Review: Tiny Ninja Theater
TheaterMania, 4/9/03
"There's something irresistibly charming about seeing Shakespeare's works performed by miniature plastic figurines."
Article: Small Actors Make Big Splash
Dramatics, 4/03
"As Yoda says, ‘You do or you do not; there is no try.’"
Review: Theatre Pick for Week of March 4
FlavorPill.net, 3/4/03
"You think you've seen every twist on The Bard’s work humanly possible..."
Article: Fringe Hit Tiny Ninja Theater Returns to NYC
Playbill Online, 2/9/03
"Trevor Bigfoot as Mercutio — whose death scene has to be seen to be believed"
Article: Best of Charleston 2003
The Charleston City Paper, 1/03
"Readers Pick for Best Piccolo Spoleto Event"
Review: Shakespeare in a Shoebox
The Washington Post, 1/11/03
"Once you've seen its Romeo & Juliet, you'll want to come to back for figurine versions of Hamlet or Othello or whatever else." — Peter Marks
Review: Action Figure Genius
The Charleston City Paper, 10/02
"Quick, clever, and chock full of surprises, more than one audience member claimed that it even outperformed the hit interpretation of the Scottish play." — Colleen Reilly
Review: Freeze Frame
Creative Loafing Charlotte, 10/2/02
"I heartily recommend being among the lucky few when Weinstein & Co. return to Charlotte or Piccolo Spoleto." — Perry Tannenbaum
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Review: Tiny Version of Macbeth is Giant Entertainment
The Charlotte Observer, 9/22/02
"Fresh, funny, ingenious and original." — JoAnn Grose
Review: Tiny Ninja Theater
Hairline, 8/02
"Four Stars: Tiny Ninja Theater is a fantastic and unorthodox show which represents what many love about the Edinburgh Festival." — Simon Ferguson
Review: Bard Takes a Flyer
Sunday Herald, 8/25/02
"Four Stars: Shakespeare is as equally at home among the ridiculous, of course." — Tim Abrahams
Review: Tiny Ninja Theater presents Macbeth
The Scotsman, 8/19/02
"Must be seen to be believed. " — Paul Rhodes
Review: Macbeth
Three Weeks, 8/17/02
"If a definition of the Fringe is originality and artistic expression, then this 35 minute abbreviated version of Macbeth, with tiny plastic ninjas as a cast, must surely rank as an ultimate example." — Paul Cochrane
Review: Mr. Smiley Face Macbeth
The Guardian, 8/10/02
"Weinstein plays it dead straight and speaks the text rather better than some classically trained actors I have heard." — Lyn Gardner
Review: Mini-Cawdor Steals Hearts
The List, 8/8/02
"a marvel of theatrical innovation" — Catherine Bromley
Review: No Drams Required
Edinburgh Guide, 8/3/02
"This is the only one I’m recommending to all my friends and the only thing I think I’ll make a return trip to!" — Annabel Ingram
Article: Ninja-cized Bard
Charleston Post & Courier, 6/1/02
Article: Tiny Ninja Theater Returns to Charleston
The State, 5/31/02
Review: Action Figure Genius
The Charleston City Paper, 5/29/02
Review: Tiny Ninjas Take On Shakespeare's Giant Roles
Charleston Post & Courier, 5/29/02
Article: Oh Tiny Romeo
The Charleston City Paper, 5/02
Article: What's The Buzz
The Charleston City Paper, 5/02
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Article: Where to Celebrate Valentine's Day Solo
Time Out New York, 2/14/02
jump to the good bits
Review: Massaker im Spielzeugland
Taz Bremen, 1/22/02
the babelfish translation
Article: Best of Charleston 2001
The Charleston City Paper, 1/02
"Best Use of Plastic Figurines in a Performance" jump to the good bits
Article: Shakespeare de Plástico
Revista 2K, 6/22/01
the babelfish translation
Article: Piccolo's Prices Too Steep for Local Festival
The State, 6/10/01
jump to the good bits
Article: Spoleto Festival at 25
The New York Times, 6/5/01
jump to the good bits
Review: Tiny Ninjas Put Twist on the Bard
Charleston Post & Courier, 6/2/01
Review: Tiny Ninjas Project Big Illusion
The Charleston City Paper, 5/29/01
Review: No Small Jokes, Just Small Actors
Charleston Post & Courier, 5/29/01
Article: Immediate Art
The Charleston City Paper, 5/01
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Article: Serious Shakespeare Takes But An Inch
The Charleston City Paper, 5/01
Review: Sightlines: Tom Waits in the Toilet
The Village Voice, 4/27/01
Article: All Is But Toys
Stage Directions, 3/01
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Article: The Bard's New Band of Merry Men Perform Macbeth
American Theater, 12/00
Article: Off-Off color: Toy Story
Time Out New York, 11/9/00
jump to the good bits
Review: Street of Blood, Tiny Ninja Theater presents Macbeth
NEXT Magazine, 9/15/00
jump to the good bits
Article: Is That a Ninja That I See Before Me?
