ONE Magazine

TheatreSpace Review: Lisa del Rosso gets MASSACRE(d) by Jose Rivera & Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Martin Belk — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:15:16 +0000

If you take seven bloodied murderers, four male and three female, and put them in a room together right after they have plotted and killed the town “devil” – a man who was a murderer and worse himself – one would think this set-up would yield interesting results, at the very least.

Yet, at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater down in the Village, where Massacre (Sing to Your Children) by playwright Jose Rivera is playing, this is not the case.

Panama (Jojo Gonzalez), Erik (Adrian Martinez), Hector (Brendan Averett), Lila (Sona Tatoyan), Eliseo (William Jackson Harper), Janis (Jolly Abraham), and Vivy (Dana Eskelson) enter a room in a deserted slaughterhouse. They are covered in blood, masked, disheveled, dirty and euphoric from their kill. There is the requisite blaring techno music, though these are not juvenile delinquents, they are upstanding members of the community: teacher, auto mechanic, filmmaker, bartender, etc…. What happens, in no particular order, is the following: one vomits, some brag, blame is levied, they all dance, drink, fight, a shower is taken by a female cast member, and there is a little psychological analysis. In a bit of foreshadowing, a few become paranoid as to whether Joe (Anatol Yusef) is really dead. There is little to no humor to the proceedings. It is, in short, banal.

None of the characters were distinctive enough to stand out, but the actors were not to blame, and did what they could with the overwrought dialogue. Interestingly, the most compelling character was Joe (a.k.a. the devil), who is offstage for all of Act 1 and only referred to; in Act II, he gets center stage, as it were. This does not enliven the proceedings, as there is much talk and little action.

The most glaring technical problem came at the end of Act 1: a knock on the door startles the cast and they freeze, facing the audience. To myself, I said, “Blackout, blackout, blackout.” Instead, the poor actors were left stranded onstage, waiting for what seemed an interminable length of time before having to exit out of the same door the knock came from, with lights on, including the ones signaling intermission. There has to be a more expedient way to get the actors offstage.

My companion heard Jose Rivera interviewed on the radio, saying (and I paraphrase) “Massacre” was inspired by the events of the last 10 or 20 years. That’s quite broad, and I am not sure what exactly Rivera was going for. Every person has a devil in them? Evil cannot be vanquished? And yet, in “Massacre,” Joe gets all the best stories and the best lines. He persuades those who tried to kill him to see themselves in ways they would rather not. The devil can be a charming man.

THIS IS ‘IN’: TACT’S LOST IN YONKERS Theatre Review by Lisa Del Rosso’

Lisa Del Rosso — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:50:57 +0000

I am not an enormous fan of Neil Simon, and this opinion is largely based on the recent, unsuccessful revivals he has had on Broadway and off. However, after watching the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lost in Yonkers,” in a beautifully rendered production presented by TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) on Theater Row 42^nd Street, I am well on the way to changing my mind.

Simon’s plays require intimacy, and that is exactly what director Jenn Thompson has created: she chose a small theater, a one-set show, no flash, no glitter, and total commitment to characterization and the relationships between members of the Kurnitz family.

In 1942, two young teens, Arty (Russell Posner) and Jay (Matthew Gumley) are dropped at their grandmother’s house in Yonkers, New York, due to the financial problems of their father, Eddie (Dominic Comperatore). Under protest, she takes them in while Eddie travels around the country, earning money to pay off debt incurred due to his late wife’s cancer treatment.

Grandma Kurnitz (Cynthia Harris) lives with her daughter Bella (Finnerty Steeves) a thirty-five year old child-woman, whose heart is in the right place, longs for love and is also described as having a “head full of marbles.” Bella helps run the family grocery store downstairs, and though her mother threatens her with “the home” if she does not behave, she is integral to the household. While the boys acclimate to their new and sometimes severe household, their shady Uncle Louie (Alec Beard) stops by, ostensibly for a visit but really to lie low from men who want to do him bodily harm. He describes himself as a “money manager,” but the boys and everyone else know better.

