MAMI BY MARIO BANUSHI AT NYU Skirball :UNDER THE RADAR

 MAMI, CONCEIVED AND DIRECTED BY MARIO BANUSHI AT NYU Skirball

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARIF

Mami is a visually stunning and incredibly poetic surrealistic poem about the mother-child

relationship. It hardly has any dialogue and it's a slow moving and majestic tableau of memory,

and grief.

According to the program,"Mami" (mother) and "mam" (Food) reflects the neglect and the attention

towards survival and tender care. This visual poem of a play explore-life's cycle and history

through slow movement, dance and a stream of consciousness.

The surreal images being created out of very little, a little house upstage, dimly lit, darkness surrounding

wast grounds, a lonely pregnant woman coming out of that little house, carrying a bag, walking slowly

eventually disappearing in the darkness, then an old woman starving and in the need of assistance and

many more beautifully haunting images of young men and women intertwined naked in search of

intimacy and love wander away into the wilderness. It's a very rare image of a poem in any theater.

There are dim lights and haunting silences and rhythmic slow and melodious movements which are

to be remembered for very long time.

The fascinating silence in this intimate and tender play is much more important then any words

to tell such a deeply human story.

Mami is the highlight of under the radar festival.

BINA SHARIF

ATCA MEMBER

Editor/Publisher: artsinternational.blogspot.com

Email: binashariff@gmail.com

Mobile: 212-260-6207

DARK MATTER BY CHERISH MENZO AT PS 122, UNDER THE RADAR

 DARK MATTER BY CHERISH MENZO AT PS 122; UNDER THE RADR

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARIF

The incredibly talented team, creating this unique performance/dance play is based in

Amsterdam/Brussels.

Cherish Menzo alongside her stage dance partner, Camilo Mejia Cortes explores

through the amazing dance movements which are, intense, challenging, aggressive,

frightening and tender at the same time.

These mesmerizing movements explore the reality of the body and it's public perception

as well as it's (afro) futuristic body.

The set has strips of white fabric smudged with black paint which hangs upstage behind

the dancers and is lit in blue color creating the effect of water dancing in the pool.

Their dance and the movements are at times intense and frightening turning abruptly

into intimacy, tenderness and love.

The dancer's silver teeth gleam and creates an out of body experience.

At one point the dancers pour buckets of black paint on the floor and then roll around

almost naked all over the paint creating haunting images of terror and bodily strength.

They twist and turn, run around sometime very close to the audience wearing black boots 

with high heels and incredible strength and confidence.

I have never seen such ferocious dance of intimacy, tension and fear.

It could have been called, "Dance of near death." It certainly keep the audience in awe

and amazement at the same moment.

Brilliant play.

A Tribute To Big Mama Thornton at Joe's Pub: Under The Radar

 A Tribute To Big Mama Thornton at Joe's Pub

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARI

A Tribute To Big. Mama is Conceived and Performed by the Poet/Performer/Singer/Visual Artist

Pamela Sneed.

Set list

They call me big Mama

Hound dog

Little red rooster

Summer time

Go down Mosses

BAND

David Barnes: harmonica

Viva De Concini: Guitarist and musical director

Mara Rosenbloom: Piano

It is an enormously moving Cabaret (Queer-Focused) about the Black blues-legend Big Mama Thornton.

The story is being told through music, spoken word and monologue which explain the history of the

 birth of blues. That music was often stolen by the white singers/performers such as Janis Joplin and

 Elvis Presley and many more.

 Pamela Sneed's dynamic performance and rhythmic singing and the revelation

of the historical facts about racism towards black artists set the record straight. Most of them never

 made money and died broke.

We learn the personal history of Big Mama Thornton  and of her early life,  how she started to sing.

Big Mama learned to sing from her mother who was a gospel singer and her father who was a preacher

in the church. She sang in small venues as the opening act for Big stars and eventually won a prize and

 became the feature performer. 

After singing a few melodious songs, Pamela breaks the fourth wall, take her hat off and tell us  about

 her own history.

  She came to New York from Boston to study and reclaim her roots and Identity as well as Big

 Mama's struggle through the times and reclaimed Big Mama and herself as proud lesbian who were

 bold and thrilled to reclaim the origin of being queer black singers who gave birth to the blues long

 before it was considered the part of a politically correct list.

The most brilliant performance by Pamela Sneed with great humor, honesty and energy excited the

whole house. Audience were with her all the way rocking and roaring.

Wonderful band and songs to die. I loved the songs, all of them but can't seem to get, Hound Dog

out of my mind.

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARIF

ATCA MEMBER

Editor/Publisher: artsinternational.blogspot.com

Email: binashariff@gmail.com

Mobile: 212-260-6207

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL 2026: ALL THAT FALL

 ALL THAT FALL

BY

SAMUEL BECKETT

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARIF

ALL THAT FALL is a one act Radio play written in 1957.

