Private Practice

www.christophermurray.org

Slackonomics

My Revson Fellow pal Claudia Preparata introduced me to her friend, writer Lisa Chamberlain this past weekend. Lisa's new book, Slackonomics, comes out in a week or so and looks like a terrific window in the the generation x world through an economic lense. Check it out at her webpage!

Recent Backstage Review

Four Women & a Waitress
June 13, 2008
By Christopher Murray
Each of the brief one-acts on this double bill features a pair of women engaged in conflict -- two sisters in Edward Allan Baker's Rosemary With Ginger and two actors in Strindberg's The Stronger, translated by Carl Mueller -- expressed in coarse argument in the former and subtle observation in the latter.

In Rosemary With Ginger, the eponymous sisters come together upon the closing of Rhode Island's Peter Pan Diner in 1993. Among the worn chairs, dirty walls, and half-filled coffee cups, they attempt to fill out an entry for a mother-of-the-month contest to honor their long-suffering mom but quickly fall into recrimination about the way their lives have turned out.

Pamela Shaw, with big hair and blue sunglasses and cracking both gum and wise, portrays the alcoholic Rosemary as struggling to maintain a sense of umbrage at most likely losing custody of her children. Aria Alpert as Ginger maintains a tense smile in the face of her sister's foulmouthed jeremiads even as her own marriage has hit the rocks. The play, directed by actor Karl Bury, is a little clunky, following standardized dramatic clichés, but the actors reveal the bonds of survivorhood that temper the sister's obvious distaste for one another.

In Strindberg's jewel of a monologue, Frau X (the frisky and intelligent Francesca Faridany) comes upon her old acting and romantic rival, Mlle. Y (noted Swiss actor and director Marthe Keller) in a café on Christmas Eve. While Frau X talks and talks, working her way through nostalgia, accusation, and finally self-satisfied admiration for her friend, Mlle. Y sits silently, nibbling on almonds and reacting only in gesture and glance.

The piece, directed by opera director Stephen Wadsworth, is a cheeky bit of theatrical effect in its deliberate unbalance, but it works, because both actors are so tuned into one another's communication of emotion and tension, expressed in endless anecdote or the meaningful silence of a cat. Keller's beatific smile and worried eyes say volumes, while Faridany's sense of comedy and pathos is evident from her entrance, when she first spies her friend and her eyes light up and the torrent of words gushes forth.




Presented by Maggie Maes and Kimberly Vaughn
at the ArcLight Theatre, 152 W. 71st St., NYC.
June 11-22. Tue.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 5 p.m.
(212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.

Recent Backstage Review

This Is a Cowboy Poem My Daddy Taught Me
June 03, 2008
By Christopher Murray
Katie Bender's wistful and moving new play, in which she also appears, is set in the west Texas desert town of Marfa, which, a program note explains, the playwright passed through in 2004, learning it was the adopted home and creative laboratory of minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, who died in 1994.

Throughout This Is a Cowboy Poem My Daddy Taught Me, Bender has a fictionalized version of Judd (the craggy Stephen Payne affecting a folksy twinkle reminiscent of Will Rogers) deliver a series of monologues explaining his creative and social vision as defined by his commitment to building an artistic haven among the dusty, disaffected denizens of Marfa.

Bender also explores the impact of this transplanted patriarch on the intersecting lives of a young woman named Love (Bender), who is retracing the pit stops of her wayward post-hippie mother; a disappointed local named Scrappy (Jesse Presler); and, in flashbacks, Scrappy's bellicose, rifle-toting sister Crystal (Mary Guiteras). Scrappy and Crystal were abandoned by their parents to white-trash squalor and an intense, almost incestuous interdependence.

On Stephanie Tucci's economically designed set, short scenes alternate among three locales: Judd's studio, the bar where Scrappy pours whiskey for Love as they share tales of lost legacies and shattered dreams, and the dilapidated front porch of the siblings' house, littered with dented Diet Coke cans used for target practice and the jetsam of a hardscrabble childhood: broken toys and overwashed underclothes.

