Stay

photo: Sandra Coudert

Rattlestick
Left at intermish.

As we see an author get settled into her new life as a college professor, a fairy? angel? (something in a non-descript billowy white dress) intermittently pops up and giggles like a munchkin and then disappears. That got so annoying after a while. I also sensed another possible playwright self-character: the young, beautiful, wise beyond her years, wildly successful author character bravely carries on with her work whilst all of the people in her life constantly burst through her front door and annoy her. Was playwright Lucy Thurber writing herself? I hope not. If so, gross. At the end of the first act when the Vulcan mind melds started up I decided it was time for me to not stay.

OEDIrx

Damn. While everybody's been sitting around reviving old plays and dicking around with flaccid new ones, Anonymous Ensemble went out, took one of the oldest plays out there (Oedipus Rex) and made it one of the freshest, most original ones around. Trippy multimedia punk rock burlesque dance show and a stiltwalking emcee, OEDIrx has the unmistakably vibrant feel of youth and the unstoppable passion of inspiration. It's a testament to how impressed I was with the show that even though I couldn't make out most of the lyrics of the six Hype-inducing songs, I was having a good enough time watching all the pretty, digital images being created live (and somewhat randomly) that it didn't even matter.

[Read on]

The Pirates Of Penzance

photo: Carol Rosegg

The new City Opera production of Gilbert and Sullivan's fabulously enduring The Pirates Of Penzance isn't empty-headed: unlike many productions I've seen, this one knows that the operetta is a satire on Victorian society. During the overture, we watch a row of Victorian ladies facing a shadow box stage, on which pen and ink cut-out drawings of Victorian heads and pirate ships sail by on sticks, Monty Python style, above a silhouette of the sea. When the show proper begins, the same silhouette runs the whole length of the City Opera stage, a nifty, unobtrusive directorial touch. If only all such touches in this production were as such; there's a bit too many of them by the time (unscripted) Queen Victoria herself is onstage serving tea. And while setting this Pirates in a Victorian shadow box is terrific for bringing its satirical elements to the fore, the visual result is a bit ugly. The production also suffers from operachorusitis, the inexplicable condition that encourages singers in groups to line up on stage in iron-footed concert formation. This production springs most to giddy, silly life when its principals are front and center: especially good are Marc Kudisch, a wonderful, sexy and smooth-voiced Pirate King with delicious comic timing, Marc Jacoby, terrific as the Major General whose patter song is this production's showstopper, and Sarah Jane McMahon, a soprano previously unknown to me whose Mabel is lively, flirty and witty. She even exits with a cartwheel. I don't remember Linda Ronstadt doing that!

Talk Radio

This is one of the rare cases where I say the play just isn't as hip as the film. It's still a great performance by Liev Schrieber, but the other onstage actors are cardboard (the callers give him far more to work with). The stage version also breaks the rhythm and reality of a descent into madness with three monologues told by Barry's co-workers, directly to the audience. Everything they tell us is already apparent from Liev's excellent performance, from the jittery leg to the sultry radio voice. By the end of the show, Schrieber is rightfully a wreck, but the unamended script lacks the harder edge presented by a whirlwind of sequences in the film. It's gone from unrelenting to almost casual. I expected to be surprised more; instead I was just enthralled.

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Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Defender Of The Faith

****

Irish Repertory

Those poor Irish Repertory matinee subscribers. After being lulled into sugar coma by the wildly genteel Meet Me In St. Louis, the Rep's latest production, Defender Of The Faith, is currently jolting them awake with the force of a zap from a pair of freshly charged shock paddles. This play about family loyalty and government informers is dark, mean and violent and the only word used more than "fuck" is "cunt". Seated in that horrible side section ("punishment seats" as Patrick likes to call them) I had a clear view of much of the audience and I counted three different contingents throughout the 90 minute production demonstratively march out in contempt and the pained looks on the faces of those who stayed tended to suggest that they were in desperate need of a trolley song. Actually this turned out to be a very well acted production of a pretty damn good play. Plays that aren't for the easily offended are the plays I often like the best.

Also blogged by: [Aaron] [Patrick]

Defender of the Faith

photo: Carol Rosegg

Irish Rep's latest offering, a tense intermissionless thriller in which a small IRA cell must sniff out the informer among them, is sufficiently grim and dark: even when characters are just sitting around the kitchen table talking, there's the sensation that violence could break out at any moment. The dialogue has the ring of authenticity, the staging is lean and effective, and the cast is solid. What the play ultimately lacks is suspense (I could tell in advance where it was going to go) and a satisfying conclusion (the play's coda is a pat cop-out).

Also blogged by: [Aaron] [David]