Swedish torment

The uncomfortable start of August Strindberg’s 1888 tragicomedy, Creditors, brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music by London’s Donmar Warehouse, probably has less to do with the new version by David Grieg than with Strindberg’s personal distaste for women’s rights. The playwright’s vehement attack on free-thinking women in this rarely produced drama produces some unintentioned laughter in the first quarter hour—mingled, to be sure, with the genuine humor he invests in the grim proceedings—before it settles into a fluctuating power struggle. Two men enter the lounge of a summer hotel. Adolph (Tom Burke), a painter turned sculptor, walks shakily and carries crutches. He is unburdening himself to Gustav, a middle-aged stranger he’s met at the hotel (designed sparely by Ben Stones all in white, reminiscent of Syrie Maugham’s décor, with some yellowing on the clapboard walls added for naturalism and only a whisper of dove-gray stripes on the cushions of the wood-framed furniture).

Adolph is suffering pangs of uncertainty about his wife, Tekla (Anna Chancellor), who has been away for a week. “My wife is a very independent woman,” he tells Gustav, who elicits descriptions of Tekla’s possessiveness and her jealousy at Adolph’s forming friendships. At parties, he says, Tekla’s hackles are raised if he talks with other men, “as if she wanted to keep me all to herself.” Strindberg’s portrait of Adolph as a man in an emotionally abusive relationship rings with truth. “When she smiles, I smile,” he says. “When she cries, I cry. Even when she gave birth—can you believe this—I actually felt the pain of her contractions.” It's telling that, as she has assumed the dominant role long reserved for the husband, he has become feminized.

Tekla, says Adolph, contains “the very essence of my being—harboring my life force.” Moreover, Tekla is a renowned novelist, whose initial successful book was drawn from her relationship to her first husband. But Adolph nurtured and trained Tekla, who was an abysmal writer, and helped her to her triumph. Like a parasite, she has leeched everything from him, including his ability to paint and, now, his confidence in her fidelity.

Gustav (Owen Teale) warns Adolph that the only way to regain his manhood is total sexual abstinence for a year; he also claims that Adolph may come down with epilepsy if he doesn’t cease intercourse (another laughable moment). Gustav, moreover, does some far-fetched psychologizing about Tekla’s previous husband, whose ghost haunts Adolph and Tekla’s relationship like a “creditor knocking at the bedroom door,” since it’s that relationship that really formed Tekla.

Adolph is persuaded by Gustav to thrash out his problems with Tekla, who is on a ferry to the resort as they speak. Gustav arranges to eavesdrop on the confrontation, and then to face down Tekla while Adolph listens behind the doors to the corridor.

In the next two scenes that’s exactly what happens; the drama deepens, and the stakes become higher. Adolph, in attempting to seize control of his marriage and make his wife subservient, endangers it. And when Adolph leaves and Gustav enters, Tekla is in for a shock. Strindberg ultimately suggests the ruin of both men is the outcome of the social emancipation of women.

Rickman’s fine production is suffused with dread, anguish, and emotional tension, helped by Adam Cork’s rich sound design—dripping water, ferry horns, distant doors opening and closing, and faraway footsteps drawing near (akin to the climax of Rear Window). Howard Harrison adds to the atmosphere with dwindling daylight and lengthening shadows from three large skylight windows on the pitched roof.

The actors are all superb. Chancellor’s Tekla doesn’t appear so unreasonable or horrific as she’s described. She’s a lively, loving woman with an independent streak and a smothering maternal quality, yet there’s no denying her destructiveness. As Adolph, Burke founders between adoration and agony, and he presents Adolph’s physical pain with subtle gestures, such as absent-mindedly massaging his thighs. Teale’s Gustav is stiff, authoritative, and quick-witted, gently feeding Adolph enough rope to hang himself; he segues smoothly from borderline charlatan to merciless avenger. It’s a credit to the Donmar Warehouse that this thorny period piece can still deliver so much food for thought.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

The Theater for the New City’s website and press claims, troublingly (to me, at least), that Barbara Kahn’s “The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams recounts the true story” of its subject. Yet, as far as I can tell, this much is true: Eve Adams (real name Eva Kotchever) “was a Jewish lesbian from Poland, who was proprietor of ‘Eve’s Hangout’ at 129 Macdougal Street in 1926, a tearoom where local poets, musicians and actors congregated to meet and share their work in salon evenings” (from the web site). We also know that Eve’s Hangout closed after Eve was arrested in a crackdown on gay and lesbian establishments and society. Prior to this, Eve and her salon had been vilified by the bigoted editor of a local paper called The Greenwich Village Quill (called The Parchment in the play). After her arrest, Eve moved to Paris where she lived, by some accounts, hand-to-mouth. She always longed to return to the States. Ms. Kahn’s account takes place in and around Eve’s Hangout and paints Eve in broad, sanitized strokes, so that she comes off as a kindly den mother rather than the avant garde provocateur described by some historians. Carefully offered as a saintly, nurturing matron, this likely well-scrubbed Eve (Steph Van Vlack) more closely resembles Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life than a radical lesbian intellectual in 1920s bohemian Greenwich Village.

Eve generously employs a young, searching, poor girl, and then generously welcomes another young, searching, poor girl (both are fictional characters); she offers wholesome dating advice (to fictional characters); she winkingly tolerates a ubiquitous, sharp and universally disliked patron (who is fictional); she heartily encourages the writing careers (of fictional characters), and forgives the lies and slights (of...well, you know) with tea and cheerful hugs. Has a kinder, gentler soul ever existed? Sadly, I doubt that Kahn is giving us anything close to the real Eve. At best, it’s a wild guess.

The production’s program states, more mildly, that the play is “inspired by a true story.” Yet, Ms. Kahn takes sometimes-shocking inspiration with the extant facts of Eve’s life. There’s a central plot twist, but it doesn’t ring true at all, not only because it’s fictionalized but also because it’s implausible, even in the context of the play’s own plot. Another problem is that the play is simply too long. You know you have length issues when you start labeling your scenes “Five-b.” We sometimes have to sit through Eve’s interminable and, frankly, not very good, love stories.

So, to get this straight: The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams is a mostly imagined account of the life of an historical person about whom we know some surprisingly few facts. Since she invents so many fictional characters (and two real characters--in name only--who may or may not have personally known Eve), Ms. Kahn might have been better off had she simply invented, rather than appropriated, a protagonist. Kahn’s Eve is not consistent with what is known of her. Kahn’s Eve would have been much too polite to hang a sign outside her salon (a fact the play uses) stating, “Men are admitted, but not welcome.” Kahn’s Eve is too timid and, frankly, dull, for such action--radical at the time.

There are two standout performances here: Anna Podolak as Amalia “Mika” Frank, a young woman whose mother disinherits her for her lesbianism, and Micha Lazare as Alice Hathaway, a longing young woman from Red Bank, New Jersey, in search of her freedom and identity. Mika and Alice start a tentative, innocent relationship. Ms. Podolak’s specialty is body language, and she can welcome or dismiss someone with a simple twist of her mouth. Ms. Lazare, for her part, brings wonder and joy to her character, free for the first time on the indifferent but nonjudgmental streets of New York City.

Deanna R. Frieman’s vintage costuming is chic and smart, incorporating both the 1920s college look and men’s period styles. And Mark Marcante’s set design really does replicate the look of a café or salon, with warm brick walls, period furniture, and even what looks like a kitchen at the back of the stage.

Well-intentioned as it is, The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams is a disappointing and fatally flawed play. Ms. Kahn is clearly sympathetic to her characters and, at its core, this play is about terrible injustice suffered by gays and lesbians in a particular place and period in our nation’s history. In a document entitled “Historical Background of the Play,” Ms. Kahn states, “I enjoy discovering people and events that have been omitted and distorted in history and popular culture.” Unfortunately, Ms. Kahn’s account may serve ultimately to further distort the life of a figure about whom we already know so little.

And You Thought Your High School Was Rough

Don’t be mistaken: Alice in Slasherland, the latest work by the geek-chic stage combat virtuosos that are the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll’s fabled tale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; it’s not even connected to Tim Burton’s current film remake. But one would also be mistaken to miss out on this highly enjoyable, skillful production. The closest any action gets to Carroll’s classic is in the character naming of Slasherland, written by Qui Nguyen, directed by Robert Ross Parker, and playing at HERE Arts Center. Carlo Alban plays high school outcast Lewis, nursing a crush on childhood friend and cheerleader Margaret (Bonnie Sherman). Much to his chagrin, this feeling is not reciprocated. Margaret leaves a Halloween party with the more popular Duncan (Sheldon Best).

