Going for Baroque

What comedy divine from blank verse springsWhen Judith Shakespeare's fairest Comp'ny brings A play-in-mostly-verse, by Hagen, Paul Of Pope's Rape of the Lock, to that great hall Known as the Duo, in East Fourth Street fair! Through Pope's old words they've blown some fresh new air.

Here, Pope's the narrator, and matches wits With actors playing Lock, and pitches fits. His off-stage-left critique is first intrusive Declining, later on, into “abusive.” Pope's view of humankind's not optimistic, So in the flesh he's sadomasochistic.

They've cast as heroine Belinda (she Of threatened curl) one who in truth's a “he” (John Forkner.) Pope himself's played by a “she”: Miss Littlestone--Soul of Hilarity! Her Pope sneers--he's a misanthropic grouch-- Whilst Forkner's 'Linda lolls upon a couch Set in a set made decadently garish By cloth of gold worth half a wealthy parish.

(In keeping with a Judith Shakes tradition Some girls play boys; boys girls: for the position Of gender in this world is social -- learned. That's shown true when the roles are thus o'erturned.)

Paul Hagen's “Popish” language is delightful: His Seussic verse is comic and insightful. He vivisects the paranoid A. Pope Who with "improvisation" cannot cope. (When one bold actor adds to “nymph” an “-o” Repeatedly, it causes quite a row.)

Lock's play-within-a-play recounts the tale Of Goldilocks (Belinda), red-lipped, pale Who to her joy and horror, is pursued By one too-rakish, scissors-wielding, rude And popular (unfortunately) Baron (Played by Miss V. Morosco, who does dare one To think she's somehow channeling James Dean And Malkovich's Valmont: suave, and mean.)

With sharp tableaux Jane Titus smartly blocks The action well, engaging as she mocks Pope's vanities, and his renowned creation. Miss Darling's costumes show smart combination Of Pope's time's clothes and ours: gowns, frock coats, bows One pair of bluejeans, plus, perched on one nose A pair of plastic glasses. When the play Is mostly over, the actors suddenly break into a more realist prose style, gang up on Pope, and struggle for control of the story.

This twist is not exactly original: it reminded this reviewer of the scene in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods in which the disgruntled fairytale characters violently gang up on their smug, self-distanced Narrator. After Lock's coup de cast, the script goes on perhaps a few minutes too long.

Ultimately, however, The Rape of the Lock is a riotously fun evening, equally likely to amuse and provoke both the original poem's fans and critics, as well as the uncommitted and uninitiated. As The Rape of the Lock is the first full production derived from the Judith Shakespeare Company's Resurgence new adaptations development program, I look forward to encountering the next product.

Some Like It Hot

Little more than hot air connects the quartet of monologues that comprise Norman Lasca’s A Great Place to Be From. As a severe heat wave makes its way across Midwestern America, four individuals share stories both devastatingly honest and comical about Important Moments in their lives; events that led them to a major change or epiphany. However, these four monologues remain fundamentally disconnected thematically, leading one to wonder if Lasca created these vignettes as anything more than a showcase for his diverse work. As it currently stands at the Kraine Theater, where Place kicks of the Babel Theater Project’s new season and runs until September 27 under Geordie Broadwater’s sometimes overly restrained direction, the play still feels like a work-in-progress.

Contrary to his show’s title, Lasca takes his audience to some rather ugly locales in the human psyche. His inaugural monologue, “Stars in the City,” finds Paul (Matthew Johnson) detailing sex with his girlfriend while bemoaning the waning emotional intimacy between them. “Transfusion,” for another example, explores the lengths to which D (Jacques Roy) will go to save an animal. There is also “Phantom Limb,” in which housewife Anne (Kim Martin-Cotten) nurtures a long-simmering fetish.

These emotional crises are rife with dramatic potential, but Lasca undercuts his own work by making it too literal. He should be showing his points onstage, not telling them to his audience. This is more difficult to do in monologue form with just one actor and his or her dialogue on stage, but he can still let some ideas emerge on their own rather than feel compelled to make them all explicit.

His actors are certainly good enough to depend on. Roy delivers a sterling performance as a disaffected hospital orderly who resorts to extreme measures to save the life of his pet dog; he immerses himself completely in Lasca’s arch dialogue and makes every image easy to conjure up. Andrew Zimmerman, too, shines in “Battle of Bunker Hill,” as a disenchanted grocery store employee going off on a tear about his overly patriotic boss. These are two performers who know how to pick up incomplete material and hoist it above their shoulders.

Johnson, on the other hand, cannot do the same thing in “City.” Despite the amount of information Lasca has his character share with the audience, we know very little about Paul and his girlfriend. Whereas Roy and Zimmerman are able to hint at what their experiences with their dog and boss, respectively, mean to them, Johnson’s monologue feels more like recitative. His line readings all follow the same delivery pattern, punctuated with a grunt, and so we never if we can take his lines at face value or need to read between them. I wish Broadwater had done more to flesh out this performance.

Also, “Phantom” feels distinct – and, it should be stated, long – enough to warrant a production of its own rather than being attached to Place on some sort of theatrical rider bill. It feels like a shame to shoehorn this monologue in, since Lasca again has the good fortune to see his work enacted by a real pro. Martin-Cotten is so at ease onstage with just herself and awkward material – involving a kinky use for a leather sling that has escalating emotional effects on its user – that I could have sworn I was watching a real person’s confession. Martin-Cotton uses the slightest gestures and glances to convey a host of conflicting emotions, from arousal to shame to denial.

All the same, the whole of these four monologues add up to less than the sum of their parts. I certainly hope Lasca continues to work through the three monologues that serve as the evening’s first act (at close to an hour-and-a-half, “Phantom” gets the second act to itself). He can certainly delve deeper into the darker aspects of these situations. His places do not have to be neat and tidy to be considered great, but they should be more completely explored.

Party of Five

The Invitation, Brian Park’s new play at the Ohio Theatre, opens mid-dinner party to a collection of middle-aged urban sophisticates. Under the direction of John Clancy, dinner conversation clips along at a pace just short of stylized; within minutes, the banter covers Tchaikovsky and Rodin, London and Machu Picchu. This is the sort of play where characters trade barbs by accusing one another of name-dropping James Joyce. Publicity materials call the production “a revenge comedy” and, as promised, it’s not long before the characters’ jovial cracks sharpen into sly attacks on one another. Marion (Katie Honaker), the hostess of the party, takes sardonic aim at those far away (black people, vegetarians, the retarded) and closer to home (her husband David, played by David Calvitto, a verbose book editor whose own publishing house has recently rejected his own book). Honaker servicably delivers Marion’s remarks but never musters the crackling glee that her glib cruelties seem intended to possess.

When tensions between Marion and David reach a breaking point, they exit with the dirty dishes, momentarily taking leave from their guests: John and Sarah (a well intentioned couple played by Paul Urcioli and Eva van Dok) and Steph (Leslie Farell, as a smart woman whose birthday the dinner party is intended to celebrate, an oddly inconsequential detail). Moments later David returns, drenched in blood (“I edited her! Edited her right out.”)

The revelation of Marion’s bloody end could make for a sharp, darkly funny button to the piece were the play to end right there. While material built into the first scene might merit further development, the subsequent scene fails to deliver. Instead, Urcioli and Farell are made to traipse around the stage covered in blood as Calvitto giddily gushes about Shakespeare, Bellini, and how much he hates his wife. The premise wears thin within minutes; the play lasts much longer.

