FringeNYC 2004 Reviews - Page 3

Haven
reviewed by Julie Blumenthal

A woman in the row ahead of me had her hands clamped over her ears for much of Haven, and I understood the impulse: mixed with the delicate songs and wry humor in Sara Kahn’s melting alto were a young woman repeatedly raped by soldiers; a child witnessing the murder of most of her family at point-blank range; a wrongly accused captive told repeatedly that people like him “have no rights.”

It’s a volatile swell of histories, rage and hope. And Kahn, Broadway baby turned human rights worker, adds her own story of transformation to the mix. Kahn is witty, full of heart, with pixieish energy and an accomplished voice; and a montage featuring lyrics from her singing trade show days and a re-created audition in which she ended up serenading Liz Swados’ dog when the director disappeared is extremely funny Disillusioned, Kahn quits the stage and “learns about the word ‘geopolitics’.” Working as a counselor in Bosnia, Cyprus, and finally New Jersey, she discovers a passion for helping refugees, and in the process, rediscovers herself.

Is it possible for Kahn’s personal story to hold its own against that bush wife in Sierra Leone? Against Laila, the child whose Unicef schoolbook features detailed instructions for how to proceed safely in a minefield? Against Fareek, the coffee vendor who, years after fleeing for his life from the mujahadeen, is taken away on September 12, 2001?

Perhaps, in another setting, at another time. But here and now, I found Kahn’s parallels between her journey and the refugees’, of her retreat from performing and Laila’s retreat from a minefield, impossible to swallow. Kahn’s material, drawn from her clients’ testimony and bolstered by her literate writing, sure delivery, and Kelly Dupuis and Marc Smollin’s plaintive score, is potent stuff. However, Haven gets sidetracked by the stories that CAN be told from the story that MUST be told.

Every time a horror was related, every time a reference was made to a refugee’s overwhelming gratitude for being in America, without irony, with a sense of “things are different here;” I felt the specter of Abu Ghraib, of Guantanamo, of every Middle Easterner in an American prison without representation or the ability to communicate with loved ones, sitting heavily in the room. Kahn opens the door to an exploration of our current situation (from which many of us have our hands clamped over our ears), in a deeper, worldwide context; but she doesn’t pursue this chance.

Program notes are split into three categories: Refugees (the current quota reduced to less than half its pre-9/11 amount, with fewer than half this amount admitted); Asylees (approximately 5,000 currently held in quasi-prisons across the U.S.); and the Patriot Act (with notes focusing on the provisions for secret detentions of non-citizens). All this information is shocking, and dreadful, and would have been astoundingly powerful delivered onstage, instead of on the back of a program. At curtain call, Kahn said, “Let’s fight to keep this country a place where [refugees] are welcome.” I couldn’t agree more; I simply wish she’d used more of the show itself to say it.

The Disembodied Soul
reviewed by David Reinwald

When you walk into the room, there is ambient music... bells and other soft sounds that are soothing and relaxing. Three large Chinese paper lanterns hang from the ceiling. The stage is bare. Soon after, the cast of six singers softly walk in, barefoot, dressed in simple yet fashionable costumes (designed by Joanna Gang). They all are seated at the back of the stage, and this exquisite modern opera, presented by Willow Breaking Productions, begins.

The Disembodied Soul takes its story from an original musical drama from the Yüan dynasty in 14th century Northern China. It is a beautiful and mystical account of the love of Ch’ien-nü (Jessica Ordman) for her betrothed, Wang Wên-chü (Daeil Cha). This love is so strong that upon Wang Wên-chü’s departure to study and become an “official,” Ch’ien-nü’s soul (portrayed by Jessica Luck) embarks upon a journey to follow him and reunite. The enchanting fairy tale also includes the supporting cast of Mrs. Chang, Ch’ien-nü’s mother (Siobhan Kolker), Mei Hsian, Ch’ien-nü’s maid (Katie Vagnino), and Chang Ch’ien, Wang Wên-chü’s servant (David Conner).

