Cross That River

Allan Harris’s new musical, Cross That River, sheds new light on the old story of the Wild West.

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

This isn’t your average pop-culture rendition, in which John Wayne and the Marlboro Man fight off Native Americans in the pursuit of the self-sufficient American way. But it’s also not an in-your-face rebuttal of those days; instead, it’s a gentle (perhaps too gentle) reminder—ranging songs from country to gospel—that there were other American heroes in that day.

In this case, the hero is Blue (Davis ), a Louisiana slave turned Texas cowboy. Encouraged by his surrogate mother, he flees the plantation and its stereotypically grim abuses (scenes that seem ripped right out of American History textbooks). Predictability doesn’t make it any easier to watch , nor do comic preachers, like Dat der Preacher (Tony Perry, who alternates well between high minded religiosity and outright lecher y). Effective performers—like Soara Joye Ross, who plays Blue’s surrogate mother—get us where it hurts, and her weary eyes and pursed lips sum up the pain of slavery far more than mere words on a page.

Like the basic plot, the songs are a bit stretched, too, milking that river-crossing metaphor for all its worth. (Yes, we get it; it’s the line between slavery and freedom.) However, the quick changes in musical styles, the molasses sweet accents, terrific dancing, and Davis’s rich baritone keep the first act lively. Harris also uses the space well: though the musicians take up most of the small stage, Harris’s narration (as the grown-up Blue) makes it seem more expansive.

Fewer tricks are needed once the story concentrates on Blue’s post-escape life. His childhood skill with horses helps him sign on at the Circle T Ranch of Old Sam Eye (an appropriately tough but loving Timothy Warmen), where, in exchange for food and shelter, he becomes an accomplished cowboy. Blue’s observations and songs about free life are fascinating. For instance, he talks about the irony of chasing and fighting Native Americans, when he too, not so long ago, was once considered just as second-class. Blue’s adult self’s interactions with his younger self (conveniently staged with the adult Blue as narrator) also add a touch of humor. When it’s finally time to ask for a salary for all of the tough physical labor, he glares at pushes his younger self (a sweet yet sly Brandon Gill ) towards his employer.

Rounding out the plot is the inevitable love interest. Annie Hutchinson (Wendy Lynette Fox), an orphan whom Blue meets while he’s cowboy-ing, is taking refuge from her job as a barmaid/whore. Hutchinson answered a personal ad that, following her parent’s death, that took her to a husband in Abilene Texas. She seeks freedom in the west, but women sadly, had more opportunities as barmaids and prostitutes than they did as cowgirls. Where Blue was able to escape slavery through his new life in the Wild West, Hutchinson comes all the way from Philadelphia to Texas, only to bondage in marriage.

Fox hints at this conflict, but the play could have been stronger if the irony was more explicitly mentioned . A few songs could be cut, too expository to be enjoyable, and maybe more exploration of the differences in opportunities for Annie and Blue as Blacks in the Wild West. Overall though, energetic cast, fun songs, and a new window into oft-explored period of American history.

Fringe/Pieface

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Anita Bryant has long been seen as a punchline: she’s most known for getting pied in the face by protestors who hated her anti-gay activism. But David Carl Lee wants to earnestly tell her story—Pie Face: The Adventures of Anita Bryant—and of how she affected his own identity as a gay man. His subtle use of drag allows us to mock her politics and take them seriously at the same time, and this makes Bryant’s transformation from a promoter of products (a beauty queen for orange juice) to a promoter of hate.

Lee’s got the dress, the big hair, and colorful makeup, but his gestures are restrained, and his voice is softened: he straddles the line between campy and sincere. He clearly hates her work, and yet he’s making a conscious effort to get inside her head, to understand her. When he portrays Bryant being pied, his lip quivers and his eyes widen in disbelief, as if empathizing with how that feels. But as the pies keep coming, the shows falls squarely into camp, and that’s when it goes downhill. Equal rights and gay marriage are timely issues, but the play doesn’t have enough time (or performers) to fully explore all of the issues it hints at. It seems rushed, the stage constantly turning from a hotel room (meant to represent Bryant’s national tour) to her home in Florida, to the Miss America set, using only a few changes in lighting, and barely any changes in furniture.

Also, the question remains why Lee would want to bring Bryant up in the first place—though the movement she led is very much alive, she’s more of a historical footnote now. In 2009, which Proposition 9 fresh in America’s memory, and slew of recent cases where states pass their own laws allowing gay marriage, it’s just not as satisfying seeing pies thrown in the face of the intolerant, no matter how successful they were in 1977. Despite a great performance from Lee, the play itself can’t quite maintain the balance of satire and biography.


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Pieface (Run Time; Intermission(s)?)

