Stormy Weather

With the recent popularity of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, grisly theater has suddenly become very hip. The Pillowman made a smoldering impression on Broadway last year, while McDonagh's newest New York production, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which leaves the stage bathed in blood, sold out its Off-Broadway run and will soon begin previews uptown. Audiences, it would seem, are eager to be tormented, even if it is vicariously from the comfort of their own seats. Now the Aussies have answered with their own psychological thriller, and although it lacks the pervasive social agenda that underpins much of McDonagh's work (not to mention the copious amounts of violence and blood), Freak Winds is a deliciously disturbing—and often helplessly humorous—addition to the canon of harrowing theatrical fare.

At the helm is Marshall Napier, who has managed to pull off a daunting triple feat. Not only does he write, direct, and star in the same play, but he manages to do each thing exceptionally well. Of course, experience is on his side—Freak Winds, which is his first full-length play, was already successfully produced in both Australia and New Zealand. And thanks to Hair of the Dog Productions, the play has found a new home tucked into the cozy Arclight Theater on the Upper West Side. Deftly acted and meticulously directed, Freak Winds draws us into a stormy night of ominous, mysteriously powerful forces.

Following up on a call, young insurance salesman Henry Crumb (Damian de Montemas) finds himself at the home of Ernest (Napier). Henry barely steps through the door when a tree falls and crushes his new Mercedes. Resigned to waiting out the storm in Ernest's comfortable living room, Henry begins his sales pitch. "What insurance buys you is peace of mind," he insists, but then, dodging his host's smart criticism, he concedes, "It can't protect you against being human."

Indeed, Henry's peace of mind soon dissipates as he is confronted with eerie and foreboding circumstances, ranging from the mildly curious—Ernest's sudden spells of nausea—to the unquestionably alarming—Henry's discovery of scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of horrendous murders. Napier's use of conventional horror devices brings welcome levity to the suspense, and the audience can't help but chuckle at the sound of a knife being sharpened when Ernest periodically leaves the room. It's testament to his finely honed script that Napier shrewdly disarms his audiences with obvious tricks, only to shock them with abrupt twists and turns (not to be revealed here).

As the presumably innocent salesman, de Montemas becomes convincingly disheveled, frustrated, and irate as he leads us on his quest to sift through multiple red herrings, uncover the truth, and escape. Napier's script is very wordy, and much of the humor depends on the actors' timing as they toss off bits of witty repartee. Thankfully, Napier and de Montemas deliver the zippy banter with expert elocution, and they are matched by Tamara Lovatt-Smith, who gives a terrific performance as Myra, Ernest's wheelchair-bound companion.

Although Napier's characters sometimes talk in circles, this only increases Henry's (and our) need to sort things out and understand what is really happening. Is Ernest a psychopath who is planning to kill Henry? And is Myra his roommate, daughter, lover, or worse?

Jeremy Chernick has devised a warm, inviting set that successfully belies the peculiarity of its inhabitants, while Andrew Ivanov has created an impressive array of creepy sounds.

Without taking itself too seriously, Freak Winds delves into a surreal world of madness and psychosexuality, and Napier's script lightly touches on Ernest's need to better understand humanity. He's interested in how and why we suffer, as well as how we can all (murderers included) share the common state of being human. But within the confines of this stormy evening, it's not certain what—if anything—we can believe, and Freak Winds quite winningly becomes little more than an enormously enjoyable thriller.

Blind Love

Myths disseminate from culture to culture like phrases relayed in a game of telephone: the Greeks borrowed from African and Egyptian myths, Romans borrowed from Greek sources, and the Renaissance, in turn, embroidered upon Roman tales. With each retelling, a subtle change of emphasis, a detail added or evaded, could alter the myth's meaning entirely. Yet some universal essence of these myths survives, helping form, as well as adapting to, each culture's values. The earliest recorded version of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is by the Latin prose writer Apuleius in his book The Golden Ass. It is the template for modern fairy tales, at least the happy kind with a Prince Charming and wicked stepsisters. Joseph Fisher's new work, Cupid & Psyche, plays jazz-like improvisations upon this standard story, enriching it while elucidating its relevance to us today.

Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and desire, has developed a few unseemly wrinkles lately. Her acolytes have abandoned her in favor of Psyche, a mortal princess of astonishing purity. Jealous, she hatches a plot to get Cupid, her son, to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly monster. But when Cupid sees her, it's love at first sight.

The problem is, Cupid doesn't want Psyche to see him because his own supernatural beauty makes any mortal who sees him fall instantly in love. He wants Psyche to love him for himself and not his looks. He whisks her away to a labyrinthine cloud castle, where he talks to her every night in the dark. Lonely, though beginning to love him, she asks for her sniveling sisters to visit her. They convince her that her husband must be a hideous demon and that she should spy on him while he's asleep, despite his grave warnings to the contrary.

In the instant she beholds his beauty, she is banished from it. Aphrodite's wrath is still unquenched, however, and she reluctantly enlists the help of her hated rival, Apollo, to get rid of Psyche for good. To win back Cupid's love, Psyche must travel to Hades and risk eternal sleep. Suffice it to say, a kiss from the charming Cupid can awaken this sleeping Cinderella so that the tale concludes happily ever after.

Revealingly, the star of the story in this production is Fisher's original character Runt, a mortal servant to Aphrodite and Cupid. Runt, played with bravado by Nick Cearley, possesses an endearing frailty as the "wise fool" that makes him a more empathetic character than the all-too-human gods. His puckish insinuations steal the show wonderfully from the allegorized "beautiful people" of the gods.

The gods have spunk of their own, though, as most evident in Johnny Sparks's portrayal of Apollo. He convincingly demonstrates a wide emotional range, from haughty intellectual snob to heartbroken unrequited lover.

Director Alex Lippard has done an admirable job blocking the play, aided by Lucas Benjaminh Krech's imaginative lighting design and Michael Moore's set. Scenes on Earth take place at the back of the stage within a gigantic gilt frame surrounded by sheer white veils. Other scenes occur on the stage proper, where large, tear-shaped lightbulbs drip down like icicles and two smaller gold frames on both sides of the stage contain sources of misty, aqua-green illumination.

Costume designer Erin Elizabeth Murphy adds an allegorical dimension by giving the mortals' outfits cool turquoise accents while adorning the gods in shades of hot pink. Thus, it's perhaps telling that Runt, unlike the other mortals, wears a sleeveless pastel-pink sweater, while Apollo, unlike the other gods, has faint blue accents in his golden tie.

While Fisher's script has many funny and profound lines, the writing style seems too prosaic at times. The overweening passions of the gods, one feels, should be allowed to burst forth in poetry and song—or, at least, pop lyrics. Dare I suggest this fairy tale would work better as a musical?

Also, the end of the first act, in which Cupid finally kisses Psyche, made me wonder if the play had ended: there was no cliffhanger to entice the audience to come back after intermission.

On the other hand, the play's real ending seemed slightly rushed, with too many unexplained events—why, for example, can Cupid's kiss awake Psyche from death, and wouldn't Aphrodite know this as Cupid's mother? Moreover, not enough plot strings (or heartstrings) are tied up: we never quite learn, for example, what becomes of Aphrodite and Apollo.

Nonetheless, Cupid and Psyche presents a creative and entertaining new interpretation of a myth that has previously captivated such artists as Antonio Canova, Agnolo Bronzino, and Walter Pater. The production conveys the tension between the physical gaze of mortal love and the inner eye's gaze on the immortal soul, in a parable that is at once timely and timeless.

Forgotten Ibsen

Victorian melodrama—can any two words make a production sound more moribund? Yet Ibsen is the master of Victorian melodrama—or "domestic tragedy," as he preferred to call it—and he is the most produced playwright in the world besides Shakespeare. Like Shakespeare, most contemporary productions of Ibsen's masterpieces require a unique directorial concept to reinvigorate them for today's audience, or they act as a star vehicle for a Hollywood glamour-puss. For every Hamlet staged underwater or Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar, we have The Dollhouse staged as grand opera with bunraku puppets and little people (as directed by Lee Breuer) or Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler (as recently seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music).

Likewise, the best way to generate interest in an Ibsen or Shakespeare production that has been directed "straight" with little-known actors is to revive one of their more obscure plays. For Ibsen buffs, the Fresh Look Theater Company is offering a rare chance to see Little Eyolf, his nearly forgotten late work of 1894.

The problem with this production, however, is that the director, David Greenwood, insists on sentimental naturalism, period costumes, and a literal-minded fidelity to the script—in what, unfortunately, has become the quintessentially stuffy "Ibsen" manner. Unfortunately, this ill suits the play itself. Little Eyolf is a wild amalgam of nearly incommensurable styles. Perhaps more than any other Ibsen work, it manages to couch the banal if bitter domestic squabbles of Ibsen's familiar middle-period dramas in the aura of the mythopoetic motifs of such early triumphs as Peer Gynt and Brand, making something surprisingly new.

