Enjoy the show...or else: Orientarhythm

This week in the Village Voice Theater Section:

Michael Feingold contemplates links between violence in the larger world and contemporary drama.

I spent four days covering this incarnation of the New York Fringe. Though largely disappointing and blister inducing, I saw a couple of shows I quite enjoyed, BASH'd and Orientarhythm. Bukowsical? Not so much.

String Theory: Opus

This Week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold offers an appreciation of Ingmar Bergman, focusing on both his films and his theatrical work, a major aspect of his career that too many obits have ignored. “He made this latter reputation doing only what great stage directors are supposed to do: taking on the finest works of dramatic literature and putting his personal mark on them in ways that magically managed to fulfill both his own vision and their authors' deepest meanings.”

I spent my week exploring the disputed territory of Israeli-Palestinian drama, attending Betty Shamieh’s The Black Eyed and Ilan Hatsor’s Masked. The former concerns four Palestinian from across the centuries, trapped in the afterlife. Alas, “Shamieh has an exasperating impulse toward the general. She wants to speak for all women, always, and in portentous poesy besides.” Though Masked would like to spark controversy, the blurb on its poster "An Israeli play about three Palestinian brothers," is much more shocking than the play itself.

Andy Propst doesn’t really harmonize with Michael Hollinger’s Opus at Primary Stages, calling it “an easily digested soap opera set in the highbrow world of classical music.” At Keith Reddin’s Human Errors, James Hannaham finds plenty: “When Miranda tearfully recites dialogue from the black-box recorder, we know this baby's going down.”

Divinas Palabras: Feingold thinks it's divine

This week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold finishes his festive tour of Lincoln Center. He enjoys Spain's Centro Dramático Nacional's production of Ramon del Valle-Inclán's "Divinas Palabras" and Shen Wei Dance Theater's "Second Visit to the Empress."

I flounce around the New York Fringe Festival, wondering what can be done to restore some of the vim of the earlier years. I interview three current and former fringe artistic directors to discover their various plans of attack.

And John Beer flops out on the sofa to review the American Living Room Festival at Here Arts Center. Beer fizzes, "he three pieces performed—the first of 24 in the festival—displayed impressive technique and quirky imagination. At the same time, each fit a bit too easily into its experimental genre: meta-theatrical whimsy, abstract dance-theater, and biographical study of a neglected historical figure."

Awake and Sing: 33 to Nothing

This week in the Village Voice theater section:

Michael Feingold goes international, without ever leaving the comforts of Manhattan, covering three shows at the Lincoln Center Festival, Hokaibo performed by Heisei Nakamura-za, De Monstruos y Prodigos (Of Monsters and Prodigies) performed by Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes, and Gemelos (Twins) performed by Compañia Teatro Cinema—all now closed. He found “moments—though too often they were only moments—when theater seemed like something human beings could enjoy, take pride in, and want to share with people in other countries.” I traveled too, taking a strangely enjoyable trip to the South Pole via Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer and making a much duller visit to the suburban family manse with Two Thirds Home.

In the Sightlines section, Angela Ashman reads up on the Art of Memory, a dance-theater piece in which “three eccentric librarians in frilly Victorian-style dresses find themselves trapped in a cavernous library, searching for a way out.” John Beer listens in on rock’n’roll musical 33 to Nothing. He remarks that it does “its bastard subgenre-—the rock-and-roll-rehearsal play—as well as it can be done. If so, the painful limitations of this boy-loses-lead-guitarist saga teach that not everything is worth doing.” And Andy Propst pulls up a pew on The Ted Haggard Monologues.

A Rose by any other name: Gypsy

This week in the Village Voice theater section:

Michael Feingold waxes enthusiastic about Arthur Laurents’s stripped down production of ecdysiast musical Gypsy. Feingold applauds, “the sense of freshness that librettist Arthur Laurents's speedy, spare new staging gives off--its streamlined approach makes the last full-scale Broadway production, by Sam Mendes, look fussy and cluttered in comparison.”