Fringe/Sex and the Holy Land

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Watch out! It’s Jews Gone Wild! In Melanie Zoey Weinstein’s Sex and the Holy Land, Lili (Weinstein) travels to Israel with her two best friends, hoping for adventure, knowledge, a connection with Jewish History, and and—hopefully, —and orgasm. She’s hounded—in her head, at least—by a chorus of Jewish mothers (pitch-perfect Yiddish accents from Susan Slatin, Michelle Slonim, and Goldie Zweibel), much to the dismay of her good friends Orr (Sarah Doe Osborne) and Chaya (Ruby Joy), who worry that she’ll spoil their fun. Instead, despite the insight, in-jokes (like the “Jew-Bu”), and “in all seriousness” moments (Or may be pregnant, Chaya wanted to go to Israel to come to terms with the death of her father), Sex and the Holy Land spoils itself by focusing on the forced drama of three reasonably privileged girls. It’s a bit indulgent, given the background.

The characters go a long way, too, from hiking in the Negev to trying to hook-up with soldiers; from praying for a deceased parent to attempting to live up to the ideals of one’s parents. The atmosphere doesn’t fare as well: a bench and blankets serve as a plane, a beach, the Western Wall, army barracks, and more. In that light, it’s hard to make out the duality of this land as a party town and a minefield, a country with its own privilege, yet a strong current of hardship borne of religious conflict. Sex and the Holy Land manages to capture the inner conflicts of these girls, but not the complexity of the country.


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Sex and The Holy Land (2 hours, one intermission)
Closed.

Fringe/Penumbra

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Writer/performer Anthony Fascious Martinez is a rapper, not a storyteller. That’s why he tries to fill his one-man show, Penumbra—about growing up with a single mother in the Bronx (his father is “working,” that is, in jail)—with audio and video supplements (recordings of family members, his personal drawings).

What he needs to do, however, is slow down: he jumps too quickly between stories of himself and various family members, that it’s hard to pinpoint which events involve him, and which may have taken place decades ago. Martinez’s strength is less in storytelling, and more in music. Singing as well as rapping a few of the sections, including one about first finding out his father went to jail, is one way he attempts to stand out.

His lyrical flow and choice of beats is a start, but does not quite make up for the subject matter, or the lack of continuity in his storytelling. These are immigrant stories told with an appealing mixture of humor and regret, but unfortunately for Martinez, Penumbra joins a crowded field of growing up in the hood/immigration to New York stories Penumbra might have been stronger without both the audio recordings and video clips, and more opportunities for Martinez to showcase his musical skills. That’s what gives Penumbra an edge in the popular field of immigrant stories.

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Penumbra (75 minutes, no intermission)
The Actor's Playhouse (100 Seventh Avenue South)
Tickets available at fringenyc.org or at Fringe Central at 54 Crosby Street ($15)
Performances August 26 at 8pm, and August 29th at 10pm.

Fringe/Deathwatch

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In Jean Genet’s Deathwatch (translated by David Ruskin), a Lord of the Flies in a French prison play, Maurice (Stephanie Smith) and LeFranc (Katherine MacDonald), are forced to share a prison cell with Green Eyes (Carissa Cordes), a notorious killer. They are not so much scared of him, as they are self-conscious that their own crimes pale in comparison. On a bare stage, with only a cot for furniture, the play revolves around their competition to show who is the strongest. The prisoners change allegiances more often than middle school girls competing for school popularity, a metaphor drawn by the choice to have these male characters portrayed by women. The boyish Maurice flashes almost tender expressions of longing towards Green Eyes, adding a subtle undercurrent of homoeroticism. LeFranc demonstrates resoluteness as he refuses to cry even as Green Eyes belittles his “minor” crimes (minor, at least, in comparison to the murder of a defenseless girl). MacDonald’s stiff upper lip and wincing eyes are a model of toughness in the face of taunting: one almost feels sorry for Maurice. This ends up playing to Deathwatch’s strength, as now the prisoners reveal an even greater truth about the world outside. It’s a bleak play, with little in the way of humor to balance the ever present competition. However, both the gender twist and the conviction of the actors makes the bleakness bearable. It’s not pleasant, but it still rings true. Even in the small space of a cell, the urge to compete is ever present.

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Deathwatch (75 minutes; no intermission)
The Cherry Pit (155 Bank Street)
Tickets available at www.fringenyc.org or at Fringe Central, 54 Crosby Street ($15)
Performances August 25-26 at 10pm and 3:15pm, and August 28-29, at 10pm and 12:45pm

MITF/Eve and Lilith

First man's first wife meets her nemesis.


Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Johannes Galli’s Eve and Lilith is a modern retelling of an ancient love triangle between Adam, Eve, and Adam's first wife, Lilith, whom he left due to lack of obedience. The play opens with Lilith (Tricia Patrick) getting ready for a night out. She wears a revealing red dress, sitting in a bordello-like bedroom covered in feather boas. Into this den of glitter and feathers walks Eve (Tatjana Maya), who wears a beige suit, hat, and dark glasses. What follows is a lengthy “you stole my man” catfight: the costumes and script attempt to dress it up as a larger discussion on women’s roles in relationships, but it never gets above being an argument.

