Elephant Larry presents…
BOOM
Saturdays May 21 & 28 @ 9:00pm
Saturdays, June 4 & 18 @ 8:00PM
The PIT

Reviewed on April 23, 2005 9PM by Caroline Smith

What’s more refreshing than snorting out loud because you’re laughing so hard? I guarantee that that distinctive noise hardly escapes your trunk at other amateur stand-up nights around the city. This doesn’t even happen while you’re watching SNL on a good night. But on April 23rd, I joined the circus with award-winning sketch comedy group, Elephant Larry, and laughed like a hyena. New Yorkers in general, need to laugh like this.

These guys were electrifying. The funny tune that opened the show only had a snowball effect for the remainder of the hour. The audience loved the immediate energy that this group brought and their outbursts of chuckles echoed every wild and outrageous sketch. Clever jokes aside, I had the impression that these were five little boys having fun. That comes with knowing, collaborating, and surrounding oneself all the time with each other’s talent. And I was right. All five elephants were once members of Cornell University’s sketch comedy group, Skits-O-Phrenics. After graduation, their laughter moved to NYC and “BOOM!” History was made. Check out their success.

July-August 2004: Elephant Larry presents two shows as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

June 2004: Elephant Larry wins the Audience & Jury Awards at the Bass Red Triangle Comedy Tour.

June 2004: Elephant Larry named Backstage Comedy Best Best of 2004.

February 2004: Elephant Larry begins their three month sold-out run of “All Aboard the U.S.S. Boatship.”

October 2003: Winner of Sketch Fights at Caroline’s Comedy Club, awarded the title of “New York’s Best Comedy Writers.”

May 2003: Finalist for “Best Sketch Comedy Group” at the ECNY’s (Emerging Comics of New York Awards).

In all honesty, this review has already been written. There is no bragging necessary for this talented group. But what I can say is that I admired the group’s collaboration and originality. Not only were you listening to jokes, but also you were having a multi-media and smile-inducing experience. Colorful, random video skits enhanced the live skits on stage.

It’s true that there’s a quirky and absurd quality to the makeup of this group, but this helps define and stretch the term, “sketch comedy.” The city is hungry for this kind of energy. They’re quick, smart, and keep the ball moving. Sketches influenced by puns and “What Year Is It?” naming a couple, grabbed you. But ending with the “Earth Rap,” made our hearts and laughter BOOM from our chests. Elephants never forget and neither should you, so get to The PIT and start your roaring. These guys rock.

The Elephants: Geoff Haggerty, Stefan Lawrence, Chris Principe, Jeff Solomon, and Alexander Zalben

PIT- People’s Improv Theatre 154 W. 29th St. (Btwn. 6th $ 7th Aves.)
Tickets $8. Call 212.563.7488 For Reservations or Contact: 917.309.5965
info@elephantlarry.com/ www.elephantlarry.com

The People’s Improv Theater (The PIT)|154 W. 29th Street
(between 6th and 7th Avenues)

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Edmond Rostand's
CHANTECLER
Tuesday - Saturday at 8PM;
Saturday @ 2PM
Sunday @ 5PM
April 28 - May 22
Teatro LA TEA at Clemente Soto Valez Cultural Center

Reviewed by Rachael Roberts

Chantecler, now playing at Teatro La Tea, is a beautiful play about following your heart and being true to your inspiration. And director Cory Einbinder is true to his heart in this wonderfully inspired show. Normally, a Puppet Show does not register high on my NewYorkCool meter, but Chantecler has some truly amazing and innovative "puppets" as well as a live band, a different artist nightly (for set dressing) and a wonderful cast.

The puppets in Chantecler are awesome. There were only a handful that were uninspired and considering that there over 75 unique characters, that is no small feat. The most impressive were the owls with their large metal masks and glowing eyes. One of which had large wings that expanded out gloriously as he flew off into the night. Another fantastic puppet (played by the wonderful Josh McLane) was the Peacock, a disco-peacock with fabulous blue feathers and a glittery
beak.

