FringeNYC 2005 Reviews - Page 7

The Velocity of Things
reviewed by Gregg Bellon

A testimonial to the quality of Regina Nejman and Company’s The Velocity of Things is that they have relieved me of my predisposition against dance shows as self-indulgent non-sequiturs. The beauty and athleticism of the choreography, manifest through a cast of beautifully agile and synchronized dancers, presents a general narrative of collisions and interconnectedness in the universe. I can’t admit to capturing the specifics of this narrative, but the cumulative effect of the visual, visceral seductiveness and passionate commitment of the individual elements more than makes up for any vagueness. The themes of time travel, human servility, industrialized mechanization, and femininity seep their way in and around the pieces, but they’re composites of the lingering feelings and emotions rather than definitive labels.

The show flows as one continuous piece, supporting the narrative structure and transitioning the moments through movement and focus, letting the music follow the dancers’ lead. The company functions as an ensemble, but each of the individual dancers shines throughout and is worth a mention (in the order in which they appear in the program): Kristin Licata, Val Loukiano, Mary Madsen, Nejman, Tamsin Nutter, and Kathy Wasik.

Nejman keeps soloing to a minimum, deliberately I assume, creating another underlying theme of friction: existence through interaction. “Like sands through the hourglass,” five women and one man, each representing more than just gender, more than just an individual, transcend time and space, culture and ethnicity, human and beyond. Nejman as choreographer places great demands on her dancers, mixing modern and ballet techniques with capoeira, yoga, synchronized stepping and moving, lifting, rolling, crawling, and jumping all over each other. Part of the fun is watching these six subject themselves willingly to the contortions and gyrations of Nejman’s grueling routine and have a blast doing it. What a pleasure to watch performers enjoying the strains of their art form.

The music, with an original score by Mio Morales and various contemporary remixes of Brazilian and International styles, complements the performers perfectly and speaks to the intimacy of the artists involved. While the music retains a personality of its own, it functions subordinately to the movements and narrative. It follows these bodies seemingly subject to their rhythm and pulsations, but keeps up with both their pace and emotion. Morales and Nejman collaborate on a cellular level it seems, his music finding and feeling the rhythm of her movements and creating a dance of their own. I look forward to seeing Nejman expand on her approach to the narrative through movement and create more individual characters that can further inform and develop her central motifs. A slight and petty request I offer to encourage more work from this talented company.

Jigsaw Nation
reviewed by Debbie Hoodiman

At the beginning of Jigsaw Nation, a young woman enthusiastically introduces herself as a writer to an older woman sitting on a bench in a park. After explaining that she's working on a project, she asks, "What do you think it means to be an American?" The older woman responds, "I thought you were going to ask me something easy!"

In the tradition of documentary theater popularized by such artists as Anna Deavere Smith and Eve Ensler, four writers from the Relentless Theater Company interviewed more than 50 Americans about what it means to be an American, transcribed their exact words, created monologues, and now present their stories. Jigsaw Nation is performed by five actors (Shannon Burkett, Elizabeth Flax, Kittson O'Neill, Keith Randolph Smith, and Charles Sprinkle) who portray such diverse people as: a young man baffled by people's offense at hip-hop lyrics when mainstream movies might be more violent; shoppers at the Mall of Americas; immigrants from France, Yugoslavia, and Cairo; a Brooklyn native who wants to exercise her right as an American not to cook; a swearing Black man who tells all who will hear that "Red, white, and blue is black"; a young woman whose fiancé leaves her because she can't have children and how she triumphs; and many more. The most compelling part of this kind of theater is that when you witness the same actors speaking the words of very different people, people with such different stories and people who are often, I imagine, quite unlike themselves, it emphasizes how the characters are alike, the common humanity that all the characters share. This is interesting stuff.

Parts of the show that particularly caught my interest include an Iranian woman (played by Elizabeth Flax) who didn't understand why people thought she should feel connected to the events of September 11th until a bank cancelled her account because she comes from a largely Muslim country; and a monologue by a young Puerto Rican student (played by Kittson O'Neill) at an all-white Connecticut boarding school who can see through all the prejudices thrown at her. Though she doesn't fit in at the school and no longer fits into her neighborhood, she knows there is something inside of her that thrives.

