New Mexican theatre troupe, Theater Grottesco, will bring their special brand of theatrical buffoonery to the New York stages, when The Angel's Cradle plays at NY's family-friendly theatre, The New Victory. Performances run Mar. 4-14.
In a subterranean city, studded with smoke-seeping grates and scaffolding, four outcasts live in harmony until a homeless man enters their world uninvited. The French-trained ensemble, wearing bulbous, padded costumes, will bounce off the walls as they sing, dance and perform impromptu concerts with metal scraps and bottles. Utilizing "buffoonery" techniques from the Middle Ages, the company embraces both larger-than-life comedy and tragedy.
Theater Grottesco was founded in 1983, by John Flax and Didier Maucort while both were in Paris. Co-artistic director Elizabeth Wiseman joined the following year. Now based in Sante Fe, the company has been responsible for more than 28 original productions, performed in seven countries and thirty states. Previous shows by Grottesco include: The Insomniacs, Fortune, The Richest Deadman Alive, and This is Life as We Know It...or Something.
Upcoming shows in New Victory's 1998-99 season include:
Mar. 26-Apr. 11, 1999, the Crossroad Theatre Company of New Jersey makes the New Victory its home with It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues. Blues illustrates the history of African-American music, beginning with a cappella plantation chants up through contemporary urban jazz.
Montreal's Theatre de l'Oeil chronicles the adventures of a worm named Pretzel in The Star Keeper, Apr. 16-25. With a cast of varying-sized puppets, Pretzel crosses the "dormitory of dreams," dives to the ocean depths and resists the bewitching charms of the Bubble Tamer to get his celestial charge back home. Rounding out the season is the virtuosity of The New Shanghai Circus, Apr. 29-May 23. With more than 2,500 years of circus tradition behind them, these incredible acrobats, contortionists and jugglers will certainly end the New Victory season with a bang.
A Broadway theatre from 42nd Street's golden age, the New Victory Theatre (formerly the Victory Theatre) reopened Dec. 11, 1996 as an Off Broadway venue. The 500 seat New Victory (209 West 42nd Street) presents theatre and films geared specifically for children. An organization called The New 42nd Street operates the theatre, working with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Bill Irwin, Theatreworks/USA, Warrington Hudlin of the Black Filmmaker Foundation and others to schedule its first season.
The New Victory was the first theatre to reopen its doors under the multi million dollar rehabilitation of 42nd Street, which also includes the newly built Ford Center (Ragtime) and the renovation and 1997 reopening of Ziegfeld's old New Amsterdam Theatre (just across the street from the New Victory) as the throne of Disney's new theatre empire (with The Lion King).
For tickets or more information on this or any other show at The New Victory, call (212) 239-6200.
-- by Sean McGrath
