SUBURBAN MESHUGAH (MADNESS)

Mike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years is a household drama about faith and family with a rhythm better suited to a British television serial than to a play. As a result, The New Group’s limited-run US production ultimately drags more than it pops, despite some sterling performances. "To be a free people in our own land is the hope of two thousand years," proclaims the Israeli anthem, Hatikvah . But for overweight and underemployed Josh (Jordan Gelber), a 28-year old still living in his parents’ secular home in suburban London, to be free to practice a more devout Orthodox faith without family ridicule seems a hopeless endeavor indeed.

Josh’s aging Leftist parents, Rachel and Danny (Laura Esterman and David Kale) are squarely hit in the face by their son’s atypical rebellion, symptoms of which include wearing a capple (Jewish skull-cap) around the house, maintaining a restricted diet, and performing a sort of prayer that involves wrapping his arms with plastic rope, making it look suspiciously -- religion as narcotic? -- like he is preparing to shoot heroin.

“It’s my choice,” says Josh, “If it gives me something, why can’t you just accept it?” And yet, Josh’s newfound religious devotion is somehow less pardonable to his parents than seven post-grad years without gainful employment.

“It’s like having a Muslim in the house,” says his father. For Rachel and Danny’s liberal household (presented as a comfy Pier-One style living room by set designer Derek McLane) is one in which Israeli policies (circa 2005) can be comfortably challenged over The Guardian or tea.

Add to the family brood a chain-smoking, steamrolling, former kibbutznik of a grandfather (the delightful Merwin Goldsmith as Dave); and a globetrotting human rights extrovert daughter (a juicy Natasha Lyonne as Tammy); and the cast for the Jewish family sitcom is complete.

Laura Esterman does a yeoman’s work in her role as the family pillar in this first act, carrying many of the more mundane passages with her deft physicality (down to synchronized head nodding).

But it's only in the second act that Two Thousand Years starts really moving, with a family crisis that forces everybody, including Rachel's long estranged sister Michelle (a plum role for the able Cindy Katz) and Tammy's new Israeli boyfriend Tzachi (Yuval Boim) to come together.

The comic relief offered by the narcissist merchant banker Michelle, whose selfish ways inspire an ire that collectively unites the family, is a welcome backdrop for more Middle Eastern debate as spurred by outsider Tzach (and the presence of Israel that he implies.)

Even if Michelle's character seems something of a foil, the heated political discussion in the second act emerges from a believable family in a specific situation rather than being superimposed onto a slow domestic rhythm as is the case in the first act.

The family dynamics of the play have much potential in other mediums, and kvetching about parking is certainly endearing and familiar enough. But while certain family members are fleshed out enough to identify with (even the curmudgeonly grandfather), the potentially sympathetic Josh (whose brooding does not belie enough stifled rage) is harder to discern, and thus harder to care about.

While many interesting topics are touched upon by this British family from Cricklewood, from the Zionist ideal, West Bank/Gaza Strip, Israeli security, Venezualan referendum, and suicide bombs, to the Americans (they do what they want), the play remains curiously disjointed in its bridge between family, religion and politics.

On the Move

Location is everything, and nowhere is that more true than in the Big Apple, where one’s neighborhood becomes a major part of his or her personality. The search for an apartment is a metaphor for one’s quest for his or her true self in Brooke Berman’s Hunting and Gathering, which just opened at 59E59’s Primary Stages theater. But this journey never quite reaches its destination. Berman, whose publicity crew has repeated her many different living arrangements, must see some of herself in Ruth (Keira Naughton), the first character we meet. As she demonstrates in a cutesy slide show, Ruth has hopped from one sublet or house-sit to another for various short periods of time over the last two decades. Her social life is as unsettled as her geographical one. Ruth finds herself moving yet again, thanks to a broken relationship as the other woman in an affair with a married Columbia English professor.

Jesse (Jeremy Shamos) is now facing divorce as a result of that affair and moving into a place of his own. It seems he has never had to find his own living quarters, or decorate them, and so must lean on his younger half-brother Astor, (Michael Chernus), a squatter, to help him. Astor, meanwhile, holds a candle for Ruth, who merely sees him as a friend, though perhaps one equally as lost as herself. Pretty soon, Jesse has found himself another lady to lean on in the form of Bess (Mamie Gummer), an aggressive student auditing her class who asks him out for drinks (for some reason, Bess lives in a Park Slope share even though she attends school in Harlem), thus rounding out the relationship geometry.

All four characters are looking for something – a place of residence, to be sure, but more importantly, a place where they belong, a place that they can truly call home. Director Leigh Silverman finds a suitable manner in which to block this quest as the characters march on and offstage with an LCD screen behind them labeling their current domicile and type of living situation in Craig’s list-friendly terms, with characters often trailing off and finishing each other’s threads, thereby communicating their shared state of flux. (David Korins, the set designer, is to be credited for not just the screen but the backdrop, in which moving boxes comprise the skyline, with certain boxes opening up to provide furniture and props).

