Critic Roundup: SLAMDANCE GARAGE, 300 PAINTINGS, WHERE WE'RE BORN, NINA, THE BARBARIANS — Review

SLAMDANCE GARAGE

Don’t you just want to scream? 

Ian Andrew Askew figures you might. The versatile writer, performer and sound designer’s thundering new work SLAMDANCE Garage is—in part—a punk rock howl of anger. Askew even invites the audience to join together, at one point, in a collective wail. 

Not that Garage is not solely defined by rage. Askew’s tightly structured solo piece begins from a place of anger, but soon moves into melancholy reflection ahead of a rousing finish. Somewhere between rock concert, monologue and dance, the piece reflects powerfully on existing as Black and queer within both the punk scene and the world at large. 

Garage is also a call to action. Askew offers no easy answers, no prescriptive path. But the show is the message: Askew presents their full self, in all their tenderness and rage, all the rich complexity we are pushed to negate. Just scream it all out. 

300 PAINTINGS

When a solo piece recounting a period of mania begins to feel like a manic episode itself, how should an audience feel? At what point should we grow concerned? 

That’s the deliberate question raised by Sam Kissajukian’s frantic delivery of his story in his forthright new work 300 Paintings. The Australian comedian’s autobiographical show, which returns to Vineyard Theatre following a run last fall, concerns a sixth month period in which Kissajukian isolated himself from friends while creating hundreds of bizarre large-scale art pieces. Recounting this episode, Kissajukian now frames it as a symptom of then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder. 

One is loath to support off-Broadway’s increasing penchant for low-cost solo works, but I must confess: this is an excellent show, witty, open-hearted, sharp and keenly structured. Kissajukian is an endearing storyteller, and while his delivery can be over-eager at points, he mostly strikes an expert balance between self-mockery and blunt honesty. 

Most striking, though, are the points when Kissajukian’s delivery becomes fast and furious to the point of near-unintelligibility. It is certainly intentional, a way to immerse us in the moment-by-moment experience of overwhelming mania. But it also feels startlingly genuine. Kissajukian still lives with this disorder now, and even as we laugh, it’s in the room with us, present and real. 

WHERE WE’RE BORN

The work of Lucy Thurber proves an ideal fit for young company Adult Film, a scrappy new outfit operating out of a private space in Ridgewood, Queens. Adult Film is presenting a barebones, intensely atmospheric revival of Thurber’s 2003 play Where We’re Born through February 9th, under David Garelik’s effective direction.  

Thurber tends towards small, intimate stories set against a grand social canvas. In Where We’re Born, scholarship student Lilly (Michelle Moriarty) returns to her Western Massachusetts hometown looking to slip back into old routines—drinking, smoking pot and lounging around with friends. But she’s stuck between here and there, and for those who never “got out,” Lilly’s return ends up wreaking havoc.

The production is a heavier lift for Adult Film than past work, and a notable step forward. There’s no distance or irony to Thurber’s text, no remove to hide behind. If this staging at times feels like poverty cosplay, that’s perhaps inevitable with indie theatermakers doing a play of this nature in a Ridgewood basement. 

Yet a game cast keeps it grounded—most especially the women. Moriarty’s Lilly is brutally open-hearted; Jamie Coffey is movingly bone-weary as Franky. And Garelik ultimately uses the space to his advantage. Thurber’s plays live in America’s most suffocating corners, and in this production’s more convincing moments, it can truly feel like the walls are closing in. 

NINA

“No-one wants to see a play about people who do plays,” insists Kyla, one of five female acting students at the center of Forrest Malloy’s dark comedy Nina. “It’s so self-indulgent.” 

It’s one of the groan-ier laugh lines in Malloy’s shaky, occasionally stirring new play. Set backstage at a prestigious acting conservatory, Nina traces the final year of five talented but insecure women’s time in the program, leading up to a high-stakes production of The Seagull.

The performances are excellent, and director Katie Birenboim finds the subtler laughs. But the play is at its worst when focused too squarely on satirizing self-obsessed performers and cutthroat acting schools. Both are low-hanging fruit, and while anyone who has endured an acting program will likely see themselves on stage, the rest of us will get bored quick.

But when Malloy’s text digs deeper, something transcendent does emerge. Specifically the journey of Kyla, the quietest of the group, who emerges triumphantly from her shell over the play’s 100 minutes. A terrific Jasminn Johnson carries off Kyla’s growth with delicate delight. And in Kyla’s parallel journeys as both actor and individual, Malloy finds a more profound connection between performance and self-actualization. 

THE BARBARIANS

A delightful if disjointed antidote to doomerism, Jerry Lieblich’s new political satire The Barbarians is surprisingly hopeful about our future. Set in a heightened, alternate United States where words are jumbled nonsense and “Madame President Fake President” is declaring war on everything, Lieblich’s bizarre play follows two scientists’ efforts to weaken the power of verbal demagoguery. To do so, the scientists have built a wacky, colorful machine. With a “strapulator.” And a “Heep-Jeep Generator.” 

It’s a grand, silly old time, energetically staged by Paul Lazar (who also stepped adeptly into a lead role at my performance). Lieblich’s frequent collaborator Steve Mellor, star of their off-off-Bway hit Mahinerator, is especially terrific as a chaotic narrator frequently interrupting the proceedings with rambling side-plots. But the momentum sags in the play’s last thirty minutes, as it becomes clear that Lieblich’s many threads are never going to satisfyingly cohere. 

A note in the program specifies that The Barbarians was first written in response to the War on Terror, and it does feel like it. Plainly, Lieblich is not writing about any single president. But the play’s critique of war-hungry, weaponized patriotism feels a bit too Bush-era specific to fully resonate at this moment.

SLAMDANCE garage continues at The Bushwick Starr through March 1. 300 Paintings continues at Vineyard Theatre through Feb 23. Where We’re Born and Nina have concluded their runs. The Barbarians continues at LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club through March 2.