The Vortex Theater Company’s HMS Pinafore reinvents the classic Gilbert & Sullivan work, creating a show that is both deranged children’s storybook theatre and homage.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Devlin
The elaborate, hysterical plots of a Gilbert & Sullivan show, told through elaborate, hysterical (and beautiful) music are firm in the hearts of many, musical theatre and opera fans alike. No wonder these shows are often treated like classical works of sculpture: they may be faithfully re-created as homage to genius, but are rarely reinvented.
The Vortex Theater Company’s HMS Pinafore does just that: reinvents the classic Gilbert & Sullivan work by taking its inspiration from Gilbert’s own retelling, “The Pinafore Picture Book.” Director Dave Dalton takes the idea of reinventing even further than that, creating a show that is both deranged children’s storybook theatre and homage. Gone are elaborate sets, costumes or even cast sizes: this show has only 7 cast members. From the narrator as a small, awe-struck girl to a Buttercup in drag, the show brings the original work to a new and imaginative level.
Standouts in the talented cast include David Macaluso and Jeni Tarde. Macaluso plays both Buttercup and Sir Joseph, switching easily between one’s bizarre, swooning antics and the other’s arrogant, hysterical pomp. He is clearly having way too much fun with that hoop skirt as Buttercup, and you can’t help but laugh. Tarde’s Josephine finds comedy in every moment as well, but it is her voice, perfection even when making a ridiculous face, which carries the role.
Vortex’s HMS Pinafore is tongue-in-cheek and artistically reverent at the same time, and certainly worth a look. Whether you enjoy G&S or have never experience a light opera, this show deserves “three cheers, and one cheer more.”
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Vortex Theater Company’s HMS Pinafore
Based on Sir W.S Gilbert's "The Pinafore Picture Book: The Story of HMS PINAFORE"
Thurs. – Sun. @ 8:00, Sun. @ 5:00
March 5 - March 31, 2007
Sanford Meisner Theater
http://www.vortextheater.com/
Friday, March 09, 2007
H.M.S. Pinafore
(L to R): Paul Sigrist (Boatswain), David Macaluso (Sir Joseph Porter), Billy Ernst (Deadeye), Sarah Hartley (The Girl), Max Miller (Ralph Rackstraw), and Jendi Tarde (Josephine) Nich Kauffman (Captain Corcoran).
Photo by: Jim Baldassare
Legendary operetta H.M.S. Pinafore is repackaged and scaled down in cast size and grandeur at the Sanford Meisner Theater. Fortunately, the talent of the ensemble and the quality of the production are exceptional in a theatrical experience that takes wonderful risks with familiar material, but entertains, thrills, and rubs warmly on the funny bone.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
Artistic Director Joshua Randall and Director Dave Dalton have plowed through the conventional telling of Gilbert and Sullivan's legendary American musical H.M.S. Pinafore, and have emerged victorious. Based on Gilbert's own digression of the classic, The Pinafore Picture Book: The Story of H.M.S. Pinafore, you have never seen this naval love story quite like this. First produced in London in 1878, this highly imaginative version takes liberties with the original context and content, but manages to stay loyal to the motif “love levels all ranks.”
A satire about love that defies social classes, this production employs a cast of seven where it habitually employs 18-20. The end result is a tighter piece that exploits the versatility and skill of a strong cast. They are not afraid to make fun of themselves, and appear to be getting a kick out of doing so. Led by chameleon David Macaluso (channeling John Ritter in posture and facial expression) in the meatiest roles of Sir Joseph and Buttercup, these players perform like seasoned thespians, and under the direction of choreographer Carrie Cimma, are adept at utilizing every inch of the stage to engage and stimulate the audience. Macaluso and Nich Kauffman (Captain Corcoran with a sprinkling of Billy Crystal) have great comedic timing, and the amusement that is derived from their tomfoolery is only matched by the excitement of the singing. Singers Macaluso and Jendi Tarde (Josephine) tantalize us with their vocals,and I am certain that their ranges are capable of enveloping a more spacious theatre. The only disappointment in the acting is the choices made by Billy Ernst as Deadeye. Unfortunate in looks and odious in behavior, this surly character is stifled by Ernst's stale choices.
With inspired costumes, puppetry and a colorful set, H.M.S. Pinafore is a delicious treat, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of child-like indulgence while experiencing it. The only thing that casts a shadow in this show's brightness is the integration of The Girl (a manic Sarah Hartley). Through little fault of this animated actress, her interjections are distracting from the narrative and too invasive. I question the need for her role at all, particularly in this more intimate, reduced version of the tale. I also think the ending, which is as profound as this operetta will allow, is rushed and Buttercup's contributions to the plot are glossed over as a result. Otherwise, with romance and fun musical numbers, this H.M.S. Pinafore is an accessible light opera that's not to be missed.
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Through March 31st. Sanford Meisner Theater: 164 11th Avenue,
New York, NY 10011 Tickets: 212-352-3101, 866-811-4111 $18
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Los Angeles
The plight of the young adult lost in the debauchery of Los Angeles is so ingrained in our pop-culture mentality that we hardly need another play about it. But Julian Sheppard's Los Angeles is surprisingly smooth and effective in reminding us of how easy it is to get lost in a world of such careless, frivolous, accidental evil.
Photo/Max Ruby
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Julian Sheppard, in the program notes of his new play Los Angeles, asks: "In the end, in L.A., is there really anything more than sex, drugs, and swimming pools?" Although there is plenty of that in his somewhat flimsy series of vignettes, there are a few moments in the overall production (well directed by Adam Rapp) where there's the sensation of striking something more fathomable than nihilism.
The show opens with an innocent but already damaged Audrey being led by her boyfriend, from the Midwest to L.A. The subsequent scenes, always jumping an unidentified period of time forward in Audrey's downward spiral of a life, take her from party to party and man to man (to woman). Despite the cliched encounters (a drug dealer, a married man, a high-powered agent, a model/actress), Sheppard's writing is fairly clever. It also offers a neat turnabout: the majority of people Audrey encounters actually want to help her, and the first few scenes end on upbeats -- the tragedy is that after the scene change, things are always worse than they were before. The intimate space under The Flea abets the character acting; the scenes are already familiar to the audience, but the close proximity of it makes us feel like the bystander at a really hot party where someone is being slowly stabbed to death for our amusement.
Audrey spends most of the play in a "comfortable fuckedupness," -- perhaps too much for us to care about the pain she keeps trying to drown out -- but the play itself, with the moody lighting of neon-stripped bars and dim, coffin-sized apartments, shows the squalor for what it is. The transitions between scenes are handled by Amelia Zirin-Brown's lovely voice (Life is a cabaret, my friends) and Audrey is shuffled from set piece to set piece like a prop herself (which, to be fair, is what she becomes). The inevitable overdose scene is handled well, with a chorus of spectral scene-partners; the only off-kilter choice is the tenth scene, which serves more as a confusing "lost episode" than an epilogue. (Other choices, like coloring all the drinks and money blue, are odd, not distracting.)
Over the course of the play, Katherine Waterson, who plays Audrey, is given plenty of time to shine, and there are a few scenes where she bravely succeeds at seeming like a stranger to her own body. The problem with a play like Los Angeles is that Audrey does not change, and each scene is just more of the same. The cast, made up of The Bats (The Flea's young repertory company), has the same dilemma, each being called upon to play a caricature that only a few of them manage to deepen (Ben Beckley and Emily Hyberger) or fully inhabit (Tanya Fischer).
A play like Los Angeles doesn't need to be written -- it's enough in our pop culture already -- but it has been, and it's enjoyable even if it's not brilliant. I hope Julian Sheppard will focus on actually developing a story in his next play, rather than just telling it; it's really the only thing holding his writing back.
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The Flea Theater (41 White Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Through March 17
Photo/Max RubyReviewed by Aaron Riccio
Julian Sheppard, in the program notes of his new play Los Angeles, asks: "In the end, in L.A., is there really anything more than sex, drugs, and swimming pools?" Although there is plenty of that in his somewhat flimsy series of vignettes, there are a few moments in the overall production (well directed by Adam Rapp) where there's the sensation of striking something more fathomable than nihilism.
The show opens with an innocent but already damaged Audrey being led by her boyfriend, from the Midwest to L.A. The subsequent scenes, always jumping an unidentified period of time forward in Audrey's downward spiral of a life, take her from party to party and man to man (to woman). Despite the cliched encounters (a drug dealer, a married man, a high-powered agent, a model/actress), Sheppard's writing is fairly clever. It also offers a neat turnabout: the majority of people Audrey encounters actually want to help her, and the first few scenes end on upbeats -- the tragedy is that after the scene change, things are always worse than they were before. The intimate space under The Flea abets the character acting; the scenes are already familiar to the audience, but the close proximity of it makes us feel like the bystander at a really hot party where someone is being slowly stabbed to death for our amusement.
Audrey spends most of the play in a "comfortable fuckedupness," -- perhaps too much for us to care about the pain she keeps trying to drown out -- but the play itself, with the moody lighting of neon-stripped bars and dim, coffin-sized apartments, shows the squalor for what it is. The transitions between scenes are handled by Amelia Zirin-Brown's lovely voice (Life is a cabaret, my friends) and Audrey is shuffled from set piece to set piece like a prop herself (which, to be fair, is what she becomes). The inevitable overdose scene is handled well, with a chorus of spectral scene-partners; the only off-kilter choice is the tenth scene, which serves more as a confusing "lost episode" than an epilogue. (Other choices, like coloring all the drinks and money blue, are odd, not distracting.)
Over the course of the play, Katherine Waterson, who plays Audrey, is given plenty of time to shine, and there are a few scenes where she bravely succeeds at seeming like a stranger to her own body. The problem with a play like Los Angeles is that Audrey does not change, and each scene is just more of the same. The cast, made up of The Bats (The Flea's young repertory company), has the same dilemma, each being called upon to play a caricature that only a few of them manage to deepen (Ben Beckley and Emily Hyberger) or fully inhabit (Tanya Fischer).
A play like Los Angeles doesn't need to be written -- it's enough in our pop culture already -- but it has been, and it's enjoyable even if it's not brilliant. I hope Julian Sheppard will focus on actually developing a story in his next play, rather than just telling it; it's really the only thing holding his writing back.
