Review- Tales from Rainwater Pond (1st Irish)

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

When Americans think of Ireland, amidst the clutter of misty green fields, vaguely Celtic druids and freedom fighters, one image seems eternal: an older man telling a wistful story in a lilting voice.  Tales From Rainwater Pond at 1^st Irish is a radiant embodiment of that image.  1^st Irish, a festival of Irish theatre currently playing twelve venues throughout the city, has a wide range of styles and theatre companies, based both in America and in Ireland.  Wexford Arts Center, the presenter ofTales From Rainwater Pond, feels like an Irish cross between BAM and a regional theatre, presenting outside productions as well as self-produced plays, along with a wide range of music, cabaret, visual arts and an elegant café. 

Tales From Rainwater Pond is written and performed by Billy Roche, a playwright and novelist whose work often centers on his hometown of Wexford, a coastal community of just under 20,000.  Actually, what is presented at 1^st Irish is Mr. Roche performing two short stories, “Maggie Angre” and “Haberdashery” from a book of short stories by the same name.  And what stories they are. 

Mr. Roche has the rare gift of richness of detail without superfluity of emotion.  His brief hints at the grief of a father or the burden of a long-burning love are stunning because we are given merely a suggestion and the foundation to fill in the rest.  While the stories are uniquely small-town Irish, the humor and loss they describe are universally human.  There is something that happens during this show that is quite larger than its individual pieces.

Although an actor of some experience, Mr. Roche has the slow delivery and wry amusement of a writer reading his own work.  At the beginning of the piece, there seems to be a firm fourth wall despite the direct address, although that breaks down by the end of the show.  While Mr. Roche occasionally enacts an action in the first story and portrays the narrator of the second story, there seems to be no reason why this should be a play as well as a book.  However, Mr. Roche and the production possess some ineffable magic of storytelling that makes the stories breathe in a way no reading could.  The simple act of one man telling an intricate story of lonely people he cared about became a community meditation.

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Wexford Arts Center and 1st Irish 2009 present

Tales from Rainwater Pond

Sept 3-13, 2009

Irish Repertory Theatre

This show has now closed. For more information on 1st Irish, visit www.firstirish.org

Irish Repertory Theatre | 132 West 22nd St | Manhattan.

Review-Dr. C (Or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps)

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

Dr. C (Or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps) is a revelation for theatre professionals. Structured as an examination in eight pieces, it explores theatre theory through the words of Aristotle, Adolphe Appia, Constantin Stanislavski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook and Anne Bogart. If none of these names is familiar, this is probably not the show for you. If they ring any sort of bells, be they present wedding bells or the vague echo of a school bell, this is a show you must see.

Adam Cochran & Justin Nestor
photos by Candida K. Nichols

The production notes describe the process as a combination of several scores: the text of the philosophers, the physical score (and some images) from the 1918 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and 3-Legged Dog’s swathe of technical playthings. While the technical score is indeed impressive, the music deserves its own entry on that list. Most of the text is sung or sprechtstimme, like a high mass acting class.

The production feels like reading a series of incredible short stories, related by theme but not creating an active arc. The audience becomes engaged in the individual images of the text and the overall question, but the piece not only doesn’t create a progression through them, it doesn’t seem to want to. Like the short stories of Italo Calvino or Sherman Alexie, you could experience the pieces in any order and find a revelation in each. It is the individually pieces that are compelling. The Brecht piece alone was well worth the evening and the actors seemed to feel the same way.

(Center) Adam Cochran & Justin Nestor
photos by Candida K. Nichols

The audience member is challenged to actively engage in the ideas presented verbally and visually, but the two are not the same thing. While they explore different images in the text, they make little attempt to present the writer’s overall philosophy. While the writers in question vary greatly in ideal performance style and spectator interaction, the audience relationship was the same throughout. It is a challenged and engaged audience relationship, but not one that reflects the individual philosophies. From the proponents of naturalism, to theatre of cruelty, alienation and communal sacrifice, the fourth wall remained like a scrim, gazed through but left intact.

