Thursday, August 6, 2009

Ongoing: Dear Frailty, Coldtowne Theatre, Fridays in August



From the review by Wayne Alan Brenner in the Austin Chronicle, August 6:


Dear Frailty

written and performed by Arthur Simone
Coldtowne Theatre, Fridays at 9 p.m. during August


There's no improvisation here. No goofs for laughs, particularly, either, although the several characters Simone portrays in his almost 60 minutes onstage provoke both nervous giggles and the occasional helpless guffaw. These aren't cartoons he's got going here; these are evocations of real and twisted people, the places where cheaper parody comes from: a grocery-store clerk who's obsessed with physical decay and aging and wants to burn the decay out of everyone's all-too-human flesh; a girl who's not quite happy about her lover's predilection for, ah, water sports; an old woman remembering her harsh past; and the PowerPoint presenter with his hilarious report on the future of capitalism.

And Simone, throughout it all, inhabiting the different characters to a believable and creepy level, with little costumery or props, renders a series of portraits as his muse increases the current to provoke another creative seizure, the jolts reflected in the actor's eyes, his jittery intense manner of delivery. This is good stuff; this is dark and twitchy and very human stuff; it is well-written and equally well-performed, and sometimes it will make you laugh.

Read more at the Austin Chronicle. . . .

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