Sideshow by the Seashore: Coney Island offers some of the best of New York theatre

Diablo Cody recently wrote a love letter to Coney Island in Entertainment Weekly, but she left out a one of its most delightful charms.

Coney Island is the most un-New York place in all of New York. You immediately sense the difference as you walk off the train:  the air is lighter, the energy is brighter. You can actually feel the absence of stress, impatience, crazily-accepted narcissim. It’s a sudden weightlessness, a kind of relaxation and openness you can only fully experience outside of the city — time actually slows down. You’re clearly not in Manhattan, and it’s nothing like Brooklyn. It’s the Venice Beach of the east coast, the Second Happiest Place on Earth. It’s an escape for every New Yorker, an awesome tourist destination, and rightly so: there’s no place exactly like it. And it’s slowly, and sadly, disappearing thanks to building developments and a lack of appreciation for its unique cultural and historical significance.

But let’s not get too somber here. Coney Island boasts some of the bestentertainment in New York. Never mind the crazy antics of the vast array of people — families, hipsters, performance artists, seniors, carnies, foreign tourists.  Forget about the thrills — yes, thrills — of the Cyclone, the infamously painful wooden roller coaster, or the scarily swaying Wonder Wheel, or the cheesetastic-yet-awesome-frights of the Spook-a-rama. Let’s talk about the Freak Show, one of the most fantastic pieces of theatre to be found in New York, anywhere, anytime.

Consisting of six acts, with the performers gamely sharing hosting duties, the (more accurate and PC-titled) Side Show constitutes one of the city’s best shows in just 30 minutes.  The devilishly charming Donny Vomit opens with the horrifying Human Blockhead in which begins by hammering a nail up his nose, and then ends with a terrifically terrifying flourish — can you say electric drill?  Other highlights include the ridiculously flexible and endlessly jaunty Krissy Kocktail’s serpentine physical navigation of 18 blades as she lays happily trapped  in a wooden box and the fearless Heather Holliday, who at 19 is the world’s youngest sword-swallower and can bend over while swallowing two swords. Not all the acts are as mind-blowing as these, and the disturbing low light is the one authentic “freak” in the entire show. The Black Scorpion’s entire act revolves around his Ectrodactyly, or in layman’s terms, his lobster hands.  While he does walk on glass (which isn’t all that exciting anyway), the Scorpion’s only real asset is the rareness of his captivating hands and feet, but the fascination doesn’t last long — and unfortunately, his act does. After the initial reveal, the discomfort of the audience is tangible as the performer gleefully and repeatedly refers to his extremities as “super-happy hands/feet.” This classic “freak show” act has dramatically lost its appeal for our PC-world, and the Black Scorpion’s awkward, forced  jocularity only thinly veils what must be a good deal of personal pain.  Despite this, the draws of the other equally authentic Side Show by the Sea Shore acts are fantastically recreated with contemporary  humor and striking talents.

While Labor Day generally marks the end of summer and with it, the closures of many Coney Island’s quirky amusements until the weather warms once again, you can catch the the world’s first professional non-profit theatre dedicated to keeping the American sideshow alive until the end of the month. Don’t miss out on one of New York’s finest treasures. I promise it’s the best $8 you’ll ever spend.

Peter Jackson Takes on Aliens & Racism in the 2009’s Most Thrilling Film

A defective spaceship hovers over Johannesburg, containing thousands of malnourished and generally unthreatening aliens. What to do, what to do?

If you’re writer-director Neill Blomkamp, you sequester said aliens in an area located mere kilometers outside the city, cutting them off from interactions with citizens by barbed wire and armed guards. Essentially, you create an alien slum.

Despite Peter Jackson’s helming as producer, District 9 is not just another visually spectacular action adventure – Independence Day this surely is not. Told through the experience of dweebish everyman Wikus Van De Merwe (played exceptionally by South African unknown, Sharlto Copley), District 9 weaves a disturbing and fascinating cinematic experience, offering a totally engrossing amalgamation of styles – documentary, science fiction, horror, psychological thriller, and moving drama. Blomkamp’s startlingly imaginative and clear-cut direction doesn’t let you catch your breath for two hours: the aliens, cruelly treated as social pariahs, desperately attempt to get their ship back to working order, and all the while, Wikus’s ignorance and disregard for them, as he evicts and forces them into even more horrifying living conditions, slowly morphs into a more sympathetic and even realistic camaraderie. This change is smartly depicted, both physically and intellectually, in one of the most visually horrifying sequences. (While I won’t spoil the film for others, the payoff is indeed great: the final shot of Wikus, and of the film itself, is both overwhelmingly moving and harrowing.)

The point of the film is clear: the shrimp-like aliens are derogatively referred to as “prawns,” and the whole of Johannesburg violently demands their banishment from the city. Assumed to lack any kind of sensitivity or intelligence, as shown when an adroit alien calmly demands – in his own language of glottal clicks and pops – the mandatory 24-hour notice of eviction, the government agents disregard him, pretending they do not hear or understand (when they are clearly fluent in his language).

It would be a mistake to entirely dismiss this layer of social commentary as ineffectual or flawed, as one of my friends smartly argues here. While the science of the racial commentary is off – the idea that “hey, aliens aren’t any different from us!” – if aliens and humans do not, in fact, share any DNA (though I’m not sure the film ever states that), District 9 is clearly not interested in exploring such specifics of science and racial engineering; rather, the film is about heightening our expectations for the alien-movie genre in general, and it does so spectacularly by visually stimulating our senses and emotions simultaneously. While we’re offered yet another cinematic commentary on the far-reaching and crippling consequences of racism, classism, and government corruption, this time it’s under the guise of a kick-ass alien -invasion movie that just about anyone with a strong stomach – whether a cinephile, sci-fi junkie, or something in between – can enjoy. District 9 just so happens to also be one of the year’s most intense and gripping films.