Despite its lengthiness, the second scene of The Invitation reveals neither depth of character nor increased understanding of the play’s absurdist world. A bizarre through-the-door exchange with a girl scout selling cookies plays out less like an insightful fragment of Americana than an improv comedy premise gone flat. Clancy’s direction fails to carve character development out of the one-note script; throughout the scene, David stays jubilant. Steph stays appalled. John stays affably accommodating.

And Sarah stays in the hall closet: when she panics in response to the bloody events, her husband locks her there, despite (because of?) her shrieking and begging. Then she is all but forgotten. Her absence allows for The Invitation’s attempt at a snappy ending; it also raises serious questions about its treatment of women. That the play is about men who butcher their wives and lock them in closets when they make too much noise is never appropriately addressed; wives are dangerously beside the point.

Somewhere inside The Invitation is an absurdist exploration of what happens when analytical criticism becomes wholly divorced from human connection. But like an uneasy dinner guest, it talks a lot without properly expressing itself.

The Sounds of Silence

Contemporary Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's Sa Ka La, now being produced by Oslo Elsewhere, has all the ingredients of a standard-issue domestic traumedy, from the estranged adult siblings and their significant others gathering for a birthday celebration, to an impending death in the family, to grudges, repression, and secrets itching to reveal themselves, including, of course, adultery. The recipe should be familiar to anyone who's seen the recent New York stagings of Crimes of the Heart, Festen, or The Clean House, or read the Washington Post's review of August: Osage County. Here we go again, this reviewer assumed, and settled to wait for the inevitable eleventh-hour confession of poverty-driven-stinginess, child abandonment, incest, or whatever. Then Fosse proved this assumption absolutely wrong.

As Henning (Frank Harts) and Johannes (Raymond McAnnally) wait for their wives--a pair of sisters (Birgit Huppuch and Marielle Heller)--and joint mother-in-law to arrive for the mother-in-law's sixtieth birthday party, another story unfolds on the same stage, which, in the world of the play, is a hospital room across their nameless city. The sisters' Mom has had a stroke, and her daughters are with her and a sympathetic but acerbic Nurse (Jacqueline Antaramian) at the hospital, waiting for their mysterious estranged brother (Noel Joseph Allain) to arrive. Meanwhile, everyone has failed to inform Henning, Johannes, and their friends (Anna Gutto and Mike Caban) that Mom's party has been called off, much less why. None of these people are much good at communication: the proliferation of mundane secrets, adulteries, and grudges demonstrates that. They remain in the dark partly because they prefer it to difficult knowledge; partly because the people who supposedly love them want them in the dark. Meanwhile, Mom, her muscles partially paralyzed, struggles to speak. The gibberish title phrase -- "Sa Ka La" -- is nearly all she is able to utter. Like the Ancient Mariner, she must communicate this truth -- whatever it means -- to someone in particular before she can find respite in death.

What does"Sa Ka La" mean? Nothing I can tell; maybe nothing Fosse knows, either. A dynamic, chillingly realistic actress, Kathryn Kates communicates the urgency of Mom's desire to communicate, without shedding any light on her message. Other questions remain unanswered as well, about details of the lives and conflicts of the sparsely drawn yet totally psychologically genuine characters. This is no accident. It is as if Samuel Beckett, the playwright of absolute minimalism, had convinced Fosse's fellow Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, the master of realism, to agree to a collaboration. Fosse, translator-director Sarah Cameron Sunde, and a sharp, tightly-knit ensemble cast make the conflicts real, so the details take a back seat to the suspense, the tension, and the screams inside the silences.

Sunde's blocking increases the deliberately infuriating sense of missed communiques; of characters passing each other in the figurative night. Characters in both locations cross in front of each other. In one scene, a character in the party room and one in the hospital stand back to back, almost, but not quite touching.

Jo Winiarski's scenic design reveals the outlines of hospital room and party room at once. It consists of an unencumbered platform, a hospital bed, a tiny table bearing a birthday cake almost levitated by a bunch of bright blue-and-white balloons, and a wall of wide, tall glass windows. The ice-blue, grey, and white tones of the set also possibly suggest the icy shores of Norway, at least as this reviewer, never having seen those shores, imagines them. At the same time, the room could be anywhere. Jen Caprio's costumes, in matching shades of blue, gunmetal, white, and sunrise-orange, allow the characters to stand out against the sets while fitting in the overall color scheme.

The only area in which this play doesn't entirely work is the dialogue's repetitive inclusion of the word "yeah." The first few "yeahs," denoting affirmation, nonchalance, fear or boredom or helpless verbal litter, are fine. People talk like that, yeah. But then when you can, yeah, hear thirty seconds of yeah, dialogue, in which the word "yeah" is spoken, yeah, seven times--yeah, seven, yeah, it starts to sound like a gimmick. Like Mamet's first naturalistic, then overdone signature expletives. But that's a small glitch in an otherwise compelling production of a play that has taken too long to find an American audience. Far too long, yeah.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Enter this production with the mindset that it is not a play, but an experience. The weighty drama, HIM is poet/playwright/painter E.E Cummings’ method of showing his estranged daughter, Nancy, the world that prevented him from being her father. That world is the circus. Presented by The Longest Lunch, and equipped with a capable ensemble of actors with a great well of energy to draw from, HIM takes the stage with some built-in obstacles. The biggest obstacle is: Cummings purposely wrote an incomprehensible play because he believed experiencing art is more important than understanding it.

There are two sides to HIM’s plot. One half is a semi-autobiographical account of the way Cummings’ marriage to his first wife, Elaine, dissolved, taking his only child with her. The other half is a circus that the main character of HIM, also named, HIM (Dan Cozzens) has written and proceeds to show to his wife, ME (Elan O’Conner). ME doesn’t understand it. HIM tells her she is not supposed to. “Just watch,” he urges.

The audience would best heed this same advice. Though HIM does have a very human story at its center, the bulk is a vaudeville circus where each skit is just as bizarrely baffling as the one before it. “What was that about?” ME dares to ask after one particularly puzzling piece. “Chaos,” HIM tells her as if it should have been obvious.

Cummings’ dialogue is rich with poetry that Cozzens recites with perfect fluidity. The imagery is vivid and a few select sentences stand out for their simple profoundness (“I held my husband up to the light today and I could see right through him.”) Cummings' level of intense analytical thought is a challenge to sustain for the play’s long running time. This performance ran at three and a half hours with one intermission.

Fortunately, The Longest Lunch makes the most of that one intermission. Hot dogs, popcorn and free cups of soda and water were served, filling the lobby with the familiar sights and smells of a circus.

Despite its burdens as a heavy and lengthy play, Him offers something not often found in modern day theater: a believable recreation of the vaudeville era.

Rather than paint the theater with cheery, bright colors, set designer Kaitlyn Mulligan selected worn and faded hues. The effect is a set that looks used and lived in. One can imagine the stage’s wrinkled red curtain and creaky tired props being dragged across a dusty countryside from one town to the next. The theater even smells like the carnival, largely due to the thick aroma of herbal cigarette smoke that permeates the room.

The female ensemble performers look authentically Burlesque in their top hats, slip dresses, fishnets and garters, tapping in a line like a tawdry group of Rockettes. But the most eerie element is Michael Hochman’s lighting design: dark green and deep purple bathe the performers, giving them a creepy, otherworldly feel.

