nytheatre Archive
FringeNYC 2003
SHOW REVIEWS ON THIS PAGE: The Savior of Fenway, Wax and Wayne, Natural Selection, Femme!, Pat Candaras: Panic Is Not a Disorder, Southside, Living With Betty, Little Wing, This Is a Newspaper, Manhatitlán, Strange News From Another Planet, Big Girl, Little World
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THE SAVIOR OF FENWAY by Martin Denton |
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As far as I can tell, The Savior of Fenway is Brendan Bates’
first play. If so, it’s an auspicious debut. Bates’ play is set in a
blue collar bar in the Boston suburb of Quincy, Massachusetts during the
last two nights of the American League Playoffs. The Red Sox are being
trounced by the Yankees, and their inability to win the pennant is
Bates’ none-too-subtle symbol of the failures of his characters, for
whom the games are a strange masochistic annual ritual. Bates’ protagonist is Walshie, the owner of this establishment, a kind-hearted but fundamentally weak man who masks his disappointment in his life by playing peacemaker for his rowdy friends and customers. Chief among these is Shane McGill, a thoroughly disreputable fellow who, when the play opens, has locked himself in the men’s room after having destroyed a good deal of glassware (including, probably, somebody’s windshield) in fits of anger at the Sox’ bad performance. To call Shane a loose cannon is an understatement; but there’s a flicker of nobility burning inside his grim and gruff exterior, as we learn when he confides in Walshie his desire to become the "savior of Fenway," liberating it from its proposed demolition. The major conflict of the play centers on Walshie’s young assistant, Patty Lentz, a once-promising baseball star whose college career derailed when his father died. One of Patty’s older brothers is having an affair with Shane’s wife; this leads to a set of serious confrontations involving weapons at the end of each the play’s acts. The best thing about The Savior of Fenway is the way that Bates resolves the situation—I leave it to you to discover exactly what happens, but I will tell you that it’s entirely unexpected and helps differentiate Bates from the numerous Mamet-wannabes whose work dots the dramatic landscape these days. Savior nonetheless owes debts to the master, in terms of structure (single set; two taut acts—though Bates’ first act could be tighter) and language (lots of four-letter words cast into a kind of poetry; overuse of labels like "bitch" and "faggot," which I could definitely do without). But Bates takes control of the form in the play’s excellent second act, making us eager to see what he might do next. The cast is exemplary under Michael Laibson’s well-paced direction. Bates plays Shane; Joe Burch plays Shane’s boss Sweeney; John Highsmith is terrific as the tightly-wound Patty; and Nate Meyer (incongruously dressed in tie, vest, and old-fashioned apron) is the conflicted Walshie. |
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WAX AND WAYNE by Robin Reed |
I hated art class as a kid. I couldn’t draw, the
room was always messy and cluttered and we had more spray painted
macaroni Christmas tree cones at my house than my mom had mantle space
on which to display them. The only way I could get through that hour
every Monday involved Elmer’s Glue. Who didn’t love grossing out their
classmates by peeling off their pasty skin? Wax and Wayne brought
me right back to that demented decadence. You walk down some stairs, through a dark stinky hallway and into a hot dark space they’re using as a theatre. Ah, the Fringe. You’ve got to love it: just when you’ve thought you’d seen it all, they seem to find that obscure beautiful thing you can’t believe you’re seeing. And that, my friends, is Wax and Wayne. And WOW. The piece is perfectly suited to the space—scaffolding and a 200-pound vat of paraffin gives it a feeling of Mom’s-aromatherapy-votives-meets-dad’s-garage-workshop. The never-ending soundscape, performed live by Tom Howe, incorporates everything from wonky wires to bicycle tires. And Howe, an overall-clad cutie, sits just off to the side and serves as a totally present fly on the wall of this neo-mad-scientist’s workshop. Wax and Wayne are Meghan Strell and Larry Underwood and they are incredible. Besides their charm and playfulness, they possess a near superhuman endurance. I won’t give away the surprise of what they do, but for over an hour in that crazy hot basement, they are captivating in their experimentation and exploration. They’ve been working together on this piece for a while, but their onstage discoveries are fresh, exciting and non-verbal. It is performance art at its best—new and exciting and not a lick of pretension anywhere in sight. Catch this one while you can; fill that space, make it hotter, make them add seats! Local Infinities Visual Theater takes their big, hot melty mess back to Chicago after their last show on Monday the 18th. |
| NATURAL SELECTION by Mark O’Toole |
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Natural Selection is a comedy with a hint of the absurd. It also
has some moments of pathos, which are quite touching. The play is ably
performed by the two writers of the piece, Kelly Taylor as Myrtle, a
feisty character who whacks the life out of cockroaches, and Sharon
Talbot as Avis, the dreamer of the two, who despite all life’s woes,