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The Flea Theater (41 White Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Through March 17
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
it is said the men are over in The Steel Tower
it is said the men are over in The Steel Tower tries so hard to be about nothing that it eventually succeeds. The subtext is caught up in the allegory, which makes it hard to watch anything but the constant squabbling of four vaudeville actors who are afraid that War will squash the Entertainment they once provided.Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
"How can you be a good performer?" asks Jonouchi, an AWOL soldier, of Sasakura, one of four frightened, mediocre vaudeville actors who have fled a relief show to hide from War in a giant steel tower. "Just take a deep breath and say whatever comes to mind," he replies. This philosophy is the heart and undercurrent of it is said the men are over in The Steel Tower, a play by the prolific Japanese playwright Hideo Tsuchida, now in production at TBG Theatre.
Something has been lost in translation; Tsuchida's parallel about trivial bickering in the light of an overshadowing war is clear enough, but the endless, repetitive chatter used to get there isn't entertaining (especially when it goes on for almost two hours straight). Given an American adaptation (Matthew Paul Olmos) of an English translation (M. Cody Poulton), not to mention director Ronit Muszkatblit's interpretation of the final text, how much of the original still exists? Coupled with the lethargic blocking of the action and the unusually low energy of the performers: Not enough.
The play succeeds in frustrating the audience, but that only allows us to sympathize with how the characters in this play feel stuck. One of the "shticks" performed involves a pantomime of how different types of people walk up and down stairs; that subtlety is called out as markedly unfunny in the play, but it's the same device the play uses. The common, ordinary dialogue (which sounds improvised, even with a script in front of me) leaves profundity to the subtext; unfortunately, this cast allows for only the mundanity of the text. The ensemble is so locked into the passive-aggressive that their range is limited, and the few scenes that would show us another side are set at night, on a dark stage lit by flailing flashlights.
There are some good sequences: at one point the act of creation is compared to giving birth (to triplets), and later on, the joke is carried on when one of the troupe offers to help the rehearsal process along by being a Lamaze coach. Running jokes, even those about overused metaphors, are a window into seeing the history of this troupe, pre-war, and the rare moments when we see the characters vulnerable (Christopher Loar, as Jonouchi, has a sweet innocence) give heart to an otherwise dispassionate, Seinfeld-ish play.
it is said the men are over in The Steel Tower tries to mix subtext and symbolism, but you can't hide allegory in a message that is already hidden. This adaptation is simply too subtle for its own good: the play we wind up seeing is the opposite of the play we want to watch.
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TBG Theatre (312 W. 36th Street)
Tickets (212-868-4444): $18.00
Wednesday-Saturday @ 8:00/ Sunday @ 3:00
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Los Angeles
The city of angels falls hard as a young woman descends into LA’s shadows by way of drugs, sex, lesbianism and the inevitable unloving father figure. Who knew LA had so much in common with NYC, after all?
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
There are a lot of things to hate about the city of Los Angeles. The smog. The traffic. The agents. I grew up there, right where with 101 and the 405 meet – and I moved to New York as soon as I could. I am no advocate for the City of Angels, believe me. Still, watching Julian Sheppard’s Los Angeles, playing at The Flea Theater, I couldn’t help but feel like I was being asked to heckle the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium – considering where we’re all seated, isn’t the attack just a little too obvious?
Los Angeles centers around Audrey, a 20-something college grad who finished school in California and, scarred by the experience, high-tails it to LA’s geographic antidote Seattle. That’s when we first meet her, fragile as a newborn swathed in an XXL sweatshirt, talking with her big-dreaming boyfriend. He needs a change, she needs a makeover – Los Angeles seems the obvious solution for both. Despite her initial misgivings about heading south to the Land of Shallowness, she gives in when he offers to “fix” her.
And here in this first scene, is the whole unraveling of the play. Los Angeles tells the story of a woman who is so eager to be fixed, she shatters herself into dust. From the Seattle table to the LA lounge, from physically attacking her boss to sleeping with a producer for $1000, Audrey is just another sucker for a savior. Sure, Drama Desk Award nominee Sheppard distracts us with speed and lesbianism, even yoga in undies, but at the core of Los Angeles, we’ve got a play about a damsel in distress. Problem is, this Los Angeles is flat out of white horses, let along knights.
Oddly enough, unalleviated suffering is the topic of a lot of enjoyable entertainment – Candide perfected the idea in literature and paved the way for all the sick/brilliant drama to follow. Sheppard’s script is full of humor, and much of it works onstage. However, Los Angeles, for all the uppers Audrey inhales, remains a bit of a downer.
Audrey, played by Katherine Waterston, never changes. She begins a mess and she ends a mess. In the very first scene of the play, Waterston is already trembling and vulnerable. By the time we get to the final act, the audience begins to wonder if all that happened in between needed to happen at all – would she have been this way regardless of all the drugs, alcohol and men we’ve just watched her consume? If so, what was the point of any of this?
Furthermore, it’s hard to watch someone “be damaged” for an hour and forty minutes. Yes, some moments she’s crying, some she’s screaming, and in one of my favorites, she’s hurtling a chair across the stage, but all those are just manifestations of The Crazy. It’s hard to sympathize with someone who seems unaffected by everything happening around her. While her level of instability is very fitting for the later scenes of the play, early on, this unflagging vulnerability makes her difficulties more inherent in her personality than responsive to the ensuing onstage action.
Unfortunately, the problems in acting are compounded by the staging. As director, Obie Award winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Adam Rapp makes many strong and thoughtful choices – the opening sequence, for example, where all the men dismantle and reassemble the set is wonderful – but he continually missteps by thrusting Audrey too far into the audience. Instead of giving us the distance we need to at least value the humor behind the insanity onstage, her vulnerability is almost literally shoved under our noses. Rapp has Audrey repeatedly lean on the divider between the audience seats and the stage, breaking any kind of critical distance we especially value when looking for dark humor.
Despite these few flaws, though, the show succeeds, in large part due to a strong ensemble cast, tidy scene structure and the smart, quickly paced dialogue. Sheppard succeeds the most when he says the least, placing hints as to exactly what has happened – and when the actors respond without overemphasizing their emotions, the result is great theater. Both Cooper Daniels, as the attractively creepy Keith, and Emily Hyberger, as the chill and entrancing Veronica, give wonderful performances, bringing the cleverness of the script to the forefront without taking us out of the action.
The scene between Audrey and Donna (played as disarmingly shrewd by Tanya Fischer) is an especial triumph – both Waterston and Fischer are so wrapped up in the energy of demands and desires that they let go of all the wounded hurt that sags them down. Instead of watching the distressed damsel weep in yet another turret, we get to see two smart, capable women work out how to get what they want as quickly as possible. Sure they have baggage, but they also have objectives – and that’s a nice thing to see. Even in Los Angeles.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Flea Theater (41 White Street, between Broadway and Church)
Tickets (www.theatermania.com, 212.352.3101): $18
Performances: February 14th through March 17th, performance schedule varies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Reviewed by Cait Weiss
There are a lot of things to hate about the city of Los Angeles. The smog. The traffic. The agents. I grew up there, right where with 101 and the 405 meet – and I moved to New York as soon as I could. I am no advocate for the City of Angels, believe me. Still, watching Julian Sheppard’s Los Angeles, playing at The Flea Theater, I couldn’t help but feel like I was being asked to heckle the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium – considering where we’re all seated, isn’t the attack just a little too obvious?
Los Angeles centers around Audrey, a 20-something college grad who finished school in California and, scarred by the experience, high-tails it to LA’s geographic antidote Seattle. That’s when we first meet her, fragile as a newborn swathed in an XXL sweatshirt, talking with her big-dreaming boyfriend. He needs a change, she needs a makeover – Los Angeles seems the obvious solution for both. Despite her initial misgivings about heading south to the Land of Shallowness, she gives in when he offers to “fix” her.
And here in this first scene, is the whole unraveling of the play. Los Angeles tells the story of a woman who is so eager to be fixed, she shatters herself into dust. From the Seattle table to the LA lounge, from physically attacking her boss to sleeping with a producer for $1000, Audrey is just another sucker for a savior. Sure, Drama Desk Award nominee Sheppard distracts us with speed and lesbianism, even yoga in undies, but at the core of Los Angeles, we’ve got a play about a damsel in distress. Problem is, this Los Angeles is flat out of white horses, let along knights.
Oddly enough, unalleviated suffering is the topic of a lot of enjoyable entertainment – Candide perfected the idea in literature and paved the way for all the sick/brilliant drama to follow. Sheppard’s script is full of humor, and much of it works onstage. However, Los Angeles, for all the uppers Audrey inhales, remains a bit of a downer.
Audrey, played by Katherine Waterston, never changes. She begins a mess and she ends a mess. In the very first scene of the play, Waterston is already trembling and vulnerable. By the time we get to the final act, the audience begins to wonder if all that happened in between needed to happen at all – would she have been this way regardless of all the drugs, alcohol and men we’ve just watched her consume? If so, what was the point of any of this?
Furthermore, it’s hard to watch someone “be damaged” for an hour and forty minutes. Yes, some moments she’s crying, some she’s screaming, and in one of my favorites, she’s hurtling a chair across the stage, but all those are just manifestations of The Crazy. It’s hard to sympathize with someone who seems unaffected by everything happening around her. While her level of instability is very fitting for the later scenes of the play, early on, this unflagging vulnerability makes her difficulties more inherent in her personality than responsive to the ensuing onstage action.
Unfortunately, the problems in acting are compounded by the staging. As director, Obie Award winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Adam Rapp makes many strong and thoughtful choices – the opening sequence, for example, where all the men dismantle and reassemble the set is wonderful – but he continually missteps by thrusting Audrey too far into the audience. Instead of giving us the distance we need to at least value the humor behind the insanity onstage, her vulnerability is almost literally shoved under our noses. Rapp has Audrey repeatedly lean on the divider between the audience seats and the stage, breaking any kind of critical distance we especially value when looking for dark humor.