Whether or not this display ever impressed Cummings’ daughter, Nancy, is not mentioned. There is a scene where Cummings describes the wonder of seeing a child in a crib while the ghost of a young girl paces around the outskirts of the room, appearing to be listening with some sympathy.

But the moment is burst by ME. Does HIM want to be a father or not? That is the reality of the situation and reality, HIM says, kills the bohemian soul. Hopefully, Nancy does understand her poet/painter/playwright father on some level. The Longest Lunch certainly seems to share his mindset. Their production has captured the aspects that Cummings loved most about the circus by recreating the smoky fantasy of vaudeville that clearly touched his soul.

A Giant Play for Little Spectators

Literally Alive Children's Theatre, based in the Players Theatre in the West Village, has been making a name for itself as a producer of low-tech, high-concept theatre for families with young children. Literally Alive's recent adaptation of The Little Mermaid garnered criticism that compared it positively to Disney's multimillion dollar stage version. Now, for their contribution to the First Irish 2008 festival of Irish theatre, Literally Alive's Michael Sgouros and Brenda Bell have unveiled an original adaptation of Irish writer Oscar Wilde's children's story "The Selfish Giant." The result is visually delightful, with spirited acting and some of the most creative audience-participation and attention-getting techniques I have seen in children's theatre. It also transparently reveals the challenge of adapting this Victorian Christian evangelical morality tale for a multi- or non-denominational modern audience.

An hour before each performance of The Selfish Giant, Literally Alive holds a free pre-show workshop, in which show puppet designer Julia Darden helps children to make shadow-puppets out of construction and crepe paper, up on the Players' stage. The puppets, shaped like flowers and snowflakes, are then used in that day's show.

The audience participation continues in the play's prologue, in which Todd Eric Hawkins, who will play the Selfish Giant, asks the children in the audience to guess "what you need to put on a play" ("Acting!" "Costumes!" "Lights!") and then introduces them to the company members who provide these elements. Hawkins identifies each of the actors and names their roles. This will be helpful later, when human performers represent birds, seasons, sleet and snow.

Then the story begins. The Selfish Giant does not want anyone else to play in his garden; even he doesn't play in it himself. He has made his rule clear, on a sign that reads "TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED." When the Giant goes off to visit his cousin in Cornwall, whom he doesn't much like, his beleaguered servant, Patrick (energetically played by Sal Delmonte), throws open the gates of the garden to the children of the neighboring village, which is as poor as the Giant is rich. (In the original story, Wilde explains that these children have nothing to play with except stones and dirt from their unpaved roads.)

When the Giant returns, he is furious, and replaces the cautionary sign with a stone wall. That keeps the kids out for good, but also drives away the birds, the flowers, and even Spring, causing it to be perpetual winter in Narnia. Or whatever country this is.

The triumph of Winter is one of the most captivating moments in the play. The season is represented by a dancer (Stefanie Smith) in a fluffy, floor-length white tiered skirt and a huge white hooded cloak that blows about her as she dances with partner in an ice-colored suit. He lifts her and spins and she flies, scattering snow and freezing air. The Giant is dismayed by Winter, but for the audience, she is a wonderful sight. The accompanying music, composed by Sgouros and performed by Sgouros, Laura Jordan, and Kristin Smith, has a lovely marimba part reminiscent of falling snow.

Then the story experiences some growing pains. Children sneak into the garden, and the Giant suddenly learns to like them -- especially one whom, he suspects, is an apparition of himself as a child. Why this change? He has learned that a garden kept selfishly apart from the world cannot bloom, and happily announces a goal to rediscover his inner child.

This is a bit odd for a play directed at the 3-10 set, who presumably have not yet lost their inner children because they are allowed to be children in the outer sense. However, in Wilde's story, the little boy who gives the Giant his attitude adjustment mysteriously has nail marks in his hands and feet. In Literally Alive's modernization, we will reach salvation by psychology and letting go of our grown-up seriousness, selfishness, and repression, an updated moral that's at least as silly as the original one.

To be fair, much Victorian-era European writing for children presents a fairly serious challenge to the modern adaptor. Most of it was intended to teach a few doctrinaire principles: that salvation after death is worth making sacrifices in life, that the rich should share their wealth with the poor through charity rather than through political reform or revolution, and that the prime example of both these principles may be found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

From Hans Christian Andersen's original "Little Mermaid," who died for unrequited love but gained an immortal soul, to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Little Eva and Frances Hodgson Burnett's pantheon of rich, spoiled children who must learn humility and charity before regaining security, this is the formula. A few brilliant writers -- Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie -- broke the rules, compelling children in their stories and audiences to confront the complexities and absurdities of the real world. Oscar Wilde, in writing "The Selfish Giant," was no such rebel.

Despite this, "The Selfish Giant" has some redeeming qualities. Literally Alive deserves kudos for translating them for a new generation of theatregoers.

Three's Company

With gay marriage and civil unions more common in urban centers, it was inevitable that gay sex comedies would become a genre to be explored. Terrence McNally broke the first ground with The Ritz back in 1975. Since then there have been a number of gays-gathering-for-a-weekend plays, but few that examine aspects of gays in committed parental relationships. Peter Mercurio’s ambitious Two Spoons examines what happens when two men who are in a committed relationship and raising a son are presented with the opportunity for a three-way during a business trip to Philadelphia. It’s a premise that sometimes holds the promise of a gay version of The Seven-Year Itch, but it ends up a muddle.

To be fair, Two Spoons means to be more than a farce, and it frequently exhibits a serious tone. Mercurio’s two protagonists, Grant James Varjas’s neurotic, twitchy Steve and Brian Gillespie’s centered, easygoing Larry, convey the struggles of all parents with being role models, instilling discipline, and nurturing the talents of their offspring (a 3-year-old named Matthew). But, in their seventh year together, during a weekend away from New York, they find themselves in a steam room being cruised by a young stud and tempted into a threesome.

Like Tom Ewell in The Seven-Year Itch, they fumble their way through a seduction with gentle humor and later fantasize about other possibilities. The objects of their lust are all played by a cherub-faced Thomas Flannery, Jr., who resembles a muscular Tintin, quiff and all. Varjas and Gillespie show off skillful timing and genuine chemistry, and their scenes have a natural give-and-take; they’re a solid core for a play that stumbles when they’re not working together, and sometimes even when they are.

Mercurio knows the way a couple operates (he and his partner have a child, according to the program notes) and has tapped that to create two characters who are genuine and likeable. But he has also chosen a fluid, often incoherent, structure. It relies heavily on narration, as Steve and Larry address the audience and explain what they’re feeling during a lot of narrative crosstalk.

Under Chuck Blasius’s direction, the switches from narration to scenes, or reality to fantasy, aren’t as cleanly made as they should be, and a good deal of confusion results. And until the first-act curtain, following an overlong seduction scene (nicely choreographed by Robin Carrigan and lighted with strobes by Rob Hilliard like a silent film), it’s not clear where the play is going. But Steve has been transformed by the encounter, and wants to “leave the door ajar” for more fooling around.

As universal themes go, whether or not gay parents should have extramarital sex is a niche issue, but it fits snugly into the mission of Other Side Productions, which presents plays of interest to the gay community. The point of Mercurio’s work seems to be that explicit rules must be set forth for parents as they are for children. But the child as presented here is the most problematic and negligible character.

