Category Archives: The Play’s the Thing

A cleaver, an egg, a fish, a lit torch, a bottle of cheap champagne

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And by “lit torch” I don’t mean a flashlight. I mean a stick with one end on fire. These are just some of the items juggled by the four lunatics who are The Flying Karamazov Brothers. Their new show, 4 Play, is currently down in the Village at the Minetta Lane Theater.

alg_karamazov

The brothers, Dmitri, Alexei, Pavel and Zossima (no, they’re not really brothers), have been around in various iterations since 1972 with Dimitri, second from left, as the founder and one constant member. This is exactly the type of light, pleasant entertainment you want in the heat of summer before the really thick stuff sets in. [A revival of Mamet’s A Life in the Theater with Patrick Stewart can wait until October.]

The show is classic Vaudeville. :90 minutes of comedy, music, dance and loads of juggling. It’s all sounds too quaint and pedestrian but I had a great time and more than a few moments of inspired awe. One segment had audience members bring items up to the stage for them to juggle. The bet is that Dmitri can keep them aloft. He gets a standing ovation if successful and a pie in the face if he fails. This evening, he successfully juggled a pink tutu, a surgical glove filled with water, a lipstick tube and a tin coffee pot. The video on their site shows that someone brought in an entire pizza for him to juggle. C’mon! How can you not be entertained by that?! I’m hoping I can bring The Girls into the city to see it before the end of the run.

Oh, how I love bad theater

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poster-PTP+2010-fe-1I love bad theater. The worse, the better, if you know what I mean.I hadn’t been to a play in about six weeks and I needed a fix. Stop all that eye-rolling. It’s my thing. You do whatever it is you do and I go to plays. Don’t judge, least ye be judged by my wicked hammer of sarcasm. You don’t want that, trust me.

This past season I feasted on a fairly steady diet of Broadway and off-Broadway plays that were celebrity-driven vehicles. Famous actors do a play for 10 weeks to burnish their credibility as artists. Sometimes it works (Scarlett Johansson). Other times, not so much (Catherine Zeta-Jones). I feel like I’d gotten away from the small, black box theaters. These are intimate productions of not-always popular material with actors in training. It’s where the rubber meets the road for actors and audience.

The Potomac Theater Project has taken up its summer residence at The Atlantic Theater Stage 2 in Chelsea. My mind was turning to mush by too much easy, popular fair, so I thought it was time to shut up, take my medicine and suffer through some avant garde theater.

I saw Plevna: Meditations on Hatred and Gary the Thief by British playwright Howard Barker. I knew what I was getting myself into. The two brief one-acts, each with a single actor, are called “theatrical poems.” In the program, Barker describes his work as “‘Theatre [sic] of Catastrophe’ in which no attempt is made to satisfy any demand for clarity.”

Oh, brother.

This stuff is hard to absorb. The dialog was Joycean in its complexity and my understanding (and attention) would fade in and out. But it was a Herculean effort by the actors and I can always appreciate that. The audience included an acting class and the students seemed impressed.

So that’s that. I’ll probably take in a few more of these small, serious, dreary, experimental plays before the fall season kicks it, just to keep my chops up. In a few weeks, the Potomac will present A Question of Mercy by David Rabe, which is a bit more mainstream. I might drop in on that. But no worries. In October, James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave are doing a revival of Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway, so it won’t be long until my brain is back to populist mush. Darth Vader is subservient to an activist for Palestinian rights. That’s what you get with famous actors. A lot of baggage and preconceived notions.

Professional wrestling/theater mash-up

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149806In honor of tonight’s Tony Awards, I’ll do a theater post, although this play is very, very far removed from what’s being shown tonight.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is a hard title to remember but, Jason, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you beg, borrow or steal a ticket to this show. It’s a look at professional wrestling. The stage consists of a wrestling ring and you are treated to a match or two. It’s a satire on how wrestling is a crash of economics, race, ego and ambition.

It’s a comedy and I laughed my ass of from opening until final curtain. A great piece of theater. And don’t just take my word for it. The play was a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize and lots of folks, myself included, think that the only reason it didn’t win was because it was still playing in Chicago when the prize was awarded. New York theater is unfairly favored. It’s a fact!

