Drama Queens Reviews

“45 Coffee Dates”

The Players Theater through April 29

Reviewed by Robert Viagas

Writer/actress Antonia Kasper had to kiss a long line of frogs—44 to be exact—before she found her real-life Prince Charming. Using a semi-fictional alter-ego named Rachel Yardley in her new solo comedy, 45 Coffee Dates, author and star Kasper recounts how she staggered through an online dating death march of Mr. Wrongs.

Her war stories are mostly horrifyingly funny—one guy who throws up on her, another brings his mother on the date, and then there is “the guy with OCD…who was an SOB.”

Some of her dates are rejected on what seem like purely “lookist” standards. There is the story of the “philanthrojock” who turns out to be much, much shorter in person than in his profile pic. “You lied to me, Napoleon!,” she snarls. But since Rachel becomes the target of plenty of the same treatment, it only seems fair.

Let’s just say that If this becomes a TV special, Match.com will not likely sponsor it.

What keep 45 Coffee Dates from being simply an elongated stand-up comedy routine are her stories that swerve into the heartbreaking, such as when she loses her father, her dog and her unborn child in the space of just a few weeks. She compares herself to older women to see how their various life choices worked out. At age 39, her quest for a life partner becomes just one facet of a genuine midlife crisis. The fact that she’s able to muster such a wry sense of humor about it all proves a testament to her tenacity.

And just when it seems as if her comic misery will go on forever, the play swerves again, this time into a happy world where her dreams actually do come true. She earns them.

Katherine Elliot directs the production, which continues through April 29 in the upstairs space at The Players Theatre in Greenwich Village.

The production is advertised as leading up to the release of the story in book form later this spring.

One of the things that Beckett fans love about Beckett is the ability that he had of using the absurdist form to distill human emotional interactions down to their basics, without needing a lot of conventional expository writing.  Playwright Michael Hagins’ “The Vengeance Room” is not only an homage to Beckett, it’s actually a good one, which isn’t something we often see.  It’s also, in its own right, a fairly tense and quite fascinating approach to a genre we don’t often see onstage – horror.

Into a dimly lit room, complete with an assortment of weapons, five characters arrive, in various states of anxiety, some stumbling and coughing, some simply disoriented.  They are strangers to one another.  They are, to an extent, strangers to themselves.  They don’t remember their names.  They are unclear as to how they arrived.  They discuss whether or not they have been kidnapped, but don’t recall anyone abducting them.

Eventually the weapons, a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, a sword, are spoken for, variously traded, and brandished with various degrees of success.  Alpha Male “D”, played with confidence and pragmatism by Michael Mena, goes for the gun before anyone else arrives, hedging his bets.  The bullying mean girl “X” comes in afterward, and chooses the sword, although her tongue is far sharper.  As played by Ariel Leigh, X is a consummate shit-stirrer and wickedly fun to watch.

Ashley Lauren Rogers “G” is a sweet soul who wishes to harm no one, yet is bullied into wielding first the bat and then, eventually, the gun, though she’s got no fight in her we can discern.  Rogers plays G with a sweetness and vulnerability that grounds the tension for the audience deftly, giving us someone we could potentially root for, though we don’t know why nor do we know what the circumstances around the tension quite are.  Rounding out the cast is an apparent couple, the henpecked “M”, played with a terrific comic haplessness by Michael Moreno, and the fired-up “O”, played alternately sweet and sarcastic by the wonderful Kat Moreno.

As the characters circle around each other, each knowing the game is for one to kill all the rest in order to escape, Director Janelle Zapata manages the dramatic tension in the small space with great skill and respect for the form.  And, most important, she never telegraphs any of the twists and turns, allowing the audience to go ahead and make assumptions that, I guarantee you, will turn out to have been false.

The Vengeance Room not only adds an exciting and interesting one-act piece to the canon of absurdist theatre pieces, it also provides something that contemporary theatre can often lack: fun.

