THE HANGOVER REPORT – Thaddeus Phillips’ 17 BORDER CROSSINGS is a visually ravishing examination of man-made borders

Thaddeus Phillips in "17 Border Crossings" at New York Theatre Workshop. Photo by Johanna Austin.

Thaddeus Phillips in “17 Border Crossings” at New York Theatre Workshop. Photo by Johanna Austin.

Last night, Thaddeus Phillips’ solo show 17 Border Crossings opened Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop. I had missed the production, a unique hybrid between monologue and performance piece, when it played briefly a few years ago at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the institution’s genre-defying Next Wave Festival. The premise of the work is simple. 17 Border Crossings is essentially a series of short vignettes depicting Mr. Phillips’ own experiences crossing national borders – on land, sea, air, and beyond – via various modes of transportation.

Taken as a whole, the play’s text is a quirky and informative – if slightly padded and self-important – examination of what man-made borders represent and how they shape our lives as residents of the world. I was a fan of Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, Mr. Phillips’ riff on the dark final days of Edgar Allan Poe, when it played NYTW four years ago. His work on 17 Border Crossings follows the same formula. Both shows take atypical subject matters and transform them into heightened, visually ravishing theatrical experiences.

Although he’s less compelling as a monologuist, there’s no getting around the fact that Mr. Phillips is a master at painting arresting stage pictures. Indeed, in 17 Border Crossings, he conjures an impressively diverse array of visual perspectives with efficiency and panache. With only a few decidedly low-tech tools at his disposal (a table, a few chairs, and a set of brilliantly and strategically placed lights), both he and director Tatiana Mallarino are able to elegantly, succinctly, and strikingly convey time, place, and space. At its best, 17 Border Crossings is seductive theater.

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17 BORDER CROSSINGS
Off-Broadway, Play
New York Theatre Workshop
1 hour, 30 minutes
Through May 12

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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