Alfred Allmers has recently returned home, where he lives with both his wife and sister, from somber mountain solitudes where he ventured to finish his book on human responsibility. While there, however, he realized his real responsibilities to his 9-year-old son, Eyolf, whom he has previously neglected. Eyolf is a cute, bookish boy who has been crippled by a childhood accident. This domestic scene is broken up by the intrusion of the Rat Wife, a Pied Piper-like creature from Norwegian folklore, who comes knocking on their door.

After the Rat Wife leaves almost as mysteriously as she enters, Alfred is left to explain his new revelation to his wife, Rita, who becomes jealous because he is dividing his attentions between her and Eyolf. We slowly learn the ironic double meaning of her jealousy: "Eyolf" is also the pet name Alfred called his sister, Asta, when they lived together, incestuously, and she dressed up as a boy.

When the real Eyolf drowns in an accident, Alfred and Rita argue bitterly over who is to blame. Rita confesses that she's happy Eyolf died—maybe now Alfred can experience passion for her. Alfred reveals that the only reason he married her was for her looks and money, not for strong feelings of love or lust.

Can one doubt that this is Ibsen's barely coded 19th-century way of telling us that Alfred's a closeted gay man? Yet few commentators or directors--and certainly not this one--have seized upon this as the key to Alfred's character, and perhaps to the tragedy as a whole.

Alfred meets with Asta, who reveals her discovery that they were never brother and sister. She then runs off with a poor match of a suitor to escape Alfred's advances and Rita's imprecations. Alfred and Rita are left alone: Alfred threatens to commit suicide, while Rita threatens to take in the poor village boys who did not rescue Eyolf from drowning. In the end, however, Alfred and Rita agree to raise the village waifs together as an act of great forgiveness.

The ending is problematic and deliberately ambiguous. While Henry James believed it marred the whole play, many interpret it to mean Ibsen had faith in his audience to see through the characters' stated resolves. Their happy compromise is all a sham; the final revelation of unredeemed misery—too horrifyingly tragic to stage?—is left for the audience's imagination. In fact, this is exactly the question the audience members discussed at this performance, even before their faint applause.

While the other actors often appeared as caricatures in a conventional Victorian melodrama, Christopher Michael Todd, playing Alfred, was astounding in the vulgarity of his expression. His eyes would gape and squint, his lips quiver, his brow scrunch at every turn. At the time, I thought his expressions were grossly under-felt and the product of overacting. In retrospect, perhaps such overacting is exactly what the role demands—I only hope it was a deliberate choice, not ironic serendipity, that produced it.

I also hope that some visionary director like Breuer or Robert Wilson, who recently directed Peer Gynt, chooses to stage this play, which, more than any other by the author, exemplifies critic Eric Bentley's shrewd remark that Ibsen's so-called "realistic" tragedy depends on retaining elements of the "trolls and devils of Peer Gynt...[and] of Ibsen's inner consciousness."

President and Assassin

M. Stefan Strozier's The Tragedy of Abraham Lincoln, presented by La Muse Venale Acting Troupe in an intimate studio space at Where Eagles Dare Theater, covers the last year in the life of the titular character. It opens with the president giving the celebrated Gettysburg Address, followed immediately by a scene with actor and soon-to-be assassin John Wilkes Booth performing a monologue from Julius Caesar. Once introduced, this juxtaposition of two views of Lincoln—revered leader versus tyrant—occurs throughout the play. Booth clearly believed that Lincoln was an unrelenting, power-hungry dictator; Lincoln honestly believed he was doing what was best for his nation. By the conclusion of the play, I was not sure which side I was supposed to feel sympathetic toward.

As Booth, Josh Stamell brought complexity to an otherwise vilified character. We see Booth with his mother, his family, and his fiancée. He loves them all but is tortured by indecision of Shakespearean proportions. In fact, his performance was so alive that Booth seemed to be the only character in color; everyone else appeared black and white. Whether intended by the script or not, it was easy to focus more on him than on any other character. Yet he doesn't fully get our sympathy; this Booth's obsession with Lincoln's supposed evils consumes him. But because he is the play's most three-dimensional character, we have little choice but to watch the action from his point of view.

Lincoln, by contrast, was taciturn, stiff, almost waxen. While this may reflect some of his actual personality traits (the real Lincoln could appear serious and reserved, despite his well-known sense of humor), it doesn't necessarily make for the most engaging theater. Occasionally he dropped his grave demeanor and, when in friendly conversation with Frederick Douglass or Ulysses S. Grant, told awkward stories about his youth that left him with an oddly manic glow. Was this hysteria showing the audience the stress that Lincoln was under? Or was it, in keeping with Booth's perspective, another indication that the president was not the stable hero we assume he is? Either interpretation would fit the play's initially introduced theme; instead, the ambiguity was unsettling.

Still, as Lincoln, Justin Ellis held his own against Stamell's Booth and gave a solid performance. His recitation of Lincoln's most famous speech was genuinely motivated. The two actors were an inspired casting choice: along with their ability to pull off two difficult characters, their physical resemblance to these historical figures was remarkable. It also helped that the costumes worn by all of the actors successfully conveyed the Civil War era without getting caught up in being precisely authentic.

Perhaps it was because the two lead actors were stronger performers than their cast mates, or because they were the only characters Strozier spent any time exploring, but the relative equality given to Booth and Lincoln made the play's perspective seem vague. I couldn't tell if Strozier has an opinion on these historical events or if he was just hoping to present the facts in a dramatic light. Unfortunately, without a well-formed point of view—whether in support of Lincoln or not—the play was never as interesting as it could have been. If Strozier does hold an opinion, he was less than successful in expressing it.

The production's real flaw was a lack of historical context for the audience. The show's program did not contain a cast list, and many of the characters portrayed (all, I believe, were actual people) were never explicitly introduced. Strozier clearly did a great deal of research for his script, and his attempt to share some of the more unsavory behaviors required of a nation at war—like the surveillance by Lincoln's secret police and ceasing prisoner exchanges—was intriguing but not well communicated. The play assumes a familiarity with Lincoln's presidency and assassination that goes much deeper than what many people were taught in school. This information is valid and welcome, but the audience needs to have an opportunity to learn it.

The show's program does mention, in a brief statement about Lincoln, that La Muse Venale wants to give "an honest performance and play." I must assume that this means The Tragedy of Abraham Lincoln wants to show a balanced view of history, without being overly glorifying or unfairly revisionist about the Civil War. A bit more communication about the playwright's intentions, whether in the script itself or in some takeaway materials for the audience, would clarify the company's purpose greatly and lead to a more consistent production with a more thoughtfully developed script.

Superhero Send-Up

Technical glitches and lagging scene changes didn't completely stop the cast of Adventures of Caveman Robot from bringing the fun to Brooklyn's Brick Theater. This production—a live-action, video-projection mash-up based on a comic book series created by Jason Robert Bell and Shoshanna Weinberger—is at once an homage to the genre that birthed Superman and the Green Lantern and a send-up of some of its more conspicuous narrative conventions. Oh, and did I mention it's a musical?

A rampant spree of "glorious larceny" has plagued the city of Monumenta (a geographical stepchild of Sin City and Metropolis), and delightfully bonkers villains have made the streets unsafe. The superhero who has managed to keep the evil in check is a lovable "metal Neanderthal" of questionable intelligence called Caveman Robot.

Victims of their own single-minded psychosis and hubris, the villains are often the ones who steal the show. And this one has plenty of gems, including the Colonel, a Nazi commander who bitterly inhabits the body of a penguin (puppetry by Robin Reed); Ape Lincoln (Ian W. Hill), a speechifying transplant from a Planet-of-the-Apes-style alternative universe; his screeching mate and fly girl Monkey Todd Lincoln; and Mr. Tense, a guy wound up so tight that bullets bounce off his body.

Besides the clunking robot, some of the heroes they match up against are the tea-drinking faux-Brit Professor Tuttlewell and his bleeding-heart, genius niece Megan, and the requisite Everyman, Loser Pete, whose maturation from do-nothing to Caveman Robot sidekick loosely frames the oftentimes nonsensical plot.

None of the cast members (most of whom admirably portray several characters) seem to be trained singers, and their off-key renditions of Debby Schwartz and Jeff Lewonczyk's tongue-in-cheek songs are endearing in their earnestness. Hope Cantrelli as Megan Tuttlewell performs a second-act showstopper with her grrrl-power rock ballad "His Robot Queen." And Ian W. Hill manages to rap a simian-themed version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that helps make this one of the highest-lowbrow or lowest-highbrow shows I've seen in a while.

It's kind of a shame that a production jam-packed with this much silly appeal relies so heavily on poorly integrated, prerecorded video projections to help convey the back story. I recognize the impulse to create a theatrical equivalent to the action movie's spinning newspaper; its bold headlines fill the screen while an ominous voice-over establishes context and propels new dangers into our superhero's path.

