Category: Outside NYC Reviews

Great timing can be a fascinating thing to experience.  Our past year of pandemic social distancing has changed how we interact with each other.  Theaters have closed down.  Streaming entertainment partially filled the void.  Herding Cats has arrived at the moment when audiences are tip-toeing back into their seats.  Although Lucinda Coxon wrote her play ten years ago there is a thematic connection to right now that is hard to ignore.

Director Anthony Banks staged this piece as both an in person event from London’s Soho Theatre while live streaming to home viewers.  The production adds another level of technical prowess by transmitting one character via video link from Los Angeles.  The overall effect is expertly realized and completely supports and enhances the storytelling.

Justine (Sophie Melville) and Michael (Jassa Ahluwalia) are flatmates.  Their vibe is wholly platonic.  She comes home from work grousing about her boss as she unloads her groceries.  Dealing with him, she says, is like herding cats.  Over the course of this eerily uncomfortable play we will learn how complicated, fragile and frisky those human relationships can be.

Justine recalls inappropriate behavior from her boss which has overt sexual overtones.  Meanwhile Michael is a telephone sex worker who gets paid to engage in overt sexual overtones.  Saddo (Greg Germann) is one of his clients.  Michael acts out a little girl fantasy for him.  It is as creepy as it sounds.  Everything and everyone is off-kilter to some extent.  As a result, Justine’s self-diagnosis near the end of the play is accurate.  “Sometimes I fell like I’m holding it all up, all on my own,” she remarks.

The vignettes in this play vary from comedic to chillingly disturbing.  This has the effect of destabilizing the viewer.  At one point, I wondered to myself if Justine and Michael were doppelgangers of each other.  I was reminded of the unstable brain from Matt Ruff’s fictional novel, Set This House in Order:  A Romance of Souls.  For those who enjoy weighty introspective themes and coloring far outside the lines, Herding Cats has a lot of nuance to sink your teeth into.

The marvelous set design by Grace Smart puts a bright light on the examinations in process.  The transatlantic streaming of Saddo onto a video screen projection gives the sex chat scenes a voyeuristic ickiness that elevates the feeling of disconnectedness.  The effect is disturbing and off-putting as intended.  The three actors excel at inhabiting these vaguely drawn yet realistic souls adrift in their own rough seas of isolation.

Loneliness and anger factor mightily into these character’s psyches.  Each of them exist on wobbly legs so there never seems to be emotional stability.  The action occurs over a period of time.  Important questions are asked but not really answered.  How will these two young people chart their life’s course after this play has ended?  That question may be as hard to answer as it is to herd cats together.

The final performance of Herding Cats is scheduled for May 22, 2021 and can be accessed via Stellar Tickets website through May 24th.  The show will be rebroadcast on Stellar from June 7 through the 21st.

www.sohotheatre.com

www.stellartickets.com/herdingcats

A classic short story by Oscar Wilde is the first presentation of a new series titled Across the Pond Theatre.  This audio production joins the Open Door Playhouse Theatre (Pasadena, California) and Our Kid and Me Productions (Oxfordshire, UK).  The Canterville Ghost is a seemingly perfect choice given its American and British characters.

This humorous story is a tale of an American family who move to an English country house.  The house is haunted.  The Americans move in despite the warnings as they do not believe in ghosts.  The early goings suggest multiple paths.  Will this be a mystery and who is “playing” ghost?  Or is this truly a ghost story?

Sir Simon de Canterville is the spirit in question.  Many moons earlier he apparently murdered his wife.  Her brothers got their revenge and he was doomed to an eternal existence in this mansion.  The first sign is a mysterious bloodstain on the floor.  Bloodstains on the carpet will not do at all!

Simon is a real apparition, thankfully.  His haunting skills do not seem to faze the family and, especially, the three children.  The twins in particular are funny balls of mischievous energy.  Daughter Virginia has a more thoughtful role to play and becomes the heart and soul of the story.

This version is an adaption by Bernadette Armstrong with John and David Hunter.  The performance is about 45 minutes long and covers the bases well. Thunder, lightning and rain open the recording and set the mood.  A bloodstain recurs “redder and bloodier than ever.”  Mysterious and persistent noises continue.  Ominously “two skeleton hands” were “placed on her shoulder as she was dressing for dinner.”

