Missed Connections to Happiness

In a program note to one of the current productions of his plays at 59E59 Theaters, British playwright Alan Ayckbourn acknowledges a debt to J.B. Priestley. Priestley’s inventive splintering of time in plays like Dangerous Corner, Ayckbourn writes, has inspired him. Thus the simple time frame of Ayckbourn's early masterpiece Absurd Person Singular (1975), which charted the changing fortunes of its six characters over three Christmases, led eventually to Communicating Doors (1994), where stepping through a door in a hotel suite takes a character back 20 years. In 1999 came the tour de force House and Garden, which have to be played in adjacent theaters simultaneously, so that characters from House exit into Garden, and vice versa, and actors work in two plays in one evening.

Ayckbourn also plays with time in his newest work, Arrivals & Departures, a comedy that may rival Woman in Mind (1985) and Wildest Dreams (1991) as one of his darkest.

At a railway station, Quentin (Bill Champion), the director of a police task force, is planning to intercept a seemingly slippery and dangerous criminal, “codename Cerastes.” Quentin is directing a squad of agents in their disguises, and things are going egregiously wrong. One “father” holds his “baby” by the feet; a female “tourist” mangles a would-be Norwegian accent. As Quentin notes, “The closest she’s ever been to Norway is Botswana.” In short order, though, Quentin has other worries. A young female police officer, Ez (Elizabeth Boag), who is about to be discharged from the force, is assigned to his unit to protect the only known eyewitness who can identify Cerastes, a bluff old Yorkshireman named Barry (Kim Wall), who arrives by helicopter.

The story then journeys in flashbacks to Ez's childhood and adolescence, as scenes alternate between her recollections and the inane attempts of Barry to talk to her. Her father dies in military combat, and she develops a deep-seated hostility toward men, feeling abandonment. Eventually she joins the police force. Even though she shrinks at anyone's touch, she has a romance with a man named Rob, but at her insistence there is no sex. At 23, she is constantly morose and, unfortunately, one finds it difficult to sympathize with her. Boag is suitably dour, and suggests that Ez has unresolved daddy issues.

Act II is when Ayckbourn pulls off one of his expected theatrical tricks: the action of the play starts over (with subtle adjustments), and this time we follow Barry's early life — marriage, children, overbearing in-laws — through flashbacks. A man who seemed eccentric, charming, and harmless turns out to be as deeply unhappy as Ez. In what is surely one of the bleakest endings of any Ayckbourn play — and it feels like a forced plot twist — Ez and Barry finally find a connection.

Well-known Ayckbourn themes are reworked here. Among them are the unseen misery of people who seem content and confident, and the incompetence and pettiness of people who hold authority (echoing 2011’s Neighbourhood Watch). The dramatist's observation of the British middle class is as astute as ever.

Although Ayckbourn intends Arrivals & Departures to be in a more serious vein, fans who are used to his generally comic spirit will find this atmosphere predominantly tragic. That’s the playwright’s prerogative, of course, but the comedy and tragedy here jostle each other uneasily. The harshness of Ez’s character, though it abates in the second act, when Barry is the focus, is off-putting. A confrontation between Ez and Rob’s parents touches abruptly on British class friction, and the final portrait of Rob that emerges doesn’t square with the patient, decent character that Richard Stacey has created.

Nonetheless, under the author’s direction, the actors do a fine job bringing this thorny anomaly to life. As part of the Brits Off-Broadway festival, 59E59 is offering a generous helping of Ayckbourn (he has written 78 plays), with visiting productions from the playwright’s own Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough: a revival of his 1992 play, Time of My Life, is also being presented, and though it, too, has a serious side, a third bill contains two one-acts under the umbrella title Farcicals.

Arrivals & Departures, Farcicals and Time of My Life play in repertory through June 29 with marathons on Sundays. For tickets and times, visit www.59e59.org.

Woman is the Future of Man

What do you get with a play that infuses all the elements of a classic farce with a modern soundtrack and an all-female cast? You get complete and utter hilarity. Much of this hilarity is owed to the wit of English playwright Aphra Behn, known to many as one of the first female dramatists and therefore a key figure of Restoration-era theater. Who better to mount a modern production of one of Behn's most ridiculously raunchy plays, Sir Patient Fancy, than all-female troupe The Queen's Company? Founded in 2000 by director Rebecca Patterson, the company is dedicated to introducing classic works to a contemporary audience through the use of gender-blind casting.

It is the late 1600s in England, a time when fiscal inequity meant marrying for money, and not for love. As a result, in the director's words, "all hell breaks loose and hearts get broken." Sir Patient Fancy, though written in the 17th century, feels a lot like something one would read in today's gossip rags: Lady Fancy is married to the titular Sir Patient Fancy, but really fancies Charles Wittmore, who is friends with Lodwick Knowell, who is in love with Isabella Fancy, who is betrothed to Sir Fainlove who actually is Charles Wittmore. Needless to say: the plot thickens and madness ensues, with a lot of laughs along the way. In a modern-day context, Behn's female characters here are not passive pretty little things, but rather active, doing most of the scheming. This is made even more interesting with an all-female cast, where the men answer to the women.  

As for the actors themselves, their onstage antics are well-timed, comedic perfection. The distinct personalities of Behn's characters combined with the irreverent kookiness of each cast member creates a bubbly atmosphere not unlike the fizzy champagne one would have in Sir Patient Fancy's court (if one had time to drink in the midst of all that scheming and meddling). The pacing and delivery of lines is never tired, maintaining a consistent rhythm, much of which is due to the company's evident chemistry with one another. One pairing with such notable chemistry is that of Tiffany Abercrombie and Elisabeth Preston, who play Lady Fancy and Wittmore, respectively. Each complemented the other with quick and natural ease; their expressions and mannerisms only helped to heighten the comedy in which they were immersed. Other standouts include Virginia Baeta as the bumbling but eager Sir Credulous Easy and Natalie Lebert as the clueless Sir Patient Fancy himself. While Matthew J. Fick's set design maintains the play's classic roots, Kristina Makowski's costumes are a fusion of both modern and period elements, providing the perfect visual representation of the company's performative style.  

Boasting a chuckle-enducing, genre-bending soundtrack and a plot with more twists than a daytime soap opera, it is clear that The Queen's Company has put their own unique stamp on classic Restoration comedy with Sir Patient Fancy.  

Sir Patient Fancy runs from March 15 – April 5 in a limited engagement at the Wild Project (located at 195 East 3rd Street between Avenue A and Avenue B). Performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at www.queenscompany.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111. Tickets are 2-for-1 on Wednesday nights.

The Power of Love

What happens when a god falls down to Earth and a mortal ascends to the heavens? You get one of the most enduring stories of love wrapped in a myth — Cupid and Psyche, a story from Apuleius's Metamorphoses, which was recently presented by Turn to Flesh Productions at TBG Theatre (312 West 36th St.). Under the helm of playwright and artistic director Emily C.A. Snyder, the theater company re-contextualized a classic legend about Cupid's fabled experience of the trials and agony of love. 

We first meet the titular God of Passion when his mother Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) notices the hearts of men are turned away from her and towards Psyche, a mortal woman who would not love. The goddess urges her son Cupid (also known as Eros) to put a spell on her so as to win the world back to love. Determined to carry out his mission, Cupid swoops down to Earth with an arrow poised on Psyche. However, the winged archer soon finds himself falling for the mortal being and kisses her. This riles the gods and before Cupid knows it, he has killed Adonis. As punishment, he walks the Earth as The Beast, forced to kill all lovers in his path, forever searching in vain for Pysche's heart. 

Playing gods and mortals is itself not an easy task and only one that Turn to Flesh could achieve with an energetic ensemble: charming leading man James Parenti as Cupid; Erin Nelson as the cerebral Pysche; Kelly Laurel Zekas and Laura Iris Hill as scheming sisters Livia and Dareia, respectively; the sensuous Laura Hooper as Aphrodite; Stan Buturla as their regal father Thanos; Patrick Marran as the confused Chrysos; as well as Parker Madison and Gwenevere Sisco as the deliciously devious duo, Adonis and Persephone. This eclectic cast of characters helped flesh out what those unfamiliar with the mythological texts would view as ancient relics, truly carrying them into the 21st century.

Indeed, it was this vision of modernizing an old fairy tale that even carried over into their costumes. Costume coordinator Emily Rose Parman injected some anachronistic flair into the earth-bound Gods' apparel. For the Goddess' self-proclaimed "rags," Parman had Aphrodite donning lots of lingerie-inspired shift dresses, as well as sexy camisole-and-shorts nighties — replete with a matching silk robe, of course. As Goddess of Death, Persephone was in full-on Victorian dress, with a Gothic twist, making her seem like something out of a production of Sweeney Todd. The mortal lovers wore contemporary clothing, as did Gods Adonis and Cupid: the former in a bomber jacket, wallet chain and heavy boots that would make any punk rocker proud; the latter, dressed simply (as any respectable Winged-Archer-God would), in a streamlined, hipster jacket and jeans combo that would not be amiss in ol' Billyburg. As for young Psyche, she sported free-flowing dresses throughout — ensembles that looked modern, and yet also recalled the simplicity and elegance of Ancient Greek dress. 