The anchor to “Lost in Yonkers” is the formidable, frightening, cane-wielding Grandma Kurnitz, and Cynthia Harris is magnificent: she is a woman who has suffered, yet is without a shred of self-pity. She seems to make those around her suffer as well, whether intentionally or not. Arty describes kissing his grandma like “kissing a wrinkled ice cube.”

The rest of the cast is equally stellar: Finnerty Steeves walks a fine line between attractive woman and confused child; her longing to be loved is apparent in a heartbreaking scene with her mother, where she explains exactly where this desire comes from, and whom is to blame. Russell Posner’s funny, awkward Arty is a perfect foil to the bluntness of Matthew Gumley’s Jay, and sometimes it seems all the best lines come out of their mouths. Alec Beard as Louie looks like he stepped out of a James Cagney film, albeit sharper and in better shape, and his manner is spot-on as an unapologetic thief who carries around a big, black bag of other people’s money. In smaller roles, both Dominic Compertore as Eddie and Stephanie Cozart as Gert are very fine.

So, I am a late convert, but this Neil Simon works for me: touching, funny and beautifully acted, “Lost in Yonkers” by TACT is a triumph.

From the Editor: Hey Glassholes: ‘This American Life’ – IS DAISEY IS PROTECTING THE GIRL?

Martin Belk — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:38:30 +0000

From the Editor:

In regards to the controversy surrounding MIKE DAISEY, I write to express my full support for THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS as a creative work.

Theatres are not courtrooms, no matter how the monsterous public relations companies, recently hired by the parties involved, will now attempt to make them appear. Daisey is not the ultimate target — theatre, the arts, free expression is. As-is creative license and our ability to communicate critical ideas in a public arena.

The New York Times, and BBC documented the lion’s share of agregious faults in our new culture of slavery-by-proxy, highlighted by Daisey’s monologue. Second, it’s not rocket science to connect the dots: FoxCOnn hires Burston Marstellar • Apple Launches iPad • Daisey sandbagged by the glassholes.

But in this real world of corporate espionage, coercion, conspiracy and fraud, I predict this: Mike Daisey might be protecting the safety of the girl in China. Just a creative hunch.

Martin Belk, editor, ONE Magazine

BELK: A Ballad of Reading in Gaol (full version of essay published in Scottish Review of Books)

Martin Belk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:07:32 +0000

A Ballad of Reading in Gaol

(Full version of Scottish Review of Books Essay.)

By Martin Belk

A young woman hangs back after my writing seminar at the new City of Glasgow College with a question: “What’s it like, ya’ know, in there?” For a second, I’m thrown, forgetting that in the preceding class I’d alluded several times to my prison writing workshops. Before I could respond, huge, heavy tears welled up and fell from her eyes, falling down to her denim jeans. She didn’t say anything more, she didn’t need to – she has a loved one on the ‘inside’. I didn’t quite know what to tell her: a ‘modern place of rehabilitation’, to reassure her, or, a ‘bona-fide prison’, to confirm and confront her worst fears? Neither is entirely true, there are problems in the narrative.

Polmont Young Offenders Institution doesn’t look anything like a typical gaol when you walk in. The sliding doors open automatically, like any office tower. A brand new waiting area is just to the left, with blue-grey carpeting and a few toys for young children to play with. No bars, no barking dogs, no armed guards. The reception is like a Scottish Executive building or the foyer of a Spartan bank. After you clear security, you take the long walk down to the learning centre to the sound of every staff member you meet wishing you a good morning. Sure, locks and doors control movement, but the building remains humane and friendlier than any corporate office I’ve ever worked in.

For over three years, I’ve served as Writer-in-Residence on a voluntary basis in Polmont, and engaged with a large number of young inmates. This work keeps returning me to a question that has never been entirely answered since the modern prison era began. What is the actual purpose of prisons? To punish, rehabilitate, or both? The origins of the question lie in a moment of historical irony. The state-sanctioned ostracism from society of human beings arose at a time when people in Colonial America and Europe began awakening to a notion of freedom. In England, an act of 1575 calling for “the punishment of vagabonds and the relief of the poor” established “houses of correction” in every county. A century later, in 1676, Louis XIV sent an edict prescribing a ‘Hôpital Général’ in every city. The legislations for these exclusions were originally for the mad, then the sick, then: offenders, political enemies, and lower-class undesirables. The result from then, through the revolutions, to present day: an arbitrary liberté, égalité, fraternité. Madness has since become,

among other things, a wide net to cast over habeas corpus.

