FringeNYC 2005 Reviews - Page 2

Some Unfortunate Hour
reviewed by Martin Denton

Sometimes we call our poets wise philosophers; sometimes we call them crazy. Case in point: Poor Mad Tom O'Bedlam, latest creation of the intensely poetic imagination of playwright Kelly McAllister and central figure of the new play Some Unfortunate Hour. I'm going to let Tom speak for himself:

I just want to learn how to love right. You know? The way we were told it was supposed to be? I know it’s out there... I think I knew it once, for a moment... a blink of the eye, really... a flash of thunder in my sometimes almost yesterdays, back in those days—the days better than the good old days, better than just sentiment and self congratulatory bullshit... I felt a brief connection with the thing, you know? The great, black thing out there, the void... and then it vanished, and its sad, lonely echo was drowned out by arguments about how to behave at birthday parties, how to behave when overcome with supposedly insane jealousies... I remember that other time, and I mourn.

Tom tells this is Charity, a beautiful smart woman he meets at a bar late one night; Some Unfortunate Hour tracks the life of their desperate courtship in just over an hour (in real time), bringing us and them to profound and glorious heights of hope and happiness and to harrowing depths of sadness and hurt. Tom is reeling from a divorce that became official this very day. His issues with the ex-wife he will only refer to as She Who Shall Remain Nameless notwithstanding, what Tom really mourns is what feels to him like the death of romance, in all its myriad shapes and meanings. When Charity lets him talk to her—after an initial encounter that frankly makes him appear like the madman he fears he is—he is dumbfounded. When she lets him lead her around the floor in a tentative, plaintive waltz, he is at once elated and terrified.

McAllister's writing is lyrical, sharp, and brutally funny. The play's structure and tone reminded me of Tennessee Williams's Small Craft Warnings; like that play, Some Unfortunate Hour puts its protagonists into a confessional spotlight on stage to let them tell us their secret yearnings, filtered here through Tom's own consciousness. And, also like the Williams work, this play is imbued throughout with the sad pragmatism that comes with maturity.

It's been mounted in a classy production by  hope theatre, inc., with a terrific (uncredited) authentic-looking bar setting, expert sound design by Darin Hallinan, and tight, sensitive direction by Tim Errickson. The play is punctuated with a beautiful, evocative score by Robbie Gill (these individual songs are worthy of their own soundtrack recording).

As Tom, Dan O'Neill gives one of the finest performances I have ever seen at any FringeNYC festival. He looks like an ordinary Joe, but when Tom's injured psyche gives way to romantic anticipation, as it occasionally does in this sweet, sad play, the warmth from his overheated hopeful heart lights up the entire theatre. Jodi Dick is splendid in the relatively small role of the bartender, Janus, who acts as confessor and chaperone to Tom and Charity. Ashley Wren Collins is less assured in the admittedly difficult role of Charity—she gives us the character's intelligence and humor, but she hasn't quite got a handle yet on the quirky remoteness that will ultimately fuel Tom's climactic, ferocious catharsis.

But I saw the very first performance of Some Unfortunate Hour, remember; Collins will grow in the role as this vivid, rich play continues here and, hopefully, after FringeNYC.

The Information She Carried
reviewed by Rachel Macklin

Conspiracy theories make for exciting entertainment. With television shows like CSI topping the network ratings and Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code setting records on the bestseller lists, it seems fairly obvious that we love a daring mystery or scandalous cover-up.

At the beginning of The Information She Carried, by David L. Williams, a young conspiracy theorist, Sharon North (Daina Michelle Griffith), tells us we’ve been lied to. Systematically and covertly, the American people have been kept in the dark for centuries. It is the year 2002, and North is on the hunt for the baseball that killed Ray Chapman on August 16, 1920, causing baseball’s single historical fatality. She believes that the ball holds a powerful secret connected to President George Washington himself. With this baseball, she can finally procure access to documents that reveal the truth of the 1986 Challenger disaster.

