FRIGID: LIVE!... At the Cockpit: Will at Work with the Lord Chamberlain's Men

Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

Shakespeare may have been accused of many questionable things—a dirty mind, a penchant for gender-benders, easy Rom Com jokes—but he was always above board and a genius in terms of form. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for the latest homage to the Bard, LIVE!… at the Cockpit: Will at Work with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a hammy hodgepodge of scenes from “backstage” at the Globe. The conceit eschews a plot in favor of a collection of moving Polaroids from the era, but without a through-line to connect the scenes, the piece feels incomplete. It also smacks of a less well-composed, less clever Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) in its attempt to be casually irreverent and off-the-cuff about the Bard's prolific life.

Longtime Shakespeare nerds will have no problem picking up the inside jokes referring to the language or characters from particular plays in the canon, but audience members who aren’t familiar with Will’s work might be lost. There are also, however, inside jokes for anyone who has worked in a low-budget theater, especially in college and especially Shakespeare ala college: dork-tacular play-jousting, the constant post-performance drinking (and the creative work that always ensues at the bar), and the restlessness and improvisation spawned by the boredom of filling time backstage during a long show. The effect, along with the uncomfortably long, silent scene changes, is discomfiting and awkward at best.

The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feeling of LIVE!… extends to the playbill. There wasn’t one: just a live, cabaret-style introduction of each actor at the top of the show. In fact, it’s not even clear who wrote the show, or if it is, fittingly, an improv-based collaboration of the ensemble. Kudos to Dave Warth, who plays the Bard himself and brings the brooding, impatient and cynical air of a playwright frustrated with his resources to each scene. If only he and his “men” could connect the dots of their sketchy ideas and turn this collection of scenes into a more cohesive whole, they may have something on their hands that would make the real Bard chuckle in his grave.

FRIGID: The Giant’s Causeways

Reviewed by Amanda Halkiotis

A potato gun, a bottle of Jameson, and an opening-scene rendition of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” would in lesser hands be a formula for disaster on any stage, inviting ethnocentric overkill and exaggerated nostalgia for one’s homeland. Lucky for Nora Sun McLaughlin (and her audience), her new play The Giant’s Causeways is excellently balanced.

Bringing together politics, humor, history and brotherhood, McLaughlin wraps these themes tightly around each other to create an earnest and straightforward framework for her characters. This works exceptionally well considering the turbulent backdrop of Belfast circa 1969-1971. Good for a laugh, working class, and Catholic, Conall (Thomas Hodgskin) is determined “no matter what happens” not to let current events divide him and his best friend who just happens to be Protestant, the practical, buttoned-up Seamus (James Fauvell). As blood gets shed and family members murdered, this innocent pact becomes harder to uphold than either expected. Things get heated and personal once the British Army starts entering the city limits, and suddenly all bets are off. These two boys, who once only ever argued over their conflicting taste in famous actresses, now begin attacking each other on every standpoint.

Conall’s suggestion to go away on holiday together sparks suspicion of anarchist political affiliations from Seamus, who chides Conall that “the IRA stands for I Ran Away.” Meanwhile Seamus, with a widowed mother and several younger sisters on his hands, feels forced to join the Loyalist army, the United Volunteer Force, against Conall’s concerned pleading. Inspired by an anecdote she once heard her father tell about a return trip home he took during “the Troubles”, McLaughlin pulls her weight as a true Irish storyteller whose narrative style of vivid imagery and upbeat humor makes this play feel more like fluid prose at times. A jarring history lesson as much as an account of the tender loss of innocence, Giant’s Causeways is the marking of great theater: it invites you into a world you may not have experienced otherwise, and changes the way you once may have viewed it.

FRIGID: Recess

Photo/Lauren Faylor

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Una Aya Osato's Recess is based on the writer/performer's experiences attending and teaching in New York City Public Schools. Sharita Jackson is only six years old, but has to cope with a dying mother and a social and academic landscape that is more like Dangerous Minds than elementary school. Adding insult to injury, Sharita’s teacher, Ms. White, is convinced she’s the devil of second grade, due to her constant fighting and undermining. Sharita’s attempts to understand what’s happening to her mother and to fit in at school are heartbreaking and fascinating. She alternates between wanting to be mature and helpful (asking her mother if she wants her medicine) and like any seven-year-old, asking if she can never go to school again.

The other characters aren’t quite as developed--for instance, Ms. White is alternately disdainful and afraid of her students, which certainly rings true, but it’s never explained why her students provoke both feelings, or why, if she’s so scared and disapproving, she got into teaching in the first place. The subplot involving videotaped messages from the children to President Obama also seems a little extraneous, especially for an hour-long show dealing with such heavy matters. Still, thanks to Osato’s insights and her realistic portrayal of a six-year-old, Recess manages to carry that emotional weight.

