Paul Rome

Calypso returns to The Bushwick Starr

July 13-14, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Tickets: $10 in advance; $15 at the door
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/255991

The Bushwick Starr
207 Starr Street (btwn Wyckoff and Irving)
L Train to Jefferson Ave

Following a sold out four-night run in May, Calypso returns to The Bushwick Starr on July 13 - 14, 2012 for what Bushwick Daily calls an “exceptional literary experience”.

Brooklyn duo Paul Rome and Roarke Menzies take the stage once again with an intimate performance that “sparkle[s] with intelligence, clever writing, sharp satire and an often hilarious send-up of the classics of our canon” (Volume 1 Brooklyn).

Taking cues from audio storytellers like Ira Glass and Garrison Keillor, as well as innovative monologists like Joe Frank and Spalding Gray, Calypso finds Rome reading the classics, narrating irreverent retellings of Homer and Virgil from the perspective of a disgruntled but faithful wife Penelope, and the Western world’s original heartbreaker: Aeneas.

Meanwhile, Menzies delivers “the character we love to hate to be” (Hyperallergic), relating a confessional tale of young love sparked over Haruki Murakami, vintage Calypso records and a fateful tandem bicycle ride through Manhattan’s West Village.

Penned by Rome, the stories “glisten with sophistication and wit” (Volume 1 Brooklyn), while Menzies’ soundtrack accompanies like a bard’s lyre, “plac[ing] the viewer exactly where the authors want her to be: deeply immersed in the story” (Bushwick Daily).

Writes Paul Cox for Hyperallergic: “It’s striking how [Menzies’] score, along with Rome’s measured sentences, captivates and immerses the auditory cortex. […] And the catharsis feels so good.”