Confining Nature: A Review of “The Two-Character Play”
Reviews from Underground
by Joshua Crone
1y ago
In the end, abandoned by the audience, two actors trapped in an unheated theater perform for an empty house to ward off the cold. Blanks swapped for bullets elevate murder-suicide from melodramatic plot device to ritual sacrifice. And when the shooting-within-a-shooting fails on both levels, the actor/characters are left with themselves, each other, an empty theater. It’s a moment that captures the travails of the covid-era theater artist with the expressive precision of a daguerreotype tinted with blood. It’s like finding at the bottom of a shoebox full of yellowed newspaper clippings a dog-e ..read more
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Noh Joke: A Review of “One Green Bottle”
Reviews from Underground
by Sebastian Middlesex
4y ago
The first minute of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre’s One Green Bottle, running at La MaMa through 8 March, is already well worth the ticket price. Where else in the States can one see Japanese noh performed (albeit briefly), complete with kimono, fan, wooden bridge, and black-robed musician? Kneeling with zen-like calm amid an embarrassment of musical riches, Genricho Tanaka utters baffled grunts and muffled wails as he strikes a shoulder drum at syncopated intervals. Is this traditional music or modern minimalism? And Lilo Bauer’s ecstatically slow entrance along the footbridge seems equally fami ..read more
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The Journey
Reviews from Underground
by Joshua Crone
4y ago
Shh… Don’t cry. Tonight’s show at The Tank is sold out, but there are still a few tickets for tomorrow’s closing matinee at 3 pm. Buy them before it’s too late at thejourneyplay.com (Other) critics say: “The comedy in this production ranges from laugh-out-loud exclamations to subtle quips you might not catch if you’re not paying close attention […] Every single actor is perfect for their role and performs their assignment admirably […] When it’s time to start the ritual, you’re invited to join the procession for a chocolate heart of your own. It’s a nice treat that adds a bit of sweet ..read more
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Pinter à l’américaine: A review of “The Dumb Waiter”
Reviews from Underground
by Sebastian Middlesex
4y ago
Precision is a quality we expect of detectives and surgeons, not playwrights. Yet it’s precisely what makes Pinter’s plays so unnerving. The pregnant pauses like labor pains at the birth of some monstrous crime. The forensic insistence on minute detail, right down to the crumbs of an Eccles cake. As if each crumb were evidence of some unspoken menace—some horror so inexpressible that the only appropriate response is to describe the wallpaper. A very English response to fear. The Englishness, the precision of his plays makes them hard to pull off in a land that favours emotional “truth”, Mei ..read more
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DeSotelle and the Deep Blue Sea
Reviews from Underground
by Joshua Crone
4y ago
“We’re all more than the worst thing we’ve done.” That’s not a line from “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.” It’s a quote from public interest lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson. But it could serve as a tagline for John DeSotelle’s deeply affecting production of John Patrick Shanley’s modern classic, running at the NuBox Theater through December 22nd. Danny (Jacob Saxton) may have killed a man yesterday in a fight over ten dollars. When we meet him at a dive bar in the Bronx, he’s a bruised and bloodied sociopath with a chip on his shoulder the size of East Tremont. Across the b ..read more
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Max and Kirill Go to “The Thin Place”
Reviews from Underground
by Max Raab
4y ago
A séance in the intimate (by off-Broadway standards) Peter Jay Sharp Theater? Max agreed to suspend his disbelief long enough to join Kirill for “The Thin Place,” a haunting new play by Lucas Hnath running through January 5th at Playwrights Horizons. From there they retired to Astoria watering hole and RfU stomping ground The Local to record yet another meandering, bilingual conversation for their longsuffering editor to transcribe, translate, and edit into something resembling a review. (Note: This review contains spoilers. If you want to see the play “with a blank mind” as the playwright int ..read more
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The Trojan Women
Reviews from Underground
by Joshua Crone
4y ago
We watched astonished as the Greeks burst in, pikes leveled, horns blaring, a song of victory on their lips. We said nothing as they mocked us in strange tongues and herded us into the great hall to witness scenes of horror. To see mothers and daughters carted away in separate cages. A princess dragged off to slavery at the end of a red noose. A captive hurled from the ramparts to die at our feet. Women stripped and struck and spat upon, smeared with mud and blood and raped and crucified. Scenes of lamentation and mourning so nakedly private we felt ashamed to watch. But the walls had been bre ..read more
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An Ear to the Celestial Vault in “The Listening Room”
Reviews from Underground
by Sebastian Middlesex
4y ago
One of the pleasures of attending fringe theatre is discovering unexpected troves of art tucked away in underground spaces. A prime example is The New Ohio Theatre, which, to judge by the imposing vault door, once concealed wealth of a more mundane character. It would be hard to imagine a better setting for The Listening Room—an underground outpost of a dying civilization whose demise owes partly to the accumulation of capital. Or for “The Listening Room”, an incendiary play by Canadian playwright Michaela Jeffery now enjoying its US premiere at the hands of Nylon Fusion. First impressions ..read more
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Cricket Does “Cocaine”: A Playdate Review
Reviews from Underground
by Cricket O'Connor
4y ago
Well, technically this isn’t a playdate review, and no, I don’t literally do cocaine. I was fed up with online dating, so I went alone to the opening night of “Cocaine,” a two-hander by Pendleton King at the John DeSotelle Studio in Hell’s Kitchen. And in the crowded lobby of the Nubox I met a guy the old fashioned way. Call him “Joe,” like the play’s dope-addicted boxer, if only because after the show he took to calling me “Kid,” like Joe calls his best gal Nora. “Joe” is an avid theatre-goer and friend of the cast, which I know raises doubts about my objectivity. But hey, Playdate was never ..read more
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Appetite for Deconstruction or A Culinary Guide to ‘Pataphysics: Max and Kirill Review “Now Serving” and “The Infinite Wrench”
Reviews from Underground
by Max Raab
4y ago
Two plays with culinary themes and a pataphysical bent. Two reviewers with appetites for deconstruction and a taste for Alfred Jarry’s science of imaginary solutions. In the theatrical equivalent of a pub crawl, Max and Kirill bicycled from Radiohole’s Now Serving: A Guide to Aesthetic Etiquette in Four Courses at The Collapsible Hole to the Kraine Theatre for a late-night performance of The Infinite Wrench, an East Village institution kept in perpetual motion by the Neofuturists. Max: The culinary link is obvious in what is billed an “immersive performance dinner party,” but less so in the ..read more
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