Let's Go Back

Anyone wondering where the next generation of talent will come from need look no further than TADA! Youth Theater. TADA! is a nonprofit company that produces original musicals performed by New York City-area children between the ages of 8 and 18. Part of its mission is "to provide young people of different backgrounds the opportunity to explore and perform theater together in an educational, supportive, and professional environment." Everything About School (Almost), conceived by Eric Rockwell, concludes TADA!'s 23rd season. School occurs as eight students—four boys and four girls—graduate from high school, which gives them a chance to reflect on how they first met and grew close from elementary school on. The production also provides additional students the opportunity to participate. No fewer than 32 students star in School, with several roles played by alternating performers, and separate casts play the eight students in elementary school, junior high school, high school, and at graduation.

School begins with the graduates celebrating and flashes back to how things began, then moves back and forth between scenes showing them grown up and in their earlier days. One of the first numbers, for example, finds Nancy (alternately portrayed by Danikha Catada and Ines Renique) on her first day as a new student. Though at first the kids make fun of her funny-sounding full name, before long she has become part of the gang. Meanwhile, one of the show's most charming parts charts the slowly evolving relationship of Jennifer and William (Patricia Fitzpatrick and Hiawatha Brown in the high school scenes, where they share their best number, "The Locker Song"). Starting out as friends, they ultimately become much more.

The show also hits on other funny aspects of school that most people, even those long graduated, will remember. The boredom of class, hating physical education, studying for the SAT exam, and applying to college all find their way into big numbers. And what look back at junior high school would be complete without a song about cafeteria food?

Director Janine Nina Trevens proves that W.C. Fields's adage about never working with animals or children does not always apply, as the entire show is as fluid as any professional adult production. These actors may be young, but they are in no way just kids; they can all act, sing, and dance. And while it's difficult to single out members of this ensemble, Nicholas Stewart, as the elementary school-aged Michael, demonstrates superb talent as a tap dance artist.

One of the other great aspects of School is that it is completely age-appropriate. The musicians who composed the songs have made them enjoyable for young children, older teens, and adults as well. Some of these songs are quite clever, including "Can't Keep Still" and "Immature." More impressive is that for a show that runs a taut 75 minutes, all the performers get their moment to stand out.

School may be marked by a high degree of professionalism, but thanks to everyone involved, it is also an enormous amount of fun. TADA! certainly made me wish I was a student there. I can't wait to see what these pros put on next year.

Seduction Scenes

Sex used to be the final frontier in entertainment, but these days it has been stripped, so to speak, of every last taboo. While honest portrayals of sexuality can offer insight into a particular character, simply addressing sex no longer makes a work titillating, let alone novel. So Bed, Brendan Cowell's look at several different sexual relationships over time, limits its potential from the outset. An Australian import staged by the One Year Lease touring company, Bed is a cyclical play. Cowell has constructed three sets of five scenes depicting various relationships (or, perhaps, merely relations) between Phil, the main character, and his conquests, both male and female. Additionally, the same simple set—a bed of Phil's—serves as the set for each scene.

Perhaps this is meant to shock. What will really either alienate or endear the audience to the play (directed with a solid touch by Ianthe Demos) is Phil himself, who is played by Nick Flint, the play's co-producer along with Demos. Is he a protagonist, with so much self-pity that his neediness knows no bounds? Or is he an antihero, solely out for his own hedonistic pleasure regardless of who else may get hurt along the way?

Over the course of the play, the audience is supposed to glean further information about each of these relationships and see them either strengthen or whither. Demos constantly moves the action along before any individual scene loses focus, but by the play's end these individual stories have only provided enough information to figure out what is going on, not why.

Part of the confusion, at least for me, was whether these different scenes were supposed to be occurring at the same time or in succession. Because Phil can be an absolute letch, I am not sure he is to be taken at his word when he gives clues to the progression of time. Are Phil's more innocent sexual encounters with Kane (Nico Evers-Swindell) representative of his younger years? It is my understanding that they are. If so, though, even at the outset of the play Phil is already a closed-off man on a power trip.

Also, by Phil's next relationship, with Daisy (Emma Jackson), he seems to be a full-blown sex addict. For him intimacy is about control, not connecting. When Daisy–and Jackson can be quite the commanding presence in these scenes–shows Phil a painted portrait of himself, he wants nothing to do with it. Clearly, Cowell's message is that Phil remains quite uncomfortable with himself. Though he might have no problem baring himself physically (indeed, Flint and the rest of the cast spend most of the play in various states of undress), Phil's inner emotions remain carefully concealed.

To an extent, Cowell does peel away the layers in the scenes with Phil and Flo (Ana Lucas). She is an older woman, and his scenes with her have an Oedipal edge. Phil seems to desperately crave a mother figure, and Flint and Lucas have a sweet, tender bond here. In fact, all of the actors are impressive, both in terms of their understanding of the material and their ease with the near nudity. But scenes like the ones between Phil and Flo made me ask what the reason was for them. Why exactly is Phil searching for someone to take care of him? The lack of answers is more frustrating than Phil's often domineering behavior.

It should be said, though, that Flint delivers a strong, complicated performance throughout Bed, anchoring the entire evening and bouncing seamlessly back and forth between the scenes, each of which requires that different shades of Phil's personality are presented and obscured at once. The character is a real tightrope to walk—can Flint be true to Phil's unlikable habits and still foster a modicum of sympathy?

I particularly enjoyed the scenes with Sarah-Jane Casey as Phil's wife, Grace, who is exhausted by work and their newborn baby. Their sex lives have faded away, and foreplay inevitably leads to either begging or fighting. "Love is not an argument," Grace repeatedly declares. And yet by then the play has demonstrated that the bedroom is indeed a war zone.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Phil's relationship with Drew, an escort whom he picks up. As Drew, Nick Stevenson performs some particularly brave physical acts, including a realistic sadomasochism scene. Despite some of the disturbing situations Drew finds himself in, it's Phil's words that hurt the most. In particular, in their last scene together Flint delivers a lengthy monologue with an astounding amount of energy and concentration. It is a heated scene, but it never quite feels climactic. The actors of One Year Lease demonstrate throughout Bed how talented they are; unfortunately, they are acting out only half a show.

Head Trip

The house has just opened and the audience is filtering in, but Realism has already begun: Stuart (Stephen Plunkett) is sleeping on his couch at center stage. There is no curtain sweep or fade to black that explicitly kicks off the U.S. premiere of Scottish playwright Anthony Nielson's drama: Stuart simply wakes up, and that is precisely its point. Taking us through his character's wild ponderings on an otherwise uneventful day, Nielson cleverly blurs the line between reality and imagination, challenging our notions of each. With Stuart's presence outside the dramatic action, there is no distinct beginning or ending to the fantasy or reality. While many absurdist cerebral plays lose themselves in a surreal haze, Nielson's sharp script takes the stream of consciousness and distills it into a witty and deeply human drama. Making sure that no thought goes unnoticed, director Ari Edelson (also artistic director of the Exchange, the newly established company that replaced the Jean Cocteau Repertory) adds crisp blocking and a fluid pace that helps connect the dots between the lead character's mental ramblings.

We meet Stuart as his friend Paul (Jordan Gelber) wakes him and they have a quick argument over Stuart's insistence on doing "nothing" all day. Although he may only have laundry, television, and moping on his agenda, each mundane task is infused with memories and daydreams, sometimes literally. Dad (Herbert Rubens) jumps out of the fridge to complain, while Mom (a superb Kathryn Rossetter) pops up from the washing machine to remind her son to check his pockets before the spin cycle.

In addition to providing a quirky playground for the constantly moving cast, Antje Ellermann's set skillfully mimics the murky divide between real and imaginary. For example, with the absence of a wall between the toilet and the living room, the audience members are forced to play Nielson's game—to either truly believe there is no separation or to fill in the blank with their own imaginary wall (as one commonly does when watching theater).

In Stuart's unfiltered mind, however, there's no separation between the toilet and everything else. What he thinks throughout his day is an eclectic blend of filthy, offensive, touching, and, most frequently, hilarious. Along with his parents, he's joined by his inner child (Tim Spears), a talk show panel, his ex-girlfriends, and a show-stopping trio straight out of Motown. In multiple roles, the supporting cast serves as an effective pit crew for the protagonist, rushing in and out with equal doses of slapstick and sincerity.

Gelber particularly shines in this style, firing out questions as a pompous talk show host, lip-synching as a (white, male) Nell Carter wannabe, and strutting around in a big fuzzy suit as Stuart's sassy cat. He's nearly breathless by the end of the night, but it's worth his exhaustion: each scene is deliciously funnier for his presence.

As Stuart, Plunkett bounces back and forth between straight man and devilish instigator with a simple twist of his eyebrows or twitch of his lips. He's at his best when Stuart lapses into boyish behavior, adding a straight-faced, velvet-voiced legitimacy to everything from fart jokes to sexual fantasies.

