Prisoners

For some, loneliness is a subject better left to the existentialists. For Concrete Temple Theatre, it is a subject worth exploring. In Alone in Triptych, the company's production for the SubletSeries at HERE Arts Center, we meet three seemingly disparate characters, whose lives are slowly revealed to be more connected than at first glance. The play (which may just as well be called Alone, in Triptych) is very much an examination of loneliness, and its power to connect those yearning to, well, connect. Written by Renee Philippi, Alone in Triptych is an abstractly-rendered and lyrical piece of theater. As the title suggests, Triptych presents a series of snapshots in the lives of three characters — our first glimpse of whom is at the show's opening. The trio stand in an nondescript location, described in the script as "a dense, forest-like place...where confusion and angst live. The air is alive; it is thick, electric, anxious." There is Leann (Vera Beren), a middle-aged musician in Eastern New Jersey; then, at an army base in Bavaria we meet Lori (Catherine Porter), whose sergeant husband routinely abuses and exploits her. Finally, there is Remi (Michael Tomlinson) in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, England. They are each separated by distance but connected by fate. 

The story, which weaves in and out of each character's scenes seamlessly, takes a literally heart-pounding turn when the police show up in her driveway, on the lookout for Leann's boyfriend, Sean, whom she had brought with her to her home in New Jersey, presumably to meet the parents. As the story unfolds, we begin to see that each person is a prisoner of their own solitude. We revisit Leann, who discovers that Sean is charged with raping a young teenage girl. We then move on from the horror of this revelation to Lori, who meets a stranger. Here, she provides some much-needed comic relief with some witty lines about her sexual past — but the humor dissipates all too soon when her new friend, offended with her candor, reveals that his daughter had been raped in the very park in which they sit. Rounding out the third in the triptych of scenes is Remi, who has kidnapped his childhood friend's 12-year-old daughter and brought her to the forest. 

The production design of the play provides just as abstract a landscape as the characters in it. It is a world that is vast and sprawling, spanning continents and cultures; yet is so individual to each of the characters. In helping to bring the play's dark themes to life are scenic designer Carlo Adinolfi and sound designer Vera Beren. In dressing the small black box in which the play was performed, Adinolfi kept the stage sparse, in keeping with the imagery of the wilderness. Beren does a great job of punctuating Philippi's poetic prose and conversely painfully tense silences with booming noises off-stage throughout the show. Stefan Hagen's projections of a bird flapping its wings are reminiscent of watercolor artwork, engulfed in bleak, cloudy colors — perhaps representative of the characters' yearning to escape the murky emotional waters in which they are held captive.  

While the play's ending felt unresolved, perhaps this is Philippi's intention — that nothing in our lives is ever truly resolved; that we are all in one way or another held captive in our solitude. And yet, in knowing this, we are never alone.

Alone in Triptych ran from March 13–30 in a limited engagement at HERE Arts Center (145 6th Avenue) in New York City. 

The Heathers' Wrath

Before there were “The Plastics” of Mean Girls’ fame, there was another cruel clique prowling high school halls and making life a living-hell for anyone who wasn’t "in": The Heathers. The 1988 Daniel Waters’ cult film has been reimagined as a musical stage show by Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy, and brings Heather Chandler (Jessica Keenan Wynn), Heather McNamara (Elle McLemore) and Heather Duke (Alice Lee) to life at New World Stages.

 

"Beautiful," the opening number performed by the show’s lead character, Veronica (Barrett Wilbert Weed), immediately transports the audience back to the hellish high school halls everyone is sure to remember complete with over the top, high school musical-esque stereotyped characters, and names like “Stoner Chick” and “Young Republicanette” in the cast list. During the song, you’re introduced to Ram and Kurt, typical high schools jocks on the football team, as well as Heather, Heather and Heather -- rulers of Westerberg High. With clever lyrics and laugh-out loud funny lines (the term “smartest guy on the football team” is compared to “the tallest dwarf”), the show instantly sets the stage for an enjoyable evening full of laughter.

Heathers tells the story of misfit Veronica who suddenly finds herself accepted by the hottest, hippest group of girls in her school. Things are looking up for Veronica, with her newfound popularity and a new love interest -- the mysteriously dark and sexy new kid, Jason “J.D.” Dean (Ryan McCartan). But eventually things turn sour, and while Veronica resigns herself to fading back into obscurity or begging for forgiveness at the Heathers' feet, J.D. has other, more sinister plans for the Heathers. He wants them dead.

With subject matter including date rape, suicide, murder and eating disorders, this show certainly deals with a lot. A comedy through and through, there were times when laughing at these topics seemed a little off -- but the writing was so great and the joke delivery so spot on that the audience was left with little choice but to laugh along.  That’s not to say that there weren’t beautifully acted serious moments as well, like when Veronica sings pleadingly, “Can we be 17?” or the haunting way that Wilbert Weed can go from bitch mode to crying with the flip of a switch.  McCartan’s J.D. is eerie, which is exactly what the role calls for. And as the Heathers, Wynn, McLemore and Lee are simply delightful.

The show moves along wonderfully, with no dull stretches to be spoken of. Complex costumes, sets and designs are unnecessary due to the strength of the script and lyrics of the songs. Though the music isn’t anything life-changing, there are some that you’ll find stuck in your head, like “Seventeen” and “Dead Girl Walking.” The cast sings the songs well, though at times Wilbert Weed can get dangerously close to screaming the lyrics instead of belting them.

The entire show is over the top in its premise, yet the production manages to avoid becoming ridiculous and overly dramatic. A strong cast delivers hysterical lines that you’ll remember for a long time while still leaving you with some moving moments. Heathers is a wonderful 2 hours and 10 minutes where audience members can remember those high school insecurities and hormones and be thankful that they never have to go back!

Heathers: The Musical plays at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday and 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit http://heathersthemusical.com. 

As God As My Witness...

Movie stars of yesteryear weren’t bombarded with today’s paparazzi and tabloids, leaving fans to often speculate their personal lives, full of movie premieres and fabulous parties. But behind closed doors, they’re humans with flaws and abrasive character traits.  Written and performed by Bettina Lohmeyer, "Bette Davis...Fasten Your Seatbelts!" takes a look inside the dark and lonely world of one of the largest Hollywood stars in history: Ms. Bette Davis.

For its second running under Susan Batson’s direction, Lohmeyer’s one-woman show follows the life and career of Davis from 1936 to 1985 -- beginning with her infamous battle with Jack Warner at Warner Brothers Studio.  Accused of being spoiled and overpaid, Davis wishes for more money, claiming she’s just as good, if not better than Audrey Hepburn. Lohmeyer channels Davis’s rage in what would be an interesting conversation -- Warner hypothetically offering Davis the leading role in his book option, Gone With the Wind, and her dramatic mocking of it being a flop. 

“I wanted to capture very private moments, behind the scenes,” says Lohmeyer, “moments in her life that inspired and touched me through my research of her films, interviews and movies. Gone With the Wind seemed to always be a reference through her career.”

From the outset, the viewer can sympathize and feel empathy for Davis; she was being underpaid in comparison to her fellow, male co-stars and Gone With the Wind is a timeless classic, how tragic- she could have been Scarlett O’Hara! Surely, that’s a grief that followed Davis throughout her entire career -- one that was a constant reminder. 

Lohmeyer does an excellent job mixing fiction with facts of the time, referencing an era where actresses were rallying for more lucrative contracts that mirrored their counterparts.  During the last scene, Davis wants to leave her apartment and stay at the Plaza Hotel after reading excerpts from her daughter's tell-all book, but there’s a hotel strike -- the New York Hotel Strike of 1985.

When asked what sparked her interest in Davis, Lohmeyer smiles and attributes the credit to Batson, “Susan Batson saw something in me that related to her.”

While describing her preparation and writing of the script, Lohmeyer reflects on how just how relatable they are, “When I was still in Europe, a friend of mine died in Germany, I was very emotional and wanted to portray the same energy of fragility.  At the same time, I wanted to show Bette extremely happy -- her win at Cannes.”

Lohmeyer’s acting is quite impressive, proven by her ability to switch from a rambunctious Davis, to an elderly, fragile version of Davis in the last scene -- after the publication of her daughter’s book, Davis still harbors anger and resentment, resonating from beginning to end. She is able to create a dialogue with absolutely no one but the audience in attendance, at times compelling them to reply to and interact with Davis. Lohmeyer’s unmistakable accent begs the question, “Was Bette Davis German?”       

