THE CRITICS LOVE LENI!

Excerpts from TALKIN' BROADWAY's REVIEW: <---click here to read the whole thing 

Describe Leni Riefenstahl however you will, but don't ignore her: That's the message dripping from Jen Ryan's new play, The Imaginary All-True Leni Riefenstahl Show, playing as part of the Fringe Festival. Exactly how history will judge Riefenstahl won't be known for many years, but anyone interested in her story would do well to take in this show and be exposed to its quirky but clear-eyed point of view about one of the 20th century's most controversial women...

This is all handled in a highly theatrical and almost improvisatory manner, with Ryan portraying Riefenstahl, and actor Rik Sansone playing everyone else. (His characterizations number over two dozen and include luminaries like Joseph Goebbels, Clark Gable, and even Marlene Dietrich.)...plenty of zany informal fun, as well as a context for exploring the way Riefenstahl is viewed and treated today...

That's obviously Ryan's main intent with the play, but she establishes early on that she'll get there by any means necessary. One can understand, for example, Sansone's reluctance to play Hitler; Ryan's solution for depicting "the elephant in the room" is nothing short of comic genius.

...This all makes The Imaginary, All-True Leni Riefenstahl Show a highly ambitious achievement that's been impressively realized here. Even if this expansive, fractured biography fails to convince you of the importance of Riefenstahl's contributions to film and the world, Ryan certainly makes a creative and compelling case. She even states in her program biography that she's been trying to adapt Riefenstahl's story for ten years, and judging by the results here, that time has been well spent.     -Matthew Murray

EXCERPT FROM NEW YORK METRO'S REVIEW <----click here to read the whole thing

In this extremely ambitious, multimedia bio-drama—as vintage stills and captioned asides cover the backdrop—Jen Ryan and cohort Rik Sansone reenact real moments from the infamous filmmaker's life and take creative license by staging surreal scenes of pop culture superstardom with Leni Riefenstahl on The Match Game and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...Ryan defends and celebrates her muse while simultaneously debunking Riefenstahl's proclaimed naivete... It's a performance that rarely uses an accent or misses a beat. —Drew Pisarra