Eastern Standard
Standards Change
Life Under Occupation
The West Side Theater is slightly dank and musty and not at all inviting. At one point, midway through the show, the lights in the theater suddenly go out, and the crashing sound of bombs exploding interrupts the silence. It transports you to another, much darker world. It is nighttime in Iraq. There is no water, no electricity, only candlelight. It is powerful and real. We know the politics, see the pictures, and hear the rhetoric. Americans held hostage, Iraqi protests in the street, and gunfire in Fallujah. The war in Iraq has raged in one form or another for nearly three years, leaving hundreds killed, thousands injured, homes destroyed, businesses burned, and a country liberated. We all know the story.
But what we do not know is the whole story, and it is one that needs to be told. The Six Figures Theatre Company, in adapting the "Girl Blog From Iraq"
Southern Gothic Solo
Angela Forrest is a great performer. She is funny, expressive, and, at times, even captivating. In her one-woman show, Profile of a Saint, she portrays 10 characters and never leaves the audience guessing who is who. When she is in character
In Limbo
Your body is lying on a lumpy mattress in a hospital bed hooked up to loud beeping machines via various tubes. A pump breathes artificial air into your dormant lungs. Family members stand at your bedside berating themselves for not saying "I love you" enough, or fighting over your inheritance while they stare at your limp figure. Your body is in that bed, but your soul is not. You are not dead; you are not alive. You are "between worlds." Such is the fate of the characters in the Chekhov Theatre Ensemble's ethereal and intuitive production of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's tragic Between Worlds. A nearly bare set is enclosed by two walls joined to form a corner. One wall contains an exit labeled A for "accidental," and the other has a similar exit leading to Corridor D for "deliberate."
In the center is an elevator, through which enters a young man, Colin (Patrick Jones), unaware that he has just crashed into a tree at 100 miles an hour. He is greeted by two hooded assistants who don't speak but are able to tell him that he is to take up temporary residency in the "hotel." And this is just the beginning of a day or so at a place that houses people between life and death.
The Two Worlds Hotel is presided over by the elegant but icy Dr. S., played coldly but with just the right amount of tenderness by Jennifer Shirley. Other guests include the saucy cleaning lady, Jesse, portrayed in full raunchy glory by Andrea Seigel; a not-so-clairvoyant Magus played not so subtly by T. Scott Lilly; and an uptight Chairman of "the Board," portrayed by Max Evjen.
Prior to the second act, the hotel is visited by a regular guest, the innocent Laura, played by an illuminating Sara Barker. Laura has been wheelchair-bound for years and uses her trips to the hotel as a chance to escape the paralysis that has troubled her on earth. As Colin begins to understand the nature of the hotel while falling heavily for Laura, the other tenants anxiously await their fates, which will be determined by the elevator that has brought them there. When it is their time, they will be called to the elevator. If they are to survive, the elevator will bring them down to earth. If they are to die, the elevator will travel up. In the meantime, they must wait and contemplate the lives they have led.
Between Worlds tackles quite a few heavy subjects, namely death, the afterlife, destiny, depression, knowledge, sanity, and second chances. Since the play never gives any concrete answers to these questions, the audience is forced to draw their own conclusions, even regarding the outcome of Colin, who closes the play as he steps into the elevator and awaits his fate.
The play is ripe with witty and sometimes poignant one-liners, such as Colin's remark to Dr. S., "I never thought death would have such good legs," and Dr. S.'s scornful, "Using alcohol. The method [of suicide] used by cowards." The dialogue has a very natural, Mamet-esque feel to it, but the play itself is more in line with European playwrights like Heiner Muller, who use fantastical ideas and strange theatrical conventions, such as the mute assistants and the ambiguously gendered Dr. S. Director Ragnar Freidank's German background surely contributes to the avant-garde feel.
