Curtain Up, Pants Down

Making theater in New York is a tricky process, especially for small theater companies on shoestring budgets. But necessity is the mother of invention, and these artists often find extraordinary ways both to cut costs and to lure new audiences. The Play About the Naked Guy boldly announces one fictional company’s latest attempt to make ends meet: to fill seats, they take a break from their traditional focus on the classics (their mouthful of a mission statement preaches their devotion to obscure, noncommercial projects) to bring in a more splashy production that will show more guts—and much more skin.

Writer David Bell channels both the backstage wit of Noises Off and the over-the-top hilarity of Waiting for Guffman. But despite the nimble, inventive direction of Tom Wojtunik and a handful of memorable acting performances, The Play About the Naked Guy quickly stretches its jokes too thin. Its insider-y, cheeky humor, stylized physical comedy, and outsize personalities could be lifted directly out of a sitcom, which isn't entirely a bad thing. Within a 30-minute time slot, the story would be a predictable yet endearing diversion; but at an intermissionless (and often arduous) two hours, the humor eventually dries up and withers away.

Still, once you steel yourself for the repetitious ride, there’s plenty to enjoy in this good-spirited production. Married couple Dan (Jason Schuchman) and Amanda (Stacy Mayer) run the idealistic, struggling Integrity Players, and their sole company member, Harold J. Lichtenberg (Wayne Henry), hits a gay club one night and returns with a flamboyant director in tow. Eddie Russini (Christopher Borg) prances on the scene with his two sidekick pixies (Christopher Sloan and Chad Austin), as well as a daring proposition: he suggests that the company let him direct the next production, which will star Kit (Dan Amboyer), an infamous porn star.

The usual calamities and misadventures ensue, led by the preening presence of Amanda’s mother Mrs. Anderson (Ellen Reilly), a vicious personality determined to foil the production and drag her daughter back to her idea of civilization: Westchester. Another major snag surfaces in the disapproval of Dan, who doesn’t want to see his theater company—or his wife—compromised by such blatant, lewd commercialism.

Ultimately, Bell's writing tries to focus on too many scenarios. Will Amanda and Dan save their theater company (and their marriage)? Will Kit become a more “serious” actor and be redeemed by the wisdom of acting legend Uta Hagen? Will Harold—who comes out of the closet early in the production—become more confident in his sexuality? And—most importantly—will the show go on? Adeptly intertwined, these stories might create a cohesive (and coherent) whole, but here, the scenes are strung together too tangentially to be fully tantalizing.

The acting is similarly uneven: Mayer is all winsome sincerity as the amiable Amanda, but as her cloying husband, Schuchman’s over-earnestness quickly becomes wearing. Clad in animal prints and towering heels, Reilly makes an old stereotype fresh and ferocious as the fearsome Mrs. Anderson. Borg and his sassy duo make a delightfully catty trio, even with such campy, "Will and Grace"-esque exclamations as “Heavens to Oprah!” and “Sweet Hillary for President!,” and Henry consistently connects as the nervous Harold, especially in his uncertain yet determined “strip-off” with Kit, who threatens to unseat him from his usual leading role. Amboyer’s Kit is appropriately easy on the eyes, but his soft voice and distracted presence get a bit lost amid the scaffolding-heavy set.

The glitzy final performance provides a bit of a pay-off, but the road to the finale is paved with tedious material. Filled with theater references (Charles Isherwood, Actor’s Equity, the Tony Awards, and Patti LuPone all get shout-outs), The Play About the Naked Guy speaks to the struggling (naked?) theater artist in all of us, especially as it asks that most unsettling of questions: What are the consequences of “selling out”?

Don’t expect any serious answers here, but perhaps an overextended sitcom about the tribulations of theater people is just the diversion and release needed to stimulate and inspire artists to move beyond the usual, tired fare—and The Play About the Naked Guy.

Grace Notes

Are you tired of the endless hours of presidential candidate debates, in which important issues seem to vanish into personalities, egos, and pundit prattle? Free yourself from the vicious election cycle and dive into the fresh approach of Grace, a captivating new play that doesn’t merely give a nod to timely issues; instead, this expert cast—led by the mesmerizing Lynn Redgrave, in a fiercely powerful and devastatingly potent performance—attacks, engages, flips, and wrestles with the timely topic (and inherent problems) of contemporary religion. An acclaimed import from London (you even get to leave the country!), Grace sets up a provocative dialogue, but not between nations or candidates. Instead, writers Mick Gordon and AC Grayling construct a rift between two warring forces within a timeless construct: a family. On one side, Grace Friedman (Redgrave) is a rigid rationalist and a determined atheist; an outspoken professor and lecturer on the “absurdity” of religion, she finds solace in reason and the indisputable evidence of scientific facts. So when her beloved son, Tom (Oscar Isaac), announces his disillusionment with practicing law and his intention to become an Episcopalian priest, he doesn’t just shake up Grace’s world, he throttles it.

Before Tom’s momentous announcement, we get a sense of the Friedman family life: stark candidness is encouraged (“Mom! Too much information!” Tom protests when Grace shares one of her torrid youthful sexual encounters), everything is up for debate, and there are no rules against chemical experimentation (Tom gleefully remembers the time when he spiked his father’s dinner with a crushed Ecstasy tablet). Most significantly, this is a family alive with intellectual energy and affection: when Tom arrives with his fiancée Ruth (K.K. Moggie), the foursome immediately swings into the easy rhythms of familiar conversation.

But Tom’s disclosure throws the group into their own corners—Tom’s father, Tony (Philip Goodwin), who is Jewish, attempts to play peacemaker between his wife and son, who launch into fiery, emphatic, and exhilarating debates. “It’s faith or reason,” Grace argues, but Tony protests that there is not simply religion and non-religion; instead, he aspires to turn “bad religion” into “good religion”—a faith that will appeal to thinking, moderate, self-critical people.

Gordon and Grayling move the arguments beyond oversimplification: when Grace accuses Tom of being nothing more than a “salesman,” he retorts that he was more of a salesman when he was practicing law, and then accuses her of being the fundamentalist for her rigid devotion to the laws of science.

The scenes vault back and forth across time, overlapping and often seeming to tear away at each other. As director Joseph Hardy has brilliantly conceived it, this potent topic may be cerebral, but its animation is both hauntingly acute and brutally visceral.

And his fantastic cast is well up to the task, attacking the material with extraordinary articulation and sophisticated depth. Redgrave and Isaac’s verbal duels are thrilling duets of vigorous elocution, and as the doting father figure, Goodwin offers an unforgettable, generous performance steeped in dry wit. On the periphery of the family, Moggie is commanding as the no-nonsense Ruth, a pragmatic lawyer who doesn’t believe in God. As Ruth navigates the minefield of issues in the Friedman family and struggles to understand Tom’s decision, Moggie carefully peels away Ruth’s layers to reveal a core of surprising complexity.

Tobin Ost’s sleek, spare, and modern set provides an elegant canvas for these vibrant debates, and Fabian Obispo’s punctuated sound design crisply launches the characters into each scene.

When a tragic event intercedes and further unravels the characters’ lives, ideological dilemmas shift into personal crises. This careful attention to an issue’s power to inform both your heart and your head makes Grace an emotional and cerebral firecracker of a show—unlike most political debates, this drama will leave you satiated yet itching for more.

Anyone Can Play Accurately, But I Play With Expression

Everyone knows The Importance of Being Earnest . In Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners, confusion and insults fly when two men pretend to be named Ernest and propose to two women. The play has become such a staple on the syllabi of literature and theater courses that it does not seem to be a play to actually go out and see performed. The Importance of Being Earnest is a relic, suitable for study but not enjoyment. Or is it? From the reaction of the audience at Theater Ten Ten's production of the play, it appears it is still possible to sit and laugh uproariously at Wilde's script. Wilde's witticisms leap off the stage, still fresh and slightly odd after over one hundred years. It is the jokes that carry the play and the production, under the direction of Judith Jarosz, realizes this fact.

In a theatrical culture that has come to expect some form of psychological realism, some form of the Method from its characters and productions, it can be startling to see realism missing from a production. So many modern productions of Wilde's plays, including the film versions, insert realism into the text, giving the characters a breadth that is actually not truly present. The actors portraying John Worthing, Gwendolyn, Cecily, and Algernon in Theater Ten Ten's production at times seem as though they are automatons, in possession of the ability to project but not the ability to emotionally connect with their characters. As one listens to what they are saying to each other, the way in which each sentence or speech is punctuated by a trifling turn of wit, it becomes clear that it is difficult if not impossible to make such fluffy characters into actual people.

