The Happiest Medium » NY Fringe 2011

FringeNYC 2011 Announces Overall Excellence Award Winners

Karen Tortora-Lee — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:24:02 +0000

We’re thrilled to pass along the Overall Excellence Award Winners for 2011 FringeNYC. Some of our very favorite shows and performers are being celebrated and we’re so thankful that we were able to experience these talented performances this year. Congratulations to all the winners!

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August 28, 2011 — Winners of the 2011 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards, as selected by an independent panel of nearly 50 theater professionals, are as follows:

Overall Production/Play

PigPen Presents The Mountain Song
- What we said: As always the only disappointment with PigPen is when the play is over; it’s hard to watch them leave the stage – the same way it is hard for a child to watch that
  
  favorite relative go home at the end of a giddy day of make-believe. The good news is PigPen is relocating to New York City so those who can’t get enough of them will now be able to see them a lot more. And as long as they’ll be putting on shows, I’ll be in the audience, watching: amazed and dazzled.
The More Loving One

Overall Production/Musical

Yeast Nation
Pearl’s Gone Blue

Performance

Jennifer Barnhart (The Legend of Julie Taymor,or The Musical That Killed Everybody!)
Ryan Barry (In the Summer Pavilion)
Miles Cooper (Elysian Fields)
Patrick Byas (Sammy Gets Mugged)
Casey McClellan (My Name Is Billy)
Brian Charles Rooney (Winner Takes All)
Lauren Hennessy (Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story)
- What we said: [Hennessy] is breathtakingly real … often funny, sometimes sarcastic and deeply sexy … her chemistry with Choura (not only during their intimate moments
  
  but during her moments of longing as well) can be felt all the way in the back row, and considering this show is playing at The Ellen Stewart Theatre that’s saying a lot. When she sings she seduces and bewitches everyone in the room.

Playwriting

Nicholas Billon (Greenland)
A.D. Penedo (The Three Times She Knocked)
- What we said: Writer A.D. Penedo has successfully taken a different type of relationship and made it not only understandable but accessible. By giving Eric a mechanism where he constantly breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience we’re given a unique look into the mind of a man consumed not so much by a woman but by a way of operating. By Eric himself explaining his little quirks and foibles to us we are left free to sit back and watch as his confessions to us pave the way for his actions toward Tara. And sure, while he may seem a little out of his mind, at least he’s explaining his motives to us.
Bella and the Pool Boy (Dennis Flanagan)

Music Composition

Chris Rael (Araby)
Dusty Brown (The Ballad of Rusty and Roy)

Ensemble

Jersey Shoresical
- What we said: Fans of (or those who admit to watching) Jersey Shore will love Jersey Shoresical for the extreme attention to detail paid by the creative team. People who have
  
  never seen one moment of Jersey Shore will also love Jersey Shoresical – because the final product is just that good. Either way, this was one hour of entertainment that left me clamoring for more.
The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady
- What we said: What delights so thoroughly is how faithful each character remains to their Brady/Partridge origins while faithfully moving the Shakespearean plots along. This story was just waiting to be done. Thanks to the fantastic team of Garvey and Stern it has now been done perfectly.
Stimulated!
Crawling with Monsters

Costume Design

Stephanie Alexander (Le Gourmand, or Gluttony!)
Mark Richard Caswell (Parker and Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow)
Tara DeVincenzo (Technodulia Dot Com)

Directing

Greg Foro (Hamlet)
- What we said: At mid-performance, just after Hamlet has rigged a play to prick the conscience of his murderous uncle, Claudius, the two characters circle the stage silently for a beat, eyeing each other variously as hunter and quarry, before Claudius calls -”Give me some light!”- at which the house is plunged into darkness and we are moved to intermission. This delicious moment is a sample of the thoughtful direction and stagecraft on display here.
Joshua Kahan Brody (Fourteen Flights)
Alaska Reece Vance (The Disorientation of Butterflies)

