Robert Cucuzza [Press]

Speed Freaks [film]

Speed Freaks [stage]

Total Fictional Lie

The Sticky Banister

Adirondack

Permanent Brain Damage

Mean Rich White Ladies

Unconscious Motives of the Motion Picture Industry

Rich White Farmers

Parlour Problems

My Head Was a Sledgehammer

I Hate Women

Love Clump

PRESS HIGHLIGHTS [ACTING]

THE NEW YORK TIMES
"...a hypnotic performer with a talent for slapstick..."

VARIETY on "Gatz"
"...an angry, key-jangling building super who morphs into the blunt-force Tom (Robert Cucuzza), the dunderheaded son of privilege from the novel transformed into a character who asserts an even more primal (and humorous) sense of entitlement."

PLAYGOER.BLOGSPOT.COM on "Gatz"
"Gatz is such an ensemble effort that singling out performances only goes so far in describing it. Still, I must record the indelible impression left by bulging, baggy eyes of Robert Cucuzza, who makes Tom Buchanan into a kind of demonic clown, dangerously unstable in his deep-seated insecurities about class and masculinity."

VARIETY on "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness"
"Thesping is brilliant throughout."

"Cucuzza's Flechsig channels Dr. Caligari without sacrificing contemporary technique."

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Panic! (How to Be Happy!)"
"The impeccably precise principal players...move and speak with the mannered zeal of automatons in search of their inner humanity..."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "Panic! (How to Be Happy!)"
"Of the four [actors], it's Cucuzza whose personality most makes an impression: mincing, lilting his lines in falsetto, a look of moonstruck delight in his eyes and a cynical, self-satisfied smirk on his lips, he forges a link between the here and now of Foreman's tormenting awareness and the memory of theaters past, proving again that, the more we live in the present, the more likely we are to be drawing on the past."

THE NEW YORKER on "Panic! (How to Be Happy!)"
"Watching the four main performers who make up the nucleus of Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre...we know we're in the presence of an ensemble in the best sense of the word."

CURTAINUP.COM on "Panic! (How to Be Happy!)"
"[The actors] move and emote fluidly, and are riveting to watch..."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "Listen Houdini"
"...[T]he flinty Robert Cucuzza (as Houdini) finds enough rabid intensity to give larger stakes to [the] clashing viewpoints."

TIME OUT NEW YORK on "Listen Houdini"
"Robert Cucuzza captures Houdini's pathetic side with such relatively spare gestures as a single glare or a raised fist."

OFFOFFOFF.COM on "Listen Houdini"
"[Director] Sharp takes advantage of Robert Cucuzza's lively stage personality to maintain a spirited mood."

TIME OUT NEW YORK on "Speed Freaks"
"Cucuzza delivers a thrillingly cartoonish performance through a series of raving eruptions, in which the talented actor transforms himself into a vibrating, eye-popping, slobbering Tasmanian devil. [T]he virtuoso auteur is a tremendously watchable actor..."

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Total Fictional Lie"
"In the hour-long show, performed on P.S. 122's bare stage, random scenes from actual documentaries...are reenacted by the seven-member cast. The funniest features Robert Cucuzza as the Bible hawker, trying to close a deal with a nearly catatonic homemaker played by Leslie Buxbaum; the banal scene repeats twice, with the actors delivering hilarious approximations of the film subjects' accents."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "Total Fictional Lie"
"[The] work here, under co-directors John Collins and Steve Bodow, has integrity, intelligence, and precision as well as imaginative skill; and its actors...have talent for days."

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Adirondack"
"The piece was performed with knowing abandon by Gregory M. Catellier, John Heginbotham, Matthew Heyner, Krista Miller, Fritha Pengelly, Adrienne Truscott, Nami Yamamoto, the deliciously sardonic Robert Cucuzza and Clare Byrne."

PRESS HIGHLIGHTS [WRITING/DIRECTING]

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Carpenter's Gold"
"...there is enough cleverness and antic physical energy to make this slight one-hour work a pleasant immersion in the comically surreal."

BACK STAGE on "Carpenter's Gold"
"...the spirit of invention is plain to see."

TIME OUT NEW YORK on "Carpenter's Gold"
"...Cucuzza...truly has a knack for the wacky—his non sequiturs can be their own reward."

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Confidence, Women!"
"...a the mix of voices creates an appealing, comic dissonance that plays into Mr. Cucuzza’s endearingly silly side."

THE NEW YORK TIMES on "Speed Freaks"
"...a master of mayhem (albeit the downtown theater kind)..."
"...a memorable exercise in delirious theatrical anarchy."

TIME OUT NEW YORK on "Speed Freaks"
"...[A] splendidly clever choreographer..."

"While Cucuzza wrote, directed, scored and starred in Freaks, his kinetic play retains an uncontrived, anarchic spirit, which is its greatest strength."

PAPER MAGAZINE on "Speed Freaks"
"[W]riter, actor, director and producer Robert Cucuzza's best play and biggest hit..."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "The Sticky Banister"
"...[T]he fluid treatment signals the emergence of a genuine poet of the theater."

BACK STAGE on "Mean Rich White Ladies"
"...[T]his is a vastly entertaining and zestfully performed piece of expressionistic vaudeville. Cucuzza's direction is self-reflective, of course, but razor sharp, and filled with wonderful details: pauses, takes, and pivots."

TIME OUT NEW YORK on "Mean Rich White Ladies"
"With such wickedly delightful characters and a flamboyant dance number to boot, this high-falutin' look at the superficial world of society mavens...develops into an acidic joy..."

PAPER MAGAZINE on "Mean Rich White Ladies"
"[Cucuzza's] version of Luce's classic, is a fast-paced, pie-in-the-face to the highfalutin' production, complete with his usual dose of Marx Brothersesque physical comedy and insanely energetic choreography."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "Rich White Farmers"
"Clearly a director of talent...[his] vision is clever, his choreography riveting..."

"Without resorting to a MacLaughlin Group sendup, director Robert Cucuzza shows the comic horror of conservative thinkers..."

THE VILLAGE VOICE on "Love Clump"
"...Robert Cucuzza flexed [his] highly imaginative choreographic wit and elicited doses of playful irreverence from spare compositions."