nytheatre festivals in review

Senseless is not just an adventure with hardboiled private eye Brick Foley, it’s an adventure of sight and sound. It mixes notions of film noir and radio plays with creative found object puppetry in striking and often hilarious ways.

The play opens with a welcome from a host announcing what we are about to experience, but first there’s a message from a sponsor hocking powered ham. Then the lights come up on a boy walking his dog. We hear the click-click-click of the dog’s claws rapping on the sidewalk while the boy innocently skips along side it. Suddenly a gun appears from out of nowhere and then a pap-pap as two shots are fired and the boy falls dead. This is the first of several murders taking place at the Helen Keller School of Music. It would seem that someone wants the student body dead and it’s up to Brick Foley and his bumbling partner to find out who it is. In the process, perhaps Brick will rekindle an old flame and also redeem himself after he failed to solve his last case which left him blind.

There are many twists and turns and misdirection but in the end Brick finds his man and cracks the case.

Write-director Elizabeth Hara spins an outlandish tale of intrigue that is brimming with tongue-in-cheek and self-reflexive quips. Hara likes a good turn of phrase and puns as well as a good slapstick joke. Her characters and plot points are ripped from the yellowed pages of '40s and '50s pulp fiction. The puppets are more representative than realistic. For the most part Hara uses hats, glasses and moustaches to represent the characters. We fill in the rest of the body with our imagination. And that is not too hard to do because the puppeteers are extremely skilled at animating these objects so they appear to be whole people.

The cast—Katrina Denney, Elizabeth Hara, Sarah Lafferty, Michael Schupbach, Eric Wright and Brendan Yi-Fu Tay—work together like a well-oiled machine while performing wonderfully nuanced character voices. Their performance is as tight as I have seen in a long time—and it has to be, because while they are animating and acting they are also running back and forth making the various foley sounds with all sorts of objects piled on the two tables behind them.

The foley effects are one of the most creative parts of the performance. Most of the effects are done using objects such as a balloon filled with beans for rain or pulling a long strip of tape to represent a long kiss. There’s even a package of wieners that used for various fleshy thuds and punches. Also, musician David Brown provides an incredible score on keyboard and sometimes guitar and he chips in on the sound effects using some sounds programmed into his keyboard. Taken together, the performance is an ingenious creation that tickles and inspires the imagination.

Senseless is part of the Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival which is in its 6th year at Theater for the New City. This festival never fails to deliver some of the best puppet work happening in NYC. There are still a few shows left to see. I plan on attending the Puppet Art Attacks Slam on Sunday night. It’s an evening a several short program puppet shows all in different styles of puppetry. Catch this festival before it’s gone. It is well worth it and you’ll thank yourself.

The sixth annual Voice 4 Vision puppetry festival kicked off this week with Hilary Chaplain’s hilarious one-women piece A Life In Her Day. Chaplain is clearly a seasoned physical comedian with a background in clowning. She can crack you up with a subtle gesture or a wry look. And I cracked up a lot.

The show explores the life of a single woman who on the surface appears happy and upbeat but as the story unfolds it becomes clear that she is rather lonely and in search of a companion other than her sweet little puppy dog that wakes her up every morning with a lick to the face. As she goes through her morning routine, which includes pealing off the top of a snowball pastry to make giant pink lips, she eventually finds a giant plastic diamond ring in her cereal box and gets a male audience member to propose to her. When that doesn’t work out she makes her lamp into a tall, handsome stranger whom she marries, honeymoons in Hawaii with, and instantly becomes pregnant. All this fantasizing amounts to a day in her life (or a life in her day) and ends on a warm, if not a little tragic, note.

Chaplain’s performance is one of the most inviting and one might say cozy performances that I’ve seen in a while. She interacts with the audience in ways that the audience members can’t help but play along. Some of those moments seemed like they had been rehearsed because the chosen audience members appeared to know what to do without instruction. She is also very quick with quirky improvisations most of which never failed to make me laugh. Her physicality is extraordinary. This piece fits into a playbill of a clowning festival rather than a puppetry festival. In fact, there is only one actual puppet, her dog, while the rest are objects that she brings to life such as the lamp or the roll of paper towels that becomes her baby. Her inventiveness and animation of these objects is skillful, for example I was amazed by how alive the lamp becomes when she merely uses one arm to represent “his” hand caressing her—but if you are looking for a show that highlights creative puppet design this would not be the one for you.

In the end I walked away with a big smile on my face. Chaplain is endlessly entertaining and she does it all with very few words. I love quality clowning such as this. It reminds me of the classic comedy of Lucille Ball or the stone face of Buster Keaton.

Don’t miss the Voice 4 Vision Festival. It has a lot to offer this year. There are several other mainstage shows both for adults and for kids, a puppetry on film component and panels on puppetry. It is a Mecca for lovers of puppets. I will be reviewing other shows in the festival so be sure and check back here at nytheatre.com for more on this festival.

The idea of seeing, let alone reviewing shows at the United Solo Festival, made me a bit nervous.  I am not a fan of the one-person show in general and especially weary in my soul of “coming of age” stories.  In my humble opinion, most everyone manages to come of age one way or another and frankly, it is rarely as interesting to me as it seems to be in the performer’s mind. And yet…storytelling has a strong pull.  In looking over their website, the range of ideas and performers within the United Solo Festival is such that there was more than enough of interest to overcome my initial resistance.  During the evening in which I saw two shows, both demonstrated an energetic narrative and in different ways utilized the form well.

