Press
Testament
A BroadwayWorld 2021 Off-Broadway Regional Award Winner in Five Categories:
-Best Streaming Play
-Best Streaming New Play
-Best Direction a Streaming Play or Musical
-Best Sound Design of a Streaming Play or Musical
-Best Video Editing of a Streaming Play or Musical
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
Stagedoor
Lyn Gardner
“All of the stories are sharply observed and neatly written.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
BroadwayWorld
Stephi Wild
“Divine performances are assured in Testament, a compelling re-imaging of four oft-forgotten Bible characters, against a haunting score of gospel and blues;”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
ReviewsGate
William Russell
“The players – Biko Eisen-Martin, Jessica Giannone, Cori Hindt, [sic] Doron Jepaul Mitchel and Desiree Rodriguez – are splendid.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
The Front Row Center
Holli Harms
“The performances are exceptional, beautiful, and intense.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
Everything Theater
Lily Middleton
“The third story shared is equally appalling, however begins with some light relief as two sisters, played by Jessica Giannone and Cori Hundt, reminisce on how they both tackled Thanksgiving celebrations with their large families. Following on from such distressing stories, it is funny to see the disbelief on the faces around them. But again, once we hear the full truth of their story, it is hideously shocking. I audibly gasped a few times during this section of the play, a sign of the wonderful performances of Giannone and Hundt.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
The New York Times
Elisabeth Vincentelli
“Every year, 59E59 Theaters in New York presents a showcase of productions headed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. While the United States have made great steps toward a return to a theatrical normal (whatever that might be), the new edition of East to Edinburgh is still virtual, with nine shows you can watch from home. Among the titles that caught my eye is Priyanka Shetty’s docu-theater solo “#Charlottesville,” about the events that roiled the Virginia city in August 2017. Borrowing from Anna Deavere Smith, Shetty built her text from interviews. Other intriguing entries in the showcase include “Testament,” in which Tristan Bernays (“Frankenstein”) imagines what would happen if four biblical characters lived now; and Somebody Jones’s “Black Women Dating White Men,” whose title is an apt description of the show.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
London Living Large
D.S.J.
“Lot's daughters are extremely well characterised by Cori Hundt and Jessica Giannone.”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
North West End UK
Alan Stuart Malin
“TESTAMENT is a powerhouse production of biblical proportions and truly testament to how the world may have adapted to life living in a lockdown, but how humanity has remained unchanged for thousands of years. […] TESTAMENT has a strong cast or [sic] performers, Doron JéPaul Mitchell (Isaac Son of Abraham), Jessica Giannone (Lot’s Daughter, Mary), Cori Hundt (Lot’s Daughter, Jane) and Biko Eisen-Martin (Impenitent Thief on the Cross/Anthony).”
Testament
59E59/Edinburgh Fringe Festival/Rochester Fringe Festival
New York Theater
Jonathan Mandell
“This 21st century American retelling of three Biblical stories is more than just clever. The hour-long play is something of a revelation, in more ways than one: It’s thought-provoking, but also, as directed by Lucy Jane Atkinson and persuasively acted by a low-key cast, it offers a series of surprises – especially if you don’t read the program ahead of time.”
Monica: This
Play is Not About Monica Lewinsky
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The List
Claire Sawers
“This smart, lo-tech, crowdfunded play from not for profit theatre company Via Brooklyn looks at modern relationships through a series of vignettes about a woman named Monica. It may or may not be a look at Miss Lewinsky (subject of the upcoming third season of American Crime Story: Impeachment) and what happened to her after the scandal with the then President Clinton. Or it may just be about people you know, how their love lives work and what's happening to gender politics in the post-Monica, post #MeToo world.”
Monica: This
Play is Not About Monica Lewinsky
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The Spectator
Lloyd Evans
“The patchwork of scenes feels like part of something larger. A TV series offering a sympathetic version of Monica’s story told with humour and sensitivity could be a winner. The producers of this excellent play should create a three-minute sizzle-reel and start pitching it to the networks.”