Berman’s play may come from personal experience, but the theatrical experience feels too insular. Who outside of the five boroughs could relate to a play that routinely name-checks areas like East Ninth Street or Orchard Street? This inaccessibility unfortunately extends to her characters as well. Naughton does an incredible job conveying Ruth’s mix of emotions and flawlessly merges the character’s moments of stubbornness and self-doubt – she is the true star of the show – but I wish Berman had provided more background for the character. Yes, she seems like a free spirit, but what are her real interests? She mentions that she has had many different jobs, but what were they, and why did none of them work out? This is especially odd given that Berman does not hesitate to provide an abundance of awkward exposition for her other characters (Bess even recites letters to her parents in monologue format).

While Jesse is the character who connects the foursome in Hunting, his character is less than central. Both Shamos and Chernus are excellent actors (witness Chernus in last season’s Essential Self-Defense and Shamos just this fall as a shamed priest in 100 Saints You Should Know), but are saddled here with two-dimensional material. I would have especially liked to delve more into Jesse’s world, since he is the character who has lost the most when we meet him. Berman’s men are lovelorn and lonely, the “gatherers” – or “prey” – as explained rather explicitly in a late scene by Bess. In fact, she is the lone character who knows how to make things happen rather than sit around waiting in vain, and Gummer uses an ebullient delivery to conceal the disappointments that have shaped her, only to ever-so-slightly reveal them in key moments.

Whether as predator or prey, what defines the four characters in Hunting is not the space in which they live, but with whom they occupy that space, an odd choice that subverts any effect Berman might want her play to have about true fulfillment coming from within. Happiness, it seems, requires more than just a broker’s fee.

Go On, Try and Offend Me

The lights stay up. A black curtain is drawn aside, revealing a row of twenty-one actors, known as the Bats, the Flea Theater's resident company, sitting on a bench. Aside from the actors, the stage is bare. The play, or rather, performance, or perhaps even better, lecture, is the Peter Handke's Offending the Audience. The premise is simple: tonight there will be no play, in the sense that there will be no representation or imitation attempted by the actors. Offending the Audience turns the tables on its audience, attempting to bring attention to them instead of its performers. Written in 1966, Offending the Audience is an avant-garde piece. However, over forty-two years later, it has lost some of its bite. While different from most plays in its structure (and the fact that it is NOT a play), the premise is no longer challenging or exciting for theater-goers. The main draw of the evening is revealed in the synopsis of the play. Expectations are shifted for this play, as the audience is alerted in advance to the difference between this play and others. Instead of being shocking and new, Offending the Audience is a relic, a historical document depicting the attempts made to revitalize or shock theater in the past.

“You represent something. You are someone. You are something. You are not someone here but something.” The group of actors repeat this sentiment to the audience, making eye contact with some members. They want us to know that this evening, the spectators have become the representation, not they the actors. They are actors who refuse to act, yet at the same time of their refusal, remain actors acting.

Offending the Audience is a scripted work, so matter how many times the performers insist that “no action that has occurred elsewhere is re-enacted here,” they are in fact re-enacting the text. Their words are not original to themselves, they have been given the sentences and phrases to speak, their movements have been directed and rehearsed. Jim Simpson, the director, has done a fine job of orchestrating the cast's movements. Clad all in black, they pop up and down from the long black bench, swarming the audience at times. The black suggests that the audience is to see the actors as they are, and to see the stage as merely a stage. Yet, as long as a text remains on the stage, as long as simple costuming and even the most simple set design remain, representation remains.

No longer shocking, Offending the Audience could be considered a classic. Audiences are no longer surprised by Waiting for Godot or A Doll's House ; why should we expect to be surprised by Handke's piece? If the piece remains standing, able to attract, educate, and entertain an audience after a period of time, then it has done its job as a work of theater. Offending the Audience provides an hour-long crash course in theater theory, from Aristotle to Artaud, that questions the why of theater. It seems appropriate that the piece is performed by the Bats. While it may not be the best piece to showcase one's acting skills, it provides an opportunity to play with what once was the avant-garde. The piece cannot be looked at as “offensive” any longer, but rather as what it is—a piece that once shocked and awed but now instructs. In an age where theater is considered dead or dying by many, it is nice to remember a time when artists wanted to challenge their audiences.

Crimes of the Tart

Anyone who complains that downtown theatre consists mainly of intimate straight plays in black box theatres with minimal sets would do well to check out The Jack of Tarts: A Bittersweet Musical. With its sixteen member production team, seventeen musical numbers, eighteen cast members, a live orchestra and countless glittery pastries, the campy extravaganza is anything but small-scale. Every aspect of the performance, from its design scheme to its performance style, is highly exaggerated, yet playwrights Chris Tanner and Eric Wallach, who also directs, keep the plotlines of their adult-themed fairy tale relatively simple. The kingdom of Tartannia is trapped in the grips of a despotic queen (Lance Cruce) who has imprisoned her son Jack (Tanner) in a dungeon where he is forced to bake tarts that drive the commoners mad - until his complicity is threatened by two wronged heroines: Agnes (Michael Lynch) who longs for vengeance and Annabel Lee (Julie Atlas Muz) who longs for Jack.