Seatbelts is quite long, but certainly necessary when chronicling 49 years of what Lohmeyer describes as a “tragic flaw.” Buckle up and prepare for an emotional, wild and exciting ride. 

Bette Davis... Fasten Your Seatbelts! is playing at The Susan Batson Studio (300 W. 43rd St, 3rd Floor) through April 27th each Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.  For tickets and other information, contact 212-226-4630.  

Hades by Design

Clusters of cloudy mirrors crowd the exposed-brick walls of The Club at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, which The Nerve Tank has transformed into Hades' euro-trashy underworld for their latest production, The Maiden. Although it is an experimental reboot of the Persephone myth, The Maiden does not narrate this classic mythological tale in a traditional sense. Rather, Nerve Tank has abstracted the myth's latent poetry, its signature characters, and the motif of lightness and darkness and remixed these elements into a sexy multimedia spectacle. The result is a visually and aurally stimulating experience supported by the infrastructure of a familiar myth. While the audiovisual design is most certainly resplendent, The Maiden is not hollow; Chance D. Muehleck's script concept and Melanie S. Armer's choreography bring up basic questions around the potential of performance and the politics of gender and power, providing just enough thematic weight to give the production some (albeit abstract) meaning.

Grasping a mason jar of blood-red wine in his slender fingers, a dark and dazzling Hades (Mark William Lindberg) surveys the audience from his perch atop an golden tricycle-cum-chariot. Designed by Greg Henderson and Melanie S. Armer, this curious and towering contraption nods to Victorian-era "penny-farthing" bicycles, with their huge front wheels and intricate steering mechanisms. Pedaling and steering his chariot contraption with intimidating control and grace, Lindberg floats past the audience towards a bound and blindfolded Persephone (Robin Kurtz), who awaits his approach in obscurity. The whole scene is teeming with sexuality and underscored by an indulgent score expertly written by the production's lead Chorus member, Admiral Grey. Like Grey, the other two members of the chorus -- James "Face" Yu and Brandt Adams -- are wholly committed to their choreography. Instead of being "too-cool," the intense dedication and well-trained movements of the chorus makes their presence an element of power, rather than a silly device.

While the performances were fantastic, major kudos for this dark gem of a production should also go to its designers. Apparently working closely in collaboration, all design elements synthesized beautifully. Miodrag Guberinic's costumes, notably Hades' sumptuous leather cloak and bullet-studded patent leather hat and Demeter's full-body black veil, looked delightful on the performers' bodies. Solomon Weisbard's lighting was on cue, changing tones just in time to maintain the viewer's interest. 

Equal parts performance art, dance, and theatre, this multimedia production is a wild bricolage of found text, poetry and visual splendor. While for some of us it might seem a bit gratuitous in its reliance on the visual, this production is nonetheless "design porn" at its very best. For audience members seeking a play-by-play narration of the Persephone myth, this show will probably disappoint with its non-narrative conceit. For the more adventurous viewers -- those willing to be consumed by the experience of a performance and those unafraid to not "get it" -- The Maiden is a one-hour downtown adventure worth taking.

The Nerve Tank’s The Maiden runs until April. 13 at The Club at La MaMa E.T.C. (74A East 4th Street). Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 10 p.m. and Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 and $13 students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased by visiting www.lamama.org, calling 212-475-7710, or visiting the La MaMa box office.

Woman is the Future of Man

What do you get with a play that infuses all the elements of a classic farce with a modern soundtrack and an all-female cast? You get complete and utter hilarity. Much of this hilarity is owed to the wit of English playwright Aphra Behn, known to many as one of the first female dramatists and therefore a key figure of Restoration-era theater. Who better to mount a modern production of one of Behn's most ridiculously raunchy plays, Sir Patient Fancy, than all-female troupe The Queen's Company? Founded in 2000 by director Rebecca Patterson, the company is dedicated to introducing classic works to a contemporary audience through the use of gender-blind casting.

It is the late 1600s in England, a time when fiscal inequity meant marrying for money, and not for love. As a result, in the director's words, "all hell breaks loose and hearts get broken." Sir Patient Fancy, though written in the 17th century, feels a lot like something one would read in today's gossip rags: Lady Fancy is married to the titular Sir Patient Fancy, but really fancies Charles Wittmore, who is friends with Lodwick Knowell, who is in love with Isabella Fancy, who is betrothed to Sir Fainlove who actually is Charles Wittmore. Needless to say: the plot thickens and madness ensues, with a lot of laughs along the way. In a modern-day context, Behn's female characters here are not passive pretty little things, but rather active, doing most of the scheming. This is made even more interesting with an all-female cast, where the men answer to the women.  

As for the actors themselves, their onstage antics are well-timed, comedic perfection. The distinct personalities of Behn's characters combined with the irreverent kookiness of each cast member creates a bubbly atmosphere not unlike the fizzy champagne one would have in Sir Patient Fancy's court (if one had time to drink in the midst of all that scheming and meddling). The pacing and delivery of lines is never tired, maintaining a consistent rhythm, much of which is due to the company's evident chemistry with one another. One pairing with such notable chemistry is that of Tiffany Abercrombie and Elisabeth Preston, who play Lady Fancy and Wittmore, respectively. Each complemented the other with quick and natural ease; their expressions and mannerisms only helped to heighten the comedy in which they were immersed. Other standouts include Virginia Baeta as the bumbling but eager Sir Credulous Easy and Natalie Lebert as the clueless Sir Patient Fancy himself. While Matthew J. Fick's set design maintains the play's classic roots, Kristina Makowski's costumes are a fusion of both modern and period elements, providing the perfect visual representation of the company's performative style.  

Boasting a chuckle-enducing, genre-bending soundtrack and a plot with more twists than a daytime soap opera, it is clear that The Queen's Company has put their own unique stamp on classic Restoration comedy with Sir Patient Fancy.  

Sir Patient Fancy runs from March 15 – April 5 in a limited engagement at the Wild Project (located at 195 East 3rd Street between Avenue A and Avenue B). Performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at www.queenscompany.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111. Tickets are 2-for-1 on Wednesday nights.

One-Trick Warhorse

John van Druten is enjoying a mini-revival this season in New York. The Mint Theater has staged his 1931 play London Wall, a glorious rediscovery typical of the Mint's work, and the Roundabout is producing a revival of Cabaret, based on van Druten’s play I Am a Camera (itself drawn from the Berlin Stories of Christopher Isherwood). The Transport Group’s production of I Remember Mama, van Druten’s 1944 play that introduced Marlon Brando to the theater (as son Nels) thus seems to arrive at an opportune time. Unfortunately, it proves disappointing.

Jack Cumming III’s production features 10 actresses playing all the roles. All are over 50, and several a decade or two older than that. Although their credentials are impeccable, and their abilities are undimmed, the concept of casting looks more like a calling card for producers to notice how talented and underused the performers are. The gimmick puts one in mind of the classic skit in Beyond the Fringe where a one-legged actor clomps into an audition for the part of Tarzan. A suspension of disbelief is all well and good, but there are some obstacles that are insurmountable.

When Phyllis Somerville enacts Dagmar, the youngest daughter of a Norwegian family living in San Francisco circa 1910, one notices the physical agility of the gray-haired actress more than the character’s journey. When the marvelous Lynn Cohen inhabits either of her two male roles—Uncle Chris and the ne’er do-well boarder Mr. Hyde—one strains to envision the petite actress with the long disheveled hair as a man, and, in the case of Uncle Chris, a figure who inspires fear. Age may not wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety, but it (along with the gender-bending) is a distraction to seeing the characters whole.

The actresses who come off best play closer to their real ages. Barbara Andres is Mama, and she is terrific: serious, skeptical, guiding, loving, agonizing. Among her three sisters is Rita Gardner (the original Girl in The Fantasticks back in 1960), playing middle-aged Aunt Trina. Their other sisters, Alice Cannon as the stern Aunt Jenny and Susan Lehman as caviling Aunt Sigrid, are fine (though all three aunts occasionally double as younger supporting characters) as well, albeit on the far side of middle age.

Perhaps Cummings’s casting was meant to refocus attention on an old warhorse, although this warhorse is so rarely staged that it cries out for a straightforward rendering. Van Druten’s play is one of those heartfelt family sagas that used to be a staple of theater. Its heroine is a young female writer growing up as a first-generation American in an immigrant family. The warmth, gentle humor, character quirks and small-town observations are of the same order as The Andy Griffith Show. It begins as a memory play, with the writer in advanced age, Katrin, played by the superb Barbara Barrie, quoting her published work, then stepping into her story to play herself at 18.