Despite these few flaws, though, the show succeeds, in large part due to a strong ensemble cast, tidy scene structure and the smart, quickly paced dialogue. Sheppard succeeds the most when he says the least, placing hints as to exactly what has happened – and when the actors respond without overemphasizing their emotions, the result is great theater. Both Cooper Daniels, as the attractively creepy Keith, and Emily Hyberger, as the chill and entrancing Veronica, give wonderful performances, bringing the cleverness of the script to the forefront without taking us out of the action.
The scene between Audrey and Donna (played as disarmingly shrewd by Tanya Fischer) is an especial triumph – both Waterston and Fischer are so wrapped up in the energy of demands and desires that they let go of all the wounded hurt that sags them down. Instead of watching the distressed damsel weep in yet another turret, we get to see two smart, capable women work out how to get what they want as quickly as possible. Sure they have baggage, but they also have objectives – and that’s a nice thing to see. Even in Los Angeles.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Flea Theater (41 White Street, between Broadway and Church)
Tickets (www.theatermania.com, 212.352.3101): $18
Performances: February 14th through March 17th, performance schedule varies.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Coming or Going
Short on the cries but long on southern discomfort, Lisa Roth's new drama examines the lives of four Texan sisters as they reunite for their father's funeral. With wonderful set and lighting design, the production value is high for this piece. The pacing, however, makes for an uneven drama with climaxes and points of conflict that are foreseeable and powerless.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
With a stage the size of Mick Jagger's walk-in closet (on ABC's Knights of Prosperity), anticipating an intimate experience at Manhattan Theatre Source's production of Lisa Roth's Coming or Going seems justified. After all, as I walk into the space, I tread on the pebbled, dirt pathway that signifies the “backyard.” With porch railings and wicker furniture, the setting is authentic and inviting. Unfortunately, not everything is as cushy.
Tracey B. Wilson plays Meredith, the protagonist and only character who left her hometown. With a flat monotone and a desire to “act” without regard for her scene partners, Wilson seems to forget that the medium is the stage, and not the soap opera sets that she has frequented in her career. She's not entirely to blame for her woodenness, though. As the first person to enter the stage, her emotional life is never established by Roth, and she proceeds through the play as if she doesn't own one. If being a New York transplant to Roth means aloofness and dark eye shadow, Tracey Wilson has Meredith down pat.
Wilson and Christopher Blessitt (Bryan Manning) take Leslie Cloninger's direction well to establish history and camaraderie in their physical actions, but they lack the connection that warrants the play's future plot developments. As the eunuch in the play, Manning has very little to do and does little with what he has been given.
As Bryan's live-in girlfriend and the baby sister, Amanda Hilson (Jen) conveys the right mixture of southern grace and underlying animosity to enliven her character. She is aided greatly, however, by her interactions with Amy Dickenson (Maureen or Mo). As the oldest and most caregiving, Dickenson embodies her character with warmth and wonderful talent. Every scene with her is an exercise in raw ability, and she is key in approximating the endearing moments that are much in the vein of Steel Magnolias. Her acting chops make everyone who shares a scene with her rise to the occasion. Even Shannon Yocum (Betsy), not exactly an acting lightweight herself, is able to communicate a thing or two as the devout Christian with Dickenson's earnest promptings.
Thematically, there are many delays in both the playwright and the characters' purposes. The dialogue, admittedly some of it very sharp, rages on without a cap before we discover that this is a play about the complexities of women's lives and the ever present opportunity to start over. Acts One and Two are imbalanced, as Roth inserts revelations in places that should be prefaced much earlier, and weaves a plot with tardy, frayed edges. As a result, this piece does not make a big impact emotionally because the audience's sensibilities are not invested. Despite beautiful, mood-sensitive lighting and good sound effects, Coming or Going is not the tearjerker that Roth envisions. But perhaps she inadvertently concedes that in attempting to navigate through the female emotive spectrum , “it's never going to be perfect.”
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Now playing through March 10th. Manhattan TheatreSource
177 MacDougal StreetNew York, NY 10011Tickets: 212-352-3101
866-811-4111 (Toll Free)Info: 212-501-4751
Sunday, March 04, 2007
The Girl Detective
"The Girl Detective" is a magical, illogical piece in which robbers dance and a redhead saves the world. But why not?
Review by Ellen Wernecke
"The Girl Detective," a new musical by the Ateh Theater Group now playing at the Connelly Theatre, is a jaunty bit of postmodern fun that doesn't care whether it has a beginning, middle, end or sequential plot. Its source material, a short story of the same name by Kelly Link (her book Stranger Things Happened can be purchased or downloaded here), is usually shelved in the sci-fi/fantasy section, but also taps into Greek mythology, an obsession with list-making and the captivating powers of the Nancy Drew archetype.
The titular heroine is a redheaded (we think) woman of indeterminate age who eats dreams instead of regular food and who is a regular visitor to the underworld. She gets wrapped up in simultaneous mysteries involving a missing wife and a cloud of tap-dancing bandits who leave objects behind in the banks they visit, while the rest of the world tries to figure out who the Girl Detective is. "The Girl Detective has saved the world on at least three separate occasions," confides one would-be expert. "She reminds us of the children we don't have," says another, "the girl we hope to marry someday." And if all that wasn't enough, her mother is still missing and there's a guy in a tree outside her house.
Adapter and director Bridgette Dunlap captures the whimsical spirit of Link's prose and resists the temptation to slot it into a more conventional arrangement. As protagonists go, the girl detective assumes the mantle of both the noirish sexpot and the hard-boiled crime-fighter with a bottle of scotch in the drawer. Ensemble member Kathryn Ekblad stands astride these two seemingly opposed characterizations with grace -- and she even manages to quick-change herself into the chorus for full-stage dance numbers. Choreographer Whitney Stock makes a rich man's daughters swing dance in the underworld and the masked women swirl their skirts in the robberies. And among the unnamed characters Ben Wood, as Guy, is a sympathetic favorite who pines away for the summer he and the Girl Detective had together even as she tells him to take a hike.
I left the theatre wanting to have seen more of the Girl Detective's world (after a spare 75 minutes, a benchmark no Broadway show has ever dared to reach for), a world in which people go out for Chinese takeout and get stuck in the basement instead of going home. It may be a narrow slice of magic, but like all great fairy tales it can be told again and again.
"The Girl Detective"
Connolly Theatre, 220 East 4th St. (between Av. A and Av. B)
Tickets: $15, 212-352-3101 or Theatermania.com
Review by Ellen Wernecke
"The Girl Detective," a new musical by the Ateh Theater Group now playing at the Connelly Theatre, is a jaunty bit of postmodern fun that doesn't care whether it has a beginning, middle, end or sequential plot. Its source material, a short story of the same name by Kelly Link (her book Stranger Things Happened can be purchased or downloaded here), is usually shelved in the sci-fi/fantasy section, but also taps into Greek mythology, an obsession with list-making and the captivating powers of the Nancy Drew archetype.
The titular heroine is a redheaded (we think) woman of indeterminate age who eats dreams instead of regular food and who is a regular visitor to the underworld. She gets wrapped up in simultaneous mysteries involving a missing wife and a cloud of tap-dancing bandits who leave objects behind in the banks they visit, while the rest of the world tries to figure out who the Girl Detective is. "The Girl Detective has saved the world on at least three separate occasions," confides one would-be expert. "She reminds us of the children we don't have," says another, "the girl we hope to marry someday." And if all that wasn't enough, her mother is still missing and there's a guy in a tree outside her house.
Adapter and director Bridgette Dunlap captures the whimsical spirit of Link's prose and resists the temptation to slot it into a more conventional arrangement. As protagonists go, the girl detective assumes the mantle of both the noirish sexpot and the hard-boiled crime-fighter with a bottle of scotch in the drawer. Ensemble member Kathryn Ekblad stands astride these two seemingly opposed characterizations with grace -- and she even manages to quick-change herself into the chorus for full-stage dance numbers. Choreographer Whitney Stock makes a rich man's daughters swing dance in the underworld and the masked women swirl their skirts in the robberies. And among the unnamed characters Ben Wood, as Guy, is a sympathetic favorite who pines away for the summer he and the Girl Detective had together even as she tells him to take a hike.
I left the theatre wanting to have seen more of the Girl Detective's world (after a spare 75 minutes, a benchmark no Broadway show has ever dared to reach for), a world in which people go out for Chinese takeout and get stuck in the basement instead of going home. It may be a narrow slice of magic, but like all great fairy tales it can be told again and again.
"The Girl Detective"
Connolly Theatre, 220 East 4th St. (between Av. A and Av. B)
Tickets: $15, 212-352-3101 or Theatermania.com
Friday, March 02, 2007
The Jaded Assassin
Big Time Action Theater's new show, The Jaded Assassin is big time action. It's surprising how many film styles they manage to reference, parody, and successfully pull off in this small-budget production. Bring on the weapons, I'm ready to get funky.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
If you've been paying attention to martial arts movies, then you already know how that genre flick has grown into far more of an actual art form than the cheesy, badly dubbed, hastily edited films of our youth. Films like Kill Bill, with their choice lighting and dance-rhythms, have become more theatrical, not less, and so it should be no surprise to hear that Big Time Action Theater has put together a live-action response to the whole Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon era. Enter The Jaded Assassin.
The show, set atop a large gymnastic mat (for reasons that should be pretty obvious), uses only a backdrop for staging, though the place and setting aren't what's important. Instead, the script calls for a narrator (Laine D'Souza, stage left) and a Taiko drummer (Malika Duckworth, stage right), and everything else is pretty much left to the actors, who are as athletic as they are hammy. As the script meanders through spoofs of famous martial-arts conventions, the story tells of a young girl, Soon-Jai (Jo-Anne Lee), whose entire tribe was killed by a magical plague that conveniently waited until she had grown into the fiercest warrior in the land. Now, consumed by anger, she hunts the man responsible, an evil wizard named Rektor (Marius Hanford). Joining her is the lovestruck peasant boy, Ouyang Feng (Aaron Haskell) and his father, a wizard (Nick Arens) -- and between them, a whole bunch of talented warriors (Maggie MacDonald, David Solomon Rodriguez, Jason Schumacher, Tonie Tirado).
