You can tell it’s Fringe Season when theatres ’round the city are suddenly bustling with life at odd hours of the day and escorting people in and out quickly so they can strike a set and get ready for the next show which is happening in, oh, about a minute. Yes, it’s all about endings and beginnings at Fringe which is why it’s rather fitting that I started my rounds this year with two very different plays that both dealt with the same fine line between living and dying, and what you do with that quick snap of a moment in between the two blackouts. Eli and Cheryl Jump takes you off on the wind of fanciful, magical, dreaminess while Look After You shows the realistic portrait of a life interrupted by a flash of illness that comes quickly and takes certainty with it. Both plays speak to the frailty of what we take for granted every day, both highlight what it means to be a survivor.
Read more »
Tags:
Adi Kurtchik,
Cassandra Vincent,
Charles Linshaw,
Daniel McCoy,
David Stallings,
Eli and Cheryl Jump,
Fringe Festival,
Ignited States,
Jason Altman,
Look After You,
Louise Flory,
Lowell Byers,
Maieutic Theatre Works-MTWorks,
Nicole A. Watson,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz
New York Fringe Festival 2009
Unless you’ve been living outside of New York City for the last decade or so, chances are you’ve either attended a Fringe show yourself, or you’ve at least heard about the festival. ”Fringe”, of course, means The New York International Fringe Festival and it is the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 companies from all over the world performing for 16 days in more than 20 venues. It kicks off in just two weeks on August 14th, so right now everyone involved is getting their act together, so to speak, and preparing for Opening Night.
One very special show which will be featured this year at the Fringe Festival is Eli and Cheryl Jump, a poetic, haunting play written by Daniel McCoy. I got a chance to chat with Daniel and find out what it’s like to be part of the Fringe, what sparked him to write this play, and what he hopes it will mean to the audience.
Read more »
Tags:
Cassandra Vincent,
Charles Linshaw,
Daniel McCoy,
Eli and Cheryl Jump,
Fringe Festival,
Ignited States,
MTWorks,
New York Neofuturists,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz,
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
Bird House (Photo by Marcus Woollen)
Lewis Carroll did it with Alice in Wonderland … L. Frank Baum did it with The Wizard of Oz: gave us stories of fantastical worlds where innocent girls stumble backwards into their watershed moment and grow up from the inside out. Now, playwright Kate Marks brings us another place of fantasy where not one but two girls on opposite sides of the same world struggle with the same journey. This is Bird House. (Directed by Heidi Handelsman and currently playing at Theater 3.)
Just as Wonderland begins with young Alice bored on a lovely day sitting near her sister, her life nothing so confounding as the frustration of trying to read a book without pictures, so begins Bird House … innocently. Young (or rather, of indeterminate age… but “childlike”) Louisy (Cotton Wright) is excitedly sitting in wait with the more grown-up (and therefore completely underwhelmed) Syl (Christina Shipp) for the clock to strike 8, for that is when Kook (Anthony Wills Jr.) and Ooo (Ora Fruchter), the two puppet birds who live in the cuckoo clock, will come out and announce the hour. Louisy is beside herself with excitement. She’s baked biscuits. Syl is bemused by Louisy but calmly reading the paper … (a book without pictures). It’s all so idyllic. So charming. So … safe. You can just see a rabbit hole and a tornado on the horizon.
Read more »
Tags:
Bird House,
Theater 3,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz
When I came on to the staff of neighborbee in October of 2008 as the theatre columnist I had no idea that just nine months later I’d be this immersed in the Off-Off Broadway community. But here I am, 29 weeks, 32 shows and 25 reviews later … writing not just for this site but for The Fab Marquee as well (go check it out!) … and thrilled to be part of a mechanism every week which (I hope) gets people off the couch, out of their homes and into these charming, cozy, sometimes unpredictably configured independent theatres. I love knowing I play a part in helping to get audiences out there in order to watch amazingly talented performers break new ground with never-before-seen plays, or bring the classics alive again for a whole new generation of theatre-goers. I’ve been lucky enough to see a bit of both in these last nine months and have enjoyed virtually every single performance I’ve reviewed. And you know, even the clunkers have a charm all their own, and can sometimes stay with me far longer than expected, just like that other indispensable New York linchpin that can be an equal hit-or-miss: the pushcart hot dog. But I digress.
Read more »
Tags:
Innovative Theatre Awards,
IT Awards,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz
Twisted is the latest great ensemble piece to come from the Horse Trade group and once again they deliver a show that lives up to its name. From outlandishly twisted to deviously twisted to simply subtly twisted, each of these five one-acts is served up with a twist.
