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A CurtainUp Review
This Is a Test
by Les Gutman
Theater being a collaborative art form, the notion of a one-person show is really a misnomer for anything more substantial than the occasional performance that interrupts us on the street or subway. It ignores the contributions of the show's director (very few of the best solo shows are self-directed) and designers.
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Michael D. Conway is smart enough to rely on an able pair of directors. He's also smart enough to have not only written this piece but also designed the combination of sights and sounds that sustain it. These "media" are as clever as the words he's written, and as much a part of his performance as he is. Whereas some multimedia theater seems to be little more than a paean to the technology, This Is a Test engages these forms as one might employ a cast of characters. It's hard to imagine how Conway's story could have been told as effectively without these effects, and yet the effects alone would add up to little more than a high-tech slide show.
Conway's autobiography is a familiar one (growing up invisibly gay in Houston ("hell on earth"), Texas, and finding "normal" by migrating to California early in the age of AIDS). It takes place in the insomnia-induced restlessness the night before he gets the results of his HIV test. There's little in the way of new information here, but what distinguishes it is the often elegant way Conway weaves and then punctuates his words into patterns that mark us: a blood test that carries him to the TV test pattern that induces another test in retrospection; the fiery rhetoric of a TV evangelist warning of the fires of hell; childhood prayer ("and if I die before I wake...") that begets a nexus between sleep and death. It also doesn't hurt that he's often quite funny, and always a sure-footed actor.
| THIS IS A TEST
Written and Performed by Michael D. Conway Directed by Melinda McGraw and Charlie Otte Set Design: Ron Malott and Charlie Otte Lighting Design: Charlie Otte Media Design: Michael D. Conway Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes with no intermission Sanford Meisner Theater, 164 11th Avenue (22/23 Sts.) (212) 613-1682 Opened January 17, 2000 closes February 6 Reviewed by Les Gutman 1/18/2000 based on a 1/17/2000 performance. |