Many of their lines are delivered as the characters face the audience. It is not a form of direct address, per se, as they seem unaware of the audience's presence. The presentational style appears to be used more because the characters are performing for each other. They realize what they are saying is ridiculous and witty, intended to make one laugh. Occasionally, the laughter was so loud that the next lines were drowned out. As it turns out, the play is possibly the Victorian era's version of stand-up.

Unfortunately, not all scenes hold up in Theater Ten Ten's production. The tea scene, in which Gwendolyn and Cecily discover that they are both engaged to someone named Ernest, lacks the bite it should carry. It was as if on this particular evening, the actors' timing was off, creating an odd pace for what should be a fast paced, catty scene. Further, it was hard to notice the fact that vindictive Cecily gave Gwendolyn tea cake when she asked for bread and butter, because the cake and other food props were so small as to be nearly invisible to the audience.

Otherwise, the play holds up nicely. It is possible to still see reflections of contemporary society (one thinks of celebrity culture) in Wilde's flippant, fluffy characters. The costumes, by Kristin Yungkurth Raphael and Lydia Gladstone, are beautiful and truthfully recreate the styles of the Victorian era. In a culture that likes to adapt and meld classic works to fit its own current needs and attitudes, it is nice to see a play left untouched, performed as it was written. The Importance of Being Earnest is a simple show, and is worth seeing for anyone with an appreciation for the styles and mores of the Victorians.

A Family Affair

With the outbreak of ethnic violence in Iraq and now Kenya, Swedish playwright Lars Noren’s War, which examines the devastation of ethnic cleansing through the prism of one family’s experience, is timely. Yet relevance and social purpose do not always equal satisfying theater. Noren, whose work is widely produced and celebrated in Europe but rarely seen in the United States, was scheduled to direct this Rattlestick Theater’s production, but when illness prevented him, director Anders Cato and dramaturge Ulrika Josephsson, fellow Swedes, stepped in with mixed results.

Cato and Josephsson can’t seem to decide if they are staging a naturalistic drama or Brechtian social theater, with the actors and production team pulling in competing directions. Instead of stinging our conscience, this schematic play tests our patience, especially at 100 minutes with no intermission.

After two years in a prison camp in an unnamed land (presumably Bosnia) during an outbreak of ethnic conflict, a man (Laith Nakli) presumed dead returns home to his wife and two daughters, who have settled into a daily life marked by scarcity, rape and cruelty. The man, blinded by torturers, also proves blind to the changes that have occurred in his absence.

In the zeal to depict the brutalizing impact of war, all gentleness has been blasted from the play. In moments that don’t always ring true, one member of the family lashes out at another with vile obscenities, while every embrace contains an undercurrent of suppressed violence.

Making War memorable despite its flaws, Nakli is mesmerizing as the brutish father who is intent on reconciling with his family, even if it means imposing his will on them, and on regaining his place as head of the household despite his impairment. He burns with intensity while never shedding the empty gaze of sightless eyes.

Cato fails to elicit any consistency of style from the rest of the multi-racial cast. Alok Tewari, as Uncle Ivan, is the only actor to deliver a naturalistic performance. Flora Diaz, who is not up to the daunting challenge of believably portraying a 12-year-old, plays Semira as a high-strung, whiny child who twitches and fidgets constantly. Her unlikely older sister is the boyish Ngozi Anyanwu, whose brash Beenina has the demeanor of an urban American youth. Rosalyn Coleman, a star of August Wilson plays on Broadway, is disappointing in the pivotal role of the mother. Always angry and sullen, she never demonstrates the emotions that bind her character to her daughters, the father, or his brother.

Noren deftly exploits the theatrical possibilities inherent in one character’s inability to see the others – from mistaken identities to deliberate deceptions. But War, translated with occasional awkwardness by Marita Lindholm Gochman, would have benefited from some modulation of tone (a short episode about the family dog’s untimely death hints at how dark humor might have been effectively deployed) and a plot with more unanticipated turns.

Scenic designer Van Satvoord evokes this war-torn wasteland with a colorless, austere set containing a handful of threadbare household objects. Costume designer Meghan E. Healey does serviceable work with flashes of ingenuity, such as the bright yellow bra straps visible underneath Beenina’s shabby clothes.

Lighting designer Ed McCarthy curiously ignores the play’s opportunities for innovative lighting. The lighting remains largely unchanged, whether the family is sitting out in the hot or inside their dwelling without electricity during the evening. Indeed, in one key scene, when the blind man asks his brother if it is morning or night, the audience is at a loss to know the correct answer.

The use of a multiracial cast and the decision not to name Bosnia may have been intended to widen the play’s significance to all genocide in our age. Instead, these tactics backfire by robbing the play of the specificity of time, place and culture that might have given it the resonance of authentic history – and the power to move its audience.

Shel Shocked

Throughout his life, Shel Silverstein has been able to effortlessly slide between genres, making a name for himself as both a Playboy cartoonist and popular children’s author (The Giving Tree and Where The Sidewalk Ends are his most famous works). He is also a songwriter, author of the Johnny Cash hit, Boy Named Sue, which he once performed alongside Cash. His play, Shel’s Shorts is so named because it contains a string of fourteen short plays written with hilarious wit and vulgarity for the enjoyment of his more mature audiences. Project: Theater fully embraces this hilarity in their production of Shel’s Shorts. They had to. The material is too difficult to survive a half-hearted effort. There are many scene changes, a large ensemble of actor’s and long difficult monologues about strange and ridiculous topics. Silverstein’s dialogue is hard enough to wrap your mind around, let alone your tongue. Actress, Amanda Byron, in particular, seamlessly delivers an unbelievably challenging monologue in her skit, Gone To Take A… that seems to go on forever while twisting and turning in surprising new directions. Throughout the course of the play it was not uncommon to hear the audience applaud both the cleverness of a monologue and the actor’s ability to recite it.

The fun is not only in the words. It is also enjoyable to observe the many different tricks that resourceful scenic designers J.J Bernard and Francois Portier used to create fourteen different sets in a tight, limited space. The most creative invention of all is a bathtub where styrofoam peanuts piled on top of a bathing girl creates the illusion of a bubble bath.

There is not a clear unifying factor tying all fourteen plays together, though the usage of signs is apparent in all but three pieces; Dreamers, Hangnail, and Garbage Bags. Signs, in this collection of plays, stand for rules that some unknown entity sets and then applies to the world, apparently for the world’s own good. The side walls of the theatre reinforce this theme, displaying a collection of small signs from the standard “One Way,” “Keep Left” to the less traditional, “No Shirt, No Service,” and “Real Men Wanted.”

The collection of stories urge us to question a sign before blindly obeying it, even if it turns out that the sign is right after all. For example, a sign reading Do Not Feed The Animal, is most likely referring to a dangerous creature whose mouth you do not want your fingers near. On the other hand, a sign reading Duck, could mean look out above for a low awning, or look out below for a biting bird. Silverstein’s logic would have you believe that the sign only refers to the bird. A sign, he argues, should only tell you something that you can not see for yourself.

In another skit, two friends stare indignantly at an Abandon All Hope sign, yelling, “Just because you tell me to abandon all hope doesn’t mean I’m going to!” Even a sign as well meaning as No Dogs Allowed is challenged by a woman so adamant on having her dog by her side that she covers him in a towel and insists he is a Ringling Brothers Circus performer that goes by the name, “Jojo the Dog-Faced Man.”

Needless to say, Shel’s Shorts is the kind of play that comes with a built-in audience. Silverstein made a long career out of thrilling children with his whimsical stories and adults with plays that are so raunchy the playbill comes with a list of bold-faced warnings. Fortunately, in this off the wall recreation of Shel's work, Project: Theater did more than just stay true to the beloved author’s words; they also stayed true to his spirit.

HELL HATH NO FURY

Arthur Miller's brilliant play The Crucible , as seen with its sizeable cast of nineteen electric (if not equal) performers in a packed house at the ArcLight Theater, is a terrific show that offers its audience what is best about live theater – a palpable experience. From the moment spurned teenager Abigail Williams (Sherry Stregack) is caught in the woods with a gaggle of young friends performing a secret voodoo love ceremony to eliminate her married lover’s wife, Miller’s account of the 17th century witch trials in colonial Massachusetts builds to a natural frenzy.

