In Black and White

Conversation With a Kleagle is loosely based on the life of Walter White, a black writer whose light complexion allowed him to investigate the Ku Klux Klan during the early 20th century and convey devastating inside information about its use of terrorism and lynching. The production reveals some of that potentially explosive life story, but unfortunately the script contains deep flaws, especially in the characterization. Most of the play revolves around two conversations between John Watson (the Walter White character), a black Chicago journalist who passes as white to travel in the South, and a Kleagle, or KKK recruiter, named Randall Monahan (Chris Keogh). The Kleagle, who is aware of Watson's background and thinks the black man doesn't "know his place," plans to kill him. Watson is then tipped off by a stranger, an African-American shoe shiner named Tookie, and narrowly escapes. But when he returns to Chicago, he learns that Tookie has paid for his intervention with his son's life. Watson decides he must face the Kleagle again and find out why he had the killing done.

Problems with the conception of these characters begin right away. In an expository opening monologue, the audience learns that Watson is black and that Monahan knows this. This could set up a potentially mesmerizing scene where Monahan drops threatening hints as to what he might do. Better still would be to keep the audience guessing about whether Monahan knows about Watson, based on the Kleagle's ambiguous and vaguely hostile language.

Instead, Monahan makes only a few threats. A conversation that could be about subterfuge, fear, and what isn't known turns into easy boasting. Watson cajoles Monahan into bragging about his exploits as a Klansman by agreeing with his racist views, and any potential tension is killed.

In the rare instances where Keogh is allowed to be intimidating, he is exceptional. Keogh is explosive, powerful, and threatening, someone you would not want to be at the mercy of. But he hasn't been given good enough material. Being completely evil, his character is too absolutist. There is nothing conflicted about Monahan, no questioning of who is right in his confrontation with Watson, and no indication of what the Klansman's motivations are. Instead of the nuanced evil of, say, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, we get the flatness of Darth Vader from Star Wars.

Another missed opportunity comes in the subplot involving Tookie, a modest, generous Southern black man, and, surprisingly, a stereotype. He is an endearing simpleton, a bootblack who, though ignorant, is noble in his sincerity and tragic in his sacrifice. As the friendly, helpful black man, he represents absolute good in contrast to Monahan's total evil.

The play also presents an irrelevant flashback dealing with Watson's childhood and the threat of racial violence against his family. His mother urges him to pass as white—advice, it later becomes evident, he does not follow except when he goes South. As indicated by his profession, Watson has decided to be black: he writes only for black newspapers. The flashback does little to develop his character, because the more central conflict is not over his passing as white but whether he will confront Monahan about what he has done to Tookie's son. Yet too much of the play deals with the issue of Watson's racial identity.

Furthermore, Andrew Burns plays Watson as someone who bears his torments mostly internally. He does not seem troubled; any evidence of his struggle over passing as white is not outwardly apparent in his gestures and expressions. Instead, Burns seems impatient to get to the end of each scene, and his character, though often appearing angry, never seems particularly tormented by racial injustice or by his mother's ambitions for him, as flashbacks suggest he would.

To the play's credit, there are a few memorable instances of unforgivably racist yet vividly descriptive lines that reflect hateful Southern attitudes. These lines are reserved for Keogh and his expressions of vitriol, delivered in a booming voice. And one directorial choice is creative, at least at first: the general Klansmen serve as stagehands so that during transitions where Watson is onstage they menacingly stare at him and pantomime threats. But the device becomes tedious after the second time.

In all fairness, writing socially conscious theater, for all its importance, can be uniquely difficult. The writer must walk a fine line between artist and reformer. Conversation With a Kleagle is a play rife with possibilities for great drama. It's too bad so few of them are realized here.

Saga of a Stripper Suffragette

Anyone who's seen the movie Showgirls knows it's easy to mock. The film's lame performances, abysmal dialogue, and embarrassing array of naked flesh make it difficult to take seriously. In fact, one could argue that because it's so bad, it would be a hard piece to satirize well: the film itself is almost a parody of ultra-racy movies of the 90's (think Basic Instinct, also written and directed by the Showgirls team). The creators of Showgirls: The Best Movie Ever Made. Ever! bring fresh mockery to the original by introducing screenwriter Joe Eszterhas into their irreverent mix. In their production, Jackie Flynn Clarke, a feminist professor at Queens Community College, interviews Eszterhas. Jackie is a fan of the film—she sees it as a potential vehicle for female empowerment—and with the help of her husband, John Clarke Flynn, and a group of amateur actors (all recruited from craigslist), she re-enacts scenes from the movie while posing questions to its writer.

Jackie clearly believes she has the gravitas of a Barbara Walters or James Lipton and treats Eszterhas with great reverence. "You're a friend to women," she tells him repeatedly. Interspersed with the recreated Showgirls segments are a video montage of the representations of Christianity in the Vegas performance number "Goddess" and the movie's entire "pool scene," shown without dialogue but enhanced by the movie's stage directions, read aloud.

This entire setup is delivered with a delightful vulgarity. The production is certainly not for the easily offended: the film clips include nudity, and the dialogue is raunchy. The actors playing Showgirls characters reproduce their dance numbers and sex scenes with libidinous abandon (in order to produce this play, somebody watched the movie many, many, many times). Everything works because all of the performers are completely un-self-conscious. The result is hysterical.

In the interview—the show's framing device—Jackie (credited as herself) and Eszterhas (John Reynolds) strike the right balance of earnest belief in their work and utter absurdity. Jackie's character is the perfect blend of lounge singer, drag queen, and politically correct academic. As for Eszterhas, Reynolds's foul mouth, exposed flabby belly, and swaggering machismo—plus his pasted-on beard and moustache—make him an uncanny likeness for the actual screenwriter.

The other member of the interview team, John Clarke Flynn (also credited as himself), has the important task of dramatically reading all of the movie's stage directions. He reminds the audience several times that "no stage directions were changed in the course of this production."

But the true star of the show was Lennon Parham as Nomi Malone, the "stripper suffragette." Parham has mastered the glazed, far-off look that, in the movie, Elizabeth Berkley passed off as acting. She even maintained her dignity when performing a lap dance to the theme song from Saved by the Bell. Her clever costume was a tight black top, worn under a pink halter; whenever the stage directions indicated that Nomi was topless (which was often), she pulled down the halter.

Her best moments were at the close of nearly every scene, when her character was supposed to emote heavily. Regardless of whether Nomi was expressing anger, sadness, or fear, Parham ended the scene with a high-pitched shriek and the destruction of a nearby object. This funny gag got funnier every time.

The rest of the cast did a great job in the supporting roles; each actor played multiple characters. Eric Bernat brought a wonderful physical presence to Henrietta and Marty, and was perfect in his black wig as Zach (played in the movie by Kyle MacLachlan). Julie Brister was commanding as Crystal, Nomi's nemesis, and should have had even more opportunities to show off her comic talents.

Jeff Hiller was not only funny but also quite a graceful dancer. Bobby Moynihan's portrayal of Nomi's best friend, Molly, was hilarious. He foreshadowed Molly's unhappy ending with a perfectly deadpan delivery of a line that kept the audience giggling long after he'd finished.

Will people who haven't seen the film get anything out of Showgirls: The Best Movie Ever Made. Ever!? Most likely. The show opens with an extended trailer from the movie, and each re-enacted scene is a reasonable facsimile of the original. Some jokes are reserved for those who've seen the movie more than a few times: the correct pronunciation of "Versace," or the taxicab that appears out of nowhere.

But the live version of Showgirls doesn't satirize just the film. It takes on Hollywood's excesses, the public's fascination with celebrity interviews, and even the academic appropriation of pop culture. There's definitely something for everyone, as long as you like things extremely funny and a little bit dirty.

Ibsen With Robots

Heddatron is an over-the-top, mind-bending, jaw-dropping piece of masterful camp. Everything about playwright Elizabeth Meriwether's new play is brilliant. Produced by Les Freres Corbusier, this outstanding production boasts an extremely original and well-written script as well as a magnificent cast, inspired direction, and flawless design elements, all of which combine to make this the must-see show of the season. In short, it is pure theatrical magic (with robots!) that leaves its audience slightly delirious and breathlessly wanting more. In suburban Michigan, Jane (Carolyn Baeumler), a depressed and pregnant housewife, reads Hedda Gabler. As she folds laundry and cleans her gun, she finds solace in Ibsen's words, identifying with the title character's situation. Weeks later, Jane's 12-year-old daughter Nugget (Spenser Leigh) prepares to give a report to her sixth-grade class on Ibsen and the "well-made play."

Meanwhile, in 19th-century Germany, a melancholy Ibsen (Daniel Larlham) plays with dolls as his sadistic wife (Nina Hellman), a severe woman who refers to her husband only as "Ibsen!," gleefully calls his manhood into question. Back in modern-day Michigan, mild-mannered Rick (Gibson Frazier) and his arms-smuggling brother Cubby (Sam Forman) prepare to rescue Rick's wife Jane, who has been kidnapped by…robots.

Images of a news report about the robot abduction assault the audience from every angle. Ibsen frantically works on his new play, pausing only to battle his loathed enemy, the sexually depraved August Strindberg (Ryan Karels), and to find momentary happiness with his slutty kitchen maid, Else (Julie Lake).

Nugget presents her report, advising her classmates that if they don't like Hedda Gabler, it's probably because they saw it on a bad night or are too stupid to understand it. Rick and Cubby, armed with an arsenal of illegal guns, head to the rain forest lair of the robots. Deep in the forest, Jane performs Hedda Gabler over and over again as her kidnappers, Tesman and Lovborg (named after characters in Hedda Gabler) and their fellow robots, swirl about her. That the four story lines converge during a group chorus of Bonnie Tyler's unrequited-love anthem "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is just further proof of this work's campy brilliance.

