Lost in Space

Real theater ignites our sense of moral duty and mirrors what is good and bad in our society. Writer Seanie Sugrue clearly does that in One Way to Pluto!, a seething reprimand of our irrational times. With humor and bite, Sugrue uses engaging dialogue to serve his thematic purpose: that we are fragile and easily broken in a brittle, capitalistic, greedy, political society that has lost its empathy. His characters’ rich dialogue stings in this punked-out philosophical commentary on our world.

Sugrue’s drama is reminiscent of the works of Sam Shepard, Harold Pinter, and Samuel Beckett. The playwright, who also directs, combines quick-witted moments with original music (by the downtown band Acquiesce) to create a CBGBs-style energy, earning its label of “punk theater.” With fine craftsmanship, Sugrue and his troupe, including designers, have memorably fused words and music together.

The story begins when Peter Cooper, a young musician struggling to find himself in New York City, wakes up to an escort, Tiffany (a sexy Jenni Halima), who demands money, and to Sean Dempsey, his irate Irish landlord, screaming for several months’ rent. Peter escapes the tougher realities of life as a poor artist, grappling with his sexuality by shooting up, dressing in drag, and running away.

Patrick Brian Scherrer gives a seismic performance as Peter, whose torment fits Sugrue’s dramatic response to the many serious issues of today. (The character performs a painful drug dance in drag that shows his inner turmoil.)
Sean (Myles O’Connor) as the ferocious landlord fed up with trying to help Peter  espouses the playwright’s views with righteous indignation, spitting out lines like, “Everyone wants to die until they find out they’re going to.”

The Utah-born Tiffany, Peter’s paid-for one-night stand, offers him a no-nonsense perspective on life as she flits around disgusted at his living conditions—dirty and sparse. Social commentary on the city’s housing situation from the escort in ripped stockings really lends the piece a raw, punk edge.

Particularly fun to watch was Peter Halpin’s eccentric performance as Johnny, a “Billy Idol wannabe” Romeo who fires Peter from the band. Halpin’s kinetic, slithery movements were hilarious. Johnny changes persona with each new rock-and-roll fad, and Halpin’s ability to switch from Sid Vicious characterizations to a Rod Stewart “club” performance without forsaking the role of Johnny enhanced Sugrue’s insight into the superficiality of the gentrification of arts in New York City. Contrasting with the wilder moments is a scene when Peter steals from his mother, Molly: Mary Tierney conveys maternal anxiety and shows that an addict’s pain affects those who love him. And Courtney Torres plays a nerdy, college student, Charon, willowy and vulnerable and intruding on Peter’s homestead. Charon’s neurotic fluidity dances in step with Peter’s.

A minimalist set reflects the grit and grunge of the punk scene meshed with a Waiting for Godot motif and works brilliantly. Although manic chaos is on the surface of Peter’s struggle, the power of the play is in nothingness: the tone and mood of the set stand in juxtaposition to the thought-provoking dialogue.

A desperate Peter lands in Strawberry Fields, where he meets a homeless man named Dwight. In this whacked-out world, Dwight is the voice of wisdom, an “alchemist” in the urban desert. Played playfully and seamlessly by John Warren, he offers solid answers to the protagonist’s questions.

The most riveting scene occurs in a psychedelic trip to Pluto, where Peter and Dwight see all that is right and wrong in the world. Scherrer lets loose an inspiring rant about “planet of hate.” They ultimately conclude, as Dwight suspected, that John Lennon was right—“all you need is love.”

The play ends poignantly, with Dwight and Peter in their Central Park homestead, at peace with the world. The dramatic juxtaposition of Scherrer’s high-strung Peter with Warren’s mellow Dwight really captures the pathos of the final moment. While Sugrue berates the world for its hate-mongering, he also offers hope after so dark a journey.

Sugrue and Locked in the Attic, fellow producer Amanda Martin, and the historical 13th Street Repertory all have reputations for being politically bold in their presentations. This ensemble of artists inspires social awakening with an “in yer face” punch.

One Way to Pluto! ends tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets at $15 may be purchased at www.13thstreetrep.org or at onewaytopluto.brownpapertickets.com. More information about the jammin' soundtrack may be found at www.aquiesce.com.

Life Can Be Lethal

Compelling characters and complex questions about crime and punishment are at the heart of playwright Eduardo Ivan Lopez’s latest play, Natural Life, at the T. Schreiber Studio.

Like many of Lopez’s plays (Ribbon Creek, The Legend of Sam’s Point, Barth’s Dilemma), Natural Life draws inspiration from true stories and historical facts. Claire McGreely (Holly Heiser) has spent the majority of her adult life in prison, and now awaits execution for the murder of her husband, Virgil (Joseph D. Giardina).

In an effort to set the record straight before her death, Claire contacts network news anchorwoman Rita Hathaway (Anna Holbrook) and offers her an exclusive interview as well as the revelation that she is ending her quest for an appeal. Claire divulges to Rita that she wants to die.

But as Rita continues to speak with Claire and learns about her troubled past in flashbacks, the straight-shooting journalist’s preconceived notions about justice come into question. Jake Turner’s skilled direction keeps the action moving swiftly and clearly through the time jumps as Claire’s difficult childhood becomes achingly apparent. Sexually abused by her uncle from the age of 5, Claire was an alcoholic by age 11 and a prostitute by 14. The abuse continued when she married Virgil. Raised by her grandmother (Noelle McGrath), Claire received advice, she says, like “sex was all that men wanted. And if I was going to lie down with them, I should always get something in return.” It becomes clear that Claire is a victim as well as a killer.

Rita voices her growing belief that perhaps Claire doesn’t deserve to die to Gov. Ben Dushane (Bob Rogerson), with whom Claire’s fate ultimately lies. But the audience is confronted with the fact that a life in prison may be a more severe punishment for Claire, who explains, "My choice is death by slow deterioration or death by lethal injection, fast and, hopefully, painless. To die quickly or slowly … For all intents and purposes, my life is over."

Heiser’s portrayal of Claire McGreely is powerful and nuanced. She expertly crafts a character that has many sides and leaves no doubt that her case is not a simple one of black-and-white murder. Even more impressive is Holbrook, who creates an instantly likable and admirable character in Rita Hathaway. Her Rita looks as if she could star in a popular television series—impressively smart, driven, tactful and yet endearingly human.

The cast is rounded out by television station executive Dan Coleman (Don Carter) and prison guard Harris (Joseph Calderone). Carter provides the only comic relief throughout the play with his portrayal of a pompous, deceptive (“Well, technically, I guess I lied”) businessman with whom Hathaway must contend. The seven-person cast remains on stage throughout the performance, seated in a row of chairs behind the action, reminiscent of a jury—judging Claire’s every move.

Helping clarify the flashbacks are locations and dates of the action, displayed on screens built into the walls of an otherwise understated set by Pei-Wen Huang-Shea. The screens serve multiple purposes throughout the show thanks to sound and video design by Andy Evan Cohen. They don’t just set scenes but serve as prison surveillance cameras, office videogames for Coleman, and jail-cell television for Claire.

The intimate space, raw performances, and impressive script make for many emotional moments. The first act starts off grippingly at the climax of the story before circling back to show why Claire McGreely ended up pointing a gun at her husband.

Natural Life is thought-provoking and commanding. The subject matter is timely, and fans of recent pop-culture phenomena such as Making a Murderer, Serial and The Newsroom are likely to be riveted by this exploration of the justice system, the prison system, guilt and the media.

Natural Life plays at the T. Schreiber Studio for Theatre & Film (151 West 26^th St., 7^th Floor) through April 2. Tickets may be purchased for $20 general admission by calling the box office at 212-352-3101 or online at www.tschreiber.org. Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on March 23 and 30.

Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun

Stop for a second and think about the way in which one interacts with one’s family, the way one assimilates to one’s society, how one honors one’s ancestors, how one speaks one's truth, and most importantly, how one heals oneself. Familiar, written by Obie Award winner Danai Gurira, challenges its audiences to think of all these situations. However, it is also a play that one must watch in order to fully understand how it can be powerfully healing and a life-changing experience for the audience.  

Directed by Rebecca Taichman, Familiar tells a story of a Zimbabwean family living in Minnesota. The eldest daughter, Tendi (Roslyn Ruff), is getting married in a matter of days, and her rehearsal dinner is in a matter of hours. As the family prepares for the rehearsal dinner, Tendi and her fiance Chris (Joby Earle) announce to the family that in addition to a traditional Christian wedding, they are including a Zimbabwean ritual. This unexpected turn causes secrets to be revealed, old wounds to reopen, and forces the family to speak the truths about the past.

With a natural build of suspense and ability to hold an audience's attention, this play focuses on a black family whose main goal is not to assimilate but rather to heal their own lives. This strong message explores issues such as how families cope with assimilation to societal norms in the United States, how they deal with the struggle between balancing cultural traditions and religious traditions, as well as how they heal after experiencing traumas from a homeland filled with pain and death.  

Although not based on her life, Gurira draws upon her own experience to create a credible script. Similarities between her life and the script includes how her Zimbabwean family also moved to the U.S. and how she was raised in Iowa while the family in the play live in Minnesota. In addition, the script allows the actors to unapologetically speak Shona as she presumably also did in her household. Unlike other shows that often translates anything other than English, Familiar takes advantage of an opportunity to be authentic, as well as give any audience member who speak Shona a small taste of home.

The ensemble includes, the father Donald, played by Harold Surratt, who grounds each scene with subtle facial expressions and dialogue. Myra Lucretia Taylor as Anne, Tendi’s aunt, is a strong and demanding presence on stage that is the main person connecting the family back to Zimbabwe heritage and ancestors. Anne’s sister Margaret, played by Melanie Nicholls-King, is the glue that keeps the family under control, even when she might feel her own life is falling apart. A definite gem in the performance by being the character that continually handles her sisters Anne and Marvelous (Tamara Tunie), as well as continually attempting to keep everyone calm. Ito Aghayere as Tendi’s sister, Nyasha, whose relentless need to bring the family back to their traditions heals the family.  Her energy and enthusiasm propels the play forward and brings it back to a nourishing place.  