Described by Steve’s mother as “three going on 23,” the toddler speaks like a teenager, quotes Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms, and takes on numerous bit parts, including a waiter at Franklin’s favorite tavern and a towel boy at the hotel, both of whom Steve mistakes for Matthew. Now, no child of 3 is likely to have personality traits that summon a grown-up doppelganger, no matter how fanciful Steve’s imagination is. The character is simply too diffuse for the actor DeVon Jackson to make convincing, let alone engaging.

There is some good writing, though, side by side with the problematic, and the production raises an interesting philosophical issue about stage nudity. Mercurio’s script specifies that it’s not necessary for this play and is, in his opinion, distracting. But nudity has been around since Hair 40 years ago, and if there is such a thing as gratuitous nudity, there must, conversely, be essential, or at least reasonable, nudity. When the sex object in a sex farce (or that part of the play written as such) is demurely covered by a dancer’s belt, it becomes just as distracting. More important, it leaves anyone who hasn’t read Mercurio’s stipulation with the unfair impression that the actor is not fully committed to what would seem to be the needs of the role.

Two Spoons has some accomplished acting, and with some editing and tightening, and a more consistent tone, it might work, but at present it carries promise more than anything else.

Dangerous Waters

Presenting Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People these days is a rather bold move, particularly in light of the 2006 publication of Steven Sage’s Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, The Plagiarist and the Plot for the Third Reich. In his study, Sage, a former historian at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, makes a persuasive argument that Adolf Hitler was influenced by at least three of Ibsen’s major plays, including An Enemy of the People, and, in essence, lifted many Ibsen themes he deemed sympathetic in order to play out his madness.

In An Enemy of the People, a scientist, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, discovers that the water supply of his community’s spa baths, an industry the town is literally banking on for its prosperity, is polluted by harmful bacteria. Only a radical rebuilding of the facilities will prevent people from becoming ill.

Politically naïve, Dr. Stockmann assumes that the town’s authorities, including his own brother, the mayor, will thank him for his efforts. Instead, the mayor, and eventually the local newspaper and townspeople, vilify him when they find out just how long the repairs will take and how much they will cost. The mayor orchestrates a campaign against his brother, denying the severity of the danger, and questioning his true motives.

Of course, Dr. Stockmann is correct. We empathize with his quest for the truth. We roll our eyes at the ridiculousness of the influential town leaders and with the townsfolk, fearfully siding with local authority rather than daring to make waves.

Dr. Stockmann, though, filled with rage and self-righteousness, goes way too far later in the play, advocating that those who disagree with him, the spineless “solid majority,” as he puts it, are no better than mongrels and should be wiped out like vermin. He likens himself to a pure-bred poodle and the majority to stupid mutts in need of training. Sage points out that this is racism by current standards (other passages are grossly misogynistic by today’s standards) and argues that Hitler appropriated and perverted Ibsen’s themes, perhaps even identifying to some degree with the persecuted and alienated Stockmann.

I searched vainly through the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s program for some allusion to the dubiousness of some of Dr. Stockmann’s own beliefs but found nothing but praise for the character. While there is much to recommend in An Enemy of the People, Arthur Miller, for one, knew that this play needed explication for contemporary audiences. An Enemy of the People is a flawed and rushed work, yet, somewhat disconcertingly, the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble doesn’t appear to acknowledge this, offering up Dr. Stockmann with an entirely straight face.

The production itself, however, is quite solid. John Lenartz, sweating and hyper-animated, nails the character of Dr. Stockmann, whose occasional fits of near-hysteria make us doubt his full sanity. Michael Surabian plays a superb Mr. Alsaken, the timid chairman of the local property owners group, who urges, to the point of impotence, “moderation” in provoking local government officials. And Joseph J. Menino is thoroughly convincing as the uptight and forbidding mayor, determined to destroy his brother’s career and family rather than see the town suffer economically.

Maruti Evans’ scenic design—a row of brightly painted houses with a screen of clouds in the background--is simple yet splendid, simulating a street in a small Norwegian town. Suzanne Chesney’s costume design is well-researched and evocative. David Nelson’s original composition for this production adds appropriately ominous overtones, particularly in combination with Evans’ pre-show lighting. Young Dmitri Friendenberg, who plays Stockmann’s son, Eilif, provides an added bonus with his cello, performing haunting pieces between some of the acts.

The 19th Century Connelly Theatre, with its proscenium arch and tin ceiling, is an ideal venue for this play, first published in 1882. Despite some of the cringe-inducing speeches of Dr. Stockmann, this play is worth seeing as a period piece. Ably directed by Amy Wagner, it's a straightforward production with all the dialogue, good and bad, and all the considerable warts, left intact. I suspect it is not unlike the production which late 19th century audiences witnessed and that, in and of itself, makes seeing this play a worthwhile endeavor.

Fear and Trembling in Copenhagen

"Oh, this is awful," Abraham, dressed in faded robe and turban, tells his young son Isaac in Ellen Margolis's provocative and thoughtful play When It Stands Still. "Your mother will have my head for this." Later in the play, Sarah discovers the myth of Iphigenia, in which the father who sacrifices his child in compliance with divine demand is indeed murdered by the grieving mother. Why does Sarah tolerate Abraham in the Biblical version, and take revenge in the Greek? Why would people ever think fear useful or sacrifice necessary? Was Abraham crazy? Was his god? And what important details are left out of this traditional story? All these questions bothered the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. His attempt to answer them was his greatest work, the 1843 treatise "Fear and Trembling." In the New Testament, humanity is advised to "work out your sorrow with fear and trembling." In Margolis's play, produced by Toy Box Theatre Company at the Gene Frankel Theater, Abraham tries to put this advice into practice. At the same time, in another universe, so does the young Soren Kierkegaard. The result is not grace, but more suffering, radiating outward from Abraham and Kierkegaard into the lives of the people they claim to love.

Margolis's take on this subject is never preachy. Often, it's comedic. A scene in which Soren compels Regine to play Abraham to his Isaac, pulling his hair torturously before raising the sword, is funny in a squirm-humour way. "And so on," the ancient Sarah says, "chapter and verse" -- ages before the chapters and verses of the Jewish and Christian sacred texts were written. Margolis also has a way of stating a seemingly bland fact about the life of her beloved Kierkegaard, then turning it in a few words into a provocative insight. "The Danish philosopher loved to experiment with fear and obsession," we are told. "In that, he was like God."

Nuanced, emotionally hyperrealistic acting makes this idea-heavy script move quickly to the zenith of both Abraham's mountain and Kierkegaard's tragedy. As Kierkegaard, Toy Box co-Artistic Director David Michael Holmes screws up his face in comedic agony during a drive with Regine and rolls his eyes in annoyance at his crass, boorish patrician father. Lindsay Tanner competently portrays Regine. This character is somewhat under-written, conforming to the stereotype of the down-to-earth "sentimental" (Kierkegaard's word) woman with no interest in the realm of ideas, who just wants to be a perfect bourgeois wife with the angry genius as her equally conventional husband. Of course, it seems that the real Regine was like that. Tanner is great at seemingly silently, broodingly hurt.

As Abraham, Kierkegaard's father, and Mr. Olsen, Rich Zahn proves himself a versatile character actor. He keeps those three roles clearly differentiated, physically and vocally. A scene in which Zahn appears in a fake Medieval chronicle play of the Sacrifice of Isaac, complete with bad, stiff, acting, derives its humor from the contrast with the good, realistic acting of the whole cast throughout the rest of the play.

