New York’s Off Broadway Scene: A Plethora of Solo Shows Now Playing
Solo shows, especially here in New York City, are a big thing. Big enough for New York City to have the world’s largest annual international festival for solo performances. Produced by United Solo, the festival will be celebrating its sixth season on Theatre Row in the heart of the city’s theatre district from September 17 – November 22, 2015. xxxxxx
But solo shows happen all year round. At this very moment there seems to be a tsunami of one person shows flooding New York City’s Off Broadway scene. And no doubt, more are on their way. Some are based on fictional characters, others on the real life experiences of the performer, and two on larger than life historical figures. Here we get Josephine Baker and Winston Churchill. Though 
none are self-directed, most all are written, co-written, or adapted by the performer, ostensibly offering the audience a more perfect fit.
Left: Johnny Donahue solos in ‘Every Brilliant Thing.’
Though Every Brilliant Thing, The Lion, and Churchill are the three plays being reviewed here, I am also listing three other solo shows at the end of this article. Let me add parenthetically that I have only seen and reviewed one of those performances (Application Pending).
On the confessional side, with a light-hearted fictional bent, is Every Brilliant Thing, an interactive play at the Barrow Street, running through March 29th. The play is adapted by writer Duncan Macmillan from his own short story, with input by British comedian Jonny Donahoe, who is also the production’s star. We are humorously gifted—touchingly so—with a story of a young man with a suicidal mother, who first tries kill herself when he is seven years old.
Often, it takes a comedian to tackle the downsides of life with a light touch, one that let’s the audience leave the theatre in one piece. And Donahoe, like a spider on drugs crazily traversing his web; or better yet in this case, the conductor–in this case— doing a bang-up job ‘orchestrating’ the audience. The absence of a stage, per se, but rather a small staging area surrounded on all
sides by audience-filled chairs, adds to the immediacy of the dramatic experience.
The performance starts before the performance, as the casually dressed and slightly overweight Donahoe, looking more like a stagehand than the star of the show, is seen passing out scraps of paper to selected audience members. They are instructed to read them aloud when he calls out their number during the course of his story telling. I got one and passed it on to my companion for the event.
The numbered sayings, selected from thousands that the writer amassed over the years, were originally written by his suicidal mother and left around the house. Each slip of paper offered her (and us, as well) reasons, ranging seemingly at random, from ice cream, to water fights, to things with stripes, old people holding hands, a new sleeveless top, to Christopher Walken’s hair and ultimately, to finding reasons to go on living.
Along the way, Donahoe narrates the story of a young, never-named boy, either a fictional character or perhaps, Duncan Macmillan’s own life story. During the course of one hour, the boy grows up, goes to college, falls in love for the first time, marries and sets up house. Interspersed throughout , in an homage to his father’s—and his own—love of music, are snippets of songs by Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Etta James, Chicago, each commenting on the 
stages of life portrayed in the performance. Echoing his own reasons to go on living, for example, is Julie Andrews’ “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music.
Another clever—and fun—feature of the performance is Donahoe’s unerring talent for recruiting the ‘just perfect’ audience member to portray his father, or an English teacher, school guidance counselor, girlfriend and, in a touching scene, a veterinarian who had to put the child’s beloved dog to sleep.
Normally, I cringe at the very thought of audience participation. And I pray that I will not be selected. Alas, I must say, the story, coupled with Donahoe’s slow-in-coming, seductive charm won over both me and my erstwhile companion. With all of these reasons to live flying about, we left the theatre counting our
own blessings. Not a bad thing!
Right: Benjamin Scheuer sings in ‘The Lion.’
“The Lion” is another confessional treat, albeit more seriously recounted. It is beautifully written and performed, with the sensitivity of a prayer, by musician, singer, writer, composer and performer, Benjamin Scheuer. The play—a roaring hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Manhattan Theatre Club and London’s St. James Theatre—is back in town again. Extended through March 29 at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre, at Culture Project on Bleecker Street, it begins a national tour this August.
While “Brilliant” Donahoe breaths life into a character other then himself, the handsome Scheuer in suit and tie, offers up his own life in The Lion by singing songs of his own composition—all on a selection of six different guitars. The performance becomes a kind of stripping away in public performance, piercing our hearts with a gentle knowingness rarely seen on stage. I could not help but 
be reminded of Once, the 2012 Tony winner for Best Broadway Musical. Both plucked similar heartstrings.
But like Brilliant, Lion is also a boyhood tale, The solo performance opens with the experience of a child, as he works his way though a series of rude awakenings, ending with a coming of age. While Donahoe’s play highlights the mother’s suicidal tendencies, it is in Scheuer’s relationship with his father, alternating between love and hate, where emotions run high. It is that dynamic tension that serves as the backbone of the play. Playing ribs to the play’s spine are Scheuer’s two younger brothers, his move to New York City, his girlfriend, and a number of sudden shocks that appear out of left field.
