Beavers Take Manhattan

Legend has it that Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan (or Manhatta) from the Lenape for the impressively trivial sum of $24 in 1626. The legend fails to mention the existence of Kitchi Amik, a six foot beaver with somewhat magical powers, the guardian of the other beavers and to some extent, of humans. The number of industrious and independent women populating the colony of New Amsterdam in the 1600's is also largely unmentioned. New Amsterdames , a new play by Ellen K. Anderson receiving its world premiere by Flying Fig Theater, seeks to correct these omissions of history by depicting several lesser known historical figures and, of course, the giant beaver. The play provides an alternate, slightly comedic view of history, seen through the eyes of those whose stories commonly do not get heard. In 1659, the deed to Manhattan, if it ever existed, is missing. Shipping entrepreneur Margriet wants the deed so that she can rule the island, making every business hers. The beavers Een and Twee want the deed so that the island can be restored to them. Everyone else wants the deed to keep it away from Margriet. Thus begins a wild hunt: where is the deed? Does it even exist? Who will get it in the end?

While the women are hunting for the deed, trouble is brewing in modern day Manhattan. The city is facing dramatic changes in the weather and an onslaught of beavers. Lightning flashes underneath a wooden platform, ominous thunder peals, and heavy rain pounds. All this is reported by newscaster Sweetie Chin, who has some connection to Kitchi Amik and the laws of nature herself.

The play provides a full immersion into all things Dutch: wooden clogs are worn by Sweetie Chin and adorn two pillars, suggesting a trail of shoes. The cast sings and dances traditional Dutch folksongs and Anna Joralemon, creator of the donut, distributes some of her olykoeken to the audience as a way of introduction.

Certain parts of the show drew laughs, for example, a little dog dressed as a baby beaver caused some audience members to shriek in excitement. However, at times the jokes in the play felt forced. In the midst of the search for the deed, Sukalan, the Lenape woman (played by Andrea Caban), runs on stage looking for her friends. Not seeing them, she exclaims: "Where'd she go? I've never lost anything in the woods. Except the time I mislaid a trap and found it by stepping into it myself.” The wooden jokes suggested a larger issue: is New Amsterdames trying to say something that has not already been said before? Women's role in history and society, the question of who the land belongs to, and the issue of race and nationality have been explored by many other stories and plays before.

And yet, one gets drawn into the plight of the women and the beavers, as modern day Manhattan is also at stake. How do the actions of people almost 350 years ago impact the world today? And by extension, how will our world's actions impact the world 350 years from now? New Amsterdames subtly raises this issue while taking its audience on a journey down a uncommonly explored path of history.

Philosopher's Stone

Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? Nothing encourages deep, introspective thoughts like putting together a video for a dating service, or a press meeting, or the inquiring eyes of a room full of strangers. Each situation requires a person to look into the distance and tell whoever is out there - camera, press or audience - who they are and what they want. This is the groundwork Will Eno lays for his series of reflective, existential plays, Oh The Humanity and other exclamations, featuring five short stories that examine the human condition through an intensely philosophical but often comic lens. The two actors Marisa Tomei and Brian Hutchinson sometimes address their probing questions to the audience, breaking the fourth wall to ask, “What do you think?” They never wait for an answer. They know they don’t have to. Their questions are presented in such a way that it is hard to resist internalizing them.

Tomei and Hutchinson speak in engaging and conversational tones. They act like real people living in a real world, not abstract symbols representing something greater than themselves. Their topics may weave through a maze of complexity, but the dialogue stays simple, clearly designed to relate to audiences rather than confuse them.

In Tomei and Hutchinson’s first skit together, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rain, Gentleman (Hutchinson) and Lady (Tomei) stand onstage staring into a camera as they record their profiles for a dating service. The Lady is squinty-eyed and uncertain; the Gentleman is nervous and overly-revealing.

They speak fearfully of life’s sudden endings, the kind that happen before you know what hit you. Lady smiles thinking about the little things in life that make her happy, such as people applauding for something they really love. They talk about the naiveté of childhood, the broken relationships of adulthood, the illnesses and quirks that define them and the way they deal with stress. As Lady and Gentleman’s realizations intensify the lights dim until you can see nothing but their illuminated faces surrounded by darkness. And then the lights go out.

Most of the pieces end with a fade to black, with the exception of The Bully Composition, a truly memorable story that literally goes out with a flash. This vignette offers an unsettling examination of the photograph, specifically its purpose to capture a fleeting moment in time. Photographer (Hutchinson) and his Assistant (Tomei) ask: what does a photograph really capture? We do not know what the people are feeling, what they were doing before they posed for the picture or what they did after it was taken. We know their image but not their story.

Photographer then turns the camera to us, the audience. He wants to take our picture and muses at the many different stories that could come from each of us. He points out that we are all strangers to each other, yet each of us has our own unique history, a set of circumstances that brought us together to this time and place. The Photographer and his Assistant behave as if they can see our personalities surfacing on our faces, implying that if we could see it too we would be amazed to learn how deceiving an image is. Then the piece ends with an exploding flashbulb, a signal that the moment is gone, leaving us as just another image without a story.

Oh! The Humanity is the kind of play that rattles your world and makes you think. Eno’s writing forces you to contemplate both the intricacies of life and the intricacies in yourself. Fortunately, the process is not all headaches and misery. This is the kind of play that makes you want to run outside, share a story with a friend, get to know a stranger better and announce your presence to the world. After all, no one wants to end up as just another image.

Wit and Whimsy

Imagine that it is December 1803, and you are among the guests invited to join the Austen family and their friends as the writer Jane, that famed observer of both sense and sensibility, is to have her first novel published. The Austens who have gathered at the home of family friends the Bigg-Withers act, sing, and recite letters and poetry in celebration of both her imminent success and the holidays. Except one does not even have to imagine this scenario, so lovingly reenacted as Theater Ten Ten’s “Innocent Diversions: A Christmas Entertainment With Jane Austen and Friends,” directed by Lynn Marie Macy, who also wrote and adapted this show. Macy treats the audience to a revue in which various cast members, in character, reenact Austen’s early writings.

Karen Eterovich makes for a fine Austen, carefully delivering Austen's often locquacious dialogue, and meshing with a host of colorful co-stars. Eterovich is matched by an equally talented ensemble, including David Arthur Bachrach as Austen’s father (who nimbly recites her “Verses to Rhyme With ‘Rose’”), Eyal Sherf as the slightly bumbling (in true Austen-fashion) Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither, Talaura Harms as Madame Anne Lefroy, and Chelsea Jo Pattison, as Fanny, the youngest Austen in attendance. Pattison was a marvel in each of her “scenes,” demonstrating wonderful poise, elocution, and full of pep. Her bio lists Diversions as Ms. Pattison’s Ten Ten debut, having recently hailed from the mid-West. Let’s hope she stays here for a very long time.

Macy’s writing perfectly captures Austen’s humor and understanding of the way both men and women and families relate to each other. Works of hers include "The Beautiful Cassandra," "A Letter from a lady in love to her confidante," and "On a Headache." However, the smaller vignettes succeed far more than Macy’s longer ones. A performance entitled “The History of England,” which features the entire cast reciting trivial bits regarding the English monarchy may be historically educational, but it goes on too long and provides no additional commentary on any of the characters. There are two other longer vignettes that feature the entire cast – “The Visit” and “Jack and Alice” – which start promisingly but overstay their welcome. Additionally, Esther David’s line readings were sometimes a little too rushed, and combined with her accent, caused her to garble some of her dialogue.

The staging also leaves something to be desired. Set in Ten Ten’s basement, with just some folding chairs positioned a little too far from the front of the stage, Macy’s acoustics were less than ideal. Sound traveled in odd directions, and some quieter moments failed to be fully absorbed by the audience.

Nonetheless, Diversions is mostly just that – wonderful, light fun for audiences of any age. I was also impressed by Deborah Wright Houston's period costumes, which could have easily come straight from the recent film Becoming Jane. Minor production bugs aside, Diversions remains a great holiday treat, with some wonderful performances. It is yet another reminder of why Austen is one for the ages.