Playbill Online, 8/30/00
Review: Oh, Forget the Money, Let's Dress Up and Play
The New York Times, 8/26/00
jump to the good bits
Review: Fringe Binge
Time Out New York, 8/24/00
jump to the good bits
Review: Fringe Benefits
The Village Voice, 8/23/00
jump to the good bits
Review: As The Bard Himself Might Put it...
newyork.citysearch.com, 8/20/00
Review: Tiny Ninja Macbeth, Finally, Little Green Man
TheaterMania.com, 8/18/00
jump to the good bits
Article: Off-Off and Running
Time Out New York, 8/10/00
jump to the good bits
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What’s The Buzz
Sampling the Big
Festival
By Patrick Sharbaugh
The most memorable part of Spoleto Festival USA ’02 to date,
for me, occurred not in front of an audience but within one. It
was a moment of genuine drama, an oasis of vaudevillian burlesque
in a desert of earnestness, a thunderclap of irony that only
Alanis Morissette would have recognized. Charles Wadsworth had
shuffled off the stage at the Dock Street after an opening
monologue peppered with his endearing brand of self-deprecating
wit, and a trio of youthful musicians had launched into a
demanding chamber piece for piano, violin, and French horn. The
leggy blond violinist was doing that curious dance violinists do
when they start sawing. The French horn player was dumping out
the collected spit from a long movement’s worth of blowing
and several of the overwhelmingly grey and silver-coiffed heads
in the audience were dipping precipitously. Suddenly, it
happened: a cell phone began to ring from within a pocketbook
somewhere off to my right to the jangly melody of — there
was no mistaking it — Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fur Elise.
Glancing behind me, I saw someone wrestling maniacally with a
purse, no doubt wishing the ushers had handed out cyanide
capsules instead of programs.
If you’ve spent any time downtown during the past week,
you’ve probably had your own favorite episode, perhaps
equally illuminating. In any event, the festival is hard to miss,
and the memorable moments and images are certainly out there, on
the street as often as they are on the stage. When you add the
city-produced Piccolo Spoleto festival to the equation, with some
700 separate events occurring over the same time frame as the Big
Festival, you get a whopping 5,150 performers (or pedestrians,
depending on which way you look at it) descending upon our quiet
seaside hamlet. Even if you see a piddling 1 percent of those
performers, that’s still 51 and and a half people, and even
if 50 of those are duds, that last guy’s bound to be worth a
look.
So taking Spoleto and Piccolo programs in hand, I dove into this
year’s festival, knowing full well that I’d be able to
see and write about only a relative handful of the complete table
of offerings. Consequently, the bulk of this first week’s
discussion centers on the Big Festival, since there are vastly
fewer total events in it than what’s in Piccolo, and several
of them had their premieres in the festival’s first week,
with few or no encore productions in the following weeks. Nearly
all the Piccolo programs, however, run the entire length of the
festival, so next week we’ll do our gosh-darndest to focus
on as much of that worthy part of the festival as we can, as well
as the Spoleto events that begin later in the festival.
Two Plays
On Thursday, May 24, the preview performance of Brian
Friel’s The Bear and Afterplay (collectively called Two
Plays After) at the Dock Street Theatre was packed, mostly with
prescient festival-goers who’d guessed, correctly, that this
would be one of this year’s hottest tickets. The
evening’s program had the added benefit of being manageably
brief and relatively light in content. Plus, of course, it came
with celebrity cachet, gift wrapped as it was with the presence
of British stage, television, and film icon John Hurt.
Hurt seems to be one of those actors people in America (in
Charleston, anyway) have a difficult time calling to mind.
“You mean the guy from Big?” No, that’s John
Heard. “Oh, right, the dude from A.I.” Um, no, that was
William Hurt. I usually start out citing Mr. Ollivander in Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, then try to see if Dr.
