Tag: Jim Simpson

Danielle Slavick and Stephen Barker Turner. Photo Hunter Canning.

: Danielle Slavick and Stephen Barker Turner. Photo Hunter Canning.

This play is a compendium of current topical concerns about the environment, junk food and junk in our food, etc., built around a romance between a man and a woman, each with children and each married to someone else.

Nina, a successful writer, and Jesse, a sculptor who doesn’t exhibit his work and a take-care-of-the-child dad, meet while keeping an eye on their young children at the playground. Nina’s the big talker and who takes up those topical concerns with apocalyptic pessimism. Jesse, who’s into meditation, tends to see good possibilities in problems (he’s such a dull personality I didn’t notice this about him but that’s what Nina says). environment, junk food and junk in our food, etc., built around a romance between a man and a woman, each with children and each married to someone else.

Their flirtation rumbles along through conversation, punctuated by a couple of dramatic incidents, one involving Jesse’s child and another a big hurricane, dramatized with multi-colored lighting effects. There are two possible endings but a lack of suspense.

Nina’s articulateness and answer-for-everything personality is well conveyed by Danielle Slavick — her responses and emphases in gestures are sharp and fun to watch for awhile though by the end of the play they seemed repetitive. There’s no chemistry felt between her and Stephen Barker Turner in the role of Jesse, though, and in any case it’s hard to know what she sees in him.

The play seems to “hope” in a sense that people will respond to it through recognition of current situations and buzz words — ecological problems, stay-at-home-dads (and alleged lowered testosterone levels, Science Times sorts of things), women who make more money than men, pollution of seafood, vegans, inter-religious relationships, meditation. The romance seems no more than a synthetic framework for voicing these familiar contemporary issues.

I See You plays at The Flea Theater in Manhattan’s Tribeca district through December 21, 2014.

Review | The Vandal by Hamish Linklater | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater (returning March 22-31, another chance to see it!)

By Yvonne Korshak

On February 6, 2013

In Off-Broadway Theater

ak bleak bleak — a bold way to start a play, but it works wonderfully. Strangers, a woman and a boy, on a cold, road at night, next to a cemetery, waiting for a bus, but the vivid characters bring it to warm, pulsating life — which is exactly the point.

Noah Robbins as the boy and Deirdre O’Connell as the Woman. Photo Joan Marcus

Through snow dusted tombstones, a path runs in diminishing perspective to the distance: read infinity. The bus is late. The woman sinks into herself, her coat hanging crooked, too thin for this cold night. Things couldn’t be worse. She has some ominous connection with the nearby hospital. She’s unresponsive to the fast-talking teen-ager who works to engage her with everything from philosophical riffs to brash seduction.

When, grudgingly, she takes his $20 bill to buy him (he’s under age) beer and Doritos we meet the third person in the play, the convenience store owner who turns out to be the boy’s father though, oddly, he hasn’t seen his son in a long time.

There are two exceptionally fine scenes in this show. One, is the boy’s monologue born from musing on the orange Dorito powder that sticks to one’s fingers and that takes off, zooming like a comet from far to near and back again, from microcosm to macrocosm, inside to outside, being and nothingness — it’s a virtuoso piece in writing and delivery, so fast and canny I’d like to hear it again.

The other is the scene between the man and the woman in the convenience store, replete with the familiar and the uncanny, a merchant’s know-how in the face of stolen credit cards and the human connections that can override things done by the rules.

Deirdre O’Connell as the Woman and Zach Grenier as the Man. Photo Joan Marcus

We’re in good hands with this convenience store owner. One enjoys the
strong capability and masculinity, combined with burred-over vulnerability Zach Grenier brings to the role, though Grenier’s a touch too cosmopolitan for this rural corner of upstate New York. Deirdre O’Connell is touching as the woman who’s been through so much she’s almost — but not completely — drained. The unhesitating speed with which Noah Robbins pours out the boy’s cosmic fast talk makes you feel he knows everything, which, through his strange circumstance, he almost does.

The outcome of this short play, involving the man and the woman, is pat and, when one comes right down to it, although the boy is the most interesting and surprising character, what happens doesn’t depend on him. I felt that this loose cannon of a character was compensating for the fact that what actually happens in the play is not unusual or striking. Yet, there’s a governing intelligence throughout that, though the play has some of the thinness of a practice one-acter, gives it a serious resonance. The intelligence of the language, the overall dramatic aura, those wonderful scenes, and the fine acting are compelling. The evocative set by David M. Barber fulfills the contrasts of realism and fantasy, intimate and cosmic, around which the play winds.

What will this young playwright do next? Having seen The Vandal — and having loved Linklater’s spectacular performance in David Ives’ School for Lies at Classic Repertory Theatre — I’ll be on the lookout for his next play, whether he writes it or acts in it!

The Vandal plays at The Flea Theater in Manhattan’s Tribeca through March 3, 2013. NOTE: The Vandal returns to the Flea Theater March 22 – 31.

L-R Danny Rivera as Pedro, Ariel Woodiwiss as Lena, Kathy Najima as Phyllis, Reg E Cathey as Pontius. Photo Hunter Canning

Review | Heresy by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

By Yvonne Korshak

On October 10, 2012

In Off-Broadway Theater

Heresy is topical, very funny, and totally enjoyable modern parable filled with references to today’s politics and based, roughly, on the life of Christ. Some of the characters have Biblical names, like Mary for the mother of Chris, her idealistic, purist son currently in jail. But Gurney’s a wonderfully surprising playwright so you can’t guess from that what to expect.

We’re in the office of Pontius, a government VIP whose preferred term of address is The Decider. Mary and her husband Joseph, old time friends of Pontius from the roaring sixties (they call him Ponti, a nickname he feels is now beyond his dignity) are trying to get their now powerful friend to get their dreamy, off-beat son out of jail. All the shenanigans are taken down on the computer by Mark (Tommy Crawford), an orderly intern (meaning : [1] he gives orders and [2] isn’t paid). Matthew, Luke and John are nowhere in sight.

L-R Danny Rivera as Pedro, Ariel Woodiwiss as Lena, Kathy Najima as Phyllis, Reg E Cathey as Pontius. Photo Hunter Canning

There’s a Kafkaesque search to find out just where in the vast and enhanced National Security bureaucracy Chris is being held.

L-R Danny Rivera as Pedro, Ariel Woodiwiss as Lena, Kathy Najima as Phyllis, Reg E Cathey as Pontius. Photo Hunter Canning

Eventually he’s located and with the help of a gorgeous Venus named Lena (short for Magdalena) is rescued and — although we never set eyes on him — we can assume he’ll be OK for the short term: when it comes to ultimates, Gurney leaves things pretty open-ended.

Reg E. Cathey as Pontius and Annette O’Toole as Mary, Photo Hunter Canning

All the actors, briskly paced by director Simpson, draw great satisfying laughs from Gurneys witty lines and ridiculous situations — played seriously as they have to be to be funny. I particularly loved Kathy Najimy as The Decider’s dotty but not stupid wife — an enthused fulfiller of the great patriotic mandate to shop. The expressions that cross her face reflect her thoughts with the accuracy and breadth of the great comic actors and she has the voice to go with it. The most originally observed character is Mary, whom Annette O’Toole brings to vivid life as a skinny, intense remnant of 60’s idealism (we see where her son gets it), ready to jaw with anybody. Ariel Woodiwiss as Lena is seductive and cannily able to grasp what really matters to her man. Reg E. Cathey as Pontius ponders with great authority as the not-so-decisive Decider.

There are a lot of laughs, yes. But in one sequence the characters, speaking out of their individual viewpoints and personalities, tell what each of them would do for the sensitive, volatile Chris when he’s freed from prison, each having a different idea. Gurney turns this, on the dime, into an inspiring moment — as in, seriously inspiring. How he does it — I’d best leave it to you to find out when you see the show. I was deeply moved.

L-R Steve Mellor as Joseph, Kathy Najimy, Reg E. Cathey, Annette O’Toole Photo Hunter Canning

Claudia Brown’s outstanding costumes characterize the actors quickly in this fast farce, and enhance the play’s fascination.

Pontius wears a truly scary pair of black, knee-high boots. Mary’s plaid drab button-down-the-front dress worn with purpley-fuschia tights characterizes not only the role but the 60’s epoch (Super-Earnest-Skip-The-Tie-Dye Type): in motion, this is a geniusy costume worn by a terrific actress. Phyllis’ claret red gown (it’s a little different from the photos) is absolutely Phyllis.

Heresy is a very refreshing play!

Heresy plays at the Flea Theater in NYC’s Tribeca through November 4th.