For all its bathroom humor, Nielson's script is ultimately a poignant reflection on relationships. Stuart is seeking closure over his recent breakup with Angie (Ali Marsh). As he leaves her repeated messages, his thoughts turn to his mistakes and joys in dating both Angie as well as his earlier love, Laura (Bree Elrod).

The fawn-like Laura provides a great counterpoint to Stuart's filthy thoughts (though she can't escape being part of them), and Elrod commands her scenes with a hushed gracefulness. Beneath the playful warmth she adds to her lines and movements, her guarded posture and wide eyes show a layer of fragility and fear that hints at the guilt Stuart feels as he mulls over his romantic failures.

While Marsh's character doesn't have quite the same depth or stage time, she delivers a delightfully compact performance. As Angie finally returns Stuart's calls, Marsh's voice-over fuels the show's crescendo. The two actors play their painfully awkward conversation to perfection, with Plunkett desperately fumbling to reach out and Marsh curtly knocking him down at every turn.

As their back-and-forth grows frustrating, Angie asks how they can peacefully end the conversation. "Talk to me like you're going to see me tomorrow," Stuart proposes. What follows is a delicately loaded exchange of typical pleasantries. Though simple on its surface, such a scene exemplifies what makes Realism a wildly intelligent theatrical experience. Like Stuart's lingering presence onstage, their clunky, heartbroken banter resonates well beyond the final line, reminding us that even a performed fantasy can feel powerfully real.

Working Girl

In New York City, love across the tracks can easily become love across the river. Musicals Tonight! concludes its season of musical readings with Irene, a romantic comedy about a plucky Irish girl from Ninth Avenue who finds love on the wealthy, distant shores of ... Long Island. The show, which opened on Broadway in 1919 and ran for 675 performances, features songs by Harry Tierney (music) and Joseph McCarthy (lyrics) and a book from legendary writers Hugh Wheeler (Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music) and Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof). This charming musical is a hodgepodge of styles, and it calls up the homespun sweetness of Meet Me in St. Louis, which also centers on the dreams of a feisty Irish lass (and features a book by Wheeler). But unlike the Missouri-bound heroine, Irene isn't content to stay at home—she is an enterprising businesswoman determined to find success.

Irene's business is piano tuning, and she spends nights poring over business administration books (borrowed from the public library) to better learn how to attract clients. She dubs her company the "AAAAAA Piano Store"—ensuring that she will be the first entry in the phone book.

The first call (and job) comes from the Marshall Estate (on Marshall Drive, in Marshall Town, Long Island). There, she meets Donald, the young heir, and she overwhelms him with vibrant stories tinted by her fetching personality before realizing that he is, in fact, one of the "filthy" rich.

Impressed with her business savvy, Donald convinces her to manage the new enterprise of a fashion designer friend. Irene thrives with her natural business moxie, and, together with her two friends Helen and Jane, she also becomes a mannequin for Madame Lucy's work. Of course, the inevitable amorous emotions soon intervene, and Irene and Donald must sort out a relationship that is challenged by both social dissonance and their business partnership. In many ways, this is a story about ambition, rather than love, at first sight.

Although the dated plot sags a little in spots, the cast—adeptly directed and choreographed by Thomas Sabella-Mills—turns on the charm to put forth an endearing spin on this musical.

Leading the pack is Jillian Louis, who gives a gem of a performance in the title role. Feisty and determined, she shades the role with delicate, appealing, and original comic touches. "I've got a joooooooob!" she announces, capturing the many levels of potential in this development. Her voice and perky presentation often suggest a young Judy Garland, especially her simple, unaffected, and exceedingly vulnerable (and heartbreaking) rendition of the standard "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows."

Louis and her leading man, Patrick Porter, also do fine work on the duet "You Made Me Love You." Much of the fun of experiencing older and lesser-known musicals in their entirety is discovering how these classic songs (so often separated from their original material) actually fit into the plot of a show.

Many of the songs evoke the light and delicate melodies of the late 19th century, but the standouts are the more over-the-top and Irish-influenced pieces. As Madame Lucy (who is actually a man), Justin Sayre scores with the overripe and boastful "They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me." Sayre winningly channels a liberal amount of Nathan Lane to create his animated and effete Lucy, and the sassy song also forecasts the sensational antics of Roger DeBris in Mel Brooks's The Producers. (It's quite intriguing to see a gay stereotype even half explored in such an early musical.) A side note: George S. Irving, who won a Tony Award for the role in the 1973 revival (alongside Debbie Reynolds), was in the audience the night I attended.

Irene chimes in on an entertaining duet with her mother (Jane Carroll, saddled with the challenging task of playing both Irene's mother and Donald's mother). "Mother Angel Darling" features Louis and Carroll chucking good-natured barbs back and forth, and these affectionate insults capture the rough-hewn love between a mother and daughter—a relationship that has become worn and comfortable through the years.

As Irene's friends, Katherine McClain and Jendi Tarde turn in top-notch comic performances and stellar vocals—they each find just the right amount of pluck, punch, and personality in their supporting roles.

The action problematically rushes toward a breathless conclusion, and it would seem that Irene—especially as rendered through Louis's exemplary and complex performance—deserves a more considered and pointed ending. Still, the rather scatterbrained plot doesn't distract us too long from the irrepressible Irene.

This semi-staged production requires that the actors hold scripts, but they manage to fully commit to their roles, and the scripts quickly become nearly invisible. With simple sets and costumes, producer Mel Miller brings his latest season of musical revivals—a must for any musical theater aficionado—to a delightful conclusion.

Sticks and Stones...

Mel Gibson. Michael Richards. Isaiah Washington. Don Imus (how's that for topical?). These celebrities have all made headlines within the last year for their scandalous use of language. They are all in varying degrees of hot water for their various expressions of anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. Most of us probably shrug them off as either idiotic or pathetic and take comfort in the fact that none of it affects us personally. But what if it did? What if an act of speech were so ugly, so offensive, so potentially harmful that legal action might be necessary? That is the question posed by Peter Sagal's play Denial, making its New York debut at Metropolitan Playhouse.

Denial follows attorney Abigail Gersten (Suzanne Toren), whose dedication to the law is so strong that she decides to defend one Bernard Cooper (H. Clark Kee), a noted Holocaust denier. Of course, denying the Holocaust is not against the law in this country. (In Europe it is a different matter, as promotional materials for the play remind us that David Irving was imprisoned last year in Austria for just such a claim.)

In a potentially illegal search and seizure, authorities have attained evidence they claim links Cooper to hate crimes and organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. This could very well be an actionable offense. Gersten, however, sees an egregious violation of Cooper's First and Fourth Amendment rights. Despite his repellent views, she takes his case, albeit very reluctantly. Oh, and Gersten is Jewish herself, which exponentially complicates matters.

Sagal, a minor celebrity as host of NPR's "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!," chose quite an explosive subject matter for his 1995 play, which, if anything, is only more relevant today. This topic is simply bursting with potential for intellectual and dramatic power.

It is a pity, then, that Denial takes so long to get going. Most of the first act is awash in endless exposition, a few clichés, and a lot of unnecessary explanation of Just. How. Important. And. Thorny. This. Issue. Is. Especially indicative of the play's dramaturgical infelicities is a clunky sequence of scenelets that cut between various locales and characters for only a line or two at a time. It quite tries (no pun intended) the patience.

The poorness of the script's first half also weighs down the earnest production. Alex Roe's direction lacks a certain tautness, and the actors seem no more than their characters' types (e.g., the devoted assistant, the self-righteous adversary). The notable exception is Toren, whose attorney so commands every scene she is in that one has no doubt she does the same in court.

Fortunately, things change in the second half. The play and production pick up steam, getting to the conflict that we've been waiting for. As things heat up, so do the actors. Kee's Cooper presents his anti-Holocaust arguments in such an ingeniously insidious manner that Gersten's (and possibly the audience's) faith in orthodox history is shaken for a moment. Further showdowns and complications make a case for this play as great drama. Particularly memorable is a gripping scene between noted Holocaust survivor/author Noah Gomrowitz (Martin Novemsky) and the mysterious Nathan (John Tobias). Novemsky awakens a powerful stage presence, previously dormant, and Tobias is profoundly affecting. To give away any more, though, would be criminal.

Melissa Estro's costumes and the set design (uncredited) offer an effective grounding in realism that does not get in the way of Roe's occasional theatrical flourishes. Maryvel Bergen's lights make this switch between naturalism and a very red expressionism with nary a hitch.

It is not spoiling anything, though, to say that with the ending, the play goes off course again. Immediately after scenes of highly effective drama, the playwright gives us a resolution so pat that it betrays the complicated nature of the story at hand. And while Toren and the others struggle valiantly to make us care, the finale leaves one wondering what all the fuss was for.

