Between the Lines

The plays of Harold Pinter, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, are generally not very long, nor do they offer much dialogue. But to suggest that these works are not involved would be misleading. They are punctuated by pauses that reveal as much—or as little—about the characters as the lines do; they verge on the threshold of absurdism; and they create unrest in their audiences. The plays often deal with an apparently trivial situation, which Pinter gradually reveals to be a threatening one, and his characters act in ways that seem inexplicable both to their audiences and, at times, to each other. Such is the case with Tlaloc Rivas's well-directed revival of The Dumb Waiter. Staged by Ward 10, a character-driven production company, at Midtown's intimate Phil Bosakowski Theater, the play begins innocuously enough. Gus (Tim Kang) ties his shoes while Ben (Jon Krupp) reads the newspaper in a small basement room that includes a dumb waiter and a toilet in another room that seems to occasionally flush—or not flush—itself at will.

Gus complains about the routine of his life—sleeping in unfamiliar rooms during the day, performing the job he does with Ben, then fleeing at night. Ben, meanwhile, is far more complacent than Gus, telling his nervous partner that he should keep mum and be grateful for their employment.

Eventually, we realize that these men are hired assassins.

Then an envelope, containing 12 matches, slides under the door. Rivas has expertly paced and blocked the arguments that ensue between the two as they try to determine what they should do with this new delivery. The tension continues to build while they wait for that night's marching orders, and the audience begins to feel as unsettled as Gus does.

Confusion is added to the mix as the men start to receive requests from the room's dumb waiter. It turns out that the floor upstairs was once a cafe, and the basement was a kitchen. The dumb waiter starts delivering food orders, and while the men cannot fill them, they send up what little food they do have. Gus's ambivalence about what lies in store, meanwhile, continues to grow.

Plays like this do not provide much in the way of explanation or resolution. Instead, Pinter creates plenty of atmosphere, disorienting the audience members so they can identify with Gus, who has been stripped of virtually everything but his instinct for adaptability.

Both Kang and Krupp perfectly embody the two hit men. Krupp's Ben is no-nonsense; his every movement is direct, and he never hesitates with a line reading. In contrast, Kang's Gus is the ideal yin to Krupp's yang, repeatedly retracing his steps and asking questions in an inflection dramatically higher than Krupp's.

Rivas has armed himself with excellent company, particularly lighting designer Stephen Petrilli and set designer Susan Zeeman Rogers, who create the very claustrophobic world that Gus and Ben must inhabit. Her set is stark, with just the two beds in a tightly enclosed space. Additionally, David Anzuelo's contributions as fight director are invaluable.

With this sterling production of The Dumb Waiter, Ward 10 proves it's a company that's unafraid to challenge its audiences. Contemporary theater could use a little of that these days.

Save the Ranch!

One hour and 40 minutes. That's how much time had lapsed in the Wings Theater Company's production of Cowboys! before a cast member made a reference to the movie Brokeback Mountain. The joke drew groans from the audience and a disapproving snort from a giant costumed horse. Certainly a musical comedy about a ranch that nurtures young, gay cowboys is bound to inspire some comparisons to the recent hit movie. However, the similarities end with "gay cowboys." This production is lighthearted and jolly, full of talented performers, cheeky songs, and silly jokes.

The plot is simple and classic: Aunt Rosie, owner of the Straight Arrow ranch, might lose her home if Rick the Texas Ranger and her cowboys can't do something to raise some money. Unfortunately, the boys—who are as sweet as can be—are terrible at all of the normal ranch-hand duties. Instead, they decide to put on a Wild West show to make enough money to save the ranch. But the "black hats" arrive to foil their plans. Knowing that the property contains untapped oil resources, Boston Bart Black and Lovely Lily Luscious want Aunt Rosie to turn over the land to them.

Their solution? Have Bart seduce honest Ranger Rick to gain control of the situation. But soon Bart realizes that his flirtatious charade is starting to turn into something more. High jinks ensue, the Wild West show goes on, and in the end everyone lives (and loves) happily ever after.

The comedy is drawn in broad strokes, and every character is a caricature of an Old West archetype. In fact, every stereotype is covered, and the show is nowhere close to being politically correct. Bart and Lily are city slickers from the East (Bart looks like John Travolta as Tony Manero in a shiny suit). Injun' Bob shows up in braided pigtails and a loincloth and speaks in broken English. Even Aunt Rosie's cowboys—known as the Croonin' Caballeros—aren't safe. Their biggest talents are fashion design, interior decorating, and "ropin' and ridin'." Innuendos abound.

Speaking of innuendos, the show is full of saucy jokes and some racy references; the songs have titles like "Everything's Bigger in Texas" and "Make the Switch." But the jokes never get raunchy, and it's all in good fun. Of course, there's a little bit of beefcake on display: all of the men are incredibly good-looking, and no opportunity is wasted to remove shirts or otherwise expose some skin (see: Injun Bob in a loincloth).

Cowboys! opens with Ranger Rick Rowdy (Brian Ogilvie) strumming on his guitar: he's our protagonist. The main plot revolves around his character, and as a Texas Ranger, he's the one everyone turns to for answers. Cute and blond, with an easy smile and a sweet voice, Ogilvie is clearly the glue that holds the production together. But David Tacheny, as Boston Bart Black, quickly becomes the show's star. Maybe this is because his character has the biggest emotional arc. Tacheny is confident and comfortable onstage, whether singing, dancing, or mugging as a cartoon version of a gangster-turned-cowboy trying to seduce a man.

The show's subplot follows Colt, Ranger Rick's sweetheart, as he discovers his attraction to Injun' Bob, the other mysterious stranger in town. Colt is aptly named: he's a young, energetic guy, though none too bright. Jeff Sheets plays him with a sweet, gangly dopiness that's completely endearing. James Bullard, though obscured by a wig and black mask for most of the show, makes the most of his role as Injun' Bob. Bullard gets many of the show's funniest lines by playing the straight man, but he's able to cut loose in a wacky war dance.

The set deserves an enthusiastic mention. Most of the action was set on the ranch, complete with porch and corral. It was deceptively flexible and would have been perfect for any respectable professional production of Oklahoma! Behind it was a simple, hand-painted backdrop of the big blue sky and the open range. It reminded me of the kind of mural that might be found in the bedroom of a little boy, against which he could play "cowboys and Indians" for hours.

The set truly invoked the intentions of this production: Cowboys! is an evening of goofy sincerity where everyone just wants to have a good time. The feelings are contagious: the whole audience seemed to be smiling as it left.

Southern-Fried Musical

In only a year's time, the original production of Pump Boys and Dinettes worked its way from Off-Off-Broadway at the Chelsea West Side Arts Theater to Broadway's Princess Theater, garnering a Tony nomination for Best Musical of 1982 along the way. The current revival at Manhattan Theater Source makes it easy to understand the show's appeal; this is an unpretentious hour and a half of good music and good times. Even if you're not a fan of country music, you will have a hard time not swaying to the rhythms put down by the talented cast. Franklin Golden plays Jim, an irresponsible yet lovable rascal who runs a garage along Highway 57 deep in North Carolina. When not taking his customers' cars out for joyrides or fishing with the boys, he spends his free time courting Rhetta Cupp, who owns the Double Cupp Diner down the road along with her sister, Prudie. But Jim's carefree ways have landed him on Rhetta's bad side. And he deserves to be there, after ditching a date with her in favor of the call of the catfish.

So Jim sings his odes to catfish, vacations, and the Southern lifestyle, backed up by Eddie (Zeb Holt), the silent bass player; Jackson (Mitch Rothrock), a bright-eyed scamp on lead guitar; and pianist L.M. While Jim may be the frontman, each member gets his say (except for Eddie, who really doesn't have anything to say). Still, it's L.M. (Michael Hicks) who steals the show by pounding the keys in a furious tirade against women ("Serve Yourself"), crooning about his star-crossed night with a country music star ("The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine"), and finally tap-dancing while accompanying the Dinettes on accordion ("Farmer Tan").

Over at the Double Cupp (which is actually just a few steps across the stage), Rhetta (Amy Heidt) and Prudie (Kate Middleton) accompany the boys, banging pots and pans and candy jars to provide percussion. They, too, get their share of the spotlight. The groove of "Tips" is nearly irresistible, and Rhetta's admonishment of her beau's behavior in "Be Good or Be Gone" makes for a fun ditty. The show stops dead for Middleton's performance of "The Best Man," revealing her amazing voice with its innocent-sounding timbre and perfect tone. But be prepared: these girls might at one point drag you out of your seat and up onstage to serenade you.

