Politics As Usual

The Genesius Theater Group, a development company that produces new works by playwrights never seen in New York, has gotten off to a promising start with Fair Game. The title has a double meaning, and it reflects the dense, challenging, and timely examination of American politics that Karl Gajdusek has written. Not least of its virtues is that it takes the intelligence of its audience seriously. There's more to chew on here than a bagful of taffy—almost too much. Midwestern Gov. Karen Werthman (Joy Franz) has just won 13 states on Super Tuesday, and her campaign manager, Miranda Carter (an icily magnetic Caralyn Kozlowski), is overjoyed but wary. In the moment of triumph, Karen's son, Simon, arrives with the announcement that he has been suspended from teaching at Princeton for an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student.

In scenes that alternate between events at the university and the damage control at the statehouse, Gajdusek poses some thorny questions. How should the governor respond to inquiries about her son? How will her slick opponent, Senator Bill Graber, capitalize on it? Will the cynical Simon (Chris Henry Coffey), who has hidden in the ivory tower, be drawn back into the rough-and-tumble of politics?

"You don't even care who wins, do you?" the frustrated Miranda complains to him. "Just study the patterns, sifting through the data. ... It used to be put it on the line or shut the hell up."

Simon's disengagement may stem from the death of his father, the previous governor, who shot himself during a scandal that involved skimming money from the elderly. The suicide, however, is a secret; the spin was that he died of a heart attack.

In fact, "spin" of various sorts is crucial in the play, notably the spin of fortune's wheel, bringing the unforeseen small event that may affect the course of history, such as Simon's affair with Sarah-Doe Osborne's confident but often sullen 19-year-old coed. Although Simon's journey back to engagement with love and politics is central to director Andrew Volkoff's generally well-paced production, their romance is never as interesting as the political strife.

Gajdusek's story, which includes dirty tricks and unexpected romantic liaisons, unfolds confidently. The second scene provides an irresistible hook: Over the phone Simon and Miranda challenge each other to identify famous quotations from political history. Their parlor game engages us like a narcotic (a metaphor the characters themselves apply to politics). Who knew that Bobby Kennedy's "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not" was a quotation from George Bernard Shaw? (Matt O'Hare's ambitious sound design of historical voices adds a lot to the piece's immediacy and texture.)

Strains do appear in the second act. The stocky, gray-haired Graber arrives. Although Ray McDavitt gives a tour de force performance as the politico to whom lying spontaneously is as easy as breathing, he can't quite put over a plot twist that almost beggars belief. No wonder Graber is a more compelling candidate than Franz's aloof and uncomfortable Karen—but then, another of Gajdusek's points is that dishonesty is essential to political success, and Karen hates politics.

There's also the nagging suspicion that Karen would never be able to shake off the financial scandal that tainted her husband—how much did she really know?—to become a viable presidential candidate. And in the last scene, Gajdusek's decision to give the actors dialogue that hinges on chance—the characters spin a bottle and deliver lines depending on whom the bottle points at—plays awkwardly. (On certain nights it may move more quickly.) Still, this is one contest in which the issues are more important than the candidates.

FRINGE PICKS

offoffonline has covered one hundred shows in this year's Fringe Festival and our editors have compiled this list of recommendations.Check them out before the Fringe Festival closes August 26!

A Beautiful Child BASH'd! - A Gay Rap Opera Boiling Pot Bucharest Calling Dressing Miss Julie Drop Six: Mister Lucky Gamers Hail Satan Hillary Agonistes Horatio I Dig Doug January 1986 Juliet Lost in Hollywoodland Lucid Miriam Naked in a Fishbowl Paper Son Pigeon Man Apocalypse The Revolutionaries 7 Stories High The Box The Gospel According to Matthew The Mercy Swing Theremin The Rise and Fall of Miles and Milo

The Play's The Thing...

Shakespeare himself was big fan of the old play-within-a-play bit, so it makes sense that many people use his works with this intention. The key, however, is making your approach unique. Kiss Me, Kate added songs, Shakespeare in Love added a cross-dressing romantic interest, and now Sergei Burbank's The Danish Mediations/Slots adds something for the MTV generation: an omnipresent camera that gives way to Real World-style confessionals on the trials and tribulations of working actors. The result is a raw take on the theater industry that feels as if an appropriate alternate title might be "Broadway, Uncut." This approach has its rewards and drawbacks. The tension builds naturally and uncomfortably, leading to electrifying releases. However, the main challenge with this style is making scripted scenes seem voyeuristic. Sometimes the camera monologues grate and the play slowly trudges on, but when it clicks, the exhilaration is infectious.

Kiah (Jason Updike) is putting on a production of Hamlet, in which he and the five other cast members will pick their roles out of a jar for each performance. One caveat for Bard fans: the choice of Hamlet goes largely without qualification, aside from sparse quotations and an overarching emphasis on self-analysis and brooding.

If learning every part of the work weren't stressful enough, the cast members' patience wears thin when one actor-cum-aspiring filmmaker, Sam (Gary Patent), creates a blog about their rehearsals—complete with videos and commentary.