The Jaded Assassin keeps to a brisk pace: Michael Voyer writes only a few short romantic scenes (flashbacks between Soon-Jai and her dead love, Li), and Timothy Haskell throws in just enough stagecraft (from paper-mache-masked ghosts to bunraku puppet fights to a fullscale shadow war [using the scrim]) to keep the play original before handing the reins back to the fight choreographer, Rod Kinter. Even the fights are playful; this group must have just sat down and thought about what looked cool before thinking about how to stage it, because there are all sorts of gimmicks that are well worth the price of admission. From slow-motion Matrix spoofs to spring-loaded jumps and bungee-cord backflips, The Jaded Assassin is almost always successful. The one exception is a strobe-lit battle with the breakdancing Electricity, which is just a little too sloppy in execution. Aside from that, bring on the ball and chain, spear, sword, katana, and dagger, and turn up the "Seven Nation Army" and "Welcome to the Jungle" soundtrack (to name a few) -- it's time to get crazy on the stage.
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Ohio Theater (66 Wooster)
Reviewed by Aaron RiccioIf you've been paying attention to martial arts movies, then you already know how that genre flick has grown into far more of an actual art form than the cheesy, badly dubbed, hastily edited films of our youth. Films like Kill Bill, with their choice lighting and dance-rhythms, have become more theatrical, not less, and so it should be no surprise to hear that Big Time Action Theater has put together a live-action response to the whole Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon era. Enter The Jaded Assassin.
The show, set atop a large gymnastic mat (for reasons that should be pretty obvious), uses only a backdrop for staging, though the place and setting aren't what's important. Instead, the script calls for a narrator (Laine D'Souza, stage left) and a Taiko drummer (Malika Duckworth, stage right), and everything else is pretty much left to the actors, who are as athletic as they are hammy. As the script meanders through spoofs of famous martial-arts conventions, the story tells of a young girl, Soon-Jai (Jo-Anne Lee), whose entire tribe was killed by a magical plague that conveniently waited until she had grown into the fiercest warrior in the land. Now, consumed by anger, she hunts the man responsible, an evil wizard named Rektor (Marius Hanford). Joining her is the lovestruck peasant boy, Ouyang Feng (Aaron Haskell) and his father, a wizard (Nick Arens) -- and between them, a whole bunch of talented warriors (Maggie MacDonald, David Solomon Rodriguez, Jason Schumacher, Tonie Tirado).
The Jaded Assassin keeps to a brisk pace: Michael Voyer writes only a few short romantic scenes (flashbacks between Soon-Jai and her dead love, Li), and Timothy Haskell throws in just enough stagecraft (from paper-mache-masked ghosts to bunraku puppet fights to a fullscale shadow war [using the scrim]) to keep the play original before handing the reins back to the fight choreographer, Rod Kinter. Even the fights are playful; this group must have just sat down and thought about what looked cool before thinking about how to stage it, because there are all sorts of gimmicks that are well worth the price of admission. From slow-motion Matrix spoofs to spring-loaded jumps and bungee-cord backflips, The Jaded Assassin is almost always successful. The one exception is a strobe-lit battle with the breakdancing Electricity, which is just a little too sloppy in execution. Aside from that, bring on the ball and chain, spear, sword, katana, and dagger, and turn up the "Seven Nation Army" and "Welcome to the Jungle" soundtrack (to name a few) -- it's time to get crazy on the stage.
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Ohio Theater (66 Wooster)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Girl Detective
Curvy girls to entice, and choreography that's nice; that's what Girl Detective is made of. The metaphysical and mythological splice in this ensemble piece adapted from Kelly Link's short story of the same title. Unfortunately, the show lacks coherence in all other areas with a cast that's too large and a narrative sans focus.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
Campy is as campy does. With an intro reminiscent of “Police Woman” (1970s show starring Angie Dickinson), karate chops and tumbles inclusive, it it immediately clear that The Girl Detective will be visually stimulating. As it progresses, it doesn't disappoint on that regard. Adapted and directed by Bridgette Dunlap, The Girl Detective has dancing bank robbers, slinky restaurant diners, and overzealous narrators to keep your eyes darting to and fro. However, trying to decipher a theme or message beyond an abstract revamping of the Persephone myth with a sprinkling of mystery and intrigue would require you to work harder than The Guy (a dry Ben Wood) does to stay atop his vantage point (Emily French's creative-looking “tree).
At the center of this presentation is the Girl Detective (Kathryn Ekblad), an admired and desired, flawed and endowed with the “law”, heroine. She is a daughter on the hunt for her mother, eating dreams and unearthing truth along the way. The ensemble lobby facts about her to each other and to the audience, and never deign us with an explanation of purpose. Ekblad, camouflaged in the choreographed sequences, distinguishes herself only when she is allowed to dwell on the emotions associated with losing her mother. She does so well, but simultaneously slows down what seems to be a preset, haphazard pace for the piece.
If anything, the play communicates a very feminist perspective, promoting girl power in its portrayal of women who are independent, fancy-free, and sexy. It demonstrates what transpires with the presence of women, and delineates the dream-scape that occurs without them. With the telling line that “the mothers are usually missing in fairytales”, the very notion that a girl's flights of fancy exist because of the absence of a strong, maternal presence is implied. Or, if you prefer, all mothers are and perhaps should be stolen away into dance, and thereby, validates escapism. Of course, this is merely speculation, as no strong disposition towards either exists. Historical heroines such as Amelia Earhart are name-dropped, and stories about strong women are folded unto stories like streams of birthday cake batter.
Whitney Stock's choreography is fun and imaginative, but executed clumsily by the troupe. They are hopelessly out of sync, and those that repeatedly flub their steps are placed at the outskirts. In character, they struggle to distinguish themselves from each other and nondescript names such as Birthday and Housekeeper are fitting. Ironically, with all the activity developing onstage, the principal players of this piece are behind the scenes, or more apropos, the vignettes. Chris Rummel provides eerie sound effects and a good score. French selects costumes that are easily augmented and stripped away to allow for the fluid and frequent changes.
The Girl Detective appears to be bent on investigating the substance of the dreams of girls. From a world that doesn't necessitate eating to naughty indulgence, it is as much a work of inward expression as it is a work of psychoanalytical regression. Here, girls are free to pirouette and plie through their musings with no lasting consequences. There's something to be said about the allure of that world. But we need more that what's presented here to access it.
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Through March 17th. Connelly Theater220 E. 4th St.New York, NY 10009 Ticket Price: $15 Ticket Information: TheaterMania: 212-352-3101; http://www.theatermania.com
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Girl Detective
This adaptation and staging of The Girl Detective is an admirable effort, but it lacks the illusory stagecraft necessary to get this type of narrative off the ground. The cast is leaking energy from a lack of focus and cohesion, and while the dancing is exciting, it's simply not enough. Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
It's a very ambitious thing, to adapt a metafictional short story. What works well on the page in parable, or metaphor, or parallel is hard to translate to stage -- harder still when the work is geared so specifically for the page itself. To go through all that effort to convert a difficult story means that you're bringing passion to the project, and I wish I had nothing but cheery things to say for Bridgette Dunlap's efforts to recreate Kelly Link's short story, The Girl Detective. But while the show begins at a brisk and breezy tempo, filled with omniscient narrators whizzing in and out of scenes and bank-robbing tap dancers stealing the show, the longer the play continues, the harder it is to figure out what exactly the point is. In a story, you have the luxury of rereading a section; on stage, the work has an obligation to be clearer to its audience -- at least, it should be, if your goal is to entertain.
Here's the kicker: despite the complicated layers of the show, the story has a lyricism that does carry over well into the theater, and the plot--adapted originally from Grimm's Fairy Tales (story 133 - "The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces") and merged with the idea of Persephone's Underworld by Link--has a mystical beauty to it. The jazz dancing brings Chicago to mind (albeit an amateur version: the actors haven't perfected Whitney Stock's choreography yet), and the secretive journeys across rivers to hidden dance-halls is very Prohibition-era. Even when you're completely at a loss, the catchy lines ("Only heroes and girl detectives go to the Underworld on purpose") and the catchy dances keep you tuned in.
I'm not a fan of the play's resolution, and I find the ambiguity of many of the scenes to be what some might call a "negative choice" in the theater. The work is very intellectual, which means that there aren't clear actions in the scenes, and as a result, the already inexperienced cast ends up speaking most of the lines, rather than acting them. Many deliveries are either too much over the top, or underplayed, and the only person who really shines is Kathryn Ekblad, who plays the Girl Detective. At its heart, the show is a play about a girl looking for her mother; it's very telling that all the bells and whistles fade away when the Girl Detective at last gets the opportunity to rhapsodize about her missing parent. Her counterpart, Guy (solidly but blandly played by Ben Wood), is stuck narrating from afar (a tree, actually), and what he needs is never clear, unless what he's after is indifference.
I respect the director's desire to adapt The Girl Detective, but she doesn't have the budget to be as dreamlike or visual as the piece requires (the opening montage makes the work seem campy, not surreal). Until she finds a way to make the drama more theatrical (and better synchronizes the cast), this show is a mystery that cannot be solved.
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The Connelly Theater (200 East 4th Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $15.00
Performances: Thursday-Sunday @ 8:00
Monday, February 26, 2007
Journey's End
A World War I period piece focussed on the British defense of a doomed bunker, Journey's End is an honest account of war: the importance of camaraderie, the mind-numbing necessity of alcohol, and the ever-present fear. For all the lack of wartime action onstage, the direction and technical work that's gone into this production makes me see light in the future of Broadway revivals; it's must-see theater.
Photo: Paul Kolnik
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
When R.C. Sherriff wrote Journey's End in 1928, he meant for it to be an honest, celebratory depiction of what he and his comrades went through, fighting for Britain in World War I. Regardless of how we much of an anti-war play it comes across as now (and it's impossible not to see the futility of war in this drama, set in an underground bunker over the course of four, terse 1918 days), the fact that Sherriff wrote the play with such open-minded wit makes it that much stronger as a stunning theatrical work. The simple truth of real, fleshed out characters--not the overdone proselytizing of The Vertical Hour or other "modern" pieces of propaganda--camaraderie does more to evoke emotions than intellectual discussions of such important matters.
