Twelfth Night (Encore)
“Axis Company Theatre brings front and center just what The Bard had intended when he wrote this glorious piece…To say that all the main characters are excellent is an understatement... a crisp cast with really good actors… "Twelfth Night" is one of the best performance I have seen in the off-off Broadway space in a long time… a masterful and creative piece that is worth seeing again and again!”

Rip Tide
“Stylishly directed by Randall Sharp, the piece foregrounds Oliver as a particularly gripping storyteller, which he is. The characters swim up to us in Oliver's vivid recollections. Sharp is one of the most consistent directors working in New York, with an instantly recognizable style that employs muscular sound design and precise lighting, with few visual frills or distractions. It works beautifully in 'Rip Tide', pulling us into Oliver's world of memory and solitude. This is the best kind of black-box magic.”

Rip Tide
“Edgar Oliver turns memory into a haunted amusement park, full of living shadows, with himself as presiding ghost. His quietly ravishing new performance piece... conjures the heyday of the fabled Pyramid Club. ”

Washington Square
“The cast, setting, dramatization, and well-crafted script evoked yearning, hope, sadness, heartache, and disillusionment...'Washington Square' was staged on a simple set with two chairs and sumptuous costuming. The audience was inexorably drawn into a story conveyed through a 90-minute production in a seemingly virtual moment. Paul Carbonara's music effectively supported the vicissitudes of emotional range in the dialogue and story's evolution...delivered by a power cast.”

Washington Square
“The four performances are spot on perfect...This has to be one of the tightest ensembles on any New York stage right now...While always minimalistic yet impressively effective in design, the storytelling and casting are always maximally delivered. The last seconds of this one are brilliant. Go.”

Washington Square
“I really urge you to see this.”

Washington Square
“Randy Sharp's stripped-down transcription of the 19th-century novel keeps our attention focused both on the four leading actors and their words. The set's sharp contrasts between light and darkness reinforces that attention... the cast brought compellingly to life a tale about how wealth is far from enough to bring about happiness or even contentment.”

Washington Square
“Director Randy Sharp has done an exquisite job of adapting this tale of repression and quiet rebellion for the Axis stage in a lean 85-minute play that stays true to the book, and even, I dare say, makes an improvement or two along the way. The production's four-member cast bring their A-game to the material with humor and fine-tuned performances...Sharp has fashioned a gem of a play that may seem to some more present than past.”

Washington Square
“Washington Square created a beautiful hour and a half based entirely on excellent fundamentals: focused writing, excellent acting, and a compelling story about compelling characters. It left me happy--the final moment of the play felt like a flash of light.”

Washington Square
“The acting is of outstanding quality and remains on a high pitch throughout...Randy Sharp's new adaptation of Washington Square is both exciting theater and entirely true to its source material. The quartet of fine actors make this story of 1840's New York entirely credible and engrossing at all times. While it avoids the beautiful trappings usually associated with the period, it is so gripping that they are not missed for a moment.”

Washington Square
“Randy Sharp's new adaptation of Henry James' novel 'Washington Square' is a beautifully staged, perfectly acted, chronicle of the Sloper family in 1840s New York...Every moment of this 85-minute production is full and engaging, even the quiet moments, the transitional moments. Director Randy Sharp has, it feels, created a staging of movement, not just of bodies but of time, that seamlessly moves the story forward...The music composed by Paul Carbonara is part of this amazing production of sweeping compositions.”

Worlds Fair Inn
“...the actors navigate a Dadaist script with humor and expression... it's a thoughtful piece of existential theatre, something like a T. S. Eliot poem made flesh.”

Worlds Fair Inn
“...a uniquely charming, deranged vaudeville act...writer-director Randy Sharp adeptly maneuvers between high and low comedy as she takes on nuclear annihilation, a different kind of rather effective serial killing...and melds Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, Oppenheimer's Los Alamos, and Holmes's murder hotel into a supremely funny and memorable show...as we finally emerge from this dark year, we may not have much hope for the future of humanity, but Axis gives us hope for the future of theater.”