Solo Performance

Donna/Madonna
The Day the Sky Turned Black
Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You!
Paper Cut
- What we said: Rasooly supplies all the voices while working the miniature mechanics and characters. It’s an inspired visual performance. To a movie-literate audience, it’s catnip.
Heroes and Other Strangers

Dance

Wallstories
When the Sky Breaks 3D
- What we said: The choreography of When the Sky Breaks 3D is nothing short of amazing. Several scenes stand out in my mind – one in particular is a scene where the dancers are fighting. At first two, then four, in a syncopated expression of movement; they struggle against each other, and ultimately themselves. The movements are strong and forceful, falling and rising, breaking apart and coming together – mirroring so many different struggles within our lives. The audience held its breath until the final resolution, as the dancers stood in unity together under the threatening sky.

Video Design

Cinty Ionescu (Nils’ Fucked Up Day)

TheaterMania Audience Favorite Award

COBU – Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing.

Congratulations again to all those recognized for overall excellence!!

Paper Cut (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:09:45 +0000

At the conclusion of Yael Rasooly‘s one woman “paper and object theater” performance, Paper Cut, the small stage at CSV Kabayitos is littered with piles of crumpled, shorn and torn paper props. This destruction is testament to the intensive, energetic and exhaustive show the actress has just presented in the past fifty minutes. It moves at a cracking pace as Rasooly acts, sings, animates, and shreds her way through a romance, set some time in the 1940s, about a solitary, put-upon secretary, who keeps one foot firmly in an escapist dreamworld. Well, maybe more than one foot. Ruth Spencer, a buttoned-up, bespectacled and be-bunned secretary is at her desk attending, with admirable efficiency, to her boss’s every request. This does not prevent her from plying the pages of her favorite reading, the celebrity movie magazines of the era. The latter say much more about the real Miss Spencer, who nurses a direct-from-the-talkies fantasy about one day catching the boss’s eye, and heart. Characteristically he – a disembodied smoothie-voice coming over her desktop personal address – sees her as nothing more than a utility. He has the insensitivity to consult her about composing a letter of seduction to another woman. And asks her what sort of gift he should get!

Spurned by the rest of the secretarial pool, who refer to her as the “bulldog”, Ruth is left alone to work late hours and day dream about better things. Here is the show’s magic. Rasooly brings these daydreams vividly to life in the form of paper cut out characters and props, all gorgeously loosed from the pages of Ruth’s movie magazines. Add in the use of period love songs and film themes coming over her small, bakelite radio, and ingenious deployment of office fixtures for atmospherics, and you have a marvelously innovative form of musical puppet theatre. The simplicity of the concept is as seductive as it is formally imaginative. We are treated to exquisite black and white photo stills of some of Hollywood’s finest – Dietrich, Bergman, Fontaine, Bogart, Boyer, and Cary Grant to name a few – hop-hop-hopping about on a desktop stage with magazine spread backdrops and lush musical swells.

Rasooly supplies all the voices while working the miniature mechanics and characters. It’s an inspired visual performance. To a movie-literate audience, it’s catnip. There are hints that Ruth’s (bull)dog’s-body demeanor veils a nature that is much more assertive, even violent. Witness how ruthlessly and crisply she tyrannizes anyone requesting an appointment with her boss. Her day dreams begin to tap into this passionate side, and when jealousy rears its ugly head, Ruth’s romantic narrative begins to swerve off-course, rushing headlong toward a scenario of victimization and murderous deception.

As her investment in her fantasy realm deepens, her halo as efficient secretary begins to slip, and everything surges forward to a hair-raising and clever denouement which delivers a bang, and not, I might add, from the paper cut out revolver that’s being brandished. Ripping!