But the constant shifts between what should be consistently high-energy antics and the more sterile onscreen news bulletins and monologues make the production lag. Ditto for Mater Vox, the sentient computer program that responds to the Tuttlewells' every voice command. If I've suspended my disbelief enough to watch a guy stomp around in a silver cardboard box—the peerless Bell gives a physically herculean performance as the title character—there is no need to disrupt the magic.

As it stands now, Adventures of Caveman Robot is a flawed but passionate show, one that audiences with a slightly higher tolerance for shows that aren't Broadway-slick will walk away from laughing.

Bad Bloodline

He's a salesman with a swastika, a seamy womanizer with a reputedly small sex organ (see title). But what William Patrick Hitler really, really wants is to become a citizen of the United States. While this may sound like a farfetched horror story from World War II, Mark Kassen—who both wrote and stars in this fascinating bio play—has compiled detailed and diligent research to assure us of the very real existence of Adolf Hitler's estranged nephew (born in England as the son of Adolf's half-brother Alois). And under the precise direction of John Gould Rubin, Kassen's Little Willy offers a compelling portrait of a man who traded on the name of a madman in a desperate quest to become somebody—anybody—important.

But ironically it was this very name that he renounced while pleading for his (and his mother Brigid's) U.S. citizenship in 1942. The cyclical play pieces together Willy's own letter of recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt while splicing in other defining moments of Willy's life: his tireless showmanship as a speaker and salesman (he hocked everything from automobiles to toothpaste), his wooing of Third Reich women, and his constant need to defend and assert himself, whether in prayer or in an interrogation room.

Despite an impressive and impassioned performance by Kassen, the brief 65-minute production often seems to skirt substantial information. The material lacks a certain potency, and the short, kaleidoscopic scenes rarely build to a level of truly satisfying dramatic tension. Of course, this may simply be an attempt to replicate the evasive nature of Willy himself, a slick chameleon who was willing to turn on a dime, renege on a deal, or sell out his family if it would bring him attention.

The production is at its most profound when Willy is at his most exposed. Late in the show, a woman (Roxanna Hope) throws herself at him, offering him sex so that he might rescue her young son from a concentration camp. Willy, so confident as a predator, all at once becomes impotent (in every sense), and he has no words with which to mask his utter powerlessness. "I'm just a lowly little car salesman," he protests. Hope, who joins Kassen in this and several other supporting roles, is a haunting presence, and she brings a stirring honesty and control to her characters.

Much of Little Willy's humor emerges in the juxtaposition of the trivial with the profound. Even as he interacts with victims of the genocide instituted by his uncle, Willy whines that he has never received full credit for convincing Adolf to shave his handlebar mustache. And he interrupts his own diatribe against Mein Kampf solely to plug his latest sponsor, Beech-Nut gum. The product placement is jarring and ridiculous, heightening Willy's insatiable desire for money, fame, and endless opportunity.

A huge projection screen fills the back wall of Clint Ramos's austere set, and Egon Kirincic's video design combines nicely with Nicole Pearce's pristine lighting to create an evocative, and rather ethereal, backdrop.

In Little Willy, Kassen brings a mostly forgotten (and arguably should be forgotten) man to life, giving us a peek at one of the original would-be celebrities. Adolf Hitler reportedly called Willy "my loathsome nephew" and paid him off exorbitantly to leave Germany. But with a last name that the world wants to erase from the lexicon, where does one go to escape? Queens became Willy's sanctuary, and, although he is now deceased, he lived to pass on his (new) name to three sons, all of whom still reside nearby. The extraordinary opportunist would never again hock a vacuum under the name of Hitler.

Mourning Light

Few topics today generate ill feelings like the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. With Theater for the New City's sometimes too ethereal remounting of Misha Shulman's Desert Sunrise, a proposal is made for a peaceful Holy Land in a play that uses grand spectacle and expressionistic techniques to communicate its ideas. But these tactics, though mesmerizing, come perilously close to swallowing up the story and its characters. In the southern deserts of Hebron, a cave-dwelling Palestinian gives temporary refuge to a lost Israeli. The men overcome their initial animosity by relating over the common elements in their lives: parents, work, music, and women. Especially women. Ismail's beloved is on her way to the campsite, and Tsahi's adulterous girlfriend has recently left him. When Ismail tells Tsahi he is planning to propose to Layla when she arrives, the men undertake an impromptu dance lesson. They are dancing when Layla shows up, and she is mortified to see her Palestinian lover dancing with an Israeli.

Layla proves to be less hospitable to Tsahi, but eventually they too connect over the mutual losses they have suffered in the conflict between their peoples. Soon, however, gunshots in the distance warn us that Israeli soldiers may have followed Layla to Ismail's encampment.

The three principals carry the weight of the play's subject matter well and don't shy away from the black comedy that it sometimes calls for. At one point, the two men enter into a morbid discussion of whose blood is the "cheapest" to Americans: Palestinian or Israeli. They eventually agree that Iraqi blood is the cheapest.

Haythem Noor's Ismail is a stalwart character of calm and gentleness; you believe he is a guy who hangs out with sheep all day. Jared Miller's Tsahi is equally melancholy and jubilant. Boisterous and quick to become emotional, Miller takes great care in recounting the tragic story of his character's life without flattening it into one note of sadness. And Alice Borman's Layla is a complex and masterful creation, both seductive and dangerous.

As playwright and director, Shulman is to be commended for bringing back this work after a successful run at Theater for the New City in 2005. A former Israeli communications unit commander, he presents a view of the conflict that is well grounded and unbiased. Neither side is glorified or demonized, and the characters are able to make choices as human beings rather than stereotypes.

Shulman urges audiences to look beyond the current situation to a better world, which is represented as a spiritual realm that we see in silhouette across a rear scrim. On its own, this shadow ballet serves as a bountiful representation of the Middle Eastern world, with animals and allegories that relate to the modern predicament. However, these spirited renderings threaten to overwhelm the story line and sometimes detract from the characters' interactions.

Dalia Carella's choreography consists of one- or two-person veil dances. Combining Arabic dance with Indonesian shadow technique and shadow puppetry, she presents many dazzling images on the scrim. Particularly striking are two birds of prey fighting over a small mammal, an obvious metaphor for the conflict over Jerusalem. These dances exist well within the barren elements of Celia Owen's set design. Covering the stage floor with sand suggests miles of empty land, and it is believable that Tsahi could become lost in this setting.

Along with his soulful score, musician Yoel Ben-Simhon "narrates" the play with interjected odes, originally intended for a chorus, that Shulman adapted from Aeschylus's Agamemnon. Unfortunately, this classical text doesn't always mirror the modern scenario as it should, and it remains unclear if these lyrical words are supposed to be the "inner voices" of the characters or some all-seeing god or both. The ambiguity only serves to confuse the audience.

Itai Erdal's lighting design, like the script, sometimes opts for otherworldly impressionism instead of naturalistic lighting; the only difference between day and night is an unfocused gobo of stars and a projection of the moon. It also feels like a missed opportunity that there isn't a representation of a sunrise in Sunrise.

The most regrettable of the piece's few missteps is at the end, where Layla meanders into the elevated language that is usually reserved for Ben-Simhon's narrator. It is hard to tell if she is praying or speaking to the audience, because the other characters seem to be able to hear her. This divergence in style leads to the play's emotional climax, where a chilling revelation is presented too hastily and is subsequently lost in the language of the ode.

Beyond these uneven points of style and design, however, it is difficult to criticize a work that seeks to educate theatergoers about things like Ta'ayush, the grassroots Israeli-Palestinian peace group Shulman belongs to. At best, this production is daring and provocative, even darkly humorous, in its exploration of a tragic and bloody dispute over territory. Shulman, Theater for the New City, and Ta'ayush demand education and humanity. The question remains whether their ideas will prove more significant than bullets. Desert Sunrise doesn't offer any easy answers.

The Price of Beans

Life is hard for Jack, an aspiring young artist living on a Brooklyn farm with a mother who insists he stop painting cows and get a real job. To pay the rent, he is sent out to sell the family cow, Guernsey, but when he returns with only a handful of beans to show for the sale, his mother cries in anguish over her naïve, useless son. What she does not realize is that the beans are magic, and in Karl Greenberg and Dave Hill's Jack & the Beanstalk, a contemporary rendition of the classic tale, they grow into a soaring beanstalk that will lead them both into a riotous, rags-to-riches adventure. Jack's mother (Noreen Foster) is not a typical farmhand. She struts onstage in a leopard skin coat, waving a patent leather purse at Jack (Matt Mager) and bemoaning his laziness. She is not alone in her contempt. Guernsey (Drew Honeywell) is also fed up, scoffing at a sleazy bean salesman (Matthew Gandolfo) who promises to show Jack things he has never seen before: "He's never seen money before. Why don't you show him that?"

