April, 2021 - Theater Mirror

By Mike Hoban

“Mommy’s Dead and They Buried Her in Moscow” – Created by Nervous Theater Company; Directed by Connor Berkompas. Presented by Nervous Theater in a co-production with The Ellen Theater at the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, MT. Available for streaming now.

How do you transform The Three Sisters, Chekhov’s masterpiece of narcissistic despair, into an almost joyous experience? If you’re the Nervous Theater Company, you begin by removing nearly all of the characters except the three siblings from the stage and story (although a couple of their “romantic” interests are represented as disembodied voices offstage), add a handful of quasi-contemporary musical numbers, and throw theatrical conventions out the window. Mommy’s Dead and They Buried Her in Moscow is the second production by the company co-founded by Boston Conservatory alums Annabella Joy, Connor Berkompas and Sympathie the Clown, and with Mommy’s Dead, they deliver on their stated mission to produce “radically re-imagined classics”.

*(Michael Knowlton, Rachel Cognata iand Kadahj Bennett in A.R.T./Company One’s ‘Hype Man’ – Photos by A.R.T.)*

by Mike Hoban

“Hype Man: a break beat play” – Written by Idris Goodwin. Stage version originally directed by Shawn LaCount. Filmed version co-directed by John Oluwole ADEkoje and Shawn LaCount. Cinematography by The Loop Lab. Animation and illustrations by Barrington Edwards. Presented by Company One Theatre and American Repertory Theater. Available for streaming through May 6. For more information and tickets, go to: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/hype-man-2021/

When Idris Goodwin’s electrifying and poignant work, Hype Man: a break beat play, had its world premiere back in 2018, a number of the names of the unarmed black citizens who had died at the hands of white police in the preceding years – Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Michael Brown – had already become household names. Unfortunately, by the time a filmed version of the play began streaming last week, nothing had been done to slow the growth of this appalling list, which has instead exploded. The sickening murder of George Floyd last Memorial Day led to the world-wide protests of last summer (the largest in the history of the U.S.), and appeared to wake up the populace to this disturbing reality as even large, conservative corporations began to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Month: April 2021

Nervous Theater Brings Mirth, Music to Chekhov with ‘Mommy’s Dead…’

“Hype Man” (Still) Exceeds the Hype