Joe Lombardi - Page 2

In Sean Gorski's excellent scenic design, an inflatable parrot is perched on the back of a lounge chair.  More parrots hang from the eave of the house.  One of them, tellingly, has deflated and collapsed onto the gutter's downspout.  Three empty beer bottles and two empty Proseccos sit on the table.  An accumulation of cigarette butts fills the ashtray.  Even the table cover has images of parrots.  It's New Year's Eve and time to meet The Wild Parrots of Campbell.

A close friend recently told me there was no cure for climate change.  Too many people are on the planet.  He theorized the solution was to eliminate two-thirds of the world's population.  Ebenezer Scrooge also shares the same sentiment.  If the sick and downtrodden cannot survive then they will help 'decrease the surplus population.'  A Christmas Carol in Harlem updates Charles Dickens' classic novella into modern times with a socially contemplative spin.

Christmas is fully represented on the stage in the small Teatro Círculo Theater.  All is not quite normal though.  On the left side of the stage there is a decorated tree with presents underneath.  The same thing is duplicated on the right side except this group hangs upside down from the ceiling.  Our world and the legend of Kris Kringle are turned upside down in The Santa Closet.  Claire DeLiso's scenic design beautifully prepares the viewer for this topsy-turvy tale.

In the musical Barnum, a song lyric compels you to 'join the circus like you wanted to, when you were a kid.'  In the family friendly new musical The Giant Hoax, a young farm girl named Emily will do just that.  She's heard about the Cardiff Giant and wants to see the amazing wonder for herself.  Emily runs away from home and will learn some valuable lessons, meet an assortment of colorful characters and sing about 'Wonderful Things.'

Truman Capote interviewed Marlon Brando in 1957.  The legendary actor was in Japan filming Sayonara.  Hilariously, we overhear one of the movie's sales pitches.  They are using 'real Japanese actors.'  This conversation is one level of the multi-media piece BrandoCapote.  On the flip side, this dance play is a commentary on men and toxic masculinity.

Is playwright Cat Miller in possession of an oversized blender?  For her play The Hope Hypothesis, she tosses in Alice in Wonderland, a Kafkaesque tale, absurdist comedy, a spy thriller, soap opera histrionics and a deep state government mystery all together.  She turns the dial to frappe because that's the most fun setting.  Out pours a surprisingly refreshing and very delicious treat which successfully manages to be equally dark and light.

'If you want to know what's wrong with this country, go ask a jazz musician.'  Jaymes Jorsling's new play (A)loft Modulation is a lot like jazz.  Some sections are scintillating, magical and transporting while others are elongated and incongruous.  Patience, however, will reward those who travel this path.  A fascinating time capsule view into a vivid and complicated world of artists, dreams, demons and drugs awaits.

How to describe the oratorically dense, frequently hysterical and mind-buzzingly creative The Invention of Tragedy?  How does Shakespeare sound to a young child?  'Let there be a dragon of trees and washing without wash cloths bags cats wardrobes bungle things and other things traps and twerps and words and greater words of estuarial conviviality.'  My new favorite kind of conviviality, it turns out.

When you are a very lucky theatergoer, a play can transport you to a different time and place and age. Decky Does A Bronco is one such experience. A heavy metal playground swing set is placed on a raised stage of green carpeting. On the walls there are chalk drawings. You can see and more importantly feel the surrounding Scottish neighborhoods in the distance. The scenic designer is Diggle who did very memorable work last year at the Tank with Red Emma and the Mad Monk.

When I sat down to see The Chaos Theory of Now, I found the pre-show music selections to be quirky.  Barbara Mandrell's 'I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool.'  Thomas Dolby's 'She Blinded Me With Science.'  k.d. lang's 'Constant Craving.'  Turns out the song choices were spot on.  The author and performer, Jennifer Joy Pawlitschek, grew up on a farm before becoming a science nerd and a lesbian.

With the not so faint wisps of fascism blowing all around the world today, artists seem compelled to paint the future.  Prasad Paul Duffy has written and directed Revolutionary with Theo Grace composing the score and lyrics.  This show has been selected as part of Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival.  Pursuing new works presented in non-traditional ways, the festival aims to push ideas forward and encourage experimentation.

Arriving at New York University's Skirball Center, I was handed two green cards.  The Oedipus card contained this quote from Sophocles:  'How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth.'  Heading down the stairs into the waiting lobby, the walls were adorned with information about the Greeks and current headlines about various disasters.  So begins the site-specific experience appropriately titled Bad News! i was there...

'I do not feel compelled by reason to accept this theory of evolution, nor the periodic table of elements, nor the theory of global warming, nor the supposed crimes against the Jews attributed to one Rudolf Hitler.'  Bad Penny and Sincerity Forever are Mac Wellman plays originally staged in 1989 and 1990.  Absolutely nothing is dated or stale in his evisceration and condemnation of America and its 'littleness and stupidity and bitterness and rage and greed.'

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the mental health condition explored in DC Fidler's play Boogieban.  Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Caplan is a veteran of the Vietnam War.  He now works for the military evaluating soldiers and their emotional fitness.  Specialist Jason Wynsky is his newest charge, a man recently returned from Afghanistan.  This two character play sets up a stimulating juxtaposition of the experience of war and its impact on men from different eras.

Rita Donatella is a struggling wannabe actress working in a science lab and donning the white coat.  She's 'analyzing feces inside a rat' and declares 'I'm not loving that.'  Her agent calls and her dreams are finally realized.  She's going to star in a movie with an A-list actor.  Waiting For Johnny Depp is a semi-autobiographical musical comedy chronicling the perilous world of self-absorption and career angst.

The music from 2001: A Space Odyssey opens Sea Level Rise: A Dystopian Comedy.  Set in a future South Florida, this play considers a world where the ocean has risen two feet.  The low lying town of Sweetwater is feeling the pain.  Maria (Rebecca Smith) is on her cellphone trying to get help.  Her septic tank is no longer buried and is broken.  The situation is dire.  She declares 'my Dad's shit is pouring out of the ground.'

Spiritual Resistance in the face of oppression is the theme for this season of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.  Their programming has been curated to accompany the exhibit 'Auschwitz.  Not Long Ago.  Not Far Away.'  Hannah Senesh, the first of four mainstage productions, is definitely worth a journey to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park.

Riker's Island is New York City's notorious jail complex.  85% of the inmates have not been convicted of a crime.  Unable to post bail, many defendants are incarcerated until their trial.  The rest of the population are convicted criminals serving short sentences.  Richard L. Roy tells his own story in A White Man's Guide to Riker's Island.

Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth are two early plays by Tom Stoppard which were written to be performed together.  Both use Shakespearean text to overtly entertain while being subtly subversive.  Presented by the Potomac Theater Project this summer, the double bill is enormously entertaining.

According to the Bible, there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem which allowed a crowd to commute a prisoner's death sentence.  When Pontius Pilate asked, they chose Barabbas to be released.  Jesus of Nazareth was then crucified.  Playwright Will T. F. Carter's first play updates this story to a Peruvian prison in 2021.