The ensemble's chemistry and impeccable timing is a tremendous success to the production. Ruff and Tunie exhibit the vulnerable bond between mother and daughter. To balance them out are the future family members, “white boy from Minnetonka,” Chris (Earle) and his brother Brad (Joe Tippett). Their natural comedic interactions add to the play and cause the audience to laugh and scream in enjoyment. Overall, it is the ensemble’s conversations and arguments that encourage open discussion about past family issues, current events and pushes the audience to question their own lives.

One of the great things about Gurira’s script is that it allows talented black actors to play fully developed characters who aren't afraid to broadcast their powerful voices. This adds to the production because it facilitates deeper conversations about real issues that occur within Zimbabwean families, African families, black families and even to an extent, indigenous families that live in the U.S. This gives audience members accessibility to a larger topic and awareness to the constant struggle families have between assimilation and preserving their culture.

 

There are moments within the play that may be seen as unrealistic. This includes the very dramatic change from the comedic, light-hearted first act to the serious and dramatic second act. It includes a spontaneous flirtation between Brad and Nyasha after bonding between a hilariously over-dramatized situation. Gurira also introduces mouth-dropping, over-the-top scenarios during the second act that allows character’s such as Marvelous and Tendi to become vulnerable in order to see how they overcome obstacles and heal themselves.

 

This production could not have been done without the talented eye of Taichman. Her vision along with the tedious work of the designers brought the text to life which lead to a spectacular performance. This includes the immaculate timing of jokes, the build towards the emotional confessions, the authentic Mbira music, as well as the healing and freeing traditional dancing that took place. Her attention to details brought unity and fluidity to every aspect of the production.  

From any seat, the audience can see all aspects of the highly-detailed set designed by Clint Ramos. Marvelous’ and Donald’s house is two floors with hallways, real doors and family pictures lining the wall. It is a breathtaking set that anyone would want to live in, including the audience who sit in comfortably cushioned seats, as if sitting on individualized mini couches. To support this design, Obie Award winner and lighting designer Tyler Micoleau incorporates the lights into the structure of the set to allow it to seem natural. Even the window is lit so that it appears as if looking out on a snowy day in Minnesota.  

Another noteworthy design element was the sound design by Tony Award winner Darron L. West. During intermission, the recordings of celebratory Mbira music by the Shona people of Zimbabwe filled the theater. With a very hectic and hilarious ending to Act One, the traditional music played during intermission is a great way to gently introduce the audience to Zimbabwean music, as well as connects with the Mbira that is presented by Nyasha during the performance.  

With accurate details of Zimbabwean culture and some cliché subplots, Familiar takes the discussion about race and culture to the forefront, as well as ignites a necessary conversation about the shaming and blaming of one’s heritage. 

 

Familiar has extended their run until April 10 at Playwrights Horizon’s Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves.) in Manhattan. Performances are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $75 to $90. To purchase tickets, visit www.TicketCentral.com and www.Facebook.com or call 212-279-4200.

Boy vs. Girl vs. Boy

The hot-button issue of gender identity is at the center of Anna Ziegler’s Boy, a troubling and moving new play, and the first world premiere from the Keen Company since 2008. The subject of sexuality is in the zeitgeist, from a new musical, Southern Comfort, about Georgia transsexuals, currently at the Public Theater, to civic debates about restroom accommodations.

The story that Ziegler presents falls on the serious side. During circumcision, one of a set of twins was horribly mutilated, losing his penis. His distraught parents write to a doctor who appeared on 60 Minutes and specializes in gender identity to seek help. He advises them to raise the infant, named Samuel, as a girl, Samantha.

Ziegler tells her story in flashback, starting at the moment Adam, who was born Samuel but raised as Samantha and reinvented himself as a man, meets a girl named Jenny (Rebecca Rittenhouse) at a Halloween party. Jenny is someone Samantha knew in school and shared a class with. Jenny doesn’t recognize Adam, for obvious reasons, but he feels a strong attraction to her.

Bobby Steggert invests Adam with a mixture of well-meaning sweetness and a tentative confidence that sometimes leads him astray. His initial meeting with Jenny goes awry when she confesses having a 4-year-old child and he says he likes children and would be glad to give the kid a lift. It puts Jenny on guard, but it’s symptomatic of Adam’s failure to fully socialize himself. And, without using makeup or drag, Steggert gently creates a little girl, crossing his ankles or pitching his voice slightly higher, or talking quickly, as children do. The plan of Sam’s parents, Doug and Trudy (Ted Köch and Heidi Armbruster), is to socialize him as a girl until he is old enough to have operations to create a vagina. But even with Dr. Wendell Barnes’s coaching, Sam feels innately more interest in bugs, cars, and traditional “boy” interests.

The play comes down strongly in favor of nature prevailing over nurture. That brings it in line with the idea that being gay or transgender is not some perversion of the natural order. Indeed, the perversion in Boy is clearly the mentality of Dr. Barnes (Paul Niebanck), the eminence who persuades Doug and Trudy to maneuver Sam into the opposite sex. Sandra Goldmark’s unremarkable furniture nonetheless provides a striking visual parallel to the psychology: second sets of furnishings hang upside down over the set, a visual parallel to Samantha's inversion.

Even misguided, Niebanck’s doctor is a touching figure, a self-possessed gay man (he calls himself “a former boy who didn’t quite fit in”) who means to do well and cares in his way for Sam. Yet Niebanck invests the doctor with a sense that he is perhaps too doctrinaire in his theories. A climactic scene when Adam confronts Dr. Barnes and reveals that he has become a man, thanks to operations, is quietly devastating for both characters.

Ziegler plots the course carefully, and under the direction of Linsay Firman, the flashbacks make sense and flow smoothly. As in the playwright’s last outing, A Delicate Ship, which took its title from a W.H. Auden poem, literature plays a part. Here, Dr. Barnes’s assertion that Paradise Lost is the greatest poem ever written hints at a concealed interest in playing God.

Serving as counterpoint is another poem, Leigh Hunt’s Rondeau, which Dr. Barnes introduced to Sam, that remains Adam’s favorite. Milton’s is highbrow and concerned with the ineffable; Hunt’s is quotidian and concerned with real life and the physical, and ends: “Say I’m weary/Say I’m sad/Say that health and wealth have missed me/Say I’m growing old, but add/Jenny kissed me.”

Every so often Ziegler indulges in sentimentality, notably in a late scene when Adam reveals the night his father told him about the accident. Eating ice cream in the car, Doug said: “You came out of your mother, just who you are. This kind, gentle boy.” Steggert smiles affectionately. “You shouldn’t drink so much, Dad,” he says helpfully. And the anguished Doug replies, “I know that. But sometimes we just can’t control what it is we do, can we?” When the story is done, Jenny wants to know what flavor the ice cream was. It’s a clumsy non sequitur suffused with cutesiness. But the errors are few. Even if you’ve thought you’ve heard all the arguments about the topic, Boy brings them home powerfully. 

The Keen Company production of Boy runs through April 9 at the Clurman Theater (410 W. 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday-Thursday and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $62.50 and may be ordered at www.telecharge.com.

Whiskey Needs Respect

Eric Gilde’s new play the goodbye room focuses on a common experience in most everyone’s life—the death of a parent—but more important, it asks the question, “What’s left of the living?” There are those who have to handle the funeral arrangements, travel home for the service, or find a way to relate to one another during a time of grief. It’s the relating that most often gets in the way. Gilde has done an exemplary job of capturing the essence of this experience, and, as the director, creates the space for four talented actors to bring it to life.

It is a detailed re-creation that, without nuanced performances, could easily come off as flat. There is nothing new, there are no great surprises and no profound personal breakthroughs in the goodbye room. However, it’s the precise manner in which Gilde wrote the dialogue, directed the actors, and how they delivered it that enhances the drama.

Michael Selkirk plays the grieving Edgar, whose wife has just passed on. Edgar has two daughters—the “good,” overworked, overwhelmed daughter Maggie (Sarah Killough) and complicated Rebecca, affectionately referred to as Bex (Ellen Adair), who married and moved to Chicago five years ago. Bex laments not coming home sooner, while Maggie plays the busy martyr who stayed behind to work and take care of the parents. This sibling story has been told and retold following the death of a parent; however, it’s Gilde’s staccato dialogue, with the characters talking over one another, coupled with the generous space between the words, where the crux is to be found. Included in this drama is the affable family friend and former love interest Sebastian (Craig Wesley Divino.)

Bex is wound tightly, from the moment we hear the car door slam to when she finally tersely reveals, “Larry and I are getting divorced.” The estrangement from her family is exemplified by her awkward attempts to console her father or hug her sister. She often finds a way to make it more about herself than anyone else. Maggie, equally tense, lets on to anyone who will listen how busy and overwhelmed she is. Sebastian has found his second family and doesn’t want to let go, always being available to lend a helping hand. Edgar is trying desperately to understand this new void in his life, even while shuffling off to make coffee or trying make sure his girls are comfortable.

It’s when he shares his Irish whiskey with Sebastian that Selkirk delivers everything that resides just behind the dialogue. “I don’t think you should come around here for awhile,” he says, pausing for a moment, then saying, “Drink up.” The rage that seethes behind his full beard and scraggly appearance is subtle yet profound.

Justin Spurtz’s set covers every base, from the 1950s paint-by-numbers framed art on the wall to the collection of family photos and the paper plates complete with grease stains left behind by the pizza. There is the patterned family sofa that has lost its firmness over the years, and the coatrack filled with winter coats and scarves. Spurtz even includes a bit of whimsy with Bex’s childhood mug.

Jacob Subotnick layers on a sound design that complements each scene, from car doors closing to LPs with crooners on the vintage stereo turntable to the subtle patter of rain. The volume of the mobile-phone ring in the handbag was on point, and the iPod selection set the scene for the sisters to share too much wine, and finally themselves, is perfect.