Furthering the play's modern twist was the music, which punctuated each act with a sweeping, guitar-driven indie soundtrack. As for the staging, Michael Hetzer's multi-purpose two-story set-up represented the worlds of the Gods and the Mortals: upstairs, not only provided entrance for various characters — God or Mortal — but also represented Heaven later on. Similarly, downstairs were the grounds that stood in for the gardens where Cupid and Psyche would meet, which also later provided Persephone's domain, Hades' Underworld. Though simple, the set looked as if it did not coalesce with the play's romantic themes. However, this is more than made up for in Zephan Ellenbogen's beautiful light-bulb fixtures and lighting cues, which were moody and stark, especially during the Underworld scenes in the play's latter half. 

They say "love is blind," and this much is true in the case of Cupid, a God who fell for a mortal. As Turn to Flesh's production shows, sometimes falling in love is worth all the pain. If there's anything the story Cupid and Psyche has given us, it is the gift of forever reminding us of the perpetuity of love and its ability to make every one of us — even a God — fallible.

Cupid and Psyche opened at the TBG Theatre (312 West 36th Street) ran from February 13-16. For more information, visit TurnToFlesh.com.

Lips Locked Uneasily

Sarah Ruhl’s new play, Stage Kiss, examines the rekindling of a romance between a scattered actress and a struggling actor as they discover they have been cast as lovers 10 years after their break-up and estrangement. Foolish, egotistical thespians and their hangers-on have long provided comic fodder for the stage: George Kelly’s The Torch-Bearers (1923); George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s The Royal Family (1928); So Help Me God!—a 1929 play by Maureen Dallas Watkins that was unearthed by the Mint Theater in 2009; the madcap Room Service (1937); Noel Coward’s Present Laughter (1942); Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky (1948); Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce Noises Off; and, of course, Mel Brooks’s The Producers (2001).

Sarah Ruhl’s attempt to follow in those footsteps is stutteringly amusing but mostly tiresome. To be sure, the piece suggests that she is after something closer to the heftier entries (more Royal Family than Room Service), but Ruhl has significantly not given her main characters real names. They are She, He, The Director and The Husband, and they come off as ciphers more than flesh-and-blood people. Other hurdles include the disruption of comic momentum by songs in Brechtian fashion (including “Some Enchanted Evening”) and an interlocking monologue.

The show that the actors are appearing in is, crucially, an old musical. “It was a flop on Broadway in 1932,” says The Director (a nebbishy Patrick Kerr), “but we think with the proper cast, a new score, and some judicious cuts it will be really very well received in New Haven.” That’s a terrific line, but the arch dialogue and melodramatic situations of the revised book that are presented make it inconceivable that any sane producer would back the show. And The Director in rehearsal is earnestly incompetent; he would never have earned a reputation that would put a major musical in his hands.

This all undermines the essential grounding the comedy needs. No matter now farcical events become, there must be a kernel of truth, a modicum of believability. Director Rebecca Taichman has not imposed a singular tone or sharpened Ruhl’s intentions, and the lack of credibility and cohesion may be one reason the performers seem to flounder. Dominic Fumusa and Jessica Hecht as He and She have little chemistry and sometimes seem at sea in their parts.

The splendid first scene, as She arrives late for her audition, promises far more than the remainder delivers. She hasn’t read her “sides,” she asks for an explanation of the plot, and her photo résumé seems to have been trampled in a buffalo stampede. The Director asks her to read with the unprepossessing Kevin (Michael Cyril Creighton), the leading man’s gay understudy. She gets the job. When She discovers that her ex-lover has the role, one might expect comic fireworks on the order of Private Lives, but the results are sporadic cherry bombs and a drifting, angst-ridden affair.  

It seems Ruhl’s intention to contrast stage passion with real passion, the heightened romance and physicality of love with the routineness of marriage and workaday life. (“Love me just shy of forever, or love me till six o’clock” goes a song about the gossamer nature of it all.) The significance of a kiss is parsed by He, who takes the position that an audience only tolerates kissing “because it signifies resolution which people like to see on stage but they don’t really like to see the act of kissing on stage, only the idea of kissing on stage. That’s why actors have to be good-looking because it’s about an idea, an idea of beauty completing itself.” (How ironic that critic John Simon was often assailed because he held actors’ looks against them for a similar reason: good looks are a way for an audience to summon quick sympathy for a character in a play’s short span.)

A variety of kisses appear in Stage Kiss, by far the funniest being those of Creighton’s roly-poly substitution for He. The talented actor particularly enlivens a scene on a divan when he opens his mouth wide as if to devour She just before he kisses her (“like a placoderm,” She complains) and frightens her. His nimble physical presence is a choice asset in a comedy that promises much, but delivers little.

Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss plays through March 23. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Ticket prices start at $75 and are available by going to www.playwrightshorizons.org or calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200.

A Winter's Tale Ends in Spring

The WorkShop Theater Company’s production of The Winter’s Tale is a very traditional staging of William Shakespeare’s play, which emphasizes the beauty of the words and the great characters that define the Elizabethan bard. In the play, Polixenes, the ruler of Bohemia, has been a guest for nine months at the court of Leontes, the king of Sicilia. He is about to leave, yet Leontes’s wife, Hermione, lovingly persuades Polixenes to postpone his departure. That is the moment when jealousy blinds the Sicilian king. He subsequently accuses his pregnant wife of being unfaithful and imprisons her. Notwithstanding Paulina’s (a noblewoman loyal to the queen) defense of his wife’s innocence, Hermione gives birth to a girl in prison. Only after their young son and Hermione die of grief and the newborn has been abandoned in the dangerous Bohemian woods under his own orders, does Leontes realize the error of his ways. This is only the first half of a play whose surprising turns include a confirmation of innocence by the Oracle at Delphi, a fatal bear attack, and a statue that suddenly comes to life.

In the staging, the action is divided between two countries, Sicilia and Bohemia. Sicilia is portrayed as a barren and cold space. The walls are covered by curtains of black plastic bags and the nobility is dressed in dark suits. Leontes himself wears a black military uniform, which brings to mind the fascist dictators of the mid-20th century. Ethan Cadoff does a great job of portraying the frigidity of the character, whose only humanity is exposed with his jealous outbursts. Laurie Schroeder’s performance as Hermione exudes a flirtatious candor that somewhat explains her husband’s reaction. The production does a great job in staging the tragic first half of the play, the winter part of the tale referenced in the title.

In the second half of the play, the action moves to Bohemia 16 years after the incidents in Sicilia. At this point, the play is taken over by the light, humor and festivities of spring, whose overt sexuality follows the spirit of the pagan fertility rituals. The plastic bags slide open to uncover the mountains and blue skies of Bohemia. Michael Minahan’s set design marks in a simple and effective way the change in space and tone from the first half. Autolycus, the comic rogue, further establishes the merriment that distinguishes Bohemia. Robert Meksin plays the character with delicious abandon, singing and picking the pockets of the bumpkin clown.

Ryan Lee’s direction successfully portrays the Sicilian barrenness that opposes Bohemia’s chaotic innocence.

Angela Harner’s costumes also distinguish each space. The Sicilian dark suits are discarded for the colorful Bohemian garbs that allude to 1960s trends. On one hand, Polixenes’s attire brings to mind the Eastern influence on Western fashion, while on the other hand Autolycus’s clothes represent the errant hippie. Although some of the Bohemian costumes are too ridiculous and lack a general cohesiveness, they create an interesting effect since the same actors who wore the repressive and uniform suits during the first half, now appear as Bohemian revelers wearing neon colored see-throughs, heavy makeup and shiny pants.    

The whole cast does a marvelous job of juggling the two opposites of Sicilia and Bohemia. While Annalisa Loeffler’s Paulina fervently defends Hermione’s virtue while constrained in a gray skirt suit in Sicilia, her Bohemian Dorcas dons a feathered boa and red sunglasses. Along the same lines, Jacob Callie Moore plays the Clown with comedic energy and hence is almost unrecognizable as the much more serious Sicilian Dion. This production of The Winter’s Tale turns the bleakness of a tragic winter into the vibrant sensuality of spring.

The Winter’s Tale runs through March 15 at the WorkShop Theater Company's Main Stage (312 West 36th St., 4th Fl.). General tickets are $18; $15 for students and seniors. For tickets, call 866-811-4111 or visit www.workshoptheater.org.

