No Pot of Gold

An 8,000-year-old Irish fairy is not to be mistaken for a leprechaun in James McLindon’s Comes a Faery. The production opens with a grown woman (Meghan St. Thomas) acting like an 8-year-old girl Siobhan as she plays with a doll and toy truck. Though it is noted in the script for “a very youthful-looking adult [to] play Siobhan,” the casting does not work. St. Thomas sounds and behaves like a whiny child and looks more like an adolescent who is at the beginning stages of puberty. The mismatch in casting distracts theatergoers from acknowledging St. Thomas’ solid performance and her ability to carry the production. The director Shaun Peknic could have taken the liberty to cast a younger woman to portray the child Siobhan. On the other hand, Josh Marcantel is well cast as the Irish fairy Seaneen. Comes a Faery attempts to capture the emotional and mental impacts that a child experiences when their mother is away overseas serving in the armed forces.

The play takes place in an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the set design by Kyu Shin is modest and homely with a loveseat, lamp and nightstand. In the background appears to be a wooden stage with three boxes wrapped in beige paper that have light cursive writing. The brown coloring used for the wording is not dark enough to clearly understand what is written. The two large walls on the backstage appear to be a large book and they also have the beige paper with brown wording on them. The light and dark blue and white zebra print floor is distracting and it does not exactly match the blue and white blankets on the couch. The audience members were further distracted from the actors’ performances when a cockroach ran across the stage and St. Thomas killed it by dropping a book on the cockroach. Marcantel tried to sweep the dead cockroach under the stage with his foot, and the experience left a lasting impression with the audience.

Siobhan is fixated on seeing her mother again and is easily manipulated by Seaneen, who has convinced Siobhan that everyone in her life will leave her. Seaneen is never clearly defined as actually being a real, live fairy or Siobhan’s imaginary playmate. This is one example of how McLindon leaves it up to audiences to decide for themselves if Seaneen is real or not. The lack of clarity does not add much to the plot or Seaneen’s character development and actually creates confusion. Siobhan’s pediatrician Dr. Neery (Lori Kee) cannot clearly diagnose Siobhan’s condition or Siobhan’s relationship with Seaneen. When Seaneen convinces Siobhan to catch Dr. Neery on fire with a burning newspaper, Dr. Neery writes off Siobhan’s failed attempt and says, “That which doesn’t kill you makes for a great story later.”  Dr. Neery believes that Siobhan could be experiencing conduct disorder or possibly psychosis. Siobhan’s guardian and Aunt Katie (Michaela Reggio) thinks that it is normal for 8-year-old girls like Siobhan to have an imaginary Irish fairy as a best friend. Katie’s artist boyfriend Raphael (Benjamin Miller) is Siobhan’s only healthy, male role model and he appears to be the only person who can actually relate to her.

The value of the production rests in its opportunity to have a greater conversation about children who are raised by others while their biological parents serve in a war.  However, the lack of clarity and confusing casting has McLindon fall short in clearly delivering a message.  Simply leaving it up to theatergoers to decide what is happening or what the point is, suggests that the material is underdeveloped. The show runs for 120 minutes with an intermission and feels like it lags. A matured production will have theatergoers wanting more and not just waiting for the show to end so that they can go home.

Comes a Faery misses it mark and does not deliver to its full potential. The production would be much more powerful if St. Thomas were cast as Aunt Katie and a teenager played Siobhan. As strong performers, St. Thomas and Miller could compliment each other’s performances if they were paired together as boyfriend and girlfriend. Reggio portrays Katie as a victim of her own circumstances and instead of having theatergoers feel empathy for Katie, she occurs as annoying and tiresome to watch. Miller stands out in comparison to Reggio when they are partnered together. Miller’s energy feels like a sitcom actor. Comes a Faery is not recommended unless theatergoers are willing to overlook its shortcomings and focus on the dynamic performances by St. Thomas, Miller and Marcantel.

Comes a Faery runs until Oct. 24 at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St. between Greenwich and Washington Sts.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by calling 347-524-0514 or visiting www.nylonfusion.org.

Finding True Joy

Sex, drugs, alcohol and money does not bring contentment to New York City lawyers, but it is still entertaining to watch the lawyers search for inner peace. Ethan McSweeny directs an accomplished ensemble in Thomas Bradshaw’s Fulfillment. Set in present-day Manhattan, the play covers ridiculous housing challenges and various pathways to self-satisfaction that resonate with New Yorkers.

The play's protagonist is a 40-year-old black lawyer named Michael (Gbenga Akinnagbe), who has worked 80 hours a week for the past nine years at a law firm with the same title of senior associate. Although Michael's colleague Steven started at the law firm the same time as Michael, Steven has been promoted to partner and makes $800,000 a year. Michael’s white, office hookup-turned girlfriend Sarah (Susannah Flood) claims that Michael has not been promoted to partner because of racism. She says, “Just think about it. No women partners, no black partners. I’m telling you this because we’re two of the only people from under-represented groups working here. We need to stick together.”

Whenever Michael’s white boss Mark (Peter McCabe) has a new, black client, Mark “trot[s] [Michael] out like a show horse!” Mark claims that Michael has not been made partner because Michael has a drinking problem.  Mark offers to have the firm pay for Michael to go to rehab, but Michael does not want to be away from work for that long. Michael also just bought a “shoebox in Soho” to live in for $1.5 million and had to borrow $80,000 from his mother’s retirement to help cover the down payment. Sarah says that Michael should instead “be living in a five million dollar apartment.”

This play’s message about happiness not being found in external things is communicated well. The value of this production is demonstrated in how this message is shown through the breakdown of Michael’s life. Audiences witness how Michael’s alcohol dependency feeds his insecurities and ultimately sabotages everything Michael has been trying to create for himself. New York City theatergoers will also easily relate with the intolerable amount of noise from Michael’s upstairs neighbor Ted (Jeff Biehl). The situation only escalates when Michael complains to the president of his condo association Bob (Denny Dillon).

As a grown man, Michael appears naive and boyish and easily manipulated by others. His own identity and sense of self-worth are questionable. Akinnagbe conveys Michael’s innocence eloquently and this allows for audiences to eventually develop compassion for Michael’s struggle. It also softens the cold, robotic, conniving exterior behavior of the other characters. Audiences begin to understand the roots of Michael’s alcoholism when Sarah says, “It’s only natural that you have no idea how to deal with people. You stopped maturing emotionally the second you started to drink [alcohol].” Michael started drinking when he was 16 years old.

As the characters seek fulfillment in their own lives, theatergoers may start to wonder if this production achieves what it set out to accomplish. Even with stellar performances like McCabe perfectly nailing his portrayal of Michael’s boss, the production seems like it is still in its adolescent stages. The material is fresh, quick and current but feels underdeveloped. The scenes tend to be short and end too prematurely for audience members to get the full emotional impact. The creative transitions between the scenes are flawless due to the lighting by Brian Sidney Bembridge and sound by Mikhail Fiksel and Miles Polaski. However, the multiple transitions become disruptive and lose their originality after a while. At times, the production relies on engaging audiences by using intense sexual scenes with masturbation, S&M and full-frontal nudity. Sex choreographer Yehuda Duenyas creates very realistic sexual scenes and it is like sitting on the set of a pornographic film.

Fulfillment does capture modern life in New York City and creates a greater conversation around what motivates and drives people. At the same time, Bradshaw could have focused more on universal, redeeming qualities.  This would add depth to the production’s message and allow for audiences to empathize with the characters’ vulnerabilities. McSweeny could also achieve this through directing the actors to have more emotional range in their performances.

The overall aim of this production falls short, and the production’s message has so much potential to mature and could even be further developed. Despite these weaknesses, the cast is superb and well worth seeing in this production. The Flea Theater has produced award-winning Off-Off-Broadway productions and is known for showcasing current and original material. For those seeking a captivating glimpse into the life of an alcoholic lawyer in New York City who has not come to terms with his alcoholism, then see Fulfillment.

Thomas Bradshaw's Fulfillment runs until Oct. 19 at The Flea Theater (41 White St. between Church St. and Broadway) in Manhattan. Evening performances are Wednesday–Monday at 7 p.m. and matinee performances are Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $35, $55, $75 and $105 and can be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or visiting www.theflea.org.

Shakespeare With Tears

You’re not ever likely to see a staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream similar to that at the Pearl Theatre Company, a co-production with the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. That’s almost certainly a blessing. Directed by Eric Tucker of Bedlam, a company known for its pared-down renderings of classics—including a powerful Saint Joan and Hamlet—A Midsummer Night’s Dream currently on the boards is a misbegotten mess. Somewhere underneath the countless irrelevancies encrusting this version may be a play about lovers, poets and fools, but despair at finding it sets in quickly.

Bedlam uses no props, so there’s a lot of miming of them; some you won’t expect. Early on, Hermia is tied up and her arms winched into the air as if she’s about to be interrogated by black-ops agents rather than Theseus. Anyone who has ever seen a traditional version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream may wonder what is going on—as will anyone who hasn’t. The five actors are not only responsible for imagining their props, but they take on multiple roles and produce their own sound effects. In fact, there is so much accumulated shouting and stage business that the story barely comes through, let alone the poetry.