Still, the play tries again and again to do more: at one point, Eve and Lilith decide to sleep on it. They dream of meeting each other’s ancient selves, Galli’s attempt to draw a parallel between their biblical selves and their modern conflict. Instead, it feels like two scenes in search of a play: that is, it lacks context. Specifically, it lacks smaller, quieter moments: a confrontation is much less effective and far less exciting when it’s just shouting.

Where Galli builds tension is in the costumes. Eve is convincingly buttoned up and repressed, she even walks so tight and controlled that her arms don’t swing. As for Lilith, she certainly put a lot of energy into looking sexy—tons of hip-swinging and leg-showing, looking as cheap as her apartment. But even this is overdone: there are too many feathers and too much cleavage: it’s more a caricature of sexy than actually sexy.

The arguments over women’s roles in society, and in relationships, are as ancient as Adam and Eve, but unfortunately, Eve and Lilith fails to add any new ideas.

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Eve and Lilith (70 minutes, no intermission)
Part of the Midtown International Theater Festival
Closed

SoloNova/The Surprise

A family vacation in Asia becomes the backdrop for revealing long hidden secrets, in Martin Dockery's solo show.

Photo/Matthew Bressler

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Defying recent cultural trends toward oversharing and openness, Martin Dockery's family hides their feelings. They don’t reveal big changes in their personal or romantic lives: they play "emotional chicken" instead, where the loser is the first to ask what's wrong or reveal a secret. Dockery's solo show, The Surprise, is Dockery’s chance to air these usually closely guarded feelings to an audience. The revelations are appropriately dramatic, but the impact is lessened without the perpsective of other family members to express their reactions to the surprises.

His father, a Vietnam vet, divorced from Dockery’s mother and now living in Vietnam, finally tells him what his life there really involves. The surprise includes a Vietnamese girlfriend and two half-siblings for Martin and his brother. Dockery's face makes the shock palpable, from the exaggerated shifts of his eyebrows, to the turns of his head and mouth, not to mention his lanky frame, which seems incapable of being restrained to a chair. His relentless energy is so engaging, you want to hang on his every word.

However, while Dockery’s physical presence is striking, his voice and pronunciation are often exaggerated— like a slam poet or rapper. The addition of rhythm distracts from what he’s actually saying, and makes it harder to keep up with the story. Also, despite the mocking tone he takes toward his families’ emotional reticence, he is shocked when Elke, his girlfriend, reveals that she’s slept with someone else—not because she has, as they’ve agreed to an open relationship, but because she’s honestly told him about it. Having the stage to himself also prevents Dockery from examining his father’s motivations for starting a new family and hiding that news from his first one. Long simmering secrets certainly create drama, but only hearing Dockery’s side of the story lessens the impact of the play’s revelations.

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The Surprise (70 minutes, no intermission)
Closed.

The Bus Stop

Waiting for Godot goes to China, in Gao Xinjian's The Bus Stop, where the bus that never stops, serves as a metaphor for the civil rights that communism promised but never delivered. However, whether the characters are waiting for the relaxing of communist China's laws, or just a ride, watching these people waiting for a bus is at times as frustrating as doing the waiting yourself.

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In Gao Xinjian’s The Bus Stop, a group of frustrated people waiting for a bus to the city serves as a metaphor for the experience of living in communist China. This bus does not come, but something compels the group to stay. A program notes tells us that the play was banned when it was first performed in China, for using the bus stop loiterers as a metaphor for communism’s false promises. (The bus only stops for some people, though the country promises that it’s for everyone.)

More than twenty years since it premiered in 1983, and without the context of living in China, this allegory loses its sting. It’s just a bunch of people on a cold, sparsely furnished grey stage, waiting for a mythic bus. Without reading the program note, it’s a stretch to try to figure out why these people have been waiting for over a year, as the dialogue revolves more around the minutiae of bus schedules than it does about life in China. Girl (Alice Oh) wonders whether a man in the city will wait for her. Hothead, the bully (Adam Hedri), starts fights with the other potential passengers, trying to cut in line–all because he wants to taste the city’s yogurt (the importance of which is never explained). Glasses, the nerd (Gabe Belyeu), is about to take his college entrance exam, though no amount of education can convince him that the bus is not going to stop for him. Sound effects signal that one might be coming a few times over the course of the play, but never does. Years pass and they're still there, which begs the question: Oppressive government or not, allegory for communism or not, why don’t they just stop waiting?

It’s a question the actors can’t answer, especially given how overly earnest they play their roles.(The exception is Albert Lima, whose straight posture and carefully measured speaking voice fit his role as the Older Wise Man.) In general, however, the cast exaggerates facial expressions and movements to try and convey their fates and feelings when the action and dialogue don’t. Hothead flails around the stage like his limbs are made of elastic, and starts fights with Glasses, who can’t seem to stand up for a minute without compelling another bus-stop denizen to punch him. He falls without any resistance, as if he wants to be hit. (We get it, he’s not too strong). A Brit who works for one of the few companies allowed to do business with the Chinese government, who brags about the privileges (cigarettes, better food, wine) that he receives because of his position, gives the audience some insight into just how deep divisions can be in supposedly divisionless society, but he too begins to talk mostly about bus schedules, and soon becomes repetitive too. While a few of the characters manage to find time to comment on the unfairness of a society that promises equality without delivering it, neither the bus nor a resolution arrives, and the audience is likely to be as frustrated as those unfortunate, waiting fools.


