"Verona Walls" at The Workshop Theater

I am always a little reticent when I happen upon a Shakespeare reimagining that seems just a little too offbeat to be viewed sober. Still I am always up to hear someone’s take on “Romeo & Juliet.” My wife, the accomplished Shakespeare actress, cringes, when she hears someone speak of true love “like Romeo and Juliet.” As she reminds me, these crazy kids knew one another less than 24 hours before tying the knot and sacking up. Moreover when anyone rips this story from the Middle Ages and into the modern world, the ability for this story to take place gets even more far-fetched. With cell phones and text messaging, this is a story which never would have happened today or only in the most remote service coverage areas of the world. Can you hear me now?

Flynn and McCurdy sitting before "Verona Walls"

With all that in mind and flask in pocket I recently attended the new play by Laura Hirschberg, directed by DeLisa M. White at the Workshop Theatre in midtown; “Verona Walls.” 

This show is about appears about as trippy a telling of "Romeo & Juliet" as you could imagine. “Verona Walls” tells the story of Mercutio and his own difficulties in love PRIOR to the action in the Bard's original. “Verona Walls” is not some rehashed telling of what we already know. Rather, this is “the story of real love in Shakespeare’s star-crossed city, complete with misunderstandings, perfect happiness, and devastating heartbreak. Classical verse mixes with Star Wars references and Beatles lyrics in this tragicomedy about the lives and loves of Shakespeare’s characters before they got swept up in the Bard’s creation.”

Got that? So the best friend in “Romeo & Juliet” was riffing on Star Wars and Lennon/McCartney before the actual time and place in the original text.  I am always eager for new ideas, but from the press materials this seemed to be reaching just a tad.

ANY-WAY.

I got inside the Workshop Theater 4^th floor lobby about 10 minutes prior to curtain and they opened the house not long after that. I ambled into the 60-odd-seat black box and Madonna’s classic, “Like a Prayer” was playing.  Even though the daytime high temperature had been relatively warm for March the theatre was very chilly. During intermission a gent and I shared an elevator downstairs and he remarked as much to me.

I found my seat and was rocking out to their choice of music before the show. In addition to Madonna there was Bowie’s classic “The Man Who Sold the World” and a song we’d hear again and again tonight; "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

Still the Workshop Theater was filled on Thursday night with all manner of artists and athletes and their conversation soon became loud enough to drown out the pre-show set list. 

The woman sitting down next to me told anyone who'd hear her that she had been writing her opus play for 7 years. “It’s just something I do,” she remarked before leaning into the education system saying they needed more Shakespeare and arts classes. Also there was an athlete guy behind me was in a bigger party talking about hip flexors. The takeaway here is that everyone in the house seemed to have some loose connection to at least a few others. The mood was jovial but I felt a tad out of the loop. Just prior to the lights going out the director came out to speak with her hip flexed friend behind me and began raving about the quality of the set. 

strident walls in "Verona Walls"

The set was an integral component to the scene changes here and this is where Beatles classics, Foo Fighters, and Cheap Trick come into play. For many of the scene changes the three people who were ostensibly the chorus would lead the cast in a musical interlude where they would all sing along to a song like “I Want You to Want Me,” “Everlong,” or several Beatles songs including “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” It was an interesting tool but I question the utility of such scene changes in a black box space. The sets were just okay; the main stage showing when we came in evoked the Berlin Wall perhaps or more to the point, Eric Bogosian’s “Suburbia.” The side of a convenience store, nowhere in particular, where the only thing to keep the kids occupied is to spray paint the walls. 

There was some interesting spray painting happening including a “See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil” image with the message WAKE UP ITALY below it. That was a gentle enough nudge to political and social unrest galvanized by an activist minority. There was also an image of a young girls shadow, ponytailed and innocent looking, standing before a young boy shadow. Both have their hands behind their backs; the boy is holding what might be flowers, the girl is holding what looks to be a baseball bat.  Subtle.

Also if you’re going to change the set around to “become” the tavern where they were quite often, you’ve got to go all-in and not take shots with empty glasses. Rum is clear, vodka is clear; that can just be water. If you’re having whisky (which they were more than once) then iced tea or cider works well. I just didn’t understand why you had to “show” the bar if it’s just a different setting or why you'd even produce shot glasses if you're not going to actually drink. I guess I’d just like to see them go that extra step of putting something into the shot glasses or flasks that they air-consumed. 

With all that out of the way let’s get into the story. So this is basically the story of what happens before “Romeo & Juliet.” Even though it’s happening in present day with references to things like GPS, talking on cell phones, and so many other modern trappings. The impetus for this night is that Mercutio (Ryan McCurdy)(Romeo’s best friend in the Shakespeare work) is done with love. Much like Ross from “Friends” (or Rachel for that matter), he is finished with the trope of love.  I thought first of George Costanza from “Seinfeld,” when the character gave up sex with his at that time girlfriend and became brilliant; but that’s neither hither nor tither. Even though Mercutio is done with love and just isn’t going to participate, his awkward friend Benvolio (listed as "Ben" but I could have sworn they called him "Benvolio at least once) (Mick Bleyer) is hoping to pursue barmaid Mistress Quickly (Christine Verleny). Like a laser Ben zeroes in on the very eager Mistress Quickly and the two fall in fast love. They beckon her often from the bar; and her name is Quickly. 

