David Fairhurst: News

May 2007
The online edition of my one-man show "Immortality" goes into production this summer. But in the meantime, enjoy this lovely review of the stage version... (Click on the postcard to enlarge it.)

Immortality
reviewed by Hieu Tran

David Fairhurst’s Immortality is a wonderfully entertaining 70-minute show centering on one man’s existential quest for immortality. How so, you might ask? Well, through any standard, non-supernatural means he could think of: first striving to become an established writer so that his words and thoughts can be remembered, then trying out the idea of impregnating a woman so that his genes may be passed on, and finally flirting with the idea of assassinating somebody famous so that his name will always be remembered in adjunct.

In the abstract, putting on a show focusing on these issues might seem to be an “interesting” idea, but one would also need to have sufficient comic imagination to pull such a premise off. Fairhurst, fortunately, manages to do so, under the direction of Lisa Deo. He basically just sits on a stool and ruminates on many of the events in his life in a stream-of-consciousness flow, ranging from the coincidence that he was born on the same day that President John F. Kennedy was killed, to enumerating the ways in which he procrastinates while writing his masterpiece (two of my favorites are untangling a phone cord and cutting the plastic off of a windowed envelope so that he can put the plastic in one recycling bag and the paper in another). The comedy of the piece is supplemented by intermittent slides, many of which qualify a number of Fairhurst’s witticisms as being stolen from much more famous writers (e.g., Oscar Wilde), and the occasional sound-piece, voiced by as many as eight other actors.

Immortality works well, thanks to Fairhurst’s relaxed mood and the no-frills, seemingly just-scraped-together charm of the set. The show is playing at a converted art studio, with thirty or so fold-out chairs for the audience, a stack of plastic crates to hold up the slide projector, and an unevenly cut, white board to project the images against.

And even though the tone of most of the show is richly and darkly comic, a hint of melancholia creeps in near the end, as Fairhurst recounts the day when Bozo the Clown forever shook his father’s single-minded faith in the sense and order of things. If there is ever supposed to be a contemporary parable for existential dread, this might be it.

40-Year-Old Attempts to Cheat Death in Immortality at Fringe NYC
By Ernio Hernandez
17 Aug 2004

A desperate procrastinator attempts to find life's loophole on death in Immortality performing at the New York International Fringe Festival through Aug. 29.

The production, directed by Lisa Deo, performs at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art in downtown Manhattan.

In an existentially anxious state on the eve of his 30th birthday, playwright-performer David Fairhurst wrote Immortality then shelved it for another decade until his 40th birthday drew near. "All the same old feelings of angst and inadequacy and dread resurfaced," admitted the scribe to Playbill On-Line, "so I decided to dust it off and try to produce it somewhere.

"Immortality is a comedy of existential dread — the obsessive monologue of a would-be writer, 40 years old and embarrassed by his own lack of accomplishment, who senses the inevitable getting closer and closer," Fairhurst explained. "A paranoid, hypochondriacal procrastinator desperate to find a way to cheat death and live forever, to leave a permanent mark on the world... even if it kills him."

The Amalgamated Memories presentation in association with Magnus Et Parvus Productions stars the author with the voices of Colleen Carroll, Jon Freeman, Joan Porter Hollander and Debbie Jaffe.

Fairhurst purports the show's subject "is literally universal: We're all going to die someday; we all want to leave behind something that will last — so how do you do that? Is it even possible? Immortality takes the spiritual, existential angst that everyone has felt at one time or another — usually alone, in the dark, at four o'clock in the morning — pulls it out of the closet kicking and screaming, puts it under a spotlight, and dares the audience to laugh at it."

Playwright Fairhurst has appeared as an actor in New York and regional stagings, independent films and on television's "Law & Order" and "Ed." As a writer, he has worked as a newspaper columnist and editor and has placed thrice in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences' Nicholl Fellowship competition. He is a former member of the '80s band Splitting Headaches.

Director Deo has directed Reading Zimbabwe and When a Storm Comes at the DR2 Theatre, Some of My Parts at PSNBC/HERE, and the Boomerang Theatre Company Hamlet New York City park outdoor tour. She recently served as a visiting artist at the Walden Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky where she staged and designed several productions including The Ghost Sonata.

For tickets to Immortality at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, 86 Walker Street (one block south of Canal St.), call (212) 279-4488 or (888) FringeNYC (outside New York). For more information, visit www.amalga.net or www.FringeNYC.org.