The Taming of the Shrew, opening the season of the newly refurbished National Theater in Constanta, is a most enjoyable show, full of color, vitality and sense of humor – which nevertheless honors the often ignored complexity of this comedy as well. For Paul Bargetto’s reading of it does not simplify the insoluble contradictions of the original.

by MARGO JEFFERSON  - February 15, 2005

The stage is bare except for the frame of a wooden house with three green windows. It is protected by a wire fence. The door opens and out struts a creature in a crown of blue-black feathers and a bathrobe with feather patches. He is Rooster, and he rules this house with threats. (Ray Wasik talks like Ralph Kramden on "The Honeymooners.")

Aesop Meets Beckett

by Anderson Weekes - Winter/Spring 2005

The proper thing to do would be to disavow - mildly, of course - having understood what it was all about and leave it at that.  Serenade & Philosopher Fox, two one-act plays by the esteemed Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek, were presented by East River Commedia under the inspired direction of Paul Bargetto in February at the downtown arts space Collective: Unconscious.  Macabre and hilarious, these comedies are black like scorched earth.  They mount frontal assaults on the faith - or pretense - that civility is at the heart of civilization, taking no prisoners and razing all our defensive fortifications.

by Matt Freeman · February 10, 2005

As Troy Lavallee, dressed as a philosophical “Fox,” began his pleadings to a silent Bishop on a Park Bench, I think I had a flash of the roots of The Zoo Story. Dressed in pelts, covered in dirt, carrying his quarry of a human in a red sack on his back, “Fox” is the murderous and unruly Nature of Man trying to find Meaning in his Existence. He pleads to a member of the establishment, who represents Tradition. He finds, instead of answers, confusion and a deep sense of Loss. Please note the excessive use of capital letters. The Zoo Story has a similar pleading for understanding, a similar park bench, a similar representative of the status quo. It refrains from the capital letters.

by MARGO JEFFERSON - January 13, 2004

It's good to step outside the security of our homeland culture. Nothing can be taken for granted. History changes, but so does the meaning of words. Depending on the situation, words like freedom and tyranny and faith have different applications and consequences. When does faith constrict freedom? When does freedom become a cover-up for tyranny? Most important, who has the power to define these words?

by Kessa De Santis - January 2004

In the program biography for playwright Slawomir Mrozek, the audience for STRIPTEASE (1961) and OUT AT SEA (1960) is alerted to the fact that while Mr. Mrozek’s name is familiar in Poland, where he is considered one of but three great modern playwrights, he is virtually unknown in the United States. The biography is, unfortunately, rather accurate. For, as socially, philosophically and politically witty as these two plays come across in translation, one can but wonder at their power when performed in the original Polish.

by Andy Propst - January 6, 2004

Although written over 40 years ago, Polish playwright’s Slawomir Mrozek’sabsurdist one-act plays Out at Sea and Striptease, which opened over the weekend as a double bill, contain vivid, and often frightening, truths about freedom that resonate loudly for America in the early twenty-first century.

by Martin Denton • January 2, 2004

Thankfully, any worries about John Ashcroft and company notwithstanding, most contemporary Americans don't know what it means to not be free. By which I mean, we take not just our freedoms for granted; but also the residual manifest destiny and cockeyed optimism that, acknowledged or not, we believe to be our due as a result of all that righteous freedom.