by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 9, 2009
I’ve been a fan of the mash-up ever since I heard that playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon during a muted Wizard of Oz creates a completely new experience. On the other hand, I’m absolutely NOT a fan of the jukebox “musicals” such as Mama Mia and Movin’ Out, because I’ve always thought it was rather cheap to take pre-existing songs and retrofit them till they trip over some sort of plot. Frankly, I’d rather just listen to Abba and Billy Joel singing the original versions.
So, when I heard about Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Porter (Created and Directed by Barbara Vann) – an almost overly-ambitious idea of taking music from Cole Porter (one of the 20th centuries wittiest, wryest, cleverest song smiths) and pairing his classic tunes with the plays of William Shakespeare - I thought “This could either go one way, or the other”. What I hadn’t bargained on was that there was a third way all together.
This review will have to be short for two reasons. One – it may go to places I don’t want to take it … and Two – after seeing pretty clearly what Act 1 (King Lear and Macbeth) had to offer, I chose not to stay for the offerings of Act 2 (Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Since all the songs were listed, I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to miss, and chose to miss it anyway.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 16, 2009
I was afraid of The Wendigo before I even got into the theatre. But not for the reasons you might think. Not because I was about to see a tale of horror, or because I’d done some research on it and the Algernon Blackwood story (upon which it was based) left me spooked. Not because I was coming off a cold and had that terrible oh-damn-what-if-I-start-coughing-during-a-suspenseful-part dread (was some actor going to break character and chew my butt out Christian Bale style ?) No – I was afraid that my delightful chat with playwright Eric Sanders a few weeks ago would some how predispose me to liking this play and not judging it critically. Well, I didn’t have to worry because that didn’t happen.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on January 28, 2009
Eric Sanders is many things: a prolific playwright, a producer, and a lover of the horror genre. With his upcoming play, The Wendigo, he takes the old tale written by Algernon Blackwood and brings it to the stage. I sat down to talk with him about his career, his upcoming play, and his thoughts on theatre.
KTL: Eric, thanks for taking some time to chat with me today. Before we get into your latest play, The Wendigo, I wanted to talk about DEWEY’S NIGHTMARE: The Library Play Challenge which was a process where people were blindfolded, set loose in a library, had to pick a book at random and then had one week to come up with a play based on the book. Your play was called Mangina. I have to ask, was it about what it sounds like it’s about?
ES: The cool thing about doing Dewey’s Nightmare is that the books were all random and very arcane, really one-of-a-kind books. I wound up getting a yearbook from a small New Jersey State School from 1982 and I had to write a play based on it. I was trying to just absorb it all … and I saw a picture of this sad looking girl, sort of looking off into the distance. On another page there was this picture of a jock. I just pictured the two of them having an end-of-year conversation about a failed relationship. The twist is that he’s a hermaphrodite.
How that came out of seeing those two photos, I don’t know. I’d be horrified if they saw the play! Not that they would ever know it was based on their pictures. So yeah, that’s what Mangina is.
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