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{Extinguish.}
nytheatre.com review
Martin Denton · May 10, 2008
What happens next is what marks LeBank as a theatrical pro. He stands before us (but with his back to us), unplugging the boom box that was playing ambient music before the show proper begins and then plugging in the single light fixture that serves as the only source of illumination inside the room during {Extinguish}...and somehow, when he turns around, he stops being Ezra the guy we met in the lobby and turns into LeBank the writer/performer who will engage us within multiple, though linked, new worlds for the next hour. It's a fairly extraordinary transformation.
{Extinguish} is a collage of monologues that are mostly about death. Some of the 27 characters that LeBank portrays here (and I'm getting that number from the press release; I didn't try to count them as they whirred past me) are about to commit suicide, or at least pondering it; others have done so or otherwise been killed. There's a preacher who performs a reverent service over a recently departed young man (whom we may have just met in the sequence just before). There's a soldier getting blown to bits in a war.
All of them are given verbal and physical expression by LeBank. His day job as a yoga instructor suggests that the latter is more his forte, and {Extinguish} confirms that. He is, in fact, an elegant and eloquent physical actor, and also—and I wasn't expecting this—a splendid clown. For me, the highlights of his performance are the two segments where physicality reigns, first in a transcendently lovely vignette where he portrays a man (perhaps just arrived in an afterlife?) who is coping with, and then thrilling to, his new found literal weightlessness; and second, a piece in which LeBank assumes the classic red nose and attitude of a clown, living moment to moment in reaction to whatever catastrophe, major or minor, his universe throws at him. LeBank's movements are graceful and precise and joyous to witness.
He's also a versatile actor, assuming each of his many personas here with ease, as well as a capable writer, with many of these characters emerging as resonant and true. {Extinguish} does not seem to me to be intended only to be a showcase for LeBank's diverse talents, but it absolutely is that: he's a fine performer-writer-etc. who seems destined to make a mark on the NYC indie theater scene thanks to his skill, audacity, and enterprise.
{Extinguish} is more than that, though, I believe; the arc that LeBank moves himself through (depicted as going from "The End" to "The Beginning" in the program) is clearly meaningful to him and propels him through a journey that I appreciated though, I must confess, did not entirely understand.
Nevertheless, if you are in search of something unusual, affecting, and joltingly real with which to vary your theatre diet, {Extinguish} is entirely worth your time. I am pleased to have made the acquaintance of Ezra LeBank and his one-man troupe, and look forward to seeing what he comes up with next.
This page updated Friday, July 4, 2008 12:16 PM
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