Frustrated, Lewis unwittingly channels some carnivorous demons to his high school, leaving it up to him, Margaret, and an odd, largely mute woman named, naturally, Alice (Amy Kim Waschke) to fend these deadly creatures off. Alice is an amalgam of La Femme Nikita and Samarra, the young girl from the Ring movies. Waschke’s portrayal has her speaking and moving in halting rhythms. We think she’s on the side of the good guys, but we’re never quite sure.

Slasherland could come off as merely mindless, derivative drivel if it weren’t for two things. First of all, the technical skill at play here (nothing strange to those who have seen other Vampire Cowboys shows like Fight Girl Battle World or Soul Samurai) is absolute wizardry. Nguyen’s fight choreography is adroit without ever crossing the line into being too violent; despite a healthy amount of blood spatter, Slasherland knows it is a send-up of teen horror flicks but never tries to enter that canon. It’s happy enough to mock from afar. Additionally, Matthew Tennie’s multimedia design provides for some hysterical moments, including a “sneak preview” that runs at the show’s commencement. Jessica Shay also is to be commended for her outstanding costumes.

The second thing elevating Slasherland is just how fun it is. Nguyen and Parker have invented some ingenious theatricalities to keep their show both fun and fresh throughout. These include a death montage set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (don’t worry, it plays much better than it might read) and a teddy bear puppet named Edgar who joins Lewis, Margaret and Alice in their quest to annihilate bad guys. (David Valentine takes care of the puppet design.) Best deserves extra props, so to speak, for his ability to operate Edgar and personify him with hedonistic wit.

The Vampire Cowboys have also assembled a cast that knows how to deliver dialogue with the right dollop of camp. Alban and Sherman seem to be having a terrific time onstage and deliver great tongue-in-cheek performances. Andrea Marie Smith is hysterical as both a bitchy teen and an additional character who appears at show’s end who might be even more evil.

Waschke handles Alice’s craziness with care. On the page, her character is the hardest to understand, and therefore the least funny, but Waschke plays her scenes with such mastery that it is sure to elicit guffaws from anyone playing close attention.

The only element of Slasherland that feels gratuitous is Nguyen’s back-and-forth narration. The play skips around to moments in the past and then back to the present within the week where the show’s action occurs. It is actually more confusing to do this than let the play move linearly. I wasn’t sure at various points when Alice and Lewis had first met and how much they had bonded, and what the extent of Duncan and Margaret’s relationship was. Just let the demons wreak havoc and get their comeuppance in the proper order.

Fortunately, that’s what happens for the most part. It’s hard to re-fashion a movie of any kind for the stage, harder to still to do it well. And yet that’s what Slasherland achieves. Nguyen, Parker and the rest of the Vampire Cowboys have taken a dismissed movie subgenre and created a production that should be seen by all. Or else.

Good Acting, but still Thirsty

If someone were to ask me in one sentence what I thought of A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick by Kia Corthron….I would say, the acting is superb, it's visually stunning, but there are too many themes. This play centers around Abebe, a South African 20-year-old student (William Jackson Harper) newly arrived in the U.S. and studying to be a preacher. He also has an extreme fascination with water and a passion to save the world from ecological doom. Ironically, the town is suffering from a drought. At the top of the play Abebe is living with Pickle, a jolly black woman played by Myra Lucretia Taylor, and her rebellious teenage daughter H.J., played by Kianne Muschett. Both are recovering from a tragic loss, though H.J believes her mother in dealing with this death of her brother and father is not facing reality. Abebe has also taken it upon himself to comfort a town boy, Tay (Joshua King) who’s gone mute after witnessing the brutal murder of his parents. Harper as Abebe is consistently entertaining, impassioned, and in full command of his numerous, fact-laden speeches against corporate America, water bottling companies, and descriptions on how the two destroy our ecological system.

Corthron, our playwright, is also gifted at writing the characters' personal stories, infusing poignancy and humor. Happily, Harper and Taylor are just as gifted at the telling of their characters' stories, and more than once I was choked up. The play is very entertaining at spots, especially when Abebe is practicing to be a preacher. At one point he rehearses baptism and dunks H.J. in the bathtub. The play, seemingly traditional, takes a surrealist turn when dreamlike intruders make an appearance as Pickle’s level of coherency diminishes. By the end of the first act, we are left with a rather horrific image of the now almost-speaking Tay wearing blood-soaked pajamas.

The play skips time to seven years later when Abebe goes back to his Ethiopian village a day too late to mourn his dead brother Seyoum, played by Keith Eric Chappelle. Abebe is confronted with the fact that he did nothing to stop the building of a “mega damn” which displaced 5000 people in his village and caused Seyoum’s entire family to die. When Abebe returns for Pickle’s 50th birthday, everything seems normal, but Pickle has neglected to tell Abebe some very major plot twists. One, H.J has found religion after some drastic life changes and two, an industrial bottling plant helps employ the town but destroys the environment. These new revelations cause Abebe’s spirit to indulge in one of his only moments of defeat, but only for a second. On a quest to baptize H.J, all three take a journey to a beautiful creek (crick) where Abebe had once baptized and saved his first sinners. This moment might be the impetus for the title of the play as the creek has dried up.

Structurally, many of the plot and storylines that were set up in act one finish in the eight years not part of the play. This gives cause for much exposition but also a little disappointment. I would have liked to have witnessed what developed with Tay (King), the harmonica playing boy, rather than hear about his life tragedy. Now his role didn’t seem to have much significance.

Directory Chay Yew keeps the action moving and gives an overall tight production. Taylor is delightfully human in the face of dealing with pain. Muschett as H.J. ages her part well; though I did find her new found religion made her a little less interesting in terms of conflict. Chapelle gave quite nice contrast to his two parts especially his sensitive and comic performance as Tich, H.J.’s estranged boyfriend/husband.

The set by Kris Stone is gorgeous and works cohesively with the lighting design by Ben Stanton. I don’t think the rolling river would have looked so sparkling without the reflection of lights. One breathtaking vision had the stage transform to look like an ice pond with a figurative tree in the back. I am a big fan of details that tell a story so I especially appreciated the colorful magnets and pictures of children on the refrigerator in the first act in contrast to the stark white refrigerator eight years later.

This play is filled with compelling passionate characters with fascinating stories but the potpourri of messages and themes from Christianity to bad corporate baby formula left me at times overwhelmed.

Smoky Suspenseful Ride

While the audience takes their seats for John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night, adapted by Matt Pelfrey, you’ll notice a caged stage enveloped by gauzy curtains while a scantily dressed and overheated girl seductively dances from deep within. Approaching curtain time, the fog seeps in. One would think this sultry atmosphere was the start of a Tennessee Williams play, but this is clearly not the case. There is a history to this play. First it was a novel, then a movie, and then it became a TV series, but this is the first time it has ever hit the stage. Why? Because this racially charged drama is both compelling and powerful and, though set in the 1960’s, still has relevance. The most astounding thing about this production is the directing. The director, Joe Tantalo, faces a challenge, probably one of his own choosing, of staging a linear, multi-scened, seemingly naturalistic story in a theater in-the-round or square, as is the case with this theater. He does so without a set, furniture or props (minus five guns and a cigar). The committed actors mimed specific invisible set items and I honestly believed I could see jail doors being keyed open. Tantalo’s staging was inventive and created intensity during scene transitions. Additional moments filled with physical symbolic gestures coupled with underscored sound or music broke up the real time of the play. The juxtaposition of these intense moments in contrast to the naturalistic playing of scenes proves quite successful.

At the top of the play, Charles Tatum (Adam Kee) is found murdered, and Bill Gillespie, Chief of Police, played by Gregory Konow, is brought in. Virgil Tibbs (Sean Phillips), an African American, is discovered at a nearby train station, racially profiled and immediately arrested. These Southern police officers quickly discover that Tibbs, a police detective from Los Angeles, will now aid in solving the case. This sequence sets up a conflict between Southern bigoted cops and an unwanted black detective that will drive the play.

The racial hatred displayed as part of the South during this time, which I’m sure is authentically accurate with dramaturg Christina Hurtado and adapter Matt Pelfrey under the helm, is an upsetting reminder. It is also unique that each character has varying degrees of racist hatred and tolerance. The play develops as possible suspects rotate in and out of the crime investigation. If you’re into crime drama, which I am, one particular element is similar in structure to TV’s C.S.I. As each new suspect appears, a symbolic crime-like re-enactment is presented on how this person could have done it. The first time this stylized bit happened, I didn’t get it. I thought I was being told how this suspect killed him, but then after it happened again with the next suspect I realized it was to add to the mystery.

