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.
There are a couple of things to know should you decide to embark on the 70-minute journey that is Inside, playing at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The first is that you should dress for the weather, whatever it may be. A portion of the performance takes place outdoors, and if it’s a cold or rainy night you want to be prepared. The second is that the Cathedral was once the workplace of legendary science fiction author Madeline L’Engle. The place and her relationship to it is important, if not integral. If you have not read A Wrinkle in Time, it may be something of a disadvantage as that work seems to be the inspiration for Inside.
Outside
There’s something extraordinary about the setting, about taking up the very same space as a woman who so contributed so much to, and some might say pioneered, the form of science fiction/fantasy storytelling as L’Engle did. To gaze out the window where she gazed as she pondered her characters’ journeys. There’s also something visceral and creepy about doing so at night, climbing down narrow stairs into a dark basement, shut off from everything else by means of noise-cancelling headphones. In that way, Inside has very intelligently used the space and its history.
Below: Meggan Dodd, Above: Robin Johnson
The idea of the performance piece (which it is, more than a traditional play) is to give the audience members, twenty-two all told sent in pairs through different rooms in the cathedral’s administrative building, a unique experience. This means unique to each other. The story unfolds over the course of several related mini-plays, one per venue. The first and last are experienced together, with performers who are somewhat in conversation with the audience. The middle three segments use additional storytelling means—a book in one case and audio broadcasting in the other two to supplement the experience. It’s an interesting idea, and very specific to the space, but being as dependent on technology as it is, there’s also the chance for it to be hobbled by that same technology. It’s a very ambitious project, but not quite perfected.
Left to right: Tamilla Woodard, Tjasa Ferme, (almost hidden) Victor Yao, Peca Stefan
The creative team, directors Tamilla Woodard and Ana Margineanu and writer Peca Stefan, describe it as: “immersive. Our intention is to make it plain that you can be in the same place at the same time and have your perspective manipulated, so much so that you can begin to ignore the reality in front of you.” Says Margineanu, “In a present reigned by ‘alternative facts,’ Inside explores the deep mechanisms of manipulation, posing the question ‘how much of what we experience is affected by the voices in our heads, in the media, on social media or from inherited family beliefs?” Both costumed main actors and supplemental voice actors are on at the same time, following their various leads to create a layered experience. Unfortunately, between sometimes patchy reception and breathily whispered lines, it can be quite difficult to discern what is being said over the headphones while also keeping track of what is happening on the performance floor.
Left to Right: Meggan Dodd, BreAnna Gladney, Megan Higgins
Each new pair of audience participants are led through the experience every twenty minutes or so, meaning the scenes must be reset. The transition, including participants being led out, actors returning to their starting places, and the stagehands replacing the props, makes the experience feel somewhat intrusive instead of immersive, which is a shame because the thinking behind the project is solid if not executed to its fullest potential. There’s also a lot of emotional heavy lifting. My partner in the journey, actress Marilyn Sokol, described the position of being a young actor tasked with delivering such heavy performances as “unenviable,” though those young actors really did throw themselves into the suffering the parts demanded, being as the performances are “continuous and overlapping,”
Kenny Mathieu
Unfortunately, the point of the production is for the audience participants to have two different experiences, but without time for discussion there’s no real way of knowing that they’re different until a later segment when one person is asked to perform a task and the other isn’t. Sometimes it isn’t even clear that the performance has begun, creating some awkwardness during attempts at dialogue with the performers, who have to stick to their scripts. Then again, that feeling of “is it or isn’t it?” lingers on. “In the theatre we are always asking for a suspension of disbelief and an acceptance of the reality we propose,” sums up Woodard. “In PopUP’s Inside that proposition — focused on the world around us — takes on an entirely new meaning.”
Despite the technical and logistic complications, there are moments of real emotional connection, even stark tension. If the group can solve the issues that break up and take the audience participants out of the experience, they will have a much more affecting piece, a piece of theater worthy of its astonishing backdrop.
Photos: Carly J. Bauer
INSIDE PopUP Theatrics Written by Peca Stefan Directed by Tamilla Woodard and Ana Margineanu Guest direction by France Damian Choreography by Joya Powel Contributions of guest playwrights Zhu Yi and Troy Deutsch Tickets for April shows now on sale. Go to PopUP Theatrics.