Our guides through this strange and fascinating landscape are a phenomenal group of actors under what is clearly a strong director’s vision. The ensemble is incredibly engaged and physically precise. You sense that any one of these actors could carry a production, but they merged together to create a seamless whole. Likewise, the film, sound and light, while extravagant in their form, were tightly controlled to support the overall image of any given moment, a remarkable achievement given their inherent potential to overwhelm.

The Cast
photos by Candida K. Nichols

One of the most telling moments in the show I saw was a minor physical glitch, the kind that are sure to accompany almost any first preview. In most shows that claim honest interaction, a hitch like this throws actors off their rehearsed game and makes it clear that their ‘honesty’ is a performance. This difference between pretended and actual focus is why cats and dogs can steal a scene right out from under a human. The way the actors accepted it as part of the show and moved on served to highlight how present they are and what an incredible risks this production takes.

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Theatre Mitu presents
Dr. C (Or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps)
June 2-14, 2009
3LD Art and Technology Center

Tickets are $18.00. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.theatermitu.org.

3LD Art and Technology Center | 80 Greenwich St at Rector St | Manhattan.

Review- The Book Of Lambert

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

The Book of Lambert is a nineteenth century novel beneath the subway lines, gothic and sprawling. It engages in the manor Middlemarch or Les Miserables, presenting ideas by slowly revealed characterization and plot. It requires the Facebook and MTV generations to recalibrate their attention, but offers rich rewards for doing so.

The play deals with six people living in an abandoned subway tunnel. Their spiritual leader is Lambert, a college professor who abandoned the world above on the heels of a disastrous love affair. His cohabitants include an alcoholic nymphomaniac dancer, a pregnant user, an amnesiac policeman, and a cankerous elderly couple made up of a blind man and a hardscrabble romantic. As Lambert writes his own book and quotes others, he has flashbacks of his relationship’s life and death. In the process of exorcising his own ghosts, Lambert compels those around him to revisit and perhaps begin to face the moments that lead them to abandon the daylight world. While the moments include the horrors one might expect, the play surprises with the impact of actions with benign intentions.

Lucille Lortel and Obie Award winning actor Arthur French as Otto and Gloria Sauve as Zinth
photo credit: Joe Bly

The program describes this production of The Book of Lambert as an update from the piece written 30+ years ago. The language feels contemporary, but some of the driving ideas feel dated. The climax of several character’s stories is a realization of some hidden memory or characteristic, the revelation of which makes the person whole. The idea that all one has to do to break the hold of an abusive memory is recover it seems naive. The fact that this simple idea is set in so complex a play makes one wonder if it is a holdover from the original production, written at a time when bohemia truly believed that understanding oneself could lead to a peaceful world. Likewise, amidst an intricate picture of interracial communication, Lambert’s white lover openly fetishizes black culture as the unknown exotic. Not only does it seem unlikely that anyone with an education or a TV could know nothing about African-Americans, but it seems doubly unlikely that any college professor wouldn’t immediately recognize the exoticization for what it was.

Lambert begins the play with the prologue to Romeo and Juliet and liberally sprinkles references throughout the play. It’s occasionally jarring to see such callous objectification described by some of the English language’s most incredible love poetry, but it’s a better metaphor than we realize. Romeo and Juliet are the ultimate kids in love with love, who fall in love without even knowing each other’s name. Both in the flashbacks and the present day, Lambert idealizes a relationship without communication, a lover with only self-interest. Despite the ephemeral charm Heather Massie brings to the role and love’s traditional eye problems, it seems shocking that Lambert doesn’t realize she has no idea who he is. In one painful moment, he says he’s not going to ‘shuck and jive her’ as he acts like her caricatured idea.

Sadrina Johson as Priscilla and Joresa Blount as Bonnie
photo credit: Joe Bly

The strong ensemble includes a couple standout performances. Clinton Faulkner has an amazing grasp of language and the charisma to carry what could be a callous role. Sadrina Johnson, as Lambert’s ‘interim lover’, exhibits both the fragility of the lovelorn and volatility of an alcoholic. Gloria Suave is heartbreaking as Zinth, a worn-down woman trying to force happiness. The design is hauntingly evocative, pulling you into this strange world from the moment you enter the theatre.