Dane Laffrey’s striking scenic design transforms the Gym at Judson into a rectangular playing area with the audience at the perimeter. Concept also prevails here: inside the area are 10 different dining tables, each with a particular focus. There is a writer’s table with drafts and typewriters for Katrin; a table covered with recipe boxes for Mama; a table full of letters where Nels (Heather MacRae) sits; and books on the table representing the educated Mr. Hyde’s room in the boarding house.

Once you figure out who is playing who—and it takes awhile—there are scenes that are quite moving, as when Mama pretends to scrub hospital floors to visit Dagmar, who has had an operation and must not be visited for 24 hours, according to hospital rules, or when Mama learns a hard truth about her boarder. The second half moves along better than the first, probably because it’s easier to follow the story. But the effect is still of a gilt-edged staged reading. The unorthodox casting puts up too many barriers to serve van Druten’s play well.

I Remember Mama will play through April 20, with evening performances at 7 p.m.Wednesday and Thursday (but 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 17) and at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets go up to $69 and may be obtained by calling OvationTix at (866) 811-4111 or visiting transportgroup.org.

Harsh Wordsmiths

The title of Brian Richard Mori’s new play, Hellman v. McCarthy, will ring bells for anyone with memories of the early 1980s. It is the case of libel brought by playwright Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes, The Children’s Hour) against novelist Mary McCarthy (The Group) after the latter, in an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show taped on Oct. 23, 1979, called Hellman “dishonest.” Pressed by Cavett as to why, McCarthy said, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Hellman, sick, arthritic and chronically irascible, saw the broadcast and called her lawyer.

The prolonged suit for libel over the next several years was one of the most notorious literary feuds of the 20^th century and drew in scores of intellectuals. Those whom Mori mentions in passing include Norman Mailer, a friend of Hellman until he urged her to drop her case; Philip Rahv, founder of Partisan Review and McCarthy’s ex-lover; and Stephen Spender, the British poet who spent time in Berlin in the 1920s with Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden and invited the women to a cocktail party in 1948—where, in their first meeting, McCarthy challenged Hellman in front of student admirers about her glib defamation of novelist John Dos Passos in the Spanish Civil War.

Hellman v. McCarthy sticks to the timeline of the lawsuit, although Mori occasionally touches on longstanding political friction as a source of the women’s mutual loathing: in the 1930s Hellman was a Stalinist; McCarthy, a Trotskyite. Hellman was famous for telling the House Un-American Activities Committee: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” But she was also an apologist for Stalin long after the dictator’s purges of the 1930s had revolted most left-wingers.

Mori’s script is up to the juicy story, encompassing re-enaction, legal documents, and speculation, but director Jan Buttram has added an extraordinary coup of stunt casting. Dick Cavett himself re-enacts his interview with McCarthy, his own deposition in the case (he was a co-defendant, with PBS), and a run-in with Hellman at a cocktail party. He also serves occasionally as narrator, and his wry, self-deprecating humor helps blunt Hellman’s toxic presence. (Cavett has also apparently made minor alterations to his dialogue. When explaining why he prefers policemen to lawyers, the practiced comic provides a better-phrased punch line than in Mori’s script.)

As Hellman, Roberta Maxwell displays the charisma of a basilisk (Hellman's appearance in an ad for Blackglama mink coats didn’t need to mention her name; the tagline read “What Becomes a Legend Most?”). More important, Maxwell conveys Hellman’s arrogance and casual lying, the self-loathing she felt as a Jew, and the bogus sincerity she affected when it suited her. “Such a shame it was cancelled,” she purrs to Cavett about his ABC interview show—but she flashes a crocodile smile. Maxwell doesn’t neglect the physical either: one sees Hellman’s fingers gnarled from crippling arthritis.

Marcia Rodd as McCarthy finds both smugness and wit in the less financially secure author, and a bit of humor in her loquacious deposition. She’s attractive and elegant, as the real McCarthy was, and she displays McCarthy's confidence in herself, gained from being orphaned at an early age and surviving a brutal marriage to critic Edmund Wilson.

Jeff Woodman and Peter Brouwer play the women’s lawyers, providing contrast with their brisk, businesslike demeanors. Mori has added the character of a gay nurse for Hellman, Ryan (Rowan Michael Meyer), who endures her abuse but remains loyal to her, and their interplay includes a lovely scene that gives Maxwell a chance to show a brief flash of humanity. Mori also takes a leaf from Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart: near the end McCarthy and Hellman meet so that McCarthy can offer a personal apology, though no such meeting ever took place.

To defend herself in the suit, McCarthy questioned everything Hellman ever wrote, exposing the falseness of the episode in Pentimento that became the film Julia. Hellman’s reputation was torpedoed, but her detestable personality guaranteed that sympathy for her was in short supply. As Cavett recalls, the night she died in 1984 he was working at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the Berkshires. He heard a stagehand on the phone. “What? Lillian? She’s dead? Tell them to be sure to drive the stake through!”

Hellman v. McCarthy plays at the Abingdon Theatre Company, 312 W. 36^th St., to April 13, with evening performances at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Matinees are 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $40.

Nora Today

When staging plays from the theatrical canon, contemporary directors are confronted with the question: why should audiences care now? While Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is undeniably a classic, its relevance always demands redefinition. Although Ibsen claimed the play was humanist rather than feminist in its politics, his protagonist Nora has been touted as a theatrical harbinger of feminism; theater critics have long been denoting the parallels between Nora’s struggles as a wife and mother and those of contemporary women. In the Young Vic’s latest production of Simon Stephens's adaptation of the play, however, A Doll’s House takes on a fresh relevance for audiences at the BAM Harvey Theater. Director Carrie Cracknell resists taking any particular stance on capitalism, gender roles, marriage, or other institutions – but instead focuses on hitting and maintaining a shrill note of anxiety produced by such oppressive institutions. In an economical and political climate that seems more precarious than ever, this mood of institutionalized anxiety is certainly something most of us can relate to right now.

In an endeavor to mimic reality, a traditional box set for a 19^th Century piece of realism consisted largely of a drawing room (or kitchen, as in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie), with doors leading to other rooms in the house or to the outside. While intricately decorated, this one-room design emphasized the claustrophobia felt by the characters, who are often entrapped within the oppressive structures of society. For the Young Vic's production, Ian MacNeil’s rotating set defies traditional realism’s claustrophobic designs in favor of a cinematic view of Nora and Torvald’s middle class flat. To watch the characters move inside this dizzying and fascinating carousel is a true marvel to behold. It gives the audience an unfolding panoramic view into the daily lives and private moments of the characters, allowing us to see Nora’s face when she drops the façade – a privilege not afforded by box sets.

Though MacNeil’s set offers a cinematic peek into the characters’ personal spaces, the acting is not cinematic at all. While Hattie Morahan’s bravura performance as Nora certainly stood out as breathtakingly original and honest, Cracknell clearly encouraged the entire cast to be unafraid of bold choices. When eliciting money or favors from Torvald (played compellingly by Dominic Rowan), Morahan’s Nora became as cute, shivery, and saucer-eyed as a baby Disney animal. In a room by herself, however, and left alone to her own inner demons, we can watch Morahan melt into an inner world of anxiety and tension that we begin to understand belies her cuteness.

Audiences of A Doll’s House have come to expect the play’s final note: Ibsen’s famous slamming door. As Nora leaves her home, her family, and the only world she’s ever known, we hear her slam the door behind her. In the Young Vic’s production, Nora does slam her door, but it makes more of a clatter or click than a slam. While possibly disappointing for those of us who want a nice loud slam!, the more subtle departing sound of Morahan’s Nora concludes the production on an ambiguous note. A loud door slam might suggest that Nora is liberated and on to bigger and better things, but Cracknell does not give us this satisfaction. Indeed, Nora steps forward with the same anxiety-ridden-confidence that a college graduate steps forward into today’s precarious job market. It is this raw, situational anxiety that makes Cracknell's production a timely rendition for today.

A Doll's House is playing at the BAM Harvey Theatre (651 Fulton St. in Brooklyn) and has been extended to run through March 23. Performances are Sunday at 3 p.m., Tuesday-Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased by calling 718-636-4100 or by visiting bam.org.