The territory is definitely comedy but Mr. Wilde expands the scope to include the concepts of love and the meaning of life.  The casts wrings out the humor reasonably well.  Using both British and American actors provides a jarring authenticity to the two different perspectives.  While I was listening, I found some of the Americans speech too contemporary which took me out of the story.  Thinking afterward, the stylistic variations can be perceived as a exaggerated take on a comedy of manners brought into the present.

The Canterville Ghost is an easy diversion with good pacing to the storytelling.  Virginia, the heroine at the center of the tale, is praised for her “marvelous courage and pluck.”  Now there’s an expression which perfectly describes this character’s bearing.  Nothing is insurmountable if you have the guts and guile to face a situation and do the honorable thing.

The Canterville Ghost is now available on the company’s website.

www.opendoorplayhouse.org

A couple sits down to dinner in their small basement apartment.  He is unemployed.  She has just landed a temporary position at a tech company.  Mary cannot reveal what the job is because of a non-disclosure agreement.  She is nervous getting back into the workforce.  “It was easy to sit at home and be, like, fuck it.”  That’s the state of the union in 2021 as presented in the play Sin Eaters.

Derek doesn’t want to go back to catering but money is in short supply.  They desperately want to escape this basement dwelling.  Upstairs is a person suffering from PTSD of some sort.  These two seem to be a relatively well adjusted couple.  It’s just the lack of gainful employment keeping them down in their current state.

Mary heads to work and we learn that she is a content scrubber for an internet site.  She’s been hired to flag pornography, gore, racism, hate speech, torture and much, much more.  The images to be reviewed are relentless.  The sheer mass takes a toll on Mary’s psyche.  She doesn’t really let Derek in on the extent, only telling him the job is “challenging.”

There have been a number of recent plays which cover this terrain.  Russian Troll Farm also concerned itself with similar employees.  Sin Eaters, however, is more concerned about the impact on home than the workplace.  The material to process is grueling and thankless.  Then the unthinkable happens.  Mary sees a very disturbing video and believes a crime was committed.  Does she report it?

Bi Jean Ngo portrays Mary.  The most interesting aspect of this character is her unreliability.  She doesn’t trust him.  He doesn’t trust her either for that matter.  There are secrets looming, some of which are spelled out and others which are hinted at.  As a viewer, I trusted neither of them which kept me interested in the plot.

David M. Raine plays the everyday guy yet mysteriously unknowable Derek.  The performance is grounded in realism which nicely offsets an increasingly jarring turn to the phantasmagoric.  I cannot say the balance between realism and eerieness was right on under Matt Pfeiffer’s direction.  The ending in particular is very strong (and intensely off-putting in the best possible way).  The visual details seemed overcooked, however, so the scene lost some of its power.

I can say that the staging, variety of camera angles and easy scene changes were very well done.  Anna Moench’s play feels like a trip through a fun house. There are twists and turns. The mirrors where we see can ourselves and the images that will be distorted.  Your mind starts to play tricks on you.  Fear creeps in to join anxiety.  There’s no telling which direction that combination will take you.  That’s the edge we are asked to traverse in Sin Eaters.

Ms. Moench gently touches on the play’s themes but vivid spookiness (and revolting unseen imagery) is what drives the entertainment factor.  Many will not enjoy this play due to its content.  Some sections lag as we contemplate Mary’s evolving state of mind.  And what about Derek’s?  Evaluated as a whole unit, Sin Eaters is imperfect like its characters (and, by extension, us).  Sin Eaters is also wildly paranoid which makes you pay attention.

Sin Eaters is being presented by South Philadelphia’s Theatre Exile through February 28, 2021.

www.theatreexile.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/russiantrollfarm

How many people’s lives have been terribly impacted by the large and small disruptions caused by the global pandemic?  Neil Redfield, the writer and star of Pim’s Metamorphoses, is one of them.  He has returned to his childhood home.  He is thinking.  “Something about being in this room again.”