The acting is consistent and realistic across the board. The best dialogue takes place in the rushed exchange between Laura and Colin just before he is to be cornered into the elevator. He feverishly asks her simple, seemingly mundane questions about herself so that he may remember her when he is gone, and she replies just as excitedly, causing his exit to be indefinitely postponed. In fact, each time a guest enters the elevator and the doors close, there is a moment when we hold our breath to wait for the result, which is not always what we expect.
Overall, Between Worlds has a sort of unfinished feel to it, as if a small something has been lost in the translation. The play confronts death with such brazenness that you can only wish that you'll never end up a guest at the Two Worlds Hotel. Even so, the polished acting and intriguing subject matter turn the two hours into a visit worth making.
Teenage Monkey Business
Adolescence has never made for particularly pretty subject matter. On television, children usually rapidly age from cute cherub to mature teenager, somehow skipping a crucial stage in the natural aging process. One's naturally changing body only makes an occasional appearance as a subplot on the Disney Channel or WB. And filmdom's closest portrayal of puberty as metaphor remains...Teen Wolf? This is true, and one might expect to find a similar comedic metaphor in Gorilla Man, which just opened at P.S. 122. The latest play by Obie winner Kyle Jarrow is part horror show and part rock opera but all camp, and for rather lowbrow humor, director Habib Azar has assembled a high-caliber company. There aren't very many lessons to learn along the way, but ultimately it is a not much different animal from the aforementioned film and its sequel.
Jarrow (onstage as the Piano Player) narrates this musical, with Perry Silver (the Drummer) helping him reference the show's own plot devices and genre elements. Fourteen-year-old Billy (Jason Fuchs) awakens to find he has started growing immense amounts of fur on the back of his hands. When he confronts his mother (a wonderfully game Stephanie Bast), he discovers that he is actually the product of a tryst between her and the Gorilla Man (Matt Walton), a hirsute beast with a penchant for gruesome murders. Billy learns that it is his destiny to follow in that path. When she is unable to kill her son, Mother, as she is known, casts him out.
Billy runs into several interesting people in this darkly comic, Wizard of Oz-like bildungsroman. These characters include a fortuneteller, a politician, a prison guard, a truck driver, and a vagrant, all portrayed by Burl Moseley and Nell Mooney. These characters, Jarrow instructs the audience, serve to teach Billy about such topics as forgiveness, fate, fear, failure, and fatherhood.
But whether taken merely on a surface level or as metaphor, Gorilla, with its not-quite-artful song lyrics and instructional storytelling, lacks oomph in the message department. The play hits on the notion of individuality, of loving who you are and not trying to run away from it, but never delves particularly deep into that idea.
Only at play's end does Jarrow provide any kind of resolution, in arguing in favor of free will over both nature and nurture. He espouses the idea that Billy does not necessarily have to succumb to his father's murderous fate. But the play just ties a nice ribbon at the end, directly telling its audience that it believes in free will more than the formative forces of genetics and one's upbringing. It would have been more impressive had Jarrow demonstrated this theme a little more consistently throughout the show.
Additionally, while it was a smart choice to limit the production to one act
Historical Crossroads
Seasoned by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Paris of the 1840s was, not unlike 80 years later, a magnet for artists, intellectuals, and radicals from across Europe. It was a decade when the world was out of balance: a crisis of the old society coincided with a crisis of the new, spawning great political and cultural ferment. Among those drawn to the city in that decade were three lions of 19th-century German history: Karl Marx, Richard Wagner, and poet Heinriche Heine. Working in the tradition of such cerebral, history-minded playwrights as Michael Frayne and Tom Stoppard, American literary critic and essayist Jonathan Leaf imagines the interaction of these three men in The Germans in Paris, an intriguing though tendentious play about the dueling of men and their ideas that is based loosely on actual events.
