Fringe the Morning After: The More Loving One at the Soho Playhouse

by the mick on September 13, 2011

in Reviews You Can Use

I’m just gonna get right on out with it—one of the stars of this show looks like a young Patrick Wilson.

That should sell tickets on its own.  I mean.  He’s handsome.  And so alarmingly Wilson-esque that you notice it the SECOND he steps on stage.  You can’t stop noticing it.

But Mr. Wilson-esque (real name: David Beck) is hardly the only thing worth recommending about The More Loving One, now playing at the Soho Playhouse as a part of the Fringe Encores Series.  Primarily focused on two couples debating the institutions of love, sex, law and family one uncomfortable evening in a college town plagued by a sex scandal, the play has distinct notes of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Still, it brings a surprising freshness to material we’ve all seen and heard before.  Plus, it earns more than a few hearty laughs, at least a handful of them thanks to Preston Martin who is giving a pitch-perfect performance as Henry, one half of the play’s gay couple.

The More Loving One won the 2011 Fringe Overall Excellence Award for Best Production of a Play before earning its spot in the Encores Series this month, and appears to have a bright future ahead of it.  We’re looking forward to seeing where it lands next.  In the meantime, you can check out one of the final four performances this month.  Snag tickets here.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Spotlight On…Adriana DeGirolami

Name: Adriana DeGirolami

Hometown: Chicago

Education: NYU Tisch School of the Arts (Atlantic Theater School, Stonestreet Studios)

Select Credits: May 21st - Judgment Day (The Kraine); Ephemerama (Gene Frankel Theatre - Planet Connections Theatre Festivity); The Murder Party (Manhattan Repertory Theatre)

Why theater?: Solidarity. Despite our growing compulsion to assert our differences, ultimately we are all human beings with a vast understanding and ability to appreciate one another’s experiences, even if they are not our own. In the theater you can find some of the greatest artistic expressions of this truth. To empathize with the characters on stage is thrilling for me, both as an actor and audience member.

Tell us about The More Loving One: On the surface, it appears to be a story about “relationships”; one straight, one gay and the challenges therein. But as you dig deeper you realize it’s actually a story about the experience of being in a relationship. By which I mean it’s about the most vulnerable, unspoken truth about the interaction between two people who are intimately intertwined with one another. All set against the backdrop of society’s preconceived judgments and interpretations of love, lust and marriage. I can best describe the writing by saying it’s as if Edward Albee and Woody Allen had a baby and named it Aaron Sorkin. Yes, it’s that good. And Cory Conely proves to be that promising. Overall, I think the most unique thing about this comic drama is its ability to keep you on the verge of laughter and even tears at any given moment, both for the performers as well as the audience. I think that’s a testament to how accurately it depicts the experience of being in a relationship with someone you love as deeply as these characters love each other.

What is it like to be a part of The More Loving One?: Nothing short of a blessing. I knew from the very first rehearsal that we had an exceptionally ambitious and passionate group of people who were all equally excited to bring this particular story to life. And I think the audience can feel that throughout each performance. We have employed a tremendous amount of care into the development of our characters and the bonds between them. Our director, Craig Baldwin, has been instrumental in helping us meticulously shape their specific relationships. The authenticity and candor is found in the specificity of their interactions, without which you are in danger of an overly cliched depiction of this play that the audience wouldn’t have been able to relate to.

What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as artists?: When you are watching theater you are experiencing someone, right in front of you, go through something that you may or may not personally identify with. What speaks to me the loudest, I suppose, is theater that I can very much identify with personally, that makes me feel - for a moment or for a couple of hours - that I am connected to a person or the people on stage and I understand them. I see myself in them and them in me. Because they are right there. What is happening is real, I can see it. And feel it. And I love that. Everyone enjoys being entertained. What speaks to me most is that which also moves me to think about my own life, my own thoughts and feelings and experiences. It reminds me that we’re all a lot more alike than we are different. And I can’t think of anything more inspiring than that delicate thread that ties us all on a fundamentally human level.

Any roles you’re dying to play?: I would happily play Tracy Lord (or C.K Dexter Haven) in The Philadelphia Story. Carol in Oleanna. Anyone in anything Neil LaBute. In about a solid decade I’ll play Belle in Rocket to the Moon and May in Fool for Love. And one day either Guillermo Del Toro or Christopher Nolan is going to make a gritty version of Aladdin and I am going to play Jasmine. And it’s going to be amazing.

