Domestic Politics

The perpetual urge to rearrange furniture suggests emotional unrest, and when the curtain rises on Lovely Day, we find Fran arranging and rearranging the beautiful objects in her well-decorated living room. This ongoing reconfiguration works as a brilliant metaphor in Leslie Ayvazian's trim and thoughtful domestic drama. On Fran and Martin's anniversary, their 17-year-old son, Brian, returns home with the news that a military recruiter has visited his school. As the couple discusses this new development, they begin to pick at the veneer of their relationship, exposing layers of emotional disconnection. The resulting action brings political subjects into highly personal focus. "It reminded me of what's there," Fran explains, after moving a set of cumbersome bookshelves, and the Play Company's incendiary production unearths both old resentments and shocking surprises in a seemingly comfortable marriage.

Martin, a successful designer, is the family's breadwinner, while Fran's painting career seems to have leveled off. She now fills her time meeting with "the group," which turns out to be an assembly of peaceful demonstrators. When Brian offhandedly mentions the military recruiter's visit, she reveals to Martin that while he was away training to be an officer in the Vietnam War early in their marriage, she was secretly attending war protests.

Martin complains early on that their "politics have diverged," but suddenly it appears that their beliefs have been widely disparate all along. Confronted with their son's potential involvement in the Iraq war, Martin and Fran find themselves at war in their living room, with words as their weapons.

Accomplished actress Blair Brown (a Tony Award winner for her performance in Copenhagen) makes her New York directing debut with Lovely Day, proving that she is just as adept offstage as on. She allows the action to build at a very controlled pace, and the couple's arguments unfold with an authenticity that is staggering in its precision and tension. David Korins's warmly hued set works as the perfect upper-middle-class battlefield, enhanced by the convivial glow of Paul Whitaker's lighting design.

Ayvazian develops her dialogue with David Mamet-like briskness and Edward Albee-esque viciousness, and the inclusion of domestic elements (the sound of Brian practicing electric guitar in his upstairs bedroom, the couple's planning and execution of a party) only magnifies the severity of the couple's disputes.

The play investigates the rather naïve assumptions we make about those closest to us, as well as how familiarity and unfamiliarity can exist so inauspiciously in a relationship. For while Martin and Fran can communicate in a nonverbal language all their own, often anticipating a response or simply grunting or gesturing, they have remained complacently ignorant about each other's deepest values and ideals.

Deirdre O'Connell and David Rasche are perfectly cast as the sparring couple, and their airtight rapport should be required viewing for acting students. O'Connell captures Fran's artistic eccentricity and earnest conviction, while Rasche gives a thoroughly compelling, subtle performance as the rather turgid Martin. Both characters are flawed, but both are sympathetic—having no clear winner always makes an argument more interesting to watch.

As young Brian, Javier Picayo makes the most of his limited stage time, convincingly portraying the natural gap that widens between parents and their teenage children. It's never clear exactly where Brian—who would rather play his guitar than consider his future—stands on the topics that have divided his parents. And this may be the most powerful statement of all. While his parents may passionately argue, it is Brian who will ultimately have to face the consequences of the country's actions; whether by the country or his parents, his future seems to have been decided for him.

"Words are what we have," Fran avows, and Ayvazian's script shows the destructive and illuminating ways in which we grip onto our words and our ideals. In Lovely Day, neither playwright nor director shies away from exposing the costs and compromises of domestic negotiations. The political and intimate are bound to intersect, and this very topical production will undoubtedly leave you thinking for some time to come.

Play Back

Did he or didn't he? Should he or shouldn't he? Will she or won't she? These questions broadly describe the major dramatic issues at the heart of Stephen Belber's Tape, playing at the Abington Theater and the inaugural production of the Underground Artists Theater Company. The company's mission statement says Underground Artists seeks to "illuminate new works and resurrect the old." Tape has been resurrected, but the experience is not entirely illuminating. The play's setup reunites old high school friends Vincent and Jon in a Motel 6 in Lansing, Mich. Vincent has made the trip to see Jon's film premiere in the Lansing Film Festival. Small talk gives way to Vincent's true motive in catching up with Jon after ten years: Vincent wants to know if Jon date-raped his high school sweetheart.

A heated argument leads to a tape-recorded confession of guilt. But before Jon can appropriately respond to this breach of trust, Vincent hits him with an even larger surprise: Amy, the girl in question, is on her way to the motel.

Jay Pingree's economical scenic design works well with Kogumo Dsi's lighting to lock the audience in the motel with Jon and Vincent. The Abingdon Theater's intimate, three-quarter thrust stage is appropriately used to show that no one is getting out of this room until a resolution is reached.

Jayson Gladstone (Vincent) and Benjamin Schmoll (Jon) present a persuasive portrait of a friendship that has been long smoldering with jealousy. Vincent is clearly the more dominating character in terms of stage presence and volume, but Schmoll gets a lot of mileage out of struggling to match his partner's intensity and intentions. Jon is like an ignored sibling: with a friend like Vincent, it's no wonder he became a filmmaker, since apparently that's all he could do to be heard. Randa Karambelas adds a logical center to the threesome as Amy, by fully embracing her character's prosecutorial side. She doesn't hesitate to render judgment immediately and emotionlessly on her two high school loves.

Tape is a study of the complex mechanics of guilt and responsibility. The text of Belber's script leaves little room for embellishment, and it would be a disservice to try to force a broad concept on the piece. That said, director David Newer fails to present a vital or unique staging. The argument between Jon and Vincent reaches its peak very early in the play and fails to rise or fall with any variation afterward. Newer directs in long strokes of "anger" and "remorse" without allowing the actors to explore the more intricate tones. The script's strength should be enough to carry any production, yet here the play never lives up to its multifaceted potential.

Instead, this production feels like a conservatory scene study, performed before a live audience. Each of the three actors is given his or her moment of focus. Schmoll's awkward apology to Karambelas for the rape, Gladstone's realization that his interference has further complicated the situation, and Karambelas's defiant gambit when she pretends to have both men arrested—these defining moments radiate with humanity in the hands of these actors. Here, the script is used as an educational tool to reach these moments for the cast, but nothing more. As a result, the play never gets its moment.

For those unfamiliar with previous stage and film versions of Tape, Underground Artists' production will serve as a good introduction to the material and to the questions Belber asks about digging up old skeletons. If the goal in producing this script was to provide an able vehicle for the freshman company's actors, it succeeds. But if Newer and his cast's intention was to perform a revealing "resurrection" of the play for new audiences, perhaps they should have left it undisturbed until they could present a more adventurous production.

Anatomy and Psychology

Soleil hates thongs. Devon can't stand to be objectified by her rugby-playing boyfriend but doesn't understand why her cousin Rebecca thinks she's such a prude. Rachel is hoping that the drastic, mood-altering side effects of her new birth-control regimen will soon wane so she and her boyfriend can wallow in the pleasure of unprotected sex. Elissa resents her father for being such a great role model.

And Jennifer is moments away from performing her first on-camera nude scene and needs her best friend, Katy, to support her decision to go through with it.

These women are angry. They are young, too. Some are clad in low-rise jeans, while others slink around the stage in miniskirts, corsets, and silk robes. Each one wears her emotional issues on her sleeve—or garter belt, as the case may be—and each one is a character in Matt Morillo's collection of monologues and one-acts, Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans With High-Class Issues.

Devon Pipers acts with manic fervor as the reluctant Jennifer in the show's finale, "The Nude Scene." She preens for the camera like a ridiculous peacock before abruptly halting the production so she can down a few shots of whiskey to get comfortable. Her onscreen lover, Barry, spends time between takes pumping iron to ensure he appears plenty sweaty, while the second-rate director tries to keep the production from descending into mayhem as the understated cameraman Kristoff clashes with the overstated Katy.

"The Nude Scene" is brilliant. The stakes are set high from the outset, and Morillo's script keeps the audience guessing whether Jennifer will actually doff her top. Every flubbed take leads her closer to going all the way before ultimately finding yet another reason not to. First, Katy is running late, and Jennifer just can't do it without her friend's reassurance. Then Barry, played by a hilariously dull Major Dodge, manhandles Jen's breasts and whispers suggestive catchphrases in her ear.

From Thomas J. Pilutik's performance as hack director Spencer to Jessica Durdock's lusty interpretation of Katy and Jason Drumwright's mute-yet-furious Kristoff, the cast members who surround Pipers counterpoise each other perfectly. Different conflicts between different people arise at every turn in the script. Moments of calm are broken by outbursts of hysteria. One character storms onto the set the same moment another character storms off. Every joke is fast and funny, consistently topped by the gag that follows. It is nearly impossible to find a reason not to laugh at this ingenious farce.