Throw in some scrappily insane peasants, royal guards with a penchant for S&M, a couple of campy cohorts of the queen, and references ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Edgar Allan Poe, and the plot is decorated if not exactly thickened. No matter: thin plot points are waved off with a wink and a shrug (“you would think these two would have been stopped before they could hatch a plan” deadpans an excellent Richard Spore as narrator Big Daddy, “…I still don’t know how that happened”).

Still, there is a fine line between campy self-mockery and unpolished performance, and The Jack of Tarts walks both sides of it. Comprised largely of veteran Village drag queens and recent college graduates, the cast clearly has a lot of fun but their performances are often hesitant. While they form an impressively cohesive ensemble, surprisingly few cast members seize what could be standout moments appropriate to a production so consciously performative, and as a result the pace drags.

The musical numbers feel well-rehearsed, yet the music is not particularly memorable and the lyrics are at times difficult to understand. Choreography, by Wallach, gets the job done but doesn’t go much beyond that. An exception is Annabel’s Arrival choreographed and performed by Muz. The scene is a particularly lovely moment of lightness enhanced by design elements, which are simple yet enormous. At its best moments, all aspects of the production embody those qualities and it would be great if there were more of them.

Throughout the production, the design scheme is instrumental in evoking the world of Tartannia. Garry Haye’s impressive set looms large in the small theatre. Zsamira Sol Ronquillo’s wig and makeup design adds far more than a flourish to Becky Hubbert’s fun costumes. Perhaps most importantly, the titular tarts are spectacular. Given that they make the characters completely nuts, it's important that they look great. They do.

From the opening of the play, every inch of La MaMa’s first floor theatre is packed with style and flavor. Literally: upon entering the space, audiences find cast members serving pastries. The extension of the performance into the audience, which continues periodically throughout the production, is limited enough to be noninvasive while successfully making the entire performance space into the play’s world. Such a warm invitation to join in the fun helps keep the audience patient during the performance's weaker moments.

At its best, The Jack of Tarts is an irreverent romp that celebrates the ridiculous while asking heartfelt questions about irresponsible leadership and those who follow it. The play's final scene, when those questions become most prescient, is among the finest of the production. It’s worth the wait.

What a Girl Wants

Though best known as a film actor with a resume traversing high-brow (Terms of Endearment) and low-brow (Dumb and Dumber), Jeff Daniels has also written nearly a dozen plays for his Purple Rose Theatre Company (named after the Woody Allen film in which he starred) in his home state of Michigan. One of them, Apartment 3A, has seen its fair share of reproductions (including a production by the ArcLight just two seasons ago) around the country, thanks to its combination of light-heartedness and sentiment. Now, The Clockwork Theatre is giving it a go, trying to find a balance between its lighter and darker themes. Annie Wilson (Marianna McClellan) is a sullen fundraising director at the local public television station who, after a rough break-up, impulsively moves into a shabby new apartment. An odd triangle simmers between her, a supportive married neighbor named Donald (Doug Nyman), and Elliott (Jay Rohloff), a colleague nursing what appears to be an enduring unrequited crush on Annie. McClellan often plays Annie a tad too far on the tightly-wired side; the character is at her most entertaining and revealing when letting loose, as she does in several sharply written tirades at her station (one of which finds her threatening the livelihood of Big Bird). But opposite Nyman, the two share a sweet camaraderie that grounds the character. Because Donald is married, yet nonetheless attentive, their relationship bears all of the intimacy sans all of the baggage that an affair would encompass. Director Owen M. Smith’s scenes, particularly early ones such as when Donald offers to cook for Annie and to teach her how to waltz, are remarkable for how deft they are in creating a bond that can grow in the most surprising of places.

But 3A has other plot points in mind. Instead of Elliot loving Annie, who in turn falls for Donald, it is Donald who loves the idea of Annie loving Elliott. Annie does finally give into Elliott’s advances, largely at Donald’s surprising insistence. Their dates lead the play in a very different direction, though, with an awful lot of exposition about God, Catholicism, fate and coincidence. As a result, Daniels’ play takes on the feel of an over-preachy sermon, and wears on the patience of its audience.

3A moves into different territory altogether yet again in its second act, with several plot twists. What works best – and is excellently staged by Smith – is the crossing back and forth between Annie’s scenes with the two different men in her new life. After her encounters with Elliott, she reports back to Donald, allowing him to take on the role of father-confessor. Both men fulfill a different set of her needs and rebuild her confidence. However, there remained a tentative, still quality to McClellan’s performance. She should be transformed by her new relationships, but her character remained rigid.

On the other hand, both Nyman and Rohloff impress with sharply nuanced turns. Daniels’ play itself vacillates between light and heavy themes a little too much; it isn’t standard romantic comedy fare but it also lacks the gravitas of a more stirring drama. The lighter first act is a more nimble affair. Rohloff finds himself bearing the burden of these weighty scenes, but is at least up to the task of heavy lifting required by Daniels’ schmaltzier scenes. He is great at portraying Elliott’s earlier scenes as he fumbles in his awkward attempts to win over the reluctant Annie, but is also believable when he must defend his religious faith.