The cast of the opera unites as a team to take the audience on a musical journey, set to digital compositions by composer Joemca. Joemca’s music provides an evocative and creative soundscape. The singers’ voices soar over the glorious rhythms and musical overtones. Ordman’s voice is strong yet lyrical, and depicts the dramatically somber side of Ch’ien-nü. Meanwhile, Luck’s angelic voice carries the sweetness and endearing charm embodied within Ch’ien-nü’s soul. Cha and Kolker are both strong in their dramatic sensibility and help the story catapult forward. Vagnino assists, while Conner brings a pinch of comic flair to the stage.

The Disembodied Soul works so well because it is balanced in every aspect. The direction by Daya Wolterstorff and movement by Elissaveta Iordanova enable the cast to fully use dynamic staging and harmonic movement, giving the small performance space rich depth. The lighting by Kevin Hardy is lush, even in its minimal resource.

My only quibble is that the acoustics of the room made it hard at times to hear the singers over the accompaniment. The lyrics (by Chêng Teh-hui,  translated by Liu Jung-en) are so poetic and sentimental that I did not want to miss a single word. I also wanted to hear more singing from the two men, especially Conner, whose beautiful singing was minimized by his small role.

I hope that this show and Joemca’s music can be heard in the future in a larger setting. This heartfelt performance is a must-see.

Bootleg Islam
reviewed by Loren Noveck

When Negin Farsad, a California-born-and-bred Iranian-American woman currently residing in the East Village, was twenty-three, she took a solo trip to the Islamic Republic of Iran to attend her cousin’s wedding. Bootleg Islam turns the story of that journey, and of Farsad’s Iranian family’s life in modern-day Iran, into smart comedy. The bride, exactly the same age as Farsad, has spent almost her entire life within a three-block radius of her parents’ home in Tehran; Farsad, by contrast, has lived in three countries, lost her virginity, and never before had to shop for clothing that complies with hijab, the dress code of the Islamic Republic. (The scene where she tries to shop for her trip at Macy’s is one of the play’s funniest.)

Assisted only by a chador, an eggplant (key ingredient of bademjan—pronounced “bottom john”—the Persian national dish, and a major character in the piece), and a slide show of “well-crafted thirty-second montages,” Farsad portrays not only herself but also those she meets on her travels. This includes many members of her family (e.g., the sheltered bride, looking very forward to becoming acquainted with sex; the “metrosexual” wedding-planner male cousin, who lends her a “fashion-forward chador” that he likes to wear on the weekends; and the Clark Gable look-alike uncle, whose womanizing tendencies have been severely affected by the Islamic regime), and also, in shorter segments, a radical mullah, a woman she encounters at a mosque, and more. Farsad is an engaging performer with a gift for character sketches, and the portraits of her family are the greatest strength of the piece.

Although Bootleg Islam is full of incisive observations and subtle political commentary, its primary strategy seems to be to draw parallels between American culture and Iranian—think three family matriarchs at a Persian wedding re-imagined as The Golden Girls, and you get the idea. This is an effective comic technique, and also serves the purpose of forcing an American audience to recognize and appreciate what they have in common with citizens of this seemingly alien nation. However, I do wish that Farsad and director Kim Gatewood had focused a little more on the structure of the piece. Each individual moment is sharply drawn, but the transitions between them feel vague, and the moments don’t entirely hang together into a cohesive whole. Farsad clearly has a unique story to tell, and the strength as a performer to tell it, but the writing could use a little more polish to make the piece as effective and as powerful as it could be.

Patriot Acts
reviewed by David Pumo

It is always a bit tricky to create theatre that is meant to educate or get the audience thinking about serious issues. The challenge, of course, is to be informative and entertaining at the same time, so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’ve been sitting through a news program. Patriot Acts (The Constitution Project), a collection of eleven short skits examining the creation, evolution, and possible dismantling of the United States Constitution, manages to walk this fine line. The skits, written, performed and directed by the various artist of The Urban Rock Project, are clever, touching and, most importantly, funny, leaving the audience disarmed and more than willing to listen and think a little.

