Author: Joe

Theater critic based in New York City. This website contains reviews "from my seat" to share my experiences and thoughts to hopefully inspire you to see a play, musical or theater company you may not have known about.
About This Reviewer - Posted on

Seclusion Smörgåsbord II

In Seclusion Smörgåsbord II, I continue my chronicle of viewing taped and live streamed theatrical presentations viewed from the seat of my couch.

Culture Clash (Still) in America (Berkeley Rep)

This troupe has been performing for decades.  In 2002, they had a program called Culture Clash in AmeriCCa based on interviews they conducted.  Culture Clash (Still) in America is an update with some added scenes reflective of current events.  The tone is incisive satire through broadly comedic skits as filtered through a Latino lens.  Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas and Herbert Següenza are all accomplished actors.  Here they showcase a wide range of skillful characterizations.

The show opens at an ICE Detention Facility where a man is being detained.  We learn that he has been separated from his daughter.  The initial tone is heavy but quickly turns to a documentary style with laughs between the two agents and the prisoner.  The people we then meet include a Miami couple in the demolition business who are being interviewed on camera.  They are hilarious as they over talk each other while baring their societal prejudices and penchant for greed.  Hurricanes are good times for the demolition business.

The parade of stereotypes include a black pastor who wonders, “How did Jesus go from looking like Osama bin Laden to Brad Pitt?”  He concludes that “white Jesus was a lie, the original fake news.”  Junior is a Nuyorican who demonstrates through dance how to tell various shades of brown-skinned people apart.  There’s also a Cuban transvestitie, two men (African, Filipino) swearing in to become citizens and a couple of ex-hippie pot smoking lesbian ladies from Fresno, California.  The jokes in this section are plentiful.  Giving granddaughter a woke Barbie.  Romancing youthful revolution: “I stood for Che Guevara and Chez Panisse.”

One of the ladies says to the other, “careful honey, you’re appropriating.”  It certainly is possible that people may view sections of this satire in that vein.  What binds this particular piece together, however, is the follow up story to the original ICE detention center.  A lawyer who works on family separations is interviewed.  The story links back to the opening scene.  He asks the unanswerable about a “country that separates children” and cages them “as punitive measures.”  The dagger is then thrust:  “Can that country still be called America?”

Performances of Culture Clash (Still) in America were interrupted by the pandemic.  This Berkeley Repertory Theater production was sharply directed by Lisa Peterson with a skillful set design by Christopher Acebo.

Bindlestiff Open Stage Variety Show:  Quarantine Edition

My first visit to this monthly inclusive hodgepodge of circus acts and bizarre curiosities was back in December, 2018.  Given our stay at home situation, these performers have taken to the internet to share their talents remotely.  Keith Nelson is once again the host who performs some of his classics between acts including the spinning top and sword swallowing.  The broadcast is also a fundraiser for these artists during this difficult time.

The acts are often experimental, in development or simply just odd.  Others are impressively professional and, like the best circus acts, fill the viewer with wonderment.  Michael Rosman welcomes us to his driveway in the “deep woods of Maryland.”  He created a new quarantined tightrope act which has been “planned but not well thought out.”  He literally and figuratively performs a tightrope walking routine above two tigers and a flaming pit of fire.

Nelson Lugo impressed with an entertaining version of the shell game.  Butch and Buttercup performed their amusing lift and balance gymnastics from an empty Brooklyn warehouse.  The heavy metal musician character embodied by Brian Bielemeier rocked the silver rings.  He dedicated the show to his six ex-wives.

There are other fine acts within this nearly two hour live stream.  Naturally there are some technical mishaps and juggling calamities along the way.  The first act presented was Magic Mike.  Think a very, very, very aged version of the Channing Tatum movie persona who presents ridiculous comedic mishaps from his home with no pants on.

Zeroboy is somewhat of a sound effects master.  This act was all over the place.  When he started singing Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” a line followed:  “you gave me COVID…”  One of our housebound family members announced, “I’m out.”  This “quarantainment” is definitely (and intentionally) a mixed bag but can be an amusing diversion during happy hour.  They are planning to air this series weekly to enable these performers to continue creating their art and, hopefully, collect a few donations as well.

