BY ELLEN WERNECKE
It’s hard to say whether Hollywood assistant Chad (Ian Scott McGregor) is having the worst day of his life, or as Homer Simpson would put it, the worst day of his life so far: When his agent boss Alan (Scott Aiello) goes off the radar, Chad is forced to babysit his bratty tween daughter (Sarah Grover) at his beach house -- and what should wash up but Shane (Chad Lindsey), the director of a forthcoming surfer movie who’s definitely drunk and possibly suicidal. When Alan gets back, not only isn’t he grateful, but instead determined to show Chad the error of his ways. From Jason Schafer, the writer of the 2007 Off-Off identity thriller “I Google Myself,” “Notes on the Land of Earthquake and Fire” zags where an “Entourage” would zig, using Chad’s dilemma as a would-be go-getter to explore how masculinity feeds into Hollywood’s notions of power and success. Not every laugh lands, but audiences will sympathize with the beleaguered Chad and root for Alan’s comeuppance.
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”Notes on the Land of Earthquake and Fire” runs through August 29 at the New York International Fringe Festival. For tickets and more information, please visit FringeNYC.org.
Showing posts with label Ellen Wernecke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ellen Wernecke. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Fringe/Clemenza and Tessio Are Dead
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
What’s it really like being a mobster? Turns out it’s a whole lot of waiting, according to Gregg Greenberg’s “Clemenza and Tessio Are Dead,” a self-aware show returning to New York for the Fringe after having its world premiere last fall at the Broadway Comedy Club. Constantly invoking “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” the play (which Greenberg directed as well as wrote) follows the events of “The Godfather” through the perspective of two low-level mobsters in the Corleone organization, constantly forced to judge their shifting positions as the next generation takes over the family business.
Nervous Tessio (Dennis Wit) prefers to fall in line with the Don, while Clemenza (Frank Senger), believing they will be cut out of the succession, concocts a darker scheme. The tone ricochets between “Office Space”-style tedium (including an incompetent game of Go Fish and a deliciously incorrect retelling of “Hamlet”) and the darker schemes of the Coppola original, but Senger and Wit keep the banter rolling, and Greenberg manages to bring them back into the fold for a fascinating finale with the help of Troy Dane, who ably portrays every other character in the Corleone fold.
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“Clemenza and Tessio are Dead” runs through August 29 at the New York International Fringe Festival. For tickets and more information, please visit FringeNYC.org.
What’s it really like being a mobster? Turns out it’s a whole lot of waiting, according to Gregg Greenberg’s “Clemenza and Tessio Are Dead,” a self-aware show returning to New York for the Fringe after having its world premiere last fall at the Broadway Comedy Club. Constantly invoking “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” the play (which Greenberg directed as well as wrote) follows the events of “The Godfather” through the perspective of two low-level mobsters in the Corleone organization, constantly forced to judge their shifting positions as the next generation takes over the family business.
Nervous Tessio (Dennis Wit) prefers to fall in line with the Don, while Clemenza (Frank Senger), believing they will be cut out of the succession, concocts a darker scheme. The tone ricochets between “Office Space”-style tedium (including an incompetent game of Go Fish and a deliciously incorrect retelling of “Hamlet”) and the darker schemes of the Coppola original, but Senger and Wit keep the banter rolling, and Greenberg manages to bring them back into the fold for a fascinating finale with the help of Troy Dane, who ably portrays every other character in the Corleone fold.
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“Clemenza and Tessio are Dead” runs through August 29 at the New York International Fringe Festival. For tickets and more information, please visit FringeNYC.org.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Thoroughly Modern Millie
The Gallery Players’ staging of this Tony Award winner is just a bonbon. But who says musicals have to be good for you?
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
When Thoroughly Modern Millie, a musical based on a British hit and envisioned as a Julie Andrews vehicle, hit movie screens in 1967, its conceit of a jazz baby trying to go straight just long enough for her to meet and land a rich man was already part of the past. Its 2002 Broadway resetting (involving new music and lyrics as well as an edited book), even further from the Jazz Age, needed heroine Millie Dilmount’s drive for laughs even more. It’s not that the notion of gold-diggers is that far from our national consciousness—we still have TV’s The Bachelor, after all—but Millie’s conviction (that to be “modern” is to make her marriage read like a balance sheet) is just as much of a joke as any show-tune anthem declaring that the character will never fall in love. (There are at least two of those songs here, “What Do I Need With Love” for the poor schemer who falls for Millie, and “Jimmy," her anthem for him.)
When Brooklyn’s Gallery Players try to go serious with Thoroughly Modern Millie, pausing to emphasize one character’s moral lesson or another’s hasty mistake, the show slows down without gaining any gravitas. But overall, it’s as light on its feet as its jitterbugging cast. Director Neal J. Freeman shows off their stuff to perfect effect by letting the production flow from scene to scene, a move that also highlights how much the company does without a Great White Way-sized budget. The song-and-dance number “The Speed Test” is a showcase for the tapping talents of the chorus as well as the “Modern Major-General”-style comedic timing of Andy Planck, who plays Millie’s boss. Allison Luff, as Millie, has clearly studied Sutton Foster’s Broadway performance of the role, but it doesn’t break her stride as the stubborn “modern” from Kansas; her friend Dorothy (Amy Grass) is just this side of shrill, but Millie quickly surrounds herself with more captivating characters like the international superstar, Muzzy van Hossmere (a deliciously grandiose Debra Thais Evans).