All the action is divided between the stage and the white screen hanging against the backdrop. Onscreen, we see another apartment, where the team rehearses and shares heart-to-heart confessions with Sam's camera. The obvious theme behind The Danish Mediations/Slots is that the unscripted drama backstage can be just as, if not more, intense than the production in front of the curtain. Among petulant divas, intimidating showoffs, and former flames, tempers flare, and nearly everyone beds a co-star. Sure, it's a somewhat stereotypical take on the acting profession, but the performances are so strong that they transcend the occasional formulaic nature of the character development.

The ensemble plays the mounting tension very well (no need to ruminate on where they might be drawing inspiration from), as their characters' rapidly thinning veils of professionalism give way to sniping, secret crushes, and taunting. When released, the pent-up feelings or frustrations flood the stage with exciting energy.

When Charles (Jason Altman), the cocky TV star who's sluggishly attempting to get some stage cred, finally breaks down, it's a particularly stunning scene. While the case against the "celebutard" has been repeated again and again by his cast mates (always late, missing rehearsals, teasing the scrawny Sam), Altman's self-defense is a touching surprise that shows the fragility beneath the frat boy facade.

Such charged moments are fueled by the way director Adam Karsten consistently keeps the actors in motion. At any given moment, someone always seems to be dashing offstage (to other commitments), dashing onstage (late again), choreographing a fight scene, shuffling through props, or whirling around another actor as they argue. The absence of idle moments keeps the pace sharp and appropriately rushed—after all, they have an opening that's quickly approaching.

This physical approach is most powerful in the conclusion to Act One. After a fight breaks out, Kiah pulls the team together to recite a soliloquy. As the actors each perform a section, trying to spin their frustration into motivation, they move in and out of each other's spaces as if dancing through a shared electric current. The energy builds as the group members realize that they're finally clicking and peaks when Kiah delivers the final couplet.

The same cannot be said for the camera monologues. At one point, Sam contemplates the pros and cons of soliloquies: "But how do they help the story?" he asks. "You don't think characters gain more through active opposition?" While the discussion makes Burbank's script impressively self-aware, it also highlights its weak spot. The characters' camera monologues are indeed important, but by video, say, No. 11, their revelations aren't that revealing and become a little boring.

Perhaps this is because Act Two is more focused on actual performances rather than rehearsals, so those same shots at the apartment don't mesh as well with the polished stage sets of the dressing rooms and squeaky-clean floors of a theater as they did with the tarp-covered, paint-strewn practice space. Thankfully, the confessions start to fade away.

Whether they're delivering a wordy soliloquy on-camera or spouting Shakespeare, the cast smoothly navigates the varied terrain (and media) with poise. Fayna Sanchez is, by turns, comedic and ferocious as the boisterous Liz, and Noelle Holly, as Ryn, approaches what is by far the most modest part with an engaging and graceful performance.

With solid acting from everyone and a script that flows quite naturally, this is a well-oiled production. But you have to wonder if the rehearsals went so smoothly.

Sparrow's Song

The set of Piaf: Love Conquers All, designed by actress-singer-director Naomi Emmerson, is surreal. The legendary singer's hotel room is rendered in stiff, flat, white panels, with the furniture painted on in black lines. It looks like a black-ink sketch on a giant piece of white paper. Here and there, a real, three-dimensional prop painted an intense pinkish-red—an umbrella or a bunch of roses—breaks the illusion. This is all perfectly appropriate for a play about Piaf (Parisian slang for "sparrow"). For the woman who sang "La Vie en Rose," life was flat, except for rare roseate splashes of love. In Roger Peace's script, the dream of love gives the destitute girl who becomes Edith Piaf a reason to live, and sing, but also makes her vulnerable to debilitating despair. The multitalented Emmerson acts Piaf's dizzy highs and devastating lows with all the passion necessary, eschewing melodrama for true pathos, horror, and ecstasy.

A second actress-musician, Stephanie Layton, plays an array of Piaf's lovers, mentors, and associates, of both genders. Layton's metamorphosis into the elderly Parisian nightclub impresario Papa is especially impressive. Wisely, Peace chooses not to have Layton, or anyone else, portray Marcel Cerdon, Piaf's beloved muse. Only Piaf can see him, and only her singing can bring him to life.

The best reason to see Piaf is the bilingual Emmerson's gorgeous singing of a number of Piaf classics, in French. These include "Milord," "Sous le Ciel de Paris," "Je Ne Regrette Rien," and, of course, "La Vie en Rose." Emmerson hauntingly recaptures Piaf's full-bodied vibrato but makes the songs fresh and powerful. It is through the carefully ordered repertoire that she tells the story of Piaf's emotional journey.

The show enjoyed several successful runs in Emmerson's native Canada. We New Yorkers should be honored that Piaf has chosen to pay us a visit.