In fact, two actual duels
Bountiful Harvests
In the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, a winter solstice ritual has survived, one that has existed since before the rise of Christianity. A special meal is made consisting of 12 dishes, all meatless and dairyless, and is proffered to any human, animal, or spirit (living and dead) who wishes to join in the festivities, in the hopes that the next year will be healthy and the harvest successful. The master of the house repeats his invitation three times: "If you don't want to come and taste all our delicious dishes, if you won't come when we invite you, then don't come when we don't call you!" This ritual, along with the songs and incantations that accompany it (called koliadas), was studied by director Virlana Tkacz for the past two winters in Ukraine. The result is the Yara Arts Group's Koliada: Twelve Dishes at La MaMa. The piece integrates these traditional songs and practices with contemporary texts and theatrical techniques, generating an engaging and resonant evening of performance.
The imagery and themes of Koliada can be quite beautiful and moving. Anyone with a sense of family ritual and heritage will be taken in by the opening, during which an older woman, a matriarchal figure, prepares her meal, mutters to herself what has yet to be done, explains how she creates a dish, and sings quietly to herself the koliadas traditional to the occasion.
The design of the show, by Tkacz and Watuko Ueno, is simple and brilliant. They have taken the first-floor theater at La MaMa, a very deep space, and used it lengthwise, allowing for busy, expansive action. There is also little audience seating, making the event extremely intimate and involving. The paper-thin back wall of the set contains faint images of vegetables and grains, and also creates mysterious shadows made by company members moving behind it. A series of three long wooden tables make up the furnishings, evocative of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" (coincidentally enough, the setting of a Passover seder, the meal of the Jewish holiday that involves cooking a large amount for family and friends, as well as inviting any outsiders, along with the prophet Elijah, to partake if they wish).
The cast members then weave their way through 12 vignettes, meditations on the food, ritual, and renewal through poetry, movement, and song. The company members portray all the different figures that inhabit the ritualistic space: townspeople, spirits of animals and storms, and the recently deceased.
The staging doesn't do justice to the poetry by Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan, however. Poetry is an extremely tricky art to translate to the stage, in terms of both direction and performance. The company simply doesn't give this beautiful text the reverence it deserves, which often makes it seem anachronistic and incongruous with the action. The different dimensions of the group's exploration don't mesh well in general, but this makes the poetry in particular stick out and suffer.
But the koliadas, especially when sung in the original Ukrainian, are charming and haunting. A special treat is Ukrainian musicians Ivan Zelenchuk and Dmytro Tafiychuk, who accompany the cast at times with their voices, fiddle, and an amazing mountain horn called the trembita. The two musicians, who are working to preserve and document the koliadas in their town of Kryvorivnia, are a tremendous complement to the piece.
Toward the conclusion of Koliada, the wooden tables are pushed right up to the audience, and the company welcomes you to their home. You are even invited to try some kutia, a sweet dish containing wheat, poppy seeds, and honey. This great feeling of familial belonging makes for a warm finale.
Ultimately, the traditions and ideas behind Koliada: Twelve Dishes are far more intriguing than the performance itself, but the themes and imagery that the performance conjures up make it a unique and touching theatrical experience.
Shooting Up the Charts
There are two basic camps in the debate over art's purpose. The first, basically idealist, argues that art should enlighten. The artist's sacred duty is to present the truth of our reality, or, at the least, the truth of the artist's reality, no matter how bleak or brutal. The second camp, however, tends more toward escapism. It contends that reality in all its misery is ever-present. Why use art to deliver a second dose of it when art is the only means most people have to momentarily step out of it?
In Marc Spitz's new comedy, The Name of This Play Is Talking Heads, now playing at Under St. Marks, the two factions again take up this never-ending skirmish. The difference here, as opposed to the debates that ceaselessly appear in publications and programs devoted to the arts, is that one of the two parties has the added rejoinder of a loaded firearm.
The battlefield, appropriately enough, is the studio of a TV music channel where a typically vapid segment, called the "Top 100 Most Rockatrocious Moments in Rock History," is being taped. (Think of such watersheds of vulgarity as Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his teenaged cousin, or the revelation that Michael Jackson's penis is multicolored, to use just two of the examples Spitz himself cheerily points up.)
