Updated: May 12th, 2004 |
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Passion Place Theatre seems intent on building a reputation based on Difficult Theater. Not necessarily difficult to produce, that is, and certainly not difficult to watch, but very difficult to perform. Their current project, David Mamet's Edmond, continues the trend. Mamet writes in short bursts of dialogue, brief scenes and violently explosive action. It takes good direction and split-second timing to pull it off. The point is, Passion Place is equal to the challenge. In fact, it is enjoyable to see a theater company who does not shy away from a risk. Edmond is sort of a cross between Sexual Perversity in Chicago and An American Tragedy. It is darkly, disturbingly humorous. As in much of Mamet's writing, the characters communicate in a way which is closer to the way people speak off-stage than what you may find in typical theatrical fare. Sentence fragments, grunts and non-sequiturs figure prominently. Although it may be closer to "natural" speech, it is particularly difficult to make this kind of dialogue sound natural on stage. The quick timing of randomly firing synapses is hard to recreate through rehearsal. That difficulty did come through at times during the opening night performance of Edmond. There were a few moments, mostly toward the beginning, when some of the actors seemed just a bit uncomfortable with the pacing of the dialogue. In the case of the title character, played by Joe Morgan, this initial discomfort, calculated or not, worked to advantage in the first couple of scenes. By the third scene, though, the entire cast seemed thoroughly into their roles and the play launched into a convincing and downright exciting groove. Minimal stage settings placed the burden of verisimilitude on the acting. A few boxes and some props money, glasses, cards, a knife sufficed to recreate the ambience of bars, bedrooms, streets and a prison cell. The blocking and performances of the cast made it all quite believable. In fact, Passion Place has assembled a company with great, indeed, surprising acting ability. Joe Doran, who did a fine job directing Edmond, makes a brief appearance as "Man in Bar", which sets the tone for much of the rest of the play. William Fiscaletti, who plays a pimp and a prison inmate, is nearly flawless in his roles. Crystal Skillman, in her role as the waitress, Glenna, pulls off a fine performance, the bursts of dialogue in her bedroom scene with Edmond clicking nicely. Joe Morgan as Edmond carries the play with a superb performance. He adapts well to the quick changes of pacing which the role requires and snaps into rapid repartee with all of the other characters. Edmond's psychological transformation, from stiff, uptight banker, to street-fighting murderer is powerfully portrayed. His initial rigidity and anal-retentiveness progresses smoothly into an easy, exuberant, ranting style. His cursing as he fights and grapples with his moral dilemmas is brilliantly fluent. Morgan has successfully captured the joy of life which lies alongside Edmond's racist, doomed tendencies. The play reaches its peaks in the scenes when Fiscaletti, as the prisoner, and Morgan are together on stage. The dialogue crackles and flares into violence and, at one point, a form of metaphysical absurdity. There is a black but powerful lunacy which rides just below the surface in Mamet's words and these two actors have skillfully brought it to the fore. Passion Place is pushing the limits of local theater, offering plays which are new and exciting. They have provided a fine opportunity for theater fans to expand their own experience. Get out to see this one. The last three performances will be Friday, Saturday and Sunday. David Mamet's plays, over the last few years, have, in a sense, revitalized modern theater. His approach to dialogue is innovative, at times startling, and his stories are funny and exciting enough to make you swear off television forever and become a theater-goer. Thanks to the Woodstock-based Passion Place Theatre company, you don't have to travel to Manhattan to see one of these new plays. You can come to the Vassar Institute Theater in Poughkeepsie to see Passion Place's production of Mamet's "Edmond." Audience members who are familiar with Mamet's most seminal work, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," will recognize some of the themes in "Edmond." But "Edmond" is a darker comedy, sort of a cross between "Sexual Perversity" and "An American Tragedy." "I first thought of 'Edmond' because a few years ago there was a Poughkeepsie group called Apple Blossom that I worked with a lot," explains the director of the production, "and the artistic director there, Keith Teller, had intended to do 'Edmond.' It never got off the ground there, but that's how I first became familiar with the play. "I decided to do it now for several reasons... I knew that Edmond was an easy play to put up in the sense that we had the cast for it. I thought we had the lead role, especially. I thought Joe Morgan would be perfect for it. I basically felt that the set requirement could be done simply and with mood lighting. "To tell you the truth, I hadn't looked at it in a few years. Apart from liking Mamet in a general way... I hadn't really refamiliarized myself with Edmond until we were actually in production with it. I just sort of decided to do it on a whim. What I found out about it in the process of rehearsal, it blew me away. It was a play that spoke to all my conservative views on life... "What I like about Edmond is that it has a view of man that I agree with. Mamet takes a very pessimistic view of the possibilities of men being able to be honest and good coming from that. I think Edmond shows that a man who suddenly one day