| . | 09/28/2009
Summer Shorts, Fall Briefs
By: Eugene Paul
If the prospect of seeing eleven plays in less than two hours seems daunting, take comfort in John Cooper’s Turtle Shell productions. That’s the Adult plays we’re talking about; the Youth set of nine additional plays, three of them “Adult” plays suitably chosen and suitably recast with children, also under the Turtle Shell aegis, seemed to evoke what sounded like quite as happy reactions. Maybe happier. New York City is still in play festival mode all over town. There are rashers and rashes of shot plays being presented in venues and formats to soothe or spoil every palate. One company boasts 30 plays in 60 minutes. Beats TV all hollow. Many of the festivals fall victim to the seemingly inevitable plague of stage waits between plays as clumsy changes of setting take place from one play to the next. Not so at Turtle Shell. Changes are, praise be, choreographed; everyone is pitched into a smoothly orchestrated fetch and carry, in silhouette, mind you, quite as entertaining in its way as the plays themselves. No time for an audience to wiggle and squirm. It is a major staging achievement.
The “Adult” plays themselves employ more than twenty actors, staged by six directors, ranging from the touchingly tragic to the lunatic absurd. (There are twenty more actors in the “Youth” group.) Bluff, a stark little drama by Mike Folie, insightfully directed by John Cooper, gives George Raboni a chance to shine and shine he does as a man whose wife’s death has tumbled him into drunken depression, unable to function. When his daughter (beautiful Lisa Graye) runs the gauntlet of midnight Park Slope in her bathrobe to her father’s shambles of an apartment to confront him, he is jolted aghast. He waves a gun at her; she challenges him to shoot himself or snap out of it. The brutality of her dare is somehow underscored by the suddenness of the play’s ending. Director Cooper gets Graye to acquit herself creditably at moments; Raboni is simply wonderful.
Hamlet in Hiding, Rick Rubin’s stupid bank robber joke of a play in Irish brogues is rendered loud and quick, as directed by Bill Toscano. Even Reindeer Get the Blues, Henry Meyerson’s play directed by Peter Sander, is a charmingly fey trifle with a character named Blixen, in antlers of course, explaining his present predicament. In a Clearing Quiet , Michael Tooher’s play, depends utterly on a child’s performance which director Shela Xoregos has not been able to elicit; there may be more here than mere macabre. Together Alone , playwright Richard Warren’s take on the art gallery pick up situation, deftly directed by Leslie (Hoban) Blake though it may be, we have seen and seen. B recka and Scarlet , however, takes us into total absurdity. Fran Handman’s play depends on the entire cast being completely invested in her send up of sci-fi antics and director Bill Toscano gets his cast to be devout loonies which is the only way to go, of course.
Of the remaining plays, two stand out, both by Hillary Rollins. In Coitus Hate-Us, marvelous Frank Genniro, as an avowed woman hater, is goaded into spouting gobbets of venom but that is just the beginning. Matching him with vent for vent, Quinn Warren spews her hatred for men. They spar, one hate after another until we realize that, since all this hilarious hatred takes place in a bar, we’ve been conned into getting involved in a pick-up routine. Funnier than SNL, so there. Rollins’ other play, Twenty-Nine Questions , also manipulates us but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it. A simple, hokey internet questionnaire becomes transmogrified into poignancy when Cynthia (remarkable Jenn Remke) informs us that her friend, Laura, (lovely Laura Kamin) at the computer, across the country in New York, was going for a job at the World Trade Center on September 11. Director Natasha Yannacanedo keeps it simple, effective. Festivals can be more than just theater fun. They’re realms for discovery. Discover.
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Summer Shorts,Fall Briefs. At the Turtle Shell Theater, 300 W. 43rd Street,4th Floor. Tickets: $20.Combo,$30. turtleshellproductions.com. or 212-352-3101 or theatermania.com. ADULT: Thu-Sat 8 pm, Sun 5 pm, Mon 7 pm. Oct 11-3 pm. YOUTH: Thu-Sat 5 pm, Sun 2 pm. Oct 11- 12 noon.
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Summer Shorts, Fall Briefs. Explore comedy, tragedy, farce, drama, horror, in eleven short plays ably acted, expertly directed, all part of New York’s mania for festivals.
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