Friday: FROM HERE TO MATERNITY
Rhys on the beach: Braving the tropical storm season, Long Branch’s own singing sensation Jillian Rhys continues her three-Friday engagement tonight at Mattison Park Restaurant in Asbury Park.
JILLIAN DOLLAR BABY: Not so many weeks ago, a twentysomething singer named Jillian Rhys wowed audiences at Asbury Park’s WAVE Gathering with an act that showcased a performer whose confident skillsets seemed honed beyond her years, and a set of pop songs that struck a quirky retro vibe harkening back to the great girl singers of the 1960s. Few beyond family members and her most fervent fans recognized her as Jillian Gaudious, finalist in the online national competition My Grammy Moment and a performer who, under her original name, worked a dance-beat thing for MTV’s Dancelife and sang for casino crowds in Atlantic City.
WAVE on your way to the top: Rhys at a past performance at Mattison Park in Asbury.
F. Scott Fitzgerald notwithstanding, showbiz is nothing but second acts. As Jillian Rhys, the singer dispensed with the processed J-Lo trappings in favor of an approach that emphasized her strong voice. And as Rhys — a name that we think might pertain to the entire band — she returns to the impressive setting of Mattison Park Restaurant in Asbury Park tonight, for the second of three Friday night showcases presented by The Saint. Jerzy Jung appears tonight in support for the show that begins at 9pm; Red Bank’s own Andrew Holtz opens when the stand concludes next Friday, September 12. Tickets and details right here.
With some anticipating a possible washout of any outdoor activities slated for these preciously dwindling days of summer, evening events such as the Sandy Hook Foundation’s sold-out End of Summer Party run the risk of having their striped tents handed to them. But veteran locals know to take the frantic forecasts with a shaker or two of sea salt, and for more tips on some quirky things going on in the high-and-dry, read on…
Hornswoggled: The Rhode Island-based What Cheer? Marching Band takes the field at halftime during a night at Asbury Lanes that also features the Naked City Burlesque Noir.
SPITVALVES AND G-STRINGS: To enter the Asbury Lanes most nights is to step into a parallel universe, one in which the delights of record-hound culture, Tater Tots, drive-in movies and Ray Bluth are king. Leaving the conventional rock club ambience in the gutter, this reimagined kegler’s kathedral has positioned itself as an alternative arts center for a whole growing subculture of sideshow, burlesk and “variety performance” acts.
It was just a few months ago that the Lanes sent a unit called The Hungry Marching Band into the downtown streets, assembling from doorways and alleys for a memorable (and completely unamplified) blast of mobile hardcore funk that boasted perhaps the finest tuba playing we’d ever heard. Tonight it’s the 18-piece, Providence, RI-based What Cheer? Brigade doing the honors, rocking the long and low Fourth Avenue space with an ambulatory show that’s sure to blur the lines between onstage and off. They’re on a bill with some of the leading players in the NYC Burlesque Revival scene, performing a scripted Burlesque Noir revue that promises “all the intrigue of a Raymond Chandler whodunit paired with sizzling striptease that never would have made it past the film board. Plus throw in a couple torch songs, some sensuous sideshow, and a dancing poodle; and you have a show that delivers big studio thrills on a b-movie budget.” Ten bucks sees you in; see this story from the New York Times for more on Naked City Burlesque.
Midwifing the monologues: Director Vivian Taormina brings her production of the documentary play BIRTH to the stage at the Middletown Arts Center this weekend. (Photo by Andrea Phox)
MATERNITY WAR: Boil some water, grab some clean towels. The Middletown Arts Center — the sometimes overlooked resource that sits mere steps from the NJ Transit platform at the township’s train stop — is the birthing place for the New Jersey premiere of a work that’s really gone forth and multiplied across the map.
The brainchild of writer and former midwife Karen Brody, the documentary-style play Birth has been hailed as “The Vagina Monologues for birth.” Like that popular theatrical piece, it’s a speech-driven and economically staged offering that’s been striking a chord with women whose childbirthing experiences have left them dissatisfied with a system characterized by intrusive, risky medical procedures and insurance company shenanigans.
Brody, a mother of two, formed the loosely organized BOLD (for Birth On Labor Day, the holiday on which she delivered one of her sons) as a way to advocate for alternatives to the hospital-based birthing model, and for the role of the modern-way midwife in the maternity care process. It’s an entity that now boasts a presence on several continents — and the play, for which Brody selected eight true-life childbirthing stories from hundreds of interviews, has been performed all over the United States (always with a local cast in each venue), and as far away as Uganda.
Among the eight women portrayed on stage is Sandy — played here by Red Bank physical therapist and artist Donna Panarello — whose emergency C-section leaves her traumatized long after the delivery and distrustful of doctors. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Amanda (postpartum doula Judy Osman of Fair Haven), a home-birthing earth mom whose line “My body rocks!” has served as a rallying cry for BOLD.
Vivian Taormina, a Long Branch-based “therapist, thespian and event-planner extraordinaire,” directs a cast that also includes Madelyne Ryterbrand of Rumson, Anna Oleinik of Asbury Park, Randi Kervick of Ocean Township, Patrice London of Plainfield, Marina Vrahnos of Plainsboro — and Lorraine Stone of Eatontown, an actress-dancer-storyteller who’s one of our favorite people on the local stage scene (remind us to do a feature on her someday).
Several of the players here have participated in local presentations of Monologues as well as Viva Vagina, the original piece by Marjorie Conn, founder of Provincetown Fringe Festival Asbury Park. Conn and company will be returning soon to Asbury’s Stephen Crane House for a Halloween-time presentation of such Women Behaving Badly as Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden. Birth, meanwhile, can be seen in Middletown tonight and Saturday at 7pm, as well as Sunday at 2pm. Reservations and other info on the play can be found right here.
Tonight, by the way, also marks the opening night for Garden of Earthly Delights, the acclaimed theater/dance piece by Martha Clarke that’s based on the 500 year old Bosch painting of the same name. It’s going up — and, if you read our interview with Clarke from earlier this week, you’ll see we do mean up — at Red Bank’s Two River Theater, for a limited-time engagement prior to a New York run in October. Check here for ticket availability and full schedule details.
This weekend in oRBit: Red Bank music merchants have even more in store…skim pickings in Sea Bright…a different kind of party at the VFW…and a star of “the stories” turns Monmouth Street into WilleyWorld…
Posted
September 05, 2008
in
under
