Missing the Muse

In epic poems, the poet traditionally begins by invoking the muse, a fickle divinity who may grant the writer the good fortune and power to accomplish his endeavor. In Sam Shepard's Geography of a Horse Dreamer, now playing in an excellent revival at the Big Little Theater, Shepard dramatizes his own anxieties about the muse deserting him. Two slow-witted gangsters, Beaujo and Santee, guard Cody in a rundown motel room. He's handcuffed to a bed in a position like Prometheus or Christ, kidnapped from rural Wyoming because he possesses the mysterious ability to predict horse races in his dreams as if he were a shaman receiving secret code from the spirit level.

Unfortunately, he's been in a slump lately. The gangsters' boss, Fingers, has hinted they're all in big trouble if Cody's luck doesn't improve soon. In fact, the boss tells his toughs, they've now been relegated to dog races.

In the next act, Cody's on a hot streak—except all the pressure seems to be making him crack. Fingers (Peter Picard), a gaudy mobster who's half clown and half godfather, swings by to check up on them with his "heavy," an eerie skeleton of a doctor. Cody's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre: he leaps and skitters around the hotel room, talking in voices, twitching, and hiding under the bed.

Fearing that his luck may be running out, the doctor tries to extract from his suitcase some bones that, he claims, contain a residue of lucky dream serum. Before he can finish the job, though, Cody's shotgun-toting cowboy brother barges through the door to rescue him, such an improbable deux ex machina proving that Cody's luck hasn't run out after all.

Shepard wrote the play while living in England during a period when he contemplated giving up playwriting for rock 'n' roll, shortly after his first taste of real success as a writer. In the play's allegory, Cody represents Shepard's compulsion to go on writing plays after a serious funk of self-doubt and writer's block. Perhaps the gangsters symbolize critics and producers who hold the artist hostage, or perhaps they are the artist's own dim-witted inner demons.

Director Ann Bowen chose to eliminate one very English detail of the original script, probably to cut the need for an extra actor. The very last thing we're to see in the script is a waiter who delivers Champagne that the gangsters ordered from room service near the top of the act. The waiter has a Joe Orton-esque punch line, entirely cut here, that hinges on absurdly maintaining the proprieties of class distinctions in the face of absolute chaos.

Fingers responds, as the lights begin to dim, by requesting the waiter to play Cody's inspirational record. In this production, however, Fingers does not address the waiter or the audience but speaks, inexplicably, to the sound board operator. While it may seem like a frivolous detail, the fact that the whole play culminates with this line makes its importance pivotal.

Nonetheless, Fingers' direct address has its own virtues—it is a strange, disconcerting choice to end a strange play (made more disconcerting because of the somewhat happy ending Shepard foists onto an otherwise darkly surrealist tragicomedy).

Overall, the acting captivates. Tim Scott literally foams at the mouth with hysteria as the smarter, more anxious of the two thugs, to great comic effect. Brian Tracy, on the other hand, captures Beaujo's sensitive side while downplaying his character's foolishness, making him more human and less like a parody of a comic book gangster.

As Cody, Tom Pavey displays an impressive range of quick-changing moods and voices as he grows ever more schizophrenic from his inner visions and paranoid about external threats. Pavey jumps and jitters with a nearly religious fear and trembling by the end. Likewise, David Elyha is downright creepy as the doctor, especially when, like a medieval shyster hawking holy relics, he holds forth on the magic bones that fill his suitcase.

The production is minimal to the point of cutting out the multimedia projection the script calls for to represent Cody's dreams—as well as cutting a couple of minor characters. However, the actors have the magnetism, in this small black-box theater, to convey the mania of a religious awakening or nightmare, as it may be. The moral of the fatalistic overtones throughout Geography seems to be that the gods are fickle, but they're not without a sense of humor.

Thankfully for us, Shepard's own muse did not desert him, and he went on to write the major plays that made him famous. Moreover, his lucky streak seems to have continued with this new production of Geography, which plays with his one-act Chicago on the same program.

Brave New World

One of the best things that BecauseHeCan does is to serve as a kind of consumer warning for its audiences. Some theatergoers may know their Pinter better than their printer, so they are apt to learn a few things here about the dangers of computer identity theft. But while clever, the play ultimately becomes a victim of its own pretensions: it tries too hard to be edgy and comes off as somewhat entertaining yet devoid of significance. Moreover, the drama, unlike in most suspense plays, falls instead of escalates as the production proceeds. What results is something that starts with a bang and ends with a whimper. The piece is a techno-thriller by two-time Pulitzer nominee Arthur Kopit that takes place in a digitally dystopian New York City and concerns Joseph and Joanne, a seemingly happy, wealthy, and successful Manhattan couple. A member of the city's literati, Joseph (Ronald Guttman) is a publisher and apparently an author in his own right. One night he invites over for dinner a group of his creative writing students. Among them is a blue-haired, disheveled young man in tattered jeans and a trench coat, named Astrakhan (Karl Gregory).

The "he" in the title presumably refers to Astrakhan, who, unbeknownst to Joseph and Joanne, is a gifted and sinister hacker poised to use his computer skills against them. You might wonder why, but then there is that title. More to the point, Astrakhan has fallen in love (or lust) with the fetching Joanne (Ylfa Edelstein). Determined to have her, he digitally assumes the identity of her Luddite husband to make it appear that Joseph is an international dealer in child porn. Most of the play takes place "after the fact," and there are lengthy explanations of how identity theft occurs and what will happen legally to Joseph, as well as what has (or has not) already occurred between Astrakhan and Joanne.

Clearly, Astrakhan wants to Oedipally assume Joseph's sexual relationship with his wife. But he also wants to shift the weight of cultural power from Joseph's old world—that of books, literature, and print—to a new age of digital supremacy, where who you are is not as important as the computerized representations of who you seem to be.

The production suffers from a number of problems. The sound and lighting try to seem gritty, but one can only take so many buzzing noises and strobe-light effects, especially when the strobe light exactly matches the color of the antagonist's hair. The dialogue, though sometimes glib and witty, often seems as if it is trying too hard to be those things. Meanwhile, this Manhattan couple comes off as too sophisticated for their own good. Joseph and Joanne are so self-assured, smug, and shallow (but in a "aren't we clever and cosmopolitan" kind of way) that you almost don't care if their lives get ruined.

Also, at times the lines are so pithy and so frequent that some of the actors, especially in the second scene between Joseph and the FBI agents, ran over them without giving the language room to breathe. In several scenes, the actors seemed in a hurry just to get through the dialogue.

Although it's a thriller, little is exciting about the play. The mystery at the beginning—why Joseph is being targeted by the police—is intriguing. But the action never builds, and the last scene results in a rambling explanation of what buttons Joseph pushed on his laptop while sitting on the porch months ago.

That said, credit is due to the dazzling set design, When the audience walks in, it sees what seems like a cross between some kind of near-future S&M bar and a dungeon inside a computer. The stage is set in an arena style, and all around the walls there are 0's and 1's, the binary code that is the basis for all computer coding, while green lights project globular shapes over the floor. It is a bit overwhelming, but that's the idea: the audience should feel estranged from the new, technological world represented by Astrakhan.

As Joseph, Guttman not only looks the part but played the too-cool-for-the-New-School act particularly well, especially when things begin to fall apart. He seems unperturbed that his world has been turned inside out. Edelstein, as Joanne, balanced the part of the slut and the good wife without giving the audience too much of either, ambiguously leaving the truth up to conjecture. As Astrakhan, Gregory was funny and had the range to come off as sick too, although the monologue he delivers at the end, which should be macabre, was somewhat stale.

The play has some saving moments—among them, its often smart and humorous dialogue, even if it is delivered with such coolness and so quickly that its richness can be overlooked. Overall, though, BecauseHeCan simply can't: it's an impressive-looking production but in bad need of repair.

Self Quest

Vivid dreamscapes, often disturbing and completely mesmerizing, have been faithfully rendered in Anthony Cerrato's fantasia Under the Sign of the Hourglass…, which was inspired by the fantastical short stories of Bruno Schulz. The Polish writer's story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass deals largely with a young man's desire to know himself through memories of his childhood and the frustration that that quest ultimately brings. Searching is a key element of Schulz's work (he published two story collections during the 30's) and of this piece: Joseph, the young man, searches frantically for "the Book," an ur-text of sorts that seems to contain all that he wants to know. The Book is illusive, to be sure, but is also at once powerful and fragile.

In one late scene, Joseph tears apart a book in rage, perhaps because he now understands that "the Book is a myth in which we believe when we are young, but which we cease to take seriously as we get older," as his frenzied father, Jacob, has warned him. Joseph's search is one that may well last until he is dead; the penultimate scene, a dark exchange between Joseph and his father, involves a ghoulish revelation that seems to evoke both life and death.

Every visual stimulus in this surrealist fantasia—from petticoats and lamps to drapes and book spines—works together to present a harmonious palette of oatmeal, gray, and birch brown that is accented with a shocking, violent red. Before our minds grasp the general narrative, our eyes recognize the hauntingly resonant color schemes that separate this place from our waking life. Annie Simon (costumes), Owen Hughes (lights), and Cerrato (set design) display a triumph of theatrical collaboration that communicates the texture of Joseph's psychological journey (or descent).

