George Orwell's 1984

Within the tight parameters, Godlight Theatre Company’s Joe Tantalo has managed to create a show that is technically tight, atmospherically compelling, and requisitely creepy. Only the extreme brevity of Alan Lyddiard’s adapted script leaves Orwell’s masterpiece short-changed.

Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

It is an ambitious enough endeavor to adapt a novel as enormous in scope and depth as the classic 1984 for the stage. Even more ambitious, though, is to do so in under an hour and a half, in the round, on a stage the size of a postage stamp. Within these parameters, Godlight Theatre Company’s Joe Tantalo has managed to create a show that is technically tight, atmospherically compelling, and requisitely creepy. Only the extreme brevity of Alan Lyddiard’s adapted script leaves Orwell’s masterpiece short-changed.

Visually and aurally, George Orwell’s 1984 is appropriately minimalist and slick. In Tantalo’s version of this “futuristic” totalitarian state, Big Brother manifests in effectively ominous and thrilling ways, with four shrill, severe women appearing as telescreens at the corners of the playing space. Their ever-present watchfulness and occasional, emotionless barked orders are heightened by goosebump-raising sound effects (sharp, chilling work by Andrew Recinos) and nightmarish light from above, changing from green to red to blue to white as the scenes evolve (an innovative and skin-crawling presentation by Maruti Evans and Dominic Barone).

Gregory Konow plays Winston Smith as a self-aware, very human man, adrift in a sea of those brainwashed by the omnipotent Big Brother. Winston moves through this world like a ghost in its former home, clinging to nostalgia in the hopes that one foot in his human memory will keep him a safe island despite the cold, power-hungry tidal wave that threatens to engulf him (and whatever remains of humanity). Konow does well with these emotions, duly terrified and motivated by his terror. His mouth often hangs open in disbelief, all the more appropriate given the head-spinning pace of the scenes, spliced together with a crude knitting needle.

Despite all this adrenaline, it takes more than climaxes to flesh out a sympathetic drama. Ironically, the human condition is exactly what this production lacks. There aren’t enough moments of quiet, simmering fear and vulnerable doubt; their parallels in the original text have been dropped in favor of constant action. The encounters between Winston and the lustful woman he falls for, Julia, should be the beating heart of the play; instead, they feel shallow and incredible, for neither they nor we have had time to develop trust and pity.

Toward the end of the work, the tempo slows long enough for the audience to hear and savor a few complete conversations, including a rattling scene in which Winston and his pitiful coworker Parsons (a terrifically obsequious Nick Paglino), having been captured for traitorous thoughts, sit opposite each other in a cold white cell awaiting their fates. In a following scene, the bone-chilling Dustin Olson, who plays the calm, merciless O’Brien, delivers blow after psychological blow to the steadfast but shattering Winston, and for a few moments, something of real substance emerges on stage.

Because of what has (or, in this case, has not) preceded it, this denouement isn’t earned; hence it’s a pulled punch-in-the-gut ending. We have to really love Winston before we can mourn his soul, and we don’t have the tools or time to do so here.

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George Orwell's 1984 (80 minutes; no intermission)
59E59 Theaters, Theater C (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison)
TICKETS: $25
Thru April 26 (Tues 7:30, Wed-Fri 8:30, Sat 2:30 & 8:30, Sun 3:30)

Indiscretions (Les Parents Terribles)

The very dark, very French, bourgeois and bohemian family playground of Jean Cocteau’s brilliant Les Parents Terribles, here entitled Indiscretions, is a savory death-match of revenge, calculation, incestuous leanings, blind innocence, ennui, high drama and a healthy serving of laughs, cringes and schadenfreude for the hungry audience.


Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

Freud would have a field day. The very dark, very French, bourgeois and bohemian family playground of Jean Cocteau’s brilliant Les Parents Terribles, entitled Indiscretions in this sharp Jeremy Sams translation (presented by the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble), is a savory death-match of revenge, calculation, incestuous leanings, blind innocence, ennui, high drama and a healthy serving of laughs, cringes and schadenfreude for the hungry audience.

