There is a special brand of fear and loathing that comes hand-in-hand with post-collegiate life, and it sits plainly at the center of this dramedy by Evan Sanderson. 20 Somethings is a look at love, loss, and the games we play through the eyes of Millennials.

We meet central couple Reese (Marie Pollizano) and James (Benjamin Drew Thompson) in a split-screen portrait of their lonely evenings at home. From a chance meeting at bar trivia to a rock-em-sock-em double date, we watch their relationship bloom, falter, and get covered in rainbow vomit. It’s a sweet story and the chemistry between Thompson and Pollizano is enjoyable, but as their burgeoning love becomes complicated by requisite familial baggage, the story is pulled towards the line of cliche.
What saves it, however, is Sanderson’s stellar cast of supporting characters. Loony and heartwarming, the neighbors and friends that surround Resse and James make their story seem more authentic, less forced. Sanderson has given us a cross-section of personalities without succumbing to stereotypes, and he should be commended. Maggie Cummings and Maddie Provo are hysterical as a wackadoo set of red-headed twins, bookish academics trapped in hot girl bodies. As a hard-partying couple looking to settle down, Viet Vo and Kathleen Choe give a glimpse into the complications of choosing commitment; their I Dos and tequila shots going hand-in-hand. Vishal Vaidya is adorable as the geeky biochemist Suresh who pines for lab partner Emily (Giselle Gastell) while wrestling with the arranged marriage awaiting him in India. Vaidya is restrained and charming in his awkwardness until he makes the easiest move of the play: talking about his feelings with the right person.

It prompts the audience to expect the same candidness of the two leads. And why not? When you have been treated to the innermost workings of a character’s relationship hangups, it’s hard to not want to play puppet-master, get everyone together in a room, and work it out before someone else throws a fit in a wine bar.

Sanderson does a wonderful job of exhibiting a variety of twenty-something relationships, and his quippy humor makes for an enjoyable piece. But he almost makes it too easy on his lead characters by giving them something specific to hang their commitment-phobic hats on. Oddly, there is no talk of the future by our lovers, no discussion of jobs or money or many of the things that make ones twenties so uniquely terrifying. Reese and James are more products of their personal traumas than their generation.

