Egg Frame Review by Jen Bush
Written by Nicholas Kennedy and Jim Grant
Directed by Lauren McAuliffe and Nicholas Kennedy
Cast: Joshua Koehn, Dayna Michelle Kurtz, Brian Mendoza, Jim Grant, Sara McAuliffe, Gillian Britt, Madelyn Stewich, Abhishek Ojha, Brendan Roque

Nicholas Kennedy is a talented New York based theatre artist and filmmaker.  His latest play Egg Frame had its world premiere at the esteemed American Theatre of Actors.

The ATA describes Egg Frame in this way: A surreal fragmented comedy about memories and losing the ones you love. Egg Frame is told as if it was like listening to a broken record.

In Egg Frame we meet the main character, Allen.  Allen is a locksmith.  There is a particularly troublesome door in the building where he lives.  He can’t seem to get it closed, even with the help of his son-in-law to be and protégé, Jack.   His wife Delores who is suffering from early onset dementia is at home working on her Great Barrier Reef puzzle.  Allen’s daughter Janey will soon be deployed to Afghanistan which the whole family is dealing with in their own way.  Allen’s friend Michael, a drunk police detective with a crumbling marriage comes to investigate a possible break in at the building.  Allen also interacts with the smart mouthed teenage neighbor, Elaine.  During the course of the play, multiple characters face adversity.

 It’s important to take heed of the description.  The first half of Egg Frame is linear and straightforward.  The second half was slightly murky and went off the rails a bit.  That’s ok because you won’t be able to connect the dots with every piece of theatre you see.  Theatre is an artform.  Visual art runs the gamut from realistic portraiture to the abstract.  We can think of Egg Frame as a little abstract.

You’ll go on a roller coaster ride with Egg Frame.  It’s emotionally moving.  There’s a lot of humor and a lot of sadness.  There’s even a little bit of Science Fiction thrown in via the Time Door.  There are themes of love, loss, and illness.  What you might find fractured and confusing could be construed as an artistic manifestation of tragedy.  When there’s a tragedy, life doesn’t make sense.  Everything is out of sorts and gray areas become grayer.  We see this during the course of the play.

There are plenty of opportunities to laugh.  Some characters broke the fourth wall and had some lighthearted interactions with the audience.  Out of nowhere there was a very well-choreographed group disco dance number which was incredibly fun and gave us a break from the heaviness. 

The skilled and talented cast worked well together to bring the story to life.  Having seen Joshua Koehn in a short film, I was already exposed to his acting expertise.  He was simply brilliant in the role of Allen.  He carried the burden of several long monologues and pulled them off without a hitch.  He deftly conveyed a wide spectrum of emotions while possessing a gift for comedy.  Dayna Michelle Kurtz was both endearing and heartbreaking as Delores.  She had a strong ability to connect with the audience on a deep level.  Brian Mendoza gave a comical yet very  powerful portrayal of the detective Michael.  His performance was impactful especially in scenes where he was faced with his own demons.  Real life couple, Gillian Britt and Jim Grant had wonderful chemistry for obvious reasons.  Gillian Britt was skilled at conveying emotion in the absence of dialogue for some scenes.  Jim Grant did well balancing humor with pathos.  He displayed great empathy in his portrayal.  Kudos to  Madelyn Stewich who pulled double duty as the sassy neighbor Lexi and as the mysterious Time Door complete with a Russian accent.  Time Door acted as a portal for the characters to move about through time.  The two characters could not have been more different from each other, and she distinguished them perfectly.  Her comedic timing is also spot on.  You would never know that this is Sara McAuliffe’s first professional role and her Off-Broadway debut as Elaine.  She was just as skilled as everyone else up on stage.  If this is what she’s capable of now, she’s got a bright future ahead of her on stage and screen.  Rounding out the cast were Abhishek Ojha and Brendan Roque as the death messengers.  Just like the soldiers they were portraying; they were in perfect unison with one another.  They were very intense, and they both busted some great moves during the dance sequence.

Under the expert direction of Lauren McAuliffe and Nicholas Kennedy, Egg Frame was a unique and compelling production.  They brought the best out of their actors and successfully executed their vision of the piece.

A really nice touch was having  the super enthusiastic writer/director Nicholas Kennedy address the audience before AND after the show.  He expressed a deep appreciation toward his cast, crew and the audience.  He put us in the right “frame” of mind!