Cocteau’s conniving characters comprise a family whose neuroses feed upon each other to alarming but fascinating effect. Matriarch Yvonne is a self-dramatizing, languid whiner of a woman; her husband, George, colludes with her indulgence by being a distant wuss. He’s been displaced in his wife’s affections by his own son, the 22-year-old, sweetly naive man-child Michael, who falls into the arms of his mother and gives her the attention fix she needs (without realizing how disturbingly Oedipal it is). Orbiting the realm of middle-class slovenliness is Yvonne’s sister--the cunning, tidy, and jilted Leo--who has by default been relegated to housekeeper as the only functioning adult among them.

The household status quo (one can hardly call it “order”) is upset when Michael returns home from a night out and announces he’s fallen in love with a girl, Madeleine. Yvonne is thrown into a tantrum over this so-called betrayal. George discovers with dismay that he’s been having an affair with the same Madeleine his son is after. Leo, in the interest of preventing a family implosion, helps strategize a way to break up the young lovebirds.

As you might imagine from the soap-opera circumstances, calamity ensues. But thanks to Cocteau’s complex and nuanced script and the actors’ tenacious and serious commitment to their characters, Indiscretions cuts remarkably deep, going much further than the easy laughs of bad melodrama. The Sams translation brings not only clarity and naturalness but also a quintessentially European sensibility to the text without ever going overboard. Director Jonathan Silverstein tackles the dense, shocking comedy with fluidity and admirable balance. Even the heightened affectation of Mid-Atlantic speech and grandiose gestures favored by Yvonne and Leo are made to work: ridiculousness suits these characters, and in the mouths of such able performers, the pitiful disaster of these shabby-chic lives shoots straight to the gut.

Melissa Miller imbues the charming Madeleine with gentle fervor and steadfast love, and William Connell makes for a puppy-like Michael. Gayton Scott’s Yvonne is a flailing force of nature, convincingly undone by her obsession with her only son. Scott’s portrayal brings moments of sympathy to a generally preposterous character. As George, Dan Cordle is ever-defeated and defenseless in the face of his steamroller wife. And Jan Leslie Harding’s Leo has a quietly boiling ferocity that allows her iciness to melt at crucial moments with slow, measured flourishes.

The central theme is that les parents are, naturally, children themselves. The characters and performances are sweeping and larger than life--suited to the play, yet still truthful. In Cocteau’s alternate universe, cruel and complicated equate to delicious and ultimately satisfying.

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.

The Judgment of Paris

Not only does Company XIV’s definition-defying dance/theater production of The Judgment of Paris transport, surprise and entertain with the ease of a blown kiss, but it is peopled by brilliant, engaging artists and is cut from a cloth that is entirely new, risky, and delicious.


Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

Every once in a while, theater presents the fulfilling gift it’s capable of: it transports, surprises and entertains. Not only does Company XIV’s definition-defying dance/theater production of The Judgment of Paris achieve all of these things with the ease of a blown kiss, but it is peopled by brilliant, engaging artists and is cut from a cloth that is entirely new, risky, and delicious.

Housed in the appropriate environs of the shabby-chic Duo Theatre (here resmbling a Moulin Rouge-esque French brothel), Paris cross-breeds the mythical tale of Helen of Troy with gorgeous baroque ballet choreography. The result is a decadent, indulgent delight with the sinful aesthetic of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.

Prince Paris of Troy (the dapper Seth Numrich, who serves as the Don Juan/carnival barker/MC of the show) must choose to give the Golden Apple of his favor to one of three feminine powers that be. Forgoing Hera and Athena, he chooses Aphrodite, the brassy, voluptuous Gioia Marchese (who is also the Madame of the house). And so the events of the story are triggered. Paris falls in love with Helen (the poised and mysterious Elyssa Doyle), only to discover she’s already married. The besotted prince steals her away from her husband in the night, sparking the Trojan War.

