Christina Bianco: The Princess of Off-Broadway Comedy
Christina Bianco impersonates Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, and Lady Gaga. She has to, because she’s already mastered most of Broadway’s biggest stars. Yet if you’re thinking that Bianco is some run-of-the-mill impressions actress, you obviously haven’t heard her sing. In addition to matching (and perhaps even surpassing) the vocal skills of the Grammy and Tony winners she impersonates, Bianco wholly embodies them—movements, facial idiosyncrasies and all. It was her display of these skills in the final incarnation of the cherished off-Broadway spoof fest Forbidden Broadway and currently in the ripped-from-the-headlines revue NEWSical that has made Bianco one of off-Broadway’s most valuable comedic actresses.
For most actors, it takes a few gigs before they find one that defines who they are as a performer. For Bianco, it was her first job in New York. Growing up in Rockland County, New York and attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Bianco snagged a spot in Gerard Alessandrini’s final installment of the critically-acclaimed revue, in which current Broadway shows are strung through the satirical wringer, Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab in 2008. Although it earned her a Drama Desk nomination for her performance, Bianco caught the production at unfortunate timing, as the long-running revue series was concluding.
“I grew up listening to it,” Bianco said of Forbidden Broadway, which Alessandrini first created in 1982. “When I booked the job, I figured I had a job for life; I thought I could do it for years and years. Unfortunately, Gerard just had enough and wanted to do other things.”
However, a similar role was around the corner for Bianco in NEWSical, which has been running since December 2009 and is currently playing at the Kirk Theatre at Theatre Row. Rick Crom’s ever-changing satirical revue reflects the political and pop-culture headlines of the moment in riotous musical numbers. Currently, Bianco can be seen skewering Christina Aguilera’s butchering of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at this year’s Super Bowl, embodying an eccentric Celine Dion, and embellishing Lady Gaga’s passion for protecting the gay community.
“Forbidden Broadway was such an institution. When people see you in that show, they associate you with it for a really long time. That wasn’t a bad thing for me,” Bianco said, acknowledging that the similar skills of improv and satirical comedy required for Forbidden Broadway landed her the job in NEWSical.
VIDEO: Christina Bianco on being Dora the Explorer and meeting her husband, Benny the Bull. Read more
The suite magic of Steve Cohen
Photo: Clay Patrick McBride
Most people want to separate their work environment from their home, but most people are not Steve Cohen. Cohen, his wife, and two children live in the Waldorf Towers in the same suite where he works, inviting over 200 strangers in every weekend. Cohen is known as the Millionaires’ Magician, and he performs his acclaimed show, Chamber Magic, five times a weekend in his residential suite. Yet Cohen’s is drastically different from the popular magic acts found in Las Vegas; he performs in front of no more than 50 people at a time, with close-up tricks steeped in Vaudeville culture.
And he’s made it into a multi-million-dollar business.
Cohen looks the part of a Waldorf resident. Dressed in tails with a yellow vest and thick-knotted necktie, Cohen, 40, not only appears dapper, but as if he’s not of this period. Even without him admitting so, it’s clear from his act that he has an affinity for old world style. Audiences of Chamber Magic are required to wear cocktail party attire (don’t even think about wearing jeans). Between the formal dress of the audience and the performer, the elegance of the setting, and Cohen’s charming delivery, Chamber Magic transports to a much older era. Yet Cohen delivers with boyish wonderment in his eyes.
That look is something that has never left him. Cohen began performing magic when he was 6 years old, growing up in Chappaqua, New York. His great uncle was an amateur magician and taught him card and coin tricks. Cohen was hooked. “That’s 34 years of a lot of magic,” Cohen said.
In 2001, Cohen commandeered a friend’s Greenwich Village apartment a few nights a week for one of the first iterations of Chamber Magic. This engagement didn’t last long, however; the friend’s wife got tired of constantly rearranging the furniture for Cohen’s magic shows. So it was off to the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, where Cohen performed for a few months. It was there that Cohen made connections that lead to the Waldorf and it wasn’t long until he took up his current residency.
Cohen refers to the kind of tricks he performs as “thinking-man’s magic.” “If I’m just doing fancy flourishes and random rolls of coins across my fingers, you enjoy it while you’re watching it, but then it’s over and it doesn’t leave you with any impact,” Cohen said. “My design parameter when creating a magic show is to make magic that lasts in your head longer.”
VIDEO: Steve Cohen talks about wooing his wife with magic, and one of his biggest fans—Stephen Sondheim. Read more
FringeNYC report: Closing notes (Rock Me Like a…)
Photo: Bart Cortright
Well, try as we might, no human drama can muster up quite the same impact as all the combined forces of Mother Nature. So with a whimpering bang, the New York International Fringe Festival (and most other theaters in the city) has decided to batten its hatches and shutter its doors two full days earlier than scheduled. And so, with little ado, I must take my leave of you, Rushers, and bid you a fond farewell. Alas, it’s too late for these mini reviews to persuade you to rush out and see these shows this weekend (my original intention), but at the very least they may persuade you to check out these companies’ work in the future. Maybe even at next year’s Fringe.
