SIX CHARACTERS & SOMEONE SPECTACULAR — Review Roundup

Off-Broadway

Photos: Marc J. Franklin & Julieta Cervantes

By
Juan A. Ramirez
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on
August 12, 2024 9:05 AM
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Reviews

Two plays opened off-Broadway recently, each featuring six characters waiting for a certain special individual.

A Millennial dramedy with Sundance movie vibes, Doménica Feraud’s someone spectacular follows the members of a grief counseling group left to their own devices when their therapist fails to arrive to a session. There’s Nelle (Alison Cimmet), a lululemon mom and the production’s most consistent source of comedy; the newly orphaned Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan), its heart; Julian (Shakur Tolliver), its polite blank; Thom (Damian Young), a caring  widower; the young Jude (Delia Cunningham), whose lengthy mourning upsets some members of the 4-month-specific cohort; and Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne), a frustrated actor whose edgy humor too often cuts into merely grating. She’s also somewhat of the Feraud stand-in: the playwright lost her mother recently and this play became a way to cope. That sense of earnest emotional exploration and livewire grief powers someone spectacular through its more unfocused moments, where it spreads itself thin by addressing, and in some cases, adding to, everyone’s trauma in its brief 90 minutes. But director Tatiana Pandiani moves her fine cast around dots’ set – a too-real multipurpose rec room of sorts – like it’s a playground, their actions organic expressions of their situations. Despite some writerly moments, Feraud shows promise and demonstrates heart.

Six Characters, meanwhile, is pure theatre, both in format and aspirations. Playwright Phillip Howze nods towards the absurd metatheatrics of Pirandello’s seminal Six Characters in Search of an Author in this brilliant sendup of modern theatre’s inability to address race, immersion, and audience both on and off the stage. A fabulous cast of six haphazardly assembles – after a clever fake-out involving audience participation – on the stage of Lincoln Center’s smallest house, simultaneously unsure of what their roles are (or if they’re even meant to have any)  but dead set on staying onstage. The imperiously buffoonish Julian Robertson (in top-notch clown form) claims to be the director, but Claudia Logan’s in-your-face leadership quickly rises to the top, even as her ex, a cop-cosplaying Will Cobbs gets on her nerves. Meanwhile, put-upon custodian Seret Scott tries to do her job as CG, an intern, begins a romance with Seven F.B. Duncombe, who appears to be a slave washed ashore from something like a parallel timeline. The plot, of course, makes no and absolute sense. A second act pairs each character off and follows more tender throughlines, which slightly dilute the works’ intensity, though gives the splendid ensemble moments to shine; Scott, in particular, moved me to tears. Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes are pitch-perfect, as is Dustin Wills’ inventive work as director and scenographer. Howze’s play is thunderously funny, surreal, and scathing, letting itself veer as sideways as his chosen industry while keeping its (six) ducks in a tight row.

Six Characters is in performance through August 25, 2024 at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theatre on West 65th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

someone spectacular is in performance through September 7, 2024 at the Signature Center on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

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Juan A. Ramirez

Juan A. Ramirez writes arts and culture reviews, features, and interviews for publications in New York and Boston, and will continue to do so until every last person is annoyed. Thanks to his MA in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University, he has suddenly found himself the expert on Queer Melodrama in Venezuelan Cinema, and is figuring out ways to apply that.

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Off-Broadway
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