(Chosen as one of The New Theater Corps'
FIVE FAVORITES for 2/2/07)
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
"By my green syphilitic penis!" roars Pere Ubu between massive tremolos of flatulence. This foolish, rotund slob, played to the hilt by Jordan Gelber, is from Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, but the play he's appearing in at the moment seems to be Macbeth. In fact, it is: here come the three Weird Sisters, cackling from atop a cauldron, setting his fate and Banquo's in stone. His wife may go by the name Mere Ubu (a clucking Dana Smith-Croll), but she's really the vicious Lady Macbeth, out-damn-spot and all. Instead of Duncan, they scheme to kill good king Wenceslas (and with a shitter hook, not a knife), and when Macduff comes for his just revenge, our "hero" bangs once on his toilet-seat armor, again on his pot-lid helmet, and then flees to France. It's a mash-up, designed to present Macbeth as a comedy, and as a means to give the adapter, Henry Wishcamper, free license to mess around with the theater, too.
Sound effects are provided by our friendly neighborhood Foley Artist (James Bentley), just off to stage left, and props, costumes, set pieces, and technical instructions for the many scene changes litter the walls. The Walkerspace stage has been hollowed to reveal every device being used, and the cast takes pleasure in mocking their own bad accents or flubbed cues. There are, of course, puppets, both of the slaughtered and performing variety, and the Tetris-like assembly of the set does as much for the play's constant physical comedy as do the shit-flinging sight-gags. (Literally.) The cast is in good form too, with gender-reversed actors like Eunice Wong and Jeff Biehl (Bougrelas and Queen Rosamond, respectively) serving up equal parts of ham and cheese.
At the preview performance I attended (1/14), there were still some rough spots, but not enough to detract from the overwhelming good humor of the piece. Though most of the musical numbers fall flat (including an homage to Rocky), there's enough variety to compensate for it (save for a slump after intermission), and though Mr. Gelber wears a fat suit, he's fit as a fiddle for comedy.
Beware the shitter hook or laugh at it, but if you're looking for a wacky riff on Macbeth, go see The Polish Play.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
The Dirty Talk
Internet hookup gone wrong?
Sidney Williams (left) and Kevin Cristaldi in The Dirty Talk
Reviewed by Eric Miles Glover
What happens when two complete strangers meet face-to-face as the result of an Internet hookup? Do the perfect identities (read: the impossible and improbable identities) that the strangers feign over an Internet connection prove reliable and truthful?
What happens when one stranger--misguided about the true gender of the other--is forced to bond, as the rain shower and thunderstorm that temper outside the isolated cabin in the mountains of N.J. (the site of hookup consummation) prevent the escape of either person? The Dirty Talk, a theatrical lollapalooza, answers the questions and provides a comical exploration into a popular but taboo trend in American culture.
It is no wonder The Dirty Talk was the "sleeper hit" of the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. Playwright Michael Puzzo wrote a comedy with sufficient heart and humor to suffuse his superb craftsmanship, language, and quasisociological investigation into the mind. His characters--Mitch, a man on the rebound from a long-term romantic relationship with a thin-skinned woman, and Lino, a man who, through adult IMs, pretends he is a Perfect Ten (a woman) to re-erect Mitch--speak about father-son relationships, loneliness, and performances of manhood with a genuineness and grace that induce enough "ahhhs," "awwws," and laughs to last an x number of lifetimes. Mitch and Lino are men who excite and resonate with the viewer.
Sidney Williams (Mitch) and Kevin Cristaldi (Lino), under the direction of Padraic Lillis, return to roles from the 2005 Fringe Festival. The men are delightful--pleasurable--as oddballs who find themselves in a bind. It rings false that Mitch, a man whose BO oozes machismo and toughness, does not harm (blind? kick? punch? strike?) Lino, a man who leads him to believe that he is a blond bombshell. However, the mere contrivance of the comedy, coupled with the comedic genius of the performers and playwright, allows the viewer to ignore the few minor discrepancies and, instead, experience the antics and eccentricities of two perfect strangers.
The Dirty Talk, by Michael Puzzo, directed by Padraic Lillis, with Kevin Cristaldi and Sidney Williams, continues through February 4, 2007, at Center Stage, 48 West 21st Street, 4th Floor, (212) 352-3101, $18.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
The Monument
Why is it that war plays seem so timeless? This revival of Colleen Wagner's 1993 play about redemption and revenge in a war-torn "today," looks fantastic, and her ideas are potent. Director Beverly Brumm's done a swell job getting it up on its feet, but the acting doesn't run with the ideas, and The Monument doesn't reach the great heights it aspires to.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Lights up on an electric chair. The man strapped to it is a soldier, or a murdering rapist, or both. Above all, Stetko (Jay Rohloff) is a man who only knows how to take orders, a man who has become impotent, and a man who now faces final judgment. When a mysterious woman named Mejra (Ramona Floyd) shows up, offering him his life in return for obeying her every whim, it is only natural for him to accept. The real mystery would then lie in what Mejra wants, but it is fairly obvious she is the mother of one of Stetko's twenty-seven victims. Therefore, for all playwright Colleen Wagner's clever lines and the way she's built her two characters up to represent the military and civilian sides, The Monument rests on its actors. That heavy weight--dead children, mass graves, and suffering--is perhaps too much for them; for the majority of the play, they approach the themes so broadly, and so one-dimensionally, that it's hard to digest the language.
It's a shame, for director Beverly Brumm has tried her hardest to give the actors things to work off of. The set is covered in a thick and dying soil, the backdrop is a stark blue sky, and the chains are real (even if the violence is choreographed). Mejra, when she is not chopping off Stetko's ears or yoking him to a giant till, is busy struggling to comprehend her prisoner, and Stetko is often laboring to carry heavy rocks or endure his mistress' harsh treatment of him. For all that action, the lines come out dusty as the stage's arid soil: Rohloff is unflinching even when told that his girlfriend has been killed and then raped. The closest he comes to emotion is in his full-bodied monologue while strapped to the chair, and later, when he tries to protect a rabbit he has befriended. As for Floyd, she is full of emotion, but suppresses too much of it. She is too harsh, too icy toward her prisoner--rather than leading him on with hope, there is little doubt in our minds that she plans to kill Stetko, and her constant imperatives are monotonous.
When the actor's habits happen to coincide with the message of the play, the show works most effectively: the opening is a real tightrope walk, and the excavation of the corpses is a high moment for off-Broadway theater. The text also features a glut of clever circumstances, like when Stetko is told that if he drops the boulder he is carrying anywhere but on his foot, she will bury him alive. His bitter defiance, even after he shatters his toes, is clever writing by any standard. The Monument may not stand tall in this production, but any ode to the victims of war--innocent and guilty alike--is better than none.
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Clurman Theater (410 West 42nd Street)
Tickets (212-279-4200): $25.00
Tuesday-Saturday @ 8:00 & Saturday @ 2:00
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Lights up on an electric chair. The man strapped to it is a soldier, or a murdering rapist, or both. Above all, Stetko (Jay Rohloff) is a man who only knows how to take orders, a man who has become impotent, and a man who now faces final judgment. When a mysterious woman named Mejra (Ramona Floyd) shows up, offering him his life in return for obeying her every whim, it is only natural for him to accept. The real mystery would then lie in what Mejra wants, but it is fairly obvious she is the mother of one of Stetko's twenty-seven victims. Therefore, for all playwright Colleen Wagner's clever lines and the way she's built her two characters up to represent the military and civilian sides, The Monument rests on its actors. That heavy weight--dead children, mass graves, and suffering--is perhaps too much for them; for the majority of the play, they approach the themes so broadly, and so one-dimensionally, that it's hard to digest the language.
It's a shame, for director Beverly Brumm has tried her hardest to give the actors things to work off of. The set is covered in a thick and dying soil, the backdrop is a stark blue sky, and the chains are real (even if the violence is choreographed). Mejra, when she is not chopping off Stetko's ears or yoking him to a giant till, is busy struggling to comprehend her prisoner, and Stetko is often laboring to carry heavy rocks or endure his mistress' harsh treatment of him. For all that action, the lines come out dusty as the stage's arid soil: Rohloff is unflinching even when told that his girlfriend has been killed and then raped. The closest he comes to emotion is in his full-bodied monologue while strapped to the chair, and later, when he tries to protect a rabbit he has befriended. As for Floyd, she is full of emotion, but suppresses too much of it. She is too harsh, too icy toward her prisoner--rather than leading him on with hope, there is little doubt in our minds that she plans to kill Stetko, and her constant imperatives are monotonous.
When the actor's habits happen to coincide with the message of the play, the show works most effectively: the opening is a real tightrope walk, and the excavation of the corpses is a high moment for off-Broadway theater. The text also features a glut of clever circumstances, like when Stetko is told that if he drops the boulder he is carrying anywhere but on his foot, she will bury him alive. His bitter defiance, even after he shatters his toes, is clever writing by any standard. The Monument may not stand tall in this production, but any ode to the victims of war--innocent and guilty alike--is better than none.
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Clurman Theater (410 West 42nd Street)
Tickets (212-279-4200): $25.00
Tuesday-Saturday @ 8:00 & Saturday @ 2:00
The Dirty Talk
Written by Michael PuzzoDirected by Padraic Lillis
Center Stage, 48 w 21st St
January 11th- Feb 4th
Reviewed by Jennifer Stackpole
As audience murmurs quieted, a sexy voice came over the sound system requesting cell phone silence. What were we getting into here? “The Dirty Talk”? The set factored heavily around a massive, rusticated waterbed, dead center, with what little room remaining host to unopened boxes, a TV topped with Playboy and Kama Sutra oil, a mounted deer head and a laptop, open and ready for business: a cabin in the middle of a rainstorm, where two strangers seem trapped.
Mitch, a tough NJ guy--Tony Soprano if he were just another PBR-drinking middle of the road American--is very upset by the presence of Lino, rosy cheeked, mustachioed, and meek--Ned Flanders if he were a bisexual chatroom junky. Mitch rails and rails, attempting to hold his masculinity against this effeminate man who has invaded his trust; seems he was expecting a buxom blonde and chatroom dealings gone awry are to blame.
The fast-paced dialogue is peppered with wit and the timing was impeccable. The characters themselves, acted with complete commitment and sympathy by Kevin Cristaldi (Lino) and Sidney Williams (Mitch), were played without stereotype; in justifying their online dealings each character reveals their complexity, and a relationship of understanding develops. What brought them each to the chatroom shows the possibility of anonymous hope and maybe even healing in chance meetings. Though Mitch finally comes to the definite opinion that it is just plain creepy, Lino is all the more secure in his internet pursuits, recognizing the arena as his only comfortable interaction with the world--his chance to meet a fellow dreamer.
Takes all kinds; this in mind, I did find the play itself a little monotonous, much like a moralizing after-school special for grownups, the bullies and the bullied equally human and vulnerable. Regardless, it remained entertaining: expertly written, directed (Padraic Lillis), and acted.
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Monument
A brutal soldier is brutalized for his war crimes in this appropriately grim and morally complex two-hander.
Ramona Floyd and Jay Rohloff in The Monument. Photo: Anthony Collins
Reviewed by Patrick Lee
In an unnamed country following a brutal genocidal war, an unrepentant soldier (responsible for nearly two dozen rape-murders) is given a choice by a mysterious woman: either he agrees to do whatever she says for the rest of his life, or he faces execution for his warcrimes. Almost as soon as he agrees to her bargain, she chops off his ear. Thus begins Colleen Wagner's The Monument, a grim and bracing two-hander which has been given a spare, intense production by the Clockwork Theatre Company.