Monster Trucks from the Future

Star Wars. Monster trucks. Deepthroat (both the porno and the scandal). Apple Rug Production's On Air Off follows three radio announcers and a technician as their 1953 broadcast is interrupted by a barrage of sound waves from the future. In between the static, they learn about Vietnam, women's lib, and winning lottery numbers in 1976. The question is, what will they do with this information? Exploit it for personal gain? Or use it to help make the world a better place?

The stage is well-set. Shows like Kenneth Barry P.I., (featuring such characters as Ricky Rat Face and Johnny the Block) and commercials for "smooth-tasting Mayfield cigarettes," give the audience a sense of time and place. Visual juxtapositions - such as busting heads of cabbage to simulate fight sounds - work well and heighten the humor.

And the cast delivers. Emily Spalding is brilliant as the icy-smooth Evelyn, and shows her range with other characters such as a Chinese waitress and a French femme fatale. Adam Lerman (who both plays the sound technician and does a terrific job with the actual sound design of the production) is the perfect straight man, delivering his deadpan lines with aplomb. And the entire cast does great voice work: we get hard-boiled detectives, craggy Cagney-types, oily advertisers, and no-nonsense newscasters.

The only problem is that once the pieces are all in place the play doesn't go anywhere. Following the barrage of radio broadcasts from the future, there is a brief and wholly unsatisfying exploration of what to do with all they've learned, and then the players flee the stage like bats out of hell.

The table is set, the ambience outstanding, but, ultimately, you walk away from this production hungering for more.

Heroic Clowning Around

Joan of Arppo is a masterful and delightful one-women clown show that should not be missed. Gardi Hutter, a known entity in her native Switzerland, is a virtuosic storyteller. Outfitted in a sloppy layering of mismatched clothes and the requisite red rubber nose, she engages, amazes, entertains and charms. Ms. Hutter’s imagination abounds and - without speaking a word - she communicates her story and offers up an experience of playful ambition. Joan of Arppo will renew your belief in magic as you giggle all the way home. Joan is a laundry woman who excitedly reads Joan of Arc and Other Heroines and dreams of fighting great battles. She reenacts these battles using the items of her laundry room – a pile of dirty clothes, washboard, clothing line, clothes pins, etc. Joan wins some battles, loses others and, in the end, meets the fate of her idol. Joan’s childlike enthusiasm is magnetic as she draws you into her laundry room/playground. She creates a rich world where objects take on multiple meanings for comedic and/or poignant effect. She teases the audience at moments, pretending to be bashful and at other moments she poses for a photographer, beaming with pride.

The story is incredibly simple and the allure of this production is watching it unfold before you. Ms Hutter’s expertise in clowning is demonstrated consistently throughout the piece. At one point, she dances with the clothesline and it is clear that she has investigated every possible way of interacting with the line and presented us the gems of her research. There are many moments where she directly solicits reactions from the audience, which, in a show like this, only works because we are with her every step of the way. The staged battle scenes vary in scale from fingers fighting fingers to setting up the pile of laundry as a life-sized opponent for her to conquer. Co-creators Ms. Hutter and Mr. Ferruccio Cainero are a skillful artistic duo that presents a carefully conceived and precisely executed production.

This hour-long show goes by in a flash. You will sit on the edge of your seat, gasp at beautiful transformations made before your eyes and experience chuckles that transform into full-blown belly laughs as you give in to Ms. Hutter’s conceits and root for our heroine’s success.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 NYC International Fringe Festival.

Hairdresser On Fire

The thin but overarching conceit of Semi-Permanent is that we in the audience have arrived at a Learning Annex course on late twentieth-century hairstyling. The show’s ads proudly proclaim “It’s about hair!” but that’s really a bit of a red herring. It’s not really about hair; well, it is, a little. But the show is far cleverer than that. Hair is the prism through which we meet and come to know our flamboyant yet profound instructor, Rick Gradone, celebrity hairstylist and actor who, like many—and perhaps, to some extent, all—of us, tries to navigate and find continued meaning in life in the wake of broken dreams, missed opportunities and disappointing people. We learn that he once hoped to become an “artist,” but that he serendipitously fell into styling, got a big press interview, and then his career catapulted off at a manic pace, a pace which he embodies as he runs around the stage, demonstrating the finer points of styles like “The Farrah” and “The Prep School,” and their wider significance for society. Photos of various styles from the past, most looking sadly outdated and silly, are projected, like chapter headings, on a screen as Gradone takes us through his personal journey. He times his lines perfectly with the background music, revealing intense and thorough rehearsal. His impersonations of college friends and French fashion prima donnas are hilarious, and his energy is unflagging.

Boy, does he take hair seriously! And, just so you know that he’s not kidding, the show’s press kit offers up an extensive list of his celebrity clients (Rod Stewart, Tyra Banks, Mariah Carey, to name just a few). Hair, he notes, is the first thing that people notice about each other. Hair transmits two messages to the world: “Who we are and who we think we are.” Gradone skillfully weaves this maxim into his monologue, and the show is ultimately about acceptance—acceptance of who we are and what we do with our lives. Why dwell on our failures? It’s all a backward-looking reconstruction anyway, a combination of truth and lies, like real hair and extensions. In the end, if it’s done well, and you’ve touched someone, it all comes out looking beautiful.

