1) John Oliver joins Seth Meyers and Anderson Cooper at the Ferst Center for the Arts.
2) The Tom Collins play the Earl.
3) The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife opens at Onstage Atlanta.
4) Georgia Puppy Caravan is coming to town!
5) Inglourious Basterds opens at area theaters.
(Photo by Dana Edelson)
1) Hayes Carll plays Eddie’s Attic.
2) Treat Dad for Father’s Day.
3) Atlanta Printmakers Studio hosts What Does an Art Critic Look, Like? with CL’s very own Cinqué Hicks.
4) The Wild Party continues at Onstage Atlanta.
5) Jimmy Shubert performs at Laughing Skull Lounge.
(Photo © Lost Highway Records)
1) New Works by Erik Gonzales, Jean Larson and Kirsten Stolle continues at Alan Avery Art Company.
2) Hayes Carll plays the Five Spot.
3) Christmas Belles opens at Onstage Atlanta.
4) Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs play the Earl.
5) Christmas at Sweet Apple continues at Theatre in the Square.
(Image by Erik Gonzales)
Halloween is over but new blood will pump up vampire fans this month. Nov. 14 sees the Atlanta release of Sweden’s Let the Right One In, a spooky drama and international film critics’ hit about a starcrossed friendship between a young vampire and a human, and then Nov. 21 marks the nationwide bow of the film version of Twilight, based on the popular Young Adult novel series of forbidden teen love with a bloodsucker. Onstage Atlanta takes a nibble of the vampire vogue with St. Nicholas, an eerie little monologue play by Irish playwright Conor McPherson.
The one-man show stars Michael Henry Harris as the unnamed narrator, a bitter, boozing theater critic living in a major Irish city. Fictional critics are usually defined either by self-loathing or verbal sadism, and St. Nicholas doesn’t break the pattern. Harris’s miserable theater reviewer acts out a mid-life crisis by developing an embarassing crush on a rising young actress. When he follows her production of Salome to London, he meets a stranger named William who turns out to be the leader of a household of vampires, and in need a human agent to invite guests for non-fatal blood “donations.” The theater critic becomes a contemporary equivalent to Renfield, Dracula’s unhinged manservant best known for eating bugs. Harris’s character goes to moral extremes, not physical ones, and while the actor has plenty of presence, his level delivery threatens to become monotonous. (In fairness, it’s a brisk show and it’s hard to imagine the downbeat character being much more animated.)
Onstage Atlanta is presenting a kind of Conor McPherson two-fer, with the small second stage hosting St. Nicholas and the larger mainstage presenting The Weir, a melancholy evening of ghost stories retold at a remote Irish pub (and staged several years ago by Theatre Gael). Both shows use horror conventions as a kind of misdirection, drawing the audience in while offering character studies of lonely, isolated individuals. St. Nicholas’ vampires rely less on supernatural hocus-pocus, and the play instead sheds light on the ideas of compassion and cultivating a conscience. It’s comparable to the original Interview with the Vampire, only without the Goth window-dressing.
1) Comedian Daniel Tosh drops by the Tabernacle.
2) The Latin American Film Festival continues at the High Museum of Art with a screening of The 12 Labors.
3) Castleberry Hill hosts Le Flash, an evening of free public and performance art.
4) The Weir opens at Onstage Atlanta.
5) CunninLynguists play Lenny’s Bar.
(Photo courtesy Daniel Tosh)
Out of Hand Theater, one of Atlanta’s youngest, scrappiest theater companies, is offering remounts of two of the ensemble’s original productions, which offer puckish visions of the national health. First, Help! plays Sept. 18-21 and offers a pointed yet amusingly plausible spoof of a self-help seminar, with plenty of audience participation. If you’ve ever wanted to beat an actor like a pinata, Help! could offer you the chance. In my review of the company’s 2004 world premiere production, I mentioned:
Help! makes some serious satirical points. The “life coaches” often interrupt themselves to hawk ancillary merchandise infomercial style, illustrating the self-help industry’s predatory nature. The inclusion of Kool-Aid late in the play comments on the cultish quality of self-improvement groups, but the play doesn’t explore the paradox of the self-help movement, which can improve the lives of participants while exploiting them.
