NOT JUST ANOTHER FACE IN THE CROWD

"They are the exact same color as my eyes. How impressive is that?" says no-nonsense businesswoman Ellen (a skilled and nuanced Esther Barlow) as she delights in a pair of earrings gifted to her by an anonymous suitor. "I am going to marry this person one day - I swear to God." Such is the tenuous conceit on which hinges this sometimes quite funny play executed by a thoroughly likeable cast. Can Jenny, the beautiful and seemingly ditzy lesbian lawyer-to-be (energetically played by Jennifer Laine Williams) win over workaholic Ellen by playing secret admirer? Can she get Ellen to see that she is the right "human" for her and not the right man she expected?

To the cast’s credit, they wring a great deal indeed from this questionable plot with the sheer exuberance of young actors who like to entertain and give themselves over fully to the job. It helps that the script is peppered with good one-liners.

Smitten Jenny is aided in her Cyrano-like pursuit by Ellen’s close confidante and gift-planting officemate Peter (Philip Graeme). Peter’s family seems to weigh heavily on his mind and impinge upon his daily life. Between a dotty cat-loving sister (camped up by playwright and actress Kate Hewlett) engaged to a witheringly shy boyfriend (Dustin Olson), and a lousy relationship with his cold and homophobic father, it’s a wonder Peter has time for his boyfriend of the same name (and numerous name-gags) Peter.

But, as Ellen’s romance in absentia blossoms (devoid of any connection to sparked real-life encounters with dreaded Jenny-of-the-Coffee-Shop), Peter must ask her if she is finally ready to surrender her rigidity and face her fears.

Fear is a topic discussed at length in the play. All of the characters are introduced (and brought back for intermittent monologues) via a 12-step meeting device -- where they confess their deepest fears (dogs, cats, infertility, being alone forever...with cats)to the audience. This technique is partially effective (and even, at one point, quite startling) yet can occasionally feel contrived.

Director Robin A. Paterson uses the stage well, as scenes shift easily from Ellen's office, the local coffee shop, and the 12-step style meeting of which the audience is a part.

For all the perpetual chatter about deep-seated fears, one might expect Humans Anonymous to be heavier and more probing than it actually is. The play is not a serious opus on the fear of homosexuality, and although it touches lightly on that nerve, lightly -- as in lighthearted fun --is the operative word.

Humans Anonymous succeeds mainly on the strength of the chemistry and timing of Williams & Barlow (both fine actresses) and the playwright’s sense of humor, which periodically bubbles over the top. It’s a good choice for a young crowd looking for an enjoyable night out at the theater.

Doing the Math

Math has never been the sexiest subject, but in David Auburn’s superb play Proof, the study of numbers anchors a fascinating, almost voyeuristic, look at a splintering family. The play nabbed both the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and the Astoria Performing Arts Center has produced an earnest, if not thrilling, revival of this razor-sharp drama. Each potent scene takes place on the back porch of a typical family home in Chicago, and we meet Catherine after midnight on her twenty-fifth birthday, sulky and slugging champagne straight from the bottle as she talks with her father, Robert, a famous and unrivaled mathematician and professor. But what appears to be a typical domestic scene quickly twists when Robert reminds her that his funeral is the following day. The play, like Catherine, hovers alluringly on the cusp of this madness. Is Catherine simply drunk and hallucinating? Or does she resemble her father—who eventually deteriorated into dementia—in more ways than in her prodigious mathematic ability?

Besides her father, who appears both as a ghost and in flashbacks, Catherine is joined by her tightly wound older sister Claire, who flies in from New York for the funeral, and Hal, one of her father’s graduate students. Claire is eager to put things in order, sell the house, and drag Catherine back to New York, while Hal is itching to get his hands on the stacks of notebooks in Robert’s office. Catherine assures him there’s nothing there, but he’s looking for a diamond in the rough—one last stroke of genius from Robert’s faltering faculties. When Hal plucks a potentially groundbreaking proof from the pile, the question of exactly what it is—and who wrote it—throws the trio into further distress.

Auburn deftly positions his characters as if they were numbers in a complex equation, aligning and shifting and repelling them to create explosive conflict. “She’s not my friend, she’s my sister,” says Catherine of the fussy Claire, and the sisters’ tumultuous relationship is particularly riveting. It’s the electrifying push and pull of two diametrically opposed (yet related) personalities: Catherine, who gave up going to college to care for their father, is bitter about her sacrifices and yet shattered by his death, while Claire, jealous of the intellectual aptitude shared by her sister and father, overcompensates by trying to take care of her intractable sister.

In this solemn production, intense musical passages underscore and drive the transitions between the scenes. These original compositions, by Jeffrey Campos, place the rumbling chords of a piano and the moaning of a cello into furious counterpoint—the instruments rub up against each other in both harmonious and dissonant patterns, much like the relationships that percolate in each scene.

Michael P. Kramer contributes yet another fantastic set to APAC (his designs for Picasso at the Lapin Agile and A New Brain were similarly sumptuous), this time creating a cozy yet damaged domestic zone, complete with picture windows and peeling paint. Lighting designer Erik J. Michael adds even more depth to the set, from the warm golden lamplight within the house to the eerie shadows from the trees. Like the bars of a prison cell, these dark slim slivers seem to trap Catherine in her anguished world.

Director Tom Wojtunik also seems to get ensnared—in the rapid-fire delivery of Auburn’s dialogue. He has elicited composed performances from his actors, but in many scenes—particularly the opening father-daughter conversation—the actors trade lines with a breathlessness that effectively locks down emotion and steamrolls over much of the humor. There’s snap and vigor in these pithy exchanges, but they often blot out the dimensionality that makes these characters so interesting.

For example, Catherine’s tough-as-nails exterior is shaded by a very real vulnerability—namely, her fear that she will end up like her father. She resists her sister’s help, but she’s eventually seduced by the goofy Hal, who manages to cut through her spiky shell. As played by Catherine Yeager, however, this Catherine is all blunt edges. Infusing her performance with noxious sarcasm, Yeager turns Catherine into something of a cartoon, rolling her eyes out at the audience after nearly every line. Her most poignant moments come in a flashback in which she tenderly cares for her father—here, she finds the varied layers that would give Catherine much-needed complexity in the other scenes.

Catia Ojeda turns in a poised and refreshingly witty performance as Claire, and Richard Vernon makes a believable, if slightly too easygoing, Robert. (One gets the feeling that the nutty professor would be a bit more idiosyncratic.) Richard D. Busser fares best as the industrious Hal; he brings a winning, loose-limbed charm to the nerdy student who is determined to be cool, at least cool enough to impress his advisor’s brilliant daughter.

At its best, Proof peers in on family strife with the irresistible intimacy and immediacy of eavesdropping; when these actors stop “performing” and allow Auburn’s writing to take fire, their charged conversations transform their lives, and the math, into compelling—even sexy—equations.

Cracks in the Facade

Harrison Williams’ Glass Houses is a Rubik’s Cube of a play, a multi-layered and entertaining work of drama, the action of which is punctuated by mini-lectures from one of the main characters, Bill, a marine biologist who explains in painstaking detail his research on the fascinating Venus Flower Basket, the self-referenced metaphor of the play. The Venus Flower Basket, we are told, is a silica-based sea-sponge found in the deep waters around Japan and the Philippines. The sponge, assimilating surrounding minerals to build its glass-like structure, forms a symbiotic relationship with tiny shrimp, usually two, sometimes three or more, which it traps forever, housing, feeding and protecting them from predators in exchange for their own waste products, which it then uses to support itself and sustain its perfect crystalline biosphere. The play’s characters, as you might guess, are likened to the shrimp (um…except perhaps for the waste product part). Because the metaphor is so obvious as the central conceit of the play, it is wisely revealed right from the very start. Such self-referential analysis could quickly become tiring to an audience but, miraculously, it doesn’t, thanks to strong performances from all four actors, particularly Randy Anderson playing the campy Nick and Brian Morgan as Bill. Nick and Bill, a couple living together for more than six years, invite Nick’s former lover, Mike (DR Mann Hanson) and Mike’s new fiancée, Stef (Stephanie Farnell-Wilson), to their Hoboken apartment for dinner, and present them with an engagement gift: a nearly perfect specimen of a Venus Flower Basket. Add to the mix a few bottles of wine and the fact that Mike has never disclosed to Stef his relationship with Nick, and it’s all an easy recipe for fireworks. Fireworks do ensue. Not only is Nick still in love with Mike, but we learn that he also has an interesting association with Stef as well.

