Unwinnable

Reposted from New York Theater Review

Most of us alive in 2012 are better at looking than listening. Our culture is so overwhelmingly visual that a live disembodied voice might come as a shock, unmoored from the comforting corporeal reality of the body from which it emanates. But that was exactly what I wanted when I saw RadioTheatre’s Third H.P. Lovecraft Festival, currently running at the Kraine Theater; to give my eyes a rest and experience the show’s visceral pleasures, no visuals necessary. (more…)

Reposted from New York Theater Review

There are two kinds of monsters that need slaying in Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters, currently enjoying its world premiere at the Flea Theater under the wings of resident company The Bats. We’re not talking about flesh-eating slime and bugbears, though both make an appearance, along with succubi and a creature called the Beholder whose joke I won’t reveal here (and a great piece of work by puppet designer David Valentine).

Another kind of monster entirely – more destructive by far than the mythic beings of Dungeons & Dragons, from whence the coterie of literal monsters comes – is regret, in this case over a teenage sister gone before her self-involved older sibling, preoccupied with boys and makeup and college, ever got to know her. (more…)