likes things just the way they are. It’s their tenth anniversary working together, where they wax lyrical and literary (Proust, Hemingway, Joyce) about the lives they have lived and perhaps the lives they could lead. Their ordinariness and mundane work is matched by an effective set design by Beowulf Boritt that deftly matches the mood of the piece, like a sign over their shoulders that reads "Alignment is Everything". Our heroes assemble small white boxes, not just ten or twenty but what seemed liked thousands. Certainly the unsung hero of the piece is whoever had to assemble all the boxes before the show. Outside lies another reality for these cocooned women. But inside their world, they offer some hilarious glimpses at their existence. Both their husbands ran off with each other and then became lesbians (this is not a misprint), prompting Avis to exclaim, "I guess that explains everything." When the office phone rings off the hook, Myrtle shouts, "Don’t pick it up. I want to work in peace". It’s a constant struggle to realign their own lives, but Avis lives in hope that perhaps one day G.W. Bush, who reminds her of Brad Pitt, "will give me a hot wax." There is a wonderful choreographed piece where they "dance" with the boxes. While I thought the writing could be more up to date—who doesn’t use a computer in this day and age?—the show is well directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett and is worth a look. |
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FEMME! by Liz Kimberlin |
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Femme! is an autobiographical "one-woman show with two
women" now playing at the Kraine Theatre. Certainly Christine Mosere, writer and subject of the piece, is a beautiful, feminine woman with wit, talent, and bubbly charm. Without a doubt, Mosere can be commended for her courage in meeting head-on the booby traps and detours leaping out from the Pandora’s Box that she, by her own admission, has opened for herself. But are courage and choices, even that dramatic, really enough to make good theatre? In the case of Femme!, unfortunately, no. Femme! is about an actress, wife and mother in New York City who suddenly becomes transfixed with a "butch" (very masculine woman, in this case also lesbian) bartender who wants a puppet to control more than she actually wants a lover. But Mosere wants love and commitment and a world free of repression and lies. Thus her dilemma: she hasn’t told her lover about her husband/she hasn’t told her husband about her lover. But fade out manipulative bartender, fade in wholesome Texas cowboy butch who wants all the same things Mosere wants—only to catch Mosere in her double-life lies. The story is played out—even described in Mosere’s narration—like a movie treatment, except with a few token theatrical devices thrown in to simulate a sense of stage-worthiness. New York audiences, however, aren’t that easily fooled. And perhaps that was my problem as an audience member and why I so quickly lost patience: went there, saw that, at least a dozen times over. "Out" plays aren’t exactly a new concept around here. Stories of misunderstood, overlooked performing artists in New York City who drown their frustrations in drink and other demons—also been done to death. Had Mosere kept it simple—focusing on her guilt at the mounting deceptions—and let her other issues/proclivities be "supporting characters," I think I might have found Femme! less diffuse and more interesting. And it’s not to say that Femme! as a stage piece is completely unsalvageable. It’s just going to take a lot of rewrites and, most especially, a more competent stage partner (the "other" woman in the one-woman show) than Mosere performs with in this production. Those elements in place, I can see where Mosere might find a noteworthy niche for Femme! outside of New York City (i.e., college, community, special interest group circuits), where less jaded audiences might find her experiences and insights a revelation. |
| PAT CANDARAS: PANIC IS NOT A DISORDER by Jonathan Warman |
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Pat Candaras is not your run-of-the-mill stand-up comic. She started much
later in life than most, after being fired from her post as Chief
Operating Officer of a maritime union. And even though she has
grandchildren, she's still capable of swearing like a longshoreman, thus
her nickname "Grandmotherfucker." As much as her stuttering delivery evokes, say, Woody Allen, she's also clearly influenced by the youthful alternative comedy scene that was born on the Lower East Side in the '90s—a scene where she herself did her first gigs. Like many of the former residents of Surf Reality, she has a carefully constructed stage persona, and will sometimes forgo an easy laugh to give us a little insight into her life. This ends up netting bigger laughs, since they're rooted in a deeper understanding of the anxiety underneath her surface poise. This compelling "welcome to my world" trip encompasses death, sex, politics, religion, and the ongoing dubious (or is that Dubya-ous?) "war on terrorism." For example, Candaras' desire to be a "regular lady"—her role model is the Virgin Mary, "who really knew how to wear a scarf!"—comes up against her horrified realization that Laura Bush is probably the best example of a regular lady these days, and she just keeps smiling no matter what idiotic crap comes out of her husband's mouth. Candaras doesn't think she could ever do that: she's had a lifelong conflict with authority of any kind. She's like an Irish Catholic Richard Pryor: This is comedy with a lot of things on its mind, and Candaras’ hard-driving approach puts her ideas across forcefully. Oh, and let's not forget that "the penis is important" to Candaras, as she realizes in an epiphany watching a man with a jackhammer. One of my favorite candid Candaras observations: "Some penises are just plain ugly." |