VICTOR
“Love Among the Shadows in Edgar Oliver's 'Victor' In this haunting memoir of his relationship with a homeless man, Mr. Oliver confirms his status as a poet laureate of New York's dispossessed. ”

VICTOR
“...Oliver's stage persona is captivatingly paradoxical: he lets the audience into the deepest parts of his memories and self-reflections, while at the same time insisting on his own shyness... I could listen to Edgar Oliver tell stories for hours, and thanks to his status on the downtown stage, I can. This particular story, far from being exploitative, introduced me to the work of another great artist: the poet and illustrator Victor Greco.”

VICTOR
“"Those were happy days," Edgar Oliver intones in his unplaceable lilt, somehow both animated and deadpan, as his hand drifts downward like a falling leaf. "Why do we survive them?" Like a dying breed of downtown New Yorker crossed with an extraterrestrial ghost, Oliver has rematerialized to deliver his latest fond, funny, strange, elegiac memoir-monologue about "the sorrows of men who live alone in rooming houses," this time about his beloved friend and neighbor Victor Greco, who died in February and who was homeless for the last ten years of his life. Sensitively directed by Randy Sharp, with a suitably sepulchral set (by Chad Yarborough) and lighting (by David Zeffren) and live music by a guitar-cello-piano trio led by Paul Carbonara, the show gives the impression that the shy loner onstage has had a far richer social life than most of us will ever have.”

VICTOR
“How Do You Translate Desire and Longing Into Theatre? By ELIZA BENT”

Last Man Club
“...a tense dystopian mood piece from writer/director Randy Sharp at Axis Theater. This one-act historical drama blows in with gale force as Sharp and her creative team unearth the allure and agony of Depression-era manifest destiny compounded by an environmental crisis.”

Last Man Club
“There are no sure bets in theater. That's the excitement and reality of live performance and creative risk taking. There are, however, reliable pockets of extraordinary levels of sustained excellence. One can presume a visit to the small Greenwich Village basement space of the Axis Company will include mind-blowing ambiance. 'Last Man Club' beautifully overloads the senses and transports you to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.”

Last Man Club
“'Last Man Club' is both feeble and full, real and not real, hopeless and hopeful, mean and meek, starved and sated. In other words, the play is many things all at the same time, but mainly a full meal of a theatrical experience that has a depth that only an ensemble group like Axis can bring to it...The actors and the directing are all spot-on bringing their talents to bear, blending the darkness of life with the only thing that keeps us alive, that spark of hope, whether real or imagined.”

Last Man Club
“...the bold standard of boundary-breaking Off-Broadway theatre...with costumes seemingly plucked from Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', and a cast of Axis rep veterans, this study in loss and borderline despair may sound bleak on steroids, but I assure you the script, direction (both by Randy Sharp), design, and actors elevate it to something as raw as it is wistful, wrapped in humor and drama.”

Strangers in the World
“...a moving, stylized theatre piece...The acting is exceptional. Each character is individualized by gesture and tone. Their dilemma is poignant, and the repeating phrases are almost incantatory...'Strangers in the World' makes these people feel contemporary as they struggle with forbidden urges and the desperate longing to be perceived as worthy of grace, blessing, and salvation.”

Seven in One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid
“Inspired by the Grimm's Fairy Tale also known as "The Brave Little Tailor", Randy Sharp's adaptation invests it with additional American pop cultural resonances and plays a lot with gender roles....There's a sweet, magical simplicity to sets and costumes that remind me of old school kid's tv from back in the 50s and 60s...The show made me so happy it's more than likely that I will return to see it next year.”

Edgar Oliver's New York Trilogy
“... Oliver's a genius, and dispossessed. He's the James McCourt of the American stage, a gay man not inebriated by but still prone to dreaming about Poe ... He's a frightening performer, so utterly himself that you can't compare him to anyone out there, nor can you compare his work to the synthetic or stupidly crafty stuff that passes as theatre nowadays. Oliver, by example, reminds you that theatre first began as a way of making poems live, and gives voice to stories that couldn't be told any other way.”

Attorney Street
“The autobiography of Edgar Oliver hauntingly describes and defines what it means to be human. For those who've experienced real loss, unanswered love, abandonment, loneliness, guilt, disappointment, or regret, this performance will reach deeply into their souls. For those who've been fortunate enough to live lives of ease, comfort, and acceptance, Attorney Street will open their hearts and mind to the human condition, and reveal what it means to truly be alive.”