In order to obtain the ball, however, North must steal it from Roxy Borman (Jocelyn Greene), whose father bought it and passed it down to her. So North shows up at Borman’s apartment, finding Roxy in conversation with her blind date, Billy Shepherd (Brian Poirier) and her roommate, Mark Engle (Darin Guerrasio). With the help of Adam Weishaupt (Frank Sallo), whose connection to the conspiracy will also be revealed, North takes the three hostage at gunpoint and they wait for the return of Borman’s roommate, Lois (Jeane Fournier), who has the keys that can open the safe where the baseball is kept. But North is antsy and agitated. She is haunted by a figure in black, Christa Chapman (Christine Carroll), who may or may not exist outside her own imagination.

These are the threads of The Information She Carried, but instead of weaving them into a coherent and absorbing story, Williams has left us holding a tangled skein of yarn. The characters feel two-dimensional and their relationships are ambiguous. Williams drops words like “Illuminati” and “Freemason” into the mix to stir things up, but the significance of these infamous secret societies (both staples of Dan Brown’s fiction) is never really made clear. Ann Carroll’s direction is effective but uneven. Blocking and props lack necessary weight at important moments (the gun, for instance, is rarely treated as if it is loaded or dangerous).

Kley Gilbuena’s set is cluttered, though intriguing at the outset. The stage is surrounded by blue sawhorses and crime scene tape. Clipboards marked as various “exhibits” hang from the sawhorses and two flats upstage sport images connected by blue tape. I was expecting these items to come into play within the story, but, aside from a few chairs and tables, they are barely used.

The cast-members of Information do a credible job, and try their best to make sense of the script’s inconsistencies. Griffith in particular is energetic and earnest, and is at her best when describing her theories to the audience. Yet, despite the best efforts of its artists, The Information She Carried is missing the essential information that would pull us to the edge of our seats.

Channel Rat
reviewed by Lauren Marks

Tara Clancy is a good reason to believe in the FringeNYC Festival.

When we arrive at her solo show Channel Rat, the stage is dressed only in an unimpressive plastic chair. That chair is soon joined by a small young woman, with bleached blonde hair in a mock-pompadour and tuxedo style shirt with no sleeves. She takes her time, surveys the audience, looks some members directly in the eye and finally speaks (in a heavy Queens accent): “Okay, now you got a good look at me, I got a good look at you, let’s pretend we’re not in a theatre and you didn’t just pay $15 bucks to be here.” She prefers, she says, for us to pretend that we are in a bar, that we have told her some stories about us, and now she will tell us some about her.

A one-woman show is always a bit risky; seeing as how if you don’t like one of the actors, you don’t like them all. And especially shows that feature “true stories” can tend easily toward the self-indulgent and the embarrassingly exploitative. But Tara manages to navigate the stories of her life with a good deal of humor, and there is not much she says that isn’t stageworthy. She has an unwaveringly engaging presence and time spent with her onstage passes almost too quickly.

Director Kel O’Neill does well to leave Tara mostly to her stories. And, there is no doubt that Tara’s life is worth the telling. Raised by her father in Broad Channel, Queens—whose main features are a aviary preserve and a port-a-potty empire—she grew up a self proclaimed “Channel Rat.” However, in stark contradiction to her admittedly small-time Queens lifestyle was the time she spent with her mother, whose boyfriend was a multi-millionaire (her mother had once been his housekeeper). Tara spent half her time living in a one-room former boathouse with her dad, and the other half at her mother’s boyfriend’s mansion in the Hamptons, where she often arrived by charter jet. She describes negotiating her way through these two disparate universes, wondering in which one she is more of an impostor.