Honeywell, who plays multiple silly roles in this production, steals scenes adorably in every one. As Guernsey, she is a sassy tap-dancing cow dressed in a black-and-white spotted suit, and as the Goose who lays golden eggs, she looks childishly endearing in a puffy white dress with orange slippers. But as a melodious golden harp, she is seductive and enchanting, especially to the Giant (Ian Sweeney), who gazes fondly upon her in his castle made of clouds.

But far beneath the clouds Jack and his mother have lost their farm. While they spend the night sleeping outside of their repossessed home, the beanstalk grows, shown as a rising shadow behind a screen that extends to the ceiling. When they awake in the morning to find it, Jack is far more impressed than his mother, who regards it as nothing more than a lifetime supply of salad. She chastises Jack for climbing it, telling him only to "be careful" after he has disappeared into the sky.

Hungry, tired, and desperate for an easy way to pay the rent, Jack stumbles into the Giant's castle, where he meets a hyperactive Servant (Gandolfo), a golden Goose, and an angry Giant demanding the blood of an Englishman. Fortunately for Jack, the Servant is desperately trying to establish a vegan household and manages to sneak him out unscathed, not realizing he has kidnapped the Goose.

The next several scenes show the corruption that occurs when one is blessed with an endless supply of golden eggs. Jack's mother finally has the material possessions she craved when they were poor, whereas an Italian-suit-wearing Jack can now support himself without having to lift a finger. And yet, they do not seem entirely convinced their lives are any better than before.

Though this play is filled with fantastical characters, they inhabit an ordinary world with everyday demands that mix cleverly with their fairy-tale conflicts. Jack climbs a beanstalk to solve his financial woes, reclaim the farm, and pay the rent, while the Giant struggles with the Atkins diet and his Servant's tasteless tofu to relieve the stomach pains he endures from eating raw meat. Still, the real obstacles here are not health and finances but the characters' individual struggles to come to terms with their own self-worth.

These conflicts will be most appreciated by teens like Jack, who are often looking to find their place in the world, and adults like the Giant and Jack's mother, who understand the miseries of unpaid rent and indigestion. But Greenberg and Hall compensate by delivering well-aimed jokes exclusively for their younger audience members, such as having the Servant distract the Giant by telling him to change his diaper, which got huge laughs from the young ones.

And so with Manhattan Children's Theater's final play of the 2005-2006 season, the company closes in the same spirit it began—catering to children and adults alike with funny, mature story lines and complex characters who exist as real, relatable people in their whimsical worlds of make-believe.

Generation Gaps

In today's linguistic marketplace, many catchphrases stay in syndication longer than the TV shows that gave rise to them. Philologists of the 22nd century will surely trace many roots of our future-speak back to Seinfeld: "soup Nazi," "Festivus," "yadda yadda yadda," and the infamous if ever-popular "master of my own domain" have already attained a wide and legitimate cultural currency. Watch out, because Mat Smart's new comedy, The Debate Plays, may have coined a new slang term that has similar resonance: "a Luigi." What—or, rather, who—is "a Luigi?" you may ask. A "Luigi" is the safe, nice, stable, and generally boring guy a girl dates after she's had a tempestuous long-term relationship with a reckless, selfish, neurotic, and interesting Super Mario. A Luigi is definitely "Player Two." The term is revealing not only in how it defines a certain generation but also in the values that it implies this generation holds.

In dealing with three generations in the life of the same town, The Debate Plays consists of three interrelated one-acts revolving around a love triangle and an obscure Nebraska law that allows the man who took a woman's virginity to challenge her new lover to a debate. The first one-act pits Scott "Scooner" Hooner, the pill-popping slacker who sells suits at the local mall, against James Hamilton, the considerate if somewhat corny and bland M.B.A. grad who makes a six-figure salary, for the love of one Courtney O'Connell.

The stuffy formality of the debate format soon explodes into the absurdly manic, no-holds-barred question-and-answer duel of wits between James and Scooner. After Courtney goes mad and shrieks "Mayday!" at the end of a crazed monologue in which she fails to decide a winner, she appeals directly to the audience for help. The audience then votes for whom they think she should date. The night I attended, the audience surprisingly chose James in a landslide. The cast later told me, however, that Scooner usually dominates but James has an edge if there is an older crowd.

The next one-act takes us back more than 100 years to the Wild West to show us how the law originated when a love triangle resulted in a bloody shootout that killed over a dozen people. The characters dress in drag—the men in big hoop skirts and the woman in bowler hat and handlebar mustache. But the real zaniness ensues when the shootout occurs in slow motion to the 12-minute rock anthem "Only in Dreams" by Weezer (choreographed by director Evan Cabnet). The characters lip-sync the lyrics in between their stylized, trigger-happy death agonies, to hilarious results. In fact, during the instrumental bridge they all break out of character to jam on air instruments.

The last one-act takes us into a future where the 29th Amendment guarantees our right to privacy in consensual sexual relations between persons of legal age. The exact nature of the play depends on who won the vote earlier, but both scenarios involve a distant relative of the loser coming back to confront the law, the town, and the aged Courtney herself.

The whole night is a wildly entertaining, fun romp. My only suggestion would be that the play needs a new title if it's not going to scare away the hip, younger crowd it targets. Part of what makes the night fun is the intimacy of the setting: the traditional theater seats in the black-box space are roped off, and the audience sits at small tables on the traditional stage area as if we're at a dinner theater. Except, since a bartender fetches drinks between acts—and the weekend performances don't begin until 10:30—it's more like "drink theater."

As the cast developed a casual ease with its audience, the acting became increasingly spunky—as if the audience and cast were speaking in the shorthand and in-jokes of old college buddies. Jeff Galfer had loads of off-kilter charm as Scooner and executed his bitter rants with loving relish. He was even funnier when he playfully deconstructed the Western belle in drag. Though Garrett Neergaard played the bland "Luigi," he nonetheless managed to imbue his character with a soft-spoken sincerity whose very corniness can be endearing.

Chad Goodridge, in a variety of supporting roles, superbly punched his jokes. Meanwhile, Kathleen White, with a glint in her eye and a gruff slur to her voice, brought a quirky, cartoonish quality of camp farce to her role as the gunslinging Amos Morgan.

If this play is any evidence, the current twenty-something generation has a great deal of anxiety about how it will change or conform to a corporatized world. More self-conscious about demographic packaging, politically correct attitudinizing, and multicultural posturing than any previous generation, their most frequent defense mechanism against their individual powerlessness is to make fun of the powers that be. If only all of their jokes could be as funny as The Debate Plays.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a modern retelling of Lewis Carroll's classic story. Part of the Dream Music Puppetry Program at the Here Arts Center, this adaptation by Lake Simons and John Dyer features original music and puppets. If, because this production is based on a children's book, you're picturing a cardboard stage and fuzzy hand puppets, stop right there. These puppets are not just animated dolls; they're also commonly found items (playing cards, banners, regular handheld props) that are infused with life. Even people are manipulated by puppeteers and moved around the stage. Every character was handled differently. Alice was both a human actor and several smaller puppets; much use was made of her growing and shrinking throughout the story. The White Rabbit was a rod puppet; the Cheshire Cat a loose-jointed stuffed animal with an illuminated smile. The "Pig and Pepper" scene was styled after a Punch and Judy puppet show. Alice's recitation of the poem "Father William" featured two psychedelic shadow puppets. Most visually striking was a two-person Caterpillar, composed of satin gloves and a modified baseball cap. Small, posed figurines were used for many of the minor characters.

Much credit goes to the five-piece band, led by Dyer. Dressed in a Mad Hatter-inspired top hat, Dyer sang all of the songs, played both acoustic and electric guitar, and provided musical sound effects. He also performed the voices for many of the characters, including the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, and the Mock Turtle.

Though Dyer was seated with the band away from the action, he was just as interesting to watch as the performance centered onstage, and his original music was a huge asset. Ranging from 60's bubblegum pop to dreamy acoustic pieces, each song propelled the story forward. Lyrics were taken directly from the Lewis Carroll text, though—like the objects onstage—they were manipulated to best serve the production. In fact, more lines from the original story were sung than spoken. Without the music, there would have been no way to advance the plot.

As the human Alice (and the voice of the Alice puppets), Simons was a perfect choice. Carroll never intended for Alice to be an ideal child, and Simons portrays her with just the right amount of mischief, innocence, and childish ignorance. Her body was used as just another puppet in some scenes: the descent down the rabbit hole was clever, low-tech, and exhilarating to watch. Occasionally, she was difficult to hear over the band, but this seemed to be a minor technical glitch limited to a single occasion.

The other performers were skilled at manipulating the various puppets used throughout the evening. They were at their very best, of course, when the audience forgot they were there. However, several of the puppets were such vibrant "characters" that the puppeteers could add to the effect, enhancing the objects with their own subtle facial expressions and postures.

The performers' wardrobe was practical and functional, allowing everyone the ease of movement needed for such a physical show. All in black (with the exception of Alice's red stockings and the blue piping on her blouse), the puppeteers were unobtrusive when they needed to be. Instead of the traditional black T-shirt/black jeans combo, these outfits were actual costumes. Designed by Carol Binion, the costumes were created to evoke Victorian dress: cravats, vests, and long skirts that suggested petticoats and bustles.