Unfortunately, Millie is burdened with a white-slavery subplot that, besides employing an ethnic caricature in a not very funny way, is also the one element that keeps the show from being family-friendly. (To begin with, no one uses the term “white slavery” any more, so good luck explaining that to little Dick and Jane.) Justine Campbell-Elliott (as the predatory Mrs. Meers) dons an Asian accent as a means of disarming the girls under her care at the Hotel Priscilla, but it’s too reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and even thoroughly, shall we say, un-modern. As a director, Freeman should have turned down the caricaturizing in order to allow the audience to focus on her henchmen, Ching Ho and Bun Foo (Roy Flores and Jay Paranada), who are funny enough even before the manually operated subtitles come out. Luckily, this sour chord doesn’t distract too much from the fun of following Millie and her jazz-crazy friends.
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Through Feb. 22 at 199 14th Street in Brooklyn. For tickets and more information, visit galleryplayers.com.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
When Thoroughly Modern Millie, a musical based on a British hit and envisioned as a Julie Andrews vehicle, hit movie screens in 1967, its conceit of a jazz baby trying to go straight just long enough for her to meet and land a rich man was already part of the past. Its 2002 Broadway resetting (involving new music and lyrics as well as an edited book), even further from the Jazz Age, needed heroine Millie Dilmount’s drive for laughs even more. It’s not that the notion of gold-diggers is that far from our national consciousness—we still have TV’s The Bachelor, after all—but Millie’s conviction (that to be “modern” is to make her marriage read like a balance sheet) is just as much of a joke as any show-tune anthem declaring that the character will never fall in love. (There are at least two of those songs here, “What Do I Need With Love” for the poor schemer who falls for Millie, and “Jimmy," her anthem for him.)
When Brooklyn’s Gallery Players try to go serious with Thoroughly Modern Millie, pausing to emphasize one character’s moral lesson or another’s hasty mistake, the show slows down without gaining any gravitas. But overall, it’s as light on its feet as its jitterbugging cast. Director Neal J. Freeman shows off their stuff to perfect effect by letting the production flow from scene to scene, a move that also highlights how much the company does without a Great White Way-sized budget. The song-and-dance number “The Speed Test” is a showcase for the tapping talents of the chorus as well as the “Modern Major-General”-style comedic timing of Andy Planck, who plays Millie’s boss. Allison Luff, as Millie, has clearly studied Sutton Foster’s Broadway performance of the role, but it doesn’t break her stride as the stubborn “modern” from Kansas; her friend Dorothy (Amy Grass) is just this side of shrill, but Millie quickly surrounds herself with more captivating characters like the international superstar, Muzzy van Hossmere (a deliciously grandiose Debra Thais Evans).
Unfortunately, Millie is burdened with a white-slavery subplot that, besides employing an ethnic caricature in a not very funny way, is also the one element that keeps the show from being family-friendly. (To begin with, no one uses the term “white slavery” any more, so good luck explaining that to little Dick and Jane.) Justine Campbell-Elliott (as the predatory Mrs. Meers) dons an Asian accent as a means of disarming the girls under her care at the Hotel Priscilla, but it’s too reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and even thoroughly, shall we say, un-modern. As a director, Freeman should have turned down the caricaturizing in order to allow the audience to focus on her henchmen, Ching Ho and Bun Foo (Roy Flores and Jay Paranada), who are funny enough even before the manually operated subtitles come out. Luckily, this sour chord doesn’t distract too much from the fun of following Millie and her jazz-crazy friends.
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Through Feb. 22 at 199 14th Street in Brooklyn. For tickets and more information, visit galleryplayers.com.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Roar
A claustrophobic family drama still has room for surprises.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
Leo Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with the words, “Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” By now it’s a trite quotation but it deserves to be repeated for every dysfunctional family snapshot that forgets this maxim. This Jordanian-American apartment drama written by Betty Shamieh, though never escaping the confines of this immigrant home, still manages to be original in putting the experiences of one family under the microscope.
All is not well in this late-‘80s Detroit household, but teasing out its problems consumes the bulk of Roar. Lebanese immigrants Karema (Maya Serhan) and Ahmed (Al Nazemian) hardly see each other between their long days of running a store and keeping up the apartment complex they also own. Their daughter Irene (Billie Alexopoulos) is an indifferent student but a promising singer, vainly hoping for that important callback from a record company executive. (So far, so standard.) Then Karema’s sister Hala arrives from Kuwait, dropping like an extravagantly gesturing bomb over the nuclear family. From then on, everything changes.