A mixture of wry observations, hilarious jokes, social commentary, and literary criticism, Meriwether's writing is sublime. Through Jane's story, Ibsen's imagined history, and the robots that tie everything together, Meriwether expertly deconstructs Ibsen and his play. Alex Timbers's direction successfully weaves together all the story lines, guiding his entire cast to polished, accomplished performances.

The acting is also exceptional. Leading the ensemble is the delightful Leigh. As Nugget, she holds the play together with her natural acting style and deadpan delivery, showcasing a talent well beyond her young age. Carolyn Baeumler mixes comedy and drama as the suicidal Jane, fully and often hilariously committing to each bizarre situation, particularly those involving her robot captors. She turns in a tender and heartbreaking performance.

Hellman stomps about the stage screaming "Ibsen!" and delivering putdowns with bull's-eye precision, stealing every scene she's in. As the lusty Else, Lake is perpetually surprised and clueless while delivering her lines with a high-pitched, helium-infused voice that provokes many laughs. In Lake's capable hands, Else's monologue about her mother's brutal rape is, surprisingly, a comedic tour de force.

Larlham comically captures the self-aggrandizing soul of the tortured artist; his conflicted Ibsen is a man more concerned with writing about life than living it. As the bikini-underwear-clad Strindberg, Karels hysterically swaggers about the stage, full machismo bravado on display as he conquers every woman in his path. Karels is the perfect foil to Larlham's neutered Ibsen.

Forman attacks the role of wannabe mercenary Cubby with psychotic abandon, earning many laughs as his insane kill-the-robots-scheme spirals out of control. As the quiet center of the play, Frazier appropriately underplays each moment, imbuing the clueless Rick with a dim uncertainty about what is happening or why his wife is so unhappy. Like Tesman in Hedda, Rick simply loves her.

The unsung heroes of Heddatron are the robots. Designed by Meredith Finkelstein and Cindy Jeffers, they perfectly capture the personalities of their Ibsenian counterparts. The Lovborg robot is hunky and brooding, Tesman is dumpy, and the others—well, they should be seen for maximum effect. The robots provide some of the funniest moments and are so well executed, they achieve lifelike dimensions.

In a city bursting with theatrical options, Heddatron is a welcome relief. Not settling for the status quo or uninspired mediocrity of so many Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, Heddatron dares to be more. And while the flash of the robots is certainly alluring, the production's real magic is all human. Meriwether, Timbers, Les Freres Corbusier, and the exceptional cast and designers have given the New York theater scene a remarkable gift.

In a Frozen World

Theatergoers bold enough to brave the icy weather and take the L train to Brooklyn's Williamsburg will understand that The Snow Hen has found the perfect location. Situated away from downtown Manhattan and even a few blocks distant from busy Bedford Avenue, the Charlie Pineapple Theater has an isolated air. This isn't where your life happens; this is somewhere else, somewhere remote. Based loosely on a Norwegian folk tale, The Snow Hen expands on the story of a girl living in solitude in a snow hut after being abandoned by her parents. She continually fishes odds and ends out of the snow, and after a few years she's grown a plume of white feathers on her back. After the audience has observed the heroine's fascinating and bizarre existence, a towering stranger dressed in a long leather coat arrives, perhaps the only other person left in the world.

Director Oliver Butler has homed in on the play's haunting melancholy, and all elements of the production—design, sound, lights, performance—blend seamlessly into a cohesive whole. Besides Butler, the Debate Society's creative triumvirate consists of Hannah Bos, who plays the girl, and Paul Thureen, the stranger. As both writers and performers, they bring humanity as well as pathos to this farfetched and fantastical landscape.

From the moment Bos first slips her hands through the curtain and "invites" us into her strange little world, we become a part of her existence. Such is the miracle of her spontaneity that for the first silent minutes of the piece, as she picks her way through a multitude of props, there is no evidence of rehearsal or blocking. Instead, there is simply an ease of being. Bos never seems to be "acting"; she simply is, and her bleak yet somehow bright existence inside her snow hut seems as familiar to the audience as any childhood memory. With its laughter and tears, this life is a warm center of emotion within a frozen world.

Thureen's first appearance is shocking. Appearing nearly 9 feet tall in relation to Bos, the stranger is a monster bringing chaos to her world. Thureen wordlessly dominates the stage as Bos desperately tries to continue her life as it was before he came. But as he begins to discard layers of fur and leather (expertly crafted by Sydney Maresca), we see the man within the monster. The stranger seems to be susceptible to the girl's influence, and her spunkiness begins to revitalize him as he thaws out from the cold. Eventually, we realize that he is just as alone—and as vulnerable and capable of wonder—as she is.

The scenic design is both wondrously inventive and effectively oppressive. The child's Fisher-Price scale vividly illustrates that the girl has outgrown her home. More impressively, nearly every piece of the set is functional. There is an extension cord on the wall, and if one of the actors plugs in a hair dryer, it works. The floor has an ice-fishing hole, and if the actors lift the lid, there is water and a fishing basket. The wealth of gadgets and trinkets allows the actors to make discoveries throughout the course of the play.

Mike Riggs's light design presents an effective interplay between realism and artifice. Inside the hut, the lights are powered by a generator and fade as scenes progress. Frequent patches of sunlight add a stark contrast to the normally frigid tones outside. A quick glimpse of the northern lights, breathtakingly rendered, creates a greenish, surreal effect.

Nathan Leigh's sound effects include voice-overs by Pamela Payton-Wright and Adam Silverman, which occur naturally and heighten the loneliness. Every element of the design seems to have a slight echo, like music heard ringing on for miles. Or maybe the music is miles away, and we hear only the echoes.

The Snow Hen offers unique joys as well as sadness. To classify the play as experimental theater probably does it a disservice. Though some of the concepts and the performance style might be appropriate for that genre, the piece's overriding message about the need for shared existence will be accessible to anyone who sees it. Audiences may depart the theater feeling as if they've left a part of themselves in this mysterious little pocket of reality. As if somewhere remote and cold, a piece of us is cataloguing trinkets and hearing the echoes of a life long gone.

On Thin Ice

Beware the paralyzing power of public perception. In Theater Ten Ten's engrossing revival of Kiss and Cry, playwright Tom Rowan adeptly examines two arenas in which public persona is a make-or-break factor—figure skating and Hollywood. Actors and figure skaters achieve fame only to become veritable public property, spawning legions of fans obsessed not only with their talents but also with the most infinitesimal details of their personal lives. Rather than confront the origins of our obsession with celebrity, Rowan approaches his subject on a more personal level, chronicling the lives of two young stars with wit and sensitivity as they package themselves for public view. But the images they create, of course, bear little resemblance to the lives they truly wish to lead.

Stacy and Fiona first meet in Los Angeles at the premiere party for Fiona's new movie, Vampire Campus. Stacy is an up-and-coming pairs figure skater, while Fiona longs to appear in more substantial films. Discovering their shared preference for same-sex partners, they form a fast friendship. As they exit the party, a photographer snaps a picture, and their relationship suddenly becomes fodder for celebrity gossip columnists.

Pouncing on what she perceives as a golden opportunity, Fiona suggests that they play along with the story, letting their fans believe they are a couple. Stacy initially hesitates, but after a disquieting conversation with his skating partner, Brittany (who wonders whether he is a "faggot" or a "homo" in the chilling, derisive language of fundamentalist homophobia), he accepts Fiona's offer.

Embraced by the press, their relationship flourishes, and their careers do, too. Fiona finally lands a more legit role, while Stacy and Brittany win nationals and begin to prepare for the Olympics. As the relationship spins out of control, however, what was intended as a brief courtship turns into a marriage, spawning action figures and exercise videos; their personal lives, consequently, begin to feel the negative effects of their elaborate pantomime.

Stacy becomes involved with a fan named Trent, who begins to complain loudly about the enforced secrecy of their relationship, warning Stacy, "Lies come back to haunt you." And Fiona, who has lived with her girlfriend Lauren for years in their East Village apartment, has hell to pay when Lauren—usually immersed in alternative, feminist publications—finally uncovers her deception.

Lauren's rift with Fiona runs deeper than the matter of falsified sexuality, however. Committed to reaching people through the progressive theater she creates, Lauren has written plays for Fiona to perform that support their shared artistic vision. She accuses Fiona of selling out and "merchandising" herself to the mainstream culture, and their ensuing argument about the transformative powers of art is one of the play's most tautly written, directed, and performed scenes.

Director Kevin Newbury moves the action forward at a controlled pace that never feels rushed or labored. Clever voice-overs and upbeat music animate the transitions between scenes, and Robert Monaco's austere set keeps the focus on the performers.

For a show with figure skating as a main subject, it could be problematic that we never actually get to see any skating. Locker room scenes bring us close, however, and Joanne Haas's beautiful skating costumes add believability to the actors' athleticism.

Most of the cast participated in the play's hit run at the 2004 Fringe Festival, and the veterans have their characters firmly in hand. David Lavine is exceedingly earnest and lovable as Stacy, wearing his heart on his sleeve so palpably that, watching closely, you might even see him blush. Julie Leedes brings a sunny, girl-next-door energy to Fiona, likable even when her calculating actions threaten to expose her self-centeredness.