The pieces cover a wide array of issues, including abortion, gay marriage, the criminal justice system, our country’s response to terrorism, and the right to privacy. Some of them are frightening, like the one that takes the anti-abortion movement to a logical next step and finds a woman accused of murder for having negligently caused her own miscarriage. Another imagines a future in which President Bush has been reelected, and his proposed amendment banning gay marriage has been ratified.

Other skits invite argument and force us to examine our own prejudices. Which of us, for instance, would not be tempted to use racial profiling to screen for possible security problems at an airport? Still others are ironic and amusing. In one, two rival Girl Scout troupes engage in a cookie war employing tactics reminiscent of those used at Abu Ghraib. Another examines sexual stereotypes, pitting a provocative high school student against his closeted principal. Yet another—possibly my favorite—takes the right to privacy, a right that has come under serious attack in reaction to 9/11, and looks at it through an intensely personal lens. A man has been reading his partner’s personal email, and has convinced himself that she is having an affair. From her point of view, he has invaded her most intimate fantasies, a healthy and important part of her life that she has every right to explore privately.

If there is one absolute constant that runs through the collection, it's the quality of the acting. Urban Rock Project’s artistic director, Rich Cole, is a casting director, and he has used his position to assemble a group of strikingly sharp actors who don’t miss a beat. All appear in more than one skit. Some write and direct as well, and the feeling of “ensemble” and collective belief in the work is palpable the minute you enter the theatre. The company’s mission is to create work for “audiences who crave more than just entertainment from their theatergoing.” With Patriot Acts, they have certainly shown their commitment to this lofty goal.

Believe in Me… A Bigfoot Musical
reviewed by Robert Kent

Adrien Royce and Michael Holland's Believe in Me…a Bigfoot Musical may not sway anyone's opinion regarding Sasquatch. However, it is evidence that new, original American musicals are not an endangered species.

Based on Royce's stage play Everything That Happens in the Woods Is Real, the likable tuner, set in 1980, tells of Arlene (Christina Norrup), an idealistic, feminist filmmaker who reluctantly becomes involved in a Bigfoot documentary at the suggestion of Kerry (Danielle Pratt), a sassy lesbian co-worker, and two insurance-salesmen-turned-producers. After "soul-less, spineless" TV-land types dismiss her movie-of-the-week about IUDs saying, "this is Hollywood not Uterinetown," Arlene joins a brood of quirky country folk in their search for the elusive abominable snowman. Between dubious yeti "sightings," the filmmaker befriends a Bigfoot expert and his wife (H. Clark Kee and Audrey Lavine), a Native American artist (David Gurland), a lesbian trapper (Kelly Kinsella), and Rudy Guevara ("as in Che") (Jamie LaVerdiere), a vitamin-store clerk with an FBI agent in hot pursuit of him. Although the actors are challenged by their thinly drawn, stock characters, and some are simply miscast, all enthusiastically execute Drew Geraci's swift, resourceful direction and Erin Coakley's minimal choreography. Throughout, Norrup is a charming leading lady and is nicely supported by Lavine, Kinsella, and Gurland in standout performances.

Economically staged, Geraci's production ideally showcases Royce and Holland's work, ambitiously billed as the musical that Michael Moore and Stephen Sondheim would write, if they wrote a musical together. Among the show's chief assets are Holland's songs, particularly the ballads: "From Now On," the titular "Believe in Me," "Out of the Darkness," and the "Color of the Winds" doppelganger "White Bird Flies Alone" (hauntingly sung by Gurland). The very versatile Holland skillfully parodies theatre's best composers and lyricists: Stephen Schwartz, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Jonathan Larson, and of course Sondheim. Royce's book, filled with conveniently contrived plot twists and references to government cover-ups, is not as developed as Holland's score. Characters are mostly one-dimensional and several moments, particularly Arlene's discovery of the "truth" about Bigfoot and the final scene, set twenty years later, seem underwritten. Overall, Royce's salvageable book and Holland's adept score combine into an untamed yet entertaining jumble of styles: romantic comedy, political melodrama, camp and social satire. Once this Bigfoot musical finds itself, it undoubtedly will be something to believe in.

