Category: Off-Off Broadway Reviews

There are no sure bets in theater.  That’s the excitement and reality of live performance and creative risk taking.  There are, however, reliable pockets of extraordinary levels of sustained excellence.  One can presume a visit to the small Greenwich Village basement space of the Axis Company will include mind-blowing ambiance.  Last Man Club beautifully overloads the senses and transports you to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

For its twentieth anniversary season, Axis Company’s Artistic Director Randy Sharp has reprised her 2013 play.  Farmers in the praries of Texas and Oklahoma destroyed the topsoil which contained native grasses.  Without those deep rooted plants to protect the land through periods of drought and high winds, dust storms raged on for the better part of the decade.  Many escaped to find a better way of life.  John Steinbeck immortalized that migration in his magnificent book The Grapes of Wrath.

Ms. Sharp has taken a different route, telling a story of a family that decided to stick it out.  When the lights go down at the start of this play, the wind is deafening.  The composer and sound designer of many Axis productions, Paul Carbonara, creates a harsh environment through sound.  You sit there for a while to take it all in.  When the lights come up, the dust is so prevalent that you can practically smell it and taste it.

Four people remain in this house.  There are no neighbors anymore.  No one goes outside without a face covering.  Major (Jon McCormick, superb) is the man of this home, determined to see the light when it arrives at the other end of this storm.  His brother decided to leave for better pastures in California, taking all the money with him.  Saromy (Britt Genelin) and Wishful Hi (Lynn Mancinelli) are the ladies in residence.  Both dream about the picture shows.  Pogord (Spencer Aste) is healing from a broken arm.  Everyone is damaged in some way; beaten down by their never ending environmental misery.

There is activity outside the home.  Occasionally a vehicle passes by.  There will be two different visitors that drop in to check on the family.  One takes his hat off to let the dust fall, underscoring the intense conditions.  The mysterious plot revolves around these strangers and survival decisions.  Claustrophobic emotional drama is the mood.  Tension is the catalyst which drives this tale forward.

Last Man Club is not a play which tells a straightforward story.  What happens and does not happen is for the audience to decide.  This experience is best described as immersive environmental theater.  With all of the current conversations about climate change, the timing is certainly right to consider the implications of a man-made disaster.  When you leave the theater, you will have resided in that sad home and felt choked by the dust and despair.  The atmosphere is suffocating and riveting.

The six actors combine a naturalistic style with their unique character’s individualized quirkiness.  Relationship histories are hinted at.  The audience is given the opportunity to color between the lines.  This is a theater piece to experience not simply to follow a story arc.  There is a darkness looming everywhere.  Can the human spirit conjure up hope in a horrific world of doom and gloom?

www.axiscompany.org

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In the 19th century, Eliza Lynch made her notoriety when she traveled from her native Ireland and became the mistress-wife of the president of Paraguay’s son.  She bore him six children and was considered “an ambitious courtesan.”  Some believe she turned him into a bloodthirsty dictator.  Others debunk this story as war propaganda.   The theater company The Drunkard’s Wife has turned her story into “a spectacle with music.”

This show is defined by the company as a fragmented portrait.  Scenes, both real and imagined, are intended to showcase her life as an adventuress, cultural doyenne, femme fatale and microfinance pioneer.  When this show begins, her face is a bit dirty and she reminds me of Marie Antoinette.  She’s planning a party.

Why is she dirty?  Apparently she is digging a grave with her hands.  I didn’t understand that until I read the script afterwards.  She (and the playwrights) like lists.  She recites how her guest should come and what they should wear.  “You will come as a fishwife of Ghent.”  Or “a raspberry.” Or “three embarrassed laundresses.”  Pointing toward an audience member, Madame Lynch declares “you will wear a prostitute’s yellow hood.”

From this point, little can be understood.  There are scenes in a forest where someone named the Mighty Gatherer says, “those rattling neotropic insects  you hear are heliotropic — they go to sunlight.”  What does this have to do with the story?  More psychobabble and then the scene ends with “does your Madame Lynch even imagine this?”

Madame Lynch was clearly not my cup of tea.  Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin wrote and directed this play.  I mentioned earlier that they apparently like lists.  Scene 17 is “695 known birds of Paraguay.”  This is presented as a chorale for Madame Lynch and two other women.  I started to worry that they were going to name all of them.  I’m not kidding.  They listed at least two hundred very specific birds (“the drab-breasted pygmy-tyrant”).  While the recitation was creatively intertwined and impressively memorized, the point escaped me entirely.

Happily, Julia Francis Kelly was an inspiring choice to play Madame Lynch.  Her performance was a nice blend of understated camp, wide-eyed opportunist and haughty first lady.  The costumes by Ms. Sherwood (with Chelsea Collins and Nikki Luna Paz) were eye catching, vividly colored and quite memorable.  Seven members of Ballet Panambí Vera, a contemporary Paraguayan dance company, livened up the proceedings with Iliana Gauto’s exuberant (and welcome) choreography.

