A Winter's Tale Ends in Spring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down the Road and Back Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Journey Home

What is an American? As children of immigrants, who are we really? And where are we from? Some ancestral homeland or from wherever we were raised? Questions such as these are at the heart of East Towards Home, written by Billy Yalowitz and directed by David Schechter, which recently ended its run at the Theater for the New City. At its best, this show is charming and relatable. At its worst, however, this show is nothing more than self-indulgent. This uneven play presents wonderful musical interludes, but the plot leaves much to be desired.

The story centers around a young man, played by David Kremenitzer, ostensibly our narrator/playwright Yalowitz at a younger age, trying to find his place in folk music and socialist revolution. In order to do so, we all travel back in time to meet him as a small boy, learning to play in his multi-racial neighborhood. We journey with him through the trials and tribulations of childhood, such as baseball tryouts, bullying, summer camp and annoying old neighbors. One such neighbor, Sylvie, portrayed by Eleanor Reissa, proves to be an essential cog in the story; she knew the young man's musical hero, Woody Guthrie, and participated directly in early to mid-twentieth century Communism in America.

When the show focuses on these satellite narrative threads, it is at its best. Sylvie’s story sheds light on a moment in our history often overlooked, bringing out the beauty of Yiddish speech and traditional dance. The highlight of the show comes in the fourth performer — Brian Gunter’s performing of folk music as Woody Guthrie. He is an extremely skilled musician, who brings to life both the sounds and meanings of this music style. The play consists of three interlocking narratives; these two and the play's driving narrative arc. Although this is meant to show the links between Guthrie, Sylvie, and our protagonist, it is often disorienting and left me wondering in which story we find ourselves at any given moment.

The tale of the young man, however, often falls flat. Despite wanting to sympathize with him, I found myself wondering why he felt so lost.  He seemed to have a great understanding of the world and to have been given some incredible opportunities. Yes, he was a victim of discrimination, anti-Semitism, and political oppression, which are no small matters, but he seemed to have the wherewithal to overcome it.  By including himself as an older man as a character, it was always clear he had found his way home. It also made it seem like this production was somewhat of a celebration of itself. He had overcome and lived to make a play of it.

All in all, the notion of a lost young person trying to find his place in the world does seem universal. The music is wonderful and the use of projections and direct audience address work nicely to engage the spectators in active thought about the issues presented.  Unfortunately, the takeaway is diminished by the story being too specific. Ultimately, this is not a play about us, the people bearing witness. It is an individual recitation, meant to show us who this particular person is, not what might be possible if we work together.

Voices from the Depths

Stories about illegal crossings reveal the bravery of those who confront innumerable dangers to escape terrible living conditions. Their goal is to ultimately achieve a better life for their families and themselves. Each immigrant has a deeply emotional story to tell about persecution, extreme poverty, sickness, the perils of the crossing, and the discovery that their destination is as filled with problems as their countries of origin. These are the stories that make up Rumore di acque (Noise in the Waters), a melologue, which is a short work created for voice and music, produced by Teatro delle Albe and written and directed by Marco Martinelli. The piece is a collection of all those migrant voices that can be heard along the Strait of Sicily, the 90-mile wide portion of the Mediterranean Sea that divides North Africa and Sicily. Some of their tales are being told for audiences at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club by a solitary demon on a volcanic island in the Mediterranean Sea.

In the melologue, a bureaucrat working for the Ministro dell’ Inferno (Minister of Hell), a clear reference to the Italian Ministro dell’ Interno (Minister of the Interior), is appointed to a deserted volcanic islet located in the middle of the Sicilian strait. The island is suggested in the bare theatrical space by a spiral of stones on the floor. The narrator stands at the center of the spiral, symbolizing his location within the bowels of the watery and volcanic hell. This figure wears dark sunglasses and a blue military uniform adorned with medals, establishing a physical reference to the now defunct Muammar Qaddafi. The General, magnificently performed by Alessandro Renda, explains in a gravelly voice that his job is to count and record all the African immigrants who have perished on their voyage to Europe. Nevertheless, the narrator never expresses any emotion towards the subjects and only shows outrage for the fish, which make his job harder by eating the flesh of the dead at sea. He is only interested in the numbers, a clear indictment of how Italian and North African governments are indifferent to the plight of immigrants.

Among his deliberations about numbers, his anger with the fish, and a discussion about how inferior bureaucrats should address him, the general tells us the sad stories of four African refugees. The character and his delivery never really lead the audience into an emotional involvement with his stories. The listener rejects everything that the narrator stands for. In this way, Martinelli resists manipulating the audience’s emotions and forces us to think critically about what the character really represents and where we are located in his narrative. Although the general is a representative of power, the refugees are still heard through the painfully beautiful music and vocals of Enzo and Lorenzo Mancuso. While the general is at center stage, the Mancuso brothers play and sing from stage right. They occupy a dreamlike space outside the volcanic islet from where their vocals act out the desperation and pathos of those who have sacrificed themselves for a better life.

Rumore di acque presents stories of refugees from Libya and many communities throughout the Sahara that are as relevant to Europe and Africa as to the United States and Latin America. The writing, direction, performance and music blend harmoniously to make audiences see the plight of immigrants and the indifference of those in power.

Rumore di acque is performed in Italian with supertitles in English. It runs until Feb. 16 at La MaMa's First Floor Theatre (74A East 4th St.). Evening performances are 7:30 p.m. on Thursday through Saturday; matinee performances are 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $18 and $13 for students and seniors. For tickets, call 212-475-7710 or visit www.lamama.org.       