Immortality
reviewed by Hieu Tran

David Fairhurst’s Immortality is a wonderfully entertaining 70-minute show centering on one man’s existential quest for immortality. How so, you might ask? Well, through any standard, non-supernatural means he could think of: first striving to become an established writer so that his words and thoughts can be remembered, then trying out the idea of impregnating a woman so that his genes may be passed on, and finally flirting with the idea of assassinating somebody famous so that his name will always be remembered in adjunct.

In the abstract, putting on a show focusing on these issues might seem to be an “interesting” idea, but one would also need to have sufficient comic imagination to pull such a premise off. Fairhurst, fortunately, manages to do so, under the direction of Lisa Deo. He basically just sits on a stool and ruminates on many of the events in his life in a stream-of-consciousness flow, ranging from the coincidence that he was born on the same day that President John F. Kennedy was killed, to enumerating the ways in which he procrastinates while writing his masterpiece (two of my favorites are untangling a phone cord and cutting the plastic off of a windowed envelope so that he can put the plastic in one recycling bag and the paper in another). The comedy of the piece is supplemented by intermittent slides, many of which qualify a number of Fairhurst’s witticisms as being stolen from much more famous writers (e.g., Oscar Wilde), and the occasional sound-piece, voiced by as many as eight other actors.

Immortality works well, thanks to Fairhurst’s relaxed mood and the no-frills, seemingly just-scraped-together charm of the set. The show is playing at a converted art studio, with thirty or so fold-out chairs for the audience, a stack of plastic crates to hold up the slide projector, and an unevenly cut, white board to project the images against.

And even though the tone of most of the show is richly and darkly comic, a hint of melancholia creeps in near the end, as Fairhurst recounts the day when Bozo the Clown forever shook his father’s single-minded faith in the sense and order of things. If there is ever supposed to be a contemporary parable for existential dread, this might be it.

Unaccessorized
reviewed by David Pumo

In the world of gay theatre (and film and television, for that matter), so heavily overpopulated with pretty white boys and their sex lives, a story told from any other cultural perspective is always worth a look. Rich Kiamco’s one-man show, Unaccessorized, about his own life as a gay Filipino from the cornfields of Illinois, is a sparkling, warm, and funny journey of-self discovery told by an overachiever who shows no signs of slowing down.

Like my favorite solo performers, Lily Tomlin and John Leguizamo, Kiamco’s work here, directed by Dan Bacalzo, is highly physical, almost an athletic event. He’s really working hard on that stage, and it’s impossible not to be impressed. The movement, from pantomime to dance and gymnastics, is precisely choreographed. The music and sound effects, designed by Mike Degen, are subtle and tightly synchronized. The results are quite professional, and a cut above what you’re used to seeing off-off Broadway.

A self-proclaimed nerd, high-schooler Rich also embraced the New Romantics of the eighties, dressing like Duran Duran, Culture Club and Flock of Seagulls all at the same time. He came out to his parents, who told him that they loved him and would find a cure. Naturally, he got on a local teen talk show and came out to all of Chicago. Bucking his parents’ dreams of medical school, he followed his own dreams to FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology, or, as Kiamco has it, “Faggots In Training.”) Working for two years as Judy Tenuta’s designer, he eventually segued into her love slave/go-go dancer/drag queen sidekick, Miss Saigon, following her to Vegas and the Howard Stern Show.

