‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’ Review: Wielding His Trusty Kitchen Tools
When did audiences become so capricious and chaotic? Since the theater reopened a year and a half ago, reports of fights, vomiting, public urination, public sex, and staff verbal and physical abuse have surged. In early April, police were called to a theater in the UK that was showing The Bodyguard. close to riotAnd on Monday night at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village, a grocer and his wife stormed the stage. Apprentice too. Do you have an usher at home?
Of course, this particular mess was planned over 400 years ago. It appears in the screenplay by Francis Beaumont. “Knight of the Burning Pestle” It’s a tricky, loopy, wildly self-referential 1607 play that parodies both urban comedy and chivalrous romance. Other than his Uptown revival of “Camelot,” these aren’t genres with a lot of currency.but red bull theater and debaclethe co-creators of this revival don’t seem overly concerned. To do.
As the play begins, a troupe of actors in skirts and trousers are about to put on a new show, The Merchant of London, gesturing to Elizabethanism. George (Darius Pierce) gets in their way. He does not believe that local business owners are fairly represented by theaters. With the help of his wife Nell (Jesse Austrian, Fiasco founder and comedy Cherry Bomb), he forces them to remake the production with the grocery store as the main character. So Leif (Paco Torson) transforms into the Knight of the Flaming Pestle, a cavalryman with a colander for his helmet and a pestle for his sword.
The problem with topical comedies is that even in backward-looking topical comedies like this, the references don’t always survive. It’s also true that a play within a play – a tale of a merchant, a daughter, and a daughter’s lover – isn’t all that engrossing. It also includes a scene that tests her devotion by threatening to kill her. It’s a terrifying moment and categorically abusive. Comedy can’t contain that.
