-2726.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 27, 2009.© Copyright by DallasVoice.com

Franken- Sense & Sensibility
"Hello Human Female" creates a monster you can't help but love
by Mark Lowry
2-24-2009 – TheatreJones.com

There aren't many mortals who would dare integrate the cheese-tastic 1986 song Somewhere Out There into a wacky, off-color narrative about a pop culture-savvy creature who falls for a 37-year-old virgin. Well, maybe if Roger Corman or the Troma pranksters remade An American Tail with a psychotic but still lovable Fievel.

But when talking about local theater, playwright Matt Lyle is the man for this job. Even when he is reveling in off-color humor and minor gore, he always reveals a sweet, romantic side.Lyle and his wife Kim moved to Chicago last year, but the writer who gave us 2007's brilliant The Boxer continues to have his work produced here. Audacity Theatre Lab opened the world premiere of his Hello Human Female at the Ochre House in Exposition Park last week. The space is teensy (and not a thrill for anyone wanting easy parking), but it's also perfect for low-budget performance. In this case, that's not a dig at Audacity's lack of funds. It's in praise of the ingenious ways Lyle and director Brad McEntire use simplistic costumes, set pieces and props—plush toy cats that might have been pulled from a Goodwill drop box!—to achieve stylishly cheap B-movie effects.

Hello Human Female sets up its story with evil Dr. Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker) looking for love on Match.com. In truth, he's searching for a virgin in which to sow the seeds for a race of yak-bee-human thingies. He e-matches with the lovely Tamela (Arianna Movassagh, whose Kewpie doll adorableness makes her perfect for the role). When she arrives at his pad for the face-to-face, she becomes smitten with Blork (Jeff Swearingen), an Igor type who was stitched together from the remains of 35 people. Despite the fact that his brain is in the jar (but not the empty jar that just happens to be in his head), Blork is an oddly charming creature who speaks in Facebook status update-style, but iffier on agreement and tense."Blork have mish-mashed legs," he might say. Or, in one of the show's more hilarious of many funny pop culture references, "kiss Blork's grits" at the mention of the TV show Alice.Sounds like an amusing enough premise for a comedy sketch. But Lyle stretches it into a longer thread, and amazingly sustains it. Tamela brings Blork home, where her tyrannical mother (Whiteker, in a funny drag performance) attempts to break up the two by sending Blork on a solo adventure. On that journey, he befriends the philosophical Homeless Harry (Scott Milligan), an ignored boy named Timmy (Becca Shivers, in another comic triumph for her and the show) and Timmy's grandfather (Milligan). Each of these satellite characters has stories, but instead of baldly laying these out, Lyle drops their psychological profiles into casual dialogue or the occasional short monologue, such as when Gramps speaks of his deceased wife while whittling a log into a toothpick.

Just like the patchwork quilt of humanity called Blork (and the 35 people who died, ahem, so that he could be born at an evil scientist convention), Hello Human Female gives us a touching look at the human condition. It's somehow poignant, even in the midst of the kind of wonderfully silly comedy that can be traced from the Marx Brothers to Mel Brooks to the Zucker Brothers and beyond. Some of the gags are recycled from famous comedy routines, but are still fresh and hysterical. No need to spoil them here.

At the heart of all this is Swearingen, who has time and again proven his prowess with physical comedy and spot-on line delivery. He goes above and beyond here, morphing a monster into a character that even the most cynical human would want to take home and feed a bowl of soup.
There's bound to be a Blork for everyone. Somewhere out there.

When Scary Met Sally
By Elaine Liner - Dallas Observer
Published on February 25, 2009
Goodbye, winter blues. Hello Human Female, springing from the wildly funny imagination of Texas playwright Matt Lyle, arrives as a late Valentine to the willy-nilly silliness of love among lovable misfits. In its world premiere by Audacity Theatre Lab at the tiny Ochre House Theatre next to Fair Park, Lyle's two-act comedy comes to life in a bright production that's lowest-of-low-budgeted but lavishly acted and ingeniously staged.

