FringeNYC 2004 Reviews - Page 7

Sleeping with Management
reviewed by Gyda Arber

Christine Goodman's new one-woman show, Sleeping With Management, concerns itself with her recent work with a touring children's theatre company that is well-known in acting circles for fostering young talent (and providing a quick way to get an Equity card). Though the group is referred to by a different name in the show, those familiar with the young actor's plight will easily recognize the company and the inside view Goodman provides.

The show covers Goodman’s tour experience, from casting to completion. To this end, she portrays nine characters, including her manager, other actors in the show, assorted people she meets on the road, and of course, herself. Since things are never as simple as they seem, it turns out that her boyfriend is road-managing the production, which makes him her boss. Negotiating this relationship with the added stress of a road show proves to be a difficult task, but Goodman brings humor and warmth to the situation. The spoken word poetry she intersperses between scenes provides even more insight.

Director Jack Halpin leads Goodman to a solid performance, doing fine work with each of the characters; she clearly knows how to tell a good story. I had a wonderful time at the show, laughing at and empathizing with her situation. The show seems to be aimed at theatre-types, however; my familiarity with this company and my understanding of theatre put me on the same page as Goodman, while my companion at the show, a theatre outsider, if you will, did not share the same enthusiasm. But I think all theatre folks will surely appreciate Sleeping With Management as much as I did; for any actors considering touring with a children’s theatre company (or who have already), the humor and inside knowledge presented make Sleeping With Management a must-see.

Rings
reviewed by Lee Ramsey

Rings—a Space/Rock Musical is the story of Les Vegas, a rocker who never made it to the big time and has been relegated to doing his act in the rings of Saturn. As Les prepares to go on tour he receives an emergency transmission from Uncle Bu who runs an orphanage. He tells Les that he's dying and he needs him to take the oldest of "his children" with him on his travels so that he can learn of the universe and come back and teach the others. Along the way Les crosses paths with his former music partner/girlfriend Selene, the ominous Reverend Spike, and The Great Brain, an all knowing head in a jar. All the things that you would expect to happen do and there's a happy ending for all.

There are several good performances. Jay Montgomery, a handsome leading man with a strong voice and tons of charisma, does a very nice job as Les. The beautiful Pamela Vandenberg is very believable as the holographic Suzi, who longs to be real and unite with Les. And then there's the wonderful Stacey Robinson as The Reverend Spike with his fabulous back-up girls Erica Ash and Selena Nelson. There are also very nice performances from the three children, Zach Sorrow, Patrick Henney, and a little girl with a great big voice named Bianca Ryan.

Now for the downside. The book and lyrics by Les Vegas (yes, he has the same name as our anti-hero) and the music by Vegas and Jon Ossman all seem derivative of other musicals.  And the direction (once again by Vegas) is one of the production's major downfalls. The staging is awkward, the transitions from scene to scene are badly done, and the production lacks effective pacing. The choreography by Robert Tunstall is at best pedestrian and is poorly executed by an ensemble of what appear to be either inexperienced or very under-rehearsed dancers (including Tunstall).

The technical aspects of the production are very ambitious for FringeNYC. All of the sets are projected in 3-D on a large screen and all of the singers wear individual mikes. Unfortunately at the performance I attended the mikes rarely worked and the projections worked only sporadically.

One final note: the production is very long but the theatre is beautifully air-conditioned. There may be wonderful new American musicals out there waiting to be discovered, but alas, Rings—a Space/Rock Musical appears from this production not to be one of them.

A Place Without Seasons
reviewed by Pamela Butler

Set in any third world country in the Western hemisphere, Marco Ramirez’s play A Place Without Seasons tells an archetypical story of life and love in wartime that deepens in complexity as it unfolds. Teresa, a young pregnant woman, waits at home for her husband Ricardo to return from the battlefield. Her displaced father, Jito, and a young midwife, Alliette, are with her. Watching over this place is a General and his soldiers. One of the soldiers is Marcel, who loves Alliette, as she loves him.

Here there are no seasons but the season of war. People look for a break in the routine of "normal life" the way that people wait out a terrible storm, only in this case the storm is forever and the waiting never ends. Teresa prays for the return of her husband, but the General knows that if he appears it means he is a deserter who must be shot. The near-perfect pitch of the dialogue and encounters among the characters maintain a razor-edge tension. The playwright might consider tightening things a bit, as the play seems overly long, losing some of its edge in the middle.