There are other chapters in the journey as well: a design gig ending in a lawsuit; a short-lived relationship with his wealthy Austrian “soul mate”; and a life-affirming trip to the top of a rock in Sedona, Arizona, in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert drag. All of it is fun, though sometimes I wonder if the focus gets a little lost. The best autobiographers tell a story with a beginning, middle and end, taking liberties with the facts, when needed, to make them work as theatre. Leguizamo, for instance, liberally changes the details about his own family from show to show to fit each new narrative thread. The story here works best when it focuses on Kiamco's own trip, and his parents’ as well, from rigid cultural and religious expectation to a more opened and colorful self-understanding and acceptance. It’s a story we can all relate to, filling in our own cultural particulars. But most of all, it’s a story told with great style and warmth by an overachiever I know I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Die, Die, Diana
reviewed by Martin Denton

Die, Die, Diana is the musical that was denied permission to perform in the United Kingdom because (a) it suggests that some members of the British royal family have copulated with horses, and (b) it suggests that other members of the royal family conspired to murder Princess Diana. I guess that stuff is kind of seditious; happily, we live in the United States, where—so far—nobody prevents you from putting on stage whatever you want.

So we get to see Die, Die, Diana at FringeNYC, courtesy of hope theatre, inc., in a fizzily ingratiating production staged by Kelly McAllister. It is, as you have probably already figured out, mostly a musical satire, not only of events surrounding the life and death of the Princess, but also of our obsession with celebrity; librettist/lyricist Scott Sublett and composer Jef Labas make their points, with virtually no subtlety, via pastiche, appropriating a whole host of musical theatre styles in a theatrical free-for-all that is frequently fun, fitfully smart, and constantly surprising. There is, for example, a scene in which the Queen Mother—played in drag as a sort of British Barbara Bush by the hilarious R. Paul Hamilton—chides her daughter Queen Elizabeth II (Heather McAllister, in a glittery tiara, faux red ermine robe, and bedroom slippers) about the poor romantic choices made by her children, with rude references to Fergie and Prince Edward's apparent fondness for "members" of the Royal Navy. (The Queen Mum delights in that last joke.) Elsewhere, the Queen complains about her mother's chronic farting, and Prince Charles is seen with Camilla Bowles-Parker in a leather S&M harness. Dodi Fayed is portrayed as a callow disco bunny who mangles the English language and pays paparazzi to catch him in flagrante with Diana; Prince William is played by an actress, Jackie Kamm, who also "plays" Prince Harry, represented by a fuzzy teddy bear puppet. (Kamm gets one of the show's finest moments, as Harry, delivering a pertinent passage from Richard III.)

There are flashbacks involving Aristotle Onassis (Hamilton again) and Marilyn Monroe (Aida Lembo). There's a Music Hall-style turn by the elderly member of Her Majesty's Secret Service who has been enlisted to knock off the Princess, entitled "I'm Too Old for This Sort of Thing" (delightfully delivered by Matthew Rankin, who doubles on guitar for most of the show). There are several "invisible dogs"; a Myrmidon who moves, and sometimes functions as, the scenery; and a big, bubbly title number in which the Queen Mother and ensemble look forward to Diana's imminent murder for the sake of the perpetuation of the monarchy. The whole shebang is narrated by a reporter called Johnny Swift, who professes his love for the dead Diana even as he feeds off her fame.

It's not always in particularly good taste, nor does it always hit its targets; it's probably several scenes too long. But McAllister has staged it with enormous verve, and his company of terrific actors give it all they've got—the ones I haven't mentioned thus far are Bob D'Haene (Charles), Beth Ann Leone (Camilla), Vinnie Penna (Dodi), Dan O'Neill (Myrmidon), and Jack Halpin (Johnny). At the center of it all is Ashley Wren Collins as the sad and misunderstood title character, pretty much a ringer physically for the real thing, particularly in the evocative designer outfits provided by costumer Betty Poindexter.

The songs, by the way, are mostly a hoot; Ayhan Sahin is the very talented musical director. 

