FringeNYC 2004 Reviews - Page 4

Rapunzel
reviewed by Joanne Joseph

This is one of the few shows appropriate for kids in this year's FringeNYC, and it is an ambitious two-act redo of the fairy tale, with many epic twists and some contemporary touches to help it along (e.g., the witch's employee/goblin calls her boss on a cell phone when trouble is afoot).

There are many pretty songs, mostly in minor key, and mostly like each other. Only during the songs are the body mikes turned on. The Connelly Theatre has excellent acoustics, so this works out. The voices are sweet and pleasing; never mind if the high notes don't all hit their pitches squarely, the performances are decently felt and conveyed.

The production comes from a group of young performers from Pennsylvania, the Bucks County Academy of the Performing Arts, who have worked hard to bring this elaborate piece to town. The children in the audience followed the story wherever it went and seemed held in thrall by it all.

Music, lyrics, and story for this version of Rapunzel are by Eric Stedman, direction is by Sara Accardi and Laura Bowman. The romantic leads are Melanie Rose Walters, of the long hair, and truly lovely, and Sean Killeen as the ardent prince. The witch, who says all men should be shunned (and daughters should be kept imprisoned in towers to avoid them) is played by Shannon Turner. This character, after long struggle, is foiled, and as we know, the prince and the girl find each other again and live happily... well the play ends before the "ever after."

The narrator/cat Pandora is played by Leann Wintermute, who keeps all the plot lines together in good story theatre fashion. The moms accompanying the children at the performance I saw did not fidget, nor did the youngsters. The Brothers Grimm, after all, do push some of our major buttons, and it is fitting that such messages are delivered in a pleasant gloss.

Common Knowledge
reviewed by Steve Chasey

It seems like any show can find a review with a glowing catchphrase to use for advertising; it is refreshing to see one that actually lives up to its own hype. Doug Budin and Randal Rapstine's performance of Common Knowledge flows from them with so much humor, honesty, and sensitivity, that the packed house was hardly a surprise.

The duo takes on the roles of a large, vaguely interconnected group, ranging from an eight-year-old playwright who has written over three thousand plays, all of which seem to be three lines about him and his mother, to a redneck car mechanic in the middle of nowhere who reminisces about his lavish dinner-party-life of the past. All of the characters are larger than life, living stereotypes who take that position and rejoice in it. They run with their political incorrectness held high overhead like a banner, charging ahead with wit and chutzpah.

The first few scenes, each introduced by the mime-like flipping of giant index cards, come across as individual stand-up comedy routines. However, contained in them are the seeds of connections and ideas that unite the storyline. The tone of the performance shifts subtly towards these ideas—of family, of interconnection, of acceptance—until a surprising moment in a scene entitled "Aisle or Window?" when all at once the touching gravity of the moment stills a crowd that has as of yet not stopped laughing. Despite all the humor and wit of the performance, that moment of silence is the heart of Common Knowledge; establishing a unity in the audience that reflects the human commonalities Budin and Rapstine portray so eloquently onstage.

An Evening of Semi-autobiographical Highly Self-Indulgent…
reviewed by Neal Utterback

Well... I can’t say that I was lied to.

Lawrence Goodman and Gersh Kuntzman’s An Evening of Semi-Autobiographical Highly Self-Indulgent Theater lives up to its name. Offering little more substance than one of its overused phallic jokes, the play feels as long as its title. To its credit, the piece, set up as three playlets, seems to attempt to comment on the state of theatre today.

The first playlet called "The Gersh Kuntzman Story" brings together the future, past, and yes, from out of the audience, the present Gersh Kuntzman. Kuntzman's life seems to be about his utter inability to impress the ladies.

In "The Making of This Play" we get to see the back story to the making of a children's play originally about two turtles. Through rewrites and an ambitious director's machinations, the play becomes an attempt to disrobe the lead actress. As an examination of the commercialization of art and the degeneration of modern theatre, this playlet is the most interesting of the three. Unfortunately, the dialogue does not live up to the playwright's aspirations.

The third ditty once again breaks the fourth wall as actors stumble through a scene which degenerates into an ad for the Fringe. Making use of the classic gag of people chasing each other around with buckets of water that end up aimed at the audience, the play almost found a truly exciting moment. I only wish I had been doused with water.