The ensemble cast deserves just as much praise. As a group, the members make a deceptively physical performance seem easy; they tumble and fall gracefully like acrobats. In several scenes, the cast performs in a kind of precise unison, turning their sounds and movements into an agitated soundscape. The performance begins with all seven characters draped on top of one another on a long bench. Slowly they awaken and regard us and one another, only to collapse back into sleep or unconsciousness at several points during the evening.

Rob Skolits (the mad, frenzied father) and Stephanie Taylor (the coolly distant mother) evoke the kind of unspoken gender warfare that seems to bubble beneath the surface of Schulz's work. Paulina and Polda (Cady Zuckerman and Sarah Politis), along with the family's tyrannical maid, Adela (the arresting Vivian Smith), are all coquettish, sensual women who tease the men without having to say a word. Mother's red hair and Adela's red lips (not to mention her lusciously full cleavage) do all the talking. Actual sex is a non-subject, but the agony of desire is present in nearly every scene. John Okabayashi rounds out the fine cast as several smaller characters, including the gentleman caller Schloma, who crumples Joseph's drawings without warning.

Words like "fantasia" and "surrealist" might repel the casual theatergoer, but they shouldn't. Even for those not familiar with Schulz's fiction (which I wasn't, until I had to write this review), it is possible to empathize with the distress that searching fruitlessly brings and the innate desire to know where we've come from, despite the show's lack of a clear narrative. The desire to know gives Joseph forward momentum, although he is taunted, teased, and discouraged at every turn.

Seeing this show, I was reminded of another play, Spring Awakening, that is beginning its run at the Atlantic Theater and that I saw only a few days before. Like Hourglass, that play also reimagines texts conceived at another time and supposedly for another historical moment. Frank Wedekind, writing during the turn of the 20th century, exposes the consequences of societal sexual repression. Director Michael Mayer and songwriter Duncan Sheik dramatize the angst that the show's young protagonists feel, with pop-rock ballads and American Idol vocals.

In both cases, we see bits of ourselves onstage, and, because of the excellent stagecraft, we can sometimes bridge the gap between "us" and "them" that both the fourth wall and time have created.

Fools and Lovers

Many a Shakespearean play has been marred and mangled by a production team hell-bent on a half-baked "directorial concept." On the other hand, if Romeo and Juliet aren't scantily clad lesbian lovers or Hamlet isn't a breakdancing android from outer space, small Off-Off-Broadway productions of the Bard's most famous works can have a hard time selling tickets. Most of us can recall getting dragged glumly to stuffy productions of, say, Othello or King Lear out of a sense of swallowing our cultural medicine—at least, we vaguely remember the first two acts before we dozed off in the third. Why torture ourselves again? Especially when this summer there's a slew of free Shakespeare outdoors, where if nothing else we can enjoy the weather.

As I hunkered down in my seat for Kings County Shakespeare's new production of Twelfth Night in the BRIC Studio theater in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, I realized many other theatergoers must have had similar reservations about productions of Shakespeare's workhorses. Glancing around me in the vast, loft-sized studio, I noticed only two people in the audience who were not immediately connected to the production—and both of us were critics.

King's County Shakespeare presents Twelfth Night in a traditional interpretation that attempts, as they say, to be "true to the text." Sets are minimal, though production values are quite high: the elaborate period costumes and the professionalism of the cast are strikingly evident. The actors' comic timing—and the pace in general—seemed to lag in the beginning, most likely a result of the actors having to perform to a nearly empty house that appeared even emptier because of its cavernous size. When they'd warmed up, however, the actors displayed a rollicking physicality and deft sense of the play's bawdy innuendo.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's most raucous, gender-bending romantic comedies. Viola disguises herself as Cesario, a page of Duke Orsino, after she believes her twin brother, Sebastian, drowned in a shipwreck. Orsino, whom Viola is secretly smitten with, sends "Cesario" to help him court Countess Olivia, who ends up falling in love with Viola, albeit in her garb as a boy, instead. (In case you wondered, there are no steamy lesbian scenes in this production, though the text seems rife with possibilities for a directorial opportunist.) When Sebastian returns, of course, misplaced identities—and affections—run amok.

The focus of this production, however, is on the ample and impish subplot supplied by the fools. Sir Toby Blech, Sir Andrew Augecheek, and Feste carouse, drink, sing, and play pranks on their priggish foil, the Puritan Malvolio. They trick him into thinking that Olivia is in love with him, despite the fact that he is her humble servant. The fools design ways to make sure he's humbled, if not humiliated, too, whether it's getting him to dress in silly leggings or to repent his desires by locking himself away in a dark box.

Ronald Cohen as Sir Toby and Ian Gould as Sir Andrew are the standouts in a talented and multicultural cast. Cohen, playing the ruby-nosed, salacious old sop, highlights Toby's gregarious desperation to find joy in what remains of his life, even at the expense of others, in a way that is, by turns, hilarious, revolting, and sad. Gould, not to be outdone, displays a limber comic chutzpah as the foppish and cowardly Sir Andrew.

Joseph Small's Malvolio has the necessary malevolent, sneering authority that makes his character enjoyable as the butt of jokes. The fetching Martina Weber, as a gender-twisted Feste, sang lovely, pitch-perfect songs (some original and some traditional) accompanied by live fiddle, percussion, and mandolin. Jovis DePognon was also notable for his twinkle-eyed interpretation of Sebastian.

Director Deborah Wright Houston doubled as the costume designer and chose to use sumptuous, Restoration-era period costumes with frills, lace ruffs, oversized gold buttons, and beautiful details and fabric. The press information claims that she deliberately chose Restoration-era (as opposed to Renaissance) costumes because they "illuminate the excesses in this play," but I am not sure how many in the audience could easily distinguish one era's frilly shirts from another's.

The missing element in the production I saw was a real audience, which was so spread out in the sea of folding chairs that people were too self-conscious to laugh much. The inevitable hushed tone was far removed from the far from stuffy productions in Shakespeare's day: actors had to compete with prostitutes, rowdy conversations, and food thrown from the pit at a time when seeing and being seen were often more important for audience members than the play itself.

This production would have fared better in a much smaller venue, where intimacy allows even a tiny audience a more unified response. It's particularly important in comedies, and most especially in Shakespeare's, where contemporary audiences often need camaraderie and cues from others to relax and enjoy themselves.

Law and Disorder

Laws based on Christian precepts, a leader with a penchant for enforcing the letter of the law, and citizens enraged at having their morality legislated: contemporary America or Shakespeare's 17-century Vienna? The correlation is easy to recognize, and it's made even more apparent in Hipgnosis Theater Company's modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Though the show suffers somewhat from stylistic unevenness, most of its elements work well enough for the production to succeed. A clash of acting styles involving two characters pivotal to expressing the play's theme is the main culprit for the stylistic jaggedness. Angelo (David Look), whom Duke Vincentio (Nick Brooks) deputizes to enforce the Viennese law against fornication before going undercover as a friar to get to know his subjects, is the very embodiment of the governmental hypocrisy that gives the play its immediacy today.

Look's subtle, naturalistic portrayal of the character, however, gets overshadowed by the more declamatory delivery and sharply rendered characterizations rendered by some of his cast mates. Failing to depict this villain in sharper relief is a missed opportunity to drive home the play's theme with greater punch. Ditto for Brooks's portrayal of the Duke, who, as the play's protagonist and Angelo's superior, is uniquely placed to balance his deputy's nefariousness.

It is hard to tell whether this discrepancy is a result of the performers' independent decisions or directorial design. But either way, a more pronounced delivery on the part of these two performers would have allowed the production to strike a more resounding chord.

Separately, however, most aspects of the show work admirably and provide considerable entertainment for a modest ticket price. Justin Steeve radiates a leading man's charisma as Claudio, the young man condemned by Angelo to death for premarital sex with his betrothed, Julietta—portrayed by the ethereally sweet Adelia Saunders. Claudio's chaste sister, Isabella, who is faced with the prospect of yielding her virginity to the lust-tempted Angelo in exchange for her brother's life, is played with grace, passion, and command by Erika Bailey.

Doubly cast John Kevin Jones is equally impressive as the fastidious lord Escalus and the absurdly abhorrent executioner Abhorson, while Julian A. Rozzell Jr. delights as the shady, ethically challenged Lucio. Elizabeth Mirarchi, as the nun Francisca, demonstrates a comedic flair in her facial expressions and body language despite limited speaking lines, and Wayne Scott's booming voice and domineering physicality make the prisoner Barnardine's short stage time memorable. The purity and emotiveness of Sarah Sokolovic's singing voice made me wish that the Bard had further indulged his musical fancy with the character of Mariana, the woman whom Angelo had previously planned to marry and who assists Isabella and the friar (the Duke in disguise) in their plan to have Angelo answer for his hypocrisy.

