Punk'd

A show with a negative word in its title, like the verb used in the New York Musical Theater Festival's Love Sucks, risks having its title turned against it if the show is subpar. But the only thing that sucks about Stephen O'Rourke and Brandon Patton's punk-rock retelling of Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost is that the show's run ends on Oct. 6. This is a brash, thrilling new musical that deserves an open-ended run downtown with wild, adoring crowds. Set in the East Village in the 1970s, the show follows two bands: the all-boy Molotovs and the all-grrl Guttersnipes. Band leaders Big Joe (Molotovs) and Patti (Guttersnipes) try to put music before mating by placing a limit on the amount of times a band member can have sex with someone in order to ward off rehearsal-killing relationships. When the groups cross paths and boy meets girl (times three), love blooms, and it's up to the others to convince former pals turned bitter rivals Big Joe and Patti that they're meant for each other.

The stage features a full band setup and a blue/gray brick-esque backdrop tagged with graffiti and a picture of the Bard. Moveable pieces are brought in for more elaborate locations. However, the most impressive sets in this show are the ones done by the bands. Most of the actors are in bands and/or write music, which lends believability to their performances. Any audience members arriving late to the show who walked in during the Molotovs's first number, No More Girlfriends, could not be faulted for believing they had walked into a concert by mistake, as the band's chemistry and precision seem the result of years, not weeks, of rehearsals.

Of course, great music would (one hopes) be a given in a show like this. What was really surprising was how romantic and sweet the courtships were, even as they started from a base of mutual physical attraction. When Big Joe tries to turn on the charm around Patti, it's played out more naturally and adorably than in any rom-com, chick flick, or cutesy-named love story genre that comes to mind.

Actors Nicholas Webber and Rebecca Hart really bring it in these roles, and are excellent frontpersons for their groups to boot. (It should also be noted that Heather Robb, as the love 'em and leave 'em Kate, has a great rock voice, acts her role brilliantly, and is smolderingly gorgeous.)

Couples, if you're looking for an alternative to the standard dinner-and-a-movie date, consider paying a visit to Hell's Kitchen this weekend to see this show. Producers, if you're looking for an alternative to yet another over-exposed theatrical chestnut, consider paying to remount this show in a gritty, below 14th Street venue. Love Sucks rocks.

A Touch of Frost

The creators of the zany musical The Yellow Wood have nabbed Robert Frost's classic poem "The Road Not Taken," splashed it with vivid surrealism and a quirky score, and spliced it into the life of an insecure Korean-American teenager. Sound a bit confusing? In their admirable attempt to give musical life to Frost's hallowed abstractions, Michelle Elliott and Danny Larsen have constructed a frothy surrealist show that eventually meanders into meaninglessness. Even before he heads off to school, Adam is smothered by choices. Will he take the time to memorize that poem for his English class? Will he sit with his little sister at lunch? Will he take his Ritalin? The answer to the last question, in particular, makes "all the difference" to Adam's day, and from the moment he hits school, reality dovetails with the bizarre. Are these dream-like sequences, which connect loosely to stanzas from Frost's poem, induced by Ritalin withdrawal? Or are we merely witnessing the fragmented thoughts of an ordinary, overly imaginative boy?

Frequently overwrought and definitely overlong, The Yellow Wood, part of this year's New York Musical Theater Festival, doesn't provide satisfying answers to these questions; nor are the questions posed very clearly. Instead, the scenes and songs unfold like a hazy (and lazy) mirage, grounded only by a handful of pitch-perfect performances from a terrific ensemble cast.

As the fidgety, troubled Adam, Jason Tam is a bundle of charm and energy. When the lights go up, he immediately explodes into a fiery monologue, which evokes the athleticism of the skateboard he clutches. His testy relationship with his overachieving but lonely sister, Gwen (the outstanding Yura Takara), is the production's highlight—their antagonistic relationship is lined (just barely) with love, providing a much-needed web of realism in this overly abstract plot. And as Adam's buddy, the irreverent Casserole, Randy Blair brings down the house (and the school cafeteria) with the powerhouse song "Tater Tot Casserole."

The Yellow Wood finally drowns in the many questions it poses. Why does Adam deny his Korean heritage? Will he become class president and lead the "nerds" to control the school? And as for the production itself, is it an anti-Ritalin tract, a celebration of overactive imaginations, or a theatrical experiment? By the time the piece ends, in a spate of warm and fuzzy self-empowerment, the oversimplified, reductive message only makes the rest of the show more confusing.

In the program notes, director and producer B.D. Wong writes that he saw the show as "a particularly psychedelic outlet to my rampant creative impulses." In his New York directing debut, Wong, an accomplished performer on stage and screen, clearly revels in this wacky material. He makes inspired use of yellow umbrellas and less successful use of an overhead projector in the spare production, but even clever technical twists are not enough to rescue this murky project. In this case, some roads are better left untraveled.

Amateur Theatrics

At the heart of most satire is a begrudging affection for the object of its pointed wit. So it is with Austentatious, a musical set within the insular world of community theater. The show's creators pay tribute to the egotism, misguided instincts, adorable amateurishness, and, yes, the abiding passion for theater that characterizes nonprofessional productions. That the show is able to poke gentle fun at the ridiculous while also being sublimely funny speaks to the considerable abilities of its cast and creative team. The Central Riverdale Amateur Players are set to work on their first show since John, the group's driving force, left for a flashy directing gig at a regional theater. The resulting power vacuum has left pretentious, pathetic Dominic helming domineering dancer Emily's unorthodox version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Emily's re-imagining, which features dance-offs, exotic locales, and oversimplified dialogue, has been aptly rechristened Austentatious.

Inexplicably, only four people show up for the one day of auditions, with a fifth (David) there to read with his actress girlfriend (Lauren). Emily claims the role of Elizabeth Bennett, for which she competes against petite blonde Lauren and Jessica, the group's regular/eternal supporting role player. (All of the actresses are dreadful, but Emily's intimate relationship with Dominic gets her the part.)

Bookish David's understated line reading and romantic soul win him the role of Mr. Darcy, much to his surprise, and the ire of Lauren, who is cast in the smaller role of Elizabeth's younger sister Lydia. Jessica's choice of monologue—that of an elderly woman—again relegates her to the sidelines, as elder sister Jane. Stoner twentysomething Blake, coerced into auditioning by his social worker, gets cast as Mr. Bingley simply because "there aren't enough guys."

