IN SCENA: Via dei Capocci

July 4,2014

What is a street in New York if not theater? And when you are on the way to a play named after a street that has earned a certain reputation the play begins before the play, surrounded as you are by characters playing themselves, high-heeled, rouged up, tattooed, the junky embracing the fire hydrant, the swank chick pushing the double stroller, the businessman with his briefcase, the man walking the dog, several men walking several dogs.  Theater for the New City is just off St. Mark’s Place. Need I say more?

It was the perfect setting for the final evening of In Scena! -- the two-week festival dedicated to bringing Italian theater to the streets of New York. When artistic director Laura Caparrotti, who had been enticing us throughout the festival with descriptions of things about to happen and things yet to come, turned up as the weary but lively former madam in the play, there was poetry in this.

It did not take long to see why Carlotta Corradi’s play had won the festival’s first Mario Fratti Award for emerging Italian authors.  In fact, I heard someone in the audience behind me say those exact words during the first exchange between the madam and Ira, the foreign girl who has answered the call for someone to clean up the house. Of course Ira has a past not unlike the madam’s; they are both finished with that life; but they are also entirely different personalities, evidenced by the fact that the older woman is now making her living by lending money at high interest and the young girl is looking for houses to clean.

Everyone has a past.  Through interludes, this play shows us the past and the present, and how the past meets the present.  This is Europe post WWII.  Everyone has suffered.  The war’s biggest victim is innocence itself, yet innocence persists, even in the older madam, an atheist who constantly talks to God, a disappointing and disappointed mother who may just have found a true daughter not of her own blood who she christens with a simple white flower.  On the streets of New York, we would call this tough love.

Carlotta Corradi has found a real street in Rome with a real past and out of it she has created an imaginative, compelling conversation that you should hear. Laura Caparotti is Lina, the convincing older madam whose vulnerability, deeply buried, has been awakened by Giulia Bisinella as Ira, the embodiment of innocence itself.  Ms. Bisinella’s portrayal of her character is so instinctual and thorough that it has a cleansing effect on the audience.  The conversation between these two actresses is like a dance.

Carlotta Brentan and Jojo Karlin, also characters with very different personalities, show us the past and then link to the present in a way that deepens the meaning of the play.  Kudos to the versatile Ms. Brentan who in addition to acting and serving as executive producer of the festival, also translated Ms. Corradi’s script into English.

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Kairos Italy Theater, the preeminent Italian theater company in NYC, presented its second In Scena! Italian Theater Festival (www.inscenany.com <http://www.inscenany.com/>) in all five boroughs from June 9 to 24, 2014.  The event featured six full productions and four readings.   “Via dei Capocci” is winner of the first Mario Fratti Award for Emerging Italian Playwrights, an honor created and bestowed by the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival.   

IN SCENA: Fallaci, a Woman Against

June 19, 2014

In a sense, a reading is a greater test of a script than a full-fledged play, precisely because in a reading all you have are the words.  But what could be more appropriate for a figure as invested in words as Oriana Fallaci?   She is the subject of “Fallaci, a Woman Against,” one more performance in the eclectic two-week run (June 9 -24) of In Scena, the Italian Theater Festival taking place in all five boroughs of NYC.  Go here for the calendar:   

http://www.inscenany.com/

I hesitate to call her a journalist because she so completely rejected that characterization. 

Hear that rejection in her own words convincingly delivered by actress Andrus Nichols whose portfolio of characters includes another strong woman – Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan.  

Instead of journalist, the writer’s words in the mouth of the actress carefully explain that the moniker she prefers is historian in the moment.  She imagines interviewing historical figures like Joan, Caesar, and Napoleon with the same intensity, challenge and distrust she applied to Henry Kissinger, Golda Meir, Willy Brandt, Nguyen Van Thieu, Ayotollah Khomeini and other elusive, prominent figures of her day. 

