Like its sister festival, the NYC Fringe festival in late summer; the third annual Frigid Festival fills a seasonal gap in the theatrical doldrums of late winter. It's compromised of numerous (30 this year) one-acts, solo shows and two-handers running the gamut of independent theater. Like many festivals, the shows get by on a wing, a prayer and a staple gun but the talent and dedication is always to be encouraged. The Frigid Festival differs from others in that all proceeds from the shows are put back into the hands of the actors. In the perennially harsh economics of the theater, producers Horse Trade Theater Group and Exit Theater are to be commended and applauded for their efforts. Below is a sample of the shows I viewed.
Reviewed by VanLoan
Adapted for the stage by Bradley Rand Smith from Trumbo's ferocious 1939 anti-war novel, it's the story of one man's coming to grips with the brutal consequences of war. Joe Bonham, a World War I veteran awakes in a hospital room and slowly realizes he is deaf, blind and without arms and legs. Basically, he's a stump of a man. The horrific realization of his condition provides the backbone (no pun intended) of the play. With America's young men and women returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in various states of amputation, the play could not be more relevant or horrendous. The more things seem to change; the more they remain the same.
As a one-man show, it's a tour-de-force for an actor who must gradually come to comprehend the extent of his physical deformities. Via flashbacks, we learn of Joe's life before the accident (obviously an explosive; a dirty bomb in modern warfare) and the simple human values of small town life are played out against the horrors of war. Locked in his own imagination, he must give us a sense of the enormity of putting together a sense of reality (how Joe learns to reconstruct time and tell what day it is is particularly moving). As Joe, Ricardo Perez-Gonzalez does an admirable job with the part. Despite his buff physique, he is able to make us believe that he has a stub of a body (with the help of a chair and some good body English). His emotional context is consistently high and reaches its apex in his learning to communicate with Morse Code. Where he falters is in the vocal texture of the performance. Too often, a manic quality creeps into his voice and it constricts variety (this is especially true of the flashback sequences). It begins to grate and saps the strength of the piece. While not totally detrimental, director Gerritt Turner should have taken a firmer hand especially since he has done such a good job of shaping the performance otherwise. Mr. Perez-Gonzalez's Hispanic background brings an unintended poignancy to the proceedings in calling to mind the modern military's reliance on minority groups to further their agenda. All the same, it's a powerful, dramatic hour in the theater and one leaves drained and depressed (as should be expected).
Confused and confusing, Live!...at the Cockpit tries to pull off a bawdy look backstage at a 1599 Globe Theater production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream and fails dismally (its described as an Elizabethan "Noises Off" in Loose Moon's production material). We watch the antics of the performers backstage as they await their cues to go on during the Act V segment of the 'lamentable comedy and cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby". What's lamentable are the lack of coherence and the inaudibility of the performers.
Later, we are at a pub (or is it during the actual Midsummer performance?) where Shakespeare (a droll Dave Warth) is working through scenes from Hamlet and appropriately Henry V, Part I. This segment is a little more amusing as we have some sense of our bearings with the Prince Hal/Falstaff conflict and the Hamlet/Ophelia love story. There was no formal playbill; however Evie Aronson had some nice comic moments as the company manager and the young vagrant boy in the bar who is physically coerced into playing Ophelia was a comic gem. The actress playing the "in trousers" part of the great Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage was also quite good (Amara Untermeyer, I think). The whole endeavor feels underwritten and under rehearsed. T.D. White and Kobun Kaluza take credit for the ill-executed conception and direction. The costumes from the Lincoln Center Archives are a justifiable knockout.
This bio-drama of historically based and imagined scenes from the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his circle of friends and enablers doesn't really bring anything new to the table of information that already exists. Yet, this production by The Beggars Group it's skillfully written and rather lavishly designed for a (no doubt) nominal budget. Justin Sturges is credited with set, sound and lighting design and excels in all three (particularly in the evocative lighting). Meredith Mosely-Bennett's costumes are a superb collection of period design. Co-written by company members Harrison Williams and Randy Anderson, the play opens with a dissipated, alcoholic Fitzgerald (author Williams) in Hollywood half-heartedly writing screenplays. He has taken up with gossip columnist Sheila Graham (Daniela Dakic).
A pastiche of scenes follows moving through Fitzgerald's life as if in a fever dream (the non-linear format is the most interesting aspect of the work). The majority of the scenes revolve around Scott's wife, Zelda (the excellent Morgan Lindsey Tachco) and how could they not. The incurably romantic, mentally ill, raging co-dependent Zelda was both muse and devastator for Scott's genius ("I will make you immortal").We are also introduced to Earnest Hemingway (Preston Copley) and the intensely competitive relationship between the two. Little is made of the suspected homo-erotic aspect (or 'bromance' in today's parlance) of the two men. Rounding out the entourage is Sara and Gerald Murphy (Sarah Anderson and author Anderson) who both enabled and protected the insecure and alcoholic couple. The entire ensemble is first rate but top honors go to the sensational Jenny Bennett as literary pundit and fellow alcoholic Dorothy Parker. She nails both Parker's devastating wit and intense loneliness in a single scene when she and Fitzgerald have sex on a lark (''penny for your thoughts"). That she is equally delicious in two other cameos as Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein is icing on the cake. While the play could focus more on Scott's struggles as a writer, Harrison and Anderson provides sharp insights into the early beginnings of the 'cult of celebrity' that is the bane of American society today.
