Harold Bloom, the most muckity of literary muckity-mucks, frequently refers to the works of William Shakespeare as the secular scriptures. Bloom always tends toward hyperbole when talking about Shakespeare, but he’s certainly on to something here; for the intellectuals who find no solace in the Psalms, there are the Sonnets. For the cynics who do not share good news of Jesus, there are plenty of … Continue reading FRINGENYC REVIEW: OLD FAMILIAR FACES
It’s been a little over a year since the epic flame out of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ relationship. Along with a lot of tabloid fodder, their hyper scrutinized love story provided a fitting cultural checkpoint, falling smack in the center of the Venn diagram for our celebrity obsession, our fear of oligarchical institutions, and our need to dissect these things via social media. Arriving … Continue reading FRINGENYC REVIEW: THE TOMKAT PROJECT
My roommate from college is a video game designer now, but he was always a big video game guy. Back in the days of Ramen Noodles, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, we used a kind of shorthand. Whenever one of us would have to call our parents for money, we’d express relief later by saying, “my meter was … Continue reading REVIEW: LIGATURE MARKS
Ever stumble across an old photo that you don’t recognize and wonder where it came from? Who might have taken it? What their story could have been? Admit it: we’re all of us guilty of a little voyeuristic curiosity. Whether your sneaky instincts are fueled by a need for juicy gossip or anthropology, the Story Gym puts them to work in The Photo Album, a … Continue reading REVIEW: THE PHOTO ALBUM
The virtues of Theater in Asylum’s production of #Coriolanus lie, as the Volscian general Aufidius says, “in th’ interpretation.” Though Paul Bedard’s social media savvy staging of Shakespeare’s play occasionally trips over the jittery tech at its center, it consistently redeems itself with wildly inventive maneuvers, including costumes straight out of Aeon Flux, impressively choreographed callisthenic dance fighting, and a surprisingly bubbly sense of humor. … Continue reading REVIEW: #CORIOLANUS
Ignoring all of its other virtues, Mac Rogers’ play Frankenstein Upstairs certainly deserves special commendation for including such an intriguing program note: Frankenstein Upstairs is set in Brooklyn in the present day. As the action takes place in the same fictional universe as Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the novel and its adaptations do not exist in this play, and the name “Frankenstein” holds no associations … Continue reading REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN UPSTAIRS
Upstream Color is an undulating new tangle of a film by writer/director/actor/composer/editor/sound editor Shane Carruth, who earned a lot of well-deserved good will with his previous effort, the inside-out time travel story Primer. In terms of scope and subject matter, Upstream Color can function as a kind of secular answer to writer/director Terrence Malick’s deeply religious The Tree of Life. Where Malick pulled the camera way back in time and space to make his point that the human condition is only … Continue reading REVIEW: Upstream Color
– ONE MILD SPOILER – The Hangover Part III is the mostly enjoyable, but also mostly perfunctory conclusion to a trio of comedies that started out in a very true place: examining the way that one guy who no one knows or is really friends with always ends up at a bachelor party, and thus changes the group dynamic in a big way. Part III, however, is essentially a heist movie, dutifully built around moderately staged sky-diving, building-repelling … Continue reading REVIEW: The Hangover Part III
Theater Reconstruction Ensemble’s challenging but ultimately rewarding production of “Set in the Living Room of a Small Town American Play” does more than deconstruct the style of the great American dramas from the 20th century. It may sound exhausting, but playwright Jaclyn Backhaus and director John Kurzynowski essentially present a staged rehearsal, which turns out to be an apt forum for meditation on the techniques … Continue reading Review: Set in the Living Room of a Small Town American Play
-SPOILERS- What at first seems to be a charming, if standard coming of age in high school story is almost rendered unrelatable by a very dark turn in the third act. Depressed freshman wallflower Charlie (played by a likable frazzled Logan Lerman) who deeply loves his friend Sam (Emma Watson, who is magnetic despite an inconsistent American accent) because she reminds him of his deceased aunt. When Charlie and Sam finally hook up, … Continue reading Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Surreal Time Press 