Thoreau, not in jail

Last night, Peter Sterne, Bwog’s resident expert on theatrical representations of philosophical imprisonment, visited the Glicker-Milstein blackbox theatre for the the Columbia University Players production of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.

The CU Players production of “The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail” (written by Edward Lee and Jerome Lawrence, directed by Cody Haefner, CC ’12, and produced by Hannah Kloepfer, CC ’13) is done in the round, with audience members on all sides, rather than on a traditional stage, as the play is usually performed. In addition, the stage is very minimalist, with only a long box and chair on a small wheeled stage in the middle of it. The music, light piano with a splash of flute and bells, is composed by Ben Weiner, CC ’11, and played by Yonatan Gebeyehu, CC ’11.

The play began not with Thoreau in a jail as one would expect from the title, but with a series of quick scenes that served as Thoreau’s memories. They comprised the bulk of the play, with the actual night that Thoreau spent in jail serving mainly as a framing narrative. These scenes quickly established Thoreau, played by Brian LaPerche, CC ’12, as a socially awkward but philosopical and passionate soul. LaPerche adopts a physical stiffness and halting speech patterns that reveal Thoreau’s internal struggle to communicate his enthusiasm for transcendentalist ideas.
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Photo via CUP

Bwog’s Hannah Goldstein reports…

Every year one of the Columbia theater groups puts on a production that caters to the audience as sophisticates—the after-dinner theater crowd, as it were. If last year it was CMTS’s Company, Steven Sondheim’s wry study of marriage and liaisons sexuelles in the upper-middle class, this year’s would be the CU Players production of Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer. The play, which clocks in at about an hour and a half, is a similarly quick-witted exploration of relationships and façade, but it is performed in the context of a—surprise!—black comedy, rather than a musical: dry in its wit, dry in the scotch consumed onstage, but certainly not dry in its entertainment.

Black Comedy is a farce set at varying degrees of lightedness, but mostly in the dark, with a fairly complex plot built around a male protagonist and his fiancée. It is one act long and is, as such, packed with brisk comic dialogues between characters who manipulate the dark to hide certain truths that would be otherwise visible to them. One of the amusements of the show, however, is that the state of lightedness in the fiction is always in opposition to what the audience perceives—except in the brief moments of dimness, in which the audience and the characters perceive the same lighting. Thus, the audience can generally see—literally and figuratively—what the characters can’t. Assistant Director Tessa Slovis does a noteworthy job juggling the lighting cues, which are especially comical during episodes of candle-lighting and candle-blowing in half-light.

The production, directed by Becca Leifer, was perfectly cast, which hasn’t always been this Bwogger’s experience with Columbia productions. Special note goes to Samuel Sainthil, making his CU theatrical debut as the agitated high-class homosexual Harold Gorringe; Collete McIntyre as the nephalist from upstairs, who acts out her accidental descent into tipsiness with a combination of panache and side-splitting schtick; and Yoni Grossman-Boder as the flamboyant German electrician Franz Schuppanzigh.

The one gripe this Bwogger had with the production was the inconsistency of the British accents across the cast (minus Schuppanzigh), a failing that broke the fiction at times. While some of the actors pulled the accent off very convincingly for themselves and for their characters, others were less convincing at either and/or both. This is not a predicament that is unique to college theater by any means; I most recently had the same complaint about Trevor Nunn’s revival of A Little Night Music on Broadway. But despite the spottiness of the accents, the cast still succeeded in conveying the quintessentially British humor of the show.

All in all, Black Comedy is a silly but intriguing romp in an exaggerated setting whose extreme circumstances add an interesting and thought-provoking dimension to the characters’ witty repartée. Since it is fun to watch and complimented our intelligence, Bwog gives it our highest honors and recommends it for everyone else to see.

Black Comedy has its last of three performances tonight at 8:00 in the Diana Center’s Glicker-Milstein Theatre.

Last night, Bwog’s Theater-Goer Extraordinaire Gabby Beans sat in on the opening night of CUP’s “‘night, Mother.”

The Glicker-Milstein Theater in the Diana Center could not have housed a more beautiful and devastating production this season. The CU Players’ production of Marsha Norman’s “‘night, Mother” is a challenging piece in every conceivable sense.