decides that he's living a lie and he wants to live in truth, the progression his life takes is very telling about what Mamet thinks the chances are for being honest in the world." Powerful performances are turned in by all the cast members: Joe Morgan, William Fiscaletti, Tonia Champ-Doran, Richard Dodd, Sikena Lindo, Crystal Skillman, David Hecht, Andy Champ-Doran and Sarah Chianese. Joe Morgan, in particular, in the lead role, carries the production. "Joe Morgan hasn't done many roles," Doran explains. "For us, he started off in a very small role in 'Death of a Salesman' as the waiter and then went on to another relatively small role in 'Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde.' It's just amazing the way he filled out this role and the job that he's done with it... I think Joe just carried it off beautifully." If you want to see impressive, powerful, funny and thoughtful theater, the place to be is the Vassar Institute Theater tonight at 8:00pm, as well as Saturday and Sunday evenings. Tickets are $8.00. The Vassar Institute is located on Vassar Street, off lower Main Street, in Poughkeepsie. Call 679-5001 for reservations, directions and information. David Mamet's stage play, Oleanna, is an intense bit of work, and rarely easy for either the actors or the audience. As in most of Mamet's work, the dialogue is fast, fragmented and full of conversational distractions and interruptions. The actors have to be quick and the audience has to devote some active attention to keep up. And when cast and house are all up to speed, you still have to deal with the ethical ambiguities of the subject matter. All of which is reason to congratulate Passion Place Theatre on their successful production of Oleanna at the Vassar Institute Theatre in Poughkeepsie. At a special, free opening night performance on May 27, a cast consisting of Joseph P. Morgan and Mercedes Casamayor plunged a nearly-full house through Mamet's furious investigation of political correctness and ideological fanaticism. Two rapid-fire acts explore the relationship between a college professor and a female student who accuses him of rape. The ethics are difficult; does the girl have grounds to make the allegations, or is she imposing some ideological agenda on the situation? Mamet seems to have written the piece to give a sense of objectivity, as if you are witnessing the events unfiltered by any judgment and are invited to make your own decisions. While the script may fall short of that ideal -- I personally think that both Mamet and director Joe Doran's treatment of the play show some bias toward the professor -- it still imposes great demands on the cast to really make the audience believe in the characters and really care. Both of these actors do a fine job. Their interplay is well-timed and believable. Morgan's professor runs through a range of emotional responses, from anger to compassion to confusion and back again. Casamayor's portrayal of the student is well-tuned, the ambiguity of her reactions in the first act nicely setting up the action for the second. The two cast members are easily capable of transporting the audience across the barrier of belief, into the action. Oleanna is a worthwhile challenge for everyone involved. It represents another step by Passion Place to expand the depth and breadth of their abilities, and it is engrossing and thought-provoking for the audience. The final three performances of the play will be this weekend, June 3, 4 and 5. Showtime is 8:00pm Friday and Saturday, and 7:00pm on Sunday. Tickets are $8.00. Call 658-9754 for reservations. Original Theatre Company produces Original Works by Local Playwrights In their effort to continue presenting new and innovative theater in the Hudson Valley, the Passion Place Theatre company will be presenting staged readings of three new plays by local authors. The program, entitled "Dangerously Close," will feature "Lying Fallow" by Doran and "The Echo" by Richard O'Corozine tonight, and "Sisters" by Holly Beye tomorrow evening. All three of the playwrights are Hudson Valley residents with long histories of activity in area theater. Holly Beye's plays have been produced by Performing Arts of Woodstock, Common Stage, and other local theater companies. Richard O'Corozine is a local artist who has been active with Poughkeepsie's Apple Blossom Productions. Doran also worked with Apple Blossom, and is presently Artistic Director for Passion Place. "We didn't have any set idea to do a play-reading series, as a company," Joe Doran explains, "but I happen to know both Richard O'Corozine and Holly Beye... Just in talking with them, for different reasons, I asked them to send me their latest, and they did." The three plays represent a variety of material, from psychological depths to humorous satire. "The Richard O'Corozine play basically concerns the events of the Albert Fentress murder case," Doran says. "The form of the play, it's sort of a two level play -- there's the present moment where Peter, the man, is playing some verbal word games with a boy, giving him candy, talking to him, trying to gain his confidence -- the other level that's going on is Peter's mom is somewhere else on stage, and she's relating the past of this his childhood and how the childhood had some strange events in it. Also, her incomprehension when she has been told what occurred, or what her son did to this boy.... The event itself is that he brutally murders and mutilates this boy. I'd say that part of the idea or theme of that play, at least the way that Sarah Chianese is approaching directing it, is to look at how much we attribute to psychological explanation when we talk about people's motives for doing things. Her question is how much can be explained away through simply talking about early