Black Box Correspondent Mark Hay attended last night’s performance of NOMADS’s latest production:

Your correspondent arrived early to last night’s production of “The (Love) Story of Myrtle Willoughby and Willough Myrtleby (and the Neighbors)” to attend its Opening Gala—mainly due to the promise of free food—where I happened to meet Kurt Kanazawa (CC’11), president of NOMADS (New and Original Material Authored and Directed by Students, the group behind the production).  He spoke briefly on his intent to bring the group into more exciting and experimental grounds, such as by adding an element of smell to theater and doing a play in ASL.

Not to sound stodgy, but when artistic undergrads use the word “experimental” to describe their work, red flags go off. I entered the theater with great skepticism, expecting possibly a strangled take on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” or some long, painful indie experience. To Mr. Kanazawa, and especially to writer Cassandra Adair (BC’12) and director Katie Lupica (CC’11), your reviewer owes you a sincere and profound apology for my doubts. Read more…

Like many of you, last night the staff of the Blue and White attended the 115th Annual Varsity Show, “The Gates of Wrath.”

The Varsity Show should not be, as most people say, about collectively making fun of ourselves and our school. It’s about collectively doing something—anything—together. And last night, at the premiere of the 115th Annual Varsity Show, we spent three hours doing just that. From 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., the hundreds who gathered in Roone for last night’s sold-out performance met a cast of familiar Columbia stereotypes (a dishonest but well-intentioned i-banker, tragically underutilized SCEG types, etc.) as well as those who aren’t such perennial Morningside fixtures (a marriage-crazed debutante, a would-be Broadway star cursed with a gift for physics.) In the past, unrealistic characters have been created with great success in Varsity Shows—recall the ritzy GS character in the 2006 show and the creepy old man who lived in Carman in the 2007 show—but this year, it just happens that they weren’t funny imaginary characters (except for Patrick Blute’s spirited and charismatic portrayal of a megalomaniacal Dean Quigley, who bears little resemblance to the real thing). Enjoyable moments came mostly from minor characters and small quips tossed in, but these moments of hilarity were largely independent from the plot and the characters. Read more…

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Thespian tracker Liz Naiden sends Bwog this dispatch from the spring showing of LateNite Theater, playing tonight and tomorrow at 11 p.m.

As the LateNite crowd stumbled in they may or may not have had time to engage in thoughtful conversation with the giant computer screen projected onto the back wall of Lerner’s Black Box theater.

If they got through their programs at a near sober rate, they probably spent at least 10 minutes watching the “man behind the curtain” typing inside jokes for people in the audience, insulting his own taste in music, and displaying his private AIM conversations.

It only got more absurd from there. Read more…

Bwog contributor Allison Grossman brings us an eyewitness account from the 4th Annual Egg and Peacock, which took place in the Lerner Black Box last night.

If you missed yesterday’s caffeine-fueled theatrical marathon, known as the Egg and Peacock festival, you missed two and a half hours of delightful snuggie references (sleeved blankets, Oprah-style), famous particle colliders, and talking statues. Starting at midnight on Saturday, eight short pieces were written, rehearsed and produced by an 8:00 PM curtain in the Lerner Black Box. The resulting pieces ran the gamut from the hilariously absurd to the eerily dramatic with common threads and themes running throughout. The night’s highlights are as follows:

Waiting for Godot to Shut the Fuck Up, like its namesake, consisted of people sitting around talking about life. The pessimistic Steven, played by Stewart Partin Jon Kaplan, has just finished composing his living will. He mulls over various aspects of life and death, including death by Dunkin Donuts coffee, with friends in his apartment. As their conversation proceeds, snarky pop culture references abound. Although he relies heavily on cultural absurdities for laughs, Adam Nover’s sharp script is delivered with great comedic timing, causing hysterical laughter. It is difficult to forget Sam Klug’s deadpan delivery of, “I’m a cervix man,” or the absurd pantomime of a Lassie-Hellen Keller crossover TV show. Their banter is cut short when Steven chokes on a popcorn kernel and is visited by Death, who informs him that it is not yet his time, and tells him that the true cause of his death will be, as previously suspected, burns from a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup.

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Bwog theater correspondent Morgan Childs saw last night’s annual XMAS! show.