Konow, as the police chief, is extremely believable as a bigoted cop and quite a strong actor. Sam Whitten as Pete, one of the more racist cops, celebrated his prejudice so outrageously that I found myself gritting my teeth whenever he was onstage. Julian Nelson as the bereaved daughter, Melanie Tatum, is quite vulnerable and has a well-played scene with Nick Paglina, the actor playing nice cop Sam Wood.

Because of the “in-the-square” stage, the actors are placed in diagonals or corners to aid visibility. After a while, however, the actors start to feel locked in place. Just as this gets tiresome, Bryce Hodgson, a fresh talent, sweeps up the space with energy and much detailed physicality in both his parts as Eric Kaufman and Ralph.

The responsibility of the play depends in large part on the connection between Konow and Phillips. Phillips undeniably grasps the authoritative poise of a northern detective, but his performance tends to be one-note, which I feel takes away some effectiveness. I would have liked to have seen more human or vulnerable qualities, especially during scenes when he was trying to gain information from suspects.

By the time we are introduced to sixteen-year-old Noreen Purdy, Scarlett Thiele, it seems rather late in the play to develop a new plot. I believe that Tantalo might have agreed because this girl was the sultry girl onstage prior to the play’s beginning.

The set by Maruti Evans is effective, minimalistic and comprised of one broad symbol: a noose hanging from the ceiling, center stage. This noose heightens the themes of the play, especially when our L.A. detective stands under it. Evans also serves as the lighting designer and has an interesting light panel on the stage as well authentic looking flashing police lights. Costumes seem “of the period,” and Phillips looks exceptional in his suit. I was confused by Adam Kee’s overly snug suit. Kee plays the dead victim of Charles Tatum as well as two other characters, and at times I wasn’t sure which character he represented because of lack of variety on wardrobe accesories.

In terms of suspense, until the end I never had an idea of who the murderer could be. Having seen the movie such a long time ago, I had forgotten. But you can bet I’ve been inspired and have added In the Heat of the Night, the movie to my Netflix lineup. I can see why Godlight Theater Company would want to adapt this story to the stage, and overall they are quite successful at it.

Good Bett

Ninety years after its debut, it's easy to see why Zona Gale's 1920 play Miss Lulu Bett garnered the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama awarded to a female playwright. Her work is at once a sparkling comedy and a curt indictment of the social position of women in the early years of the twentieth century. In Gale's play, the eponymous heroine has resigned herself to being an old maid and earning her keep as the household drudge for her brother-in-law, Dwight Deacon, a puffed-up, small-town justice of the peace. Lulu's life turns upside down after Deacon's ne'er-do-well brother Ninian arrives for a visit. When the lonely pair accidentally marry due to a peculiarity in the local law, Lulu gets a taste of both love and independence. Although the dubious legality of their marriage eventually forces Lulu to return to her former life, her spirit has been irrevocably altered.

Gale tenderly portrays all the women in the show, each of whom is constricted by the roles they are expected to play in society. Some characters' struggles are obvious: Lulu's chafes at her invisibility while her sister Ina transforms herself into a wheedling toady for her husband. Others, like teenager Di Deacon, suffer more quietly. Each woman, however, is trapped by social expectations which pass them from father to husband with no opportunity to know themselves.

Miss Lulu Bett is unusual in having had two different endings. Gale's original, feminist final scene is reminiscent of Ibsen's A Doll's House, with Lulu, like Nora, departing her hometown to work and to discover her own identity. A second ending, incorporated into the original Broadway production after a negative audience reaction, offers the heroine another chance at marital bliss. Director Kathleen Brant's current production seamlessly reaches a conclusion which is both satisfactory and poignant.

Brant has crafted an excellent, intelligent production, although she could have found more variety in the second act, which falters and becomes repetitive. Fortunately, the humor and honesty of Miss Lulu Bett compensates for its flaws.

The production is blessed with a number of excellent performances. Laurie Schroeder is perfect as Miss Lulu, deftly handling the character's transition from an under-appreciated shadow to forceful woman. Gerrianne Raphael creates a poignant portrait of Mrs. Bett, a woman who has suffered such losses in her own life that she supposes her daughter better off having nothing to lose. Meanwhile, Mary Ruth Baggott's Diana “wiggles and chitters” charmingly, beguiling both her family and the audience into underestimating her emotional compass.

As the bumbling neighbor Neil Cornish, Michael Gnat brings humor and humanity to each of his scenes. Anne Fizzard, however, teeters on the edge of caricature as Lulu's sister, Ina Deacon.

Miss Lulu Bett is also well-designed. Craig M. Napoliello's set seamlessly changes from a small-town dining room to a porch, which serves as a symbolic and literal threshold between Lulu's circumscribed life and her potential future. Napoliello's design is enhanced by Diana Duecker's lights, which create the illusion of a much larger space in the tiny WorkShop Theater. The costumes by Anna Gerdes are simple, yet in one moving scene painfully reveal the deprivation that Lulu has experienced in comparison to her nearest relatives. Jeffrey Swan Jones provides an intelligently-chosen soundtrack for the production.

Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett does not provoke the shock that Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House did forty years earlier. Nevertheless, it is a worthy play which has been lovingly produced. Catch it while you can.

Phantom Whim

Carmichael (Christopher Walken), the main character of Martin McDonagh’s new play, A Behanding in Spokane, has spent the last 47 years searching for his left hand. However, an absent palm and five digits is nothing compared to what is missing from this play: purpose. Behanding, playing the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, finds Carmichael holed up in a dreary hotel room in an unnamed town. Marilyn (Zoe Kazan) and Toby (Anthony Mackie) are a couple of scam artists who have answered his online ad and said they have Carmichael’s missing hand. (He explains that when he was younger some bullies had the missing appendage severed by a speeding locomotive.) Unfortunately, the couple has been caught red-, er, black-handed, when Toby provides a hand clearly belonging to a man of another race.

Carmichael then holds Marilyn and Toby hostage in his dingy room while he leaves to investigate a lead Toby has provided; he has lit a flame working its way down to a tank of gasoline. As directed by John Crowley (A Steady Rain), there’s no Hitchcockian tension here, though. He plays Behanding for laughs, and as a result, the stakes feel quite low.

McDonagh’s earlier plays, like The Beauty Queen of Leenane trilogy, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Pillowman (also directed by Crowley), were masterful works but punishing affairs. They were as lacerating for the audience as they were for his characters. But they also provided thoughtful social and existential comedy (so, too, did McDonagh’s overlooked 2008 movie, In Burges).

Behanding is, I suppose, best described as a black comedy. Marilyn and Toby never really seem in peril. Its tone is humorous instead of tense, and McDonagh seemingly intends for his play to be taken at face value. Compared to his other plays, though, Behanding -- the playwright’s first American-set work – feels utterly lacking. Is he branching out, trying for something more commercial, or merely being lazy?

The play also suffers from a kind of identity disorder. It is unclear whether Crowley and McDonagh aim for realism or surrealism. Though both Marilyn and Toby sit handcuffed in the hotel room, a working telephone is within Toby’s reach. (In several humorous exchanges, Carmichael’s unseen mother calls on it.) If the show were aiming for realism, there would either be no phone or it should not work. And if Behanding skewed on the side of something more surreal, the play should emphasize that they know a phone is there but come up with contrived reasons not to use it. The current result makes the play feel unfinished and slapdash.

The excellent Sam Rockwell plays a fourth character. He’s Mervyn, the hotel’s desk clerk, who is just looking for an opportunity to save the day. I don’t know if Behanding was written specifically for Rockwell or Walken, but it certainly plays toward both actors’ irreverent acting styles. There are divergent effects, however. Rockwell specializes in playing disarming men-children, as in Choke and Snow Angels, so Mervyn is a perfect fit. But Rockwell tailors his performance to the character, making sense of the hotel employee’s quirks so that the audience understands where he is coming from when he is dealing with other characters.

Walken, on the other hand, plays vintage Walken here, and the effect is a distracting one. His shtick – tuff tawk and over-enunciation of odd syllables – has provided him with a lasting persona, but that persona can be a hindrance. It makes his performance feel like a caricature, and takes the audience out of the scene. Such familiarity with Walken’s demeanor also detracts from any threat the actor might possess in his scenes. His Carmichael makes one’s initial reaction one of laughter when one should be cowering. I would be interested to see how a different actor would approach this role. (It should also be said that Carmichael is offstage for a great deal of Behanding, and while he is, the play does not miss him.)

McDonagh saddles Kazan and Mackie with the play’s most thankless roles, though. The characters reminded me of half of the Scooby Gang; the two are so hapless one wonders how they ever thought they could pull off Behanding’s central scam in the first place. Mackie holds his own; he’s actually the only actor of the four who commits enough to making it look like his character might actually be in danger, and he does so while still embracing the play’s innate humor. Kazan, however, comes off as more amateurish. Her line delivery is manic and shrill. McDonagh intends for her to be alternately a clever operator and a damsel in distress, and I didn’t believe either persona.