If one had a churlish bone to pick with this otherwise delightful show, it would be about the somewhat unambitious scope the narrative holds. Rasooly and co-author Lior Lerman never quite allow anything to break the frame of their time-honored tale. The tone is strictly pastiche, played for light farce. When Rasooly vocally lets loose with excerpts from some torchy blues numbers, the emotional register shifts significantly. She is more than capable of delivering this feeling and it is in some regards a shame that the authors never explore this or permit their characters a sliver of depth. Who knows what might have been? As it is, all is preserved as flatly two-dimensional. Which I suppose, in another way, is the point; It’s Only a Paper Moon. Certainly the capacity-filled and highly appreciative audience did not feel the want of anything extra. This is light and crafty entertainment. At the end of the day, however slight, you don’t have to go deep to really feel a paper cut.

~~~

Paper Cut

Yael Rasooly

Writer: Yael Rasooly and Lior Lerman

Director: Yael Rasooly

0h 50m

www.yaelrasooly.com

VENUE #3: CSV Kabayitos

Sat 27 @ 3

The Panic Diaries (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:23:16 +0000

Katie Northlich has that commanding sort of physical presence that can hold a room with ease. There is a boldness in her look, an assuredness in her movements that can compel you to watch, whether she’s meekly sipping a glass of tea, or absently raking a hand through her hair while at the end of her tether. But, as her self-authored, one woman show, The Panic Diaries, playing at the Studio in Cherry Lane Theatre, amply demonstrates, she is a consummate actress, and no doubt can make herself invisible in a crowd if she so desired. Some dark glasses might be useful to this end, as she is possessed of a pair of large, glancing eyes that betray the intelligence and watchfulness within. Likely she is aware of this, as she uses their impact to focus an audience, and their watchfulness in appropriating the behavioral niceties of different character types. As an actress she is altogether self-possessed. Which makes it most interesting that the several characters she brings to life in this show are very much the opposite; people who have somehow lost themselves in the act of becoming what they believe is expected of them. On a psychological level, this particular malaise must be the classic actor’s dilemma. Adept at becoming someone else, they experience difficulty merely being themselves. So, for all her poise here, we can believe that she knows something of what she speaks.

We are presented with an unnamed woman, alone in her apartment, beset by the troubling sense that she has somehow, somewhere, lost the plot of her life. To her diary she pours out fears and frustrations, lamenting a feeling that things have lost their meaning, their value, their taste. Nothing survives as a refuge – her identity, her aspirations, her relationships. It is a dark and lonely place. Panic ensues. Each imploding diary encounter moves us along to a sketch featuring a new character Northlich gamely embodies in situations both banal – at a department store exploring bridal registry gift options – and pathological – a well-heeled southern woman comes apart in the course of a coffee date with friends. All of her women are, in some sense, heart-breakingly pathetic, even as Northlich, a natural comedian with a fluid expressivity, raises the comical pitch to hilarious levels. An explosive young chatterbox, visiting a gynecologist, erupts into a non-stop spiel about her profligate sex life to a hapless stranger in the waiting room, establishing new dimensions around the term inappropriate. It is both ridiculously funny and terribly sad. Which is to say it is the best sort of theatre. Before this character has even opened her mouth, with just the restless flick of her eye play, Northlich has delivered us the hopelessly narcissistic soul of the young woman.

All of her women suffer from a compulsion to say something that has unsettling consequences. A homeless woman, begging at a store entrance, is reliant on the store keeper’s daily charitable gift of a single cigarette. But she can’t stop herself sounding off at one of his customers and consequently unwittingly forfeits her smoke privileges. A nervous encounter between past college lovers prompts a young woman to carelessly divulge that she had a secret abortion following their break-up. The true self, long ignored and repressed, will eventually out. Spurned and un-nurtured, it is not surprising that rage will be leading.

There is a fine balance between the comedy of the sketches and the relentlessly self-questioning diarist’s scenes. Perhaps the solemn, unwavering tone of the diarist is overshadowed by the finer plumage worn by the sketch characters, but this tug-of-war feeds into the larger theme of imbalance, polarization, and self-alienation. There is art in it. Concentrated and, at just one hour and ten minutes, winningly brief, the whole performance is a tonic and a salutary riposte to the Sex and the City set, for whom Life seems reducible merely to the mother and father of all shopping lists (check off as you go). Director Joe Ricci uses a craftily light hand, allowing Northtlich to come through fully. Really there’s no call for panic here; everyone – characters, actor, and audience – are very nicely served.