How to Become a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less was an exemplary use of this form and how it can be.  The highly talented Leigh Hendrix manages to explore character, space and tone within one concise and engaging hour.  Using the framework of a self-help seminar, her narrator, Butchy McDyke, sets off with great humor to actively engage the audience.  The character was funny and bold but could have become a bit too much if this piece had confined itself to the frame.  Instead, as the seminar moves into various exercises, Hendrix brings in other characters including a performance artist character who is valiantly unsuccessful at creating the great moment of “Art” and a college student who working to create a very big “Day OUT” in a very little community.  Within the minor characters a variety of experiences are created and while they could have been presented in one character, one life coming out, the separations actually serve to create more connections.  Rather than fracture the experience, I felt more able to have my reactions as I wasn’t being dictated an “Example” or “Important Experience”.  I never felt asked to applaud someone else’s personal bravery or validate them, but instead was offered a set of experience performed by a gifted performer.  The piece then cleverly had the audience applaud itself for becoming lesbians as the seminar promised, transcending its own joke by allowing the audience their own connections to the experiences, in some sense we did become lesbians as advertised.

*****

More traditional in its format, In a Relationship, confines itself to one character, one table, a screen and a laptop.  The charming Helyn Rain Messenger enacts a twenty-something New Yorker battling the blood sport that is online dating in New York City.  She is with him, then she is not, then she is, and then she is desperately trying to sort out what their status is.  It is a highly recognizable conundrum and initially very funny but when the narrative turns, it is not quite well navigated and in such a short piece, feels arbitrary.  The script could have stayed funny with the girl staying with him or growing past him.  It could have become more serious, perhaps earnest even, and questioned what a relationship is or what she really was looking for.  Any of those directions have their own pitfalls but any would have required enough (and quite simply more) development to allow a more satisfying experience than what In a Relationship does, which is to quickly jump to a psycho take on exactly how bloody online dating can be.  This sudden leap from Bridget Jones to Fatal Attraction is more than the piece can support.  While largely the piece is enjoyable, the resolution is abrupt and undercuts the overall effect.  It almost feels as if it could have been equally effective as a YouTube clip.

The one-person show is such a challenge, for both the creative team and the audience.  When done well there can be moments of breathtaking honesty that can, when needed, transcend a myriad of potential weaknesses.  At its best, there is almost a sense of the actor telling the story their way to allow the audience to tell it their way.  Perhaps the disappointment when this does not happen is all the stronger because there are no other actors to help carry the load.  But with the scope of United Solo there is a wonderful opportunity to witness an extraordinary range of potential.

Holidays can prove difficult for theatre programming: between events and gatherings, pulling in an audience can be a challenge. The United Solo Festival took a pragmatic approach to All Hallow’s Eve this year by scheduling two seasonally-appropriate comedic works with dark underbellies.

Writer/performer/composer Eliza Ladd brings us her performance piece on est déshabillé, a comedy about death, which incorporates movement, percussion, sound, song and text to create a sort of madcap meditation on mortality. The literal translation of on est déshabillé is it is stripped, which is fitting—Ladd starts the piece looking a bit like a crazed homeless woman in a fisherman’s cap and frayed trench coat, and moves on to marabou pumps and a long, frilly red robe awkwardly tied up at the crotch to reveal black lingerie underneath.

Armed with a huge walking stick, Ladd channels a warrior on walkabout, an addict on the street, an aging New York housewife, an odd sort of gibberish-speaking fraggle, and an opossum-like creature hanging onto a branch for dear life. Rhythm is introduced to the piece through tribal-flavored scat singing and the sound of her shuffling across the stage in her high-heeled slippers. Ladd also performs a keyboard riff as she pushes the plugged-in instrument around the playing space, and reminds us of the passage of time as she swings the walking stick wide over her head, again and again, like the hand of a clock dragging the stage.

Ladd creates an outlandish nontraditional narrative with on est déshabillé that seems to transcend any one particular time and place. Her full commitment to her characters leads to some truly hilarious moments, and while the piece has a bit of an edge to it, there is also a delightful and surprising tenderness here that hints at some release from what we know as earthly suffering. The path may not look familiar, but I encourage you to follow where Ladd leads. As she says in her program notes, “Trust the stick.”

*****

The year is 2611 when we first enter the world of Guillermo Reyes’ This Way to Your Ritual Lobotomy as performed by actor Felix Pire. Our master of ceremonies is Elian VI, direct descendant of Elian Gonzalez, the little Cuban boy who was rescued just off the coast of Florida in the year 2000.  We are told that little Elian—who was actually an alien from space—went on to become the new ruler of Cuba and supreme world dictator. Disheartened with what he saw as the decline of humanity, Elian grew up to implement a cyborg agenda upon his rise to power, ordering mass lobotomies for the general populace and replacing all frontal lobes with appetite enhancing “iChips” sponsored by various fast food companies to keep humanity in line. 

We are returned to the present day, where Pire energetically performs multiple characters in a series of monologues meant to chronicle humankind’s downward spiral and thereby the need for ritual lobotomies. Among the cast of characters, we meet a sleazy paparazzo, a fast food server who is the son of Lee Harvey Oswald, and a Texan version of a Mormon Dame Edna who serves as a counselor on the subject of erectile dysfunction.

Thrown into the mix are three autobiographical segments about Reyes’s dealing with his own mother’s death. I suspect this event served as a catalyst for Reyes to create Lobotomy, and these monologues are meant to provide a throughline for the play.  Oddly, these are the weakest scenes of the show. Pire approaches Reyes-as-Reyes with almost too much weight, resulting in what feels like a heavy handed attempt to add depth and pathos to an otherwise wacky one-act. It occurred to me that this may be due to either the actor being too close to the playwright or even the playwright being directly involved and too close to the piece. The assistance of an objective director might help going forward.