This is not a show for someone expecting a faithful rendition of the classic story. Nor is it the most accessible piece for someone unfamiliar with the text (the Disney cartoon doesn't count). While this adaptation follows Carroll's version closely enough, many of the scenes are done without any additional context. If you don't know the book very well, you might find yourself lost. This can be disorienting, but it also mirrors closely Alice's experiences. It takes a mature mind to assimilate the constant stream of images and sounds and to synthesize them into a recognizable representation of the Alice story. Thus, it might not be the right event for young children.

Still, Simons and John Dyer's Alice is definitely worth seeing, even if puppetry isn't your thing. What is most exciting about this production is watching a unique vision of a classic. This adaptation challenges the specific images of Alice that are ingrained in our popular culture and offers us a new trip to Wonderland.

Noir Tale

With its standard detective-story plot, Rip Me Open has a wealthy, gorgeous blond who hires a rough-and-tumble private eye to investigate a case where nothing is as it originally appears. But there's a twist: the blond is a man and his hired gumshoe a woman, a world-weary secret shopper who takes occasional snoop jobs on the side for money. It's a clever beginning that turns the detective genre on its head, yet the play fails to build a story of substance around this solid start. As a result, Rip Me Open slows down early before eventually stalling out completely. Desiree Burch plays amateur investigator Lucinda Coolidge with a very believable working-class weariness. When a flamboyant and frustratingly enigmatic Sebastian Rumpford offers to hire her to find out more about his new lover, she initially hesitates; Sebastian seems like too much of a case himself to work for. But he has too much money to take no for an answer, and money is something Lucinda can't say no to.

Lucinda soon discovers that Sebastian's lover, a man who goes by three different names, has a lot to hide. But he isn't the only one; Sebastian himself refuses to disclose to Lucinda all the secrets of his relationship, including a mysterious and deviant act that may cost him his life.

As Sebastian, Michael Cyril Creighton displays natural comedic timing. His lounge-lizard crooning, faux-diva vamping, and prissy whining work in good counterpoint to Burch's straight-faced exasperation. But the straight man/funny man routine takes Rip Me Open only so far.

In addition to acting, Creighton and Burch are credited with co-writing the show with Kyle Jarrow and director Brian Mullin. The problems with their script are myriad. To begin with, they use the same simile-laden speech that is the foundation of clichéd detective stories. Initially hearing a secret shopper use this type of language adds humor to the story. But the language becomes repetitive, and as the show begins to take itself seriously, the continued use of a second-rate Sam Spade style is no longer funny, and the show becomes the same cliché it originally set out to mock.

Rip Me Open becomes more confused, and less a matter of genre manipulation, when it changes tone. It starts out as a lighthearted farce, then shifts into dark comedy before becoming experimental theater and finally ending as some kind of fantasy/tragedy. The Sebastian character borrows heavily from Will & Grace's Karen, someone too rich to understand the common world. He asks questions like "What's a Sizzler?" and remarks, "Oooh, Applebee's! That sounds quaint." Yet moments later he becomes an ashamed man, tortured by his perversion as he attempts to elicit pathos from Lucinda (and the audience) by explaining how special his lover makes him feel.

Eventually, Lucinda discovers that his secret sexual act is that his lover disembowels him during sex on a regular basis. How does Sebastian consistently survive such an ordeal? Were there trips to the emergency room? What about recovery time? The playwrights apparently felt it was unneccesary to consider such questions.

Witnessing Sebastian's torture prompts Lucinda to strangle Sebastian's lover to death and burn his house down. The next morning, Lucinda and Sebastian meet in a Denny's to discuss the darkness of their souls over pancakes. Are Sebastian and Lucinda the least bit worried that they might be imprisoned for the previous night's occurrences? Another question that the playwrights fail to address. The ridiculous nature of these events makes the script unbelievable, and the playwrights' inability to create a reality for these events to take place in makes the play nearly unwatchable.

The idea that Lucinda has seen too much of man's evil nature during her stint as a secret shopper is funny. The idea of a woman as a hard-nosed private dick and a man as her client is inspired. But the constant referential jokes (like the Applebee's line), potty humor, and vulgarity drag the show's high concept below lowbrow. The play's creators seem to be attempting to push the boundaries, but just what boundaries do they think they are pushing?

Creighton, Jarrow, Mullin, and Burch neglected the careful construction and emotional grounding that allow Sam Shepard's fantasy worlds and David Lynch's bizzare tales to appeal to their audiences in challenging, nonlinear ways. The foursome's dialogue parrots Raymond Chandler's language without adding any new perspective to it. Rip Me Open bills itself as "drawing on influences ranging from classic film noir to Dennis Cooper and Haruki Murakami," but its execution exposes it as a shallow and immature imitation of the works its writers admire.

In Search of Lost Time

Memory plays often suffer from those ponderous longueurs the backward glance is prone to: no matter how significant or traumatic the recalled event may be, it has led to the present's wistful, cozy, and inevitably repetitive nostalgias. And while the act of remembering does not have to be as impervious as Proust's cork-lined room, one can ill afford the luxuriousness of looking back if confronted with current dangers. Thus, to frame events as memories—secure and made precious in the mind, their dramatic moment must be long dead. Time regained may well be conflict lost. Skin Tight, written by New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson, attempts to avoid this problem. It is not until the play's end that we discover that the fighting, lovemaking, and confessions between two aging lovers, Elizabeth and Tom, are definitely memories. By saying this, don't think I'm giving anything away. The whole play is suffused with small eddies of conversation and ebb tides of monologue where the lovers lose themselves in reminiscences about their past.

The opening sequence is a corny stage fight that predictably turns to sexual teasing as the lovers collapse onto the bed. The play takes a long time to warm up even after the lovers get talking. Is it really believable, for example, that this is the first time an older couple discusses their "first time" with each other? While it's not apparent yet that the events occur in memory (whose blurring force compresses the bright details), the quick alternations between passion and violence don't seem altogether believable. In fact, most of the action sequences appear a bit "canned"—especially one in which Tom yanks Elizabeth around by a knife she's biting in her mouth.

James Jacobus, as Tom, often lapses into overwrought, actor-ly expressions (pursing his lips, screwing his brow) when he is trying to show his character being pensive. He is much better at expansive and humorous gestures, such as when he rants. Stephanie Barton-Farcas demonstrates a more even-keeled control throughout, though her tone never really matches the desperate pitch of her character.

The play eventually strikes a note of genuine pathos, however, when it slows down to let the characters confront each other with their stories. Elizabeth, it turns out, has always resented Tom for going off to fight in the war. She confesses, though, that her affair with a young sheep sheerer during this time only led her to realize that her love for Tom was inescapable. Likewise, the couple's angry litany of petty domestic resentments hits hilariously true to home.

The end of the play attempts to portray a poignant scene of the lovers saying their last goodbyes, nude in a bath. Does the full-frontal nudity distract one from the quiet mood of sentimental sorrow that's intended? Not much. What it lacks in shock value it gains in intimacy, especially since their bodies quickly turn away or submerge in the tub downstage under dim-lit blue gels moments after they disrobe. But even this scene did not help the play escape a certain generic blandness.

Director Pamela Butler's stage design—a bed with white sheets upstage right, a tub (or trough) downstage left—is merely functional and lacks the expressionistic evocations that often give memory plays their eerie translucence wherein things reflected become more real.

Interestingly, love, unlike other powerful emotions that dissipate with time, sometimes appears more alive, more real insofar as it has been lost to a vanished past. Within memory, the events of one's love life usually become starker, stranger, and more fraught with their future significance.

This play, however, produces the opposite effect: a limp, nostalgic monotony lacking the erotic triste of remembering a long-lost love, which the play intended to evoke. While the experience of watching it was more or less entertaining while it was happening, it was also fairly forgettable afterward.

Are You Scared Yet?

"Sometimes the scariest monster in the world is the guy sitting next to you in the dark," says a character in the first of four unsettling one-acts by emerging playwrights in Dread Awakening. The two scariest plays of the evening exploit that idea to nerve-jarring effect. In the first, Bloody Mary by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a teenager scares his girlfriend out of her wits as they drive down a deserted road at night. In the other, Sleep Mask by Eric Sanders, a black facemask becomes the device that drives a woman to hysterical fear of her husband. Each play keeps us on tenterhooks with hard-to-predict plot lines and quicksilver shifts of mood and tempo.

The four plays together demonstrate how solid writing and acting are the essential ingredients of all good theater, including the theater of horror. The temptation to indulge in special effects must have been great, but the design team for the four dramas, which each have different directors, is notable for its restraint and nuance. The 45th Street Theater's cavernous black box provides a fitting backdrop.

