EAST TO EDINBURGH: Inside Private Lives

I see a lot of potential in Kristin Stone's distillation of character acting; she's transformed the act of monologuing into a rare chance for intimate communion with the audience. However, her show, Inside Private Lives, depends entirely upon whether or not the audience takes the cast up on this challenge, which in turn depends on whether or not the audience has heard of such infamous (but dated) characters as Christine Jorgensen, Bobby Sands, Tokyo Rose, Elia Kazan, and Wallis Simpson. Those are just the five from the matinée I attended; there's another five in repertoire for the rest of this run. What I'm missing from the show is the drama: while they need something from the audience, they aren't often given a hard time getting it, which leads to little more than a recounting of facts. The passion is there, but it's a tiny, flickering flame, one that needs sparks and support from the audience, like no show ever before.

[Read on]

Surface To Air

photo: Ric Kallaher

A family awaits the cremated remains of the eldest son, who died over thirty years ago in the Vietnam War. The standard issue arguments are trotted out, with each cardboard character too neatly assigned a set of beliefs: dad still believes that we were fighting the good fight in Vietnam (if he didn't, then his son's death was for nothing) and mom is still living in the past (so that she doesn't have to face the present). This play is the opposite of revelatory - it feels derived from a hundred plays and movies we've already seen - and the writing is so formulaic that I didn't believe a single minute of it. That's saying a lot, considering that the cast is headed up by the likes of Lois Smith and Larry Bryggman, two indisputable treasures of the stage who can usually make me believe anything.

Also blogged by: [Aaron]

Vrooommm! A NASComedy

Another not-to-be-reviewed new play at SPF.

EAST TO EDINBURGH: "An Age of Angels"

Before he heads to Edinburgh, Mark Soper needs to learn to sell himself a little better. His play, An Age of Angels is populated with so many eccentrics (child-watching perverts, pant-shitting nerds, alien-obsessed loners) that it's hard to get past the foulness to enjoy his characters. The thin, multi-threaded plot doesn't help either: the show begins with the sounds of children playing, then sirens, then bullets, but it isn't until the fifth character (an ignorant urban hick) talks about trying to get a "goddamn soccer ball" that we understand what's going on. The point of the play is to show how the little things add up, but the lack of self-contained arcs for the narrators makes them less than tangential: they're phantasmal.

Soper's other issue is his language: would even the smartest dweeb at an elementary school use the phrase "perfect Pynchonesque parabola" to describe the arc of a soccer ball he's reflexively kicked? His dumb characters work because they leave off with the staccato rhythms and beat-poetry descriptions of minutia, but the show all too often seems like a continuation of more of the same. It's also, quite frankly, terrible for a few of the segments: Soper looks and sounds like a combination of Robin Williams and Lee Tergesen, but without the energy or sincerity of either. As a director and producer, Ines Wurth should've given her star a transfusion of coffee: this would've cleaned up the stalling costume-changing transitions. Still, I give Soper credit for memorizing such technically roundabout dialog, and, to the eight people who left the performance after ten minutes, you should know the show improved. (Not enough for me to recommend it, however.)

Cipher

Summer Play Festival. Can't review it. Can count it.

Surface to Air

I'm hesitant to say bad things about Surface to Air: it's the first theatrical production to grace the renovated Symphony Space. However, if their future selections are as bad as David Epstein's charmless family drama, there's little to be lost in this warning. Surface and air is all you'll find in this shamelessly exploitative play about Vietnam (i.e., letting go of the past). The plot idles as often as the ghost of the play, Rob (Mark J. Sullivan), a sullen monologist who orates every so often from a dim spotlight cast over the stage left patio. The rest of the time, he just stands there, nodding off, although who could blame him, considering how blandly James Naughton directs the rest of the cast.

Princess (Lois Smith) is a germaphobe whose spirit died when Rob crashed and went missing, thirty years ago. So it makes perfect sense for her to smear herself in Rob's ashes: well, perfect sense considering all the hard work Epstein and Naughton go through to establish her fear of people and things. After all, she sprays not just the table, but the rag she wipes it with, and then the trashcan she throws it into. It's all so artfully done. Of course Hank, Princess's husband, has it out with his children, Terri and Eddie, over the meaning of honor: why else would you reunite them? Marisa Echeverria, who plays Eddie's new, Hispanic wife, is the only spot of color here, and the play she's in has nothing to do with Vietnam. There are a few good spots between Cady Huffman (as a bossy studio executive) and Bruce Altman (as a docile documentarian), but these scenes only re-enforce how unnecessary the intrusion of Vietnam is into this play. Politics may be dramatic, but just talking about politics, without any stakes or emotional investment at all? That's worthless.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]