Watching the performers in Playlab‘s production, Professor Ralph’s Loss of Breath, can shortly leave you in ready sympathy with the central character’s unlikely plight. The proceedings move at such a rate, the lines flow at such a pace, you’ll be virtually breathless trying to keep up. You needn’t fret unduly, however, if you miss a detail or an allusion (and you’ll probably miss a couple). You are fairly comfortably installed in a parallel cartoon universe where nothing matters too much because, well … because now look what’s happening!  The two performers, Scott Michael Morales as Mr. Lackobreath, and Robert Berliner as Toby Dammit (and everybody else, come to that) charge through their scenes describing character, setting and action, alternately capering, prat-falling, breaking into song, dueling – verbally and physically – at a positively giddy tilt as the madcap tale unfolds. This could prove mere irksome slapstickery if it were not for the quality and commitment of the actors. Director Kevin P. Hale has struck a rich seam of gold in recruiting this duo, never mind it being some class of fool’s gold. Both project an instantaneous theatrical charisma, lavish with the vaudevillian understanding that only a high energy showmanship will do to keep this quirky puffball of a feature aloft. As a team they have a comedic aura just standing together: Berliner tall (and by more than just a head and shoulders), soignée and devious; Morales shrimpish, cocky, and gullible. Together they could almost put over anything, which is good as they’re asked to put over quite a lot. They’ll keep you watching even as your brain is wondering – how does anyone find the time to think this stuff up?

Robert Berliner as Toby Dammit. Photo by Paul Fox.

A downright silly storyline follows the frankly fatuous quest of Mr. Lackobreath to retrieve his, well, lost breath. This he has lost in the course of an argument with his new young wife. Of course. In rapid succession he becomes a fugitive from the police, the patient of a surgical quack, the quarry of a lustful virgin, the dupe of a convicted criminal, the subject of a public hanging, and the mark of Mephistopheles. And probably a few other things I forgot to mention. The rag-taggle tumult of events comes from the pen of Kevin P. Hale, who so brilliantly showed his puppet piece, Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment, at the 2012 Frigid festival. Hale claims to have adapted it from one “Professor” Ralph Phillips, a nineteenth-century  American itinerant puppeteer, who translated it from a German language version which was itself an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, Loss of Breath, from 1832. Said Prof. Phillips allegedly, following his absinthe-soaked tour of Europe, repaired to Vermont where he established the puppetry department at one Eldritch College, in Glover, VT just before he died on Halloween night in 1911.(Searches on line for an Eldritch College in VT yield nothing, but there is in the virtual vicinity an Eldritch Institute promoting a fairly wicked tee-shirt design featuring an impression of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.) Invention, adaptation, or a combination thereof, the piece does hold much of the naive quality of story telling common to popular entertainments of the 18th and 19th centuries, being riddled with vulgar sexual innuendo while hollowly purporting to tell a tale of moral instruction (this one champions Perseverance). Poe’s original story is itself breathtakingly silly, but does bear the hallmarks of some of his distinctive phobic obsessions – guilt, suffocation, paralysis, live entombment – which are all nimbly presented here. A good smattering of olde world misogyny gets some play, coded and uncoded, and for those who would wish to delve a little deeper for subtext, themes of emasculation, loss of libido, impotence, homophilia, and auto-erotic strangulation might be induced to raise their curly heads. Then again, Punch and Judy was about a wife-beating, tyrannical felon. It’s all great fun. Inquiring minds might like to know more about Prof. Ralph, Eldritch College, and the ur-text of this creation, but it’s probably a safe bet to consider that Hale and the Playlab troupe are from that select type your grandma warned you about, carny folk. Providing you don’t believe a word of it, you’ll be fine.

Scott Michael Morales as Mr. Lackobreath photographer Paul Fox

More than fine, you’ll be highly entertained. Beneath all the tom foolery and apparent sham-ery is a cunning mind, rich in theatrical lore, and better, a beating heart of creative purpose.

