by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 24, 2011
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.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 22, 2011
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.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 22, 2011
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?
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 20, 2011
It’s pretty clever when a theatrical production adopts the stance that what it is about to present you with is nothing more than offensive, odious rubbish. And when it does so persistently, warning you at each interval that things are only going to get worse, more unbearable, it seems cleverer, because you have no one to blame but yourself for hanging around. And when each performance or act hones so close to the edge of becoming merely cacophonous insult, while convincing you that the method in this apparent chaos is quite sound, well, that makes it even more clever. In fact, everything about Inverse Theater‘s Smoke the New Cigarette by Kirk Wood Bromley at the Bowery Poetry Club is exceptionally clever; so clever it hurts.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 17, 2011
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.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 14, 2011
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.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on March 23, 2011
There are several occasions during Mimic when performer Raymond Scannell’s kohl-lined eyes look directly out into the audience and rake through the crowd with a malevolent glitter. The moments induce goose bumps, and a magnetic tug that would have you surrender all resistance and follow him willingly towards the heart of darkness he is hinting at in his self-penned monologue.
Seated at a gloss black piano, on a minimally dressed stage, Scannell dazzles with a torrent of language, effortlessly synchronized piano glissandi, and flashes of mimicry brilliance. Julian Neary, however, the character he is playing, the talented mimic of the title, is altogether a more anemic soul, and his audience attentiveness falters throughout a self-absorbed, self-dramatizing narrative. Julian’s eyes glaze over frequently as he recalls parts of his story, and he turns regularly away to face a mirror hanging alongside him. Given his prevailing narcissistic nature, and his present quest, after years as a successful entertainer, to separate a true self from his assumed characters, Julian’s self-absorption is perhaps appropriate. But an hour plus in the company of even the most diverting of narcissists can be taxing and, reflexively, an audience who fail to find anything that reminds them of themselves in that duration, are bound to get restive.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on March 4, 2011
Boatload (photo by Stars And Hearts)
In Boat Load the boat of the title is a metaphor representing the creative muse of Gary Bazman, an underachieving actor who has stayed too long in his small hometown. The load is the passenger list, a lifetime of Gary’s familiars – father, mother, girlfriend, professional contacts, friends, imaginary characters, even his cat, Mr. Tangerine. Gary, the boat, and its load, are all represented by writer/performer Jayson McDonald on a stage that is bare but for a single straight-backed chair. The ensuing hour of actorly tale telling will have your head spinning as you try to keep up with the action and not lose yourself in McDonald’s riveting performances.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on March 3, 2011
Joe Mazza in The Hyperbolist (Photo by Susan Ask)
As you enter The Red Room, the small black box theater space upstairs from KGB Bar, to attend The Hyperbolist, don’t be surprised to find performer/auteur Joe Mazza already there waiting to personally greet you. His is an undeniable presence, crackling with the energy of the irrepressible performer, eager to shake hands, quip with you, and generally impress upon you the aura of his creative, irrefutable me-ness. You could feel him across a room even if he wasn’t so striking, and there’d be no need for the trappings of theatrical finesse – the black clothes, dark-framed glasses, and black eye make-up – if he wasn’t, in a moment, about to launch a complex, engrossing, and delightful attack upon your jaded audience senses.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on March 1, 2011
Kevin J Thornton stars in I Love You (We're F*#ked) Photo by Chris Wage
Kevin J. Thornton nimbly takes the stage at 4 in the afternoon for another performance of his one-man show, I Love You (We’re F*#ked). “It’s early in the day, isn’t it?” he asks. “I feel like I’ve just gotten up.” And looking at him, with a slight rawness around the eyes and a gracefully rumpled quality to his stage ensemble, you could quite believe it. But there’s nothing of the grouch, morning or otherwise, about Kevin. His speaking voice is low, calm, almost velvety; the sort of voice that could induce a tranquil confidence even as it asks you to ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your table tops are stowed, and your seats are in an upright position, as the captain will shortly be attempting a crash landing. Standby.
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