Category: Off-Off Broadway Reviews

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1923.  “Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.  Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.  Then leaf subsides to leaf.  So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.  Nothing gold can stay.”

Chad Beckim’s play of the same name similarly addresses decline.  In this case, Eden is a small town in Maine.  Grief makes its presence felt in a number of ways.  Most tragically, this family will experience its own taste of America’s opioid epidemic.  Knowing someone who’s family has experienced this first hand should have made this material resonate emotionally for me.

Clay is off to college and his long-term girlfriend Jess is not.  His mother (Mary Bacon) takes her in while he is away at school.  Jess is having difficulties at home with her new stepfather.  We hear about a lurid “underwear twirling” incident.  She manages to get a job in a chicken processing plant and things go south from there.  They chat face to face on their computers to stay connected.  You can sense their worlds are slipping apart.

Clay has a tough as nails sister named Tonya who has a neglectful baby Daddy.  Jess’ brother Jamie is an EMT in training.  He is demonstrating father skills and has joint custody of his daughter.  Both of their unseen partners are described as assholes of one sort or another.  Will the stated opposites Tonya and Jamie (who are clearly not opposites) attract?

The play is written in short episodic scenes which felt clinical.  Obviously with this subject matter, there is going to be some serious tension.  Jokes are placed bizarrely throughout.  The audience laughs as intended but any sort of dramatic momentum is derailed.  Unseen girlfriend Amanda is “as useless as a white crayon.”  Funny, yes.  Inconsequential to the plot and throws off the mood?  Most definitely.

The acting is strongest by the the two supporting siblings played by Peter Mark Kendall and Adrienne Rose Bengtsson.  There is heft and depth to their characters.  They are people stuck with bad relationships and regrettable decisions.  However, the complex individuals underneath the messy situations register loud and clear.  We feel compassion and empathy towards them.  The performances are confident with strongly drawn portraits of living, breathing survivors.  Every scene containing at least one of these two characters is the strongest parts of the play.

The more challenging acting assignments are reserved for the underwritten central roles of Jess and Clay played by Talene Monahon and Michael Richardson.  Their relationship is very basic.  I was reminded of the old after school television specials.  A very topical drama leading to a lesson to be learned.  In this case, there will be healing before going back to playing Uno.

I suppose the play may be more concerned about the collateral damage caused in families forced to confront this epidemic.  The two young people should probably be a little less bland to sell the all-consuming tension they create.  Perhaps their blandness is the point being made here.  This adversity could happen to anyone.

Nothing Gold Can Stay was efficiently directed by Shelley Butler.  Scenes and locations were clear within a one room set.  The story is a sad one and much sadder than “dropping an ice cream cone.”  Chad Beckim’s play warns of the small town dangers for a misguided, disheartened and disillusioned young American generation.  “This place is like a spider’s web.  You stay long enough, you’ll get stuck.”

Nothing Gold Can Stay is presented by Partial Comfort Productions at A.R.T. Theatres and runs though October 26, 2019.

www.art-newyork.org

The last two entries into the Flea Theater’s festival of Mac Wellman plays are the never before staged The Fez and a revival of The Sandalwood Box.  Both are short works included in the five plays produced with the theme “Perfect Catastrophes.”

The Fez was originally commissioned as a T-shirt play in 1998.  As written, the play is simply a descriptive paragraph.  Mr. Wellman’s words are often highly specific and overflowing with poetry, incisiveness and jibberish.  Sometimes in equal measure.  This one is descriptive and, yes, short enough to be printed on a shirt.

Any of the “better class of contemporary classic American or British play” begins this piece.  Mr. Wellman suggests the chosen work should be “properly inflated with moral updraft of a clear and paraphraseable kind.”  The classic chosen in this production is universally recognizable.  Rora Brodwin is a delightful exaggeration of Eliza Doolittle.

As the retelling unfolds “Something Strange” happens.  The Fez takes its place as a ceremonial object center stage.  Mystifying and silly dances seem to represent rituals of worship.  Those sections have names like “Fur-Lined Hangover.”  In the process, the staid theater of the past is shaken up, allowed to swim in its kookiness and simply be “The Fez.”  Downtown mayhem and the Surfari’s song, “Wipe Out.”

