Cable’s “Nip/Tuck” ended Wednesday night with its 100th episode, which was filmed in Los Angeles last June. After a 7 year successful run filled with shocking revelations, sex, drugs, and surgery-it was a well put together episode and a finale that did not disappoint.
Mark Shyzer as Esther (Photo credit: Tanja-Tiziana, Double Crossed Photography)
Fishbowl starts off deceptively; writer / performer Mark Shyzer introduces his cast of characters with such blasts of humor, and his transformations are so successful, that you might be fooled into thinking Fishbowl was written to be little more than a vanity piece in order to showcase Mr. Shyzer’s talent of reeling off bitingly funny one-liners while embodying 5 seemingly unrelated but unforgettable characters.
The Power of Birds (written by Robin Rice Lichtig and directed by Elizabeth Bunnell) begins with migration; but that of a family, not a flock. For a moment if you just sit still enough, you can see the allegory of it take shape in front of you: Father Philip Fogarty (Jay Potter) has left the family (apparently for good) and without even an emotional downshift Mom Loretta (Annie McGovern) moves into lead position – steering the flock toward new territory and new horizons that she feels will benefit all of them. Loretta Fogarty takes a job in a new state and brings her two children and her mother-in-law along. It’s as if nature has taken the place of nurture and the migration must happen according to some unspoken but unmistakable design. And despite grumblings from 12 year old daughter Zoe (Emma Galvin) who had a strong connection to her father, the family moves because they are compelled to by some inner compass. Loretta, a gym teacher with very little regard for the world of ornithology which was so important to her husband , uses sports metaphors and cheers to rally her family and take them into the next phase of the game (“Go Team Fogarty!”). Like a parrot, son Charlie (Noah Galvin) repeats everything his mother says, and even if he’s saying it for the first time you get a sense that it was filtered through his mother’s voice at some point first (In response to where their father might be, Charlie and his mother have this exchange: CHARLIE: Not working in an office like a man, right Mom? LORETTA: Not taking care of his 12-year-old children. CHARLIE: Not taking us on family trips, right Mom?) He is like the other half of his mother, like a twin.
Brian McManamon as Andrew
Frigid Festival has really stepped up their game this year, is what I was thinking as I descended down the stairs from the Red Room, still reeling from the one-man show It or Her by Alena Smith. The medium of madness is one that has so many artistic possibilities, and when performed well it can be a goldmine for the audience. Nuances and colors of the human condition can be given a larger leash with which to run. Nothing is as delightful, for me, as a luscious character study set into a well-told tale. This production is all that and more.
A lot has to be said about the 52-year old Austrian actor who burst onto the Hollywood scene last year in Tarantino’s Oscar nominated Inglourious Basterds. Certainly, Quentin knows how to pluck them out of nowhere, and I am sure glad he found Christoph Waltz.
New York Neo-Futurists Desiree Burch, Cara Francis & Erica Livingston serve up a cure for what ails you in this Neo-Medicine show, performing in and around a giant pot of self-made soup. Bottling this soup, as well as a series of elixirs, potions, tonics and products, they heal and reveal the female experience live, honest and in the flesh.
Incorporating ingredients from interviews, living newspaper, personal stories, circus acts and freak shows, the women of The Soup Show ultimately feed their audiences with a question “How far has the women’s movement moved us?” The fierce trio honor the 30th Anniversary of Women’s History Month, and show you why the readers of the Village Voice named The New York Neo-Futurists “The 2009 Best Performance Artists in New York.”
ADVISORY: adult language and nudity.
One lucky grand prize winner will receive:
To enter, correctly answer the following question:
Q. Who is the director for The Soup Show?
(Wanna cheat? The answer is at www.nyneofuturists.org/site/index.php?/site/soupshow )
Email us your answer with your first and last name to giveaways@thehappiestmedium.com, all entries must be received by Friday, March 5th at 10am.
Click here for contest guidelines.
Good luck!
Last Life is the fightsical from Timothy Haskell (creator of Road House: The Stage Play) and Eric Sanders (The Wendigo), and stars Taimak (of the legendary fight film The Last Dragon). The title is proving to be about as accurate a title as “Cher’s Final Farewell Tour” because this show has been revived more times than Britany Spear’s reputation – and I couldn’t be happier for the whole creative team.
“I gave God a chance to kill me…”
The White Ribbon is the latest film by Austrian born director Michael Haneke. Those who are familiar with Haneke know that he is a fan of long, detailed shots (Cache), and violence (Funny Games) to express and communicate to his audience. But his latest film Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon) which is nominated this year for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars steers us in a ultimately different direction: to that of a pre-World War 1 black and white Germany … stimulating a breeding ground for hate, fascism, and events to come later in this country.
But the true theme of The White Ribbon is simply evil. A brilliantly put together careful and cautious analysis of pure evil.
Unionize! (photo credit David Fuller)
“Why don’t you write a piece about all kinds of prostitution – the press, the church, the courts, the arts, the whole system?” asked Bertolt Brecht of Marc Blitzstein in 1937 after hearing Blitzstein’s song “The Nickel Under the Foot” (Oh you can dream and scheme and happily put // And take, take and put // But first be sure // That nickel’s under your foot // Go stand on someone’s neck while you take him // Cut into somebody’s throat as you put // For every dream and scheme, depending on whether // All through the storm // You’ve kept it warm // That nickel under your foot ), and so began Blitzstein’s creative journey to create “The Cradle Will Rock” which is a musical portrayal of exactly that. The greedy Mr. Mister, his vapid, silly, hedonistic family, his easily-controlled preacher, his wife’s pet artists, and some of the good people who needlessly get crushed under his wheels as they try to unionize in “Steeltown, USA” under the direction of their leader, Larry Foreman.
Lauren Roth as Clair and Tyler Hollinger as Chris
What do you get when you pair a narcissistic, yet emotionally fragile sex addict with her wanna-be-normal husband, whose penchant for punishing women is taken out on his wife’s lover’s girlfriend? The result is something even more bizarre and difficult to follow than that opening sentence. Kaleidoscope Theatre’s “Sex and Violence” did its best to shock the audience into submission, but unfortunately it really just backfired because all of the sex and violence in the world won’t fill in the enormous gaps in the plot, script, acting and character development.
