by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 18, 2011
Once upon a time... How that can roll off one’s tongue with a savor that is like the sun kissing your forehead on a sweet summer’s night, as the glowing orb burrows into its deep red cave in the sky. This is truly storytelling (with properly credentialed and sincere storytellers from the world famous International School of Storytelling). Michael & Caja based in The Hague make a great team telling this story.
Michael Driebeek van der Ven begins A way of Man by giving a brief introduction about the story and the nature of storytelling, including a note that – since the point of storytelling is to help us envision things in one’s mind’s eye – if the audience wants, we are welcomed to close our eyes and no judgements would be made. Van der Ven is also is responsible for the very subtle yet dramatic dimming and brightening of the lights which help us move through the transitions of seasons and scenes and senses.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 18, 2011
One thing about Fringe Festival is that it encourages experimentation among the already experimental crowd of off-off-Broadway and regional theatre troops from around the country. You can read more about their developmental process here, really quite fascinating actually. This piece is interesting in part because of the comedy interwoven into the structure (a fun mix of parody and literary criticism), but more importantly the methodologies of how the story is told (using audience participation) are worth going to the play by themselves. Mercury Rep, a Madison, Wisconsin based company, has been a past fringe favorite, and they get a chance to make their mark this year again. You’ve Ruined A Perfectly Good Mystery! is truly is a good example of the type of theatre that the New York International Fringe Festival exposes to a larger audience.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 17, 2011
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.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 17, 2011
Sure, I knew that the star of Bette Davis Ain’t For Sissies was going to be a woman. But there was still a part of me that gave a little stutter when I saw Jessica Sherr walk onto the stage, about to embark on her journey to embody this legendary actress. There’s a reason why Bette Davis is a favorite of drag performers, a la Cher, Judy and Liza. Because legends like these have enormous shoes to fill and sometimes the dainty feet of a woman just slosh around in those heels. However, I wasn’t here to see a drag show. I was here to see why Bette Davis Ain’t For Sissies. Unfortunately this “comedy solo show” (which had very little comedy) never really clarified that for me.
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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 Karen Tortora-Lee on August 17, 2011
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.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 16, 2011
Negative Space Sometimes Shows Us The Way Out
Sadness is a universal and necessary part of the human condition, whether you experience it from losing a job, a loved one or just find yourself at end of your rope. But is “unhappiness” different than “sadness”? Can lives be ruined when they are unhappy much more than when they simply have a neutral lack of happiness? Playwright Greg Kotis (who wrote the book for Urinetown as well this year’s Fringe runaway hit, the already sold-out Yeast Nation) examines these themes in 9 short dark comedies called The Unhappiness Plays.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 15, 2011
The Three Times She Knocked (Photo by Josh Jones)
How innocently these things can start … a knock on the door, a simple question, met with a glance that – to the person meeting those eyes – may appear to linger too long or bore in too deeply. Is this the beginning of a forbidden love affair between two already-married co-workers? Or just the planting of the seed of a what-could-be fantasy in the mind of a man already hungry to harvest a new crop of sexual obsession? For Eric (Bob D’Haene) his spark for Tara (Isabel Richardson) is set off innocently at the office, but is flamed into a bonfire each one of The Three Times She Knocked on his office door.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 14, 2011
Oh, you’ll love walking into the theatre at Dixon Place to watch I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography – Mark Sam Rosenthal’s (Celebrity!) solo show. The music is cranking with such anthems as The Pussycat Dolls “When I Grow Up”, Katy Perry’s “Firework” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and the walls are glowing with projections of Mark in his candid, semi (one assumes) nude “oops, you caught me being cute!” poses. You’ll just love walking in, almost as much as Mark Sam Rosenthal himself does.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 14, 2011
Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story (written by Mariah MacCarthy, directed by Amanda Thompson) is just that … “A” Romeo & Juliet story – not a 100% faithful retelling of THE Romeo and Juliet story. First of all, Romeo and Juliet are both women. So, right away, by making this a gender-issue play and bringing in questions of Juliet’s orientation – questions she must ask herself as much as we the audience must ask of the play – an entirely different layer is added to this tale which is deeper and more complex. And since this layer is deeper and complex, so is the love story. There’s an urgency that doesn’t -can’t- exist in a heterosexual telling of this story, and that adds to the thoughtfulness and despair. And the hope.
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Once upon a time... How that can roll off one’s tongue with a savor that is like the sun kissing your forehead on a sweet summer’s night, as the glowing orb burrows into its deep red cave in the sky. This is truly storytelling (with properly credentialed and sincere storytellers from the world famous International School of Storytelling). Michael & Caja based in The Hague make a great team telling this story.