Shot through with bittersweet observations of the well-trod American immigrant experience, Roar is nonetheless successful because it differentiates between the problems plaguing this particular family and all the families like it. Even the third-act revelation about Karema and Hala’s early life in Jordan, which arrives long overdue, doesn’t seem clichéd because it unfolds in such a believable way. Director Elaine Molinaro develops Shamieh’s expository information as if we were sitting down to dinner with family; when we are finally separated from these characters, we ache to discover what goes on after the play ends. (Alexopoulos is particularly poignant as the teenage Irene, caught in the family maelstrom when she’s having enough trouble deciding whether to rebel or do her duty towards her parents.)
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
Leo Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with the words, “Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” By now it’s a trite quotation but it deserves to be repeated for every dysfunctional family snapshot that forgets this maxim. This Jordanian-American apartment drama written by Betty Shamieh, though never escaping the confines of this immigrant home, still manages to be original in putting the experiences of one family under the microscope.
All is not well in this late-‘80s Detroit household, but teasing out its problems consumes the bulk of Roar. Lebanese immigrants Karema (Maya Serhan) and Ahmed (Al Nazemian) hardly see each other between their long days of running a store and keeping up the apartment complex they also own. Their daughter Irene (Billie Alexopoulos) is an indifferent student but a promising singer, vainly hoping for that important callback from a record company executive. (So far, so standard.) Then Karema’s sister Hala arrives from Kuwait, dropping like an extravagantly gesturing bomb over the nuclear family. From then on, everything changes.
Shot through with bittersweet observations of the well-trod American immigrant experience, Roar is nonetheless successful because it differentiates between the problems plaguing this particular family and all the families like it. Even the third-act revelation about Karema and Hala’s early life in Jordan, which arrives long overdue, doesn’t seem clichéd because it unfolds in such a believable way. Director Elaine Molinaro develops Shamieh’s expository information as if we were sitting down to dinner with family; when we are finally separated from these characters, we ache to discover what goes on after the play ends. (Alexopoulos is particularly poignant as the teenage Irene, caught in the family maelstrom when she’s having enough trouble deciding whether to rebel or do her duty towards her parents.)
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Funeralogues
Given a moving backdrop, The Funeralogues fails to move quickly enough.
Reviewed by Ellen Wernecke
“While most little girls were planning for their wedding,” Stacy Mayer declares at the beginning of The Funeralogues, “I was planning for my funeral.” When delivered at the altar of All Souls Church on the Upper East Side, Mayer’s cheeky line is both more realistic—the show, after all, begins with a piano accompaniment solemn enough that it feels inappropriate to clap—and less believable. She will nearly get the chance to stage her own funeral over the course of The Funeralogues, an hour-long show written by Robert Charles Gompers and directed by Molly Marinik, but before that, she’ll meander through several others’ experiences with death—a journey that isn’t quite as vivid or moving.
Mayer embodies several characters within the show, from an elementary school teacher grasping at the correct response when she learns that one of her pupils has died to the last survivor of a family with 13 children. Gompers draws from famous eulogies in history, medieval mourning custom (in which “grief was appropriated by rank”) and blockbuster movies and stacks them up, tier by tier to form the body of the show in between reenactments of, for example, a 6-year-old’s Barbie funeral. (She had a dream life, but now Skipper is already honing in on her man against their owner’s wishes.)
But it doesn’t add up because Mayer doesn’t do enough to differentiate her characters. A series of old people with different accents are still too much alike; when she goes on to deliver one-liners from a sampling of eulogies, those character capsules have more contrast to them than much of the previous half hour. Toward the bottom of the show, we are introduced to a character who has a truly unique story to tell—a “casualty specialist” dispatched to the families of American soldiers who have died in the service, forced to deal with the aftermath of a bombing in Bahrain—but it doesn’t hit the emotional heights it should. The location of The Funeralogues is the perfect setting for this reflective show, but it ultimately doesn’t deliver because it doesn’t give the audience enough to hold onto in its depictions of those facing death. Instead, far too often it’s like being at a wake for a stranger.
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Through December 13 at All Souls Chapel,
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Estrogenius Week 4
A recent New York Times article described a panel of dissatisfied female writers who believe their work is underrepresented in the local theatre scene. At least over at Manhattan Theatre Source in October, it was all about the ladies.
Reviewed by Ellen Wernecke
It’s fitting that all the short plays in Estrogenius’ fourth week were written and directed by women. But promotional materials for this October’s “celebration of female voices” at Manhattan Theatre Source also feel the need to answer the question of why there are “so many” men in this year’s plays. This is peculiar because it implies that addressing the concerns and describing the lives of women needs to happen in a male-less space. The playwrights certainly don’t need to write men out of their plays in order to be writing from a female perspective (and when they do, it shouldn’t be as a crutch); one play, “Safety First,” says a lot about women without any onstage. If there is a connection in these works, it’s in their treatment of the perception of women and femininity in the public sphere.
