The notices are in for Arias with a Twist, the return of Basil Twist and Joey Arias’s puppet-and-song spectacle to the HERE Arts Center, where it first played in 2008. Arias is abducted by aliens, dropped into a fabric jungle, sent on a psychedelic trip and finally deposited back in Manhattan, all of it built around him by Twist’s marionettes, gray-man puppets and a big band of hundred-year-old wooden musicians. Ten critics have filed. Seven of them are delighted; the other three wonder aloud whether an eighteen-year-old confection has kept its fizz.
The verdict: ten notices, and only one of them prints a score — The Front Row Center at 4.7 out of 5 — while the other nine review without a rating, as most New York outlets do. On Basil Twist’s stagecraft there is no argument at all. Where the field parts company is on the remount itself: seven critics find it undimmed, while TheaterMania and Theatrely both call it a museum piece and TheaterMania, Blogcritics and Theatrely all hear the wear on Joey Arias’s voice.
What are critics saying about Arias with a Twist?
Vulture
"My play, myself"
Reviewer: Sara Holdren
"Ostensibly, Arias With a Twist is much less of an “autobiographical tale” than How Shakespeare Saved My Life, but in its utter disregard for the mundane, it ends up showing us more of the truth of its performer. “I want to go on an acid trip!” Arias recalls telling Twist when the latter suggested they make a show together. “I want to be on a Busby Berkeley cake with a million legs.”"
TheaterMania
“Arias With a Twist Goes Down Dry”
Reviewer: Zachary Stewart
Make no mistake: This is a museum piece. The puppets of the Dream Music Orchestra have literally been removed from their display case just outside the theater and dusted off for this remount (Twist spoke with TheaterMania about the challenges of getting his puppets performance-ready in a city where the kind of shops that offer the material he works with are rapidly dwindling). Some of the pieces show their age.
The Front Row Center
Reviewer: Sarah Downs
At the center stands Joey Arias. Magnetic, glamorous and quirky – a little Dr. Smith, a little Judy Jetson, and 100% fabulous, Arias is a solo artist who holds stage effortlessly. He is the fulcrum of this fantasia of flowers, the cosmos and drag. A gorgeous goth diva in corset and heels. As he says, there’s an X and a Y, and he is the Z.
Exeunt NYC
“Cabaret + drag + aliens + cheeky plants + marionette orchestra = a fizzy, witty, visually stunning good time”
Reviewer: Loren Noveck
But more than any of that, the show is a wacky delight that both takes Arias seriously as a drag/cabaret star and has a lot of fun with exploding the very idea of a serious cabaret show into mayhem. Twist’s creations, which often blur the line between scenery and puppetry, are a grab bag of all the ways to think about the art of puppetry: Visual gags done with objects, like a series of ever-receding curtains and some extremely suggestive jungle flora. Full-person-size figures like a posse of gray-man aliens who inspect Arias while he’s strapped on a rotating apparatus, or a can-can line of zaftig beauties with identical faces. Human augmentations, like the octopus arms above (or a bit with extra legs that I won’t spoil by including the photo.) Plays on scale, like Godzilla-size human legs trampling an animated glowing cityscape or a mini-me of Arias. And, most classically and perhaps most magically, a marionette orchestra (which I believe are puppets nearly 100 years old that Twist inherited from his grandfather)–all of it brought to life with uncanny poignancy by a six-person ensemble of gifted puppeteers.
TheaterScene.net
Reviewer: Karen Karin Rosenberg
Arias with a Twist, the title of this production, is a clever pun. On the one hand, it simply describes the collaboration of two justly-celebrated talents: Joey Arias, a performance artist, and the director Basil Twist, who designed the set and puppetry for this production. On another, metaphorical level, it conveys the most striking aspect of their joint work: solo songs with myriad surprises. Expect ingenious, mobile settings as Joey, played by Arias, falls from outer space to an earthly jungle, is launched on a trip by a psychedelic mushroom, and finally reaches New York. (My sketch of the itinerary is not complete.)
Read Karen Karin Rosenberg’s full review at TheaterScene.net
Theater Pizzazz
“Extraordinary!”
Reviewer: Alix Cohen
Arias has a smokey, late Billie Holiday-like voice that insinuates, celebrates, and soars, emitting the occasional Betty Boop squeak. He sings like he does everything else, with shameless exuberance and fierce style. Appealing vulnerability shines from bravado. There’s no fourth wall. Love is in the air.
Stage and Cinema
Reviewer: Kevin Vavasseur
"And anything is possible for Arias’s onstage persona, an ultra-feminine burlesque throwback. For she is abducted by aliens, dropped into Eden, parties with well-hung demons, trips off ’shrooms, has a clarifying moment of self-reckoning opposite her snarky mini-me, pulls herself together, takes a literal bite out of Manhattan, slays as a Big Band girl singer, and dazzles as the toe-tapping centerpiece of a high-kicking, rotating, Busby Berkeley-esque finale. More story by association than cogent narrative, creators Arias and Twist have again brought the fun, laughs, theatricality, imagination, wonder, naughtiness, and coloring-outside-the-lines sensibility that made the show a success almost twenty years ago."
Blogcritics
Reviewer: Jon Sobel
"Mingled with projections, the puppetry is a wonder: life-sized characters (human and otherwise), a living jungle, a sparkling New York cityscape. Most charming of all is the Dream Music Orchestra, a century-old quartet of puppet musicians. Not only do they “play,” but Arias interviews them in one of the show’s best scenes."
Theatrely
Reviewer: Joey Sims
"Still, I wonder if the team erred in replicating Twist so exactly, like a museum piece on display. Arias’ voice is basically shot; the bawdy humor is played for gasps, but no longer feels so transgressive. Aside from a couple brief asides to the audience, Arias doesn’t have any fun with either of these realities. If Twist and Arias had acknowledged the passing of time, rather than ignoring it, how much more alive might this show have felt?"
Off Off Online
Reviewer: Deirdre Donovan
"The songs, all performed live by Arias, add oomph to the spectacle. Whether it’s the aforementioned performance of “Kashmir,” the psychedelic recording of the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” during Arias’s acid trip, or his very moving rendering of Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” when the diva realizes that being a party girl isn’t much fun once the party’s over, the songs terrifically buoy and complement the production’s visual poetry. And once Arias has completed his surreal journey and arrives back in New York City just in time to take the stage for his nightclub act, he throatily croons Billie Holiday’s “You’ve Changed,” wearing a white gardenia on his gown as a tribute to his vocal muse. The performance not only poignantly ends the wild psychedelic puppet odyssey but also serves as an anchor for the entire production."
Production photographs by Richard Termine.
More from the New York season: what the critics made of The Invention of Love at Theaterlab, and Jacob Ming-Trent’s How Shakespeare Saved My Life at the Public Theater.
Arias with a Twist runs in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, through November 1.