Please don’t ask me to explain XMAS!.  In case you missed last night’s two-show run, the bare facts may seem a little out of left field.  Things begin like an off-color joke when a pagan, a Jew, and a frustrated Kwanzaa observer conspire to kidnap Santa Claus, only to find their plans thwarted by Charlie Brown, Tiny Tim, and a rapping Lil’ Drummer Boy.  The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is looking for love, and Santa wears skinny jeans.  Two goats fall in love.  It all works out in the end.

There’s a lot going on in this year’s XMAS!, but for one reason or another, nobody seems to mind.   XMAS! North by Northpole, the third installation of the annual student-produced holiday musical, is the story not of Charlie Brown, not of Tiny Tim or Sally Pagan or Cindy Jew Who, but of all of them as well as all their friends.  In that way (and in Jew Who’s confession that she secretly prefers Christmas to Hannukah), XMAS! is a rumination on the universality of Christmas.  But let’s not kid ourselves, lest we forget the real meaning of XMAS!: wit, irreverence, and a respite from the stress of final exams.

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Bwog apologizes profusely for the late arrival of this review.  This afternoon’s  technical difficulties prevented us from posting it earlier. If you can hurry to the Wien Lounge for the final performance of The Winter’s Tale, do so now. It begins at eight—run!

As odd as it may seem there are traces of Othello, Lear and The Tempest all in The Winter’s Tale.  The relatively lesser known Shakespeare play is at once a political play, a domestic drama and a romantic comedy. The combination of these disparate genres could lend itself to satire, perhaps even pastiche, but in KCST’s current production directors Stephanie Denzer and Katie Logan bring impressive candor and earnestness to The Winter’s Tale.  Indeed, its moments of drama are as fraught and powerful as its moments of comedy are natural and entertaining.

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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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You’ve heard of LectureHops, you’ve heard of RoomHops, and BarHops. Meet the latest species of the Hopping persuasion: the LibraryHop.   Here, Bwog offers a guide to the NYPL’s Performing Arts Library.  Happy studying! 

O, autumn! That time of year when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang! This may or may not be such a great thing depending on whether you’ve become a part of Butler’s permanent collection. But the problem with dear Butler is that it’s everyone’s favorite library: On any given visit you’re likely crosses paths with your freshman year roommate, the TA from the poetry class you regularly skip, the entire PKA pledge class or that guy you were hitting on at Cannon’s two weeks ago. 

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Bwogger Mariela Quintana attended yesterday’s Bloomsday on Broadway celebration at Symphony Space. Here, she explains what to expect from a seven hour performance of two episodes of Ulysses.

Last night, literati, and admirers of Eire convened on the academic megaplex that is Symphony Space to celebrate the 104^th anniversary of Bloomsday. Each year the venue hosts “Bloomsday on Broadway”, a commemoration of the day Leopold Bloom traversed through Dublin in Ulysses, James Joyce’s epic and famously esoteric novel, one of the few canonical works left off the Lit Hum syllabus for the welfare of both freshmen and their professors. How could a work that could not be encompassed by our august Lit Hum be circumscribed in single, public event? 

Dressed in a sharp white summer suit and a royal blue button down, emcee and co-founder of Symphony Space Isaiah Sheffer introduced the reading with the cavalier familiarity that only twenty-seven years of tradition could afford. In his opening remarks, Sheffer discussed the enduring relevance and accessibility of Joyce’s work in New York City street culture and in the mix and flow of voices on Broadway.  The night, Sheffer explained in his sedate, NPR timbre, would consist of a multi-voiced reading of the entire “Ithaca Episode,” a musical interlude and then the reading of the final episode, “Penelope,” performed by Fionnula Flanagan. As the final two episodes in the novel, “Ithaca” and “Penelope” are collectively known as the “Homecoming” and detail the culmination of Bloom’s day (after he has returned home with Dedalus) and Molly Bloom’s final address, respectively.  

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Bwog’s resident theater expert Michael Molina managed to weave his way through the large, metal, bleacher-like sets to review KCST’s As You Like It, and was kind enough to send us his review.

The King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe’s performance of “As You Like It” brings laughter and general amusement despite rain clouds, graduation bleachers, and a three-hour performance. While Shakespeare seems to be at it again with his “Oh, shit, he doesn’t know that’s not her even though it is” and the typical “Why did that guy do that? Now he’s ruined everything!”, the members of the troupe bring jovial glee to this complicated comedy of silly proportions. Although this piece of student theater is not the most groundbreaking interpretation or presentation of Shakespeare, the profound talent of the cast and the mostly insightful direction of Priyanka Choksi creates a general mood of merriment that can be seen for two more nights outside near the steps.