Deep South

Early in Ashlin Halfnight's Mud Blossom, Camille Brown repeatedly slings a knife into a wall. She casually tosses the knife so precisely that the audience instantly knows there are potentially violent, even dangerous, events in store for these characters. In Emergency Theater Project's world premiere production, the playwright has crafted a taut, intricately packed world of family history and deceit for his well-defined characters to inhabit. As Camille plays with the blade, the audience is intimately aware that something in this quiet little house is going to rupture before the play ends.

Single mother June is doing her best to raise Camille, her only daughter, after the death of her husband. June and Camille live in the rural South in what has been the family home for generations, along with June's mother, Gongi. June is protective of her 15-year-old daughter, sometimes to the point of physically abusing her, while Gongi often acts as mediator.

Camille, meanwhile, is ready to run away to Quebec, or start messing around with boys, or anything that her mother doesn't want her to do. She also wants to know why her father is dead and why her mother hasn't been the same since. A harrowing chain of events forces these three generations of women to sort out their messy lives together.

The major action comes out in only a few sudden bursts, so most of the stage time is spent living with these characters. Halfnight's script also spends a good deal of time distinguishing the characters' voices from each other and developing their separate relationships. Each woman is instantly defined and has a tangible, overarching goal, even if there is no obvious conflict in front of her.

Halfnight also makes excellent use of atmosphere. For instance, Camille keeps digging up baby shoes in the flowerbed outside the house, and the radio warns of a serial rapist who uses a recording of a baby crying to lure victims out of the house. These two pieces of valuable sensory information play perfectly into the story's themes of buried truth and lost children.

Kate Pines's direction is impeccable, blending seamlessly with the script. Her take on the material doesn't force the play into places it shouldn't go—it stays true to the text and keeps the action and the characters moving. Regardless of what the women are talking about, there is always some small physical task for them to accomplish. There are several scenes in which the characters fold laundry without ever referring to that task in the dialogue. Likewise, June silently does the morning crossword puzzle with her coffee. These are both small but effective examples of adding activity and authenticity to the characters' lives.

Jesse Poleshuck's scenic design represents both the interior of the family's living room and the exterior of the yard very well. The structure is highly detailed in places like the kitchen but vague in others, such as the porch. This is particularly effective, because you get the impression that the whole stage picture was once a pretty painting that now has spots flaking off.

Above all other design elements, though, Bridget O'Connor's soundscape is the most powerful and driving. The Decemberists' music before the play begins is rockabilly enough to suggest the tone and location of the action but is just a touch off-kilter, warning us that everything in this world is going to be a little skewed. Music from Gongi's old clock radio lends effective atmosphere to the scene transitions and pays off in an intense hallucinatory sequence toward the end.

Corrine Edgerly, Jennifer McCabe, and Liz Myers are all superb actresses. Edgerly's Gongi is compellingly sweet, deceitful, and funny when necessary, but she also moves into the play's darker territory without hesitation. Playing an abusive parent is easy if you turn him or her into caricature, but McCabe's frustration as June is so accurate and familiar that it convinces us that everyone has the potential for violence under harsh circumstances.

Myers gives Camille a wonderful, genuine way of running over the other characters' lines that lets you know she's not really listening to what they say. She has two very difficult tasks in her role—delivering a lot of monologues to unseen characters and playing a teenaged character who has to grow up very quickly. She succeeds at both, and her performance drives the show.

With Mud Blossom, Halfnight has put together a textbook example of a great American play, one where all the elements of performance and design have allowed the Emergency Theater Project to present a stunning production.

Keeping It Together

Living Image Arts is offering a highly diverting triptych of one-act plays in its production of Committed at the Lion Theater at Theater Row. While all three shows are quite varied in both subject and tone, they all share a common trait: thoughtful, original artistry. The evening's first one-act is its most amusing, and its most successful, in examining both the fun and the fragility of relationships. Marlo Hunter smoothly directs "Men Are Pigs," Tony Zertuche's fast-paced look at who, if anyone, holds the power in a couple. Peter Marsh, Tyler Hollinger, and T.J. Mannix play these three lifelong friends named, respectively, Man 1, 2, and 3. They take turns acting out the significant moments that shaped their view of women, from adolescence through adulthood, and how these women have in turn shaped the men's self-confidence.

Are men really pigs, insensitive cads interested in only one thing? Zertuche posits that these men, and all of their kind, in fact are merely a product of the women with whom they become interested, and of the women's treatment of them.

The action becomes increasingly involving—and more realistic—with Mannix's scenes, which represent the men's college years. His burgeoning relationship with his co-worker (Elizabeth Schmidt) is far more deeply realized than one might expect from such a comical scene. Each of them tests the waters, trying out jokes and flirting awkwardly, in the way couples meet in college.

All three actors are comfortable with the rapid-fire scene and character switches, and Schmidt proves herself to be a versatile actress, portraying all of the "girlfriends" the three men dated. She plays them distinctly and with a comic edge. Hunter keeps the action moving throughout the piece (punctuated by excellent 1980s and 1990s song choices and set designer Scott Needham's age-appropriate decorations). All three actors take turns contributing their own anecdotes, like a relay where a baton is passed back and forth and never dropped.

Hollinger reappears in a very different role in William K. Powers's more stilted "Off the Cuff." No longer Man 2, Hollinger now portrays Guy, according to the program (which is progress, of a sort, as far as ambiguous character titles go). Guy is an attractive handyman with a secret who finds himself in the household of a very odd family. All of its members seem to have an alcohol problem, so they have created a rule stating that only one member may get drunk at a time, and whoever does so must wear a pair of handcuffs.

Director Holli Harms cannot quite guide this mayhem to liftoff, despite some irreverent performances from the committed cast members. Maria Gabriele and Richard Kent Green, as Bebe and Arthur, the matriarch and patriarch of this crazy clan, demonstrate excellent comic timing with their nonsensical banter. Brandon Walker as the son, Dookie, also has some wonderfully off-kilter moments, but Mia Aden's work as Babs, the daughter, feels a little less focused.

In fact, so does all of "Cuff." Powers strives a little too hard to enter the oddly absurdist world created by such playwrights as David Lindsay-Abaire, and many of his prescribed bits of business for his characters—drinking coffee, switching use of handcuffs, Babs's random engagement to Guy—become tired. Additionally, I am not sure how well this loopy plot ties into the show's commitment theme.

Obert Askins's "Boxes," the final piece, is a strong dramatic work, but as directed by Lindsay Goss, it's a little too remote. It addresses the idea of commitment in a cleaner fashion than "Cuff" does, but the relationships are strictly familial ones rather than romantic in nature. Aaron (Matthew Sincell) and Cassandra (Julie Fitzpatrick) are brother and sister, reunited following the violent death of their father. He devoted his life to working with boxes full of leftover ship cargo, trying to determine if they contained riches or explosives. But in seeking a potentially better life, he died.

Aaron, a malcontent, thinks that his father's death was for the best. Though both performers' Irish accents wane at times, Sincell makes his character's despondence vividly clear. As Cassandra, Fitzpatrick embodies several stages of grief at once, and as the character reasons, even bargains, with her brother to move on, her pain is palpable.

Needham's impressive set design transports his audience to the beachhead where the action takes place, but Goss might have been wise to let the visuals speak for the whole play; Askins's dialogue, about being boxed into a miserable life, grows tired and is something of a down note on which to end a production that began with such sparks.

Hear Them Roar

Rachel Crothers was the pre-eminent American female dramatist of the early 20th century. Not only did she see more than two dozen of her works performed on the New York stage, but she was among the first American playwrights to entwine the political and social problems of the day into her plots. Additionally, she produced her own works. It's doubtful that many people, even devoted theatergoers, remember Crothers, but Woman Seeking... should change that. This 10-year-old local theater company's Web site states that the group's aim is to "provide the theater audience with high-quality ensemble productions that showcase women in roles ... and often question their beliefs and prejudices about gender roles and women's place in our society."

In keeping with that mission, Woman Seeking… has revived one of Crothers's works, Expressing Willie. The play takes place during the Roaring Twenties, when the fashion of the era was to freely express one's opinions and hedonistic desires, which helps explain the show's somewhat mysterious title. Dan Jacoby is Willie Smith, a member of the nouveau riche, thanks to his work in the toothpaste industry. He has left behind his Texas upbringing and now lives in a mansion on Long Island with his mother, Mrs. Smith (Ann Parker). Willie has invited several members of the Manhattan elite to his estate in the hopes of cementing his status in high society.

Unbeknownst to Willie, his mother has invited his homespun ex-girlfriend, Minnie (Maria Silverman), for the weekend as well. Mrs. Smith's plan is to rekindle the flame between the two and distract Willie from a visiting predatory gold digger, Frances Sylvester (Simone Lazer). Among the other guests invited by Willie is the artist Taliaferro (Rhonda Ayers) and Dolly and George Cadwalader (Wynne Anders and Michael Frederic).