The lead-off play, “Little Birds” by Joy McCullough-Carranza, addresses this theme head-on with its portrait of three fictional female astronauts (Lori Brigantino, Dawn D’Arcy, and Lynn Stetson). In its alternate history, a group of women pilots push for a mission to demonstrate their fitness for space, only to find themselves stranded for 42 days on the moon. The leader, the dreamer, and the cynic, facing certain death as their supplies dwindle, reflect on the separate paths that have brought them here, but director Melanie Sutherland never frames the debate in terms of what they gave up; as if respecting the alternate universe of the play, she portrays the women at the end of a long conversation, but at peace with their choices.
Danna Call’s “Safety First” (directed by Maura Kelley) treats femininity through its opposite: the traditionally masculine pursuit of hunting. Two hicks (Tomike Ogugua and Robert Ross Pivec), armed with a sock puppet named Ammo and a .38 Winchester named Mr. Heston, are teaching a gun-safety class which devolves into an argument about an incident involving a one-armed pharmacist. Full of swagger when they start, the men, who directly address the crowd as wannabe hunters, lose some of their magnetism once they cease to play for laughs, but the play’s (slightly obvious) point is still well taken.
The women of “Parkersburg” (written by Laura Jacqmin) find themselves in a similar predicament to the astronauts of “Little Birds,” but once the novelty of seeing female coal miners has worn off, there’s little more to this slice of life. The three workers have been directed by their female supervisor to find a new vein or a new job; even their highest ambitions, of going to work in the potentially mythical mine on the other side of the mountain where they can quit work at 5, are enclosed by the present. Its emotional dead end makes it one of the weakest offerings, along with Lucile Lichtblau’s “On the Beach,” a sitcommy story about aging, told by two couples on a public beach. The elders (Gloria Rosen and Anthony Spaldo) are taking advantage of what may be a very short amount of time left together; the newlyweds (Louis Changchien and Autumn Horne) are embarking on their new life with the earnestness of the annoyingly certain. The contrast provided some chuckles, but its ending is too pat for comfort.
The dystopic vision of Lane Bernes’ “New York, New York” is the strongest of the plays, even as its firm commitment to a futuristic world places it outside the aegis of human experience. In the New City, post-President Giuliani’s second term, citizens are segregated by profession and a Metrocard is your ID; an artist and a banker try to buck the system’s official discouragement of cross-cultural commitment, and, per West Side Story, find a place for them both. A crowd-pleasing gag featuring Tony Kushner threatens to derail it, but its daring plot is unexpectedly sweet because of the choice its mismatched lovers make.
Reviewed by Ellen Wernecke
It’s fitting that all the short plays in Estrogenius’ fourth week were written and directed by women. But promotional materials for this October’s “celebration of female voices” at Manhattan Theatre Source also feel the need to answer the question of why there are “so many” men in this year’s plays. This is peculiar because it implies that addressing the concerns and describing the lives of women needs to happen in a male-less space. The playwrights certainly don’t need to write men out of their plays in order to be writing from a female perspective (and when they do, it shouldn’t be as a crutch); one play, “Safety First,” says a lot about women without any onstage. If there is a connection in these works, it’s in their treatment of the perception of women and femininity in the public sphere.
The lead-off play, “Little Birds” by Joy McCullough-Carranza, addresses this theme head-on with its portrait of three fictional female astronauts (Lori Brigantino, Dawn D’Arcy, and Lynn Stetson). In its alternate history, a group of women pilots push for a mission to demonstrate their fitness for space, only to find themselves stranded for 42 days on the moon. The leader, the dreamer, and the cynic, facing certain death as their supplies dwindle, reflect on the separate paths that have brought them here, but director Melanie Sutherland never frames the debate in terms of what they gave up; as if respecting the alternate universe of the play, she portrays the women at the end of a long conversation, but at peace with their choices.
Danna Call’s “Safety First” (directed by Maura Kelley) treats femininity through its opposite: the traditionally masculine pursuit of hunting. Two hicks (Tomike Ogugua and Robert Ross Pivec), armed with a sock puppet named Ammo and a .38 Winchester named Mr. Heston, are teaching a gun-safety class which devolves into an argument about an incident involving a one-armed pharmacist. Full of swagger when they start, the men, who directly address the crowd as wannabe hunters, lose some of their magnetism once they cease to play for laughs, but the play’s (slightly obvious) point is still well taken.
The women of “Parkersburg” (written by Laura Jacqmin) find themselves in a similar predicament to the astronauts of “Little Birds,” but once the novelty of seeing female coal miners has worn off, there’s little more to this slice of life. The three workers have been directed by their female supervisor to find a new vein or a new job; even their highest ambitions, of going to work in the potentially mythical mine on the other side of the mountain where they can quit work at 5, are enclosed by the present. Its emotional dead end makes it one of the weakest offerings, along with Lucile Lichtblau’s “On the Beach,” a sitcommy story about aging, told by two couples on a public beach. The elders (Gloria Rosen and Anthony Spaldo) are taking advantage of what may be a very short amount of time left together; the newlyweds (Louis Changchien and Autumn Horne) are embarking on their new life with the earnestness of the annoyingly certain. The contrast provided some chuckles, but its ending is too pat for comfort.
