Liberty for All

Liberty: A Monumental New Musical captures an America not unlike the one we see today: a place where people want to come, but also where many struggle to find work and build a simple but stable life. The story begins when Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a French artist, lovingly completes his statue and sends her to the United States (it's a gift from France to commemorate a century of independence), as if she were his own child. Liberty (played by teenage actress Abigail Shapiro) comes looking for a pedestal on which she can stand to spread her message of hope and freedom.

However, when she arrives at Ellis Island, she is given the same treatment as every other immigrant. She is poked and prodded, and given the twice-over; only to be rejected—after all, what is her purpose here anyway? Hope? That’s not enough. Commissioner Francis A. Walker, who was responsible for the census in the mid-1800s (played with a debonair charm by Brandon Andrus), schedules her to return to France on the next boat. Liberty perseveres. After all, hope is not only for the immigrant, but for everyone seeking freedom and a better life.

The wonderful cast brings life to a variety of characters: an Italian immigrant (Nick Devito), an Irish foreman (Mark Aldrich, who also plays news mogul Joseph Pulitzer), a Russian knish seller (Tina Stafford, who moves gracefully between the Russian Olga, and a wealthy American heiress named Regina Schuyler), a former slave (C. Mingo Lingo), and a native American Indian (Ryan Duncan).

Liberty is a love song to New York—a city that embraces everyone, or at least tries to—but it’s also a history lesson. There’s a great deal of information about Emma Lazarus, played with tight-lipped determination by Emma Rosenthal, who is the most well-drawn character in the play, and the most interesting. She teaches English to Giovanni, an Italian immigrant who seems to hang around the port (is he being deported, or just a loafer?). His improved English increases his betting options: “Ten to one!” he says triumphantly and skitters off. Emma looks after him with a wry smile, clearly amused. This intrigue, however, is forbidden: Emma is from an affluent Jewish family that has been in America for four generations. Hanging around the port and new immigrants is not what a society girl is supposed to do, even if she is a poet, and Regina Schuyler, a wealthy woman who puts her money where it will give her the highest profile, makes sure Emma knows she’s being watched.

With book and lyrics by Dana Leslie Goldstein, there are some laughs along the way. Particularly funny are “The Charity Tango” sung by Liberty, Commissioner Walker and Schuyler, and “We Had It Worse” in which the Russian immigrant Olga and the Irish immigrant Patrick McKay compete to see who had  it worse when they first arrived in America. However, as they crescendo in their comparisons, they also discover they agree on something when they sing: “Kids have no idea what hard work is” (…) “Soft” (…) “like a boiled cabbage,” and do a double-take in each other’s direction; they finish the song with a broad smile.

The production is fun, and kid-friendly, but very uneven. While the libretto is outstanding, the music by Jon Goldstein sounds canned; all the tracks seem to have been created on a synthesizer. The stage also feels small, not only because it is small, but because Evan Pappas's staging lacks dynamics and, at times, deflates the production. Some choreographed movement would have given the actors some breadth and depth and the production real musical-theater flair. Nonetheless, the cast clearly has their musical theater chops, and is led to a hopeful finale by Lady Liberty, who proves that perseverance pays off—a message we know is often true.

Liberty: A Monumental New Musical plays an open run at 42 West, 514 West 42nd St., between 10th and 11th avenues. Performances are Sundays at 2 and 5 p.m.; Mondays and Wednesdays at 3 and 7 p.m.; and Thursdays at noon and 3 p.m. Tickets are $72/$36 (premium/child premium); $63 (adult); $27 (children 4-12) and may be purchased by visiting LibertyTheMusical.com.

 

Ripped From the Headlines

Kim Davies’ deftly written new play, Stet, is inspired by the hotly debated 2014 Rolling Stone article, “A Rape on Campus,” which detailed a purported gang rape on the campus of the University of Virginia. The publication later retracted its story amid accusations of poor journalistic practices. 

Stet follows journalist Erika Novak (Jocelyn Kuritsky), a journalist assigned to write a story about rape on college campuses. The unsentimental Erika claims to be exhausted—“raped out” is the way she puts it—from a media saturated with similar stories, but her editor, Phil (Bruce McKenzie), challenges her to find a new way to cover the story—cutting to the heart of what really happens to the victims in the aftermath of sexual assault. The playwright herself is no stranger to the heavy topic. As an undergraduate, she attended a college with a pervasive date-rape problem. In 2014 her play Smoke was produced at the Flea Theater and received critical acclaim. Smoke took place at a bondage and fetish party.

In Stet, journalist Erika wades through endless accounts from victims as she tries to find one that stands apart from the typical “rape is bad” story. She discovers Ashley (Lexi Lapp), a college freshman with a horrific story of violent sexual assault by multiple men during her first few weeks on campus. Her accusations, ignored by the school because she didn’t file an official report, implicate a fraternity on campus.

Erika and Phil have found their hit cover story. Erika’s research leads her to Christina Torres (Dea Julien), the project coordinator for Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention at Ashley’s college. Erika is frustrated by Christina’s confirmation that many cases go unreported to police or campus security, but Christina is adamant that her job is to support the victim in whatever course of action she wishes to pursue. Erika also speaks with Connor (Jack Fellows), the leader of “One in Four,” an activist group on campus. Connor also happens to be vice president of the fraternity Ashley claims is responsible for her rape.

As Erika becomes more invested in the piece, Ashley grows more and more concerned about the implications of speaking out against her attackers. When Ashley says she no longer wants to be a part of the story, Erika talks to Phil about presenting Christina’s personal story instead—a much more “normal” rape story involving drinking and an acquaintance.

Erika, clearly affected by the emotional nature of the piece and her own connection to the topic, must grapple with presenting a story that will turn heads and land her her first cover piece or relating a familiar tale that is often ignored. Kuritsky does a wonderful job portraying Erika’s transformation from unattached, factual journalist to emotionally involved storyteller, helped by Jo Winiarski’s straightforward set, alternating between Erika and Christina’s offices yet morphing easily into a college bar with the help of walls that double as screens. Thanks to Katherine Freer’s projections, the screens add a multimedia element to the production. Scenes from the advocacy event “Take Back the Night” play on the walls as well as text messages between Erika and Ashley.

Multiple red flags throughout her investigation give Erika pause and in the end, she must use her journalistic moral compass to decide what story she shares with the world. Will she forge ahead despite the truth and “let it stand”—literally the meaning of the Latin stet, a common term in editing journalistic copy.

Stet presents audiences with a myriad of moral questions throughout its hour and forty minute run time, which flies by due to the snappy script and smooth staging by director Tony Speciale. The supporting cast of characters really shine as well. As Christina, Dea Julien brings an immediately energetic and likable personality to the stage. There isn’t a line she throws away the entire time she’s performing—brilliantly delivering small talk and moving monologues with the same level of skill.

As Connor, Jack Fellows speaks powerful and thought-provoking dialogue while believably remaining the typical “frat bro.” McKenzie plays Phil with a frustrating lack of self-awareness and detachment.

Davies’ script is full of lines that may sound cruel or politically incorrect when they come out of the actors’ mouths, but what is so powerful is the realization that similar things are said time and time again in the national conversation around sexual assault.

Stet runs through July 3 at the Abingdon Theatre Company (312 West 36^th St.) through July 3. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are Sundays at 2 p.m., and there is an additional matinee at 3 p.m. June 25. You can order online at http://abingdontheatre.org/stet/ or by calling the box office at 212-868-2055. (A portion of all ticket sales will be donated to Take Back the Night.)

’Tis Better to Have Loved ...

Out of the Mouths of Babes, a fun new situational comedy by Israel Horovitz, explores both the light and dark sides of life. In it, four women, three older and one younger, gather on the eve of a funeral. The deceased was a man they were all either married to or lovers with. In the opening scene, Evelyn (the remarkable Estelle Parsons) and Evvie (the earthy yet fiery Judith Ivey) meet in his apartment. It is familiar to them both because they lived there at apparently separate times. However, it turns out there was some overlap, and you know what that means.

Added to the mix is the morose Janice (Angelina Fiordellisi, an actress with the commanding and stentorian voice of an old-school stage actress, and founding director of the Cherry Lane Theatre), who was not invited at first because she was thought to be dead—she has a history of suicidal tendencies. Her first attempt was out a window in the very same room where they are all meeting. She left him for the same reasons the others did: infidelity. Marie-Belle (effervescently played by Francesca Choy-Kee), the thirtysomething kooky and idealistic most recent girlfriend of the departed (who was 100 when he passed away), has invited them all here. She appears to have psychic access to the deceased man and channels his thoughts as well as appears to remain, literally, in touch with him when she breaks into fits of laughter from the tickling matches he engages in with her from beyond the grave.

