THE PATIENT GLORIA AT St. Ann"s Warehouse

THE PATIENT GLORIA by Gina Moxley; Directed by John McIlduff; Producer: Emma Coen

With: Gina Moxley, Liv O'Donoghue, Jane Deasy

A divorced woman named Gloria gave permission to be treated and filmed by three well established

psychotherapist in three different session with the promise that the film will be only for training

 purposes,  but they broke that promise and eventually put it on Television.

 The Patient Gloria is based on that film. 

The film was called, "Three approaches of psychotherapy."

 Gina Moxley plays all the psychotherapists,

 with her own twisted and hilarious take and performance.

Before tha play begins, she is sitting and sewing something which reveals itself as a penis, actually three

 different kinds,  for three different therapists.  This approach is hilarious for a while but eventually

 become redundant and loses the fun it evoked in the very beginning but Moxely is a great performer

 and still commands the stage.

She herself explains that in her real life in Ireland as a young women she was always told that sex is

 never enjoyable but it's actually violent and relates her experiences of men exposing themselves to her

 and in one of her depiction of the psychologist she just goes right in between the legs of her patient

 Gloria and magically disappears from the couch. That is an amazing bit. Liv O'Donoghue as Gloria

 is quite effective, confused, anxiety stricken, believig in her therapist, revealing her most private

 thoughts to therapists who are non-serious with many problems of their own and un-knowingly become

 caricatures of themselves.

 The play is very much a satire about psychoanalysis.

 Jane Deasy is energetic and plays, electric guitar and sings songs such as.,"In my room" and "Shitlist"

which are quite enjoyable. She also did the choreography. Moxley as a therapist tell Gloria that if any

 one has one disability, such as having a mangled arm should not dislike all her other normal body parts

 and must admire her person as a whole. She brilliantly displays her make believe mangled arm in such a

 brilliant manner that it becomes one of the best scene in the play.   As a whole the play is very

 enjoyable, maybe not for everyone but I imagine it must have been a riot in Ireland.  

                       

DOWNSTATE AT Playwrights Horizon

 DOWNSTATE by Bruce Norris; Directed by Pam MacKinnon

                                    

                                       Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman              

Bruce Norris, who won the Pulitzer for Clybourne Park, has come up with an entirely different

subject matter which is quite disturbing as well as gripping throughout.  In the very first scene we

 encounter a very angry and anxiety stricken young man Andy (Tim Hopper ) and Em (Sally Murphy)

 Andy's wife confronting a wheel chair bound older man Fred (Frances Guinan )

We soon realize that Fred is one of the four men convicted of sex crimes against the Minors and Andy is

 one of the victim who thirty years later has found Fred in a group home with three other room mates

 who had been convicted and been sentenced already but now live under the supervision of their parole

 officer Ivy (Susanna Guzman)  who is very strong and caring about their wellfare.

The other three men are, Dee (K. Todd Freeman ) Gio (Glen Davis ) and Felix (Eddie Torres ) . They are

 all convicted of sexual crimes against minors except Gio who served for statuary rape.

These men are not allowed any smart phones or internet leaving a vey claustrophobic life and express

 lots of anger about their situation. In conrast Fred is very calm and in control. He listens to Andy and

 his wife as if nothing dangerous ever happened, but it did and Amdy had been traumatized all his adult

 life.

Fred was a Piano teacher and Andy was his student and Andy's pain is coming across from the stage to

 the audience while Fred still plays Chopin in a very peaceful manner.

Dee on the other hand doesn't believe that he committed a crime. He thinks he had a love

 relationship with a minor who was totally in love with him and used to write him letters during his

 prison stay telling him how much he missed him. Ivy tries very hard to convince Dee that he needs to

 deal with his denial of reality and not hide behind the fake notion of love. K. Todd Freeman, as Dee is 

 very emotional and strong about his belief. He is also the one who takes care of Fred with lot of concern

 about his disability.

Glen Davis as Gio who works at Staples and brings a co-worker, Effie ( Gabi Samels ) home, while he is

 not allowed and they indulge in drugs in defiance and doesn't express any remorse about his past while 

 Eddie Torres as Felix is extremely expressive about his guilt and remorse and try to seek redemption in

 religion, bible is his redemption.

All these characters are extremely disturbing to watch. The play  is about guilt, repentence, redemption

 but there are no simple answers and the playwright deals with all the complexity of these issues which

 are very hard to take with a sense of a razor sharp eye and leave it upto us how to feel about these very

 disturbed and disturbing characters who evoke our disgust and sympathy at the same time.

Pam Mackinnon 's direction is srong and sharp.