~~~

The Panic Diaries

Katie Northlich
Writer: Katie Northlich
Director: Joe Ricci
1h 10m
www.thepanicdiaries.com
VENUE #18: The Studio at Cherry Lane Theatre
Fri 26 @ 6 Sat 27 @ 3 Sun 28 @ 4

Top Drawer (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:12:29 +0000

Behind many a lime-lit smile beats a bruised and battered heart. Adelaide Mestre, the singer and actress whose self-authored show, Top Drawer, is playing at the Bowery Poetry Club during the New York Fringe Festival, comes with a unique understanding of this dark knowledge. Scion of a socially prominent family, whose parents were both somewhat transgressive artistic types, her upbringing was bright with the aura of musical showmanship and comfortable gracious living. Her mother was an opera-singing socialite, her father an exiled Cuban concert pianist. A heady romantic courtship between these two resulted in the end of her mother’s first marriage and an eventual elopement of the Park Avenue princess and her Latin lover accompanist. But her mother suffered from the familial assessment that her operatic abilities would never be more than fair, and her creative outlet was stymied as a result. Her father’s secret sorrow, one that would eventually prompt his suicide, was that he was homosexual, and tortured by the knowledge. As a set-up it has almost a classical ring for the evolution of a feisty young performer struggling to emerge from the professional and personal shadows of her parentage. And struggle she did in one of those unfocussed, erratic, episodically self-destructive courses pursued by embryonic divas the world over.

But my, how lightly now she seems to wear it in this musical tale of her gradual reconciliation with her history. Confused and off course as she is thrown by her up-bringing, she generously steps to the side here, allowing the swan songs of her parents’ stories the greater part of the spotlight. In a deeply touching instant, she impersonates her mother singing for the family a desperately sad rendition of “A Very Unusual Way” from the musical “Nine“. The voice, one she tellingly informs us she is more comfortable singing in than her own, is searingly rung with a sorrowful understanding of the love that sparked between mother and father, a love no less genuine for being peculiar. Ravaged by self-doubt, her mother could only ever sing before an audience with her eyes tightly closed. Surrounded by privilege as she was, it is this poor self esteem that Adelaide the artist has inherited. There are several haunting moments like this in the performance. For all her would-be Broadway swagger, Mestre has a keen appraisal of the tender, the poetic. In one allusion, as she recalls a later visit to a remote aunt in a crumbling Cuba, she speaks of a collection of family photographs that seem to have faded from too much viewing. The same aunt gifts her with a couple of old recordings of her father’s piano recitals. The vinyl records are antique, chipped and covered with mold, having languished in a tropical climate of stagnation and disintegration. The conflicted, distracted young Adelaide carelessly disposes of them amidst her household clutter, but the image prevails, lingering over the proceedings like a phantom wound. When we are eventually treated to a sample of these early, scratchy recordings, the music is fused with feeling as it drifts out over our heads in the hushed auditorium.