The dystopic vision of Lane Bernes’ “New York, New York” is the strongest of the plays, even as its firm commitment to a futuristic world places it outside the aegis of human experience. In the New City, post-President Giuliani’s second term, citizens are segregated by profession and a Metrocard is your ID; an artist and a banker try to buck the system’s official discouragement of cross-cultural commitment, and, per West Side Story, find a place for them both. A crowd-pleasing gag featuring Tony Kushner threatens to derail it, but its daring plot is unexpectedly sweet because of the choice its mismatched lovers make.
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Invitation (Ellen's Review)
In “The Invitation” it’s the hosts -- and we -- who overstay our welcome.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
Everyone’s got a friend like Marian, the sharp-tongued shrew who dominates the first half of Brian Parks’ play “The Invitation,” a world premiere from Word Monger Productions. Shouting and shrill from almost the very moment we meet her, Marian (played to perfection by Katie Honaker) has no problem voicing opinions for which “contrarian” is not quite strong enough a word, like “Retarded people are depressing” and “What’s to see in South America?” The dinner party she and meek husband Dave (David Calvitto) are hosting is ostensibly in honor of their friend Steph (Leslie Farrell), but everyone pays attention to Marian -- at first attempting to debate her, and then letting an awkward silence fall after her jabs at vegetarians and volunteer work. Yet when later one character tells another, “She wasn’t always like that,” it has the ring of truth: No one wants to believe all along he has been friends with a sexist classist racist.
But the George-and-Martha relation between Dave and Marian can only go so far, especially when she turns to attacking his book which has been turned down by the publisher where he works. (“Apparently novels are supposed to be entertaining,” she sniffs in one of many, many roarers delivered by Honaker and others.) About the specifics of the shift we will only say, the gun on the mantelpiece is a literary reference dropped amid the crossfire of wits early in the show, and is developed with gore to spare.) The place where it lands is where “The Invitation” takes a turn into outright unpleasantness in the “Funny Games” mode, in which we are asked to question whether we were tolerating the torture of the people onstage to the point where one is pressed to action. But this turn of events dehumanizes Dave in order to justify what has just happened, and director John Clancy allows Calvitto to unleash his inner Joker a little too much. Still, even with the coda, which is complete nonsense, “The Invitation” is a funny, nasty little piece of work.
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”The Invitation,” which also stars Paul Urcioli and Eva van Dok, runs through Sept. 27 at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster Street. For tickets and more information, visit WordMongerProductions.com.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
Everyone’s got a friend like Marian, the sharp-tongued shrew who dominates the first half of Brian Parks’ play “The Invitation,” a world premiere from Word Monger Productions. Shouting and shrill from almost the very moment we meet her, Marian (played to perfection by Katie Honaker) has no problem voicing opinions for which “contrarian” is not quite strong enough a word, like “Retarded people are depressing” and “What’s to see in South America?” The dinner party she and meek husband Dave (David Calvitto) are hosting is ostensibly in honor of their friend Steph (Leslie Farrell), but everyone pays attention to Marian -- at first attempting to debate her, and then letting an awkward silence fall after her jabs at vegetarians and volunteer work. Yet when later one character tells another, “She wasn’t always like that,” it has the ring of truth: No one wants to believe all along he has been friends with a sexist classist racist.
But the George-and-Martha relation between Dave and Marian can only go so far, especially when she turns to attacking his book which has been turned down by the publisher where he works. (“Apparently novels are supposed to be entertaining,” she sniffs in one of many, many roarers delivered by Honaker and others.) About the specifics of the shift we will only say, the gun on the mantelpiece is a literary reference dropped amid the crossfire of wits early in the show, and is developed with gore to spare.) The place where it lands is where “The Invitation” takes a turn into outright unpleasantness in the “Funny Games” mode, in which we are asked to question whether we were tolerating the torture of the people onstage to the point where one is pressed to action. But this turn of events dehumanizes Dave in order to justify what has just happened, and director John Clancy allows Calvitto to unleash his inner Joker a little too much. Still, even with the coda, which is complete nonsense, “The Invitation” is a funny, nasty little piece of work.
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”The Invitation,” which also stars Paul Urcioli and Eva van Dok, runs through Sept. 27 at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster Street. For tickets and more information, visit WordMongerProductions.com.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Fringe/America 20XX
Really, these are the guys who are going to save the world? All we can say is, good luck with that!
Photo/Tida Ann Manathat
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
From the very start of America 20XX, in which two muscular gladiators out to save the world accidentally kill each other, this comedic dystopia leaps ahead of most superhero satires of stage and screen. The Rutgers troupe Wacky Hijinks and writer-director Cyriaque Lamar bring a uniquely twisted view of the future to the stage, and while there are missteps, they hit their marks better than most spoofs, starting with their line-up of truly inferior superheroes.
