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| Kate Sandberg and Terry Schappert |
| Photo Credit:Tony Knighthawk |
| Ah, the outdoor summer theatrical: fast, cheap and out of control, relying more on broadswords than on brains, it is what makes summer in New York worth sticking around for. Blunt Theater Company’s post-apocalyptic production of Rashomon epitomizes the genre.
A stage adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 cinematic masterpiece (itself adapted from two short stories by turn-of-the-century Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa), Rashomon tells the story of a violent crime from the wildly conflicting points of view of the perpetrator, victim, and witnesses.
Here’s five reasons why you should see this show:
It’s outdoors. The community garden at 9th and C is a fantastic outdoor venue - beautiful, quiet, and relatively free of irritating insects and Jimmy Smits, making it the best spot for summer theater in the city.
It’s fast. At just over an hour, you can catch Rashomon after dinner in one of the East Village’s trendy little eateries and still make it to Korova Milk Bar before the crowds show up.
It’s violent. Okay, only one character gets killed – but, since the same story gets told over and over in this masterpiece about the frailty of perspective, you get to watch him get snuffed four times in a row.
It stars World Wrestling Superstar Chris Benoit as the villain Tajomaru. Okay, not really. It’s actually Terry Schappert playing Tajomaru, but the difference is trivial.
It’s free. Well, free-ish - as long as you’re hard-hearted enough to withstand a little guilt-tripping from the company’s directors afterwards.
And so what if the some of the performances are uneven, or the staging leaves a little to be desired? There are cool sword fights (by Dan Renkin and Brad Lemons), and grade-A nifty plastic-and-fishnet costumes (Virigina Tuller) and a healthy dose of East Village Wierdness. If the “we’re-making–it-up-as-we-go-along” blocking bothers you, you can watch artist James Harley painting really neat pictures in the background in lieu of a set.
As far as acting goes, Kate Sandberg stands out from the crowd as the wife of the murdered man. She turns on a dime from shy to hostile, from damaged to oversexed, as the various stories and perspectives demand. And Shappert, either despite or because of his WWF-super-stardom, is fun to watch: brash and blustering and good with the sword.
Howell Mayer performs nicely as the morally conflicted woodcutter, and Kenneth Garson, the company’s executive director, wears a lot of different wigs as the obligatory transvestite hooker.
Rashomon is good, clean, fun – which is what you’d expect from the one company in New York that can actually spell “theater.” The folks at Blunt know better than to try to get philosophical with this piece – the failure of human memory and the inadequacy of truth may have been powerful themes in 1950, but in the post-moral 21st century these themes are as numbingly familiar as our candy-coated carcinogenic breakfast cereal.
This show is not about truth; it’s about sex and banditry and folks getting killed. Who could ask for anything more?
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La Plaza Cultural
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Category: Drama
Written by: Faye & Michael Kanin
Directed by: Rhonda Dodd
Produced by: Blunt Theater
Opened: July 14, 2004
Closed: August 1, 2004
Running Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Theater: La Plaza Cultural
Address: 9th Street between Avenues B & C
New York, NY 10002
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Tickets: $FREE
n/a
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Creative Team
Written by: Fay and Michael Kanin, based on the movie by Akira Kurosawa
Directed by: Dr. Rhonda R. Dodd
Produced by: Kenneth Garson and Sheila Morgan/Blunt Theater Company
Costume Designer: Virginia Tuller
Fight Direction: Dan Renkin and Brad Lemons
Cast
Marguerite French as Medium
Kenneth Garson as Wigmaker
James Harley as Artist/Deputy
Mary Ellen Hostak as Mother
Natalie Johnsonius as Shura Tsure
Michael Lennon as Priest
Howell Mayer as Woodcutter
Andrew Quinn as Husband
Kate Sandberg as Wife
Terry Schappert as Tajomaru
Virginia Tuller as Shura Tsure
Crew
Stage Manager: Tony Nighthawk
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