The second act of 3A would have benfited from greater humor, in a Neil Simon vein. I believe Rohloff would have been up to the challenge and would have liked to have seen McClellan flex her comedic muscles. Nyman, too, brings a great amount of insight to Donald, showing just why the character could be as generous and patient as he is. Ultimately, it is because his character is so sympathetic that the audience roots for Annie at all.

Olga Mills’ set design works surprisingly well, providing triple duty as the backdrop for both Annie’s and Elliott’s abodes in addition to the television station where they both work. Combined with the good acting of the show’s cast (including Philip J. Cutrone and Vincent Vigilante in amusing minor roles), this talent finds the heart in Daniels, and buoys up a play that could have otherwise been brought down by the weight of its playwrights ambitions.

Over the Moon

The magnificent Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel was never intended to be a theater. With its deep brown paneled walls, almost claustrophobically cozy space, muted lighting, and lush atmosphere, it seems better suited to the intimacy of cabaret (for which it is a historic stomping ground) or to the stealthy maneuvers of a clandestine love affair. But Tajlei Levis and John Mercurio were determined to stretch the stoic walls of this hallowed space to embrace a different sort of creature entirely: a musical comedy. Exploding with charm and infectious songs, their new musical Glimpses of the Moon makes an endearingly predictable—and predictably endearing—evening of classy, frothy entertainment.

Adapted from Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, Glimpses of the Moon marks another period piece for Levis (book and lyrics) and Mercurio (music), who have become something of literary specialists over the past few years. Their jazzy adaptation of Dawn Powell’s 1940s novel A Time to Be Born played to sold out audiences at the 2006 International Fringe Festival; Glimpses of the Moon also skips happily back into the glamorous days of old New York and was written specifically to be performed in this historic space.

At the performance I attended, the room was at least partially filled by a cluster of the well-heeled Manhattan elite. If, like me, you’re unaccustomed to such luxury, you’ll find that you immediately identify with the central couple, Nick (Stephen Plunkett) and Susy (Patti Murin), two bright and clever individuals who rub shoulders with the upper set—but haven’t a cent of their own. Treasured and admired for their talents (he writes, she dances), Nick and Susy rely on their friends to sponsor their high-brow lives. But when their paths cross, Susy hatches a scheme to get them off the hook forever: she proposes that they get married, trade in the gifts for cash, and stay married for only one year, or until one of them snares a richer spouse.

In the midst of their mischief, however, Nick and Susy unexpectedly fall in love—with each other. They’re unwilling to settle for a life of poverty, however, so they remain determined to find wealthier matches, wounding themselves and each other in the process. Within this deceptively simple story, Wharton asks uncomfortable questions: Can you be happy without money? How much will we compromise ourselves for what we (think we) want?

Mercurio’s bouncy, appealing score enlivens every scene, and the production pops swiftly from one song to the next. Mercurio sits at the grand piano, which serves as the central set piece, and his fiery accompaniment is given depth and texture by Geoff Burke, who contributes captivating counterpoint on flute, clarinet, and saxophone.

Briskly directed by Marc Bruni and quick-stepping to the elegant, compact choreography of Denis Jones, the excellent six-member cast turns in remarkably rich performances in their thinly sketched roles. Beth Glover is perfectly pretentious as Susy’s uppercrust friend Ellie, who uses Susy to conduct her own extramarital escapade, while Daren Kelly turns in a warm and blustery performance as her long-suffering husband. With her snappy, spot-on timing, Laura Jordan very nearly steals the show with her sharp comic performances in two quirky roles. And as the fantastically fussy Streffy, Glenn Peters dexterously delivers an endless stream of witty asides.

As the crafty couple, Plunkett and Murin generate a sweet chemistry during the sweeping title song. Levin hasn’t given much dimension to their characters, however, and the performances suffer a bit from their overwhelming normalness. With her zippy trove of songs and dazzling smile, Murin fares better at making Susy a very nearly quirky heroine—an imperfect ingénue we can root for. And along with the rest of the cast, Murin is draped in a set of gorgeous costumes designed by Lisa Zinni.

A major draw of this production is the opportunity to see a different notable cabaret singer at each performance. Levis and Mercurio have cleverly set one of the scenes in a luxurious hotel—guess which one?—in the elegant Oak Room, where a quarreling Nick and Susy watch a performance of “Right Here, Right Now,” a torchy, “seize the day” ballad that is both poignant and pointed. Cabaret legend KT Sullivan took the stage the night I attended; Susan Lucci and Alison Fraser are among the artists yet to come.

Regrettably, the song that Mercurio and Levis have given their diva is one of the production’s least melodically remarkable, but its lyrics elicit a lovely transformation from Nick and Susy. It’s rare that you get to watch characters watching a performance, and it was fascinating to see how they reacted to the music. Although it skips over darker (and often more interesting) plot possibilities, this production makes an excellent case for the power of song. Set in a cabaret space, where the genuine exchange of music and emotion is de rigueur, Glimpses of the Moon offers a glimmer of honesty that takes musical theater back where it belongs—whether or not it was intended for theater, the Oak Room is currently bringing it up close and personal.