A slide show projected on a screen downstage right of the main playing space announces various scenes. Music cues are somewhat sloppy; my first thought was there may have been a problem with the board, but there were some weird cuts from one piece of music to the next. Costumes are laid out across the stage for Pire’s easy access, and he transitions between his characters with panache.

This Way to Your Ritual Lobotomy thankfully releases the audience from all obligation of an actual surgical procedure. While the piece could benefit from some additional workshopping, it does serve as a reminder that we can either be part of humanity’s decline or part of the solution.  For my part, I choose the latter.

The best analogy I can come up with for the second annual United Solo Festival at Theatre Row is that of a small-plates restaurant for theatre and dance. The specials change nightly, the portions are small to substantial, and you can enjoy bits of delicious things not only from various regions of the United States, but also from exotic international locales.  The food, of course, is solo performance, and the feast I’ve enjoyed so far at United Solo has been delightful.

Jim Loucks’s Cemetery Golf takes place in and around a 1979 Georgian Baptist church.  Loucks, a commanding presence in blue jeans, a navy t-shirt and a pair of converse, transforms himself into Jimmy, a fearful little boy wrestling with issues of faith and early adolescence. Other characters include Jimmy’s immediate family: the evangelical former bad-boy preacher who also happens to be Jimmy’s father, his perfection-obsessed wife and Jimmy’s mother, and Michelle, Jimmy’s curly-headed little sister.

This coming-of-age piece mostly deals with Jimmy’s family unit and what it’s like to grow up as the son of the local preacher in the South. The title refers to the 3-hole golf course Jimmy’s father has constructed at the local cemetery. Instead of sand traps, one has to avoid hitting the hogs in the neighboring pen. Introduced 45 minutes into the 70-minute piece, I wished this amusing anecdote had been incorporated more from the beginning as a narrative thread.

Before transforming from one character to the next, Loucks often crosses the stage to hit a particular character’s “mark” before transitioning, interrupting the fluidity of the piece. Also, the physicality and vocal qualities that Loucks has chosen for his characters—while certainly entertaining—often push his creations into the realm of stereotype. Additional depth could perhaps be achieved by delving into some of the darker issues that proper southern families like to pretend don’t exist outside the home—especially those families that are trying so hard to appear perfect. With further workshopping, this piece could be a hole-in-one.

*****

Donald Molosi’s 25-minute monologue, Blue, Black and White, is based upon Sir Seretse Khama’s exile from Botswana to the UK after taking a white English woman as his wife. Dressed in a tweed jacket, Molosi’s Khama is a slight-framed warrior inflamed with passion for both his wife and his country, and he wields enormous power onstage even in moments of prolonged silence. With a piercing gaze, he listens intently to his detractors and responds enigmatically in both English and Tswana, often walking in a wide circle as if to protect his territory and all that he holds sacred.

The title of the piece refers to the colors that Khama proposes for the flag of Botswana as his country moves towards independence from Great Britain.  Molosi provides us with a lovely, if too brief, portrait of the man who eventually becomes the first president of Botswana. I wished for a longer piece—at the least, an additional scene—and hope that one is in development.  As an encore performance from last year’s United Solo Festival, you will have one more opportunity to see Blue, Black and White on November 19.

*****

Suzanna Geraghty’s raucous Auditions, Zoe’s Auditions comes to us from Ireland and tells the tale of Zoe, a passionate if somewhat clueless actress doing time as the stage manager for a production of A Christmas Carol while trying to land an acting job of her own. Geraghty’s Zoe is a delightfully optimistic mess of a woman: showing up late to an audition with her hair askew after having been chased up a tree by a band of thugs, cross-dressing as a man in an attempt to get seen for a production of Hamlet, and rewriting a monologue from The Three Sisters so that everyone can live happily ever after.

Zoe’s darkest moments of self-doubt take us into her own personal version of A Christmas Carol where she is advised by the ghosts of her past and future self, and is reminded of the words of an old drama teacher. Zoe wakes from this dream to find that the show she is stage managing has been cancelled on account of bad weather and absent actors, and she must go out to entertain the audience herself.

Geraghty warns us in a voiceover before the performance that she will be calling upon members of the audience to participate, and she’s not kidding: one burly gentleman was called to the stage several times to help her in moments of mock physical distress. He even picked her up at one point, much to the delight of the audience.  Be prepared to sing “Jingle Bells” and enjoy a wacky, heartfelt, and seasonally-appropriate 45 minutes of theatre.  A performance for Auditions, Zoe’s Auditions has been added; check it out on November 13.

*****

New York-based dancer/choreographer/media artist Jonah Bokaer brings us Three Cases of Amnesia (2007).  These three multimedia solo dance pieces form a moving meditation on technology, and feature 3D animation projections which Bokaer has generated with the assistance of choreography software. Occasionally the rendered figures dance on the screen by themselves; at other times, Bokaer joins them to create a digital pas de deux.

In False Start (2007), Bokaer’s arm seems to be in possession of him rather than the other way around: it strikes out again and again, like an ignition switch that just can’t seem to make connection. A bright spot of light turns him into a shadow puppet against the projection screen, creating the effect that he is dancing with himself.