Lost parents and the betrayals inherent in moving on from childhood's disillusionments are themes expressed mostly in traditional realistic dialogue, with expressionistic collage elements added as the play builds to its climax under Stephanie Yankwitt's deft direction. The subtle and apt costuming is by Jennifer L. Adams.

An excessive reliance on monologues to express the characters' emotional states reveals the play to be incompletely dramatized, but heartfelt performances engage the audience's empathy. Presler stands out in a workhorse role, his pinched, unshaven face moving from an adolescent's gawky credulity to a young man's numb disbelief in the possibility of his own redemption.

Presented by Rockstead Productions and the Cardinal Group at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex's Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, 312 W. 36th St., New York City.
May 29-June 15. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.
(212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.
Casting by Judy Bowman.

The Brooklyn Paper Shout Out

The redoutable editor of the award-winning Brooklyn Paper, Gersh Kuntzman, (did you know he also co-wrote the critically acclaimed off-broadway play "SUV: The Musical" with songwriter Marc Dinkin?), was kind enough to give my private practice a shout out in last week's issue. Thanks, Gersh!


Our gay/political/social work/writer/Democratic insider pal Christopher Murray was happy to report that he’s now licensed as a social worker by New York State and has set up a private practice. First on the agenda? Life-coaching sessions with gay men or men with a history of substance abuse (or both?). Contact him at www.christophermurray.org. …

Josef Kozak Drawing

I just acquired this untitled drawing by Josef Kozak from the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. Outsider artist Kozak creates detailed mythological fantasias often weaving elements from 17th century and Native American images and motifs. Usually sexually explicit, his work is technically at a high level, and incorporates a winking humor into a strongly narrative expression.

This piece was featured in a recent edition of "The Archive," the journal of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, and was made available to me by Charles Leslie.

An interview with Kozak appeared in the Spring/Summer, 1999 edition of "The Archive".

Backstage Review of The Judas Tree

The Judas Tree
April 29, 2008
By Christopher Murray

The historical story of currently incarcerated Latina serial killer Dorothea Puente, who dispatched elderly and drifter residents of her Sacramento boarding house, makes terrific dramatic material in Mary Fengar Gail's fictionalized The Judas Tree.

MultiStages' world premiere production is set a film noirish 30 years previous to the 1988 conviction of Puente. Voluptuous landlady Elena Fiero (played with defiant intensity by the comely Roseanne Medina) sees herself as a bruja and priestess of nature, saying, "I killed no one…. They sacrificed themselves through me," though she happily cashes her victims' government checks. When the uncle of a young woman who disappeared while staying with Elena asks a retired private investigator (John Haggerty) to insinuate himself into her world, he quickly falls prey to Elena's seductive charms and risks being another victim planted in her garden.

Told through the familiar Law & Order framing device of a trial, The Judas Tree alternates between somewhat prolonged two-person scenes full of florid language — "We chicas know the chacha of the flowers as they dance" — and sung commentary by five dancers comprising what the program calls the Chorus Corpus Flora, who wave their arms in ecstatic, Isadora Duncan-style movements choreographed by Jennifer Chin.

This play with music (by Anika Paris, with lyrics by James Schevill) drags in places by overlaboring the religious and botanical symbolism of Elena's specious rationale for her murders. But a strong supporting cast helps make up for that, particularly Daniel H. Hicks in the dual roles of the concerned uncle and an elderly boarder, Tanya Perez as a chatty boarder and expert witness, and José Febus in several roles, most movingly a disabled boarder who becomes an unwilling accomplice.

Presented by MultiStages

at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center's Teatro La Tea, 107 Suffolk St., 2nd floor, NYC.

April 26-May 11. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., May 4, 5 p.m.; Sun., May 11, 2 p.m.

(212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.