Ultimately, the play asks, “Who are the poor shrimp in this drama?” Are they Mike and Stef, embarking together on a potentially troubled life due to Mike’s bisexuality? Are they Bill and Nick, trapped in a false relationship where Nick longs for someone he can no longer possess? Are they Mike and Nick—is Mike really in love with Stef or is he in denial about his true sexual orientation? Is marriage the trap? Are relationships, straight or gay, snares by definition, quagmires of compromise? Mr. Williams suggests that all of us are trapped in some way—we all construct glass houses from our fragile beliefs about ourselves and others, denying a truth here—lying to others there—and when a crack forms in that house, whether self-inflicted or as a result of a stone thrown by another, we realize just what brittle, delicate creatures we really are. All this makes for compelling and worthy theater. At the play’s climax, Nick and Bill engage in a tense and uncomfortable confrontation that would make you turn away if the acting wasn’t so riveting.

Like mastering the Rubik’s cube, there’s always a logical and inevitable conclusion, and the play’s ending is forced, all of its pieces wrapped up too tidily. But, like the cube, the real action is in the confusion and the endless possibilities, and Glass Houses offers much for the audience to ponder about the fragile structures we build for ourselves.

Minimalist Horror

Henry James’s ghost story “The Turn of the Screw” has intrigued generations of readers as well as artists. British composer Benjamin Britten turned it into an opera. The 1898 story was also filmed (and retitled The Innocents) with the late Deborah Kerr as the governess sent to Bly, a remote country estate, to care for the niece and nephew of a London bachelor who has become their guardian. Jeffrey Hatcher’s 1999 stage production is a bare-bones tour de force for two actors that takes some structural liberties but preserves the frissons. Among the tweaks Hatcher makes is to assign all the secondary roles, including that of Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, to the male actor and to make Flora, the niece, so shy that she doesn’t speak at all. The play therefore elevates Miles, the young boy, to the center of the battle between the governess and the phantoms. The whole is performed without scenery or costume changes. Still, in Don K. Williams’s beautifully directed production, James’s story feels distilled rather than downsized.

Hatcher’s play compresses the action into seven days, announced like a diary by Melissa Pinsly’s young, callow and romantically infatuated governess. Hatcher introduces the possibility of her repressed sexuality in the first scene, with subtle humor and yet more sexual innuendo than James could employ. “I need a woman,” announces Steve Cook’s uncle to the prospective governess, referring to the job of raising his wards. And when she agrees to the stipend, he says, “A satisfied woman, our very goal in life.” After she accepts the position with barely contained excitement, he notes dryly, “I have seduced you.”

The great critic Edmund Wilson pointed out in his 1938 essay The Ambiguities of Henry James (just republished in a collection by Library of America) that it wasn’t until 1924 that a canny critic noticed that only the governess sees the ghosts. The question of whether they are real or figments of her overly romantic imagination and a repressed sexual infatuation with the uncle enhances the eeriness of the tale. (Both the film and the opera include visible revenants.) Hatcher’s treatment adds a weirdly incestuous element, establishing the intentions of the male and female ghosts, Peter Quint and Mrs. Jessel, to inhabit the bodies of the innocent children and be reunited.

Once at Bly, the governess (who goes unnamed, as in the story) meets Mrs. Grose, and the sightings begin. Pinsley negotiates the various mood swings of the governess—from elation to apprehension to an almost evangelical hysteria and determination—very well. Cook, dressed in a frock coat for all his characters, differentiates them vocally or, in the case of Miles, by adding a sullen hunching to his shoulders.

Gorgeous lighting from Karl Chmielewski adds immeasurably to the mood. He creates deep shadows upstage that the characters draw back into, and from which the ghosts materialize in shadows, insubstantially. Chmielewski also uses sidelighting in a noirish way, and his choice of colors, notably indigo and amber, is just as evocative in setting the right tones for scenes.

The actors add most of the sound effects. Cook, for example, announces the time of a chiming clock. They make creaking noises and whooshing noises, and occasionally Hatcher contributes to the atmosphere of dread a stunning line like “The house hissed of snakes.” Although the narrative slackens occasionally, the play builds to a wild, insane climax, more effective than James’s sturdy prose evokes on the page.

The original story begins with a framing device, but James drops it by the end. Hatcher, however, returns to it, and we learn what happens to Flora and the governess. The coda is dry, black, and ironic, and leaves little doubt that the governess is a figure to beware.

The (Devilish) Assault of Reason

In the preface to his universally adored novel The Screwtape Letters, Christian author C. S. Lewis claims that “there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Now the author’s own “unhealthy” interest in devils and their practices has inspired the Fellowship for the Performing Arts’ sublime stage production at the Theatre at St. Clement’s; the only excess of which is the team’s intense delight in reinventing of Lewis’ text for a new audience. For the unfamiliar, Lewis’ deviously clever novel is comprised of thirty-one letters from a learned demon named Screwtape to his bumbling nephew Wormwood, who is attempting to win a mortal’s soul over to the “father below.” As it turns out, things are very academic in this Oxford Fellow’s vision of the netherworld. Every demon must graduate from an institution known as the Tempters Training College before heading to Earth to harvest souls for demonic consumption. Screwtape, now retired after an illustrious career, serves as his naïve nephew’s mentor in the art of steering human thoughts away from “the enemy” and (unknowingly) toward eternal oblivion.

When Screwtape was first published in 1942, Lewis’ keen insights into religion, war and the general state of the world served as a piercing reprimand to worldly cynics and devout believers alike. One can’t ignore the implications of mounting a production like this in the current climate of religious schism. A morbid curiosity might lead some contemporary audience-goers to consider what Screwtape would have to say about partial-birth abortion, for instance. The devil only knows.

This stage version by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean presents a complete and compelling depiction of Lewis’ snarkily astute narrative. Each letter to Wormwood is dictated by Screwtape (played by McLean) and dutifully transcribed by his demonic secretary, a necessary and helpful theatrical convention named Toadpipe (played by Karen Eleanor Wight). This allows Screwtape to strut about his study without vanishing into the physical business of writing, which is something that might have meant Loveletters-esque damnation for the piece. Undoubtedly, Fiske and McLean have performed some generous cutting and pasting of Lewis’ text. Most notably, their edits energize the last twenty minutes of the production.

Fiske directs Screwtape in a broad, fantastic style, calling to mind the quixotic milieu of film directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. The advantages of adapting the text and then directing the adaptation are clearly evident; all of Fiske’s stage conventions seem to have been custom built into the narrative. For instance, the process of sending and receiving letters involves Toadpipe scaling a serpentine ladder that extends the full height of the stage and waiting for a bolt of energy to pulse into a suspended mailbox. This theatrical Rube Goldberg is just preposterous enough to add a dash of necessary sorcery to the piece, but is executed so unpretentiously that it enhances Lewis’ text without distraction.

Fiske is fortunate to have this far-fetched exhibition rendered by capable artists like scenic designer Cameron Anderson, light designer Tyler Micoleau and sound designer Bart Fasbender. When you hear the words “one-person show,'' the expectation for technical design is (perhaps unfairly) very low. Imagine the glee in discovering that this one-person show takes place on an intensely raked stage cantilevered above a pool of fog, that it builds atmosphere with appropriately disturbing soundscapes in every scene and that it occasionally elicits mesmerizing explosions of lightening and hellfire. More importantly, the technical wizards implement this sensory icing with honors.

Of course everything hangs on Max McLean, who assails Lewis’ text with more politician than perdition. It is fitting that Screwtape frequently cites “jargon” as the best tool in a devil’s repertoire, because McLean’s ruthless command of the language alone proves enough to entertain. Even the demon’s exaggerated pronunciation of his own name betrays the aristocratic zeal of a Charles Dickens villain: “SKAH-ruuuue-WAH Tay-PAH!” McLean is less convincing, however, when the script calls for Screwtape to descend into bestial fury. Some of these snarling moments teeter on the brink of parody, but thankfully McLean always quickly reverts to his droll center. As the significantly lower-caste demon Toadpipe, Ms. Wight carries out her role’s growling and bone-gnawing with undomesticated charisma.