Assistant Living

If the world gave out awards for multi tasking Angela Madden would take home a blue ribbon. She is a writer, director, performer, producer; co-founder of Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and one of their Board Members. But before she was any of these things she was an assistant, a secretary, and in her own words, a “servant”, to rich C.E.O’s across the nation. Angela Madden’s one woman show, C.E.O and Cinderella, has more than a hint of autobiographical truth to it. Both the actress and character are named Angela, they both have a theatrical background and both have worked in high powered corporations before devoting themselves to theatre.

Angela started her career as a modern day Cinderella, performing menial tasks for her boss while eagerly awaiting her own invitation to one of his balls. In the meantime, she is there to serve his dinner. “Give it to the peasants,” her first boss would say, referring to trays of uneaten salmon and tarts that she carried back to the kitchen. At first Angela was delighted with the opportunity to binge on her rich boss’s fancy leftovers. But after four years of carrying trays she grew tired of being a peasant.

How long will it take for Angela to get invited to the ball? When will her Prince Charming come? In real life these questions have less to do with fairy tale endings and more to do with a young woman’s quest for self esteem.

“Make your own ball,” the actress says now, in an interview with United Stages that is featured in the playbill; though it took her years to muster up the ability to follow her own advice.

Angela comes from a very dark past. Her childhood was shattered at an early age, her innocence snatched at the hands of a deviant stepfather. No matter how hard Angela tries to run away from her past she still feels bound to it. At one point she realizes that she dreads walking to work to face her boss the same way she once dreaded coming home from school to face her stepfather.

Angela Madden’s story is one of resilience. She finds ways to carry on, to shed her hurt and make right what someone else made wrong. Standing alone with only a chair and table for props, Angela has very little to hide behind as she divulges disturbing details about her life. Her raw honesty makes the story especially compelling.

Like Cinderella, she spends her days waiting for someone else to whisk her away from her life, hoping a boss will fall in love with her or at least see her as an extended member of his family. Through her adventures in corporate life to her confrontations with her family we see that Angela has not experienced much to give her faith in humanity, and yet she finds beauty in the theater.

Slipping into another character proves to be Angela’s greatest escape. She can’t make a living acting but she never gives it up, even when her employers become more demanding of her time. Her talent is something the C.E.O’s can not take away from her. It is a part of her life that remains separate and untouched from the bad.

There is much more to her one-woman show than simple plot and narrative. Angela has a way of delivering her monologues that makes you feel as if you are watching something very personal. She bares her soul so fully and trustingly that you can’t help but pull yourself out of the story to admire how far the real person has come.

Angela has scaled huge obstacles to turn her childhood dreams of stage stardom into a reality. And though it clearly was not fun or fulfilling at the time; it does seem that managing millions of small details, working long, hectic hours and patiently dealing with demanding and eccentric C.E.O’s has prepared her well for a career in the theatre.

Dead Heads

Several of the characters in Mark Schultz’s Deathbed are truly loathsome. One cowardly man thinks so little of his cancer-stricken wife that he can’t bear to be near her, recoils from her touch, doesn’t appear to know or care what cancer is, and reluctantly allows her one hour to lay her head in his lap before he must flee: “Call me when you’re better.” Another man matter-of-factly expresses his desire to commit suicide “on Wednesday morning” because, he claims without explaining, that worlds of dead people live inside him. His inert and self-pitying granddaughter fails to intervene and his paperboy asks, “Can I watch?” The boy later nonchalantly helps the man commit the act. The play’s press release exaggerates: “Deathbed eloquently paints a landscape of longing and desperation as its characters struggle with loss and suffering.” Deathbed is anything but eloquent. The script brims with stingy language and innumerable clichés. Deathbed consists of a series of interrelated vignettes, each lasting a few minutes. Typically, one person clumsily attempts to describe his or her deep anguish and the other is busy text messaging or otherwise focusing solely on him or herself, rattling off trite responses like, “That’s so sad.”

In response to harrowing details, the transparently amoral characters of Deathbed utter the buzz phrases “that’s sad” or “that’s horrible” or a variation of them no fewer than thirty times. This soon becomes tedious; it’s as if the entire cast has never matured beyond valley speak. I almost expected Paris Hilton to appear, exclaiming, “That’s sad. And hot! And sad!”

Mr. Schultz stretches the callousness and muteness of these characters far past the point of credulity. Perhaps he is satirizing impossibly self-absorbed individuals. Perhaps he has identified an unlikely handful of loosely related (a la Crash) characters existing at the remote end of apathy. Or, maybe he’s simply watched American Beauty too many times. (For good measure, Schultz curiously tosses in a plot thread about a gay man helplessly in love with an ostensibly straight one).