Overseeing this group is Sam, the no-nonsense stage manager who gave up on acting after a scarring experience in a college production. She comes to rehearsals early, leaves late, and makes sure that, despite the writer/director clashes over script changes and clog dances, the ship sails smoothly into port (i.e., opening night). But even Sam has difficulty keeping up with the increasingly outlandish revisions to Austen's book, particularly because of her devotion to the source material. (Hilariously, Dominic considers that to be "the movie," which we presume to be the most recent version, starring Keira Knightley.)

In its depiction of community theater antics, the script gets two things wrong that would greatly help in establishing reality at the top of the show. As the actors wait for auditions to start, we do not get a strong sense of who knows whom. Community theater groups are traditionally tight-knit, and a relatively small circle of people goes out for shows on a regular basis. Auditions are all about friends from previous productions reuniting, evaluating strangers on their abilities based on their looks and preparedness, and gossiping about their rivals.

Playing into this would seem to be an ideal way for the writers to establish exposition, character, and past history in a very economical way. It could be done as part of the interjectory recitative in the show's opening number, "Audition."

The other detail that did not ring true was the small number of auditioners. While it makes sense to keep the cast small in order to develop each character's arc—which is done very successfully throughout the show—an explanation of the poor turnout is needed. There could be a clearer line about people turning their back on the group after John left. (This is hinted at in the second scene, which is too late.) Who has ever seen an audition with a turnout of fewer than a dozen people?

Fortunately, the script is propped up by bouncy songs, unexpected and funny lyrics, and a game, talented cast. Former Avenue Q puppeteer Stephanie D'Abruzzo (Sam) is the most believably unglamorous actress playing a stage manager I've ever seen, and the song "I Manage" seems to have been tailor-made to showcase her strong, emotion-soaked voice. The other standout is Stephen Bel Davies, whose dithering Dominic gets some of the production's funniest lines. (Presented with a tap-dancing number in a scene, he recalls that the original version was "more mouthal and not so leggy-tappy.")

All of the actors have wholeheartedly embraced their characters' talent levels and shrunk or outsized their personalities to match. Their conviction is so strong that it's almost a shock to read their professional bios in the program!

For the show's ambitious players, their goals range from a good run to fame and fortune on a larger scale. The goals for the production's creators are less clear. This is a diverting, crowd-pleasing piece that would do well in limited runs at small houses in big cities with a theater culture. Despite its similarities to Noises Off!, which has run twice on Broadway, it doesn't have the presence to command a large commercial venue. But, to borrow the title of the Act I closing number, perhaps scoring a run at the New York Musical Theater Festival is "the next best thing."

Friends & Neighbors

The neighbors have just dropped by. They've brought Shiraz. And brownies. Sound good? It's not. They've also come with a mission to destroy your childhood and completely upend your entire life. They have a creepy demeanor that borrows equally from Mister Rogers and David Lynch. They know everything about you—even about your old imaginary friends. Such is the case when Hank Mountain and his pal Vera arrive to torment Kathleen Clarkson, a teenager whose family lives in a Midwestern "McMansion." Unfortunately for Kathleen, her parents are too distracted playing host to their friends, talking about paninis from Panera and projectors from Sony, to be concerned about these mysterious visitors. As a result, the guests place the entire household under their spell, until only Kathleen and two fellow teens are left in a transformed world to figure out just what happened.

While audiences might also find themselves scratching their heads after Have You Seen Steve Steven?, the play's sharp writing and natural flow make it a pretty enjoyable mystery to tackle. With subtle nuances and complex characters, it's one of those rare shows that manages to be surreal without being ridiculous, and it deserves an additional viewing to explore its every intricacy.

Ann Marie Healy's script has a firm grasp on familiar subjects, which keeps it from spiraling into experimental theater no-man's-land. Too often, a surreal play expends so much energy on creating a wacky world that it neglects to convincingly capture human emotion. Healy succeeds here by crafting a splendidly bland setting for her bizarre ideas. Before Hank and Vera arrive to shake things up, the play initially unfolds as an interesting rumination on generation gaps.

Frank and Mary Clarkson are throwing a dinner party to catch up with their friends the Dudleys, who've brought along their slacker son and a foreign exchange student whom they've "ordered." With vocabularies lifted from store catalogs and owner's manuals, as well as a complete inability to listen to their children and some of the worst sweaters since The Cosby Show, the adults come off as tacky, ignorant, and materialistic.

So it's no surprise that when they discuss the future with the kids (romance, college), the youngsters recoil. Kathleen and the Dudleys' son, Thomas, would much rather reminisce about their childhood days spent searching for their imaginary dog, Steve Steven. Kathleen repeatedly states that she is "not ready" and doesn't want to grow up and become her mother. Perhaps this is what Peter Pan would've sounded like had J.M. Barrie lived in franchise-conquered suburbia.

With deftly controlled pacing, the gap between the grown-up and the growing is further distinguished. Unlike their parents, who speak in rushed, definitive statements (even their questions seem to contain answers) and frequently talk over each other, the teens speak slowly and suspiciously, as if doubting everything they're hearing—and perhaps a bit of what they're saying too.

The best examples of this juxtaposition are Kathleen and her mother. As Kathleen, Stephanie Wright Thompson speaks in a sort of slow, questioning drone—always the deep, dry counterpoint to the adults' bubbly sopranos. Alissa Ford's Mary, on the other hand, has the bright eyes and chipper voice of a Disney cartoon character constantly on the brink of breaking into song.

It's the parents' oblivious nature that allows them to be so easily entranced when Hank and Vera crash the party. Kathleen and Thomas, however, sense something's up. Thomas even thinks he first saw Hank in a nightmare. The visitors show a real eerie interest in the teens, and confess that they've come to set their imaginary childhood pooch free.

As Hank, Matthew Maher is a restrained breed of creepy: a soft voice, an unsettlingly delayed sense of timing, and a personality that switches from charmer to bully in a blink. In addition to chilling, Hank's odd behavior makes for some of the play's funnier moments. When the scrawny Thomas (Brandon Bales) attempts heroics, his awkward commands, and even more awkward efforts at self-defense, are hilarious. In one fabulous scene, he discovers that hurling vodka at an intruder and shouting "Begone!" doesn't help the situation—it just causes someone to cry over stained flannel.

