Joe Lombardi - Page 3

Presented by NAATCO (National Asian American Theatre Company), the parentheses of the title [Veil Widow Conspiracy] hint at this play's structure.  The events to be unveiled center around a 1922 political murder mystery which occurred in Xinjiang, China.  It is also about a 2010 movie filmed on location about that mystery.  Finally, two young Asians in a dystopian Brooklyn in 2035 are discussing the film.  The story lines are related and tucked inside each other but really serve to comment on philosophies and moralities.

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club has programmed a month-long series called the Stonewall 50 celebration.  Coinciding with this weekend's World Pride event, 13 Fruitcakes arrives with a few instructive sentences about New York in 1964 when the World's Fair was opening.  The mayor orders the city's social pariahs off the streets including the homeless, druggies, prostitutes and homosexuals.  That's a far cry from rainbow windows at Nordstrom's in midtown today.  Halleloo!

Ever wanted to sit on the floor during a Presidential nominating National Convention?  The opportunity is available in Brooklyn at the Irondale Center.  Danny Rocco's play immerses its audience onto the floor of the 1944 Democratic convention.  Roosevelt had already served four terms and was not expected to live through his next one.  A battle for the Vice Presidency - and for the likely next President - occurred.  That juicy political story is retold here with a huge cast of forty actors.

Seven women choreographers and their companies share resources and collaborate for this one week festival of dance.  Each performance of Women/Create! contains four selections.  In addition to experiencing the enjoyment of varied works and styles, the choreographers spoke to the audience after the first piece ended.  Jennifer Muller set the tone for the evening with 'I truly believe that movement is a language which can speak and heal the world.'

There are no sure bets in theater.  That's the excitement and reality of live performance and creative risk taking.  There are, however, reliable pockets of extraordinary levels of sustained excellence.  One can presume a visit to the small Greenwich Village basement space of the Axis Company will include mind-blowing ambiance.  Last Man Club beautifully overloads the senses and transports you to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

In the 19th century, Eliza Lynch made her notoriety when she traveled from her native Ireland and became the mistress-wife of the president of Paraguay's son.  She bore him six children and was considered 'an ambitious courtesan.'  Some believe she turned him into a bloodthirsty dictator.  Others debunk this story as war propaganda.   The theater company The Drunkard's Wife has turned her story into 'a spectacle with music.'

When you enter the downstairs space at La Mama, multi-colored fluorescent lights illuminate a multi-level stage.  Asked to enter the theater in twos, your first stop is a few steps up to a level.  If you so choose, you can go inside the curtain to speak with the great ancestors.  The play Messiah has big ambitions, a title which promises significance and a downtown sensibility right from the start.

Playwright Elise Forier Edie is often asked how much of The Pink Unicorn is true.  She answers 'all of it' and 'none of it.'  All of the events depicted happened to someone, including herself.  A high school refused to allow the formation of a Gay and Straight Alliance Club.  Transgender children and their families are shunned, harassed and threatened for allowing freedom of expression.

Flesh Mob is a performance collective which created this interdisciplinary dance-theater work about sexual education.  From their website:  'sex is funny, stupid, gross, elevated and base, and we'll never stop being titillated or uncomfortable about it.'  MISEDUCATED: an oral history of sexual (mis)education is based on interviews they conducted.  The performance is a combination of documentary theater, movement, humor, nudity and live music.

There are two apartments across the hall from each other in The Bigot.  In the messy one on the right, Bill O'Reilly's book Killing Reagan is perched on the couch.  Bottles of pills are sitting on a tray.  On the left is a much neater, more modern home.  Two young lesbians have just moved in after a brief courtship.  They are celebrating their anniversary of two months, two days, six hours and twenty three minutes.

Marigold Page is a Tohono O'odham woman.  She is also an activist working with her tribe to resist a wall being built across their Nation.  She meets John Morales-Rio, a Native land surveyor working in the southern U.S. and Mexico.  He is smitten and charms her into a spontaneous picnic.  Why this particular career?  His family has a history of protecting their lands and ensuring that the most sacred sites are protected for generations to come.  John tells Marigold, 'I feel BOUND to it.'

When taking a seat in the Paradise Factory Theatre downtown, the stage backdrop suggests a large scrapbooking canvas. Pictures of children and the wilderness. Happy, peaceful images. They are layered and have texture. Some of the edges are uneven around the borders reminiscent of photographs from long ago. Boldly titled in capital letters, WHORE will be heading down the path of memoir told with the passage of time.

A month ago I saw Austin Pendleton portray a teacher on Broadway in the fine play Choir Boy. Now he is the elderly Professor with a much younger third wife. They are visiting with Sonia and Uncle Vanya in this adaptation of Chekhov's play. Right from the start, the cast informs that LIFE SUCKS. is about love and longing, true to the spirit of its source material. The Professor notes 'it's also about the audacious, ludicrous and protean nature of the obstreperous and ever-feckless human heart.' Vanya points out 'he has a penchant for sesquipedalian elocution.' Fans of word play will lick their chops listening to some of this dialogue.

Based on a novella by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba is being presented in Spanish (with English supertitles) by Repertorio Español. A veteran of a Columbian civil war, the Colonel lives with his wife in a small village under martial law. They are impoverished and very hungry. Every Friday he waits for the postmaster. A letter is supposed to arrive with his pension from the war. No mail has arrived for fifteen years, hence the story's title which translates as 'No One Writes to the Colonel.'

'Some people go to therapy to work out their stuff,' Nicholas Linnehan informs at the start of his autobiographical play, Identity. Not him. Instead, 'I write plays to fix myself.' Before the first scene even starts, his character named Mike is laying bare his emotions for the audience to see. A man with a mild case of cerebral palsy and disarthryic speech, he points out that he is different from us. 'And deep down inside, I guess I'm praying I'm really not.'