The Vengeance Room will run at Kraine Theatre, 84 East 4^th Street, on February 22^nd at 10:30 PM, on February 24^th at 8:20 PM, and on March 4^th at 1:50 PM.  For tickets, please visit the Frigid New York Festival website at http://www.horsetrade.info/frigid-festival-df84

Diary of a Madman Review by Natalie Lifson

You walk into an office building. The same office building you walk into every day. You take a seat at your desk. You look around at all the familiar faces. Nobody’s looking at you. Nobody’s ever looking at you. You don’t matter here. You don’t belong here. You could be someone important in another life. Someone worth glancing up at as you enter the room. Someone worth loving. She doesn’t want you and she never will. You’re alone in the world. You’re nothing. Insignificant. It’s enough to drive a person mad.

Diary of a Madman , a one man show adapted by actor Ilia Volok and director Eugene Lazarev from a story of the same title by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, explores the psyche of a man, Poprischin, who feels so dissatisfied with his own role in life that he gradually descends into a sort of madness characterized by paranoia and grandiosity.

Throughout the brilliant painting that is Volok’s performance, every twitch of his face, every jerk of a limb, is another artfully placed brushstroke on the captivating emotional landscape of Poprischin, the civil servant who just wants to be noticed, who just wants to  matter  in a world that seems to have completely discarded him. 

Even with a minimal set that consists only of a blank stage framed by two ladders, Volok manages to transport us into not only into the early 19th century, but into Poprischin’s rapidly declining mind. As Poprischin progressively loses touch with reality, as he determines that he is, in fact, the king of Spain, as he stalks Sophie, the woman he is in love with, Volok’s movements become jerky and over exaggerated. His eyes bug out as he shouts sentences that a sane person would utter at an ordinary volume. He pauses in the middle of sentences to breathe rapidly. His face contorts to display his dwindling internal conflict like an open book. It is so easy to forget that Volok is not, in fact, the elderly madman with a limp that he plays so skillfully. Likewise, Volok is so gifted at miming that suspension of disbelief becomes second nature. When Poprischin talks to a dog, the audience feels as if the dog is truly there. When Poprischin enters Sophie’s bedroom without permission and addresses her, the audience can almost­but­not­quite see her out of the corner of our eyes.

Volok is particularly engrossing to watch in the moments in which madness utterly consumes Poprischin. A particularly riveting scene finds Poprischin ranting about women and the devil. As he shouts and stomps and lurches his body in different directions, the lights, designed by Ken Coughlin, bleed a dark red.  This , Coughlin, Lazarev, and Volok alike seem to indicate,  this  is true madness.

While  Diary of a Madman  certainly keeps the audience on the edges of their seats throughout the entirety of the performance, the highlight of the show by far is the use of sound, as designed by David Marling, particularly when Poprischin discusses Sophie. When Poprischin as much as hands Sophie a handkerchief, he pauses where he stands, his movements become fluid, and he babbles on and on about the object of his obsession as music begins to play. In the background every time thoughts of her pop into his head, the song “Una Furtiva Lacrima,” sung by Izzy, plays in the background and dictates his bodily movements. “Una Furtiva Lacrima,” which is from the Italian opera  L’elixir D’Amore  and details the emotional experience of a man who uses a love potion on a woman who he had tried and failed to win the heart of, is a fitting song choice that flawlessly characterizes Poprischin’s manic passion in  Diary of a Madman.

The raw emotion displayed by Volok in these moments, paired with Izzy’s voice in the background, is intoxicating and impossible to look away from.

In addition to being a powerful and entertaining piece of art,  Diary of a Madman  is a profound commentary on mental illness, homelessness, and empathy. Despite Poprischin’s madness, it is impossible for the audience not to empathize with his situation. Although his emotions are amplified, the experience of loneliness, of invisibility, is one that is universal. Poprischin begins just like any man; he is an average office worker with average job performance and an average life. He is someone that anyone could know, that anyone could  be.  He transforms from this universal character into a homeless madman claiming to be a king on the street, not dissimilar from people we walk quickly past on the street every day and avert our eyes from. Poprischin may be a figment of Gogol’s imagination, but truthfully, he could be anyone.