Enter Romeo (Jacob Owen) the svelte Casanova (dare I call him a “Romeo”?) of the group, he’s got a favor to ask of his dear heartbroken friend Mercutio; he needs a wingman. His latest love is Rosaline (Lauren Riddle) and she’s got a cousin Alyssa (Rachel Flynn). As we learn, no matter his present state of mind, Mercutio can’t let his friend down. How could you not? I mean this guy Jacob Owen looks like ginger Justin Timberlake; I wanted to hang out with him after the show! For Mercutio though it’s all about honor, friendship, and these bonds that can’t be broken. During the first half of the show he says as much to Alyssa about why he’s never travelled further than Verona. So he probably shouldn’t push too fast to get in on the sequel to this one.

For the purposes of modern discussion Mercutio and Alyssa equate loosely to TV’s Ross and Rachel. Alyssa has more of the wanderlust spirit in her where Mercutio wants simply to exist in his perpetual present. As a performer McCurdy evokes a deep brooding in his apparent conflicted mindset, restless and unhappy in his present state while still not wanting any change. While “Romeo & Juliet’s” original character is hotheaded and bored of his friend’s sunny outlook towards life, McCurdy plays this Mercutio with a deeper dourness that brought to mind the characters Hamlet or even Richard III.

Flynn introduces us to Alyssa and seems to be going through her own change. While out of one side of her mouth she is stridently independent and still wants to get out and see the world, she also seems to realize the limitations of that attitude and is queerly drawn to the strident Mercutio.  Has Cupid landed his mark? It doesn't take long to begin that ride.

Verleny and Bleyer are both accomplished performers in their own tertiary roles as Mistress Quickly and bashful Ben. From the get-go Ben seems primed for a change of scenery. Still much like the Benvolio character in “Romeo & Juliet,” Ben is interested in keeping the peace and making sure all remains fair in Verona.  While Quickly doesn’t appear ready to physically go anywhere, she also appears eager for whatever may come from her admirer. 

Owen flanked by Flynn (R) and Riddle (standing L) with
Wasser (far L) in "Verona Walls"

Riddle has done the best she can with a character that seems ripped from a TMZ headline. The character of Rosaline is a bit of a slut and shows off her true colors pretty quickly. Owen is the light on the stage and really should be more aptly paired with Flynn. In fact one of the real puzzles for my mind, if he is so quick to fall in and out of love, is why he even gave Rosaline a second look when he met her lovely cousin Alyssa. 

Matthew Russell, Ben Sumrall, and Liz Wasser are all competent barflies in this play but are grossly underused. Wasser and Russell do a fine job singing and playing instruments when called upon but their parts in the story are minimal. Their virtually always being onstage though reminded me of the homeless and drug addicted chorus characters in “Rent.” All that needed to happen for a true bit of mind-bending comeuppance is for one of the three of them to pick up a squeegee and spout, “honest living, honest living.”

While it may not be sure what it is; history or comedy; drama or musical; “Friends” or “Rent;” “Verona Walls” is a refreshing take on classical themes. While I may have gone on at some critical length, this genre of multimedia play has real promise.

“Verona Walls” is a play about hope, opportunity, promise, change, the bonds of family, and the ties of lifelong friendship. It’s about holding on and letting go. With cell phones. And slow motion Japanese kickboxing. With moves which look like they were gleaned from “Mortal Combat.” And Beatles songs. And Foo Fighters. But I could see Dave Grohl in a frilly, Middle Ages style shirt. 

At the end of the day what’s most important is how the audience took to the material. There were so many jovial hoots and hollers this evening, I felt like I was in British Parliament. Or a Bernie Sanders rally. Because to a modern audience not bound by things like time and place, “Verona Walls” is a lot of fun! So while it’s still running, come on out and enjoy this great escape from the stresses of life. An escape that can whisk you away, through time and space, to another place, off Across the Universe! 

"Sugar Ray" Dinner Theatre at New Harlem Besame Restaurant

When you think of the words, “Sugar Ray,” there are different evocations for different people. Some may wax poetic to the 90’s alterative rock band; some may only consider Sugar Ray Leonard as the very best Sugar Ray. But right here, in Harlem, there is another Sugar Ray who belonged to an earlier time who is no less prolific. Sugar Ray Robinson, by many even to this day considered the greatest boxer of all time, found his fame and laid his roots down in Harlem. The New Harlem Besame Restaurant lays claim to a great relic of that history and through the month of March, Besame is playing host to a dinner theatre production of Laurence Holder’s one man “Sugar Ray.” Starring Reginald L. Wilson and under the direction of Woodie King Jr. this play and dinner production runs Sunday through Tuesday until March 28.

My first impressions of the "Sugar Ray" show at Besame were not favorable or not favorable for those who hope to begin an event on time. The shows starting time was listed as 7pm. However 7pm came and went and we weren't even allowed in the theatre. I appreciate there is an intangible dynamic in the solo dinner theatre production scheme but it really could have only been one of so many things. When folks come to a show at 7pm and the running time is listed as 75 minutes, there is a certain expectation of how the night will go. All that planning though goes out the window if you never start the play. Most of the crowd seemed amiable and happy to have an evening out. I just want future guests of this space to perhaps plan accordingly.

