by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 14, 2011
The Thornhills of Park Avenue (L-R: Bill Connington, Anthony Haden-Guest, Juliette Bennett)
We recently wrote about Bill Connington’s success with his award winning play, Zombie (based on the novella by Joyce Carol Oates). The short film based on the play- winner of “Best Short Film (Horror)” at the Washington D.C. International Film Festival will be shown as part of The Williamsburg International Film Festival — Knitting Factory | 9/23/2011 | 12 AM – and (if you’re down that way) at The Atlanta Horror Film Festival in a few days on September 16.
In Zombie Connington plays a mild-mannered “normal-seeming” serial killer who abducts innocent victims and attempts to turn them into his zombie slaves.
But if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea the versatile Connington will flex his comic muscles for you as an upscale Society investment banker trying to discover the meaning of life in the short film The Thornhills of Park Avenue. Written by Connington the film co-stars Juliette Bennett and Anthony Haden-Guest.
“A young Park Avenue couple invites a British writer and cartoonist for cocktails. Quips and satire ensue. The story is: what is more important: money or happiness? The answer? Cocktails, apparently…”
The Thornhills of Park Avenue will be screened at the Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival (Sept 15 – 18 / Concord New Hampsire) on September 17th.
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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 Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on September 13, 2011
Immediately arresting in this production of Deirdre Kinahan‘s new play, BogBoy, at the Irish Arts Center, is Ciaran Bagnall‘s simple stage set of several scrim panels reflecting projected landscape imagery. The mood is heavy and still – darkening flat vistas of bogland stretching off to meet a cloud-crowded sky broken only in places to admit thin fissures of light. The colors shift slowly between sombre browns and blues, with occasional russet veins of sunset. Amorphous, echoing sounds groan forth creating a mournful, timeless feeling. This is a bruised place. Into this scene walks Brigit, a woman as bruised as the landscape, but prickly, defensive, and verbally alert. She is a Dublin rehab patient, a former heroin addict and prostitute, transported to the rural remoteness of Navan, Co. Meath, and initially utterly at sea in this natural wilderness. Warily she begins an acquaintanceship with her neighbor Hughie Doyle, a solitary, slow-thinking bachelor who seems to her as foreign as the landscape. Gradually we watch as their sad stories unfurl.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 11, 2011
If you were a bird and your entire kingdom consisted of the tiny cage where you slept, ate, drank, preened and otherwise just hung out you’d feel really threatened if another bird came along and tried to knock you off your perch, as it were. Let alone another bird with habits, styles and affectations much different from yours. If you were that bird, you’d feel threatened. Annoyed. Face it, you’d be Flocked.
Flocked, now playing at the Brick Theatre as part of Amuse Bouche A NY Clown Theatre Festival Hors d’Oeuvre showcases a very tiny world – a birdcage – and a very big theme: control.
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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 30, 2011
Monologues! Comedy! Improv! Ukulele music!
Friday, Sept. 2nd, 7-9pm
Hosted by award-winning playwright Monica Bauer (Outstanding New Script, MITF 2008; nominee writing for Best Solo Show, Planet Connections 2010; finalist, Heideman Award).
Performers include:
- playwright Monica Bauer performing the Breast Pride Movement from the Diet Monologues
- John Fico performing a monologue from his critically acclaimed performance in Made for Each Other
- Duncan Pflaster, master of the Broadway Ukulele
- and others!
Admission $8 (includes one free raffle ticket for a $100 Amazon.com Gift Certificate that will be raffled off that evening!)
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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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