To avoid punishment by Reverend Parris (a fierce Keith Barber), the young women begin-- in escalating fashion-- to accuse their neighbors of trafficking with the Devil. Outside metaphysical experts are brought in, like Reverend Hale (a nuanced Kevin Albert), to determine whether Black Arts are indeed afoot, until generalized hysteria swells and the misguided search leads many townspeople to needless execution.

Skilled direction from Pamela Moller Kareman aids this spirited cast (in a regional transfer from Croton Falls) to explore the pervasive dynamics of groupthink. A powerful allegory for the Senate Sub-Committee hearings on Un-American Activities, Miller’s small-town Salem residents undergo parallel conflicts of conscience – is it better to stand in truth and avoid devastating consequences (blacklisting?) or to name names and confess to imaginary crimes?

Standouts of the cast include the mesmerizing Sarah Bennett as Elizabeth Proctor, the upright wife of philanderer John Proctor (a hearty Simon McLean), and a wily John Tyrell as Gilles Correy, the lawsuit-bent farmer who famously cries out “more weight” as he is being pressed to death by heavy stones.

Also logging in with impressive work are Cheryl Orsini as Ann Putnam; Jennifer Hildner as Mercy Lewis, one of the young women in the accusatory posse; and Tyne Firmin as the implacable Judge Hawthorne. Kimberly Matela’s period costumes, David Pentz’s lighting and Matt Stine’s sound all add to the evening’s enjoyable effect.

Absent from the show, however, is the necessary sexual chemistry between John Proctor and an (otherwise very credible) Abigail. Also, the Barbadian nurse, Tituba (Walita) who spearheads the inciting voodoo ceremony (and choreographed the lovely opening dance sequence) is rather jarringly portrayed as being the same age as the other young women.

The Crucible is an excellent and still relevant play -- to think, a human rights group is currently appealing to the Saudi King to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft in the town of Quraiyat. The play is currently being presented with committed and energetic acting by its entire cast at The ArcLight. Go see it.

Sound and Fury

Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and its Double has exerted immeasurable influence on recent generations of theatre practitioners and scholars. His “Theatre of Cruelty,” derived from surrealism, focuses on spectacle, gesture, and ritual, rejecting both psychological realism and the primacy of text, and seeks to overwhelm the audience with a multisensory experience that will free them from their quotidian state of mind. As a theorist, he is widely considered to be one of the two most important figures in twentieth-century theatre (the other being Bertolt Brecht.) As a playwright and director, however, Artaud is generally considered to have been less successful. The Cenci, his loose adaptation of a nineteenth century verse tragedy by Percy Shelley, ran for less than two weeks in 1935 and was a commercial disaster. The reasons for this failure are the subject of significant disagreement: perhaps the audience was not ready for Artaud’s revolutionary staging techniques, or perhaps Artaud was not able to, on his first attempt, realize his vision for the Theatre of Cruelty. On stage, The Cenci seems to have been received as a hybrid of tragedy and Grand Guignol and audiences rejected it soundly. The production’s notoriety, along with a notoriously stiff translation into English by British surrealist Simon Watson Taylor, have imbued the play itself with the forbidding air of one of the greatest flops in theatrical history.

John Jahnke’s company Hotel Savant has set out to redress this state of affairs by securing the rights to the first American translation of Artaud’s Cenci and incorporating the aesthetics of Cruelty into the postmodern staging paradigm that owes so much to Artaud’s theoretical writings.

There is much to admire in this new production, including Richard Sieburth’s clever new translation, which inserts some much needed irony and humor into the stilted text; Kristin Worrall’s densely layered and sophisticated sound design; Peter Ksander’s simultaneously spare and complex set, which transforms the Ohio Theatre into a sort of maze for both audience and performers; Jahnke’s elaborate and fluid staging, with simultaneous action and metatheatrical flourishes that update many of Artaud’s ideas; and mostly compelling performances from a skilled and physically beautiful cast. There is little question that this team of collaborators have given their all with this production, and that most of them feel they are working on something special and possibly even important.

The problem is that the play, despite Sieburth’s considerable efforts, just isn’t very good. Artaud wanted to de-emphasize the text in his work, foregrounding the sensory, real-time impact of liveness on stage, but The Cenci is still a text-based play and therefore the text needs to provide a strong foundation for the production. Instead, it feels like the product of a fevered adolescent imagination, perhaps an adolescent who had only recently discovered the writings of the Marquis de Sade. This kind of work has its charm when framed as a B-budget horror film but when presented with the self-importance of ground-breaking theatre it collapses under the weight of its grand pomposity.

The story of The Cenci, inspired by a real-life family of sixteenth-century Italian nobility, is a lurid one. Francesco Cenci (Anthony Torn), the family’s patriarch, is a licentious libertine who abuses his family and servants psychologically and physically. When some in the family report his crimes, which include an incestuous relationship with his daughter Beatrice, he is treated leniently by the papal authorities and subsequently removes his family to a castle outside of Rome, where they take matters into their own hands and murder him rather than continue to live under his tyranny. The crime is discovered and the family are put to death.

The sensational and scandalous tale of the Cenci family has been the subject of novels, plays, operas and films by artists ranging from Stendhal, to Dumas, to Hawthorne. The problem with Artaud’s version is that his oft-stated rejection of simplistic psychology and specifically character-driven motivations lead him to embrace the idea of Evil with a capital “E,” an idea that is meant to make the story something more but paradoxically makes it seem smaller and somehow absurd. Even if an audience were to embrace the suspect idea that Evil is a primal force, it is unlikely that any actor or actors could successfully embody such an abstraction, even when aided by sound and light and gesture. The power of the story of The Cenci is that it really happened; attempting to elevate to the realm of the “universal,” Artaud instead rendered it kind of silly.

Still, for theatre history enthusiasts, Hotel Savant’s production represents a unique opportunity. It is unlikely that another rendition of Artaud’s play will pass our way any time soon. It is well-worth the $18 price of admission to witness a skilled and enthusiastic ensemble grappling with one of theatre’s most ambitious failures.

Party People

Creativity struck twice during the 2000 theater season, when two dramatic adaptations of the Jazz-Age poem “The Wild Party” surfaced in New York. On Broadway, composer Michael John LaChiusa’s version nabbed a handful of Tony nominations but closed after only 68 performances; Off Broadway, Andrew Lippa’s incarnation met with a similar fate, snagging several awards but playing only 54 performances. Were audiences resistant to this edgy source material, or were they simply confused by having two parties to choose between? Whatever the reason, the lights went out on both shows in 2000, but now, eight years on, Brookyn’s ever-reliable and always ambitious Gallery Players have revived Andrew Lippa’s slick and seductive send-up of The Wild Party; with no competing garish galas in the area (aside from the occasional Park Slope street festival), perhaps audiences won’t shy away from the deliciously decadent production this time around.

The titular party is born, as so many problematic ideas are, out of nagging boredom. Queenie, the blonde and leggy half of a vaudeville couple living in 1920s Manhattan, persuades her boyfriend Burrs—a stage clown with a volatile, violent temper—to throw a spontaneous and gargantuan bash. Their relationship has soured, and she’s hungry for an influx of new and familiar faces to stir up some drama.

When her old pal Kate arrives with her latest catch, Mr. Black, in tow, Queenie immediately goes on the hunt. Shrugging Burrs off on Kate, she falls into a fierce flirtation with Black, who is an all too willing partner in this toxic mix of jealousy, love, and desperation.

Lippa’s almost completely sung-through score carefully traces the paths of the central characters, who perform the bulk of the material. A writhing mass of decadence, the party is laced with acts of debauchery (alcohol and drug use, sexual couplings), but it is also peopled with an extraordinary collage of juicy supporting characters. And in this production, the featured players nearly pull the rug out from beneath the principals.

Not that the leading characters don’t have some exceptional talent. As the calculating Queenie, Nicole Sterling has a distinctive voice and puts forth an instantly provocative presence and an imposing silhouette, but her tough-as-nails demeanor never registers the vulnerability that makes Queenie such a tragically trapped figure. In contrast, Jonathan Hack’s performance only skims the madness that would transform Burrs into a truly menacing, maniacal, and just plain terrifying persona. He has an explosive voice that handles this demanding material well, but it’s hard to believe that his Burrs wouldn’t be crushed by Queenie in two seconds flat.