Ayers steals many scenes playing the free spirit who comes to Minnie's aid, not only helping her come out of her shell–which demonstrates Silverman's skills as a pianist–but also helping her land Willie on her own terms.

The entire cast does a great job: Jacoby portrays Willie as a lovable milquetoast, and Silverman makes for a charming naïf. Lazer, channeling Christine Baranski, offers a devilish turn and nearly runs away with the show with her character's riotously manipulative attempts to win over Willie. One final star merits mentioning: costume designer Jessa-Raye Court, who outfits every character in perfect period gear and, despite the likelihood of a limited budget, never seems to have opted for cheapness over quality.

Director Christine Mosere's production hits a few snags in trying to keep this dated material fresh. Some of the humor shows its age, and if lines were not going to be cut, she could have dialed down the trite dialogue. Also, while Silverman, who was also in charge of the musical arrangements, is outstanding on the piano, is it necessary for her to go on playing for as long as she does?

I also question the decision to include an intermission between the first and second scene of the middle act. The play would have run better had Mosere eliminated the intermission by devising an alternate means for a set change, and if she had curtailed the characters' long entrances and exits.

I am all for Woman Seeking... and its mission—highlighting women onstage and backstage, both from the past and the present. But why cast Akiva Penaloza as Simpson, a manservant, when she is so clearly of the opposite gender? It's not as if Willie stars an all-female cast. This type of stunt, small as it is, subverts Crothers's work when this production otherwise proves just how lasting and insightful it can be.

Estrangements

Barbara Kahn and Jay Kerr's Pyrates!, a musical about 18th-century sea robbers Anne Bonny and Mary "Mark" Read, delighted audiences at Theater for the New City well before Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg's The Pirate Queen. In their newest collaboration, 1918: A House Divided, book writer-lyricist Kahn works magic again, this time with composer Alison Tartalia. A House Divided begins with the jaunty but efficiently clarifying song "Shake the Tambourine for 1918." The world of New York during the First World War is quickly established. Then we meet protagonist Breindl Gershon (Victoria Lavington), a young Russian-Jewish Brooklynite who dreams of being an artist and prefers to be called Billie. She also entertains a silent crush on Rina Calvatti (Victoria Levin), the lonely Italian accompanist at the local picture palace, where everyone goes to watch silent films and newsreels produced by the military.

Billie clashes over art and sexuality with her traditional sister Raisl (Erin Leigh Schmoyer) and Old World father (Dan Leeds). Her father exiles her from the house, and, with no one to turn to except Rina, she finds love. Meanwhile, the war divides New York society, and Billie's Greenwich Village friends confront a big risk when their antiwar protest in Washington Square faces potentially violent opposition from the police.

As Abraham Lincoln warned, "A house divided cannot stand." Will Billie and her estranged family find the courage to make peace? Can the war be stopped before it destroys her community more than the internal divisions between the hawks and the doves already have done? And will all the characters survive their battles, on the home front as well as those abroad?

Kahn tells a complex, riveting story about love, courage, and the painful division of homes, cities, and nations. Meticulously researched, with vintage newsreels playing on a cinema screen above the stage, A House Divided also resonates painfully with present-day reality. When painter Jamie (Robert Gonzales Jr.) sings a farewell duet, "The Last to Die," with his just-drafted boyfriend Ricardo (Michael Naclerio), the Iraq War parallels were unmistakable. The two romances are endearing, though a scene in which a third woman, artist's model Carmen (Kelly Scanlon), hits on Rina in front of the timid Billie is never really followed up.

Some of the lyrics are witty and reach for Sondheim in the use of rhyme: "I'm really not offended / By a nude who has descended / A stair / I really don't care!" At a few points, they fall into cliché. "Happy as a lark" and "free as the breeze" are examples. But with help from Tartalia's varied, memorable, and often soaring score, Kahn generally eschews preaching for passion, and the result is engaging.

The cast is uniformly strong, and the singers make themselves heard clearly over the instruments. Most of them also play instruments, in the style of Sondheim musicals recently directed by John Doyle (Sweeney Todd, Company).

Mark Macante's set is simple but effective, dominated by a huge, forbidding movie screen in a gold frame and the rows of chairs that make up the cinema auditorium. Amy Kitzhaber's costumes look appropriate for the period, though greater risks could have been taken. The "Drag Ball at Webster Hall" could have included more drag—in that scene most of the women wear dresses, and all of the men wear trousers.

Kahn's direction keeps the bustle moving. My only objection was to the final tableau, in which four actors stood between the lovers Billie and Rina, interfering with the metaphor for reunited lovers, home, and community.

I left A House Divided humming "Shake the Tambourine" and haunted by the lyrics of "The Last to Die." I hope to see it revived soon. It needs a little tinkering, but it should keep its energy and power.

Bard Parody

It's the end of the first act of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), and the trio of actors in Phare Play Productions's energetic and very, very funny performance—Michael Climek, Ben Klier, and Scott Morales—cheerfully congratulate themselves on having completed all 37 of Shakespeare's plays. But, as they double-check the program, the three are struck with a visible panic at what they have skipped—and though I have never seen the play before, I know exactly what's coming. How could any Shakespeare parody be complete without poking fun at Hamlet—or, according to Complete Works (and everyone else, apparently), "the greatest play ever written"?

That's the thing that makes this play tick. The reverence we give to Shakespeare can literally make audience members, performers, and literature students nervous. This hyper-paced comedy doesn't get its manic energy just from affectionately making fun of Shakespeare's plays—it runs as well on making fun of the frenzy he sends people into.

Complete Works, originally performed and still linked to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, sprints through abbreviated comic versions of the Bard's plays using only three male actors. With few props and no set to speak of—other than an intentionally fake white curtain—the actors, who address each other with their real names, alternate between joviality, hammy smugness, and a jittery, nervous panic. Appropriately, one of them plays a Shakespearian "scholar" who can't keep anything straight. They sail through the comedies, but find much more to laugh at in the tragedies (a full-scale rap on Othello is particularly noteworthy). The second act is entirely devoted to Hamlet.

While I wouldn't necessarily say that familiarity with Shakespeare is a prerequisite for enjoying the show—there is much flat-out improvisation and physical comedy from the actors—I do think it helps. My favorite scene, a well-executed Titus Andronicus in the context of a cooking show, might not be quite as funny to someone who wasn't familiar with the plot's cannibalistic bent.

The production is pretty low-budget, but by and large it works. One of the things that makes it so much fun is that the actors clearly revel in the material. That they're enjoying themselves so much allows the audience to do so as well. Bounding across the stage in sneakers and tights, they give an energetic performance that borders on the acrobatic, sometimes with a volume too loud for the Lodestar Theater space.

But they're also a tight trio—the speeches given in unison are well executed enough to give the production some polish. In one particular scene—and whether this is due to the actors' chops or to a sharp sensibility on director Christine Vinh's part, I can't say for sure—Scott Morales gives a thoughtful, intimate monologue enhanced by the other two watching him in respectful silence. And although it's, of course, a setup for a gag, it's affecting enough to suggest that these guys know how to do more than just goof off. (And goofing off well is a lot of work too.)

The three are decent improvisers; they've added plenty of their own material, some of which is pulled out of recent headlines and pop culture (one of them got in a Don Imus reference) and some of which comes from playing off the audience's responses. If audience participation is not to your taste, this is probably not the best show for you. These three are pretty aggressive about including the audience members in the performance, and they sometimes single people out.

The cross-dressing gags do get old pretty fast, and there's certainly more than a few moments that get lost in the unceasing frenzy. But if you're looking for a competent production that will make you laugh, you'll find it here.

Before the Revolution

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh is Joel Gross's tale of a love triangle involving the ill-fated queen during the two decades leading to the French Revolution. Superbly directed by Robert Kalfin and beautifully acted by a cast of four (one in a nonspeaking role), this romantic drama presented by Earl Productions is history made intriguing and delicious. There are inherent dangers in the creation of historical drama. If it's too heavy-handed in the history, nuanced human characterization suffers; if it's excessive in the emotional drama, the political element seems like the awkward, hollow context for a romance novel. Assisted by Kalfin's well-tempered direction, Gross gracefully sidesteps both potential pitfalls. The result is a drama in which the social and political standings of each of the characters are as wickedly intertwined as lovers' limbs and as crucial to the tale as the trio's amorous intentions.

