Interesting - an Armenain play in New York

[winoman]

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?UR...~Q3C5g4oXggQ5E)Q3C)//JQ3C/0Q3C)SQ3CQ5EOH1Q5EHXQ3CXHQ3BQ22HsoQ3C)S2ggFfOQ5E2V

[nunechka]

i want to see it... DAMN IT! i need to take a break from school and work...

[TomServo]

Isn't this old news?

[Siamanto]

Isn't this old news?

I may go and see it tomorrow????

Venue:
Century Center
111 East 15th Street (East of Union Square and Park
Avenue)
New York NY 10003

Running Time:
2 hours, including one 15 minute intermission

Upcoming week's performances
Thu.May.12 8:00PM
Fri.May.13 8:00PM
Sat.May.14 3:00PM
Sat.May.14 8:00PM
Sun.May.15 3:00PM
Sun.May.15 7:30PM
Tue.May.17 8:00PM
Wed.May.18 8:00PM

[Siamanto]

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?UR...~Q3C5g4oXggQ5E)Q3C)//JQ3C/0Q3C)SQ3CQ5EOH1Q5EHXQ3CXHQ3BQ22HsoQ3C)S2ggFfOQ5E2V

[The following is the text of the article. Siamanto.]



Armenian Couple Find Healing After the Killings
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: April 28, 2005

Carol Rosegg
Omar Metwally as Aram and Lena Georgas as Seta.


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Call it meeting cute, the old-school way. Aram Tomasian, a new American living in Milwaukee in 1921, orders his bride from the old-country catalog after taking a shine to her photograph. The girl arrives, but hold on: she doesn't quite match the picture. Sure enough, they shipped the wrong merchandise.

Love will ultimately prevail in "Beast on the Moon," the sincere but musty romantic drama by Richard Kalinoski that opened last night at the Century Center for the Performing Arts. But the path to marital contentment runs through some rough emotional terrain, even after Aram has made his peace with the bait-and-switch trick.

Both Aram (Omar Metwally) and his 15-year-old wife, Seta (Lena Georgas), are Armenians, survivors of the killings and mass deportations that took place in the Ottoman Empire while World War I raged in Europe. They bear scars that must be healed, or at least acknowledged, before true union can be achieved. Indeed, it's the unhappy confluence of Aram's psychic wounds and Seta's physical trauma that causes the conflict at the heart of the play.

Minutes after Seta has set down her worn tapestry bag and taken an awed, grateful look around her strange new habitat, Aram tries to drag her off to the bedroom. He is on a desperate mission to replace the family he lost in the killings, and wants to begin procreating, pronto. Sadly, Seta's years of malnourishment make this difficult, and as Aram's frustration grows, he expends his anger on his increasingly despondent and isolated bride.

"Beast on the Moon" was produced at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theater of Louisville in 1995, and has racked up a lot of frequent-flier miles in the ensuing years. Its prize-winning career on international stages includes productions in 17 countries and 12 languages, according to the show's publicist. In 2001, the play won five Molière awards. (That's French for Tony.)

The reasons for its popularity are not hard to discern. The play is forthright in performing tasks that clearly have wide international applications: consciousness-raising and the promotion of tear-duct health.

A narrator, played by the nicely avuncular Louis Zorich, is on hand to provide history lessons about the plight of the Armenians that do not fit neatly into the framework of the play. And with the help of a third character, a surrogate son named Vincent (Matthew Borish), a few life lessons will be learned, too, when the cowed Seta and the stern Aram clash at last in the cathartic confrontation that provides the play with its emotional climax.

The production at the Century Center, the play's New York premiere, is respectable and effectively acted. A little too effectively, actually. It's easy enough to guess the secondary career of the production's director, Larry Moss. Only a dedicated acting coach could elicit performances this relentless.

Mr. Metwally, seen on Broadway in last season's short-lived "Sixteen Wounded," brings a dark intensity to the domineering Aram, and Ms. Georgas's bright, timorous smile can be affecting. But one of Mr. Moss's mottoes, at least on the evidence of this production, seems to be that to stop moving is to stop acting. Both performances are exhaustingly busy, plastered in surface filigree that is more distracting than illuminating.

The virus also infects the work of young Mr. Borish, a precociously professional 13-year-old. His performance as the prickly but good-hearted young tough is so polished and persuasive that it seems churlish to note that it is also mechanical. He, too, seems to have matriculated at the Energizer Bunny Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Beast on the Moon

By Richard Kalinoski; directed by Larry Moss; sets by Neil Patel; costumes by Anita Yavich; lighting by David Lander; sound by Peter Fitzgerald; production stage manager, Fredric H. Orner; production management, Showman Fabricators Inc.; fight consultant, Rick Sordelet; general manager, Roy Gabay; associate producers, Stephanie Bast, Anahid Shahrik and Linda Shirvanian. Presented by David Grillo and Matt Salinger. At Century Center for the Performing Arts, 115 East 15th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes.

WITH: Louis Zorich (Gentleman), Omar Metwally (Aram), Lena Georgas (Seta) and Matthew Borish (Vincent).