Bindlestiff Open Stage Variety Show:  Quarantine Edition is available on the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Facebook home page and their You Tube channel.

youtube/bindlestiff/april6

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/bindlestiff/december2018

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Seclusion Smörgåsbord I

The PR and theater company emails, Facebook ads and Twitter posts have led to an wide array of streaming theatrical events.  Some are live and some are taped.  Some are new and some are older.  On Saturday, April 4th, I decided to take in three wildly different performances.  I’m recording them here for prosperity and, more importantly, to keep my sanity in check.  The first entry in this series has been named Seclusion Smörgåsbord I.

Brittain Ashford @ 54 Below at Home

Ms. Ashford has a haunting voice which I first heard when she appeared in the excellent musical Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.  This nightclub aired her 2017 solo debut which featured some original music and favorite covers.  She played an array of instruments along with the onstage band.  Her voice is unusual and really captivating.  The show was relaxed and tuneful, perfect for adding calmness in these nervous days.  Future 54 Below at Home events can be found here:

www.54below.com/54belowathome

50in50: Letters to Our Sons

Based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, The Billie Holiday Theatre hosted a live Facebook presentation.  Ten actresses from around the country read stories by 50 Black women writers from across the world.  The curatorial connectivity was to “consider both the world they inherited and the one they’d like to create.”  Directed by Indira Etwaroo, the show was rich with stirring, vivid and emotional prose.

Here are a few gems I managed to jot down.  “God is nestled in the rhythm of your heartbeats.”  He “loved me like he was drowning.”  Someone was “dressed in the color bittersweet.”  Anger surfaced in various moments to effectively communicate a conviction or an injustice.  “When asking a great leader why they hurt people, they answer because I can.”

The show segued from performer to performer quickly.  As a result, there was a satisfying variety of voices and writing styles to absorb.  The speed of the transitions encouraged emotions to build and register strongly.  Occasional musical interludes from Maritri Garrett on the piano added beauty and a chance for reflective pauses.

All of the performers were compelling.  Kendra Holloway and Phyllis Yvonne Stickney were especially memorable for me.  As a Facebook live presentation, the audience was able to add comments throughout.  “Phyllis has more voices than a cat has lives.”  The group participation and reviews from all of our seats infused the entire piece with a tremendous sense of communal bonding.  “This is food for weary and worn souls.”  One of my favorite expressions of joy: “So soulful and so soulfilled – our ancestry thanks you.”

50in50 is available to view on the Facebook page of The Billie Holiday Theatre.

www.facebook.com/billiehollidaytheatre

Werq the World Live Stream

For my final show Saturday, I jarringly transitioned from 50in50 to a benefit event for out-of-work performers in the entertainment industry.  Nine drag show queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race performed mostly newly recorded videos while practicing social distancing in the process.  The evening was hosted by Bianca Del Rio (from Los Angeles) and Lady Bunny (from New York) who noted that “social distancing is easy when everyone hates you.”

Most of the queens had messages to deliver along with their performances, notably about staying home.  The first two segments featuring Gigi Goode and Asia O’Hara were my favorites.  I was also impressed by Aquaria’s entirely self-made music video from seclusion.  The hosts devolved into bawdy and raunchy humor which often works with a live drunken audience.  Here, with time delays between the two coasts, the jokes felt forced and mostly landed with a thud.

Werq the World Live Stream is available for a fee.  Portions of the proceeds (and all of the tips) are going to those performers who signed up on their website to receive financial support during this difficult period.

www.vossevents.com/werqtheworldlivestream

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Bright Lights, Big City (54 Below at Home)

Theater district nightclub 54 Below has programmed an at home series for our entertainment during this pandemic.  Most events are cabarets, showcasing great talents.  Others like Bright Lights, Big City revisit shows with appealing casts.  This particular musical opened Off-Broadway in 1999 to mixed to negative reviews.  This twentieth anniversary concert staging confirms those earlier impressions.