Of course, good performances by the cast almost invariably mean good direction. Since the performers in Pump Boys and Dinettes are this endearing, praise is certainly due to director Laura Standley. She guides the play's tone, making sure that every cast member lampoons his or her character type while displaying the affectionate respect that every culture deserves but that Southern culture rarely receives in New York theater. Even when playing Southern caricatures, the cast members invite the audience to laugh both at them and with them, charming the heck out of everybody in the process.

Also deserving praise is the stage design. On the Pump Boys' side of the stage, L.M.'s piano stool is made of old tires. On the Double Cupp side, the pies that come out of the oven look better than the ones at the diner across the street from the theater. And the walls are peppered with old tin soda and gasoline advertisements.

If you're looking for fun music and a show where the performers freely interact with the audience, you'll find that Pump Boys and Dinettes is a gem of escapist theater—complete with a free raffle.

Let's Put on an Operetta

What's the best way to avoid the expense and effort of intricate sets and elaborate costumes when producing theater? Put on a play about people putting on a play! Instantly, your audience recognizes the simple props or costumes as the kind of work your characters might have created. What would have been merely sufficient now becomes endearing. So it is with Theater Ten Ten's revival production of The Singapore Mikado. Its thoroughly enjoyable version of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta takes place in British-occupied Singapore on Dec. 10, 1941. The time and setting are significant, marking the date of Japan's devastating attack on the British Navy in World War II. As the audience, we are guests at the Christmas party of Sir Evelyn and Lady Judith Estebrooke. For entertainment, the partygoers take roles in The Mikado and perform it for us.

It is clear that you are seeing a "play within a play" from the moment you walk into the theater. Malphal Singh, Sir Estebrooke's servant, welcomes you to the "party" and gives you your second program for the evening—the program that lists the biographical information on the "actors" in The Mikado. For a brief, terrifying moment, I was concerned that the fourth wall would not just be broken but penetrated, allowing for unsuspecting audience members to be sucked into the action. Fortunately, everyone remained safely in his or her seats for the entire evening.

The interesting layer of meta-theatricality—staging, in Singapore, a musical about a small Japanese village—also highlights an under-explored period in World War II history. As The Mikado wraps up, Sir Estebrooke receives the news that the British stronghold is now under the control of the Japanese. The performers, suddenly sobered by the report of extensive casualties in the attack, complete the final musical number wrapped in kimonos but with stony expressions on their faces. The party is no longer jolly.

The Singapore Mikado is, despite the creative nesting of story line, still an operetta, and a demanding one at that. Theater Ten Ten has assembled a wonderfully gifted cast, from the principals to the ensemble members. The company's producing arrangements allowed it to cast both Equity and non-Equity performers, and the show features a well-balanced mix of young, talented singers (the adorable Emily Grundstad and Martin Fox as Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo) and seasoned veterans (David Arthur Bachrach as a natty, jovial Mikado and Cristiane Young as the formidable Katisha).

As Ko-Ko, the High Executioner doomed to be his own victim, Greg Horton embraced every nuance of his character's narcissism, connivance, and cowardice. The result was a near-constant source of comedy. David Tillistrand provided a solid comic interpretation of the proud, overly employed Pooh-Bah (he's the town's sheriff, magistrate, treasurer, tax collector, coroner, etc.). The vocal performances of both men were, like their acting, outstanding.

The one character unique to this version of The Mikado is the houseboy/stage manager, Malphal Singh (Andrew Clateman). Played with a wide-eyed earnestness, Clateman's Singh performs the multiple tasks of a Shakespearean clown. He distributes props, accompanies pianist Benno Matthay (Joel Gelpe) on the drum and triangle, and moves furniture, even interrupting Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo's love scene to change the set. However, his greatest feat may have been sitting cross-legged and motionless onstage during the entire 10-minute intermission.

The costumes and props, incidentally, were fine. Not only were there kimono-style robes for the musical portion, but all of the "performers" were outfitted in "street clothes" that included nice reproductions of military uniforms and party clothes appropriate for 1941. The set, designed by Katharine Day, was flexible enough to accommodate the entire cast appearing onstage at once and still provided a simple, classy environment.

In New York, it's easy to discount productions that don't appear in an avant-garde festival or take place in a tiny space in Greenwich Village. Park Avenue along the East 80's is not an area known for its gutsy theater scene. But sometimes the best work can be found in an Upper East Side church basement. Theater Ten Ten has successfully restaged a much-loved classic in this refreshing interpretation.

Thwarted-Love Story

Tales of doomed love can be charted back to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but contemporary interpreters of fairy tales are more apt to provide a polished happy ending. (The Grimm brothers could scarcely have imagined how Disney would drain the blood from their sobering tales.) When Once on This Island surfaced on Broadway in 1990, it snagged eight Tony Award nominations, including two for its industrious creators, Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music), who seemed to have learned the secret of smart storytelling: that a more realistic and truthful interpretation of a fairy tale need not be bland and dour. Instead, they infused their tale with color and light in what New York Times theater critic Frank Rich termed "a joyous marriage of the slick and the folkloric."

With their exuberant rendition of this musical, the Gallery Players have staged yet another admirable revival. The energetic performances fairly explode from the stage, and director and choreographer Steven Smeltzer's interpretation is a dazzling celebration of the art and power of storytelling.

Based on Rosa Guy's novel My Love, My Love (a Caribbean reinvention of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid), Once on This Island tells the story of Ti Moune, a black peasant girl who falls in love with Daniel, the light-skinned son of a wealthy French planter. Like everyone else on the island, Ti Moune and Daniel are divided by class and race. "We dance at parties," the esteemed class sings, while the peasants counter, "We are dancing just to stay alive."

For the peasants, survival is paramount, and dreaming beyond present conditions is a luxury not easily afforded. But Ti Moune, whose mysterious origins led her to be plucked from a tree by her adoptive parents, wants more than a life spent working for others. "Mama's contented, and Tonton accepts what he gets," she scoffs while singing about her parents in her triumphant anthem, "Waiting for Life." She is determined that her own life will be much different.

With superstition prevalent throughout the island, four gods both help and hinder Ti Moune on her journey. As personified by Alicia Christian (Asaka, goddess of the earth), Anthony Wayne (Papa Ge, demon of death), Monica Quintanilla (Erzulie, goddess of love), and Michael C. Harris (Agwe, god of water), the spiritual beings are the island's lifeblood. Quintanilla, in particular, turns in an exceptional performance as Erzulie, and her sensitive performance of "The Human Heart" is one of the show's most heartfelt moments.

The entire cast is very strong and obviously thrilled to be part of this story. As Ti Moune (originally a breakout role for the precocious LaChanze, who currently stars in Broadway's The Color Purple), Lisa Nicole Wilkerson brings a lovely, wistful quality to her performance. (Recently featured as Nala in the national tour of The Lion King, she is a tremendously accomplished dancer as well.) Ashley Marie Arnold is endearingly energetic as Little Ti Moune, and as the story-within-a-story continually circles back to her eager questions, she is a hopeful, poignant, and ideal recipient of its message. With her youth and vibrancy, she is, as the company explains in the final song, "Why We Tell the Story."

Rashad Webb gives a sensitive (and silky-voiced) performance as Daniel, and Dann Black (who very nearly stole the show as Horse in the Gallery Players's production of The Full Monty last year) offers another delightful turn as the doting Tonton Julian. Debra Thais Evans (as Ti Moune's cautious Mama) and Katherin Emily Mills (as Daniel's intended, Andrea) also deliver fine performances.

With the show's impeccable design, the Gallery Players prove again how so much can be achieved with so little. Joseph Trainor (set designer), Amy Elizabeth Bravo (costumes), Niklas J.E. Anderson (lighting), and Jill Michael (puppet artist) are all to be commended, as the island comes alive with dynamic and creative colors, shapes, creatures, and dimensions.

Smeltzer excels in moving his actors across the stage—under his able direction, every person looks like an accomplished dancer. The percussive and dramatic "Pray," in particular, is an ambitious and arresting achievement. He is less confident, however, when the action slows down, and many of the quieter, dramatic moments become slightly static. In "Forever Yours," Ti Moune and Daniel's haunting duet, for example, the scene takes place so far upstage that its resonance very nearly evaporates. Ti Moune also remains seated for the following scene, which leaves Wilkerson unable to exhibit her character's escalating resolve as she makes a pivotal deal with Papa Ge. These are minor quibbles, however, in a production so brimming with well-executed movement.

Music director Steve Przybylski and his band play the Caribbean-influenced score with ease, and the percussion-based sections are particularly emotive and nuanced.

More attuned to the bleakness of reality than the romance of happy endings, Once on This Island nonetheless presents a world that honors love and integrity, even—and even more so—when faced with insurmountable limitations. The Gallery Players continue this celebration with pizazz.

Shall We Dance?