By giving us such a broad spectrum of quarter-life craziness, however, Sanderson paints a solid portrayal of the cloudy nature of relationships, and how they tend to be more chaotic than a round of Halo.

~~~

20 Somethings
Namayesh Productions
Writer: Evan Sanderson
Director: Ameneh Bordi
These friends zip through city life. James is too quirky for his own good. Suresh has fallen for his lab partner. And Reese just wants more. Their lives collide as they discover that love isn’t a game…or is it ??
1h 35m   Local   New York, New York
Comedy   FringeHIGH
Staycation: My NYC Story   Ride the Rollercoaster of Love
www.20somethingstheplay.com
VENUE #14: New Ohio Theatre
Sat 18 @ 2:45*  Tue 21 @ 4:15  Thu 23 @ 10:45  Sat 25 @ 12  Sat 25 @ 9:45

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• … And Then She DIES At The End! – On Why Even Nicholas Sparks Can Be A Hero (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Songs Of Love: A Theatrical Mixtape (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Final Schedule Announced for Fringe Encore Series
• Contrasts (Fringe Festival 2012)

Sometimes performance art gets the reputation of being a bit esoteric, experimental, or just plain weird, and all of these come into play in varying degrees in < the invisible draft >.  However I think at the core there are some strong messages to be filtered through the barrage of multimedia and interpretive movement, and this play almost subliminally infiltrates the audience with a message that is both important as well as worth the effort of trying to digest during this challenging piece.

Here is a cheat sheet for those who are interested in knowing more about the world created in  < the invisible draft >.  My intent is to perhaps sort the ideas which I saw portrayed,  or at the very least help them  percolate more freely, much in the way Italo Roma does in the book heavily referenced in this play called Invisible Cities. This book inspired  the live action silent movie (ie mime and interpretive movement piece) called “Our Man of the World” that is simultaneously enacted along with a radio play, The Girl With A Backpack (performed with the voice talents of Briana Posner),.  This mixture is then interwoven throughout with lush multimedia contributed by Lotte Maria Allen (prints and animation), Jonah Rosenberg (sound design), Emma Grace Skove-Epes (video performance) and Nickey Frankel (scenic designer).  It’s all  baked together onto a large canvas that, with the assistance of pulleys, contraptions and the audience’s imagination,  becomes a house,  a swan,  a whirlwind…At least I think that’s how it goes.

We open with  a large fabric construction, silence and a face beaming out at us. He emerges from a flap just large enough in the “building” and is then followed by another man. They have a silent discussion/transcendent emergence about a feather.  Both are  ”Our Man of  the World” played by brothers Maxwell and Milo Cramer.  They help become the screen that the message of the play is projected across throughout this piece.  Whether silent shadows,  a room drowned in multimedia  — or the bright stark emptiness where the two converse dissonantly; they literally speak in random postcards in a way that mirrors the shifting beauty for the rest of the play.

The message is complex, but also simple.  There are many ways that we can move  between different parts of our lives and the meanings (or lack of meaning) that  are a part of the urban (or even just the social) life we live.  Sometimes thinking about who we are helps, but other times this investigation of who we are sets us more firmly in the void of objectivity that the world tries to enforce upon us, perhaps eventually we “become lost” when we try to think  of what would come next once we get to a place that’s stable in our way of seeing the world.  We are part of the world in every macroscopic and microscopic way, but sometimes our imagination is too much for our own good.

This is the third iteration of this piece, and  creator/director Claire Moodey has done a good job setting the balance between confusion and deeper understanding. However, it takes longer than the time of the performance to have everything slide in place — it is a very moving piece, but I think you definitely have to be prepared to “do the work” in order to have that movement.  If you think you’re up to the task, check out a clip of some of the multimedia below  to see if this show will be a good one for you.

Hope to see you on the other side of meaning.

~~~

< the invisible draft >
Preview the Arts
Writer: by Claire Moodey, sound by Jonah Rosenberg, set by Nickey Frankel, and animations by Lotte Marie Allen and Claire Moodey
Director: Claire Moodey
Enter a liminal space between reality and its representation: a map of consciousness constructed by the Girl with a Backpack and conducted by Our Man of the World. Where these gods meet blossom stop-motion “cities” inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
1h 0m   Local   Brooklyn, New York
Performance Art   Multi-Media
Staycation: Literary Lane   Spa Getaway (Mind & Body)
www.theinvisibledraft.com
VENUE #14: New Ohio Theatre
Sat 11 @ 7:15  Sat 18 @ 10:15  Thu 23 @ 4  Sat 25 @ 5:45  Sun 26 @ 12

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• Final Schedule Announced for Fringe Encore Series

If you’ve read any of the many books written by author Nicholas Sparks, or seen any of the movies that inevitably come on the heels of publication, no doubt you’ve noticed a pattern.  They’re tear jerkers which stick to a formula: get the audience heavily invested in the love story of the gal and the guy … And Then … (wait for it) … She Dies At The End! This play written and directed by Christina Brosman and Elizabeth Kerin takes the cliches of all Nicholas Sparks’ stories and  wonderfully transforms the saccharine and bittersweet into a roaring fun adventure.  Lovers of fantasy adventure shows  will recognize and love the parody form which is taken to as high a level of art as Nicholas Sparks’ has taken the genre of “crymance”.

The play opens with good old-fashioned melodrama, as we hear Brennan Lee Mulligan  - the long deceased ghost of Sparks’ great-great-great granduncle Corporal Reginald Sparks  - who was one of the long line of Sparks who have been fighting for centuries “in a secret war with Hell itself”.  He introduces his descendant Nicholas as the only hope this generation has against the evil of the Demon Rodanthe who is so evil, “that even an ocean of holy water could not save us”. He holds him at bay for a little while with a haunting flute tune.

