OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW
SPIN
Reviewed by Rebecca Lewis-Whitson
Published 2008-10-18
There are places in this city where art still manages to squirm free from that yoke placed around its neck and secured tightly in place by a budget plan and a producer’s desire to recoup. Spin, a new series of one-acts playing at The Cherry Lane Theatre, reminds one of the good old days when the west village was alive with new and sometimes experimental work made for the sake of creating art, and not for creating a profit.
The one-acts, by Gina Gionfriddo, Elizabeth Meriwether, Adam Rapp, Mark Schultz, and Judith Thompson, all dip toes in different methods of story telling. The pieces range from satirical, to real, to absurd, but they all deal with the universal themes of human connection (i.e. sex, love), art, and politics and most feel tangibly relevant to life in this country today.
Some scenes, such as Gionfriddo’s “ America ’s Got Tragedy” and Thompson’s “Nail Biter,” appeal to the audience’s collective knowledge of recent news from both the political and the entertainment scenes. The former, an amusing spoof on today’s reality game show craze, pits Britney Spears against a recently killed American solder in Iraq in a game show that provides a cash reward to the contestant whose life is the most tragic. The latter is a one-man piece in which a Canadian CSIS agent expresses his own humanity despite his part in the interrogation (which included turning a blind eye on evident torture) of a 15-year-old boy captured in a Taliban compound and detained at Guantanamo Bay .
Other scenes appeal to the universality of human nature, such as Meriwhether’s “90 Days,” in which a man and a woman try desperately to preserve their connection during a trying time in a long distance relationship, and Schultz’s “Fun,” an oddly moving one-act showing the human side of the pornography industry.
Rapp’s piece, entitled “Tone Unknown” is the absurd, almost surreal one-act of the bunch. It details the impending doom of a woman who, though she had studied acting at Julliard, has been reduced to a D-list sexpot anchor woman on a pop TV show that searches for the newest scoop on strange and titillating stories about the entertainment industry. While an interesting piece of obvious artistic merit, it leaves one rather befuddled, thinking ‘Well I know that meant something….I’m just…not quite sure what.’ Of course, such intangibility very well may be part of the whole point of the piece, too.
Five talented actors, Patch Darragh, Rebecca Henderson, Jesse Hooker, David Ross, and Dreama Walker, portray each of the characters in all five one-acts. Their stellar performances display not only an impressive versatility, but often an honest and amiable presence onstage that helps heighten the immediacy and appeal of some of the pieces, especially “90 Days” and “Fun.” Jesse Hooker’s poignant and understated performance as the sole actor in “Nail Biter” causes him to stand out, yet the five actors on a whole operate as a seamless ensemble.
At only 85 minutes, directors Evan Cabnet and Alex Kilgore keep the pace briskly moving, and wisely never indulge in the urge to push the desire to make a political or artistic statement. Instead, they let the plays speak for themselves, only once slightly tugging at our heartstrings with some appropriately timed screen projections. John McDermott’s minimalist and easily adaptable sets and Nicole Pearce’s sharp and effective lighting help facilitate an evening in which art is used as a way to come to terms with the growing difficulties we are all facing in our lives as New Yorkers, as Americans, and as members of the human race.
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