It isn’t fair to penalize McDonagh for creating a play that is lighter than the rest of his oeuvre. In its defense, Behanding is diverting and will please anyone looking for a healthy dose of star power. Still, one cannot help but wish that beyond all the eccentricity, the show had something more to say.

The Ladies Who Lunch

Desiree Burch, Cara Francis and Erica Livingston offer no greater proof of the daring and immediacy to be found in New York theater than in their current work, The Soup Show. The three are part of the New York Neo-Futurists. The Neo-Futurists (or “Neos,” as they refer to themselves) are a group of self-actualized performance artists. Their mission is to create “a world in the theater which has no pretense or illusion,” with no suspension of disbelief. A prop doesn’t substitute for something else, and they use their own names rather than portraying character. In other words, to paraphrase La Cage Aux Folles, they are exactly who they are.

And who they are in Soup, sharply directed by Lauren Sharpe, are three confident and comfortable women, sharing themselves with an audience. Be warned: there is nudity, and plenty of it. From start to finish, pretty much, we see Burch, Francis and Livingston nude onstage. Yet this nudity is in no way offensive or shocking, In fact, after merely a few minutes, one is too busy listening to what the women have to say to be distracted by what they are – or are not – wearing.

Soup is essentially a variety act, a review of sketches tied together by the notion of female solidarity and resilience. At the evening’s commencement, all audience members are handed out pencils and instructed to sketch one of the three actresses. It’s a powerful move, and defines the difference between being naked and being nude – the former is vulnerable and the latter has power. They claim their appearance before the audience before anyone in the audience has the chance to feel embarrassed.

At the center of the stage, not to mention the show itself, is a big hot tub that the three women periodically enter but more often add various items from the evening into. Soup itself is a bouillabaise of stories taken from the performers’ own lives as well as interviews and images put forth by the media.

For instance, Livingston shares her personal feelings about the battles in raising her stepdaughter and the lessons she wishes for her to learn. At the same time, she creates recipe and tries to catch ingredients like eggs and flour into a mixing bowl – this could look somehow sloppy or misguided, but Livingston’s and Sharpe’s touch makes it both personal and a perfectly theatrical way to present how messy parenthood can be for anyone. (You can bet that those ingredients will also find their way into the hot tub.)

Throughout Soup, the performers intermittently quote from sources’ thoughts about women. While one reads, another holds a magnifying glass up against various parts of the readers’ body. One way to view this is that even when women are recounting one’s thoughts, their physicality will always also be under the microscope. All three performers are sublime, and it should be said, work so well together I found myself thinking of the three women as one cohesive unit rather than three separate actresses.

Sharpe’s show is both slick and substantive, moving at a fast clip but never too fast for the audience to process the humor and the emotions that have just been introduced. And while much of the show is deeply personal, it’s also raucously fun. Burch invites a man onstage and shaves half of his face. And in what is sure to be the evening’s most talked-about sequence, Francis demonstrates a special talent she has honed over time.

This combination of deep thought and crudity meshes together perfectly. It allows the show’s three stars to embrace who they are in their entirety. No one can ever be summed up by one simple description, or even a few. Soup explores how each person is a mash of complications and contradictions. One of this show’s key strengths is that beyond supporting any feminist perspective, it espouses a human one.

Another heavy moment of the show occurs when Burch strips down the notion of what motherhood can mean. This perceptive monologue is immediately, followed, however, by a request for anyone in the audience to step onstage and give them a hug. Who wouldn’t want to?

A Slice of Life

Every person has a unique story to tell. Danusia Trevino uses performance in order to share her narrative with us. Her play Wonder Bread traces one woman's journey from Poland to the US -- and sometimes back again -- through theatrical storytelling. There are many bright moments in this somewhat inconsistent piece that make it a tale worth seeing performed. The play follows her through her tumultuous life story. We see her at all stages of her life: as a child dealing with her parents, as a teenage girl seeking her international route of escape, as a young woman desperate to find herself and fit the skin of her new American identity. The events are told in and out of linear time; we jump back and forth from recent moments to those further in the past. This technique, although at times disorienting, highlights the connections between different aspects of her life. We see all of life's subtle causes and effects.

Trevino is quite charming throughout. There is a tender sweetness to her self-portrayal. Rather than using an ensemble of players to fill out the world of her tale, she plays every role in her life story, with varying levels of success in terms of believability. She uses iconic items that emblematize each "other" in her tale, evoking some essential aspect of that individual's self.

The stage literally becomes cluttered with items -- and strewn with tomatoes -- before the play is done. This clutter diminishes the overall effect of the stage picture somewhat. The progression of the narrative suggests that the final image should focus provocatively on Danusia. Instead, we see her almost engulfed by all the detritus of the events that brought her to this moment. Perhaps, however, that is the point -- Danusia will always have these bits of her past surrounding her. She will carry her past with her, no matter where she goes or what she does.

There are elements in this play that do not quite work. There are a number of physical movements and dances that do not quite come across as effectively as they might. Their meanings remain vague in terms of the larger story arc. Still, the stage space is well-utilized and the intimacy of the space emphasizes the confessional nature of the piece.

Overall, Wonder Bread is a sweet, personal story told by a lovable individual. It reminds its viewer to keep a privileged place in her heart for the place from which she came and for all those with whom she has come into contact. One never knows which little details could lead to compelling theater. It could be something as simple as one's first slice of Wonder Bread.

Desk Love Gets Sensual

Hangman School for Girls is an exorcising first work of writer Lucy Gillespie, one which follows Hazel, a pariah through her years at a well-established boarding school. The story is packed into a quick tempo two hours, where imagination, psychological turns and creative staging conjure an intense sense of involvement with Hazel’s story and her bearings on reality. Leta Tremblay, director of Girls, calls it a story of “an outcast, the lowest of the low.” But as for its directing, it is in fact at the top: the synchronicity of exaggerated movements, the concentration of the actors, in particular Sarah Anne Masse and Laura Wiese, and the bold usage of space make this a robust piece. The five actresses begin by playing childish games of pretend, in which Chelsea, played by Masse, is the clear leader, symbolized by her standing on a chair and balancing a book on her head. The games they play are always sharply driven by the power relationships of the girls, and lines are crossed. The pretend seems awfully real: at some moments, the lights change to a menacing red, and the chants of the girls who taunt Hazel bring her once to tears of terror.

The hostility of Hazel’s school environs drives her deeper into her imagination and she only finds consolation in a desk, played by Nick Afka and a desk, literally. The desk is so fashioned that Afka sits on an extra posterior bench, and manipulates the drawer in front of him in a cartoonish fashion. At one point Hazel, played by Gilliespie, sits reading on the desk, while Afkas' hands connect to her shoulder, although he himself appears “turned off.” The symbiosis of man and object is one of many clever stagings in this piece. The subtext of Girls is also noteworthy; the power dynamics serve as a commentary on the law or authoritarian relationships, which is represented in mock trials.

Throughout the play the process of the girls' maturation is symbolized by their dialogue (spoken in English accents) and their costuming. They remove their red sweaters, open their blouses, exchange their flats for pumps, wear make-up and by the end reach sexual maturity. The desk is driven mad by the generations of blossoming bodies of girls who sit upon him. It is this endless cycle which makes the “uniqueness” of Hazel seductive enough to bother both of them. A relationship, however unconventional, ensues. In the end, it has profound consequences for desk as well as girl.

Manhattan Theater Source, where the show is playing, is a unique space with a façade of intricate wrought iron filigree painted fading red. Inside a stage greets one on the right, then one ascends to the black box of Vanguard Theater upon a tree house-like set of stairs with a multipurpose landing situated half-way up, hovering in the main room. The black box seats approximately 65 people, although the first row spectators will be uncomfortably close to the action. The set design of this production is simple: desks, faux- lockers and clocks, a chalkboard, and a map of England-- it serves its purpose well. The space creates a pleasurable, intimate setting, and intensifies the connection of the audience.

Because the story line is very unique, it may not satisfy those looking for a traditional ending-- or middle for that matter. As a piece of new writing, however, it is very psychologically engrossing and for its directing and staging Girls deserves some recognition. If nothing else, there is a shocking love scene with desk - perhaps that says it all.