Attorney Street
“... extraordinary ... in 'Attorney Street,' (Edgar Oliver's) seriously haunting new performance piece ... the phantoms summoned by this one-of-a-kind monologuist are both vivid and elusive, as such manifestations must be ... Mr. Oliver's tone often seems poised between that of Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe, with perhaps a touch of Tennyson's memorializing rapture. Mr. Oliver is, above all, an elegist, as so many 19th-century writers were.”

Attorney Street
“Edgar Oliver, Actor and Raconteur, Hews to His East Village Past ”

Attorney Street
“(Edgar Oliver) is funny and warm, wide-eyed and thoughtful, charming and vulnerable ... (his) storytelling and performance are intimate and personal ... Attorney Street is a genuinely special night of small pleasures in the downtown theater.”

Attorney Street
“The piece is a brief anthology of farewells, to a bakery in an earlier New York, to a lost poem, to a father he never knew. There's a feeling of suspended time: Oliver sometimes seems like a time-traveler buffeted by our too-noisy world ... lyrical ... heartbreaking...”

Evening - 1910
“Before Saturday night's performance of 'Evening — 1910' was through, I knew I would want to hear its music again: those strings, those harmonies. In its score, the creators of this sung-through show, Randy Sharp and Paul Carbonara, have made something beautiful and delicate...like a sepia-tone memory...the band is excellent, the sound is full and the show is fast and fluid.”

Evening - 1910
“...the most exquisitely crafted music to be heard on the New York stage right now...boast(s) some of the best-crafted lyrics currently onstage...it is certainly a musical journey into the past that's worth taking.”

The Vast Machine
“...seething with feeling...dark...vivid...the divide between commerce and compassion is made abundantly clear, as is the deserved torment of these sailors, flailing in an inferno of moral retribution.”

The Vast Machine
“...a tense, impeccably designed world premiere production...a fascinating look into an industry that changed the course and the nature of America and, indeed, the entire Western world...an uncomfortable and therefore effective experience.”

Bad Kid
“Growing Up Gay, Goth and Generous - 'Bad Kid' is a New York Times Critic's Pick”

Bad Kid
“At Axis, 'aggressive surrealism' immerses, engages, messes with you”

The Groundling
“Though it begins as a formulaic showbiz farce, it takes an unexpected swerve toward heartbreak...borrowing a neat trick from Shakespeare, Mr. Palmieri tops off the saccharine comedy with a bittersweet finish...plenty of audience members were dabbing eyes with sleeves and tissues as the lights came up...under Mr. Palmieri's direction, the cast thrive...”

The Groundling
“... a thoroughly modern, breathlessly comical, arrestingly poignant story of a man trying desperately to make sense of love and loss...this production is a terrific example of what happens when director, actors, and crew are all on the same wavelength...with gut-busting laughs, a stellar cast, and a moving story, The Groundling is one of the surprise downtown gems of the season.”

Solitary Light
“...it will astound you with its uncommon beauty...when the actors step into the light, Karl Ruckdeschel's stunningly authentic period costumes come into full view...everyone in the ensemble sings like an angel...among the most beautiful music heard on the New York stage this season...Sharp and Carbonara have created an emotional soundscape...Sharp's stage pictures paired with Carbonara's magical melodies make for a pleasant ...hour in the theater. ”

In the Park
“'In the Park' manically enchants with gruesome, erotic brevity ... what makes this Walser-esque daisy chain of pastoral vignettes cohere is Oliver's perverse enthusiasm ... the monologue's lyricism makes all his obsessions seem equally compelling...”

In the Park
“...emotionally grand work ... 'In the Park' (respectfully directed by Randy Sharp), is so beautiful—so enthralling in its undisguised but never tedious self-absorption, in its command of the spoken word, and in its demand for love—that to remain unmoved by it, or to dismiss it as fairy folderol, begs the question: Why? ... (it is) an enormous leap into autobiographical brilliance ... 'In the Park' is a love story about moments and sensations...”

In the Park
“(Oliver's) performance is a joyous ode to melancholy and solitude ... startlingly beautiful ... 'In the Park' celebrates Oliver's love of the natural world and the profound pleasures he finds in a life of solitary contemplation ... The New York theater scene is richer for small, meditative, verbally textured pieces like this.”