Cultural Wasteland

Anne Washburn's ambitious but labored Mr. Burns is subtitled A Post-Electric Play. The central conceit is that in the future an undefined catastrophe has occurred (there are references to a quarantine, a “bug,” and empty and burned cities). All electricity has stopped, and worse, nuclear power plants are melting down. Around a campfire (niftily envisioned by designer Neil Patel as a smoking TV set), a group of survivors share stories about episodes of The Simpsons to keep their minds off their plight.

The title refers, of course, to Homer Simpson's villainous boss at the nuclear plant in the cartoon series. Meanwhile, the principals (all carrying the same first names as the actors who play them) try to piece together TV episodes from jumbled memories as if each were another Homer — the blind Greek one — assembling The Iliad; they falter and trail off and balk and interrupt one another. Although the play was partly developed by the actors' own reconstruction of an episode, which may account for some self-indulgence, it's a plodding start to a demanding play. One wishes director Steve Cosson had sped things up a bit.

Among the most proficient of the reconstructors is Matthew (Matthew Maher), whose most helpful colleagues are Susannah (Susannah Flood) and Jenny (Jennifer R. Morris). Their reconstruction, however, is suddenly interrupted by a stranger, Gibson (Gibson Frazier), who arrives from Framingham, Mass. In one of Washburn’s best ideas, the campfire group asks his story, and then each, following a custom that has apparently arisen among the refugees and survivors, reads 10 names from a personal log in hopes that Gibson will have information on the survival of someone in the log that he carries; Gibson, in kind, reads 10 names as well. Although it's time consuming, one senses the isolation and disappointment as name after name brings no response.

Beset by fears of radioactive fallout from disabled plants, they trade rumors of heroic last-ditch efforts, underground seepage and no-go zones, and then they return to The Simpsons. Other bits of pop culture, from the film Cape Fear, with Robert Mitchum, and the remake with Robert De Niro, to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, also bubble up.

In the second scene, seven years have passed. The principals have been joined by Quincy (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), and they are preparing to put on a Simpsons episode, albeit on a shoestring. During the intervening years, rival troupes have popped up (as well as theater circuits), all laying claim to various episodes of The Simpsons. It may be amusing or disheartening that what these performers want to preserve seems so trivial next to Shakespeare or Moliere or Chekhov, whose works, one must assume, cannot be remembered so well.

Nonetheless, there are suggestions that civilization is making a comeback; there are haves and have-nots, and Gibson offers the opinion that Chablis will come back into fashion because “people are ready for status again.” In this world, though, wealthier troupes pay for lines to Simpsons episodes that are remembered by various people, and shysters try to sell bogus lines or claim credit for lines that they had nothing to do with. And the actors find solace in the high quality of their commercials. (Washburn doesn't clarify whether they are presented during the play.) The cast rehearses their episode, but the scene ends with a twist drawn from other kinds of TV series, such as 24 and Strike Back.

A leap forward of 75 years brings a well-appointed troupe —with nicely painted backdrops and excellent lighting (Justin Townsend’s work is exemplary in all three segments), performing an episode of The Simpsons in costumes and striking half-masks. There is music (by Michael Friedman). The result is a pastiche of The Simpsons that incorporates bits of G&S, a Greek chorus, rap, and the catch phrase from the 1940 Bob Hope vehicle The Ghost Breakers: “Feets, don’t fail me now!” A reference to Chablis suggests that the original script of the shoestring company has served as the template for the production.

In its own way, Washburn’s apocalyptic drama echoes the history of theater, as culture forms and re-forms itself, passing through natural disasters and war and accruing .classic bits over time. The idea is full of promise, but the work is too often taxing rather than compelling, and feels ramshackle at times. Even so, the actors work hard, and they are all good. Sam Breslin Wright has the title role, but the plays-within-the-play are too cumbersome, and the whole enterprise, calculated to spark one’s intellect, ends up numbing the mind.

A Lesson of Love and Loss

From the moment the lights dimmed and music started, I knew that 23 Year Old Myth was not going to be your average jukebox musical. With a genre-bending soundtrack (ranging from the indie hits of Florence and the Machine and MGMT, to original material by members of the company such as Emma Barash and playwright Leslie Gauthier), the play – which is part of Theater for the New City’s Dream Up Festival — is a musical about one girl’s journey of love and loss in the city, all told through the plucking strings of the ukulele. 

Loosely based on Gauthier’s own personal experiences, the play finds Girl 1 (played by Gauthier herself) falling in love with Girl 2 (Lindsay Cook), just as she is diagnosed with cancer. Narrated by a lone figure dressed as a subway busker, known as Ukulele Man (Brendan McDonough), 23 Year Old Myth is presented in a series of scenes that act as “snippets” of the journey. The transitions from scene to scene are clever, with the company not only doubling as stagehands but also as props — and even part of the set themselves — with some pushing and pulling the bed into place while one poses as a standing lampshade. Daniel Geggatt and Michael Steiner’s set is meant to reflect this youthful, metropolitan feel of the play: a single bed facing the audience lengthwise; and later on, a couple of chairs, hospital curtains, a metal food tray, as well the aforementioned handheld lampshades; and two blue subway pillars stand at opposite ends of the stage, with a single yellow line demarcating where the platform ends and where the tracks begin, a sign of the journey to come.

In the first few of these scenes, Gauthier memorably captures life as a twenty-something living in New York City: young, vital and alive. The show opens with the cast all dressed by Jenny Kessler in variations of blue jeans and white shirts, standing in various positions onstage and yelling out typical “New York-isms” in alternating spurts (“I lost my MetroCard!” “Wallet in Cab!”), as Girl 1 makes her way across the stage. She stands on a subway platform, singing along to Florence and the Machine’s “Between Two Lungs” at the top of her lungs – in all appearances, just a regular 22-year-old starting her life. In the middle of her private concert, Girl 1’s train arrives, and she runs for it, only to trip just as the doors close. Her journey has started, if with a little fumble. 