In any event, the conceit runs out of gas quickly. We get it. And we get it early in the play. These selfish and astonishingly inarticulate characters don’t care about each other and most are too socially retarded to express anything resembling empathy. They (and the script) are not “eloquent.” When the paperboy asks the soon-to-be suicide what he thinks death is like, the first thing this man (who has supposedly thought long and hard about it) can come up with is, “Oh, I don’t know.” The cancer stricken woman hopes that people will respond to her disclosure by saying, “Wow, that’s amazing.”

I cannot recall the last time I felt that a 50-minute full-length play was too long, but Deathbed bored me to dea… oh, nevermind. During the matinee performance I attended, someone in the audience was actually snoring. Many of Deathbed’s characters may be struggling with something, but it isn’t loss or suffering. They have light years to go before they reach that level. These atypical people are struggling with their inability to communicate in the most rudimentary ways. Someone call Toastmasters!

If there’s a bright spot in this production, it’s the combination of scenic (Alexander Dodge), lighting (Josh Epstein), and sound design (Ryan Rumery). Hospital waiting room walls lined with antiseptic white plastic seats seamlessly morph, during vignette segues, into pastel blue living rooms with couches. Quick, loud, ominous sound bites portend drama that the characters never quite live up to.

That’s because Mr. Schultz won’t let them. He reins them in with three-word sentences and one-dimensionality, as if he doesn’t trust them. I’m sure there are accomplished actors among the cast but, unfortunately, the miserly script frustrates all of their efforts.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

It takes someone with an intermediate knowledge of the past twenty years of comics to fully appreciate Roundtable Ensemble’s production of Chris Kipiniak’s superhero drama Save the World. In the interest of full disclosure, my day job is in the licensing department of one of the “Big Two” comic book publishers; so I was more than up to the task. But this enchanted hammer comes down on both sides, because I doubt someone who couldn’t recognize when this resourceful production cribs heavily from influential comic works, like Watchmen, and Squadron Supreme would enjoy it as much as I did. A psycho-political thriller, Save the World follows a U.N. sanctioned superhero team, the Protectorate. When half a dozen natural disasters bombard the Earth simultaneously, the Protectorate suspects that they might be connected. Just days away from installing a U.N. authorized third party government in Jerusalem; the team’s members find their heroic principles fraying under the pressure. The play’s seemingly innocent title actually reveals its bleak ideology: “How far are you willing to go to save the world?”

There are certain aspects of the plot that borrow directly from the classic comics mentioned above, like the notion of superheroes taking over a politically unstable country and a last minute twist. Yet Kipiniak (who has written a handful of Marvel comics as well) also introduces super-characters with truly inventive abilities and compellingly ambiguous ethics. Take for example the team’s leader Aon, an obvious send-up on DC’s Superman. Aon’s never-ending battle against evil is just that—never-ending. As would probably be the case with such an obligated and powerful being, we never actually see Aon. He’s simply too busy to meet up with the rest of the team at headquarters. Nevertheless, Kipiniak shapes Aon into strong “absent character” through other characters’ remarks about him.

Superhero antics are not naturally suited for live theatre, so director and developer Michael Barakiva scores points for his success. Wisely, the super powers on display all function based on other characters’ reactions to them, like Stagger’s ability to slow down time or Quake’s invisible seismic blasts. The play’s few action scenes are impeccably staged, and there is a pervading sense of dynamism in the way Barakiva got the script on its feet.

The scenic, lighting and sound designs support Barakiva’s zippy staging. Shoko Kambara’s set design aptly recalls the “Hall of Justice” from the Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon. Scaffoldings upstage and on both sides allow the cast to depict different locations with ease. Shane Rettig and Nick Francone, as the sound designer and lighting designer respectively, work hard to make up for the lack of visible super powers. Umbra’s shadow powers, for instance, get their own mysterious look and sound. It’s all very convincing.

Thanks to Oana Botez-Ban’s sharp, but restrained costume design, each character’s super-duds ably classify their powers and personality; an obvious stand out being Stagger’s spectacular red/orange business suit. The black sash that Legend adds to his costume to honor a fallen comrade is a particularly endearing touch. The only costume that didn’t measure up is Future-Knight’s supposedly “advanced” suit of armor. Clearly a child’s plastic Halloween costume, the cheap getup made it very difficult to buy her as a legitimate superhero.

Outer trappings aside, all the cast members render their characters with great humanity. There aren’t really “good guys” and “bad guys.” These are morally conflicted people trying to do good or trying to live up to their potential, but failing in a big way. Christine Corpuz, who plays the uncertain Quake, brings this struggle to life very well. Again, the dapper Stephen Bel Davies as Stagger, the team’s English strategist, added just the right kind of zing to the proceedings; Davies hides his character’s comprised moral compass under his refined demeanor splendidly.

Kipiniak has certainly crafted a mature story, opting for cerebral “Biffs!” “Bams!” and “Zowies!” over the traditional kind. This production isn’t really appropriate for kids, which both helps and hinders. My only fear is that people who don’t share my enthusiasm about superheroes are going to feel put off by all the intensely serious melodrama. Not me— what interested me in seeing this super heroic tragedy on stage was its unexpected resonance with Greek and Shakespearian tragedies. Like those plays from antiquity, Save the World persuasively examines the quest for power and its dire consequences.