Early audiences at New Harlem Besame production of "Sugar Ray"

One thing about this space is that the show was played to a row of four rows of tables and virtually none of them were proper “facing” the black box stage. There were directly facing seats along the perimeter and in the back but if you were like most of the audience you had to pivot in your chair to see the action. If the restaurant would have spread out the tables in a staggered fashion, that may have led to a less awkward layout.

I don’t mean to belabor the pre-show optics of this space but we were left sitting for well near an hour. The production staff was in back of where I was sitting and I asked the board op what's up with the massive delay? She confided, "It was something outside of their control." Having a rich history in the theatre I appreciate that this could mean any variety of things from the fact that perhaps the star of the show has fallen ill to a dignitary guest is holding the curtain to even someone died, as happened one day when I was working at The St James Theatre’s original staging of “The Producers” with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in 2001/2002.

So we waited. 

And waited. 

And waited a bit more.

Eventually the show was ready to get going and a nice woman who was a partner with The New Harlem Besame Restaurant took the stage and apologized for the fluid nature of the live dinner theatre spectacle. She relayed that the very spot we were sitting was where Sugar Ray Robinson Enterprises once stood. She said that this very building had held a Sugar Ray Robinson affiliated dry cleaner, barbershop, and even a lingerie boutique.

Just at the stroke of a quarter till eight the evening got underway. Mr. Wilson as Sugar Ray Robinson appeared none the worse for wear in a stylish looking pink/purple suit and dove right into the story. Unfortunately for many of us unfamiliar with mid-20^th Century boxing in America, the barrage of obscure names he shot out at us didn’t really register.

Wilson, as Robinson, told the story of how he got started boxing in a priest’s illegal basement boxing ring, how his mother was dreadfully against the prospect of his going into boxing, and how he ascended the ranks. Wilson was a colorful actor who hit arpeggios and kept up a nervous energy throughout the bulk of the evening. When describing Robinson’s first fight his pitch hit a slow crescendo. At the completion of this tale he broke off and admitted to his audience the feeling was something "You don't know. Only a boxer can know."

Wilson is a talented performer and kept the audience rapt up in this otherwise confusing story. However my guest for the evening, who has taken boxing lessons, was take aback by his shadowboxing which he did multiple times this night. "Turn your wrists" she kept mumbling. 

Robinson was a colorful soul as well. As the evening progressed, he told of how he had bought homes for his mother, given $500 to his till that point absent father, and even had something as seemingly gaudy as a Flamingo Cadillac. Research on Robinson before the show alluded to the fact that he may have been one of the first fighters to roll with an “entourage” although from the sounds of the story at Besame, Robinson seemed a conflicted and insecure figure.

“Money was real reason you were s boxer,” was recurring theme throughout the show. Robinson saw himself as a “Gladiator” and “Unstoppable.” Robinson retired once, took to the dancing and entertainment circuit (as his sister and he took ballroom classes in his youth), tried to scheme to make that paper, and then reemerged to the boxing world some time later.

Reginald L. Wilson is the entertainer as Sugar Ray Robinson.

The storytelling in this play was interesting and engaging but when the playwright diverts off into sexual conquests, racial strife, religion, and other platitudes the story became preachy and pedantic.

“When God sends you a message you have got to hear it!"

“When God gives you a gift you need to use it!”

“God always has a message for you and he packages it in interesting ways!”

I expected Wilson to ask, “Can I get an Amen brothers and sisters?” but he didn’t have to. Many in the audience fell right into this cadence and began unprompted snapping their fingers and warmly agreeing with him.

The real pinnacle of this evening was the story of Robinsons tutelage of a young Cassius Clay, the professional boxer who would later go on to become Muhammad Ali. Wilson tries to convince us of Robinson’s straight and narrow path for the young boxer and that may have been true. As the boxer aged he seemed almost regretful at the things he had and hadn't done. 

Capitulation is realized when he recounts of a conversation with Ali on the phone. Ali had gotten a draft card and declared he’s going to dodge the draft. Without thinking Robinson admits that any effort to dupe the government is futile, “because when you get out of jail you'll be too old to fight like me!”

However for all of Robinson’s bravado and living the pimp lifestyle, eventually Father Time and Gravity catch up with you. This was a story of love, family, comeuppance from nothing, bounty, and eventual decline. When I walked away from the Besame dinner theater production of “Sugar Ray” I felt that the story was a little bit meandering. But maybe that’s not the point. Astute audiences will be able to glean a cogent picture of this man, who he was, and what his legacy remains today.

"Hamlet" by First Maria at Teatro Circulo

As one of the great classics, I am always curious when I hear of a production of “Hamlet” like the one being staged by First Maria LLC at Teatro Circulo in the East Village. This show, which continues through March 20 is directed by Celeste Moratti and performed by a mixed American-Italian company. Performed entirely in English this staging was a participant in Milan, Italy’s 2013 “Hamlet Marathon.”

We all know the story of “Hamlet,” tortured prince of Denmark: his uncle kills his dad, the uncle marries his mom, he gets stuck on that fact, tells Ophelia he loves her, figures out his uncles deception, tells Ophelia he doesn’t love her, inadvertently kills his mom while trying to kill his uncle, Ophelia kills herself, Hamlet fights and gets killed by his only friend Horatio, before Fortinbras the Prince of Norway shows up, ready to fight the Danes only to realize that everyone is dead before he steps into the crown. Basically the ultimate story of a dinner party gone wrong. And here you thought burning the Brie was the worst thing that could happen.