Last Man Club
“...(an) atmospheric, expertly structured one-act drama...the Dust Bowl illusion is masterly...(a) story of deception, despair and some surprising aspects of persistent hope.”

Last Man Club
“...Axis Company offers a deeply unsettling sensory overload in their dark and disturbing play about die-hard survivors of the Dust Bowl.”

Last Man Club
“Dust Settlers Follow a Storm”

Down There
“I am in awe at the accomplishment of 'Down There': this is genuinely cathartic theatre that enlarges our understanding of the human condition in an important way. It is harrowing and disturbing... it's compassionate and horrified in its examination of what our species proves that it's capable of.”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)
“...sweet and sinister...Mr. Oliver is a living work of theater all by himself.”

Hospital 2009
“Coma Chameleon | A serialized play that has followed an unconscious man's interior world for 10 years returns for another short stay”

Trinity 5:29
“... terse and cryptic ... fascinating ... a worthy examination of historical significance ... spooky ... meticulous ...”

Trinity 5:29
“... a wonderfully extravagant production ... impressive ... compelling ... Axis Company manages to tickle the audience intellectually and visually.”

Trinity 5:29
“... extraordinary and intense ... 'Trinity 5:29' is a work of theatre that needs to be experienced ...”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“Oliver delivers his tale with grace and honesty; the show seduces as an artifact of a New York that is endangered, if not extinct.”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“... heartwarming and heartbreaking, the production masterfully captures the idiosyncrasies (of) city living ... Oliver's sweetly off-kilter delivery ... his nostalgia for the past, combined with his focused engagement with the present, make (him) a masterful storyteller.”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“... Edgar Oliver('s)... guileless and charismatic weirdness is pretty irresistible ... a taut and utterly involving hour. It is very funny, and also oddly touching and affecting. It makes us hungry for more ...”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“... a cast of unforgettable characters and so, so many comedic ... and sharply bittersweet moments..”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“... theater at its purest... he takes the stage and... you can see why the man is a downtown legend... darkly hilarious, heartbreaking...”

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House
“Nowhere do the lines between legend and history, living and haunting, so noticeably blur ... you'll want Edgar Oliver to tell (the story) ...”

Hospital 2008
“... from scary to hilarious and back again.”

Hospital 2008
“... a Lynchian balance of horror, humor and weirdness... leaves the audience amused ... ready to return for the next episode.”

Hospital 2008
“..arresting, thrilling, tantalizing, and—in terms of its physical production—spectacularly impressive.”

Hospital 2008
“... the annual production of 'Hospital' is one of the few reasons to stay in New York for the summer ... it is surprisingly bizarre, heartbreaking, and hysterical.”

Hospital 2008
“... a highly pleasing piece of absurdity.”

A Glance at New York
“Sharp's adaptation of ...A Glance at New York is stylistically impressive. ”

A Glance at New York
“[Axis] bristled with energy and absolutely rippled from the moment the ensemble catapulted from behind the simple red curtain. ”

A Glance at New York
“[Axis has] managed to creat one of the freshest pieces of theatre on the Fringe.. ”

Seven in One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid
“The sterling Off-Broadway theater group the Axis Company has created a wonderful new holiday tradition ...”

Hospital 2005
“One of the brightest stars in the Off-Off Broadway firmament...”

Hospital 2004
“...a clinical Alice in Wonderland, just as enjoyable and fascinating as it is convoluted...Hospital offers an incredibly accessible and artistically rich experience that will keep the audience coming back for more.”

In Token of My Admiration
“In exploring the Hawthorne-Melville relationship, the company again proves itself to be an exciting, evolving presence on the downtown theater scene. ”

In Token of My Admiration
“Axis Company's narrative exploration of the friendship between literary luminaries Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville might be based on historical facts, but its approach is purely imaginative. In Token of My Admiration envisions conversations between the two men through poetic dialogue, film, and even an inspired vaudeville act. Using a sparse, industrial space with a small stage and three screens, the scenes focus on lean dialogue between the two stage performers and the actors on film. The conversations are mostly suggestive, however, and it's left to the audience's own imagination to fill in the blanks. ”

In Token of My Admiration
“...truly experimental...it is playful, odd, resonant, sometimes poetic and occasionally puzzling. That's just what you ought to find in basement theaters on Sheridan Square.”