Medical quarantine makes sense with leprosy. However, a judgement of madness was ambiguous, and proved useful when dealing with citizens who posed difficulties to the state. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, in his book Madness And Civilization, “One out of every hundred inhabitants of the city of Paris found themselves confined” for varying lengths of time during the seventeenth century. “Absolute power made use of lettres de cachet and arbitrary measures of imprisonment … [extended equally to] the poor, to the unemployed, to prisoners and to the insane. [...] As with the libertine…or the ruffian…it is difficult to say [who is] mad, sick, or criminal.”

Polmont’s senior officials have learned from experience: contrary to the theory behind the Hôpital Général, the further you remove people from society and atmosphere of a civil community, the less likely they’ll productively integrate back into one. Officials came to similar conclusions two centuries ago, as Foucault writes, “The evil which men had attempted to exclude by confinement reappeared, to the horror of the public.” While some criminals are hardened beyond hope, and need to be locked away for good, I’m not so sure about the greater portion of humans we leave to languish in prison.

One of the fastest tickets for a long-term ride to the big house is booze. Simply being intoxicated or high can be construed by the authorities as a ‘state of madness’ in and of itself. Technically, we are indeed imprisoning the mad, by our very own definition. Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill has called for a “definite change in the booze and blade culture of Scotland.” I hope that change comes soon. Whether you choose to look at government statistics, the testimony of prison officers, or my experience of working with young inmates, the findings are similar: in approximately 80% of cases, alcohol was a major contributory factor to the offence. Most prisoners I know stood trial, unable to defend themselves, because they had no memory of events due to blackouts. Ironically, the local term for this is ‘Mad w’ it’.

So, if many of our young people are conditioned, expected even, to become criminals, how does law enforcement fit into this picture? While there are plenty of people in law enforcement who work diligently for a safe and just society, there’s something else afoot. Something at the core of our support for our foundering Hôpital Général. In his recent play about the 1989 uprising of the Czech Velvet Revolution, Rock ‘n’ Roll, one of Tom Stoppard’s characters named Jan offers an insight into social systems: “Police love dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics. Heretics give meaning to the defenders of the faith.” Perhaps this explains why so many of our Polmont young writers describe their predicaments so matter-of-factly? Do we get what we want?

When I began working with young men at Polmont I first noticed their lack of self-confidence. Peer-pressure shames those with ambition as ‘attention seekers’. One of my students, Calum, reported being put on the street to run with ‘the lads’ at the age of four. Another, Jeffrey, at age 8, was charged with the full-time care of his two younger brothers, aged 5 and 3. Both came from families of alcoholics. What do pre-teen boys do, I asked, when left in the street to fend for themselves? Drink, do drugs, join gangs. “What else were we supposed to do, when that’s all you know?” Calum has repeatedly asked me.

Strathclyde Chief Constable Steve House recently announced that officers on patrol every day would rise from 500 to 2600 in the radical plans to unleash “old-style policing with a hard edge.” Sounds good, but a new rodeo roundup of the mad may not do the trick. after the announcement, I had a conversation with a recently retired policeman who told me, “It works in theory, but in reality, you’ve got people calling the police for everything from legitimate emergencies to complaints about their dirty windows. They tried to put in a call-priority system, but no matter what you do, there simply aren’t enough officers.”

Like Calum and Jeffrey, many inmates report long histories of alcohol, drugs, neglect, and physical and sexual abuse. Some have legitimate mental health illnesses, and need proper diagnosis and

treatment. Many experienced a school system that is coercive and labelled them as troublemakers from a young age. Most report negative social conditioning (intentional or not) on the part of families, carers, teachers. “My family and people in my neighbourhood always said that I’d end up in gaol” Jeffrey told me. “The last time I saw my father was after I’d been arrested, we crossed paths in handcuffs. ‘Hi Dad, what you in for?’” reported another boy, forcing out a shy laugh.