This disarming production of The Screwtape Letters, perhaps the most interesting piece of reverse-psychology in literature, will no doubt provoke the same theological musings among contemporary intellectuals that Lewis intended half a century ago. We must ask ourselves: are cynical pride and dismissive self-delusion really the “gradual path” to Hell?

If so, a lot of us are probably… well… screwed.

Glamour in a Gumshoe

From the wholesome adventures of Nancy Drew to the neo-noir high-school high jinks of TV’s Veronica Mars, the girl gumshoe has carved out a solid niche in popular culture. In Kelly Link’s fantastical short story The Girl Detective, the title sleuth doesn’t have a perky name—adept at solving tricky cases and nabbing criminals, the Girl Detective is on the hunt for her missing mother, whose name (she suspects) may very well be the same as her own. And to say it out loud might just be bad luck. Under the inspired vision of director and adapter Bridgette Dunlap, the Ateh Theater Group has revived its acclaimed production of The Girl Detective for the Crown Point Festival. As in its 2005 adaptation of Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (another collection of surrealist short stories), The Girl Detective presents an enchanted dreamscape filled with charged ideas, vivid colors, intriguing premises, and precious little solid ground. Dunlap has an acute eye and an undeniable talent for riffing on the bold, eclectic, and downright bizarre; even when this production loses a bit of its steam, it still keeps us looking for what might be just around the next corner.

The production blares to life in a colorful montage of bodies writhing to a jazzy, frenetic beat. The Girl Detective (the haunting Kathryn Ekblad, in a pretty blue dress and headband that evoke Alice in Wonderland) gracefully breaks up fights, returns purses to their rightful owners, and generally makes the world right.

But all is not right in her own world. Ignoring her father’s pleas, the Girl Detective has stopped eating. Instead, she visits—and devours—people’s dreams. Slipping through the subconscious world, she’s on the lookout for her mother, who vanished when she was young. Is her mother dead? Or on vacation? And why won’t anyone speak of her? When she gets wind of a story about tap-dancing bank robbers, the Girl Detective suddenly feels like she might be on the right track.

As they create designer Emily French’s appropriately minimalist sets, the energetic ensemble scurries on and off the stage, and it is through their direct address that we learn the most about the Girl Detective, in both what she is and what she is not. “The Girl Detective doesn’t care for fiction,” one character remarks. But, “she feeds her goldfish,” adds another.

Still, despite this accumulation of random facts—and the insights of the Guy Detective, who sits in a tree to “detect” the Girl Detective—the wispy central character remains mysterious and hazy, as does the plot. The story extends from “real” life into the underworld, but there’s not much to distinguish these settings (which may be the point). Ultimately, the Girl Detective’s quest gets a bit lost in the weird and wonderful tapestry that surrounds her.

Dunlap provides an often captivating animation of Link’s story, and she crams a vibrant assortment of styles—including tap and swing dancing—into the narrative. These sequences are polished and pulsating, but they often linger too long, and the overall pacing of the show drags at times. Ill-placed, shadowy lighting further obscures the production.

Clearly, the ever-elusive Girl Detective, that master of disguise, is meant to be a metaphor for our search for what we’ve lost. But the story—and this production—doesn’t have enough punch or snap to jolt us out of our apathy. It does, however, form a lovely, if somewhat spacey, meditation on loss, which is becoming a familiar theme on New York stages, from The Civilians’ pithy musical Gone Missing to the lyrical grace of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. These productions, along with The Girl Detective, explore loss from stylized, wacky angles—here’s hoping they ultimately find their way to more solid ground.

Paper Soldiers

In the second scene of this Gulf War play, four soldiers, lost in their tank, alternate between panic and story-swapping. The tank driver shares a surefire tip to get lucky with a girl: take her to an off-off Broadway play, “20 bucks a ticket... the plays suck... but it’s really dark and you can score a hummer in the back row.'' I hope someone scores here because the average theater-goer isn’t likely to be otherwise much rewarded by this play. The subject of Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats is veterans’ post-traumatic stress disorder; it’s a vital and timely issue and theater offers an ideal form to explore it. This production tries its earnest best with a Gulf War veteran staggering between news-charged sets: from an unhappy home to a flashbacked battle zone, thence to a VA hospital, and finally to a homeless encampment in a New York City park. It’s a good conceit, this looking back to the still-unresolved fallout of Bush Senior’s war to emphasize the crisis of the current Bush’s reign of destruction and its direct effect on individual soldiers. But the main character here, Sgt. John Brown, is hardly an individual; his persona is as generic as his name. (Any allusion to John Brown the abolitionist is too obscure to identify.)

Sgt. Brown’s journey across the stage is driven by sad formula, unenlivened by the stale dialogue of a CNN anchor on weed (Anderson Cooper trying to channel Abby Hoffman?). Played by Chris McGuire, Brown struggles to communicate with his wife (Abigail Ziaja) in various classic scenes of alienated partnership. The origins of Brown’s sense of guilt and isolation become clear in a long, loud flashback scene where his substance abuse and poor judgment cause the death of his three subordinates (Alfredo Diaz, Richard Essig, Robbie Rescigno). Blasting battle sound effects are one of the especially painful elements of this play; their combination with the shouted agonies of Sgt. Brown throughout the performance had this reviewer reaching for earplugs.

Poor Brown flunks out of the VA hospital, where he fails to impress Dr. Elsinore Zinn (Evelyn Voura) with his symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome—she isn’t buying it, or she doesn’t have space or funds for him, it’s not altogether clear in what way she is negligent. The doctor boots him out of the hospital at the same time his wife boots him out of her life. Brown has no choice but to join the Vietnam vet panhandler (Jeff Lyons) who opens the play in his homeless camp in the park. Eventually, Brown is even exiled from the camp.

Like the script and the direction, the actors’ performances are earnest and heartfelt but largely undeveloped. Alfredo Diaz stands out with strong vocal command and Chris McGuire manages to bring an energetic physical presence to difficult solo hallucinatory convulsions.

Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats tackles a tough and significant subject and deserves credit for that but I’d rather hear directly from the individual soldiers who inspired it than from their cut-out stand-ins.

Romero & Juliet

The Bard had it coming. All of the elements of Twelfth Night are perfectly suited for a zombie horror interpretation: morbid language, contagious insanity, and near-comical ignorance. The most enjoyable aspect of the Impetuous Theater Group's adaptation, 12th Night of the Living Dead, is that they not only take this unique approach, but pull it off with a stunning degree of commitment to the original work. Unlike the bloodbath that unfolds onstage, playwright Brian MacInnis Smallwood's adaptation is more like careful surgery than wild hacking, as he extracts only absolutely essential and appropriate parts. The synopsis generally remains the same: Viola disguises herself as a male, Cesario, creating a bizarre love triangle between herself, the lovelorn Orsino, and the mourning Lady Olivia. All the while, the show's pranksters, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria, down some wine and taunt the stiff steward, Malvolio.

Though Smallwood cuts many lines (nearly all of Viola's: as the first zombie, she's reduced to grunts and squeals for the entire show), what remains is strikingly smooth. He occasionally adds fresh updates to fit his subject (when Feste, the fool, exclaims "as if thy eldest son should be a fool; whose skull Jove cram with brains!" a nearby zombie echoes, "braaiiins!") and assigns some lines to different characters, but his version impressively uses most of Shakespeare's own words to tell a completely different tale.

In this interpretation, a giant green meteor has struck Viola and Sebastian's ship, pulling the vessel down and dragging the siblings apart. Viola washes up on the shores of Illyria, looking a bit pale and, well, different. She walks with a heavy limp and carries herself in a sort of post-lobotomy fashion. Apparently, the meteor has infused her with an insatiable appetite for human flesh – a hunger that is passed onto each of her victims.

One of the most amusing things about watching a Shakespearean comedy is feeling privy to an issue that the characters keep missing. In Twelfth Night, it is their failure to see beyond the gender disguises. This inability to notice unusual realities is also what made the recent zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead, so amusing. Like the people in that film, the untouched (that is, still human) characters in 12th Night… start out dangerously blind to the plague that's overtaking those around them.