Footloose, one of the great—and few—movie dance musicals, became a Broadway show a few years ago in what seemed like a perfect fit. The story of city boy Ren McCormack, who challenges a repressed rural town that has banned dancing and music—and gets the girl in the process—seemed like a no-brainer, especially given that the Great White Way is littered with film-to-stage adaptations. But the show didn't make much of a mark on Broadway. A variety of explanations—a crowded season, fan loyalty to the original movie—are plausible. But one fundamental question remained: How do you cast a group of professional performers to play a bunch of amateur dancers?

St. Jean's Players has found an answer by featuring a roster of well-honed if not professionally seasoned talents in its cast. While Footloose is the first show for many of these cast members, they demonstrate a wealth of talent that should add many a future show to their résumés. This should come as no surprise to anyone who saw the company's wonderful production of Annie this past fall, and director Paul Kowalewski's Footloose is right on par with that show.

Based on events in 1978 in a small Oklahoma town, where dancing had been prohibited for nearly 90 years until a group of high school teens questioned the ban, Footloose has a little more gravitas than its initial premise might suggest. The fictional town of Bomont, located somewhere in the Midwest, has banned music and dancing because several years earlier four teenagers, while driving home from a dance and possibly intoxicated, died when their car went off a bridge. One of them was the son of a minister, Shaw Moore (Shannon Bain), who immediately called for the outlawing of any recreational activities that might again end in tragedy.

Bomont has lived in a state of repression ever since, until the arrival of Ren (Eric Noone), who has left Chicago with his mother Ethel (an underused Debbie Nicklaus, especially with her beautiful alto) after his father abandons them. Why did he leave? That's one of several questions never answered in the show, but the movie never addressed them either. Eventually, Ren befriends Willard Hewitt (lovable teddy bear Ryan Cook) and falls for the local rebel, Ariel (Christina Smith), who is, of course, the daughter of the Rev. Moore.

With his rebelliousness, Ren makes a name for himself in Bomont, not only with his classmates but also among the pious town elders, particularly when he decides the town should hold a dance. As Ren ingratiates himself, he also meets Ariel's friends, who act as both a girl group and a Greek chorus commenting on the action—Rusty (Giselle D'Souza), Urleen (Becky Titleman), and Wendy Jo (Liz Marion).

Noone is nothing short of spectacular as Ren—fleet of foot and good-looking to boot. Do not be surprised if he becomes a major star on stage or screen in no time. He shares a real chemistry with Smith, whose pretty countenance is matched with an even prettier voice. Both are dynamic presences who command every second of their time onstage. In addition to fitting well with each other and their co-stars, they pull off the tougher trick of successfully playing high school students. Their duet of "Almost Paradise" is a highlight of the show. But Kowaleski doesn't let the spotlight shine on just his leads; D'Souza proves her chops in "Let's Hear It for the Boy," and Cook does a standout job on "Mama Says," one of the songs written for the Broadway version.

Bain is a marvel, intense and sensitive, and his scenes with his onstage wife Vi (Sharon Lowe) are among the most moving. I wanted them to have more than one song together, besides another original written for the stage, "Can You Find It in Your Heart?" The Rev. Moore is a tough role to play as written. He is an antagonist, but Bain always shows a layer of hurt, loss, and doubt beneath the character's obstinacy.

I'd be hard-pressed not to mention one final element: Kelsey Gerlach's choreography. Fluid, fun, and at times even balletic, her dancing allows for many impressive moments from the universally great ensemble, while always remaining youthful and energetic. It's no wonder Footloose brought the crowd to its feet. The St. Jean's Players have done it again.

Highbrow and Dirty-Minded

Sex farce has always been, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a trivial genre for serious people. Part of the reason is that the arch, ironic sensibilities of literary playwrights—from Aristophanes to G.B. Shaw to Joe Orton—cannot easily stomach the cheese of traditional romantic comedies. Sex farce subverts romance, displaying the black caulk behind love's gilded mirror. At the same time, its distorted caricature of courtship often lets us see more accurately the gross outlines of passion's truer features. Kiran Rikhye's smart yet lighthearted frolic Stage Kiss is no exception: it playfully teases out the tension between high-minded sexual mores and one's dirty-minded wish for more sex. In fact, Stage Kiss sends up the genre of sex farce itself with a gentle parody of its conventions.

Neptune's annual rape and sacrifice of a small Grecian island's most beautiful virgin has both Phyllida and Gallathea fearing for their lives. Rather than lose their chastity, they each separately strike upon a scheme to cross-dress as dashing gents and hide out in the woods. Upon meeting, both maids quickly fall for each other—thinking the other is a man, of course.

However, both are too timid to give either their disguise or their virginity away. Venus, Neptune's lover and rival, tries to get each maid to make the first move, but to little avail. Neptune finally discovers them—but, in the end, Venus has her own tricks to keep Neptune from turning his.

Intentionally redolent of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It on the surface, Stage Kiss has its real inspirational roots in Charles Ludlum's "theater of the ridiculous." Ludlum's work reveled in outrageous polysexual high jinks whose version of camp derived as much from the cheap thrill of its spectacle as from its whip-smart downtown wit.

Trashy glam rock and drag queens informed the quirky sensibility of Ludlum's stage shows, which delighted in extravagance of all types—whether it was glitter poured over an actor's entire body or the silent lilting of a single leaf falling from the rafters. But Ludlum's travesties were also knowing theatrical pastiches: they plundered genres both high and low, casting an ironic wink at their historical context even as they kept one eye wide open on the contemporary underground scene.

Stage Kiss is reminiscent of Ludlum's work, noticeably The Mystery of Irma Vep in the way Jon Campbell and Layna Fisher, the actors playing Neptune and Venus, run through a series of accelerating costume changes as they comically race around the stage also portraying Gallathea's and Phyllida's respective—though hardly respectable—single parent. Director Jon Stancato does a wonderful job pacing the play with lively blocking that veers into the madcap.

Likewise, the costumes, designed by Merav Elbaz Janowsky, provide another piquant source of humor because Gallathea is played by a fey Cameron J. Oro dressed obviously—but not too obtrusively—in drag. The effect can be dizzying as Oro negotiates the postures of gay and straight simultaneously while bending and blending genders.

With its nonstop sex jokes, the play undercuts any bombast that the deliberately archaic blank verse might possess. Neptune's trident, for example, is composed of three dildos, and, at one point Venus somersaults into Neptune's arms for some acrobatic cunnilingus.

In fact, the constant quips and double entendres come off even better for their vestige of anachronism, because the meter heightens the play's atmosphere of artifice without detracting from the dialogue's intelligibility, thanks to the concise yet colorful—and, quite often, off-color—verse.

Campbell and Fisher manage to get in cahoots with the audience during several scenes that demolish the fourth wall, which they milk for the giddy humor that arises from the awkwardness that audience interactions bring. (If you're not game to being put on the spot, though, make sure you sit well in the back of the small theater.) Fisher, especially, gains our affections as Venus, the slut who stumbles around in a drunken stupor but always slyly manages to come out on top—and over the top.

David Bengali's set design bedazzles with AstroTurf, chintzy blow-up trees, and fallen, Day-Glo leaves. But one of the best touches in this gaudy, disco-like diorama was a minimalist gesture: Venus pulls down a small blind center stage with the words "The Woods" written on it as she sprays some pine-scented air freshener for comic effect.

Unlike romantic comedies, where the inevitable happy ending is too often sickeningly predictable, the "happy ending" of Stage Kiss has a delightfully tongue-in-cheek twist. Audiences should walk away charmed by the play's escapades, gleeful with a guiltless spring fever. One feels thoroughly emancipated from serious concerns of laws, politics, and wars—as well as the unwritten rules of romance, sexual politics, and the battle of the genders.

Couples in Crisis

I'd Leave You...But We Have Reservations is a collection of four new one-act plays. The theme (sort of) is couples in crisis in restaurants (mostly). The setting is New York, and all the characters are very New York in that annoying highbrow way that exists only in theater. Produced by Living Image Arts and now premiering at the Linhart Theater at 440 Studios, this cobbled-together and tedious mishmash features some funny performances but little else. The first piece is Robert Askins's Past the Teeth, a pointless and tiresome Woody Allen reject about a couple celebrating their anniversary. The wife, played by Erin Kukla, is a whiny nag. The husband, played by Joseph Tomasini, is an annoying neurotic. Together, they are thoroughly unlikable. A restaurant critic on assignment, he takes notes about the restaurant as his wife prattles on about feeling neglected. She talks about their lackluster sex life—he feigns ignorance. There are lots of food-as-sex metaphors that have either been heard before or just aren't funny. The performers are not helped by Marco Jo Clate's uninspired direction, which runs the gamut from sitting with lots of arm movements to walking around aimlessly with lots of arm movements.