Then there are the families, dramatically depicted as losers and victims of crime – perfect for prime time ratings and newspaper sales – or, as absent thugs who are at the root of all that is evil in young criminals. Perhaps they’re just playing along too, in this game of madness? The fact is that abusers were themselves abused. The cycle repeats itself.

In his landmark social study, The Closing of the American Mind, American scholar Allan Bloom sheds some light on the ailing modern family, and possibly some of the reasons young male offenders outnumber females 14 to 1. In the context of the conventional notion of traditional families, Bloom observes the unwillingness of “Women to make unconditional and perpetual commitments on unequal terms [with men], and no matter what they hope, nothing can effectively make most men share … child-rearing.” My experience with incarcerated young men has taught me that you cannot force men to care and take membership in a family unit as father or son; nor can you force a young man to want to care about a naive community that pretends to be innocently shocked anew by every single crime, via a daily fix of gossip columns – consumers consumed by consuming. “People can continue to live while related to [their] beloved; [but] they cannot continue to be related to a living beloved who no longer loves or wishes to be loved,” Bloom explains, highlighting what I consider a critical component of today’s identity crisis of young men in the US and UK.

Rigid business approaches to learning also present a problem, parcelling out a system of ‘bums on seats’ and bottom-line rationales. The results are disastrous, alienating good teachers and students alike, and the effect on the prisoners is devastating, resulting in a greater aversion to learning. If we’re looking to ensure released offenders return to gaol, this is a good way of going about it.

The encouraging news is that I have not met or worked with one official at the Scottish Prison Service who does not want positive change. Let’s face it: ‘body-farming’ is depressing. Farms where nothing grows. Nothing changes. Of course, offences must be punished. Sentences must be served. But then what? If we follow the US model, the farms only get bigger, and the result is painfully similar to what Musquinet de la Pagne observed in Paris in 1790, “These wards are a dreadful place where all crimes together ferment and spread around them … a contagious atmosphere.”

My wish is for all young people today to reclaim their own narrative, whether locked in gaol or tied to an iPod. If they don’t, they will be victims of Thomas Mann’s insight: “Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves context – it is silence which isolates.” Young people in custody can be vague about why they’re there, and so internalise another narrative, which is not autochthonous but imposed by the authorities and sections of the press, in an attempt to ‘explain’ their behaviour. Misguided school mandates declare ‘everyone’s a winner.’ The goal: to catch the kids that fall through the cracks; those left behind as hands-on teaching and apprenticeships were traded for standardized tests.

Only three of my hundred or so prison writers have claimed ‘I didn’t do it’. And one actually didn’t; he was proven innocent after serving three years. So, if any of them write down even one authentic line about themselves, I’ve done my job. One honest statement in a notebook they take with them after they leave gaol could mean the difference between a positive future and a career in criminality.

Students start exactly where they are with regards to their vocabulary and language. We don’t ‘dumb down’, we do not judge. We write about anger and pain, guilt and amends, forging a bond with the outside world. Some have all but cried when we’ve studied Samuel Beckett, and learned that creative failure is an option, as is the resolve to “fail better”. We use Romeo and Juliet, in the footsteps of my mentor John Calder did in Easterhouse in 1969 with gang members, to deal with

violence and knife crime. On racism, we read James Baldwin and Malcolm X; there may be parallels between today’s ‘ned’ and yesterday’s ‘nigger’.

If facilitated correctly, the results are astonishing, but they don’t fit on bubble-answer cards. My approach is a hybrid of ‘Theatre-in-Education’, and personal essay. ‘T-I-E’ takes contemporary topics and develops dramatic narratives to be explored and performed, and has proven effective in dealing with drug abuse, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, bullying and spousal abuse. My approach to personal essay develops the solitary act of writing within a group setting, and combined with T-I-E opens a natural path to other genres in writing. After three years, we’ve been given permission to match written evaluations with proper college credits. Plenty of other dedicated agents, charities and arts organizations are engaged in new, equally valid work. Now we’re getting somewhere.

I am certainly not alone, nor the first in this educational reform effort. Dozens of dedicated agents, agencies, charities and arts organizations share a common goal. The challenge is in effective delivery of services to the kids that fall through the cracks; those ones left in the dust as the vocational training, apprenticeships and hands-on training, were traded for standardized tests and the outright lie that ‘everyone’s a winner.’ Once I was one of those kids, but I got lucky.