The play opens with a scene early in the acquaintance of the social-climbing portrait artist Elisabeth le Brun (Samantha Ives) and one of her subjects, the rakish but politically idealistic nobleman Count Alexis de Ligne (Jonathan Kells Phillips). As the two eventual paramours, Ives and Phillips banter with audience-winning charm and verve. Even as their carefully stoked sexual tension renders their romantic entanglement a mere eventuality, they convey the agendas nearer their hearts. Le Brun wants to parlay the association into an introduction with the ingénue Queen in hopes of becoming the Queen's portrait artist, while the Count speaks starry-eyed of empowering the peasant masses.

Enter Amanda Jones as "Toinette" the sheltered daughter of Empress Maria Teresa of Austria, bred to please family and King and to symbolize the relationship between two nations—but also to keep her nose out of political affairs. As the naïve, homesick Queen yearning for friendship and the sensation of feeling like a desirable woman (yens fulfilled, respectively, by le Brun and the Count), Jones conveys a royal's dignity and a schoolgirl's delight. Convincingly transitioning from innocent to disillusioned in this 20-years-in-two-hours tale, Jones impresses throughout. Perhaps most memorably, she sparkles in a hilarious scene recounting the Queen's first sexual experience.

Ives and Phillips demonstrate range as well. As the Count, Phillips is no one-note playboy. Years fighting in the American Revolution under Lafayette turn his debonair idealist into a man of convincing depth and understated innocence lost. Ives balances ambition with sincerity and seems equally comfortable with drawing-room wit and boudoir intimacy. A bit of a quibble, but a slight increase in le Brun's early Machiavellianism would yield a more powerful payoff when, in the midst of revolution, she eventually declares her loyalty.

The fourth cast member, Hugo Salazar, serves the pragmatic function of setting the stage before each scene, but in this nonspeaking servant role he also reminds the audience of his class's pivotal voice in the outcome of the story. To his credit, Salazar embodies the positive aspect of the cliché about there being no small roles—wordless, he is variously dignified, endearing, and comical.

Directorial and design choices succeed in alluding to the lavishness of the play's locales without distracting from what must be the highlight of the presentation—the actors' apt portrayals of Gross's carefully drawn characters. Sumptuous costumes by designer T. Michael Hall are the production's one perfectly chosen concession to the expected visual drama of historical romance. As the backdrop for a few easily rearranged furniture pieces, Kevin Judge's simple, off-kilter white scenic space is an effective and versatile design choice for a play that might have tempted a lesser designer-director team into counterproductive opulence.

Paul Hudson's lighting design achieves its task with similar elegance; projected title cards and the outline of an imposing Versailles window are the few elaborations in a space whose lighting options are limited. Merek Royce Press's sound design transports the audience from ball to opera to garden with a few well-chosen and modulated ambient tracks.

Though the tale is fictional (especially regarding the Count), the three characters' predicaments make for a compelling, passionate, and memorable lesson in history and the heart. As historical drama, this succeeds where many in the genre disappoint. In short, if history lessons were all like this, no one would ever cut class.

Getting Along

What if you gave a war and nobody cared? This is the central question in Five Years Later, a post-9/11 dramedy that gets its timeline and its punch lines all wrong. Produced by Point of You Productions, this ensemble piece stars a group of self-absorbed caricatures who get bumped off one by one by an invading horde that they're mostly ignoring.

In the sitting room of a Manhattan apartment, WASP-y, wasp-waisted debutante Oblivia is busy fussing over the arrangements for a post-funeral party in honor of her late father. Already in attendance are lecherous, addled Uncle Kracklekraw and his ward, the fast-talking, gum-chewing teenager Gabriella. Expected to arrive are sarcastic, black-clad theater company directors Brian and Shamus, dumb blonde model Petunia, effeminate gay nurse Blane, butch lesbian personal trainer Bruna, hippie "spiritual adviser"/orgy organizer Love, and technology-addicted CEO Bill.

While it may come off as dismissive to use such easy adjectives to describe these characters, they are, in fact, described as completely here as they are in the play's 90-plus minutes. These are intentionally obnoxious and stereotypical characters, with echoes of No Exit-inspired personal dynamics.

The allusion to that Sartre play becomes more apparent when a group of well-armed marauders attacks New York City, forcing the group to stay in the apartment. But an utter disinterest in any subjects besides themselves, coupled with their dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, gives these misguided folks the courage to wrestle with the demons outside (the apartment) instead of the ones inside (their minds).

Yes, this lofty message is conveyed, but in a vehicle that doesn't have enough gas to go the distance. In order to make the point about working in deliberately broad strokes, the writer and director should work together to make the characters' behavior larger than larger-than-life, and their dialogue atrociously offensive. Jeff Love and Marc Adam Smith don't go that extra off-putting mile in their script, and since Love does double duty as director, he won't fix what he doesn't perceive to be broken.

Most egregiously, this cast–which, according to the members' bios, has logged a lot of hours in improv classes–spends most of the evening saying "no" to each other, breaking the Golden Rule of Improv ("yes and"). Granted, the script is responsible for their words and actions, but one of those playwrights is an improv teacher, no less. Rather than rebuff each other so often, why not have them misinterpret things based on their total self-focus?

Five Years Later is clearly trying to go for a larger theme, as spelled out in a monologue by the character of Love (who not-so-coincidentally shares the co-writer/director's last name): "Remember five years ago? When the crap hit the fan here? Remember what everyone was like when the dust settled? We were nice. We were helpful."

She wonders why it takes "a tragedy of historical importance" for people to get along. Yet in this show, when freedom and people's lives are at stake, the characters are not nice. They are not helpful. They do not get along. Is it this production's opinion that, five years (or, really, five and a half years) after 9/11, we as a species are no longer able to band together as we did back then? The message and the play are unclear.

It's a noble and awfully Pollyanna-ish approach to focus on the renewed brotherhood of man in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. But it's hard to love and respect your fellow man when he's a selfish jerk. Perhaps the message in this show shouldn't be about being nicer to each other, but being a better person in general. Some might argue that America's own myopia got these characters into trouble in the first place.

After Happily Ever After

It's a good time to be a Stephen Sondheim fan. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in his work, including Broadway revivals of Assassins, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and Company, which is still running. The highly acclaimed City Center Encores! version of Follies has spurred talk of a full-fledged revival, while a London production of Sunday in the Park With George is about to make its way across the pond. Even more highly anticipated is the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film version of Todd, which will be released later this year. Sondheim even appeared on The Simpsons this season. Yes, it's a good time to be a Sondheim fan, but then again, isn't it always?

It should really come as no surprise, then, that I am writing about a Sondheim musical: Center Stage Community Playhouse's Into the Woods. The prospect of seeing another version of this venerable staple of high school and amateur theaters might not sound like the most promising night out, but Center Stage's version breathes enough fresh life into this 20-year-old chestnut to make it worth revisiting.

Under the revelatory direction of George Croom, Into the Woods crackles with the frenzied chaos that one expects might happen if you combine a dozen or so fairy tales and mix well. James Lapine's book takes the stories of Cinderella, Jack (of beanstalk fame), and the apocryphal Baker and his Wife and scrambles them, overlapping characters, sharing plot points, and the like. Also along for the ride are Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and a host of others. The first act ends with the story resolved as we know it: the Giant dead, the Witch defeated, Cinderella married to her prince, etc. The second act, however, shows what happens after happily ever after.

While this sounds like the perfect show to take the kids to (and it is), there is plenty of sex and violence for the grown-ups. The play retains some of the Grimm Brothers' gruesome details (just how desperate were the ugly stepsisters to make the shoe fit?), and the final body count is surprisingly high. The lascivious Prince (the hysterically louche Nick Sattinger) is double-cast with the Wolf, highlighting their similarly voracious appetites. In a classic line, the bed-hopping Prince confesses that he was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Morality in these fairy tales is at the heart of Into the Woods. Sondheim's lyrics contain such quotable aphorisms as "nice is different than good" and "wishes come true, not free." Nothing is black and white, though, as the characters become far more complex than either the Grimms or Walt Disney ever imagined. In the song "Moments in the Woods," the Baker's Wife (the heartbreaking Lara Buck) comes to terms with the way the forest has brought her pleasure and pain, happiness and hypocrisy, love and infidelity. She learns all too well what Shakespeare and countless others have told us: crazy things happen when characters go into those woods.

There are indeed very dark places in that forest, but this is countered by a generous helping of Sondheim's trademark bounce and wit. Fortunately, Center Stage's production is fittingly bouncy and witty. Despite the modest space at Foster Hall (originally a detached chapel on the grounds of St. Peter's Episcopal Church), Croom's staging is full of zip. The pace rarely lags, and the fairy tale fantasy creates opportunities for ingenious meta-theatrical flourishes. These are mostly found in the person of Robert "Ben" Tylka, a true standout in the double role of the Narrator and Mysterious Man. Tylka's Narrator is one part Our Town's Stage Manager, one part Cabaret's Emcee, bringing both authority and mischief to the role.

