Scene4 Magazine | Qreviewstag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//22008-08-24T02:18:19ZQREVIEWS—Short, little reviews on theatre, film, the arts and media. To post a new article or a comment to an existing article, click on the "Post A New Article" link on the right sidebar.Movable Type Personal 4.1Victory at the Dirt Palace by Adriano Shaplin (SoHo Think Tank/Ice Factory 2008, Ohio Theatre, New York - Directed by Whit MacLaughlin. August 20 - 23, 2008.) tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5862008-08-24T02:00:23Z2008-08-24T02:18:19ZPaul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and...Paul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman
The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and Drew Friedman), sets many targets in its sights in this sharply drawn, occasionally tedious 90-minute piece. The story, such as it is, follows the rise and fall of broadcast news rivals James and K. Mann, father and daughter (the "K" stands for Katherine, but she never refers to herself by that name). Their head-to-head battle for ratings supremacy is also a stand-in for the passion play of a bitter father/daughter battle, with K. accusing James of his loving her "like cancer loves cells." During K.'s premiere broadcast, terrorists attack the United States, cutting off all electrical power. Within the space of ten minutes the US declares war, then wins the war it has declared, and, as power is restored, K. beats James to the usual insipid end-of-broadcast eulogy/paean delivered by news anchors about victory and heroism. The overnight ratings declare K. the winner, and James resigns (to be replaced by his assistant Andrew). But Andrew, not content with his victory, brings down K. by exposing photographs of K. in a leather S&M mask, photographs taken by K.'s assistant Spence (who is also K.'s sex partner), who is angling for his own rise up the corporate food chain. The play ends with Andrew and Spence co-anchoring the nightly newscast that James had run for 30 years, while a chastened K. and James (now doing the weather report) work for a local TV station somewhere in America's heartland. Each has his or her own "victory at the dirt palace," the lowest kind of victory, as K. points out. Shaplin's satiric dissection of celebrity culture, the vapidity of the news media ("all news is jokes," James says at one point), and the operatics of family dysfunction are all intelligent and presented with humor and flair (thanks to Whit MacLaughlin's tight direction). Yet Shaplin also has a love of his own voice and pours out metaphor-laden word-streams that often strain too hard for significance and delay or divert the story's unfolding. And the choice to have the actors direct almost all their lines to the audience and the air (only rarely do the characters interact with each other) in essence makes the play a monologue and denies it the opportunity to build the kind of gravitational attraction among characters that creates dramatic tension. "Victory at the Dirt Palace" is cerebrally interesting and sometimes culturally provoking, but it never goes beyond its own cleverness and bombast, in the end not looking or sounding very different from the celebratized superficial culture which it aims to demolish by parody.
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Zombie by Bill Connington (FringeNYC 2008, adapted and performed by Bill Connington from the novella by Joyce Carol Oates. August 9 - 21, 2008.) tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5842008-08-15T03:45:31Z2008-08-15T03:52:42ZPhoto: Bill Connington as Quentin P., serial killer, with his favorite ice pick (photographer Tony David) What are we to make of "Zombie," a one-actor piece about Quentin P., the queer sadistic sexual-psychopathic murderer who yearned to create a zombie...Photo: Bill Connington as Quentin P., serial killer, with his favorite ice pick (photographer Tony David)
