“ ‘Sad Boys in Harpy Land’ is at once the bellowing laugh from the flame-kissed walls of our current hell and a guttural, existential screech that encapsulates the deranged experience of having to live in this world, finding art along the painful path.”
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“ ‘Sad Boys’ spends very little time beyond the interior of Tatarsky’s head...the collection of references and potential ingredients is tantalizing. Tatarsky doesn’t have “no material,” she has plenty, but she keeps scattering it in her own predilection for extended, self-engrossed freak-out.”
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“The songs have a vaguely improvisational feel. Some stanzas rhyme, others do not, but all are bracingly honest...I worried that the morose pixie dream tutor gimmick would wear off, but it never did thanks to sharp direction from Morgan Green and the beguiling presence of Cramer, an enigmatic performer who makes you lean forward and pay attention.”
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Many in the audience were clearly taken with the performer; I have no explanation for this.
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“I didn't comprehend a word of this and have no idea what Alexandra Tatarsky is driving at, so all I can do is describe what I saw...Tatarsky clearly has a following, and many of them cheerfully whooped through all this and gave Tatarsky an instant standing O. Maybe they're more up on their Goethe.”
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Tatarsky uses language in a fresh way, ultimately giving the sensation of having created her own. There are so many thoughts overlapping, and there are accompanying unintelligible sounds and gurgling (some of that happens during her coffee “breaks” and those coffee cups seem to be hidden absolutely everywhere), yet we follow her. When she references a new text, she will nonchalantly drop “I assume everyone here has read the book, yah? Great.” Of course, hasn’t everyone read "Die Ausbildung und Reisen von Wilhelm Meister"??? Her spontaneous body language may very well be choreographed but even there we have a very approachable and comforting whimsy throughout.
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"Clear away all of the warning-worthy and transgressive shenanigans in “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” and Alex Tatarsky – performance artist, cabaret singer, and clown – offers a convoluted, fragmented, erudite adaptation of two German coming-of-age novels, connecting them, and herself, to the themes of self-loathing and inaction. But her seriousness is suspect, and it’s the shenanigans that make this show so weirdly captivating."
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