Results tagged “charlesmee”

You don’t have to wait until summer to catch sweet some rays out on Fire Island; playwright Charles Mee and a troupe of 108 actors and musicians have brought the beguiling little beach community to Tribeca, where they’ve transformed a cavernous space at the 3LD Art and Technology Center into a beach party of epic proportions. The wholly immersive experience begins as soon as you step inside the theater and realize that not only is there no stage, but there aren’t even any seats: the performers weave their way among the audience members, who recline on pillows or beach chairs.

The above photograph from Paradise Park might lead you to believe the two hour production is a kinetic, exhilarating carnival ride. But just as the anticipation leading up to a day at Six Flags, New Jersey quickly dissipates into an irritable, misanthropic funk, an evening at Charles Mee’s Paradise Park leaves you strapped into a roller coaster that lurches forward only at rare intervals.

In Charles Mee’s Queens Boulevard (the musical) the titular traffic artery is no longer the “boulevard of blood” notorious for hit-and-run collisions. In fact, there isn’t a drop of blood in Mee’s colorful fairytale, which takes as inspiration the centuries old dance-drama style of Hindu theater called kathakali, among other things. In Mee’s eyes, Queens Boulevard is the symbolic common thread connecting New York’s myriad ethnicities and cultures, with Queens as the proverbial melting pot...