As the rapist-murderer becomes victim, the play (first presented in 1995) drives us to question when, and for what purpose, brutality is justified. When is the punishment no better than the crime? If that were all the play had on its mind, it would be derivative stuff, a less accomplished relation of plays like Death and the Maiden. Instead, Wagner's sobering play ups the ante at each turn with new moral complexities as the two characters continue to violently clash.
While the play is solidly structured and distinguished by its tough unsentimentality, the dialogue too often sounds authoral; the characters believably speak to each other a little less often than they make grand statements of the "war is no place for the innocent" variety. The result is a lack of nuance: the play's points are hit as if nails with a sledgehammer.
There's also an unfortunate predictability in the play's scheme which drains some of its power: it isn't hard to guess what Mejra, the mysterious woman, is ultimately after. It's a credit to the actress playing her (Ramona Floyd) that our attention is held despite this: she bites into her lines with a cold ferocity that reveals the character's suppressed rage, giving the play its primary tension. When she is called upon to express a moment of profound grief, the depth of her anguish is chilling even though we saw it coming in advance. As the soldier, Jay Rohloff impressively finds the traumatized wounded soul of his war-damaged character.
The grave, high-stakes clash between these two characters is a grim reminder that the hell of war continues on when war ends.
Clurman Theatre (410 W 42nd Street)
Tickets (212-279-4200): $25.00
Performances: Tue - Sat at 8pm; Sat at 2pm; plus Jan 21 at 2 pm & 7pm, Jan 28 at 2pm
Ramona Floyd and Jay Rohloff in The Monument. Photo: Anthony CollinsReviewed by Patrick Lee
In an unnamed country following a brutal genocidal war, an unrepentant soldier (responsible for nearly two dozen rape-murders) is given a choice by a mysterious woman: either he agrees to do whatever she says for the rest of his life, or he faces execution for his warcrimes. Almost as soon as he agrees to her bargain, she chops off his ear. Thus begins Colleen Wagner's The Monument, a grim and bracing two-hander which has been given a spare, intense production by the Clockwork Theatre Company.
As the rapist-murderer becomes victim, the play (first presented in 1995) drives us to question when, and for what purpose, brutality is justified. When is the punishment no better than the crime? If that were all the play had on its mind, it would be derivative stuff, a less accomplished relation of plays like Death and the Maiden. Instead, Wagner's sobering play ups the ante at each turn with new moral complexities as the two characters continue to violently clash.
While the play is solidly structured and distinguished by its tough unsentimentality, the dialogue too often sounds authoral; the characters believably speak to each other a little less often than they make grand statements of the "war is no place for the innocent" variety. The result is a lack of nuance: the play's points are hit as if nails with a sledgehammer.
There's also an unfortunate predictability in the play's scheme which drains some of its power: it isn't hard to guess what Mejra, the mysterious woman, is ultimately after. It's a credit to the actress playing her (Ramona Floyd) that our attention is held despite this: she bites into her lines with a cold ferocity that reveals the character's suppressed rage, giving the play its primary tension. When she is called upon to express a moment of profound grief, the depth of her anguish is chilling even though we saw it coming in advance. As the soldier, Jay Rohloff impressively finds the traumatized wounded soul of his war-damaged character.
The grave, high-stakes clash between these two characters is a grim reminder that the hell of war continues on when war ends.
Clurman Theatre (410 W 42nd Street)
Tickets (212-279-4200): $25.00
Performances: Tue - Sat at 8pm; Sat at 2pm; plus Jan 21 at 2 pm & 7pm, Jan 28 at 2pm
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Greener Grasses....A play about Post-Traumatic Slave Disorder
A bold look at the African-American psyche, this ambitious drama forged on a modest budget lacks focus and precision, but is impassioned with a sense of black pride and hope.
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January 11th 2007- February 4th 2007 Thursday-Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 3:00 Theatre For The New City 155, 1st Avenue Special Performance Monday January 15th at 8:00 pm for Martin Luther King Junior’s Birthday. Tickets $15 per person: Available from www.theaterforthenewcity.net or at (212) 254-1109.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
Written and directed by Sabura Rashid, Greener Grasses explores racial anxieties with some dramatic clutter. Although modestly profound in certain respects, it is tarnished by tangled sub-plots and too many characters.
Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
Written and directed by Sabura Rashid, Greener Grasses explores racial anxieties with some dramatic clutter. Although modestly profound in certain respects, it is tarnished by tangled sub-plots and too many characters.
Two cultural settings, nineteenth-century slave quarters and a twenty-first-century urban neighborhood, coexist on stage, with a slave auction relevant to both periods serving as the partition. Is it a bridge or is it a gulf? Neither. The slave auction is an anvil, both to the detriment of the African-American consciousness and to the structure of this drama. Rashid aims to get to the root of destructive African-American behavior by returning us to a time when the African sense of pride was attacked and mutilated, creating the misinformed, lazy perspective that permeates black culture today. She targets slavery, or rather, the slave mentality, as the catalyst for this dissonance. Through visuals, she deftly presents dignity and self-awareness as emblems that, once ravaged by slavery, are now freely given away by young black men and women. Her assessments are as potent as those of a psychologist: for example, that the oppressed sometimes assume the same characteristics of the oppressor. However, the narrative is often chaotic and needs clearer lines.
Rashid uses monologue in the opening sequences to demonstrate how--in hue, outlook and diligence--black people's desires have lightened over the centuries. What white men have initiated, black men have sustained and allowed to rip through their unity. These monologues, though pertinent, suffer from too many trite phrases that should have been edited. They duel with the slave exhibit in the foreground of the stage, and lose. This lack of focus does harm to what is arguably a poem to the black community.
Four slave archetypes, still prevalent in today's black society, are examined: the newly uprooted, the defiant, the scared, and the brainwashed. It is here that black-on-black crimes are also introduced. Using a split-stage technique popularized by film, Rashid cleverly presents some of those same characters in a modern, junior high-school setting. It is here that the problems with educating black youth are discussed. That George W. Bush's likeness is prominently displayed in the center of this setting is a silent finger on the holes of his "no-child left behind" program.
The technical segues into different eras and subplots need to be crisper, and the cast would benefit from more overt direction. Violent moments were often nonsensical, poorly choreographed, and jammed in like the wrong jigsaw piece. Anachronism, too: modern inventions, such as a set of headphones (not invented until the 1930s) on the head of a "pickaninny."
The play also suffers from a large cast: the presence of several characters played by Kennitta Lindsey and April McCants could have been omitted. As the sole Caucasian actor, Bill Weeden's poorly applied facial hair and makeup is as distracting as his fumbling speeches. Lisa Roxanne Walters's Ms Padget is a Nubian queen in need of Sista Souljah, and her performance as Abigail is flaccid. Although Rebecca Thomas's Principal Frost and Mrs. Achebe are excessive, her Sharon Robinson is fiery and right on the nose. Chiquita Camille and Thyais Walsh, Maggie and Martha respectively, shine as slave sisters bonded by misery and hope.
Greener Grasses does not lack for potential or influence. It is emotionally charged and laden with social parallels that are clever and challenging to the theatergoer. There is some startling imagery, good songs, and occasionally, a potent line of dialog that lassos you back to Rashid's original intent: a rise, not to arms, but rather to action and to a dream for re-assembling what was stolen. As in the adage, "the grass is always greener on the other side", Rashid's purpose is to let black people know that it may be greener than enslavement and the Jim Crow era, but much can and still needs to be accomplished. It is the modern black person's responsibility to shoulder their ancestor's dreams, and realize them both in mind and body. Although heavily doused in tragedy and pain, black history has had some triumphs, and Rashid calls for the pursuit of more.
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January 11th 2007- February 4th 2007 Thursday-Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 3:00 Theatre For The New City 155, 1st Avenue Special Performance Monday January 15th at 8:00 pm for Martin Luther King Junior’s Birthday. Tickets $15 per person: Available from www.theaterforthenewcity.net or at (212) 254-1109.
Macbeth: A Walking Shadow
An essential Shakespearian production, boiled down to its essence (and pared down to seventy-five minutes), this adaptation of Macbeth keeps the Bard's language, but heightens the haunting with a lot of clever direction from Andrew Frank and some excellent acting from the cast (led by Ato Essandoh).
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Soldiers turn into witches, dead men creep around, and Macbeth is trapped onstage, caught in a series of flashbacks e'en as he fights that epic battle with Macduff: this isn't your parents' Shakespeare. It's better. That's not knocking the elongated prose of the bard, but Andrew Frank and Doug Silver's new adaptation of Macbeth (here subtitled "A Walking Shadow"), has managed to emphasize the magnificent language by cutting out the majority of it. The scenes glide smoothly from one key moment to the next, whirling around a horrified Macbeth (the excellent Ato Essandoh), and showing, more than ever, how a heroic man becomes a despot. Politically resonant, emotionally relevant, and theatrically elegant, this new production of Macbeth needs to be seen. And at seventy-five minutes and only $18.00, you can even see it again and again.
Director Andrew Frank uses the intimate space of Manhattan Theater Source to mount an epic production, and succeeds, placing all the action on a narrow slab of stage between two rows of the audience. The action, long and narrow across that black strip, makes every scene into a fierce showdown, none stronger than the pivotal moment when the tempestuous Lady Macbeth (Celia Schaefer) convinces her husband to murder the fair King Duncan (Chuck Bunting). Schaefer's compelling performance is quiet at first, not manic, which gives her opportunity to build to a murderous pitch by her climactic "spot" speech. Better still, because Macbeth is condemned to remain on stage, seeing all that has led him to his bitter end, we can watch Essandoh's marvelous reaction to moments he would never actually witness in a more orthodox Shakespearean production.
But this is far from the Essandoh and Schaefer show, fabulous as both are. The cast is engaging and outstandingly clear, so much so that almost every line becomes quotable. Everything is so focused, so intense, that we cannot look away. And why would we want to? From Malcom's mournful anger (Michael Baldwin) to Banquo's loyal demeanor (Len Childers), there are plenty of nuanced performances to enjoy. James Edward Becton, cast in a melange of small roles (witch, soldier, and doctor), was the most captivating performer of the night, a man truly living his part.
T'would be a shame to miss this excellent production, nay, an unforgivable sin. I hope Frank and Silver will consider cutting some other Shakespearean plays: what they've created here is not only a flattering adaptation, but a short and sweet Macbeth that is as perfect for schools as it is for even the most grown-up, jaded audience.
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Manhattan Theater Source (177 MacDougal Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday-Saturday @ 8:00
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Soldiers turn into witches, dead men creep around, and Macbeth is trapped onstage, caught in a series of flashbacks e'en as he fights that epic battle with Macduff: this isn't your parents' Shakespeare. It's better. That's not knocking the elongated prose of the bard, but Andrew Frank and Doug Silver's new adaptation of Macbeth (here subtitled "A Walking Shadow"), has managed to emphasize the magnificent language by cutting out the majority of it. The scenes glide smoothly from one key moment to the next, whirling around a horrified Macbeth (the excellent Ato Essandoh), and showing, more than ever, how a heroic man becomes a despot. Politically resonant, emotionally relevant, and theatrically elegant, this new production of Macbeth needs to be seen. And at seventy-five minutes and only $18.00, you can even see it again and again.