Monica: This
Play is Not About Monica Lewinsky
59E59
TheatreScene.Net
Joel Benjamin
“The scene set in 1990 showed yet another facet of Monica: a lesbian relationship with The Lover, a lively, lovely Cori Hundt with whom she seems to have the most mature rapport.”
Monica: This
Play is Not About Monica Lewinsky
59E59
Broadway World
Derek McCracken
“This clever time-shifting one-act play from Via Brooklyn succinctly captures the tension between holding on and letting go of one's identity in an era where private lives are frequently made public either strategically or by scandal.”
The 39 Steps
Via Brooklyn at the Southampton Cultural Center
The Independent
Bridget LeRoy
“Cori Hundt portrays the various femme fatales and love interests with the perfect amount of 1930s glamour mixed with humor.”
“For an evening of comedic fluff and international intrigue, theatergoers can't beat The 39 Steps. It is utterly delightful.”
Fuente Ovejuna
Ducdame Ensemble at FringeNYC
Theatre is Easy
Jared R. Pike
“The Ducdame Ensemble breathes new life into this 400-year-old tale of oppression and revolution making it vibrantly resonant in today’s global political climate.”
“Published in 1619, Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna may seem like a museum piece; however, in this stunning production by the Ducdame Ensemble, the vivid characters spring to life and de Vega’s 400-year-old words sound as resonant today as they must have in the corrales of the Spanish Golden Age.”
“Under the precise direction of London Sundance Winner William Oldroyd, the excellent Ducdame Ensemble, comprised of graduates of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), present de Vega’s work as if he had written it in response to our current global political climate.”
“It is impossible to isolate outstanding performances in such a strong piece of ensemble acting where every performer excels and also supports the rest of the company. [...] The strength of every member of the Ducdame Ensemble makes them a company to watch. I cannot wait to see what they have to offer next.”
“A THEASY best bet: Best of FringeNYC 2015.”
Fuente Ovejuna
Ducdame Ensemble at FringeNYC
NY Theater Now
David Fuller
“The performances are uniformly outstanding so it’s not fair to single anyone out.”
“An ensemble of 6 men and 5 women, most of whom are recent graduates of the MFA program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, a/k/a LAMDA, have created a gut-wrenching yet inspiring take on the Lope de Vega classic play, directed by London-based director William Oldroyd.”
“Kudos to Ducdame Ensemble and Breukelen Stage + Film for bringing this timely, unfortunately relevant piece to the Fringe. [...] We need the story of Fuente Ovejuna.”
Fuente Ovejuna
Ducdame Ensemble at FringeNYC
TheaterMania.com
Zachary Stewart
“Cori Hundt is appropriately majestic as Isabella”
“The feisty young cast dives into the story, luxuriating in its epic gore and horribleness. An extended torture scene featuring blood-curdling offstage screams sent one audience member running from the performance I attended.”
Fuente Ovejuna
Ducdame Ensemble at FringeNYC
GardenStateJournal.com
Doug Strassler
“Director William Oldroyd marries the old-school violent agitprop stylings with a modern accessibility that packs a visceral punch (perhaps literally; one audience member was said to have fled the performance and vomited on the evening I attended). The entire cast is a paean to commitment and manages to transcend the bare-bones resources allotted by the 14th Street Y Theatre where Fuente is performed.”
“Fuente is performed by the Ducdame Ensemble, a conglomerate of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) alumni, reprising a production they had done within their training program. And so this production affords us the chance to peek into the recent past of a newly formed entity as well; to watch is to visit a talented team that coalesces nicely and brings out the best in each other.”
“It’s no small praise to say that to watch Fuente Ovejuna is to sit in on a family affair.”
Dames of Thrones
Ducdame Ensemble at the International Shakespeare Center (ISC) of Santa Fe
Live out Loud: Santa Fe
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
“This one night performance by the Ducdame Ensemble of New York (presented at The Adobe Rose by the International Shakespeare Center of Santa Fe) shot through the audience like a bullet: consistently riveting, sometimes brusque, sometimes perplexing, sometimes shocking, like a high-energy direct hit of singing poetry, and at other times like an exercise in rapid-fire bardic snippets.