Feingold found Robert Wilson’s Fables de la Fontaine at Lincoln Center less than fabulous, chiding Wilson for “impos[ing] a personal straitjacket on the material in lieu of interpreting it.” Feingold concludes: “One piece was narrated, inexplicably, by a donkey; I couldn't help thinking it was Wilson's way of telling us the whole event was being transmitted through the sensibility of a jackass.”

I considered David Epstein’s Surface to Air rather earthbound and formulaic to boot, though director James Naughton has assembled a remarkable cast. And gently disagreeing with the New York Times, I found gently against The People vs. MONA, wishing Jim Wann and Patricia Miller had featured fewer song sketches and more fully realized tunes.

In the Sightlines section, Garret Eisler sinks his teeth into the vampire comedy Bloody Lies, but finds it bloodless. Meanwhile Candace L. emigrates over to the MITF to see INS musical Take Me America, watching as it "devolves into a collection of anecdotal, runaway tales."

Keep it rolling: Absinthe

This week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold rolls over Xanadu, though he finds kind words for the cast, especially Kerry Butler as the Aussie-accented Greek muse. He sings the praises, however, offered by the double-bill of Chinese operas presented by the Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan, alas now closed. One notably features a sword-fighting dramaturg.

I found myself again intoxicated with the naughty cabaret acts offered in Absinthe at the Spiegeltent. I thrilled less to La Vie, likely as these acts were set in Purgatory.

In Sightlines, John Beer doesn’t express reverence for the Rev. martin Luther King The/King/Operetta, calling it, “a frustrating hodgepodge of a piece—infectious, profound, and baffling by turns.” And Angela Ashman reasons about Kirk Wood Bromley’s rhymes during No More Pretending at the Ice Factory Festival.

The paper chase: Doppelganger

This week in the Village Voice theater section:

This week in the Village Voice theater section, I become a Morning person, giving a warm reception to Peccadillo’s revival of Sylvia Regan’s 1940 play Morning Star about immigrant Jews. Though the direction’s uneven and “Regan creates entertaining characters rather than bona fide people,” the production sent “audience members, and even the occasional critic, scrabbling in their bags for tissues.” I also went back to the future with playwright/songster Ethan Lipton’s Goodbye April, Hello May a multigenre (sci-fi/romance/comedy/drama) play about New York in the 22nd-century, with an excellent cast.

Julia Wallace was less than ardent about the Politics of Passion, a trio of Anthony Minghella one-acts produced by the Potomac Theater Project. Wallace concludes that “neither [Minghella’s] plays nor their staging here seem particularly political or connected to each other.” Garret Eisler doesn’t recommend doubling up on Doppelganger, saying the 3LD play “opts more for existential meandering than social commentary. Instead of a story of credible human beings, the writing degenerates—even in the course of its short hour—into a platform for the playwright's Einsteinian gobbledygook.” And Andy Propst takes account of Professional Skepticism a CPA play. Propst applauds playwright James Rasheed’s milieu and characters, but finds “his overladen plot, director Kareem Fahmy's strangely laid-back staging, and a needless intermission combine to sap this 90-minute piece's momentum.”

And Tom Sellar settles in for a festive chat with Lincoln Center Festival artistic director Nigel Redden.

A blog? How droll!

This week at the Village Voice theater section

Michael Feingold is passingly friendly regarding Old Acquaintance, though he does wonder why the Roundabout has produced it: "Not untruthful and not unfunny, it stands as an instance of a life we no longer lead. Whether such a play should, or can, be revived is a different matter." Meanwhile Tom Sellar portions out praise and culpability in his review of Howard Barker's No End of Blame. I sat lakeside during the Public Theater's watery but very enjoyable production of Romeo and Juliet.

In the Sightlines section, Julia Wallace assigned her own personal search engine to I Google Myself. John Beer analyzes the prose of The Toad Poems, based on the poesy of Gerald Locklin. In Central Park, Andy Propst decides that All's Well That Ends Well doesn't end well at all.

David Greenspan: Don't Argue

This week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold pulls up a chair at Target Margin’s The Dinner Party and very much agrees with David Greenspan’s The Argument. He’s not at all eager to look back at Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, but he’s delighted to direct his footsteps toward Peculiar Works's OFFstage: The East Village Fragments.

