The Supper Club of Lost Causes 2009
Neil Genzliner | New York Times November 15, 2009
"The Supper Club of Lost Causes," a fractured look at faded glory that is being given a strange, smart production at Theater for the New City. A vacationers' hell proceeds to unfold, featuring an incompetent waiter (Blair Stauffer), a dead state trooper (Steve Greenstein), a bandleader (Jeff Pucillo) with two broken shoulders, and a lovely but mysterious main act (Siho Ellsmore).
Martin Denton | nytheatre.com May 25, 2008
Only one piece succeeds at being both fresh and engaging within the short-play format, David Zellnik's delightful Ideogram, which is as perfectly funny and complete as a ten-minute comedy can be. It begins from a simple enough premise: Jasper (winningly portrayed by Bryan Fenkart) gets his Chinese-American friend Drew (Pun Bandhu) a birthday card, and as a joke he scribbles some made-up Chinese characters on it. Drew gives the card to an elderly relative (played with grand comic panache by Siho Ellsmore) who insists that the writing is real-in fact she says it's a beautiful poem. Zellnik builds on this initial idea creatively and cannily, along the way providing some genuine belly laughs in an evening otherwise devoid of them.
Dan Bacalzo | Theatremania May 27, 2008
EST Marathon 2008 Series B features one of the more solid line-ups of one-acts that I've seen so far in this long-running annual festival. David Zellnik's Ideogram also contains a lot of laughs. The amusing premise of this short sketch is that Caucasian stock broker Jasper (Bryan Fenkart) gives his Chinese-American co-worker Drew (Pun Bandhu) a birthday card on which he's doodled made up Chinese characters. But it turns out the writing is not only actual Chinese, it's poetry. Jasper is hailed by an old Chinese woman named Wei (Siho Ellsmore) as a great poet, and she soon has him writing short stories and plays that she claims are getting productions all across China, and then being censored by the government. The playlet, directed by Abigail Zealey Bess, smartly skewers a number of Orientalist motifs even as it employs them. It also keeps a nice balance between whimsy and mystery. Is Jasper really a great Chinese writer, or is one or more of the other characters pulling his leg?
Jewtopia 2005