Tucker has introduced action to accompany virtually every line. When Egeus complains that Lysander “bewitched the bosom of my child,” Lysander air-squeezes Hermia’s imagined breasts. When Jason O’Connell’s Bottom speaks of “a tyrant,” his hands become pistols and he shoots them. O bad tyrant! Looking for his comrades, Bottom says, “Where are these hearts?” That leads O’Connell to pull an imaginary one from his chest and gnaw it like Hannibal Lecter. Everything must be illustrated, no matter how inappropriately, in this Shakespeare for Imbeciles production.

It’s not enough to pile on irrelevancies: Tucker has vulgarized the play as well. When Mark Bedard’s Oberon says, “I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my…henchman,” the pause he inserts suggests latent pedophilia. When the actors cluster together late in the play (as they often do to become scenery, though not in this case), there’s suddenly an orgiastic scene of hip-thrusting intercourse and tongue work. When Puck returns to Oberon with the flower love-in-idleness, he doesn’t have it in hand. Oh, no, it’s down his throat so he can hawk loudly and puke it out!

Amid this goulash, Nance Williamson shows the best command of poetry, both as the brusque Hippolyta and lumbering Helena. Bedard recites the verse clearly enough, but doesn't quite find the music in it. O’Connell is egregiously irritating as Puck, Bottom, and Pyramus. As the last, he yells for Thisbe in the style of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. (He also does an impression of Al Pacino in Bottom’s “shivering shocks” speech, and they’re amusing, but unnecessary.)

The performers may be excused, given all that Tucker has taxed them with. They contribute constant sound effects and movement: weird noises, rolling around, wrestling, humming the music from Jeopardy and “The Girl from Ipanema,” grunts, clasping one another, shrieks, falling to the ground in an instant, tsk-tsks and putting on silly accents (Sean McNall’s Demetrius seems to be Spanish by way of Scotland; Bedard’s Thisbe has a Southern twang). Scarcely a sentence goes by without some enhancement. Oberon’s speech “The next thing then she waking looks upon/Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull/On meddling monkey, or on busy ape/She shall pursue it with the soul of love” cues an aural zoo as the actors contribute the sounds of each animal mentioned. But nothing is so impressive as the rare moments when the words are left to be heard on their own—Bedard’s Oberon, speaking of a “boar with bristled hair,” or Helena’s late soliloquy. It’s then one realizes what quality the actors might be capable of.

Heaped with praise by critics at the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was clearly not to the taste of a scowling woman speaking to a friend at intermission. Passing by, I overheard only the word “indefensible.” Whether it applied to those reviews or to the production itself, she was on the money.

A Midsummer Night's Dream plays through Oct. 31 at the Pearl Theatre (555 West 42nd St. between 10th and 11th Aves.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Oct. 7, 11, 12, 15, 20, 28 and 29 and at 8 p.m. on Oct. 9, 16, 17, 23 and 30. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Oct. 8, 10, 14, 17, 18, 21 and 31. For tickets, call 212- 563-9261 or visit PearlTheatre.org.

Drink, Drink and Be Merry

Theater-going in New York City has a long and intimate history with drinking, from the boozy concert saloons and cabarets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to contemporary lobby bars on Broadway and drinking within immersive theater experiences such as Sleep No More and Queen of the Night. Occupying its own place in this legacy of combining theater and drinking, The Imbible at the Soho Playhouse not only serves drinks to its audience, but attempts to narrate the history of drinking since the beginning of humankind. This is a long and complex history, of course, and since The Imbible also attempts to explain the chemistry of alcohol and its biological effects on the body, the show can only tell a selective and incomplete history. But playwright and performer Anthony Caporale’s passion for the subject, as well as the overall fun ambiance of the production, make for an enjoyable and educational night at the theater/bar.

Artisan bartender and host of the popular web series "Art of the Drink TV," Caporale as "The Bartender" approaches the subject of alcohol from his practical experience. Trivia heads and history nerds will love the educational appeal of The Imbible, which is packed with facts on the history and science of alcohol. An especially magic moment of the performance is when Caporale reveals that the very basement that the play takes place in a former Prohibition speakeasy frequented by members of historic New York City’s Tammany Hall. To be drinking freely in space that used to harbor bootleggers is one of the most unique aspects of this production.

While Caporale educates and quizzes the audiences on facts about the history of drinking, the cast supports his documentary narrative with their dynamic voices and a capella harmonizing. The songbook of The Imbible draws from pop songs, and while it can be fun to recognize tunes, it may leave one yearning for more original music. That being said, the singers’ a capella talents are enjoyable, no matter the song, and the musicality adds to the amusing atmosphere of The Imbible. 

While the musical talent of the cast is undeniably strong, the comic moments of Imbible can be hit or miss. Much of the show's humor depends on ensemble bits, and at times, the group dynamic falls flat or comes off as forced. Furthermore, while the mood of this production is undeniably casual, the comic gags need more focus from the director and performers to really hit their mark. One particularly distracting actor habit was laughing or smirking during line delivery—while cracking up during a comic sketch is one thing, nervous or excessive laughing tends to steal away from the comedy. All in all, the malfunction of some of these comic moments may come from an ambivalent relationship between the supporting cast and the audience.  While The Bartender clearly communicates directly with the audience, as a narrator figure, the supporting cast is less securely related with the audience. The cast is, without a doubt, a funny group, but the comedic timing and stylization in The Imbible needs more polishing. 

The Imbible is set to run into January 2016, but the run is unlimited and could very well be extended. The popularity of this show may indicate that contemporary audiences are eager to engage with fun and accessible performances, especially under the socially lubricating effects of alcohol. It should be mentioned that audience members must be 21 or older to attend The Imbible and the ticket price includes three drinks. Each drink is creatively worked into the narrative of the play. While this show, like any other piece of theater, is not perfect, the talent and dedication of the cast endear one to its antics. The Imbible makes for a fun, boozy, and surprisingly educational night of theater in New York City.

Tickets (which include three drinks) are $55 and can be purchased at Imbible.org. Performances are scheduled through January 2016 and take place at SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam St. between Varick St. and 6th Ave.) in Manhattan and run Thursdays at 7 p.m. and Fridays-Saturdays at 9 p.m.

Fairy Tales with Scary Endings

German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are best known for writing Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and many other famous fairy tales. There was also a darker side to the Grimms’ earlier works that included child abuse, incest and anti-Semitism. The short stories in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman echo the Grimms’ twisted side. The Pillowman takes place in a totalitarian state and deals with childhood abuse. The characters rarely experience a "Disney" fairy tale ending. Audiences are sure to be amused and horrified as this story unfolds.

The production opens with a proclamation from writer Katurian (Kirk Gostkowski) trying to weasel his way out of being tortured: “The only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.” Detectives Tupolski (Deven Anderson) and Ariel (Paul Terkel) do not buy Katurian’s noble stand as a writer. Katurian recites one of his gruesome short stories The Tale of the Town on the River about a poor, little boy with no shoes who is bullied by the local children. One day the little boy offers a hooded driver a piece of the boy’s sandwich. The driver repays the boy by using a meat cleaver to cut off all of the boy’s toes on his right foot. The driver is supposed to be the Pied Piper and he is riding into the German town of Hamelin to lure away all of the children with his magical flute. Due to the boy’s missing toes, he is unable to walk as fast as the other children. The little boy is not taken away by the Pied Piper and becomes a Hamelin survivor.

Detectives Tupolski and Ariel claim they found the toes of a dead, Jewish boy in Katurian’s home.  The detectives assert there is a connection between the crippled boy in Katurian’s short story "The Tale of the Town on the River" and the Jewish boy’s death. A string of other child deaths could be tied to Katurian’s violent short stories. Out of the four hundred stories Katurian wrote, he says “maybe ten or twenty have children in [them].”  Audiences soon discover Katurian’s inspiration for these morbid stories in a film directed by David Rey. The film discloses the horrific abuse and neglect Katurian’s brother Michal (Kyle Kirkpatrick) experienced by their parents—which permanently left Michal “slow to get things.”

The value of this production is its ability to creatively show the effects of childhood abuse through the eyes of Katurian. As the main character and a family member, Katurian’s perspective is unique because he was never abused. His parents loved him and encouraged him to be a great writer. Audiences are able to connect with Michal’s suffering through Katurian’s love for his brother. Likewise, it is Gostkowski’s stellar performance as Katurian that carries this show.  Katurian appears clever and likable, and at the same time, he feels so slippery. Audiences are left wondering if Katurian is telling the truth or lying about the murdered children in his stories.

Anderson is not fully self-expressed and authentic in his portrayal of Detective Tupolski. Director Greg Cicchino could have Anderson face the audience more often and project his voice so that audience members can get related to Anderson’s character during his opening lines. Instead of gauging the audience’s approval of his performance, Anderson could be more powerful by fully stepping into his role as the lead detective. As Detective Tupolski’s partner, Terkel maneuvers through the action scenes seamlessly in his performance of Detective Ariel. When Terkel slams Gostkowski’s head against the wall, the audience gains a real sense of what it is like to live in a totalitarian state. However, Terkel’s frequent use of herbal cigarettes starts to become a distraction and eventually does not add to his character. Kirkpatrick’s performance as Katurian’s mentally challenged brother Michal adds comic relief when Michal goes on about having an itchy butt.