I take stock of Lear deBessonet’s blues-tinged take on Brecht St. Joan of the Stockyards and test the merits of Matthew Schneck’s comedy Badge.

And them!

Just received news of the next Offstage Voice, the networking event extraordinaire. This incarnation will be held at the Bubble Lounge, June 20th, from 6-8. Join Michael Feingold, Brian Parks, Adamma Ince, our publisher Michael Cohen, and me. RSVP to Mauro Deceglie at mdeceglie@villagevoice.com by June 13.

Lin Manuel Miranda declares victory over the Obies.

This week in the Village Voice theater section, it’s OBIE-riffic. Here’s a list of the winners and a gallery of photographs of the gala evening. You can also check out my party report and my live blog coverage of the awards. Reflecting on the season, Michael Feingold croons everything old is new again. Lovely Tom Sellar offers a travel guide to the best in international theater and I polled Off-Broadway luminaries about the shows they wish they’d seen. Elsewhere, we reviewed Passing Strange, Stairway to Paradise, 110 in the Shade, Gaslight, Back from the Front, Memory, and Kraken.

Bowled Over: American Fiesta’s Steve Tomlinson

This week in the Village Voice’s theater section, Michael Feingold gets locked up in The Brig. It’s not exactly hard time: “Kenneth H. Brown's The Brig is a play of consequence, both aesthetically and politically.” He also enjoys Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon, although he notes that Without the stature [Frank] Langella brings, Frost/Nixon wouldn't be much, despite Michael Grandage's skillful staging and fine work in smaller roles by the likes of Stephen Kunken, Corey Johnson, Armand Schultz, and Stephen Rowe.”

Feingold also purrs a fond farewell to Broadway grande dame Kitty Carlisle Hart: “n a world where even garden-variety good manners have almost vanished, Kitty Carlisle Hart practiced a democratic version of noblesse oblige: She knew very well that she was one of the elite, but for her this meant practicing straightforward give-and-take rather than demanding deference. She was wholly considerate of you, and expected you to be so of her.”

Feingold also finds the Pearl’s production of S.N. Behrman’s Biography sufficiently lapidary: “this solid but slightly too earnest revival directed by J. R. Sullivan, only wants an extra squirt of fizz in the playing to make both its satiric acid and its clear-eyed compassion look-—to use a period expression-—as fresh as paint.”

I went to The Sea, but found Edward Bond’s lone comedy a supremely choppy experience. I also collected a performance of American Fiesta, a not-quite-a-play in which the genial writer-performer Steve Tomlinson compares Fiestaware to “repressed emotions, lost childhoods, familial tensions, love, terror, imperfection, acceptance, the divide between red and blue states,” well everything.

Meanwhile, Garret Eisler finds Anthony Neilson’s day-in-the-life play Realism, a none too fantastical drama.

Lady of Lee-sure: Young Jean Lee

This week in the Village Voice Theater Section:

Michael Feingold faintly praises John Fugelsang’s All the Wrong Reasons, writing, “The event runs about 90 minutes, contains some mild laughs and some mild stimuli for the cerebral cells, and does no particular harm if you have the 90 minutes to spare.”

I profiled provocative playwright Young Jean lee as she readies her play Church for P.S.122. I find her a remarkable if painfully self-scrutinizing talent. Sample quotation: "That's totally me. I am so typical." Meanwhile, I failed to have a religious experience at transFigures, but enjoyed Lear deBessonet’s pastiche play detailing varieties of god-driven mania.

Sightlines, after the jump:

In the Sightlines section, Garret Eisler gets fairly high off of Giants, which he describes as “a dystopian fantasy about a dysfunctional family,” featuring total commitment to her idiosyncratic fantasy-genre vision and invented language.” Andy Propst gets his hands dirty with Mud Blossom, which he calls a combination of “Southern Gothic literature, after-school specials, and, to a certain extent, Jerry Springer.”And John Beer enjoys the Tutsi roll that is Leslie Lewis Sword and Edward Vilga’s Miracle in Rwanda, tale of a woman who survived a Rwandan massacre, apparently a piece of “riveting theater.”