The Book of Lambert, while likely to connect with the audience’s mind rather than their empathy, is interesting exploration of the labyrinth of psyche, especially the caves of love, need and perception.

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La MaMa e.t.c. presents
Leslie Lee's
The Book Of Lambert
February 13th-March 1st, 2009

Tickets are $18 for adults and $13 for students and seniors and can be purchased by calling 212-475-7710 or visiting http://www.LaMaMa.org.

La MaMa e.t.c. | 74A East 4th St | Manhattan

Review- The Tender Trap (Retro Productions)

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

Retro Productions’ The Tender Trap is an act of theatrical time travel. As we’ve seen in Delorean-based time travel, the journey can be uneven and the first moments discombobulating. But what a fascinating landscape awaits you.

True to their mission, this Retro production does not try to interpret the play for the twenty-first century, but imbues the entire evening with the sounds, sights and attitudes of the 1950s. The sounds, designed by Bobby McGinnis, consist of luscious renditions of popular songs with something to say about love and the pursuit of it. The sights include brightly colored clothes by Ben Philipp that ably depict character and era and a truly phenomenal set. Designed by Jack and Rebecca Cunningham, this detailed rendition of a 50s bachelor apartment not only incites farcical stage movement and defines the character of its inhabitant, but it’s a harmonious decor doo-wop. The pattern of the curtains is echoed in the rail and the couch pillows, the accent of the carpet is echoed in the ashtray, ad infinitum, although it’s subtle enough not to intrude on your attention.

Ric Sechrest as Charlie Reader and Casandera M. J. Lollar as Julie Gillis
photo credit: Kristen Vaughan

The attitudes include boundless optimism, can-do gee-whiz spirit and not a little sexism. The set-up hinges on the idea that career women, having spent the years their counterparts were getting married in career-building, are so marriage-hungry that they’ll aggressively chase any man who appears remotely single. While the women are sometimes witty, they are also the butt of quite a few jokes, both by the male characters and the play. However, if you can accept the attitudes as being of a specific time period-as well as the slight stylization created by that 50s spirit- there are a lot of laughs to be found.

First produced on Broadway in 1954, The Tender Trap is a classic sex comedy. Charlie (Ric Sechrest) is a salesman who finds himself far more in demand in New York City than he ever was back home. When his friend Joe (Jim Kilkenny) visits him to pursue a business scheme, he can’t believe the women pursuing Charlie. Particularly heartbreaking to our eyes is Sylvia, portrayed with elegance and charm by Elise Rovinsky. Despite her extraordinary blend of sophistication and wry human knowledge, she waits for Charlie to weary of playing the field, openly admitting that he’s simply her best hope for marriage. She develops a competition with a rapacious marriage-minded young assistant (Casandera M.J. Lollar).

Jim Kilkenny as Joe McCall and Ric Sechrest as Charlie Reader
photo credit: Kristen Vaughan

The ensuing action is very funny. C.K. Allen, as a jazz musician friend of Sylvia’s, has quite possibly the funniest five minutes on any stage in New York. Ms. Lollar appears to have a Lucille Ball hidden inside her ingénue, while Ms. Rovinsky’s wit and timing drive the screwball comedy. The plot does teeter a little when it depends on the chemistry Mr. Sechrest has with the ladies; as his affection for them seems interchangeable, the revelation of his true love is a surprise that tilts audience sympathy towards the jilted lady. Overall, however, The Tender Trap is a hilarious evening, one from 1954.

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Retro Productions presents
Max Shulman & Robert Shaun Smith's
The Tender Trap
November 6-22, 2o08 (Mon-Wed-Sat @8pm; Sun @2pm)
The Spoon Theater

Tickets: $18.00 (TDF Vouchers Accepted); to purchase call 212-352-3101 or visit www.retroproductions.org

The Spoon Theatre | 38 West 38th Street, 5th Fl | Manhattan.

