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| Kate Sandberg and Terry
Schappert |
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Photo Credit:Tony
Knighthawk |
| Ah, the outdoor summer theatrical:
fast, cheap and out of control, relying more on
broadswords than on brains, it is what makes summer in
New York worth sticking around for. Blunt Theater
Company’s post-apocalyptic production of Rashomon
epitomizes the genre.
A stage adaptation of
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 cinematic masterpiece (itself
adapted from two short stories by turn-of-the-century
Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa), Rashomon
tells the story of a violent crime from the wildly
conflicting points of view of the perpetrator, victim,
and witnesses.
Here’s five reasons why you
should see this show:
It’s outdoors. The
community garden at 9th and C is a fantastic outdoor
venue - beautiful, quiet, and relatively free of
irritating insects and Jimmy Smits, making it the best
spot for summer theater in the city.
It’s
fast. At just over an hour, you can catch Rashomon
after dinner in one of the East Village’s trendy little
eateries and still make it to Korova Milk Bar before the
crowds show up.
It’s violent. Okay, only
one character gets killed – but, since the same story
gets told over and over in this masterpiece about the
frailty of perspective, you get to watch him get snuffed
four times in a row.
It stars World Wrestling
Superstar Chris Benoit as the villain Tajomaru.
Okay, not really. It’s actually Terry Schappert playing
Tajomaru, but the difference is trivial.
It’s
free. Well, free-ish - as long as you’re
hard-hearted enough to withstand a little guilt-tripping
from the company’s directors afterwards.
And so
what if the some of the performances are uneven, or the
staging leaves a little to be desired? There are cool
sword fights (by Dan Renkin and Brad Lemons), and
grade-A nifty plastic-and-fishnet costumes (Virigina
Tuller) and a healthy dose of East Village Wierdness. If
the “we’re-making–it-up-as-we-go-along” blocking bothers
you, you can watch artist James Harley painting really
neat pictures in the background in lieu of a set.
As far as acting goes, Kate Sandberg stands out
from the crowd as the wife of the murdered man. She
turns on a dime from shy to hostile, from damaged to
oversexed, as the various stories and perspectives
demand. And Shappert, either despite or because of his
WWF-super-stardom, is fun to watch: brash and blustering
and good with the sword.
Howell Mayer performs
nicely as the morally conflicted woodcutter, and Kenneth
Garson, the company’s executive director, wears a lot of
different wigs as the obligatory transvestite hooker.
Rashomon is good, clean, fun – which is
what you’d expect from the one company in New York that
can actually spell “theater.” The folks at Blunt know
better than to try to get philosophical with this piece
– the failure of human memory and the inadequacy of
truth may have been powerful themes in 1950, but in the
post-moral 21st century these themes are as numbingly
familiar as our candy-coated carcinogenic breakfast
cereal.
This show is not about truth; it’s about
sex and banditry and folks getting killed. Who could ask
for anything more?
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La
Plaza Cultural |
Category:
Drama
Written by: Faye & Michael
Kanin
Directed by: Rhonda Dodd
Produced by: Blunt Theater
Opens: July 14
Closes:
August 1
Running Time: 1 hour 10
minutes
Theater: La Plaza
Cultural
Address: 9th Street between
Avenues B & C
New York, NY
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets:
$0.00
n/a
Online Ticketing: None
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Creative TeamWritten
by: Fay and Michael Kanin, based on the movie
by Akira Kurosawa
Directed by: Dr.
Rhonda R. Dodd
Produced by: Kenneth
Garson and Sheila Morgan/Blunt Theater
Company
Costume Designer: Virginia
Tuller
Fight Direction: Dan Renkin and
Brad Lemons
CastMarguerite French as
Medium
Kenneth Garson as Wigmaker
James Harley as
Artist/Deputy
Mary Ellen Hostak as Mother
Natalie
Johnsonius as Shura Tsure
Michael Lennon as
Priest
Howell Mayer as Woodcutter
Andrew Quinn as
Husband
Kate Sandberg as Wife
Terry Schappert as
Tajomaru
Virginia Tuller as Shura Tsure
CrewStage Manager:
Tony Nighthawk | |