What are we to make of "Zombie," a one-actor piece about Quentin P., the queer sadistic sexual-psychopathic murderer who yearned to create a zombie who would obey him without question by performing home-made lobotomies with an icepick rammed up through his victims' eye-sockets? "Zombie" is in that genre of theatre that uses the stage for the case-study of a psychological/psychotic condition (think "Equus"), in the hope of (in this order) titillating the audience through voyeurism and, perhaps, shedding some explanatory light on the "abnormal" (i.e., people not like the audience members). But a script is not a case-study, imagination is not the same as the DSM-IV, and two-hours-with-intermission does not substitute for therapy. Inevitably the interpretive effort must always deliver less than it promises because, one, the audience is always more interested in titillation than explanation and, two, explanation can never be dramatic (think of how all those CSI shows try to tart up the lab tests with music and camera-work so that people won't switch the channel). Well, then, if by the end of "Zombie" Quentin P. is still an unsolved riddle, what about the quality of the performance itself? Again, "Zombie" delivers less than it promises. Directed by "Mamma Mia!" resident director Thomas Caruso, with set by Josh Zangen, lighting by Joel Silver, and sound by Deidre Broderick, Connington chooses to present Quentin as a sort of button-down nerd, with owl-eye-styled brown-rim glasses, slicked down combover, chinos, and a short-sleeve shirt who speaks in slow, upper-Midwest-themed accent. All this is meant to contrast with the viciousness of his anecdotes about using the trash of society as his experiments in zombie-making. Connington does well enough, though several line-flubs and Caruso's advice to play Quentin with only the slightest hint of animation drain off most of the story's vigor and danger. But the choice to adapt this as a monologue is also partly to blame for the slightly soporific quality of the production. No matter if the actor is talking to a stuffed dummy (the only "zombie" Quentin is able to create) or to the audience or to the air, the stage lacks a second center of gravity around which the dramatic action can orbit. In addition, almost all the "action" in the piece is told in retrospect, not shown in the present tense, and so the piece becomes something more for the ear than the eye. Finally, Connington just does not offer the kind of performance that turns the dialectic between the outward dweeb and the inner monster into a memorable hour upon the stage. "Zombie" unfortunately feels too much like its title.
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Heistman by Matthew Maher (SoHo Think Tank/Ice Factory 2008, Ohio Theatre, New York - Conceived and Directed by Gabriella Barnstone. Reviewed August 1, 2008)tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5812008-08-04T15:00:54Z2008-08-04T15:15:05Z Photo: Steven Rattazzi as the Heistman - Photographer: Brian McDermott In "Heistman," Heistman, played by Steve Ratazzi, and his two cohorts (a man and a woman) have just taken over a bank and secured two female hostages when they... Photo: Steven Rattazzi as the Heistman - Photographer: Brian McDermott
In "Heistman," Heistman, played by Steve Ratazzi, and his two cohorts (a man and a woman) have just taken over a bank and secured two female hostages when they are surrounded by the police and commanded to give themselves up by a police officer (Matt Oberg) barking through a megaphone. However, instead of surrendering, Heistman proceeds to deliver the first third of "The Heist Man Manifesto" (the complete text of which, running for three double-sided single-spaced pages, is stuffed into the program). The Manifesto begins with Personal Happiness and ends with The Fear, which he defines as "the fear that your life is a waste"; according to Heistman, it is The Fear which drives most people to do desperate things (such as robbing banks) to make their lives have meaning. At this point, about 20 minutes into the 45-minute production, Heistman, driven by his own capital-F "Fear," is saved by the two hostages, who have somehow freed themselves from being tied up and who lead him and his two "associates" on a dance of self-peace. This is all sort of a metaphoric and mildly interesting silliness, with ideas like "heist" and "hostage" and "giving up" laden with double and triple layers of "meaning," underscored by an eclectic sound design by Marcelo Añez, choreography by Barnstone (which is excellently performed by Ratazzi and Molly Lieber, Eleanor Smith, Carolton Ward, and Barnstone herself), and Paul Douglas Olmer's and Garin Marschall's effective set and lighting. Ratazzi's performance is what gives the piece any intellectual heft that it has: by turns flippant, fear-laden, comic, and dangerous, Ratazzi turns the commonplaces of the Manifesto, which are a dull read on the page, into words with edges and possibilities.