In addition to the fabulous "animals" onstage, there was a great 3-man string band that played live all night, adding to the richness of the show. And to round it all out, they had an artist, Johnathan Zagg, (the artists rotate nightly) who was set-dressing live. Zagg would add details to the "farm", such as a flying balloon or a frog that were painted and projected live throughout the night. It was quite
wonderful to have so much live sensory action.

It really is a fun show, and the cast was just great, most of them embodying 3-4 different animals. Josh McLane was truly stellar as the Grand Duke (owl) and the
wildly entertaining Peacock. Orion Taraban had a strong performance as the charasmatic Chantecler and Kalle Macbrides was quite charming as the Pheasant. It was a strong cast and an enjoyable show.

The play was a bit on the long side (2 1/2 hours or so) and it "wandered" a bit in the middle. But all in all it was an enjoyable family show with spectacular puppets.

Written by Edmond Rostand, translated by Kay Nolte Smith and directed by Cory Einbinder. Presented by: Adhesive Theater Project in association with Off the Leesh Productions

Tickets are $18, please call 212-353-3101 (or online via
www.TheaterMania.com

Teatro LA TEA at Clemente Soto Valez Cultural Center |107 Suffolk Street
(Between Delancey and Rivington Street)

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Kenneth Nowell's
The Fall
Thursday - Saturday @ 8PM
Sunday @ 5PM
May 5th - May 29th
Looking Glass Theater

Reviewed by Cariad O'Brien

Running an hour and a half without intermission, the play holds your attention. Elegantly directed by Kate Marks, the stage is bare except for a white altar/bed where Jill and her mother often lie and a suspended screen on which Jill's projected memories continually flicker past. The video by Maria Cataldo is usually literal, a green backyard, a turning staircase, a girl running toward a house and is at its most effective when it compares Jill's deteriorating mental state to an angry little girl in a cartoon.

Marks choreographs her actors with great artistry: Jill's body is carried among the cast, expressing her helplessness and need to be helped. The actors mime their props and scenes often end with dance-like flourishes that work well. The capable cast in this family drama matches each other in looks and intensity of emotion. A brief exchange where Jill buys a gun from a shady character (Erika Ewing) is particularly strong. The play finishes in a violent crescendo, as Jill forces the truth out into the open, attacks her father and destroys herself - the truth and the reality that she is not mad proving more difficult to bear than the supposed madness itself.

Tickets: $15.00 212-352-3101 Info: 212-307-9467

Looking Glass Theater 422 West 57th Street

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Judith Thompson's
I Am Yours
May 18th-28th Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8pm
Center Stage Theatre

Reviewed by Mikal Saint George

Producing theatre in New York is an up hill battle at best. Assuming you don’t have 15 million dollars. Off-off Broadway fare is usually the territory of actors just starting out or those who never should have. Even the handful of bright talent that very much does exist usually has to contend with a temp job, part time waitron gig, three stoner roommates and the horror of attempting to build a life in New York in cheap shoes.

Rehearsals are usually at the end of an impossibly long day and the night before a painfully early morning. Pretty much everyone involved is tired, hungry, broke and functioning mostly on the fumes of hope/desperation/rage. That being said, Canuck Productions has chosen a nearly Herculean challenge in producing Canadian playwright Judith Thompson’s I Am Yours.

Thompson’s tale of some of the world’s most broken creatures in late 1980’s Toronto does not follow a particularly linear story line. Instead, it is more a barrage of somewhat disjointed scenes offering emotional slices of life, usually at its most histrionic moment.

This is an intriguing choice as a playwright and a potentially lethal one as an actor or director. Forcing such jarring emotional and physical intensity on an audience without any back story or opportunity to connect with a character can leave the viewer with the feeling of being unexpectedly assaulted by a angel-dusted Port Authority vagrant looking for a dollar.