Director Andrew Frank uses the intimate space of Manhattan Theater Source to mount an epic production, and succeeds, placing all the action on a narrow slab of stage between two rows of the audience. The action, long and narrow across that black strip, makes every scene into a fierce showdown, none stronger than the pivotal moment when the tempestuous Lady Macbeth (Celia Schaefer) convinces her husband to murder the fair King Duncan (Chuck Bunting). Schaefer's compelling performance is quiet at first, not manic, which gives her opportunity to build to a murderous pitch by her climactic "spot" speech. Better still, because Macbeth is condemned to remain on stage, seeing all that has led him to his bitter end, we can watch Essandoh's marvelous reaction to moments he would never actually witness in a more orthodox Shakespearean production.
But this is far from the Essandoh and Schaefer show, fabulous as both are. The cast is engaging and outstandingly clear, so much so that almost every line becomes quotable. Everything is so focused, so intense, that we cannot look away. And why would we want to? From Malcom's mournful anger (Michael Baldwin) to Banquo's loyal demeanor (Len Childers), there are plenty of nuanced performances to enjoy. James Edward Becton, cast in a melange of small roles (witch, soldier, and doctor), was the most captivating performer of the night, a man truly living his part.
T'would be a shame to miss this excellent production, nay, an unforgivable sin. I hope Frank and Silver will consider cutting some other Shakespearean plays: what they've created here is not only a flattering adaptation, but a short and sweet Macbeth that is as perfect for schools as it is for even the most grown-up, jaded audience.
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Manhattan Theater Source (177 MacDougal Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday-Saturday @ 8:00
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Israel Horovitz's New Shorts
Israel Horovitz is still hard at work, spinning nine new short yarns that look at character first, but with a nice flourish of comedy, a slice of sarcasm, and a slab of drama. They're not all perfect, but they're a well-rounded offering of a hard-working playwright's contributions to his field, and well worth seeing. Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Take the metaphor of "The Race" (one of the nine new playlets in Israel Horovitz's New Shorts) as a means of expressing this evening of theater. Nine actors, each running for their own reason (well, okay, one is just standing there) but united for a common cause. One's a twelve-year-old girl, exuberant but unpolished (like "Audition Play"), and one's a two-time champion, trying to outrun her own age. The pieces don't mesh together, nor should they: as is, they show the wry, comic sensibilities of their writer, Mr. Horovitz, and his range. "Affection in Time" could be Beckett, "Inconsolable" is stylized poetry, and "The Hotel Play" is classic Horovitz. Save for the wholly uneven "The Fat Guy Gets The Girl" and "The Bridal Dance," both of which try to hard to have a punchline, this is a theatrical anthology of one playwright's love of characters. Best of all, because the shows are swift, there's no room for exposition, and the plays are as distilled (though not as refined) as Line. There's a certain sort of thrill in seeing nine plays run by in one evening, each jockeying for your attention.
The cast is filled out by members of the Barefoot Theater Company and some other talented actors (like Lynn Cohen); the direction is deftly handled both by the writer and by Michael LoPorto. There's a potpourri of elements to each scene, but what's interesting is Horovitz flexing his comic impulses, even while burdened with the tragic. "Cat Lady" is the best of the pack, for while it is filled with double-takes and bad puns, the monologist is a person first, lonely and depressed. "The Hotel Play," which gets laughs from awkward misinterpretations, is ultimately about the same thing: two people, this time, each lost, but perhaps able to connect if they can let go of their masks.
The most relevant play, however, is the political piece, "Beirut Rocks," which begins as a conversation between two American students who meet during the evacuation of their overseas overseas school. These moments juxtapose the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, just outside, with the live feed Benjy (Christopher Whalen) is getting of Tiger Woods, a world away. It's the reverse of their normally sheltered American life, and what's more, their illusions are being shelled by US weapons. Before long, two more evacuees join them, including an Arab-American who, in living up to the antisemitic stereotype, surprises us with her fiery denouement.
That Horovitz, after so many plays, can still seem fresh, young, and fierce is not surprising. But it is refreshingly satisfying to see, much like this collection of short plays.
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Kirk Theater (410 West 42nd)
Tickets (212-279-4200): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday - Saturday @ 8:00/Sunday @ 3:00
Macbeth
Finally, a traditional production of The Scottish Play that manages to feel surprisingly young, spry and good as new. If only poor Banquo could say the same.
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
Macbeth. There. I’ve said it. Aloud. So once every last one of you theater-lovers has finished walking in circles and spitting in doorways so ghosts do not haunt your opening nights and unwrap noisy otherworldly candies through your recognition and reversal monologues, perhaps we can just sit down like normal well-adjusted adults and talk about The Scottish Play.
Done?
Wonderful, because the New York Actor’s Ensemble’s current production of Macbeth is worth talking about. There are no gimmicks in this show, no single-gender casting, WWII updating or disco interludes – this here is pure Shakespeare. Very little text was cut, yet somehow the play whizzes by, action-packed, seamless, and vastly entertaining. Of course, there are bumps along the way, but, on the whole, NYAE’s Macbeth was what our professors always told us Shakespeare should be -- riveting, gross, raunchy, insightful and very entertaining.
Of course, our anti-hero Macbeth (played by the excellently on point David M. Mead) does the same thing he always does (next time, just ignore the Weird Sisters!), but Mead brings a approachable just-your-average-guy quality to the role. This is a Macbeth who snuggles up in his new royal robe when no one else is watching – the snuggle lasts only a simple split second, but it subtly expresses both the satisfaction he must be feeling and the intense insecurity. This Macbeth is understandable and relatable – two very welcome attributes in any Shakespearean production. Mead encourages our compassion through these small human gestures, yet isn’t afraid to make us recoil; whether blood-stained and searching for that sticking point or ranting over the now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t Banquo, Mead’s Macbeth somehow holds strong as the center of this play’s success, even as the character himself unravels into tragedy.
Kenneth Cavett, taking on the role of Banquo, also presents a stunningly complex and sympathetic character, though, granted, it is much easier to be Mr. Popular when you’re discovering the murderer instead of wielding the gory blade yourself. Still, Cavett’s Banquo is the early pulse behind the show, stirring the demons in Macbeth long before Banquo suspects there is anything to fear, jumping around with childish excitement at the Weirds’ mere mention of “king.” Together, Cavett and Mead keep the production moving, leaving the audience rapt up in the action, of course, but far more impressively, in the language as well.
The same cannot, unfortunately, be said of Lady Macbeth, played by the chiseled-featured Susan Angelo. Lady Macbeth is indeed the pinnacle of the complicated female, so one can’t blame Angelo too much. However, why is it that almost all actors playing Lady Macbeth play her with the mannerisms and facial expressions of a drag queen taking the stage after five too many daiquiris? It’s the Blanche DuBois Dilemma – when an actress starts crazy in Act One, where’ll she go for Act Five? Sure, she can always make the jump from crazy to crazier, but with Lady Macbeth, that’s just spitting in one enormous blood-red ocean.
On the topic of enormity, the stage is, well, not. And while the size of the performance space shouldn’t make or break an otherwise rewarding production, when the play is Macbeth and the first scene involves a bevy of men stage-fighting in multi-colored plaid skirts, size does matter when the kingdom in contention is roughly the size of a New York City kitchen. Furthermore, when the show’s set is a miniature version of Stonehenge, it’s only natural for This is Spinal Tap to pop into my mind. And, call me as crazy as Lady Macbeth, but when I go out for a little high culture, the last thing I want on my mind is a trio of dancing midgets.
Overall, though, Macbeth is an exciting production, entirely worth both your time and your superstitious spits (just not on the teeny tiny stage, please; you might flood Stonehenge).
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The WorkShop Theater (312 W 36th Street, 4th Floor)
Tickets (212-695-4173 x5 or www.macbeth2007.com): $18 general, $10 students and seniors
Performances: January 5th through January 21st, Wednesdays through Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 1pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 4pm.
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
Macbeth. There. I’ve said it. Aloud. So once every last one of you theater-lovers has finished walking in circles and spitting in doorways so ghosts do not haunt your opening nights and unwrap noisy otherworldly candies through your recognition and reversal monologues, perhaps we can just sit down like normal well-adjusted adults and talk about The Scottish Play.
Done?
Wonderful, because the New York Actor’s Ensemble’s current production of Macbeth is worth talking about. There are no gimmicks in this show, no single-gender casting, WWII updating or disco interludes – this here is pure Shakespeare. Very little text was cut, yet somehow the play whizzes by, action-packed, seamless, and vastly entertaining. Of course, there are bumps along the way, but, on the whole, NYAE’s Macbeth was what our professors always told us Shakespeare should be -- riveting, gross, raunchy, insightful and very entertaining.
Of course, our anti-hero Macbeth (played by the excellently on point David M. Mead) does the same thing he always does (next time, just ignore the Weird Sisters!), but Mead brings a approachable just-your-average-guy quality to the role. This is a Macbeth who snuggles up in his new royal robe when no one else is watching – the snuggle lasts only a simple split second, but it subtly expresses both the satisfaction he must be feeling and the intense insecurity. This Macbeth is understandable and relatable – two very welcome attributes in any Shakespearean production. Mead encourages our compassion through these small human gestures, yet isn’t afraid to make us recoil; whether blood-stained and searching for that sticking point or ranting over the now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t Banquo, Mead’s Macbeth somehow holds strong as the center of this play’s success, even as the character himself unravels into tragedy.
Kenneth Cavett, taking on the role of Banquo, also presents a stunningly complex and sympathetic character, though, granted, it is much easier to be Mr. Popular when you’re discovering the murderer instead of wielding the gory blade yourself. Still, Cavett’s Banquo is the early pulse behind the show, stirring the demons in Macbeth long before Banquo suspects there is anything to fear, jumping around with childish excitement at the Weirds’ mere mention of “king.” Together, Cavett and Mead keep the production moving, leaving the audience rapt up in the action, of course, but far more impressively, in the language as well.
The same cannot, unfortunately, be said of Lady Macbeth, played by the chiseled-featured Susan Angelo. Lady Macbeth is indeed the pinnacle of the complicated female, so one can’t blame Angelo too much. However, why is it that almost all actors playing Lady Macbeth play her with the mannerisms and facial expressions of a drag queen taking the stage after five too many daiquiris? It’s the Blanche DuBois Dilemma – when an actress starts crazy in Act One, where’ll she go for Act Five? Sure, she can always make the jump from crazy to crazier, but with Lady Macbeth, that’s just spitting in one enormous blood-red ocean.
On the topic of enormity, the stage is, well, not. And while the size of the performance space shouldn’t make or break an otherwise rewarding production, when the play is Macbeth and the first scene involves a bevy of men stage-fighting in multi-colored plaid skirts, size does matter when the kingdom in contention is roughly the size of a New York City kitchen. Furthermore, when the show’s set is a miniature version of Stonehenge, it’s only natural for This is Spinal Tap to pop into my mind. And, call me as crazy as Lady Macbeth, but when I go out for a little high culture, the last thing I want on my mind is a trio of dancing midgets.
Overall, though, Macbeth is an exciting production, entirely worth both your time and your superstitious spits (just not on the teeny tiny stage, please; you might flood Stonehenge).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The WorkShop Theater (312 W 36th Street, 4th Floor)
Tickets (212-695-4173 x5 or www.macbeth2007.com): $18 general, $10 students and seniors
Performances: January 5th through January 21st, Wednesdays through Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 1pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 4pm.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Linnea
A stripper, complete with a heart of gold and two dueling suitors, brings Dostoevsky’s The Idiot into 1990s East Village street life – but what else is new?
