The Happiest Medium » New York

Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse – The End Is Nigh In Fairy Tale Land (Fringe Festival 2012)

Linnea Covington — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:27:38 +0000

The spread of fairy tale themed and zombie-filled story lines have saturated the market over the last few years. We have The Walking Dead, Snow White and the Huntsman, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and now, Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse, premiering at the 2012 New York Fringe Festival.

If you haven’t seen it, go, and hurry as if the end is truly coming. Every moment of Brenton Lengel’s play proves worth it. Produced by State of Play Productions, this 90-minute show starts out with Little Red Riding Hood, who soon gets taken by the Big Bad Wolf, who turns her into a zombie. Cue Prince Charming, played by Adam La Faci, and his lady fair, Rapunzel, played by Parker Leventer. Both are there to kick some living dead ass. They do this well, though much credit goes fight choreographer Lisa Kopitsky and her assistant Adam Alexander. Without these two the action scenes – and the characters in them – would have fallen flat.

Eventually, the team of fairy tale crusaders comes across a woman in the woods. “She’s dead, look at her skin, it’s as white as snow,” says a disgusted Rapunzel, after Charming kisses the corpse. But wait! Spoiler: it’s not a dead body; it’s Snow White, played by Lucia Brizzi, who now claims Charming as her own. The two women couldn’t be more different. Rapunzel is strong, bitter, and brave; and Snow White is weak, fluttery, and optimistic. The latter could have been annoying; instead, with great comedic timing the personalities balance perfectly.

Another plot line I enjoyed was Prince Charming; apparently, he actually is the same prince that gets all the fairy tale princesses. This isn’t his fault, he finds, when faced with Prince Dashing, played by David Marshall. Since Dashing is also a ladies’ man, Charming learns that wooing women is both their special power. Dashing uses his gift to steal Rapunzel and Snow White, Charming uses his to seduce a man-eating female bear, played by Simon Feil, who also did a stellar job as the Woodsman.

Each character touches on aspects of their actual fairy tale counterparts. Rapunzel talks about how she lost her hair and twins, Hansel and Gretel make an appearance, iron really does kill fairies, and Snow White is petrified of apples. They make references to just about every fair tale, even ones that aren’t in Grimm like The Princess Bride. No matter what their part, everyone in the cast had me completely entertained for over an hour. I also had no idea how it would end. Let’s just say it surprised me, but I won’t tell. So, go see it already, just make sure to wear your zombie-proof coat.

~~~

Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse
State of Play
Writer: Brenton Lengel
Director: Jessica Creane
Snow White awakens to true love’s kiss 28 days after the zombie apocalypse. Now she must end the plague with Prince Charming — and his axe-wielding lover Rapunzel. Blood, sex, kung fu, gender politics…fairy tales as usual.
1h 40m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Comedy
Staycation: Fantasy Island Excursion   Sci-Fi Tech SuperHero Camp
www.stateofplaytheatre.com/shows/current-show-snow-white-zombie/
VENUE #01: The Living Theatre
Sat 11 @ 10  Wed 15 @ 2  Sun 19 @ 3:45  Fri 24 @ 5:30  Sat 25 @ 9

Bite The Apple – To Bite Or Not To Bite? (Fringe Festival 2012)

Linnea Covington — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:54:23 +0000

I am all for the fairy tale fun we have been having in the last couple of years. There has been a melody of interesting takes on Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, the Wicked Witch, and so on, both on the screen and in literature. So, why not a play about six of Grimm’s hottest heroines?

Only, in Bite The Apple by Linda Manning, the princesses and damsels are in a different type of distress—middle age. Cinderella, played by Diana Henry, has the great shoes but her Prince Charming has deserted her out of boredom. Red, played by Amy Young, is a gutter punk no longer getting pursued by the wolf, but chasing him instead. Snow White, played by Annette Arnold, remains a child trapped in a 40-year-old body, so afraid of everything, that she abandons her kids. Manning’s own character Rapunzel, has gone completely crazy without her prince or her twins, and has locked herself in a tower of her own making. Finally, Gretel, played by Diana Zambrotta, is still sweet, but now alone since Hansel died. While all these ideas sound like a story, the actual production left me feeling, well, nothing.

At first, it had mystery as Red and Cinderella seemed like older versions of their younger counterparts. They weren’t happy, but neither had they digressed beyond the basic character. Things had fallen apart and their happy ending wasn’t working out the way they had hoped. Once we moved on to Briar Rose, commonly referred to as Sleeping Beauty, things got a little off. Why was she so unhappy in the castle? How did she fall asleep under the tree? We never find out. As for Rapunzel, I had to look back into the program to figure out who she was. The only sign given was the desert setting, but even that fell flat. The circumstances that made her go off her rocker were never made clear, but we do know she managed to pull out of the sandy spot in her head long enough to talk to Gretel. As for that character, I didn’t see the growth or story, save for her rescuing her brother.

For the amount of time the play had, there was a lot that could have been done. Instead, I often felt uncomfortable in my seat watching these women deteriorate, which, could be what Manning had in mind. Still, what I experienced was more out of restlessness than emotion. It’s not that I seek the happily ever after, more, I didn’t buy the stories strewed before me. Save for Cinderella and Red, the rest of the play went nowhere.

