MEDEA AT BAM

MEDEA AT BAM

MEDEA: Written by Simon Stone after Euripides
                 Directed by Simon Stone
                 Set by Bob Cousins
                 Lighting design by Sarah Johnston
                 Video by Julia Frey
                  Produced by BAM, International theater Amsterdam and David Lan

The play opens on a very bright white set which has white walls, white spotless floors and not a hint of any furniture.  The two children, Gus (Orson Hong) and Edgar (Jolly Swag) are on stage playing
with their phone and iPod.

 In this modern version of Medea, Anna (Rose Byrne) a skilled scientist has just returned from mental
Institution after spending almost a year there because she had been poisoning her husband Lucas (Bobby Cannavale) who had been cheating on her by having an affair with Clara (Madeline Weinstein) the daughter of his boss Christopher (Dylan Baker) to advance his career.
Anna has already helped her husband Lucas who worked in the same lab and is a scientist as well but not as advanced as his wife and she feels totally disrespected by his dismissiveness.
They are now divorced and Lucas has the custody of his two sons Gus and  Edgar

After Anna is back from the hospital and behaves pretty much in control of her plight decides to spend the night with her children and her husband.  The children are making a documentary about their home life and we see mostly Anna's close ups on a big screen above the stage. They end up making love and Clara finds out and is very upset and her father wants Lucas to right the wrong by making Clara pregnant.

Husband and wife bicker and fight and yell and scream at each other like many married couples whose marriage is gone sour.  Anna finds out that Clara is pregnant  and wants to take revenge.

In the meantime black ash keeps falling like black snow flakes from the ceiling and covers the
immaculately white floor, (Poetic image of coming doom)

Both children play as normal children would with anything even ash and throw handful at each other
running around and enjoying that moment of fun which won't last very long for sure.  Both actors
Jolly Swag and Orson Hong are wonderful.  Actually they are the most watchable in their innocence
and playfulness even under the difficult atmosphere they are in.

Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale are like any other husband and wife whose marriage is falling apart for what ever reason and thus doesn't evoke the terror which has been experienced in Euripides
Medea. The last act by Anna of burning the house with her children in it is based on a real event which took place in Kansas city in 1995 in which a woman named Deborah Green who put fire to her house and killed her children.

Though its always a good idea to go back to the classics and re- evaluate them but then the power
of the original has to match the power of the modern versions.  Though this Medea is a very good script and well acted by the actors and well designed, it just doesn't evoked the horror of the suffering
of the ancient mother.  It's not the fault of the writer/director.  we are in different times, there are so many horrors of so many different kinds that perhaps we have become numb to the grief of others.
There is another factor of our being a little distanced from Anna's tragedy because from the very beginning it's established that she is mentally disturbed and it's assumed by many that a mentally disturbed  person is capable of lot of harm and perhaps must not be left alone with kids and should be better supervised.  But still no excuses are enough.  The death of innocent babes by the hand of their own mother is a vast tragedy and we should be more vulnerable to the plight of women who suffers
from it or any one else who has the misfortune to go through it.

This Medea raised more issues of mental illness for me than the abandonment and betrayal of
Euripides Medea who left Colchis, helped Jason retrieve the golden fleece, became a refugee in Greece, after bearing two sons was being exiled by Creon, the king of Corinth because Jason wanted to marry Creon's daughter to improve his station in life.  Medea was crushed, hurt, humiliated, abandoned and wanted to take revenge against Jason without ever contemplating the eternal loss of her own children.  In murdering her children does lies madness as well, so in the deep analysis of
both plays, both women are for sure mentally disturbed.  In this regard it was very good of Simon Stone to dig down the real cause of this unbelievably scary tragedy and come up with a brand new
Medea after Euripides.

Reviewed by BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
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ORIGIN 1st IRISH THEATRE FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

                                   ORIGIN 1st IRISH THEATRE FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
   
                       London Assurance                                                           Scourge

                                       
                                                               Round Room

ORIGIN 1st Irish Theatre festival just ended after it's glorious one month run in various venues
in Manhattan, queens and long Island. This is not only a fascinating theatre festival but a very important one as well.  We are fortunate to see wonderful original productions of new and raw
materials by aspiring writers, directors, designers and actors from all over Ireland and from the world.
How fortunate for us to be dealt with such a treat.

I wasn't able to catch everything the festival offered but the plays I saw were deeply engrossing
and left an impression with me that the most important thing in life beside having good health is the
arts in all its form and especially theater.  Some time you don't know what to expect and then you live with the beauty, the revelation about something scary, something mesmerizing and even painful and you leave the space with a different mind set which enhances your own sensibility, your own inner
beauty and sorrow.  And the shows I saw dealt with all that.