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
There are a couple of ways to pass English Lit your senior year of high school – you can 1. read the books and take a plethora of margin notes in your extra-special lucky ballpoint pen; 2. check out sparknotes.com and hope that the poor starving college grad who penned the synopsis wasn’t feeling maliciously inaccurate that night; or 3. frequent that certain type of Off-Broadway show that gets its theatrical rocks off by mirroring the classics in an entirely self-conscious and clearly underlined way. If you choose number 3, well grab your Kipling sac and head for The Storm Theater’s world premier production of Linnea.
Now, before I sound too snooty, keep in mind that I am a big literature fan. True, I find those turn of the century Russians mighty depressing – but any play that adds to my knowledge of novels is okay by me. And, in that sense, Linnea certainly fits the bill. After surviving a full semester struggling through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I would never (never!) willingly pick up The Idiot on a whim. Linnea however, absolves me of my aversion to this fruit of epileptic genius – the show tells a modern-day version of the classic Dostoevsky story – and how!
Danny, played by a nearly Pollyanna-esque Joshua Vasquez, serves as a 20th century Myshkin, exemplifying kindness, analytical reason and compassion, while Cody, played by a charismatically hulking (if such a thing is possible) Jamil Mena, updates the role of Rogozhin, who in turn personifies all that is hyper-sexual, brutishly lusty and a enjoyable on a Friday night after a pint or two at Mars Bar.
Danny and Cody first meet in a pub, and the two hit it off disconcertingly well – if this is Alphabet City in 1993, I don’t see what Jonathan Larson (let alone NYC’s immense homeless population) was getting all worked up about. This Big Apple is so friendly it forces me to query why anyone would ever want to riot in Tompkins Park. In the disconcertingly rose-tinted eyes of Linnea playwright John Regis, these rabble-rousers should have all just shared a drink, a childhood story, and good joke instead of throwing stones and storming the police force. Who knows; in Regis's pinkeyed perspective maybe a simple tea party with doilies would have sufficed…
Regardless of the eerily sociable nature of the East Village residents (even a homeless man jokes around for spare change and – get this – seems just as happy when no coin is forthcoming), the play darkens into a story of betrayal and competition as Cody and Danny fall in love with the same woman, a stripper named Linnea (played by the limber and lovely Benita Robledo).
I feel I should mention that Linnea is performed in a church located right off Broadway. I say this now because only in a house of God would a stripper (albeit one with a heart of gold, of course) fall in love with a customer (or better yet, even, with two!). Awesome.
However, as sweet as a stripper love story can be, Linnea quickly sours -- while the acting is servicable and the production elements (lighting, staging, and sets) are impressibly effective, the play itself is as devoid of subtext and spark as a Times Square hooker circa 1993. It takes a lot for me to say this, but, despite his allusions to granduer, John Regis doesn't begin to measure up to the man behind The Idiot. Regis bites off more than he can chew and, in this play it seems, speaks with his mouth full. It's too bad he had to make such bald allusions to a work of genius. While I may not love my Dostoevsky, I respect him, and flaws that may be forgivable in an original production become unforgettable in a play that insists on underlying its laughably lofty aspirations.
Still, if you prefer your Dostoevsky distilled and modernized, Linnea will surely do the trick, and will do so with far less complicated character names. Linnea is also worth seeing for its high production value – the lighting in this show is beautiful and its visuals really impress upon the audience just how gritty this nice little city used to be, even if the dialogue doesn’t quite drive that same point home.
I recommend Linnea as a nice addition to the sub-genre of New York plays that deal with the good old days of extremely intimidating East Village street life (see also: Larson’s Rent and Jose Rivera’s stunningly apocalyptic Marisol). And if you’ve got those mid-terms looming and for some odd reason you’ve mistakenly assumed pre-Revolution Russian Lit would be an easy A, well, Linnea’s got a heart of gold for you too!
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The Storm Theater (St. Mary’s, 145 W 46th Street)
Tickets (www.stormtheater.com): $18.00
Performances: January 11th through February 3rd, Thursdays through Fridays at 7:30pm and Saturdays at 2pm and 7:30pm.
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
There are a couple of ways to pass English Lit your senior year of high school – you can 1. read the books and take a plethora of margin notes in your extra-special lucky ballpoint pen; 2. check out sparknotes.com and hope that the poor starving college grad who penned the synopsis wasn’t feeling maliciously inaccurate that night; or 3. frequent that certain type of Off-Broadway show that gets its theatrical rocks off by mirroring the classics in an entirely self-conscious and clearly underlined way. If you choose number 3, well grab your Kipling sac and head for The Storm Theater’s world premier production of Linnea.
Now, before I sound too snooty, keep in mind that I am a big literature fan. True, I find those turn of the century Russians mighty depressing – but any play that adds to my knowledge of novels is okay by me. And, in that sense, Linnea certainly fits the bill. After surviving a full semester struggling through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I would never (never!) willingly pick up The Idiot on a whim. Linnea however, absolves me of my aversion to this fruit of epileptic genius – the show tells a modern-day version of the classic Dostoevsky story – and how!
Danny, played by a nearly Pollyanna-esque Joshua Vasquez, serves as a 20th century Myshkin, exemplifying kindness, analytical reason and compassion, while Cody, played by a charismatically hulking (if such a thing is possible) Jamil Mena, updates the role of Rogozhin, who in turn personifies all that is hyper-sexual, brutishly lusty and a enjoyable on a Friday night after a pint or two at Mars Bar.
Danny and Cody first meet in a pub, and the two hit it off disconcertingly well – if this is Alphabet City in 1993, I don’t see what Jonathan Larson (let alone NYC’s immense homeless population) was getting all worked up about. This Big Apple is so friendly it forces me to query why anyone would ever want to riot in Tompkins Park. In the disconcertingly rose-tinted eyes of Linnea playwright John Regis, these rabble-rousers should have all just shared a drink, a childhood story, and good joke instead of throwing stones and storming the police force. Who knows; in Regis's pinkeyed perspective maybe a simple tea party with doilies would have sufficed…
Regardless of the eerily sociable nature of the East Village residents (even a homeless man jokes around for spare change and – get this – seems just as happy when no coin is forthcoming), the play darkens into a story of betrayal and competition as Cody and Danny fall in love with the same woman, a stripper named Linnea (played by the limber and lovely Benita Robledo).
I feel I should mention that Linnea is performed in a church located right off Broadway. I say this now because only in a house of God would a stripper (albeit one with a heart of gold, of course) fall in love with a customer (or better yet, even, with two!). Awesome.
However, as sweet as a stripper love story can be, Linnea quickly sours -- while the acting is servicable and the production elements (lighting, staging, and sets) are impressibly effective, the play itself is as devoid of subtext and spark as a Times Square hooker circa 1993. It takes a lot for me to say this, but, despite his allusions to granduer, John Regis doesn't begin to measure up to the man behind The Idiot. Regis bites off more than he can chew and, in this play it seems, speaks with his mouth full. It's too bad he had to make such bald allusions to a work of genius. While I may not love my Dostoevsky, I respect him, and flaws that may be forgivable in an original production become unforgettable in a play that insists on underlying its laughably lofty aspirations.
Still, if you prefer your Dostoevsky distilled and modernized, Linnea will surely do the trick, and will do so with far less complicated character names. Linnea is also worth seeing for its high production value – the lighting in this show is beautiful and its visuals really impress upon the audience just how gritty this nice little city used to be, even if the dialogue doesn’t quite drive that same point home.
I recommend Linnea as a nice addition to the sub-genre of New York plays that deal with the good old days of extremely intimidating East Village street life (see also: Larson’s Rent and Jose Rivera’s stunningly apocalyptic Marisol). And if you’ve got those mid-terms looming and for some odd reason you’ve mistakenly assumed pre-Revolution Russian Lit would be an easy A, well, Linnea’s got a heart of gold for you too!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Storm Theater (St. Mary’s, 145 W 46th Street)
Tickets (www.stormtheater.com): $18.00
Performances: January 11th through February 3rd, Thursdays through Fridays at 7:30pm and Saturdays at 2pm and 7:30pm.
The Germans in Paris
You can do a lot with a set consisting of only three doors and whatever else is brought on stage, but no matter how delightful the scenery, if the characters start to seem like entertaining props, there's a problem. The Germans in Paris is a smooth show with likable actors, but the script is too stiff to flow: it looks and sounds good, but keeps tripping up the narrative.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Reviewed by Aaron RiccioJonathan Leaf's play, The Germans in Paris, has two duels, three revolutionaries, and an adulterous love affair. For all that, it comes across more as a comedy than a serious play, and on top of that, as more of an intelligent play than a rip-roarer. The lines are clever, but often come across as dry or artificial, and the plot's distracted narrative never picks up enough speed for a climax or a denouement. There is much to admire in Leaf's play, for the performances are still sincere and full-bodied and their costumes are as rich as the play wishes to be, but his vision of 1840's France is strikingly out of focus.
First off, the story revolves around Heinrich Heine, who may be a poet in real life, but is here portrayed as a smug, pinched, and pared aristocrat (even though he is written as a womanizing socialite). Jon Krupp is engaging in the role, but far from poetic in his language or carriage. Rather, he makes Heine sullen and untouchable: when he gets into a duel with the bellicose Solomon Strauss he seems almost apathetic; after being shot, he laughs and fires his own gun into the air. It's the way we would expect the more lively character, Karl Marx, to act; instead, Marx comes off as an arrogant, self-serving man, filled so much with revolutionary fervor that he scarcely knows how to care for his own family, let alone fight his own duels. Leaf's script makes the likable Ross Beschler portray Marx as a villain and the reserved Krupp's Heine into a hero, and The Germans in Paris, like its title, works best as a fine display of paradox.
What Leaf has done, and what I fear director James Milton only emphasizes, is to wrap this paradox not in a riddle or an enigma, but in the cloying, bumbling presence of Richard Wagner, a role hammed up by Brian Wallace. Wagner has little to offer the play in terms of ideas -- the character is an egotist, and spends most of his time talking about his struggles trying to publish music. Alone, Wagner's pitiable existence might make for an enjoyable farce, coupled with two other characters screaming for attention, his plight means little and, in fact, gets little attention from the writer or director. The only plot followed through on is that of Heine's affair with Mme. Morisot (a charming Angelica Torn); even his marriage to Mathilde (Kathryn Elisabeth Lawson) comes across as no more than dramatic effect.
It takes Tom Stoppard nine hours and three plays to tell the story of his Russian intellectuals in The Coast of Utopia, and while we can all aspire to do better than that, two hours is perhaps not enough time to do anything of great weight or import in The Germans in Paris.
-----------------------------------
The ArcLight Theater (152 W 71st Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday - Saturday @ 8:00
First off, the story revolves around Heinrich Heine, who may be a poet in real life, but is here portrayed as a smug, pinched, and pared aristocrat (even though he is written as a womanizing socialite). Jon Krupp is engaging in the role, but far from poetic in his language or carriage. Rather, he makes Heine sullen and untouchable: when he gets into a duel with the bellicose Solomon Strauss he seems almost apathetic; after being shot, he laughs and fires his own gun into the air. It's the way we would expect the more lively character, Karl Marx, to act; instead, Marx comes off as an arrogant, self-serving man, filled so much with revolutionary fervor that he scarcely knows how to care for his own family, let alone fight his own duels. Leaf's script makes the likable Ross Beschler portray Marx as a villain and the reserved Krupp's Heine into a hero, and The Germans in Paris, like its title, works best as a fine display of paradox.