Take every B-movie about a mad scientist and whisk it into the plot of The Princess Bride. Add a hunchback, a giant man in drag, three stuffed cats, a trunk full of Cabbage Patch dolls, Timmy and Lassie on the edge of a crumbling cliff, some riffs on Nietzsche and the best of KISS—and you're only spooning up the first layer of hundreds of pop culture references Lyle stirs into his script. His gags are inspired by old Jack Benny and Sid Caesar routines, by Woody Allen, Mel Brooks (especially Young Frankenstein), Mike Myers (in Dr. Evil mode), The Wizard of Oz, Mommie Dearest, Of Mice and Men, the board game Clue and the feel-good rhythms of Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers.

Here's a 31-year-old writer with a jillion episodes of Beverly Hillbillies and Davey &; Goliath stored on his cranial hard drive. Little bits of retro TV shows, commercials and cartoons are sprinkled through this play like fairy-tale breadcrumbs leading into a magical forest of theatrical fiction. How Lyle uses all this without dialogue and characters becoming hokey, cliché or bogged down in cuteness is what sets him apart from so many young playwrights who throw failed sitcom and movie scripts on small stages and try to call them plays.

Lyle may someday write for television—he left Dallas for Chicago last year to join Second City's comedy writing program—but he's already shown great promise with his theater work. Before Hello Human Female, there was the one-act The Boxer, which debuted at the Festival of Independent Theatres in 2007 and transferred to a successful run at Dallas Children's Theater. That one paid homage to the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which also are Lyle obsessions. Acted without words, The Boxer told the sweet story of an unemployed Depression-era girl (played by Matt Lyle's wife, Kim) who masquerades as a man to train a scrawny pugilist for his big bout. That they fall in love is cause for much confusion, until, of course, the girl reveals her true identity. Lyle's plays usually lead to the happiest ending possible.

The Boxer was written with the title role in mind for Dallas actor Jeff Swearingen, one of those uniquely gifted physical comedians with a Chaplinesque flair for gesture and timing. Lyle also wrote a starring part for him in Hello Human Female: Blork, the Igor-like assistant to the play's unhinged scientist, Dr. Gorn (Jeremy Whiteker). Blork is a "patchwork human" made of bits of 35 corpses. In the sloppy construction job, Gorn forgot to give Blork a brain, but burdened him with three scrota and only one testicle.

From his entrance in the first act, Swearingen takes Blork to places even Lyle probably didn't imagine. The character would be funny enough as written, but this actor delivers a value-added version. Since Blork is made of recycled parts, Swearingen moves his limbs like a marionette with uneven strings. He keeps his eyes unfocused. His top lip seems to have come from a different stiff than his lower one. He scuttles unevenly across the little stage, like a crab with a hernia. But even when he's doing the goofiest business, like playing "Camptown Races" on the spoons, we know that inside Blork's little hunched-over bod throbs a giant-sized heart that's yearning to beat in unison with the leading lady's. Blork's a romantic, a Prince Charming in disguise.

The lady love is Tamela, a dorky 37-year-old virgin played by the compact, curly-haired Arianna Movassagh, who's terrific at ditzifying. Lured to Dr. Gorn's lab by an online dating service, Tamela falls in love at first sight with Blork. They are separated in true fairy fable fashion—Becca Shivers and Scott Milligan play several supporting characters who get in the couple's way—but they wind up back in each other's arms. Or in Blork's case, several other people's arms whipstitched onto his droopy shoulders.

Hello Human Female brings the funny in big and small ways. There's a close laugh-to-line ratio, but that stretches the performance past the two-hour mark. A little trimming and tightening wouldn't hurt. And though the "deleted scenes" after the curtain call are amusing, they're really unnecessary. Comedy should always leave 'em wanting more. We definitely want more plays by Matt Lyle. If they keep starring Jeff Swearingen, even better.

Hello Human Female

Best trailer ever... HELLO HUMAN FEMALE

HELLO HUMAN FEMALE: new trailer by Jeff Hernandez