OUR PAST SHOWS

HAMLET

Hamlet uncut is set for a run at The Cloisters Lawn, a beautiful setting in New York City in August 2008, weekends from August 7, Thursdays-Sundays 8 PM

HAMLET, uncut, is set for a run at On The Cloister Lawn at Ft. Tryon Park, a beautiful setting in New York City in August 2008, weekends from August 7, Thursdays-Sundays 8 PM.

There will be no intermission, but audiences will be able to leave and rejoin the performance in progress, it worked so well in the indoor workshop last year.

Christopher Gottschalk will play the lead role, and many cast members will be returning from the workshop, including Laurence Weeks as Claudius, Frances You Sanderson as Ophelia, Robert Berliner as Rosencrantz, Bruce Barton as Guildenstern, Ed Banas as The Ghost and now as The Gravedigger, Ellen Distasi as Gertrude, Scott Key as Fortinbras and Marcellus, Tom Lawson as Player one and Sailor, Michael Jennings Mahoney as Ossrick and Priest, Chelsea O'Connor as Fransisca and Lady, Oh Ryne as Polonius, Christopher Salazar as Horatio, Kurt Uy as Laertes, Colleen Wallnau as Player Queen, Jonathan Reed Wexler as Bernardo. With the gorgeous Cloisters as a backdrop, Hamlet will move from place to place as we go from scene to scene in classic Gorilla Rep style - all free of charge!

The Cloisters Lawn is located in Ft. Tryon Park near the 190th Street Station on th A Train in Manhattan.

Here's a rave review of Hamlet in Backstage (and by the way, we fixed the first-night glitch in the lights!)

Scene from Hamlet. Photo by Benjamin Heller Hamlet
August 12, 2008
By Jerry Portwood

What with all the interpretations and impressive special effects showing up in Shakespeare's plays, it's refreshing to experience a pared-down version of Hamlet that reminds you that you don't have to make it complicated to enjoy the show. The most enchanting thing about Gorilla Rep's current production has to be its location on a grassy lawn on a hillside of the Cloisters. Enter through the winding paths of Fort Tryon Park — birds chirping, locusts humming (along with the cars along the nearby highway) — as the sun sets along the Palisades and you'll end up alongside the medieval structure at Manhattan's tip. It's a backdrop that puts recent modern-set interpretations of Elsinore to shame.

Director Christopher Carter Sanderson has created a simple, accessible, and easily enjoyed version of Hamlet, with the animated and likable Christopher Gottschalk in the lead. In his curtain speech, Sanderson calls Hamlet an environmental play, because the actors move into different playing spaces on the lawn, and the audience is expected to move to keep up. With the aid of a few remote-controlled halogen lamps — which occasionally flicker off, leaving the actors in the dark — the outdoor setting is enlivened at different corners during the uncut and intermissionless production. While a few actors sound as if they're straining in the outdoor setting, Gottschalk, Oh Rhyne (Polonius), Ellen DiStasi (Gertrude), and Laurence Weeks (Claudius) make it seem effortless, delivering their lines with pith and humor.

At one point during Hamlet's conversation with the ghost of his father (Ed Banas), a bat swooped down for bugs, adding a level of uncanny verisimilitude. Putting up with baby squeals and jet engines is all part of the charm of a free outdoor production, but the strong, lively cast overcomes all these potential pitfalls, and the charming locale adds a romantic vibe that's difficult to match.

Presented by Gorilla Rep at the Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park,
99 Margaret Corbin Drive, NYC. Aug. 7-31. Thu.-Sun., 8 p.m. Tickets are free.

KNB - The Musical

The New York International Fringe Festival 2008KNB – The Musical, book, lyrics and music by Christopher Carter Sanderson is in The New York International Fringe Festival 2008!

“KNB” stands for “Kuwait Naval base” and it is where CCS is coming home from in late June, to put up a musical set in a unit much like his own with the help of Allison Tartalia, Music Director/Arranger; Erin Porvaznika, Choreographer; and Alexis Qualls, Stage Manager

All of his future royalties from “KNB – The Musical” have been pledged to help Gorilla Rep projects, so we hope the Fringe run will be the start of great things for “KNB – The Musical.” Come on down to the Fringe in August after you’ve seen Hamlet at The Cloisters to help us launch what we hope and dream will be like the New York Shakespeare Festival’s “A Chorus Line” for Gorilla Rep. “A Chorus Line” ran on Broadway and financed the NYSF for years.