Peach Appeal

Flirting with (and stripping to) the taboos of the Prohibition era, the burlesque troupe The Peach Tartes—a luscious quintet of game, glamorous women—have unleashed their saucy new show in the intimate boudoir space of the Cutting Room. Cheekily dubbed Peel for Repeal, their latest romp is a winsome, lively, and irresistible evening of entertainment that loosely embraces the music, style, and aesthetic of the 1920s. The eclectic performances are tethered together by an enigmatic hostess, Miss Astrid, a brilliant comedienne who presides over the evening with a thick German accent and an endless stream of ripe verbal zingers. Declaring her plan to open a speakeasy named, aptly, “Shhhhh,” she introduces each scene as a possible act for her new club. Through her interaction with the audience (many of whom were more than eager to participate), Miss Astrid creates a speakeasy in the venue itself, ordering patrons to “drink the boooooze,” make noise, and, most of all, imbibe the intoxicating show.

And whether or not you want to take her advice, it’s all too easy to lose yourself in the decadent atmosphere. Sitting elbow to elbow at long tables alongside dedicated regulars who swilled cocktails and stared hard at the stage, gazing up at the dimmed chandeliers that provided a smoky, sultry ambience, I had to blink to remember that it was 2008, not 1928.

Burlesque, after all, is escapism at its finest; when we arrive at a place, Miss Astrid reminds us, we "are either running from or to something.” The talented Tartes—who are, variously, fine actors, dancers, and acrobats—maintain their part of the charade, appearing only as their alter egos (Scarlet O’Gasm, Veruca Honeyscotch, Rita MenWeep, Penny Dreadfulz, and Madam Rosebud) with no mention of their “real” names in the program.

Accompanied by bouncy, soulful, and brazen music, the women spool and twist their bodies to create meaning and tell stories. And the majority of these stories, of course, whether a soliloquy featuring a lonely Oklahoma girl or a flirtation between two silent-movie stars, arrive at the same skin-baring conclusion.

But showing skin will only get you so far, and the trick of this brand of storytelling, as the Peach Tartes have embraced with moxie and wit, lies in the creative steps you take to reveal yourself. Layered in stockings, camisoles, fringe, and tassels, each performer makes brilliant and often seductive use of creative props. (Take a moment to imagine the possibilities inherent in the broad curves of a liquor bottle or the sharp edges of a shovel.)

Given the group’s penchant for theatricality, it seems no accident that the most polished and entertaining numbers showcase the least amount of skin. At the top of the list is Veruca Honeyscotch’s high-flying routine. Devastated after the abrupt departure of her boyfriend, she removes only her gloves before climbing up two long scarlet curtains that hang from the ceiling. To the brassy, jazzy sounds of Ella Fitzgerald crooning “When I Get Low, I Get High,” Honeyscotch scales the drapes, winding and binding herself before unfurling and bending her body into various breathtaking contortions. She’s coy, commanding, and, remarkably, clothed.

Burlesque is certainly not for everyone, and as a feminist I was on high alert to sniff out any wisp of objectification. Instead, I found myself charmed by the good-natured, almost wholesome, attitude of this dynamic ensemble, who popped with personality and sweetly shrugged off the occasional musical miscue.

The show hurtles to an end all too quickly with a quick reference to the 1929 stock market crash. With its flimsy, uneven structure, the show itself is also something of a tease—a cluster of variety acts dominated by a mid-show raffle and obscured by the clinking of glasses. Still, Peel for Repeal accomplishes a tricky theatrical feat, one just as coveted in 2008 as it was in 1928: it leaves its audience wanting more.

Ghosts in the Machine

The amazing Richard Foreman describes his famous avant-garde productions as "theater machines." Foreman's latest "machine," Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, absolutely fits this description. Like previous Foreman "machines" running down the decades, this one is a magical contraption that assembles seemingly random components of human experience to create something new and insightful. The experience is transformative. When you enter the Ontological Theater of St Mark's Church, Foreman's usual shop floor, the place has been decked out somewhat like Madame Blavatsky's seance studio. The walls are covered with gigantic antique "spirit photos" -- in which two portraits, one of a living person and one of a presumed ghost, are exposed within the same frame. Names (of the living person? the ghost? the photographer?) and long-passed dates are scrawled along the borders. Three-dimensional theatrical masks pop out of a few of the photos.

The spirit photos are all mounted on a slight diagonal to the stage floor, suggesting that this "machine" occupies a different plane than the auditorium, literally. Center stage is occupied by two small grand pianos, one veiled with a heavy cloth.

In the upstage wall are set two projection screens, with punched borders suggesting photograph negatives. The screens stare -- blankly, at first, and then are filled with images shot in two distant locations, England and Japan. Dressed like high-society seance participants, a small ensemble of live actors begins a "journey" to another place and time.

As usual for Foreman machines, the design elements are bizarre, surreal, and evocative, combining whimsy and unease. The seance conductor wears black tie, with vampire teeth and a frilly lace apron, emphasising his role as an attendant to the living from the undead. A gigantic garish puppet, "King Mockingbird," is crowned with tiny American flags, referencing America's mimicry of the rest of the world.