Death, rarely welcome, but always inevitable, can provide a microscope for the living to look at their lives in the present. Although at first they are cynical and even antagonistic toward one another, the women develop a rapport and join together in their concern for Janice. Whenever they lose sight of her, they immediately bond and frantically ask: “Where’s Janice?” And, unfortunately, at one moment when the other women are caught up in a reminiscent reverie about the past and the man who is now gone, their worry proves valid. There is nothing funny about suicide, but a topic can be made funny by the right ratio of drama to comedy. Under Barnet Kellman’s direction, the balance is perfect.

Neil Patel’s scenic design not only captures the airy and orderly nature of a Parisian apartment but is further complemented by the warm and intimate space of the Cherry Lane Theatre where the play is running. Paintings adorn the walls in Parisian salon style (and turn out to be the works of famous actors such as Rosie O’Donnell, Billy Dee Williams, and Joel Grey, among others). The one painting, however, that is given the most attention is Untitled Peonies, a work that Evelyn recognizes as her own creation from when she lived in the apartment in the ’60s. She can’t believe he still has it hanging on the wall.

Each of the women—Evelyn, Evvie, and Janice—left the man for the same reason. His unfaithfulness drove them away, but the initial bitterness and anger over his infidelity covers up the sadness and lament for the loss of a great love. When Evvie says, “He was a collector,” she means it as a bad thing. However, Horowitz suggests that collecting things, like lovers or paintings of former lovers, is a way of celebrating life.

Marie-Belle turns out to have an odd agenda. She extends the idea that they should all live together after the funeral. She claims she is rich, and although she appears to be an interminable airhead, has made a lot of money playing the stock market on advice from a friend. Between the apartment and the money, she feels they could have a good life together. Perhaps she is onto some kind of new age, enlightened concept of co-housing. Janice jumps at the chance, rather than out the window again. Evelyn, who is 88, and Evie, who is 68, warm to the idea. It’s attractive, not only because of their age, but because, truth be told, they are lonely, and living together may be a good antidote. They certainly know the apartment, and for all the bad memories, there are lots of good ones as well. It was their home once before. Why not again?

Israel Horovitz’s Out of the Mouths of Babes is playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce St. (near Sixth Avenue South). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. For tickets, call OvationTix at 866-811-4111, go online to www.cherrylanetheatre.org, or purchase them at the Cherry Lane box office. 

What If—Robots?

What would happen if technology rebelled against us? One possibility is explored in Mac Rogers’ Universal Robots, a science-fiction play set in Czechoslovakia after World War I. It is inspired by the 1921 sci-fi drama R.U.R., by the Czech playwright Karel Čapek. Čapek’s play, whose initials stand for “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” introduced the word “robot” to the English language and was instrumental in establishing the robot as a character.

Rogers expands upon Čapek’s world and creates his own universe filled with wired beings. The play eases into the realm of human-like robots in the first act. It begins with the gathering of the ensemble of robots (of which the audience is not aware) chanting of how they tell their story to remember. Remember what? This chant will surface again and connect many dots for the audience of whose story they are truly telling.

As the play opens, the characters are gathered at their local watering hole in Prague. The café is frequented by a playwright, Karel (Jorge Cordova), his sister, Jo (Hanna Cheek), who is a sculptor, and their barrage of friends. Here, they drink, laugh and discuss many of society’s conundrums. Life is good. Helena (Brittany N. Williams) enters the café, pushing a wheelchair containing an automaton, and introduces them to the object that will change their world. She asks them to come see the lab where the human-like robot was created. Their intrigue and fear grow, yet they ultimately agree to go with Helena to visit the plant and meet the automaton’s creator, Helena’s mother, Rossum (Tandy Cronyn).

After their visit, the world they know changes. They decide to embark on a mass production of automatons. They fear the loss of human employment and self-efficiency but establish ground rules to keep their creations in balance. They all agree to an established set of boundaries, and a union is formed. The robot production begins.

As the play progresses, Hitler is on the rise and a representative from the United States visits the President of the Czech Republic (Sara Thigpen), who is one of the major people in charge of the automaton project. Up to this point the group had decided that the automatons would not be used for war or programmed to kill, and now they are faced with saving millions of people or going against their values. They choose humanity—or do they?

Rogers outlines the deterioration of many of the close-knit human relationships from the beginning of the play. The pressure and guilt of programing the robots to kill prove to be too much to handle for some. One relationship with a sweet, sad dynamic is that of Jo (Hanna Cheek) and the robot Radius (Jason Howard), who was a human waiter, Radosh, who passed away and is later reincarnated as the face of the lead automatons. Radius is no longer human, but the physical association and emotions that tie Jo to Radius are very human. It brings up the question of where does humanity live, in the flesh or the soul? Howard shows versatility as he skillfully switches from human to robot with his diction and physicality. In his scenes with Jo he is able to capture the softness of a human yet parallel it with the sterility of a robot.

Rogers does a fantastic job of posing such deeply rooted questions that force the audience to really think about choices, good, evil and humanity as a whole. Rogers delves deeply into these complex themes and creation questions. He poses a hypothetical where choosing the lesser of two evils could be at the expense of humanity. Although the play deals with relevant issues, at times it feels as if he might be trying to tackle too many deep questions for one sitting.

Director Jordana Willams has put together a diverse cast of 10 in Universal Robots, a powerful, thought-provoking play that should be appreciated not only by sci-fi enthusiasts but anyone who is interested in thinking about the world’s “what ifs.”

Universal Robots runs through June 26 at the Sheen Center (145 6th Ave.; entrance on Dominick Street). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. tonight and Wednesday through Saturday; there is also a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $18 for students and may be purchased online at web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/957321.

The Private Is Now Public

Who doesn’t feel good when a posting on Facebook gets lots of “likes”? It’s a place where, when something momentous in your life happens, like a marriage, or a death, your FB friends—all hundreds of them—can give you a virtual hug. It’s also where the theater company Five on a Match culled the dialogue to create its production of Seen/By Everyone, directed by Kristin Marting at HERE Theater. Although the production feels fragmented—it’s nonlinear in both story line and dialogue—it does resonate. Primarily, it asks the question through the production itself: what is the effect of social media on our lives? It’s not an original question, and certainly not one that can be definitely answered, but it’s one worth considering from time to time.

The creators (Matthew Cohn, Amir Darvish, Meg MacCary, Enormvs Muñoz, and Jean Taher) use Facebook as a starting point, and every word in the show is from Facebook posts. The play, however, is not a head-on commentary on social media, but rather about the weight and depth of what is shared in this milieu. The writers focused on two major themes: relationships and death, and as in real life, conversation about these topics may be scaled down to their lowest common denominator, or fragmented. Also true to life is the pattern of everyday communication in which we respond to immediacy of information, as well as the tendency to meander down many different roads. No wonder we love social media so much: it mirrors our needs and patterns of communication so perfectly.

The play begins with a death, and picks up different fragments of different stories about relationships. One character, a perky but lost-looking character named Maggie (Alesandra Nahodil), dressed in a pleated white skirt and a crocheted blouse (costumes are by Oana Botez), sits at a bar. She says,­­­­­ “I made up a birthday so I felt justified getting wasted today.” Then, “I’m good at being homeless. But not that good.” The Bartender, dressed in tremendously tall lace-up platform boots, like the gatekeeper to a leather bar, addresses her with platitudes: “It’s OK to be alone,” he repeats over and over. Later, he gives her a list of all the things she can do to feel better: “write a story, read a new book or magazine, take a nap.” She seems unappeased. Later we learn why. She’s restless but not for the reasons we think. It’s a part of the play that remains a mystery until the end. However, in his attempt to soothe her, the gatekeeper/bartender (as usual) turns out to be the wisest one.

In some scenes, more naturalistic acting and narrative bring characters together. They gather at the bar, or at tall, round tables in the center of the space and gossip, fight, laugh, cry and over share. At one point, Rose (Katie Brustele) and Bernice (Jen Taher) exchange superficial tidbits. Bernice aptly launches into a diatribe about the elimination diet she’s doing in which she can’t eat any “gluten anything, no corn, soy, chocolate, booze, pork/beef/shellfish, no dairy/cheese/yogurt/egg, no sugar, maple syrup, agave, or honey.” It’s funny because it’s timely. Everyone knows someone, or knows of someone, who is consciously taking something out of their diet.

Without the development of characterization and a story line, however, it’s hard to get a sense of who these characters are. When Bernice accuses Fred (RollsAndre) of being cynical, we have to take her word. In this world, we have to take the other’s word, and there is some suggestion that social media nullifies our individuality. This is particularly implied when actors don masks with mirrored tiles, and line up. The masks make them faceless, and take away their individually, perhaps representative of the virtual FB community that is based on photos, disembodied words, and still images, rather than real interactive ones.

The experience of watching Seen/By Everyone can be disorienting if you’re not willing to leave your typical theatergoing road map of expectations behind. In the end, it offers a thought-provoking experience about the nature of what happens when important events, or everyday issues, are filtered through the lens of sharing vis-à-vis Facebook, a place where our identities are easily socially constructed, and where information, when isolated, can be disembodied.