The ensemble of six, all nuanced performers and marvelous dancers, rarely leave the stage. Instead, they morph fluidly from scene to scene, changing costumes and characters as the production requires, creating the theatrical equivalent of a magic show. With the wide-ranging symphony of musical selections, the piece is like a live collage. Leigh Allen uses the lighting to conjure up gorgeous, stark tableaux for the performers and Olivera Gajic’s costumes create the effect of an exquisite, expensive period piece. The whole production is a masterful example of creative collaboration, helmed by choreographer/director Austin McCormick, a ballet scholar who also conceived the piece.

It would have been enough to watch the ladies basking in the can-can music, cooing and jeering at each other and the audience. But the mythical storyline deepens and grounds the production, making it more than just a feathery, if highly enjoyable, romp at an old-fashioned Parisian gentlemen’s club. Between the graceful, quietly intense ballet interpretation of the Trojan War and the myriad suggestive jokes and bosoms on display, high art and lowbrow raunch are corseted together in the span of one bewitching hour.

Catalpa

Donal O’Kelly’s panache in this whirlwind one-man show is both indulgent and infectious. But while he clearly relishes the playful challenge of morphing from captain to first mate to wife to sea bird—all of which he accomplishes, amazingly, with no more than a microphone, a trunk, and a gauzy white drape—there is only so much one man can do in portraying an epic historical tale.

Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel

Donal O’Kelly must have spun some outstanding yarns as a child, because his storytelling skills are on full display in his solo show Catalpa. However, while he turns the true tale of a late 19th-century seafaring rescue mission into a rollicking aural experience, the story itself is lost in the larger-than-life details. O’Kelly’s panache is both indulgent and infectious, so while he clearly relishes the playful challenge of morphing from captain to first mate to wife to sea bird—all of which he accomplishes, amazingly, with no more than a microphone, a trunk, and a gauzy white drape—it compromises the fascinating history he seeks to portray.

The Catalpa was a whaling ship that, in 1875, set sail from New Bedford, Massachusetts to Western Australia with the undercover plan to rescue a handful of Irish prisoners who had fought British rule in the Fenian Rebellion. Lacking the resources to create a fully cast blockbuster, O’Kelly has instead couched it as an idea for a movie, narrated by a man alone in his bedroom. Because the action isn’t physical, Catalpa comes across as a plot-driven spoken-word performance, complete with live original music by Trevor Knight (which nicely complements O’Kelly’s shifting moods). With the aid of an arresting lighting design by Ronan Fingleton, O’Kelly launches himself and the audience into Captain George Anthony’s voyage around the world. He is at his best when he touches upon the connection between the sea and the women in Captain Anthony’s life (this theme deserves to be a piece unto itself). The language explodes with rich symbolism and onomatopoeia; with your eyes closed you can almost smell the salty waves and feel the wind rippling in the sails.

The magic only works some of the time, though. Often, O’Kelly is like a kid at play in his private world, so absorbed in his imaginary circumstances that he seems to forget he is performing for other people. In these moments, his characters are less than sympathetic, and the vitality of the tale is dulled by what becomes a meta-retelling. 

The many voices of Catalpa whir by so fast that O’Kelly, for all his mesmerizing flourishes of sound and movement, is often swept away from the real drama: an epic adventure of man against nature and man against himself as he fights for justice and for his passion. Donal O’Kelly’s ambition finds moments of great triumph, providing gleeful entertainment and a marvelous display of poetics in voice and body, but Catalpa would be a story well served on a different sort of stage: that of the big screen.

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Catalpa (2 hours; 10 minute intermission)
Donaghy Theatre at the Irish Arts Center (553 West 51st Street)
Tickets: $60; $55 for member
Limited Engagement: November 12 - 30. Tues-Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 3pm

Eureka!

