SWAN LAKE/ Loch na hEla at BAM

                                   Rachel Poirier in "Swan Lake/Loch na hEala" at BAM

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

AT BAM

Swan LaKe/Loch na hEala

Written, Choreographed and Directed

By

Michael Keegan-Dolan : A dance and theater piece

The very first scene of this fascinating play has a man with a rope tied to his neck which is tethered

to a cinder block.  The man moves around in circles and makes noises as if he had been turned into

a goat.  At least that's how I saw it and immediately related this scene to the Irish suffering and persecution for thousand upon thousands of years.  For me that was a metaphor for human torture

in Ireland.

This man/goat is played by Mikel Murfi.  He is only in his underwear paces around agonizingly.

Then after a while three men dressed in black clothes and black hats come near him and dance around making the

so called animal extremely un-comfortable.  As they come too close to him he is extremely frightened and he cries and make shrilled noises, then the three men called, Watchers grab hold of him, lay him down, pour water on him (It made me feel like water torture) but actually they were giving him a mini  bath and then giving him a tough massage with red towels, the color of blood , dress him up and make him sit down on a chair. Then he asks for a cup of tea.  "I won't say a word until I have a cup of tea."  I loved that, he must be so cold.  He starts to tell us a story of Jimmy O' Reiilly (Alexander Leonhartsberger) who had been extremely depressed since the death of his father and his mother who in a Wheelchair  Nancy ( Elizabeth Cameron Dalman ) gives him his late  father's loaded gun for his 36th birthday after her repeated failed efforts for him to get out of his sunken state and meet some woman.

This Swan Lake has no resemblance to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake but it has the most incredible music

by the Dublin band Slow Moving Clouds. It's performed live by three musicians.  It is hypnotic, and stirring with an Irish dirge which creates incredible sense of desire as well as sadness of the incompletion of that very desire. I looked to buy a CD of this haunting music in the lobby afterwards but there was none being sold. While I was listening to this beautiful music which creates a feeling of longing, an ever lasting longing, I went back to the first scene about my concept of Irish suffering because this music and this performance/dance and theater piece is exactly about that.

it has the feel of morality tale of religious persecution, subjugation, oppression of people especially women and the graet human spirit of survival.

A priest comes into the story. The priest played by Micheal Murfi assaults a young woman Finola,

Rachel Poirier, a wonderful dancer and the star of the show) and then being afraid that she will talk, 

puts a curse on her and her three sisters to turn into, "filthy Animal."  Now they live at the edge of

the lake and these are the Swans in this play...young women in white dresses, white wings and wearing black wings after the priest's curse. Their movements and their dance including the men  as well are just priceless. 

One evening Jimmy takes his gun out and goes to the lake to kill himself and at that exact moment

a woman/swan appears suddenly to prevent him to kill himself.  He falls in love with her, its Finola

and they dance together, a dance of joy and liberation and freedom at last.  There are many highlights

in this majestic ballet/dance/performance but this one is the most heartfelt because by this time we want something beautiful to happen for Finola and Jimmy.

This Swan Lake is difficult to describe in simple terms because it encompasses so much history, folklore and mythology in 75 minutes.  I wish it went on and on especially the most incredible and joyful last scene, the last dance in the show with tons of beautiful white goose feathers also dancing with the dancers and falling like pure white snow flaks all over the stage and all over the first few rows of the audience.  It was a moment to rejoice and put all the anguish, oppression and history of Ireland behind.

Michael Keegan-Dolan is one of the most fabulous choreographer/writer and director I have encountered.  This is his first work I have experienced and it won't be the last. The whole cast is marvelous, very talented and appealing. Rachel Poirier is superb. A thrilling experience for me.

I also love everything Irish.  I was in Dublin three times this year and I breathed poetry, literature/

humor/pain/joy and enormous history every minute and kept going back...Irish have great humor and great poetry and a sense of survival  and great music in them and all of it is  in Micael Keegan-Dolan's Swan Lake/Loch na hEala.

REVIEWED

BY

BINA SHARIF

artsinternational.blogspot.com

email: binashariff@gmail.com

Cell; 212-260-6207

www.facebook.com

WHY? by peter brook AT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

Actors: Hayley Carmichael and Kathryn Hunter

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
presents
C.I.C.T. / Theatre des Bouffes du Nord

WHY?