Films like Saving Private Ryan and the HBO limited series, Band of Brothers, knew this and were the stronger for it, crafting silent scenes that spoke as much as the action. Journey's End, which is live and on a Broadway stage, can't do the same special effects, so instead the play focuses simply on the characters, with the war taking place just a few feet aboveground, an ominous presence brought to life by Gregory Clarke's spectacular sound effects. As for the bunker (designed by Jonathan Fensom), it's a dank, rat-infested mess, barely lit by candles (kudos to Jason Taylor's dim lighting), and the cramped quarters--wooden walls and poles pressing in from all sides--exacerbate the tension of the piece.
I've spent so much time establishing place (before even mentioning the excellent ensemble or the dashing director) because the world itself of this play is as much a character as anyone else, and because things like that too often go overlooked. But they're important to note; one of the reasons Journey's End is such a great play is that the pieces all work together--even the curtain call is gloriously rigged to continue the emotional toll of the show, and I'm glad that a director (David Grindley) finally had the balls to carry the reality of the theater past the threshold of the curtain. Within the show itself, he manages to carry more tension on a bare stage (the characters are all presumed to be fighting in the trenches) than many directors accomplish in their whole careers. One pivotal scene, filled with heartbreaking subtext, involves the fifteen minutes of preparation before what is essentially a suicide mission: the two officers deliberately keep switching the topic in order to clear their minds of their impending deaths (it's no surprise that another officer cracks) and their casual conversation about the English countryside is painfully oblique.
What I like most about the play's execution is that Sherriff's characters avoid the all-too-easy trap of stereotype. Though there are comic characters, like the rotund and mustached Trotter (John Ahlin), they are not just so. In Trotter's case, he is just a man coping with the constant pressure as best he can: "War is bad enough already, but war without pepper--it's bloody awful." In the case of our whiskey-addled protagonist, Captain Stanhope (Hugh Dancy), it takes a bottle to keep the demons at bay, and his wizened, gentle second-in-command, Osborne (Boyd Gaines) to keep him sane (and to tuck him in at night). Our heroes are the characters like Raleigh (Stark Sands), a newly minted officer who is perfect for leading nighttime raids through mortar-ripped holes in the enemy lines on account of his naivety about suicide. In this case, Raleigh also doubles as a connection to Stanhope's former life, which bolsters the awful truth that men must reinvent themselves in war: in order to survive, they must kill who they once were.
Journey's End, whether Sherriff meant it or not, makes for a relevant revival (at last!) on the Broadway stage, and is a far tighter production than last year's Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (perhaps because the play enlists theater veterans rather than television plebes). It's gripping, and utterly immersing: to the usher who recommended I bring a handkerchief: you were right.
---------------------------------------------------
Belasco Theater (111 West 44th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $36.25-96.25
Performances: Tuesday-Saturday @ 8; Wednesday & Saturday @ 2; Sunday @ 3
Photo: Paul KolnikReviewed by Aaron Riccio
When R.C. Sherriff wrote Journey's End in 1928, he meant for it to be an honest, celebratory depiction of what he and his comrades went through, fighting for Britain in World War I. Regardless of how we much of an anti-war play it comes across as now (and it's impossible not to see the futility of war in this drama, set in an underground bunker over the course of four, terse 1918 days), the fact that Sherriff wrote the play with such open-minded wit makes it that much stronger as a stunning theatrical work. The simple truth of real, fleshed out characters--not the overdone proselytizing of The Vertical Hour or other "modern" pieces of propaganda--camaraderie does more to evoke emotions than intellectual discussions of such important matters.
Films like Saving Private Ryan and the HBO limited series, Band of Brothers, knew this and were the stronger for it, crafting silent scenes that spoke as much as the action. Journey's End, which is live and on a Broadway stage, can't do the same special effects, so instead the play focuses simply on the characters, with the war taking place just a few feet aboveground, an ominous presence brought to life by Gregory Clarke's spectacular sound effects. As for the bunker (designed by Jonathan Fensom), it's a dank, rat-infested mess, barely lit by candles (kudos to Jason Taylor's dim lighting), and the cramped quarters--wooden walls and poles pressing in from all sides--exacerbate the tension of the piece.
I've spent so much time establishing place (before even mentioning the excellent ensemble or the dashing director) because the world itself of this play is as much a character as anyone else, and because things like that too often go overlooked. But they're important to note; one of the reasons Journey's End is such a great play is that the pieces all work together--even the curtain call is gloriously rigged to continue the emotional toll of the show, and I'm glad that a director (David Grindley) finally had the balls to carry the reality of the theater past the threshold of the curtain. Within the show itself, he manages to carry more tension on a bare stage (the characters are all presumed to be fighting in the trenches) than many directors accomplish in their whole careers. One pivotal scene, filled with heartbreaking subtext, involves the fifteen minutes of preparation before what is essentially a suicide mission: the two officers deliberately keep switching the topic in order to clear their minds of their impending deaths (it's no surprise that another officer cracks) and their casual conversation about the English countryside is painfully oblique.
What I like most about the play's execution is that Sherriff's characters avoid the all-too-easy trap of stereotype. Though there are comic characters, like the rotund and mustached Trotter (John Ahlin), they are not just so. In Trotter's case, he is just a man coping with the constant pressure as best he can: "War is bad enough already, but war without pepper--it's bloody awful." In the case of our whiskey-addled protagonist, Captain Stanhope (Hugh Dancy), it takes a bottle to keep the demons at bay, and his wizened, gentle second-in-command, Osborne (Boyd Gaines) to keep him sane (and to tuck him in at night). Our heroes are the characters like Raleigh (Stark Sands), a newly minted officer who is perfect for leading nighttime raids through mortar-ripped holes in the enemy lines on account of his naivety about suicide. In this case, Raleigh also doubles as a connection to Stanhope's former life, which bolsters the awful truth that men must reinvent themselves in war: in order to survive, they must kill who they once were.
Journey's End, whether Sherriff meant it or not, makes for a relevant revival (at last!) on the Broadway stage, and is a far tighter production than last year's Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (perhaps because the play enlists theater veterans rather than television plebes). It's gripping, and utterly immersing: to the usher who recommended I bring a handkerchief: you were right.
---------------------------------------------------
Belasco Theater (111 West 44th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $36.25-96.25
Performances: Tuesday-Saturday @ 8; Wednesday & Saturday @ 2; Sunday @ 3
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
In Lewis Carroll’s much-loved tale, babies turn to pigs, rabbits carry pocket watches, and teatime reigns eternal – but how do you put it all onstage? And what will you tell the children? The Ateh Theater Group puts down the book, picks up the Wonderland, and gives our kids all the nonsense they can handle, and then some.
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Reviewed by Cait Weiss
“Everything has a moral if only you can find it.”
So says the pig-rearing Duchess in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, adapted and directed by Bridgette Dunlap at the Connelly Theater.
However, if you’re looking for a strong dose of fable morality for your own little one, well, you’d best peer down a different rabbit hole. The Ateh Theater’s current production is full of semantic loopholes, realized paradoxes and, in the true Carroll fashion, gobbelty-goops of jibjab-ery – or, to put it plainly, a lot of word games.
The big dilemma facing Ateh’s production is this: how can a play all about the vagaries of language appeal to the under-ten crowd? How can you translate the jokes, when translation itself is the joke? Even Disney, for goodness’ sake, gave us a hookah-smoking caterpillar when presented with the Wonderland Dilemma. So what’s a smart, ambitious, youth-oriented theater company like Ateh to do?
Make it visual.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland owes a large part of its appeal to its crew – Kathryn Ekblad as the fight choreographer, Amy Van Mullekon as the costume designer, Emily French as the set designer, and, of course, Bridgette Dunlap as director – through their astonishing visual illusions and conceits, the plays is transformed from “Words, words, words” into a veritable Wonderland for the five-year-old viewer.
Before watching this production, I never realized what a poor candidate Carroll’s Alice was for the theater – not only is the story almost all words and no action, the little bits of action we do get are practically impossible to stage. Take, for example, Alice’s most common stage direction – "grows" and "shrinks." It takes a fearless director to choose a play that not only features a character literally three-inches tall, but then stretches that same character a mile high, sticks her inside a house and proceeds to light her on fire. Really, nothing quite says children’s theater like an oversized living pyre.
Dunlap, however, is deft in her direction, and she uses elaborate dance choreography and low-cost, high-imagination staging to imply, if not actualize, all the weirdness of this Wonderland. Alice shrinks by shifting from a squat to tip-toes while the chorus of characters around her slowly crouches to the ground – contrary to my description, the overall effect is not that of an awkward gym class, but of Alice actually growing. From the audience, you sense her expanding as the world around her shrinks, and the simplest staging accomplishes the most impossible of tricks.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also uses props to great effect, most notably by having Alice stand on a chair and release a scroll of paper, covered with a sketch of her elongated body – the drawing fades in with the actress’ face and, if we squint our eyes and suspend our disbelief for a second, we can actually start to see Alice transformed into a serpent.
As cool as these staging devices are (and believe me, they really are cool), Ateh’s production falls short. The acting, even for children’s theater, is rough – Alice, played by Kathryn Ekblad, enters in a hurried frenzy of shouting that never lets up. Ekblad doesn’t allow her Alice any emotional transformation, even as she physically grows and shrinks; as a result, the play ends up as a one-note adventure. However, there is a bright side: Sara Montgomery, as the Duchess, and Elizabeth Neptune, as the Cook and Card, both give hilarious performances full of humor and unexpected quirks, enjoyed as much by the adults as by the kids in the audience.
Unfortunately, despite the show’s visual detail and high energy level, the children in the audience were not nearly as captivated as one would hope. While the show kept its adult audience reasonably well-entertained, Ateh would have to greatly increase the sight gags and go mum on all the fancy talk to win over younger viewers.
More than half of the kids I saw looked like they were enjoying show, but that still left more than a couple restless rugrats rustling around. The little girl seated next to me, in particular, was not a fan and, by the time we started the croquet match, she had flung herself to the floor in a temper tantrum screaming, “I want to go out of the show now!”
As the March Hare instructs Alice: “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” Those words might very well be the real moral behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And, from what I saw happening in the seat to my left, this little one certainly had learned her Lewis Carroll lesson.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conelly Theater (220 E. 4th Street)
Tickets (www.theatermania.com, 212.352.3101): $15
Performances: February 23rd through March 17th, Saturdays and Sundays at 12pm
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reviewed by Cait Weiss
“Everything has a moral if only you can find it.”
