Featured Review
Three Irish Widows vs. The Rest of the World (Stage Left Studio)
BOTTOM LINE: An exciting, face-paced, very physical, one-man show.
I first fell in love with Ed Malone's manic narrative style last March when I had the pleasure of seeing his one-man show, an autobiographical tale called The Self Obsessed Tragedy of Ed Malone Chapter 2 (rumor has it, the production may resurface in the near future). It's easy to see why his latest work, Three Irish Widows vs. The Rest of the World was extended for the third time since it's original mount in August.
Malone, like a whirling dervish, bounces from one character to the next with precision and deftness. A man possessed, he embodies twenty-five different characters in seventy-five minutes. With magical storytelling, an abundance of energy and clear direction, Malone guides the audience on a journey through Ireland, Spain, The United States and India through the eyes of his mother Maura and aunts, Marguerite and Brita, the titular three Irish widows.
Malone paints a picture of the women's not-so-great lives in Ireland with their respective not-so-great husbands - two of them drunkards who enjoy good, Irish, burnt steak and the other an Englishman who, well...eats fish. (No, it's not dirty - he's simply prim and boring compared to the boorish boozers.) After a drunk-driving incident and two bouts with "the Big C," (cancer), the men meet in Heaven where they enjoy "the jar" at Christ, the local heavenly watering hole, while the three widowed women are left to reinvent themselves here on earth.
I first fell in love with Ed Malone's manic narrative style last March when I had the pleasure of seeing his one-man show, an autobiographical tale called The Self Obsessed Tragedy of Ed Malone Chapter 2 (rumor has it, the production may resurface in the near future). It's easy to see why his latest work, Three Irish Widows vs. The Rest of the World was extended for the third time since it's original mount in August.Malone, like a whirling dervish, bounces from one character to the next with precision and deftness. A man possessed, he embodies twenty-five different characters in seventy-five minutes. With magical storytelling, an abundance of energy and clear direction, Malone guides the audience on a journey through Ireland, Spain, The United States and India through the eyes of his mother Maura and aunts, Marguerite and Brita, the titular three Irish widows.
Malone paints a picture of the women's not-so-great lives in Ireland with their respective not-so-great husbands - two of them drunkards who enjoy good, Irish, burnt steak and the other an Englishman who, well...eats fish. (No, it's not dirty - he's simply prim and boring compared to the boorish boozers.) After a drunk-driving incident and two bouts with "the Big C," (cancer), the men meet in Heaven where they enjoy "the jar" at Christ, the local heavenly watering hole, while the three widowed women are left to reinvent themselves here on earth.