Towards the end of this hodgepodge of a rambling play, undercooked spectacle, dull cartoon and incoherent history lesson stuffed with pretentious dialogue, there is a fashion show.  The War of the Triple Alliance is depicted.  In a show which excelled in presenting memorable costumes, why was the fashion show so mundane?  Points about warfare and casualties were uttered but none of them mattered before moving on to the next vignette.

Madame Lynch wants to be a clever production showcasing the horrors of misguided cultural imperialism.  Perhaps the finished product is just too specifically quirky to be enjoyed from outside the creative team’s vision.  I cannot think of anyone I would send to see this show.

www.newohiotheatre.org

www.thedrunkardswife.com

When you enter the downstairs space at La Mama, multi-colored fluorescent lights illuminate a multi-level stage.  Asked to enter the theater in twos, your first stop is a few steps up to a level.  If you so choose, you can go inside the curtain to speak with the great ancestors.  The play Messiah has big ambitions, a title which promises significance and a downtown sensibility right from the start.

The jam packed story arc begins in March 1968.  FBI Director Hoover was quoted as saying that the Black Panthers were “one of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal security.”  This play has a viewpoint.  Hoover is trying to neutralize black militant groups to prevent the rise of the Messiah.

In a nightclub,  a disc jockey begins scratching.  “The scratch” functions not only to set a time and a place but also to represent distance.  Between music and time.  Between Africa and America.  Even between beats and silence.  “Scratch” and it’s 1996.  Mom offers her child encouragement: “don’t ever stop rapping.”

Now a DJ named Messiah, the plot swirls around stylistically and melodramatically.  Messiah deals with queer and trans people struggling within the “legacies of sexism and homophobia” of black nationalism.  The Star Land strip club is also a setting where a gorgeous trans performer finds an unlikely admirer, the absentee father of Messiah.

The melodrama and plot contrivances multiply.  Lines such as “I can’t go through with this” and “I can’t watch someone else die” are commonplace.  Some intensely poetic word imagery, however, is very effective:  “I can still smell the blood on the concrete.”

Crack cocaine has begun to devastate the community and Star Land is not immune as its ladies become ghosts.  The spirits of the ancestors are represented on stage by two women.  The play frequently stops to underscore how this community came to be so damaged.  The CIA was behind the contras who were “sending crack to the hoods.”  This particular controversy was real news and is used as another example of how the system represses and continues to enslave.

Writer and Director Nia O. Witherspoon definitely has a ton of topics to address about the African American and LGBTQ experience.  She confronts not only oppression from outside but also the internal problems within the community itself.  The range of subjects is exhaustively comprehensive.  Topics covered in this play include single moms, transvestites, drugs, capitalism, gender issues, police brutality, rap music expressionism, alcoholism, prostitution and more.

Messiah does need an edit.  The first act is a long 1:45.  This soap opera eventually pulls together the plot strings connecting these characters in the second act.  There are many inspired sections that feel angry and instructive.  The Black Panthers tell their story about bravery but the young people are “calling bullshit on that.”  To his absentee father he says, “you think you’re a revolutionary – well you ain’t – you’re fucking pathetic.”

A strong cast brings this vision to pulsating life.  The dual roles of Messiah and Malika add depth to the character’s journey, each aware of the importance of the other.  Painful lessons are learned.  None perhaps more damning than this nugget:  “we all have the white man’s religion inside us.”

Messiah offers up plenty to think about and is a nice start to La Mama’s month long programming reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.  I expect everyone’s personal frame of reference will shade their engagement with this material.  In her play, Ms. Witherspoon addresses the past to spark a future which shifts reality “towards creativity, justice and freedom.”  That’s a tall order.  Traveling across a few less lanes might tighten (and shorten) this unique and inspirational theatrical event.

www.lamama.org

Playwright Elise Forier Edie is often asked how much of The Pink Unicorn is true.  She answers “all of it” and “none of it.”  All of the events depicted happened to someone, including herself.  A high school refused to allow the formation of a Gay and Straight Alliance Club.  Transgender children and their families are shunned, harassed and threatened for allowing freedom of expression.

Written as a one woman confessional, Trisha Lee takes us through her unexpected journey as a mother.  Sparkton, Texas is a small town where everyone hangs the American flag on the fourth of July and goes to church on Sunday.  Her daughter decides that she wants to go to her new high school as a person without gender.  Jolene becomes Jo and adopts the pronoun “they.”

