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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on March 3, 2012
David Lawson’s solo show, VCR Love, had a limited engagement recently at The Brick Theater. Bold and innovative, this show explored the consequences, both positive and negative, of the increasing availability of porn in American society as seen through his own experiences.
The story begins with Lawson’s first “exposure” to explicit nudity at the impressionable age of 11 (a quick calculation based on context would put the year at 1995) when Lawson saw his first pair of naked female breasts which made an appearance in the seminal classic Animal House. The mental sensations of this discovery along with the struggle to replicate this initial thrill move him through the next few years of his life from stolen Victoria’s Secret catalogs to taping the “good parts” of MTV like Fiona Apple and Mariah Carey in there slinky skimpies. “It meant more because of the time I spent waiting for those precious moments on tv, and it would now be preserved forever”. VCR love, indeed.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 29, 2012
Man Saved By Condiments by Mary Jo Pehl is a dramatization of the true story of a man whose car went off a bridge while he was on his way to work. With a broke his hip, no cell phone and no one aware of where he was, he survived for five days by eating snow and the packets of condiments he found strewn around the floor of his garbage heap that passes for a car.
The solo show, directed by Bill Stiteler, starts off a bit clumsily as every thought is expressed aloud by Steve (Tim Uren) for the sake of the constructs of the play. While the back story explains that in order to stay sane the man talks to himself the device is somewhat forced for the sake of theatricality. It also doesn’t help that Steve is somewhat unlikable and not particularly introspective. He’s got a chip on his shoulder and (as bits of his life are revealed through the various moments when he’s either talking to himself, chatting with squirrels or railing at God) there’s not much redeeming about him.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 29, 2012
The Happiest Medium review by guest contributor Katelyn Manfre.
Canadian import Rachelle Elie enjoys being a woman. She especially enjoys her run-of-the-mill feminine pastimes: trying on sparkly dresses with eye makeup to match, dancing seductively to Ke$ha on a fur carpet, and hydrating with imported bottled water. She’s married to an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, has two lovely sons, and is, for all intents and purposes, living the dream.
Served with a side of audience discomfort, Elie’s solo show, Big Girls Don’t Cry (playing at The Red Room), is an insightful, if slightly off-putting insight into the psyche of the Modern Woman. Elie appears in what looks like a doll’s dress that lost a fight with a Bedazzler, knee-highs and platform slippers. She gapes and gasps her way through her basic biography, stopping every so often to sing or dance in a non-sequitur celebration of her womanhood. Questions are posed to the audience, and as she stares hard into each person’s eyes, she dares us to not be jealous of her in all her sparkle, and the beautiful life she has.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 29, 2012
The Happiest Medium review by guest contributor Katelyn Manfre
It’s tough out there for a single girl. It’s especially tough out there for a single girl with a habit of substance abuse and an absent father. But Nicole Pandolfo bravely lays it on the line for us in Love in the Time of Chlamydia running now at UNDER St. Marks.
This Jersey girl has a lot of hilarious, ridiculous and oftentimes make-your-skin-crawl war stories from her wild single days in New York. There’s a lot of bar (and bed)-hopping, recreational drug use, parties with strangers, chance encounters, unfortunate moments, and one memorable trip to Paris. Despite all of the hardships and heartbreak, Pandolfo tells her story with a smile, a smug F-you to all of the guys who hurt her and let her down, namely her distant father.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 28, 2012
To say I was “pleasantly surprised” by Slash Coleman‘s solo show Big Plastic Heroes currently playing at UNDER St. Marks as part of the FRIGID Festival is an understatement. All signs pointed to this show being a raucous, self-aggrandizing narcissistic sausage-fest devoted to testosterone-ladened cultural touchstones and overblown Americana. After all, the artwork for the show features Coleman not only as Evel Knievel, but as the Bicentennial edition of Knievel, bedecked in red white and true-blue … superhero cape included. He’s even clutching a football helmet. Yes, the show I expected to see was vastly different than the one which actually unfolded before me. Within the first few minutes “pleasantly surprised” was overtaken by “completely mesmerized”. From there, it only got better.
Writer and performer Slash Coleman is a born storyteller – he has a way of not only captivating his audience but virtually hypnotizing them as his style and cadence allows his story to spring up around him as if by magic. Using no props, no sound effects, and only very subtle lighting cues Coleman seems to need nothing more than his chair and his voice to support his tale.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 27, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by Guest Contributor Katelyn Manfre
People are always telling D’yan Forest to “act her age.” For her, that is simply unacceptable. At 77 years young, when D’yan has seen, experienced, and gone to bed with so much of the world, she simply hasn’t been able to settle into her age. In I Married a Nun!, running at UNDER St. Marks, she has set out to tell her story, to explain and illustrate just why being a senior is not where she’s at right now.