First Maria and Moratti have their own take with this production. This staging is set in the late 70’s or early 80’s “during the wave of hedonism that abruptly ended with AIDS” this production strives to “frame the play in an awakening of conscience.”

The cast of this show includes Alexander Sovronsky (Hamlet), Celeste Moratti (Gertrude), Michael S.Kaplan (Polonius), J.B. Alexander (Claudius), Doria Bramante (Ophelia), TristanColton (Laertes), Nina Ashe (Rosencrantz/Marcella/Player Queen), Ross Hamman (Guildenstern/Bernardo/Player King/Gravedigger), and Collin McConnell (Horatio).  Additional chorus work features Markus Weinfurter and live music was performed by Francesco Santalucia and Papaceccio.

I must admit that, on the surface, the press materials for this production had me a little confused. “The elders of the play are either overwhelmingly present or in the case of Hamlet’s father, absent to the point of being a ghostly image of himself.”

As I recall [sic], the elders in Hamlet are hyper-present. Ophelia’s dad Polonius is trying to get into the head of his daughter to the point that she commits suicide at the first signs of trouble. Gertrude is all the way into the life of her son Hamlet in one of the most Oedipal relationships this side of the Middle Ages. The overarching obsessiveness of both son and mother are the whole reason anything even happens in this play! Maybe if Gertrude weren’t obsessed with her son and had set some parental boundaries, then he would have known his place in the world and either set off on his own or knelt down before his mother and his uncle and been obedient.  And Hamlet’s father, seen in the original staging as “ghost,” isn’t “overwhelmingly absent” he’s dead. He isn’t a “ghostly image of himself,” he IS a ghost! I am just overly cautious when a straight reading of the text is thought to be some revelatory event. Still this production was received with international acclaim so I can’t be too particular about things before I’ve even seen it.

After a gentleman took the stage and asked us to silence our phones, the lights went down and the show began. The cast assembled in the dark on the stage and we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At a certain point you have to begin to wonder about technical glitches. There were some random popping sounds on the stage; a football team running through an emblem inscribed tarp might be the best way to describe it. Seriously though I began to wonder; one minute, two minutes, three minutes and more; what the heck was going on? The random stage rumblings took a more concerted tone and like a classic Voorhees horror film, there was this low whispering going on. This is something that would come back again; this was, I surmised, the “awakening of conscience” that the production teasers talked about. How interesting then that this awakening of conscience felt as though it were emerging from some sort of dream state.

Since the story here is well-trodden ground, I’d like to say a bit about the performances here. Mr. Alexander as Claudius had a good speech in the beginning but then I felt was grossly underused for much of the remainder of the play.

"...to sit or not to sit, that is the question" 

Ms. Bramante and Mr. Kaplan were both skilled as Ophelia and her father Polonius respectively. He spoke well for most of his time talking and had a commanding presence and even delivery that was a problem for some others in some parts. Ms. Bramante wasn’t breaking any new ground with her Ophelia but I have a theory about that which I’ll get to a little later on.

Mr. Sovronsky in the title role took us all for a ride. At points he was up; at points he was down. His brooding and scheming worked well for the most part when he was called upon. Some of the delivery had different pacing choices than I would have expected, but because this play has been done so often, everyone’s got their own take.

I was a tad vexed by some of the cuts/alterations made to the classic “Hamlet” text. I know this was not meant to be identical; in fact in the press material Ms. Moratti even goes so far to say that “her concept of Hamlet’s family is not particularly Danish.” So why then with all the cuts which were made did the director keep in place numerous mentions of Denmark? If this was meant to take place in 70’s or 80’s America why then didn’t the text reflect that more clearly?

Another thing that really had me questioning things were all of the divergent costumes. Ms. Bramante as Ophelia wore a peasant pilgrim dress that would have set her apart but would have been totally out of place in the rah-rah 80’s in America. As Gertrude Ms. Moratti seemed a tad disheveled. There were a number of times that several characters went from playing “cloaked background characters” to their title roles, but for her majesty, the changes were often too sudden.

One of the best examples of this is while Hamlet is casting his play-within-a-play he goes to find his “actors.” He only winds up using two Ms. Ashe (who was a vastly underused and very powerful variety of characters including Rosencrantz) and Mr. Hamman (who was also very capable and played Guildenstern among many other smaller parts) but still, Ms. Moratti was there. In her Gertrude costume. Stretching and “prepping” like she was going into the next scene as an “actor.” But they didn’t use her. Or put more succinctly she didn’t use herself. Or overused herself by leaping into this unused character for mere seconds. 

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse with this but in the very next scene she was sitting with Claudius watching Hamlet’s show. Which is where she should have been. So why then was she pretending as though she were going into the next scene as someone else? While still wearing Gertrude’s dress? It was just very disarming to see the transition played that way. I appreciate that the director was going for “activity” but Ms. Ashe and Mr. Hamman changed costumes many times. Most everyone onstage did; why then couldn’t Ms. Moratti? At the end of the play most of the shuffling, rustling, "activity" didn't serve much purpose.

What all these critiques get down to is the ultimate tragedy of First Maria’s production of “Hamlet.“ There is and always has been a very fine line for actors who act, actors who direct, and actors who do both. Alfred Hitchcock may have involved himself best for his time in his films. A quick walk-on and he’s done; never sacrificing the action going on onscreen to serve his own needs. This may have been the most glaring problem with this production; plenty of talent onstage and not nearly enough direction.