childhood irrational impulses, as opposed to adult decision-making, and how much responsibility plays a role in what people do. "My play is a real simple play, about a country love-triangle. At its deepest level, it's really a comment about plays like this. It's about that character who we've seen around since 1950, sort of a James Dean type, a rebel type, and he comes into a household and wreaks havoc in one way or another, but he's vulnerable. He causes a cataclysmic, whirlwind event to take place... he ruins things and puts them back together in one way or another. I take that character and I make a comment about all the plays and all the movies that have ever been about a character like that. On the one hand, it's every cliche you've ever heard about these types of plays, and on the other hand it's somehow very gripping, because this story, you can tell it a thousand times and for some reason it captivates us. My play is an exploration of why this character is captivating. He's repulsive and enigmatic and seductive... all those things rolled into one. "Holly Beye's play [directed by Dean Barnes] concerns a wacky, sort of half-futuristic world with a lot of totalitarian aspects to it. People are forced to conform in one way or another. They have to wear antennas in order to be constantly hooked into this business, commercial conglomerate -- sort of a 24-hour running commercial, or government/corporate dominated media is controlling their lives. It's about these two lovers who are trying to break out of that. That's generally what it's about. Specifically, it's a comment on our own culture. It's a very funny play. It has a kind of quirky imagination to it... " "Lying Fallow" by Doran and "The Echo" by Richard O'Corozine will be presented tonight, "Sisters" by Holly Beye will be presented tomorrow. Both shows will begin at 8:00pm, and will be performed at the Vassar Institute Theater, 12 Vassar Street, Poughkeepsie. Admission is free. Call 658-9754 for more information. David Mamet's sociological explorations have taken some interesting twists over the years, from the fragmented silliness of "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," to the frustrating ambiguity of "Oleanna". "The Water Engine", now on stage at the Vassar Brothers Institute in Poughkeepsie courtesy of Passion Place Theatre, takes yet a different approach. While the central figure of the play is ostensibly inventor Charles Lang, played with tense passion by Joseph P. Morgan, it is really the media of the year 1935, in which the play is set, that is the star. More information comes from the play's versions of radio broadcasts, newspaper reports, postal deliveries and World's Fair hype than from direct action. It's an effective technique, and well-played by the Passion Place company. The fast pace of the play is maintained effectively by four Radio Actors/Actresses, played by John Benzinger, Julie Canepa, Dean F. Barnes and Sarah Chianese, who also double up roles as various incidental characters throughout the play. As the barrage of media information pours forth, we follow Lang's attempts to patent and market his new invention, an engine that runs on distilled water. Lawyers Gross and Oberman, played by Tom Corbisiero and Ralph Villani respectively, take the side of corporate interests to prevent Lang's success. Both are convincingly corrupt, with special note going to the complete bastard portrayed by Villani. The dialogue in the action sequences is less fragmented than Mamet's usual style, and there is a nice flow of tension and excitement. The radio and media clips are splintered almost (but not quite) to the point of Burroughsian cut-ups, but tie together more and more as the play develops. At first it seems as if there is little or no connection between Lang's situation and the radio broadcasts except to set the context of the play, but as events develop, action and information intersect more frequently. The media only takes direct notice of what is really happening with Lang, though, when it is much too late. The cast's timing of this montage of motion and exposition is nearly flawless. The set is an artfully staged 1930s-style radio station, but (the) direction is so effective that all the locales of the script, laboratory, soda shop, park, fair, and newspaper office require no effort on the part of the part of the audience to achieve suspension of disbelief. The effect is like a film-noir movie, with newspaper headlines spinning out from the darkness to form transitional shots between scenes. "The Water Engine" is diverting, exciting and thoughtful, exactly the kind of material that Passion Place excels with. Performances continue this weekend, so drive your stinking internal combustion vehicles over to Poughkeepsie, but if you figure out how Lang's engine actually works, watch your back on the ride home. COSMOLOGIES by David Rabe
"Ranting All the Way" by Phillip H. Farber
