The Obie Award winning (for sustained excellence) Ice Factory returns for its 15th Anniversary season at its longtime downtown home, the Ohio Theater. Presented by the Soho Think Tank, it has become a renowned incubator for dynamic new works and theatrical innovation. Of this season's seven offerings, this reviewer was able to catch the three below.
Written by Karinne Keithley, this plotless, atmospheric piece is set in a place called Kentucky-Montana. The place is symbolic of the duality of human nature with its difficulty in interconnection ("two directions of travel wrapped around each other. But, if you end up there, you are in trouble"). The piece itself is divided into four parts with the actors identified by letters.
The most successful of the sections is the third which is an operetta featuring Marie Antoinette and three deer set in Maine. Using an old fashioned slide projector as a guide, the piece has the ethereal, haunting quality ("careful what you wish for / it could move something out of place") that the overall piece seems to be striving for. More confused than contrived, it lacks a unifying composition to pull it into focus.
Written by Matthew Maher, Heistman provides a manifesto upon entering the theater. It's a thirty-four part treatise which professes to deconstruct the issue of personal happiness. It moves from the simple act of eating a cupcake to more abstract concepts such as happiness vs. morality, fear as an inevitable extension of happiness (called The Fear in the text) and finally the creation of art (called The Project) as a valid reaction against The Fear (or lack of happiness). This manifesto is superimposed upon a dance piece in which a bank robbery is enacted. The bank tellers (women) are in their underwear which the police officers (men) are dressed in Spiderman costumes.
The manifesto is read aloud as the bank tellers and policeman break dance throughout. The piece was conceived and directed by Gabriella Barnstone and performed by el gato teatro. Even at 55 minutes, the piece is dense and bewildering as the juxtaposing of manifesto/movement never gels. Downtown theater luminary Steven Rattazzi is the Heistman providing the one interesting note in the proceedings and gives the impression that he at least knows the score.
Written by Adriano Shaplin, Victory at the Dirt Place proved to be the most fulfilling (and fully realized) play of the festival. In TV ratings land, a father and daughter compete for the place of top dog in the nightly news category. After an amusing and touching prologue with K Mann combing and grooming her father James, the show opens with Mann vs. Mann as the two go head to head in their primetime supremacy quest for The World News Tonight. The author has noted a loose connection to Shakespeare's King Lear and has included enough key words to give the text a veneer of royalty (the media kind). If Paul Schnabel is duly bombastic as James Mann (Lear), he has met his match in Stephanie Viola as his ferocious daughter K (Regan). Their diatribes at each other's broadcast content/technique come fast and furious taking on a volcanic intensity. Both anchors have a personal assistant (aka lackey) who are secretly jockeying for the prime shot themselves. Drew Friedman is particularly amusing as James Mann's assistant Andrew (the Fool to his Lear). The evening contains all the tabloid ingredients necessary to a ratings battle (terrorism, sex scandals, natural disasters) and the leads play them for all they're worth. The play is set in the summer of 2001 so the "incident in September" soon looms its ugly head only to take its place as more fodder in the ratings war. Victory at the Dirt Palace is a viciously funny farce truly ripped from the headlines. Like the road kill that is often mentioned in the play, you can't keep your eyes off it.