Peter Mussared's costumes are dazzling, and Jason Bolen's set creates magic, allowing for a dizzying range of entrances and exits, and a few surprising hiding places. A small number of spectators are seated on the stage, which the actors have plenty of fun with. One is never quite sure where a character will pop up next.

Musical director Kurt Kelley has crafted a tight ensemble out of a large cast of mostly nonprofessionals, featuring a number of capable soloists. At the preview I attended, the wireless microphones were temperamental, as they often are. Even though Foster Hall is small, one does not envy the singers in their task of conquering the space's awkward acoustics. The cast certainly does the best with what it has.

In the end, Center Stage has created something it should be proud of. Over the years, I have seen umpteen productions of Into the Woods, and was even in one once upon a time. That the play can still become fresh and alive to me is quite an accomplishment.

Dot.Love

I try not to let myself become one of those jaded, cynical theater critics. I try to appreciate the hard work that goes into even the blandest of productions. But shows like Romance.com, now at the Richmond Shepard Theater, don't make it easy. Written and directed by Dramatist Guild member Joe Simonelli, the musical explores the pitfalls and perils of online dating, at a time when Web sites like E-harmony, Lavalife, and J-Date have become widespread. Simonelli's piece tries to capture the unique desperation and satisfaction that online dating engenders. We are introduced to Allen and Pam—he's an online dating junkie with the screen name "Commitment Phobic." She's a first-timer who calls herself "Cosmic Girl."

After a little prodding from her friend Linda, "Cosmic Girl" fires off an e-mail to "Commitment Phobic," like an electronic arrow from the Hotmail account of Cupid himself. In fact, freelance journalist Allen is so pleased with his success in online amour that he decides his next article will be titled—sigh—"Romance.com."

The two lovers hit it off and soon enter the normal, non-dial-up realm of relationships. They meet each other's bizarre parents and try to set up their equally zany single friends. Things turn sour when Pam discovers her boyfriend has written an article about what a sham online dating is and how he's used it to manipulate lonely singles like—gasp!—her.

All right, so Simonelli's book isn't King Lear. But it has a certain level of popular relevance, and it's sugary enough to keep audiences from losing interest. There are a couple of moments, mostly involving Allan's gregarious friend Bill, that are pretty funny. There are also a lot of clichés in the dialogue and a lot of attempts at "witty banter" that have the characters refusing to answer very simple questions. But often there isn't a whole lot to say, because the story flows fine, even if it is remarkably uninventive and predictable.

Simonelli's music is pretty basic too. There are a few good ideas for songs, like "Ya Got Deleted" and "Low Down Internet Blues," but the music isn't ever intrinsically connected to the story line or the characters. Again, it's fluffy, sometimes fun, stuff, but even now, two days later, I can't remember a single lyric except "Romance.com," which I recall only because it's also the show's title.

The cast works really hard—too hard in some cases. When Allen and Pam have to make out for a minute, he passionlessly tackles her into a wall, and the resulting scene is very awkward. Also, many lines come out false, as when Mike Sunburg's Bill speaks every other line in a different accent. None of this seems natural; instead, it's as if the director was trying to squeeze in untenable dialogue or stage directions that he just couldn't part with. Despite the effort, it doesn't always work.

Again, I have a great appreciation for the cast members. Their biographies say most of them seem to have traveled with the production from New Jersey, and there is a definite sense of dedication to the work. Jennifer Nelson has a generally very magnetic, expressive presence as Pam. Likewise, Ben Bleefeld, as Allen, is very easy to like and evokes a lot of sympathy at one point when he crunches his head into a laptop. Sundburg and Pam Del Franco are fun as the couple's factory-made crazy friends Bill and Linda. Katie Bass and Steve Fischer play Allan's and Pam's strange, conveniently single parents very well.

A musical like Romance.com is difficult to classify. It wasn't edgy and it wasn't wildly original, but the audience at the performance I attended certainly couldn't get enough of it. Perhaps this one can be written off with "there are different kinds of theater for different people." Perhaps I am jaded after all. Either way, I was logged off.

Arrested Development

For the characters in Chicken, the Mike Batistick dramedy playing at Studio Dante, age is nothing more than a number. While they've got on in years and even have raised or sired offspring of their own, they are all very much children themselves. Studio Dante is co-founded and co-run by Michael Imperioli, the Emmy-winning co-star of The Sopranos (he plays Christopher Moltisanti), and just like that acclaimed series, Chicken is about a highly dysfunctional family. Imperioli is Floyd, an unemployed powder keg who imposes on his childhood friend Wendell (E.J. Carroll) and Wendell's older, pregnant wife, Lina (Sharon Angela, also a Sopranos regular), by moving into their claustrophobic Bronx apartment. (Imperioli's wife, Victoria, deserves much applause for the realistic set design.)

Floyd and Wendell share a close, sad bond: both met as children in the New York foster care system. But the two have traveled markedly different roads into adulthood. While Wendell struggles to make ends meet and neglects his health, Floyd blames his childhood for his impulsive, hedonistic behavior and feels justified in taking Wendell's money; abusing Felix (Lazaro Perez), the father who gave him up; and even abandoning his own children.

Wendell has decided to raise a rooster for a cockfight and then reap the winnings. He deludes himself into thinking that Floyd, a Cuban-American, will assist him (apparently Felix used to do this sort of thing during his Cuban past) and feel compelled to move himself out of the apartment.

Imperioli may try to steal every scene, but director Nick Sandow makes it clear that the heart of Chicken lies with his married couple. Carroll is terrific as a flawed, harried Everyman whose loyalty to those around him is immense—to a fault. And Angela is every inch his equal as Lina, who knows no passion, only resentment—of her life, her apartment, her husband, her pregnancy. Watching the two of them together made me forget the opulent surroundings that make up the relatively new Studio Dante and left me convinced that I was watching—rooting for, even—a pair of have-nots.

The same cannot quite be said of Imperioli's scenes. Yes, Floyd is a showboating character, but he errs on the side of mania and seems like more of a cardboard character than a three-dimensional man, capable of changing. Furthermore, his accent—New York by way of Cuba—rings false. It sounds more like the highly YouTubed rap Natalie Portman sang last year on Saturday Night Live than organic speech.

This is never more evident than in Floyd's scene with Felix. Perez does an exceedingly moving job, capturing the rhythms of someone trying to reconnect with the son he once wronged even as his mind and body have failed him. To Batistick's credit, this pathos is never trite or cloying. I do wish, though, he had provided a little more information about Floyd's and Wendell's past. Every detail doesn't need to be spelled out, but by creating so much guesswork, he ultimately creates indifference on the audience's part.

I wish, too, that Batistick had found a way to integrate more of his characters at once. Many of Floyd's and Lina's scenes are two-character moments. For example, when Rosalind (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), Floyd's ex-wife, appears, she fires most of her tart daggers Lina's way. Why doesn't she have more of a confrontation with Floyd? This is an important question, since Floyd learns earlier that Wendell has been secretly providing her with money.

All this may have been a logistical choice on Sandow's part—the tight set allows for only so many characters onstage at once before they start blending and bumping into one another. Yet it would have been nice if this talented cast had had the chance to gel somewhat more as an ensemble.

I also found the Rosalind character a bit of a conceit. Though Bernstine delivers her lines with aplomb, Batistick makes them sound a little too articulate and perceptive, and as a result too rehearsed, for such a spontaneous character.

Sandow's pacing falters a little in the second act, which runs only half the length of the first. Major events occur with little time to ruminate on their consequences or to create full dramatic effect. Yet Batistick 's broader questions ring loud and clear by the play's end. What makes a family? What makes a man? I wish he had provided something in the way of an answer.

Little Orphan Anne

Red hair may go in and out of fashion, but a certain plucky, redheaded orphan named Anne (with an "e") has made an indelible mark on the imaginations of children both young and old for nearly 100 years. Sprung from the beloved and best-selling Anne of Green Gables novels of Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (first published in 1908), Anne has appeared across the media in various and sometimes unlikely forms: television movies, television series (including a cult Japanese anime version), stage adaptations, and countless fan Web sites. Anne has also inspired something of a pilgrimage, as many Green Gables devotees make the journey to Prince Edward Island to traipse across the nostalgic backdrop of Montgomery's descriptive work. A long-playing musical attracts tourists visiting the island; now, Theatreworks has produced its own Anne musical, a cheerful and brisk accounting of Anne's most memorable escapades, enhanced by the blithe and lyrical songs of Gretchen Cryer (lyrics) and Nancy Ford (music).

Intended for young audiences but enjoyable by all, the 90-minute show begins when elderly brother and sister Matthew and Marilla decide to adopt a boy to help work on their farm. When the orphanage delivers Anne instead, crotchety Marilla wants to send her back immediately. Soft-hearted Matthew, however, quickly develops a fondness for Anne's wild imagination and dreamer's personality, and he persuades Marilla to let her stay.