Gilde’s drama touches slightly on the concept of the lingering spirit of the departed, with lights flickering or the broken stereo finally playing. It’s a welcome relief from the family drama being played out, but it’s also a hint that there is more to life than silly squabbles or playing the blame game one more time. Maybe love, as messy as it can be, transcends the boundaries of this reality to remind us of what’s important.

“The goodbye room” is at the Bridge Theatre at Shetler Studios (244 West 54th St., 12th floor) through March 19. Remaining performances are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m., plus Tuesday, March 15, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 and $18 and may be purchased by visiting Artful.ly.

Waterlogged Ethics

March 8th, 2016

Yes—there’s really a pool on stage at Red Speedo, the new play by Lucas Hnath (The Christians) at the New York Theatre Workshop through March 27. The pool is certainly an achievement for scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez, since it immediately places the audience in the natatorium where swimming stud Ray (Alex Breaux) awaits the following day’s Olympic trials.

But the lane of serene blue water that spans the forestage stands in stark contrast to the murky ethical dilemmas that Hnath examines. Ray’s future as an Olympic swimmer and Speedo-sponsored star are threatened by a dependence on performance-enhancing drugs; a brother whose financial well-being is inextricably tied to Ray’s success; an ex-girlfriend whom he desperately wants to marry; and a coach who is also looking for his piece of the glory.

Ray’s brother, Peter (Lucas Caleb Rooney), is a lawyer who yearns to quit his job and play full-time agent to his younger sibling. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get his cut from the Speedo deal he has negotiated—even if it means turning a blind eye to Ray’s reliance on HCG—a synthetic testosterone classified as a performance-enhancing drug.

Ray’s ex-girlfriend Lydia (Zoë Winters) is bitter and angry after losing her license to practice sports psychology when she dabbled in the realm of pharmaceuticals. Peter helped get her convicted after speaking to the prosecution and relaying private information.

Ray’s coach (Peter Jay Fernandez) tries to take the ethical high road when he discovers what he believes are another swimmer’s drugs in his office refrigerator. But when he realizes they belong to his star pupil, he quickly changes his tune.

Then there’s Breaux as the athlete himself. The actor does a wonderful job portraying a character with more depth than meets the eye. Though Ray appears to be unintelligent and inept at grasping complex scenarios, it’s quickly evident that he’s not as dumb as he seems. Even his hideously large back and leg tattoo of a sea serpent is his own stroke of quasi-genius: “Just thought it would be good for publicity and stuff, because we all kinda look the same when we swim, because we all have goggles and swim caps, so I thought it would be a good idea to make myself really easy to spot, so like when I’m swimming, and they have the camera overhead watching us swim, it’s really easy to know which one I am, and everyone will be like ‘Whoa, who’s that guy with the sea serpent, he’s awesome.’” He is scared to fail and scared of what it will take to win, which results in his saying to Peter, Lydia and Coach exactly what each wants to hear—even if it isn’t true. But even though he’s a pawn in their endgames, he’s playing them too.

Director Lileana Blain-Cruz keeps Hnath’s script moving quickly, though the snappy, rapid-fire dialogue sometimes seems forced. It’s unclear if the choppiness is due to directing or acting choices. The script really soars when each character has a longer chance to speak—granting the audience a look inside their psyches. The air horn signifying changes in scene, however, does little to aid the audience, aside from causing them to jump.

For the most part, Rooney makes Peter deliciously deplorable. And while the rest of the cast hold their own, there’s nothing spectacular about their characters. What is spectacular is a climactic fight scene between Peter and Ray, choreographed by Thomas Schall, that takes full advantage of Hernandez’s set.

Hnath’s writing leaves no clear protagonist and offers no ethical calls throughout the 80-minute intermission-less production. Rather, he leaves the audience to ponder that all-too-gray area between right and wrong, good and bad.

Lucas Hnath’sRed Speedo plays through April 3 at the New York Theatre Workshop (79 East Fourth St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday; at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (212) 780-9037 or visiting nytw.org.

Young, Scrappy and Hungry

In the musky glory of The Kraine Theater, the March family spits crazy rhymes and self-professedly drops beats like a smooth silk ribbon. Although jaunty violins welcome us inside, it is the quick enticement of Lil' Theatre Company's hip-hop musical that soon settles us into our seats. Lindsay Taylor and Sara Stock are the writers of Lil' Women: A Rap Musical, which was inspired not just by Louisa May Alcott's novel but also by a certain popular rap musical that sends all who see it into fits of religious praise: Hamilton. The influence is too obvious to go unnoticed—sometimes to the production's occasional weakness. In an effort to reconcile the massive success of its progenitor with its own relative obscurity, Lil' Women drops hints of its inspiration while trying to break new ground with reasonable success. 

Originally from the show streets of Orlando, Taylor's production is one of the more standout shows at this year's FRIGID NY festival—she is credited as the director and producer of Lil' Women. Its concept invites apprehension and interest in equal measure: taking a beloved classic and subverting its white, all-American tradition is no easy task. Many already know the story: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March weather crises of faith, friendship and love as they grow up under the benevolent eye of their parents, mischievous Laurie (the boy next door) and John Brooke (his tutor). It reads like a soapy, sweet tale, promising an uncomplicated ending. But somehow Taylor's hilarious spin on the March family makes it easy to forget the all too well-known plot, and enjoy the droll, nudge-nudge moments of musical inspiration that slips and slides from the pens of Taylor and Stock.

Beth pulsates with witty energy; she isn't the dowdy, quiet angel that Alcott canonized in her book. Megan Borkes renders her active, self-aware and irrepressibly engaging. Croix Provence's Amy begins as a childish caricature of Alcott's character, but by the end of the play, she is brimming with womanly wit and charm. Even mature Meg, played by the highly entertaining Toni Bonaccorso, sneaks in some character development even as the show speeds through the plot. Her meet-cute romance with John (a disarmingly funny Gregory Coleman) is a delight to watch, and her command as a rapper, while seemingly incongruous for a dimpling redhead, is especially astonishing. But by and large, the play is carried on the very able shoulders of Rebecca Siegel, who plays the glorious spitfire that is Jo March. Siegel is perhaps the best rapper of all her sisters (although Meg might disagree; the two have a fantastic rap battle— mediated by her mother, played by writer Sara Stock—that helps the audience settle who the better rapper is), and her singing voice is quite agreeable too. Her most poignant, Jo-like moments come during her interactions with Beth, Laurie (a rib-ticklingly wonderful Adam DelMedico) and Friedrich Bhaer (played by a superb Justin Aldridge), the three most important agents in her life. 

The reigning star of the show is the music: rhymes and dialogues flow seamlessly from the actors. The cast does not for a second call into question its rapping abilities. A particularly enjoyable song (and one that refused to stop playing in one's head) is "Commander in Chief" sung by Mr. March, played by the supremely talented Jason Blackwater. The partnership between Taylor and music writer Isaac Folch renders even the most mawkish episodes from Alcott's book (namely Mr. March's return from the war) side-splittingly funny. If there is one avenue where they falter, it is in the story. For a tale as often told as Little Women, it might take more than a rap musical to refresh its well-known denouements. But even as the show whizzes past key scenes (Beth's passing, John and Meg's married life, Jo's publications and Amy's brush with death), the production leaves us quite content in its attempt to refurbish a beloved story. 

The costuming is subdued yet appropriate; it doesn't seem anarchic or anachronistic, as most period costumes do in intimate settings (costume is by Borkes, Siegel and Taylor). The set is an empty black box, and in some ways makes the action in front of it all the more colorful. The main star of the show, however, is the music. Hip-hop is a nascent musical medium, especially on the Broadway stage. Hamilton has made rap music palatable to the largely white, upper middle-class audiences of New York, with the same brand of spine-tingling newness that Lil' Women has successfully emulated. One could say that Miranda's juggernaut endeavor has just spawned the first (of its undoubtedly many) children, and no-one's complaining. Lil' Women, for all its overt obeisances to Lin-Manuel Miranda's genius, borrows the same penchant for envelope-pushing musical entertainment.

The last performance of Lil' Women: A Rap Musical at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.) was March 5. As part of Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, Lil' Women will run from May 19-29 at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater (812 E. Rollins St.) in Orlando, FL. Tickets are $11 with the purchase of the Fringe button starting April 14 at www.orlandofringe.org.

Love in the Fen

There are some choices that are done in the name of love. Fen, by British playwright Caryl Churchill, directed by Patricia Lynn, presents the choices many would not consider. As the audience walks into the lower theater of IATI, the set is staged with five metal wash buckets used for collecting vegetables and stones, a table and two chairs, all representative of the agricultural life in Britain in 1983. Most of the townspeople work on the local farm. They share their stories and also bare their shame there.

Upon entering, the audience finds itself in the middle of a love affair between Val (Aimee Ranger) and Frank (David Rudi Utter). She has left her husband and two daughters to be with the man she loves. She has broken traditional gender roles and is torn with being morally correct and being with the love of her life.

As the play continues, the audience is introduced to a daughter and her stepmother, played by Lauren Lubow and Katie Consamus, respectively. All the characters take on multiple roles, and among the outstanding cast, Lubow skillfully switches out of hers effortlessly and poignantly. 

The women’s stories are intriguing and tragic. Their lives reflect the small-town and farming mentality where poverty permeates the air. Love is often not a choice but a luxury. We see the abuse of a stepmother continue, a farm owner contemplating selling his land; we see hunger and loss. All through these stories is woven the notion of love and what it means for these people. Churchill is a great storyteller and her characters, although there are many to keep track of, reflect the deepness of her words. 

Throughout, Lynn has drawn excellent performances from her actors. Lynn does a spectacular job of organizing seamless transitions and strategic blocking; still, the number of characters became confusing. Additionally, Lynn and set design consultant Allyson Lubow’s use of the space was excellent. The space can feel rather confining, but the production used all of it efficiently and relevantly. It felt like we were in the outskirts of their world, peeping in quietly.