Bloody Mary, nimbly directed by Pat Diamond, begins in the dark with the disembodied voice of a man saying "Bloody Mary" over and over. Our fears are temporarily allayed when the stage lights switch on to reveal Ben (the handsome and chipper Jedadiah Schultz) reciting the phrase as his ditsy girlfriend (Christianna Nelson) applies lipstick. "How many was that?" Ben asks, explaining how, following the child's game, he is trying to conjure a blood-soaked Mary.

The allusions to classic horror movies come at us fast and furious. The pair, both horror movie buffs, are off to Shadow Lake to film a "mockumentary" about the slaughter of camp counselors on the site of an Indian burial ground. Even the night drive, as Ben tells Amy, mirrors the opening sequence from the Twilight Zone movie. But Aguirre-Sacasa, who writes for Marvel Comics, recycles these clichés in such a playful and ironic way that the audience is kept guessing—and exhilarated—right through to the 49th and final recitation of Bloody Mary's name.

Likewise Sleep Mask keeps us debating whether what we are watching is truly appalling or just a bizarre misunderstanding with the potential for tragic consequences. Annie (Jenny Gammello) awakens from a nightmare to find her husband James (Joe Plummer) next to her wearing a skin-tight leather mask. Uncertain whether she is awake or still dreaming, she demands that he remove the mask. He refuses, insisting that it's a sleep mask to keep his skin soft and wrinkle-free. The play, directed by Amanda Charlton, veers from black comedy to horror and back.

The other two plays fall short in different ways. A love triangle works itself out in a predictable, though disturbing, fashion in Treesfall by Justin Swain. Director Jessica Davis-Irons has encouraged flat, high-contrast performances from her actors, but more ambiguity and shading might have given the story more power.

Directed by Arin Arbus, Pearls, the shortest and slightest of the four plays, is a monologue delivered by a creepy dentist (Robert Funaro), who plays out sexual fantasies on a lovely client as she lies etherized before him. Playwright Clay McLeod Chapman slowly reels viewers into his tale, keeping us in suspense about its meaning and then embarking on a devilish flight of fancy about sexual arousal via a woman's teeth. The play is over, however, before it has set off much more than a frisson of revulsion in the audience.

Whatever its small flaws, the evening fulfills its title's promise. These four plays awaken our dread.

History Lesson

An integral part of theater is the practice of producing older, lesser-known works. The term "revival" is used in these cases because of the literal act of bringing a dead show back to life, as well as the act of breathing new life into it through a fresh translation, staging, etc. The idea is that by modernizing a text, the gap between current and former experiences is lessened, creating a greater understanding of the work and, with luck, correcting the mistakes that kept it out of favor in the first place. Bertolt Brecht, while not exactly a household name, is known to theater historians and students as the creator of "epic theater." He did not want his audiences to sit passively, suspending their disbelief and accepting what was onstage as reality; he wanted them to acknowledge and transcend the artifice so they could see it for the political and social commentary it was meant to be. One of his plays, known as Fear and Misery in the Third Reich in the original German and as The Private Life of the Master Race in English, is a series of scenes that address the miseries brought about by the Nazi regime. These hardships range from a general culture of fear to the outright threat of the end of one's comfort, livelihood, and life.

In Binyamin Shalom's new translation, receiving its American premiere at Walkerspace, Germans sport Southern accents and use urban patois alternately with accent- and slang-free speech. There are also modern clothes in some scenes and period clothes in others. These devices are used to blur the lines between the situations of the past and present, and to stir the audience into analysis. How effective they are depends on the audience member's familiarity with (and enjoyment of) Brecht's purposefully alienating style.

In any case, they raise two questions. First, in using modern dress and contemporary argot, the production goes against Brecht's own concept of "historification," which is the placing of a historical event outside the recent memory of audiences so they cannot directly relate to what's happening onstage. (This allows the audience to keep a bias-free perspective on the event.) While it is true that during the play's first staging in 1938 viewers would find the action sadly relevant, it's likely that most theatergoers today will see this as world history and not personal history. It all boils down to what choice is more in line with Brecht's ideas about theater: a past we cannot remember or the odd juxtaposition of the "now" with the "then"?

Secondly, by making direct parallels between the suppression of free speech in Nazi Germany and in modern-day America (as the show's program suggests), is this production comparing our government to their government? Is it comparing the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and at Guantánamo Bay to the treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz and Dachau? At first glance, these comparisons would be highly offensive to the memory of the generations of people who died at the hands of the Nazis. At second glance, by belittling the comparison one is belittling the gravity of current human rights violations.

This production hits hardest when its audience is hip to the specific requirements of Brechtian drama. However, there's something for the empathetic theatergoer as well; "The Jewish Wife" (the titular woman leaves her Aryan husband to make his life easier) and "The Old Soldier" (about rationing at the dairy and meat markets) are moving, and "The Informer" (the evils of the Hitler Youth) is deliciously unsettling. Scenes tended to run a bit long, though scholars could debate whether this is done on purpose or is a fault of the pacing.

The assorted actors, young and old, blond and dark-haired, have clear voices and are comfortable with the performance style. Tracy Hostmyer's Jewish Wife (in the aforementioned scene) and Nicholas Daniele's Secret Police Officer (in "The Chalk Cross") gave especially strong performances; Hostmyer's plainspoken delivery and naturalistic style as the Wife was not rooted in any place or era, while Daniele's modern, boorish Officer was equally effective.

It's difficult to judge the success of a play that holds as its core value the wish to unnerve and manipulate its audience. The Private Life of the Master Race toys with its viewers, presenting moving scenes and snippets of horror, all prefaced by stilted, rhyming speeches. It is less important as a revival of Brecht and more important as a return to the values of the epic theater: questioning the political and social status quo, questioning the purpose of theater, and waking up a complacent audience. This is where it achieves its most meaningful success.

Unbirthing the Truth

The life of a momentous work of theater generally runs as follows: first, the work is a bombshell exploded in the art scene; after initial, tense resistance from the mainstream, it is then lauded and subsumed by the very people who originally dismissed it; finally, the work becomes so ubiquitous that, when restaged with no additional artistic bells and whistles (such as a directorial "concept"), it seems very much like a parody of itself. For all its virtues, the most lasting impression I carried away from the Michael Chekhov Theater Company's production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child is that Shepard's most well-known play may now be edging into the third, self-satirizing phase of its life cycle. Shepard has been referred to as the "poet laureate of America's emotional Badlands." Buried Child is no aberration in the oeuvre; the work is, arguably, one of its pinnacles. (Just ask the Pulitzer committee, which awarded it the prize for drama in 1979.) The setting is the decaying farmhouse of an Illinois family. Dodge (Thomas Francis Murphy), the salty patriarch, is largely confined to the living room couch by an unnamed illness. He is cared for—in the loosest sense of the term—by his wife, Halie (Patricia Elisar), and their two sons, the emotionally crippled Tilden (Tom Pavey), and the one-legged, bullying Bradley (Brian Lee Elder).

The fun begins with the arrival of Vince (Jason Griffith) and his girlfriend Shelly (Kristin Carter), Greenwich Village types on a trip away from the city (New York is never named, though it doesn't need to be). Vince claims he is Tilden's son. Much to both his and Shelly's chagrin, however, no one in the house recognizes him. It seems the decay is not limited to the walls around them; a secret has been rotting the foundation of the family itself. When Vince leaves Shelly alone in order to buy Dodge a bottle of whiskey—a futile attempt to get in the elder's good graces—she takes it on herself to uncover exactly what is sour at the heart of this particular American Gothic.

As with all but the best mysteries, the pursuit of the truth in this case is more engaging than what is eventually uncovered. Indeed, if the secret in question weren't handled so elliptically, a case could be made that it borders on being offensively stereotypical of the worst of rural America. Shepard deals in symbols, though—he is our most accomplished purveyor of stage image as metaphor—and not, generally, in outright social commentary. So I will refrain from reading too much into his devices, and rather take him at his word.

Which is exactly what the Michael Chekhov Theater Company does as well. The show fits comfortably in the limited room of the half-accurately named Big Little Theater. (In his curtain speech, the acting house manager described the space as a "postage stamp"; to credit his observation, taking your seat is indeed a little like seeing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.) Like nearly everything else involved in the production, the skill with which such a large show—three or four characters are almost always onstage—is shoehorned into such a diminutive theater speaks to the company's extreme competence.

But this competence never takes wing into inspiration. Though each cast member turns in an unimpeachable performance—Murphy as the gruff Dodge and Carter as the beleaguered but otherwise normal Shelly, especially—the overall effect is similar to viewing a print of a famous painting in place of the vibrant original. Unstraying faith to the word of such a well-established work of art, it seems, comes at the cost of a fresh encounter with the work's spirit.

In all fairness, there is no blackly critical finger to be leveled at the company's efforts. They do Buried Child the honor of letting it speak for itself. Unfortunately, what the work seems to be saying at the moment is "reinvent me, or let me rest."