Inherit the Blog

This week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold tracks the evolution of two American dramas in revival, Inherit the Wind and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He labels them both "studies in lying." Of Inherit, he pronounces, "If the issues aren't engaged powerfully, Hughes's staging keeps the personal combats lively and fluid." On Moon: "This is big, grim stuff, which O'Neill tries to enliven with heavy helpings of folk comedy.... Howard Davies's production lets you feel the bigness, though none of his performers are really up to it."

Feingold lets fly at David Harrower's Blackbird, about the aftermath of a rather unusual relationship: "Maybe you'll care; I couldn't."

I hoped to aid and abet the Accomplices but found Bernard Weinraub's drama about attempts to involve America in saving Jews from Nazis an affecting history lesson, but not very much of a play. I also found my way to Losing Something, a woefully disappointing debut of a nifty new theatrical technology.

Elsewhere, Eliza Bent gets in the sack with Banana Bag and Bodice as they ready their new show The Fall and Rise of the Rising Fallen, soon to debut at P.S. 122. John Beer doesn't go ape for David Zellnik's Serendib, writing that this play about animal behavioralists, "Early on, [it] poses a fascinating question: How much of our supposed understanding of animals is based on pure projection? But Zellnik swiftly jettisons this puzzle to focus on that more familiar chestnut—-what do women want?"

The Dark at the top of the Blog

This week in the Village Voice’s Theater section, Michael Feingold braves William Inge’s Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Feingold has especially uplifting words for the productions director, Jack Cummings III, “He has not only given an elegantly spare, contemporary feel to a work that in other hands might have seemed heavy and archaic, but he has infused it, through his cast, with a gorgeously sculpted emotionality that recalls, not inappositely, Elia Kazan, who directed the original production of Inge's play a half-century ago.” Seeing the Pirate Queen, Feingold buckles (but doesn’t swash) under the weight of “he sedative powers of this lump of aesthetic Ambien.” He’s far happier facing Face the Music, a Hart and Berlin revival in the Encores! Series.

As for my own playgoing, I would happily have asked for more of Neil Bartlett’s Oliver Twist, a joyfully grim adaptation, which offers many pleasures but does fail to awake interest in priggish Oliver himself. I also thought about fleeing Fugue, Lee Thuna’s inane investigation of amnesia.

In other arts news, Downtown impresario and no mean journalist Trav S.D. does time with the Living Theater, in their new space on Clinton St., as they prepare for the revival of the Brig.

So, I hear you like to blog: Some Men

This week in the Village Voice Theater Section:

Michael Feingold joins together Terence McNally and Adam Rapp, finding commonality between McNally’s portraits of gay relationships in Some Men and Rapp’s addled Midwesterners of Essential Self-Defense. Feingold also grieves that Joan Didion’s memoir of mourning, The Year of Magical Thinking, doesn’t translate more successfully to the stage.

I get tangled up in two plays detailing human and non-human bondage. The Aquila Companay’s Prometheus Bound features a handsome lead actor, but that alone won’t enliven this static production. And Lucy Thurber’s Stay features a young woman still bound up in an abusive upbringing.

In the Sightlines section...

In the Sightlines section, Andy Propst sets himself apart from Theodora Skipitares’s The Exiles. David Ng moves into with Widower’s Houses, but doesn’t much care for the surroundings. And Garret Eisler reluctantly climbs into bed with Scituate, a drama about a man who lies down on the job of living.

It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s World: Propeller Company

This week in the Village Voice’s theater section, Michael Feingold went behind the scenes, spying on the backstage worlds of Curtains and Our Leading Lady. He remarks, “Just as the stage is a standard metaphor for the world, the disorienting realm we call backstage is the mirror of our hidden world, a place where everything stage illusion disguises can get spilled out, and spelled out explicitly, under harsh, unflattering work lights.” Feingold objects to elements of Charles Busch’s writing and Lynne Meadow’s direction, but happily falls under the spell of Leading Lady’s leading lady, Kate Mulgrew. While complimenting its cast, he calls Curtains, “a lot of sound and fury signifying mild diversion.”