This show is ready for prime time; I see no reason why Semi-Permanent shouldn’t continue beyond The Fringe Festival. Mr. Gradone’s talent is clear. After watching him for a while you begin to wonder, “Why isn’t this guy a star?” He’s certainly got the talent. “Why is he still doing hair?” Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that...

Romance and Rebirth

Self-professed "storyteller" and two-time "Best in Fringe Festival" winner Antonio Sacre returns to the New York International Fringe Festival with his first new work in five years. This undeniably entertaining performance, Rise Like a Penis From the Flames—A Phallic Phoenix Story, chronicles Sacre's adventures with love, fame, and faith during the intervening half-decade. Though his audaciously (and misleadingly) titled monologue only concerns itself marginally with mythology and even less so with male anatomy, Sacre's piece frankly addresses many aspects of contemporary romance. As he recounts the story of his relationship with his wife during her rising acting career, we are led through tangential side stories. These vignettes don't inform the main narrative very much, but some hilarious episodes—like Sacre directing disinterested Los Angeles high school students in a production of Antigone aptly counterpoint the superficiality of his wife's new life in the movie biz.

Sacre's performance certainly confirms his day job as a storyteller and teacher in elementary schools. He describes each embarrassingly adult situation—like failing to pick up a girl at a singles club—as innocently as if he were in a fairy tale. Sometimes this juxtaposition works to great effect, but occasionally this wide-eyed mushiness threatens to cheapen his story's more adult themes, as evidenced in his lengthy, mawkish sermons dedicated to his wife.

While Rise is more schmaltzy than its misogynistic title suggests, Sacre's earnest account provides much insight into modern romance, with all its absurdities and calamities.

Note: This production is part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

The Desperate Howl of a Dead-End Life

Move Andy McQuade and the paper detritus surrounding him on the stage at the Independent Theater down the stairs and out to Eighth Street, and he would be indistinguishable from any of the muttering homeless people one can find there. Most people in the audience would cross to the other side to avoid this snarling, flailing, unwashed specter. But in William Whitehurst’s disturbing Pigeon Man Apocalypse, McQuade’s great achievement is to make this character deeply sympathetic. He might still seem menacing by the end, but the audience knows where he is coming from and cannot simply forget him or dismiss him as subhuman, as they might otherwise have done. McQuade plays Arthur Cork, whose “personal apocalypse” has arrived with a family moving into the building where he has been squatting for years. The sound of drills and hammers and people’s voices in the floors below his filthy hideout impels him to tell the story of how he got there. Apart from the fact that it’s made up, the main thing that separates the unsettling rant that follows from those one usually hears from mentally ill street people is the neat, chronological way it’s presented. Arthur starts with his own birth-memory and works on through the wrenchingly sad, lonely years of his childhood to the rush of awful events that landed him where he is now. It’s a story that will be familiar to anyone who has read memoirs lately, marked by early abandonment by his father and then years of brutalization by his cruel mother. Arthur impersonates her frequently as he tells his story, and a cutting hatred fills his voice as he recounts the way she never let him leave the apartment and abused him in all ways imaginable, physically and emotionally.

By the time he brings things up to the present, no one in the audience can be surprised that things turned out for him this way, or blame him for his disgusting appearance and uncivilized bearing. McQuade has inhabited the character fully and insists, often by speaking to them directly, that the audience not avert their eyes from Arthur Cork’s destruction. Unfortunately, the noisy fans in the theater drown out some of his lines, since he occasionally lowers his voice to just above a whisper. But even so, when the lights go down at the end McQuade’s powerful performance has given the audience more than enough to break their hearts and make them furious about this pointlessly ruined life.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 NYC International Fringe Festival.

The Power (and Terror) of Words

Welcome to a world where nothing is as it appears. In Reader, acclaimed playwright Ariel Dorfman creates a layered allegory for a tyrannical government and the urgent cries of its citizens for liberation. Dorfman, a Chilean writing in exile, explores themes of sociopolitical crisis such as power, identity, willfulness and pain. Reader is a bold play that demands irreverent staging and rejects catharsis. For example, actors play multiple roles, characters exist in two worlds and time flashes backwards and forwards. The challenges posed by the play abound. The seven-year-old NY-based theater company One Year Lease (OYL) has dedicated its summer to producing all three of Dorfman’s Resistance Trilogy to which Reader belongs. Out of this text, director Ianthe Demos adeptly weaves together an intelligent and visceral production that bursts with vitality and terror. Reader is a deliciously tangled tale in which a literary censor finds his life story in a manuscript he is set to edit. The story of the manuscript is played out within the story of the play, which forces our main character into deep self-examination. Persistent ghosts haunt him, shaking his confidence and decomposing his veneer of togetherness before our eyes. The oppressor becomes the oppressed as he battles his conscience, attempts to conceal his secrets, hunts down the writer and, finally, overcomes his central fear to rebel against the system he once represented.

