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Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.

isolation

Porcupine Choose One: Pain or Warmth

05/15/2017

Cassandra has dreams of porcupines. It’s bitter cold. The rodents huddle together for warmth, prick/hurt one another, separate, grow cold again, and huddle. So it is with many of us.

FIRST

Jessica Kuhne and Jean Brassard; Sofi Lambert

Noami (Jessica Kuhne) and Theodore (Jean Brassard) are a couple. After admiration, the thing she desperately wants is a baby. Her bored partner makes it clear he’s more concerned with what color he’ll die his hair. One gets the feeling neither has friends.

It’s Cassandra’s birthday. (Sofi Lambert) Celebrating so thoroughly she’s fraught, the young woman decorates, bakes a cake (resembling a porcupine) in a magic oven, sings, squeaks, squeals, dances, and chirps to party guests who aren’t there. Every word and move is wildly exaggerated. Photocopied invitations are disseminated to most everyone she meets. Will anyone come to her party?

TWO

Sofi Lambert and Yeauxlanda Kay; Vincent D’Arbouze

The hugely pregnant Suzanne (Yeauxlanda Kay) is minding the counter at Phil’s  Corner Store. (She hasn’t had sex in 15 years. It’s immaculate, or in this case, surrealist conception.) To say the woman is bad tempered is to minimize her sour response to anyone in her path. Life stinks and, if prodded, she’ll tell you why.

Her brother Phil (Vincent D’Arbouze) is a bundle of ambulatory neuroses, the greatest insecurity stemming from a preadolescent rejection. He’s secretly in love with Cassandra. When a change of gravy at an habitual restaurant shakes one’s life, balance is precarious. Oh, Phil’s second profession is hairdresser.

PARTY

Jessica Kuhne, Yeauxlanda Kay, Sofi Lambert

Suzanne’s unborn baby is passed from belly to belly by violent means, Theodore falls for Cassandra and is cruel to Noami,  Noami and Suzanne accidentally meet at Cassandra’s party which causes a change in both, Phil musters the courage to declare himself…Very little ends well. There’s a wounded duck (a great puppet by Jean Marie Keevins), odd employment of a ski mask, a great deal of French pop music, and a truly romantic, unique birthday gift.

Porcupine is kind of a kitchen sink piece. Every unedited idea the playwright had is tossed in the mix. As a result,  it’s a bit heavy handed in its quirkiness and over long. Still, the characters’ crossovers are telling and ultimate isolation is crystal clear.

Sofi Lambert and Jean Brassard

As Theodore, Jean Brassard must rise above dorky wigs (possibly intentional) and the vacillation of his director. The actor does create a markedly selfish beginning, a credibly smitten and disappointed center, and a defeated finish.

Between parentheses of over the top manic behavior, Jessica Kuhne gives us palpable fury and a later sea change.

Sofi Lambert’s theatrical skills are buried by direction.

Vincent D’Arbouze’s Philip is sweet and sympathetic, his anxiety realistic, depression weighing. In one passage, the actor appeals to audience members with empathetic success.

Yeauxlanda Kay is excellent throughout. She provides ballast, inhabits a solid character, and appears to think (as Suzanne) before she acts. An artist to watch.

Director Leta Tremblay has sculpted a Cassandra so abrasive and hysterical (not funny), it’s difficult to feel appropriate compassion. She also forces Noami into excessive expression where words and behavior would’ve been sufficient. These two tip the piece in a way that affects everything to the detriment of the writing. Nor can Tremblay decide whether to make Theodore innately callous or just fickle. Physical staging is effective.

This theater of the absurd piece spools out in vignettes. Three separate areas, defined by Lighting Designer Chelsie McPhilmy, present separate lives from which people “venture forth.” Loopy use of balloons, confetti and a metallic strip curtain work well in a friendly handmade way that suits the show – as does minimal furniture. Scenic Designer Angelica Borrero.