A director needs to sit in the audience and see the show for what it is. Not see it from behind the eyes of one of the principals onstage as Ms. Moratti has here. 

A perfect example of this backfiring is when Mr. Sovronsky is making a big comedic introduction of his play to the audience in the court. I watched as Ms. Moratti watched the actor playing the part and was laughing along with the audience in the theatre and in the play. Everyone cajoled along as Hamlet whooped and wailed. Were she really the mother of this man, Gertrude would have been appalled at his implied accusations that his uncle, her new beau, had killed Hamlet’s father. Claudius would have been just as mad right out of the gate and would have shut the whole thing down. Or at least had some sort of negative reaction! When the reading onstage to his scene was tepid nothingness, I surmised this as a haphazard directorial choice.

A few other things: There was a lot of singing which was really distracting. In the beginning there is a number where the whole cast is singing and you can’t really hear the lines; so you’re not really sure what they are singing about.

The whispering onstage reminded me of the “Friday the 13^th” franchise of films. It also evoked though “Macbeth.”  I was waiting for someone to erupt from the whispers with “bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

There is the scene with the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Horatio, Marcellus (or Marcella in this production) and Bernardo take Hamlet out to see the ghost of his father. In the text this action all takes place out on a platform. So when Hamlet is startled by the appearance of his father it’s only natural that his friends lurch for him so that he doesn’t leap from the ledge. Still because of the way the ghost apparition is presented here, there is no indication that they are on a ledge at all. Hamlet’s dad is surrounded by other cast members in their cloaks and they are all crawling around on the floor. So when Hamlet’s friends reach for him to hold him back, it seems to no particular purpose. It reads as though they brought him to this place that they told him they saw his father and then do everything in their power to stop him from approaching. It just seemed rather queer.

Speaking of the dead father, the actor who played him had no shirt for the whole show. His long hair and gruff beard evoked Jesus. Or Jared Leto. I wasn’t ever sure why he had no shirt or shoes on the whole show; it couldn’t have been comfortable.

I’m picking and I realize that. I appreciate that it is First Maria’s right to take this play and do whatever staging they want with it. I also appreciate that Ms. Moratti is an Italian born actress. But when Gertrude is onstage with her husband, with her son, or with anyone else, and you can’t really understand what she is saying, this is because there is no one there directing her. Some of her lines came out okay but a lot of times it was as though she had marbles in her mouth. All she needs to do is slow down and project! Like Ms. Ashe, Ms. Bramante, and all of the other males in the cast. The whole show really would have benefitted from stronger direction from someone who wasn’t a cast member.

"Nothing But Trash" at Theatre for the New City

When I went out tonight to see “Nothing But Trash” the new play by Andy Halliday at the Lower East Side’s Theatre for the New City (155 First Avenue), I was not planning on writing a review. I didn’t bring my camera, I didn’t bring a notepad; in truth my wife and I almost didn’t’ make it to the space on time so we didn’t even buy our tickets ahead of schedule. We were heading out to support an old friend of ours, one of the stars of the show, Tim McGarrigal.  However this lurid tale of forbidden love was a great time and something that everyone who’s able should make it up to see.

McGarrigal stars as Tab, a wide-eyed young man who is just coming into his own and beginning to put his feelers out towards life and the world. Rory Max Kaplan is cast opposite Tab as Troy, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks summer companion who winds up being much more.

While the premise of summer love has been done a thousand times before, Halliday reaches for a different type of tapestry. The details may be convoluted and Oedipal but the message is simple: love hurts. Love comes in many shapes and from different directions.  Love can blindside you and usually takes your breath away. Love can be simple and love can be kind; love can be rigorous and love can be consuming. Even when it’s hazy and does all these things love can also reveal an elevated and enlightened sense of truth. And love changes you; for better and for worse.

Put into a deeper sense of time and place; “Nothing But Trash” is set in idyllic 1958. This was an era of homegrown innocence and because it’s past is in our mind’s eye, everything is pretty well set in stone. Things were pure, intentions were earnest, and right and wrong were clearly defined. Halliday’s deliciously lurid cast of characters all have burdens to bear. It's revealed during the fast paced 100 minutes of this show, that even the most upstanding citizens of 1958 had skeletons in their closet. Even those who appear devoid of a dark side or 'just want to explore Paris' still have their crosses to bear.  Even with all the high-pitched melodrama at the end of the play, it’s true love which swoops in, wins out., and ultimately saves the characters day.

G.R. Johnson directs this very able cast. McGarrigal and Kaplan are joined onstage by Tim Burke, Andrew Glaszek. John Kevin Jones, David Errigo Jr., Jeffrey Vause, Steven Wenslawski and the playwright Halliday.

“Nothing But Trash” continues running at Theatre for the New City through March 23, 2014. Tickets are available through Smart Tix.

Something's Got Ahold of My Heart

Hand2Mouth Theatre Company out of Portland Oregon is heralded as “the old guard” in a vibrant theatre scene. Their show, "Something's Got Ahold of My Heart," now playing at La MaMa on the Lower East Side was one I recently got to go check out.