Nibbler is an odd beast. By that I mean the play and the (we can surmise) titular character. The latter is a gangly green guy with a habit of popping up when people are at their most vulnerable, in flagrante delicto or enjoying some solo stimulation. (There are quite a few adult situations in this 90-minute play, not to mention an abundance of male nudity and some downright saucy—if sometimes hilariously purple—language. So ends the parental advisory.) The green beast shows up and promptly wreaks havoc on the group of recent high school graduates, bringing them forced enlightenment compliments of its mind-altering sexual predation. After encountering the creature, the quintet is changed irrevocably. It’s all very American Graffiti. But, you know, with an alien.
Matthew Lawler as Officer Dan, Rachel Franco as Tara
Nibbler was mostly written in in 2004, though almost all of the action takes place in the New Jersey pine barrens in 1992. The performers go above and beyond, considering the abundant nudity, the very mature scenes and the incredibly compromising positions with some creatively chosen props. And nearly all of them accompany moments of pained desperation, the symptoms of deep emotional damage, which the actors perform with admirable fervor. If you are the type for whom the human form brings blushes and giggles, this is not the play for you. For everyone else, it will likely touch some feelings and memories close to home—if not of yourself than probably of someone you knew when you were that age.
James Kautz is Adam, the de facto narrator. The story unwraps itself in flashback as he sorts through a box of mementos from the summer after high school graduation. His friends way back when are an eclectic mix: Elizabeth Lail is the blonde and secretly super-sexual Hayley, Matthew Lawler is local boy-turned-fuzz Officer Dan, Spencer Davis Milford is Matt, the über-Republican politician’s son, Rachel Franco is anxious overachiever with daddy issues, Tara, and Sean Patrick Monahan is Pete, the boy who secretly pines for his best friend, Adam.
James Kautz as Adam, Rachel Franco as Tara
A simple telling could be that sex changes things and makes people grow up. The creature, after all, is drawn to people in the throes of sexual excitement, and after this initial encounter those people are forever changed. Another telling could use the alien as symbolic of the college experience, something that’s scary at first but ultimately brings us wisdom and catalyzes change to help us become the people we are ‘meant’ to be. Or maybe it’s just about longing for what has passed, a simpler time before adult responsibilities and difficult choices made it impossible to keep on keeping on. Either way, the characters change in dramatic ways, ways that make them happier in the end because they have become comfortable with themselves, but also sadder for never being able to go back to how things were.
Elizabeth Lail as Hayley, Spencer Davis Milford as Matt
The whole thing is amusing, even if a little heavy-handed with the sterotypes. The one part that didn’t work, on multiple levels, was the musical number at the end, which does, in fact, sound as if it was written by a teenager trying to be deeper and more philosophical than they really have in them. Problems with mic balance and not entirely on-tune singing added to the effect, as did the brief pauses in between singing when the characters went back to their former selves, joking around in their favorite local diner hangout. It’s the kind of scene that may look good on paper but just doesn’t work in a live performance.
What it does well is point out how the political climate in 1992 had so many parallels to what is happening today. Not quite as extreme, mind, but certainly interesting. Playwright Ken Urban and director Benjamin Kamine have done good work with the set, props, and the 90s grunge feel, both the clothes and the attitude. The attention to detail is also so true to Southern New Jersey in the early-to mid-90s. From the clothes to the music to the diner snacks, it rings true. So visit the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater on Waverly, then maybe make your way over to MacDougal for some frites with gravy and cheese. Think about who you were, who you are, and enjoy the moment for what it is: the bridge between what was and what will be.
Photo credit: Russ Rowland Top: James Kautz as Adam, Elizabeth Lail as Hayley, Spencer Davis Milford as Matt, Sean Patrick Monahan as Pete, Rachel Franco as Tara
Nibbler Playing at The Rattlestick Playwrights Theater 224 Waverly Place Through March 18, 2017
At a time when so many people in positions of power are working so hard to revise history and gaslight the general public, every voice that speaks to the truth of the powerless, to the disparity of treatment toward people of different colors or religions, and to the suffering of the innocent is a voice we heed. Angela Polite’s is one of those voices, and her (mostly) one-woman show, Mary Speaks, looks back through generations of black women, and tells their combined stories as a parallel to the life of Mary, mother of Jesus. With music and lyrics of her own creation, it’s a heartfelt portrayal of how mothers and grandmothers have struggled over the last 150 years to try to make their children safe in a hostile country that still claims it’s free and equal.
Mary Speaks began as an assignment by Polite’s pastor, Reverend Henry A. Belin III of the First AME Bethel Church in Harlem. It has grown into a moving series of stories about black mothers and sons, the love and history that bonds them, and the fears and dangers that often beset them.