Château de Versailles

Richard Ploetz’s Versailles is a raw glimpse into a true girl interrupted. Sharon, a single mother and pole dancer at The Golden Lady, will either drown from her excessive whiskey consumption, or in the swamp where she resides in North Florida. From the outset, the theater is pitch black, a clock begins to tick, and the audience is introduced to Sharon (Charise Greene) — eyes filled with tears and sitting Indian-style at the feet of an elderly gentleman, Mr. Mason (Charlie Moss). There are a few toys scattered in the corner, a hint that a child may also reside in the apartment. Confirmation arrives in the form of Bob (Eric Chase), a neighbor returning a stuffed animal forgotten from a play date with his daughter. Brandon (Drew Ledbetter), Sharon’s boyfriend and could-be father of her daughter, stumbles in the scene, slurring his words, interrupting their flirtation — asking, “where’s the kid?”  

Bob later returns with his wife, Beth (Elizabeth Bell), who uncomfortably goes into a tale about an accident where she slipped and fell “down there” on top of a fire hydrant, as Sharon and Brandon have a full-on grope session mere inches away. Bob quickly shushes her. Sharon’s father, Harmon (Nick Ruggeri) drops by frequently to pick up his granddaughter, only to be told she’s at the babysitter. Ploetz and Director Ian Streicher proved they are wild boys by introducing Nick (Ron Bopst), the manager of The Golden Lady, during a sex scene with Sharon, where Nick experiences some shortcomings, but he’s damn proud of it.  

Under Streicher’s direction, the play’s style is cinematic, darting from scene to scene; a bit difficult to follow during the initial introduction to the characters, but makes watching the seedy train wreck that is Sharon’s life so much better — a refection of the individuals who pop in and out of Sharon’s life, leaving just as quickly as they came. While Sharon’s the central character and the surrounding characters migrate to her, Ploetz creates stories for each individual, all of which are looking to escape Versailles Estates. 

Brandon brings most of the wit, an auto mechanic and unintelligent Southern boy who only wants to love Sharon and her daughter, but can’t compete with the many men and options under Sharon’s belt. He’s actually smarter than he lets on, quickly catching wind to Sharon’s trysts with Bob and Nick, but still sticking by her, constantly mentioning marriage. After beginning his affair with Sharon, Bob becomes infatuated, visualizing Sharon while sleeping with Beth, referencing Sharon as a black hole. San alcoholic stripper to his sober, prudent wife.

When Beth meets Sharon, she was a recovering alcoholic, but when confronting Sharon about the affair between her and her husband, she’s confused about how nonchalant Sharon handles what should be shameful. Girl chat over a few drinks becomes a sexual experimentation between the two. Once a straight-laced, traditional housewife, Beth finds she can’t stop thinking of Sharon and wants to be her. From the way Bob talks to her, Beth has lost who she really is during their marriage and Sharon brings her to life.  

Nick is a smooth talker, the only one who doesn't seem to love Sharon, but he’s the one she truly desires. He’s convinced her to dump Brandon, buy her apartment, and get rid of her daughter. The reality and irony — the only thing he wants and loves is The Golden Lady. Harmon, Sharon’s father, is accused and later admits that he molested Sharon when she was a little girl. As a result, Nick has become the quintessential father figure Sharon’s never had. In an effort to fix his wrongdoings, Harmon is trying to gain a relationship with Sharon’s daughter, but is it innocent? 

Sharon and her father's friend, Mr. Mason, compete for her subconscious — Mr. Mason is Sharon’s reality.  Sharon’s in love with being in love and being loved, and willing to give herself to anyone who will have her — anyone except her own daughter. Ploetz makes it clear Sharon loses track of her daughter; she’s always “at the babysitter’s,” wherever and whoever that may be. Mr. Mason allows Sharon to ask herself if being sexually abused by her father is the cause of her exquisite pain. When she’s willing to sleep with Mr. Mason, is Sharon seducing herself and opening up to her own psyche? 

Versailles is sure to offer a few chuckles and definitely some gasps, but the intensity and realness of Sharon’s desperation opens a different type of emotion. There's also something to be said about a production that isn’t afraid of on-stage, awkward-sex scenes.  

Versailles ran until March 9, 2014 at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave.).

Heavy on the Ham

The cast and crew of Untitled Theatre Company #61 have gone to great lengths to create a festive, Czech-culture infused atmosphere around their production of The Pig, or Václav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig. Upon entering the space at the 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center, the first thing to greet audience members is a bar serving Czech Pilsner-Urquell beer as the scent of delicious Langos wraps by Brooklyn eatery Korzo wafts through the air. A traditionally-dressed maiden weaves among the spectators peddling fresh pretzels as the New York-based Cabaret Metropol sets the tone with their pre-show music. Indeed, music proves to be the central element to this production of The Pig, a play that was originally written by Václav Havel and Vladimír Morávek. While this production certainly succeeds in showcasing Czech traditions and the vocal talents of the cast, its ultimate downfall is that Havel's political message gets lost in the noise — buried beneath a heavily-produced evening of food, drink, elaborate technology, and hammed-up song and dance.

Written in 2010, The Pig is Havel's only work in which the playwright himself appears on stage as one of the characters. As a playwright, dissident, revolutionary, and eventual president of Czechoslovakia, many of Havel's plays conceal acrid critiques of the Communism party. While Edward Einhorn's English adaptation of The Pig seeks to make Havel's play accessible to an American audience, it feels like too much has been lost in translation. This adaptation follows Havel (Robert Honeywell) as he tries to obtain a pig for a zabíjačkais (a rural Czech tradition in which a pig is slaughtered and eaten as part of a feast) for a group of dissident friends. Havel's quest is narrated through interviews with a ditzy American news reporter (Katherine Boynton), footage of which is live-fed through a "news" camera and projected on screens surrounding the audience. The camerawork and technology is impressive, thanks to the brainpower and resources of 3-Legged Dog, who specialize in digital technologies for performance. There is also an array of projected images accompanying the show, and while these projections are visually interesting — evoking things like setting, weather, history, or emotionally evocative images — one wonders what this technological element actually adds to the production.

As if this wasn't enough for an audience to handle, Havel's journey and his interviews with the journalist are further peppered with a sequence of cabarets from the famous Czech operetta, Bedřich Smetana's The Bartered Bride. While the musical talent and voices of the cast are impressive and well-trained, it is unclear why the production takes the musical subplot of The Bartered Bride so far as to obstruct (aurally and thematically) the play's deeper meaning.  

In a relatively small performance space, the over-the-top characterizations, cheesy gags, and overdone facial expressions in this production read way too large for a small venue. While the overdone stylization evades subtlety, it is also not sharp enough to be parody. Overall, the stylistic choices guided by director Henry Akona do the talented cast a disservice. 

The Pig, or Václav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig, is playing at the 3LD Art & Technology Center (80 Greenwich St.) until March 29. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 7:00 p.m. Tickets including dinner are $45 and $20 without dinner. Patrons who wish to order dinner must book 24 hours in advance. For tickets, call Ovationtix at 866-811-4111 or visit www.3ldnyc.org. 

Office Hours

Until the 20^th century was three-quarters spent, television and movies were strictly censored. Writers in those media pulled their punches, skirting tough social issues and playing naïve on matters of sex and politics. But playwrights didn’t face nearly as many content restrictions as their colleagues in film and TV, and audiences went to the theater for grown-up entertainment. 

In an era of rigid content taboos, dramatist John Van Druten (1901-1957) supplied Broadway with intelligent plays in which characters talked forthrightly and with wit about the things that made Hollywood censors squirm. The English-born Van Druten, who became an American citizen in 1944, may not have been a household name, but many of his beautifully crafted plays – among them, Old Acquaintance, The Voice of the Turtle, and Bell, Book and Candle – enjoyed long engagements in New York and were performed all around the United States. He lives on, most prominently, in Cabaret, the endlessly revived musical and landmark Bob Fosse film, based on his comedy-drama, I Am a Camera (which, in turn, was based on The Berlin Stories of Van Druten’s good friend, Christopher Isherwood). This winter New York is having a sort of Van Druten fest, beginning with the Mint Theater Company’s engaging revival of London Wall, an unjustly mislaid West End play from 1931 (to be followed by the Transport Group’s all-female revival of I Remember Mama, which opens March 30).

Van Druten studied law and clerked for a firm of solicitors before transforming himself into a full-time writer. London Wall takes place in a law firm; and the play’s title refers to a thoroughfare in the City of London where the office is located. On the evidence of London Wall, it’s safe to say that Van Druten observed the inhabitants of the legal world, especially the women, with care and empathy. The play depicts four typists, employed at a pittance, with little prospect for social mobility other than fortuitous marriage. These women are of different ages with differing romantic prospects.