The idealist thrown into this escapist stronghold is Pete (Brian Reilly), a writer for Headphones magazine. Initially under the impression that he has been invited on the show to share his knowledge of music and the culture surrounding it, he is quickly disillusioned when he sees the channel's staple comedian, Frankie (Matt Higgins), being force-fed his opinions by Tom (James Eason), the show's director. However, Pete's disillusionment quickly gives way to outright rebellion
Collaborative Theater Alive and Well in CollaborationTown
As
I climbed the creaky stairs to the building's top floor, I
was told that the homeless man out front was a "friend" and
was instructed to be quiet as we passed the yoga studio. Eventually,
we reached the top—a spacious, somewhat dirty loft with
screens dividing it in half. One half was being used for a
photography shoot, with a number of women in ridiculous costumes
and garish makeup, conversing and posing. On the other side
was a group of unassuming-looking young men and women sitting
in a circle, eating and laughing. They are CollaborationTown.
One writes in a notebook; two others are going over poster
designs
CollaborationTown in Rehearsal
A small group of theater artists, CollaborationTown is still in its infancy. Most of the company has been in New York City for less than two years, and so far it has three shows under its tight belt. But all this gives it the requisites for an effective troupe—young, fresh, hard-working, and optimistic.
There was a time when Off-Off-Broadway was practically synonymous with "collaboration." Working with little space and even less money, young groups put up shows in lofts in SoHo and the East Village, creating them with a utopian ethic. The Performance Group, the Living Theatre, and Bread and Puppet, among others, worked to create new performances through a physical, textual, and critical exploration of a particular piece, or explored the group's aims in general. Every member had a say in the direction of the piece, and ideas were often generated by group exercises or brainstorming. These works had a vital focus on process, with rehearsal and preparations taking months, sometimes years—a far cry from today's common four-week rehearsals.
This theatrical modus operandi was also largely a product of its time and place. In the midst of the Vietnam and Cold Wars, the arts were being supported more than ever while simultaneously struggling to find a new voice amid the political and social turmoil. Collaboration sent a message of equality and harmony:these social microcosms could exist without conflict and without oppression.
But times have changed. The utopian lifestyle has vanished, for the most part, and while the ideas and people from that
era still have a strong influence, the collaborative method within theater companies is very rare. Most designate each role in a production—actor, director, writer, designer—to only one member, who may or may not excel in it. Every once in a while, though, a group braves the process of collaboration again.
With a core membership of seven and a number of associates, CollaborationTown is attempting to keep that tradition alive and well. The group has no professional boundaries in its members' functions. According to its mission statement, "Actors can be writers, writers directors, directors designers, and designers actors."
Most of CollaborationTown's members met doing their undergraduate work at Boston University in a new program that went beyond simple conservatory training. In their theater studies, they learned about experimental traditions and alternative ways of creating performances. When they graduated, they all made their way to New York, equipped with the tools to create their own theater.
Currently, CollaborationTown is preparing The Astronomer's Triangle—"a love story by way of map." On the heels of the unnervingly real and narrative Trading Floor, the group took a much more abstract starting point: a meditation on love Working out of a church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, they came together with favorite books, music, and pieces of their own
A scene from The Trading Floor
writing to begin the script, now credited as written by Jordan
Seavey and the members of CollaborationTown.
The Astronomer's Triangle is "much more about myth now,"
Seavey said. With their limited experience in the matter—all
of the members are in their early 20s—the piece is much
more about the legends and expectations of love than the all-too-fleeting
experience itself.
"This is not When Harry Met Sally…," said Amanda Berkowitz, the company's managing director. "It's about the possibilities of finding love." The result is a story about "an astronomer, a waitress, and a cartographer [who] find themselves in a disorienting, explosive, and unknown scientific state: LOVE," the group's Web site says.
