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.

Pixar soars once again, lifting audiences UP

Something has been a bit off with Pixar. Though enjoyable, I never quite understood the excitement over The Incredibles.  Cars was utterly boring. Ratatouille was cute, but lacked a vitality of inspiration.  And WALL•E, which began with such invigorating promise, abruptly devolved into cute-robot-saves-the-day dreck. Pixar, the company I had built such high hopes for based on the visual delights and depths of emotion presented in the Toy Storys and Finding Nemo, was dropping the ball. 

And then I saw Up.  

Everything I had been missing about Pixar was there: complex human emotion presented through beautifully simple storytelling, clever dialogue and honest humor, and breathtaking, fantastical feats of visual imagineering.  Within the first ten minutes of the film, I had laughed loudly and openly, abruptly and quietly wept, and then laughed again before I had a chance to wipe away the tears.

The story is simple:  we watch as the withdrawn Carl (the wonderful, curmudgeonly Ed Asner) meets his childhood sweetheart and fellow adventurer, the charmingly boisterous Ellie. Through a brilliantly calibrated and underscored sequence sans dialogue, we witness them fall in love and marry; we weep with Ellie upon the devastating realization that she cannot have the children they so longed for, and we  whole-heartedly root for them as they save and plan for the South American adventure they had always dreamt of experiencing together. When life gets in the way and their grand plan falls to the wayside, that’s exactly when the adventure begins: Carl attaches a rainbow of balloons to their lifelong home, and in a loving tribute to his beloved Ellie, steers the makeshift contraption to Paradise Falls, along the way, learning the life lessons of how to let go and open himself to new experiences and new loves. Of course, Carl does this all with the help of a quirky and endlessly amusing supporting cast of characters including the youngand adorably earnest boyscout-stowaway, Russell, the loyal and lovable canine, Doug, and the maniacal foil and one-time idolized explorer, Charles Muntz (the always wonderful, and in this case, delightfully despicable, Christopher Plummer).

While the story is predictably conventional, there’s a reason Carl’s tale of loss and rediscovery is one of the oldest narratives in existence: it is universally true, resonating with all audiences, everywhere. Carl’s tale is heartbreaking and heartwarming, and Pixar tells it so thoroughly and subtly, and with such elegance and understanding of the human experience, that instead of overpowering the beautiful simplicity of the story, the awe-inspiring animation elevates and enhances its inherent narrative delights through lush coloring, vibrant characterizations, and heartrending sequences. The title is more than fitting: as Carl and his house of balloons alternately ascends and falls, paralleling his life journey, we know that no matter how weighed down or disheartening life becomes, there’s nowhere to go but Up.  And that genuine and open optimism creates the best kind of (Pixar) adventure.

Harvey Gets His Chance

I’m not 45. Not even close, in fact.  Marketing campaigns have made it clear that such an age is the key ingredient — along with the obligatory vagina, of course — needed to enjoy Last Chance Harvey, a quiet romance about the middleaged and unassuming discovering that there’s always one more shot at love…and life.

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson offer beautifully simple performances as Harvey Shine and Kate Walker.  He, the self-proclaimed “vulgar American” and unenthusiastic jingle writer who once dreamt of jazz pianist fame, needs to make amends with his estranged daughter on the eve of her London wedding. She, the quintessential emotionally reserved Brit, perfunctorily collects surveys from airline passengers for a living and dreads her infrequent – and frequently bad – blind dates.  Clearly it’s kismet that the two meet, spend a single blissful day together, and…live happily ever after?  Are the middleaged even allowed to do that?

That’s the entire premise of writer-director Joel Hopkins’s cliché-riddled film.  The weird thing is, it actually works.  Let’s not kid ourselves: it’s more than difficult to make an utterly original movie these days, particularly within the overstuffed realm of the romantic comedy.  And Hopkins steals from some of our most beloved weepies: his entire cinematic concept echoes a Before Sunset in in the twilight years of life, but there’s also the scene in which Harvey serenades Kate with his sultry piano skills in an vacant hotel ballroom (a la Pretty Woman) and the fact that any potential romance for Kate ends before it begins thanks to a loved one’s incessant phone calls and constant clinginess (Love Actually).  And I can’t even begin to name all one hundred-plus rom-coms that utilize the estranged relative device, but they’re there, in abundance, workin’ hard for the tears and sympathy (here, a little Meet the Fockers painful awkwardness is thrown in for good measure). There isn’t one person who can’t relate to daddy/mommy issues, and the traditional rom-com knows this and exploits it to usually comic effect, but here it does so subtly and surprisingly effectively.

But Harvey has one thing going for it that almost no other love-centric flick does: real, honest-to-goodness age.  And I’m not talking about the wisdom that comes with it either. I mean the actual years – with the frown lines to prove it. Dustin and Emma, in their 50+ years, present an intriguing picture to those like me, in their 20s, unsure of their ability to relate to such, shall we say, seasoned characters.  But working within the same tired frame of romantic leads half their ages is exactly what’s so alluring.  To see Thompson as Kate, dreamily gazing out a bus window, and nearly bursting out of her skin for the pure giddiness of meeting someone she is utterly surprised to so fancy, and then moments later, to see that unadulterated happiness break down into the depths of disappointment and heartache when the older object of her affection fails to show for the fairytale-like meeting… It’s not until then that the realization hits that the one thing that does not change with age is the dizzy anticipation of meeting a new love and the tragic loneliness of rejection. Absurdly obvious as this is, Hopkins’ film portrays this “last chance” at love with such tenderness and honesty that is not until Kate tearfully inquires how their cross-the-pond romance could work, and Harvey tenderly, and with a quiet confidence responds, “I don’t know. But it will,” that I understand the difference between 20-something and 50-something romances: silver-haired Harvey isn’t going to let the wonderfully feisty Kate slip away, because he’s finally able to recognize that she is the chance he was waiting for.