Production designer Aaron Gonzalez created a simple, gray set that feels like a cross between a makeshift jail cell and an abandoned office during the height of the Cold War. The Chain Theatre is a fresh, friendly, intimate space with a gallery exhibition in the lobby by Tyler Hughes. The seating is connected, and if someone in your row is fidgeting throughout the show, their movements can be felt by others sitting in the same row. There is also simulated gunfire during the production for those who are sensitive to noise.

If you have not had a chance to see a performance of McDonagh’s award-winning play The Pillowman, then this is an opportunity to do so. Since its first public reading at London's Finborough Theatre in 1995, the play has traveled around the world. The use of universal, childhood fairy tales allows for generations to easily connect with the material. It is McDonagh’s take on childhood abuse that is most startling and thought-provoking for audiences to discover.

The Pillowman runs until Oct. 3 at the Chain Theatre (21-28 45th Rd. between 21 and 23 Sts.) in Long Island City, Queens. Evening performances are Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and matinee performances are Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 at the door and can be purchased by calling 866-811-4111 or visiting www.variationstheatregroup.com.

Not So Perfect, Definitely Absurd

In Laugh It Up, Stare It Down we are introduced to Joe (Jayce Bartok), who convinces Cleo (Katya Campbell), a woman he’s just met, that their encounter is a pivotal crossroads. This should definitely end in Cleo joining Joe for coffee, he posits. Cleo resists, claiming that she’s already met her “romantic crossroads”—a man named George. By the next scene, however, Cleo and Joe have been dating for two weeks and there’s never another mention of poor George. Not surprisingly, this isn’t the last brush with unfaithfulness in this play written by Alan Hruska and directed by Chris Eigeman.

The rest of the play follows in much the same way as these first two scenes. A plot is introduced, questions are raised, and then the story jarringly jumps to a point in the future, leaving the audience to wonder how exactly the couple got from point A to point B. From their first encounter to their looming demise when a hurricane strikes their town on Rhode Island, Laugh It Up, Stare It Down offers snapshots of climactic times in the couple's lives.

An absurdist play, Laugh It Up, Stare It Down is consistently zany. In one scene, Cleo and Joe’s baby is misplaced by a befuddled nurse before being found and returned to the nursery. In another scene, they sit down for dinner at a restaurant with blank menus and one entrée option. Unfortunately, scenes like this, though entertaining in their wackiness, detract from the script's more thought-provoking and philosophical side.  

Bartok and Campbell realistically portray a couple navigating difficult situations and raising important questions like whether or not romantic love exists, or is merely an illusion killed by “a bit of intimacy.” Are they ready for children? Can they overcome infidelity? Can they maintain “ecstatic” love when life becomes routine? How will they feel when the end is near? All of the conversations revolving around these momentous milestones in their relationship create more questions still.

Bartok and Campbell are buoyed by Amy Hargreaves and Maury Ginsberg who play a variety of supporting characters and really add charm to the show with the different personalities they create. Hargreaves is moving as Alberta, vindictive as Dorothy and hysterical as the Waitress and Nurse Leaving. Ginsberg is detestable as Stephen, intriguing as Arturo and hilarious as Chalmers. It’s truly a treat to watch the supporting actors as they display their acting range.

The biggest standout of the night was the creative team behind Laugh It Up, Stare It Down’s ambiance. Kevin Judge's scenic design, Jennifer Caprio's costume design, Matthew J. Fick's original music and Peter Salett's sound design impressed throughout, but never more-so than during the final scene. A chandelier becomes a buoy, lighting and sound portrays a dark night out at sea, and the result is truly mesmerizing.

If you want a play that doesn’t require suspended disbelief, has a straightforward plot, and a standard happy ending, Laugh It Up, Stare It Down is not for you. This play creates more questions than it answers. But maybe that’s the point. Laugh It Up, Stare it Down isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly absurd—fitting for a show whose tagline is “Life Can Be Perfectly Absurd.”

Laugh It Up, Stare It Down plays through Oct. 10 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are between $59-$99 and can be purchased by calling 866-811-4111 or visiting Ovation Tix.

Getting Down and Dirty

Over the years, musical theater has certainly seen its fair share of romantic comedies—from 1970's Company to 2011's First Date—the concept of young people finding love onstage seems almost as ancient and time-honored a ritual as love itself. However, none seem to match the irreverent and brashy style of Level II Theatre's Love is Like Mud. Presented as part of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival, at intimate downtown venue Drom, Mud sets itself apart as a delightful, fizzy romantic comedy "cocktail"—heavy on the comedy.

At the show's open, we meet lovelorn Jon (Gavin Rohrer), as he, following a recent breakup, laments to his parents about the merits of love. In an attempt to comfort his son, Marshal (Jay Liebowitz) memorably dispenses this piece of wisdom: "It's pliable, dirty. Love isn't like a diamond. It's more like...mud." With this thought in mind, Jon enters once more into the breach, braving the city streets alone in search of that messy thing called love—until, like a clod of dirt in the face, it finds him. In what could only be described as a "Missed Connections" advertisement come to life and set to music, Jon meets Anne (Taylor Kate Manns) after recognizing her from their regular commute home ("Same Spot Again"). He asks her out, and after the success of their first date ("Excellent Choice"), they embark on a relationship together. For a while, all is well and at the height of their time together, even Jon's parents get in on the act, prodding them about taking that "next step" in their relationship ("Grandkids").

Soon afterward, the "honeymoon goggles" come off and their seemingly-blissful phase starts to wane. In a complete turnaround, Anne begins to recount Jon's faults ("The Little Things") and Jon, for his part, soon develops that ever-dreaded roving eye ("Wanderlust"). The two eventually part ways, and at the instruction of their friends, drunken metal-head Angelo and yoga health-nut Maya (also played by Liebowitz and Elise Raynard, respectively), try playing the field ("Revolving Doors"). But as the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and after bumping into one another at a farmer's market, Jon and Anna both realize that they're only stronger together ("Other Girls [The Only One Ever]"). 

As far as romantic comedies go, Mud doesn't stray too far from the pack, plot-wise. However, its clever coupling of onstage antics—particularly those concerning plush genitalia—and campy song lyrics provide a much-needed offbeat kick. Writer-director Benjamin Folstein's band, Level II, lends much of Mud's comedic flair through its catalog of original songs, which references influences from jazz to 90s pop-rock. Both lyrically and structurally, the songs do not follow the traditional musical theater format, presenting a unique take on the genre that is ultimately much fresher than the show's "dirty" name implies.  

It is the aforementioned performances of the actors, however, which certainly add the "oomph" to the music's kick. As the two twenty-somethings at the center of the show, Rohrer and Manns demonstrate great chemistry with one another, both vocally and physically. The latter's solo performance in the middle of the show ("There You Are")—reminiscent of Karessa's solo in Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick... Boom!, another off-Broadway hit— definitely brought the house down. For their part, Liebowitz and Raynard are the perfect foils to the more even-tempered lead duo, providing much of the show's comedic relief. 

Love is patient, love is kind; but what they never tell you is that it's also kind of a hot mess. Folstein and Level II Theatre's Love is Like Mud gets down to the nitty-gritty of it all, while also gettin' down to some good, ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll. The music may not always feature pretty little love songs, but they still get to the heart of the matter. That is, after all, what love's about.

Level II Theatre's production of Love is Like Mud ran at the DROM (85 Avenue A between 5th and 6th Street) in Manhattan from August 15-29 at the New York International Fringe Festival. For more information about this production, visit www.loveislikemud.com.  

An Evening Called Desire

The wonderful (and often weird) works of Tennessee Williams have graced the stages of New York City in a kaleidoscope of iterations. From The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, to his later, queerer works in off-off-Broadway houses, there has hardly been a lack of opportunities to see this beloved American playwright’s work come to life in our city. An interesting new addition to the menagerie of Williams' productions is The Acting Company’s Desire: An Evening of Plays Based on Six Stories by Tennessee Williams at 59E59 Theaters. Authored by six different playwrights, the short plays in Desire take a variety of approaches to their adaptations of Williams’ short stories, which he wrote throughout his career. The quality and composition of each vignette is as varied as the dramaturgical approaches, but overall, Desire amounts to an enjoyably mottled evening of play, all in the spirit of Tennessee.

Most impressively, Desire boasts a knockout cast. Every performer is solidly dedicated to their character and action, but Liv Rooth and   Megan Bartle stand out in particular. Rooth commands the room as Clara in Tent Worms and proceeds to dazzle with Anna’s frenetic energy in Oriflamme.  Bartle demonstrates an impressive range as a weepy fiancée, Betty, in You Lied to Me About Centralia and then as a curious sorority girl, Layley, in The Field of Blue Children. As Layley, Bartle delivers a sexually triumphant and revelatory monologue, which practically brought the house down. Indeed, Williams’ spirit is perhaps best communicated through the talents of this versatile cast.

Each short play varies greatly in style, structure and language. Beth Henley’s The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin and Rebecca Gilman’s The Field of Blue Children are both plot-driven, heavy on events and action, and aim to tell a complete story. Despite their structuring, these plays’ best moments occur when they swerve away from their plots to divulge into character development. On the other hand, Marcus Gardley’s Desire Quenched by Touch, Elizabeth Egloff’s Tent Worms, and David Grimm’s Oriflamme situate seemingly everyday characters within apparently normal narratives, but in true Williams' style, each story gradually distorts itself into a strange and otherworldly version of reality. Finally, John Guare’s You Lied to Me About Centralia is an adaptation of “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” which is the short story that inspired The Glass Menagerie. This short play rewards the audience with winks at the Wingfield characters and their eccentric dinner.