What about the victims? For some, writing classes invite the suspicion, prison is cushy; to certain minds, rehabilitation itself is disrespectful to those hurt by the inmates. My answer: do everything in our power to honour victims by preventing more. Couple punishment with rehabilitation – finally, tangibly, and lift society up to a new standard. Place principles above personalities on all fronts, and put accessible education and excellence ahead of entertainment and excess.

In his new book, Wind from the East French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton, 2010). Richard Wolin writes about how Foucault witnessed detained militant students who demanded status as political prisoners, in order to receive special privileges. “Was not the lot of all prisoners similarly unjust?” Foucault also joined Enquête-Intolérable, a movement dedicated to documenting the plight of people in French Prisons in 1970. According to Wolin, their findings are pertinent in relation to class bias “[...]80 percent of the bourgeois prisoners benefited from furloughs, only 32 percent of working-class inmates enjoyed such privileges.” Wolin cites trends held in other areas as well: early release – bourgeois 90%, working class 33%. Overall the working class was more closely monitored, more readily imprisoned, and once incarcerated, it was more difficult for them to leave.

When I recently visited Barlinnie prison, the library was empty, to the dismay of the officer in charge. As ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ came on the radio, I began to make notes about how to keep our young people from re-entering prison once they’ve left:

1. Prisoners need to be kept as involved, informed and engaged with society as possible. The further they are removed, the more likely they will re-offend.

2. Make prison tough through action. No TV in the daytime. Mandatory activities – education, sport, work. Work should encourage self-sufficiency.

3. End the dismal failure of placing young offenders directly back into the communities they came from. Prison officials, teachers and support workers agree this is the number one ingredient in a high rate of re-offending. Same gangs, same arguments, grudges, fights and trouble – they need a clean start. Make relocation a privilege, not a right.

4. Offer tax breaks and other incentives to businesses that employ prisoners after release. Even the most menial job can make a world of difference.

5. Ban videos depicting children in the act of committing crimes from social networking sites. Enforce the ban as strongly as that on child pornography.

6. Propose a new national service policy – military, forestry, nursing older people or helping the poor. It’s time to give back.

On 23 November 2010 bidding will close on the new learning contract for prisons in Scotland. Write to your MSP. Mark my words and the advice of those on the front lines: you do not want gaols to go private. Private gaols are gaols for profiteers and will ensure that nothing changes. Penny wise, pound foolish. The choice is clear: suffer more crime by alienating criminals in private bureaucracies or seize the opportunity to write a new story.

A sleection from this essay appeared in the November 2010 Scottish Review of Books.

Poetspace: Mary Folliet Hard Times Encore • Good Times Ahead 2012

Martin Belk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:33:53 +0000

A HAIKU DUO FOR 2012

Hard Times Encore

~a Café Loup haiku~

what a see-saw world

these turbulent trying times

no exit in sight

•

Good Times Ahead

~a New Year’s wish~

peace & love maybe

but please first fair play for all

then we’ll rock ’n’ roll

—Mary Folliet

ONE blogs – LISA DEL ROSSO – Theatrespace Review: Nina Raine’s TRIBES: Get your ticket! “You Might be Missing Something”

Martin Belk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:27:44 +0000

“You’re not missing anything,” is repeated like a mantra throughout the first act of Nina Raine’s brilliant and provocative “Tribes” by various members of Billy’s upper-middle class British family. Born deaf into an intellectually rambunctious, argumentative hearing clan, Billy (Russell Harvard), was raised reading lips and not taught sign language on principle, “so he would not be part of a minority,” according to his stubborn, retired academic father Christopher (Jeff Perry). Also currently living under the same roof are Billy’s mother, Beth (Mare Winningham), a novelist; his college-age sister Ruth (Gayle Rankin), a singer; and the insecure, older brother Dan (Will Brill), who is not quite sure what he wants to be, other than a creative person like everyone else in the family. But in truth, the family argues at such a pace that it is impossible for Billy to keep up, leaving him in silence; until Billy falls for Sylvia (Susan Pourfar) who was born hearing into a deaf family, learned sign language and is going deaf herself. Sylvia introduces Billy to a new world where fits in. Now he wants to tell his own stories his way, and asks his family to learn how to sign, refusing to speak to them until they do. When they balk, he leaves them.

