Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – UNDER THE RADAR 2019: Review Roundup 1

• By drediman
• January 9, 2019
• No Comments

The company of New Saloon’s “Minor Character” at the Public’s 2019 edition of its Under the Radar Festival. Photo by Elke Young.

January in New York wouldn’t be the same without attending a barrage of offerings at a number of experimental theater festivals, the grand daddy of which is the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. Indeed, what better way to start the new year for a theater geek like me than to take stock of what’s new and exciting in the world of the performing arts? The name of the game, as usual, for the likes of Under the Radar is performance without borders; these festivals refreshingly eschew genres, presenting hybrid shows that find authenticity in their untethered states (some more successfully than others). Here are my first crop of reviews from Under the Radar 2019.

FRANKENSTEIN
Manual Cinema

For a number of years now, this Chicago-based troupe has been devising and presenting live handcrafted cinematic experiences to increasing acclaim. Its latest, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s much-recounted Frankenstein, is one of the company’s largest-scale works to date, complete with an impressive musical score by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter (perhaps a little too cheerful within the context of the dark tale), which is beautifully played onstage live, as well as a wider array of visual tools (shadow puppetry, cinema, theater, musical accompaniment, etc.) at its disposal. Even if this means that Frankenstein loses some of the scrappy enchantment and strikingly spare poetry that made their previous productions (e.g. Ada/Ava, Luna del Ray) so beguiling, the company remains singular in its aesthetic. As always, one of the most fascinating aspects of Manual Cinema’s works is the opportunity to simultaneously watch the creative process with the final product.

RECOMMENDED

[50/50] OLD SCHOOL ANIMATION
Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey

Theater need not be a pleasant experience. This sentiment has been seemingly taken to heart by Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey, the writers of the slicing, distilled [50/50] old school animation, one of the most unnerving and disturbing shows I’ve had the “pleasure” of sitting through in recent memory. The show is divided into two very brief halves, in total lasting only 50 minutes. The first portion is comprised of a pitch black monologue, and it’s this segment that will likely have most people talking. Although it’s delivered by the petite and mousey Ms. Mousney – in one of the most unsettling, dead serious performances I can remember – it becomes clear very quickly that what we are encountering in her portrayal is pure evil incarnate (no spoilers here). The second half, performed with revved-up intensity by Mo Fry Pasic is less viscous but equally telling of the society in which our girls are brought up in. Yes, it all left a pretty nasty taste in my mouth, but I just can’t get the stealthy [50/50] old school animation out of my head.

RECOMMENDED

MINOR CHARACTER
New Saloon

That evening, right on the heels of [50/50] old school animation (and still rattled), I immediately caught New Saloon’s playfully academic, lighthearted riff on Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya entitled Minor Character. The raison d’être of the piece is the opportunity to present a mash-up of various adaptations of the classic play (I counted six translations, including Google Translate!), briskly presented in a compact 90-minutes as directed by Morgan Green. To mix things up even more, each character is portrayed by a rotating door of actors (sometimes all at once, other times just one at a time). If the end result is less giddy and enlightening than the concept would suggest, so be it. I still welcomed the opportunity to see this ubiquitous play in a new light.

RECOMMENDED

INK
James & Jerome

One of the quiet surprises of the Under the Radar Festival thus far has been James & Jerome’s utterly lovely Ink, which was appropriately performed at a lecture hall in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (instead of one of the Public Theater’s spaces). The piece is a soulful hybrid between art history lesson, spoken memoir, and music concert. What the duo has created is a series of gorgeously thoughtful and scored meditations on art, its history, and its relevance in our lives through an accessibly contemporary, albeit quirky, lens. By making art personal, James & Jerome – both exquisite, sensitive, and heartfelt monologists – have thoroughly bewitched me.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
 

HEAR WORD! NAIJA WOMAN TALK TRUE
Ifeoma Fafunwa

As much as Ink was about creating small, mesmerizing personalized moments, Ifeoma Fafunwa’s exuberant and impassioned (and often times bombastic) HEAR WORD! Naija Woman Talk True is concerned about making as raucous and robust a theatrical experience as possible. Through a parade of vignettes depicting the turbulent, wide-ranging stories of various Nigerian women and stirring ensemble numbers, Ms. Fafunwa has crafted her own version of A Chorus Line (fittingly presented at the Public!). I’m happy to report that HEAR WORD! is just as affecting and thrilling as that classic American musical. Kudos particularly to the truly exceptional cast, who seem to be living every moment onstage with a vibrancy of life itself. This is theater that throbs with vitality, it and shines every so brightly.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

In addition to these “mainstage” productions, I’ve also caught a few of the festival’s concerts at Joe’s Pub (the delicious Meow Meow, the legendary downtown performance artist Penny Arcade in a show with an unprintable title), in addition to a number of devised performances by the festival’s in-house crop of Incoming! theater artists.

2019 UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL
The Public Theater (and other locations)
Through January 13