Monica Perez-Brandes as Teresa wonderfully portrays the worried and pained young wife and mother-to-be. Her husband Ricardo, coiled, cat-like, and wary, is given full expression by Gerardo Gudino. Jito, sung, acted and danced by Alberto Morgan, stands out as the embodiment of despair and the welling of native blood. These three actors voice the rounded, musical cadences of romance language in both English and Spanish. The other actors—Alejandro H. Fumero (Marcel), Rebecca Delgado (Alliette), and Ben Schiff (General)—don’t use accents, and the sharp twang of their New York English was jarring to my ear. Other than that their performances are excellent.

A simple arrangement of ladders provides the perfect set, which director Alejandro Orozco makes excellent use of in creating the scenes. The haunting, emotionally charged music (uncredited) sets the tone throughout. Lighting designer Eric Southern has brilliantly lit the action—strong and minimal.

Ramirez, a very young playwright of 21, has written a beautiful piece of theatre—powerful, poetic, and timeless. From the opening music and magic between Jito and Teresa, to the final expression of primitive intensity, I was pulled into the atmosphere of place and story. If magical realism, the beauty of a finely orchestrated piece of theatre, and emotional fireworks excite you, this is definitely a play to see.

Mankynde
reviewed by Sharon Fogarty

Mankynde bills itself as a “postmodern medieval musical,” based on a play of the same name written in the 1500s by an anonymous author. The performing, writing, and musical talents are of high caliber with impressive academic credits evident. The script includes some funny jokes, often mocking the play itself. But the conflict relies on jabs at what the press release refers to as “the American political scene” and the commercial shallowness of pop stars. These hard-to-watch "villains" form an over-thrusting pop group called the Vice Squad who try to sway the title character Mankynde, played nobly by the comedic actress Jessica Almasy, into being as trite as they are.

Talented and committed Andy Paris plays Mercy, who strives to bring meaning to the Vice Squad, who gyrate offensively and all move and sound like N’Synch, New Kids and Britney with added vulgarity. The Squad is supposed to be obnoxious, boring, and gratuitous; indeed that is the force-fed message of the play.

Deliberately, infrequent moments of truth and beauty are interrupted with superfluous numbers a la Fame. A touching overture with impressive arrangement by cellist Dave Eggars is dashed when the smiley cast enters, each in a different color like members of a banal improv group and sing a cute number about how much fun we’re going to have. The repetition of these storms of superficiality forces the production into a preachy after-school special. Even the good musicians are required to play air guitar while disco music is piped in.

In the end, it is difficult to care whether Mankynde resists the Vice Squad leader, Mischief, (Christine Rea, whose vocal resonance is impressive), because the story relies on an impossible, automatic compassion, pulling sympathy and understanding from character titles alone, and not from a relatable past.

I wanted to like this show because talent is clearly present; all very good actors with excellent voices including funny Christopher Burris, handsome Ari Butler, and Marissa Rodriguez, whose powerfully articulate soprano belt and comedic skills echo Maya Rudolf. And there are many clever images and interesting lines, hinting at the play’s potential, including the witty digs of Julie Crosby (book and lyrics) and Nancy Magarill (music and lyrics) who, with a connection to the pathos of their main character, will hopefully go far.

Black Martian
reviewed by Anthony Pennino

Alex Parisien, the star of the one-man show Black Martian (which he also authored), is one hell of an actor. He jumps around stage assuming multiple roles from the life of his vaguely fictitious alter-ego Phillip in a performance worthy of the Tectonic Theater Project.

Black Martian serves as a coming-of-age story for Phillip, who is a Haitian-American. What is unique about Phillip’s story is that both his parents are doctors and that he grew up in Scarsdale, New York. The people who intersect with Phillip are from across the racial spectrum. Phillip, because of his upbringing, acts more “white” than “black,” and Parisien gets a great deal of comic and dramatic mileage out of his character’s failed attempts to fit in with the African American community. Interestingly, Parisien’s best acting emerges when he plays Bella, Phillip’s white girlfriend from Italy who eventually becomes his wife. There is a poignancy and passion when Parisien plays these scenes.

If only Parisien the playwright equaled Parisien the actor. As occurs frequently when actors write plays, the individual character moments are complex and exceptional, but there is something lacking in the arc and thematic structure of the piece. Parisien’s subject—that of trying to discover his identity in America (both personal and cultural)—is something that has universal resonance for audiences, even if the particulars differ. And his additional focus on class distinctions in the black community is a worthy subject. But he needs to tie all of his different ideas together in a tighter fashion. The opening of the play is particularly distancing because it feels thrown together, and the audience has not been given a chance to understand Phillip’s world or introduced to Parisien’s overarching concerns. A further difficulty is that Phillip as a young boy is far less appealing than Phillip as an adult.