Unsurprisingly, Clancy’s upbringing results in a fixation with contradictions and eccentricities, anything that deviates from the norm. She details her fascination with the unusual elderly she encounters, some of them family, others neighborhood strangers, a fascination she claims borders on envy because they are “so much themselves.” Tara makes a hopeful and convincing case by the end of her storytelling as she reads off a collection of words that all basically deal with unpredictable, and sometimes un-reconcilable, strangeness. She says that these are “a bunch of words to remind us that shit don’t make sense.” She says if there are this many words about how “shit doesn’t make sense,” it must be okay when things don’t. So, she concludes, if your own life doesn’t make much sense, don’t panic, there is no cause for alarm—we’re in it together, and it’s not making sense to any of us.

Feud: Fire on the Mountain
reviewed by David DelGrosso

Feud: Fire on the Mountain by writer/director Creighton James is a new melodrama about the bloody Civil War-era conflict between the Hatfields and McCoys of West Virginia. It is an ambitious production in its size, giant by FringeNYC standards, with a cast of 18, including three musicians who sing and play accompaniment. James has a wide canvas to work with: a rich historical subject filled with events and a large ensemble of talented, age-appropriate actors and musicians who can evoke the period. Unfortunately, James narrows his exploration of this feud right from the beginning: he chooses a side.

James’s McCoys are pious, goodly people, whose morals are looked to by their pacifist patron, “Ole” Ranel. They are like an Appalachian version of the Cratchits and even have their own Tiny Tim—in this case, Alifair, a mute, angelic six-year-old daughter with a tiny crutch. The Hatfields, led by “Devil” Anse Hatfield, are like Appalachian gangsters—an arch and menacing rogues' gallery of mustache-twirlers and knuckle-draggers. Despite the famous poverty of the area, they dress in dark suits, contrasting with the McCoy’s humble farm attire.

The play condenses the 20 years of feuding into a few expedient and bloody months, and in the course of the play the Hatfields show themselves to be sadistic murderers and rapists while any violence from the McCoy side is always given just cause as self-defense or a passionate refusal to turn the other cheek against a clear wrong. The play is so partisan that it feels like McCoy propaganda—something the estate would commission to be performed at the family museum—and what is lost in this one-sidedness is any sense of moral ambiguity.

About 2 hours and 20 ear-splitting starter pistol shots into the play, Ranel McCoy tries to persuade his sons to stop fighting, saying that violence begets violence, and that the aggressor always believes that right is on their side. His son retorts that his father has been a coward, and did not do enough to fight for his family. This argument would have been compelling had the play been grounded in the real history of the feud—where both sides had deeds which may have been justified under the circumstances, as well as acts despicable under any circumstances. But in the world of this play, such philosophical debate is moot. Like a tidy Hollywood fiction, the sides have been clearly divided into good and evil. In this world the McCoy patriarch does not need to worry about right and wrong because his side is right. And, unfortunately, the existence of such moral absolutes removes the most interesting dramatic questions from the table.

The Friar and the Nurse
reviewed by Sarah Congress

Set in Shakespearean times, the play opens with a very high-strung and upset Nurse attending confession. The Friar listens kindly, but seems to be more interested in the Nurse than the sins. About twelve years later they meet again, and a forbidden love between them blossoms, as they try to help the young lovers Romeo and Juliet escape. Amidst all the chaos happening outside, the Friar and the Nurse seem to be lost in a world of their own, built on the love and compassion that they share for each other.

I liked how Laura Depta portrays the Nurse to be very talkative, yet with a strong streak of tenderness as well. Not only does Stan Peal play the Friar, but he also wrote the play, created the music composition, and did the set design. Peal plays the Friar to be rather low-key, but very kind and generous. I also thought that the director, Lon Bumgarner, staged the piece very fittingly and was very conscious of the period.

Despite limited space, the set (designed by Peal and Lon Bumgarner) is very detailed, and magically transports us to an old, rustic church in Verona. The costumes (designed by Barbi Van Schaick) are very accurate to the time period as well as the characters’ classes.

