Tag: queer voices

REVIEW: Stop Kiss

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Rude Mechanicals completes their 2023-24 season with the 1999 play by Diana Son, Stop Kiss. Seeing this play was a new experience for me, and quite a beautiful one.

Set from Stop Kiss in the Arthur Miller Theater.

The play follows two young women, Callie (Emilia Vizachero) and Sara (Victoria Vourkoutiotis), who meet in New York City and begin to have feelings for one another. One evening, they share a kiss in the West Village, and it results in a terrible hate crime leaving Sara with a life-altering injury. The play follows a non-linear storyline, jumping from Sara and Callie’s first interaction to weeks after the attack.

 

I am not cultured on much queer theater, so I haven’t been exposed to many pieces where characters are actively discovering their sexual identity during the show—rather many pieces I’ve encountered have characters come in with their sexuality seemingly decided. I enjoyed this piece’s honest and sincere exploration of queerness.

I was immediately struck by Audrey Tieman’s beautiful onstage set when I walked into the Arthur Miller. It brought me directly into the moment of the show with an ornate pink apartment—the 1990s, young, and within a metropolitan city. The major part of the set was far upstage, juxtaposing the thrust space. This left the apartment scenes feeling more presentational than personal, counteracting the intimacy of a thrust. All of the scenes outside the apartment were on the thrust, such as the detective’s office or moments when characters were strolling through the streets of New York City. An interesting choice, that sometimes led me out of the detail of the world that was created in the embellished apartment set.

Emilia Vizachero and Adam Rogers delivered individually exquisite performances. Rogers is effortlessly charming as Callie’s undefined partner, George, and Vizachero brilliantly leads us through a journey of Callie’s many complex emotions over two timelines—one I would be happy to experience again. Vourkoutiotis also played a sweet and gentle Sara, with wholesome chemistry alongside a witty Vizachero.

 

Emilia Vizachero as Callie.

Direction (by Reese Leif) was cohesive and thorough. Scenes and dramatic moments felt naturally paced, at times skimming on hyper-realism, making the play’s brutal contrast of content duly apparent to the audience.

 

The illuminating kiss that closes the play leaves a fully realized portrait of Callie and Sara’s relationship. This perfectly placed scene becomes charged over the duration of the play due to the revelations about what lies behind and ahead of these beloved characters. It was an unforgettable (and titular) moment of the piece, yet left my heart aching for the two women.

 

 

Leo Kupferberg (a fabulous and frequent SMTD Dramaturg) made a beautiful point in his dramaturgy note about the “in-between” of the piece, which I left the theater pondering. This show revels in the lack of certainty, unwavering bravery, and messiness many women navigate through. Stop Kiss can feel limited to its darkness and crucial messaging of the tumultuous experiences of many LGBTQ+ relationships, but Leif brings out the beauty in such darkness, reminding us that love always prevails.

 

 

 

 

 

April 20th, 8pm. Arthur Miller Theater. Images thanks to @umrudes on Instagram.

REVIEW: Falsettos

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[Title photo: Sam O’Neill (left), Caleb McArthur and James Parascandola.]

It’s not often that I see a show that leaves me as moved as Basement Art’s production of Falsettos did.

Basement Arts is an organization whose mission is to create “inclusive student-produced theatre by allowing students from across campus to execute all aspects of the theatrical production process”. They perform three shows a semester, as well as produce the annual Late Night events such as the Mx. Walgreen Pageant and 24-Hour Theater. This semester already featured some emotional heavy hitters —Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties by Jen Silverman and For Colored Girls/When The Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

Falsettos is a culmination of merging two one-act musicals, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, produced individually in 1981 and 1990. A fully sung-through musical— there are few moments without song. However, much of the show reads as a play, with heightened drama in every moment and not a single superfluous word. The show follows a Jewish Family in New York City in the 1970s— Marvin (Sam O’Neill), the frustrated ex-husband of the underappreciated Trina (Caroline Patterson), and partner to the stylish Whizzer (Caleb McArthur). Trina and Marvin’s son, Jason (James Parascandola), is growing up quickly, rapidly reaching the age of his bar mitzvah. Among all this, Trina and Marvin’s psychiatrist, (Sammy Guthartz), fall in love and get married. Thus, completes the web of this unusually interwoven family. That is, until you meet the quirky lesbians from next door in Act II, Dr. Charlotte (Abby Lyons) and Cordelia (Kate Cummings).