While this subject matter continues to rise in popularity, rarely does it seem as honest and generous of spirit as it is here.  As written, the play creates a believable story arc for this complicated mother/child relationship.  Alice Ripley’s heartfelt and earnest performance adds layers and layers of emotional depth.  By the end, there is a freedom expressed that is not simply obvious.  Trisha Lee is still imperfect but that’s exactly what she should be.

Along the way, Ms. Ripley (Next to Normal, Side Show) gets to wring quite a few laughs out of her observations.  Jo owns a pet tarantula that she wears on her shoulder “like a furry epaulet.”  On the male/female scale, there is Marilyn Monroe on one end and Charles Bronson on the other.  “Where I’m from, talking to the ACLU is the same thing as talking to Satan.”

Jo has been raised without her father who died in an accident.  She has an imaginary Pink Unicorn named Star Dancer.  She confuses Mom.  She’s not hiding that she’s gay.  She’s trans.  If she were drunk or pregnant, her mother would know what to do.

To Mom’s credit, she holds her pocketbook decorated with butterfly appliques and tries to understand and even learn something.  LGBTQ are “all different evidently.”  Listening to a woman walking through the uncharted foreign territory of gender neutrality and pansexuals is intended to be comforting, eye opening and, I presume, calmly reassuring and instructive to similarly perplexed parents.

In this play, a priest delivers a sermon in Trisha Lee’s church.  The author wrote it “pretty much word for word” as spoken by the pastor in her former church.  He invoked the Holocaust and likened supporters of the LGBT community to Nazis.  As a Christian woman, both author and her protagonist wrestle with lines from the Bible and the people who conveniently pick and choose which ones they believe.  Yes, it remains stunning how the religious community has completely abandoned “do not judge and you shall not be judged.”

Out of the Box Theatrics is a small company founded in 2015 dedicated to producing new and classic works from a fresh perspective in site specific locations.  The Pink Unicorn is being staged in The Episcopal Actors’ Guild, upstairs above the Church of the Transfiguration.  The guild’s history is one rich in support of the acting community and those in need.

The play would definitely benefit from a few less metaphors (especially those concerning animals).  This intimate venue is an ideal way to spend some time with Trisha Lee.  The story is timely, important, nicely told and prompts thought.  Spending more than an hour and a half enjoying Alice Ripley deliver this monologue in a room with two dozen people is the icing on a joyously hopeful rainbow cake.

www.ootbtheatrics.com

www.actorsguild.org

Marigold Page is a Tohono O’odham woman.  She is also an activist working with her tribe to resist a wall being built across their Nation.  She meets John Morales-Rio, a Native land surveyor working in the southern U.S. and Mexico.  He is smitten and charms her into a spontaneous picnic.  Why this particular career?  His family has a history of protecting their lands and ensuring that the most sacred sites are protected for generations to come.  John tells Marigold, “I feel BOUND to it.”

Writer and Director Tara Moses is a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.  American Indian Artists, Inc. (AMERINDA) works to foster intercultural understanding of Native culture.  Located in New York, this multi-arts organization is the only one of its kind in the United States.  Amidst our current political circus regarding our border with Mexico, BOUND makes us contemplate boundaries in a refreshingly interesting way.

The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was signed by Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna and James Gadsden, the U.S. Ambassador to that country.  The westward railroads were being built and the land was coveted for such development.  No one seemed to care that the new border would split this particular tribe across two different countries.

John has been hired to assist an oil company now looking to develop a pipeline through their long-bequeathed lands.  His intentions are well-meaning.  By participating in the process, perhaps the most sacred sites can be spared.  Both John and Marigold are finding it harder to get to work these days.  The additional border security adds significant delays traversing through the boundaries of their Nation.

This play fluidly alternates between the current day struggles of John and Marigold back to the conflicts experienced by White River and Tall Woman in 1853.  Both generations are played by Dylan Carusona and Elizabeth Rolston.  The characters are not deeply written but both actors manage to imbue them with charm and sense of purpose.

While a good portion of BOUND focuses on the Native American experience, Ms. Moses intersperses her story with historical reenactments.  Scenes with key historical figures such as President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of War Jefferson Davis give historical perspective.  The economic hunger of America as a young, aggressive nation hell bent on colonization is dramatized.  The oil industry’s encroachment is represented as the same story all over again.

Other scenes from today’s headlines are equally highlighted.  Snippets from television reporting are recreated such as the coverage of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s pipeline protests.  The Border Patrol repeats what we’ve all heard before:  “many of them are drug cartels, murderers and rapists.”  As the White Chorus Man, Nicholas Stauffer was especially effective in successfully inhabiting these different characterizations.

“No one is illegal on stolen land” may be the belief (or the dream) but reality seems to suggest otherwise.  Centuries of warring native tribes had to come together when a new, better armed and financed tribe came to conquer.  Capitalism is represented as an evolutionary step after tribalism.  Countries became greater than tribes.  Are we now in a period where corporations and money are becoming greater than countries?