As Sirs Toby and Andrew, Timothy J. Cox and Benjamin Ellis Fine are fantastic aloof fools, giggling and gamboling amidst the bloody scene. Fine portrays Andrew as an amusing kind of man-child with a nice blend of cockiness and cowardice. One moment he’s declaring a duel, the next he’s crying and rocking himself as he’s cradled in a friend’s arms.

Much of the show's hilarity surfaces when Shakespearean eloquence collides with the grit and gore of cult horror. As our Viola snarls and growls at the gate to Olivia's estate, and even bites Malvolio, Olivia's response (lifted directly from the original) becomes absurdly understated: "you began rudely."

The entire cast superbly navigates the unusual territory of spilled intestines and iambic pentameter. Tom Knutson makes Malvolio's transformation into a zombie a particular treat, as the conservative servant gradually loses his rigidity with progressively slumping posture and increasingly breathy, broken speech.

Special effects help the show blend dialogue fit for a production at The Globe with visuals fit for a zombie film by George A. Romero. Increased levels of gore are seamlessly woven into the story. The creepily comical flirting between Olivia and Viola-as-Cesario is a good example. Unaware of the present danger, Olivia takes the zombie Viola's aggression for passion and becomes quite attracted to her attacker.

Even when the zombie bites off her finger, Olivia is not deterred. In a clever spin on Shakespeare's original – which has Olivia sending Cesario a ring as a token of affection – this version has her sending the entire severed appendage.

The production's only weakness is its complete devotion to creating chaos. Often, the zombie groans completely drown out the dialogue. At other points, the action is so widely distributed across the stage that it's impossible to focus. The house, for example, actually has a bar to the side of the main stage. While it's a fitting setting for Toby and Andrew, the bar is located so far from the center that most of the audience cannot see it.

Although the plot centers on disorder, the success of this mash-up rides on its tight organization and nice balance between different genres. In one of show's best scenes, for example, zombie characters pause to have a "chat." While they groan at each other, they hold their lines on cards. The scene is funny and unique, as zombies are traditionally uncommunicative. Leave it to Shakespeare fans to find a way to give pop culture's most ineloquent monsters a method of articulating their thoughts.

Lost in the Funhouse

Before launching into “The Dreams of Laura Bush,” one of two-and-a-half monologues that constitute Wake Up!, Karen Finley took a moment to describe herself. As she walked from the downstage podium to the upstage desk, arranging papers and garments beneath a camera that projected image onto a screen behind her, she proclaimed: “I’m Joan Collins with a conscience.”

“I’m Britney Spears with an education.”

“I’m Liza Minelli with a Happy Family.”

These descriptions got laughs, of course, but none of them captures who Karen Finley is or, more accurately, who she presents herself to be.

After entering to applause on the night I saw her, Finley made some casual remarks to the audience, dedicating the evening’s performance to her students. Because the space is small, she had no need of a microphone, but a loud fan in the back of the audience area made it difficult to hear her. When someone complained she stepped forward and apologized, asked if the fan could be turned off, suggested that people move closer (“Oh here, this is an excellent seat,”) etc. After going through this apparently spontaneous exchange, however, Finley reassured us that we wouldn’t have any problem hearing her now that she was about to begin in earnest.

She was right. As she launched into her prologue, a short monologue about a woman who seeks out amputee veterans for sexual trysts, her voice was rich with chest resonance and easily filled the room. Was her somewhat discombobulated entrance, her initially timid voice, her attempt to quiet the room and bring the audience forward just an act, then? Or her occasional self-deprecating remarks about not being “that good an actress?” Figuring out how to read Karen Finley as a performer and as a persona are a significant part of the experience of watching Wake Up!

The two monologues that make up the body of this performance are “The Dreams of Laura Bush” and “The Passion of Terri Schiavo.” For the first of these, Finley speaks as our current First Lady, presenting pages from her personal dream diaries. The dreams range in subject matter from Condoleeza Rice having an affair with the President to Laura organizing a fictional “Dependent Film Festival” in Crawford, Texas, to a fragmented reimagining of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, to a sexual fantasy about Tony Blair. Other “dreams” are less cohesive or are just partial glimpses of images. The pages from the dream journal are drawings and sketches that Finley arranges on a desk and that are projected onto a screen behind her. The dreams form a house of mirrors of the Bush administration and of our current national moment.

In “The Passion of Terri Schiavo,” Finley steps in and out of several characters, each of them projecting their personal narratives and causes onto Schiavo’s body. Some of it is moving, some of it is funny, and some of it is intentionally offensive. The common thread between these voices is that all of them, under the guise of caring about Schiavo, are really airing their own passions, their own fears, their own guilt, looking to an image of a dying woman to be their information-age messiah. “I’ve never met her,” one of the characters says, “but I love her.” Ultimately, Finley conludes, "Terri needs her own reality TV show."

Despite Finley’s image as a polarizing figure, a reputation born from her famous court battle with the NEA in the early nineties, there is very little polemicism on display in Wake Up! Instead, it is a show by and about someone who is trying to make sense of our baffling political and cultural present. I was neither as taken with the performance as the woman to my left (another reviewer), who laughed uproariously for most of the evening, nor as puzzled as the man to my right (my guest for the evening), who wasn’t sure what to make of Finley at all. Instead, I felt a sympathy for an artist trying to work in a narrative form when the world she’s portraying seems to have lost its coherency. However, whether you love her, hate her, or are not sure what to make of her, you will leave Wake Up! with little doubt that there is no other performer quite like Karen Finley.

Fear Factor

Halloween is in the air, and in the spirit of the year’s scariest holiday comes Greg Oliver Bodine’s Wicked Tavern Tales, an adaptation of three terrifying Edgar Allan Poe stories. Bodine’s adaptation keeps most of Poe’s original work intact with only a few cuts and alterations to compress the tales into three short works that flow together well, with each one delivering its own special jolt of horror. The product of these edits is not a watered down text, but a celebration of all things spooky. Wicked Tavern Tales has a certain thrill ride quality about it; even the entrance to the theater resembles the inside of a creepy Disney ride. Walking through a dark curtain, audience members will find themselves standing in a long, dimly lit hallway guiding them towards two towering wooden doors. Outside these doors hangs an ominous sign reading, ''Wicked Tavern.''

Staging the play in a century-old venue such as Manhattan Theatre Source provides many wonderful possibilities for establishing a haunted atmosphere. The wooden floors are naturally creaky and the red brick walls legitimately worn by time. The candles and lanterns that illuminate Gregg Bellon’s eerie, dark set do not take us into another time, but deeper into the one in which this room was actually built.

The chills are racing up your spine even before Narrator/Barmaid (Libby Collins) appears onstage to signal a start to the action. She answers the audience as if we have just asked a question, a question regarding our desire to hear a ghost story. Collins holds a lantern towards the crowd to light various faces and inquire as to how well they know their friends/neighbors/husbands/wives. She asks, because the characters in Poe’s three short horror stories, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Black Cat, met their demise at the hands of those they trusted.

The Tell-Tale Heart is arguably one of Poe’s greatest known works, and the opportunity to see it performed live is a treat you won’t find in a Halloween bag. Nancy Sirianni plays the crazed narrator, Ms. Moore, a woman driven mad by the evil-looking left eye of her charge, Old Man (Michael Patrick Collins). Sirianni captures every tick and nuance of the memorable character Poe constructed; she is pleasant and attentive to her employer and cheerfully frank about her justification for plotting his murder. When she hears his terrified beating heart the theatre flashes red and the sound grows louder and louder, drawing us all into her world of madness.

The Cask of Amontillado also focuses on a grisly act of murder, this time at the hands of a jealous, scorned lover named Montressor (Kevin Shinnick). This piece is hindered by some period-specific language integral to the story’s foreshadowing that sometimes gets lost in the dialect. Fortunately, Shinnick and Ridley Parson, who plays Montressor’s friend, Fortunado, appear to sense this hurdle and compensate for it with many hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions to indicate when something sinister is afoot. As Montressor proceeds to commit his final act of violence, it becomes disturbingly clear where the story is headed.

The night of horror concludes with The Black Cat, a segment filled with so many gruesome acts that one can see why it was saved for last. There is no topping the maniacal unwinding of Alfred (Ridley Parson) who matter-of-factly narrates the story from his cell on death row.

