[ "with their eyes" / pitch review ]
another from last fall...
The Mouths of Babes
In the Coterie's 9/11 play, kids speak truths that adults can't.
By Alan Scherstuhl
The Pitch
Published: October 12, 2006
Just last week, this paper toasted the Coterie Theatre as Kansas City's best. Proud to celebrate what many think of as a children's theater, we lauded the Coterie's superior craftsmanship and the balance that artistic director Jeff Church strikes between whimsy and reality - his shows handle grown-up themes more thoughtfully than most ostensibly grown-up theaters.
No production should exemplify the Coterie's approach more clearly than With Their Eyes: The View of 9/11 From a High School at Ground Zero. A collection of monologues culled from interviews with students at New York's top-tier Stuyvesant High School, With Their Eyes is an informal oral history of the day and its aftermath. In appealing vernacular, on a stage teeming with schoolhouse life, the Coterie's kids tell us what the New York kids felt and feared: how the air "hurt," how an adult told the kids to grab hands and run, the way some boys laughed during the uncertain moments before the second plane hit.
This is honest talk from when the wound was fresh, before the signal event in recent American life had scabbed over and been exploited to sell us Chevys and candidates and 24-style torture and a meaningless war. With Their Eyes is often funny and surprising - exactly what you would hope for. Unfortunately, though, too many of the monologues are dry, despite their personal details.
The exceptions are highlights, moments as memorable as any you will ever see on a stage. Vi Tran is riveting as a smart kid skeptical of the sense of community fostered by the attack. As his character struggles to find words to explain why he's infuriated at the tourists taking snapshots at ground zero, we hear painful truths that few have dared speak. Anastasia Zorin's turn as a custodian is delicately wrought, suffused with a weary pride; and Victoria Willingham is priceless as both a dance-obsessed special-education student and a senior whose thick hip-hop lingo is already dated. Janelle Chu does smart, subtle work as the school's building manager; in the months after 9/11, she's both touched and overwhelmed by the gifts that schools across the nation have shipped to Stuyvesant. (A box on the stack behind her reads, wittily, "Toby Keith CDs.")
Living history aside, the chief reason to catch this is Abdelhadi Baaddi, a young actor, sound-effects wizard and bona fide human beatbox from Amsterdam. He spits the kick and snare drums between scenes and sometimes backs up a monologue with incredible all-mouth renditions of "Drop It Like It's Hot" or "I'm a Slave 4 U." Equally impressive is his horrifying re-creation of the sound of jets slamming into buildings and his late-in-the-show performance as a Muslim student suffering persecution.
Too much of the show fades after final curtain, but Baaddi's sounds and performance linger.
Where:
At the Coterie Theatre at Crown Center, 2450 Grand,
Details:
Through October 22, 816-474-6552.
The Mouths of Babes
In the Coterie's 9/11 play, kids speak truths that adults can't.
By Alan Scherstuhl
The Pitch
Published: October 12, 2006
Just last week, this paper toasted the Coterie Theatre as Kansas City's best. Proud to celebrate what many think of as a children's theater, we lauded the Coterie's superior craftsmanship and the balance that artistic director Jeff Church strikes between whimsy and reality - his shows handle grown-up themes more thoughtfully than most ostensibly grown-up theaters.
No production should exemplify the Coterie's approach more clearly than With Their Eyes: The View of 9/11 From a High School at Ground Zero. A collection of monologues culled from interviews with students at New York's top-tier Stuyvesant High School, With Their Eyes is an informal oral history of the day and its aftermath. In appealing vernacular, on a stage teeming with schoolhouse life, the Coterie's kids tell us what the New York kids felt and feared: how the air "hurt," how an adult told the kids to grab hands and run, the way some boys laughed during the uncertain moments before the second plane hit.
This is honest talk from when the wound was fresh, before the signal event in recent American life had scabbed over and been exploited to sell us Chevys and candidates and 24-style torture and a meaningless war. With Their Eyes is often funny and surprising - exactly what you would hope for. Unfortunately, though, too many of the monologues are dry, despite their personal details.
The exceptions are highlights, moments as memorable as any you will ever see on a stage. Vi Tran is riveting as a smart kid skeptical of the sense of community fostered by the attack. As his character struggles to find words to explain why he's infuriated at the tourists taking snapshots at ground zero, we hear painful truths that few have dared speak. Anastasia Zorin's turn as a custodian is delicately wrought, suffused with a weary pride; and Victoria Willingham is priceless as both a dance-obsessed special-education student and a senior whose thick hip-hop lingo is already dated. Janelle Chu does smart, subtle work as the school's building manager; in the months after 9/11, she's both touched and overwhelmed by the gifts that schools across the nation have shipped to Stuyvesant. (A box on the stack behind her reads, wittily, "Toby Keith CDs.")
Living history aside, the chief reason to catch this is Abdelhadi Baaddi, a young actor, sound-effects wizard and bona fide human beatbox from Amsterdam. He spits the kick and snare drums between scenes and sometimes backs up a monologue with incredible all-mouth renditions of "Drop It Like It's Hot" or "I'm a Slave 4 U." Equally impressive is his horrifying re-creation of the sound of jets slamming into buildings and his late-in-the-show performance as a Muslim student suffering persecution.
Too much of the show fades after final curtain, but Baaddi's sounds and performance linger.
Where:
At the Coterie Theatre at Crown Center, 2450 Grand,
Details:
Through October 22, 816-474-6552.