The Boston Theater Marathon Review

The Doppler of My Heart by Rick Park, Directed by Josh Glenn-Kayden, Presented by Company One Seven plays in and we have, by my reckoning, the first truly great ten minute play. It stars Greg Maraio and Becca Lewis (making a welcome return from the one minute readings of the previous day) as a married couple, Donnie and Eileen, who are taking a drive up to Connecticut. Their accents are thick and Boston. There’s amusing talk of checking “dopplah” “weathah”, as if she’d known it’d be this cold she’d have worn her “parkah” (… guess I probably don’t need the extra “h” on that word). There’s this delightful “Who’s on First”-type exchange as Eileen is complains about missing her friend’s nephew in a school production of Wicked. (he's playing Glinda and wants to perform on Broadway. "Yeah," quips Donnie, "Broadway in Somerville") “It’s Wicked?” he asks. “Yeah!” “Wicked what?” It’s hard to describe what made the play so effective. A huge acknowle...

Quick note: They usually sell copies of a bound printed collection of all the plays, and I was planning on purchasing a copy this year to help jog my memory and so I could make note of great lines, etc. Sadly, according to the lady at the counter, they’re still working out where they’re going to get the books printed and so they were not available. So I shall be relying exclusively on my chicken scratch notes written in a dark theater. May God help us all. Grass Hog by William Donnelly, directed by Christopher Scully, presented by Battleground State A man named Levesque (Michael Kaye) walks out on the empty stage, active lawn trimmer in tow (seriously, it was plugged in by a long extension chord), minding his own business when another guy named Bettencourt (Kevin LaVelle) crosses, yelling at him to stop. The grass he’s about to cut abuts the property line and while he may like his own grass trim and tidy, this guy prefers his yard less manicured. Actually, the grass itself bel...

Holy cow. Ten straight hours of theater. I did. I sat through every single play. I have twenty-seven solid pages of notes, half a page for each play: all fifty-four of them. Here are some things that I learned: Boston has some a-m-a-z-i-n-g actors. While I definitely saw familiar faces and friends, they were few and far between. Instead I was delighted by performer after performer after performer I had never seen before do some great great work. Watching it all had some terrifying implications for myself as an actor. Granted I know more than a few of them were equity, and that’s not happening any time soon for yours truly, but STILL. Wowza. This town’s also got some amazing playwrights. There were many great, and I’m talking GREAT plays. Plays I would be thrilled to see performed again. Obviously much credit has to be given to the actors and director, but the plays were legitimately surprising and subtle and poignant and laugh out loud funny. I can’t think of the last play I s...

Eugene Vigner, played by a significantly less bald Pat Shea So I know that my last two reviews were not exactly glowing, but that’s about to change with Constance Cogden’s One Day Earlier . Now before I continue: a brief caveat. I know Connie. A little over a decade ago I starred in a production of her (then) new adaptation of Moliere’s The Misanthrope at Amherst College. I had recently dropped out of school but was sort of lingering around Western Massachusetts like a benign tumor. And since all I seemed capable of doing was acting in college theater, I auditioned for the show and was cast. I fear that her very clever adaptation deserved a better production than the one afforded it, but to be fair that’s how I wound up meeting Olivia D’Ambrosio , now famed Artistic Director of Bridge Rep. I’m not trying to name drop, just trying to be transparent regarding my allegiances. However, even if I’d never known Connie, I’d already be biased towards this play. One Day Earlier is a...

The last play I reviewed I had very mixed feelings about. Judith by Julian Olf I’m much more of one mind: I didn’t like it. There are a variety of reasons for this, which I’ll get into, but first: a rundown. Judith is an adaptation of the Book of Judith, a Deuterocanonical book considered part of the Christian canon for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christian sects, but not considered scripture by either Jews or Protestants. Growing up Lutheran myself, I had never heard this story until yesterday afternoon. Though frankly, even if it had been part of the Old Testament I’d grown up with, I’d still probably know nothing. My ignorance on matters biblical could fill an ark. The story is pretty simple: Judith (a luminous Marya Lowery) is an exceptionally pious Jew who has spent the past few years in mourning for her dead husband. In the meantime, the Persian army led by a general by the name of Holofernes is set to lay waste to the city of Israelites. He’s already cut off ...