“Live from the death of democracy,” the Power Patriots—pompous Constitution (Jon Bershad), argumentative Red State/ Blue State (Greg Bing) and the inscrutable Super Eagle (Lamar)—have congregated in the Liberty Lean-To, completely aware they are facing their doom. The nasty piece of work iDol has uploaded the souls of every human on the planet, and unless the Power Patriots can protect the last real American baby, they too will be sucked into the gaping, toothy maw where iDol’s click-wheel should be.
With a villain so ludicrous at one point he yells out, “I’m a machine! I count things!” these sad supermen have no hope except to trade American history-influenced barbs, relive their worst flashbacks and face their fears in what can only be described as deus ex anti-machina. Whether they’re singing ‘90s rock ballads or waging war with jazz hands, Bershad and Bing are straight-faced and fantastic—but it’s Lamar’s “gross illiterate clone,” the mostly-naked, squawking man with the bald-eagle mask, that makes the satire sublime. Lamar’s fellow actors may resent these small moments of absurdity, but they pay off for the show: It’s just so incredibly weird that you can’t help but be taken in by the conceit and pushed towards the ridiculous conclusion.
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“America 20XX” returns for one final performance August 18 at 6PM at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street. For $15 tickets and more information, visit America20XX.com or FringeNYC.org.
Photo/Tida Ann ManathatBY ELLEN WERNECKE
From the very start of America 20XX, in which two muscular gladiators out to save the world accidentally kill each other, this comedic dystopia leaps ahead of most superhero satires of stage and screen. The Rutgers troupe Wacky Hijinks and writer-director Cyriaque Lamar bring a uniquely twisted view of the future to the stage, and while there are missteps, they hit their marks better than most spoofs, starting with their line-up of truly inferior superheroes.
“Live from the death of democracy,” the Power Patriots—pompous Constitution (Jon Bershad), argumentative Red State/ Blue State (Greg Bing) and the inscrutable Super Eagle (Lamar)—have congregated in the Liberty Lean-To, completely aware they are facing their doom. The nasty piece of work iDol has uploaded the souls of every human on the planet, and unless the Power Patriots can protect the last real American baby, they too will be sucked into the gaping, toothy maw where iDol’s click-wheel should be.
With a villain so ludicrous at one point he yells out, “I’m a machine! I count things!” these sad supermen have no hope except to trade American history-influenced barbs, relive their worst flashbacks and face their fears in what can only be described as deus ex anti-machina. Whether they’re singing ‘90s rock ballads or waging war with jazz hands, Bershad and Bing are straight-faced and fantastic—but it’s Lamar’s “gross illiterate clone,” the mostly-naked, squawking man with the bald-eagle mask, that makes the satire sublime. Lamar’s fellow actors may resent these small moments of absurdity, but they pay off for the show: It’s just so incredibly weird that you can’t help but be taken in by the conceit and pushed towards the ridiculous conclusion.
---
“America 20XX” returns for one final performance August 18 at 6PM at the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street. For $15 tickets and more information, visit America20XX.com or FringeNYC.org.
Cake And Plays... But Without The Cake
A tasting menu by a promising young playwright.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
There’s a little too much quirk in the top half of this triple bill of short works by playwright Jono Hustis, but the Daniel Horrigan-directed showcase demonstrates Hustis is starting to look beyond the killer set-up. In “Cow and Shakespeare,” an addled bard (Michael Hartney) meets a writing cow (Michael Micalizzi) as Hustis explores the idea that one man from Stratford-upon-Avon couldn’t possibly have come up with all the works that bear his name. The play doesn’t go much further than this one note, an academic perennial, but Micalizzi’s deadpan, all-suffering bovine is a treat. (At one point, he flatly declares, “Have you ever heard of a COW getting a commission?”)
In “Monsoons,” the weakest of the three plays, a first date between the world’s densest man (Craig Mungavin) and a typical uptight female (Morgan Lindsay Tachco) goes, predictably, horribly wrong on both sides. This is a battle of the sexes that deserves a permanent ceasefire, with Christopher “Women don’t get funny” Hitchens as signatory; the decision here to use that tiresome idea as a final punch line leaves a sour taste.
But this stand-up guy and girl are forgotten with “In The Name of Bob,” a slightly longer work that follows a waitress (Darcy Fowler) who meets a man claiming to be her guardian angel (Andy Gershenzon). With the close of each scene came the apprehension that “Bob” would echo, say, “Heaven Can Wait” or (please, no) “City of Angels,” but Hustis pulls a neat twist at the end that satisfies and delights. It’s elevated by the oddball chemistry between Gershenzon and Fowler and especially by Fowler’s closed-off Alicia, who has to make the audience believe she’s just open enough to take the angel Marvin’s bait. When she can do this, the audience can accept Gershenzon’s flailing and oversize presence onstage. Hustis gives Fowler the space in the writing to make that conversion, a sign that desserts aside, he’s a playwright to watch.
