Category: Off-Off Broadway Reviews

2018 feels like a good time to experience Aladdin Ullah’s Dishwasher Dreams.  In a world which is vilifying immigrants on a daily basis, it’s refreshing to actually listen to the story from the other side.  Mr. Ullah tells his family’s tale in the form of a comic monologue since he has had a career in stand-up.  At eighteen years old his father arrived from Bangladesh, settled in Spanish Harlem and got a job as a dishwasher.  Near the end of this very personal and introspective play, he notes that America “was the place you can come to and feel welcome.  I wonder if anyone feels that way today.”

Dishwasher Dreams is nothing if not timely.  The stories recounted here are quite personal, often funny and occasionally very moving.  The tears well up in Mr. Ullah’s eyes a number of times which makes his heartfelt delivery more poignant than merely listening to the words.  His mother is a particular character to enjoy.  She doesn’t quite understand his infatuation with the Yankees, noting “why would I want to see men in pajamas playing with sticks?”  As portrayed here, she is a classic immigrant mom like many you have seen or heard about before, full of quips and full of love.

Like many Americans, she struggles with race when one of her sons dates a black woman.  She learns English from Sesame Street.  Every Sunday the family travels downtown to watch Bollywood films to remember who they are despite the boys wanting to see Jaws or Star Wars.  Familiar terrain indeed but nicely executed with a reflective lens that the passage of time allows.

Dishwasher Dreams does need some fine tuning and nuanced direction but the backbone is strong.  Since the structure is largely a comic monologue, Mr. Ullah speeds through many sections like we are in a nightclub.  That may work for the punchlines but not when he is performing the many people we are fortunate to meet.  The pace makes certain sections confusing to follow.  A slower delivery with more delineation of voice or physical mannerisms would greatly enhance the storytelling.

Mr. Ullah’s father was a dishwasher who knew Sidney Poitier as “Sid,”  another immigrant dishwasher before he became an enormously famous Oscar winning Hollywood star.  His father’s dreams were not nearly as big or perhaps they were.  To live a life free.  To raise a family and be happy.  To dream.  Why is that so hard for so many people to empathize with?

www.castillo.org

High Noon is my third visit to the Axis Company after Dead End and Evening – 1910.  This off-off Broadway venue is a small yet visually expansive space in a basement in Greenwich Village.  The set is all white – the floors, the wood walls, the saloon bar and a platform all the way to the left.  The actors emerge wearing superb costumes (Karl Ruckdeschel) in various shades of black and dark gray.  A famous Academy Award winning western film is reinterpreted for the stage.  The tension created is riveting.

The story is about a retiring marshal who marries at the start of the play.  The townsfolk all hear that a convicted man is out of jail and returning to the town presumably to extract revenge on the marshal.  The train is scheduled to arrive at noon.  The locale is still a territory in the United States but lawlessness has been brought under control.  The economy is wobbly and citizens worry about the impact of a devastating event.  Concerns also mount from those who have real reason to fear the train’s arrival, like an ex-girlfriend who later became the marshal’s ex.  Rather than retire and leave town with his new bride, the marshal decides to stay and face the impending gun battle.

The actors are on stage for the entire performance which lasts a little more than an hour.  There is continual movement in which the characters ebb and flow into their scenes.  The dialogue is crisp and appropriately clipped and melodramatic for the western genre.  Directed by the company’s Artistic Director Randy Sharp, the impact is stylized, true to the spirit of a western yet somehow a dreamscape.  Imagine a town where its people are all armed and self-protection is the rule of law.  The DNA of the Second Amendment.

Tension builds from the storyline but is theatrically enhanced by the background music and sound effects by Blondie’s Paul Carbonara.  The actors evoke their characters varying degrees of nerves fraying amid the rising apprehension as noon approaches.  What will happen?  You will be grandly entertained and look forward to the next Axis production.  This troupe has great style.  I left the theater feeling rather tense.  And impressed.

www.axiscompany.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/deadend

A young man dreams of a career as a painter but falls in love.  Instead of pursuing his passion, he marries and becomes a businessman for a company that makes soap.  In his forties and looking back, he realizes as an individual he was an “I.”  As a married man, however, it’s always “You and I.”  What makes for a happy life?  A fulfilling one?  What are the compromises and benefits associated with signing on to “you and I”?

