Three Ways of Looking at a Break-Up

Emma Fisher’s new drama is as straightforward as a relationship, which is to say not very straightforward at all, especially beneath the surface. In a setup reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s famous film <a href= “http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/” Rashomon , which presents the story of a crime from different points of view, the events of Diving in December are told three times over, from the perspective of each participant in a youthful love triangle. It’s an interesting approach, but most of the scenes are overlong, giving the play a bloated, sluggish feel even though the acting is generally on point. The unconventional triangle consists of a lesbian couple, Georgie and Max, plus Austin, Georgie’s best guy friend from college (portrayed with endearing awkwardness by Patrick Shaw). He’s an aspiring chef. Max works as a sommelier in her family’s restaurant. Georgie, on the other hand, is enrolled in Stanford’s mathematics Ph.D. program. As one of only two female students, the pressure to prove herself by proving a difficult theorem is eating Georgie alive and creating great friction with Max. Lillian Meredith has just the right mixture of confidence and anxiety to play Georgie, while Kymberlie Stansell has a pitch-perfect take on Max’s haughty, demanding personality.

Since Georgie has little time for her and is always hopped up on Adderall, Max begins to hang out more with Austin, who has been nursing a crush on her. Tensions come to a head one night when Max can no longer take Georgie’s insensitivity and inattention and runs into Austin’s arms. Then she leaves for good, an event the audience has seen coming since the play's beginning, as it opens with Georgie reading Max’s farewell letter.

If a viewer fails to read the advance materials about the show, it will take some time to figure out how the play's structure works because of how long it takes for each segment to play out. To be effective, the multiple vantage approach requires crisp, quick takes, and the plot of Diving in December would have lost nothing with some strategic deletions. The dialogue, in particular, tends to drift. Fisher’s writing has definite potential, and the well-chosen cast helps to enliven the production, but it’s not a quality play yet and would benefit from further development.

A Lecture on Post Partum Depression

Three mothers suffering from post partum depression take the stage, and their stories spill out of them as though there had been no one there to listen before. This may be true, but being in the theater simply to listen is not enough. In the Shadow of My Son, written and adapted by Nadine Bernard from her own experiences with post partum depression, interviews with other mothers, and various pieces of literature, poses a few questions, but offers no discoveries. The main question comes close to the end, when the women are sitting together in a support group—“why don’t they educate women about PPD?” In the Shadow of My Son is Bernard’s attempt to solve that problem, and the play could become required viewing for expectant mothers just as car safety videos are shown to drivers ed students and drug videos are shown in health classes. The intent is to educate, however the play never becomes a theatrical experience.

In the Shadow of My Son suffers from rambling monologues and too many sketches that never add up to anything. There are some nice moments—the post partum talk show featuring a delightful Wendy Baron and a charismatic Mavis Martin as the humorous duo Earth Mother and Rainbow Mother. Together they answer letters from mothers, and their distinctive personalities make these scenes the most enjoyable. Another stand-out scene is the haunting one in which Baron’s character reads from Amy Koppelman’s book A Mouthful of Air as Martin’s character acts out the passage in which the main character drowns her baby. Alexandra Gilman, memorable as one of the mothers who continuously asks for her own mom, infuses her monologues with raw emotional power. Overall, though, the play fails to become the sum of its few working parts.

The scenery is both cluttered and obvious. Children’s playhouses and toy kitchens line the back wall, and blocks and boxes litter the stage as if the characters are in a child’s playroom. The boxes are meant to symbolize the idea that these mothers put their personalities in a box on the top shelf once their baby was born. But this line is uttered more than once, and one longs for some sort of visualization that doesn’t have to be explained, something in this play that the audience can discover for themselves.

JTT at the Fringe

The plot summary on the Fringe website for A Mivkah is completely different from the plot summary on the back of the show’s postcard. Neither come very close to describing the show, which is like a bad Robert Altman film. There’s so much overlapping dialogue that it’s impossible to tell what’s happening. Combine that with the fact that one actress plays the mother of all three unrelated main male characters without any type of costume or vocal change, and you’ve got a mighty confusing hour in the dark. Max Jenkins plays Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement and Lion King fame. Now a washed up child star at 25, JTT (as the girls used to call him) is desperately looking for a comeback. He finds his calling in the world of confessional solo performance, using his despondent friend Alan to test his new material. Alan has problems of his own. He talks to the ghost of his dead grandmother Nana and the ghost of his dead childhood love Ben.

All the characters walk with unclear purpose in carefully choreographed patterns across the stage. Some dialogue occurs when actors are backstage behind the curtains. More often, dialogue happens on top of the rolls of old carpet and wooden doors that make up the set. At one point, Jessica Arnold as Nana delivers a monologue from atop the door as another actor with his back to the audience moves the platform for obscure dramatic effect.