I imagine there was a great deal of anticipation for this show back then.  The source material was Jay McInerney’s 1984 collosal hit novel of the same name.  New York Theater Workshop produced the enormously successful Rent a few years earlier.  Most of the same creative team was on board for this show.  Paul Scott Goodman wrote the book, music and lyrics for this show.  The feel is rock and pop with some bad lyrics.  Very bad.

What is nice about this rendition is the cast’s vocals are strong so the songs get a chance to shine.  This is a concert version so much of the book is skipped.  The story is essentially about a young man who wants to be a writer and is currently working as a fact checker at a magazine.  He discovers the Reagan era party world of drugs, sex and other excesses in New York City.  Things go downhill but redemption comes when he sees a new reality.

The opening number is “Bright Lights, Big City.”  The tone is set quickly and awkwardly.  “You got any blow? / Is Stevie Wonder blind?”  The writer loved this type of quip.   A later song contains: “Do you have a smoke? / Can Bob Hope tell a joke?”  Followed by “Bob who?”  A character in the opening number is named Drug Girl.  She loves “drugs and everything they do.”

The second song is “Back in the City.”  Both opening tunes have two reprises as does the best song in the show, “Brother.”  The lead character Jamie (Matt Doyle) has a brother named Michael (Danny Harris Kornfeld) who is struggling and being ignored after caring for the death of their mother.  Both performers effectively carried that emotional story arc.

In “Sunday Morning 6AM” a dead girl last seen in Washington Square Park sings as the late night partying comes to an end.  Another character named Coma Baby has a song I never need to hear again.  Jamie’s wife leaves him and goes to Paris leading to the song, “I Hate the French.”  The rhyme will be “stench.”  He’d rather tea and Judy Densch.  Not kidding.  Here’s another doozy:  “It isn’t that compelling checking other people’s spelling.”

Coma Baby later returns with a song called Missing.  The worst rhyme of all is in the reasonably decent song “Kindness.”  Jamie’s new girlfriend Vicki (Christy Altomare) rhymes “like” with “psyche,” as in human psyche but pronounces it without the second syllable.  I’m currently reading Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat in which he dissects his own and other’s lyrics.  I’ve learned so much about rhyming conventions that perhaps I am more attuned now.  To be fair, however, those watching with me did not hear anything they enjoyed.

Without the book it was hard to make sense of some of the hallucination scenes like “Camera Wall” where dead girl comes back for a group number.  This musical is very period specific.  I did laugh (both with and at) the line “monstrous events are scheduled for tonight with Euro trash so nice and soft.”  That felt true to the dialog of that era.

Bright Lights, Big City never went anywhere and it is obvious why.  I enjoyed this short visit (1:15) and the performers who were quite good.

www.54below.com

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Podcast Episode 29

Podcast Episode 29 is now live.  Pick your favorite service provider through these links:  iTunes  Spotify  Stitcher  Google Podcast and Buzzsprout.

Plays and musicals reviewed before the coronavirus isolation began.  Plus two virtual pieces.  One a podcast of a new musical with the timeliest of titles: “Monotony: The Musical.”  Also, the beginning of a new online series called CyberTank.

I hope you enjoy the March 2020 Podcast.  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.  Please send any thoughts to this email: theaterreviewsfrommyseat@comcast.net.

About This Reviewer - Posted on

How Do We Choose Community Over Despair? (CyberTank Episode 1)

With all of the theaters closed, more and more websites and theater companies are taking their works online.  Some are free and some have paid subscriptions.  I frequently attend productions at The Tank, an Off-Off Broadway arts incubator.  They have just started a weekly series called CyberTank.  The first episode is appropriately themed How Do We Choose Community Over Despair?

Christian Roberson is the host.  He also submitted a documentary style hip hop video about art and racism.  The mood is very casual and apologetic as the team fumbles through the early stages of this venture.  I found myself inspired by each contributors’ passion to share feelings and art during this time of isolation.  The experiment in process is to create an e-home for e-merging artists.  Like The Tank itself, the range covers many disciplines.