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY
Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne
with
Hayley Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, and Marcello Magni

Peter Brook is one of the most talented International Theater Director. He is an expert in
various genres: Opera, writing, theater, cinema.  He is a minimalist.  His book called
'THE EMPTY SPACE" Is a bible for directors especially who appreciate very little stuff on stage.
Every actor has been inthralled for decades by Peter Brook.  He is a philosopher as well.  All his plays seem simple with just a carpet on stage and a few stools or small chairs.  Thats' it.
Believe me a carpet makes the set, elegant, sophisticated and exotic like his actors.  He has actors from all over the planet.  Talking about diversity in the theater, no one can beat Peter Brook.

But his plays are not simple, they are loaded with meaning, drama, emotions, politics, religion,
the plight of civilization. WHY?  is all that and more.

Actors simply tells us that when god created humanity, humanity got bored quickly and then
for their amusement god created theater which provided joy and eventually danger.
Actors become real actors on stage and demonstrate without any hint of self importance how to be a real actor.  How to play drunk for an example.  Most of the actors playing drunk in ordinary drama
try to be drunk, they are wobbly as if they can't walk because they are playing drunk.  But the real
great acting playing drunk involves being still.   in WHY? one of the actor plays drunk.
He is trying to un-lock his door with his key but can never locate the key hole eventually the keys fall down but he can't pick them up, he gestures towards the audience in the first row to pick them up and
give it to him but the audience member picks up the keys and throw them at him, he can't catch them,
keys fall on the floor again...this whole scene becomes a great lesson in marvelous acting lesson
and is hilarious at the same time.

All the actors in the show are superb. They can move, they can dance, they can sing.  Great talented cast,  a joy to watch.

Then play turns into the danger part of the theater.  It deals with great actors and directors in Communist countries, in this case Soviet Union where everything is censored and theater is considered dangerous and the people doing it as well.  Well known theater directors and their wives are being arrested, tortured and killed.  So the philosophy of the play WHY?  is a question.
Why should such creative imagination which gives such joy is a punishable act? and why life should be like that? Why we always have to pay a price for having any kind of fun and joy... Why? the eventual punishment?

WHY? is an amazing play, it raises so many important questions which have no answers, it's life.
In life one doesn't know when a moment of great happiness will turn into a dangerous tragedy.

I love Peter Brook.  I have always loved him.  When I was living in London long time ago studying
acting, I came upon his book, The Empty Space and that is my bible  now and I hate clutter on stage.
Minimalism breathes, moves, and smells freshness.  When ever there is an empty space one wants to get up and dance...and free movement on stage without bumping into furniture is pure bliss in the theater.

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

NOTES ON MY MOTHER'S DECLINE NYTW (NEXT DOOR)

Actors: Caroline Lagerfelt and Ari Fliakos

DIRECTED BY: KNUD ADAMS
AT
NYTW (NEXT DOOR)

NOTES ON MY MOTHER'S DECLINE is an autobiographical play about a mother  who is ill
and her declining health is being watched by her son who might be in his late thirties or early forties.
The audience sits on both sides of the stage giving it an intimate feeling.  There is nice big bed with white bed cover.  The son, named Andy (Ari Fliakos) narrates the play.
Mother (Caroline Langerfelt) walks   in a nice pink nightgown and lies down on the bed, her head propped up by pillows.

The son tells us about his mothers routine.  "She smokes.  She smokes."  He repeats often with the
great sense of detachment. He is also miked and his sound adds another layer of emotional distance
from his mother.  I guess since the play is autobiographical perhaps the son was never so intimate
with his mother but some how we want him to be, we want him to be more involved with his emotions of grief because we all know even from the title of the play that the mother is going to die soon.  He tells us about the caretaker who is very nice but eventually steals money from her.

Mother lives in the same apt in the East Village where she raised her son.  The son also lives close by.
Mother complains that he doesn't visit so often.  They don't talk directly to each other.  Mother is
upbeat and jovial.  The son is very serious, serious but not sad, not openly sad, maybe trying not
to be sad but this way the play doesn't have any looming sense of loss.  I didn't share the son's grief
because he didn't want to share it.  Play stayed dry emotionally. Towards the end the son takes the
wire of. Maybe at this time he wants to share his real voice with some tenderness.

I think the play would work much better if it was a radio play with some sound effects added.
Caroline Lagerfelt was excellent. She had the wit, the humor, the sense of impending tragedy
and love of life. We find out during the course of the play that she loved theater.

