The first giggles and Alive Theatre’s Cherry Poppin’ Play Festival come about half a minute into Anthony Cretara and Jasper Oliver’s The Adventure Play-which initially sounds like a porno set to “The Great Gig In The Sky,” all heavy breathing and excessive noise-courtesy of our clownish prepubescent plague-ridden serf from the 14th century, Zozza masterfully played by Jessica Culaciati. And really, an entire column could be written just about her flawless body movement, as well as that of her supporting cast.

What comes next make no sense on paper-or even as it unfolds before you-but there is tremendous joy to be found among the fart jokes, Beatles lyrics, Beyoncé references, men in rabbit suits, fairies with stringed instruments and other assorted absurdity (including a man popping out from inside another man’s head in a fantastic fit of blood splatter; “You have a big head!” is the punchline, naturally).

– Ellen Griley

If theatre is business (it is – otherwise we wouldn’t be writing grants for our survival), the Alive Theatre has a good business model. Recruit locally, stage guerilla shows in very cool, rotating venues, showcase new, often world premiere work. It keeps costs down and enthusiasm up.

It smacks of all things Long Beach (face it, the place does emit a singular sensation), while keeping the edge sharp and the target moving.

They offer a nice closed loop: the performances are events, really, showcasing local bands for pre-shows, which in turns works the crowds, which in turn fuels the actors, whose energy gets channeled back to us.

The young company’s already an institution; it’s received critical acclaim and fan adulation. It’s bold, no, scratch that, it’s audacious. It’s in our face but it’s also in our mind. It’s audacity challenges us and our hold on our lives, what we hold to be real, to be unreal, and, in the case of “The Adventure Play (or Keep Them Babies Outta My Soup),” written by Anthony Cretara and Jasper Oliver, directed by Jeremy Aluma, and staged in the Royal Theatre aboard the Queen Mary, kicking off the their second annual Cherry Poppin’ Play Festival 2009, what we hold to be surreal.

Narrated by Calli Dunaway, the story recounts the trails and tribulations of Zozza (Jessica Culaciati; she plays a dude), a 14th century peasant, who seeks meaning and confirmation of his existence. The story represents a voyage (it’s both an Odyssey as well as a Wizard of Oz dream) through a mind-space littered with references to symbols, signifiers, Kierkegaard, and the relativity of time. It’s absurd, all right, and very funny. In one scene a Man (Eddie Chamberlain) appears from the future but then dies, at which moment another full sized, living man pops out of his head (nice touch, that) and the story continues apace.

But it also confirms that the quest of self-knowledge is a universal one from which we must sort through what we learn from books, from tall dark strangers, from friends, from experience and then come to some unique and individual (read: not conditioned by advertising and media) identity.

– James Scarborough