~~~
Bite the Apple
The Other Mirror
Writer: Linda Manning
Director: Katherine M. Carter
Cinderella is a past-her-prime trophy wife, Red Ridinghood lurks outside bars waiting for the wolf, and Snow White wants to kill her kids. Your favorite fairytale princesses are clearly beyond their “happily ever after,” which path do they take from here?
1h 30m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Comedy
Staycation: Literary Lane   In Someone Else’s Shoes
www.theothermirrortheatre.com
VENUE #14: New Ohio Theatre
Sat 11 @ 9  Sun 12 @ 12  Tue 14 @ 3  Thu 16 @ 4:15  Sat 18 @ 8

#mormoninchief’s Boring Campaign (Fringe Festival 2012)

Linnea Covington — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 22:28:29 +0000

Politics, an election, religion, Twitter—with so many current trending topics, how could #mormoninchief not be interesting? In fear of burying the lead, I will tell you now that regrettably, it was not. Given the smoothness of the script, I don’t think the author of the book, Matthew Greene, wrote a bad play, nor was the execution faulty. In fact, the three-man show featuring Karis Danish, Nicole Rodenburg, and leading with Jesse Liebman, ran efficiently, and the actors professionally played out their characters.

But in the end, I wondered why I was watching #mormoninchief. The premise of the story proved intriguing: An everyday Mormon named Connor Jorgensen, played by Liebman, started a Twitter feed and wrote a line exulting something his brother in the church said. That brother happened to also be running for president, and, given the quickness of the Internet, Jorgensen’s tweet spread like a wild fire and angered the candidate. He had no idea this happened until a crackerjack reporter named Lydia Strout, played by Rodenburg, burst into his life with questions not only about the tweet, but about Jorgensen’s place in life.