Charade (2006) pairs frenetic movement with a static soundscape that at times is little more than a series of beeps, pings and electronic pulses; at other moments, Bokaer dances to the sound of a clock, a typewriter, and children playing. The dance with technology here is both literal and figurative: he uses a Mac laptop as a prop and eats an entire apple on stage, core and all. Bokaer physically connects with a brick wall, over and over again, speaking volumes about our need to seek and create connection online.

Nudedescendance (2005) finds Bokaer taking off layers…and layers…and layers of clothing to disco music, and ends with him naked sitting atop a step ladder.  Once there, he slowly drinks a large bottle of water as he descends the ladder and lands himself sitting on the stage.  I took it to be a meditation on self and our created identities online, though I could be reading too much into it.

A couple of technical notes: while I appreciated the use of a lower light level to create ambiance, the lights were at times too dark and I struggled to find Bokaer’s movement on the floor from the third row. Loud whispers from the booth area were incredibly distracting in the small house.  At the same time, it occurred to me that, at that volume, some words other than “Ready…go!” could have been whispered as a sort of subliminal poetry for additional texture. Other than that, I found the 60-minute piece quite enjoyable and look forward to experiencing Bokaer’s future works.

United Solo this year features 77 works by different artists around the world and runs at Theatre Row through November 20th.  Many performances only run once, so pick a night, grab yourself a seat and enjoy all the riches that this wonderful festival has to offer.

I returned to the Second Annual United Solo Festival this weekend for two more of the festival's 77 solo performance pieces and caught Mozart’s Sister and From Busk Till Dawn, sharply contrasting shows in both origin and style. Mozart’s Sister is a Polish import, chronicling the story of Amadeus’s little talked about but similarly-talented older sibling. From Bust Till Dawn is a journey through 5 years in the life of a Times Square “human robot” street performer, Tim Intravia. Both demonstrate the tightrope that a solo show must walk to be successful, but while From Busk Till Dawn is a bittersweet story filled with hilarity and wit, Mozart’s Sister shows how easily a good concept can become derailed.

To be fair, Mozart’s Sister, conceived and performed by Sylvia Mylo and written by Pawel Grabowski, offers a very interesting story. It examines just how Nannerl Mozart, who like her brother was a child prodigy and keyboard virtuoso, could almost disappear from the historical record. After touring for a time with Amadeus, Nannerl faded more and more into obscurity as her loyalty to her beloved father and her need for a family life created a larger and larger rift between her and her artistic endeavors. It resonates because it’s a choice that almost every artists faces in his or her life: Follow the dream and sacrifice almost every vestige of a normal life, or give in to the human urge to settle down and take care of your current and future loved ones? And it seems that, because Nannerl chose the latter, we may have lost a second great Mozart in music history.

Where Mozart’s Sister fails is, quite literally, in its staging. Theatre ROW’s Studio Theatre, where all shows in the United Solo Festival play, is a black box theatre with a very slightly raked seating area. Director Anna Sroka staged the entirety of the 75-minute piece with performer Sylvia Mylo sitting on the ground, rendering her almost impossible to see for anyone but the first row and perhaps the second. I barely knew what Mylo looked like until the final minute, when she finally stood up. This can’t be blamed on the space, as I was easily able to see the performers in the 3 other shows I’ve seen in the festival, despite sitting in the exact same place. It was obviously a case of blocking the show based on an artistic concept and failing to adjust when the space wasn’t set up for this concept. Not that staging a show in such a way is ever acceptable, but the nature of this piece made it even more of a misstep. Mozart’s Sister is a dramatic and slightly tragic story, with only a few moments of levity, it’s a period piece (thus it relies slightly on its look), and there is only one person onstage. When you can’t see the one performer, it gives the audience nothing to focus on.

It also does a disservice to the design team, who looked as if they worked very hard to suggest the period (but very little of it was visible), but most of all to Mylo. It sounded like she gave a very solid performance, her voice was great and consistent, but I can’t accurately critique her performance because I don’t know what she did physically to fill her pauses (which there were a lot of; it was a very meticulous, measured performance), nor could I see any facial nuance. I really wish I had been able to see every moment of it, because it seemed that Mylo put great heart and commitment into her piece.

*****

From Busk Till Dawn is a hilarious, perfectly paced solo effort by Tim Intravia. Early on in the show, Intravia mentions that being human robot is not easy; it just looks easy because he’s good at it. The same could be said about Intravia and comedy. He makes it look like anyone could be as funny as he is, his timing is so spot-on and his delivery is so natural. It makes for a fun ride.

Intravia, interminably bored with his daily robot routine, starts conversing with a trash can across the way, which he endearingly names Troy. Unable to talk to any of the passing customers (as he’s supposed to remain motionless unless they tip, of course), he’s reduced to recounting his life story to an inanimate object, and his commitment and heartfelt outpouring to the trash can just adds to the hilarity. We hear run-ins with the police, his love for “lotion lady” (who works in a lotion shop in Times Square, across from his spot), a beating at the hands of Elmo (or a street performer Elmo), his acting hopes, and the annoying habit of everyone around him constantly asking him to do his “robot routine” for them.

All of the humor seems to sneak up on you, it never seems as if Intravia is trying to be funny, he just is. And the show runs at such a perfect length: clocking in at 45 minutes, you get just enough hilarious stories about the rigors of street performing, without it seeming like 45 minutes of an actor complaining (which he also jokes about early on, saying “nobody wants 45 minutes of an actor complaining…if that’s true, you should probably just leave now…”), but leaving you wanting just a bit more. It's such a witty, funny piece, that when the few moments of true somberness turn up, you feel blindsided by them, in a good way—they stand out so much more. Intravia is a truly gifted performer, maybe moreso than with his ability to do the robot and make cool sounds, and From Busk Till Dawn is a very worthwhile watch.