Unfortunately, the same blitzkrieg attack isn't nearly as effective in the four shorts leading up to "The Nude Scene." Whereas Jennifer appears to be a conflicted and complex individual, the other women in Angry Young Women come across as erratic, one-dimensional figures.

As Soleil in "My Last Thong," Jessica Durdock cuts off her thong...while still wearing it. The daughter of hippies, Soleil finds thongs vulgar, sexist, and more than a little bit uncomfortable. Moreover, she can't believe her bra-burning mother could go from not shaving her armpits to trimming her bikini area and sporting a thong. She is disgusted that her 12-year old niece shaves her bikini area. And while Soleil does provide some amusing observations on women's body-maintenance routines, the monologue comes across as more of a rant than a character study. It isn't long before the monologue begins repeating its points, dulling the humor of jokes that weren't exactly side-splitters the first time around.

"Playtime in the Park" and "The Miseducation of Elissa" suffer from the same problems, repeating themselves frequently and airing complaints without any apparent purpose other than to complain. "Unprotected Sex" stands out somewhat from the others, but only because hockey fans Brian and Joe (Dodge and Thomas J. Pilutik, respectively) provide the audience with a reason to ignore the hormone-saturated caricature that is Rachel.

The cast also seems to be hyper-directed, gesticulating wildly and speeding through their dialogue without taking much time to even breathe between lines. As a result, the tongue-tied actors misspeak more than once.

Still, laughs are to be had throughout the production. Angry Young Women is an entertaining show, questioning the ideals of what women want to be, what men want women to be, and what both men and women are willing to do to get what they want. The first four skits prove to be a fun distraction, but "The Nude Scene" is worth the price of admission by itself, a truly great piece of theater.

Poet in Exile

Governing bodies have a long history of silencing their critics. In The Art of Love, an opinionated but unsatisfyingly passive piece, playwright Robert Kornfeld examines how the Roman poet Ovid's innocent gibes at his fellow man's sexual proclivities earned him a spot on his government's hate list, and ultimately cost him his freedom and happiness. A famous writer and ladies' man, Ovid has been banished to the Greek colony of Tomis, where he has spent most of his days in his own company. After many months, he's decided to make a public appearance, where he'll discuss his famous book The Art of Love and present a performance on the circumstances surrounding his exile from Rome. Some of the townspeople gather to speak with him and end up being figures in the quietly engaging and sorrowful presentation of his past.

The Roman emperor Augustus, plagued with a wayward and immoral daughter and a cold, post-menopausal wife, can't get no satisfaction. He is at odds with his own morality, forced to uphold a public policy of zero tolerance toward sexual misconduct while needing to take a lover on the side to make sure he has sons to continue the line of succession. Augustus believes Ovid's works, with their playful talk about rape and adultery, are poisoning the minds of the Roman people, especially his daughter, as well as undermining the state. Ovid's only powerful champion is Augustus's stepson Tiberius, who begins to be seduced by politics and power plays once he is in line for the throne.

Through it all, Ovid's one source of strength and comfort is his wife, Fastina. For her, he has given up all thoughts of extramarital conquests, and he dedicates his life and writing to their love. His interactions with her in his performance/memories attest to how he misses her more than anything else in Rome.

James Nugent does great credit to the law-trained, romance-obsessed Ovid. His ability to answer directly the questions he wants to answer—and to dance around the questions he would rather avoid lending an opinion to—was enjoyable. There's a rationality to Ovid's passion, so that it wasn't weepy and feminine but a truthful and masculine emotion.

Tom Thornton's Augustus certainly has the gravitas and bearing of an emperor, possibly because he is also the director and people naturally deferred to him. But there were times when he took a bit too long with his speeches, and the pacing suffered from the director not directing himself. It was interesting to watch Stephen Francis take the future emperor Tiberius from a misfit stepchild to a calculating ruler. And as Fastina, Laura Lockwood radiated loveliness and intelligence.

Special mention (and great acclaim) must be given to set designer Mark Mercante, who took advantage of the soundstage-sized playing space and bedecked it with a marvelous interpretation of ancient Italian architecture. It's always refreshing when the proper budget and time are given to set design, as it often gets short shrift in Off-Off-Broadway productions.

Since there were no blackouts to signify scene changes, the lighting designer had the challenging task of keeping things visually interesting in order to hold the audience's attention. While Alex Moore did a nice job illuminating sections of the stage to define the boundaries of the scene's playing area, Thornton's staging was a little demure. This was particularly the case in the first act, when endless exposition and speechmaking slowed down the action. (Higher stakes and more energetic performances enlivened the second half of the show.)

Obviously, exile is missing from our country's punishment playbook; otherwise, people like Michael Moore and Jon Stewart would be missing from movie theaters and television. But censorship is still alive and kicking and making trouble for "troublemakers." It's good to be reminded that it is not a new phenomenon, so we can enjoy our current liberties and know what would be sacrificed if they were taken away.

Rites of Passage

When Navin, an Indian college student, opens his mouth to speak, it's hard to resist laughing at his thick Calcutta accent. Sadly, this is exactly what the American media have primed us for: Indian accent equals stereotype, cheap humor, caricature. But thank goodness for Rajiv Joseph, the bright, young playwright whose magnificent play, Huck & Holden, is enjoying a first-rate world premiere at Cherry Lane Theater's studio space. Joseph's writing has the smarts and sophistication to rip away stereotypes while revealing his characters' raw humanity. With simple storytelling, he deftly constructs Navin's coming-of-age story with comedy, pathos, and a distinct emotional core. This is theater at its finest, and theater that matters.

It'd be easy, of course, to portray Navin as a clichéd fish out of water who stumbles onto the American college scene, discovers drinking and debauchery, and forsakes his straight-laced past. Of course, there are the requisite lost-in-translation moments (Navin asks a friend, "How many times are you making love in your life?"), but lucky for us, Joseph grounds these comic moments in something more meaningful. He gives Navin room to wrestle with his inhibitions, toy with his temptations, and negotiate a new identity in a foreign land.

A dedicated engineering student, Navin (Nick Choksi) goes to the library in search of the book Huck & Holden for his required English class. There is, of course, no such book—Navin has mistaken the paper's topic (the literary protagonists of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye) for a book title. There, he meets Michelle (Cherise Boothe), a voice major with a work-study library job.

The two quickly strike up a friendship, and when Michelle discovers that Navin is still a virgin (saving himself for an arranged marriage back in India), she vows to shatter his polite, polished shell. She invites him to her boyfriend Torry's (LeRoy McClain) fraternity party, and Navin's evolution begins.

Michelle is African-American and a lapsed Catholic, which provides a dynamic foil to Navin's strict Hinduism. Navin is determined to live by the "the rules"—the norms and behaviors that will reward him in his life back in India. But as Michelle shares how she has created her own system of values, the two characters share moments of connection almost poetic in their lyric simplicity. In short, Michelle helps Navin learn how to carve out a life all his own.

The inclusion of two supernatural figures gives this romantic comedy a twist. Like so many college boys before him, Navin begins to idolize Holden Caulfield while reading The Catcher in the Rye, and Holden springs to life in the form of Singh (Arjun Gupta), who was the cool kid in Navin's private school in India. Singh becomes an anti-conscience character, encouraging Navin to take more risks. And near the end of the show, the Hindu goddess Kali (Nilaja Sun) appears as part of Michelle's consciousness (blame it on overexposure to Kama Sutra).

A stellar cast and superior production team bring the script fervently to life. Choksi gives a star-making performance as Navin; he is a compelling, controlled actor, and he contributes a natural grace to a very complex comic and dramatic arc. Boothe gives tremendous heart to Michelle's up-and-down emotions, and she finds a myriad of inflections in the expression "Daaaamn."

Gupta shows smooth confidence as Singh, and McClain's charismatic take on Torry is so infectious you wish he could be onstage more often. And in her fierce, no-holds-barred portrayal of the monstrous goddess Kali, Sun very nearly steals the show.

Director Giovanna Sardelli keeps the action moving at a crisp pace, but she also gives Navin the necessary space and time to think through his actions. The production team proves that mastery lies in the details. Regina Garcia's functional set features rows of rotating bookshelves, literally framing the proceedings in the acquisition of knowledge (or books); Pat Dignan's lighting beautifully captures natural light filtering through a windowpane; Rebecca J. Bernstein's costumes capture both Navin’s finicky taste and the disarming spectacle of Kali; and Bart Fasbender's punchy sound design keeps the energy up during the quick set changes.