Call it whatever you will: a tapestry, a compilation, a “mix tape” of passionate and violent passages, drawn from scenes involving women in Shakespeare’s cycle of history plays. Dames of Thrones had the punch, the considerable pluses (and possibly a few of the drawbacks) of a surprise attack.
The show announces its genre-bending sensibilities at the very beginning, as thirteen male and female actors in “cool” contemporary clothes (the set otherwise consists of a few chairs) perform group mirror games and pantomimes -- couples meet, swear allegiances, couples break apart or are broken by shadowy third parties. The background music suggests a courtly setting.
This is a world where nobody can be unconditionally loved and trusted. The Shakespearean canon veers between extremes of the beautiful and the terrible, high comedy and romance, and sinister terrors; and by focusing on the terrors Dames of Thrones is truly a production whose themes have a short distance to travel to match the power-hungry prurience of the TV series “Game of Thrones” an apt pun.
Having cued the audience appropriately, the remainder of the two hour performance is a miasma of grief, loss, war and pillaging, in scenes (slightly edited) that suggest the plights of the female protagonists from plays such as King John, Richard iii, Henry iv, and Henry vi.
That means that over two hours you will not encounter the more familiar Shakespearean heroines. No Lady Macbeth. No Ophelia. Nor King Lear’s three daughters. And of course sans easily recognized heroines, Dames of Thrones is short on familiar stories and monologues.
But you will experience oblique glimpses into the lives of several of Shakespeare’s female royal protagonists, who feature in plays that even by Shakespeare’s standards have extremely complex plots. They are women of high standing (though Joan la Pucelle, aka Joan of Arc is thrown in for good measure.) They have names that are preceded by “Lady” -- Lady Kate, Lady Anne and Lady Constance. The bitter irony is that they lead constricted lives, and they suffer insults and injury in a sexist world that puts women on par with servants. “Lady” is often a pointless title.
Throughout the evening these women are put in the position of using their last resource, meaning their feminine wiles to convince a man to do some honorable deed, or not follow through with some foolhardy measure. Or an outright cruel folly. The women hold their ground using lovely iambic rhythms; they sally with clever retorts. But essentially they’re always pleading a case. …
These selections from the history plays (at their best) become a sociological study of marriage and sex privilege in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare was not a particularly historically accurate writer, but when he wrote about real historical Kings, Queens, and Ladies, he touched on real travails. The fact that these people really lived strengthens Dames of Thrones’ sociological power.”
Dames of Thrones
Ducdame Ensemble at the International Shakespeare Center (ISC) of Santa Fe
President of the Shakespeare Guild & Former Director of Academic Programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library
John Andrews
“Ariana Karp and her superb cast wove a beautiful tapestry of scenes involving strong female characters. And the performers handled the verse with a dexterity, sensitivity, and expressive power that is quite unusual in today's classical performances."
She Stoops to Conquer
Hudson Warehouse at Riverside Park
StageBuddy.com
Mack Muldofsky
“Ted Moller plays Lumpkin without that self-aware and transgressive irony, but with great physical assurance and energy. If you met him in real life, you would tell him to stop and he wouldn’t. He’s cleverly cast alongside Cori Hundt as Constance Neville, whose anxiety is well-paired with his loutishness. She is birdlike, pained, anxious; he is compact, dynamic, and stout; together, they look like a stork and a duck having an argument.”
“But Goldsmith valued, above all, the comedic elements of his play, and Hudson Warehouse has successfully captured its spirit. Intelligent and precise acting is necessary to produce a ridiculous production, and the actors of She Stoops to Conquer, all of whom are talented, give careful and physically expert comic performances. Every member of the cast is funny; I cannot overstate the rarity of this accomplishment in comedies.”
Territories: The Spoils
PTP/NYC at the Atlantic Stage 2
Scene 4- International Magazine of Arts and Media
Michael Bettencourt
“Each of the five characters gets a good chunk of stage time to talk about himself or herself, and [...] they are all expertly delivered.”
“As is always the case with anything the Potomac Theatre Project creates, the production values are excellent, the direction is sure-handed, and the acting is vibrant, spacious, and assured.”