At this point in the process, roles both on and offstage are pretty much settled-characters have been cast, the script has been written, and Matthew Hopkins has taken on the part of "director." But the group is quick to point out that anything goes. "We're really supporting each other," Hopkins said. And despite the collective nature of the process, there hasn't been much conflict or head butting.
"We'll have hardy debates," member Boo Killebrew said. "You have to fight for your vision." The personal negotiation is outweighed, however, by their accomplishments as a group. "As a group, we never have to compromise our vision or integrity," Killebrew added.
Hopkins readily admits that the group is still "just learning." Their process continues to be formed and improved upon daily. It's clear that they are very young and carry all the signs of untainted artistry.
Yet there is no reason to believe that CollaborationTown won't succeed. The art of collaborative theater is by no means dead, but few have learned how to let the process of process evolve.
Grotowski's methodology belongs very much to the 1960's, yet a new form of theatrical collaboration could be important and thrive in the 21st century. And perhaps CollaborationTown's strong base and exuberance will find that form and give it a new home.
The
Astronomer's Triangle opens March 17.
For more information, visit www.collaborationtown.org.
Beauty Is Skin Deep
Stunning. Illuminating. Touching. Powerful. These are just a few of the words that come to mind when describing the experimental dance piece Skins, playing at the historic La MaMa Theatre. Even without specific characters or a linear plot, Skins tells an amazingly human and compassionate story through its unifying themes about body image, self-expression, and the societal pressures that shape and change us. This piece is based on the poetry of Elizabeth Ingraham, whose work has also inspired a series of life-sized female "skin" sculptures that can be seen hanging in La MaMa's lobby. Throughout the play, a compilation of Ingraham's poems is recited over a sound system as the words come to life onstage through music, dancing, light, and scenery.
Between poems, the dancing is underscored by hypnotically beautiful music performed live
Faith and Dreams
Faith is an awfully open-ended subject on which to base a play. Faith in God, faith in relationships, faith that human beings are essentially good
Love Those One-Acts
Like a vacation fling, a one-act play can either be long remembered for its delicate and thrilling touch, or quickly forgotten should it go awry. But when you've got six back-to-back one-acts, all dealing with the transient nature of love, chances are good that at least one will leave a lasting impression. Scenes From a Distance, the fourth production at the Jan Hus Playhouse, was a foolproof rendezvous before the actors even took the stage. The evening featured three one-acts ("English Made Simple," "Bolero," and "Seven Menus") by comedic genius David Ives and three more from playwrights Mary Miller ("The Ferris Wheel"), Sean O'Donnel ("I Just Wanted to Say"), and the 2005 recipient of the John Steinbeck Award for Literature, Joe Pintauro ("Fur Hat").
Though Ives's name likely brought in much of the audience, it was Pintauro's "Fur Hat" that generated the most guffaws. Director Elaine Connolly seemed aware that this might be the case, as the one-acts were lined up like a strategic baseball roster. "The Ferris Wheel" got the evening off to a solid and competent start, "I Just Wanted to Say" and "Bolero" were only meant to get on base, and "Fur Hat" grand-slammed.
"Fur Hat" is the story of a chance meeting in a university caf
Deal With the Devil
Don Juan in Chicago begins with Don Juan in his 16th-century Spanish castle mixing potions and chanting Latin in hopes of conjuring up the Devil, until he is interrupted by his faithful servant, Leporello. Concerned about his master's well-being, Leporello attempts to convince Don Juan to give up his intellectual pursuits in favor of wining, dining, and women. But the not-yet-legendary lover harbors no concern for momentary desires of the flesh. A 30-year-old virgin, Don Juan has only one thing on his mind: immortality. With immortality, he surmises, it would be possible to discover the answers to all of life's questions, and he would take his place as the greatest of all history's thinkers.