As time goes on, the visitors' origins grow only murkier. Are they real neighbors? Demons of doom? Mere metaphorical devices disguised in knit caps and snow boots?

These aren't the only questions that linger ambiguously at the play's conclusion, and audiences might leave feeling at once intrigued and frustrated, with only a handful of clues pointing to what may have occurred. Yes, it puts us in the same position as the bewildered teens, but it's important to remember that the characters aren't smiling as the lights go out.

Electric Euripides

Prospect Theater's ingenious, energetic production of The Rockae is another outing for the company's stalwart composer-lyricist, Peter Mills. Based on The Bacchae, The Rockae follows Euripides's original closely but adds its own spin. As you might guess from the title, Mills has chosen the rock idiom for his show. Broadway purists may object—and there are times, especially early on, when the vocal screeching and loudness means straining to understand the lyrics. But on the whole, Cara Reichel's superbly directed production works very well indeed, and the melodies are varied and pleasing.

To refresh your myth memory, know thee that the god Dionysus is outside Thebes, having traveled from "Eastern lands" to gather more converts to his cult. His mother was Theban: Semele, the granddaughter of Zeus. His father was Zeus. Dionysus's aunts, Agave, Autonoë, and Ino, still live in Thebes, where Agave's son Pentheus has assumed the kingship from his grandfather Cadmus, who has retired and handed over power, as unwisely as did Lear.

A rock band plays upstage as the action unfolds on a simple set. Sarah Pearline's only scenery is a tubular-metal structure with a raised platform that serves as prison and the mountain of Cithaeron, where the bacchantes gather. David Withrow's costumes conjure a louche, erotic world, finding a modern parallel to the bacchanalia in The Rocky Horror Show. He draws on a palette of black, chartreuse, and purple, along with tassels, fringes, lace, and netting. The scene where Pentheus puts the women in chains and they sway and pull on them looks like an after-hours club on the Lower East Side (I'm assuming).

As Dionysus, the god of wine, Michael Cunio is given very little to wear: leather straps crossing a bare, glitter-flecked torso, dangerously low hip-hugging black pants, and, initially, a blond woman's wig. His Dionysus is licentious, confident, sly, homosexual, and just plain fun, particularly matching wits with Mitchell Jarvis's arrogant, immature Pentheus. Jarvis smoothly underplays the struggle between the king's urge to maintain control and his innate curiosity about what the women of his city are up to, and Pentheus's final seduction by Dionysus is perhaps the juiciest scene in Mills and Reichel's witty book (as well as in Euripides).

As Dionysus cunningly baits Pentheus, the latter inches toward inevitable cross-dressing to spy on the women, and finally puts on women's clothes. "You're doing it all wrong!" exclaims Pentheus to the soldier helping him. "On this side my dress falls smoothly to my ankle, but over here it's all crooked."

All the performers seize their chances and run. In a song called "High on Cithaeron," Matt DeAngelis, in the bit part of a herdsman, delivers a tour de force performance describing the rites of the women in Mills's evocative lyrics: "Some buckled snakes around their waists/As they were getting dressed./While others suckled young gazelles/And wolf cubs at their breast." Three women (Jaygee Macapugay, Simone Zamore, and Rashidra Scott) sing as a trio of maenads, while Meghan McGeary's enraptured Agave joins her sisters Autonoë (Laura Beth Wells) and Ino (Victoria Huston-Elem) in another trio.

In a show about revels, dance is crucial, and Marlo Hunter's hyperkinetic choreography draws on the hair-throwing references in the text, giving the maenads head-tossing moments along with frenzied jumps, kicks, and slides. A number called "Abandon" is flavored with East Mediterranean sinuousness, in keeping with the lyric—"The kind of justice that prevails/Will not be weighed on Western scales"—as well as the origin of the cult in the East.

The musical falters only when Euripides does: There's an extended anticlimax involving Agave and Cadmus that's faithful and necessary, but it drags. Still, the talents on display here deserve notice.

True Lies

Whoever said that honesty is the best policy must not have lived in Chantbury, London, during the 1930s, a time and place where honesty was often suppressed in favor of creating a world where marriages are perfect and everyone is your friend. This is the setting for Dangerous Corner, J.B. Priestley's soap-operatic comedy about the hidden love, lies, and betrayal that exist beneath the surface of picture-perfect lives. Dangerous Corner first opened on Broadway in the early 1930s after undergoing several rewrites following its original London production. It is presented here with all of the original dialogue restored, though it is hard to imagine Priestley tampering with such a seamless, tense story. Each excuse, glance, and flighty character gesture is a carefully constructed building block in a mystery surrounding the apparent suicide of a vibrant young man named Martin.

From the benign opening you would never guess you are about to be engulfed in a whirlwind thriller. Four well-dressed women sit in an elegantly decorated drawing room exchanging polite, but ultimately dull, after-dinner chitchat. Two of them, Betty (Jaime West) and Freda (Karen Sternberg), are married to successful partners in a publishing firm, while a third woman, Olwen (Catherine McNelis), seems content being single as long as she is part of their tight-knit group.

Later the men enter in suits and ties, tease the women, and help themselves to bottles of liquor. To add to the occasion, Freda casually offers cigars from a musical cigarette box to her guests, not realizing the life-changing conflicts this innocent gesture is about to ignite. All of the ensuing revelations can be traced back to this box, given to Martin the night he killed himself. Those who recognize the box must have been at his house on the day of his unexpected death, though no one has ever said as much before. Sensing that something is amiss, Martin's brother Robert (Chris Thorn) drops his manners and turns the party into an all-night interrogation.

Once the finger-pointing begins, the play turns into a deliciously enthralling melodrama of brash accusations and outlandish confessions. McNelis is the first actress to produce mascara-smudging tears in the midst of a passionate scene, instantly adding to the story's delight. If the actors acknowledged the outrageousness of the situation in their performances, the humor would be lost. It is their total and sincere investment in this material that pulls us into their wild world and makes us care about the outcome.

The theme of false truth and dirty secrets is heightened by the costumes. Sternberg makes great use of Freda's ability to deliver silencing cold looks and biting commentary while sashaying across the room in a glamorous studded evening gown. Justin R. Holcomb, understudying the role of Charles Stanton in this performance, is entirely convincing as an impeccably dressed businessman who easily announces shocking sins to his colleagues without ever losing the smile on his face.

