Review: “Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg”

A new musical by Christian De Gré is a vibrant, sweet celebration and a bitter truth, all in one shot. 

The citizens of post apocalyptic Williamsburg, led by Charles aka the Mayor Whiskey Pants (Tony Mowatt), don’t let their copper mugs go dry. From dusk to dawn they drink whiskey. The biggest worry they know is a hangover. At Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg, the audience members are welcomed to have a taste of this life (literarily) as shots of whiskey are handed out along with the programs. As we take our seats in a 360-degree theater, the “tipsy” chorus members mingle with their guests, struggling to remain standing. Later during the show they periodically pass out on the chairs amongst the crowd, creating a beautiful “surround sound” effect while filling the cozy theater with choral arrangements.  

Cast of Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg. Photo by Ze Castle Photography 

The slick scenic design by Brian Freeland consists of backlit wood panels covering the walls and a wooden platform serving as a stage. The room that looks like a liqueur case lovingly embraces you and truly comes alive with spectacular lighting by Christina Watanabe. Bold and colorful, Watanabe’s work is nothing short of a painterly masterpiece. Very appropriate for a musical, the heroine of which, the mayor’s daughter (Michelle Ireton), is an aspiring artist.         

Despite the celebratory atmosphere, the endless bender on the government’s penny is not a joyous affair. We learn from scratched sepia propaganda film that some horrible Event preceded the founding of the Whiskey Still settlement. Since then, the founding mayor Whiskey Pants strives to keep the entire town drunk so nobody remembers a thing. Or wants anything, or dreams for that matter.

Somnambular citizens shuffle around with futuristic makeup by Kate Marley, dressed in inventive costumes by Ashley Soliman. The attention to detail across all of the design departments is phenomenal. Each character, including the chorus members, are dressed and groomed in a uniquely creepy and beautiful way, reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd on steroids. It’s also hard to ignore the resemblance between Helena Bonham Carter and one of the stars of Whiskey Pants, Chloe Fox, playing Sybil, the right hand of the mayor. The strong but shattered woman Fox portrays is uncannily realistic, even wrapped in a whimsical dress and with thick bloody eyeshadow.          

Tony Mowatt, starring as the mayor Charles, is surprising with the range of his voice, switching depending on the matter of the conversation. Juggling timbres allows Mowatt to conveying a vast emotional pallet. And he indeed has a lot on his plate. Around the corner is the annual drinking competition for the title of mayor. A shady newcomer is in town. And, the most bother off all, is his daughter. Unlike your average teenager, Abigail is hesitant to join the drinking population on the verge of her sixteenth birthday. She wants to leave Williamsburg and become a painter. Will she dare to dream or will she stay with her father whom, despite his undeniable alcoholism, she really loves?

At first I couldn’t become at ease with the phantasmagoric setting and the odd plot. Less time could be spent on singing about whiskey in the beginning. The obvious flaws of “alcogolistocracy” as a political system and some biological inconsistencies regarding drinking (namely in the scene of the drinking completion) kept me suspicions. Then it hit me, Whiskey Pants is a fiery tale and should be viewed as such. The engulfing, fast-moving music by Christian De Gré and spectacular visual designs might make you think for a second that it is all sheer entertainment. Then you realize that you are witnessing a coming of age story of a talented girl in an alcoholic family. Only instead of nasty bum who beats her, there is a loving father and she is truly torn apart. She has blue hair, lilac tutu and funny shoes. But she might as well walk the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn right now.             

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Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg plays at HERE, 145 6th Ave, through October 28, 2017. The running time is 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8:30, Saturday and Sunday at 4:00.Tickets are $30 and  $50 and are available at here.org or by calling 212-352-3101.

Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg is composed and directed by Christian De Gré. Book is by Serrana Gay. Lyrics are by Joseph Reese Anderson. Music Director is Trevor Pierce. Movement Director is Allan K. Washington. Costume Design is by Ashley Soliman. Make-Up Design is by Kate Marley. Scenic Design is by Brian Freeland. Lighting Design is by Christina Watanabe. Sound Design is by Wes Shippee. Video Design is by R. Patrick Alberty.