I Am Yours follows the story of borderline schizophrenic artist Dee (Heather Ballantyne) attempting to cope with nightmares stemming from a childhood fear of things living behind walls (her crappy apartment must be a regular Jungian playground). Dee’s scenes often open with her lying face down on floor and then flying into rage. Generally, one would have to hang out at a bus station or visit a methadone clinic to meet a woman of this stellar quality. Apparently she and husband Mack (Tim Barker) play a regular game of on again/off again, rip-your-guts-out followed by hot make-up sex psuedo marriage.

Professional basket case Mercy comes to visit (via the bus, what a deb!) sister Dee while fleeing an emotionally and sensuously barren marriage. On this same wacky day Dee and Mack have split (again) offering the perfect opportunity for Dee to sleep with dim- witted handy man Toilane (Joey Klein) after a (surprise!) extremely angry, 45-second introductory conversation. Somewhere in the mix we also meet Touilane’s less than elegant mother Peg (Karin Wolfe). Peg is an affable, no-nonsense, blue-collar poster queen with the venom of a pissed off school cafeteria lunch lady whose hairnet pinches.

Fast forward. Dee is (surprise!) pregnant. Just for the fun of it, she decides to tell husband Mack that it is his baby and that she is keeping this one. But not before telling Toilane that the baby she is having is in fact his and that she will be giving it away regardless of his feelings. To add to his humiliation she is sure to break this bit of news in the presence of her sister – a complete stranger to Toilane. What a gal! No wonder everyone wants her! I won’t give away the high jinks that follow, suffice it to say poverty, mental illness and the zipless fuck simply do not mix – sorry Erica Jong.

More questions are raised then answered or even addressed by Thompson. Why is Dee so cruel? More importantly, why is everyone so nice to her? She seems to have a sociopath’s prerequisite lack of human emotion yet her salt-of-the-earth, regular guy husband Mack always returns. Her nightmares, childhood fears and seemingly demonic visions – genuinely intriguing facets of the character - are quickly mentioned but never again discussed.

Director Alex Correia has crafted many ingeniously thought-out scenes that individually are truly stimulating. Stringing them together is the challenge and Correia has certainly stepped up to the plate. It will be interesting to see where this work eventually goes. With this as it’s starting point, Correia’s vision promises to lead it in very exciting directions.

Heather Ballantyne does an admirable job of constantly teetering between neurotic and psychotic. Her ability to pull raw emotion from her gut at will is apparent. She deserves to have fewer short moments and more fully fleshed out scenes to allow her to really shine as she obviously is meant to.

Lynde Houck as skittish sister Mercy has a tough role indeed. She refers to herself as “ugly” and has all the usual ugly-sister-wilting-in-the-shadow-of-pretty-blond ticks and quirks but is really too pretty to be completely believable. It may be that this is merely her mental self-image, more reflective of her self-esteem battered by the awe she seems to feel toward her sister. Unfortunately, their relationship is never really developed enough to give much insight. We learn of her fears of sex leading to her feelings of whorey dirtiness that lead to a painfully unfulfilling marriage. Don’t they have Cosmo in Canada?!

Houck’s defense of television viewing to her sister however, is as good as it gets! In this relatively brief but perfectly delivered monologue Houck captures the essence as well as the absurdity of our consumer driven, retail buying, Dr. Phil following, media driven culture. This teeter-totter between humor, fear, desire, need and passion is the direction this piece was most likely intended to go in.

Veteran soap actress Karin Wolfe as uber-frau Peg has the working class scrappiness thing down to a tee. Even when her character is all over the place with empty-nest angst and dish-pan hands bitterness, Wolfe manages to reign in the explosive temperament of Peg and give her focus.

It is Joey Klein as love-struck simpleton Toilane however who owns this show as much as any actor could. An arresting amalgam of Joaquin Phoenix and Christopher Walken (with just a dash of Saved By The Bell’s Screech for comic relief) Klein more than any anyone in this very able cast manages to take what could easily be achingly ridiculous melodrama and not only owns it, but makes it work. His interaction with his mother is at times truly astounding. He does not merely tread into the territory that could easily flatten even the most seasoned actor but instead tears in, swallows the scenery and expels it from every pore. He can repeat the same word 25 times – and does more than once - and still make you wish he would say it one more time. The guy is good.

