Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Theater Review (NYC): Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit by No Tea Productions

Posted on | December 4, 2008 | 2 Comments

This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Say what you will about the depressing state of Off-Off-Broadway theater (and it certainly is depressing), one thing you can’t complain about is the unprecedented quantity of theater that currently exists in New York City. Quality theater, and quality coverage, is what’s missing, and venturing Off-Off-Broadway has increasingly turned into a crapshoot for entertainment. But here’s a good rule of thumb for your future New York theater ventures: if the show is a product of No Tea Productions, you’ll almost certainly be entertained, and maybe even moved.

I may have gone a tad overboard when I claimed that the success of The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy was “a reason for hope for American theater,” a statement that has followed the publicity of No Tea wherever they have gone, but with the company’s top-notch reworkings of one-act love story vignettes in Plucking Failure Like Ripe Fruit, I was glad to see my enthusiasm for my first experience of the company was no fluke. Ripe Fruit is not as wholly entertaining as Mark and Andy—a natural product of the format—but the quality of the cast, execution and spirit are just as strong.

plucking failures like ripe fruitThe selection of plays is short and sweet, with a mix of established playwrights like Harold Pinter, David Ives, and David Auburn with some, younger, more ragged, indie-mined playwrights. Though the show claims to be “A Night of One-Act Romantic Tragedies,” Ripe Fruit offers as many glimpses of hope as it does of unrequited love. Its spirit is perfectly in tune with one of the most dismal holiday seasons in recent memory. In a time when all seems hopeless, just making a human connection—any connection—can be enough to get you through. Even recognizing the possibility of such a connection can be enough. This spirit makes Ripe Fruit strangely uplifting, and one of the better shows you can see while alone in New York around Christmas time.

No Tea has wisely kept an element of spontaneity by performing a different selection of shows in a different order each night. While this leaves me unable to comment on the entirety of the experience, I will say I was not disappointed by any of the shows I saw. All of the actors have incredible chemistry, in particularly Sabrina Farhi and Jeff Sproul in David Ives’ Sure Thing, Sproul and Brooke Eddey in Garth Wingfield’s Please Have a Seat and Someone Will Be with You Shortly (which was the most satisfying one-act I saw all night), and Farhi and Richard Lovejoy in the honeymoon-gone-awry saga of Dorothy Parker’s Here We Are. All in all, this is a company that’s on a roll right now, and has nowhere to go but up if the economy allows it.

plucking failures like ripe fruitMy one complaint was that Lindsey Moore’s direction often let the occasional beat linger too long, which threw off some scenes’ timing. But that’s no reason to miss one of the best displays of romantic malaise you’re likely to see on the New York stage this season. Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit is an absolute joy, and it’s almost enough to make you overlook whatever problems plague you in what is supposedly the most wonderful time of the year.

Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit: A NIght of One-Act Romantic Tragedies. Directed by Lindsey Moore; lighting design by Timothy Mather; sound design by Lisa Nussbaum; production photos by by D. Robert Wolcheck.

Starring Alicia Barnatchez, Brooke Eddey, Sabrina Farhi, Richard Lovejoy, Jeremy Mather, and Jeff Sproul, with D. Robert Wolcheck.

Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit is produced by No Tea Productions and Horse Trade Theater Group. The show will run at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place) until December 6. Tickets can be purchased at www.horseTRADE.info

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > >

Comments

2 Responses to “Theater Review (NYC): Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit by No Tea Productions”

  1. Art
    December 4th, 2008 @ 8:36 pm

    Hi Tynan,

    I found your review on Blogcritics and wanted to let you know I enjoyed it. It’s hard to find good off off Broadway

  2. Ethan Stanislawski
    December 8th, 2008 @ 9:41 am

    Glad to do it art. Leave it to an unemployed recent college graduate to be crazy enough to review theater!

Leave a Reply





Anti-Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree