Fantastic Four

The Astoria Performing Arts Center is a small building tucked away near the Triborough Bridge, where it is being temporarily housed by the Greek Cultural Center in what appears to be the basement of a residence. But for those willing to give their Metrocard a little use, a trip to the end of the N subway line is akin to finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There's no leprechaun involved, however, just the solid quartet that makes up the cast of Forever Plaid, a musical that, despite never playing the Great White Way, has enjoyed nearly 20 years of success at the national and regional tour levels. It is fitting that the Plaids play such an intimate venue as the APAC, since the group never made the big time during its heyday. In an irony to end all ironies, the fictitious band, which continued the quintessential 1950's doo-wop style into the 1960's, died in a car accident—a collision with a group of teen girls on their way to see the Beatles in 1964, just as the Plaids were headed to their first big gig. The show's premise puts the foursome in limbo, hoping that if they can simply perform their concert, they can finally move on.

There isn't much more plot or suspense than that, just a series of delightful performances and character bits. Frederick Hamilton leads these four outstanding multitalents as Frankie, perhaps the most grounded of the group. Shad Olsen is terrific as the lispy Sparky, whose speech impediment gives way to amazing vocal chops time and time again (he also shows off his skills as a pianist during "Heart and Soul"). Ryan J. Ratliff is Smudge, Sparky's childlike half-brother, while Joseph Torello is the nerdy Jinx.

The group gels together quite well on such standards as "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Sixteen Tons/Chain Gang," and "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing," and the members' zeal for the songs is infectious. They also put their well-honed, joyous harmonies to work on lesser-known songs, including "Perfidia," "Before Love," "Crazy 'Bout Ya Baby," and the particularly tender "No, Not Much." Another highlight is the first-act closing medley of "Caribbean Plaid," in which the Plaids sing the songs of Harry Belafonte; numbers like "Calypso," "Day-O," and "Matilda" bring the audience to its feet.

Flawless as this performance is, there is one minor complaint about the show, and it is a structural one. The second act is barely half the length of the first. While it is wise to ensure that the second act runs shorter than the first, it would have been nice if Forever Plaid had incorporated more songs (the well-paced show flies by), or at least divvied up the numbers with a tad more equality. However, director Brian Swasey (a talented performer himself) makes the most of each number, recreating many of the archetypical dance moves associated with the 1950's crooning groups that Plaid so lovingly pays homage to. (Writer Stuart Ross did the original choreography.) This is a group that is truly in sync.

Only at one point near the show's end does the dialogue overtake the singing, as Hamilton delivers a bittersweet monologue in which he recognizes the heights that the quartet never achieved. While that may be true of the Plaids, the show that features them at APAC is nothing short of a major success. Encore!

Growing Up Ibsen

Ibsen is everywhere. First there was Heddatron at the HERE Arts Center, a hilarious sendup of Ibsen's "well-made play" Hedda Gabler featuring a cast of robots. Then in March, Cate Blanchett and her fellow Aussie actors invaded the Brooklyn Academy of Music, delivering a fascinating production of Hedda Gabler with Blanchett as the craziest Hedda this side of Bellevue. Now, with spring in full bloom, Wakka Wakka Productions brings us The Death of Little Ibsen at the Sanford Meisner Theater, featuring a cast of puppets and an Ibsen who is the craziest of them all. Strange, funny, and completely original, the play is a 50-minute joyride into the bizarre world of Ibsen's mind.

The Death of Little Ibsen fascinatingly and often hilariously deconstructs the famed Norwegian playwright's tumultuous life. The production chronicles Ibsen's life from his birth in 1828 to his death in 1906, and all of the play's characters, with the exception of his mother, are puppets. The title character, Little Ibsen, serves as an embodiment of the inner voice of Ibsen the man. And fortunately for the audience, Ibsen's inner voice is a little crazy.

The show begins with Little Ibsen's birth, a particularly amusing sequence, as he is literally ripped from his mother's womb. From there, Ibsen grows up. He attends grammar school and is accused of plagiarism. He fights with his demanding parents and leaves home. In his early 20's, he meets and falls in love with a servant girl, who seduces him and becomes pregnant.

Ibsen panics and flees to a university, where his radical thinking leads him to launch a newspaper. Soon his first play is published, and he is hailed by the people but reviled by the critics. He marries and has a child, then deserts them (on the back of a pig!) to concentrate on his writing. As the years pass, Ibsen gives up his mistress, returns to his wife and now-grown son, and publishes some of his greatest works.

Ibsen's plays are huge successes, but through it all Little Ibsen succumbs to his own inner voice (Littler Ibsen?). It seems Little Ibsen suffers from irrational bouts of paranoia and a monster-sized inferiority complex that grows worse with each passing success. Ibsen's paranoia takes the form of two devil puppets. These cynical devils mock and disparage him; acting as a chorus, they sing their negative messages in clever rhymes. The devils denounce Ibsen's writing, calling The Master Builder pretentious and sneering at Hedda Gabler. As for his inner-inner voice, it tells Ibsen to just die because he isn't really any good at what he does, and besides, the critics don't like him very much.

The unusual production benefits significantly from Kirjan Waage's brilliant puppet design. One of Wakka Wakka Productions's four members, Waage brings Ibsen and his puppet colleagues to dramatic life. With their oversized features and anatomically correct appendages, the puppets are in some respects grotesque. Little Ibsen is first seen naked with genitalia on display, and later his servant seducer exposes her breasts during a rather hilarious chase sequence.

The design and execution of these peculiar puppets is so convincing that they achieve lifelike realism with their eerily authentic movements and speech. The Little Ibsen puppet, in particular, successfully personifies Ibsen's personality, presenting a man who is at times interesting and amiable and at other times ornery and frightening.

The members of Wakka Wakka do it all—sets, lights, music, costumes. But they are exceptional in their roles as puppeteers and set designers. They manipulate the nearly dozen puppets with expert precision, becoming part of the scenery as they vanish into their puppet roles. David Arkema is particularly effective as Little Ibsen. Dressed in a costume identical to his puppet's, Arkema is flawless at bringing the playwright's neuroses to life.

The set design is inspiring, proving just how much can be achieved with limited resources. Consisting of two boulders, a table, a chair, and a wardrobe, the set pieces are covered in moss and various forest greens. Within this fantastical funhouse, the set comes alive, opening up into secret compartments and serving multiple functions.

What The Death of Little Ibsen gives its audience, albeit with tongue firmly planted in cheek, is the mind behind the man. The play masterfully exposes a truth about the great playwright: most of his plays are actually about him. In deconstructing Ibsen, Wakka Wakka charts his quest to find his true self. As he wrestles with ghosts from his real life as well as those from his writing, he arrives at his final destination—death. It's a fantastic, insightful journey that never fails to entertain.

Devil's Due

German literature has a rich tradition of drama with epic proportions. There's Wagner's Ring cycle, of course, and Brecht's self-styled "epic theater." Though lesser known, there's also Karl Kraus's play The Last Days of Mankind, which was so long he claimed it could be performed only on Mars, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's fifteen-and-a-half-hour film Berlin Alexanderplatz. But the granddaddy of all of these sprawling Teutonic masterworks, which often are as impossible to watch as they are to stage, is Goethe's Faust. Clocking in at just over six hours, it's a work that is often read (or at least assigned) in college, yet rarely given a full production stateside.

It's not just the length of Faust that intimidates directors and producers; it's the wildly incongruous plot and fantastic stage directions as well. In Part I, which is the more conventional of the two parts by far (and makes sense as a self-contained play), we witness Faust, a lonely man of learning, surrounded by his books, globes, alchemy instruments, and astrolabes. Still, he possesses a desire to overcome his own academic verbiage, ever striving and seeking a transcendent knowledge of experience.

In fact, Faust has just retranslated the first line of Genesis as "In the beginning was the…Deed" when a poodle he found on a nature hike transforms into Mephistopheles, a devil. The poodle, which struck me as silly or bathetic when I read the text years ago, was one of the great surprises of watching a staged production. It is played by an actor in a giant papier-mâché costume and comes off as a wonderfully theatrical element of the ridiculous.

The devil, of course, has come to strike a bargain. Mephistopheles gets Faust's soul if he can find one moment that Faust believes contents him perfectly.

Mephistopheles then whisks Faust away to a rowdy bar to show him a good time; when this doesn't work, he takes Faust to an orgiastic rite of primitive witches (played by absurdly cross-dressing actors). Next, Mephistopheles concocts a plan to get a simple young peasant girl, Gretchen, to fall in love with him. But, as these things are apt to do, the affair ends badly: Gretchen had to kill her mother and her baby. With her suicide, she ascends to heaven, forgiving all, while Faust is still found wanting.

Part II is a crazy roller-coaster ride through several mythological realms, as Mephistopheles now pulls out all the stops to find Faust a transcendent moment. Faust whizzes around through world-historical zeitgeists, from an ancient Egypt of griffins and sphinxes flapping their golden feathers to a future where a mad scientist has created a little man glowing inside a test tube.