Regarding the fakery and predetermined outcomes of wrestling, a very good point is made. It is, after all is said and done, a performance piece. Aside from the content, is it any different than seeing Hamlet and knowing exactly how it’s going to end? Not so much.

The last time I saw a wrestling play was Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Fly Trap (1983) starring Andy Kaufman and Debbie Harry. Kaufman played the ring referee. Harry played Tanzi, who had a special deadly hold: The Venus Fly Trap. For real.

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Here’s a fun article from The Wall Street Journal about a self-described Manners Enforcer. He’s a dapper, bow tie-wearing gentleman in his 60s whose mission in life is to get folks to behave in a more civilized manner when in public. His weapon of choice? The cell phone jammer, of course! Here’s the photo from the article. It’s the exact same model I employ! We are brothers in the same war.

Additionally, here’s a card that was posted to PostSecret today.

STFup

I’m hoping an army of us arises to take back our peace quiet. Simply put, people who abuse their cell phones in public are assholes and deserve to have their service cut off. Sometimes I think that cell phones are a greater threat to Western civilization that Al Qaeda.

Your roots are showing

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playbill_2103_169867708Million Dollar Quartet is the other musical I saw that received a Tony nomination (see below). It’s a jukebox musical! Much to my utter delight, Mrs. Wife joined me for this one.

On December 4th, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gathered in Sun Records for a one-time only jam session. This show is not a recreation of that session. It merely uses this meeting as a jumping off point. There’s a loose plot line that involves Sun owner Sam Phillips and a contract with Johnny Cash, but the meat of the show is four actors recreating the hits of these Godfathers of rock and roll.

It is with a great sense of relief that I can report the show is a lot of fun and worth seeing. Why a relief, you might ask? Because this music is deeply important from a cultural standpoint and it isn’t being played anywhere. What radio station plays Carl Perkins songs? None! That Broadway is the vehicle through which it’s kept alive is fine by me. And aside from its legacy, when you hear these songs, you feel a lot better about life and love and loss.

In addition to the Best Musical nomination, Levi Kreis received a Tony nomination for his portrayal of loose cannon Jerry Lee Lewis. To me, his was the most fleshed-out character. But that may be because it’s the flashiest role.

Here’s a clip of the cast performing a medley from the show on David Letterman. Turn it up!

 

That damn race music

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memphisThe Tony nominations came out and I actually saw two of the four nominees for Best Musical. I’m not much for musicals so it’s an unusual coincidence.

My pal CB is a writer in the fashion industry and he did a piece on Chad Kimball, one of the co-stars of Memphis. (That’s him in the poster.) Are you ready to feel like an under-achiever? Not only is Mr. Kimball in a Broadway hit musical and nominated for a Tony (Best Performance by an Actor in a Musical) but he, along with his brother, are successful clothing designers. Bastards! Their line is carried in Bloomingdale’s. I’m not sure if you can do better than that.

Mr. Kimball invited CB to a performance and I tagged along. We had house seats. House seats are the best seats in the theater. They’re held back by management for VIP’s, press and hangers-on. When I go to a play, I usually sit in the last few rows of the balcony. It’s all I can afford! Sitting up front is a completely different experience. It’s easier to get sucked into the performance. I guess that’s why they cost so much. Duh.

[Side comment: Many years ago I was upgraded to a first class seat on a flight to Las Vegas. It was a terrible mistake. It warped my perspective. My days of blissful ignorance in coach are over.]

This isn’t just another jukebox musical with a plot loosely built around an artist’s catalog, as were Movin’ Out (Billy Joel songs), Come Fly Away (Sinatra songs), The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Bob Dylan songs), Mama Mia (ABBA songs) Good Vibrations (Beach Boy songs) Love, Janis (Janis Joplin songs) etc, etc x 100.

The story takes place as rhythm and blues music was just starting to be embraced by a young, white audience. There is much parental angst in the plot. The songs are genre originals written by David Bryan, a member of the girlie band Bon Jovi, and playwright Joe DiPietro. The music kinda worked for me, but what really sucked me into the story was the performance by the two leads. Seeing two actors inhabit their roles so completely was the real treat of the show. And sitting front and center certainly didn’t hurt.

A public thank-you to CB.