The other leads fare better. Michael Jones turns in a smooth and enigmatic performance as the elusive Mr. Black, and Julia Cardia brings a delightfully zany energy to her thrilling performance as the devious Kate. In fact, her appearance midway through Act One was enough to kick the entire production into a higher gear—she explodes onto the stage like an uncorked bottle of champagne.

The most frustrating part of this Wild Party, however, is the tantalizing tease of being introduced to entrancing supporting characters who, after saying hello, don’t say much ever again. As the sexually ravenous Madelaine True, Tauren Hagans stops the show with an avalanche of perfectly fired one-liners during her saucy solo “An Old-Fashioned Love Story” (just guess which kind). As the dim boxer Eddie and his pint-sized girlfriend Mae, Theis Wekessser and K.C. Leiber turn in a sweetly comic—and adorably choreographed—duet on “Two of a Kind,” while composer brothers Phil and Oscar D’Armano (portrayed by cunning comedians Justin Birdsong and Zak Edwards) generate peppy panache as they guide the partygoers through a performance of their latest project.

Although these characters get a bit lost in the shuffle, this is still a hypnotic and intoxicating party in which to lose yourself. Director Neal J. Freeman keeps his ensemble on their toes—they are both interested and interesting—throughout the production, and Brian Swasey has created some exceptional, infectious choreography that uses the claustrophobic confines of the on-stage apartment to great advantage. And although the brassy band frequently threatens to overpower the actors (and, more perniciously, to obscure the show’s lyrics), they keep the show jumping under the solid direction of Jeffrey Campos.

The production also provides sumptuous visuals through the evocative and provocative designs of Summer Lee Jack (costumes), Hannah Shafran (set), and John Eckert (lighting).

Although the original Wild Party is now a distant echo, the best parties never lose their steam. Composer Andrew Lippa sat across the aisle from me during the production I attended, and judging from his reactions to the show, both he—and the responsive audience—are happy to have this Wild Party back in the city.

SUBURBAN MESHUGAH (MADNESS)

Mike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years is a household drama about faith and family with a rhythm better suited to a British television serial than to a play. As a result, The New Group’s limited-run US production ultimately drags more than it pops, despite some sterling performances. "To be a free people in our own land is the hope of two thousand years," proclaims the Israeli anthem, Hatikvah . But for overweight and underemployed Josh (Jordan Gelber), a 28-year old still living in his parents’ secular home in suburban London, to be free to practice a more devout Orthodox faith without family ridicule seems a hopeless endeavor indeed.

Josh’s aging Leftist parents, Rachel and Danny (Laura Esterman and David Kale) are squarely hit in the face by their son’s atypical rebellion, symptoms of which include wearing a capple (Jewish skull-cap) around the house, maintaining a restricted diet, and performing a sort of prayer that involves wrapping his arms with plastic rope, making it look suspiciously -- religion as narcotic? -- like he is preparing to shoot heroin.

“It’s my choice,” says Josh, “If it gives me something, why can’t you just accept it?” And yet, Josh’s newfound religious devotion is somehow less pardonable to his parents than seven post-grad years without gainful employment.

“It’s like having a Muslim in the house,” says his father. For Rachel and Danny’s liberal household (presented as a comfy Pier-One style living room by set designer Derek McLane) is one in which Israeli policies (circa 2005) can be comfortably challenged over The Guardian or tea.

Add to the family brood a chain-smoking, steamrolling, former kibbutznik of a grandfather (the delightful Merwin Goldsmith as Dave); and a globetrotting human rights extrovert daughter (a juicy Natasha Lyonne as Tammy); and the cast for the Jewish family sitcom is complete.

Laura Esterman does a yeoman’s work in her role as the family pillar in this first act, carrying many of the more mundane passages with her deft physicality (down to synchronized head nodding).

But it's only in the second act that Two Thousand Years starts really moving, with a family crisis that forces everybody, including Rachel's long estranged sister Michelle (a plum role for the able Cindy Katz) and Tammy's new Israeli boyfriend Tzachi (Yuval Boim) to come together.

The comic relief offered by the narcissist merchant banker Michelle, whose selfish ways inspire an ire that collectively unites the family, is a welcome backdrop for more Middle Eastern debate as spurred by outsider Tzach (and the presence of Israel that he implies.)

Even if Michelle's character seems something of a foil, the heated political discussion in the second act emerges from a believable family in a specific situation rather than being superimposed onto a slow domestic rhythm as is the case in the first act.

The family dynamics of the play have much potential in other mediums, and kvetching about parking is certainly endearing and familiar enough. But while certain family members are fleshed out enough to identify with (even the curmudgeonly grandfather), the potentially sympathetic Josh (whose brooding does not belie enough stifled rage) is harder to discern, and thus harder to care about.

While many interesting topics are touched upon by this British family from Cricklewood, from the Zionist ideal, West Bank/Gaza Strip, Israeli security, Venezualan referendum, and suicide bombs, to the Americans (they do what they want), the play remains curiously disjointed in its bridge between family, religion and politics.

On the Move

Location is everything, and nowhere is that more true than in the Big Apple, where one’s neighborhood becomes a major part of his or her personality. The search for an apartment is a metaphor for one’s quest for his or her true self in Brooke Berman’s Hunting and Gathering, which just opened at 59E59’s Primary Stages theater. But this journey never quite reaches its destination. Berman, whose publicity crew has repeated her many different living arrangements, must see some of herself in Ruth (Keira Naughton), the first character we meet. As she demonstrates in a cutesy slide show, Ruth has hopped from one sublet or house-sit to another for various short periods of time over the last two decades. Her social life is as unsettled as her geographical one. Ruth finds herself moving yet again, thanks to a broken relationship as the other woman in an affair with a married Columbia English professor.

Jesse (Jeremy Shamos) is now facing divorce as a result of that affair and moving into a place of his own. It seems he has never had to find his own living quarters, or decorate them, and so must lean on his younger half-brother Astor, (Michael Chernus), a squatter, to help him. Astor, meanwhile, holds a candle for Ruth, who merely sees him as a friend, though perhaps one equally as lost as herself. Pretty soon, Jesse has found himself another lady to lean on in the form of Bess (Mamie Gummer), an aggressive student auditing her class who asks him out for drinks (for some reason, Bess lives in a Park Slope share even though she attends school in Harlem), thus rounding out the relationship geometry.

All four characters are looking for something – a place of residence, to be sure, but more importantly, a place where they belong, a place that they can truly call home. Director Leigh Silverman finds a suitable manner in which to block this quest as the characters march on and offstage with an LCD screen behind them labeling their current domicile and type of living situation in Craig’s list-friendly terms, with characters often trailing off and finishing each other’s threads, thereby communicating their shared state of flux. (David Korins, the set designer, is to be credited for not just the screen but the backdrop, in which moving boxes comprise the skyline, with certain boxes opening up to provide furniture and props).

Berman’s play may come from personal experience, but the theatrical experience feels too insular. Who outside of the five boroughs could relate to a play that routinely name-checks areas like East Ninth Street or Orchard Street? This inaccessibility unfortunately extends to her characters as well. Naughton does an incredible job conveying Ruth’s mix of emotions and flawlessly merges the character’s moments of stubbornness and self-doubt – she is the true star of the show – but I wish Berman had provided more background for the character. Yes, she seems like a free spirit, but what are her real interests? She mentions that she has had many different jobs, but what were they, and why did none of them work out? This is especially odd given that Berman does not hesitate to provide an abundance of awkward exposition for her other characters (Bess even recites letters to her parents in monologue format).

While Jesse is the character who connects the foursome in Hunting, his character is less than central. Both Shamos and Chernus are excellent actors (witness Chernus in last season’s Essential Self-Defense and Shamos just this fall as a shamed priest in 100 Saints You Should Know), but are saddled here with two-dimensional material. I would have especially liked to delve more into Jesse’s world, since he is the character who has lost the most when we meet him. Berman’s men are lovelorn and lonely, the “gatherers” – or “prey” – as explained rather explicitly in a late scene by Bess. In fact, she is the lone character who knows how to make things happen rather than sit around waiting in vain, and Gummer uses an ebullient delivery to conceal the disappointments that have shaped her, only to ever-so-slightly reveal them in key moments.

Whether as predator or prey, what defines the four characters in Hunting is not the space in which they live, but with whom they occupy that space, an odd choice that subverts any effect Berman might want her play to have about true fulfillment coming from within. Happiness, it seems, requires more than just a broker’s fee.