The set, designed by director Jason Shuler, is a dreamscape of sharp, geometric grey, black, and white hills, and Medieval pageantry: gold cloth, a pair of fluffy, puffy white wings suspended from the flies, a proscenium-within-a-proscenium and even a deliberately unconvincing wooden ram on wheels. Jennifer Paar's costumes perfectly evoke the play's two cultures -- nineteenth-century upper-class Copenhagen society and the imagined culture of the Old Testament world.

Lastly, live violin accompaniment composed and beautifully played by Leanne Darling, who is seated in a choir loft-like space above the actors, increases When It Stands Still's natural tension and poignancy. How often can you hear live incidental music Off-Broadway?

Go spend some time with Soren Kierkegaard, trapped in the moment when Abraham leads Isaac up that mountain. Trust me, it's far from a torturous experience. Except if you really think about it, as did Kierkegaard -- and Margolis and company.

Outside the Lines

The Chalk Boy, written and directed by Joshua Conkel, is a sharply funny and energetic foray, sprawling forth from the high school caste system of present-day America, whose typical roles never completely contain his interesting and evolving characters. Centered around four young women, who at first glance could be cast into general archetypes like “The Slut,” “The Freak,” “The Prom Queen,” or “The Jock,” the play follows the developments surrounding the mysterious disappearance of their classmate (whose popularity only seems to grow with his absence), Jeffery Chalk. We’re first introduced to the small Washington state community as voyeurs, watching the town being illustrated before us on chalkboards, then as participants when addressed as part of a school assembly, class, or pep rally (of sorts). This indoctrination works; it’s a familiar world to which everyone can relate, yet it still manages to be fresh, funny, and even surprising.

Here the usual teenage woes of school, dating, and parents are mostly backdrop. Life and limb may now be at risk, battle lines are drawn and redrawn, and the social rules are constantly changing. Even the non-satisfying pop soundtrack that punctuates their lives falls sorrowfully short for them—and Britney’s three-minute chirp doesn’t begin to cut it.

The girls’ underlying search for identity and meaning, whether through chugging cough syrup, spouting religious doctrines, exploring sexual identity, or performing Wiccan rituals, continues throughout, heightened by genuinely eerie bits and a certain sense of ongoing dread, if not exactly impending doom. Threats may loom, as does the character of the missing boy, yet their own self-explorations seem to be where the most is at stake. They are compelled to define themselves in relation to their missing classmate as well as to each other - not to mention trying to find out what has actually happened to him.

It’s no coincidence that the missing boy is named Chalk. Like the narrative blackboards before us, will all of the characters just blow away or be erased at the end of the day? They struggle to answer the questions: Who matters? Who doesn’t? But maybe also: What remains? Or: What lasts? Beyond the characters’ longing for clear identity, what ultimately does carry meaning in their (and our) world?

It’s refreshing in a dark comedy to see characters who seem to be self-searching rather than the predictable self-loathing, as they find themselves unable to be contained within their own drawn circles (or pentagrams as the case may be), demonstrated by their changing allegiances and willingness to experiment beyond them. This optimism satisfies, somehow making it a “feel-good” darkened Black-as-Death world. If nothing else, it’s certainly more fun.

The actors’ performances are deft and dynamic, both as the four classmates and their lively sketches of other Clear Creek inhabitants. Penny’s inner and outer conflicts are portrayed with sullen perfection by Jennifer Harder, who makes Penny’s dissatisfaction with life enjoyably palpable. Mary Catherine Donnelly’s Lauren is single-mindedly earnest, and her full-on embodiment of Penny’s mother and others is skillful and engaging. Marguerite French, who plays the quirky Trisha, also brings to life multiple colorful characters with aplomb. Kate Huisentruit’s Breanna is honest and sweet, while the character seems almost too naïve for the world she inhabits.

The transitions between roles (and scenes) were directed and executed well, sometimes via simple onstage costume changes, which allowed for seamless transformations right before our eyes. The intimate space was also well utilized, with minimalist yet evocative props, corresponding lighting shifts, and double- or triple-duty set pieces, all of which served to bring the audience directly and believably into each scene.

Again, the world Conkel presents is familiar, although by no means predictable. Along these lines, the epilogue might have been slightly more open-ended and questioning rather than (almost too) neatly tied up. Sure, the stories are fairly true to expectation, but it might have been fun to engage the imagination of the audience even further with other possible endings for the characters, whether toward harsher cynicism, or hope for eventual liberation from the usual chalk outlines. In the meantime, though, it’s definitely worth hitching a ride.

Past Imperfect

Edith Freni’s new play clocks in at 55 minutes, but it’s more substantial than some shows twice as long. Eve (Sarah Nina Hayon) is trying to sell her late mother’s jewelry when she runs into Chet (Justin Blanchard), a boyfriend she had back in high school who dumped her for a fellow student. Their meeting is the catalyst for Eve, now well into her 20s, to recall the pain she felt—and has never really gotten over—from that childhood trauma. Freni presents the details of the trauma, however, in a unique way. Eve has been attending therapy, in which she has to watch others act out her life using the information she has provided. As the meeting with Chet leads to spending time together and a sudden rekindling of their feelings for each other, the bizarre therapy sessions arise in her memory and reveal not only Eve’s story but some extraordinary dysfunction among the participants.

The sessions, which are both humorous and harrowing, are supervised by the earnest Lou (a superb Peter O’Connor), a velvet-gloved martinet who alternately challenges and mollifies his band of misfits. “What is Tenet Number One, Eve?” he asks her. Poor Eve has to check her pamphlet to the scorn of her fellows, but she answers: “Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone.”

Lou is gradually and skillfully revealed as a self-important monster, and the damaged attendees as noxious, though funny, accomplices. They include Sarah (Sharon Freedman), a young woman with low self-esteem addicted to the cake that Eve bakes for the meetings; Jemma (Cynthia Silver), an abrasive impersonator of Eve; and Dave (Vincent Madero), an overeager young man and the only male in the group. “I’m the man,” says Dave brashly, as he winks at the director, Lou, who encourages him with a subtle nod. Yet it’s all surface; Madero’s bluster is a permeable mask for us to see that Dave is deeply insecure but kind-hearted. (Madero also plays the brief role of Eve’s layabout brother, and does it with a risible selfishness.)

But this is Eve’s story, and in telling it, director Erica Gould and Hayon navigate the shifting tones beautifully: the scenes of Chet and Eve tentatively exploring their touchy past, bewildered at the prospect of being thrown together again, have a stillness and depth and melancholy to them. Blanchard brings a warmth and confusion to Chet that win sympathy for his character's predicament.

Yet the tone can switch quickly to the freewheeling egoism of the therapy sessions. It’s a tribute to the fine ensemble that the shifts are seldom jarring. The only drawback is that anyone who hasn’t experienced group therapy of this kind may not latch on right away to the fact that those scenes, with their immature participants, are not actual flashbacks to high school but rather reenactments of Eve's history. (Nobody entering the theater would want to have had the experience of Lou’s therapy sessions anyway.)

Freni’s theme is that sometimes a particular event in one’s life can halt growth and prevent one from achieving happiness. “Father,” Eve asks a priest, “is it possible that one stupid, small thing can happen, that makes something else happen, that leads to something else…so that my life is what it is because of one small event, years ago, that I thought was unimportant?” It’s a notion borrowed from Back to the Future and, of course, It’s a Wonderful Life, but Freni’s treatment is original. Her answer, much more psychologically based, is that only when accepts the past can one move on. In meeting Chet, Eve has a chance to revisit the past, and ironically, to relive it with a different emotional outcome, though some of the particulars stay the same.