I really enjoyed seeing The Friar and The Nurse. For one hour I was laughing, crying, and worrying about the characters as if I had known them all my life. Peal and Depta have a rare and wonderful chemistry, which is perhaps what makes the play so realistic, and the characters so likeable. I felt that they were both very talented actors, and I loved seeing them on stage.

I highly suggest that you see The Friar and The Nurse. It’s beautiful, there’s no other way to put it.

This Isn't Working
reviewed by Sharon Fogarty

Talented writer Francesco Marciuliano, author of the nationally syndicated comic strips Sally Forth and Medium Large (available weekdays at www.DrinkatWork.com), has gathered some of the best comic actors I’ve seen in a while to present his four short plays, or long sketches, about job dissatisfaction. The works, for me, are more true than funny, as each piece rides essentially on one joke, though Marciuliano’s one-liners, clever comebacks, and deep wit do point to a very gifted satirist.

The subject of corporate surreality is central to each work and most evident in the first piece, “The Island,” which features five office workers who, having survived a plane crash, are stranded on a desert island. In suits torn to shreds, the starving survivors attempt to continue with their “team meetings” and carry on with “business as usual.” Marciuliano wonderfully conveys that corporate tactics, abstract solutions which look good on paper, never quite get underway or focus on who is actually going to do the dirty work.

Despite the one-joke issue, the actors carry the plays splendidly, particularly when Miranda Jonte and Megan Ross battle it out in “The Awards,” about a ceremony for best pharmaceutical commercial copy. The joke of running back to the microphone to either gain self praise or further insult each other is repeated excessively, but the actresses are completely inspired each time and the work becomes entertaining because of their oddly manic determination. The two other sketches in the program are “The Meeting,” where an author has the power to write events and characters in and out of his life, and “The Takeover,” in which Neanderthals are being bought out of existence by a more advanced race.

Under Jefferson Jowdy’s direction, Marciuliano’s works fall somewhere between a Saturday Night Live sketch and a Twilight Zone episode; they seem to either need more action to become plays or crude editing to become sketches. But the actors handle this delicately and should be commended. They include Alex Goldberg, who carries a sublime sincerity in each of his complex roles, and Julia Garrett and Will Bouvier who, with their honest and calming presence, are well cast as the voices of truth amidst corporate blindness. The corporate-ladder-climbing roles are played with hilarious arrogance by Michaela Hall, Gary Culig, and David Flaherty. Peter Rodriguez and Barbara Drum Sullivan create a series of exceptional performances, leaping into their characters with complete abandon, heightening the ridiculous circumstances of each scene, and often getting huge laughs because of their serious commitment.

The Miss Education of Jenna Bush
reviewed by Eric Winick

Melissa Rauch is a pretty, engaging performer, and when you catch sight of her onstage as Presidential offspring/wild child Jenna Bush, you know you’re in for a treat. With Jenna’s penchant for partying, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and now, apparently, teaching fourth graders, the woman is begging to be parodied. So let’s consider ourselves lucky that Rauch rose to the challenge. With her vivacious demeanor and rock solid comic timing, her fingers on the pulse of politics and pop culture, she’s the perfect guide through the gnarled passages of Ms. Bush’s drug- and drink-addled brain.

Set on the eve of the first day of Ms. Bush’s teaching assignment, the play (co-written by Rauch and Winston Beigel) finds Jenna ordering Chinese take-out (tough, as she can’t recall her address), cutting on her Yale-educated twin sister Barbara, and fathoming her parents’ decision not to attend her graduation from the University of Texas. As she anxiously awaits her food and considers outfits for the next day, Jenna relates anecdotes from her life—how she spent September 11th in a Chuck E. Cheese, how she got in trouble for sticking her tongue out at the press, and how smooching Mary Cheney wound up having unfortunate repercussions for gay people nationwide.

