INTERVIEWS
GO SEE A SHOW podcast w/ creative team and casts of Injunction Granted and Dijla Wal Furat
REVIEWS
REFUGE - Blessed Unrest and Teatri Oda
“The story of Refuge is beautifully told in that specific, ensemble-based, devised physical theater style that is characteristic of Blessed Unrest… The scenes where language is a barrier are some of the most delightful. They have funny misunderstandings such as during a Passover seder when the word for matzoh hilariously gets mistaken for the word for cat. When Bujar (Eshref Durmishi) encourages Yakov (Perri Yaniv) to take shots of raki with him, the extreme culture shock is soon replaced by extreme drunkenness.”
- Tami Shaloum, Round the World Stage |
Joe Pintauro's RAFT OF THE MEDUSA - Barefoot Theatre Company
"Barefoot Theatre Company’s new revival of Raft...does Pintauro’s bold piece great justice, giving new generations an important– if not exactly happy– reminder of a tense and turbulent era in New York City sociocultural history. The very first scene of the play, in fact, delivers the theater attendees an image that was hauntingly familiar to those who remember the early days of the epidemic: a young man in his last few hours of life, disoriented and frail, with a body covered in KS lesions. We learn that the young man was a former rabbinical student named Donald (Perri Yaniv)." - Jed Ryan, Lavender After Dark
"The electrically charged cast...Dramatic and deeply, deeply moving; alarming, depressing, inspiring, painful, witty and the list goes on to describe this play – both as a play and as a production. The intensity and commitment was such that the play seemed to end and reality began. I felt like I was sitting in on a group session and not a theatre." - Natasha Dawsen, Arts Independent
Mayakovsky's THE BEDBUG - Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble
"Yaniv’s Prisypkin, about whom there is something almost biological, a performance of pure organic matter, is never far from the animal." - John Osburn, Osburnt
"The musical choreography and improvisational elements that were added to the show are a big highlight...which clearly leans heavily on not just the text, but on its physical comedy and the caliber of the individual actors...The show is wonderfully cast."
- Anthony J. Piccione, OnStage
"The musical choreography and improvisational elements that were added to the show are a big highlight...which clearly leans heavily on not just the text, but on its physical comedy and the caliber of the individual actors...The show is wonderfully cast."
- Anthony J. Piccione, OnStage
Rachel Crothers' A MAN'S WORLD - Metropolitan Playhouse
*nominated for Outstanding Revival - New York Innovative Theatre Awards
"The Metropolitan Playhouse has staged a forceful and stimulating revival of this play...a true ensemble giving a feeling of community to these aspiring artists from all parts of the world: Perri Yaniv as the passionate German violinist Fritz, Dane Dandridge as the cynical French painter Emile, Timothy Christopher Goodwin as the hearty American writer Wells and Regina Gibson as the tempestuous Italian-American opera singer Leone, all with convincing accents...This play should stimulate interesting discourse as to whether the relations between men and women have changed much in the intervening 103 years since A Man’s World was written. The play’s power suggests that not much has altered."
