A Theatrical Solo Show Roundup — Reviews
Discover your identity. Find your person. Or, if all else fails, get a dog.
Off-Broadway is positively littered with solo shows right now—such are the industry’s financial straits. For each of these lonely performers, salvation arrives in a very different form. The answer might be a loving pet, or a devoted partner, or profound self-acceptance….or just some really good sex. If, indeed, any answers arrive at all. No surprise that the strongest works of this bunch decline, ultimately, to provide any easy catharsis.
For Ari’el Stachel, author and performer of Other (at Greenwich House Theater through December 6), the core struggle is identity. A deserved 2018 Tony Award winner for The Band’s Visit, the performer works through an exhaustive array of challenges in just 90 minutes, all framed around Statchel’s own struggle of selfhood: his confused adolescence as an Arab Jew, discrimination against Arab-Americans after 9/11, panic attacks on Broadway and, finally, the ongoing fallout of the Gaza war.
To give it all shape, Stachel tends to break his own life into distinct sections, packaging the personal and political with a tidiness that doesn’t always ring true. A less diffuse structure might have allowed some room for Stachel to, where needed, dig a little deeper. His performance work is also overly broad, particularly when it comes to the friends and peers that float through Stachel’s life. All but the performer’s family feel like types, not fully formed humans—gay best friend, annoying NYU student, nagging Jewish elder, etc. In experiencing Other, I was reminded of the incredible precision that solo work demands, and how easy it can be to slide into caricature.
Still, Statchel’s openness around grappling with anxiety is refreshing. He is also remarkably honest about his own failings, particularly the years spent keeping his Yemenite Israeli father at arm’s length. Comfort with his own identity is what allows Stachel to extend a full, unburdened love to others. At least for this anxiety sufferer, that rings true.
Extending full, unburdened love to others is also the focus of Brandon Kyle Goodman’s Heaux Church—albeit in a slightly different sense. This joyous piece, at Ars Nova through November 21, is a celebration of unadulterated sexual pleasure. Goodman warmly leads us through a judgement-free sex talk, pushing past any nervousness or shame the topic brings up with skillful ease. Specific and even hands-on, Heaux Church is a happy relief from theater as feelgood sloganery. “Love thy neighbor” is a nice sentiment, sure—but Goodman will actually show you how. (Demonstrating on a Krispy Kreme donut, no less.)
Sharply directed by Lisa Owaki Bierman, Heaux Church is not technically a solo piece—it should be noted that Goodman receives essential support from DJ Ari Grooves and Greg Corbino, who operates some very talkative puppets resembling a butthole, penis and vulva. It works only because Goodman is so totally at ease with themselves, a comfort that extends into the audience. That self-love is, we will come to learn, hard-won after a long journey (much like Stachel’s). But Goodman eases through the toughest part of that story, sandwiching the pain between joy on either side.
By contrast, Zoë Kim’s Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) ambushes its audience with a shocking, unsettling account of parental abuse and family trauma. Perhaps “ambushes” is an unfair word. But the structure of this Ma-Yi Theater Company production (at The Public Theater through November 16) feels a tad cruel to the viewer. As shaped by Kim and director Chris Yejin, the piece’s early sections do not really prepare us for what’s to come. So harsh is the tonal shift that it’s difficult for Kim to rein it back when her journey does, thankfully, take a turn for the better.
It’s a bit obscene, I know, to complain that a person’s story—their life, the experiences they lived—is more than you can take. But tales of trauma can easily wind up numbing.
When Kim does ultimately pull us out of that abyss, she does it with a dog. His name is Spaceman. He is, as the stage directions aptly state, “the cutest dog in the world.” Now, of course, a cute dog is always a winner. But more importantly, the arrival of Spaceman (along with Kim’s eventual partner, her person) eases Eat into a space where love and pain can co-exist. Still, with some distance from Kim’s show, I can more easily admire her refusal to counterbalance the pain at her story’s center.
An adorable dog also proves central to David Cale’s Blue Cowboy, a far gentler piece now at The Bushwick Starr through November 15. Cale’s extraordinary monologue traces his brief love affair with a mysterious ranch hand while visiting Ketchum, Idaho to research a film script. Cale is an expert storyteller, and veteran director Les Waters guides this deeply moving piece with a typically light touch. Aiding the storytelling is an elegant set by Colleen Murray, and subtly evocative lighting design by Mextly Couzin.
As with Goodman’s piece, Cale’s text has a refreshing sexual frankness. Like Stachel, he is admirably honest about his own emotional failings, and moments of immaturity. And like Kim, Cale refuses to allow too easy of an emotional catharsis.
The dog does arrive a bit earlier, though. And that’s nice. It’s always nice to have a dog.