The performers offer rich, frenzied characterizations prickling with energy. Most notable are Darrell James, who plays the main characters Daniel Lucas and Don Alfonso Morales, and an electric Emma Jackson who plays Irene and Jacqueline. The set, costumes and lighting ground us in a noir space seething with intrigue, mystery and elegance.

Dorfman creates a world where tyranny smiles and violates. One Year Lease uses its dexterity to present a tension-filled and alluring imagining of this world. The themes of this play are deeply engaging and strike a cord of relevance to contemporary life without being overt or heavy-handed. Treat yourself to an evening of theater that is both contemplative and animal. See Reader.

Note: This production is a part of the 2007 NYC International Fringe Festival.

Voices of Ukraine

My expectations for Ancestral Voices were low. Dance is typically the riskiest of Fringe genres. The Festival prides itself on future Off-Broadway transfers playing alongside chintzy one-joke productions that will never again see the light of day. Serious dance companies wishing to disassociate themselves from a festival where fellow shows have titles like Sodomy & Pedicures or Rise Like a Penis from the Flames – A Phallic Phoenix Story are likely to skip the Fringe altogether for the slightly more prestigious New York Musical Theatre Festival in September. Indeed, just 11 shows of nearly 180 at this year’s Fringe fall under the genre of dance. This dearth is why it’s so exciting to report that Ancestral Voices is the festival’s second home run for dance. (The first was the Japanese hip-hop fusion of Orientarhythm.) Based on Ukrainian folk songs and poetry, the production is a consistently entertaining experience full of beautiful images. The serious nature of the production threatens to veer into bland ethnic presentation territory, but avoids this thanks to performer artistry, a quick-moving variety of scenes, and sincerity.

Several moments stand out as highlights. Erin Conway and Mark Tomasic perform a lovely courtship dance between a star and the moon. Tomasic later takes a solo in “The Fire of Kupalo,” a sequence full of enough tricks and passion to put to shame any of those angst-filled contemporary routines on So You Think You Can Dance. Other highlights include “Swim, Gentle Swan,” another gorgeous solo, performed by Catherine Meredith, and a full company number that wraps the stage in an intricate pattern of blue, yellow, and red ribbon. When the ribbons are gently pulled apart one by one after the dance, the effect is simple but striking.

Nadia Tarnawsky grounds the production as the onstage narrator spouting new age babble that probably would’ve sounded ridiculous coming out of someone else’s mouth. Indeed, the pre-recorded Ukrainian poetry that bookends most scenes, translated by Tarnawsky and performed by two voiceovers artists, does sound a little ridiculous. The reading of each poem lacks dynamics, making too much of it sound exactly the same. This is a disservice to the show’s otherwise excellent structure and choreography.

The Well Done Play

The stage looks nice. The actors are skilled. The director has done her job well. The script itself is well crafted. Everything is well done. So why do the spectators walk out of The Sunshine Play mildly entertained but unsatisfied, an hour and a half of their lives that will slip out of their consciousness within minutes? There are two answers to this question - form and content. The form is traditional realism, adhering to Aristotle’s unities, scene building upon the previous scene, with entrances and exits at the predictable moments that enhance the comedy or drama, according to its needs. Realism has been the prevalent mainstream theatrical form for the past six decades or more. At least as far as this critic is concerned, it is in dire need of an update. As for the content of this play, it’s difficult to answer the critical questions every artist must ask himself before plunging into his art, ‘what am I doing this for?’ ‘How is this play going to help the people who come see it?’ As I’ve heard theatrical legend Judith Malina say many a time ‘If you have nothing to SAY don’t do theater.’

This new play from Romania by Peca Stefan, directed by Ana Margineau, tells the rooftop story of two young Romanians, one Bulgarian, and the woes of their entangled relationships. The attractive red set by Ina Isbasescu provides the stomping ground for the quirky romantic triangle that will unfold over the course of the night. Cosmin Selesi is funny as the Eastern European alpha male, Isabela Neamtu acts nimbly as a Romanian Carrie Bradshaw, and Daniel Popa adeptly portrays the complexities of a sensitive marijuana addict making the transition from husband to divorcee. It adds up to a respectable but forgettable evening. And one can not help but wonder what a play like this, which would fit well into the repertoire of most conventional theaters, and refrains from exploring new types of theatricality, is doing in a festival of plays on the fringes of the theatrical order.

Get in the Zone. Clone Zone.

Anatomical Scenario is an unconventional dance theater company exploring the art in artificial, reads the program from the Ohio-based company's August 15 performances of Anna and the Annadroids: Clone Zone at the Linhart Theatre. Unconventional is an understatement. The multi-media enhanced dance production follows a narrative of five robot girls battling through the videogame-inspired world of Anna's mind (named after company director Anna Sullivan). Supposedly based on psychologist Carl Jung's psychoanalytical model of the psyche, the scenes resemble those in a mental hospital.