Five on a Match’s world premiere of Seen/By Everyone runs through June 25 at HERE (145 6th Ave.; entrance on Dominick Street). Performances are at 8:30 p.m. June 16-19 and 22-25. Tickets are $25 and may be purchased online at http://www.seenbyeveryone.com/tickets/.

Love’s Lasting Effect

How tightly does the average American cling to a confabulation of love? If pop culture’s steady stream of uninspired TV shows and mildly erotic paperbacks is any indication, people seem to be grasping for any and all channels that lead to answering this question. Unsurprisingly, New York theater offers an intelligent, mesmerizing counter: The Effect, a play by Lucy Prebble. The Effect has a singularly moving tension at its core: can two people fall in love under “the effect” of a powerful anti-depressant? Or is love simply the side effect of that drug?

Barrow Street Theatre’s exceptional take on this award-winning play (it received rave reviews and multiple awards in London and has struck similar chords of awe Off-Broadway), pushes us to seriously consider a fanciful four-letter word that ordinarily inks the pens of poets. Director David Cromer orchestrates this production with white-knuckled excitement at the mere prospect of discovering something unknown about love. The Effect suggests a new, intoxicating interpretation of modern romance, unbothered by moral clichés or excessive sentiment.

The play opens inside a sanitized hospital room, with quiet colors and sensible chairs and white lab coats. Connie Hall (played by a fantastic Susannah Flood) is being interviewed by Dr. James, her clinical supervisor. She is careful and precise, answering every question with painstaking clarity—sometimes to humorous effect. Next, Tristan Frey (a terrific Carter Hudson) plops himself down in from of Dr. James and proceeds to flirt, extemporize and generally misbehave. These two main characters could not be more different from each other. In the confines of their six-week-long aphrodisiac existence as part of the drug trial of an antidepressant, Connie and Tristan discover each other in themselves, each pushing the other to believe in their respective ideas of love.

Cromer urges nervous humor in Flood and Hudson’s performances. The two protagonists carry conversations like precocious babes endowed early with the power of speech. Flood’s Connie is a study in fastidious, think-first-talk-later practicality, but Hudson’s inspired Tristan Frey is endlessly energetic, dancer-like and hell-bent on talking Connie into falling for him. It isn’t enough to say that their chemistry is palpable; when their eyes meet, each magnetizes the other’s performance, elevating the entire production to goosepimply electricity.

As for the emotional trauma of falling in love—for it is, the play argues, a kind of trauma—Cromer reserves such hefty work for Steve Key and Kati Brazda. Understated, Brazda plays the most unexpectedly affecting character, Dr. Lorna James. As the lead psychologist of the antidepressant study, James begins her arc as a dry clinical supervisor, reining in the sexual urges of Connie and Tristan with the amused authority of an animal handler. But as her interactions with Dr. Toby Sealey (Key) reveal, she hides a deep, corrosive wound, thanks in large part to her beliefs in love and attachment. It is through James that we see the real pitfalls of love—the ones Prebble wants to warn us about.

The players are not Cromer’s only tools, however; moving walls, suggestively dark corners and flashing text are sleek supplements to the overall effect of the play (the scenic design is by Marsha Ginsberg and lighting design is by Tyler Micoleau). These additives do not distract from the entire play, as one might expect, but rather enhance Prebble’s narrative. A particularly hilarious scene involves both Connie and Tristan taking a psychological test in which they must name the colors of the words that flash on a screen before them. James dryly notes that her subjects will falter at words that they associate with emotional burden. “Father,” “diet,” “breasts” and “guilty” prove particularly difficult for our lovers.

Cromer aims to show us a precise examination of falling in love, with all its awkward pauses, fitful first moves and, yes, even sex, in all its clinical vulnerability. Prebble’s commentary on modern love is a moving, masterly ode to humanity’s endless pursuit of answers to nebulous ideas. The Effect disturbs and excites—your notions of everything from intimacy to depression will take a hit, for the better.

Barrow Street Theatre’s production of The Effect runs through Sept. 4. Evening performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased by visiting SmartTix.com, on the phone at 212-868-4444, or in person at the Barrow Street Theatre box office, open at 1 p.m. daily. For more information, visit www.BarrowStreetTheatre.com 

Define Liberated

It’s difficult to get excited about six straight, homogeneous women sitting around in a weekly support group in Brooklyn eating Chinese, drinking wine, and going on about work, men, and sex in the age of Tinder. Imagine watching The View—add food, wine, and Zumba but without an ethnically diverse panel or politics and you’ve got a gist of #liberated, playing at the IRT Theater in Manhattan. Conceived and written by Lillian Meredith, who is one of the actors, the play is created by an ensemble of artists known as The Living Room, dedicated to creating work about contemporary American women.

#liberated starts out relatively innocuously. The “Sister Support Group for the Daily Trials of Being a Woman,” a.k.a. W-I-P-E (an acronym which is never explained), meets weekly and begins each meeting with a fast and crazy video on learning Zumba moves. This week one of the members has invited another woman to join them without asking the group first. The women seem to be put off by someone new inhabiting their “safe space,” but they soon acquiesce. They pour her a generous mug of wine as if to symbolize acceptance into the tribe. The topic this evening starts out smartly enough about the sexual exploitation of women in advertising, and the conversation devolves into who watches porn and who doesn’t. Over the next few meetings the women decide to bring samples of porn that each likes to share with everyone, and the reactions to one another’s choices are quite funny. Then they get the idea to create a more feminist version of porn, with each creating a scene to be acted out and videotaped. Realizing that this may actually empower and liberate other women, they upload the finished product to the Internet with one swift click.

The video takes off—like after like, share after share—that is, until the Internet trolls, hiding behind avatars and fake names (probably sitting in the dark in their underwear in their parents' basements) come out of the woodwork. The scene is similar to watching celebrities read mean tweets about themselves. The trolls are horrific, one wishing they would “drink bleach and die” and another spewing, “I’m ready to pump GENIUS level sperm into your football-shaped body.” The women lose focus on their original intent and create a new set of sexual videos trolling the trolls. Nothing good comes of it, and the play turns extremely dark.

#liberated is codirected by Rachel Karp and Jaki Bradley—it’s almost as if one directed the first half and the other directed the second. There are some good comedic moments early on, although not sustained, and it’s easy to see that the women enjoy being with one another. Dancing to Enya with multicolored scarves to simulate an undulating vulva is actually a pretty funny moment. However, there is nothing sexy enough nor hardcore enough to warrant the vitriol foisted on them by the Internet trolls. The sexual scenarios mostly come off as silly and tame, which begs the question, why the backlash? These are women who most likely would have experimented in college. They know of PornHub and Max After Dark, but beyond that the script lacks imagination and daring.

As an ensemble piece, #liberated includes Tamara Del Rosso, Zoë Sophia Garcia, Lillian Meredith, Gabby Sherba, Taylor Shurte, and Madison Welterlen. They are good enough, given a marginal script. The Brooklyn apartment set design by Frank Oliva has an Ikea look, which includes nice lighting credited to Scot Gianelli. The sound design by Ben Vigus is across the board and oddly employs misogynistic rap music between the scenes. Vigus evokes Internet sounds, television newscasts, and lively Zumba-type music.

In the world of oversharing on the Internet, between Facebook and every social media app, #liberated seemed to want to say something profound. Unfortunately, it never says enough. It does not include women of color or create a powerful, lasting conversation. In a year where we may see the first female president in this country, it’s way past time for women to step up and truly make a difference in the world for women. At best the only message here is don’t engage in a battle on the Internet—no one ever wins.

#liberated runs until June 19 at IRT Theater (154 Christopher St., 3 Floor, #3 B) in Manhattan. Performances are Wednesday through Monday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $18 and are available at rttheater.org.

Paranormal Problems

For the first production by Irish Repertory Theatre on its return to its 22^nd Street location after a year’s renovation and exile, artistic director Charlotte Moore has chosen (or perhaps approved) Conor McPherson’s Shining City, a 2004 play about a psychiatrist and his patient who wrestle with secrets and regrets that is directed by longtime associate Ciarán O’Reilly. (Shining City was eventually seen on Broadway in 2006.) In some ways the play is a mixed bag: McPherson’s early works, such as The Weir (1997) and Port Authority (2003), rely on interrelated monologues to tell a story. In The Weir, for instance, a group of people gather in a bar and tell ghost stories, one by one. In later works, such as The Seafarer and The Night Alive, McPherson becomes less reliant on speeches than on give-and-take that resembles real conversation.

Shining City concerns a Dublin psychiatrist, Ian (Billy Carter), who has taken on a patient, John, a man who cannot sleep in his home since he saw the ghost of his dead wife, Maury, killed in a violent traffic accident. Played by Matthew Broderick with a deft Irish brogue, John is worried about his sanity. The memory of the apparition haunts him, and he cannot stay overnight in his home. John seeks Ian’s help in restoring him to sleep at night. In a series of near-monologues with the psychiatrist, John reviews his life and marriage.

