Two From East to Edinburgh

59E59 Theaters continues its preview of short pieces on their way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Goblin Market – Extraordinary

A 1985 interpretation of Christina’s Rossetti’s 1859 narrative poem (produced at Vineyard Theatre) featured two actresses as sisters Laura and Lizzie. This interpretation employs a single performer, co-adapter Jennifer Jewell. The artist inhabits both girls and seven goblins with fluid specificity and imagination. Movement, almost dance, is as much a part of dramatization as colorful poetry. Every word vibrates with life and emotion. Sexual innuendo (when present) drips.

Laura and Lizzie live alone together and are devoted. One evening, drawing water from a stream, they hear goblin merchants call out “Come buy! Come buy!” The list and description of fruits tantalizes. Laura is drawn, but warned by Lizzie: “Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?” Another girl in the area once partook, shriveled and died. Laura ignores her sister and gorges surrounded by goblins. (The segment is orgiastic.)

 

The next night, Laura hopes to barter enough to bring treats back to her sister, but cannot hear the little men with their “… iterated jingle/ Of sugar-baited words…” Lizzie can, but ignores them. Laura sinks into depression, goes gray and stops eating…“with sunk eyes and faded mouth/ She dream’d of melons, as a traveller sees/ False waves in desert drouth…”

With her beloved sibling on the verge of death, Lizzie takes a silver penny and meets the goblins on their route across the hill. She wants to take her purchase home, but the creatures insist the girl sample. Growing angry, they prod, poke, tear (this is shudderingly violent) and press fruit to her lips leaving the girl covered in juice but resolved. She retrieves her penny and returns home.

“Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you…” Lizzie cries to Laura. Her sister hungrily complies, but the taste is now “like wormwood.” The girls sleep. Come morning, Laura is cured. Both go on to families of their own, warning the children of goblins.

Jennifer Jewell

Coming in at about forty-five minutes, the piece is completely riveting. Ms. Jewell is 150 percent present, body, mind, and heart. A realistic southern accent (this version is set in Appalachia) does nothing to impede precise articulation. Both pacing and use of the stage couldn’t be better.

Evocative music and wordless vocals are selectively used to enhance.

Photos courtesy of the production.

Print- Wikipedia: Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Goblin Market
Adapted by Jennifer Jewell and Mark Cabus
From the poem by Christina Rossetti
Performed by Jennifer Jewell
Directed by Mark Cabus
Co-Directed by Patrick Mulryan
Choreographed by Allison Plamondon
Original Music by Chris Tench

The Darling Core

Simone Daniel and Conor Anthony O’Brien

Lilith, for those of you who are not scholars, derives from Third and Fifth Century Jewish mythology. Purported to have been both a sexually wanton demon and Adam’s first wife (explain this to me), she was created at the same time from the same earth (not his rib). Unwilling to be subservient to her common law husband, the first feminist left Eden and coupled with archangel Samael. God then created Eve. The rest of the story is common knowledge. Corrupted by a serpent, Eve gave Adam a forbidden apple and the two were banished from the garden.

In this play, after Eve and their offspring Cain and Abel died, Adam (Conor Anthony O’Brien) teams up with Lilith (Simone Daniel) to form a vaudeville act comprised of ba-dump-dump jokes we hear each time they leave our sight and ostensibly appear in front of an audience. (Jokes and applause are swell but introductions of next acts are unintelligible.) “JumpinJehosaphat, you’re a great audience.”

The bickering couple have been on the road for centuries with Lilith often leaving destruction in her wake – Chicago fire anyone? They argue about the past, referring to incidents only the intelligentsia may get. How many of you are familiar with the history of Austria’s Franz Ferdinand? Who out there knows the story of Barabbas – ok some have seen the film. What was “the ship of dreams,” which of these two faked death and who repeatedly attempted suicide? Things have worn so thin, Lilith suggests ending it all. Everything. As in apocalypse.

The Darling Core (what?) is an amusing premise buried in cryptic references. It doesn’t help that both actors are self-conscious and Direction (Daniel Holme) staid.

Photo courtesy of the production

The Darling Core
Written and performed by Simone Daniel & Conor Anthony O’Brien
Directed by Daniel Holme

59 East59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street

About Alix Cohen (1706 Articles)
Alix Cohen is the recipient of ten New York Press Club Awards for work published on this venue. Her writing history began with poetry, segued into lyrics and took a commercial detour while holding executive positions in product development, merchandising, and design. A cultural sponge, she now turns her diverse personal and professional background to authoring pieces about culture/the arts with particular interest in artists/performers and entrepreneurs. Theater, music, art/design are lifelong areas of study and passion. She is a voting member of Drama Desk and Drama League. Alix’s professional experience in women’s fashion fuels writing in that area. Besides Woman Around Town, the journalist writes for Cabaret Scenes, Broadway World, TheaterLife, and Theater Pizzazz. Additional pieces have been published by The New York Post, The National Observer’s Playground Magazine, Pasadena Magazine, Times Square Chronicles, and ifashionnetwork. She lives in Manhattan. Of course.