As Lauren, Nell Gwynn is instantly persuasive as a feminist playwright with transform-the-world ideals, and her intensity is tempered by her sure-footed delivery of many of the play's most ironic lines. Elizabeth Cooke offers a flawless performance as Brittany, innocently spouting the maxims of her fundamentalist upbringing, and Reed Prescott turns in a touching performance as Stacy's conflicted figure-skating friend-cum-lover, Ethan. Only Timothy Dunn, the cast's newcomer, struggles a bit with the bombastic Trent, and his over-the-top quality distracts at times from the realism of the other performances.

As Brittany laments the skating duo's loss of their "wholesome Christian kid appeal," it becomes clear that very nearly everyone has an image to sell. In Kiss and Cry, choosing to compromise your identity brings devastating consequences, and it is impossible to delude others without somehow deluding yourself.

Even realizing your utmost dreams, it turns out, offers little relief, and Fiona and Stacy become both perpetrators and victims of erratic cultural expectations. As a bit of dialogue attests, one must "encourage the untrue rumors to shut down the true ones." But when the truth is eradicated, what steps in to take its place?

Inhuman

Dread, terror, and paranoia run rampant through our society these days, the newspapers tell us, promulgated by the forces of war and an ever-growing culture of fear. Ostensibly written in response (and protest) to the Vietnam War, Walter Wangerin, Jr.'s prescient novel The Book of the Dun Cow is an antiwar diatribe that also parallels the current war in Iraq. Randy Courts and Mark St. Germain have adapted Wangerin's material into the most unlikely of forms—a musical—with quite thrilling results. In this haunting and cerebral production by the Prospect Theater Company, The Book of the Dun Cow examines existential questions of war, its motivations, and the responses it generates.

And did I mention that the protagonists are animals?

Welcome to an alternative universe where animals are the keepers of the earth, presided over by the gregarious and slightly pompous rooster Chauntecleer. When a neighboring ruler, Senex, decides to produce an heir, he unwittingly brings forth Cockatrice and the evil of the underworld (Wyrm). As animals begin to die, Chauntecleer must make difficult decisions about war and its consequences.

Although you might be tempted to interpret the show (the first act, at least) as an allegorical tale that predicts the coming of the Dun Cow (a savior figure of sorts), Wangerin's story pushes beyond the simple assignation of roles to a more complex narrative. As a result, characters are rich and multidimensional, but the story itself is so densely written that it is often difficult to tease out a clear sense of what has actually taken place (and why).

But in a story chronicling war, you might argue, this ambiguity is so much the better. War is, after all, cloaked in mystery; as Chauntecleer's wife (the hen Pertelote) queries, in the darkness of battle, "Who can tell who's right?"

Director Cara Reichel has created a thoroughly believable world for her characters, paying careful attention to the inherent power of storytelling. When the Narrator (Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum) takes the stage, he carefully opens a book. The animals file on wordlessly, giving the Narrator their undivided attention. As he begins the story, the characters come to life to act out the tale.

And although the Narrator somewhat perplexingly closes the book before the show ends, this too seems a conscience choice. "Is this the moment when the animals' story becomes our story?" wondered the friend who accompanied me. We weren't able to come up with a definitive answer, but the debate that ensued over this and other plot points indicated that The Book of the Dun Cow is replete with questions—imperative ones worth thinking about.

Courts and St. Germain's sophisticated, contemporary score, buttressed by percussion and guitar, has a sound all its own, full of lavish harmonies and evocative melodies. Marcus Baker leads an accomplished orchestra through the fine orchestrations provided by Courts and Daniel Feyer.

Portraying an animal can be a risky endeavor for an actor (the risk of embarrassment certainly runs high), but—thanks in part to David Withrow's intriguing and resourceful costume design—the performers are fully believable in their anthropomorphic state. Rather than attempting to realistically "transform" the actors into animals, Withrow merely suggests their animalistic traits. Boots, corsets, and vests form the standard uniform; a red scarf suggests a rooster's wobble, while the dog Mundo Cani sports a canine-channeling droopy hat. Hand puppets add another innovative touch.

Similarly, the performers, with a few exceptions, do not overplay their animal affectations, wisely opting for more subtle mannerisms. As a whole, this is a fierce ensemble of actors, wholly dedicated to their task. As the sparring roosters Cockatrice and Chauntecleer, Micah Bucey and Brian Munn dominate the proceedings with powerful, captivating performances. Vanessa June Marshall brings delicate sensitivity and a crystal voice to Pertelote, and David Foley Jr. offers a tender and mighty-voiced performance as Mundo Cani.

Paulo Seixas has provided an appealing multilevel set for the actors, but unfortunately Jessica Hendricks's choreography often fails to take full advantage of it. After exhilarating battle scenes and affecting group montages, the simplistic choreography in many of the full-ensemble songs often undermines its intricate accompaniment. This cast and this story, in other words, deserve more than a simple "step, touch, repeat" routine.

Why do we fight, and what do we hope to accomplish? What can we ever accomplish? Like the recent film Munich, The Book of the Dun Cow argues that even as we work to stamp out evil, it will always find a way to regenerate itself. Although the musical very nearly collapses under the weighty questions it poses, it is an intriguing inquiry into fundamental questions. When confronted with evil, do we resist violence, Chauntecleer asks, or do we "become a rat to kill a rat"?

Advertisements for Myself

Everyone thinks he or she has a story to tell. Some people's lives make for genuinely compelling autobiographical material, while others just like hearing the sound of their own voices. What marks the difference between mere confessional theater and high art? Confessions of a Mormon Boy, conceived by, written, and starring Steven Fales, and a holdover from the 2004 New York Fringe Festival, doesn't answer that question. Instead, Fales, an actor with a history of stand-up experience, delivers at the SoHo Playhouse a well-rehearsed story of his life. (He also puts his very well-defined body on display almost as much as he does his psyche.) It's a journey that takes him from his Mormon roots in Utah to his days (and mostly nights) as a gay escort in New York. But from start to finish, the message is clear: "Me! Me! Me!"

Fales's story, which includes his ostracism from the Mormon community, is not without moments that deserve sympathy. He grew up living life according to the edicts of his family and their religion—he was an Eagle Scout and a missionary, and he attended Brigham Young University. But all along he sensed that his sexuality was pulling him down a divergent path.

He opted to avoid it at first. Fales married a woman, Emily, whose father not only was gay and an early AIDS victim but whose mother, Carol Lynn Johnson, wrote a book chronicling her life with that husband. During Fales's marriage, which produced two children, he worked at his performing arts career and felt it increasingly hard not to stray into the arms of other men. Eventually, the Fales divorced and the Mormon Church excommunicated him (Fales accurately points out the hypocrisy in the church's banishing him for something that the Mormon religion does not even recognize), and he made a life for himself as a struggling actor in New York City.

Fales didn't struggle for long, though he found success not as an actor but as a gigolo. During Boy's last third, he chronicles the many nights he spent with rich Johns who subsidized a life increasingly dependent on chemical substances. This is familiar territory for anyone who has read memoirs by such people as Drew Barrymore, Augusten Burroughs, or James Frey (the latter's facts may be false, but the song remains the same). Fales intermittently mentions the shame he caused and felt as a result of his decadent lifestyle, but prefers to dwell on his glamorous experiences. And while I firmly believe he cares for his two children, his affection for them in Boy feels more like an afterthought; they seem far too remote when mentioned in this show.

For someone who is responsible for most of what his life has brought, Fales repeatedly comes off as a victim. Yet everything about this Boy, as directed by Jack Hofsiss, has far too nice a sheen to suggest real suffering. Instead of being a harrowing tale of a life's ups and downs, the show is merely a nicely packaged piece of self-promotion.

But if Boy is little more than a commercial for himself, Fales proves to be his own best advertising tool. His material may be run-of-the-mill (and apparently there is more—he is currently preparing a new stand-up "dramedy" act), but Fales delivers it with impeccable timing and perfect diction. Furthermore, his recollections of his youth, with all its confusion, mistreatment, and mistakes, are full of vivid detail. Several devices, including the use of a recording of Fales singing as a child, show what a long journey he has been on.

By the show's end, he has undergone quite a transformation—physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually—but Boy is not the story of a metamorphosis. Fales is not interested in spreading his wings and flying away. He wants to stay put right where he is, at center stage.

Infernal Discourse

George Bernard Shaw imagined hell as an amusement park dedicated to licentious pleasures. While there may be "quite enough reality on earth," the "horror of damnation," he says through his mouthpiece, Don Juan, is that "nothing's real" in hell. Unfortunately, the horrific dreariness of reality intrudes into the Medicine Show's production of Shaw's dream play within a play, Don Juan in Hell, the self-contained third act of his Man and Superman. Dona Ana, an old flame of Don Juan's, is a fresh arrival in hell. She meets her former lover and her deceased father, an ex-military commander who is visiting from heaven. The devil calls and tries to convince Juan to switch places with the commander so that hell can have a new catch. Acidly eloquent monologues ensue about the nature of love, marriage, and the meaning of life.

The famous libertine, weary of endless sensual indulgences, decides he prefers the contemplative life of heaven. For some reason, the devil changes her mind and protests Juan's decision. But any dramatic conflict is secondary to the witty banter in this comedy of ideas that resembles a Platonic dialogue in the way Juan gets all the best lines.

Director Alec Tok appears to have made a deliberate choice to stage Shaw's philosophic reverie utilizing Brechtian dramaturgy. On the surface, this makes sense because Shaw is in many ways the English Brecht: both playwrights wrote "epic theater" that emphasized didactic arguments, often at the expense of action, in an effort to engage their audience's intellects and further social—and often socialist—causes. In addition, Shaw's dream play concocts an atmosphere of brittle illusions, which seems to make it suited to the distancing effect that was Brecht's goal. Brecht wanted his audiences to see the illusion of theater as an illusion, and not mistake it for some "naturalistic" reality.