Everything in this highly polished production cries out for mention, but at the heart of it all is Joseph's taut, masterful script. Resisting a happy ending, Joseph leaves us on a precipice right alongside Navin, but this uncertainty somehow feels like the happiest possible ending of all. The journey toward self-definition may be messy, but in Huck & Holden it's definitely worth the bumpy ride. And by the end, don't be surprised if you forget about the accent.

Les Misérables

According to the myth of the starving artist, one must endure misery for the pure joy of making art. It's a romantic idea, to be sure, but what happens when merely surviving isn't enough? In LMNO Theatre Company's production of The Understudies, Jeff Bedillion's playful "flirtation" with Jean Genet's The Maids, a pair of starving artists decide to stage a rebellion. The understudies, Ami (Maiken Wiese) and Evadne (Stefanie Eris), plot the demise of the star, Donna (Jennifer Susi), who is the diva of divas—demanding, high maintenance, cruel, and spoiled.

Although this is meant to be the tragic story of Ami and Evadne, in the end, oddly enough, it's easier to sympathize with the villainous Donna. Whether or not this was Bedillion's intention is unclear, but his script leaves us little opportunity to root for his underdogs. Instead, in the midst of a rather overwrought and unbalanced production, a seemingly heartless character wins our hearts.

Likable or not, Donna's understudies certainly suffer for their art. Ami and Evadne live like sardines in a tiny apartment, toil away as understudies (glorified tech crew) for a thankless director, and spend the wee small hours of the morning performing in their "safe place," a late-night cabaret show emceed by a drag queen. They also have their respective backstage dramas. Ami frolics in the light booth with the stage manager, while Evadne has recently accused their director of sexual harassment.

But their lives, at least by their estimation, are finally about to change. They begin to enact a fantasy in which Evadne (played by Ami) fights with Donna (played by Evadne) to the death. Although they always stop before its completion, they decide to kill Donna with a cup of poisoned tea. But, as so often happens, circumstances conspire against them, finally suggesting that destructive personalities often destroy themselves.

Genet based The Maids on an actual event in the 1930s in which two maids killed and mutilated their employers. Bedillion smartly extends this conceit to theater, where hierarchies abound. When repressed and beaten down, he proposes, those at the bottom of the totem pole will eventually plot their rise.

Unfortunately, Ami and Evadne aren't written or performed with enough humanity to make the story work, and their game of charades rambles on interminably in the first scene. While Bedillion has penned a pleasing style of elevated dialogue, the female fighting too often devolves into petty and shrill scream-fests, and it's difficult to see the dimension in these understudies.

Ironically, it is when Bedillion tries to be his most melodramatic that he (perhaps unwittingly) creates moments of emotional truth. And as (prima?) Donna, Susi steals the show with her stunning dressing-room scene, employing superb comic timing and stylized characterization in her mercurial tirades. She unveils Donna's emotional neediness, and when she expresses her wish to "take off the mask" and be an understudy herself, the result is poignant, even more so when it is followed by a gale of manic laughter.

Bedillion channels Genet by evoking a French mood, beginning with his use of marvelously gritty Edith Piaf music. Anna Peterson's well-defined lighting contributes to the foreboding atmosphere; her exquisite illumination of a taxicab's interior is a particularly haunting touch. With its exposed brick walls and darkened basement, Under St. Marks is the perfect venue for a piece exploring the sinister corners of humanity.

In addition to The Maids, The Understudies echoes another powerful piece of drama, last season's The Pillowman, in which the line between fantasy and reality was horrifically blurred. While that territory could be more artfully explored in The Understudies, Bedillion's inquiry into the debauchery of fame, celebrity, artifice, and, of course, theater raises intriguing questions about the price we pay for our art and the hierarchies in which we live. Ami laments, "We're lucky enough to survive, but not quite lucky enough to live." And if living is the goal, sometimes surviving just isn't enough.

Perchance to Dream

"And by a sleep to say we end / the heartache and the thousand natural shocks..." (Hamlet). You would go to sleep too. You would sleep if your husband yelled at you constantly in unintelligible corporate-speak. Or if your stepdaughter said she would cut off your hand in order to gain entrance to public housing. Or if it snowed salt. What would you do then? You would sleep.

With What Then, Rinne Groff has written a truly innovative dramatic farce about marriage, a reflection on dreams, and a frightening premonition of environmental degradation. As the play begins, somewhere in the not-too-distant future, Diane, a middle-aged accountant, quits her job to spend more time at home, asleep on her kitchen countertop. Diane is no narcoleptic; she is instead what her husband Tom calls a "champion" sleeper. In her dreams, she becomes increasingly involved in a somnambulist fantasy about being an architect and creating the perfect housing project, replete with amphitheater, community garden, and velvet people mover.

Tom, the eternal realist, chastises Diane for quitting work and spending all her time sleeping to create her illusionary edifices. Diane reminds him that her new "profession" is just as elusive as his, since the vaguely ominous, environmentally devastating corporation that he works for is more concerned with creating acronyms and circular professional jargon ("You saw the Public Forum for the Public?") than creating actual products.

Meanwhile, Tom's daughter (and Diane's stepdaughter) Sallie, a drug-addled opportunist who would attempt murder for the sake of an apartment, convinces her boyfriend, Bahktiyor (or, to his friends, Tom—let's call him Tom 2), to steal Diane's blood as she sleeps. Sallie plans to use the fluid to pass a blood test so she can be eligible for government-subsidized housing.

While attempting to abscond with the hustled hemoglobin, Tom 2 inadvertently wakes Diane. She shares with him the idea for her marvelous structure. Entranced by her vision, Tom 2 quickly falls in love with her. He abandons Sallie and her scheme and soon becomes Diane's co-conspirator, traveling with her through consciousness and unconsciousness, becoming an architect of dreams and helping her build, as it were, castles in the air.

It's no surprise that they turn to sleep, given the nightmarish scenario that Groff has conjured. Dust storms, government-issued gas masks to be worn in the living room, massive global warming, and dried lakes are just a few of the treats awaiting us in this post-apocalyptic setting.

Two musical numbers add an implausible yet humorous note, though admittedly the first one drags a bit. The first whimsical number, "What Then," comes just after Sallie, in a frenzied tantrum, attempts to kill Tom 2, her now ex-boyfriend. The song is a catchy little ditty that, given its place after such a serious scene, shows the profound range of emotions in the play. The second number, "Sorry for Myself," makes great use of a Fisher-Price children's microphone, highlighting the playfulness that's evident throughout the production.

Director Hal Brooks, after recently ending his Pulitzer-nominated stint as director of Thom Pain, brings a revelatory quality to the play, finishing scenes on twists instead of inevitabilities, imbuing reality with a tinge of the fantastical, and schlocking up the farcical.

Long-time Clubbed Thumb member Meg MacCarthy plays Diane as if she were in a daze, which, given the part, a kind of sleepwalker among the awake, is exactly right. Husband Tom, played by Andrew Dolan, is good but somewhat stiff. Merritt Wever boldly attempts the difficult part of Sallie (who changes drastically throughout the play), though she often seems daunted by the challenge. Piter Marek, as the immigrant boyfriend-cum-dream-builder Bahktiyor, delivers a solid performance, at once playful and tragic, and displaying a great degree of depth.

If what dreams may come are anything as sweet as What Then, then keep dreaming.

Love Lost

Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? This philosophical question is raised in The Black Bird Returns, a dramatic love story playing at the 45th Street Theater at Primary Stages. Co-written by Alexis Kozak and Barbara Panas, the play focuses on former lovers Kat (Panas) and Cliff (David Walters), who quickly move to rekindle their old flame without giving much thought to the feelings of their current partners. This creates an obstacle that the script has trouble overcoming. We know that Kat and Cliff are truly in love with each other, but they convey this in such an unsympathetic manner that it is often hard to root for their happiness.

Kat's boyfriend, Roger (Douglas Lally), feels pushed away to the point where he glumly asks, "How would you rate me, as a B- or a C+?" When Kat hesitates, he probes, "Am I even on the honor roll?" Meanwhile, Cliff treats his trusting, pregnant wife, Amanda (Julie Jenson), like excess baggage. On a date, Kat asks him, "Are you single?" He counters, "Do you need me to be?"

Deep into Act I, in a desperate, melodramatic moment, Cliff confesses to Kat that he is dying of cancer. This would cast him in a softer light if he chose to inform his doting wife as well. Instead, he goes along with her pillow talk about what a good father he will be, never once hinting that he might suddenly and inexplicably drop dead before the birth of their child.