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The Bus Stop (80 minutes, no intermission)
Sanford Meisner Theater (164 Eleventh Avenue)
Tickets available at theatermania.com, or by calling (212) 352-3101 ($15)
Performances March 26-April 19th, Tuesday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 7pm, and matinees on Sat. & Sun. at 3pm.

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: 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.

Zombie

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Evil lurks in unlikely places in Bill Connington's one-man show adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novella.

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In Zombie, Bill Connington’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s novella, Connington plays Quentin P., a man whose large, thick glasses, receding hairline, and monotone voice are almost aggressively bland, making his appearance in sharp contrast to his horrifying hobbies, which include attempting to give drifters frontal lobotomies, which he hopes will turn them into sex slaves (a zombie). Evil, in other words, lurks in the least likely places, amongst even those who have all the advantages in the world, and may appear as boring on the surface as it is violent underneath. We’ve learned as much from Hannah Arendt and Law and Order: SVU: everyone has learned to fear the loner at the back of the class.

Zombie is no action-packed television show, however. The play comes across like a prison interview; Quentin simply describes his crimes, without any kind of order. Quentin P., newly released from jail, sits in his basement apartment playing chess with himself, describing in exact detail, and chronological order, his extensive rapes and murders, with only brief flashes of insight into why. The robotically slow movements and flat affectation of early scenes are scarier and more compelling (and more realistic) than later scenes in which he’s angrily reenacting his crimes. His arm takes a full minute to move a piece on the chess board, as if he’s performing brain surgery rather than moving a pawn. His motives aren’t so complex: there was a particularly attractive boy in sixth grade who ignored him, he uncomfortably showered with his peers in high school, his father found a stash of his gay porn. Is this what turns people into a serial killers? And makes them obsessed with creating zombie sex slaves by giving drifters frontal lobotomies (none of which work)?

Connington plays against what he perceives as the our need for closure: Zombie doesn’t provide insight into why this particular killer committed his crimes, why the criminal justice system would let someone like him go after only two years in jail, and only prosecuted for one of his many crimes (his father knew the judge at Quentin’s trial), and how he could show so little remorse. However, while Connington is initially committed to Quentin’s personality, when he starts describing his crimes, as graphic and disturbing as they are (you may not be able to look at ice picks, vans, or mannequins the same way again) it seems like shock for shock’s sake. Shouting and eye-popping rage are expected for criminals, and the music that accompanies the reenactments resembles that of a low-budget horror movie. The lighting is similarly distracting, sudden bursts of spotlights highlight the most violent moments, instead of allowing the violence to speak for itself. Connington puts a lot of effort into capturing the nature of this man, but unfortunately succeeds at displaying Quentin’s actions, not explaining them.

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Zombie (70 minutes; no intermission)
Theater Row (410 West 32nd Street)
Tickets available at zombietheplay.com, or at the box office

Performances run February 18-March 29 Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 3pm.

Blanche Survives Hurricane Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire

In Mark Sam Rosenthal's one-man show, Blanche DuBois finds herself in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina, navigating the same vast sea of red tape and false promises that average citizens of Louisiana had to endure. Unfortunately, despite the presence of a natural disaster and a well known (and loved) character, it is campier, not insightful.

Photo/Stephen Gelb

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In writer and actor Mark Sam Rosenthal’s one-man show Blanche Survives Hurricane Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, Blanche Dubois has made it out of the hospital she was carted off to at the end of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. She's stayed in New Orleans since then, and is ready to shed some light on the very real and very scary arrival of Hurricane Katrina. However, despite Rosenthal’s obvious affection for Blanche, his use of camp makes it hard for Blanche to keep up her appearances. According to the program notes, Rosenthal played Blanche to cope with the hurricane’s aftermath, just his Blanche ignores everything past 1960 as a survival mechanism. This ends up dissolving into a weak parody of an iconic character, failing to add insight into either the character of Blanche or the horrifying events she and so many others faced during Hurricane Katrina.

The tiny set conveys the wreckage Blanche walks through on the way to the Superdome: jackets and scarves draped listlessly over a Do Not Enter sign that is sadly reminiscent of FEMA’s message post-hurricane. Despite being small, it manages to show Blanche traveling from the Superdome in Louisiana to a megachurch in Phoenix that has “adopted” Katrina survivors. (Blanche is still just as reliant on the kindness of strangers as ever, save that now the stranger is Uncle Sam, and all he’s offering is red tape.) However, the set is more believable and affecting than the actor.

