Theater: The Mysteries (at The Flea Theater)

(photos above are from the NYTimes review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/theater/the-mysteries-retells-the-bible-at-the-flea-theater.html?_r=0

Kent and I were thrilled to see this 4.5 hours of theater (adding another 1 hour for intermissions) at the Flea Theater yesterday.  It is rambunctious, loud, in-your-face, epic scale drama and action. Written by 48 playwrights, the show is performed by a cast of 48 with a choir of another 20 - all packed into a little red box of a stage surrounding the audience 360 degrees. It was entirely thrilling and exhilarating.

Our favorite writers and most memorable sections:
ACT I - THE FALL
Dael Orlandersmith Song of the Trimorph (Lucifer’s Lament)
Liz Duffy Adams Falling for You
Johnna Adams           God’s Rules
Jordan Harrison The Annunciation
Chris Dimond          The Slaughter of the Innocents

ACT II - THE SACRIFICE
Max Posner          The Woman Taken in Adultery
Amy Freed          The Raising of Lazarus

ACT III - THE KINGDOM
Don Nguyen          The Death of Christ
Billy Porter/Kirsten Greenidge Ascension
Meghan Kennedy The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
Lillian Groag          The Death of Mary
Najla Said          The Assumption of Mary
Michael Mitnick The Last Judgment
José Rivera          Sermon of The Senses


The program: http://www.theflea.org/files/uploads/1402693355.pdf

Theater: Blink (Brits Off-Broadway Series at 59E59)

Soho Theatre, London and nabokov present presents

BLINK

By PHIL PORTER

Directed By JOE MURPHY
Designed By HANNAH CLARK

With THOMAS PICKLES and LIZZY WATTS

Excerpt from the NYTimes review:

The play, part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at the 59E59 Theaters, introduces Jonah and Sophie through direct address to the audience. Jonah describes being raised on a farm in central England that was a religious commune, with his father in charge. His mother, he says, died when he was 15 but left him the means to escape and a letter encouraging him to do so.  

 And thus the awkward country boy ended up in London, renting a room from Sophie. She too tells of losing a parent, her beloved father, who had raised her after her mother left when she was 2. And she too is an odd duck. How odd? She anonymously sends Jonah a video monitor. When he turns it on, he can see her, though he does not realize that she is his landlord (the rental having been arranged through an agency) and that she lives upstairs.  -By NEIL GENZLINGERJUNE 9, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/theater/blink-by-phil-porter-at-59e59-theaters.html?_r=0

Film: Sacro GRA (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

SACRO GRA
GIANFRANCO ROSI, 2013
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 93 MINUTES

The first documentary to win the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, the latest from Gianfranco Rosi (El Sicario, Room 164 and Below Sea Level), reveals the sheer diversity of life bubbling around the margins of Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare, the 43.5-mile highway that encircles the city, the longest in all of Italy. The absorbing and often moving individual portraits that emerge—an ambulance driver caring for his ailing mother, a scientist studying palm trees ravaged by beetles, an eel fisherman nostalgic for old traditions—give visibility and a human face to the places Sacro GRA drivers pass through but never see, while exposing the city’s striking contradictions. Inspired in part by Italo Calvino’s novelInvisible Cities, Rosi’s captivating chorale plunges the viewer into this paradoxical reality, allowing us a more direct, even sensorial experience of life in the shadow of progress.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/sacro-gra

Film: Quiet Bliss (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

QUIET BLISS
IN GRAZIA DI DIO | EDOARDO WINSPEARE, 2014
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 127 MINUTES

Three generations of women seek refuge in their family’s Salento olive grove after their small textile business collapses in Winspeare’s warm and vibrant drama. Against the backdrop of a radiant southern Italian landscape, Winspeare’s characters—serene Salvatrice (Anna Boccadamo), hardened Adele (Celeste Casciaro), loudmouthed Ina (Laura Licchetta), and aspiring thespian Maria Conchetta (Barbara De Matteis)—revive their lives in the wake of economic catastrophe. Turning to a back-to-basics existence as a means of healing the wounds wrought by the recession, they undergo transformations that the director renders with equal parts pathos, insight, and humor.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/quiet-bliss

Film: The Fifth Wheel (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

THE FIFTH WHEEL
L’ULTIMA RUOTA DEL CARRO | GIOVANNI VERONESI, 2013
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 113 MINUTES

Veronesi’s irresistible romantic comedy takes a journey through pivotal events in four decades of recent Italian history, as seen through the lens of Ernesto Fioretti’s unexceptional life. Played with charm and a disarming sense of humor by Elio Germano, Ernesto is a good-hearted, honest middle-class guy who struggles to keep up with changes and is always a step behind. His father disparaged Ernesto by likening him to the “fifth wheel of the wagon,” and his aspirations and involvement through the rise and fall of Socialism and the Berlusconi era are accordingly modest. But his protagonist’s apparent simplicity is precisely one of the strengths of this Tuscan director’s fifteenth feature, which opened the Rome Film Festival last year to great acclaim. Rich in emotions, its ups and downs coinciding with those of the country, Ernesto’s life serves as the perfect platform for abundant laughter and tears.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/the-fifth-wheel