The production is extended through February 18 so there are still ample times to see this masterful work.

Crafting a cabaret performance that’s cohesive as well as charming isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.  Fortunately for me, Andrea Bell Wolff, with the help of a great team of musicians and terrific musical direction, managed to more than pull it off on Saturday night at Don’t Tell Mama with her new show, “Prisoner of Love.”

Andrea herself is a sprightly, bubbly musical theatre vet, and has a story or two to tell about her life on the road, but one of the most interesting things about her show is the choice of songs.  Many of them are playful, but just as many are thoughtful, heartfelt, and dovetail seamlessly into her own life story.  The songs are given an extra dash of poignancy once Andrea reveals that the arrangements were done by the late Barry Levitt, who passed away just a few short months before the show went up.

Director Peter Napolitano and Musical Director Mathew Martin Ward keep the show moving and the pace varied, and pieces like Kander and Ebb’s “Colored Lights” and a cover of Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train” pop lightly along, while more introspective pieces like Joni Mitchell’s “River” deepen the experience.  There is even an original song, the titular “Prisoner of Love”, written by Napolitano and the late Levitt, that reminds us that musical theatre pieces can have breadth and depth as well as being tuneful and catchy.

Bell Wolff is absolutely charming and very engaging as both a singer and raconteur, and she brings the right tone to each song in the show, whether it’s Sondheim (Could I Leave You?) or James Brown (a very earthy rendition of “This is a Man’s World”).  I particularly enjoyed “Other Lady”, a Leslie Gore tune that one doesn’t hear all that often.

Keeping Ward on piano company is John Miller on bass, Howie Gordon on drums and percussion, and Rob Thomas on violin, and the quartet provided a delightfully full and coordinated sound without overwhelming the audience in close quarters.

Andrea’s show was only scheduled for one night, so my normal plug to see it doesn’t apply here.  However, I’m certain she’ll perform it again sometime soon, and Don’t Tell Mama Cabaret’s brick room will be the better for it.

Sidney Meyer’s Don’t Tell Mama Restaurant and Piano Bar  [http://donttellmamanyc.com/] on 46th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, has shows seven days a week, with matinee’s on Saturdays and Sundays.

As with the recent London revival of “Angels in America”, and Regeneration Theatre’s recent revival of “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” audiences are momentarily curious as to why these LGBTQ plays are being revived now.  In fact, a woman in the audience next to me was musing about that very thing after we’d both just seen Regeneration’s newest offering, a revival of William M Hoffman’s “As Is.”  It didn’t take us long to remember that we are still, unfortunately, in Trump’s America, we have a Vice President that believes in conversion “therapy” for gay youth, and that, therefore, we all have to make as much effort as we can to remind the public that we will not allow ourselves to be pushed back into the intolerance and ignorance of the past.

“As Is” is very much a play of the 80’s, as the pre-show music reminds us.  And not so much was known about HIV/AIDS in 1984 as is known now, about causes, prevention, or treatment.  But now, in 2018, the slogan “ignorance = death” can be applied to so many different things that depicting the original inspiration for that slogan onstage inspires a deep and many-faceted experience for today’s audience, which is absolutely Regeneration Theatre’s mission statement.

All that said, “As Is” is not just an issue play.  It’s never just been a play about HIV/AIDS.  “As Is” is a play about love and friendship in crisis, which is something to which everyone can relate.  Leading the cast as Rich, Brian Alford paints a compelling portrait of a deeply frightened and sensitive man acting out after his diagnosis in precisely the way all of us would.  Rich is at once hopeful, angry, biting, and, ultimately, vulnerable in ways he wouldn’t have been before becoming ill.

Robert Maisonett plays ex-lover and current companion Saul with depth and breadth, nailing Saul’s jealousy and neurosis as well as his love, humanity, and loyalty.