This show is regarded as an epic in their press materials; it:

“…wrestles with the yearning, euphoria and eviscerating tragedy of love. Weaving an energetic blend of 70's pastiche, romantic comedy excerpts, dance theater, testimonials, original music and aggressive physicality, it invites its audience into a deeply emotional experience.”

Okay. So that’s the show I saw tonight. I want to table that for just a second and dredge up another old quote I saw recently. It was from legendary playwright Edward Albee who said:

“When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions – that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that it’s worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. That’s all.”

So I came in from the rain of a Friday night in January to see this play with all the hope and anticipation that anyone could have for something which sounds, on paper, so promising.

We arrived to La MaMa just before the show was to start and the woman who gave me my tickets told me I could “write down a dedication and a song lyric on a sticky note” and it would somehow or other find inclusion in the show.

I have worked with one of the great experimental theatre companies; The Groundlings out in Los Angeles before. So I was familiar with this conceit. Have people write something down and it would somehow make it into their long-form improv.

“But was Hand2Mouth improv?”

I was suddenly very confused. It doesn’t say anything about them being an improv group in their playbill…but it also doesn’t say that they’re not an improv group. In fact if you look closely at the program it says that the show was “created” by the performers.

Hmmmm. Okay.

Anyway we were late getting to our seats so I declined to write anything down; the woman at the desk made an indignant snort.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

We sat down and surveyed the scene before the lights quickly went dark. The space was wide with audience siting on either side. I opted for a seat on the more full side and I immediately noticed a couple of things. There was a synthesizer, there was a drum set (both off to one side) there was a turntable, there was a wine bottle, and we would see that there were these numerous rugs and pillows which would change shape from scene to scene.

A girl/woman appeared onstage speaking French-gibberish. Some of what she was saying was indeed French but as she continued along many of her words sounded like a garbled gibberish. She asked another one of the performers to translate. Which another girl/woman did. This went along fine for a while before being cut off by another one of the performers; I think the word was “liver.” Inside the human body; the first translator called it something else; spleen(?); then the second translator got involved and they began sniping at one another.

And this was how the show started. For about 5 minutes it was this. Then suddenly the show became about “the true meaning of love.”

• Can one person know what another person feels?
• Is love able to be verbalized?
• Does love translate across miles, across continents, and between two people?

All heavy subjects I must admit for a Friday evening, but there you have it. And on it went. None of the highfalutin language was lost from scene to scene; to the players onstage it got more and more intense as they used other artist’s emotions and they riffed off lines from love songs. Which I guess is where the sticky notes come into play.

My wife and I have this game; I’ll call it “Title & Artist.” It doesn’t really have a name but it does have a hook. I have a long background in music; my digital player flits with 10,000 entries. I know music every which way; she, less so on the surface but unlike me she’s got a really good memory and an ear like a hawk. So when we are driving in the car and I plug my music in I will start the songs anywhere in the alphabet and the game is that she guess the title and artist before the first words come in.

Imagine my surprise then when we were sitting in the audience and these performers came out trumpeting lines from the love songs of Dolly Parton, Lionel Ritchie (twice!) Whitney Houston, the West Side Story Cast Album (song: “Maria” – twice!) and many, many others.

There were underwear-clad Greco Roman wrestling struggling poses, there was an assumption of roles without words and only birdy-on-shoulder thought bubbles being emitted by the omnipotent fellow players. There was an opining to the love gods and there was considerable heartbreak.

Which I guess gets me to my one big distaste for this play. The press release says that Hand2Mouth are hoping to draw the “audience into a deeply emotional experience.”

But, so far as I could tell, there was 0 emotion going onstage this night. They were not connecting with the audience and they seemed even to not be connecting with one another. At first I thought that I might be seeing the most genius work around; I thought that maybe this was what avant-garde was, I thought I was the problem. Unfortunately by the time the 105 minute show had let out, I was decidedly convinced otherwise.

Their overly simplistic, black and white, jubilation or heartbreak navigation point was one of the real issues I had with this show. If people weren’t breathlessly grinding on one another in one sexy scene they were suicidal and forlorn in another scene. This was a place I had been to before; it’s called middle school. For a moment I was convinced that this show had been written by 13 year old girls; or manatees. I thought that there was no way that they would come out here and try to sell us this bale of hay when the whole barn’s ablaze.

The last 40 minutes or so of their show was the presentation of a few original songs, injected with vignettes that they read off of sticky notes. This must have been the dedication portion from before the start of the program. I get it that they were trying to “connect” with their audience but they looked like they were nervous teens reading off the schools prom dedications.

That’s the thing about this cast though; they were not old but they also certainly were not young. To take a page out of my own high school memory book; it’s a little bit like they all though they were somehow channeling belligerent Uncle Rico –

“…she says I’m still livin too much in ’82.”

One thing about this show was that clearly all the performers were really proud of themselves; they thought they were the bee’s-knees. They all had an awful lot of enthusiasm and it emanated; even if it wasn't always towards one another.

Obviously they were going for something that was way above my pay-grade. I don’t doubt the performer’s prowess were they to have a cogent script, a clear storyline, an emotional arc which connects with the audience and with their cast-mates, and some kind of realistic conclusion. But I just didn't see it tonight.

All the players seemed to be very pleasant, talented, and fine from a technical standpoint. In my estimation though “Something’s Got Ahold of My Heart” is a high concept piece which still exists in their own heads. 