Director John Castro's decision to stage the play in the round provides the audience with an intimate look at the characters' ethical dilemmas, aided by Steeve's additional contribution as lighting designer and the combined efforts of Steeve, Rozzell, and Lara Evangelista as scenic designers. The audience surrounds the playing space, while a rectangle of regularly spaced flats painted to appear shabby surrounds the entire set and provides ample entries and exits that are well suited to the logistical complexities of producing Shakespeare.

The drab gray and light-green walls, dotted with the dull metallic luster of cheap industrial wall lamps and complemented by the paint-splattered wood floor, effectively evoke the seedier areas of town where the sex trade—one of Angelo's targets—occurs. Though the lighting equipment is limited, Steeve makes apt use of what is available to define different locations and enhance mood. In addition, composer and bassist Luke Mitchell provides, by himself, a gut-grabbing live soundtrack.

Costume designer Krista Thomas playfully translates Shakespeare into the present day with ensembles that speak to the characters' societal roles and defining traits. Angelo is appropriately staid in stark black, Escalus stuffy in seersucker and a bow tie, and brothel proprietor Mistress Overdone (the saucy Kate Dulcich) tawdry in a hot pink bustier.

A unifying acting style might have tied this production's disparate yet successful elements more tightly together, but as it stands, Hipgnosis's take on Shakespeare's examination of the crossroads of law and morality provides entertainment and insight, each in good measure.

After Eden

The world was green once, full of new possibilities and unfound discoveries. They might include graceful images of fields and towns, vividly described food, and the beauty of a simple yet evocative piano accompaniment, all of which define the Michael Chekhov Theater Company's production of When the World Was Green. The piece was written by Sam Shepard and longtime collaborator Joseph Chaikin for the Olympic Arts Festival during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It tells the story of an aging chef who kills one of his patrons, whom he believes to be a cousin who must die because of a decades-old familial blood feud. The entire play takes place in the cell of the Old Man (Peter J. Coriaty). There, awaiting his punishment, he is interviewed by a young woman (Alia Tarraf) who may or may not be the daughter of the man he killed.

On a basic level, the play is a glorious homage to food. Indeed, for the Old Man, the world was green during his idyllic past as a cook. His memories are draped in a sweet kind of nostalgic melancholy. The Old Man's succulent descriptions of various foods and their preparations, and the scenes where he teaches the Interviewer how to cook a dish, make the piece also about the creative process itself. Although his life was governed by the grim fact that he had to murder his cousin, he was still able to find small moments of great beauty in the meals he created. Ultimately, though, the Interviewer wants his story, and this is the gift he gives to her.

The piano music, always present, was scored for the original production and playfully interacts with the characters. The pianist, Larry Chertoff, is just offstage but in view of the audience. The riffs and ditties that he plays not only focus distinct lines of dialogue—conveying, for instance, the importance of a scene ending—but are a constant reminder that the Old Man's mission in life was to kill his cousin, who was a pianist. It is as if the cousin is never gone, despite the Old Man's insistence that "it's all over now."

The Old Man, played by Peter J. Coriaty, deftly displays a kind of distant sadness as he ruminates about his life, devoted, as it was, to food and death. He also shows a rabid anger at the Interviewer over her insistence that he retell his story. Tarraf is appropriately pushy in the role and nicely builds up to revelations about her own past, although in her solo scenes, directed toward the audience, she was a bit overly sentimental.

The set is minimal: a metal cot, a small table, and a simple light representing a window all underscore the straightforward unpretentiousness with which Carol Kastendieck has directed this under-recognized Shepard classic.

"The joy in theater comes from discovery and the capacity to discover," Joseph Chaikin writes in The Presence of the Actor, his seminal book on acting. The joy in this production of When the World Was Green is great because there is so much to discover.

Warrior Princess

"Sleep now," a tired Prince Henry begs his teenage bride. "Let the castle rest." He does not see the fires of rage in her eyes when she slams the door, seething, "The castle will rest no more!" The young bride is Margaret of Anjou, and in Sarah Overman's historical drama Her Majesty the King, we watch her grow from a feisty young girl to a resilient woman warrior who casts her weakling husband aside to wage war over the land he has pathetically given to his enemies.

A story focusing on royal family feuds that span generations and divide countries can easily become bogged down in dry historical data. Fortunately, Overman's characters are so interesting that we listen closely to their poetic, old English dialogue, eager to learn the twists and turns that have brought them to this point in their lives.

The play opens with a young Margaret (Lisa McCormick) sleeping peacefully in a bedchamber veiled by a billowing white sheet. Suddenly, she is aroused by a ghostly murmur and the image of an old woman's scowling eyes looking through her curtain. She instantly recognizes the apparition as her deceased grandmother, Yolande of Aragon (Mimi Cozzens), who warns her to stay away from England and return to France. Horrified, Margaret points out that it is too late. She is on a boat that is about to dock on English shores.

Once she is plucked from the boat, Margaret scarcely has time to utter a greeting before she is met with swarming palace aides who adorn her with jewelry and harshly dress her in a shimmering red gown. After a ring is shoved on her finger, the aides deposit her in the bedroom where she is to meet her husband and produce an heir.

Unfortunately, her new groom, Henry VI (Michael Keyloun), is a lanky man with nervous ticks and jerky movements who is terribly frightened of leadership. While he shies away from the throne, his vicious opponent, the Duke of York (Jason Kolotouros), gets closer to seizing it for himself. Seven years after his marriage to Margaret, Henry VI finally gives in and lets him have it. Margaret is furious. Not only has she been married into a family that is about to become obsolete, but she has just given birth to a male heir. She wails that her son will now be a stranger to his country—"he who should be king!"

What we see next is the strength of a woman determined to fight for the life that is rightfully hers. If her husband is not going to act as king, she will do it for him. She sheds her youthful gowns and emerges as an armored adult warrior, played with vigor and fortitude by Diana LaMar. As an inspiring speaker and valiant and fearless fighter, she is followed into battle regardless of the fact that she is a woman.

The 15th-century Wars of the Roses ensue, in which the houses of York and Lancaster struggle for the throne of England. Yet there is so much more at stake than the outcome of this conflict. While the characters in this play dutifully assume the leadership roles they were born to play, they have moments of heartbreaking vulnerability where they long to marry for love and have children who are not likely to die on a battlefield. McCormick's portrayal of Margaret in these scenes is painful to watch. Beneath the layers of armor is a child's soul that yearns for a carefree life free of crowns, titles, or inheritance. Her character shines a harsh light on royal marriage, showing how easily the world forgets that people born to be pawns are still born people.

Margaret's role in history is not complimentary. Some would argue rightfully so, since she caused a war in a country she was sold to for peace. But in Her Majesty the King we see the human side of this often vilified queen. Here, she is a young girl, a doting mother, a loved mistress, a loyal granddaughter, and a strong, intelligent leader. This story is likely to make even her biggest detractors pause and wonder if maybe her only real crime in life was to skillfully play the cards she was dealt in a world where females were not expected to understand the game.

She Stoops to Banditry

There's nothing quite as delightful as watching a seasoned actor do what he was obviously born to do, and this is what happens when George Riddle performs "Heliotrope," a sweet pastiche song in which he woos a younger woman in vain. Well on in years (and experience), Riddle logged more than 5,000 performances in various roles in Off-Broadway's longest-running musical, The Fantasticks, and his confidence, skill, and joy are apparent in every twist, shuffle, and sidelong glance he throws at the audience. Here is the consummate professional, taking his time and using each word (and shrug) to maximum effect. Never mind that the song comes out of left field with little dramatic function to recommend it—in the hands of the seasoned Riddle, it sparkles with charm. Although his performance left me wishing I had a "repeat" button, it is, unfortunately, a diamond in the rough within an extremely roughhewn new musical, The Legend of Pearl Hart. Based on the true story of the last (and only female) stagecoach bandit, the action moves from 1893 to 1905 (and from Canada to Arizona) at a tiresome clip. In condensing Pearl's life, writers Rich Look (music) and Cathy Chamberlain (book and lyrics) skim over the surface of what could (and should) be a much more intriguing story. Any account of a woman with a gun will draw immediate comparisons to Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, and Look and Chamberlain do little to convincingly develop (and improve on) what that classic show created.

To say life turns on a dime in Pearl's world would be an understatement. Born in Ontario, she sees her fortunes evolve in quick, singular events. Cutting the high card from a deck lands her in a (troubled) marriage to Frederick "Black Jack" Hart and a move to Chicago. A lucky poker hand buys her a hotel in Arizona; a later, unlucky poker hand snatches it away. With such split-second jumps in the action, there's little dramatic build to the story's events and even less time for substantial character development. Even when Pearl decides to start robbing stagecoaches, we don't see the actual event; instead, we watch a crowd of people impassively watching the robbery from the sidelines.