Director Michael Wilson situates each play in its own discrete style—in honoring the diversity of the playwrights—but blends their worlds together via beautifully choreographed scene transitions. Wilson also highlights Williams’ affinity for objects, which are so often laden with rich and symbolic meaning. His staging illuminates important objects such as Anna’s swishy red evening gown (Oriflamme), Richard Miles’ coffin-like violin case (The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin), Jim’s glass figurine (You Lied to Me About Centralia), and Grand’s paper bag lunch (Desire Quenched By Touch). One thing the overall production lacked was a Williams-esque rawness: its staging and design were quite safe, lacking some of the grit and strangeness that often pervades Williams' writing, but is often ignored and polished over.

Undeniably, the cast and production is well-rehearsed and everything runs smoothly and professionally; but perhaps a little more impromptu wildness and odd eccentricities would have raised the stakes on its effect. In any case, Desire is a most welcome addition to the Tennessee Williams performance repertoire, and these short plays add flourish to the posthumous portrait of this strange and beloved author.

Desire: An Evening of Plays Based on Six Stories by Tennessee Williams plays through through Oct. 10 as part of the 5A Season at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59^th St. between Park and Madison Aves.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are on Thursday at 7 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. Single tickets are $70 ($49 for 59E59 members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or visit www.59e59.org.

Dressed to Cross

Matthew Lopez, best known for The Whipping Boy, an intense drama about slavery and the Civil War, could hardly have followed it with something more different than The Legend of Georgia McBride, a confection of spangles and sass at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The new play is a farce in the vein of La Cage aux Folles and Tootsie, leavened with some obvious sermonizing about finding one’s inner self and celebrating the indomitability required to wear a dress and padding—sort of “Climb ev’ry mountain, find ev’ry frock.” It’s good fun, and there are plenty of laughs, but it’s also predictable. Uptown, for instance, an empowered drag queen saves a whole factory full of straight people by manufacturing irrepressible footwear.

Skillfully structured by Lopez, and well-directed by Mike Donahue for MCC Theater, Georgia McBride follows a young married man, Casey (Dave Thomas Brown), who can’t manage to support his wife, Jo (Afton Williamson), by performing as Elvis. When they’re about to be evicted from their home because they’re behind on their rent, and Jo is pregnant, the irresponsible Casey reassures Jo with “We’ll figure it out."

The bar in the Florida panhandle—Panama City, to be exact—where Casey is working is hanging on by a thread. Georgia McBride takes off when Casey’s boss, Eddie (Wayne Duvall), brings in a distant cousin to transform the club into a gay bar “destination.” The cousin, Matt McGrath’s tall, skeptical Tracy Mills, is a drag queen who arrives backstage resembling a Tennessee Williams character, turbaned and weary. She has another drag queen in tow, Anorexia Nervosa, aka Rexy (Keith Nobbs). Casey’s Elvis impersonation is eliminated, but Eddie is kind enough to let him stay around to tend bar. Rexy, however, has a drinking problem, and one night before her “Edith Piaf number,” she passes out. Quicker than you can say “bouffant hairdo,” Casey is put into a wig and dress and ordered to perform as Piaf.

 

“I don’t know anything about doing drag!” whines Casey. “Has that ever stopped anyone?” Tracy sensibly responds. Casey is initially disastrous—but Donahue has pitched the gradual transformations skillfully through a succession of scenes, until Casey fully inhabits the drag and finds his true persona, a country music diva named Georgia McBride. All the way along Brown is excellent, persuasive both as the straight husband and the feminized drag queen. Helpfully, he never registers as androgynous; he’s a masculine male, yet in women’s clothes his Y chromosome never shows.

Under Tracy’s tutelage, Georgia starts as an ugly duckling but becomes a star. In typical farce fashion, however, Casey doesn’t tell his Jo what he’s up to. He just hands her the increased income and explains that bookings of heavy metal bands have increased profits at the bar, which is 40 miles from their home. Eventually, of course, Jo finds out everything, and there’s some dramatic hand-wringing about whether she will leave him, but none of it rings true, and Williamson in the thankless role can’t do much to invest it with suspense. 

The cast is mostly outstanding. Nobbs plays two roles, and as Rexy he’s not really convincing as a woman, unless you think “roller derby.” (The idea that Rexy could pull off Piaf is ludicrous.) But as Casey’s henpecked neighbor Jason, the actor shows why he’s one of his generation’s outstanding artists. A highlight of the production is Jason’s recollection of his dating “a gender nonconformist” that Nobbs imbues with nostalgia, rue and gentle humor.

McGrath as Tracy has the showiest role, and he seizes it with relish, by turns sympathetic, caustic, disdainful, but most often indomitable. He has the fun of dropping most of the inside references: to Stephen Sondheim (Company, Sweeney Todd and West Side Story), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and Auntie Mame, among many others.

Anita Yavich supplies all the explosions of color one expects from drag costumes—and there are plenty of them—and Ben Stanton’s lighting is sometimes subdued, sometimes garish, and always fun. Donyale Werle has contributed a set that screams “sleazy white trash.” (It’s a stereotype that Lopez indulges in as well, when Jason speaks of his wife and children: “There were rumors we had some cousins in common, and now I think that might have been true.”)

All in all, The Legend of Georgia McBride covers well-tilled ground, but has enough wit and wisdom of its own to make a visit pleasurable.  

The MCC Theater production of The Legend of Georgia McBride runs at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St. between Bleecker and Hudson Sts.) in Manhattan through Oct. 11. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with Thursday evening performances at 7 p.m. on Oct. 1, and at 8 p.m. on Sept. 24 and Oct. 8. Tickets may be purchased by calling 212-727-7722 or visiting www.mcctheater.org.

Meet the Bergers

The lives of the Berger family in Awake and Sing!, The Public Theater's production of Clifford Odets’ rousing Depression-era drama, sway to the swinging beat of old Hollywood’s silver screen. There is the drama of a young, forbidden love affair, the scandal of a child out of wedlock, the emotional carnage of lost hope and disillusionment. Rudolph Valentino receives a passing mention, and Fred Astaire croons about dancing cheek-to-cheek during intermission. Odets’ seminal play packs quite a sentimental wallop, but the National Asian American Theater Company's (NAATCO) touching revival featuring Asian-American actors in the largely Jewish-American roles, counters any mawkishness with strong, complex performances and director Stephen Brown-Fried’s confident steering.

Odets’ play centers around a Jewish family living in 1930s Bronx, and the ensuing turbulence that follows the growing restiveness of Ralph Berger (an appropriately energetic Jon Norman Schneider) and the breaking and building of Hennie Berger’s spirit (an evolution played to utter ferocity by Teresa Avia Lim). The siblings’ mother is Bessie Berger (Mia Katigbak, reprising a 2013 award-winning performance), stalwart matriarch of the family and brusque caretaker of her children’s lives. Mr. Berger (an endearingly soft-spoken Henry Yuk), on the other hand, trots about the apartment harmlessly. Rounding out the family is disillusioned academe and occasional grandfather-figure (a sage Alok Tewari) and the ever-present vitriol and violent passions of one-legged war veteran Moe Axelrod (a fantastically complex, utterly resplendent Sanjit De Silva), who has a "yen" for Hennie. 

Much of the production’s conflict is courtesy of De Silva and Lim’s fiery chemistry, and Brown-Fried makes us anticipate their acerbic confrontations with glee. But aside from Ralph Berger’s erratic bursts of youthful, reckless energy (egged on by a philosophizing Jacob), the Berger kids don’t provide half as much vigor to Awake and Sing! as Katigbak’s Bessie does. Shamelessly guilt-tripping her way to what she thinks is a secure future for her children, Bessie is an unsympathetic antihero, and she dominates the power plays that rattle the household. Only Lim seriously challenges Katigbak’s governance, with Hennie’s caustic sarcasm and world-weary cynicism rivaling that of her mother’s.

Dusty browns, maroons and beiges color the set, as well as the costuming. Alexae Visel gives Bessie Berger matronly, no-nonsense dresses, while fitting Hennie with form-flattering skirts and black-buckled heels. The men get high-waist pants, oxfords and suspenders. Their fashion is reminiscent of silver screen lotharios and starlets, but Visel has imbued the clothes with hints of wear and tear. It’s occasionally difficult to catch a front view of the actors; the Public has staged the production in such a way that the performance space is sandwiched between two opposing rows of audiences. Sometimes, the effect can be quite stirring; Brown-Fried and scenic designer Anshuman Bhatia have cleverly made the space between the sofa and the dinner table into a battleground. Hennie and Moe’s emotional altercations take place in that no-man’s land, as does Ralph’s rebellious profession of love and Bessie Berger’s strict admonishments of her children.

