New York Critic

Photo by Theo Cote The set for Unexploded Ordnances (produced by Split Britches at La MaMa) consists of seven tables arranged in a circle and three large video screens on the back wall. Several minutes into the show, one of the two actresses, Lois Weaver (who also directs), asks who in the audience was alive during World War II. The ten individuals who respond spend the rest of the show sitting at the tables with her as a sort of Council of Elders. It’s really cool.  Ms. Weaver represents the President - no particular president. The second actress, Peggy Shaw, spends nearly all her time downstage right at a desk with a computer. She represents the General - no particular general. The play’s concern is nuclear annihilation and it unabashedly borrows from the movie Dr. Strangelove . But in that movie the president and the general were specific fictional characters. In this play they’re archetypes, like the figures in Genet’s play The Balcony . Film can’t do this. ...

There are seven performers in Ping Chong and Company’s play  Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ .  They talk about their actual lives - what’s happened in the past - in the present tense, and what they talk about is the substance of growing up disadvantaged in New York City. When one is asked “What would you tell your younger self?” the reply is “Be patient.” And when another is asked “What would you say to other kids like you?” the answer is “You were put here for a reason.” What an enormous encouragement it must be to young people, to hear that from these articulate performers - aged 18 to 22 - whom we grow to like so quickly! The performers - four actresses and three actors - tell us their stories both individually and communally - that is, they rotate among themselves speaking bits of their narratives, but it’s all in chronological order. We experience them growing up together although they grew up separately. It’s like hearing from a generation. Some are eth...

Photo by Paul Gillis What we do without smart clown shows? “Smart clown show” describes Happenstance Theater’s show Brouhaha , appearing Off-off-Broadway at The Theater for the New City. The loose premise is that the six characters expect the world to end imminently (the script doesn’t explain why and we don’t care). There are a couple of off-stage sort-of explosions that throw them on the floor, and then this brief exchange:  “Was that it?” “Apparently not.”  And then they resume gayly throwing themselves at life. They dance (it’s lovely with their accordion and their umbrella) and play a game tossing their hats around and jockey for position in lines for nothing at all. Even better, they talk to us. “Hello. This is a safe place,” is the first line. “Ladies and gentlemen, the world is ending tonight,” they announce later without a trace of regret. The line “Imagine the bombs exploding outside are far away,” gives the script’s only real suggestion of given circu...

In Panorama (presented by La MaMa) characters morph into one another in defiance of actuality or stage convention. The show begins with 17 video clips of actors introducing themselves, and as the play proceeds we meet seven of them on stage. That upstage video projection is always active, and sometimes it’s the actor on stage whose image is projected - they're always being videoed onstage, and sometimes they take video selfies. They’re always talking directly to us, usually one at a time. There are smaller video screens on the sides of the wide, empty stage that sometimes echo the large, upstage screen and sometimes don’t. The performers don’t act in the strict sense; they present their real selves to us. One met Charles Manson; one is from Turkey; one used to be on drugs. The script is made up fragments of narrative from their actual lives - that’s why it’s so extraordinary that they morph into one another. A black woman talks about the first time she was called a “chink”....

Fellowship for Performing Arts produces theater from a Christian perspective. It’s currently touring with a solo show about C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert . Here in New York they’re presenting another play about Lewis, Shadowlands , Off-Broadway. It’s a larger production, with a cast of ten. Like The Reluctant Convert , it explores theology through the prism of Lewis’ life. Shadowlands begins Lewis’ story from just before he meets the poet Joy Davidman - that is, Mrs. Gresham, as she is more often called in the script. Later she becomes Mrs. C.S. Lewis, but only after she breaks down the barriers that Lewis has created to shield himself from the female other. We meet Lewis among his hyper-intellectual mates in the male sanctuary of Oxford. Mrs. Gresham, an American with whom he has been corresponding, visits, returns to America, and then shows up again, now divorced, announcing that she’s moved to - of all places! - Oxford. Lewis finds in her ...