                                                      Sally Murphy and Tim Hopper

Reviewed by Bina Sharif (ATCA)

Editor/Publisher:artsinternational.blogspot.com

email:binashariff@gmail.com cell: 212-260-6207

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BOSWELL, A PLAY BY Marie Kohler

                                                                    BOSWELL

                                                           by Marie Kohler

                                                             Josh Krause and Brian Mani

Director: Laura Gordon; Costume Design: Misti Bradford; Scenic design: Jody Sekas;

Lighting Design: Katy Atwell; Wig Artisan: Emily Christoffersen;

In a small theater packed with artifacts of the time, depicting 1763 when Boswell, a Scottish-biographer, diarist and a lawyer visited London and met one of the greatest conversationalist, Dr, Samuel Johnson who was a poet, an English writer who wrote the dictionary of the English language and was also an essayist, moralist, critic, lexicographer and a man of letters.

Boswell was a young ambitious man who had great curiosity and he, made notes of every experience in his every day life diligently and that's how he ended up composing the biography of Johnson called, The life of Samuel Johnson, a rare book which had real quotations of Johnson and it was of a different style of biography because it was based on Boswell's journals and his memory and his conversations with Samuel Johnson.

In Boswel,  a contemporary fictional researcher, Joan (Phoebe Gonzalez ), a graduate student travels from Chicago to Scotland in 1950 being aware of the newly unearthed, scripts, letters, diaries in(1920-1950) to check  out the new material. 

The set by Jody Sekas serve many locations and have many maps, books, old trunks filled with papers, notes, manuscripts, pure gold for the researcher, and also serves as a salon,  meeting places of great literary scolars of London such as Oliver Goldsmith, most famous actor of his times, David Garrick and a reat friend of Samuel Johnson, Burke and Henry Thrale and his wife Hester.

It also serves as an Inn where a certain lady Fiona (Miriam A. Laube, who also plays three different  roles) Has a treasure of gold for Pheobe to dig in. They bicker quite a bit but it's an intersting,  intelligent, and mildly acidic bicker.

Boswell is played by very charming and likeable Josh Krause. He is also very well liked by the ladies he meet and for sure is a ladies man but doesn't shy away from making copius notes of everything he hears.

After 11 years of their friendship, Boswell and Dr, Johnson travell together to Scotland and Boswell ends up writing his journal of a tour to the Hebrides on which the biography, The life of Samuel Johnson is based.

 Brian Mani is excellent as Samuel Johnson and he even looks like him. Majestic and bigger than life,

the greatest conversationalist and wit who ever lived. His costume is also very effective. In-fact all costumes are brilliant. All actors did a wonderful job. The play is very well directed by Laura Gordon. The transition between scenes is smooth and subtle. Boswell is MHK production's award winning play.

It was a great delight to see this play acted with intelligence, skill and wit.  Boswell is MHK production's award winning play.  It's one of the very best play I have seen recently and I have always loved Dr, Samuel Johnson and Boswell and their amazing contribution to the history and literature.  

                                                 

                                                      Miriam A. Laube and Phoebe Gonzalez

Reviewed by Bina Sharif (ATCA); Editor/Publisher:artsinternational.blogspot.com email:binashariff@gmail.com     Cell: 212-260-6207;  Facebook; Instagram

"WHERE WE BELONG" AT PUBLIC THEATER

 "WHERE WE BELONG, " AT PUBLIC THEATER

"WHERE WE BELONG,"

Written and performed by Madeine Sayet who was named for Jeets Bodernasha whic means flying bird who was the speaker of Mohegan, the language spoken by indigenous people.

Madeline Sayet's ancestors were those people and this play is autobiographical.

The actress is extremely fluent and has incredible energy as a narrator of her search to find a place where she would absolutely be comfortable with the most urgent feeling of belonging. That search takes her to England, the land of language, Shakespeare's language. She feels like a flying bird herself landing at many airports, restless, curious, desiring to find a final destination for the Indigenous people who for centuries have been disappearing, being displaced and out of sight.

She feels that the language will perhaps be the saving grace for her people. She enrols in a PHD programe in Shaespeare at the Royal Shaskpeare company where she acts and directs some Shakspeare plays such Tempest and relates with  the character such as Caliban.

Eventually she doesn't complete her studies,  though she finds satisfaction in Shaespeare because she thinks he is anticolonialist. She is a researcher  and very critical of colonialism and is disappointed when she visits British museums where she learns that the museum preserves the remains of at least 12-000 human beings from all over the world.

The play is directed by Mei Ann Teo and the production design is by Hao Bai with a glamorous lighting

which actually doesn't really serve the purpose of the show whic is more like an intellectual recitation

which could have been done a bit more with stillness under one focused light instead of lots of movements which distracts from the seriousness of the piece. Though Madeline Sayet is very energetic,

she somehow lacks emotional depth which prevents her to be intimate with the audience in her extremly important and painful search for belonging.

Nevertheless it's an important show and very informative about the history of Indigenous people.

Reviewed

by

Bina Sharif

ATCA, (American Theater Critics association) member

Editor/publisher: artsinternational.blogspot.com

Co-host: HI Drama

email: binashariff@gmail.com

Cell: 212-260-6207

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