Reviews
TRANSMITTER MAN: A ROCK RADIO PLAY
Premier Recording
By Rob Lester
"If you're in the mood for an unusual theatrical musical adventure, and have a taste for rock and risk, check out Transmitter Man. Structured as a radio play (it's about radio waves - more on that later), and with an aura of paranoia in an Orwellean future society, a story is told though songs. Most of the numbers are very short, as are the segments with narration or dialog. The doings are broken up into 38 separate tracks. This is certainly in the style of rock opera, but don't think "overblown" and huge. But it's rock for sure, with pounding drums and often very electric guitar-driven. One of the guitarists is George Griggs, the composer-lyricist who also takes the role of the title character. Our Transmitter Man is a guy who, somehow, has his private thoughts transmitted (and sung) over the air waves where they can be heard on every radio station.
"There's little evidence of traditional musical theatre influence but some elements will remind listeners a little of rock operas like Tommy and commercial pop-rock music with a dark edge. Sung dialog tells the tale, with bits of spoken dialog here and there. Some of it is relentless in its force, appropriate to the saga which involves panic atatcks, both personal and city-wide as anxiety and antagonism rule the day. Spoken news reports and narration help us follow the plot.
"There is some musical variety here, with angst the operative word. Repeated musical phrases, sometimes to the point of relentlessness, form some of the songs' structures. Some seem more like fragments that could be developed. The packaging offers only a few sentences as far as plot synopsis, but much can be gleaned from the songs that are narrative or mini-scenes like "This Is a Break-Up Song" (you can't be much clearer than that). The lyrics are functional but not the kind that make you admire them for their craft, wordplay or poetic images. When they repeat, it emphasizes that. (Examples: "We're getting to your brain/ We're going through your brain/ You'll never be the same." and "I hate this pain, but that's how it is.")
"The songwriter in the lead role does well, despite a smallish voice that doesn't prevent his character from venting and exploding -quite the contrary. Chris Sheehan as the psychiatrist is especially effective and the early scenes with overwhelming authority are more interesting than much of what follows. For those more easily offended, there are several instances of strong curse words and a segment briefly suggesting orgasmic cries. Some of the lower-key moments work best, such as the "Trying Not to Stare" song where Owen meets an attractive woman (sung by Rachel K. Myers). There are a few well-done glimpses of satire in depictions of the future society ways and the kinds of things people say that are then normal ("I design packaging for cranium implants"). It is effective at times without being easy to take. One feels as if run over by a musical truck, and the plot's anxiety attack won't be the only attack for some listeners: the almost non-stop attack of wailing guitars and head-banging rock may be too much pound per pound. But several of the songs are catchy and quirky, such as "Pills for Owen" and "I'm Never Bored When It Rains."
"The CD is produced by Todd Tobias who also plays several instruments. Transmitter Man transmits a high dose of rock energy, but may not sustain interest throughout, especially for those wanting more polish or tradition. It has its raw appeal and a dash of whimsy and satire, but may be more notable as rage-worthy than stage-worthy if it were to be a theatrical piece."
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The Infinity Repertory Theatre Company
By Anya Rakoczi
Published: August 2007
'MOD' is a show with a great sense of humour. Set in 1964 it is a satire of the Beatles
mania that hit America; the hysteria that infects the youngsters of one small American town provides the audience a constant stream of laughter
throughout. The play's over-the-top spoof-like style was wildly fun and its success lay in the exaggerated acting of the cast, whose inflated
personalities were blessed with great comic timing. The show is scattered with up-beat catchy songs and, of course, dance moves to be cringed over,
but what more could you expect from a show set in the 60s? Filled with enthusiasm and comic silliness, rock 'n' roll has never been so funny.
Augustine's Sanctuary, 6 - 12 Aug, 10:45pm (12:15am), prices vary, fpp 166.
tw rating: 4/5
Getting "MOD" Into Fab Shape
by Peter D. Kramer
Published: July 20, 2007
"MOD"
Where: East to Edinburgh Festival, 59E59 Theater, 59 E. 59th St., Manhattan
When: 7 p.m. today to July 29 (no performance July 24)
Tickets: $15
Call: 212-279-4200
With: Lucy Braid, Andre Catrini, Mike Greco, Jasmine Schwab, Craig Fogel, Austin Wages, Susannah Genty-Waksberg
and Rachel Warren. Featuring Elizabeth Campolongo, Christine Barnwell and Amy Secunda.
Long after John, Paul, George and Ringo went their separate ways, George and Paul got together to talk about The Beatles.
Not that George and Paul.
It was George Griggs and Paul Andrew Perez, who met in Nyack when Perez ran Main Street Arts and Griggs was putting on shows there a couple of times a year. Their paths crossed again when Perez moved on to the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts.
Griggs had written a rock opera called "A Midsummer Night's Dream and a song cycle, "Heat Lightning." He and Perez worked together on summer teen shows but wanted to work together on something bigger.
