nytheatre Archive
FringeNYC 2003
SHOW REVIEWS ON THIS PAGE: Final Countdown (Balkan Blues), Deep Stories: From the Notebooks of Richard Foreman, Brain Freeze, Pale Idiot, UGLy, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Cycling Past the Matterhorn, Sketch Comedy For Dummies, Darrah Carr Dance, The Daily Grind, Who's Your Daddy?, Blurring Shine
|
FINAL COUNTDOWN (BALKAN BLUES) by Alex Roe |
|---|
|
Final Countdown (Balkan Blues) is a series of theatrical
vignettes that sketch life in an unidentifiable modern Balkan nation.
Central characters include a sexton, a virtuosic professional mourner,
their distracted daughter Zozo, and a handsome boorish every-Slav who
mates with her. Ironical and bleak, this portrait recounts or enacts
stories of graft, delusion, rape, pedophilia, and many "cides":
patriicide, infanticide, and suicide. The surfaces of the production are very promising. Flat but idiosyncratic, the characters of playwright Saviana Stanescu and her adapter Michael Johnson-Chase are cartoons, and the production is designed accordingly. Costumer Oana Botez-Ban dresses and makes up the actors as faded clowns. The plain set, simply but colorfully lit by Phil Coakley in a corner of a gallery at the Westbeth Community Center, is merely a border for the action. John Stone’s music playfully fuses popular American and Eastern motifs. And the physically diverse actors play in a broad and presentational style with a few flares of physical ingenuity under the direction of Cosmin Chivu and the choreography of Reed Farley. These elements all give the production an admirable integrity and consistency. The devil, of course, is in the details. For both the pathos of human frailties and the comedy of human foibles to come to life, there must be a depth and texture to the sketch. All five performers invest their play with verve and purpose, but as a rule, their portrayals only point to characters and outline events. The ironies and jokes of the script and the pains and the provocations of the fictional lives are indicated, but never revealed by the interactions on stage. Despite the singing, dancing, laughing, fighting, fornicating, and dying, nothing seems to happen. As if to prove this rule, Kathryn Foster’s Zozo is the exception. Shrieking or still, laughing or crying (or both), she is consistently complex and dynamic, fully present and filled with desires and demons. In her, the Balkan blues begin to resonate. Final Countdown is a worthy addition to the Fringe: it is an adept translation (by Theo Herghelegiu and Viorel Florean) of an accomplished Eastern European writer. Thanks are due to the several institutions that made it possible, including the Romanian Cultural Center, the Lark Theatre Company, and World Theatre Presents. I only regret that this production did not resonate theatrically to become more than a curious object of international art. |
|
DEEP STORIES: FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF RICHARD FOREMAN by Don Jordan |
The St. Marks Theatre on an August night and a text
by Richard Foreman: what could be more ‘fringe’? In this case, maybe
it’s a little too fringe. Using material culled from unfinished play-text pieces from Foreman’s web site, adapter-director John Issendorf and the rest of the ATM Company attempt to capture the magic of this East Village icon in Deep Stories: From the Notebooks of Richard Foreman. Known for experimentation with style, language, and play development, Foreman’s plays have long been a staple of the avant-garde, their beauty stemming from his use of individualized style and deliberate effort to create an atmosphere of cause and effect, even if it doesn’t seem so at first glance. In Deep Stories, we see nothing of cause, but plenty of effect. Silly props like a rubber fish, a Styrofoam hammer, and a singing pencil sharpener appear without explanation, as do ‘The Glamorous Woman’ and ‘A Man in a Hat’. Without the benefit of background or development, these and other of Issendorf’s choices often feel empty and without justification. At one point, for example, a character asks, "Do you prefer objects over people?" This is quickly answered with, "No. I prefer not people but what is inside people." I was hoping that this new thought might lead to some human, emotional contact among the performers. Instead, it led only to what felt like random, kitschy takes on video, two minutes with a puppet, prop tricks, and a dance number without reason. At places like FringeNYC, it is important that companies work on material such as Foreman’s, and downtown audiences (including myself) will encourage most attempts to stretch the ramifications of performance. However, in this instance, there seems to be an inadequate glance at the inner life of the material being used. There are a couple of high points to the evening, including Jason St. Sauver’s nearly continuous sound design, which remained interesting throughout, and Norm De Plume’s strong sense of concentration and commitment as ‘A Man in a Hat’, which made me willing to watch for his choices. However, what Foreman’s plays reveal, and Deep Stories seems to miss, is that underneath all the theatricality there is an eager search for real people, their deeper stories, and an answer to all of life’s incongruities. Without this imperative search in place we have nothing to hold our attention. |
| BRAIN FREEZE by Seth Duerr |
|
Writer/performer John Kawie’s Brain Freeze, although very short
(only 55 minutes long) is quite interesting as a theatrical piece. The
story revolves around Kawie’s stroke, which attacked him at the height
of his stand-up comedic career, and how he has learned to deal with it.