Kev Berry just lost his job in a restaurant.  He has begun writing a document called “For the Sake of Heaven.”  The plan is to “capture this thing” on a day-to-day basis.  He then reads his entry from Day 2 called “Adjustments and Curry.”  Iveth Otero filmed a short belly dancing video.  The mood was dreamlike and gauzily lit.

Suzelle Palacios, who I recently saw in Birthday in the Bronx, followed with a sonnet.  She also implored artists to find ways to express their art.  She suggests trying something you haven’t done before.  The encouragement of expression drives the feeling of community evident throughout this episode.

Emery Schaffer presented a taped segment from his play A My Name is Allison.  Three friends have a game night and Allison comes to one of them.  She’s a doozy.  On a monthly basis, Ayun-Halliday hosts Necromancers of the Public Domain.  This program takes an old book from the New York Public Library and creates a one night low budget variety show.  This month’s book was 1921’s New York: The Nation’s Metropolis.  She tells us, “so I wrote this yesterday at 5:00.”  A tune follows with pictures and humor.

Ran Xia was inspired to take an eighteen day train trip, talk to strangers and create a travelogue.  In her segment, storytelling is set to a piano accompaniment.  Nikki Knupp follows with a transgender themed pop song and a fun homemade music video.  The opening line is memorable:  “Is who you are reflected in a stranger’s eyes?”

As we can never truly escape the abominations of the White House occupants, a section from The Melania Trump Road Show is played.  Lauren LoGiudice portrays the first lady.  The segment is titled Fashion Police of Politics.  “Shame on him for those eyebrows” made me laugh out loud.  Poet Mike Fracentese came next.  He began a bimonthly poetry reading series at the Tank.  The third show was cancelled due to the virus.  He shares his poem about climate change.

Constantine Jones has written a manuscript called The Gut.  It is one long poem separated into distinct movements.  Three selections highlight his project and you feel drawn into his creative process and thoughts.  “Slide Show” particularly stood out for me with the promising opening, “all the things I’d like to be.”  Finally, Julia Knobloch concluded the episode with three recently written poems.  Her themes were the dark legacy of the Nazi’s, getting older and the search for a place which bore the title, “Los Angeles.”

Mr. Roberson reminds viewers that The Tank (like all smaller non-profits) will be struggling financially through this period.  Donations are encouraged.  The Venmo accounts for most of the artists are also noted in the upper left hand of the video.  If you enjoy a performance, a tip can be easily shared from your seat.  I look forward to the next batch of experimentation and sharing.

The Tank is a Off-Off Broadway theater and arts incubator which typically puts on 1,000 shows annually working with over 2,500 artists across many disciplines.  New episodes are scheduled to go live on Tuesdays at 4:00pm eastern.

www.thetanknyc.org/cybertank

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Monotony: The Musical (Podcast)

Avid theatergoers who are sequestered at home amidst the coronavirus crisis may find themselves bored.  Along comes an uncannily well-timed new show that bears the name Monotony: The Musical.  Unlike some of the other theatrical streaming events popping up every day, this one will be released as a podcast on April 15th.

Sarah Luery wrote the book and lyrics for this show.  While working in an office in 2008, she jotted down her frustration.  “This monotony will be the death of me” is the opening line for the song “Death of Me.”  The setting is an accounting firm.  Herbert Handler III (Alden Bettencourt) is experiencing “life in a cage.”  A brown bag lunch “provides an hour’s solace at best.”  Herbert’s deceased father wanted him to be an accountant and he listened.  Ten years have passed and he’s got “a diversified 401k and nothing to retire for.”

The tone for this show is set early.  There are plenty of office jokes and clever accounting terminology weaved into this original new musical.  Phones and faxes are the “only thing that makes you know there’s something outside.”  Herbert’s best friend Marnee (Kelsey Ann Sutton) is the office manager who sings about making sure the staplers always stay packed.  Her mother (Alixandree Antoine) chastises her with ” you spend your entire day with men; no wonder you’re out of sorts.”  Monotony begins in a vein of musical comedy-lite before plunging into a melodramatic forest (albeit with a crafty – some might even say campy – structural device for its storytelling).