Michael Bettencourt]]>
TRACES/fades by Lenora Champagne (SoHo Think Tank/Ice Factory 2008, Ohio Theatre, New York - Written and Directed by Lenora Champagne. Runs until July 19, 2008tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5742008-07-20T21:23:01Z2008-07-20T23:05:01Z (L-R) Amelie Lyons, Joanne Jacobson and Lenora Champagne - Photographer: Gary Breckheimer TRACES/fades runs about 75 minutes and is Ms. Champagne's "meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history." Therein lies the challenge with this sometimes affecting... (L-R) Amelie Lyons, Joanne Jacobson and Lenora Champagne - Photographer: Gary Breckheimer
TRACES/fades runs about 75 minutes and is Ms. Champagne's "meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history." Therein lies the challenge with this sometimes affecting but often off-putting production: a mixture of themes and devices that have not been blended dramatically. The script's constant references to wars and bumbling presidents and amnesiac societies is butted up against the central story of a memory-losing Ann (Joanne Jacobson) who, packed away in a nursing home, is beloved by her granddaughter (Amelie Champagne Lyons) and only marginally attended to by her daughter (played by Ms. Champagne). Naturally, the old woman's story steals center stage because it is immediate and visceral as opposed to the more abstract commentaries on big-picture politics. The play's structure mimics this uneasy link of part-to-part, with presentational elements morphing into song-singing to prettyish tunes by Daniel Levy and Lisa Dove to some very wry and wrenching interactions among the denizens of Ann's nursing home (Mary Fogarty, Matthew Lewis, and Judith Greentree) as they spar with their well-meaning but overwhelmed care-giver Nettie (Quanda Johnson) -- all of which are individually interesting but which are also not quilted into a dramatic whole. (Not to mention the video projections by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty of purling water under ice, snowstorms, hands that write then un-write what they've just written, and so on, which are more distracting than illuminating.) The moments I found most touching were the ones ungussied by "theatrical device" and "author's message," such as when Nettie complains to Delores about how her getting-older body is thickening in the middle, and Delores responds, straight and acerbic, with "That's nothing. Just wait. Everything hurts." Truth plain and unadorned in those words, and the audience, understandably, laughed in both recognition and commiseration. Or when Nettie muses, "If we are what we remember, then who are we when we forget?" Moments like those are what makes seeing TRACES/fades worth the effort.
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Crave by Sarah Kane (Potomac Theatre Project, Atlantic Stage 2, New York Directed by Cheryl Faraone. Runs until July 26, 2008) tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5722008-07-12T23:54:11Z2008-07-12T23:58:29ZIt is well-nigh impossible to hear Sarah Kane's aching meditation on the cravings for love, connection, and understanding minus the static bred by her suicide several months after the piece was written. But it is important to do so in...
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Do Not Do This Ever Again by Karinne Keithley (SoHo Think Tank/Ice Factory 2008, Ohio Theate, New York Directed by Maria Goyanes. Runs until July 12, 2008) tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5712008-07-12T18:23:31Z2008-07-12T18:24:32Z"Do Not Do This Ever Again" is a 90-minute intermissionless journey into "a landscape of lost love and modern loneliness," though the multi-media'd journey feels so much longer because about halfway through writer Keithley and director Goyanes decided to drop...
Michael Bettencourt ]]>
Scenes From An Execution by Howard Barker (Potomac Theatre Project, Atlantic Stage 2, New York Directed by Richard Romagnoli. Runs until July 26, 2008)tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5702008-07-12T18:20:21Z2008-07-20T21:08:22Z (L-R): Peter Schmitz as Prodo and Jan Maxwell as Galactia - Photographer Stan Barouh Howard Barker is a hard playwright to feel warm about -- his primary characters make no concession to sentiment, and all of them, to one...
(L-R): Peter Schmitz as Prodo and Jan Maxwell as Galactia - Photographer Stan Barouh
Howard Barker is a hard playwright to feel warm about -- his primary characters make no concession to sentiment, and all of them, to one degree or another, are fascinating monsters, driven by a complicated choreography with power that causes pain and dislocation as they cut their way through the world. In "Scenes," Galactia, an unmatched painter with an unruly desire to tell the truth, is commissioned by the city-state of Venice to memorialize its greatest military triumph, the battle of Lepanto. In the course of covering 3000 square feet of canvas, she manages to offend everyone from the Doge on down by choosing to portray slaughter rather than triumph. But lest we take the the default liberal position of championing the artist over the state, Barker gives the state some pretty strong arguments about why we shouldn't trust artists to tell the truth, and in the end Galactia comes off both as a hero and a fool. For the most part, director Richard Romagnoli has crafted a balanced and energized production, and Jan Maxwell has created a Galactia who may be impossible to love but who demands that we pay attention -- and we do, to our delighted agitation..