Review | Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater | World Premiere

By Yvonne Korshak

On December 15, 2011

In Off-Broadway Theater

News Flash 12/15/2011: The Flea’s Romantic Holiday Comedy
Looking at Christmas Comes to TV
December 21 – 25 on Thirteen WNET

Thirteen WNET will air The Flea Theater’s acclaimed 2010 production of Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks (head writer of SpongeBob SquarePants) beginning December 21. Filmed live at The Flea last year, this romantic comedy set in front of New York’s famed holiday window displays is directed by Jim Simpson and features The Bats, The Flea’s resident company of actors. Broadcasts on Thirteen WNET are slated for Dec. 21 at 10pm; Dec. 23rd at 3am, and Dec. 25 at 11pm. Check your local listing for airdates in other markets. Here’s the review (Dec. 2010 )

… Boy Meets Girl in front of Bloomingdale’s …

Looking at Christmas is a delightful romp through some of the world’s great Christmas stories with just enough bite to make it exciting — and hilarious.

John, a young writer who’s just been fired meets Charmian, a young actress with no audition call-backs, who charms him into accompanying her on their private Christmas Eve tour of NYC’s famous decorated Christmas store windows — Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf’s, Lord & Taylor’s and then some — with a climactic finale at Macy’s. After they move on to the next, the window they’ve been viewing comes alive: we get to see what John and Charmian saw and more — what the characters in the windows think and do about their lives in the stories they find themselves in. All along the way Banks gives us amusingly irreverent views of iconic narratives — he’s a tv writer and the play shows that in its fast-paced episodic appeal, but you won’t quite see this on tv.

Mrs. Santa Claus — in the skimpy outfit we heard about from John and Charmian — allures an Elf. The Little Match Girl rebels against Fate. Tiny Tim in a metallic space suit lets Scrooge have it. The spoof of the fabulous ice wonderland of Bergdorf’s windows, with an icy Princess and a Snowman missing some crucial parts, was one of my favorites. We get the “true story” behind eight vignettes, with the last being … well, I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag — although you can find it on the Flea’s web page. A couple of the episodes seem somewhat forced, but all are at the least entertaining.

We may not have known how much we wanted the characters in those detailed and tinseled store windows to come to life but Banks, a lead writer for SpongeBob SquarePants, did (not surprising when you think about it), and in Looking at Christmas he fulfills our yearning. As a friend said, John and Charmian’s exchange of gifts at the end echoes that of the couple in O’Henry’s Gifts of the Magi, one of the windows. With that knowing stroke, the real world and the world of characters in our communal imaginations come together — on the real side of things.

Jim Simpson directs Banks’ witty script with verve and style. Raul Sigmund Julia as Snowman, Christian Adam Jacobs as Elf, Holly Chou as the Little Match Girl struck me as nothing less than powerful in their humor, but all the actors, mainly from the Flea’s young resident company, The Bats, are about perfect in their roles, and their timing throughout carries the day. The costumes are just right, the lighting and scenic relationship between the real world and the Christmas dioramas are effective — this play is a real Christmas present!

Looking at Christmas plays at the Flea Theater in NYC’s Tribeca through December 30.

Future Anxiety | Raul Sigmund Julia as Malcolm sets down his heavy bucket for a moment as Holly Chou as Comrade Li profers a creation. Photo: Richarde Termine

Review | Future Anxiety by Laurel Haines | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

By Yvonne Korshak

On May 5, 2011

In Off-Broadway Theater

… normalcy meets end of world …

Future Anxiety is a vast, crisp ensemble play that brings you to the future by following through on everything that’s undermining our earth as we know and love it. “Vast” even though it all takes place in The Flea’s rather small Off-Off-Broadway theater but when this talented group gets through with it — it seems positively epic!

Things we take for granted are in short supply — toilet paper’s doled out one square at a time. Violent storms rack the sky interrupted by fires broad as the horizon — shades of today’s news of tornadoes and fires. Radioactivity everywhere is a given. When an awakened cryogen who hasn’t yet fully accommodated to her new body wants to go outside for some fresh air, the thought sends the nurse into paroxysms of laughter. Oh yes, and China having collected on its debt, Americans are serving as slaves to the Chinese.

Karl, a man with a Jesus complex, played by Ugo Chukwu, is offering

Ugo Chukwu as Karl recruiting for a space trip. Photo: Richard Termine

salvation via a space voyage to another planet but it’s clear that in spite of his manic optimism, the trip isn’t going to make it. But is staying behind any better? As a parable, Future Anxiety reminds me of Thornton Wilder’s optimistic The Skin of Our Teeth, but in reverse.

One reason the play manages to seem so big is that the set is a series of platforms on different levels, performance spaces for fast moving individual vignettes of impending disaster. The actors are from the Flea’s young theater group, the BATS, which is a good thing because the staging and directing require outstanding agility and energy. Reynaldo Piniella (as Jake) leaps at full twisting speed from level to another — but he makes it!