The set by Marsha Ginsberg is effective.  The lights by Oona Curley not so.  Lights are directed more  towards the audience which was annoying.  They should have been more focussed on the
actors but since there were audience on both side of the stage that was the best they could do.
I wish the son was more grief stricken.  I am not being morbid but after-all his mother was dying.
this play could have made me cry but my eyes stayed dry.  I felt for the mother but not for the son
and I didn't like him being miked.  I love natural voice and it would have worked much better because the place small and intimate.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF

artsinternational,logspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell; 212-260-6207

MOTE BOOKS CONTINUES

NOTE BOOKS CONTINUES

DREAM PLAY'S THERAPY

BY

BINA SHARIF

TO BE PRODUCED AT

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
JAN 9---JAN 26

CAST:  KEVIN MITCHELL MARTIN
             BINA SHARIF

NOTES:

TO BE INCLUDED:

PREDICTION
FUN PLAY
LEAK
SYBIL'S DESPAIR
REPAIR BILLS UNDER THE DOOR
KNOCKING AT DOOR, MULTIPLE
BANGING ON THE PIPES, MULTIPLE TIMES
MUSIC FROM THE MOVIE PSYCHO...SHOWER SCENE

"NOW HE HAS A REAL LEAK AND ITS A RED LEAK..."

REVIEW KING LEAR

William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” is the greatest tragedy. It comes to Broadway with the mighty brilliant and extraordinary Glenda Jackson. She appeared in the same title role at London's Old Vic in 2016. We are blessed to have her here in New York now.

The story of King Lear is the tragedy of an old and weary king who decides to retire and just live with his daughters. He has three daughters, Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel), Regan (Aisling O'Sullivan) and Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) and he wants to divide his kingdom amongst them with a condition. They must declare their love for him openly and in front of everyone. Goneril and Regan uses flowery language and praise him to the heavens but Cordelia the youngest and the most sincere daughter speaks the truth and tells him that she will love him as much as a daughter should love her father who brought her up, loved and fed her, and nothing more. The king is outraged and banishes her. The Earl of Kent (John Douglas Thompson) who wants to speak on Cordelia's behalf is also banished.

King Lear's daughters show their ugly faces and intent eventually. They treat the old king abominably, reduce his staff from one hundred men to almost one. This causes him to storm out on one of the worst stormy nights. The king is now homeless on a heath soaked by the rain and hail. He is only accompanied by his fool (Ruth Wilson in a double role) and the Earl of Kent disguised as a servant, who takes him to a cave for shelter. Also in the cave are the King’s old friend the Earl of Gloucester (Jayne Houdyshell) who is also abandoned and unbeknownst to Gloucester is his legitimate son Edgar in the guise of Mad Tom (Sean Carvajal).

King Lear's tragedy unfolds by making one foolish mistake to satisfy his royal ego and he now realizes how big a mistake it was and how he banished his young and loving daughter Cordelia for not flattering him falsely. Eventually Cordelia who is married to the king of France comes back to rescue her father.

I cherish this play, but not the way it has been staged here. The play is directed by San Gold who loves to overcrowd the stage. There are tables, chairs, flags, even a life size ceramic Lion near Lears throne and roaming musicians.

Lear's staff is sipping tea and drinking champagne all along, and I am wondering: What's the occasion? What are they celebrating?

All this stage business doesn't work. Actually it distracts.

But luckily we have Glenda Jackson here who surmounts every obstacle and howls like a tiger herself with such clarity and control and concentration that we need no other fake lion for effects.

Every word Ms. Jackson speaks is like jewels and pearls coming out of her mouth. She is small and very fragile but her performance is the most powerful I have ever seen on any stage in the world. I am amazed that she is not nominated for a Tony award.

Other actors who give wonderful performances are, John Douglas Thompson, Ruth Wilson in both roles and Jayne Houdyshell.

Elizabeth Marvel and Aisling O' Sullivan are not very convincing as real sisters
because of their varied accents.

The production also has a string quartet with original music by Philip Glass. This is totally unnecessary.

But once again, the biggest problem for me in this production is the set. The stage is so loaded with extra stuff that if Glenda Jackson wasn't a powerhouse we will never find her, she would be hidden behind the lion. But how can one hide a real lion of talent behind a fake ceramic one?

This is the third time I have seen Ms. Jackson on stage, “Strange Interlude”, “Three Tall Women” and now in” King Lear” as Lear and Oh! boy, I am a real lucky and blessed woman.
Beyond HAPPY FACE for Glenda Jackson and MIXED FACE for the production.

