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EmmyAward winners Holland Taylor and Buck Henry starred in Motherby Lisa Ebersole, which played at The Wild Project in New York duringJuly and August 2009. Photo credit: Alison Cartwright
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PerfectHarmony is sharp as a blade. The performances aremagnificently hilarious. The harmonies — typically absurdversions of pop songs — range from lovely to ridiculous toriotous. They help to make Perfect Harmony as close to perfect as anyFringe show can be.
- Leonard Jacobs, Backstage
Pitch perfect! A hysterical lookinside the high-pressure world of high school a cappella singing, Perfect Harmony reminds us of why wehave the prolific Fringe Festival: to find the plays that deservebigger stages and, if possible, a longer applause.
-Rachel Wynn, Show BusinessWeekl
Well-nighperfection, as the title promises!
David Finkle, TheatreMania
PerfectHarmony is a charming mockumentary. Terrific.It was a joy to watch such sensational performers!
- David Hurst, Next Magazine
The principal pleasure of the Roundtable Ensemble's currentproduction of Shakespeare's TheTaming of the Shrew is the cast's ability to convince usthat the whole play is being improvised. Director Andrew Grosso'sconcept that the whole thing is being played out backstage at a USOshow as a sort of competition between military officers andentertainers gives the actors a good excuse to madly switch offcharacters, and seemingly riff off each other's cues... it's a greatshowcase for this acting talent.
The basic story is well-known: As a joke, a group of menconvince the drunken Christopher Sly that he actually is a nobleman andperform a play for him. The play involves a Signor Baptista's twodaughters: ill-tempered Katherina and beautiful Bianca. Lucentio wantsto marry Bianca, as do two other suitors, but Baptista won't marryBianca off until Katherina is married first. Petruchio, seeking a wifewho will make him rich, arrives and agrees to woo Kate. She puts upquite a fight, demeaning him with volley after volley of invective, butPetruchio still announces they will be married. Her insults arereturned when he shows up late to the wedding and then proceeds todeprive her of food, claiming that it isn't good enough for her. Biancaand Lucentio are married after a series of incidents involvingdisguises and mistaken identity, and Hortensio marries a widow (in thisproduction Christopher Sly is inspired to jump into the on-stage actionto portray the widow), and all are surprised that it is Bianca, notKate, that is uncooperative at the group wedding banquet.
The production moves quickly and is performed in one 90-minuteact... The size of the cast is economical, too: each of the actors(aside from Kate, Petruchio, and Sly) plays multiple roles and oftenthey are frantically switching between characters... the cast does avery good job of keeping it clear who is who, even when performingseveral roles within one scene! They excel at putting on variousaccents and genders, not to mention costume pieces, and it's all doneto great comic effect.
Each of the players is worth mentioning. Tom Butler'sPetruchio is a swaggering soldier at the beginning, but layers of depthare revealed as he pursues and "tames" Kate. Paul Whitthorne is aprissy, sour Kate, which is appropriate, but he makes his journey toher final submission a believable one and becomes a much warmerpresence. Autumn Dornfeld is terrific in several roles including Biancaand Gremio. Jonathan Kells Phillips has come up with some very funnycharacterizations, including a Pedant who seems to owe something to JimBackus of Gilligan's Island. B. Brian Argotsingerputs his nebbishy persona to good use throughout and Alex Smith provesto be the most chameleonic, taking on no less than 9 roles, sometimesswitching characters from line to line.
Ironically, however, it is the actor with the least stage timewho makes the most lasting impression. Arthur Aulisi is genuinelytouching as the drunkard Sly, who watches the whole play from the firstrow of the audience and is so moved and enchanted by the spell of thestorytelling that he joins the actors on stage to play the widow in thefinal scene. For the conclusion of the play, Aulisi plays Sly as morechildlike than drunk, and Grosso adds in Rosalind's epilogue from As You Like It for Sly todeliver following his "performance" as the widow. Again, Aulisi isgentle and touching in this humorous "apology" for the bad behavior ofboth men and women in Shrew:
I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men,to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men,for the love you bear to women—as I perceive by yoursimpering, none of you hates them—that between you and thewomen the play may please.
The staging includes a good deal of expertly-executedslapstick (Teddy Cañez is credited as fight coordinator).The set mostly consists of the Chernuchin Theatre's permanent catwalkwhich is smartly used, and there are some appropriate period props onthe stage. Becky Lasky's costumes communicate character clearly, andshe has dug up some very funny, very over-the-top costume pieces, forthe actors to relish and play with.