NAATCO’s hope to carry out theater’s function in “taking people who were viewed as marginalized, and place them at the center of culture” is perhaps done so well, that we altogether forget that there is a Berger family. The characters seem to take on roles that are familiar and universal to everyone in the audience: an overbearing mother, a reckless teenage brother or a vicious old flame. Love songs from Hollywood’s Golden Age have audiences tapping their feet and humming, and the familiar twang of Bronx accents have us settling in comfortably, although hearing "goil" instead of "girl" soon trespasses on the ear. Subsequently, the supposed novelty of casting Odets’ typically Jewish-American drama with an Asian-American cast quickly dissolves; we are quite contentedly left with a fresh new realization of the Berger family. And it’s quite a sight to see.

NAATCO’s production of Awake and Sing! ran till August 8. For more information, visit www.publictheater.org.

Strained Geometry

It’s an axiom of theater that a writer shouldn’t direct his own work. Whether, if Richard Maxwell had heeded that advice, Isolde would seem more than a taxing exercise in bewilderment is an open question.

The play’s titular heroine is a woman struggling with neurosis. Her wealthy protector, Patrick (Jim Fletcher)—“she’s kind of a daughter and a wife a little bit to me”—is footing the bill for her to have a dream house built, and not just a dream house, but a perfect house. The architect she has chosen is named Massimo, but it’s unclear that Massimo (Gary Wilmes) has a talent for anything but gooey, pretentious psychobabble, although he has supposedly won awards. As it happens, Patrick has a construction company and knows the business. He challenges Massimo to put his ideas on paper, show him some schematics, but Massimo resists. Instead, Massimo begins an affair with the troubled Isolde (Tory Vazquez, who is married to Maxwell).

This mundane set-up turns out to strain credibility, and it gets scant help from the writing or the direction. Massimo expounds on “beauty that can be found in harmony” but sounds like a charlatan. He notes that “each of my projects is the start of a movement which will only be completed when it relates to the environment. The landscape is beauty. I read it like a book, I experience it and I protect it.” Patrick and Isolde come off as equally implausible. Describing Massimo, Patrick says he’s “jejune,” and notes “he left his glove on to shake my hand.” Isolde responds, “I know you hate that.” Really? How often does one shake hands with someone who’s gloved? It would have to be pretty often to build up antipathy toward the practice. And it doesn’t help that Maxwell directs his actors to deliver their lines woodenly, often just standing to face the audience. The result is that the dialogue, with emotion tamped down, frequently seems to be mere recitation.

Whether this is a way of indicating the action is from Isolde’s memory is unclear. She is a renowned actress, lately struggling to remember her lines, yet is stricken with ennui. “How long have I been doing the same thing?” she asks. “Every new project is the old project, then do it again…how many times? Get on a plane, go through a tunnel, go over a bridge.” Her name, of course, evokes the legendary Cornish love triangle of Tristan, Isolde, and King Mark, and that seems to be the role she's struggling with.

“I noticed myself and my predicament echoing through the epochs,” says Isolde’s character in the play being rehearsed, hinting at a universality in this love triangle. In any case, the legend is sidelined until late in the show, when it is explicitly invoked in a dumb show, for which Isolde appears in a gown of burgundy velvet and the men wear medieval garb and wield large swords. (Costumes are by Romy Springsguth.) Here Sascha van Riel’s bland lighting suddenly becomes saturated in garish color, but the sequence and what follows generate even more confusion.

Maxwell’s staging is also baffling. On Sascha van Riel’s set of a raised platform, some modernist chairs, and a couple walls broken by a dado rail that suggest rooms wallpapered in butcher paper, characters seem to appear from nowhere. “Here he comes,” says Isolde, and Massimo arrives. Any sense of real life, in which someone rings or knocks, someone goes to answer it, someone escorts a guest out rather than lets him wander alone through the home, is absent. The front door is apparently wide open. The scenes play as snapshots, but what’s in those snapshots doesn’t ring true. 

There are some interesting passages, notably one about the refrigeration techniques of ancient Sumerians, but they are tangential, though Maxwell does prove adept at finding comedy in odd moments, thanks mostly to a fourth character, Uncle Jerry (Brian Mendes), who is also in construction and a friend of Patrick’s.

Ultimately, any message the play has is undermined by the determined obscurity and the affectless deliveries. Whether isolated images and passages will stick in one’s memory is too soon to know. But the likelihood is slim.

Richard Maxwell's Isolde plays through Sept. 27 at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place between Lafayette Ave. and Fulton St.) in Brooklyn. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday through Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets may be purchased by calling 866-811-4111 or visiting www.tfana.org.

Chilled Irish Tales

The very first staging of The Weir at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London shot to almost immediate acclaim, with nascent visionary playwright Conor McPherson winning a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1997. Following incarnations of The Weir have starred current TV mainstays Brendan Coyle (of Downton Abbey fame) and Michelle Fairley (as a particularly aggrieved member of the Stark family in Game of Thrones). And The Weir does seem to require the same expressive vocal drama and expository storytelling that television shows afford us. With its extraordinary character appeal and its fascinating series of spine-chilling Irish folktales, the Irish Repertory Theatre's production of The Weir is a darkly bloodcurdling, utterly captivating take on McPherson’s well-crafted play.

Set in a rural Irish pub, bar owner Brendan (a serenely gruff Tim Ruddy) and friendly barflies Jim (John Keating), Jack (Paul O’Brien) and Finbar (Sean Gormley) try to welcome a lovely, mysterious import from Dublin, Valerie (an aptly cast Amanda Quaid), as she acclimates herself to her windy surroundings. The men proceed to tell haunting tales of faeries, poltergeists and abandoned houses, all the while struggling to reconcile their forced bachelorhood with their sudden, protective interest in Valerie—who has an eerie story of her own to tell.

Director Ciaran O’Reilly carefully fleshes out each character through the exquisite exposition of each individual story, courtesy of McPherson’s chillingly arresting words. Somehow, distinctly Irish turns of phrase possess an earthy accessibility under his pen, as well as a surprising amount of humor. There is an understated, rugged comradeship that the men share in their familiar curses and ubiquitous swigs of Guinness. The Irish flavor of it all is surpassingly delightful, as are the fantastical folktales borne out of that stout-and-song tradition; McPherson deftly paints his characters as traumatic products of their stories, and it’s difficult to distract yourself from their beguiling eeriness.

Valerie’s tale holds a deep, desperately weary grief. Jack’s dual yarns of a coldly enchanting faerie adventure and a haunting lost love both possess an expertly gleeful, then progressively sorrowful mannerism. Perhaps most harrowing are Jim and Finbar’s stories, for different reasons; an endearingly odd Keating imbues Jim with a trembling, wide-eyed respect for the supernatural, while Gormley’s Finbar is an uneasy skeptic, begrudgingly honest in his retelling of an eerie encounter, but steadfastly refusing to believe in anything out of the ordinary. But it is O’Brien’s gruff, garrulous take on Jack that gives the entire production that heady, hallucinatory magic. He keenly modulates the volume of his voice—whispering at climaxes and chuckling in practice disbelief—until it becomes an actor all its own. The back-from-hiatus (and excellent) Tim Ruddy makes us wonder why Brendan is still a bachelor.

Ciaran O’Reilly has woven each of these character’s stories with some unknowable alchemy. Even as a single actor seems to commandeer the stage with his or her tale, a magnificent change comes over their compatriots on stage: they become the audience. We are mirrored in their slack faces and uneasy composures; just as the seated audience writhes inwardly against our collective imaginations when Valerie narrates her ghostly tale, Jack, Jim, Brendan and Finbar cannot move. A magnificent design and sound/light team induce much of the trance-like state the audience enjoys.

Courtesy of scenic designer Charlie Corcoran, the bar room is a study in light and dark browns, cleverly synthesizing the homey, fire-crackling hearth ambiance perfect for storytelling. The lighting by Michael Gottlieb is an understated marvel dimming almost indiscernibly during the narrative sequences. During these instances, the audience hears a hollow, equally imperceptible whistling of wind, perhaps the most effective minimalist contribution to the play, overseen by Drew Levy. But the actors’ voices are so spellbinding that the whistling seems an organic soundtrack to their story. 

The Weir ends much too quickly and the actors’ final exit leaves us with an irrational hope that they might come back on stage and tell us their hauntingly beautiful tales in their seductive Irish slang once more. Instead, we hear the familiar refrain of good luck, as Jack was accustomed to say before downing a pint, and the companionable reminder of the power of storytelling. In the end, when McPherson’s words have run out, we are left with a sweet, silent ache for some similar kind of chilling magic.

The Weir ran until Sept. 3 at The Irish Repertory Theatre at the DR2 Theatre (103 East 15^th St. between Union Square East and Irving Pl.) in Manhattan. For more information, visit www.irishrep.org.

Adrift in Choppy Waters

Playwrights Realm has been a champion of new writing since its inaugural production, Substitution, back in 2008, and has often introduced important new voices in theater. Last year’s offering, the thrilling My Mañana Comes by Elizabeth Irwin, won two Drama Desk nominations. However, Anna Ziegler’s A Delicate Ship, whose title is taken from W.H. Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts, doesn’t rise to the same heights.

The three-hander, a meditation on adulthood directed by Margot Bordelon, involves Sarah, a young woman in the midst of a happy relationship with her boyfriend Sam, and Nate, a young man whom she has known since childhood. Nate arrives drunk and unannounced on Sarah’s doorstep on a snowy Christmas Eve. What has instigated his sudden appearance is the discovery of a poem (Musée) he found in a college textbook from 1993.