The whole production feels like a bad experimental show you did in college, the type of thing where you went out more for the party and the alcohol afterward than for the actual show itself. This is a shame because over the hill child stars are a hot topic in American culture right now. They demand a good play, but this certainly isn’t it.

The overall aesthetic is aided by some excellent original music created by Chris Moscato. Cellist Christine de Frece and violinist Danielle Turano add dramatic tension to the muddle of a story. They also laugh at all the jokes from their miniature orchestra pit, creating a far more enjoyable impression than anything else onstage.

A Cupboard Full of Questions

Something is rotten in the home of Mrs. Hubbard. At first it seems messy children are the problem plaguing the exasperated title character of Mark Jay Mirsky’s absurdist, playful black comedy. Mrs. Hubbard is a plainspoken housewife played by Jennifer Bayly with a sly smile shifting beneath her weariness. Early in the production, a woman in nurse whites (given an expertly evasive manner by Jill Helene) shows up asking about “Filthy Child” and her brother, and Mrs. Hubbard lists all the cleaning she’s had to do. Then a foul cursing booms down from upstairs, the last syllables drowned out by a recording of the opening chord from Beethoven’s Fifth. The filth must be metaphorical, the audience thinks.

Ophelia and Fortinbras, the siblings in question, are played with a wicked glee by Lynn Mancinelli and Israel Mirsky. They do use dirty language, but when they enter it’s clear that they are not children but immature twentysomethings. The audience has been misled in another way too: the real problem is evidently Mr. Hubbard, described as a despicable rodent who is in hiding and should be exterminated. This is where the visitor in whites comes in: she is actually a representative from the pest control company the children have called. Mrs. Hubbard is soon on board with the plot as her anger toward her husband outweighs her irritation with her immature children.

Unfortunately for the children, their plot does not unfold according to plan, setting up gruesome ends that will not surprise anyone who recognizes the children’s names from Hamlet. And when the audience finally meets Mr. Hubbard (Jeremy Johnson), a kindly-looking old man toting a leather-bound Shakesepeare folio, it feels as though it has been steered wrong yet again. He claims he absented himself from the family merely because he wanted some privacy and quiet. Having met his wife and children, it’s hard to blame him. So what’s going on?

Mirsky’s writing is precise and vivid (one passage when Mrs. Hubbard remembers her mouth being washed out as a child is especially memorable), but the story’s meaning is stubbornly elusive. The uncertainty is even written into the script, since Mr. Hubbard addresses the audience to ask with whom it will side. Viewers who prefer endings to be wrapped up neatly will be turned off by this aspect of Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, in spite of the strong acting and tight staging. However, the production's many open questions will please those who enjoy puzzles.

Ghost World

Burn is an unfortunate example of what happens when good plays happen in bad venues. At the first performance it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. The sound system experienced technical problems so severe that the audience was prompted to applaud the tech team for being able to fix them at all, let alone in a timely manner. The show started 30 minutes late, the air-conditioner was not working properly, and the theater was so hot that half the audience members were fanning themselves with playbills. "Live theater, folks," a member of the production staff said, apologetically.

But while other productions would succumb to these obstacles, Creighton James's Burn transcends them. James is responsible for a former Fringe hit, Feud: Fire on the Mountain, seen in 2005. Burn is proof that lightning can strike twice at this festival.

James likes to create visual experiences for his audiences that summon up the sights and sounds of the period he is depicting. Set designer Quinn Stone sees this vision through, establishing a thoroughly eerie atmosphere onstage. We see the interior of a sparsely furnished, dimly lit old country cabin from before the Civil War. The cabin has an old, rustic feel, with smoky, spooky fog wafting through its walls, perfect for the opening of a chilling ghost story.

Fast-forward to the present day. A group of teenage tourists have set out to investigate the truth behind the ghost that supposedly haunts the land this cabin was built on. They are startled by a mysterious Man (Don Guillory), who has suddenly appeared to tell the tale. While the tourists observe the action from the wings, we are taken into the lives of a troubled Appalachian family struggling to make ends meet. One of them will become this infamous ghost, but which one is anyone's guess. There are several red herring characters, but only one with a story line truly horrific enough to become an eternally unsettled spirit.

The play is strong and entrancing, but with the heavily accented dialogue and the facial subtleties of the mute main character, Cady (Amy Hattemer), you have to work hard to overcome the poor visibility in certain parts of the theater. There were many swaying heads jockeying for better views, and frustrating moments where something would happen onstage to cause the right half of the audience to gasp, "Oh my God!" and the left half to frantically whisper, "What happened?"

But with strong acting, beautiful visuals, and haunting music that foreshadows the most unsettling moments, Burn is a tight, terrifying story that is worth craning your neck for.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.