Tens and Twenties
reviewed by Eric Winick

The office is a popular place these days. Not that everyone’s clamoring to get there, or spend unnecessary time pushing pencils, faxing, or taking meetings. Yet the popularity of BBC-TV’s The Office and cult success of films like Office Space attest to a piqued interest, a morbid curiosity, about the everyday goings-on in cubicles and around water coolers worldwide. Is it that we’ve become so accustomed to the fantastic, to the lives of people outside these settings, that we now crave a glimpse of ourselves—the average, workaday nine-to-fiver?

In his two-hander Tens and Twenties, playwright Gregory Hardigan portrays this Everyplace as a Hell, or at least a Purgatory, that traps its occupants for ten to twenty year stints, after which time they are released to the world, never to set eyes on a Xerox machine again. The damage inflicted by these stretches is considerable—over time, employees lose touch with family, friends, and, basically, anything happening ten feet beyond their desk. To ease the pain, execs hire, or are assigned, actors, whose job it is to provide the illusion that the employee goes home after a long day at work—by reading passages describing the commute and inevitable reunion with one’s family.

It’s an intriguing premise, and Hardigan exploits it for most of its potential. Genre-wise, the piece falls squarely in the realm of Twilight Zone-ish science fiction, dotted with lovely, lyrical descriptions that give the play its heart: a crisp, fall day in an idyllic American town; the sights and smells of a local bakery; and the characters’ inability to receive the touch of another after long periods of deprivation. Initially icy, the interaction between our protagonist and his actress/secretary only thaws as both begin to appreciate, then empathize with each other’s predicament. Gradually, a deeper understanding emerges, and an unexpected melancholy settles over the proceedings.

Kurt Ehrmann and Cora Vander Broek shine in the roles of the beleaguered “ten” and his enabler, who is known only as “Constance.” Ehrmann, barefoot and rumpled, portrays his character’s private hell with a fierce intensity. The fresh-faced Vander Broek manages Constance’s subterfuge with a sly grace. Both rise to Hardigan’s expertly concocted occasion, and the result is bewitching, frightening, and disquietingly familiar.

Host and Guest
reviewed by Brian Rogers

The Georgian (as in former Soviet Republic) expats at the helm of Washington DC's Synetic Theater are self-serious in a way that's all too rare these days. We're talking art with a capital A. Host and Guest, their exuberant and unapologetically melodramatic dance theater offering, is an embarassment of riches.

Adapted from the 19th century poem by Vazha Pshavela, Host and Guest is the story of a remote mountain village where a Muslim (played by Paata Tsikurishvili) opens his home to a sworn blood enemy—a Christian—with dismal results. Hatreds boil over, tragedy piles onto tragedy.

It's a powerful and familiar tale. Director Paata Tsikurishvili and choreographer Irina Tsikurishvili attack us with a seemingly endless stockpile of visual ideas. Several of these—most notably the production's many harrowing fight sequences—are like a punch to the gut, executed with cunning and precision by a cast of 16. Others—while it's impossible not to appreciate their formal beauty—smack of self-conscious theatricality.

Every second of this performance—and I'm only partially exaggerating—is played at a frightening pitch. That the ensemble manages, much of the time, to match this intensity with skill is no small accomplishment. But the near-total lack of silence here is suffocating. Many of the production's high octane moments, smothered with gorgeous orchestral music by Vato Kakhidze, feel overheated and unearned.

The Synetic company received a great deal of acclaim for a Hamlet adaptation which was performed without dialogue. One might have wished for a similar treatment here. The text, by Roland Reed, does little to augment the Tsikurishvilis' inspired visual storytelling; and too often gets in the way of this ambitious, well-intentioned, and fitfully brilliant exercise.

Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act
reviewed by Seth Duerr

A black man. A white woman. An officer of the law. In Athol Fugard’s Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality Act, the Man and the Woman debate their love for an hour, only to be caught suddenly in the act and interrogated until the play’s end. This is a harrowing world of shifting paces and moods, with performances to match.