By the end of the day, honesty has been utterly proved to be the worst of all policies, but in case there is still any doubt, Priestly rewinds the story from its emotional end to its benign beginning, showing us what would have happened if a popular radio tune had distracted the guests from discussing the musical cigarette box. The results are so radically different that it leaves you wondering about the benefits of telling the truth, and whether we, like these characters, would be better off just keeping it to ourselves.

High Art, Domestic Strife

The famous artist who has incredible charisma and an outsized ego, a master at his craft while a failure as a human being. That familiar type is the fascinating main character in Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy's play The Shape of Metal, which opened at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 2003 and is now receiving a belated U.S. premiere at 59E59 Theaters. But in this case, the he is a she. Nell Jeffrey, played with terrific verve by esteemed stage actor Roberta Maxwell, is an ailing 82-year-old sculptor whose work is being put on permanent display in a national museum—and a self-described "bit of a beast" when it comes to "niceties" like people's feelings. The play, directed by Broadway stage veteran Brian Murray, turns on the confrontation that Nell has with her middle-aged daughter Judith, who visits seeking answers about the long-ago disappearance of Grace, her mentally unstable sibling. Grace, who appears only in flashbacks and dream sequences, vanished 30 years earlier after her mother quashed her romance with a mechanic from the nearby village.

The Shape of Metal works as a suspense drama complete with a buried family secret that, when revealed, is both surprising and plausible (no small feat). But what makes the play noteworthy is the richness of its three female characters, particularly the formidable Nell, and the combustible, dueling emotions that fuel their clashes with each other. If the characterizations have a flaw, it is that these women are revealed only through their interactions with each other, making for some gaps.

The quality of acting in The Shape of Metal is outstanding. Julia Gibson endows the levelheaded Judith with both heart and intelligence as she ricochets from frustration and rage to concern and empathy with her mother. Molly Ward brings Grace to life with luminescent power.

But it is Maxwell who steals the spotlight as the hard-charging and acerbic artist. Nell berates new artists for their acceptance of mediocrity and recoils from the slightest sign of failure in herself and others. With shades of Lear, she grandly predicts her impending death while scorning the indignities of aging, including memory loss. In her exchanges with Judith, she is, by turns, self-righteous and pensive. Maxwell brings such zest to the part that she doesn't convincingly convey Nell's physical and mental impairments. Her rapid half-step shuffle, for instance, seems more jig than feebleness.

Murray decided to keep the play's Irish setting, though nothing in the plot demands it in the way that the work of fellow Irish playwrights such as Brian Friel and Conor McPherson does. It's an unfortunate decision since all three actresses, particularly Gibson, slip in and out of convincing Irish accents.

Set designer Lex Liang pulls off the illusion of a massive, garage-like artist's studio on a stage that is diminutive even by Off-Off-Broadway standards. In fact, the entire design team is top-notch, doing work that is in service to the play's needs and never flamboyant.

The Shape of Metal, which refers to Nell's favored material for sculpting, offers grist for reflection on the relationship between art and life, the nature of modernity, and the claims and limits of family. Nell, who spends a lifetime trying to create finished objects, ultimately comes to understand that failure is human, that perfect form is never attainable. The Shape of Metal is a case study for such a life philosophy. Far from perfect, it is yet a work worthy of attention and regard.

What's the Frequency?

There is a lot to be said about the effect television has had on our lives since its invention more than 50 years ago—the way people's sedentary lives have increasingly come to revolve around an electronic box as a way not to expand but to escape their own universe. Kevin Mandel tries, I believe, to address the pros and cons and, most of all, the power of television in his absurdist comedy A New Television Arrives, Finally, but the message gets muddled along the way. Television gets in trouble right from the start. Mandel's play is too vague for its own good, opening with Man (Bryan Fenkart) alone during the daytime in a bathrobe at his apartment. For some unknown reason, he has been faking that he's sick to stay away from work and from his fiancée, Woman (Kate Russell). His old television has apparently broken down, so he has ordered a new one.

But the new television that arrives takes an odd form, that of actor Tom Pelphrey (who alternates this role with Victor Villar-Hauser). Pelphrey, cloaked in a wild red suit (courtesy of costume designer Rebecca Lustig) that resembles an outfit the Joker might have relished, enters and immediately dominates Man's apartment, marching around, dropping vases out the window, and making all sorts of accusations about the tenant's empty, disappointed life.

Television first holds Man in his sway and then does the same once Woman arrives. The two are mesmerized by the new appliance's philosophies of life and its understanding about what each of them needs to be happy. Eventually, Television's urgings get darker, pushing both characters to question more about their lives and essentially making them his hostages.

But Mandel never provides enough background about the lives of Man and Woman—what were they like when they were happier, and how did they get unhappy in the first place?—and the audience is left to accept Television's assessments of their lives based not on any evidence but just on principle. Furthermore, once Television gets Man and Woman in his thrall, the stakes don't really escalate as much as meander until the play's end. Mandel seems to suggest that people have surrendered too much of the power in their lives to television and need to take control, but he never builds on that assertion.

The play's ambiguity also raises questions about the basic construct of Television himself. Is he really supposed to be a talking TV set? Or is he ultimately a man? Why does Man so readily welcome him into his apartment? Several unconvincing twists in the last scenes suggest that Television might have an agenda of his own behind the havoc he wreaks on Man and Woman, but the audience never figures out what that might be.

Nonetheless, director Kevin Kittle maintains the right amount of momentum to keep the play going too fast for any holes in logic to emerge. He blocks the characters in constant circles so they are in constant motion, yet going nowhere. This is an effective touch in terms of characterization, but it is problematic in terms of narrative: a play really should have some direction.

Pelphrey, an Emmy winner for his work on Guiding Light, is certainly volcanic as Television, delivering long, obtuse monologues with aplomb. His passion drives every scene, as it must. Television certainly wouldn't work if he didn't appear be pulling the strings at every moment. Mandel really seems to be enamored with this character and seems to disdain Man and Woman; they are both milquetoasts who are unable to articulate what has gotten them in such a rut.

The result is that Fenkart and Russell are left to their own devices to create both back story and sympathy for their characters, but Mandel makes that mission impossible. Since they are essentially playing an Everyman and Everywoman, too many specifics, he apparently feels, would blur his point.

Still, Fenkart and Russell are appealing actors with a strong presence, and they adequately express the surreal humor. It's just that when the laughter subsides, we are left with nary a clue as to what to make of this play.