This American Thing

No one wants to see himself as a racist. Especially in the United States, where the question of race is so sticky, people actively avoid any words, actions or even thoughts that could be interpreted as racist. But is it possible to live a racism-free life in a country where race is such a central component of personal identity? Is it honest for anyone to claim that he or she is completely non-racist? If, ask creator/performers Evan joiner and Kobi Libii, there's anyone who thinks that because Americans are very careful about their attitude toward race, it means that the US is on its way to purging itself of the problem, let him come and be challenged by Boiling Pot. Created from interviews with over 125 Americans, this piece of documentary theater manages to give an accurate and wide portrayal of the confusion the question of race creates in today’s American mind. Middle class African Americans trying to be white, and a white teenager who is convinced he is O.J Simpson’s son, are some of the characters encountered on the Black-White front. Touching on the grim attitude toward Muslims in this country, we meet Arash, an Iranian American who gets called by friends “Camel Jockey” and in turn falls into an intense rage. When he sees images of the devastation Israel has created in Lebanon he wants to “fly home and fight.” It is a complex picture of the perpetuation of racism both by individuals and states (in a telling moment we learn about the public admission of an official committee of the state of Ohio that acknowledged its own criminal justice system’s bias against African Americans.)

Joiner and Libii act with heart and intent. Libii especially is a joy to watch slip in and out of the real people he interviewed and now portrays onstage with precision and skill. However, there is at times an overly-earnest quality to the play, a politically correct attitude towards race, which has a distancing effect on the understanding of racism. It is this quality that keeps the show from providing revealing insight for people who already acknowledge the sad reality of race in the US. That said, this is a play that can and should tour university campuses and high schools country-wide, and will help young Americans better understand their own racial tendencies.

Drop Fifteen for Drop Six - It's Worth It

In Drop Six: Mr. Lucky a dynamic group of young comedians called "Drop Six" use music as a vehicle for storytelling. The show is comprised of a number of sketches that rely heavily on the juxtaposition of sound and action, using irony to emphasize the comedic nature of a situation. For instance, in one sketch, Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" blasts over the sound system to suggest that the barren stage has transformed into a hip club. Enter three young nerdy men who try their best to get jiggy, but to no avail. Of course, a nerdy girl emerges midway through the scene and looks slightly disappointed by her prospects. Though not an entirely original sketch, the performers, Marcus Bonnee, Alicia Levy, Rodney Umble, and Tim Girrbach commit to their personas with such gusto that viewers forgive them for offering a cheap laugh. In another sketch a young man finds himself face to face with a beautiful mermaid while Chris Isaak’s "Wicked Game" blares in the background. The story, which is completely pantomimed, details the young man’s infatuation with the finned femme and eventual realization that he cannot teach a mermaid how to walk. Alicia Levy, the token female in the collective, tries her best to shuffle along with her two-legged suitor and elicits plenty of chuckles in the process.

Many of the sketches in Mr. Lucky build upon one another, although some do not. The lack of complete continuity does not diminish the quality of the performance but may bother viewers who prefer to see loose ends tied up by the end of a show. Overall, Drop Six: Mr. Lucky is entertaining and is no doubt one of the better shows in the Fringe this year.

Hellraiser

When is a play about Satanism not a play about Satanism? When it's Mac Rogers's Hail Satan, now playing at the Bleecker Street Theater as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Sure, there's unholy doctrine, hooded figures, and a ritual, but this story is more about fathers and daughters than Lords and Dark Lords. Tom, a copywriter who's average in every way, finds himself quickly hired by the tight-knit clan working in an office in a high-rise. Unafraid of long hours (albeit afraid of fatherhood), he's accepted immediately into the group, and is even invited to join in their Sunday religious services. But when he realizes that these services involve worshiping Satan, he's unnerved, though not enough to quit, or even to avoid getting involved with co-worker and Satanist Kristen.

Tom ends up making it to their church after all and fathering the Anti-Christ, who appears as a cute blonde named Angie. But can Tom really expect to save Angie from her destiny? And why is he more worried about her (and work deadlines) than about his role as the stepfather to the Devil's child?

Playwright Rogers creates a believably mundane office environment as well as a realistic religious group. (Note that they are not affiliated with the Church of Satan but are their own sect with different ideals.) While the worship scene runs a little long while going over the tenets of Satanism, it's important for the audience to understand (and maybe even relate a little) to what these people believe. You're meant to like them, and then to be disturbed that you like them.

The actors play it low-key and naturalistic. In particular, Sean Williams, who plays group leader Charlie, runs so warm- and cold-hearted that it's easy to forget that he's diabolical until his words slap you in the face. Director Jordana Williams's occasionally static direction (in the name of realism) is vindicated by the pacing and performances she gets out of her cast.

