The World is a Stage

In 1099 Will Shakespeare and William the Conqueror took the chunnel from Normandy invading England with their corpulent wit and charm and co-penned many plays, novels and television scripts. England was never the same again. Until that point the main form of entertainment in the British Isles were Druid human sacrifices and an occasional Roman orgy.

In 1664 John Smith and his brother came to the New World selling cough drops when Jeremiah Smith was inspired by the beauty of John's sixteen year old girl friend, Pocohontas, and decided to start a theater troupe in Virginia. Their success quickly became a national phenomena among the colonists and native americans. The troupe soon moved to Provincetown, Massachussetts and then on to the great white man way... Plymouth in late November. At the Plymouth Plantation Theater the Smith brothers introduced a new innovation, a show and a turkey dinner. Dinner theater was born.

Since then New York City has become the theater capital of the western world (at least on this side of the Pond) showing dozens of formula musicals and comedies requiring families to take second mortgages to see a show and treat the kiddies to McDonald's. Fortunately, NYC is also home to hundreds of off Broadway, off-off Broadway and so far off Broadway that you are in Brooklyn shows. I frequently find shows through the Smarttix website which is the sales venue for many of these theatrical troupes. The ticket prices are very often cheaper than a movie ticket and usually more entertaining and substantial.

There are many talented playwrights, actors and innovators who call NYC home and due to this you will usually see an outstanding individual performance even if the total performance is mediocre. Over the last few years we saw a marvelous drama set in Ireland (The Pagans), a musical set around the final years of Mark Twain (where the cast of four almost outnumbered the audience), A greek tragedy set in the antebellum south (Medea/Ma Deah), a Korean percussion performance set as a kitchen comedy (think Three Stooges meets Hells Kitchen with drums) and Broadway's Next Big Hit (an outstanding improvisational group that creates a Broadway Musical from audience song suggestions).

Last night we saw a performance at the Under St. Mark's theater of a radio reading of two of H.P. Lovecraft's stories The Call of Cthulhu and Reanimator. The performance included two very talented actor/readers, smoke and lights going on and off. I enjoy Mr. Lovecraft's stories and was looking forward to watching a re-creation (or should I say a re-animation) of an old time radio broadcast. Both actors were wonderful but I was dissappointed that Radio Theater did not manually re-create the sound effects that were employed in creating the radio dramas of yesteryear. The sound effects and music were sadly pre-recorded.

I wanted to name the two actors but unforunately I cannot find the program to do so. As there are only five or six readers of my blog I don't believe this omission will have any profound impact on their careers. All in all I enjoyed the reading anyway (as a reading and not as a radio show). Ilana fought to stay awake. It may have been better if they threw in a turkey dinner.