That bigger something gets its premiere tonight at 59E59 Theater in Manhattan.
It's "MOD," their 90-minute rock musical about Rory, a kid growing up in 1964 middle America, watching the British Invasion and dreaming of being the fifth Beatle.
After nine performances at 59E59 - at 59 E. 59th St. - "MOD" turns the British Invasion around and invades the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival, where it will play Aug. 4-11.
It's been a long and winding road to this moment, with drafts and more drafts; songs written, honed and discarded; and scenes shaped, stories changed.
Griggs wrote the music and lyrics; Perez wrote the book.
The songs include "Shake, Baby Shake," "Something Happens When the Boys Meet Girls," "I'm Your Man," "A Boy Like You" and the groovy "AM Radio," which revels in a format "where the action lives."
"AM radio, I can count on you.
AM radio, yeah, you're coming through."
Remember, this is 1964.
Griggs, 54, a Bronx native who grew up in New City and now lives in Haverstraw, says he was - and is - a Beatles fan, although his favorite band was The Kinks.
When friends picked favorite Beatles, he chose John, the smart one.
"He was introverted and secluded, yet extroverted at the same time," Griggs says. "He was the rhythm guitarist, the main songwriter, always the leader."
Griggs went on to front a band of his own - Shobiz - a group that toured as the opening act for Aerosmith, Twisted Sister, Talking Heads, Joan Jett, and The Ramones.
Perez, who was just 4 years old in 1964, was into McCartney.
"I guess as a little kid it always made me feel cool about my name because he was so cool," Perez says.
"I think my earliest recollection was of the movie 'HELP!' and it was on network TV and I just thought they were the funniest and coolest guys on the planet. I learned to play guitar because of The Beatles."
There are no Beatles songs in "MOD," but Griggs did consciously try to put himself back into that time, when he'd sit in his New City garage and "play 'Gloria' for three or four hours straight."
That's the kind of kid Rory is in "MOD," dreaming big.
Creating a musical from a blank page is a daunting task, but Griggs and Perez got a big boost in 2004 when they approached ASCAP NYC, a sort of musical incubator where working pros give up-and-comers a boost.
They were chosen as one of three musicals to receive ASCAP's help that year. On the panel of composers and songwriters were Stephen Schwartz ("Pippin," "Godspell," "Wicked") and Stephen Flaherty ("Seussical," "Ragtime").
After presenting one full act of the musical, Griggs and Perez got the panel's feedback, some of it brutally honest, but all in the name of making the show better.
They were given a week to rewrite and rework before coming back to the panel.
"We were in good company," Griggs says. "Steve Flaherty said: 'George, my musical was in your position. It was just a few years ago when me and Lynn (Ahrens) were where you are. Now you're doing it and I'm on the panel.'
"And Stephen Schwartz brought us in and said: 'Look, we're all just songwriters.'"
Crafting a musical is not easy, Griggs says.
"I'm seeing 'Godspell' or hearing 'Hard Day's Night' or 'Sgt. Pepper' thinking it just sort of came out that way," Griggs says. "There's a whole process. People don't realize."
There have been many changes along the way, with workshops and readings and new songs promised and delivered.
At some of the workshops and readings, and at ASCAP, one of the performers was Chantel Pascente, who started working on "MOD" when she was still a student at Somers High School and taking classes at Northern Westchester Center for the Arts.
After NWCA closed, Perez formed the Theater District at the Pulse Performing Arts Studio in Bedford Hills - and the student-driven Infinity Repertory Company.
"MOD" is officially an Infinity presentation - and Pascente is its director. She says some of the songs are the same ones she sang years ago at ASCAP, but "the story's completely different."
And it's still evolving. As late as last weekend, there were still moments during the rehearsal when the action stopped and the words "really great song will go here" were spoken by the cast, the book writer or the composer.
Cast members have come and gone, too. Now, it's a mix of Infinity kids and some young New York-based actors. It's a work in progress, a work that will premiere tonight in Manhattan - after many a hard day's night.
King of Hearts Hails From Memphis
By Patricia McNeill
Senior Staff Writer
Issue Date: 2/14/06 Section: A&E
"Hearts Are Wild"
Through Feb. 19
Starring: Billy Hartung, Julie Dingman Evans, Ben Evans
Directed by Tracy Brigden
City Theatre
412.431.CITY
Many think that oracles went out of style with the Greek gods at Delphi and the likes of Oedipus. City Theatre's world-premiere musical, "Hearts Are Wild," lays such erroneous conceptions to rest by informing the masses that we had one here in the United States, in Memphis, Tenn., not 60 years ago.
The Oracle, my friends, was Elvis and the temple was rock 'n' roll.
When Steve was just a baby, his parents took him to the King (Billy Hartung) to see what bright future awaited him. Instead, in true oracle fashion and with the trademark curled lip, they received a cryptic message: "Your son will follow the music in his head, and he will die at the end of the road."