This show has some gore, but is not strictly horror. It also has some laughs, but it's certainly not a comedy. What we have here is honest-to-goodness adult drama, with a little genre thrown into the mix. It's a refreshing change of pace from the emptiness of summer entertainment and will stay with you when the bright lights of the Fringe have dimmed.

Religious Therapy

At the start of Jesus Rant, the house lights dim and a stool and two suitcases are illuminated. A man dressed in black pants, black converse sneakers and a “got jesus” tee-shirt comes from behind a curtain, quickly surveys his audience, takes a seat on the stool, and begins to talk. The topic at hand is Jesus Christ, if you haven’t guessed that already, and the speaker, H.R. Britton, over the course of his life, has become something of an expert on the subject. In a one hour one-man show Britton unpacks more than thirty years of religious angst generated by the Christian icon. Britton begins by recalling the first time that he was in the center of a familial prayer circle, a mildly amusing account that is followed by other examples of his participation in exercises of religious fervor. These stories are intended to be funny but the punchlines to his tales often get lost. Jesus Rant feels much like a shaggy-dog story that twists and turns but never gets to the point. This sense is exacerbated by Britton’s tone of voice, which seems intended to elicit a casual air, but comes off sounding merely uncomfortable. One gets the sense that he is still struggling to remember his lines.

In the latter half of the performance, Britton talks about his hobby or obsession with reading Christian propaganda. He shares numerous excerpts from books about Jesus that he has collected over the years, many that he pulls from the suitcases on stage. The physical representation of unpacking and re-packing of Jesus in his life conjures the idea that perhaps all of Britton’s anxieties could be alleviated if those suitcases on stage were traded in for a couch and an hour of therapy with a seasoned professional.

A Chase Too Brief

The postcard, program, and other promotional materials for Chaser all declare in serious-looking font that the play contains, “Male nudity and scenes of a sexual nature.” At least it's obvious that they know what they’re selling. The show is a rote examination of bug chasing, the troubling trend of gay men actively seeking HIV virus infection. Playwright Howard Walters wisely leaves politics at the door, but the even-handed approach means his play has nowhere to go once the initial concept is revealed. Eventually, Chaser just turns into a shouting match. The first date between Dominick, a tightly wound fashion consultant, and Val, a charming out of work actor, has gone well enough that the pair has ended up in Dominick’s apartment. Dominick doesn’t believe a guy as cute as Val would ever go for him, but he eventually succumbs to Val’s irresistible smile, leading the rest of their night into dangerous territory.

Jake Alexander as Dominick and Wil Petre as Val have great chemistry together, so much so that their onstage encounter feels less like a first date and more like a third or fourth date. The two make all kinds of wild judgments about one another when they barely know each other, so nothing they say is particularly effective. The audience never gets to see these characters before they decide to sleep together. Walters would do well to add some exposition at the beginning, allowing viewers to get to know these men better.

As such, the experience is all set-up and mostly no payoff. Audiences aren’t stupid. When they go see Chaser , whose logo is creepily made of various kinds of bugs, they know what the title means and what’s going to happen. Once the play's secret is disclosed, it doesn't explore new topics or deepen the understanding between these two men. It just sits there. As for the promised “male nudity and scenes of a sexual nature,” these are there, but certainly not the guilty pleasure main attraction for peeping tom audiences.

The show, which runs a brisk 55 minutes, ends so suddenly that there was a slight hesitation in the audience as the lights went down over whether or not clapping should begin. Both Dominick and Val are interesting characters played by good actors. Walters should trust his audience to go with them beyond mere surface level.

Ties that Bind

With its small cast, minimal technical requirements, and heart-stopping storyline, Up, Down, Strange, Charmed, Beauty, and Truth makes a great Fringe show. In this fast-paced, 45-minute one act, a pair of teenage sisters struggles to escape their drug-addled mother with help from a favorite uncle. Through a series of wholly organic yet startlingly unexpected plot twists, by the end of the play nothing – not the characters, not their situations – is how it seemed when the play began. Up, Down…, written by veteran off-Broadway playwright Edward Allen Baker, is receiving a well-deserved reprisal by casa 204 productions after premiering at the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s annual one-act marathon eight years ago.

After short-work festivals, stellar new plays like Up, Down… can have a difficult time finding appropriate venues for subsequent productions outside of acting classes, where the scripts live on as teaching tools. So it’s good to see it find a home at the Fringe Festival alongside premiers and work in early stages of development.

Director Diana Basmajian ably sustains the play's brisk pace and the three-member cast brings nice energy, if inconsistent working-class East Providence accents, to their portrayal of the characters. Linnea Wilson and Megan Hart maintain a believable sisterly rapport, while Greg Drozdek nails complicated Uncle Danny’s self-perception as a down-on-his-luck funny man.