Crimes of the Tart

Anyone who complains that downtown theatre consists mainly of intimate straight plays in black box theatres with minimal sets would do well to check out The Jack of Tarts: A Bittersweet Musical. With its sixteen member production team, seventeen musical numbers, eighteen cast members, a live orchestra and countless glittery pastries, the campy extravaganza is anything but small-scale. Every aspect of the performance, from its design scheme to its performance style, is highly exaggerated, yet playwrights Chris Tanner and Eric Wallach, who also directs, keep the plotlines of their adult-themed fairy tale relatively simple. The kingdom of Tartannia is trapped in the grips of a despotic queen (Lance Cruce) who has imprisoned her son Jack (Tanner) in a dungeon where he is forced to bake tarts that drive the commoners mad - until his complicity is threatened by two wronged heroines: Agnes (Michael Lynch) who longs for vengeance and Annabel Lee (Julie Atlas Muz) who longs for Jack.

Throw in some scrappily insane peasants, royal guards with a penchant for S&M, a couple of campy cohorts of the queen, and references ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Edgar Allan Poe, and the plot is decorated if not exactly thickened. No matter: thin plot points are waved off with a wink and a shrug (“you would think these two would have been stopped before they could hatch a plan” deadpans an excellent Richard Spore as narrator Big Daddy, “…I still don’t know how that happened”).

Still, there is a fine line between campy self-mockery and unpolished performance, and The Jack of Tarts walks both sides of it. Comprised largely of veteran Village drag queens and recent college graduates, the cast clearly has a lot of fun but their performances are often hesitant. While they form an impressively cohesive ensemble, surprisingly few cast members seize what could be standout moments appropriate to a production so consciously performative, and as a result the pace drags.

The musical numbers feel well-rehearsed, yet the music is not particularly memorable and the lyrics are at times difficult to understand. Choreography, by Wallach, gets the job done but doesn’t go much beyond that. An exception is Annabel’s Arrival choreographed and performed by Muz. The scene is a particularly lovely moment of lightness enhanced by design elements, which are simple yet enormous. At its best moments, all aspects of the production embody those qualities and it would be great if there were more of them.

Throughout the production, the design scheme is instrumental in evoking the world of Tartannia. Garry Haye’s impressive set looms large in the small theatre. Zsamira Sol Ronquillo’s wig and makeup design adds far more than a flourish to Becky Hubbert’s fun costumes. Perhaps most importantly, the titular tarts are spectacular. Given that they make the characters completely nuts, it's important that they look great. They do.

From the opening of the play, every inch of La MaMa’s first floor theatre is packed with style and flavor. Literally: upon entering the space, audiences find cast members serving pastries. The extension of the performance into the audience, which continues periodically throughout the production, is limited enough to be noninvasive while successfully making the entire performance space into the play’s world. Such a warm invitation to join in the fun helps keep the audience patient during the performance's weaker moments.

At its best, The Jack of Tarts is an irreverent romp that celebrates the ridiculous while asking heartfelt questions about irresponsible leadership and those who follow it. The play's final scene, when those questions become most prescient, is among the finest of the production. It’s worth the wait.

What a Girl Wants

Though best known as a film actor with a resume traversing high-brow (Terms of Endearment) and low-brow (Dumb and Dumber), Jeff Daniels has also written nearly a dozen plays for his Purple Rose Theatre Company (named after the Woody Allen film in which he starred) in his home state of Michigan. One of them, Apartment 3A, has seen its fair share of reproductions (including a production by the ArcLight just two seasons ago) around the country, thanks to its combination of light-heartedness and sentiment. Now, The Clockwork Theatre is giving it a go, trying to find a balance between its lighter and darker themes. Annie Wilson (Marianna McClellan) is a sullen fundraising director at the local public television station who, after a rough break-up, impulsively moves into a shabby new apartment. An odd triangle simmers between her, a supportive married neighbor named Donald (Doug Nyman), and Elliott (Jay Rohloff), a colleague nursing what appears to be an enduring unrequited crush on Annie. McClellan often plays Annie a tad too far on the tightly-wired side; the character is at her most entertaining and revealing when letting loose, as she does in several sharply written tirades at her station (one of which finds her threatening the livelihood of Big Bird). But opposite Nyman, the two share a sweet camaraderie that grounds the character. Because Donald is married, yet nonetheless attentive, their relationship bears all of the intimacy sans all of the baggage that an affair would encompass. Director Owen M. Smith’s scenes, particularly early ones such as when Donald offers to cook for Annie and to teach her how to waltz, are remarkable for how deft they are in creating a bond that can grow in the most surprising of places.

But 3A has other plot points in mind. Instead of Elliot loving Annie, who in turn falls for Donald, it is Donald who loves the idea of Annie loving Elliott. Annie does finally give into Elliott’s advances, largely at Donald’s surprising insistence. Their dates lead the play in a very different direction, though, with an awful lot of exposition about God, Catholicism, fate and coincidence. As a result, Daniels’ play takes on the feel of an over-preachy sermon, and wears on the patience of its audience.

3A moves into different territory altogether yet again in its second act, with several plot twists. What works best – and is excellently staged by Smith – is the crossing back and forth between Annie’s scenes with the two different men in her new life. After her encounters with Elliott, she reports back to Donald, allowing him to take on the role of father-confessor. Both men fulfill a different set of her needs and rebuild her confidence. However, there remained a tentative, still quality to McClellan’s performance. She should be transformed by her new relationships, but her character remained rigid.

On the other hand, both Nyman and Rohloff impress with sharply nuanced turns. Daniels’ play itself vacillates between light and heavy themes a little too much; it isn’t standard romantic comedy fare but it also lacks the gravitas of a more stirring drama. The lighter first act is a more nimble affair. Rohloff finds himself bearing the burden of these weighty scenes, but is at least up to the task of heavy lifting required by Daniels’ schmaltzier scenes. He is great at portraying Elliott’s earlier scenes as he fumbles in his awkward attempts to win over the reluctant Annie, but is also believable when he must defend his religious faith.

The second act of 3A would have benfited from greater humor, in a Neil Simon vein. I believe Rohloff would have been up to the challenge and would have liked to have seen McClellan flex her comedic muscles. Nyman, too, brings a great amount of insight to Donald, showing just why the character could be as generous and patient as he is. Ultimately, it is because his character is so sympathetic that the audience roots for Annie at all.

Olga Mills’ set design works surprisingly well, providing triple duty as the backdrop for both Annie’s and Elliott’s abodes in addition to the television station where they both work. Combined with the good acting of the show’s cast (including Philip J. Cutrone and Vincent Vigilante in amusing minor roles), this talent finds the heart in Daniels, and buoys up a play that could have otherwise been brought down by the weight of its playwrights ambitions.

Go On, Try and Offend Me

The lights stay up. A black curtain is drawn aside, revealing a row of twenty-one actors, known as the Bats, the Flea Theater's resident company, sitting on a bench. Aside from the actors, the stage is bare. The play, or rather, performance, or perhaps even better, lecture, is the Peter Handke's Offending the Audience. The premise is simple: tonight there will be no play, in the sense that there will be no representation or imitation attempted by the actors. Offending the Audience turns the tables on its audience, attempting to bring attention to them instead of its performers. Written in 1966, Offending the Audience is an avant-garde piece. However, over forty-two years later, it has lost some of its bite. While different from most plays in its structure (and the fact that it is NOT a play), the premise is no longer challenging or exciting for theater-goers. The main draw of the evening is revealed in the synopsis of the play. Expectations are shifted for this play, as the audience is alerted in advance to the difference between this play and others. Instead of being shocking and new, Offending the Audience is a relic, a historical document depicting the attempts made to revitalize or shock theater in the past.

“You represent something. You are someone. You are something. You are not someone here but something.” The group of actors repeat this sentiment to the audience, making eye contact with some members. They want us to know that this evening, the spectators have become the representation, not they the actors. They are actors who refuse to act, yet at the same time of their refusal, remain actors acting.

Offending the Audience is a scripted work, so matter how many times the performers insist that “no action that has occurred elsewhere is re-enacted here,” they are in fact re-enacting the text. Their words are not original to themselves, they have been given the sentences and phrases to speak, their movements have been directed and rehearsed. Jim Simpson, the director, has done a fine job of orchestrating the cast's movements. Clad all in black, they pop up and down from the long black bench, swarming the audience at times. The black suggests that the audience is to see the actors as they are, and to see the stage as merely a stage. Yet, as long as a text remains on the stage, as long as simple costuming and even the most simple set design remain, representation remains.