Whether or not you will be engaged will depend on your ability to be a ball of yarn to a mischievous cat.  This is, after all, a perfect cat-astrophe.  After this bouncing lunacy of theatrical excess, the mood changes but is still futuristic.  The Sandalwood Box takes place in the rain forests of South Brooklyn.

Dorothea Gloria is Marsha Gates, a student at City College.  In a voice over, she tells us that she lost her voice in 1993 as a result of an act of the Unseen.  This one’s going to be mysterious, you quickly conclude.  Indeed as she warns “if you think you cannot be so stricken, dream on.”

At a bus stop Martha meets Professor Claudia Mitchell (Ashley Morton) whose specialty is human catastrophe.  (Ah, the theme!)  What follows is a lot of words, especially from the Bus Driver (Ben Schrager).  A busy man, he says “we dream, gamble, seek, deserve a better fate than Time or Destiny, through the agency of the Unseen, allows.”  If you want to enjoy this ramble, Mr. Wellman may be saying, just get on the bus.

The Sandalwood Box of the title is where Professor Mitchell stores her collection of catastrophes.  Some will be revealed.  In accordance with a prophecy of the Unseen, 25,000 Serbian soldiers were massacred clearing the way for Turkish mastery of the region for over half a millennium.  The history of the human race is filled with disasters ruled by the dark Unseen’s id.

Many of Mac Wellman’s works are difficult to follow.  The language can be a tropically effusive thicket of imagery and random thought bubbles.  Not The Sandalwood Box.  This one is a little mysterious and playfully edgy.  Marsha has many questions as we all do.  The one that stood out for me was this one:  “Why is one person’s disaster not a catastrophe for all?”

These two plays, like everything in this festival, offer an interesting glimpse into the Wellman world.  He plays with the convention of theater.  He gets angry at the darkness of the human race.  He confuses and challenges his audience.  For a taste of this unique (and possibly acquired) taste, these two eccentric offerings are sure to both confound and entertain.  Put your fez on and really think about what the messenger is saying.  We had differing thoughts about meanings and definitely did not understand everything.  Maybe that’s the why they call these catastrophes perfect.

The Fez and The Sandalwood Box, part of the five play festival Mac Wellman:  Perfect Castastrophes, is running through November 1, 2019.  Only have time to try one?  Definitely try The Invention of Tragedy, my personal favorite, followed by Sincerity Forever.

www.theflea.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/theinventionoftragedy

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How to describe the oratorically dense, frequently hysterical and mind-buzzingly creative The Invention of Tragedy?  How does Shakespeare sound to a young child?  “Let there be a dragon of trees and washing without wash cloths bags cats wardrobes bungle things and other things traps and twerps and words and greater words of estuarial conviviality.”  My new favorite kind of conviviality, it turns out.

Originally written in 2004 and having its world premiere now, Mac Wellman’s exuberant mini-masterpiece is a refreshingly idiosyncratic theatrical experience.  When you see as much theater as I do, there is an unique joy when confronted with something this complex and wacky.  He is clearly reflecting on the dangers of groupthink and mob mentality.  His chorus repeatedly intones “and chop the chails off all cats.”  I was reminded of different clowns, the ones who chant “lock her up.”

His chorus demonstrates in words and actions a mutual reinforcement of symbols and ideas and speak.  I enforce you and you enforce me.  “When an each becomes an all, the all becomes an each.”  That “is the invention of tragedy.”  After the Hare (Susan Ly, excellent) recites this analysis, the narrator cues yet another catastrophic cat reference and there is “a tragic paws.”

One particular member of the chorus (a very winning Drita Kabashi), however, has her eyes wide open.  She’s a mischievous rebel who clearly isn’t falling in line.  The entire play is set in the auditorium of a parochial school.  At one point, this sore thumb starts chugging church wine rather than obediently reciting her lines in formation with the others.  She takes a stand to say, “I am here to announce and PROCLAIM a departure of all cats.”  Eventually she will be challenged by the one who wields an axe.  This is a play of ideas not plot but amusingly The Invention of Tragedy does embrace “all things felineckety.”

The narrator sits at an organ scoring the action with ominous and simple chords.  She drolly comments on the action, highlighting stage directions like “a pause of inappropriate dogginess.”  I was compelled to frequently watch Sarah Alice Shull perform her role.  She wrings so much subtle irony from her lines.  Her facial expressions and body language were arguably even more entertaining.