What Leaf has done, and what I fear director James Milton only emphasizes, is to wrap this paradox not in a riddle or an enigma, but in the cloying, bumbling presence of Richard Wagner, a role hammed up by Brian Wallace. Wagner has little to offer the play in terms of ideas -- the character is an egotist, and spends most of his time talking about his struggles trying to publish music. Alone, Wagner's pitiable existence might make for an enjoyable farce, coupled with two other characters screaming for attention, his plight means little and, in fact, gets little attention from the writer or director. The only plot followed through on is that of Heine's affair with Mme. Morisot (a charming Angelica Torn); even his marriage to Mathilde (Kathryn Elisabeth Lawson) comes across as no more than dramatic effect.
It takes Tom Stoppard nine hours and three plays to tell the story of his Russian intellectuals in The Coast of Utopia, and while we can all aspire to do better than that, two hours is perhaps not enough time to do anything of great weight or import in The Germans in Paris.
-----------------------------------
The ArcLight Theater (152 W 71st Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday - Saturday @ 8:00
Monday, January 08, 2007
The Rapture Project
Puppets fighting for the political and religious future of Earth -- the stakes couldn't be any larger, the platform couldn't be any smaller. It's hard to see the message through all the chaos and the humor (intentional and otherwise), which makes The Rapture Project somewhat of a mess, but you can't say it's not an enjoyable, wacky mess.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
I dare you to tell me that watching puppets fight isn't the funniest thing you've ever seen (puppets do). Great Small Works's The Rapture Project goes one further than mere puppet action, though, when Susan Sontag gets the s#!t beat out of her by the devil. I'd say that it's just one of those plays, and chalk it up as a hip urban experience, but The Rapture Project tries too hard to also be a political play about Islamic fundamentalists and Christian zealots, not to mention a series of unsubtle vignettes on American corruption and global culture shock. Plots run as rampant as puppet strings, and there is little attempt made to blend things together. If anything, the ever-changing musical styles of the interludes just make things more divisive.
Now, chaos can be fun, as with a mass puppet melee set to excited shrieks of "Armageddon." And there are scenes of ephemeral beauty, as when a security-guard puppet flies off-stage, only for the roof's curtain to pull away to reveal him being transported through a black-and-white wonderland by four naked puppeteer "gods" as the rest of the cast hums a crescendoing series of notes. But the show is erratic and, like a jigsaw with missing pieces, starts to become more of an annoyance than an amusement. Luckily, the performance isn't much more than an hour, and it ends on a good-enough note that the work isn't soured by the rougher patches.
The concept, to revive the old Italian tradition of Orlando Furioso plays that brought Christian and Muslim violence to a head, is a good one, and very relevant today. But it's going to take more than the promising presence and premise of the female punk-rock militant Islamist, Rebeah, to break through to any audiences. The work needs to be developed, and the cuts between scenes need to do more than play with ethnic beats and post-hip spoken word to draw things together. At one point, pigeons fall from the sky, but we've only got blind faith (and a narrator) telling us that it's a sign of the apocalypse and the ensuing Rapture. The biblical flowchart surrounding the "stage" doesn't help much either -- it's Greek (or Latin) to me.
It's not that there's too much noise--the troupe's musical segments are polished blends of saxophone, tambourine, oboe, drum, and accordion--it's that there's no blending of those elements in the show itself. There's just a bunch of individual pieces that caterwaul their way to a decidedly unresolved finale. There are plenty of sight gags to make the play palatable, and there are those rare, truly enjoyable moments of total cohesion, but you won't leave the theater full of ideas, just with the image of puppets swinging their futile arms at one another.
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HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $20.00
Thurs.-Sat. @ 7:00 | Sat. @ 10:30p.m. | Sun. @ 2:00
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
I dare you to tell me that watching puppets fight isn't the funniest thing you've ever seen (puppets do). Great Small Works's The Rapture Project goes one further than mere puppet action, though, when Susan Sontag gets the s#!t beat out of her by the devil. I'd say that it's just one of those plays, and chalk it up as a hip urban experience, but The Rapture Project tries too hard to also be a political play about Islamic fundamentalists and Christian zealots, not to mention a series of unsubtle vignettes on American corruption and global culture shock. Plots run as rampant as puppet strings, and there is little attempt made to blend things together. If anything, the ever-changing musical styles of the interludes just make things more divisive.
Now, chaos can be fun, as with a mass puppet melee set to excited shrieks of "Armageddon." And there are scenes of ephemeral beauty, as when a security-guard puppet flies off-stage, only for the roof's curtain to pull away to reveal him being transported through a black-and-white wonderland by four naked puppeteer "gods" as the rest of the cast hums a crescendoing series of notes. But the show is erratic and, like a jigsaw with missing pieces, starts to become more of an annoyance than an amusement. Luckily, the performance isn't much more than an hour, and it ends on a good-enough note that the work isn't soured by the rougher patches.
The concept, to revive the old Italian tradition of Orlando Furioso plays that brought Christian and Muslim violence to a head, is a good one, and very relevant today. But it's going to take more than the promising presence and premise of the female punk-rock militant Islamist, Rebeah, to break through to any audiences. The work needs to be developed, and the cuts between scenes need to do more than play with ethnic beats and post-hip spoken word to draw things together. At one point, pigeons fall from the sky, but we've only got blind faith (and a narrator) telling us that it's a sign of the apocalypse and the ensuing Rapture. The biblical flowchart surrounding the "stage" doesn't help much either -- it's Greek (or Latin) to me.
It's not that there's too much noise--the troupe's musical segments are polished blends of saxophone, tambourine, oboe, drum, and accordion--it's that there's no blending of those elements in the show itself. There's just a bunch of individual pieces that caterwaul their way to a decidedly unresolved finale. There are plenty of sight gags to make the play palatable, and there are those rare, truly enjoyable moments of total cohesion, but you won't leave the theater full of ideas, just with the image of puppets swinging their futile arms at one another.
-------------------------------------------------
HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $20.00
Thurs.-Sat. @ 7:00 | Sat. @ 10:30p.m. | Sun. @ 2:00
The Rapture Project
The Rapture Project places the tangled debate between Fundamentalism and Tolerance in the hands of black-and-white-clad puppeteers, creating a fascinating and morally-nuanced play that leads us to read between the proscenium arches and wonder just who is pulling our strings after all.
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
“Rapture”, a Latin word, literally means “to be caught up or snatched away.” What better way to set the stage for a play about the End-Times and all thereafter than the use of puppetry? Bound as puppets are in their own strings, they only look alive when they are hovering hesitantly over seemingly solid ground. Furthermore, for the tangled dilemma that is Fundamentalism versus Tolerance, nothing beats an old-fashioned puppet show in metaphorical relevance or good clean fun.
Great Small Works, the Obie and Jim Henson Award winning collective of artists, was largely responsible for the revitalization of toy theater in New York City, bringing paper cut-outs, puppets and tiny proscenium arches to the city’s downtown and outer-borough theater scene. Now, at the HERE Arts Center this month, Great Small Works picks up the marionettes once again, and, with The Rapture Project, they have indeed got the world on a string.
The Rapture Project is an impressive undertaking, inspired by 19th century Sicilian puppet theater, 1920’s apocalyptic artwork, and the 1960’s hallucinations of San Francisco theater designer Jilala. The production combines music, puppets and live performances as a sort of 21st century anti-Revival.
Clearly made with a blue-state bent, The Rapture Project begins with a musical number, and the performers (GSW members John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, joined by Shane Baker, Andrea Lomanto and Jessica Lorence as actors/puppeteers and Jessica Lurie on sax) sing out a litany of their spiritual and all-too-secular grievances – one piece of the big complaining pie: “Locusts falling from the sky / Promotion went to the other guy.”
Soon the puppet show begins, and we are transported to a world “when times are scary and nothing seems just” where “you need answers, something you can trust.” In other, less metrical words, we are transported to a world of Fundamentalism, into its deepest ring, the ring of the Born-Again Christian and his God-driven quest to covert the heathen Muslims.
The Rapture Project presents a humorously tongue-in-cheek examination on the perversion of faith, satirically naming both Peace in the Middle East and decent dental care sacrilegious goals of the Anti-Christ. However, the play’s true intelligence and entertainment isn’t so much what is said (as by now most New Yorkers know the case against Bush and the Religious Right as well as Pinocchio knows the inside of a whale) but in who is speaking; out of the mouths of puppets and puppeteers hast The Rapture Project ordained strength against its enemies.
In a play so anti-Bush, it’s odd that most of The Rapture Project still works in binaries of Good and Evil. Yes, GSW’s Evil is not Bush’s Evil, but it is an Evil nonetheless – an Evil of intolerance, greed and violence. Perhaps moral ambivalence isn’t the best fit for toy theater, a genre most often used today by children acting out fairytales with paper dolls and brightly-hued pipecleaners – still, The Rapture Project persecutes the American Religious Right with the same fervor and delight Bush employs in his verbal attacks against Middle Eastern Muslims. The Creator’s hand alone transforms this show from a witty exercise in hypocrisy into a deeply thought provoking, morally nuanced and wholly fascinating production. No, that’s not God’s hand, but the hand of the Puppeteer.
The slight intrusion of a human arm in the upper corner of the proscenium arch; a puppeteer’s acknowledgment to the audience that two strings have tangled together; the finally removal of the stage’s top border, revealing the shoulders, arms and faces of the puppeteers themselves – all The Rapture Project’s self-conscious staging choices pull the attention off the literal and onto the bigger picture (not coincidentally, the most persuasive argument against Literal Christianity isn’t in any of the scripted, but in these staging choices and how they affect the tone of the show). Yes, the action of the play suggests the moral that “Fundamentalism = Evil, No Questions Asked,” but with the puppeteers visibly manipulating the puppets below, a second, far more interesting moral surfaces – the moral that simply binary systems (and all the stereotypes that arise from them) need to be deeply questioned as long as someone else is pulling the strings.
The Rapture Project sets out to cleave the universe into just another set of Right and Wrong – however, in the end, the show completely fails at that goal (thank God), and instead of a black and white morality tale, we are given an equivocal, debatable and dialogue-encouraging reflection of all our own political and social paradoxes, no strings attached.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
HERE Arts Center (145 6th Avenue between Spring and Broome Streets)
Tickets (212-352-3101 or www.here.org): $20
Performances: January 4th through 21st, Thursday and Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 7pm and 10:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reviewed by Cait Weiss
“Rapture”, a Latin word, literally means “to be caught up or snatched away.” What better way to set the stage for a play about the End-Times and all thereafter than the use of puppetry? Bound as puppets are in their own strings, they only look alive when they are hovering hesitantly over seemingly solid ground. Furthermore, for the tangled dilemma that is Fundamentalism versus Tolerance, nothing beats an old-fashioned puppet show in metaphorical relevance or good clean fun.
Great Small Works, the Obie and Jim Henson Award winning collective of artists, was largely responsible for the revitalization of toy theater in New York City, bringing paper cut-outs, puppets and tiny proscenium arches to the city’s downtown and outer-borough theater scene. Now, at the HERE Arts Center this month, Great Small Works picks up the marionettes once again, and, with The Rapture Project, they have indeed got the world on a string.
The Rapture Project is an impressive undertaking, inspired by 19th century Sicilian puppet theater, 1920’s apocalyptic artwork, and the 1960’s hallucinations of San Francisco theater designer Jilala. The production combines music, puppets and live performances as a sort of 21st century anti-Revival.
