Review: Your Presence is Cordially Requested at "The Coronation of Queen Jaguar"

The Coronation of Queen Jaguar

Created and performed by Christine Stoddard and Aaron Gold

Featuring Adriana Ascencio, Jada Bennett, Nate Brown, Jeffrey Copeland, Andie Fuentes, Dylan Manning, Rob Penty, and Michal Serpe

A Quail Bell production presented by Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Executive Artistic Director, at Theater for the New City

155 First Ave., Manhattan, NYC

September 6-14, 2024

Christine Stoddard and Aaron Gold
Have you ever wanted to witness a coronation, but without standing in line for hours in the rain like our friends across the Atlantic have recently done? If so, then you're in luck: Christine Stoddard and Aaron Gold's deftly comedic The Coronation of Queen Jaguar positions audience members as titled guests at the eponymous investiture, using the ceremony as an umbrella under which to stage a series of improvisation-and-interaction-heavy segments that meld character-based satire and audience participation into a gratifyingly distinctive experience. The Coronation of Queen Jaguar is currently part of the 2024 Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City (TNC). The new works festival, in its twelfth iteration this year, runs from August 25th to September 15th and is dedicated to discovering new authors and challenging, non-traditional works and ideas. Helmed by the TNC's Literary Manager, Michael Scott-Price, this year's Dream Up Festival offers 16 plays, 12 of which are world premieres, one of which is an American premiere, and all of which can be seen for a ticket price of $15-$20 each.
Christine Stoddard and Aaron Gold
The show comprises four main sections, with an additional meta frame introduced by an early post-scene disagreement between Stoddard and Gold as Stoddard and Gold. In the first segment, the Ambassador (Gold) introduces us to Queen Jaguar (Stoddard), behind a simple but effective mask and evincing a regal yet sinuous bearing. Queen Jaguar leaves her throne in order to provide a kind of cold reading to audience members, with the catch that her cryptic, sung pronouncements require interpretation by the Ambassador. The middle two segments satirize wealthy artist types. In the first, the straightforwardly named Art Bitch (Stoddard), commissioned to provide a painting for the coronation, relies on Tik Tok fame and, more importantly, money from her uncle Cornelius (Gold)—a hilarious figure whose vanishingly small understanding of art exists in inverse proportion to his Mr. Burns-like physical fragility—to sustain her career. In the second, Stoddard becomes the utterly committed and detail-obsessed publicist for egomaniacal author Alan Hoonch (Gold), who is scheduled to do a reading and talkback (when Hoonch reads his excerpt, Gold's moving his fingers along the lines on the page without ever looking at the book is a great comic detail). After Hoonch's appearance comes the appearance of the Appraisal Lord (Gold), who does not, despite his name, work for the Antiques Roadshow, but instead, with the aid of his assistant, Helpy the Helping Jester (Stoddard), offers audience members their choice of Playful Insult or Serious Compliment. When the Appraisal Lord has finished his work, it's time for the coronation itself.
Christine Stoddard and Aaron Gold
Stoddard and Gold do a masterful job of inhabiting a set of idiosyncratic characters while adjusting to and integrating what they elicit from the audience. It is interesting–and adds an additional dimension to the experience–the ways in which, through those audience interactions, some moments of sincerity sneak in amidst the witty ad-libs and consistently uproarious fun. With such an enjoyably unique admixture, it only makes sense to bend the knee at The Coronation of Queen Jaguar.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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