I have also to give Regeneration kudos for continuing to revive plays with somewhat larger casts.  This play employs nine actors, though some of them do double, and when many regional theatres limit productions to six actors, or even just four, Regeneration pushes against that tide and often produces plays with more.  Without Regeneration, not only wouldn’t we necessarily be seeing “As Is”, but we wouldn’t have been treated to supporting performances by Jenne Vath (Hospice Worker/Narrato), Daniel Colon (Chet), Aury Krebs (Lily), Sara Minisquero (Business Partner), Rick Calvo (Pat), Mario Claudio (Barney), and Colin Chapin (In a sensitive and deft performance as the dying Rich’s brother.)

Director Marcus Gualberto keeps things moving apace in a very small performance space, and allows the actors to navigate the overlapping dialogue and the emotional landscape without overmuch fuss and fugue, guiding everyone gently toward the poignancy of the ending without veering into melodrama.

I would advise that you check out the revival of this play, not because you might feel it’s an artifact from some other, bygone time, but precisely because it’s not.  As Is, particularly in this production, reminds the audience that situations are only addressed when they are identified, spoken about, and rallied around.  Some of the  voices that brought the discussion about HIV/AIDS into the spotlight during the Reagan era were, sadly, silenced.  But in these days when the political climate seems to be swinging back toward intolerance, ignorance, and violence, all of us must do what we can to put a chock in that pendulum and prevent it from pointing us back toward a dark age of indecency and separation from each other.  As Is will remind you that every voice is needed, even an echo from the past.

Regeneration Theatre will present As Is now through February 11th, 2018, at the Workshop Theater, 312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.

Teen suicide is a subject much discussed in the media, yet part of the reason it’s much discussed is that it’s not always understood, even by families that have direct experience.  Into this discussion comes a new one-act play by Anthony J. Piccione in which the Ghost of a suicidal teenager (played with sensitive nuance by Julie Wallace) narrates for us, in Our Town fashion, as a series of flashbacks show how she was bullied, misdiagnosed and, ultimately, ignored.

The Body of the teenager is the character used as an avatar throughout the series of flashbacks, and as played by Erin Amlicke, she’s a bit more typical of what we sometimes think of as a teenaged girl – surly, unwilling to see a point of view other than her own, uncommunicative.  Ghost is a bit more introspective, but manages to comment on the events leading to her suicide without undue sentimentality or pathos.  Both performances are confident and touching, commanding the stage without undue fuss and expertly allowing the story to live and breathe.

Emma Romeo and Gabriel Stephens play the Girl’s hapless parents with sympathy and complexity; Dana Majeski does a nice turn as the mean girl/bully that regrets her actions, and Andres Gallardo Bustillo plays a therapist that doesn’t seem to know how to engage with the Girl in any way other than by therapy rote without making him completely stereotypic.

Playwright Piccione does an absolutely masterful job in illustrating this story, ostensibly an issue play, in a way that doesn’t make it feel like an issue play at all.  He has rendered the story with the kind of wisdom and depth that indicates that he has a visceral and personal connection with the subject.   If a family has been touched by depression or suicide, they will certainly recognize the hallmarks of an all-too-common situation, while those who have been lucky enough to have escaped the situation will, nonetheless, find themselves coming to an understanding by the time the play is over.

The beauty and elegance of this play is haunting and the subject matter most timely.  The performances are understated and deft, and the direction, by Sarah Jane Schostack, is sophisticated and cunning, particularly when having the Body and the Ghost of the teenage girl face off against one another.

I can also say that “What I Left Behind” truly is what we think of as a complete, well-told one act; I was not left with the feeling, as I so often am, that the one act play was merely a sketching of what would eventually become a full-length work.  Instead, it reminded me of the episodes of the old Twilight Zone – fully realized in approximately 45 minutes, complete with a cathartic response from the audience.

I’m absolutely looking forward to more work from this playwright.