The girls walk around pigeon-toed, twitching and bouncing as the music sings repetitive lyrics like, "Free your addictions" with a video-projected background of a storm of raining pills. In one section the girls run in place before a moving road, similar to the old race car Nintendo games, while a computer generated voice complains about her needs: everything from Prozac and running shoes, to couples therapy, to an internet love match.

Perhaps this is a comment on the overindulgence of society, as Sullivan' work claims to "explore interior disorders by exaggerating and manifesting them externally. The mission is accomplished through interrogating and critiquing the conventions of a social order that celebrates robotic conformity and idealizes a plastic-souled way of life." Through the integration of film, dance, and technology-generated graphics the show succeeds in making bold statements about humanity and its dysfunctions.

Although the show is extremely entertaining, it is difficult to imagine it being presented in a venue other than the Fringe Festival due to its take on mental illness, innate quirkiness, and near nudity. Sullivan is informative in her visual explanations of psychiatric disorders through video demonstrations of the occurrences in the brains of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. However after each segment the words pass by sarcastically: "Treatment: Take Drugs."

The nature of the production calls for dancers to have flawless timing and energy so as not be usurped by the flashy commotion of the background film. They surpass these expectations, remaining fully in character as they demonstrate strength and skill. The choreography is full of angular movements and headstands, lending itself nicely to the music and lyrics.

The technical aspects of the production are outstanding. Elaborate costumes are changed often, while the clown-white makeup and glittery eyelashes remain a constant. The lighting and video create the sense of being enclosed in a videogame. The audio blends well with the action.

It is these factors that truly steal the show and make it a must-see for Fringe audiences.

Not the Best Recipe

PB&J is a big tease. The concept is great. Two sisters in the remote Vermont mountains sell homemade peanut butter to eager consumers. However, their culinary creation has a sinister secret ingredient: pureed penis. The execution is not so great. The play makes every joke you expect it to, setting up a great premise and failing to do much with it. At an hour and forty minutes, the show needs more than just one good idea to sustain its running time. It doesn’t have them, although there's plenty half-baked notions and missed opportunities. Sisters Lillie and Millie are about to bolt their rural cottage for Canada when Dick Longfellow, a local radio announcer, shows up requesting an interview. Lillie is charmed by the presence of a celebrity, but Millie sees Dick’s extreme endowment at their last hurdle toward freedom. Will Dick escape with his dick intact?

The cast elevates the material, making the groaners fewer and farther between. David Gable as the unfortunate Dick Longfellow has the big creamy voice necessary for a radio announcer plus great comic timing. Lisa Riegel as Lillie and Amy L. Smith as Millie have a believable rapport as sisters, which is impressive because their relationship as written doesn’t make much sense. Mary Goggin and Juliet O’Brien round out the cast. Goggin plays Dick’s wisecracking producer while O’Brien seems like she’s having a grand time as the illegal immigrant sexpot who helps in the kitchen.

PB&J is most effective in its many monologues that break the fourth wall. Playwright Tara Dairman has a flair for direct storytelling. Just an actor, a simple spot and the audience. When the lights go back up and characters start interacting with each other, the fun drags. In group scenes, the same thing tends to happen over and over.

The momentum is further killed by the many set changes executed by an incredibly slow two-person crew. To be fair, there are many blocks to be moved onstage from one position to another, but there’s no excuse for sluggish switches. The dead space during the second half was so bad that laughter actually erupted through the audience when the crew came out to switch the set for the final time.

Kids in the Hall

Angst The New Teen Musical is a play about teens, featuring teens, and even written by teens, who studied at the Young Artists Council of Youth Performance Company. The heavy teen influence easily appeals to a young, Internet-savvy audience. But those unfamiliar with the art of creating a profile and choosing your "top 8 friends" will have trouble understanding some of the story's central conflicts. A colorful musical number introduces us to the eight major characters: slut, popular girl, token black male, Jesus freak, stoner, closet gay man, intense overachiever, and political activist. Because they are all in the same creative writing class, geeky loner Tom (Eric Mayson) decides to add his new classmates to his top 8.

The story's strengths lie in the bubbly score, written by performer Eric Mayson. Mayson, a recent graduate from a performing arts high school, shows true veteran poise for not losing the gravity of a somber monologue when the stage lights accidentally faded to black in the middle of his speech. He displayed even greater mettle in the following scene when his character's climactic turning point was punctured by the opening notes of a party song. The obvious technical error could have destroyed the scene, but Mayson barely flinched and kept the moment together.

Where the play does need to be more careful is in the execution of its racially centered jokes. They walk a fine line between pushing the envelope and coming uncomfortably close to sensitive stereotypes. For example, a black student looking to connect with his race tries out tap dancing—a reference to minstrel shows? Later, when he tries to slip out of the class to avoid admitting he has not done his work, his teacher calls out, "Hey you, runaway slave," to summon him back. These are the kind of jokes that leave you unsure about whether to laugh or cringe.