With these elements of horror, Wicked Tavern Tales is fun enough to exist solely as a holiday fare, but the eloquence of Poe’s language elevates it to something more. This play is not merely about shock value as the writing leaves you with thoughts and feelings to contemplate afterwards. However, you may want to hold off on such contemplation until after you have turned on all the lights.

Island of Pain

Sophocles’ Philoktetes is the only extant play on a story mentioned in Homer’s Iliad; it was tackled by Aeschylus and Euripides as well. Their versions are known because of 1st-century criticisms by Dion Chrysostom, who compared them. Each of the ancients gave the story his own spin, just as MacArthur Award winner John Jesurun does in his version, parts of which date from the 1993 and the first Gulf War. For instance, Sophocles alone features the character of Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son, who is brought by Odysseus to the island of Lemnos to fetch Philoktetes and his bow and arrows. Without the archer and his weapon, which belonged to Heracles, the Greeks cannot take Troy. But Odysseus abandoned Philoktetes (usually spelled “Philoctetes,” and accented like “catastrophe”) on the voyage out, because the warrior was bitten by a poisonous snake; the suppurating wound in his foot stank so bad that the Greeks marooned him. That betrayal means Odysseus needs Neoptolemus to cozy up to the castaway and trick him into helping them.

Jesurun, who also directed and designed the set, eliminates the Chorus and other characters. On a bare stage lighted with generally soothing projections on the floor and the upstage wall—a sparkling swimming pool, tree branches swaying in the breeze, clouds floating by—the three antagonists meet and talk in this updated version. Philoktetes is isolated in a hotel on Lemnos, having been kicked out of the hospital on the other side of the island. The action is “an autopsy conducted by the cadaver,” the hero announces to the audience.

The plot here plays a poor second fiddle to Jesurun’s vivid language. The words veer from startlingly lyrical to crude vernacular. At times they have the beauty of a dark psalm:

“If I give you a brain full of black blood, You will rejoice and thank me for it, If I give you a three-headed son, You will jump for joy. If I give you testicles of salt, you will rejoice. If I rain thalidomide on your people, You will rejoice and thank me.”

But frequently this elliptical poetry just piles up frustratingly. “Jesus, make me into clear water,” says the suffering bowman. “Can’t you see I am covered in white powder, a toppled minaret, armless and close to starvation, lost in a sea of ventriloquy, the lithium at the end of the tunnel.”

The mention of Jesus is no accident. Religious words like “temple,” “transgression,” “crucified,” “salvation,” and “cross” recur, along with “hammer and nails.” But Jesurun blends Christian and pagan beliefs confusingly. “For we are blessed among women,” says Philoktetes, who claims to have been transformed into a woman on the island. Early on, though, he notes that he was self-born, and moreover, “My first-born son was my lover, born of me and only me.” Much of it sounds familiarly Greek, like Zeus shape-sifting to fornicate with Leda or Danaë. And late in the play comes a scene that echoes both St. Peter’s denial of Christ three times as well as Judas’s betrayal. Neoptolemus asks Philoktetes for a kiss twice, and Philoktetes asks Neoptolemus for one as well. The homoerotic scene has resonances of the garden of Gethsemane, but which is the Judas and which St. Peter is unclear.

That kind of muddle is unfortunately typical of this frequently inert play, which loses a listener in thickets of oblique dialogue and situations. The plot involving the bow, which is crucial in Sophocles, is dispensed with quickly; the language is the primary interest to the writer-director.

That’s reflected in the casting. The actors, dressed (by Ruth Pongstaphone) in dark, contemporary civilian clothes, have not been cast in a realistic way, but for their delivery of the language in clear diction and incantatory phrasing. Louis Cancelmi, for instance, is far too hale and handsome to be a battle-hardened soldier, wasting from disease for a decade, and the willowy, questioning Neoptolemus of Jason Lew doesn’t look like he has Achilles’ DNA. Will Badgett does lend Odysseus some of the harshness and taciturnity of a military man, but their common talent is to handle the language with restrained intensity that provides some dramatic tension. The primacy of language isn’t so bad if Jean Racine is writing the dialogue and the dramatic situations are clear, but here it misfires badly.

Down To Earth

There are two stories going on in The Boycott. One features its writer, producer and one-woman star, Kathryn Blume, as herself, discussing her feelings about the general lack of attention shown to global warming and the little things Americans do every day that unknowingly harm the environment. The other story is the synopsis of a madcap screenplay that Blume wrote about a woman named Lyssa Stratton, who is campaigning for all women to go on a sex strike until the country takes global warming seriously. Blume originally wrote the screenplay with Hollywood stardom in mind (''dream casting: George Clooney'') but realizing the impracticality of this endeavor, decided instead to re-enact key scenes from the screenplay in front of a video camera and post the finished product on youtube. The Boycott interweaves personal monologues from Kathryn Blume’s actual life with her solo re-enactment of the youtube screenplay.

The result is a story that has way too much going on. Global warming is a real and pertinent issue and Blume has a lot to say about it, but her clear, heartfelt statements of the facts are more compelling than her frenzied re-telling of the fiction.

The story’s most passionate monologues are the ones that come from the depths of Bloom’s own experience; seeing a yoga center guzzling energy when their building is conducive to operating exclusively on solar power, and people in the supermarket who couldn’t care less whether their groceries are bagged in paper or plastic. There is a small tidbit about a time when Blume overheard a group of businessmen intelligently discussing global warming issues over dinner. The despair she feels at hearing their conversation end, ''basically, we’re screwed,'' drives her point home more than the entire retelling of the silly screenplay.

The screenplay, which reads like a mix between Austin Powers and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, suffers from too many personalities, many of which are too similar to be distinguishable. Blume switches from one character to the next by turning her head from side to side, but often her voice does not change enough for us to know who is who. She sounds like she knows what she is talking about, but the multi-character dialogue is recited at such a fast pace that it is hard to catch the gist, let alone the words.

This is a shame considering that Blume has some interesting knowledge to impart. When she sheds the screenplay and slips back into her own skin she is able to cleverly and comprehensibly articulate the damage we are doing to the environment, the most horrific example being the way our pollution has changed the way the planet looks from space.

During these scenes she often adopts a very casual tone, addressing the audience as if they are guests in her living room. In some instances, this laid back approach is cute and effectual, such as the scene where she turns on the house lights, waves at the audience and asks them to say hello to her camera. But when the tossing of a prop offstage goes awry she halts the narrative to giggle, ''Whoops that worked better in rehearsals.'' When the tone gets this informal it calls attention to the fact that we are watching an actor, not a character, and that takes us out of the story.

But all delusions of youtube fame and Hollywood grandeur aside, The Boycott has its heart in the right place, and when Bloom stops pretending to be five people at once and sits solemnly in a chair to deliver a slow, thoughtful speech about the Armageddon that awaits us if we don’t change our polluting ways, the message really hits home.

Back From the Future

Having seen, or, rather, heard, Radiotheatre's I>The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, I eagerly anticipated another installment in their current H.G. Wells Science Fiction Theatre Festival -- The Time Machine, now playing at 59E59 Theatres through November 4th. The climax and ending of this adaptation of Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine, written and directed by Radiotheatre's chief innovator Dan Bianchi, packs a chilling punch. However, the whole is not up to Radiotheatre's usual level of suspense and immediacy, on account of a frame-and-flashback structure that situates most of the play in the hero's past experience.

The set-up takes its time, with the Time Traveller (Jerry Lazar), a mad scientist whose grief for his late wife is his life's unhealable wound, puttering about his living room in the company of three rather nondescript friends. He invents the Time Machine. They don't believe him. Finally, the moment we are waiting for arrives: the Traveller tests the Machine, with himself in the driver's seat.

Moments later, the Traveller returns. He has come from the very distant future, to tell a story of high drama from beyond the end of human history. Unfortunately, a lot of the danger is a bit minimized by the fact that the Traveller has returned safely to the past -- obviously racked by post-traumatic stress, but alive and physically well.

The one future character who is differentiated enough to invite concern, love interest Theena, is passive and communicates nonverbally, albeit like her counterpart Weena in Wells's prose.