Originally written as a solo piece while attending Southern Methodist University in 2019, Mr. Redfield has adapted his work into a live digital performance.  Similar to Ovid’s seminal Metamorphoses, this is a poem.  It may not be an epic per se, but it is wildly ambitious in scope.  The work is clearly personal.  Setting the show in his actual childhood bedroom in the middle of a pandemic with the world closing in and abundant time to overthink anything and everything is truly inspired timing.

What was this young boy really afraid of as a child?  Why did he fear the sun failing to rise each and every morning?  Those are the questions posed at the beginning of this work.  Was the sun breaking its promise?  The viewer is soon to find out in a series of sections both fantastical and mundane.  He begins his journey falling out of a window.  The video angles were cleverly executed.

Mr. Redfield and his Director, Ann Noling, remotely conceived this production.  This performance lasts approximately ninety minutes.  One person and one long poem in a room.  Along with Scenographer Matthew Deinhart, the creative team nicely developed movement and varied locations which were effective in setting mood and changing scenes.  There’s even a little puppetry.  While the technical elements are often simple in design, they are nicely executed and well rehearsed.  The lighting effect utilized for a scene with the sun reminded me of sci-fi series from the 1950’s or 60’s.

The writing here, however, is the true star of the piece.  The poem directly speaks to the angst of a child who “really, really, really wanted to meet his  father, his real father.”  He imagines him “with an overpowering presence that no one could deny.”  It’s no small leap that he turns out to be one of the gods.  That’s how the fictional Pim connects to Ovid’s poem.  This section of the play and performance is a particular highlight.  Headphones are recommended when watching as the sound effects (Caroline Eng) enhance the storytelling.

Character transitions are always thoughtful and occasionally outstanding.  (I’ll not reveal too much here.)  A simple switch to the Scholar finds Mr. Redfield seating next to a shelf with books.  Perithemus is “a bit prickly, he had friends, who also saw the world as predictable phenomena.”  A child grows and finds his tribe.  Many are successful.  Perithemus’ storyline has his world turned upside down.  How significantly?  “He felt electricity over his skin.”

An example of the gorgeous prose:  “And Perithemus felt a firework flower swell inside his entire body and turn it into tingling lights, for the first time, he was higher than the clouds and he could see everything at once, every person who has ever kissed every other person in all of time, just for a moment – before falling slowly, blissfully back into the gravity of the supermassive object his lips has just tasted.”

Is Mr. Redfield’s performance as blissful as that kiss?  That’s a big ask.  I did enjoy and admire certain segments and characterizations more than others.  As an entire concept, however, there is beauty in the language and in the analysis of one’s place in the world and in the journey to get there.  The influence your parents had – and have – on your very existence and the way you perceive the world, for better or for worse.

Pim’s Metamorphoses captures this particular moment in time by creating a theatrical, whimsical and profound link to our socially distanced and isolated lives.  Now is as good a time as any to try this:  “He woke up as something else.”

Pim’s Metamorphoses is being performed live digitally though January 31, 2021.

www.pimsmetamorphoses.com

The alarm goes off.  You scan your horoscope.  “Hey, look at that, it says that you should keep to yourself today and limit contact with the outside world.”  Doesn’t that line seem so appropriate for our pandemic filled 2020?  While A Day was written a few years ago, Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s play has been given its English language premiere in an inventive live streamed performance.

The four main characters spend their time navigating a day in their life.  “Your horoscope tells you to be bold today.  Be bold.”  Starting at midnight, this play is structured as an hour by hour exploration of four people with different personalities.  The interesting conceit is that much of the time they narrate and comment on each other’s story.

Alphonso (Jahmar Ortiz) is the cheerful, optimistic, physically fit one.  Debs (Erica Steinhagen) tells us that he made a smoothie.  He makes a little extra for his neighbor.  Nico (Sylvie Yntema), however, sees the neighbor “with the problematic jokes” as one who “doesn’t seem like the type who finds delight in blended fruit.”  Translated by Josephine George, there are witty gems like that scattered throughout this play.

Alphonso is also a movie buff who particularly enjoys classic films.  As movies are referenced, the footnotes display on the screen.  There are a few good jokes which come from these as well.  The best parts of A Day are found in the details.  Alphonso narrates Harris’ constipation issues.  Sitting on the toilet, he plays twenty seven rounds of solitaire, winning eleven.  Alphonso then concludes, “but what would actually fill you with relief would be to relieve yourself.”

