Jump

**
Union Square Theatre

This Bruce Lee meets The Three Stooges, paper thin, karate play is the type of show that you catch while taking a break in between roller coasters at an amusement park. If you are a karate fanatic, an 11 year old, or have a breaking-boards-with-heads fetish, by all means, GO! If you are anyone or anything else, I recommend skipping it.

Frankenstein

photo: Carol Rosegg

There's another Frankenstein monster in town. This one's gym-toned in leather pants with a military crop. He looks punk rock but, like everyone else in this relentlessly somber sung-through musical, he sings mostly Wildhorn-like ballads. (Also like everyone else he wears one of those distracting head mic's that make you think he's an operator standing by to take your call). Like that other singing Frankenstein he's not so scary: this musical is so determined to capture the romantic flavor of Mary Shelley's novel that it forgets to deliver the suspense and the thrills, and while it's faithful to the main events in the novel, it isn't anywhere near as thematically interesting. What the show does have going for it (besides the cast: it must be said that the three principals act and sing the hell out of this show with intense passion and commitment) is a steady focus on the relationship between the monster and his creator. It leads to a strong, emotionally potent conclusion between the two, but the monotonous show seems to take forever to get there.

I Used to Write on Walls

Photo: Working Man’s Clothes/DARR Publicity

Some playwrights dip into the pool of odd New Yorkers, set them in a room together, and call that a play. Others actually listen to what those characters have to say. Bekah Brunstetter belongs to that latter camp, and her new play, I Used to Write on Walls is a blast to watch. With outstanding performances from Maggie Hamilton and Darcie Champagne, the play follows the hearts of several confidence-less woman as they all get lost in the surfer physique and rambling philosopher intellect of Trevor (Jeff Berg). At times, there's a little too much craziness, which co-directors Diana Basmajian and Isaac Byrne might want to look at, but for the most part, it's easy to get lost in this bi-polar comedy, a dizzying last chance for satisfaction.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

Start Up (GTA's Road Theater USA)

I like the ambition of GTA's newest German import from prolific modernist Roland Schimmelpfennig: taking the play Start Up on a sixteen city tour of America in only seven weeks. But I worry that that ambition may blunt the truisms at the heart of the play: that culture has no place in commerce, and that America has become "a country of cinematography." I also worry that Ronald Marx, an actor turned artistic director, may have bit off a bit too much in his multimedia presentation of the show: the scenes are energetic, but seem unfocused, and the home-movie looking monologues, while focused, track all over the place. Some rambling is needed, especially for a play that's half road trip, but I'd expect more from this cast and, to be honest, a little more fury from this playwright (who seems to have toned things down for when this play tours to more rural, certainly less experimental, neighborhoods). But hey, it's a start.

[Read on]

A Feminine Ending

I'll be reading closely all the reviewers who bashed Mauritius for not being realistic enough; I want to see what they'll say about A Feminine Ending, the most artificial play I've seen this year. It's artfully written by Sarah Treem, by which I mean there are some nice depictions of feminist theory (by way of the use of gender-specifying nouns) and elegant, loving descriptions of an orchestra. But the play is pure hokum, not even entertaining enough to be diverting: Amanda (Gillian Jacobs) so glibly patters with the audience that scenes seem like interruptions, and the actors all seem like they're performing, particularly Marsha Mason (the mom), who delivers her "I may be getting old but I still have a life" monologue more to the over-50 subscribers than to her partner. Treem talks a decent game, but she's far too off-topic and "feminine" (in that, according to Woolf, she likes to explore rather than get to the point), and director Blair Brown does nothing to reel her in. Amanda's crush (Joe Paulik) plays eccentric like a manic Robin Williams and both her father (Richard Masur) and fiancee (Alec Beard) go through their scenes without a hint of feeling. The only emotion in the show, in fact, takes place off stage, and even that seems completely planned and falls flat. Ms. Jacobs is perky and bright: too bad the play focuses more on her friends and family than on her fears and insecurities.

[Also blogged by: David | Patrick]

The Quantum Eye

It seems, well, deceptive to call The Quantum Eye a magic act, and I don't think that Sam Eaton - the mild-mannered mentalist who performs the show - would want to be called a magician. (It's perhaps also deceptive to say that it's a one-man show, since every bit of business requires at least one audience volunteer.) Despite some parlor tricks of the playing card variety, the "supernormal" evening is not so much a flashy sleight-of-hand entertainment. It's more a low-key (but sometimes wildly impressive) presentation of mind-teasing deceptions performed at close-range. Eaton's are not filament wire, secret compartment types of tricks. He says that the deceptions he performs in the intimate, ninety minute show can be figured out with common sense and he encourages us to use ours. For exactly that reason I can't get The Quantam Eye fully out of my head. I think I have a good idea how he was able to guess what a volunteer wrote on an index card sealed in an envelope, but most else baffled me. How was he able to get a volunteer to close her eyes and blindly spin the dial on her wristwatch and have it read the exact time that another volunteer secretly wrote down on paper?