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Photo by Don Kellogg

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Red Dog Howls

Alexander Dinelaris' new play has taken a few years to make it to New York and it's pretty clear why you won't be seeing this one any time soon again.  It's wordy, over-indulgent, a bit too much of a history lesson, and too long.

Kathleen Chalfant (Rose Afratian) is a grande damme of the stage, but even her effortless and virtually flawless performance could not overcome the deficit of material and the painful and stiff performance of Alfredo Narciso (Michael Kiriakos) - which was either his own doing or that of director Ken Rus Schmoll.  

This is one of those plays that you don't get to figure everything out until the key is handed to you at the very end.  And when this key was handed to me i wanted to toss it in the Hudson River.   If you think about it for more than 5 minutes, the entire construct of Rose makes no sense whatsoever.  She lived a life to 90+ years old and never once thought to do what she did before now?

Please.  I don't believe it for a minute.