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SOUTHSIDE by Kate Ward |
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Dee Bolos begins her one-woman show with a question. What do we think of
when she says, "Southside"? Her assortment of characters, residents of
the Chicago neighborhood, rattle off their free associations: frosted
hair, jeans with zippers at the ankles, the dirty Irish, St. Ignatius,
cops, plumbers, and the neighbor who doesn’t mow his lawn. This is an
America not restricted to one locality in the Midwest. What follows is a
series of monologues attempting to paint an intricate portrait of Bolos’
working class roots. I have to be honest, I was a little touchy about
the subject matter. There is cringe-inducing potential for condescension
in these types of sociological memoirs. I needn’t have worried. Although
a bit jarring, Southside gives us an unassuming and painfully
funny look at the world in which Bolos grew up. The structure is a little fragmented. There seems to be no connection among the vignettes save the fact that all of the individuals reside in Southside Chicago. The feel is of a serio-comic episode of MadTV (both Bolos and director Jacqueline Stone have backgrounds in improv comedy). Despite this lack of through-line, I found myself affected uniquely by each story. Some of the most poignant include the tale of a sixth grader nicknamed "mosquito bite boobs" recounting her embarrassment at not having a bra for the boys to snap; a bartender’s hard rationalization of his act of vigilante justice; and a daughter’s tough-love plea to her mother to kick out an abusive boyfriend. One of the more schizophrenic sketches involves a clandestine PTA meeting and a soccer mom’s pronouncement that it’s okay to masturbate. This seemed less an elucidation of the old neighborhood than a baffling detour into the well-worn territory of outrageous female comedy, replete with gynecological diagrams and recitation of the words "vagina" and "clitoris." My eye rolling was interrupted, however, when Bolos switched on the house lights and raffled off a brand-new "Bullet" vibrator. I pulled out my ticket and perked up in sheepish anticipation. A woman in the front row won the prize. Damn. I was off by only one digit. She brings it all home with an energetic rap about Southside pride, which almost pulls a theme together. The song is catchy. I’m still humming it. The audience exited the theatre in a bubble of enthusiasm. Southside is a fun, touching, and almost fulfilling evening. |
| LIVING WITH BETTY by Liz Kimberlin |
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It was simple bad luck for both me and the stalwart cast of Living
With Betty that I was assigned to review their opening performance
August 9th. It seemed that everything that could go wrong (at least
technically) did go wrong; between the noisy window air conditioner
behind and the groovy 60’s soundtrack blasting from the amps, I had
trouble hearing accurately throughout this hour-and-ten-minute,
intermission-less production. But somehow the plot of Living With Betty, written by Heather Benton based on a true incident in her mother’s life, remained compelling and not at all difficult to follow: a vivacious but enigmatic woman, Betty, insinuates herself into young widow Sally Su’s life and slowly but surely goes a few unwelcome steps beyond living vicariously through her. There is some lovely staging here of visual scenes combined with era music that deliciously captures the cheesiness of the 1960’s—most notably Betty’s outrageous international-spy-and-potluck-party by the pool. Phantoms mysteriously flit in and out of the action. There are inexplicable—and quite possibly gratuitous—non-dialogue fantasy sequences accompanied by lots of really cool smoke and fog. All of the performances, especially from the women actors, appear to be polished and natural. And while everyone could have used either a mike or a few lessons in voice projection, it was obvious some respectable on-stage work was happening under very trying circumstances. Special kudos to Danielle Fink and Ashley Wren Collins as Sally Su’s protective best friends, respectively, the disapproving, paranoid Mavis and flaky but compassionate Beverly. Each gets the moment she deserves—quite literally—in the spotlight. In fact, for all the tech problems that afternoon, I applaud the play for not falling into the category of a thinly-veiled movie script. Living With Betty is truly theatre that dares to embrace the theatrical. And for the title character’s theatre world of Munchausian delusion, it’s entirely appropriate. |
| LITTLE WING by George Psillides |
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At approximately 6:45pm, the staff at the Westbeth Community
Center let the half dozen or so members of the audience down a
path of white feathers to see Little Wing, an urban
fairytale. More white feathers surround the perimeter of the
stage, with a three-sided black curtain serving as a backdrop.