One fantastical scene has the man-made "homunculus" riding on the back of the sea god Proteus, who has turned into a dolphin. To stage the scene, actors in costumes hold props representing their characters in action. Nearby, several sea nymphs frolic on the half-shell, reminding me of scenes of mythological mischief from Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle.

In the middle of Part II, there is an hourlong play-within-a-play featuring Helen of Troy. Helen and Faust have a child, and there is a funny scene in which their child, represented by a surprisingly expressive puppet, hops and skitters around the mountainsides.

Suffice it to say, however, that Faust is never satisfied, and the tragedy belongs to Mephistopheles. If the second half of Part II begins to lag with its sheer glut of myth and profusion of characters, one wants to be sure to wait for the finale. Devils dance around with giant masks that make them look like bobblehead dolls, endless streams of silver confetti pour down from the ceiling, and a chorus of angels sings an operatic hymn to life.

In fact, director David Herskovits has inserted many imaginative touches throughout the production, emphasizing the self-consciously theatrical quality of the text, which is often interpreted "poetically." For example, stagehands hilariously prance out onstage to hold a cloth to cover Gretchen when she is changing and, later, to cover the destruction of a violin.

Set designer Carol Bailey has given different scenes radically distinctive styles, from romantic gardens painted on a backcloth, to a small proscenium stage for the miniplay, to plywood cutouts for the mountain crags.

While all of the actors are adequate, David Greenspan, playing a dapper Mephistopheles, has the edge of worldly savoir-faire and insouciant archness necessary to convey the obsessive scheming of a devil who's seen it all. His character shifts from making flip gestures and snide wisecracks to having genuine pathos in his "death" speech. Douglas Langworthy's new translation uses a snappy, vernacular verse that emphasizes the off-the-cuff wit of the original.

If you have the stamina, seek out this rare opportunity to experience a transcendently theatrical staging of an epically proportioned classic.

Hey, Mr. D.J.

Whether you're at an East Williamsburg loft party in Brooklyn or a velvet-roped mega-club in Manhattan's Meatpacking district, the best D.J.s know how to gently coax a crowd into ever-giddier heights of abandon. D.J.s are to songs and lyrics what astute librarians are to books. Their art is one that rides—that surfs—on sensibility, mood, and intuition; they are the tone painters of a vibe's pure gestalt. A great D.J. seems to have a sixth sense to mix songs smoother than a good bartender mixes drinks. The best D.J.s can weave a tapestry of sounds whose narrative arc over the course of a night transcends its individual sonic threads; the worst D.J.s, on the other hand, make you long for the random-shuffle option on your iPod.

Playwright and director Mitchell Polin's new play, Mustard, proceeds in a self-described process of "remixing" classical dramatic source material. That is, Polin "samples" the characters, phrases, themes, and textures of traditional plays, then re-dubs them, scratches them, subjects them to feedback loops and distortions, blends one into another, and creates a multitrack text that includes wholly contemporary rhythms and beats.

As a character in his play states, "Our situation as artists is that we have all this work that was done before we came along. ... I would not present things from the past, but would approach them as materials available to something else ... a collage made from various plays."

The classical text he "samples" in Mustard is that old Ibsen warhorse The Dollhouse. The sample, in this case, is the famous climax in which Nora tragically realizes her independence and walks out on Torvald. Between suspended splices of actual Ibsen dialogue and oblique allusions, Polin orchestrates a multimedia pastiche of musical and meta-theatrical vignettes.

During many scenes, characters make glib philosophical comments on the (non-)action or build up expectations for what is about to happen. Yet even though several characters repeatedly declare that "everything you are about to see has already happened," the play never quite seems to begin.

Insouciant girls in miniskirts and oversized sunglasses lounge around provocatively as if in a glossy fashion magazine. Other girls lisp gibberish nature poems or spout metaphoric nonsense about aliens and galaxies while playing magic tricks with small flashlights. All of this feels like a prelude to some promised "big event" that never materializes.

The play's high points, however, come when a live indie rock band, Tungsten74, jams out everything from 70's pop tunes like My Sharona to eerie Radiohead-like electronica. Meanwhile, a video screen in back of the stage alternately displays abstract rhythmic patterns, time-delayed double exposures of the actors' movements, and an image of the cosmos as an eyedropper's universe of writhing amoebas.

Of the cast members, Michael Burke displays the most stage presence and panache as an androgynous, leather-clad, potty-mouthed cynic who trolls the city's alleyways for sex. Unfortunately, his tirades never go anywhere—they are sterilized, self-contained exhibits in a kind of theatrical test tube. His barely concealed threat to rape the audience is never believable because we've long ago realized the play lacks the bite of real action.

Mustard is quite "experimental" in many ways, yet, like most experiments, it advances a big theory but delivers a small failure. The problem with the play is that while its goal of "de-centering" a text is an interesting—even noble—cause, the piece does not provide an alternative form of coherence to that Aristotelian chestnut about having a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end. At least for me, while individual lines or bits of action were enjoyable, the overall impression was murky and ill conceived.

To be fair, the press release warns, "Polin is a director who moved from happenings into theater." In fact, I wished the play retained more of the spirit of a rock concert and of happenings, instead of utilizing the standard, static theatrical division between audience and actors. If a stated goal of the play was to break down the boundaries between life and theater, the audience members needed to be a greater part of the action: they needed to stand up, rock out, move around, intermingle, break-dance, and crowd-surf. They needed to touch and be touched.

The play needed to have the spontaneity of a live D.J. mixing and scratching tracks, responding to its live audience, rousing the wallflowers to blossom. As it was, the audience members slumped in their chairs, politely watched, and timidly crept toward the door before the band finished its last song.

Royally Lewd

Bloody Mary, Rachel Shukert's comedy about the life of Queen Mary I of England, now playing at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, is, to be blunt, a deluge of profanity and sexual perversion. Mary's reign—as if the monarch's titular nickname isn't indication enough—racked 16th-century England with religious and political turmoil. Hundreds were burned at the stake as Mary sought to redeliver her country to Catholicism. At the Clemente, Shukert has the moxie to drag this troubled period through the anachronistic gutter of our modern, sacrilegious, pornography-soaked culture. The product is a sex comedy of the basest, most violent type.

To be clear, I think this is a good thing. Anyone with a taste for the kind of obscene—and obscenely smart—linguistic excess that made, say, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut such a delight should make time for Third Man Productions's lewd gem. If more history were given the same irreverent treatment, we might feel less alienated from it. We certainly wouldn't be bored by it. Shukert's work is crudity par excellence.

The evening begins with King Henry VIII (Ian Unterman) loudly sodomizing Queen Catherine of Aragon (Kristin Slaysman). When Catherine points out that this particular method has yet to produce an heir, Henry offers unsurely, "This is how they did it back at Eton." A brief anatomy lesson by the queen and a second, more "proper" attempt later—which includes a mid-coital tableau and a suitably cinematic flash of white light—and Mary herself (the excellent Audrey Lynn Weston) emerges meekly upstage, dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl.

What follows hews impressively close both to what we know and what we think we know of Mary's life and times. Henry soon throws Catherine over for Anne Boleyn (played in hilarious drag by James Ryan Caldwell), who bears him the daughter who will later become Queen Elizabeth I (also Caldwell). Henry then throws over Boleyn (who ends up beheaded) for Jane Seymour (whom we do not see here). Seymour finally bears Henry his much-desired son, Edward (Reginald Veneziano). However, in quick succession both Henry and Edward shuffle off their mortal coils, leading to a short squabble over the crown, a political skirmish that Mary eventually wins.

Good comedy doesn't pervert the essence of its subject as much as it points up the absurdity that's already there. From her promiscuous father—Mary's ill health is rumored to have been the result of congenital syphilis contracted during her birth—to her plainly chilly marriage to Phillip II of Spain at the venerable age of 37, the story of Mary's life is already rife with sexual undertones (even leaving aside her intense devotion to Catholicism, a religion of subsumed eroticism if ever there was one). Shukert simply turns these into wildly glaring overtones.

For instance, when young Mary catches her father receiving oral favors from Boleyn, the king stammers that the service is actually a kind of medical procedure. Mary innocently presses:

Mary: Why can't Mummy [do] it for you?

Henry: Because Catholics can't do that, Mary!

Mary: Cardinal Wolsey can. I've seen.

Those times Shukert moves away from such easy vernacular into what I can only call heightened ribaldry—inventive, period-sounding vulgarity, essentially—the wonderful cast rises easily to meet her. When his sixth wife denies the dying Henry one last fling, he rumbles, "Such treason! To deny thy dying husband a final tussle of the flesh? When God alone knows what kind of [female genitalia] he shalt find in heaven! Hearken thus, slattern! Or thy shall au revoir to one's tête as did an ill-fated queen long before thou couched here."