Imagination and poetry are at the heart of this production.  Playwright Emilia Costantini has weaved Fallaci’s own words together to create an interview that never took place.  Two women sit on chairs facing each other, interviewer and interviewee, exactly the kind of free-ranging discussion of herself Fallaci never agreed to in life.

The poetry is in the depth of the subject matter and artfulness of the words that make up Fallaci’s responses.  She will tell us that writing is the most strenuous job in the world and that only written words have lasting value, that disobedience to the arrogant is mandatory – the only justification for the miracle of being born, if we do not protest injustice we are like leaves dragged in the wind, that war is the bane of human existence, that politics as a career is destructive to the world, that love is unknowable, that there is no reality like the death of a mother because it anticipates your own.  She is a professed atheist, an eloquent spokesman for the soul, a woman at one with and against the history of her times.

All of this comes through.

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Written by Emilia Costantini

translated and adapted by Dave Johnson and Laura Caparrotti with help from Carlotta Brentan

Fallaci played by Andrus Nichols    Full In Scena Calendar:  http://www.inscenany.com/

IN SCENA: Hanno tutti ragione – Everybody’s Right

June 14, 2014

If you’re ready for something entirely different or if you’re naturally drawn to things Italian – and who isn’t?  – mark your calendar for the In Scena Italian Theater Festival, beginning with this unique play.  The festival runs in all five NYC boroughs through June 24. Go here for the calendar:  http://www.inscenany.com/ 

This is a play based upon a novel written by an award-winning movie director, Paolo Sorrentino.  The novel is nearly 400 pages long; the play is less than 5,000 words delivered by a woman playing a man, animating the dialogue impeccably with dance, gestures and song.   Every spoken word is in Italian but that is absolutely no barrier for non-speakers thanks not only to the English super-titles that display above the action but also to the richness of the delivery.  If anything, this play is a tutorial in how much more than words there is to a meaningful performance.

Tony Pagoda, lounge singer, world-weary like all of Sorrentino’s characters, regardless of the medium, is about to experience what should be one of the highlights of his career – a performance at Radio City Music Hall where none other than Frank Sinatra will be staring back at him from the audience.

Iaia Forte, the actress who played Trumeau in Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty” (La Grande Bellezza) rivets your attention as Tony.  Only one other character intermittently appears on stage – a woman with whom Tony dances provocatively.

Life is a song.  Life is a dance.  Tony may not be at the end – the music is still playing – but he’s definitely past the middle.  He’s stuck in that moment that seems to fascinate Sorrentino – when his characters can no longer escape the conclusion that the promise of abundance has failed.  Tony is disenchanted with the world, but he cannot claim innocence, none of us can.  

Tony Pagoda is past the point of fixing anything.  He can only be eloquent about the place to which he has arrived.  This eloquence Iaia Forte embodies for us.  In the telling, she makes us forget that she is a woman playing a man, or that she is speaking a language that may not be our first.  As Tony, she rails against all of those things that disgust him; Tony finally tells us he only likes “nuance.”  Iaia Forte gives us nuance.

I do see in all of Sorrentino’s work a flicker of hope – circumstances do not change, nothing develops except the possibility of understanding.  For Tony what flickers is one word – a name with reverberations in the literature of his homeland – Beatrice.

The In Scena Theater Festival is like an Italian feast made up of endless courses.  That’s what I felt when Executive Producer Carlotta Brentan enthusiastically outlined for me the week’s lineup, like a master chef lavishly describing the specials on the menu.  I have my eyes on three tempting dishes.  Buon Appetito!

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Once again, the full In Scena calendar:  http://www.inscenany.com/

Hanno tutti ragione – Everybody’s right

Based on the novel by Paolo Sorrentino

Tony Pagoda aka Tony. P – Iaia Forte

Director Tony Servillo

HUMAN FRUIT BOWL

March 30, 2014

This play is a spoken meditation on so many things – art, subjects, objects, knowing, not knowing, thinking that we know when we really don’t – heady stuff – embodied throughout in the quiddity of the naked, young girl standing before us.