Jo Clate also directs the second piece, Jacqueline Christy's Lunch, an at times charming play about two old friends who meet for lunch to catch up. Maryanne, played by the woefully miscast Mia Alden, is a classic screw-up. Well into her 30's, she lives each day as if she were at a never-ending frat party. She gets drunk every night, has reckless sexual encounters with strangers and co-workers, pops pills, and is generally a frightful mess. Her friend Lucy, played by the talented Shelley McPherson in the evening's best performance, has it all, including a handsome husband and a house in Westchester.

As Maryanne unravels with each passing minute, Lucy listens attentively while offering advice, and ultimately takes pity on her. When Maryanne turns the tables on Lucy, the play devolves into a Lifetime TV movie about lesbians and eating disorders. Alden stumbles her way through the part and pauses at the oddest moments. But McPherson skillfully makes her presence known with a fully developed, three-dimensional performance that manages to make even the lesbian subplot touching. She deserves better material.

The longest and most hollow piece is Stephanie Rabinowitz's Nice Is for Dogs. Littered with literary references for the well educated, it wants to be an existential post-postmodern play so clever in its execution that the audience marvels at its construction. It isn't.

Sylvie, played by Rose Courtney, has dinner with her ex-lover Nate (Peter Marsh). She is a mess and unlovable, while he is in a new relationship and seemingly happy. They reminisce about their affair, and she tries to win him back. When he balks, she shoots him.

Dante, played by Greg Oliver Bodine, inexplicably shows up to taunt Sylvie in some sort of hell on earth metaphor. It is all very unclear. Sylvie then remembers another lover, also played by Marsh. He upsets her, and she kills him. Dante taunts some more. Perhaps she is in hell reliving a series of bad relationships? A third lover, Marsh again, lasts 30 seconds before being dispatched. Sylvie seeks solace in Dante, who turns out to be just like all the others. Director Christopher Schraufnagel tries to make it work, but he is outmatched by Rabinowitz's messy script. Schraufnagel does elicit a great performance from Rose Courtney, who embraces Sylvie's obnoxious personality and runs with it.

The evening's final play, Maria Gabriele's Club Justice, inexplicably abandons the "restaurant/couples-in-crisis" theme and is a forced and uneven attempt at social commentary. The title refers to a TV show hosted by a sadistic nutcase named Humphrey Balduc, played by Kyle Masteller. The show allows people who have been wronged to take revenge on their assailants.

Alexandra Lincoln plays Ziggy Haltegger, an uptight fussbudget who has been wronged. Ziggy comes on Club Justice to unleash her raging brutality on the foul-mouthed Lila, played with malicious delight by Heather Collis. When Ziggy's revenge goes awry, Humphrey turns on her, making Ziggy the TV show's target. It is a clever idea, but with Gabriele's unfocused direction and meandering script, the execution falters. Collis, however, does deliver a truly funny performance.

The problem with I'd Leave You...But We Have Reservations is that the four shows flounder with their lack of focus. Each play is a generic relationship piece populated by unlikable characters. Moreover, the production offers no connection to its audience, and its condescending attempts at depicting highbrow, cosmopolitan living ring untrue.

Things Unsaid

Samuel Adamson's highly regarded first play, Clocks and Whistles, has been given its American debut thanks to the Origin Theater Company's trans-Atlantic mission statement. It concerns a group of friends—twenty-somethings in late-90's London—who need and want each other, partly because of the sense of ownership that affection breeds. It's also about how their inability to directly communicate emotion is their most enduring quality. As frustrating as this muted, muddled kind of existence might be to watch, we understand that the language of half-truths, things unsaid, and innuendo is precisely the point: this play is as far from American melodrama as one can get.

Each cast member performs admirably in a tale of ambiguous sexual identity and the obsessive power of affection. As the bisexual lothario poet, Trevor (Jerzy Gwiazdowski) is particularly magnetic; Meghan Andrews—quite skilled at adopting Anne's highbred Sloane accent—is also in good form. Special kudos to Zachary Williamson for filling set changes with a totally engrossing soundtrack. Talya Klein's direction acknowledges the play's subtext and manages to use the Cashama theater's tiny space efficiently. And yet it's been hard for me to uncover why I found the whole thing so completely tedious.

I think I've hit upon the reason: this is a play completely dependent upon a culture that I know only through its (completely unreliable) stereotypes. For instance, the Brits are famously known for their stiff upper lips, their discomfort with all things blatantly emotional or overblown.

And it was through the haze of this stereotype that I understood poor Henry's plight: he is a gay man stumbling halfheartedly out of the closet and is completely infatuated with Trevor, but also dependent upon his heterosexual friend Anne. When Anne appropriates Trevor for the sexual commodity he is, Henry (David Mawhinney) is left feeling maligned and ignored. He reaches for both of them, but cannot remake a relationship with Trevor until his relationship with Anne dissolves and Trevor acknowledges the risky life he leads. The climax—Trevor's acknowledgement that he cannot donate blood because he is a health risk—gives the play its raison d'être; all this love and lust comes with a heavy price.

I didn't actually recognize, or empathize with, Henry's longing because I knew it first and foremost as an expression of British reserve. Perhaps it's that investigation of another culture—even one as easily accessible as contemporary London—and the way its members regard each other that keeps Clocks and Whistles from satisfying a gut feeling for something completely knowable.

Whether this reaction of mine has been aided and abetted by the play's age—it premiered in 1996 in London—cannot really be known. What I do know is that I regarded it almost anthropologically, like a case study of people I would never actually hang out with. And at two hours and 15 minutes, this case study goes on a little long.

Clocks and whistles are alarms of sorts: end of the work shift, watch out for that train, good morning, sunshine! They alert us to time's passing and to specific moments that we have deemed important. The proliferation of AIDS plays—or even plays that generally address the culture of sexually transmitted diseases—acts as an alarm of sorts. We are reminded that certain lifestyles, certain choices even, are risky and may carry irreversible consequences. For this reason, Clocks and Whistles was, and is, an important piece to see. It's too bad that watching this production has to be such a ho-hum affair.

War & Peace

Anton Chekhov's most famous works are dense dramas about class, society, and love. Despite the plays' translation from Russian to English, a careful reader will have no problem understanding the text, but many actors would agree that acting Chekhov is harder than reciting stanzas of Shakespearean iambic pentameter. The characters' inner monologues are more important than the words they speak out loud; great care must be taken so that the actors don't come off as either one-note (by focusing on the outside) or inscrutable (by focusing on the inside). The 13th Street Repertory Company's presentation of TROIKA: God, Tolstoy & Sophia is about a different Russian writer, the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Still, playwright Peter Levy seems to have been greatly influenced by the country estate dramas of Chekhov in his structuring of this biographical piece, which does much to illuminate the author's life even as it suffers under its inspiration's shadow.

In the play, the 82-year-old Tolstoy has moved away from his fiction writing to focus on religious ideas, in part to atone for the debaucheries of his youth. Concerned that the high price of books keeps the poor from reading him, he's decided to change his will so that the royalties for his more recent work will go to his daughter Sasha, who will then refuse to accept them. He must do this behind the back of his wife Sophia, who claims she will need all of his revenue to support herself and their children after Tolstoy's death.

The author, backed by his publisher, doctor, and daughter, is increasingly at odds with his wife over money, spirituality, and sex, and is getting weaker by the day because of it. Into the fray comes Valentin Bulgakov, a poor university student and Tolstoy's new secretary, who refuses to take sides. Yet his growing affection for Sasha demands it, so he gets caught up in the struggles over Tolstoy's wealth, well-being, and eternal soul.

Levy has done his best to trim down the action to spotlight the primary and secondary conflicts, but there seems to be too many scenes, especially at the beginning, some of them lasting for barely a minute. The dialogue is stilted, consisting of general conversational pleasantries or Tolstoy's academic quips. Most important, the play is missing a strong narrative and dramatic arc, a misstep that can be made only collaboratively.

The actors and director fail to invest the play with a sense of urgency or consequences. Sophia's appalling behavior seems to come purely out of spite, not a blend of spite, fear, love, and all of the other emotions that come when your life partner is drawing away from you emotionally and spiritually, and dying as well. Sasha doesn't convincingly put forth the libidinous overtones of her dialogue, or how she can be both her father's daughter and a woman with very modern ideas (and an altogether too contemporary way of speaking).

Mike Durell's Tolstoy wasn't a very charismatic guy, but he did come across as a very learned and opinionated old man and drew the audience's empathy for the shabby way his wife treated him. The most effective performance was that of Mark Comer, whose Bulgakov was simple, earnest, and likable.

The goal of 13th Street Rep is to provide a place for performers and crew to learn their craft through putting on full-scale productions. It's commendable that it's choosing new works that are about more than modern people and their problems, so as to challenge and teach the company's members. But sometimes the lesson is that ambitious projects don't always make for good theater.