Such pervasive indecency would grow thin without a human, emotional anchor. This is exactly what Weston provides in her turn as Mary. She is the nerd who discovers that even after she's bested the bully—in this case, by strapping him to a pole and torching him—she will always be greeted icily by those people whose acceptance she craves. Weston's sweet insecurity is the necessary counterweight to Bloody Mary's coarseness.

At bottom, this rampant solecism speaks to more than just a gleefully depraved imagination; it's clear and admirable evidence of Shukert's love for the language, even if that love is more fit for the brothel than the nunnery. Oscar Wilde offered that "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Perhaps, but as Bloody Mary shows, sometimes the gutter works just fine.

The Play's the Thing

Bethany Larsen's Maybe He's Just Not That Into You and Nick Moore and Susannah Pearse's Decisive highlight a group of six, 10-minute plays produced by the Milk Can Theater Company and collectively called The Hamlet Plays. Half of the short pieces are set in the modern day and are about actors talking about acting, while the other three present conversations among characters from the play. In Larsen's chick-lit toned piece, Ophelia laments the demise of her relationship with Hamlet to Ibsen's Nora and Oscar Wilde's Salome. Both women are headstrong and self-confident, and they console Ophelia as though they were the supporting cast on Sex and the City. Tongue placed firmly in cheek, Larsen writes self-conscious characters who know they are characters and who can talk about life after the final curtain call. Nora is collecting alimony from Torvald, and Salome is a hit at her belly-dancing class. These women are engaged in a purely fictional process of feminist-lite literary revision, remaking the story into "her-story." Thanks to Larsen's deft use of modern pop-psych dialogue, it's a fun process to watch.

Three members of the Post-Hamlet Support Group welcome Alex, a surfer dude with treacherous motives, in Decisive, a crowd-pleasing musical that plays the Prince of Denmark's tragic flaw for comic effect. Rachel (Jennifer Stackpole), Joe (Reza Jacobs), and Richard (Jared Dembowski) are actors who cannot cope with life after Hamlet. Each has acted the lead role (Rachel was in an all-female version of the play) and meet to reminisce about the good old days. When Alex arrives, they regard him snobbily but come around after he presses them to relive the moment they found out they were cast.

We soon learn that Alex hasn't actually played Hamlet but has been turned down for the parts that were offered to Joe and Rachel; his father was denied Richard's role in London in 1964. After his father's ghost visits him, Hamlet is famously indecisive. His inability to take action against his Uncle Claudius is fueled by his thoroughly modern self-obsession and soliloquizing introspection. And so Alex's decision to seek out and ultimately destroy these former competitors, which results from his decisive and direct nature, gets at why he probably wasn't right for the part in the first place.

Larsen, Moore, and Pearse make good theater because they mine the textual and thematic treasure chest of the Bard's best-loved play. They successfully communicate interesting stories in a short amount of time by giving us characters whose sense of self is either fueled by or in comical opposition to those selves we find in Shakespeare's text.

The Lamp's Lit attempts to show us scenes that Shakespeare didn't, and while adding to what most people regard as a pretty decent play is a bit presumptuous, it does manage to present a sympathetic portrait of the traitorous queen. Roya Shanks gives one of the show's best performances as Gertrude, pacing about the royal chamber, awaiting her son's return. TJ Morton is a disappointingly stiff Ghost who elicits his wife's help to kill Claudius; casting an actor who at least looks like a grave, wronged king might have helped.

Cheryl Davis's dialogue is at its best when Gertrude has to respond to both the Ghost and her impatient husband, Claudius, who wants her to come back to bed. The piece is ultimately not as finely conceived as Maybe or Decisive, but it does go out on an intellectually stimulating limb.

I found the other three pieces—The Player King Musical, Baloney, and The Match—boring and hardly worth mentioning. None of them offered characters worth caring about, which is saying a lot when their approximate run time is only 10 minutes each. The Player King Musical is a clichéd meet-and-mate, and Baloney is a poor attempt at philosophy, choked by obvious metaphors. Better actors could squeeze some value out of The Match, about longtime friends competing for the lead role as you know who, but as is, it's flatfooted and melodramatic.

None of the plays were made better by Michel Ostaszewki's distractingly colorful backdrop. The versatile scaffolding worked well and should have been paired with a simple black background that would have made the small space seem less cluttered.

At the end of the show, audiences were encouraged to vote for The Hamlet Plays in the Innovative Theater Awards's online balloting. In this case, it's too bad we can't select the show's individual plays for these Off-Off-Broadway awards. When the pieces are grouped together this way, the bad ones distract too much from the good.

Blood, Love, and Rhetoric

Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's most enduring antiheroes, was famously obsessed with being, or not being—as well he might have been, given the way his world had been turned upside down. But in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard doesn't ask for our sympathy for the moping Prince of Denmark. The focus instead is on two of Hamlet's university friends, who are drawn into the strange events in Elsinore and perpetually bumbling around the edges of the drama, unsure as to what they are supposed to be doing and kept in the dark as dark currents swirl around them. In the Milk Can Theater Company's production of Stoppard's 1966 play, action is the name of the game. Whether it's the titular characters tossing coins (85 heads in a row) or the bawdy, dissolute troupe of tragedians comporting themselves around the scaffolding that serves as a set, the characters are a mass of restless energy. Director Julie Fei-Fan Balzer shows us a northern kingdom where almost everyone is frantically trying to outrun, outfight, outscrew, or outmaneuver his own fate.

The play presents us with two very sympathetic leads. Rosencrantz (Avery Clark) is boyish and playful but with a pensive, melancholy streak; he hides his heartbreak over the inevitability of time passing with games and action. Guildenstern (Walter Brandes) is wiry and warier, brooding over the twosome's situation and how they got into it.

But the show belongs to the troupe of Players, under the direction of their wry and lascivious pitchman, the Player. Accompanied by drumbeats and noisemakers and juggling and swaggering, these Players of the "blood, love, and rhetoric school" fill up the stage. Playing kazoos and wearing codpieces, they offer entertainments both over the top and under the covers, if you catch their drift. Encountering the two courtiers on the road to Elsinore and again within the castle—as well as on later voyages—the Players are a maelstrom propelling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on their way.

Played by Zack Calhoon, the Player is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead's beating heart—the lewd, earthy, and surprisingly wise voice of reason. He and his troupe of fallen tragedians know all the slings and arrows that outrageous fortune has to offer. They—and apparently only they—realize that in their world, they are all just following the path they were set on. As the Player says, "We are tragedians, you see? We follow directions. There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means."

Also, and by no means should this be discounted, the Players do the most engaging and enjoyable re-creation of Hamlet's play-within-a-play, The Murder of Gonzago, that I have ever seen. Great use of kazoos.

The title of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead being what it is, the fates of the two hapless courtiers from Shakespeare's most famous tragedy should come as no surprise. But it's a testament to this production that when the third act begins to wane and it begins to dawn on the characters (and the audience) that death is how things will end for these two, the effect is heartbreaking.

Just as in Hamlet, Stoppard's play ends as Fortinbras enters to announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. But the playwright does pay his two hapless characters tribute: they are no longer lost in the carnage of a royal bloodbath, and the audience can shed a tear for two innocent souls who followed their paths to unhappy ends.

Dead Zone

Don't let the title fool you; Welcome Home Steve isn't about Steve at all. Craig McNulty's play is about Steve's friends, a motley group with not much in common. Having met in writing school, they've managed to keep in touch for a number of years after graduation, despite the dramatically different lives each has chosen. The play begins with the friends gathering in Sheila's apartment to welcome Steve back from an extended jaunt in Turkey. But when they go to rouse him from his sleep, they find him cold. Steve has overdosed on a tiny portion of the heroin from a six-figure drug deal he was putting together.

While such a premise brims with dramatic promise, McNulty uses his characters as mouthpieces for weak arguments about responsibility and ethics instead of letting the conflicts inherent in his material run a natural course. As a result, his characters seem one-dimensional, which detracts from the script's finer-crafted moments.

Sheila is an ultra-spiritual hippie type; she was also Steve's girlfriend when he was not globetrotting on his various misadventures. Peter is a stoner, not quite busy laboring on his stoner masterpiece while paying the bills working behind the register at a taco shop. Billy is a horror writer living hand-to-mouth, in stark contrast to his Wall Street girlfriend, Holly. John has given up his writing aspirations for an unfulfilling life as a grade-school teacher.

Like filmmaker Kevin Smith, McNulty builds much of his dialogue from arguments over geek-culture standards; the play opens on Peter trying (and failing) to convince Billy of the artistic merit of graphic novels. Instead of eliciting the kind of understated performances Smith gets from his actors in films like Clerks, director Guilherme "Guil" Parreiras gives his actors free rein with the script, resulting in quite a bit of overacting, particularly by Joseph Amato, who plays Peter. While Amato eventually does get some laughs, his wild gesticulations and inconsistent mock-ghetto accents betray an insecurity with the material.