To the left is a white venetian blind. Taped to the curtain at
various places are black ink drawings of what appear to be wings
and assorted thumbnails of angels . In front of the curtain
there is a bed with a girl supposedly sleeping, half covered by
a Superman bed sheet, her back turned to the audience, wearing
white trousers and a black bra. Little Wing is about an angel ,"SHE," played by ginger-haired Alicia Racine, who after the audience has taken their seats comes out covered in a white comforter. She drops it, and we see that she has wings, but there is blood where the wings are attached. (Oh My!) "HE," played by Dominic Bogart looking like a guido model, wears black army boots, faded jeans and a baseball jersey with a painted light bulb done in the same style as the drawings on the black curtain. Does the light bulb represent a bright idea? I think not. "HE" is trying to get "SHE" out of the apartment. Nevertheless, apart from "HE" bringing "SHE" her daily dose of milk, oranges, and Hershey kisses, Little Wing is loaded with meandering monologues: "HE" starting one such with "I had a dream..." (Oh brother!), "SHE" telling "HE" after he gives her an orange that "You are an orange." (Yikes!), "HE" referring to her as Dark Angel (Oh please!); vows of marriage, mumblings of abortion. The penultimate moment is when "SHE" lights a white candle that has the scent of tangerine (Gulp!) and later sings "Blackbird." If Little Wing is an urban fairytale based in New York, why was a McCartney song chosen instead of a Lennon song? At least Lennon lived in New York. Eventually "SHE" goes out into the rain with "HE". Earnest at most, whimsical in the least, the only catharsis I felt from Little Wing was at the nearest bar after the show. |
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THIS IS A NEWSPAPER by Richard Hinojosa |
| "There are very few things that
aren’t funny in hindsight." This exceedingly veracious line is the theme
of Jordan Seavey’s darkly funny new play This is a Newspaper. In a series of sketches, This is a Newspaper tells the "true" stories behind headlines. The cast is fantastic. Each member of this ensemble creates multiple distinct characters for every scene they are called upon to play. I have to give kudos to Geoffrey Decas and Boo Killebrew for standing out among such a talented cast. Seavey’s script is a real roller-coaster ride. At its best, it is clever and hilarious. The opening scene in which a couple laughs about being taking hostage in a Moscow theater is grimly comical. And the scene with the two guys who find love on a hijacked airplane warmed and blackened my heart at the same time. But the scene that is truly inspired is the musical number about a Chinese child prostitution ring. The number is backed up superbly with live music from the way-under-used accompanist Andrew Lagrimas. The shorter sketches are some of the best. The guy who tries to bring a brick on the airplane is a belly laugh and half. However, some of the sketches go on a bit too long and some I couldn’t figure out how they connected to media headlines. I also expected the script to highlight the media’s desire to feed us this garbage and the public’s hunger for it. But it never makes that connection. Also, some of the headlines seem a bit outdated like the Lady Di and Winona Ryder scenes. It takes away from the freshness of the play. Overall the script is strong. But Seavey needs to work on his endings. Most of them fall flat. A few blackouts would have helped. And, this I have to say, David Reynoso’s set is an eyesore. It consists of large racks, stuffed with newspaper and inexplicably wrapped in cellophane. The set serves no other purpose than to clutter the stage, limit the actor’s playing area, and make Matthew Hopkins’ slick direction a more difficult task. This is a Newspaper is bold, beautifully shocking, and savagely funny. It is refreshing to see a playwright who unabashedly tackles issues that these days might seem taboo. Check this one out. It personifies the value of FringeNYC. |
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MANHATITLÁN by Michael Feldman |
| A convincing tiny Manhattan
apartment is the setting for the Actors of the World's production
Manhatitlán. The play is an adaptation and translation (uncredited)
of the French-Caribbean play Ton Beau Capitaine by Simone
Schwarz-Bart. Surrounding Antonio—the despairing passionate protagonist—are a second-hand rug, a decaying chest, an antiquated lamp, and a wicker basket filled with various grocery items. Yet Antonio's one true possession, as he reveals in a heart-breaking confession towards the beginning of the play, is a cassette tape with the voice of his wife Maria. Manhatitlán, as its title suggests, is about disjointedness and the clash of two contrasting places, cultures, and identities. The play explores exile and separation as Antonio, played by Marco Aponte, interacts with the taped voice of his wife Maria. Antonio and Maria correspond via audio tapes instead of letters. The lust and desire Antonio has for Maria is quite apparent as they both struggle with infidelity. The disjointedness of the piece is vividly portrayed under the direction of Lance Lattig, as Antonio alternately listens to the voice of Maria on tape or looks at her image in a framed picture on the table, but never both at the same time. Unfortunately, the production is also disjointed, with the performance not always measuring up to the exquisite beauty of the writing. Aponte's reactions to the taped voice seemed childish and forced, which steered me to listen to the play rather than watch it, ultimately leading me to contemplate this show's legitimacy as a theatre piece. Perhaps it would fare better as a radio play. Ultimately, though, I bought into the world of the play and saw Aponte's depiction of Antonio work because the character is an immigrant, lost and out of place just like a child. And Lattig should be congratulated for the stunning images which are only possible in the theatre, like the moment when Antonio dreams of Maria, seeing and hearing her at the same time (as we do via video projection), and when he tears up hundreds of dollars reciting lost promises and dreams that will never be. |
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STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER PLANET by David Fuller |
| One of the noble features of FringeNYC
is that it provides a venue and audience for the development of new work
with commercial aspirations. Such a piece is being presented by Ring of
Fire Productions, Inc., at The Play Room on Lafayette Street: a
ninety-minute rock musical called Strange News from Another Planet.