The North American premiere of “Tribes” is at the Barrow Street Theatre down in the Village in New York City; it has already had a successful run at The Royal Court in London, 2011, won an Offie Award and was nominated for both Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for best new play. “Tribes” is playing currently in Australia and productions in Germany and Hungary are in the works.

“Tribes” explores notions of conforming or not, of love and possession, and of belonging. The profanity, intellectual arguments, sibling rivalry and egotism are all completely believable in a high-octane, competitive household. There are pithy one-liners, like when Ruth asks why no one in her family can’t say a word without shouting, and Christopher replies, “Because we love each other.” Ruth replies, “Yes, like a straight jacket.”

The production of “Tribes” at the Barrow Street Theatre is impeccably directed by David Cromer and beautifully acted by a first-rate ensemble. Raine’s moving, funny and shattering play demonstrates the limits and benefits of the tribe one comes from, and also, finding a new one. After Billy leaves and Dan is reduced to a gibbering wreck, he finally asks, “What is the sign for love?” The answer is both an affirmation, and an enormous step forward.

ONE blogs – LISA DEL ROSSO – Theatrespace Review: “imitation should be avoided at all costs”

Martin Belk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:07:30 +0000

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when it comes to the great, early plays of Sam Shepard, imitation should be avoided at all costs. A case in point: “Yosemite,” a new play by Daniel Talbott down at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the Village. Shepard’s “Buried Child” looms large over a script that goes nowhere, leaving three young people in the woods to bury their baby brother, whose remains are in a black plastic trash bag. The eldest assumes the role of the gravedigger. That is it, until the mother shows up along with this rule of theater: once a gun is brought onto stage, it must eventually go off. Here, pardon the pun, it is used as a cheap shot.

“Yosemite” dwells in the past, has no forward motion, no levity, strains credibility and is directed with a dirge-like pace by Pedro Pascal. The cast (Noah Galvin, Libby Woodbridge, Seth Numrich, Kathryn Erbe), do the best they can with what they have. The set, by Raul Abrego, with its snow, enormous trees and cloak of winter chill was very beautiful. And the next time “Buried Child” is revived off-Broadway, I suggest you run to see the real McCoy.

ONE blogs – LISA DEL ROSSO – Theatrespace Review: The Picture Box “Needs Some Gray”

Martin Belk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:02:43 +0000

If “The Picture Box,” a new play by Cate Ryan presented by The Negro Ensemble Company (celebrating their 45^th season) at the 42^nd Street Beckett Theater, were instead a painting, it would be only in the colors black and white. What it needs are shades of gray.

On voting day, prior to Obama’s 2008 election, Carrie (Jennifer Van Dyck, earnest but miscast) a middle-aged white woman, has come from New York to sell her deceased mother’s Florida home. Enter the white buyers, Bob (Malachy Cleary) and Karen (Marisa Redanty), who are, with the first lines they speak, revolting and racist. They exit to vote (presumably for McCain). The voting issue exposes a tragic flaw in the script; the couple are from Michigan and are not Florida residents; therefore, they would not be registered to vote in the state of Florida.

Enter Mackie (the wonderful Arthur French), an 89 year-old black man who has been with Carrie’s family since the day she was born, and she considers him family, as she does Jo (deliciously played by Elain Graham), his black wife. They are good, decent people, full of affection and admiration for each other, even when bickering. My favorite line is Jo’s: “I can unwife you anytime.”

A box of photos is found, and this triggers a lengthy period of exposition, describing how Carrie grew up, stories about Mackie’s family, Carrie’s mother, Carrie’s dog, and it all goes on far too long, rendering the drama static.