The United Solo Festival runs the gamut in styles and genre, and as with any large festival, there are going to be some studs and duds. But the studs that I’ve seen have been very good pieces of theatre, headlined by very talented performers.

This week, the United Solo Theatre Festival kicked off at The Studio Theatre at Theatre ROW. The world’s largest festival devoted to solo theatre boasts a line-up of 77 productions in its second year, including 29 one-man shows and 48 one-woman shows spanning artists from 4 continents, running over the period of the next 5 weeks. I caught two of the first few shows making their debut at the Festival this year, Once Upon a Caterpillar and CLUTTER: I’m Saving My Life and It’s Killing Me, two one-woman shows, that while both comedies, contrasted greatly in both style and success of execution.

Once Upon a Caterpillar, performed by Esmeralda Castellon, took the form of three vignettes tied together by short interludes of an audio queue of a radio talk show. Castellon has a great presence onstage and creates a range of 4 distinctly different, lush characters (including her talk show host voiceover). She makes her first appearance as a hilarious hotel maid from Trinidad, who describes her story of journeying to New York , detailing her daily activities and vivid dreams; then transitions to a very understated woman who has recently lost her son, offering condolences to a family member at a funeral who happens to be passing on the street and relating how she tries to cope with her own loss; and makes a final transformation into a sassy angel giving a seminar on the “do’s and don’ts” of praying.

Castellon has a fun, spontaneous comic sense onstage and very distinct, colorful characters with her two funny roles, but her understated, heartbreaking performance wedged in the middle is where she truly shines. She manages to create a person that you feel you may have spoken to at some point walking down the street; one of those people you didn’t want to start talking to in the first place but then become actually drawn to by their heartbreak and sincerity. In a moment where she reads a letter she had written to her dead son to help cope, her gradual, subtle emotional breakdown is wonderful, especially since it so sharply contrasts the other two vivacious over-the-top comic characters.

However, while her characters and performance are very solid, Castellon’s show lacks a general throughline. The radio interludes are not enough to hold the three pieces together in a coherent manner. It attempts to focus on the idea of metamorphosis (hence its title), tying each of the three characters to each stage—caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly—but it only succeeds with this theme in the most obvious way, in that each of the characters are so distinctly different. The pure quality and nuance of the more dramatic middle vignette, also makes the first and third comedic vignettes seem insubstantial. They end up feeling like rough comedy sketches rather than fleshed-out stories.

Castellon, in her comedy, often has an interesting feel, similar to a stand-up comic. She had a very supportive audience, who were very on board with her show and she played with them nicely. However, it feels that she knew her target audience well, and often had very specific, narrow humor, often leaving the casual viewer feeling left out of the joke. Esmeralda Castellon knows and stays true to herself during Once Upon a Caterpillar but too often to the detriment of a broader audience.

*******

CLUTTER: I’m Saving My Life and It’s Killing Me, written and performed by the phenomenal Nancy Redman, is a smooth well oiled machine of a one-woman show. When faced with eviction due to her hoarding, a neurotic stand-up comedian must clean up her apartment or else. Redman, in a wonderful collaboration with director Austin Pendelton, delivers a powerful, funny, and poignant performance as a woman who finds meaning in every scrap of paper she’s ever had and can seemingly part with none of it.

We go along for the ride with Redman as she tries to finally throw things out (including fliers and newspapers from the past 4 decades, and apparently 20 crates of audiotapes of her past stand-up performances). She finds reason and memory in everything, making it impossible to complete her task, and finds every reason to distract herself from doing it.

Redman’s performance is a study in detail and character. She creates such a real, terribly flawed, yet endearing person. She finds humor in almost every sentence she delivers, while finding ways to infuse the moments with the subtle sadness of her issues. She and Pendleton work well together, as no moment is wasted and every bit of her stage business and rifling through her mounds and mounds of junk seems so genuine; she almost makes you feel her stuff is as important to you as it is to her.

A renowned stand-up comic in life, Redman makes great use of her natural talents in the piece. The show has often the natural off-handed feel of a stand-up routine, much like some of the moments in Once Upon a Caterpillar, but unlike the former, it is woven so naturally into the play, in random jokes made to her mom on the telephone, and in a hilarious sections where, in order to distract herself from throwing things out, she goes on a run of telling us all of her clean stand-up jokes in prep for a gig she has at a women’s shelter (which she absolutely must do now—then she’ll get back to cleaning). It’s moments like these which are the true beauty of CLUTTERED. There is so much that seems absolutely inane and completely off the topic of the show’s “central theme”, until you realize that that is the point. These interludes are a conscious or subconscious ways for her to avoid the problem; every one is subtly underlined with her hoarding issue—each left turn matters.

And while it would be easy to look at Redman’s creation as simply a great quirky comic piece, it would be a discredit to the work; because there is so much more going on underneath. Because as funny as she is, it’s her commitment to detail that impresses most. She takes a risk that most actors are too afraid to try: she dares to be uninteresting at times. That is, that she finds moments that she doesn’t have to infuse with drama or comedy. When she reads a text message off her phone, she sounds like a real person, struggling to deal with a piece of technology.

Redman and Pendleton teamed up to create a truly masterful illustration of the form celebrated by the United Solo Theatre Festival. Redman has complete control over CLUTTER and its themes, and delivers a hilarious, thoughtful evening of theater.