It is an extremely positive and hopeful tale about a man changing his
perspective so that he is no longer a victim to his disabilities. The story is executed in two parts: a private session, and "group therapy." In this latter segment, Kawie’s storytelling is at its height, as he impersonates the rather sordid and exhausting array of characters with whom he had to deal during his initial recovery period in the hospital, among them a soft-spoken woman named Laura who always has a chart to explain her emotions; Joanne, who seems harmless enough until her hand-puppet, Clarence, bad-mouths the group; and a group leader who is the combination of every disgustingly positive, superfluously optimistic idiot you could think of. Jerry Diner’s direction encourages Kawie to be forthright and simple in his storytelling, which serves him well. However, Diner doesn’t always get Kawie to be as open and fresh as he can, which ultimately makes it hard for us to connect at all times. Brain Freeze’s end seems to be rather abrupt as well, especially since the group therapy session provides enough comic relief that we are able to handle a powerful ending, where I have no doubt Kawie could definitely drive the show home. Looking at the whole picture, Kawie presents an honest, generous, surprising, and ultimately touching account of his own Mt. Everest, and it looks like he’s well on the way up to the summit. |
|
PALE IDIOT by Scott Mendelsohn |
|
Kirk Lynn’s Pale Idiot follows the well-worn trail blazed
by the early absurdists; the show will offer few surprises to
anyone familiar with Beckett, Ionesco, Anouilh, or Durrenmatt.
The play is, however, well-executed, and forms that once shocked
audiences by questioning authority now offer familiar pleasures.
The writing of the ending is a bit unsatisfying. But two days
after the blackout, I found a good deal of truth and comfort in
this satire that shows the outrageous lengths to which
communities will go in the name of "public safety." An ambiguous, authoritarian "Health Inspector" (Ehren Christian) comes to town to rid the community of its idiot. One by one, he submits each townsperson to an "idiot test": witty rhetorical exchanges designed to entrap its subject into admitting his or her own idiocy. The exchanges are never less than engaging, and except for occasional shouting, director Laramie Dennis has harmonized the performances nicely so that they are always serving the play. She receives sensible, effective design work from J.W. Larkin (sets), Maggie Dick (costumes), and Jerry Browning (Lighting Consultant) Shawn Fagan, as the Altar Boy, is a gifted physical comedian. His entrance with a stack of books is both funny and truthful as it embodies his character’s desperate need for a rigid answer. Travis York as the Mayor’s Assistant provides an excellent foil. As Mother’s Maid, Lisa Loutit has a tendency to indicate the comedy rather than allowing it to emerge from the truth of the scene, and Ehren Christian’s quirks as the Health Inspector play more like ideas than real human tics. But in their main scene together, both Christian and Michael Braun as the Blacksmith’s Apprentice dropped any level of pretense—the comedy of this scene was deeply felt by the actors and by the audience. Between each of these exchanges, the Idiot (Roxy Becker) addresses the audience in poetic parables delivered in an alienated third person. They are honest meditations on the capacity for comfort and generosity in a watch-your-back world. And when she sings the beautiful "Idiot Song," (composed and accompanied on guitar by Tim Robert), she rocks out with a painful, androgynous awkwardness. Her vulnerable, unsentimental performance provides the soul that raises the piece above any absurdist cleverness. Becker embodies the central loneliness that we all work so hard to keep at bay. |
| UGLY by Lee Ramsey |
|
UGLy is a very innovative and powerful new theatre piece written
by Nels'on Ellis. Based on a true story; the play is about Alice Marie,
a young black woman trapped in an abusive relationship, who is killed by
her boyfriend, Spoke, in front of her eight year old son. The crisp dialogue alternates between beautiful poetry and harsh street talk. The action is at the same time stylized and realistic. Spoken text is interspersed with music and song. UGLy is sixty tightly constructed minutes of extremely interesting contradiction. A talented and powerful cast under the very capable direction of Cedric Harris bring the story vividly and unflinchingly to life. Ayodele Casel is particularly good as Yvonne, Alice Marie's strong willed sister; and as the tragic couple, Dawn-Lyen Gardner (a strong actress with a beautiful singing voice) and Charles Parnell are wonderful. The only casting mistake seems to be having an adult actor to play their eight-year-old son Little Leon. It isn't the actor's fault, but having an adult play this role makes the character appear to be a retarded man instead of a frightened child. I think using a real child would take the production to even deeper and more disturbing levels. The lighting design by Chuck Cameron is very effective especially considering the technical limitations of FringeNYC. The play also features a wonderful on-stage band (Eleonore Oppenheim, Elias Guzman, Kwaku Payton, and Yasef Manzano) and two lovely vocalists (Christine Clemmons and Letha Rose). The cast also features: Lizan Mitchell, Bonita Oliver, and Jesse Roche. |
|
JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS by David Johnston |
|
Seven years ago, friends in Chicago took me to see Too Much Light
Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was a group called the Neo-Futurists,
and I had never seen anyone do quite what they did. Pizzas were ordered.
