There is no need to comment much on this turkey. It's called "GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES" and in it playwright Rajiv Joseph has come up with two of the most obnoxious people to land on a New York stage in years and since they are the only two people on stage this makes for as irritating an evening as I've had in a very long time.
Mr. Joseph's play[to use the term loosly] concerns two childhood friends who keep running into each other over a period of thirty years to compare the scars and physical calamities of their lives, and if you are bored reading about this that's ok because I am bored writing about it.
The usually talented Scott Ellis has provided routine stage direction and the two actors[Jennifer Carpenter and Pablo Schreiber] give the impression of just wanting it to be over.
"GRUESOME PLAYGOUND INJURIES" is flat, tastless and dull. One can only imagine what Mr. Joseph's next play will be will be like. It is called " Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo" and is due on Broadway in March with Robin Williams starring.
At The Second Stage Theatre 305 West 43rd Street N.Y.C.
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Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
A FREE MAN OF COLOR A REVUE
It seems that I am beginning to sound like a broken record but a good idea for an exciting and worthwhile play has not worked out and even with a colorful background and a vibrant central character John Guare's latest play " A FREE MAN OF COLOR" is [sad to say] a pretentious bore.
Mr. Guare has written some wonderful plays about the human condition ["The House Of Blue Leaves" and "Six Degrees Of Seperation"] and his latest is set in New Orleans right before the Louisiana Purchase happened and law and order took hold. The time is 1801 and the plot revolves around a Don Juan who is a master seducer and the richest man in New Orleans. He is also a free man of color at a time when class division was common.
It's good idea but it is woefully overwritten, overpopulated and overproduced and George C. Wolfe's stage direction seems needlessly busy and and sometimes static, and Hope Clarke has provided some minor dance movement that could have been done away with and not at all missed.
The twenty six member cast works hard but seem ill at ease with the stilted dialog and situations and David Rockwell's sets are colorful but over-elaborate and they are well served by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's lighting, but "A FREE MAN OF COLOR " is another case of a colorful and lively story drowning in a sea of excesses, and it ends up being a dull, lifeless and static play.
AT THE VIVIAN BEAUMONT THEATER LINCOLN CENTER N.Y.C.
Mr. Guare has written some wonderful plays about the human condition ["The House Of Blue Leaves" and "Six Degrees Of Seperation"] and his latest is set in New Orleans right before the Louisiana Purchase happened and law and order took hold. The time is 1801 and the plot revolves around a Don Juan who is a master seducer and the richest man in New Orleans. He is also a free man of color at a time when class division was common.
It's good idea but it is woefully overwritten, overpopulated and overproduced and George C. Wolfe's stage direction seems needlessly busy and and sometimes static, and Hope Clarke has provided some minor dance movement that could have been done away with and not at all missed.
The twenty six member cast works hard but seem ill at ease with the stilted dialog and situations and David Rockwell's sets are colorful but over-elaborate and they are well served by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's lighting, but "A FREE MAN OF COLOR " is another case of a colorful and lively story drowning in a sea of excesses, and it ends up being a dull, lifeless and static play.
AT THE VIVIAN BEAUMONT THEATER LINCOLN CENTER N.Y.C.
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