Herbert works for Mr. McGiver, the firm’s owner.  He has a crush on the son of his boss, a comic book writer named Theo (Jon Gibson).  It is easy to guess that father and son are at odds over this career choice.  “The Son You Need” contains the line “you are an asset that I appreciate despite the cost.”  I have to admit I heard the influence of “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton in that melody.  Remembering Jonathan Groff stopping the show as King George III brought a smile to my face.  We all need that now.

There is even a number called “The Accountant’s Dance.”  Since this is a podcast, you will have to choreograph that one in your head.  Counting is involved such as “one foot in, one foot out.”  An even better idea is to click the link below.  Watch the original “Turkey Lurkey Time” from Promises, Promises to glimpse an office party gone wild, 1960’s style.

Monotony has seven episodes which average twenty to twenty-five minutes long.  After leaving the office in the first episode, the trials and tribulations of its appealing young characters take center stage.  Herbert oversleeps one morning and sings “I’m Late” with brass accompaniment that recalls theme songs from old James Bond films.  Many tunes become dirges such as “Woe is Me.”  If you listen closely, however, some lyrics are bone dry and quite funny such as “Here I am… barely existing at all / Like a 5:00 shadow or a urinal stall.”

This musical continues headfirst into late twenties/early thirties angst.  Career dissatisfaction.  Divorce, both parents and children.  Mom’s new boyfriend who happens to be daughter’s co-worker.  Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich adoration.  A very sweetly rendered gay romance.  Some ponderous philosophical musings including this proclamation:  “I give myself permission to stop living for others.”

What is very effective in Monotony is the use of an unusual narrator to add a documentary flare and some welcome humor.   That part is well-voiced by Ted Macofsky who also doubles as the boss.  Herbert’s relationship with his dead father is nicely developed with some thoughtful emotional twists emerging from the overly heavy drama.  There are stock characters populating this musical for sure.  As played by Ahamed Weinberg, the smallish role of Bode somehow managed to make me laugh out loud despite the recognizable broad caricature.

Monotony is an old-fashioned musical targeted to a younger audience.  When it tips into absurdity and surprises, the show is at its most interesting.  Jared Chance Taylor’s music is often pleasant but the accompanying vocals are, to be honest, very mixed in execution.  While millions of us sit at home with a depressingly escalating virus all around us, a little Monotony might be just what the doctor ordered.  Take a chance and see if you agree with the observations from my seat.

Monotony: The Musical will release its podcast on April 15, 2020 and a link can be found on its website.

www.monotonythemusical.com

youtube/turkeylurkeytime

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Veinticinco: a myth of the brain (The Tank)

The brain has been studied for centuries.  Veinticinco: a myth of the brain is a performance art piece that ponders that fact in a personal way.  The brain adapts, molds and transforms.  One of the four young women says “all of this I’ve been obsessed with.  So obsessed with.”

The four lobes of the brain are covered in this meditative exploration.  The temporal lobe is in charge of language.  Cleverly, the show begins with “maybe it’s the first thing you recall that starts building a language.”  The ladies then alternate snippets of the first things that they remember as a young child.  “My turtle Leo” had a name which was based on a television program.  This detail later elicits a laugh as she recounts all her turtles up through Leo seven.  When the thoughts are sharply detailed, Veinticinco is at its most effective.

Isabella Uzcátegui created this piece in collaboration with her co-performers Sofia Figueroa, Ana Moioli and Sofia Sam.  With backgrounds from Venezuela, Brazil and Peru, the languages of their own histories are addressed.  “I have to give up a part of myself to speak English.”  The English language is considered “very chewy” and makes “my brain go slightly faster.”  Emotions are “definitely for Spanish.”  Hearing foreign languages interspersed throughout the show brings these storytellers to life.

Most of the dialogue spoken is in short segments.  There is some vivid imagery developed such as equating one’s mind to mirrors and windows.  The occipital lobe controls sight and illusions.  One complements she likes the color of another’s blue shirt.  But it’s green.  It looks blue.  “It’s yellow,” concludes a third person.  The show is also a playful study on our brains; what makes us similar and what makes us different.