The play begins with low energy and stagnant blocking, but it’s immediately jump-started once Kris Wiener and a wrestling ring of Christmas lights ascend upon Low Steps. Throughout the play Kris does a fantastic job of moving the show along with a carefree, cocksure nature. And the Christmas lights foreshadow the imaginative elements of what’s to come. Read more…

Didn’t see CMTS’ production of A New Brain? Too bad! Bwog daily editor Alexandra Muhler wants to tell you what you missed.

A New Brain is, in a few ways, typical musical theater. The lead spends most of the show’s two hours in a gown. The ballads are sincere and softly lit. In all, there are about two spoken lines in the play. And, most upsettingly, audience participation is forced at every turn.

But A New Brain is also quirkier than your average musical. The gown donned by Gordon (Ross Ramone), the frustrated songwriter at the center of the play, is a hospital gown, worn as he undergoes an improbably named “craniotomy.”  The moments of cast-crowd interaction toy with the standards accepted in such exchanges—first row audience members will be sung to, chastised, and sometimes even forced to sing along.

However, the mushy incoherence of bad musical theater rarely seeps into this production. Though the beginning of the second act lags a little with a string of earnest solos, the show is dominated by a crisp aesthetic.

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Free theater is one of the many perks of a being a Columbia student.  Camino Real is an opportunity to see the work of young professionals that should not be missed.  The final two performances are today at 2pm and 8pm at the Riverside Theater on Claremont and 120th St. 

As Janis Joplin puts it:“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”  And without a doubt there’s a bit of “Me and Bobby McGee” in Tennessee William’s Camino Real, now being performed at the Riverside Theater Columbia.  But instead of wailing out the blues of a broken heart, Williams casts the Camino Real’s wayward denizens in a shroud of obscurity.  Tony Speciale’s direction, however, gives Williams’ elliptical script an innovative, new spirit.   

The performance capitalizes on the surreal setting of the original script – a ghost town somewhere south of the border, haunted by the bygone dreams and achievements of its residents. Even though the Camino fosters its inhabitants illicit cravings, a desire to escape binds them all.  The stage, imaginatively designed by Russell M. Schram, divides between the Siete Mares, a seedy resort, and the Ritz Men Only, a flophouse that seems more appropriate for Amsterdam’s Red Light district than the work of a Southern Gothic.

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Last night, Bwog attended the penultimate performance of the CUplayer’s performance of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.  Read on to see what you missed if you didn’t make it. 

The high ceilings and picture windows of the Wien Lounge perfectly recreated the elegant atmosphere of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.  Although Melanie Silver’s stage design could not have been more appropriate, the choice of Simon’s play in three acts seemed less appropriate for an undergraduate theater production. 

In Act One: A Visitor from Mamaroneck, Jason Resnikoff and Masha Kamenetska play Sam and Karen Nash, a conventionally unhappy middle age couple, who have come to suite 719 for their 24^th wedding anniversary.   Attempting to extract some tenderness out of her husband’s severe retorts, Kamenetska’s bubbly performance is painfully contrasted against Resnikoff’s sedate resignation.  Resnikoff’s furrowed brow and gravelly pitch suit Sam’s perpetually dour mien, but his performance is best when he laces his cruelty with humor. Similarly Kamenetska plays an excellent peppy house-wife, but she adds depth to Karen’s seemingly shallow anxieties when she hisses, “What can I do, Sam? I’m attached to you!”   The fine acting showcased here successfully draws out the conflict buried within Simon’s script: What does one do with life or love when it becomes boring?

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Bwog’s theatrical afternoon continues with Tony Gong’s review of the Classics Department’s production of Antigone. 

Last night, I journeyed into Columbia classics undergraduates’ first performance of Antigone at the Minor Latham Playhouse in Milbank, buried deep within the Barnard’s campus. The mystical and labyrinthine trek was well-worth it—partly due to the unique theater experience that followed, and partly because Hewitt dining hall was pretty good that night.

Sophocles’ Antigone picks up where Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes ends, with brothers Polyneices and Eteocles dead, and their power-hungry uncle Kreon instated as king. Kind of like the end of Star Wars: Episode III. And, like the newly asthmatic Darth Vader, Kreon demerits all family and friendship for loyalty to the state by denying the dead Polyneices proper funeral rites for fighting against Thebes. Hence the drama begins, when Antigone, Polyneices’ sister, is caught trying to bury her brother, and ordered to death.

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