Back in the 1980’s a standup comedian named Andy Kaufman decided that the “bits” and the “routines” he was doing professionally didn’t go far enough in allowing him to express himself.  He approached the World Wrestling Federation and, in 1982, created a character that he subsequently inhabited so often and in so many contexts, the Letterman show, wrestling events, theatrical events, that he effectively created a permanent fourth wall around himself.  He jettisoned his beloved TV character, the reason most of his audience knew him, stopped giving interviews as anyone other than “wrestling villain Andy” and, thus, challenged his audience to question the very nature of what was real about Andy Kaufman, the comedian and also the man.  Many who were used to a traditional comedian’s approach didn’t “get it.”  In fact, his insistence on hiding behind his own personal fourth wall made some of his audience literally hostile toward him.  He didn’t care.  He had a story to tell.

I thought about Andy Kaufman as I watched Wednesday night’s performance of UVX: The Luxury Universal e[X]perience at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side.

The premise of UVX is that a large corporation has found an algorithm to quantify “fun” and is now prepared to apply techniques to its filmic “experience” as various as audience voting, Rocky Horror-type trash tossing, multi-media and Erhardt Seminar Training, to create an interactive experience for the audience that is at once funny and bizarre.    Yes, there is a goofed-up film, preceded by a mock trivia quiz with a somnambulistic rendering of the intro from A-Ha’s “Take on Me” as background Muzak.  But the film is not the point.  All the stuff that goes on in the foreground, with the (hopefully willing) participation of the audience is the point.

In true Andy Kaufman-like style, there is no program naming the creators of the show, listing the actors, or otherwise letting the audience know anything much at all about what it’s in for.  There is only a small brochure which seems to resemble the escape safety brochure from a low-rent airline.  This is rather a shame, as the actors playing the ushers, or “buddies”, were doing quite a good job, and I’d like to call them out by name if only I knew what their names actually were.

There was also, therefore, no way of discerning, on the night who, exactly, was responsible for creating the theatrical experience I was watching.  Thanks to Google, though, I was able to discover that the piece was created by interactive theatre veteran Lyle Sterne and self-described multi-media jack-of-all-trades Alex Chmaj.

The UVX experience also gives a nod to amusement park rides, in the sense that the person who gets onto a ride at Six Flags is entering into an agreement that something artificial is going to, nonetheless, evoke an emotional response as if the circumstance is “for real.”  UVX manages to accomplish this largely through the maintenance of the fourth wall I previously described – Sterne and Chmaj pretend, good and hard, that everything they’ve created is “for real”, and it doesn’t take long for the audience to suspend it’s disbelief and pretend that it’s real as well.

I’d like to say a few words at this point in praise of silliness.  Theatre, particularly New York Theatre, isn’t often just flat-out silly.  Unintentionally funny, perhaps, but not Monty Python-style, Kaufmanesque silly.  With its battling stormtroopers wielding glowsticks and its gleeful “buddies” exhorting the audience to throw paper airplanes and otherwise have fun, even if one of the ushers should suffer bodily harm or even death, UVX is monumentally, supremely silly.

As with most audience-driven theatrical experiences, the show is more fun when the house is full.  UVX makes a point (one of many) about the corporatization of entertainment by charging a premium to sit in the balcony, able to throw debris on the proles below but not (I assume, since I couldn’t see) engaged by the “buddies” or the stormtrooper characters.  When I visited, there were some empty seats, but I could see that the audience members in front of me, who went “all in” with the participation aspect, were having a good giggle.

This is not the first time Sterne and Chmaj have collaborated, and it won’t, I assume, be the last, but I would encourage theatergoers to visit the Abrons Arts Center while they can still catch UVX and watch something that very few people are attempting to do these days – an example of commercial experimental theatre that requires the audience to engage in a way it may not be used to.

Andy Kaufman would love it.

