‘Handball,’ Outdoors, by the Urban Theater Movement (NY Times - July 30, 2014) #Harlem/#ArtsEducation News: Marcus Garvey Park, Urban Theatre Movement, Marcus Garvey Park Alliance, Marcus Garvey Theater - Summerstage, Central Park Summer Stage EXCERPT: Gentrification has come to Harlem: the wine bars, the refurbished brownstones, the swanky potato chips at the corner bodega. You can catch a close-up view of that kind of transition onstage in Seth Zvi Rosenfeld’s play “Handball,” in Marcus Garvey Park. “Handball,” produced by SummerStage, takes place in an unnamed neighborhood. It might be North Brooklyn or the South Bronx or even the Harlem blocks around Marcus Garvey. The action plays out on a similar patch of ground, the center of contention between the locals who use it for handball and dominoes and the new arrivals who want to build dog runs and flower gardens. “It’s bogus at the highest of levels,” a longtime resident tells an incomer. “Go back to Westchester.” He replies, “I’m actually from Connecticut.” A production of Urban Theater Movement, the play owes a debt to Stephen Adly Guirgis’s gaily profane odes to city life. The characters also include several teenagers and a local politico, all jockeying for control of the same plot of grass and concrete. The script is somewhat distended. Scenes go on too long, and structure sags so that Mr. Rosenfeld can insert more jokey exchanges. As befits a show that will move to Central Park after its Marcus Garvey run ends, the set is cheap and provisional. So are the microphones and lights, which frequently malfunction. Brenda Banda’s direction is often awkward, with clumps of characters forced to mime conversation while a scene plays out nearby. That said, Mr. Rosenfeld offers a series of unexpectedly sympathetic portraits, which often begin in stereotype and then transition into something that feels more muddled and more truthful. What many of the performers lack in nuance, they make up for in charisma. After the first few scenes, the audience began to laugh and answer back, cheering or rejecting the characters’ choices. The play also serves as a love letter to a constantly fading and regenerating New York. “It’s like a blackboard in slow motion; everything gets erased,” one character explains. “You got to watch this city close, baby.”
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 15:24:30 +0000
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