The NY International Fringe Festival is presenting “Ryan Is Lost” a new play by Nathan Wellman which is an intriguing, interesting and brooding two character drama. If one could imagine, it would be the offspring of “Waiting for Godot” and “The Zoo Story.” It is absurdly provocative as it slowly retrieves simmering emotions to the surface, allowing a boiling pain…
Theresa Rebeck asks an important and rich question in her new “Poor Behavior” currently running at the Duke on 42nd Street the new home of Primary Stages. This question might go unnoticed it is so intertwined with Ms. Rebeck’s rant about the state of marriage in contemporary “civilized” culture: and it is a good rant indeed. The real question though…
“Through the way where hope is guiding,/Hark, what peaceful music rings;/Where the flock, in Thee confiding,/Drink of joy from deathless springs.” – “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (Words by Martin Janus) Mona Golabek’s “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” is an extraordinary Master Class in the resilience and healing of memory, the power of storytelling, and the enduring mystery of the…
An Ode (of sorts) to “Enter at Forest Lawn” It is perhaps all those wrong turns into Forest Lawn (and other gateways to divided eternal futures) that seem to get us and Jessica (Sarah Lemp) into trouble. We start out all right (ostensibly). Wounded and be-hooked Clinton (Matthew Pilieci) writes in his journal that we are all “pretty much the…
Douglas Evans (Derek Ahonen) is the perfect anti-hero in his anti-epic “The Qualification of Douglas Evans” currently running in repertory with “Enter at Forest Lawn” at Walkerspace in New York City. This protagonist struggles with his addiction to alcohol as the codependent son of an alcoholic father (Penny Bittone) and completely codependent mother (Barbara Weetman). The audience experiences this playwright…
Playwright Robert Boswell has determined to tackle difficult themes in his new “The Long Shrift” currently running at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater: when a crime is committed, who is the innocent and who is the guilty? Does the justice system work? What are the long term effects on the accused and the victimized? At the age of eighteen, Richard (Scott…
Douglas de Souza’s “666 DSM” concludes its brief run at the 59E59 East to Edinburgh Festival and prepares to face its opening at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2014. Mr. de Souza and his director/producer Cindy Sibilsky have several challenges to face and overcome before rubber hits runway in The Burgh. In six vignettes, writer/performer Douglas de Souza rants…
Ostensibly eschewing the technology of communication, Dan (Michael Yavnieli) and Jeff (Jeff LeBeau) engage in what proves to be a marathon for gamers par excellence as they reunite at an undisclosed location in “present time adjacent” at a small table. Friends for twenty-five years, these two remaining members of a post-high school foursome of friends engage in exactly the type…
EJC Calvert’s new play “Commit,” currently running at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ, is a dark comedy written in three acts. Each act carefully dissects the vicissitudes of the human condition, in particular the abilities of humankind to commit themselves to a variety of relationships despite their prolific and sometimes unsettling flaws. Three creatures appear in the titles and…
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” (“Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.”) – Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy,” Canto III, line 9 of “The Inferno” One would think that with Dante Alighieri, Goethe, John Milton, Kurt Weill, T.S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner (among others) in the house, nothing but a good time would be…