Falsettos was written by the incomparable William Finn and James Lapine, both Jewish writers (and Finn identifying as queer himself). It’s hard not to love this gem of a show. Its mechanical musical composition and emphasis on developing endearing and complex characters make the show feel complete and questionably familiar. The music is fun and catchy yet requires exceptional musical expertise to execute well (skillful music direction by Caleb Middleton).  The story blends humor and heartache while these characters are on their quests for happiness and acceptance.

The relevance that Falsettos retains from its 1992 premiere is remarkable. Difficult family dynamics, a rapidly changing social landscape, and a world that feels like it’s uncontrollably crumbling around them. Successful musicals stand the test of time, and after over three decades it’s clear that Falsettos made the cut.

The tense family dynamics were masterfully cultivated by director Naomi Parr and navigated equally as masterfully by this intense and thoughtful cast. Patterson (the needy, Trina) has one of the most captivating voices in the show—she does not shy away from the luxurious lines in the score while capturing Trina’s true angst and frustration with the imprudent men in her life. Her dynamic alongside the charming and perfectly awkward Mendel (Guthartz) was sublime. O’Neill and McArthur navigate perhaps the most complicated relationship dynamic in the show, one loaded with lust and devotion, sprinkled with violence and need for acceptance. The nuance the two brought to this unbelievably deep relationship was remarkable. Whizzer and Marvin’s poignant love maneuvered through each twist and turn, even past the heartbreaking finale—an arduous task beautifully achieved. Underneath these two intricate relationships leaves Jason (Parascandola), who left to pick up the pieces (literally and physically). Parascandola’s playful exchange with youth and hope left me rooting for Jason, wondering where his little life will take him next. It’s plain to see how this cast ripped my heart out and left it in the 1970s with them.

The cast of “Falsettos” and director Naomi Parr.

Parr states in her director’s note: “Falsettos addresses devastating tragedy but lives instead in the celebration of life, including mishaps that surround these moments of grief.” With one of the most responsive and touched audiences I’ve ever encountered, it seems the only thing missing from Falsettos was another weekend of shows.

 

April 6th, 9pm. Newman Studio. Images thanks to Naomi Parr and Basement Arts.

REVIEW: Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters

Ella Larsen Leave a comment

**featured image from the performance trailer on UMS.org

8:00pm • Saturday, February 4, 2023 • Arthur Miller Theater

Yet again, I was mistaken in my assumption that Your Sexts Are Shit would be a simple comedy performance. Through a combination of love (and sex) letters among historical figures, screenshots of sexts (and not-sexts), and her own constructed narrative, Rachel Mars paid tribute to the voices and stories we have historically neglected to value.

Mars took a different approach to sharing each form of writing with the audience. Each style was represented visually onstage–to the right was a chest of drawers topped with a noisy, old-fashioned carousel slide projector that cast the slightly-askew letters onto a small screen. At the center, a modern projector flicked between sexts at the click of a remote. To the left, a pristine home office complete with studio lighting and Mac were set up on a slight platform. Each location lent its own interpretation to the written words Mars read, and in the Q&A, she described how these connected with the different impacts forms of communication have on their readers. For example, there is a different kind of eroticism behind sending a letter and the uncertainty of waiting for a response than in the immediacy of texting.

Also in the Q&A, Mars shared the intentionality behind her curation of the letters and texts. James Joyce’s letters to Nora Barnacle were included first, because her chance encounter with them in 2020 was what led to the project in the first place. However, she used his letters to draw attention to the fact that while the famous author’s letters have been preserved, history has not assigned the same value to his partner’s voice. This was a common theme among the letters chosen: they represented voices, or relationships, we erase. We erase women who own their sexuality, and we erase the evidence of people in power who don’t fit our expectations of womanhood or manhood. During the performance I heard one of the older audience-members next to me asking his partner, “Are these real?” I feel like it demonstrated the extent of that erasure, where even if evidence is right before our eyes we question its integrity because it clashes so intensely with our pre-conceived understanding of reality.

Something Mars said which struck me was that she takes the letters, and the texts, “quite seriously.” While we might laugh at the brazenness of Joyce’s letters, they are still the remnants of a real relationship between two real people. While I may have entered the performance with the mindset that it would be all easy laughter (which perhaps already says something about how society has taught me to think about sexuality), I left with a newfound curiosity about the other stories we neglect to take seriously.