The most enduring characters in young-adult literature (Harry Potter, et al.) often triumph over dismal circumstances, and Anne is no exception. Orphaned and blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an overactive imagination, Anne must earn the love and support of the town of Avonlea—a community that is not used to accepting outsiders. Much of the joy in watching Anne arrives when she gets into scrapes and then digs her way out.

Book writer Cryer has abridged and adapted Montgomery's writing into a coherent, yet often breathless, coming-of-age story—we follow Anne through school, friendships (most notably, "bosom friend" and neighbor Diana Barry), the devastating loss of a family member, and the first sparks of love. At times, Cryer has perhaps shoehorned too much exposition into single scenes or bits of dialogue, depending too heavily on the (young) audience's comprehension. Happily, most of the show moves along smoothly, and she has cleverly spliced together stories to yield additional witticisms. (Die-hard Anne fans will love the vegetable she uses to describe Anne's newly—and mistakenly—dyed-green hair.)

Tyler Marchant's brisk and playful staging keeps the production zipping along, as do Dave Hab's jaunty orchestrations. If not every tune is memorable, the songs invariably work to prod the story along. Especially appealing are Anne and Matthew's bouncy duet "Kindred Spirits" and the surprisingly witty schoolroom number "The Use of the Colon." Anne and Gilbert Blythe also share a lovely duet called "It's Nice to Know," which lightly documents their slowly growing affection. Music director W. Brent Sawyer sits at the piano and gracefully conducts the small orchestra (cello and woodwinds).

Piper Goodeve makes an ebullient Anne, fiercely embodying both her irrepressible hopes and her melodramatic tirades. Her giddy solo "I Can Stay," in which she celebrates Marilla's decision to keep her at Green Gables, is a triumph of voice, personality, and athleticism. The little girls seated around me let out contented sighs at their favorite Anne moments—they clearly embraced this live and rambunctious version of their heroine.

The other seven performers offer Goodeve strong support, and Dustin Sullivan is particularly winning (and in lovely voice) as the "incorrigible" Gilbert.

Within an inviting oval proscenium, the design is as colorful and charming as a greeting card. Beowulf Boritt's simple set is dotted with vibrant red flowers, and Clifton Taylor's gorgeous lighting makes use of a sumptuous palette of pastels (he also does fine work creating rain and snow). David C. Woolard and David H. Lawrence contributed the iconic and eye-pleasing costumes and wigs, respectively.

If the design fails to call up the glorious landscape of Prince Edward Island, it's fitting for a production that—like its heroine—flies on the force of imagination. It's likely that Anne herself wouldn't have it any other way.

Theater of the Disturbed

In Suburban Peepshow, a pair of cubicle dwellers discuss their ambivalence toward plays, dismissing the genre with the comment "They're not good." In their estimation, the staged shows they've seen pale next to the late 80s/early 90s oeuvre of actor Charlie Sheen. Theaterphobes like these might enjoy Nosedive Productions's latest presentation, a double bill that flays the formulas in films and theater through a deconstructed, absurdist take on popcorn cinema and kitchen-sink drama. The red-draped performance space of the East Village's Red Room sets the stage for this exhibitionist exhibition.

The evening begins with playwright Mac Rogers's theatrical amuse-bouche Trailers. A dizzying number of light and sound cues are employed in this bare-bones depiction of the bare-bones plots of populist films. The action is alternately framed by the proscenium arch (wide shots) and a black cardboard frame (close-ups), with a cadre of actors changing wigs and costume pieces in the background.

This short piece amusingly illustrates the interchangeability of the performers and scenarios in this type of entertainment. Audience members who are still wedded to political correctness might be astonished by the way one particular series of films escalates in shock value. They should remember, however, that Rogers's target is not the group of people involved but the group of people writing inane Hollywood scripts. Anthony Bertram presides as announcer and unwilling enabler to this celluloid trash.

At the end of Trailers, the company exits, with costume and props in hand. A carnival barker appears to introduce us to the Suburban Peepshow that awaits, the freak show that is … ourselves at the dinner table. A mother, a father, and a son have the most natural-looking meal that can be eaten on a stage with prop food. But then the family acknowledges the barker, the fourth wall is broken, and absurdity seeps through its cracks.

It turns out that Bill (the father) may be getting a promotion due to the firing of his colleague Jack. Bill speculates that Jack was let go because of some hidden depravity, and his musings shape the character of Jack as he appears later in the show.

The Playwright appears, as does a co-worker masquerading as the Director. Besides Bill, Jack, and Bill's son Jeremy, all of the characters are named after their function in the script: Office Guy 1, Therapist, Pool Guy, and so on. Bill's affair with New Girl (a new co-worker) sends Mother (Bill's wife) to Therapist, who vies with Pool Guy as potential lovers. When pink-slipped Jack hears of Bill's assumption of his old job, he swears revenge.

Though Bill has a direct cause-and-effect relationship with the show's proceedings, he's only the main character because Playwright has put him in that position. However, even the Playwright answers to the disembodied Voice coming from the light booth. Who's in charge here? Exactly.

Writer James Comtois—who doesn't appear as Playwright but does have a memorable cameo in his show—has an admirably complex concept that sometimes gets away from him. A few scenes stretched to yawn-inducing lengths, and some of the jokes were spread Family Guy-style thin (they played well past the point when they were funny). But this production, when paired with Comtois's previous work, The Adventures of Nervous Boy, shows he has a fine ear for the dialogue and personal problems of his generation, and a dark sense of humor that is willing and able to exploit them.

Secrets and Lies

Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind is as American as Topdog/Underdog is black. It's a virtual epic poem/novel/absurdist road movie of the mind. Above all, it's a three-course feast for eight actors. In Manhattan Theater Source's production, director Daryl Bolling sets some especially ravenous performers loose on this banquet. Shepard's 1985 play is initially about a marriage doomed by the husband's relentless insecurities, violence, and paranoia; opening out, it takes on post-World War II American life. Jake (Todd d'Amour) thinks he has beaten his wife, Beth (Laura Schwenninger), to death in a jealous rage. When he confronts the possibility that she may be alive and recovering somewhere, he becomes obsessed with finding her.

It turns out Beth and Jake are both yearning to reunite, but their families won't let them. Each partner is in torturous recovery—physical for Beth, psycho-spiritual for Jake. The beating has left Beth brain-damaged, but it hasn't diminished her love for her husband. Likewise, Jake is an infantile brute fighting off memories of his dead father's abuse and neglect, but he can't live without Beth's love.

The play crosscuts between Jake and Beth in their neutral corners (California and Montana, respectively) with their crazy families, while Jake's brother Frankie (Jeff Wills) goes on a quest to confirm that Beth is alive. Frankie just wants to ease his brother's scrambled mind. Like most foolish acts in this play, Frankie's journey arises out of pure love.

In the midst of arguments, crossed signals, and reconciliations, illuminating family histories spill out. Shepard uses plain middle-American vernacular to whisk us from decade to decade, city to city, soul to soul—imagery conjured solely from the characters' reminiscences. Shepard's young and old Americans speak only of their own experiences in strict dramatic context, but he makes the stories feel emblematic and panoramic.

It takes superior actors to preserve the poetry in these passages without coloring over their plainspoken realism. On the other hand, too much restraint could render the lines flat, mannered, and tediously familiar. Bolling's triumph is that his entire cast is up for the challenge, though some show more imagination than others.

As the main protagonist and dramatic catalyst, d'Amour kick-starts the play with the appropriate jolt. He makes Jake's menace and vulnerability linger as a presence even in the scenes where he doesn't appear.

Each actor has dazzling moments to spare, but the big surprises are the unexpected standouts. Campbell Echols, as Jake's sister Sally, brings the most lived-in realism to her line readings. There is never any doubt that she has lived the scarred, compromised life her monologues attest to.

Another great standout is Cindy Keiter as Meg, Beth's hilariously earnest, docile mother. At a glance, Meg appears to be Edith Bunker/Gracie Allen on autopilot, but Keiter makes Meg's innocence genuine at every instance, then negotiates turns in Shepard's dialogue that reveal depths of emotional intelligence and strength. That's simply what the role requires, but Keiter makes these transitions dizzyingly graceful.

In a heart-stopping moment, Meg's fussy, domineering husband, Baylor (Hank Davies), chips away at her relentless optimism until she is forced to reveal to him that her passivity is mostly for his benefit: If he knew how helpless he'd be without her, his entire macho world would crumble. Keiter understands Meg so well that she elevates her to a kind of heroine for the compulsively empathetic.

On a slightly lower rung, Schwenninger, Davies, Ridley Parson (as Mike, Beth's brother), and Wills give vibrant but relatively unadventurous interpretations of their characters. Schwenninger makes Beth as blunt and physically uncoordinated as you might expect, but her longing doesn't resound as forcefully as Jake's, making the invisible magnetic pull between them feel a little one-sided.