Because the play runs about an hour and wants to be full-length, there are too many unanswered questions: why exactly was Mackie hired by Carrie’s mother? As a cook? Caretaker? Driver? Servant? It’s a little odd to have hired a young black man to look after a white baby girl. Carrie had no father, but her mother had many husbands. So if she was simply a bad and negligent mother, why not say so? Also, the historic Obama election, used as a gimmick in the beginning, remains only that: a gimmick. There is no aftermath. There is no “morning after.” The election is dropped and never mentioned again, not even to say that these folks will be staying up all night to await the results. I mean, really. Most of the world waited up to see what the outcome would be. I did. With the subject of race relations ostensibly at stake here, wouldn’t these people do the same?

ONE blogs – LISA DEL ROSSO – Theatrespace Review: JAMES X: a BRAVE theatrical Experience!

Lisa Del Rosso — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:34:01 +0000

How does society deal with a juvenile delinquent? An “abandoned boy?”

In the case of “James X,” written and performed by the astonishing Gerard Mannix Flynn, at the age of eleven he was sentenced into Ireland’s industrial school system, run by congregations of nuns and brothers. On his way to the first, St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack, he was orally raped in the car by a brother, and sodomized by another once he arrived. From there, a succession of schools followed, then prison, and the abuse never stopped: physical, sexual, mental. No matter how many times James X complained, nothing was ever done.

The Culture Project, Gabriel Byrne (who also directed) and Liam Neeson are to be commended for bringing to New York a brave, wrenching theatrical experience. Byrne has been very candid about his own abuse at the hands of a priest, and how he tried to come to terms with it included a very public letter of apology written for TheIrish Times in the 1980’s, which was met with a thunderous silence.

Finally, times have changed, with hundreds of victims coming forward and telling their stories, blame being apportioned, and amends being made by the Catholic Church. These are small steps, but in the right direction.

“James X” is the pseudonym on his file, for confidentiality, when he testifies before the Report of the Commission to inquire into Child Abuse. Now a middle-aged man, James X sits outside the room waiting, nervous, jittery. For most of the 85 minute play, Flynn goes at a clip, and puts on quite a stream-of-consciousness, rolling on the ground, sometimes funny, animated song and dance account of his life. No sexual abuse is mentioned until, just before the end, Flynn confesses his “show” was a lie. The lie he “invented to make his life tolerable.”

Flynn reads his statement. He reads out the litany of his sexual abuse, the physical abuse that landed him in the hospital for an operation, his incarceration in the prison for the criminally insane. He was betrayed by the system, and tells the tribunal, “You said you would cherish us and take care of us. And you didn’t. This is your file, not mine. It is your shame. And I’m handing it back.”

ONE blogs – LISA DEL ROSSO – Theatrespace Review DERBY DAY by Samuel Brett Williams

Lisa Del Rosso — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:20:19 +0000

23 (L-R): Jared Culverhouse as Frank Ballard (sitting), Jake Silbermann as Johnny Ballard (standing), Beth Wittig as Becky and Malcolm Madera as Ned Ballard - photo: Paul Gagnon

Midway through world premier of “Derby Day” by Samuel Brett Williams in the 42^nd Street Clurman Theater, I wrote in my notebook, “The waitress will get the winning ticket.” And she did.

The deserving waitress in question, Becky, played by the brilliant Beth Wittig, not only wins, she steals the show out from under the three volatile male characters. Becky is the only one not trapped, who knows who she is, who has any dignity.

The Oaklawn Derby is the backdrop for a turgid family drama – three brothers (Jake Silbermann, Jared Culverhouse, Malcolm Madera) show up in a rented room for the races in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which happens to coincide with the funeral of their father. As the liquor flows, so do secrets, lies, and recriminations. The room is trashed, as are all of the relationships.

The violence of Midwestern men has been mined before: by Sam Shepard in “True West” amongst others, and 75 minutes is not enough time for all of the drama piled on awkwardly and absurdly by Williams. He has a good ear for dialogue and character development, but there is no real catharsis here; all three brothers are rotten and rotten in myriad ways. We have a jailbird/alcoholic/gambler/violent brother; a thrice-divorced/ alcoholic/ gambler/ wife-beater/ violent/cheater brother; and a cheater/alcoholic/gambler/violent/patricidal wreck. Not much variety, a lot of predictability. Except for Wittig’s Becky. She is the clear winner.