Tim Barker as Mack and Stephen Hansen playing a trio of supporting characters are admirable given the minimal character development they are given by the playwright.

Marc-Eric Nielson’s set of fetus art and sperm chandelier is as visually arresting as budget will allow. His choice of dirty 1960’s velveteen provincial crap juxtaposed against stark black box walls speaks volumes.

May 18th-28th Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8pm
$15 at the door or through www.smarttix.com
RESERVATIONS:   212 868-4444

Center Stage Theatre | 48 West 21 Street, 4th Floor | NYC

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Theatre – Arts Connection
Presents
“Julie”
Freely adapted from “Miss Julie”
By August Strindberg
Wednesdays through Saturdays @ 8PM
Sundays at 3PM
May 6th-May 21st
Henry Street Settlement/Experimental Theatre at Abrons Arts Center

 

Reviewed on May 7, 2005 by Caroline Smith

They hit the nail right on the head when they captioned Strindberg’s ‘Julie,’ as “the original desperate housewife.” However, there were neither demure white picket fences nor lacy curtains separating the wealthy from the poor, as seen on the television show. Rather, this play began as an art installation wherein the maids took on the role of mannequins. The lighting was minimal and their chalked expressions basked the stage in an eerie bluish glow. Instead of fences, a circle drawn entirely of salt was sprinkled on stage, representing the hole the servants were born into. When Jean, Miss Julie’s father’s valet, breaks this circle by bedding the strange and childlike, ‘Julie,’ the play is set into motion.

In this adaptation, Jean’s affair with aristocratic daughter of the Count, Julie, is blatantly sexual and transcends all social and class differences. However, Strindberg’s 19th Century “Miss Julie,” was banned throughout Europe for its controversial and frank portrayal of sex. Today we see these relationships develop not only on television, but also right under our noses.

In the play, Julie was described as a child of nature, having been raised as a boy with a great sense of independence. Similarly, as I watched this play I thought Julie had been born in the wrong era. She represented many contemporary ideas while her counterpart, Jean, had more of a classical, guarded identity. Furthermore, Julie promised her mother she would never become a slave to a man. However, in their lovemaking, the balance of power and betrayal shifts. It also might be noted that sex was utterly too complicated in the 19th century, as well as in director’s David I. L. Poole’s current adaptation. Between Julie’s layers of crinoline and fiery red hair, Jean got lost in the sheets.

If I were to end with the beginning… At the start of the play Jean says,
“When upper class people want to mingle with the help, they become common.”
What began as a harmless flirtation between the two had manifested itself into a war between the sexes. Jean began to see a way out of the lower class via Julie. The lovers made plans to go to Switzerland to open a hotel because leaving the house would imply leaving all social and class barriers behind them. But the constant power struggle drives the ambitious and aggressive Julie mad. She will not succumb to a man and she’ll kill herself over it if it means just that.

The Experimental Theatre/Abrons Arts Center at the Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street. Production runs from May 6th through May 21st (Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 3). Tickets are $15. Call Smarttix at (212)868-4444 or via the web at www.smarttix.com. For more information, please log onto the company’s website at www.TheatreArtsConnection.org.

 

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Mark O'Rowe's Howie the Rookie, a play about two lads drinking themselves through a rough night in the underbelly of a depressed Dublin suburb, is a magical evening in the theater. Now playing at the Irish Arts Center, the script consists of two interconnected monologues performed consecutively: one by Howie a pit bull of a character, the other by Rookie, the local lothario. Although they are unrelated, the two unemployed louts share the same last name Lee, which to the violence obsessed Howie, is a wonderful tribute to his idol Bruce Lee. O'Rowe's writing is rough and Joycean, filthy and precise. Like Irish writers Connor McPherson and Enda Walsh, he is adept at the monologue form. What's more, his racing plot lines are adorned with clever turns of phrase, wicked insults and a not over used street vernacular (lodgy-bodgy means to screw) that makes his dialogue pop and his language rhythms unique.