Costume designer Lynn Wheeler provides instant insight into Uncle Danny as a working-class man living alone and into little sister Marley as an honor student from the wrong side of the tracks. Wheeler has less success with Steph, whose white tanktop and neat ponytail don’t convey what should be a disheveled appearance.

According to its press release, casa 204 productions aims to produce work featuring “characters and narratives that are not commonly seen on stage in order to bring a broader and deeper definition of humanity to contemporary American stage.” Given that mission, Up, Down… is a curious choice; there is no dearth of American drama about scrappy, blue-collar families desperate to improve their lot. As a quintessential example of that genre, however, Up, Down… is an arresting production.

Real Love

What impact do clashing worldviews have on relationships? The Double Murder Plays, an ambitious yet often confusing series of scenes written by Scott Klavan, uses a wide variety of styles to examine that question, from psychological realism to theater of the absurd. The six 10-to-15 minute scenes feature a man and a woman (Klavan and Harriet Trangucci), who in all but one scene are involved in some sort of romantic relationship. Each scene presents characters struggling to connect with one another, despite their often oppositional outlooks on life.

At best, the scenes –- the title calls them plays but few feel complete enough to stand on their own –- express variations on intimacy and love. Unfortunately, the connections between the scenes –- and sometimes even between the characters themselves –- are not clearly articulated by either Klavan’s text or Stephen Jobes’ direction.

With a simple but sufficient domestic set used for most of the scenes, the production opens with a well-dressed woman (Trangucci) carefully arranging a white linen tablecloth when a mentally ill homeless man walks into her dining room. At first frightened by the man’s bizarre behavior, she ultimately welcomes him to her table. Despite the committed performance of the actors, the reasons she does so –- Has she recognized him? Has something he said struck a cord? –- are never illuminated.

The first scene’s depiction of the man as a free thinker and the woman as his restrained, practical counterpart is replicated in several subsequent scenes. In one, a woman struggles to persuade her aging hippy husband that they should medically treat their son’s behavioral disorder. In another, involving two socks engaged in a delightfully whimsical exchange that lends a unique dimension to the concept of a mate, the sock played by the male actor pontificates on the nature of the universe and quotes Dostoyevsky while the sock portrayed by the female actor worries excessively and begs her mate to think practically. The cartoonish, human-size socks, designed by Caitlin O'Connor, fit over each actor's heads and keep their arms pinnned to their sides, leading to some fun physical comedy.

The scene for which the play is named is the most astutely directed and, therefore, its best: a husband and wife chat about their days and their careers, each secretly poisoning the other’s martini. By balancing realism with absurdism, the scene incorporates elements of the prior scenes. And by depicting a couple bantering as they kill each other, it has the most complete message. It would make a fitting conclusion for the evening.

Instead, the production closes with a confusing scene between a woman wondering if she wants kids and a bureaucrat who inexplicably appears in her home. The only scene not about a romantic relationship, it sends the show off course. The production would have done better to skip it and devote more work to the previous scenes; they need it.

Name Game

One of the hallmarks of a typical New York International Fringe Festival production is a subversion of culture, be it of the classical or "pop" variety. Trading on a recognizable brand name is one way for a Fringe show to stand out from the 200 others playing in the same 12-day span. Depending on the strength of the gimmick, the result can be anywhere from "Oh, O.K., I get the reference" mediocre to "Look how funny this sacred cow is!" clever. Coming into Lost: How a Certain TV Mega Hunk Stole My Identity, your typical Lost addict is looking for a fix in the face of another six months without new episodes of the ABC mega-hit. (Or maybe it's just me.) On that point, the production does not disappoint. There are liberal uses of the show's incidental music as well as a video cameo by Michael "Ben Linus" Emerson.

However, the story is mainly about Josh Halloway, a monologist from New York who is amused and then threatened by the similarity between his name and that of Josh Holloway, the actor who plays roguish con man Sawyer on Lost. Because of his grandfather Harry Hurwitz's last-minute search for a new, non-Jewish surname before his vaudevillian debut, Halloway ("with an A") has become one of the "nomenclaturally challenged." He struggles with self-esteem, a girlfriend who tries to make him over into Josh Holloway's (with an o) image, and has an uplifting meeting with Peter Sellars ("with an a"—not the dead Pink Panther comedian but the opera director).

There is a nice mix of reality and surreal bits in the piece. One could make a comparison to Woody Allen's early stand-up routines, but every skinny, intellectual-looking Jewish comedian gets that label these days, and the last thing that Halloway needs is to be confused with another famous guy. The bottom line is that it's a funny, entertaining show. You don't need to be a Lost fan to get it, but it helps.