It is here we first take notice of Ukulele Man, who softly provides musical accompaniment throughout the play. He is not quite Stew of Passing Strange, though not quite Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, either. McDonough’s character seems more in the vein of Evita’s Che, a sort of hipster bearing witness to the struggles of Girl 1 with her illness and how it affects her relationships. Midway through he disappears, perhaps signifying how people in your life will come and go, depending on your need for them. He helps tell Girl 1's story with as much wit and pathos as needed, as do the rest of the vibrant cast. 

In fact, it is the company’s energy that truly makes this show, providing each scene with the right balance of both humor and humility, especially during the middle portion of the show, the bulk of which takes place during Girl 1’s time at the hospital. Together, they breathe life into Gauthier’s wonderfully natural dialogue and make certain moments seem as if we’re witnessing our own friends interact. 

In one scene, Girl 1 visits an old friend (the delightful Barash), who stumbles through the painfully realistic discomfort of greeting someone whom you know is dying. Girl 2 struggles with how to take every reaction to her situation. How does one go back to being young again when every question or proposal comes underscored with the possibility that you may die? This scene (and every scene before and after, for that matter) in the latter half of the show treads this line with beautiful execution, veering back and forth from laughter to tears, and back to laughter once again.

According to the show’s program, the show is based on “the parallels between falling in love and being diagnosed with a disease,” an idea which is represented through Girl 1 and Girl 2’s relationship. Cook’s Girl 2 is like any lover confronted with a disease; her portrayal is one of selfless strength and love at the beginning, yet filled with regretful inadequacy towards the end. Just as with the disease, their relationship goes through stages of positivity, denial, anger and finally acceptance. That is, after all, the journey of life.

23 Year-Old Myth is a story of mythical proportions, taking you on a journey where the littlest things can have the biggest impact. This unusual musical play takes you by surprise, bringing moments filled with laughter and tears, plucking at your heartstrings.    

‘9-to-5 Clerical Poets’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mommas on the Prowl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revels in a Grey Area

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Girl, Big Show

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s long life on the frontier certainly provided her with plenty of storytelling fodder – enough, at least for eleven novels and ten television seasons. And yet somehow, when many of the early highlights are compressed into one piece, as they are in Little House on the Prairie – The Musical,” currently playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the work feels oddly lacking. It is likely that the creative team of this family-friendly musical relies too heavily on fans of the long-running television incarnation, which starred Michael Landon as Pa Ingalls and then-child star Melissa Gilbert as protagonist Laura, to be the chief audience. Well, Gilbert may be all grown up, but she’s still attached to the Prairie. Now, she plays Ma Ingalls, a much slighter role, but one that nonetheless is designed to draw in nostalgists.

I say this because the show does very little to stand on its own. Despite a long out-of-town tryout process – Prairie has already played the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and has replaced much of its original book and score – the show still plays as though it is in draft form. Rachel Sheinkin replaced Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley, the original scribe who first helped shape the musical, and perhaps some of her narrative grace notes went with her. (Donna di Novelli provides the lyrics.) The current result plays mostly as a checklist of boldface events from the early novels.

I say “current” because I firmly believe that Prairie still has plenty of room to grow. It certainly isn’t lacking in talent, particularly in the form of Kara Lindsay in the leading role of Laura, a precocious young tomboy. Over the course of the show, Laura learns to mind her parents and schoolteachers, support her family when older sister Mary loses her sight, make amends with nemesis Nellie Oleson, feels the joy of breaking through to schoolhouse pupils, and even finds a love of her own (there’s little mystery as to who the lucky guy might be when the talented Kevin Massey first appears as Almanzo Wilder.) Lindsay, who is also a terrific singer, ably plays beneath her real age, and gradually bridges Laura’s maturation in ways the episodic script doesn’t provide for her.

But what the show cannot do is delve into the culture of the lifestyle it sets out to portray. Director Francesa Zambello erred in similar fashion with her last show, the musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Both shows impress as spectacles, but offer less beneath the surface. The technical elements are there, but they lack inspiration. Similarly, Michele Lynch choreographs several professional ensemble numbers, but they feel rote and do little to enhance the story.

As a result, one never feels the hardship of prairie life, even as a raging fire destroys the Ingalls’ wheat prospects, nor does the viewer get the chance to fully grasp the details of the Homestead Act that grants the Wilders and the other settlers their right to sojourn to the unsettled Dakota territory in the first place. Instead, the audience is stuck watching them from afar, as events befall the Wilders in too fast and frequent a manner. The view gets a little better in Prairie’s slightly protracted second act, when Laura comes into her own as both teacher and woman; one hopes that this storytelling sensibility will work its way into more of the show as it continues its run.

Nonetheless, Alessa Neeck and Carly Rose Sonenclar hold their own with the material as Laura’s sisters, and Loprest acquits herself well as the mischievous Nellie. Steve Blanchard is a solid Pa Ingalls. In fact, the weakest link in this musical chain is actually Gilbert herself. The actress handles her dialogue with the ease of a pro, and proves she can dance with the best of them during the show’s curtain call, but her talk-singing though the show’s eleventh-hour number, “Wild Child,” leaves a bit to be desired.

Still, there is nothing in Prairie that cannot be improved with some effort. The Ingalls’ journey is one worth taking, and hopefully, one that will continue to improve in time.

Cruel to Be Kind

In plays such as Fat Pig and Reasons to be Pretty and similarly dyspeptic films like In the Company of Men, playwright Neil LaBute has spared no mercy in displaying just how cruel man can be, invading the dark corners of the mind people keep hidden from strangers and shining a bright light upon them. bash, one of LaBute’s earlier works of note (it debuted Off-Broadway a decade ago featuring a searing cast that included Ron Eldard and Calista Flockhart), is perhaps one of his most searing. Director Robert Knopf certainly holds nothing back in Chris Chaberski's and Eastcheap Rep’s current production, running at Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory.