Once Steve is found dead, the play shifts to a more serious tone, and the play begins to lose its credibility. For some reason, nobody even thinks about or discusses calling the police when his body is found. Rather, all the characters agree to let Sheila perform vague and repetitive spiritual rites over the body, which conveniently allows for different characters to be left alone with each other, creating contrived conflicts.

When Peter and Billy decide to sell the heroin, John tries to talk them out of it. But the trio seems to be more concerned with debating the questionable morality of providing drugs to junkies than the legal ramifications of such actions. This, too, feels more contrived than natural, especially because the play never addresses what actually happens to the drugs.

A big twist comes at the end when one character confesses to administering the deadly dose to Steve. This prompts John, who hears the confession, to (finally) call the police, admitting that he was the one who unwittingly killed his friend. It would be a nice twist, except it leaves one wondering: if the evidence of the crime could be so easily faked/destroyed, why not let the blame for Steve's death fall on Steve?

Ken Larson's scenic design stands out, lending the play some much-needed believability. The setting is the living room/kitchen of a Brooklyn apartment, and the stage looks every bit the part. From a toy basketball hoop on the wall to the lived-on couch, the set's distinctive touches give the actors a comfortable world to work in.

But while the production values are very good and the acting is professional, the script still needs work. Should McNulty find a way to color in his sketched characters and craft a more believable story arc, a subsequent rewrite might produce a fine play. As it is, though, Welcome Home Steve seems like a workshop production.

Darkness Falls

One fateful day, a 12-year-old girl left her Bronx apartment to buy a notebook at the store. When she found that she did not have enough money, her third-floor neighbor suggested that she call her mother from her apartment. Naïvely, the girl obliged, and soon found herself knocked out and tied to a bed in the boiler room of their building. Desi Moreno-Penson's terrifying play Devil Land, at Urban Stages, is a reimagining of this real-life incident with a supernatural twist. A green monster that the kidnapped girl, Destiny (Paula Ehrenberg), refers to as the Grinch watches over her from within the rusty yellow boiler, scratching at the metal whenever it appears her captors, Americo (Miguel Sierra) and Beatriz (playwright Desi Moreno-Penson), might harm her.

The stage is set to confine both the characters and audience in an uncomfortably small, inescapable space. The boiler room is dark and dreary, with boards covering the windows, a coiled chain in the corner, and a neatly made, flat gray cot. Before the play starts, we hear ominous music that foreshadows doom with every heavy note.

There is an underlying symbolism in everything that happens in Devil's Land, which can help ease the tension if you focus more on that than the reality of the situation. Destiny is more than just a pigtailed girl in peril; she has clairvoyant powers passed down to her from her Taíno ancestors. The Taínos were Indians who inhabitated the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, and their culture was nearly destroyed under Spanish colonization during the 16th century. Destiny embraces the spirituality that comes with being a member of the clan, never allowing her captors to erode her faith.

Her character represents the enslaved Taínos, who were like innocent children in their trusting of the world and others in it. In this respect, Americo and Beatriz personify those who tortured the Taínos in a violent attempt to change their beliefs. When Destiny asserts that her own spirit cannot be broken, Beatriz decides to kill what she can't convert. The climax involves an internal struggle on Americo's part to go along with this, while Beatriz spirals into a hysterical state, eagerly listing all the gruesome ways she would like to kill the little girl while she lies helplessly on the bed, drugged into a deep sleep.

The three characters who hold this piece together are terrific actors. Sierra has a great moment where he shifts from his realistic portrayal of a man beaten down by life into a fantastical character who moves and talks quite differently. Moreno-Penson is spine-chilling as a mentally unstable, maniacally religious woman capable of snapping at any given moment. And Ehrenberg, an adult actress, is fully convincing as a wide-eyed 12-year-old struggling to make sense of her horrific situation while maintaining a sense of mystery about whether her ability to converse with ghosts and the Grinch is real or a drug-induced delusion.

But at times Devil Land tends to go beyond scary and into the realm of the nightmarishly disturbing. It is hard to find comfort in the fact that a protective green monster is watching over Destiny when we see her chained to the bed, fighting off sexual advances from Americo and physically harmed by Beatriz in a violent scene that ends with a quick fade to black with the lingering sound of a child's terrorized scream.

However, for adults who enjoy a good hair-raising, spine-tingling tale, the technical elements of Devil Land are perfectly crafted, especially the flashes of yellow light and booming thunder that punctuate the story's most frightening moments seconds before we anticipate them happening. With its finely tuned acting, tightly plotted story, and shocking special effect in its final moments, Devil Land has all the ingredients for a petrifying thriller.

Searching for Sanctuary

When a play opens on Broadway, it is judged by critics and audiences within its specific cultural moment; reviews can either buttress or deflate a production, but the work's lasting impact is more difficult to predict or measure. As years pass, a playwright's words can become more or less profound, and a play's longevity is often dependent on its reception by regional audiences, as well as the creative ingenuity of the theater companies that choose to rescue it from obscurity. When esteemed playwright Lanford Wilson's play Angels Fall opened on Broadway in 1982, New York Times critic Frank Rich was quick to point out its "ailments." Although Wilson had won the Pulitzer in 1980 for Talley's Folly, his latest effort played a scant 57 performances.

Some 25 years later, Theater Forum has revived Angels Fall in a compelling, intimate production, staging Wilson's play—a study of six individuals stranded in a mission church in New Mexico—where it might have worked best all along: in a church's sanctuary.

Set designer Andrew Seltz has cordoned off a section of the cavernous Church of All Nations to create this intimate sanctuary, where the audience surrounds the playing space on three sides. The tiny mission contains six pews, and the actors, directed with sensitivity by the capable Russell Taylor, move fluidly within the snug space.

The six arrive at the church for various reasons, but they are all detained when the roads are closed due to complications loosely ascribed to a mine explosion with potential nuclear fallout. Wilson has been called an American Chekhov, and Angels Falls is definitely an in-depth Chekhovian character study. In a relatively static environment, there is little overtly physical action but plenty of emotional conflict as the characters interact with one another to locate the sources of sanctuary in their lives beyond the mission. Wilson's script constructs a poetic, almost timeless dramatic landscape.

He populates this landscape with flawed, lovably human characters stricken with a variety of crises, and the well-cast performers turn in fine performances all around. Niles Harris (Jeff Farber), a middle-aged art history professor, has recently abandoned teaching after losing faith in the merits of academic knowledge. He is accompanied by his wife, Vita (Kathryn Barnhardt), his one-time student and now caretaker, who is traveling with him on a trip to Phoenix for mental treatment and rejuvenation. In two exceptional performances, Farber handles Niles's fits of histrionics with humor and ease, while Barnhardt gives a refreshingly layered performance as a young wife determined to stay cheerful even in the face of her husband's explosions.

The warm and compassionate Marion Clay (June Flanagan), although still visibly upset by the recent death of her artist husband, stops in with her young lover, Zappy Zappala (Frankie Ferrara), a haughty professional tennis player, on their way to his next big tournament. Ferrara offers a well-nuanced take on the high-strung, hypochondriac Zappy, while Flanagan brings a warmly compassionate—although sometimes uncomfortably maternal—quality to Marion. Her relationship with Zappy does not immediately come across as a romantic one.

The bright young Navajo doctor Don Tabaha (Andrew Reaves) is torn between staying in New Mexico to minister to the Indian tribes who need his services or taking a high-profile research job, the work to which he feels more suited. The mission's energetic priest, Father Doherty (Tim Moore), makes no secret of his opinion on the matter, goading Don with guilt and even hiding his keys to defer his departure. Reaves is appropriately intense as the conflicted Don, and Moore's Father Doherty is impishly jovial as he mischievously hurls rocks at the low-flying helicopters.

When the helicopters finally announce that the roads are clear, Father Doherty shouts back, "You've given us all our monthly dose of fear, now fly back to White Sands and gloat. Shame. Shame! Don't they love to scare us to death. Don't we love them to do it. Can't you feel the tingling? Isn't fear exciting?"

In our post-9/11 age, the idea of sanctuary perhaps has more immediacy than it did in the early 1980s. And although the characters leave the mission irrefutably changed, to conclude that their problems have been solved would detract from Wilson's eloquent script. Instead, they—and we—have had a moment of communion, in a setting complete with altar and votive candles. This intersection of lives is certainly a theatrical convention, but it's also one of the minor miracles of devastating circumstances. And in this sense, Theater Forum gives us a thoughtful reinvention of Angels Fall, a play whose meaning has become even more potent in our particular cultural moment.

School Daze

A lot is asked of children's entertainment: it must be fun, educational, and clean, and cater to short attention spans. Young people make for tough crowds; they haven't yet mastered the art of feigning interest and will make it known if they're not enjoying themselves. And in New York, those who produce theater for children must contend with not only hard-to-please tykes but also their hyper-involved parents, who scrutinize everything before it's seen or heard by their little ones. The New Acting Company has recently started a monthlong run of Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a play adapted by John Olive from Louis Sachar's beloved stories. Featuring an architecturally questionable school building teeming with strange teachers and quirky kids, these tales make classrooms seem more friendly than usual while slyly teaching social behavior and Morality 101. In the hands of director Stephen Michael Rondel, Sachar's stories have been brought vividly to life in a colorful, engaging production.