The production is stripped down. Polite doesn’t have flashy props or much in the way of a set. It’s mostly about her body and her voice, which changes dramatically to suit whichever of the many characters she portrays throughout. She also has an accompanist, Christopher Burris, also her director, who plays the music she has written as she sings the lyrics she wrote. It’s a small production, but Polite’s performance is fully from the heart.
The vignettes are also extremely relevant. From the slave auction to the modern mother concerned that her playful son will end up imprisoned for his cheek (or, more terrifying, at the end of a rope, as was the sad end for the wrongly accused and lynched Emmett Till) these stories resonate. There is no one American experience, but certain Americans have experienced much harder times than others.
Being a minority in America has never been easy, and despite all the decades that have gone by, it has not gotten much easier. That we are seeing performances like Mary Speaks, like Hidden Figures, like Moonlight—pieces of artistic endeavor that bring the black experience to a wider audience—is incredibly important right now. When revisionists would argue that the kind of racial prejudice we see now in rising KKK violence and vandalism is something new, these works remind us that not knowing about terrible or tragic events doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
We are living in a time when the future is even more uncertain, when racism is not being fought as it should be by those in power. The best way to change minds is to make them feel the hurt, the sorrow, to see the shame of their actions against the less powerful and less privileged. Every voice that speaks for justice and equality is a voice for hope. Mary Speaks shows that anyone can hear the message and become the voice.
Mary Speaks was performed at the Theater for the New City’s Community Space Theater.
There are three acts in the ephemera trilogy by Kimi Maeda: “The Homecoming,” “The Crane Wife,” and “Bend.” The truth of the matter, however, is that “Bend” alone is worth the price of admission, making the first two visually stunning, strikingly creative pieces gifts of light and beauty. The recommendation is to make the ephemera trilogy a priority; it is breathtaking, both for the bold and open approach to its subject and the subtle beauty of its expression.
For the first piece, “The Homecoming,” Maeda approaches the art of storytelling using colorful cut-out murals that she sets apart from her curtain canvas, using a simple flashlight to bring a poetic tale to life. The effect is like animation in real time, with the swirling, playful-but-controlled movement of light through colored film creating an effect that feels both innovative and charmingly old-fashioned.
For “The Crane Wife,” Maeda uses more traditional shadow play, bringing herself into the telling and creating, in a couple of cases, truly mind-boggling effects. As parables go, this is as traditional as they get—a simple story of love, trust, and the inevitability of human folly to keep us from our true happiness. Though simple on the surface, this and “The Homecoming” carry layers of history for Maeda, as they are explorations of her mother’s experience emigrating from Japan and her experience growing up both Japanese and American.
“Bend” is something else entirely. It’s historical, biographical, personally intimate and of incredible social import at this point in the United States’ story. It is the story of two men, one a half-Japanese artist who grows up in Japan and the other a Japanese American boy in the US, whose path cross at the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona. An image of the stage from above is projected in real time on the simple backdrop. That camera will follow Maeda’s movements as she creates a series of paintings and sculptures in sand, images that accompany the larger story as it is told
That larger story encompasses interviews with Maeda’s father/grandfather about his time in the camp, a lesson in art history focusing on the work of Isamu Noguchi, on the history of the Japanese in America—including a clip of the pop culture icons The Three Stooges to show how ingrained the prejudice against the Japanese was—and discussion of the Leave Clearance Application Form*, a confusing and heavily charged “loyalty questionnaire” that male internees were forced to fill out, the consequences of which could have landed them in active combat or prison depending on their answers.
As the saying goes, “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.” Without even going into the details about life in an internment camp and showing little of the footage that exists of such places, Maeda’s narration is powerful and affecting. The whole performance is mesmerizing. In her own words, she uses “shadow puppets to highlight the disconnection between how we see ourselves and how others see us.” Her use of simultaneous sand drawing and archival footage in “Bend” is how she discusses with the audience her feelings about the persistent “fragility of memory.”
With the recent socio-political backward slide, the talk of Muslim registration and separating different kinds of people from others, “Bend” commands us to look at one of our country’s most shameful moments and learn from that generation’s mistakes. We may think of ourselves as more savvy and informed than our forebears, but we are still a species that can be driven by fear to commit acts of hate. We need to be better, or risk losing what makes us human and, yes, what makes us great. the ephemera trilogy is something better.
the ephemera trilogy playing at The Tank Mainstage,
151 W. 46th Street
Through March 12, 2017
Photo credit: Kirk Murphy
* • “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?”
