Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Three solo performers at the height of their storytelling powers: Anna Deveare Smith (NOTES FROM THE FIELD), Sarah Jones (SELL/BUY/DATE) and Daniel Kitson (MOUSE)

• By drediman
• November 22, 2016
• No Comments

This fall, three outstanding solo performers are at the height of their storytelling powers, giving New Yorkers some mighty fine theater a result. These performers – Anna Deveare Smith, Sarah Jones, and Daniel Kitson – have had great successes both in New York and elsewhere in the past, but I don’t think I’ve seen any of them more committed to their craft and comfortable in the spotlight. What’s astonishing is that their approach to theater-making is completely their own; these are very different artists with their own idiosyncratic but fully satisfying storytelling aesthetics.

Anna Deavere Smith in “Notes from the Field” at Second Stage Theatre

Anna Deveare Smith has long been one of the most noted names in the solo performance genre. Her latest, Notes from the Field (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), which is currently running at Second Stage, continues in the line of her trademark socially conscious, documentary theater. In Notes from the Field, Ms. Smith meticulously weaves together a web of interviews to create a tapestry that shows us the toxic relationship between this country’s justice system, educational system, and rate of incarceration. As with her previous work, Ms. Smith miraculously plays each of the interviewees – comprised of administrators, teachers, parents, and students – with precision and integrity in an urgent performance of tremendous skill and passion.

Sarah Jones in “Sell/Buy/Date” at Manhattan Theatre Club

Over at City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Sell/Buy/Date (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), written and performed by the irresistible Sarah Jones, is currently wrapping up its run. Ms. Jones, a virtuosic technical performer of the same caliber as the aforementioned Ms. Smith, is a blazing talent. Like Ms. Smith, she possesses the uncanny ability to disappear into the various characters she’s portraying. However, unlike Ms. Smith, Ms. Jones creates fictitious characters to populate her story; her pieces are conjured from her imagination and not documentary theater. In Sell/Buy/Date, she’s created a future in which humanity has made significant strides from the world we know today. From this futuristic, weirdly objective vantage point, Ms. Jones does an utterly fascinating job exploring all sides of the sex industry – it’s workers, consumers, history, and the economics that surround it.

Daniel Kitson in “Mouse, or the Persistence of an Unlikely Thought” at St. Ann’s Warehouse

Across the East River in Brooklyn, Daniel Kitson’s enchanting Mouse, or the Persistence of an Unlikely Thought (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) is now in the midst of a brief run at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Mr. Kitson is a known commodity back in his native U.K., and he’s slowly making headway on this side of the pond (he performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse a few seasons ago). In Mouse, he tells quirky parallel stories of a man named William and a head-spinning phone call that he receives that lasts through the night, as well as the story-within-a-story about a woman’s almost spiritual interaction with a mouse (!) that she encounters. Notions of loneliness, the preciousness of human interaction, and lives not led are explored in a loopy manner that can only be described as Kitsonian. Like the other two shows I’ve talked about here, Mouse simply can’t be missed.

NOTES FROM THE FIELD
Off-Broadway, Play
Second Stage Theatre
2 hours, 20 minutes (with one intermission)
Through December 18

SELL/BUY/DATE
Off-Broadway, Play
Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center
1 hour, 20 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 3

MOUSE, OR THE PERSISTENCE OF AN UNLIKELY THOUGHT
Off-Broadway, Play
St. Ann’s Warehouse
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 27