If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: I think this is a question better posed to people like, say, Meryl Streep or Kevin Bacon who may or may not have someone they still have “yet to work with.” Needless to say, the list is extensive and I look forward to watching it shrink.

Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?: Depends on the genre..
Comedy: Mila Kunis in “How do you pronounce your name?”
Rom-Com: Minka Kelly in “Don’t be that girl”.
Drama: Emmanuelle Chriqui in “I have lived for a while” (starring Alfred Molina as my father).
Action: Jordana Brewster in “Chi-Town, NY”.
Foreign: Paz Vega in “Los plebes” (starring Ana Claudia Talancon as my sister).
Sci-Fi: Sigourney Weaver in “Aliens”. Wait…

What show have you recommended to your friends?: One of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time closed right before previews were over. It was called Jump. It was a martial arts-meets-clowning Korean extravaganza. It was incredible. And it was gone in the blink of an eye. Alas…

What’s up next?: Working with The Shelby Company in their monthly sketch theater series, Ephemerama.

For more information on Adriana, The More Loving One, and the Shelby Company, please visit, http://www.adrianadegirolami.com/, http://www.themorelovingone.com/, and http://www.shelbycompany.org/

The More Loving One

nytheatre.com review

FringeNYC Festival Review
Jack Hanley · August 17, 2011

Twentysomethings caught off guard by the sudden whirlwind of adulthood is a familiar theme in plays and films. These stories often steer toward an endearing ending with revelations about love, friendship and commitment. But playwright Cory Conley’s language is too smart and too audacious to conjure a thematic cliché. For him, revelations are fleeting and adulthood offers no comfortable, permanent resting place; it’s just something to get used to. The More Loving One doesn’t want to be charming; it’s fast and ferociously funny. And it distinguishes Conley as a new, important voice of the Millennial Generation

The integrity of Conley’s dialogue is established by its tension. And the play begins (and rarely lets up) with palpable tension. Matt and Lauren, a young married couple, have just returned home from a long day at court where a friend of Matt is being tried for statutory rape. Matt is a witness for the prosecution. His mood when he returns home is manic, righteous and condescending. He’s on a verbose jag jumping from one topic to another often contradicting himself. Lauren tries at first to dismiss him, and we understand quickly she endures this behavior often. And yet she can’t ignore him; she starts questioning him, trying to decode the subtext of everything he’s saying, trying to find some seamless meaning of the man she married. A Sisyphean effort on her part, and no less so when she tries to justify her own contradictions.

Just as their squabbling is about to reach full boil, we’re introduced to Matt and Lauren’s roommate Heinrich and his boyfriend Henry. Heinrich immediately knows they’ve walked in on “a thing.” Matt insists they not leave, but stay, drink and join the tension. And as the evening progresses they seem to fall into a game of who can misunderstand each other the most.

Henry is not so much part of this game. He’s sweet, smart, and diligently pragmatic. He seems to represent the playwright’s point of view: a contradictory character is human nature. Hoping our life has continuity or a stable path only sets us up for broken promises and lost dreams. Henry tries to remain above the fray, until he’s faced with the unexpected. There are many absorbing twists in the play that lead each character to a difficult decision. But revealing them would risk weakening the story’s punch. 

Director Craig Baldwin has an uncanny precision in his modulation of tone and pacing. Conley’s script is full of lashing humor, and Baldwin smartly uses it not so much to release the tension among the characters, but to lure us deeper into the conflict.

The cast is remarkable. Their characters possess them. David Beck as Matt, Adriana Degirolami as Lauren, Jimmy Davis as Heinrich, and Preston Martin as Henry take the stage with honed skill and unwavering confidence.  

So, who is the more loving one? Or maybe the better question is: “If equal affection cannot be” who prefers to be the more loving one? Well, that question is left open for the audience to debate. In the W. H. Auden poem, from which the play takes its title, he says he prefers to be the more loving one. At least he did when he wrote the poem. But there’s a good chance he later contradicted himself.

Opened: August 17, 2011
Closes: August 28, 2011

The More Loving One

at La MaMa ETC’s First Floor Theatre as part of the New York International Fringe Festival

Reviewed by Erik Haagensen

August 18, 2011

Photo by Ryan Mekenian

Playwright Cory Conley displays a bracingly original voice in his new comedy-drama “The More Loving One,” about two 20-something couples, one straight and one gay, who have each been together for about four years. Acutely observed, inventively structured, and acted impeccably under the nuanced direction of Craig Baldwin, the show is, in a word, terrific.