Ian, meanwhile, has troubles of his own. He wants out of his marriage to Lisa Dwan’s Neasa, and when Neasa arrives and listens to him explain, she seems rather a dunce, cottoning to the fact that he’s leaving her long after the audience knows it. The couple have a row in his home office, and he assures her he’ll take care of her but that he won’t return to the marriage. There’s less give-and-take than there is of Ian’s staking out his position fully, and then Neasa delivering her side of the story. O’Reilly’s direction can’t disguise that the playwright is still adapting to conversational back-and-forth.

Anyone familiar with McPherson’s work knows that something eerie is going to happen, but when it does, unfortunately, the effect is much less chilling than it was in the Broadway production. Whether it’s due to Broderick’s laid-back delivery, which, although an appropriate choice for the character, somehow makes the proceedings too cozy, and the audience too comfortable, or whether O’Reilly’s staging simply fails to do the moment justice, is unclear.

But Broderick is doing better work than he has in a long time. He’s taken on a gigantic role and he’s never less than enjoyable in it. Billy Carter as the psychiatrist is also exemplary. His Ian is energetic, sympathetic, emotionally torn and yet willing to face hard truths. A late entrance by James Russell’s Laurence, a pickup for sex, reveals much about Ian, who abandoned the priesthood in order to marry Neasa. Yet a final scene further complicates the nature of Ian’s character, and one senses that perceptions are not to be relied upon. It calls to mind Hamlet’s observation, “There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.” It's a good epigraph for the play’s finale as well.

That Ian’s name is the Gaelic version of “John” is a subtle hint at the haunting climax. The Irish Rep’s Shining City is a satisfying, if not ideal, rendering of what feels like a transitional play by an important modern playwright.

The Irish Rep’s Shining City plays through July 3 at the company’s refurbished home at 132 W. 22 St. in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Matinees are at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, call Ovationtix at (212) 727-2737 or visit irishrep.org.

Home Town Unpleasantries

Alan Ayckbourn’s plays have been a fixture of the Brits Off Broadway Festival for several years. This year, along with a revival, the festival is presenting the world premiere production of Hero’s Welcome, first seen at Ayckbourn’s own Stephen Joseph Theatre in Yorkshire, England, and now on an international tour.

Ayckbourn, the author of 79 plays, may be one of the most underrated playwrights alive. Many of his works are comedies, but there are often dark underpinnings. From his classic Absurd Person Singular (1975), in which a hilarious attempted suicide takes up the entire second act, to Arrivals & Departures (2013), one of his darkest, he has been a masterly commentator on British society in plays that range from science fiction (Comic Potential, Communicating Doors) to astute social observation (Things We Do for Love, Absent Friends)—always using comedy to make his points.

Unlike many Ayckbourn plays, Hero’s Welcome feels a bit long and complicated. Opening with Elgarian music and a TV interview, it concerns a soldier named Murray (Richard Stacey) who has returned to his small home town to take up residence with his new wife, a woman from the unidentified foreign country in which he conducted his heroic deeds. Her name is Madrababacascabuna, but she goes by Baba. The interview elicits a confession from Murray that he left under a cloud; he was “a bit of a tearaway,” as his interviewer puts it. As Ayckbourn’s play unfolds, it becomes clear that the heroes in the play are the three wives we see; their husbands are cruel or ineffectual. The mayor of the town, Alice (Elizabeth Boag), was abandoned at the altar by Murray. Now she is matched with a kind-hearted duffer named Derek (Russell Dixon), who plays with toy trains all over their house, and who describes himself as a “consort.”

Murray’s old mate Brad, meanwhile, is married to Kara. But the upper-class, wealthy Brad refuses to acknowledge that he and Murray were close childhood friends. The competitive Brad is, in Wodehousian terms, a blackguard. He repeatedly insults Charlotte Harwood’s cheery, giggly Kara, and she accepts it.

Murray hopes to resurrect the family business, an old hotel called the Bird of Prey. It’s listed as historically important but is rundown. Moreover, Murray’s father couldn’t pay the taxes on it, and now it belongs to the town council, and Alice is bent on tearing it down. Although she’s not vicious, it suits her impulse for revenge to prevent Murray’s buying back the property.

Ayckbourn’s play is about the public faces people put on that conceal their private personalities, and how the past shapes those personalities. Just as Kara remains chirpy in order not to recognize Brad’s cruelty, Brad himself is cruel in order to forget his lack of courage in throwing over a woman he loved in the face of his parents’ threat of disinheritance. Murray, meanwhile struggles with some bad behavior of his own. In addition to jilting Alice, his heroism is a sham.

It’s often unwise for an author to direct his own work, but in the past Ayckbourn has proved the rare exception to the rule. This time, though, the play feels a bit longer than it need be, and a bit overstuffed with incident. What a different director might have done to tighten it is uncertain, but the actors, at least, are outstanding. Stephen Billington’s Brad is all surly arrogance, and Boag’s Alice is stiff and competent, but frosty from a life of suspicion sparked by her jilting. Dixon is a comic pleasure, and Derek’s rising to his Lochinvar moment, when he excoriates Brad, is deeply satisfying. Stacey’s Murray is perhaps the least interesting character—he’s not the hero of the title, since it’s an ensemble piece—but he conveys decency, modesty and honest regret.

Still, it’s Evelyn Hoskins’ Baba who is first among equals. Learning English slowly and painstakingly, bravely facing a future in as a refugee, ultimately befriending Kara and confronting Alice, Baba’s journey becomes the play’s real focus. Early on, after she has met the people from Murray’s past, she asks him: “Why they hate you?” Like Winnie in the Ayckbourn masterpiece My Wonderful Day (2009), she knows the truth that others cannot see.

Two Alan Ayckbourn plays, Hero’s Welcome and Confusions, run in repertory through July 3 at the Brits Off Broadway Festival at 59 East 59 St. between Park and Madison. Tickets are $70 but two-show packages are available. For information, visit 59e59.org.

Cognitive Dissonance

So much has been written about elephants—their vast capacity for family and emotions, as well as the horrific plight of being hunted and maimed for the ivory—that it’s easy to see why Jakob G. Hoffman chose this magnificent species as a subtext for his play, A Persistent Memory. It is the story of a young, wealthy philanthropist, David Huntington (Drew Ledbetter) attempting to make sense of his issue with time and lapses of memory. Elephants and memory—two things that have a long association.

There are numerous threads of the plot that transcend time in David’s world, one where he is never without his journal. It’s difficult to know whether David journals because he’s continually trying to make sense of the difficult losses he has experienced or as an antidote to his self-diagnosed early-onset Alzheimer’s. His addiction to sugar pills to calm his nerves doesn’t appear to help. While in Uganda he meets Olivia (Victoria Vance), a middle-aged, UNICEF worker from Belgium. David’s Ugandan friend from boarding school (Richard Prioleau) has called ahead to introduce them. She tells him of new, strange behaviors by the local elephants and alludes to events that have happened in his life, which makes David uncomfortable. Regardless of what she has been told, she is attracted to him.

Elijah’s girlfriend Carly (Claire Warden) is a concert violinist with a drug problem, and while it seems they have had intense sexual relations, those have now dwindled, to Carly’s annoyance. Kasem (Ariel Estrada), a Thai man and elephant expert, is soliciting funds from David’s family foundation. He is easily angered when David mispronounces his name—it’s KAH-sam—and he walks with a limp that is never explained. Lastly, Marie (Lisa Bostnar) is the fiancée of the elder (unseen) Huntington. She wants father and son to move on from the tragedies that have upset their lives.

Hoffman attempts to address drug and alcohol addiction; sexual issues, from latent homosexuality to middle-aged crises and affairs; trauma, including murder, suicide, and death; depression; and possibly early-onset Alzheimer’s. Those are just the human issues. Stories of elephants in captivity being abused and the ravages of elephant poaching are woven throughout.

Hoffman’s non-linear approach to memory issues works well—“I thought I had already been there”—to show the nagging thoughts plaguing David. Being totally present in any situation is difficult for him. However, because none of the story lines is linear, they prove so confusing that the ending, when it comes, is unexpectedly abrupt. Both playwright and director allow the script to get lost in an abundance of stories that never dig deep enough into the meaning of existence, a question that also preys on David's mind.

Silly script details torture A Persistent Memory, specifically with regard to David and his dialogue. When Olivia hands him a picture of Lake Victoria, his commentary on Africa is childlike: “I can remember growing up, if someone would mention Africa to me, I would immediately think of Tarzan movies, apes—that sort of thing,” but he never moves into a more learned dialogue about Africa.

The redemption of A Persistent Memory is the talented, diverse cast. It is unnerving to witness Warden as Carly experiencing an overdose, and Prioleau’s subtle delivery of Elijah’s affection for David is moving. As Kasem, Estrada’s devotion to the elephants is heartfelt. Vance’s monologue in the AA meeting talking about her devotion to good vodka, neat, is clear and on point.