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“Cake and Plays… But Without The Cake” runs through August 24 at the Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street. For tickets and more information, visit at hand theatre company’s Website.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
There’s a little too much quirk in the top half of this triple bill of short works by playwright Jono Hustis, but the Daniel Horrigan-directed showcase demonstrates Hustis is starting to look beyond the killer set-up. In “Cow and Shakespeare,” an addled bard (Michael Hartney) meets a writing cow (Michael Micalizzi) as Hustis explores the idea that one man from Stratford-upon-Avon couldn’t possibly have come up with all the works that bear his name. The play doesn’t go much further than this one note, an academic perennial, but Micalizzi’s deadpan, all-suffering bovine is a treat. (At one point, he flatly declares, “Have you ever heard of a COW getting a commission?”)
In “Monsoons,” the weakest of the three plays, a first date between the world’s densest man (Craig Mungavin) and a typical uptight female (Morgan Lindsay Tachco) goes, predictably, horribly wrong on both sides. This is a battle of the sexes that deserves a permanent ceasefire, with Christopher “Women don’t get funny” Hitchens as signatory; the decision here to use that tiresome idea as a final punch line leaves a sour taste.
But this stand-up guy and girl are forgotten with “In The Name of Bob,” a slightly longer work that follows a waitress (Darcy Fowler) who meets a man claiming to be her guardian angel (Andy Gershenzon). With the close of each scene came the apprehension that “Bob” would echo, say, “Heaven Can Wait” or (please, no) “City of Angels,” but Hustis pulls a neat twist at the end that satisfies and delights. It’s elevated by the oddball chemistry between Gershenzon and Fowler and especially by Fowler’s closed-off Alicia, who has to make the audience believe she’s just open enough to take the angel Marvin’s bait. When she can do this, the audience can accept Gershenzon’s flailing and oversize presence onstage. Hustis gives Fowler the space in the writing to make that conversion, a sign that desserts aside, he’s a playwright to watch.
---
“Cake and Plays… But Without The Cake” runs through August 24 at the Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street. For tickets and more information, visit at hand theatre company’s Website.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
MITF: Those Whistling Lads
Celebrating the life of Dorothy Parker is not a tall order for this ingenious literary biography.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
The ghost of Dorothy Parker, the lady wit of the Algonquin Round Table, still stalks the streets of New York, preying on the melodramatic young who drink too much and want to make something of themselves. Those Whistling Lads may come ultimately to praise and showcase Parker, not to bury her, but it can keep that heroine worship somewhat in check, and that's a good thing. (Not every drinker turns out a Dorothy.)
Maureen Van Trease as Parker walks the audience through a short course on the sharp-tongued flapper, narrating her life with assistance from a selection of her poems and short stories. Van Trease hovers in the background as the ensemble plays her friends and lovers, reciting poetry and acting out her less well-known short stories, not just her famous quips. A description by Van Trease of Dorothy's unhappy marriage is paired with "Here We Are," a scene of two giddy newlyweds (played by Ethan Angelica and Hannah Wolfe) whose honeymoon is undone in two hours by sex and bitterness. As Mrs. Parker slides into alcoholism and love affairs, on stage it's played out as "You Were Perfectly Fine," in which a drunk (Justin Herfel) is retold--painfully--the events of the night before, or else the inventions of his female companion (Annalyse McCoy). In this convention Those Whistling Lads, also adapted by Van Trease, puts the work on display as biographical evidence, instead of dwelling on life and leaving out art.
Parker's heroines are tortured, but their situations are common enough to outlast the era in which they were born. (In"A Telephone Call," a chorus of women from 1928, 1945 and 1964--played by Wolfe, McCoy, and Natalie Wilder--all wait for the phone to ring in a symphony of emotional cruelty.) There are no happy endings for these dames (nor was there for Parker), but director Bricken Sparacino keeps the tone relatively light and lets hero worship play through. The tragedy of Parker's life is that her aim was so true, but as she reminds us in Those Whistling Lads, "I never did take my own advice." "Dottie" will continue to inspire, despite everything.
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Those Whistling Lads
Part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival
Through August 1 at the Workshop Theatre, 312 W. 36th St., 4th floor
Tickets, $18, ticketcentral.com
For more information about MITF, visit Midtownfestival.org
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
The ghost of Dorothy Parker, the lady wit of the Algonquin Round Table, still stalks the streets of New York, preying on the melodramatic young who drink too much and want to make something of themselves. Those Whistling Lads may come ultimately to praise and showcase Parker, not to bury her, but it can keep that heroine worship somewhat in check, and that's a good thing. (Not every drinker turns out a Dorothy.)