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Professor Ralph’s Loss Of Breath
Company:  Playlab NYC
Directed by: Kevin P. Hale

Remaining Performance:
Mar 05, 7:05PM
Mar 08, 12:30PM

Click HERE for tickets

Running time: 1 h 0 min
Price: $10.00 – $15.00
Seating: General Admission

The Kraine Theater
85 E. 4th Street
New York , New York 10003
2nd and 3rd Ave

Horse Trade Theater Group will present the 8th Annual FRIGID New York Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4^th Street between 2^nd Avenue and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1^st Avenue and Avenue A) February 19-March 9. Tickets are available for purchase in advance at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling 212-868-4444. 
 

Related Posts:

• PROFESSOR RALPH’S LOSS OF BREATH: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment – Listen To These Tales Of Poe (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Poe-Dunk – A Matchbox Entertainment: 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

Ten Questions. Ten Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?

Professor Ralph’s Loss of Breath

Production Company: Playlab NYC

“Mr. Lackobreath is the luckiest man alive, but soon after his wedding his life becomes a high-spirited comic nightmare. Punch and Judy meets the Book of Job in Professor Ralph’s neglected masterpiece.”

Show Times:

• Thurs 2/20 @ 8:40PM
• Sun 2/23 @ 3:40PM
• Wed 2/26 @ 8:40PM
• Wed 3/05 @ 7:05PM
• Sat 3/08 @ 12:30PM

Answers by Kevin P. Hale (Director)

1. Your tag line is out there on postcards and press releases so we know the PR version of what this play is about.  But when you talk to your family and friends, how do you explain the show to them?

KH: Professor Ralph’s Loss of Breath is an epic slapstick road movie; a two person Warner Brothers cartoon live on stage.

2. Here’s a scenario: After the show some audience members go have a drink.  What’s the part of the show you hope they’re discussing?

KH:  I hope they are talking about and continuing to laugh at the inspired performances of Robert Berliner (Toby Dammit) and Scott Michael Morales (Mr. Lackobreath).  The burden of the show rests on totally their shoulders, and their comic hi-jinks will deserve to be the center of all conversations regarding the show.

3. What drives your show – character, theme or plot?

KH: Theme.  Toby Dammit and Mr. Lackobreath spend an evening performing one of the greatest comic novelties in the world while providing moral lessons regarding the virtue of perseverance, and as such I believe that they are a source of hope. 

4. In rehearsals, read-thrus, or prior incarnations, what’s the one thing someone said about the show so far that made you (or the team) the most proud?

KH: When I directed a different version of the show back in 2009 at FringeNYC one of reviewers wrote “Hopefully, as some shows do, Loss of Breath will find life post-Fringe.” It took five years, but I’m proud that Playlab NYC finally brought the show back.

5. Let’s fantasize for a moment. Let’s take the “off-off” off. Imagine this show is on Broadway. Would that change the production itself?

KH: Not a lot, Loss of Breath is akin to The 39 Steps: there aren’t a lot of production needs. One actor (Scott Michael Morales) plays our hero, Mr. Lackobreath, while the one other actor (Robert Berliner) plays every other character in the show. The biggest change Broadway version of Professor Ralph’s show would be that the actors would get the opportunity to become a much tighter comedy team.

6. Taking that one step further – after paying everyone what they’re worth of course, what is the most lavish, luxurious, pointless thing you would spend money on if there was no constraints?

KH: There’s a crypt scene toward the end of Loss of Breath, and the most lavish pointless thing I would want would be something like the graveyard set from Dance of the Vampires’ number “Eternity.” It would take forever to lower from the flies and it will just stop the play dead in its tracks. (Tanz Der Vampire Second Act ~ Eternity)

7. Is there a scene, a moment, a gesture … anything at all in the show that you anticipate may get a completely different reaction depending on the audience that night?

KH: I think the audience reaction to Mr. Lackobreath’s meeting with the sweet virginal Pleasant Pecksniff will probably vary each night.

8. What’s your favorite line from the show?

KH: Toby Dammit has a line early in the performance, “Pray gentles, it’s a pretty play, when performed well. So pray it is performed well.” For me, that line about sums up Professor Ralph’s Loss of Breath.

9. Is the world of this play sustainable outside a theatre? In other words … do you think people live the way the characters do? Would you want a world where they do?

KH: Oh dear, oh dear…tsk tsk tsk…I hope it isn’t, I hope they don’t, and certainly not.

10. You scan the audience and you see a face that stops you dead in your tracks – who is it? And why are you shocked?

KH: “Professor” Ralph Philips, the show’s writer – because he’s been dead for over a century! I just hope he isn’t too insulted by what we did to his script.

