AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Tony DeSare –Radio Show
(www.Telarc.com)

"Dreamy." It's not a word that's used much these days. Still it is probably one of the most evocative words I know for describing this sumptuous new disc from DeSare. The singer's smooth vocals on both standards and his original compositions are the sort that might have sent women swooning in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The concept for the disc is really quite clever and gives DeSare the chance to demonstrate his versatility. Tracks are introduced by DJs from radio stations of various formats, so while one's listening, it's almost like having a radio tuner being switched. Thus, "Bizarre Love Triangle," a seductive cocktail music-like duet with Jane Monheit, is found on a jazz "station." It's followed by another song in this vein, "All or Nothing at All" before DeSare moves onto a buoyant rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's "Lazy River."

Perhaps the most effective distinctive and intriguing sequences on the disc comes when the honky-tonk of "Johnny B Goode," which DeSare delivers with electrifying speed and intensity, is followed by Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A'Changin'," where DeSare's delicacy and intelligent phrasing poignantly enhance the power of this folk anthem.

DeSare's own compositions seamlessly fit into the standards on the disc, so much so that I was surprised to find that one tune, "A Little Bit Closer," had been penned by the singer and wasn't a long forgotten gem from the 1940s. Toward the end of this consistently satisfying disc, DeSare offers another original song, "Dreaming My Life Away," a waltz that almost sounds as if it might come from a century ago. It's a melancholy rumination on lost love with a melody that floats out into the ether, and yes, it's also sort of "dreamy."

-- Andy Propst

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Spirited performances from leading actresses Deidre O'Connell and J. Smith Cameron pull theatergoers through Andrea Lepcio's Looking for the Pony, an overly plotted portrait of two sisters whose worlds are rocked when one discovers that she has breast cancer.

In that brief sentence, "Pony" may sound as if it were a "TV Guide" quote for a Lifetime made-for-television movie, and on many levels it is. Lauren (O'Connell) is a can-do sort of entrepreneur, mother and wife, who, despite having gotten a clean reading on a mammogram in the recent past, learns that cancer has set in, and badly. Her sister, Eloisa (Smith Cameron), is a banker, who's ready to chuck the world of finance for a graduate school writing program. When she learns of her sister's diagnosis, though, she's tempted to forego school so that she can help her sister navigate what seems to be a dizzying array of doctors, treatments, and general day-to-day chores.

The story of Lauren's experiences with the medical community and Eloisa's life choices might be enough for one play, but Lepcio adds in a host of other details. The play flashes back to the women's childhoods (O'Connell and Smith Cameron play the younger incarnations of their characters without cloying), and we learn how their stern father's behaviors molded their adult personalities. While Eloisa's tribulations with graduate school do make for an integral part of the story, the details that Lepcio provides about Lauren's business only diffuse the script. Similarly, "Pony" gets bogged down with a backstory about a key moment in Lauren's life when Eloisa was unable to help the sister who had helped her so much as a child.

As always, O'Connell and Smith Cameron, two of the city's seemingly busiest actresses, deliver immaculately detailed and often moving performances in the production which has been directed at almost a whirlwind pace by Stephan Golux on a unit set from Adam Koch, where a pair of industrial metal chairs and a rolling metal hospital chair seem to be in perpetual motion as the play jets from scene to scene. Debargo Sanyal and Lori Funk, who play all of the other characters in "Pony," are also kept in what seems to be perpetual motion, and while Sanyal, playing characters that range from a cranky and demanding old man to a klutzy physician to a fey, self-obsessed hairstylist, manages to nail characters in what seems to be seconds, Funk's various characters often seem to be generalized extensions of one another.

Still, as Lauren's battle becomes increasingly difficult, it's nearly impossible to not be drawn into her story and what theatergoers may find themselves hoping is that Lepcio may consider streamlining the piece in order to further maximize the impact of "Pony."

---- Andy Propst

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Looking for the Pony plays at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre (2162 Broadway). Performances are Wednesday at 2 and 7pm; Thursday at 7pm; Friday 8pm; Saturday at 4 and 8pm; and Sunday at 4pm. Tickets are $45.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-579-0528 or by visiting www.vitaltheatre.org.