Rewrites Wanted

There are lots of holes in Suzan-Lori Parks' The Book of Grace. One of them is the ominous open grave which one character digs in his backyard to deter another from rebelling. The other holes, unfortunately, are in the script, resulting in a production which is unsatisfying at its best. At its worst, it is downright dull. The play opens with a self-consciously poetic prologue introducing The Book of Grace's players: Vet (John Doman), an order-obsessed border guard; his battered wife, Grace (Elizabeth Marvel), who insists on seeing “evidence of good things” in her bleak and circumscribed life; and Buddy (Amari Cheatom), Vet's angry twenty-something son from an earlier marriage, who plans to give his abusive father three chances to redeem himself or he will take vengeance. A play about these three characters could have been explosive. Unfortunately, Parks never develops her characters beyond the cardboard archetypes of authoritarian father, self-deceived wife, and angry young man.

The Book of Grace takes it title from a collection of secret writings created by the title character to record all the good things that happen in the world around her. Determined to see the best in everything and blind to the flaws of her husband and stepson, Grace brings Vet and Buddy together again after a fifteen year estrangement. Hints of past sexual and physical abuse taint the father-son relationship as Vet dangles the possibility of a job and a promising future in front of his son.

The Book of Grace tries to be a metaphor for the dysfunctional attitudes which are at the core of contemporary American society. Its effectiveness is blunted, however, both by heavy-handed characterizations and by the uneven text. Parks seems to have discovered her characters as she wrote, taking up and discarding multiple threads without fully exploring them. With one dramatic and effective kiss, Buddy exposes his father's past sexual abuse. Soon after, however, this theme is forgotten and another shocking scene ensues. Grace and Buddy, who haven't seen each other since they were twenty and ten years old, inexplicably have sex within moments of their reunion. Later, Buddy develops an intense identification with home-grown terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh. Sure, there is some suggestion that Buddy had been “trouble” as a child, but other than a few broad hints here and there about the characters' pasts, no explanation is given for the characters' baffling and changeable behavior. All these flaws are compounded by a sudden and incomprehensible ending.

In a way, it is a shame that The Book of Grace is as much or more about Buddy as it is about the title character. While Buddy is never consistent enough to seem real, Marvel imbues Grace with a genuine sense of tragedy. In some ways, Grace is reminiscent of Mae in Maria Irene Fornes' 1983 play Mud. Small towns (and big cities) are full of Graces; good-hearted but cowed by husbands and brothers, they try to find some means of self-expression, be it via a night course or poorly written but earnest prose that they dream will become a bestseller. When Grace finally stands up for herself, the moment is electric.

Director James Macdonald is helped by solid performances from all three of his actors, who do the best that they can with the material they have been given. Macdonald comes up with some memorable bits of staging which capture the ambiguity and violence which lies beneath the surface of family relationships. At one point, Vet seems ready to greet his prodigal son with a hug but it swiftly turns into a pat-down. At another, Vet interprets one of Buddy's gestures as a victory “V” to celebrate the medal that Vet is about to receive. In fact, Buddy is indicating that his father has only one more strike to go before he will take revenge. Aside from a few moments, though, Grace generates surprisingly little tension.

Susan Hilferty's costumes are straightforward: Vet's impeccably creased uniform, Grace's pink waitress outfit, and Buddy's neutral jeans-and-undershirt ensemble each hint at the nature of their characters. Hilferty's only misstep is a red dress which Grace longs to have; although the dress is built up in earlier scenes, when it finally appears, it is too bland to reveal anything about Grace's interior life.

The scenic design by Eugene Lee is a metaphor for a crumbling American family. Detritus of other family dramas—a couch, a television set, an ironing board, and a kitchen sink—sit uncomfortably on a dirt floor. A encircling wooden path represents the outside world while upstage, a shovel and a pile of sandbags scattered with red sand lay beneath a huge highway billboard. The desolate landscape works both on a literal and a metaphorical level. With the addition of atmospheric lights by Jean Kalman and sound by Dan Moses Schreier (who provides a porn soundtrack which reads disturbingly and evocatively like sobbing), Grace is lovely both to see and to hear.

Unfortunately, a strong design and a few strong scenes are not enough to save The Book of Grace, a disappointing effort from a talented author.

Pregnant Pause

Many writers forget that in order to create a valid work of art in response to a controversial issue, be it the war, violence in the media, or the death penalty, a piece must integrate opinion into a narrative that both supports its thesis and entertains. Without a gripping story or intriguing, believable characters, all that is left is posturing. Girls in Trouble, the supremely entertaining work currently mounted at the Flea, demonstrates a keen understanding of all sides of the hot-fire topic of abortion. Playwright Jonathan Reynolds makes one smart choice after another in a charged work that never stoops down to mere demagoguery.

Reynolds understands that no matter where one might stand on the right-to-life debate, the underlying issue is one of respect: of feelings, of trust, of privacy, and that is what his work brings to life. As a result, it is one of the most engaging works I have ever experienced at the Flea.

Trouble, directed by Flea founder Jim Simpson, is a triptych of three unique vignettes that reveal the different mores of three time periods in the last fifty years. While this concept isn’t entirely new – HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk did very much the same thing nearly fifteen years ago – the work shows how little progress we have made as a society in tolerating each other’s differences and stepping outside our own solipsistic viewpoints.

Beyond that, Trouble also provides several meaty opportunities for its Bats, the astonishingly capable group of repertory players at the Flea. Andy Gershenzon captivates in the play’s first portion, as Hutch, a collegiate gool ol’ boy who races across state lines late one night with a friend, Teddy (Brett Aresco), to get his one-night stand, Barb (Betsy Lippitt) a crude illegal abortion. Hutch is trying to race Barb back post-procedure in time for her morning exam. Gershenzon is fully committed to playing his part as reprehensibly as Reynolds demands; there isn’t a false note in his portrayal of a character who wants to be unhindered in life with utter disregard for the damage he might leave in his wake. He is human, in many of the ugliest ways imaginable.

This sequence is familiar, particularly as Hutch and the gang finally meet Sandra (Akyiaa Wilson), the nurse who will help Barb, but Simpson’s genius lies in using the situation as a mirror. How much of ourselves do we recognize in Hutch, or even Barb? Would we behave in a similar fashion? How, in fifty years, has so little changed? Pay close attention to the subtle work of Aresco as well, who makes the malleable Teddy a perfectly realized example of tacit approval.

Trouble heats up in its second act in a great showdown between Amanda (Laurel Holland) and Cynthia (Eboni Booth). Set in modern times, Amanda is an NPR host with a gorgeous career, apartment (John McDermott did the set design) and daughter. However, she also has a problem: an unwanted pregnancy. Sunny is a pro-life advocate who bluffs her way into Amanda’s apartment to dissuade her from an imminent abortion. Reynolds has both Amanda and Sunny recite the expected rhetoric in defense of their respective sides, but in a way that informs the characters more than shouts to the audience. It is perhaps Reynolds’ greatest accomplishment that one can never truly infer his stance on this issue by play’s end.

Booth and Holland are incendiary. The irony is that the more the two women argue, the more similar they appear to be. While their battle royale is akin to a great tennis match, the two actresses are so in sync with one another, and Simpson helms the act so deftly that it plays more like virtuoso jazz piece. In essence, Reynolds uses Trouble as the sugar to help his medicine go down. Without shoving it down our throats, he makes his point clear. Regardless of one’s opinion, it is never right to turn a private matter into a public game that always requires a winner and a loser.

Booth is the evening’s MVP, appearing in all three sequences. She commands the stage for the first act closer, a daring spoken-word piece in which Sunny, a pregnant woman, laments her situation, the man who helped her get there, and the ramifications of her options. Booth nimbly moves around the dialogue and gets under the emotions. How she is able to play three so disparate women in the course of one show and not look exhausted is beyond me. I’ll let it remain her secret.

But it’s no secret that Reynolds and Simpson have created a must-see work. Trouble sheds light on a fight that shows no sign of stopping any time soon. It’s easy to be blinded when discussing a taboo subject. In an entertaining – no, riveting – way, this play reminds us that beneath the issues are real people. Regardless of their flaws, they cannot be forgotten.

Long Live the Revolution

Theater can be many things -- it can be an escapist evening of entertainment, it can speak about important social and political issues, it can raise serious and provocative questions, it can imbue people with a sense of hope. What is rare from a performance piece is that it be all of these things at the same time. Revolution!?, written and directed by Pavel Dobruský and Vít Horejš, is the epitome of the combination of all of these elements. It is at turns funny, poignant, relevant, and an all-around thrill to watch. The play is a loose collection of scenes that all present different historical instances of political revolution. This idea, though compelling on its own, might not prove a source for great dramatic literature. But when paired with the best of performance aesthetics and techniques, the recipe it engenders is for brilliant and meaningful theater.