The problem is that Tok stays on the surface; his use of Brecht's dramaturgy is superficial and distracts our focus from the depths of Shavian meditations. The play, for example, "breaks the fourth wall" for only an instant—when the devil hands a random audience member a dollar bill to demonstrate the allure of mammon. It almost works. But the gimmick takes attention away from the alluring sophistry, which is the heart of the play.

Likewise, the costumes, while well constructed and imaginative, led to confusion. Juan wore a codpiece, multicolored tights, and a troubadour outfit complete with plumage and ruffles, while the commander was adorned in a mink thrown over World War I gear bespattered with inexplicable, Pollock-like drips of yellow and gray. More disconcerting yet was the fact that he had silver glitter smeared on his face.

Tok and costume designer Uta Bekaia attempt the radical juxtaposition of styles that Brecht urged, but the effect is baffling. The bafflement was most likely intentional: a superfluous nonspeaking actor enters and exits at odd moments wearing a new costume each time, from cross-dressing in a French maid outfit to parading as a Roman soldier.

Moreover, while elaborate Brechtian masks are used, they are rapidly dropped with little change in the characters' voice or action to denote any transformation, thus nullifying their effect.

While many of Tok's attempts to set Shaw's play to Brecht's directorial music may seem interesting, at least theoretically, the production flounders because of more basic reasons: overzealous blocking and emotionally callow acting.

During the play's long monologues, the actors engage in incoherent and distracting behavior. The audience is never given the chance to focus on the intellectual gymnastics when the characters halfheartedly toss pillows, pantomime animals, or—in one of the most egregious scenes—pretend to give birth to a helmet. It's as if Tok, afraid the audience will be bored by Shaw's speeches, overcompensates with too much action. Yet the transitions between scenes stultify with moments of dead air.

The least ingratiating aspect of this production, though, was the cliché-ridden acting. Brecht proposed a theory of acting opposed to Stanislavsky's, which relies on the interiority of deep, primal memories. Brecht's theory proposed that actors articulate a series of controlled and highly stylized gestures. The actors in this production, however, displayed neither naturalistic emotion nor stylistic control in their movements. They travestied the subtlety of the text with the banality of their unfeeling expression. With the occasional exception of Peter Judd, who played the commander, they wallowed in overwrought melodrama throughout.

The entire play came to a fitting conclusion on the night I saw it. A prop malfunction caused the climactic unveiling of heaven to be delayed. As Mark Dempsey, playing Juan, fidgeted with a curtain, he came out of character for a second to shrug apologetically to the audience.

If Shaw—or Brecht—wanted to disabuse us of the possibility for human transcendence, he couldn't have hoped for a more earthbound production.

Musical Romp

"Pardon the proximity of my person to your own." So steeped in politeness (and alliteration), these are hardly the words one expects to hear from the mouth of a prostitute. But in the world of fiction—and musical theater—possibilities expand. In the tradition of such innocent-girl-meets-big-city, city-proves-bad-influence tales as Thomas Dreiser's famous novel Sister Carrie, John Cleland's 18th-century novel Fanny Hill is tantalizing fodder for musical adaptation. If Ed Dixon's music and script are often meandering and overly simplistic, the ever-dependable York Theater Company has produced an endearing, jaunty romp of a show. And the overqualified cast, without fail, rises above the mostly mediocre material to turn in delightful performances.

Leading the pack is Nancy Anderson, who embodies the title character with sincerity and grace. Displaying vulnerability and pluck (sometimes simultaneously), Anderson brings to mind a young Bernadette Peters. With striking and precise comic timing, her strong performance anchors the show as the young heroine sets off to seek her fortune and encounters many curves in the road.

And Fanny certainly has ample ups and downs to navigate on her picaresque adventure. Orphaned in the small village of Lancashire, she arrives in London with little money but plenty of determination. The devious Mrs. Brown (Patti Allison), spying easy prey, scoops her off the street and whisks her into her house of prostitutes. Initially charmed by the house's splendor and luxuries, Fanny recoils when she discovers how the girls come by their money. After she falls in love with Charles (Tony Yazbeck), a sailor who spots her through her window, Fanny runs away to live with him. But when the sailors kidnap Charles and take him back to sea, Fanny finds herself back at Mrs. Brown's house, looking for refuge.

Resigned to her lot, Fanny throws herself into her new career, perfecting the prostitute's trade and becoming a kept woman for a wealthy country lord. The action finally resolves in a happily-ever-after(-ish) manner, but not until the requisite amount of mayhem and clever coincidences have occurred.

Billed as a takeoff on "the world's most infamous naughty book," Fanny Hill rarely feels truly naughty; sex scenes are highly stylized, and much of the humor comes from Fanny's wide-eyed, naïve reactions to provocative situations. With tongue firmly in cheek, the show often channels famous period pieces such as Candide and The Pirates of Penzance (the sailors, for one, immediately recall those infamous pirates). While comparably playful and frothy, Fanny Hill lacks the depth of those superior productions.

And Dixon's music cannot even begin to compete with the songs of Leonard Bernstein or Gilbert and Sullivan. Dixon's sprightly melodies are often as simple and repetitious as tunes from a music box. Largely unmemorable, the songs too often rely on short, rhymed phrases ("There's not enough pain / and I never was vain") that fail to develop into more substantive passages.

There are notable exceptions, however, which point to Dixon's promise as a songwriter. "Honor Lost," Fanny's lament after she first exchanges sex for money, is an evocative and moving ballad wrenchingly performed by Anderson, and "Every Man in London" is a show-stopping comedy song for the raunchy Mrs. Brown. Allison makes every moment count, and she quite deservedly brings down the house.

But with an ensemble that boasts such esteemed talents as Emily Skinner and David Cromwell, it seems a waste to let them languish in repeated, interminable choruses of "Clippy-clop-clip/Clippy-clippy-clop-clip" (the sound of horses as Fanny travels). If they feel their training is wasted, however, you'd never guess it from their dedicated performances. Skinner delights as Martha, Mrs. Brown's maid, while Cromwell shows comic flourish in several craggy, curmudgeonly roles. Michael J. Farina, Adam Monley, Gina Ferrall, and Christianne Tisdale round out the talented ensemble.

In the stock dreamy-male leading role (see Frederick in Pirates), Yazbeck gives a winning performance as Charles. Armed with a full-bodied, silky voice (as well as the uncanny ability to achieve beautiful resonance while splayed out on his back), Yazbeck should attract the attention of many casting directors. Keep watch on this up-and-coming young actor.

Fanny Hill, with its feisty young ingénue and torrid subject matter, would seem to be a prime candidate for musicalization. Widely considered the first "erotic" novel, Cleland's book, in print since 1749, has been the subject of multiple debates over censorship. Unfortunately, Dixon's adaptation ultimately lacks the substance to make Fanny's story a true theatrical event.

Still, James Brennan's direction is crisp and nuanced, Michael Bottari and Ronald Case's set and costumes are creative and lavish, and the cast is first rate, making this something of a guilty pleasure—a buoyant exercise in frivolity. "If you hold your head high and keep walking," Fanny says, "you might just end up where you're going." And at the York Theater, chins are held deliriously high.

Tricks and Spirits

The veil between belief and disbelief is a fundamental element in the relationship between a play and its audience. If a play does its job, the veil should be transparent, allowing the viewer to move seamlessly from the real world into the fiction of the play. With Beyond the Veil, at Where Eagles Dare Theater, the veil seems barely existent, leaving all of the grinding nuts and bolts of the production visible to the audience. The production should stand out as a warning to theater artists whose scripts make promises that their budget cannot keep. John Chatterton's play follows a Victorian-era scientist, William Royce, as he sets out to expose the medium Florence King as a con artist. After the death of his wife and an inexplicable séance, Royce begins to believe that Florence and her mother may be more than parlor tricksters. Royce takes both women into his home and makes it his mission to scientifically validate Florence's abilities, even forming a bizarre sexual relationship with the ghost-like Trudi, a long-dead former lover from Germany.

In some places, the actors make very noble efforts. James Arden, Sean Dill, and Naama Kates, as Royce, the Vicar, and Florence, respectively, all bring a grounded sensibility to their characters, regardless of the sometimes farcical circumstances. Gregg Lauterbach has a tendency to ham and overreach as the foppish Lord Darnley, but ultimately his arrival onstage heightens the other actors' energy. Nora Armani's accent comes and goes, but her Mrs. King (Florence's mother) blazes to life in the second act. The pretty and likable Rachael Rhodes, playing Iris the maid, seems to have been given five or six lines as payment for doubling as run crew and manipulating the objects that Florence "levitates."

The production's real failure is the design and technical execution. Roi Escudero is credited as the sole designer of the scenic elements, costumes, art, props, and virtual effects, but she seems to be settling for things rather than achieving the production's true goals. Any interesting sequences building up to a ghostly visitation are ruined when the audience hears the slide projector click on and then realizes that the actors are marking time, waiting for it to project a brief and indistinguishable image of a ghost.

The script refers again and again to Royce's scientific equipment and his having brought this equipment into the main room (playing area), but it never happens. Even so much as a yardstick is kept offstage. There are numerous references in the text to lighting controls and a dial on the wall, both of which are tackily hidden just behind a jutting wall.