His affair is unmasked when a fateful day arrives and Kat is forced to call an ambulance from his house. When Amanda confronts Kat about her relationship with Cliff, she is coldly dismissed. Here, Amanda earns our heart with her pained, desperate pleas to know more about her husband's secret life, especially regarding his mysterious friend Tom. Kat folds her arms and refuses to tell the grieving widow that Tom is a beloved blackbird they once fed on a mountain.

The blackbird is a meaningful symbol to Kat and Cliff and comes from one of their last happy days together before the romance dwindled. And so, during an outing with Roger, Kat returns to these mountains to find the piece of Cliff she thought she had lost.

At this point, a spiritual moment is set to unfold when a loud, jarring noise suddenly fills the theater. It is an umbrella repeatedly opening and shutting in the tech booth to represent the flapping motion of a blackbird's wings. The sound effect may have the best of intentions behind it, but when amplified by a microphone it sounds less like an approaching bird than a winged dinosaur. It drowns out the low, tearful dialogue uttered by Kat as she tries to maintain the somber mood.

Fortunately, the play is armed with strong acting to hook you where the characters may not. Cliff may have a sleazy nature, but Walters has a sweet, boyish charm that shines through the dialogue. There is such a deep sincerity to his "I love you" that we almost forget he is saying it twice a day to two different women.

Lally is also a magnetic force as Roger, Kat's berated boyfriend. A lingering moment in the play is his crushed expression when Kat hollers at him for innocently cooing at a blackbird. His enthusiasm at spotting the bird sounds so genuine that it hurts to see how quickly it fades at the sound of his girlfriend's sharp voice.

Perhaps the doomed relationship story here is more about Roger and Amanda, the dejected lovers of Kat and Cliff. They know their relationships will always pale in comparison to their partners' first loves, but they both try hard to make things work. In this story they come off as good people who have been deeply hurt and are unloved by those they want badly to please. With luck, the next time the blackbird returns, it will be for them.

Ye Gods!

What is satire? According to Wikipedia, it's a style of writing that "exposes the follies of its subject to ridicule...using irony and deadpan humor liberally." M. Stefan Strozier has written The Whales with the intention of turning a mirror onto New York theater and taking it to task for its indulgences, lazy productions, and liberal ideas. But though his views may be fashioned into an often thoughtful, Aristophanes-like satire, its presentation and performance is hampered by indulgent scenes, a lazy production, and half-formed ideas, which destroy the subtle irony and deadpan humor. In the play, the hermaphrodite god Dionysus is displeased with the current state of drama, particularly in the Big Apple. After some brainstorming with her Maenads, Dionysus sends them to find a crazy playwright to write a new show for a dramatic competition. If it is deemed good, the playwright will enjoy great rewards (including an Apple Mac laptop). They find their champion in Harry Alton, a former playwright and currently a homeless schizophrenic who lost his livelihood by writing a play called Hang All the Hippies at High Noon.

After the Maenads visit Harry and his fellow homeless lunatics in dreams, Harry goes about working on a new play for the competition. He meets a starry-eyed NYU drama student named Melissa, who suggests that they get someone to produce a reading of the work. Their plans are thwarted by Joanna Higginbotham, a member of the theatrical establishment whose ideals are the antithesis of Harry's.

Soon they are in the presence of the Whales, who are sent by Dionysus to judge the competition. But instead of a duel between the plays, the Whales call for Joanna and Harry to debate their viewpoints, with each trying to make a case for his or her goals and rules for today's theater.

Sadly, Strozier felt the need to jazz up his honest critique with unnecessary rap duels and dance breaks, and to people his script with tired stereotypes. If a character is presented as schizophrenic, he doesn't need to say things like "I am not crazy, everyone else is crazy" to get the point across. This is especially true in a protagonist; how can the audience believe in a hero who says such unbelievable things?

Instead of playing out the satire in a deadpan fashion, the actors chew up the black-box theater, and too many pregnant pauses kill the show's pacing. Perhaps Strozier would've been better off getting an outside director to exert some discipline over the staging instead of directing it himself. The promotional materials for The Whales boast of its large cast. But when one person is onstage speaking and a dozen other people are also there, carrying out their own objectives, fidgeting, and so on, the words are lost and the number of people is a detriment, not an asset.

It seems the big point that Strozier is making is that there should be better theater, that people shouldn't spend lots of money for lackluster Broadway shows, and that the liberal artistic elite is mostly to blame for the sorry state of the arts. But other than vague suggestions about critics and publishers loosening their stranglehold over their industries and being open to new things, no other ideas (certainly no original ones) are put forward to fix what the playwright says is so broken.

The ability to question institutions and to incite change is an important right to have and to exercise. However, there must be responsibility in carrying it out. The message itself is not only significant; so is the way that it's delivered. This is especially true when engaging in intellectual battles, such as a call for better New York theater. If one cannot bring a superior, or at least equal, product to the table, then it is no longer necessary or relevant. Rather, it is only so much more detritus in an already litter-strewn arts scene.

American Anomie

Richard Maxwell's plays resemble the paintings of analytic cubism, a style marked by a monochromatic, fractured collage of everyday three-dimensional objects reduced to two-dimensional squares and circles. Likewise, by breaking down and flattening our colorful American idiom into its component parts of straight talk and roundabout prevarication, Maxwell's plays help us observe the essential shape of our concerns and the undercurrent of anomie that belies our speech's animation. As important as analytic cubism was, however, its heyday was deservedly short-lived. The pleasures of such deliberately dull and angular compositions quickly fade because their appeal is almost entirely cerebral. Similarly, Maxwell's work, while an important step, is merely that: a step—it trips up if it stays put. Unfortunately, his current play, The End of Reality, malingers in its deadpan monologues until they finally succumb to the malaise of ambivalence that is their subject.

Five security guards on night watch struggle to relate to one another, and to a silent intruder in their midst, with various methods of coping with their boredom, helplessness, and fear. The images of an institutional lobby, a sterile corridor, and a motionless computer lab are projected by security cameras onto a video monitor. We are in the guard tower of a postmodern Panopticon, but, ironically, it's the guards themselves who are simultaneously anaesthetized and scared out of their wits.

Even if something happened, the guards, unlike police, are not supposed to fight. The florescent lighting imperceptibly flickers. Otherwise, there is a rigid monotony to their existence. The guards talk at—not to—each other about sports, the weather, their weekends. Without such talk, their vulnerability would be too palpable. However, their disconnected speeches, gauche pauses, point-blank stares at the audience, stylized male gestures, nervous repetitions, offbeat slang deconstructed in slow motion, and overwhelming lack of affect—even when describing situations that demand poignancy or paroxysm—betray them: they are faithless and afraid.

When the intruder arrives, it's as if such horror had been half longed for because it gives their lives dramatic moment. It's a kind of solution. They can finally utilize their skills and achieve the purpose of so much waiting. But, then, the conflict with the intruder seems to parody itself—the fight becomes an overly theatrical mockup of kung-fu movies.

Once detained, the intruder sulks in the center of the room: massive, silent, at the mercy of unknown forces—a living symbol of their anxiety. Yet their lives go on around him as usual with macho posturing, flirtations between the sexes, unconvincing sermons from the boss, and minor family crises. Nothing changes. Their situations, however, have been put into absurd relief: the dreadful has already happened, and—like Beckett's clowns—they can't go on, but do.

The play succeeds when it separates its characters' banal speech from their genuine feelings so that the heavy undertones of grief and longing break apart from the clichés they spout so fluidly. For example, the stop-and-go speech of a tough-guy veteran telling a female newcomer about his collection of Jordans and "Lil' Homies" (tiny figurines of urban stereotypes) reveals both his lack of self-awareness and his inner desperation, and it is a moment at once hilarious and heartbreaking.

Too often, though, the characters drone on in monotonous, disjunctive monologues. The characters don't seem to know where they want to go, their speech meanders, and, consequently, the audience begins to lose interest. Ultimately, there is not enough variety or enthusiasm in their dry, uninflected voices to sustain our attention for long swathes of soliloquy. When the characters engage in dialogue, on the other hand, their punctuated rhythms and extended pauses embellish the banal discourse so we can hear their alienation, not unlike the faint, hollow buzz of monitoring devices along the corridors.

The large, black stage engulfs the characters, while the sharp, white canvass backdrops convey the blankness of their yearning.

One shares the characters' uncertainty over whether their story is comically realistic or bleakly absurd. Or a tragedy, perhaps, about how the unserious levity with which we proceed with our lives undercuts the very matters of deadly earnestness that are at stake in them, even though, in the face of such existential nightmares, we have recourse to little else except these exchanges of shopworn trivialities to stave off hopelessness.