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH

In the THM virtual Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH which FRIGID Show do you take on? And what do you throw?

CHALLENGES:  Professor Ralph takes on Petunia and Chicken (Because I loved Animal Engine’s The Vindlevoss Family Circus Spectacular! last year).

THROWS: Rock. And when we throw it we throw it hard.

CHALLENGED BY: The Canuck Cabaret - who also threw ROCK leaving you both with a DRAW, allowing you to DRAW one more breath – perfect for someone who is on the verge of a Loss Of Breath, wouldn’t you say?

Thanks PROFESSOR RALPH’S LOSS OF BREATH for participating in The Happiest Medium’s FRIGID New York Festival 2014 Q&A. And for playing our game! You’re officially ROCK in any and all challenges.  You may win, you may lose – who knows! This is how it works in the crazy world of the Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH!

For the rest of you don’t forget to check out PROFESSOR RALPH’S LOSS OF BREATH !

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  ~~~

Horse Trade Theater Group will present the 8th Annual FRIGID New York Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4^th Street between 2^nd Avenue and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1^st Avenue and Avenue A) February 19-March 9. Tickets are available for purchase in advance at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling 212-868-4444. 

Related Posts:

• Petunia And Chicken: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• East In Red: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• I Shall Forget You Presently: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• SHOOTING ABE: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Something Wicked: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

The characters of this show may be tiny, a little wooden, and come off as a little stiff but Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment is anything but rigid.  In fact, this innovative, charming, engaging show by Playlab NYC directed by John Pieza is a lively piece of theatre thanks to the man behind the matches – Kevin P. Hale.

Hale conceived this show which can be though of as a trip at break-neck speed along the autobahn of Edgar Allan Poe works (in the course of an hour over 30 Poe works are mentioned, performed or touched upon). Hale is also the sole performer, voicing all the characters and maneuvering scores of itty-bitty matchstick puppets around their eensy-weensy sets.  Don’t worry, though, thanks to a projector every microscopic bit of theatre is visible to the audience and there’s not a bad seat in the house.

When  acting as narrator, and giving a bit of history Hale is much like Poe himself who (we are informed) was a great fan of puns.  Puns, of course, can be a bit of an eye-roll but the winning and likable Hale delivers them with such outright enjoyment that it’s almost impossible not to be swept up in the sense of fun that pervades this entire production.

Poe-Dunk is many things at once: play time for grown ups,  multi-media theatre, and an exquisite study in how to shave those zeros off your production budget while still delivering characters who are gorgeously costumed and have the luxury of performing in beautifully appointed sets.

Poe-Dunk, "Annabel Lee"

The set up is simple.  Hale, for the most part, sits at a table and delivers Poe’s works one after another  -some well know (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Mask of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue) and some obscure (The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, The Philosophy of Furniture).  Each time another small box is drawn forth there’s no telling what will come from it, and as each Matchbox Theatre piece plays out it is nothing short of delightful to watch the clever ways that the tiny sets are manipulated.  These itsy-bitsy sets are not simply static but come complete with all manner of special effect which are highly creative and in some cases utterly ingenious.  While some stories rose far above the original work in terms of playfulness (Cabs, Theatrical Rats) the presentation of  The Cask of Amontillado was as chilling, as dramatic and as memorable as any I would hope to see in a full-scale production and played in a way that would make Poe proud.

One bit of advice if you’re planning to attend  -just as when you go to Madison Square Garden for, say, a Lady Gaga concert and find yourself staring at the Jumbotron the whole time to see her better-  you may find yourself staring at the projection screen most of the time.  Don’t.  To do so would be to rob yourself of the joy of constantly being reminded exactly how small and well-rendered each of these mini-scenes are … as well as keep you from enjoying the expressions on the face of Mr. Hale as he tells these tales of Poe. This is a man who – as PlayLab’s mission statement declares – takes fun way too seriously.  So allow yourself to enter his tiny world and see how amazing it can be to play with matches.