Nametags were assigned. A dark room clock on the wall said when the show
stopped. But underneath the carefully planned chaos was a strict
artistic mission that embraced how much damn fun theatre could be. Plus,
they were gifted actors and writers. Since then, I’ve seen the New York version of T.M.L.M.T.B.G.B., their adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial and their hilarious riff on Samuel Beckett, The Complete Works of Samuel Beckett…. Their Kafka adaptation managed to pull off being funny and scary, using only a lot of talent and a few doors on casters. The Beckett parody was both respectful homage and savage demolition. Their newest FringeNYC entry, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, is exactly what the title says—an analysis of funny. And their agenda—and the Neo-Futurists always have one, even if they change their mind—is to dissect comedy to the point that it is not funny. Jokes is, of course, very funny, and peppered throughout with their signature non-sequiturs ("Mark Twain? Devoured by squirrels."). Jokes combines Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, Milton Berle, audience participation, Down’s syndrome, fart jokes, and psychodrama, delivered by its three perpetrators, Greg Allen, Heather Riordan, and Andy Bayiates. In all honesty, I didn’t feel that Jokes was among their best efforts and I’m not sure why. Parts lagged, not a common feature of their work. Jokes lacks the late-night anarchism of Too Much Light and the guts and theatricality of K. But what I admire about the Neo-Futurists—and why you should get to know them—is that they are a collective of writers and performers interested in building a significant body of work. And they’re doing it. The joy is seeing each new show in that context. If you don’t get to know the Neo-Futurists, you are just depriving yourself. |
| CYCLING PAST THE MATTERHORN by Andrea Lepcio |
|
Go see this play. It is unstintingly honest, extremely well written, and
splendidly acted. Judging from the laughter throughout and resounding
applause at the end, the audience loved it as much as I did. Written and
directed by Deborah Grimberg, Cycling Past the Matterhorn is a
family comedy that is unafraid of the dark. It is equal parts a coming
of age story both for a daughter and her mother. The daughter, who has
yet to make very much of her life, fears being stuck at home with her
Mum forever. The mother, having just been left by her husband, grapples
with middle age and her fears of being left entirely alone. Revealing
truth from each of the characters’ perspective with skill, Grimberg also
captures the ways in which our behavior changes depending on whom we are
with. When the mother, having been told she is going blind, reassures
her loyal sister that she will be fine, and then turns on a dime to wail
at her daughter about her true fear and frustration, the audience roars
with recognition. The talented actors excel at delivering Grimberg’s juxtaposed dialogue and slice-and-dice action. You will fall in love with Kathleen Peirce as Esther, the mother. Hers is a performance not to be missed and makes Caitlin Loesch-Jones’ job as the daughter doubly hard. Fortunately, Loesch-Jones finds exactly the right tone to keep us wishing she gets what she wants even as we worry about what that might mean for her mother. Susan Wallack, Don Fowler, and Nina Jacques in supporting roles serve both the central story and deliver fully realized characters. I love this kind of acting (and writing) where it seems with each exit the characters are going off to an equally interesting drama of their own. Too many plays purport to be about a dysfunctional family and then busily crowd the stage with peculiar relatives, unusual tics, and unheard-of human behavior. Grimberg’s dysfunctional family moves us because we can recognize ourselves and our loved ones in it. While she adds extremes such as the out-of-shape mother taking up long distance cycling, she has created very real people who surprise us in the ways our own families’ surprise. The opening music by Gai Prathan created a delicious atmosphere as the lights came up. Given the budget and technical limitations of FringeNYC, Chavalit Trakulsantirat’s simple set combined with Grimberg’s direction work wonders in creating the world of the play. Cycling Past the Matterhorn is a delight that deserves its spot at the festival and continued life elsewhere. |
| SKETCH COMEDY FOR DUMMIES by Alexander Zalben |
|
Sketch comedy is an art, despite what you might think from
watching Saturday Night Live or MadTV. And like
any art, in order to create you must first learn the basics.