Our rebel is singled out right from the start of this play.  The chorus says about her:  “This difference is a problem.”  Mr. Wellman further elaborates that “this difference is a problem for one and all as we shall see the problem will not go away.”  This is a society which craves sameness “and chop the chails off cats.”  If you have any capacity for critical thinking, the analogies to many current events are obvious and bracing (despite having been written in 2004).

Surrounding the essential themes of this play, there are countless lines of exquisite jibberish.  There were many of us in the audience delighting in the quirky verbiage.  A big laugh greeted this enchantment:  “Goose ascending in tall aspect to please the St. Elmer’s fire.”

Mr. Wellman is not simply being silly here and looks to bond with his listening audience.  “And yes, like you perhaps, I am inclined to fight windmills because I cannot say what it is I really want to say.”  It’s not a big stretch to think about The Invention of Tragedy and today’s bizarre groupthink alliances.  Is this play any more incomprehensible than the current adoration society between fundamentalist Evangelicals, serial sexual predators and gun waving ‘Mericans?

Meghan Finn directed this stellar production.  What happens on stage is no simple feat.  The language is intricate but this outstanding cast of young women makes it look effortless.  And fun.  It really comes across as a warped school play.  Some admittedly will be baffled; it’s like sitting in the middle of a Trump rally.  You can understand the words individually.  The imbecilic mob mentality, on the other hand, may seem elusive and repulsive.

Theater that entertains this extravagantly while baring its fangs so intelligently is a treat.  Many, many decades from now, I hope this particularly horrific era will be embarrassing to a future state where differences are celebrated.  And with more gentle words.  Like Mr. Wellman, “I like the quiet idea, that rides imperceptibly through time and history, like a ripple on a pond.”  Embrace the different theatrically and pounce (like a cat!) on this one.

The Invention of Tragedy is part of the Flea Theater’s festival of five plays called Mac Wellman: Perfect Catastrophes running through November 1st.

www.theflea.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/wellman/badpennyandsincerityforever

Good intentions and sad realities come into focus in the telling of the demise of the Greenwich Village institution, St. Vincent’s Hospital.  A question is posed.  “How do we hold a memory when all the bricks are gone?”  Novenas For a Lost Hospital mashes up 160 years of vivid life serving a community from the cholera epidemic of 1849 to the HIV/AIDS crisis and 9/11.

Elizabeth Ann Seton (Kathleen Chalfant) was the first American canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.  She created the first parochial girl’s school and founded the Sisters of Charity.  From that order, four nuns from Maryland arrived in New York to start an orphanage.  A hospital to serve the poor followed with thirty beds.  From those humble beginnings grew a major city hospital.

One of the nine novenas contained in this remembrance is “the beauty of chaos.”  One neighborhood resident fondly remembers St. Vincent’s emergency room.  That’s “where you go when you need a big dose of mayhem.”  She’s played by Kelly McAndrew, a standout in multiple roles amidst a strong cast of actors.

This hospital served everyone regardless of religion and ability to pay.  In our current political climate many of our elected leaders and corporations fight to reduce providing health care to its people.  This history is definitely worth reflecting on.  Rather than sisters of charity, today we have the land of the $100 million health insurance CEO.

The structure of this play is an interconnecting fantasy of assorted doctors, nurses and patients from various ages of the hospital’s existence.  Mother Seton was “my favorite hallucination” says an AIDS patient (Ken Barnett) who survived the plague.  His choreographer boyfriend (Justin Genna) did not, noting “everyone is getting better but me.”  All of the characters from different eras pop in and out to shed light on this hospital’s history while also commenting on societal injustices.

Pierre Toussaint (Alvin Keith) is another historical figure who helps frame the period.  He was a slave from Haiti brought to New York.  Eventually freed, he became a leading black New Yorker who contributed and raised funds to help build St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  He was the first layperson buried in the crypt below the main altar.  In 1996, the church declared him “venerable,” a major step toward becoming a saint.  Helping to grow the tax-free financially lucrative business of religion might be the sarcastic (if likely accurate) interpretation.  But I digress.

