Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther: An Appealing Hand

I'll conclude my reviews of the six semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival which I saw on Friday night at The Duke on 42nd Street - all short plays - with an anthology review of a handful of three very different kinds of plays -

• One-person plays are always a challenge for the performer, and Christina Dewar came through on this brilliantly in Dear Diary, a meditation on a young woman's coming of age, sexually.  In fact, I'd say Dewar's performance was at times a tour de force.  She delivered her lines, which swung from wise to humorous, and often were both, with aplomb and style.   She also wrote them.  I'd say Christina Dewar is someone to watch as both a playwright and an actress.
• Burning Leaves is "a brief selection of scenes from the full-length" play, so it's a little difficult to judge.  But what I saw is enough to make me want to see the complete play.  Matt Leland left New York City for some unspecified unsetting reason.  He's an actor, 32-years-old, and is trying to reestablish himself as a high school teacher in a small town in the midwest.  He's a caring, sensitive person, and therefore takes time with a troubled male student - who soon wants to sleep with him.  Burning Leaves therefore enters the difficult ethical thicket of what the teacher's appropriate response should be, since saying no for whatever good reason to the student could further shatter the student's already shaky self-image.  Well written by Tom Rowan, with Matt very well acted by David Gow, and as I said, I'd definitely welcome a full version of this play.
• Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up is a funny NYC straphanger - literally, taking place on one  of our NYC subway cars - in which Sammy comes to terms with Esther, via appearances and interjections from his former relationships.  Definitely good for a laugh.

So, in the sum, these three short plays, as well as the three I reviewed over the weekend, made for a very enjoyable, provocative two+ hours at The Duke last Friday night.  I hope they all go on to own bigger venues, but even if they don't, they've already made their mark in New York and thereby the world.

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists: Max & Domino, Frozen West, and The Lady in the Woods.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Lady in the Woods: The Snake, with a Twist and Political Upshot

Continuing my reviews of the six semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival which I saw on Friday night at The Duke on 42nd Street - short plays, all of which were excellent - we have Hyten Davidson's The Lady in the Woods, which takes place in "a cabin the forest, upstate New York, the present, late November".  In other words, in both place and time, pretty close to home.  In more ways than one.

For although The Lady in the Woods may sound like an allegory, and it actually is, it has cutting-edge relevance to what we see and hear on the news every day.  The Lady welcomes a man from the forest with frostbite on his feet and frost in his hair into her home, where she's alone, and offers him food.  Much like the "tender-hearted woman" in Al Wilson's 1968 hit record, "The Snake" (which also has frost on its skin) (written by Oscar Brown and co-produced by the great Johnny Rivers), in turn based on "The Farmer and the Viper," an Aesop's fable.

Here's the song in case you don't remember or never heard of it:



So in the song and the fable, the woman (farmer in the fable) are rewarded for their kindness by  death from the snake (viper) which proceeds to more than the bite the hands that fed them.  Now if that moral sounds queasily familiar, it may be because none other than Donald Trump read lyrics from "The Snake" at campaign rallies in 2016 and after he became President in 2017, to illustrate his argument about what would happen if we good Americans let Syrian refugees into our country (I wish I were kidding).

But this makes the ending of The Lady in the Woods even more notable.  I won't give that ending explicitly away, but suffice to say that our Lady does not end up the same as the tender-hearted woman in Al Wilson's song, or Trump's painting of Americans in her image.

Very well acted by Laura Frenzer as the Lady, and Jack Coggins as the man from the forest.  See it if you can.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists:  Max & Domino ...  Frozen West ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up

Frozen West: Science Fiction, Literally

Hey, most of you know I write, watch, and read a lot of science fiction - not always as much in that order as I would like - so I was especially pleased to see Frozen West at The Duke on 42nd Street last night, one of six short plays which are semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival, all of which were excellent.  Now, Frozen West may not be what you or I usually expect when the genre of science fiction comes up - because this short play is about something which is not only possible but scientifically real, right now.  Frozen West is, in other words, literally a work of fiction about science - or, literally science fiction.

The science which today is real and indeed has been so since 1967 is cryonics, or the deep freezing of human bodies after death with a view to reviving them at some point in the future, when our descendants discover a way of unthawing without damage and curing the illness that killed the frozen deceased.  Wikipedia says that as of 2014 there are about 250 people in such "suspended" (not dead!, as one of the characters in Frozen West, Dana, keeps insisting), including baseball great Ted Williams (but not Walt Disney or Robert Heinlein, contrary to the urban legends that they are frozen).

The action  in Frozen West - actually, talk, not action - takes place in a cold room, with six (I think) frozen heads (a cheapo option for those who opt for the freeze), where the room's caretaker, the aforementioned Dana, converses about cryonics and the nature of life and the world with a new acquaintance, Naomi.  Both parts are well played.  But Naomi delivers the funniest lines, makes the best faces, and Maggie Dunleavy (who also directed) animates the role with a special spunk and style.

Davis Alianiello is the playwright, and he's given us a sometimes laugh-out-loud, philosophically rich clip of banter, that captures the state of life in the 21st century.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists:  Max & Domino ...  The Lady in the Woods ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up

Max & Domino: Dark, Funny, Iconic

I had the pleasure of seeing Anthony Marinelli's Max & Domino at The Duke on 42nd Street last night, one of six short plays which are semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival.  All six were excellent, and I'll likely review each of them in the coming days, but I'll start with Max & Domino, which was my favorite for a variety of reasons.

I saw and reviewed here Marinelli's Acoustic Space - a short 2015 movie made from his short play - which apropos McLuhan (who came up with the term) was about the impact of ubiquitous smartphones on interpersonal relations, and looked to me like a movie that might have been produced had McLuhan and Woody Allen gone on to collaborate as producers after McLuhan's appearance in Annie Hall.  Max & Domino has nothing to do with phones, but is invested with Marinelli's savvy about media, this time about movie idols and fevered illusions.

Actually, Max & Domino is about just one movie icon, Marilyn Monroe, who as fate would have it is the Marilyn in my just published Marilyn and Monet.  Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to star in a Woody Allen movie, but she's permanently in our firmament, as hot today as ever she was in the 1950s and 60s.

In Max & Domino, she's perfectly played by Amanda Greer, who delivers just the right verve and breathiness.  Greer is in fact Domino, one half of a mobster enforcer team who are torturing poor Charlie (well played by Mike Funk) to give up where he hid their money and who knows what.  Like a boxer on the ropes having visions of some babe in his real or mediated life, Charlie makes his beating more exquisite by imagining that at times the brunette Domino is blonde Marilyn.  (I told you this was both dark and funny.)

But the best punch comes with a twist at the end, which I won't tell you, except that all is revealed and clicks into place with stiletto precision.  I hope Max & Domino move on from the semi-finals, and Charlie rides forever like his namesake on the MTA.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists: Frozen West ...  The Lady in the Woods ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up