The Oud Couple

West Bank, UK is a musical romp through a political minefield: a musical comedy about a Palestinian and an Israeli forced to share a rent-controlled apartment in London’s West Bank. While playwright Oren Safdie and composer and lyricist Ronnie Cohen deserve credit for a certain measure of creative and political audacity, they bear responsibility for an almost juvenile rendering of a poorly developed storyline and puppetlike characters. When Israeli ex-patriot Assaf Ben-Moshe Benvenisti (Jeremy Cohen) breaks up with his German girlfriend and returns home to his rent-controlled flat, he discovers that Palestinian refugee Aziz Hamoud (Mike Mosallam) has taken over his lease. Their American landlord is torn between the two men and urges them to work out their differences and learn to live together in harmony. The allegory is in place and the timing of this show’s run in New York lands conveniently at the close of the Annapolis talks, offering journalists a soft angle to the story of renewed American efforts in the Middle East peace process.

This premise of personalizing a raging conflict is an ingenious one but the choices made here reduce the complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations to a sitcom punctuated with catchy tunes. Or rather, a series of catchy tunes run together with sitcom dialogue since the musical numbers almost overrun the straight dialogue. This may be a good thing because some of the songs have clever moments and the singing is quite good.

One regret of this reviewer is that the purely instrumental interludes aren’t more substantial. These interludes provide a welcome break from the camp of the show; in these moments, the pain and loss of the Middle East conflict come to life. Jessie Kotanski’s performance on the oud (Middle Eastern lute), in particular, offers a haunting, if losing, call for quiet contemplation. Three of the musicians’ (Scott Baldyga, Jake Shulman-Ment, Chriz Zaborowski) placement on the stage in a sort of central, windowed cage seems emblematic of their caged-in relation to the action, while the oud player is exiled to a balcony above the stage, making its notes all the more plaintive.

The two stars of the show are truly gifted performers and do an admirable job of infusing their highly limited roles with strong emotion and individuality. Jeremy Cohen spends a lot of the play in an undershirt flexing his considerable sex appeal and this is a great contrast to Mike Mosallam’s grandfatherly, overweight persona, corduroy- and cardigan-bound. And yet it is Mr. Mosallam’s homespun physicality that offers the most electrifying moment of the show when it suddenly explodes into dance in one of the final musical numbers.

In addition to the two main players, a parade of caricatures troops through the action, including a lesbian suicide bomber and a nymphomaniac Orthodox Jewish woman. The latter two are played, among other roles, by Michelle Solomon, who camps up each performance to the same painfully exaggerated degree. Antony Patellis offers a series of somewhat muted counterpoints to Ms. Solomon’s performances; it’s almost a relief to focus on his quieter version of the silliness.

Having voiced so many complaints about this production, I need to break a rule of criticism and describe the audience’s reception. It was glowing. Hearty laughter and applause greeted every short scene. I was reminded of my strongly negative response to one of the biggest musical hits of the decade: Avenue Q. If my evaluation and last night’s audience are any indication, West Bank, UK may be a runaway success.

Cardboard Catharsis

Fictional human cruelty is a lucrative subject for the theatre. There is something righteous in our need to witness representations of horrific acts by some theatrical barbarian, and then see that barbarian brought to justice in the final act. In Bread and Puppet Theatre’s arcane new production, The Divine Reality Comedy, the infamous political action group attempts to dramatize the plight of prisoners indefinitely detained in Guantanamo Bay. The point is that there can be no catharsis as the end of this piece—the only barbarians that can be brought to justice, according to Bread and Puppet, are us. With a structure on loan from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bread and Puppet’s Divine Reality Comedy breaks down into the three sectors of the afterlife: Paradise, Purgatory and the Inferno. No fewer than thirty-four cast members use cardboard cutouts, instructional drop cloths and remarkably engineered puppets to teach audiences the inner workings of each realm. Except this isn’t Dante’s afterlife; Bread and Puppet intend for these short skits to present a compelling metaphor for the contemporary United States.

Heaven is a land of gross (but nonetheless policed) excesses whose citizens wallow in their status at the top of the divine ladder. The ringleader of the “Paradise” is a vaudevillian scarecrow Santa Claus, who takes sardonic glee in the oppression of his subjects. “Post-Paradise,” which apparently didn’t make the cut in Dante’s version, is a dainty cardboard horse dance. In “Purgatory,” all metaphors are abandoned in favor of hard facts about detainees in Guantanamo. Finally, in “Inferno,” we witness disquieting stage tableaus representing the cruel photos taken of detainees.

While Bread and Puppet’s new piece is visually arresting, even heart wrenching at times, it is also frustratingly opaque. While I don’t mean to diminish the efforts of Peter Schumann’s team in tackling these issues, it cannot be ignored that the execution is usually too casual and just plain confusing. For instance, the material is handled with very high levels of whimsy, like the Santa-crow and the horse dance. This is fine, but when wanton silliness commandeers the stage for too long – as in the horse dance – audience members might just give up on the piece. It is likely that the horse dance was an intensely profound metaphor that merely went over my head. Even so, it was far too silly for far too long.

Speaking of metaphors and silliness, both of these elements seem to gallop off with the horses once we get to “Purgatory.” After some highly effective non-literal recreations of society in the “Paradise” segment, the company jarringly presents clinical particulars about the indefinitely detained. This shift in mode quickly sobers the audience, but it also disrupts the overall unity of the piece. Had I seen the “Paradise” and “Post-Paradise” segments in another sitting, I would have never believed that they were part of the same play as “Purgatory” and “Inferno.” While each segment of the Divine Reality Comedy keeps true to its own tone, none of them sync with any of the others.

In spite of this unevenness, one can easily appreciate the jovial air with which the massive cast of volunteers commits to the material and the Christmas Pageant Aesthetic of its choreography, puppets and set pieces. The staging by no means attempts to preserve the suspension of disbelief. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are denoted by cardboard signs scrawled out in Sharpie marker. When a cast member dons one of the vividly imagined and executed puppet costumes, like the “Paper God,” the change is performed on stage without mysticism. The stoic witnesses to Guantanamo are not sent careening by their response to the horrific acts being committed in front of them, but rather by a push broom.

One scene in the “Paradise” segment offers a glimpse of Bread and Puppet at their best. As the cast members walk from one side of the stage to the other, they find themselves occasionally pursued by two giant black boots (made of cardboard, of course). The cast members swerve to avoid the boots, or else change their direction altogether, ever mindful of the presence of authority but determined not to let it interfere with their lives. Finally, the boots have backed the entire cast into a corner of the stage and will soon be treading on the lot of them. Then, one cast member clearly yells out “Hey!” A few more sporadic shouts follow. One by one, the tyrannized citizens of Paradise shout “Hey,” until they are shouting together as one voice. The power of this determined chorus backs away the boot heals of oppression, and the cast is free to walk in peace again.

This simple but dynamic scene galvanizes the purpose of Bread and Puppet, not only in regards to the Divine Reality Comedy, but also regarding the company’s entire manifesto going back to the Vietnam era: the ghastly truths of the world are sometimes best understood in their plainest terms. While I wasn’t enraptured by this particular piece, I recognize and applaud the work for its willingness to stand up and shout “Hey!” at the revolting events taking place at Guantanamo Bay.

Prancing and Pawing

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Or do you? Jeff Goode’s comedy The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, staged by the Dysfunctional Theatre Company, takes audiences to would-be familiar North Pole territory and twists the terrain: Santa Claus is a pervert. Though best known for original work, the Dysfunctional Theatre Company has produced The Eight: Reindeer Monologues each holiday season since 2005. With its playful characters and simple structure –- a series of tell-all style monologues from the reindeer who pull Santa’s sleigh -– the The Eight: Reindeer Monologues makes a smart annual Christmas special for a company dedicated to irreverent ensemble material.