As events unfold, characters break the fourth wall frequently to describe themselves or comment on cohorts. Early on, for instance, Sarah (Miriam Silverman) tells us about herself:

"I am the woman reading The New Yorker on the subway, mostly the cartoons and the movie reviews and occasionally an essay about the failures of doctors and hospitals and how we could, all of us, die very young…. In this memory, tonight, I am thirty-three."

At another point, Matt Dellapina’s easygoing Sam reveals: "I’m a Mets fan—always have been, die-hard—even during the years when they were worse than awful. I love sushi, though I didn’t have the nerve to try it til I was thirty-two years old."

It’s quickly apparent that Nate (Nick Westrate) is carrying a torch for Sarah, although it’s never quite clear why Silverman’s overly patient hostess suffers Nate’s intrusion into a romantic liaison on Christmas Eve. She and Nate used to smoke a joint together in their building while growing up, but it hardly makes his visit credible. Soon Nate is baiting Sam with snide comments that eventually turn into full-blown insults.

The set-up promises drama, but the direct address to the audience distances one from the emotions the characters feel. Ziegler has some interesting things to say about parents and children, time and happiness, but the primary mode of interaction is philosophical debate, even though Ziegler tries to establish the groundwork by having Sarah declare of Sam: “He’s a singer-slash-philosopher-slash-legal secretary.” It’s impossible to imagine any of them uttering something as mundane as “Please pass the mustard.” At one point, Bordelon even allows Nate to jump up and down on Sarah’s sofa with his shoes on. Ziegler seems to suggest that adults are uncertain children in full-size bodies, but it puts a great strain on credibility.

Even though the dialogue is lively, and Westrate brings passion to the volatile, overbearing Nate, there's a secondhand feeling to the proceedings. Once Nate exclaims, “Let’s play a game!” you might feel like cursing Edward Albee and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and all the dramatic descendants that it has spawned.

Auden’s poem is not merely the source of the title, but a portion is read aloud. The poem itself describes another work of art, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, showing a leg of the overweening young man as he plunges into the sea in a small corner of the canvas. Meanwhile, life goes on around him obliviously, and, in Auden’s words, “The expensive delicate ship, that must have seen/Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,/Had somewhere to get to, and sailed calmly on.” Poem and painting make the point that, as the world experiences an ordinary day, someone nearby is having a life-changing event: death, ruin or horror.

Ziegler’s characters live that Christmas Eve with intensity, and in a sober, affecting coda, two of them meet years later in Prospect Park. (Here the blurry photograph of the New York City skyline that backs Reid Thompson’s simple set makes its most pointed contribution, suggesting the mists of memory.) Each has found happiness, known family loss, and had children. And parenthood, Ziegler implies, has forced them finally to grow up. It’s a beautiful finale to a sometimes awkward production.

A Delicate Ship plays through Sept. 12 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Matinees are at 4 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or visiting https://ticketcentral.com.

Fatalistic Fandoms

In the Ice Factory Festival’s run thus far, no play has managed to reconcile the New Ohio Theatre’s intimate space with the magnitude of its subject matter as well as George and Co.’s production of Holden. The wrathful claustrophobia that Holden emanates very quickly imbibes the audience itself, and we find ourselves shifting uncomfortably in our plush blue seats. But it doesn’t begin that way. We are lulled into enjoying the sarcastic dialogue, the self-aware movements of the actors and Billie Holiday’s sad voice, which croons occasionally as part of the play’s soundtrack. But this false security is made all the more frightening by the individual character revelations that slowly begin to transfigure and twist the production into an entirely unexpected and strangely arresting creature.

The set is an organic element of the story: its walls of chopped logs and floors of wood chips create a color scheme of unending amber brown. Typed-up sheets of paper hang from a clothes line. It is evidence that we are in a writer’s island. There is a spare cot, shelves stacked with books and a detective-like desk with a reading lamp, typewriter and magnifying glass. And everywhere, crumpled balls of paper litter the furniture and the floor. Holden already seems overly cramped in its setup, and we wonder how its actors will negotiate the space, but this is a calculated move on the part of scenic designer Nick Benacerraf.

Writer-director Anisa George notes that Holden exists “in an impossible time and place,” lending an otherworldly tint to the log bunker in which her story is set. Four figures lie sleeping in the darkness as crickets chirp drowsily outside. One man gets up, quietly turns on a reading lamp and opens up J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye. His name is Hinckley (Scott Sheppard) and he begins to retype the entire book, word for word, with a typewriter set in front of him until the tall, side-burned and bespectacled figure of Chapman (Jaime Maseda) stops him. Both Chapman and Hinckley are devotedly respectful to the pajama-clad, white-haired Jerry Salinger (Bill George), who wakes up from a war-torn nightmare (the real Salinger took part in the hellish storming of Normandy on D-Day), but Zev (Matteo Scammell) seems to be on equal terms with the author.

Zev, a serious young man in torn jean-shorts and a red flannel shirt is the "new guy," as Chapman and Hinckley derisively christen him. It is not until the closing stages of Holden that the two start calling him by his name. A little girl called Peggy (Adele Goldhader) is the only one who is able to enter and exit the bunker; she appears to be Salinger’s 10-year-old daughter, and keeps urging him to return to the rest of his family. But Salinger pays little attention to his environs, even completely disregarding his three bunkmates as he fusses and fumes with his writing.

As the play progresses, it becomes evident that Chapman and Hinckley are infamous men. The former is Mark Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon in 1980, and his compatriot is John Hinckley, Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981 (a sore point for him since he couldn’t "finish the job" as Chapman did). Both men were apparent lovers of The Catcher In the Rye, rationalizing their murderous intents with Holden Caulfield’s disdain for "phonies." Hinckley was famously obsessed with Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Taxi Driver, as George funnily references before she reveals the character’s true self, but still he and Chapman are scarily similar. When Jerry (in the play) writes down one sentence in a fit of inspiration and falls back asleep, his two fans are rendered speechless by his words: “In his mind, fulfillment meant loving a good woman and killing a bad man.”

George cleverly introduces her characters with relative anonymity. Maseda makes Chapman seem like a hyperactive publisher or agent, impatiently keen on the release date for Jerry’s new book. Sheppard renders Hinckley as a comically bumbling figure, interacting innocently with his environment. It is only Zev, played to ominous ferocity by a supremely talented Scammell, who remains unknown to us until the end. Why is he being held in this purgatory-like fan land with such company as Lennon’s killer and Foster’s stalker? He doesn’t even like Salinger, and thinks Holden is “kind of a loser” to the utter shock of his fellow bunkmates. We soon find that George has created an even more terrifying character in Zev, one especially menacing to the modern American. He is the nameless, unselective kind of killer who rejoices in the power of guns and in closed, packed places. Even Chapman and Hinckley are disgusted by him, and it is with a bloodcurdling, knowing shiver that we hear Zev’s words: “I don’t like people. I like maps...blue prints. I like to see where the entrances and exits are. Public places. Stadiums. Schools. Theaters.”

The audience is flooded with memories from the country’s collective consciousness: Sandy Hook Elementary, a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and a church in Charleston, South Carolina. We see the second generation of American violence in Zev, and it is an aimless, indiscriminate violence borne not out of emotion, but detached cruelty. Zev’s fight isn’t against "the phonies" like Chapman and Hinckley. His violence doesn’t require reason or impetus, but merely opportunity. This complete shift in tone and performance that quietly occurs halfway through the play is an unflagging testament to George’s intelligent directorship and riveting dialogue. Holden merits a visit, and it almost seems like a citizen’s requirement, as we remain mired in the sorrows of modern violence.

Holden ran from August 6-8 at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St., #1E between Greenwich and Washington Sts.) in Manhattan. For more information, visit www.newohiotheatre.org.

A Different Kind of Fourth Wall

If the walls of your high school bathroom could talk, they could probably tell you all you need to know about high school more than the halls ever could. While shy grazes between classes and aggressive shoves against the lockers can be very revealing about the high school experience, what is said behind closed doors—away from the hallway ruckus—can be just as illuminating. Under the pretty exterior is the ugly truth under the harsh light, and these revelations can differ depending on the person. In those few precious moments before class, in front of the bathroom mirror, every person is faced with the one thing that can be the difference between success and failure: themselves. Such moments provide the backdrop to Renée Roden's SHE, a production under Open Booth Theatre Company which explores the inner worlds of teenage girls, all within the confines of an actual bathroom located at Cristo Rey New York High School.

The third floor women's restroom is one which, despite its tiny space, signifies the oft-claustrophobic mind of a teenage girl. Indeed, from the moment one enters Cristo Rey, one is immediately inundated with images of various ways the media represents women, all plastered along the staircase walls leading up to the third floor landing. The claustrophobia sets in further once we are seated and left not only with a delayed, torturous silence, but also the silencing soundscape of our thoughts. As the title suggests, SHE centers around three female protagonists: the titular, intelligent She; the fun and gregarious Ryan, She's best friend; and Cassie, a talented ballet dancer and She's twin sister. In the privacy of the restroom, they worry about how their hair is behaving and whether they'll actually pass that AP Bio exam—and most importantly: whether any of them are going that party.  