Review- Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

It was poignant watching Missa Solemnis a couple nights after the election. Tuesday night brought more than the election of a liberal African-American president; it saw the passage of California’s Proposition 8, a referendum to ban gay marriage. One of the largest efforts to pass Proposition 8 came from the Mormon Church, which raised between $10 and $20 million (news reports vary), and had every ward read a statement encouraging members to donate time and money. In this light, Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry became even more urgent as it told the true story of a gay Mormon’s suicide.

Jai Catalano as Todd and Matt Huffman as Henry

The Henry of the title is Henry Stuart Matis, who gained national headlines when he shot himself on the steps of the Mormon Ward House in Los Altos, California. It was 2000 and the Church was working to promote the passage of Proposition 8’s predecessor, Proposition 22. The playwright, Roman Feeser is a non-Mormon who became so intrigued with Henry’s story that he moved to Salt Lake and, among other research, attended the Church’s sexual conversion program. He is finishing a book, Latter Gay Saints, about homosexuality in the Church of the Latter Day Saints. With this relevancy and research level, one can’t help going in eager to see some new insight, some light shed on this complex situation.

Ultimately, those hopes are disappointed. The play provides a stark image of Henry’s predicament. We see his anguish at being unable, through prayer or force of will, to eliminate the part of himself that his faith calls an abomination. We see his parents’ inability to help him, no matter how much they want to. The family’s words paint a vivid picture of a community where to be different is to be outcast and a faith where family is a theological unit. It is a compellingly tragic picture, but the picture never moves. There is little development either of character or idea.

Matt Huffman as Henry and Bill Fairbairn as Fred

There are some dramaturgical and production solutions to this inertia. Many scenes repeat themselves. While the blocking contains some truly beautiful images, it occasionally underscores this repetition. In the play’s most tangled scene, a conversation with a Bishop who offers sympathy without solution, the two actors cycle between sitting, standing behind their chairs, and crossing downstage of their respective chairs as they review theology and whether sexual conversion programs. Neither character settles on a philosophical or physical position. There is also a distracting convention of direct address. The characters tell us what they are about to do before they do it, leaving us nothing to discover in the scene - although we are surprised by a climactic scene that belies the play’s initial suicide note.

Beyond these issues, however, it may just be that the production sets itself an impossible task. The story of Henry Stuart Matis, as told in Missa Solemnis, is a story of man versus God. The tragedy of Henry is not the community’s rejection, although some dialogue refers to homophobia in the community, nor of his family’s rejection. His tragedy is that his God condemns homosexuality without offering him any solace from his native desires.

How do you depict spiritual conflict? Any number of books from Siddhartha to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance manage it, but literature is a descriptive art form. Plays thrive on conflict in action, no matter how varied and subtle the permutations of protagonist and antagonist. There are several plays in which an individual character or the community stands in for God and their battle with the protagonist is demonstrative of the protagonist’s battle with God. But does this dilute the spiritual conflict? Does it become man versus God AND man?

Matt Huffman as Henry

In Missa Solemnis Henry has no one to fight but himself. His family is appalled, but loving. They are as unable to help him as they are to directly address his misery. He is sent to a Bishop who provides a counterpoint to our idea of Mormons, but not to Henry or his family. Henry’s eventual lover is respectful and compassionate. With no one pushing back, Henry is left to spend the entire play begging for help and receiving varying levels of incomprehension and bewilderment. That may be an exact depiction of the life of Henry Stuart Matis, but it doesn’t make for compelling theater.

The production does have some strong moments. Our first image of Henry is stunning, with a light and sound cue that seem emotive at the time, but come back as diegetic and ominous. The beautiful graveyard scene between Henry’s mother (Gail Winar) and lover (Jai Catalano) reduced several in the audience to audible sobs. Matt Huffman’s Henry has a charming side that draws in the audience and the other characters.

With the play’s descriptive images, I can only imagine the depth and detail to be found in Mr. Feeser’s upcoming Latter Gay Saints and will look forward to reading it. Unfortunately, despite obviously being crafted with research and love, the strengths of Missa Solemnis are unable to overcome its inertia.