Clearly made with a blue-state bent, The Rapture Project begins with a musical number, and the performers (GSW members John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, joined by Shane Baker, Andrea Lomanto and Jessica Lorence as actors/puppeteers and Jessica Lurie on sax) sing out a litany of their spiritual and all-too-secular grievances – one piece of the big complaining pie: “Locusts falling from the sky / Promotion went to the other guy.”
Soon the puppet show begins, and we are transported to a world “when times are scary and nothing seems just” where “you need answers, something you can trust.” In other, less metrical words, we are transported to a world of Fundamentalism, into its deepest ring, the ring of the Born-Again Christian and his God-driven quest to covert the heathen Muslims.
The Rapture Project presents a humorously tongue-in-cheek examination on the perversion of faith, satirically naming both Peace in the Middle East and decent dental care sacrilegious goals of the Anti-Christ. However, the play’s true intelligence and entertainment isn’t so much what is said (as by now most New Yorkers know the case against Bush and the Religious Right as well as Pinocchio knows the inside of a whale) but in who is speaking; out of the mouths of puppets and puppeteers hast The Rapture Project ordained strength against its enemies.
In a play so anti-Bush, it’s odd that most of The Rapture Project still works in binaries of Good and Evil. Yes, GSW’s Evil is not Bush’s Evil, but it is an Evil nonetheless – an Evil of intolerance, greed and violence. Perhaps moral ambivalence isn’t the best fit for toy theater, a genre most often used today by children acting out fairytales with paper dolls and brightly-hued pipecleaners – still, The Rapture Project persecutes the American Religious Right with the same fervor and delight Bush employs in his verbal attacks against Middle Eastern Muslims. The Creator’s hand alone transforms this show from a witty exercise in hypocrisy into a deeply thought provoking, morally nuanced and wholly fascinating production. No, that’s not God’s hand, but the hand of the Puppeteer.
The slight intrusion of a human arm in the upper corner of the proscenium arch; a puppeteer’s acknowledgment to the audience that two strings have tangled together; the finally removal of the stage’s top border, revealing the shoulders, arms and faces of the puppeteers themselves – all The Rapture Project’s self-conscious staging choices pull the attention off the literal and onto the bigger picture (not coincidentally, the most persuasive argument against Literal Christianity isn’t in any of the scripted, but in these staging choices and how they affect the tone of the show). Yes, the action of the play suggests the moral that “Fundamentalism = Evil, No Questions Asked,” but with the puppeteers visibly manipulating the puppets below, a second, far more interesting moral surfaces – the moral that simply binary systems (and all the stereotypes that arise from them) need to be deeply questioned as long as someone else is pulling the strings.
The Rapture Project sets out to cleave the universe into just another set of Right and Wrong – however, in the end, the show completely fails at that goal (thank God), and instead of a black and white morality tale, we are given an equivocal, debatable and dialogue-encouraging reflection of all our own political and social paradoxes, no strings attached.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
HERE Arts Center (145 6th Avenue between Spring and Broome Streets)
Tickets (212-352-3101 or www.here.org): $20
Performances: January 4th through 21st, Thursday and Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 7pm and 10:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
The Country Wife
The Country Wife is anything but rustic: this revitalized production is crammed with sex, schemes, swords, and stupid people. Nothing's confusing, nor is it dull -- this is top-notch physical and wittical comedy, with high Off-Off-Broadway production values to back up and emphasize every over-the-top situation.
Clockwise from UL: Janna Kefalas, Richard Haratine, Laura LeBleu,
Kristin Price, and Linda Jones. Photo Courtesy: Sergio Reynoso
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Restoration comedy is a moniker that might chase away some audiences, conjuring up images of Shakespearian prose and dainty outfits rather than bawdy plots and hilarious farce. So let's call a fop a fop and cut to the chase of this excellent production by the HoNkBarK! Theater company: The Country Wife is a sex comedy, complete with bold double entendre, like a scene in which the supposed eunuch Horner (just faking it so that men will trust him with their wives) pounds Lady Fidget's “china” while her husband, the aged Sir Jasper Fidget, and Old Lady Squeamish laugh unknowingly to themselves.
Whether it's the outstanding cast, the fantastic portrait-gallery set, or their delightfully colored velvet robes, stockings, and beribboned shoes (and that's just the men!), this 1675 play hasn't aged a day, and actually has the added humor of watching a historical sexcapade from our modern perspective. John Ficarra, who keeps the pace brisk for this three-hour show, has worked in plenty of physical comedy too, playing with the tropes of caricature in the oblivious Sparkish (a fantastic Brian Linden) and the signature repetitions of the (rightfully) jealous Mr. Pinchwife and his innocent country wife, Mrs. Margery Pinchwife.
The play steals from Moliere, but more in the traditional homage of the time than a plagiarist's intent, and I'd love to see the exceedingly talented Ray Rodriguez and Kristin Price go on to star in A School for Wives. That's a specific example, but the whole cast knows how to keep classical theater alive: their lines are more baroque than our modern argot, but their actions are direct and to the point. Take for example one of the three plots: Harcourt (Steve Kuhel) finds that the best way to seduce Sparkish's wife-to-be, Alithea, is to let the fool help him. Alithea's misplaced honesty to her fiancee forces Harcourt to be as quick with his tongue as he is on his feet, and there's not a twisted line of logic from his mouth that can't be followed by the audience.
The bottom line is that The Country Wife is filled with men of wit and women of fancy, and as the show builds to a satisfying collision of plotlines, you can't help being giddy with the delight of being swept off your feet. Not many Off-Off-Broadway productions feature such high production values, casting standards, and entertaining scripts: I advise you to rush to the country before it's too late.
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McGinn/Cazale Theater (2162 Broadway)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $17.00
Thursday - Saturday @ 8:00 Sunday @ 6:00
Clockwise from UL: Janna Kefalas, Richard Haratine, Laura LeBleu,
Kristin Price, and Linda Jones. Photo Courtesy: Sergio Reynoso
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Restoration comedy is a moniker that might chase away some audiences, conjuring up images of Shakespearian prose and dainty outfits rather than bawdy plots and hilarious farce. So let's call a fop a fop and cut to the chase of this excellent production by the HoNkBarK! Theater company: The Country Wife is a sex comedy, complete with bold double entendre, like a scene in which the supposed eunuch Horner (just faking it so that men will trust him with their wives) pounds Lady Fidget's “china” while her husband, the aged Sir Jasper Fidget, and Old Lady Squeamish laugh unknowingly to themselves.
Whether it's the outstanding cast, the fantastic portrait-gallery set, or their delightfully colored velvet robes, stockings, and beribboned shoes (and that's just the men!), this 1675 play hasn't aged a day, and actually has the added humor of watching a historical sexcapade from our modern perspective. John Ficarra, who keeps the pace brisk for this three-hour show, has worked in plenty of physical comedy too, playing with the tropes of caricature in the oblivious Sparkish (a fantastic Brian Linden) and the signature repetitions of the (rightfully) jealous Mr. Pinchwife and his innocent country wife, Mrs. Margery Pinchwife.
The play steals from Moliere, but more in the traditional homage of the time than a plagiarist's intent, and I'd love to see the exceedingly talented Ray Rodriguez and Kristin Price go on to star in A School for Wives. That's a specific example, but the whole cast knows how to keep classical theater alive: their lines are more baroque than our modern argot, but their actions are direct and to the point. Take for example one of the three plots: Harcourt (Steve Kuhel) finds that the best way to seduce Sparkish's wife-to-be, Alithea, is to let the fool help him. Alithea's misplaced honesty to her fiancee forces Harcourt to be as quick with his tongue as he is on his feet, and there's not a twisted line of logic from his mouth that can't be followed by the audience.
The bottom line is that The Country Wife is filled with men of wit and women of fancy, and as the show builds to a satisfying collision of plotlines, you can't help being giddy with the delight of being swept off your feet. Not many Off-Off-Broadway productions feature such high production values, casting standards, and entertaining scripts: I advise you to rush to the country before it's too late.
-------------------------------------------
McGinn/Cazale Theater (2162 Broadway)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $17.00
Thursday - Saturday @ 8:00 Sunday @ 6:00
Saturday, December 23, 2006
A Crazy Sound
The strongest moments of “A Crazy Sound” lie in exploring the unconventional sounds of an insane asylum, those that cannot be contained or expressed in the light of day. Yet the play quickly devolves into a traditional theatrical form, stunting Dario D’Ambrosi’s promising premise and opening scene.
Reviewed by Jessica Freeman-Slade
The inmates of “A Crazy Sound” (from left to right: Meredith Summers, Celeste Moratti, Lucy Alibar, Emma Lynn Worth, Kat Yew, Sheila Dabney.)
Credit: Jonathan Slaff.
Like all good experimental theatre, Dario D’Ambrosi’s “A Crazy Sound” begins in the near-dark. The bareness of the LaMama warehouse annex provides the perfect setting for six women curled beneath white hospital sheets, as a nun recites the Hail Mary up and down the corridor. The sleeping bodies soon pick up the recitation, and the audience is drawn into the possibility that finding this sound beautiful and incomprehensible insinuates that we are the ones made “crazy” by staying to listen to this sound. The opening five-minute sequence, modeled on D’Ambrosi’s observations from a stint in a psychiatric hospital in Milan, embraces all the possibilities of the term “experimental” and truly hooks the audience.
Yet when the lights come up, you are saddened by their return. The women’s vocalizations of their experiences turn trite when they are forced into the realm of regularly paced exposition, from the most benign (Lucy Alibar, exacting hilarious vengeance on a cheating husband) to the most grotesque (Celeste Moratti, counting and muttering as she limps around the hospital floor.) Songs from the inmates punctuate the story, and the plainness of the melodies becomes gratingly mundane when compared to the opening sequence. The inmates even put a fashion show, to delight the visiting daughter of Kat (Kat Yew), who despite her desire to be a good mother will never be able to get out of the hospital. As the women prance about in dolled-up hospital shifts, you don’t feel a longing to see them get out and live their lives, but rather a desire to see them try to get better.
D’Ambrosi seems to both embrace the women’s madness (and inexplicably use it to comic effect) and to insist that the audience be terrified by them. In explaining the women’s insanity, the play’s greater meaning is clouded rather than clarified. Though D’Ambrosi should be given credit for the exact diagnoses unknown, none of these women’s stories lead us to any conclusion about their actual madness, or about how the music they make is either a cure or a palliative. The women certainly seem to enjoy it (and so does the nun, inexplicably) but the audience leaves without sufficient sympathy or even interest. We start in the dark, yet the ending leaves us hoping for something a little bit brighter.
The strongest moments of “A Crazy Sound” lie in exploring the unconventional sounds of an insane asylum, those that cannot be contained or expressed in the light of day. Yet the play quickly devolves into a traditional theatrical form, stunting Dario D’Ambrosi’s promising premise and opening scene.
LaMaMa E.T.C., in its Annex Theatre at 74A East 4th Street. Tickets $20. 212-475-7710.
Shows run through December 30th, Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm.
Reviewed by Jessica Freeman-Slade
The inmates of “A Crazy Sound” (from left to right: Meredith Summers, Celeste Moratti, Lucy Alibar, Emma Lynn Worth, Kat Yew, Sheila Dabney.)Credit: Jonathan Slaff.