When Rosenthal enters, he’s in shorts, sneakers, and a surgical mask, listening to an iPod as he digs through the wreckage, which doubles as the Superdome, a motel room, and Phoenix, Arizona, as Blanche narrates her story. The visual effect makes it seems as if Rosenthal isn’t committed to his character, and even when he puts on a wig, his voice is a high, slow exaggerated southern accent. His movements are equally unsubtle: all limp wrists and prancing.

At best, Blanche Survives Hurricane Katrina is lighthearted camp: she refers to herself as the “au lait” in a “sea of café,” and runs, flustered and furious, to her social worker after hearing her temporary roommate’s favorite song, “My Humps.” This roommate, Shandria D’Africa, also provides her with her first hit of crack. Watching Blanche exclaim, eyes wide, wig nearly falling off, and arms in the air, “That’s like no cigarette I’ve ever had!” is cringingly hilarious. But these laughs are short-lived, and this comic narration fails to keep the story moving. Rosenthal’s idea is a good one—using Blanche’s devotion to alcohol, make-up, and men as a way to defiantly slap glamor on an extremely unglamorous event. However, his execution isn’t glamorous, it’s just trashy.

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Blanche Survives Hurricane Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire (70 minutes)
Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam Street)
Tickets available at the box office or at Sohoplayhouse.com ($30)
Performances Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays 7pm and 9pm, and Saturdays 3pm and 9pm through March 15.

Zero

Zero is a portrait of aimless twenty-something men struggling with broken dreams, unable to let go of the crushes and grudges they've carried since high school. Despite an energetic lead, the production and the plot fail to move beyond the limited ambitions of the characters.

Photo/Nan Coulter

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

It’s another morning in the life of Leonard (Danny O’Connor, who wrote and performs Zero), a failed actor who has spent the last eight years since high school living from one hangover to the next. O’Connor is cringe-inducingly familiar as this young, wasted man: he jolts awake, grabs his water bottle like a life raft, stumbles from his crumpled bed to the bathroom, and after revisiting last night’s bad decisions, prepares for a reunion with his high school friends. Time has passed, and emotions have changed, but neither Leonard, Alex (a recent Iraq veteran), nor Sam (whose holy trinity is babes, beer, and brawling) have gotten over who they were in high school, nor have they reconciled what they hoped to be with the aimless twenty-somethings they’ve become.

O’Connor’s expressive shoulders allow him to move between characters. Alex keeps his in a state of high-shrug tension, as if always on guard for the enemy, Leonard is terminally slumped, and Sam struts around, chest forward, like a barroom peacock, ready to hit on any woman in his line of vision. But while the characters change, the conversations all revolve around how hot high school’s Mindy McPhee was, and the touching but sadly out of place story about how Alex killed people in Iraq. These transitions are jarring, especially as Alex, after all he’s been through, is still fixated enough on Mindy to be angry at Leonard for sleeping with her years later. Of course old grudges die hard, but better plays have been made about how war changes priorities instead of enforcing old, pathetic ones.

O’Connor gamely keeps up his energy enough as he switches between characters, and that's admirable, but time and again, he runs out of shoulder positions and vocal shifts and seems to be playing one man with multiple personalities, rather than fully developed, separate characters. Alone, and with a limited set, O’Connor (despite his expansive frame and expressive demeanor), can’t quite transition from bar to bedroom to airport. He moves quickly enough between Alex, Sam, and Leonard, but when he adds in monologues from two minor characters, they drag. There’s little that connects Gabe, a formerly overweight and underappreciated man who seems hellbent on compensating for his lonely teen years, or James, an artistic loner jealous of Gabe’s reinvention, to the main plot. In the end, despite well-observed characters, and the wincing humor of lines like “I’d like to MySpace all over her Facebook,” Zero’s plot is as aimless as its characters.

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Zero (2 Hours, 1 intermission)
Roy Arias Theater 2 (619 9th Avenue)
Tickets available at theatermania.com, or by calling 866-811-4111 ($17)

Performances Nov 13-December 22, 2008, Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Saturday at 8:15pm.

Self Portrait with Empty House

Buildings, like people hold many secrets. In Self Portrait with Empty House, actor and playwright Edgar Oliver reveals the secrets of his own building, in this captivating one-man show.

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Edgar Oliver’s one-man play, East Tenth Street: Self Portrait with Empty House, is an unsentimental yet utterly captivating glimpse into a building and the people that give it life. Oliver takes the stage as a tour guide for the tenement building he’s lived in since his early days in New York. Its residents, because of their interests, age, or mental state, are often relegated to the fringes of society, but Oliver puts them front and center, displaying an entire world with nothing more than his words, his hands, voice and memories.

The bare set highlights Oliver, whose black-clad body practically blends in with the stage, leaving only his face and hands illuminated. That’s the point, for his hands and face are the deft instruments that sing of Freddie the often-naked dwarf and Kabbalah enthusiast; Donald the alcoholic postman, and Frances, the landlord’s former wet nurse, now senile, whose now spends her time cleaning her rag collection. The lives, told as anecdotes, are shocking enough to keep the audience’s attention—everyone’s out to kill someone, the superintendent greets residents wearing only a towel, and Freddie spends a suspicious amount of time mixing and guarding a mysterious green liquid that might be made from urine.