• “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?”
The life of Saki is a story unto itself story. Much like the characters the iconic British writer created in his later years, Saki—the pseudonym of journalist Hector Hugh Munro—spent his youth in exotic locales. He mourned tragic losses, including that of his mother by a freak accident when he was still a toddler, and suffered through an upbringing by puritanical aunt guardians. Later he took on adventurous occupations and assumed his secret identity to become a writer of contemporary fables. In the play Life According to Saki, the fruits of his imagination mix with details pulled from biographical accounts, offering a charming, touching glimpse into how his stories came to be.
Munro was in his prime when he insisted to march as a private into the muddy, miserable trenches that characterized the Great War. In those muddy troughs of misery he met his nation’s youth, the boys and men just emerging from their teenage years, some of whom would see nothing but those trenches until the ends of their short days. In this telling of his story and stories, it was in those desperate conditions that he did what he could to lift his companions’ spirits of and take their minds away from the field of battle.
L-R: Caitlin Thorburn and Phoebe Frances Brown
Going by the name of Saki—a reference to the cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam—Munro penned sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre, always satirical short stories about the follies of the landed gentry back home and the absurdist behaviors unique to Edwardian England. The heroes of these stories, often children or members of the working class—easily imagined as proxies for the boys around him—are always cleverer, kinder, and all-round better at life than the silly sods who rule over them.
These tales, adapted for the stage by children’s author Katherine Rundell, are performed with precision and impeccable comedic expression by a troop of six very hardworking actors: Phoebe Frances Brown, Ellen Francis, Tom Lambert, Tom Machell, Caitlin Thorburn, and David Paisley, as Saki. This production and its cast won a Best of Edinburgh award in 2016, and it’s no wonder why. It is a marvelous piece of work told marvelously.
The vignettes are bound together, told as if in those trenches by a company of soldiers, with a narrative provided by the character of Saki. Along with a small assortment of everyday household props that stand in for weaponry and costuming, there is a collection of striking puppets—a small boy and a small menagerie of animals designed by Clair Roi Harvey and Suzi Battersby—that set an unsettling tone. They looked heaped together like rags, but have an expression of menace that nicely balances the twee and often silly aristocrats with whom they interact.
Ellen Francis (foreground); L-R (background): David Paisley, Tom Lambert and Caitlin Thorburn
Important to note is that Munro was a gay man who grew up in the same period as the trial of Oscar Wilde, which undoubtedly had an effect on his writing. Like Wilde used coded language to discuss love and sex in a highly repressed era, Munro used animals to write about the secrets in his heart. That the work can be enjoyed by children at one level and appreciated by adults at another is just one more reason why the work remains so alive and revered. It’s also delightfully silly.
Silliness is really key here. There’s satire and commentary on Important Social Issues, applicable both then and now, but what makes these stories so memorable is the full-on, high-energy delivery and the way these talented actors throw themselves head-first (literally in some cases) into the tall tales. Director Jessica Lazar has not spared her cast, leaving them only the brief interstitial moments of narrator Saki’s contemplation to catch their breath. But they never lag, never fumble, and offer unique and interesting characters by the dozens. They are a beautiful and talented group of performers, but special mention goes to the ladies, whose breadth of accents and investment in the physical comedy made them as hilarious as they are lovely.
All photos by Alex Brenner Top: R-L: Caitlin Thorburn, Phoebe Frances Brown, Ellen Francis and David Paisley
Life According to Saki Written by Katherine Rundell Directed by Jessica Lazar Now playing at 4th Street Theater Through March 5, 2017
Cats, kittens and all you beautiful people, you simply mustn’t miss His Royal Hipness Lord Buckley and the man who stands in for the legend, one Jake Broder. Buckley’s hep, you hear? A hipster in the original sense of the word—not a lick of flannel in sight, opting for a white waistcoat and tails—and Broder stoked the flames, blowing hot tunes and slinging smoky jazz lingo in cool beat meter. Don’t be a square! If you dig classic licks and linguistic tricks, spend two out-of-this-world hours with Jake Broder and co. He’s feels the rhyme, the rhythm sublime, and I strongly suggest you make the time to get to 59E59 before Buckley and his merry band skip town.