Which brings me back to that Albee quote above. As I watched this show I began to wonder if the cast had any idea really what they were doing, whether we the audience were complicit in our lack of due diligence, and whether what was being said was even worth saying at all.

As Hand2Mouth Theatre Company signed off with their original arena-rock sendoff I felt as though I were in Times Square 10 nights earlier with Ryan Seacrest. But this was not New Year’s Eve, I did not know what I was cheering for, and as I fell back out into the evening mist, I felt a deflated confusion and somewhat shirked of my time and investment more than anything else.

Hand2Mouth is playing dates through January 20 at La MaMa First Floor Theatre, 74 East 4^th Street.

Life After Bush

It’s no small coincidence that the stock market is plunging, the war is ongoing, and the scathing critiques of the current administration are all coming to a head currently. We are but a few short weeks from the 2008 Presidential election; with the lines between our nations free economy and the storied images of freedom blurring into nothing; it’s ever more important that we be paying extra special attention to this one people. So it goes that Nero Fiddled is spelling out their final chapter (one can hope) of the Bush Legacy with their latest work “Life After Bush” playing at hERE (145 Sixth Avenue) in Manhattan’s West Village.

This show could have easily been called “The Idiot’s Guide for Reasons to Vote Obama in 2008,” as anything else, but despite the play’s very left-leaning sensibilities, neither side was spared the rod. With Joe Biden dressed as Peter Pan, Hillary singing her “Evita”-laden concession, and Barack Obama done up in a Super-Bama outfit, even the democrats were not beyond caricature.

“Life After Bush,” was conceived in reality but written by cast members Noah Diamond and Amanda Sisk (who are also co-artistic directors of producing agent Nero Fiddled). The rest of the cast includes Kim Moscaritolo, Avi Phillips, Tarik Davis, and AEA members Brian Louis Hoffman and Sadrina Johnson. David Hancock Turner is listed as the accompanist in the playbill and he did a fine job playing DJ Thacker’s musical arrangements.

The real thing which this reviewer took away from this musical-comedy was actually the dire seriousness about this year’s election. There were a number of fun and funny moments like nearly every time the “McCain” or “Bush” actors entered the scene, with their military fatigued helmet and “Barney” the dog, respectively; the tune “Corporations Are People Too,” and Rudy Giuliani’s eponymous number. While all art is satire and life should never be taken too seriously, the fact is that for all its fun and bravado, “Life After Bush,” never strays too far from the actual reality of what has happened and the stakes which we all will be subjected to.

Two examples which stood out to me occurred at the beginning and the very end; “It’s Been A Bad Eight Years,” and “The American Dream.” During “…Eight Years,” there was a startling photo montage which came up along the back of the auditorium where we are reminded of all the horrific events which have gone on during this current administration: the levees in New Orleans, Terri Schiavo, Cheney grabbed his gun, the tragedy of Tony Snow, “shock and awe” in Iraq, the even sadder tragedy of America’s Mayor, Bush as “the decider” and so much more. These were all made fun of, yes, but the photographs actually were real; these events actually happened outside of the realm of The Soup; an unsettling realization, indeed.

The rest of the action in this musical includes things which we’ve all seen (unless you’ve been living underneath a rock since the late 1990’s) and swoops around full circle to the end. The cast of characters all come on in plain clothes during the stirring “The American Dream” and each take their turn at the mock voting machine, driving home the importance of every person doing their part. For a comedy piece, this song is a somber piece which tags the shows closing and tugs on all the right reflexes with lines like:

“The American Dream is starting with nothing, arriving at something, finding a way
The American Dream is faith in the future; The American Dream will be real someday.”

The show had its technical problems (in a space like hERE, especially when you’ve got such fun and cutting lines, everyone should have had mics) but the performances were all pulled off with an insightful amount of skill, humor, and attention to detail.

Many people have already had enough of this year’s election; they’d rather not consider the repercussions of the last eight years; they may just be ready to turn the page. However for others, all the psycho drama leading up to the events which will go down on November 4th and beyond, we geeks are totally jazzed and ready to roll. In “Life After Bush,” there is humor, there is pathos, there is reason to laugh, there is reason to cry, but most of all there should be reason to have hope. That was the driving message in this musical; that all we can hope for, for our future; is some kind of hope for some kind of change.


** Tarik Davis as Barack Obama, Avi Phillips as John McCain. photo by Tom Huben
**Brian Louis Hoffman as George W. Bush. Photo by Tor-Evert Johansen.

Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon of One Act Plays

Marathon Goes Gasping

by Jesse Schmitt

When I first attended a show at the Ensemble Studio Theatre more than 10 years ago I was dazzled at their wall of pictures of previous performers. One picture always caught my eye; a show at EST from 1986 starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Elias Koteas. The picture caught my eye not so much for her as, at the time, she was not nearly the superstar she is today (though, at the time, I was able to appreciate her performance in Steve Martin’s “LA Story”) No, it was for Mr. Koteas as he had starred as the renegade Casey Jones in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from my youth.

Another thing that I noted was the creaky, slow, small elevator, the tepid cough from the air conditioning unit, the cramped seating arrangements, and that big pillar which runs right through their second floor theatre.

I guess that was what was always impressive about the Ensemble Studio Theatre; what had happened there before. Being an eternal optimist when I first arrived here, I imagined some young scribe gazing up to the wall in the future and seeing a photograph of a show of mine and listlessly imagining themselves as I did before.