The way Oliver’s hands dance to his stories is rhythmic and vivid, like he’s forming his neighbors out of thin air, introducing them to the audience without them being present. His eyes also play a starring role, widening with terror when a neighbor tries to hit him over the head, narrowing (and accompanied by with maniacal laughter) when death is narrowly averted.

Oliver says he loves to observe things inside and outside of his building, taking walks through various parts of the city, reveling in the most desolate areas, looking for the barest hints of life. This might seem voyeuristic, but the play doesn’t treat his neighbors like circus curiosities. Though they don’t meet happy ends, Oliver manages to convey their demises with a sadness mixed with the barest hint of ghoulish glee. It takes a very charismatic performer to stand on a stage and talk about his apartment building, and have it feel as if you’ve actually followed him down the rabbit hole. With Randy Sharp’s taut direction, and Oliver’s eye for detail and sense of genuine concern and wonder, East Tenth Street manages to take you into another world.

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Self Portrait with Empty House (1 hour, no intermission)
Axis Theater (One Sheridan Square)
Tickets: see theatermania.com

Performances (through 11/22): Thurs. - Sat. @ 8pm.

Flip Side

The characters in Flip Side are stuck in two different worlds, and their contrasts are fascinating. But, aside from an online affair, playwright Ellen Maddow never allows them to interact, and it's hard to feel sympathetic for jealous characters when they refuse to experience anything themselves.

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

It’s not a good sign that Anna Kiraly’s set is more developed than any of the characters in Ellen Maddow’s new play, Flip Side. The characters that inhabit the two mythical worlds of Drizzle Plaza and the Waterfall family home are stuck in one dimension, whereas the set—constructed of wooden beams and transparent paper (for projections)—serves as a house, a restaurant, and a town square. If you like experimental plays, Flip Side is an enigmatic exploration of the longing to be somewhere, and what happens when you discover that “somewhere else” has just as many problems as the place you’re trying to escape.

Drizzle Plaza is the land of the terminally haggard, where people like Frank (Will Badgett) and Daisy (Heidi Schreck) spend their time talking about lost loves and lost opportunities in short, clipped sentences. Their idea of a fun night is spying through their neighbor's windows, grasping for a piece of what they think is a comfortable life. Little do they know that this supposedly content neighbors are actually fighting over the amount of time Alan Flynnalyn (John Hellweg) spends chatting online with his school sweetheart instead of spending time with his wife Marilyn (Tina Shepard). Hellweg’s drooping eyes and slouch suggest a harried husband; the way he constantly clutches his laptop and speaks as if he’s in a chatroom (“LOL”), shows a child looking for a new world to escape to. In the midst of spying, Frank and Daisy meet a pair of elderly women whose X-ray glasses allow them to see not only inside their neighbor’s houses, but inside the world of the Waterfall family.

This is Drizzle Plaza’s flip side, and the Waterfallmanic energy is a sharp contrast to the plaza’s listless residents. Uncle Oscar (David Brooks), and mother Sylvia (also Tina Shepard) are happy always being in motion, going from job to home to gym with a constant smile, as this lets them ignore the inner dissent of their teenage daughter, Cheramoya (Sue Jean Kim), who dances and insults her mother, Sylvia, often at the same time. She's like a Tazmanian devil, pigtails whipping around, perpetually out of breath. As for Sylvia happens to be the woman Alan spends all of his free time talking to.

With all of this spying, I expected more intrigue, more excitement, maybe even more violence, but aside from Cheramoya accidentally throwing a tomato at Drizzle Plaza, the two sides never interact (not counting Alan and Sylvia’s online affair). However juvenile, the tomato throwing could have been an opportunity for the two sides to experience firsthand what they had been passively spying for the entire play. It would force them to see the reality behind what they assume is the better place, and maybe even find some appreciation for the one they’re already in. After all, it’s hard to feel sympathetic for jealous characters when they’re refusing to experience anything themselves.

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Flip Side (1 hour 30 minutes)
Connelly Theater (220 East 4th Street)
Tues-Sat at 8pm, through October 19th
Tickets available at www.smarttix.com

The Time of Your Life

The denizens of Nick's Bar in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life escape the Depression and an impending war with a few drinks.

Photo/Mike Abrams Photography

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

It’s 1939, depression-era San Francisco, and the country’s preparing for war. Of course, you’d never know it from the looks of The Time of Your Life, where Nick’s Bar is the center of the universe. Mysteriously wealthy slacker Joe (Mike Mendiola) spends each day at his regular table, ordering glasses of champagne and sending his lackey, the sweet, dim-witted Tom (Matthew DeCapua) to run errands. And then there’s Kitty Duvall (Daniela Mastropietro), a prostitute with dreams of being an actress, who falls in love with Tom. Forget war: the central conflicts of The Time of Your Life are more personal. Will Kitty and Tom be able to marry? Will menacing policeman Blick (Dan Berkey) shut down Nick’s Bar for allowing prostitutes inside? However, these undeveloped plots aren’t pressing, and the play is ultimately as slow as the bar’s liquored patrons.