In the script, many of Florence's channelings occur by way of a spirit cabinet. The idea is that she is bound securely in a small space and therefore unable to produce the floating instruments and manifestations of ghosts that take place during the séance. As executed here, this device becomes laughable. The question of whether Florence is untying herself and flitting about Royce's study naked is answered when the audience can hear her disrobing and see her undoing the cords she was bound with. Most of Veil's special effects evoke only muted snickers when they should serve as a device to heighten the mystery and suspense. Even the simple manifestation of a chair being moved on its own volition is ruined when we see the "mover" brush the curtain just behind it.

Though the script suffers from some forced innuendo and double entendres, a lot of interesting character dynamics are at play. The repeated question of who is cuckolding whom reaches its crescendo at the start of the second act, and once the play settles into its more farcical purpose of producing the most elaborate con, the audience will no doubt find itself very engaged in what's going on.

Perhaps this production would benefit from a little variation in creative input. Here, the playwright also works as the theater owner, producer, and director. Any one of these tasks is taxing enough, and Chatterton seems to be juggling many responsibilities. The result is a production that looks thrown together, more along the lines of a "stumble-through" than a finished product. Also, with Escudero trying to fulfill all of the technical requirements, every area of design is bound to suffer. Separate lighting, scenic, and special effects designers might have focused more attention on the show's technical quality.

Beyond the Veil tries wholeheartedly to make daring choices but doesn't seem capably staffed to make the more spectacular moments seem smooth and believable. Tricks like floating instruments and projected ghosts are only able to trick the characters if they can fool the audience. Unfortunately, this Veil isn't thick enough to pull over anyone's eyes.

Ladies' Night

The director's role in the creation of most productions is that of Ultimate Decision Maker. (S)he is in charge of making key calls concerning the script, the actors, the costumes, the sets—everything that is seen or said onstage. Some directors will have a specific vision of what the show should be, and will work to make that vision come alive. Others will work with their creative team to put together a greatest-hits compilation of all their strongest ideas. But what happens with a show that's missing a director? If the writer is living and involved with the production, not a syllable will be omitted from the script, even if scenes are overly long. Often, the actors will be given too much freedom and will indulge in unnecessary pauses. Most of all, there will be no overarching purpose or plan for the play, resulting in a limp night in the theater. This is the case with Ham & Egg, a decently performed, sometimes funny, but ultimately uninspired sketch show currently running at Under St. Marks.

Six sketches and a few videos feature Meg Kelly Schroeder and Pam Wilterdink, two thirty-something actresses who are skinny enough to pull off wearing micro-mini nurse uniforms and rocker spandex, and ballsy enough to play characters like snaggletoothed, jazz-loving sisters and middle-aged, middle-American bus drivers. Each scene is played with elaborate costumes and wigs to transform these ladies into women (and one boy) from different walks of life.

Generally, the live sketches tended to run a little long without decent resolution. Longer still were the videos, some picking up on the stage action, some telling their own stories, but all relying on the Family Guy idea that something dumb or awkward is amusing if left to go on for a ridiculous amount of time. There were also problems with the sound not syncing up to the picture, which made the short films seem even less short.

The scene changes were lengthy as well, probably to give the actresses time to change. Cleanup was done by Scott Myers (in purposefully unconvincing drag or in character from previous scenes), taking his sweet time to remove furniture or to add set decoration. (What Myers lacks in swiftness he certainly makes up for in popularity; on the night of this review, he seemed to have a lot of supporters in the crowd who loved his bits.)

The distaff duo's most effective characters were the ditzy blond nurses of "The Nurses" and the buttoned-up Victorian librarians in "The Eagle & the Hawk." It wasn't just that these were well-known stock characters that the audience had an easy affinity for. These scenes (the first and last of the evening) were highly stylized, and Schroeder and Wilterdink seemed to have a great time (and a natural instinct for) tapping into the soap opera and Masterpiece Theater genres. The writing was also wittier and more playful. Perhaps more than two scenes played so archly would've been overkill; still, that seems preferable to being underwhelmed by the rest of the show.

It's interesting to wonder what Ham & Egg could have been with a director. Instead of 90 minutes, it could've been a tauter 60. Instead of interminable film clips, it could've had quick gags (with quicker costume changes backstage to make up for time lost in the video segments). And instead of a slapdash production with flashes of brilliance, it could've been a streamlined show and a better showcase for its stars' talents.

Catherine Filloux: Creating on a World Stage

 

Lemkin (John Daggett) and JP an informant (Christopher Edwards). Photo by Carol Rosegg

Playwright Catherine Filloux does little to hide her heritage. "My dad was born in the center of France, and he became an adventurer," she says. Likewise, her mother seems to have had her share of influence. "My mom was a very literate person who loved literature." Being of French-Algerian descent, her mother wrote poetry in both her native tongue and English.

Somewhere between the poet and the adventurer lies Filloux, the prolific author of such works as Photographs From S-21, Eyes of the Heart, The Beauty Inside, and Lemkin's House, which opens Feb. 9 at the 78th Street Theater Lab. Filloux's adventures in theater have allowed her to take on major international issues, such as genocide, that playwrights and audiences don't always want to confront. At the same time, her career has taken her across oceans and brought her back again.

She also has the sort of credentials an aspiring playwright can

only dream about. Filloux is the Fulbright senior specialist in Cambodia and Morocco, the recipient of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays' Roger L. Stevens Award, and the Eric Kocher Playwrights Award from the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

Her published work reveals her penchant for exploring the world. Whereas her father sailed from France to New York Harbor in a catamaran, Filloux uses her plays to traverse the choppy waters between nations and cultures. Something of an adventurer herself, she has had her work produced in Cambodia, France, Algeria, Turkey, and Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"We grew up in San Diego in this kind of schism of Algeria, France, and San Diego," Filloux explains. "So it made for a background of not really knowing where one belongs and feeling like an outsider."

Filloux's "outsider" status encouraged her to look outside of the United States for inspiration. "In France and Europe, there is more fighting and conflict than was visibly apparent growing up in this country. I was drawn to conflict, which is an appropriate thing for playwriting."

International and cultural conflicts are always at the heart of her writing. Eyes of the Heart is an exploration of the psychosomatic blindness that afflicted Cambodian women after witnessing the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in the late 70's. The Beauty Inside examines the Middle Eastern tradition of honor killings, where a woman who is raped and impregnated before marriage can be killed by her family.

"Both of these plays have repressive regimes and dire situations," Filloux says. "They're about tradition and family and utter evil. Honor killings are based on traditional tribal beliefs, but they happen all the time all over the world. They're happening right now."

Filloux's mission in theater, she admits, is to expose these evils. "For a while, these crimes were the 'best-kept secrets,' but they're not even secrets. They happen all the time, and nobody cares. And that's the problem on some level with doing this kind of theater. There's just a little wall that's been built up against these things, and to write theater about them is part of the challenge."

Her latest challenge is Lemkin's House, based on the life of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-American lawyer who invented the word "genocide" in 1944 and spent his life striving to have it recognized as an international crime. The play is set in Lemkin's afterlife, where his final rest is disturbed by those who have lived through modern atrocities.

"Lemkin's House comes from having explored a specific genocide, which is Cambodia, for many years and then realizing that genocide happens continuously all over the world and especially in the 90's with Rwanda and Bosnia," Filloux says. "These were enormous genocides."

Jean Randich, director of the 78th Street Theater Lab's production, points out that "a major task of Lemkin's House is to sensitize an audience to imagine crimes of both commission and omission that abet genocide."

"Catherine presents in short brutal scenes actual events from the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides," Randich says. "Interlaced with these are imagined scenes, sometimes politically provocative scenes, in which the reluctance of the West to get involved is addressed."

Randich adds, "One can't play the play without absorbing the historical background of three separate genocides-the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia."

Filloux's body of plays might suggest that she views such horrors objectively for the purpose of her writing, but that isn't the case. The strength of her work comes from the depth of her connection to those who suffer from these crimes. "I'll never get over the series of events that occurred with Rwanda," she says. "It was such a travesty on the part of the United Nations and its member states. In a hundred days, 800,000 people were hacked to death."

She finds great significance in juxtaposing the Rwandan massacres with Lemkin's quest to establish genocide as an international crime, which the United Nations did in 1949. As she notes, "The U.S. ratified Lemkin's treaty in 1988, and Rwanda occurred in 1994."

Still, Filloux understands audiences' reluctance to see plays that explore such topics as mass killings. "I think that people feel guilty," she says, "and they're not always able to enter those kinds of stories very easily." But in the case of Lemkin's House, she believes New York theatergoers are in for a different experience.

"What's interesting about Lemkin's House is that it's going to be, on some level, a comedy. There are a lot of ways of dealing with the subject matter," she says. "The comedy comes from the sort of absurd quality that occurs when we try so hard to do something against all odds. Those odds are human."

The 78th Street Theater Lab's production follows the play's world premiere in Sarajevo and a reading at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. "It's amazing because it was a reading, but I have to say it was one of the high points in my theater experience," Filloux says. "At that reading was the biographer that knows more about Lemkin than anyone. He was very supportive, and I was honored to meet him."

She finds the play's international production history most appropriate. "Lemkin believed in a world. The play is about forgiveness."

Filloux seems happy with her place in the world. Working in both Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway settings, she has found the perfect vehicle to pilot her course from country to country. As Randich says, "Catherine is a tremendously ambitious writer, which is both the joy and the challenge of the work."

But even stronger than Filloux's passions about injustice and atrocities is her devotion to her chosen art form, which she hopes will carry her through many more uncharted regions of the human experience.