The hardboiled Miss Janus (Julia Coffey) has invested 10 years in her job and seven in an unrewarding relationship with a low-level Dutch diplomat. She's fed up with the law firm and on thin ice with her beau. Pat Milligan (Elise Kibler) is a 19-year-old, alone in the world, just entering  the workforce. Miss Janus, a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, wants to steer Pat away from the fates of Miss Hooper (Alex Trow), a dewy-eyed romantic who may be putting too much trust in a married man, and Miss Bufton (Katie Gibson), a good-time girl who's about to age out of the romance market. 

In addition to the typists, London Wall involves two lawyers – Mr. Walker (Jonathan Hogan), the firm’s senior partner, and the much younger Mr. Brewer (Stephen Plunkett), a roué who can’t stop himself hitting on newly hired typists. The cast is filled out by a client, the exasperatingly eccentric Miss Willesden (Laurie Kennedy); an office boy, Birkenshaw (Matthew Gumley); and Hec (Christopher Sears), who is employed elsewhere in the building and is besotted with Pat.

The plot of London Wall includes some creaky, old-fashioned turns, but these are outweighed by Van Druten's elegant, believable dialogue and his intricately drawn characters. Under the able direction of Davis McCallum (lauded last season for The Whale at Playwrights Horizons), the cast of nine forms a remarkably balanced ensemble. The actors, most of whom are American, navigate the distinctly British text and its antiquated locutions with assurance and dialectal consistency. Amy Stoller, the Mint's long-time dialect coach, deserves special recognition.

Scenic designer Marion Williams has created a sturdy, eye-appealing set that the actors reconfigure between scenes to move the action swiftly from one room in the firm to another. Joshua Yocom has found period props, including antique telephones and telephone switchboard, that enhance the production's verisimilitude. And Nicole Pearce's lighting plot contributes significantly to the professionalism of the enterprise. To find fault with the Mint's London Wall, one would have to quibble about a couple of bad wigs. And who cares about the occasional bad wig?  

London Wall is running through April 26 at the Mint Theater Company (311 West 43^rd St.). Performances are 7 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $55 and can be purchased at www.minttheater.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

The Power of Love

What happens when a god falls down to Earth and a mortal ascends to the heavens? You get one of the most enduring stories of love wrapped in a myth — Cupid and Psyche, a story from Apuleius's Metamorphoses, which was recently presented by Turn to Flesh Productions at TBG Theatre (312 West 36th St.). Under the helm of playwright and artistic director Emily C.A. Snyder, the theater company re-contextualized a classic legend about Cupid's fabled experience of the trials and agony of love. 

We first meet the titular God of Passion when his mother Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) notices the hearts of men are turned away from her and towards Psyche, a mortal woman who would not love. The goddess urges her son Cupid (also known as Eros) to put a spell on her so as to win the world back to love. Determined to carry out his mission, Cupid swoops down to Earth with an arrow poised on Psyche. However, the winged archer soon finds himself falling for the mortal being and kisses her. This riles the gods and before Cupid knows it, he has killed Adonis. As punishment, he walks the Earth as The Beast, forced to kill all lovers in his path, forever searching in vain for Pysche's heart. 

Playing gods and mortals is itself not an easy task and only one that Turn to Flesh could achieve with an energetic ensemble: charming leading man James Parenti as Cupid; Erin Nelson as the cerebral Pysche; Kelly Laurel Zekas and Laura Iris Hill as scheming sisters Livia and Dareia, respectively; the sensuous Laura Hooper as Aphrodite; Stan Buturla as their regal father Thanos; Patrick Marran as the confused Chrysos; as well as Parker Madison and Gwenevere Sisco as the deliciously devious duo, Adonis and Persephone. This eclectic cast of characters helped flesh out what those unfamiliar with the mythological texts would view as ancient relics, truly carrying them into the 21st century.

Indeed, it was this vision of modernizing an old fairy tale that even carried over into their costumes. Costume coordinator Emily Rose Parman injected some anachronistic flair into the earth-bound Gods' apparel. For the Goddess' self-proclaimed "rags," Parman had Aphrodite donning lots of lingerie-inspired shift dresses, as well as sexy camisole-and-shorts nighties — replete with a matching silk robe, of course. As Goddess of Death, Persephone was in full-on Victorian dress, with a Gothic twist, making her seem like something out of a production of Sweeney Todd. The mortal lovers wore contemporary clothing, as did Gods Adonis and Cupid: the former in a bomber jacket, wallet chain and heavy boots that would make any punk rocker proud; the latter, dressed simply (as any respectable Winged-Archer-God would), in a streamlined, hipster jacket and jeans combo that would not be amiss in ol' Billyburg. As for young Psyche, she sported free-flowing dresses throughout — ensembles that looked modern, and yet also recalled the simplicity and elegance of Ancient Greek dress. 

Furthering the play's modern twist was the music, which punctuated each act with a sweeping, guitar-driven indie soundtrack. As for the staging, Michael Hetzer's multi-purpose two-story set-up represented the worlds of the Gods and the Mortals: upstairs, not only provided entrance for various characters — God or Mortal — but also represented Heaven later on. Similarly, downstairs were the grounds that stood in for the gardens where Cupid and Psyche would meet, which also later provided Persephone's domain, Hades' Underworld. Though simple, the set looked as if it did not coalesce with the play's romantic themes. However, this is more than made up for in Zephan Ellenbogen's beautiful light-bulb fixtures and lighting cues, which were moody and stark, especially during the Underworld scenes in the play's latter half. 

They say "love is blind," and this much is true in the case of Cupid, a God who fell for a mortal. As Turn to Flesh's production shows, sometimes falling in love is worth all the pain. If there's anything the story Cupid and Psyche has given us, it is the gift of forever reminding us of the perpetuity of love and its ability to make every one of us — even a God — fallible.

Cupid and Psyche opened at the TBG Theatre (312 West 36th Street) ran from February 13-16. For more information, visit TurnToFlesh.com.

Dire Family Dynamics

“People can be barbaric,” says Mother in The Open House—a supremely ironic remark given the poisonous familial atmosphere in Will Eno’s new play. The matriarch has gathered with her family in their living room, but it’s Father (Peter Friedman), in a wheelchair, who dominates with his malignity. Visiting Son and Daughter are sitting on the sofa, unsettled; and Uncle (brother to Father) is standing uneasily to the rear.

In the long following scene, Father belittles and insults those around him. For example, recollecting the day he met Mother, he relates a story of a beautiful girl he saw in his youth, then turns it on its head: “On the way home I met your mother here.” Though it occurs early, Eno has so firmly established Father’s nastiness that one can see the twist coming. The man enjoys belittling others; it’s no wonder his family frequently retreats to speechlessness. Director Oliver Butler gives Pinteresque weight to the silences, and Friedman modulates the patriarch’s passive-aggressive attitudes with aplomb.

His influence has unexpected comic effects. Presented an anniversary present from her two children—a third, Richard, is absent, and no wonder—Carolyn McCormick’s Mother thanks them and then puts it unopened on the floor next to her. Is it a reflexive recognition that its opening will only give her husband an opportunity for more abuse?

Midway through the play, a turnaround begins, as the family characters leave and are replaced by a new set of people (played by the same actors). Father has put the house on the market, and the real estate agent, Anna (Hannah Bos, who was Daughter), arrives to prep it.

Soon a possible buyer, Tom, arrives (Michael Countryman, who doubles as Uncle). Then a workman named Brian (the Son reinvented) and eventually Melissa (McCormick), Tom’s wife. They are busy, cheerful, actively involved in life. Father has no power over them, and he is no longer the center of attention; he is, in fact, often ignored. The arrivals have their own preoccupations; they are chatty and outgoing and alive, and the door, closed at the start, is left wide open.

When Father tries to throw his weight around, Tom calls him on it, refusing to let him play the disability card. “I might threaten an asshole who’s a bully in a wheelchair,” he says. “Don’t you use language like that in here,” Father snaps. “I’ll say any word I know,” responds Tom. Friedman’s character gradually shrivels in his chair until he’s rendered helpless by the turn of events he has instigated.

Eno seems to be making the point that emotional abuse can only exist if one allows it to and mollifies the abuser, but the play suffers from its schematic structure. As soon as Bos reenters as Anna, one suspects where things are heading. It is cathartic to see Father get his comeuppance, but one wishes the play didn't rely so much on the actors’ skillful doubling, and strained credibility just a bit less.