- Victor Gluck, TheaterScene
"The play unfurls in high melodramatic dudgeon...yet some of the broader outlines of the standards (and double standards) imposed on women remain exhaustingly familiar." - Claudia LaRocco, New York Times
"Ms. Crothers deftly populated her play with a colorful cast of characters, a cross-section of bohemian New York City at that time...the intense and rounded acting by the Metropolitan Playhouse cast in the intimate theater space helps keep these characters believable. Perri Yaniv as Fritz wears his heart on his sleeve and produces a very good German accent." - Joel Benjamin, Theater Pizzazz
"The deft musical interludes offered by Fritz, the German musician (Perri Yaniv), and Lione (Regina Gibson), the Italian-American opera singer, offer a seamless transition between the acts as well as authentic ambiance within the play’s action...Yaniv’s skillful piano playing along with Gibson’s well-honed voice serve the transitions beautifully...played with finesse and sincerity, A Man’s World at the Metropolitan Playhouse is a rare production that both honors and does justice to its source text." - Adam Neal, Travel Lady Magazine
- Victor Gluck, TheaterScene
"The play unfurls in high melodramatic dudgeon...yet some of the broader outlines of the standards (and double standards) imposed on women remain exhaustingly familiar." - Claudia LaRocco, New York Times
"Ms. Crothers deftly populated her play with a colorful cast of characters, a cross-section of bohemian New York City at that time...the intense and rounded acting by the Metropolitan Playhouse cast in the intimate theater space helps keep these characters believable. Perri Yaniv as Fritz wears his heart on his sleeve and produces a very good German accent." - Joel Benjamin, Theater Pizzazz
"The deft musical interludes offered by Fritz, the German musician (Perri Yaniv), and Lione (Regina Gibson), the Italian-American opera singer, offer a seamless transition between the acts as well as authentic ambiance within the play’s action...Yaniv’s skillful piano playing along with Gibson’s well-honed voice serve the transitions beautifully...played with finesse and sincerity, A Man’s World at the Metropolitan Playhouse is a rare production that both honors and does justice to its source text." - Adam Neal, Travel Lady Magazine
Claire Beckman's THE PLANTATION - Brave New World Repertory Theatre
"A startlingly visceral immersive adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” set in post-bellum Virginia and performed in the gracefully colonnaded Commanding Officer’s House on Governors Island, with a humor and humanity that would surely please Chekhov...“The Plantation” is an examination of race and the legacy of slavery that feels urgently relevant...Set in 1870, in the aftermath of emancipation, it’s a play whose notions of tradition and inheritance and ownership — of property rights that included the rights to human bodies — have far deeper reverberations than they usually do in “The Cherry Orchard.” Black or white, the characters here are our forebears...the poignancy of this gains a frisson of history — the ghosts of our American past that we keep trying to leave behind, and that painfully haunt us still."
-Laura Collin-Hughes, The New York Times
-Laura Collin-Hughes, The New York Times
The Living Newspaper's INJUNCTION GRANTED - Metropolitan Playhouse
"With so many roles, discussion of character development is impossible, but what one does get from each of the performers is a sense that they can adopt a role just as easily as they switch hats... Perri Yaniv’s accordion is used perfectly in those instances that summon up the experience of east European immigrants." -Jeff Myhre, NYTheatre Guide
"In a marvel of precision, dedication and good, old fashioned, show business know-how, the company of six turns itself inside out, effortlessly conjuring at the drop of a hat the multitudinous characters...pitch perfect performances and amazing teamwork." - Critic-at-Large, Newsvine
"In a marvel of precision, dedication and good, old fashioned, show business know-how, the company of six turns itself inside out, effortlessly conjuring at the drop of a hat the multitudinous characters...pitch perfect performances and amazing teamwork." - Critic-at-Large, Newsvine
"UPCOMING HORROR SHORT Z-STUY IS ONE TO WATCH OUT FOR"
"On a busy urban street a young alpha male businessman (Perri Yaniv) is overcome by racking coughs and convulsions. Yet even in his death throes, he cannot stop yammering on his cell phone to his “bro” or stop lamenting the unfair treatment of straight, white males. The shopkeeper whom he has just run out of business looks on in confusion while a vapid realtor mistakes it all for performance art. Is this the start of the zombie apocalypse… Or something much worse?