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Row Man Productions NYC & LSNelson Productions present
Roman Feeser's
Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry
Oct 30-Nov 22, 2008 (Wed-Sat @8pm; Sun Nov 2 @3pm)
The TBG Theater

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at www.SmartTix.com or by calling 212-868-4444.

The TBG Theater | 312 West 36th Street (3rd Floor) | Manhattan.

Review- Life in a Marital Institution (The Deep end Productions)

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

Life in a Marital Institution gives exactly what the title promises: a witty tale of a crazy marriage. The extent to which you enjoy it depends entirely on your point of view.

Let me start by admitting that I am not this piece’s target audience. The characters are of a certain age and income level and the most appreciative audience members appeared to be in that group. For the young and single, whether happily so or on the partner prowl, pieces about marital problems can feel like getting your palm read in a pawn shop. You may notice that shameless romantics tend to prefer stories that end in marriage to those that begin with it.

James Braly (writer-performer)

In this well-constructed one-man show, writer/performer James Braly depicts moments from his combative marriage to a woman who samples the full range of the New Age buffet. Under Hal Brooks’ polished direction, Braly moves seamlessly between these scenes and the frame story of his sister’s deathbed marriage. (It’s funnier than it sounds.) Both Braly’s writing and performance are so clear that you can literally see the action as it unfolds. The story of his sister’s wedding maintains suspense through the episodes of his own marriage, although one conflict of his sister’s wedding feels unresolved at the end of the show. Michael V. Moore’s simple set makes the action more intimate and suggests multiple locations while confining the story to none. Lucrecia Briceno’s lights sharply delineate time and place, although at times the backlighting can be a bit hard on the front rows.

There is, in fact, so much talent involved and care taken with this show that I can’t help wishing they were telling a different story. There are some shows that mine the details of a particular human frailty to touch something universal. This is not one of those shows. It’s an entertaining hour and change about people with the benefits of wealth and education who seek relationships that make them miserable. There are certainly many people like that in New York and this show may very well be a good date play – there’s nothing like seeing how bad it could be to make you feel good about where you are. But why spend so much energy on a show that will leave your mind like a wave on the sand? Mr. Brooks’ previous productions of No Child…and Thom Pain (based on nothing) proved he is a gifted interpreter of solo performances and Mr. Braly is an evocative writer/performer. I hope the partnership continues and for its next story seeks a subject relevant to more than just Mr. Braly’s peers.

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The Deep End Productions presents
James Braly’s
Life in a Marital Institution
June 26-August 31, 2008
Soho Playhouse

Tickets are $40-55. To purchase tickets, call the Soho Playhouse at 212-691-1555, or visit www.sohoplayhouse.com. For more information visit www.LifeInAMaritalInstitution.com.

The Soho Playhouse | 15 Vandam St between 6th Ave & Varick | Manhattan.

Review- Marko the Prince (Immigrant’s Theatre Project & John Stark Productions

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

Marko the Prince tells a compelling story from the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars. That is more difficult than it sounds. Our minds, at least the empathetic parts, tend to shut down in the face of devastation. It’s a difficult trick to convey mass violence, while allowing us to care for the survivors when people are dying all around them. Playwright Jovanka Bach does this admirably, spinning a suspenseful mystery set amidst the onslaught of civil war. As the plot climaxes, so does the resonance between its story and the war against which it is set.

Herman Petras as The Guslar & Trezana Beverley as Mila.

The playwright and production frame the tale as a heroic folk story, which allows us to stay emotionally invested in the characters and the state of their world. A Slavic minstrel, the Guslar (Herman Petras), performs folk ballads that comment on the story and narrates the story in verse. While there are times where a little context would help the tales resonate with an American audience, the Guslar functions like the Chorus of Henry V, deftly weaving images that help us process what we’ve seen and prepare for what’s to come. Art Rotch’s set neatly captures this heroic spirit by abstracting old Eastern European architecture and enshrining a grainy print of a village square in the central arch.