Director Lea Orth's awkward, sometimes stagnant staging certainly doesn't help—actors often deliver lines straight out at the audience when they are meant to be communicated to actors standing far behind. And when Pearl's younger sister Lucy, an aspiring novelist, sells a play based on Pearl's life, the company launches into one of the most confusing sequences of stage movement I've ever seen. Characters haphazardly appear, disappear, and reappear, and while it looks as if they might be rehearsing for a play, it's impossible to decipher exactly what's going on. Eventually, they launch into a short retelling of Pearl's adventures, but it's like reading the Cliffs Notes of the Cliffs Notes—an abridged version of an already poorly abridged story.

Look's music tends toward a general country sound—what you might hear played on a piano at an old-fashioned saloon, perhaps—but it lacks a general cohesiveness, unless you count the prerecorded, overly synthesized accompaniment that gives every song a rather tinny sheen. The songs range from derivative contemporary musical theater (Pearl's solo "A Window Opens") to the twangy gems "Just a Cowboy" and "Buffalo's Gone"—full-fledged country ballads that showcase Keith Krutchkoff's buttery baritone to lovely effect. These songs do little to advance plot and character, however, functioning primarily as occasions to stop and sing.

The lyrics often further complicate matters. When Pearl arrives in Chicago, the company repeatedly welcomes her to "Shhhhhhhhhh—[pause]—cago," and my date had to lean over and ask me to clarify what they were saying.

Still, there are several effective numbers. Riddle, who plays bartender Joe, scores with the vaudevillian "Heliotrope" as well as with the trio number "What About Me?," sung by the men who long for Pearl's attention (including the fantastic Trip Plymale as Ed, the town drunk). And another diamond in the rough, Laurie Gamache (a veteran of the Broadway production of A Chorus Line), gives a strong performance in the fiery "New Girl in Town." As sometime saloon owner Kate, she is a vivid, confident presence, almost making us wish the show were more about her character instead.

As the title character, Catherine Hesse exudes plenty of heart but little of Pearl's pluck. That's not entirely her fault, however, as the simplistic material doesn't always give her much to work with. Michael Shane Ellis is appropriately villainous and shows off a lovely voice as Pearl's scoundrel of a husband, Jack, while the rich-voiced Krutchkoff comes off a bit stiff as Bill Truman, a cowboy star and ladies' man who falls hard for Pearl.

Is Pearl Hart's story worthy of dramatization? The creators would do well to delve deeper into the more exhilarating and provocative moments of Pearl's life rather than trying to include every minute detail. Perhaps then Pearl would comprise richer characteristics (both good and bad) that would make her more human and, as such, worth rooting for.

I Spy

"Avant-garde" and "risky" were the adjectives used in the press packet to describe The Terrorist, probably because "underdeveloped" and "ill-conceived," while more accurate, would come off as harsh. The Terrorist, an attempt at a noirish thriller and farce that is neither, is a tell-don't-show diatribe about the nation's state of affairs. Frank (George Tynan Crowley), a mealy-mouthed basement tinkerer, is developing some sort of thing—it looks like old wires and duct tape in a wooden box—that will help with the United States's anti-terrorist mission. Only problem is—as we're told about 700 times—it's kind of hard to tell the difference between terrorism and anti-terrorism when you start to try.

Frank's female companion (I'll call her that, because there isn't enough backstory or story-story to call her much else), Claire (Miriam Tabb), is a whimpering, doe-eyed young thing who communicates in pouts and shrill screams. Tabb isn't given much to work with, but manages to squeeze a few meager chuckles out of the role just by being strange.

Claire seems to want Frank in part because of the excitement he brings to her humdrum life. Or at least that's what she says. I doubted her, though, because Frank, with his rumpled clothes and hair, his loner's paranoia, and his inability to return a simple hug, seems to have the appeal of a street bum.

Frank's paranoia (and Claire's thrills) is derived from the attention of a pathetically unbelievable government agent, Paula, flatly played by Alice Connorton. Paula is the Big Brother in the bushes watching Frank's and Claire's every move. Connorton's best attempts at farcical menace hardly raised an eyebrow, and I found myself thinking that if her real-world counterparts at the Department of Homeland Security or, say, Guantánamo Bay were as ineffectual as this, we'd all be in a lot less trouble.

Perhaps Paula has dispatched Roger to watch Claire, his employee, or perhaps she hasn't. Who needs a story line, it's avant-garde! All we know for certain is that Roger, who looks like a kindly old gentleman, is keeping an eye on Claire's every move.

Director David Willinger seems to have been very excited by the cabaret setup of the Laurie Beechman Theater and has set a considerable bit of the action among the tables and chairs. We see Paula stalk Claire and Frank watch Paula. Roger watches Claire while Paula watches him. Because the world this play seems to conjure has no real through line to the one waiting for us outside, I was less than eager to be such an unwilling participant so much of the time.

Rather, I would have liked to sit in the dark and continue to ask my questions: If The Terrorist is a farce, why wasn't I laughing more? And if it's a farce that is meant to illuminate our present situation, why are its situations so unrecognizable? And while we're at it: why are three of the four actors so old? And why is the fourth black? Are these the results of Off-Off-Broadway's available resources, or were the casting decisions meant to communicate something about the nearly late, almost great baby boomer generation?

My questions remain unanswered. The good news is that for every bad play, there is the promise of a good one on the horizon. Sure, the Unofficial Yale Cabaret is finishing up its first season with a lemon, but there's always next time.

In Limbo

Jesus needs an attitude adjustment. Not only is he faced with the arduous task of transporting people to heaven (from an endless list scrawled on his clipboard), but his father seems to be ignoring him and fails to return his calls. In Eric Bernat and Robin Carrigan's entertaining but sometimes overwrought new play, Jesus and Mandy, a rather uncertain and pessimistic Savior arrives to convey Mandy to the afterlife. However, the feisty, terminally ill 12-year-old will have none of it. Instead, she proposes a different plan: touring the world as "Magical Mandy" with an agenda of "smiles, fun, and hugs." And maybe—just maybe—she will realize her most treasured fantasy and appear with Happy Sheckles on his annual Telethon for Terminal Tots.

From the get-go, we know that Mandy is a goner (the sock puppet doctors at St. Jude's Indigent Hospital tell us so), and the play takes place in limbo, as vividly imagined by set designer Mark T. Simpson and lighting designer Garth Reese. As Mandy's imagination whirls, the stark hospital room becomes a psychedelic playroom framed by shiny geometric clouds, shifting multicolored lights, and a bottomless chest of toys.

Set in the late summer of 1972, this "comedy with dance" becomes an homage to that era. Carrigan's perky choreography is well suited to C.P. Roth's vibrant sound design, and the bouncy 70's music occasions everything from hand-slapping to kicking to leaping into the air. Carrigan is particularly adept at detailing the sort of poker-faced, so-serious-it's-ridiculous dancing that is guaranteed to produce laughter, as in a spastic yet lyrical duet performed by Jesus and Mandy late in the show (feathers and pinecones are used to great effect). Although the dance sequences often arise inexplicably and go on a bit too long, they are easily the most enjoyable—and entertaining—elements of the show.

They also help to disguise the thinness of the plot. Confronted by Jesus, who insists that her time on earth has come to an end, Mandy enlists the help of her imaginary friends, who come to life to help her convince him otherwise. The suspense pivots on whether Mandy will finally agree to move on, but there's simply not enough conflict to captivate an audience for over two hours. Arranged arbitrarily, the episodic events—Jesus will get a makeover, go on trial, and experience a Freaky Friday kind of soul exchange before the night is through—fail to build into a satisfying climax.

The pace alternates between vibrant (the dance sequences) and lethargic (most everything else). Saddled with the bulk of the wordy script, Stephanie Fittro is the show's find as Mandy. A veteran of, appropriately, the national tour of Hairspray, she is a consistently perky and winning presence, and she carries the show triumphantly on her slight frame. From her brown pigtails to her saddle shoes, she puts forth her self-described "Mandy-ness"—an unwavering positive attitude and belief in good. She also manages to spit out dialogue at an amazing speed, including such unlikely phrases as "It's not like he perniciously prevaricated or perpetually perpetrated perjury. Per se."

Co-writer Bernat plays Jesus, and he is appropriately sullen and pessimistic as the forlorn Messiah, if a bit detached and slow in his line delivery. Costume designer Karl A. Ruckdeschel obviously had a ball costuming Mandy's friends, who suggest characters from the Austin Powers films. Sassy Ivy (Afi Ekulona) wears a clingy, metallic-silver bodysuit with red lapels, while good-natured Ned (John Haegele), a Ken-doll knockoff, prances around in a loud arrangement of orange and brown patterns.

In his concept for Beastro (Eddie Cruz), Ruckdeschel's ties to Avenue Q are most obvious (he is currently a costume design associate for that puppet-centric show), and Beastro, ostensibly a stuffed unicorn who is missing a horn, features a fantastical plush animal suit with an orange mane, set off by red sneakers. With no intelligible lines to speak of, Cruz nonetheless makes the most memorable impression of Mandy's three sidekicks—a terrific dancer, he successfully employs his physicality and facial expressions to fashion a captivating and altogether original creature.