More frustratingly, Theena is played not by a live voice (like Lota in Radiotheatre's Moreau), but by pre-recorded sounds. They are great, surreal sounds, by the masterful Radiotheatre regular Wes Shippee, but they still combine with Theena's limp pathos to make her seem something less than human. Or, given her uncertain Linnaean classification, something less than a sentient creature.

This dramaturgical structuring makes it seem as if the Traveller's travels, narrated by him in the past tense, are part of the past, not the future. Of course, that paradox is part of Wells's and Radiotheatre's point, and supports the play's exploration of the effect of the possibility of time travel on speculation about deterministic versus fatalist concepts of history.

The action picks up when the Time Traveller reveals that he is not through with travelling, and finds that his friends remain skeptical about his vision of the future. The end of the play is scary -- especially because it is more scientifically possible than almost any other science fiction conceit with which I am familiar.

In short, if you love Wells, "The Time Machine," or the sci-fi or horror genres, this dramatization will prove enjoyable. So program your own Time Machine for an evening before November 5th and blast off to 59E59.

Those Pesky Martians

In 1938, Orson Welles directed a radio theatre adaptation of H.G. Wells's classic sci-fi horror novel The War of the Worlds. Some people turned on their radios in the middle of the broadcast, mistook the story for an actual news report on an actual, present, invasion of hostile Martians, and panicked. It seems silly, until you see, or, rather, hear, award-winning New York performance art company Radiotheatre's newest adaptation of The War of the Worlds, written and directed by Radiotheatre's chief innovator Dan Bianchi. The voice of the newscaster, reporting, he says, from the site of the Martian touchdown in Port Jefferson, Long Island, sounds hauntingly like an actual 1930s radio journalist. The sound effects easily suggest visuals, and the story is as horrific as in the original.

Radiotheatre's signature performance style -- on-book readings accompanied by vividly evocative, masterfully layered sounds effects and rousing, movie-score instrumental music -- makes the piece emotionally engaging and viscerally chilling while appearing a blatant theatrical illusion.

While communicating what all the fuss was about back in 1938, this adaptation also incorporates some distinctly modern, specifically post-9-11 touches. Its main concern is not how the humans resist the aliens as how the horror of murderous invasion changes them, causing widespread panic and making the nameless, Everyman hero, voiced by Frank Zilinyi, do something that, before the landing, would have seemed unthinkable. Part of Radiotheatre's HG Wells Science Fiction Theatre Festival, The War of the Worlds plays at 59E59 Theatres in repertoire with three other Radiotheatre pieces.

The cast wears a uniform of nondescript black clothes, and the set is almost as noncommunicative: a backlit sign that says "Radiotheatre," a pile of pseudo-antique travel trunks, a few portable flashing lights, and, enshrined on top of one of the trunks, a small photo of Orson Welles. The sound effects, on the other hand, are complex, paramount, and perfect. The Martians' mechanical walking "tripods" tramp into and out of earshot, their sinister machinery whirring, squeaking, and shrieking. Our hero runs through muck, cracks open creaky wooden doors, and scurries around his hiding places. Pounding music heightens the adrenaline rush and signals the approach of the dangerous Martians, and dangerously panicked people. Kinder music underscores the return of daylight, peace, and hope.

The large ensemble bring several distinct human characters to life. Supporting Zilinyi are Peter Iasillo as a Martian-shocked soldier who fantasises about a resistance movement based on the behaviour of New York City's rat population; Elizabeth Burke as the hero's rather naive wife; Cash Tilton as an ineffectual Senator; and Patrick O'Connor as an eccentric medical researcher.

Most compelling is the versatile R. Patrick Alberty, double-cast as the lone radio journalist who keeps reporting even when he fears he is the last human alive and an obnoxious minister who can't decide if the Martian's bright death ray is Satan or a vengeful yet radiant God.

Comparisons with the recent War of the Worlds film, starring Tom Cruise, are inevitable. The play engages with the issues of psychology, philosophy, and ethics that Wells incorporated into his tale; issues that the movie completely ignores.

Radiotheatre's The War of the Worlds concludes with an epilogue that alludes strongly to the world of the original broadcast, and the threat of imminent war that, in 1938, was anything but fantasy. This play should appeal to a range of audience: fans of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and American cultural history, but also anyone for whom daydreams and nightmares prove engrossing pieces of theatre.

Splatter-Fest

It might be the goriest interpretation of Aristotle yet. As the narrator, Brother Blood, explains the healing power of performance through catharsis (“When done properly, art can be used like surgery to extract the cancer from our collective psyches”), he demonstrates his theory on a poor, seemingly lobotomized victim, pulling out organs and entrails in a flash of blood and wild smiles. The problem with The Blood Brothers Present: PULP, a series of three short plays interwoven with several vignettes, is that there are just too many surgeons around the operating table. With five directors and five playwrights who seem to have differing visions, the show is inconsistent and disorganized. Though it pays homage to 50’s horror comics, its vibe is more thrown-together than throwback.

The series’ flaw is that it fails to devote itself completely to this genre. It’s a shame because when it does dive headfirst into the pulp world, and brings the comic book pages to life, the effect is quite thrilling. The first and last plays, Mac Rogers’s Best Served Cold and James Comtois’s Listening to Reason do a good job, crafting interesting back stories so that there’s suspenseful drama mixed with the gory payoffs. In language, pace, and tone, each feels like a tale from an earlier time. Both, for instance, have a derisive narrator (Brother Blood) whose all-knowing background commentary gives the plays an old-fashioned radio hour feel.

Both stories focus on plausible horrors: a jilted lover who’s come to gun down a homewrecker in Best Served Cold and the inner monologue of a serial killer in Listening to Reason. They also contain the strongest performances, including Anna Kull’s furiously heartbroken avenger in the former and Jessi Gotta’s superbly subtle turn as a disabled victim in the latter.

In a recent interview on NYTHEATRECAST, the show’s creators said that these two pieces were actually adapted from pulp horror comics, while the middle play, Qui Nguyen’s Dead Things Kill Nicely, is an original work. This changeup is quite obvious, as it disrupts the tone and pace set so well by the story that precedes it. Dead Things not only skips the effective narration, but also has a far goofier quality that detracts from any semblance of scary.

Nguyen’s piece has some of the evening’s funniest lines (a debate about the existence of zombies is amusing, thanks to the Grandma Addams-esque Stephanie Cox-Williams) and a fantastically gruesome finish (multiple decapitations! Evil Dead-style chainsaw hands!). However, the play’s refusal to take itself seriously as a story leads to an inability to take itself seriously as a production: with British accents that are distractingly bad and dialogue that often feels like it’s merely filler between jokes or violence, the play is too sloppy to be successful.

On the other hand, PULP’s production team has obviously put a lot of effort into special effects, which they execute exquisitely. All of the stories share a common love of gore, and while the splatter-fest is not quite at the bring-a-poncho level, severed limbs and slit throats abound. Even the most ridiculous cases of slit bowels or skinned backs look impressively realistic.

Another enjoyable aspect of the production is its soundtrack, which includes wonderful original music by Larry Lees as well as surprising offerings from familiar names. From the evil carnival-sounding suite that opens the show, to two wordless vignettes set to perfectly appropriate songs, the music is a delight. One short piece, about a camper who transforms himself into an insect, is told through the comically creepy song “Bugs” by, as I was later amused to learn, Pearl Jam.

With Halloween around the corner, PULP is written for those who crave a good bloodbath each October. But if such audiences are really looking to satisfy their fright fix, they might have better luck finding catharsis at the nearest haunted house.

About a Boy

Sex is natural. Repression is bad. Ignorance is dangerous. Poverty is deadly. Patriarchy is oppressive. These and other less-than-revelatory assertions are at the heart of Good Heif, a coming-of-age tale with an avant-garde patina that is currently enjoying its premiere as part of the New Georges 2007-2008 season. Unfortunately, generally strong staging and admirable performances cannot save the text from its undercurrent of condescension and self-congratulation.

Formed in 1992, New Georges' mandate is to encourage the work of female theatre artists. Over the course of fifteen years, the company has produced a number of notable premieres and helped to launch the careers of an impressive array of aspiring playwrights. Given the company’s mission statement Good Heif is a self-consciously playful selection, as its narrative is structured around the sexual awakening of an adolescent male. The trials of a pubescent male in a patriarchal society, as rendered by a playwright and a director who are both women and presented by a famously feminist theatre company: this seems to have all the makings of a provocative, subversive piece of gender-political theater.