...But there is more at work here than just a comedic send-up of the zombie genre. Z-Stuy returns to the roots of the genre where zombies stand as a metaphor for consumerism and twists it into a uniquely 21st century mold. The film is classy enough not to overtly state what it’s really about in the form of exposition, but at the same time it is not subtle about the point it’s making at all." - Tyree Kimbell, DownRightCreepy.com
...But there is more at work here than just a comedic send-up of the zombie genre. Z-Stuy returns to the roots of the genre where zombies stand as a metaphor for consumerism and twists it into a uniquely 21st century mold. The film is classy enough not to overtly state what it’s really about in the form of exposition, but at the same time it is not subtle about the point it’s making at all." - Tyree Kimbell, DownRightCreepy.com
Maurice Decaul's Dijla Wal Furat : Between the Tigris and the Euphrates
"Decaul’s retrospective portrait brings to the fore salient aspects that eventually would characterize war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The infliction of unintended casualties on innocent civilians. The difficulty of determining friend from foe. The presence of the press in the combat zone as omniscient judges. The spasms of guilt that would afflict individual soldiers and Marines as they killed and saw buddies killed. In the years after 2003 these issues would metastasize and become defining, overwhelming aspects of our war experience." - Peter Molin, "How We Were: Maurice Decaul's Stage Vision of Iraq, 2003"
"We also spend time with four U.S. Marines, both in full battle mode, and in quieter moments in which we see the mounting toll of their psyches...without being overly political (no mention of weapons of mass destruction, for instance), it makes its point, clearly and emphatically...the performances under Alex Mallory’s direction are first-rate all around."
- Howard Miller, Talkin' Broadway
"We also spend time with four U.S. Marines, both in full battle mode, and in quieter moments in which we see the mounting toll of their psyches...without being overly political (no mention of weapons of mass destruction, for instance), it makes its point, clearly and emphatically...the performances under Alex Mallory’s direction are first-rate all around."
- Howard Miller, Talkin' Broadway
S. Ansky's THE DYBBUK with Marvell Repertory Theatre
"The ambition is impressive and the results are equally so in Marvell Rep's mounting of The Dybbuk...Perri Yaniv makes an appropriately ephemeral Khonnen." - Ron Cohen, Backstage
"Perri Yaniv is ideal as the love-hungry rabbinical student who becomes the dybbuk – appropriately mysterious and a little frightening as Khonnon and believably otherworldly in his spirit form."
- Andy Smith, TheatreScene
"Never has so much been done with so little. It is an amazing accomplishment. It is compelling theatre at its best...with a superb Perri Yaniv."
-Oscar E Moore, Talk Entertainment
Bone Orchard's Times 365:24:7 - The Brick Theater
w. Ensemble, c. Peter Rad
" The principal figures are David Wilson (Jason Fleitz), a freelance reporter for The Times; a married Michigan couple, Cheryl (Stephanie Bratnick) and Terry (Gardiner Comfort), whose son has been killed in the war in Afghanistan; Mete (Fatih Gençkal), a Turkish photographer for The Times incensed at news media bias; Joy (Laura Jensen), a shallow NY1 anchorwoman who advances to CNN; Judith (Maggie Surovell), a Washington blogger, and her young daughter, Emilie (Ayesha Ngaujah); and Rob (Perri Yaniv), an embedded photographer in Afghanistan. This swirling stew — addressing issues like the suppression of wartime images, the vapidity of television coverage and the impact of television news on children — while almost undone by the volume of its ingredients, does cohere."
- Andy Webster, The New York Times
Word Infirmia at the Flea. c. Perri Yaniv
"Yaniv’s documentary style and the range of personalities and histories he brings to the stage brings these theoretical ideas vividly to life. The material—simple responses to simple questions—is utterly illuminating and real. While it may not be surprising, it breathes flesh and blood into our ideas of truth and personal responsibility...the warden’s grim assessment of burglars-turned-murderers who blame their victims for leaving the window open or “getting in the way” during a theft—there is an equally luminous moment where a perpetrator (I’m now questioning my use of the word “criminal”) sees outside the prison of the self and recognizes the effects of his crime on his family, his victim, his victim’s family ...moral codes are revealed as a beautifully shifting mosaic reflecting necessity, honor, and survival. If this sounds powerful, it is...Yaniv delineates the individual personas of his interviewees well, and with compassion held equally for the petite female cop and the drug-dealing high school dropout...the voices Yaniv has collected are varied, real, and well worth hearing." - Julie Blumenthal, nytheatre.com