Directed by Attilio Rigotti, Veinticinco flows easily between proclamations, questions, insights and movement.  The lighting design by Orsolya Szánthó is particularly fascinating in its variation and choreography.  Most of the effects are hand held by the cast.  There is a feeling of analysis and of illumination.  The staging and visual impact added a nice layer of mystery.  We know what we know and we don’t know what we don’t.

“This is my dream body” is said during the segment which covers the frontal lobe.  What followed caught me by surprise.  “Wouldn’t it be great,” we are asked, “to have a second brain…  a reserve heart… that would just drop down into place when the first one breaks?”  Memorable writing is a strength of this show.

Clocking in at forty five minutes, Veinticinco is probably long enough for now.  There is a distant, lecture-like quality to this dreamlike excursion into the brain.  I found myself wanting to know more about these women which is a good sign that they drew my attention into their vision.  If each person had a short monologue or two, that could potentially allow us to get emotionally attached to their exploration rather than primarily intellectually.

Cinquanta might be a nice follow up piece twenty five years from now.  What makes artists’ tick and want to create is usually interesting and, as is the case in this unique production, often entertaining.

The Tank is a non-profit presenter and producer serving 2,500 artists in 1,000 productions annually on their two stages.

www.thetank.org

About This Reviewer - Posted on

Two Can Play

The phrase “Two Can Play at that game” implies retaliation against an act of deception, deceit or harm.  In Trevor Rhone’s enormously satisfying comedy, two characters engage in a game of wits.  Survival is one theme.  Surviving a twenty year marriage.  Managing to live in a world which has become a gun battleground.  Poverty and joblessness are suffocating.  Dreaming for a better life in America.  Aspiring to being a woman who is more than a domesticated slave.  The flavor is Jamaican but the targets are universal.

Jim and Gloria are attempting to sleep in their Kingston home.  Gunfire is ablaze outside which is nothing new.  Elderly “Pops” is in the back room coughing.  Jim is completely paranoid.  He is nervous and on edge.  Gloria suggests he take more valium.  This play takes place in the 1970’s.  Despite the tensions and horrors of life in this lower middle income neighborhood, the tone is one hundred percent situation comedy.  The foibles and tribulations of a couple after their children have fled the coop for better pastures in America.

All three kids are now illegal immigrants there.  Son Andrew sends a letter home.  Jim is fearful about his children being caught.  “Uncle Sam is a bitch.  Him have satellite up in the sky can read number on dis house.”  Imagine how Jim’s worries would escalate with thirty years of additional and more invasive technologies.  His other son Paul has three jobs.  Dad’s reaction is “God bless America.”

Pops dies in the first scene.  Jim and Gloria hatch a plan to emigrate to the United States.  “We have to go to Uncle Sam.”  In classic comedy fashion they will bicker over money which is very tight.  Jim notes that Gloria is spending too much on “war paint” which could buy extra food.  She retorts, “Yuh still have money for yuh cigarette though.”  Gloria appears smarter and more resourceful than her domineering husband and is learning to gain power in the relationship.

Today she witnessed a man selling a puff for ten cents.  Gloria invests in a carton and negotiates with her husband.  Jim reluctantly pays $1.50 for a cigarette.  He then asks for a match.  That’ll be another ten cents.  The scene is a small one but nicely demonstrates the state of their relationship.  Through all the dangers and disappointments in their lives, they have managed to survive to this point with their classically humorous and recognizable identities.  While this Jamaican couple is drawn as a stereotype, that is clearly playwright Trevor Rhone’s intention.  These two are prototypes of similar dreamers everywhere.

There are tons of laughs written into this comedy which is being revived after its 1985 New York premiere.  Gloria’s frustrations are a common one even today.  She knows her husband is seeing someone else on Tuesday nights.  “You can’t manage your homework properly yet yuh taking on extracurricular activity.”  They are aligned, however, in escaping their increasingly embattled homeland for the promise of America.  We laugh with them due to their personalities but the urgency registers regardless of the humor.