For the most part, the actors do a nice job with their characterizations, though I suspect that as the company develops this piece more, the actors will find more specificity.

My only concern about the show is that because the stories are so varied and touch on so many subjects, there isn't a crystal clear theme. The company may want to focus on a narrower topic. Or, perhaps, like the metaphor in the title implies, the wide variety of topics is the point: Odd shaped pieces seeming so different, yet somehow fitting together, is what it means to be American.

Dance With Me, Harker
reviewed by Eric Winick

I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and now, having seen Wallis Knot’s Dance With Me, Harker, I wish I had. There’s clearly a compelling story here—years of adaptations and spin-offs prove this, to a fault—so why shouldn’t there be an experimental, disco-inflected, movement-based version? This is the Fringe Festival, after all. A show featuring nudity, Grand Guignol horror, and writhing, corset-clad beauties should fit right in to this annual pageant of debauchery.

Adapter-designer-director-choreographer Eileen Connolly has fashioned her Dracula as a series of viewpoints on the main storyline, much like Stoker’s novel (I’m told). Harker follows our title character (Daniel Wolfe) on a globe-trotting journey from Transylvania, where he first encounters Dracula (Richard Omar), to London, where the night stalker continues his reign of terror, and back to Transylvania, where Harker, along with Drs. Seward and Van Helsing (Jyota Bertrand and Kathy Hendrickson), attempts to finish off the Count once and for all. Each character relates, in time, his/her own part of the story, and, eventually, busts a move on the dance floor. Though the action is presented, for the most part, on a bare stage, Connolly illustrates the tale with some breathtaking stage pictures, many of them involving plastic sheeting.

There’s value, of course, in reinventing a classic, and in using the medium of theater to explore its visual, sonic, and kinetic possibilities. Connolly has hit on a novel approach to Stoker’s material, but one wishes it had been a bit clearer for those not intimate with the subject material. The use of video, song, and a plethora of foreign languages seem designed to lend Harker a timeless, international flavor, but they only wind up diluting the main story. At one point, a castigating nun hands audience members a flyer relating the true history of Transylvania and Dracula. I’m not sure when we were meant to read this information, given that we were sitting in the dark, but then, given Connolly’s kitchen sink approach, why not hand the audience a dense, wordy historical handout?

And then there’s the question which is destined to plague every Stoker adaptation, be it on Broadway or off-off-off: how much of this is intended to be funny? Despite the preponderance of cleavage, impassioned glances, funk-rock score, and overall cheesy-sleazy air (personified by Omar’s swaggering Count), there’s a solemnity to the proceedings that belies the show’s Rocky Horror-esque vibe. The cast earns high marks for committing fully to the approach, and Connolly is to be credited for her thoroughly modern spin, but ultimately, as enjoyable as it is to watch scantily-clad vampire brides sashay, vogue, and pose, an over-reliance on gimmickry stabs this Dracula straight through its rapidly beating heart.

Pipe Dreams
reviewed by Matt Freeman

Nicole Blaine’s mother was a crack addict. Terrible, and true. Nicole Blaine was also picked on in elementary school because she didn’t have cool sneakers. And through her difficult life, her love affair with Friends got her through the tough times. The latter two facts are perhaps not so terrible, but they are apparently also true.

Blaine’s rambling one-woman show, Pipe Dreams, has, within its nearly two-hour running time, a compelling story. After her parents' divorce, her mother, a successful lawyer, takes a new husband, (dubbed “Scary Larry”), and together they spiral downward into self-abuse and crack addiction. We meet Blaine’s hard-smoking dreamer Dad; her distant and traumatized brother; the love of her young life, the lionized “Micky Miller”; and her gaseous grandmother. Oh, and Jennifer Aniston herself. And the girl that picked on her when she was a kid. And her high school boyfriend Andy whose vocabulary consists of the single word: “Dude.”