Like Mother, Unlike Daughter

In just a few short years, Bekah Brunstetter has emerged as a major voice in Off-Off-Broadway theater. With an irreverent tone that takes a skewed glance at themes no less heavy than identity and religion, her works (which include To Nineveh, last year's New York Innovative Theater Award winner for best original full-length play) ask intelligent, intriguing questions about the ways people in various situations affect each other, and the reasons they make their choices. And yet the questions come coated in such humor (usually dark, sometimes naughty), one doesn't even taste the medicine as it goes down. Brunstetter's latest, You May Go Now, is no exception. The play, part of the Babel Theater Project, opens with doting Dottie (Ginger Eckert) teaching her wide-eyed teenage daughter, Betty (Melinda Helfrich), how to bake the perfect cake, as well as instructing her on other customary ways to be a good, subservient wife.

For the first 20 minutes or so, one would be right to assume that Go Now occurs during the 1950s, so perfectly does the tableau (directed by Geordie Broadwater, with a set by Tristan Jeffers) fit a scene from Father Knows Best or a Douglas Sirk film. But Brunstetter provides enough clues to let us know that her play in fact take places in a contemporary time, albeit a world completely unlike any her audience has ever known.

It is also a world that requires constant reorientation. Dottie insists that her naïve daughter land a good husband and do whatever is necessary to keep him, leading one to think that Go Now is about Betty's journey to self-affirmation. Or one might assume that—until Dottie, suddenly and to Betty's understandable concern, packs her daughter a suitcase and banishes her from the house because it is her 18th birthday and time to venture out on her own.

Then, with no time to recover from this whiplash, the play completely reinvents itself when what appears to be the ghost of Dottie's husband, Robert (Ben Vershobow), comes home. The jarring plot twists continue, as Betty returns home with Phillip (Justin Blanchard), a man she met at the bus station and thinks is the one. As it turns out, there is a reason for their sensed connection, one with drastic implications for both Betty and Dottie.

Go Now works as both straightforward melodrama and crazy metaphor, a heartfelt concoction with as many layers to it as one of Dottie's perfect cakes. The focus is on the two distaff members of its cast; Dottie is stripped of her perfect image while Betty comes more and more into her own. The play requires, then, two leading actresses capable of portraying these transformations with all the nuance Brunstetter requires, and it finds them in Eckert and Helfrich.

Eckert has, perhaps, the trickier role, as her nurturing demeanor, especially Dottie's cheerfully chirpy cadences, masks a far more devious edge. She even buoys the character revelations that veer toward the more preposterous. Yet Helfrich runs away with the production, playing a woman-child discovering her own courage in a world getting rapidly more complicated and less dependable than she thought. Her delivery of some of Brunstetter's more perverse lines (just a few examples: "I can't remember if Russia is a continent or a type of fruit," "the boy at the grocery store said his [ejaculate] tastes like strawberries and emancipation") is both humorous and heartbreaking, suggesting the loss of innocence that all young, vulnerable children must undergo at some point.

Broadwater's direction does not always adequately distinguish between the scenes with Robert and Dottie and those with Dottie, Betty, and Phillip. She could provide more of a clue, perhaps through lighting, blocking, or music, that the scenes with Robert do not take place in real time but are going on inside Dottie's head. Nonetheless, Vershobow, as Robert, has a strong presence, radiating judgment and affection for his wife.

Blanchard skillfully portrays every angle to Phillip, whose motivations become clearer in stages. One goes from being afraid of him to genuinely caring for him, which is quite a trick to pull off. Yet somehow Brunstetter forces her audiences to care for each of her characters, flaws and all. Off-Off-Broadway theaters may be small, but this playwright's ideas continue to loom large.

Stoppard Lite

The acclaim for Tom Stoppard's vastly intellectual, nine-hour Coast of Utopia has prompted a look back in Stoppard Goes Electric, an umbrella title for the Boomerang Theater Company's ambitious presentation of three television plays the dramatist wrote in the 1960s. Each has a different director but draws on a core cast. While they're an interesting glimpse at the formative years of a great playwright, they also point up a flaw that Stoppard himself has confessed to: "I can't do plots and have no interest in plots." Offered by Boomerang in repertory with two other plays, the productions are also hampered by their transfer to the stage: cumbersome scene changes slow the momentum. And although the actors are game enough and there's clearly talent here, they haven't mastered the high, Wildean style to send Stoppard's language into the stratosphere. Lines like "To stay in for tea is almost impossible in decent society, and not to get up at all would probably bring in the authorities" remain earthbound.

Teeth, directed by Tim Errickson, is probably the most successful, although it features a bit of gender-blind casting that distracts from the play, a trifle about adultery and payback. George Pollock (a slippery Mac Brydon), apparently a serial philanderer, visits a dentist (played by Christopher Yeatts with a mature confidence that offsets his youthful looks) for whom George's wife, Mary (Sara Thigpen), works as an assistant. Mary suspects him of cheating, and as soon as he's under a narcotic in the dentist's chair, George implicates himself in hanky-panky with the dentist's wife and then flails around comically to establish a veneer of innocence.

Cuckoldry and medicine also figure in the second piece, Another Moon Called Earth, directed by Christopher Thomasson. In it, Richard Brundage's historian of logic, Bone, is constantly distracted from his intellectual pursuits by his recently bedridden wife, Penelope (a childish, volatile Kate Ross), who watches and listens to a massive parade celebrating "lunarnauts" (Britain's first men on the moon). Penelope cryptically suggests that history has just crossed a Rubicon, and only she and the lunarnauts know it. Penelope's doctor, Albert (Yeatts again), offers some wildly untraditional therapy under the bedcovers while Bone is buried in ancient texts.

Stoppard seems to be satirizing academics who study a "grand design" yet are oblivious to what's under their noses. Some of this is amusing, although comedies about cuckoldry are probably bigger thigh-slappers in Europe, but it doesn't register as top-of-the-line Stoppard, like The Real Inspector Hound or Dirty Linen.

The most serious-minded piece, and the most indicative of Stoppard's admission of plot failure, is A Separate Peace, in which a man named John Brown (Bill Green) arrives at a hospital and talks his way into occupying an empty room. His background is mysterious, and he's got a lot of money to buy serene surroundings, but not at a hotel. Although a young nurse (Shauna Kelly) shows some sympathy, she's a spy for the doctor (Brundage) and the chief nurse (a peremptory Ross), who are determined to uncover Brown's past and boot him from the premises.