As Val comes to grips with the dilemma of leaving her family for love, she arrives at a decision that will end her misery.The decision may seem rash and illogical to a viewer, but considering her outlook on life, it might have been the best one.

Fen leaves audiences thinking about choice and love and everything in between.

Presented by Red Garnet Theater Company at the IATI Theater Black Box, 64 East 4th St. Closed Feb. 21.

Shakespeare’s Game of Thrones

The first of Shakespeare’s quartet of late romances, Pericles (1608) is certainly one of the least known of his plays. Most scholars agree that the first two acts are by lesser light George Wilkins. Yet the production at Theatre for a New Audience is so engaging and visually sumptuous that one can only wonder it’s not a staple of the canon.

The opportunity to notch Pericles, the 35^th of Shakespeare’s 37 plays that he has directed, has brought British director Trevor Nunn to Brooklyn. And Nunn’s genius in handling the notoriously corrupt text has pulled it all together, even though the main story splits into two and then three parts as the hapless Pericles endures loss and separation from his family.

Antioch is where Wilkins sets the plot in motion. There Christian Camargo’s prince, wooing the daughter of King Antiochus (Earl Baker Jr.), must solve a riddle to win her hand. Otherwise, his head may end up with others sitting atop cypress-draped spears. But the answer exposes a deadly secret, and Pericles flees the city. Unable to settle safely in Tyre, Pericles hands the reins to Helicanus (Philip Casnoff), his trusted adviser, and wanders around the Mediterranean. He has numerous setbacks and adventures, including marriage to Gia Crovatin’s elegant, demure Thaisa (a princess). They have a daughter, Marina, named by Pericles after Thaisa dies in childbirth, and he leaves her to be raised by friends as he heads to reclaim his throne. Betrayal and misfortune follow, and, believing Marina dead, he withdraws into misery. But, as Shakespeare turns a corner from his tragedies to the life-affirming romances, miracles do happen. 

It all sounds pretty sappy, but it’s as spirited as Game of Thrones, what with jousts, shipwrecks and even pirates. Using gossamer, pleated tunics and gowns, costume designer Constance Hoffman creates distinct Levantine kingdoms: white for Pentapolis; black for Tarsus; indigo in Tyre; and in Mytilene, bright, Arabic-style clothes. The set by Robert Jones features an upstage wall with a large circle with panels that open to reveal varied terrains: a desert, perhaps, or, in a stunning coup de théâtre, a huge gray moon with the goddess Diana. 

The story is based on a Renaissance novel by John Gower, who appears as the Chorus, eagerly spinning out the tale. Raphael Nash Thompson invests him with authority and sometimes a rich baritone, as he sings portions of the verse to an extensive score provided by Shaun Davey and played by 10 musicians from the PigPen Theatre Company, several of whom double in the small roles.

Nunn takes other liberties with the text, drawing on Wilkins’s 1608 novelization of the play for information to smooth out bumps. A nifty scene is interpolated when the surrogate Helicanus tries to quiet the demands of other lords for an explanation where their prince has gone, in front of a visitor that Helicanus suspects is an assassin. It’s a well-written scene, but it’s not from the play. One can sense Nunn’s sure hand in even the smallest details—when that same assassin, Oberon K.A. Adjepong’s Thaliard, arrives in Tyre, he looks around and says, “So this is Tyre, and this the court,” with a snort of disgust and an air of superiority. 

For the most part, the actors handle the language with skill. Although Pericles is, like Job, more victim than agent of his destiny, Camargo speaks the verse confidently and is as heroic as the part allows, growing from callow youth to a man chastened by life’s hardships. 

The more colorful roles are seized with relish. John Rothman as King Simonides is a merry monarch, trying to get his daughter, Thaisa, and Pericles to pair up. The strapping Ian Lassiter as Lysimachus, governor of Mytilene, starts off as a randy patron of the brothel where Marina is determined to keep her chastity and charts a touching transformation to her ally and eventual suitor. Will Swenson is a well-spoken Cleon, the starving King of Tarsus, whose life and country Pericles saves. Yet years later Cleon becomes morally hamstrung after his wife, Dionyza (Nina Hellman), plots Marina’s murder.

Not all is perfect. Patrice Johnson Chevannes as the Bawd misses a lot of the humor in the part. And the Marina of Lilly Englert is a major drawback. Englert radiates innocence and purity, but when she speaks, she sucks air audibly before every line and sometimes between phrases; the character sounds like she’s having an asthma attack. Her irritating aspirations mar some key moments, including the great reconciliation scene with Pericles.

On the whole, though, this rarely staged romance is a feast for the eyes and the ears, a gem from a master Shakespearean director that you won’t want to miss.

Trevor Nunn's production of Pericles runs through April 10 at Theatre for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place between Rockwell Place and Ashland Place) in Brooklyn. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday-Saturday, and matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets $75-$85 and may be ordered by calling OvationTix at 866-811-4111.

Tales of the Road to Freedom

Frederick Douglass said, “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” It felt like the spirit of Douglas was downtown at the Gene Frankel Theatre, inspiring all who hear the call to go see Pappy on Da Underground Railroad. This heartrending one-man show, developed by cabaret performer Richard Johnson, under the direction of Keith Allan with musical accompaniment by Terry Wallstein is in honor of Black History Month. Johnson soulfully weaves the tales of trials and tribulations on the trail to freedom with Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad. With honest, down to earth direction and staging, this charming piece found its perfect venue at the Gene Frankel Theatre.

Raw, vulnerable, intuitive, fiery, wise, and out smarting, Pappy is the culmination of all the heroes of that dark time in American history. Soulfully singing some of the old classic spirituals such as “Wade in the Water” and “Steal Away” Johnson, as Pappy, explains how Harriet Tubman used song to guide runaway slaves to freedom. Through Johnson’s characterizations, we learn about the spirit of a people who were willing to pay the price for freedom and how it takes courage and determination to continue to fight for it.

Long-time cabaret performer Johnson authentically brings to life a part of our past that should never be forgotten. In the storytelling tradition of Haley’s Chicken George or Walker’s Celie, without overacted characterization, Johnson shows us the passion of a powerful survivor in his magnetic Pappy. With pathos, he comically impersonates his giggly first love, Mary, who pined for another. He mimics her obsession for, “Jacob! Jacob! Jacob!” and then tenderly reveals she killed herself by drinking lye after her lover was beaten to death for killing the master’s son who raped her. What hits to the core is how Johnson weaves Pappy’s memory with his heart-rending vocal of “Balm in Gilead,” accompanied by the mournful piano rendering of musical director Terry Wallstein.

Johnson’s subtle interpretation of Harriet Tubman is truly inspired. There is never doubt that Pappy is an authority on Tubman. He tells of his first meeting with the sassy Tubman and how she convinces him to come with her on the freedom trail. With hands on his hips, and a molasses sweet voice, he mirrors her command, to go back south to get her mother.

With assistance from technical crew, Stephon Legere, Luis Rivera and Cesar Perez, Allan uses a minimal set, allowing Johnson’s own energy to create the time and place. Small wooden platforms transform from tree stump to safe house cellar doors to a boat on the river, to train tracks to the north. Johnson guides us by the North Star and the sounds and signals along the riverbanks to freedom. The use of haunting sound effects enhances the menace in the moment, further heightening the historical significance of Pappy’s story.

As Johnson sings the doleful spirituals of those times and interweaves the stories of survival and escape to the Promised Land of Canada, he paints a clear picture of those heroes and villains he deals with along the way. Speaking to the audience as if they were his new group of runaways, Johnson creates the suspense and urgency of the time and place in a very internal and organic way, making his audience feel very much the eminent dangers of the ghostly swamps, in the pitch black night.

Perhaps one of the most suspenseful moments was when Johnson transforms into the racist slave hunter and his dog. As the slave hunter reveals his reasons for hating runaway slaves so much—his favorite boyhood mammy was sold off because of her runaway son—the crescendo of his anger rises with the sound of the barking of his dog. This brilliant direction really enhanced the danger of that moment in the journey to freedom.

Johnson really draws in his audience as his partners on the Underground Trail. When Johnson illuminates on the hidden meanings of the railroad terms, he also sheds light on how significant the building of the railroads were to the emancipation of slaves. Sitting comfortably Indian style, Pappy decodes the meaning of the symbols of the quilts and reveals the ingenuity and sophistication of a people intend on gaining freedom. With the eerie sounds of the river flowing in sync with Johnson’s rich vocalization of the classic, “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” he elucidates on how each symbol will be signs along the way to guide his motley runaways to safety in Canaan, which Pappy declares is the name for Canada. On reaching the Promised Land of Freedom, Pappy leaves us with a sense of hope for the future, as long as we never forget those champions of the past.

In these tumultuous times, Johnson’s exploration of the past is very significant. It encourages us to be as brave and determined as people like Harriet Tubman and all the unsung heroes of that time. In order to change history, we must learn from it. Johnson, in his poignant characterization of Pappy, leaves us with the great message that the heroes of yesterday can inspire the heroes of tomorrow. As Alice Walker said, “Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.”

Pappy on Da Underground Railroad's last performance was Feb. 27 at the Gene Frankel Theatre (24 Bond St. between Bowery and Lafayette St.) in Manhattan. For more information, visit brownpapertickets.com.

What Gives You the Right?

What havoc would the world endure if all fossil fuels disappeared overnight? What extraordinary chaos would each nation encounter? What would you do if you were thrown into darkness without electricity and power? For some people, these scenarios may seem far-fetched, extreme or an unworthy conversation for the stage. Jupiter (a play about power) begins to examine, through the course of a 200-year dialogue, what could occur as a result. It is through the haunting and beautifully delivered experience of Jupiter that possibility, along with responsibility, is born from awareness.