The play is set in Sabor, a town on the border between Serbia and Bosnia, where the population is at war over which ethnic group owns the single cemetery. A prominent Muslim man and a prominent Serbian man have been murdered and their sons, childhood friends, grieve and search for the killers. Their efforts are manipulated by the corrupt police chief and his assistant.

Marko the Prince is part of a trilogy about the Yugoslav Wars. While it’s meant to be performed independently, the play begins mid-action, with the fight over the cemetery having begun in the previous play. There is also little explanation of each character’s nationality and how they relate to burgeoning national conflict. It requires attentive listening through much of the play to place the character’s actions within the backstory of the previous play and the larger context of the war.

Engagement, however, has its rewards. Hristo Hristov and Tony Naumovski are charismatic and intriguing as Vuk and Cerni, the villainous police. Even when you don’t know their reasons, it is clear they believe they have justice on their side and this makes them fascinating even when they are loathsome. Jelena Stupljanin and Josh Clayton are charming as two people from different worlds finding commonality in confusion. While the play’s final scenes contain several powerful portraits of grief, Ms. Stupljanin does something extraordinary. She manages to fall apart without hysteria, showing us a mind trying to retain control while the body is raving.

The Serbian son, Chicha (Aaron Lohr), drives the play in his efforts to find his father’s killer and protect his fiancee, Boyana, (Lanna Joffrey) and his widowed mother, Mila (Trezana Beverley). His journey, unfortunately, is where the production falters. The writing, especially the narration, seems to be calling for a charismatic leader, and for much of the play Chicha is abrasive and dismissive of family and friends. The narrator describes Chicha and Boyana as an eternal love, but even their halcyon scene they spend talking past each other. Mr. Lohr deals well with difficult twists of language and builds his climactic speech into a soaring revelation. One can only imagine what a different interpretation of Chicha could have yielded.

While this is not a flawless experience, it is an impressive effort. It depicts the cycle of retribution without falling into propaganda or complacency. And it does so with a story that keeps your mind intrigued even as your heart is moved.
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Immigrant’s Theatre Project &
John Stark Productions present
Jovanka Bach’s
Marko the Prince
June 20-July 13 (Wed-Sun @ 7:30pm; Sun matinee @ 2:30pm)
The Barrow Group Theatre

Tickets are $20 available at www.theatermania.com or by calling 212-352-3101. For more information visit www.immigrantstheat.org

The Barrow Group Theatre | 312 West 36th Street, between 8th & 9th Aves. | Manhattan.

Review- The Actor’s Nightmare & The Real Inspector Hound (T. Schreiber Studios)

The Fab Marquee Review by Peyton Wise.

For its final show of the 2008 Season, T. Schreiber Studio is presenting a double bill of famous one-acts. Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare portrays an understudy/actor/accountant pulled on-stage to perform a part he never rehearsed in a performance that shifts between famous plays. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound portrays two critics whose personal problems are drawn into the play they’re reviewing. The plays suit each other well. Both are surreal farces about the blurred lines between stage and reality. They have fundamental philosophical questions underpinning the premise and the humor. They are both structured to build laughter, even as they twist the knife.

The plays are given equal treatment. Both are lavishly designed, with a rich palette and an incredible set that builds an ornate proscenium with boxes into a black box theatre. Both plays are well-cast and meticulously staged. And both are so restrained they fail to reach the mania the lines suggest. It’s like hearing individual solos in place of the Hallelujah chorus. The moments may be lovely, but they don’t add to their intended sum.

That said, there are truly funny moments in both shows. Anyone with a smattering of theatrical history will enjoy Durang’s upending of beloved plays. Sara Goff’s incisive send-up of Beckett is a must-see. (In fact, she has several wicked caricatures throughout the nightmare.) Michael Black, as the unwitting performer, is charmingly bumbling as he tries to keep his head. The critics of Inspector Hound (Julian Elfer and Rick Forstmann) have a patter that is as hilarious as it is painful to anyone who’s ever been at the mercy of men like them.

With so many of the elements in place, one can’t help but wonder what the evening would be if the plays reached their suggested pitch. Both are given a lovely structure, but the shadow of what they could have been steals the scenes.