BOUND, the play, is full of ideas.  The material itself contains fairly average dialogue but it did inspire some thoughtful contemplation.  Is the history of white European colonists in North America any different than those who drew imaginary lines and split tribes haphazardly in the Middle East?

For a very small scale play presented in an East Village basement on a shoestring budget, I felt engaged.  That is commendable.  When a cultural institution is engaged in making the world see their truth through a different lens, that is meaningful theater.  BOUND could certainly be a better play than it is today.  As a white European second generation descendant from immigrants, I have to agree that America could certainly be more compassionate than it is today.

www.theaterforthenewcity.net

www.amerinda.org

When referring to the indigenous vultures on Wall Street, the phrase “roguery is concentrated there” would seem a kinder vernacular than others I have heard.  In 1857, successful playwright Dion Boucicault’s The Poor of New York premiered.  The play begins in 1837 during the time of a financial crisis in the United States.  Based on actions made in the banking system by then President Andrew Jackson, a major recession followed which lasted into the mid-1840’s.

At the start of this very interesting artifact, Gideon Bloodgood’s bank is failing and he’s preparing to skip town.  A sea captain named Adam Fairweather is about to embark on a long journey.  He wants to deposit his family’s entire fortune for safekeeping while he is gone.  The slime ball banker fraudulently accepts his deposit to add to his coffers before he bolts to Europe.  The Captain gets wind of his imminent collapse and returns that same evening to get his life savings back.  An argument ensues and the Captain drops dead.

Act II  (and the rest of the play) is set amidst the financial crisis of 1857, twenty years later.  This one involved economic decline and the bursting of a railroad industry stock bubble.  (Isn’t it fun how we learn from our past mistakes?)  With the migration of people westward, banks were willing to loan huge sums to railroads, some of which existed only on paper.  The slavery versus abolitionist debate was heating up.  The job market in the north imploded.

The Poor of New York doesn’t delve into the financial shenanigans of mid-nineteenth century America from a national perspective.  Instead, the plot centers around one evil banker and the family he destroyed.  This is a tale of a rich man who showers his daughter with every extravagance.  Alida Bloodgood is described as having a heart “as hard and dry as a biscuit.”  As played by Alexandra O’Daly, she is delightfully haughty.

All of the poor folk in this story are well intended, benevolent souls with nary an opportunity to pull themselves out of abject poverty.  What’s worse is that they remember the days of comfort making their misfortune even more painful.  The Metropolitan Playhouse explores American theatrical heritage to illuminate contemporary culture.  The Poor of New York opens a window to the 1% as portrayed 160 years ago.

Directed and designed by Alex Roe, this production has been given an inventive staging.  I have not seen a manually operated turntable so artfully and effectively incorporated into storytelling since the Mint Theater’s 2011 production of Rachel Crothers’ A Little Journey.  This tiny off-off Broadway space becomes an office, a street, a tenement and a home.  As always with this company, entrances and exits are dramatically executed and also make sense.

Popular songs from the 1850’s are performed by the cast during scene changes which fill out thematic elements.  They include “Oh! That I Were a Man of Wealth,” “Money is a Hard Thing to Borrow” and an amusing ditty called “I Really Must Be in the Fashion.”

Although very dated in style, the play effectively hits its targets.  The actors often speak their thoughts to the audience to help move the plot along.  As performed by this solid cast, this historical period piece comes alive.  A popular hit at the time, Mr. Boucicault rewrote the details for other productions such as The Poor of Liverpool, London or Manchester.

Paul Fairweather, the sea captain’s son, seems to be the moral center of this play.  In a nicely understated way, Luke Hofmaier inhabits this man who is desperate to take care of his family while retaining his dignity.  Teresa Kelsey (Mrs. Fairweather) and Jo Vetter (Mrs. Puffy) memorably portray the older women who use kindness and generosity of spirit to survive each day.

The men have the juicier roles whether they are the good or bad guys.  David Logan Rankin plays the self-dealing Badger as an inky conniver.  He is tremendously fun to watch as his character evolves.  Bob Mackasek’s Bloodgood is a perfectly detestable banker.  The Fairweather’s family friend Jonas Puffy sells chestnuts on the street.  Beaming with a positive attitude despite the circumstances, John Lonoff is pitch perfect in the role.

As regular readers of my blog know, I tend to be partial to plays from the past especially when they are entertainingly realized.  Not everyone may be as forgiving to the random asides spoken out loud from these somewhat stock characters.  For a glimpse into America’s theatrical past and its uncanny mirror to our continuing legacy of financial malfeasance, The Poor of New York is highly recommended.

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org

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