Theater in the Light

Bone Portraits, Deborah Stein's ambitious new drama presented by Stillpoint Productions, melds gothic horror, romance, vaudeville, and contemporary theatrical experimentation with seeming effortlessness. This multidisciplinary ensemble effort is an exquisite piece of theater, condensing the years between 1893 and 1905 to show how scientific discoveries revolutionized society and set the spirit for the new century. The play's point of origin is the X-ray, discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen (Michael Crane) when he unwittingly radiographed his wife's hand. The discovery so gripped the popular imagination that soon fashionable young couples began posing for X-rays, known as "bone portraits."

Thomas Edison, portrayed here as a slick, vaudevillian charlatan by Gian-Murray Gianino, capitalizes on the fad, hiring a lab assistant named Clarence Dally (Adam Green) to take the portraits. The plot follows two couples as their lives are affected by the era's scientific zeitgeist and the X-ray specifically: Clarence and his wife Josephine (Jessica Worthman), and Myrna and Edward (Miriam Silverman and Michael Craine), a seamstress and a journalist who meet at the Chicago World's Fair.

Green radiates the idealism and trustworthiness of any business's star employee, but he also brings a sensuality to his scenes with his wife. Worthman's performance makes Josephine's love for her husband palpable, even if it is also as phantasmal as the bone portraits that eventually take his life. Silverman and Craine also do an excellent job of rendering the emotional and physical connections between lovers.

Other characters include the noble Roentgen and the spry Nana, an elderly woman who at first provides a foil for the period's scientific spirit but slowly embraces it by exploring the World's Fair and the bone portrait fad. Nana is also played by Silverman, who demonstrates a notable physical versatility, while Craine slips easily and convincingly into a German accent as Roentgen.

The two love stories form the backbone of the drama, but to ignore the show's other elements would be to grossly oversimplify what Stillpoint achieves here. The cast of five, billed as co-creators and expertly directed by Lear deBessonet, demonstrates versatility and physical agility in a variety of vaudeville-inspired songs, dances, and comedic skits. To the credit of both the company and the playwright, these elements, rather than hindering the show's momentum, further develop the already-established characters and also demonstrate the effect of the X-ray's discovery upon the average American.

The production also stands out by utilizing design not as an afterthought but as an integral element. Because cameras and projectors were also newly invented during the late 19th century, the use of film and projection here adds to the feeling of scientific wonder. Film and video designer Gregory King and projection designer J. Ryan Graves transport the audience to the World's Fair, where Myrna and Edward fall in love. Ghostly projections that replicate X-rays are a visual focal point as each character experiences a bone portrait.

Scenic and lighting designer Justin Townsend, along with his associate designer, Peter Ksander, elegantly and effectively divide the stage space into performance areas that convey emotion as well as location. The show begins on a small platform in front of a curtain, in the style of vaudeville, but as the story's emotional depth is revealed, so too are areas farther upstage with the removal of hanging sheets. Stark light accentuates the white fabric, calling to mind the excitement of scientific discovery. Yet when the effects of radiation exposure ultimately destroy several lives, the deepest stage area is disclosed, and the actors are physically taken on a journey that parallels their characters' emotional travels.

Costume designer Kirche Leigh Zeile and sound designer Matt Huang also serve the production admirably. The costumes ground the production in the appropriate decade with historical detail, yet do not restrain the cast's ability from meeting the playwright's and director's physical demands. Huang's soundscape displays range: realistic sounds and lively music add ambience to the scenes at the fair, yet harsher and more discordant notes contribute to the play's harsher emotional moments.

For the most part, the production moves quickly and never sacrifices pace or clarity for the sake of experimentation. But in the middle, the use of exaggerated physical movement and a departure from dialogue that would anchor the narrative may leave some audience members feeling adrift. Still, that is remedied with the fanciful utilization of some gothic horror, as when one of the characters encounters a phantasm. An eventual return to vaudeville with a pleasantly surprising comedic musical number refocuses the story and heightens the impact of the show's conclusion.

Overall, this production succeeds on several levels. The tragic love stories move the audience emotionally, while the vaudeville sequences bring a lightness to the story's darker proceedings. Together, these elements effectively develop the show's theme about the dangers of scientific experimentation and knowledge. And Stillpoint's work highlights another message: the virtues of theater when a production exemplifies collaborative effort this well.

Growing Up

A coming-of-age tale often features a defining moment in an adolescent's life that crushes his or her innocence, catapulting the youth into the cruel world of adulthood. Co-written by Nat Bennett and the play's monologist, Sam Rosen, and currently playing at the SoHo Playhouse, Ham Lake is in that genre but with a twist. Rather than focus on an adolescent, Rosen portrays a 22-year-old who is driven to self-examination after a cruel trick by his ex-girlfriend leaves him freezing and stranded in a Minnesota field at Ham Lake. Though this character seems a little old to realize the fun and games of childhood are over, Rosen gives a convincing and very charismatic portrayal of a twenty-something male who has maintained his childlike naïveté a little longer than most people.

Whether Rosen's monologue is autobiographical or pure fiction is never revealed. It is billed as being "so outrageous that it must be true" when it is not outrageous at all but rather completely believable within its context. Rosen's character (never named) is exactly the kind of man who would be attracted to the girl and visa versa. The explosive fights in their relationship seem completely natural given the collision course they are on.

Rosen delivers the monologue with a perfect comic tone and timing. His energy level is contagious, and his childlike enthusiasm is so captivating that you almost hope the tragically immature character he portrays does not grow up into a boring, jaded adulthood. But between the laughs are moments of poignancy, times when Ham Lake feels more like an in-depth character study than a riotous monologue.

The girlfriend, Tanya, and Rosen's character lead sad, empty lives with broken homes, boring jobs, and no real aspirations to change their lot in life. To compensate for their humdrum existence, they have loud, raucous fun when they are together, often ending a night of verbal sparring with passionate sex when it looks as if one may dump the other.

But the laughs wane and then cease altogether when hard facts about the pair's background are revealed. The boy's mother abandoned him when he was a child. His father raised him the best he could, relating to his two sons on a buddy level with camping trips and dirty jokes. Tanya has a 4-year-old daughter, an abusive ex-boyfriend, and a night job serving drinks in a strip club. With their breadth of problems, they each need someone strong to lean on. Leaning on each other only causes them both to collapse.

Adding to the problems is the boy's father. Though he loves his sons, he is unable to relate to them as a parent or role model. He does not even seem aware of the abusive relationship that has defined his son's life until the day he calls from Ham Lake asking for a ride home. When the father shows up in his car, the boy finally tells him everything that has been going on. But it is all ignored by the father, except when he reveals he was once in a similarly abusive relationship. Frustration outweighs humor in this moment, when the opportunity to break a destructive family cycle is lost, possibly forever.

As entertaining as Rosen is in his portrayal of a childish twenty-something, there is no masking with laughs the circumstances that have made him this way. In fact, when the older brother finally tells Rosen's character that he needs to grow up, the younger brother lingers over the words as if hearing them for the first time.

Ham Lake does not conclude neatly with promises of a brighter future and better days ahead. The ending feels heavy, making things seem a little more bleak than when the story began. One can only hope that one day something or someone will come along and push the young man in Rosen's monologue forward before his future becomes as cold and empty as a field at Ham Lake.

Postwar Blues

Sex. Youth. Drugs. The themes of Pains of Youth, a play written more than 80 years ago by Ferdinand Bruckner, are decidedly modern. In it, a group of twenty-something medical students engage in self-destructive behavior to combat boredom and find purpose and meaning in their lives. Picture MTV's The Real World in post-World War I Vienna, and you will get the idea. Heck, it even contains the requisite lesbian. The 7th Sign theater company has revived the work at TriBeCa's Access Theater in a flawed production that does not convey the power and intelligence of Bruckner's play. Instead, it relies on shock over substance. But lesbian kisses and wanton drug abuse are hardly shocking to the MTV generation, and these moments only serve to punctuate an otherwise dull show.

The play centers on seven young people living in a boarding house in Vienna ("seven strangers picked to live in a house…"). As several of them near graduation from medical school, they have to deal with the uncertainties of grown-up life in postwar Europe and face the disillusionment left after the war.

The day before Marie (Kari Floberg) is to graduate from medical school, the sadomasochistic Freder (Mick Lauer) reveals that her boyfriend Petrell (Josh Heine), whom she disturbingly refers to as "Little Boy," has fallen in love with another medical student, Irene (Amy Ewing). Marie, feeling distraught and alone, falls into the arms of her manic roommate, Desiree (Sheila Carrasco). During all of this, Freder performs the ultimate manipulation: transforming the character of the house's maid, Lucy (Donna Lazar), from trusting and innocent to bawdy and wanton.

