Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Two solo shows create exspansive theater: Edgar Oliver’s NEW YORK TRILOGY and THE BECKETT TRILOGY starring Conor Lovett

• By drediman
• November 13, 2017
• No Comments

Who says that big things can’t come in small packages? Two solo performances I attended recently have reminded me all over again of the potency of the form to produce epic theater. Sometimes looking inwards and using the mind’s eye can create vistas that can surprise you with their expansiveness. No elaborate, expensive stagecraft can compare.

Conor Lovett in “The Beckett Trilogy” at the Duke.

Last week, I had the opportunity to catch Conor Lovett take on the mammoth task of performing segments from three novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. In this impressive three-hour performance, appropriately entitled The Beckett Trilogy (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), Mr. Lovett portrays characters from these works, each distinct in their demeanor, humor, and intellect. Yet underneath it all, they all – and by extension, we – inescapably share perhaps the defining experience in all of our lives, our impending mortality. With astonishing clarity and wit, Mr. Lovett vigorously navigates the internal lives of these characters as they grapple with the inevitable. Although this is inherently harrowing theater, taking us three times over to the very brink of the unknown abyss, Beckett and Mr. Lovett (and let us not forget director Judy Hegarty Lovett) have painted compassionate, sometimes very heartily funny, and and ultimately (and strangely) hopeful portraits. Indeed, The Beckett Trilogy made for an inspired offering at this year’s White Light Festival.

Edgar Oliver stars in his “New York Trilogy” at the Axis Theatre.

At the Axis Theatre in Greenwich Village, Edgar Oliver’s “New York Trilogy” (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which is comprised of the three hourlong monologues (each written separately over the last decade and here performed on separate nights) East 10th Street, In the Park, and Attorney Street, is completing a well-deserved sold-out run. Together, these hypnotic musings weave together a spectral, shimmering image of old New York and the man he once was. In essence, these ramblings are ghost stories, conjuring up scenes that are fleeting and flickering – yet pungent and sometimes frankly erotic. It’s as if the audience were at a séance, with Mr. Oliver acting as our cryptic medium. Mr. Oliver, a fixture in the downtown arts scene, is transfixing in each of these monologues. His unmistakable delivery (pastoral, even languid) and diction (so affected as to be authentic) drew the audience in with its hushed tones and dreamy disposition. Mr. Oliver is a singular artist.

And there’s more. Transport Group’s Strange Interlude, a third show I’ve yet to see (I see it during closing weekend), converts Eugene O’Neill’s problematic six-hour play into a one-man show (!). It stars David Greenspan, and should be pretty darn epic. And there’s also the Broadway transfer of John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Morons, which ambitiously seeks to cover the entirety of Latino history under two hours. It opens this Wednesday.

THE BECKETT TRILOGY
Off-Broadway, Play
The Duke on 42nd Street
3 hours (with one intermission)
Closed

EDGAR OLIVER’S NEW YORK TRILOGY
Off-Broadway, Play
Axis Theatre
Each 70 minutes (without an intermission)
In repertory through November 18