Fourth Avenue (Brooklyn)
This show has two two excellent actors from New York City. A riveting murder mystery with lovable characters and a very tight script. Just what I'm looking for at The Fringe Festival!
It was entertaining, thought-provoking, and I was lost in the well-acted believability of the characters. The story kept me wondering and immersed in where it was going. Both actors are superb. I am trying to figure out how to see it again. I will attend anything they perform in the future.
You’ve got to love a whodunnit in which the who is capitalism.
In Fourth Avenue (Brooklyn), which is being performed by co-creators Emily Louise Perkins and Moti Margolin, a guy named Boris is being interrogated because he’s suspected of murdering the real-estate-broker girlfriend of the developer who demolished the apartment building where Boris and his family had lived for generations.
When you see the show, you’ll figure out for yourself who the literal murderer is. More importantly, Fourth Avenue is a critique of the kind of development that has no sincere respect for neighbourhoods — or existing residents.
The storytelling isn’t didactic, it’s human.
Playing her, Perkins makes the girlfriend effervescently charming, despite her sense of entitlement. As they get to know each other, Boris asks her why she stays with her boyfriend, who sounds like a jerk, and she replies, “I don’t want to be alone” and “I like the lifestyle”: motivations that are both classic and chilling.
Margolin paints an even more sympathetic portrait of Boris, a guy who’s lost both his mother and his housing, and who is increasingly — somewhat disturbingly — angry.
As the script skips between characters and time periods, between external scenes and Boris’s internal monologue, it subtly ratchets up the tension — and, admirably, refuses to resolve it.
The play’s final speech is a gorgeously surreal flight. The girlfriend-now-wife, whose name I can’t remember for the life of me, welcomes us to the sixtieth floor of the multimillion-dollar building that’s been imposed on the site of Boris’s one-time home. Dressed like a character from the Day of the Dead, she giddily explains how a single ethnic cookbook in the display suite provides cover for the destruction of a community.
Such skilful artistry to interrogating class. Yeah, baby!
(You can read all my reviews — including Fringe reviews — on my website, Fresh Sheet Reviews. Click the URL below.)