 

Written by Jeremy Pickard, Jupiter is a well-thought-out, cutting-edge play. Believability needs to be suspended for five minutes—the amount of time it takes to explain the science-fiction underpinning that the protagonist, Joe (Pickard), has the power to make fossil fuels disappear in a blink and then put himself in orbit, far from the madness about to ensue. And he uses it. His only link to the world below is 1950s-style radio that is used to communicate with a woman introduced as Humanity (Sarah Ellen Stephens).

 

Darkness envelops the world. Mobile phones are useless and communication trickles. Gangs rove around seeking food while friends and neighbors huddle together to stay warm or share what they have left. Bodies begin to litter the wayside. The larger question is, Why the need for this extreme? Humanity angrily expresses to Joe that treaties and accords had been reached, partnerships created and world leaders have begun to understand the need to work together to save the planet. Joe’s reply—it’s too late. For every step mankind can take, he has played out each scenario to its fullest, and not one will make a difference. Only a complete reboot will put mankind on a course correction.

 

For 200 years Joe and Humanity quarrel, debate, discuss and agree to disagree. The loneliness in orbit begins to affect Joe, and even the robot he built for companionship is not enough. The world and its remaining inhabitants transition ever so slowly out of the period of intense darkness and anarchy. The piece suggests that maybe there is hope.

 

The situation of the play was inspired by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa; it caused a “volcanic winter” that led to famine and disease. Although the disruption in Jupiter is manmade, the results would be similar.

Credited as co-creators along with writer Pickard are Jonathan Camuzeaux, Lani Fu, Megan McClain and Simón Adinia Hanukai, who directs the piece. Fueled by global concerns about the environment, they are part of the eco-theater company Superhero Clubhouse, “a collective of artists and scientists” working to create “original performances via a collaborative, green and rigorous process,” according to its website. (Camuzeaux and Hanukai’s Kaimera Productions is a co-producer).

 

Composer Camuzeaux, who emigrated to the U.S. in 2009, creates haunting music using a rare stringed instrument called a sazouki; he also delivers a telling narration early in the performance and later portrays the robot Cowboy. Hanukai, who is originally from Azerbaijan, splits his time between New York and Paris. His rich and diverse background in dance, theater and education shows in the movement, layout and character development.

It is clear that they not only embody a worldview but also deliver it with extraordinary purpose and aplomb. Pickard’s script is powerful and concise, and he creates a character with the halting manner of Rod Serling. The play/performance progresses with such deference to the experience of the audience that the focused collaboration produces its intent boldly and with great detail.

Stephens, who carries a large share of the acting responsibility, brings all the nuance of mankind together as Humanity. While Pickard created a way of being for Joe that is consistent, the actress moves through a palette of emotions. She brought conviction and intensity to her part.

So committed were the collaborators of Jupiter to bringing a greater awareness to the issue of global energy beyond the play that the creative team secured a grant to attach solar panels to the theater. While not always enough power for an entire performance, there is a television monitor above the stage letting the audience know how much energy is used in kilowatt hours and the grams of carbon dioxide required. Additionally, after each performance is a panel discussion with the cast and a guest for those who would like to hear more. Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, climatologist, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog RealClimate, was on hand to answer questions.

The deeply moving Jupiter delivers its message in an insightful and  powerful evening, and beyond.

Jupiter (a play about power) will be presented at La Mama Theatre Club (74a East 4th St.) through Feb. 28. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday-Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are available by calling the box office at 212-475-7710 or through OvationTix at 866-811-4111.

Tennessee Stretching

The opportunity to see two late plays by Tennessee Williams, one a world premiere, is a tempting prospect for theater lovers. Although the general judgment prevails that The Night of the Iguana (1961) was his last great work, there have been productions of the failed plays of the later years that attempt to restore luster to them. The Two-Character Play, Kingdom of Earth, A Lovely Sunday in Crève Coeur, and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel have their partisans. In the same spirit, the ambitious Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company has put together a bill of A Recluse and His Guest and The Remarkable Rooming-house of Mme. Le Monde, both written in 1982, the year before Williams died. They are strange one-acts, and if they were by a lesser-known writer they might not be worth a look. However, they benefit from the inventive shoestring productions given them by director Cosmin Chivu and provide an engrossing evening.

Justin West’s set for each features junk: mounted animal heads, Cornell-like boxes and rusty radiators clutter the space; crates serve as chairs and tables. Buzzy TV monitors are used in both works, most unusually in A Recluse and His Guest, which is set in “a far northern town in a remote time.” The TV monitors are less out of place among costumer Angela Wendt’s furs, greatcoats, and leather aprons and boots, which suggest a Game of Thrones era and a fairy-tale setting that jibes with the plot of Recluse. Into the town of Staad trudges a starving, penniless woman, Nevrika (Kate Skinner), to start life anew. She has trekked through forests and fields and avoided wolves. She is scorned by townspeople, but after an encounter with a wealthy but amoral “gentleman,” Nevrika arrives at the door of a recluse, Ott (Ford Austin), and insinuates herself into his life.

Quite apart from his desire to be alone, Ott has justifiable misgivings about Nevrika. For one thing, she talks to animals, cawing occasionally and bringing home a hen that lays eggs for them. Gradually, he adjusts to her company and finds her useful as she straightens his home, rubs his back and helps him bathe. He allows her to stay even after a letter of warning arrives about her. Skinner invests Nevrika with cunning and desperation, and Austin’s Ott is both harsh and floundering in the face of her growing affection. Her grooming him for an appearance at the spring ball in Staad foreshadows a Shavian ending.

The Remarkable Rooming-house of Mme. Le Monde is a shorter and slighter piece. A starving cripple named Mint lives in the attic of a rooming-house, where he is raped by the young son of Mme. Le Monde regularly. Mint (Jade Ziane) hauls himself around his upper room on hooks that descend on ropes, but the ropes are of varying heights, and sometimes he falls to the floor. When an old school chum, Hall (Patrick Darwin Williams) arrives, things turn ugly. Mint has biscuits (i.e., cookies, since the piece is set in London) and tea for his guest, who has stopped to service Mme. Le Monde (Skinner again, in a red fright wig) on his way upstairs. But the nattily dressed Hall, who is a confidence man, helps himself to tea and biscuits relentlessly, keeping the hapless Mint away from nourishment.

Willliams’s dialogue in the piece can seem like a high-school version of Joe Orton: Hall and Mint were educated together at the sniggeringly named Scrotum-on-Swansea. “At Scrotum-on-Swansea you were a notorious fag and bed-wetter, but reasonably mobile,” Hall recalls with a posh accent. “Now you get about only by swinging from hook to hook, like that historical ape-man swinging from branch to branch in the jungle.” The sexual frankness, arch dialogue and nudity are part of Orton’s repertoire, and, as John Lahr points out in Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, in 1982 Williams was working on another play, A House Not Meant to Stand, which “broadcast the influence of British playwright Joe Orton.” Clearly Mme. Le Monde, from the same year, also reflects Orton, but it lacks the comic snap of the younger man’s work.

Mme. Le Monde ends grimly but satisfyingly. Chivu has used the TV monitors skillfully to replace a collapsible staircase called for by the script. These short plays aren't earth-shattering discoveries, but they have many small pleasures, not least for fans of Williams’s work. Playhouse Creatures deserves credit for spotting those rewards.

Two one-act plays, A Recluse and His Guest and The Remarkable Rooming-house of Mme. Le Monde, comprise Tennessee Williams 1982, presented by Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company through March 6 at Walkerspace (46 Walker St. between Broadway and Church Street) in Tribeca. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 24–28, March 2–6, and March 9–13, with a matinee on March 5 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $40 and may be purchased by calling 800-838-3006 or visiting PlayhouseCreatures.org.

#IKEA Angst Emoji, Emoji

The script for Help Me Out Here, an entry in the 2016 FRIGID New York festival, pulls material from text messages written when people were drunk, iPhone notes, personal journals, positive affirmation recordings, and sprawling Post-it notes on which writers look for the meaning of existence—all while assembling a chair from IKEA. Michael Joel and Kaitlin Overton, who conceived the script, also perform and co-directed the piece; they keep their real first names as the characters.

Taking on three jobs to produce one’s own work in the theater requires a dynamic, steadfast vision to provide the ultimate experience for the audience. When it occurs, magic happens; however, even though the angst of a younger generation lost in the mobile phone/social media argument—"If I’m so connected, why do I feel so alone?"—is conveyed in Help Me Out Here, the play comes up short. Conceptually it has footing, but with only 40 minutes of material, there are too many missteps.

Lonely, frustrated and uninspired, Michael sits down to write but settles into how many different ways he can scrawl "dip shit." He drinks wine from a ceramic coffee mug. With the help of her own bottle of wine, Kaitlin, meanwhile, is attempting to assemble an IKEA chair while sending needy text messages to Michael, some of which are answered, and some not. Equally as lonely, and exacerbated by the chair, she seeks solace and empowerment from self-help CDs. Until the closing scene, they are both on stage delivering monologues but have no physical interaction besides the text messaging.

 

Michael has more of the in-depth dialogue that provides insight into his anxious view of himself and the world. His diatribe on hashtags is particularly telling: “Look at what is happening in the world. Humanity as a whole is a fucking hellscape,” he says. “And what is anyone doing about it? Nothing. Fucking hashtags. That’s about as far as we have advanced as a society.”

 

Riffing on the proverb "When one door closes...," Michael uncovers an ah-ha moment: “So you start and end every day pushing and pushing at this door, and you end up wasting years of your life trying to push this door open when finally you get the sense enough to look at your surroundings and notice that this whole time, printed on the handle of the door it says in big bold black fucking letters ‘Pull.’”

He attempts to go to a party but instead listens to every neurotic thought in his head, delivered as a voice-over. Soon enough he is barely managing a lame excuse to the hostess to make his exit. Meanwhile, maybe because of the wine or just because she is growing weary waiting for a response to her text messages, Kaitlin falls asleep. The parts of an unfinished chair and the instruction manual are all around her.