As David, Ledbetter shows exasperation with not only himself and others, but his lapses of memory are profound. Director Jessi D. Hill uses the actors well to create a fluid expression of time against David’s memories weaving in and out, but in the end A Persistent Memory still feels like a series of vignettes.

When a play feels like it’s not coming together, it’s easy to hear dialogue that reinforces what’s wrong with the script. In a conversation with Elijah about coming late to Carly’s violin performance, David says, “I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s like my mind decided to log it away as something that already happened. Like a past memory. Forget it. I know it doesn’t make any sense.” And, too often, neither does A Persistent Memory.

A Persistent Memory is playing through June 18 at the Beckett Theatre (410 W. 42nd St., between 9th and 10^th avenues). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. There is an additional matinee at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. Tickets are $49.50. Due to the subject matter, this may be inappropriate for ages 12 and under. For more information and to purchase tickets visit http://www.apersistentmemory.com/

Signature Moves

The Sandbox opens inside a blinding yellow set, and the audience oohs at the sight of a rippling male abdomen, belonging to that of a nameless Young Man standing on a beach, as he stretches his arms up and down. The first impression of this play, the opener in three one-acts under the umbrella title of “Signature Plays,” is that of visual and aural superfluity. In the remaining two plays, Drowning by María Irene Fornés and Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, the visual impressions push and pull between deficit and excess. Albee, Kennedy and Fornés, all resident artists of Signature Theatre’s past seasons, are commemorated in this series of plays; with such heavyweights, it’s no surprise that empathy, satire, and metaphor figure beautifully in a production that fantastically sequenced and pleasingly produced. 

In Edward Albee’s tragicomic The Sandbox, bright, gaudy beachwear dances on the bodies of the players, and a cellist plays an affecting, mournful solo throughout. Mommy (Alison Fraser) and Daddy (Frank Wood)  are spending an aimless, empty day at the beach, and have dragged a particularly voluble Grandma (Phyllis Somerville) along. Grandma is nearing her end, and she is (ironically) very much taken by the Young Man (Ryan-James Hatanaka) flexing and stretching beside her. Hilarious fourth-wall breaks somewhat diminish the cello’s winding dirge (the music is by Brandon Wolcott), but age and the requisite humor of growing old suffuse Albee’s questions with sadness. The cake-like set (by Mimi Lien) is jarringly reminiscent of filmmaker Wes Anderson’s visual ideas; the striking environment serves as the backdrop for the writer’s melancholic humor. Under Houghton’s masterful direction, the actors are the visual realization of Albee’s kooky, world-weary amusement. 

From this melancholic treat for the eyes and ears, we are steered into María Irene Fornés’ Drowning. If there was ever a play that was built to test the dramatic resolve of its audience, it is Drowning. Fornés’ one-act play takes place in what looks like a old-timey diner. The first visual shock we receive are the strange, melted get-ups that the two main characters, Pea (Mikeah Ernest Jennings) and Roe (Sahr Ngaujah), have on. They have science-fiction bodies, although Roe reassures Pea: “You are made of human flesh.” And for our next visual jolt: every movement the actors make is made with agonizing, breathtaking slowness. The push of a newspaper, a lean forward, even the blink of the eye, are retrograded and decelerated. Jennings and Ngaujah move through molasses, as their characters struggle to reconcile their inward innocence and hope with society's reactions to their ugliness.

In perhaps the highlight of the production, Fornés’ slow-moving masterpiece is rendered into a magical, morphing painting. Every visual element is a lullaby of movement. When Pea is rejected by a "fair" woman he has fallen for, Jennings electrifies his performance with anguish, breaking the slow, known rhythm of movement through molasses and yielding to a restive, frenzied unhappiness. His vocalizations of this unhappiness and particularly moving: he says that he is “too smooth and black” for this world, too ugly, undesirable and rough to validate his claim for a fair woman's love. It is difficult to ignore, as is Fornés’ intention, the sharp allegorical reference to the modern plight of the young black man. How does he deal with society's rejection of him, a rejection so inherently based on the color of his skin? Does he ignore the tension bubbling inside of him, as Ngaujah’s Roe does, or does he have no choice but to exorcise it by speaking aloud, as the unfortunate Pea endeavors to?

But if Drowning was a statement on the modern condition of the young black man, Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro is the ultimate homage to the modern mixed life of a half-black, half-white woman. As the final piece in the production, Funnyhouse’s undeterred commitment to shock, upset and amaze its viewers proved an almighty boon to Kennedy's terrific play. From direction (Houghton) to brilliant costume and sound design (Kaye Voyce and Wolcott, respectively), Funnyhouse was the standout piece of the night. It follows the elegantly cosmopolitan mind of the author, studying English literature in New York and living in anonymity, yet struggling with the emotional trauma of her family’s past. On stage, the author (played by Crystal Dickinson) guides us through her varied relationships with Patrice Lumumba, her father and a troubled African priest (a fantastic Sahr Ngaujah), Jesus, and her gold-clad avatars, including the white-faced Duchess of Hapsburg. Booms and swells of jolting, terrifying music punctuate Kennedy’s allegories. Each actor inflects his lines with the playwright’s unique poetic intent—that her emotional life has the makings of a nightmare. It is full of sound, fury and the inescapable divisiveness of growing up as black and a white woman. 

Scenic designer Lien again creates a resplendent set, full of moving staircases, disappearing mirrors and golden chandeliers. Red draperies hang from a gilded bed, and pockets of light shine suggestively in corners. The beauty of the final play reminds us strikingly of that bright yellow scene from The Sandbox, and the dancer-like finesse of Drowning. Director James Houghton has seemingly bound the threads of three disparate tales into a single, heady production. Aside from the welcome challenge of building one’s visual literacy as a theatergoer, eyes and ears will take infinite delight in the impressionistic treats of the “Signature Plays.” 

“Signature Plays” runs through June 12 in The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42^ndSt.,between 9^th and 10^th Avenues). For dates and box office information, please visit http://www.signaturetheatre.org//tickets/production.aspx?pid=4284

It’s War

The juxtaposition of two masterpieces by two giants of modern theater on opposite sides of the ever more relevant and explosive issue of gender is a New York theatrical event. Theater for a New Audience has paired Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House with the lesser-known The Father, by August Strindberg, a play written partially in response to the Ibsen play.

Director Arin Arbus and her creative team brilliantly use the same actors in similar roles in both plays and configure the theater at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in traverse with the audience on two sides of a fairly narrow but long stage. A Doll’s House, first produced in 1887, follows the 1937 Thornton Wilder adaptation. The Father, written in 1887, boasts a newly commissioned translation of from writer and director David Greig.

Both plays tell the story of a marriage that falls apart when a woman takes action on behalf of a husband or child in a world in which the society upholds male prerogatives. The law denies both women scope of action on critical matters in their lives. In The Father, it would deprive Laura (Maggie Lacey), the wife of Captain Adolf, the title character, of any say in the future of her child. In A Doll’s House, it turns Nora’s saving of her husband Thorwald’s life into a criminal act. What will Laura do when the Captain (John Douglas Thompson), her husband, announces his irrevocable decision to send their daughter away to school to become a teacher when she wants Bertha (Kimber Monroe) to remain home and study art? What will happen to Nora when her forgery of a promissory note on a loan is revealed to him just as, inconveniently, he is about to start a new job as the head of a bank?

In both plays the man is the provider, and the husband complains about his wife’s spending his hard-earned money (no concept of an economic partnership here!). Both women must connive to make their marriages work and get what they want, be it the nibble of a macaroon or the destiny of a child. In both, wives get in the way of their husbands’ careers, Laura in misdirecting her husband’s scientific letters detailing hard-won discoveries, and Nora in forging her father’s signature and potentially placing her husband in a compromised situation at his bank. Is it coincidence that the dramatic turning point of each play depends on an act of male violence? In The Father, Captain Adolf throws a lamp at his wife and the resulting fire is a tour de force of staging by Arbus with Riccardo Hernandez’s scenic design. Matters for the Captain devolve from there. In A Doll’s House, the violence is verbal. Thorwald’s berating of Nora when he feels his career and social standing are threatened fires Nora’s decision to leave the confinement of her “doll’s house.” The overlap of the two plays could hardly be more striking.

But that overlap is indeed the point, and it throws the different human, gender, and theatrical visions of the plays into far sharper relief. A Doll’s House is, of course, not just the dramatic rendering and canny analysis of the woman’s situation in the late 19th century; it is a manifesto that speaks boldly even today. When Nora’s husband, Thorwald, defends himself to his wife, saying, “No man sacrifices his honor even for the woman he loves,” and Nora responds, “Millions of women have done it,” the audience at the Polonsky erupted in applause. With humiliating clarity, Nora comes to understand how living in homes run by men has stunted her growth as a human being. “I’ve been living like a beggar, by performing tricks for you!” she tells Thorwald. “You and my father are responsible. It’s your fault my life has been wasted.” Maggie Lacey is commendable in both wife roles, and does especially well with the lighter shades of Nora’s passionate character.