The cozy North Pole dive bar where the play is set enhances the production’s sense of festive seediness. The North Hole (designed by Jason Unfried, who appears on stage as a disturbingly funny Donner) features a cluster of tables, a fully stocked bar, and, in keeping with the holiday spirit, bits and pieces of clever Christmas décor. An erect blow up palm tree strung with lights is a particularly inspired touch.

Over the course of the play, each reindeer seizes an opportunity to head to the front of the bar in order to fix a drink and reveal to the audience his or her unique perspective on the crises at hand: Vixen has accused Santa Claus of sexually assaulting her. Will the scandal bring about the downfall of Santa Claus, and, by extension, the end of Christmas itself? More importantly, should it? Among the members of Santa’s prestigious sleigh team, vocal and opinionated employees who have a lot at stake, it all depends on whom you ask.

Dasher (Robert Brown, who also directs) is a Hawaiian shirted, baseball-capped yes-man proud to lead Santa’s team. As Dasher, Brown displays dumfounded agitation toward the members of the sleigh team who question Santa’s integrity, yet lacks the charisma required for the leadership skills that the character so desperately wishes he had.

Rachel Groundy stands out as Blitzen, a feminist reindeer deeply troubled by the rampant corruption in Santa’s workshop. She delivers Blitzen’s direct address with a delicate thoughtfulness that is as much a rallying cry as it is an articulate examination of right and wrong. Groundy nails the demeanor of a smart young activist who has had just enough to drink that the she is delighted at an opportunity to deliver an enthusiastic lecture to anyone present.

Not all of the performers maintain the high energy levels needed to sustain an atmosphere of juicy scandal. Still, at 75 minutes, the production clips along at an appropriately brisk pace.

The Eight: Reindeer Monologues has sufficient references to classic Christmas stories, especially the 1964 stop-animation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, to delight theater goers immersing themselves in the holiday spirit and all of the entertainment – plays, movies, music – that the season brings. For those suffering from an overdose of holiday festivities or anyone seeking refuge from requisite holiday cheer, the production’s adult-themed version of the sugary reindeer story will provide welcome relief.

Thus, the darkly comedic scandal that divides the reindeer community can, ironically, unite the characters’ real-life, human counterparts. For holiday enthusiasts and cynics who are looking for a Christmas play that they can enjoy together, The Eight: Reindeer Monologues would make for a fun evening.

GUESS WHO'S BACK IN TOWN

The curtain opens on a dishevelled Bubba (Travis York) lying on the floor wearing only one orange sock, yards away from a contraption of bottles and gongs he has rigged to periodically go off and force him to pay attention. Pay attention to what, one might ask? And ask again when this play's rather arresting beginning begins to disintegrate into too many scenes with slow pacing and mundane dialogue before tying up all its plot elements neatly in the end.

(Pay attention to his research is the correct answer.)

Bubba's research involves investigating the history of ghosts in the town where he has grown up and still lives, albeit housebound and morose since his former girlfriend D'Lady (a crisp Sarah Kate Jackson) ran off three years ago.

As it turns out, once on the road, D'Lady also abandoned her partner-in-illicit-getaway and Bubba's best friend Jimmy (Mark David Watson). Abruptly ditched in Colorado, Jimmy then fell in love with a mystical woman living in a melon patch named Betsy (Keira Keeley), who has since hitchhiked to town on a mission to find Jimmy.

Other local inhabitants include community pillar and resident kill-joy Gloria (a dogged Marielle Heller) and Roy and Amory, a young married couple trying to conceive. Gloria eventually rescues the homeless waif Betsy (decidely lacking in any discernable skills beyond the melon patch) and showers passive-aggression on her newly dependent boarder.

D'Lady returns to town as the prodigal bad girl, stirring up layers of buried emotion in those who previously knew her. These scenes stood out because the tension during them was real, including an uneasy exchange between D'Lady and the married Roy (Ben Scaccia) and a heartfelt confrontation with Bubba.

However, one gets the impression that the playwright lacked faith that the story of a woman returning to face the wreckage of her past and the commotion she stirs up would be compelling enough without the extracurricular ghost activities. Unfortunately, these forays into the supernatural are confusing and distract from the main plot. The supernatural themes that continue throughout the play (imagined ghost sightings and the endless melon patch monologues) never really work except as a vague metaphor for people who find their way to this small town for resolution of some sort.

Solid direction and moments of honest acting by some of the cast (Travis York and a physically expressive Havilah Brewster as Amory in particular) helped to overcome the more confusing etheral elements. Yet, despite its promising patches, the play did not succeed in commanding my sustained attention.

“On the piano top, a nest of souvenirs...”

The Piano Teacher offers a portrait of one of “those brave ladies who taught us/ So much of art, and stepped off to their doom,” in the words of the late poet Donald Justice. Julia Cho, the author of this successful play, seems almost to have borrowed her characters, plot and atmosphere from Justice’s poetry and memoir about his childhood piano teachers; the following one in particular: On the piano top, A nest of souvenirs: paper Flowers, old programs, a broken fan, Like a bird’s broken wing. —And sometimes Mr. L. himself Comes back, recurring, like a dream. He brings Real flowers. Thin, Demanding, his voice soars after dark In the old opera between them. But no one sees the blows, only An occasional powdered bruise, Genteel.

The Piano Teacher is the story of just such a couple, as told by the surviving wife, Mrs. K, a lonely, widowed, retired piano teacher. (Donald Justice’s work also features a Mrs. K.) Luminously played by Elizabeth Franz, Mrs. K addresses the audience so intimately that she actually offers cookies to each person in the front row. We are enveloped in her warm, grandmotherly lap, drawn into the heart of her cozy home so effectively that we nearly fall asleep there, lulled by her gentle voice telling her gentle, slightly boring, slightly formulaic story. The story of a simple piano teacher devoted to each of her sweet but ordinary students; only one of which had talent amounting to genius... and he—here, at the first intimation of complexity, Mrs. K breaks off and stoutly returns to her rosier memories.

When complexity—human cruelty—finally does enter the stage, the effect strains the balance of the play’s mood and plot. Suddenly this is a play dedicated to undermining audience expectations of sensationalist drama: hints of deeply buried pedophilia eventually add to up a more ingenious form of molestation.

Taken in sum, it’s an effective story and Kate Whoriskey’s direction and Derek McLane’s scenic design bring it to life beautifully. The extraordinary Elizabeth Franz bears most of the responsibility and can enjoy full credit in what amounts to a tour de force one woman show for much of the play. Carmen M. Herlihy adds a terrific dose of vitality as a grown-up former student and provides the first allusions to the troubled past with fine subtlety.

When trouble makes its full appearance, it is in the person of Michael, played by John Boyd. Michael was Mrs. K’s lone pupil of genius and he returns to haunt her with terrible revelations about her late husband. It’s a highly demanding role, not least because of its brevity. Mr. Boyd’s performance of the disturbed young man borders on the formulaic: a manic yet formal delivery and overstimulated hands. This would amount to overkill except that his scarcely contained physicality threatens a bodily attack on Mrs. K—an attack which never comes. Here again, the audience experiences a healthy frustration of Hollywood expectations.

In the end, The Piano Teacher plays best in retrospect, where we can savor the extraordinary performances and the fine plot tensions at our own pace.

Substantial Pleasures

The Constant Couple is a constant delight. The Pearl Theater Company’s production of George Farquhar’s turn of the 18th century play presents a perfect example of the playwright’s lines,“What more can most substantial Pleasures boast Than Joy when present, Memory when past?”

This is a play that offers laugh-out-loud entertainment, provocative themes and terrific performances of both comedic theater and period music, all of which echo for days like a fetching melody.

George Farquhar’s youthful comedy invites us into a London teeming with colorful characters. Steadfast Colonel Standard wants nothing more than to win the charming Lady Lurewell. But his way is littered with scheming rivals, troublesome fops, and bumbling rustics, all of whom seem to have some claim on his lady love. Combining all the wicked joy of the jaded Restoration stage with the “novel” notion that faithfulness and integrity might have their uses too, The Constant Couple illuminates a world merrily careening between deceit and honesty, cynicism and hope—between the follies of the past, and the glorious possibilities of the future.

