Reviews

FringeNYC Roundup #6

The eighth annual New York International Fringe Festival has officially ended, although several participating shows have already announced extended runs. These include FringeNYC Excellence Award-winner for Overall Production Dog Sees God, The Only Thing Straight Is My Jacket (featuring FringeNYC Excellence Award-winner Micah Bucey), and Lulu: A New Musical, which will soon jump festivals and be seen in the inaugural New Musical Theatre Festival beginning in mid-September. Other Fringe shows are likely to announce extensions in the near future; meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the productions that our TheaterMania reviewers saw during the festival’s closing weekend.

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Kevin Mambo, Tom Shillue, and Mason Pettit in The Last Detail(Photo © Michael Meske)
Kevin Mambo, Tom Shillue, and Mason Pettit in The Last Detail
(Photo © Michael Meske)

The Last Detail

It’s too bad that the producers and creative team of The Last Detail chose to make their production a musical, since it would have been more effective as a straight play. Based on Darryl Ponicsan’s novel of the same title, which also inspired the 1973 film starring Jack Nicholson, The Last Detail tells the story of Billy “Bad Ass” Buddusky (Mason Pettit) and “Mule” Mulhall (Kevin Mambo), two “lifer” sailors who are assigned the task of escorting a young sailor named Lawrence Meadows (Tom Shillue) to a security facility in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Meadows is a kleptomaniac and has been given a severe sentence for a minor crime. As the three men make their way to their destination, they discover new things about themselves and each other.

Neil Genzlinger’s stage adaptation is full of funny lines, rich character detail, and believable dialogue. However, most of the original songs by Julia Darling and Andrew Sherman seem shoehorned into the plot and are unevenly executed. In and of themselves, the songs aren’t so bad; they have a folk rock sound that’s heavy on guitar but they contain some memorable musical phrases. A trio sung by the sailors as they head to New York City’s Greenwich Village is bouncy and fun, while a duet between Billy and his ex-wife Charlotte (Julie Dingman) towards the end of the second act is also quite catchy. Yet none of the songs actually seem necessary, and several of them distract from the dramatic throughline.

Most of the cast members are also far better actors than singers. Pettit has a palpable stage presence but seems somewhat tentative when he breaks into song. Shillue possesses a goofy energy that almost makes up for the fact that he doesn’t always hit the notes. Mambo is probably the best singer of the three but is still stronger in the book scenes than the musical numbers. The most accomplished musical theater performer in the cast is Mary Testa, whose only song is Meadows’ mother’s solo late in the second act; she performs it well but, again, the song itself adds little to the show.

Director Michael Weitz seems uncertain what to do with the musical numbers; he usually has the cast just come forward and sing them to the audience rather than actually staging them. Despite such problems, the show is entertaining — and, judging from the reactions of audience members on the night I saw it, most were willing to forgive its faults.

D.B.

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Vuillard’s Room

Vuillard’s Room is a dance-theater piece about the eponymous French painter of the Nabis movement, a Parisian post-impressionist school noted for using muted colors. Although the show’s set design and costumes stay true to the palette of the artist, the dynamic choreography is anything but subdued; there are dazzling flashes of talent in 40 brief minutes.


The central characters of the piece are Édouard Vuillard (Tom O’Reilly), Mme. Vuillard (Carine Montbertrand), and the artist’s sister, Marie (Aimée Phelan Deconinck). Since many of the artist’s themes revolve around femininity and domesticity, it’s unclear which of these Vuillards is the title character, and that may be part of the point. O’Reilly plays the male lead with grace; in one whimsical moment, he gestures with a broom as though it were a paintbrush. The subjects of his paintings are mostly seamstresses in his family, and Montbertrand’s portrayal of the hard-faced Mme. Vuillard makes for comedy. Deconinck, with stately poise and posture, is magnetic in the role of Marie, imbuing her every movement with an almost tangible sensuality. J’aime Morrison directs and choreographs the show with aplomb, her experience with the legendary Mabou Mines troupe apparent throughout. (Morrison even makes an appearance as a competing seamstress.)

The interspersed dialogue comes directly from Vuillard’s journals, and the man was clearly more talented as a visual artist than as a writer; the text is awash in meaningless profundities. Still, the fledgling company Cross Stitch has woven a lively theater piece out of these materials.

A.K.

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Leona Brausen, Jeff Haslam, and Davina Stewart in Pith!(Photo © Peter Edwards)
Leona Brausen, Jeff Haslam, and Davina Stewart in Pith!
(Photo © Peter Edwards)

Pith!

We may be fighting a War on Terror, the Republican National Convention may be wreaking havoc on the lives of many New Yorkers, and there may be ongoing destruction in the Middle East — but Stewart Lemoine won’t let any of that get him down. He’s Canadian, and he’s also the author of a Fringe Festival play so optimistic that it makes The Music Man look like a downer.


Pith! is a nonmusical comedy about a Good Samaritan named Jack Vail (Jeff Haslam) who goes to elaborate lengths to get a widow to deal with her loss. This homegrown country boy from Golden Age America finds a weeping Nancy Kimble (Leona Brausen) in the backyard of a Presbyterian Church and decides to step in and cheer her up. After feeding the little lady a spoonful of bumbleberry pie and drying her tears, he finds out that she’s the servant of a woman named Virginia Tilford, who lost her husband on an ill-fated trip to Latin America. So Jack decides to take the two of them on a fantastical and imaginary journey down south to help Virginia get some closure.


After a little resistance, Virginia warms up to the idea, and she changes from her black mourning clothes into a wardrobe fit for a 19th-century explorer. Wild adventures of the imagination follow, including run-ins with several overzealous Latin lovers, a hunt for buried treasure, and an attack by indigenous forest people. There’s a little Good Society racism buried not too deeply beneath the surface here, but the stereotypes are so nostalgic in the style of old school “exotica” films that they rarely are offensive.


Leona Brausen’s costume design complements the action nicely; Jack Vail’s “Newsie” hat and starched vest are nice touches. Though Lemoine’s writing exhibits some of the best comedy-of-manners wit this side of Noël Coward, the sticky-sweetness of Pith! just might induce a cavity or two.

A.K.

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Pith!

Closed: August 29, 2004