The show is essentially a triptych of three extended monologues. Though the order has changed in various productions, the first of the three scenes I saw was “Medea Redux.” It features a lone woman, matter-of-factly addressing the audience about a sexual relationship she had with her teacher when she was thirteen years old. The unnamed woman ultimately becomes pregnant from this relationship, but keeps the child and defends this teacher, even though the two eventually become estranged.

Chelsea Lagos plays the woman in a performance that’s part endurance test and part act of deception: her character tells us a lot, and does so in very carefully measured amounts, but what is most important is what she doesn’t tell us. LaBute’s most important character attributes lie in what remains unsaid. It isn’t that his narrators in bash are unreliable, but that what we see is not totally what we get. The playwright wants us to dig in between the lines and come up with our own conclusions, forcing us to turn a mirror on our own dark impulses.

Take, for example, the next monologue, “Iphigenia in Orem,” starring Luke Rosen as Young Man. Rosen, in a wonderfully polished performance, recounts to an unseen party (and really to us) how a practical joke between himself and a work colleague escalated severely. As with Lagos’ Young Woman, circumstances eventually escalate to the point where the Young Man makes a shocking decision. This is shocking not just because of the weight of the decision, but also jarring because his assured delivery doesn’t fit that weight appropriately.

More than most of LaBute’s plays, including his later Wrecks, bash reflects the playwright’s dexterous ear for language and imagery. He knows how to make these long scenes more palatable for his less auditory audience members. Throughout the play, he subverts the major events of each monologue. His characters gloss over heavy subjects effortlessly – sometimes Lagos and Rosen display sweetness or fondness when describing difficult certain choices they have made – and speak in a lilting, lyrical way.

Knopf also demonstrates real style for each monologue. Each scene feels perfectly paced, and make the seemingly impossible possible: he finds a way into each character that not only hooks us in, but makes us care regardless of the information we get from them. We feel the pain, shame, foolishness and regret that these characters have experienced at some point in the stories they share.

And it really does feel like sharing. Throughout the performance, we feel as though we are right there witnessing the acts discussed in the play, rather than simply hearing accounts of past incidents. Nowhere is this more paramount than the second act monologue, “A Gaggle of Saints,” in which Lagos and Rosen play Sue and John, a New England couple who recount a disturbing trip to New York in ways that contradict each other while filling in missing blanks.

Lagos and Rosen are perfectly cast in each of their two roles. They both feel completely honest and lend an enormous amount of credibility to their respective pieces of the show. Additionally, Jessica Fialko’s design deserves mention, particularly the lighting, which becomes a character of its own during the performance.

Perhaps the most alarming about bash may be the same thing that makes it the most successful. Knopf’s production shows that, while cruelty can take many different forms and occur in a variety of different situations, it is something that lives in all of us.

Nightmare Scenarios

Two men in grim, adjacent cells talk to each other through prison walls. They have been incarcerated for years and are repeatedly tortured for information—or rather, initially for information, but now pointlessly, as a distraction to their tormentors. The men in this Kafkaesque nightmare are named Valdez and Wallace. Wallace calls Valdez “Mr. Valdez,” but Valdez is more casual and uses “Wallace.” To pass the time, they speculate on what they don’t know—The Unseen of the title. Dramatist Craig Wright’s Kafkaesque situation invites some comparison with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, whose characters also wait in uncertainty and near despair for some resolution to their fate. The Unseen is bleak but not depressing, and it feels especially timely and universal in Lisa Denman's taut, riveting production. The men might be in Abu Ghraib, or Guantánamo, or any number of hellholes around the world. Their names, too, suggest a breadth of places the action might be occurring. "Valdez" calls to mind a banana republic; "Wallace" might be American or British, of which neither nationality has escaped accusations of torture in the struggles with Iraq and the IRA, respectively; and their guard, Smeija, has a distinctly Slavic name that summons up the brutality in the Balkans in the 1990s.

To pass the time, Wallace and Valdez exchange words in shorthand about their torture: “Trips to the sink, making knots … twice, the whole drooling gang…” Wright leaves it to the listener to surmise the specifics of the horrors they endure. The men play an old game that starts “I went to the ocean and took…,” and they list various objects whose names must be in alphabetical order. They speculate on whether the prison layout is irregular or not. “We don’t know the structures or rules,” says a worried Valdez. “We don’t know the grand design.” (His point is skillfully demonstrated by Sarah Brown in her asymmetrical set.)

Wallace moves objects on the floor of his cell—saucers and a piece of chalk and other objects—in a pattern that only he understands. Suddenly he announces that they must escape that day, that all the signs point to its being their only chance. But a visit from the hulking, black-masked thug Smeija, nicknamed “Smash,” reveals that Wallace’s sanity hangs on a thin thread.

Smash is not only a guard but one of their torturers, and Wright indulges in pitch-black humor as Smash (played with frustration and intensity by Thomas Ward) complains that he’s been too nice to them and is being punished with double duty on his birthday. Wallace tries to butter him up—“We’re here for you”—but it doesn’t work. “All you people think about are yourselves,” fumes their anguished inquisitor. “No one with a heart is safe around you people.”

Steven Pounders as Wallace captures his character's suspicion and confidence, with a streak of arrogance; he’s not sure that Valdez isn’t a spy. Valdez (Stan Denman) has opposite qualities: he is more upbeat and hopeful, certain that someone is in the adjoining cell and aching to make contact. He’s open enough to admit that his captors don’t trust him because they think he lies—even though his admission jeopardizes Wallace’s trust in him.