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The 2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL will run February 22-March 4 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A). Tickets to all shows may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

Related Posts:

• Poe-Dunk – A Matchbox Entertainment: 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Professor Ralph’s Loss Of Breath (2014 Frigid New York Festival)
• The Rope In Your Hands: Katrina, In Their Own Words (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Stripper Lesbians: When Baring It All Is Academic (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Man Saved By Condiments: Some Time Alone To Ketchup (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?

Poe-Dunk, "Annabel Lee"

Poe-Dunk – A Matchbox Entertainment

Company: Playlab NYC

Beyond the tales of terror! On a tabletop lies the quaint and curious work of Edgar Allan Poe. Newspaperman. Playwright. Critic. Humorist. An itty-bitty puppet repertoire of obscure curios, marginalia, and even a couple popular classics from America’s most versatile writer.

Show Times:

• Wed 2/22 @ 6:30 pm
• Fri 2/24 @ 9:30 pm
• Mon 2/27 @ 8:00 pm
• Wed 2/29 @ 11:00 pm
• Sat 3/3 @ 12:30 pm

Answers by Kevin P. Hale

(Creator / Performer)

Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Kevin: A podunk is a small place that is regarded as unimportant. Cast members don’t get much smaller than the pair of three-quarter inch lovers in my version of “Annabel Lee.” Additionally, it was my goal to shine a light on some of Poe’s lesser-known works, seemingly unimportant stories like “The Scythe of Time” and “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion.” And finally Edgar Allan Poe loved puns, so Poe-Dunk seemed inevitable.

Diánna Martin’s Question
If you were going to invite five people, anyone from past and present, to see your FRIGID show – who would you invite and why?

Kevin:

G. K. CHESTERTON – His essay “The Toy Theater”

MOM – When she flew out to see the last performance of Poe-Dunk – A Matchbox Entertainment at FringeNYC this summer Hurricane Irene happened, and the performance was cancelled.

“PROFESSOR” RALPH PHILLIPS – His1892 puppet adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Loss of Breath” has been a continual inspiration to our work at Playlab NYC.

LAURA HEIT – Her matchbox shows allowed me to see that my matchbox Poe models didn’t need to just sit on a bookshelf.

DAVID CRONENBERG – When I invited him to my high school graduation twenty some odd years ago he didn’t come.

Antonio Minino’s Question
What is the biggest sacrifice you’ve ever made for your Art and was it worth it?
Kevin: I once sacrificed a goat for my Art. It was totally worth it, so now I’m thinking about sacrificing a water buffalo.

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson’s Question
Was there any unexpected discovery made during the development of this production and, if so, can you share it?
Kevin: I hear that actors do this sort of thing all the time, but I was very surprised to discover that I could memorize a sixty-minute one-person show.

Michelle Augello-Page’s Question
What do you hope the audience receives from the experience of seeing this show?
Kevin: It is my hope that they leave the theater knowing that Edgar Allan Poe was a very funny guy.

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH

THM Bonus Question – We’re serious this year!
In the THM virtual Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH which FRIGID Show do you take on?
Kevin: Drowning Ophelia

And what do you throw?
Kevin: Paper

Excellent choice, Poe-Dunk … fantastic!  I’m not making any predictions, but seeing as Drowning Ophelia is a ROCK opera, you may have won that one.  But we’ll have to see!

Looks like Love in the Time of Chlamydia (who challenged everyone with ROCK) has finally – yes I’ll say it – met her MATCH!  Because after either tying or vanquishing most of the opponents she’s now been smothered by PAPER.  Victory to – Poe-Dunk!  You were also challenged by I Married A Nun … who also chose PAPER.  That is a DRAW — but in this case “draw” means go out and “draw” some more of those great little Poe-Dunk characters!

Thanks Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment for participating in The Happiest Medium’s FRIGID New York Festival 2012 Q&A. And for playing our game! You’re officially PAPER in any and all challenges. You may win again, you may not – who knows! This is how it works in the crazy world of the Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament of DEAAAAATH!

For the rest of you don’t forget to check out Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment!

~~~

~~~

The 2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL will run February 22-March 4 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A). Tickets to all shows may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

Related Posts:

• Poe-Dunk: A Matchbox Entertainment – Listen To These Tales Of Poe (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Professor Ralph’s Loss Of Breath (2014 Frigid New York Festival)
• LOL: The End. : 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• ‘Til Love Do Us Part: 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Aerial Allusions: 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)