3rd
Annual New York International Fringe Festival 
**Fringe Excellence Awards given out August
29th**"I Count the Hours" by Stig Dalager At the WOW Café Reviewed by Melissa Anelli for Theatre Reviews Limited We lucky, sheltered Americans don't really know what war is. The world was at war twice, yet our soil never became battleground. An audience with such a background might find it hard to empathize with a city such as Sarajevo, whose streets ran daily with the blood of the dead. This is precisely why Stig Dalager's "I Count The Hours" may have trouble hitting its mark with its American translation - we simply don't want to understand. No, it isn't possible to fully understand the ravages of war outside our window. But the distinct humanness of "I Count The Hours" is universal, and imagining ourselves in the same situation is inevitable. One trapped woman's road to death is told in four overlapping stages of her mind, the youngest being her life as a child. An almost weightless dancer, she represents the grace and freedom this woman always thought she'd have. As she gets colder, hungrier, and angrier, the child is an almost cruel presence, a constant reminder of what could never be. Stories of the past are interweaved with present thoughts, and reality only shows up right before death. The war we never see becomes frighteningly real in this woman's splintered and beaten personality. However, American audiences may not be ready for this type of drama. Even with all of the provoking images presented, people didn't seem to be occupied with the thought of homefield war. Sure, the couple in front of me chatted up a storm on their way out, but not on death or combat - on the near-anorexic look of the young dancer. "I really thought she'd blow away," the woman said. It figures that Americans would take an intense and horrifying look at war and turn it into an eating disorder. Reviewed on Sunday, August 22, 1999 "I COUNT THE HOURS: A PLAY FOR A SARAJEVO WOMAN" By Stig Dalager. Adapted and directed by Roger Hendricks Simon. American translation from the Danish by Lone Thygesen Blecher and Jane Mushabac. Presented by the Simon Studio at the WOW Café, 59-61 East 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd (Bowery) Avenues. In August at the New York International Fringe Festival on the following dates: Tuesday the 24th at 4:00 p.m.; Friday the 27th at 10:30 p.m.; Sunday the 29th at 6:00 p.m. All tickets are $11.00. For information and reservations visit http://www.fringenyc.org WITH: Alice Rosengard (Woman), Elizabeth Flynn-Jones (Woman), Nannette Deasy (Woman), Derek Lively (Man) and Abigail Simon (Memories of Childood). Music by Sean George. |