Instead, Brooklyn-based playwright Maggie Smith has written about “men” in a generalized “rural” setting, constructing the rural male as “other” in a way that feels dismissive and often mean-spirited. “If only these idiot characters of mine could see what I and my laudably sophisticated/liberated audience see, they would stop oppressing the earth, themselves, and each other,” she seems to say. To be fair, Smith is apparently aiming for something “universal” here, but universalizing often results in the reductive rather than the enlightening, and her play is no exception.

Good Heif is set on a vaguely defined barren landscape, rendered by set designer Lauren Helpern to look kind of like the cracked-desert photograph on the cover of Midnight Oil’s 1987 Blue Sky Mining. The characters dig into the dry earth, although they do not seem certain what it is they are digging for, and it is later revealed that they fear and suppress the rare instances of water bubbling to the surface. Off in the distance are trees with leaves, and what should be the promise of a more fertile life, but the desert locals demonize that place, calling it “over thar” and suspect that may be where the “divul” makes his home.

Lad (Christopher Ryan Richards) is alarmed to find that his body is changing and asks Pa (John McAdams) if he is becoming a man. The most visible sign of Lad’s impending manhood is the show’s primary visual gag: his persistent erection. Pa advises Lad to relieve his sexual longing with a heifer until he can find a suitable woman, and equates sex with digging into a hole in the ground. Ma (Barbara Pitts) is not to be told about these changes in her son; she is a hard-working but sickly woman and such news might push her over the edge.

Lad meets a mysterious feminine creature (April Matthis) who may or may not be the devil his parents have warned him about. She is from “over thar,” and while she doesn’t know what sex is either, she is far more open to finding out, and to exploring both Lad and the world with an open curiosity. Culture clashes, exorcisms, beatings, and coming-of-age ensue.

Director Sarah Cameron Sunde has crafted a visually compelling production and worked with her actors to create a cohesive and consistent ensemble. The performers in general are disciplined and energetic, committing to the seamless and concrete realization of this rather abstracted world. The program notes mention that Good Heif has had a long rehearsal process and incorporated a variety of techniques, and the admirable ensemble work onstage demonstrates the benefits of such a process.

All of this praiseworthy work, however, cannot obscure the intellectual laziness of the text. Smith has tried to infuse her play with a great deal of humor, but all of the jokes are ultimately at the expense of her characters. The audience are invited to laugh along with her as she chastises their ignorance and stubbornness; their fears are shown to be destructive, yes, but are also presented as so ridiculous and unfathomable that we simply judge their actions rather than seek solutions for change.

Publicity materials for Good Heif state that Smith’s “language is spare, simple and straightforward” but that “the life beneath the language is complicated, gnarled, and dangerous.” This may very well have been the intent of the play and the production, but there is little “complicated” or “dangerous” about inviting the audience to pat themselves on their backs for their enlightened views while laughing scornfully at those who live in fear of themselves, of each other, and of the world around them.

The Return of Beebo Brinker

Beebo Brinker, the sulky, sexy, tortured and maddening butch heroine of Ann Bannon's 1950s lesbian pulp novels, lives in Greenwich Village. New York's oldest elevator operator, Beebo keeps a low profile when the cops raid the bars, but every femme in the Village knows her, or wants to. Bannon called her a cross between movie star Ingrid Bergman and athlete Johnny Weissmuller. For Bannon's readers, Beebo served as a tour guide to the strange, wonderful New York lesbian subculture and a fantasy lover. At the same time, Beebo's dark, violent, man-emulating and self-hating side revealed the dark side of Bannon's books: their persistent undercurrent of internalized homophobia. The Village is a great place to live, they suggest, but a girl would have to be a martyr to live there -- or else very, very brave. Beebo and her world are resurrected with eerie accuracy in Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman's The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, a stage adaptation of several of Bannon's books. Part pulp romp, part exploration of cultural history, the play concentrates on a love triangle between Beebo and two very femme women, estranged sorority sisters and lovers Laura Landon (what a romance-novel name!) and Beth Ayres, nee Cummings.

Laura comes to Greenwich Village to forget about Beth, who dumped her to marry a man. While Beebo falls for Laura, Beth resolves to leave her husband and children and travel cross-country to New York to find Laura and pick up where they left off.

Meanwhile, Laura's friend Jack, a forty-something gay man sick of deluding himself that rent boys love him, relies increasingly on Laura for platonic companionship. Soon, he is asking her to share his loneliness.

Yes, the characters are walking stereotypes. Jack is a particularly egregious example. However, the production garners laughter and exudes pain because Leigh Silverman's direction renders the entire world similarly melodramatic and unreal. The mise-en-scenes look ripped from the covers of Bannon's books. Laura (Marin Ireland) looks down, arching her back like a wilted sunflower, as straight roommate Marcie (Carolyn Bauemler) lounges on a bed, exposing one garish pink Doreen bra strap and turning her body downstage as if aware of an audience. Beebo (Anna Foss Wilson) leans against a wall in the bar surveying the scene with an intense gaze, fitting easily into the roles of both spectacle and voyeur.

Rachel Hauck's versatile minimalist set is dominated by a platform that functions as several beds and floors. This leaves it to Theresa Squire's costumes to establish the period. They do, with clarity, finesse, and fun, but without going overboard into parody or kitsch.

Beebo is suited up in men's style trousers and shirts and severely brushed-back, apparently Brylcreem'd hair. A few striking touches: tall boots and a red velvet vest, emphasise her beauty and iconoclasm, but also her tragic drive to control her world and its other women.

The other girls wear such 1950s staples as crinoline-stuffed skirts, belted sweaters, and pointy, bulky bras. Marcie in particular seems to have got her fashion sense from Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe.

The actors make up in technically precise character-acting for the characters' absence of depth. Each has a clearly defined walk, stance, and voice. There are two standouts, however. One is Bauemler in the sharply contrasting roles of Marcie, scary vamp Lili, and worldly, cynical romance novelist Nina Spicer, an homage to Bannon herself. The other is Wilson. Beebo spends much of the play merely watching the other characters, surveying her domain, but Wilson builds into even this a rage at her world that bursts through the cool exterior at just the right moments. Paradoxically, it is the fantastic Beebo who, of the play's principal characters, ultimately appears the most complex and self-contradictory, which is to say, the most genuinely human.

As a play with lesbian characters at front-and-centre, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles is a rarity in New York theatre, even off-off-Broadway. It is a great piece of cultural archaeology and often riotously funny. At the same time, it is a play about people caught between difficult realities and often more difficult fantasies. They try to see through a maze of prejudice and self-denial to find out who they really are, and find the courage to live by the truths they discover.

Gunning for Hamlet

Mercy Thieves takes its title from a line in Hamlet describing a ship of pirates as “thieves of mercy,” an apt evocation of the brutal main characters, but this play owes more to Quentin Tarantino than to Shakespeare. The characters are ostensibly derived from Hamlet but what purpose this serves the story or the character development is unclear; one gets the feeling that the author has sought to lodge a weak plot in a canonic framework. Nevertheless, thanks to very strong performances and well-written dialogue, this gangster comedy achieves moments of high art and entertainment. We are introduced to the characters as we enter the theater: on the low-lit, curtainless stage the two players sit side by side, accompanied by a pair of legs stretched out on the floor from behind a bar. This pre-scene doesn’t do much to inform the plot, but the two main actors’ postures and attitudes already begin to establish their characters: Nick Stevenson as the smoldering DJ and Jeremy Waters as the ecstatic Mike. Both will be superb in their renderings of idiosyncratic hit men.

What structure there is in the plot is hopskotch: one step forward, two hops back fill us in on preceding stages in the story which, if played out chronologically, would reveal how empty the storyline is. The play traces one night in the lives of Mike and DJ, two hired thugs who have been given a mission: to find Harry. Harry proves to be elusive (he never actually appears onstage), and the two set off on a journey across Australia, unearthing and killing off their old friends and colleagues in their search. What Mercy Thieves really amounts to is a series of character sketches expressed through high and low-tech media and prop manipulations: from the large video screen backdrop where certain scenes unfold cinematically, to flashlight-driven chase numbers.