Will Eno’s The Open House plays through March 23 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. From March 3-9 the evening performance schedule is Monday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 8 p.m. From March 11 through 23 the evening performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 8 p.m. Matinees throughout the run are at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by calling the Signature Theatre Company at (212) 244-7529 or online at www.signaturetheatre.org.

Lips Locked Uneasily

Sarah Ruhl’s new play, Stage Kiss, examines the rekindling of a romance between a scattered actress and a struggling actor as they discover they have been cast as lovers 10 years after their break-up and estrangement. Foolish, egotistical thespians and their hangers-on have long provided comic fodder for the stage: George Kelly’s The Torch-Bearers (1923); George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s The Royal Family (1928); So Help Me God!—a 1929 play by Maureen Dallas Watkins that was unearthed by the Mint Theater in 2009; the madcap Room Service (1937); Noel Coward’s Present Laughter (1942); Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky (1948); Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce Noises Off; and, of course, Mel Brooks’s The Producers (2001).

Sarah Ruhl’s attempt to follow in those footsteps is stutteringly amusing but mostly tiresome. To be sure, the piece suggests that she is after something closer to the heftier entries (more Royal Family than Room Service), but Ruhl has significantly not given her main characters real names. They are She, He, The Director and The Husband, and they come off as ciphers more than flesh-and-blood people. Other hurdles include the disruption of comic momentum by songs in Brechtian fashion (including “Some Enchanted Evening”) and an interlocking monologue.

The show that the actors are appearing in is, crucially, an old musical. “It was a flop on Broadway in 1932,” says The Director (a nebbishy Patrick Kerr), “but we think with the proper cast, a new score, and some judicious cuts it will be really very well received in New Haven.” That’s a terrific line, but the arch dialogue and melodramatic situations of the revised book that are presented make it inconceivable that any sane producer would back the show. And The Director in rehearsal is earnestly incompetent; he would never have earned a reputation that would put a major musical in his hands.

This all undermines the essential grounding the comedy needs. No matter now farcical events become, there must be a kernel of truth, a modicum of believability. Director Rebecca Taichman has not imposed a singular tone or sharpened Ruhl’s intentions, and the lack of credibility and cohesion may be one reason the performers seem to flounder. Dominic Fumusa and Jessica Hecht as He and She have little chemistry and sometimes seem at sea in their parts.

The splendid first scene, as She arrives late for her audition, promises far more than the remainder delivers. She hasn’t read her “sides,” she asks for an explanation of the plot, and her photo résumé seems to have been trampled in a buffalo stampede. The Director asks her to read with the unprepossessing Kevin (Michael Cyril Creighton), the leading man’s gay understudy. She gets the job. When She discovers that her ex-lover has the role, one might expect comic fireworks on the order of Private Lives, but the results are sporadic cherry bombs and a drifting, angst-ridden affair.  

It seems Ruhl’s intention to contrast stage passion with real passion, the heightened romance and physicality of love with the routineness of marriage and workaday life. (“Love me just shy of forever, or love me till six o’clock” goes a song about the gossamer nature of it all.) The significance of a kiss is parsed by He, who takes the position that an audience only tolerates kissing “because it signifies resolution which people like to see on stage but they don’t really like to see the act of kissing on stage, only the idea of kissing on stage. That’s why actors have to be good-looking because it’s about an idea, an idea of beauty completing itself.” (How ironic that critic John Simon was often assailed because he held actors’ looks against them for a similar reason: good looks are a way for an audience to summon quick sympathy for a character in a play’s short span.)

A variety of kisses appear in Stage Kiss, by far the funniest being those of Creighton’s roly-poly substitution for He. The talented actor particularly enlivens a scene on a divan when he opens his mouth wide as if to devour She just before he kisses her (“like a placoderm,” She complains) and frightens her. His nimble physical presence is a choice asset in a comedy that promises much, but delivers little.

Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss plays through March 23. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Ticket prices start at $75 and are available by going to www.playwrightshorizons.org or calling Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200.

Lady Macbeth in Love

The Everyday Inferno Theatre Company’s production of Something Wicked aims at a deeper exploration of Lady Macbeth, the protagonist’s wife in William Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the original play, Macbeth encounters three witches, the Weird Sisters, as he returns from battle. The witches reveal that he will become the King of Scotland. Therefore, Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to kill the king.

Macbeth’s acts are not only moved by his ambition, but also by Lady Macbeth’s insistence that he must fulfill the witches’ prophecies. When the protagonist hesitates, Lady Macbeth persuades him to do the deed. Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains. She is cunning, ambitious, and will stop at nothing to reach her goals. Yet she is not simply a villainous caricature since her insanity and final suicide demonstrate the effects of a guilty conscience. Something Wicked, which was directed and adapted by Anaïs Koivisto, explores the character’s humanity, an aspect that is overlooked in Macbeth.

The action begins right after Lady Macbeth’s death. The Weird Sisters now become her guides through a purgatory-like space in which she will confront her deeds and their consequences. Therefore, Something Wicked is structured around key scenes from the original play. Lady Macbeth’s new outsider perspective will force her to rediscover the horror of her actions and reveal the real motor behind her decisions and profound love for her husband. It may seem that this revelation places Lady Macbeth in the conventional female role of dutiful wife, yet the performance dissipates this notion by having three different women playing the role. The multiple Lady Macbeths affirm the complex nature of the character and challenge the exclusive focus on her villainy. Kathryn Connors plays the dead Lady Macbeth with a subtle vulnerability as she observes the action like a ghost. Ali Stoner performs the Lady Macbeth who mercilessly pushes her husband to kill the king. Finally, Lila Newman plays both Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff, who is killed along with her son under Macbeth’s orders, suggesting a connection between the murderous temptress and the motherly victim. Koivisto avoids trapping Lady Macbeth into only one role, thereby underscoring the multiple dimensions that define her humanity. In the play, Macbeth is also superbly performed by Zachary Libresco, Samuel Platizky and Jay William Thomas, who also act additional key characters from the play, but this effect is not as forceful as with Lady Macbeth.

The cast successfully fills the performance space with songs, movement and dance to the point where scenery would only hinder their work. The witches, played by Laura Epperson, Sam Bruce and Paul Gregg, are omnipresent and they serve as perfect guides to the ghostly Lady Macbeth. These spooky characters are a welcomed expansion on the original since they only appear twice in Macbeth, even though their prophecies are central to the story.

Nevertheless, the play itself suffers from moments that lessen the impact of Koivisto’s work. There is a new text that surrounds the scenes taken from Macbeth, yet it needs to be fleshed out more. There should be more dialogue between the witches and Lady Macbeth that could comment more on the scenes from the original play and emphasize the Weird Sisters' playful perversity and the villainess’s vulnerability. This interaction is crucial to build the context through which the audience re-encounters Shakespeare’s original work. Furthermore, there is a moment in which the actors suddenly transform into critics who theorize about Lady Macbeth’s real motivations in the original text. The scene, which was well performed by the actors, is an unwelcomed break that bogs down the action. Koivisto must trust her interesting work more and permit her Lady Macbeths to reveal their complexity for themselves. Regardless of its shortcomings, the play is a needed expansion to Shakespeare’s original. As the title suggests, there is indeed “something wicked” in Lady Macbeth, just as there is something loving in her too.

Something Wicked is running until March 9 at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th St.) as part of the 8^th Annual FRIGID New York Festival. Tickets cost $16 and can be purchased at www.smarttix.com and www.frigidnewyork.info, or by calling 212-868-4444.  

A Winter's Tale Ends in Spring

The WorkShop Theater Company’s production of The Winter’s Tale is a very traditional staging of William Shakespeare’s play, which emphasizes the beauty of the words and the great characters that define the Elizabethan bard. In the play, Polixenes, the ruler of Bohemia, has been a guest for nine months at the court of Leontes, the king of Sicilia. He is about to leave, yet Leontes’s wife, Hermione, lovingly persuades Polixenes to postpone his departure. That is the moment when jealousy blinds the Sicilian king. He subsequently accuses his pregnant wife of being unfaithful and imprisons her. Notwithstanding Paulina’s (a noblewoman loyal to the queen) defense of his wife’s innocence, Hermione gives birth to a girl in prison. Only after their young son and Hermione die of grief and the newborn has been abandoned in the dangerous Bohemian woods under his own orders, does Leontes realize the error of his ways. This is only the first half of a play whose surprising turns include a confirmation of innocence by the Oracle at Delphi, a fatal bear attack, and a statue that suddenly comes to life.