The quality of the production is so uniformly high, it’s not easy to single out specific scenes. The action unfolds in brilliantly flashing intercut scenes that never allow our attention to flag (although the sum is a bit too long, more on this below). Director Jean Randich and the production staff have collaborated in crafting an ideal context for the encounter of outstanding performances. Among them, a few deserve special attention.

Eduardo Placer’s performance of Clincher, a purple-wigged fop, is utterly unforgettable. It’s a simply hilarious role and yet Mr. Placer injects a strange complexity through his unusual physical command and delicate timing that is as unsettling as it is funny.

Bradford Cover as Sir Harry Wildair is everything we want from a pampered gentleman hedonist: he delivers brilliant epigrams and strikes elegant yet foolish poses as if he were born to them. What a chin—and libido—leads this character in and out of trouble.

Rachel Botchan’s Lady Lurewell is a perfect counterpart to Sir Harry: her clever elegance is as deftly performed by her delicate hands and heaving bust as by her musical oration. David L. Townsend and Dominic Cuskern offer wonderful characters and John Pasha delivers a convincing, if somewhat stilted, hero of the heart. Finally, Jolly Abraham’s Angelica manages a fine balance between romantic idealism and moral clear-sightedness.

The supporting cast is consistently strong and the musical interludes are exquisite.

The only complaint this reviewer has to lodge concerns the length of the production. I wonder whether or not the absence of a running time in any of the PR materials is intentional. It clocks in at more than two and a half hours and I think that some minor editing would benefit the whole.

However, any such objection to a play’s length might run counter to The Pearl’s irreplaceable mission to bring classical theater to contemporary audiences. And so, as I pointed out to my 14-year-old date, my goddaughter, we can trust this theater company’s decisions to render a fully authentic experience and thus focus our 21st century attention spans on something longer than a Hollywood movie.

Speaking of 14-year-olds, The Constant Couple is a great family bet, although audiences should be prepared for some robust bawdiness. When the pawing of certain female (or apparently female) characters elicited a few “ewws” from my goddaughter, I enjoyed a discomfort I never see her experience when she watches the most explicit music videos!

Hearts of Darkness

Noah Haidle’s Rag and Bone derives its title from the concluding lines of William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”: Now that my ladder’s gone,

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

The poem—the last stanza is an epigraph in the printed script—is about an artist whose creative juices have deserted him (the circus animals are a metaphor). Rag and Bone, a goulash of surrealism, fantasy, and absurdism, sporadically amusing and often confusing, feels like a dramatic version of an artist floundering for inspiration.

The central characters are George (Michael Chernus) and his brother Jeff, who run a ladder store. Jeff is enthusiastic about his work in an Up with People way. “I could sell a picture book to a blind man,” he tells George—a line that unfortunately rings false, since the dim but sweet-natured Jeff is too kind to do anything of the sort. Luckily, Matthew Stadelmann invests the role with a disarming innocence that makes Jeff the most sympathetic character.

George, meanwhile, is using the ladder store as a cover for selling illegally harvested hearts; he has told the gullible Jeff that they’re “widgets.” They’re quality hearts too: a pediatrician, a kindergarten teacher. Customers can even try them out. George performs the transplants himself, with the panache of Sweeney Todd—spasms of violence staged with arching spurts of blood by Sam Gold.

The latest person whose heart George has seized is a Poet (Henry Stram, chest bandaged bloodily, looking bewildered at his continued consciousness). He is befriended by a Hooker (Deirdre O’Connell, exuding shopworn sensuality and warmth) with a heart of you-know-what. The Poet and Hooker eventually cross paths with a Millionaire (David Wohl) dressed in top hat and tails, who wants a new ticker. “I can buy anything in the world but I can’t feel anything,” he tells George. “I want to feel the world, not just own it.”

Haidle’s use of archetypes is puzzling, and Gold’s production doesn’t clarify what the dramatist is getting at. Designer Oana Botez-Ban has decided the dress code for Millionaires is top hat and tails, but that also makes him look like a ringmaster—perhaps a private visual reference to Yeats’s poem?

Meanwhile, the Hooker's Pimp, who also goes by the nickname T-Bone, complains of being too kind-hearted for his business—even when he’s just smacked someone. Kevin Jackson deftly plays T-Bone’s surliness with just enough lack of conviction, but the towering black actor is flashily dressed by Botez-Ban in a white suit and hat, and plentiful gold chains. Unfortunately, among all the archetypes, a gaudily clad black man as Pimp reeks of bad taste.

Clearly the characters are all trying to find their way, and all are betrayed in some sense by their hearts, old and new. It’s unfortunate that Eric Shim’s sound design has percussion effect (perhaps a tympani) striking whenever one character punches another, effectively treating them as cartoons, since the actors manage on their own to keep a recognizable humanity in their character types.

Haidle’s talent for comic dialogue works only fitfully in this bittersweet work. One of the choicer exchanges occurs when George, who has kept his late mother’s heart in a cooler, wants a transplant of that heart. “The only problem is, I don’t know how to perform heart surgery,” says Jeff. Replies George: “I’ll talk you through it.”

But when the post-operative George, stocky and bearded, begins wearing a housedress and adopting his late mother’s alcoholism and smoking habits, it’s impossible to figure out what the point is. Or, at least, if there is a point that isn’t as obvious as: Love is unpredictable. Money can’t buy happiness. The heart betrays us all. Life is a bitch.

Survivors

Sara Falles does not fit the stereotype of an abused woman; in fact, she seems the least likely candidate to fall into such a relationship. She is strong, determined and unafraid to challenge her husband when she feels he is wrong. Playwright Jay Hanagan’s decision to focus on an abused woman with a clear sense of self-worth gives his play Softly Sara Falls a new and important take on the issue of domestic abuse. Softly Sara Falls is produced by Wizard Oil Productions, a relatively new company created to increase awareness of a variety of social issues. Domestic abuse is certainly a worthy issue of focus, though arguably an obvious one. Fortunately, the play does not merely state that Domestic Abuse Is Bad. Instead, it asks us a question that we do not consider often: How many times have you looked into the face of an abused person and not realized it?

The irony in Hanagan’s play is that even people who are abused miss the warning signs in others. The story does not focus on one suffering person, but several suffering people, all trying to avoid their crippling inner demons by concentrating solely on the future and never looking back.

A goofy young man named Reed (Michael Mattie) has a crush on Sara (Cecil Powell) but feels the wall she has put between them. He seems to always be happy, but the smile strains when the conversation turns to questions of his past. Sara’s best friend, Tanys, acts flippant and cute when she shows up at Sara’s house in cloud patterned pajamas hugging a bowl of popcorn to her chest for their big Saturday movie night. However, when Sara casually asks about the details of her relationship, she suspiciously clams up.

Even the antagonist Grant (Jonathan Ledoux) has a shady back-story, though the play does not use it to excuse his actions, only explain them. Sara knows from the beginning that her husband has skeletons in his closet; specifically a scarcely mentioned father who Grant’s siblings claim was prone to abuse. She urges Grant to confront these feelings rather than keeping them locked up inside, not realizing that she is lovingly encouraging years of repressed anger and aggression to rise to the surface.

Hanagan enhances this story by telling it in a non-linear format. Early in the plot Sara calls an advice hotline and narrates her story on-air as we watch it unfold before us. She starts with happy times, jumps to bad ones, and then switches back to the way things are now.

This forces Powell to run through a gamut of emotions ranging in extremes from frightened spouse to silly, playful friend. One scene ends with her cowering on the floor and another begins with her sitting poised and confident in a chair seeming sure that she has nailed a job interview. But in all scenes Powell comes across as a survivor, not a victim. There is a great moment where Grant pleads with Sara for a minute of her time when she tells him, in a controlled, furious voice, “No! Not even a second.”