Therein lies the problem: Blaine leaves as little out as she possibly can, and the effect is a failure to plumb the depths. She tells us almost anything she can fit into the play about her life, forcing her to glaze over what we’re curious about (“How did your Mother get addicted?”) and giving equal time to stories that we may not need to hear. For example, she spends much of the latter half of the second act explaining that she decided to become an actress, a fact made clear enough by her very presence on the stage.

The first act begins with a mention of her mother smoking crack, and then moves rather far away from the topic, and ends, yet again, on that fascinating and grisly note. The 45-50 minutes in between provide us with the details of her father’s bedtime stories, her oversized backpack in elementary school, her parents’ divorce, a debate with her mom about fashion, and her experiences at college. These factoids and jokes are not without their inherent humor, but they leave us waiting for the play to narrow in on its subject. In her haste to present a full memoir, Blaine never brings the piece completely into focus.

In some moments, her desire to tell us everything actually distances her from the audience. The reason she decided to put together a one-woman show, she reveals, was that it was career advice from her idol Jennifer Aniston, whom she happened to meet at a Rite-Aid. Blaine also says expressly that her choice of subject matter was intended for her own healing process. The unintended result is placing the audience rather low on her list of priorities; making us seem like either a part of her march to a sitcom career, or her personal captive therapists.

I suspect the unspoken truth of Pipe Dreams is that Blaine wants very badly to express the pain that she experienced, and use it to enlighten. She’s certainly capable enough of the performance aspect: she’s bright and quick and personable and comfortable in front of the audience. What she needs is to decide what goes in a diary, what goes in her stand-up routine, and what goes into a play about watching a parent succumb to addiction, weakness, and drugs. Once those things are clearly delineated, she may well find the story (and humor) inside Pipe Dreams that is struggling to be heard.

You Again, a musical about cloning
reviewed by Alyssa Simon

On its official website, You Again: A Musical About Cloning is described as a "straight-faced comedic musical." That is a perfect definition of its style and also the reason why, given the outlandish plot, it succeeds and entertains so well.

Clorox Fantastik, a substitute teacher (so named because he was orphaned as a boy, found in a janitorial closet, and raised by custodians), arrives at a normal enough seeming high school thinking that he is just working there for one day. He discovers Ruby, a lonely guidance counselor to whom he is inexplicably drawn. He also meets the students in his class who represent all the high school archetypes: Johnny the nihilistic loner, Davey the lunkhead jock, Lila the school tramp, Heather the cheerleader, and Vagnes the nerd.

He also meets the oily principal, appropriately named Mr. Skummings, and is introduced in the teachers' lounge to his bitter and burnt out co-workers. There, he hears them talking about a missing science teacher named Arthur Dunn, the man he is there to replace. Clorox comes to realize that something is not quite right (could it be the two-headed janitor, Victor, that gives it away?) and decides to stay.

A good thing he does, because Dunn is alive and conducting his science experiments in human cloning on the students in the school basement. Funding his research is a nefarious corporation represented by the Ad Men, who go by the names of Cobalt, Crimson, and Lime (also the colors of dish soap and other household products for sale). See, while Principal Skummings only wants the students cloned so that their difficult teenage personalities can be erased and their test scores improved, thereby saving the closing of the school and his job, the Ad Men also want the students cloned—the kids who make F's and the kids who make A's are cloned and all the clones make B minuses,  so that every one is average. In other words, everyone becomes the same, a little mediocre, and the perfect consumer.

There is a surprise ending that I won't give away but I can tell you that there is an awesome fight scene at the end involving the entire cast and some mops, choreographed by Warren Carlyle. It's difficult to single out any one performance. I would have to say that a few standouts in a cast of standouts are Jennifer Lee Mitchell as Ruby for her sense of humor and warmth and Cat Davis for her terrifyingly perky and energetic cheerleader, Heather, Also, Marc Donovan for being the square jawed yet soft spoken hero, Clorox Fantastik and Johnny Pruitt as the school loner. Kudos as well to choreographer Carlyle who has created hilarious moves for the Ad Men, and director Bill Gullo, who also wrote the book and lyrics. (My favorite song, "Wake Up Heart," has Ruby singing to her broken heart, "Don't make me come in there and turn that sad music down.") And lastly, kudos to composer Rob Wagner, who also happens to be a member of one of the the great modern Klezmer bands, the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars. Go see this show!