In the staging, the action is divided between two countries, Sicilia and Bohemia. Sicilia is portrayed as a barren and cold space. The walls are covered by curtains of black plastic bags and the nobility is dressed in dark suits. Leontes himself wears a black military uniform, which brings to mind the fascist dictators of the mid-20th century. Ethan Cadoff does a great job of portraying the frigidity of the character, whose only humanity is exposed with his jealous outbursts. Laurie Schroeder’s performance as Hermione exudes a flirtatious candor that somewhat explains her husband’s reaction. The production does a great job in staging the tragic first half of the play, the winter part of the tale referenced in the title.

In the second half of the play, the action moves to Bohemia 16 years after the incidents in Sicilia. At this point, the play is taken over by the light, humor and festivities of spring, whose overt sexuality follows the spirit of the pagan fertility rituals. The plastic bags slide open to uncover the mountains and blue skies of Bohemia. Michael Minahan’s set design marks in a simple and effective way the change in space and tone from the first half. Autolycus, the comic rogue, further establishes the merriment that distinguishes Bohemia. Robert Meksin plays the character with delicious abandon, singing and picking the pockets of the bumpkin clown.

Ryan Lee’s direction successfully portrays the Sicilian barrenness that opposes Bohemia’s chaotic innocence.

Angela Harner’s costumes also distinguish each space. The Sicilian dark suits are discarded for the colorful Bohemian garbs that allude to 1960s trends. On one hand, Polixenes’s attire brings to mind the Eastern influence on Western fashion, while on the other hand Autolycus’s clothes represent the errant hippie. Although some of the Bohemian costumes are too ridiculous and lack a general cohesiveness, they create an interesting effect since the same actors who wore the repressive and uniform suits during the first half, now appear as Bohemian revelers wearing neon colored see-throughs, heavy makeup and shiny pants.    

The whole cast does a marvelous job of juggling the two opposites of Sicilia and Bohemia. While Annalisa Loeffler’s Paulina fervently defends Hermione’s virtue while constrained in a gray skirt suit in Sicilia, her Bohemian Dorcas dons a feathered boa and red sunglasses. Along the same lines, Jacob Callie Moore plays the Clown with comedic energy and hence is almost unrecognizable as the much more serious Sicilian Dion. This production of The Winter’s Tale turns the bleakness of a tragic winter into the vibrant sensuality of spring.

The Winter’s Tale runs through March 15 at the WorkShop Theater Company's Main Stage (312 West 36th St., 4th Fl.). General tickets are $18; $15 for students and seniors. For tickets, call 866-811-4111 or visit www.workshoptheater.org.

I Want to Speak with the Writer

Memory is a dangerous place to live. It is often untrustworthy and filled with the lies we wish were the truth. It is also the place we're most likely to encounter those we wish we could forget. For Bemadette, in Nilo Cruz's brilliant Sotto Voce, memory is both where she most wants to be and the location she would most like to forget. Watching her journey to her past and towards her future makes for a rewarding theatergoing experience — one that is powerful, emotional and worth remembering for many years to come.

Sotto Voce focuses on Bemadette, brilliantly portrayed by Franca Sofia Barchiesi, a reclusive writer whose only contact with the outside world is a young housekeeper, Lucila, played by Arielle Jacobs. Their world is rocked when a young man, Saquiel, brought to life by Andhy Mendez, comes seeking Bemadette’s advice for his fledgling writing career and, more importantly, with his most important story: the facts of what happened with a ship bound for Cuba in 1939. This ship carried hundreds of Jewish passengers attempting to escape Nazi Germany. One of those was Bemadette’s first love, a man who she both continually tries to bury in her memory and seeks to keep alive by never confronting the facts of his actual fate.

As a writer, Bemadette must enter the dangerous space of memory if she wants to finish her most important story: what actually happened to her love when he attempted to flee. Through her interactions with Saquiel, she is forced to retell moments of her past, but also to face her almost insurmountable agoraphobia. As someone who has not gone out in years, she will only rendezvous with the young Cuban student via the written and spoken word. He delights in these virtual visits, taking her both to sites in their adopted New York City and spots in her own mind.  Simultaneously, Saquiel befriends and then seduces Lucila, who fears that having escaped her homeland of Colombia will turn out similarly to Bemadette’s abandonment of her hometown of Berlin. What if she forgets where she is from and can never go back?

All of the performances are effective and affecting. The conceit — which displays the writer and her student interacting physically to mirror their vocal and written meetings — works perfectly to develop the necessary emotions. There is a particular mood to this production, one brilliantly orchestrated by Cruz, serving double duty as writer and director. The sense of melancholy is consistently tempered by moments of humor and deep humanity. The intimacy, immediacy and honesty of this production are perhaps its greatest elements. No performer deserves more credit for this than Barchiesi. She makes Cruz’s poetry sing while understanding the many variations and complicated levels of this compelling woman.

The topic here is one that is more than deserving of a play. Theater, at its best, asks its audience to confront and discuss content that might otherwise be ignored because it causes discomfort. This play is no wallflower when it comes to making hard observations and important commentaries. And yet, it never seems preachy or didactic. This is due in large part to the play’s style: these individuals seem to have at their disposal the perfect words for all of the things that they need to say. The events are given poetic poignancy by the way in which their speakers choose to elucidate them. I found myself both laughing and crying during the play and, perhaps most importantly, continuing to discuss the issues put forward long after the house lights had come up.

All in all, Sotto Voce is a play not to be missed. It sheds important light on an historical event while bringing to life very realistic and incredibly relatable characters. It is a heartfelt and meaningful piece of theater. It will give its spectators a memory they won’t soon want to forget. In fact, it may even inspire them to write their own histories into the poetry of memory as well.

Sotto Voce runs through March 9 at the Theater for the New City (155 First Ave). Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. General admission is $20; $15 for seniors and students. For tickets, call 212-254-1109 or visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net. 

Big Canvas, Small Bytes

Few playwrights have been so attuned to their times as British dramatist Caryl Churchill. She became an international name in 1979 with Cloud 9 and its examination of sexual politics, and since then she has reflected the winds of change in plays such as Far Away (2000; governmental oppression), Serious Money (1987; financial shenanigans), A Number (2002; cloning), and Seven Jewish Children — A Play for Gaza (2009; oppression of Palestinians), not to mention Top Girls (1982), in which she explored American vs. British feminism.

Her newest play, Love and Information, is a challenging experimental work, a random mosaic of scenes, vignettes, and snippets, the longest perhaps two or three minutes, the shortest only about 20 seconds long. Together the bits and bytes of dialogue give a sense of foreboding about the Digital Age. By the end of the intermissionless two hours the twin subjects of her title seem on uneven ground: one feels that information has the upper hand and is overwhelming the emotional well-being of all the characters.

 

Under the direction of James MacDonald, a cast of 15, including Maria Tucci, James Waterston, Jennifer Ikeda, and Randy Danson, give brief life to multiple personalities, none of whom appears more than once. (At least not noticeably so; Churchill’s script indicates a couple places where there might be overlap.) Racially diverse, they include people from all walks of life in various situations: teen girls at a sleepover swooning over the star of a boy band; two picnickers discussing scientific experiments on baby chicks; seatmates on an airplane; musicians; spinners at a gym; a couple in bed; boys camping under a starry sky; and a savant who can recall weather and incidents on random days from the past, among many others. The scenes are played out in a square white box with walls and ceilings decorated in grids of black and blue lines, and each ends with a blackout.

 

For many of the scenes, designer Miriam Buether provides a major set piece, from the gym equipment to a patio table with a large orange umbrella to beds, chairs and sofas of various descriptions. There are also smaller elements: a baby carriage, a cello case, children’s toys, and a Babar book. The result is a panorama of modern life. Gabriel Berry and Andrea Hood’s costumes encompass winter gear (though perhaps none so warm as are needed this winter!) to summer shorts and swimsuits. Christopher Shutt’s sound design sets up each of the scenes (they all comprise seven portions, perhaps suggesting days of the week, and an epilogue): the sounds of children at play, classical music, motorcycles, and cats meowing relate to the topic or situation of the next interaction.

 

The primary challenge is that Churchill’s play doesn’t have a conflict or an arc or any traditional dramatic structure. Its effect comes from the accretion of details, as characters talk about everything under the sun, e.g., mathematics, science, getting together with annoying friends, redacting government documents, and words that mean “table.” The nontraditional form may alienate some viewers, and it requires close attention to sift a “message,” as in this brief exchange between a couple:

 

“What sex evolved to do is get information from two sets of genes so you get offspring that’s not identical to you. Otherwise you just keep getting the same thing over and over again like hydra or starfish. So sex essentially is information.”

