Salamander Stew (Fringe Festival 2011)

Lina Zeldovich — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:47:23 +0000

So What Really Is Salamander Stew?

Shakespeare meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in Salamander Stew, a Romeo and Juliet musical powered by love and a mighty joint, currently playing at The 4th Street Theater as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. There aren’t too many international productions in Fringe this year, but a lost-in-time enchanted forest does the trick to make this one feel far removed from New York. The only verse-play in the festival, Salamander Stew takes you into a phantasmagorical world of slithering creatures, hungry spirits, and deceptive rather than deciduous trees. Everything we always read about the deep dark woods but were afraid to experience unfolds before our eyes in its native wickedness. If you are a Harry Potter fan, a Tolkien geek or if Beetlejuice was one of your favorite movies, Salamander Stew is a must.

‘Tis the premise – classically simple: Young, naïve and lovesick Steven stumbles upon beautiful woodlands. It’s hard to tell whether the spell descends on him from the evil powers of the trees or the sinful potency of the grass he smokes, but once he takes a respite in the welcoming shade, the thicket takes him. His inflamed mind takes him on a psychedelic trip: he meets his love, he loses her, he wakes up in the lizards’ lair exhausted and hungry, but all he is offered to eat is a nauseating salamander stew.

A sprig of spinach.
A slice of radish.
Whiff of ginger.
Paw of rabbit.

Orange claw.
Forest thatch.
Lizard’s lungs.
Down the hatch.

There aren’t many props on the stage: a leaf-covered layer and a couple of beautifully authentic stumps adorned with fuzzy yarns is all the magic. The treacherous forest as well as the evil inhabitants it harbors, are acted by the energetic cast of seventeen. They spend hours on their make-up, transforming themselves from human into sprawling plants, slithering serpents and ghastly gnomes. On the way to the theater, they practice jungle sounds, chirping like birds and rustling like leaves. Their efforts pay-off: the moment we set foot in the door we feel that instead of a theater, we have wandered into the endless woods.

A lot happens in this one-act musical: dancing, drumming, singing — all in a quick aggressive pace that never slows down, moves the story forward and keeps our attention. So do the lighting effects, transporting us from the pitch black to the vampirish white to the soft shade of the love scenes. The cast works well together, especially when performing the Red-Eye dance in complete darkness, creating a believable illusion of dozens of hungry red eyes glowing in the infinite wilderness. A charmingly poetic old English script executed in the best traditions of Stomp, has a lot to offer, but there is only one thing is doesn’t do.

It never explains what really is Salamander Stew.

When it doubt, Google it. According to Urban Dictionary, “Salamander Stew” is a code name for sex.

~~~

Salamander Stew

Writer: Michael Fixel
Director: Juliet Fixel and Ron Shreve

1h 0m
www.facebook.com/salamanderstew
VENUE #12: 4th Street Theatre
Thu 25 @ 6:15 Fri 26 @ 2 Sat 27 @ 10 Sun 28 @ 4:30

The Mad 7: You Are Now Exactly As I Am (Fringe Festival 2010)

Stephen Tortora-Lee — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:06:21 +0000

After beginning a normal day at work, in the middle of his most fulfilling time (morning coffee) Elliott (Yehuda Hyman) is approached by a blind man wearing headphones and knocking his stick in rhythm to an unknown beat. He hands Elliott his headphones and out of curiosity, Elliott accepts and is prepared to listen to … Nothing, there was nothing on the headphones. He leaves the old man to his delusions and goes about his way.

As he gets back to his cubicle and on his way to deliver the report he was rushing the entire morning to get to his supervisor he runs into a flamboyantly deaf woman who points and tells him that his answers are leaving him right down the street. Suddenly in a rush of some sort of compulsion as well as the joy of curiosity and interest in his life he doesn’t remember feeling for as long as he remembers, Elliott is guided by the the rest of the Mad 7 out the door, through the city off on a bus, to a strange old hotel with a funny little room, and cozy little bed with a mysterious suitcase that appeared when he wasn’t looking. Later, after walking for days through lands both real and imaginary and still not having a morsel to eat, Elliott is tempted again by the forces of darkness to eat the forbidden food of the Cafe Toledo where not only do they take American Express “they take everything”.

The Mad 7 shows us hope wrapped up in a query covered up in a koan and infiltrated with Mystery.

The most repeated phrase in this play is:“You should now be exactly as I am.”

Pretty scary or inconsequential a statement depending on how you look at it. But Hyman’s plays asks: What if instead of taking it as an order or a suggestion we take it as an affirmation an agreement that we meet as strangers but leave as equals?

Sometimes we find a Garden where we least expect it.

Do believe you have a special destiny? A special story that will someday work upon you – evoking your greatest Self – which will touch the Mysterious and leave there Changed? Do you believe it will transform to a new level of understanding of the universe and make you a better participant than ever before? If so . . . how to touch the sphere of possibility?

Elliott seems to have stumbled onto such a path toward a greater personal enlightenment and purpose. The ”how” is the literal as well as the metaphorical journey of The Mad 7. The “why” is the same “why” we all have . . . and that is to become exactly who we might be, perceive beyond the limits of our normal vision into the future, beyond the limits of our normal lives, beyond the limits our current perception.

In short The Mad 7 is a parable about what it means to exist. Are we the sum of our activities, our societal standards, and our scope of our opinions? If we do not look for challenges to our reality are we really living it?

Yehuda Hyman, as one of the many other characters he plays, gives Elliott advice as one of the Mad 7.

Many times in a one man show, such as The Mad 7, we are awash with wonder that one person can have so many faces. But to have such a diversity as well as such a strong feeling of one on one solidarity among the different incarnations of virtues which are the Mad 7 is truly a wonder to behold.

In order to begin our journey to the realms of the ineffable we start with the common goal that we just want to get away from it all sometimes. Often times we think the way to do that is to be left alone, so we can keep our lives moving along (what we think is) the right track. Yet is the path of least resistance really a path or merely a hole, where the longer we stay still the more firmly rooted we are to our preconceptions and our need for normality and stability? Often times this escape is merely so we may stay in the same place and appreciate our desire to have the same normalcy to return to. Other times we may have an experience like that of Elliot Green in The Mad 7.

Like Elliott, many could always use a redirection and re-exploration of their lives. So if you have the chance check out this play directed by Mara Isaacs. It still open for two more shows this Fringe Festival. Also I would encourage you to check out this link after you are done watching The Mad 7 as it is chock full of information and interviews to help explore further layers of this play later on.

~~~

THE MAD 7 – A Mystical Comedy with Ecstatic Dance
The Mad 7 Team
Writer: Yehuda Hyman
Director: Mara Isaacs
Choreographer: Yehuda Hyman

2h

www.themad7.com
VENUE #4: 4th Street Theatre
Click on a date below to purchase tickets:

Fri 27 @ 2 Sun 29 @ 1:45

The Happiest Medium » 4th Street Theatre

Salamander Stew (Fringe Festival 2011)

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