Down the Road and Back Again

If you were born or grew up in the mid- to late-1980s, chances are the names Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia will strike in you a very nostalgic cord. When the four Miami-based retirees known as The Golden Girls debuted in 1985, they immediately became a hit with their post-menopausal, cheesecake-slicing antics. From the ditzy, air-headed Scandinavian Rose to the wonderfully saucy and sex-driven Blanche, it wasn't hard to laugh along with these Girls. The show ran for only seven seasons (practically a lifetime by today's standards), but it made an indelible mark on American pop culture; Thank You For Being a Friend, which is currently running at the Laurie Beechman Theatre is definitely evident of the sitcom's impact. The musical parody features an all-male cast as the Golden Girls themselves with music and lyrics by director Nick Brennan.

Here, the names are slightly different: Blanche is now Blanchet; Rose is Roz; and Dorothy and Sophia are Dorothea and Sophie. Despite the slight changes, the rest of the show is still in keeping with the original television comedy — from the dialogue to the overall episodic tone. Indeed, at the show's start, we find Blanchette (with binoculars in hand and her booty out to the audience, of course) snooping on the new neighbors next door. The other ladies soon make their entrances into the kitchen, and we learn that their new neighbor is actually none other than Latino pop star Ricky Martin (played by Adrian Rifat).

As dinner theater entertainment goes, Thank You For Being a Friend makes for a super fun night out. Each of the cast members have their share of the stage. Chad Ryan as Blanchet is spot-on, and both Luke Jones and John de los Santos are hilarious as the mother-daughter duo. However, it is Brennan as the naive but sweet Roz and Adrian Rifat as the pop star has-been that completely steal the show. Brennan doing Betty White's "aw shucks" mannerisms and Rifat's entrance with Ricky's signature "prayer hands" were hilarious.

As a group, they complement one another very well and seem to have an intricate knowledge of the others' rhythms, which only further helped the comedy along. Also bringing on the funny were the songs, among which were revampings of old showtunes, as well as originals written by Brennan. Some examples include "All That Jizz," an obviously classy homage sung by Ricky; "Roz's Turn," in which Roz proclaims her right to Shady Oaks fame; "Sex Changing," in which Dorothea goes through some, er...changes; and the oh-so-catchy finale, "Miami."  

Of course, one cannot write about a musical set in the '80s without talking about the clothes. The costumes by Jessa-Raye Court are absolutely fab in all their shoulder-padded glory. At one point, the girls do away with the talent show doldrums with some good old-fashioned retail therapy ("Fab Fads") with...what else? A fashion show with cardboard outfits and sequins. As for the set design, much of which revolved — literally — around a couple of multi-purpose panels, behind which was where all the mind-boggling quick changes took place (seriously, the cast of Broadway's Cinderella would even be impressed). The stagehands even donned as golden-aged girls themselves with wigs and tacky pantsuits.

If you're in for some great food, drink and some raucous laughter, then you'll love Thank You For Being a Friend. It will not only make you pine for the good old days of over-sized blazers and the "Latin Invasion" of '99 (a moment of silence please), but it will make you remember that aside from the fashion blunders and questionable musical taste, not all of it was bad. So head down to the Laurie Beechman Theatre and walk down memory lane — it'll make your life less of a, well...drag!

Thank You For Being a Friend is playing at the Laurie Beechman Theatre (which is located inside West Bank Cafe at 407 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are Wednesdays at 7 p.m., and Fridays, Feb. 28, March 14 and 28 at 10 p.m. with added shows Saturday, March 8 at 7 p.m. and Thursday, March 27 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 (plus a $15 food/drink minimum) and available at 212-352-3101 or Spincyclenyc.com.

Theater of the Mind

Theater allows us to see people at their most vulnerable. In a live performance, anything can happen: lines can be forgotten, injuries can occur and things can always go wrong. Yet Ruff, by Peggy Shaw, reminds us how meaningful that vulnerability can be. We attend the theater to connect on a human level. Shaw invites us into her harrowing experience, giving us the chance to mourn, laugh, and love, along with her. In this, it is precisely what theater should — and even must — be to maintain relevance in an increasingly mediatized world.

In this one-person show, Shaw tells stories about her life, particularly her recent experiences surrounding and as consequence of her stroke. Medical dramas have the potential to be maudlin, but this production is transcendent. She finds not only the profundity but also the absurd humor in her, and our, human condition. At every turn, as witness to her trauma and triumph, it is hard to know whether to life or cry. This feeling is situated precisely at the crossroads of the ridiculous and the sublime, like so much of our experience of being alive.

She links her physical condition to deep philosophical ideas, making poetry out of even her darkest tales. Shaw expertly draws connections between what has happened to her and events that may seem far afield from one person’s stroke.  She muses about family, memory, community and technology. This last thematic element is key; the entire aesthetic of the theater links this intimately personal theatrical piece with our technologized world via television and projection screens.

Shaw does not shy away from her potential problems performing; rather, she brilliantly delights in them, drawing attention to them from the show's start. The choice of Shaw and collaborator Lois Weaver to provide the performer with her text via television screens on stage is brilliant. It works both to guide Shaw through the meandering, stream-of-conscious monologue while acting as subtle commentary on the presence of memory in a world in which everything is digitally recorded.

Shaw allows this theme of mind and memory to evoke the spirits of her great downtown forbears and contemporaries in the space of La MaMa's First Floor Theatre. Facing her own mortality makes Shaw face how many have been lost before her and what traces they have left behind. What is left when a live performance ends? Is a recording of that performance the thing itself or is it only in our untrustworthy memories that the plays of old reside?

This play addresses such grand questions without providing clear-cut answers, as theater is the place to ask, not necessarily explain. In its depth, Ruff is a slap-in-the-face reminder about the brevity and ephemerality of life. However, in its jokes, quips and witticisms, it is proof that it is only through humor that we can truly represent what it means to be human. And, in her bravery of being live in the theater with her audiences and her mind's images simultaneously, Shaw has created a piece of theater not to be missed.

Ruff runs from Jan. 9-26 at the La MaMa First Floor Theater on 74A East 4th Street. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at lamama.org. Adult tickets: $20; Students/Seniors: $15.

WASPs in Denial

No one familiar with A.R. Gurney will be surprised that his new play, Family Furniture, is set near Buffalo, New York, or that four of the five characters are white Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians. Those things, though, are about all that’s predictable in Gurney’s touching new comedy, currently at the Flea Theater in a crackerjack production directed by Tony nominee Thomas Kail.

Over a five-decade writing career, Gurney has chronicled middle and upper-middle class Protestants with a perspicacity comparable to that with which his contemporary Philip Roth approaches middle and upper-middle class Jews. In Gurney's compactly structured new play, as also in Roth's novella Goodbye, Columbus, a sensitive young man is altered in the course of a 1950s summer by disorienting discoveries about those around him and his social milieu. Both Roth and Gurney's protagonists head into autumn altogether more worldly than they were in June.

Gurney depicts a prosperous U.S. in which Cold War anxiety is taking the edge off the elation of World War II victory. The location is a summer colony on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie, close enough to Buffalo for paterfamilias Russell (Peter Scolari, familiar most recently, as Lena Dunham’s father on Girls) to commute on weekdays. While Russell carries on with the breadwinner's routine, his wife, Claire (Carolyn McCormick, widely known as pathologist Dr. Olivet on Law & Order), luxuriates in weeks of vacation. The play’s events unfold against a backdrop of the Army-McCarthy hearings, a political spectacle which Americans are following in "real-time" on their newly acquired television sets. As Russell observes, the world has "changed radically ... since the war." In his own household, for instance, the comforting verities of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture are under siege: daughter Peggy (Ismenia Mendes) may soon be engaged to an Italian-American from a working-class family; and son Nick (Andrew Keenan-Bolger), a college junior, is dating Betsy, a Jewish woman (Molly Nordin) who's coaching him to think far more critically about literature and especially about matters social and political. 

Russell is liberal-minded about Buffalo's increasing diversity, but he's uneasy at the prospect of the children marrying outside his Anglo-Saxon comfort zone. “We all need roots,” he says. “Deep roots, tap roots, you might call them. And we don’t last long without them.” Russell aims to be tolerant (within certain bounds): “I like to think we are able to embrace the future without denying the past.” Denial, however, is the thing at which he most excels.

From curtain-up, Gurney’s characters reveal what dab hands they are at maintaining secrets and ignoring reality. Claire, ostensibly alone on an overnight shopping trip in Manhattan, has dropped out of sight. She reappears pretty quickly; but her explanations for this and other absences never quite add up. Nick is confident he knows what's going on; and he assumes poor Russell has been snowed by his wife's lame excuses. Betsy, the play's non-WASP, declares that Russell “must be very naïve.” Defensive about his father's predicament, Nick shuts down the discussion, telling Betsy his father's “a complicated guy.” What Nick doesn't yet understand is the societal compact by which his parents and their forebears have managed to rise above social breaches and personal affronts that, if acknowledged, might capsize friendships, wreck marriages and swamp families. This tacit covenant is at the heart of Family Furniture; and, by placing it there, Gurney suggests it is, or used to be, essential to WASP culture. Speaking of the kinds of secrets with which Family Furniture deals — among them, infidelity, inconvenient pregnancy, abortion, feuds and embarrassing break-ups — Claire tells Nick: “People can know and not know … [a]nd still get along famously.”