Let’s admit we can’t take our eyes off her.  But we also can’t stop listening to her.

This is a unique experience.  When before have playgoers been offered pencil, paper and a lapboard so they can draw what they see?   (The image at the top of this review is a snapshot of a sketch that the woman sitting next to me kindly let me take). 

 

The audience transforms into a live drawing class with an “inside view” that no live drawing class ever gets – the inner life of the model.  

Take a string of things – a heterogeneous parade through the mind – errands she has to do today, the next pose, artists we think we know, models we don’t know except for their names, why is that, famous, infamous, smells, stories, sights, sounds – and the fragmentary return of a rumor of suicide – like a tune that keeps coming back each time in a slightly different key -- when did it happen, why did it happen, how did it happen, did it even happen?

This is what transpires when the subject is an object with its own subjectivity and we dare to explore it.  Distinctions blur.  The play’s multimedia production holds up for our reflection paintings as special objects worthy of a museum because this many years later they emanate with the energy of their little known subjects.

Human Fruit Bowl is a well-conceived, well-written, well-acted experience.  It’s more than a play.  It’s an education.

Bravo playwright Andrea Kuchlewska!  Bravo director Jessi D. Hill! Bravo actress Harmony Stempel for a brave, compelling performance – you turned us inside out.  

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Baruch Performing Arts Center in association with terraNOVA Collective & soloNOVA Arts

The Rose Nagelberg Theater at Baruch

55 Lexington Ave. at 25th Street

Performances Thurs, Fri 8PM; Sat, Sun 3PM, thru April 11

TICKETS:  email ron@spincyclenyc.com or CALL 212-505-1700 x. 11

LUCKY ME

August 11, 2014 

“Lucky me,” I was thinking to myself once again as I sat in the NJ Repertory Theatre in Long Branch, because this theatre is such a find.  Twenty minutes before show time were enough to quietly marvel at the set – a seemingly fully-functional kitchen, a dead ringer for the ones audience members may have just left on their way to a play about to start.  It reminded me how much and varied artistry it takes to bring the mere words of a script to life which must be why they call it – a production.

As it turns out, in “Lucky Me” the set plays a major part.

“Lucky me,” I was thinking to myself once again as I sat in the NJ Repertory Theatre in Long Branch, because this theatre is such a find.  Twenty minutes before show time were enough to quietly marvel at the set – a seemingly fully-functional kitchen, a dead ringer for the ones audience members may have just left on their way to a play about to start.  It reminded me how much and varied artistry it takes to bring the mere words of a script to life which must be why they call it – a production.

As it turns out, in “Lucky Me” the set plays a major part.

So do the actors, of course, with a dyspeptic, comedic Dan Grimaldi at the center of the action playing the part of Leo, by turns predictable and unpredictable, but always excruciatingly entertaining.  He fills us with doubt – about whether he actually perceives the things he says he does and about whether he’s actually devoid of the sense he acts as if he doesn’t have.  He delivers that rare level of acting that makes a script even more interesting than it may be.   Not only is the actor acting but so may be the character he portrays.  This keeps the audience on its toes and moves the action along.

Wendy Peace as Sara is also hiding something.  She’s made her peace with events we witness bordering upon the comically supernatural, which is where the set comes into play.  But there is also a bigger reality she is not talking about, which may explain her very convincing hesitancy about well… everything, including Michael Irvin Pollard as Tom, smitten and persistent, in spite of everything.  He is the only character in the play without a sense of foreboding.  We wonder whether his job as a TSA Agent has inured him to worrisome signals, which gives us a sense of foreboding for our own lives outside of the theatre, if he’s typical. 

Mark Light-Orr as Yuri, the young landlord, gives dimension to what in other hands would be a one-dimensional role.  We like him and we like his accent, and we’re thankful to him for helping to unravel the mystery in such dramatic fashion.