FRIGID: Are We Freaks?

Reviewed by Aaron Riccio

Bricken Sparacino titular question, Are We Freaks?, is both rhetorical and serious. This isn't bad, it's just unbalanced: the campy presentation of this Tales from the Crypt-like quartet of twisty sideshow stories overtakes everything else. At best, there's a gender-bending adventure in which Annabelle (Sparacino) unwittingly uses a two-wish death mask to turn her best friend Lizz (Uma Incrocci) into the man of her dreams ("I wish I could meet a guy just like you!")--it's clever and energetic. Not as good is the Carrie-like tale of Abby (Joy Gabriel), a socially awkward "freak" who heads off to college, knowing that she can hide her inside-out parts away. Superficial Pam and Devon (Hannah Wolfe and Annalyse McCoy) have been bribed (by Abby's mother) into letting her into a sorority (of all places), and face consequences when the truth comes out. The other two segments--involving the unconjoined Wonder-ful Twins (Sparacino and Jennie Inchausti) and Caitlin the Cat and Leslie the Lobster Girl (Melanie Wehrmacher and Kara M. Tyler)--are just silly. So what?

FRIGID: Now and at the Hour

Reviewed by Aaron Riccio

"Do you ever have the feeling that everything that is happening has happened before and will happen again?" To this question, posed by the affable Christian Cagigal, the answer can only be yes, particularly when it comes to "mental" magic tricks. And no, it's not deja vu: if you see a lot of theater, you've probably seen some of these tricks before.

And yet, thanks to his casual showmanship--the deliberate placement of objects, the metronomic pacing of his transitions and tricks, his roll-with-the-punches attitude--we're able to humor him. And, in doing so, we're able to humor ourselves, especially if one stops trying to tear down the wizard's curtain, appreciating the illusions as an extension of our imagination. What's especially nice about Cagigal's performance is that the flair isn't squandered on razzle-dazzle effects; instead, it builds a strong narrative (involving Cagigal's memories of his sick, war-veteran father), one which nicely resolves itself in a metatrick that ties together all the talk of time travel and strange childhoods.

FRIGID:The Black Jew Dialogues

Reviewed by Cindy Pierre

So a black man and a Jewish man walk into a cheap hotel room together, and after three days come out with The Black Jew Dialogues, a compare-and-contrast comedy that tries to figure out why black people and Jewish people have so much conflict. Written and performed by Ron Jones and Larry Jay Tish, this variety show uses video, interviews, puppetry, fat suits and characters to go through shared histories, customs and food, but there's little substance apart from the laughs.

This is partially due to the fact that the dialogue plays out more like an improvised conversation (both Jones and Tish have an improv background) than a structured script. The theme is simply too heavy to leave it up to chance. And the show itself, rife with stereotypes and popular history, sometimes talks at the audience rather than engage it even though there are some interactive segments. The laughs may be frequent, but they're bought with off-color jokes. For instance, in one interview, a white teenager jokes about kissing and humping a black girl, and then addresses his mom in a showy, rebellious act.

There are some good bits: one is a fun interaction between Jones and God (also played by Jones), in which they harmonize a progressive spiritual that includes lyrics like “bash the white man in the head.” Another is ONE (One N****r Everywhere), in which the government implants a black man in the unlikeliest of places, with President Obama as ONE's most crowning achievement.

It's not just silliness: there's a poignant statement about how Jewish people and black people have earned the right to laugh. It's even qualified by a series of gruesome stills and videos of oppression, but this context, which should frame the whole show, is just an ending. And that's too little, too late.

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FRIGID: The Black Jew Dialogues (60 minutes, no intermission)
Kraine Theater (85 E. 4th St. btwn 2nd and Bowery)
http://www.smarttix.com/ ($16)
Through March 7th.

FRIGID: The Dysfunctional Guide to Home Perfection, Marital Bliss and Passionate Hot Romance

Reviewed by Cindy Pierre

Ever wish that all the truths and mysteries unlocked about marriage and love over the centuries were contained in one source? Have therapy and friendly counsel failed to give you the answers that you seek? Then you'll be jumping for joy when you get yourself a copy of The Dysfunctional Guide to Home Perfection, Marital Bliss and Passionate Hot Romance, the companion to 2001's How to Have the Ultimate Orgasm Each and Every Time. Or not. Written over wine by Jennifer Gill, Rachel Grundy, Amy Overman, Amy Beth Sherman, and Theresa Unfried, this collaborative effort may display an impressive knowledge of strong historical females and may exhibit strong performances under Gill's competent direction, but the show itself stays too much in the head.