Family Furniture is felicitously cast with a combination of seasoned pros and well-trained younger actors, all of whom understand that, in Gurney's script, what's unsaid is as important as what's said. The playwright's stage directions call for scenic design that’s as elliptical as his dialogue — “simple and somewhat abstract.” Rachel Hauck (set design) and Andrew Diaz (props) have taken Gurney at his word, creating a suggestive, uncluttered environment, furnished with readily moveable benches and tables, utilizing the imagination of both performers and audience. Claudia Brown’s costumes reflect the handsome styles of the Eisenhower era and the timeless taste of the Ivy Leaguers who populate Gurney’s universe. Betsy Adams’s lighting evokes the season's progression, early summer to Labor Day, and since the production has no detailed scenery, suggests the distinction between interiors and exteriors. 

Gurney and Roth belong to the remnant of a generation that brought insights of post-Freudian psychology, plus unprecedented sexual candor, to fiction and drama. While Roth recently declared an end to his literary career, Gurney, at 83, is going strong. He may be looking backward in Family Furniture to the era of Goodbye, Columbus, but his swift exposition, efficient dialogue, and the play's relatively brief running time (sans intermission) belong to the zippy, impatient theater of today. And Gurney's authorial voice has irony enough to mark him as a denizen of the 21st-century. Family Furniture invites us, for a hundred minutes or so, to ponder a social convention that, according to Gurney, has saved face, spared feelings and, in some instances, kept families intact. Now's the time to do so: it's a self-willed naivety unlikely to survive social media, Internet gossip and the bluntness of our current tell-all, know-all discourse. 

Family Furniture by A.R. Gurney presented by The Flea Theater, 41 White Street between Broadway and Church Street in TriBeCa, runs Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m., through Sunday, December 22. Tickets are $15, $30, $50 and $70, and may be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or visiting www.theflea.org.

Love and Other Drugs

According to the old adage, “love is blind” – so goes the premise behind Shakespeare’s classic play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Titan Theatre Company’s production expands this idea with the concept of a sort of “blind” casting – that is, having eight of the nine actors’ roles chosen for them by the audience before every performance. Through this method, the notion of love as something that does not discriminate is quite literally put on display and brought to the forefront in ways possibly never before seen with the play. The results, with the company’s talented cast, is a romantic comedy like no other.

For the uninitiated, A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells the tale of a group of young lovers, a pair of which – Theseus, duke of Athens and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons – are about to embark on their upcoming nuptials.  The rest of the lovers find themselves in a love triangle (or perhaps, a love square), as Demetrius pines for Hermia, who is betrothed to Lysander, while Helena yearns for Demetrius’ affections herself. In the midst of all this, a play is scheduled for the wedding celebrations by a group of simpletons: Quince, a carpenter; Flute, a bellows-mender; Snout, a tinker; Snug, a joiner; and Bottom, a weaver. Rounding out this eccentric cast of characters are the creatures of the wooded forests in which much of the action takes place: Puck (also called Robin Goodfellow), a mischievous hobgoblin; his master of sorts, Oberon, king of the fairies; his queen, Titania; and her attendant, Peaseblossom.

It is through Oberon and Titania’s quarrel over the possession of an orphan boy that the plot thickens, as the Fairy King orders Puck to use a flower with magical properties in order to make Titania fall in love with a beast, so as to pluck the orphan from her ownership while she’s in her daze. The two conspirers also happen to witness Helena pursuing Demetrius in the woods, and Oberon orders Puck to cast Demetrius under the spell of the charmed flower. However, while the task of distracting Titania is successfully done (as she falls for Bottom, turned into a donkey after the group’s rehearsal in the woods), Oberon discovers that Puck has mistakenly made Lysander, not Demetrius, fall in love with Helena. So ensues madness of comedic proportions.

Shakespearean actors are often lauded not only for their ability to decipher and interpret the Bard’s language, but also for their sheer ability alone. They are often classically trained, and as such are able to embody these characters and present them to a modern audience with ease and grace. The cast of this production is no exception – in fact, they far exceed all the usual qualities of a Shakespearean actor, given the task thrown at them. The unique casting process challenges each of the eight actors (the character of Puck is always played by the same actor; in this case, by Matthew Foster) to memorize all 16 roles in the play.

While confusing at first, as some of the female roles were played by men and vice versa, switching things up with the casting only helped to further heighten the comedy and eventually made for a great night at the theater. Each actor was given a track of double roles, and each one was astounding in their grasp of each character. Jonathan Matthew Finnegan was wonderfully flamboyant and ever as the scorned lover of Helena (he also played fairy Peaseblossom), while Sean Hudock was adorable in his roles as the romantic Hermia and shy, cowardly Snug.  Though perfectly capable as Lysander, it was Lloyd Mulvey’s take on Flute that garnered much laughter, particularly during the “Pyramus and Thisbe” scene. One of the production’s taglines was: Who’s your bottom tonight? – and this night’s Bottom, played by Emily Trask, was the highlight of the evening, as she managed not only to make the audience cry with laughter, but also induce chuckles from her fellow cast mates. 

The casting process also gave way to an interesting reinterpretation of the costumes. As no one knew beforehand which roles they were to play, the cast was first introduced to us wearing “uniforms” of white dress shirts and black slacks. Once cast in their roles for the night, their individual costumes were adjusted, with the women wearing skirts and sashes, and the men wearing sweaters and blazers over their outfits. For the lovers, costume designer Scott Frost had each pair wearing corresponding colors, a clever way for the audience to figure out whose true love belongs to whom. 

As for the set design, the production went for a minimal yet elegant set befitting a fantastical play such as this, featuring a simple stone-like platform, replete with bits of shrubbery. Alan Pietrowicz’s lighting, most of which consisted of a neon-colored fixture along the back wall (which would change color depending on the scene), as well as overhead lighting, which would dim in order to signify the transition from day into night and therefore setting the tone for the lovers’ trysts in the forest.

The Titan Theatre Company’s rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is one that will leave you entranced and thoroughly entertained. With a clever reimagining and talented cast, this is one dream you won’t want to wake up from.  

A Midsummer Night's Dream is playing at The Secret Theatre (4402 23rd Street in Long Island City) until November 3, 2013.  

George Kelly Comes Forth

Philip Goes Forth, George Kelly’s Depression era comedy-drama, chronicles a conventional young man’s plunge into bohemian New York. Back in 1931, when the play premiered, Kelly’s work was as popular and as integral to American culture as that of his fellow Pulitzer Prize recipient Eugene O’Neill. Today he's remembered principally, if at all, as an uncle of Grace Kelly, the Oscar-winning movie star whose 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier revived the economic fortunes of Monaco by bringing worldwide attention (and flocks of tourists) to that Mediterranean principality. Ah, the ironies of history.

In George Kelly’s day, Broadway audiences were accustomed to playwrights easing them gingerly into the dramatic action. Philip Goes Forth opens with something few writers would risk today: 40 minutes of solid exposition, including backstory disclosures by a conveniently loquacious parlor maid.

Just out of college, Philip Eldridge (Bernardo Cubría) has returned to his hometown, 500 miles from New York. He's training as an executive at his father’s firm (precise business unspecified) but longs to be in show biz. Philip's Babbitt-like father (Cliff Bemis) thinks his son should be grateful that he’s got a secure job in the midst of the Depression. The “old man” scoffs at Philip's declaration that he wants to write plays; the young man packs up his wounded pride and heads for Manhattan.

With the first act dedicated to set-up, Philip Goes Forth finally gets going in Act Two, when the protagonist takes refuge in a Murray Hill rooming house where all inhabitants have artistic aspirations. His compatriots include a hack writer (Teddy Bergman), an unsuccessful composer (Brian Keith MacDonald), and one person – a poet – with a genuine gift (Rachel Moulton). Their little community is overseen by a former stage star (Kathryn Kates), sympathetic to the challenges and disappointments faced by those in the arts.

Kelly’s theme in Philip Goes Forth is the contrast between genuine artists and the mere wannabes who are drawn to la vie de bohème but lack the vision, passion, or application necessary to create anything worthwhile. In an earlier play (and Broadway hit), The Torch-Bearers (1922), Kelly lampooned the pretensions of suburban aesthetes. The masterstroke of that Kelly classic is the magniloquent Mrs. J. Duro Pampinelli, director of a thoroughly awful Little Theater group. Mrs. Pampinelli, vividly drawn by the playwright (and catnip to generations of character actresses), is the very model of a hick-town culture-vulture. Philip Goes Forth – like The Torch-Bearers — pokes fun at pseudo-artists and the Philistines who love them. The characters of Philip Goes Forth, however, lack the intricacy and gusto of Mrs. Pampinelli; they represent ideas with which Kelly is grappling, but don't spring to life like the best of the playwright's creations.

