nytheatre Archive
FringeNYC 2001

If you need to be reminded why FringeNYC is so important as a laboratory and proving ground for exciting new work, then go see Out of Time… at the Sol Goldman 14^th Street Y. Conceived and directed by Joseph Furnari for his Foolzparadize company, and presented by Triad Arts Ensemble, Out of Time… is a sweet, moving, and thoughtful exploration of the imagination. Furnari and his cast of nine talented actors conjure a world of childlike innocence and creativity with joyous enthusiasm and sparkling originality. It’s a mind-tickling, delightfully diverting enterprise, one that with appropriate development and refinement could and should have a long, hearty life after FringeNYC.

It begins with an actor sketching on a pad. Suddenly, the stage fills with activity as the company bounces and leaps into the space playing what seems like every kids’ game all at once. The location is clear: we’re inside the mind of a child, in that joyful and boundless place where everything is possible and everything makes sense. Thomas soon joins the creatures of his imagination on an adventurous journey through the Silly Swamp and across the Gorge of Slime. Destination: nowhere in particular.

And then Thomas’s mom and dad show up: it’s bedtime. The game is ended and the drawing pad is put aside, never to be taken up again. Thomas is growing up.

We find out later on that Thomas goes to college, becomes a graphic artist at an advertising agency, marries a woman named Kelly and has two lively kids named Zoe and Eddie. But I’m getting ahead of things: what happens next is that Areté, the place that Thomas’s imagination invented at the beginning of the play, is in the throes of disaster. Two factions are at war, the Atives, artists and scientists who believe in creating and inventing new things (though not necessarily ever finishing them); and the Geoms, administrators and bureaucrats who worship order , organization, and completion. After a long period of squabbling, the Atives and Geoms suddenly surface in Thomas’s world, where, as the warring aspects of his own troubled brain, they make a spectacular last stand.

Furnari, as co-writer and as director, weaves the fantastic universe of the Atives and Geoms seamlessly with the more naturalistic one occupied by Thomas and his friends and family. (Glenn Krutoff, co-writer and assistant director, must be credited here as well.) The same eight actors—Jessica Calvello, Jody Dobson, Gregg Dubner, Xiomara Frans, Mark Gorman, Terri Rzeznik, Traci Shannon, and Tiffany Anne Sinclair—portray Atives and Geoms and the inhabitants of Thomas’s actual life, switching effortlessly from one character to another with a simple change in stance, gesture, or attitude. Raymond S. Wallenthin III is the play’s vulnerable, engaging center as Thomas. The performances are masterfully theatrical and wonderfully revealing: Out of Time… never strays from Thomas’s consciousness, and Furnari’s staging realizes that concept superbly.

The writing and staging are at once accessible and breathtakingly inventive; this is an experimental piece that never feels experimental. I’d like to see Thomas’s psychology become more complex and less predictable; fleshing out the characters of Thomas’s wife and mother, for example, should make that aspect of the piece, which is the glue binding it together, feel less by the numbers. Indeed, Out of Time… is one of those rare works that feels like it needs to be longer: it ends a little faster than we want it to. I encourage Furnari and his collaborators to keep working on their show. They’ve got a raw, uncut diamond on their hands; I can’t wait to see the glittering jewel they’re on their way to creating.

Bang Big is an ambitious premiere project for NYC-based Overlap Productions. Both complicated and engaging, the piece takes a dysfunctional Cleaver-esque family and gives them an hour to exist/find God/find meaning before the world blows up.

Barb (Chris Campbell) is the mom who informs us at the top of the show that this is the end. And the end is boring, she says, much like the middle. She’s been bored and numb for years, and longs to feel something, like hunger or sadness, after living a life that has eluded her. She and her husband Harry (Chance Muehleck) have your typical empty relationship with each other and the world around them--they are so absurdly disconnected that they hear a child cry and can’t recognize what the sound is ("it’s a fire engine...it’s a kitty..."), Barb has almost forgotten her two children, and so on.

Meanwhile, their dysfunctions and depressions are on real-time reality TV. We don’t know who’s operating from the ubiquitous Green Room, but we do know that we’re both the stage and studio audience. The show’s numerous transitions imply (very clumsily) that the space is being set up for different voyeuristic glimpses into Barb and Harry’s world. Two lackey-stage-hand types, a hilarious Abbott & Costello team played by Jeremy Beck and Christopher Yeatts, grab props from a suspended table and set up each new scene while taking on the identity of different characters within them. They’re getting the go-ahead to do all of this from some uber big-brother on the other end of a walkie-talkie. It’s purposely vague, and makes us wonder who’s controlling us--God? The Gap? Our desires?