The True Tragedy of the Mortician
reviewed by Anthony Pennino

Daniel Diamond is a clever playwright—and that is not meant necessarily as a compliment. In The True Tragedy of the Mortician, Diamond has constructed a surreal piece that has its roots in experimental theatre dating back to the end of World War II. What is missing from his work is the essential ingredient in any piece conceived for the stage: true human emotion and passion.

Mortician begins with the title character breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience in what amounts to a meta-theatrical discussion of the role of actor, director, playwright, and audience. Though the playwright clearly intends for this framing moment to be revelatory, it will be old hat for anyone who has seen at least one production from the canon of Christopher Durang. It is further troubling that this opening chorus has little to nothing to do with the rest of the play (the Mortician does not return until the final two minutes of the play). Nor does it help that Ryan O’Toole seems miscast for the role of the Mortician.

After the opening, the action moves to a restaurant in an alternate reality New York where married couple Alain (Cliff Campbell) and Marjorie (Rebecca Simone Stein) have set up a blind date for their friends Chet (John Paul Skocik) and Sarah (Chloe Cmarada). They are served by Fire (Caroline Taylor), whose questionable gender serves as the basis of an argument among the four. A number of bizarre events occur including the disappearance and appearance of their chairs, a recorded recitation of the daily specials, dance music, and a series of grisly shootings.

Many of these events come across as arbitrary and unmotivated; Diamond appears to have a particular goal he wants to achieve, and he will get there regardless of character logic. Further, neither the writer nor director Jason Alan Carvell appears to have devised a coherent set of rules that govern the universe they have created. And the drive to make philosophical points (about the cruelty of love, perhaps?) rather than an emotional life for the work leaves the audience unable to care about the fates of the characters.

That said, every now and then there is a turn of phrase, observation, or humorous exchange that comes across as true, raw, human—in short, believable. If the playwright would allow for more such moments, then a stronger play might emerge.

Noteworthy in the cast are Campbell and Stein who make the most of their roles of the bickering yuppie couple.

Ponzi Man
reviewed by Yuval Boim

The term “Ponzi scheme” refers to Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who in 1920 managed to swindle millions of dollars from investors in a plot similar to a Pyramid scheme. In Woman Seeking…’s production of Gary Morgenstein’s Ponzi Man, an upper class Jewish family suffers financial and emotional devastation at the hands of a son who illegally manages the family fortune.

All is not well when Hillary and Ike Rosen assemble their three children, Ben, Alicia, and Annie, for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Ike has mysteriously injured his foot; Annie and her husband Steven, whose son refuses to attend the dinner or talk to them on the phone, are famously unhappy in their marriage; Alicia, a failing actor, despite landing a commercial is revealed by her mother to have no trouble procuring porn gigs. Worst of all, Ben may or may not be on the brink of a ten-year prison sentence for fraud in connection with the family real estate business. The play revolves around the exposure of a web of lies and deceit veiling painful family secrets. This is what happens when a family entrusts too much of its love in all the wrong places, the play seems to be saying.

While Morgenstein’s frequently potty-mouthed dialogue is at times illuminating (I could have done without the explicit descriptions of sexual acts and the repeated use of the word “fucking” which unfortunately do not transcend the vulgar), and the relationship dynamics he outlines are potentially disturbing and moving—Annie’s realization that her almost incestuous infatuation with her brother Ben leaves her unavailable to her husband; Alicia’s temporary refuge in her brother-in-law’s desperate advances—the production feels a bit like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Given white collar crime’s steady presence in the news Ponzi Man might have a contemporary resonance, yet Morgenstein’s choice of style—kitchen sink tragicomedy meets Kaufman and Hart—alienates us.