 

Fireworks, failing lights, and an unbelievably realistic rainstorm make us bow to set designer Jessica Parks, lighting designer Jill Nagle and sound designer  Merek Royce Press. 

Director SuzAnne Barabas draws impressive performances from an excellent cast.  The interaction between the actors carries the day.  I’ve also resolved to arrive 20 minutes early for every upcoming performance to let the set begin the play before the play begins.

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Show runs through August 31.  Performances: Thursdays, Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 3pm & 8pm; Sundays at 2pm and selected Sundays at 7pm. 

Written by Robert Caisley; Directed by Suz Anne Barabas.

Cast: Dan Grimaldi as Leo; Mark Light-Orr as Yuri; Wendy Peace as Sara; Michael Irvin Pollard as Tom.

Set Design by Jessica Parks, Lighting Design by Jill Nagle, Sound Design by Merek Royce Press,

Costume Design by Patricia E. Doherty, Properties by Jessica Parks, Technical Director, Michael "Rusty" Carroll, Stage Manager, Jennifer Tardibuono    

A VIEW of the MOUNTAINS

April 30, 2014

Count your blessings.  That’s what audiences at playwright Lee Blessing’s “A View of the Mountains” can do through April 26 at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.  So can all the residents in surrounding areas – to have such a theatre within reach.  Once again, the set, the acting, the direction, the intimacy achieved between audience and performers reach a level of excellence that begins with the choice of material.  “The play’s the thing,” and for that, we need to thank Mr. Blessing.

A number of years ago I saw his “Cobb” off-Broadway in NYC where the three characters on stage were the infamous hall-of-fame baseball player at three different stages in his life.  They argued, taunted, questioned each other and tried to explain themselves as any of us who has lived more than a few years does within ourselves nearly every day.   This innovative staging of character made an impression that has never left me.  In “A View of the Mountains,” the debate is just as familiar, because it echoes the current national political polarization and the ageless conflict between father and son.

The action is very quick.  This is a compliment to all involved when you remember that the substance out of which the story emerges is made up of only words.  This is the art of theatre at its best, and for some reason that seems to get communicated more thoroughly in confines this small in size.

“A View of the Mountains” is a sequel to “A Walk in the Woods,” Mr. Blessing’s earlier play about a US arms negotiator and his Russian counterpart.   Thirty years later, we encounter that arms negotiator in his comfortable home on the Hudson anticipating an uncomfortable visit from his son, the junior senator from Tennessee, radically different from his father in political ideology.

What transpires is the acting out of differences within a family – memories, anger, disappointment, comedy – physical comedy – and the revelation of secrets…

Eva Kaminsky embodies the role of Gwynn, the senator’s wife.  She’s comic in the extreme, energetic, highly expressive, single-minded, an audience magnet.   John Little as the arms negotiator is reflective and strategic; he gives us a man with experience.  Katrina Ferguson as the negotiator’s wife strikes the right ironic balance; a late entrant into this family drama, she is alternately amazed and amused.  Michael Zlabinger as “Will” has very little will; he convincingly shows us someone under the influence of external circumstances and forces, including his own wife.  The teenage son of the arms negotiator and Ilsa, half-brother to Will, is played with complete familiarity by Jon Erik Nielsen or Jared Rush in different performances.

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Directed by Evan Bergman; set design Jessica Parks; lighting design Jill Nagle; costume design Patricia E. Doherty; properties Jessica Parks; technical director Michael “Rusty” Carroll; stage manager Jennifer Tardibuono; fight director Brad Lemons.

Performances through April 26:  Thursdays, Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 3pm & 8pm; Sundays at 2pm and selected Sundays at 7pm.  New Jersey Repertory Company; 179 Broadway, Long Branch, NJ 07740 (732) 229-3166  http://www.njrep.org/