Good Art - the Creative Force of Original Expression and Truth, contains
Many Rooms!
Here are a Few Good Critiques of the 2013 Fringe NYC representations.
"BULLY"
- showing at the Sourros Theatre on MacDougal Street
"BULLY",
by Lee J. Kaplan and directed by Padraic Lillis is
a 1-hour long show, but surely well used
from start to finish.
* Sub-titled as "It's the fight of his life",
this Bully offers a
pugilistic looking over as it relates some real life memories
of the character (the actor himself); this new one-man play
is an energized
- on all four pistons - autobiographical exam
of a painful childhood past of the middle
class kind. Kaplan,
fit as a fiddle, in a tight, taut, highly expressive journey that
is travelled in a shared recall with a nice but gregarious
audience, tells us much
- and gives us much. "BULLY" shows
Kaplan the amateur sports boxer as he
travels on memory lane
without the sentiment, and we all get enjoyably caught up in
his gutsy way of stepping into the ring (metaphor alert)! Kaplan
then shares: as
he grew away amid and from the viscious, mean
wreckage of targeted bullying (he, the
target), the details are
given out. In elementary school, he gets pushed around, plus
knocked down, hit, and spat upon, and all done by a bad cabal
of hateful co-students.
Kaplan uses visuals (slides) which, save
for one (his school portrait photo as a 12 year
old) are not very
needed. After all, we have Lee Kaplan, successfully showing his
watchers and listeners quite a bit as he disguises his fair nature
with a hard favored
rage. But not always of course; Kaplan even
possesses a truthful charm that befriends
us while he expresses
his own felt pain, - and we get to feel it too. Fortunately it appears
that he had the love of his family behind him, coupled with a fine
appreciation
of his Jewish roots - offering as much as possible a
genuine haven for passage into later
life. "BULLY" is worth a visit.
But 'ya better hurry. Tickets may be
becoming scarcer and scarcer.
- KEVIN MARTIN
"ALABAMA BOUND" Defly performed
with intelligence, economy,
and feeling in this one-woman show, Linda Nalbandian has aimed
squarely at the heart for bringing to life a slew of truly-human women -
wit, warts and all. Nalbandian portrays five distinct characters from
various
backgrounds (meet Dixie, a nice and tipsy 9-1-1 dispatcher;
Miss Evelyn, a mere 83-year-old
nursing home resident with a surprise;
Loretta - and her mother-in-law; Alice, the beautician,
and Dominique
who is in prison). "ALABAMA BOUND" is enjoyably directed by Charlotte
Higgins, and presented at the White Box, 440 Lafayette Street.
- KEVIN MARTIN
"VERY
LITTLE" - this is a little 35-40 minute nugget dealing with fatal
circumstances
taking place in and among the gatherings and scatterings
of Union soldiers in an Everglades
locale in Florida - in 1863. How hot is
that? The story also involves the life
of a woman attired in a Rebel jacket
facing her own eternal fire, and how the Yankees are
affected by this and
other doings is very interesting indeed. Cleanly directed, "VERY
LITTLE"
is very good. Showing at Teatro Circulo,64 East 4th Street
- KEVIN MARTIN
"OLD FAMILIAR PLACES" Nat Cassidy writes and directs a
somewhat lengthy effort of over 2.5 hours revealing the
Shakespearean impact - of
sorts - placed on two lives as
they figure out their relationship to themselves vis a vis
the
Bard's presence in the learning consciousness of passion. This
is a bright and curious play and doesn't disappoint in any big
way; though -
try as they might - the stage chemistry between
the the two "modern" characters
(James Patrick Nelson and
Marianne Miller) felt a bit too thin at times. Tandy Cronin
(of
superb creative genealogy) and Sam Tsoutsouvas (remember
the
name) fare beautifully together as the other-time-and-
place pair of characters - brother
and sister style ala Victorian
living - and help bring the piece into sharper focus. "OLD
AMILIAR LACES" is full of surprising wit at times and how the
story of Shakespearean inflluence unfolds here is mostly fun
to see and hear and
feel. Showing at the Players Theatre,
115 Macdougal Street
- KEVIN MARTIN
"THE RUFUS
EQUATION" "THE RUFUS EQUATION" is a lively,
clever, appealing
new, first play by Ted Cubbin, with a sharp-witted
pen pointed toward a university physics
department, - with its
members' very human affairs almost scientifically played out by
a
cast of six good actors, efficiently directed by Tom Ridgely. And, it
seems clear that this is a playwright who knows his stuff, - atoms,
molecules, static
electricity - you name it. The writer also works
out some of the finite parts of human
interaction - which adheres in
part to the whims of one of its main wizard-ish characters
named
Bert (nicely realized by George Arend) in his pursuit of falling in love
and maybe even staying there for a while. It seems that loving and
getting
loved (getting laid of course) requires new and creative
experimentation for some folks.