Iannis in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin rings any bells.
“Contact?” Nope. “Rob Roy?” Uh, uh. “The
Elephant Man?” Wha..? Invariably, I reach the inevitable:
“Remember the guy whose stomach the baby alien exploded out
of onto the dinner table in Alien?” Oh, yeah! That guy!
Which is a shame, not to mention an embarrassing indictment of
the kind of people I hang around. Because John Hurt is a terrific
actor, as anybody who saw him in Afterplay that evening, or
since, can attest.
For sheer ability, though, I have to credit his co-star in the
play, Penelope Wilton, with outshining him. Her Sonya was an
exquisite piece of craftsmanship and nuance; she created a
character whose definition lay in the sum of the almost
microscopic flickers of action — and inaction — that
Wilton brought to the words Friel had given her. Hurt filled out
the piece extremely well with his American stage debut, but it
was Wilton’s show.
The piece that preceded it, Chekhov’s The Bear (from a
translation by Friel), was also well done, though in a completely
different vein than Afterplay. Where Afterplay was heartbreaking
and full of subtlety, The Bear was a broad guffaw of a farce,
with Elisabeth Dermot Walsh looking like a far sexier Catherine
Zeta-Jones, and who had me wishing for a bib when my drooling
finally got completely out of hand.
Pop-and-Lock
Kick Off
I was late for the Opening Ceremony at noon the next
day, since it took me 25 minutes to drive from upper King Street
to anywhere near the corner of Broad and Meeting. In retrospect,
I probably would have stood a better chance if I’d driven to
Mt. Pleasant and taken the water taxi over. It was warm but not
stifling, and the crowd gathered before City Hall was impressive.
Although I missed the (no doubt) electrifying comments from
Spoleto’s board president and their treasurer
(“luminaries,” according to the official press
release), I did catch the final pithy words of John Hurt, who was
sweating to such a degree it seemed he was close to cardiac
arrest — or having an alien explode out of his chest.
Mayor Riley spoke last, as always, and although he sounded like
he’d been at the fights all evening, he did give a rousing
affirmation of what Spoleto and the arts mean to humanity in
general, and to us Charlestonians in particular, and in a broader
way what all of that means for civic life, the nature of urban
centers, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Sure, the folks
on James Island think he’s the Antichrist, but you gotta
hand it to him: the Mayor does get passionate about the arts and
creating livable cities.
The ceremony ended with the French hip-hop ballet group Compagnie
KÓfig’s seven members performing on a stage in front of
City Hall for what seemed like an inordinately long time —
especially given that they were all doing what were essentially
straight breakdancing moves. After about 20 minutes of watching
John Hurt and the mayor develop cricks in their necks as one
gyrating KÓfig after another gave his or her best impression of
what embarrassed Americans most about the ’80s, I was
frankly a little nervous about seeing them at the Garden Theatre.
The group ostensibly brings French, North African, and Spanish
roots together to transform the street moves of American hip-hop
into a more formal choreographic technique. KÓfig interposed
such athletic feats as breakdancing, pop-and-lock, and
head-and-back spins with stylized French, North African, and
Andalucian Spanish choreography, Brazilian capoeira, mime (god
help us all), and gymnastics. The performance was accompanied by
Andalucian guitar, electronic and rap music, and some pretty good
lighting and video effects. All in all, it wasn’t
necessarily my thing, if you know what I mean. But the crowd at
the Garden went nuts for them on Sunday, so what the hell do I
know.
The Power of
South Africa
“The first time you hear a bunch of South Africans
singing together, you’ll never forget it,” is what
Broomhill Opera music director Charles Hazlewood told me when I
interviewed him on the morning before they opened their much
ballyhooed Yiimingaliso: The Mysteries at Sottile Theatre on May
24. I’d previewed in these pages both of the shows the
Broomhill gang had slated for this year’s festival, and
I’d read the London reviews, so I had a pretty good idea
what lay in store for me that evening.
Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming experience
of seeing The Mysteries in person, and Vumile Nomanyama’s
remarkable performance as God and Jesus. Everything you’ve
read or heard about this show is true — it is flat-out one
of the most exuberant, emotionally charged, brilliant pieces of
theatre (and I use that word in the largest possible sense)
I’ve ever seen. I will do anything I can to see it again,
and if that means I get your seat because you were too slow to
buy a ticket, so be it. I’m not a religious person (although
I was raised Catholic, so naturally I’ve retained the
guilt), and I was slightly skeptical — despite the raves
— about a show based on stories from the Old and New
Testaments of the Bible. I’m an idiot. Because this show
isn’t about religion, or even spirituality; it’s about
storytelling, and even I can admit that some of the world’s
best stories are in the Bible.