The piece opens with humor; a funny rendering of the little man being continually put down by the bigger one. From here, the journey the play takes us on is a fascinating one. The ensemble traces important revolutionary moments -- from Prometheus to Spartacus to the Boston Tea Party and beyond -- through the use of various performance elements. There is almost no text (and of the text that there is, much is not in English), but the stories come across loud and clear. We see these instances come alive through the actors' bodies, through the use of puppets, through song, dance, juggling, stiltwalking, and the like.

The lack of dialogue reminds the viewer about universals. Play this piece in any country, regardless of its mother tongue, and the narratives have the potential to be understood. Nearly every nation has faced a revolutionary struggle, be it a success or a failure, and nearly every human has grappled with the struggle for freedom from some controlling force. Performance is also a universal; we are all capable of being entertained by the same things. No matter our homeland, we all share certain bonds. These bonds can be used to enact great change.

This play depicts the human facing the worst of situations and finding ways to stand up for him or herself. The humans we see before us on stage evoke one level of this experience and the use of generic wooden puppets emphasize another. They are faceless, identityless personas, yet their manipulation on stage makes them seem to be unique individuals. When they are tossed aside or vanquished, the pain is still visceral. Their presence suggests the multitude of unrecognized individuals who fight for good in the world regardless of the long-term consequences.

Despite powerful and disturbing moments, this play also evokes delight and brings a smile to a spectator's face. There are individual visual images that are entirely unforgettable: the floor strewn with bodies that must be revived; a young woman writhing around a desk avoiding questions about the Russian Revolution; the final vision of the performers standing in solidarity, shaking their keys, about to change their nation's history.

Revolution!? leaves an indelible impression on anyone who bears witness to it. It is powerful material rendered in a most enjoyable manner. It shows us how powerful the individual can be when she stands with others. Change can, and does, come if people perform.

State of Chaos

What if Michael Jackson had ruled an empire? What might he have done? Well, he might have spent a large chunk of the national treasury to stock magnificent zoos with exotic animals. Or, he might have hired a group of astrologers and alchemists rather than raise an army. He might have even secluded himself for weeks at a time while ignoring affairs of state. That’s just what Rudolf II did in Renaissance Bohemia and these actions and their consequences contributed to the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. You’ve heard of Edward II, Richard III, and Henrys IV, V and VI. Rudolf II? It turns out Rudolf II, who ruled Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia from roughly 1572-1608, had quite an interesting story. And playwright Edward Einhorn has imagined and presented it in a manner that is nothing short of dazzling.

Rudolf’s reign was a chaotic one, and Mr. Einhorn sketches some of its basic facts, taking broad imaginative license in many cases. Despite some necessary omissions (the whole story of Rudolf II might take days), Mr. Einhorn gives us a fascinating man loaded with contradictions: formidable, yet highly insecure; unmarried and actively bisexual, yet also the Holy Roman Emperor; Catholic, yet spellbound and influenced by mediums who claim to communicate with spirits in puddles of water. Rudolf was also obsessed with his hated younger brother, Archduke Matthias, and, though he feared losing his crown to Matthias, he knowingly made many decisions which actually sped up that very process.

Director Henry Akona maximizes the generous space of the new and magnificent Renaissance Revival Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side. The space has spent the last 15 years under renovation by the Czech government. A royal bed, on and around which much of the action occurs, sits at the head of the hall. A bright red carpet runs down the length of the hall (the audience is seated, lengthwise, two rows deep) and every inch of its space is used at one time or other during the production.

Since he spends much of his time in bed, Rudolf (Timothy McCown Reynolds) is almost always dressed in a sleeping gown. Despite this, he exudes a kingly, if effeminate, demeanor that would make one think twice before crossing him. Mr. Reynolds’ acting is first-rate; he moves effortlessly from charming, to bewildered, to enraged. A small orchestra/chorus sits in the balcony and contributes conservatively, never overbearingly. The king’s headboard at one point features a replica of Guiseppe Arcimboldo’s portrait of Rudolf as Roman god of the seasons, a prize possession of an emperor noted for his patronage of the arts.

Mr. Einhorn is an accomplished playwright who confidently breathes life into a complex and paranoid ruler who was uniquely unqualified to rule. Yet, Mr. Einhorn also captures Rudolf’s eccentricity, humanity, contradictions and humor. The love scenes between Rudolf and his mistress Katerina (Yvonne Roen) are playful and sweet. Ms. Roen expertly plays the apprehensive and long-suffering mistress, loving Rudolf despite his numerous dalliances and his open long-term affair with his chamberlain, Philip Lang (Jack Schaub). Each actor in this production is greatly talented; there are no weak links. Standouts include Eric Oleson as Rumpf, Rudolf’s first and candid chamberlain, and the bearish Joe Gately as the great but haughty Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Carla Gant’s costuming can only be described as majestic and Ian W. Hill’s lighting has a touch of the surreal.

It takes chutzpah and no small amount of self-confidence to pen a historical play such as this. Mr. Einhorn surely grasps the magnitude of the undertaking and turns the effort into an unmitigated success. You don’t need to be a scholar of the Austro-Hungarian empire to enjoy this play; all you need is the willingness to be entertained and enlightened.

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

The photo on the front of the program for the Transport Group’s revival of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band is somewhat misleading. Seven of the cast members are shown literally bursting through the doors of a closet with broad smiles and giddy dispositions. Only one cast member, tucked ominously in the fetal position on the closet shelf above the rest, hints at the dark depths of this seminal gay drama. This production is both a laugh-filled and emotionally fraught showcase of a landmark piece of theater. According to their mission statement, the not-for-profit Transport Group Theatre Company (Normal, The Audience) is “dedicated to developing and producing works by American playwrights and composers that explore the American consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries.” The Boys in the Band certainly fits the bill. First produced in 1968 one year before the Stonewall riots and the birth of the modern gay liberation movement, Mart Crowley’s dramedy about a birthday party gone horribly wrong was the first successful contemporary play that featured (mostly) uncloseted men. According to Playbill.com, it ran for 1,000 performances in its original Off-Broadway production. It was also made into a 1970 film by director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Cruising, The French Connection) starring the original cast of unknowns.

The shadow of that film hangs heavy over the Transport Group artistic director Jack Cummings III’s new version. The celluloid Boys in the Band is practically de rigueur for queens of a certain age and virtually queens of all ages. Filled with bitchy bon mots, the script overflows with what I like to call “quotential” — delicious lines that can be quoted out of context and thrown into conversation for guaranteed laughs.

The plot is simple. Harold, the self-described “ugly, pock-marked Jew fairy,” is turning 32. His best frenemy, Michael, is throwing him a birthday party that brings together a motley crew of gay men in his stylish downtown apartment. The arrival of Michael’s former college roommate — a straight-laced, married man — starts the booze and insults flowing, culminating in what can only be called a harrowing group therapy session.

This new version has the novelty of being site-specific, and located in gay-centric Chelsea no less. The performance takes place in a penthouse studio apartment designed to time capsule perfection by Sandra Goldmark. The 99 audience members sit around the set like party wallflowers. (Note to the micro-bladdered: The show runs two hours without intermission and there is no re-entry since the “front door” of the apartment is also the entrance/exit for the actors.)

Critics and audiences alike have often commented on the supposed self-loathing of the characters, and this revival of Boys in the Band will not silence them. These are gay archetypes — the flamboyant queen, the bookish neurotic, the fresh-out-of-the-closet homosexual — and drama is after all filled with stock characters. What most theatergoers probably want to know most is whether the show holds up over 40 years later. The answer is yes — and no. The Boys in the Band is still a terrific text for scenery-chewing actors that generates a bundle of laughs and even a fear tears.

The mostly gay, mostly middle-aged audience at the Sunday matinee I attended most likely had previous knowledge of the show, but that in no way interfered with the enjoyment of the play in the here and now. Kevin Isola unleashed a closetful of emotions as the college roommate Alan who crashes the party, deftly weaving the character’s ambiguous sexuality into his portrayal. Graham Rowat as the straight-acting teacher Hank and John Wellmann as über-queen Emory were pitch-perfect. Special notice should also be given to Jonathan Hammond, who brilliantly navigates the tricky waters from hopeful sobriety to ugly drunkenness in the lead as Michael. His role is the most problematic and, in many ways, the most unsympathetic, but Hammond brings an empathy-stirring pathos to Michael that saves the show from maudlin sentimentalism.

Which brings us finally to the scene-stealing character of Harold. Jon Levenson looks the part, attacks the part, and has fabulous comic timing, but I felt like instead of making the role his own, he was simply mimicking the iconic performance of Leonard Frey from the original cast. Harold still gets most of the best lines and the biggest laughs, but the shadow of Frey looms over Levenson, as do the forever-on-celluloid characterizations of all the roles.