Written by Cusi Cram, Novenas For a Lost Hospital similarly digresses and quite often.  Racism and genocide are addressed.  “Slaves laid the bricks in this area for land stolen from the Indians.”  On the realities of health care:  “sometimes Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again.”  Science and religion are “uneasy bedfellows.”

“It’s not like the Catholic Church is the only sexist institution.”  There are frequent jabs at a misguided America throughout.  With bipartisan neglect, we “bail out banks but not hospitals.”  The rebukes are sharp and sometimes very on point:  “late stage capitalism will literally kill us all.”  When Susan Sarandon is rebuffed twice for her comments about not taking her kids to St. Vincent’s, the message gets diluted.  Was that a personal vendetta requiring a repeated slap across the face?

There are so many reasons to celebrate and not forget what this institution meant to those in need.  When the fourth candle is lit and you realize that there are nine novenas in total, all the side tracking began to take its toll on my endurance.  Regarding surgical theater, did we really need to hear a doctor quip “free theater, the best kind”?

This production begins with a musical prologue in the courtyard of St. John’s in the Village.  The audience is then escorted around the corner to the theater.  We are encouraged to linger at old photos of the hospital through the years, cholera notices and ACT UP marches.  At the end of this play, everyone travels outside to the AIDS memorial for a solemn moment of reflection.

Novenas For a Lost Hospital is certainly a well-intentioned historical remembrance worthy of serious contemplation.  As a theatrical event, however, most sections and scenes are far too elongated.  How many times do we need to see the choreographer dance?  When this meditation hits the bulls-eye and makes a hugely pertinent point, the impact is very powerful.  Without a charitable hospital which serves the less fortunate, “where do we go the next time there is an epidemic?”  Indeed, where do we go?

The world premiere of Novenas For a Lost Hospital is being presented by Rattlestick Theater through October 13th.

www.rattlestick.org

When you are a very lucky theatergoer, a play can transport you to a different time and place and age.  Decky Does A Bronco is one such experience.  A heavy metal playground swing set is placed on a raised stage of green carpeting.  On the walls there are chalk drawings.  You can see and more importantly feel the surrounding Scottish neighborhoods in the distance.  The scenic designer is Diggle who did very memorable work last year at the Tank with Red Emma and the Mad Monk.

Aidan Marshall’s exceptional lighting design transports this tale back to a time when the summer days of young boys consisted of horseplay and vivid imaginations.  The lights may change color and freeze a moment for emphasis.  David (Cody Robinson) narrates his story of five young boys in 1983.  He describes himself as a “pathological reminiscer.”

This memoir as a play effectively tells the story of one summer which remains an unforgettable, unforgivable and unlucky moment in life.  “That’s what happens when you look back with an adult frame on things.”  David is joined by O’Neil, Barry, Chrissy and the titular Decky for daily fun at this particular playground.  The swing set challenge of bronco “fills in the gap between Star Wars and football.”

Imagine yourself at nine years old standing on a swing in the park.  Gaining momentum, you use gravity to make the swing go higher and higher.  High enough so that you can use one foot to coerce the swing to fly over the bar while you jump off.  A successful bronco completes the revolution without any personal injury.  The sound effect from the heavy chains punctuates the victory.  The trick is a dangerous combination of vandalism and sport.  And a social benchmark for the gang.  On the evening I saw Decky Does A Bronco, there was even a spectacular double performed to excited applause and an obviously proud cast!

David tells this story of these boys and their childhood exploits in the park.  Chrissy (David Gow) and Decky (Misha Osherovich) are best friends who are always fighting and competing.  They have outsized fantasies and the energy of valiant warriors.  Barry (Kennedy Kanagawa) spends the summer with his grandmother, biking to this park and trying to break his own record on each trip.

An older (thirteen) outsider named O’Neil (Graham Baker) often stops by.  He is “one of those naturally cool people with amazing sporting ability.”  He can bronco for days.  Scenes with these five kids playing and horsing around are impressively realistic and will spark memories of youth, creativity, freedom and competitiveness.  All of the adult actors have beautifully inhabited a detailed childlike persona.  The situations and assorted hijinks are vividly staged by director Ethan Nienaber.