This play’s plot also revolves around their son who dreams of a career as an architect.  Like his father, he has fallen in love at a young age.  Go to Europe and study or get married?  The set up occurs early in this diverting, uncomplicated story.  Philip Barry wrote this play while he was engaged and trying to establish himself as a playwright before settling down.  The axiom “write what you know” certainly applies here.

A critical and commercial success, You and I was Mr. Barry’s first play to be produced on Broadway in 1923.  His later and more famous works include Holiday and The Philadelphia Story (written specifically for Katherine Hepburn) which were turned into Hollywood films.  You and I was also adapted into a now lost 1931 movie called “The Bargain.”

Metropolitan Playhouse explores America’s theatrical heritage to illustrate contemporary American culture.  Do you follow a path to your passions which may be less lucrative than getting a safer job in business?  That is certainly a question being addressed by young people today.  You and I explores that theme with the added fun of listening to language, mannerisms and societal hierarchies now a century old.

In a small off-off Broadway house, this company has mounted a fine, well-directed (Michael Hardart) version of this play.  The cast is quite accomplished in portraying roles from this very old play without any smell of mothballs.  Finely etched characterizations were created by Elisabeth Preston (as the mother) and Aidan Eastwood (as her son).  In particular, her chemistry with her husband (an excellent Timothy C. Goodwin) was believable and had a cool, nicely understated Nick and Nora vibe.

Caitlyn Barrett’s set design is simple and highly effective in establishing place.  The scene changes are performed by the actors in this very intimate space.  The overall result is an evening spent eavesdropping in a family’s home as they ponder the mini-dramas of the day.  I enjoyed this production of You and I immensely.  Glad to see this rarely revived play on stage and highly recommend a trip to the Metropolitan Playhouse in the East Village.  And while you are there, check out my favorite Cuban restaurant in New York City, Café Cortadito, just two blocks away!

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org

www.cafecortadito.com

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/amarriagecontract/metropolitanplayhouse

Once in a blue moon (or should I now say red?) you take in a new work off-off Broadway and walk out of the theater wholly impressed.  Such is the feeling generated by the musical Red Emma and the Mad Monk being presented this month at The Tank.  Writer Alexis Roblan and Director Katie Lindsay co-created this original and ambitious piece composed by Teresa Lotz.  Twelve year old Addison is in her room doing the usual internet surfing and tweeting.  Addison is also a history buff.  The show is set in the United States in 2017 “where the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries exist side by side, online and in a theatre.”

Addison has an imaginary best friend in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin who elevated himself from poverty to holy man.  Or is that charlatan?  This monk was a healer to the last tsar’s son prior to the Russian revolution and all of their assassinations.  She is also obsessed with Emma Goldman, the writer who was a pivotal figure in the development of anarchist political philosophy in the early 20th century.  Along with her lover Sasha Berkman, they planned but failed to murder steel industrialist and union-buster Henry Clay Frick in support of the worker’s movement.

Incidentally, Addison also has her own young person’s life crises to manage.  What emerges from this richly conceived phantasmagoria is much more than a history lesson juxtaposed with school age internet drama.  Red Emma and the Mad Monk confronts the politics, trials and tribulations that lead to anarchies both large and small.  This musical contemplates the internet, our news cycle and oppressive systems of government by imaginatively combining and contrasting these stories.  Complexity is embraced and analyzed.  What is the best way to make change?  Is there a best way?

Now for the cherry on top.  Surprisingly, Red Emma is funny and very entertaining.  Drita Kabashi’s performance as Rasputin is light as air yet mystical and substantial, filled with thoughtful, sometimes hilarious observations on life.  (Her eyes should have a curtain call.)  As Addison, Maybe Burke believably grounds this story so we experience thought processes from a twelve year old’s point of view.  In multiple important roles, Jonathan Randell Silver was spot on in each characterization.

The creative team did truly inspired work in mounting this production, notably the set design by Diggle.  When you enter the theater, you immediately feel that you are in a young person’s bedroom.  The lighting, costumes and, in particular, the direction of Red Emma and the Mad Monk inventively showcased this unique musical.  So many topical themes and ideas poured from the stage.  America is and may always have been the promise of freedom but that doesn’t necessarily happen in practical terms.  Some impressive new voices in theater worth a serious listen.

www.thetanknyc.org