So says the pig-rearing Duchess in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, adapted and directed by Bridgette Dunlap at the Connelly Theater.
However, if you’re looking for a strong dose of fable morality for your own little one, well, you’d best peer down a different rabbit hole. The Ateh Theater’s current production is full of semantic loopholes, realized paradoxes and, in the true Carroll fashion, gobbelty-goops of jibjab-ery – or, to put it plainly, a lot of word games.
The big dilemma facing Ateh’s production is this: how can a play all about the vagaries of language appeal to the under-ten crowd? How can you translate the jokes, when translation itself is the joke? Even Disney, for goodness’ sake, gave us a hookah-smoking caterpillar when presented with the Wonderland Dilemma. So what’s a smart, ambitious, youth-oriented theater company like Ateh to do?
Make it visual.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland owes a large part of its appeal to its crew – Kathryn Ekblad as the fight choreographer, Amy Van Mullekon as the costume designer, Emily French as the set designer, and, of course, Bridgette Dunlap as director – through their astonishing visual illusions and conceits, the plays is transformed from “Words, words, words” into a veritable Wonderland for the five-year-old viewer.
Before watching this production, I never realized what a poor candidate Carroll’s Alice was for the theater – not only is the story almost all words and no action, the little bits of action we do get are practically impossible to stage. Take, for example, Alice’s most common stage direction – "grows" and "shrinks." It takes a fearless director to choose a play that not only features a character literally three-inches tall, but then stretches that same character a mile high, sticks her inside a house and proceeds to light her on fire. Really, nothing quite says children’s theater like an oversized living pyre.
Dunlap, however, is deft in her direction, and she uses elaborate dance choreography and low-cost, high-imagination staging to imply, if not actualize, all the weirdness of this Wonderland. Alice shrinks by shifting from a squat to tip-toes while the chorus of characters around her slowly crouches to the ground – contrary to my description, the overall effect is not that of an awkward gym class, but of Alice actually growing. From the audience, you sense her expanding as the world around her shrinks, and the simplest staging accomplishes the most impossible of tricks.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also uses props to great effect, most notably by having Alice stand on a chair and release a scroll of paper, covered with a sketch of her elongated body – the drawing fades in with the actress’ face and, if we squint our eyes and suspend our disbelief for a second, we can actually start to see Alice transformed into a serpent.
As cool as these staging devices are (and believe me, they really are cool), Ateh’s production falls short. The acting, even for children’s theater, is rough – Alice, played by Kathryn Ekblad, enters in a hurried frenzy of shouting that never lets up. Ekblad doesn’t allow her Alice any emotional transformation, even as she physically grows and shrinks; as a result, the play ends up as a one-note adventure. However, there is a bright side: Sara Montgomery, as the Duchess, and Elizabeth Neptune, as the Cook and Card, both give hilarious performances full of humor and unexpected quirks, enjoyed as much by the adults as by the kids in the audience.
Unfortunately, despite the show’s visual detail and high energy level, the children in the audience were not nearly as captivated as one would hope. While the show kept its adult audience reasonably well-entertained, Ateh would have to greatly increase the sight gags and go mum on all the fancy talk to win over younger viewers.
More than half of the kids I saw looked like they were enjoying show, but that still left more than a couple restless rugrats rustling around. The little girl seated next to me, in particular, was not a fan and, by the time we started the croquet match, she had flung herself to the floor in a temper tantrum screaming, “I want to go out of the show now!”
As the March Hare instructs Alice: “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” Those words might very well be the real moral behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And, from what I saw happening in the seat to my left, this little one certainly had learned her Lewis Carroll lesson.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conelly Theater (220 E. 4th Street)
Tickets (www.theatermania.com, 212.352.3101): $15
Performances: February 23rd through March 17th, Saturdays and Sundays at 12pm
BFF
Two tragic stories, interlocked around one traumatized girl, deliver a realistic drama, and a good view at how maturation can go horribly wrong. Much of BFF is telegraphed by the choice to jump between past and present, but it's still engaging to watch, mostly because it's so understandable.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
How lightly do you take friendship? BFF looks at the dark side of what it means to be Best Friends Forever, and while the show is a bit predictable in its twists, playwright Anna Ziegler's momentum is exciting. The show jumps back and forth between a once idyllic childhood of poolside chats and slumber parties and the grownup "equivalent" of dates in the park and bedside romance. It's nice to see what gets lost as we get older, even if there is a more sinister tenor to Ziegler's script.
The cast performs well, and each has a moment to shine, but the script is littered with a bunch of somewhat repetitious scenes. Even though takes place without an intermission, it seems like there's still plenty of room to cut; that, or there needs to be more of a change of pace in the scenes themselves. Scenes like the one pictured, where the past bleeds through the set's aquarium windows into the present, are few and far between, and it looks like director Josh Hecht just wasn't given enough raw material to keep vivid. Aside from his one poor budgetary decision to cast a multimedia "scene" against the frames of the set (which gives a cartoonish feel to the straight show), Hecht does an otherwise fantastic job of transporting us through their world.
BFF isn't an epic drama, which you probably guessed from the somewhat mocking title, but it does occasionally come across as being too light for its own good. Yes, the show is set in the real world, and yes, we've all had similar experiences, but I sometimes get the sense that the characters are knowingly parodying their situation instead of living it truthfully. Given the performances, especially that of Laura Heisler, who brings more levels to her clingy and immature character than Sasha Eden's occasionally one-sided stoniness, I have a feeling that the minor flaws rest in the script's tone.
This show won't change your life, but it will entertain you, and if you're in the mood for something light yet serious, BFF packs a lot of relationship woes into 90 minutes.
----------------------------------
DR2 Theater (103 East 15th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $25-35
Performances: Monday - Saturday @ 8:00
Reviewed by Aaron RiccioHow lightly do you take friendship? BFF looks at the dark side of what it means to be Best Friends Forever, and while the show is a bit predictable in its twists, playwright Anna Ziegler's momentum is exciting. The show jumps back and forth between a once idyllic childhood of poolside chats and slumber parties and the grownup "equivalent" of dates in the park and bedside romance. It's nice to see what gets lost as we get older, even if there is a more sinister tenor to Ziegler's script.
The cast performs well, and each has a moment to shine, but the script is littered with a bunch of somewhat repetitious scenes. Even though takes place without an intermission, it seems like there's still plenty of room to cut; that, or there needs to be more of a change of pace in the scenes themselves. Scenes like the one pictured, where the past bleeds through the set's aquarium windows into the present, are few and far between, and it looks like director Josh Hecht just wasn't given enough raw material to keep vivid. Aside from his one poor budgetary decision to cast a multimedia "scene" against the frames of the set (which gives a cartoonish feel to the straight show), Hecht does an otherwise fantastic job of transporting us through their world.
BFF isn't an epic drama, which you probably guessed from the somewhat mocking title, but it does occasionally come across as being too light for its own good. Yes, the show is set in the real world, and yes, we've all had similar experiences, but I sometimes get the sense that the characters are knowingly parodying their situation instead of living it truthfully. Given the performances, especially that of Laura Heisler, who brings more levels to her clingy and immature character than Sasha Eden's occasionally one-sided stoniness, I have a feeling that the minor flaws rest in the script's tone.
This show won't change your life, but it will entertain you, and if you're in the mood for something light yet serious, BFF packs a lot of relationship woes into 90 minutes.
----------------------------------
DR2 Theater (103 East 15th Street)
Tickets (212-239-6200): $25-35
Performances: Monday - Saturday @ 8:00
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Sweet Bird Of Youth
Growing old is hard to do in the T. Schreiber Studio's production of Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth."
Review by Ellen Wernecke
One of my high school English teachers used to tell us there are only two plots in literature, "a man goes on a journey" and "a stranger comes to town." The protagonist of "Sweet Bird of Youth," Tennessee Williams' play now up at the T. Schreiber Studio, is driving both of those plots, but what he wants is only part of the picture in this opus on delayed gratification and moth-eaten desire.
Chance Wayne (Eric Watson Williams), one-time would-be actor, is both the man going and the stranger coming as the play opens. In high school, he ran with the town's teenaged in-crowd because of his good looks and his A-list girlfriend, Heavenly Finley (Shelley Virginia). Since then -- and we're never told exactly how long, exactly, he's been away -- things have been downhill for the kid who would be in pictures: Still not a star, he's settled for being a pair of hips for hire, currently tagging along with the past-her-prime actress Alexandra de Lago (Joanna Bayless), who insists on being called the Princess, en route to no particular place.
So Chance has steered the Princess back to his hometown of St. Cloud, Mississippi, and explains to her more or less that he's come to take Heavenly away, even though he couldn't be bothered to stop in for his mother's funeral a few weeks earlier. If he had stopped in, he might have found out that her father, politician Boss Finley (David Donahoe) has it in for him because on his last visit he gave Heavenly something contagious to remember him by, and now she flits about the family home like a ghost.
There's the anvil hanging over Chance Wayne's head, and he spends most of "Sweet Bird Of Youth" unaware of its presence. What he does recognize, though, and where the Princess has him beat, is the passage of time that is stealing away that which made him special. (In this sense, maybe Williams is a little too good looking for the role -- you can't see anything decaying around his edges.) The Princess might be able to explain to him what comes after beauty fades, but she's got her own baggage and her hashish habit to obscure her own sight. In her dreamy, noodly speeches, Bayless takes a character that could have been a caricature -- Norma Desmond, anyone? -- and makes her the only pure-hearted one in the bunch. After all, Heavenly's a victim who let her anger pickle her, and lets herself be used as a prop in the Boss's campaigns as a symbol of white frailty in the South, and the Boss's black mistress (Andrea Jackson) can't decide whether she can live with herself or not.
Chance isn't a classic cad with a tortured heart, but a deluded soul who thinks he can stall Time's chariot long enough to snatch his old girlfriend away. "All my vices I caught from other people," he declares early on without a hint of mea culpa. Williams loves delusion in all its forms, but he seeks it out in young men -- think of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"'s Brick, wedged between his two selves and resisting entreaties from either side. "I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting," mutters the Princess in the first act; but Chance can't, even as the walls of St. Cloud close in around him.