That merry band includes Michael Lanahan as the Hip News Man and Abraham Lincoln, and a tight trio of piano, bass and drums manned by Mark Hartman, Brad Russell, and Daniel Glass, respectively. They swing into action with some “Money Jungle” and “Night in Tunisia” before Lanahan and Broder take the stage, hitting their stings and providing flawless accompaniment. Where Lanahan’s News Man cuts a lean and clean figure with thick black plastic frames and a high-and-tight haircut, Broder’s Buckley, despite the polish and tails, seems ready to bust out all over the place—in song, in dance, with a faux doobie stuffed between two fingers on one hand while the other snaps to punctuate his proposals. His voice moves from the Queen’s English in smooth RP to the gravelly tones of a handful of Southern characters in varying shades of unsettling.
In fact, between the hijinks and hilarity there are brief pauses in the action wherein Broder’s Buckley transitions from delightful to downright disconcerting when it comes to short vignettes regarding characters of African ancestry and their treatment, historically. Being as enamored of a style of music borne from the minds of beleaguered black men and women in an often hostile America, it makes sense to remind the Upper East Side audience of the crucible in which jazz was forged and refined. Never is this reminder more acute than before the lights fall on the first half, during a provocative version of “Georgia On My Mind.” Sure, the feeling is compounded by the fact that these voices are coming from a white dude in a fancy suit, but it’s clearly a performance grounded in earnest deference. And it’s never a bad thing to know from whence came the things we love, and especially the people who brought them to be.
The original Lord Buckley was an American comedic monologist in the 1940s and 50s whose act gave inspiration to the beat generation as well as the hippies and a cadre of cool 1950s artistic types the likes of Norman Mailer and Quincy Jones. He was a vessel through which flowed the lingo of a passing age, coming from influences on both sides of the pond. In his quieter moments he sounded like the proper Lord, but turned loose he let the jazz ethos run buck wild through his snazzy self and out into the world.
In the first half of this show, Buckley tackles seasonal favorites like A Christmas Carol and the tale of the Pied Piper. In the second half, Broder and co. turn their sights on the land of the free, performing a hip love letter to Honest Abe as well as expounding on more current events—though seen through hopeful, love-forward, rose-colored lenses. And through it all, Broder keeps his performance humming. It looks like no easy feat reciting all that purple-tinted prose, but he does so without a stumble. He’s high energy, high pathos, high minded and would allude to being just plain old high, though that is most certainly a nod to the habits of jazz’s past. I can’t imagine pulling off a performance like that while under any kind of mellowing influence. He takes the original Buckley’s work and runs with it, switching with ease from Received Pronunciation to something thick and soulful, never dropping character nor letting the energy flag. He’s sharp—sharply dressed, sharp of mind, quick of tongue—but at the same time offers a softer solution to the world’s ills. “Don’t Hate, Love Harder.” Take that beat to the streets, guys and dolls. Let it be known.
Photos by Vincent Scarano
His Royal Hipness Lord Buckley 59E59 Theaters Through January 1, 2016
Aristotle posited that a perfect story is one whose entire action, the protagonist’s personal evolution as well as their physical journey, takes place in the space of one day. By that account, Leah Kaminsky would do the Greek mind proud. Her story, The Waiting Room, now the recipient of the Australia’s 2016 Voss Literary Prize for best novel, is a short but powerful work. Reading it feels a little like holding your breath after you’ve heard a strange noise, just waiting for it to happen again. It’s a tense and smart telling of one day in one woman’s life as she struggles with her family—past and present—and her work, all while under the nebulous threat of a possible terror attack in her adopted city, Haifa.
Haifa has been a place under threat in recent weeks, much of it evacuated after arsonists set fire to the fields and forests that surround it, and going back several years now it was the site of many bus bombings and other such terror attacks. But there was a time when Haifa, the third-largest city in Israel, was also its most peaceful. With incredibly diverse ethnic and religious populations coexisting between the Mediterranean and the Carmel hills, Haifa was seemingly exempt from the strife that plagued other parts of the country. It is in this climate that The Waiting Room exists, back in the 1990s, when what she’s experiencing is only the beginning of something different and ominous.
The Waiting Room is a short but powerful read. The ending is broadcast from the first page, but that doesn’t make it any less tragic—even if it does seem somewhat unlikely. Take it as an analogy for Dina’s psyche, the realization of premonitions too frightening to acknowledge head-on and internal monologues too upsetting to divulge, and it paints a pitiful but spot-on picture of how destructive angst can be. The collective memory of the Holocaust and the current heightened political climate are a fearful combination, one that I’m sure many can feel starting to wear away at their nerves. When you don’t know who to fear, only what, it’s easy to create monsters out of your imagination and mask them with the strange faces you pass on the street. Do it too much, however, and you become the monster.