Like all good experimental theatre, Dario D’Ambrosi’s “A Crazy Sound” begins in the near-dark. The bareness of the LaMama warehouse annex provides the perfect setting for six women curled beneath white hospital sheets, as a nun recites the Hail Mary up and down the corridor. The sleeping bodies soon pick up the recitation, and the audience is drawn into the possibility that finding this sound beautiful and incomprehensible insinuates that we are the ones made “crazy” by staying to listen to this sound. The opening five-minute sequence, modeled on D’Ambrosi’s observations from a stint in a psychiatric hospital in Milan, embraces all the possibilities of the term “experimental” and truly hooks the audience.
Yet when the lights come up, you are saddened by their return. The women’s vocalizations of their experiences turn trite when they are forced into the realm of regularly paced exposition, from the most benign (Lucy Alibar, exacting hilarious vengeance on a cheating husband) to the most grotesque (Celeste Moratti, counting and muttering as she limps around the hospital floor.) Songs from the inmates punctuate the story, and the plainness of the melodies becomes gratingly mundane when compared to the opening sequence. The inmates even put a fashion show, to delight the visiting daughter of Kat (Kat Yew), who despite her desire to be a good mother will never be able to get out of the hospital. As the women prance about in dolled-up hospital shifts, you don’t feel a longing to see them get out and live their lives, but rather a desire to see them try to get better.
D’Ambrosi seems to both embrace the women’s madness (and inexplicably use it to comic effect) and to insist that the audience be terrified by them. In explaining the women’s insanity, the play’s greater meaning is clouded rather than clarified. Though D’Ambrosi should be given credit for the exact diagnoses unknown, none of these women’s stories lead us to any conclusion about their actual madness, or about how the music they make is either a cure or a palliative. The women certainly seem to enjoy it (and so does the nun, inexplicably) but the audience leaves without sufficient sympathy or even interest. We start in the dark, yet the ending leaves us hoping for something a little bit brighter.
The strongest moments of “A Crazy Sound” lie in exploring the unconventional sounds of an insane asylum, those that cannot be contained or expressed in the light of day. Yet the play quickly devolves into a traditional theatrical form, stunting Dario D’Ambrosi’s promising premise and opening scene.
LaMaMa E.T.C., in its Annex Theatre at 74A East 4th Street. Tickets $20. 212-475-7710.
Shows run through December 30th, Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm.
Friday, December 22, 2006
The Coast of Utopia: Shipwreck
Visually thrilling but not as intellectually stirring as Voyage, Shipwreck is a great compliment to the Coast of Utopia trilogy, but a little dry and melodramatic on its own. Worth seeing for the strong ensemble cast, even if the leads are playing too safe to tap into any real emotions.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Tom Stoppard’s Voyage was a very heavy play: as the first part of an epic trilogy about Russian intellectuals and their revolutions (The Coast of Utopia), it bore the responsibility for establishing characters like the exuberantly radical Michael Bakunin (Ethan Hawke), the passionate literary critic Vissarion Belinksy (Billy Crudup), and the formidable thinker Alexander Herzen (Brían F. O’Byrne). By contrast, Shipwreck, the second part of the trilogy, is light and often comically witty—it sails on the good humor and fortune amassed by the initial installment and suffers little tragedy (or emotion) until deep in the second act. That’s a little ironic, considering that the first act comprises the French revolution, but the big events always seem to happen from afar (in fact, they’re often staged far in the hollow recesses of the gigantic Vivian Beaumont theater). Stoppard is more interested with the reactions of individual cogs than with the entire mechanism, which explains why the second act of Shipwreck focuses on the fomenting of Herzen’s philosophies on life after the tragic (and offstage) death of his deaf son.
Though Stoppard is technically correct when he claims that each part of The Coast of Utopia stands alone, Shipwreck doesn’t do much by itself: it starts off as a dry exchange of idealisms inParis
However, within the context of the entire cycle, Shipwreck is a far more enjoyable evening. It’s not often that we get to see characters grow over several decades or to see talented actors like Richard Easton and Martha Plimpton making the most of small roles. The extra layers from play to play add dimensions to otherwise static scenes, and even at its most boring, director Jack O’Brien has made The Coast of Utopia beautiful to look at. Shipwreck winds up, fittingly, like Herzen: focused more on the technical marvels of O’Brien and company than the emotional range of O’Byrne and company. (Not to diminish the cast in whole: Bianca Amato and Amy Irving, among others, are stunning.)
Because there is less meat to Shipwreck, O’Brien has flavored his theatrical stew with vibrant staging and a transformative set. The deep recesses of the Vivian Beaumont Theater are used in full to play with perspective to show us the Place de la Concorde inParis Italy
There are, however, high hopes for Salvage. Voyage set up believable characters and breathed the great revolutionary ideas into them. Shipwreck spends its two-and-a-half hours draining these characters of their hot air. Revolution is in the air, and even if it doesn’t reach us in Salvage, we’ll at least have one final opportunity to enjoy O’Brien’s marvelous direction.
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Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $65.00-100.00
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Tom Stoppard’s Voyage was a very heavy play: as the first part of an epic trilogy about Russian intellectuals and their revolutions (The Coast of Utopia), it bore the responsibility for establishing characters like the exuberantly radical Michael Bakunin (Ethan Hawke), the passionate literary critic Vissarion Belinksy (Billy Crudup), and the formidable thinker Alexander Herzen (Brían F. O’Byrne). By contrast, Shipwreck, the second part of the trilogy, is light and often comically witty—it sails on the good humor and fortune amassed by the initial installment and suffers little tragedy (or emotion) until deep in the second act. That’s a little ironic, considering that the first act comprises the French revolution, but the big events always seem to happen from afar (in fact, they’re often staged far in the hollow recesses of the gigantic Vivian Beaumont theater). Stoppard is more interested with the reactions of individual cogs than with the entire mechanism, which explains why the second act of Shipwreck focuses on the fomenting of Herzen’s philosophies on life after the tragic (and offstage) death of his deaf son.
Though Stoppard is technically correct when he claims that each part of The Coast of Utopia stands alone, Shipwreck doesn’t do much by itself: it starts off as a dry exchange of idealisms in
However, within the context of the entire cycle, Shipwreck is a far more enjoyable evening. It’s not often that we get to see characters grow over several decades or to see talented actors like Richard Easton and Martha Plimpton making the most of small roles. The extra layers from play to play add dimensions to otherwise static scenes, and even at its most boring, director Jack O’Brien has made The Coast of Utopia beautiful to look at. Shipwreck winds up, fittingly, like Herzen: focused more on the technical marvels of O’Brien and company than the emotional range of O’Byrne and company. (Not to diminish the cast in whole: Bianca Amato and Amy Irving, among others, are stunning.)
Because there is less meat to Shipwreck, O’Brien has flavored his theatrical stew with vibrant staging and a transformative set. The deep recesses of the Vivian Beaumont Theater are used in full to play with perspective to show us the Place de la Concorde in
There are, however, high hopes for Salvage. Voyage set up believable characters and breathed the great revolutionary ideas into them. Shipwreck spends its two-and-a-half hours draining these characters of their hot air. Revolution is in the air, and even if it doesn’t reach us in Salvage, we’ll at least have one final opportunity to enjoy O’Brien’s marvelous direction.
---------------------------------------------------
Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $65.00-100.00
Monday, December 18, 2006
Strings
Strings has the potential to be a better play, but perhaps only in one of these hypothetical parallel universes that it refers to. Here on our Earth, the parallels between unexplainable tragedy and mysterious science are too loosely knit to be the membranes of m-theory, and the cast is too uneven to be its strings.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Intellectual plays are only as good as they are clever, and although Strings is occasionally very smart, the majority of Carole Buggé’s text goes about reminding us of that fact. (Characters are constantly quoting poetry as if Brit-Lit were the intellectual equivalent of street cred.) The conversations about string theory are fascinating, but not when the actors have to break the fourth wall and use illustrative examples to explain it. That’s like admitting that the parallels between science and society aren’t clear enough. As for the affair at the heart of this play—June cheats on her cosmologist husband, George, with their best friend, Rory (a particle physicist)—it must not be interesting enough, because Buggé adds their scientific idols: there’s a very foppish Isaac Newton (Drew Dix), a dowdy Marie Curie (Andrea Gallo), and a very stolid Max Planck (Kurt Elftmann). Rather than fix the tedium of the train ride or the lulls in the conversation, Buggé uses fantasy to build intimate exposition. As a final element, there’s the raw emotion of June and Rory’s dead son—not just dead, by the way, but 9/11ed. (If playwrights are going to keep using 9/11 as a tragic catchall, then I can verb the tragedy.)
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78th Street Theater Lab (236 West 78th Street)
Tickets (212-362-0329): $18.00
Wednesday-Saturday @ 8:15
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Intellectual plays are only as good as they are clever, and although Strings is occasionally very smart, the majority of Carole Buggé’s text goes about reminding us of that fact. (Characters are constantly quoting poetry as if Brit-Lit were the intellectual equivalent of street cred.) The conversations about string theory are fascinating, but not when the actors have to break the fourth wall and use illustrative examples to explain it. That’s like admitting that the parallels between science and society aren’t clear enough. As for the affair at the heart of this play—June cheats on her cosmologist husband, George, with their best friend, Rory (a particle physicist)—it must not be interesting enough, because Buggé adds their scientific idols: there’s a very foppish Isaac Newton (Drew Dix), a dowdy Marie Curie (Andrea Gallo), and a very stolid Max Planck (Kurt Elftmann). Rather than fix the tedium of the train ride or the lulls in the conversation, Buggé uses fantasy to build intimate exposition. As a final element, there’s the raw emotion of June and Rory’s dead son—not just dead, by the way, but 9/11ed. (If playwrights are going to keep using 9/11 as a tragic catchall, then I can verb the tragedy.)
The Open Book production company focuses on minimalist productions that emphasize the literature and the script more than the theatrics, and that’s fine for a thinking play like Buggé’s. But it also means that when the text dries up or the actors falter, there’s nothing to distract us. Mia Dillon’s fine playing Rory as a callous flirt, but it’s hard to believe her when she’s crying over her dead son. Keir Dullea doesn’t seem to know his lines, but he’s fortunately cast as a pompous aristocrat, which makes it hard to tell when he’s fumbling or just being British. The shining star of this piece is Warren Kelley, whose roguish, cockney explanations of the uncertainty principle make for jarring, dramatic work, and a world where Strings can parallel Frayn’s Copenhagen.
The second act brings a nice twist: this time, Rory and June are married, and George is the cheating best friend. It’s interesting to watch the events play out again, but when June says, for the second time, that she’s got the oddest feeling of déjà vu, it loses its charm. Strings suffers the same fate: the story itself (and the science) is interesting enough, but only when left alone. The more Buggé adds, the emptier it seems.
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78th Street Theater Lab (236 West 78th Street)
Tickets (212-362-0329): $18.00
Wednesday-Saturday @ 8:15
Earth in Trance
A smart play with a strikingly capable cast, Earth in Trance packs on cultural reference after cultural reference, eventually spinning out of its own plotline and into provocative, captivating chaos.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a wall in Brooklyn that is covered in graffiti, splattered with the following phrase: “I asked for paté. I suffered. I asked for paté.”
In many ways, this small patch of scrawl accurately sums up the action of Earth in Trance, written and directed by the Brazilian visionary Gerald Thomas and playing at La MaMa through December 30th.
The sixty-minute play, performed by Brazil’s Dry Opera Theater Company, is set in a mercurial singer’s dressing room as she waits to go onstage and perform the role of Isolde in Wagner’s opera. To help pass the time and soothe her nerves, the Actress (played by a comely and lingerie-clad Fabiana Gugli) drinks, pops pills, and talks to her only confidante in this world, the Swan (brought to life by the engaging and duck-billed arm of puppeteer Juliano Antunes and voiced by the wonderfully apathetic Gen X intonations of Seth Powers).