No longer shocking, Offending the Audience could be considered a classic. Audiences are no longer surprised by Waiting for Godot or A Doll's House ; why should we expect to be surprised by Handke's piece? If the piece remains standing, able to attract, educate, and entertain an audience after a period of time, then it has done its job as a work of theater. Offending the Audience provides an hour-long crash course in theater theory, from Aristotle to Artaud, that questions the why of theater. It seems appropriate that the piece is performed by the Bats. While it may not be the best piece to showcase one's acting skills, it provides an opportunity to play with what once was the avant-garde. The piece cannot be looked at as “offensive” any longer, but rather as what it is—a piece that once shocked and awed but now instructs. In an age where theater is considered dead or dying by many, it is nice to remember a time when artists wanted to challenge their audiences.

Over the Moon

The magnificent Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel was never intended to be a theater. With its deep brown paneled walls, almost claustrophobically cozy space, muted lighting, and lush atmosphere, it seems better suited to the intimacy of cabaret (for which it is a historic stomping ground) or to the stealthy maneuvers of a clandestine love affair. But Tajlei Levis and John Mercurio were determined to stretch the stoic walls of this hallowed space to embrace a different sort of creature entirely: a musical comedy. Exploding with charm and infectious songs, their new musical Glimpses of the Moon makes an endearingly predictable—and predictably endearing—evening of classy, frothy entertainment.

Adapted from Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, Glimpses of the Moon marks another period piece for Levis (book and lyrics) and Mercurio (music), who have become something of literary specialists over the past few years. Their jazzy adaptation of Dawn Powell’s 1940s novel A Time to Be Born played to sold out audiences at the 2006 International Fringe Festival; Glimpses of the Moon also skips happily back into the glamorous days of old New York and was written specifically to be performed in this historic space.

At the performance I attended, the room was at least partially filled by a cluster of the well-heeled Manhattan elite. If, like me, you’re unaccustomed to such luxury, you’ll find that you immediately identify with the central couple, Nick (Stephen Plunkett) and Susy (Patti Murin), two bright and clever individuals who rub shoulders with the upper set—but haven’t a cent of their own. Treasured and admired for their talents (he writes, she dances), Nick and Susy rely on their friends to sponsor their high-brow lives. But when their paths cross, Susy hatches a scheme to get them off the hook forever: she proposes that they get married, trade in the gifts for cash, and stay married for only one year, or until one of them snares a richer spouse.

In the midst of their mischief, however, Nick and Susy unexpectedly fall in love—with each other. They’re unwilling to settle for a life of poverty, however, so they remain determined to find wealthier matches, wounding themselves and each other in the process. Within this deceptively simple story, Wharton asks uncomfortable questions: Can you be happy without money? How much will we compromise ourselves for what we (think we) want?

Mercurio’s bouncy, appealing score enlivens every scene, and the production pops swiftly from one song to the next. Mercurio sits at the grand piano, which serves as the central set piece, and his fiery accompaniment is given depth and texture by Geoff Burke, who contributes captivating counterpoint on flute, clarinet, and saxophone.

Briskly directed by Marc Bruni and quick-stepping to the elegant, compact choreography of Denis Jones, the excellent six-member cast turns in remarkably rich performances in their thinly sketched roles. Beth Glover is perfectly pretentious as Susy’s uppercrust friend Ellie, who uses Susy to conduct her own extramarital escapade, while Daren Kelly turns in a warm and blustery performance as her long-suffering husband. With her snappy, spot-on timing, Laura Jordan very nearly steals the show with her sharp comic performances in two quirky roles. And as the fantastically fussy Streffy, Glenn Peters dexterously delivers an endless stream of witty asides.

As the crafty couple, Plunkett and Murin generate a sweet chemistry during the sweeping title song. Levin hasn’t given much dimension to their characters, however, and the performances suffer a bit from their overwhelming normalness. With her zippy trove of songs and dazzling smile, Murin fares better at making Susy a very nearly quirky heroine—an imperfect ingénue we can root for. And along with the rest of the cast, Murin is draped in a set of gorgeous costumes designed by Lisa Zinni.

A major draw of this production is the opportunity to see a different notable cabaret singer at each performance. Levis and Mercurio have cleverly set one of the scenes in a luxurious hotel—guess which one?—in the elegant Oak Room, where a quarreling Nick and Susy watch a performance of “Right Here, Right Now,” a torchy, “seize the day” ballad that is both poignant and pointed. Cabaret legend KT Sullivan took the stage the night I attended; Susan Lucci and Alison Fraser are among the artists yet to come.

Regrettably, the song that Mercurio and Levis have given their diva is one of the production’s least melodically remarkable, but its lyrics elicit a lovely transformation from Nick and Susy. It’s rare that you get to watch characters watching a performance, and it was fascinating to see how they reacted to the music. Although it skips over darker (and often more interesting) plot possibilities, this production makes an excellent case for the power of song. Set in a cabaret space, where the genuine exchange of music and emotion is de rigueur, Glimpses of the Moon offers a glimmer of honesty that takes musical theater back where it belongs—whether or not it was intended for theater, the Oak Room is currently bringing it up close and personal.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

It takes someone with an intermediate knowledge of the past twenty years of comics to fully appreciate Roundtable Ensemble’s production of Chris Kipiniak’s superhero drama Save the World. In the interest of full disclosure, my day job is in the licensing department of one of the “Big Two” comic book publishers; so I was more than up to the task. But this enchanted hammer comes down on both sides, because I doubt someone who couldn’t recognize when this resourceful production cribs heavily from influential comic works, like Watchmen, and Squadron Supreme would enjoy it as much as I did. A psycho-political thriller, Save the World follows a U.N. sanctioned superhero team, the Protectorate. When half a dozen natural disasters bombard the Earth simultaneously, the Protectorate suspects that they might be connected. Just days away from installing a U.N. authorized third party government in Jerusalem; the team’s members find their heroic principles fraying under the pressure. The play’s seemingly innocent title actually reveals its bleak ideology: “How far are you willing to go to save the world?”

There are certain aspects of the plot that borrow directly from the classic comics mentioned above, like the notion of superheroes taking over a politically unstable country and a last minute twist. Yet Kipiniak (who has written a handful of Marvel comics as well) also introduces super-characters with truly inventive abilities and compellingly ambiguous ethics. Take for example the team’s leader Aon, an obvious send-up on DC’s Superman. Aon’s never-ending battle against evil is just that—never-ending. As would probably be the case with such an obligated and powerful being, we never actually see Aon. He’s simply too busy to meet up with the rest of the team at headquarters. Nevertheless, Kipiniak shapes Aon into strong “absent character” through other characters’ remarks about him.

Superhero antics are not naturally suited for live theatre, so director and developer Michael Barakiva scores points for his success. Wisely, the super powers on display all function based on other characters’ reactions to them, like Stagger’s ability to slow down time or Quake’s invisible seismic blasts. The play’s few action scenes are impeccably staged, and there is a pervading sense of dynamism in the way Barakiva got the script on its feet.

The scenic, lighting and sound designs support Barakiva’s zippy staging. Shoko Kambara’s set design aptly recalls the “Hall of Justice” from the Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon. Scaffoldings upstage and on both sides allow the cast to depict different locations with ease. Shane Rettig and Nick Francone, as the sound designer and lighting designer respectively, work hard to make up for the lack of visible super powers. Umbra’s shadow powers, for instance, get their own mysterious look and sound. It’s all very convincing.

Thanks to Oana Botez-Ban’s sharp, but restrained costume design, each character’s super-duds ably classify their powers and personality; an obvious stand out being Stagger’s spectacular red/orange business suit. The black sash that Legend adds to his costume to honor a fallen comrade is a particularly endearing touch. The only costume that didn’t measure up is Future-Knight’s supposedly “advanced” suit of armor. Clearly a child’s plastic Halloween costume, the cheap getup made it very difficult to buy her as a legitimate superhero.

Outer trappings aside, all the cast members render their characters with great humanity. There aren’t really “good guys” and “bad guys.” These are morally conflicted people trying to do good or trying to live up to their potential, but failing in a big way. Christine Corpuz, who plays the uncertain Quake, brings this struggle to life very well. Again, the dapper Stephen Bel Davies as Stagger, the team’s English strategist, added just the right kind of zing to the proceedings; Davies hides his character’s comprised moral compass under his refined demeanor splendidly.