It is difficult to assess whether the actors’ discomfort on stage is entirely due to the hectic nature of FringeNYC, where a time limit and fast turn-over are enforced. The rushed dialogue makes it difficult to follow the story, and the actors seem burdened in executing Emily Tetzlaff’s staging, at times standing in front of one another or almost disappearing behind a sofa in an attempt to articulate three separate spaces on the stage. Jane Purcell Dashow (as Alicia) and Ken Dashow (as Steven), a husband and wife acting team, stand out as most honest, and Ruth Jaffe (as matriarch Hillary Rosen) delivers an even performance. Despite the production's flaws I managed to stay interested in this family’s struggles to manage its emotional and fiscal resources. Perhaps further clarity in writing and production will fully realize Ponzi Man’s potential.

You Mutha! A One-Mother Show
reviewed by Geeta Citygirl

Jennie Fahn’s You Mutha! is a bubbly and spirited experience for all adults—we can all relate to either being a mother, wanting to be a mother and/or, as all of us must admit, having a mother,. Fahn is a petite 4’10” powerhouse talent who rocks the living room atmosphere with this homage to moms in this fantastic one-mother show.

The day I attended her performance, it was an oppressively hot and humid New York City Saturday (with temperatures so high the city felt like a steam room). I arrived too early so waited patiently outside with a New Jersey couple. Jonathan, Jennie’s high school classmate and now a father, was attending the show with his wife, Michelle. We moved from outside to sitting on the steps leading up to the theatre. Suddenly a group of women entered speaking loud and excited to be seeing Jennie—they reminded me of Long Island maternal figures. Moments later, as if we were at a large reunion of sorts, we were all talking to each other. I enjoyed listening and watching as pieces of the puzzle were getting solved. When asked his name, Jonathan was immediately recognized when one mother hollered up the stairs that she was on the phone with his mother last night! One by one I heard stories of the various connections—and it was mostly the mothers who were recalling people and places and incidents. Then the house door opened. And we all (now friends) entered as a family.

We were welcomed with a great marketing tool and an even more useful gift in these hot temperatures—each of us got a turquoise heart-shaped paper fan with a wooden handle, designed with the show information. As we fanned ourselves, the show began. With a list of changing quotes projected on the back wall, dance, songs (the You Mutha! jingle will stay with you days after you leave the show), and a Jennie Fahn puppet, this is a piece of pure delight.

Fahn takes us on a journey of mothers everywhere—including a glimpse at her mother! We get to think about why Bambi and Nemo both lose their mothers. She asks us to think about why it is always the MOTHERS (often in children’s stories) that get killed off. Then proceeds to expose us to a “Mommy and Me” mother, a Los Angeles mother, and my favorite part of the entire show, a mother who illustrates how her Day Runner gets filled with activities and commitments. This demonstration will show you the incredible energy of both mothers and Fahn. Special mention to Coco for the wonderful puppet design—that alone with get you giggling. Larry Sousa’s smart direction and use of minimal props and set really help to highlight Fahn's strong presence. Kudos to Daryl Archibald and Christopher Lavely, the talents whose music helps the 60-minute show move effortlessly.

On a personal note, the show really made me think about what it would be like to be a mother. I thought of my mother—Asha—whose name in Hindi translates to “hope.” And I couldn’t help but remember it really is the mothers that are the hope of this world. We realize that (as some say) “every day really should be Mother’s Day."

Professor Dilexi Presents…
reviewed by Kimberly Wadsworth

Some readers will remember the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of kids' books; at the end of each page or so the reader got to choose where the plot went next ("if you go inside the haunted house, turn to page 4; if you peek in the back window instead, turn to page 7").

Despite billing itself as a "choose-your-own-adventure play," Professor Dilexi Presents Dramatis Personae of the Apocryphal Menagerie is nothing like that.

The show gives a nod towards this conceit at first; we’re welcomed by Professor Dilexi (Lilah Rahn-Lee), a ringmaster character who, together with her clown assistant Thinkandjump (Crista Fuentes), promises a grand show “for all those over the age of reason.” They introduce us to our story’s heroine, Wilma (Chelsea Philips), and we are given our first chance to choose a plot point, by voting with our applause: should Wilma have milk or orange juice with breakfast?