We follow Dina, a doctor and daughter of Holocaust survivors, from her breakfast table, through the streets of town, and into the wanderings of her mind as she tries to deal with circumstances both ordinary and extraordinary. She’s heavily pregnant, misses her childhood home in Australia, has been fighting with her husband, has a young son she’s worried about… Things are not comfortable. And to top it off, she has her mother—long dead to the rest of the world but very much alive in Dina’s mind—criticizing her every thought, her every move. She’s incredibly stressed and feels like the world is quickly becoming a much scarier, much darker place (and through the lens of current events some might say we are well on our way). That no one else seems to see it makes it all that much worse.
Kaminsky’s writing is natural and clear, even when the situations she presents are not. She does an excellent job of describing Dina’s neurosis, her anxiety, and her stoic attempts to brush them aside and get on with her ‘normal’ life. But Dina’s life isn’t what many of us would call normal. She lives with generational trauma and family secrets that throw off her perception of people’s motives and the world around her while also living in a country filled with individuals who must live each day with a somewhat fatalist edge, knowing that at any time there could be a bombing or a stabbing that would bring their existence to a close but that can’t let them stop doing what they need to do.
The question for Dina is whether or not to pay attention to her apprehensions, to keep calm and carry on or trust her instincts when things feel wrong. How is she to know when these choices could have life-or-death consequences? It’s a question many people face on a daily basis, and one that others think they face. Then there are other questions: When does caution border on mistrust border on bigotry and xenophobia? How do we make sense of senseless violence? How do we know when our perceptions are ‘correct’ and when they’re lies we tell ourselves to make it through another day?
It’s a lot of weighty philosophy packed into one slim, light book, but doing the emotional heavy lifting can be a gratifying experience indeed.
What do you get when you put nursery rhymes in the seedy back alleys and darkened docks of a noir yarn? You get something twisted and delicious, like The City That Cried Wolf, now running at 59E59 Theaters.
We all know the way it goes: Hardened gumshoe is hired by a jealous husband to follow a beautiful but dangerous dame, things go awry, people get hurt, the gumshoe finds himself falling deep in a mystery he never could have predicted. Only this time there’s a twist. That hardened gumshoe is one Jack B. Nimble, the guy who’s hired him to track his wife is Mayor Humpty Dumpty, the wife is one Bo Peep, and the rest of the characters are right out of rhymes from bedtime. It’s a tale chockablock with adult themes told in a way that could keep even the youngest among us giggling. Playwright Brooks Reeves has filled the script with ‘dad jokes’ and punny nods to the source materials, providing enough winks and nods to keep things interesting for cool kids of all ages.
Adam LaFaci and Rebecca Spiro
The cast of characters is huge. From the aforementioned cracked egg to a delightfully dark pair of gleeful coroners called Hansel and Gretel to a gang of feathered ruffians that trade in drugs and women, the titular city is a dark place and there’s something foul afoot. Or is that fowl? It seems like the city wolf population has been hard at work causing death and destruction, and Detective Nimble is caught in the middle of a situation that may not be what it seems.
There are six actors—Holly Chou, Michelle Concha, Dalton Davis, Adam La Faci, Rebecca Spiro, Gwen Sisco, and Dalles Wilie—covering a cast of dozens. La Faci sticks to Nimble throughout and Concha and Spiro spend the majority of their time as Mother Goose and Bo Peep, respectively, leaving all the rest for a merry and versatile band of high-energy players, all of whom do a fabulous job of creating personalities as distinct as they are diverse. And they are very diverse. We got blind mice, police grunts, wary wolves, and at least a dozen other denizens of shadowy Rhyme Town. It’s difficult to pick favorites because they’re all so good and are required to play such different characters, though Wilie certainly throws himself into his parts with impressive vigor.
Rebecca Spiro
There are timely undercurrents about racial—or, in this case, species—profiling, media obligations, terrorism, police brutality and more. It isn’t a new play, but it plays fresh in the greater context of current national and world events.
Directed by Leta Tremblay, The City That Cried Wolf is nearly two hours of dark mischief, though the time flies once you’re fully immersed in the story. Jazz fills the air. The scenery is simple but beautifully done, with glowing neon illuminating the name of each venue as it’s introduced and enough grit and grime to make it feel fully lived-in. And you will want to live there, even after you get to whodunit. Get in while you can.
The City That Cried Wolf is playing at 59E59 Theaters through December 11, 2016.
Left to Right: Meggan Dodd, BreAnna Gladney, Megan Higgins