Gill incorporates her literary degree to develop the concept for the play, but the show never comes together as a cohesive drama. Rather, the narrative is broken up into all 9 chapters of the book (with chapter 9, The Sensuous Woman being the most lively and entertaining) that flirt briefly with characters such as Queen Elizabeth I, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Anne Bradstreet to give the audience different perspectives on dealing with relationships. It's just too bad that the presentation is little more than a literary course. The use of simple but effective props and costumes such as a bonnet and a knitted hat that convincingly dubs as a helmet allow the actors to shift in and out of the different characters, but the show is too monotonous. The stage is also littered with over 30 wine bottles that winds up being overkill: the wine is already mentioned in the playbill, and the labor involved in putting the show together is evident onstage.

What most holds The Dysfunctional Guide back is the lack of an authoritative voice. There are simply too many dissenting opinions, different writing styles and no unified theme. From remaining chaste and unmarried to keeping it sizzling in the bedroom, the show doesn't have any clear advice to dish out, which is what a guide should do. Perhaps the writers thought they could avoid the follow-through by calling it dysfunctional, but you still might walk out of the theater feeling short-changed.

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FRIGID: The Dysfunctional Guide to Home Perfection, Marital Bliss and Passionate Hot Romance (50 minutes, no intermission)
The Red Room (85 E. 4th St. btwn 2nd Ave and Broadway)

Tickets: http://www.smarttix.com/ ($15)
Through March 7th

FRIGID: The Expatriates

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

The Expatriates, written by Randy Anderson, Jenny Bennett, and Harrison Williams (with contributions from the rest of the Beggars Group), is an abridged version of the life and career of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and feels more like a history lesson than a full-fledged play. Those familiar with the ups and downs of Fitzgerald’s (Harrison Williams) writing career and his marriage to the feisty, but mentally unstable Zelda (Morgan Lindsey Tachco) will not find any new insights into the author (or his Lost Generation peers).

Told in reverse chronological order, the play moves from Los Angeles, where he is writing for MGM, all the way to his time with Zelda Fitzgerald and his attempts to contain her mental illness. There are also plenty of guest appearances by other Lost Generation luminaries, like Ernest Hemingway (Preston Copley) and Gertrude Stein (Jenny Bennett). Zelda flails around the stage, Sara and Gerald Murphy (Sarah Anderson and Randy Anderson) keep her from failing down, and Hemingway drinks and teases Fitzgerald for not being masculine enough. But aside from Bennett's dryly hilarious turn as Stein (as elliptical and abstract in person as in prose), the play comes across as a live-action commercial for a biopic of Fitzgerald’s life. There's plenty of action, but it's harmless fun, easily forgotten.

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The Expatriates (55 minutes, no intermission)
Location: The Kraine Theater
Closed.

FRIGID: Freedom 85!

Reviewed by Amanda Halkiotis

Debra Hale’s Freedom 85! may be a condensed two-woman show, but multiple characters and slice-of-life storylines transcend this short, modest piece into an evening of thought-provoking and quality theater. Andrea Risk joins Ms. Hale onstage and throughout the night they switch in and out of different gender identities, ages, and ethnicities with ease and swiftness. Playing a sassy Jamaican diner owner trying to push the daily special of curried goat one minute and a shy recovering alcoholic new in town and looking for a fresh start the next, Hale gives an excellent performance with equal parts overflowing attitude and restrained vulnerability. As for Risk, first introduced as an aging British mother who refuses to move into an assisted living facility, she then almost instantaneously morphs into the concerned son who wants what’s best for his mother but can’t articulate the sentiment due to his gruff exterior.

Hale's chameleon-like script matches the versatility of the actresses, spanning geographical and historical distances. Director Kim Blackwell uses well-timed changes in music and lighting to make these shifts, but also maintains the theme of minimalism by limiting her use of any loud sound effects or bright flashes. This approach keeps the actors at the center of it all, letting them do all the work. It also keeps the pace moving and covers a lot of ground as it relates to plot while never allowing the audience to get too comfortable with one scene or character.

Short, intermittent flashbacks, for example, keep too much backstory from clogging up the dialogue while also helping bring to light present-day motives or behavior. An elderly woman’s fear of living alone suddenly makes sense when you see her years earlier in WWII England, shielding herself from air raid bombs and sirens while also trying to keep her little sister safe. Even the less dramatic aspects of the script have an overwhelming sense of sincerity. Common enough incidents like the torture of starting a new waitressing job during a breakfast rush or drinking too much at a wedding where you don’t know anybody ring distinct and isolated onstage, evoking visceral gut reactions of sympathy and concern from the audience.

With razor wit sticking out from all sides bound by a central theme of friendship, this play portrays the true landscape of a small-town diner and the stories behind its colorful regulars from all walks of life.