The All For One Theater Festival is the latest entry in a growing sub-genre of theatre events here in NYC: the celebration of one-person shows. This one, headed by executive director Michael Wolk, features 15 solo performance works spanning genres and points of origin; it runs for a couple of weeks in November 2011. (The festival's website is here.) nytheatre.com has reviewed many of these shows during previous incarnations/presentations at other festivals. Here's a quick overview of what our reviewers have had to say about nine of these pieces.

Truth Values: One Girl's Romp Through M.I.T.'s Male Math Maze was reviewed by Josephine Cashman at FringeNYC 2009:

In January 2005, Lawrence Summers, then the President of Harvard University, shot himself in the foot when he suggested that women may not have the same innate abilities in math and science as men. Multitudes of women (and men) all over were deeply offended and outraged at his sexism. Maureen Dowd wrote an article in the New York Times strongly criticizing Summers and encouraging women everywhere to "Dish it Out."

One woman, also enraged at Summer's remarks, was inspired to "dish out" her own story by writing and acting in her own show. Gioia De Cari's Truth Values: One Girl's Romp Through MIT's Male Math Maze details her experience as a Ph.D. candidate in theoretical mathmatics in the mid- to late-1980s at MIT. Fresh from Berkeley and newly married, De Cari arrives at the fabled Boston school ready to take the mathematical world by storm.

What she finds, however, is a school full of men and boys, most of whom have the emotional maturity of 12-year-olds. Her professors are largely dismissive of the very few women at the school and her male classmates are both enamored of and insulted by her presence. De Cari must search for a place to study without disturbance, which turns out to be the Margaret Cheney Room, a women's-only study with a combination lock to keep men out. Most of De Cari's female classmates try to assimilate by dressing like the male students and doing their best to blend in to the background. Not Gioia De Cari. After one professor continually directs her to bring cookies to class, De Cari starts her "fashion experiments," wearing more and more provocative clothing, which serves to initially alienate her female classmates, but also serves to increase the unwanted attention from the male students and faculty.

Rash was reviewed by Kat Chamberlain at East to Edinburgh in 2007:

Solo theatre doesn't get any better than this. Rash by Jenni Wolfson doesn't even feel like a "show"—it's so real and irresistible you want to demand the rest of her 10-plus year journey that the mere one hour could not possibly cover. And it's actually about post-genocide wreckage and unbearable human loss.

Jenni is entirely real, albeit with a resume that inspires awe. After getting a master's degree in Human Rights, she goes back to her parent's home in Scotland to celebrate. That's when she gets a message on the answering machine, "Jenni, this is Carmen from the United Nations, can you leave next week for Rwanda?" It leads to three years in Rwanda, two years in Haiti, and travels to 25 other countries as a UN human rights and humanitarian worker.

Jenni's family is not, and never has been, happy with her career choice. But she is highly motivated. With a flight ticket to Rwanda that says "we are not responsible for your life," a full-blown case of chicken pox that she was scared to tell anyone about for fear of being pulled out, and a suitcase full of teabags, Jenni embraces her mission and fellow workers from around the globe, initially viewing it as an exciting and exclusive party, a humanitarian Woodstock. Then the reality hits.

The initiation into Rwanda includes visiting a prison of 8,000 war criminals—men, women and children—in a space built for 500. "Don't enter the prison if you can't handle it," she is told, "There's no room to faint." Things don't get easier from there. There are bodies, gunshots, and nerve-wracking waiting for help in silence—or worse, with strained, normal conversations—and wondering if you are wrong to make not only your own, but your family's life a hell.

Life and death collide, and reporting a lost credit card becomes an absurdist theatrical event. Often times Wolfson sits in a comfortable armchair on stage, knitting away with orange yarn as she tells her gripping stories with humor and humility. She paints a picture so human and immediate that you can almost see the shack of a restaurant—the only one—in Kibuye where she calls early to order grilled chicken for dinner, to give them time to catch and cook it. You can almost feel the suffocating mud on her face as she was bound and dragged away in a terrible attack.

Wolfson's deft writing is complemented by Jen Nails's direction. She utilizes the space and props, as well as an overhead screen, to their maximum effect, keeping the stage in high tension. The show also employs the most ingenious way to present projected photos that I have seen. Throughout I was enthralled, entertained, and very much enlightened. Get a ticket to see it while you can, for an eyewitness account of one of the most horrific crimes in our lifetime, for an illuminating experience, and most of all, for the chance to meet a truly remarkable human being.

23 Feet In 12 Minutes: The Death And Rebirth Of New Orleans was reviewed by Montserrat Mendez at FringeNYC 2010:

This docudrama about the survivors of Katrina has been the most moving stage experience I have had since my Universal Robots breakdown of 2009.

I could go into details of the play, how actor Deanna Pacelli weaves in and out of characters, finding the different voices of these survivors of Katrina, five years ago, and how it's told in a straightforward fashion with the use of a prop here, and a scarf there. Except, I can't recall many details, all I remember is the pure emotional power of this piece. A piece so powerful, I didn't take a single note, my pen shaking in my hand, and finally put down when I had to wipe tears from my eyes. This is not just a Fringe play. This play should be sent to every school, seen by as many people as possible, it should be performed on street corners. It should be presented to anyone who dares to watch the news, and say, well, there's nothing I can do.

Because this is not just the story of survivors, these are the stories of six heroes, people who saw their lives completely ransacked by nature, and then continuously raped by looters, the police, and the media. All told by one woman, who becomes every single one of them. This story—Jesus, it only happened five years ago. Why did we ever stop talking about this? How could we have failed the people of New Orleans so badly? Why are we still failing them? These are the questions I left this performance with.

