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A New Television Arrives, Finally A Theater Review By Melissa Cruz |
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“A New Television Arrives, Finally,” currently playing at Theatre 54, bills itself as an absurdist black comedy. Absurdist? Possibly, but I’m not thoroughly convinced. Black? At points, I suppose if I look real close. Comedy? Sadly no. “A New Television Arrives, Finally,” tells the story of a young, fairly dissatisfied couple who is greeted by their new television. Their television being a handsome, charming man who tells them of all the great adventures he has experienced as well as all the great things to come in their lives. Their television quickly turns on them and then embraces them again with moodswings of your slightly odd bi-polar aunt who only comes to visit on Christmas. The concept of a television being played by an actor and greeting us with a mischievous grin fifteen seconds in I can easily accept. The rest of the piece, however, was pretty hard to swallow.
In my past few articles, I’ve expressed my desire to see more of a classic approach to theater. I’ve desperately been longing to see a full piece with minimal characters where the action takes place in one location. With “A New Television Arrives, Finally,” I almost got my wish, but not quite. While the action takes place in one apartment and the actors give their best shot at creating compelling characters, the text gives us nothing but overly verbose diarrhea of the mouth. Our television, played by Tom Pelphrey with admirable gusto, rambles on and on reciting soliloquy after soliloquy without actually saying anything at all. Some of you may argue that this is an absurdist play where language and dialogue are traditionally untraditional. This may be the case, however I doubt it was the authors intent for his words to bore his audience. I found myself frequently losing focus and wondering where I should go for a drink and a nibble after the play. I imagine that playwright Kevin Mandel’s desired effect was to challenge the audience to think outside conventional means instead I was moved to remind myself to tape “Rock of Love with Bret Michaels” the following day. Frankly, the dialogue was so tedious that it was difficult to care at all about any of the people onstage. Although, I must give Tom Pelphrey and Bryan Fenkart credit for their sincere performances. Both actors have great presence and are obviously talented. I look forward to seeing them perform when they are not trapped by such a tiresome play. “A New Television, Finally” comments on what director Kevin Kittle calls ‘our culture of need’ referring to our incessant desire to be wired whether it be through ipods, cell phones or text messaging. Again, I appreciate the concept however after 90 minutes and pages and pages of excessively meaningless dialogue all the play really told us was our addiction to media is bad and is creating a society full of zombies. No kidding? This is not a new idea that is being explored here. Most of us are aware of the damage that a 24 hour news cycle can create and most of us are aware of the problems associated with media and commercialism. The idea that television and media corrupt our minds has been touched on time and time again by various artists in various genres and in much more interesting ways. David Cronenberg fiercely explores this in his spectacularly shocking 1983 film “Videodrome.” George Romero goes as far as to literally turn us and our materialistic peers into soulless shopping mall zombies in “Dawn of the Dead.” It is certainly a concept that has been done before in much more shocking and creative ways. Unfortunately, the author of “A New Television Arrives, Finally” has chosen to hide behind the questionable label of ‘absurdist’ in order to justify the flourish of his vocabulary instead of really delving into the human condition and offering up something real, tangible and relatable. The result is, once again, disappointing theater. Performances through September 30th “A New Television Arrives, Finally” Theater 54 244 West 54th Street New York, NY |