Memories of Moscow

A Russian proverb says, "To live a life is not as simple as crossing a field." Or, crossing a field can be far more complicated than it would seem to be. Or needs to be. Similarly, Shoot Them in the Cornfields! is an ambitious, poetic production that wants to be about many things, but in the end has too much going on and is more complicated than necessary. This new play by Sophia Murashkovsky tells several convoluted stories, the main one dealing with a young, American Jewish student, Sonya, in Moscow during the turbulent days of the 1991 coup d'état. The play also includes the story of Sonya's Russian grandparents, Yelena and Mikhail Levin, who were arrested and sent to prison in the 1950's by the KGB, ostensibly because they were successful Jewish business owners accused of "entrepreneurialism." Much of this portion takes place during a cruel interrogation of the couple. Other narratives include the Levins' romance during World War II and a subsequent abortion, and the failed love affair of Sonya and a Russian soldier, Dimitri.

The title, Shoot Them in the Cornfields!, comes from the midcentury Russian government's practice of murdering mentally retarded citizens. Many were shot in cornfields. The Levins had successfully employed mentally retarded workers who, after the dismantling of the couple's factory, were later executed.

The entire play is performed in a singsong verse that at some points is clever but often detracts from the storytelling, with lines that seem to go far off the narratives in order to keep the rhyme scheme. One interesting effect of the verse is that the language becomes alienating, in a "Brechtian" sense, to the audience; it is different enough that it can never be mistaken for "real" speech. Indeed, the production includes many aspects that could be considered Brechtian. This includes the show's best bit, the second-act opener that features a movie projection where the cast is seen onscreen singing and dancing to "Russianized" versions of American show tunes, with lyrics such as "not a ruble to spare for the Chattanooga choo-choo?" The cast watches itself onscreen, effectively becoming part of the audience.

Yet this playful interlude has elements that are as sinister as they are alienating. The projection is crosscut with words like "desire" and "ambition." At one point, the actors, who are singing over the original soundtrack, hold a note for a startlingly long time, changing its pitch to a deeper, more ominous one midway through. Near the end of the song, the dancing begins to less resemble the innocent tap that accompanies show tunes and becomes more like the marching boots of soldiers going to war. The result is upsettingly appropriate for a production that displays the brutality of an oppressive regime.

With reserve and dignity, Yelena (Carolyn Seiff) aptly plays the Jewish grandmother who perseveres through many hardships. As Sonya, Maila Miller is frenetic and seems nervous onstage. Joey Klein, as Dimitri, the xenophobic Russian boyfriend, has dreamy good looks and an appropriate slyness about him, but often appears stiff. The best performance was by Grant Morenz as the KGB informant Ivan, who is strangely presented as foppishly gay, at once outlandish and threatening.

A major problem was the tech work, which was particularly off during this performance. It was full of mistakes, which could be seen as a deliberately alienating effect, such as lights turning on and off at inappropriate moments, but more likely were ill-timed light cues. In a few moments, the sound cues seemed to be mistimed as well.

The set consists of a simple wooden ramp with a small platform jutting off from either side. This unnaturalistic setting, coupled with the rhyming dialogue, the alienating effects, and the characters' ability to simply "walk" from scene to scene, covering vast distances, eras, and stories, gives the overall production a dream-like effect, where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred.

Overall, Shoot Them in the Cornfields! is a victim of its own ambitions, and it attempts to do too much. The themes are many: memory, loss of love, Russian nationhood. There are too many plot lines to follow, and some of these are not even resolved in the script. Unanswered questions sprout like fresh stalks of corn: Exactly why does Dimitri suddenly turn on Sonya? Is he dealing drugs or involved in prostitution? Why is Ivan played as gay? What is the purpose of the two girls who begin to fondle each other in the background late in the show?

This is a challenging production that tries to tell the story of an American girl who, by retrieving her family's past, salvages her present. Like memory itself, however, the piece is a muddled thing of conflicting narratives and modes. What results is a confusing collection of assertions, images, and ideas.

Players's Tale

While the Gallery Players's theater may be located a few subway stops deep into Brooklyn, their production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play Take Me Out seems not too far away from Broadway. The main reason for the play's success is simple: each member of the 11-man cast gives a truly exceptional performance. It's difficult to single out any one individual when each actor performs at such a high level of quality. Noshir Dalal is perfectly cast to type as the gay golden boy Darren Lemming, star of the New York Empires baseball franchise. Ron Brice is more than solid as Darren's mentor and rival, Davey Battle. Even Nobuo Inubushi's understated acting as Japanese import player Takeshi Kawabata is compelling, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he spends most of the play completely silent.

But the night belongs to Jonathan C. Kaplan, who plays the self-acknowledged "smartest man in baseball," Kippy Sunderstrom. Kaplan takes the weight of the production onto his shoulders and swaggers around the stage as if the burden were no heavier than his jersey.

Not much actually happens during the play's first half, which serves merely to introduce all the characters. The task of narration falls to Kaplan's Sunderstrom, and he enthusiastically delves into the details of Darren Lemming's past, his coming out of the closet during a nationally televised press conference, and the arrival of the unfortunate savior of the season, the racist and intolerant relief pitcher Shane Mungitt. Even with the lack of action, Kaplan's energy—along with some well-timed jokes—keeps the production pushing forward, despite the script's self-indulgent need to begin with the story of Adam and Eve.

The play really gets started near the end of the first act, when Mungitt publicly admits to feeling uncomfortable in the locker room with his gay teammate. When the second act begins, Mungitt has been suspended, and the Empires have struggled without him. A public apology lands him back in the clubhouse, but although his talent puts the Empires back on top of their division, his presence creates tension in the locker room, a tension that ultimately leads to outrage and tragedy.

As Mungitt, Peter Hawk plays the white-trash right-hander with an understated presence that ensures he stands out on a stage that's full of full-of-themselves alpha males. His gruff voice and casual delivery try to steal every scene, seemingly without Hawk's permission.

Cully Long's set design is simple: the floor of the stage is painted in tan and green with a couple of thick, white stripes, as if it were an anonymous corner of a baseball field. Four lockers and stools sit on each side of the stage for most of the production. A platform upstage triples (pun intended) as the locker room's shower as well as a press podium and pitching mound. What serves to change the scenery are subtle lighting changes, designed by Travis Walker. And natural-sounding sound effects, such as running water, clicking shutters, and play-by-plays, help create a believable atmosphere regardless of how many props are present or lacking in any given scene.

The only noticeable weakness in the Gallery Players's production is the Pulitzer-nominated script itself. Greenberg's characters are little more than clichés: the dumb rookie Jason seemed a near carbon copy of Bull Durham's Nuke LaLoosh; the Hispanic players Martinez and Rodriguez serve no purpose other than to curse in Spanish; the wise, old Skipper is reminiscent of, well, every manager in every baseball movie ever made; and the flamboyant sports agent is so "gay" that he skips when happy and eats ice cream when depressed. What elevates the characters beyond stereotypes and makes the audience members care (and they care a lot) is the cast members' inspired performances. Rodriguez and Martinez's jokes about Kawabata's mother could easily fall flat but instead provoke belly laughs.

The stereotypes also make the play's moral messages come off a bit trite. In Greenberg's world, only ignorant people are racist and only religious people are intolerant hypocrites, but true friendships last forever. The script leaves a few conflicts somewhat unresolved in its attempt to be taken seriously as a social commentary, but it still can't manage to create more complexity and believability than a Julia Roberts story about a hooker with a heart of gold.

But never mind the playwright's attempts to dress up his lighthearted frolic as an intellectual tragedy. Take Me Out is two hours of fun, witty comedy. The clever direction, impeccable production values, and first-rate acting by the Gallery Players make this show a genuine must-see.

Saving Grace

We see them in malls and hospitals, on street corners, and mostly on the news, waving their fists at the latest injustice: religious fanatics, lecturing from their pedestals, hoping to sway anyone and everyone they pass to adopt their way of thinking. In Gip Hoppe's comic and heartrending drama, Mercy on the Doorstep, two such fanatics, a rigid pastor, Mark (Mark Rosenthal), and his newly born-again wife, Rena (Jenn Harris), move into the home of Rena's feisty, alcoholic stepmother, Corrine (Laura Esterman). Their intention is to save her soul, but they soon learn that leading a foulmouthed, iron-willed woman to God is by no means an easy task. The play opens in Corrine's living room, which soon becomes Rena and Mark's living room when it is revealed that her late husband left everything to his daughter and son-in-law in return for their assistance in leading him to Jesus. Essentially, this leaves Corrine homeless, but if she gives up her sinful ways and embraces Mark's preachings, they will allow her to continue living in the home. She, of course, balks at the idea, screaming profanities, waving an empty liquor bottle, baiting Mark with insults, and later telling Rena, "My bull---t meter went into red the minute he walked in here."

Surprisingly, given Corrine's dazed condition, that meter is correct. Mark has too many inner demons to be the good Christian man he badly wants to be. Rosenthal has this character down so well that a single glare can hold the same weight as a lengthy monologue. The females exchange loud, cutting words when they are upset, but Rosenthal sits silently in a chair with anger practically steaming from his ears.