------
"Sweet Bird of Youth"
Now Playing at the T. Schreiber Studio/ Gloria Maddox Theatre, 151 W. 26th St.
Thursdays-Saturdays 8pm, Sundays at 3pm
Tickets: $20, Theatermania.com
Review by Ellen Wernecke
One of my high school English teachers used to tell us there are only two plots in literature, "a man goes on a journey" and "a stranger comes to town." The protagonist of "Sweet Bird of Youth," Tennessee Williams' play now up at the T. Schreiber Studio, is driving both of those plots, but what he wants is only part of the picture in this opus on delayed gratification and moth-eaten desire.
Chance Wayne (Eric Watson Williams), one-time would-be actor, is both the man going and the stranger coming as the play opens. In high school, he ran with the town's teenaged in-crowd because of his good looks and his A-list girlfriend, Heavenly Finley (Shelley Virginia). Since then -- and we're never told exactly how long, exactly, he's been away -- things have been downhill for the kid who would be in pictures: Still not a star, he's settled for being a pair of hips for hire, currently tagging along with the past-her-prime actress Alexandra de Lago (Joanna Bayless), who insists on being called the Princess, en route to no particular place.
So Chance has steered the Princess back to his hometown of St. Cloud, Mississippi, and explains to her more or less that he's come to take Heavenly away, even though he couldn't be bothered to stop in for his mother's funeral a few weeks earlier. If he had stopped in, he might have found out that her father, politician Boss Finley (David Donahoe) has it in for him because on his last visit he gave Heavenly something contagious to remember him by, and now she flits about the family home like a ghost.
There's the anvil hanging over Chance Wayne's head, and he spends most of "Sweet Bird Of Youth" unaware of its presence. What he does recognize, though, and where the Princess has him beat, is the passage of time that is stealing away that which made him special. (In this sense, maybe Williams is a little too good looking for the role -- you can't see anything decaying around his edges.) The Princess might be able to explain to him what comes after beauty fades, but she's got her own baggage and her hashish habit to obscure her own sight. In her dreamy, noodly speeches, Bayless takes a character that could have been a caricature -- Norma Desmond, anyone? -- and makes her the only pure-hearted one in the bunch. After all, Heavenly's a victim who let her anger pickle her, and lets herself be used as a prop in the Boss's campaigns as a symbol of white frailty in the South, and the Boss's black mistress (Andrea Jackson) can't decide whether she can live with herself or not.
Chance isn't a classic cad with a tortured heart, but a deluded soul who thinks he can stall Time's chariot long enough to snatch his old girlfriend away. "All my vices I caught from other people," he declares early on without a hint of mea culpa. Williams loves delusion in all its forms, but he seeks it out in young men -- think of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"'s Brick, wedged between his two selves and resisting entreaties from either side. "I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting," mutters the Princess in the first act; but Chance can't, even as the walls of St. Cloud close in around him.
------
"Sweet Bird of Youth"
Now Playing at the T. Schreiber Studio/ Gloria Maddox Theatre, 151 W. 26th St.
Thursdays-Saturdays 8pm, Sundays at 3pm
Tickets: $20, Theatermania.com
The Fantasticks
With teenage rebellion and naivete as accessories, two meddling but well-meaning fathers bait their kids into a marriage, but they're not the only ones on the hook. Though the world's longest running musical is revived at the Snapple Theater Center with gusto, nostalgia dangles prettier than any other element that this production has to offer.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
You know the story. Spirited boy meets comely female neighbor. Comely female neighbor falls for spirited boy. All is hunky dory between them, except for one thing: Their fathers hate each other. Can you remember how The Fantasticks made you feel the very first time? Perhaps you were a flower child or a baby boomer when you first experienced the starry-eyed, pristine love between the youngsters named Matt and Luisa. Can you taste the whimsy? If you can, then you're primed to revisit and enjoy Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's legendary musical.
Cynics, this one's not for you. Originally staged at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in 1960, the gush and mush that gave this show its longevity are not sparse for its return to off-broadway. This production runs on fantasy juice, and demands at least a sampling of your hopes and a portion of your heart to keep you from running. Not that you can't be otherwise engaged. There is enough talent here, exhibited by Burke Moses as El Gallo (or the cock in Italian and Spanish) and Sara Jean Ford as Luisa to keep you seated. Moses has great comedic timing, both in facial tics and body, to deliver a charming narrator. His crowing easily steals the show. 25-year old songbird Ford has a mellifluous voice that pierces the soul, but even giving in to her vibrato requires a degree of optimism.
Also impressive are substitute players John Deyle as Matt's (a forgettable Douglas Ullman, Jr.) father Hucklebee and Tom Flagg as Henry, the Old Actor. Deyle plays his role to the hilt and seems to genuinely be enjoying himself, even if he appears a tad tired. Flagg, short in stature but not in craft, is the straight man to Robert R. Oliver's outrageous, Tim-Conway-esque Mortimer (The Man Who Dies).
The reputation of this musical preceded it, and I was more than happy to see what many have heralded as timeless. Unfortunately, despite good performances and good renditions of old, popular favorites such as "Try to Remember" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain", I am hard-pressed to discern what exactly has made this show endure. The quality of the writing itself is satisfactory, but the overall sensation derived from this show is not "fantastic." It is adequate in its presentation of lasting love, but with the exception of a few El Gallo show tricks, is devoid of wow factor. If you can divorce your mind from 2007 and all that it entails, perhaps you may find this show more compelling, but I'm a little harder to get. They'll have to pull out more stops to sway me. Yet, since several in the current cast are Fantasticks' veterans, there may be more to this "world-renown" stuff than I can appreciate.
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Now playing at the Snapple Theater Center: Duffy Theater, 1627 Broadway, New York, NY, 212.246.3828 For tickets: 212-307-7171
Elephant Girls
Part of the Triple Threat Series at Emerging Artists Theatre
Restless,discontent and Republican, Jersey housewives hurl the spotlight on the Afghani elephant in the room during a Kozy Kitchen party that brings out the truth in everyone's characters. Saturated with off-color humor and middle-eastern ignorance, Elephant Girls illuminates US commercialism and excess with cartoonish tactics and garishly far-fetched results.
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Reviewed by Cindy Pierre
Riddled with elephantine symbolism, the sardonic perspective on the US' foreign politics and domestic obtuseness is hardly elusive in Carl Gonzalez' Elephant Girls. From its inception, Elephant Girls lobs us over the head with sentiments that don't pardon the pun, and drill into our heads that the religion, politics, and creeds of the characters are ponderous in size and influence. Nary a second to appraise the dialogue, behavior and general mood of the piece, we are assaulted with a rather strong disposition: this ain't a garden-variety, politically correct drama. Though jolting and downright repugnant, this near-campy production succeeds in making us squirm in our seats. And perhaps that is exactly the type of unrest that some of us need.
Set in a quaint, comfortable living room, the cosiness of this theatrical experience stops with the backdrop. Enter Beth (a cantankerous, impassioned Amy Bizjak), the bullhorn of glib opinions. Gonzalez has depicted her as both the comic relief and the villain, dependant upon your sensitivities. She begins the drama heavily engrossed in an urban video game. You'll have to suspend your disbelief of a 30-something housewife playing this game and talking the talk, if only to understand Gonzalez' inflated point about "ghetto entertainment."Her banter with Claire(an even Glory Gallo), her more appeasing and apologetic sister, over the violent and cliched points of the game sets the tone for what unfolds as an exaggerated, bigoted performance. But she's not the only close-minded one, merely the most vocal.
Beth is even tasteless enough to direct her ethnic slurs towards Jasmine (a natural Gameela Wright), friend and sole African-American presence. Jasmine's inclusion in the drama seems odd and unjustified in light of the intolerance, but when she chimes in with her own narrow-minded viewpoints, her race fades in importance as does her pride. Although Beth's slurs are lighthearted and seemingly in jest, I wonder why it takes several jabs for Jasmine to react. Frances (a likable Vivian Meisner), mother to Claire and Beth, is the senior, verbally least offensive character of the piece. With varying degrees of intolerance, these women all like to think of themselves as Elephant Girls (likened in one instance to John Merrick as the Elephant Man), basically good on the inside, but monstrous on the outside. Yet, their hideousness is only demonstrated, never uttered, relieving them of any kind of responsibility. That their environment is passively identified as the source for their ugly behavior is trite when made in comparison to the aging of an Afghani girl in a portrait.
Using a reprint of National Geographic's famous cover photo The Afghan girl from 1982, the ladies speculate over the subject of Casey's (Claire's never to be seen daughter) school paper with condescension and false sympathy. The action revs up when their proclaimed Afghani "dartboard" is made flesh by the unexpected arrival of Casey's math tutor Robina to the party. We soon learn from Vicki (a vibrant and whirlwind Lue McWilliams), the tardy Kozy Kitchen product peddler, that a water main has broken, obstructing the roads and Robina's departure.
Robina, gracious and full of integrity, is the antithesis of everyone else. Replete with American trivia and history, she shames them during the party games and upsets their ideas of privilege. As Robina, Sarah Miriam Aziz is modest in her superiority. Every inflection of her invoice is filled with composure, curiosity and benevolence. Robina could have easily been on the offensive, biting back in response to the barrage of insults. She chooses to educate them instead, and does so with poise. As a symbol, she validates the Afghani population in the US as patriots and survivors of what the five housewives couldn't even begin to contemplate. Her resilience to tell the truth is admirable, and is a stark contrast and stab at the Bush administration's dissemination of information on the War in Iraq and other foreign involvement in middle-eastern countries. The playwright is, however, remiss in not including Casey as a character in the play. She is the primary factor in both plot and subplot, and should have been represented as the malleable, innocent child implied. Her physical presence would have made the moral conundrums in the drama even more daunting, as that is one of the major points of concentration.
With trumped up paranoia and hatred, Elephant Girls awakens even the most latent of our prejudices. Using the microcosm of a New Jersey household, it is easy to apply them to the broader scope of the American vote. What is not so easy is the elimination of ingrained attitudes and notions. With those in harness, they may be just as ominous as the potential for someone to "jihad us all."