It takes a very magnetic actor to make Joe stand out amidst the parade of drinkers coming in and out, to make him equally handsome and mysterious. Mendiola is almost up to the job—he has a faraway gaze, a hint of sadness in his eyes, and a charming, bitter laugh. It's heartbreaking to watch Joe look at Tom and Kitty, to give them his blessing for the kind of love that—for reasons he won't say—he can't have, and Mendiola’s grief is palpable in his expressions. And yet, his tendency is to direct his intense stare toward a distant point the audience can't see, rather than to Kitty, whom he claims to care deeply about, or even to Tom or Nick.

As Kitty, Mastropietro is a credible hooker with a heart of gold, ready to out-sass Blick when he tries to arrest her, but also prone to burst into tears whenever she is reminded of her childhood. Berkey is sleazy enough as Blick (practically fondling Kitty even as he threatens to arrest her, getting into fights with random drunks simply because he doesn’t like their clothing), so that when he finally loses a fight, it feels like the good guys have won. Unfortunately, it’s the only moment when the stakes are high enough for the audience to be concerned. Before that, the pace is too slow and the plot too crammed with minor characters for the audience to find a reason to care.

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The Time of Your Life (2 Hours, 20 minutes, one intermission)
The Storm Theater (145 West 46th Street)
October 3-November 1 Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm and Saturdays at 2:00pm. Additional performance Monday, October 6 at 7:30pm.
Tickets are available at http://www.smarttix.com/, 212-868-4444.

Sa Ka La

In Jon Fosse's familial drama, a surprise party is ruined after the guest of honor suffers a crippling stroke . . . but that's not going to stop the family from complaining!

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

Sa Ka La, written by Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, involves a surprise party of the most disturbing kind. Henning and his sister-in-law’s husband, Johannes, are setting up for their mother-in-law’s sixtieth birthday and wondering why the guest of honor is late. The shared sideways glances and grimaces the brothers use in place of language speak volumes about their complicated relationship with “Mom” (Kathryn Kates). It’s awkward, but rings true. Miles away (i.e., the other side of the stage), Nora (Marielle Heller) sits at the edge of a hospital bed, watching her comatose mother, the victim of a sudden stroke.

The contrast between the wisecracking Henning and Johannes and the startled pain in Nora’s eyes is enough to instill the fear of karma in even the snarkiest audience members: it calls for at least a brief moratorium on gossip. Like a little girl again, the ever-devoted daughter Nora begs her mother to hang on just a little longer, at least until her sister and brother Hilde (Birgit Huppuch) and Ola (Noel Joseph Allain) arrive. Nora’s pleading makes us hope that this tragic event will reunite the estranged family, but as Hilde’s high heels stomp into the room, her lips pressed into an angry, thin line, her eyes narrowed in barely concealed rage, those hopes are dashed. In this family, Mom’s stroke only enhances their tensions: how dare she disrupt the party to lay on her deathbed?

Sa Ka La effectively explores uncomfortable truths about family and tragedy, but its power is decreased by the staging. Director Sarah Cameron Sunde handles the sudden shifts between settings by having half the cast freeze, but then has them move into new positions in the middle of another, unrelated, scene. It’s like watching a two-ring emotional circus, and it dilutes the power of both Johannes and Hennings’ bonding even as their siblings unravel in the hospital. Fosse deserves credit for treading difficult familial waters, but Sunde’s staging reduces the power of his efforts.

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Sa Ka La (75 minutes, no intermission)
45 Bleecker Street.
Performances are September 6-27, 2008.
For more information and tickets visit osloelsewhere.org.

Fringe/Other Bodies

Photo/Isaiah Tanenbaum

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In Other Bodies, Terry (Vince Nappo) is an advertising executive who spends his workdays pitching tampon and underwear ads to a female audience, and his nights sleeping with as many women as possible. One morning, after nearly raping one conquest (who just happens to be his boss) he gets a whole new view of his target audience: he wakes up in a woman’s body.

There are about five minutes of sweet revenge (now he’ll see what it’s like) in the look of sheer horror on Terry’s face when he realizes he had breasts. Nappo’s acting is best in these scenes—his eyes widen to anime-character proportions and he writhes and screams, tangling himself in his bed sheets as the alarm clock sounds its punishing wakeup call.

Aside from showing how scared Terry is, playwright August Schulenberg doesn’t delve any deeper into how Terry’s life and personality is changed by his gender. Very quickly, Terry gets a new job, also in advertising and falls in love with yet another boss, this time male. Schipp over-exaggerates this frat-boy slacker, slouching, slurring, and swaggering her way through the role. So how much of one’s personality depends on gender? Schulenberg isn’t interested in debating this juicy question: instead, he changes Terry again, after a sudden car accident renders Terry largely immobile, the direction horribly static, and the gender-switch somewhat moot.