Feingold also set sail on a performance of Jack Goes Boating. He finds it somewhat shallow going: “Its sweetness and surface truth, though pleasurably genuine, don't offer the characters either much depth or much convincing context.”

I rather selfishly swallowed up the Sightlines section so as to sample the glut of Shakespeare shows running at present. I was entirely tamed by Propeller Theater Company’s Taming of the Shrew, “the homosocial universe of the Propeller production offers commentary on and criticism of the text itself, laying bare its assumptions regarding sex and gender, the cruelty toward women it seems to unthinkingly endorse.” Their Twelfth Night also made for a pleasant evening. I had a colder reaction to poortom productions a new all-male company devoted to Shakespeare, finding that “Neither actors nor director seem to delight much in the verse. The best bits are extratextual moments. Poor Tom has assembled an able company—and some very lively designers—but they may wish to rethink their Shakespeare focus.” The verse wasn’t worth delighting in in Sweet Love, Adieu, Ryan J-W Smith’s sophomoric Shakespearean pastiche.

I also swore some degree of fealty to Signature’s revival of King Hedley II, finding it a very worthy resurrection.

A Blog you say? I need a drink.

This week, in the Village Voice theater section, Michael Feingold climbs into 1001 Beds and takes Tea and Sympathy, tracing half a century of American social history [and] the 50-year evolution of gay-themed theater as well. He also tunes into the revival of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio. Feingold finds that the revival “never quite coalesces into a dramatic statement. What does coalesce, pretty unforgettably, is Schreiber's performance as a hard, compulsive, lizard-eyed cynic who keeps revealing, in flashes, the helpless, betrayed, idealist self he spends his nights trying to bury.”

I listened in (legally) on Lawrence Wright’s My Trip to Al-Qaeda, which details his efforts to research and write The Looming Tower. If I didn’t exactly find him credible as an actor, I very much enjoyed his narrative and sweater vest. I informed on the Irish Rep’s Defender of the Faith, determining that the plot of this so-called thriller emerges as “more workmanlike than revelatory.”

In the Sightlines column, Andy Propst raises half a glass to Bill W. and Dr. Bob, a drama about the founders of Lindsay Lohan hangout AA. In a welcome visit to the theater section, film critic J. Hoberman sets sail with Moby Dick—Rehearsed, writing, “The emphasis is on the power of Melville's language, and the sturdy ensemble.” Meanwhile, Joseph McCombs ventures into Tall Grass, Brian Harris’s dramedy about three couples, remarking “Harris overindulges his need for novelty, twisting his characters' motives just as you think you understand them.”

One day, little Cave Dweller, this blog could all be yours.

In the Village Voice's theater coverage this week:

I took up residence in Christopher Shinn’s rather uncomfortable Dying City. While the play offers affecting portraits of its citizenry, it doesn’t rate as a work of social or political import.

Though Michael Feingold does not suggest we should never never never never see Kevin Kline’s King Lear, he does maintain that the title role demands a fury that simply isn't a part of Kline's emotional makeup. Feingold also appreciates the retelling of Terence McNally’s “fairy tale” Prelude to a Kiss, directed by Daniel Sullivan.

In Sightlines, Andy Propst listens in on Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. And he likes what he hears. David Ng doesn’t have a ball at Looking Glass Theatre’s production of Baal, though he somewhat blames the script. I like just about any play with bears in it, and Gwen Orel somewhat agrees, offering warm and fuzzy words for the ursine-inclusive The Cave Dwellers.

Elsewhere in the paper, Angela Ashman takes a rather naughty view of the onstage seats (apparently known as the “ass” and “boob” seats) available at Spring Awakening and in an article neatly times with the imminent St. Patrick’s Day festivities, Mark Blankenship says slainte the importance of being Irish, especially when you’re the Irish Repertory Theatre and you’ve just bought your space.

Am I Blue? The Attic

This week Michael Feingold goes our of the past, revisiting three plays form the World War One era. Feingold sees echoes of our current conflicts in the art of earlier generations. He surrenders to R.C. Sheffield’s Journey’s End, its revival directed by David Grindley. He has wispier praise for the J.M. Barrie ghost story Mary Rose and a revival of Harley Granville Barker’s The Madras House at the Mint.

