Tag Archives: New Play

Fugard’s New Play is Canonical

I had the opportunity this past weekend to see Athol Fugard’s new play The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek at the Signature Theater in New York. Fugard has added a nuanced and multi-layered work to his canon. The fact that he is closing in on 83 and still able to grow as a playwright speaks to the power of his voice and to the great well of the stories he still needs to tell.

The play is set in two time periods: 1981 (apartheid era) and 2003 (post-apartheid era). The beginning is deceptively simple. Nukhain (Leon Addison Brown), a worker on a ranch in Mpumalanga Province, spends what little free time he has from his labors to paint rocks (what he refers to as his “flowers”) on the side of a desolate hill. Not many people see them, but this project provides an outlet for his artistic self. But this day is unlike the rest. He faces a giant boulder, the last rock to be painted on the hill. Instead of turning it into a massive flower, he uses it instead as a canvas to tell his own story, to provide his own history. At the same time, he has taken a young worker Bokkie (Caleb McLaughlin) a young worker under his wing. What he has painted frightens and excites both of them. It is unlike anything that he has ever done. However, the mistress of the farm Elmarie (Bianca Amato) shows up and is at first puzzled and then disturbed by this new work. She wants Nukhain to remove it and go back to painting one of his flowers. Bokkie objects, but Nukhain agrees.

The second act jumps ahead over 20 years. Bokkie has now grown up and is a teacher, Jonathan (Sahr Ngaujah). His mission is to restore Nukhain’s painting. After a tug-of-war with Elmarie, he at last has permission to do so.

The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek is a wrenching work. Fugard proves again that he is a master of the genre in that he essentially sneaks up behind the audience at about the 40-minute mark in Act One and hits it in back of the head with a two-by-four (metaphorically speaking). Fugard conveys the complexities of a nation torn apart by years of strife and racial animosity. His great gift of weaving tales of the downtrodden with lyricism and empathy is, of course, present. Here, though, he examines culture, and the threat that black culture posed to the apartheid regime.

So long as Nukhain painted flowers on rocks, it was fine. Beautiful, yes, but with no significance whatsoever. Once, though, he tries to tell his story – which is not particularly political, but because this is South Africa is de facto political – then his work becomes dangerous and must be destroyed. Though physical violence is implied throughout, none is perpetuated on stage. And yet, Elmarie’s determination to remove the painting (which, by the way, appears as an extraordinary piece of African Art) is the greatest violence of them all.

 

That Fugard is able to convey all the horrors of the apartheid regime in this one understated moment speaks volumes about his talents as an artist. And let us not be mistaken. Though the actions of the play are specific to South Africa, the work speaks as much to any nation where a ruling class seeks to erase the culture of a disenfranchised group. It is a play that needs to be seen, should be seen – it also needs to be a play that is forever cemented in the canon.

All You Need is a Man with a Rhyme

Last night, I had the good fortune of seeing A Sucker Emcee at the Labyrinth Theatre.  Craig muMs Grant — rap artist, poet, playwright, actor (Oz) — performs a rap/poetry/dramatic monologue. Rich Medina provides key support as a DJ; though silent throughout, he creates conversation with muMs and serves as chorus to the play. A Sucker Emcee is at once very new and very old. And it is because it very much dwells in this paradox that it is an extremely powerful, honest, and wrenching evening of theatre.

I consciously used the term “chorus” above because muMs and his director Jenny Koons craft something very elemental here. Before Thespis stepped before an audience as something other than himself, theatre was a poet and a musician weaving a tale on stage. The music is hip-hop; the theatricality is elemental, primal, old when the Dionysia. If you don’t think that such an old form has relevance to the modern theatrical sensibility, go to Labyrinth and be amazed.

muMs tells the story of his life, his artistic life, how he came to be a poet, a rapper, an emcee. It is a life of triumphs and tragedies, mistakes comic and painful, good times turned bad and bad times turned good — because it is a life. The poet came of age in the Bronx in the late 70’s and 80’s. He touches on how his youth intersected with the birth of hip-hop. In so doing, he fits very much into that vein of American poetry that finds its home at that intersection of the personal and the political, the historic sweep of a nation or community and the closely observed moment of the individual. Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and James Baldwin would welcome muMs into their clubhouse with open arms.

It is the great paradox — its magic, its genius, its madness — that the more specific a work is, the more universal it is. James Joyce’s Ulysses testifies to that wonder. When you sit in the dark and are caught in the rhythm and rhyme of the performance, you cannot help but be carried away to a place of emotional truth caught floating on the rushing current of the elegance and rawness of his verse. muMs’ family is not your family, muMs’ struggles are not your struggles — and yet you recognize your family, your struggles in the frenzy of his poetry. It is a supremely human moment that only theatre can provide. What hits home is the extreme humanity of this gifted compassionate man who wrestled with his fears and became the artist of authenticity that he wanted to be.

Go. Be amazed.