“On a summer weekend in a steamy college town,” we first meet science professor Matt and video artist Lauren, a married couple returning home from Matt’s testimony against a  fellow teacher in a case of statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl. They share their college-provided condo with grad student Heinrich, Lauren’s longtime friend and former fellow artist, who is involved with the prettier Henry, a senior. In four nonchronological scenes, we watch both relationships put at risk, with one solidifying and the other dissolving.

Conley has a masterful ear for contemporary speech and a knack for exploiting subtext, as well as one of the most unusual but effective ways with exposition I’ve yet encountered. He manages to keep you constantly guessing yet never confused, a neat trick. David Beck shines as the uncomprehendingly self-involved Matt; Adriana Degirolami intrigues as the impassive but judgmental Lauren; Jimmy Davis gives the calmly superior Heinrich, who describes himself as “passive,” a sharp edge; and Preston Martin deliciously mixes sweetness and smarts as Henry.

The title comes from W.H. Auden’s poem (“If equal affection cannot be/Let the more loving one be me”), which Conley deftly makes into a two-edged sword in a taut and telling 75 minutes.

Presented by Nathan Koch as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at La MaMa ETC’s First Floor Theatre, 74A E. Fourth St., NYC. Aug. 17–28. Remaining performances: Sat., Aug. 20, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 21, 4 p.m.; Mon., Aug. 22, 8 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 28, noon. (866) 468-7619 or www.fringenyc.org.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Spotlight On…Preston Martin

Name: Preston Martin

Hometown: Dublin, Virginia

Education: NYU Tisch Undergraduate Drama (Playwrights Horizons, Experimental Theater Wing)

Select Credits: Kyle Jarrow’s Hypochondria (Marqilyn Monroe, Columbia); Fun Design With Svelte! (Svelte, DR2); Liz Swados’ Kaspar Hauser: a foundling’s opera (Kaspar, The Flea)

Why theater?: Vulnerability. Human vulnerability is a gift that we constantly try to hide, and the theater is the place we go to watch that vulnerability unveil itself. Theater teaches us through reflection that emotion, both positive and negative, is what makes day to day life mean more than waking up, having a day, and going back to sleep. I love being on both sides of it, audience and artist.

Tell us about The More Loving One: The More Loving One is a stellar four person comic drama exploring societal and personal definitions of love, lust, and marriage. We witness a gay couple walking in from the most important moment of their relationship and into the deepest and most dynamic argument their straight couple roommates have ever come up against. Cory Conley’s language is so human and raw and hilarious and poignant (I’ve been calling it gay Woody Allen with a splash of Edward Albee), and the tensions he has built will have you on the verge of laughing and/or crying at any given moment.

What is it like to be a part of The More Loving One?: We are having such a whirlwind of a time. Each of us have a little something that these character’s situations are sparking inside each of us, so there’s this generous outpouring of truth, but then we will turn around and make each other laugh at some of the most tense moments because Cory has written that fascinating balance between revealing self with protecting sore spots by throwing a zinger at somebody’s face. Craig Baldwin’s direction has been truly inspired. He is capturing some really poignant moments by reminding everyone that though we’re in the pits of conflict, each couple deeply loves each other, so we have to keep fighting to protect that love.

What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?:
I get really turned on by theater that is truly theater. Things you can’t see in a movie, that you really can only experience live. I think that mostly speaks to watching surprises. Sometimes that means spectacle (which doesn’t have to be EXPENSIVE, just innovative and surprising), sometimes it’s just a powerful performance from an actor that you can’t believe is happening in the same room as yourself. It’s not really a certain style that speaks to me, it’s just the element of surprise and the appreciation that you’re breathing the same air as people who are living as other people that have a transformative message for you to hear. When artists take that into consideration when making theater, I am spoken to. My biggest inspiration is watching all of my friends who relentlessly create and put on show after show because they’re born to do it.

What are your favorite audition pieces?: Song: The Origin of Love from Hedwig. Spoken: A hilarious monologue from Little Dog Laughed and a heartbreaking confessional I stole from the film Heartbeats

Any role you’re dying to play?: Jack Skellington duh. Or a gay male Vivian Ward from Pretty Woman. Also, duh.

What show have you recommended to your friends?: I was spreading CSC’s Unnatural Acts like wildfire while it was running.

What’s up next?: I’m collaborating with Elizabeth Swados on a theatrical tribute to the life of the revolutionary Ellen Stewart, founder of La Mama ETC.
- Michael Block