For the record, she did, in fact, marry a nun. For 25 years D’yan was unofficially wedded to Mary, an ex-lady of the cloth with whom she travelled the world and shared a rather active sex life (don’t worry–she’s got props). While her relationship with Mary is the focus of a large part of her story, D’yan also goes into great detail about her exploits, dalliances, and experiments before and after. She has, it seems, been comfortable in her skin and up for anything since she was a little girl growing up in Boston.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 27, 2012
Not everyone got the kind of name that looks good on a marquee or sounds good in the sentence ” … and the award for best actor goes to …”. And let’s all just admit it now: no one really knew how to pronounce “Gyllenhaal” till several movies in, and even then it took TWO siblings to get the world to say it properly. Twenty years later Demi Moore still has 50% of the population putting the accent on the wrong syllable.
So. Now imagine that you’re not that famous at all. Nowhere near. And you’re given a name that everyone mispronounces or mistakes for another name upon hearing it. Wouldn’t you change your name too? You would if you were Moe Rosen, writer and performer of I’m Only Explaining This Once, his solo-show currently playing at the Red Room.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 25, 2012
The Happiest Medium Review by Guest Contributor Linnea Covington
Afternoon Tea With Jane Austen (Photographer credit: Chris J. Hing)
Most little girls grow up reading the works of Jane Austen, be it Emma, Sense and Sensibility, or Pride and Prejudice. Some boys also read her stories, but usually that’s a school assignment. But, no matter how you digest this early 19th Century author, one thing remains consistent – you never learn much about her actual life. In Tali Brady’s one-woman play Afternoon Tea With Jane Austen, the Montreal-based actress and playwright attempts to share this history with you.
It’s an excellent way to become acquainted with Austen, and while Brady wrote a wonderfully fluid play chock full of personal details, fetching narratives, and historical information about the author, she doesn’t always execute her role as Austen well. The show started out slow as she bumbled around the who’s-who in Austen’s family, and even though she said herself that it was boring, it still shouldn’t have been. This isn’t because of the subject matter but more of Brady reciting her lines like she’s dictating instead of storytelling.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on February 25, 2012
Suzen Murakoshi‘s self-authored, one-woman performance, Breathe, Love, Repeat, presently playing at Under St. Marks as part of this year’s Frigid New York Festival, is an autobiographical recounting of her last days with her mother. For anybody this might represent a daunting theme, vast, self-examining, possibly too much. But Murakoshi has an imaginary alter ego to call upon in the face of such a challenge – a samurai super daughter – and unhesitatingly she jumps in and grabs the bull by the horns. Why or whence came this super daughter is never made clear, she just magically appears in the form of Murakoshi heroically brandishing an invisible sword above her head in full spotlight. She is the pluck, the resistance, and later the resilience that help carry the author through the ordeal of watching her mother gradually sicken and decline. She is some sort of Asian folkloric warrior princess, alive to the existence of a spirit realm, knowledgeable of the proper respects and tributes owed the demons that haunt us.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 17, 2012
Sanctuary
Susanne Sulby writer, actor, co-director,
Andrea Haring co-director
An exploration of the struggles and tragedies of war and our need for sanctuary. A fast paced energetic multi media exploration of the roles we have played in war throughout time. Multiple characters expose the connections of fear, bigotry, power and religion with war and how they find sanctuary from it.
Show Times:
- Monday, 1/16 @ 9pm
- Wednesday, 1/18 @ 6pm
- Friday, 1/20 @ 7:30pm
Answers by Susanne Sulby (writer, actor, co-director)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Susanne Sulby: Though this is an International show I am from the US. Sanctuary is about our Universal experience as women in relation to war. This Story is told through the eyes of the three main characters, the house wife, an international war correspondent and Sanja Sihilovic a POW in Bosnia. ‘Sanctuary’ exposes the connection of fear, bigotry, power and religion to war throughout history and across the world. Using multiple characters, Film projection, movement and sound, I explore the human tragedy of war as well as the roles and responsibilities of individuals in the conflict of nations. Sanctuary makes immediate on the stage some of the most pertinent issues of our time.
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