nytheatre Archive
FringeNYC 2001

SHOW REVIEWS ON THIS PAGE: Doing Justice, Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, Charlie's Angel, Theme and Variations, Misfit, Tarnish, School For Salomés

DOING JUSTICE by David Fuller
There are many different reasons to see a play, though usually they fall into two categories: the desire to be entertained and the quest for knowledge. When a play falls into both we are doubly blessed. Sometimes, however, there comes along a play that goes beyond these audience-driven reasons and compels us to see it of its own accord, as if it were alive and called out, "Come see me!" Doing Justice is such a play. Playwright and performer Adina Taubman interviewed members of the Littleton, Colorado community to get their thoughts and reactions to the tragedy which occurred on April 20, 1999, when two students at Columbine High School shot and killed 12 of their classmates, plus one teacher, and shot and injured 23 more students, before taking their own lives. The result is a one-hour, one-person show adroitly directed by Beth Manspieizer and deftly performed by Taubman, who portrays 33 of the human beings touched by the events of that day. Surprisingly, there is humor amongst the pathos, as Taubman interweaves the characters who appear and reappear in a tapestry of humanity that may never satisfy us with an answer to the Why of it all, but most certainly sheds light as to the many human orbits of existence that permeate our culture and the inherent potential energy for disaster when these orbits intersect. Should guns be so easy to obtain? Should parents stop delegating the responsibility for their children? Should schools be sensitive to the needs of all students? Should schools embrace religion? Should all media programming consider their audience instead of their marketplace? These questions and more are aired directly and indirectly during Doing Justice, but with a skill that never makes you feel you are being preached at even when you are actually being preached to. This may seem antipodal, but Taubman is quite skillful in her dramaturgy and never leaves us too long with one thread of thought before weaving and re-weaving another. The people she inhabits compel us to listen and Taubman’s characterizations are very engaging. Doing Justice and its dramatic kin are important to theater. The questions must be raised. See it and draw your own conclusions.
JIM CARROLL’S THE BASKETBALL DIARIES by Michael Criscuolo
Swiss actor Pascal Ulli has adapted Jim Carroll’s autobiographical novel, The Basketball Diaries, into a solo showcase for himself. Considering Ulli’s affinity for method acting (which he details extensively in his program bio), Carroll’s book—which chronicles the author’s coming-of-age as a basketball player, male hustler, drug addict, and budding writer on the mean streets of 1960s New York—seems like properly intense material for him. Unfortunately, what would seem to be a perfect fit for both Ulli and the text turns out to need a few alterations after all. The main obstacle is the form itself. One-person shows are basically long speeches, but their success rests solely on being thought of by the actor as a full-length, two-person scene between the speaker and the listener, who may be an imaginary offstage figure on the audience themselves. The speaker’s need to tell his or her story to the listener, and his or her reasons for telling it to that particular person, are what drive a one-person show forward. Ulli hinders himself by not clarifying enough for himself who his listener is, or what they mean to him. By doing so, he prevents himself from fully expressing why his character needs to tell his story, and why the audience should even listen to it. Ulli also has a language barrier to overcome. English is obviously not his first language, even though he is functionally fluent and is always completely understandable. But, he hasn’t yet reached a level of comfort or mastery that allows him to deploy a multitude of inflections and other vocal nuances that would not only give more meaning to what he’s saying and make it sound like he knows what he’s talking about, but would also help him (and, in turn, the audience) connect emotionally even more to the material. Right now, it just feels like he’s reciting his lines, but he should settle into a more comfortable groove the more he performs the show.