Harris (Karl Gregory) tells the spunky, obsessive Nico that she sometimes feels “like an extra in your own life.”  He elaborates further.  “Especially at work, you feel like the poor extra in the samurai movie who accidentally got kicked in the face when one of the main samurais mounted his horse.”  There’s plenty of sadness lurking amidst the quirkiness of these lives in all sorts of array and disarray.

Directed by Samuel Buggeln and Wendy Dann, this live streamed production reminded me of the opening credits for the television sitcom, The Brady Bunch.  Each person in their own box looking at the others in their boxes.  Except here they talk about the other people and also about themselves.  The four actors perform from separate green screen spaces on the stage of the State Theater in Ithaca.  The effect fit the play beautifully and was nicely realized.

Parts of A Day are a bit heavy handed.  I assume that is an intentional reflection on everyday life; our fears, our worries and our insecurities.  In certain sections, my mind wandered as the character’s tales looped around many mood changes.  The details, however, never failed to disappoint.  And there’s even a helpful cure provided for us all.  “When the boat starts to sink, we’ll take a ramen break.”

A Day will be live streamed through November 21, 2020.  Advance ticket purchases are available.

www.thecherry.org

TheaterWorks Hartford (Connecticut) and TheatreSquared (Fayetteville, Arkansas) present Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy with additional support from The Civilians (New York City).  This play was written and produced for a digital platform and performed remotely.  When the credits roll at the end, the cast list includes “volunteer tweeters.”  At this moment in the presidential election cycle, how could you not be interested?

The play opens with a bit of fantastical foreshadowing.  A wizard manages to grow trolls out of the ground.  No one notices they are magical.  The tsar summons his troll army.  He tells them that a neighboring country is choosing a new king.  The trolls need to ensure that “they choose a fool.”

Sara Gancher has written this comedy which is reflective of a major news item from the last five years.  Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election.  Ms. Gancher takes us into the world of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.  Right from the beginning, we know what this company thinks.  “Americans are idiots.”

Depending on each employee, the outlook of their job is different.  The bombastic Steve (Ian Lassiter), a disgruntled American, seems to believe they are saving the world.  Nikolai (Greg Keller) thinks what they are doing is evil, “but I want to do a good job anyway.”  Nerdy Egor (Haskell King, deadpan hilarious) previously worked in loss prevention at a WalMart in Nebraska.  He cranks out a lot of volume but is chastised for too much Nazi content in his messaging.

The situations are indeed funny.  Should you read the manual so you understand Americans?  No, since you are “better off watching House of Cards or Ru Paul’s Drag Race.”  Is this a job or is it a war?  The characters debate whether they are mongrels in the golden horde or artists who are supplying mankind’s eternal need for stories.

Ms. Gancher makes sure that her tale contains some prickly zingers which make us reflect and consider the mission.  No one growing up in the U.S.S.R. ever thought their country would end.  But it did.  “Never doubt a group of people can change the world,”  she writes.  Additionally, “Hillary kills babies in dungeon tunnels under Disney World.”

Killary Clinton jokes aside, there is a core sadness which I felt while watching this play.  People actually believe this crap.  My parents consume this horseshit by the shovelful.  Russian Troll Farm is inherently a comedy draped in an invisible cloak of horror.  The abandonment of critical thinking is one of America’s greatest failures.  No one said it more clearly than Donald Trump when he uttered, “I love the uneducated.”

Office politics and sexual misadventures also play a part in the plot.  There are tensions with the boss Ljuba, a tough, old, alley cat of a woman.  When one of her employees wants to leave, she warns, “If you don’t come back to work you might want to leave the country.”  Then she adds, “nothing personal.”  The fourth part of the play focuses on Ljuba and it is one of the highlights of a creatively structured and diversely written piece.  As Ljuba, Mia Katigbak is simply excellent.

The entire cast shines in their various characterizations.  The multi-location digital collaboration has been capably and confidently directed by Jared Mezzocchi and Elizabeth Williamson.  These actors are fully engaged with each other and not simply facing out to the streaming audience.  There are many visual details to enjoy.

