GRANDUNCLE: LAST CALL!

There are still a few tickets left for the final two performances of The Granduncle Quadrilogy, so look sharp!

Meanwhile, some more press:

Greg Burgett in the New York Press:

The Granduncle Quadrilogy, now in its final weekend, seems to have slipped in just under the wire, an impressive ode to lives needlessly centered on conflict and tradition… Inhabiting a world lovingly created by writer Jeff Lewonczyk and director Hope Cartelli, the characters traverse a frosty stage of minimally-adorned white. Wearing expensive looking, perhaps budget-hogging layers of fur and long johns, they parse Granduncle's unreliably remembered life spent eating "puffin's beak" and at a mandated week in "honeymoon camp" (his residence beside "Lake Intestinal" and time atop of "Mount Cranium" imply a rich, interior fantasy state).

And Samantha O'Brien in OffOffOnline:

While multiple deaths on frozen tundra might not be everyone’s idea of holiday cheer, the Brick Theater’s dark comedy, The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice, makes for good morbid fun. Jeff Lewonczyk’s script so extensively crafts entire cultures with their own lexicons, traditions, and histories that it feels like fictional anthropology. In the cast’s capable hands, even the most peculiar traditions or phrasings (describing smell as “taste for nose” was a favorite of mine) seem natural. Granduncle largely succeeds in telling a good story well—a simple goal, but one too often overlooked or unnecessarily complicated by aggressively experimental or ironic productions. Such a uniquely imaginative show as this is enough to put you in the holiday spirit – no matter how many bodies pile up.

In the interest of fairness, I also feel compelled to mention a review in Time Out New York, with which I have understandable quibbles.

Hope to see you at the show!

"WILDLY IMAGINATIVE AND ENGAGING TO THE SENSES"

The greatly anticipated Granduncle review from nytheatre.com’s very own Martin Denton posted today, and we’re thrilled to say that he liked it! Here are some highlights:

It's a funny show, and also a melancholy one; wildly imaginative and engaging to the senses. Jeffrey Lewonczyk … has pulled out all the stops in imagining an alternative universe in which to set his story that is at once weird and off-kilter and incisively familiar. Also Hope Cartelli, the director, who with a crackerjack design team has realized Lewonczyk's imaginary world in vivid and robust detail.

Each of the tales' various thematic ideas give free rein to Lewonczyk's imagination, and the fun derives from seeing how he'll use exotic ingredients like an albatross egg or a mammoth trunk in contexts you just don't see coming. When he gets to create from whole cloth a second new world—in the last piece, when Granduncle's wanderings take him to a land so warm and fertile that you can pick and choose which birds you will eat—Lewonczyk goes into overdrive.

Also, we’ve posted a few new pics on Flickr. Enjoy - or else.

(Photos, as ever, by Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors)

THE GRANDUNCLE QUADRILOGY: LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS HERE!

We had a wonderful opening weekend, and thank you to the many individuals who came out to support us during our first three shows.

I’m opening up this page as a set place for audience members to leave comments about the show, whatever those comments may be. We already received a thoughtful and inspiring mini-review of the Friday performance on one of last week’s posts, and if you’d like to read it click here and scroll down.

We also received a generally positive review on Gothamist, which is exciting. Some key quotes:

If Joseph Campbell ever got really baked and told his grandchildren a meandering bedtime story, it might have sounded something like The Granduncle Quadrilogy… There's an endearing 'let's put on a play' charm at work here... the minimalist set proves you don't need much to evoke an alternate reality in the theater. With just a white backdrop suggesting a desolate snow-blind north country, and Julianne Kroboth's elaborately funky costumes of pelts and feathers, director Hope Cartelli transports the audience deep into the tundra.

There are a couple of comments on that post as well, one of which simply says “I dig this play,” the other of which says “FUR IS DEAD,” in reference to the photo (which happens to be the same one at the top of this post). In response to the latter, let me quote Hope, who told me in an email today that “all fur in the piece is recycled vintage that would have otherwise gone to the trash and is better off serving a show then festering in Staten Island!” So in other words, no animals were harmed in the making of this show.

Let the comments commence!

(Photo of Richard Harrington & Fred Backus: Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors)

A FIRST GLIMPSE AT GRANDUNCLE

(Melissa Roth, Richard Harrington, Fred Backus)

Tonight is the preview performance of The Granduncle Quadrilogy, our last chance to tinker and play before the official opening tomorrow. At last night's dress rehearsal, Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors Photography came by to take some production photos, and the first of them are housed in a set at The Brick's Flickr page. Here's a glimpse; more will follow. Let me say that, as a gratified writer, I am so unbearably excited that my bones are likely to shatter.