As time passes, Valdez exhibits his own delusions with a theory of a vast array of tunnels under the earth with the entry points in graveyards that is just as chilling as the moment that Wallace accidentally learns that his hope of escape is built on an illusion.

Both actors, superb in their roles, seem to have done their own makeup just as superbly. They look like victims of brutal beatings, with scars, welts and bruises disfiguring their bodies; costumer Carl Booker’s torn and shredding clothing matches their skill.

Although the physical action is limited, Wright’s dialogue takes up the slack with unexpected lyricism, from the story of a button that Valdez’s mother has taught him, to Smash’s gruesome descriptions of what he has done to a prisoner. And his ending suggests, hopefully, that somehow humanity can never be extinguished, that an unseen spark survives even in the most inhumane circumstances. The play may be short, but it packs a wallop.

The Wonderfulness of Helplessness

A woman is buried to her waist in a pile of dirt. A bright blue painted sky stretches behind her and the sun constantly beats down upon her. She is awoken by piped in buzzing sounds. Though stuck in the mud and controlled by unseen forces, she seems quite okay with her situation and proceeds to go about her day to day routine. Reaching into a tote bag, she pulls out an unusually long toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. Much time is spent attempting to read the writing etched into the handle of the toothbrush but to not much avail. The woman, Winnie, forgets what she has deciphered once she has deciphered it. Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days makes no attempt to explain why Winnie is buried the way she is. It is this lack of explanation, prevalent throughout his work, which makes Beckett a challenging figure and why his plays are tricky to produce. People want explanations, but like life itself, Beckett offers none. The play is often looked at as a comment on the human condition: a true expression of the absurd. We have no idea why we are here, might as well ramble on about it, might as well accept the circumstances as they are (even if that means sinking into a pile of earth). And yet, although the play comments on the human condition, Winnie’s experience is so far removed from what a typical person would experience that it is difficult to relate to her. Furthermore, Beckett’s stream of consciousness style occasionally goes in and out of one’s ears, with occasional phrases burrowing deep into the brain but with the majority leaking back out again.

Here would be where quality directorial choices and a strong performer would come into play. The goal is to make all the words stick, to engage the audience through the magic of theater. Intentional Theater’s production is almost completely able to make the play engaging and relatable. The show makes use of Beckett's production notebook from a 1979 performance in London. Winnie's mound is the same but the props are a real standout. They are surrealistic, elongated forms. Winnie’s mirror is about 2 inches wide yet has at least a foot-long handle. Her sun shade is a not very wide, crocheted parasol, a visual reminder of its uselessness against the constant sun. The deformed props highlight the futility of her condition. She can't read the toothbrush; she can barely use it to brush her teeth.

One occasionally feels sympathy for Winnie, as she tells stories from the past, as she calls out desperately to Willie, her husband, who lives in a hole behind the mound of earth. All that is seen of Willie, for the most part, is the back of his head and his papier mache boater hat. Asta Hansen brings a vulnerability to the role of Winnie that is quite appropriate, but occasionally the actor breaks character. There was a very audible line prompter hidden under the mound at the reviewed performance, and, suddenly, Winnie’s pauses were simply an actor forgetting her lines rather than an artistic choice.

Beckett is bleak. And yet, for that, each of his plays has some element of physical comedy, perhaps because comedy finds its base in sadness. Winnie digging through her props is one element of this. So is Willie's toying with his hankerchief and boater. Unlike Winnie, Willie is free to move about, and his flopping and climbing lighten the proceedings considerably. An accurate depiction of the frustrations and struggles of life, Happy Days is a must-see for anyone who has ever questioned their existence and then paused to smile about it.

Puppets without Masters

When the curtain rises in the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s production of The Historye of Queen Esther, King Ahasverus and of the Haughty Haman, four magnificently tall and colorful puppets dominate the stage. The puppets, like their human actor counterparts, are large-scale representations of the play’s main characters, and throughout the show echo the stage action like extended shadows. Unfortunately, these puppets are the most exciting aspect of the show, an awkward and lackluster take on an incredibly dated piece of 18th-century folk theater. A hit on the traveling marionette show circuit in the 1700s, The Historye of Queen Esther is based on the Bible’s Book of Esther. In the biblical telling, King Ahasverus of Persia holds a contest to name a new queen after his wife, Vashti, refuses an order to display her beauty for the King’s guests. The winner of this contest is Esther, a gorgeous young Persian woman who happens to be of Jewish descent, a fact she hides from the king, as advised by her stepfather Mordechai. Sitting near the palace gate one day, Mordechai overhears two royal attendants plot to kill the King. He reports their treachery, and they are executed. Mordechai’s respect for the King, however, does not extend to his prime minister, the haughty Haman. When Mordechai refuses to bow before him, Haman vows to kill him and obliterate his people, the Jews. Fortunately, the King learns of Mordechai’s honorable deed and vows to reward him, foiling Haman’s efforts. This leads Esther to reveal her true heritage, and the King amends Haman’s decree against the Jews, allowing them to defend themselves against persecution. He also orders Haman’s execution.

Incorporating stock comical characters, goofy word play, and distractingly loud instrumental accompaniment, the Czech Marionette Theatre’s take on this story is only slightly more chipper, retaining much of the content and structure of the Biblical version. Though the play ends on a happy note, with comeuppances to its villains, it isn’t really a show for kids, as it’s promoted to be. In addition to the on-stage hangings and Jew-hating, some of the verbal jokes involve advanced vocabulary that kids won’t understand, and punning that will make adults cringe. This is a shame, as children are likely the only ones to get much out of such a farce.

