Balm in Gilead Off-Off Broadway Review
Thanks to Seinfeld and its countless imitators, the coffee shop has become a cliched setting. Those who go into Balm in Gilead expecting the 90s version of hanging out in a coffee shop - wherein beautiful people who never seem to work sit around discussing their sex lives and old TV shows - are in a for a sever case of culture shock. This gritty play - a landmark for playwright Lanford Wilson, La Mama (where it was created in 1965) and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company (which made it famous in 1984) - features decidedly unbeautiful people…David Andrew Salper, in an almost painfully realistic portrayal of an incoherent addict…impressed with his monologue - half of which was muttered as a louder conversation transpired at another table. Balm in Gilead was resurrected by Steppenwolf/Circle Rep in 1984, and this revival is a worthy successor.
-Adrienne Onofri
Balm in Gilead InTheater Magazine
There’s a heck of a lot of actors giving good face in this revival being produced by Straight From the Heart Productions at the 30th Street Theatre. Set in a 24-hour coffee shop around 72nd Street and Broadway in New York City - a now gentrified spot once known as “Needle Park” because of the drug addicts who congregated. there. Life goes on as usual: Lesbians fight over female turf, drag queens hustle while applying makeup, dopers nod off and fall about, and drug deals go down one after another. In 1965, all this must have been shocking stuff, and much of it still carries punch. Act One ends with some drug threats and a truly brilliant monologue given full worth by David Andrew Salper who, as the junkie Fick, tries to explain a recent quasi-mugging. Mr. Salper’s lived-in delivery is perfect as he eases into the tale and slowly but sure devastates. Kudos to Straight From the Heart…It’s a revival long overdue, for a new generation to discover.
Women of Manhattan Los Angeles Times
John Patrick Shanley sidestepped his well-trodden path when he wrote “Women of Manhattan.” Shanley aficionados shouldn’t look here for the violence of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” or the deeply toned ethnicity of his plays and films about the Italian-American experience in New York. These women belong in Wendy Wasserstein country in Beth Henleyland. What audiences may be pleasantly surprised to find in this effervescent production at the Little Victory is that Shanley can do what many other male playwrights can’t, and that is write dialogue for women accurately and affectionately. The performances also bubble. Of course David Salper’s Bob is as interesting as a plate of glass, and Anthony Winters’ blind date Duke is annoying as an unreachable itch. But that’s the point of their being there, and they each have enough charm to make it logical that the women find them attractive.
-T.H. McCulloh
Diavolo Dance Los Angeles Times
With enormous theatrical savvy and professional production values, Jacques Heim’s full-evening performance spectacle “Tete au Carre” polishes and popularizes the hyper-athletic, bop-’till-you-drop style of movement theatre that has become so prevalent locally. Presented over the weekend at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, the eight-part piece took place inside, atop and around a metal jungle-gym (designed by Greg Smith) that constantly changed with the addition of curtains, ramps, platforms and projection screens. The most successful segments included the inventive mime “snapshots” of the prolouge, Heim’s volleyball game opposite Curtis Hurt - with the fearless David Salper cast as the ball, parts of the quartet about male hostility and the virtuosic interlued in which composers Juliet Prater and Jean-Pierre Bedoyan used the jungle gym as a giant percussion instrument.
-Lewis Segal