No, not THAT Romeo! Oh man, do I have some complicated feelings about this play. Written by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich and directed by Brett Marks (full disclosure: I am friends with Brett (but then, who isn’t? This guy gets around!)), Romeo Chang opens on a pair of bickering nurses trying to run simultaneous tests on a patient, Jen (played by the very strong Jessica Webb). One nurse is trying to do an ultra-sound and the other is trying to do another complicated procedure to see whether or not Jen can withstand an experimental procedure for what we soon discover is a terminal illness (I never caught a specific reference to the disease itself, though it’s possible I missed it in the early first scene as I was simply trying to figure out what was going on. My guess: lung cancer). The play smartly leaps past the moral quandary of whether or not she should take treatment to save her own life at the cost of her unborn baby. The outlook is already grim and the odds on the last trea...

If Ten Minute plays require a mastery of the succinct, then what pray tell demands the craft of the One Minute play? Boston already has its own One Minute Play festival, which I had the privilege of being in this past January (along with 65 other local actors). And both witnessing the over hundred one minute plays of that production and again seeing thirty today, my mind reels at the sheer variety so many authors manage to pack into such a small little package. I mean, after all, you barely have enough time to establish a sketch of a character or a situation, let alone allow them to develop. Some of the plays hinged on setting up a situation and then subverting out expectations with a twist ending, making the plays essentially a one minute joke. I have to admit, that I found the ones that did this today less appealing. Marika Barnett’s Lost and Found had a woman trying to convince an airline customer service representative to help her find her missing luggage. She eventually r...

So the big question: what is it like watching six straight hours of theater??? Spoiler Alert: I still don’t know. The last play was shorter than the others and I left the theater a little after five. But still, Noon to five is still a lot of theater to chew through, and the thirty three plays I saw offered a lot of food for thought. “What is that?” I hear you saying, “Thirty three? I thought it was only three full length plays you were watching this evening.” Well, that’s what I thought too! It’s a good thing I’m notoriously early for things, otherwise I would have missed the first of three groups of ten minute plays which preceded each of the longer offerings. Now, I did take notes on all of the mini plays, but I’m not going to review them individually, because it would be almost insane. But in my next post, I’ll talk about the experience generally and point out some of my favorites and not-so-favorites of the bunch. There was no intermission for each of the three play...

The world of theater is an insular business, even in an ostensible metropolis like our fair city . I'm not quite sure how regular independent viewers do it, like Beverly Creasey or the folks at Events Insider or the cavalcade of others, but I imagine that staying objective is a tricky business. Even more so when you're not really a reviewer, but someone who actually works with (or who has aspirations to work with) companies, directors, and playwrights. From scanning thedlist of companies involved, there are three that I've worked with previously (all in the same hour block too, Jesus), and several more of whom I various degrees of connection. How can I possibly remain objective?? The truth of course, is that probably can't. But of course, we come to all things with a variety of biases and expectations. Frankly, I don't think that I'll have trouble staying objective in an interpersonal sense. I'm pretty secure with my relationship to most of my ...

Best free theater outside a Parisian cafe. I know, I know. I've still got whole days before this thing starts. What am I doing writing ANOTHER post? Because I've got hot news! I thought I remembered the marathon as being more than a one day event last year, and friends, countrymen, that's because it is! Saturday BPT is producing three full readings of new works going from noon to six! This is apparently called the "Warm-Up Laps... because you know, sitting through six hours of a staged reading is just enough to get the heart pumping. The plays are Romeo Chang , by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich at 12pm. Judith by Julian Olf at 2pm, and One Day Earlier by Connie Congdon (I know her! She's super nice!) Each play will be performed in Hall A on the second floor of the Calderwood Pavilion and moreover they are completely free . Listen people: if you are even remotely interested in new theater and you don't have anything better scheduled, you owe it to yoursel...

Hello all! This is going to be a weird little micro-specific blog dedicated to reviewing the annual Boston Theater Marathon produced by the Boston Playwrights Theatre annually. A little background: This is the 16th year of the marathon, assuming my Roman Numeral calculus is correct and XVI means 16. It will be performing a week from today, Sunday May, 11th at the Calderwood Pavillion: Here's the deal: Starting from Noon to 10:00pm, Five 10 minute plays will be performed back to back to back to back to back on the hour every hour. Each play is new and original and written for the marathon. Most plays have been rehearsed and directed from a variety of theaters in the greater boston/new england area (or at least that's how I remember it was done last year. Please correct me if I'm wrong). Tickets are $25 preorder or $35 on the day of. The great thing about the tickets is that they're for the full day. Each hour ends with a little seven minute intermission, which all...