Director Jerry Ruiz and his ten actors work hard to give Kelly's lackluster script a patina of professionalism. Cubría plays the title role with gung-ho energy and the earnestness of the adolescent hero in a Horatio Alger novel. As Philip's odyssey progresses, the actor re-calibrates his performance to reflect all the young man is learning in the New York School of Hard Knocks. Cubría woos ingénue Natalie Kuhn with an innocence — or, rather, naivety — that’s at once daffy and believable. Kuhn, who manages to be both dewy-eyed and down-to-earth, lends credibility to sweet banalities, such as: “I think it’s wonderful that you should want to do something on your own. After all, [your father’s] achievement isn’t yours. And you’re a man, as well as he is… I should think he’d respect you all the more for it.” 

Bemis, Moulton, and Christine Toy Johnson (as Philip’s sympathetic aunt, Mrs. Randolph) give notably engaging performances. Carole Healey, playing a two-faced society matron (Mrs. Oliver), has two scenes of high comedy in which the tone of Kelly's writing is somewhat out of kilter with the rest of the play. Flamboyant but not quite over-the-top, Healey imbues the flat character of Mrs. Oliver with surprising dimension and gets the evening's loudest, most prolonged laughs. When events stray down a melodramatic path, neither Kelly nor the slightly uneven supporting cast are at their best. 

Steven C. Kemp (sets), Christian DeAngelis (lights) and Joshua Yocom (props) evoke the 1930s in contrasting scenic designs for a provincial living room in Act One and the townhouse of the second and third acts. The former is all right angles, unadorned and startlingly white; the townhouse has deep, warm hues, oblique lines and exotic bric-a-brac. The handsome costumes by Carisa Kelly enhance the production's period flavor. Contemplating the extremes of old-fashioned formality with which the designer has clothed her actors while also listening to the handful of speeches that are most alien to a 2013 sensibility, playgoers may be perplexed. Does what's stilted and jejune in Philip Goes Forth reflect merely the social rigidity of the era the dramatist is depicting or a limitation in Kelly's craft? Those acquainted with other works by the playwright, especially The Torch-Bearers and The Show-Off (1924), are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The Mint Theater Company focuses on plays that have been neglected and, in some cases, forgotten. For 18 years, this troupe, under producing artistic director Jonathan Bank, has resurrected worthy dramas. Though not likely to be remembered as one of the company's most valuable rediscoveries, Philip Goes Forth is a diverting piece by a playwright who ought to be more than a footnote in the biography of Princess Grace.

Intellectual Gymnastics

Gymnos: A Geek's Tragedy blends two of my favorite things: Ancient Greek theater and working out. However, in this work, the mixture is an uneasy one. The world of gym rats seems to have no room for someone of intellectual inclinations and the so-called "geek" — a successful playwright with a chance at Broadway — cannot make himself fit in the world of fitness freaks. The at times funny play written by Nina Mansfield and directed by Adyana de la Torre, currently playing at HERE Arts Center, misses the mark when it comes to the important crossroads between betterment of the mind and improvement of the body.

The plot, at most points during the production, is both difficult to ascertain and seemingly irrelevant. The thin storyline centers around the aforementioned dramatist on a deadline: he owes a script in a week. At the same time, he is being haunted — or more precisely harassed — by a series of muses who, rather than inspiring his imagination, suggest he engage in matters of physical exercise. They justify this by referring to a former love interest of his, Helen, ostensibly based on the historical "face that launched a thousand ships," and with whom he failed romantically both due to a lack of confidence and a lack of well-defined abs. From there, we follow our seemingly self-appointed hero through his series of herculean trials: from one bizarre, oppressive gym to the next.

The performances are uneven at best, and although I understood the abundance of actors on stage to be standing in for a Greek chorus, they often do little more than make the world of the drama seem cluttered. It is hard to root for the hero, as his challenge appears to benefit no one but himself, and even there, he does not seem to care all that much.

The best sequences incorporate dance; I found myself wishing more of the play actually staged the fitness experience as opposed to the time spent in the gymnasium itself. The play does pick up in the second act and the highlight of the production is de la Torre's brief on stage performance as a zealous Zumba instructor. The worst parts are the overwhelmingly vulgar humor, which, though at first laugh-out-loud funny, wears out its welcome from overuse and becomes more awkward than raucous fun.

Both the lighting and set are fine, and the costumes do appropriately fit the world of the play. Unfortunately, no aesthetic element is enough to compensate for this ultimately self-serving production. The protagonist is not likeable enough to propel the story forward, nor is the text, even comedically, rich enough to carry an otherwise undramatic spectacle to any sort of fulfillment. The space between body and mind is explored in this play but, in the end, left as disconnected as it was at the beginning.

30 Carats

The Pearl Theatre Company has launched its 30^th season with George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell, co-produced by the Gingold Theatrical Group. From now through October 13^th, five members of the Pearl resident company and four other actors, under the able direction of David Staller, are demonstrating how farce — manic and mechanical in the wrong hands — can be at once sidesplitting and poignant when tackled properly.

Shaw (1856-1950) began writing You Never Can Tell in 1895, when the public’s appetite for farce seemed insatiable. Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas, the granddaddy of Victorian farces, was in the third year of its blockbuster London run; and just four months before, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People had taken the town by storm. In the Saturday Review, Shaw acknowledged Wilde’s technical flair but declared himself unstirred by Earnest: “It amused me, of course; but unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening.”

You Never Can Tell concerns the household of Mrs. Margaret Clandon (Robin Leslie Brown), a feminist author who long ago fled her autocratic husband (Bradford Cover), taking their three children to live on the island of Madeira. At the play’s outset, she and the children — Gloria (Amelia Pedlow) and twins Dolly and Philip (Emma Wisniewski and Ben Charles) — are back in England after 18 years as expatriates. Mrs. Clandon has chosen a seaside resort as their point of reentry, believing this the last place the family risks bumping into the estranged father about whom the children know nothing.

The imaginative universe of You Never Can Tell is every bit as topsy-turvy as the worlds of The Importance of Being Earnest and Charley’s Aunt. Shaw embraces the trappings of melodrama and farce — improbable coincidence, mistaken identities, disguises and chance reunions of lost relatives. His ingénue and juvenile fall in love at first sight, as they might in any West End vehicle of the day. But, in Shaw's hands, each scene is a full-out debate; and as the playwright once remarked, “every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.” Shaw's rapid-fire dialectic transforms the hoary odds and ends of 19^th century dramaturgy. The result is witty and psychologically complex with enough melancholy to make the characters and their emotional dilemmas believable.

Gloria, the ingénue of You Never Can Tell, is an exemplar of the late 19^th century’s “New Woman,” thoroughly schooled in feminist ideals and determined to “obey nothing but [her] sense of what is right.” Her swain, Valentine (Sean McNall), is a roué and self-proclaimed “duelist of sex,” whose values are antithetical to Gloria’s strict moral code. The couple's sparring pits intellect against heart (and flesh); the swift, surprising reversals in tactical advantage between the romantic warriors reflect the mantra voiced by an omniscient waiter (Dan Daily): “You never can tell, sir: you never can tell.” 

That mantra may seem as lighthearted as Wilde’s pun on the name Ernest. It points, however, to existential uncertainty, the uncontrollable nature of life itself. Near the end of the play, a barrister (Zachary Spicer), predicting what will happen to the lovers, speaks the evening's most memorable — and most dismal — line: “It’s unwise to be born; it’s unwise to be married; it’s unwise to live; and it’s unwise to die.” That vision is worlds away from Charley's Aunt; yet Shaw finds a satisfying balance between what's buoyantly old-fashioned in his comedy and the darker elements lurking beneath its bright, sparkling surface; and he rounds off the proceedings in a way that owes much to Shakespeare's romantic comedies.

The vocal fireworks of Shaw’s plays are no cakewalk for actors, especially when assumed accents are required; but every member of the spirited ensemble is up to the task. Staller, founder and artistic director of the Gingold Theatrical Group, keeps his players (handsomely costumed by Barbara A. Bell) in perpetual motion around a colorful environment, inspired by Art Nouveau and designed by Harry Feiner (scenery), Stephen Petrilli (lighting), and M.L. Dogg (sound). The high style of the show’s scenic conception and the well-calibrated irony of direction and performance (never devolving into camp) ensure that what’s silly in You Never Can Tell blends harmoniously with what’s serious.

You Never Can Tell is playing in the superbly-equipped theater on West 42nd Street to which the Pearl moved last season. For almost 30 years, this troupe occupied small venues in Chelsea, the East Village, and the basement of City Center. The current production vindicates all the toil, sweat, and money-raising of the Company's three-decade journey to its spacious new home.

Miss Lonely Hearts

Closing out Theater for the New City (TNC)’s imaginative Dream Up Festival is an unusual offering from Hungarian-American troupe Pilvax Players, titled Liselotte in May. If you’re the type who has ever wondered what it was really like as Miss Lonelyhearts in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, then look no further. The play, written by Zsolt Pozsgai, centers around the eponymous character as she becomes desperate in her search for a soulmate. Just as she turns 30, Liselotte realizes, living all alone in her New York City apartment, that she has no one to share her life with. In a pathetic attempt to find her special someone, she posts a personal ad for a husband.