As we shift back to the world of 1996 (before The Notebook and the changes that it wrought), we see Nicholas (Alan Starzinski) enter with Callie (Sarah Black) carrying crates and canning jars with much mutual excitement over Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and the joys of pickling.  Reginald invisibly whispers awkward phrases in Nick’s ear like a demented Cyrano De Bergerac to try and move Nick beyond his innate awkwardness and Callie leaves with a look of uncomfortable confusion.

After Callie leaves, Reginald reveals himself to Nicholas, and explains to him the charge their family has had for generations: to save the world from Rodanthe whose only weakness is the tears of mankind, particularly women “whose tears are the most potent”.  After a brief visit by Rodanthe through the magic of light and sound design (thanks to Jill Sapenoff, stage manager and production designer  Doss Freel), Nicholas -who was a bit of a slacker before- throws himself into the occupation of writing sappy romance novels that make you cry, which soon, besides keeping the demon at bay, also get him the girl, and success in life in short order.

However this is not “The End” for our heroes. The year is 2011 and people are getting used  to the power of Sparks’ crymance, his wife of 15 years, Callie, is sick of Nick being full of himself (along with always being occupied with creating his next novel)  and bellows of the Demon Rodanthe are heard closer than ever.  The only way to save the day is to get beyond his predictable writing and create his magnum opus, or else … once again the certainty of apocalypse is at hand.
To try to save his marriage Nicholas confesses the real reason why he has been so driven to write romance novels, which drives Callie to send a police officer (played also by Sarah Black again in a demeanor as tough and cold as her portrayal of Callie was sweet and sincere) to take him into an insane asylum.

The third movement of this story is several months later when Reginald brings poltergeist friends of his for enough of a distraction  (again through brilliant sound design) to bust him out so he can write and write until he is ready for the thrilling conclusion of the play.

The writing and direction of this show keep the audience laughing and engrossed the whole time and do a good job of melding parody with touching (melo)drama in a way that could be a good example to many. I hope to see more works by this company in the future and hope the rest of their Fringe run is as successful as the show I saw.

~~~

…And Then She DIES at the End!
Writer: Christina Brosman and Elizabeth Kerin
Director: Christina Brosman and Elizabeth Kerin
When a ferocious demon threatens the survival of mankind, only tearjerker novelist Nicholas Sparks can save the world. Can he churn out a masterpiece, get the girl, and still make it home in time for “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman”?
1h 0m   Local   New York, New York
Comedy   Improv/Sketch/Stand-up
Staycation: Literary Lane   Celeb-reality TV in Hollywood
www.andthenshediesattheend.tumblr.com
VENUE #14: New Ohio Theatre
Fri 10 @ 7:45  Sat 11 @ 12  Sun 12 @ 7  Wed 15 @ 7:45  Sat 18 @ 6:15

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• 20 Somethings–The Game Of (Quarter) Life (Fringe Festival 2012)
• < the invisible draft >: A Dense Dissertation, But Perhaps Still Drafty (Fringe Festival 2012)
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We’re always excited to hear that a great show is sticking around for a while.  And if you had a chance to read Geoffrey Paddy Johnson’s review of Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War you know that it was a great show.  (If you DIDN’T get a chance to read it, go ahead and click the link above.  We’ll be right here when you get back).

So I’m sure Paddy would be the first in line to celebrate the announcement tha the New Ohio Theatre is extending the Manhattan Premiere of The Mad Ones’ critically acclaimed Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War for two additional weeks.

The extension runs from February 9 – 18.

Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War is a sci-fi surrealist War of the Worlds meets A Prairie Home Companion examination of American nostalgia that combines 1950s radio drama, vintage country music and Soviet science.

~~~

Related Posts:

• Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History Of The Robot War