The Hand and the Hen

I don't think there's a problem in Woken'glacier's translation of Chilean playwright Fernando Josseau's plays: it's more a problem with transitions from director Oscar A. Mendoza, and enunciations from actress Coco Silvera. The plays themselves are giddily tragic one-acts, brief but memorable for their eccentric poise (like something out of Borges). In the first, The Hand, an inspector investigates the mysterious severance of a middle-aged man's hand. The amputee (Jeffery Steven Allen) is reasonably panicked and perturbed, whereas the detective (Paul Daily) is surprised and a little irritated by the interruption of his routine: a missing hand isn't so bad as a corpse.

The lively exchanges of desperation and exasperation work well, but the momentum is constantly interrupted by lengthly blackouts. The music that plays through them, composed by Spiros Exaras, is just as rhythmic as the language, but it clashes with the text: it has its own story, and the two don't work well in tandem. As for the second play, The Hen, let's just say that it takes a certain sort of talent to turn a tale of rape, cuckoldry, and chickens into comedy. The alienating blocking puts Him (Allen) and Her (Silvera) at odds before the show even begins; the comedy is that we root for the self-assured rapist (Daily), but it's less funny when we root for him because of his victim's poor acting.

Gypsy

Photo/Ari Mintz

After hearing all the praise for Gypsy, I was expecting to drop dead of excitement watching LuPone channel all of her estimable skill into the role of Rose. Maybe I suffered from a case of overexpectations. Maybe there were too many fawning fans in the audience--a celebratory praise party--for me to enjoy the oft-interrupted performance. Maybe I was sitting too far away from the stage to appreciate the phenomenon happening on it. But I don't like to make excuses: maybe the show just wasn't as good as it was hyped up to be.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David | Patrick]

The Black Eyed

Photo Credit/Joan Marcus

New York Theater Workshop is on a roll this season: Horizon was a Beckett-like allegory on religion and faith, and The Black Eyed is a Callaghan-like parable on what will happen to our faiths if we cannot learn to understand one another. Betty Shamieh's play is controversial--it features an unrepentant suicide bomber in the afterlife and has harsh words for martyrdom--but it is written beautifully, with shades of slam poetry and Greek choruses. Though the polemic is passive, the performances are passionate, and Sam Gold's direction serves as supportive punctuation for the finely crafted message already laid bare on stage.

[Read on]

[Also blogged by: Patrick | David]
Tickets only $35.00 with code BEBLG28

MITF: "The Broken Jump"

OK, so these days, vaudeville really isn't that funny. However, watching actors like Jack Boice ham it up in a flattering homage of the old days; that's comedy. The Broken Jump isn't just a comedy, though, and that's what makes it pretty good, too. King Talent's script tells the story of an elder performer, Julius McGowen (whom he also sagaciously plays) coming to terms with the life he left when he fled the ill-repute of his ex-prostitute lover, Natalie (played by Melissa Jo Talent) to pursue an eventual Broadway act. Fifteen years later, and McGowen's a dying breed who finds a breath of fresh air in Natalie's precocious daughter, Christina Bell (Caitlin Mehner). Unfortunately, his partnership with young Milton Kean (Tony King) is threatened by his big plans for Christina, and by the aggressive politics of conservative Senator Irving Drew (Greg Homison), who'd like to ban children from the inappropriately lascivious messages of "the theater." The show bustles along, building relationships and lovingly embracing the history of vaudeville, and it's not until the abrupt, mood-changing finale that The Broken Jump appears to be broken.

The Black Eyed

photo: Joan Marcus

***
NYTW

I generally agree with Patrick's ("stunningly lyrical") and Aaron's ("finely crafted") Showdown reviews for The Black Eyed. To my recollection, I have never even seen a play solely about Palestinians, female or otherwise, and that reason alone makes this production pretty darn unique. Four Palestinian women, each with their own story loaded with struggle, pain and strife, gather in the afterlife searching for answers (it sort of reminded me of the harrowing 9 Parts Of Desire, the one woman play about Iraqi women from a couple of years ago (jeez can't those poor middle eastern women catch a break??)). My one quib, which is admittedly a shallow one, is that shortly into the play it became obvious that each woman was going to have her 2o minute platform to tell her story and the predictability of this structure was noticeably taxing on a few of the matinee subscribers as well as my ADHD self.

The Day Before Spring

I'm fairly sure I am not the target audience for the popular Musicals In Mufti series at the York. While I don't mind watching an open-book, minimally staged reading of a dated, antique musical, I need the compensatory pleasures of a great score. (That a score is merely obscure or recently rescued - as this one was, per the Times article a couple of days ago - is not enough to ring my bell, although there is obviously an appreciative audience that goes ding-dong-ding for this.) While it was fun to see Hunter Bell steal a scene or two, and the cast was thick with good singers, I decided to make my exit at intermission: none of the Lerner and Loewe songs in the first act, excepting the lilting title song, did anything for me. Also, the show's story crawled so slowly that my mind wandered from the stage to the fancy people in the audience: How does Barrett Foa get his teeth so white? Is Jeff Bowen wearing the same sandals as in this iconic pic? Where can I get the shampoo and conditioner that Susan Blackwell uses?