Writer Mari Brown must have agonized over those 60 interviews to give us the most powerful stories, and to create a real dynamic piece that flows together, and comes full circle. This is heartbreaking dramaturgy, and while I have had my heart tugged at this year at the Fringe, rarely has something just pounded at my chest until it nearly ripped my heart out. This is... I was angry, in tears, amazed by humanity's instinct for good, for bad, and for our ability to forget.

Creating Illusion was reviewed by Jo Ann Rosen at soloNOVA Arts Festival 2009:

I am always wary of magicians, because I don't believe in magic. But Jeff Grow, master of conjuring, doesn't call himself a magician. He doesn't call himself an illusionist or a sleight-of-hand performer either. He sees himself as a con man. This won me over immediately. After all, he says, his machinations first require gaining the confidence of his mark, then striking awe into them with the work of nimble hands and fast fingers. Grow is an appealing technician who brings a boyish charm to a group willing to be fooled. What's needed is a little polish to bring the presentation to a professional level.

During the hour performance, Grow levitates a cigarette, cons ten dollars from an audience member, makes whole a ripped newspaper, and engages in ostensible ESP (remarkably believable) with members of the audience. Grow is adept at slowing down his motions, conning us into thinking we will see how he does the trick as he explains it. There are audible "ahs" when we don't, and again he's got us in the palm of his hand. Aside from the smooth illusions, I most enjoyed Grow's explanations of how a con works, painting familiar New York street scenes and populating them with cons he has met and been conned by. This is the best of his patter, and it proves sharp and illuminating.

For a show of illusion, I assume the performer has a certain skill set. What I come for is the showmanship. For the most part, I got it.

Hamlet (Solo) was reviewed by Megin Jimenez at soloNova Arts Festival 2008:

The proposition is simple: one actor and the text of Hamlet. No props, no costumes, no light effects. Can this work as theatre? That is the question. Can one man contain this, the longest of Shakespeare's plays, the consummate feather in the stage actor's cap, packed full with murder most foul, a play within the play, Oedipal angst, a swordfight, and more than 15 characters (male, female, and ghost)? The simple answer: yes.

Starting with a brief command for "lights," Raoul Bhaneja pares down the tragedy, delivering the essentials without pause for 95 minutes. I was tempted for a moment to distance myself from the conceit and view the play as a man talking to himself: Hamlet in Hell, reliving his downfall in a state of lunacy. But no, impossible—every gesture has intention, each voice is distinctive. There is nothing schizophrenic about Bhaneja's performance. The characters shine through; we do not see a man possessed, channeling demons before us, but fully-formed people speaking, interacting, feeling. And this is riveting.

How does he do it? First, Robert Ross Parker's direction does not forget the audience, mapping out enough cues so we know where we are, who we are seeing. This ultimate actor's challenge is in the end not "about" the actor, in the sense of asking us to witness a self-pleasuring exercise. Rather, as we settle into the dark plot, the idea of "Bhaneja as actor" (or, in other words, the novelty act factor), fades, and the court of Elsinore surfaces in his hands, his shape, his voice. To name just a few, Claudius wields a goblet smugly, loyal Horatio sports a noble squint, and the patsies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are distinguished by their frozen classical poses, to charming comic effect.

And where is the Prince of Denmark in all of this? Ironically, it is Bhaneja's loving care for the whole cast of characters that at times threatens to obscure the star (so to speak) of the show. While the fast pacing keeps the audience rapt, during the first third in particular, I was longing for some breathing room in Hamlet's soliloquies, particularly given the actor's word-perfect command of the delectable language. The shortened script may also contribute to this swift-acting Hamlet; much of his infamous indecision is lost with the omission of the prince's hesitation to strike at Claudius at prayer. Without Fortinbras and impending invasion, the stakes are not as high as the whole kingdom. Instead, family loyalty trumps all. This is a Hamlet full of rage, desperate for action.

Over There was reviewed by Maura Kelley at FringeNYC 2010:

Thankfully, I got to see this fantastic heartfelt, hilarious one-freckled-man show. I knew ahead of time, I would probably get at least a laugh out of this show being that like Walsh, I'm Irish and a big fan of Blue color radio, but boy, was I wrong. Instead of just a guffaw, Over There offers a thought-provoking, side-splitting journey through PJ Walsh's not so ordinary life. The play is told in story form with Walsh playing himself at various ages as well as hilarious and specific characterizations of the oddball folks he's met along the way. Highlights include Bill Clinton and Hillary, his uptight training sergeant, his gruff Dad, and his ethnic grade school teacher.

Walsh begins with tales of childhood as a young, not-so-focused Catholic boy with freckles growing up in a small town in New York. He then reveals that his life-altering decision to enlist in the navy was heavily influenced by his love of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman. Of course he never suspected the possibility of war. Especially uproarious are Walsh's stories of military training followed by his highly regarded promotion to absolute power in the White House as dental technician for President Clinton.

Walsh is a storyteller and he has a spontaneity that makes it feel like he's telling these stories almost for the first time. There an ease and comfort to his narrative. But what makes this show truly more than just a talented standup with funny observations on life is he lets us know he's discovered his life's purpose.

Monster was reviewed by J Jordan at soloNova Arts Festival 2010:

This particularly grizzly father-son story is, in part, told by a youngster, the next door neighbor who was innocently hating his own family at yet another holiday barbecue when the tragedy occurred in his neighbor's basement. The kid at the barbecue didn't hate his family enough to take an axe to any of them, of course, so what made the weird kid next door do it? That question is basically the premise of Monster. It's the kind of tale that is told in the dark, one that actually begins in the dark, and one that is also told by a creature from the dark. The silence at the beginning of Monster is calm, peaceful, and blissful, until the loud music and blaring lights reveal a man who might as well be Satan himself. Turns out, he sort of is.