CHARLIE’S ANGEL by Tim Cusack
Charlie’s Angel has an intriguing premise: twin brothers, one straight, the other gay; the straight brother is brutally gay bashed on his way home from yet another drinking binge at the local pub. He nearly dies in the encounter, and its psychic reverberations have tragic results. The secret hovering over all of this is that as a child he let his gay brother sexually stimulate him while he feigned sleep, thus tainting his manhood for the rest of his life. The situation is rife with rich metaphoric possibilities: doubleness; the narcissism of gay desire; the capriciousness of fate; essentialist versus constructivist ways of ordering the world; the necessity and impossibility of human forgiveness Beyond the philosophical implications there is the additional sociological reality of the British class system and an ironic awareness that gay identity is often a ticket to the access of its upper echelons for many a boy born with the wrong bloodlines. The double irony is that many gay men still experience guilt over the blokes they’ve left behind in the fairy dust, sometimes the very ones who hounded them out of the neighborhood in the first place. All of these themes faintly glean in Jonathan Rice’s solo performance. (I’m assuming he also is the playwright, although no actual playwriting credit is given nor is any director identified.) But like gold ore trapped in rock, his ideas are in need of prospecting and refining before their true value will be distinctly discerned. Part of the problem is that the writing feels too claustrophobically fixated on the siblings. Their shared sexual shame is revisited over and over again to the exclusion of any other erotic encounters. We’re told about this thing that happened between them which caused an irrevocable split, but never about how it has affected their other relationships. All we know is that Jimmy, the gay brother, hasn’t had sex in the last two year (as if), and we never hear about any woman that Charlie, the straight one, has been with. Besides my suspicion that in the actual situation both parties would be much more ambivalent about its meaning (I’ve known twins who have hinted about shared sexual experiences but certainly without any of this sturm und drang), it’s hard for its emotional implications to land with any force when we don’t see its effects in the world. In fact, the world outside of the two doesn’t even seem to exist. We have absolutely no sense about their lives, their work, or who their friends are. In fact we learn practically nothing about them except for their traumatic childhood and how they feel about each other. Even when the world does intrude during the gay bashing, the violence remains generalized. We’re told that Charlie is almost killed, but the specifics of whether he was beaten or stabbed and how many attackers there were are frustratingly withheld. And some indication of why his attackers mistake this loutish oaf for a gay man would also have been appreciated. This last point also links to the next: the characterization of the two brothers is extremely problematic. Charlie is alcoholic, loud, obnoxious and sentimental. Jimmy is quiet, refined, a celibate nervous nelly…and sentimental. It’s a credit to Rice’s supreme commitment as an actor that these stereotypes never become offensive. He manages to find the truth in even the stalest lines, but he also rarely plays against their content, and the overall lack of any surprising context quickly grows wearying. We’re only seeing these characters under the psychological microscope, and their neuroses and obsessions appear undistinguishable from anyone else’s, like emotional protozoa. There are some moments of payoff in the evening: Charlie’s recurring dream after the attack of being torn to pieces by wolves provides a poetic concreteness otherwise missing, and his spoken wish that his brother would get AIDS and die is too much of a blow to easily dismiss. But on the whole, this angel never quite takes to flight.
THEME AND VARIATIONS by Eva van Dok
I sat in Theme and Variations assuming that everyone else around me knew what was going on. I didn’t and I can’t figure out if it was the play’s lack of clarity or my own. It lasted about 20 minutes --I blinked and it was gone. Now’s the time to revert to the trusty fringe description of SMUT Ensemble’s Theme and Variations in lieu of my own confused one: "…Words are traps and repetitious phrases lock two characters into patterns they are barely aware of. [They] take wild actions, desperate to break the melody they can’t quite detect, as the theme becomes overpowering." The two actors in the play, Tara Gibson and Michael Aranov, sit at a table, facing each other and proceed to speak in stilted, repetitious dialogue that I assume was supposed to have an underlying musicality and rhythm. Dialogue is, or should have been, more of the focus. The two characters that engage in it are in an unhappy, dysfunctional relationship--he is out of work and miserable, she is just miserable. They are locked in the patterns they have created, all of which is supposed to crescendo into an ending of…something. The problem is that although there is a theme here, it has no variation. The actors, although obviously talented, desperately hang on to one level of emotion, speech, and intensity for the entire 20 minutes, which results in a boring, one-dimensional commentary on how NOT to talk to your significant other. My guess is that the piece (by Steven Grindley) is more interesting than it appears here. The text seems to be an almost melodic exercise in dialogue and behavior--sort of like Pinter characters chasing their own tails--and it would have been much more effective if the actors had a slightly removed Pinter-esque quality as well. Because they were so emotionally stuck in their own redundancy, I lost the point of the repetition itself, as well as the structural variations that went along with it. As a result, the actors’ naturalism is out of place in a piece that seems to inherently want to show something instead of telling it. I lost the words, their effect, and I guess, the whole point of the piece on the distraught faces of the two actors.
