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by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 14, 2011
Lauren Hennessy (photo by Cathryn Lynne / WWW.CATHRYNLYNNEPHOTO.COM)
It’s no secret that Mariah MacCarthy’s beautiful Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story struck a deep chord with me; I loved so many things about it. For me it was one of the highlights of this season’s Fringe Festival. So when the wonderful Lauren Hennessy was the recipient of an award for overall excellence for her work as Romeo I was thrilled that this talented woman was being recognized for her remarkable skills as not only an actress but as an overall performer. In MacCarthy’s Ampersand Romeo is a rock singer with a devoted following … and the minute Hennessy takes the stage there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that she’s got the goods to pull it off.
The Fringe dust has settled, and I was able to chat with Lauren to find out how much of Romeo is really Lauren, how she feels about working with the talent Mariah MacCarthy … and just which role she’d love to play if anything were possible. Read on …
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 31, 2011
Earlier this week FringeNYC announced the 2011 Overall Excellence Award Winners and we at THM couldn’t have been happier to celebrate with the winners and congratulate them on their success. One standout for me was The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady which was definitely one of my favorites this year. I was lucky enough to get a moment with Stephen Garvey – writer of this fantastic show which takes one part Brady, one part Partidge, one part Shakespeare, and all parts groovy and mixes it together in a crazy plot worthy of Sherwood Schwartz on his best day. Read on to find out if Garvey is Team Brady or Team Partridge … see how creativity can spring in the most unlikeliest of places, and learn what the secret to a great mash-up really is …
Stephen Garvey!!! First of all, congratulations on winning the Ensemble Award! You’re in great company. It was clear from the first five minutes that your show was destined to win recognition, but did you see this award coming?
SG: Didn’t see it coming but so happy it came. We really lucked out with this cast. Director Jay Stern and I had to hold our auditions very late in the game, and we were nervous. Not only did we need to fill 18 roles, we needed actors who could sing, dance, be funny and manage to capture the spirit of the iconic characters they were playing. How we went 18 for 18 is nothing short of miraculous!
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 30, 2011
There is a delightful episode in Chris Phillips’s play Elysian Fields, which was presented at the Kraine Theatre during this year’s New York Fringe Festival, when the characters Maggie (“the cat”) and Skipper, from Tennessee Williams‘s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, are talking. Skipper is recounting to Maggie the early years of his friendship with her husband, Brick Pollitt, and making a veiled confession about the tenacity of his attachment to Brick. He describes a hot southern afternoon as he watches an old tabby cat patiently riding out the uncomfortable afternoon heat on a rooftop, awaiting a patch of shadow to alleviate its situation. He is struck by the cat’s stoic forbearance. He has it in mind to be just like that cat in life, patiently staying put, expectant that what he desires will one day fall to him. This image is more famously invoked by Maggie in Williams’s celebrated play, when following Skipper’s death, she pleads for her grieving husband’s attention and affection. It’s a clever piece of writing, respectfully returning us to the allusive power of Williams’s theatrical storytelling.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 29, 2011
Didn’t get a chance to see some of the Fringe shows everyone was raving about? Wish there was another shot at seeing some of the plays THM reviewers couldn’t get enough of? Well now’s your chance! 18 Hit FringeNYC Shows Return in September! Beginning September 9th, the FringeNYC Encore Series will take place at the SoHo Playhouse and The Players Theatre. All tickets are $18, available beginning August 29th. Call 866-468-7619 or click here.
SOHO PLAYHOUSE
- After Anne Frank: Sat 9/10 @ 4:30pm, Sat 9/17 @ 4, Wed 9/21 @ 8pm, Fri 9/23 @ 9:30pm.
- facebook me: Sun 9/11 @ 2pm, Sat 9/17 @ 2pm, Sun 9/18 @ 2pm, Sat 9/24 @ 9:30pm, Sun 9/25 @ 2pm.