"The love affair I've had with theater is really something that I feel is strong after 20 years," she says. Yet she also notes with some concern that "it's so sad on some level that the theater is challenged and fragile right now."

The future of theater, Filloux believes, can be found in the noncommercial scene. She has worked as a playwriting professor at Bennington College in Vermont, the New York University Dramatic Writing Program, and Ohio State University, where she seeks out fledgling writers who share her passion for exploring Lemkin's "world."

"I'm so attracted to young playwrights who make that commitment," she says. "To me that's exciting."

Lemkin's House, directed by Jean Randich, is playing at the 78th Street Theater Lab through Feb. 26. Performances are Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.smarttix.com.

Proof Positive

When David Auburn's Proof first premiered in 2000, it took the theater world by storm. Quickly transferring to Broadway from the Manhattan Theater Club, it garnered five Tony Awards, including Best Play, and won the Pulitzer for drama. Auburn's compelling work about trust, sacrifice, and the wonder and madness of mathematics captured the popular imagination and critical attention. It was an intensely captivating play that deserved all of its accolades. Ground Up Productions is now reviving Proof at the Manhattan Theater Source. Its production, which is much more modest in scale than the original, further proves that this play has all the makings of a modern classic. Its early success cannot be attributed to the size of the house (Manhattan Theater Source has a few hundred fewer seats than the Walter Kerr Theater) or whether household names are in the show (the Broadway production starred Mary-Louise Parker; this production stars four relative unknowns). Proof works first and foremost because of Auburn's brilliant writing. Still as engaging as ever, the play, directed by Adam Gerdts in this revival, does not disappoint.

The story begins when Robert (Stuart Marshall), an acclaimed mathematician, startles his mathematician daughter, Catherine (Kate Middleton), who is asleep on the porch in the middle of the night. He wakes her so they can celebrate her 25th birthday with a bottle of cheap champagne. But when his former student Hal (Guy Olivieri) appears, Robert vanishes.

Actually, it is the night before Robert's funeral, and Catherine has only dreamed that she saw her father. She wakes from her slumber when Hal emerges from the attic after poring over notebooks filled with Robert's nonsensical writings scrawled during his years of mental breakdown. The young mathematician is determined to find any shred of brilliance left among these scribblings.

Eventually, Catherine does show him a work of unquestionable genius, but its authorship is called into question by Hal and her sister, Claire (Amy Heidt), who is in town for the funeral and to convince Catherine to live with her in New York. Claire, a mildly successful, even-keeled urbanite, thinks her sister inherited both her father's intelligence and his susceptibility to insanity. With no concrete proof as to whose work it actually is, Hal, a man of science, is forced to realize the unpredictability of true brilliance.

Catherine sacrificed college to care for her ailing father, and Middleton's performance captures the social awkwardness and gruffness that comes with such isolation. But Middleton fails to display the quality of madness that Auburn equates with genius—an insanity, it's implied, that Catherine may also succumb to, like her father. Rather, Middleton is depressed, mopey, and withdrawn. It makes her all the more human, but forces one to wonder whether someone without a hint of madness could in fact be truly brilliant. Middleton's performance begs the question without convincingly answering it.

Olivieri, Marshall, and Heidt are all strong in their supporting roles. Olivieri's Hal is passionate—about math and Catherine—but he is ultimately limited by his work and mediocre career. Even in his distrust of Catherine, he is kind and motivated by his feelings for her, yet he remains aloof, as one would imagine someone obsessed with numbers would be.

Marshall embodies Robert's manic brilliance, which is illustrated in Catherine's flashbacks when he switches from lovable and caring to frenzied and possessed. Heidt's stability and assuredness as Claire balances out Middleton's Catherine. Claire has spent years working endlessly to pay the bills for her father and sister once her father could no longer work. She is smart and successful, but in a bland way when compared with her sister and father, Still, Heidt conveys this without giving a one-note performance.

The production is guided by Gerdt's deft directing, which keeps the pace from flagging. Travis R. McHale's lighting design helps maintain a sense of timing and rhythm, as all the action takes place on a quaint and intimate back porch at varying points over a long weekend.

Overall, Ground Up's Proof shows what makes this play a classic in the first place: it is intense, intelligent, and thoughtful. If you've seen it before, it deserves a second viewing. If you haven't, definitely go to the Manhattan Theater Source for this worthwhile production.

Paranoid-in-Chief

Presidential pomp and circumstance has always been a surreal spectacle. How bizarre was it when "Dubya" searched under his Oval Office desk looking for lost weapons of mass destruction in a self-satirizing skit for a press gala? Of course, the Clinton years provided their fair share of sideshows in the Oval Office, too. Our current political climate contains enough levels of dramatic irony to plunge even the most casual political observer into the spinning vortex of partisan rancor and the warped rhetoric of media manipulation. Who needs theatrical send-ups of political life when our real-life political theater sends itself up?

In the Brick Theater's revival of Richard Foreman's 1988 play, Symphony of Rats, directed by Ian W. Hill, the president gets sucked down the rabbit—or, in this case, rat—hole of paranoid schizophrenia. The media have swarmed around the president's sex life like a pack of frenzied rodents scavenging in a back alley for a piece of garbage to gnaw on. The president cracks up. He imagines he's communicating with voices from outer space. As his delusions of grandeur grow, he believes he's been beamed to another planet where angels, aliens, dancing rats, and comic-book monsters run amok. Each delusional episode blurs together into a jumbled pastiche of sci-fi freaks and screwball comedy that portrays the president's increasingly manic imagination.

Alyssa Simon, playing the First Lady with the "reptilian smile," however, deserves special mention among a crowded supporting cast for the subtlety with which she makes a "straight" character appear more strange and sinister than the fantasy creatures that too often appeared like benign waxwork figures around her.

Many of the vignettes are visually arresting. The president—played by a hyperactive and often cross-eyed Hill—hears voices that tell him he's "lost his swing." As golf balls pop out from between his beret-wearing mistress's wide-open legs, he crushes them underfoot as if they were eggs. In another vignette, he watches in terror as his symbolic mistress, the Statute of Liberty, gets spread on the dinner table and raped.

The most powerful man in the world suddenly has his mojo go awry and his god-like abilities desert him. A paraplegic asks to be miraculously healed, only to rise up and turn into a towering demon with claw-like arms.

The president gets replaced by a cardboard cutout with a happy-face balloon for its head. He whisks scissors from his pocket and becomes a barber as the inner self seeks vengeance on the outer "suit." The suspense created by simply flashing a sharp object in the same visual space as a balloon is palpable.

Like a bad acid trip, events accelerate as they become more detached from reality. A character spoofing a film noir detective comes to investigate the president, the president boogies at a disco crowded with mindless ingénues, and he plays a life-size game of whack-a-mole.

Eventually, though, the incoherence and over-stimulation of these lavish spectacles get somewhat tiresome. Endless sight gags can hold our attention only so long, and one gets the sense that each outlandish scenario, funky costume, or entrancing prop exists merely to one-up the zaniness of the last. The production shares the aesthetic of the music video, the metaphysic of the short attention span, and the psychology of media saturation. Its first principle is "I think, therefore I—oh, heck, what's on the next channel?" Any sense of narrative or momentum liquefies into a sensual kaleidoscope of ever-changing sexual cartoons.

Because the president in this production is portrayed generically, any satire in the original production has been blunted, with no attempt to update the jokes to fit our current commander in chief. The play, therefore, is not so much about politics as it is about the thin line between sanity and schizophrenia.

In fact, the production embodies many of the dramaturgical ideals of that true paranoid schizophrenic, Antonin Artaud. At one point, an exasperated president, slouching behind his desk far upstage, asks the audience if anyone wants a glass of water, then realizes he can't give somebody one because he's supposedly on TV and not in a theater. Conversely, a few minutes later the president strides right up to the audience during an intense monologue where some of Hill's sweat dripped onto my notepad. Like Artaud's proposed "theater of cruelty," we experience an orchestration of pure theatricality that unfetters itself from narrative conventions and textual supremacy in favor of a savage attack upon our senses.

My own tastes, however, incline toward spectacles where the visual slapstick and visceral stunts hang on—or at least by—a thread of narrative. Films such as Fight Club and Schizopolis, for example, do a better job at conveying the schizophrenic nature of reality because they are able to represent the funhouse of a character's mental life without the story itself getting lost in it.

Solo Turns

Four Women masquerades as a play. Playwright Cheever Tyler has assembled four unrelated monologues and ineffectually linked them together under the broad themes of love, loss, and destiny. But the monologues' only true connection is that they are told from the perspective of women. Under Christopher Carter Sanderson's pedestrian direction, the monologues meander and grow tiresome, failing to reach a point and often getting lost within Tyler's unpolished writing. The evening begins with "Dixie Glitter," a convoluted, mildly amusing piece about an uneducated trailer-trash yokel (a favorite type of woman in Tyler's monologues) who finds herself playing host to the spirit of Carry Nation.

Who? Exactly. Carry Nation was a quasi-famous prohibitionist during the early part of the 20th century. Her claim to fame was that she would take a hatchet and smash bars to pieces. The monologue spends a lot of time explaining this, as do the program notes. One day Dixie, a would-be psychic, has Nation's spirit passed on to her by another crazy local. The trouble is that Dixie is a good-time girl who loves her drinking as much as she loves her men.

Suffice it to say, she and Carry are quite the odd couple, and hilarity ensues…or is meant to ensue. Robin Benson throws herself into the role but can't overcome the flawed writing and lame jokes. After almost half an hour, even she appears to want the piece to end.