It's produced by the experimental company, MABOU MINES at PS122. 

Directed by: JoAnne Akalaitis and lit by Jennifer Tipton

Though Radio Plays are always an auditory experiences, here the director decided to stage it

with an enormous set design.

The photo graphs of the actors are shown in the beginning and then quickly removed.

The enormous and complicated set represents a rugged Irish town is by scenic designer

Thomas Dunn.

The houses in this town are tiny, like doll houses, beautifully lit. There is also a junk yard full

of broken bicycle, dirt filled tires which has been collapsed somewhere near a railway track.

One can see a beautiful blue river running through the town from the huge windows where the light

 shows the time of dawn and the dusk and the changing mood of the play.

One of the town dweller, Maddy Rooney (Voiced by Randy Danson) goes to meet her elderly blind

husband (Tony Torn) at the railway station and on her way she encounter other people from the town 

in an old automobile making crazy sounds. They offer her a ride.

The train has been delayed for some unknown reason but her husband Dan had not informed her of the

 delay and on the way back, the dark road and the expected thunder adds to their miserable conversation

during their trip back. They discuss loudly in a ferocious manner the idea of God-who-is the creator

of all that fall and end up in hysterics.

I throughly enjoyed the design, couldn't keep my eyes off the cute little houses lit like diamonds and the

beautiful river flowing outside the windows and the haunting shadows created by light which kept

 distracting me from the words. I tried very hard to concentrate but my mind kept wandering around.

Some words got lost though visually All That Fall is a marvel.

REVIEWED BY

BINA SHARIF

ATCA MEMBER

Editor/Publisher:artsinternational.blogspot.com

Email: binashariff@gmail.com

Mobile: 212-260-6207

RILKE: 1 MILLION WORDS, A SOLO SHOW AT TORN PAGE

                                                       RILKE: 1MILLION WORDS

A SOLO PLAY,  WRITTEN, PERFORMED AND PRODUCED BY

IVO MULLER AT TORN PAGE PERFORMANCE SPACE.

Directed by: Arieta Correa

Lighting by: Lucca Del Carlo

Costume by: Sophia- April Gross

Ivo Muller, a Brazilian actor has taken the challenge to do his solo play in English for the very first time

and he is pretty brilliant throughout his 60 minute long show in which he connects himself as an actor in

 2025 with one of the greatest poet, Rainer Maria Rilke who was born a Century ago in Prague and

 settled in Germany and created amazing and soul searching poetry in German language.

In an extremely intimate and fascinating space belonging to Late Rip Torn and Great actress, Geraldine

Page. The room is littered with tons of aged looking envelops with a school desk and a child's small

 chair. There is a pair of ruby colored slippers on the side. This minimalist approach enhances the poetry

and the idea of age and youth's freshness.

In 1903, a young poet took the courage to write Rilke a letter seeking his advice about how to create

 poetry. That correspondence continued till 1908 and Rilke wrote numerous letters to the young poet.

Actually, that's how I discovered the greatest poet Rilke myself. A book, "Letter to a young

 poet." as a gift and read the whole book in one sitting amazed by it's shear brilliance and the soul

 searching effort and desire to create something worthwhile. Rilke tells the young poet to reflect what's

the most important yearning within the deep depths of his soul, without expressing that desire he would

 perhaps perish and always feel like a child so he can have a sense of freshness and originality and child

 like truth and honesty in his reflection.

Ivo Muller uses his own inner desire to create as an actor in the present time remembering Rilke and

 also playing him in the very beginning of the show, anxiety stricken dealing with the numerous letters

 lying on the floor and suddenly changes into the actor paying homage to Rilke.

The show is mesmerizing and Ivo Muller is very capable and rooted in his creation sticking his courage

 to the moment and he succeed. He relates to us about his scattered identity as an immigrant where his 

foreign sounding name making it difficult to connect with the inner and  the outer worlds especially as 

an artist. 

Ivo Muller's struggle and dedication and love for Rilke is there all along and it absorbs us throughly.

I loved the show but at the same time wanted more of Rilke and his amazing poetry which I simply

 adore.

REVIEWED 

bY

BINA SHARIF

ATCA

Editor/Publisher :artsinternational.blogspot.com

Email:binashariff@gmail.com

Cell: 212-260-6207

La Musica Deuxieme: Produced by, blessed unrest

.                                      (Matilda Woods,Taylor Valentine)

La Musica Deuxieme: Produced by blessed unrest (theatre for the adventurous)

Written by Marguerite Duras; Translated by Barbara Bray; Directed by Jessica Burr.                  Costumes by Sera Bourgeau; Lighting Jay Ryan; Sound by Laura Galindo.

Marguerite Duras was a fantastic writer of lyrical and haunting poetry with a revolutionary style. She was a feminist who authored many novels, plays and screenplays. Her very praiseworthy and unique creativity includes this brilliant play ("La Musica Deuxieme") currently staged in the excellent space, The Drawing Room, a perfect venue for this highly charged story of love, desire and abandonment.  