Freni also employs symbols skillfully, as two rings play crucial parts in the plot, particularly in the last minutes. The touching, slightly mysterious ending of the play indicates that one cannot discard one's past but must own it before the hope of moving on from it can be fulfilled. If this play were jewelry, it would be a small, exquisite gem.

Are You In or Out?

Anti-social behavior reaches new heights – or is it lows – in Larry Kunofsky’s new comedy, What to Do When You Hate All Your Friends, directed by Jacob Krueger at Theatre Row’s Lion Theatre Hate is an intriguing serio-comic offering about the perils and pluses of the people we allow into our lives. It stars new discovery Todd D’Amour as Matt, a ruffian who – you guessed it – hates all of his friends. Violently, in fact: if anyone ever makes the mistake of touching him, he responds by punching something. Matt is not the only character in Hate with some rather odd peccadilloes. He encounters Celia (Carrie Keranen), a snob who utters Tourette’s-similar outbursts when sexually aroused. Celia heads a very elite organization called the Friends, an elaborate social network that ranks its own members and constantly shuffles them up and down the spectrum. In one of several roles, the marvelous Susan Louise O’Connor plays Holly, another dominant member of the Friends (although the entire cast is uniformly wonderful, Kunofsky undercuts the effectiveness of the Friends by not having a larger ensemble to fill it out – the group appears too elite for its own good).

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Enid (Amy Staats), a non-Friend who narrates Hate. Kunofsky has constructed a meta sensibility for his play: as Enid speaks to the audience, the other characters (Josh Lefkowitz rounds out the quintet as Matt’s nerdy friend Garrett) can hear her and sometimes even interrupt. Unfortunately, this conceit never quite takes off. It is one thing to break the fourth wall and address the audience, but for asides to never truly land aside of the characters seems like a fruitless gimmick. Additionally, Niluka Hotaling’s set pieces feel a tad crammed into the Lion stage. At times it is difficult to discern exactly where a scene is supposed to take place, and whether different scenes are meant to appear within earshot of one another.

On the other hand, there is plenty that does pay off in Hate, chief among them the odd – and oddly endearing – lengths to which both Celia and Matt go to push others away. D’Amour demonstrates a terrific penchant for comedic physicality, but it is his vocal delivery, from pipes that sound deep but never hollow, that sells the role the most. A lengthy scene in the play’s second act puts these actors to the test in a scene that marries slapstick humor with sentimentality.

The other three actors work overtime. In addition to playing Garrett, Lefkowitz fills in several other small roles, as does O’Connor. But nothing compares to the latter performer, who turns Hate into a one-woman textbook class not only in creating multiple characters, but also in how to switch back and forth between them with no confusion. This is a skill that requires major concentration and discipline, but O’Connor is such a pro that she seems completely at ease in doing so.

Staats dazzles as Enid, converting a role that could have been merely a device into a three-dimensional performance. Where Matt and Celia channel their inner problems into conflict with others, Enid is a sweeter soul. She’s a character that may in fact strike the closest to home for many audience members, for Enid is one of those people on the periphery, someone who never really belongs but is always eager to help out, only to get shot down with no adequate explanation. It’s during her delivery of narration late in the show that Staats’ performance crystallizes into something greater than the sum of its parts, turning Hate from relationship comedy into a more sensible observation about human behavior.

Kunofsky provides many examples to buttress Enid’s narration, but Hate does not quite make this final leap. The show is quirky but unbalanced; the playwright never separates the difference between trivial friendships and meaningful ones. “Friend” is a label that gets tossed around but has many different meanings, all of which get conflated into one for dramatic purpose here.

And yet there remains very little to hate about Hate. Kunofsky may not get everything just right, but he certainly puts forth great effort. And that’s what really counts in a friend, right?

All American

It’s an idea that could have gone either way – Voltaire’s eternal optimist desperately tries to apply his upbeat philosophy to the misfortunes of modern -day America. Thankfully, the expertly staged, solidly entertaining FringeNYC entry Candide Americana represents the best of all possible adaptations. Kind of. As presented by the Rabbit Hole Ensemble in their characteristic minimalist mode, Candide, his philosophy teacher Dr. Pangloss, and his lady love Miss Cinnbunsa ruminate on contemporary tragedies as they experience them firsthand – Bosnia, 9/11, Katrina, The Staten Island Ferry Crash – with each event slashing a new hole in Pangloss’s cheerful worldview. Voltaire’s original novel played the naïve Candide’s dreadful journey for laughs, and Stanton Wood’s modern version doesn’t stray from the satiric tone. Almost eight years later, it’s still a delicate thing to fool around with 9/11, especially in New York, but by including it Wood drives Voltaire’s point home in a relatable way – sometimes tragedy happens randomly and it is foolish to try to see a silver lining.

Edward Elefterion’s crafty staging utilizes the performers to the maximum extent possible by relying on them to communicate place through blocking and ambient sound. Josh Sauerman is vigilantly wide-eyed as Candide, and the other six performers tackle multiple roles with plenty of charm.

If there is any fault in this artfully composed retelling, it’s that the contemporary setting doesn’t necessarily add anything to Voltaire’s original. This is not to say that our modern tragedies are in any way similar to the travails of Enlightenment Europe – only that the journey from youthful optimism to adolescent cynicism to a refined sense of cautious pragmatism will always resonate, regardless of the time and place.

Into the Fire

One of the less familiar facets of the black experience to beexamined by playwrights is the hierarchy of skin color among blacks themselves. Although Dael Orlandersmith tackled the subject brilliantly in her Yellowman in 2002, intraracial prejudice is fresh enough to be the focus of Cassandra Medley’s melodrama about human beings warped by the systems that govern them, whether racism, sexism, or the destructive aspects of capitalism.

Zena (an elegant and well-spoken Gin Hammond) is a light-skinned black woman who, traveling on a train in the car for Negroes in 1947, is “rescued” by a white conductor, who miscontrues her race and escorts her to the car for whites. Thus Zena leaves not only her life as a black person in segregated Mississippi, but also the disdain of dark-skinned blacks for “high yellow” ones, people whose mixed race gives them a high percentage of Caucasian features, including light skin. Renaming herself Wendy, she passes for white and eventually marries Brian Syms (Michael McGlone), a working-class lug of Irish descent. Together, with the help of night school, they have pulled themselves up in society—or pushed their way into it.

A decade later, as Zena and Brian attend a Detroit auto show from their home in Fort Wayne, Ind., the socially astute wife encounters Reuben, whom she last saw as a hopeless drunk—and with whom she had twin baby girls who died of typhus. Reuben is now off the sauce and in a relationship with Pearl, a devout churchgoer whose dark skin leaves no doubt about her race.

Trapped between her two lives, one represented by a membership in a country club, and the other by a conjure woman reading bones, the discomfited Zena reflects on her journey, and flashbacks alternate with present reality (not always seamlessly). If, as Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You can’t go home again,” neither can you leave it behind. Or, as Sister Nicodemous, a seer whom Zena consults, says, “You can’t just scoop out what’s been bred in the bone, honey.”

Medley’s exploration of the effects of racism and miscegenation veers frequently, perhaps unavoidably, into the melodrama of Fannie Hurst’s classic novel Imitation of Life, also about “passing” for white; the playwright also touches on other injustices that limit human potential as well. There’s a strong dose of the anti-business fervor of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross in the way Lloyd attempts to warp Brian’s sense of right and wrong and bribe him into silence about an automobile defect. And Brian shows a class bias that conveniently dovetails with racism. He refuses to allow Zena to polish his shoes, insisting that it’s the job of hotel employees, who, naturally, are black.