Let it be said that this is an ambitious play to produce. In general, translations (the original was in German) can be overly formal, and the source material, although quite provocative, is heavy-handed. It takes an extremely seasoned director and group of actors to achieve the balance between theatrics and subtlety that the play needs to succeed. Unfortunately, this production's cast and directors, all relative newcomers, show that they are still green.

Director Charlie Wilson, assisted by Mike Fitzgerald, leaves the cast to navigate the awkward interactions alone. As a result, for a play about sex there is surprisingly little chemistry. Also, many of the actors screamed out most of their lines, making it nearly impossible to understand the dialogue. It seemed that every emotion—love, hate, anger, fear, happiness, etc.—was conveyed through the same heightened, screechy tones. If the play was performed in German, this technique might be effective, but the Access Theater is a small black box and requires greater control. Although the actors, most if not all theater school grads, appeared passionate about their characters, their passion seemed misguided.

The play's rhythm was interrupted by unnecessary set changes, making a long production even longer. The cast, acting as stagehands, would move furniture around, perhaps to indicate a new room or to offer the audience a different perspective on the action. It was never clear why this was done. Wilson would have better served the play by keeping the sets the same throughout.

Still, the production was not without merit. The costumes, designed by Katja Andreiev, capture the time period and the characters remarkably well. Desiree's kimono-esque nightgown ideally suited a sexually liberated free spirit. And as Lucy changed from housekeeper to glorified streetwalker, her clothes went from dowdy to decadent. Andreiev's research and attention to detail was apparent in all of her creations.

But ultimately, clever costumes are not enough to save this muddled production. Pains of Youth offers a window into an era not very different from our own. It is a worthy play in need of a more fully realized presentation.

Eastern Images

In Japanese, photography translates as "copying the truth," and the Yara Arts Group has produced a delicate, thoughtful theatrical exploration of the father of Japanese photography, Hikoma Ueno (1838-1904). Combining elements of music, dance, and puppetry, Sundown is an enigmatic meditation on the life of a pioneering artist. Rather than follow a straightforward biographical form, however, the play charts Ueno's life more abstractly, drawing from historical fact as well as texts written by such disparate authors as Emily Dickinson and anonymous geisha girls. Created and directed by Watoku Ueno (who also provides the vivid lighting and set design, and is of no relation to the photographer), Sundown allows Hikoma Ueno's life to unfold in mesmerizing, dreamlike scenes, underscored by violinist Storm Garner's haunting compositions, which can be both jarring and serene.

Although the proceedings turn overly metaphorical at times, Ueno himself (Nick Bosco) grounds the production, and Sundown investigates many transformative conflicts in his life. Raised in a tradition of portrait painting, he adopted the camera in his quest for clearer artistic expression. The camera was dismissed as witchcraft by many of his acquaintances, and Ueno's pursuit of photography was controversial during a time of overwhelming Western influence.

Ueno mixed his own chemicals and invented a "wet plate" developing procedure that, unlike a daguerreotype, created a negative that could be reproduced multiple times. Still, commercial success eluded him, and the majority of his subjects were geishas (whose beauty made them ideal subjects to be photographed), foreigners (who didn't have intrinsic prejudices against photography), and rebel leaders (who, prepared to die in battle, wanted their images preserved).

Impending mortality made a photograph overwhelmingly important to the Japanese samurai—not merely a luxury but a duty. "I completed my obligation to prepare for death," a soldier remarks after Ueno takes his photograph.

Whole sections of Sundown offer straightforward, and rather didactic, historical facts put forth by the six actors, who reveal comprehensive information about Ueno's background and surroundings. The actors form a captivating, precise ensemble throughout, but the play's most intriguing moments are the more poetic ones. Ueno (the director) uses a simple white screen to display mesmerizing images with puppets and light, as well as reproductions of many of Ueno's photographs.

With its suggestive, cyclical structure, Sundown arrives at several false endings, and a few of the final scenes (involving geishas and samurai) are rather protracted and feel randomly placed. And although Kazue Tani gives a compelling performance as the Bird Woman, her interactions with Ueno could be more clearly defined and explained. Fortunately, the stage pictures offer such arresting images that you are unlikely to be too bothered by the occasional opaque metaphor.

Ueno wanted to find an artistic formula for photography, a way to capture the "things we can't see that exist." A century after his death, photography continues to fascinate us as a window into lives and times gone by. In Sundown, the Yara Arts Group offers an intriguing study of one of history's most important—and largely forgotten—chroniclers of humanity. The production finds particular poignancy in the many photographs that appear on the screen; Ueno endeavored to "copy the truth," and the eyes of his subjects challenge us to understand more fully, beyond what we can see.

Shepard's Pie

In Hotel Chronicles, his offbeat memoir, Sam Shepard recounts how he used to sleepwalk around his house at night. His parents told him they had to tuck him back in bed in a somnambulistic state. Shepard, yearning to experience a closer connection with his parents, began to fake sleepwalking, especially when he heard his parents making love. Thus, part of Shepard's reality became the playacting of his dreams, just as his nightly fantasies acted themselves out using his body without him even knowing. This early experience is indicative of how there's no clear line between the real and the imaginary in Shepard's work: there are only seamless inversions of both.

In Action, four awkward members of a Dust Bowl family—who are, at once, total strangers and aspects of a single person—go through the rituals of Christmas dinner. They begin with long pauses, blinks, and stares while nervously sipping tea. Each character is in his or her own head, flipping through a book, telling a story no one listens to, or tapping feet under the table. As one character remarks to himself, "It's hard to have a conversation." When another offers to do someone a favor, it's perceived as a kind of thinly veiled threat. The action, however, is quick to escalate.

Jeep, the character for whom the whole scene may be a nightmare inside his head, smashes a couple of chairs in his rage at not being able to express himself. His brother, Shooter, goes to fetch a new chair—and meanwhile misses out on the turkey dinner. Jeep, in a quirky twist that's pure Shepard, has miraculously found a fish in the well outside, and begins to carve it up for Shooter. The smell wafts palpably throughout the small theater.

By the end, the images suffice to express the characters' sense of anomie and isolation: the women fasten and unfasten pee-stained underwear to a clothesline, Shooter cowers under an easy chair like a turtle, and Jeep screams that he has been imprisoned in a body over which he's lost all control. Penny Bettone portrays Jeep with a manic, masculine rage that still manages to keep some inward tenderness and vulnerability intact.

Cowboys #2, which also plays on levels of reality, is a rewrite of Shepard's first one-act, which he has lost. Two bums pass their time at a construction site playacting the part of cowboys. They wallow in the mud during a flash flood and long for a better life—and some breakfast, too, especially since one of them is a diabetic.

While the play is slight in itself, it provides a few entertaining monologues so the actors can let loose and act goofy. Both Jason Kalus and Adrian O'Donnell, as Chet and Stu, give rollicking, honky-tonk performances with lots of twang when they play their characters' cowboy alter egos. The actors are just as capable of suddenly pulling back, though, into more serious moods when their characters' mundane existence interrupts their game of make-believe.

The short play powerfully foreshadows Shepard's distinctive style: taut, well-plotted conflicts are abandoned to allow for wild, extended metaphors and stories of personal damage. Cowboys #2, like many of the plays Shepard was to write later, is about how reality often intrudes violently upon our fantasy lives.

Chicago, a play that demands that the dream state be accepted as a premise for reality, offers Tim Scott, playing Stu, a wonderful opportunity to mesmerize the audience with more of Shepard's zany tall tales as he flops and splashes around in a bathtub with his pants still on. Be forewarned: Artistic Director Michael Horn passes out towels to those seated in the first row, and they come in handy.

Stu represents the helpless slacker out of his element in the cutthroat corporate fish tank. His wife, who has just landed a new job, keeps receiving in the backroom upscale visitors who wear expensive suits or minks and haute couture dresses. These visitors also carry fishing rods, the bait of which they later dangle into the audience.

The fun, intimate atmosphere keeps the audience game for the high jinks: on the night I saw the play, an audience member in back of me teasingly gulped at the bait as it swayed in front of him. By the end of the play, after his wife has left for work, Stu gives breathing lessons as he steps out of the bathtub's little pond and into the bigger "pond" of the stage. Audience members cannot help but feel a mysterious energy as they inhale and exhale along with him.

Director Tom Amici has assembled a wonderful cast all around and has created a thoughtful production whose small scale allows the important details of Shepard's plays to shine through. When audiences exit from the intimate, comic nightmares of these early Shepard one-acts, life itself seems a kind of sleepwalking.

Unreality TV

Television: miraculous invention or mind-numbing instrument? Whether you love it or hate it, TV isn't going anywhere. (Indeed, it's hard to believe that the unrelenting barrage of reality shows will ever stop.) Critics of television tend to focus on how the media desensitize people to serious topics (war, world hunger), for when you can simply change a channel to something more cheerful, how can anyone ever be expected to invest in anything real? Reality—and our perception of it—is the focus of Alex De Witt's Prime Time, which attempts to eviscerate the false sense of security that is created when one lives in the suburbs and watches the world from the safety of a cozy living room. This would-be comedy falls short of its noble goal, however, and its razor-sharp critique is dulled by an incoherent script, lackluster direction, and tepid performances.