Not bad, eh? Unfortunately, this plot never really panned out, and instead, the viewers watched as they circled around these subjects and beat them into blind boredom. Halfway through the play I wanted it to be done, and, as my savvy companion pointed out, “Right now 140 characters doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.” Maybe if the show cut their hour-and-a-half time down to 45 minutes or an hour, it would have flowed better. They could have easily nicked the character of Kate Walker, played by Danish, Jorgensen’s friend and the wife of his business partner. She came in screeching about her husband ignoring her and then they talked about some dull personal stuff. Then they did it again, and again. At this point, you may ask, what about the Twitter feed? Well, in the end that idea petered out as not only did Jorgensen not tweet again, but also the actual impact of his one tweet was never fully explained. In the end, this left the show flat and fleeting, instead of something to be tweeting.

~~~

#MormonInChief
Michael Holt Productions
Writer: Matthew Greene
Director: Austin Regan
Connor, an unassuming Mormon, becomes the center of media frenzy when he tweets inflammatory statements inspired by a Mormon presidential candidate. When ambitious blogger Lydia confronts him, Connor is forced to choose between living by faith or living by fact.
1h 30m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Comedy
Staycation: Ripped from the Headlines   In Someone Else’s Shoes
www.mormoninchiefplay.com
VENUE #07: The Kraine Theater
Sat 11 @ 6  Tue 14 @ 4:45  Sat 18 @ 12  Sun 19 @ 7  Wed 22 @ 2:30

Pawn (Fringe Festival 2011)

Stephen Tortora-Lee — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:55:32 +0000

When is a tragedy not a tragedy? When we realize the Only Way Is Forward and healing takes place on a lot of levels.

In the folk-rock musical Pawn, by Karmia Chan Cao (playwright, director, and composer) we see a Canadian family split apart twice in 10 years, first by the oldest son being taken from them in the crumbling of the Twin Towers on September 11th and later on when the younger son volunteers to go overseas for three years to Afghanistan. The eldest son, Kai, is now just a picture on the top of a shelf in the family’s convenience store (the picture is of Eric Tran who plays piano with the rest of the band).

Now their other son, Abraham Niu (Alex Kaneko) will be finishing his second and final tour of duty in Afghanistan in 5 days and the story of this play circles around the end of his journey home and how he he finds resolution from his brother’s death by making a the most important choice of his life. It is a lush play with many different layers: cultural, spiritual, and that of personal redemption … of many types. It has truly been finely crafted and I hope this play get to “make it big” and spread its message: to accept the moment we are in and use it to make the future brighter to a larger audience sooner rather than later.

We begin with this family singing forlornly; they miss their sons terribly. The family is made up of the mother (Ma played by Sarah Guerrero), the father (Ba played by Julian Kusnadi), and the daughter (Shea played by Alicia Triana).

At the same time, back in Afghanistan, Abraham’s unit finds out that they will have to guard the perimeter of a village they have been working to establish friendly relationships with for several months. They’ll have to guard to make sure that no one gets out of the village. They feel like they will be betraying both the villagers as well as themselves, but those are their orders.

[AK featuring Gator (played by Sam Julian) and the ensemble (played by Karen Young, Anna Gu, Christian Ollano, Katherine Neubauer, Mark Hammer Johnson, Rachel Purcell, and Troy Yang) in the Fringe cast]

Abraham has misses his home and this causes him to have a change of heart and he begins trying to warn some of the villagers of the coming danger after comparing the desert with his snowy native land of Alberta, and wishing he could make himself pure again after his time as a soldier in Afghanistan. He finds some children in the targeted area which is to be bombed and tries to get them to call off the run, but he can’t get Gator to stop the run before the first barrage. He is order to get out of the impact zone before the plane comes back for it’s second pass. Abraham rushes back in to get the children out and a dying mother presses her baby in his arms.

At the same time his mother, sensing her child is threatened, reaches out with her spirit to protect him however she could. She chants a song of protection as the bombs are zooming in on their targets.

The lights go down and then Abraham finds himself in the Pawn Shop of Time confronted by a stranger.

Once in the Pawn Shop of Time he is approached by someone who introduces himself as Lego (played by Graham Roth), who in part looks like his army buddy Gator but in part reminds him of a childhood toy. He finds himself surrounded by bits and pieces of memories from his life. Lego is some cross between Puck and a guardian angel or some personal incarnation of intuition slowed down enormously.

Lego reads from a book, apparently Abraham’s Book of Life which seems to be set the form of a poetic play dialogue with Lego as narrator. It explains that Abraham is in the Pawn Shop of Time, where time has been stretched. What will only be the last few seconds before the bomb above him drops will feel as if it takes up the length of a night. In that time Abraham will have to make the most important decision of his life: will he run away from the blast site thus saving himself but dooming the native children to death?

It seems that the metaphor of Pawn Shop works to bring across the idea that it a place where we have all the forgotten things in our lives, as well as a place to evaluate and decide what can be traded for what. It also underscores that this is the time for him to no longer be just a pawn, but to finally take control of himself and truly make a decision. But before he makes this most difficult decision, he must look back at his life and see what brought him here.

At the end everyone sees that – as the title says – the “Only Way is Forward”. We see Abraham’s vision of the future and funeral inspirations and how his family finds closure.

In this great musical by Karmia Chan Cao we see a triumphant journey from pain to redemption as a family steps out from under the shadow casts by prejudice in their home in Alberta. Since the final show was cancelled due to the oncoming Hurricane Irene, instead of a regular review I made a more of a compilation in order to tell a lot of the story, so more people could get a chance to see this. These clips are from an earlier version of the show, with a more basic production. The Fringe production was very smooth with great sound (sound design by Jason Fang and assisted by Tamarind King) and music (played by this talented group of musicians: Eric Tran playing piano; Nathan Heng-chi Cheung, playing Liuqin, Melodica, and Glockenspiel; Sterling Camden playing electrical guitar; Stephen Quiñónez on acoustic guitar, and Karmia Cao on drums) as well as lively dance (choreographed by Alisha Mitchell) beautiful costumes (by Leanna Keyes) and a set that pulls together the many different locations of this play (the convenience store, Afghanistan, Chinatown, New York and The Pawn Shop of Time) in a very balanced and meaningful way (set design by Michael Cohen).

This play has had a lot of world wide critical acclaim, and a very heartfelt and meaningful storyline and I hope it gets the chance to be in the Fringe Encore Series so we all get another chance to see it again.