Avery Pearson, who brings to life this dark, foreboding storyteller—let's call him Mr. Dark Side—does a fine job of slipping into the skin of the weirded-out neighbor kid, the axe-wielding neighbor kid, and various other doomed souls. I say "slips into the skin" because when Pearson moves from one person to the next, or back to Mr. Dark Side, it's creepy. And it's supposed to be. Even less comforting is how something inherently evil can so easily assume the persona of someone who on the surface seems to be good—the neighbor kid, the recovering alcoholic, the alcoholic's pushy girlfriend to name a few. These characters are all saved from being glib caricatures by Pearson's craft, as well as that of his director (Steve Cook, who provides excellent and seamless control) and writer (Daniel MacIvor—thanks for keeping me up at night). We're also saved by their infusion of dark, yet sharp humor.

These characters, different as they may be at first, all fit neatly into the same story. As each tale is told, as each person starts to unravel, Mr. Dark Side pulls those frayed strings and weaves them into something distasteful that as a result is also supposed to be compelling. The concern here is that, having been to horror movies, or even having read the morning paper—they seem to cover the same topics these days, no?—I found myself waiting, proverbially and rather literally, for the axe to fall. It does.

Scared Skinny was reviewed by Richard Hinojosa at FringeNYC 2010:

"This person I'm projecting is not the person I feel on the inside" says writer/performer Mary Dimino in her very funny and inspiring one woman show. Dimino, who has struggled with her weight her entire life, tells her life story from her first very sloppy and unwanted kiss to her determined efforts to lose the weight. Her performance is utterly captivating and serves as excellent motivation to others struggling with their weight.

Dimino's story is very much what you may expect from a person in her position. She is a sweet girl with all the same desires for love and acceptance that anyone has, but her weight has always been an obstacle. She begins by describing her childhood in Queens. She was a miracle baby who was raised for a time by her grandmother who was extremely paranoid about the lustful desires of boys. She dated a string of men who were all wrong for her before she finally settled into taking care of her ailing mother. Eventually depression set in and she began to gain a lot of weight and that led to other health problems. One day she had an epiphany. She finally saw herself as others saw her and she decided to lose the weight. She describes all the crazy weight loss programs she attempted before she finally realized that a little exercise and a healthy diet in small portions is all she really needed to do to lose the weight. And she did it. Most importantly, she kept it off.

Dimino is a great performer. She has a standup-comedian-style delivery and that works great for her well-written, funny script. I found it very easy to connect with her because she doesn't attempt a lot affectation. She is natural and likable. Sure, she does impersonations of several characters in her life and these impressions are hilarious but she doesn't try to make this a one-woman show filled with character work. She is a storyteller and she uses these characters as nuance rather than trying to show off her acting skills. I really liked that about this play. It makes the show honest and moving.

Scared Skinny is a show that is equally entertaining as it is motivational. Definitely catch this one. If you do you may find that you have your own motivational story to tell.

Wanderlust was reviewed by Martin Denton at TBG Arts Center in 2008:

Martin Dockery's one-man play, Wanderlust, is spectacularly good. Dockery is an insightful and articulate writer and an equally smart and captivating actor; all of the exotic places he takes us to in this tale of a five-month excursion to western Africa spring up in vivid living color in the mind's eye as he describes them, and all the ups and downs of his remarkable adventures make the heartbeat alternately race and relax. Best of all, there's a subtle but compelling point behind Wanderlust that seeps into the consciousness as Dockery progresses through the show: in its own way, this is as much a call to action as his fellow solo performer Mike Daisey's more political How Theater Failed America—a wakeup call for anyone who's forgotten that one's days are meant to be actively lived and embraced rather than passively sat through and squandered.

Dockery begins his odyssey, which happened at the pivotal age of 35, in Wall Street, where—for too long, he suddenly realized—he had been laboring as a temp. (Dockery's explanation of how his departure from the world of high finance may have something to do with the current economic slowdown is very funny and may just have a grain of truth in it.) Dockery had recently ended a long-term relationship with one woman, and now found himself in non-committal relationships with three other women at once. The seeds of discontent were evident to him.

And so he decided to make good on a lifelong dream, to visit West Africa. The bulk of Wanderlust focuses on Dockery's extraordinary experiences there, from his ride across the Sahara desert (in the company of a Belgian couple with an awesomely high-tech SUV) to the final days of his trip, in Ghana, where he met up (as pre-arranged) with one of his three girlfriends.

Dockery's stories are all worth hearing. These tales are, I'm telling you, absolutely unforgettable. Dockery's language is precise and specific and utterly evocative; he acts out his adventures (as opposed to simply recounting them) with enormous energy, immediacy, and physicality. He brings his African experiences entirely to life, supplying a thrill that feels more actual than vicarious.

Director Jean-Michele Gregory's work is invisible, which is the highest praise I can give it. Every moment in Wanderlust feels spontaneous and in the right-now, which can only be the result of immense preparation.

Lots of folks do cool stuff and think they can tell people about it (in a one-person show like this, or even just in a living room or bar); and lots of folks do one-person shows and think they're communicating something singular and compelling. The combination of both elements—great technique and a riveting and valuable tale to tell—is rare. Doing both as well as Dockery does them is rarer still.