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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 Lina Zeldovich on August 21, 2011
Dystopia Gardens: Soylent Green meets Sleeper.
Ladies, gentlemen and other fellow Fringe enthusiasts, Will Nunziata and Jerry Sean Miller do it again: with their hilarious multi-media one-act, they instantly drop us into One World, a place allegedly so polluted that people live inside humongous domes and savor food pills. “Allegedly,” by the way, is the keyword.
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by Lina Zeldovich on August 21, 2011
So What Really Is Salamander Stew?
Shakespeare meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in Salamander Stew, a Romeo and Juliet musical powered by love and a mighty joint, currently playing at The 4th Street Theater as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. There aren’t too many international productions in Fringe this year, but a lost-in-time enchanted forest does the trick to make this one feel far removed from New York. The only verse-play in the festival, Salamander Stew takes you into a phantasmagorical world of slithering creatures, hungry spirits, and deceptive rather than deciduous trees. Everything we always read about the deep dark woods but were afraid to experience unfolds before our eyes in its native wickedness. If you are a Harry Potter fan, a Tolkien geek or if Beetlejuice was one of your favorite movies, Salamander Stew is a must.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 21, 2011
Bill Connington Long Island Film Fest
The short film ZOMBIE will be screened on Monday, August 22 at the New York City International Film Festival. The program of shorts is at 11:35 am – 1 pm at the Abingdon Theater, 312 West 36th Street, 2nd floor. ZOMBIE is the last film on that morning’s program. Tickets are $5.
ZOMBIE tells the story of a mild-mannered “normal-seeming” serial killer, who abducts innocent victims, and attempts to turn them into his “zombie” slaves. The stage play was presented at the New York International Fringe Festival, Off-Broadway at Theater Row for an extended run, and at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in New York. It was also recently performed in Seattle, and a production is planned for Mexico City. Continue Reading…
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 21, 2011
There was so much to be excited about before heading into Gleeam – the Glee / Scream Mash-up Musical written by Andrew Lloyd Baughman with lyrics by Phil Close and directed by Emily Jablonski. First of all, the advanced artwork was fun and clever. The iconic loser “L” now holds a menacing knife! How cunning! Secondly, the idea was how-can-you-miss?-perfect: two well-recognized, well-received high school memes thrown together to create one fantastic pot of crazy zaniness. Hilarious! Thirdly, the venue (Le Poisson Rouge) is sexy and spooky all at the same time, glowing red against oceans of black. “This is gonna be good,” I thought to myself as I took my seat and waited – I’ll say it – gleefully … while taking in the gorgeous backdrop done by talented artist Jared Davis.
It didn’t take long, however, to realize that Gleeam was actually not going to live up to its advanced hype.
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by Michelle Augello-Page on August 21, 2011
Lipshtick is an ambitious play, taking the audience on a funny, poignant, and complex journey through what it meant to be a woman in 20th century America amidst a media blitzkrieg mirroring society’s perceptions, ideals, and images, while seeking to expose how women internalize and externalize these expectations as they struggle towards a sense of self and continue to define the realities and experiences of being female in American society in the present.
Written by Romy Nordlinger and Adam Burns, “Lipshtick” is centered around the Make-Me-Over Show, a reality T.V. show which eavesdrops on women’s lives by hacking into their media devices in order to find the next contestant to win an appearance on the show. The lucky winner will receive the ultimate make-over, becoming the very image of society’s ideal woman.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 20, 2011
Meet Anna. In Anna & The Annadroids: Memoirs of a Robot Girl - an interesting combination of modern dance, techno music, social commentary, science fiction, multimedia, and a bit of burlesque – Anna is an android who is made of ”pure synthetic organic flesh”. So instead of being made only of metal with a “mind full of microchips” she’s got a heart filled with “…love…passion…confusion…pure sexuality”. The dancing and aerial acrobatics of Anna Sullivan (Anna), are accompanied with ambient, driving techno beats created by various artists which she performs while wearing beautiful costumes created by Elizabeth Harzoff. The acrobatics seem to correspond to times of dreams (whether regular or daydreams) as something seems to be making her concentrate on something other than reality.
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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 Karen Tortora-Lee on August 19, 2011
The mother/daughter dynamic is a convoluted one – speaking myself as a daughter who has both benefited from the advice of a strong willed woman while at the same time fought to get out from under the weight of Mother’s somewhat (shall we say) “insistent” personality. So, for me, Mary-Beth Manning’s Mother she’s with you wherever you go was a show that I knew was going to bring up a lot of issues before it even started. The wonderful thing about this solo-show, however, is that while Mary-Beth’s mother Joanie is one hundred percent a unique character unto herself, Manning manages to hit upon the universal themes we all struggle with when dealing with a person who is both our constant source of inspiration and comfort as well as our constant source of agitation, depending on the day.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 18, 2011
Here’s the story … of The Bardy Bunch: The War Of The Families Partridge And Brady.
It’s 1974 and two families, one Brady, one Partridge are at war. Their battlefield exists in cancelled sit-com land and their weapons consist of killer dance moves, cut throat ballads and production numbers meant to slay you in the aisles. Their story is a mash up of well-known Partridge and Brady references retrofitted into such Shakespearean plays as Hamlet, MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, among others.
The result is everything Fringe has come to be celebrated for: an innovative, enjoyable, hilarious night of theatre written by Stephen Garvey and directed by Jay Stern that isn’t afraid to push the envelope.
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