The American Legacy
Metropolitan Playhouse
The American Legacy

220 East Fourth Street ~ New York, New York 10009
Office: 212 995 8410 ~ Tickets: 212 995 5302

"One of my favorite downtown theaters" ~ Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
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Reviews - East Village Chronicle

Review by Martin Denton • January 23, 2004

Metropolitan Playhouse, one of my favorite downtown theatres because of their commitment to thoughtful and engaging historically-flavored work, has now taken on perhaps its most ambitious assignment: East Village Chronicles, a sort of theatrical history of its home turf, the Manhattan neighborhood(s) variously known as the Lower East Side, East Village, and Alphabet City. Nine playwrights and five directors have collaborated on ten short plays, divided into two programs. Evening A takes place in the 19th century, and Evening B covers the period since then, up to the most recent historical roadmarker, September 11, 2001. It's a wonderful concept that is fairly well-realized.

East Village Chronicles offers a sweeping, panoramic look at a city and a country on the move—snapshots of Americans (and, consequently, of America) at regularly scheduled intervals. Herewith, the plays, their periods and subjects:

   Astor and Irving by Michael D. Jackson: Multimillionaire John Jacob Astor engages writer Washington Irving to write his biography, early 1800s

   The Exploitation of Joice Heath by Trav S.D.: P.T. Barnum's first "attraction" is a Negro woman whom he claims is George Washington's 160-year-old nurse, 1835

   Manhattan Drum Taps by Craig Pospisil: A black man hides out from the Draft Riots in a white woman's home, Civil War

   If Cleanliness by Michael Bettencourt: An Irish immigrant struggles with cholera, religion, and Emma Goldman, 1880s

   Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeutschland by Anthony P. Pennino: A German immigrant loses her son and husband in the Slocum fire, 1904

   Ragtime Galz by Renée Flemings: Women become aware of various social issues, including birth control and unionization, thanks to Margaret Sanger and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, early 1900s

   Bring Back Lillian Wald by Mary Baldridge: Lillian Wald debates the Devil, time period unclear (Wald was active from the 1890s until about 1920)

   Kosher Brew by Erica Silberman: The Jewish heir to a kosher winemaking company wants to play jazz, 1970s

   225 by Staci Swedeen: A young woman from Kansas moves into an Alphabet City apartment, only to meet the ghost of an earlier inhabitant, 1980s

   Goodbye to All That by Anthony P. Pennino: In the afterlife, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee killed in the World Trade Center attacks meets a Slocum disaster victim, 2001

Trav S.D.'s contribution about Barnum and Joice Heath is delightfully entertaining as it makes a sucker out of  the man who said "There is a sucker born every minute" (I won't reveal the particulars of Mr. S.D.'s nifty surprise). And Michael D. Jackson's play,  depicting a meeting between Astor and Irving, is fun and illuminating, particularly when a wealthy businesswoman named Maria Williamson, the owner of a chain of brothels, arrives to shake things up. Both of these plays are particularly satisfying because they encapsulate American archetypes so very well; Jackson, especially, has chosen his subjects cannily, pitting the rich, unscrupulous, acquisitive, and very pragmatic Astor against the more modest, more spiritual, puritanical Irving to reveal the colorful contradictions that comprise the American character.

Other pieces fit more awkwardly into the tapestry: Bettencourt's If Cleanliness and Silberman's Kosher Brew feel very specific with regard to character but very generalized with regard to time and place: Silberman drops in a date (March 8, 1970) and a place (Fillmore East), but there's little else in her piece to tie it to the East Village at a particular moment in history. And Baldridge's Bring Back Lillian Wald doesn't even try to evoke period, instead fantastically putting its title character on a contemporary news program to debate a devil whose views are alarmingly similar to the current administration's (itself a sadly reductive notion).

A few plays find their authors trying something interesting and/or new, and not quite achieving it, which is par for the course in an evening of one-acts such as this. Renee Flemings' Ragtime Galz is fascinating and admirably conscientious, but by tackling two very important social issues—Margaret Sanger's early efforts to educate women about birth control and the horrendous working conditions that led to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire—she simply bites off more than she can chew in a half-hour play. Craig Pospisil weaves the political rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln and the poetry of Walt Whitman around a bitter drama involving a black man seeking refuge in the home of an Irish immigrant during the Civil War Draft Riots—an intriguing idea that doesn't quite cohere. Staci Swedeen's 225 is built around a terrific concept, that the newcomers reclaiming the East Village must not lose sight of the rich and varied history of their neighborhood. But it's not developed sufficiently to pack the emotional wallop that it could. Pennino, who was the leader of this project, makes a stab at tying things together thematically in the final piece, Goodbye to All That, but it feels incomplete.

But of course kudos to all these artists, who have managed to create two genuinely engaging evenings of theatre in a remarkably short period of time. All five directors plus designer William Kenyon, stage manager Gavin Walker Smith, and the uncredited costumer(s) must all be acknowledged for pulling things together with enormous professionalism and polish, particularly given the tight time frame (Pennino tells me that all ten plays were written, cast, and mounted in just four months) and an off-off-Broadway budget.

Huzzahs, too, to a hard-working company of actors, several of whom take three or four roles in the course of the two evenings. Among those making strong impressions: Andrew Firda as Astor, Barnum, and the Devil (a trio of roles any actor would kill to play, I imagine); Jane Petrov as Maria Williamson and as the Irish housewife in Manhattan Drum Taps; Phillip Bettencourt, singing beautifully a capella in Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeustchland; Christina Romanello as a spunky Margaret Sanger; Lisa Barnes, ditto, as both Emma Goldman (in Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeutschland) and Lillian Wald; and Laura E. Johnston, a delightfully buoyant presence as Joice Heath.

I am full of respect for all the artists who worked to bring East Village Chronicles to fruition; and it is because of that that I offer a couple of closing thoughts about the project as a whole. I would have liked more historical consistency—Wald and Goldman seemed to appear out of sequence, and most of the mid-20th century was absent altogether; why? I had a clear sense of inclusiveness, particularly with regard to women's issues; yet there is too much of some things: Emma Goldman figures in no fewer than three plays; Irish immigrants dominate (again, three plays). I missed the richness of the New York City melting pot: where, for example, are the Chinese, whose culture is so integral to the Lower East Side?

Finally, I think it's telling that the emphasis here was so much on tragedy: riots, disease, disastrous fires. Boundless optimism is relegated here only to bounders like Astor and Barnum: is that the vision our playwrights really have for their town?