volume of smoke

volume of smoke may not be as focused on a hot topic as The Laramie Project, but that's fine: the center of this tragic is a physically hot topic, an "Awful Conflagration of the Theatre" that killed seventy people in 1811, and the emotional core is a molten-smooth assemblage of declamations from the dead. This show takes the wry, honest moments that I liked most from, say, The Burning Cities Project and confronts tragedy dead on with ash-blackened imagery and the beautifully squeamish language. Did I mention that the six-person ensemble is fantastic, particularly Abe Goldfarb and Daryl Lathon, who really seem to love everything about theater? Or that Isaac Butler (who has expanded a lot since I saw The Amulet) is a technically precise, physically gripping director? Clay McLeod Chapman has a distinctly haunting prose that brings to mind a more eloquent Chuck Palahniuk, and I recommend this play very highly to everyone.

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The Producers

photo: Paul Kolnik

It seems right that the most-Tony'd-ever musical is going out with John Treacy Egan and Hunter Foster in the leads: not only are they an ideal team, they can also probably each claim to have played these roles on Broadway (Max and Leo, respectively) at least nearly as often than anyone else during the show's six year run. (Egan also put in time as Franz and as Roger DeBris: is that some kind of a first, three principal roles in the same production?) Besides a believable rapport that gives the show warmth, and drum-tight comic timing that keeps the show firing away at a machine-gun clip, the Egan-Foster pairing offers the pleasure of what is probably the best-sung Producers that's ever been. After Tony Danza's brief stint it's great to see the show once again working on all levels in its last weeks; too bad the critics were dispatched some weeks ago to see that bit of stunt casting, when it wasn't.

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.

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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]