UVX: The Luxury Universal e[X]perience will be playing at the Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, New York City, on Friday 3 November 2017:2:00 PM; 5:00 PM; 9:00 PM, Saturday 4 November 2017:  2:00 PM; 5:00 PM; 9:00 PM and on Sunday 5 November 2017: 1:00 PM; 4:00 PM

Tickets can be obtained via ovationtix at the URL below:
http://www.abronsartscenter.org

Or by phoning the box office at 646.941.9326

SUSAN BARRETT opens this week in Soundview Summer, a daring work that takes a personal look at the after-effects of nuclear exposure.  Ms. Barrett had some interesting takes on everything from being an artist, to being funny, to being in Indie Theater … if that still exists!  

Tell us about yourself as an artist? 

I’m Susan Barrett, and I play Cathy in Soundview Summer. I’m a comedic character actor who really enjoys transforming into characters to the point where I am unrecognizable on stage. A few years ago, I did an all female production of Othello. We actually played the male roles as men with lots of facial hair, transformed the way we walked and talked. I was overjoyed at our opening night party when someone came up to me and said, did you see the show, who do you know in it? And, I was able to say I WAS IN IT! When people don’t have a clue it is me off stage, that really feels gratifying. Those types of projects are what I am drawn to the most. Also, outlandish comedy with lots of improv. However, I love developing new works, like Soundview Summer, with playwrights, and just working on good stories, and well written plays, whether it be comedy or drama. I really enjoy making folks laugh, so comedy is my “go to,” but it’s also nice to portray a serious drama where hopefully what I bring to a role can help to ignite something in someone in the audience. If I reach some person in some way as an actor, and tell the story well, then I know I have done my job. I also love the medium of television and film. It’s really quite a privilege to get to do what we do as artist’s.

What do you hope to convey to your audience regarding this powerful topic? 

This question is a challenging one for me. My character Cathy, doesn’t comment at all about the topic. She simply plays an important relationship in the story with the main character at a transitional time in his life. Cathy pops in and out very quickly near the end of the play, and is very “slice of life.” I hope the audience finds her relationship with Billy refreshing and fun as she adds a bit of levity to the story. We get to see a different side of Billy with Cathy as both their lives progress forward.

Do you feel a stronger sense of responsibility when the subject matter is so serious? 

Again, difficult for me to comment on this particular question because my character Cathy isn’t really effected directly by the subject matter. Since the play is not really about her journey, and we only get to see a glimpse of her life with Billy, I would say that perhaps there is more of a strong sense of building a lasting relationship where two people come together by circumstance to teach each other a lesson, and to help and aid one another at a particular cross roads in their lives. That alone in telling the story is a strong sense of responsibility. I think just telling any characters story is a strong sense of responsibility, no matter what the subject matter is.

Tell us your feelings on Indie Theater? 

That’s an interesting question! I’m not sure Indie Theater still exists, at least not how it did, or the way I knew it in NYC in the 80’s up to around 2008. So many great companies (some of which I was a part of) have had to close their doors. Even the Fringe Festival has taken a hiatus. It makes me very sad to have seen that occur as NY has changed so much in the last decade. So, I say Bravo and Kudos to anyone who is able to continue to produce, develop and bring new works to the forefront, and continue to create on ANY level. It’s so important to keep ALL of The Arts going, no matter way, and to be able to express, create and tell valuable stories through any medium in this crazy unsettled climate we are now living in. We can’t stop making a positive impact on the world!

What’s next? 

If you find out before I do, please let me know! LOL! Actually, I shot an episode of Shades Of Blue opposite Jennifer Lopez over the summer, and that should be airing on television mid-season, sometime after January. My goal is to continue to work more in film and tv, and work towards a recurring role on a series, so if anybody with any influence out there is reading this, please keep me in mind. Again, LOL! I was fortunate enough recently to audition for a recurring role on a new Showtime series that shoots in late December, so here’s hoping….working on remaining faithful, and taking it one day at a time. Also, I am teaching again, and would really enjoy focusing on coaching younger actors, and doing more teaching artist residency work.