EPICish - A Journey Through Georgia

EPICish, written by & starring Eve A. Butler. Part of the 2013 FringeNYC Festival, playing at Venue #9, Jimmy's No. 43, through August 25th, 2013.

Upbeat pop music with a violent undercurrent leads us into Eve A. Butler's examination of three women in Savannah, Georgia, coming back again in the brief interludes between each story (including Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" and Lily Allen's "Fuck You Very Much"), reminding us that inside the friendly atmosphere, beneath the veneer of southern charm, and behind the sweet doe-eyed face of Ms. Butler, darker thoughts and actions dwell.

Playwright and performer Butler has written three monologues inspired by some of the great heroes of traditional epic poems - Bea Woolf (Beowulf), Masha Gilyov (Gilgamesh), and Odessa (Odysseus) - all set in Nausicaa, a small coffee shop in Georgia. There is a satisfying interconnectedness of the pieces, though they tell disparate stories, as Masha mentions in passing the fate of Bea, or Odessa and Bea reveals a friend in common.

Einstein: An Absent-Minded Narration

Richard Kent Green and Sheilagh Weymouth as Einstein and
Elsa surrounded by reporters. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Einstein, by Jay Prasad. Directed by Randolph Curtis Rand. Starring Richard Kent Green. Currently running at Theatre at St. Clement's through August 25th, 2013.

As Act One of Jay Prasad's bioplay Einstein closes, the title character declares to the whirling electrons of reporters circling the nucleus of his press conference (sorry, couldn't help myself; carry on), "Do I think I'm the greatest scientist the world has ever produced? Does anyone doubt it?" The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

All biopics and bioplays face the same problem: they're supposed to stay true to the facts, even when they don't make a particularly compelling story; even when the ending disappoints. What's disappointing here is that Albert Einstein, who revolutionized physics and the way we look at the universe, does have a compelling life story - but Prasad hasn't presented it in a particularly compelling manner. Following Einstein's life from his humble beginnings in a patent office in 1905 through to his death fifty years later, Prasad's play gives us everything without enough editing down to give us a narrative with a through-line - a series of steps down an inevitable path, to the building of the man, the genius, the legend. So Act One in particular is peppered with scenes, not of young Albert on his scientific discoveries, but of him standing with old school friends, with his soon-to-be wife, with his former teacher, and narrating to each other flashbacks to respective youths (including an arbitrary use of accents for Mileva's parents, when no other scene or character sports them), however irrelevant they are to the supposed story being told. There's all too much telling going on here, and not nearly enough showing, and a lot of it feels irrelevant.

Unsolicited

It was 9:45 pm. Hardly witching hour, but still dark out. I was walking up 8th Avenue to meet a friend, reading twitter on my phone. A man I didn't know fell into step beside me.

"I just thought you should know, you look very attractive in that outfit."

I spared a side glance at him, didn't break my stride, then replied while looking at my phone, "I just thought you should know, that makes me uncomfortable."

Now, as NYC catcalling goes, as pedestrian sexual harassment goes, this was fairly mild. Polite, even. So I replied politely but firmly that this wasn't great behavior on his part.

"You can just take the compliment." Again, not an aggressive tone, but he's pressing the issue when he should back away.

"Yes, but you don't know me and I don't know you and so it makes me uncomfortable."

He said something else but I peeled away into a u-turn to cross the street, and I didn't hear it.

Here's the thing - I believe he didn't mean anything cruel by it. He didn't cuss me out. He didn't corner me against a wall. He wasn't a potential rapist. He didn't even call me a bitch (that I'm aware). But he also didn't realize that even what he did was inappropriate, was a quiet form of harassment.

Talking Heads: A Lovely Night of Melancholy

Talking Heads (series 2), by Alan Bennett. Directed by Paula D'Alessandris. Starring Tom Patrick Stephens, Amy Scanlon, and Fiona Walsh. Currently running at The Secret Theatre through July 27th, 2013.

There's rarely any money in Off-Off-Broadway theatre. They do it for love, we see it for love. Sometimes companies can produce fascinating spectacles with small budgets. And sometimes they rely on the two tenets of storytelling which are truly vital to having a good theatrical experience - the story being told and the ones telling the story - the writing and the actors and director. The Secret Theatre's and Mind the Gap's production of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads has no budget and no spectacle; the actors move their own furniture and props and there are no elaborate stage pictures. But what it has in spades is good stories being told by good storytellers - and so, with very little fanfare, we have a moving and funny night a the theatre.

Finding the Funny at The Explorers Club

David Furr and Lorenzo Pisoni as Harry Percy and
Lucius Fretway. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The Explorers Club, by Nell Benjamin. Directed by Marc Bruni. Starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Lorenzo Pisoni, and David Furr. Currently running at Manhattan Theatre Club, City Center Stage 1 through August 4th, 2013.

The Explorers Club, a new play by Nell Benjamin, is a sparkling love letter to old-school British farce. It's a lushly-designed one-set play stuffed to the walls with eccentric characters, chaotic misunderstandings, slapstick, wordplay, and one or two mistaken identities and impersonations.

The play opens in London, 1879, with a meeting of the members of this exclusive Explorers Club, where our timid and clumsy hero, Lucius (Lorenzo Pisoni), proposes the admission of the club's first female, Phyllida Spotte-Hume (Jennifer Westfeldt). Met with responses varying from oblivious geniality to outright moral indignation - John McMartin, perpetually clutching his bible as the doddering Professor Sloane, is particularly scandalized by the notion - Phyllida soon wins the rest of the members over with the presentation of Luigi, a member of an elusive tribe from a hitherto lost city. However, after a disastrous introduction to the Queen (Luigi's traditional manner of greeting is slapping the other in the face), the club soon finds itself under siege by not just Her Majesty's army, but also a mob of angry Irishmen and a group of monks who can kick people's heads off. Things are looking pretty dire, as vines of Lucius's latest plant discovery climb the walls and railings of the club.