Director Craig Baldwin has done some interesting work in creating context for the frequent time and media shifts and in his efforts to convey violence and action on a small stage using simple means. Unfortunately, the overall effect is inconsistent and awkward. There are several car scenes that feature DJ driving a floating steering wheel while Mike fiddles with the radio dial or philosophizes. The two are seated in chairs behind an overturned table as the car. The effect is of two vaudevillians in a Model-T - not exactly noir. There is more vaudeville to come when Mike and DJ mime killing techniques; maybe this is a cool concept and it’s just poor miming, but the result is embarrassing.

Where the manipulation of time and context works, it works beautifully. The finest scene in the play is between Harry’s mother, Pru (brilliantly played by Victoria Roberts), DJ and Mike. DJ recalls his visit with Pru to Mike, as it actually unfolds. Mike asks questions from the future and, from the past—from her chair upstage—Pru rolls her eyes at Mike or gives him a cool stare. This simple treatment of gazes and stage positions succeeds where the props and screens collapse into gimmickry.

Throughout the play the level of performance is outstanding. Nico Evers-Swindell is excellent as he shifts between three characters; his Jimbo is one of the highlights of the play. Emma Jackson does a juicy “Sharon the Tart” and Paul Swinnerton is a perfect pub man, among other characters. Jeremy Waters dominates the stage with his explosive yet affable, murderous yet sensitive rendering of tender, homicidal Mike. Mercy Thieves may be on its way to Hollywood (the screenplay has been optioned), but it’s hard to imagine anyone but Mr. Waters in this role. The same could be said of the entire cast.

IT Awards Spread the Wealth as They Expand

Off-Off-Broadway celebrated itself at the third annual New York Innovative Theatre Awards. The ceremony, affectionately known as the IT awards, took place on September 24 at the Fashion Institute of Technology's Haft Auditorium, with more than 700 nominees and supporters in attendance. Though the ceremony, hosted by actress Julie Halston, included politicians (New York City Councilwoman Christine C. Quinn) and Tony-winners (Anika Noni Rose of Caroline, Or Change), the focus of the evening fell squarely on the shoulders of the hardworking artists who have entertained the Off-Off-Broadway community in the last year.

Unlike last year, when the production of To Nineveh swept most of the categories, the awards this year were spread out among multiple productions. Three shows -- CollaborationTown's 6969, LaMaMa Etc.'s Dancing vs. the Rat Experiment, and Rising Phoenix Repertory's Rules of the Universe -- walked away with three awards apiece. Additionally, three honorary awards were given out, to Doric Wilson, a founding father of the Off-Off-Broadway scene; to Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York); and to Rising Phoenix Repertory, which won a $1,000 grant as part of the Caffe Cino Fellowship award.

It was a big night for Daniel Talbott, who accepted the Caffe Cino award and also received the Outstanding Director award. "It's weird, since I'm an actor, but I have really bad stage fright when I have to speak in front of folks without a play to hide behind," he explained, after admitting to being shocked when he won the second award. Talbott praised the Rising Phoenix company. "The award honors everybody that's part of Rising Phoenix Rep and all the folks who worked on the show...We only had four or five days to put it up, and everyone was dedicated and on board from the beginning in every single way. It's a show I am really proud of."

Max Rosenak, an IT recipient for Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role for 6969, also praised his show. "The play is by far the most interesting play I have gotten to work on, and the part of John is the most fascinating character I've gotten to play. I knew from the first line of the first reading that it was going to be a really special experience, and it was. My scene partner, Ryan [Purcell] was fantastic to work with." Rosenak added that "it feels wonderful to be told that I did a good job. That's a rare experience."

Dan Safer was a double winner for both Outstanding Choreography/Movement and Outstanding Production of a Performance Art Piece for the innovative Rat Experiment. "Winning for choreography means a lot to me," he said, "because what Witness Relocation does falls outside of traditional categories, and there are purists who say what I do is 'not dance.' There was a lot of debate from critics, etc, when we did the show, on that subject. It was great to be recognized for making dances.

Additionally, he provided one of the evening's highlights by bounding up on stage on a piano bench that flipped over, though he emerged unharmed. "Can you imagine if I had knocked all my teeth out? Given what our work is like, I think it was actually quite appropriate that I did that." Safer also praised the LaMaMa company for their support.

One winner was not present during the ceremony. Susan Louise O'Connor was the recipient of Outstanding Lead Actress for the silent concerto but was busy performing at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. She found out that she won via text message during her show's intermission. "I'm so freaking honored to receive this award," she said later on. "I think the IT awards are such a great way to draw attention to and celebrate Off-Off Broadway."

Indeed, the reach of the IT Awards has grown impressively from each year to the next, with last year's inclusion of shows produced in Queens and this year's acceptance of shows produced in Brooklyn. One of these shows, Gallery Players' Urinetown: The Musical, was the recipient of the award for outstanding Production of a Musical. As the community continues to call attention to its own, everyone comes away a winner.

Chromosomes in Conflict

Although Rebekah Brunstetter’s new drama is subtitled "A Lady Play," the main character is Trevor, a hunky surfer played with artful cluelessness and earnest charm by Jeff Berg. Trevor is given to saying “rad” and to declaring that he’s on a God-directed mission; he's going to “solve all the problems in the world. One by one.” But first he has to finish his philosophy class. The play, a loosely connected series of vignettes, examines women’s relationships with men through Trevor, a sort of universal hookup. Brunstetter writes, as Swedish playwright August Strindberg did, with a sense that the two sexes will always be in disharmony. Her women, who vary in age, size, and race, all come off as needy or resentful. But since Trevor exhibits some of the obvious male shortcomings that women have complained about through the years, this is to be expected. He’s no good at commitment or remembering birthdays, and he often behaves like an irresponsible child, although he is a gentle lover and good in bed. Unlike the fierce competitors in a Strindberg play, both sides here start out enervated. Sexual satisfaction is possible, but there’s little emotional connection.

As Trevor’s liaisons are examined on April Bartlett’s simple set of a low central platform for indoor scenes and a green stage carpet for outdoors, the play straddles realism and absurdism. It veers from touching to wildly implausible, and from drama to comedy, with most of the humor at the man’s expense. (It’s unclear whether this schizoid aspect is the result of having co-directors, Isaac Byrne and Diana Basmajian.)

Brunstetter’s first scene, though, is contrived and off-putting. Anna, a child of 11, sings to herself a song with the line, “Gonna shed your placenta.” Anna is that old theatrical cliché, a child knowledgeable beyond her years, and she has gleaned information about her mother’s sex life that includes fellatio and periods. (Anna’s information supposedly comes through eavesdropping, although she knows more than the CIA would if mom’s bedroom had been bugged.) But when Anna yells, “I got my period! I’m on the rag!”—really, is it possible that she overheard that? Whose mother ever says that?

Rachel Dorfman exhibits patience and openness as Anna’s mother, but the character is plain creepy. She makes weird, jealous comments on her 11-year-old’s beauty and also barks instructions like “Don’t look directly at me. It burns.” It’s akin to watching Britney Spears playing mother to JonBenet Ramsey.

Brunstetter is more successful with Diane, a plump policewoman who claims to be 34 and much older than Trevor, who’s 25 (although the age difference between the actors is invisible). Diane is a decent woman but awkward, and Maggie Hamilton invests this crucial role with shy self-consciousness and a poignant vulnerability. She meets Trevor as he’s about to chalk a message on a wall; Diane acknowledges that she also used to write on walls. The implication is that Diane's wild spirit has been tamed. Diane and Trevor begin an unlikely affair, although Trevor has other women.

One of them is Joanne (Darcie Champagne), a cosmetician who meets Diane in a park and gives her a makeup lesson. And another is Georgia (Lavita Shaurice), a woman who periodically performs at a poetry slam on an open mike. Trevor has damaged both of them as well, although neither registers as strongly as Diane. Late in the play Trevor encounters an older woman, Mona, who’s both hilariously insane and truly frightening, and is played by Ellen David with the panache of Ruth Gordon. The scene also gives Berg the opportunity to show he can play fear and vulnerability and that his casting isn’t entirely based on the frequently displayed results of gym time and protein shakes.

The damage that men inflict on women is a meaty subject for drama, but Brunstetter’s approach is ultimately too loosely structured and too erratic in its tone to rate as either realism or absurdist satire.