WHAT A WORLD! WHAT A WORLD!
The Tank, NYC
by Eric Marlin
cast Queen-Tiye Akamefula, Annie Hoeg
photos Maria Baranova
The 1943 melodrama The Pearl of My Oyster could be a camp masterpiece, an erotic transfixion, a flicker of joy amidst utter terror, or it might just be a dumb old movie. Two performers try to sort it out and things get heated…does anyone need an Altoid?
“Crowd-Pleasing Theater to See,” New York Times, Helen Shaw
“As the summer heats up, our critics are raving about these seven not-to-miss Off Broadway shows.”
Eric Marlin’s cryptic play about camp and its discontents isn’t exactly — or solely — a play. The director Ilana Khanin treats Marlin’s disorienting and archly funny text as if it were a avant-garde choreographic score: For the first section of the 65-minute show, it’s like a dance of the minimalist Judson Church variety; then it becomes a drag re-enactment, as if a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” shadow cast had decided to act out “Casablanca” instead.
New York Theatre Review, Theresa Buchheister
I got swept away last night, over and over again, by the pearl in MY oyster, this beguiling play, written with twisting humor and roiling inner monologue that becomes outer monologue by Eric Marlin and directed by Ilana Khanin with an unique choreographic sensibility shared by great directors like Richard Foreman and Tina Satter.
If you want to have some new art crushes, you should go see this show