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by The Happiest Medium on February 28, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by guest contributor Linnea Covington
The term “rock musical” can mean a variety of things, most of them not very good. But in Zack Powell and JD Cannady’s Drowning Ophelia, the musical aspect is all part of the story and the story rocks on its own. Cannady, who wrote the book, manages to create a convincing drama surrounding Ophelia, Shakespeare’s forlorn noblewoman who has the bad luck of loving Hamlet. She also drowns herself, which is exactly how she ended up in purgatory, singing away the time with her band the Clowns and waiting for the day Hamlet shows up.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 28, 2012
To say I was “pleasantly surprised” by Slash Coleman‘s solo show Big Plastic Heroes currently playing at UNDER St. Marks as part of the FRIGID Festival is an understatement. All signs pointed to this show being a raucous, self-aggrandizing narcissistic sausage-fest devoted to testosterone-ladened cultural touchstones and overblown Americana. After all, the artwork for the show features Coleman not only as Evel Knievel, but as the Bicentennial edition of Knievel, bedecked in red white and true-blue … superhero cape included. He’s even clutching a football helmet. Yes, the show I expected to see was vastly different than the one which actually unfolded before me. Within the first few minutes “pleasantly surprised” was overtaken by “completely mesmerized”. From there, it only got better.
Writer and performer Slash Coleman is a born storyteller – he has a way of not only captivating his audience but virtually hypnotizing them as his style and cadence allows his story to spring up around him as if by magic. Using no props, no sound effects, and only very subtle lighting cues Coleman seems to need nothing more than his chair and his voice to support his tale.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 27, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by Guest Contributor Katelyn Manfre
People are always telling D’yan Forest to “act her age.” For her, that is simply unacceptable. At 77 years young, when D’yan has seen, experienced, and gone to bed with so much of the world, she simply hasn’t been able to settle into her age. In I Married a Nun!, running at UNDER St. Marks, she has set out to tell her story, to explain and illustrate just why being a senior is not where she’s at right now.
For the record, she did, in fact, marry a nun. For 25 years D’yan was unofficially wedded to Mary, an ex-lady of the cloth with whom she travelled the world and shared a rather active sex life (don’t worry–she’s got props). While her relationship with Mary is the focus of a large part of her story, D’yan also goes into great detail about her exploits, dalliances, and experiments before and after. She has, it seems, been comfortable in her skin and up for anything since she was a little girl growing up in Boston.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 27, 2012
Not everyone got the kind of name that looks good on a marquee or sounds good in the sentence ” … and the award for best actor goes to …”. And let’s all just admit it now: no one really knew how to pronounce “Gyllenhaal” till several movies in, and even then it took TWO siblings to get the world to say it properly. Twenty years later Demi Moore still has 50% of the population putting the accent on the wrong syllable.
So. Now imagine that you’re not that famous at all. Nowhere near. And you’re given a name that everyone mispronounces or mistakes for another name upon hearing it. Wouldn’t you change your name too? You would if you were Moe Rosen, writer and performer of I’m Only Explaining This Once, his solo-show currently playing at the Red Room.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 27, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by Guest Contributor Katelyn Manfre
We live in a difficult world, rife with headaches and hardships. Each day new problems arise, and we are forced to self-diagnose and medicate to calm the stresses, the woes. But what if we didn’t–what if we made the very specific choice to just be happy? Is that even possible?
This is the massive philosophical question that playwright and performer Tim C. Murphy seeks to answer in Blind to Happiness, his solo show currently running at UNDER St. Marks. Using, in his words, the “quirks and quarks” of characters from his past, Murphy muses through three very different characters.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 26, 2012
“How long does it take to become a true New Yorker?”
Obviously playwright Chris Harcum goes right for the tough questions in his play, Rabbit Island, currently playing in the Kraine Theatre as part of the 2012 Frigid Festival.
When we first meet Alex (Ethan Angelica) he is nervously pinging around his therapist’s office, a desperate Canadian transplant who simply wants to feel like he belongs in this town. “Some say it’s when you have your first private moment in public …” he goes on to explain, but I would offer that simply unleashing this tirade of neuroses to a therapist qualifies him for at least one click on his “True New Yorker” Punch-card.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on February 26, 2012
Because Frigid slots are limited to 60 minutes some shows have needed to trim their original running time. Cutting down some of the material can sometimes break a beautifully crafted piece, as you just can’t fit it all in. Not so for Emleigh Wolf who has been bringing The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal to various audiences on numerous occasions over the last few years, often in small 5-20 minutes sketches at open mics and other venues. At its current Frigid run at UNDER St. Marks, Wolf really shines as these short skits are able to be united and lengthened. While always humorous, putting Umberto in a full narrative with a beginning, a middle, and a triumphant end makes The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal something that I think we can all identify with by the conclusion of the performance.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 25, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by Guest Contributor Linnea Covington
Afternoon Tea With Jane Austen (Photographer credit: Chris J. Hing)
Most little girls grow up reading the works of Jane Austen, be it Emma, Sense and Sensibility, or Pride and Prejudice. Some boys also read her stories, but usually that’s a school assignment. But, no matter how you digest this early 19th Century author, one thing remains consistent – you never learn much about her actual life. In Tali Brady’s one-woman play Afternoon Tea With Jane Austen, the Montreal-based actress and playwright attempts to share this history with you.
It’s an excellent way to become acquainted with Austen, and while Brady wrote a wonderfully fluid play chock full of personal details, fetching narratives, and historical information about the author, she doesn’t always execute her role as Austen well. The show started out slow as she bumbled around the who’s-who in Austen’s family, and even though she said herself that it was boring, it still shouldn’t have been. This isn’t because of the subject matter but more of Brady reciting her lines like she’s dictating instead of storytelling.
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by Michelle Augello-Page on February 25, 2012
Initium / Finis is “a sensual tale of violence and revolution born in a futuristic metropolis. Theatre Reverb combines media, red-light cabaret, live music, Judeo-Christian and Hindu myth, and classical Indian dance-theatre to envelop spectators in a lush sci-fi noir.” This Frigid Festival performance is an excerpt from a larger work, which will be two hours in length and is scheduled to be presented in 2013.
Initium / Finis is an ambitious project, carried by Kristin Arnesen’s performance throughout, as the story expands in many layers, as well as many directions, including an interesting sci-fi premise, sub-plots of intrigue, and cabaret-style entertainment. The play is supported by live music, visual images and written information in montages of video, and the use of screens to paint pictures with light and shadow. Kristin Arnesen pulls all of these elements and more into a riveting performance; she is a delight to watch on stage as she illustrates the story, demonstrating her evident talents as a performer.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on February 25, 2012
Suzen Murakoshi‘s self-authored, one-woman performance, Breathe, Love, Repeat, presently playing at Under St. Marks as part of this year’s Frigid New York Festival, is an autobiographical recounting of her last days with her mother. For anybody this might represent a daunting theme, vast, self-examining, possibly too much. But Murakoshi has an imaginary alter ego to call upon in the face of such a challenge – a samurai super daughter – and unhesitatingly she jumps in and grabs the bull by the horns. Why or whence came this super daughter is never made clear, she just magically appears in the form of Murakoshi heroically brandishing an invisible sword above her head in full spotlight. She is the pluck, the resistance, and later the resilience that help carry the author through the ordeal of watching her mother gradually sicken and decline. She is some sort of Asian folkloric warrior princess, alive to the existence of a spirit realm, knowledgeable of the proper respects and tributes owed the demons that haunt us.
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