The story unfolds slowly. The audience is privy to a private and almost uncomfortably intimate glimpse into one hour in the life of Thelma, a lively older woman with an insatiable sweet-tooth (played by Morgaine Gooding-Silverwood, CC ‘14), and her middle-aged, epileptic daughter Jessie (played by Kate Eberstadt CC ’13). Just as soon as you are lulled into a sense of comfort in the naturalness of the domestic scene, a startling revelation is uncovered, sending the piece into an inexorable spiral where both characters grapple with some of the most basic and frightening aspects of the human condition.

The premise of the piece lends itself to an immediate and pointed emotional response, but the skill and honesty of the actors paired with the clarity of the direction is what makes the piece truly effective. Eberstadt’s Jessie is simultaneously decisive and vulnerable, and her defeated carriage clearly transmits the futility of her plight. Gooding-Silverwood plays a miraculously convincing 60+-year-old woman, and her groundedness and remarkable comedic timing provide an essential respite from the play’s more oppressive themes. However, it is the mother-daughter relationship between these two actors that is the chief triumph of the production. Their emotional struggle is both compelling and tragic, steeped in a skillful adherence to reality while maintaining the sense of foreboding appropriate to the play’s morbid subject matter.

In short, “’night, Mother”, directed by Louisa Levy CC ’12, is a remarkably gripping piece performed by talented, honest actors and directed with the clearest of intentions. If you’re looking for a cathartic experience, this is the play to see.

“’night, Mother” is running through Saturday.

Photo via CUP

Megan McGregor was on hand to catch the CU Players’ final performance of Let Us Go Out Into The Starry Night: Three Plays.

Last night, Lerner’s Black Box seemed cozier than usual—a side effect of an encroaching audience. A nearly full house watched the cast of Let Us Go Out Into The Starry Night: Three Plays frolic and move props about the stage as a few last stragglers strolled into the theater. After one actor put a trunk under the feet of an unsuspecting and amused couple, the lights went out and the first play, The Red Coat by John Patrick Shanley, began.

In The Red Coat, Lorenzo Landini plays a drunk student who waits outside a party for the girl with whom he is in love, played by Hannah Kloepfer. Lorenzo’s portrayal of a drunkard was heartwarming, light, and surprisingly accurate for a college student. In all seriousness, Lorenzo plays a role that could have been easily overdone, yet he plays it with a charming easiness. Hannah Kloepfer, known for her role as a French hen in XMAS! 4, also gives a convincing performance. Hannah portrays her role of a kind girl grappling with the loss of her youth endearingly. Read more…

You know those coffins you’ve been seeing out on the steps for the past few weeks? Well apparently the CU Players have decided to finally lay the corpse to rest and have the funeral this weekend … over the course of three days in the Lerner Party Space of all places. Bwog’s Interactive Theater Bureau Chief Jon Edelman was in attendance for last night’s first round of the matriarch’s drawn-out funeral.

Photo via CU Players

Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral brings the concept of interactive theater out of the realm of Italian stereotypes, so prevalent after the success of environmental theater pioneer Tony N’ Tina’s Wedding, and into the realm of Jewish stereotypes, a theme more fitting with trends in Columbian comedy. Beyond that, though, the show isn’t that original. But it is still pretty damn funny.

Here, as in Tony N’ Tina’s Wedding, the show incorporates the audience into the cast of players, in this case as the assembled attendees for the memorial service of Grandma Sylvia, matriarch of a feuding Jewish family. This motley clan is composed of both the dysfunctional members you’d expect (the drunk, the slut) and the ones you wouldn’t (the condescending psychologist, the gay vampire).

The interactive experience begins on the line outside the show, as the family members act as ushers, distribute yarmulkes, have loud arguments, and search for the missing rabbi. While this technique establishes the characters and makes the wait to get in more bearable, the audience reactions are sometimes unpredictable and not always cooperative: some dutifully played along, contributing reminiscences of the departed, while others did their best to mess with the actors, claiming that they had come to see a play, not a funeral, and weren’t sure who Sylvia was. Read more…

Every play ever produced has been showing this weekend and last. Bwog’s Anish Bramhandkar checks out the latest offering from the CU Players, Dirty Hands.

There’s no way around it. Dirty Hands, Jean-Paul Sartre’s post-war political drama, is very long. At the end of the two-and-a-half hour play, you’ve enjoyed yourself but find yourself wishing that translator Lionel Abel had the foresight to write an abbreviated version.