Early on, a driving theme of the play is set forth – how crazy is ‘crazy’ in a world as upside-down as our own? As the Actress coddles and feeds her Swan with an ASPCA affection quickly undercut by the her admission that she intends to fatten him to make foie gras, we learn that crazy is just another word for nothing left to lose.
And just like that, the humor of the play is revealed – Earth in Trance is rooted solely in the absurdity of the modern world, calling on current events and 21st century hot topics ranging from goose liver controversy to Rumsfeld’s departure to Foley’s fast-typing fingers to the O-Zone layer, all to furnish jokes for characters so completely out of their minds that the Actress can only conclude, “We are inside the head of George W. Bush.”
Gerald Thomas is no stranger to the absurd, having worked with Beckett and both directed and adapted many of the quintessentially existentialist playwright’s works. Thomas repeatedly references both Beckett and his absurdist contemporaries throughout Earth in Trance, turning the play into a sort of inside joke for any theater buff or drama major. We’re even told how Godot got his name, why Pinter so loves the sound of silence, and the many frustrations encountered when trying to simultaneously follow the Stanislavski method and flirt with fellow performers. This is a smart play, no doubt about it, and it quite obviously knows its genre well.
However, as smart as Earth in Trance is, it seems to get so mired in its cultural references that the play can’t take a step towards defining, let alone resolving, its own action. Earth in Trance goes everywhere and nowhere at once, and while Gugli is quite something, tearing up monologue after monologue onstage (as she well should, considering Thomas wrote the play for her) and Antunes’ and Powers’ joint performance is altogether fascinating, Earth in Trance spins so quickly around so many issues that it throws itself entirely out of orbit.
Earth in Trance packs quite a punch, indeed, but at the end of the hour, one wonders a bit what all the blows were for. Still, the show is worth seeing for anyone interested in the future of Absurdist Theater in a post-post-modern, hyper-paradoxical world. After all, there are far worse things that being barraged with smart ideas, even if they don’t come with a side of paté.
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La MaMa (74A East 4th Street)
Tickets (212-475-7710 or www.lamama.org): $15
Performances: December 14th through December 30th, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:30pm and 8:00pm. There is no performance on Sunday, December 24th.
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There is a wall in Brooklyn that is covered in graffiti, splattered with the following phrase: “I asked for paté. I suffered. I asked for paté.”
In many ways, this small patch of scrawl accurately sums up the action of Earth in Trance, written and directed by the Brazilian visionary Gerald Thomas and playing at La MaMa through December 30th.
The sixty-minute play, performed by Brazil’s Dry Opera Theater Company, is set in a mercurial singer’s dressing room as she waits to go onstage and perform the role of Isolde in Wagner’s opera. To help pass the time and soothe her nerves, the Actress (played by a comely and lingerie-clad Fabiana Gugli) drinks, pops pills, and talks to her only confidante in this world, the Swan (brought to life by the engaging and duck-billed arm of puppeteer Juliano Antunes and voiced by the wonderfully apathetic Gen X intonations of Seth Powers).
Early on, a driving theme of the play is set forth – how crazy is ‘crazy’ in a world as upside-down as our own? As the Actress coddles and feeds her Swan with an ASPCA affection quickly undercut by the her admission that she intends to fatten him to make foie gras, we learn that crazy is just another word for nothing left to lose.
And just like that, the humor of the play is revealed – Earth in Trance is rooted solely in the absurdity of the modern world, calling on current events and 21st century hot topics ranging from goose liver controversy to Rumsfeld’s departure to Foley’s fast-typing fingers to the O-Zone layer, all to furnish jokes for characters so completely out of their minds that the Actress can only conclude, “We are inside the head of George W. Bush.”
Gerald Thomas is no stranger to the absurd, having worked with Beckett and both directed and adapted many of the quintessentially existentialist playwright’s works. Thomas repeatedly references both Beckett and his absurdist contemporaries throughout Earth in Trance, turning the play into a sort of inside joke for any theater buff or drama major. We’re even told how Godot got his name, why Pinter so loves the sound of silence, and the many frustrations encountered when trying to simultaneously follow the Stanislavski method and flirt with fellow performers. This is a smart play, no doubt about it, and it quite obviously knows its genre well.
However, as smart as Earth in Trance is, it seems to get so mired in its cultural references that the play can’t take a step towards defining, let alone resolving, its own action. Earth in Trance goes everywhere and nowhere at once, and while Gugli is quite something, tearing up monologue after monologue onstage (as she well should, considering Thomas wrote the play for her) and Antunes’ and Powers’ joint performance is altogether fascinating, Earth in Trance spins so quickly around so many issues that it throws itself entirely out of orbit.
Earth in Trance packs quite a punch, indeed, but at the end of the hour, one wonders a bit what all the blows were for. Still, the show is worth seeing for anyone interested in the future of Absurdist Theater in a post-post-modern, hyper-paradoxical world. After all, there are far worse things that being barraged with smart ideas, even if they don’t come with a side of paté.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
La MaMa (74A East 4th Street)
Tickets (212-475-7710 or www.lamama.org): $15
Performances: December 14th through December 30th, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:30pm and 8:00pm. There is no performance on Sunday, December 24th.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Heresy
Dark times make for good dramas, and while the narrative of Heresy is too cluttered with half-explored incidentals, the heart is there. As an educational piece, it's worth checking out, but uneven acting may be too great a gulf for the audience to cross.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Sabina Berman’s Heresy, playing at the HERE Arts Center, is an attempt both to represent the immigration of colonists to Mexico in the 16th century and the religious persecution of the Jews, even in the New World. The cast’s blunt speechifying makes the result more like a history lesson; the black boxes, hats, and masks left scattered across the empty emphasize this schoolhouse atmosphere. But it’s not a bad play, and as educational theater (based on autobiography), it’s surprisingly solid.
The action takes place in New Spain (Mexico) as it is “civilized” by Luis de Carbajal the Elder (a stilted, DeNiro-like Manny Alfáro). Luis is a genuine Catholic—or at least a fearful opportunist—but when he discovers that his relatives still practice Judaism, he remains silent. Other characters are swept into this fold as well, from the uneducated Jesús Baltazár (Andrew Eisenman) to Luis’s faithful servant, Pedro Nuñez (an often-flat Bill Cohen). Their stories wash in and out, but due to the years-spanning scope, they seem like moralist examples of persecution rather than dramatic scenes.
Heresy begins with the torture/interrogation of Luis de Carbajal the Younger (the charismatic Morteza Tavakoli): it makes sense, therefore, for the extended flashbacks of the show to come off as exhibits. There is defiance in Doña Isabel’s (the excellent Sue Hyon) Israeli pride, there is innocence in Rodriguez Matos’ (Mauricio Leyton) faith, and there is doubt in Luis the Younger’s soul. The drama comes from the conflict between young Luis and his brother, Brother Augustin (a haunted Daniel Damiano), and if Berman ever wants to focus the text, this is the ideal place to do so.
Heresy is a large show that could use a little more ambition. Crammed into ninety minutes, twenty of which are repetitive (yet brutal) scenes with the inquisitors, there isn’t enough time to really savor the theatrical life of the Jewish traditions and ceremonies that were forced underground. A marriage ceremony is forced to double as a confrontation, and several stories (like that of Jesús Baltazár) are told half in summarizing monologues, half in vignettes. A better balance needs to be found in the narrative structure for us to accept this type of confessional storytelling. But even unbalanced and occasionally clumsy, Heresy is an inspired piece of theater—it’s just not inspirational.
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HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $15.00
Performances: 12/13 @ 7:00; 12/15 @ 7:00; 12/16 @ 2:00; 12/17 @ 2:00
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Sabina Berman’s Heresy, playing at the HERE Arts Center, is an attempt both to represent the immigration of colonists to Mexico in the 16th century and the religious persecution of the Jews, even in the New World. The cast’s blunt speechifying makes the result more like a history lesson; the black boxes, hats, and masks left scattered across the empty emphasize this schoolhouse atmosphere. But it’s not a bad play, and as educational theater (based on autobiography), it’s surprisingly solid.
The action takes place in New Spain (Mexico) as it is “civilized” by Luis de Carbajal the Elder (a stilted, DeNiro-like Manny Alfáro). Luis is a genuine Catholic—or at least a fearful opportunist—but when he discovers that his relatives still practice Judaism, he remains silent. Other characters are swept into this fold as well, from the uneducated Jesús Baltazár (Andrew Eisenman) to Luis’s faithful servant, Pedro Nuñez (an often-flat Bill Cohen). Their stories wash in and out, but due to the years-spanning scope, they seem like moralist examples of persecution rather than dramatic scenes.
Heresy begins with the torture/interrogation of Luis de Carbajal the Younger (the charismatic Morteza Tavakoli): it makes sense, therefore, for the extended flashbacks of the show to come off as exhibits. There is defiance in Doña Isabel’s (the excellent Sue Hyon) Israeli pride, there is innocence in Rodriguez Matos’ (Mauricio Leyton) faith, and there is doubt in Luis the Younger’s soul. The drama comes from the conflict between young Luis and his brother, Brother Augustin (a haunted Daniel Damiano), and if Berman ever wants to focus the text, this is the ideal place to do so.
Heresy is a large show that could use a little more ambition. Crammed into ninety minutes, twenty of which are repetitive (yet brutal) scenes with the inquisitors, there isn’t enough time to really savor the theatrical life of the Jewish traditions and ceremonies that were forced underground. A marriage ceremony is forced to double as a confrontation, and several stories (like that of Jesús Baltazár) are told half in summarizing monologues, half in vignettes. A better balance needs to be found in the narrative structure for us to accept this type of confessional storytelling. But even unbalanced and occasionally clumsy, Heresy is an inspired piece of theater—it’s just not inspirational.
----------------------------------
HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $15.00
Performances: 12/13 @ 7:00; 12/15 @ 7:00; 12/16 @ 2:00; 12/17 @ 2:00
Saturday, December 09, 2006
All Fall Down
All Fall Down
Reviewed by Nicholas Linnehan
All Fall Down, written by David Ledoux, makes a striking introduction for the Theatre Recrudescence. This science fiction play warns of “the plague” which kills nearly everyone in Manhattan. “The cure” is available to a few selected individuals. But what is inherently interesting in this play is the irony of a “cure” that kills. The emotional and moral twists and turns of this play trap the audience because no one van escape the horrible plight of the “plague”. This is a great way for this company to make its debut. The play is well put together. The ensemble works well together and brings the world that they created to life. Despite some awkward scene transitions, this play puts this company on the board in a big way. All Fall Down is a delight. It’s provocative, scary, and comical, which is no small feat!
Reviewed by Nicholas Linnehan
All Fall Down, written by David Ledoux, makes a striking introduction for the Theatre Recrudescence. This science fiction play warns of “the plague” which kills nearly everyone in Manhattan. “The cure” is available to a few selected individuals. But what is inherently interesting in this play is the irony of a “cure” that kills. The emotional and moral twists and turns of this play trap the audience because no one van escape the horrible plight of the “plague”. This is a great way for this company to make its debut. The play is well put together. The ensemble works well together and brings the world that they created to life. Despite some awkward scene transitions, this play puts this company on the board in a big way. All Fall Down is a delight. It’s provocative, scary, and comical, which is no small feat!
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