Jesus and Mandy boasts some kicky one-liners ("You put the 'mess' in 'Messiah,' " Ivy tells Jesus), striking design elements, and amusing choreography. But the show's punch is buried beneath an overwritten script that makes it difficult—and often confusing—to travel from point A to point B.

Still, director David Drake makes a good case for the rewards of paying attention to Mandy, and as brought to life by Fittro, she is both endearing and sympathetic. With her earnest dedication to show business (the telethon is her dream performance), Mandy's faith in entertainment is transparent, as well as a bit heartbreaking. For in her mind, an audience is the gateway to salvation, and the forlorn Jesus needs only to step on a stage to get his groove back.

Behind the Music

It seems more and more rare to find plays that are uniquely theatrical. The lines between the artistic mediums have blurred to the point that there exists little distinction. For every brilliantly reinvented Sweeney Todd revival that could thrive only on the stage, there exists countless generic, Lifetime TV-movie rip-offs masquerading as insightful dramas. Television shows are made from movies. Movies are made from television shows. Plays are all too often glorified sitcoms or disease-of-the-week melodramas—or, worse, forced musicals adapted from mediocre movies. That which was once unique to each medium, particularly theater, has become pedestrian. Kate E. Ryan's mock-rockumentary Mark Smith is a noble attempt at marrying the genres, transferring to the stage the This Is Spinal Tap/A Mighty Wind style of moviemaking. Produced by 13P, a collective of playwrights working together to produce 13 new plays by 13 playwrights, the piece is an intriguing union of documentary filmmaking and live theater, with a campy dose of E! True Hollywood Story. The results are a mixed bag.

Still, Ryan has created a funny and surprisingly touching story. The play goes "behind the music" to explore the rise and fall of an 80's rock star, Mark Smith, the lead singer of the band Cheetah, which has fallen into obscurity. The unseen filmmakers explore Mark's fictional hometown by interviewing people who knew him or were influenced by him. Included are his mother and sister, his high school music teacher, his hair stylist, his girlfriend, and a devoted fan, among others.

Ryan's writing is particularly effective when telling the story of the mother and sister. The former, Margaret, is half-paralyzed on one side and limps about the house showing off pictures of a young Mark and proudly telling stories about his boyhood. Meanwhile, his younger, timid, and jealous sister, now a grown woman working at a local store, keeps her place in the background, as she has her whole life. The two women's stories are the most real, equal parts funny (their personalities) and sad (their lives).

The supremely talented six cast members play multiple roles to great effect. Alissa Ford is especially effective as Mark's mother, transforming her body into that of an elderly woman, complete with physical limitations and an affected speech pattern. She gives a transcendent performance.

Melissa Miller also does fine work, as Laurie, the teenage fan obsessed with Smith and his band. Fidgeting and stammering with insecurity, Miller realistically portrays a shy teenager lost in her musical obsession.

Each of the six actors inhabits his or her roles with conviction, creating a fully realized and three-dimensional performance that holds the show together even during its weaker moments. At those points, the play loses focus, weaving in and out of stories with no connection to Mark (particularly the superfluous story line featuring Mark's music teacher and his band of musicians).

Remaining true to the jumpy patchwork of documentary filmmaking, the play is composed of short scenes that start in the middle and end shortly thereafter. This creates many obstacles, but Ken Rus Schmoll's inventive direction fills in many of these story line gaps. Schmoll takes us literally behind the scenes as the audience watches each set change. He also has the actors assume their places in the setup of the upcoming scene as the set is being changed.

The concept of image as a manipulated and prepackaged persona is a major theme of the play, and Schmoll touches upon this with the clever use of melodramatic music cues and the aforementioned set changes, evoking the laughably serious atmosphere found in so many celebrity exposés. But as the play goes on, these changes become self-indulgent and too long, lacking the quickness that the medium of film permits.

Ultimately, Ryan has overwritten the show, yet at the same time, she has underdeveloped the story lines, leaving the play unfocused. It's not about Mark or Margaret or the family or the community—or some of these or all of these. It's about the concept of writing a mockumentary-style movie as a play.

This uneven playwriting exercise emphasizes style over substance, and it's all very familiar in an age of behind-the-scenes schlock TV. Even so, Ryan has managed to create a rich and complex assortment of characters. Mark Smith and her writing excel when the talented cast is allowed to tell her stories.

Hell Is Other People

Surrealism works best onstage when it's introduced immediately (from the time the audience members take their seats) or gradually (as it works its way into the play's structure, slowly becoming more dominant). Because we live in a realistic world, we assume that what we see will be realistic, even going so far as to "suspend our disbelief" and accept a few pieces of furniture and a painted wall as someone's living room. At the Gene Frankel Underground, Nosedive Productions's The Adventures of Nervous-Boy (A Penny Dreadful) starts out as a monologue-and-scenes piece focusing on a twitchy social misfit who feels as if he's cut off from the priorities and anxieties of his fellow New Yorkers. The ambient sounds of subway cars and idle bar chatter fill up the awkward pauses in his conversations. But soon we realize this is not the New York we know. This is a distinctly more evil, more rotten Big Apple, and this clever "comedy-horror play" mixes insightful dialogue about loneliness with a lovely bit of ultraviolence and pitch-black irony.

Nervous-Boy is a freelance art designer whose job and lifestyle allow for minimal human contact. He makes enough money working for clients from home that he doesn't need a roommate, and he unwinds by drinking in bars where other solitary people do the talking for him. Though his personal choices seem to be made with isolation in mind, he occasionally speaks of escaping his general feelings of dread by rejoining the world, until a meeting with someone "in the world" reminds him why he shuns it.

Nervous-Boy goes out to meet his friend Emily, a narcissistic, cellphone-dependent actress who talks loudly about nothing, much to his disgust. Their evening continues when they go to an avant-garde performance piece in Chelsea (which avid theatergoers will sadly recognize and laugh at) and an after-party. The more he interacts with Emily, the more he relaxes and starts connecting to the world. But there are no happy endings in store for him, and his life starts to get stranger, bloodier, and full of devils and zombies.

Playwright James Comtois could have made an interesting but forgettable show about the alienation one can feel in a big city. Instead, he's chosen to heighten these themes by introducing supernatural characters and death in order to wrap the audience in the protagonist's alienation. It's a risk, and it's good that he took it. (If you can't take risks Off-Off Broadway, where can you take them?)

The plot is helped along by Mac Rogers (Nervous-Boy), who is believably antisocial but also strangely magnetic. His intelligence and sincere conviction make him at times admirable, at times pitiable, but always watchable. As Emily, Rebecca Comtois avoids caricature in her portrait of the silly young actress. The ensemble members play a number of characters, and they are adept at being hilarious in one scene and slipping into the background in the next.

Sarah Watson's lighting design employs a subtle redirection of light in order to indicate scene changes; it's a smart way to keep the show going and allows the action to "reset" without plunging the audience into total darkness. The much-in-demand Qui Nguyen of the Vampire Cowboys Theater Company has stepped in to do some fine fight choreography in an elaborate bar brawl. Oh, and a few surprisingly "dressed" characters will have pre-show program readers going back to makeup designer Cat* Johnson's bio once the house lights come up.

In the real world, freelancers who choose to can live like shut-ins, like the protagonist in The Adventures of Nervous-Boy. But in the real world, most of them aren't friends with stoner demons. For those who want to escape into someone else's personal hell, the Gene Frankel Underground provides an entrance.

Prophet Taking

Sunday school was never terribly interesting. But unbeknownst to my 12-year-old self, the Bible is filled with the kinds of juicy stories about sex, death, and destruction that should make any adolescent salivate. I Have Loved Strangers, a new work by the excellent Clubbed Thumb company and part of its "Summerworks 2006" series at the Ohio Theater, draws on Bible stories about prophets, placing them in present-day New York City. The problem here is that there are far too many plots, characters, and anachronisms. Although there are a few shining moments as well as some good acting, what mainly results is a confusing work that attempts to do too much.

The play takes place in a New York that is like a modern-day Babylon. With elements of the stories of both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it tries to weave together three different plotlines about prophets and prophecies. What emerges, however, is not a melding of the old and the new but a stiff hodgepodge of conflicting narratives. The three stories are disjointed and seemingly unrelated, and are tied together only toward the end. Scenes from different plotlines are juxtaposed for maximum confusion. Not until late in the production does one finally begin to understand who each character is.

The first story has to do with a prophet in rags, Jeremiah (T. Ryder Smith), who by dress and speech seems to belong more to the Bible than the Big Apple. Not unlike the biblical Ezekiel, he breaks a bottle to symbolize the imminent destruction of the land, although it is not clear if this destruction is destined for New York or Jerusalem.

Jeremiah is first seen wandering aimlessly among contemporary Manhattanites, who are choreographed moving in sync in a manner closer to dance than drama. As the urbanites discuss funny and entertaining "slice-of-life" tidbits that would appeal mainly to an audience of New Yorkers ("Smith Street used to be a dump, but now it's really nice"), Jeremiah appears to be a lunatic prophet of doomsday, not unlike the contemporary kind. He could easily be wearing a placard that says, "Repent! The end draws near."