USS Frankenstein
“...the roles are so deeply realized and the physical presence of the clanking, groaning hull of the disintegrating ship so threatening that the 40 minutes of this play tickle and torment one for days.”

Seven in One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid
“...what could be better than a play that asks you to shout? Well, one that asks you to sing... All this fun is part of an updated version of ''The Brave Little Tailor,''...My son also thought of another reason that ''Seven in One Blow'' is the greatest play ever: the actors pass out candy at the end.”

“The ensemble acting maintained a sense of truth amid such abstraction with line readings that put any number of moments in abrupt, sharp focus. The staging had a certain formality that suggested an element of ritual. After all, this story is cyclical, a constant churn of justice and the lack of it...I found (it) Brechtian, offering no release from the issues at hand. Any traditional ending would suggest that justice of some sort wins out... 'High Noon' became a dense, provocative, complicated nexus of ideas – the sort that's possible off-off-Broadway.”

“You can drop kick any cinematic nostalgia of Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, and assorted bad guys back to 1952. Axis Theatre's adaptation of Hollywood's quintessential Old West showdown has been given a new, lushly surreal life with a company that paints the material and their characters with strokes of conflict—both internal and verbal.”

“Marc Palmieri’s brilliant adaptation… is pure story; accessible, lovely and flowing. Director Randall Sharp’s staging is clean and simple, allowing the heart of the story to be presented… there is a rainbow of color in the music of the play that adds all kinds of texture… the ensemble is prodigious, using the space with grace of movement that glides and flies from scene to scene. All strong solid performances.”

“...an elegantly streamlined and truncated staging of Shakespeare’s 'Twelfth Night'… Sharp’s staging is clean and stylish, putting the emphasis on the work’s subtly shifting emotional landscape… live musicians are ingeniously incorporated into the fabric of the play, and they provide wonderful underscoring over the course of the performance (Paul Carbonara’s recurring love motif is particularly enchanting)… the acting is reliably solid… which lends itself to Sharp’s human-scaled version of Twelfth Night.”

“…satisfying in its exactitude… Axis refers to ‘Twelfth Night’ as ‘Shakespeare’s most painful comedy,’ and that’s just what Sharp, Palmieri, and the superb cast deliver… ‘Twelfth Night’ demonstrates precisely what Sharp and Axis do best, whether offering an original play or a fresh take on an old chestnut.”

“…brilliantly directed by Randall Sharp from a streamlined adaptation by Marc Palmieri… a delightful, fun-filled 90 minutes of mirth, music, and pranks… all members of the large ensemble… were excellent…one could truly appreciate the richness of the period costumes designed by Karl Ruckdeschel. Simply spectacular. And kudos for the hair and makeup stylings by Will Vicari and wigmaker Krystal Balleza… all (Shakespeare’s) comic devices and wordplay in 90 minutes. Plus, live music. Grand!”

“…director Randall Sharp’s twilit production… (is) a design and staging triumph… Karl Ruckdeschel’s gray-toned eighteenth-century costumes glimmer with crepuscular glamour…”

Chosen by Time Out New York as one of the top ten reasons to applaud New York Theatre

Chosen by The Village Voice: Only the Best: Fall 2001 Arts Preview

"...creates a compellingly unsettling evening...[which] reflects Axis's clear and powerful artistic vision."

"...a welcome spark... the evening is a vivid study in honor and its discontents."

"Seamless is the word I'd use to describe the Axis Company's new production ..."

"...check out this production by a theatre company which is emerging as an important force."

"... so mind boggling the first time around that a second visit was required.... a promising aesthetics in progress."

"These people are really doing the most innovative and compelling work around...best use of film in any theatre I've ever seen...Very funny, unpredictable... an atmosphere heady with history...I'm so grateful [they're] in my neighborhood...[They've] got something going there I've never seen the likes of."

"Credit is due to this rather bold company with a distinctive mission, vision and talent to make it happen."

"...A thought provoking production...an apple pie holocaust!"

Axis Company is represented by:
John Wyszniewski
Everyman Agency
347.416.3881
john@everymanagency.com