Nonetheless, the script has a great deal of potential. With more development, it will no doubt become an impressive piece of theatrical writing. And there is a great deal to recommend Black Martian as is. Many of the individual moments (such as teenage Phillip’s Clockwork Orange-like experience where he is deprogrammed from loving pornography) are full of hilarity and sly truth. And spending 90 minutes watching Parisien transition between 15 very different and very compelling characters is in itself worth the price of admission.

Womyn in Three
reviewed by David Pumo

You have entered the Atomic Bar & Grill, a dive club in an alternative universe. The house band, Creatrix, fronted by lead singer Infinity Blue, will soon be joined by a band of gypsies who dance and sing as they take us on a journey that follows three souls reincarnating at different times in history, working out their karmic relationships, and teaching us about the interconnectedness of all people and things.

Cabaret-like setting notwithstanding, Womyn In Three sure ain’t Kander and Ebb. It is, however, an interesting story, told with passion to spare, creatively staged and beautifully sung.

Okay, so you’re not necessarily into the whole new-age-reincarnation-karmic-retribution thing. No matter. Hey, you don’t have to like the Salvation Army to enjoy Guys and Dolls. There’s enough going on here to keep you more than entertained. If it opens your mind and gets you thinking about the nature of the universe, that’s icing.

The book is strong and well-paced, taking us from the European witch-hunts of the 1500s, to a slave plantation in the American South, to an indigenous American tribe. Three souls reincarnate and unknowingly meet each other in these three settings. Their relationships and the power dynamics between them change each time. The three “souls” are played by different actors in each “lifetime,” making it a little confusing to keep track by the third incarnation. This is important in order to follow the thread of each soul.

The music throughout—it is almost an opera—is soulful, bluesy rock, played solidly and sung by strong and powerful voices. One of the strongest belongs to Caren Lyn Manuel as the storyteller, Infinity Blue. Manuel also wrote the book, music and lyrics. This is an impressive feat. Nearly two hours of music here, there is nothing that feels like filler, and many songs that are outstanding, with memorable melodies and hooks. Despite the number of times her name appears in the program, Manuel doesn’t try to steal the show, but instead writes generously for the many unique voices she has assembled.

The ensemble, including four hard-working dancers, dress in eclectic costuming and makeup, with pieces representing the cultures of the stories, mixed with 70s/80s hard rock, Latin (Manuel’s stunning dress), sixties accessories, and one Eryka Badu wig. It’s all fun and sexy, and great that no two performers are the same color, shape or size. Manuel—currently in Rent and opening soon in Brooklyn on Broadway—knows her way around a musical. She never lets the energy drop, and builds to a crescendo that had the audience on it’s feet. Let it lift you up too.

Kiss and Cry
reviewed by Paul Hagen

Do not be alarmed if, during the first minutes of Kiss and Cry, you seem to be watching a very awkward play; you’re not. It’s just two characters in an awkward situation. Fiona, a lesbian actress who has just gotten her first big break, and Stacy, a deeply closeted male figure skater, meet by chance—but their very conscious decision to perpetuate rumors of a romance between themselves ends up rocking their respective worlds.

Fiona is played with shining-star feistiness by the lovely Julie Leedes. It’s easy to love her exuberant, malapropism-dropping performance, especially when compared to David Lavine’s Stacy, who embraces the naïveté and shame of his closeted character almost to the point of becoming grating. Gregory Marcel absolutely smolders with sexuality in the role of Stacy’s erstwhile lover Trent. (For those of you into this sort of thing, there is a fair amount of boys walking around in their underwear. I’m just saying.) But the show’s biggest surprise is Nell Gwynn, who, in the role of Fiona’s lesbian playwright/director girlfriend, absolutely blew me away. Her fantastic husky voice, her absolute conviction to her über-serious character, even the way she carries herself—she’s an absolute scene-stealer!

Director Kevin Newbury keeps the action moving in this long (2 hours, 20 minutes) piece, and playwright Tom Rowan’s witty and moving script makes comedic hay out of everything from the difference between Hollywood's and Greenwich Village’s ideas of entertainment to the precious comments of skating commentators to our universal fixation on winning awards, and ends up giving us some really touching moments along the way, as well. The only real issues I have with the play are that it’s not particularly theatrical (in other words, the same script could be just as successful, if not more so, on film—not necessarily a bad thing if that’s how you like your theater served) and that there is a bit of melodrama that drags near the end of Act Two. Of course any and all melodrama is made up for by the final scene, which is a piece of pitch-perfect comedy by Nell Gwynn that left me belly-laughing as the lights went out. In summary, Kiss and Cry is funny, sexy, fun, and definitely turns out some medal-worthy performances.