A compelling aspect is that this future is not too distant and things are not all that different from today, only worse. The population that’s crowding the planet isn’t 40 billion or 200 billion — it’s 12 billion (today, approximately 6.9 billion). Sonia (Katherine Folk-Sullivan), the sweet girl with the mean job of people collector (like house re-possessor) munches a bag of chips she’s found somewhere with an expiration date of 2012.

Among the excellent performances, Holly Chou’s as Comrade Li, in charge of U.S. debtor-slaves, is a genuine show stopper. The expressions that cross the face of this martinet party-liner who finds liberation in poetry are in themselves a reason to go to The Flea and see the show. I’ve never seen anyone carry a bucket on stage that looked so genuinely heavy as when Raul Sigmund Julia as the slave-poet Malcolm labors under her eagle eye. Same when he digs his shovel into a pile of rocks.

Raul Sigmund Julia as Malcolm sets down his heavy bucket for a moment as Holly Chou as Comrade Li profers a creation. Photo: Richarde Termine

While not the first future dystopia by a long shot, Future Anxiety rings a new and important bell: a growing sense of guilt among human beings about the state of the planet and, joined to it, a negative assessment of our own kind. In expressing this point, the role of the poet, Malcolm, is key. Malcolm is given a chance to be free of his slave labor, but he’s so burdened by a sense of guilt for what human beings have wrought on this planet that he prefers to remain a slave, rather than add his hand to the destructive work of those who play responsible roles in this world.

There’s some brief but wonderful use of constructed masks/dummies, like the one Karl makes to replace his beloved but estranged Christine (Joy Notoma), leaning his head against it and draping its limp puppet arm across his own chest in a poignant-though-you-know-it’s-a-dummy moment.

For some of its jokes the play relies too closely on Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone (I know it well because I acted in it). Future Anxiety doesn’t need anybody else’s jokes, though. It’s fired by the underlying seriousness that makes for the best humor!

Future Anxiety pla ys at The Flea Theater in NYC’s Tribeca through May 26th.

Review | Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater | World Premiere

By Yvonne Korshak

On December 1, 2010

In Off-Broadway Theater

The Flea’s Romantic Holiday Comedy
Looking at Christmas Comes to TV
December 21 – 25 on Thirteen WNET

Thirteen WNET will air The Flea Theater’s acclaimed 2010 production of Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks (head writer of SpongeBob SquarePants) beginning December 21. Filmed live at The Flea last year, this romantic comedy set in front of New York’s famed holiday window displays is directed by Jim Simpson and features The Bats, The Flea’s resident company of actors. Broadcasts on Thirteen WNET are slated for Dec. 21 at 10pm; Dec. 23rd at 3am, and Dec. 25 at 11pm. Check your local listing for air dates in other markets. Here’s the review.

Office Hours by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Featuring The Bats | Flea Theater

By Yvonne Korshak

On October 24, 2010

In Off-Broadway Theater

… twilight of the Great Books …

Office Hours is a tender and passionate love story about — the love Humanities professors hold for the great books of the western tradition just when the core focus (aka “privileging”) of these books is on the way out. It’s also a fine comedy.

We’re in the late 1960’s, and in a flexible, amusing setting of young professors’ offices. The profs are all teaching sections of the required two-semester Western Tradition core course but they’re worried. Rumor has it that this course is to be eliminated. No more core. Good-bye dead white males. The young teachers, concerned individually about their futures, share an overriding concern: for Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare.

Over a passage of time that’s, very cleverly, both the course of a day and two semesters, the profs interact with each other and with the students who drop in, during and outside of office hours. We see the full parade of views about “the classics,” from love and appreciation of the great writers through to “politically correct” antagonisms — sometimes sincere, sometimes manipulated to pass a course; in this we get a portrait of an age.

The first moon landing and the Vietnam War, introduced as radio background, broaden the scope, reminding us how much the times are a-changing. Then the War arrives center stage in the person of an anguished and threatening Vietnam vet who has held in his heart, like a flower in the darkness, the memory of a positive comment a professor had once made in the margin of a paper he’d written in college, his one “straight A.”

Part of the pleasure of Office Hours is that the students and professors , while acutely observed and amusing as types, are also fully rounded and varied individuals. This so-satisfying, witty comedy — comedy with an elegiac ending that brought tears to my eyes — is knowingly staged and directed by Jim Simpson and played by the Flea’s young acting company, The Bats. The Dante cast rotates with the Homer cast — the Dantes played when I was there, and Bjorn Dupaty, Wilton Yeung, Maren Langdon, Holly Chou, Betsy Lippitt and Raul Sigmund Julia were all perfect in their multiple roles, all of them as both professors and students with diverse personalities.