When the lights finally went down on the last scene of The
Mysteries, the Sottile still rang with the echo of what Hazlewood
had described to me. The moment the lights went up — and I
mean the moment — every audience member in the house was on
his or her feet. That is what standing ovations should be about
— the complete inability to remain in one’s seat.
It’s also worth noting that in the lobby prior to the
performance, there was a sign that read: “WARNING: The first
scene of Yiimingaliso: The Mysteries contains full frontal
nudity.” According to Hazlewood, only in Charleston have the
producers been “encouraged” to post such a sign. A
friend suggested a far better alternative posting: “WARNING:
every scene but the first of Yiimingaliso: The Mysteries contains
no nudity whatsoever. Sorry.”
I thought Broomhill’s other production, of Bizet’s
Carmen, was quite good in its own right. It made no excuses about
being nontraditional, and it used the same set and rough
theatrical idiom as The Mysteries. And Pauline Malefane was a
fitting Carmen, able to fix her incredible eyes on a male
character, think “puree,” and watch as that person
wilted into a quivering, lacerated mound of post-manhood. But the
formalized structure of an opera, for all the indigenous
expression this South African group brought to it, seemed to drop
a wet blanket over what was most appealing about the Broomhill
company. For sheer vitality and life-loving energy, Carmen
couldn’t come close to The Mysteries, in my opinion.
Soweto’s Strings
Boost Harlem Dance
Dance Theatre of Harlem was as good a dance presentation
as I’ve ever seen at Spoleto, a classically trained company
that brought an extraordinary level of vitality and creativity to
what I heard many patrons (black and white) suggesting —
wrongly — would be an “African-American” dance
program.
The South African Suite featured infectious music consisting only
of percussion and violin from the Soweto String Quartet, with
hints of some of the native dance movements seen in The
Mysteries. To be honest, extraordinary music brought this
production to a level well above the ‘very good’ it
would have been based on choreography alone. Set in the colorful
costumes and musical atmosphere of Trinidad, the second program,
Dougla, also knocked ’em dead at the Gaillard. The final
piece, a set of alternatingly saucy and classically-styled pieces
set to James Brown and Aretha Franklin songs, was as much fun as
one can have without wetting oneself. (Still, there’s
something about seeing grown men do full splits that seems to fly
in the face of the natural order of the cosmos.)
Birdsong and
Silence
At the first Music in Time program last Saturday,
organizer and conductor John Kennedy introduced two American
premieres of new works from Brett Dean and Somei Satoh, as well
as a slightly less new work (1998) by Kyle Gann, who was actually
in the audience (as if the members of the Spoleto Festival
Orchestra onstage weren’t already anxious enough).
Dean’s Pastoral Symphony, which I previewed here last week,
was the first order of business. Kennedy introduced it by playing
a sample of an Australian butcherbird’s song, a theme upon
which the piece is loosely based. It featured lots of strings,
sheets of aluminum foil, a snare drum, and the recorded sounds of
birdsong and trees being chopped down. Filled with lots of
volume, no discernible meter or melody, and some amazingly dense
passages during which even some of the musicians looked
hopelessly lost, it was actually pretty enjoyable. Of course,
I’m the sort of person who thinks the sound of an orchestra
tuning up before a symphony is enjoyable, too, so feel free to
take that any way you like.
The second premiere, Satoh’s From the Depths of Silence, was
... completely inoffensive. It was so quiet and slow as to be
nearly inaudible — hence, I suppose, the name. As Kennedy
said in introducing the piece, “If you have a cough, this is
going to be an extremely uncomfortable piece for you.”
Art Caper
Shim-Sham
In fact, I did have a cough, so rather than suffer
through the unpleasantness of trying not to think about clearing
my throat for who knows how long, I ankled over to the Camden
Exchange Gallery above Rue de Jean for The Great Art Caper,
courtesy of artists Kevin Harrison and John Duckworth. Things
were a little late getting started, but once they began it was
indeed the spectacle I’d been promised. Harrison and
Duckworth’s inspiration is to throw a party and insist that
no one attend. It’s actually quite a savvy piece of
guerrilla marketing — schedule the opening reception for the
exhibit, then ask a couple hundred of their very closest friends
to boycott the thing. It’s a sham, of course, but the
picketers out front, the “celebrity” arrivals, the red
carpet treatment, and the paparazzi all made for a good time.