By all accounts and appearances, they seem like your average, everyday band of teenage girls. However, under the bright fluorescent light of their seemingly normal exterior world lies the stark harshness of their individual psyches. As each girl is left alone, we discover that while the three are vastly different, they each silently harbor the same problems. And interestingly enough, just as their personalities strike certain contrasts between them, so are each girl's ways of coping. She seeks solace in ritualistic perfection, reciting a mantra throughout the entirety of the play. Yale-hopeful Ryan finds comfort through numbers, made known through her use of a calorie-counting journal. Labyrinth-obsessed Cassie escapes through art—mainly dance, of course. "Everyone has to have somewhere that they go," she says at one point, as she does a private ballet solo to music from La Bayadère. "I think we all have one. A somewhere where we can go be by ourselves."  

While the intriguing mention of a toilet-centric play definitely warrants a second glance, it is the powerful acting which completely leaves you in the play's thrall. Much of this is due to the strong performances delivered by the show's three leading ladies. Just as the play's three girls are living testaments of dichotomy, so are the three actresses. As She, Katherine Dudas walks the fine line between strength and vulnerability, a trait which makes itself known by play's end. For her part, Emily Dauer's Ryan balances her character's quippy one-liners with introspective observations about body image. Just like her character Cassie, Meaghan McLeod possesses a body of contradictions—at once both elegant and rough around the edges, in all her Bowie-inspired glory.

The small space also provides an interesting layer to the play's acting, with the actors not only periodically breaking the fourth wall, but also nearly "physically interacting" with the audience themselves. The lighting design utilizes dark, colored tones as the girls shift into their internal worlds, an effect that is powerful to watch. Similarly, the props design does an impressive job in suspending disbelief, by utilizing a few simple props to signify different locales such as the local Panera Bread and the house party. The use of music is equally important; songs such as John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland" contrast with uptempo, Top 40s party anthems like Fifth Harmony's "Worth It," underscoring the play's recurring theme of appearances and society's pressures.

SHE examines the barriers between the private and the public selves—and whether a happy balance can be met. How many times have we tried to emulate that which isn't our actual self? Every day, as we are faced with these pressures, we often look to ourselves to blame. If we can lose that extra pound, make our lips plumper, or our hair silkier, we would stop hating the reflection staring back at us. However, it is only in looking outward and correcting society's standards instead that we can finally break through the barriers.

Open Booth Theatre Company's production of SHE ran at Cristo Rey New York High School (112 East 106th Street between Park and Lexington Aves.) from July 23 to Aug. 8. For more information on this and similar productions, visit http://www.openbooth.bpt.me.  

A Slanted Perspective

The reality in New York City and the rest of the modern world can seem absurd, morbid and mysterious from one minute to the next. Troy Deutsch’s In a Tilted Place shows just how strange life can really get. The production is a series of nine outlandish short plays, or wild scenes, and opens with a giddy, young woman (Cassandra Stokes-Wylie) retelling her “very, very real” dream. In her dream, she saw herself as a spirited girl, who had faith in God and ate ice cream at her local Dairy Queen. In her small town she “[biked] down Main Street with streamers on [her] handlebars.” Her story starts to take an unexpected turn when she shares about her first love, an “All-American quarterback.” She had group sex with her football player boyfriend and a brown, squirrel mascot who had “actual squirrel fur,” small paws and human eyes.

These creepy twists and turns are consistent throughout In a Tilted Place, and theatergoers wonder what this show is trying to say about the world we live in. The characters are in environments that seem normal at first and then their circumstances become bizarre and surreal. The female characters are often portrayed as controlling, manipulative, sex-crazed maniacs and the men are aloof, unavailable, drunk or driven mad by women. The value of this production is its ability to present ordinary, day-to-day life as uncanny, odd and whimsical. In a Titled Place is able to disgust, enlighten and provoke audience members.

In the second play, Chanel Chance, a lonely, desperate, young woman Ella (Kelsie Jepsen) sits in a cafe and tries to read Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Goldfinch.” Ella catches the gaze of a young man (Ronald Peet) sitting at another table and asks, “Are you someone? I’m sorry. But I noticed… Are you watching me? I’ve been looking over here and…” Their quirky exchange quickly becomes heated and even more awkward when Ella discovers that her own father has been paying this young man to spy on her. Ella forcefully kisses the man and demands, “Just look at me. Just smell me. Smell me. Smell my neck. Smell it. Smell it.” It is like watching a weirder version of an episode from “The Twilight Zone.”

This is Peet’s opening scene and his heavenly voice is abruptly overshadowed by Jepsen’s frenzied performance as she dominates the space. Peet is an exceptional actor from the Bahamas who graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts Drama program at New York University. Directors Ashley Brooke Monroe and Courtney Ulrich could balance out this scene by having Peet speak directly to the audience more often and have Jepsen slow down a bit. In a later play, Glowing Dinoflagellates, Peet plays naive and impressionable Benjamin. Benjamin is seduced by a powerful, horny, middle-aged woman (Pamela Shaw) to stay at her vacant inn on a cliff. Peet and Shaw’s authentic chemistry and first-rate performances complement each other extremely well and create a solid foundation for other actors to shine. Sex slaves (Sean Kazarian and Michael Kingsbaker) generously contribute to heightening this scene by bringing comic relief as they ramble on in unison about their torturous stay at the inn.

This production’s material is too insular and will likely not travel beyond audiences who enjoy fringe theater. In Brown Fish, a young woman sits on a bench in a concrete park and confesses to her male friend about her roommate’s poop cabin. She describes the poop cabin as “A brown, self-induced, feces log cabin. Like from pioneer days. But the logs, instead of wood, were made of poop.”  Wider audiences may not appreciate this production’s unconventional subject matter and style.

The set design by Kate Noll is uncomplicated with a few pieces of furniture and gray, bland walls that look like concrete. Viewers get the sense that these characters exist between a rock and a hard spot. It is like watching a group of people living in an emergency exit hallway in the basement of a skyscraper, and they do not know that the building is on fire. This minimalistic approach is not distracting and allows for audiences to focus solely on the performances. The simplicity works when a mermaid (Rachel Moulton) slowly drags herself across the floor and onto the stage in Call Me Daryl Hannah. Audiences are captivated watching her struggle as she pulls her body and huge fin across the bare, hard surfaces to meet a young, drunk man (Kingsbaker) sitting on a park bench.

In a Tilted Place relies on shocking and unusual subject matter to create tension and mystery. Audience members can turn into distant bystanders who are merely observing. As observers, they can become disconnected from these unique characters and not know how to relate. A clearer overall aim and vision could create a deeper appreciation for this production’s willingness to transcend traditional ideas.

In a Tilted Place runs until Aug. 30 at the IRT Theater (third floor of 154 Christopher St. between Washington and Greenwich Sts. in Manhattan). Evening performances are Monday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and matinee performances are Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by calling 800-838-3006 or visiting BrownPaperTickets.com.

Apocalypse Soon

Societies don’t come much more dystopian than that of Philip Ridley’s brutal and Darwinian Mercury Fur. In this vision of the future, staged in traverse by Scott Elliott for The New Group, Ridley posits a world—specifically New York—in the grip of post-apocalyptic violence. Zoo animals have been gunned down in their cages, riots fill the streets, and drugs are plentiful. 

Lanky Elliot (Zane Pais) and his dim-witted brother Darren (Jack DiFalco) have been sent to prepare a derelict apartment for a party; they are rearranging overturned, tattered furniture—though even “tattered” seems too stylish a description for the squalor designed by Derek McLane. Bits of white plaster and black chunks are strewn over the floor; the furniture is worn with holes, and graffiti is on the windows. 

The preparations are clandestine, and Elliot and Darren are skittish. They are thrown when they discover that one of the apartments in the abandoned building is occupied, by Naz (Tony Revolori, who played the bellboy in the film The Grand Budapest Hotel). Naz has met Elliot, who at one time was known as “butterfly man in the ice cream truck.” Naz traded an artifact he had looted from the Met for some of Elliot’s drugs, peddled in the form of butterflies—and everyone uses them. 

Naz is impressed to hear that Elliot and Darren are working for Papa Spinx, a legendary power broker. Darren pleads with Elliot to let the gentle Naz stay and help them. Elliot reluctantly agrees, but such is the sense of dread, fear, and jangled nerves that director Elliott creates that a tense viewer may want to yell, “Get out of there!”

Yet, other characters soon arrive. They include Lola (Paul Iacono), a drag queen who is Elliot’s lover and has been enlisted to prepare a young Asian boy, known as the Party Piece—for the upcoming event. But things don’t go as planned. The Party Guest has pushed up the date and yet is running late. The light is fading, so that Spinx may have trouble filming. (Splendid work by Jeff Croiter encompasses flashlights and candles, fire and dawn.)

When the gruff Spinx (Sea McHale) arrives, he has with him a blind woman dressed in a ball gown and known as the Duchess. Emily Cass McDonnell invests her with delusion and vulnerability that recall a Tennessee Williams character; a highlight is her attempt to sing “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music. (Ironically, Darren earlier recalls a memory of the movie his parents loved—about mountains and “do-re-mi.” But that unalloyed symbol of the triumph of good is a barely perceptible memory.)