Mama Never Said It Would End Like This

From the fervent to the helpless to the flippant, several perspectives on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are presented with equal respect in Elena Hartwell's In Our Name. Each sentiment receives due attention in a production which consists of three plays, two monologues and a two-person scene. The components are united not only thematically, by the Middle East, but also in referencing people who are fundamentally altruistic and honorable, in spite the harrowing ends they suffer. In The Unraveling, Rebecca Nachison plays a social researcher delivering a lecture to college students about the importance of Shakespeare's words. Nachison proves herself to be a great orator by delivering a well-written speech, but the play shows very little promise of theatricality until the message shifts to her daughter's military involvement in Afghanistan. Hartwell manages this transition with finesse, linking the importance of Shakespeare's words to the importance of words exchanged between a mother and daughter, but the practicality of this swift subject change is questionable given the circumstances. Nachison conveys passion as well as restraint, and brings life to the struggle of wills between mother and daughter.

In What He Carried, a pregnant widow talks to her unborn child about his inheritance from his daddy, a former National Guardsman dispatched to die in Iraq. As the mother, Hartwell is focused, but rarely involves the audience as her gaze is lowered for the majority of the time to her swollen belly. Given its slow start, the ghastly surprise in this play is unexpected, but it is the sort that moves civilians and incites them to action. Terms such as N.O.K. (next of kin) have never seemed so bleak, and the acronym C.N.O. (Casualty Notification Officer) is information best left unknown. This monologue demonstrates how war's effects ripple across time and through lost relationships and the impact it can have on current and future generations.

The final contribution, Waiting for the Light, is less successful than the others. In a 15-minute time span between smoking her cigarettes, an everyday worker wearing a uniform similar to Target's discusses her casual opinions about Iraq. Her nonchalance swells slightly to pride after her son enlists. Concurrently, another woman rattles off names of twenty-somethings that have perished in the war before discussing the psychological impact on a soldier killing a child. The cigarette smoker's story is compelling in its simplicity, depicting an everyday staple of indifference that is very prevalent in today's society. However, her audience is undetermined, and her relationship with the other character is undefined. They appear independent of one another, despite the good drama that each woman creates.

In Our Name is a timely exploration of military sacrifice and courage. Although these qualities are not wholly understood by the civilians in these plays, they are not mocked or devalued. Sacrifice and courage are acknowledged as the soldiers' truths, even if the civilians consider the motives to be based on lies.

Rattle and Hum

Brimming with life, energy, style, and substance, a fantastic jazz combo ushers in each performance of The Jazz Messenger. The tight ensemble underscores dramatic scenes, accompanies dusky ballads, and even keeps rhythm during intermission. Unfortunately, the dramatic substance of this uneven production never locates the vivid colors heralded by the musicians. An impressive but wobbly effort written by Eric K. Daniels (who also stars in the title role), the play tells the story of Terry Clayton, an African-American trumpet player who is imprisoned by a malicious German officer in France during World War II. The officer, Major Köhn, is smitten with Terry's girlfriend, a French jazz singer named Avril. He enlists the despondent Terry to help him write jazz songs to win her affection. Locked in his cell, Terry befriends an ailing French priest and also finds time to construct a gramophone made of various objects, including pieces of a sewing machine, a butter churner, and a dessert tray.

Not only does the play drown in its diffuse plot, but it is also troubled by a lack of focus on the central conflict. Rather than deepen the relationship between Avril and Terry (ostensibly the thing most at stake), Daniels has written himself mini-monologues in which he pontificates on the subject he loves most: jazz. However, these outbursts don't always make sense. For example, when the petulant Terry teaches Köhn to create rhythm, he exhorts him, "I didn't say smother it, brother!" This colloquial language, along with his frequent use of "man," creates a false familiarity between him and the tyrannical military man, a mercurial character who doesn't hesitate to raise (and use) his pistol at the slightest provocation. That he would be coddled with jazz-speak is hardly believable.

Daniels seizes every opportunity to exalt the spontaneity and bliss of jazz, a form that, for its players, "reflects their soul and suffering in the moment." Within this dramatic context, however, it's no substitution for the sufficient development of character. In the absence of dimensional performances and clearly defined relationships, this ambitious, emotional story frequently becomes melodramatic and overwrought.

Still, there is plenty of emotional and intellectual terrain within this story. Terry doesn't just talk about jazz—he uses it as a code to alert the French Resistance to the Germans' plans, an enticing development that is mentioned only fleetingly. And Terry's racial conflict—not feeling entirely welcome in either France or pre-civil rights America—is also briefly mentioned.

Perhaps due to the inconsistent material (and peripatetic accents), the performances are more faintly sketched than fully embodied. The Jazz Messenger is a promising riff in search of a solid bass line.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.