The play is searching for a sincere commentary and I imagine that the writers think they are making statements by using crude, common humor. But ultimately the play is mired down by a bog of cliché Jewish jokes, sexual stereotypes, and endless self-loathing. The production is directed somewhat amateurishly by Eric Oleson; the actors often seem uncertain of their lines and/or their staging, giving the appearance of unfortunate improv sketch comedy. The one exception is the always quirky Kenny Wade Marshall (of the improv troupe Rash Behaviour), who manages to tread water as the play sinks below him.

Beware the Man Eating Chicken
reviewed by Pamela Butler

Beware indeed! The play opens in the home of the Smith family. Mother Betty Smith (Mikaela Kafka), her younger sister Carol Smith (Catherine Taormina), and son William (Osborn Focht) are engaged in a get-rich-not-so-quickly scheme involving a merger of flesh with flesh, more like a large takeover plot. The young William is being plied with many, many chicken delights prepared by reluctant chef Carol, in order to compete in the “The Fattest Man in The Universe” contest. Mom Betty, putting Lady Macbeth to shame, has two weeks to go, and she defies anyone to get between her and her goal of taking first prize.

Enter Captain Leonard (Christian Johnstone); looking for the suspicious consumer of more-than-humanly-possible amounts of food, suggesting an illegal pet is resident here that needs to be confiscated. He is handled by protective mother Betty, defending her progeny as any Mom would. Word is out though, and Albert (Cordell Stahl), self-described poultry mogul, comes sniffing after a financial killing, needing William’s help.

Just when he thinks he has a deal, Dorothy arrives to thwart him. She has an interesting relationship with the set design that I am unable to make sense of, but she gets a laugh. Who is Dorothy? How do you define a surprise that just isn’t a thrill? The plot is peppered with unpredictable misfiring and the ending feels incomplete.

There are worthy moments in this under-cooked comic escapade. Osborne Focht gives excellent lip service to William. Christian Johnstone, as both the Captain and his colleague Dr. Martin, has just the right take on these very different characters. Cordell Stalh shines with comic perfection as Albert, and gives probably the most notable performance in the ensemble.

John Peterson does an excellent job making the best of the story and keeping the action and comic timing at a brisk pace. The musical accompaniment is delightful, offbeat, and ties right in, thanks to Andy Cohen. Author Henry Meyerson is after social comment here and it’s an interesting premise with clear condemnation of American greed, deceit, and heartlessness in the face of the big buck. I’m just not convinced that the evening’s fare is up to his or our expectations.

The Black Swan of Trespass
reviewed by Ross Chappell

A rooster and a cat complaining about modernism? A man talking to a mosquito? Actually, an imaginary man talking to a singing mosquito? “The urchins picked their noses in the sun, (pause) with their left hand.” Presented by Stuck Pigs Squealing.

WHAT?! If The Black Swan of Trespass sounds confusing, it is. It’s also quite wonderful. Straddling the line between linear theatre and theatre of the absurd is difficult, but the authors (Lally Katz and Chris Kohn) manage the trick fairly well. They have imagined the life and thoughts of a man who just happens to be the figment of two Australian soldiers’ imaginations.

The true story: In 1943, World War II Australian soldiers/poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart engineered an imaginary poet named Ernest Malley to parody modernist writings. They wrote poems that were deliberately nonsense, then posed as his sister submitting them by mail to Max Harris, an outspoken modernist poet and magazine editor. After Harris declared Malley the “most significant new voice in Australian Literature,” they revealed their colossal joke.

Katz and Kohn have used this historical event (and Malley’s poems and “life story”) to bring Ern Malley to life for an unusual look at what it means to be human. The show wanders in and out of a dreamlike state where Ern Malley recognizes that he is the creation of these two soldiers (the rooster and the cat, by the way). The play carefully weaves comic and tragic moments into an effective balance. Anopheles, the mosquito, sings a response to Ern’s suggestion of his eye as a biting location, “Mosquitoes suck blood, not eye juice.” The humor is truly bizarre, but it works. And somewhere between the comedy of Ern’s nonsense lines (“If I confused your blonde hair for weeds, was it not floating on my tides?”) lies a stark and painful look at reality.

The beaten, bruised object of Ern’s unrequited affection (played by Jacklyn Bassanelli) tries to entice American soldiers to her bed. James Saunders brings this imaginary poet’s melancholy and instability to life, and Katie Keady is oddly hypnotic in her portrayal of Ern’s utterly normal sister.

Adding to this cleverly written script are some inventive technical aspects. Projections of images and text on the rear wall are effective and, occasionally, fascinating: Ern reaches toward his sister’s glowing handprint. A standard echo effect yields an eerie, mesmerizing sound for Gavan O’Leary (Anopheles), including his stunning rendition of “You Don’t Know Me.”