But overall, the production is well suited for young audiences, who will enjoy seeing their language and culture reflected onstage. Creative writing teacher Mr. King (Theo Langason) talks to his students in "chat speak," a kind of Internet substitute language that breaks entire sentences down into three or four letters. "Did you think I forgot about you?" he asks the class loner. "ROFL!"

If you knew instantly that this meant rolling on the floor laughing, this play is for you.

I'll Be There for You: angel/buddy Tests the Boundaries of Friendship

angel/buddy is one of those frustrating plays that makes the viewer feel that either it is too deep for the average audience member to understand or that it is simply a weak piece of theater. While I feel that angel/buddy has its weak moments, ultimately it reaches the goal that it sets out to achieve, which is to establish that its two title characters are all that each other has in this world. At curtain up we see Buddy sitting in an armchair crying his eyes out. Angel enters soon after carrying a massive amount of cocaine. We learn that Buddy's girlfriend has just left him in a violent rage and he has called Angel over with the cocaine to help him work through it. Buddy and Angel proceed to consume ridiculous amounts of cocaine while they discuss where exactly Buddy went wrong in his relationship. Throughout the play Angel and Buddy talk, snort coke, hallucinate a race of man-hating aliens, visit with Angel's deceased parents, and contemplate suicide. Not bad for one evening.

Ken Ferrigni wrote the play and also stars as Buddy. While he eventually wins the audience over to his side, Ferrigni writes and plays Buddy as a whiny loser who would rather snort coke and complain than try to fix his problems. It's not until a scene later on in the play where Buddy offers a retarded homeless person $20 for a hug that the audience is fully on his side. Aaron Kliner plays the surprisingly co-dependent Angel as a funny but reserved outcast who lives vicariously through Buddy's success. Phil Wilcox turns in a splendid performance as OMG, but Deanna Gibson is the true stand out in the cast. Undertaking all of the female roles, she spikes each one with incredible individuality and fully commits to every word even when the writing gets a little off the wall.

Overall, angel/buddy sets up a series of unfortunate and outrageous events that the title characters overcome in order to find that at the end, all they need is each other. While the show is entertaining to watch and the dialogue is clever and well-written, the conclusion seems simple enough to reach without all the drama.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Dressing Miss Julie Gender Bends

On August 14, I headed downtown to the Lower East Side to catch a performance of Dressing Miss Julie, a gender-bending re-telling of August Strindberg’s classic play. Without knowing the original text, it took me until about halfway through the performance to figure out exactly what was going on. While the confusion was a little daunting and prevented me from thoroughly enjoying the piece, it definitely piqued my interest in reading Strindberg’s play. After absorbing the original, everything that Dressing Miss Julie covered made perfect sense and I would recommend any other potential audiences familiarize themselves with the original text as well. In Strindberg’s Miss Julie the daughter of a Count has a Midsummer Night tryst with a servant, thus throwing off the balance of the class system in the house. Raised by her father to maintain her feminine place in society and influenced by her mother to learn and employ traditions that are typically male, Miss Julie is confused by where her gender places her in this power struggle. Jean, the saucy servant with whom she shares her indiscretion, relishes this new sense of power over Miss Julie and uses it to nurture his more delicate sensibilities, thus tarnscending his traditional gender role in society as well. When these two come together, a full on battle of the sexes ensues to a dramatic and tragic conclusion.

While the sexuality and gender biases are more subtle in Strindberg’s play, the writers/actors Anna Kull and Justin Perkins put it right out in front of you. At the front of the house are positioned two large bells (a nod to how Jean is constantly plagued by the bell summoning him to his master) that the audience is encouraged to ring. Every time the bells are rung, the actors switch roles, costumes and genders. Removing the clothing that represents not only their genders but their places in society (hers being an upper class gown and his being a servant’s uniform) clearly helps to illustrate how easily this tryst makes it to strip down these costumes and change the power struggle. The message Dressing Miss Julie strives (and succeeds) in getting across is that social mores about class and gender are nothing more than costumes that can be removed with a flick of a zipper. Funny and fast-paced, Dressing Miss Julie is an interesting contemporary twist on a classic.

A January to Remember

The Challenger disaster, the Superbowl, and the dissolution of Nick's parents' marriage intertwine in Timothy Mansfield's explosive and relentless drama, January 1986, a fascinating if slightly problematic memory play that warns of the danger of memory. As the play unfolds, it becomes clearer not only how mixed-up Nick's memories are but why Nick is retreating into this one. Mansfield has a good ear for language, and lines linger long after they are spoken. All three actors deliver impressive performances. Ian McWethy as Nick manages the difficult task of portraying both a man of 30 and a child of nine in the same scene without resorting to kid cliches. Jona Tuck as Nick's frequently beaten mom inspires compassion without victimizing her character, and Adam Nowack creates a father who is both scarily violent and sympathetic.

The set, a small table, chairs and counter in the background and a couch, table, and TV set in the foreground, perfectly evokes a small suburban house with just the right amount of detail to make it personal.

