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“Fish Men” and Speed Chess
June 7, 2018
This play which was first seen at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 2012 opened in February in New York City in February 2018 and closed in March.
This review by Neil Genzlinger, in the NYT of Feb. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/t...en-review.html
“A lot of Cold War symbolism accumulated around the 1972 world chess championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, but that was nothing compared with the weighty baggage piled onto the Washington Square Park chess tables in “Fish Men,” a drama by Cándido Tirado receiving its New York premiere at Intar.
The story brings five men together around the tables, which are a New York City institution. By the time each has unloaded his back story, we’ve been given a history of genocide, a helping of survivor guilt, a course in the hazards of gambling, and much, much more. Too much, really.
Cash (Shawn Randall) is a verbose hustler who tries to lure people into playing against him for money, something he especially needs on this day because his child’s birthday is imminent. John (Gardiner Comfort) is another hustler with a gambling debt. Jerome (David Anzuelo) is one of the last park denizens willing to play chess just for fun, and all of them revere an elderly fellow known as Ninety-Two (Ed Setrakian), who doesn’t play anymore but was once a chess prodigy.
Into this mix of friendly adversaries comes Rey (José Joaquín Pérez), who wants to settle debts his uncle incurred at the tables the day before. He seems harmless enough, but is he really there to scam the scammers?
Mr. Tirado gives each character a ration of pithy dialogue, some of which is delivered by the actors as they are playing actual games of speed chess. That moderately impressive feat, though, cannot distract you from the overindulgence in this play. The insistence on having everyone hold forth about something hefty — whether it’s the Holocaust or the treatment of American Indians or oppression in Guatemala — makes for a moralizing tract more than an artfully constructed character study.”
June 7, 2018
This play which was first seen at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in 2012 opened in February in New York City in February 2018 and closed in March.
This review by Neil Genzlinger, in the NYT of Feb. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/t...en-review.html
“A lot of Cold War symbolism accumulated around the 1972 world chess championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, but that was nothing compared with the weighty baggage piled onto the Washington Square Park chess tables in “Fish Men,” a drama by Cándido Tirado receiving its New York premiere at Intar.
The story brings five men together around the tables, which are a New York City institution. By the time each has unloaded his back story, we’ve been given a history of genocide, a helping of survivor guilt, a course in the hazards of gambling, and much, much more. Too much, really.
Cash (Shawn Randall) is a verbose hustler who tries to lure people into playing against him for money, something he especially needs on this day because his child’s birthday is imminent. John (Gardiner Comfort) is another hustler with a gambling debt. Jerome (David Anzuelo) is one of the last park denizens willing to play chess just for fun, and all of them revere an elderly fellow known as Ninety-Two (Ed Setrakian), who doesn’t play anymore but was once a chess prodigy.
Into this mix of friendly adversaries comes Rey (José Joaquín Pérez), who wants to settle debts his uncle incurred at the tables the day before. He seems harmless enough, but is he really there to scam the scammers?
Mr. Tirado gives each character a ration of pithy dialogue, some of which is delivered by the actors as they are playing actual games of speed chess. That moderately impressive feat, though, cannot distract you from the overindulgence in this play. The insistence on having everyone hold forth about something hefty — whether it’s the Holocaust or the treatment of American Indians or oppression in Guatemala — makes for a moralizing tract more than an artfully constructed character study.”