FringeNYC 2013: Another Evening of Awkward Romance
A subway breakup. Lovesick auctioneers. Pharmaceutical romance. This two-person comedy celebrates humans at our most odd, endearing, and vulnerable. We all struggle when it comes to love. And if we're honest, we're all weird about it.
Official production websiteShow details/ticketing at FringeNYC
Review by Pamela Butler · August 15, 2013
Wendy Herlich has written a series of delightfully funny and quirky romantic scenarios she performs with the very talented Aaron Phillips. Each vignette illuminates the trials and tribulations of love and desire, unrequited and otherwise. She mixes live stage action with short videos that serve as follow ups to first encounters.
Here are some of the most untypical and fringe relationships you would never think of, but each shows off classic human behavior. A couple of copy writers share a work space and laugh over the absurdities of typos and bad print layouts. All is fine until one finds out the other is dating someone else in another department. Stony silences and hostility ensue until it comes out that they both have always had a crush on the other, but were too shy to do anything about it. With some awkwardness they decide to date. The video that follows shows how two red pencil loving people can have a good time at a wedding.
In another and most memorable scene, two choir members show up for rehearsal in a church, and no one else in the choir is there. In the course of their banter we get to hear them sing, and boy can they sing! What a treat. However there is a battle for vocal supremacy which suddenly turns into a passionate embrace that floors them. We discover in the video that follows just what happened to the choir.
I love costumes, and while there is no credit given to a costumer, I’ll assume it is Ms. Herlich who chooses to come on stage dressed to the nines in a sleek and stunning 1940’s outfit that steals the show for me. She greets her boyfriend, in an old tee shirt and jeans, with the perfect diction and delivery of a great iconic actress from the period. It seems she has relapsed into an illness they both share; a need to leave the present world and literally inhabit the world of old movies. Her boyfriend seems to have kicked the habit, but with his sobriety they cannot speak the same language. They finally resolve their dilemma but you’ll have to see the show to find out how.
Director Ruthie Levy does a nice job staging the action and keeping things moving and David Castaneda lights the various love scenes to their best advantage. I haven’t given away all the awkward romances explored here and it would be worth your while to check them out. Lots of laugh out loud and endearing moments that will charm and no doubt resonate with almost any audience.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from Another Evening of Awkward Romance
We're asking artists from each show to answer questions about themselves and their work to help our readers get a detailed advance picture of the festival:
All About My Show · Wendy Herlich (Writer)
- Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
features a character who blows her nose seductively. - What do you think this show is about? What will audiences take away with them after seeing it?
All around us we see ideals of romantic love, in movies and on TV, and we like to perpetuate that myth by focusing on the fairy tale aspects of it. Another Evening of Awkward Romance is a celebration of the flip side of that...a warts-and-all portrayal of the journey we all make in search of that kind of love, and what it's really like when we get it. I hope people will enjoy lots of heartfelt laughs and walk away feeling unashamed (and maybe even proud) of the little awkward part that lives within them. - Why did you want to write this show?
This is a follow-up to another show I did last year, An Evening of Awkward Romance. The response to that show was so enthusiastic that I decided to keep the awkward romance journey going...so I came up with this new show with new material on the same theme. As for the initial inspiration, as a writer and performer, I noticed that awkward people in love came to the fore in my work again and again, so I decided to embrace that quality and create a whole evening of scenes devoted to it. - Who are some of the people who helped you create this show, and what were their important contributions to the finished product?
Well, my director, Ruthie Levy, has a great eye, and added a lot of ideas to make the work leap off the page. And I wrote the choir scene specifically for my co-actor, Aaron Phillips, after I realized he was such a gifted and trained singer. My husband, Neil Levy, a former SNL writer, was instrumental in giving me feedback as I developed the script. Other ideas were inspired by people in the funny way they often are...my friend Matt Smith (who did his solo show All My Children at the Fringe last year) has worked as an auctioneer before, so talking with him inspired me to write the piece about the auctioneers. And of course, since I am self-producing this show, there are countless friends who have supported me and helped in one way or another to make me realize the run of this show. I will have a very long paragraph of thank-yous in the program! - Which character from a Shakespeare play would like your show the best: King Lear, Puck, Rosalind, or Lady Macbeth -- and why?
Are you kidding?? Puck!! I feel like Puck could have written this play. Almost every one of these characters is wearing the head of an ass, metaphorically speaking.
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