 

CORE CREATIVE PRODUCTION’S A THOUSAND DEATHS PLAYING NYC FRINGE ‘14

New York, NY/Jul 20, 2014 (For Immediate Release) – Core Creative Productions is delighted to announce that its production of A Thousand Deaths by Anthony P. Pennino has been accepted for the New York City Fringe Festival ’14. The play will perform at 64E4 Mainstage (Venue #11) on East 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. The dates of the show with curtain are as follows: Wednesday 8/13 (2:45pm), Friday 8/15 (7pm), Sunday 8/17 (8 pm), Monday 8/18 (7 pm), and Saturday 8/23 (2pm); there will be a talkback after the final performance. The show lasts approximately one hour.

Adapted from Jack London’s science-fiction short story of the same name as well as other material by the famed author, A Thousand Deaths takes the audience to The Philippines at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Joshua (Sean Hoagland), a noted scientist, has discovered what he believes to be the key to death itself. He must, however, test this cure to determine if it is truly effective, and so he kills and restores his test subject, Henry (Blake Merriman), multiple times. As Henry slips between this world and the next, he encounters a mysterious figure in the form of his old shipmate O’Brien (Peter Collier). A Thousand Deaths explores questions of immortality, scientific ethics, and the very nature of human survival.

A Thousand Deaths had its world premiere in January 2014 as part of The Gilded Festival at The Metropolitan Playhouse.The original cast from that run is returning for the Fringe production.

Core Creative Productions Core, located in New York City, was founded by Alberto Bonilla, Elizabeth Inghram, and Anthony P. Pennino.  Previous productions have included Dia de los Muertos by Pennino, which premiered at Teatro La Tea in July 2011 and RINO by Zack Calhoon, which premiered at the Brick Theater’s Democracy Festival in June 2012. Visit us at www.corecreativeproductions.com

Jack London (1876-1916) is the author of such famed novels as Call of the Wild and White Fang. “A Thousand Deaths” (1899) has the distinction of being the first work of his to be published.

The Nance: Good Theatre Trying to be Great

[This review originally appeared on nytheatre.com: The Nance.]

The Nance, a Lincoln Center Theater production currently playing at the Lyceum Theater, is a very good play that has ambitions to be a great play. Unfortunately, it misses that lofty mark.

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane (The Little Dog Laugh) dramatizes the world of burlesque in late 1930’s New York. He focuses in particular on the role of the nance, an effeminate or homosexual male character that was part and parcel of the stock repertoire of the form. At this time, Mayor Fiorrello La Guardia vigorously sought to close down the burlesque houses — not just for the striptease but for the nance acts as well – and thus “clean up” the city of lewd behavior.

As the nance Chauncey Miles, Nathan Lane astounds. I am often ambivalent about Lane’s work. While he rightly receives acclaim as one of our stage’s leading comic actors, I have also found his work to be undisciplined and at times borderline self-indulgent in trying to force every last laugh out of an audience. With The Nance, though, he is in top form – what his work in Butley should have been. Yes, there are the trademark one-liners, slow burns, and physical bits of business, but there are all utilized in service of character and story. Lane also does equally well in revealing the complexities, contradictions, and ugliness of Chauncey’s character. In the second act, when Chauncey’s life takes a wrong turn after a run-in with the law, Lane embraces that darkness with a passion and integrity that is quite rare. His ferocity when he breaks up with his lover Ned (Jonny Orsini) because he, Chauncey, cannot stand the thought of being loved is both brutal and unvarnished.

Lane shares the stage, for the most part, with a strong and talented ensemble. Andréa Burns and Jenni Barber, as two of the women in the burlesque show, add strong comedic support. Lewis J. Stadlen provides texture to Efram, the show’s manager, who constantly navigates his instinctual dislike of Chauncey’s nature with a quiet desire to be ethically responsible. It is Cady Huffman as Sylvie, a performer and committed Marxist, who shines. Her love-hate relationship with Chauncy provides much of the spark and dramatic tension on stage. Her struggles in many ways mirror Chauncey’s own. I was glad that Beane provided such a rich narrative arc and backstory for a character another writer might easily have kept boxed in for easy laughs and sexual puns. Indeed, one of the highlights of the show is how burlesque is portrayed not so much for its seedier qualities (thought that is there) but that is served an important social need as a subversive art form.

The one disappointment in the cast is Orsini as Ned. A nice guy whom Chauncey finds, takes in, and in the end turns out, Ned never commands attention or focus the way the other five characters do. Ultimately, the problem here rests with the script. By design, he is the male ingénue to serve the plot needs of Chauncey’s life. He comes into Chauncey’s life all too easily and leaves all too easily. And so, it never really matter who is on the other end of the table from Chauncey being berated just so there is someone. There was an opportunity to find some lyricism in Ned’s naivety and simple ways, but that opportunity was missed.