The play opens on the class on the 30th floor. Most of the students have been turned into apples by their wicked teacher, Mrs. Gorf; class nerd Myron and best artist BeBe seem to be about to receive the same fate. Through a bit of resourcefulness, they turn their teacher into an apple instead, and the enchantment is broken on their classmates Dameon (who smiles all the time), Rondi (who's a bit of a bully), and LesLie (who is treated like one girl but is played by two girls in identical dress). The students are soon joined by a new teacher, Mrs. Jewls, who is kind, funny, pretty, and smart—the perfect teacher, in their minds. The rest of the show follows their class adventures, dealing with other teachers and their own personal challenges.

The biggest stars of this production are the set and costume designers. Gregg Bellon has created a marvelously loopy classroom by mixing forced perspective, a raked stage (slanting downstage), and bits of traditional classroom pieces (combination desk/chairs and a wide blackboard). Despite an overload of hues and props (books on desks, papers on bulletin boards), the use of perspective directs the audience's eyes up center toward the action. Bellon also employs an oversized puppet mouth above and to the right of the stage for announcements by the school principal, Mr. Kidswater; it's a cute device that makes a normally static voice-over entertaining.

Irina Kruzhilina's costumes combine swatches of brightly patterned material to create an entirely new sartorial language. Her pieces are a mash-up of rural Sunday best, bolts found in the sale bin at a fabric store, and Seussian architecture. It's a credit to Kruzhilina's talents that one can see a pattern (ha-ha) in her designs, when the characters could have been less creatively dressed in old clothes that had a few sequins here or an extra leg sewn on there.

The mostly young cast seemed to be having a good time, and their enthusiasm was matched by the adults playing their teachers and school counselors. Best of the bunch were Maxine Dannatt, as BeBe, and Carrie Heitman, as Mrs. Jewls. Though Dannatt was the youngest in the group, she conveyed the most charm and got the biggest laughs as feisty, "school's fastest drawer" BeBe. Heitman, saddled with the challenge of playing "the perfect teacher," was able to create a very warm, real person; the public school system would be only too lucky to recruit an instructor like this.

Reasonably swift blackouts between scenes and composer Andy Cohen's fun incidental music and sound cues helped move the show along. Rondel's directing kept the events light and fun without being cutesy, and brought fine performances out of his cast. In adapting the books, Olive wisely cut down the classroom size from 30 students to six, and included fun vignettes that also propelled several story threads.

Theater can be a great teaching tool; kids can see real people their own age going through similar challenges and learn how to handle them by example. But Sideways Stories is more than a lesson on good behavior for children. It is also a lesson on how children's theater can be clever without being dull, and amusing without being dumb.

Shakespeare in a Bottle

Producing one of Shakespeare's comedies is no easy feat, but producing one well—on a limited budget no less—is an exponentially more difficult task. Yet that is exactly what Developing Arts has achieved with its presentation of Twelfth Night. Director Kelly Barrett does an excellent job of creating a coherent vision for this production—a crucial element in the success of any contemporary Shakespearean revival. The fantastical realm of Illyria, imagined here as the inside of a genie's bottle, is sumptuous with color and texture, and also alive with the bawdy humor that's too often glossed over in less astute productions. The company, directed by Barrett, does not take itself too seriously, sidestepping an all-too-common pitfall in presenting work by the Bard.

For the most part, the cast is terrific at playing the emotions in the verse, ensuring that audience members less familiar with the text will not only be able to follow the device-ridden plot but can enjoy it as well. Rebecca Nyahay charms as the lovelorn Viola, who disguises herself as a man, Cesario, in order to serve the object of her affection, Duke Orsino—played by a sincere if too youthful Mark Kinch. Nyahay radiates girlish excitement, breathing life into verse that's crucial to the exposition. Alternating between a natural femininity and her stylized mannerisms when in character as Cesario, she highlights the comedy inherent in the woman-in-disguise plot device.

Sri Gordon is beguiling as the haughty-turned-lusty Olivia, who spurns Orsino's romantic advances, becoming enamored instead with his messenger, Cesario (Viola in disguise), and, later, with Viola's brother, Sebastian—the endearingly earnest Nick Giello.

If Illyria is a genie's bottle, then Kristin Carter, as Feste, Olivia's clown, casts the spell. Barrett switches Feste's traditional gender and has her costumed as a genie, but she astutely directs Carter by accentuating the wisdom characteristic of a Shakespearean fool. Carter is at once shrewd, flirtatious, and innocently playful. Music features prominently in this comedy, and Carter—who provided the arrangements for her own numbers—is a treat to listen to.

As Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's inebriated, scheming uncle, Bob Manus plays a buffoon extraordinarily well, and Andrew D. Montgomery is a delight as the rich and foppish Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby's friend, drinking companion, and witless trickery victim. Though the two are thoroughly enjoyable to watch, the dynamic between the characters would be better presented if Sir Toby's craftiness received slightly more emphasis, and if Sir Andrew was portrayed as a bit more self-important rather than utterly likable.

Wende O'Reilly is vivacious as Olivia's woman Maria, the mischievous mastermind of the plot to trick the steward Malvolio, played with appropriate, masterful pompousness by Hunter Tremayne. Gretchen Howe, as Olivia's servant Fabian, injects liveliness into scenes even with limited dialogue, and does a great job of delivering the explanatory monologue typical of concluding scenes in Shakespeare's comedies. Henri Douvry admirably and effectively performs double duty as a priest and as the sea captain who accompanies Viola.

Barrett's decision to cast two other roles irrespective of traditional gender may prove a slight distraction to those familiar with the play, but it's not enough to upset the magical world she and the cast have fashioned. Antonio, Sebastian's friend, is reimagined here as Antonia and portrayed with an elegance and deft command of language by Valerie Austin, although the recasting may call to mind a romantic intention not present in the text. Taniya Sen and Chris Gilmer fulfill the various supporting roles demanded by Shakespeare with quiet dignity, despite having Sen, a woman, portray Valentine, traditionally one of the gentlemen serving the Duke.

Barrett's genie's bottle concept is an apt choice in the confined space, and set designer Dave Smith economically brings the idea to life. He conjures exotic Middle Eastern locales, with jewel-toned fabrics used to cover the few set pieces, and an impromptu rug consisting of swatches of various textured fabrics. Costume designer Gemma Le contributes to the effect, utilizing rich color and a few well-chosen details (such as tasseled belts) to give the impression of decadence on a limited budget. Though the venue cannot claim versatility in lighting effects, a few small glass chandeliers add detail. The fights are well choreographed by Matt Klan, though at this particular performance it seemed the cast was still becoming comfortable with the production's physical demands.

Despite the aforementioned minor distractions and the limitations of the space, this clever reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most oft-performed comedies works well. Audiences expecting an evening of laughter will not be disappointed.

Dirty Work

The wounded characters in Elizabeth Meriwether's finely crafted The Mistakes Madeline Made reveal themselves to each other and to us via startling emotional juxtapositions; quietly disquieting confessions of pathos and loss are scattered among their oddball interactions. Every element of this production—from the actors' empathetic performances to Evan Cabnet's nuanced, physical direction and Lauren Halpern's wonderfully realized set—coheres into a successful whole. Edna (Laura Heisler), a recent college graduate reeling internally from the loss of her older brother, has just landed the worst job imaginable: she is the assistant to an anal, preternaturally cheerful office manager named Beth (Colleen Werthmann). The office that Beth oversees—a space that approaches a Martha Stewart-level of organization and polish—exists solely to handle the affairs of an über-rich family whom we never meet, but whose specter of uptight, forced WASPish happiness haunts every moment of the play. Madeline opens as Beth assigns Edna the thrilling task of finding George, one of the family's sons, a second pair of New Balance sneakers because he enjoys wearing the pair he already owns so much.

Werthmann—flexing some of the same muscles she developed as the naïvely pleasant mother of the reincarnated title character in Christopher Durang's Mrs. Witherspoon last winter—has a masterful sense of comic timing. Her Beth is a personality we recognize instantly, perhaps from a childhood ballet class or a community service bake sale, a person so intent on happiness at all costs that we watch and wait for her veneer to crack under pressure.

Wilson (Ian Brennan), meanwhile, is the only office assistant under Beth's command who enjoys a small amount of autonomy. A socially awkward graduate student whose dissertation is in a permanent state of incompletion, he communicates in fits and starts, words rushing from his mouth and then jerking to a halt, like the linguistic equivalent of a turbocharged car constantly forced to stop at red lights. He has so much to say, and we see him finally finding someone to say it all to. Brennan accentuates Wilson's speech with singularly impressive sounds—sounds that imitate the copy machine and that represent his emotional responses to situations ("dong!" means something like happiness)—so that his talking becomes a whimsically unique cacophony.