That’s where Sketch Comedy for Dummies, a new show by the
Canadian group Todd’s Lunch, comes in. The plot, as it were, has the group getting hired to write a "For Dummies" book about sketch comedy. During the show, they give brief lessons about writing sketch comedy. The lessons often serve to introduce sketches, and in a few examples, flow directly into the sketches themselves. So how do they do? Well, they definitely hit the basics of sketch writing. In fact, they’re almost too basic at points, ranging from "have an idea" to "characters are funny." The best of these is the section about editing your material. As opposed to the others, which often seem like awkward set-ups, the editing section flows well, and pays off with a bang. Their performance style is very relaxed, which sometimes works against them, reading as low energy. Occasionally it works for the trio, lending them an off-hand breezy charm. The evening’s best sketch, the tale of Johnny Punchintheface and the worst card trick ever performed, benefits from this fluid, low-energy style. I’m still giggling about it several days later. The Johnny Punchintheface sketch also works so well because the group doesn’t just illuminate the basics of sketch comedy; they use them, and build on them. It has a character, a premise, and is extremely well edited. But it also takes each of those ideals an extra step, until the sketch spirals out of control, as the best sketch comedy does. I couldn’t help thinking the whole time how they have a really good idea for a show: most audience members have little idea why sketch comedy works, just that when it does, it does well, and when it doesn’t, it fails spectacularly. But at the same time, the concept works against Todd’s Lunch. The basic sketches that illuminate their points aren’t as funny as the more sophisticated sketches. And the more sophisticated sketches don’t fit in to the idea of the show. But hey, you gotta give them credit for trying. I mean, they are performing for dummies. |
|
DARRAH CARR DANCE by Sarah Wolfman-Robichaud |
| More Darrah. That’s what I
kept thinking every time the knowing smile of Darrah Carr and her fellow
star dancer/spoon-player, Niall O’Leary, took to the stage. I want to
see more of them. The Darrah Carr Dance concert consists of five pieces,
inspired by traditional Irish folk dances and modern/improvisational
dance. The evening was well spent, with a few exceptions, and overall
quite enjoyable. Two of the five dances are performed by the very talented Darrah Carr herself, and her partner, O’Leary. The chemistry between these two bodies deserves a standing ovation. Darrah and Niall’s dances create a sense of rhythmic foreplay that builds from an innocent twirling tableau to an energetic battle of the sexes. The two know each other’s steps like they know their own. Since we Americans have only recently been introduced to this form of dance through the televised Michael Flatley’s Riverdance, my neighbor in the audience was not out of line when at the end of the evening he cried, "Eat your heart out, Flatley!" The other three pieces in the evening do not come close to Carr’s own. One is truly a work in progress, while the other two do not seem quite as cohesive as the short musings of Darrah and Niall. In each, two to six girls prance around the stage in flowing gowns to many different styles of music. Their faces are plastered with smiles, but the commitment to the emotion of the movement is lacking. Dancers Claire Malaquias and Breezy Berryman lead the girls in gravity-defying leaps and freezes in their child-like playtime on the stage. These girls are lovely, but Darrah truly stands out as the star. This dance concert is worthy of much praise, although the complete message remains an unclear concept. The Irish, jazz, and Quebecois music leaves you tapping your feet out the door, but it also makes you speculate that it would’ve been nice if only you could have seen more of Darrah. |
|
THE DAILY GRIND by Tim Cusack |
| By far the most enjoyable 35 minutes you
will spend in this year’s FringeNYC can be had by stopping by the
Linhart Theatre for KIN Dance Company’s collection of short,
interrelated pieces The Daily Grind. Frit and Frat Fuller’s Los
Angeles.-based company combines the razzle-dazzle of Dreamland’s music
video industry with canny po-mo gestural dance, goofy stage presence,
and social commentary. The result is unlike anything else currently
happening in New York’s dance scene and proves once again how valuable
the festival is for exposing us islanders to what’s going on in the rest