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Updates for January 30, 2009

New York Daily News

Off-Broadway offers revivals of the fittest
How the mighty have fallen. That's a recurring thought as Brian Friel's funny-sad 1979 play "Aristocrats" tracks the decline of the O'Donnells.

Time Out New York

Review: Aristocrats
Irish Rep stages Brian Friel's Chekhovian drama about a family's dwindling fortunes.

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New York Times

An Irish Home Littered With Corpses, Living and Dead
Brian Friel’s elegiac play is being given a first-rate revival by the Irish Repertory Theater.

Associated Press

A Once-Great Family Faces Decline in 'Aristocrats'
The electrical wiring is woefully outdated, there are no more servants, and croquet must be played with invisible equipment -- but strains of Chopin still pervade the enormous house and grounds of decaying Ballybeg Hall in 1970s County Donegal, Ireland.

Variety

Review: Aristocrats
...Charlotte Moore assembles a dream cast to play the members of this diminished clan, gathered here at the bedside of their dying patriarch to wring their hands over their proud lost heritage and to illustrate Friel's belief in the healing power of storytelling to take a family, a village, a nation through troubled times.

Back Stage

Aristocrats reviwed by Andy Propst
Stories about once-wealthy families and the homes and land they can no longer support are ubiquitous on New York's stages these days.

TheaterMania

Review: Aristocrats
The Irish Rep presents an extremely uneven production of Brian Friel's Chekhovian drama about an Irish family in the 1970s.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Aristocrats
Does the upper crust ever do anything but decay? So many plays are obsessed not with who the rich are but instead who they were that you can often predict a new one - or an unfamiliar old one - merely by applying your knowledge of another member of the genre. Of the two significant problems with the Irish Repertory Theatre’s otherwise

CurtainUp

CurtainUp

Review: Aristocrats
As staged by the Irish Rep Brian Friel's Chekhovian play is given the intimacy it deserves.

 

Updates for January 30, 2009

nytheatre.com

Review: Freshwater

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UPDATES FOR JANUARY 29

Time Out New York

Review: Freshwater
The SITI Company, led by Anne Bogart, tackles Virginia Woolf's one play.

Associated Press

Women's Project unearths Woolf's 'Freshwater'

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Freshwater - A Bucolic Romp With Some Victorian Artists Courtesy of Virginia Woolf

New York Times

Proof That Virginia Woolf Did Have a Light Side
This production turns Virginia Woolf’s only play into a light comic lark played as if it were a laugh riot.

Variety

Review: Freshwater
You really had to be there -- at a country house in 1935, when the era's Olympian elites, the Bloomsbury group, performed Virginia Woolf's one and only play, "Freshwater," for their private amusement. ... While helmer Anne Bogart deftly conveys the sophomoric glee behind the original giddy enterprise, the over-bright and over-brash production puts a certain Yankee spin on the Brits' intellectual antics.

Back Stage

Freshwater reviewed by Adam R. Perlman [critics pick]
Christopher Durang, Steve Martin, Virginia Woolf: It's not a grouping you'd make, unless you were assigning place settings for a licentious, time-warping dinner party.

TheaterMania

Review: Freshwater
Anne Bogart turns Virginia Woolf's minor farce into an evening of crude inanity.

 

The Times UK

Duet for One, Almeida, London
Does the play’s portrait of an MS sufferer in the psychiatrist’s lair have the dramatic power to deserve its first major revival? Yes

The Guardian

Duet For One, Almeida, London
Tom Kempinski's two-hander about a violinist stricken with multiple sclerosis and her analyst moves Michael Billington greatly

Daily Telegraph

This Duet is sublime
A rich and nuanced production of Tom Kempinski's play Duet For One at the Almeida touches on something profound.

Whatsonstage.com

Review: Duet for One
Stephanie Abrahams is a 42 year-old violinist stricken with multiple sclerosis who embarks on a series of therapy sessions with a German psychiatrist, Dr Feldman, in his comfortable consulting room. The bookshelves in Lez Brotherston’s design...

London Theatre Guide

First Night Feature: Duet For One
When your entire life has been focused around one aim, one goal, one experience, how can you cope when that is taken away? This is the question at the heart of Tom Kempinski’s Duet For One.