A very funny comedian with a tight show. Michelle Collins recently moved to Amsterdam (to be among other tall people), and she lovingly compares the people and norms of the Netherlands to the US. Collins shows slideshows to move along her act: viral Instagram posts, TikToks, dating app profiles, photos and videos from her family vacation, and more. Her commentary is spot on and her storytelling, sprinkled with some songs, is hilarious. She has a loyal fanbase and excels at crowd work, lovingly ragging on audience members throughout the show.
Joe's Pub at the Public The play begins with a group of Black pregnant high schoolers practicing basketball, except only one of them is really pregnant – and they're all wearing fake baby bellies. The coach won't let April (Brittany Bellizeare) play while pregnant and the team needs her to win the next game. It's 1998 in rural Arkansas, and options are limited. Tensions are high on and off the court as the girls compete with each other and hope to attract a scout that will offer a scholarship for college, a way out of the life they know. When April decides to make the journey to get an illegal abortion, the girls band together to support her despite religious belief (from Ciara, played by Ciara Monique, who is also a harboring a secret relationship with Donna, played by Renita Lewis) and personal beef (between the ultra-competitive Sidney, played by Tamera Tomakili, and Starra, played by Erica Matthews, after Sidney pokes holes in Starra's condoms).
The actors actually play basketball on stage, and the direction of the final game is an amazing feat of theater. The girls narrate the game as they move around the court, playing offense and miming defense. Talk about hitting your marks. They make and miss baskets on cue (for the most part), all while portraying fully formed characters. The play is a little long, but tells an important story with heart. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center Alex Edelman is a great storyteller and this is a great story to tell. A little slow to pick up, Edelman finds his groove after he stops making caveats about his work. It's a disclaimer of sorts that what you're able to see has serious underlying implications - it's not silly, just-for-fun humor. That being said, the show is hilarious.
After a post on Twitter, Edelman started receiving anti-semitic comments from white nationalists. Out of curiosity he started a group of these accounts and began following their posts. One day someone posted an event invite asking "Do you live in NYC? Do you have questions about your whiteness?" and included details for a meetup in Queens - the most diverse borough in one of the most diverse cities in the world. Edelman, as an Ashkenazi Jew living in NYC, decided to go. The show details this adventure with asides that give us insight into Edelman's very conservative Jewish upbringing. The result is poignant and funny and makes us confront the warped viewpoint that more and more of this country has. Spoiler alert: Towards the end of the meeting Edelman is outed as a Jew and takes his leave unscathed. Hudson Theatre Patty, played by Rhea Perlman, is meant to represent any of the many Upper West Side Jewish woman in New York City. She spends her days chopping vegetables to make homemade dog food, and talks mainly to her grown niece, Sammy (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer), who she raised. The main topic of talk is her daughter, a struggling artist - we only see Cecile (Arielle Goldman) in a few scenes and in most of them she sits in rehab and barely speaks.
We don't see Patty interact with Cecile very much. Most of the time we're in Patty's kitchen, she's chopping away at nothing (the chop timing is impressive but it's a wonder Perlman doesn't have bandaged fingers by now), and Sammy is over for a visit. Towards the end, when Patty does visit Cecile, we finally see Patty's neurotic, overbearing presence crushing Cecile. Meanwhile Sammy is (eagerly?) waiting for her wife's homophobic elderly mother to die, and taking on the brunt of Patty's cyclical conversation. We also hear briefly about Sammy's adoption and her mother dying young, but it all seems simply a way to explain away a close relationship to Patty. The play slogs on a bit, but it was fun to see Perlman up close. Claire Tow Theater, Lincoln Center |
Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|