Upon eventually succeeding in bringing Mephistopheles to the mortal plain, Don Juan declares his heart's desire, and the Devil agrees to give Don Juan (and unlucky Leporello) life eternal, with one condition: that Don Juan agrees to seduce a different woman every day before the clock strikes midnight. The deal is sealed in blood, and thus begins Don Juan's legendary sexual escapades. Comedic antics and dramatic moments ensue as four centuries of lies, love, and infidelity eventually culminate in one chaotic evening.
As the title character, Michael Poignand displays a wide range of talents as he transforms himself from the na
Rethinking Shakespeare
Many half-finished quotes that have adhered to my mind through the years were first introduced in Macbeth. Lines like "Is that a dagger...," "Out, damned spot...," or "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." offer a good reason to revisit Shakespeare's play. In a new twist, C.A.G.E. Theatre Company's production has set it not in the usual medieval Scotland but in Scotland in 2005. At first, this version seems to be a smart route for director Michael Hagins to take. The space at the Impact Theatre in Brooklyn is rather small. On a stage of that size, the production team does not have the luxury of elaborate sets and costumes that would take up an enormous amount of space. Before the lights dim, the audience is introduced to three ladies
Hero Worship
Kevin Augustine's puppets are incredible creatures. Their intricacies are many, with fine facial features and clever physical manipulations that lend them a super-reality. Their carefully chiseled, slightly askew contours make them simultaneously disturbing and melancholic. And with the fine-tuned coordination of Augustine and his fellow puppeteers (Laura Emmanuel, Sophie Nimmanit, and Matthew Riggs), the characters come to life in an astounding manner. Add to the list of characters a luminescent butterfly and a book that attempts to fly from its reader's hand, and Augustine has created a magical world in which anything goes, a world particular to puppetry and to Augustine's work in particular.
This is what makes the shortsightedness of Big Top Machine such a shame. Augustine is one of the greatest puppet artisans working today, but the text of the piece is ultimately uninteresting and banal. The story revolves around Stan (Augustine), who, in an effort to escape his estranged wife and alcoholic tendencies, does what almost everyone has considered doing at one point or another
Deadly Games
The cloudy difference between fantasy and reality is the subject of Jeff Tabnick's new play, I Found Her Tied to My Bed, an hourlong one-act about the fine line between true romantic love and ritualistic murder. Lounging around a set dominated by nothing more than a large bed, two young female roommates play games of love and death, pressing each other's buttons until they have no choice but to make their fantasies a reality or look elsewhere for someone to share the rent with. This spare but affecting production, playing every Wednesday night at Under St. Mark's until the end of the month, examines a not-so-healthy relationship between two roommates, sometime lovers, and occasional murder accomplices.
"I'm not a lesbian. I'm a killer," says Jan (played by the severe Shannon Kirk), a rebellious nurse at a retirement facility, who has taken to amusing herself at work by speeding up the turnover rate at the facility's critical wing. A pair of damp cloths her only tool, she views herself as something between an avenging angel and an agent of mercy, killing in a seeming act of euthanasia only the sickest patients
Henry IV, Part One: Much Humor, Less Horror
Of all of Shakespeare's histories, I like the two Henry IV plays the best, for their jarring combination of ribald humor and bloody horror. Over the last few years, I have appreciated them even more for their uncanny parallels to present political realities. Here we see a world leader's son spending his youth in debauchery, then turning about-face to assume his father's mantle, self-righteous in his sense of destiny. Here we see soldiers dying in a war that should never have happened, its perpetrator deceived and manipulated by his advisers. Here we see ordinary people, in taverns where they drink and in battlefields where they die, sacrificing their own destinies for another man's. And here we see the occasional extraordinary old drunk who speaks the truth better than a ruler or a Rumsfeld: "What is honor? A word."
These parallels are not lost on director Marc Silberschatz, whose troupe, Twenty Feet Productions, is presenting in repertory the eight plays that ponder the devastating Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York in 14th- and 15th-century Britain and France. The cycle, Silberschatz says, shows how "a diseased morality acts on a people like a cancer." Retelling this story "gives us a chance to examine what we are doing today" in our own domestic and international affairs.