In the end, the image of a character who avoids reality by clinging blindly to his faith, talking incessantly of angels and ecstasy, is upstaged by a kneeling woman behind him who has been literally blinded by her fear. She reaches out her hands, imploring, while the personification of their terrors stalks off into the world.

Much like cubist portraits, it's as if Maxwell has put his characters under a strobe light, each threadbare trope of salvation shattered, frozen, and recognized for its inadequacy. Those brief flashes in the remorseless dark, however, are too inadequate even for their own designs.

Once Upon a Time

In recent decades, literary scholars have fastened on fairy tales as a key to unlocking the mysteries of the national psyche. Fairy Tale Monologues: Fables With Attitude, in a sometimes wickedly funny and subversive production staged by Point of You Productions, takes this premise and runs with it, reimagining these age-old stories as miniature psychodramas and endowing the inhabitants of Fairyland with modern identities and motives.

Directed by Jeff Love, the play consists of 10 segments, each running roughly eight minutes. One by one, in no apparent order, fancifully dressed fairy-tale characters, including King Midas, Tom Thumb, Snow White, and Goldilocks, take their turn on the stage, which is sparsely adorned with a signpost and a rectangular box, and tell the audience their stories.

The press release promises that the fairy-tale characters will "tell you what really happens when their story ends. Is it truly 'Happily Ever After'?" But writer Paul Weissman does more: he relays each tale's aftermath but also reimagines the tale itself as well as the events preceding it. With few plot links between the tales, each monologue succeeds or fails on its own merits, which makes for an uneven evening.

In the funniest sketch (the only one that's not a monologue), Hansel and Gretel, two wide-eyed, doughy German children dressed in lederhosen, explain where they were last night to their stepmother (whom we neither hear nor see). Gretel's attempt to present a plausible alibi is undermined at each turn by Hansel's interjections about candy-cane houses and witches, propelling the girl to concoct in exasperation the fairy tale's twists and turns. Triumph swiftly turns to frenzied denials when their stepmother informs them that she's just been on the phone with Rapunzel's mom, who presented a different version of events. Love and Alyssa Mann offer precisely synchronized, pitch-perfect portrayals of the not so innocent kinder.

The other standout monologue of the evening is delivered by the Big Bad Wolf, played by the brawny Gerard J. Savoy with just the right combination of piqued pride and smarminess. The wolf argues half-convincingly to the audience that he's gotten "a bad rap." A construction contractor and father of "a couple of litters," the wolf recounts how he was unfairly exiled for burning down the houses of the three pigs (for whom he cannot conceal his contempt) and later found companionship with Granny until Little Red Riding Hood—a self-absorbed teenage grandchild—enters the picture.

Weissman and his actors get off some good laughs, with Goldilocks as a masquerading, gender-bending bandit (Love); Tinkerbell (Marlise Garde) and Snow White (Melanie Kuchinski Rodriguez) as spurned lovers; and King Midas as the amoral, gold-mongering ruler who does not see any tragedy in his golden touch.

But when Weissman tries to go deeper and become serious, he ironically becomes shallower. The change in mood is jarring for the audience and is not justified by stories that genuinely tug at the heart. Weissman, as actor, falters in his earnest portrayal of Pinocchio as a young man who mistakenly thought he could win his detached father's love by becoming human. Even more of a drag on the evening is David Holt's Tom Thumb, who loses his uniqueness when he grows up—and grows ordinary in stature.

The final monologue should rightfully be delivered by the commitment-phobic dreamboat, Prince Charming (Johnny Blaze Leavitt), given how it neatly circles back to the opening, when Snow White confesses how she is in jail for poisoning the prince in a fit of jealousy. Instead, the evening concludes with an unfortunate thud, courtesy of Sleeping Beauty (Cassandra Cooke), who awakens from a long sleep as an iPod-toting, tiara-wearing jogger who fondly remembers her prior life as a nasty, self-absorbed princess.

Despite its ups and downs, Fairytale Monologues shows that children's fairy tales can be the source of great humor, and an artful mirror of the human condition.

Age Against the Machine

The four vignettes that make up Michael Smith's new piece, Trouble, now playing in the Joe Cino Theater at Theater for the New City, are not unlike the four elements: watery in places, sometimes laboriously sodden, occasionally breezy with offbeat musings, then suddenly fired with bitchy wit. The choppiness is reassuring in a way. With his reviewing for The Village Voice in the 1950's and 60's, Smith is widely considered the man who legitimated Off-Off-Broadway; it's nice to see that he has retained some of the amateurish charm that is the form's hallmark. Running through the center of the four loosely related sections—the way a river runs through manmade borders—is the aging but still formidable Tess Byerson (Kathryn Chilson), New York City's new commissioner of art and culture. Like any aging river, Tess may sport a few more wandering curves than in yesteryear, but she has lost none of the force of her current. She makes this fact clear in the opening scene, set in a Chinese restaurant during a press barrage: "Look at the pictures. Every single one, I'm not just smiling, I'm radiant. I can't fake that."

Self-love, though, is inelegant. Smith's concern here is not with unchecked ego but with the delicacy of ego in its slow dance with time. Glamour inevitably fades; time eventually leads the waltz. What else could justify Tess's very next line: "But then what?" Indeed, what could justify the next, most successful part of the evening, as Tess and her aide, Dickie (Alfred St. John Smith), head out to the studio of artist Sandy Morphol (the brilliant Jimmy Camicia) for a visit as part of her hard-won commissionership?

After spending a tense few minutes in an elevator that doesn't appear to be moving, Tess and Dickie emerge into the "sweatshop," where the Andy Warhol stand-in lords over his models like a god. (The enmity many Caffe Cino veterans hold for Warhol and his posse is the stuff of Off-Off-Broadway legend; I can only think that Smith's affection for the long-defunct coffeehouse helped sharpen his pen to such a gleeful point here.)

So it is that Smith is at his best with a target in his sights, and Morphol's exploitive temple proves to be excellent ground for some of his strongest material. For instance, when Tess discovers that she is being videotaped while models copulate in the background, she is indignant. It's left to Dickie, a fan of Morphol's, to smooth the burgeoning rift:

Tess: I don't do porn. Dickie: But you look divine today. I mean it. This is one of your best days. You're like a love goddess presiding over the orgy. Athena never looked so good. Tess: You're sweet to say so. Now will you get the [expletive] out of my frame?

Such nimble jiu-jitsu is rarer the further from this scene we travel. Like Tess, we begin to feel the wheel of time slowly turning; for an audience member, needless to say, this is more fun as a dramatic theme than as a hard fact. When we get to the final vignette, which takes place between Tess and her previously unseen lover Randy (Dino Roscigno) in a jail following his arrest, whatever comic energy Smith once mustered has dissipated into the cavernous, dark air of the Cino. All that's left is an unfocused attempt at pathos, as Tess realizes she is no longer wanted.

That Smith also directed the piece may have something to do with this dissipation into fuzziness—what he couldn't sharpen as a writer he certainly couldn't improve with staging, if he could see that anything needed improving at all. Still, as anyone who's contemplated the paradox that is King Lear knows, to write about age and aging requires remarkably youthful vigor. With Trouble, Michael Smith shows that he may be technically a little long in the tooth, but when he sets his mind to it, those teeth can still deliver a wicked cut.

Out of Asia

Written and directed by Rubén Polendo, though clearly credited as a Theater Mitu collaboration, The Myth Cycle: Ahraihsak is an escape into a ritualistic performance that explores the perfections and frailties of human nature. Intelligent and visually striking, this capable production exposes its audience to artistic traditions not commonly encountered in Western theater. The titular myth is that of Ihsak (Darren Pettie), the favored heir of a king. Betrayed by his brother, he goes into exile. While wandering, he meets another king who was wrongly dethroned: Naarah (Jason Lew). Naarah travels with his fiercely protective sister Tarwan (Aysan Çelik), who quickly develops both a strong respect for and an attraction to Ihsak.

Summoned back to his kingdom by his treacherous brother, Ihsak returns home, only to lose everything he values. His actions plunge him into violence and despair, until a brave novice priestess (Jenni-Lynn McMillin) helps him to heal.

Ihsak's devolution from noble warrior to haunted tyrant—and his transformation back—seems derived from the myths and traditions of many cultures. No specific culture or country is cited in the program as source material, and several times throughout the evening I wondered if this story was created by Theater Mitu or was an actual myth. While the play clearly displays South Asian influences, the themes of creation, destruction, hope, and love are universal, and as relevant today as they would have been in any past age.