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Through March 4th. Theatre 5 311 West 43rd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10036
Tickets: 212-352-3101 Info: 212-247-2429
The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The
Love it or hate it, The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The is a weird, but talented, work of theater. Renaldo The is a hodgepodge of characters, but winds up being nothing more than a showcase for Aldo Perez's skill as an actor. There's very little to attach to in this disconnected work, but at the same time, there's something thrilling in the absurd.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Seeing a show like The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The makes me glad, for the first time, to be a blogger. This is the type of show that I'd rather discuss casually than sit down and ponderously review. It's too experimental a work to pin down to one genre, or to classify neatly for a studious audience: it is a surreal mockery of seriousness that can be as entertaining one moment as it is frustratingly obtuse the next. And it's not for everyone: art rock mixes with vaudeville, and silent film flows giddily into live pantomime. The end result is a show so different from everything else, but so true to itself that it blurs the line between good and just being quirky.
The 3 Legged Dog performing space promises a blend of multimedia and theater, and it's nice to have a group that dedicated to the possibilities of the future. But it's actually the multimedia that holds The Cruse of the Mystic Renaldo The back. Once the scrim collapsed and the live show began, with its eccentric mix of prerecorded footage, I found myself actually enjoying the sheer forcefulness of Aldo Perez's character (and there's no doubt he's a talented comic actor). But at the same time, the constant shifts from scene to scene left me feeling disconnected from the center of the work: we see so many layers to Renaldo The that we never see the character himself, just the template of the sketch that Perez has created.
At one point, Perez throws out the phrase tableau vivant, or "living picture," and that's an apt description of his show. You should know, though, that the artists they've modeled themselves after are the tortured ones, like Van Gogh, and the surrealists (like Escher and Dali) who contribute not only to the convoluted scenes but to Paul DiPietro's brilliant set, a dilapidated miniature world like something from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Perez's cohorts add much to this world too: Richard Ginocchio, who plays Renaldo The's silent valet, has one of the most pained stares in the world (though he can't always keep a straight face), and Jenny Lee Mitchell (who plays the sexy maid), has one of the best ranges that I've seen on the New York stage.
I can't say that this is a great show or not; I squirmed as much from discomfort as in delight. But I was moved by The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The, and I was impressed by the determination of the actors to maintain such an eccentric facade. Thing is, weird as Renaldo The may be, there are plenty of crazy characters just like him lurking around the cabarets, and if you're going to see a show dedicated to them, you'd better be sure you like their act first.
-------------------------------------------------
3 Legged Dog (80 Greenwich Street)
Tickets (212-645-0374): $20.00
Performances: Thursday & Friday @ 6:30/9:00 | Saturday @ 9:00
Reviewed by Aaron RiccioSeeing a show like The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The makes me glad, for the first time, to be a blogger. This is the type of show that I'd rather discuss casually than sit down and ponderously review. It's too experimental a work to pin down to one genre, or to classify neatly for a studious audience: it is a surreal mockery of seriousness that can be as entertaining one moment as it is frustratingly obtuse the next. And it's not for everyone: art rock mixes with vaudeville, and silent film flows giddily into live pantomime. The end result is a show so different from everything else, but so true to itself that it blurs the line between good and just being quirky.
The 3 Legged Dog performing space promises a blend of multimedia and theater, and it's nice to have a group that dedicated to the possibilities of the future. But it's actually the multimedia that holds The Cruse of the Mystic Renaldo The back. Once the scrim collapsed and the live show began, with its eccentric mix of prerecorded footage, I found myself actually enjoying the sheer forcefulness of Aldo Perez's character (and there's no doubt he's a talented comic actor). But at the same time, the constant shifts from scene to scene left me feeling disconnected from the center of the work: we see so many layers to Renaldo The that we never see the character himself, just the template of the sketch that Perez has created.
At one point, Perez throws out the phrase tableau vivant, or "living picture," and that's an apt description of his show. You should know, though, that the artists they've modeled themselves after are the tortured ones, like Van Gogh, and the surrealists (like Escher and Dali) who contribute not only to the convoluted scenes but to Paul DiPietro's brilliant set, a dilapidated miniature world like something from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Perez's cohorts add much to this world too: Richard Ginocchio, who plays Renaldo The's silent valet, has one of the most pained stares in the world (though he can't always keep a straight face), and Jenny Lee Mitchell (who plays the sexy maid), has one of the best ranges that I've seen on the New York stage.
I can't say that this is a great show or not; I squirmed as much from discomfort as in delight. But I was moved by The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The, and I was impressed by the determination of the actors to maintain such an eccentric facade. Thing is, weird as Renaldo The may be, there are plenty of crazy characters just like him lurking around the cabarets, and if you're going to see a show dedicated to them, you'd better be sure you like their act first.
-------------------------------------------------
3 Legged Dog (80 Greenwich Street)
Tickets (212-645-0374): $20.00
Performances: Thursday & Friday @ 6:30/9:00 | Saturday @ 9:00
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Neglect
A stunning performance from two actors who are utterly in sync, Neglect is a harsh look at the choices we find ourselves making when our backs are to the wall. Stuck in the ghetto, sweating in a heatwave, one young man in fear for his life comes face to face with his breaking point in a sweltering confrontation with the old woman he is robbing.
Reviewed by Aaron Riccio
Not much has changed since I first covered Neglect last October. What few tweaks there are, are almost all for the better. Playwright Sharyn Rothstein has made her already compact work even tighter by strengthening the parallels between the polite young schemer, Joseph, and the pushy, self-centered matriarch, Rose Anne Hayes. Director Catherine Ward has succeeded in focusing our attention on the "safety" of one's home by cutting away the outer world (in the original production, the hallway was visible), and making the space even smaller. Although the final minutes of Neglect still seem a bit forced, they've increased the stakes by removing a gun (which cheapened Joseph's sincerity and remorse) and revising the fight choreography to more resemble the height of pathos rather than violence bordering on absurdity. In other words, Neglect is as well-worth seeing now as it was last year: it is a brilliant slice of racial relations, social struggle, and the plight of the poor.
The play is a natural tale of depression, but without the bogging politicizing of other social writers; as a result, Neglect seems more immediate and pressing than similar works like Raisin in the Sun. There's only one scene, cramped into a small inner-city slum apartment during a Chicago heatwave, and the show is only an hour long. More than enough time for a talented young playwright like Rothstein to paint a vivid picture: you can even see the sharp edges of the facade melting in the unrelenting heat and pressure of the show. While the characters may start with nothing -- lumps of coal, really -- by the end of the show, they've developed, at least for the audience, into diamonds in the rough.
The greatest asset of Neglect, however, is its talented performers: William Jackson Harper and Geany Masai. Their reprisal is so perfect that it's hard to image any other actors ever playing these parts. Geany Masai is a full-bodied woman and she's got the full-bodied voice to go with it, from the deep commands and questions of a stern woman, to the clucking uh-huhs of a rumormonger and storyteller, all the way to the high-pitched squeals of a delighted little girl (despite her age). She moves with a heaviness I wouldn't wish upon anyone, rocking several times in her seat before getting the momentum to stand, only to shrivel up with suspicion and fear. As for Harper, you can see his mind constantly in action: his role is like that of an urban Hamlet, a gentle intellectual who is forced by circumstance to do something he does not wish to do. It also gives him a real arc, going from a patient, smiling worker to an anxious, scowling thief. His performance is instantly accessible and his choices are neatly motivated and driven completely by his interactions with Masai: the two are completely in sync.
Neglect is impressive not just for its actors, direction, or smart writing, but for the poignancy of the piece. My heart goes out to these characters and their situation, and I think the newly staged end of this play is an absolutely perfect statement of our isolated states of America: togetherness found in loneliness.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ensemble Studio Theater (549 West 52nd Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday & Saturday @ 7:00
Reviewed by Aaron RiccioNot much has changed since I first covered Neglect last October. What few tweaks there are, are almost all for the better. Playwright Sharyn Rothstein has made her already compact work even tighter by strengthening the parallels between the polite young schemer, Joseph, and the pushy, self-centered matriarch, Rose Anne Hayes. Director Catherine Ward has succeeded in focusing our attention on the "safety" of one's home by cutting away the outer world (in the original production, the hallway was visible), and making the space even smaller. Although the final minutes of Neglect still seem a bit forced, they've increased the stakes by removing a gun (which cheapened Joseph's sincerity and remorse) and revising the fight choreography to more resemble the height of pathos rather than violence bordering on absurdity. In other words, Neglect is as well-worth seeing now as it was last year: it is a brilliant slice of racial relations, social struggle, and the plight of the poor.
The play is a natural tale of depression, but without the bogging politicizing of other social writers; as a result, Neglect seems more immediate and pressing than similar works like Raisin in the Sun. There's only one scene, cramped into a small inner-city slum apartment during a Chicago heatwave, and the show is only an hour long. More than enough time for a talented young playwright like Rothstein to paint a vivid picture: you can even see the sharp edges of the facade melting in the unrelenting heat and pressure of the show. While the characters may start with nothing -- lumps of coal, really -- by the end of the show, they've developed, at least for the audience, into diamonds in the rough.
The greatest asset of Neglect, however, is its talented performers: William Jackson Harper and Geany Masai. Their reprisal is so perfect that it's hard to image any other actors ever playing these parts. Geany Masai is a full-bodied woman and she's got the full-bodied voice to go with it, from the deep commands and questions of a stern woman, to the clucking uh-huhs of a rumormonger and storyteller, all the way to the high-pitched squeals of a delighted little girl (despite her age). She moves with a heaviness I wouldn't wish upon anyone, rocking several times in her seat before getting the momentum to stand, only to shrivel up with suspicion and fear. As for Harper, you can see his mind constantly in action: his role is like that of an urban Hamlet, a gentle intellectual who is forced by circumstance to do something he does not wish to do. It also gives him a real arc, going from a patient, smiling worker to an anxious, scowling thief. His performance is instantly accessible and his choices are neatly motivated and driven completely by his interactions with Masai: the two are completely in sync.
Neglect is impressive not just for its actors, direction, or smart writing, but for the poignancy of the piece. My heart goes out to these characters and their situation, and I think the newly staged end of this play is an absolutely perfect statement of our isolated states of America: togetherness found in loneliness.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ensemble Studio Theater (549 West 52nd Street)
Tickets (212-352-3101): $18.00
Performances: Wednesday & Saturday @ 7:00
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