In The Father, the Captain’s human growth has been stunted too, and in a manner parallel to Nora’s, since it is his profound and early attachments to women, plumbed to extraordinary depths in the play and in the harrowing and magnificent performance by Thompson, that undermine and doom him. Thompson’s performances as the husbands are powerful, but the Strindberg provides him with a role of rare emotional range in which he, along with the audience watching him, absolutely revels. The Father is a cri de coeur on behalf of husbands and breadwinners everywhere and the sacrifices that come with that role. At the heart of this painful play is not a heroic vision of manhood but rather a disturbing vision of male weakness. It is out of weakness that the Captain reaches to the law and social norms of male prerogative to counter the will of his determined wife.

At the same time, staging the plays in repertory works to Strindberg’s advantage. The tight construction of The Father, in which the suspicions his wife plants about whether he is Bertha’s father or not drive the Captain to insanity, makes the Ibsen work feel, at moments, contrived, as when Nora’s friend and foil, Mrs. Linden, makes the shocking decision to allow Thorwald to find the damning letter that will reveal Nora’s forgery. The psychological contradictions and depths of Strindberg’s portrayal of the Captain makes Ibsen’s portrayal of Nora's final resolve to leave her husband and two children appear less powerfully motivated by comparison. 

At the end of A Doll’s House, there is hope beyond the confines of the performance itself. Nora, who was courageous enough to undertake an extraordinary scheme to save a husband’s life, will surely succeed now that she has made the decision to save her own life.  And in the aftermath of battle, there is the possibility of a new woman and new man that will emerge from this process. The same is not true for the more despairing vision of Strindberg, in which the male is fundamentally powerless, and the entire family a rubble of destruction. Tellingly, it is the Captain’s own nanny, Margaret, beautifully played with unexampled tenderness by Laurie Kennedy, who tricks him into the actual straitjacket to which his madness has led him. For the noble Captain, there is no exit. Strindberg’s vision is as dark as Ibsen’s is radical.

Arbus and her marvelous casts invite us to place these plays beside each other and, in so doing, come away with a new understanding, not only of these works, not only of these playwrights, but of ourselves. Can great theater do more?

Theater for a New Audience presents August Strindberg's The Father and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House in repertory at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place) in Brooklyn through June 12. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, call Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.tfana.org.

An Epic Cut Down to Size

John Doyle has made a name for himself with pared-down productions, mainly of musicals—The Color Purple, now on Broadway; Passion and Allegro for Classic Stage Company—and his first foray into traditional plays for CSC, where he is the new artistic director, features that trademark minimalism. Peer Gynt, written in verse and covering a lifetime of its hero, who wanders from Norway’s fjords to the deserts of Arabia to find himself, is an epic journey.

Ibsen wrote his eventful play in 1867 but did not intend it for performance. After a change of heart, he asked his countryman Edvard Grieg to compose music for a theatrical premiere in 1876. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, which grew out of his incidental music, is one of the most lushly Romantic pieces of music of the 19^th century. Here, though, Dan Moses’ Schreier’s music features a couple violins that often drone long notes and underscore scenes, and choral writing that features humming by the six actors playing all the subsidiary parts.

The role of Peer Gynt itself stands as an Everest for an actor, yet it comes around far more rarely than Hamlet. Richard Thomas tackled it brilliantly in Hartford in 1989, under the direction of Mark Lamos. Thomas, plagued by boyish looks long after his years as John-Boy Walton, made the most of them in Peer Gynt and convincingly played the young Peer, while assuming the mantle of the older man easily.

At CSC, Doyle has cast Gabriel Ebert, a Tony winner for Matilda, and he’s the best thing about the production. Ebert conveys the young Peer with high-kicking brio and excess of energy, yet in the quieter scenes his maturity comes to the fore. It’s possible to have two actors play the part, but, reduced to less than two hours from four, this adaptation needs only one. The climax of Peer’s long search for his soul—which society claims he lacks—results in his peeling an onion for meaning, and finding nothing in the center. Ebert claws at it and pulls at it with his fingernails, his eyes reddened by the onion fumes, but with more a determined curiosity than desperation.

Peer is notorious for his tall tales. Returning home from wandering, he tells his mother Åse (Becky Ann Baker) that he has hunted a stag into the wilderness, wounded it, and then, about to kill it, been taken on a wild ride by the injured animal. Åse doesn’t believe him and rebukes him, but then comes around.

Even apart from his imaginary experiences, though, Peer’s life is chock full of incident. Åse tells Peer that his girlfriend is about to be married. Peer crashes the wedding and steals her away. He also meets Solveig (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), a young girl—she’s recently been confirmed, so she must be about 14—who falls for him. Then he flees the fury of the bride’s father; he arrives at the lair of the Troll King (Dylan Baker), seduces his daughter, escapes becoming a denizen of the underground, and begins a lifelong journey to distant lands, ending up finally in Norway again.

Doyle’s adaptation touches on most of the events, but it makes them more real. The cue for this approach seems to come when the Bride says, “That’s the way—we mountain people. Everything has another meaning.” Yet the change pulls Ibsen’s play toward the naturalism that characterized his later work, and and even psychological realism, as Peer's struggles seem to become internalized. At times it underscores Peer’s search for himself with heavy-handedness. “Jack, be thyself,” says the Doctor, who is also the Troll King, clad by Ann Hould-Ward in a gray suit, paper crown and sunglasses. Later in the play, Peer becomes a successful businessman, entering in suit and sunglasses himself, and throws money into the air. It may suggest that in his pursuit of success Peer has become more troll-like, but it's also one of the few grand flourishes in the production. Characters like the Boyg, offering “Go round” as strange advice, don’t appear but are rendered as voices of the Chorus.

Although Doyle’s minimalist, modernist approach may force one to focus on the words, the loss of color and variety risks dulling one's senses and resulting in confusion. To anyone who has experienced a full production, this Peer Gynt seems intent on sensory deprivation. 

John Doyle's production of Peer Gynt plays at the Classic Stage Company (136 E. 13th. St., between Third and Fourth Avenues) through June 19. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by calling the box office at (212) 352-3101, Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visiting classicstage.org.

She Won the Lottery

James Fritz’s play for two voices, titled Ross & Rachel, appears to have as its impetus the long-running TV show Friends. The characters of Ross and Rachel were one of the first to be known in the pop lexicon by one name, “rossnrachel”—inseparable and sometimes insufferable. Make no mistake, though: Ross & Rachel is no sitcom or walk in the park—those names aren't even used in the play.

Originally published as a paperback, Ross & Rachel is a tightly written tour de force for Molly Vevers, who easily modulates between “he” and “she” in this fast-paced drama. Fritz raises a number of questions and challenges about being in a relationship from the moment two people meet and how they interact with others at a party. Imagine a couple, not so much as individuals but as a couple conversing with others, practically talking over each other in side-by-side dialogues.

“How long have you two been together now?”
“You’ve still got that look about you.”
“Did you ever hear how we first met?”
“Right from the first moment I saw her, standing next to my sister, I knew.”
“Not now, honey.”
“Strap yourselves in, you’re not gonna believe this story.”
“They don’t want to hear about that.”
“You guys think that’s good? Tell them about how we got back together. She tells it better than I can.”

Vevers delivers this type of dialogue consistently for nearly 60 minutes. She is quite good in this challenging role, especially as the subject matter evolves into difficult, almost unimaginable events. A number of inquiries are examined and played out. Where does “I” end and “you” begin? Just how much will women often give up to be in relationship? Is it true that any man is better than no man? Does “until death do us part” really mean what it says?

Fritz wrote the male character as a typical guy. However, a revelation of an illness he has leads to a demand of her that seems hugely selfish. But the "Ross" character (those names are never heard throughout the work) doesn't seem written egotistically enough to warrant her acquiescence to his request. Or is she just mad?

Vevers begins the performance dressed only in a white cotton waffle-weave spa robe, holding a cup of tea and sipping from it casually as if to have a chat. Eventually she pours the remainder into the shallow pool she is standing in. She then fills the cup from the pool and proceeds to drink from it three times, spitting out the rancid water each time. Cringeworthy, but to what end? The action yanked the focus from the dialogue.

The design elements don’t help much. The lighting design by Douglas Green don’t live up to Vevers’ performance. Lighting appears as an afterthought—almost nonexistent light and a strand or two of twinkle lights hang overhead. Only at one point was the light dramatic enough to complement the brutal dialogue—when Vevers is lit crosswise, creating two distinct shadows on opposite walls. Alison Neighbor has designed a set featuring a shallow, round, black pool of water—which Vevers never leaves after the first 10 minutes or so—surrounded by eight votives on the floor.

To complete the play, director Thomas Martin has Vevers clap three times. The lights go to black, as if it were the “Clapper” lighting commercial or Jeb Bush begging an audience with “You can clap now.” Cue music. Vevers is too fine an actress and the dialogue too complex to incorporate silly moves and allow for a nonsensical set design—it’s unnecessary and distracting.