Decky is the smaller boy and he has less skill in completing a Bronco.  Narrator David fondly recalls this particular summer and then tries to make sense of a tragic event which is hinted at from the beginning of this exceptionally fine play.  There may be a few seconds of heavy handedness in the script towards the end.  Do nine year old boys think and speak that way?

The utterly complete capturing of youthful zeal is what makes Decky Does A Bronco so thrillingly entertaining.  David notes that this time is prior to the sarcastic period.  “Before I knew it, I was being ironic in the morning.”  Amidst all of the zany fun, a specific incident occurs.  Who is to blame?  How does it impact such young lives?  How does the passage of time help to heal deep sorrow?  Do we move on with life?  Are we forever changed?

Run to see Decky Does A Bronco.  All five actors are perfect in memorably written roles.  Douglas Maxwell’s excellent play is wildly fun and deadly serious, just like life.  We’ve all said things that we regret at one point or another.  Here’s a chance to listen to a playwright come to terms with that.  I was devastated.  Bravo.

Decky Does A Bronco is running through September 21st at The Royal Family Performing Arts Space.

www.deckydoesabronco.com

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When I sat down to see The Chaos Theory of Now, I found the pre-show music selections to be quirky.  Barbara Mandrell’s “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”  Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science.”  k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving.”  Turns out the song choices were spot on.  The author and performer, Jennifer Joy Pawlitschek, grew up on a farm before becoming a science nerd and a lesbian.

Her play uses the fascinating idea of taking chaos theory to help explain what is happening in America today.  Like many of us, she is struggling to grasp how people can see the world so differently.  “My family are far right Republican, fundamentalist Christian, climate change-denying, Trump-voting creationists.”  She asks out loud, “How did that happen?”

Ms. Pawlitschek will take us on several journeys.  Widowed Joyce is struggling to save the Nebraska family farm and owns a bookstore called Isaiah 40:31 Books and Gifts.  Lesbian politician Jenny is running for office in a deeply religious Minnesota district.  Her daughter Ashley is the poster child for antifa.  Bethany lives in Atlanta persevering through an unhappy marriage while homeschooling four children.

In addition to these characters, Ms. Pawlitschek acts as the narrator.  Her thought experiment is allowed to blossom from engaging individualized stories to broader perspectives and analysis.  Her siblings all went to the same schools.  “How did I end up loving science, when most of my family became committed fundamentalists?  How can chaos theory explain this?”

Politician Jenny is a moderate democrat who believes in cutting government waste but also taking care of the less fortunate.  She’s campaigning in a place “where farming is a pre-existing condition.”  Humorous little zingers pepper this play and are endearing.  Her daughter screams her rage and calls the President a “pervy seventy year old.”  That’s the clean version.

The playwright figured out she was a lesbian in college.  “I met Dee, an androgynous heartthrob with a tragic past.”  She uses characters to demonstrate alternative points of view but does not mock them.  The outrage of youth is tempered by the rest of the women who are matured but seemingly hardened into their beliefs.  Homeschooling mom Bethany is sure end of times is coming and she is preparing her family.

These vignettes are expanded into commentary.  What is the difference between a public school education and a home schooled childhood?  Public school is filled with mixing experiences, different ideas and random events.  The home environment is much more controllable and, therefore, structurally more linear.  With the advent of computers, chaos theory was exploding the notions of complex systems.  They are non-linear, dynamic and full of contradictions.  Many people need linearity, she proposes.

The Chaos Theory of Now occasionally packages its politics into simplistic liberal treatises.  Some of the speeches are less compelling than the storytelling and analytical concepts.  She asks us to consider “are immigrants stealing our jobs or is it robots?”  In our complicated world, the answer cannot be simply a or b.  Corporate greed, slave wages overseas, changes in work ethic and so on – the culprits are many and labyrinthine.

Spontaneous reorganization can happen when destabilizing elements are added into complex systems.  Ms. Pawlitschek ponders with us.  “What new country will come of out these tumultuous times?”  What is going to emerge from this place of fear and anger?  How nice to have a personal memoir performed with exuberance and joy to help us shed some light on our world today.  The Chaos of Now is unique, personal and a rewarding experience.

As part of Theater For the New City’s Dream Up Festival, The Chaos Theory of Now is running through September 15th.

www.theaterforthenewcity.net