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BUFFALO NEWS PREVIEW
GUSTO MAGAZINE 7/25/09
Subversive O'Neill
BY COLIN DABKOWSKI
News Arts Writer
Western New York playgoers who have taken in the lyrical mastery of Eugene
O'Neill at the ongoing retrospective of the playwright's career at the Irish
Classical Theatre Company might not recognize him in the Subversive Theatre
Collective's upcoming production of "THE HAIRY APE."
But Subversive founder Kurt Schneiderman assures us he is there. As
part of the Infringement Festival, Subversive will open its own
multidisciplinary and unorthodox production of O'Neill's lone consciously
political play at 8 tonight in its Manny Fried Playhouse (255 Great Arrow
Ave.).
The show follows the psychologically fraught story of, as Schneiderman put
it, an "over-exploited sailor who decides he wants to go out and kill
the wealthy, but can't quite get his bourgeois extermination campaign off the
ground." In other words, it's not exactly a soap opera.
 Subversive
used an impressive variety of alternative artists to bring its experimental
production to fruition, among them "mad Bohemian musicians"
Patrick Cain and Gabriel Gutierrez, movement choreographer Monica Karwan,
puppeteer Mark Tattenbaum and mask work by Leonard Ziolkowski, who also will
play the role of the titular ape. The production includes some genuine
actorly types, too, including Candice Kogut, Patrick Cameron, Paul O'Hern,
Sarah Brown, Betsy Bittar, John Vines, Anthony Orlowski, Monica Karwan, Brian
Zybala and Drew McCabe.
The show runs through Aug. 9. For more information, call 408-0499 or
visit www.subversivetheatre.org.
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
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