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Playing with Canons
Edited by Martin Denton
New York Theatre Experience $26
596 Pages
Dateline: 4th December, 2007
This massive volume compiled by NYtheatre.com's Martin Denton contains
the full scripts of eighteen contemporary American plays. As such, it
is taking a long time to get through in a busy schedule. In order to
give an early feel for a very worthwhile project, this is initially
a review at the one-third point that will be updated periodically as
time permits.
For anyone wishing to get immersed in New York Indie Theatre, Playing
with Canons will prove a useful and very entertaining read. Its
subtitle tells the story - Explosive New Works from Great Literature
by America's Indie Playwrights.
For British readers, it will be an introduction to many writers whose
work has not yet travelled the Atlantic and shows that the Off and Off-Off
Broadway scene is vibrant, if possibly more experimental than some might
ideally wish to stomach.
The first three plays owe their existence to Shakespeare, but refreshingly,
two are not based on the best-known works.
Kirk Wood Bromley's Want's Unwisht Work modernises Love's
Labours Lost for the post-Punk era. The writer uses vibrant language,
often in blank verse and takes as his subject sex and couplings, rarely
simple. He writes very entertainingly, although the plot is sometimes
subsumed by his desire to impress with poetry.
By way of contrast, Larry Loebell's enjoyable re-working of The
Tempest, La Tempestad is more interested in working with
Shakespeare's plot than language. The play resets Prospero's Island
on Vieques in the Caribbean. This was used by the USA as a weapons testing
site for sixty years and allows Prospero, Miranda and their good and
bad colleagues, Ariel and Caliban, to engage in a debate about American
imperialism.
Shawn Northrip has turned Shakespeare's bloodiest shocker into Titus
X, a wild punk rock musical. Even though it is determinedly contemporary,
the hip, modern and very American script maintains the spirit and much
of the plot of the original. This Punk/Goth horrorshow is one play from
Playing with Canons that this reviewer is dying to see.
The next section starts with a complete change in style and tempo.
Matthew Freeman has re-created Genesis or more specifically the
biblical Mystery Plays that constituted theatre so many centuries ago.
Drawing from those of York, Wakefield and Chester, he has compiled five
short plays in poetic, if sometimes archaic, language.
These tell some of the most dramatic tales of all time. There are the
Creation and Fall of Lucifer; the pairings of Adam and Eve (with the
serpent Lucifer); Cain and Abel; and Abraham and Isaac; as well as the
Flood.
David Johnston's very free adaptation of Aeschylus' The Eumenides
is a fragment of his larger Oresteia. It is a sassy, modern language
romp through the trial of Orestes for killing his mother Clytemnestra
at the behest of Apollo. Johnston's enjoyable script races along, containing
a great deal of humour within a tragic framework that even allows a
dozen audience members to decide the murderer's fate (well, in theory).
Principia by Michael Maiello is a witty musical featuring Kerry
who seems like a modern version of a Greek ancient. He finds a golden
apple and meets a weird collection of demi-Gods and hangers-on from
different eras and genres as he searches for peace, wealth and happiness.
The Russians open with Uncle Jack, Jeff Cohen's affectionate
updating of Uncle Vanya to West Virginia today and as he puts
it "rather than being a gimmick or an attempt to deconstruct or
one-up Chekhov, (was) a serious attempt to restore the original intent
of the author for a contemporary American audience".
More soon.
Philip Fisher
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