Sara does not look like the face of abuse and she does not speak like a woman who would allow a man to abuse her, but it is important to acknowledge that her story is still plausible. All too often abuse is perceived to be written all over someone’s face in bruised lips and darkened eyes, but not all signs are so easy to read. Sometimes you find it in a bright, young woman who can speak enthusiastically of her future but never of her past.

Terrorism Reaches Thebes

Take a wild guess which world leader this line describes: “His brilliant emptiness shines throughout the land.” Well, alright, it could be a great number of them, but New Moon Rep and Roust Theatre Company’s I Kreon leaves no room for doubt which W we’re talking about. The play focuses on one of the most important questions that the War on Terror has brought to the forefront – how must we treat our enemies? Between Guantanamo and Saddam Hussein’s ugly end, most Americans have this question floating around the landscape of their political consciousness, and adapter-director Aole T. Miller does well to bring his feelings on the topic into the shared space of the theater. However, this adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, one of our most basic reference points in creating political theater, ultimately chooses a tactic of mocking over serious debate. By the time Kreon, the thinly veiled equivalent to our own authoritarian leader, comes around to realize the error of his dogmatic ways, it is too late for him to rectify his actions. At that same point in I Kreon it is already too late for the talented company to produce a lasting impression on its audience.

As the title suggests, the production focuses not on Antigone (Claire Siebers), but on her uncle, king Kreon (played with an intelligent flare by James Luse). To a modern audience Kreon’s actions seem debatable at best. He refuses burial rights to his own son because he feels that he betrayed the homeland, in this adaptation by attacking and destroying two Theban towers. Kreon would rather leave Polynices’ body to the dogs. In one of the many strong lines spoken by the masked Chorus, Miller hints at the comparison he is drawing between the death of Polynices and that of Saddam Hussein: “What honor is there in killing a man after death?” the Chorus asks the obstinate king.

The Chorus, with their touching repetition of poetry, accompanied by the haunting recorded soundscape of the piece, do manage to provide some emotional depth to the production. Their fine Balinese masks and fluid movement conjure some of the Greek spirit of the play. But the adaptation’s “Greekness” - and while aiming to please a twenty first century audience, I Kreon definitely attempts to find a fifth century BC Athenian vibe - falls short with its main exploration, that of the character of Kreon. Where Sophocles gave the hard lined king un-ignorable strength of argument, Miller gives him laugh lines taken from various twentieth century villains. It is undeniably funny to watch James Luse's odd triple amalgamation of King Kreon, Dr. Evil and George W. spew lines such as "There is no compromise between the rights of slaves and those who rule the modern world." However, Antigone survived this long, and indeed is one of the classics that most interests modern audiences (this is at least the third production of the play this year in New York alone) because of the dual nature of the play. It is both subversive and traditional. It presents the establishment’s point of view while questioning it in the deepest possible way. It thrives on the tension between right and wrong, and on the complexity of every political act. This production’s great need to take a stand chokes the complexity out of the classic, and presents Kreon alone with the mess he created and deserves. It is for this reason that the emotions never quite grip, even when he finally does see that he brought disaster on himself, his family and his country.

The attempt to use a classic in order to let out a loud cry in opposition to our present political situation is to be applauded, as is the playful theatricality, the tasteful design (set and costumes by Shana Mckay Burns, lighting by Andrew D. Smith) and the well-rounded ensemble. But when your villain does not seduce you with his arguments, watching his downfall will not be the tragic experience Antigone was written to be.

Still Not Ready for Prime Time Players

The creators of spurn do at least two things right: they utilize films between set changes and they keep their sketch comedy show brief. Sketch comedy is not an easy art to master. spurn tries its best but, like other troupes before it, frequently comes up short. spurn has been together since 2001; this is the group’s tenth installment. The actors, particularly Greg London and Lara Jane Dunatov, are polished and intrepid, but their shine is repeatedly dulled by mediocre writing.

One gets the sense that the spurn creators really, really, really once wanted to work on Saturday Night Live; their whole act owes deeply to the legendary show. spurn’s sketches are at least as good as the current crop of SNL ones. However, since the experience of watching SNL right now is one of hoping desperately for just one gem in a growing pile of forgettable clunkers, that's not saying much. SNL is uneven at best and so, unfortunately, is spurn.

Several of the eight sketches fall flat because they are simply vulgar and hackneyed. Although the sketches average only five to seven minutes in length, during several of them I caught myself anticipating the endings, and wondering what the next one would bring. Many of the skits elicited curiously loud guffaws and hoots from a few members of the audience and, at times, I wondered if they were shills. After all, how loud can one laugh at punch lines about necrophilia and the word “vagina?”

Hard core sketch comedy fans will enjoy the show's fast pace and crispness. Others might wonder how it differs from a typical collegiate comedy revue. spurn shows flashes of brilliance; thy just don't come frequently enough. One of the stronger skits is “am i right, fellas?” in which four female college dorm mates try to pull off a television show about feminism. One of the cast members memorably refers to it as “The View with working ovaries.” The “show” predictably turns out to be anything but feminist and soon devolves into bickering among the cast members, one of whom later flees in tears after her mother calls the studio to tell her she has cankles. Another imaginative sketch is the final one, “shooters,” in which three guys at a TGIF’s bar compete to see who can insult girls the most quickly. One of them gets more than he bargained for, as the other two bolt in horror.

Another strong feature of the show was the use of inter-sketch films, a smart idea that alleviates the awkwardness of frequent set changes. One of the sharpest was “20th Century Fops,” a hilarious recurring bit about two lecherous eighteenth century dandies trying to make it in the modern world. The sketch is introduced by a classical music rendition of The Doors’ “Twentieth Century Fox.” The antiquated humor is absurd and the idea original. spurn’s videos are already big hits on YouTube and its own podcasts. Not all the films are equally clever, however: “Rape Lazer” is simply lame and offensive. spurn wants to offend, to push the envelope. That can be a good thing, but spurn too often takes an easy prurient path that results in the “been there, done that” kind of sketch that leaves one laughing only briefly. Well, maybe not really laughing—more like chuckling. I recommend this for folks looking for a quick evening of giggles and for those loyalists who are still fans of SNL.

Job Perks

Fans of bawdy humor, unite! Robert Farquhar’s Bad Jazz, at the Ohio Theater, pivots around a rather raunchy premise: Natasha (Marin Ireland) is an actress, and her director, Gavin (Rob Campbell), wants her to engage in an actual act of oral sex onstage instead of a stimulated one. Far from sensationalistic, however, Farquhar’s play uses this move as a starting point to address the blurry line between performance and reality. As Jazz unfolds, the audience is often unsure whether the actors are playing characters in real life, the play within the play, or some layer in between. In this way, Jazz is not unlike Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, similarly structured and posing similar questions. But is this play the real thing? That answer is yes, though perhaps not an unequivocal one. Jazz, directed by Trip Cullman, is not a play for everyone, as one devilish scene early on makes patently clear. Jazz may not be a dirty play but it is certainly an adult one. Though her boyfriend, Ben (Darren Goldstein) objects, Natasha opts to go on with the performance. What follows is the birth of a tangled relationship between her and co-star Danny (Ryan O’Nan) that bleeds on- and off-stage, leaving Farquhar’s audience to guess as to what exactly is going on. Are Natasha and Ben carrying on in real life or just in character? When are they themselves and when are they performing?

What makes Jazz so strong is that Farquhar never cowers behind his premise; he plays both the comedic and dramatic moments straight rather than opting for low-brow humor or self-referential witticisms. Ireland does a masterful job of shading in Natasha, making her sensual, determined and fragile with the right combination of both forced and tentative vocal delivery and posture. What is more, we get to see her evolve over the course of the show from naïve actress to experienced – and slightly bruised – lover. O’Nan, too, is fully committed. Ben is a physically demanding role, portraying coitus (the sex scenes are carefully, if perhaps not discretely, choreographed) and his bumbling character’s more nervous tics. Goldstein, too, is a forceful presence, one that I wish had appeared more often in Jazz.