Alas, Bert tries, and gets to first base,
which is pretty much a big score for some nerds
in this world.
But he is a likeable and brilliant guy, and I don't want to give
out too
much detail about what unfolds in the beginning, middle, and end. All
the actors rise to the occasion, so to speak, and if you don't learn as
much
about physics as you could or ought to, or even want to - this
is still one of the better
shows of the Fringe. An extra good standout
among the actors comes forward, brightly,
near the end of the story by
Pierre Epstein as Ed, a seasoned and more senior of the brains
here, and
who eloquently recalls his long-ago and faraway encounter with no less
than the master physicist himself, Albert Einstein, reflecting on how anyone
could
be able to ever know how to truly discover beauty. Something to think
about.
"RUFUS EQUATION" is playing at the Connelly Theatre at 220 East 4th Street.
- KEVIN MARTIN
"EN AVANT! AN EVENING WITH TENNESSEE WILLIAMS", at Kabayitos on Suffolk Street, is a drabby one-man performance on Tennessee Williams, weakly written and performed
by William Shuman and conspicuously misdirected by Ruis Woertendyke that ran an eternal hour and twenty-five minutes.
The end of this so-called theatrical piece was never so deeply welcomed - when it finally arrived. The actor runs through
a chronology of Williams' early, struggling efforts as a writer - in the face of a disapproving, miserable father - to
his meteoric moment of success with a triumphant new work, "The Glass Menagerie" ("success" was regarded
with apt mistrust as the "catastrophe of success" by the pained playwright himself). The piece drones on,
however, with overly familiar items such as Williams' sexuality, Lorette Taylor becoming the first famous Amanda to play
in "Menagerie", and a young Marlon Brando doing a very important house repair before auditioning - and then getting
the role of Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire". Also mentioned are later travails and exploitations (by others)
that enter and exit the Tennessee Williams orbit. We get to hear these details and occasionally witty reflections, but we
don't get the "play", so to to speak. The deep emotional levels - a Tennessee Williams quality that shines through
most of his poetic brilliance - are limited here in any kind of expression. Most of the time - the actor reaches for a drink
from his little mini-bar, conveniently on hand. There is also an old typewriter on display (lest we forget that Tennessee
Williams was an author and playwright). The most dramatic detail related to this production is the point that it is to return
to the boards very soon for a new, perhaps limited, run.
- KEVIN MARTIN
"STRANGE RAIN"
at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre, 45 Bleecker Street, is a
truthful, sharply drawn cautionary
tale of American politics, culture, and
science - done right and crisply by the fine writing
of Lynda Crawford. It is
a warning to the post-50's generation(s) of men and women
in this land on
government's strange, perhaps ominous grip on the natural rights of ordinary
humans. "STRANGE RAIN" pertains to our climate and weather conditions.
(Still
need to wonder about the perils of climate change couched in government and
private interests'
secrecy with their insatiable thirst for power and profit)?
One
can get easily spooked when thinking of the spooks who may REALLY be
running the show of
our daily society. Global warming, where are you? Oh,
you are already here! "STRANGE
RAIN" is done with a smooth, clear direction
by Simone Federman. If you see this very
socially, morally important work,
consider yourself duly warned. (That's
meant as a complement). High
production values are in evidence, and
the whole thing is superbly acted
through and through. - KEVIN MARTIN