In Rachel Wood's sluggish production, the situation sort of shuffles along, and the thrust of it is probably clearer in Britain, with its nationalized health service. Brown's innate desire to be taken care of by the state seems at odds with his capitalist willingness to pay for the care that he doesn't require. To receive the attention he craves, though, he must erase his history entirely. Green's plummy-voiced Brown, however, is such a cipher that one doesn't have much interest in him.

While Boomerang deserves credit for putting some early Stoppard onstage, these adaptations won't enhance his reputation or increase his fan base.

Down Home Magic

If only life were more like a music video, where success is amplified to the max. For the Sturgess family, things couldn't be more different. One son lives in a car propped up on blocks, the other has mental breakdowns that are cured only by liquor, and Dad has Social Services breathing down his neck. Their sole escape: a steady supply of heavy metal and punk music. In fact, in ...and we all wore leather pants the only thing more magical than rock 'n' roll is magic itself. The plot is peppered with mystical events, ranging from a mysterious visitor plucked from the sky to an immaculate conception.

Robert Attenweiler's imaginative script is set in a rather unimaginative place: Ashtabula, Ohio (read: Anytown, USA). The contrast makes for poignant and comical moments, which the talented cast aptly captures. The first three scenes contain some fabulous repartee that is aided by quick dialogue and a snappy pace set by director John Patrick Hayden.

Most at home among the witticisms is Joe Stipek. As Krank, the loner, car-dwelling son, he has a perfect deadpan tone that makes even the wildest notions sound inappropriately (and hilariously) matter-of-fact. When his date expresses concerns over his makeshift hot plate in the backseat, he explains, "No, it's fine. People tell ya shouldn't have fires inside a' cars, but they mean when you don't think n' crack a window." His complete sincerity makes dangerous ignorance seem adorable.

As his brother, Danny Bruckert's Jagger is Krank's boisterous and self-assured foil. He struts around the stage, mostly without pants, and revels in the play's more absurd moments. For poor Jagger, things are pretty absurd: he may or may not be a mechanic, and he may or may not be the former star of a heavy metal group. While he keeps having strange and increasingly aggressive flashbacks–a guitar solo here, a wild motorcycle ride there–his wife, Mary (Becky Benhayon), remains determined to stamp them out with alcohol. As a result, Jagger has no idea who he is, and Bruckert captures his confusion and mounting frustration well.

Thanks in part to an inexplicable combination of a meteor shower and an earthquake, the characters' problems and innermost needs and fears are hurtled to the surface. However, the play stumbles a little when everyone collides in the family den. While the shorter, two-actor scenes earlier in the play offer some real zingers, the lines don't have the same bite when the entire ensemble shares the stage.

The appearance of a mysterious visitor, who speaks like a prophet and dresses like a jogger, also trips up the story slightly. Here, the simple lyricism of magic layered over the mundane is replaced with lengthy speeches that tip almost too far in favor of the former.

But when the play maintains this balance, it's a delight. Take, for instance, the show's depiction of the so-called meteor shower. Jagger and Mary have just brought out some glow-sticks (they couldn't find a flashlight) to look for their missing child when a loud rumble and flickering lights overtake the stage. As the characters stumble through the chaos, Mary goes to the door at the back and struggles to hold herself up with the frame. Her shaking hands wave the stick up and down until its glow flashes like green lightning.

Despite its modest technology, the clever production team creates a dazzling special effect. Now here's a group that knows more than a few things about crafting magical scenes from ordinary ingredients.

Round and Round

Television producer Joss Whedon recently suggested that people keep waiting for the proverbial dust to settle in their turbulent lives, only to realize that the settling dust is actually their life going on. Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio, the masterminds behind Troika Ranch's Loop Diver, certainly seem to echo Whedon's sentiment in their fascinating new production at the 3LD Art and Technology Center. In this modern dance presentation, the choreography is enhanced by strong multimedia elements, and each ingredient amplifies the central theme—the creation, execution, and ultimately destruction of patterns, or "loops," in people's lives. Six dancers garbed in subdued black move through an open playing space, which is interrupted only by three large projection screens. As the performers whip feverishly through the space, it takes only a few cycles to realize that their movements follow a very strict pattern. Each location, posture, and pose is rigidly defined.

The choreography hints at narrative threads, such as two performers who might represent lovers. We're not supposed to know the particular emotions behind their movements specifically—each caress, advance, or rejection is executed as if the players were robots pantomiming the human experience. As the piece progresses, the lights change slightly, and the performers pick up their pace. Then something tremendous, yet simple, happens. Two of the usually nimble performers violently bump shoulders as they pass each other. Simultaneously, the music becomes distorted. From there, the "loop" deteriorates into anarchy.

At first listen, the music is unspectacularly digital—seemingly random beeps and blips occasionally corrupted by static. Likewise, there is a simplicity to the performers' movements that might suggest an uninspired choreographer. But both of these initial conclusions would be wrong. Astoundingly wrong.

While Stoppiello receives billing as the head choreographer, two unique architects also guide the players' movements. EyeWeb and Isadora, two revolutionary computer programs, use cameras at either end of the performance space to map the performers' movements. The programs (one created by Coniglio) interpret these movements to create the multimedia elements of the show. These programs govern practically all of the musical and video elements, and in turn, the performers react to each change in the elements by improvising slight variations on their main choreography. These improvisations ultimately inform new media elements in the program, which inform new improvisations, and so on and so on.

This staggeringly innovative convention appropriately expresses Loop Diver's theme of incorporating disorder into living patterns. Does it work? At the risk of sounding naïve, the "loop" repetition seems too redundant in some portions of the show. Seeing the same dance sequence 20-plus times is part of the experience, but it doesn't always feel new or necessary. Eventually, you yearn for the slight deviations to become more dramatic.

About halfway through, the performers speak garbled sentence fragments into microphones. Curt phrases like "Impossible to discard" and "Change, don't change" read like verse poetry and also intensify the central concept. Still later in the piece, small groups of performers take center stage for short vignettes. Unfortunately, some of these solo dances went on too long to retain interest.