Mestre has a naturally winning stage presence, casually dazzling. And this is fortunate for her as, during the night of my viewing, be it first night nerves, or a want of rehearsal, in her enthusiasm to tell her tale she frequently fluffed her lines and even lost her place in the narrative, prompting her to reach for an iPad which she consults, absently dropping around stage like a favorite old clutch purse. She might stop during a line to insert an omitted word, and in one instant she actually paused her pianist to restart a song when she dropped a couplet. It is to her credit as a performer that she sails through such blunders with hardly a ruffle, her smile confidently assuring “you all know where I’m coming from”. Distracting as these moments might be, in some measure they add to the sense that you are witnessing a real individual on stage telling a real story about real people. There is an underlying modesty about her performance, which effortlessly transcends any gaffes. When she lets loose with a song you can see and hear the real artistry. She has a gem of a song at the end, “Looking for the Light”, written for her by John Mercurio, which would grace any high-end Broadway production. Her accomplished and stalwart piano accompanist is Doug Oberhamer. Coco Cohn directs with a minimum of fuss. A lovely evening awaits.

~~~

Top Drawer
Writer: Adelaide Mestre
Director: Lauren Cohn

1h 30m
www.adelaidemestre.com
VENUE #13: Bowery Poetry Club
Tue 23 @ 5 Wed 24 @ 5 Fri 26 @ 7:15 Sun 28 @ 2

Victor And Victoria’s Terrifying Tale Of Terrible Things (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:52:59 +0000

A Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things? With such alliterative allure we are beckoned to witness the strange story of fretful fraternal twins, Victor and Victoria. At curtain, on a darkened stage, the two children lie side by side in a commodious bed that features a headboard resembling, is it, a pair of pitching headstones? (Thank you Edward Gorey.) Sinister noises reverberate around them, hinting at… what? It’s too terrible to say, and Victor, the softer-hearted sibling, rouses suddenly from his sleep with a blood-curdling (and ear-cramping) shriek. Victoria is not the only one sitting bolt upright in the theater after that, but mercifully it is her task and not ours to calm the quaking Victor and convince him that his night terrors were just a dream. Or, were they?

Nothing seems to offer comfort for long as fearsome sounds barricade them into their room, and all attempts at distraction end by invoking horrible happenings. When the duo discover a bedtime book called a Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things (strange, I don’t recall that being there) they are compelled to read it, as sleep, now, is out of the question. And thus they embark on the initially elevating tale of the dauntless young sea captain, Archibald, and his beauteous beloved, Myfanwy. The twins throw themselves into the story, enacting with gusto the various characters of the book. But just as with the earlier efforts to raise their spirits and calm their nerves, this tale takes on a tragical tone, waxing woeful as it turns terrifying. Where will it end and what especial significance does the story hold for the plighted, plot-plagued playmates?

Yes, it’s a dark and stormy night alright, and we all know the ropes. Which is why it is all the more remarkable that out attention is held in an unrelenting head-lock by these two limber principals, who throw us every creaky cliche of the genre, but with their own special spin. In matching black, pudding-bowl haircuts, and floral nursery blouses, they resemble a set of Tim Burtonesque bookends as they grimace, prance, and shriek their way around the stage in broad impersonations that might ordinarily have audiences groaning. But we are in the hands of a gifted pair of physical comedians, fully committed to the arch-silliness of their story, and their gravitational pull is irresistible. Nathan Cuckow is the slightly wimpish Victor, and Beth Graham the gleefully ghoulish Victoria. There is a natural comedic chemistry between the two, with Cuckow playing an admirably earnest straight man beside Graham’s capering cut-up. Her quivering little dance of childish enthusiasm is priceless and could comfortably put Snoopy in the dog house. It comes as no great surprise to learn that these talented actors are in fact the joint authors of this comedy. The award winning production is by Kill Your Television Theatre hailing from Edmonton, Canada. Kevin Sutley directs with a firm hand, never allowing the show to descend into buffoonery, and in turn is beautifully served by his actors, who, on a minimally dressed stage, adroitly transform simple props into effective tale-telling devices.

In the best traditions of Gorey, the Gothic gourmand, things get pretty gnarly and horrific, - madness, infanticide, cannibalism, live-interment – taking it all just a little beyond the friendly G rating that (real) children might follow. The ghastliness is lavishly laid-on with the artful assistance of Terry Fairfield as sound designer. Everything comes together as a deliciously delectable boo! All in all it’s an absolute romp. For a brief moment we are like children again. Children alone. In a theater. In the dark.