In a fictional country allied with Nazi Germany, Hugo (Sam Johnson, CC ’11), a young Communist, is reluctantly chosen by the party to assassinate a political leader, Hoederer (Arron Seams, CC ’13), whose actions make him a “class traitor.” Hugo and his wife, Jessica (Jenny Vallancourt, BC ’11), move in with Hoederer so that Hugo may work as his secretary and kill him. As an educated man of ideals and principles, Hugo finds it difficult to follow through, though he is egged on by his wife, who treats the entire affair as if it were merely a role-playing game.

Sam Johnson, Jenny Vallancourt, & Arron Seams

And it was this notion of a game that kept the audience’s attention. Jenny Vallancourt’s lively, uninhibited character enraptured the audience from her first appearance. Unlike her fellow actors, Vallancourt’s character was completely at ease in this dark world. Every phrase she uttered resonated with delicious, conflicting layers of meaning. It was the women of this play that held scenes together. Jenny’s delightful fickleness contrasted so beautifully with Olga’s (Madalena Provo, BC ’12) somber concern and Louis’ (Anya Whelan-Smith, BC ’13) swaggering bravado that scenes without either of them floated, unfocused and disconnected.

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Feeling emotionally burdened, Bwog’s Catharsis Bureau Chief, Claire Sabel, sought release last night in CU Players’ production of Sophokles’ Elektra.  And according to her review, the trip was more than worthwhile.

It is one thing to read the great works of Greek drama in Lit Hum, and quite another to bring them to life on stage – but CU Players’ production of Elektra, directed by Brian Bené, is a truly brave attempt at tackling Sophocles’ very difficult tragedy.  Lasting a tightly packed 90 minutes with no intermission, the performance can at times be laborious, but is ultimately extremely rewarding.

As Bené points out, the central themes of Elektra - suffering, loss, revenge, and the desire for justice – are all very modern ones which make the play both extremely accessible and uncomfortably relevant.  Thus, after having read virtually all of its modern translations, CU Players decided to adopt one of the most contemporary versions available – that of Anne Carson, published in 2001. Carson’s Elektra is so desperate and trapped by the fate of her family that the only course of action left to her is to lash out and ‘make noise’; a notable and distinctive feature of this version, as explained in the preface to the play which is helpfully included in the program, is Carson’s decision to transliterate the lamenting shouts of the characters, so that the audience hears “Oimoi!” instead of the expected “Alas!” Read more…

Bwog theater critic Morgan Childs attended last night’s production of I Am My Own Wife.

It takes a great deal of confidence–or perhaps recklessness–to break the rules of any contemporary play, much less one that has garnered significant attention across the national stage.  The sheer notion of staging Doug Wright’s 2004 I Am My Own Wife with a cast of nine seems to be a violation of the playwright’s principle intent for the play; that is, to put on display a man whose identity is entirely of his own choosing.  But CU Players’ production raises the stakes of Wright’s script even higher, demanding that the audience continue to probe its themes to their fullest and to implore its conception of the self far beyond the text.  CU Players’ production functions quite elegantly in opposition with and as a complement to the play its author originally intended.

 I Am My Own Wife is primarily the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a male German transvestite and survivor of both the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Berlin.  The play is also the narrative of Wright himself, written as a character within the play, whose investment in Charlotte pervades and informs the piece as a whole. A single male actor typically plays both roles, in addition to some forty others, but CU Players’ skillful adaptation lends its many voices to a cast of nine.  Credit is due most notably to director Amanda Stoffel, whose vision for the piece is clearly realized from its beginning. 

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Looking for some student theater in your life? Bwog reviews the latest production from the CU Players.

Having had only a month to put the production together, the CU Players (or “CUPS,” better-known for the plastic cups handed out during the activities fair) did a more-than-credible job of mixing the Bronx with the Bible Thursday night.

It was tentative and cliched in the beginning, complete with the awkward hand gestures of nervous actors.  However as the performance went on and the audience warmed to the cast, the characters quickly fleshed out and captivated the viewer.
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Procrastination doesn’t have to mean venturing far.  Lectures, laughs, and lame ledes, all on campus.

Sunday

Photo Scavenger Hunt: Run around campus with photography nerds and try to take the most super-awesomest pictures to win an unspecified prize!  4:00 PM.

Monday

Elections and the US Media: An international panel of journalists discusses the coverage of the 2008 elections by American media.  7:00 PM.

Tuesday

The Secret Life of Bees: Free screening in Lerner Cinema.  Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, and Queen Latifah!  Director Gina Prince-Bythewood will be there for a post-show Q&A.  2:00 PM.

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