Assigning credit for the choreography is difficult. Stoppiello certainly deserves most of the kudos, but the performers are also credited with the creation of the movements. The staccato, robotic movements effectively convey the automaton-like mind-set in which people carry out routines. This provided some comedy later in the piece, when performers would find another person in their spot and would bump them and back up repeatedly, like a toy robot bumping a wall. Another excellent bit involved the performers desperately trying to discard their clothing but ultimately finding themselves unable to.

The piece requires that none of the performers stand out, and none do. Each is fully devoted to the style of the piece, and hearing them huffing and puffing as the movements get more intense only draws the audience in further. In addition, they all affected mindless expressions very well. Robert Clark, Jen (JJ) Kovacevich, Johanna Levy, Daniel Suominen, Lucia Tong, and Benjamin Wegman deserve praise for their commitment and ardor.

Coniglio's video projections are quickly edited and efficiently disorienting. In some nice moments, the performers move around the screens while videos are playing and cast striking shadows. The lighting design, by David Tirosh and Jennifer Sherburn, was minimal but proficient.

What Loop Diver lacks in grace it makes up for with originality and scope. Normally, modern dance, like abstract painting, elicits only an immediate emotional response. Troika Ranch's production certainly evokes that initial reaction, but it also manages to provoke interesting thoughts about the nature of our routines and habits. Perhaps the most profound idea: if the patterns in our lives are forged by our reactions to previous patterns being ruptured, who's to say—when the dust finally settles—that any true patterns exist at all?

Where There Are Awards, Come Rewards

Once, a trio of sages came to a community bearing gifts. Their goal was to provide protection and support for an important entity. While they may not possess any gold, frankincense, or myrrh, these theatrical magi are now blessing the Off-Off-Broadway community. Jason Bowcutt, Shay Gines, and Nick Micozzi, three performers who have spent a healthy portion of their lives both on- and backstage, originally united to bring greater recognition to the world of affordable theater and to expand its base of support.

In just three short years, their New York Innovative Theater Awards have amassed a surprising level of support. This year's ceremony, Sept. 24 at the Fashion Institute of Technology's Haft Auditorium, is guaranteed to be a standing-room-only event, with celebrity presenters.

The origins of the IT Awards had less to do with award recognition than with bridging the gaps between the many performers in the Off-Off-Broadway world. "I wanted a way to get the community together and get more coverage for their shows," Gines says. She points out that many actors were so busy focusing on what they were doing that they remained unaware of what other shows were being mounted around them. "I wanted to use the awards to shed light on Off-Off-Broadway, she says.

"I knew that I couldn't do this myself," Gines continues, "and I had no doubt that [Bowcutt] and [Micozzi] were the two people to help." They both agreed with the IT Awards mission statement--"to honor the history of Off-Off-Broadway and the world that surrounds it"--and the three began putting ideas together in 2002.

Bowcutt, Gines and Micozzi are very much a team, communicating all day and meeting at least once a week. According to Gines, "The three of us complement each other, even by arguing, because we find flaws and hone the system." She says much of the first year involved setting tight deadlines and adhering to them. The three constantly listen to feedback from others and continue to work out any kinks in the system, whether it's updating the IT Web site or adding eligible shows. During the second year, for instance, shows in Queens became eligible. "There are constant changes, and they're organic," Micozzi says. "Just like Off-Off-Broadway itself."

Award recipients and nominees come from a judging formula that the three concocted with the help of focus groups made up of friends and other members of the Off-Off-Broadway community. Several appointed judges as well as audience members can vote for every show that registers for consideration. "Including the audience was key," says Gines. "We wanted to get them invested and to have an important role."

After a June 2004 launch party, they started adjudication during the 2004-05 Off-Off-Broadway season for Manhattan shows. The first awards ceremony in 2005 took place at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which seats about 300. As a testament to the growing support for the IT Awards, this year's ceremony location seats 780. As in past years, some will probably be turned away at the door. Furthermore, each year has seen the number of shows submitted for consideration double.

Since the IT Awards are not funded, the organization thrives largely on donations from benefactors, and Micozzi is quick to credit their staff and their "extremely generous volunteers for their help. They are doing it out of support for our idea and goals. I'm still amazed how much they give and how dedicated they are." Gines agrees, adding that one day she hopes to see the IT Awards develop into a foundation, with paid positions for staff.

All three acknowledge that there have been slight bumps along the way. Micozzi says that, much like the New York International Fringe Festival, the IT Awards encounter a kind of snobbery from those who remain dismissive of the Off-Off-Broadway scene. Bowcutt remembered one person who said an awards show was a mistake. "He said it would ruin Off-Off-Broadway. And then he submitted his show the following year."

Nonetheless, Bowcutt, Gines, and Micozzi agree that competition is not what the IT Awards are about, and they point to their three annual honorary awards. The 2007 Artistic Achievement Award, presented to an individual who has made a significant artistic contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community, will go to Doric Wilson, one of the first resident playwrights at Caffe Cino, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse. According to playwright Robert Patrick, Wilson "established the Cino as a venue for new plays and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off Broadway." Wilson became a pioneer of the alternative-theater movement and later was a founding member of Circle Repertory Theater and the TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) Theater Company and the more recently formed TOSOS II.

There also is a Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented to an Off-Off-Broadway company that consistently produces outstanding work. The award includes a fellowship to be used for an Off-Off-Broadway production. This year's recipient is the Rising Phoenix Repertory, founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott. Rising Phoenix Rep produces an ongoing reading series of new plays, workshops, and festivals. Festivals include Summer Lovin', seven new short plays by members of the MCC Playwrights' Coalition; Detour Days, a week of works in progress; the Brooklyn Plays, nine short plays focused on a single borough; and ClipLight, eight days of workshops, panel discussions, readings, and classes.

Recent productions have included What Happened When at HERE Arts Center; Fall Forward at the Sitelines Festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; The Telling Trilogy (including The Ride, a 2006 IT Award nominee for Outstanding Original Short Script); Rules of the Universe (a 2007 IT Award Nominee for Outstanding Original Short Script, Director, Actor in a Leading Role, and Production of a Play); Three Sisters, at the Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy's No. 43; and Gift, produced as part of the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. Rising Phoenix Rep serves as a home base for a company of theater professionals that encourages an open exchange of work and ideas within the greater theater community.