Kaitlin’s challenge assembling an Ikea chair against the backdrop of life is a keen metaphor for both of them. The inclusion of her character, however, lacks conviction from the playwrights, as evidenced by her lack of dialogue. Michael battles with life, world and God issues while Kaitlin listens to positive affirmation on a CD and argues with a how-to manual. This type of dialogue only reaffirms the age-old myth that men are strong and educated, while women are weak and helpless.

A different director could have brought a fresh eye to the play: one who addresses cracks in the storyline while pulling/pushing the actors to dig deeper. Perhaps because of their closeness to this material neither Joel or Overton has addressed inconsistencies in the script. Kaitlin, in a text message, asks Michael if he has a screwdriver. When he arrives they finish the chair, but without a screwdriver, they never reference the screwdriver, using an Allen wrench instead.

However, the real problem is that the directors of Help Me Out Here have given Kaitlin so little substantial dialogue and a dated female story line. “I don’t understand these instruction booklets,” she says. “I never have and I never will.” Even in the modern age of IKEA, the writing behind Kaitlin’s monologues has not allowed her character to progress. Instead, she is relegated to being either unwilling or unable to understand an instruction manual or the need to have a man come to the rescue.

The next morning, Kaitlin awakens, still surrounded by the pieces of an unfinished chair, and she calls Michael. Human interaction, not another text message, moves him to come over. Maybe, after all, it’s not so much a man to the rescue but rather the bigger picture that people can accomplish more together with a glass of wine than by going it solo. Until the playwrights, or a different director, rethink the point of the angst, there is not much to help.

A No Dominion Theatre Company production, Help Me Out Here plays at Under St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place) in Manhattan. Remaining performances are Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 7:10 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 27, at 10:30 p.m.; and Saturday, March 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults and $13 for students at www.horsetrade.info. For a complete list of plays presented by FRIGID New York, visit www.horsetrade.info/frigid-festival. 

Horrors in the Heartland

It’s been 20 years since the Broadway revival of Buried Child, and the production by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center suggests that Sam Shepard’s 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning play has lost some luster. Echoing classic American dramas of dysfunctional families—notably Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Long Day’s Journey Into Night—Shepard’s portrait of the American dream gone awry is a post-Vietnam nightmare that combines melodrama and absurdist elements. The latter can try one’s patience, as Shepard hacks away at American mythology with a scythe.

In Derek McLane’s shabby, brownishly-decorated Illinois farmhouse live three people: Dodge (Ed Harris), a sickly, cantankerous, whiskey-swilling patriarch who lounges on a beat-up sofa with a ratty blanket that is every bit as necessary to him as Linus’s in Peanuts. This feeble figure, whose name evokes Dodge City and Western heroism gone to seed, is married to Amy Madigan’s beady-eyed Halie, a woman who is cuckolding him with the local priest, Father Dewis (Larry Pine), who buys her telltale yellow roses. From him, she also wants public support for a statue of their late son Ansel, a basketball “star,” she claims, who died under mysterious circumstances. 

A new inhabitant is another son, Tilden, played by Paul Sparks as mentally challenged in the vein of Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men. Tilden has returned home after 27 years in New Mexico; he is generally soft-spoken as well as soft-headed. He finds corn in the backyard when his parents swear nothing grows there, brings it inside and shucks it. Occasionally, he mutters in a shell-shocked way about a secret and something buried in the yard.  

Dodge and Halie have a third son, Bradley (Rich Sommer), who uses a wooden leg after a chain-saw accident. Dodge is terrified that Bradley will sneak in and cut his hair while he’s asleep, and indeed, an emasculation in the manner of Samson occurs at the end of Act I. (Shepard’s 1978 version was three acts; in 1996 he reworked the script, and the current production plays without intermission.)

The couple who upset the apple cart, as it were, are Vince, Tilden’s son and the grandson of Dodge and Halie, and his girlfriend, Shelly (Taissa Farmiga); they drop in on his grandparents while traveling cross-country to see Tilden in New Mexico. (Parent-child communications in this family take a beating: Nat Wolff’s Vince hasn't seen his grandparents in six years; and, of course, he has no idea his father has left New Mexico. Moreover, neither father nor grandfather recognizes Vince, let alone remembers him.)

Both McLane’s set and Susan Hilferty’s costumes do a fine job of conveying realism, but much is left unexplained, and one’s suspension of disbelief often strains under Shepard’s symbolism. Why does Vince leave the house to buy liquor and not return till the next morning? Apparently so Shelly can be victimized by the sadistic Bradley and scorned by Dodge and Halie. And when they turn hostile, why doesn’t she explain more quickly that she is their grandson’s girlfriend? Or warn off Bradley before he takes advantage of her? The stage time that it takes for her to use common sense is, as Mark Twain would say, “a stretcher.”

In a climactic moment, when Halie discovers that the backyard has a bounty of vegetables, she yells to Dodge: “Tilden was right about the corn, you know. I’ve never seen such corn… dazzling. Tall as a man already… Carrots, too. Potatoes. Peas.” The idea that a field of high corn would not have been noticed in the backyard defies realism, as does Halie’s mention of potatoes. If she has not seen the corn until now, how can she possibly claim there are potatoes under the earth? But the symbolism of a harvest sprouting from blood and death is the point, not rationality or realism. 

Still, in Tilden’s corn-shucking and later, Shelly’s cutting up carrots, director Scott Elliott brings out the humor, although the two younger cast members pale in gravitas and skill compared with the superb veterans. Elliott also creates a terrific sense of febrile menace and poisoned trust. “You think because people propagate they have to love their offspring?” Dodge asks Shelly. “You never seen a bitch eat her puppies?” Life in this American home resembles a dogfight.

Shepard’s cynical view of American ideals and debased notions of national self-esteem were certainly fashionable in the late 1970s. To a large extent they are still hanging around. But Buried Child, for all the vigor of its performances, feels just a bit stale. 

The New Group production of Buried Child will play through April 3 at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd St., between 9th and 10th Avenues) in Manhattan. Evening performances are Tuesday-Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., and on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25-$115 and may be arranged visiting www.thenewgroup.org, or through Ticket Central at 212-279-4200, or in person at 416 West 42nd St. (noon to 8 p.m. daily).

Nothing But the Truth

Why Not Just Tell the Truth is an ambitious, yet over-reaching, play at The Tato Laviera Theatre. It is extremely current and very raw, with great music selection for a television show. Based on a web series, of the same name, it brought the challenges of the average TV show to the stage; the need for a talented script doctor and a seasoned director. The play desperately wants to be edgy, however what’s missing is an understanding of theatrical character development, voice projection and pacing. The playwright offers 25 separate scenes in three acts, and as he explains before the current rises, the play is in your face; however it lacks the tightness cinema may forgive but the stage demands.

Written, co-directed and produced by Carleton King, who also plays the lead, Why Not Just Tell The Truth is challenged by King assuming too many duties. His character is on stage for most scenes, never allowing him the latitude to tighten the script or deliver deeper, richer characters. As an actor, King’s vision for the role of Jason requires a deeper, spiritual quest (especially as he argues with God). Throw the Bible on the ground but make it matter. The audience is afforded less time with the characters enduring long scene changes that soften the impact of drama

As a teenager, Jason inherited an extremely large sum of money from his parents. He has been married for two years to a woman who verbally taunts him all the while cheating on him. After finally separating, she is physically abused by her new boyfriend, ridiculed by Jason’s new female companion who proclaims herself a “high-powered attorney” and eventually returns to Jason longing for whatever it is she thinks they had. While Jason has no desire to take her back, her new boyfriend, who is unhappy with her departure, exacts his revenge but on the wrong person. Jason’s best friend Tony struggles with the transition from the dating scene to a more serious relationship, having perfected the persona of a player. Jason’s childhood sweetheart-turned-mafia "hybrid princess" is still longing for a relationship with Jason knowing that his wife is not good for him. Tony, returning from the dead to offer Jason advice, comes off as a cliché rather than sage closure for the character. 

The young actors, who anxiously want to do a respectable job delivering every line, lacked exciting direction with a script that includes a lot of story but provides little room for character nuance. Rarely does co-directing enhance the result and in this case merely muddies the result. Why Not Just Tell The Truth is co-directed by Melissa Diaz. Repeatedly, dialogue is swallowed making scenes difficult to understand, and in almost in every scene someone is outside of the pool of light. The lighting technician, Hector Orta, chose not to light stage right but rather use a wide follow spot. A more seasoned director would have caused the actors to deliver more than just basic emotions, while addressing the most important need of an audience—the desire to care.

The Tato Laviera Theatre is a great space with stadium seating, a large stage to work with and an awesome light board. The main set includes a sofa, end table and a Queen Anne, high back chair, and stage left, which is Tony’s bedroom, has a single bed pushed up against the wall. Stage right starts off empty; however throughout the evening, two chairs and a table are noisily moved on and off set. Since most of the scenes that take place in this part of the stage utilize the table and chairs, it would have been simpler to work around them and light the area appropriately. Additionally, stagehands are too often seen, voices are heard from back stage and lighting, and music cues are missed.

Why Not Just Tell The Truth does not have that luxury of a boom mic or editing room. The musical selections are well chosen for a TV show or movie, but on stage, it fragments the story rather than bring it together. The bones of the play—love, betrayal, revenge and forgiveness—are spoken about but without deeper development of the characters, believability has to be suspended leaving little truth to tell.

Performances of Why Not Just Tell The Truth, produced by Tru Luv Entertainment, run on Friday, Feb. 19 at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at The Tato Laviera Theatre (240 East 123rd St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.) in Manhattan. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visiting https://www.eventbrite.com/e/why-not-just-tell-the-truth-the-play-tickets-19703885853.

Read our Q&A interview with Carleton King on his inspiration behind Why Not Just Tell The Truth.

Q&A: King Brings Web Series to Theater

Carleton King grew up in Brooklyn, had head shots as an infant and was pushed toward the profession by his parents. Even so, he always knew he had a knack and evolved with the craft by studying acting and theater at St. John's University and Long Island University. After a number of acting credits over the last decade in theater, film and TV, King developed the web series Why Not Just Tell The Truth. With a few thousand subscribers across the globe, King has decided to go Off-Broadway to gauge whether he should add to the 11 episodes already in the can. Either way, coming clean is at the heart of his inspiration.

