Kaspar Hauser

photo: Ryan Jensen

Composer/director Elizabeth Swados' latest, at the Flea, is a sung-through adaptation of the story of Kaspar Hauser, the mysterious, wild child orphan who became a cause celebre in Germany in the 1830's. The show's book, a collaboration between Swados and Erin Courtney, shapes the story of the cruelly mistreated lad as both a tale about the fickleness of celebrity and as a metaphor for the plight of the artist, wholly succeeding at neither. Nonetheless, the 90 minute one-act never lags, and bears Swados' unmistakable artistic stamp. Despite the often melodramatic events in the story, Swados eschews the sentimental in her score: the often unrhymed lyrics, the occasional dissonance, and the persistent dark chords bring color and texture to her melodies without disabling them. Several in the cast, featuring the Flea's resident Bats, are excellent singers whose raised voices literally vibrate the seats in the small black box theatre. Although the emotional impact of the show's finale is curiously muted, and the show's heightened, stylized presentation is not for all tastes even among musical theatre fans, the show is absorbing and accomplished, also boasting a captivating lead performance by Preston Martin.

The Hefner Monologues

The Hefner Monologues both is and isn't what you might guess from the title. Yes, it's monologues; no, they're not separate or independent. Yes, it's a guy named Hefner talking about his own life; no, his stories are neither fictionalized nor gaudily embellished (at least, he is able to convince us as much). As personal tales are wont to, these include embarrassing moments, funny situations, life-changing experiences, revelations. We see Mr. Hefner in childhood, adolescence, and college years. One lesson learned: it's often the "silly little things" that make all the difference, things like finding you have a clean tissue to offer a pretty girl who's crying. Another lesson: being related to a famously unique celebrity (Mr. Hefner is a relation of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner) can be a curse, but the curse can also be lifted. Mr. Hefner is a talented actor with a big personality. While the stories may be true and unembellished, the delivery is bigger than life, often nearing (but never going over) the top. Part of the Frigid Festival, The Hefner Monologues is a modest-sized piece with a very big heart, and well worth your modest investment.

Read the full review.

The Winter's Tale

photo: Joan Marcus

I wasn't impressed with what he did with the same mix of British and American actors in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, also currently at BAM, but Sam Mendes' production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is a wondrous, gorgeous gem. One of The Bard's late dramas, the play is challenging to stage (partly because of its fluctuations in tone) but Mendes has scaled all the action cohesively and guided the actors to emotionally accessible, beautifully judged and articulated performances. Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, Ethan Hawke and Richard Easton are all outstanding; it's too rare a pleasure to see an ensemble so thoroughly comfortable with Shakespeare's language and rhythms. In previous productions I've seen, the play's finale has never worked; here, I was moved to tears.

That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Telephone

photo: Pavel Antonov

A triptych of short, strange, highly stylized scenes, slightly unified by the theme of the limits of verbal communication, comprise this hypnotic ninety minute poem-play by Ariana Reines which The Foundry Theatre has produced with painstaking care. Every sonic and visual detail seems deeply considered and correct, working the play - which is an experience rather than a narrative - immediately into the subconscious. The first scene, and the only one of the three that could be said to be quirky, takes the first telephone conversation, between Alexander Graham Bell and Watson, as a starting point before peeling back layers of their consciousness about communication. The second scene, in which Jung's turn-of-the-century mental patient Miss St unleashes a frenzied torrent of words seemingly unfiltered from her schizophrenic mind, is overlong and exhausting to watch - it lacks the openness for interpretation of the other scenes, and once we get the point, there's not enough music in the words to hold our attention. Nonetheless its effect is essential for the success of the final scene, a spellbinding, meditative performance piece for all three actors in the cast (Matthew Dellapina, Gibson Frazier, and Birgit Huppuch) in which we wade in a sound stream of lines from intimate telephone conversations. I've rarely seen theatre that so effectively does what this scene accomplishes: it taps directly into the interior life of the audience.

Soul Samurai

Photo/Theresa Squire

Shut yo' mouth--Soul Samurai's only talkin' 'bout theater! Vampire Cowboys Theater, that is, which means there are sexy girls fighting and biting one another, not to mention exaggerated riffs on action-packed film genres: creator Qui Nguyen isn't far off when he says it's Kill Bill meets Shaft. Despite sounding like a B-movie, the cast is A-rated, as is the creative direction (puppets south of Avenue Q; stop-motion animated fruit) and overall fun. Nguyen and director Robert Ross Parker have learned from their previous shows and made mistakes into strengths, from the action-figure intro through the training montages, all the way into the wide variety of actual fight choreography. Now, baby's got bite!

[Read on]