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Somewhere in the Pacific by Neal Bell (Potomac Theatre Project, Atlantic Stage 2, New York Directed by Jim Petosa. Runs until July 26, 2008)tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.5692008-07-12T18:17:01Z2008-07-20T21:14:41Z(L-R): James Smith as McGuiness and Malcolm Madera as Albers - Photographer Stan Barouh The ensemble work in this tale set on a troopship "somewhere in the Pacific" towards the end of World War II is very good, well-timed and...(L-R): James Smith as McGuiness and Malcolm Madera as Albers - Photographer Stan Barouh
The ensemble work in this tale set on a troopship "somewhere in the Pacific" towards the end of World War II is very good, well-timed and well-choreographed. But while Neal Bell's core desire in the play, as told in his program notes, is to show how homophobia damages not only its target but also its targeters, from captain on down to private, his good intention gets lost in the play's clunky structure and its WWII-war-movie-inflected dialogue. Director Jim Petosa also makes some ineffective choices, such as the staging of the last scene on a life-raft after the troop ship has been torpedo'd, that obscure Bell's message. In the end, I was not clear why Bell wrote this play, what question he had in mind that the play answered, since the play seems as much about the complicated friendships among men under the crush of war as it does about the crush of prejudice and proscribed desire.
Michael Bettencout]]>
Looking Up by Carla Cantrelletag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.4602008-02-21T21:15:20Z2008-02-21T21:19:34ZRunning February 16-March 2, 2008, at Theatre for the New City in NYC. This two-actor show about finding love takes place in a bar that hosts a trapeze act(!). Wendy (Cantrelle), the trapezista, looks down to find Jack the bartender...
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Virgin Love Vexedtag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.3762007-11-06T00:32:01Z2007-11-07T05:17:43ZHey, you must be an "Angeleno" and I'm not. And that means that you live in a town with tons of live theater and other than the road shows, very few worth seeing. If you knew better, you would have...
Larry Marcus]]>
Review of Virgin Love from 11/2tag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.3752007-11-05T23:48:34Z2007-11-07T05:17:22ZI just had to give my review. This was the all time worst play I have ever seen. It was poorly written, the songs and dialogue were crude (a song about an itchy crotch/catching an std?), and the actors all...
jeepgirl]]>
Hamlet vs Hamlettag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.3742007-11-05T23:37:42Z2007-11-07T05:16:58ZThere are two masterful film versions of this great play: one by Olivier and one by Branagh. The major difference between the two is this—Branagh does the play justice, almost an unedited version of the play, with magnificent cinematography, production...
Mel Silverman]]>
Virgin Love in LAtag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.3732007-11-05T23:25:19Z2007-11-07T05:14:34ZWeak script and only a few good tunes, but on the whole the performances were solid especially Lawrence Smilgys and Nicole Ortega and lots of kudos to the director, Felipe Alejandro, who really knows how to handle "commedia." Set and...
Larry Marcus]]>
Leonardo DiCaprio’s "The 11th Hour" Calls Forth Humanity’s Finest Hour tag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.2992007-08-23T06:07:01Z2007-11-06T01:52:01ZIn this summer's blockbuster hit Transformers, "Decepticons" from an alien species, wreak havoc on Earth – things look bad, humanity seems doomed. But just in the nick of time, against all odds, our young heroes save the planet. It’s an...
The 11th Hour, the creatures are us. And the ways in which we are wreaking havoc on planet Earth are far more frightening than anything dreamed up by Hollywood:
--Injecting poisons into the atmosphere causing our children to choke and wheeze in an epidemic of asthma.