I saw the ROUND ROOM by HONOR MOLLOY, not only a superb playwright but a wonderful
poet as well.  Her play takes place in the wards and corridors of a maternity hospital ROTUNDA HOSPITAL in DUBLIN and its about the childbirth of various women mostly poor and desperate over the Centuries. Molloy was very fortunate to have extremely talented actresses who in a limited studio space and the production which is in development process made us forget that this is work in progress and is as good as any finished product in any theater big or small.  The space was perfectly used and there were movements as fluid as a dance.

The highlight of ROUND ROOM was also SUSAN McKEOWN,  grammy award winner Irish singer
and songwriter who had the voice of a nightingale who provoke sensations of stirring ancient times gone by and its pain, sorrows and regret in a dirge like sensation which gave me the chills.  I am still hearing her.  I am so thrilled to know that Molloy won the award for the best playwright.
I would like to see this production again a few more times.

Another highly recommended, profoundly moving and touching the depth of your soul play was
SCOURGE written and acted by MICHELLE DOOLEY-MAHON produced by Wexford arts
and Irish Rep.  The play is about the relationship of mothers and daughters at the times when both need each other.  In SCOURGE, which is about Michelle's own life story about her mother
being in the nursing home with dementia for seven years where the daughter diligently and with great tenderness takes care of her.  The mother never moves ore talk and the daughter feed her, changes her clothes, and put her to bed.  She has all the patience to do this great deal with affection for seven years.
Michelle Dooley Mahon is one of the most brave actress and writer who opens her soul and heart for us and we feel everything she is going through all along. It created lots of pain in my own heart because my own mother passed in an other country oceans apart...without me.
The play is amazingly directed by BEN BARNES, a highly imaginative director from ABBEY TEATER.  I love his concept of using a doll as the mother figure and the tenderness which the actress showed to deal with it was extremely powerful and touching. I am still thinking about the writing and acting of Michelle.  This is what good theater does for you.  Make you feel, think, laugh and cry.
MICHELLE DOOLEY MAHON won the special Jury prize and I am very happy about it because she really deserved it.

I also saw LONDON ASSURANCE at the IRISH REP directed by incredibly talented CHARLOTTE MOORE.  It's a comedy of manners, a farce very well designed with wonderful period costumes and well acted by the whole cast.  The play was written by DION BOUCICAULT, most prominent playwright of 19th century.  He was also an actor and a director.  London Assurance was produced
at Covent Garden in 1841.
The play is about the upper classes with all their spoiled dissatisfaction with life and the wonderful
things they have.  It deal with identity confusion, romance, mystery, intrigue, love triangles and perfect resolutions which work for every one at the end.  It was throughly enjoyable.

The whole ensemble was good but I particularly liked Rachel Pickup as Lady Gay Spanker and  Colin McPhillamy as Sir Harcourt Courtly.  Rachel Pickup got the best actress award, a great choice.
Charlotte Moore won the best director and the play got the best design as well.

I just can't go away without mentioning the most heart wrenching film called NUALA about
Nuala O'Faolain, a great writer who became very well known all over with her memoir, ARE YOU SOMEBODY?. The film is beautifully shot and is immaculately narrated by Marion Finucane,
a radio show host and a childhood friend of Nuala. Once you see this film you will never be able to forget it. A MUST SEE.
 WRITTEN
 by
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
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NUALA--A LIFE AND DEATH PRESENTED BY ORIGIN IST IRISH FESTIVAL

NUALA--A LIFE AND DEATH, AN AWARD WINNING DOCUMENTARY PRESENTED BY ORIGIN IST IRISH FESTIVAL

A multi award winning documentary film about Nuala O'Faolain, an intellectual, novelist, literature professor, newspaper columnist and the New York Times best selling memoirist.
Her memoire, ARE YOU SOMEBODY?  made her an international celebrity and sold millions of copies and after that she wrote three more books including two novels.

Nuala 0' Faolain was born in a catholic house hold and had eight siblings.  Terry 0'Sullivan her father, a dashingly handsome philanderer and a playboy was a famous gossip columnist  who neglected his
wife and his children throughout his life and had multiple affairs with younger women.  Her mother developed a lonely
habit of going to the pub and staying there and drinking till she would pass out.
Nuala had a very lonely childhood and out of her loneliness she developed the love of books and of literature.  As a grown woman she had an unconventional life.  Beside being a brilliant woman who was full of life and a literary intellectual force she always felt like an outsider.  She went through the
struggle of painful self discovery and was hungry for love but always looked for it in the wrong places.  She started to have affairs with much older married men, having a glamorous life, going to the parties, drinking and having a lot of sex.  But she was restless and in the desire of seeking what she couldn't find, she kept moving away from most of her relationships eventually. Love was not there for her.