Read more »
Tags:
Horse Trade Theatre,
one-acts,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz,
Twisted
Going to see The Temperamentals at the end of Pride Month was as deeply stirring as watching a reenactment of the signing of the declaration of independence on July 4th, if not more so. Because, while the history of how America fought and won its independence is a story that is well worn, the story of how, long before the Stonewall Riots, a group of men fought for their own personal freedom is one I’d never even heard about before seeing this amazing play.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t happen in one fell swoop; it progressed bit by bit and built on itself event by event. Brown v. The Board of Education beget Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott which paved the way for Martin Luther King, Jr. Similarly, the Gay Rights Movement didn’t burst forth, fully formed, in one great disco-as-wreaking ball through the walls of the Stonewall Inn. By definition, it simply couldn’t. Rather, it started off years earlier with Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, and a manifesto which became The Mattachine Society. The Temperamentals is the play which tells their story.
Read more »
Tags:
Bob Hull,
Chuck Rowland,
Dale Jennings,
Daryl Roth,
Harry Hay,
Jon Marans,
Jonathan Silverstein,
Man Underdog LLC,
Matthew Schneck,
Michael Urie,
Pride Month,
Radical Faeries,
Rudi Gernreich,
Sam Breslin Wright,
The Mattachine Society,
The Temperamentals,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz,
Thomas Jay Ryan,
Tom Beckett
"The Office"--Cast of Richard Hymes-Esposito's THIS ISN'T PARADISE (Photo Credit: NuansArt.com)
This Isn’t Paradise is so much like Glengarry Glen Ross that it could have been written by David Mamet himself. That is … if David Mamet had fallen down a well and lost his memory. And his ability to write a play. And when he crawled out of the well all he found in his pocket was a wad of cocktail napkins with scribbles on them which said Follow up on that real estate story … Don’t forget all that trademark cursing … and the trademark misogyny. Then Mamet took all the cocktail napkins and gave them to the guy who wrote Gigli and said Here, finish this up for me.
In Memorium
This was supposed to be a review for
reasons to be pretty (written by Neil LaBute, directed by Terry Kinney, starring Thomas Sadoski, Marin Ireland, Steven Pasquale and Piper Perabo). A very late review, no doubt, but not every reviewer has the luxury of seeing a Broadway show while it’s still in previews. Sometimes a reviewer needs to wait until someone wins an extra pair of tickets and graciously passes them along to her … which is how I came by my tickets. So, if you’re looking for a review I’m going to direct you to a
terrific review of
reasons to be pretty by David Stallings of
The Fab Marquee. If you’re looking for my reasons why good shows can’t survive on The Great White Way these days, then please keep reading …It all started last week when I got this call:
Read more »
Tags:
2009 Tony winners,
broadway,
Neil LaBute,
Piper Perabo,
reasons to be pretty,
Terry Kinney,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz,
Times Square,
Tony Awards,
tourists
… my mom grounded me for getting a speeding ticket … so I peed in her shampoo …
… I only make friends with ugly people …
… I am sleeping with 2 married men … I am a married man myself …
… I will die NEVER having been loved …
… I dread coming home to my daughter and husband every day …
Wow. Heavy stuff. Stuff I did not make up. Stuff that can be found on a confessional website where people unloaded their deepest secrets anonymously. Secrets that were then gather up, assembled, and made into Bigger than I, written collectively by Counting Squares Theatre, directed by Nick Sprysenski and currently playing at UNDER St. Marks.
Read more »
Tags:
Bigger Than I,
confessions,
Counting Squares Theatre,
secrets,
theatre,
Theatre Buzz,
Under St. Marks
I’m here to set the record straight. I’ve spent years thinking that Phylicia Rashad’s career was based on giving life to characters that sprung forth from Bill Cosby’s head, the straight (wo)man standing patiently by as William Henry Cosby, Jr. Ed.D. gave in to one of his patented Cosby-eque tirades. After all, she played his wife, lawyer Claire Huxtable, for eight seasons on The Cosby Show, then signed on for the gig again, playing Ruth Lucas on Cosby. She took Claire Huxtable on the road and over to A Different World to visit her “daughter” when ratings required her to do so, and she had no issue with voicing the mother of Little Bill, Cosby’s saccharine animation for the 3-and-under set. She’d even appeared in an episode of The Cosby Mysteries. (Ever hear of it? Me neither). Almost more stereotyped than Henry (who?) “The Fonz” (oh …) Winkler, she even Claire Huxtable’d her way through those Jenny Craig commercials. I know she’s had other roles, but her main body of work remained so uninteresting to me that I never bothered to catch her in A Raisin In The Sun or anything else, quite frankly. So it wasn’t really on my radar that she won a Tony … or even that she was up for one.
And then I spent a night at
August:Osage County. Never, and I mean EVER, have I ever done anyone a greater disservice. Phylicia, if you’re out there, I apologize. I more than apologize, I owe you a steak dinner. I owe all the Huxtables (even you,
Grown Up Rudy) a steak dinner. Because Phylicia Rashad, you left me ashamed at my small-mindedness, humbled by your skill and in awe of your complete transformation. You really ARE a great actress.