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T. Schreiber Studios presents
The Actor’s Nightmare &
The Real Inspector Hound
May 8-June 15th, 2008 (Thu-Sat @8pm, Sun @3pm)
Gloria Maddox Theatre

A suggested donation of $20.00 (Senior $15; General Student $17) is requested, and advance tickets can be purchased online at www.tschreiber.org or by calling 212-352-3101.

Gloria Maddox Theatre | 151 West 26th Street, 7th Floor | Manhattan.

Review- ‘Old Comedy from Aristphane’s Frogs’ (Target Margin)

The Fab Marquee Review by Preston Wise.

Something extraordinary is happening on 13th Street; Target Margin’s Old Comedy transcends what we think a play can do. Inspired by Aristophanes’ satire The Frogs, this adaptation doesn’t feel like the play is from old times, but a young art form. It has the unrefined rage of a brilliant teenager. This production takes so many risks, breaks so many taboos, challenges and inspires the audience so often that it seems absurd to compare it to a typical theater experience.

Pedro Pascal as Dionysus & Derek Lucci as Xanthias.
Photo Credit: Joe Dore

The play loosely follows the structure of The Frogs. Dionysus (Pedro Pascal), the god of Wine and Drama, and his slave Xanthias (Derek Lucci) travel to the underworld in search of a poet and preside over a verbal duel between Euripides (Purva Bedi) and Aeschylus (Anthony Mark Stockard). Xanthias begins with a razor-beautiful speech comparing the decline of ancient Athens and the end of the ‘American century.’ The play teems with images from throughout human history. A forest out of The Inferno is haunted by a Wendy bird. Heracles thinks he’s special because they changed his name and made him a cartoon. Charon makes a brutal prophesy that no checks and balances can save a government whose people have become corrupt.

As you may guess, the play is smart as it is fearless. As it is funny. While each actor has a standout moment, the comedy team of Pascal and Lucci ignite the show. Sometimes with a flamethrower. As they drop in and out of character, commenting on the action they drive, many of the laughs are of “I can’t believe they just said that” humor. Followed quickly by humor of recognition. The ensemble, working seamlessly as one, finds and discards caricatures by the second.

Somewhere between political commentary too angry to be called satire and a paean to writers who shaped the human soul, the play starts to be something more than play. It’s entertaining and thought-provoking and then it becomes something else. Maybe it’s a reminder that theatre can be a life-changing, not just a night out. Maybe it’s just an experience.

Early in the play, it’s pointed out that Xanthias is a literary first: the clever slave. He will be followed by any number of servants, slaves, and fools who are wiser than their masters and say to them what no one else would. That’s a good analogy for the play. Its production values, while clever, are not ornate. The musical numbers, whether through acoustics or conscious choice, often seem dampened. Sometimes one can see the outline of what a moment could be with stronger musical support. It doesn’t have the smooth polish of Broadway or the Off-Broadway subscription season.

(Front L-R) Purva Bedi, Davina Cohen,
(Rear L –R) Charles Hudson III, Michael Levinton & Anthony Mark Stockard
photo credit: Joe Dore

Like Xanthias, the production uses its humility to say what we don’t like to think, much less hear out loud. There are riveting indictments of our leaders, our art, and the populace that follows them. Rather than anger or defensiveness, they make us laugh or ruefully shake our heads. After the play, something has changed.

And that is a stunning achievement.

——————
Target Margin presents
David Greenspan’s
Old Comedy from Aristophane’s Frogs
directed by David Herskovit
Closing May 31st @ 8pm

The performance schedule for Old Comedy from Aristophanes’ Frogs is Tuesdays – Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. Single tickets are $45 for weekday performances and $50 for weekend performances and may be purchased online at www.classicstage.org, by calling 866-811-4111, or in person at Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13 Street, between 3rd & 4th Avenue, Monday – Friday 12-6pm, or by visiting www.targetmargin.org.

Classic Stage Company | 136 East 13 Street, between 3rd & 4th Avenue | Manhattan.