It all starts off well enough, as we are presented with a "normal" middle-class living room in the suburbs of Detroit. Wealthy John Ball, his pretty wife Helen, and their two young children live an idyllic life far beyond the reaches of social ills like racism and poverty, which they see only through their television screen. Or rather, which they don't see, since they have the option of turning the channel when things get too harsh for their tender hearts.

When a female face appears over the static on the huge television screen, she informs John that never in history has there been "such a divide between the haves and the have-nots." She explains that what he has is a "luxury"—the luxury to worry about anything other than mere survival.

In the next scene, the same woman appears onstage as John's long-lost sister Sarafina. Obviously pregnant, she shows up at the house late one night with her boyfriend Carl in tow. She explains that she is trying to straighten out her life and wants a place to stay for a while. Carl, we learn, is a member of a gang in Detroit, and the next morning reality (in the form of three gang members out to seek revenge against Carl) explodes into John and Helen's home.

"This is just like on TV," Helen comments flatly as one of the men draws a gun. Although her script is obviously meant to eschew naturalism, De Witt has drawn characters that are overwhelmingly—and uselessly—two-dimensional. And without a structure taut enough to illuminate their faults, the characters simply fall flat when they might have been used to illustrate more compelling truths.

For example, as two stagehands appear between scenes to rearrange the set and comment on the action, their ideas—inexplicably—seem to influence the plot. When they fantasize about violence, the following scene feels like an homage to Quentin Tarantino films, but it's violence filled with gratuitous expletives and racial stereotypes.

Even more troubling is when the stagehands fantasize about two women being intimate, and Helen and Sarafina enter for an erotic scene on a kitchen table. While in theory this is likely meant to point out the ridiculousness of such audience-pleasing conventions, De Witt's elementary critique only objectifies the women further, adding to the problem rather than attempting to abate it. (A moment of unnecessary nudity by one of the actors—also the playwright—only furthers the confusion.)

Still, every so often a character says something interesting. "I want to live my life, not watch everyone else's," John announces. And Helen despairs that her life "looks like a Hallmark card commercial, but it doesn't feel like a Hallmark card commercial." Unfortunately, these statements are not investigated to any satisfying depth. Instead, they are muffled by—among other profundities—Sarafina's explanation that "in the dark, they're all the same," as she confides in Helen about her sexual relationship with Carl.

Fern R. Lopez's direction locates and maintains a stagnant tempo throughout the production, and Josh Zangen's spare set is functional, if rather confusing. (Why, oh why, in an obviously middle-class home, would the TV set sit directly on the floor?) Lighting designer Jennifer Schriever gives the production its most professional touch, and the lights of the television flicker with an attention to detail that is largely missing elsewhere.

The recent surge of reality TV has prompted many to consider television's potential to represent a coherent reality, leading to thoughtful debate and critique of a media outlet that, at its best, can both entertain and inform. But instead of encouraging us to consider how we might improve this reality, Prime Time is only further confirmation of how misguided we can be.

Platonic Kitsch

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is often told as a tragic tale of romance. Orpheus is the plaintive lover whose melodious lamentations for his lost love give him power over beasts and stones. Eventually, his songs gain him admittance to Hades, where he seeks to bring Eurydice back from the dead. Warned that if he looks back at her he will lose her forever, Orpheus cannot help himself. He looks, and she vanishes instantly from his gaze. Plato, however, interpreted the myth of Orpheus as an allegory of image and reality (as Plato was wont to do). In Plato's version, in his Symposium, Orpheus's desire to bring back Eurydice and himself alive from Hades is a sign that he is not willing to heroically die for love. Orpheus is merely a musician, a poet—and, thus, for Plato "shows no spirit." Because he seeks only the fleeting apparition of his love, Orpheus is "sent empty away."

The Medicine Show's revival of V.R. Lang's 1952 play in free verse, Fire Exit: Vaudeville for Eurydice, uses this passage from Plato as an epigraph—our first hint that this is going to be a strange, self-condemning anti-romance and not what it may seem on the surface: a feel-good burlesque with witty references to Greek myths.

Playing off Plato, Lang portrays Orpheus as the successful but essentially empty antihero and Eurydice as the naïve young girl who, having become bitter with cruel experience, is seduced into selling out at tawdry burlesque shows, where men go to ogle skin instead of contemplating high ideas. The mythic characters get updated to 1930's America, and the plot is filled out with a supporting cast.

Orpheus is a hot opera composer and librettist whose career is rapidly taking off; he is surrounded by an avaricious gaggle of gay agents and producers who look as if they're from 1930's Berlin cafe society with their foppish hats and silk cravats. Eurydice, on the other hand, is the simple, homespun nursing-school student whose silly aunts and tacky uncles are aging vaudeville types trying to hook her up with a big break or a bachelor.

Problem is, the play's form wants to revel in the lyrical impulse its theme condemns—high poetry and low show tunes alike. This contradiction irks one not just "theoretically" but in terms of the characters' motivations and the entire play's through line.

We can't quite figure out who Orpheus is or why Eurydice falls for him so hard. Moreover, why—if Orpheus is so empty of true love—does he bother to search for Eurydice for many years when he has plenty of screaming teenybopper fans? And, by the way, is it believable that teenyboppers are ardent opera buffs, or does this represent a descent into opera buffa?

Worse yet, Jon Crefeld, who resembles a more vapid version of Nick Lachey (if that's imaginable), acted as empty and lost as Plato describes his character of Orpheus. Whether his character was supposed to be stiff was difficult to discern—but if so, then why is Orpheus so feted in the play? Crefeld's interpretation of Orpheus exemplified a dim bulb more than the megawatts of genuine star power.

The play's condemnation of pinchbeck theatricality reaches its most absurd level when Eurydice's trio of aging, failed vaudevillian aunts belt out an off-key show tune. The acting and singing is an amateur representation of amateurishness. Again, I became genuinely confused as to whether their songs' grating wheeze was parody or dreadfully unaware self-parody.

The play contained a few entertaining bits, however, such as a scene where the fey producers devour a phallic baguette and dribble spurts of Champagne on themselves. Their drunken frenzy litters the stage with crumbs and suds until they're finally dragged into the wings.

Ironically, Uta Bekaia's costumes—that element of pure theatrical appearance—were unusually apropos in their sheer tackiness. For example, Eurydice's uncles "slap-schticked" their way in plaid suits, white wingtips, baseball caps, and truly horrendous dime-store ties. Eurydice herself cavorted in a stripper's faux-nurse outfit by the end.

These bright points, though, can't keep the piece from collapsing in on its self-contradictions. Lang's attempt at a "free verse" play ultimately fails: we cannot hear the rhythm, which is essentially a prose rhythm, except when the lines become jangly with clichéd rhymes. Moreover, the idea of using poetry and vaudeville to tell a story that casts aspersions on both leaves one little to believe in.

The contempt the play expresses for the tackiness and essential falseness of theater is, oddly, both reinforced and undermined by the production's cheap exuberance. The audience begins to sense there is something disingenuous about the production's sincerity of self-contempt, which lacks both irony and, like Plato's Orpheus, "true spirit."

Club Scene

Three-year-old Tajmere Clark died an unnatural death on a recent Sunday. While on a drunken rampage, a crazed gunman shot and killed the African-American toddler in her East New York home. When Melvin Van Peebles wrote his 1971 musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death: Tunes From Blackness, he must have hoped that things would be different by 2006. No such luck. Two days before the Brooklyn shooting, Van Peebles stood in the back of the club T New York in Midtown. There, the Classical Theater of Harlem is reviving his Broadway musical for a rapacious city where black citizens still die unnaturally every day. Yet in spite of the topical title, the production feels more like a parody of a Fat Albert episode than a social commentary on urban violence and struggle.

The characters are Shaft-era stereotypes, including pimps, prostitutes, bag ladies, drug dealers, and cops. Or, more specifically, "Fatso," "Big Titties," "The Dyke," and "Sweet Daddy," among others. Interestingly, Van Peebles penned Ain't Supposed to Die at the same time he was working on Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which has been called the first "blaxploitation" film. The connection between the two is undeniable.

The production takes place in a nightclub where audience members sit at banquettes surrounding the dance floor, at bistro tables in the middle of the floor, and in a balcony overlooking it. The actors climb over and around the audience and play off of the people seated closest to the center. Two-for-one drink tickets can be purchased at the box office window, so you can sip your Tanqueray and tonic while watching street violence re-enacted near, or sometimes on, your table.