While apartheid may have been abolished in South Africa almost two decades ago, issues over who may or may not love one another, and how governments either sanction or persecute such relationships, are as prevalent as ever. Though here at home, our government may not incorporate South Africa’s former Immorality Act condemning marriage and/or sexual relations between blacks and whites, the current fight over gay marriage in this country is just as horrendous, particularly since this country is the first to proclaim its own freedoms.

This universal relevancy, however, is what makes Fugard very difficult to direct—his works, while they are most definitely plays, can easily bait directors (as occurs with Peter Wallace’s staging of this production) into the trap of presenting moral philosophy instead of driving the action. Wallace does however treat the work with an immense appreciation, and directs his actors with sublime care and respect. Wallace’s use of media would be very effective if it were not used to the point of overshadowing the actors in many crucial moments. Using a video projector upstage, certain snapshots of the actors appear in real time during the show, presumably the photos that the officers were taking. There are way too many, however, and the more that appear, the less effective they become.

Most admirable here is the performance of Noel Arthur as the Man; conceived with grace, playfulness, a keen intellect, and, in times of danger, an intense vulnerability, Arthur helps bring out the Man’s spectacular inner battle—he criticizes his lover for her fear of being caught loving him, and yet when he is caught, his gut instincts match that of a trapped animal facing an impending slaughter. Similarly, Megan Leigh as the Woman (appearing naked, as does Arthur, for the entire 80-minute performance) presents a lovely and well-thought out portrait of a very lost soul. A little creaky at the beginning, Leigh certainly warms up to the job—her final speeches are done with a heartbreaking defensiveness. All that is missing is a way for the two performers to find the same relaxation listening as they have when they are speaking; it would make their relationship that much more inevitable and sad.

Wallace and his dialect coaches Laura Hitt and Judilee Vivier, having done brilliant work with Arthur and Leigh (Afrikaaner being one of the hardest accents to learn), do need to reign in Bob Jaffe’s stint as the policeman, as he sounds like a crude Italian taking a class in Afrikaans, something too distracting for a story as important as this. The play and the lead performers certainly overcome these deficiencies however, and the production is well worth your time.

Burning Botticelli
reviewed by Sarah Wolfman Robichaud

“If art is not about honesty, what should it be about?” This question is debated early on in Burning Botticelli by actor Joe Hickey in his moving, frighteningly realistic, portrayal of the 15th century Florentine preacher, Fra Savonarola, thus serving the audience one of the play’s main themes. This is a daring question for any self-proclaimed artist (or actor or writer) to attempt to answer. Playwright Dennis Schebetta explores here the age-old frustration of every artist who searches for a “voice” to inspire them. This piece, directed by Scott Embler, is gorgeous, with its slide projections on white canvasses, clothes, and faces—but it may be difficult going for the viewer without at least one Intro to Art Historical Analysis class under their belt.

The play opens with a flourish of characters, each telling his or her own story. A Native American girl camps out in the desert hoping for a vision from the Spider Woman. Botticelli runs to the aid of Savonarola, who shunned Botticelli’s painting for displaying the work of the devil, and the two men reconcile before the preacher is burned at the stake the following day. A contemporary artist, who hears voices that tell him what to create, is stalked by a cult follower as he sits before Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in Florence. All of these images flash in front of the audience’s eyes before the play unfolds to reveal some very lovely moments about each of these artists’ struggles to fit into their societal standards.

What follows weaves together Native American myths and contemporary art critiques, performed by a talented ensemble cast ranging from parrot impressionists to a young omniscient boy. This play just may not be for everyone: do not see Burning Botticelli to be “entertained” for two hours—rather, follow the advice of G. R. Johnson’s heart-wrenching, complex, and willingly-tortured character, Monk. “The viewer discovers all,” he tells us; see this to discover what you can, because “the world has lost a sense of mysticism.” How selfless and kind of Schebetta to give back to us some of that lost magic.