MISFIT by Julie Congress
It’s amazing how badly mutilated a good premise can be. In a way the story of Misfit is quite similar to the experience of the show itself. The play is about an entire town blaming the local pariah for a murder, even though there is no evidence to indict him. Basically, everyone goes against this one boy. Just like the acting, choreography, costuming, dialogue, directing, sound and set all go against the plot of Misfit. The plot becomes an outcast in a sea of mediocre theatre techniques. But, alas, the concepts behind the play are not strong enough to keep it from being pulled under by all the other aspects of the show. As mentioned, Misfit takes place in a small town where the police have just found the body of an eight-year-old boy. The police chief, Jonathan Werther (Richard Prioleau, Jr.) assigns the case to Detective Charlotte Van Houten (Liz Santine), making it clear to her that he is positive the murderer is the devil-worshipping high-school student Wayne Crowley (Paul Hagen). Werther also makes it quite apparent that he wishes a very hasty conviction. Van Houten then interviews a string of hostile witnesses: the high-school bully, Crowley’s girlfriend, the victim’s father and Van Houten’s "friend" Lynnette Garrison (Jill Creighton). Through the course of these interviews we also learn that Van Houten is a misfit in the town herself, a single thirty-something women doing a "man’s job." One of my major problems with Misfit is the violent inclinations of all of the characters. Even when Van Houten is interviewing her first witness, the high-school bully, Brian Rizano (Jon Crane), he’s jumping on tables, throwing things, screaming and choking Van Houten. Now, it would be somewhat understandable if this brutality was only attributed to Rizano’s character. But every other witness goes at Van Houten with the same viciousness. This cruelty and its effects are totally unrealistic. When Garrison, in a rage, destroys the tape recording of the ongoing interview, I figured, fine, get her for destruction of property, it’s got to be a misdemeanor at least. But Van Houten didn’t do anything – the violence just kept going on the same as before. Along with the improbability of all this physicality, there also comes the fact that the show can never reach a climax. If you start out with this intensity, you never have any place to go. This may not be as critical an issue, but I’m a firm believer in personal space, so the fact that the actor’s faces were always three inches apart really bothered me. Once again, we’re back to the improbability factor. My final complaint is with the actors, possibly due to short rehearsal time, they had trouble projecting and articulating. I was in the second row and couldn’t hear great portions of the show. It really is a shame that such an interesting story can be led so astray. I’m not sure if it is repairable, but I certainly hope they at least give it a try. It does have a good plot line, even if nothing else.
TARNISH by Michael Criscuolo
I approached Scott Mebus’ rock musical Tarnish—which touts itself as "The Musical for Here and Now" and "a vital, new original musical, which the stage has not been privy to since the days of Cole Porter"—with a healthy dose of skepticism. I mean, any show that throws around declarations like that in its press materials ought to be looked upon with suspicion. They’re the kind usually made by the audience after they have seen the show. They decide what stands the test of time and defines the zeitgeist, not the creators. For Mebus to do so comes off as presumptuous, and reveals a large amount of hubris on his part. It’s not surprising, then, that Tarnish not only reveals the depths of that hubris, but also fails spectacularly to live up to its own hyperbole. Tarnish tells the story of Mary (Melanie Penn), a suburban teenager who suffers from a nebulous mental disorder, and runs away from her repressive home life to the big city, where she manages to hold her own against pimps, bums, and drug addicts, and eventually gets taken in by a kind-hearted college student (Aaron Berk) who helps her find herself. This is a familiar coming-of-age scenario, and Mebus—who wrote, composed, and directed Tarnish—does nothing to freshen it up. His writing displays a juvenile sensibility throughout, but never keys into the true adolescent intelligence he’s striving for. The kids are supposed to be smarter than the adults, but the script makes all the characters look equally dumb. It’s also unclear what point Mebus is trying to make with Tarnish. He’s clearly put a lot of time and energy into the show, but he doesn’t ever tell the audience anything they don’t already know. Consequently, Tarnish lacks any sense of surprise. Tarnish just seems to be a vessel for Mebus’s songs. But his lyrics don’t seem to be anything more than vowels that his cast can hang their vocal embellishments on, which is too bad, because his melodies are excellent throughout. And, the cast is full of good voices. But, without a clear theme to express (or firm grasp on smooth blocking and scene transitions), director Mebus just leaves them all hanging. Mebus is clearly a talented composer, and he does not lack ambition, so I have no doubt that he’ll go very far. But, no man is an island. I think, for the time being, until he hones his narrative skills a bit more, it would be wise for him to dole out the book-writing, lyric-writing, and directing duties to separate collaborators next time. Doing that will not only benefit the show, but it’ll make him look good, too.