PassionPlace Theatre seems intent on pushing the envelope of regional theatre. Just watching their production of David Rabe's Cosmologies last weekend at SUNY New Paltz was like having a team of schizoid chiropractors manually manipulate your brain; directing and acting in it must have been a considerable challenge. Cosmologies operates on several levels - as a classic tragedy, an absurdist farce, and a kind of mythic, Fruedian dream. Ambiguous and enigmatic, while remaining quite gritty and realistic, the script contains nuances that are not always easy to grasp, forcing a kind of unique kind of participatory viewing by an audience that may be forced to concentrate harder than usual. Verbiage comes in great chunks amidst bursts of sex and violence, each character pontificating on his or her singular reality-tunnel. The pacing is relentless and the dialogue quite difficult. ...PassionPlace was equal to the challenge. Directing and acting were top notch, with nearly flawless timing and dialogue that seemed natural, even when venturing across the border into wackyland. Members of the small cast were convincing as characters who are each, in their own way, at least one bean short of a three-bean salad. Richard Guerriero, as Richard the psychotic pimp, was intense and crude with an edge of absurdity. Marla Zuk, as Richard's wife and whore, Teddy, effectively added yet another level of ambiguity, liberally mixing qualities of sincerity and tenderness with lust and a species of hopelessness. Adam Lauricella injected a religious conscience to the dream scenerio as student/priest Milt, and Victor Small brought a criminal urge to the collective pysche as an escaped convict. The smaller roles of the nightmarishly masked cops were played with style by Todd Caster and Joseph P. Morgan. As Eric, the high school student whose dying moments this play chronicles in baroque detail, Michael C. Williams [Blair Witch Project], served simply as the constant center around which all the other characters revolved. Eric is bold, fearful, sensual, intellectual, mature and child-like. It's a tough role, a character who goes through some changes, and it must have required extraordinary dedication to mater, which Williams apparently provided... Everytime I get to review PassionPlace Theatre, I can't help but mention how great it is to have a theatre company in our midst that is not afraid to take on a challenge and stretch the limits of both cast and audience. For the Saturday night performance, a large group seemed extremely appreciative of the production, if slightly bewildered by the strange turns of the plot. PassionPlace also deserves notice for repesenting a fresh work by a major playwright, and the ability to benefit from the imput that David Rabe was able to give them. 1975: UNDERGROUND EPIC - "The Future of Poetry"
Enter Aqiyl Thomas, a spiritually conscious poet describing Western Imperialismm street corner hustlers selling crack dreams with ice cream, and the fears of an un-aborted fetus inside the womb. Put him onstage with Soulystic, a live Jazz/Afro funk band that knows how to make people move. Add in a sinuous bellydancer and breakdancers spinning on their heads. Then throw in a live video feed of the action onto two big onstage screens, mixed with photos of Che Gueverra and Mississippi picnic-goers smiling at brown bodies swinging from trees. You get an electrifying performance - and that's before the two little children come out and build an electric chair out of percussion instruments. 1975:Underground Epic is a multi-media dramatization of 22 poems from Aqiyl Thomas' book of the same title. Epic gives the author's reflections about Love's misconceptions (and abortions), blind American consumerism and finding comfort in African roots. PassionPlace Productions gave three performances of Aqiyl's dynamic (book in a) theatre show in late June at D'Youville College's Kavinoky Theatre. 1975:Underground Epic is truly poetry in motion. Not only does the audience get to have a skilled storyteller flow about funky 2am love affairs, ancestral meditations, and personal rejuvenations, they get to see the stories as well. Although each piece is delivered in separate scenes, Aqiyl and his (fellow) actors make silky smooth transitions from one topic to the next. Soulystic - led by members, Eric Crittenden (formerly of The Waz) and Clif Jackson, do a great job adjusting their original hard jazz/Afrobeat score to fit the mood for each scene. And Director, Sarah Chianese, obviously spent a lot of time selecting simple yet evocative props, such as lit torches, flashlights and hollow boards that easily converted a drum kit into an electric chair. The video presentations of sculptures, photographs and live stage action shown through multicolored filters added another solid dimension to the show. As the main spoken word performer, Aqiyl drops each line like he means it. Before this show began its East Coast run last May, the 26 year old Buffalo native spent the previous six months as a feature poet at slams and concerts in England, Switzerland and Germany. And for the past two years, his name has become synonymous with the open mic night he normally hosts (and co-founded) at The Poetry Planet Café in Atlanta, GA. He shows his comfort with the stage with his clear, multi-tone phrases, verbal imagery and eye contact. Poetry slams, open mics and multi-media plays featuring politcally conscious hip hop and spoken word poetry are becoming more popular in New York City, Atlanta, and other urban locales. In fact, Aqiyl is opening a second Poetry Planet Café on Allen Street in Buffalo in the Fall of 2002. But wait: if you turn on WBLK, BET or MTC, there's hoes to be slapped, glocks to cock, money to be made and punks to be sprayed. So why does Aqiyl waste his time doing this punk poetry sh** when the commercial rap industry is so on point? His answer: After one show at Kavinoky, Aqiyl kicked back in a front row seat and grinned as an audience member from the Bahamas bragged about her spicy Carribean cooking. He then compared spoken word to a home cooked meal. "If we have a community cookout, nine times outta ten people doing the cooking are gonna know us," he said, "so they're gonna put a little bit of love into the food… You'll feel the energy, the love from the food. It's not like you go to Arby's and get something really machine oriented." If Aqiyl's Epic Is just a taste of what spoken word can be, then Buffalo is now realizing how hungry she's been. Check out the Poetry Planet and Passionplace Productions for more info on Aqiyl and 1975:Underground Epic. |
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