- The More Loving One: Sun 9/11 @ 7:30pm, Wed 9/14 @ 9pm, Tue 9/20 @ 8pm, Thu 9/22 @ 9:30pm, Mon 9/26 @ 8pm.
- Fourteen Flights: Mon 9/12 @ 8pm, Tue 9/13 @ 8pm, Thu 9/15 @ 9:30pm, Fri 9/16 @ 9pm, Sun 9/18 @ 7:30pm
- PigPen Presents The Mountain Song: Wed 9/14 @ 7pm, Sat 9/17 @ 9:30pm, Sun 9/19 @ 8pm, Sat 9/24 @ 5pm, Sun 9/25 @ 7:30pm.
HURON CLUB @ SOHO PLAYHOUSE
- Paper Cut: Fri 9/9 @ 7pm, Sat 9/10 @ 5pm, Sun 9/11 @ 7:30pm, Mon 9/12 @ 8pm, Tue 9/13 @ 8pm.
- You Only Shoot The Ones You Love: Fri 9/9 @ 9:30pm, Wed 9/14 @ 7pm, Thu 9/15 @ , Fri 9/16 @ 10pm.
- Bongani: Sat 9/17 @ 4:30pm, Sun 9/18 @ 5pm, Mon 9/19 @ 8pm, Wed 9/21 @ 8pm.
- Who Loves You Baby?: Sun 9/18 @ 7:30pm, Tue 9/20 @ 8pm, Thu 9/22 @ 8pm, Sun 9/25 @ 7:30pm.
PLAYERS THEATRE
- I Will Be Good: Fri 9/9 @ 7pm, Sun 9/11 @ 4pm, Sat 9/24 @ 5pm, Sun 9/25 @ 6pm.
- Araby: Sat 9/10 @ 5pm, Sun 9/11 @ 6pm, Sun 9/18 @ 7pm, Mon 9/19 @ 7pm.
- Felony Friday: Sat 9/10 @ 7:30pm, Sun 9/11 @ 8pm, Tue 9/13 @ 7:30pm, Thu 9/15 @ 9:30pm.
- Pearl’s Gone Blue: Fri 9/9 @ 9:30pm, Fri 9/16@ 9:30pm, Mon 9/19 @ 9pm, Sun 9/25 @ 8pm.
- The Legend of Julie Taymor,or The Musical That Killed Everybody!: Wed 9/14 @ 7pm, Thu 9/15 @ 7pm, Fri 9/16 @ 7pm, Sat 9/17 @ 7pm, Sat 9/17 @ 10:30pm.
- Parker & Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow: Wed 9/14 @ 9:30pm, Sun 9/18 @ 9pm, Wed 9/21 @ 9pm, Fri 9/23 @ 7pm, Sat 9/24 @ 10pm.
- COBU – Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing: Sat 9/17 @ 5pm, Sat 9/24 @ 3:30pm
- Noir: Sun 9/18 @ 4pm, Tues 9/20 @ 7pm, Thu 9/22 @ 7pm.
- Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin’ Rock Opera: Wed 9/21 @ 7pm, Thu 9/22 @ 10pm, Fri 9/23 @ 10:30pm, Sat 9/24 @ 8pm, Sun 9/25 @ 4pm.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 28, 2011
Imagine what it would be like if you had always dozed off to sleep during your childhood bedtime stories, and you never got to hear the words -”and they lived happily ever after”? You were awake for the introduction of the main story characters – a fair maiden, a prince, a beast, a witch – and your head was nodding as the tale was reaching a crescendo of anxiety and crisis, but you were out for the count by the occasion when all was safely resolved and truth and goodness triumphed over evil adversity. Well, all your stories would be unresolved, forever arrested at a pitch of extreme desperation. You yourself might be inexplicably fearful, characteristically tense and anxious, and your slumbering dreams could well be nightmares. Such is the imaginative, if unlikely premise of Cody Lucas‘s Happily Ever After, produced by the Denton, Texas based outfit, Sundown Collaborative Theatre. The main character, Jack, was such a highly sensitive child, drowsy enough to experience this unfortunate set of circumstances. Now, a young man, he is a nervous pill-addicted wreck, afflicted and exhausted by his fear of sleep, a state that delivers him relentlessly to a nightmare realm of terror.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 28, 2011
When is a tragedy not a tragedy? When we realize the Only Way Is Forward and healing takes place on a lot of levels.