Majesty in Words, Not Images

John Ott’s new play strives to be more than a retelling of the classic myth in which the sculptor, Pygmalion, falls in love with his own statue, Galatea. In this two-person play, Ott attempts an ambitious treatise on how opposite beings instantly change each other’s lives. His vision is grand with recurring references to enlightenment, oblivion, physics, and illumination. The thickness of the text overpowers this production and, while we leave thinking about big ideas, we did not have an experience filled with the sense of the wonder, grandeur or mystery that these big ideas should inspire. Set in present-day New York, Pygmalion has a chance meeting with a street performer, Galatea. Her beauty instantly enamors him and they begin a romantic, artist/muse relationship. Their opposing life philosophies, more often than not, create greater conflict between them. Their conversations become the main action of the play – conversations about the nature of feathers versus bricks, the etymology of the word ‘phenomenon,’ and what it means to destroy and build. We are shown the development of their relationship from each point of view, which offers the first and only opportunity for the audience to receive a demonstration of how their differing beliefs inform their lives. This demonstration, however, takes place in the exposition and text, not by utilizing the large, bare stage or the virtuosity of the actor’s instruments.

In the balance of text, staging, design and acting, this production is skewed towards the text. The play does not leave much room for action and activity, which poses a great challenge to the stage direction. In one climactic moment, the characters fall into oblivion. The audience is asked to create the entire scene for themselves, while the actors stand still. I would love to see the actors, director & designers confront the challenge of presenting images for what seem to be impossible. Herein lies the magic the play desires to achieve.

The two actors carry an impressive load and exhibit great dexterity with the text. The ideas in the text, however, requires deeper connection and consideration of each moment to help the audience believe the life-altering intensity of their attraction to each other.

While Ott is clearly drawn to life’s big questions, this production amounts to a staged recitation. As is, it would be an effective read. A play about wonder and mystery, however, needs more majesty in its staging to help us experience the otherworldliness of Galatea.

A Box of Memories

Everyone living in New York City knows what it is like to live in a box. Though they may be different sizes, though they may house different things, they are, at least, one thing that we all have in common. But that is where our similarities end in The Box. In this autobiographical work, Steffi Kammer ushers her audience through her life growing up in Brooklyn’s Farragut housing projects, her experience attending The Dalton School (one of the finest private schools and the place where Kammer began developing the play), and introduces us to characters whose only similarities are their encounters with Kammer and their boxes. As her stories amass, so do the memories she collects of events fond and foul, of people kind and crass, and of experiences anyone might wish to forget. She places these memories in her otherwise-unused refrigerator, eventually creating her own version of a Joseph Cornell assemblage .

Though people and events she encounters may not be altogether unusual, like the homeless man who tells her he will marry her, Kammer weaves her stories with the fresh earnestness of a child. She does not rage when older men take advantage of her, but, as Cornell did with found objects, Kammer puts memories of these events in her own box.

Metaphors abound in The Box. Concepts like boxes (as home, as theatre, as safety, as separation, etc.) and working (in both the electrical and design senses) trace through the show’s 65 minutes like familiar friends, popping up in some unexpected places.

Kammer’s ease, humor, and tenderness make the play nothing less than charming. Her quirkiness is endearing and her narrative is remarkable.

While some moments may feel a bit clichéd and the piece would benefit from more careful staging, it is an overall enchanting work. The Box is well worth seeing for anyone who, no matter the extraordinary variety of bizarre things she sees in a day, finds herself living in a box.

Tru Ways

A sleek, fizzy cocktail of a show, A Beautiful Child captures an afternoon tryst between two ordinary friends in New York. But this is no ordinary relationship: on April 28, 1955, it was Truman Capote and Marilyn Monroe who strolled through the city, trading gossip, rumors, and secrets. Based on a work of nonfiction in Capote's collection Music for Chameleons, this eloquent and hypnotic play is a revelatory and unforgettable encounter with two very distinct and provocative celebrities. Gracefully produced by the Courthouse Theater Company, it is one conversation you don't want to miss. Capote and Monroe first meet up at the funeral of Constance Collier, acting teacher to the stars. Collier took on students only after they had achieved a certain degree of celebrity, and her pupils included two Hepburns (Katharine and Audrey) and Vivien Leigh. Capote introduced Collier to Monroe, whom Collier referred to as "my special problem"—"a beautiful child" whose essence, like "a hummingbird in flight," could be captured only on film.

Here, Capote acts as our camera; ever the persistent interviewer, he softens Monroe with alcohol, relentlessly coaxing away her façade. In a dingy Chinese restaurant on Second Avenue, they openly discuss their respective love affairs. But as Capote probes deeper (as we know he will—and want him to), Monroe's tinkling laughter fades into something darker.