It's such a poignant and sad story that in her defeated effort to seek her father's love the tragic result of never finding it was obvious. She started to drink, her mother passed away of alcoholism and two of her brothers died of the same disease in England. She got a scholarship but it was taken away from her because of her bad behavior but since she was the most capable and brilliant young intellectual she ended up in Oxford. She became a force of nature when she came back.  In her late 50's she published her memoire which became a phenomenon.  She ultimately had a relationship with  another brilliant woman Nell McCafferty for 15 years but moved out of that as well and went to NY where she had her last lover, a lawyer named John with a little daughter from his previous marriage and Nuala had difficulty being with the kid as well.

Film makers of Nuala are Patrick Farrelly and Kate'O Callaghan and they did a great job.
Film is narrated by stunning Marian Finnucane, an RTE talk radio host and a childhood friend of Nuala.  She interviews Nuala's three sisters who are a riot with great Irish humor, there are clippings
and photographs of her family, her interviews after her memoire was published and photos of Nuala who was a beauty.  The movie has very sad moments but amazingly wonderful laughs in it as well but then comes the most tragic part of the movie which made me cry so much when out of the blue Nuala is diagnosed with brain cancer. She doesn't want to go for chemotherapy but decides to get radiation treatment.  She decides to still travel.  She goes to Paris, Madrid, Berlin, New York but eventually decides to come back home,  Then there comes the most moving moment of this tragic documentary when she is interviewed by her friend Marion Finucane's on her radio show.  During her devastating illness she had been extremely brave in dealing with it.  At her radio interview she sadly confess, "Marian,
I don't want more time.  As soon as I heard I am going to die, the goodness went from life."
Her last words in the film are, "I am broken hearted--was loving life, am afraid."

This documentary is one of the best film I have ever come across.  It is so immensely sad, so touching, so brilliantly energetic like Nuala herself and at the end very very tragic.
We also found out at the screening that Marian Finucane, the narrator and Nuala's childhood friend also passed a few weeks before the screening in NY.  I couldn't sleep all night and Nuala's brilliance,  her tragic death and the pain of her loneliness which she felt intensely throughout her life will not leave me soon.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
facebook,com

"FEOS" UNDER THE RADAR AT PUBLIC THEATER

"FEOS"  PART OF UNDER THE RADAR AT PUBLIC THEATER (NOW CLOSE


A story by Mario Benedetti adapted by playwright Guillermo Calderon is a mesmerizing tale
of people who have a strong belief that they do not fit in any society and they don't actually because
they are not the most handsome and pretty  to look at. The word Feos mean, "The ugly ones"

In the beginning we see a number of people standing in line to see a movie. All of a sudden a dim light,  a kind of mysterious shines on a woman standing in the middle of the line and she notices a man standing a few feet behind her.  Their faces are not perfect.  They are disfigured. Their physicality have some kind of relationship with each other.  It's  like when two people meet by an accident of destiny. These hopefuls to find a love life are portrayed by mannequin puppets manipulated by large
human beings  in black, creating a very haunting effect under the brilliant lights designed byJose Luis Cifuentes.

After the movie the nameless man asks the woman if she would join him for a drink at a nearby cafe.
She agrees.  In the cafe they talk mostly about how others might see them and people with disfigurement like theirs can ever have a romantic and sexual relationship?
They speak haltingly but in a frank way and are often interrupted by a very funny waiter who talks about finding a girl friend. Their dialogue mostly consists of their physical appearance.

The scene moves to a bus stop, (I guess she accepts his invitation to go home with him.)
The bus stop scene is very funny.  To take the bus or to get a cab?  Becomes an interesting question.
She offers to pay for the cab...

Next morning is the most amazing scene of them holding each other naked and never uttering a single word.  This show is another high light of under the radar festival.  I  was throughly mesmerized by the ability of puppeteers and the lights and the story. The show is now closed because I saw it on the last day of the festival but will be remembered for a long time to come. Very sensitive, very emotional and very romantic story.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA  SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell:212-260-6207
Facebook.com

"NOT I" BY SAMUEL BECKETT UNDER THE RADAR AT BRICK

"NOT I"
by
SAMUEL BECKETT
AT BRICK, BROOKLYN
PART OF UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL

PERFORMED BY : JESS THOM
DIRECTED BY : MATHEW POUNTNEY

"NOT I" . Is one of the most challenging and complex monologue written by the great playwright
Samuel Beckett.  Beckett's language and his meticulous directions are so precise that it's even hard
for very accomplished actors to follow and Jess Thom ( wonderful performer) has Tourett's Syndrome which is a neurological condition and the person suffering from it can not control verbal
and motor tics, so Thom throughout the 12 minute monologue often incorporate words such as, "Biscuit" to control her verbal tic.  She thumps hard on her chest every time she utters that word without disturbing Beckett's language. The flow of the word, biscuit has a very different speed and once she resumes Beckett's words she resumes the high speed which the monologue requires and the result is absolutely brilliant.  Jess Thom is such a presence and is endowed by special skill and an enormous gift to handle the writing of Beckett which is never completely easy but she is extremely brave in the doing of it . Thom adds such an enormous effect to Beckett's strong and mesmerizing
words.