Strong performances by Pettie, Çelik, Lew, and Corey Sullivan (as the comical Mibi) keep the journey of Ihsak and his companions engaging and emotionally charged throughout the two acts. As Act I came to a close, several short, powerful scenes gave the show's first half a bit more energy than its second, which ends with a gentle message of hope and peace.

Theater Mitu's mission includes a concept it calls "Whole Theater," where theater entertains the senses, the mind, and the emotions. This was instantly apparent when walking into Teatro LA TEA at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center: the air was heavy with incense, and the space separating the performing area from the audience was lined with Oriental rugs. It was clear that the world in this play would be very different from noisy, gritty Delancey Street outside.

Powerful visual elements—puppets, masks, handcrafted props—added to the production's luster. The puppets worked well, from the rod puppet of young Naarah to the brilliant construction of Ahsan the horse, silently and deftly executed by Peggy Trecker. Because the actors performed so seamlessly with their props, the show's deceptively simple "special effects" were quite effective.

Scott Spahr's set of platforms and ramps was spare and elegant. Outlining the central performing area were shallow troughs of dirt, tantalizingly lighted before the show began but, sadly, not used during the production. However, an ingenious use of shiny Plexiglas and well-positioned water for Tarwan's bathing scene more than made up for it.

Miranda Hoffman's costumes were simple and represented a strong sampling of East Asian and Southeast Asian traditional dress. The masterful lighting design by Ryan Mueller made everyone and everything look beautiful.

Jef Evans played his original music in full visibility of the audience. He sat at his small version of a gamelan, surrounded by drums, bells, chimes, and rattles. The songs and vocal performances were perhaps the show's weakest aspect, if only because the acting and technical values were so exceptional. I was continually surprised to hear the songs delivered in English because they seemed so steeped in non-Western elements. The characters did seem to come by their songs organically, and the well-composed music flowed in and out of each scene naturally.

Theater Mitu's production succeeds at being "Whole Theater" because it is definitely the sum of its parts. Not just a vehicle for acting, writing, or visual effects, the play turns into true performance in a way that traditional Western theater seldom achieves. While it is an especially enjoyable evening for a theatergoer interested in ritual and performance, less specialized audiences should not feel intimidated by the title or subject matter. The company does a great job of making the show accessible and entertaining for everyone.

Escape From the Psycho Ward

From the moment Randle Patrick McMurphy bursts into Nurse Ratched's ward, all jovial and sassy because he's been committed here rather than sentenced to prison, you just know there's going to be trouble. The psychiatric ward, dedicated to the rehabilitation of "the weak," operates on a set of unspoken, unwritten rules that McMurphy, a poster child for the anti-establishment, thinks he can ignore. But as this time-honored classic unfolds, McMurphy's protest against the passive-aggressive bullying that Nurse Ratched has perfected on her charges is no match for her arsenal of literally mind-altering medical procedures. But for all his antics and aggression, McMurphy isn't really the protagonist here. He's a vehicle of change, a sacrificial lamb of sorts for Chief Bromden, who, during the course of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is brought out of his deaf/mute shell and escapes the ward under the cover of night. Physically, Chief Bromden is a hulking figure, but mentally he's a child haunted by conversations with his father, who, we later learn, became a "small man" when he sold the family land. Bromden, who has inherited this curse of mental smallness and fragility, is shoved and bullied by staff aides and generally ignored by everyone else.

The attention McMurphy shows Bromden pays dividends and awakens the man from a waking dream. It is Bromden who lifts the box filled with electrical wiring when McMurphy could not, and it is Bromden who casts the final vote to allow the men to watch baseball on TV. McMurphy exemplifies for him, and for all the men to a lesser degree, what it looks like when freedom takes the form of all-out rebellion. When Nurse Ratched plays her ace and has McMurphy lobotomized, we understand that McMurphy's tale is a cautionary one. Not all of the patients will ever muster the courage to leave, but at least they understand that leaving—and living—is a viable option.

The Charlie Pineapple Theater Company, making plays in Brooklyn's Williamsburg, far, far from Broadway's madding crowd, does a commendable job with this production. At a little over three hours, it could be shorter and probably will be, once the fairly good ensemble cast gels a bit more. George Stonefish is a well-cast Chief Bromden, making the disparity between his physical and mental presence believable.

Among the crazies, Michael Snow is Dale Harding, the voluntary admit and president of the Patients Council who is hiding from his sexuality. Snow plays Harding compassionately, steeling him against the pain of living with a razor-sharp wit and a finely attuned self-consciousness. Brian Leider and Christopher Franklin, as the stuttering Billy Bibbit and the amped-up Cheswick, are also a treat to watch. Both commit wonderfully to their characters and give the at times lagging production some of its much-needed energy.

In order for Cuckoo's Nest to work, the leads must communicate their utter hatred for each other with every breath. Nurse Ratched, a pent-up dominatrix in disguise if there ever was one, is a mistress of order and protocol. Sadly, Cidele Curo's performance leaves much to be desired—she neither projects strength nor that just-under-the-surface lust for strength that can electrify the clash between her and her charges. And as McMurphy, Jerry Broome seems to be acting under the influence, or perhaps the weight, of Jack Nicholson's performance in the hard to forget 1975 film. That said, there are worse things than a rehashing of that performance, but much of the ensemble work deserves a fresh and fully realized McMurphy to guide them.

Overall, this is one loony bin we shouldn't mind being locked up in for a few hours, just as long as we, like Chief Bromden, can escape once the going gets rough.

Last Years

You have to admire Pierre van der Spuy. Imagine leaving a successful medical career to pursue theater, a courageous act in itself, only to become playwright, director, and star of one of your very first projects. As anyone in theater can attest, to do any one of those three things well is a challenge; to do them simultaneously is nearly impossible. Albeit with dogged effort, van der Spuy falls far short of success with Anton, his four-act investigation of the last four years of Anton Chekhov's life. While densely researched and thoughtfully presented, the script—intended to represent a Chekhovian authorial style—lacks a dramatic arc, and the action flits around, but never fully addresses, van der Spuy's overarching intention.

His purpose, noted in Epilogue II, is to raise awareness and concern for how children are treated in their first five years of life. Referring to a tree's development (as mentioned in the play), he asks, "What are we as a society doing to support those parents with undetected defective inner growth rings to prevent them from passing on their loneliness, their melancholy, their self-destructive behavior, and their fear of intimacy from generation to generation?"

But while the Chekhov represented in Anton is melancholic, regretful, and often emotionally impenetrable, the four episodes offer little evidence to link his emotional state directly to the first five years of his life. His tense relationships with his family do fray and tear apart as his health deteriorates. But just as his consumptive cough never really worsens (even near the end, it's difficult to believe he is close to death), the pace of this lugubrious, bland production, instead of ebbing and flowing, plods steadily and flatly along, offering few epiphanies or transformations.

Chekhov spent most of his last years in Moscow and at his home in Yalta, where the play is set. There he keeps company with his widowed mother, Eugenia (Loyita Chapel); his sister, Masha (Shelley Phillips); and the actress Olga Knipper (Ana Kearin Genske), who starred in many of his plays and later becomes his wife. He certainly has many reasons to be gloomy: his mother is fiercely overprotective and needy, Masha longs for independence but continues to lean on him, Olga openly has affairs and struggles with pregnancy, and Chekhov himself still struggles with his brother Kolia's death from consumption, which occurred when Chekhov was 29.

As a playwright, Chekhov valued the use of subtext and metaphor, and wrote scripts that prioritized character over plot. While van der Spuy's script does, at times, embrace these conventions, his characters lack the depth and poignancy to carry the production forward. Olga, in particular, is so static that Genske herself seems bored by her own performance at times.

Fortunately, Chapel and Phillips bring welcome light to the production. As Chekhov's unlikable mother, Chapel purses her lips with severity, but also allows us to see her irrevocable love for her son. She is particularly remarkable in a beautiful moment when she tells Anton what she remembers about Kolia.

Phillips is luminous as Masha, expertly locating the complicated subtext in what could be a forgettable role. When Olga chides her, "Your lips are smiling, but not your eyes," she's telling the truth—Phillips often wears her smile as a deceptive mask, and reveals subtle layers of character throughout the production.

Rounding out the cast are Kent Langloss, who does a fine job as the omnipresent Dr. Altshuller; Lee Kaplan, who overplays the annoying qualities of visiting author Bunin; Jamison Vaughn, who is too young but still endearing as the elderly servant Mariushka; and Jim Heaphy, who plays the other fictionalized servant, Sergei.

