Flying high: Five Flights is breathless fun--and bravura art too.Five Flights * Written by Adam Bock * Directed by Kent Nicholson * Starring Jason Butler Harner, Matthew Montelongo, and Alice Ripley * Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. (through February 22) Adam Bock's Five Flights features file best gay male kiss I've ever seen on the stage. It s a long, juicy, passionate smooch between Ed (the charismatically nerdy Jason Buffer Harner) and Tom (the studly studly - Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to hairy but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic "most studly" or as noun-form "studliness". "Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most studly." Matthew Montelongo) that builds huge tension in the theater, shifts just enough to let the audience laugh a little, then keeps on going. The kiss is only one step in a mating dance that Bock Noun 1. bock - a very strong lager traditionally brewed in the fall and aged through the winter for consumption in the spring bock beer lager beer, lager - a general term for beer made with bottom fermenting yeast (usually by decoction mashing); originally depicts in all its awkward glory. Ed and iris two siblings must decide what to do with the aviary aviary Structure for keeping captive birds, usually spacious enough for the aviculturist to enter. Aviaries range from small enclosures to large flight cages 100 ft (30 m) or more long and up to 50 ft (15 m) high. Enclosures for birds that fly only little or weakly (e.g. their recently deceased father built in a vacant lot as a tribute to his dead wife. Jane (Joanna P. Adler), wife of Ed's brother Bobby, wants to sell the properly to a developer. Ed's sister, Adele (Lisa Steindler), and her best friend, Olivia (Alice Ripley), want the aviary to house Olivia's birdbrained Church of the Fifth Day. That's where Ed meets Tom, a pro hockey player who's attracted first to Olivia's gospel and then to Ed. They approach, they avoid, they date--then Ed backs away. Someone hurt him once, and he doesn't want to risk that again. Tom counters with some gentle advice: "Rejection bounces us out of our bodies, and we have to find a way back in." If it were only a portrait of an up-to-the-minute gay relationship, Five Flights would be a winner. But it's a lot more. It's amazing how much Book packs into a 90-minute play--hilarious character studies, inventive bits of writing, keen observations of life, swerves into wild theatricality. Book switches scenes in an instant: "Here we are. Different place. New moment. Same story." And they're off. Suddenly Tom and a gay-friendly teammate (Kevin Karrick) are batting a shampoo bottle around a locker room with hockey sticks. Suddenly Adele, the good listener, has a 10-minute monologue. Kisses come out of nowhere, with varying results. Five Flights is a comedy about faith--in visions, in the tales, in the body. Most dangerous of all is faith in nothing. Five Flights is a breakthrough for Bock, the 42-year old Canadian who studied playwriting play·writ·ing also play·wright·ing n. The writing of plays. with Paula Vogel at Brown University and won a 1999 Best Play award from San Francisco Bay area “Bay Area” redirects here. For other uses, see Bay Area (disambiguation). The San Francisco Bay Area, colloquially known as the Bay Area or The Bay critics for Swimming in the Shallows. He's found his ideal director in Kent Nicholson, whose inventive staging drives the play at screwball screw·ball n. 1. Baseball A pitched ball that curves in the direction opposite to that of a normal curve ball. 2. Slang An eccentric, impulsively whimsical, or irrational person. adj. speed and elicits sensational performances. Ripley (best known for musicals) especially shines, playing Olivia as a mix of a holy roller, Marilyn Monroe, and a chicken. Book and company break all the rules of conventional playwriting with Five Flights, but fans of quirky, soulful comic playwrights like Craig Lucas and Harry Kondoleon will feel fight at home. Shewey writes on theater for The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times. |
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