Likewise, Davies draws some of the biggest laughs from Baylor's absurd aloofness and machismo, but he rarely displays anything more than surface irritation in the hunter-rancher's verbal assaults on his family. Parson and Wills, as the put-upon, overprotective brothers in each clan, play exasperation a bit too broadly at times. Yet all the cast members show enough of a grasp of their characters to deliver an inspired surprise on any given night.

Bolling smoothly corrals his ensemble on a wide (I want to say widescreen) plank of a set, managing the space with a fluidity that makes the scene transitions feel cinematic. When the action shifts from California (stage left) to Montana (stage right), the sense of distance, cultural and geographical, is palpable.

All this talk about depths and dark themes might obscure an important fact: the play is funny as hell too. Shepard's absurdism springs so purely from emotional truths that the shock of recognition simply tickles. As Jake's doting mother, Lorraine, Emily Mitchell is the cast member who tap-dances most nimbly along the play's tragicomic ledge. When Lorraine tells Sally about the husband/father/war hero who abandoned them for a life of alcoholic brooding, Mitchell turns Shepard's prose into a lacerating requiem and a hilarious riff in the same breath. Now that's how an actor should come to the table at a classic Shepard play: starving.

At Your Convenience

Desipina & Company's popular series of seven 11-minute skits, aptly titled Seven.11 Convenience Theatre, has returned for its fifth season. Currently running at the Henry Street Settlement, the production once played at another historic location, the basement of the Lower East Side's Tenement Museum, where it utilized that prime location to fulfill the company's mission of challenging stereotypes related to the South Asian and Asian-Pacific American immigrant experience. Though remnants of that mission still remain in the show's current season, its insightful slice-of-life approach to storytelling has given way to a more edgy and raucous style. The skits offered in this installment will be more appealing to an audience eager to have fun than one yearning for an enriching cultural experience, which is hardly touched upon except in one skit, "Café Ceilao" by Vishakan Jeyakumar.

This skit gives us a heartfelt look into a rarely examined corner of life by showing the blossoming relationship of two Sri Lankan immigrants who meet in a small cafe housed within a 7-11. The story is well paced, touching, and intelligent, striking the right balance between comedy and poignancy and exemplifying what it means to create work that bridges the gap between cultures.

The preceding skit, "Bachelor Moon" by Thelma Virata de Castro, also has its heart in the right place, telling its tale of longing and loneliness through letters written between two former college pals (Jackson Loo and Ka-Ling Cheung) whose friendship has drifted apart. This is followed by Janet S. Kim's "How Convenient," a comical meeting between a lovelorn superwoman (Anita Sabherwal) trying to woo Rocket (Jackson Loo), a second-string superman. While both skits are solid and well plotted with strong acting, it is unclear how either relates to the stereotypes facing immigrants or convenience store employees.

The same is true of the opening skit, "The Professional." The title refers to an actress who cannot act "professional" when rehearsing her part because she believes her co-worker is sleeping with her boyfriend. The story is light and entertaining, and Ka-Ling Cheung is adorably funny as the wrongfully accused colleague, but there is no insight to be gleaned here.

In the fifth skit, "We Are History" by Jon Kern, we meet a spunky 7-11 cashier named Martha (Ka-ling Cheung), who is working in her father's store when tourists come through the door taking pictures of what they claim to be a crime scene that memorializes her own death. Kern has successfully constructed an eerie and tense story, and though it says nothing about Asian-American culture, it does make good use of its convenience store setting.

"Bollywood Blueberry Brainfreeze Bonanza" by Debargo Sanyal features Seven.11 Convenience alumnus Sanyal, a standout actor from past seasons. In this skit he is strictly the writer, although his antagonist, an egotistical Bollywood star (Andrew Guilarte), is curiously named Debargo Sanyal. After delivering a zany Slurpee promo for MTV, Sanyal is rendered unconscious when he actually tries the brain-freezing drink. Lying on the floor, he is stripped of his clothes by two half-dressed potheads who proceed to take over his MTV segment. The whole premise is so over-the-top ridiculous that you can't help but laugh and enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for the final skit, "Bikram & Cheeckochio: The Musical," with lyrics by Michael Lew and Rehana Mirza and music by Samrat Chakrabarti. A parody of Pinocchio, the main character, Cheeckochio (Meetu Chilana), is cursed with a rear that grows larger whenever she makes a racist remark. To become a real girl, she must drink a 7-11 Slurpee. What starts off as an interesting premise is quickly drowned in an excessive amount of pornographic references and "ass" jokes. The narrator (Jackson Loo) even flashes a full-page spread from an adult magazine to the audience, a questionable prop to use in a skit with humor catering to an under-21 audience.

Fortunately for this production, it has a lively, dynamic cast of performers who could not be boring if they tried. There is no doubt about their ability to deliver an entertaining evening of theater, but in light of other seasons and past Desipina & Company productions, it is disheartening to see the show's original zest for social change and cultural commentary become lost in a cloud of fluff.

It's All Greek to Mee

Electra sits center stage in a green spotlight with a pack of Marlboroughs on the table in front of her. She is surrounded by unmoving men with bloody bandages, in wheelchairs and on hospital beds. "You could say," she observes while looking up and taking a drag on her cigarette, "there is no form of anguish, however terrible, that human beings might not have to bear." It's a near-verbatim quote from Euripides's Orestes, the inspiration for Charles Mee's Orestes 2.0. The script then slips seamlessly back into Mee's original words. "Well," Electra sighs, "there's a way of putting things in order."

But order is not the aim of Mee's frenetic and high-energy play, now at the HERE Arts Center. While Mee makes liberal use of the ancient Greek source text, he also incorporates quotes from Guillaume Apollinaire poems and Soap Opera Digest articles into his own writing. He splices all these pieces together into a gritty and darkly humorous collage of a show that sweeps you into a scene, only to push you out in the next brisk transition.

The play draws on the famous Orestes myth, picking up the story at the height of the action. After discovering that his mother and her lover have killed his father, Agamemnon, the prince Orestes kills them both. Orestes 2.0 raises questions about the role his sister Electra played in goading him to action and about the punishments they each deserve.

Mee writes in verse, and his command of poetry is the driving force in his plays, which range from violent adaptations of Greek classics (Bacchae 2.0) to contemporary love stories like Big Love and True Love. Critics can accept his appropriations of Molière and Shakespeare because Mee's unique metaphors and fluid language are often on par with the established masters. (Another factor that deflects accusations of plagiarism: Mee makes all of his works available online at charlesmee.org and encourages young writers to borrow from the plays.)

But HERE's production of Orestes 2.0 loses most of Mee's verses in a chaotic competition for volume. The script is by no means calm, but at times director José Zayas seems to lose control of his own stage. The script's themes are loud, but the production bordered on deafening.

Mee calls for a vague setting with hospital beds, and Zayas sets the scene in what appears to be the mental health wing of a veterans' hospital. The problems this raises have nothing to do with the set. In fact, designer Ryan Elliot Kravetz makes effective use of the small stage with a few beds, wheelchairs, and microphones. A strategically angled mirror allows for cinematic bedside scenes, and the connotation-loaded red tape adds dimension to the sparse stage.

The psych ward setting falters because it limits the actors to playing crazy. Orestes and Electra, played by Bobby Moreno and Barrett Doss, respectively, display obvious talents as physical actors as they throw themselves against walls and ease into interpretive dances throughout the show. But their overly stylized speeches are difficult to understand from the start of the play, which is already highly charged following the recent matricide. From there, the emotions and decibel levels only rise, so that by the play's end, more than half of the actor's lines are delivered in incomprehensible shouts.

Although the staging quashes the lead characters' audibility, it does provide an excellent function for a modern-day Greek chorus of nurses and patients. Detached from the central action but elaborating on the environment of a postwar world, their speeches riff on subjects ranging from masturbation to imagination. Particularly engaging is Daniel Manley's lighthearted speech about multiple homicides. But even their words dissipate among the overlapping monologues and a background of recorded techno beats.

The choice to prioritize emotion over language in the play sacrifices more than just the script's poetry. Mee's relevant themes about state corruption and his subtle satire aimed at a hotheaded rising generation are lost in the literal fog that covers the stage. The green lights and smoke machine may transport you to another world, but they deny how similar this world is to our own.

At times the production seemed to carry the audience into a war zone. In one of the many climaxes in the second half, an overly excited actor nearly stepped off the stage, smashing a footlight with his boot and scattering glass off the stage. At another moment, an overhead speaker visibly shook with the radio voice-over it was projecting, threatening the closely seated audience. While Mee's script blurs the distinctions between ancient Greece and American society, Zayas's production sometimes blurs the chaos in the script with the confusion onstage. The results may ring in your ears more than they resonate in your thoughts.