All in all, an interesting (if sometimes oblique) concept with haunting performances. Though Black Swan is possibly not an appropriate choice for those who detest abstract art, it is a remarkable show nonetheless.

Reconstruction
reviewed by Ross Chappell

The performance of Reconstruction, by Clifford Lee Johnson III, began with a disclaimer. “Due to circumstances beyond [their] control,” the playwright was required to step in for one of the two actors, and they had put the show together in precisely five days. “Every writer’s worst nightmare,” we were told, and rightly so. We were informed that they had treated the week as a workshop for developing a new play and were warned that the actors might have to ask for lines. They did, but only occasionally. Given the circumstances, the performances were impressive.

Reconstruction is the story of Ally and Ford, a wife and husband who are spending the evening in their bedroom desperately trying to revive their sex life. The catch is that Ally has undergone mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, and reconstructive surgery. This show is really far more Ally’s story than it is Ford’s. Ally’s moments are the heartbreaking ones. She describes her surprise that she misses being ogled by men in public. She chuckles at her own analogy of the change to a reconstructed breast filled with saline, “milk to tears.” These moments are personal and real, and Alice King (Ally) does wonders with them.

The problem is, this show is a comedy. Johnson has created a genuinely funny show, and most of the comedy is built out of wonderfully mundane moments. In a phone conversation with their daughter, they have to convince her not to flush her grandmother’s fish down the toilet—because it’s not like Nemo; it’s a city fish. Ford tests Ally’s breasts for natural feel, size, and weight (yes, there’s nudity in the show) to which Ally responds, “Don’t squeeze it like a Nerf ball!” The entire show sounds very much like a real couple, in a real bedroom. Sometimes they are playful, sometimes comically frustrated.

Unfortunately, the show is so dominated by this light atmosphere that it undermines the serious moments that are presented. It seems to be trying to recreate a couple’s strained attempt at levity to deal with a painful situation, but it falls short.

However, I have my own disclaimer: Reconstruction seems to have genuine potential, and I would very much like to see a finished version. I applaud the actors, director, et al. Their efforts were apparent. And I daresay the average playwright would require far more than five days’ notice for appearing in nothing but bikini underwear and rose petals.

Voices of Juarez
reviewed by Fred Backus

Inspired by the rash of killings of young women in the Mexican border town of Cuidad Juárez over the last decade, Voices of Juárez takes us through the final days and post-mortem aftermath of Lydia, a fictionalized representative and spokeswoman for the city’s victims. Appearing as Lydia’s spirit, Yale undergrad Kristen Hunter, the show's creator, takes us through a community infested with corruption and misogyny. Lydia is forced to work in a factory through the incompetence of her crooked, abusive, and alcoholic father, her male supervisors dehumanize her and her co-workers, the factory bus driver tries to recruit her for prostitution, and the male police force is unable or unwilling to solve a wave of almost ritualistic brutality against women that continues to take its death toll in the background until it rises up and snuffs out the main character.

That there is something monumentally wrong in Juárez is clear, and Hunter understandably sees and addresses it as a systemic problem inextricably linked to gender. Hunter is a grounded performer who successfully translates her moral outrage to the stage. In doing so, she has crafted a clear and sometimes compelling narrative into an effective propaganda piece that certainly calls attention to a situation deserving both acknowledgement and action.

But the simplicity of the approach can be troubling. Hunter launches into her first male character with a hyper-macho swagger and by balling her fist into her pants to represent his offending organ, a clear sign of what is to come. Voices of Juárez is awash in one-dimensional stereotypes—the women wise, patient, supportive, or heroic; the men stupid, unfeeling, corrupt, or depraved. Lydia’s boyfriend alone among the men is cast in a good light, but he drifts into fantasy as a Mexican Romeo from a feuding family. Director Aole T. Miller neither rounds out these stereotypes into characters, nor sharpens them into archetypes.

The forces at work causing the epidemic of violence against women in Juárez are multifaceted, involving an interplay of domestic violence, serial killings, official corruption, deep-seated gender roles, and economic imperialism to name a few, and while one can’t expect anyone to explain what in real life is a mystery, a better acknowledgement of the complexity of the problem might be called for. Voices of Juárez certainly touches on these themes, but too often resorts to clumsy clichés, and seems to end by pointing the finger at a vague but omnipresent patriarchy, which is pretty much where we began.