Another satisfying layer of Two Can Play is the emergence of Gloria as a woman.  She’s discovering that her servitude needs to change.  She is no longer property to lend, lease or rent.  Her adventures in this play are thoroughly enjoyable.  When she realizes the only thing holding her marriage together is crisis, her transformation blossoms.  The play nicely builds a believable story arc despite the wildly entertaining comedic escapades.

Joyce Sylvester and Michael Rogers are terrific as Gloria and Jim.  Their chemistry has the appropriately lived-in feel.  They both know how to expertly land a joke and they each have an abundance of them.  Their oversized facial expressions are truly hilarious.  Director Clinton Turner Davis wisely turns up all the dials to showcase this play as a big and very broad comedy.  These two characters could easily carry a television series.  You love their imperfections.  You want to hear about their desires.  And, finally, you root for their ultimate success, whatever that will mean.

The New Federal Theatre production of Two Can Play is running at the Castillo Theatre through April 5, 2020.

www.allstars.org/castillo

About This Reviewer - Posted on

La Construcción del Muro (Building the Wall)

Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle, All the Way) wrote Building the Wall before Donald Trump won the presidential election.  He said, “I sensed that even during the campaign real and lasting damage had already been done to the country.”  This play was released in 2017 and has been performed in sixty cities worldwide.  Costa Rica’s Teatro Espressivo translated the play into Spanish.  La Construcción del Muro is now back on stage in New York after runs in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Spain.

Mr. Schenkkan released the play in 2017 a day before Trump threatened to paralyze the government if Congress did not clear the way for a border wall.  The work is in the genre of speculative fiction.  The story is a nightmare scenario made believable through easily drawn comparisons to history.  This view equates Trump’s rise as a symptom of problems with Western democracies where white nationalist and supremacist right-wing movements have emerged.

You are asked to enter the theater in a straight line.  The house is split into North and South with a white dividing line down the middle aisle.  Attendees are separated intentionally.  The ushers are prison guards.  On stage there are two chairs on opposite ends of a table in some sort of conference room.  A man is escorted in wearing an orange prison uniform.  He has handcuffs on and takes his seat.

Rick is awaiting trial for unspecified crimes committed during the period where he was put in charge of a detainment center in Texas.  Gloria is a professor and historian who has come to interview him and uncover the truth.  She is not sure what will come of this conversation.  In the original play, Gloria was written as African American.  In this Spanish version, she has been changed to a woman of Latina descent.  That alteration seems to add a vital element of outrage and immediacy to an incendiary topic.

Rick is a Texan who is part of the downwardly mobile lower white middle class.  He struggles to make ends meet for his wife and child.  His job in the border detainment camp is going well and he has increased responsibility.  These prisons are profit-making enterprises so there is significant pressure.  He is fiercely anti-immigration noting “if we don’t have borders, we don’t have a country.”

In Mr. Schenkkan’s imagination, the Justice Department was beginning to shut down America’s prison industrial complex but the election changed that direction.  After an attack in New York, martial law became law.  As Trump said (and this play repeats), there’s a lot of “bad hombres” out there.  Before his arrest Rick was in charge of a stadium which had been co-opted to house illegals and other undesirables.  Everything was fine, he says, before the sanitation problem.

This dystopian fantasy is not especially shocking since the imagined scenarios are grotesque exaggerations of current events.  In 2020, cages are in use at the border.  The Nazi parallels are obvious.  When the conflicting passions of these two characters finally collide, their anger and disbelief registers strongly.  If America displays how immigrants are treated, “who would want to come here now.”

That’s a bleak picture for sure.  In this production, directed by Natalia Mariño, voice-over quotes by Donald Trump heighten the plausibility of the story.  When children’s pleas on an actual 2018 tape are played, it is hard to reconcile a nation which pompously crusades itself as a model of Christianity.  A question is posed very early in the play.  What makes history change?  Is it the academics, science or people?

Rodrigo Duran and Magdalena Morales are actors from Costa Rica and Guatemala, respectively.  Their solid and nicely controlled performances highlight their character’s intense convictions.  By the play’s end, they shine a blinding spotlight on an immoral future state which doesn’t seem impossible.