Photos by Audobon McKeown
Opening: Yeauxlanda Kay, Jean Brassard, Sofi Lambert, Vincent D’Arbouze, Jessica Kuhne

Porcupine by David Paquet
Translated by Maureen Labonte
Directed by Leta Tremblay
Through May 20, 2017
Actors Fund Art Center
160 Schermerhorn St. Brooklyn

Shining City – Unmoored in A Crowded City

06/10/2016

In essence, Shining City (last seen here on Broadway in 2006), is another of playwright Conor McPherson’s ghost stories. This one, however, alludes not only an “actual” spirit, but city lives lived, despite liaisons, without roots or attachments, adrift in limbo.

Still living with unopened cartons, fledgling therapist Ian (Billy Carter) welcomes his first patient with professionalism that covers insecurity.  John (Matthew Broderick) evidently tried to get an appointment with a psychiatrist recommended by his doctor, but waiting time was four months. We never learn how he found Ian. John’s problem, emerging in the fits and starts of an otherwise, one suspects, taciturn man, is that his wife Mari is appearing in the house weeks after she died in a particularly grisly car crash. The patient is so badly shaken, he’s moved into a B & B.

Lisa Dwan, Billy Carter

John and Mari barely communicated when she was alive. He had no idea she was out the night she died or where she was going. If they’d only communicated. If they’d only been able to have children. Is she now trying to punish her husband or to tell him something?

Ian is –surprise!- visited by Neasa (Lisa Dwan) the mother of his baby. Despite an argument, oblivious to exit statements, she expected him home days ago. Stuck in his brother’s house, life’s become ostracized hell. We learn some of Ian’s backstory, viable reasons for his feeling troubled. He will, he promises, be responsible.

Next we look in on the therapist one night when he’s picked up Laurence (James Russell) in a park. Homeless, in debt, and also a father, the man is reduced to selling himself in order to be able to go back to temporary digs. This is Ian’s awkward first time with a man. It doesn’t turn out as planned.

two

Billy Carter and James Russell; Billy Carter

Furniture is moved, cartons packed. Ian is once again moving. John returns for a last visit. Both his and Ian’s lives have radically changed. Or have they?

McPherson’s episodic piece is fatalistic. These are four characters without real homes, in search of connection, who “affiliate” but seem not to bond. Loneliness in a crowd. Less poignant than numb. Uncomfortably familiar. Even the building’s door buzzer never gets fixed.

Director Ciaran O’Reilly makes us feel like voyeurs. Even the playwright’s signature, fragmented dialogue arrives authentic. Each actor wears anxiety and disassociation a bit differently; the sum may make you squirm. Raised voices are never gratuitous. In fact, tensions often show themselves in small ways like John’s hand upon the couch arm, a single finger twitching or Laurence’s sudden, yet ambivalent move towards John. Ian’s unwitting smiles at some of what John tells him are priceless.

Billy Carter (Ian) is an onstage natural. The actor uses his character’s feelings to color every word and move or lack thereof rather than demonstrate them. He is here, palpably, a man shut off from himself as well as the world.

Matthew Broderick (John) begins a victim of our familiarity. It takes awhile to accept his pronounced Irish accent. Drawn sympathetically to the turbulence that drives him, however, we become as accustomed to it as we do to his self-flagellating guilt. Broderick is a master of hesitant, confused delivery. His everyman persona serves the role. John could be your friend, your neighbor.

An unnerving play.

Charlie Corcoran’s Set is appropriately utilitarian and minimal with details reflecting an old building.

The newly renovated Irish Repertory Theater is more comfortable, more accessible, and more spacious. A venerable and worthy institution begins another act like a phoenix rising from plaster and sawdust.

Photos by Carol Rosegg
Opening: Matthew Broderick, Billy Carter

Shining City by Conor McPherson
Directed by Ciaran O’Reilly
Irish Repertory Theatre
132 West 22nd Street
Through July 3, 2016

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