With children in mind, the play attempts to demonstrate a moral involving the danger of haughtiness, but it’s clear that the bigger issue is bigotry. The overwrought attempt to harvest a moral is just one problem. Whereas the moralizing is an oversimplification, the dialogue is a complication of a simple story. Theresa Linniham’s performance as Kasparkek (the Punch of the Czech version of Punch and Judy) is a welcome relief from the plodding tone. Though clumsy wordplay sometimes overshadows her skills at accents and clowning, she uses every opportunity to showcase her talents as a vaudevillian. Unfortunately, some of the other actors do not share her fluidness and eagerness to entertain, which further weighs the play down.

Though the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre is known for its post-modern approach to puppetry, which involves the obvious presence of the puppet master, they do not use this style to their benefit here, and the actors are upstaged by marvelously clever-looking marionettes. Created by Jakub Krejci, Michelle Beshaw and Emily Wilson, the cast of puppets is widely varied and incorporates odd instruments to delightful, surprising effect. Some have chalkboards or violins for chests, plungers for legs, hammers for arms, dazzling beads for a bosom—all of which relate to the personalities of the characters in witty ways. It’s a pleasure to see a new puppet enter the spotlight, but, sadly, this satisfaction wears off once the puppet begins to speak.

Perhaps The Historye of Queen Esther is doomed by its dreary source material to be a heavy-handed attempt at dealing with the complicated historical attitude toward Jews, but one can’t help but wish that the Czech Marionette Theatre group applied the innovation that produced its puppets to the live performance. Whereas the plunger and hammer limbs of the marionettes move with grace, the human actors are stiff and dull. If a carpenter like Geppetto could work his magic on this show, maybe the wood and the flesh would work together in greater harmony, and the material wouldn’t seem so ancient.

Father Figure

The title of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s play Fresh Kills doesn’t refer to any recent murders, but that doesn’t mean her characters aren’t up to some very bad things. Director Isaac Byrne navigates a performance of palpable tension to show the dark places to which some people are capable of going, but while he is adroit at bringing the what of the play to life, Wilder’s failure to provide the why makes for a frustrating, though not unrewarding, evening. Occasionally, a show starts off strong but loses steam. That is not the case here, however. Fresh essentially begins in medias res; it starts in the middle of the action. The play finds its characters at a dramatically compelling crossroads, but fails to explain how they got there or where they are headed. It’s a great middle, but still in search of a beginning and end, the dramatic equivalent of an Oreo cookie with only the marshmallow stuffing.

Fresh Kills, playing at 59E59 Theatres, actually refers to the name of the Staten Island town where blue collar family man Eddie (Robert Funaro) lives with his wife, Marie (Therese Plummer). As far as we can tell, Marie is a compassionate, understanding wife, still in love with her husband, whose main concerns seem to be raising their child, keeping their house up and paying their bills.

Which is why it comes as a surprise to find Eddie picking up Arnold (Todd Flaherty), an underage male hustler, in his pick-up truck after finding him in a gay chat room. Is Eddie acting out on latent homosexual urges? Is he depraved? Merely curious? Wilder never clues the audience in as to what has drawn Eddie to seek out Arnold in the first place, or for how long he has been trolling the websites.

Nor does she adequately explain what lands Arnold in Eddie’s car. It is difficult to make heads or tails of what transpires between Eddie and Arnold, because their encounters never add up to a full affair. Then, before you know it, Arnold has ingratiated himself into Eddie’s family. Without seeing or knowing too much about Arnold’s home life, it is impossible to take him at his word, and so we never know if he is looking for a substitute family to replace his own disappointing one, merely pursuing his own sexual impulses, or if he is a deranged sociopath.

Flaherty fits the role physically – the dodgy look in his eyes suggests danger and instability – but the actor has a habit of garbling many of his lines and not always making the dialogue his own. Funaro, on the other hand, overcomes Wilder’s script deficits to peel back the layers of a confused, flawed man. While Wilder never provides sufficient context to explain how Eddie lands himself in such a threatening situation, Funaro does a brilliant job of showing Eddie’s agony with his current plight. It is a performance that is completely open and honest. Plummer, meanwhile, matches Funaro scene for scene in a resourceful performance that constantly stretches beyond mere “beleaguered wife” stereotypes.

Jared Culverhouse rounds out the ensemble in the pivotal role of Nick, caught in the middle as both Eddie’s best friend and Marie’s brother. Nick is a sea of volcanic rage, protective of Eddie yet loyal to Marie. His work further energizes the whole play (very well-paced by Byrne), and his versatility – dancing between comic relief and vitriolic intensity – textures what otherwise could have been a one-note work.

Byrne is to be complemented for staging such an arresting work in an intimate space (the audience sits on either side of the truck in the center of the theater), and Jake Platt’s lighting design goes a long way toward establishing the mood. Nonetheless, Wilder’s structure leaves many questions unanswered in Fresh. Wilder wants to explore what happens to people who pursue interests that run far afoul of what is considered acceptable by mainstream society, yet there remains far more territory to excavate.

For Love and Theater

Playwright Itamar Moses puts it quite nicely when he states that “a short play is like a single.” However, unlike a pop single, which can often become more popular than the longer album format, short plays tend to get relegated to the dust bin, pulled out for One-Act Festivals in the summertime, maybe, but otherwise, playwrights tend to become known only for their longer works. This is a shame as there many truly delightful short plays. Thankfully, the Flea Theater is producing five of Moses' short plays in an evening titled Love/Stories (or But You Will Get Used to It). The Flea's downstairs space works well for the structure of the show — each play has its own section on the wide stage. A “Reader” guides the audience through the transitions and through the final play itself. The plays are thematically linked: they are about love. But not only just about love but about the inner workings of theater and perhaps how difficult it is for one to find love while working in theater. In the first play, “Chemistry Read,” a playwright is forced to watch the actor who stole his girlfriend audition for the lead role in his play. In “Authorial Intent,” the longest of the five plays, we are taken through the breakup of couple, first in regular format, then in highly theatrical and literary technical terms, then finally as the actors playing the actors stripped of their characters. “Untitled Short Play” is all about the writer's stress in attempting to write a scene for a couple at a cafe.