Kipiniak has certainly crafted a mature story, opting for cerebral “Biffs!” “Bams!” and “Zowies!” over the traditional kind. This production isn’t really appropriate for kids, which both helps and hinders. My only fear is that people who don’t share my enthusiasm about superheroes are going to feel put off by all the intensely serious melodrama. Not me— what interested me in seeing this super heroic tragedy on stage was its unexpected resonance with Greek and Shakespearian tragedies. Like those plays from antiquity, Save the World persuasively examines the quest for power and its dire consequences.

Dead Heads

Several of the characters in Mark Schultz’s Deathbed are truly loathsome. One cowardly man thinks so little of his cancer-stricken wife that he can’t bear to be near her, recoils from her touch, doesn’t appear to know or care what cancer is, and reluctantly allows her one hour to lay her head in his lap before he must flee: “Call me when you’re better.” Another man matter-of-factly expresses his desire to commit suicide “on Wednesday morning” because, he claims without explaining, that worlds of dead people live inside him. His inert and self-pitying granddaughter fails to intervene and his paperboy asks, “Can I watch?” The boy later nonchalantly helps the man commit the act. The play’s press release exaggerates: “Deathbed eloquently paints a landscape of longing and desperation as its characters struggle with loss and suffering.” Deathbed is anything but eloquent. The script brims with stingy language and innumerable clichés. Deathbed consists of a series of interrelated vignettes, each lasting a few minutes. Typically, one person clumsily attempts to describe his or her deep anguish and the other is busy text messaging or otherwise focusing solely on him or herself, rattling off trite responses like, “That’s so sad.”

In response to harrowing details, the transparently amoral characters of Deathbed utter the buzz phrases “that’s sad” or “that’s horrible” or a variation of them no fewer than thirty times. This soon becomes tedious; it’s as if the entire cast has never matured beyond valley speak. I almost expected Paris Hilton to appear, exclaiming, “That’s sad. And hot! And sad!”

Mr. Schultz stretches the callousness and muteness of these characters far past the point of credulity. Perhaps he is satirizing impossibly self-absorbed individuals. Perhaps he has identified an unlikely handful of loosely related (a la Crash) characters existing at the remote end of apathy. Or, maybe he’s simply watched American Beauty too many times. (For good measure, Schultz curiously tosses in a plot thread about a gay man helplessly in love with an ostensibly straight one).

In any event, the conceit runs out of gas quickly. We get it. And we get it early in the play. These selfish and astonishingly inarticulate characters don’t care about each other and most are too socially retarded to express anything resembling empathy. They (and the script) are not “eloquent.” When the paperboy asks the soon-to-be suicide what he thinks death is like, the first thing this man (who has supposedly thought long and hard about it) can come up with is, “Oh, I don’t know.” The cancer stricken woman hopes that people will respond to her disclosure by saying, “Wow, that’s amazing.”

I cannot recall the last time I felt that a 50-minute full-length play was too long, but Deathbed bored me to dea… oh, nevermind. During the matinee performance I attended, someone in the audience was actually snoring. Many of Deathbed’s characters may be struggling with something, but it isn’t loss or suffering. They have light years to go before they reach that level. These atypical people are struggling with their inability to communicate in the most rudimentary ways. Someone call Toastmasters!

If there’s a bright spot in this production, it’s the combination of scenic (Alexander Dodge), lighting (Josh Epstein), and sound design (Ryan Rumery). Hospital waiting room walls lined with antiseptic white plastic seats seamlessly morph, during vignette segues, into pastel blue living rooms with couches. Quick, loud, ominous sound bites portend drama that the characters never quite live up to.

That’s because Mr. Schultz won’t let them. He reins them in with three-word sentences and one-dimensionality, as if he doesn’t trust them. I’m sure there are accomplished actors among the cast but, unfortunately, the miserly script frustrates all of their efforts.

Assistant Living

If the world gave out awards for multi tasking Angela Madden would take home a blue ribbon. She is a writer, director, performer, producer; co-founder of Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and one of their Board Members. But before she was any of these things she was an assistant, a secretary, and in her own words, a “servant”, to rich C.E.O’s across the nation. Angela Madden’s one woman show, C.E.O and Cinderella, has more than a hint of autobiographical truth to it. Both the actress and character are named Angela, they both have a theatrical background and both have worked in high powered corporations before devoting themselves to theatre.

Angela started her career as a modern day Cinderella, performing menial tasks for her boss while eagerly awaiting her own invitation to one of his balls. In the meantime, she is there to serve his dinner. “Give it to the peasants,” her first boss would say, referring to trays of uneaten salmon and tarts that she carried back to the kitchen. At first Angela was delighted with the opportunity to binge on her rich boss’s fancy leftovers. But after four years of carrying trays she grew tired of being a peasant.

How long will it take for Angela to get invited to the ball? When will her Prince Charming come? In real life these questions have less to do with fairy tale endings and more to do with a young woman’s quest for self esteem.

“Make your own ball,” the actress says now, in an interview with United Stages that is featured in the playbill; though it took her years to muster up the ability to follow her own advice.

Angela comes from a very dark past. Her childhood was shattered at an early age, her innocence snatched at the hands of a deviant stepfather. No matter how hard Angela tries to run away from her past she still feels bound to it. At one point she realizes that she dreads walking to work to face her boss the same way she once dreaded coming home from school to face her stepfather.

Angela Madden’s story is one of resilience. She finds ways to carry on, to shed her hurt and make right what someone else made wrong. Standing alone with only a chair and table for props, Angela has very little to hide behind as she divulges disturbing details about her life. Her raw honesty makes the story especially compelling.

Like Cinderella, she spends her days waiting for someone else to whisk her away from her life, hoping a boss will fall in love with her or at least see her as an extended member of his family. Through her adventures in corporate life to her confrontations with her family we see that Angela has not experienced much to give her faith in humanity, and yet she finds beauty in the theater.

Slipping into another character proves to be Angela’s greatest escape. She can’t make a living acting but she never gives it up, even when her employers become more demanding of her time. Her talent is something the C.E.O’s can not take away from her. It is a part of her life that remains separate and untouched from the bad.

There is much more to her one-woman show than simple plot and narrative. Angela has a way of delivering her monologues that makes you feel as if you are watching something very personal. She bares her soul so fully and trustingly that you can’t help but pull yourself out of the story to admire how far the real person has come.

Angela has scaled huge obstacles to turn her childhood dreams of stage stardom into a reality. And though it clearly was not fun or fulfilling at the time; it does seem that managing millions of small details, working long, hectic hours and patiently dealing with demanding and eccentric C.E.O’s has prepared her well for a career in the theatre.

Ghosts in the Machine

The amazing Richard Foreman describes his famous avant-garde productions as "theater machines." Foreman's latest "machine," Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, absolutely fits this description. Like previous Foreman "machines" running down the decades, this one is a magical contraption that assembles seemingly random components of human experience to create something new and insightful. The experience is transformative. When you enter the Ontological Theater of St Mark's Church, Foreman's usual shop floor, the place has been decked out somewhat like Madame Blavatsky's seance studio. The walls are covered with gigantic antique "spirit photos" -- in which two portraits, one of a living person and one of a presumed ghost, are exposed within the same frame. Names (of the living person? the ghost? the photographer?) and long-passed dates are scrawled along the borders. Three-dimensional theatrical masks pop out of a few of the photos.

The spirit photos are all mounted on a slight diagonal to the stage floor, suggesting that this "machine" occupies a different plane than the auditorium, literally. Center stage is occupied by two small grand pianos, one veiled with a heavy cloth.

In the upstage wall are set two projection screens, with punched borders suggesting photograph negatives. The screens stare -- blankly, at first, and then are filled with images shot in two distant locations, England and Japan. Dressed like high-society seance participants, a small ensemble of live actors begins a "journey" to another place and time.

As usual for Foreman machines, the design elements are bizarre, surreal, and evocative, combining whimsy and unease. The seance conductor wears black tie, with vampire teeth and a frilly lace apron, emphasising his role as an attendant to the living from the undead. A gigantic garish puppet, "King Mockingbird," is crowned with tiny American flags, referencing America's mimicry of the rest of the world.