Office Hours is a remarkably full portrait of a key period in American history and the changes it brought, and it’s specific and touchingly human. Lofty visions intermingle with sensitively conveyed foibles, failing and just plain individuality. It’s non-stop enjoyable.

Office Hours plays at the Flea Theater in NYC’s Tribeca through November 7th.

Review | A Light Lunch by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

By Yvonne Korshak

On December 27, 2008

In Off-Broadway Theater

This new play is inspired by our recent presidential elections: the issues are alive and the play sparkles with vitality — and partisanship. Obama supporters, don’t miss it! Bush supporters might do better to stay away.

The setting is a checkered table cloth cafe with framed drawings of theater personalities: read “very New York City.” A Texas attorney, who happens to be a tall, beautiful woman, meets a handsome NY theater agent for lunch to purchase all rights to a new play by the agent’s client. Why are the attorney’s clients so anxious to obtain all rights to this — as yet unfinished — play? The agent, though tempted by the big pocket offer, needs a reason. He’s responsible for representing the best interests of his playwright client, after all, and as it emerges the rights to the play are being sought by a Certain Very Powerful Man who’s engaged in polishing up his political legacy. Gossip has it that he will be badly characterized in the play so he’s seeking the rights to totally suppress it.

The agent balks at doing the deal blind, so the attorney balks at completing the deal. An impasse. But A. R. Gurney comes up with a “deus ex machina” (earnestly defined by the Aristotelian boyfriend of the busybody waitress) that will thrill all who love movies. A play within the play turns the plot to please all parties (well, all those with a small p). And all parties on the scene are pleased … Gurney doesn’t let us worry too much about the Texas clients.

This world premiere of A. R. Gurney’s A Light Lunch plays at the Flea Theater in Tribeca through January 25th.

Review | Dawn by Thomas Bradshaw | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

By Yvonne Korshak

On November 24, 2008

In Off-Broadway Theater

… partial redemption …

Dawn at The Flea Theater has lots to keep you interested including vivid and sensational scenes, great acting and important content — alcoholism and child sexual abuse. It would be stronger if it did not struggle with problems of character and plot.

In the most powerful episode, a pedophile Uncle transforms an on-line Lolita into his sexual partner all the way to rolling-on-the-floor-naked success. It’s the crux in this play of family disaster and a classic scene: well observed, well written, an engine for the narrative and on a significant topic.

But other scenes are only titillating ad-ons. A gorgeous young actress in a Victoria’s Secret garter belt ensemble lustily climbs astride her elderly, gin sodden husband, failing to get a rise out of him. It’s part of a subplot that brings hype to the play, not drama, and doesn’t ring true.

The acting hits every target. Gerry Bamman as the successful business man and elderly alcoholic conveys psychological nuance and hilarity — he’s never out of character. Irene Walsh as the desirous younger wife, Kate Benson as the ironic but vulnerable first wife, Laura Esterman as the beleaguered mother of the sexually abused 14 year old, Steven as the God loving abuser, Jenny Seastone Stern as the 14 year old “in love” with her Uncle — all are perfect.

But in spite of their best efforts, the play is unconvincing. How on earth does this elderly, violent, man who polishes off gin by the quart maintain his successful business and — if that were not enough — remain an object of sexual and emotional desire for two women? Why on earth is his young wife filled with lust for an old drunk who doesn’t reciprocate her passion, and why so unwilling to leave him? Why should we believe in the facile religious conversion of this brutal, dyed-in-the-wool alcoholic?

The ending, though, is smart, thought provoking and true — it goes part way to redeem the rest.

DAWN plays at The Flea Theater on White Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca, through December 6.

Yvonne Korshak reviews Off-Broadway, Broadway, Film and Art

Tag: Jim Simpson

Review | I See You by Kate Robin | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

Review | The Vandal by Hamish Linklater | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater (returning March 22-31, another chance to see it!)

Review | Heresy by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

Review | Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater | World Premiere

Review | Future Anxiety by Laurel Haines | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

Review | Looking at Christmas by Steven Banks | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater | World Premiere

Office Hours by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Featuring The Bats | Flea Theater

Review | A Light Lunch by A. R. Gurney | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater

Review | Dawn by Thomas Bradshaw | Directed by Jim Simpson | Flea Theater