Songs ranging from "Lily Done the Zampoughi Every Time I Pulled Her Coattail" to "Come Raising Your Leg on Me" remind the audience that Van Peebles may have been less concerned with racial equality than with having a good time. (He did perform the hardcore sex scenes in Sweet Sweetback himself.)

Alfred Preisser directs for thrills here, mostly at the expense of the female cast members. Violence against women and forced prostitution is as serious today as it was 35 years ago. Instead of using the vicious and the exploitative to provoke disgust and dialogue, Preisser allows the pole dancing, sexual assaults, beatings, and draggings to continue for so long in so many scenes that one wonders if he is disgusted by these acts or intrigued by them. (Judging by the faces of some men in the audience, it may have been the latter.)

Van Peebles's songs rival Lenny Kravitz's for repetition. Most consist of one line repeated over and over. (The show is touted as a precursor to choreopoem, spoken word, and rap, so three cheers for evolution.) The cast is dedicated and energetic but lacks any real vocal power. The opening song, "It Just Don't Make No Sense," is sung almost entirely off-key. John-Andrew Morrison, as an unemployed man who sings "Mirror Mirror on the Wall," is one of the better vocalists, however.

The singers get no help from the orchestra because this live musical doesn't have one. The score is pre-recorded and played by DJs in a booth overlooking the club floor. Visual aspects make up for aural sloppiness. Some costumes are fun and playful, like the money-hungry pimp in a light-green leisure suit, while others are spot-on realistic, like the homeless woman (played very convincingly by Kimberlee Monroe) who could have easily been lured into the club from Eighth Avenue.

Ain't Supposed to Die ran on Broadway for nearly a year, from 1971 to 1972; racked up Tony and Grammy Award nominations; and laid the foundation for some of the most important styles in African-American music. This revival should have either made the rowdy relic pertinent to today's issues or simply let it die a natural death.

Mixed Bag

When this Friday or Saturday night comes around, do your immortal soul a favor and go to church. No, not the big one on Park Avenue. I'm talking about the one that congregates in the downstairs cabaret space at Theater for a New City. This worship service is called Suck Sale...and Other Indulgences, and Evan Laurence presides as the high cleric of indulgent absurdity. Suck Sale is actually a collection of four performance pieces, two scripted and two improvised, that were conceived, written, and directed by Laurence. As the title suggests, he doesn't conceal the fact that this is his own self-indulgent ritual. Whether audiences take part in it or sit in respectful silence is up to them, and probably not even a concern to him. Laurence and his cast are having so much fun that it becomes a downright religious experience.

In the first piece, Suck Sale, Mimi Dieux-Veau invites two vacuum cleaner salesmen into her home under the pretense of deciding who has the best sucking machine. Dieux-Veau, played with disturbing sensibility by Tanya Everett, is a combination of Donna Reed and a tribal priestess. Brian Ferrari and Laurence play the salesmen, and each recounts the startling experiences that have led them into the melancholy life of heaving Hoovers, before the two learn they've been brought together for a different reason. From there the sanity of the situation fractures, as Priestess Mimi uses her ability to control the salesmen's movements like puppets and then actually turns them into Punch and Judy puppets for a while.

The piece gives way to some shtick in The Sybil, in which Laurence takes two suggestions from the audience and improvises a 10-minute scene. He successfully conjures up three characters: a man, his wife, and, well, a hemorrhoid goblin that is setting off firecrackers inside the man's rear end. Each of the characters, amazingly, has separate character arcs, voices, and styles of movement, and Laurence plays the scene until its inevitable conclusion. Unfortunately, this was an early performance in the show's run (opening night, in fact), and the house wasn't as charged as it needed to be for this kind of improv.

The small audience perked up a little for the third piece, Edith the Head Takes Manhattan, in which Laurence plays a disfigured World War II refugee, Edith, who seems to have lost her entire body. Laurence plays this bit in a magnificent giant head puppet that is bigger than his entire body. I am not really clear if this monstrous creation should be considered costuming (designed by Mary-Anne Buyondo, Corinne Darroux, and Josefin Sandling) or props (designed by Kate Odermatt and—who else?—Laurence). But my admiration goes to the appropriate member of the design team, because the puppet was spectacular.

This section is "moderated" by David Slone, who reads from a text that describes Edith's journey from Europe to America. This text is not unlike the Mad-Libs word game; Slone reads a line of text like "When Edith swam across the Atlantic Ocean to America, she swam with..." and the audience decides that Edith swam "with mermaids." Laurence and Slone then would act out that scene. This sketch, unlike The Sybil, had the added pressure involved in completing the text Slone was reading, and unfortunately the giant head gag wore a little thin. Even so, the raw, creative ludicrousness of a gigantic head making love to Albert Einstein is something that demands respect both in its conception and execution.

The fourth and final piece, Four Better or Worse?, is the culmination of Laurence's sermon. Imagine Donald Marguiles's Dinner With Friends, except the two men have fallen in love with each other, and the two women seek spiritual enlightenment by summoning arcane tribal spirits that ultimately possess one and drastically age the other. Did I mention the mind swaps, the time-traveling fetuses, the multidimensional wormholes opened by alien anal probes (so that's what those aliens have been up to all these years!), or a messiah who is upset that his stigmata bleeds onto all of his alms money? Laurence crams every type of humor from the previous pieces into this final explosion of absurdity. It is all very raw and offers the appropriate sensory overload for the show's conclusion.

Aside from the lack of audience enthusiasm for the improvised segments at this particular performance, Suck Sale draws you in with the same morbid curiosity that attends driving past a car crash. Laurence consistently outdoes himself and takes the humor to another level, daring audiences to follow him. Even the lighting design and technical elements by Mi Sun Choi and Heejung Noh seemed to be improvised, and lighting cues that happened just a second too late added to the show's charming slipshod aesthetic.

Charming as Suck Sale is, it was clear the cast was a little nervous about whether the audience "got it." Smaller audiences are inevitably quieter audiences, and the lack of vocal response seemed to affect the timing and overall mood. There is a great wealth of strong material in Laurence's work, but a larger audience might coax out its absurdity better.

Space to Grieve

Lee Blessing's Two Rooms explores grief, not by dramatizing volatile moments but through the mundane, repetitive act of waiting. Sure, there are emotional climaxes in this play, but they feel somehow muted by all the waiting that Lainie (Katie Tuminelly) has to do. She is waiting for news of her husband, Michael (Derek Lucci), an American University in Beirut professor who was taken hostage by Lebanese vigilantes during what was to be his last semester abroad. Lainie empties Michael's office in an attempt to exist in a space like the one he might be in. She sits on a small rug on the bare floor talking to her memory of him. Blessing's stage directions collapse the two rooms—Michael's office and his actual holding cell—into one; when Lainie and Michael share the stage, it is as if their separate rooms have been layered on top of one another, and the space between them seems less so.

Lighting designer Bryan Keller handles the stage and staging well; subtle tonal shifts throughout the play evoke the spaces clearly. These are intimate scenes of longing and grief as Lainie and Michael speak letters to each other and gather strength from their imagined conversations.

Lainie's grief is valuable, though, to those who can either profit from it or be damaged by it. The media cannot help but seek out and publish Lainie's dramatic response to her husband's absence, while the State Department cannot allow a desperate women to jeopardize its covert operations or intelligence gathering abroad.

Lainie must negotiate the largely self-serving interests of both the State Department (represented by Ellen, the woman assigned to her case) and the media (exemplified by Walker, a zealous reporter). Though some of his exits were a bit abrupt, Jacob Knoll's Walker is generally engaging and open, someone we immediately want to trust and listen to. Someone we don't mind Lainie listening to as well.

Perhaps director Kara-Lynn Vaeni's decision to make Ellen (Emily Zeck) insensitive was second nature: who wants to sympathize with a government agent? But the production would benefit from a more nuanced portrait of this character, perhaps by an actor who can better juggle Ellen's obligation within the governmental bureaucracy and her exhaustion in the face of that obligation. As it is, Zeck comes off like a finicky schoolmarm better suited for a second-grade classroom than a midlevel State Department position.

The predictable struggles for Lainie's trust by Ellen and Walker are mediated, most of all, by Lucci's voice. It's a strange thing when one actor's voice—the medium through which he must present this character—becomes itself a powerful character in a production. When the play starts, we see Michael sitting alone in the bare room, talking to Lainie about everything and anything. Lucci's voice is somnolent and soothing, a perfect vehicle for Blessing's surprisingly poetic metaphors. I found myself wanting to get back to that cell, wanting to hear more from the man who talks his way through such a harrowing experience.

This is Checkpoint Productions's first show, and it's competently produced, thanks in part to the preponderance of Yale School of Drama alumni. Once they get a few more shows under their belts, this may be a group to keep watching.