Sounds like the makings of your average romantic comedy — until you take into account the fact that each one of Liselotte’s suitors end up dead on the first date! In this vein, the play is more like a romantic comedy gone haywire, with the comedy part definitely amped up in the first half. Much of the funny bits are due to Chris Kardos’ scene-stealing performances as each of the lonely heart’s various suitors. 

Kardos is the ultimate character actor, effortlessly shape-shifting from one persona to the next. In one scene, he is an awkward and very nervous German butcher named Ludwig; in another, he’s a butt-crack-baring plumber with a New York accent. Each character has their own set of idiosyncrasies, and with this comes a whole lot of physical quirks, which Kardos takes on with much gusto as he falls over chairs and even gamely walks around with his coveralls dragging precariously to his knees, inciting much laughter from the audience. It is this sharp knowledge of physicality — coupled with his impeccable timing — that makes Kardos one talent to watch. 

As the play’s Liselotte herself, Kata Ruzsik is a vibrant actress and quite believable as a young woman frantic in her pursuit of happiness. Despite a few rushed line readings at the beginning, Ruzsik starts to hit her stride by the second scene. She takes in just as much as Kardos gives in terms of performance, playing against his suitors well and creating an energetic exchange between them that keeps us all enthralled. 

While the two actors’ comedic banter is certainly entertaining, it’s not all fun and games for Liselotte — after all, there is still the consequences of all those dead suitors to contend with. As each male character dies with each scene, the play’s tone takes a serious turn in its latter half. Maddened by the trauma of watching all of her paramours die so suddenly and tragically, the play culminates in the last of the deaths, as she meets Roland, an escaped psych ward patient whose poems Liselotte somehow seems to have memorized. It is here where her character takes a turn for the worse,

Presented by TNC artistic director Crystal Field, the whole premise behind the Dream Up Festival is for new works to push the boundaries of the form so that the play is presented in an untraditional way, and Liselotte definitely pulls this off. Much of the play — due to its inventive storytelling — felt very much like an independent film, both tonally and visually. Edina Tokodi’s set design reflects the femininity we see in Liselotte at the beginning of the play, with a simple set built around hanging canvases as the backdrop of her Bleecker Street-based apartment. As the play slowly takes its dark turn, Roland Udvari’s lighting design becomes noticeable in the form of second-long blackouts, with the actors sometimes repeating their lines — much like quick cuts in suspense films. 

This particular technique was intriguing; while at first confusing, it gradually became effective as the play went on, especially by the time Liselotte met troubled Roland. It called to mind the film Swimfan, which utilizes the same method, and in the end, it created the desired effect. In fact, a lot of these moments happened throughout the latter half, sometimes repeating certain scenes after another scene had passed, giving the impression that perhaps it was all a part of Liselotte’s imagination.      

Agota Hodi’s costumes are also worth mentioning, as they also echo the transition the title character goes through. At the beginning of the play, we find the still hopeful Liselotte in sophisticated heels and a demure but colorful sundress, cinched at the waist with a wide belt. She is like any other young, fashion-conscious city girl about to go on a date. As the scene-after-scene passes and bodies of her potential husbands drop like flies, Liselotte’s wardrobe is pared down to more organic, natural silhouettes and materials. For example, when we meet British radicalist Henrik, Liselotte’s costumes take on an artsy flair, as she is dressed in a white jersey dress. Then, by the time Roland comes around, she is in a loose shirt and black leggings, her hair up in a tousled bun and mascara running down her face. It is as if she morphs into the person she thinks each man wants her to be instead of them conforming to her needs.

Liselotte in May is certainly a play that explores the boundaries of imaginative storytelling and takes it to new heights. While it hit some snags rhythmically at the start, it eventually gains momentum and dares to challenge the way a play is performed. Supported by an outstanding cast and creative team, every element of the play — from the set to the lighting to the costumes — helped to achieve their vision cohesively and to great effect. Liselotte in May teases, delights and shocks to the core and makes for a memorable visit to the theater.

Is Ohio For These Lovers?

You’re throwing a dinner party. And you know that despite your best efforts at making sure the cheese plate and finger sandwiches are perfect, as soon as the alcohol starts flowing, the night is sure to be less than perfect. 

That’s the premise for Matthew Freeman’s Why We Left Brooklyn (The Dinner Party Play). The play’s two main characters, Michelle and Jason, are a married couple hosting a dinner party to mark their departure from the Park Slope apartment they’ve inhabited for the past eight years.  Jason (Andrew Schwartz) is finally throwing in the towel on his acting dreams and moving to Columbus, Ohio to become an adjunct professor. But while Jason’s feeling jaded and dejected about his original life-plan, his wife Michelle (Susan Louis O’Connor) has finally landed the book deal she’s always wanted. The plan is for Michelle to stay with their friends George, (David DelGrosso) and wife Franny (Marguerite Stimpson) to finish publicity for the book before joining Jason in Ohio. From the beginning, it’s clear that there is tension surrounding this temporary long-distance relationship.

The dinner party guests include George and Franny, former schoolmate Charlie (played by Matthew Trumbull in a delightfully quirky and endearing way), and Nicole (Moira Stone), a blunt but humorous mother of one who describes children as things which, “destroy your body, your sex life" and "turn you into an object of scorn and judgment.” But despite her insistence that twins would make her, “tear out my fucking eyes,” you get the feeling that she’s hiding a softer side behind her caustic exterior.

Also in the boxed-up Brooklyn apartment are Leanna (Sarah K. Lippmann), a wannabe writer going back to school for interior design, and boyfriend Harry (Jay Leibowitz), a chef at a popular new restaurant.

Finally, there’s Dawn (Rebecca Gray Davis) who feels unfulfilled at her job at a museum, and boyfriend Sanjeet (Imran Sheikh), an analyst who clearly isn’t in his element with this group, though he’s liked by all for his friendly, laid-back demeanor. Each character has a strong personality and a seemingly strong bond with Jason and Michelle. All except for Dawn and Sanjeet.

While the staging and blocking did nothing to draw the audience in, the dialogue was always quick and witty, though in real life I’ve never experienced an intoxicated group of individuals so adept at maintaining a single conversation.

The group dynamic was natural and despite being a two-hour play set in one room, the relatable and comedic banter kept the show moving. Throughout the three acts, the mood slowly changes as the dinner guests become drunk and as Jason’s departure draws closer. Instead of ragging on Charlie for forgetting a lime when buying Coronas or questioning the merits of yoga, the conversation switches to how the word “fresh” implies a sense of entitlement, which Jason accuses half his friends of possessing. George accuses Jason of being a quitter and giving up on his dream prematurely. Looming over conversations about President Barack Obama, Celiac Disease as the next fad diet, heirloom tomatoes and New York bagels, is the question of whether or not Jason and Michelle still want the same things in life. And what’s the difference between accepting reality, growing up and running away from your problems?

Why We Left Brooklyn is worth a visit, for the way the ensemble brings these vibrant characters to life and for the way dialogue leaves you able to tell exactly which ones you would be friends with in real life. Though certainly full of laughs, what we learn from these 10 characters’ stories is profound. Some dreams come true. Some dreams will never be realized. And sometimes, dreams change. 

‘9-to-5 Clerical Poets’

Someone To Belong To, a self-proclaimed, “sweet little love story,” starts out with lyrics that are sure to cause any New Yorker sitting in the audience to nod their head in agreement. “A typical day in New York is no cause for popping a champagne cork,” sings the ensemble. Based on the book by Lori Steele and Christine DeNoon, this new musical with music and lyrics by David DeNoon, has its celebratory moments.

Set in 1963, Someone To Belong To revolves around two love stories involving four main characters. Davis (played by Chris Ware), a writer who feels he’s wasting his potential working in an advertising agency, falls for his often-frazzled but endearing secretary, Annie (played by Samantha Eggers). Unfortunately, Annie becomes engaged to cheesemaker Ted, played to comedic perfection by Jonathan Desley. Two other copywriters at the advertising agency, the strong and determined Lois (Katherine Henly) and the ladies’ man Joe (Justin Colombo) are in an open relationship. This works for the two non-committal flirts until Joe realizes he may have fallen in love. The core cast is solid but the real standout is the hilarious secretary Miss Sasslebaum, played by Carla Nager.

When Christine DeNoon’s father, David DeNoon, passed away, she had no idea that he had penned over 100 songs. Upon finding them in 2012, seven years after his death, she decided that they deserved to be heard and gathered a team to shape 11 of his songs into a musical. The show’s memorable anthem, “The Great American Would-Be Novelist,” essentially tells the story of DeNoon’s real life. A talented songwriter, DeNoon, like the character Davis, felt trapped working as a copy editor at an advertising agency. 