The musical features five talented actors playing multiple roles (Katie
Brack, Katharine Clark Gray, Jay Kiman, J. Todd Howell, and Linq Yim) in
a fanciful tale adapted by Sheila Callaghan from stories by Herman Hesse.
The heavy metal score is by Michael Alltop, who co-wrote the lyrics with
Callaghan. On a simple, effective set designed by Mark Fitzgibbons, the actors tell us a story set in the aftermath of a future war—an allegory relayed through the imagery of archetypes and bracketed by an "unearthly" announcer who is accompanied by ironic flash media super titles. It is the story of Owen (Yim), a man from a peaceful land who is literally dropped into a war-ravaged land by Bird (Howell), a vulture like being whose only interest in war (and death) is epicurean. It is also the story of Emil (Kiman) who comes home to this place after touring the cosmos as a galactic correspondent. Who and what they encounter, and their interaction, make up the body of the piece. The actors are all versatile and well cast. Highlights include Yim’s pure rock-band-front singing Owen, Brack’s wonderful dancing zombie Dead Woman, Howell’s pragmatic black-boa-enshrouded Bird, Kiman’s honest earthy-unearthly Emil, and Gray’s marvelous versatility in each of four very different roles. The material has potential and I hope that this project will have another incarnation. The story is intriguing and the dramaturgy is clever, with themes that certainly resonate with today’s audience. And the bracketing device is original and fun. What needs the most work is the music, which sounds largely the same. Perhaps the songs should be more clearly defined as different rock genres? At any rate the audience seemed to enjoy itself. You will certainly feel you’ve been entertained if you go. And I encourage you to attend. These folks are onto something. You could be a part of the genesis of the next The Rocky Horror Picture Show. |
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BIG GIRL, LITTLE WORLD by Debbie Hoodiman |
| O.K. I’ll gush. Can’t Sleep
Productions’ Big Girl, Little World is one of the best original
plays I’ve ever seen. In a role that could have been written for her, Andrea Alton plays Big Girl, an overweight recluse who wears sweatshirts bearing motivational sayings and converses with her hero, a self-help guru/life coach named Claire, through her television. Her "little world" is the apartment she hasn’t left in months. The play takes place on a single day when everything changes for her. Although I thought that a subplot involving Big Girl’s roommate seemed over-simplified compared to the rest of the play, overall Big Girl, Little World is an intelligent, hilarious, and (despite the danger of falling into cliché with this type of material) complex and original piece of theater. Alton is funny, energetic, sincere, and unusual, and more than delivers the emotional climax of the piece. Jesse Wilson, as the quirky and scary food delivery guy, is a marvelous actor who stands out even in this talented group. Maura Knowles, both on video and live, is perfect as Claire. Kimberly Prentice and Ray Crisara, as Big Girl’s roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend respectively, do a great job with their roles. Video sequences edited by Peter Kendall and recorded by Doug Ladendorf are clever and funny. But, the real star of this play is Jay Duffer's script. The playful (yes, playful) script, which deals with themes such as suicide, abortion, sex, mental illness, fear, and murder, includes nursery rhymes, witty word play, recurring jokes, suspense, comedy, and heart. Nothing is simple, and because there are several possible, plausible outcomes to Big Girl’s situation, I enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen. |