While this shimmering presentation is wildly engaging, if often dumbfounding, the treatment of a subject as huge the cosmos is bound to seem oversimplified—and maybe even a little silly—in the confined time and space in which it plays.

Photo/Jocelyn Gonzales

Reviewed by Lyssa Mandel
[See also: Aaron Riccio's review]

The Living Theatre doesn’t just Think Big, it Thinks Enormous. Their latest creation, penned by the late Hanon Reznikov and Judith Malina, tackles no less than the Big Bang itself. Specifically, Eureka! is an experiential, multisensory re-imagining of Edgar Allen Poe’s prose poem (of the same name), a reverie on the formation and potential destruction of the universe. Eureka! fulfills the Living Theater’s mission statement: “call[ing] into question who we are to each other in the social environment of the theater.” But while the shimmering presentation is wildly engaging, if often dumbfounding, the treatment of a subject as huge the cosmos is bound to seem oversimplified—and maybe even a little silly—in the confined time and space in which it plays.

Evaluating Eureka! as theater would short-change and misrepresent the multidisciplinary work, which is equal parts performance art, video installation, hands-on exhibit, chemistry lesson, and audience participation. The experience is meant to feel bizarre and dreamlike throughout, and it forces the audience to question its role. Although the Living Theatre prides itself on involving its viewers, this is far from a simple call and response. Patrons are coaxed by urgent cast members to help create the performance as it unfolds, taking part in the sounds and movement to add to the voice of the Collective.

Don’t expect to sit passively as the magic unfolds: instead, the audience stands in the center of the murky performance space itself, surrounded by a web of zigzagging scaffolding poles (and statuesque actors). Projection screens at both ends display ever-morphing images of the cosmos, spliced and overlaid with live feed of audience members as they explore the space. After several minutes in this deep blue gallery of hushed waiting and discovery, the black-clad performers silently descend one by one from their frozen perches, and their poise and physical control let us know that we’re in good hands long before a single word is uttered. (The performers must be fearless for us to trust them; they are.) The disintegration of the fourth wall is like a gradual dip into a cold swimming pool. One cautious toe at a time, the audience acclimates to the idea of zero distance between performer and observer. By the end of the process, one is expected to fully submerge. (I was almost to that point; perhaps with a larger crowd of patrons I would have been even closer.)

Helping the audience get there is the sullen Mr. Poe (played with youthful vigor and austerity by Anthony Sisco): as he speaks about his gnawing search for answers to the Big Bang, what has followed since, and what is to come, the play picks up momentum, sweeping the audience into its undertow. In a chronological whirlwind of evolution set to rippling music by Patrick Grant and fantastical lighting by Gary Brackett, we are led through a maze of general evolutionary drama alongside Poe, as if traveling inside his head while he works through the problem of humanity’s existence and potential extinction. (Yes, it’s a lot of ground to cover in 75 minutes.)

Judith Malina directs with a warm and meticulous hand, though the content sometimes comes across as pretentious. The ensemble shape-shifts from trembling atoms to personified elements, and they are the infectiously confident blood and guts of the whole experience. But for this avant-garde experiment to work, the theatergoer must not only enter with an open mind, but remain pliable throughout--it might be too optimistic to ask for such willing volunteers.

Eureka! is unselfconsciously embracing, a riotous ode to serendipity, empowerment, and harmonious cooperation. However, the audience is implicated so aggressively that it becomes off-putting and even uncomfortable. The Living Theatre means so well and asks for connection so pleadingly that it’s hard to say no, but the novelty of the hands-on project and the distraction it creates in the “viewer” threatens to overshadow the actual story being told.

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Eureka! @ The Living Theater (21 Clinton Street)
Tickets: $20 (Wednesday: Pay-What-You-Can)
Performances (through 11/9): Wed. - Sat. @ 8 | Sun. @ 4