-January 20, 2007, Matt Schicker, nytheatre.com review
The actors putting on this “Shrew” are varietyplayers in a USO show who pass the time backstage playing cards andannoying each other with their warm-ups until a drunk (Arthur Aulisi)stumbles in. They throw him in a robe, start calling him“Lord” and plant him in the front row of theaudience for the duration – or at least until he makes hisown stage debut in the final act. Complicit in the duplicity, theaudience is roped along into the show, with six actors tackling 23parts (with the help of identifying props and accents).
It makes sense that for theplay-within-a-play to work, there has to be some doubling. And thedouble casting sets up some interesting juxtapositions: If the sameactor (in this case Alex Smith) plays Bianca’s fatherBaptista and her eventually successful suitor, Lucentio, then hereventual choice of him is both natural – after all,it’s a type she knows and of which he must approve– and slightly alarming, in its confirmation ofBaptista’s power over her. (She couldn’t have madeit work with the suitor Gremio, whose part actress Autumn Dornfeldtakes with a pair of thick glasses and an old man’s affect.)
But the most surprising change aboutthe Roundtable’s adaptation is the male player who takes therole of Katarina – or is forced into it, having assigned allthe other parts. Once we’ve gotten over actor PaulWhitthorne’s mustache and his player’s disdain forthe role, it presents us with a series of questions about theshrew’s own nature. Having seen her state, why does Petruchio(the swaggering Tom Butler) continue to pursue her? Is“shrewish” just a synonym for “too muchlike a man?” (Whitthorne drapes himself with a blue checkedapron but makes no pretense of raising his voice to play her,foregrounding the difference.)
And it changes the titular taming:With a man in Katarina’s shoes, the struggle between her andPetruchio takes on an erotic subtext which was present in the originalplay when all the parts were played by men, but which our moderncastings have allowed us to forget. Instead of being physicallyoverpowered by him, the implication is that she chooses to submit.There is no pretense at unending love here: Katarina’s finalspeech to her fellow wives seems like a performance, rather than alecture, and is thus easier to swallow.
The play ends on an unresolved chord;we’re left pondering Butler’s rendition of“You Belong To Me” and wondering how much truththere is in it for Baptista’s daughters.
-Ellen Wernecke, New Theatre Corps
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December 2004, The BeltTheater,
“It's ahigh-spirited, feel-good rock show interspersed with pop, blues,excursions into larynx-wrenching Broadway-type ballads, and miniaturemock production numbers. ... a gritty, freewheeling version of "
-Ron Cohen,BACKSTAGE
”Thisshow—the most fun I've had at a new musical in months, maybeyears—is all about the jubilation that comes from figuringout and then following your path. The actors, musicians, and audienceshare in the sheer joy of the thing and when it's over, just abouteverybody is in a great mood. What Mamma Mia! And
-Martin Denton, NYTHEATRE.COM
The cast of
- Jessica Cogan, NEWYORKCOOL.COM
I couldn’t havechosen a better show. WrongWay Up’s high energy cast are accomplished performers who canmake an audience laugh or cry with their inspired commitment to asong’s heart tugging poignancy then quickly turn around anddeliver witty lyrics that make Andrew Grosso’s directionworthy of his reputation”.
-
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“Director Grosso,confronted with a crumbling, badly disintegrating East RiverAmphitheater … proves that “Waiting forGodot” will work anywhere, anytime, and under anycircumstance imaginable… The integration of the East RiverAmphitheater into the very heart of the play itself comes as both asurprise and an indicator of the care with which this production wasput together. Make no mistake: this is a solid, decidedly worthwhileproduction of the play, well cast and universally wellperformed.” - Joseph Hurley, IRISH ECHO
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“DirectorGrosso should be commended for his wise and ruthless choices he makeshere. He’s created a brisk, no-frills evening that bringsShakespeare’s central themes into sharp relief.” - Eric Grode, Backstage
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“Director Grossosustains a cracking pace and extracts wry humor from thequintessentially American passion play hostage drama that ensues. Three people that youwouldn’t want to get involved with end up making for anenjoyable evening.”
- Charles Godfrey-Faussett, TIME OUT
“Outstandingperformances and superb direction make this one of the best evenings Ihave ever spent in the theater.”
- Jane Marlow, HAM & HIGH,
“Atriumph of style … the standard of acting isimpressive”
- Andrew Aldridge, THE STAGE,
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