Soon Edna begins to steal Handi Wipes from the new shipment that has just arrived and enlists Wilson to hide them around the office; their scheming escalates into "The Handi Wipe Caper," an act of sabotage that knocks Beth and her controlled environment off-kilter just long enough to allow a dramatically redemptive moment for all three of them.

We have come to recognize this kind of small-minded, corporate banality before, as in the comic strip Dilbert and the TV series The Office. It exists here not for its own comedic sake—though the writing and performances are all strong enough that it could—but as a counterbalance to the emotional detritus that Edna can no longer mask.

Heisler offers a commandingly downtrodden performance that not only holds its own against Brennan's emotional exuberance but also presents her character's depression as something that is at once childishly antagonistic and spiritually desolate. In a particularly haunting exchange, Edna meets up with yet another date (Brian Henderson hams it up as three iterations of the same would-be writer—Drake, Jake, and Blake—that Edna pursues) and admits, "You remind me of my dead brother. I'm trying to [expletive] him back to life."

As Beth fights to keep the office clean and tidy, Edna fights, equally hard, to pollute it with her bodily stench and her rebellious nature. Unable to stop reliving the week that she and her brother Buddy (Thomas Sadoski nicely portrays the war reporter as slovenly, erratic, and shell shocked) spent together after he returned from Iraq, she succumbs to his ablutophobia (fear of bathing) and confronts people with the force of her stench.

Halpern externalizes this relationship by placing a white ceramic bathtub for Buddy to lounge in center stage; only Edna can see the tub, a kind of gleaming sarcophagus, and the human remains it holds. Though we sense that Edna is not doomed, her inability to bathe is as much a response to Buddy's death as it is a protest against the entrapments of her office environment.

Last December, an issue of New York magazine identified 27 bright young things who might "justly be famous by the year 2010." With offerings like The Mistakes Madeline Made, Elizabeth Meriwether, who was listed among the 27, is well on her way.

Waiting for Light

Faced with suffering and death, every person must find a way to make peace with the world. According to 70-year-old Ruth, "Nothing happens that God doesn't have a reason for." Trials can be chalked up merely as lessons from God, attempts "to reach down and shake us out of our ignorance." The disruption of ignorance is central to Marvin's Room, Scott McPherson's graceful study of a disjointed family whose idiosyncrasies are exacerbated by serious illness. The play earned a heap of major awards during the 1991-92 theater season and was later made into a star-powered film featuring Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep. T. Schreiber Studio has put together a pleasant—albeit lukewarm—revival, and although the intimately staged production lacks the urgency and emotional acuity to fully realize the play's more intricate themes, McPherson's script is undeniably important and well worth hearing again.

Redemption comes in many forms, McPherson acknowledges, but he refuses to tolerate apathy, celebrating instead the sweet and selfless nature of his heroine, Bessie (Noelle Holly), who has sacrificed much of her life and independence to care for her invalid father and aunt in Florida. At 40, Bessie learns that she has contracted leukemia, and the dutiful caregiver suddenly becomes a patient herself. In need of a match for a bone marrow transplant, she contacts her estranged younger sister, Lee (Jill Bianchini), who flies in from Ohio with two sons Bessie has never met.

Lee, clad provocatively in a slinky wardrobe, has weathered tempestuous relationships with men and maintains rocky ties with her sons. Hank (Michael Osborn), the eldest, lives in a mental institution (we later learn that he burned down their family home), while Charlie, too much absorbed in his own imagination, is failing in school. The quirky family also includes Ruth (Adair Jameson), Bessie's delightfully eccentric aunt, and, of course, Marvin (Donald Wolfe), the bedridden patriarch who makes erratic, unintelligible sounds from his room, partly visible through a blurred windowpane.

Bessie's illness is the catalyst for this unprecedented reunion, and the characters react and interact in relation to her condition. While the script doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of cancer (the wig Bessie wears to cover up the effects of her medication; the awkward, ugly family fights), McPherson's light touch infuses the proceedings with a welcome sense of humor. Bessie's physician, Dr. Wally (Trey Gibbons), for example, is an impossibly absurd figure—opening sterile equipment with his teeth—suggesting just how unequipped we are to deal with illness.

In this production, however, the action rarely feels as imperative as it should. Director Peter Jensen's staging is often static and mechanical, and the actors seem to click into place by the forces of routine rather than any emotional motivation. One of the play's miracles is the relationship that develops as Bessie begins to connect with the troubled, inscrutable Hank. Sitting stiffly on Bessie's porch, however, the two barely register a bond of any kind, and their words ricochet in empty space without energy, lacking the crucial spark that enlivens active communication.

On the whole, Holly handles her performance well, giving Bessie a serenity unmatched by those around her. As her sister (and foil), Bianchini brings bite and sass to Lee, although she sometimes turns her into a caricature drawn too broadly to be believable. The two actresses share an excellent scene in an impromptu late-night kitchen conversation. Here, one can feel the shared history and love that—despite their differences—will forever bond them together.

Osborn channels angst admirably as Hank, while Jameson is delightful as the soap opera-obsessed Ruth. Her devotion to these fictional characters, while unquestionably escapist, makes a strong case for how necessary such diversions—no matter how silly—can be.

Like the mellow, bluish tones of the set, this production is finally both too safe and too sedate, a subdued presentation of an exceptional script. McPherson's play debuted the same year he died from complications of AIDS, and the semi-autobiographical material (he based Bessie on his mother) represents people with broken, tired lives in search of hope and a path through their pain.

Although we never clearly see the titular character, Marvin—whether gasping or laughing—is nonetheless the work's centerpiece. He has been slowly dying for more than 20 years, but he still takes simple, childlike delight in the lamplight his family members refract throughout his room for his entertainment. This vital search for brightness in the face of death is, finally, the play's most important lesson.

Silence Is Golden

In a time when you can download movies to your cell phone, a retreat into the world of silent film is refreshing. Take Love Is in the Air, the Pig Brooch theater company's quirky staging of a silent movie at the 14th Street Y Theater. An energetic cast of 10 (supported by an orchestra of four) plays out a simple tale of love gone awry against the backdrop of 1920's society. Dustin Helmer plays Hapless Henry, an earnest tramp whose libido follows the elegant and snobbish Aimee LaBlatte (Anna Moore) while his heart should belong to the shy and warm Plain Jane. In the style of Buster Keaton, Harry dashes about the stage in his bowler, avoiding the malevolence of Boffo Mysterioso and Aimee's dapper boyfriend Valentino.

The cause for the hullabaloo is an upcoming New Year's Eve dance, to which Henry hopes to take Aimee. Plain Jane has fallen for Henry in a typically zany love triangle. As Jane, Jennie Smith is sweet in her brown dress and pigeon-toed shoes. The tall and dark Seth Powers has an attractive brooding quality (something like Sawyer on TV's Lost) as Boffo Mysterioso; he brokers a Faustian bargain with Henry, who will go to any length to gain Aimee's affection. And, of course, we know what happens when you sell your soul to the devil.

With a round face and puppy-dog eyes, Helmer wins over your heart as the show's underdog. Petite and blond Anna Moore aptly plays spoiled socialite Aimee, with the best costumes of the bunch: a yellow silk flapper dress for the day, followed by a red beaded number for the New Year's dance.

Overall, the cast is adept and quick, and the high quality of the work begs for equally high production values somewhere Off-Broadway. Helmer created the ambitious piece, and he's well cast as the star in his own show. This production also boasts a fantastic properties manager, who goes unnamed. Giant restaurant menus and baseball-sized diamond rings are some of the creative props employed.

Scene changes are handled by a quartet of clowns billed as Slow Joe, Sleepy Sue, Saucy Seppy, and Stage Manager. The bits are at times entertaining; at other times, tedious. Genevieve Gearhart as Sleepy Sue makes the most of her small role, milking her stage time as best she can.

While the play is almost entirely silent, a ragtime underscore led by pianist Laura Blau keeps the audience's ears perked up. The cast and musicians are all well clad in Prohibition-era attire by Amelia Dombrowski.

Under Paul Peers's direction, the show is both charming and concise, clocking in at under an hour. The concept is muddied, though, by the theater company within a theater company gag. The real Pig Brooch company has concocted the Kiek in de Kök Players, who are the actors, clowns, and musicians from Estonia who decided to make this silent film into a stage play. (Why Estonia? That's never revealed.)

Still, it is interesting to see one genre transformed into another, namely silent film into a stage play. The show doesn't gel entirely, but with lines from the script projected onto the black backdrop and the actors' Chaplin-like pratfalls, Love Is in the Air remains endearing.

Stormy Weather

With the recent popularity of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, grisly theater has suddenly become very hip. The Pillowman made a smoldering impression on Broadway last year, while McDonagh's newest New York production, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which leaves the stage bathed in blood, sold out its Off-Broadway run and will soon begin previews uptown. Audiences, it would seem, are eager to be tormented, even if it is vicariously from the comfort of their own seats. Now the Aussies have answered with their own psychological thriller, and although it lacks the pervasive social agenda that underpins much of McDonagh's work (not to mention the copious amounts of violence and blood), Freak Winds is a deliciously disturbing—and often helplessly humorous—addition to the canon of harrowing theatrical fare.