Because most of the stories are told stream of consciousness, there’s a randomness to the proceedings that ultimately slows things down to a trickle. Major questions, such as why Jenna decided to become a teacher in the first place, are left unexplained. Jenna addresses the audience throughout, taking us into her confidence, but who are we? Sure, it’s a shame that Daddy never calls, but why should we sympathize with this dingbat? It’s fun to watch Jenna pour Jack Daniels into her Coke can, engage in ignorant conversation with a Chinese restaurant manager, and perform her infamous “butt dance,” but the fact is, lacking a convincing narrative, personal stakes, or any real action, Miss Education is little more than a vehicle for Rauch’s spot-on impersonation.

Of course, the absence of an effective story arc mattered little to the audience the night I attended the show. People leapt to their feet at the show’s conclusion, applauding, I imagine, Rauch’s tireless performance. Still, 90 minutes is an awfully long time to draw out a single joke. The show would undoubtedly work as a sketch, either as a one-off or as the first in a continuing series (a la the Church Lady, or Wayne Campbell), but at its current length, the play loses steam, petering out about an hour in.

Let’s hope Ms. Bush fares a bit better as she begins her foray into the real world.

Payment
reviewed by George Hunka

Two high-school acquaintances, now reaching middle-age, find themselves in a seedy motel room in industrial northern New Jersey for a somewhat pathetic tryst. As time progresses, they reveal that each has selfish ulterior motives for the rendezvous, and despite their age and adult accomplishments they themselves regress into adolescence, with violent consequences. Donna Fiumano weaves a haunting pattern of memory and aggression through her new play Payment, sensitively and skillfully directed by Amber Estes.

My guess is that, in its unusual composition as a duet for two middle-aged upper-class Americans raking through the ashes of memory, this may be the most unusual offering in FrinegNYC. Laurel (Kim Chapman), a fading Hollywood actress with roots in a suburban New Jersey community, meets Allen (Brian Armstrong), now a successful CEO, by chance; drawn together, they wind up between the sheets. This sparks a teenage-style boastfulness and a bizarre puppy-dog affection in Allen; Laurel begins to get lost in memory and fantasies of escape. Both Chapman and Armstrong deliver strong performances here, perhaps a little restrained by opening-night jitters (especially Chapman, whose too-mature restraint in the first act doesn’t fully prepare us for her transformation into a man-eating virago in the second). While this is a quiet show, here and there it threatens to become too quiet, obscuring Fiumano’s spare but evocative renderings of the characters’ past.

Contrary to intuition, these two-handed talkfests require a strong directorial hand to establish visual and aural patterns in support of the verbal. Estes, a first-time director, demonstrates a sensitive recognition of the emotional variations of the piece and a sympathy for both of the characters; more to the point, she knows that a dialogue-heavy piece has to move, and move it does. The achievement is that it moves so well, and she draws complex emotional states from her performers that dig deep into the underlying storms of the characters’ passions.

The major fault of the otherwise subtly-structured and composed script is that it’s too anxious to tie up its loose ends in a burst of violence. While many of us are capable of resolving our emotional crises this way, the human truth is that we don’t, for a variety of social, cultural and psychological reasons. However theatrically effective, it’s a too-easy form of wish-fulfillment, and often the possibility of violence is far more poetic than its realization. (This is a fault that Payment shares with David Mamet’s fine Oleanna, a quote from which prefaces the show, so Fiumano needn’t worry too much.) But this shouldn’t detract from the dark, pessimistic vision of contemporary sexual and personal relationships that Fiumano and Estes draw for us here. Maybe it’s an unusual show for the Fringe: two main characters, one realistic set, a peek into the passions of middle-aged white upper-middle-class Americans. But less is definitely more.

Frank DeMato has a small but memorable part in the second act; Lisa Donnelly managed the stage and assisted the director; Drew Bellware designed the sound; Dan Renkin and Brad Lemons coordinated the fights. All connected with the show should be proud.