Choking on Happiness
reviewed by Loren Noveck

It’s hard to see, at first, why the two one-act plays that comprise Choking on Happiness were paired. The Best It’s Ever Looked, by Annie Marks, is about a middle-aged couple—successful doctor Michael (Tod Engle) and social-studies teacher Diane (Barb Halas)—and their fraying marriage, while Homesick, by Victoria Janis, dramatizes a chance encounter at a resort bar between Margaret (Liza Bryn), a guest, and Lili (Carol Mennie), a quasi-legal immigrant from Romania who works as a maid. They’re directed by different people (Vincent Marano for Best and Miriam Weiner for Homesick). The pieces share no actors. There’s a complete (and very awkwardly handled) set change between the two.

I think what’s meant to tie the pieces together is that characters in each are facing up to unhappiness, and admitting out loud for the first time that their lives don’t satisfy them. But here lies the problem: the characters are little more than caricatures, and fairly unlikable ones at that. The problems they’re having with their lives are things we’ve heard a million times before. Diane has spent her whole life cooking and carpooling and being a doctor’s wife instead of fulfilling her goals and dreams. Michael has taken refuge in a tawdry affair. Margaret, on vacation without her children, realizes she might be depressed and doesn’t really miss her kids all that much. In 2004, it’s hard to imagine these issues breaking new ground. Lili, the cleaning woman, is less gratingly self-absorbed than the others, but no less stereotypical. I found nothing compelling or unique in these stories, nothing to get me invested.

There is, of course, poetry to be found in lives of uninteresting or unlikable people, but neither Marks nor Janis has found a language or style to convey that poetry. Weiner’s well-paced direction of Homesick does make the play more interesting to watch, whereas under Marano’s direction, The Best It’s Ever Looked seems to drag. The writing overall is competent and workmanlike, but ultimately I found the evening completely mediocre—and yet it played to a standing-room-only house at its first performance. To me, this kind of show—slice-of-life writing, adequately solid acting, but not a risk taken throughout—is an uneasy fit with the anything-goes, freewheeling FringeNYC atmosphere. The crowds lining up to see Choking on Happiness may well disagree.

I Hate This
reviewed by Debbie Hoodiman

I Hate This, David Hansen’s one-man show about his grief following the stillbirth of his son, details both the hours leading up to the birth and the year following the tragedy in alternating scenes. The segments of the show are separated with headings on a computer, which provide an easy reference for the audience and add structure.

Hansen explores his grief pretty fearlessly, without simplifying the material or falsely telling the audience everything is or will be ok. The death was sudden and terrible, and to his credit, Hansen does not turn away from that fact. That said, also to his credit, there is some levity to the show. He tells some jokes and one-liners and his demeanor is straightforward but not heavy.

Hansen plays several characters, including himself, two hospital nurses, his father, his brothers, his ex-girlfriend Julie, and most enjoyably, his English niece. When playing the niece, he captures the whimsicality of a small child, and because of his physical transformation, it is his strongest scene as an actor. She sits him on the floor and plays “market” with him. She tells him a story about each of her animals. The specificity of this scene is powerful, sad, and enjoyable at once. A scene at the Cloisters, describing a painting in detail, also stands out. Hansen adds perspective to the show through references to Hamlet and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

The original music by Dennis Yurich and the sound cues/design work very successfully, as does Thomas Cullinan's direction. As a play, I don't know that the script would work on its own, with an actor other than Hansen performing it, but maybe that is the nature of the autobiographical, non-fiction, one-person-show genre. Overall, the show is sincere, moving, and interesting, and I appreciate Hansen's handling of difficult material.

Training Wisteria
reviewed by Josephine Cashman

Training Wisteria is an uneven but noteworthy post-mortem on divorce and its lingering impact on the family. With a simple but effective set (Blair Mielnik), and marvelous lighting (uncredited) that really does suggest a backyard, director Erin Smiley does a credible and heartfelt job illustrating how a family falls apart as it attempts to move on. It’s a year after math professor Stephen has left the house, and his now ex-wife Lynn has gone into “home improvement overdrive” according to her son Dylan. Yet somehow the house and backyard have fallen into disrepair. Dylan is barely graduating from high school the next day, and Lynn has 24 hours to turn her backyard into a suitable place for a party. While trying to introduce a wisteria plant into the backyard, Lynn praises the plant because “you control how it grows.” Unlike children:  Lynn has clearly lost control over Dylan, and has only a tenuous hold on her other two kids, while Stephen barely has any relationship with them at all.