The actors open blank books and hold them up against the screens, reading the projected video images through the thin pages. Is there acting here? Yes, but the performers act as if entranced. Their coordinated speech and motion is impressive, but this is not the kind of show in which acting serves to illuminate character or forward a plot. The inhabitants of Potatoland do convey curiosity about that strange other universe -- ours, or rather, the world of the human consciousness. The Potatolanders are engaged, frustrated, and bewildered.

The human performers start their journey by taking drugs, and soon find themselves mesmerized by the parade of images on the screen. Foreman marshals the three troupes of performers -- American, English, and Japanese -- to compare the journeys of tourists to the "spirit world," to the sub- or heightened-consciousness, to actual distant climes, and of course, the best armchair tourism of all -- theatre spectatorship.

As usual, Foreman comes up with some intriguing paradoxes. "I am here before you arrive / I will be here after you have gone," the image of a performer on the screen aptly says -- but being only a projected image, recorded on a continent far away, this person is not "here" at all, ever. "Trust me / I go backwards / Trust me / I repeat myself," another chants, fulfilling her iterated prophecy even as she speaks it. "The visitor sleeps amidst the excitement of the experience," a HAL-like voice intones. To consider this mere speculative musing is a mistake.

At one point, Foreman confidently declares that "only by being a tourist can one experience a place" -- and then shatters that idea with a filmed scene on a staircase, featuring the Japanese ensemble, involving 1940s costumes, hiding, and what sounds like air-raid sirens. With varying degrees of severity and horror, New York, England, and Japan have all been attacked from the air. Ever since, the art and culture of these three places have struggled to make the receding memory of those horrors "immediate" as their survivors inevitably fade into mere spirit.

"Go to England immediately!" the Potatolanders are commanded, but this is easier said than done. They -- and we -- can see "England" on the screen, but is any flat image on a screen, any spectre from the photographed past, really "immediate" to its living spectator? Or is it the "immediacy" of trapped, distant images that leads people, in Potatoland and on planet earth, to believe in the magic of photography, cinema, and theater?

Like the imaginary time machine of H.G. Wells, Foreman's latest theatre machine takes us to "other worlds," and in so doing, compels us to examine our own with new eyes.

Peach Appeal

Flirting with (and stripping to) the taboos of the Prohibition era, the burlesque troupe The Peach Tartes—a luscious quintet of game, glamorous women—have unleashed their saucy new show in the intimate boudoir space of the Cutting Room. Cheekily dubbed Peel for Repeal, their latest romp is a winsome, lively, and irresistible evening of entertainment that loosely embraces the music, style, and aesthetic of the 1920s. The eclectic performances are tethered together by an enigmatic hostess, Miss Astrid, a brilliant comedienne who presides over the evening with a thick German accent and an endless stream of ripe verbal zingers. Declaring her plan to open a speakeasy named, aptly, “Shhhhh,” she introduces each scene as a possible act for her new club. Through her interaction with the audience (many of whom were more than eager to participate), Miss Astrid creates a speakeasy in the venue itself, ordering patrons to “drink the boooooze,” make noise, and, most of all, imbibe the intoxicating show.

And whether or not you want to take her advice, it’s all too easy to lose yourself in the decadent atmosphere. Sitting elbow to elbow at long tables alongside dedicated regulars who swilled cocktails and stared hard at the stage, gazing up at the dimmed chandeliers that provided a smoky, sultry ambience, I had to blink to remember that it was 2008, not 1928.

Burlesque, after all, is escapism at its finest; when we arrive at a place, Miss Astrid reminds us, we "are either running from or to something.” The talented Tartes—who are, variously, fine actors, dancers, and acrobats—maintain their part of the charade, appearing only as their alter egos (Scarlet O’Gasm, Veruca Honeyscotch, Rita MenWeep, Penny Dreadfulz, and Madam Rosebud) with no mention of their “real” names in the program.

Accompanied by bouncy, soulful, and brazen music, the women spool and twist their bodies to create meaning and tell stories. And the majority of these stories, of course, whether a soliloquy featuring a lonely Oklahoma girl or a flirtation between two silent-movie stars, arrive at the same skin-baring conclusion.

But showing skin will only get you so far, and the trick of this brand of storytelling, as the Peach Tartes have embraced with moxie and wit, lies in the creative steps you take to reveal yourself. Layered in stockings, camisoles, fringe, and tassels, each performer makes brilliant and often seductive use of creative props. (Take a moment to imagine the possibilities inherent in the broad curves of a liquor bottle or the sharp edges of a shovel.)

Given the group’s penchant for theatricality, it seems no accident that the most polished and entertaining numbers showcase the least amount of skin. At the top of the list is Veruca Honeyscotch’s high-flying routine. Devastated after the abrupt departure of her boyfriend, she removes only her gloves before climbing up two long scarlet curtains that hang from the ceiling. To the brassy, jazzy sounds of Ella Fitzgerald crooning “When I Get Low, I Get High,” Honeyscotch scales the drapes, winding and binding herself before unfurling and bending her body into various breathtaking contortions. She’s coy, commanding, and, remarkably, clothed.

Burlesque is certainly not for everyone, and as a feminist I was on high alert to sniff out any wisp of objectification. Instead, I found myself charmed by the good-natured, almost wholesome, attitude of this dynamic ensemble, who popped with personality and sweetly shrugged off the occasional musical miscue.

The show hurtles to an end all too quickly with a quick reference to the 1929 stock market crash. With its flimsy, uneven structure, the show itself is also something of a tease—a cluster of variety acts dominated by a mid-show raffle and obscured by the clinking of glasses. Still, Peel for Repeal accomplishes a tricky theatrical feat, one just as coveted in 2008 as it was in 1928: it leaves its audience wanting more.

Can You Go Home Again?

Going home (or to what used to be home) for the holidays is a painful experience for many. As we grow up, what used to be family traditions fall away, as the responsibilities and burdens of adulthood weigh down. Such is the case in Chad Beckim's new play, The Main(e) Play . Shane, an actor who is beginning to make it in New York, returns to his childhood home in Maine, where his brother Roy still lives with his seven year old son, Jay, and their Ma. The two brothers stand in direct contrast to each other. While Shane earns his living filming cheesy commercials, the most famous of which is one for the Gap, Roy works pouring construction, what he considers to be actual, honest work. It is the collision of the two brothers that causes both to come to a realization about the way they are. The stage is set up to resemble a small-town, decorated-with-love living room that is littered with toys. All signs seem to point to a basic, American family drama. But, what sets The Main(e) Play apart from other domestic dramas is that its action mainly occurs somewhere else, offstage. Jay and Ma are never seen, only mentioned, even though their characters shape a lot of the play. Thanksgiving dinner, the reason why Shane has returned home, is only mentioned after the fact. A large portion of stage time is dedicated to the brothers sitting on the couch, smoking, watching TV, and rehashing what just happened. A shroud of mystery surrounds the play. Shane's cell phone and wallet go missing; who besides Jay could possibly have taken them? What is the problem with the boys' Ma? Why did were the locks changed on the family house?

The play doesn't attempt to explain everything or even anything. It stresses the results of the brothers', particularly Shane's, actions, rather than the actions themselves. Each character in the play is flawed, but in the end it seems that Shane is the most flawed of all. Where Roy has accepted the responsibilities of fatherhood, Shane has rejected it in a devastating way. Shane finds things to blame for the difference in his childhood home, never accepting it is his own actions that could be the reason for the change.

Language in the play is of utmost importance, due to the fact that the audience hears about things rather than sees them. Beckim's dialog is sharp-tongued and a bit offensive. Roy, his friend Rooster, and Jess, Shane's ex-girlfriend, speak in a way that is, at times, delightfully crass. The actor's use of accents subtly distorts what they are saying, particularly when their characters leave messages on Roy's ancient answering machine. The distortion can cause some frustration for the viewer, since the messages come at a pivotal point in the play. The only character who is accent-less is Shane, who has practiced and trained long to lose all vestiges of his hometown voice. It is interesting that Shane, the one character who is the most opaque, should be the one to speak the most clearly.

Anyone who has ever returned home and hated it should perhaps look into themselves to see why. The Main(e) Play will appeal to those who appreciate not knowing everything up front, and to those who like to hear the language of the stage rather than just see the action. The play manages to set itself apart from other plays that would be considered “domestic dramas” by not showing the audience all the dirty details of home life, just the one that ultimately matters.