Amerika
reviewed by David Reinwald

Amerika is a new play directed by Alexander Poe and Joseph Varca, based on Franz Kafka’s first and unfinished novel of the same title written in 1913. The play, presented by The Redux Theatre Company, begins as if it is a biographical sketch of the start of Kafka’s writing career. But it soon takes a wild turn, leaving any thoughts of that original concept behind. As the plot moves forward, the character Kafka (Ben Correale) is found swimming alongside his own penned characters and becomes subordinate to them and their every whim. His friends and family reappear in this quasi-dream sequence, now renamed as new characters in an almost Wizard of Oz-like scenario that continues for the rest of the play. Many of the actors surface again and again, each time with a new identity. The characters wage a battle against Kafka to control and dominate the destiny of his novel.

For the Kafka-“uninitiated” such as myself, this play is hard to understand. It seems as if writer/co-director Alexander Poe is trying to place attention on the eccentric features of the many characters in Kafka’s novel. While Correale plays Kafka believably, the character remains locked in a state of unbroken defenselessness. Meanwhile, as the character Grubach (Anthony Nelson) vies for control of the story, he stretches the play into moments of farce that seem to stray away from its original tone. Zoltan (Noah Bean) is yet another character thrown into the mix. He acts as a semi-paternal figure to Kafka, but he has several tricks up his sleeve. Bean has some shining moments early on, but later falls susceptible to the pitfalls of the writing. Nevertheless, these actors and the rest of the cast surely work hard with what they have.

One of the show’s redeeming qualities is its scenery, which adds a nice touch to the background. Set and lighting designer Robert Roberts has combined silhouette projections with actors in-shadow projected onto framed canvasses which change to fit the altering locations of Kafka’s journey.

It's Phuc Tap!
reviewed by Jonathan Calindas

The amiable and charming actress Eileen Fogarty was born of an Irish father and a Vietnamese mother, but unlike her four siblings she does not possess any of the physical traits of her Irish lineage. This intriguing fact, which she drops at the start of her one-woman autobiographical show It's Phuc Tap!,  later becomes the main thrust of this one-hour play.

Fogarty’s father was an Irishman who owned a shipping company and her mother was a nurse. They met in Vietnam during the war and later split; her mother went to live in the United States, and her father lived with the children in Singapore. In an amusing series of anecdotes, which take Fogarty and her siblings from Singapore to Los Angeles, she tells of what it was like to look completely Asian and have a completely Irish name. These seem cliché at first, especially to a New York audience where internationalism is not particularly unusual, but as the show progresses we realize that this serves to set up her story which begins when, after a careless comment from her Aunt Thuy, she starts to question her true genetic lineage. In the ensuing journey, Fogarty explores what truly makes us what we are and who we consider to be our true parents along with the rich heritage that they pass on.

The piece is perfectly at home at the cabaret room of the Collective: Unconscious space. The actress’s proximity to the audience creates an atmosphere so intimate that even lighting changes seem intrusive. Fogarty is endearing as she plays the various characters in her story, including her father “who looks like Clint Eastwood” and her delightful, complex mother, but she is most effective when she plays herself because it is then that we understand what the story means to her. The story is so undeniably hers that the seamless direction by Jean Collins and Christine Schoenwald is virtually undetectable.

The colorfully phonetic title, by the way, is never mentioned in the show, but according to the press materials, it is Vietnamese for “it’s complicated.”

The Great Official Subway Musical
reviewed by John Samuel Jordan

Get your tokens (or Metrocards) now for this fast-paced, riotous ride through the New York City subway system. Victor Verhaeghe (book,  lyrics, music) and Debra Barsha (music) have put together a very, very funny, short one-act musical entitled The Great Official Subway Musical. I must also give note to Ira Gasman, who wrote the lyrics for the opening number entitled “On the Subway,” which clearly gets things rolling along for this fine production.