PigPen Theatre Co., last year’s FringeNYC winners for Overall Excellence in a Production, returned this year with PigPen Presents: The Mountain Song, a disarming yet bittersweet tale set in Appalachia, as narrated by an amiable mountain (Ben Ferguson). If you failed to see their award-winning The Nightmare Story, last year, you can catch it this October at Brooklyn’s Irondale Center. Read more
FringeNYC report: Day 10, Mothers of Invention
Photo: Grace Passerotti
If you had to choose, would you say your life most resembled a cartoon or a carnival? Drawn by the hand of fate or propelled by the chaotic momentum of the midway? Rendered in meticulous India ink or 64-bit digital, or covered in grit and spangles? Anna Sullivan and Naomi Grossman are here to lead you through the pleasures and pitfalls of each with their respective solo performances Anna and the Annadroids: Memoirs of a Robot Girl and Carnival Knowledge.
The mysterious entity that is the Amerifluff Corporation lurks behind this latest edition of the Annadroid saga, two different installments of which were performed at the 2006 and 2007 New York International Fringe Festivals (The Robots’ Dream Tour, and Clone Zone). This performance however is different in that it is just Sullivan alone onstage, supported with video, original music, and 3- D live camera effects rather than with a troupe of flesh-and-blood “robot” dancers. Sullivan is a flexible and courageous dancer, and the driving electronica that forms her score (composed by David Morneau, Forest Christenson, and Sullivan) sets an appropriately forbidding and futuristic tone. As Sullivan doesn’t speak during the piece, all of the exposition and storyline is presented via video, which cuts between hilarious spoof commercials for a variety of Amerifluff Corporation products (“Touchy-button” phones, for example), and the pages of a “Heavy Metal”-style graphic novel in progress (drawn by Natalya Kolosowsky, Grace Passerotti, and Bella Messex). The major drawback of this strategy is that the performance proper never builds up momentum, so often does Sullivan quit the stage altogether (reappearing several minutes later in a series of sexy costumes designed by Liz Harzoff and Sullivan). Recently relocating to the West Coast might have inspired Sullivan to strip her Annadroids production as close to the bone as possible, but quite honestly, it could use a little more meat. Read more
FringeNYC report: Day 9
Photo: Hope Cartelli
It’s always fun to try and seek out the fringe of the Fringe—the unclassifiable shows with vague program blurbs and clever concepts that are even harder to find outside the context of Fringe than within it. A trio of inventive plays caught my attention over the past few days and will hopefully catch yours during the next.
Looking to satiate my geek streak, I stumbled across Theatre of the Arcade (Venue 14, Bleecker Street Theatre), a series of five short plays each set in a different video game world as if written by a famous playwright. Opening with an homage to both Frogger and Samuel Beckett entitled “Monologue for a Single Player,” a bowler-hatted character (Timothy McCown Reynolds) navigates the absurdity of only three directions in which to step, and the persistence of death moving along with him. The next play, The Alabaster Nymph, proves the strongest of the bunch, setting Donkey Kong in a desperate, Tennessee Williams-influenced drama where Josh Mertz’ Joe and Shelley Ray’s Pauline, a wilted southern belle with a limp and dishpan hands, are locked together in irreconcilable conflict. Also strong is the final vignette, a Sam Shepard-inspired Super Mario Brothers installment starring Steven Heskett and Mertz as temperamentally-disparate brothers camping in the desert while taking hallucinogenic mushrooms together in a misguided attempt to bond. The show could end after three pieces and no-one would feel cheated: as it is, the show lasts two hours, which is pretty long for a Fringe show. Read more
FringeNYC report: Weekend Edition
Photo: Dixie Sheridan
As a San Franciscan, I had some initial doubts about the much-hyped Broadway-centric Fringe musical The Legend of Julie Taymor, or The Musical That Killed Everybody! My internal resistance monologue went something like this: “It’s just going to be full of New York industry jokes I won’t get,” and “Oh great, another musical about musicals; like that’s never been done before”, and “They just want to beat up on the most successful female director on Broadway.” All of which turns out to be more-or-less true, but what else turns out to be true is that some shows are worth their hype, and if you want an opportunity to tempt the fates and poke fun at the Broadway machine, The Musical That Killed Everybody! is for you.