In the second monologue, "Albany Drive Thru Pawn Shop," a Southern belle named Celeste finds herself trapped in the past with her fragile sanity teetering on the brink. She is unable to recover from a soured love affair, and her problems are further compounded by the hardships of the Depression, which force her to sell off her family's beloved belongings to make ends meet. The monologue seemingly takes place over decades, but the time line is annoyingly unclear, and the resolution is a train wreck of psychobabble. As Celeste, Ninon Rogers is all demure Southern accent and genteel affectations, but little else.

The most troubling piece of the evening is "Inventory," featuring Charlotte, a physics professor struggling with the deaths of her husband and son. The monologue is an unfocused debate on the roles of science and religion, as Charlotte tries to reconcile her profession with her faith. Speaking to an unseen therapist, she calmly rails at the gods for taking her family while calling upon her scientific background to provide answers. Debbie Stanislaus does very little with the piece, aimlessly circling the stage and occasionally raising her voice beyond a calm whisper to show anger or confusion.

The show concludes with "Trip to New Jersey," an unfunny and borderline racist monologue about another trailer-trash heroine, Trumpet Vine, on the verge of marrying a much older Middle-Eastern man. Trumpet waxes philosophical about love and, more important, money as she explains why she is marrying her rich sugar daddy. Seduced by jewelry and his endless wealth, Trumpet decides life in a burka can't be all that bad.

Playwright Tyler makes sweeping generalizations about the Middle East, conceiving Trumpet's beau as a stereotypical "evil doer" complete with henchmen, oil fields, and a harem of beauties waiting at his beck and call. Kelly Tuohy revels in Trumpet's trashiness, almost making the audience forget how thin her monologue is. Ultimately, though, Tuohy succumbs to bug eyes and "golly gee whiz" deliveries.

Sanderson provides little direction for his actresses, most of whom wander helplessly about the stage wearing out the same 5-by-5 patch of space. Although hindered by Tyler's amateurish writing, the director fails to provide a beginning, middle, and end for each monologue, leaving his actresses stranded and stuck.

Four Women suffers from many problems, but its biggest obstacle is the script itself. Stale situations, underdeveloped characters, and empty dialogue prove too difficult to overcome and too uninteresting to care about.

Then and Now

Norman & Beatrice: A Marriage in Two Acts makes an extraordinary demand on its two actors: they play an elderly man with dementia and his loving wife in 2001 and return after the intermission to play the same characters as newlyweds in 1947. Directed by David Travis, this traditional new play by Barbara Hammond, featuring veteran actors Graeme Malcolm and Jane Nichols, soars in the first act but stumbles badly when it leaps back in time in Act II. The opening act captures the texture and rhythm of lived experience shaped into a satisfying dramatic arc. According to the program notes, Hammond wrote it after a visit to her parents' home in the months before her father died. Set in the kitchen of the couple's modest, small-town Wisconsin home (the splendid set design is by Luke Hegel-Cantarella), the 40-minute act is a closely observed, poignant rendition of the havoc that Alzheimer's disease inflicts on the victim's sense of self and history, and the vigilance and patience required of the caregiver.

Norman, the former mayor of his small town, inhabits a confused, anxious mental state in which fantasy and reality blur, the familiar often turns strange and disconcerting, and the past devours the present. Malcolm astutely conveys Norman's fractured reality while never losing touch with the old man's humanity. Beatrice, meanwhile, spryly maintains the thread of a "normal" conversation, patiently filling in the pieces of himself that Norman has forgotten. Nichols's matter-of-fact Beatrice takes her new circumstances in stride without self-pity.

The scene is not maudlin or depressing. The enduring bond between Norman and Beatrice leavens the sadness of this final chapter. "We should get married," remarks Norman at one point. "We are married," Beatrice reminds him. "We are?” replies Norman. "Holy Toledo! I'm a lucky guy."

This first act stood alone as a one-act play for five years, until, Hammond says in the program notes, she was inspired to write a prelude after she unearthed a short film of her parents' wedding. Set in the same kitchen, stripped of the accretions of a half-century of living, this second act finds Beatrice pregnant with her first child and Norman setting out on his political career.

The second act, a pale derivative of the first, has the feel of a writing exercise. In it, Hammond shoehorns in one snippet of dialogue after another that we heard previously in the first act, but the echoes rarely achieve resonance. Instead, we discover that the non sequiturs that Norman utters in the throes of dementia are the remnants of surprisingly banal conversation.

Perhaps trying not to present too idyllic a view of the young couple, Hammond veers too far in the opposite direction. The misunderstandings and personality differences that come to light make it hard to believe that this man and woman got married in the first place, let alone stayed together for more than 50 years. It doesn't help matters that Malcolm and Nichols are mature actors. Nichols has the toughest time. In a drama that strives for realism, it seems unfair to ask an actress probably closing in on age 60 to play a 21-year-old woman.

Ultimately, it's a shame that the intricate story of a marriage that we glimpse in the first act must remain buried there.

Hard Times

The American Clock, Arthur Miller's paean to those who lived through the Great Depression, is an ambitious but ultimately flawed portrait of Americans' plight during the turbulent early 1930's. Although the Brooklyn-based Sackett Group, in only its third production, tries to weave together the play's multiple strands, we get mostly shreds of stories that too easily unravel, and the overall effect leaves the audience chilled. Most of the play, an early Miller work, concerns the Baums, a Jewish family living well in Manhattan during the 1920's. But when the stock market crashes in 1929, Moe Baum (Steven W. Bergquist), the father, loses his finance job, and the family begins its long spiral into poverty. Bergquist is appropriately understated as the proud patriarch, genuinely concerned for his family but unable to accept his reversal of fortune.

The Baums are forced to move back to a dilapidated section of Brooklyn, their former home. A whole generation, it is noted, returns to live with its parents—now Bubbys and meshuggah grandfathers—only to be ensnarled in petty domestic disputes while facing dwindling prospects.

Rose Baum (Susan Faye Groberg), Moe's troubled wife, notes with chagrin that sometimes you can go a whole year in Brooklyn and "never go back to Manhattan." Groberg, with humility and sincerity, brings to the production a personal touch that is sorely missed in the other performances, where many of the actors seem to be simply going through the motions.

A large portion of the narrative focuses on Lee (David B. Sochet), Moe and Rose's young son, whose coming-of-age story takes him through the years from Manhattan to Brooklyn and Alabama. Sochet has the difficult task of playing Lee at 13, 15, 18, and into his early 20's. Though his portrayal of Lee's earlier years is a bit too naïve and earnest, he comes into the part more when he's older and working as a journalist.

Strangely, The American Clock presents, along with the Baums' story, short narratives concerning a Midwestern farmer who loses his property and travels east; a loosely aligned group of newly unemployed financial kingpins; an African-American hobo who travels the country in search of work, singing all the way; and a wealthy, socialist CEO who realizes the error of his ways. There's also a dance competition that seems to have no real connection with the other scenes.

All of this is narrated, stiffly, by a clever financier who realizes, before the crash, that he needs to withdraw all his money from banks and instead buy gold—or, at the very least, carry thousands of dollars around in his shoes.

The play's multiple plot lines leave too little room for the development of the individual characters. As a result, there is little crucial empathy created for the characters and their stories. Ultimately, the only characters the audience cares about are the Baums, whose story is more nuanced.

The Sackett Group's choice of The American Clock was an audacious but dangerous decision, and unfortunately the company has fallen victim to many of the risks inherent in mounting the work. Aside from being too overarching and in need of drastic cutting, the play is not particularly well suited to Off-Off-Broadway. With its large cast of more than 30 characters, musical numbers, and major changes of setting, it would be much more effective as a well-funded Broadway or Off-Broadway production. On the Brooklyn Music School Playhouse's vacuous proscenium stage, with a stark, black backdrop and spartan set, the characters seen dancing and singing onstage appear small and distant.

The director, Robert J. Weinstein, makes the interesting choice of having all the actors, when they are not playing in scenes, seated onstage and watching from the sides, as in Our Town. This somewhat compensates for the massive, empty space that so wants to be filled.

The American Clock is a relatively unknown Miller work that is seldom chosen for production, and the Sackett Group's daring venture reveals some of the reasons why. With a more appropriate lineup for the rest of the season, brighter things should be expected from this new company in the future.

Running Amok

Babies With Rabies has an awesome title. It rhymes, for starters, and it has a delicious, campy, trashy-movie feel to it. Just hearing the title makes you think, "Oh, man! Babies with rabies! Running amok! So totally cool!"

But there are almost no babies with rabies in this production. Instead, there is an extraordinarily convoluted story about a play within a play (within the play), and a lot of shouting. As best as I can figure out, after a detailed examination of my notes and some informal diagramming, the plot of Babies With Rabies is this:

A writer (Erwin Falcon), a producer (Rob Moretti), and a group of actors are working on a play about the residents of an insane asylum who are putting on a play as part of their therapy. Some of the resident crazies plan to use this play to distract the guards and doctors so they can take over the asylum and allow their madness to achieve its fullest flowering. However, some of the residents are against this.

The play the inmates are putting on (the third-level play) is about a kingdom afflicted by a mysterious plague that attacks children and turns them, according to the script, into "crazed homicidal zombies" prone to "fits of cunning and terror." (Here, at last, are the babies with rabies.)

As written out, this story line would seem to promise, like the play's title, all sorts of wacky high jinks and high-camp melodrama. But the script, written by Jonathan Calindas (co-artistic director of Cuchipinoy Productions, which produced the show), begins in the middle of the action, with proclamations that the audience is about to see "a play that will blow your mind," a play that will "question what is real and what is pretend." And while it may be that my mind was blown, I found the show utterly baffling.