Many of DeNoon’s songs contain clever, catchy lyrics such as “Here’s To Manhattan,” “Some Get The Bumpy” and “Don’t Bad-Mouth New Jersey” while others leave something to be desired. Christine DeNoon, who has experience in improv, certainly injects some laugh-out-loud lines to the script, though sometimes the jokes are somewhat cheesy (literally “You don’t like cheddar? But cheddar makes everything better! Hot damn I’m on a roll!”).

For a small New York International Fringe Festival production, the lighting, choreography and costumes are all commendable. Director Leslie Collins does a great job with the show, which while predictable, leaves audiences smiling as the curtain closes. 

But as you understand the love-lives of Davis, Annie, Joe and Lois, you can’t help but feel that the better story already took place, when Christine DeNoon discovered her father’s binder of songs and decided to bring them to life.

Seeing is Believing

For centuries, the macabre has found its way into the canon of theatrical performance, capturing the imaginations of audiences around the world. From Shakespeare’s original Macbeth to Punchdrunk’s current site-specific production based on the Scottish play, Sleep No More — the thrill of the dark unknown is still being sought by audiences today. Such is the case with Xoregos Performing Company’s Danse Macabre, which made its premiere at Theater for the New City earlier this month. Danse Macabre owes much of itself to the traditions of “Grand Guignol,” a term for the graphic horror style of theater that first found its footing at Paris’ Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol during the late 1890s. This style often contains stories with themes of amorality, and often alternated the gory scenes with humorous skits and musical vaudevilles. Danse Macabre certainly succeeds in translating these elements into our modern times. It never aspires to reach the shock-horror scale that so many films of the genre resort to, but instead takes its time as each scene unfolds, until it finally creeps up on you. 

The show opens with a series of skits written by various playwrights: a collection of scenes that at first seem ordinary, but soon start veering toward the dark and disturbing. With the company playing multiple roles, this was never more evident than in the show’s latter two skits, “Daddy’s Boy” by Pamela Scott and “The Bender” by Jack Feldstein. In “Daddy’s Boy,” a recently-divorced detective (Nick Giedris) tries to convince his young son to “play a trick” on his ex-wife by pretending to shoot her. The son (Trevor DeVone), the “Daddy’s Boy” in question, goes back and forth between hesitation at the request and desire to please his father. In the end, he eventually decides against it — or does he? In “The Bender,” a young girl (Janice Amano) stumbles drunkenly out into a darkened street and into her friend standing on the curb (Nicolas Cerkez).  She starts what ends up being a mostly one-ended conversation, even flirting with him. All the while, he looks around cautiously, as if to make sure no one else is around, before reaching into his coat pocket and…

Well, you get the idea. Both scenes are quietly creepy, making you look over your shoulder and think twice about talking up that cute stranger on the train ride home. However, while this is all part-and-parcel of what the show intends, not all of it will leave you with the goosebumps. Much of Danse Macabre also has its moments of comedic relief — most of which could be found in the other three skits — “Out of Bounds” by Dylan Guy, “Zandar the Magnificent” by Joel Trinidad and “Among My Souvenirs” by Dave DeChristopher. 

“Out of Bounds,” starts off rather tame as we meet Wally (Sam Eckmann) and Crunch (Cerkez), two friends just conversing over a beer. The conversation seems to start off innocently enough — with the two sharing a quick-witted exchange not unlike the kind heard in old films of the 1950s — until Wally starts telling Crunch about a dead mouse he’s been keeping in a box. Or, at least it looked dead when Crunch opened it. In “Zandar the Magnificent,” a send-up on those phony crystal ball prophets (with Giedris as the eponymous seer), a woman named Jo (Pamela Stewart Ehn) asks him to foresee her fate, only for a freak accident to occur, causing the once-phony to suddenly acquire “the gift.” 

Last but certainly not the least, “Among My Souvenirs” is perhaps the funniest of the three, if unexpectedly so. In the scene, a young working stint named Caryn (Natalie Margiotta) finds her apartment infested with mice. After exterminating them, she is stuck with figuring out what to do with their dead remains, until she suddenly remembers everyone she seeks revenge on. With Margiotta narrating, she is helped by the other members of the company in reenacting her demented revenge spree, inciting much laughter from the audience.

As the series of skits ends, there is a two-minute pause before the title dance piece starts. It is a dreamlike sequence, with a young girl in a nightgown surrounded by ghoulish figures and eventually being led away by a mysterious man in a cape. The dancing, choreographed by director Shela Xoregos after the original work of historian-choreographer Angene Feves, is simple in its movement and feels more like watching a mini-play in the vein of The Red Shoes take place. It is here where Raiza Peña’s costumes really shine, especially with the ghouls; she uses the familiar sight of figures under sheets, an idea which seems juvenile and trite, but here looks and feels just as creepy as their movements.

All in all, Danse Macabre is an experience to, well, experience! With minimalistic sets by Lisa Barnstone and beautiful lighting by Don Cate, the show feels like an old vaudevillian set, but with a Twilight Zone-like twist. Full of plot twists and cliff hangers, played to spine-chilling perfection by the company, Danse Macabre will leave you simultaneously laughing and squirming in your seat.  

Mommas on the Prowl

It seems hard to believe that Cougar the Musical is celebrating a year’s run Off-Broadway at St. Luke’s Theatre. The show brings to mind those mismatched couples one sees periodically who provoke the thought: “What’s she doing with him?” (Or vice versa.) In this case, the unprepossessing half is the show itself, a smartly crafted, moderately pleasant musical comedy about three women who seek sexual liberation in middle age.

The women — Clarity, Mary-Marie and Lily — are played by actresses who have been with the show from early days (respectively, Brenda Braxton, Babs Winn and Mary Mossberg); they are joined by a newcomer, Andrew Brewer, who plays a variety of young studs (and one female). Collectively, they are the element that makes one’s head turn — superb talent making a good deal of hot air seem like it's propelling a shiny zeppelin.

Written primarily by Donna Moore, with additional music by Mark Barkan, John Baxindine, Arnie Gross, Meryl Leppard and Seth Lefferts in a variety of combinations, Cougar has the requisite “he done me wrong” song, as Lily, having filed divorce papers, finds herself in the dating pool again and attending Over 40 and Fabulous meetings. Mary-Marie is the wealthy proprietress of a bar for older women, a “den of antiquity”; although she is persistently wooed by the unseen Frank, she resists dating a man her own age (54) and is determined to find a young stud for sex. The third heroine, Clarity, is a self-possessed career woman who has raised her child and denied herself any physical relationship, apart from one with a personal mechanical device, which she sings about in the evening’s most cringe-inducing song, “Julio.” But Braxton radiates so much class that she makes it palatable — barely.

The women all connect in a manicurist’s office, and the song they sing there, “Shiny and New,” is one of the highlights of the show. In fact, the female power anthems — “I’m My Own Queen,” “My Terms,” “Love Is Ageless” and “Say Yes” (whose sentiment uncomfortably echoes that of “Yes” from John Kander and Fred Ebb’s 70, Girls, 70, and is used in the same preachy, affirmative way) — are less interesting than the ones that have to do with character.

One of the best of them is “Let’s Talk About Me,” a Cole Porter-ish list song that name-checks Alvin Ailey, Eva Gabor, Stephen Hawking and Manolo Blahnick, among others, in its clever lyrics. It’s sung by Lily and Buck, a would-be actor who’s working as the bartender at Mary-Marie’s watering hole, and Brewer and Mossberg lend a delicate touch to the romantic banter so that you’d almost think they were the leads in a Porter show.

The songs, however, are hung on a book that often settles for sitcom humor. When Lily meets Mary-Marie and tells the story of how she was shoehorned into the role of mother and housekeeper, she says, “I was doing time.” “Prison?” asks Mary-Marie. “Marriage,” says Lily.

To be fair, a large portion of the audience was having a great time, applauding at the message songs and even lending an occasional shout-out. It’s a truism that the right casting is the most important element of any project, and director/choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett certainly deserves credit for her finds. Winn, with a resemblance to Betty White, summons memories of Sue Ann Nivens, the middle-aged man-trap that White embodied on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Winn is an adroit physical comedian and, like the others, possesses a strong singing voice. As Clarity, Braxton is a crisp, composed presence and the real belter; although the lady is well into middle age, her looks scream, “Thirty-five, max!”

Mossberg’s Lily is a likable linchpin, yet the actress can’t really put over Lily’s life-changing decision about Buck. The notion that an older man and a much younger woman might be emotionally and intellectually soul mates was the core of Woody Allen’s Manhattan back in 1979. That resolution was a daring choice of hope and affirmation, in spite of uncertainty. In 2013, the authors of Cougar advocate a woman’s right to pair with a younger partner, then undercut their message with a plot twist that feels bourgeois, defeatist and unsatisfying, no matter how they spin it.