Lights up on the present. Steve (Ben Evans) thrashes about under his Elvis bedspread, waking from what he thinks is a dream and not the latent memory of his proclaimed destiny. What seems to be left over from the dream is the rock 'n' roll band (Craig "Izzy" Arlet, Tom Earley, Brian Stahurski) that had accompanied Elvis and his prophetic declaration. Unfortunately for Steve, and much to the chagrin of his wife Sharon (Julie Dingman Evans), only he can see and hear it.
As he gets ready for work, Steve goes into an easy and almost melancholic number called "Ordinary Life," in which he, along with his wife and dad (Billy Hartung), sing of the stability he has achieved in suburbia with his new lawn mower and even a snow blower.
But as the song continues it morphs into a confession of Steve's inner desires and becomes an anthem for anyone who has ever wanted to break out of the average life he leads. With passion and a quick tempo, Steve gutturally cries out that he wants to go to Tahiti, get a tattoo and "find a girl with no diploma to give him head until he's in a coma."
It seems his wild streak is about to find some encouragement in the form of his new co-worker, Brianna (Katie Allen). Dressed in colorful and revealing clothing, she is the opposite of Steve's grounded and conservative wife and ready to break all the rules. She seems to bring out his inner bad boy as he shows up to work one day with mussed hair and a Hawaiian shirt. Brianna is, of course, dressed to match in a plastic grass skirt and coconuts. As for the problem of the wedding ring on his finger, she sings a seductive number that proclaims "I'm Cool With That."
When Steve goes to get a haircut at Paranormal Hair and Nails he learns from his hairdresser/psychic (Billy Hartung) that his dream is actually a vision and that "the wild one will save you, the safe one will kill you."
More sure than ever that Brianna is the wild one for him, Steve continues on his musical journey of self-exploration in which he gets in touch with his inner Elvis ("The Elvis in Me") has a hilarious "battle" with a Skater Dude (Billy Hartung) in a coffee shop ("I'm a Real Man") and tries desperately to figure out which road he will die on.
"Hearts Are Wild," by George Griggs and Darrah Cloud, is the contemporary rock musical at its best. The musical numbers are powerful and lingering and the lyrics are tight and witty. The vocal talent brings the entire show together with the four-person cast hitting every mark.
Ben Evans seems to have been made for the role as he easily transitions from geeky pocket protector to sexy pelvic thrust with a voice that rivals the King himself at moments. Julie Dingman Evans, whom Evans is married to on and off the stage, gives an amazing vocal performance in "Only Everything" where she plaintively sings of the love she has for her husband. Her sympathetic portrayal of the seemingly suffocating wife makes it difficult to decide with whom Steve will ultimately be happier.
Kate Allen, a Point Park senior, is vivacious and seductive as the vixen Brianna. Each of her numbers pops with energy, particularly her opening number, "The Place Where I Belong," where she is beside herself with joy as she enters into what surely must be her rightful position in life: an office assistant.
Billy Hartung, by far the most comedic of them all, impressively plays no fewer than six characters, including The Oracle, a punk, Steve's dad and the hairdresser. Hartung does a fantastic job of sharply defining each role. His Elvis impersonation is entertaining, with a voice that makes you melt and a white jumpsuit that hurts your eyes.
"Hearts Are Wild" is a night of rock that will draw praise from even the most reluctant musical theatergoer. In fact, it's sure to make your heart beat a little faster.
Read the full article here.
IN PERFORMANCE: THEATER;
Crisis and Harmony in the Next-Door Garage
By Neil Genzlinger
Published: March 12, 2003
"Heat Lightning"
Kirk Theater
A new theatrical form may be taking shape at the Kirk Theater on 42nd Street: the garage band musical. The show, "Heat Lightning," about 75 minutes of songs tied together with a little bit of story, is so scruffy, relaxed and intimate that you feel as if you're watching one of those three-chord garage bands that bang out ragged music mostly for the fun of it.
That is partly because the stage is roughly the size of a garage, and because you are indeed watching a band: the musicians are planted right alongside the actors. The main character, Seth (Sean Fri), slips in and out of the band, since in the story he is a country-rock singer.
Seth is having a midlife-crisis moment, cheating on his wife, Cris (Laura Marie Duncan), with a luscious temptress named Aurora (Coleen Sexton). The two backup singers in Seth's bar band (Jennifer Waldman and Jackie Seiden) mock him a lot, in perfect harmony.
The play, by George Griggs and Paul Andrew Perez, which runs through April 20, doesn't have much more than that on its mind, plotwise. Mostly it's a vehicle for Mr. Griggs's songs, many of them pretty punchy, all of them delivered well by the talented singers. A wry number called ''Ordinary Life'' early on sets a nice tongue-in-cheek tone; the play and the actors rip along just on the edge of camp and parody for most of the way. The plot and the novelty run out before the music does, but that's the way it is in garages; if you want neat and genteel, find a living room.