Ross & Rachel is strong and powerful, and it demands attention, and Vevers brings the words alive. What is striking is her drive to connect with each audience member, most telling in a monologue about coffee. She has a manner and a presence reminiscent of fine actresses from another era. This is her era, her time.

Ross & Rachel is part of Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th St., between Park and Madison Avenues). Performances run through Sunday, June 5. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25 ($17.50 for 59E59 members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.59e59.org.

The Tongue Is a Mighty Sword

Move over, James Brown. It’s time to add Joe Morton and Dick Gregory's names to the pantheon of hardest-working men in show business. In Turn Me Loose, written by Gretchen Law and directed by John Gould Rubin, Morton gives a tour de force performance as Gregory, the tireless civil rights activist and stand up comic known for his acerbic social satire on race and American politics.

Morton, of the hit TV show Scandal, adeptly captures both the younger and the older Gregory as the play moves back and forth in time. As a comedian, Gregory eloquently holds a mirror up to the contradictions in American society. Although he believes economics are at the root of many problems in society, he contends that “poverty is not the worst disease on earth. Racism is.”

Born in 1932, in St. Louis, Gregory says he had “black assets: fast feet, and a fast tongue.” He was athletic and outspoken, and when he was given a three-year contract at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club in Chicago in 1961, he was catapulted into another realm as an entertainer, not as a “shuffling minstrel, but as a 28-year-old star.” However, he often stepped down from comedy to take up the cause of the 1960s civil rights movement and march side by side with Medgar Evers.

Morton captures the conflict between being a performer and being an activist that caused Gregory to take pause at moments in his life. In a chilling moment, the young activist gets a bad feeling that he can’t shake before heading back down South to join Evers. But suddenly his son dies and he returns North to join his wife. Only two weeks later, Evers is assassinated; Gregory believes his personal tragedy spared his life. The dangers of activism and being a black man in the South in the ’60s were never more apparent. He realizes that the "racist system is nothing but a shadow. You got to dive through—every day could be your last.” He also realizes that bigotry is like the barb of an arrow piercing the skin. Gregory returns to comedy and aims, not so much to extract the arrowhead from the sides of American racists, but to shake them with enough laughter that it will fall out.

Morton’s voice has a deep timbre, and he has amazing reserve and control over both his voice and physicality. Often, while the tempo and volume rise, his body is restrained and still. Near the finale, sweat pours down his face, and instead of taking the handkerchief, as he does at times throughout the play, he forges through what he has to say: the power of his words is amplified by the apoplectic state of his face.

The raw immediacy of Morton’s performance, coupled with the power of Gregory’s message, incites some members of the audience to murmur “Mmm-hmmm” and “Yeah,” as if they are receiving a message from the pulpit rather than the stage. Also helping tell the story in a variety of roles is John Carlin; among other things he plays a bumbling mediator at a loss for words when Gregory delivers an acerbic diagnosis of the state of economics and its effect on all that ails American society.

It takes tremendous courage and intelligence to design and deliver the kind of comedy Gregory does. At 83, he's still going strong. Because of his work with the civil rights movement, and the way in which he has relentlessly, with humor, grace and a tongue like a sword, dissected the contradictions about race in America, the conversation itself has since taken a few twists and turns. For instance, Vin Diesel, who rose to stardom in The Fast and Furious films, declines to accept any racial pigeonhole. Rather, says one observer, Diesel presents himself as “a multiethnic Everyman.” The actor’s insistence on identifying himself as a human being, rather than by race, is an important step. As Turn Me Loose makes plain, it’s one that Dick Gregory has worked tirelessly for.

Turn Me Loose plays at the Westside Theatre (407 West 43rd St.) through July 3. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $79 and may be purchased by calling (212) 239-6200 or visiting www.turnmelooseplay.com.

 

Concealed and Revealed

“Camouflage: to be in plain sight, but not to be seen” is the undercurrent of Cal in Camo, about a family dealing with grim challenges. At the heart of the play are a husband struggling to provide for his wife and child; the wife who has little, if any, affinity for her newborn; and her backwoods brother, a man of few words, whose own wife has recently drowned. Given the somber plot, Cal in Camo is often surprisingly humorous, with actors who reach deep to pull out emotionally charged performances.

David Harbour plays Tim, who is languishing in a small Illinois town as a distributor of craft beer. His wife, Cal (Katya Campbell), is a stay-at-home mom. Their arguments may resonate as typical, but the writing by William Francis Hoffman delivers the stories wrapped in a unique casing. Relish the amusing moments, because Cal in Camo is a gut-wrenching play. The topic of Cal’s brother Flynt, his behavior at their wedding two years earlier, as well as his upcoming visit, is fodder for intense, fast-paced dialogue.

When he arrives, Flynt (Paul Wesley) just peels away another layer to the family secrets. However, it’s Wesley’s perfectly stilted delivery of Flynt’s simplistic view of the world that is bold: “You wanna bond with that baby...you take that baby dirty as she is....diaper dirty....you…strip her down...and you strip yourself down…and you get down on the ground you wrap your whole body around that baby….even though you might not know what you’re doin’ at all...that’s nature...nature knows what ta do.... like water knows where ta go...you just gotta let it find you.”

Campbell’s Sybil-like performance is striking; on one hand fighting with Tim, her unmotherly response to the cries of her child juxtaposed with her schoolgirl excitement to see Flynt. The reveal of their mother abandoning them and Cal’s experience in and out of foster homes is telling: “The way I grew up in all those different homes with all those different families...you learn not to want...you keep your eyes in front of you...if you don’t want they can’t take anything away from you if you don’t need they can’t break your heart…but I got caught up in this idea this picture of family this thing you had and I started to believe it.”

Harbour takes Tim's lack of trust to a new, in-your-face level—the performance is solidly Harbour. His sheer size next to Campbell takes on a brutish, commanding figure, and his resentment being dragged to rural Illinois by Cal is evident in every gesture, as well as everything he doesn’t say.

The opening scene with Cal on the floor attempting to pump her breasts of milk feels like it was put there for shock value. In that regard, it steals the thunder from the scene of Cal and Tim fighting about her inability to produce milk, which requires them to purchase formula.

Once Tim arrives home to the family kitchen, complete with sliding door to the backyard, John McDermott’s set design works harder. With Flynt standing on the porch, having just walked out of the kitchen, the set rotates, and he is standing on the back porch. Grant Yeager delivers crisp lighting design and, coupled with sound design by Amy Altadonna, creates the perfect storm scene. Altadonna’s baby cries are spot-on, whether through a baby monitor, from the other room, or coming from the traveling car seat.

Cal in Camo is meant to be uneasy, and director Adrienne Campbell-Holt makes sure of it. The dialogue is fast and the narrative hard, begging to be heard. Living is in the asking and yet being vulnerable to the answers; that’s where the heart grows. For the actors it is evident that they know the material and they listen; even more important, they respond in kind. The camouflage is ripped aside and the human spirit is revealed, bruises and all.

Cal in Camo continues at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place, just west of 7th Avenue) through June 12. Evening performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and at 7 p.m. and Sundays and Mondays; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturdays. Running time is 85 minutes. For more information and tickets call Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.rattlestick.org.

Days of Drinking Games

Love has a hard road to travel to find itself, especially in this madcap world. It has never been easy for young adults to figure out the mating game, and in Half Moon Bay, a dark and witty new play by Dan Moyer, the lovers meet in the grungy bar of a bowling alley. The two-hander opens to Led Zeppelin and bright lights, then goes pitch-black as the Talking Heads blare in the darkness. The lights (by Mike Inwood) abruptly go full up to reveal Annie (Keilly McQuail) alone at the bar, where she meets the neurotic Gabe (Gabriel King), a gambling addict with too much time and money on his hands. The alcoholic Annie gives Gabe lessons on pickup lines. And so begins a dark comedy about the narcissistic, existentialist, and often self-destructive struggle young adults experience to find themselves.

Moyer’s intelligent yet poignant dialogue reflects what many go through at that period when a person realizes he or she is not a child anymore and is trying to play grownup, but doesn’t know how. Gabe asks, “You here with anyone else?” And Annie retorts smugly, “No I come here alone and bowl by myself, then I go home and cry when I lose.” Amid the humorous banter there is a serious undertone that mirrors the inner struggle of finding love in a hopeless place.

Annie realizes she’s an addict when she discovers she has genuine feelings for Gabe. Although both actors start out tensely over-animated in performance, as they live through what they are doing and build the emotional life of their characters, their desperation becomes compelling.

Reid Thompson’s set is so real it’s surreal, enhancing that unearthly feeling that alcohol and attraction can give. Pictures on the wall tell of past bowling championships; half-empty liquor bottles and dirty glasses whisper of other lost nights. The disarray of Annie’s apartment reflects the disarray of her life.

Choices by sound designer Janie Bullard and Thompson heighten the characters’ emotional state. The muted outside illumination that Inwood has artfully crafted for the Santa Cruz, Calif., setting is particularly effective, as is the way nighttime becomes daybreak as Annie switches from “party-ready” to “Get the hell out of here” mode after their evening together.