~~~

Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things
Writer: Nathan Cuckow and Beth Graham
Director: Kevin Sutley
1h 20m
VENUE #4: Teatro LATEA
Mon 22 @ 5

2 Burn (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:30:21 +0000

There’s an undeniable darkness at the heart of Alex DeFazio’s new play, 2 Burn, produced by Elixir Productions Theatre Company for this year’s NY Fringe Festival at The Living Theatre. And the darkness in a large measure resides in the character of Paul, an earnest college educator, as played by Jody P. Person, one of the show’s co-directors along with Jennifer Joyce. The darkness is all the more remarkable for being manifest in a character who seems pointedly to reject such categorization, as he subjects all experiences to the un-nuanced spotlight of his intellect, opining ultimately that there is no such thing as Love. Love is merely a social construct deployed by people for their own ends, Paul declares, and not in a tone that is hard-bitten or love-weary. Rather in an earnest and instructive manner, careful that his listeners do not fall into the folly of believing in such an illusion. Person’s Paul exudes an openness, an unblinking wholesomeness, apparently devoid of shadow. He’s kind of like a nihilistic Julie Andrews. Which is why we settle back and read him as a sort of chump, heading for a classic theatrical pratfall. Of course he’s going to fall in love. And love is going to rip him a new one.

The play wastes no time in setting up the scenario, ushering in Manny, a seductive if slight, failing student who appears to have handpicked the readably gay Paul to rescue him; and to teach him ‘other things’ besides. Manny has several large “do not engage” signs flashing about him, and we can only wonder at Paul’s naivete in overlooking them and rising to Manny’s sexualized bait. There’s plenty of shadow clinging to Manny and only a chump would take him at his word. Paul’s friend, Maureen, a precariously positioned black, lesbian adjunct professor at the college, attempting to teach Manny about poetry, sees what is going on and tries to warn Paul off. Will Paul listen? It’s possible that some hangover demons from Paul’s last relationship are propelling him onward, but armed with the belief in his own rationality, and a sense of mission, he proceeds, being pulled deeper and deeper into the deceits and evasions Manny lives by. Out pops Sarah, a figure from Manny’s past, undeniable proof of his duplicity and manipulation. Everything begins to stink and Paul finds himself on the brink of his own professional and personal destruction, as fate and plot would fittingly dictate. But in the final scene’s unsuspected revelation, a hidden darkness wells up out of Paul and a sudden reversal occurs, casting a much creepier light on the proceedings, and swapping the roles of predator and prey. Was Paul really blind all along, or was he just indifferent, certain in the knowledge that he was ultimately holding an ace up his sleeve, the ace of spades no less?

It’s a tale alright, though it is perhaps a little over long in the telling. It’s all very well casting Paul as the frontal-lobe-loaded rationalist, but do we have to hear so much of his academic name-dropping, or his turgid intellectualizations? The specters of homophobia and HIV/AIDS are invoked and contribute to the complexity of the story, but seem merely serviceable dramatic tropes played to up the ante. The dialogue sometimes feels over-extended and over-heated, which brings us to another problem with the physical aspects of this production. There just is not enough heat. It would be a trial for anyone to discover the erotic side of Person’s Paul, wide-eyed and reasonable as he is, but Patrick Martin’s troubled, waif-ish Manny cannot convincingly do it. Much depends in the play on the contact between these two, but there is, alas, no chemistry. The problem is compounded by the fact that the staging seems somewhat adrift in the expansive performance space of the venue, diffusing any attempt at generating atmosphere. The sound effects reverberate from somewhere well off stage and their unevenness and surprising volume is distorting. The production struggles to emotionally and physically fill the space. Given these setbacks, it is left to the actors to rescue what they can. Deena Jiles in the thankless role of Maureen, and Michelle Wood as a potentially fatale Sarah, rise gracefully to the moment.