All of the actors refrain from tongue-in-cheek banter, particularly Gavin. As the director with demons of his own, he is the catalyst for all of the action in the play. He constantly pushes the boundaries between Ben and Natasha’s relationship (and in doing so, their relations as well), stemming from his own frenzied pathos. As the play moves on, we learn far more about his self-hatred, particularly in a central scene involving rent-boy Ewan (Colby Chambers) that is as amusing as it is ultimately horrific. Susie Pourfar also plays several roles, most notably as the playwright of the play-within-a-play, but, unfortunately, none of them are sufficiently developed. I, for one, was left wondering what exactly troubled her.

Cullum also makes one tactical error in staging this two-hour play without an intermission. I think it would have helped audiences digest the plot without destroying its momentum, and his actors are so reliable that they could have helped the audience dive right back into the material. Bart Fassbender’s music and sound design and Dane Laffrey’s costuming choices are also to be commended.

For the most part, however, Farquhar’s oddball plotting results in a tantalizing evening that asks many questions about the invasive role of performance in an actor’s life. The same question can be posed as to the effect of any kind of art in any artist’s life. That he allows his audience to ponder these questions without directly providing an answer is Farquhar’s greatest feat of all.

Class dissed and dismissed

If a professor so intolerant that his rage is literally murderous doesn’t sound like the subject of comedy, then you aren’t living in the world of Eugène Ionesco. Enthusiastically residing in this deranged place are the cast of and the creative team behind The Collective’s production of Ionesco’s play, The Lesson . With the actors’ giddy insanity, the play becomes a comedy of ridiculous proportions that, while excessive compared to the wit of Ionesco’s text, effectively conveys his criticisms. By downplaying the darker notes, this production limits the social commentary in a play that mocks pedants. The Lesson is an increasingly bizarre exchange between an egomaniacal professor and his young student. A simple lesson turns malicious when the pupil has difficulty understanding her teacher. With characteristically destructive arrogance, the Professor dismisses his maid’s warning: “philology leads to calamity.” The Collective cheekily begins the show saying, “some people never learn.”

The production is enjoyable largely because of the hilarious portrayals by a talented cast, particularly Robert Grant as the Professor. Grant’s towering stature is a funny joke in itself (one echoed in the large shadows he casts on a gray wall). From the moment he enters the stage through a door frame that barely accommodates him, clad in knee-high black boots and a military jacket, he draws laughs. The decision to dress the Professor in military getup, instead of Ionesco’s requested cloak and skullcap, shifts the play’s indictment of power from the religious to the political. It is also a more blunt parody of a certain personality type.

The Professor dwarfs his pupil, played by the petite actress Rachelle Wintzen, dressed in a schoolgirl’s perversely sexual outfit. Initially, a strange dynamic sets the pair on equal footing—they are both very awkward—but the Professor’s dominance is soon clear. In the wake of his deep Germanic voice (the kind often used when mocking academics), the pupil’s squeaks sound more childish. From the start the Professor’s intentions seem less than pure; he rubs his hands like someone anticipating an acquisition.

Though the production attempts to work with the play’s sexual insinuations, given the over-the-top comical performances, the Professor’s sexual advances are funny rather than lewd. Instead, Grant’s exaggerated gestures and voice highlight his character’s immaturity and impetuousness. His relationship with his maid, played by Elizabeth Steinhart, similarly demonstrates his weaknesses. Though Steinhart is too young and attractive to be a matronly servant, her booming voice matches Grant’s, and she holds her own. Steinhart does a fine job with a character whose motivation is the least understandable. The maid is the only one who relates cause and effect, but she does not stop calamity.

The play takes a dark turn when the pupil begins to suffer from a toothache. The Professor grows louder and more threatening as the pupil becomes meeker and wearier. The lesson climaxes when his rage, combined with his exhilaration, lead him to stab his pupil. During this exchange the stage lighting (by Randy Harmon) assumes a more lurid vibrancy. In this light, the tension and speed of the escalating dialog become palpable; the sweat on the Professor’s brow glistens, as do his large teeth and wild eyes. When he releases his rage by striking the student, it is shocking, but expected.

The Professor’s transformation is strange in Ionesco’s play, but the turn in this production is less comprehensible. Since the overall tone is light, the Professor is never sinister, and his final actions seem too impossible to be taken seriously. Sometimes the production seems hesitant to explore the character’s darker qualities. For example, whereas Ionesco calls for the Professor to twist his pupil’s wrist, The Collective’s bouncy Professor timidly grabs her ponytail.

The humorous interpretations of the cast are reinforced by Jessica Forsythe’s direction. Forsythe uses the sitting and rising of the Professor and pupil to mimic the seesawing shifts in power. Mostly, she allows Grant to dominate the stage, as he does the lesson. Additionally, Forsythe wisely uses a sparse set. The large table/desk presents a formidable obstacle between the professor and his pupil, and acts as a second stage and prop. In one scene, when his student correctly answers a series of questions, the Professor grasps one end of the table with exceeding exhilaration, while at the other end she shrieks with corresponding excitement.

As strange as the dialog and plot often seem, the appearance of a Nazi armband is a reminder that a familiar world can be just as senselessly brutal. In the microcosm of the Professor’s apartment his behavior is comical, but for a society that laughs at his intolerance the implications of the unlearned lesson are disquieting. Even if such dark themes are only touched upon in this production, Grant’s performance alone makes the show worth watching. Considering that The Lesson is The Collective’s first production, it’s exciting to think about how the group will apply such fierce energy to other works.

Shock and Words

What else can be done with sex on the stage? Over the years, former “codes” about and attitudes towards sex have slowly fallen away or changed, leaving the modern stage an open playground for whatever sort of coupling a theater company or director can imagine. It seems nothing can generate a reaction of interest or wonder concerning sex anymore. Werner Schwab's The Round of Pleasure , based on Arthur Schnitzler's scandalous, banned (in 1920) play La Ronde , takes sex to a new place, a place where sex becomes almost irrelevant. La Ronde was composed of ten scenes, in which five men and five women swapped sexual partners, passing syphilis to each other. The structure of The Round of Pleasure mimics that of its precursor, although syphilis is gone, replaced by a chunky language and a sense of divorce, both among the ten characters and ultimately in the audience. The characters in Schwab's play wear either screw off or otherwise detachable sex organs. Occasionally, two characters will have sex while standing on opposite ends of the stage, each quaking and shaking in such a way that, divorced from the act associated with it, their actions become unnerving. The disembodied, dislocated couplings provide a backdrop for a play that shakes the conventions of its society, without rising to the point of critiquing it.

Schwab's characters speak a language which is at once familiar and unfamiliar. Michael Mitchell's translation takes into account the numerous grammatical mistakes, made up words (German being a language in which one can take several nouns, attach them to each other, thus and create a new compound), and archaisms found in Schwab's German. On stage, it is unclear whether the characters know what they are saying or not, and this is intentional. It is also occasionally difficult to make out what the characters are saying. Yet, while the words may sometimes float by unparsed, the incomprehensibility adds to the play instead of detracting from it. What the characters say is not as important as how they say it or what they are doing while they say it.

As the words pour almost controllably out of the characters' mouths, it is clear what it is each wishes to achieve in their encounters with one another. Power lies at the base of each coupling. A prostitute convinces an executive that her services are on the house and then, after the deed is done, expects payment. A landlord shoves his tenant's head under water, sticks his penis in her underwear, and afterwards her only response is “Ok, but no water at the next performance.” Do these people enjoy their sexual liaisons? The answer seems irrelevant.

Ildiko Nemeth's direction and Julie Atlas Muz's choreography ensure that meaning is conveyed at all times. Movement based interludes show the characters preparing and unpreparing for their scenes. The opening features the entire cast donning their genitalia and various costumes, over top of a basic white uniform, covered in white ribbons, which suggests at once an image of both straitjackets and zombies.

