by John Thomason
(All Photos by Justin Namon)
[
Regarding Zoetic’s Stripped] “For many American actors, it would be difficult enough to recite a lengthy soliloquy in a convincing Russian accent. But doing so while wearing sky-high heels and almost nothing else while performing acrobatics on an unsteady stripper pole mounted in the center of the stage? That’s a feat of physical, mental, and emotional dexterity that, placed anywhere else in a year-in-review column, would be burying the lede.
As Masha, an exotic dancer desperate to maintain guardianship over her baby in a court system stacked against her, Lindsey Corey put on a performance that still echoes with a cerebral fire all of these weeks later. It came in Chris Demos-Brown’s Stripped, at Zoetic Stage with choreography by Barbie Lazaro of Miami’s Vixen Academy. Corey worked the pole like a seasoned professional, stimulating our minds as well as, you know, other places. She made that old chestnut about Ginger Rogers — that she had to do everything Fred Astaire did, only backward and in high heels — seem quaint.
[Regarding Zoetic’s Betrayal] “Zoetic’s spartan reimagining of Harold Pinter’s reverse-chronology classic Betrayal tops the list. The play was jazzy and judgmental when it needed to be and favored the appearance of an existential void over a sense of a physical place. Stuart Meltzer found profundity in the spaces between Pinter’s acidic words, drawing a career-best performance from Chaz Mena.”
Miami’s Top Ten Stage Shows of 2015
1. Betrayal, Zoetic Stage
2. Constellations, GableStage
3. Summer Shorts, City Theatre
4. Stripped, Zoetic Stage
5. Ragtime, Actors’ Playhouse
6. Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune, Alliance Theatre
7. New Jerusalem, GableStage
8. Leveling Up!, New Theatre
9. The Toxic Avenger, Actors’ Playhouse
10. Disgraced, GableStage
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