In the Sightlines section, John Beer squeezes into Yoji Sakate’s The Attic, pronouncing it “witty, bizarre, and intensely moving.” Katie Baker investigates The Girl Detective, a stage adaptation of Kelly link’s short story, with excellent results. Arrivals, a play discussing government encroachment on civil liberties, encroaches on Andy Propst’s time.

I took in two plays featuring girls gone not exactly wild, but certainly somewhat astray. Julian Sheppard’s Los Angeles is a star map to ingénue Audrey’s psyche. In Anna Ziegler’s BFF, a young woman finds herself borne back ceaselessly, and somewhat shallowly, into the past.

Death to critics!

This week, in the Village Voice theater section:
Michael Feingold responds to Charles Isherwood's boredom with The Coast of Utopia and offers some concluding remarks on the whole of the Stoppard trilogy. Feingold charges, "[Stoppard's] passion for ideas itself starts to seem an evasion."

I conflated Sam Marks's Nelson, an ambitious drama about a talent agency employee, to Marc Spitz's Your Face Is a Mess, an unambitious but sunny entertainment in which a drug dealer attempts to reform.

In the Sightlines section, David Ng did battle with The Jaded Assassin, John Beer observed A Very Common Procedure, and Andy Propst commits himself warily to Marat/Sade.

Greco-Roman gods are lovely, but we meant the other Apollo

On Monday the 12th, the Village Voice is hosting an Offstage Voice party at the Apollo Theater, a tippling and networking event where theater types can hobnob with Voice types including Editor-in-Chief David Blum and my own wonderful editor, Joy Press. You would be hobnobbing with me, too, but alas before the date was announced I had long since bought a ticket to Florida where I will be hobnobbing with my eventual in-laws, lots of alligators, and a mojito--a large one. But even without me, it should be a fun event. I've attended several and have enjoyed the drink tickets and conversation equally well. And often there are snacks!

Raise the roof.

Michael Feingold scores two new musicals, getting a little lift from In the Heights, but finding himself Adrift in Macao. I was pleased to see his mostly kind words for In the Heights as I'd enjoyed it myself and thought that critics' accusations that the musical doesn't present the nabe grittily enough were very much beside the point. As Feingold writes, if "its conflicts resolve with abrupt ease, well, life has almost always seemed that way in the musical theater."

I introduced myself to two young companies, Sabooge and CollaborationTown, each creating a work centered on an unstable protagonist. Neither cohered for me, though I did adore Sabooge's stage pictures.

In the Sightlines section, Angela Ashman encountered the squeaky delights of the Tupperware comedy Elephant Tales. John Beer gave an unprejudiced account of two new plays by Thomas Bradshaw, Cleansed and Strom Thurmond is Not a Racist. And Andy Propst had the last word on Oren Safdie's play of the same name.

Not All That?

This week in the Village Voice's theater section:

Michael Feingold doesn't think Alan Ball's All That I Will Ever Be is really all that. Though he does praise Ball's ambition and honesty. He finds White Horse Theater's revival of Williams's In The Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, a less than quality inn, though he does draw attention to the script's worth.

I found The Spanish Play a sad mistranslation of my Sunday afternoon, not caring terribly for either Yasmina Reza's script or John Turturro's direction. Apparently the other night Turturro stepped in for an ailing Zoe Caldwell. That I would have liked to see. What does it mean that in one week both Michael and I had need of the term "faint praise"?

I didn't need any blush while attending At Least It's Pink, Bridget Everett's raunchy one-woman musical, written in collaboration with Michael Patrick King and Kenny Mellman. Perhaps we can convince Ms. Everett and Mr. Mellman to grace our blog to the links to their cheeky little number "Canhole."

In the Sightlines section, Eliza Bent dipped her toes into Mme. Bonnnard's Bath,http://www.ticketcentral.com/index.asp?p=promocode&pid=5417&aid=, John Beers finds Absolute Clarity less than crystalline, and Andy Propst, almost lone among critics was converted to The Jew of Malta.