Is anyone a hero or even likable?  That is not the point in a play which asks the question, “What’s the difference between Moses and Stalin?”  In the midst of another presidential campaign, our intelligence agencies are again warning about foreign government’s meddling with our democracy.  Russian Troll Farm could not be timelier.  It’s billed as a comedy – and there are indeed laughs – but they often cut more deeply.  That makes this play worth seeking out.  That also makes the voting ballot worth casting during these next few weeks.

Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy is streaming live through October 24, 2020.  After that, the play will have encore viewing on demand through November 2nd.

www.russiantrollfarm.com

Sometimes you just have to let a play wash over you.  Not try to ride the waves and steer your way through.  Just let whatever happen.  Zero Cost House is one such experience.  The oceanic volume of big picture themes and insightfully sharp details cannot be controlled by the viewer.  Toshiki Okada’s play does not let you be in control.

In 2011, this playwright began a collaboration with Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre on an adaptation of Thoreau’s seminal Walden.  Then the Fukushima meltdown happened.  Mr. Okada changed course and his resulting work is not only a nostalgic trip to a more simpler time but also a political memoir.  The Japanese government is held to account for its handling of the tragedy.  In our time of COVID-19, the parallels to any government’s inaction during a crisis make for an easy parallel to draw.

The structure of the play is loopy, twisty and bendy.  Cast members play multiple roles and share multiple parts.  Time moves forward and backward repeatedly.  Linear this is not.  Director Dan Rothenberg beautifully orchestrates all of this action and philosophizing.  The Zoom experience proves to be a perfect presentation vehicle.  If you like big, weighty themes delivered through fascinating and unusual scenes by an exceptionally strong creative team, then Zero Cost House is a must-see.

You will find deadpan humor.  Past Okada (Aigner Mizzelle), the playwright’s younger self is writing a play but doesn’t know what’s next.  Current Okada (Dito van Reigersberg), another character tells his youthful version, “this is a common problem with writer’s block.”  There is playful humor such as when Thoreau is asked if he googles himself.  The answer?  “Yeah, everyday.”

The juxtaposition of writing a play about oneself at different ages is just one of many conceits.  The younger Okada is thoroughly obsessed with Thoreau’s book and the messages of a simple life and living in nature.  The playwright brings in Kyohei Sakaguchi (Will Brill, fantastic) into this work as a modern day Thoreau (Alex Torra).  He is famous for his Zero Yen Project which involves the study of structures built at no cost, such as shanties made by the homeless.  In their own times and ways, both thinkers advocate for the simpler life.

Philosophical ideas burst forth frequently during this two hour play.  “I didn’t want to waste my life in a company to follow the rules made by society.”  Or,  “I want to be rich with time.”  Immature people need to pretend they are arrogant.  To which the playwright notes, “unfortunately I am unfathomably far away from this kind of naivete.”

Adding into this heady stew is the writer’s agent (Mary McCool), a rabbit couple (Saori Tsukada), a Björk cover band and assorted visuals.  To say this is meta doesn’t quite capture it.  It’s mega-meta.  The clarity of the storytelling is astonishing.  One character says that they are “peeling myself away from the layer of the ordinary.”  You can do the same by catching this extraordinary production.

Reflecting on the creativity required to both write and present this play was an additional bonus.  The words are laden with details worth hearing.  Watch the actors fully inhabit these people with memorable facial expressions and movement.  The presentation of visual effects and miniatures by Maiko Matsushima adds to the fun.  Missing live theater?  Zero Cost House might convince you otherwise.

Take the time to go visit Walden again or for the first time.  Breathe in the fine air.  Catch a fish for dinner.  Think.  About yourself, life and your purpose in the world.  This play stopped me in my tracks and washed over me like the tsunami which hit Japan and caused the 2011 crisis.  Watching it, I felt adrift but excited.  With a rescuer as surefooted as Mr. Okada, the times are a-changing for the better.

Pig Iron Theatre has another livestream Zoom presentation of Zero Cost House scheduled for Friday, September 25th.

www.pigiron.org