WEEKEND ADVENTURES IN THEATERGOING: URINETOWN AT CAP21, THE GLORIOUS ONES, ECETERA
My weekend in theatergoing began with ROCK 'N' ROLL on Friday night. I don't need to go into great detail here, as my review runs Monday in AMNY. (It's in the print edition, but I haven't seen an online edition of it yet.) I must confess that attending nearly any Stoppard play is tough - and if you're not in for the work, of attempting to grasp his philosophical concepts and wit - you will be lost. And there were definitely points throughout Act One when I felt that way. But by Act Two, when I had the play's structure and language within my comfort zone, I truly began to admire and enjoy it. And rereading the text of Act One on the subway home also helped to put everything into context.
URINETOWN AT CAP21 - This was quite probably the best Cap21 production I've ever seen over the past two years. All Cap productions, populated by NYU musical theater undergrads, are performed in a small blackbox at the Cap Studio on 18th Street and 5th Avenue. URINETOWN is a show that fits easily into a small blackbox space, and it needs no more than five musicians. As such, Cap's 5-person pit performed the score to total perfection. EVITA, which I attended at Cap last year, was also quite good, but URINETOWN was an easier show for the students to pull off gracefully. It was also a far stronger production of URINETOWN than the Steinhardt one I saw last year, though that hosted a really spectacular set design.
THE GLORIOUS ONES - I can't really go into this one in much detail. At the time of this blogging, it hasn't officially opened yet. But may i just say how glad I am that Lincoln Center produced it following its Philadelphia run last year. Tom Stoppard and Ahrens & Flaherty are great examples of artists whose new works are deservingly nurtured by Lincoln Center.
EVIL EYE PRODUCTIONS HALLOWEEN PARADE PLAYWRIGHTING CONTEST THING - I don't remember the exact title. Here's the gist. I got an email about a week ago from the artistic director of Evil Eye Productions, who I apparently met at one opening night party or another. He asked whether I would be interested in contributing a ten-minute play to their event, to take place Saturday night at midnight at the 45th Street Theatre, where I've seen a handful of Off-Off-Bway shows.
The gimmick was that each play would be based on participants in the Halloween parade. We'd get emailed a few pics of people in costume, and we'd have 3 days to write a short play. After receiving a second email from the artistic director, I agreed to do it. After all, why not take advantage of the opportunity? So, I had little if no time to really do a great job. I wrote the play (about siamese twins and a pimp) on Saturday morning over the course of maybe two hours. Was it a great play? Of course not, but I tried to contribute something. I went to the theater at 10pm and watched as their randomly recruited director deleted more than half of the play's text, leaving nearly nothing left. (In all honesty, it consisted of a thin plot and some theater criticism, so I don't really blame her.)
At 12:40am, about halfway through the second of the seven short plays, I left. I didn't know anyone at the event (half the half-filled audience was there to see a heavy metal band performing later in the evening) and, quite frankly, was embarassed by what I had submitted - and somewhat upset by the way it had been treated by the director and everyone else. It was kind of depressing - here I had been given this pretty cool opportunity, and I didn't have the time to really take advantage of it....
Sunday night - OHIO STATE MURDERS at Theater for a New Audience - The only contact I've had with Adrienne Kennedy has been studying SLEEP DEPRIVATION CHAMBER and FUNNY HOUSE OF A NEGRO three years ago at NYU in Bob Vorlicky's American Drama class. The play, an hour-long lecture mostly based on Kennedy's life as a student in 1950 at Ohio State, turned out to be extremely well-performed. I could see Village Voice critic Michael Feingold, who works for the group as their dramaturg, almost in tears by the end. I think I also appreciated the fact that the show was not done in Kennedy's fragmentary, lyrical style, making it far more easier to digest. I highly recommend the play.