In the folk-rock musical Pawn, by Karmia Chan Cao (playwright, director, and composer) we see a Canadian family split apart twice in 10 years, first by the oldest son being taken from them in the crumbling of the Twin Towers on September 11th and later on when the younger son volunteers to go overseas for three years to Afghanistan. The eldest son, Kai, is now just a picture on the top of a shelf in the family’s convenience store (the picture is of Eric Tran who plays piano with the rest of the band).
Now their other son, Abraham Niu (Alex Kaneko) will be finishing his second and final tour of duty in Afghanistan in 5 days and the story of this play circles around the end of his journey home and how he he finds resolution from his brother’s death by making a the most important choice of his life. It is a lush play with many different layers: cultural, spiritual, and that of personal redemption … of many types. It has truly been finely crafted and I hope this play get to “make it big” and spread its message: to accept the moment we are in and use it to make the future brighter to a larger audience sooner rather than later.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 28, 2011
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
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 27, 2011
Kevin Mannering and Matthew Michael Hurley (Photographer: Alona Fogel)
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me? Wait a minute now – what? Just what is Danny Mitarotondo’s new play, What the Sparrow Said, at CSV Latea, trying to say? Or is it really trying not to say anything? The language has certainly been put through a crafty shredder, stripping it of any natural clarity, eliptically hinting that there is more going on than is apparent, morphing into indigestible poetry, and flashily playing at nonsense while preventing any speaker from actually finishing a sentence. The actors rattle off their lines as if they were in some over-paced 1930s screwball comedy, overlapping sentences in a manner that defies clear communication and challenges listener comprehension. Strain as you will to grasp what is being said, it is all but hopeless. And when this difficulty is pointedly compounded by the decision to stage separate scenes on top of one another, and having characters in different scenes talking simultaneously so that your attention is split in the rising din, and you are forced to abandon at least one set of exchanges… well; really? Yeah, I get life can be confusing; chaotic even. Yes, and life can be annoying. Very annoying. Verisimilitude, however, is definitely not a part of this playwright’s vocabulary. Absurdism? Perhaps.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 26, 2011
Jersey Shore is a show on MTV that, in and of itself, is already parody – boldly mocking an easily mockable subculture known as the Guido and Guidette. All executive producer SallyAnn Salsano had to do was sit back, let the cameras roll, and watch as these buff, well tanned, dark haired over-accessorized not-too-bright kids perfected the art of GTL (Gym, Tan, Laundry), avoided making out with Grenades, beat up the beat on the dance floor, got drunk, then got into each other business (and beds) and just generally ran amok. The formula was keyed into the system early on and everyone involved with this runaway hit just had to sit back and ride the wave of success ever since, following their cash cows from the eponymous Jersey Shore to Miami, to Italy and back again. So, frankly, does a show this rife with built in self-mockery require a parody … in the form of a Rock Opera no less? If that show is Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin’ Rock Opera then the answer is (cue the fist pump) oh hell yeah.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 26, 2011
Schadenfreude, the German word meaning pleasure derived from the pain and suffering of others could almost be a word to describe the dry, witty, quite thoughtful, and generally dark comedy of 74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater. This concept was wonderfully explained in Avenue Q in 2003, but has been referenced in many other places including the Simpsons in 1991. However I think this play requires the audience to utilize schadenfreude differently – as rather a recognition or appreciation of suffering (which would be something like Schäden Anerkennung OR recognition/appreciation of pain). Since there is always a lesson to be learned or an observation to be had by the characters in Stereo Radio Theater, it plays much more like a parable than a satire of people’s lives.
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