If it sounds confusing, it is. But it’s supposed to be that way, I think. Elizabeth Horsburgh’s script, although still in need of clarification rewrites, is a fascinating meditation on what we’re all on the brink of ("The obliteration of the world is about to happen. It will be gruesome, but nothing compared to what will happen to our souls," Horsburgh writes). Or, what is happening to all of our souls right here and now. Horsburgh’s piece has a built-in ambiguity, pace, and style, however, that wasn’t allowed to breathe in Tania I. Kirkman’s busy directing. Kirkman’s confusing mix of realism vs. presentational, unneeded transitions, and general unclear directorial choices with the play’s multiple story lines robbed Horsburgh’s writing of its stylized structure. I got the feeling that Kirkman wasn’t lacking vision—instead, she was too ambitious and placed her mark on the piece instead of paring everything down to find what it inherently needed.

Most of the cast, Chris Campbell in particular, was talented and energetic, even if a few of them had a propensity for frantic acting choices. Campbell had, however, the rare ability to always appear as if she was on camera, as if a million eyes were watching her, while still communicating with focus and intention to those in her on-stage reality. Another cast notable, Matthew Hart Landfield (Harry Jr.), is worth watching for in the future—although a little vocally weak, his on-stage presence and comic timing is strong.

Although still rough around the edges, Horsburgh’s Big Bang is worth checking out. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more of her around town.

I really wanted to like this production. Probably because it is from Australia and I have a soft spot for those down under inhabitants. Possible all those Qantas ads I saw as a youth.

A bar, a couch and an upstage elevated screen were all the set that was there, but I figured it was mainly a one-person show so most would be left to the imagination. Then behind the bar sat a man, who, it turned out, played an electric keyboard partially obscured by the bar. I never understood the need for a live musician. The program told me that his name was Ian Moorehead, and that he was also the composer. But the music seemed so incidental, and his presence was so ignored by the actors, that I never understood why it wasn’t all just taped.

With the house lights still up, the soundtrack started, so very faint at first that I wondered whether there was a technical problem with the sound system. Words shot out of a cacophony, mostly words about sex. A very slow fade up of the sound to audibility and I realized that it was supposed to start that low. Anyway, we then got our first super title on the screen. Ah, Brecht, I thought? But the titles evolved into the thoughts of the main woman, Jezebel, played energetically and with earnest enthusiasm by Jacqueline Linke.

What transpired could be described as the sexual trials and tribulations of a modern woman, except that that would be trite. Except that the work seemed trite. I confess that I did laugh, though, as did much of the audience. Linke was quite amusing as she took us through various permutations of love, "like", fraternity and, yes, "puppy" love, the later being of the literal variety. Keith Agius was convincing as all the men in Jezebel’s life, as well as very funny as the aforementioned puppy. I suppose he was Everyman as seen through the heroine’s eyes. One moment in particular that stands out in my mind is an amusing coitus ballet by Agius and Linke that would make Karma Sutrans awe-struck. All this, by the way, with the clothes kept on.

But this sex-journey took a turn somewhere in the second half that left me yawning. Fear of commitment devolved into fear of flying and then into pure anxiety disorder. It got serious and the setup didn’t allow us to take the seriousness seriously. This was not a problem of the acting, per se, but of the construction of the piece. Linke and Agius were at all times believable, often humorous and certainly adept at the darker emotions when required. The program notes by the author describe the play as "a darkly comic exploration of loneliness." This exploration begins very promisingly, but it doesn’t fulfill its mission. Strange, but even after stops at Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Edinburgh, Dublin, London and New York, it still feels like a work-in-progress.

Two Girls from Vermont is proof that a great plot isn’t everything. On paper it sounds terrific: an adaptation of Two Gentlemen from Verona, where Valentine and Proteus are replaced with modern-day high school girls, their fathers were long-ago lovers in Provincetown, and the Duke is now a six foot five Duchess in drag. Sadly however it all falls far short of the mark. The strongest elements are the staging, choreography and set and costume design. It’s all very colorful and kinetic and if the cast never had to open their mouths it would be a very good thing.