The domestic tension is beguilingly captured by Sarah Phykitt's set, in which ornate rugs and furniture are juxtaposed with family photos to create a believable familial atmosphere. Katie Stults produced a very pleasant collection of costumes, and Jessica Lynn Hinkle's lighting design convincingly evokes the changing seasons. Unfortunately, the direction works to undermine these excellent technical elements—characters enter and exit from inconsistent locations, and in the absence of a coat rack, one character simply throws his coat on the floor.

Anton laments, "Life should be beautiful if you live in a house like this," but looks can be deceiving, and Chekhov's life, as presented here, is far from bucolic. Chekhov longed for theater that was "just as complex and yet as simple" as life itself; people may be simply having a meal, "but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are smashed up."

Unfortunately, we aren't privy to enough creation or destruction to justify this journey, and, like Joe Brooks, who produced, directed, and wrote the now-defunct Broadway musical In My Life earlier this season, van der Spuy falls victim to the lack of perspective that results from being too immersed in one's own project. Still, you can't blame him for trying; as he's probably already discovered, producing theater is often about, if nothing else, dreaming the impossible dream.

The Oddest Couple

While theatergoers flock by the thousands to see the limp Nathan Lane-Matthew Broderick revival of a Neil Simon play, the truly inspired "odd couple" is taking place just a few blocks away on West 43rd Street at Theater Three, where Candy & Dorothy Productions is premiering Candy & Dorothy. In David Johnston's flawless new work, two women who could not have been more different in life, Candy Darling (an Andy Warhol protégée) and Dorothy Day (the Catholic activist), find themselves trapped together in death. In the afterlife, they begin a journey that transcends time and space, soaring well beyond the heavens to create a story that is equal parts funny and poignant.

An occasional actress and "partial transsexual," Candy (Vince Gatton) lived life to the extreme as one of Warhol's many sidekicks. A sometimes Communist and Mao sympathizer, Dorothy (Sloane Shelton) gave her life to helping the less fortunate by working as the compassionate co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. In death, Candy and Dorothy squabble over the present and the hereafter while reflecting upon the past.

Under the guidance of a disembodied voice (the pitch-perfect Brian Fuqua), Candy quickly takes to the afterlife, working her way up heaven's ladder as she becomes a caseworker for the newly arrived. Her first client is Dorothy. On a mission to earn her "wings," Candy attempts to teach Dorothy a lesson about her life on Earth. But her efforts are thwarted as Dorothy stubbornly helps a troubled young woman in New York City.

On Earth, 33-year-old Tamara (Nell Gwynn) is at a crossroads—literally—as she stands on the corner of First Avenue and First Street. Flat broke, stuck in a dull job, and having just had an abortion, Tamara is a mess. Her life is complicated even further when she stumbles into a relationship with a wise bartender named Sid (the very funny Amir Arison). On the verge of consummating her relationship with him, Tamara finds herself the focus of the two very unlikely guardian angels.

The heavenly duo quickly make themselves at home in Tamara's apartment, cleaning up the place, offering advice, and helping Tamara stage a protest rally. Realizing she is seeing dead people, Tamara fears she is losing her mind. Ultimately, Dorothy's otherworldly preoccupation with the living Tamara turns out to be both women's salvation. (Interestingly, Dorothy's real-life daughter was named Tamar.)

Johnston's crisp dialogue crackles with wit. He creates situations of laugh-out-loud hilarity, yet they're mingled with quiet moments of honesty. He also has a profound understanding of what makes human beings tick. Whether we watch his characters share a cup of coffee or are allowed to eavesdrop on the intimate conversation between lovers, Johnston's masterful dialogue resonates with truth.

Kevin Newbury's seamless direction is the ideal complement to Johnston's script. Newbury uses the tight space to full advantage, expertly creating a sense of claustrophobia as Tamara's life implodes. The small stage accommodates nearly a dozen settings with the addition of a simple set piece or well-placed prop.

Newbury also guides his five-person cast to polished, inspired performances. As the tortured Tamara, Gwynn delivers a thoroughly intense and raw portrayal. Brimming with excitement and honesty, she expertly finds comedy in tragedy as she displays her hilarious neuroses. As the humble Day, Shelton gives the character a dry wit and an incredulous smirk. Her deadpan delivery makes even the subtlest jokes crackle, and her natural performance never falters or hits a false note.

But even with a great script, outstanding direction, and magnificent acting, Gatton manages to run away with the show as drag queen Candy Darling. He never resorts to typical drag histrionics—no shrieking, no mincing, no letting his albeit fabulous costumes do the acting. Gatton fully inhabits Darling, disappearing into the role with such conviction and determination that you forget a man is playing a woman. It's the ultimate compliment to Darling, who wanted nothing more than to be accepted as a woman. Gatton honors that wish and Darling's memory with his brilliant rendering.

Candy & Dorothy is a hidden gem. With its combination of subtle emotion and uproarious humor, the play accomplishes the rarest of feats: it transforms you. As it leaves you with smiles and laughter, it also reminds you that a simple act of kindness can truly change one person's life. This production deserves to have a long life, and with the producers trying to move it Off-Broadway, here's hoping it does.

Medical Miracle

Is there anything left worth believing in? With biting humor at a breakneck pace, Word Monger Productions presents Brian Parks's snarky play Goner, an expertly produced delight guaranteed to make you question your allegiances, whether they be medical, governmental, or cinematic. It's easy enough to poke fun at government these days, but Parks's clever script puts an inept president into the hands of three even more inept surgeons at a hospital. Even if you don't believe in government, you might still have some faith in medicine. But if you pay attention to Goner, you won't for long.

Dr. Hoyt Schermerhorn (Jody Lambert) is the new guy at the hospital, and he struggles to get to know his colleagues. The wiry Dr. Ecorse Southgate (Matt Oberg) is a glockenspiel master who has recently designed Chemotherapy Barbie (yes, she vomits and her hair falls out). And Dr. Warren Wyandotte (David Calvitto), the head of surgery, gazes into his daughter Wixom's mouth to determine if she is pregnant, proclaiming, "What's a father doctor for, if not free gynecology?"

When President Waterford Novi (Bill Coelius) is shot in an assassination attempt, he is transported to the hospital, where the doctors wait until he is stable enough for an operation. The comic buildup to the operation grows in manic intensity, punctuated by the exploits of two FBI agents (Leslie Farrell and Patrick Frederic).

A clever subplot charts the budding romance between newcomer Hoyt and Wixom (Jona Tuck), who works as a lab technician. Pushed by her father to become a doctor, Wixom instead dons a beret and becomes an "artist." She decides to make a documentary about black people (whose oppression she has newly discovered), and her wide-eyed enthusiasm and blatant lack of knowledge indict the warped sense of righteousness taken on by many a filmmaker.

It is to Parks's credit that he manages to extend his critique from medicine and government to the realm of film as well. After all, why dismiss President Bush only to blindly follow Michael Moore? Goner ably questions unqualified loyalty to any one thing, medical or otherwise.

John Clancy has directed a superbly well-oiled production, and the actors move through the show with astonishing vocal dexterity. The high-speed pace calls for veritable linguistic gymnastics, and the actors don't miss a beat, thanks also to the impeccable precision of Eric Southern's lighting. My only complaint was that the hourlong show sometimes skimmed through its substantial material so quickly that several high-quality jokes were either unintelligible or barely touched upon.

As the surgical trio, Calvitto, Lambert, and Oberg make a thrilling comic team, whether they are attempting to operate or harmonizing to a heart monitor. Tuck is very engaging as Wixom, and she offers a surprisingly winning monologue about analyzing stool samples (as a "chef in reverse"). Coelius's unshakable deadpan as the president makes us love to distrust him, and Farrell and Frederic are splendid as the FBI agents and in assorted other roles.

A zippy, absurdist comedy in the tradition of Christopher Durang and Urinetown, Goner played to positive notices at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, and New Yorkers are now lucky to find it stateside. Apparently there are idiots everywhere, whether you believe in them or not. But wherever you choose to pledge your allegiance, Goner suggests it's much safer to laugh at the idiots than to take them too seriously.

Flow of LAVA

(W)hole, currently playing at the Flea Theater, is a full-length movement piece from the creative minds of the LAVA girls: an all-woman, six-person dance troupe known for its ability to draw on geological themes and phenomena as an inspiration for its dazzling aerobics. LAVA was founded by director and performer Sarah East Johnson, who later recruited Natalie Agee, Diana Greiner, Molly Chanoff, Rebecca Stronger, and Adrienne Truscott to complete the group. They are the cast of (W)hole, a show that shines with astonishing athletic performances and stunning trapeze feats, but dims in trying to convey the weighty ideas and symbolism that lie beneath the stunts. The LAVA girls are not, literally, jumping through hoops merely to jump through hoops. On the contrary, there is a purpose to everything they do. In the (W)hole press release they explain that such stunts as their "handstand duets and balancing acts" are used to represent "magnetic polarity reversal." However, those witnessing the handstand duet onstage without reading this beforehand (there are no explanations within the pages of the playbill) are not likely to understand the handstand's significance to magnetic polarity, let alone its reversal.