KNB - the Musical “KNB – The Musical” is a romantic musical comedy set in the current war among the members of a US Navy Reserve Boat Unit. The unit ponders deployment while a Boatswains Mate wonders what is making life truly miserable. Fun music, dance, and wonderful New York actors make for a toe-tapping evening.

Check back here for more pictures and news about “KNB – The Musical” and visit the Fringe NYC web site for ticket and reservation information:

www.fringenyc.org

Here's another rave review from nytheatre.com. You don't want to miss it. For full review and ticket information.

2008 New York International
Fringe Festival Reviews

KNB - the musical
reviewed by Martin Denton
Aug 14, 2008

KNB is billed as "the romantical, comical, nautical musical"; writer/director Christopher Carter Sanderson has also described it as "a romantic musical comedy set in the global war on terror." And it is, indeed, exactly those things; and without a speck of irony or disrespect. What Sanderson has accomplished here is something that I wouldn't have guessed was possible in these detached times of ours, and that is to give the War in Iraq its own This is the Army, a Broadway-style musical mascot full of irreverence, cheer, and melody that pays tribute—without idealizing, sentimentalizing or, most important, politicizing—the achievements of the young men and women who serve the United States in our armed forces.

KNB stands for Kuwait Naval Base, and that is where the members of the Naval Reserve Boat Unit who populate this show are likely bound. For now, though, they are at an American naval base, where they undergo training and drills. In the opening number, they admit they're here, above all, because "We Need the Money."

We quickly meet our protagonist, a likable Petty Officer (Third Class) named Batteaux whose fiancee has already shipped out to the Middle East with her unit. The chief of this unit has made Batteaux his scapegoat under the false belief that Batteaux is having an affair with his wife; he's making the young man's life hell. Attractive female Seaman Lane emerges as a possible love interest for Batteaux. And meanwhile, two other members of the unit, Heckler and Kotch, are trying to write a musical, in hopes that it will be picked up by the USO and keep them from going overseas. Batteaux, naturally, becomes their leading man.

The show proceeds in a succession of quick scenes, some of which advance Batteaux's story, and most of which feature a socko musical number (often ostensibly something from Heckler & Kotch's show). KNB shines in this department. With a company of 23, it possesses a chorus as large as or larger than most Broadway musicals, and choreographer Erin Porvaznika and director Sanderson use their man- and womanpower impressively. I was stirred by the a cappella singing of the national anthem near the start of the show, and then thrilled by fancy footwork in choral numbers like "The Goodbye Waltz," "The 11 O'clock Number" (featuring a kickline), and "Fraternization Polka" (yes, there is a polka).

Sanderson is the show's composer/lyricist, and most of the songs in the show pay homage to a great classical musical theatre/film tradition (e.g., Fosse, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Gene Kelly, etc.). There are really only two or three that cross the line into pastiche, including the delightfully pertinent "OSRMN" (I won't tell you what that stands for; it sends up shows like [title of show]). My favorite song is probably "Boatswain's Mate," a lively blend of Gilbertian patter and sea chanty.

The cast is led by Glenn Seven Allen as Batteaux, who sings, dances, and acts with grand finesse. The dancers are generally terrific; some of the singers, though, strain to be heard in the admittedly oversized Schimmel Center for the Arts. Standouts include Brett Hunter Levenson as Kotch, Daryl Brown as the company CO, and Matthew Wrather, who, in addition to dancing, is a featured pianist in a couple of numbers.

Sanderson's direction is splendid; he moves his large cast as seamlessly and swiftly here as in any of his trademark outdoor Gorilla Rep shows, and he trusts and engages his audience's imagination to add the invisible trappings to a bare bones production. The show's lyrics and book are the only relatively weak spots, creatively; with revision (or possibly the addition of a collaborator), they could be brought up the high level of the tunes and staging. And then KNB will be ready for its next deployment.

Written/created by: Christopher Carter Sanderson
Directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson
Presented by Gorilla Rep