To be fair, the rest of the decisions made by the audience have more impact. (And I noticed a rowdy group at the back of the audience won all such votes; I may be overly suspicious, but I don’t remember seeing them in the house before the show started.)

The gimmick only comes up five times in the 90-minute show, anyway. The rest of the plot is simply a melodrama about Wilma, her husband Frank (Rachel Hochberg), her lover Ian (Charlotte Rahn-Lee), and her friend Annie (Amy Sullivan). Mostly, we just watch as Wilma and Ian have a tryst or Annie contemplates suicide, while Professor Dilexi lurks to one side, giving us a leering grin or freezing the action to speechify about the characters. Towards the end, they suddenly drop the conceit that no one else can see Professor Dilexi, allowing Wilma and the Professor to argue about things like fate and free will. Wilma also turns to the audience at one point and begs us to choose carefully, because this is affecting her life.

The play, written and directed by Rebecca Fullan, attempts a lot—it tries to be a parody of the book series, a commentary on control over one’s fate, and even a circus act at some points. But pulling the show in so many directions just blurs the focus, so it falls short on all fronts. The company also seems overly challenged by the material—and by the size of the Connelly Theatre, which simply swallowed up their voices. Even though I was in the second row, I frequently couldn’t hear a word anyone was saying. The production elements are also uneven: Rachel Hochberg and Liz Tucker’s costumes for Professor Dilexi and Thinkandjump are impressive, but Wilma runs around in a bathrobe throughout the show. The lighting design by Elizabeth Hanson has similar rough spots.

Fuentes’s performance does stand out, in part because she speaks throughout with a such a squeaky voice that it sounds like she’s eaten helium balloons whole. She also shows impressive concentration during a scene in a hospital, where for five solid minutes, while doing such things as digging through characters' handbags, tying ribbons around people's legs, turning somersaults, and blowing up a balloon, she makes regular “beep” noises, to represent a heart monitor. It’s probably telling, though, that in a five-minute scene that involved the whole ensemble, my attention was most held by a woman who only said “beep.”

.dependent study
reviewed by Kaipo Schwab

In Andrew Schneider's .dependent study, two performers, Kristin Stewart and Gram Watts, explore the complexities of relationships through a confounding series of vignettes. Armed with an audio mix of assorted classical music, electronica, and computer voiceovers, a slide projector and two television monitors (placed, oddly enough, on the floor, creating irritating sightlines that cause one to crane their neck no matter where they may be sitting in the theatre), this production throws everything it can at the audience to make sure all of our senses are working overtime. I felt especially bad for a young female teen sitting in the front row—possibly dragged there by her mother for a "cultural experience"—who had to endure the pornographic images and orgasmic sound effects as well as video of buildings being destroyed and news reports sporadically flashing from the monitors throughout the play. I’m sure she had lots to say on the ride home. As do I now.

This often disjointed play (perhaps intentionally so) is not for all tastes (and it certainly wasn’t for mine). I found it particularly amusing to read in the program notes that the company producing the show (big|picture|group) holds as its mission the intent to "use theatre as a lens through which the obscure dynamics of contemporary life might be brought into focus." That’s a high-reaching and laudable goal indeed, but to make us see what you see, you have to engage us with some common language (visual or aural) in order to connect with us so we might better comprehend your ideas and message. I can appreciate a work with lots of layers, until the layers bury the underlying meaning and whatever it was we were supposed to feel gives way to frustration.

In contrast to Schneider’s writing and directing, the actors impressed me. They swim through the quagmire with technical agility and would seem right at home in any Richard Foreman or Mac Wellman piece—playwrights who are just as out there conceptually, yet whose greater command of language allows them to communicate raw emotion when words fail or just the right words when emotion fails. Stewart, especially, has great stage presence and shows glimpses of real comic flair (even when she unfortunately has the embarrassing task of masturbating with a meat cleaver before us).

One line struck me in the play as possibly making sense of .dependent study: “be as cryptic as possible to keep the mystique of your persona.” If you’ve got the time and inclination to search for the cryptic meaning behind this experimental work that sits on the very outskirts of "fringe," then by all means spend your evening studying this puzzle of a play.