The story centers on Chris, played by Verhaeghe. His goals in life are to become the first official Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Facilitator and to bring back courtesy to the NYC subway system. After writing 4,000 letters to Mayor Bloomberg, he finally gets the call. This is his journey to the Empire State Building to meet the mayor and begin his new career. And it’s all done to music, with that certain brand of crass, stupid, gross, out-of-the-ordinary humor, which I personally find hysterical. It’s that Leslie Nielsen Airplane/Police Squad kind of humor, with a dash of SCTV and the punch of MAD TV. And Verhaeghe pulls it off perfectly. He has phenomenal help from the scene-stealing Alexandra Williamson as Ginger Sacksabath and Joel Jones as Scott, his love interests. Jones’s “I’m Jazzy!” is a real treat.

The ensemble, consisting of Dina Losito, Tony Westbrook, and Mari Micari, though each shine at various moments, was less assured on the night reviewed. They portray a handful of characters, including token clerks, conductors, guards, various members of the Amish community (when Scott and Ginger race to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for an impromptu search) and, strangely enough, Kristy McNichol and Jodie Foster, who are having a secret lesbian tryst in the subway tunnels.

The singing is the production's one weakness. But this is a comedy, and a very good one, so I had no problem overlooking that fact. The musical direction by Paul Leschen is fine. And the overall direction by Robert Petkoff is consistent with the style—fast-paced and funny. The show runs just over an hour.

Bob Jones is thanked in the program for his brilliant design work. I’m assuming this refers to the wonderful paintings that brilliantly depict the various settings.

For an extra treat, be sure to read the entire program. The “Producer’s Disclaimer” is definitely worth a read. Sample: “We reserve the right to parody, mock, or otherwise make fun of whatever crosses our path as a way of dealing with the stress of everyday life. We hope you concur.” This reviewer definitely does.

Beware of Dog
reviewed by Eric Michael Kochmer

From Beware of Dog's blurb in the FringeNYC Program Guide: A mysterious dog interrupts a marriage proposal, while a set of strange events and surreal characters further deepen the mystery until when… This absurd play examines the superficiality of human relations while exposing their inherent irony and comedy.

What does absurd mean? Nonsense? Blatant ranting about milk for the sake of nothing? Reading about it in a theatre history book you may hear about a tiger who jumps through a window for no apparent reason. Audiences leave asking who… what… where… why the hell would you do this? Absurdity is often an excuse for reckless staging and intrusive spectacle to take the focus off of the plot/story. It is said of some of the great absurdist playwrights that they are so knowledgeable of structure that they can abandon it altogether… I really like that idea… Another fascination of these so-called absurdists: repetition. It can be over intellectualized, but most of the time well written absurdity is simply the primal human force inherent in the play.

Beware of Dog: boy sees girl—boy asks girl to marry him (on first meeting, mind you)—girl tells boy that boy needs to ask her father (who we are later told may be blind)—father tells boy that boy needs to ask mother (who we are later told has been bedridden since father and mother were married, so any meeting would be impossible)—mother tells boy to wait—boy is fed up with this and leaves—boy returns to find the mother very upset because in his absence the girl was married to a doctor who wears a mask (who we later find is of course the dog). There is a confrontation between boy and dog, boy wins, girl marries boy. This is the gist of it with some shadow puppetry in between some scenes giving the piece a nice mythical feel.

For me, the play is a fable on perception and love, with the boy proving his dedication and commitment to the girl by staying around and fighting off the dog. Well-translated and staged by Turkar Coker from the legendary scroll of  the Turkish poet Melih Cevdet Anday, the performance nevertheless could use some smoothing out. I think that the choreography lacks fluidity and is much too plastic, but it does not hamper the pace. I also think that the shadow puppetry needs to either be incredibly cleanly stylized or raw and reckless; instead it's in between, but still highly enjoyable. Hey I was happy to see some shadow puppetry. Chris Prangley, Esra Cizmeci, Turkar Coker, Ayse Eldek Richardson, and Ozgur Cebioglu all do fine jobs as the ensemble. I deeply applaud the New York Theatre Ensemble for producing this work and hope that they keep on bringing more rarely-produced plays like this to the New York stage.