The play shifts back and forth between the imagined past and an imagined present where Nick, now 30, struggles to understand his memories through fictional conversations with his parents and flights of fancy. The boundary between these time spaces is thin, however, and while this method of storytelling is fresh and inventive, it can often disorient the audience, as it is hard to tell where the characters are.

Since this is a memory play, many scenes deal in reconstructing the way life was--where dad was sitting as he watched the Superbowl, where mom and dad made scuff marks on the floor--but sometimes the lines that begin with "I remember" become too numerous, and the scenes become bogged down with description. Michael Kimmel's inventive direction makes these scenes interesting to watch, as the characters move seamlessly from stationary positions to acting out a memory and then back again, but there needs to be more of a balance between the recounting scenes and the scenes of immediate action.

A captivating story, great dialogue, and exceptional acting lift January 1986 above its minor problems. Mansfield is definitely a playwright to watch.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 NYC International Fringe Festival.

Viva La Revolution!

Until they succeed, revolutionaries are often dismissed as unrealistic dreamers. So it’s appropriate that Adam Mervis’ terrific new play, The Revolutionaries, is full of people’s descriptions of their dreams, both the sleep kind and the aspirational kind. But unlike many plays that use dreams as a device, Mervis’ smart, funny script never takes the easy route. And even when they’re talking about these intangibles, the actors are so strong in their roles that the audience readily goes along with them. The engaging first-level plot of The Revolutionaries tracks what happens when two childhood friends get into the cutthroat energy business. One of them, Chevy, has invented solar panels that are inexpensive but highly efficient and will allow users to go off the power grid. Given a wonderfully apt Peter Pan-like boyishness by Robert Yang, Chevy seems naïve and idealistic with his wild dreams of changing the world and giving power to the people. By contrast, Frank acts the part of the hard-nosed, savvy businessman who builds the new power company with money from his own trust and know-how from his prior career on Wall Street. Brought to intense, jumpy life by Mervis, Frank brims with big plans that he refuses to see thwarted by consideration for others. As a result, his relationship with his girlfriend Jean (the excellent Desirée Matthews) deteriorates rapidly, since getting the company off the ground is more difficult than he anticipated and she misses the life they left behind in New York.

Once the little company’s fortunes do turn for the better, it’s not long before the “practical” Frank begins to seem out of touch, drunk on power and endlessly spouting aphorisms about leadership. And the sweetness of success lasts for just a short time: part of what makes The Revolutionaries so propulsive and entertaining is Mervis’ ability to evoke the non-stop, roller coaster feel of working in a start-up. The first act is nearly perfect in terms of pace and suspense leading up to the intermission. The second act is slightly weighed down with a few too many subplots, but the writing doesn’t lose its edge and the actors delve more deeply into their characters.

The Revolutionaries pulls viewers in quickly and keeps them captivated throughout, wondering what will happen next. The cast presents the combination of straightforward interpersonal dramas and serious thought nearly seamlessly under Megan Marod's intelligent direction. It is a complete package of a quality unusual for the Fringe.

All Aboard the Derelict Trail

The See You Next Tuesday Company's production of Bukowsical! opens with the lines "“What’s the feeling you get when you’re down on your luck/And you’re too drunk to fuck?” and doesn't look back from there. On our musical journey we encounter singing booze bottles, flung fetuses, and soiled seductresses galore. If you're faint of heart, this may not be your cup of J&B. But if you've got a little Bukowski in you (and the show maintains that "there's a little Bukowski in all of us"), this is the venue for you. The show is framed as a backer's audition for a fictional theatre company, which is trying to raise money to mount a show about Bukowski's life. To give the backers a taste of what the production has in store, they take us down the "derelict trail" of Bukowski's life. We start with Bukowski as a child, where he is beaten by his fellow classmates to the tune of "Art is Pain." In "Writing Lesson" the ghosts of Faulkner, Plath, Burroughs and Tennessee Williams advise him to "get down, get dark, get dirty," and in "Through a Glass, Barfly" Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn battle it out for the honor of playing Bukowski on film.

Although the framing mechanism quickly breaks down (is the audience supposed to donate money?), you're so caught up in the silliness that you don't really notice. The Bukowsical! Band, consisting of Gary Stockdale, Jon Burr, Robby Kirshoff and Ed Caccavale, do an excellent job, and the lyrics of Gary Stockdale and Spencer Green are right on track. A couple of sour notes - the hackneyed moral outrage of a bishop, and a completely out of place ballad by Buk's ex - do little to take away from the overall value of the production.

Performances are steady all around, with Marc Cardiff excelling in his role as the Founder of the fictional theater company, and Brad Blaisdell doing his blinking and balderdashed best as Charles "Buk" Bukowski.

One of the biggest laughs comes when a lawyer from the firm of Ernst, Williams and Weinstein arrives to put a halt to the production. (Bukowski's widow, did in fact, try to stop the show.) The lawyer tells them that as, a New York Jew, she knows musical theatre, and this company's never making it to Broadway. That remains to be seen. In the meantime, it's all aboard the derelict trail.