of this country’s alt theatre. The Fullers take the average working stiff’s diurnal routine as the often-literal jumping-off point for their dances: In their version of working hard for the money, commuter trains and boardrooms become playgrounds where the inhibitions of corporate life get gleefully discarded. Co-workers progress from flossing their teeth and shaving with an electric razor to tossing each other from the conference table or executing pitch turns on it. Our day with them begins in "Anxiety" as Kenji Yamaguchi sits alone on stage, unwinding from a rope, and the Fullers crawl along the stage floor with other lengths of rope, eventually dividing the stage into three "runways." The ropes begin to oscillate like stylized waves in Asian theatre, while Yamaguchi jumps over them, turns, uses the upstage one as a ballet barre. Perhaps this is his fever dream the night before the big presentation. Next we see him at breakfast and then getting on the train to go to work. The Fullers join him in a bouncy trio that becomes progressively more athletic, and soon Jessica Peasant backwards rolls onto the stage, stopping only to brush her teeth. More and more dancers pile into the subway "car" and the movement becomes increasingly complicated, but we never once forget that we’re seeing individuals getting in each other’s way. The Fullers have something to say: rare in theatre, all too rare in dance. When the company emerges at the end of the piece all in white to dance to the music of the Winans family, the critic in me wants to yell out, "You’re losing specificity of character! This is too sentimental. And the Winans are way homophobic." But the person in me just cries. |
|
WHO’S YOUR DADDY? by Loren Noveck |
| Who’s Your Daddy? is like
sitting down for coffee with a gifted stand-up comedian, and getting a
personal tour through her interior world. Wendy Spero is very, very
funny and so, not surprisingly, is her one-woman show. The piece uses
Spero’s home movies and family journals to help tell the story of a
fatherless woman who only begins to understand what she’s missing as she
watches her day-job boss (with whom she has a strange, semi-fatherly,
semi-buddy relationship) become a dad himself. Spero and director
Anthony King use her conversational, informal performance style, and the
intimate space (Westbeth Community Center), to maximum advantage, so
that the audience feels welcomed into Spero’s stories and psyche. All the individual anecdotes in the piece are hilarious, especially the ones featuring her sex-therapist mother. (I’m still chuckling over a story involving Spero as a teenager getting frank sexual advice from her mother. Another, featuring her boss, a phone booth, and Hugh Grant, has to be heard to be believed.) But the show as a whole feels a little unfinished. I left thinking that Spero has only begun to tell the story of her renewed search for a connection with the father she has never known. There seem to be plenty of opportunities to expand upon the piece in all directions—humor, pathos, and even exposition (and when was the last time you found yourself wanting more exposition from a play?). Many times, a glimpse of an avenue for further exploration would pop up, be mentioned for a sentence or two, and then vanish. Clocking in at just over half an hour long, Who’s Your Daddy? is short, sweet, and to the point. But Spero is such an engaging storyteller and performer that I found myself wishing she’d stray from the point more often, and give us more. I hope she continues to develop the piece, and I hope I have a chance to see it again if she does. |
|
BLURRING SHINE by Alexander Zalben |
| Blurring Shine has one of
the strongest ensemble casts I’ve seen in years. Every single performer
has a unique presence, and a complete command of both the stage and
playwright Zakiyyah Alexander’s satirical text. Okay, quick step backwards: Blurring Shine is a play about two estranged African American half-brothers. The first, Luther, is a well-off master-of-the-universe type, well-spoken, smartly dressed, and willing to sell his soul for a deal. The other is Shine, a ghetto refugee who dresses in B-Boy style, and uses every piece of slang available, for all its worth. Luther ends up hiring Shine to be repeatedly interviewed for a murky and slightly sinister sounding marketing project. As it continues, and Shine and Luther begin to have their lives intertwined… let’s just say if you guessed that they end up switching places, and learning important life lessons from each other, you wouldn’t be wrong. You also wouldn’t be completely right. The play has several surprises up its sleeves, and I’ll leave those for you to find out yourself. Ed Blunt as Luther, and Mtume Gant as Shine both completely inhabit their characters, creating real people that skirt the edge of parody, without ever falling into it. Parody is left to the rest of the cast, including the hilarious Burl Moseley, muMs, and Dorian Missick, in a series of scenes which I won’t ruin, and which come very close to stealing the show. The meat of the show comes with the question, is Hip-Hop a valid means of expression, or just a collection of marketing dictates. And how can a person be original, when companies control every bit of our waking life. It’s not the most original water in the world, but Blurring Shine treads it well. |