Seeing The Boys in the Band live on-stage, literally trapped at the party, one can’t help but feel the urge to flee as the tension rises and the laughs surrender to vitriol. And one can’t help but ask why the partygoers endure such personal attacks without either fighting back or simply leaving. As the shell-shocked audience filed out at the end of the show, I wasn’t the only one who voiced this common refrain: “I need a drink.”

History of Violence

Jesse Berger’s bloody adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi for his Red Bull Theater, which specializes in playwrights who toiled in Shakespeare’s shadow, is a respectable, if not completely satisfying, staging of Webster’s masterpiece about the perils of seeking normalcy and happiness in a state of moral and spiritual corruption. His production, drenched in gore and provided with dim lighting—and swaths of blackness—by designer Jason Lyons, seems to take its tone from Webster’s imagery of crawling things, like snakes, salamanders, leeches, and lice. Three siblings are at the core of the action. The vivacious Duchess, newly widowed, resides with two brothers, Duke Frederick (Gareth Saxe) and the Cardinal of Aragon (Patrick Page). Both caution the Duchess not to marry again, partly because they want control of her wealth, and perhaps in the dissolute Frederick’s case—he first appears with a bad case of bedhead and a hangover—because of something unhealthier. The Cardinal, however, is cut from the same cloth; he has a mistress, Julia (Heidi Armbruster), the loose wife of another courtier.

But Rouner’s Duchess has already fallen for Matthew Greer’s open, fresh-faced steward Antonio and intends to marry him. (Webster rather boldly dismisses their class differences.) She woos him in a subtly comic scene and weds him in a secret ceremony of pledged troths. Meanwhile, her brothers have assigned a hireling named Bosola (Matthew Rauch) to her household as a spy. As Webster’s plot swiftly advances, Bosola reports that the Duchess has had three children, but it takes longer to determine the father—until she betrays herself by trusting him too much.

Bosola, in fact, is arguably the real tragic hero, a man caught in the net of his own ambition. Once a scholar in Padua, according to Antonio’s friend Delio (Haynes Thigpen), Bosola has a grudge against Page’s smooth, wily Cardinal, for whom he did something underhanded that landed him in the galleys as a slave for two years. Still, his will to get ahead knows no bounds, so he hitches his wagon to the star of his betrayer, who passes him along to Ferdinand. As Antonio notes, Bosola “would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud/Bloody or envious, as any man/If he had means to be so.”

Bosola’s compromised nature suggests the dangers of a world where evil thrives and decent people fall easily into temptation. If Bosola initially seems a bit too like Iago, one discovers in the second half that he has a lot more gray area. Rauch finds the layers as the spy has misgivings about his work. By turns he’s witty, eager for advancement, and appalled.

Berger’s production goes for a minimalist look that’s alternately garish and grim. Beowulf Borritt’s sets underscore the nature of the state. In the first act everything from walls to chairs is covered or wrapped in what looks like a bright pink vinyl shower curtain. It’s ugly and cheap, yet there are flecks of gold design in it, and lighted a certain way, it can seem pleasant. When it’s pulled down late in Act I, a network of scaffolding is revealed, stark and dark, with courtiers dressed by Jared B. Leese in gray riot gear. (The pulling-down flourish has become a cliché, however: my companion pointed out that it was employed the last time he accompanied me to the theater.) An awkward element is the use of a central platform that actors have to jump from and hoist themselves onto throughout the play.

Some moments can seem ludicrous, but even the most bizarre make sense. Ferdinand confines the Duchess to a madhouse, where her dress has been shredded into that of a B-movie starlet in a low-budget horror film, appropriate for this potboiler. In a fever dream, she is beset by the lunatics, rises amid them, and sings a Rodgers & Hart song as they perform dances à la the June Taylor dancers. It’s outrageous, but it works. (And it's all in Webster, apart from the choice of song.)

Berger himself has pruned the jagged verse into a softer, more flowing text, spoken commandingly and usually clearly by a fine cast. Saxe is an effectively dislikable and unbalanced Ferdinand (though he might make more of the incest that’s inherent in the character), and Armbruster as Julia is marvelously seductive and willful in the small role; Carol Halstead also shines as Cariola, the Duchess’s loyal, bawdy, superstitious servant.

Rouner’s Duchess is problematic, though; somehow she never summons the sympathy one needs to feel. Her plan to marry Antonio against her brothers’ wishes indicates a cunning at odds with her tragic fall, for which more naïveté seems necessary. She’s also tall and imposing, which undercuts a sense of grandeur regained when she delivers her famous defiant line, “I am Duchess of Malfi still.”

But Berger’s untraditional staging, in spite of some lagging in the second half, gives full rein to the horrors of Webster’s morbid imagination. If your taste runs to stabbings, poisonings, stranglings, severed hands, and even lycanthropy, this is your cup of wormwood.

A Dish Best Served Cold

You have to give the American Globe Theatre a “G” for guts—for taking on Titus Andronicus, which, despite its popularity in its time, is now frequently dismissed as William Shakespeare’s weakest (and it’s certainly his most despised) play. Guts also happen to be a big part of the play—at least in the manner and speed with which they’re spilled. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s bloodiest work and probably his earliest revenge tragedy. Students at the University of Liverpool have dubbed it the bard’s “Quentin Tarantino Play” because so many characters die, or are raped or tortured in barbaric, grotesque and improbable ways. The critic S. Clark Hulse estimates that an atrocity occurs every 97 lines. Much of the story, and its main focus, is far older than Shakespeare, so we can’t blame him for all the brutality. Much of the tragedy is derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and its portrayal of the rape of Philomela.

The venerable literary critic Harold Bloom once famously opined that Titus Andronicus could only be played as a farce and vowed that he would only see it again if Mel Brooks directed. Too bad he’s missing this one because, for the most part, John Basil’s American Globe Theatre plays it straight and it goes quite well as a direct, albeit psychotic, drama. Mr. Basil follows the script where it leads and wisely leaves it to the audience to decide whether or not it’s parody.

Titus Andronicus elicits sniggers and eye rolls because the play’s militaristic Roman and Goth characters exact continuous revenge on one another, constantly upping the bloody ante, until the heinous acts turn blackly humorous. Eventually, warring factions greedily and unknowingly consume the cooked remains of family members in pies. Mr. Basil gives the humor its due (i.e., we’re allowed to laugh) but he refuses to let it get out of hand, keeping tight reins on the story and the gore.

Once again, the commanding American Globe Theatre staple Richard Fay steals the show as Titus Andronicus. Powerful, intimidating, convincing, Fay is a consummate Shakespearean actor. You can’t take your eyes off him, and the other actors orbit around him gracefully. Also notable in the 16-member cast are Jon Hoche as a fierce Lucius, Lamont Stephens as the inexplicably and irredeemably evil Aaron, and Nick Vordeman as the whiny, weak-willed and humorous emperor Saturninus.

Once again, the American Globe Theatre maximizes a small space and employs a flexible stage to great benefit. Two projection screens at the top of either side of the two-storey stage frame the action. When the action takes place in a forest, a black and white sketch of a forest scene might appear. It’s a very effective strategy where elaborate stage changes are not practical.

Unlike other productions, and in spite the photo that accompanies this review, the theatrical blood is used quite sparingly. This is a good thing when so many people die horrific deaths. Mr. Basil smartly removes our gaze from the machinations of the horrors and places our concentration on the fact that they do, indeed, occur; the actors dispatch most of the deeds with quick, choreographed and graceful strokes. We are left not with the horror of that graphicness but rather with the horror that one could do such things to another human being - and that one can spend time plotting endless, total revenge. The bard’s derided tale really has enormous significance for our fractured, vengeful age.

I recommend the play to anyone who is curious about this underperformed Shakespearean oddity. The mere existence of Shakespeare in today’s Times Square is remarkable and The American Globe Theatre is still the best theater bargain in the area.

Next-Door Haters

Clybourne Park , Bruce Norris's new drama, loosely based on the Lorraine Hansberry classic A Raisin in the Sun , is a searing and blisteringly funny look at race relations and the power of property. Enjoying its premiere at Playwrights Horizons, the play is presented by a talented cast of actors -- a few of whom (Christina Kirk, Frank Wood and Chrystal A. Dickenson) raise the bar exponentially on already-excellent writing. It is finely directed by Pam McKinnon.

Clybourne Park , (also the name of the all-white Chicago neighborhood depicted in Raisin , begins Act One in 1959, with neighbors up-in-arms over the sale (in the wake of a tragedy) of a home at 406 Clybourne Street to the community's first African-American family.

Russ and Bev (Kirk/Wood) play a traditional 1950's couple, who - while packing up the house with the help of their maid, Francine (Dickenson) - are confronted by angry neighbors (Jeremy Shamos/Annie Parisse) concerned about the effect of the sale upon local property values.