His story is in stark contrast to that of the far more mellow Hananiah, a new age prophet (and, in the Bible, a false one). He appears in domestic scenes with his wife, who is greatly swayed by his charisma. With his good looks, quick smile, and impervious self-assuredness, one could easily imagine him as a charming cult leader. The scenes between Hananiah (James Stanley) and his wife, Ruthie (Jennifer Ruby Morris), are funny at first, placing the seemingly otherworldly character of a prophet in a quotidian setting for a domestic satire, replete with such marital problems as miscommunication, petty fights, and bruised egos. The first scenes are quite amusing and fresh, but the narrative becomes more serious and tedious as the unhappy couple's relationship steadily worsens.

The third story line has to do with a ragtag group of revolutionaries who seem like the Weather Underground radicals of the 60's and 70's. Though it is not clear what they are fighting for and whom they are fighting against, their struggle slowly becomes part of the other two stories, leading to an explosive ending. There is also a fourth, half-told, and seemingly unrelated story line that involves two unnamed persons wandering through a forest, visiting a cemetery, and watching fireflies. Throughout most of these scenes, the theater is dark, and the actors are seen by the flashlights they carry.

As Jeremiah, Smith astutely assumes the role of someone who has become a medium of God. He writhes on the floor, bends his back and trembles, and appears to be in great pain and fear, not knowing what he will say next and how much trouble it will get him into. Stanley, as the hunky Hananiah, has a winning smile and easy affability that makes it easy to understand why his wife, played in a suitably understated fashion by the vivacious Jennifer Ruby Morris, has fallen for his charms. Despite his seemingly sweet veneer, he also shows signs that he is a sinister, manipulative figure desperately trying to control his wife.

The set is quite minimal: a terracotta-colored screen as a backdrop and a castle-like gate to add to the biblical feel.

I Have Loved Strangers is a challenging piece that, in moments, uses ironic humor to show a biblical figure in modern-day life. It also raises interesting questions about the nature of prophets and why people follow them. Overall, though, this overambitious production has an ambiguous quality that never quite lets the audience know exactly what is going on. Ultimately, we would profit from a bit more clarity.

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love

A glowing crimson heart adorns the front curtains of the June Havoc Theater, greeting audiences to the Abingdon Theater Company's new show, Elvis and Juliet. This clever visual aid, formed by two shining, carefully placed, and "gelled" spotlights, could also represent the combination of Fred Willard and David Rasche, two red-hot comedic talents who lend their brilliant timing and, yes, heart to Mary Willard's joke-heavy, plot-light script in this breezy production. The year is 1989, and newly engaged Yale seniors Juliet Jones and "Aaron" Lesley have spent their last month at college in a whirlwind courtship brought on by a mutual love of numbers and science. But before they can get married and take jobs in Washington, D.C., it's time to meet the parents. When Juliet starts asking direct questions about her fiancé's family, "Aaron" shamefully confesses that his first name is actually Elvis and that his father is a professional Elvis impersonator. Juliet, who we learn comes from Connecticut literary bluebloods, is surprised but agrees to come with Elvis to his parents' home in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, in the blue suede-furnished living room of the Lesley family mansion, patriarch Art (Fred Willard) and his wife Becky (a former exotic dancer) await their son's return from school. They are joined by daughter Lisa Marie (a vapid Madonna wannabe) and Art's brother Joey (David Rasche), who does a Rat Pack tribute act. Elvis's father is excited about his son's return from school, as he's booked them a gig at a hotel, where they'll appear as "Double Elvises."

Once the prodigal son and his intended appear, there's a clash of values, as the Lesleys fail to understand why their son wants to leave Las Vegas and become an economist. The clashes become more intense when the group travels to New Haven to meet Juliet's equally (but oppositely) offbeat family. Will Elvis and Juliet ever make it to the altar? When they do, will it be a little white church in New England or a drive-through chapel on the Strip?

Despite the titular homage to the tragic Shakespearean love story, there never seems to be any doubt that these two nerdy kids will make it. The script by Mary Willard (Fred's wife) presents only minor obstacles, mostly created out of bickering, that hardly seem insurmountable; one simply waits for the characters to talk themselves back into agreement. The story's structure seems more like a frame for larger-than-life characters and lots of jokes. They're good jokes, though, and a good cast has been assembled to tell them.

As the goofy young lovers, Haskell King (Elvis) and Lori Gardner (Juliet) are very endearing misfits who are both products of and completely different from their families. Willard plays Art as a misogynistic blue-collar guy who just happens to impersonate Elvis for a living, in a very subtle, straight-man performance. At the other end of the spectrum is Rasche, whose Uncle Joey lives like a member of the Rat Pack, using his booze-and-broads talk to mask the soul of a poet.

Christy McIntosh's Lisa Marie was the most over the top of the characters, but she sold the majority of her lines. (She was also the butt of the show's funniest joke; when the weight-obsessed Lisa Marie claims she is talented, Art responds that "dieting is not a talent.")

All of the actors have a way with comedy and portrayed very natural family dynamics, right down to the classic rhythms of arguing siblings. Director Yvonne Conybeare coaxed fine performances from her cast and made sure that no laugh was left behind. However, some of her staging was a bit too naturalistic and made for sloppy stage pictures. (While people in their living rooms don't think about upstaging each other, people on living room sets in theaters need to do so.)

During a long set change between the first and second scene in Act 1, the lighting designer employed motorized lights that swirled and changed colors and shapes in kaleidoscopic fashion. The audience laughed at this simple distraction from the heavy lifting going on behind the curtain. Elvis and Juliet definitely benefits from having colorful stars on display.

Bard in the Park

It's sunset in Central Park, and a man in a golf cart is driving around and emptying the trash cans. A few yards away, a 3-year-old is having a birthday party complete with balloons, picnic lunches, and shrieks of joy and discontent. It all looks pretty typical of parks around the world. Except for the Count of Rossillion, who can be seen stealing away to Florence in hopes of escaping a forced marriage to a woman of a lower caste. Only in New York. More specifically, only in Central Park, where the New York Classical Theater produces free stagings of the classics. Right now it's Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, and director Jay Paul Skelton has conceived an afternoon of entertainment that not only ends well but has a beginning and middle that are lots of fun too.

All's Well is one of the Bard's more peculiar comedies. Even more unsettling than two offstage deaths before the curtain's rise are the male romantic lead, who is pretty unlikable, and the story's moral, which seems to be that you can weasel your way into marriage, the army, or political power, provided you know the right people.

The right person is the ailing king of France who, upon being cured by a physician's daughter named Helena, agrees to force the object of her affection, the Count of Rossillion, into marriage. But Bertram, the count, wants little to do with Helena and spirits himself away to Florence, where he joins the army with his serpentine pal Parolles. If All's Well has a claim to notoriety, it is the "bed trick" by which Helena switches places with another woman, Diana, with whom Bertram plans to be intimate. As a result, Helena becomes pregnant and satisfies Bertram's marriage demand: that she mother his child.

The fun in this production is its kinetic energy. As the characters country-hop from Rossillion to France to Florence and back, the audience is led around one of the many ponds in the park. Along the way, Skelton gives us glimpses of the unscripted in-between scenes, like the theft of Parolles’s drum and his eventual capture. Shakespeare had both of these scenes occur offstage, but here they add flavor and diversity to the proceedings. If the audience keeps moving, then the production has no choice but to keep from being burdened by the play's sometimes long-winded text.

The entire cast deserves special commendation for its focus and audibility in the midst of such a distracting, unpredictable environment, even if Vince Nappo's howling Parolles and Elena Araoz's fiery Diana are the immediate standouts. On the evening I saw the show, there were a few well-covered line slips that bespoke a strong ensemble whose members are willing to look out for one another.

Sadly, when the sun went down and Classical Theater members began pointing flashlights at the actors' faces, it distracted a number of people in the audience and probably the cast too. Though understandable, this device broke the play's flow during the final scenes. Shakespeare probably never envisioned one of his comedies being played in pitch-black night. Raising the curtain an hour earlier would solve the problem, although weekday audiences would have to race here from the office.

This summer, many will likely be racing to Central Park to see the Public Theater's Macbeth. While that's sure to be a solid production, waiting in line for hours to squint at Liev Schreiber in the distance may shatter the mystique of free Shakespeare in the park. If that star-studded and sold-out show sounds unappealing, New York Classical Theater's dynamic and more traditional staging of Shakespeare may be a welcome alternative for some audiences.

Brief Encounter

Although the term "well-made play" often brings up negative connotations, the genre provides a simple format for imaginative dialogue and a tight plot. Dark Yellow, a new work by Julia Jordan, amply supplies both. The play tells the story of a night of intrigue and sex between Bob, a lonely, aging traveler, and Jen, a waitress at a rural bar. The play opens with a scene entirely in the dark. The only thing the audience experiences is the sound of Bob's voice as he tries to coax Tommy, a young boy, out of a hiding spot. The pair are being pursued by someone, although it is not clear whom. Though the opening rambles a bit too long, the scene ends in an exciting, surprising flourish.