(Gavin Starr Kendall, Richard Harrington)

(Richard Harrington and Friend)

"THE FLIGHT OF THE MAMMOTHS"

The third and final Granduncle Fable created by Piper McKenzie and Yarn AudioWorks (and read so beautifully by Richard Harrington, in the role of Granduncle) has been posted at PiperMckenzie.com. It features audio recordings of ACTUAL MAMMOTHS, captured in the wild by the intrepid Eric Winick. Also, more horrible deaths. Listen to it HERE.

GRANDUNCLE ASCENDANT

Now that the holidays are approaching (like, the day after tomorrow), there is no better time to start using the blog to plug our holiday show. Of course, being The Brick, our holiday show involves not Christmas or Hanukkah or even, alas, Kwanzaa, but rather a made-up holiday known as Kisselsrite.

Anybody who was at the inaugural Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee in December 2005 may recall a short play that I wrote called "Granduncle Tells the Children a Story of Kisselsrite During the War," a kind of alternate-world dark Arctic fairy tale. Well, Piper McKenzie (i.e. myself and Hope Cartelli) have decided to expand this concept into The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice, which you can find out more about at Piper McKenzie's website.

Among other things, we've partnered with Yarn AudioWorks to create three Granduncle-themed podcasts, in which Richard Harrington, as the title character, shares fables from his grim, fantastic world. The first one, "The Walrus and the School of Fish," went up last week, and today we posted the second one, "The Dog Who Liked People Too Much." (A third, "The Flight of the Mammoths," will appear on Tuesday, December 2.)

Please give these a listen if you can - they're only three minutes each, and they will fill you with a wintry, disoriented feeling that will hopefully remind you to give thanks for the warmth and coziness of what we hope to be a wonderful Thanksgiving.

NOVEMBER REIGN

We have clearly been remiss about blogging this month as heartily as we'd like, but we hope to redress that in the coming weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, hyper-millennia, and eons.

A great place to start is with a reminder that, holy crap, this is the FINAL WEEKEND for our current production, Lord Oxford Brings You the Second American Revolution, Live! Houses will get full, so do not miss your last chance to check out this one-of-a-kind amalgam of revisionist history, live television, cabaret crooning and dark clowndom!

The Greenpoint Gazette says, "Timely and funny ... draws on juxtapositions of history as old as our nation, and as new as McCain-Palin 2008. The fact that within that bloody scope we get some laughs, some sexiness, and some reflection is a tribute to the power of good writing, original work, and actual live people doing actual live things. Why don't you switch off your TV? Go see some theater."

A lot of good things come from Greenpoint, including many of our readers, so, yeah, there you go. Buy tickets HERE.

(Photo Credit: Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors Photography)

THE LORD OXFORD HOUR

Behold, you! A video message from LORD OXFORD and PATTY O'PATTICAKE regarding The Brick's currently-running show, in which they star, as themselves, in the show, that is currently running, at The Brick. You - behold!

'TIS THE SEASON

As pretty much every corner of the Brick Empire aside from this one is aware, we presently bask in the dawn sparkle of our first-ever official Mainstage Season. You can read all of the details of this momentous new epoch in theatrical history at bricktheater.com/mainstage.

Though we’ve been presenting programming more or less year-round since our inception in late 2002, to date we’re known most for our festivals (such as September’s third annual New York Clown Theatre Festival, for which we extend a hearty and belated thanks to all those who helped make it such a mallet-to-the-cranium success!). But this 2008-2009 Mainstage Season represents the first time we’ve brought together a carefully curated selection of shows under the same rubric, with each production being given the full range of The Brick’s resources.

So please, readers of the B(rick)log, join us in congratulating Robert Honeywell, Piper McKenzie, Old Kent Road Theater, Bone Orchard, Nick Jones, Rachel Shukert, and Third Lows for being so fortunate as to stand astride the Crossroads of Civilized Culture. How to best to do so? Why, by purchasing one of our insanely reasonable Season Ticket Plans, naturally.

Of course, the time to take best advantage of these deals is this immediate moment, because this weekend marks the debut of our first Mainstage Season event: Episode Seven of the ongoing serial Penny Dreadful, the first season of which played to sold-out houses several months ago – a situation surely to be repeated throughout the second season’s six episodes.

Additionally, there is a mere modicum of days left before the premiere of the first full-length run of the season, Brick Co-Artistic Director Robert Honeywell’s succinctly titled opus, LORD OXFORD BRINGS YOU THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION, LIVE! being the necessary and appropriate response to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's suppression of the freedoms and dignity of the European-American settlers and their descendants in the Royal Eastern American Colonies and the inordinate conferring of special favours and privileges on the merciless Indian savages and the former Negro slaves, in the year Two Thousand and Eight

Truly, an occasion to embrace by investing in a full season of Brick entertainment. We’ll have more to say about Penny and Lord Oxford in future posts – including interviews with the creators, inspiration round-ups, and other goodies – but for now, we’ll leave you to start marking your calendars and visiting bricktheater.com for tickets.

Did I mention that you should purchase some tickets? Sorry, but I’ve been accused recently of being a bit subtle for popular tastes.