With the outrageous outfits on hand (and on virtually every other
body part), it was like an old-fashioned Saturday night in SoHo.
More To Come
Everybody wants to see the Tiny Ninjas. Last year it was
Macbeth, this year it’s ... well, the Lilliputian little
fellas have brought us another tragedy, this time with the
Montagues, the Capulets, the Nurse, the Friar, Tybalt and
Mercutio, Benvolio and his thumb, the Apothecary, Queen Mab, and,
of course, the two whining, hormone-driven adolescents for whom
the whole thing is named. The Tiny Ninjas regularly rock New
York’s Fringe Festival, and they were certainly a hit last
year at Theatre 99’s Piccolo Fringe, where they appear again
this year. Considering audiences are limited to 20, and
you’ve got to watch the proceedings with binoculars,
I’m recommending a sign at the door: “WARNING:
Claustrophobic, overweight people with bad eyesight and offensive
body odor will be required to exhibit full frontal nudity in the
first scene of Romeo and Juliet.”
If you’re thinking there’s a lot out there, even in the
Big Festival, that I haven’t gotten around to, you’re
absolutely right. Both the big operas have eluded me so far, as
have the majority of the jazz programs (although my landlords had
a party Saturday evening that ended with a walk to the Cistern
for Tierney Sutton’s show, which they’ve told me was
splendid). In the coming week, Spoleto introduces the Festival
Concert and the Choral/Orchestral Concert, the Westminster Choir,
Steve Reich’s much-anticipated documentary video opera Three
Tales, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Chen Shi-Zheng’s
traditional Chinese fable Ghost Lovers, and Ping Chong’s
puppet-theatre work Obon, as well as the theatrical dance group
Salia Ni Seydou.
And that’s just Spoleto; there’s a whole raft of music,
dance, theatre, film, street performances, lectures and art
exhibits in the Little Festival that I’ll be immersing
myself in this week, so just sit tight.
I’ll not waste a lot of time bemoaning the fact that I
haven’t been able to see The Second City show yet, or the
Have Nots!, both of whom I’ve seen several times and both of
whom I’ll be making that extra special effort to see
sometime this week. You and I both know you want to go, so
let’s dispense with the formalities. Tickets are likely to
be scarce by the time you read this, so my recommendation is to
get on the stick.
• Tickets for the Broomhill Opera Company’s productions
of The Mysteries and South African Carmen are so hot that there
should be some sort of euphemism for it. We just don’t know
it.
• The Have Nots! are doing surprisingly well — almost
selling out its first three performances — especially with
Second City in town competing for butts in seats.
• You’d better hustle if you want to “check
off” buying tickets from your things-to-do list for The Bear
and Afterplay.
• Word has it that the senior follies Yesterday’s
Heroes, a song and dance review performed by 65 senior citizens
from Anderson, is a delightful show for everyone from grandma to
grandchild and (apparently) Spoleto Festival USA’s General
Director Nigel Redden.
• Quintango nearly sold out its first show at Footlight
Players Theatre, and always does well.
• According to Randall Davis of the City’s Office of
Cultural Affairs, Piccolo is on a record-setting pace. The little
sister festival pre-sold one-and-a-half times as many tickets for
its first week this year, as compared to last year’s first
week. In its second week, it pre-sold almost one-and-a-third as
many tickets as last year’s second week.
• Buy ahead if you want to see The Second City as it is on
track to break its previous Piccolo record.
• Pat Conroy’s talk on his brother’s suicide is
the third in his doom-and-gloom series and has already sold 450
seats. While only half the house, any Piccolo event that sells
that many seats is an unqualified success.
• The second in the series of Mepkin Abbey concerts will
likely sell out, as did the first one.
• Looks like the sleeper hits for the big festival will be
Chen Shi-Zheng’s Ghost Lovers and Ping Chong’s Obon.
Hao-jie-la!
• A line has been rewritten in Master Class that makes
reference to local Spoleto critic, Robert Jones. Locals seem to
appreciate the joke.
• Per usual, Spoleto’s Chamber Music series sales are
starting to heat up.
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