Unexceptional Tricks
reviewed by Christopher Moore

If you are curious at all about Dadaism, see Unexceptional Tricks. Max rada dada’s Unexceptional Tricks is one of the most singularly unique and refreshing theatrical experiences I have ever encountered. While it is tempting to compare elements of his show with known cultural commodities such as PeeWee Herman, the early Steve Martin, or Joel Hodgson, such comparisons would not do this performer or his show justice. Suffice to say, if you have ever at anytime found humor anywhere at any point in your life, you will find this production irresistible. The novelty of this play’s construction, the ingenuity of its execution, and the snap of rada dada’s wit ensure a delightful experience.

The show is greater than the sum of its parts, which in this case means a great deal given the number of parts involved in the show. His spatula collection alone numbers over 15,000 pieces, sent from people around the globe. From the tinkling sounds of a carnival organ that drift in and out of the performance to the enormous sea of everyday items spread around the stage, all elements of this production are tuned to delight. Dressed as an Eagle Scout with a moustache that could’ve been drawn on his face by Marcel Duchamp himself, rada dada performs unexceptional tricks and tells unexceptional stories, but the result is magic. As a performer, rada dada’s style is casual and endearing. In addition to his tricks, rada dada shares his collection of unique art, which he reveals has been created by circus and sideshow performers from around the world. It is tempting here to catalogue the details of his art collection and the particulars of his tricks, but to do so would be the equivalent to giving away a surprise ending. Suffice to say, I saw a stage effect involving three cardinals that defies description, and is perhaps the best technical achievement in any theatre this season. Another favorite trick was a game called “Come on” which featured board games ornamented with the images and details of various vacations rada dada had taken. I could give more details, but it would spoil the fun.

Rada’s variation of dada could be dissected in terms of the theatrical tradition of Dadaism, and a thorough intellectual consideration of this piece would surely link this show to the art of Duchamp, Raymond Roussel, and other mothers and fathers of dada. However, viewing this piece through that lens might deny you a rare and true dada experience. That would be a shame. This show made me see ordinary things in an exceptional way, and I am confident others will have the same experience. The spirit of joy that emanates from the world of rada dada is contagious, and as I left, I was sure that I saw inanimate objects smiling.

Cemetery of Lips
reviewed by Frank Kuzler

Cemetery of Lips by Nancy Ancowitz is a one-woman, visceral, poetic search for voice in which an unnamed speaker haplessly wanders through a waking dream, being led from place to place both within and without herself in search of what is buried deep inside—her individuality and personal power.

Ironically enough, the show’s strength lies more in the narrative journey of the speaker than in the establishment and at times repetitiveness of the main metaphor—lips as voice. Throughout, she sees only lips: lips that devour life, lips that sing, wailing lips, fellating lips. She sees all the things that lips can do except speak for her.

At the head of the show, the speaker finds herself in a cemetery in which the voices of the dead, but self-possessed, speak to her and prod her on her journey through places where her voice has been stifled. The places vary from a typical street, an intimate cafe, and finally a classroom: all places where the personal voice can at times yield, particularly in the face of “greater” authority.

Eventually, the speaker is led to herself and enters herself through giant vaginal lips. There, she rediscovers those things that make her both human and individual, and it is in this discovery that the piece is a pleasure to watch. She explores her digestive system and sees all things that she has ingested, not only the nourishment but also the rhetoric, politics, and socialization of herself. She finds a stockpile of words that she never used, or wanted to use but swallowed at various points of oppression throughout life. She finally and magically finds the strength to reactivate her words, her lips, and ultimately herself.

The show left me with some questions about the power behind the speaker’s journey. For example, why was there the feeling that the speaker was being led through this search, as opposed to actively searching?  And why the form of entry at the end? It seemed overtly masculine.

As an experience, the spoken word performance is wonderfully accomplished by Jaye Austin Williams. Musical direction (Greg Cicchino) ranges from haunting to playful and hints at those messages with which we are barraged from youth including the "Star Spangled Banner." Subtle and lovely performances are given by Joyce Chen on the violin and Anoush on the drums.