by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on April 29, 2012
There’s much more than a touch of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe in the character of Katharine Sherman‘s Christopher Marlowe in her new play, Christopher Marlowe’s Chloroform Dreams, running at the lower east side’s The Red Room. The time-and-smoke shrouded legend of the Elizabethan playwright hangs over the proceedings and propels the story all the way, and then nearly, to its end. Familiar tropes from classical mythology and fairy tale erupt everywhere in a noiresque style tale of a femme who is at once fatale and in flight. Mix in more than a strain of poetic patter and the result might be ponderous, over rich and over-reaching if it weren’t from the pen of a careful, gifted playwright who has a sharpened sense of when to call off the big thunderous themes to allow the smaller human story to breathe. Sherman is excellently served in this production by director Philip Gates who has done a great deal to let this highly theatrical, complexly structured drama flow. And flow it does, like silk, like smoke.
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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 Karen Tortora-Lee on September 28, 2010
There’s something truly wonderful about smartly written children’s stories. When you look at the enduring ones they’re not still around because they’re cute or funny or have clever titles . . . they’re still around because they teach an amazing lesson in a subtle and gentle way. So, while Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana has a title I could say over and over again and still laugh – I don’t think it’s gotten as far as it has on funny alone. In fact, after hearing what creator Croft Vaugh had to say about his play, I think the reason this show has come this far is because its creator is as extraordinary as its topic.
Beginning as solo play performed by Croft Vaughn himself, Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana was first presented as part of Six Figures Theatre Company’s Artists of Tomorrow Festival at the Westside Theatre in December 2006. From there it went to both the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2007) and the Indianapolis Fringe Festival (2008). The new 5-person version of the play was presented in 2008 as part of The Management’s Salon Reading Series. Now, audiences will be able to see the first fully staged production of the ensemble version of Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana at UNDER St. Marks.
Today Croft Vaugh tells me about the challenges of turning a solo-show into an ensemble piece, he explains how Fairy Tales are filled with parental imagery, and he gives some advice on how to transform yourself into a monkey . . .
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