It's a story of two lovers; He (Taylor Valentine) and She (Matilda Woods) have been separated for some time and meet again in a hotel room.  Many of Marguerite Duras' novels have hotel rooms, seaside resorts, beautiful white muslin curtains on gorgeous

                                            (Taylor Valentine, Matilda Woods)

French windows with a breeze that constantly makes the curtains wave restlessly -  like the people in the room; the character, "He", is restless, anxious, talks in French on the phone while anticipating something beautifully troublesome. Suddenly, here, the elegant Matilda Woods  ("She") enters. Thus, a tale of passion, longing, desire, betrayal begins one more time.

In a very charged language, they try to be vague about their dishonesty but both of them come to reveal how they have cheated on each other: He, with some exotic foreigner and She abandoning him (at least that's how he took it) while going to the bars all alone by herself. They each inhabit a dilemma of tortured passion to possess and abandon, and then possessing again under all odds, and followed by betraying and abandoning yet again, -  not only of the one that each desires but of one's own individual self, too.

The very tense and taut dialogue from both sides is all about this longing of being together at least one more time under all circumstances, though we (the audience) can see the ultimate result of said longing will be a disaster in the making a second time.

Duras' writing is all about an unfulfilled passion of ever longing, to be a winner of sorts that will encounter defeat over and again. The longing, (a beautifully and haunting word) is often suggested in a metaphorical, stream of consciousness manner that will lose its essence if that burning desire and long lost passion - still burning underneath - should unite. Duras's longing here has no union but merely stays as longing. It is an emotion that remains - expressing the characters' pain and regret of a love lost and in  spite of this eagerness to possess they both will have lost, alas! - one more time.  This passion, however, which leaves each lover naked without ever touching - surely lasts longer,

This is a wonderfully acted play by both Valentine and Woods, and directed to perfection by Jessica Burr.  Lit very effectively in dim light by Jay Ryan, it will be with me for a long time as well. I already feel a strong desire to see it one more time. 

Everyone should rush to catch a performance of a great play by one of the most gifted writers in the world.

May, 2024                                                                                                                                        Reviewed by BINA SHARIF

Editor/Publisher: artsinternational.blogspot.com

Member: ATCA

email: binashariff@gmail.com

Cell: 212-260-6207

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THE DOUBLE BASS:Origin's First Irish Festival at Cell Theater

THE DOUBLE BASS: FirstOrigin's Irish Festival at Cell Theater

THE DOUBLE BASS

Written by Patrick Suskind in German language

Translated and performed by Sean Gormly

Directed by: Labhaoise Magee

Lighting: Chris Steckel

Sound: Mason Pilevsky

THE DOUBLE BASS is a solo play translated and performed by a charming and talented Sean Gormly,who has the through knowledge of musical instruments especially the double bass.

According to the player, "The double bass is absolutely vital instrument of an orchestra but least appreciated." The actor also informs us that the double bass originally had three strings but eventually the fourth string was added to it."  It's a very important play for all of us who know a lot about the double bass and the ones who know the least. It's an hour long monologue, almost a lecture about the musical instruments and the lives of their players and the passion of the musical career with all it's longings, desires and frustrations.

Sean Gormly, a lonely man who lives in a sound proof apartment, minimlly furnished is ironing his white shirt at the start of the play informing us charmingly about the love and frustration of being a musician especially as the double bass player. He is very attractive to the soprano named Sarah of his orchestra, actually not only attracted towards her but is actually in love. He confessed that he had no girl friend for the last two years and express his longing for sarah by dancing with the double Bass, a very touching scene of the lonely life of an artist.

He talks about other composers like Mozarts and thinks he is over rated and his ambitious father was cruel to him. He likes German and Austrian composers better, Wagner among some of them.

He is not happy about his fee as a player compared to some others but is proud that he paid much less for his double Bass. Despite his loneliness and frustration about many things dealing with his Orchestra and personel life, his passion for music and his craft is outstanding. He doesn't allow his despair to take over his passion, and Sean Gormly has passion and dedication for his instument and for his craft.

He keeps himself busy, getting ready for his immediate performance, get dressed , ready to go after venting some regrets and lack of companionship but you know that his heart and soul is consumed byhim playing the double Bass for life.

This play is very educational, brilliantly performed in a calmly agitated manner by extremely likeable Sean Gormly. The play which was originally in German language has some Irish references whichdoes justice to his Irish brogue. THE DOUBKE BASS is not only a good play, it's also a very important play. We often go to the theater to reflect, to be inspired, to learn something new...all those things happened to me during the play. I was fascinated and I really learned a lot about the musical world and the musical instruments and the dedication of the artist under all odds and obsticles.

REVIEWED

bY 

BINA SHARIF

ATCA

Editor/Publisher:artsinternational.blogspot.com

Email:binashariff@gmail.com

Cell:212-260-6207

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