Carleton King: Honesty is a very deep rooted idea. Most people hate to be lied to but sometimes we even lie to ourselves. This can leave you in a lot of trouble when you’re in denial or being dishonest in interpersonal relationships. So I wanted to explore some of those situations.

OffOffOnline: Taking a look at some of the episodes, I see characters with some heavy weaponry and situations that go on beyond just lying to your girlfriend.

Carleton King: Yes, some of the characters allow certain situations to become bigger than normal life and stem mostly from Tracey (Ana Araújo). Her father was a mafia boss, and her mother comes from a Cuban crime family. That causes her to have this weird dichotomy of a personality, but her friendship with Jason helps drive the plot. So anyone who disrespects him has to worry about her coming after them.

OffOffOnline: Jason is your character. Tell me about him.

Carleton King: He’s a good guy. He believes in love, marriage and making things work. That can work to his detriment because he’ll try to make a bad thing work when he probably just needs to let it go.

OffOffOnline: I guess that includes his marriage.

Carleton King: I’ll just say it. Kathy (Charese Annel) is a bitch. He got his heart broken in college by Janette (Margaret McDuffy and Inayah Burton). She was the one that got away and this left a lingering hole in his heart. Unfortunately, he ends up filling it with the wrong person.

OffOffOnline: Denial—if you will?

Carleton King: Yes… She is evil but hopefully people get to understand what makes her the way she is.

OffOffOnline: She sounds more suited to Tony, the player.

Carleton King: He’s in denial in the sense that he doesn’t want a real relationship or love.

OffOffOnline: Why?

Carleton King: All the characters have their face value and their underlying value. In other words, the things that make them what they are. He’s in denial in the sense that he doesn’t want a real relationship or love.Tony (Patrick Jackson) has all these women, and it’s so easy for him. But why does he chase love like that? We just hope people can come to understand what makes a player a player.

OffOffOnline: How much does Jason relate to your life?

Carleton King: If you know my life, you really wouldn’t get the correlation. But a lot of the situations were inspired by the feelings that these scenes are based on. So if you follow the emotions, then you get the idea where the inspiration comes from.

OffOffOnline: How much is New York City a character?

Carleton King: This play could take place anywhere but it does come into play in the background of the characters. Mariah (Janelle Stein) is a reformed hood girl from the projects. That’s a very specific thing because projects in other cities are not the same. The ethnic mix in New York is also different. So the intermingling in our melting point is inherently different and represents itself in the characters.

OffOffOnline: Are you using the same actors from the series?

Carleton King: Except for me, it’s a whole new cast.

OffOffOnline: What was it like converting from the web to a play?

Carleton King: You don’t have the magic of editing and multiple takes. Then we had to break things down to their basic level and rearrange to fit a more natural order so they flow better.

OffOffOnline: What will be the impact of doing this live?

Carleton King: There’s so many things that I put into the show—it wouldn’t be the same if I tried to record it. The scenes had to be done right there in front of an audience because it’s more of an interactive thing… I’ll just say I plan to raise a few eyebrows.

OffOffOnline: What do you hope people take away?

Carleton King: The truth can be a very powerful thing that shouldn’t be lost in translation, and hopefully people can have the courage to be honest in the first place.

Performances of Why Not Just Tell The Truth run on Friday, Feb. 19 at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at The Tato Laviera Theatre (240 East 123rd St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.) in Manhattan. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visiting https://www.eventbrite.com/e/why-not-just-tell-the-truth-the-play-tickets-19703885853.

The (Not So Secret) Life of Men

It’s no secret that the early days of dating are about as easy to navigate as a combat zone. A million and one books have been written on the differences between men and women and their communication and dating styles. Elsinore County’s Antony Raymond’s yeah, i met this girl… explores the life of three men in various stages of their journeys in dating.

Expertly cast are Christopher Heard as Joe, the blonde, California pretty boy, Eric Doviak as Ben who is smooth-talking and looks like he just walked out of an episode of "Mad Men," and Dan McVey who plays Guy with enough ennui to make any girl fall for him. The play is set in a bar, which Guy has inherited from his father where the guys congregate to hash out their various experiences and theories about women and dating. The play focuses on their inner life, and at first, they seem caddish and shallow; reinforcing stereotypes about what they want in a woman: eye candy. Guy calls out to the others: "That's my type!" and Ben replies: "What? Hot!" But as the play unfolds we see they also want love and can be as insecure and uncertain about it as women are.

Raymond does an excellent job of using the small stage. With the help of lighting designer, Daryl Embry, tableaus are created and broken, and the stage comes to resemble various settings including a nightclub and restaurant. The actors work well together. At first, the dialogue seems to come too fast; patter that falls off a nervous tongue, but as momentum picks up, and scenes change in seconds, the aerobic patter is needed to maintain the rhythm of the action.

There are many enjoyable things about this play, but the writing is what makes it exceptional. Raymond has his finger on the pulse of the inner lives of men and women and compacts their feelings about dating and romance in today’s era of new age thinking and technology into small and poignant vignettes. He also admits how men can come up short in communication. At one point, Ben tells his friends he broke up with someone by leaving her a voice message. They chide him, so he admits he sent a text as well. When they ask what he said in the text, he confesses that he texted to say he left a voice message. They cringe, and so do we, but also laugh.

Well captured is the arbitrary and contrived nature of dating. At one point, a couple sits at a table, getting to know one another by asking each other questions. The intensity of the questions build quickly, and take on the tone of an interview created by someone's overbearing mother. They begin with the mundane: “What is your favorite color?,” but soon climax to the most loaded question of all: “Do you want to meet my parents?” Within in a few minutes, they are arguing about the future, and the relationship is over.

Also special to this play is how tightly choreographed the scenes are. Stacey Roca, Amanda Kristin Nichols and Zina Wilde represent a gamut of female archetypes. Reminiscent of a Sam Shepard play, but much more humorous, is a scene in which the three women cycle through the arms of the three men. It captures how fickle the heart can be depending on what it wants. Sometimes you just want sex and other times you want love and intimacy. The scene suggests that ultimately it’s about the chemistry. If you’re interested in finding out what lays beyond that, you will need some time.

Love does happen—to Joe, the one who is seemingly the most flirtatious and disinterested in a committed relationship. He gets engaged but gets his heart broken. The reason is not what you think. Guy continues to swear off musicians only to be infatuated by each one that comes into his bar to play open mic. Ben is the most cynical of the three friends and chastises the others when he declares: “You keep looking for some perfect girl to come along and save you, or some broken bird that you can save, but that’s not going to happen (…) There’s no perfect person out there for anyone except the person in the mirror.” It’s hard to tell if he’s the most enlightened or the most narcissistic. We are told to love ourselves first before we can have a meaningful relationship, and that is what Ben is suggesting.

However, it is Guy’s belief that there's a woman out there for every man; a binary, that aligns us more as social creatures. He even believes in a more cosmic connection and meditates on this: “You got to think about the ying and the yang. Without good there can’t be a bad. Could it be possible there is someone out there that was created with us and for us?” Let’s hope so! It definitely seems better to grow “old and wrinkly” with someone, as one of the actress' declares, then to remain moored on an island of cynicism and defeat. After all, no man is an island.

Elsinore County’s production of yeah, i met this girl by Antony Raymond is running through Feb. 14 at Under St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between First Ave. & Avenue A) in Manhattan. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visiting www.elsinorecounty.com. 

Greek by Way of Ireland

The Irish Repertory Theatre program for The Burial at Thebes credits Seamus Heaney as the author, but the Nobel Prize-winning poet, who died in 2013, didn’t originate the story. Like many others—including Racine (Phèdre), Jean Giraudoux (Tiger at the Gates), and Jean Anouilh, Heaney was inspired to refashion G­reek drama for a modern audience. Indeed, Anouilh himself drew on the same source, Antigone, as Heaney does for The Burial at Thebes, a 2004 reworking of the third of Sophocles’ plays about Oedipus and his descendants.

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The play takes place following a civil war, in which the brothers of Antigone, Eteocles and Polyneices, clashed. Heaney doesn’t delve into the source of the conflict: the brothers were to share the crown year by year, but Eteocles refused to step down when Polyneices’ turn came, and Polyneices took up arms against him. Both brothers have died in the deciding battle, and the leadership of Thebes is now in the hands of Creon, Antigone’s uncle and the brother of Jocasta—who may be remembered as both mother and grandmother to Antigone; her sister, Ismene; and their late brothers. Polyneices has been tarred as a traitor by Creon; he has declared that Eteocles will be buried as a hero, but Polyneices will be left unburied as carrion.

Heaney, who had reworked Philoctetes into a play, The Cure at Troy, in 1990, shows a keen sense of the drama in Antigone’s first words, underlining urgency and giving a streamlined sense of the conflict to come as well as the burden of the sisters’ history.

Ismene, quick, come here!
What’s to become of us?
Why are we always the ones?
There’s nothing, sister, nothing
Zeus hasn’t put us through
Just because we are who we are—
The daughters of Oedipus.

Compare that with the sedate 1962 translation by Michael Townsend:

My darling sister Ismene, we have had
A fine inheritance from Oedipus.
God has gone through the whole range of sufferings.
And piled them all on us—grief upon grief,
Humiliation upon humiliation. 

Heaney sticks with “Zeus” for the flavor of the original, rather than a Christianized “God,” and his simpler language moves more swiftly. His version of the story sounds more energetic to the modern ear (though one wishes he had avoided use of the anachronistic “beyond the pale”—it occurs not once or twice, but three times). Omitting the traditional chorus, Heaney focuses on individual personalities and equalizes their weight, especially benefiting Winsome Brown’s helplessly distraught Eurydice. 