The show opens quite tenderly with a song of love that recalls his joy, at a very early age, listening to his father, who made him his first musical instrument, a banjo made from a cookie tin, rubber bands and an old necktie, sing and play the guitar. Such tenderness does not last long as his father, given to rages, makes a happy life impossible for Benjamin. Perhaps the father, an academician rather than a full-time musician, is angry for a musical life not realized; for he is forever punishing his son. Scheuer describes one cruel incident, where his
father, seeing Benjamin playing with his friend on the front lawn, runs out and stomps his son’s water gun to pieces, for no apparent reason.
Except for six well-placed guitars, all of which Scheuer ends up eventually playing, the stage is left beautifully bare. This allows Scheuer’s finely-composed music and lyrical style, for which he has won numerous awards, to register all that more deeply. Spoiler Alert: as painful as some of the down-deep story-telling is, the ending reveals a new lease on life and represents a breathtaking, uplifting finale.
On the subject of historical icons, Churchill—Winston if you need to ask—is currently holding court at New York’s New Word Stages. It runs through July 2, 2015. Adapted by Chicago actor Ronald Keaton from the life and words of Winston 
Churchill, the play is based on the life and words of the famous Englishman, as well as a teleplay by Dr. James C. Humes, by the same name.
Ronald Keaton stars in ‘Churchill,’ extended through July 2, 2015.
The year is 1946 and the 72 year old, ex-Prime Minister Churchill, the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States, having accepted an invitation from President Harry Truman to visit the U.S. He is seen giving a talk, in actuality a summing up of his life, to the students at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Prior to his appearance, we are told, the two of them were drinking Scotch along the way, before arriving in Fulton by train. It is here that he delivers his legendary “Iron Curtain” speech, a term Churchill coined.
The Great Man’s story beings with his birth in 1874, at Blenheim Palace, the home of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. The play then takes us to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Surrey, where he had his education; to his military beginnings; his entrance into politics; and his ascendance to the office of Prime Minister, held during the war years, 1940-1945, and again from 1951-1955. Along the way, we are privy to snippets about his beloved nanny, his distant parents, his love of FDR, his defeat for re-election as prime minister, the history of Neville Chamberlain and Joseph Kennedy advocating for some level of appeasement with Hitler, the support his loving wife Clementine, and his 
actress daughter Sarah. We even get to see him paint, a hobby he popularized.
I wish I could say that I was blown away by Churchill. I would even have settled for mild enjoyment. Sadly, I found play’s fact-filled script, which spent some two hours skimming the top of Churchill ‘Greatest Hits,’’ while hardly plumbing the depths of the man himself. The performance seemed more like a term paper tediously delivered as a lecture, than an actual play.
The actor himself was affable in his own way. But, try as he did, even fitted out with Churchill’s familiar Holmberg hat and cigar, bore little resemblance to the full-bodied, bulldog-looking Churchill we are most familiar with. Though Keaton 
was more successful at emulating Churchill’s speech patterns, as well as his movements—he obviously studied his subject on film—he never got close to Churchill’s fiery oratory skills.
For a brilliantly portrayed and fully-believable Churchill, both as written and acted, Dakin Matthews’ portrays Churchill as one of Queen Elizabeth II prime minister’s in The Audience, current playing on Broadway. It is the go-to Churchill of the hour. He actually steals the scene from Helen Mirren. And that is saying something.
Other One Person Shows:
Josephine and I: Cush Jumbo, still playing on Broadway opposite Hugh Jackman in “The River,” just opened in her one woman show Josephine and I, to rave
reviews, at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theatre. Written and performed by Cush Jumbo, and directed by Phyllida Lloyd – it premiered at London’s Bush Theatre. Here Jumbo plays both a British actress on the rise, as well Josephine Baker, the boundary-crossing, Paris-conquering, Africa-American chanteuse who was an international star for half of the 20th century.
For those who need a Josephine Baker (1906-1975) refresher, Baker was the first African-American performer to rise to international prominence. She was also a French Resistance spy and civil rights activist. Married twice by age 16, the flamboyant Baker—she is known for her nude dancing—served as muse to Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.”
Application Pending: previously reviewed on this site (link below), is currently running at the Westside Theatre, through April 19. For two challenging, fun hours we get to inhale actress Christina Bianco, in a hilarious and zany performance, as she tries to cope with a new and totally unexpected job change at work. Along the way, with great mimicry, we meet some 42 characters, each one more outrageous than the next.
The Man in the Woman’s Shoes: In this solo performance, playing through March 14 at the Irish Arts Center, Mikel Murfi, both the actor and script writer, treats us to the life of Pat Farnon, a full-time cobbler and an occasional farmer who is majorly adept at channeling the sounds of chickens, bees, birds, as well as a pig, dog, and a dying turkey.
By Edward Rubin, Contributing Editor