Scandalous Slapstick at the Frigid Festival
by Cora Cadman
If you need more than “spooky clown burlesque show” to convince you that this performance was nothing short of comedic genius, you need your funny bone checked. As part of the Days of the Dead Festival, presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks, Hex Appeal offered 60-minutes of debaucherous clownery wrapped in lacy lingerie.
Each actor crafted a brilliant solo strip tease that engaged with the audience in a way I have never seen before, eliciting hoots, hollers, and laughs. The audience was eager to engage, throwing dollar bills and participating when requested by the performers, one even offered their glasses to be used as a prop.
The costumes were brilliantly layered in black and red. I was particularly charmed by the tasteful X shaped black glitter pasties. Each performer had their own unique comedic style. The two younger performers had excellent command of their facial expressions, emoting with every muscle as if in a silent film. The cartoonish burlesque makeup enhanced their abilities and earned a laugh at every turn. What Hex Appeal lacked in content it made up for in style at least tenfold.
Simple Ingenuity At the Frigid Festival
by Cora Cadman
Every theater kid’s worst nightmare turns into a celebration of life in Frigid’s No Roses. A group of ghosts haunt an old French theater while putting on a production of Macbeth, almost killing one of the lead actors. Despite the rather absurd concept and motley crew, I was charmed by the complex layering of realities and depth of insight into death. While one ghost grapples with wanting to be alive again after dying too young, the living actor struggles with not wanting to be alive anymore.
Each character exhibits an endearing optimism and camaraderie. I was impressed by the nuance of backstory and personality of each ghost which created simple moments of levity which were much needed at times. I thought the logistical maneuvering of presenting two dimensions on stage was clever and effective.
When a ghost possessed a living body, the performers moved as one in a delightful bit of stagecraft which could have easily been campy or cringey. No Roses impressed upon me the power of an original idea and resourceful design in a way that is not necessarily groundbreaking but simply enjoyable.
The Flattening of Present Tense.
by Asta Trivedi
Present Tense was written and presented by Walter Corwin, who has been part of the ecosystem of Theater for the New City for the past forty years and crafts comedic and political one-acts for the theater every year. Running from September 17 to October 4, this play was described as a story in five skits, an accurate description for singular vignettes that hardly tie together with narrative cohesion, nor stand strongly in individual parts either.
While the scenography was well curated, sketching an environment for three ordinary Americans often doubling between several undescribed characters, the staging is flat with a bare middle playing space, making the scenic design seem decorative at most.
This is a talking play — with potential to take the limitations of the space and explore the peaks and valleys of performance and language, yet the physical comedy does not land with hardly any real action for the actors to drive towards.
Almost entirely delivered in asides, the constant direct address is unjustified for dialogue and conversation that should essentially build connection between individuals, and unless stylized in an heightened way, culminates in a repetitive dulling of any potency the characters and their relationships, personal, political experiences may hold.
The hypothesis and conclusion the play reaches is, “there are no morals left”, a sentiment explored with some absurdity, lacking much meat to detangle and pull apart what these morals are, without which we are left empty and regretful of our choices as a community.