Even in California, the on-going delays, budget crises, and injured actors of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, have been a constant source of am-news-ment over the past couple of years, so none of the material presented in the show comes as much of a surprise. But what does is the crack timing, powerful vocals, and buoyant enthusiasm of the cast, and the slickly professional feel of the production as a whole, despite the pointedly low-budget set (six cubes and a triptych painted in the style of Picasso’s “Guernica”) and the cardboard props, which cleverly undermine the related budgetary excesses of the ill-fated Taymor production. Read more
FringeNYC report: Day 8
Photo: Nicole Piotrkowski
It’s double trouble with Killing Nellie and Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrifying Things. Each show stars a duo—in Killing Nellie, it’s Mark Storen and Oda Aunan as unhappily-wed folk singers Rupert and Embla; Victor and Victoria stars Nathan Cuckow and Beth Graham as the titular terrified. Though totally unrelated in terms of content, both productions do skew towards the darker end of the spectrum, putting the creep back into show, for audiences who like their theater with a gothic twist.
Killing Nellie, presented by theMOXYcollective at Venue 13, The Bowery Poetry Club, hails from Australia and Norway via the Winnipeg Fringe. Like fellow Aussies Clare Bartholomew and Daniel Tobias who tour as the German mock-rock band Die Roten Punkte, Storen and Aunan perform their show as if it were a concert. First Storen, who cannot find his wife, begins to play his acoustic guitar alone, until Aunan, dressed to the hilt and speaking only in Norwegian, shows up and takes the mic. It becomes quickly apparent that theirs is not a happy union, and with each successive song, their onstage animosity grows to the point where it’s no longer funny—just mean. The real humor consistently lies in the songs, particularly the lullaby sung in Norwegian (a translated lyric of which goes, “I’ll rip out your guts/I’ll tear out your heart”) and a song called “Magee” which details a real or imagined dalliance on Emblar’s part with a man named Magee, and Rupert’s jealous reaction. Read more
Stage Rush TV: Episode 75
Talking points:
- Our Fringe Festival correspondent, Nicole Gluckstern, co-hosts!
- FringeNYC vs other cities’ Fringe
- Rent off Broadway. How it stacks up and who is best in the cast
- Broadway grosses
What do you think, Rushers? Have you ever attended a Fringe Festival in another city? What are your best Fringe memories? Have you seen Rent off Broadway yet? Who do you think is giving the best performance? Leave your bohemian opinions in the comments below!
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FringeNYC report: Day 7
Photo: Dixie Sheridan
One time-honored staple of the Fringe Festival is the sketch comedy show, and at first gloss, that is what the three funny women of Lipshtick (Venue 5, Dixon Place) intend to present. Opening with an ongoing Game Show segment—“The Make Me Over Show”—Romy Nordlinger, Scout Durwood, and Aja Houston, the “makeover specialists,” scope out the audience for a lucky contestant. The chosen winner (director, Bricken Sparacino) is eventually whisked backstage to undergo her transformation, while the makeover specialists change costumes and characters for each successive vignette. Each individual actor has a strong stage presence, and a shot at some pretty funny material, and the video montage (designed by Adam Burns) interspersed between each scene is almost too good, at times threatening to upstage the actors altogether. It’s a shame that the amount of deliberately unfunny material written into the show detracts from Lipshtick’s basic identity and exiles it into a kind of limbo where it cannot present itself as a serious drama, but doesn’t quite fulfill its premise as a sketch show either. On the other hand, characters like star-struck Macy’s shopgirl “Brittany” and unapologetically lusty bargirl “Dorca” are as funny as it gets. Read more
FringeNYC report: Day 6—Short takes
Photo: Anya Garrett
Time flies when you’re sitting in a dark theater. It’s only Wednesday, almost a full week of Fringe has passed, and the buzz is ratcheting up from hum to rumble. The lines are getting longer, the “sold out” board at FringeCENTRAL is growing larger, and more time theatergoers are comparing notes with total strangers stuck in the same long line outside shows. Lest you think I’ve been resting on my Fringe laurels, the next couple days will feature short takes on shows I’ve been seeing but haven’t had a chance to drop a line about yet. Got a recommendation of your own? Tweet me @enkohl!
The F*cking World According to Molly focuses on Molly “Equality” Dykeman (Andrea Alton), a hard-living, smack-talking, public-school-security-guard-cum-poetess making her poetry reading debut at Venue 16, The Players Theatre. Molly loves “all ladies,” nachos, and her first power saw, doesn’t care much for men (“I don’t like spending time with people I don’t want to fuck.”), hates her job, perhaps for the same reason, and definitely hates her “miserable” ex, ditto. Her raunchy poems and pick-up lines are almost indistinguishable from each other, one wistful ode begins with the line “I want to stick my face in your vagina,” but gradually Molly’s vulnerable side does creep out for a cameo appearance or two, leavening her schtick with unexpected sweetness. PC Molly isn’t, but uncompromisingly direct she is, and ultimately isn’t that the preferable vice? Read more