Director Victor Lirio gets very good performances from a talented cast. Ron Cephas Jones plays Reuben with alternating deep contrition and struggling decency, and Hammond shows the distress just underneath Zena’s apparent confidence, and her budding sense of sexual inequality. And he gets a go-for-broke performance from Melanie Nicholls-King as the fervent and anguished Pearl, who doubts Reuben’s attraction toward her because of her dark skin and sabotages her own chances for happiness. Indeed, Pearl has the more deeply tragic story, and that throws off the balance a bit, although finally the character’s self-loathing becomes just a tad too annoying for the play’s good.

David Newer tries to restrain the overly melodramatic aspects of Lloyd but can’t really, and it’s not entirely his fault. Medley gives him a dialogue with Brian that refers to “niggers, Mexican wetbacks, Jew boys, probably some gypsies, all working together”—and it rings false, because in 1957 people in a country-club set wouldn’t use that language while talking with a relative stranger. If Newer’s mustache were longer, he could twirl it easily to fit the character’s cardboard villainy.

Lirio stages the action simply, though occasionally sluggishly, on a large elevated white disc surrounded by a semicircular white curtain that serves as backdrop to all the scenes, but looks most accurate as a fixture at the auto show, as does a huge crystal chandelier that hovers over the stage.

Medley clearly wants to write about pressing social issues, and Diverse City Theatre Company is committed to nurturing her gifts. This is a good effort, with virtues that surpass any flaws.

A Tale Fit For a Queen

Timothy Findley's play, Elizabeth Rex , playing now in an Off-Broadway transfer at Center Stage, is an achievement. Presented here in New York by the Playwright's Guild of Canada and the theater ensemble Nicu's Spoon, the innovative yet lengthy production features two standout actors and a somewhat hearty supporting cast. Elizabeth Rex is set in a barn on the evening before Queen Elizabeth I's lover, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, and his royal compatriot, the Earl of Southampton, are due to be beheaded for treason.

In the barn are William Shakespeare and a group of actors who have just finished a performance of Much Ado About Nothing for the Queen, featuring the best and most seasoned actor of Shakespeare's female roles at the time, Ned Lowenscraft (Michael Digioia), as Beatrice.

Due to public rioting in the streets in anticipation of the upcoming appearences at the guillotine, the male actors are stuck for the evening in the barn. The sole female present is the company's half-blind seamstress (Rebecca Challis).

That is, until a lonely and anguished Queen Elizabeth I (Stephanie Barton-Farcas) appears with two of her ladies-in-waiting (Melanie Horton and Ruth Kulerman), to distract herself with a cup of ale and a probing conversation with Lowenscraft that turns into a profound jousting session on the question of gender.

The Queen, whose position as England's monarch has required her to sublimate her most feminine qualities, says to the womanly Lowenscaft, "If you will teach me how to be a woman, I will teach you how to be a man." And the actor, perhaps because he is slowly dying of the pox, dares to tell the Queen the truth of her situation as well as the truth of his own personal story.

Both Barton-Farcas and Digioia do a terrific job, subtle and animated and heartfelt, and it is the moments in the play when these two powerhouses go head-to-head that are the most interesting. Though the play could easily be clipped by 15 minutes, the scenerio itself and much of its heightened language is extremely clever.

The costumes, particularly those of Queen Elizabeth, as chosen by Rien Schlect, are gorgeous. And the set is very simple and effective, save a jarring teak tray-table that seems oddly modern and misplaced.

The show's only setback is that certain members of the supporting cast tend to overact, and one, in particular, distinctly underplays, which lends a slightly disjointed feel to ensemble moments.

Scott Nogi does a fine job as Shakespeare, as does the charming Bill Galarno playing elderly actor Percy Gower. Horton and Kulerman fare the best among the rest of the supporting cast. In his turn as the Bear, Sammy Mena also deserves recognition.

The Write Stuff

On the surface Tom has the kind of problems many writers might wish they had. He has a nice-sized fan base, critical acclaim and a wife so supportive of his talent that she volunteers to pay all the bills so he can spend his days typing. Tom (Kyle Knauf) seems to have the perfect life, but his muse, Norman (Jake Suffian) thinks otherwise. Norman haunts Tom incessantly, voicing all the worries, concerns and crippling doubts that Tom tries to suppress. Timothy Nolan’s play, Not Dark Yet, has more complexities than its blurb and comical portrayal of a cross-dressing muse would have you believe. Like its main character, Tom, the real story lies beneath the surface.

Tom’s doting wife Anne (Elizabeth Bell) is also his pushy publicist and even something of a fiction writer groupie. She wants her husband to be the Next Big Thing – the guy on everyone’s front page who goes on talk shows impressing the world with his literary soul. The central question in the story is whether Tom wants that as well. He is plagued by Norman, who represents his inner torments and deepest fears - the biggest one being that his wife may only love him for his talent.

Knauf plays Tom with a deep, thoughtful center, as someone who likes writing about the truth, but not facing it. Bell is also very convincing as a woman falling out of love with her husband without officially saying so. Instead, Tom tries to pretend they’re both on the same page while Anne reacts coldly to his overtures, trying to shame him back to the keyboard.

Nolan has crafted a story without a clear hero and no obvious answers. He also offers an interesting perspective on writing, particularly in regards to people like Tom who enjoy doing it but not for a career.

The play ends on an open-ended note, though it does not bode well for Tom that Anne recoils at his declaration, “I love you more than words can say.” Without the words you wonder how long Tom will be able to retain that love.

Not Dark Yet is part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.

Joe Litigator

The music that blasts through the theater before the beginning of Johnny Law: Courtroom Crusader is funky, soulful, and . . . distinctly unlawyerly. In this spirited solo show, actor Tim Ryan Meinelschmidt grabs this musical energy and runs with it, riffing amiably through an entertaining and fascinating look at the life of one lawyer—yes, his name is Johnny Law—as he attempts to put some personality on a persnickety profession. But this loquacious lawyer doesn’t stop at unearthing the cool from the courtroom. Meinelschmidt and his cowriter, attorney Thomas L. Fox, use the fictional Law to explore the ethical dilemmas and crises that confront any lawyer, from defending belligerent (and clearly guilty) prisoners to darting through pesky objections and insufferable judges to get a point across to a jury. (He even offers practical-sounding advice on how to respond if you’re ever pulled over on the road for a field sobriety test—who knows if it really works, but how often do you come away from theater with free legal advice?)

Briskly directed by Christopher Fessenden, Johnny Law snaps to life through the tireless tenacity of Meinelschmidt, who brings a refreshingly direct (eye contact!) and gregarious (funny jokes!) approach to the material. Stuck in a hotel room the night before a big trial—defending a student accused of drug possession—Law fields calls from the district attorney and the boy’s mother while reminiscing about his colorful career, which includes stints in the U.S. Attorney’s office, public defender’s office, and private practice.

Although a few of these anecdotes ramble on a bit (the shedding of 10 minutes or so would help), they provide the best bits of material. Meinelschmidt is an impressive vocal chameleon and plies his booming baritone into various cadences and octaves—he morphs seamlessly into the thunderous, James Earl Jones-like tones of a regal judge, doing a quick reverse to send up an adenoidal, embittered law professor.