Kirk and Wood are outstanding in this simmer-to-boil act. Kirk infuses Bev with such energy that she wrings out every drop of the hostility-behind-the-gentility of a 50's-era woman, both in her condescending interactions with Francine, and in the way she summons the community priest (Brendan Griffin) to aid her preoccupied husband and comfort herself. As a deeply depressed father, Wood is achingly funny - and uses some of Norris's shorter lines like lethal tennis volleys.

Racial misconceptions and fears are dredged up as arguments by the intruding neighbors -- ranging from vapid concerns over ethnic food to obscene sociological observations ("So what I have to conclude is that the pasttime of skiing just doesn't appeal to the Negro community.")

The act is washed down with Bev's ostensibly well-meaning but nauseating platitudes thrown in for good measure ("Maybe we should learn what the other person eats...maybe that would be the solution, if someday we could sit down at one big table.")

A Raisin in the Sun was to become the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. It draws its inspiration from the Langston Hughes poem, Harlem, taking its title from the line, "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" For The Youngers, the play's central family, home ownership - in spite of objections from Clybourne Park's Improvement Committee - is held up as a Holy Grail of sorts.

In Act Two of Clybourne Park , set in 2009, we find a young white couple (Parissse/Shamos) thumbing through a contract that would allow them to bulldoze their freshly-purchased house at 406 Clybourne Street to reconstruct it, plus an addition (of the upwardly-mobile variety). As their home would then dwarf other nearby homes, they face objections from the Historical Society of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, in the form of another couple (Dickinson and Damon Gupton).

The second act starts out civilly, but soon emerges into raw conflict and the artful but brutal use of (racially-inspired) jokes. The second act really belongs to Dickenson (as Lena), as she evolves from benign impatience to increasing frustration with not being heard, to finally showing her teeth. The space in the room that Lena claims once she explodes personifies all the underlying metaphors in question. Kirk also shines as the narcisstic lawyer for the young white couple, langorously sipping iced-coffee Weeds style, and delivering well-placed comic lines.

The racism in this act hurts, it's meant to, but it's also raw and funny. It touches close enough to the nerve to be both unsettling and hilarious. The intra-couple tension that is also present only adds to the building rancor.

The only disappointing thing about Act Two (once it gets revved up) is the tail end of it, which harkens back to events in the house, as it existed in 1959. This attempt to tie the two stories (1959 & 2009) together - joined already by virtue of place - feels manufactured and gratuitous.

The set, engineered by Damiel Ostling and rich in detail, undergoes a stunnning transformation in-between acts. The pale greens and rose purples that contrasted with well-chosen costumes like Bev's dress in Act One, become grafitti-stained walls with off-stage glimpses of overturned paint buckets in Act Two.

There is an acute sense that no easy resolution is possible for still-festering racial tensions over territory and community. ("You can't live in a principle. You live in a home." )

Still, an evening of smart writing and terrific acting where risks like these are taken makes every startling moment completely worth the price of admission. Hurry to Playwright's Horizons to catch Clybourne Park while you can.

American Nothing

It’s a truly American creation. Grab an inspiration here, a pulpy reference there, plug in a badly sung song, a dance or something resembling one, some sexy violence and lots of lights and screens (way more screens of course) – and you got a play. But don’t forget the most important thing – even if you’re actually trying to say something about the world make sure to bury it deep under layers of irreverent hollowness. It is Art after all. This is the cutting edge of American theater. And Radiohole is at its forefront. Whatever, Heaven Allows is a 90 minute multi-media art installation about Americana. It draws on Milton’s Paradise Lost, and on Douglass Sirk’s 1955 film All That Heaven Allows. The five performers (all interesting, but none attack the material with as much punch as Eric Dyer) lead the audience from one type of rush to the next, with nothing but the life of the performance itself at stake. This is a performance about performance, and its main contribution is in its exploration of performance. One might call that in itself a reflection of society, which of course it is, but this show’s meta-nature overpowers its statement. Just like America!

Here’s another American experience for you – mid-way through the show, just as I was losing interest in the extravagant action on the stage, an aging man sitting next to my friend began fondling himself, occasionally elbowing my friend in the process. I’m only relating this experience because my first thought was that perhaps it was part of the play. Anything could happen, it seemed. The lights had already come up on us spectators once or twice, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find an actor or two join our side with the various colored globs of food coloring they had just splattered all over their faces. A gently masturbating man making spectators feel uncomfortable could easily be another odd moment that goes along with the collective beer chug, the mopping of the floor and other eclectic images.

Would it have meant something if it were part of the play? Again, no, but clearly the play has succeeded in opening the playing field of what might happen in the theater.

What the piece does not do as successfully is to explain the reason for its existence. It tries. The last quarter of the play takes on a stronger narrative quality, detailing the love affair between a mother and her gardener, and its disapproval by her children. We see images of classic domesticity, and watch the American dream trashed and belittled. While it is gratifying to see the troupe attempt some social commentary, it comes too late and so is lost in the sea of whimsicality that comprises the first three quarters of the play.

Nonetheless Whatever, Heaven Allows stays with you, making you wonder about the nature of art today, and what that says about the world we live in.

Dress Blues

ReEntry, Emily Ackerman and K.J. Sanchez’s enthralling work currently gracing Urban Stages, is as relevant as a show can get. The play, culled from real-life interviews with many Marines, examines the difficulties involved in realigning to life in the States after serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it does so with no political judgment regarding the cause of such service. However, a show this well-honed would be a must-see at any time. Sanchez also directs ReEntry, following a successful run at Two River Theatre Company in Red Bank, New Jersey. Over the course of a year, she and Ackerman conducted interviews with war veterans and their families and shaped characters from these voices. This kind of testimony theater excels at being informative, even enlightening (i.e., Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank’s The Exonerated), but Sanchez’s adroit production goes one step further: it succeeds at finding the beating heart in this play’s narratives.

That’s precisely the key to ReEntry. Though these tales are hard-hitting (one voiceover recounts a father’s obsessive need to re-watch video news footage of an accident that took his son’s life), it finds just the right balance between dramatic entertainment and reportage. The stories are far too compelling to make us want to close our eyes or stop listening.

This is largely due in part to the show’s stellar quintet of actors who honor the servicemen and servicewoman sharing their stories. Joseph Harrell, acting as de facto narrator, plays the first character we meet. He’s a Marine Corps commanding officer who addresses us as though we are about to embark on a military detail of our own, lecturing on how in order to survive – and perhaps, take the lives of others – some mental re-wiring is required (if Harrell looks authentic, you’re onto something. In real life, he’s an erstwhile underwater Marine.) His performance is a beautiful embodiment of the dedication such a lifestyle demands.

Take, for example, the family of John (PJ Sosko) and Charlie (Bobby Moreno), both of whom saw combat overseas. Both find it immensely difficult to reset their mental clocks. Their mother (Sameera Luqmaan-Harris) and sister, Liz (Sheila Tapia), attempt to make sense of and justify their new temperaments. (Ackerman and Sanchez use this family as the home base for characters they introduce us to over the course of the evening.)

Mom also crosses a line, conducting a relationship with a soldier, Tommy, who was blinded in an accident that Charlie was lucky enough to survive. Luqmaan-Harris and Sosko also play Maria and Pete, a Marine family. Maria goes to great lengths to explain that they are a team unit – while she keeps the home fires burning and Pete fights, the suffering, fear and pride are equally shared at all times.

There is no single inherent dramatic conflict moving ReEntry along, at least not for those only inured to standard Aristotelian structure. Rather, each tale offers its own sense of heartbreak and emotional struggle. And in the aggregate, these individual stories add up to something much greater.

ReEntry addresses what these Marines have seen in the Middle East and also what they must react to upon the return to a “normal” life. Of course, there are problems waiting for them back on home turf as well. Charlie finds that his girlfriend has been cheating on him, and John is a powder-keg, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with no tolerance for the minutiae in which “civilians” get wrapped up. Moreno is a skilled performer, using great subtlety to distinguish between Charlie, a born follower, and Tommy, a natural leader. Sosko is outstanding, particularly in portraying John’s difficulty keeping his fury on a leash.

The women of ReEntry are not to be overlooked either. Luqmaan-Harris makes each of her characters unique and believable, and Tapia comes the closest to hitting Everywoman status. Their naturalistic work is endearing, and in the show’s greatest moments, riveting. Zach Williamson’s sound design and Marion Williams spare art direction also add to the show’s you-are-there effectiveness.

ReEntry is a work you won’t soon forget. There’s a word for a work this important, and it is one that applies to the play’s subject just as much: heroic.