Theater

Brandon Victor Dixon may not have a long Broadway résumé, but he certainly has an auspicious one. After his Tony-nominated performance in the Oprah Winfrey-produced musical The Color Purple in 2006

Review of the Saturday, May 18 matinee performnce at the John Golden Theatre in New York City. Starring Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielson, Billy Magnussen, Shalita Grant and Liesel Allen Yeager. A new play by Christopher Durang. Directed by Nicholas Martin. 2 hours 30 minutes, including one intermission. Through July 28.Grade: AReview starts here

...and the awards keep coming in! The Off Broadway Alliance, the organization of Off Broadway producers, theaters, general managers, press agents and marketing professionals, announced the winners of the 3rd Annual Off Broadway Alliance Awards, honoring commercial and not-for-profit Off Broadway productions that opened during the 2012-2013 season. (Winners in GREEN) Best New Musical F#%king Up Everything Here Lies Love Murder Ballad Natasha, Pierre + the Great Comet of 1812 The Other Josh Cohen Best New Play Cock Disgraced Finks My Name is Asher Lev Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Best Musical Revival Closer Than Ever The Good Person of Szechwan The Last Five Years New Girl In Town Passion Best Play Revival All in the Timing Golden Child The Piano Lesson Talley’s Folly Uncle Vanya Best Unique Theatrical Experience Buyer + Cellar Ingenious Nature Jukebox Jackie Old Jews Telling Jokes The Old Man and the Old Moon Best Family Show Bunnicula Piggy Nation Show Way The Velveteen Rabbit Wanda’s Monster Legend of Off Broadway Honorees Christopher Durang A.R. Gurney Kristine Nielsen Daryl Roth Stomp Sigourney Weaver

Never let it be said that I won't give a show a second chance. I was considerably at odds with both critical and public opinion on the recent American Repertory Theater production of Pippin. The crowds went crazy and the critics did, too. Me, not so much. (Read my review.) I'm sorry, but I just found the production to be all flash and no substance. But then, that has always been the problem with Pippin, ever since Bob Fosse kicked composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz and librettist Roger O. Hirson out of rehearsals and proceeded to mold the show into his nihilistic, pyrotechnical vision. But I was open to the possibility that I might simply have been a tad dyspeptic, or perhaps out-of-sorts, on the night that I saw Pippin in Cambridge. So when I got the invite to see Pippin again, I eagerly replied in the affirmative. The reviews for the Broadway production were no less rhapsodic, although there were a few holdouts, including Ben Brantley at the New York Times, and Terry Teachout at the Wall Street Journal. Well, after seeing the show again, I have to say that I still come down on the side of Ben and Terry. This Pippin is lively, bright, and loud, to be sure, but it still lacks any discernible meaning. For me, what we have here is the proverbial tale, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Again, one of the main problems with Pippin as a show is that it doesn't build, it meanders, particularly during a rather uneventful second act. Fosse hid the flaws with razzle-dazzle staging, and here director Diane Paulus and choreographer Chet Walker (working "in the style of" Fosse) pretty much just replicate the Fosse glitz, supplemented by some admittedly impressive acrobatics, supplied by Gipsy Snider of Les 7 doigts de le mains. But, again, what does it all amount to, besides audience-pleasing showboating? How do all the cast members bouncing around on green workout balls illuminate the meaning of "Simple Joys"? What's the point of having the two hand-balancers upstaging the action during the number "With You"? I'm as big a sucker as the next guy for whiz-bang production elements, provided, of course, they add something to the narrative. There did seem to be some changes to the production on the road from Cambridge to Manhattan. Some sequences genuinely seemed more fluid, while others seemed to produce more of an ebb in the flow of the production, notably the number "Extraordinary." I seem to recall that in Cambridge, this number simply featured the character Pippin climbing around the set and singing, but now we have a fully staged, overly busy, distractingly cutesy barnyard number, complete with folksy costumes and lots of focus-pulling stage business for the members of the ensemble. The number lacks focus, exacerbated by a whole lot of self-satisfied mugging on the part of the chorus. (I guess that's one of the dangers of filling your show with acrobats who can't act.)  As for the cast, I remain fully enamored of both the quirky Rachel Bay Jones, in the otherwise thankless role of Catherine, and the astonishing Andrea Martin as Berthe. Martin, quite deservedly, got a mid-show standing ovation after her masterful "No Time at All," which was somehow even more of a pleasure in New York than it was in Cambridge.  I have to say that Matthew James Thomas, in the title role, has become far more animated and sympathetic. Charlotte d'Amboise as Fastrada also seems more comfortable and self-assured, although neither performer has made the cross over into memorable. Patina Miller was out for this particular performance, but Stephanie Pope made for a more-than-adequate replacement as the Leading Player. In fact, I found Pope to have more presence and a more satisfyingly sinister bent than Miller did. Terrence Mann as Charlemagne remains marble-mouthed and mumbly, particularly during "War Is a Science." If anything, I understood even less of what he sang this time around. In