Eleanor Rigby Is Waiting
reviewed by Leslie Bramm

Like it’s more famous namesake, Davi Parr’s Eleanor Rigby is Waiting moves in familiar places and explores equally familiar states of loneliness and emotional isolation. Parr’s script is funny, tightly written, and often touching. Moving in snippets from one Manhattan location to another, six actors play over a dozen lost New York City souls. The play is tied together by a few thin strands and a skillful use of roses. We see these people collide, dissolve, and desperately try to make some kind of human connection. Each actor plays multiple roles, and Parr intertwines their lives as the climactic scenes begin to weave in and out of each other.

The song lyrics paint a detailed story of a spinster trapped in her meaningless and void life. Lennon and McCartney are masters at sussing out characters with a minimal amount of words. The song asks the question, “where do they all come from”? Parr succeeds in using the song to create the general theme of lonely people, but the text falls short of making the characters real. Parr’s play might be served by listening closely to the last verse of the song (Lennon’s contribution, by the way) and trying for a deeper sense of closure.

The direction by Eric Amburg is excellent. He moves the action smoothly from beat to beat and finds a tempo that suits the play perfectly. The ensemble is well cast and all the actors have moments where they are "bang on." Standout performances are given by DeAnna Gonzales and Michael Hardart—they are able to dig deep consistently. Lighting by Stephen Brady serves the play well and the sound design by Michael Creason creates an eerie pastiche that sets the mood. Eleanor Rigby is Waiting is an enjoyable play that doesn’t quite hit its mark, but never fails to remind us of how lonely we can become and, at the same time, that there is always someone even more so.

Last Words
reviewed by Kevin Connell

His name is Ken Carnes and his contribution to the New York International Fringe Festival is his solo play Last Words. He is primarily an activist, an educator, and a disciple for social awareness. Based on the last word testimonies from inmates across America headed for the electric chair, this docudrama centers on the fictitious Albert L. Peoples, a sort of everyman illuminating the heart of human suffering and the ramifications of lives seemingly misused, but more misunderstood.

It is clear in the design of his play that Carnes seeks sympathy and compassion for those on death row. I must say that sitting in the theatre I missed the debate on the issue—the controversy. I wanted the challenge of being a juror asked to decide between the death penalty and life in prison. I wanted somehow to be convinced that the choice of death was right and I wanted that to be disproved, so that by the play's end I would be definitively convinced, changed, and yes, sympathetic and compassionate. With continued script development, Carnes may find that this complication strengthens his well-intentioned counsel to empathize.

Effectively projected throughout the production are the actual last words of decades of inmates sentenced to death. Accompanying each quote is their photo. Mostly men—two women—so many from Texas, but also Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, California, Oklahoma, Virginia, Missouri, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Utah. This serves as testimony of the lives terminated in 1999 and 1955 and the years before, in between, and since.

This is a wonderful social drama that most certainly should be incorporated into our education and counseling systems, high schools and juvenile detention centers, colleges and judicial training programs.

This production is worthy of traveling down to 86 Walker Street (at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Arts space). It’s a questionable venue with a broken elevator, but don’t judge Last Words by its cover. Inside, Carnes delivers a humble, gracious, and intriguing look at an important issue and the lives that inhabit it.

An Account at First Hand of the Battle…
reviewed by Matthew Trumbull

If there were a Longest Play Title prize awarded at the 2004 FringeNYC, George Rand would have a lock on it with his self-written one-man war yarn, An Account At First Hand of the Battle Lately Waged In and Around the Town of Gettysburg (PA.) As Related By Major General Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (Ret.), Army of Northern Virginia (C.S.A). Even the stage manager lost her way saying it aloud in the pre-show announcements. But 19th century titles didn’t mess around, and neither does Rand’s General Trimble, who we are meeting in the year 1866, three years after the Gettysburg battle began the nineteen-month death knell of the Confederacy.

Tough, leathery, and devilish, the 64-year-old general struts before us with a twinkle in his eye, giving not one hoot what we think of him, chastising us for even wanting to hear about Gettysburg and not Chancellorsville, which went better for Dixie. Rand is a masterful storyteller, switching characters in flashbacks to portray Robert E. Lee and various other commanders, Confederate and Union. He even gives us a 70-year-old farmer who fought the British with his musket in 1812, and comes to Gettysburg to kill Rebels with the same gun.