Beane is looking to place his work on the same level as Cabaret and John Osborne’s The Entertainer, and it is here that he is unsuccessful. Both of the other works use a seedy theatrical form as a metaphor for what is occurring in larger societal context beyond the stage. So Cabaret portrayed the failures of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, and The Entertainer used the collapse of the English music hall tradition to reflect upon the decline of the British Empire during the Crisis of Suez. However, the events of The Nance never feel like they have much of an impact or connection beyond the specific community of New York burlesque. And as reprehensible as Mayor La Guardia’s actions may have been, given what else was going on in the late 1930’s, they hardly rise to the level of misdemeanor. Unlike then Archie Rice from The Entertainer, Chauncey only stands for himself.

That said, spending a theatrical evening with Chauncey would be a worthwhile evening indeed. The backstage comedy elements are flawlessly executed, the dramatic moments are honest and cathartic, and Nathan Lane commands both equally well.

Neva: Must See Theatre at The Public

The following is a review I wrote on Neva, a new play currently in production for the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre. The review appeared in nytheatre.com (Welcome to nytheatre.com)

The American stage needs more plays like Neva.

Written and directed by Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón and translated by Andrea Thome, the production is a part of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre. Calderón sets his play in St. Petersburg, Russia on January 2, 1905. This infamous date is significant because striking workers, protesting peacefully, were gunned down by Tsarist troops; that day, known as Bloody Sunday, would become the impetus for violent revolution a decade later. Meanwhile, Olga Knipper (a fantastic Bianca Amato), Anton Chekhov’s widow, rehearses for a production of The Cherry Orchard in an empty theater. She is joined by two members of the acting company: Masha (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) and Aleko (Luke Robertson). Together they muse and argue about art and revolution and the intersections thereof.

Neva stands as an excellent example of a Modernist text fully realized as both an intellectually intense and emotionally exciting night at the theatre. Calderon incorporates a number of different elements in order to breathe life into his work while nonetheless creating something new and true to his own vision. Most important of these elements is the one pertaining to Chekhov that incorporates the playwright’s artistry and biography; it revolves around The Cherry Orchard. In Chekhov’s last play, we know that change is coming to and for Russia. But what shape will that change take? Will it be that of the coarse and low-born merchant Lopakhin, or that of the idealistic and reform-minded student Trofimov? Chekhov did not know the answer –the play premiered a year before Bloody Sunday and Chekhov died during the summer in between – though he does tip the scales in favor of Lopakhin. Had he lived to see Bloody Summer, his estimation might have – nay, would have – been different. Calderón sets his play crucially when one such road to the future would be closed (or at least put on hold for several decades). Suddenly, we are in a world that Chekhov would no longer recognize, and yet his presence still dominates the lives of these characters, especially Olga’s.

As director, Calderón confines the action to a very tight space – a small dais, little more than an island awash in the darkness of the Anspacher – and provides only a single practical for lighting. He utilizes a blending of styles including Chekhovian, Brechtian, and Absurdist.

The effect of such a construction is to raise the stakes appreciably for the audience. Yes, the work is historical but not the sort of history where we are privileged with a point of “objective” observation. Rather, the history here more closely fits the German notion of Geschichte wherein political forces are in continual process from past to present in order to give form to the future. It is that conversation between past and present with which Calderón engages his audience. Neva is as much about the playwright’s native Chile – and the shadow that the Pinochet regime still casts – and the contemporary United States (a society currently in a state of transition) as it is about Russia of a century ago. True to the Modernist paradigm, he reimagines forms and ideas from the past to speak urgently of the now.

Here, Calderón follows in the tradition of two of his nation’s foremost authors. First, like Pablo Neruda, he investigates the moment where love (and a gentle eroticism) elides with the revolutionary spirit. Unlike Neruda, whose style was often one of elegiac romanticism, Calderón’s voice is a raw, primal, visceral howl. (NB: Neruda and Calderón bookend the Pinochet regime as the former died suspiciously of heart failure three days after the start of the military coup.) Second, like Vicente Huidobro, he is on a quest for authenticity in writing (here playwriting instead of poetry). But unlike Huidobro, he finds history not a burden but a source of freedom. Added to this mix is a post-colonial rejection of hegemonic cultural dominance, represented by Olga’s belief in the superiority of the German over all else.

These components make for compelling theatre indeed. Calderón anchors his play, beginning and end, with two monologues that demonstrate his virtuosity as an artist. The first, Olga’s, appears on the surface to be an egotistical actor’s rant, but beneath lurks the contradictions and paradoxes of the life in the theatre. The last, Masha’s, also exposes the many conflicting factors that contribute to a revolutionary’s state-of-mind, and Bernstine mines the role of Masha for her glorious complications and nuances. The third member of the cast, Robertson, fully embodies the role of Aleko, who must, at Olga’s bidding, constantly reenact Chekhov’s death in a mockery of a realist theatre’s catharsis. Most poignant is the scene where Chekov does not die and witnesses Lenin’s return at Finland Station and the launch of Sputnik. Aleko, the aristocrat turned actor, serves as a bridge between Olga and Masha as his politics are closer to Tolstoy’s than Trotsky’s.

I cannot say enough about this excellent, exciting, and necessary play. I am not familiar with Calderón’s other works, but now I want to be.