~~~
Pawn ran until August 26, 2011 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
~~~

The Custodian (Fringe Festival 2011)

Stephen Tortora-Lee — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:12:37 +0000

What’s the difference between a janitor and a custodian? It’s all about a sense of responsibility for what you care for. The Custodian is a story about trying to find one’s way in the world, the complexities of love, and one normal man’s struggle to learn how to fight back against the messy carelessness of superheroes creating a codependent relationship with the regular citizens of New York by saying they need to save the world from disaster and then making the people trapped under the rubble of their battles beg to be rescued.

The Custodian (written and directed by Will Lacker) opens upon a messy apartment where a man is avidly playing a video game. All of sudden another man (played by Kevin Alan) in a bright yellow getup comes out of the shadows. Is this our first look at a superhero in this play? We quickly find out he is announcing another tussle between super hero and super villain … and the effect it is having on traffic (this announcer’s specialty). Kevin returns time and time again as the voice of the world outside the apartment whether as announcer or as a trivia savant who gives the other characters special bits of information to help them understand more arcane facts that they (or the audience) need to know.

Kevin does a great job of conveying the excitement and investment the world seems to have in the exploits of superheroes. He also gives the underlying fear of collateral damage that is unsaid but sometimes seen in his face. Sound and lighting is done expertly by Matt Wharton who brings us deeply resonate thuds, thumps and crashes of the scary world outside the apartment which is never seen.

The clever costumes by Sara Lukasiewicz and Laurel Casillo (who plays Wanda) illustrate flamboyancy of the world outside in the glimpses we get.

In this story what our hero, Max (played by Eryck Tate), cares for is nothing less than New York City, and he isn’t used to having such large passionate feelings, so his transformation from a normal everyman to The Custodian is a tough one. He has an eccentric roommate Remi (played by Nick Hepsoe), who has obsessions with trivia, Gina Davis and a “commitment” to video games, as well as a trust fund to support his habits.

His girlfriend Wanda (played by Laurel Casillo) is always being supportive and her father gets Max an interview which seems like it might be far up on the ladder of success (“data entry” – an exciting possibility to Max), but the job is of custodian. He is sent home with a mop to work on his mopping skills.

Later Max wakes up to his “day off” and an urgent call from his supervisor Manuello that he’s “needed urgently” to help sweep up the four floors of smashed glass caused by a superhero. Only you can save us!

Added to the mix is a story of an old yet mysterious friend of Remi’s named Fing (played by Adam Delia), a wild-man guerilla fighter just out of Uganda who will be staying with them for an “indefinite” period of time. Wanda is at first repulsed by Fing, but soon a chemistry beginning to develop.

With disaster threatening to take down the city, and Wanda’s life in peril, what can they do to stop the careless rampaging of superheroes? Then the answer comes in a flash (a muddled confused and almost incoherent flash) of mental agility.

Kidnap a superheroes sidekick!

It seems wrong and yet so right. A plan is made and we see the wheels of transformation happen to all in this gang of would-be crusaders.

See the show while you can for a great mix of laughs, ethical dilemmas, and great chemistry both between and within the characters as they all change into something closer to their true selves as we see the birth of The Custodian!

~~~

The Custodian
Five Flights Theater Company
Writer: Will Lacker
Director: Will Lacker

1h 45m

www.fiveflightstheatercompany.org
VENUE #6: The Living Theatre
Thu 18 @ 8 Wed 24 @ 2 Sat 27 @ 7

The Happiest Medium » New York

Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse – The End Is Nigh In Fairy Tale Land (Fringe Festival 2012)

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