Have you ever been to a séance? Have you ever been tempted to try to contact the other side? Have you ever felt the presence of some ethereal being? Or have you always been the sensible, cynical type that thinks all of that is rot? Well, either way, the boundary-pushing, ground-breaking and dimension-rattling cabaret that is Electronic Voice Phenomena will certainly make you question the beliefs you hold most dear. Electronic Voice Phenomena combines experimental technology, literature, music and performance in a show that focuses, quite bluntly, on death and the afterlife. The project is inspired by the notorious ‘Breakthrough’ experiments conducted by Konstantin Raudive in the 1970s, where he captured voices-from-beyond in electronic noise. This show is unique. It is not easy, not always clear and certainly not easily comprehensible. But it is fascinating. The wordsmith SJ Fowler acts almost like a compere, being the through line, almost a reference point that keeps the audience anchored into the proceedings. This is very useful, and makes the show nicely coherent. He tells us that he is a conduit the spirits use to contact the living, flipping the perception that it is only the living that tries to contact the dead. He also introduces the idea of a kind of electronic empathy that the living can find with the dead. These are complex concepts that are gradually elaborated on. The show is shuffled at each performance by guest performances, but there are some regulars. Ross Sutherland is one of the regulars, whose performance uses the idea of synchronicity that psychologist Carl Jung touched on some of his work, where two separate ‘inputs’ come together and we start to see things that chime as more than coincidence. Using a looped clip from the Crystal Maze as ‘input one’ and some tongue-in-cheek and yet highly personal spoken word pieces as ‘input two’ he demonstrates how we start to identify patterns and coincidences in what otherwise would feel like chaos. The piece becomes about hopelessness and loss and yet finding solace in the sense that we are able to make of chaos. There are other standout performances from the ‘hauntological synth-pop’ music group Outfit, from the haunting Hannah Silva whose performance focuses on séance and possession and human being’s conflicting instincts, and from Honor Gavin who builds a melancholic soundscape delving into the murmurs heard on a dead telephone line. All use technology in new and interesting ways to complement their performances. The show always comes back to SJ Fowler. He really stands out of the crowd as an extraordinary performer and poet. The climax of his show comes in a mind-blowing, deeply unsettling and ultimately haunting moment when he is overwhelmed by the bottled resentment he has in him and by the voices of the ghosts that are taking over his head. It must be said that this show is an acquired taste. There are moments when the art is more about the artist than it is about the audience, and this can make it hard to find a way in. That said, the experimentation in this show is amazing to watch, and the way it deals with such a difficult subject in a head on way is commendable. The show makes the audience feel in a way that most theatre doesn’t. It accesses a fundamental, animalistic emotional response to the material that is hard to explain. And this kind of experiential theatre is incredibly rare. If Electronic Voice Phenomena comes to a theatre near you on its tour, don’t miss it. Electronic Voice Phenomena is touring until 25 May. For more information and tickets, see www.electronicvoicephenomena.net The post Review: Electric Voice Phenomena appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

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