Despite its rather crass theme and crude language, a sense of beauty emanates from the production. The set, designed by Ms. Nemeth, Jessica Sofia Mitrani, and Joel Grossman, literally sparkles. Luxurious fabrics are draped across a bed stage right, and dragged across stage, draped over various characters as the scenes change. Over top of their white unitards, the women wear gold accented dresses or silky black lace.

The various visual and aural elements of The Round of Pleasure assure an enjoyable show for anyone seeking an evening of sensory stimulation. In the end, the show is not so much about sex as about the ways in which people manipulate and are manipulated, whether by other people or by the words they are forced to use.

Rock On

Arpeggio is not a musical, it is a “play with music,” and yes, there is a difference. In a musical the characters break into song, in Arpeggio they break into rock ballads created by Alec Bridges. The play aspects demand that the audiences stay quietly in their seats, applauding respectfully when appropriate. The musical aspects urge the audience to stand, scream and whistle, especially towards the end when the onstage band turns the show into a rock concert. Still, referring to David Stalling’s Arpeggio as a play with music would only be acknowledging what it is on the surface, and if there is anything this story teaches you, it is that one must look below the surface. At its heart, Arpeggio is a tight, well-plotted psychological thriller in the same vein as nail-biting films, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female.

The play begins in a tiny New York City apartment decorated with only a couch, table, and bookcase, as the current owner, Zeb (Andy Travis) does not believe in TV’s, stereos or any other appliances that create noise. His little monastery is shattered when his new room mate Gerry (Allison Ikin) moves in with boxes of CD’s featuring her favorite male vocalist Tobin Grey (Jonathan Albert). Gerry owns dozens of life-sized Tobin Grey posters and an extensive collection of audio disks she recorded at each of his many concerts. But her obsession is more than just a crush; Gerry claims to be Tobin Grey’s secret girlfriend, explaining that he asked her to move to New York to be closer to him.

Ikin is perfectly cast as the ideal roommate. She has a shy, disarming smile, a cute bobbing ponytail, and an easy-going, laid back manner. Even as her darker side is slowly revealed, Ikin manages to preserve Gerry’s innocent, girlish charm, making her nearly impossible to distrust.

Gerry’s celebrity heartthrob, Tobin Grey, is more than just a poster in this plot. He shows up in person, not as a narcissistic celebrity, but as a regular guy who just likes making music. This rocker has a gentler side, which he demonstrates in a speech about the misconceptions his female fan base have of him. He sounds more sad than pleased to admit that he breaks a lot of hearts when young girls mistakenly believe he is looking at them when he performs his romantic ballads live.

We learn that Tobin Grey’s greatest talent is his ability to execute arpeggio notes on his guitar. Arpeggio, Gerry explains to us, is a musical term that refers to single notes being played in quick succession rather than all at once in a chord. When you play the notes separately you can hear the special sound that each one makes. Play them in a chord and the notes lose their unique, individual quality.

This explains why we do not see Gerry’s true nature until her world has crumbled around her. She uses Zeb’s hectic circle of friends and lovers to disguise her real self, but as this group dissolves so does her protection. When Gerry finally goes solo she is surrounded by a band, under a spotlight, and in front of a microphone where she delivers a somber, beautiful rock ballad just as powerful as the one she idolizes Tobin Grey for singing.

Apreggio may not be strictly about the music, but Stallings uses it in all the right ways to enhance the plot. The songs do not puncture the story but rather weave naturally into the fabric of its central themes and characters. Integrating a rock soundtrack into a psychological thriller is an ambitious combination, but it works -- except for the fact that you won’t know whether to leave the theatre discussing the story or jumping out of your seat to dance to its final notes.

No Winners Here

“It’s so cutting edge it’s practically illegal,” one character says of the play they’re working on in Bingo With the Indians. “It’s like diamond-edged, Mom. That’s about as close as you can get to naming it.” Bingo, written and directed by Adam Rapp, indeed deserves credit for its bold style. The problem with plays that have edge, however, is that they can occasionally leap off them. With all its unbridled electricity, Bingo runs in many directions without ultimately choosing one.

The play is powerfully aggressive in every way. Its language revolves around cruel fighting or chilling manipulation, its movement is explosively violent, and its characters are malicious to the core. In fact, Bingo has such a confrontational tone that it occasionally feels like a direct assault on the audience. This is not unintentional. As the plot centers on three members of a struggling East Village theater company, the line between reality and drama is consistently blurred.

The “company” – director Dee, actor Stash, and stage manager Wilson – are trying to scrounge some funds for their latest production. Their solution: steal the cash from a small-town New England bingo game. The New Yorkers don’t take kindly to the local atmosphere and despise the theatrically impaired townies.

The unfortunate outsider who comes into their motel room is Steve, a sheepish 19-year-old whose parents own the place. He, it turns out, is “secretly interested” in theater and dreams of living in the big city like his visitors. Stash is merciless toward Steve, taunting him, roughing him up, and eventually stealing his watch.

The poor teen is so lonely that he still craves his bullies’ friendship. As Steve, Evan Enderle is absolutely fantastic. Thanks to Enderle’s perfect body language (hunched shoulders, anxious bouncing) and tone (every statement comes out like a hesitant question), Steve practically sweats a palpable blend of desperation and vulnerability. Watching him get bullied is tragic and emotionally draining. Most, it seems, for Enderle: at curtain call, the actor looked absolutely exhausted.

The play really hits its stride when Stash and Dee go to pull off the heist, leaving Steve and Wilson in the room. Wilson gets the amateur actor to read a script with him – one that happens to include nudity. Thanks to Rob Yang’s restrained performance, Wilson’s sexual manipulation of Steve is at once deeply disturbing and freakishly academic. Enhancing the interaction, Yang speaks in the kind of deadpan voice that’s usually reserved for psychiatrists or conscience-lacking serial killers (think Kevin Spacey in Se7en).

The other characters lack this depth, and the play’s poignancy (and point) seems to wither away after they return. They trade barbs that might make Mamet blush, but their dialogue and personalities become grating when they don’t go any further from there.

Since the only compassionate character is someone who works outside the theater community, it would seem that Rapp is making a point about how a life spent playing pretend might detach someone from reality. The three company members in Bingo assume new identities with names such as “Big Daddy” and hide in their new characters, betraying previous promises with disclaimers like, “I was acting. That’s what we do in the theater.”

However, it’s hard to imagine that working in theater would make anyone as ruthless as Bingo’s thugs. A bloody attack (a “company fight call”) that comes toward the end is inexplicably brutal – even by the angry standards established by earlier scenes.

Things spiral out of control from there, thanks to a bizarre Native American song and dance, and a rambling monologue.

The final lines, directed at the audience (returning to the play’s exploration of reality vs. theater), are a clever reprisal of earlier dialogue between Wilson and Steve. The latter commands, “Smile…Unsmile.” With its seesawing between dark comedy and all-out nihilism, it’s never quite clear which expression Bingo With the Indians wants us to make.

Richard Reflects, Brilliantly

"I do mistake my person all this while," the future King Richard III (Michael Cumpsty) reflects after railroading his murder victim's wife into marrying him literally over her husband's dead body. "Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, / That I may see my shadow as I pass." Renaissance superstition held that devils cast no shadow, so Richard needs a mirror to assure himself that he is not really a devil. In Classic Stage Company's production of Richard III, Cumpsty's Richard's reflections are brilliant, in a variety of ways. The set, by frequent Kulick collaborator Mark Wendland, literally surrounds Shakespeare's famous sociopath with illuminated looking-glasses. The performance space is paneled with mirrors and illuminated by gigantic crystal chandeliers, which are reflected in both the mirrors and a gleaming, slick floor. Oana Botez-Ban's costumes combine sleek, timeless shapes with evocative colors. Groups are color-coded. For example, the princes in yellow; Richard's brothers and sister-in-law wear blue. The bereaved women who blame Richard for their menfolks' deaths wear shiny black-and-grey gowns that capture and reflect the chandeliers' glaring light. Despite being surrounded by reflective surfaces, however, Cumpsty's Richard and the court strenuously try to avoid seeing themselves as they are.