Lawyers are (in)famously dramatic, and while Johnny Law harnesses the best of this theatricality, it stops short at becoming flip. By sprinkling in a liberal dose of sobering stories (the frightening effect of drugs and alcohol on crime) and devastating descriptions (the realities of life behind bars), it ultimately makes a convincing case for the need for committed, courageous lawyers. And as the music portends, those litigators might just have some soul after all.

Johnny Law: Courtroom Crusader is part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.

Discovering Jonah

Because of the limitations of the Fringe Festival (a mere 30-minute window between shows and lack of storage space for sets), the most successful productions tend to be ones that thrive from a sense of minimalism. That the viewers of The Disappearance of Jonah may just forget about its limited production values is, in itself, an indication of the production's success. Blending driven young talent with Darragh Martin's lyrical script, the production is festival theater at its most enjoyable. The setting of The Disappearance of Jonah transforms from Jonah's family's kitchen to his fiancé Natalie's (Lydia Brunner) apartment and to a Lower Manhattan coffee shop, but each location change is accomplished by a simple shuffling of chairs and tables. Allowing the audience to imagine walls, doors and windows serves the play's intentions, as an invisible Jonah (Jeff Brown) often enters and exits scenes at his own pace, addressing other characters within his reality.

Jonah has already disappeared as the story begins, but the audience is introduced to him almost immediately. As Jonah discusses his choice of college with his mother in a flashback (he has chosen NYU in order to be with Natalie), his character becomes at once familiar and fascinating: a high school star adored by his family and teachers, his confidence is fragile in the face of an impending transition into adult life. Even though Jonah speaks like a writer--he suggests to Natalie that the two travel by hot air balloon and scuba dive in Central Park's lake--his mother (Lori Kee) is pushing him towards a doctor's career. His imaginative rambling reveals an intelligence nurtured by his surroundings, but also an uneasiness, a brewing rebellion against structured expectations. Jonah appears to be a boy whose thoughts keep him awake at night.

The story presents several intersecting narratives, the weightiest of which shows Jonah's brother Finn (Jake Green) searching for Jonah. Green has a tough role to carry, as he has to both establish a self-conscious contrast to his charismatic brother and take charge of the forward motion of the narrative. He handles the challenge with grace, however, showing an honest vulnerability that ultimately helps him emerge as the stronger of the two brothers. Asher Grodman is also excellent as the distracted, ego-driven writer, whose storyline offers a genuinely fascinating turn to the story.

This Fringe entry is the brainchild of Aporia Repertory Company, a group consisting mostly of past and present Columbia University students. From the performances he has encouraged out of his actors, it's tough to believe that co-director Dan Blank is still collegiate--and majoring in political science.

The Disappearance of Jonah is part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.

L.A. Story

I can happily state that 50% of Perez Hilton Saves the Universe (or at least the greater Los Angeles area): The Musical is quite funny. Unfortunately, I can’t speak for the other half of the show because it was inaudible. Too often, the instruments drown out the singers, detracting from the jokes and, at some points, the plot. From what I heard, the musical was an amusing blend of sass, melodrama, and ridiculousness. Don’t expect depth or realistic scenarios here. The show is like Hilton’s trademark pink hair: it’s tacky fluff, but it’s fun. This is quite appropriate considering the focus on celebrity culture. For those who aren’t familiar with the real Hilton: he’s a blogger who covers the juiciest tidbits of Hollywood.

As Hilton, Randy Blair is a delightfully catty diva, wringing humor out of every biting quip. While drawing hearts on picures of Zac Efron’s abs and bashing Amy Winehouse is a full-time job, the show adds a new target for Hilton to tackle: terrorism. Since the world avidly reads “what Perez sez,” two terrorists have decided to hijack his site in order to lure a large crowd to one place and bomb them. A bit far out? Did I mention it’s the day of Britney Spears’s funeral, the terrorists intend to use an explosive made of plutonium and kitty litter, and Hilton has fallen for one of them?

Fortunately, the actors have a knack for treating ridiculous plotlines with sincerity. One of the best moments is when Hilton receives anti-terrorism training and realizes he must defeat his new crush. In the song that follows, he repeatedly cries out “you want me to shoot my lover all over his face.”

You might be asking: what’s a play about celebrities without any? Well, the musical includes “visits” from Winehouse, Efron, and Paris Hilton. However, in cramming as many celeb cameos as possible, some of these scenes verge on being pointless and could’ve been cut (the show is 2 hours, after all). When the cast nails it, though, it’s fabulous. Laura Jordan’s Kathy Griffin and Andrew Keenan-Bolger’s Tom Cruise are alone worth the price of admission.

In the finale, the cast sings “whenever you’re down…rag on someone else, you’ll feel really great.” This seems quite true for the performers, who appear to be having a ball.

Perez Hilton Saves the Universe is part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.

Britney's Name in Lights

What if Britney Spears, the most poignant example of disintegrated teenstardom in recent history, was turned into the Ariel or Elphaba of her own musical? And in pairing the fallen Britney with the strategically building chord structures and self-examining lyrics that characterize the modern musical, what would we discover about the art form itself?

Molly Bell's and Daya Curley's California import, a meta-musical entitled Becoming Britney, aims to explore both of these questions. The time frame is just short of 90 minutes, and the pace is frantic. Becoming Britney both plots out the star's much-documented life and offers satirical observations about the nature of musical theater itself. Many of the lyrical choices are clever, and the six-member cast demonstrates polished talent, but the overtly ambitious paradigm of 'Becoming Britney' ultimately weakens the end product.

The show opens shortly after the starlet's head-shaving incident that has placed her in the custody of a celebrity rehab center. She is soon asked to recount her story in song, as the clinic's other inhabitants have already done with gleefully ringing harmonies, and the audience is made aware that these characters are, very consciously, inside a musical.

Mocking Britney Spears through song may not initially seem like a challenge--after all, a writer isn't likely to run out of material--but the pervasive sense of heartbreak associated with each of her antics also provides a moral conundrum. More than just laugh at Britney's bizarre childrearing methods and schizophrenic escapades around Los Angeles, we want, almost desperately, to understand what drives her. It's this expectation that also inevitably raises the stakes for Becoming Britney.

As the title character, Molly Bell is convincing. While her Britney offers too many wide-eyed stares and not enough of the starlet's now-famous fits of rage, Bell has undoubtedly studied her subject carefully. She slurps Red Bulls, picks at her teeth, chews gum and, during the show's lip-synched numbers, nails Britney's characteristic finger-wagging and seductive smirk. In these pre-recorded pop tracks, her moans and nasally delivered choruses sound exactly like the real Britney. 'Push it Out,' a number that opens with K-Fed (Keith Pinto) dancing to a hospital heart monitor and includes plenty of panting and grinding by twice-pregnant Britney, is bluntly hilarious--and surprisingly catchy. When Bell sings live, her self-assured and versatile voice is a joy to listen to.

Although many of the musical numbers offer smart comedy ("I need an "I Want"- Song to describe internal strife," sings Bell in a showstopper that seems to mock every self-discovery song from The Sound of Music to Wicked), they seem to be in frequent discord with the show's spoken scenes. This Britney is simplistic and chronically void of self-awareness, but when she breaks into song, her lyrics and vocabulary suddenly turn snarky. This conflict may very well have been intentional, but still leaves us in the dark on who really is behind the wig.

Becoming Britney is part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.