Ben Munisteri's evocative choreography artfully whirls Monroe and Capote into various settings, and the trim production floats by under Linda Powell's precise and elegant direction. Joel Van Liew, peering out from behind owlish glasses, deftly captures both Capote's charm and his greedy celebrity worship. And Maura Lisabeth Malloy, who certainly has no easy task in representing the legendary Monroe, is simply mesmerizing as the doomed siren. In a subtly textured and heartbreaking performance, she delicately exhibits the vulnerability and insecurity that loomed so precariously behind Monroe's beauty.

Glimpsing a grandfather clock in a store window, Monroe is transfixed. Staring at this emblem of domesticity, she pronounces, as if realizing it for the first time, "I've never had a home." It's the sort of realization that unfolds only within the bounds of comfortable, familiar friendship. Thanks to Capote, and to this extraordinary theatrical aperitif, we too get a glimpse of this sparkling light before it was extinguished.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.

Confusions of Theater and Adolescence

The most striking aspect of Thom Pasculli’s FREEDOM! And the Sticky End of Make-Believe is its sheer physical energy. The show, a surreal account of a boy coming of age in a war-mad world, is the first production of a holistic U.S.-South Africa arts education program called <a href= “http://www.thesavannahtheatreproject.org/” The Savannah Theater Project . The cast puts enormous effort into portraying the characters in this absurdist movement theater piece, so that even though the plot wanders, the actors’ efforts go a long way towards maintaining viewers' attention. As they sing, play instruments, dance, and invent “soldier” games, the actors are all riveting to watch. If the viewer looks beyond the abstract movement bits, an actual plot sequence can be discerned. Events are bounded within the three days that remain before the boy, Conner, is to be sent off to military school. He lives with his uptight father Jack and wildly imaginative tag-along kid sister Carly, and across the street from Mildred and her rebellious 23-year-old son Salvatore. Conner is pulled in all directions by the other characters, each of whom has their own idea of what he should be doing. Jack wants him to be a hero in the war on terror army; Salvatore wants him to be a hero opposing the war; Carly wants him to play make-believe with her; Mildred wants him to ignore everything and reach his true self’s full potential, whatever it may be. Not surprisingly, Conner quickly gets confused and disoriented by all these opposing plans for his future.

Even understanding the general outline of the action, one’s head starts to spin while watching it. With random segments of athletic dance, dolls that come to life, and Jack racing around on stilts and skates, the play feels like a hallucination or fever dream. Movement theater can be effective in conveying things that are too difficult or strange to say in plain language. However, since it is frequently developed in workshop classes, there is always a danger that a show relying heavily on it will become an uncoordinated combination of parts that aren’t accessible to someone who wasn’t in the workshop. FREEDOM! And the Sticky End of Make-Believe often falls into this trap. While the physicality is fun to watch, it provides too little of the extra meaning it could, and one leaves feeling exhilarated yet dissatisfied and nearly as disoriented as Conner.

Lost in Bucharest

What does it mean to come of age in a country where the past weighs heavily on the present, making the future a perpetually surprising concept? Bucharest Calling attempts, without directly discussing Romanian history, to provide the audience with a sense of what it is like to be a young person living in Bucharest today and wrestling with the legacies of the country's communist past. The city's atmosphere is invoked not only through the actors' performances but also by projected images of indoor and outdoor spaces in Bucharest, music, sound effects, and film.

Five characters—a clubber girl, a prostitute, her pimp, a radio show host, and an illegal car racer—chase dreams they find difficult to define, and more difficult to realize. Their lives intertwine in increasingly complex ways, and as the plot progresses, each in turn encourages and frustrates the desires of the other characters. Even for an American who has never visited Romania or any part of Eastern Europe, their situations and decisions are convincing and inspire empathy.

The five actors—Laurentiu Banescu, Katia Pascarlu, Daniel Popa, Isabela Neamtu, and Cosmin Selesi—give intense, nuanced performances. Peca Stefan's script has been well translated from Romanian into English and is honest, poetic, and fierce. Ana Margineanu has done an excellent job coordinating both the actors' work and the piece's design elements into a coherent production. At times, particularly in the middle, the pacing seems a little slow, but this relatively minor flaw may even out in subsequent performances.

The major design feature is the projection of hand-painted, animation-like images onto a screen located behind the stage platform. The images provide easy transitions between scenes and locations and assist in evoking Bucharest. The music, often ostensibly a component of Alex's radio show, is catchy and adds much to the strong sense of atmosphere. Through the device of the radio show, this production features one of the most inventive pre-show announcement segments this viewer has seen.

A fully realized staging of an innovative play, Bucharest Calling is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys quality Off-Off-Broadway theater.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.