What a monumental effort for any actor but especially for Jess Thom.  This role written for  Mouth requires vocal, emotional and physical energy and a tremendous  skill and Thom deals with it head on.

The director Mathew Pountney has to be congratulated for trusting the talented Thom and taking a chance and giving us an un-forgivable experience. The performance is also signed for the deaf.

At the talk back after the show Thom revealed that it took her one year to master the role and to reach
the level of vocal speed required by the author.  She has amazing energy, powerful voice and a great sense of humor.  This play should give every actor the hope to surpass all kinds of obstacles in the theater.  Actually not only the play but Jess Thom is the marvelous example to overcome tremendous
odds because of her skill, determination and will power.
"Not I" . is the highlight of under the radar festival.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell:212-260-6207
Facebook.com

TRUTH HAS CHANGED UNDER THE RADAR AT PUBLIC THEATER

TRUTH HAS CHANGED
PART OF UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL
AT PUBLIC THEATER

TRUTH HAS CHANGED is a solo piece written and performed by Josh Fox.  Josh Fox is a documentary film maker and an activist.  His film won an award at the Sundance film festival.
Documentary is called "GASLAND"

Truth has changed is about the misinformation and the propaganda spread by the media, corporations,
politicians and advertisers. Josh Fox focuses on Face book and  Cambridge Analytica and doesn't have any thing nice to say about them. He presents a short film in which Mark Zuckerberg avoids
questions asked by the Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez.

Truth has changed is extremely dense show.  It starts when the actor was part of a protest against fracking
at the Delaware river when a young student asked a question, "How do we know the truth?"
I guess the student's question was really profound because there are always so many conflicting stories and opinions about all kind of news which eventually become exhausting and one just
gives up.  Mr. Fox's show also has far too much information in it about so many topics such as
fracking, oil spills, 9/11, Iraq war, climate change and 2016 election.

After a while one can't absorb all the disturbing information which we are already familiar with.
It also has racism, corporate greed and a big section is about the digital technology and because
of that all the people in the world are part of a data and no one has any sense of privacy left.

Mr. Fox is a passionate performer but for this show which is more about journalism than real drama
 his passion seems a bit much. There is a long sequence when Mr. Fox starts to dance under an
Umbrella making believe it's raining, like Gene Kelly and it seems over-dramatic.
His intentions are really sincere and its admirable to inform the public about misinformation of all kind but most of us are already suspicious of the information we get about the most serious events happening in the world but perhaps its a good idea to be reminded again even if its very difficult to
handle.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
facebook.com

ANDARES AT THE PUBLIC THEATER:UNDER THE RADAR

ANDARES: PART OF UNDER THE RADAR THEATER FESTIVAL AT THE PUBLIC THEATER

ANDARES is an exploration of the mythic past and difficult present of Indigenous people of Mexico,
created by Makuyeika Collective Teatral and conceived and directed by Hector Flores Komatsu.

ANDARES is performed in a very sensitive and tender manner with song and dance on a bare stage with a very few props such as a few masks, and beautifully colorful ribbons in the shape of a hat/mask. The minimalistic approach to this mythical and ancient fable is very effective.

One by one the performers narrates in a moving manner about their cultural beauty being threatened by the modern contemporary forces of destruction.  There are ancient stories about how gods of fire created peace, calm and beauty which turned into nasty and destructive forces called human beings.

There is a narration about a stag's eyes full of tears and weeping about the memory of the beautiful forest in which he roamed freely  and was his dwelling which is now no more.  That bit was the best part of the show taking us back into the calmness of nature which is turned into cement and steel in
the modern times and even its memory is weeping.  Imagine! how sad the image of that haunting memory can be?

The whole show is spoken in Spanish with very clear super-titles which really helps .
There are tales of parents, grandfathers and animals.  The Mayan culture has as much respect for animals as for the humans and that is very touching. There is also the confusion of a young man
about the power and control of patriarchal society and his recollection of being a male who dresses as female by his deep desire and inclination.

The actors, Jesue Maychi, Domingo Mitangos, Lupe-de-La-Cruz and Guitarist- Raymundo Pavon-Lozano are very effective. The best thing about them is that they are extremely calm and natural
and that makes the whole experience very moving.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
Facebook.com