Last to arrive is the Party Guest (Peter Mark Kendall), who has promised Spinx a good deal of money to stage a gruesome fantasy of his. Elliot, the most intelligent of the characters, is going along with Spinx only because he has to protect Darren and Lola. Elliot alone remembers history. He reads and he knows the past. “His brains are like the guts of a great white shark,” says Darren, who tells Naz, in a ghoulishly comic yet repellently vulgar rendering, the story of John F. Kennedy and his assassination, but mixes Marilyn Monroe and Hitler into the mangled history.

But, it turns out, Darren’s memory was induced by eating a butterfly, which Elliot presses him to describe. “What did it do to you?” Elliot asks. “Famous people … political leaders … killing them,” Darren answers. And Elliot divines, “Assassination. You ate a red with silver stripes.”

Mercury Fur is strong medicine. Although Ridley has a way with dialogue and description, it’s hard to judge whether his play merely wallows in depravity or is a legitimate assessment of mankind’s capacity for evil. Perhaps it’s so disturbing because the behavior of his characters leaves no doubt that any shred of decency will soon be utter moral desolation.

The New Group production of Mercury Fur plays at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd St. between 10th and 11th Aves. in Manhattan) through Sept. 27. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 p.m. on Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, visit TheNewGroup.org or TicketCentral.com.

Losing the Plot

Of the three plays open to critics at the Ice Factory Festival this summer, Losing Tom Pecinka, staged at the New Ohio Theatre by Morgan Gould & Friends, is most given to playfulness. Even with the story’s grey backdrop of Tom's death (an immediately evident plot point), writer and director Morgan Gould is more intent on good-humored self-mockery. But even with the occasional laugh that this meta-humor elicits, Losing Tom Pecinka struggles to elevate its story, and regularly defuses its own comedic fireworks.

The story surrounds the event of the eponymous character’s passing, and the destructive attempts of his friends in coping with it. The character Tom Pecinka (whose ghost and flashback-version is played by Zack Segel) is named after a real-life founder of Morgan Gould & Friends, and we assume that the title is a play on the actual Pecinka’s move to the Yale School of Drama. Janice (Tommy Heleringer, pretty in a dress) is a guilt-ridden ex-girlfriend, constantly at odds with Kai (Christopher Geary), Tom’s bitter best friend. Ryan Pecinka (Amir Wachterman), brother of the deceased and funniest of the lot, suffers silently in his love for Janice.

Wachterman is the undeniable talent of the show, straining laughter from even the most confused situations. His fairly ingenious dress-up as a sweaty tennis player, complete with a white sweater tied around his shoulders, making love-stricken speeches to Heleringer’s Janice makes for an uproarious incongruity. Heleringer himself is a shrill delight, making do with Janice’s oftentimes puzzling situational comedy to great effect. The entire cast bubbles with an underlying humorous energy, but their fractured dialogue and the intractable intent of Gould to exercise her didacticism, crowd out any real comedy. The plot is threadlike at best; Gould focuses more on unveiling her satiric takes on comedic tropes and stereotypes she has found in theater.

Indeed, the point Gould tries to make is that theater, and entertainment in general, has fallen into dreary, acceptable routines. These are routines from which her audiences need to be jolted out of; hence her lackadaisical attitude towards public relations (as evidenced by the production's promo). But the primary fault of Losing Tom Pecinka resides in its stubborn insistence on such satire. A heated discussion between Ryan and Janice, which held some potential for good drama, devolved into a satirical scientific run-on, the kind Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg would be proud of.

Even these scenes struggle to take off. We are left wondering whether the ghostly Tom that appears to Kai after his death is a comedic poke at depictions of the afterlife in traditional theater (perhaps Hamlet’s ghost?) or a product of Kai’s dramatic, psychological breakdown. It is only at the very end of Losing Tom Pecinka that we finally understand Gould’s directorial intent. Since the plot is a bare canvas, only present to hold the entire production together, the ending loses its finality and importance. Even after a seeming resolution to the play (all the characters huddle around Tom's grave in nostalgic remembrance), they all abruptly break into song, in an ineffable attempt at satirizing the musical.

There are moments of real hilarity, however. The ending is a particular delight to watch, since we are now certain that they’ve been making fun of our seriousness all along. Pregnant pauses and audience interactions with the cast produce considerable audience laughter, especially towards the end. Abrupt changes in time and place heftily undercut the sometimes-awkward interactions between actors, and keep us curiously waiting for the next scene. The sexual tension between Heleringer’s Janice and Wachterman’s Pecinka is palpable, but never serious. Even the eponymous character’s death is rendered comical, somehow. Yet, a willful need to jerk its audience out of its seated stupor and be “not boring” makes Losing Tom Pecinka a parody of itself: to be new and exciting might not be so interesting after all.

Losing Tom Pecinka ran from July 8-11 at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St., #1E) in Manhattan. For more information, visit http://www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

Souls Drowning in Sorrow

Dramedy very infrequently serves its stories well. Add to that alloy the well-worn narrative of an unfolding mystery, and one can easily overflow an already full cup. But Sea of Souls is an adamant proponent of such a mixing, so long as they can evoke every audience emotion from terror to laughter. Souls has a swift undercurrent of drama, cast over with ostensible shades of black comedy, all of which crashes together in a series of messy, heart-thumping climaxes. Ion Theater Company's presentation of this Southern-accented, surprisingly action-packed new play, has traveled across the country from it's home in San Diego to an off-Broadway reading at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. 

The play is like Picnic, in that its characters struggle to bury themselves under tough, yet brittle, exposures, and then it takes on something of a Tennessee Williams-like series of haunting personal revelations. Set in an unnamed mining town in the South, sometime in the late sixties, suspicions abound when a wandering folk singer from New York arrives at the town's bar (mysteriously named Sea of Souls—the acronymized cry for help is the production's first big clue to its audience) and won't stop asking about where she's from. When she clashes with Casey, the bar's bitter, sharp-tongued owner, Sam proceeds to uncover a series of clues about the small town's unsavory past. 

Perhaps Souls' greatest offering is the formidable Catalina Maynard, whose uncompromising, biting portrayal of the lead character Casey grounds the entire production. Casey's sharp tongue lashes out indiscriminately, and her stiff social graces provide everything from mild comic relief to extraordinarily fierce dramatics. Ms. Maynard's performance elevates Casey's character to that elusive kind of antihero likability, and few middle-aged matriarchs on stage can achieve that. With the potency of Ms. Maynard's presence, the other characters play up to her (with a singular exception), sometimes with affecting results. 

Abby Fields as the aptly-named Joan is the beguiling mystery at the heart of the play. She starts out as the mildly irritating moral center of Souls (she introduces herself by staring eerily at us and saying, prophet-like, "I know things. I have a gift.") But quickly, and quite beautifully, she evolves into a haunting symbol of her small town's deadly past, and it is in this transformation that we find Ms. Fields' strength as a character performer. Her powerful presence on stage is only rivaled perhaps by Ms. Maynard and Evan Jason Heil, the "new-in-town" deputy sheriff Roy whose aw shucks persona has no end to its audience appeal. 

Carl, the mischievous runaway and disillusioned Nam vet, is infected with a Kerouacian wanderlust typical to the sixties. Evan Kendig plays him with an endearing earnestness; it is easier to love the roguish Carl that it is to find commonality with the wandering Sam, played by the sometimes-interesting Rhianna Basore. Sam is something of a blank slate, and it is unclear if Ms. Basore meant to play her that way, or if it is an unforeseen consequence of an occasionally vacant performance. Carl and Sam are the thematic opposites to the dwellers of Souls' small town setting; Casey sets up a unique tension with the "Northerner" Sam who walks into her bar, bristling at the assumptions the former makes about her Southern hometown. Yolanda Franklin is delightful as Lila, the fast-talking foil to Casey's wrath and rage. Ms. Franklin portrays her with delicate intensity, as the only person who can control Casey's lashing tongue. Their banter seems a product of an eons-long friendship-turned-symbiosis, and provides a priming, emotional depth to Souls. 

In particular credit to the script and its writers, Glenn Paris and Claudio Raygoza, the dialogue manages to synthesize the nearness of an emotional apocalypse that every character on stage seems to be running from: Vietnam, spousal abuse, past murders, an abandoned child. Paris and Raygoza, also artistic directors, are keenly aware of their time period, and dress up speeches and arguments with the colloquialisms of that volatile time, the sixties. The characters take up an inherent residence in the cultural and political fabric of America in the sixties, yet never leave the diner tables and bar stools of their small Southern town. 

The mood of the production alternates seamlessly between sombre remembrances of said town's past, and the brisk diurnal rituals of 'good mornings' and humorous exchanges. The set itself beams with bright oranges, yellows and greens - overhead lamps glisten redly above the bar, and a colored jukebox sings soft folktales between scene changes (songs which happen to be original compositions by the sultry-voiced, and hugely talented, Linda Libby.) Most of the climaxes that clutter the ending (for there are multiple) take place in the dark, and more than one audience member shuddered at the bloodcurdling screams and bangs that suddenly reminded us that we were done laughing at Casey's sarcasm or trying to work out Sam's sorrowful origin story. Sea of Souls isn't realized fully until the explosive ending(s), but that's a good thing - it builds its mysterious stamina over time and sprints to a breathtaking finish. 

Sea of Souls ran until July 11 at Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street) in Manhattan. For more information, visit http://iontheatre.com/#ion-home-page.