Except for the first bit and a small epilogue at the end, nearly the entire play, about one hour and 15 minutes, is conducted in the next scene, which takes place in Jen's living room. It quickly becomes apparent that she has picked up Bob at the bar where she works. Though she is ready to jump into bed with the older man, Bob seems troubled. He may be cocky (when Jen asks him to tell her something she doesn't know, he replies matter-of-factly that she will be "naked in an hour"), but he's still tentative, and continually pulls away whenever the two draw together.

As the potential lovers play a snappy and imaginative word game of "tell me something I don't know," we learn that they are hiding things from each other, and both are more intimately involved than we might first suspect. The ending presents several twists and turns; some predictable, others not so much. The final scene leaves the audience with a tender if ambiguous glimpse of a kind of redemption following a night filled with sex, violence, and deceit.

This is a play that is invested heavily in characterization, and the characters, for the most part, are strong, though at times there are some inconsistencies. One wonders, for example, why two rural, seemingly lower-class white Americans would be so knowledgeable about New York City, a frequent topic of their discussions. Despite a kind of "explanation" for their shared interest in the city, their fascination seems more a reflection of the playwright's interests. Also, Bob's diatribes have him drifting between philosophy professor and lowlife a bit too much.

Still, Elias Koteas is superb as Bob—at times aloof and timid; at others, reckless and menacing. He has a great ability, through all of his bluster, to come across as someone who is deeply questioning his life choices. Tina Benko, as the attractive and self-assured Jen, portrays a woman who knows what she wants and is appropriately startled by the evening's surprising revelations.

Jordan is very much in control of her craft. Her dialogue is pat and witty, and one-liners abound. At one point, Bob notes, "I'm just trying to get into your bedroom, not Carnegie Hall." To which Jen replies that he should have gone home with her co-worker, who is "younger and prettier, which is a pretty good combination in the middle of nowhere." Also, there is a tight economy of plot, so that every piece of the story is tied together neatly at the end.

To that end, Dark Yellow is a straightforward work containing a relatively easy-to-follow story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It is playing in the Studio Dante, a postage stamp of a theater with a richly decorated interior—one suspects that this is the kind of show the venue specializes in: well-crafted, traditional plays that are more like Off-Broadway and maybe even Broadway productions than the more experimental ones often found Off-Off-Broadway.

The set design, especially to those accustomed to the generally low-budget standards seen Off-Off-Broadway, is opulent. The doors, ceilings, appliances, and fixtures are all real. Jen's living room appears exactly as one would expect: quaint and well kept, though perhaps a bit expensive for a country waitress. It is obvious that a considerable amount of time and skill went into this lavish setting.

Like a poet who chooses formalism over free verse in order to feel free inside an already established structure, Dark Yellow creates an entertaining experience within the narrow bounds of a well-made play.

Revolution/Revelation

"False consciousness," Karl Marx believed, was the ideological byproduct of the capitalist power structure, which creates specious social categories to protect class interests. Its cure, Marx reasoned, was a bloody political revolution. The viscerally enthralling Marat/Sade, newly revived by Push Productions, thrives on the vertigo of debating such impassioned political ideas, where the intellectual consequences often turn themselves inside out. Originally produced on Broadway in 1966, the play earned both director Peter Brook and playwright Peter Weiss Tony awards. Brook's legendary production, in fact, still reverberates with those who saw it, as I fortunately learned from an audience member seated next to me who eagerly shared her vivid experience of that original, groundbreaking show—fresh in her mind 40 years later!

The immense success of Brook's version, which incorporated dramaturgical ideas from Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Atraud that profoundly influenced the nascent Off-Off-Broadway movement, has overshadowed other productions to the point where Weiss's play is rarely staged. Even younger audience members, who didn't have the opportunity to experience the original Broadway version, must compare any new mounting of Marat/Sade to Brook's production—or, at least, to its legend.

Weiss's play draws on two independent historical anecdotes, which he ingeniously combined as a play within a play. First, the infamous Marquis de Sade directed inmates of the Charenton mental asylum, where he was also locked away, in productions of his own plays for the supposed therapeutic benefits of art and the delectation of self-righteous, "progressive-minded" aristocrats who lived nearby. This historical detail will be familiar to those who saw Doug Wright's recent play and the 2000 film Quills.

The other historical anecdote concerns Jean-Paul Marat, a Jacobin leader of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. He was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondist, as he furiously penned revolutionary polemics while, to relieve a terrible skin disorder, he soaked in his bathtub—a literal bloodbath.

In Weiss's imaginary treatment, Sade stages a play about Marat's assassination that, while continually digressing from the climactic stabbing, alternates between musical numbers and philosophical banter. A chorus of sexually ravenous inmates, bruised and disheveled, breaks out in gleeful dance and march tunes that often end with chants of "We want our revolution now!"

In between these screwy show tunes—skewered with over-the-top choreography that plays off each inmate's disorder, Sade (Alan Jestice), a cynical aesthete in bathrobe and bedroom slippers embroidered with a fleur-de-lis, engages Marat (Tom Escovar), sunk in his bathtub until he is merely a wounded head, in a debate about the possibility of sweeping political change.

When the inmates—perilously on edge as they stage guillotine-style executions—finally enact Marat's murder, they go berserk with revolutionary and sexual fervor, liberating themselves in a vast uncontrollable orgy. The original Brook production staged the inmates' "play" inside a cage while the aristocratic classes sat on either side of the stage. At the end, the aristocrats escaped the deluge of erotic mania by locking themselves in the cage and letting the inmates loose, demonstrating that "revolution" means to come full circle.

Without aristocrats onstage, both my neighbor in the audience and I anticipated that this production would somehow chase the real audience members (or, at least, audience plants) onto the "prison" of the stage. Alas, this did not happen. The inmates merely cavort and hump onstage while the orderlies—and we—look on helplessly in awe.

Nevertheless, the production has pizazz aplenty, with a wonderful chorus of inmates. Each possesses his own unique psychotic "tic," from narcolepsy to exhibitionism. Director Michael Kimmel's choice to have an intermission two-thirds of the way through slowed the momentum somewhat. Both Escovar and Jestice displayed panache, however, simultaneously appearing logical and demented as they emphasized the fine line between sanity and psychosis.

When the asylum's droll warden intervenes several times to stop the play's antics, it seems that the inmates may be acting rationally to inhumane conditions while he is cruel and out of touch. In this production, unlike Brook's, Marat's Marxist plea for action hits closer to home than Sade's cold-blooded aestheticism, although both also appear as twin-born monsters gone mad with overtaxed reason.

What makes this production most interesting, though, is how it reflects today's cultural context, which is far different from 1966's. For example, our politically correct view of mental illness no longer considers homosexuality a disease, and many people with mental illnesses have been deinstitutionalized. Likewise, the moral certainties surrounding the Cold War have vanished in our age of relativism, in which conservatives and liberals alike find themselves in a slippery moral quicksand over issues like the Iraq war.

In light of such societal changes, this new production of Marat/Sade strikes a radically different note. The production feels entirely relevant—and redolent of our current political impasse. We need this new Marat/Sade because, as Thomas Jefferson purportedly said, "every generation needs a new revolution."

Bloomsday Revisited

Retellings of famous works can be a dicey proposition. If the original is well loved, a new version will face harsh scrutiny by the old version's admirers. Yet just as great movies can be made out of good books, sometimes another author's fresh take on a classic can streamline the story and illuminate the points that the source material tried to make. James Joyce's Ulysses, a large book dense with complex thoughts and literary styles, may be familiar to English majors and fans of Irish literature, but it has not exactly cracked the mainstream. The work itself is a reworking of Homer's The Odyssey, so it's appropriate that it, too, has received a makeover, courtesy of playwright Sheila Callaghan. Her version, Dead City, cuts down the number of characters and switches their genders, tosses out plotlines, and transplants the action from early-20th-century Dublin to late-20th-century New York. In so doing, her judicious pruning has allowed the germ of Joyce's (and Callaghan's) ideas to blossom.

"Blossom" is, indeed, the surname of the main character, Samantha, whom we follow over the course of a day. Her morning routine of making breakfast in bed for her singer husband Gabriel is thrown off by the appearance of a jasmine-scented letter from Gabriel's new (female) booking agent. Concern over her spouse's infidelity and the stability of their marriage informs her choices the moment she puts foot to sidewalk.

As Samantha goes about tending to obligations (chatting to her heavily pregnant neighbor, attending a funeral, having a business meeting), she keeps running into Jewel, the troubled poet daughter of her carpenter. Jewel has not gotten over her mother's lost battle with lung cancer and seems to be on her own fast route to mortality through a life of alcoholism and indolence. Samantha finds herself drawn toward protecting the young woman, while at the same time envying her independence from responsibility and people.

Apart from Samantha and Jewel, the rest of the cast fills multiple roles as the people whom the two main characters run into during the day. The performers work on a set of minimal props and movable stonewalls, assisted by projected images and text that announce each scene's location and time of day. Cameron Anderson's utilitarian set design works well with William Cusick's photo-realistic (and sometimes hilarious) projections to create a world that the audience readily accepts as both normal and the far edge of normal.