Rena is the most sympathetic member of the household, loved by both Mark and Corrine for the same traits they hate in each other. Mark admires her obedience and unconditional loyalty as a wife and Christian, whereas Corrine longs for Rena's wild side. Both are so busy accusing the other of offending Rena the Pious Wife or Rena the Repressed Rebel that neither can see her for who she is: a compassionate, insightful woman capable of loving both her husband and stepmother with the same open heart.

Rena has had bad luck in life: two parents who seemed more intent on partying than raising her, and whom we sense even encouraged her self-destructive behavior. Marrying Mark and embracing Jesus changed her life but not her personality. We see remnants of the old Rena, especially in a funny and telling scene where she hears the seductive Marcy Playground song "Sex and Candy" on the radio and starts innocently dusting to its tempo. After a quick look around to ensure no one is watching, she turns up the volume and throws herself into it, dancing on the table, straddling the banister, and unabashedly indulging in the very behavior she and Mark are trying to beat out of Corrine.

Corrine and Mark's fights often feel like a tug of war over Rena, who watches them try so hard to save each other's souls that they wind up destroying their own. Their fights illustrate the need for conversion, though not necessarily in a religious sense. Everyone needs to change, including Corrine, whom Rena still wants to lead to God not because she fears Corrine is headed for eternal damnation but because she wants to see her stepmother embrace something other than a bottle.

With Mercy on the Doorstep Hoppe has created three very nuanced and believable characters whom audiences can easily invest their emotions in. After seeing their pain and learning about their troubled pasts, we want them to find happiness. Despite their bickering and unwavering confidence in their own beliefs, Corrine, Mark, and Rena are all lost souls who desperately need to be saved, not by religion but by each other.

At the Local Bodega

The fourth edition of Seven.11 Convenience Theatre—a grouping of seven "brown"-centric, 11-minute plays that all take place in a convenience store—is a mixed bag with a few flatfooted non-dramas amid the generally well-executed short pieces. Nearly all of the Kraine Theater's 99 seats were full, and the production—committed to producing shows by and about the South Asian, Asian-American, and, to a lesser extent, general minority experience—has just been extended due to popular demand. Perhaps it's not that theater is dead, just that audiences—even "typical" theatergoing audiences—are tried of the same old same old.

When Inspector Shankar Ladoo Prasad (Sean T. Krishnan), the magnifying glass-wielding detective in "Who Killed Mr. Naidu First?"—a musical whodunit featuring clever lyrics, and the evening's best production—burst into a lyrical rendition of a Bollywood tune, the audience roared with laughter and clapped with recognition. The Clue-inspired murder mystery pits local customers with names as evocative as Mrs. LotuslLeaf (Alicia Ying), Ms. Lychee Martini (Meetu Chilana), and Professor Pappadum (John Wu) against the detective, all of them wondering who did in the happy convenience-store owner (Andrew Guilarte).

As good as "Mr. Naidu" is, Desipina & Company, with its seemingly strong financial and audience support base, should be a bit more exacting in its search for enticing short plays. Regrettably, "Jaffna Mangoes" and "Homecoming," the evening's worst pieces, begin the show. In the former, the casting barely rises above the kind of stereotyping this production should be working to undermine, and the story, if it can be called that, lives up to its slice-of-life characterization so well that nothing interesting actually happens. Once Bill Caleo's "racist, angry white man" leaves the store, the three brown men (Krishnan, Guilarte, and Jerold E. Solomon) can go back to their kindhearted joking. The play should portray the relationships, struggles, and identities of these men without pitting them against a two-dimensional, motivation-less white scapegoat.

In "Homecoming," Tessa (Chilana), a shrill and utterly annoying young woman, happens upon an old flame working in a local convenience store. Her emotional outburst materializes out of thin air before we're finally told that she's coping with her father's recent death. Dean (Caleo) doesn't share her desire to rehash the past, or her lexicon of years-old tidbits. As we watch them emotionally wound each other in an all too common display of the private in a public space, we wonder why the convenience store conveniently stays customer-free for the duration of their fight. Of all the short plays, "Homecoming" fails to make the production's unifying location a believable setting for its action.

"Undone" is an underdeveloped tween drama about Fizza (Chilana), who is planning to run away from her parents' strict house and an enforced marriage. The plot twist of sorts—a past relationship between Fizza's buddy Jill (Alicia Ying) and the store clerk (John Wu)—almost works, but it ultimately gets drowned by a girl-power rant that should be more subtly handled. Similarly, the production's other musical, "Bombay Screams," showcases excellent singing by Guilarte, Caleo, Chilana, and Solomon, but the lyrics don't rise above Rent-style sermonizing about Gen X multi-culti angst. Both shows have potential but need further development to sharpen the characters and keep them from thematically predictable places.

The production's strongest shows, by far, are "Who Killed Mr. Naidu First?," "The Old New World," and "Kung Fu Hustle." Dude (Wu) and his advice-spitting wingman Bro (Solomon) steal the show in the jocular "Kung Fu Hustle," about a shy geek attempting to seduce a new girl with a black belt in karate (Ying) by lying about his martial arts skills. It's a recognizable and very pleasing get-the-girl story that, aside from being snappily written and well acted, lets the characters exist in terms that contain, but are ultimately larger than, their racial identities.

"The Old New World" is a futuristic look at the race to annex the unoccupied United States of America by the world's three superpowers: China, India, and Brazil. The plot, which ends with a satisfying twist that I won't spoil here, lightheartedly imagines the implications of a worldwide shift in economic and political power. The story's use of the convenience store, the site of a futuristic expedition, is imaginative, giving the actors material that seems to put their energy to good use.

Despite the production's artistic unevenness, Desipina & Company seems to understand something many larger, mainstream companies have yet to figure out: minority audiences are starving for theater that attempts to dramatize their stories. Such theater uses those audiences' cultural markers as points of reference and also casts a veritable rainbow of actors who act outside of the narrow sliver of roles we are used to seeing them play.

With its resounding level of support, Seven.11 Convenience Theatre will probably be around for several more years. In that time, it should not only continue promoting the dramatization of untold brown stories but also use its newly acquired cultural cachet to promote the very best in theater, regardless of color.

Anatomy of a Breakup

Everyone wants what he or she cannot have, especially when it comes to love. Single men and women, eager to find lasting love, envy friends in relationships. But these same friends in relationships oftentimes covet the freedom and unpredictability of being single, particularly when their love begins to sour. When it comes down to it, being in love can be terrible, and being alone can be worse. At least in the hands of Jason Mantzoukas and Jessica St. Clair, a comedy team described by some as a modern-day Gracie Allen and George Burns or Elaine May and Mike Nichols, the miserable underbelly of love also proves hilarious.

The duo, whose last show, I Will Not Apologize, was featured at HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, has teamed up once again for We Used to Go Out at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. The result is a laugh-out-loud look at the breakdown of a relationship.

Playing themselves in a Curb Your Enthusiasm sort of way, Jason and Jessica are a couple on the brink of a breakup. We Used to Go Out focuses on that time when both parties know it is over but stay together anyway because, well, it is the evil you know versus the evil you do not know. From spicing it up a bit (with a lesbian couple Jason finds on the Internet) to learning how to please your man properly (let's just say there is flicking and clapping—Jessica's "signature move"—involved), the show is an unapologetically vulgar look at the lengths people take to make everything O.K.

But the many attempts to save their relationship fail, and Jessica and Jason do end their relationship over a nasty exchange of answering-machine messages. But as bad as they thought their love life was, single life proves to be even more pitiful. Jason, wearing three-week-old sweatpants (Jessica threw his clothes out on the street, and most were taken by a homeless man), comes crawling back to her, only to find out she has fallen for a ne'er-do-well named Scooter, also played by Mantzoukas. To Jason, this is not a name but "a mode of transportation," which only adds insult to injury.

This show is nothing new—anyone who has been through a painful breakup, or has endured being single after a painful breakup, can relate, and yet it feels entirely fresh. Mantzoukas and St. Clair have a chemistry, even during their most off-color moments, that most real couples would envy. They are bold and wonderful comics who take ordinary and rather depressing material and repackage it in a totally spontaneous way.

Mantzoukas's charming nature and quick wit are very appealing. And considering the way things end up for Jason, women who have trouble separating the character from the actor will surely want to help heal his wounds. He plays not only Jason and Scooter but also Peggy, Jessica's rather manly best friend, and he could easily steal the show from a lesser stage presence. But St. Clair holds her own. Even at her most vulgar, she draws empathy and speaks to the confused woman inside many of us. She also bares a striking resemblance to Rachel McAdams, which makes a surprising scene involving, of all things, the movie The Notebook (in which McAdams starred) all the more hilarious.

We Used to Go Out is 50 minutes and $5 well spent. No matter how bad your love life might be, you will leave realizing that it could always be a lot worse, which, to my mind, is priceless.