Rand and director Natasha Badillo have found clear distinctions in posture, accent, and demeanor to separate Trimble from others that Rand weaves into his one-man tapestry. Badillo has skillfully made full use of the stage, protecting Rand’s anecdotes from stagnancy by giving him an easel and paper to illustrate strategy, and leaning him occasionally against the heat pipe, as if it were an oak shading him from the Gettysburg sun.

Though Rand nimbly leapfrogs from character to character in certain stories, I found it difficult to keep track of who’s Dixie and who’s Union in anecdotes delivered by Trimble himself. Though the crusty general harrumphs at an 1866 audience, Rand might further tweak these stories for 21st century folk, who have been separated from the deeds of these men by almost 150 years. There is sadness in that, and Rand incorporates beautiful moments of vulnerability into our time with Trimble. He leaves us with a heartbreaking glimpse of an old man who is struggling with obscurity, restlessness, and regret as the lights fade on all that he had to say.

Three
reviewed by Jeff Lewonczyk

Puppetry is one of the most precise of art forms, almost entirely dependent on technique, and so imprecision and technical snags nettle more in a puppet play than they do in other media. So it’s a compliment to Laurie O’Brien’s puppet triptych Three that, despite a welter of opening-night mishaps, the imagination and delicacy of her vision still shone through.

Pulling inspiration from sources such as Edward Gorey, Lewis Carroll, Jean Cocteau, Jan Svankmajer, and Joseph Cornell, the three short pieces that make up this half-hour show each inhabit a world unto themselves. The first, “A Horse Called Sadness,” uses candy colors and word balloons to conjure a world of dazzling pathos, in which a sadistic ringmaster shoots the forlorn title character for having broken a leg. As jaunty hand-drawn text trails across the back of the puppet stage’s miniature aperture (turning the narration into a kind of puppet itself), a high-strung dancer named Bird-Girl and the “Bunny Called Anger” respectively attempt to lament and avenge their poor friend’s death.

The second piece is a shadow-puppet interpretation of Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” mined for the eeriest possible resonance. As an acid voiceover declaims Carroll’s verse, the exquisitely sinister titular pair make you truly frightened for the welfare of those poor, naïve oysters.

“Pest Control,” Three’s climactic presentation, is the longest, dreamiest and least narrative of the lot. Suffering a concussion after a blow from a child’s stray ball, a freakily serene Victorian doll finds herself in the living embodiment of a Joseph Cornell box. A succession of cabinet doors open and close, revealing a multitude of images both poetic and disturbing, as a cherubic demon flits in and out, bearing mysterious exhortations.

I won’t go into detail about the technical snafus, since I’m confident they’ll have been ironed out by the second performance. If the magic of the images came through well enough despite such obstacles, I can only imagine their beauty when presented with greater assurance.

A Chicken and Its Breast
reviewed by Leslie Bramm

Caila Lipovsky and Christine Heinisch are the driving force behind the pseudo-punk, somewhat cabaret band “Apartment Burlesque Orchestra.” They have joined forces (again in an apartment) to give us A Chicken and Its Breast. This mostly solo show is written and directed by Lipovsky, with Heinisch providing the musical or anti-musical back drop. It’s hard to pin down this piece. It’s listed in the FringeNYC Program Guide as sketch comedy/improv. It’s not quite that—this is the type of fringe experience that falls into a world of its own. You have to be patient with the play and give it time to unfold. There is a method to Chicken’s madness and it’s worth the time you will invest in it.

The play follows the story of Holly, a 20-something woman who falls in and out of bad relationships with boys and hates her mother. That could be the story of many young, neurotic women. In Holly’s mind and Lipovsky’s text, however, that would be much too easy. Holly is near a meltdown and we’re invited into her mind to share it. From the opening moments, when she blurts out “I like it when my boyfriend rapes me,” we get a feeling that the evening is moving into darker territory.

It’s hard to give a detailed synopsis of the piece without ruining some of its many surprises. Instead I’ll tell you that Lipovsky gives an energetic performance as Holly. From her adept yoga routine to the psychotic dance numbers, it's clear that she has a trained body and knows how to use it. In fact the using of her body is key to this character’s make up.

Between each scene Heinisch takes over with a musical score that is disquieting. The play shows us the ugly and dark part of Holly’s psyche. By the end you’re hoping someone will love her, or at least treat her decently. Does it happen? You’ll have to see for yourself. If your taste for fringe leans to dark meat, or thighs and breasts then A Chicken and Its Breast is the perfect piece for you.