The strong acting ensemble carries the story through its wanderings in and out of the regular world, so that the digressions into fantasy and inner monologues seem natural. As Samantha, Elizabeth Norment is a strong and sympathetic lead who projects such a rich inner life that she seems too genuine to be merely a script's creation. Norment's commitment enriches her scene work with the other characters, so that even short exchanges have a sense of verisimilitude.

As Jewel, April Matthis is so tortured and unhinged that one starts to imagine the growls of her empty stomach and the stench of booze and body odor from her clothes and unwashed skin. (It's great to see a performer playing a homeless person who doesn't look like a college student in precisely torn togs.)

Callaghan's script makes many references to Joyce's book. Both set their stories on June 16 (also known as Bloomsday to the Irish writer's fans). Samantha Blossom (the Internet consultant) is a direct nod to Ulysses's Leopold Bloom (the advertising-space salesman), just as Jewel (the grieving young poet) is similar to the book's Stephen Dedalus (the grieving young writer). The most amusing and inventive parallel is the scene that Joyce sets on "the strand" (a term used for major thoroughfares in England) and that Callaghan sets in the Strand (the independent bookstore in downtown Manhattan). To Callaghan's credit, the allusions do not seem shoehorned in but work as organic parts of the new story.

The only part of Ulysses that didn't work as well in Dead City is Gabriel's final soliloquy. In the book, Bloom's spouse Molly is given a chance to express her own viewpoint on some of the events of their shared past. Since readers can see the number of pages left in a novel, they can readily accept the change of protagonist and adjust their sense of the novel's narrative arc according to how close they are to the back cover.

In the play, however, Gabriel's speech came across as less of a denouement and more as an extra scene that was ill-advisedly tacked on to the end. Perhaps it was because the audience members were so emotionally invested in Samantha that they were not interested in listening to her adulterous husband.

Well-written, original plays are not a regular part of New York's theatrical landscape. It's a delightful surprise when one appears, even if it's a revision of an already published work. Yet it's dismissive to think of Dead City as just another link in a historical chain. Sheila Callaghan's play is a unique and completely contemporary bit of magic.

The Garbage Can-Can

Beware: Even though Clever Hans bills itself as "dance theater" and is listed in the theater section of most papers, this production is overwhelmingly pure dance. Moreover, it's smart choreography and well-performed dance at that. It may not be for everyone, though—especially if one expects traditional "theater." One man who looked like a stereotypical Midwestern tourist—trucker hat, un-ironic T-shirt, unintentionally low-riding jeans cut for a proverbial plumber, and palpably bored as hell at the shenanigans—left with his wife after the first dance.

Too bad. They missed the third dance in the triptych, which is a hilarious Beckett-esque send-up of vaudeville dance numbers that makes especially creative use of old-fashioned metal trash cans. If they had stayed, I bet they would have laughed along with the rest of the audience at the incongruous antics, which required no explanations.

Panel one began with three dancers who appeared vaguely like cat burglars. Dressed in black hoods and skirts, they shuffled crook-kneed around in a circle. Off to stage right, a woman in a green tulle dress stood tied up with a rope, which was attached to a miniature house at the back of the stage. The three dancers, crouched into each other like Russian dolls, slunk over to the rope. They began testing the boundary of the suspended rope—ducking or dipping under it and alternately popping up on either side.

One dancer, who often made frenetic, scissor-like motions with his arms and legs, touched the woman in green for a moment. Then, the three dancers scampered off, embraced, lifted each other, and formed a ring where they braided their bodies under one another's arms amid hanging tubes that their movements set off into pendulum motions. Meanwhile, the woman in green slowly turned backward as she wrapped herself in the cord, eventually entering the small house. At the end, the woman in the long green dress glided offstage on roller skates; the three dancers scurried into the wings.

Whereas the first dance was accompanied by an original classical score for a live violin, cello, and piano, the second dance was accompanied by two violins that were plucked more than they were played with the bow. The real audio accompaniment for the second dance, however, is a text: the dancers tell the fairy tale of "Clever Hans" as they enact it.

Clever Hans is anything but—each time Gretel gives him a gift, he eventually fouls it up. Hans has put a goat in his pocket, dragged a slice of bacon on the ground, and carried a cow home on his head. He finally brings Gretel herself back with him, then tosses eyeballs of barnyard animals at her.

The movement of this darkly comic dance thankfully does not limit itself to a strictly mimetic acting out of the story. Rather, three dancers playing Hans and one dancer playing both Gretel and Hans's mother linked together and pushed apart, screamed that they'll do better next time, and dryly recapped the text. More traditional dancing, which grows increasingly manic, was interspersed with pedestrian motions that resembled such things as a game of "rocks, paper, scissors" and the semaphore-like arm motions of an air traffic controller.

The third and most entertaining dance is the last, a study in awkwardness and sadomasochism. Accompanied by archival copies of Charles Ives's There is That and W.C. Handy's St. Louis Blues playing with a few cracks and blips on a phonograph, a male dancer soft-shoed on a pile of large rocks laid out in a line downstage. Meanwhile, a female dancer with pigtails hunched over on all fours with shoes on her hands, and mock-danced as if she were a trained dog. The male dancer then whirled the woman around like a dervish as he simultaneously tried to keep large metallic garbage cans spinning.

The dance took a sinister turn when he pinged a pebble off a garbage can lid that the woman held over her like an umbrella. Dissatisfied, he forced her to eat a pebble and then poured an entire bucketful of pebbles on her head. Undaunted, she stood atop an upside-down garbage can and performed a parody burlesque dance. The man retaliated by shining her shoes—and then her face. Next, he stuffed her in the garbage can and overturned it. She, however, refused to yield and continued to use her foreshortened limbs to perform a puppet-like dance. In the end, he grabbed her by the pigtails and rode off on her back into a door that wouldn't open.

Choreographers Lynn Brown and Lynn Marie Ruse show deft touches of humor throughout, which the dancers enlivened with their suppleness and physical wit. With only six performances, make sure you don't let this clever "dance theater" piece fool you into missing it.

Radio Beckett

Radio plays were a short-lived literary genre that nonetheless managed to leave many touchstones of lasting impact. While mostly forgotten today, the powerful radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, performed by Orson Welles in 1938, struck panic in hundreds of thousands who, tuning in after the introduction, believed Martians were attacking Earth. On the other hand, Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, which he finished composing moments before entering the studio, remains his single most famous work even today. Seeing Kaliyuga Arts's excellent new production of Samuel Beckett's radio play All That Fall (originally written in English for BBC radio), one can appreciate the possibilities of the lost medium—the seductions of pure sound and the way silence becomes existentially equivalent to death, or dead air.

Although presented as a live radio broadcast—complete with 1950's-style squared-off, oversized studio microphones and a mammoth antique radio that faces out to the audience, the production visually entertains with its large ensemble of actors producing an assortment of sound effects. Many of those effects, in fact, come from the actors themselves. Bucolic moos, bleats, and barks, along with plenty of barnyard clucks, crowing, and coos, make for an entertaining and funny backdrop to the main story.

Mrs. Rooney (voiced with a rollicking lilt by Helen Calthorpe) takes the long walk to the train station to meet her husband, running into various country eccentrics along the way. Mr. Slocum (Matt Walker) offers her a ride in his beat-up, hand-cranked jalopy. While struggling to get the top down, Mr. Slocum and Mrs. Rooney erupt in such a fit of heavy breathing, huffing, and straining that the scene has rightly been dubbed "audial pornography."

When Mrs. Rooney arrives at the station, quite late, her husband's train has not arrived yet—there's been a "hitch." Finally, after some commotion amid the impatient passengers on the platform, it does arrive, and she meets her blind spouse.

Mr. Rooney (Rand Mitchell, who was in Beckett's original production of Ohio Impromptu) is a senile old gentleman, a classic Beckett ne'er-do-well who quips, "Did you ever know me to be well?" and sighs, "If I could go deaf and dumb, I might live to be a hundred." The irony is that Mr. Rooney—who can't even count the number of steps on the stairs to his house, though counting, he claims, is one of the great joys of his life—probably already is 100.

The couple saunter back home, ruminating on where they're going in life—the running joke being that we're clearly all going to the grave. Mrs. Rooney enigmatically mentions babies dead before they were ever born, meditating on her general sense of sterility. The play ends in the same spot it began, where the "hitch" that stalled the train is revealed.

Though they all share a bit of Irish brogue, the cast members have distinctive sonorous qualities to their voices—gruff or nasal, twangy or sweet, grating or smooth—that perfectly suit their character. Director John Sowle's precise orchestration of the whole medley of voices and sound effects produces a kind of poetry that truly does, at times, ascend to music.

What more fitting play to commemorate what would have been Beckett's own 100th birthday? Even if Beckett, the man, has passed on into dead air, we can be assured from productions like this one that his oeuvre's haunting voice will remain alive for quite some time to come, even amid our culture's contemporary static.