Spin is a multi-disciplinary piece featuring: music, spoken-word poetry, monologues and visual projections. Made up of approximately a dozen segments, I felt the same way about Spin that I do about CDs. (A fitting analogy, I hope, as Parry is also a musician and was in fact selling her CD last night.) What I mean is that I generally don’t like every song on a CD. I love some songs, like a few, and then there are one or two that I feel should probably have been left off entirely. (My show partner, Joanne, was trying to come up with a bicycle metaphor on the way home. Something about how you can love the handlebar streamers but still find the banana seat uncomfortable? I think mine works better).
Edward Albee’s first play The Zoo Storyis a conversation between two strangers who meet on a park bench. So Red One Theatre decided to forego actually renting theatre space and carting around a bench prop, and is staging it on park benches across the city throughout September.
Smile (presented this week by Randolph Academy) has all the elements of a good musical – impressive music, a good story, and meaty roles for triple threat performers. So why hasn’t this show by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman stood the test of time, like Phantom or West Side Story have?
I’m going to guess it’s the references to Gorbachev and Terri Garr. This show is pure 80’s, complete with rotary phones and Aqua Net hair. So maybe we had to wait for the 80’s to be retro cool again before dusting this dated musical off? In any case, I liked the show; it was toe-tapping and funny (and in some places, kind of sad.)
You know how sometimes you see an opening act at a concert, and you think “Wow, these guys are really good. Who even needs the main act?” And then actually you see the main act, and you’re like “Never mind. Yeah, this is what I paid for.” Head First is like that. The three pieces are all just fine separately, but the third piece so eclipses the ones before it that you feel a little bad for the other two. Fortunately, they’re all from the same company, so I don’t feel that bad for them.
You know what I love about the Fringe Festival? I love that you can go see a post-modern retelling of Lysistrata one minute, and then go see a play about poo the next. Isn’t theatre great?
I attended a workshop presentation of Spin, by theatre creator Evalyn Parry, it was a one-night event as part of the Hysteria Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.