The sisters’ dilemma is sparked by Paul O’Brien’s stern, autocratic Creon, whose edict demands death for anyone who buries Polyneices. His actions are an affront to the gods, and to Rebekah Brockman’s passionate, righteous Antigone. Katie Fabel’s Ismene is also upset but lacks the gumption to join Antigone in secretly burying their brother. To complicate matters, Antigone is betrothed to Haemon, Creon’s son (the intermarriage of the cousins in a family plagued by incest goes unremarked; after all, it’s long before blood work and DNA testing).

The cast, under the astute direction of Charlotte Moore, brings passion and fire to Heaney’s language. When Creon condemns Antigone for her actions and resists Haemon’s pleas to spare Antigone, Eurydice worries about the effect on Haemon, as well as her husband’s transgression of Greek custom. Yet Heaney’s virtue is that he simplifies as well, as in Ismene’s initial response to Antigone’s proposal: “Easy now, my sister/Think this through for a minute.” Or, also from Ismene, a passage that foregrounds a modern tension between chauvinism and feminism:

Women, defying Creon?
It’s not a woman’s place.
We’re weak where they are strong. 

Because the Irish Rep is forced to use the DR2 Theatre during renovations to its 22^nd Street home, and the cramped stage means Tony Walton’s set consists of a couple raised platforms and some decorative vertical roping, the actors must sidle off awkwardly. Nonetheless, the cast is solid, with Robert Langdon Lloyd’s blind seer Tiresias a sizzling standout. Colin Lane brings comic worry to the part of the guard who has let Antigone slip by and bury Polyneices—and then redeems himself with her capture. Curiously, he and Rod Brogan as the Messenger have pronounced Irish accents, which seem to mark them as a different class from the royals; but then Ciarán Bowling’s accent as the royal heir Haemon muddies the issue. Quibbles aside, even if this version of Sophocles feels Irish only by virtue of accents of some of its cast and its author’s birth, it’s a welcome foray into seldom seen Greek drama.

Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes plays through March 6 at the DR2 Theatre (103 E. 15^th St. between Union Square East and Irving Pl.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, and at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, and Friday-Sunday. Matinees are at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $71 and can be purchased at by calling 212-727-2737 or visiting OvationTix.com.

Not Just Another Sandwich...

Currently playing at Urban Stages is the latest adaptation and world premiere of Monte Cristo by Jared Reinmuth based on The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. An extraordinary cast of 13 who rarely, if ever, leave the stage deliver betrayal, lust, greed, power, and most of all, revenge. The director, Cailin Heffernan, utilizing a small space, keenly chose to keep the actors on stage as witnesses to each scene, as well as part of the scene. Ever present and always attentive, the actors pose, mimic and mime the action, create sound effects, and play musical instruments, including Spanish guitar and a drum called a djembe, while awaiting their turns in Dantes’ game of revenge chess. All these elements make the main dialogue even more compelling.

The story of Dumas’ 1844 classic is a familiar one. On the eve of Dantes’ (Tom Frank) wedding to young Mercédès (Kate Kenney), he is betrayed by three friends who devise a plot that labels him a betrayer of the crown. Imprisoned for 14 years, Dantes learns of the treasure of Monte Cristo, escapes from his captors, finds the treasure and returns to society taking on the persona of Count Monte Cristo. With wealth supporting him, he exacts revenge on his three false friends—one of whom, Mondego (Carsey Walker Jr.) has married Mercédès; they have one son, Albert (Brett Benowitz).

The plot takes place in the prison at Chateau d’If, in Rome during Carnival, and lastly, in Paris. What ties this current production by New Light Theater Project together so well, besides the multitalented cast, is original music by Henry Aronson, the film visuals created by Dedalus 7 projected onto the backdrop, dialect coaching from Theresa McElwee and superb fight direction by Dan Renkin. The lighting, by Michael O’Connor, is subtle and moody, bringing to life the simple yet creative set design by Sarah Lambert. Etched into the side walls are hash marks to count the number of days Dantes is in prison along with the phrase, “My God, let me keep my memory!”

Costume design by Cheryl McCarron consists of floor length dresses for the women, each in a different hue, while the men sport brocade vests with colored cravats. Monte Cristo is in a three-piece contemporary tux with a red cravat, which appears a little out of keeping with the period, but he wears it well. McCarron enhanced the costuming with colorful feathered masks for the Carnival in Rome, white gloves for the Parisian cocktail party and rough-hewn shawls for the men in prison. Overall, the costuming is extremely appealing.

Heffernan has molded her actors into an effective ensemble. Keeping track of the characters, each playing multiple roles with different accents, is challenging to watch at times, making it difficult to single out any actor. As a large, tight ensemble piece, each actor plays very well off the other as scenes meld seamlessly from one to another. The subtleties required to not just be present to what is happening center stage but to enhance it with sound effects and mime makes each actor an integral participant.

Frank’s portrayal as Monte Cristo is charismatic and engaging even as he manipulates his betrayers Fernand (Carsey Walker Jr.), Danglars (Vinnie Penna) and Villefort (Paul Sheehan). The young Mercédès, Kate Kenney, is bright and radiant. In an unusual scene at the wedding ceremony, Kenney dances with Mondego and they include Alana Barrett-Adkins, who then is "handed off" to portray the married Mercédès. Delivering rich performances are Liliane Klein as Mme Danglars and Margherita Peluso who played Mme de Villefort and La Carconte.

From the opening processional to the final shot, this is a vibrant production with a dedicated and talented cast. Revenge, in any century, may be sweet; however, the ensemble of Monte Cristo is rich with talent and proves it.

The New Light Theater Project's production of Monte Cristo runs through Feb. 13 at Urban Stages (259 West 30th St. between 7th and 8th Aves.) in Manhattan. performances are Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $10-$15 and can be purchased by calling 630-632-1459 or visiting BrownPaperTickets.com.

Fifty Shades of Activism

In Robert Lyons’ Death of the Liberal Class, directed by Jerry Heymann at the New Ohio Theatre, Nick, played with a self-deprecating aplomb by Steven Rattazzi, is a balding, pot-bellied academic who has written a book called "Robo Corp" that has garnered him great success after years of being an adjunct professor and a freelance journalist. However, after a “nervous breakdown” in which he rejects the ideas he has written about in the book—that robots will take over the world and that they are “standing on the precipice of the darkest period in history”—he has retreated to a farmhouse in Canada owned by his wife’s family.

His teenage daughter Andrea, played with a convincing mixture of indifference and righteousness by Jeanette Dilone, however, has dropped out of high school and followed him there. She has swallowed her father’s previous convictions hook, line and sinker, and has decided to pursue her own brand of activism, “hacktivism.” She is joined by the unassuming yet handsome Even, played by Justin Colon (who appears to have a magnificent singing voice revealed in one small snippet in the play) whom she has met online. The computer is the perfect tool for activism. Where it was once dangerous and possible to suffer bodily harm—think Kent State University in 1970 when four were killed and nine wounded in a melee between protesters and National Guard—computers have removed the physical component of activism and provided the safety of anonymity. Even and Andrea quietly, heads together, plan to take down the Robot Economy that her father has written about. The sexual tension is palpable even with their eyes glued to their respective keyboards.

Meanwhile, everyone is mad at Nick. He’s been sleeping with Maggie, the dewy skinned and wholesomely pretty Olivia Horton, who lives on the farm next door with her husband, and also with Daphne, his wife, when she comes to visit. Maggie’s husband beats her for sleeping with Nick and Daphne chides him for leaving New York City.

Although there is still sexual chemistry between them, Melissa Murray as Daphne captures the understated disdain that New Yorkers have for those who leave. After all, who, in their right mind, would leave an Upper West Side apartment in New York City? She may as well come out and say it: he’s a loser! But, somehow, living on the farm, in the middle of Canada has made Nick feel peaceful, and dare we say it, happy. In the opening scene, Nick’s daughter notes how happy he seems. When he retorts “I’m not allowed to be happy?,” she nearly chokes with disgust, “Not this happy!”

Nobody wants Nick to change, especially his daughter. Yet, he no longer believes in the chaotic world he wrote about in his book nor does he want to have anything to do with it. His daughter decides to carry out her own grassroots activism, and hacks into Maggie’s account. Comic relief comes unexpectedly in an exchange between Nick, his daughter, and Constable La Fontaine, a Canadian Mountie who works in the cyber division, played with wonderful restraint by the mustachioed Arthur Aulisi. When the Constable arrives at the farmhouse to investigate the hacking, they deny it. Although the Constable remains beautifully polite, it appears he knows better. It’s a moment filled with tension and irony.

Although we usually think of men as being better hackers, Andrea is actually the gifted hacker who plans to infect Wall Street computers with a virus that will bring them crashing down. Nick pleads with her, and asks her to see how it will affect the little people, but she is so full of her own—or rather Nick’s—ideological idealism that she runs off with Even to carry out the plan.

When Nick’s wife realizes he isn’t coming back to the city with her, she leaves and gives him an eviction notice from the farmhouse. In the beginning of the play, you wonder what Nick’s appeal is: he’s a middle-aged guy with thinning hair and a thickening middle who’s sleeping with two beautiful women. But then we see that it’s his underlying sensuality that makes him attractive. After he rejects his own lofty “liberal” ideas about the Robot Economy, he actually becomes more attuned to the world of living through the senses. At one point, his daughter comes to him, computer attached to her arm like an extra appendage, complaining she can’t get access. He gently says “access these trees… access the sky.”

Robert Lyons’ play asserts a very important message in this age of technology: that it can be both useful and destructive, but what it’s not, is sensual. Nick may be the underdog here, but in the end, he’s the one who is the true activist: being in tune with the senses is more likely to save humanity than anything else. The rest of the world around him needs a little more time to get there.

Death of the Liberal Class, written by Robert Lyons and directed by Jerry Heymann, runs through Feb. 13 at the New Ohio Theater (154 Christopher St., #1E between Greenwich and Washington Sts.) in Manhattan. Performances are Wednesday–Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday–Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by calling 1-888-596-1027 or visiting http://www.NewOhioTheatre.org.