Brewer, with less than a fortnight under his belt, has seamlessly integrated his characters with the others, and his roles give him ample opportunity to display a wide-ranging talent. His Buck is low-key and genial, while his Latin lover is a bit more high-strung and polished. He delivers hard-boiled noir dialogue adeptly (in a scene that seems out of place), and he sings and dances with panache. He has the looks of a leading man — specifically, Ryan Reynolds, with whom he also shares splendid comic chops. Like the women, he deserves a bigger show for his talents. But for now, they are burnishing Cougar the Musical, and that’s reason enough to check them out.

Alligator Summer

The terrifically titled Alligator Summer unfortunately outshines the play it’s attached to. Playwright Dylan Lamb has subtitled the work A Southern Gothic Atrocity in Three Acts, and although director Brandi Varnell’s production doesn't follow that structure, the Southern Gothic Atrocity part is a tribute to truth in advertising.

Lamb seems to have drawn inspiration from a variety of classic Southern sources: The Glass Menagerie (there’s a young narrator like Tom, and the play is a memory from 1944), the eccentrics of James Wilcox’s novels, and A Confederacy of Dunces—which, had the title not already been taken by John Kennedy Toole, would almost have been ideal for the characters in Alligator Summer. They are practically all dim bulbs, though they’re not in confederacy. They’re at one another’s throats.

The play concerns two families whose names signal that this is a parody of sorts: Antietam Julep, Atticus Julep, Ethylann Gettysburg, Antebellum Gettysburg. Antietam (Nicholas Yenson) is the narrator, announcing that it’s a memory play, filtered through time and alcohol, and evoking Williams's masterpiece. The families are neighbors, and Ethylann Gettysburg (Jackie Krim) is having an affair with Atticus Julep (Mark A. Keeton), cuckolding her gold ol' boy husband Bundle (played with a sympathetic decency by Nathan Brisby).

As the memory begins, all the characters but one are gathered in an attic, around the bed of Attica Julep (Annalisa Loeffler), who is dying of typhus. Or perhaps not. From here they enter and exit through a window. Somewhere outside is son Toby (Dylan Lamb). Down below, one is given to believe, is a host of alligators swimming around, although it later turns out they're not swimming. When Toby returns from “his ambiguous errand”( as Bundle knowingly terms it in a meta-theatrical comment), he recalls the alligators’ arrival. “First days was rough, mind you," recalls Toby. "I’d gone to fetch this whiskey barrel…and as I’m rolling it out the back I beheld an endless army of Gators, strolling on down Main Street…” Swimming or marching, the toothy amphibians have nonetheless taken over the town of Willow Delta, and in the manner of an Ionesco play (e.g., Rhinoceros), there’s no lucid explanation of why.  But it’s certainly the reason that Bundle urges Antebellum to use “inside voices…or the gators may hear you.”

If Lamb has a serious message to convey via metaphor or Kafkaesque allegory, it’s not apparent. One senses that the situation is just a springboard for an overheated parody of melodrama, and at that level it works. Still, so much campiness ought to be consistently funny, and Alligator Summer, though it has a good share of laughs, is more often laden with determined quirkiness than with hilarity.

Varnell understands that such material must be played straight by the actors, and they perform with commitment their Southern eccentrics, no matter that they're removed from discernible reality. As Toby, author Lamb shows a skilled comic dryness, and he has given himself some juicy monologues; Toby is a rake given to anti-gay bigotry and murder, but Lamb plays the florid language with just enough humor to make him the most enjoyable redneck of the bunch. “Now listen close,” Toby counsels his brother Antietam. “A boy can become a man in two ways, each as ‘ceptable as the other. He can kill a man less deserving of life than he, or make satisfying, preferably consensual love to a pretty woman.” And there’s something canny about that “than he” rather than “than him.” It’s a nice flourish of grammatical accuracy that demonstrates the author’s genuine talent for dialogue.

Yenson gives a sympathetic portrayal of the confused and struggling Antietam, who is supposedly 13. Though the actor is clearly older, he taps into a mix of sweating desperation and shame (he’s gay but not out) and admiration for his older brother that make the discrepancy irrelevant. A scene in which Toby insists that Antietam prove his heterosexuality by having sex with young (and overeager) Antebellum Gettysburg (Erin E. McGruff) employs the name of another famous Civil War battle in a manner calculated to make the Daughters of the Confederacy blench.

In spite of the performances, Varnell hasn’t found an overall tone for the piece, apart from sweaty desperation. One senses that the play is meant to be much funnier than it is, but at least it marks Lamb as a young writer with a gift for a certain kind of dialogue and a sharp sense of humor. When he breaks away from the inspirations so evident here and finds his own voice, he's likely to fulfill the promise he shows.

Revels in a Grey Area

The satirical musical Cuff Me: The Fifty Shades of Grey Unauthorized Musical Parody has popped up almost as quickly as a topical bit on Saturday Night Live, and it’s best, perhaps, to think of it as a goofy SNL sketch that lasts 90 minutes. Fifty Shades of Grey, is, of course, the 2012 erotic trilogy by E.L. James about the initiation of its heroine, Anastasia, into submissive sex with the rich, handsome Christian Grey. By many accounts—including those of the narrators of Cuff Me—James’s self-published works feature turgid writing, light-years from the explorations of sex written by D.H. Lawrence or Henry Miller. But then who would come to Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The Unauthorized Musical Parody? Probably not the middle-aged to elderly women who lined up after the show to have their programs signed by the charming cast of four.

Any parody promises silliness, and Sonya Carter’s production delivers. Carter keeps the action moving at the speed of farce, which is a good thing, because the plot neither requires nor deserves a lot of thought. The show is at its strongest musically; the writers Bradford McMurran, Jeremiah Albers, and Sean Michael Devereux have fitted their lyrics to well-known pop hits, from Madonna’s Like a Virgin to Frank Loesser’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside to La Vida Loca. (On occasion, however, the lyrics are hard to follow, partly because of the swiftness and partly because of the sound design.) The choreography, which is uncredited, suggests that the energetic cast all have advanced degrees in writhing. They also wiggle, jump up and down, swivel their hips, and occasionally twist nipples. The abundance of pelvic thrusts, flicked tongues, and hands smoothing torsos may grow overly familiar as the show progresses, but then sex is the only topic at hand. 

The action is framed by two women in bright track suits who meet in a nail salon. One (Tina Jensen) is unfamiliar with the story; the other (Alex Gonzalez in drag) undertakes to explain it. And as she does, the story of Anastasia and Christian unfolds.

As Anastasia, aka Ana, the lovely Laurie Elizabeth Gardner has lungs of iron that can belt out a number. In addition to her looks and voice, Gardner has the twin gifts of great comic timing and being a dexterous physical comedienne. She seems to have modeled Ana on Goldie Hawn, right down to Hawn's giggle from Laugh-In. Whether or not that’s true, her interpretation of a dumb bunny is spirited fun. A sample exchange:

“I’m having a problem with my phone,” Ana tells her best friend Kate. “Spotty reception?” Kate asks. Ana: “No—I’ve never been good at math.”

Matthew Brian Bagley as Christian plays with a drier humor. His aloof hero is less frenetic, often a straight man to Gardner’s idiocy, and there’s a running joke that he’s not gay. When Ana pointedly asks him if he is, he says, “What I do in the confines of my bedroom with other guys is none of your business. And it doesn’t make me gay.” Still, there are several indicators, among them a super sight gag from set designer Josh Iacovelli as Christian sits at a café table. (Costumer Riona Faith O’Malley matches him with a sartorial gag of her own.)

The two supporting players—the chameleonic Rodriguez and the plus-size Tina Jensen, undertake a variety of characters with elan. Rodriguez is particularly good as a Zumba instructor and a lawyer named Willy Blowman, and if you can spot the double entendre, be assured there are many more on the same level. The latter, in addition to the nail salon client, plays Ana’s inner goddess, and her best friend, Kate, and has a singing voice as powerful as Gardner's.

Under Carter’s direction, the predominant tone is hysteria. The story hurtles forward, and the jokes seem to be thrown out to see what will stick, as if her template were the wall of the sex shop on stage that displays a wild variety of fetish paraphernalia. Nothing is taken too seriously, not even the show itself, as characters periodically break the fourth wall: When Blowman misunderstands an order from Christian, he is told, “Not you. You have a quick change.”

For a show extolling sex, there’s very little, in fact. Gardner gets down to black undergear and garters, and Bagley does a strip to briefs and plays a late scene bare-chested, but Fifty Shades is about fantasy, anticipation, and expectation. That said, some of the elements, particularly a contract that Christian wants Ana to sign to be his submissive, sit uneasily with musical comedy. An audience used to, say, Guys and Dolls, will find language and descriptions of kinky behavior far beyond mainstream limits of bawdiness, let alone good taste.

Still, it’s not likely Fifty Shades will be more than a musical of its moment, and already a fleeting one at that. But it provides an impressive calling card for four talented performers, and some lowbrow fun with a frisson of transgressive pleasure.