Maureen Van Trease as Parker walks the audience through a short course on the sharp-tongued flapper, narrating her life with assistance from a selection of her poems and short stories. Van Trease hovers in the background as the ensemble plays her friends and lovers, reciting poetry and acting out her less well-known short stories, not just her famous quips. A description by Van Trease of Dorothy's unhappy marriage is paired with "Here We Are," a scene of two giddy newlyweds (played by Ethan Angelica and Hannah Wolfe) whose honeymoon is undone in two hours by sex and bitterness. As Mrs. Parker slides into alcoholism and love affairs, on stage it's played out as "You Were Perfectly Fine," in which a drunk (Justin Herfel) is retold--painfully--the events of the night before, or else the inventions of his female companion (Annalyse McCoy). In this convention Those Whistling Lads, also adapted by Van Trease, puts the work on display as biographical evidence, instead of dwelling on life and leaving out art.
Parker's heroines are tortured, but their situations are common enough to outlast the era in which they were born. (In"A Telephone Call," a chorus of women from 1928, 1945 and 1964--played by Wolfe, McCoy, and Natalie Wilder--all wait for the phone to ring in a symphony of emotional cruelty.) There are no happy endings for these dames (nor was there for Parker), but director Bricken Sparacino keeps the tone relatively light and lets hero worship play through. The tragedy of Parker's life is that her aim was so true, but as she reminds us in Those Whistling Lads, "I never did take my own advice." "Dottie" will continue to inspire, despite everything.
---
Those Whistling Lads
Part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival
Through August 1 at the Workshop Theatre, 312 W. 36th St., 4th floor
Tickets, $18, ticketcentral.com
For more information about MITF, visit Midtownfestival.org
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
MITF: Interning
Summer interns scrap and snarl in this reality-show farce.
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
There’s no question that reality TV has perverted the traditional sense of what it means to be an intern. It may surprise regular viewers that interns don’t typically get sent to Paris, and they usually aren’t forced to play camp games with their fellow free laborers to test their teamwork skills. So the scenario envisioned by the new play “Interning” is hardly outlandish: Why wouldn’t a 21st-century intern suspect that an indentured summer assembling gift bags and brainstorming for a PR giant is secretly being filmed and thus her entrée to stardom in our time?
That’s Alisha (Jenna Pace), a former Miss New Jersey and one of four summer interns working for the slimy Ron Olden (Ryan Andes). Joining her is a wannabe actress (Kristen Howard), the gayest straight man around (Anderson Lim) and London everygirl Marta (Nadia Owusu, who also wrote the play), who lounge around in their holding room waiting for their boss to page them a la “Charlie’s Angels.” But Alisha’s conviction that there’s a hidden camera causes her to act in ways that would be perfectly acceptable on reality TV and absurdly improper in life. Even the calming influence of Carl Bella Carmichael (Michael Galyon), Ron’s assistant and an acting legacy in his own right who claims not to use his family connections at all, can’t constrain her desperation to win.
Owusu’s script takes too long to unwind, but once it gets going the comedic performances prove capable of holding it aloft. The blocking helps: Director Rye Mullis uses a pen of chairs to strand the interns on center stage for most of the show, making their own tension contagious. Lim’s play on stereotype as a man who's gay and doesn't know it is pretty tired, but Andes’ take on the creepy boss is surprisingly original in the sneering way he presides over his clueless underlings. And Galyon’s monologues paired with a thousand-yard stare steal the show.
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“Interning,” part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, runs through August 3 at Where Eagles Dare (347 W.36th St.). For more information, visit Midtownfestival.org
BY ELLEN WERNECKE
There’s no question that reality TV has perverted the traditional sense of what it means to be an intern. It may surprise regular viewers that interns don’t typically get sent to Paris, and they usually aren’t forced to play camp games with their fellow free laborers to test their teamwork skills. So the scenario envisioned by the new play “Interning” is hardly outlandish: Why wouldn’t a 21st-century intern suspect that an indentured summer assembling gift bags and brainstorming for a PR giant is secretly being filmed and thus her entrée to stardom in our time?
That’s Alisha (Jenna Pace), a former Miss New Jersey and one of four summer interns working for the slimy Ron Olden (Ryan Andes). Joining her is a wannabe actress (Kristen Howard), the gayest straight man around (Anderson Lim) and London everygirl Marta (Nadia Owusu, who also wrote the play), who lounge around in their holding room waiting for their boss to page them a la “Charlie’s Angels.” But Alisha’s conviction that there’s a hidden camera causes her to act in ways that would be perfectly acceptable on reality TV and absurdly improper in life. Even the calming influence of Carl Bella Carmichael (Michael Galyon), Ron’s assistant and an acting legacy in his own right who claims not to use his family connections at all, can’t constrain her desperation to win.
Owusu’s script takes too long to unwind, but once it gets going the comedic performances prove capable of holding it aloft. The blocking helps: Director Rye Mullis uses a pen of chairs to strand the interns on center stage for most of the show, making their own tension contagious. Lim’s play on stereotype as a man who's gay and doesn't know it is pretty tired, but Andes’ take on the creepy boss is surprisingly original in the sneering way he presides over his clueless underlings. And Galyon’s monologues paired with a thousand-yard stare steal the show.
---
“Interning,” part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, runs through August 3 at Where Eagles Dare (347 W.36th St.). For more information, visit Midtownfestival.org
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