The three children are textbook cases in how kids tend to deal with upheaval: one is “perfect,” one is angry and self-destructive, and one is desperately trying to keep the peace. Kate LoConti does a commendable job playing the shrill, know-it-all older sister Rachel, but at times seems uncomfortable on the stage. Benjamin Sands plays the angry young man Dylan with passion and plenty of angst, but it’s only in the second act where he hits his stride and lets loose all the feelings and emotions he’s been sitting on for so long. Mehera Blum does an outstanding job as Kacie, who desperately wants to hold everyone together and is cracking under the pressure.

Playwright Molly Smith Metzler does not do as good a job creating the parents as she does with the children. Lynn and Stephen’s behavior makes them more cartoons than actual characters, but actors Rachelle Fleming and Andrew Dawson rise to the difficult task and manage to make them truthful and sympathetic.

The father is too easily made the villain of the piece, and it seems that the playwright raises hard questions that seem too glibly answered. Nevertheless, Training Wisteria is an admirable and entertaining look at a family picking up the pieces of relationships gone awry.

All the Help You Need
reviewed by Jo Ann Rosen

All the Help You Need, the one-act play written and performed by Tim Ryan, reflects Ryan’s experiences as a handyman in Hollywood as he pursues his acting career. As a showcase, this piece permits him to display his facility with accents, characters, and movement. Among his characters is Werner, a German contractor who exacts fast, precise work from his employees, perfection few can meet. An orthodox Jew is another, and there are a few hookers and housewives thrown in. In between the hour of anecdotes, Ryan slips his fingers into the holes of wooden cube props (constructed by Richard Meinelschmidt) to rearrange the stage for each story. He does this inadvertently, artfully, and these moments are almost intimate compared to the energetic pace of his tale-telling.

The stories themselves are the kind you welcome at the dinner table after a routine day at the office—witty, eccentric, and lively. Strung together, they are still witty, eccentric, and lively, and we have a good idea that Ryan must be a tolerant and flexible individual to be able to work with the clients he encounters in his day job. As an evening of art, the tales amuse, though cumulatively, they do not necessarily pack the same punch as one or two told over rice and beans. Halfway through, the unusual is expected. Perhaps the actor knows this, because he ups the stakes with a final story—the only serious one—that is so outrageous that it lacks the credibility of the others. The audience is left to ponder what to make of the mystical ending. Did this really happen? If so, some authenticating is in order to maintain the consistency of the previous 45 minutes.

All the Help You Need is directed by Christopher Fessenden and can be seen at the Access Theatre.

The Knowledge & Conversation of My Guardian Angel
reviewed by Kevin Connell

This is the Hudson Exploited Theatre Company’s fifth year at the New York International Fringe Festival. If you’re a fan of their previous work, go see this show and continue to support their continued contributions to new contemporary theatre.

Be prepared, though: The Knowledge & Conversation of My Holy Guardian Angel, or An Old Fashioned Love Story, unfortunately appeared to me to be an unfinished play and left me unsatisfied as I witnessed their work for the first time. In fact, this one-hour play feels more like the first half of a much longer piece. I wanted Act II. The play begins with four actors (in costume) on stage—four, even though there are only two credited in the program. The two uncredited actors, Lauren Jalazo and Johnson Cooley (listed as Assistant Stage Managers) move and interact through all scene transitions and are quite integral to the intrigue of the story. I assume that they are portraying the subjects of the drama, the missing twin sister and the husband shot in the head while on a sailing trip. All scenes focus on the brother and the wife, played by John C. Cunningham and Mikaela Kafka respectively, and their shared losses. But their story feels more like the back-story, interesting yes, but incomplete. Who do I ultimately care about? The sister and the husband. Like Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, I wanted The Knowledge & Conversation of… to unravel and clarify itself in a second act that goes back in time and tells the unexpected truth of the sister and the husband, the unexplained story that is haunting the wife and the brother. The “Assistant Stage Managers” are given a well-deserved curtain call at the end, but I felt cheated of the truth they needed to tell.

I wanted more. You see—Tom Sleigh is an imagistic and challenging playwright who constructs contemporary language with the insight of a poet. He feeds the Victorian soul with an epic awareness of the Greeks, while constructing characters that live in the most contemporary of settings.

Gregg Bellon’s direction is simple as he shapes this character-driven production. I would love to see his work on film, as his strengths live in the subtleties of each moment. Kafka and Cunningham give even performances, but I wanted them to trust more poignantly the silences between them, as moments are rushed, particularly in the third scene when the tensions need to build to a greater suspense.

The strength of FringeNYC is that it is a testing ground for new plays and upcoming artists. My hope is that the Hudson Exploited Theatre Company takes full advantage of this opportunity to investigate the continued development of this play, while receiving the support of generous audiences.