For starters, a number of the actors/patients are identified, at different times, by a) their actor names, b) their character's asylum ID number, and c) the names of the characters they are playing within the play. One of the characters (played by Dennis Lemoine) plays identical twins with reversed numbers (45 and 54) and rhyming names (Larry and Gary). Another (Andrew Rothkin) suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning that he is constantly switching personas, from an unctuous giggler to a lisping Satan to Sigmund Freud.

With everyone in the cast playing so many roles, keeping track of who's who—and whether they are being "themselves" or performing in one of the other plays—is no easy task. Also, to underline the fact that these are bad actors portraying crazy people who are themselves bad actors, all of the lines are given a full-camp, full-volume treatment, punctuated with much dramatic gesturing.

Keeping track of what's going on is exhausting amid all the deafening talk. By the second act, when your ears have adjusted and the structures of the many plays within the plays start to become apparent, it's too late to become engaged. There are a few funny lines that send up absurd, pulp-movie conventions and Off-Off-Broadway. (Kelly Rauch, who portrays Tina, an actress inexplicably in possession of an Equity card, shouts, "I know this is Off-Off-Broadway and you're doing the best you can, and you don't have any money, but I'm not used to working under these conditions!") But these lines get buried in the wall of sound.

Babies With Rabies seems to have had ambitious goals. But with the weight of its plot machinations and the heavy-handedness of its subject matter, it never takes off. And there wasn't even a baby with rabies in sight. Now that's disappointing.

Going Somewhere

"Apathy, baby!" proclaims Fabian, one of 10 New Yorkers portrayed in the Narcissists's production of C. Commute. "Frozen apathy." At once aware of the pitfalls of his generation's malaise and eager to "gloss it" into artwork that can get him the big break he believes is "just around the corner," this twenty-something captures the paradoxical sentiments of his peers. The 10 urbanites in this new play by Alexander Renison Holt are at once apathetic and hopeful, jaded yet still idealistic, setting the tone for a generation just as Fabian believes his art will. Theatergoers in their 20's and early 30's will no doubt recognize themselves in these characters, identify with their struggles, and laugh in the process.

The play is structured as a series of 10 monologues, the first of which is presented as a voice-over. Besides sharing the city and the zeitgeist, the nine characters who appear onstage also share the same subway car, suggested in Brett Dicus's elegantly minimalist set design by two benches and poles set on a diagonal upstage. The car functions as a holding pen as the actors take turns presenting their monologues downstage.

Director Ryan Colwell deftly choreographs their entries, subway-riding time, and exits to resemble the randomness of being in a true public space, ensuring that what could have been merely a convenient theatrical device actually contributes to the play's urban ennui. The audience sees the characters literally "in the same boat" (or subway car), but remaining in isolation from one another, which is expertly conveyed by the actors' body language and introverted stage business.

Colwell also performs, his delivery highlighting Holt's rhythmic wordplay. He creates a sense of frenetic boredom in the voice-over monologue of Damon, an office worker who time-kills his workdays Web surfing. Dalane Mason is convincingly erratic and creepy as Haberdasher, a nattily dressed pickpocket who spews advice and prophecy, invades commuters' personal space, and causes all to avert their eyes to avoid conversation. Matthew Simon is deliciously jaded as Christopher, an actor and gigolo who just wants his own show on HBO. It is to Simon's credit that Christopher's declaration—"We all sell ourselves for something"—seems organic rather than pedantic.

Jessica Jolly is feisty and fun as Jennifer, a woman written to be somewhat past her prime, though the actress herself is not. Bemoaning the recent trend in straight men becoming effeminate, the character is lively and timely, though she does veer toward the stereotypical as she ponders her physical appearance and the options of breast enhancement and blond hair dye. Holt creates a more multidimensional character in Jude, a gay man pondering the step of leaving the comfort of his neighborhood to move in with his partner. In David Michael Holmes's performance, Jude's ambivalence is heartbreakingly palpable, even as the audience laughs with recognition at his deadpan musing ("Of course, I know he wants me, but how do I know I'm done with all the others?").

Chugging Colt 45 in his cut-off jeans, black T, and red bandana, Fabian surprises with his shrewd theories about the commercialization of art. Patrick Craft conveys the character's no-nonsense attitude and astuteness with equal conviction. Holt indulges in the bittersweet with Greta, a young woman awash in the "unspoken misery that is bliss." Becky Lake easily captures Greta's fragility and resignation, though she occasionally allows the rhythms of the playwright's words to direct her performance rather than wielding them as gracefully as she handles the piece's emotional content.

Salvatore, written as the melodramatic one of the lot, is "a show man, a vampire." Brad Danler's performance vacillates between understated and emphatic, though it's unclear whether this is the result of directorial choice. A more consistently seething delivery would have been more meaningful. Danler, with his hypnotic voice and lithe build, could surely have handled the demands of depicting someone so darkly fascinating, and the realism would have been heightened, not hampered—there are very calculating people who think of themselves in such dramatic terms and comport themselves accordingly.

Tom Picasso portrays Edward, a man financially supported by his wife and suffering feelings of emasculation, with touching vulnerability, while Janine Barris is idealism incarnate as a transplanted farm girl, Donna.

The urban motif is notably enhanced by the sound design of Daemon Hatfield, who has turned the recognizable sounds and rhythms of the subway into eerily evocative electronica that accompanies the intercalary scenes. Kate Haugan's urban-savvy costume design subtly underscores each monologist's persona.

In C. Commute, the Narcissists have delivered on their mission statement to provide "theater as a form of therapy," reflecting the struggles, vices, and vulnerabilities of a generation. The audience will delight in what they see onstage, but will they like what they see in the mirror? Whatever the answer, C. Commute makes for entertaining and thought-provoking theater.

Dirty Work

Sleeping Booty. Throbin Wood. Snow White and the Seven Sailors. These were the characters and stories that captivated 11-year-old Andrew Goffman, and, as you may suspect, this was not the stuff of innocent fairy tales—instead, Snow White and her Seven Sailors were engaged in full-blown, hard-core pornography. In his one-man show, The Accidental Pervert, Goffman blends standup comedy with drama to tell his personal story of coming to terms with an (accidental) addiction to pornography. Although he successfully displays his extensive knowledge of the genre while managing to land a number of well-timed jokes, the show fails to deliver on its promise and potential. Instead of delving more deeply into more substantive questions about his addiction and its consequences, Goffman contentedly skims over the surface, reducing the show to a rather sophomoric exercise in easy jokes and bathroom humor.

"None of us start out to be a pervert," Goffman asserts. "It's life that does it to you." Life, in this case, turns out to be dirty videos and a VCR. When his father moves out, Goffman's idyllic family life is shattered. Longing to feel close to his father, he scours his closet, discovering a hidden cardboard box filled with porn. The videos become addiction and escape for Goffman, warping his mind and skewing his expectations of what both women and sex should be.

That pornography has the power to manipulate one's thoughts is hardly new information, and Goffman's retelling of his sexual awakening as influenced by pornography lacks shock value. Instead, his stories are often conventional, predictable, and tiresome. Yes, his mother forbade him to masturbate ("Don't touch yourself down there or your hand will stick to it"). Yes, he played doctor with a young female friend so they could see each other naked. Yes, his first real sexual encounter (at 15) was a disappointment. We've heard these stories before, and we'll hear them again.

Unfortunately, the fresh and potentially enlightening story Goffman could tell is left largely unexamined. When he meets his future wife, Maria, he tells us, he changes from a womanizing, self-destructive cad into a straight-laced, responsible man. And when they have a daughter, Goffman throws away his porn collection for good. Regrettably, he does little to explore exactly why and how these transformations take place. He does tell us that he suddenly realizes the women in the porn videos could be his wife or daughter, but it seems unbelievable that the revelation could be so instantaneous and complete. And why, for example, didn't he have this revelation when he fell in love with his wife (a "good girl," as he describes her)?

While Goffman hits the mark on a few of the more humorous aspects of adolescence and childbearing (his take on conceiving a child is particularly witty), director Charles Messina would do well to excise or shorten many of the silly, protracted porn fantasies and dance sequences in favor of a more detailed exploration of Goffman's choices and character. Surrounded by an old recliner, a large TV screen, and a hefty jar of Vaseline, Goffman makes an amiable confidant. His self-portrayal, however, most often feels paper-thin. Adding dimension and depth to his characterization would make us sympathize with him more (as well as explain why his wife—presumably so intelligent and accomplished—would fall in love with him).

The Accidental Pervert is, as intended, a story about pornography and the dangers of projecting fantasy onto reality. Its noticeable gaps, however, are the most intriguing parts of Goffman's story, and many powerful questions go unanswered. How did his wife react to his obsession with porn? How did his "kinda-sorta" twisted view of women begin to change? How did pornography influence his ideas about manhood and masculinity? And if pornography was a "legacy" or "rite of manhood" unwittingly passed down from his father, what does this say about societal expectations for men?

Raised on Woodcock Lane in Blue Ball, Pa., near the town of Intercourse, Goffman seems almost absurdly well suited to telling a story of unintentional perversion. While at times endearing, The Accidental Pervert is too often cutesy and contrived, and the image Goffman projects is less of a grown man who has dealt with an addiction and more of a mischievous boy who still revels in discussing its depravity. Although he claims to have thrown out the porn for good, you get the feeling he might still have one copy of Sleeping Booty stashed away somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. Accidentally, of course.