Olivia Abiassi

What Else Is True?

August 21, 2023

Another problem with the play is that although the subject is “Improv” we never actually witness any, just theater games to prepare for group improvs. Games like Mind Meld, Mating Call, 99 Problems, Zip Zap Zop and the Pattern Game are practiced but as the rules are not made clear, many in the audience be confused by what is happening. Throughout the play we are told that Miles is the most brilliant of them all, based on his auditions and performances, but except for a brief moment in the next to last scene in which he performs two characters in an improv alone, we are never shown any evidence of this. [more]

HOUND DOG

October 30, 2022

Director Machel Ross does little to guide this play to any semblance of cohesion. Scenes 1 and 13, between Hound Dog and Ayse, her childhood best friend, begin with the exact same lines and stage blocking up to a point…so, did one scene happen and the other one not happen? Which is the real scene? Scene 6, between Hound Dog and Yusuf, the neighborhood trash collector and best friend to Hound Dog’s father Baba, happened three days after their meeting in Scene 4, or is it, as Hound Dog perceives, only yesterday? [more]

First Down

February 27, 2022

A plea for understanding the pain of being Muslin-American, Sevan’s First Down at the 59E59 Theaters focuses on the plight of an adored football player who decides to kneel and pray during the national anthem rather than stand at polite attention, hand over heart. Quarterback George Berri (a handsome, well-built, sensitive Peter Romano) is a mid-westerner with pale skin and a name that doesn’t necessarily connote his Muslim upbringing. After the Star-Spangled Banner is played, Berri, a young Lebanese/American, is first seen. He is on his knees praying in the locker room well after the game is over. Soon Coach Bill Fitzgerald (Larry Bull, finding every nuance in what could have been a clichéd macho role) enters and the structure of First Down begins to manifest itself: three conversations of increasing emotional power beginning with Coach Bill, then Berri’s agent and finally his impassioned mother. [more]

The Commons

February 18, 2020

Could there be five more self-involved, selfish, self-deceptive characters than those who populate Lily Akerman’s "The Commons" at the 59E59 Theaters? No, these five roommates aren’t evil, just depressingly of the here and now, young people who have lost the ability to communicate honestly with each other. There’s a problem with a 90-minute play about people who do not connect: it is an unrewarding slog for an audience to sit through. [more]