Whether this marathon makes the present-day connection is best evaluated by those who, like the 12 actors themselves, had the stamina to take in the entire experience. With only two plays to go on, I can report that Richard II, reviewed elsewhere on this site, effectively portrays the diseased morality that initiated nearly a hundred years of bloodshed. The actors do not have to use neckties or cigars to demonstrate how easily a vain and cocksure leader can be toppled by cunning and venal opponents. The subsequent play, Henry IV Part One, is rocky and rushed, though the effects of the growing cancer remain clear.
The secret of a good Henry IV is in maintaining a perfect balance between the comic and the tragic, but in this production the comic wins hands down.
Richard Brundage commands the stage as literature's most lovable philosopher-drunk, Sir John Falstaff. In Richard II, Brundage plays the dominating Duke of York with incongruous timidity, but here you get a real Falstaff, savoring each juicy line like an epicure tasting wine, rolling the words delightedly around the tongue with deliberate pace and timing, moving and gesturing effortlessly.
Alas, he has an inadequate match in Albert Aeed as Prince Hal, the king's heir. Admittedly, this is a difficult role for any actor
From Scavenger to Mail-Order Bride
Smoke billows up through lofty ridges of puckered mauve fabric in which garbage nestles in a phantasmagoric rendering of Smokey Mountain, a massive dump on the outskirts of Manila that provided sustenance of sorts to 20,000 Filipino scavengers. At ground level, in complementary colors, are the study and bedroom of a real estate broker's upscale Park Slope apartment. This inventive set by Dan Kuchar depicts the twin poles of Linda Faigao-Hall's The Female Heart, an ambitious new play that follows Adelfa (played with aplomb by Rona Figueroa) in her journey from scavenger to Starbucks employee to college grad to mail-order bride.
While the political message is hammered home where a light tapping would have done the trick, the playwright manages to seed enough compelling details in Adelfa's story to sustain our attention. Director Jamie Roberts's sure-footed blocking plus the work of her talented design team help smooth the play's leaps through time and space.
We learn about Smokey Mountain, which was demolished in 1993 to make way for a never-built housing development, through the clunky device of spot news reporting by an Australian journalist, wittily portrayed by Sean Sutherland, who interviews Adelfa's brother Anghel (Victor Lirio) at the dump in 1992 in the play's opening scene and returns to the site nine years later in the final scene.
In between those expository bookends, Faigao-Hall vividly dramatizes the mercilessness of poverty, the forces that drive immigration, the miscues and incongruities between Filipino and U.S. culture, and how profoundly important the money sent by migrant relatives is for families back home. What she doesn't do as effectively, alas, is create convincing, multidimensional characters, despite the laudable efforts of the cast.
The play's title comes from the Tagalog phrase for a man or woman with a tender heart. Adelfa and her brother share that quality. Through an extended flashback, we learn that Anghel secretly took a job as a dancer in a male sex club to finance his family's escape from Smokey and pay his sister's way through college. But when Anghel falls seriously ill, it is Adelfa's turn to sacrifice in order to pay for his medical care. Adelfa and her mother decide that marriage to a rich American his surname, they happily note, is Golden�is the best choice among unappealing options.
The Female Heart picks up momentum even as the plot grows less plausible when the main action shifts to Brooklyn. Roger Golden (Tim Davis), a good-looking businessman in his 30s, turns out to be controlling and prone to angry eruptions, but penitent and self-reflective at other moments. Adelfa not only accepts her plight, negotiating larger and larger sums of money from Golden as the relationship becomes more confining and brutal, but appears to fall in love with him.