These big changes are a little too much for a two-hander, because it prevents Terry from really learning about himself, let alone women. Plot-wise, the second act seems like a cop-out, and for all the tantalizing promise of the first act, when the gender drops, so does our interest.

Fringe/Pawnshop Accordions

When the buses depart, Port Authority comes alive with its community of the night.

Photo/Ellis Gaskell

Reviewed by Ilana Novick

In Jonathan Wallace’s Pawnshop Accordions, an unlikely group of friends sit in the folding chairs of a sparse, dark alley outside the Port Authority bus terminal. They’ve formed their own city within a city, a miniature exercise in anarchy, and though its inhabitants talk about one day making it big, getting better jobs, and moving up in society, they never leave the confines of the station, which slows down the pacing and deprives the play of a chance to develop a larger central conflict in its plot.

Named after the food that composes his livelihood, Egg Sandwich (Shpend Xani), an Albanian immigrant who may have been a soldier, fires a makeshift grill and makes a living selling sandwiches to people like Godly Man (Brian D. Coates), the community’s resident schizophrenic, and Roche (Tim Cain), an EMT burned out from years of near-rescues and near-misses who is now concerned that his wife, the bright spot in his life, will be deported.

The set is limited to a circle of folding chairs and Egg Sandwich’s cart. With such a spare set, the characters must animate the space. Zaida (Gina Samradge) in particular, a mute (by choice) accordion player, rises to the challenge. Cradling her accordion as if it’s a beloved but unruly baby, ready to kick and scream at any time, but in need of protection, it’s fascinating to wonder how she ended up there. Xani and Cain never get beyond their easy rapport —Roche getting teased for seemingly never taking the calls from his dispatcher, Egg Sandwich for possibly having been a soldier back in Albania—and their dialogue reveals less than Zaida’s stony silence. The direction, which keeps the characters stuck in their chairs or just outside the perimeter of Egg Sandwich’s cart, only contributes to the static plot.

While the characters have their own personal stakes—maybe something will happen to change the course of their lives, maybe Roche’s wife will get deported, maybe we’ll find out why Zaida doesn’t talk—there is no one question, problem, journey, or larger theme that binds the characters together enough to move the play along, aside from the novelty of a bus station community. The work seems geared more publication in a magazine as a nonfiction slice of life, given how it explores how people form their own communities. It lacks a central conflict however, to make it a compelling play.

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The Theater at 56 Bleecker Street. Performances are August 9-16^th. Tickets available at www.fringenyc.org.

MITF/Out of Control

Do motivational speakers enourage their listeners to overcome their addictions, or simply empty their wallets?

Review by Ilana Novick

Like a guest who overstays their welcome, the motivational speaker Peter Quick was supposed to simply to give workshops, but instead stays long enough to disrupt the relationships between the members of Overindulgers Annonymous in Out of Control by Bridget Harris. Sweetie (Kara Ross), a waitress with a guileless smile and braided hair, has an innocence that belies her lover abandoning her as a teenage mom. Her overindulgence is marijuana. Bunny (Marca Leigh), an aging bombshell with a self-professed drinking problem, longs for the sexual attention her husband is no longer interested in providing. Delores (Dorothy Frey) has a shoplifting problem. Brenda (Beverly Prentice) may or may not be a sex addict, but her predilection for eating slices of cake at a time suggests an eating disorder. Is Quick the fire under the backside that these women need to cure their bad habits, or is he a man unfairly judging women’s habits, using his authority as a speaker to mask his sexism?

The group’s meetings, with the women all sitting on black crates in a circle, forms the basis of set and of the action, with scenes alternating between the women's meetings and Quick's lectures. Only Sweetie and Brenda are seen outside of these meetings, at home and at work, which gives their characters more room to develop. The rest seem not to exist outside of the meetings, which means we only get a narrow explanation of what's behind their addictions. Dempsey is a credibly motivating (but slightly sleazy) speaker, all expressive hand gestures, mile-wide smiles, and a hard stare, and he sprouts infomercial affirmations like “tame the beast within.” He unsettlingly decries feminism for giving women too many choices, and implies that their addictions are a result of their freedom…the freedom to binge. Though there may be a grain of truth in that, the play disturbingly never questions his statement. The possibility of a debate is brushed aside in favor of catty gossip among the members. First Sweetie is lauded for her steadfast devotion to her daughter, the next she’s getting high in her laundry room and watching the home shopping network. When Delores steals from Walmart, should we laugh when she claims she’s shopping not stealing, or look down on her for stealing to make up for her feelings of being neglected by her husband?

Out of Control has potential as a satire of the self-help industry and of the ways in which women can undermine each other, even as they claim to be supportive. But it can’t decide whether to laugh at or support the quest to cure addiction, or whether Peter Quick is the tough love these women need or a charismatic con artist making money off of women’s insecurities. It also doesn't provide enough evidence of the character's lives outside of the group to answer the questions it raises.