The problem is the script, which is sort of "not there". Neither literary nor humorous, it just kind of hovers like a vague cloud for the cast to move through, inspiring neither great performances nor terrible ones. There is a marked laziness to the adaptation. For example, rather than creating a more appropriate modern-day equivalent to nobility, (such as a C.E.O., a Mayor, or a television star) author John Kauffman merely creates a "Duchess of Quebec." Likewise, he converts a messenger into a United State Postal Worker, and then proceeds to have him do a million things a U.S. Postal Worker would never do: deliver a single piece of mail from one house to another, take bribes, and deliver a piece of mail internationally from Vermont to Quebec. More clever and more resonant ways to solve these problems awaited the author, who clearly didn’t bother to discover them. The lack of imagination extends to the attempted use of comedy at the expense of Canada, already done to death by the likes of Michael Moore and the "South Park" creators. In short, it ain’t Shakespeare.

Caliban Upon Setebos is a dramatization of a poem by Robert Browning that has an intriguing premise – how would Caliban of Shakespeare’s The Tempest react privately to Prospero; what does Caliban think when he’s off in his own cave? The program has a parenthetical explanation of the action of the play: "Caliban hides and speaks of himself in the third person, in fear that Setebos might catch him in possession of a thought."

One needn’t have knowledge of the Browning poem, as I didn’t, or the Shakespeare play, as I did, in order to get immediately into the character and situation. Director Timothy Holst gives us an evocative beginning. The otherworldly music, with the stage in total darkness, sounds as if an accordion were slowly breathing, an effective aural metaphor for the rhythmic ebb and flow of the surrounding sea. Or was it the somnambulant utterances of the monster himself? The first image we see is Caliban frozen with his back to us, a bucket on his shoulder dramatically lit. Then we get a portion of the famous curse Caliban utters against Prospero in Shakespeare’s play: "All the infections that …"

From here, one presumes, we get the Browning text and performer Joel Garland as Caliban is riveting. His superb baritone voice makes the walls of the Red Room – a space, which makes an excellent "cave" – reverberate with agony and resound with recriminations. Garland’s great sumo wrestler bulk of a body, fully displayed as he appears only in shorts, is perfect for the role. Both body and voice are incredibly agile and clearly well trained. He has great focus and gives us a Caliban of simple elegant intelligence.

Yet Garland’s talent cannot sustain this hour-long piece. The problem could lie in the text, as it seemed very disjointed, but I think it is in the direction. What is the through-line of the piece? Instead of getting a beginning, middle and end, we seem to get mostly "middle." Forgive me, but all middle makes muddle. Holst needed to give us a better arc for the piece and also to help Garland find the individual arcs of Caliban’s thoughts. It is possible that the problem lies in beginning with Shakespeare and moving to Browning, as if the latter’s poetry doesn’t live up to the former. But I think acting Browning just needed to be treated more like acting Shakespeare. Poetry takes care of itself if you understand the underlying arc of thought. And Caliban is a thinker, an eloquent thinker.

Please see this production. Translators Ryan Suda and Greg Vargo have provided a completely accessible American translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play. Ensemble members Dacyl Acevedo, Richard Aviles, Nicole Donohue, Karen Eterovich, David Fraioli, David Green and Sheila Lewandowski bring this translation to life with exuberance, emotional clarity and physical dexterity. Director/designer Brian Rogers presents a unique visual and aural vocabulary that is immediately engaging and continually enthralling.

The setting is simple – frames floating in the air with floodlights suspended nearby and three microphones on stands. We enter amidst the company, which is apparently warming up. As we sit and watch we understand that the warm-up is helping us get into what will be the director’s sound and movement lexicon. Once the narrative begins, we are swept up and we don’t land until the applause. Rogers and his theater et al company keep Schnitzler’s story of love and war remarkably clear, using a sort of Meyerhold biomechanics - movement-extrapolated emotion and stylized staging. Yet the company’s commitment to the artistic vision is total and the design elements are integral – the lighting is simple and dynamic, the music underscoring is supportive and never intrusive. In addition, brazen cross-gender casting actually helps clarify the story, as we are compelled to listen to the text and feel the passionate subtext.

The Paradise Theater was close and rather stuffy, but I don’t think anyone noticed. There were audience members standing in the back, but I don’t think they cared. The company could have taken another bow.