Review- Boxed In (Project Oriented Productions)

The Fab Marquee review by Peyton Wise.

The marketing for Boxed In, a presentation of two one acts by Project Oriented Productions, describes it as ‘fighting against a stagnant country of 88 hour work weeks and $8 cups of coffee.’ That may have been the writers’ impetus, but the plays inspire questions more than they impose answers. In both plays, someone is crazy, but I honestly don’t know who, myself included.

The first piece, Cornered, portrays a manic first-day orientation of an artist-turning-checkout-girl at Cornerworld, a superstore for Styrofoam packaging corners. (The description of how Cornerworld replaced dusty old mom and pop corner stores is one of the many surprise laughs scattered through the piece). The orientation is driven by Roberta (playwright Kellie Arens), an obsessive employee-handbook thumper who argues with stuffed animals as she charges through a litany that includes requiring the applicant to change her hair color and lose her pregnancy. We begin to wonder, however, at the sanity of Fawn (Melissa Derfler), the Goth artist for sticking around. When Roberta breaks her to the point of forcing her to scream “art is useless,” the audience, clearly comprised of artists, can’t help shifting in their seats.Cornered has many surprises, both in the staging and the writing. Both set the groundwork early for punches that come around at the end of the play. If the intention is to build to a frenzy, however, it is sabotaged by the middle section. After the situation and tone are established, both continue without escalation. During this time, one can’t help but wonder why Fawn stays, despite having her hand on the doorknob while being insulted and why the lights keep changing so abruptly. Despite these limitations, the play has some interesting thoughts and Arens and Derfler find some fun comedic moments. At the performance I saw, Arens created from a prop problem one of the funniest moments in the play.

The second piece, Transit, is quite simply a remarkable piece of theatre. Everything is so tightly honed it was like watching the Marx brothers via Meyerhold. The simple tools offered by lights, two actors, and some boxes onstage were used to create fractal worlds. The actors were so in tune and the mime so sharp- at one point an actor picked up a discarded ‘prop’ from the exact place the other had thrown it- that I began to believe I must be crazy to not see props and scenery that were so clearly there.

The play begins with two men in coveralls, waiting for a train to come. They play games waiting for it to come and as they do, we begin to realize this may not be the limbo of a train platform, but of some form of incarceration. Sam (playwright Jonathan Albert) is a Gump-like younger brother, deeply affected by the moods of the moodier and more sinister Pat (Anthony Crep). As the games merge with murkier aspects of their pasts, the actors play hide and seek on a dizzying path of tonal switchbacks. Albert and Crep execute the turns in perfect unison, playing off each other and in a Beckettian pas-de-deux. Either performance is impressive; together they are stunning.

Director Cristina Alicea keeps a sharp control of the reins, shaping pace and focus by eliminating any extraneous movement or element. The set of white boxes is used to shape movement without marking place. The lights change subtly to bring us into each world without defining what we’re about to experience. At one point, the exit light is put to the best use I’ve ever seen. (The performance of No Exit with a clearly marked upstage fire exit must now take second place.) The entrance of sound is so unobtrusive that it’s only noticed when it changes for a powerful final reveal.

Absurdism, like many 20th century isms, has often been remembered only for its repudiation of conventional structure. Transit is so successful because the playwright and director create their own structure, rather than justify whimsy with ‘carte absurde’. Audiences may not know the play’s rules, but can feel that they and the actors are supported by it. The actors are not trying to justify outlandish choices with mania and the audience can trust that the end will not betray what’s gone before. In fact, this hidden structure is a theatrical metaphor for the bastard existentialism that prompted Absurdism. Pat and Sam follow a track laid out according to rules they don’t know, vacillating from rage to joy to fear, with a predetermined ending, while we struggle to connect any clues to a universal picture that includes us.

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Project Oriented Productions presents
Boxed In
May 1-18, 2008 (Thu-Sat @8pm; Sun@3pm & 7pm).
The Royal Theatre (The Producers Club).

Tickets: $18 available online at www.smarttix.com.

The Royal Theatre (The Producers Club) | 358 West 44th St. | Manhattan.