Thompson’s set is utilized fully by director Jess Chayes; the actors improvise and evolve in their experience together, and ultimately connect in this mad, mad world. Starting out quick-witted and terse, the evening ends poignantly still and emotionally moving. The play looks at broken children and reprimands society to offer more to them, underlining that young adults need guidance on how to love as well as maneuver through life.

In response to Annie’s story on bad pickup lines like “Your mouth is like a window to the tongue,” Gabe asks her, “It didn’t work, did it?” She sadly replies, “Of course it didn’t work.  Very much.” Yet a good deal of the play is about what is not said; it helps that director Jess Chayes’s choice of music sets the proper tone.

Thankfully, Moyer offers hope in the end for the lovers. After much fear and reluctance Annie does open up and allows Gabe into her heart. There’s a possibility for them to find a true connection.

Lesser America’s production of Half Moon Bay runs through June 4 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m.; there is an additional performance on Wednesday, May 18, at 8 p.m. For tickets, which are $19, call OvationTix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.cherrylanetheatre.org/onstage/half-moon-bay.

An Ideal Betrayal

As Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s 2012 revision of his play The Judas Kiss, Rupert Everett has found the role of his career. Though he’ll always be more famous for films such as My Best Friend’s Wedding, his terrific performance in the production visiting BAM helps resurrect a play by the prolific author of Plenty and Skylight that had less impact in its Broadway debut in 1998. 

Neil Armfield's staging has given Hare’s play the heft of real tragedy. The Judas Kiss is set at two pivotal points in Wilde’s life: the first act takes place the day he is arrested at the Cadogan Hotel for gross indecency, following the collapse of his 1895 libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde’s younger lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie. The second takes place two years later, after Wilde has left prison and has settled with Bosie in Naples, living hand-to-mouth.

In both halves Wilde is seen to undermine his own best interests, all for the love of Bosie, played by Charlie Rowe as an arrogant, narcissistic worm in a light blue suit. (Costume designer Sue Blane clearly knows her stuff; it’s a color long associated with homosexuals.) The first act revolves around Wilde’s refusal to leave England, even as his old friend and ex-lover Robbie Ross (Cal MacAninch) urges him to. Yet Wilde foolishly won’t take the carriage that awaits to spirit him to the Continent.

Instead, Wilde tries his best to be unflappable, tossing off witticisms and demanding a meal of lobster before the police arrive to arrest him. Everett handles the timing and the wit with ease, and he’s physically right as well: tall, and in a fat suit, a bit stout, just like Wilde. He claims to foresee what is going to happen, yet, he says, “I have always had a low opinion of what is called action.” It's a witticism that contradicts his reckless decision to sue Queensberry for libel after being called a “sodomite.” Nonetheless, Everett inhabits the contradictions, the wit, the passion and the foolishness, in a multifaceted, riveting performance.

He’s equally as good in Act II, sitting almost the whole time in a straw hat and lap blanket on a chair in Naples. He and Bosie are in a lowdown hotel, and Bosie is picking up tricks. Tom Colley as an Italian fisherman is one of them; he spends most of his considerable stage time demonstrating that he has no body fat whatsoever. The frank nudity contrasts neatly with the scene that opens the play, when Alister Cameron’s dryly indulgent concierge Moffatt discovers his staffers, Arthur and Phoebe (Elliot Balchin and Jessie Hills), having sex in the darkened room taken by the Wilde entourage. Before Arthur leaves, Moffatt says they must have a talk about the situation later. Twisting a towel around his hand and snapping it ever so slightly, as if it were a riding crop, he warns, “I shall need to reprimand you in person.” His sexual impulses are glimpsed for only a moment, but it’s typical of Armfield’s detail. The contrast between the unruffled acceptance of heterosexuality vs. the disdain for homosexuality, as well as English repression vs. the later Italian vigor, enriches the story.

Hare is one of Britain’s most political playwrights, so barbs aimed at the class system are inevitable. Bosie is an aristocrat who naturally abuses the staff and loudly opposes Robbie’s common sense by insisting his highly placed acquaintances in the House of Lords will pull strings for Wilde. They don’t.

Moreover, Wilde and Bosie are only two sides of a love triangle. MacAninch invests the dapper, punctilious Robbie with an almost palpable unrequited affection for Wilde. His yearning makes their parting the most moving moment in the play. And Wilde behaves cruelly to Robbie, yet Robbie takes it with only the subtlest objection. 

Wilde is not, however, so blind that he cannot see Bosie’s callowness. When the arrogant youth declares, “I am already the greatest non-narrative poet in English,” Wilde flashes a scowl that’s priceless. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch for Hare to cast Wilde as a Christ figure, but it’s not hammered at heavily. The kiss of the title quickly follows, as Bosie has been bought out by an allowance from his parents and has packed his bags. The last glimpse of Everett’s Wilde, throwing his head back and laughing uncontrollably, hints at a classic architecture. He has given up everything for a young man who didn’t really love him; and he has sent away the man who did. The first act is tragedy; the second is farce.

David Hare’s The Judas Kiss plays through June 12 at BAM Harvey Theater (30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Place and St. Felix St. in Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets start at $30. Visit www.bam.org/theater for information. 

High on the Buy

Shoes and Baggage is a wildly entertaining one-woman show that explores shopping, and life. Written and performed by stage veteran Cheryl Stern (whose Broadway credits include La Cage aux Folles and The Women) and directed by Joe Barros, both actor and director do a marvelous job of using the cell theater, a small space that is more of a theater in the rectangle than the round. Nonetheless, all seats are good, and musical director John Dipitino’s soundtrack, performed by a two-man band with drum, keyboard and guitar, adds pizzazz and drive to the performance, but don’t overwhelm the diminutively sized actress.

Stern hits the nail on the head when she reveals her conflicted relationship to shopping. She manages a delicate balance between revealing the inner turmoil as well as the ameliorating effects of shopping during some of life’s more difficult moments. The dialogue is intimate but not, as kids today say, TMI (too much information). A self-confessed connoisseur of clothing, shoes and baggage, she recalls her experiences buying her first Louis Vuitton bag and to “buy, or not to buy” a pair of Louboutins that cost as much as her weekly paycheck.

Weaving in past experiences that go all the way back to childhood with more contemporary experiences, Stern does a fantastic job. She touches on relationships that have influenced and informed her appreciation for clothing. Two in particular are with Rena and Karen, whom she remains fast friends with in life and shopping. When Stern first meets Rena in a college acting class, she is completely taken by her. Dressed in a rabbit fur coat, Rena is “urban-sexy in a Bianca Jagger sort of way.” It turns out Rena can’t act but the two form a bond. Akin to this relationship is the one she forms with Karen while out walking her dog one day. Karen is a former Ford model and disco queen and, when they meet, the ad director of Vogue. They embark on many shopping excursions and Karen verses her in the world of couture.

Stern’s play is also an autobiographical account of her experience as an actress. She hilariously renders her experience as a cast member of The Women, a Broadway production that included Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Tilly and Kristen Johnston. She forms an unlikely bond with Tilly, who has a great appreciation for unusual jewelry and fashion. When Stern compliments Tilly on some rings she’s wearing, she captures Tilly’s relaxed and off-the-cuff cadence with her reply: “Super-cute, right?” They become friends with an appreciation for fashion, and after one particular shopping spree, nearly miss curtain call.

It’s not only the wild forays into shopping that Stern captures, but the addictive nature of it. While trying to return a sweater at a high-end retail store, she ends up leaving with a pair of pants and a top, in addition to the sweater she initially goes in to return. When she sings: “High, totally high from the buy…,” it explains the thrill of going home with new purchases. But then, when she feels compelled to hide them in the closet so her husband won’t see them, there’s the shame in knowing that they exceed her budget, and she failed in returning a sweater that wasn’t really perfect after all.

Stern outlines the way shopping can alleviate some of the stress that occurs in life. When friends get sick with cancer, or lose their jobs, or her father is in the hospital after a heart attack, shopping and an appreciation for clothing, shoes and baggage somehow make the moments more bearable. Yet, as Stern grows older, she comes to recognize that shopping is an addiction as serious as any other. She sings “High, totally hooked on the high, take another hit, like breathing air, oh the lure of what to wear.” Through Debtors Anonymous and self-help books filled with daily affirmations she comes to terms with the fact that shopping is only a high, and not a real antidote to life’s problems. It’s uncertain how she will live without the “high of the buy,” she says, but it seems like it’s time to try and face the music of her addiction, and let that “good buy” go.

Shoes and Baggage, is playing at the cell, 338 West 23^rd St. (between 8^th & 9^th avenues) through June 3.^. Take A/C/E train to 8^th Ave at 23^rd Street. Evening performances are at 7 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. No late seating is permitted. Tickets are $35. For more information, call (646) 861-2253, visit www.thecelltheatre.org.