LaFazio has produced a serious and deep-delving piece of drama here, and is to be applauded for that much. Nevertheless, it is profoundly difficult to establish an erotic atmosphere on any stage, be it a platform or a basement, and while one can sit through the present production willing the best for all concerned, sadly this 2 Burn just does not spark.

~~~

2 Burn
Elixir Productions Theatre Company
Writer: Alex DeFazio
Director: Jennifer Joyce & Jody P. Person

1h 40m
www.elixirproductions.org
VENUE #6: The Living Theatre
Sat 20 @ 11 Sun 21 @ 9:45 Wed 24 @ 5:15 Thu 25 @ 2

PigPen Presents: The Mountain Song (Fringe Festival 2011)

Karen Tortora-Lee — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:12:43 +0000

When I was scanning the list of Fringe shows that I intended to review this year my heart gave a little leap when I saw that PigPen would be returning again this year with The Mountain Song. True, I’m probably not supposed to have a favorite before I even see the show, but after being completely and utterly entranced by last year’s Fringe offering The Nightmare Story I eagerly awaited their next play the way a doting mom awaits a favorite son’s visit home from college.

“What’s this play about?” I heard someone ask, as they navigated the Fringe Fairway of 4th Street and saw our long line. “It’s about a carpenter who’s trying to get to his daughter’s wedding …” someone answered. Clearly this person’s never seen a PigPen production before. For, while this may be what the story is “about” … this was not what we were all waiting to see. This simple synopsis does little to account for the fact that half of PigPen’s remaining shows are now already sold out.

A few moments later as we filed into the theatre it became clear what we were there for: the exuberance, enthusiasm and unbridled talent of the troupe that calls themselves PigPen made up of Arya Shahi, Ben Ferguson, Dan Weschler, Ryan Melia, Curtis Gillen, Alex Falberg and Matt Nuernberger. They commanded the stage as they played music they’ve become popular for, foot-stomping, head-bopping, hand-clapping folk music played on banjo, fiddle, tambourine, drum, guitar, and accordion. Later they will add in an electric guitar.

As the story settles in they captivate and charm the audience with a unique blend of shadow puppets, song, inventive props, and good old fashioned imagination. While much of their appeal rests with their easy humor and their wry delivery when the story calls for deep sentiment these guys can conjure up a feeling of heartbreak or poignancy as easily as they evoke airplanes, serve up giants, or give a voice to a mountain. So yes, we watch as the carpenter goes in search of his daughter in order to attend her wedding. But that’s not what we’re held by. It is the way each moment of their story carries a hidden treasure, a drop of exhilaration, a perfect twinkle of resourcefulness and realization. “That’s a good story,” they conclude, “sad but pretty … they way a story ought to be“.

As always the only disappointment with PigPen is when the play is over; it’s hard to watch them leave the stage – the same way it is hard for a child to watch that favorite relative go home at the end of a giddy day of make-believe. The good news is PigPen is relocating to New York City so those who can’t get enough of them will now be able to see them a lot more. And as long as they’ll be putting on shows, I’ll be in the audience, watching: amazed and dazzled.

———-

———-

~~~

PigPen Presents: The Mountain Song
PigPen Theatre Co.
Writer: Alex Falberg, Arya Shahi, Ben Ferguson, Curtis Gillen, Dan Weschler, Matt Nuernberger, Ryan Melia

1h 0m
www.PigPenTheatre.com
VENUE #12: 4th Street Theatre
Thu 18 @ 6:30 Mon 22 @ 7:15 Thu 25 @ 10 Fri 26 @ 3:45 Sat 27 @ 12*

Hamlet (Fringe Festival 2011)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 11:23:28 +0000

Perhaps director Greg Foro and the BAMA Theatre Company could not have asked for a better setting than the Connelly Center’s Connelly Theatre on East 4th Street to stage their production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A miniature old world theatre stage, complete with grinning classical masks on a battered, gray painted proscenium, it quietly, without the use of scenery flats, and a minimum of props, establishes a subtly pointed atmosphere for this admirably pared down presentation of one of the English language’s greatest stage tragedies.