The plays all have charm and the actors are all very engaging and energized, but occasionally the meta- nature of the plays gets to be a bit much. “Untitled Short Play” is the most static of the plays, given that no action in the traditional sense occurs—it is a play “hijacked by its opening stage direction.” However, John Russo is vibrant as the Reader, hopping around the Flea's wide stage obsessing over what could possibly happen in the scene that never happens. One would like it if the “play” were to actually begin, but then again, the Reader is quite compelling and his complaints understandable.

The strongest of the plays is “Szinhaz,” which is structured as a talk show, with an actress, Marie, interviewing a brooding Russian director. The director, Istvan, only speaks Russian, or at least something that sounds Russian. Felipe Bonilla pulls off the “Russian” language, be it actual Russian or not, very well. Marie's attempts to translate Chekhov's titles from Russian to English are quite hilarious as well: The Garbage Bird and There are Sisters and There are Three of Them. “Szinhaz” deals with the relationship between what is created in the theater and what actually then begins to occur in real life: the way in which actors playing lovers occasionally fall in love offstage as well, as they have become so wrapped up in the emotions created for the theater.

Love/Stories (or But You Will Get Used to It) makes for an enjoyable night of theater, particularly for anyone on the “inside” of theater and for anyone who has ever been enchanted by love.

Living Walls

Before New York’s financial world caved in on itself, the most ubiquitous enemy to the city’s longtime residents was its series of aggressive redevelopment projects. Its five boroughs may have risen in stroller-friendliness over the past decade, but the family businesses and community-specific traditions that once characterized its neighborhoods have now given way to drug store chains and luxury condominiums. A collective need to resist gentrification prevails as New York’s defining cause of social activism, and consequently is reflected in art projects conceived within the city’s borders. Such is the case with redevelop (death valley), a frenzied blend of video, photography, spoken word, dance and music playing at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City. The scope of the project is ambitious to the point of feeling exhausting as it attempts to use this mishmash of artistic genres to create a parallel between local redevelopment projects and the impact of ghost towns on the American psyche. In its strongest moments, redevelop (death valley) reads like a cleverly conceived museum installation, but its lack of narrative clarity does more to jumble the goals of the piece than to inspire moments of a-ha.

Five performers roam about the stage during its roughly hour-long running time, but for most of it they are literally upstaged by an assortment of hanging, translucent panels that serve as projection screens and obstruct the audience’s view. Isolating the company’s performers with a plastic wall and offering the audience a partial, distorted view is a strategic choice that appears to be designed to trigger frustration. Just as the endless construction of sterile condominiums muffles the spirit of a neighborhood, these white panels invoke our curiosity, ruthlessly control our viewpoint, and distance us from the flesh-and-blood element of the piece. The metaphor is effective, but its execution also keeps the audience at a needless distance.

While most of the video and still photography images projected onto the panels depict elements of the performance space itself, from the five dancers’ quivering legs and hands to extreme close-ups of light beams, windows and radiators, the work is also punctuated by two lengthier, pre-taped segments. An interview with a longtime Long Island City resident opens the first half of the work, and the second half in turn begins with a series of video clips, images and commentary depicting abandoned desert towns.

While the opening interview suffers from sloppy editing that makes its subject appear excessively long-winded, the second documentary segment is arguably the most affecting part of redevelop (death valley). There’s an unexpected beauty to its images of abandoned houses, stripped of everything valuable and blending, like fossils, into the landscape around them. In this segment one can’t always make out the voice of the interviewee, but as the recorded sound of a distant highway grows almost unsettlingly loud, these words lose their importance.

Perhaps the only clear arc in Rogers’s piece is the gradual removal of these obstructing screens. Its five characters occasionally shut out one another’s access to the audience by putting up additional panels, but as the piece draws to a close, they move these screens, one by one, onto a pile on the floor. As we begin to see the oblong, tile-walled room in its entirety, another memorable image is revealed: the five performers have gathered around a dinner table in the far end of the space, chatting and pouring glasses of wine underneath a yellow light. In the center of the room is a pile of unidentifiable rags, and in front of the audience a narrow beam of rain pours on an abandoned tea set. Even if one isn’t quite sure of the meaning of this visual moment, it's difficult to forget.

Although the visual and audio elements of the performance appear to be carefully orchestrated, its use of words is its most notable weakness. When the five characters speak, it’s often almost impossible to make out their words, and when one does hear them, their context is unclear. The performance also tries to make use of a variety of spoken-word recordings, including FDR’s fireside chats and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, but their meaning remains obscure and their presence only contributes to a viewer’s confusion.

It’s difficult, of course, to fault the Chocolate Factory’s artistic director Brian Rogers for his ambition, and I’m not sure that I would want to. Love them or hate them, works like redevelop (death valley) continue to challenge and expand the ways in which we perceive theater. The work itself may not always be relatable, but the artistic passion behind it certainly is.

Lost on the Levee

The title may be the most engaging thing about Mark Sam Rosenthal’s exploration of Tennessee Williams’s greatest creation negotiating the aftermath of the 2005 storm. Blanche DuBois finds herself disheveled and in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans. But her experience seems refracted through that of author Rosenthal, as the play begins with him wandering through the debris, putting on yellow gloves and a filter mask to start cleaning up. Amid the muddy debris of the hurricane (Kevin Tighe’s willy-nilly piles of artifacts include an ornate portrait frame, a child’s bicycle, a blue rubber dildo, and Carnival beads), he discovers a pale green, pristine valise. When he opens it, a bright red, surreal light shines out. Inside he finds a blond wig and tiara; when he dons the wig, he becomes Blanche, riffing on her adventures with Stanley and Stella before the hurricane, in the Superdome, and with a FEMA roommate named Chandria d’Africa who is separated from her boyfriend Tyrece. The solo show becomes a dramatic stream-of-consciousness effort that not everyone may follow as Blanche encounters an assortment of characters and experiments with crack (and indulges in alcohol).

