Review: Press Play on "Blockbuster Guy" (and Be Kind—Rewind!)

Blockbuster Guy

Written and performed by Mark Levy

Directed by Kristen Keim

Presented at UNDER St. Marks

94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC

February 21st at 5:30 pm; February 28th at 8:50pm; March 1st at 3:30pm; March 4th at 10:30pm; March 7th at 2:10pm (click here for tickets)

Mark Levy. Photo by Arin Sang-urai
Right at the start of Mark Levy's solo show Blockbuster Guy, he announces that he always has been and always will be a movie nerd. Blockbuster Guy offers a humorous paean not only to how film can shape our lives but also to finding a sense of discovery and even community in the unlikely location of a now-defunct corporate retail chain. The show arrives in revised form at the 2020 annual FRIGID Festival after a 2019 run at SOLOCOM at the PIT Loft. Levy is no stranger to the festival, with All is Fine in Sunny Florida! (2016), Lenny Bruce is Not Afraid (2018), and CC: You in Hell! (2019; reviewed by us here) on his FRIGID resumé, and Blockbuster Guy sees him collaborating for a fifth time with director Kristen Keim, who also directed Lenny Bruce and with whom he won an award for ...Waiting at the 2017 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

At one point, relatively early in the show, Levy asks the audience members to close their eyes for what he half-jokingly refers to as a "guided meditation" that leads to his younger self's happy place: Blockbuster Video. While that might sound like a potential punchline, Levy is sincere is his affection for its vanished aisles. He reveals how his love of movies, developed at an extremely young age, offered an escape from bullying; but his burgeoning cinephilia is equally tied up with memories of a loving family life. Mingled with stories of customers and coworkers from his time as a Blockbuster employee in a small college town in Florida, where he acquired the inescapable sobriquet that gives the show its title, are anecdotes of films that impacted him: Scream, for example, acting as a sort of initiation or The Producers introducing him to an actor who would eventually help to fuel his love of theater.

Levy is an entertaining and compelling storyteller, not infrequently punctuating stories with an ironic laugh, and the show often has the feel of a rousing conversation with a friend who also enthusiastically loves pop culture, parts of which are officially designated Tangents. Images and video are well integrated, including a Blockbuster employee training tape that plays as background before the show and pops up again later with an oddly sexist segment involving a customer who should perhaps find a new husband.

While Blockbuster Guy is funny throughout, it also possesses a touch of melancholic nostalgia for what can never be recreated: even before Blockbuster's demise, Levy finds that working in another Blockbuster store lacks the same "weird energy" as the store in small-town Florida. However, its ultimate message comes from something like the positive inverse of this unrepeatability of circumstance: just like you don't need to be embarrassed to love bad movies, it's ok to get joy from whatever is the right thing for you at the right time—even if that is working retail.

-John R. Ziegler (a few favorite movies: The Nightmare Before Christmas, The City of Lost Children, and Aliens) and Leah Richards (a few favorite movies: Oldboy, Clue, and Night of the Living Dead) 


FRIGID 2020 Reviews on Thinking Theater NYC
Cetology
Laser Comedy Show
Mother Leeds
And the Rope Still Tugging Her Feet
A Southern Fairytale

FRIGID 2020 listings on Thinking Theater NYC
The 500 List
Artaud Marat
Beneath the Bikini
Cemetery Golf
Closed Circuit
Delirium
Finding Fellini
Jaxx & Lolo: A Friendship Story
Magnetic Dragons
Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter
A Southern Fairytale
The Stands
Story Time with Joey Rinaldi
This Feeling

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Immersive "American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams" Takes Audiences on a Marvelously Crafted Journey

Image
American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Jim Niesen Presented by the Irondale Ensemble Project at The Space at Irondale 85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NYC October 27-November 26, 2023 Shadenia Savid in Moony's Kids Don't Cry . Photo by Natasha Rotondaro In 1948, Tennessee Williams published American Blues , a collection of five one-act plays, and a remarkable new production of this collection by Brooklyn's Irondale shows that these works have lost none of their power to both entertain and challenge audiences in the intervening three-quarters of a century. Comprising plays written in the decade between 1936 and 1946 - Moony's Kids Don't Cry (1936); The Dark Room (1939); The Case of the Crushed Petunias (1941); The Long Stay Cut Short, or, the Unsatisfactory Supper (1946); and Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1946) - American Blues represents the second part of Irondale's American Century, the first install
Read more

Review: Nancy Redman’s "A Séance with Mom" Conjures Mother-Daughter Hilarity and Love

Image
A Séance with Mom Written by Nancy Redman Directed by Austin Pendleton Presented at Chain Studio Theatre 312 W. 36th St., Manhattan, NYC April 20-23, 2023 [Update 5/1/23: shows added May 24-June 4, 2023 (no performance May 29)] Nancy Redman Nancy Redman appears onstage, a simple table in front of her, a walker off to the side. Within seconds, we are immersed in a séance involving two then three then four characters—all emerging from only Redman. Redman plays Nadine, a woman who has something urgent to address with her dead mother, Gussy. Redman manages multi-faceted character work, each character in conversation with the other, complete with different gestures, accents, and mannerisms. The effect is riveting and, ultimately, deeply cathartic. The heart of the show comprises Nadine’s mission to reach her mother through a séance in order to talk. An unwitting rabbi plays the bumbling gatekeeper to the spirits in the séance, while Nadine’s something—actually several somethings—to tell her
Read more

Review: From Child Pose to Stand(ing) Up: "Yoga with Jillian" and "Penguin in Your Ear" at the Women in Theatre Festival

Image
Yoga with Jillian Written by Lia Romeo Directed by Andrew W. Smith Presented by Project Y Theatre and Richard Jordan Productions in association with The Pleasance June 2-17, 2023 Penguin in Your Ear Written and performed by Eliza Bent Directed by Jess Barbagallo June 10, 2023 Part of the Women in Theatre Festival , presented by Project Y Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres Michole Biancosino. Photo courtesy of Project Y Theatre This June, Project Y Theatre Company presents the eighth annual installment of its Women in Theatre Festival (WIT), which showcases new work by women and maintains "more than 50% female representation of all artists involved." This year, the festival includes a lobby installation project, titled In the Betweens , from scenic designer Chen-Wei Liao, through which audience members pass on their way into the theater proper. One first chooses first between "light" and "dark" rooms and then moves into "the gardens" before re
Read more