“You don’t think that while we’re doing it, do you?”

“It doesn’t hurt to know it. Information and also love.”

 

Later on, a gay man receives a bouquet of red roses from his lover and he begins to gush with emotion in the form of information: “it means stop and of course it means go because it’s the color of energy and red cars have the most accidents because people are excited by red or people who are already excited like to have red.” He notes that “in China red is lucky.” But his information overload simply obscures the point of the roses: someone loves him. The flood of data that one has to process in our current world, Churchill intimates, is driving us further and further apart, until, she suggests, we will be left with only information and have lost our humanity.

The regular performance schedule for Love and Information is Tuesday and Wednesday at 7.p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.  There will be a special student matinee on March 19. Orchestra tickets are $85, and mezzanine tickets are $65. They may be purchased online at nytw.org or by phoning Ticketmaster at 800-982-2787, or in person at the Minetta Lane Theater box office, 18 Minetta Lane.   

Two for Change

Dr. Du Bois and Miss Ovington, produced jointly by the New Federal and Castillo Theatres, is an historical drama about two people, one African-American and the other Anglo-Saxon, seeking a way to work together to reform an unjust society. Playwright Clare Coss has imagined a Sunday morning in 1915 on which W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary White Ovington, members of the group that founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), unexpectedly cross paths — and end up crossing swords — in the suite of offices where, on weekdays, they're accustomed to less emotional exchanges with each other. The production is directed by Gabrielle L. Kurlander and designed resourcefully on an Off-Off Broadway budget by Chris Cumberbatch (sets), Ali Turns (costumes), Antoinette Tynes (lighting), and Bill Toles (sound). It's an admirable contribution to New York City’s observance of Black History Month, though the principal attraction is Kathleen Chalfant as Miss Ovington.

The NAACP has been a forceful proponent of civil rights since its inception in 1909. For almost a quarter century, from 1910 to 1934, Du Bois (1868-1963), the most prominent African-American intellectual of the day, devoted the bulk of his professional effort to that organization, serving on its board and as director of publicity and research. As editor of the NAACP journal, The Crisis, he nurtured new voices among African-American artists and intellectuals. Born in the Berkshires not long after the Civil War, Du Bois earned B.A., M.A. and Ph.D degrees at Harvard, taught at a number of distinguished universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, and wrote numerous books (his most famous being the essay collection The Souls of Black Folk in which he wrote, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line").

Mary Ovington (1865-1951) was a Brooklyn-born Unitarian whose forebears were abolitionists. Educated at Radcliffe College, she committed herself to the cause of civil rights after hearing an address by Frederick Douglass. Like Du Bois, she was on the NAACP staff for many years, addressing discrimination in employment, education, housing, public services and voting rights. The producers’ program note describes her as “the first white woman to dedicate her life to anti-racist work in the twentieth century.” Ovington's writings include Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Came Tumbling Down.

As depicted by Coss, Du Bois (played by Timothy Simonson) and Ovington display the scrupulous good manners of the Victorian era in which they grew up. Although they share a wholehearted commitment to fighting racism, their personal relationship is tense and volatile. Midway through the play, they acknowledge a mutual attraction that's physical as well as intellectual. That scene, despite some anachronism in the dialogue, is the most arresting part of the script. The characters' shared decision to sublimate a powerful urge for the sake of their common vocation is inherently poignant; Chalfant's performance enhances the moment with a complexity that's true to the text but far beyond what the dramatist has written.

Best known for multiple roles in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America on Broadway and as the dying academic in Wit by Margaret Edson, Chalfant is one of the foremost actresses working on the American stage. It's hard to imagine anyone better equipped to balance the genteel veneer of Coss's Miss Ovington with the substantial passions animating this character's brain and heart.

According to the production's playbill, Simonson has returned to acting after a period in finance. A formidable presence on stage, he resembles photographs of Du Bois in early adulthood. But it's the range and emotional color that Chalfant brings to her role that audiences are likely to recall most vividly about the 90 minutes they've spent at the Castillo Theatre.

Dr. Du Bois and Miss Ovington offers a number of engaging moments; yet it's not so much a play as a series of set pieces in which the characters spar on subjects related to bigotry, civil rights, and social change. Coss hasn't found a way to make the disparate scenes cohere or resolve themselves into a unified drama. Plays seldom spring full-grown from their authors' imaginations; they're more likely to develop in stages. With insights from the intelligent performances in the New Federal/Castillo presentation, the playwright may be ready to take the script to the next level.   

Dr. Du Bois and Miss Ovington runs through Feb. 16 at the Castillo Theatre (543 West 42^nd Street). Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $25 ($20 for students) and may be purchased from www.castillo.org or 866-811-4111.

Expressionism Lightly

In 1922, New York City was in a thrust of urbanization. Women manned the desks of the American workplace for the first time, and the click-clack of their typewriters beat the heart of an emergent labor force. This is the urban landscape of playwright Sophie Treadwell’s expressionistic play, Machinal, which Roundabout Theatre Company has brought back to Broadway's American Airlines Theatre for the first time since its 1928 debut. Based on events in the life of Ruth Snyder, Machinal follows the character of the Young Woman from her tedious stenographer job, to a loveless marriage with her boss, to the birth of an unwanted child, to an illicit love affair, and finally to the trial for her husband's murder.

First, an introduction to the play and its relation to expressionism. Just as a dollhouse mimics a human house, realistic theater mimics reality. Alternatively, expressionism distorts reality from a subjective viewpoint of experience. Though Treadwell may not have intended Machinal to play as straight expressionism, she was one of several American playwrights importing the genre in the 1920s, including Elmer Rice and Eugene O'Neill.  Machinal includes significant trademarks of expressionism, such as monologues expressing heightened intensity and a soundscape that blends human speech with mechanical sounds such as the typewriter. Experienced from the Young Woman’s perspective, Machinal nightmarishly depicts her internal struggle to separate her own desires from societal demands in the realms of labor, marriage and childbirth.

Focusing on the acting in the Roundabout production, it seems as if director Lyndsey Turner has dialed the expressionism way down. While clearly a directorial choice, this may have been at the expense of the production’s effectiveness. Though there were moments when the actors’ vocal rhythms invoked the same industrial throbbing evoked by Matt Tierney’s innovative sound design, their rhythms mostly remained natural and human. While vibrant characterizations such as Suzanne Bertish’s memorable Mother and Ashley Bell’s sassy Telephone Girl demonstrate the actresses' fine chops, they confused the production’s overall style and mood. As the Young Woman, Rebecca Hall’s delivery read as exceptionally realistic. Under Turner’s direction, unfortunately, Hall's character arc is indeterminable; though we see her suffer at several crisis points — a panic attack in the subway, followed by breakdowns in her mother’s apartment, on her honeymoon, and in the hospital after childbirth — each of these instances plays at an equal magnitude, conveyed by a good deal of high-pitched angst. These moments are the play’s sorest loss; in favor of realism, Turner’s direction misses Treadwell’s moments of intensely alienating and telegraphic rhythm.

The one actor refreshingly committed to an expressionistic stylization was Michael Cumpsty, whose caricature of the Husband is delightfully automated. Certain moments of choreography favored expressionism, too, such as one vignette in the hospital in which nurses, doctors, patients and visitors robotically repeat mundane gestures; without the rest of the play supporting it, however, this brief moment fell short of evoking anything more than an interesting transition.

Expressionism heavily influenced many elements of the production's design. The magnificent rotating stage designed by Es Devlin revealed scene after striking scene; its visible machination an obvious yet powerful nod to the play’s title and its expressionistic roots. Lighting designer Jane Cox's innovative technique incorporated hard, bright horizontal lines of light that scanned the set, sometimes lingering on a face, an embrace or an expression. Overall, the design team provided the visual and aural landscape of industrialization that the ensemble largely lacked in stylization.

If you’re looking for a production that really honors the vein of expressionism coursing through Machinal, the stylistically noncommittal performances in Roundabout Theatre Company’s latest production may disappoint you.  Though earnest and well-rehearsed, these deliveries clash with a production design meant to evoke a historical moment when New York City was developing vertically at breakneck speed. Machinal captures a human soul whose body is caught in the cogs of an emerging industrial landscape; while this production's design skillfully evokes the sights and sounds of this phenomenon, the performances fail to evoke a larger emotional experience.

Machinal runs until March 2 at the American Airlines Theatre (227 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday; matinee performances are at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets range from $52-$127 and are available for purchase at 212-719-1300 or www.roundabouttheatre.org.