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Freedom 85! (60 minutes; no intermission)
Location: Under St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place)
Tickets [www.smarttix.com]: $10
Performances: Saturday 3/7 5:30pm and Sunday 3/8 1pm

FRIGID: End of the Trail

Reviewed by Cindy Pierre

If you really want to get to know someone using a fun, party-friendly tool, forget playing Truth or Dare. End of the Trail, by Kenny Neal Shults and Sean Owens, is a much more entertaining, exploratory and incredibly witty game. Written almost eight years ago by this pair of real-life friends, it's a shame that this gift wasn't bestowed upon the theatrical world sooner. When several predictions for Armageddon coincide on the same day and threaten to “reset” the earth, rather than cower under the table, Sean and Kenny spend their last few hours playing a dangerous game of truth, pain, and nostalgia. Going through emotional and mental landmines that would make a therapist shriek, the pair map out their lives from how they met to how they'd like to leave the earth with all the failed relationships in between.

Using great wordplay and chemistry, the two actors effortlessly engage the audience from beginning to end by encouraging them to think and laugh uproariously. From Cameron Eng's visually arresting “board” that resembles Monopoly on downers to Alexia Staniotes' foreboding “talky clock” (countdown to the apocalypse), the show is conceptually inventive and exciting. End of the Trail may denote the last moments of these characters' lives, but let's hope it's the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration between the writers behind them.

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Frigid Festival: End of the Trail (60 min., no intermission)
The Red Room (85 East 4th Street, between 2nd Ave and Bowery)
Tickets: http://www.smarttix.com/ $15
Through March 6.

FRIGID: Jet of Blood or the Ball of Glass

Reviewed by Amanda Halkiotis

This short piece has the heart of emerging, push-the-envelope theater but none of the follow-through. The actors are just as surprised by their antics as the audience, and with no one in control, the whole evening is a surreal example of the blind leading the blind. The minimal, monosyllabic script — which revolves around a young man whose quest for love is blocked by his lover’s parents — should provide clarity, but is so abstracted that there is little substance. The emotional original music by Nat Osborn and Dustin Carlson seems the most thought out, but the onstage synthesizer overshadows the actors. The costumes don’t help to set the scene: they mix the pastoral and futuristic, from floral cotton aprons to a cardboard bra shaped like gallon milk jugs (not to mention sequined mini-dresses and black sunglasses). Because the central theme is so abstract, these contradictions are just further examples of over-the-top and disorganized chaos. Similarly, the gratuitous profanity and overt sexuality burdens the performance instead of moving it along. The best part of the evening is Simon Gunner’s campy yet stylistic choreography, weaving in and out of the piece at just the right moments to break the tension and dismiss any confusion through laughter. Other than that, however, this is avant-garde theater at its worst.

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Jet of Blood or the Ball of Glass (50 minutes; no intermission)
Under St. Marks (94 Saint Mark's Place)
Tickets (www.smarttix.com): $11
Performances: Saturday 3/7 11:30pm and Sunday 3/8 7:00pm

FRIGID: Jihad for Vent and Dummy

Ron Coulter and Sid Star in Jihad for Vent and Dummy

Reviewed by Cindy Pierre

You may have seen plays before that attempt to debunk religious beliefs by emphasizing thought over faith, but you've probably never seen it done the way Ronald Coulter's Jihad for Vent and Dummy does it. In it, Coulter tells the audience that we're the “dummy” to his “ventriloquist” by conforming to religion and creating and subscribing to a faith instead of thinking for ourselves. Sid Star, the wooden dummy, acts as a devil's advocate and uses humor to question Coulter's points.

Before you remark to yourself that Coulter's mouth is moving, Star makes fun of him for that and other things involving the title and content of the show. Although Coulter takes caution not to single out a specific religion by name, the very title of the show and some of the dialogue suggest that he had Islam and Christianity in mind when he was developing the concept. It's just too bad that Coulter never makes a cohesive argument.

Between funny quips and a creative bit where he exchanges his voice for Star's, Coulter performs a play within a play with Star in order to establish the parallels between theater and religion. However, Jihad for Vent and Dummy is much more about making declarative statements about how arbitrary religion is rather than supporting it with solid examples. And never does Coulter allow for the possibility of faith/belief and intellect co-existing in a symbiotic relationship. Of course, to do that would negate the premise for his show. At one point, Coulter even inserts a Q & A session with the audience to get their feedback, showing insecurity in his theme.

Jihad for Vent and Dummy may get a few laughs, but this cutesy presentation and the lack of follow through won't get the spiritual and philosophical wheels turning in the direction that Coulter would like. You may be amused every once in a while, but you'll leave the theater the same way that you came in.
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FRIGID FESTIVAL: Jihad for Vent and Dummy (50 min.)
Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery)
Tickets: $15. http://www.smarttix.com/
Through March 8.