SCHOOL FOR SALOMÉS by Tim Cusack
I want to dance for you. I want you to watch. But on second thought, maybe I don’t really feel like dancing. What will you do for me if, and I do mean if, I dance? Slip some money in my jockstrap? Marry me so I won’t dance for anyone else ever again? Kill someone for me? Salomé, c’est moi. Elena Gluzman wants to free our inner Salomé, the Judean princess who desired John the Baptist. He, alas, had eyes only for Jesus, and she, scorned, does the most famous strip tease in history for her stepfather Herod. Her reward for pleasing Daddy: Johnny’s head on a platter. Don’t we, too, deserve to get what we want? And don’t we, too, possess the means to get it? To help us self-actualize these goals, Gluzman will be running a School for Salomés for the duration of the Fringe Festival at the Theatre for the New City in the turned-inside-out space of the Cino Theater. I invite anyone reading this review who needs a refresher course in the art of the sexual tease or the finer points of domination and submission to enroll for one night’s class. It will be a most edifying experience. It seems that Gluzman’s is the latest in a tradition of such schools dating back to the turn of the last century. A certain Mr. Wilde wrote a notorious play about said Judean princess that caused quite a scandal when penned. The question of Wilde’s own sexual proclivities (young men) may have had something to do with the scandal, and the play was refused performance permission. When the play finally was performed (a few years after Wilde’s untimely demise), scandal turned to sensation. Soon, the demand for Salomés outstripped (so to speak) the supply, and a school was established to train young women in the skills necessary to perform this supremely challenging role. As Gluzman reminds us, however, it is not enough to display one’s body in a provocative fashion. No, Salomé, must also have a philosophical grasp of the why of her dance. When the young women hoping to gain admittance to Gluzman’s school line up on stage to audition for one of its spots, they are not just asked to dance; they are also asked questions like: "What do you most desire from life?" and "What is the nature of death?" Love is the key to both. Salomé wants love from life, but I’m Salomé, so I want love from life. Love’s absence is death. Salomé wanted John’s love more than anything, more than all the riches of Rome. She couldn’t have it, so she chose his death and, by extension, her own. Gluzman’s School is also the continuation and embodiment of another tradition: that of marginal queer theatre. Gluzman collapses time by taking what is arguably the world’s first (1895) self-consciously homosexual play (although there is no overt homosexuality in it) and by using a performance technique pioneered by Ronald Tavel (note to Ms. Gluzman: Life of Juanita Castro is by Mr. Tavel; Mr. Warhol merely directed the film version) in his Playhouse of the Ridiculous in the 1960s, creates a densely layered performance spectacle that speaks to the concerns over gender and power preoccupying us in the first part of the 21st century. A large man carries around a tiny hula doll. John tortures Salomé by baptizing her over and over again, closer to a drowning than to salvation. Although who’s to say which is which? In this queered vision of our relationships, someone is always in control; someone is always giving orders to a someone else whose purpose is to obey. I’m always trying to please you. My life is in your hands. I want to do it, whatever "it" is, better. Even when you, the master, want to trade places with me, your slave (as in the creepily funny scene between the two fascinating Dubson brothers, Olag and Dima), I don’t want to relinquish my lack of responsibility. I’d rather tease you. The show is about to start. Don’t go anywhere.