The Hanging Of Razor Brown

photo: Kymm Zuckert

We never meet the title character in The Hanging Of Razor Brown - he's a "Negro" sentenced to death for stealing a horse in a small town in Florida, circa 1918. Instead our focus is on the proper, socially correct schoolteacher Madame Genevieve LeCompte, who has escorted three of her charges to witness the hanging in order to teach them a hard, insidious life lesson: know your place, and suffer it with dignity. When she holds forth about the proper place of men, women and Negroes, the play is an absorbing character study that brings to vivid life the social conventions, hypocrises and prejudices of the time. The play is less successful in its depiction of its male characters: at least two might as well be wearing placards that say "Derived from Tennessee Williams".

A longer review at New Theater Corps.

Human Error

photo: Monique Carboni

****

Atlantic Theater Stage 2

I really respond to plays about budding romances where our leads are flawed, damaged, loners with tons of baggage. Witnessing people overlook enormous red flags (inability to communicate, propensity to lie, and general douchieness) because of the hope that a happy ending just MIGHT work is a very honest and realistic point of view. There is nothing quirky or cute going on in the romance chronicled in Keith Reddin's Human Error, a new play about two researchers who ease into a relationship while examining the wreckage of a plane crash. This is a sad, well written, well performed play. I was glad I went and if the author based these characters on anyone specific I hope I don't run into them at a bar.

MITF: The Last One Left

How do you once again tell the story of the child who sacrifices her own life to care for an ailing mother? By adding pirates. But not just sea pirates, robot sea pirates -- actually, Mexican robot sea pirates. And the mother, Ruth (Deborah Johnstone), she can't just be sick, she needs to be damaged by something really ludicrous, like a falling airplane part. Next, we'll have to bring home the favorite (i.e., only) son, Danny (Marco Formosa), so that this selfless daughter, Emma (Emily Clare Zempel) can really struggle with her inner guilt. You know what? Better add a younger sister, too: you know, Anna (Maria McConville), the idealistic kind who can't wait to become a lesbian, and possibly a vegan. And let's top the whole thing off with a twisted love story . . . Eddie (John Stillwaggon) is Danny's army buddy, and when he visits, he falls for both daughters. For all the incredulity embedded above, playwright Jason Pizzarello knows what he's doing: The Last One Left is a poignant and hysterical look at things as different as the blind trust of soldiers and the blind love of romantics, with sayings as epic as "Love is a ship that always sets sail in a storm," or as odd as "I smell running water and hear burnt toast." Dev Bondarin adds a rare touch of beauty to such a story with her quiet, musical transitions, not to mention a deft hand with the comic timing of the stylized, door-slamming farce within the romance within the drama within the play.

Daguerreotype

It's not what's in a name that matters anymore: it's what's in a picture. Stephen Aubrey's Daguerreotype is a little underdeveloped, but those sections that are clear show a lot of promise for reviving historical theater and reminding us of how we once were. Some people believe photos capture a soul--I think they capture a story. Now the American Story Project just needs to decide if that story's going to be about Mathew Brady, the pioneering war photographer, or if it's going to be about the unsung Civil War.

[Read on]

Devil Land

Looks like Devil Land will be the last play I see at this year's Summer Play Festival, where the shows are (say it with me now) not open for review.

The Wikipedia Plays

****

Ars Nova

17 playwrights have been instructed to write 10 minute plays inspired by Wikipedia entries ("Troposphere", "Bill Clinton", "The Defenstration of Prague"). Fun idea! As in most short play festivals we have scenes that work extremely well and others where you're like "WTF?". Happily Ars Nova's Play Group Writers are a sassy batch of wordsmiths so aside from a couple of WTF's?! (talking laptops?? umbrella girl??), we had a pretty hysterical night at the theater (a gun toting Greenpeace volunteer? HA!). As this is was just a weekend engagement and will have already closed by the time that most of you have read this, let my endorsement lie with the youthful, edgy, relevant energy that has become Ars Nova's hallmark. You'd normally expect shit this cool (The Wikipedia Plays, At Least It's Pink, Automatic Vaudeville, Dixie's Tupperware Party, Creation Nation, etc) to be south of 14th street among all the tattoo parlors and coffee houses but there it is hunkered down deep in the heart of Hell's Kitchen (Broadway's suburbs) like a hipster oasis.