Cumpsty and Kulick's informed, unpretentious directing makes this a non-patronizingly accessibleRichard. Hand gestures accentuate a few of the script's most opaque archaisms, such as "moiety,'' and when the dialogue mentions offstage characters, we see them. For example, the play opens with Richard facing the upstage mirrors, and turning to contemplate his brother Edward IV, who stands frozen, also reflected, wearing the crown and embracing a red-velvet-garbed mistress.

When Richard says that his "winter" is "made glorious by this noble son of York," he gestures to his brother. Later, when Edward mourns their middle brother, Clarence, murdered at his apparent demand by Richard's treachery, the king crosses to the "Tower" mid-speech and embraces his dead sibling, while the court looks on.

Cumpsty plays Richard as a believable three-dimensional being, not a snarling caricature. His disarming affability seems dangerously genuine. Cumpsty’s casual, chatty delivery of the early soliloquies is more compelling than Sir Ian McKellen’s famous interpretation in Richard Loncraine’s 1995 film, and makes room for a huge change in persona when Richard finally lets his act fall apart.

Cumpsty’s Richard jokes with his enemies, and induces the audience to brittle nervous laughter. In one of the staging's most psychologically spot-on moments, Richard III presents his grieving sister-in-law, whose brothers and sons he has killed, with his superficially charming request to marry her one remaining child. Helpless and asked for a response, she laughs -- as in Chekhov's phrase -- through tears. Her reaction for once exposes Richard's absurdity. It is a laugh of dissent.

Among a strong cast, the other standout performance besides Cumpsty's is that of another bereaved dissenter, the former Queen Margaret, as played by Roberta Maxwell. Marching across the space like a general on the battlefield and delivering her "prophecies" with biting, confident lucidity, Maxwell reveals "Mad" Margaret as a surprisingly sane woman in a mad world.

Only the "prophetess" Margaret knows the real extent of Richard's destructive potential. When the women of the court crawl to her, demanding to learn how to "curse,'' Margaret gives us a haunted but patient orator and mentor figure. Maxwell's Margaret and Cumpsty's Richard are equals and opposites. Once as ruthless as him, she now sees herself in him as if in a carnival trick-mirror.

One weak point was the decision to distribute flags printed with Richard's insignia, a white boar, to the audience during Richard's election by the people of London. The passing of bunches of flags from spectators on the aisles to the middles of the rows was a distracting hassle. In order to participate in the flag brigade, this reviewer had to look away from the stage. While gazing at fellow spectators to see if any concerned citizens would refuse to hail Richard of Gloucester (yes, some did) this reviewer momentarily paid no attention to the impassioned speech that Buckingham (Michael Potts) was giving to the London populace. Directors as genuinely innovative as Kulick and Cumpsty need not rely on gimmicks.

Cumpsty and Kulick’s Richard III is the first production in Classic Stage Company’s Fortieth Anniversary Season. It will be a hard act to follow, but demonstrates why, unlike Richard, Classic Stage Company has enjoyed such a long and happy reign.

Laughter is the only medicine

Watching an evening of theater inspired by Bertolt Brecht could potentially be an exhausting and perplexing experience. Brecht’s concept of epic theater, according to which a play should provoke rational self-analysis and critical perspective, can inspire formal innovation, but also plays that are difficult to watch. Indeed, Brecht wanted the audience to think independently, and to effect social change. The Brooklyn Playwrights’ Collective is at an early stage in its project to write plays influenced by its favorite playwrights in alphabetical order; they are currently considering the work of Brecht. Their production, Beyond Brecht , includes plays that often attempt to mock classical theater (i.e. non-epic) and its reliance upon narrative and emotional stories, but which fail to provide inspiration for critical analysis. The influence of Brecht is most clear in the staging and structure of the plays, which use his devices for disrupting the illusions of storytelling to highlight the deliberate construction of a drama. These innovations include narrators that directly comment upon plot, interaction with the audience, self-conscious songs that break the flow of plot, and explanatory placards.

The first play performed, Fulana , might inspire independent thinking if the message was not so obvious. In Felipe Ossa’s play the title character is the embodiment of a capitalist agenda: an eager immigrant in a whorishly attractive French maid costume. The pitiful abuse of such persons is made clear, but is complicated by the abusive response of the oppressed. In the role of Fulana, Marisel Polanco carries herself with self-awareness and self-possession. Despite her assertiveness, the play’s plot and tone give little reason to doubt the crushing power of the American way of life. The narrative follows a familiar arc and the actors adhere to the stereotypes represented by their characters. The play hardly prods deeper consideration of the themes it introduces.

The second play, The Pithecanthropist (by Ed Malin), is the most energetic and philosophically engaging play of the evening. Using an overly self-conscious play-within-a-play it demonstrates the artifice of drama. In the play the leading character argues against romantic notions in favor of Darwinism. Played with impressive dryness by Chris Arruda, Prosper is a foppish intellectual who renounces the Romantic by donning an ape costume. That witty lines and an exaggerated accent creep through the mouth of an ape mask makes the device hilarious. To prove his theory, the self-proclaimed Pithecanthropist stages a drama that mocks knightly romances. Despite the uncharacteristic confusion of its characters, the story ends happily, undermining the argument of the play’s producer. It is a story with a mind of its own: the love of the characters brings resolution and mutiny against the creator.

The concept is strong, but constant campy jokes detract from the cleverness of the play. In particular, the rap songs are parodies so ridiculously bad that they are nothing more than that. Though the play mocks overwrought romances, it follows a reliable plot. Perhaps it represents a counter-argument to Brecht, making fun of the notion that drama could be used for political purpose. However, if the play did not include flights of illusionist fancy, there would be little left.

Some enjoyable use of Brecht comes in the interpretations of his concept of the “separation of elements.” In some of the plays, particularly The Resistible Rise of Fatlinda Paloka (by Marcy Wallabout), the actors deftly shift roles and registers. Playing an uptight Southern couple, Nick Palladino and Siobhan Doherty alternate between Seuss-like rhyming and carefully accented spite. Their bitterness is directed at the abrasive immigrant Fatlinda Paloka, whose eccentricities are humorously exaggerated by Erin Leigh Schmoyer. The acting is excellent, and the play is funny, but the underlying metaphor is hard to find. In a conclusion which arrives abruptly, Fatlinda’s blindly infatuated husband explicitly states a moral. That the meaning or purpose of this lesson is so unclear detracts from the play's better qualities.

A play with clearer direction, but less interesting style is Lucky in Love , written by Erin Browne. In a gesture to Brecht, placards list the action in each scene, but add little to the play. Several short scenes tell the story of unrequited love between female friends. The placards underscore the play’s dull straightforwardness. The characters and scenes aren’t fleshed out enough for the viewer to care, and the dialogue isn’t sufficiently meaty for contemplation.

The final play, “Sauté Your Face” (by Jerry Polner), consists of a good single punch line joke: a cooking show for ex-dictators in which instruction is command and brutality is art (or fruit salad). Mark Blackman energetically repeats the Generalissimo’s catchphrase, “I am great. You are crap,” but by the fourth time it is clear the joke has run its course. Fortunately, the playwright, unlike a self-loving dictator, knows when to cut things short.

In all of the plays the influence of Brecht’s formal contrivances is clear, but the underlying morality or the push for audience reflection is lacking. The plays don’t stimulate critical consideration of American society; rather, they highlight the difficulties in using this structure to interpret modern social problems. Though there are attempts to give “rational” purpose to these stories by acknowledging the artifice of the presentation, they are basically classical dramas. The commentary is too often an indictment, or the issue at hand too vaguely defined, to spark debate. If attending the show, expect to laugh some, but don’t expect an evening of provocative theater.