At the helm is Marshall Napier, who has managed to pull off a daunting triple feat. Not only does he write, direct, and star in the same play, but he manages to do each thing exceptionally well. Of course, experience is on his side—Freak Winds, which is his first full-length play, was already successfully produced in both Australia and New Zealand. And thanks to Hair of the Dog Productions, the play has found a new home tucked into the cozy Arclight Theater on the Upper West Side. Deftly acted and meticulously directed, Freak Winds draws us into a stormy night of ominous, mysteriously powerful forces.

Following up on a call, young insurance salesman Henry Crumb (Damian de Montemas) finds himself at the home of Ernest (Napier). Henry barely steps through the door when a tree falls and crushes his new Mercedes. Resigned to waiting out the storm in Ernest's comfortable living room, Henry begins his sales pitch. "What insurance buys you is peace of mind," he insists, but then, dodging his host's smart criticism, he concedes, "It can't protect you against being human."

Indeed, Henry's peace of mind soon dissipates as he is confronted with eerie and foreboding circumstances, ranging from the mildly curious—Ernest's sudden spells of nausea—to the unquestionably alarming—Henry's discovery of scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of horrendous murders. Napier's use of conventional horror devices brings welcome levity to the suspense, and the audience can't help but chuckle at the sound of a knife being sharpened when Ernest periodically leaves the room. It's testament to his finely honed script that Napier shrewdly disarms his audiences with obvious tricks, only to shock them with abrupt twists and turns (not to be revealed here).

As the presumably innocent salesman, de Montemas becomes convincingly disheveled, frustrated, and irate as he leads us on his quest to sift through multiple red herrings, uncover the truth, and escape. Napier's script is very wordy, and much of the humor depends on the actors' timing as they toss off bits of witty repartee. Thankfully, Napier and de Montemas deliver the zippy banter with expert elocution, and they are matched by Tamara Lovatt-Smith, who gives a terrific performance as Myra, Ernest's wheelchair-bound companion.

Although Napier's characters sometimes talk in circles, this only increases Henry's (and our) need to sort things out and understand what is really happening. Is Ernest a psychopath who is planning to kill Henry? And is Myra his roommate, daughter, lover, or worse?

Jeremy Chernick has devised a warm, inviting set that successfully belies the peculiarity of its inhabitants, while Andrew Ivanov has created an impressive array of creepy sounds.

Without taking itself too seriously, Freak Winds delves into a surreal world of madness and psychosexuality, and Napier's script lightly touches on Ernest's need to better understand humanity. He's interested in how and why we suffer, as well as how we can all (murderers included) share the common state of being human. But within the confines of this stormy evening, it's not certain what—if anything—we can believe, and Freak Winds quite winningly becomes little more than an enormously enjoyable thriller.

Blind Love

Myths disseminate from culture to culture like phrases relayed in a game of telephone: the Greeks borrowed from African and Egyptian myths, Romans borrowed from Greek sources, and the Renaissance, in turn, embroidered upon Roman tales. With each retelling, a subtle change of emphasis, a detail added or evaded, could alter the myth's meaning entirely. Yet some universal essence of these myths survives, helping form, as well as adapting to, each culture's values. The earliest recorded version of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is by the Latin prose writer Apuleius in his book The Golden Ass. It is the template for modern fairy tales, at least the happy kind with a Prince Charming and wicked stepsisters. Joseph Fisher's new work, Cupid & Psyche, plays jazz-like improvisations upon this standard story, enriching it while elucidating its relevance to us today.

Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and desire, has developed a few unseemly wrinkles lately. Her acolytes have abandoned her in favor of Psyche, a mortal princess of astonishing purity. Jealous, she hatches a plot to get Cupid, her son, to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly monster. But when Cupid sees her, it's love at first sight.

The problem is, Cupid doesn't want Psyche to see him because his own supernatural beauty makes any mortal who sees him fall instantly in love. He wants Psyche to love him for himself and not his looks. He whisks her away to a labyrinthine cloud castle, where he talks to her every night in the dark. Lonely, though beginning to love him, she asks for her sniveling sisters to visit her. They convince her that her husband must be a hideous demon and that she should spy on him while he's asleep, despite his grave warnings to the contrary.

In the instant she beholds his beauty, she is banished from it. Aphrodite's wrath is still unquenched, however, and she reluctantly enlists the help of her hated rival, Apollo, to get rid of Psyche for good. To win back Cupid's love, Psyche must travel to Hades and risk eternal sleep. Suffice it to say, a kiss from the charming Cupid can awaken this sleeping Cinderella so that the tale concludes happily ever after.

Revealingly, the star of the story in this production is Fisher's original character Runt, a mortal servant to Aphrodite and Cupid. Runt, played with bravado by Nick Cearley, possesses an endearing frailty as the "wise fool" that makes him a more empathetic character than the all-too-human gods. His puckish insinuations steal the show wonderfully from the allegorized "beautiful people" of the gods.

The gods have spunk of their own, though, as most evident in Johnny Sparks's portrayal of Apollo. He convincingly demonstrates a wide emotional range, from haughty intellectual snob to heartbroken unrequited lover.

Director Alex Lippard has done an admirable job blocking the play, aided by Lucas Benjaminh Krech's imaginative lighting design and Michael Moore's set. Scenes on Earth take place at the back of the stage within a gigantic gilt frame surrounded by sheer white veils. Other scenes occur on the stage proper, where large, tear-shaped lightbulbs drip down like icicles and two smaller gold frames on both sides of the stage contain sources of misty, aqua-green illumination.

Costume designer Erin Elizabeth Murphy adds an allegorical dimension by giving the mortals' outfits cool turquoise accents while adorning the gods in shades of hot pink. Thus, it's perhaps telling that Runt, unlike the other mortals, wears a sleeveless pastel-pink sweater, while Apollo, unlike the other gods, has faint blue accents in his golden tie.

While Fisher's script has many funny and profound lines, the writing style seems too prosaic at times. The overweening passions of the gods, one feels, should be allowed to burst forth in poetry and song—or, at least, pop lyrics. Dare I suggest this fairy tale would work better as a musical?

Also, the end of the first act, in which Cupid finally kisses Psyche, made me wonder if the play had ended: there was no cliffhanger to entice the audience to come back after intermission.

On the other hand, the play's real ending seemed slightly rushed, with too many unexplained events—why, for example, can Cupid's kiss awake Psyche from death, and wouldn't Aphrodite know this as Cupid's mother? Moreover, not enough plot strings (or heartstrings) are tied up: we never quite learn, for example, what becomes of Aphrodite and Apollo.

Nonetheless, Cupid and Psyche presents a creative and entertaining new interpretation of a myth that has previously captivated such artists as Antonio Canova, Agnolo Bronzino, and Walter Pater. The production conveys the tension between the physical gaze of mortal love and the inner eye's gaze on the immortal soul, in a parable that is at once timely and timeless.

President and Assassin

M. Stefan Strozier's The Tragedy of Abraham Lincoln, presented by La Muse Venale Acting Troupe in an intimate studio space at Where Eagles Dare Theater, covers the last year in the life of the titular character. It opens with the president giving the celebrated Gettysburg Address, followed immediately by a scene with actor and soon-to-be assassin John Wilkes Booth performing a monologue from Julius Caesar. Once introduced, this juxtaposition of two views of Lincoln—revered leader versus tyrant—occurs throughout the play. Booth clearly believed that Lincoln was an unrelenting, power-hungry dictator; Lincoln honestly believed he was doing what was best for his nation. By the conclusion of the play, I was not sure which side I was supposed to feel sympathetic toward.

As Booth, Josh Stamell brought complexity to an otherwise vilified character. We see Booth with his mother, his family, and his fiancée. He loves them all but is tortured by indecision of Shakespearean proportions. In fact, his performance was so alive that Booth seemed to be the only character in color; everyone else appeared black and white. Whether intended by the script or not, it was easy to focus more on him than on any other character. Yet he doesn't fully get our sympathy; this Booth's obsession with Lincoln's supposed evils consumes him. But because he is the play's most three-dimensional character, we have little choice but to watch the action from his point of view.

Lincoln, by contrast, was taciturn, stiff, almost waxen. While this may reflect some of his actual personality traits (the real Lincoln could appear serious and reserved, despite his well-known sense of humor), it doesn't necessarily make for the most engaging theater. Occasionally he dropped his grave demeanor and, when in friendly conversation with Frederick Douglass or Ulysses S. Grant, told awkward stories about his youth that left him with an oddly manic glow. Was this hysteria showing the audience the stress that Lincoln was under? Or was it, in keeping with Booth's perspective, another indication that the president was not the stable hero we assume he is? Either interpretation would fit the play's initially introduced theme; instead, the ambiguity was unsettling.