     

The cast is Michelle Ireton, Tony Mowatt, Charlie Tingen, Caitlin Mesiano, Claudillea Holloway, Nick Connoly, Stefanie Londino and Bernard Holcomb.

Review: “Café Play”

A new immersive show by This Is Not A Theatre Company eavesdrops on the conversations at a New York café.

This Is Not A Theatre Company has had their audiences soak their feet in a pool, ride the 7 train, and take the Staten Island ferry. The site of their new immersive show is somewhat more conventional—the Cornelia Street Café in the heart of Greenwich Village. Conceived and directed by Erin B. Mee, Café Playfeatures the company’s signature eclectic writing, with scenes by Jenny Lyn Bader, Jessie Bear, Mee, and Colin Waitt. Add to the mix choreography by Jonathan Matthews, a dash of live singing, and sprinkle it all generously with the absurd, and you will get a recipe for a lovely theater outing.

Jonathan Matthews in Cafe Play. Photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki.

Café Play has breakfast, afternoon tea, and late night performances; all come with a drink and a small snack. The grapefruit sorbet at the 3pm performance was divine, as was the crème brulee my friend ordered. Seated at the communal table for six, we chatted with other audience members about everybody’s experience waiting tables. It’s funny how the trivial can become common ground for strangers.

Looking at ordinary things from unexpected angles is what Café Play does best. In a series of vignettes we witness conversations among café patrons and staff: an awkward reunion of two exes, a scandal caused by social media obsession, and waiters who bond over their shared misery and fantasize about a zombie apocalypse. In other words, just a regular day in a New York café, albeit one where you can openly listen to the peculiar conversations at the next table and even hear what a cup and a cockroach have to say to the world.    

Realistic scenes are followed by absurd monologues and rolling on the floor. Laughs alternate with poetic revelations. Serious issues like racism, ecology, and feminism are tackled along the way. The actors transform with swift costume changes in a fast-moving carousel of characters. Among my favorites: the Lonely Patron (Jonathan Matthews) and his “empowered woman eats alone” monologue is accompanied by dancing at, around, and on the table; the beautiful a capella song of waitress Laura (Jessica-Brittany Smith), who dreams about the Broadway stage; and the duo of Mary (Caiti Lattimer) and Ann (Amanda Thickpenny) obsessing over their bodies like broken records.

At times I found my thoughts drifting and my hand doodling with a crayon on the paper covering the linen. I also noticed my friend sketching, and my neighbor enthusiastically enjoying her desert. There is a rare beauty and lightness in the way that Café Play does not demand much of its audience. Yet at the same time, it’s rich in flavor, with a variety of textures. Like a box of chocolates, Café Play is sure to have at least one of your favorites.         

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Café Play runs at Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, through November 15, 2017. The running time is 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission. Performances are 10/11 at 12:30 and 3; 10/13 at 10:30am; 10/17 at 10:30; 10/18 at 12:30 and 3; 10/24 at 10:30; 10/25 at 12:30 and 3; 11/1 at 12:30 and 3; 11/7 at 10:30; and 11/15 at 12:30 and 3. Tickets are $35 and $40 (including snacks and drinks) and are available at thisisnotatheatrecompany.com.

Café Play is conceived and directed by Erin B. Mee with scenes by Jenny Lyn Bader, Jessie Bear, Erin B. Mee, and Colin Waitt. Choreography by Jonathan Matthews. Produced by This Is Not A Theatre Company. 

The cast is Trinity Bobo, Caiti Lattimer, Jonathan Matthews, Jimmy Schatz, Jessica-Brittany Smith, and Amanda Thickpenny. And the cockroach.

[This review was published on theasy.com on 10.05.17]

Review: “Crossing”

An opera by young and talented Matthew Aucoin fantasizes about Walt Whitman’s Civil War years.

“What is it, then, between us?” This, the first line that Walt Whitman (baritone Rod Gilfry) sings in Crossing, is borrowed from Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” as is the sentiment of human bond conquering the barrier of space and time. Composer/librettist/conductor Matthew Aucoin pays homage to Whitman’s fondness for opera in the prologue, instantly connecting the character to us:

I have sat where you sit

Looked upward as you look –

Have felt the thrill

Of darkness descending …

The Cast of Crossing. Photo by Richard Termine.