Midway through the show, the LAVA girls bring (W)hole to a screeching halt to play interactive games with the audience. One grabs a clipboard and says, "Anyone who has been upside down in the past five days please stand up." Those who stand (a surprising handful) are asked to come onstage. They are then given 17 seconds to join hands and form two circles moving in opposite directions. When this is accomplished, they return to their seats, and more questions of this nature are asked, encouraging those who answered affirmatively to come onstage and form various molecular patterns with others. This game is enjoyable for those who want to participate, and entertaining for those who don't.

The fun wanes when the LAVA girls give everyone in the crowd approximately two minutes to frantically gather their things and find a new seat in another section of the square-shaped theater. Some audience members gamely participated, while others looked reluctant to find another seat when they were comfortable in the one they had. In some cases, those with good seats who didn't move were not-so-playfully pressured to by those in bad seats, who saw this as an opportunity to acquire better ones.

Before the interactive games, the audience is given a quick, short, and complicated tutorial on how lava is formed beneath the earth, and is told that the point of the games is to show how "alike minerals find one another." But these connections, especially for those who are not science-minded, are hazy at best. Also hazy is the reason behind ushers forcing all audience members to remove their shoes and wrap them in plastic bags prior to entering the theater. Was this a prank or did it represent a scientific theory? There is never an explanation.

Without knowing or understanding the message behind the movements and tricks being performed by the LAVA girls, (W)hole can be appreciated only on its purely physical level. Mixing science and circus to create a comprehensive, full-length movement piece is a difficult endeavor, but with some trial and error, these six talented gymnasts should find the perfect balance.

Parent Trapped

The most effective moments of Dutch playwright Alex van Warmerdam's The Northern Quarter, now making its New York premiere at the Sanford Meisner Theater, are the two stage images that bookend the evening. Minutes after lights' rise, the 41-year-old protagonist, Faas, uses a flashlight to follow the winding tendril of a long, red knit scarf—like a man slowly collecting the thread sewn for him by the Fates—until he comes face to face with his personal Klotho, the goddess of spinning: his disturbingly cheerful mother, still blithely crocheting. All roads, we're seemingly told, lead to Mom. The rest of the evening doesn't so much advance from this image as circle its significance, like a dog sniffing around its master. Faas (the excellent Dave Geuriera), under the aegis of both his mother (Heather Hollingsworth) and his rigidly decorous father (Vincent van der Valk), has been held the long years of his life under what amounts to house arrest. He is not allowed outside; he is barred from reading books (when his father relents and gives his son a dictionary, Faas discovers that all but a few paternally approved words have been scratched out); he is even denied a shrimp sandwich on the grounds that wanting one means he is not entirely content at the present moment. Trouble starts when Faas begins to assert to his parents the truth of that accusation.

The uneven charm of van Warmerdam's script, as translated from the original Dutch by director Erwin Maas, is in its particular type of absurdity. It's not a pure blend. Where the absurd argues that the world and those who people it are threatening for being entirely inscrutable, van Warmerdam seems to suggest that the true threat to our well-being is not attempting to go out and crack the code.

It's no surprise, then, that once he lets Faas into the world—where he finds his beloved books and experiments with painting, among other things—the mood noticeably lightens. A warm breath of common sense begins to creep into the dialogue (a duel of philosophy with three quirky construction workers is the high point of this shift in tone), as opposed to simple logic, which, in keeping with the absurd tradition, the parents show time and again to be easily perverted.

Maas's attractive visual sense generally accentuates these various dips and rises (with strong support from costume designer Oana Botez-Ban and light designers Lucrecia Briceno and Tim Cryan). This is a double-edged sword. Where sometimes Maas's staging serves to adeptly underscore a moment's subtext—as he does with the red scarf image—he bludgeons others with obviousness. (I'm thinking particularly of several scenes in which mother and father use their son as a sitting stool, needlessly emphasizing his subjection.)

The cast members bear up well, though. They know the work is, at bottom, a clown show—as pointed up by the many inventive costumes as well as through makeup (the parents, for instance, are powdered and lavishly rouged)—and the actors ratchet up the energy accordingly. Particularly fine work is done by van der Valk and Hollingsworth. However, it's Geuriera's imperturbable Faas who anchors the evening. He wisely refuses to play his unwilling shut-in as a child trapped in a man's body. Instead, he aims at the more interesting challenge of playing a man trapped in a child's life.

That van Warmerdam lacks the teeth for the viciousness of the unadulterated absurd makes his inclusion of a gun and its eventual use all the stranger. Yet from this misstep comes a crowning touch. With his father looking on, Faas steps off the stage and passes through the audience, out into the brisk air beyond the theater doors, from which we can hear real life humming on 11th Avenue. After a long, pained moment, the father offers a simple endorsement: "Goodbye, son."

Separate Lives, Common Affliction

In response to the cheeky list "123 Reasons to Love New York Right Now" that New York magazine published on Dec. 26, Gawker.com, a media blog popular with the Google generation, published its own snarkier, hipper version. No. 81 on the Gawker list made me gasp; it read, "Because nobody uses condoms anymore." After Rent and the AIDS quilt, Magic Johnson and those ubiquitous red ribbons, has the generation weaned on sex education classes lost its collective concern about HIV and AIDS so thoroughly that we no longer care to take even the most basic sexual precaution?

Sadly, the numbers continue to paint a grim picture. Young people between 15 and 24 account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide, with more than 6,000 in this age bracket getting the disease every day. In the United States, the rate of AIDS diagnosis for African-American women is a staggering 25 times the rate for white women; HIV/AIDS is the No. 1 cause of death for African-American women between 25 and 34. And all this after more than a decade of AIDS awareness.

These are some of the facts I was compelled to seek out after seeing Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter in their two-woman play, In the Continuum. The production, minimally staged and beautifully acted, tells the story of two women, one African and one African-American, who, though they live on opposite sides of the planet, are fighting remarkably similar struggles.

Abigail, a Zimbabwean, is seemingly a success story. She is an on-air reporter for the local news station and has a young child by her equally successful and desirable husband, Stanford. Abigail knows that Stanford is cheating on her, but hopes that the child she carries will bring him back to her arms. When she goes to the crowded clinic for a checkup, Abigail is told by an unsympathetic and distracted nurse that she has the disease. What's worse, though he may beat her and send her back to her village a shamed woman, Abigail must break the news to Stanford and convince him to come in for testing.

Meanwhile, Nia, a Los Angeles teenager who is in and out of foster homes, has snuck out to a club with her best friend. She waits there for her boyfriend, Darnell, a local basketball hero, with several people hoping to ride his coattails out of the ghetto. After shots are fired at the club, Nia finds herself in a clinic, only to learn that she is pregnant with Darnell's child and HIV-positive.

From here, both Abigail and Nia must interact with the women who surround them, including a former high school friend turned sex worker and a social-climbing acquaintance for Abigail, and a painfully out-of-touch social worker and a gold-digging cousin for Nia. Each of these meetings propels Abigail and Nia closer to the play's dramatic climax: the moment of confrontation and exposure. Abigail and Nia must decide whether to face public shame and "out" the men who gave them this disease or continue to submit to the weight of secrecy.

It is then, at that moment of choosing, that the fictional wall dividing Abigail's world from Nia's breaks down and the two women momentarily acknowledge each other onstage. Their cultural particulars fall away and they know a moment of solidarity and understanding that, though strictly expressionist, represents so much of what they do not have access to. Neither woman ends up telling her secret, and in not doing so, both reveal to us how much more solidarity and understanding these characters need—from each other, from the people they know, from us.

That Gurira and Salter play every character in this 90-minute piece, often simultaneously onstage and deftly transitioning among them, is a theatrical triumph that must be seen to be believed. Watching them weave together the stories of these wildly different yet tragically similar women is akin to watching expertly trained and obviously gifted dancers, each moving independently, both moving as one.

Despite the lax attitudes that have prompted some to declare this a post-AIDS cultural moment, the numbers do not lie. And plays like In the Continuum succeed not only as art but as reminders that, in terms of this disease and its effect on specific communities, the worst of times are not behind us.