Still, as Lincoln, Justin Ellis held his own against Stamell's Booth and gave a solid performance. His recitation of Lincoln's most famous speech was genuinely motivated. The two actors were an inspired casting choice: along with their ability to pull off two difficult characters, their physical resemblance to these historical figures was remarkable. It also helped that the costumes worn by all of the actors successfully conveyed the Civil War era without getting caught up in being precisely authentic.

Perhaps it was because the two lead actors were stronger performers than their cast mates, or because they were the only characters Strozier spent any time exploring, but the relative equality given to Booth and Lincoln made the play's perspective seem vague. I couldn't tell if Strozier has an opinion on these historical events or if he was just hoping to present the facts in a dramatic light. Unfortunately, without a well-formed point of view—whether in support of Lincoln or not—the play was never as interesting as it could have been. If Strozier does hold an opinion, he was less than successful in expressing it.

The production's real flaw was a lack of historical context for the audience. The show's program did not contain a cast list, and many of the characters portrayed (all, I believe, were actual people) were never explicitly introduced. Strozier clearly did a great deal of research for his script, and his attempt to share some of the more unsavory behaviors required of a nation at war—like the surveillance by Lincoln's secret police and ceasing prisoner exchanges—was intriguing but not well communicated. The play assumes a familiarity with Lincoln's presidency and assassination that goes much deeper than what many people were taught in school. This information is valid and welcome, but the audience needs to have an opportunity to learn it.

The show's program does mention, in a brief statement about Lincoln, that La Muse Venale wants to give "an honest performance and play." I must assume that this means The Tragedy of Abraham Lincoln wants to show a balanced view of history, without being overly glorifying or unfairly revisionist about the Civil War. A bit more communication about the playwright's intentions, whether in the script itself or in some takeaway materials for the audience, would clarify the company's purpose greatly and lead to a more consistent production with a more thoughtfully developed script.

Forgotten Ibsen

Victorian melodrama—can any two words make a production sound more moribund? Yet Ibsen is the master of Victorian melodrama—or "domestic tragedy," as he preferred to call it—and he is the most produced playwright in the world besides Shakespeare. Like Shakespeare, most contemporary productions of Ibsen's masterpieces require a unique directorial concept to reinvigorate them for today's audience, or they act as a star vehicle for a Hollywood glamour-puss. For every Hamlet staged underwater or Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar, we have The Dollhouse staged as grand opera with bunraku puppets and little people (as directed by Lee Breuer) or Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler (as recently seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music).

Likewise, the best way to generate interest in an Ibsen or Shakespeare production that has been directed "straight" with little-known actors is to revive one of their more obscure plays. For Ibsen buffs, the Fresh Look Theater Company is offering a rare chance to see Little Eyolf, his nearly forgotten late work of 1894.

The problem with this production, however, is that the director, David Greenwood, insists on sentimental naturalism, period costumes, and a literal-minded fidelity to the script—in what, unfortunately, has become the quintessentially stuffy "Ibsen" manner. Unfortunately, this ill suits the play itself. Little Eyolf is a wild amalgam of nearly incommensurable styles. Perhaps more than any other Ibsen work, it manages to couch the banal if bitter domestic squabbles of Ibsen's familiar middle-period dramas in the aura of the mythopoetic motifs of such early triumphs as Peer Gynt and Brand, making something surprisingly new.

Alfred Allmers has recently returned home, where he lives with both his wife and sister, from somber mountain solitudes where he ventured to finish his book on human responsibility. While there, however, he realized his real responsibilities to his 9-year-old son, Eyolf, whom he has previously neglected. Eyolf is a cute, bookish boy who has been crippled by a childhood accident. This domestic scene is broken up by the intrusion of the Rat Wife, a Pied Piper-like creature from Norwegian folklore, who comes knocking on their door.

After the Rat Wife leaves almost as mysteriously as she enters, Alfred is left to explain his new revelation to his wife, Rita, who becomes jealous because he is dividing his attentions between her and Eyolf. We slowly learn the ironic double meaning of her jealousy: "Eyolf" is also the pet name Alfred called his sister, Asta, when they lived together, incestuously, and she dressed up as a boy.

When the real Eyolf drowns in an accident, Alfred and Rita argue bitterly over who is to blame. Rita confesses that she's happy Eyolf died—maybe now Alfred can experience passion for her. Alfred reveals that the only reason he married her was for her looks and money, not for strong feelings of love or lust.

Can one doubt that this is Ibsen's barely coded 19th-century way of telling us that Alfred's a closeted gay man? Yet few commentators or directors--and certainly not this one--have seized upon this as the key to Alfred's character, and perhaps to the tragedy as a whole.

Alfred meets with Asta, who reveals her discovery that they were never brother and sister. She then runs off with a poor match of a suitor to escape Alfred's advances and Rita's imprecations. Alfred and Rita are left alone: Alfred threatens to commit suicide, while Rita threatens to take in the poor village boys who did not rescue Eyolf from drowning. In the end, however, Alfred and Rita agree to raise the village waifs together as an act of great forgiveness.

The ending is problematic and deliberately ambiguous. While Henry James believed it marred the whole play, many interpret it to mean Ibsen had faith in his audience to see through the characters' stated resolves. Their happy compromise is all a sham; the final revelation of unredeemed misery—too horrifyingly tragic to stage?—is left for the audience's imagination. In fact, this is exactly the question the audience members discussed at this performance, even before their faint applause.

While the other actors often appeared as caricatures in a conventional Victorian melodrama, Christopher Michael Todd, playing Alfred, was astounding in the vulgarity of his expression. His eyes would gape and squint, his lips quiver, his brow scrunch at every turn. At the time, I thought his expressions were grossly under-felt and the product of overacting. In retrospect, perhaps such overacting is exactly what the role demands—I only hope it was a deliberate choice, not ironic serendipity, that produced it.

I also hope that some visionary director like Breuer or Robert Wilson, who recently directed Peer Gynt, chooses to stage this play, which, more than any other by the author, exemplifies critic Eric Bentley's shrewd remark that Ibsen's so-called "realistic" tragedy depends on retaining elements of the "trolls and devils of Peer Gynt...[and] of Ibsen's inner consciousness."

Superhero Send-Up

Technical glitches and lagging scene changes didn't completely stop the cast of Adventures of Caveman Robot from bringing the fun to Brooklyn's Brick Theater. This production—a live-action, video-projection mash-up based on a comic book series created by Jason Robert Bell and Shoshanna Weinberger—is at once an homage to the genre that birthed Superman and the Green Lantern and a send-up of some of its more conspicuous narrative conventions. Oh, and did I mention it's a musical?

A rampant spree of "glorious larceny" has plagued the city of Monumenta (a geographical stepchild of Sin City and Metropolis), and delightfully bonkers villains have made the streets unsafe. The superhero who has managed to keep the evil in check is a lovable "metal Neanderthal" of questionable intelligence called Caveman Robot.

Victims of their own single-minded psychosis and hubris, the villains are often the ones who steal the show. And this one has plenty of gems, including the Colonel, a Nazi commander who bitterly inhabits the body of a penguin (puppetry by Robin Reed); Ape Lincoln (Ian W. Hill), a speechifying transplant from a Planet-of-the-Apes-style alternative universe; his screeching mate and fly girl Monkey Todd Lincoln; and Mr. Tense, a guy wound up so tight that bullets bounce off his body.

Besides the clunking robot, some of the heroes they match up against are the tea-drinking faux-Brit Professor Tuttlewell and his bleeding-heart, genius niece Megan, and the requisite Everyman, Loser Pete, whose maturation from do-nothing to Caveman Robot sidekick loosely frames the oftentimes nonsensical plot.

None of the cast members (most of whom admirably portray several characters) seem to be trained singers, and their off-key renditions of Debby Schwartz and Jeff Lewonczyk's tongue-in-cheek songs are endearing in their earnestness. Hope Cantrelli as Megan Tuttlewell performs a second-act showstopper with her grrrl-power rock ballad "His Robot Queen." And Ian W. Hill manages to rap a simian-themed version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that helps make this one of the highest-lowbrow or lowest-highbrow shows I've seen in a while.

It's kind of a shame that a production jam-packed with this much silly appeal relies so heavily on poorly integrated, prerecorded video projections to help convey the back story. I recognize the impulse to create a theatrical equivalent to the action movie's spinning newspaper; its bold headlines fill the screen while an ominous voice-over establishes context and propels new dangers into our superhero's path.

But the constant shifts between what should be consistently high-energy antics and the more sterile onscreen news bulletins and monologues make the production lag. Ditto for Mater Vox, the sentient computer program that responds to the Tuttlewells' every voice command. If I've suspended my disbelief enough to watch a guy stomp around in a silver cardboard box—the peerless Bell gives a physically herculean performance as the title character—there is no need to disrupt the magic.

As it stands now, Adventures of Caveman Robot is a flawed but passionate show, one that audiences with a slightly higher tolerance for shows that aren't Broadway-slick will walk away from laughing.