Blanche Survives Katrina… isn’t a drag show, though it reeks of camp. Rosenthal doesn’t trying to disguise his masculinity (at one point, his bare, hairy chest is covered only by a ragged shawl). The script is merely a meditation on the character in different circumstances, and one may surmise that Blanche embodies poor New Orleans itself.

Although Rosenthal's Blanche borrows phrases from Williams's heroine ("It just buzzes right through me," she says of the booze), the language here is determinedly high-falutin’. In an imaginary encounter with Jean Lafitte, for instance, she remonstrates, “No! Unhand me, you rascal pirate! I warn you, my sisters will track you down—and you shall have the wrath of the archdiocese upon you if so much as one blonde hair upon my head is harmed! Yes, you will steer your masted schooner through the murky waters of the bay at Barataria, you will secret me to your lair where you and your merry band of brigands intend to perpetrate all manner of mischief on me! And you think that I’ll enjoy these degradations because you’ve heard stories but I won’t because they are not true.”

A little of that goes a long way, but there’s no crude, brawny Stanley Kowalski to offset the feyness and flightiness—and his impatience with her in A Streetcar Named Desire very quickly becomes understandable. Anyone who attends Rosenthal's sequel may well decide that Stanley had every right to put Blanche away.

In Rosenthal’s script, Blanche has been released from the asylum, to which Stanley committed her, in order to seek shelter from the storm. She returned to their home to ride it out, and while she clung to the top of the stove, “They died. Drowned ... there in that house on Elysian Fields,” she says. After Katrina, Blanche has encounters with various characters, as well as drugs and alcohol. Surrounded by black refugees in the Superdome, she muses, “In a pot full of café, I seem to be one of the few drops of au lait!”

Later she acquires Chandria d’Africa as her FEMA roommate. The scenes with Chandria are played in a strange, dreadlocked blond wig that Blanche finds in a second green valise—the how and why of these spotless valises are points left unanswered—and puts on. The wig suggests the look of Chandria d’Africa, but Rosenthal isn’t Chandria. He’s always Blanche, and yet it's not a wig Blanche would ever wear. Director Todd Parmley hasn't helped clarify such confusing moments. Later, Blanche is transported to a new life in Phoenix, where she is aided by Christ the Avenger Church (one of the few really funny gags) and serves fried chicken at a fast-food restaurant.

If Rosenthal has a point to all this, other than an extended riff on the character, it’s not clear. It may be that Blanche embodies New Orleans, the elegant lady brought low, struggling against the ravages of the storm, scrambling just to survive and doing things no one should have to do. But Parmley invests no tension in the piece, no urgency about what happens next to her. It just plays out as a rambling streetcar heading nowhere.

The Magic is Somewhere Beneath the Surface

A confused teen runs away from home and lives on the streets, turning tricks to survive and using meth to dull the pain. A social worker/graduate student meets him in order to use his story as a part of her dissertation. Yet, she finds that this teen is different from other gay youths on the streets. This teen, Nihar, claims to be running from his foster parents, who just so happen to be the “King of Shadows” and the “Green Lady,” and who want to take him back into their world of darkness. Of course, the social worker, Jessica Denomy, thinks he is lying or delusional. In case you haven't guessed by now, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's King of Shadows is inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream . Nihar is allegedly the changeling boy fought over by Titania and Oberon in Shakespeare's play. However, despite his magical upbringing, we are never allowed a peek into Nihar's world. The action takes place in Jessica's apartment, or at the park, or else at other real places. The play tries to maintain a balance between the magical and the real, but ultimately remains firmly ensconced in reality. Instead of showing the magic behind Nihar, the play tells us of it. Jessica's teenage sister Sarah describes being attacked by one hundred “carnivorous butterflies” and Nihar describes the way in which other runaway teens are going missing, but butterflies and kidnapping are never seen on stage. A lot of time is spent having the characters stand under spotlights and narrate parts of the story, as if to serve as a reminder that a tale is unfolding before the audience and as a cheap way to fill in some exposition.

However, what the story lacks in actual, visible magic is made up for by the design elements of the show. Wilson Chin has a constructed a space where couches and stairs slide out of torn poster-coated walls. Lightning storms and purple fog materialize out of nowhere, thanks to the design by Jack Mehler. The fog and lightning serve as the physical evidence that Nihar may actually be what he says he is.

Likewise, the cast does a decent job in bringing their characters to life. Aguirre-Sacasa has provided the actors with fully-fleshed, meaty characters. Kat Foster, as Jessica, is able to elicit equal parts sympathy and revulsion for her character. She went into social work because she had the money and nothing better to do. She truly cares, but is rather unlikeable at times. Yet, it is difficult to not feel sympathy for her by the end. Likewise, Satya Bhabha is completely believable as the lost and fearful Nihar. He plays his role with enough strength and wonderment that it is never certain, until the play's end, whether he is crazy, or a liar, or really a magical being. Richard Short and Sarah Lord round out the strong cast as Jessica's police officer boyfriend and younger sister.

The stage elements do their best to enhance the play, but what is ultimately at issue is the script. It never delves deeply enough into the world of Nihar, choosing instead to depict Jessica's reality and suggesting that we are meant to stay in the realm of the real and not leap off with Nihar through portals into the land of fairies and who knows what else. King of Shadows does an adequate job of showing the reality of social work but never dares to create fully the world that it itself implies.