--Dumping toxic chemicals into the oceans, killing 90 percent of the big fish.
--Poisoning our food supply with pesticides, mercury, herbicides and more.
--Hacking down whole forests vital to the sustainability of life on Earth.
--Burning huge fossil fuel reserves, creating emissions that disrupt the fragile atmospheric balance that regulates temperature and makes Earth habitable.
-- Contaminating our drinking water, melting our icecaps and killing off species forever.
How would we react if an alien species did this to our planet?
“Would we be outraged? I’m sure we would,” Leonardo said when I asked him this question at a Beverly Hills press conference.
“We face a convergence of crises, all of which are a concern for life,” he says in the documentary. “Every living system is in decline – the forest cover, the soil, the oceans. There isn't one living system that is stable or improving. And those systems are required for life." Life on Earth in peril? In a fiction film, people would be gathered around their TV sets, brows furrowed in worry, clutching their children to their breasts, anxiously awaiting some glimmer of hope for how humanity can fight back. But this is real. So is public anxiety even higher? Not according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Their analysis shows that so far global warming hasn’t even ranked with Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton in the top-ten news stories.
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The 11th Hour for Scene4 Magazine. Kanegis' interviews with the film directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen are available at http://www.scene4.com/html/arthurkanegis-i0807.html In addition to reviewing films, Kanegis is a screenwriter, producer and President of One Films, LLC. Contact: ArthurKanegis@Hotmail.com.
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Fringe NYC 2007: DIRT tag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.2942007-08-19T21:15:27Z2007-11-06T01:52:01ZChristopher Domig executes this one-person show by Robert Schneider (originally written in German in 1993, translated by Paul Dvorak). DIRT is a monologue by Sad (short for "Saddam"), an Iraqi living illegally in some modern city, and in this cry...
Michael Bettencourt]]>
Paul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman
The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and Drew Friedman), sets many targets in its sights in this sharply drawn, occasionally tedious 90-minute piece. The story, such as it is, follows the rise and fall of broadcast news rivals James and K. Mann, father and daughter (the "K" stands for Katherine, but she never refers to herself by that name). Their head-to-head battle for ratings supremacy is also a stand-in for the passion play of a bitter father/daughter battle, with K. accusing James of his loving her "like cancer loves cells." During K.'s premiere broadcast, terrorists attack the United States, cutting off all electrical power. Within the space of ten minutes the US declares war, then wins the war it has declared, and, as power is restored, K. beats James to the usual insipid end-of-broadcast eulogy/paean delivered by news anchors about victory and heroism. The overnight ratings declare K. the winner, and James resigns (to be replaced by his assistant Andrew). But Andrew, not content with his victory, brings down K. by exposing photographs of K. in a leather S&M mask, photographs taken by K.'s assistant Spence (who is also K.'s sex partner), who is angling for his own rise up the corporate food chain. The play ends with Andrew and Spence co-anchoring the nightly newscast that James had run for 30 years, while a chastened K. and James (now doing the weather report) work for a local TV station somewhere in America's heartland. Each has his or her own "victory at the dirt palace," the lowest kind of victory, as K. points out. Shaplin's satiric dissection of celebrity culture, the vapidity of the news media ("all news is jokes," James says at one point), and the operatics of family dysfunction are all intelligent and presented with humor and flair (thanks to Whit MacLaughlin's tight direction). Yet Shaplin also has a love of his own voice and pours out metaphor-laden word-streams that often strain too hard for significance and delay or divert the story's unfolding. And the choice to have the actors direct almost all their lines to the audience and the air (only rarely do the characters interact with each other) in essence makes the play a monologue and denies it the opportunity to build the kind of gravitational attraction among characters that creates dramatic tension. "Victory at the Dirt Palace" is cerebrally interesting and sometimes culturally provoking, but it never goes beyond its own cleverness and bombast, in the end not looking or sounding very different from the celebratized superficial culture which it aims to demolish by parody.
Michael Bettencourt]]>
