Review: “Pool Play 2.0” ended, but what a glorious swim it was!

The audience is sitting on the edge of the swimming pool, twirling their feet around, while the cast of seven tells stories, cultural anecdotes, and parables about various bodies of water. Solos by the choreographer of the show, Jonathan Matthews, are interspersed with monologues and scenes that eventually lead to a series of naïve and joyous group dance numbers set to Handel’s Water Music and Bobby Darin’s Splish Splash.

photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki

Conceived and directed by Erin B. Mee, Pool Play 2.0 is another site-specific, immersive performance by This Is Not A Theatre Company, founded in 2013. The play, written by the company co-founder, Jessie Bear, launches fearlessly to explore the pool both as a cultural mythologem and a physical space.        

Being at the public pool might cause a lot of anxiety. “My legs are too skinny!” “I should have bought a new swimsuit!” – actors yell standing by the corners of the pool in the beginning of the play. They have to declaim at the top of their lungs to fight the acoustics of the Waterside Plaza. I applaud the strength and high energy of the actors, who were able to deliver lines to all four sides of the pool even while swimming or wrestling with a rubber boat.   

It helps that the writing of Jessie Bear (with additional text by Charles Mee and Leanne Sharpton) breaks into short, frisky lines. Over the course of the piece we are taken to various swimming pools around the country and time travel simultaneously. From the segregated pool in Davers, Virginia, opened in 1925, to the dystopian future, where due to an ecological catastrophe, people only get to enjoy the pool in the form of a hologram.         

Genres of the fragments vary widely. There are sketches of lives of rich pool owners and pour public pool workers; there is a lecture given by a fish on her values and lifestyle and a parable starring penguins. Memories of the imaginary childhood adventures in a bathtub are paired with training sessions of professional swimmers. In addition to the dance routines mentioned earlier, there is a Nighttimeswimming song, performed under the racing lights of cars on the FDR reflecting in the glass ceiling of the pool.

And I didn’t even list everything the Pool Play 2.0 has to surprise you, to make you laugh, to give you a wet embrace of unconditional love. The abundance and scatter of the fragments might be difficult to enjoy if you are a linear narrative junkie. I would recommend giving in and, the same way as with the water, let the performance hold you.

Some of the stories might resonate more than others, and this is the beauty of the format. Perhaps the goofy dancing by Jonathan Matthews in a retro, striped swimming suit and assortment flowery caps will land home with you. The joy, the sense of wonder resulting in the discovery of new sensations, and bodily qualities of being in the water are reflected on the dancer’s face throughout and are the essence of the show.

Pool Play 2.0 by This Is Not A Theatre Company ran on March 10^th-April 8^th. Let’s hope we will swim together again very soon. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for them, as I am sure more surprises are to come!             

Review: ‘The Room Sings” while beavers dance

Sitting in the audience of The Room Sings, I am constantly questioning the sanity of what I see, even though I am at La MaMa, the legendary experimental theater where the traditional theater is historically challenged. But I guess this is an appropriate reaction for the musical in which The Room is the main character.

photo by Suzanne Opton

Ellen Maddow, cofounder of The Talking Band and the composer of The Room Sings, plays the lead. Dressed in a classy suit (costumes by KiKi Smith), the layering of which resembles crumbled old wallpaper, The Room introduces us to the inhabitants of the house over the past 70 years.  

Paul Zimet, the writer and director of The Room Sings, succeeded at assembling quirky and unexpected characters. The only obvious connection between them is the house in the woods that they all inhabited at some point in time. But Zimet bends the time line and modifies the space by rotating multiple units of the set designed by Nic Ularu.     

In the head spinning kaleidoscope we see: two old siblings (Tina Shepard and Jack Wetherall) at each other’s throats in 1943; the duo of teenage Oscar (Luka Kain) and an old Chinese man, Mr. Ma, coping with their losses, fears and each other; a love triangle of two brothers, Al (Joe Roseto) and Sal (Andrew Weems), and Loretta (Theresa Mccarthy) writing an opera at their hunting lodge in 1987; a married couple, Hope (Abigail Ramsey) and Sidney (Will Budgett), and Hope’s widowed father William (James Himelsbach) selling the house in 2015. Every drama is accompanied by it’s own unique soundtrack coming out of the transistor radio, mostly distracting and unnecessary.   

The worlds of spirits and animals, such as porcupines, skunks and beavers, all have their share of the property and are at constant war with the human tenants. The video projections by Baxter Engle feature mostly peaceful landscapes contrasting with the fears and cruelties of the human nature ruling inside the house.

The Room Sings while having some major flaws, nevertheless, has its divine moments. We forgive Ellen Maddow her dull singing voice, trying to catch up in energy and speed with the recording, for the touching absurdist poetry of Zimet’s songs. We forgive week acting for the masterful puppetry, designed by Ralph Lee.

As the beavers from the puppet opera say, the humans are difficult to grasp at times, especially if the room tells the story.                                           

The Room Sings produced by The Talking Band runs through April 16^th at the La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre located on 66 E 4^th Street. Shows are Wednesday to Saturday at 7pm, Saturday matinee at 2pm, Sunday at 4pm. Tickets are $30 for adults, $20 for students and seniors, and a limited amount at $10 is available. Run time is 75 minutes with no intermission.    

Review: “Rare Birds” against the bullying bullets

Rapid development of electronic technology provides us with new ways of communicating. It also enables bullies to invade privacy and to use it to torture the most vulnerable. Adam Szymkowicz looks closely at high school cyber bullying in his new drama Rare Birds, produced by The Red Fern Theatre Company.

photo by Billy Tompkin

Nerdy birdwatcher, Evan Willis (Jake Glassman) is a “punching bag” for his schoolmate Dylan (George Colligan) and his sidekick Mike (Dylan Guerra). Bullies constantly pick on Evan’s songbird shirts, yet he refuses to wear “normal” clothes. “Normal”, is what Evan’s mother, Janet (Tracey Gilbert), wants him to be. By that she means sneaking liqueur out of her cabinet and smashing mailboxes with a baseball bat. She also wants him to like her new boyfriend, Ralph (Robert Buckwalter).         

You might not like Evan Willis, but for different reasons. A downtrodden sixteen-year-old vents his confusion on his mom and behaves like a jerk towards her new boyfriend. Like a wounded bird in the box of his bedroom, he pecks a hand reached out to him, and agonizes trying to break out. Evan’s crush on Jenny (Joanna Fanizza) eventually makes him Dylan’s victim. We nervously wait for the rest of the show to see who will fire a gun introduced in the first scene.

The realistic “box” of Evan’s room (designed by Andrew Mannion), abundantly decorated with birds, is both a safe haven and a prison. Other sets, the school, the casino restaurant and the bad boys hang out, are marked with just a few singular elements. But the outside world is not that different from Evan’s. Kids and adults alike are dealing with their own fears, confusions, and misconceptions.

The moment when one reaches out to help the other starts a chain reaction of understanding. But before the patch of blue sky is seen, the director Scott Ebersold suffocates the audience with adolescent violence, humiliation, and neglect. However, Rare Birds is far from being black-and-white. The tight-fit cast takes us on a very real and emotional journey, where you sob one moment and laugh the next.           

Rare Birds runs through April 9, Thursday - Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm with an added performance on Monday, April 3 at 7pm. The Theatre at the 14th Street Y is located at 344 East 14th Street. Tickets are $20, available at 212-352-3101 or www.redferntheatre.org.