REVIEW : 17 BORDER CROSSINGS

 In, "17 BORDER CROSSINGS" Thaddeus Phillips, performer/writer/traveller speaks many languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese,Czech which is a great ability and a source of convenience while covering extensive travels in many parts of the world where all these languages come in handy.

Mr. Phillips is on an almost bare stage with the exception of a desk and a chair which he uses very effectively in different scenes and in different parts of the world, but the way the show is written, performed and directed, there is no hint of the purpose of his travels.

Are these pleasure trips? Is he a journalist? Travelling on behalf of a company who is paying all the expenses? I assumed that these trips must be holidays.

Also it is not clear if the character he created is travelling or Thaddeus, the writer himself is the traveller? And if this show is autobiographical I would be curious to find out what kind of job Mr.Phillips has in order to pay for all those travels but I guess that's not the point of the show.

Concentrating on the title of the show, the show seems like it's about borders and border crossings and that's where the show has a problem.In today's world when we think about or talk about borders some kind of difficult feelings of anxiety and terror crosses our mind and we pray for safe crossing.

At this time of our lives the talk of border security and it's imagined difficulties, to say the least, is a reason sometimes for us not to go to the difficult parts of the world, but this writer/performer is ambitious and every time there is a hint of any difficulty at the border he just avoids expressing it or even encountering it. He just moves on to the next venture.

After a while the show seems like a showcase for different languages which the writer/performer speaks and we find that interesting and admirable but we want to face the reality of the times and encounter some kind of difficulty entering all these troubled places.

Everything in this show is light and somewhat amusing. Trust me, we don't want
the traveller to go through hell, but we do need to learn a bit more about serious issues dealing with so many border crossings.

Towards the end of his travels when he arrives at Newark airport, he is confronted by homeland security about a stamp on his passport from Cuba. He is detained for 6 hours...and then nothing. We are unable to know how he was released ?

Throughout the show we travel with him but don't learn much about the places we travel to and how difficult it is to cross all those borders.

Lighting design here is brilliant and so are the sound effects. Thaddeus Phillips is also a decent performer but the problem is in the conception of the show.
It needs a sense of danger.
MIXED LEADING TOWARDS ORDINARY except sound, lights and the bare set.

TRIAL OF MISS SURATT. REVIEW

BINA SHARIF:
The players in “The Trial of Mrs. Surratt” are already on stage when the audience enters. It's a huge cast of wandering players and they do wander around, jumping up and down on the benches, tables, running back and forth as if they are trying to catch a thief and yes, they are. They are trying to catch a murderer who shot president Lincoln and then ran away.

This play is mixed with historical facts (Not so clear) with fiction causing as much confusion as the wandering players trying to create chaos but instead are lost on stage. After a long time (Seems much longer ) the actors begin their dialogue.

For a while I thought this play is going to be a wordless experimental, performance piece. I was finally relieved when the words were spoken but most of the time I couldn't concentrate on the main action because there was lots of unnecessary secondary action taking place in the background.

The play should concentrate on Mrs. Surratt and the circumstances which made her a suspect in the Lincoln assassination. Mrs. Surratt was thought to have been sheltering rebel soldiers.

Her son, Johnny Surratt, was considered a suspect because he was friends to Booth. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t even in town when Lincoln was shot so Johnny made sure to stay away and elude capture.

Mary Surratt ( the most solid actress in the play) is persistent about her innocence but she is being tried not in the civil court but in an army tribunal where Judge Holt and the war secretary Edwin Stanton (another good actor) are determined to find her guilty from the very beginning.

Since the play has mixed up the facts and the fiction together my understanding of this particular play is not so precise either. There is lots of talk about Catholics not in a good way and I wondered if the assassin was a Catholic.

There were very strong impressions of John Wilkes Booth and his friends being gay. It doesn't matter if they were, but questions were raised which somehow can change the intention and the depiction of historical facts.

There were some good things in the show. I liked the music and the lights were very good but my main objection towards this show is that I couldn't concentrate on the words being spoken and I missed many important details in the play, but after the show, at the talk back the director informed us after I asked some questions about the distractions, she told us that the author didn't mind if we do miss some details because no matter what happens, the life still goes on.

I think there was too much life going on which was not so interesting after a while. I wish the author and the director concentrated more on the script and the real facts of the tragedy enfolding.
UNHAPPY FACE