By play's end, things have come full circle. As his sister's letters and phone calls dry up, Anghel recalls the family's final day at the dump, when the three danced with hopeful glee, as the happiest day of his life. "My dear Adelfa, don't send any more things," he writes. "They're just things, Adelfa. Stuff. And it always comes down to this. Someday they'll be garbage."
The Obscenity Heard 'Round the World
When used correctly, the profane actually serves a very sacred social function, one that is too often lost in the shock of the profanity itself: it forcibly tears away the veil of unthinking habit and empty tradition. In this sense, French playwright Alfred Jarry was a master of the profane. Indeed, his finest creation, the infamous Pa Ubu of the play Ubu Roi, is nothing but a vessel for all that Jarry considered base and cowardly in humanity. (Appropriately enough, Ubu's famous first line in that play is simply, "Puh-shit.") Yet Elizabeth Swados's sharp new musical Jabu, based on Jarry's life and using healthy portions of his Ubu play cycle as illustration, shows us just why this high priest of blasphemy is still so sacred to modern theater.
From his childhood in Laval, France, in the late 1800's through his bohemian life in Paris and a rather messy self-destruction
Grace and Good Deeds
The waiting periods during major conflicts and tragedies will often strip off layers of character to reveal our vulnerable and solitary selves. But while the conversations that go on during these periods may feel particularly important and profound, they don't necessarily make for good theater. Waiting: A Trilogy, the third play from Brooklyn Heights journalist and playwright Paulanne Simmons, falls short of its goal by relying too heavily on dire situations and the characters' backgrounds to deliver an underdeveloped theme.
In the three disconnected scenes, three characters go out of their way to do something nice for somebody else, supposedly connecting the ideas of serving a higher power and earthly goodness. In a hospital, a Christian Scientist attempts to comfort a co-worker who is waiting for the results of her husband's brain surgery. At a bus stop, a young schoolteacher refuses to leave the scene of an accident to ensure that her cab driver isn't unjustly blamed. And in a high-rise office building, an Orthodox Jew risks his life during a terrorist attack to wait for help with a wheelchair-bound friend.
All compelling ideas for scenes, but in the end, there's nothing to hold on to. Taking its own leap of faith, Waiting falls back on the assigned spirituality of its characters to give the performances a sense of grace. While Simmons set out to explore the connections between spirituality and good deeds, she doesn't go deep enough with the characters, nor do some of the actors.
In the first scene, Deborah Paulter (Brenda, the Christian Scientist) and Stephanie Lynn Hakun (Ethel) set a bizarre and contradictory precedent in the very bare hospital waiting room, which consisted of only a bench and a table. Paulter's Brenda was ebullient, if slightly overacted, in contrast with a hesitant and awkward Hakun, who proved in the second scene that her glaring mid-sentence stutters were not intended as part of any one character.
Also in that scene, a booming Patrick Toon (cab driver Mohammad Abdul al-Aziz Medani) and Pierre O'Farrell (a too blatantly racist bus driver, Vinnie) have it out over a bus-cab collision, and Hakun, as the cab's passenger Heidi, steps in to defend Abdul. When a police officer (Joe Salgo) winds up taking Heidi's word rather than condemning the foreign taxi driver (as he says he normally would), the scene winds up feeling like a sugar-frosted morality lesson.
In the final and most powerful scene, Toon (Aaron) and O'Farrell (Tom) did achieve the degree of stripped-down humanity that the script called for, but it was far too late in the production to provoke a reconsideration of the play itself. Toon, O'Farrell, and Salgo, each in dual roles, might have grounded the production with solid performances, but they could not rescue it from its acute case of oversimplification.
The script also has characters revealing intimate details and personal anecdotes far too detailed for a slice-of-life trilogy. And while there were moments of comic relief, they wound up feeling inserted like keys into the wrong locks of the wrong doors. For serious drama to open itself to humor, the audience needs to be emotionally invested first.
No one likes to wait, much less watch other people wait. The lesson here is that if you're going to make an audience watch characters wait, the waiting needs to be pretty damn significant.