Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Sometimes it’s good to be bad.  But, it’s not good for Mike, Amadea, Willow, and Dante, the four characters that take us on a fiendish journey through 7 Sins in 60 Minutes.  It is, however, good to watch them be bad.  7 Sins in 60 Minutes is one seamless play that actually runs just under fifty minutes.  It is written by seven female playwrights who each tackle one specific sin.  So, the first chunk is about sloth, the second about greed, and so forth.  Sometimes, it was obvious when we got to the next sin.  Often, though, it was not, and trying to figure out the sin provided much interest and fun for the audience.

Nevertheless, although the conceit was pulled off very successfully, the resulting play was not completely satisfying.  Things were swell through Sloth, Greed, and Lust, but the show started losing focus with Gluttony.  Then, the momentum lagged a bit with Anger, picked up again with Envy, and got close to fully recovering with the excellent Pride.  The ending, however, put a nice little button on the piece but left any thematic weight that was built throughout the play by the wayside.  Nonetheless, the show was filled with moments of excellent writing and was performed by a superlative ensemble cast.

Leading the pack for me was Karen Sours as Amadea.  The show opened with her drunkenly stumbling across the stage tripping over her stiletto heels while wielding a bottle of Svedka.  She finds her friend Mike, played with brio and sophistication by Duane Cooper, and proceeds to awkwardly flirt with him.  She also kicks off her shoes.  Hard to buy someone going barefoot in the streets of New York“  Not with Sours’ expert portrayal.  Also, a Svedka drunk is much different from a Stoli drunk, which is much different from a Grey Goose drunk.  Sours captured the experience perfectly.

Cortnie Loren Miller and Michael Rosete play Willow and Dante, a wealthy couple who foil the somewhat bohemian Amadea and Mike.  The action moves along nicely with effective staging by director Melanie Sutherland.  Unfortunately, there is no set designer and no set.  The evening could have definitely benefited from scenic elements.  Come to think of it, the lighting design by Joyce Liao could have done a lot more for the piece than it did.  The transitions between scenes needed a lot of work, and the lights were often simply on or off—memorably off during the lust section when some serious sex was taking place but one could still make out the actors sitting back to back—when the play begged for more atmosphere.  Although the show had no costume designer, the costume design was actually quite effective.  I particularly appreciated Mike’s rolled up jeans.  Overall, 7 Sins in 60 Minutes offers much to admire and enjoy.  And thankfully, the play never commits that deadly sin of the theatre, boring an audience.  In fact, though it would not quite be a sin to miss it, 7 Sins is filled with theatrical virtues.  So, go there, well HERE, for some dark debauchery.