The play is performed in Spanish with English supertitles.  There are quite a few distractions in the production including video projections of the interview.  Overhead lights in the conference room changed positions and brightness but I was unable to determine why.  The ideas were enough tension to hold my interest.  When leaving the theater, I wondered how audiences throughout the world digested this material.

La Construcción del Muro (Building the Wall) was written in 2016 as dystopian fiction.  From the perspective of 2020, is it?  Your observations of current events will likely inform the gradient of your answer to that question.

This Costa Rican stage adaptation, co-produced by Teatro Espressivo and Teatro LATEA, is running until March 15, 2020.

www.teatrolatea.org

www.espressivo.cr

About This Reviewer - Posted on

SEVEN SINS (Company XIV)

Can the biblical tale of Adam and Eve be told in stunning burlesque without upsetting any higher powers?  The audience didn’t seem to care while soaking up this witty, imaginative and delectably subversive version.  The devil opens the show with Sam Tinnesz’s “Play With Fire.”  The lyrics are altered to set the mood as in “my boys like to play with fire.”  As is usual for a Company XIV performance, things do indeed get hot.

Poor Adam is created but soon thereafter complains of loneliness.  A cleverly executed scene produces Adam’s rib, the key ingredient for making a woman.  (Are we really still teaching this in schools?)  Dean Martin’s “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” cheekily underscores their duet.  Costumes (Zane Pihlstrom) in this show are fantastically bawdy and sparkly.  Adam and Eve wear sheer material decorated to look like a nude body over their undergarments.  Remember, shame takes them a while to discover.  Scott Schneider and Danielle J.S. Gordon were terrific in their roles and atmospheric dances.

An elaborate snake dance ensues.  The temptation.  The bite.  The fall.  Adam and Eve are cast out of paradise.  There are seven paths to hell.  Seven deadly sins.  Now the cast wants to celebrate as we are getting to the pulsating heart of this show.  “Sinners, a toast… to hell!”  The spirit being conjured is summed up by the follow up remark.  “May your stay there be as fun as the way there.”

After a perfectly timed intermission, Austin McCormick’s burlesque extravaganza kicks into high gear.  The seven sins are thematically embraced in this ex-warehouse space.  The decor is described as Versailles decadence spliced with Prohibition era dance halls.  The room can definitely get a little smoky (for design effect) and the superlative lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew completes the visual picture.

If you’ve never seen Company XIV before, attending is a super stylized and dreamy trip back in time.  The performers greet you and are also the bartenders.  Different types of seating are available.  This show has a few large tables in the middle of the room.  These people are served food and drinks.  They also get a close up on some of the action.  There is a party-like vibe but when the lights go down, all eyes are focused on the performers and their impressive skills.

Marcy Richardson is a peacock strutting her stuff as Vanity.  If you have seen her act before, she has an knack for aerial acrobatics while singing opera.  This time she performs “L’eliser D’amore” (The Elixir of Love) by Gaetano Donizetti.  The troupe’s trademark intermingling of musical styles is typically fascinating.  Ms. Richardson returns later in the show during Greed and delivers the best routine I have ever seen by her.  That is saying a lot if you’ve been lucky enough to catch her act before.

Lust  is appropriately placed in the middle of the show.  In an ensemble piece, two men hang upside down in a full split position from the overhead lighting fixture.  This is a brief moment in the show but it informs the high level of quality.  You notice the double lyra in the air when you take your seat.  During a Jealousy scene, Troy Lingelbach and Nolan McKew are dazzling on this apparatus.

Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come to My House” concludes the Gluttony section.  A little can-can nods to the Moulin Rouge feel of this nightclub.  After all, we are told, “everywhere there’s a lot of piggies living piggy lives.”  Funny, sexy, artistic, athletic, musical, breathtaking and endlessly entertaining, SEVEN SINS is a perfect introduction to this company.  Stay far away if bare buttocks and teasing sensuality offend your delicate sensibilities.

SEVEN SINS is performed at Théâtre XIV in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  The show is running until October 31, 2020.  A delicious slice at Artichoke Pizza can also be had on the nearby corner.

www.companyxiv.com

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/nutcrackerrouge/companyXIV