With just the presence of an old steamer trunk, from which are pulled props and costumes, the black curtained stage is almost empty, and our eyes and ears are focussed throughout on the actors and the language. The result, with this hard-working cast of just eight players to cover all the roles, is impressive. There isn’t an actor on stage who can’t sink their teeth deeply into the emotionalism of the moment and who isn’t capable of making the boards resound with anguish. And better, most refreshingly, the speech, with all its grand flourish, meter, and rhyme, is lent an almost contemporary natural rhythm, all of it brimming with conviction and detail. This is saying a lot given most people’s propensity to disengage from naturalism when faced with anything from the Bard. Historians and academics may ring their hands, but there is something significant happening around the Alabama Shakespeare Festival when it is producing actors and stagings of this calibre. If you are straining to hear a southern accent, you won’t here.

This is the company’s third annual presentation at NY Fringe and will undoubtedly uphold their reputation for showing leanly honed, emotionally fluent examples of Shakespeare’s eloquence. If the question is – can Shakespeare ever be modern? – then this – and not the trompe of putting a cast in thirties gangster tuxedoes and giving them cigarettes to smoke – must be as close as it comes. Everybody wins – the Bard, the actors, the audience; everybody, of course, but the beautiful losers of Elsinore.

At mid-performance, just after Hamlet has rigged a play to prick the conscience of his murderous uncle, Claudius, the two characters circle the stage silently for a beat, eyeing each other variously as hunter and quarry, before Claudius calls -”Give me some light!”- at which the house is plunged into darkness and we are moved to intermission. This delicious moment is a sample of the thoughtful direction and stagecraft on display here. There’s more than a hint of Beckett in the graveyard scene, gleefully played for laughs by Alison Frederick’s intoxicated gravedigger, but this section, so often a problematic episode for companies, holds fast, true to the rest of the production. Carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts indeed. As the tension mounts the bodies pile up, leading to that most notorious of final scenes that features lingering death monologues by three of the principal characters and the terrifying specter of overkill. But we are in safe hands here also. Matt Renskers’ Horatio holds the stage with passion even as the actor corpses rise about him and calmly assume their place at rear, standing silently facing the audience before final curtain.

Much credit is due to all the performers, several of whom wear crew hats also. Chris Roe is perfectly cast as the Prince of Denmark; a wiry, brooding presence with palpable intensity and an electric intelligence which plays at levity while never surrendering the character’s own self-absorption. Physically agile, vocally limber, Roe gives us a Hamlet as desperately fucked-up as the situation he finds himself in; as sticky and complex a role as ever written for the stage. Everyone really is pitch perfect, but if I was forced to mention names a nod would have to go toward Roe; to Alison Frederick, whose Ophelia is genuinely disturbing; and to Nick Lawson, whose Laertes is quite a bit more than just a hot head.

I certainly wouldn’t have a problem recommending this production to any audience, but if you’d like a chance to observe some singular actors do their thing, delivering in full-blooded form the scenery-shredding language of William Shakespeare, at the perfect venue, then this NY Fringe festival ticket is really all that; smoking hot.

~~~

Hamlet
BAMA Theatre Company
Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Greg Foro, Assistant Director: Sarah Walker Thornton
2h 20m

www.bamatheatrecompany.org
VENUE #7: Connelly Theater
Sun 14 @ 12 Wed 17 @ 2 Mon 22 @ 4

The Happiest Medium » NY Fringe 2011

FringeNYC 2011 Announces Overall Excellence Award Winners

Congratulations again to all those recognized for overall excellence!!

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