Time and experience changes a lot of things, but the spaces at the Ensemble Studio Theatre are a bit like Time in a Bottle. The elevator is the same, the waiting area is the same, the air conditioning is still lukewarm, the seating is still the same, and the same pictures still hang on the wall. Though the inside may have been moved around and the paintjob appears to be fresh, I wonder about what’s new that’s going on at EST. When I found out that the historic 30th Anniversary of their popular “Marathon of One Act Plays” series was taking place, I quickly jumped on board and made my way to series C.

Let me take a step back and say that the outgrowth from EST is really quite amazing. To think not even of Ms. Jessica Parker and Mr. Koteas, the list of those who the entertainment media have been or are currently associated with the popular off Broadway venue is awe inspiring indeed: Sam Shepard, John Patrick Shanley, Jon Voight, Cassandra Medley, Billy Aaronson, Leslie Ayvazian, Lewis Black, Leslie Caputo, Danny DeVito, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, Amy Fox, Richard Greenberg, Romulus Linney, William H. Macy, David Mammet, David Margulies in addition to the late Wendy Wasserstein, Shel Silverstein, and of course the former artistic director Kurt Dempster, among countless others. So it is not that a great many talented people are not regulars at EST. In addition, two very excellent playwrights with whom I studied; Christopher Ceraso and Edward Allen Baker regularly have their work showcased at EST and they may even still be teaching through the theatre.

So needless to say, more than 10 years hence and my being quite cynical about the state of things in general, the bar was set quite high in my mind for the caliber of work I would be seeing at Series C of the EST Marathon. I had been to the Marathon in years past and one thing which I was always impressed with was the brevity I felt in seeing the plays. 5 one act plays, some as short as 10 minutes, showcased with talented actors, minimal staging, few scene changes, and important themes.

The first play of the evening, “Piscary” by Frank D. Gilroy, directed by Janet Zarish was a relationship play set around a Scrabble board. The “He” character, played with nervous abandon by Mark Alhadeff was having second thoughts about his marrying the “She” character, ably played by Diane Davis. He starts the play zoned in on his fish tank, feeling like they should call off the wedding which is set to go down in three weeks. She reacts with an unreal amount of calmness in the eyes of this reviewer who was just married within the year (that, or my new wife is quick to pull her punches; the truth, I’m sure, lie somewhere in between) Maybe Ms. Davis’ character is used to this crazy talk from Mr. Alhadeff which would be considered by some a role reversal for genders, but who’s keeping track?

The embattled couple get down to brass tacks when he declares that she is no good at Scrabble; that’s the reason he wants to call off the wedding. They decide to square off in a mano-e-mano game of winner-take-all Scrabble, the house, the stuff, the fish tank. He is confident, she is cool. When she opens up her verbose vocabulary and takes him to the ropes, he is despondent. The ending is something of a compromise and really speaks to the amount of marriages that are rushed into by late in life couples (ugh! Late 20’s!)

The second play, “In Between Songs” was written by the popular comedian Lewis Black and directed by Rebecca Nelson. Starring Jack Gilpin as Chaz, David Wohl as Ed, and Cecilia DeWolf as Grace, this play stands as a trippy retrospective on a life lived. At the outset, the indistinguishable characters are all sitting, listening to a Bob Dylan record; then the song stops. All the rest of the action of the play takes place before the music gets going again.

This play really seemed more like an homage to how good life is (particularly when fueled along with cannabis) and how good their life had been. They all feel “interconnected;” Grace hits the bowl, literally, of some Stove Top stuffing, like it was like warmth for hypothermia sufferer and that was the whole point, I imagine. That we all need things, sometimes for much longer or much greater than we are conscious of; and when we get these needs fulfilled, we have a very hard time letting go.

The third play in the series, “Flowers” was written by Jose Rivera and directed by Linsay Firman. Starring Raul Castillo as Beto and Flora Diaz as Lulu this play is a fantasy trip of the imagination of children. Beto and Lulu are brother and sister and Lulu, slight elder, is 12. She has begun sprouting acne and she feels this is a revelatory event that her video game playing brother should take note of.

One thing that these two did in the play which really got to me was they addressed the audience directly. One thing I learned in my studies as a playwright (especially my more advanced studies at EST) was that breaking down that fourth wall should only be of absolute necessity and should be used sparingly. Every time the other character left the stage, the one left would talk to the audience and fill us in on all the back-story. If you can’t tell the story in the present moment and if what is going on onstage isn’t interesting enough for us to be engaged, then you probably shouldn’t be telling said story.

This was, by-and-large, the case for “Flowers.” Lulu’s acne began sprouting branches and these branches began flowering. This idea was a little strange premise for a play that otherwise seemed so real.

It was after this play that the intermission took hold. It was almost 105 minutes in! I deciphered my other obligations for the evening (I had to be at work at 11PM) and bolted during intermission. I hastened to even write a half-baked review of this series, but apparently I had a lot to say.

I do hope for the reinvention of the Ensemble Studio Theatre; I imagine a day when I can return there and see challenging work from unknown playwrights and be satisfied that the time spent there was at least thought provoking. However I have to say that this latest go-round, with three tapped out old stoners, two kids with wild imaginations, and a bickering couple, pre-marriage, is nothing all that new.

Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 W 52nd St
New York, NY 10019
(212) 247-4982
www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org