The third award is the Stewardship Award, for an individual or organization demonstrating a significant contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community through service. The 2007 winner is Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York, the support organization for over 375 of New York City's not-for-profit theaters. Each year it awards more than $350,000 in cash grants to theaters throughout the city; provides more than 200 technical-assistance workshops, roundtables, and consultations; makes more than $500,000 in cash flow and real estate loans; and provides low-cost office space to 45 companies in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

"On behalf of A.R.T./New York's chairman, Peter Cross, our president, Robert LuPone, and the entire staff, board and our 380-plus member theaters, I want to thank the New York Innovative Theater Awards Committee for honoring us with the Stewardship Award, says Virginia P. Louloudes, executive director. "To receive this acknowledgement during our 35th anniversary season, from this inspiring community that we serve, fills me with tremendous pride."

Regardless of the IT Awards's expanding reach, the organizers are not ones to rest on their laurels. As it becomes feasible, they would like to include the other boroughs for consideration, and they still debate additional categories.

"I want to add an Outstanding Stage Manager category, because they're the unsung hero" of any production, Gines says. "But we don't know how to judge that." After a chuckle, she adds, "Maybe we should set a deadline."

Fringe Wrap-Up

A wrap-up of five more Fringe Festival productions which are still playing this weekend. For more information, visit the Fringe Festival website .

CHING CHONG CHINAMEN
Review By: Adrienne Cea
Written By: Lauren Yee
Directed By: Anne Marie Bookwaltez

Ching Chong Chinamen currently playing at the Fringe Festival is about a Chinese family named, The Wongs, so removed from their culture that the mother, Grace, (Sandy Chen) feels like an imposter when ordering from a Chinese restaurant. Daughter, Desdemona (Jamie Yuen-Shore) only cares about her cultural identity when she realizes it could get her into an Ivy League school, son Upton (Sean Finerty), wants to be left alone to play his video games, and Dad, Ed (Wilton Yeung), is the first to throw away his chopsticks in favor of a knife and fork.

The characters are all so unapologetically true to their neurotic, egocentric selves that the storyline can hardly go wrong with them in it. Each member of the Wong Family is completely engaging in their own unique way, especially in their reactions to their new houseguest, a Chinese boy named, J, (Randy Nakagawa); whose real name is so difficult to pronounce that they assume he is saying Ching Chong.

Along the Wong's path to self-discovery and betrayal the story takes many unexpected and surprising turns. But the character's goals and personalities are kept so consistent that it's easy to follow their madcap, meandering story, and fun to guess what will happen to them next.

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KISS AND MAKE UP
Review by Adrienne Cea
Book and Lyrics/Directed by Kevin Hammonds
Music and Lyrics by Mark Weiser

Fringe comedy, Kiss and Make Up, contains all the usual combustible Fringe elements; outrageous plot, snappy dialogue, clever scenery, original songs, and a cross dressing lead. The cast and crew of a community theatre have just learned that the president will be attending their Opening Night, an unexpected surprise that creates stage fright, bickering and some excessive pill popping.

Jeanne Tinker is a stand-out as Annabelle; a first time actress who writes her lines on the back of a Chinese fan. Her best gags stem from a trick played by a jealous actor, who erased all the marks onstage instructing her where to stand. He redraws the marks in random places leading to some hilarious staging problems for poor Annabelle.

The play-within-a-play plot could have been confusing, but David Sabella-Mills is the unifying thread that holds them both together. A series of screwball circumstances have left him no choice but to play both the male and female lead, which he pulls off surprisingly well, until both need to be in the same scene at once. The farcical humor and sight gags to come out of this dilemma inspired impromptu moments of audience applause. The play is so full of originality and unexpected surprises, that it simply must be seen to be believed.

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Elektrafire
Review by Samantha O'Brien

Greek tragedy rocks! In Elektrafire, the classic play gets a rock opera makeover with several fiery, catchy songs. Standouts include the punchy "Hey Agamemnon," the aggressively percussive "Elektra," and Heidi Suhr's splendid wailing in "Sister Dear."

Although the score soars, the plot stumbles because the one-hour production moves a bit too quickly and glosses over its complicated themes of coups, matricide, and incest. The loud band also hinders plot development, as the instruments frequently drown out the actors. While it might not satisfy Sophocles or Euripides aficionados, fans of Jesus Christ Superstar and Pink Floyd's The Wall should certainly drop by.

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Champ: A Space Opera
Review by Adrienne Cea
Created by Jeff Curtin, Juan Pieczanski and Patrick Young
Directed and Produced by Patrick Young

It is the distant future, Earth has been destroyed and the last of humanity is confined to a spaceship with a final destination that is over a hundred light years away. In the Fringe rock opera, Champ: A Space Opera we meet Champ (Jonathan Fredrickson) and his fellow crew members as they struggle to past the time, traveling towards a place they will never live to see.

This multimedia story is told through a combination of television images, dance, and deafening rock music. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of room on the stage to accommodate a live nine-person rock band and five dancers all at once. The dancers, whose talent is evident in their graceful, controlled movements, are unable to do much more than wave their arms and move in place. There is also the matter of the complicated plot, which is explained in more specifics on a screen located behind the dancers, obstructed from the audience each time they perform in front of it.

Visually the science fiction atmosphere is fully established. The dancers stand ankle deep in a smoky fog that eventually covers their entire bodies, and the instruments hit some eerie high notes. But without a full understanding of the story being performed, these creative elements end up getting lost in space.

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Face Off with Ugliness
Review by Adrienne Cea
Written by Rick Bland
Directed by Heather Davies

Rick Bland's dark comedy, Face Off With Ugliness, currently running as part of the Fringe Festival is built around a good joke that gets stretched too far. Any material, when stretched to its limit, will start to grow thin and flimsy. Good jokes are no exception.

The play's two actors, Rachel Hamilton and Rick Bland, personally greet and shake the hands of audience members as they take their seats. They are not welcoming us to the show, but to a banquet honoring murdered surgeon, Frank Miller, who died in the midst of his grand plan; gathering excess body fat from people around the world to plug holes in the ozone later.

Some of his body slicing ideas are funny -- like when Miller creates shoes out of liposuction patients' excess skin to wear as an alternative to leather. But by the time our main character is eating meatballs fried in body fat, the story has taken a turn for the gross. There is no element of reality to latch onto, no character to connect with or any emotion to be felt. Bland needs to surgically remove some of his excess jokes and focus on using his material to shed a revealing light on our image obsessed society.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.