The play is cinematic in its storytelling as the two fellows tear through the city on their desperate adventures. Director Nancy Malone, makes use of this quality and keeps her actors moving throughout the industrial set. A rusty backdrop, dingy bench and suspended pipes suggest a dodgy part of town and the many sound cues punctuate the action, bringing clarity to the often accented diction and unusual slang. Despite their heightened lack of sophistication, both characters are funny and obviously as instinctually intelligent as their writer. The script is filled with references to kung fu films and American westerns. One of many colorful screwballs introduced in the story, Chopper Al, makes the Rookie think of the High Chapparal when he says hello (Hi Chopper Al) . A vicious bruiser in his loose fitting Bruce Lee tee shirt waiting to pounce, Howie says "I'm like Tarzan, I dive like the fucking Weismuller I am,." a reference to the first actor to play Tarzan.

Howie is a thug looking forward to a night where he can beat the living daylights out of his former friend, the Rookie, who slept on his gay friend Ollie's mat and left scabies behind for the next visitor, Peaches. A crime magnified by the fact that Peaches was later humiliated: found by his father naked, with his pubic hair shaved and begging to be put down like a dog. Howie, about to attack the Rookie says, "I take down my prey like a feral hunter and hold them tight." Despite the hard hitting dialogue, Mark Byrne sensitively underplays Howie's rage underscoring instead his frustration and lack of opportunity in life. The night ends horribly and Howie is cruelly and unfairly blamed by his parents, who should have blamed themselves. Howie is transformed by grief and it is a much altered man that we hear about (but do not see) in the Rookie's post intermission monologue.

The Rookie enters in act two, his hands down his pants scratching, not knowing t he is infected with scabies. He has to come up with seven hundred cash to pay off another thug, Ladyboy, whose exotic fish he accidentally knocked over and killed while scratching himself. So far, he has raised 200 from the "dollies" who are besotted by him: "Handsome bastard I am - break hearts and hymens I do." He is unable to raise any off his parents because he slept with his stepmother to pay back his father for leaving his real mother, and anyway, the father didn't have any money to begin with.

Howie, in the second act is obsessed with helping the Rookie, to erase the consequences of the night before which ended in such horrible tragedy. In contrast to the Rookie, the only girl that Howie can get is his friend Peaches' two hundred and thirty pound slut of a sister, called Avalanche, who siddles up behind him while he's having a piss and jerks him off saying, "Slip into me room and slip into me womb."

The attitude of all the men toward women in the play is completely appalling and recognizably Irish. They are judged on looks alone and when not acting as masturbatory tools, expected to stay at home. In a full circle plot twist, Peaches attacks Howie for sleeping with his sister, raising her hopes even though everyone knows she is "unlovable." One attractive girl, who works at a supermarket to provide for her retarded brother, rejects Howie on her one night out (although she later sleeps with the Rookie). Howie remarks that she should be at home minding her brother (who we later discover is actually her child but she was too embarrassed to admit it).

The Rookie is equally repulsive, but as played by the incredibly charismatic John O'Callaghan, (who premiered Connor McPherson's monologue Rum and Vodka in the US a few years ago) it is easy to see why the ladies are so attracted to him. Despite his foul mouth and despicable intentions, you find yourself rooting for this man to evade another beating. Although he may not deserve a pummeling for killing the fishes, he certainly has it coming on behalf of the women he has so heinously abused. O'Callaghan is that rare actor who seems ten feet tall on stage; his sublimely talented, effervescent performance is reason enough to see the show. Howie the Rookie is definitely one of the best performances I have seen in a long time.

Tickets are $40/$45 and are available by calling 212.868.4444 or visiting www.smarttix.com

Irish Arts Center |553 West 51st Street
(Between 10th and 11th Avenues).

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