photo by Lia Chang In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which mandated the detention of Japanese-Americans in prison camps. A University of Washington student named Gordon Hirabayashi chose not to obey either the “order for evacuation” to a camp or the curfew that Japanese-Americans were subject to. With the help of the ACLU he fought his case as far as the Supreme Court, where the judges decided unanimously against him. Later, he declined to return an oath of allegiance that Japanese-Americans alone were required to return, and he was again convicted. 40 years later a college professor notified Hirabayashi that he had discovered evidence that the government had suppressed evidence in Hirabayashi’s case. Ultimately, a federal court reversed both convictions. The Hang a Tale company has produced Hold These Truths , a solo show by Jeanne Sakata presenting these events in Hirabayashi’s life. The bulk of the extended (90 minutes) monologue is...

photo by Adam Smith Jr. How many works have been based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ? Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) lists 39 pages in its Works based on Frankenstein category - novels, films, comics, video games. Mary Shelley accessed an archetype in our collective unconscious like few other writers. Needless to say, not all of these adaptations are masterpieces. But stage adaptations of the novel promise, at least, to be rewarding; there’s a real dramatic conflict between Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature. And the musical is particularly right for this epic, operatic story.    Eric B. Sirota has written the book, music and lyrics to a musical based on the novel. It’s called, appropriately enough, Frankenstein , and it’s been playing at St. Luke’s Theatre, Off-Broadway. It’s really good, a lively and entertaining stage response to Ms. Shelley, produced by John Lant, Tamra Pica and Write Act Repertory . Clint Hromsco has directed the show with a great, ...

photo by David Allen The Mushroom Cure is an extended autobiographical monologue - 90 minutes - written and performed by Adam Strauss and directed by Jonathan Libman, currently playing at Theatre 80 St. Mark’s, Off-off-Broadway. It centers on Strauss’ attempts to treat his OCD through psychedelics, and his concurrent romance with a woman named Grace. The two stories are intertwined as Strauss explores psychedelics and the personal relationship. He meets Grace when he’s researching drugs, and she accompanies him to Martha’s Vineyard to take the magic mushrooms. Libman understands the particular challenges of a solo show, and he deals with them with intelligence and precision. The performance has a nice variety, with clear differentiation between intimacy and humor, and there’s a living rhythm to the whole thing. Strauss, who’s very talented, is at his best when expressing - and reliving - the experience of making a decision in the presence of OCD. He bounces violently be...

photo: Jonathan Slaff August Strindberg wrote a children’s play? Strindberg? That great melancholic? So it would seem. August Strindberg Rep (Off-off-Broadway) has produced his final play, The Black Glove . It was written in 1909 and first produced in 1910. It was the fifth of his chamber plays, but not usually included in collections of those plays. It’s rarely produced and was indeed written, purportedly, for children. Strindberg’s best known for his expressionism, but this play is set in an apartment building - seven floors and 21 units with heat, electricity and telephones. The Professor lives in the attic and The Caretaker lives in the basement. Among the tenants living between them is a bad-natured young Wife, who calls the building a “strange house where human destinies are piled one on the other side by side”. Also present are The Christmas Angel (the play is set on December 23rd and 24th) and an Elf. The Wife, it seems, has lost a ring and a glove, and she blames...

Photo by Richard Termine The Mad Ones , a musical by Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk appearing at 59E59 Theaters, takes its title from a line from Jack Kerouac’s book On The Road : “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live…”. In fact, its central character, a young woman named Sam, carries a copy of the book around with her. She’s just graduated from high school. Her mother, Beverly, expects her to go to Harvard; her best friend, Kelly, expects her to go to a state college with her. What Sam wants to do - sort of - is to take to the road, although she only has a learner’s permit. And Kelly encourages her. Kelly “believes in listening to the road” - that is, wandering.  We meet Sam at the show’s opening trying to make the decision of what to with with her life - with her next year, actually - and her decision-making provides the substance of the play, such as it is. The script proceeds with flashbacks until the final scene. In the process w...