Gilfry, in a brown suit and hat, paces in front of a screen with scrolling handwritten lines (video projections by Finn Ross), hypnotizing the audience like a pendulum. The screen raises as the poet descends into his memories of volunteering as a nurse for Union soldiers in a Civil War field hospital. Jennifer Tipton's low-angled, cold white light literally illustrates the lyrics, throwing shadows of soldiers on the hospital walls, as if their souls are barely attached to their wounded bodies. Tom Pye's appropriately shabby hospital room set shrinks, and the all-male chorus doubles visually in size as each is accompanied by his own shadow.    

Crossing delicately interweaves fantasy with Walt Whitman’s biography and poetry in a dream-like, haunting narrative. The beloved American poet indeed volunteered as a nurse in the army hospitals during the Civil War. Memoranda During the War, a book Whitman published in 1875, inspired Aucoin’s Crossing, although the core of the story, the poet’s romantic involvement with John Wormley (tenor Alexander Lewis), a Confederate soldier in disguise, is fictitious. Despite the liberties of the plot, the portrait of Walt Whitman is compelling. Like an impressionist painting, Crossing captures the ever-flowing inner essence of the poet.     

Aucoin's libretto explores the vast and overwhelming sensation of interconnectedness through shared experiences, whether that is attending the opera, falling in love, or going to war. This theme of oneness is just one of the ways Aucoin references "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"; the aria that ends the first act even borrows some lines from Whitman's 1856 poem.

And while Aucoin also draws from this same Whitman poem in his aria “Once I lay…”, he does it in a completely different way. Freddie (bass baritone Davone Tines), a runaway slave, tells both his life story and a horrifying vision of future wars. Tines’ hollow, slowly expanding voice is accompanied by the subtle swaying of his head, which creates a beautiful reverberating effect. The twenty-six-piece chamber orchestra, A Far Cry, seems to almost start playing a soul tune, but never does. 

Indeed, Crossing often tricks you into thinking that you are about to hear a rendition of a certain style or genre. When the messenger (soprano Jennifer Zetlan, the only female voice in the piece) brings the news of victory, and Whitman encourages everybody to rejoice, we expect the chorus to burst into a patriotic martial song. Instead, we hear the frustrated moaning of the soldiers tortured by lowliness and PTSD.

The events between 1862-1865 are oddly reminiscent of present day concerns: a divided country at war and “souls half torn from their bodies.” Fittingly, the slowly unfolding score and atmosphere remain grim and melancholic until the end. The hospital floor crowded with beds is cleared in the second act, but the landscape that replaces it is even more depressing. A background photograph of ruin, a bare tree laying on the ground, and the chorus now dressed in modern-day attire, all sink in fog. 

A few, minor critiques: perhaps the choreography of four dancers dressed as Union soldiers is a bit of a cliché, and the video projections could be similarly fine-tuned. An American flag fluttering against a stormy sky is overkill for an opera so subtle and nuanced, both musically and poetically.  

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Crossing plays at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, through October 8, 2017. The running time is 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission. Remaining performances are Thursday 10/5 and Saturday 10/7 at 7:30; Sunday 10/8 at 3. Tickets are $35 - $125 and are available at bam.org.

Crossing is Composed, written, and conducted by Matthew Aucoin. Directed by Diane Paulus. Choreography by Jill Johnson. Set Design by Tom Pye. Costumes by David Zinn. Lighting by Jennifer Tipton. Projection design by Finn Ross. Featuring Chamber Orchestra A Far Cry. Produced by American Repertory Theater.  

The cast is Rod Gilfry, Alexander Lewis, Davone Tines, Jennifer Zetlan. Ensamble: Hadleigh Adams, Sean Christensen, William Goforth, Frank Kelley, Michael Kelly, Ben Lowe, Matthew Patrick Morris, Daniel Neer, James Onstad, Jorell Williams, and Gregory Zavracky. Dancers: Jehbreal Jackson, Jeffrey Sykes, Christina Dooling, and Karell Williams.

[This review was published on theasy.com on 10.05.17]