notanotherbookreview

  THE BRONZE BOY by Nancy Hamada, directed by Todd Faulkner. Cast included August Kiss Fegley, Nicole Greevy and Todd Faulkner. The production was showcased in "East of Edinburgh" at 59 E.59th Street, one of 6 plays selected for Edinburgh's Fringe Festival. The 59th Street venue offered an opportunity to stage shows prior to the festival. It's an unusual opportunity in the United States. Unlike Britain, there is no National Theater to provide festival opportunities for new plays, let alone venues to showcase them.  THE BRONZE BOY is a surprisingly funny, nuanced and serious play about America's love-hate relationship with guns, explored in a road trip. This meandering journey on our highways is a visit to our hidden gun culture. We see headlines in America, telegraphed shots of life and death madness, but rarely stories of our subterranean inheritance. Our relationship to guns is largely ignored in news culture, which emphasizes senselessness over the hidden ...

  THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE by Ashley Griffin , directed by Rachel Klein produced by New York Rep at Royal Court Performing Arts Space, 145 West 46th St., 3rd floor. Through June 15th THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE   is a courageous play on target for these ultra commodified times, when sex, if not love, is yet another "market" to be navigated for strategic advantages--status, finance.  Eloise, played by Ashley Griffin, and Will, played by Danny Garner, are magnificent combatants except that this courtship is a work for hire.   Historically, in this "man's world," marriageable girls (Rapunzel anyone?) were locked up for their own good. "No man marries a cow, if he already has the milk" was the basic idea of  women's value. Whether rich or poor, around the globe, legacies were at stake. Yet Eloise's conundrum is emotionally like Rapunzel. Unable to leave her tower, she hires Will, a sex professional Though women are sometimes accused of being obsessed with...

The Presentation at I.R.T. 3 nights Dec 2019, was to be the first step before a showcase.  With Covid, opportunities didn't exist. Now since Theater is back, I am open to a production of this play in hybrid or traditional theater forms. There are special videos not completed except for the final night, using the monitor that frames this story in our media world. There are marvelous puppets of Houdini in water closet and other magic moments that add a dimension of hyper reality to stage magic.  The play was without these elements and the story alone moved people. If your theater would like to explore work with this show, leave a comment here and I will contact you. The video below is edited from the original presentation which was about two hours in length.  Thanks, Susan I. Weinstein link to video of Ether presented in a Residency Workshop at I.R.T. Theater (copyright)    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56d8Qtjyu_U Script available on request, full-length or...