The actors open blank books and hold them up against the screens, reading the projected video images through the thin pages. Is there acting here? Yes, but the performers act as if entranced. Their coordinated speech and motion is impressive, but this is not the kind of show in which acting serves to illuminate character or forward a plot. The inhabitants of Potatoland do convey curiosity about that strange other universe -- ours, or rather, the world of the human consciousness. The Potatolanders are engaged, frustrated, and bewildered.

The human performers start their journey by taking drugs, and soon find themselves mesmerized by the parade of images on the screen. Foreman marshals the three troupes of performers -- American, English, and Japanese -- to compare the journeys of tourists to the "spirit world," to the sub- or heightened-consciousness, to actual distant climes, and of course, the best armchair tourism of all -- theatre spectatorship.

As usual, Foreman comes up with some intriguing paradoxes. "I am here before you arrive / I will be here after you have gone," the image of a performer on the screen aptly says -- but being only a projected image, recorded on a continent far away, this person is not "here" at all, ever. "Trust me / I go backwards / Trust me / I repeat myself," another chants, fulfilling her iterated prophecy even as she speaks it. "The visitor sleeps amidst the excitement of the experience," a HAL-like voice intones. To consider this mere speculative musing is a mistake.

At one point, Foreman confidently declares that "only by being a tourist can one experience a place" -- and then shatters that idea with a filmed scene on a staircase, featuring the Japanese ensemble, involving 1940s costumes, hiding, and what sounds like air-raid sirens. With varying degrees of severity and horror, New York, England, and Japan have all been attacked from the air. Ever since, the art and culture of these three places have struggled to make the receding memory of those horrors "immediate" as their survivors inevitably fade into mere spirit.

"Go to England immediately!" the Potatolanders are commanded, but this is easier said than done. They -- and we -- can see "England" on the screen, but is any flat image on a screen, any spectre from the photographed past, really "immediate" to its living spectator? Or is it the "immediacy" of trapped, distant images that leads people, in Potatoland and on planet earth, to believe in the magic of photography, cinema, and theater?

Like the imaginary time machine of H.G. Wells, Foreman's latest theatre machine takes us to "other worlds," and in so doing, compels us to examine our own with new eyes.

Can You Go Home Again?

Going home (or to what used to be home) for the holidays is a painful experience for many. As we grow up, what used to be family traditions fall away, as the responsibilities and burdens of adulthood weigh down. Such is the case in Chad Beckim's new play, The Main(e) Play . Shane, an actor who is beginning to make it in New York, returns to his childhood home in Maine, where his brother Roy still lives with his seven year old son, Jay, and their Ma. The two brothers stand in direct contrast to each other. While Shane earns his living filming cheesy commercials, the most famous of which is one for the Gap, Roy works pouring construction, what he considers to be actual, honest work. It is the collision of the two brothers that causes both to come to a realization about the way they are. The stage is set up to resemble a small-town, decorated-with-love living room that is littered with toys. All signs seem to point to a basic, American family drama. But, what sets The Main(e) Play apart from other domestic dramas is that its action mainly occurs somewhere else, offstage. Jay and Ma are never seen, only mentioned, even though their characters shape a lot of the play. Thanksgiving dinner, the reason why Shane has returned home, is only mentioned after the fact. A large portion of stage time is dedicated to the brothers sitting on the couch, smoking, watching TV, and rehashing what just happened. A shroud of mystery surrounds the play. Shane's cell phone and wallet go missing; who besides Jay could possibly have taken them? What is the problem with the boys' Ma? Why did were the locks changed on the family house?

The play doesn't attempt to explain everything or even anything. It stresses the results of the brothers', particularly Shane's, actions, rather than the actions themselves. Each character in the play is flawed, but in the end it seems that Shane is the most flawed of all. Where Roy has accepted the responsibilities of fatherhood, Shane has rejected it in a devastating way. Shane finds things to blame for the difference in his childhood home, never accepting it is his own actions that could be the reason for the change.

Language in the play is of utmost importance, due to the fact that the audience hears about things rather than sees them. Beckim's dialog is sharp-tongued and a bit offensive. Roy, his friend Rooster, and Jess, Shane's ex-girlfriend, speak in a way that is, at times, delightfully crass. The actor's use of accents subtly distorts what they are saying, particularly when their characters leave messages on Roy's ancient answering machine. The distortion can cause some frustration for the viewer, since the messages come at a pivotal point in the play. The only character who is accent-less is Shane, who has practiced and trained long to lose all vestiges of his hometown voice. It is interesting that Shane, the one character who is the most opaque, should be the one to speak the most clearly.

Anyone who has ever returned home and hated it should perhaps look into themselves to see why. The Main(e) Play will appeal to those who appreciate not knowing everything up front, and to those who like to hear the language of the stage rather than just see the action. The play manages to set itself apart from other plays that would be considered “domestic dramas” by not showing the audience all the dirty details of home life, just the one that ultimately matters.

Never Again

There is a formula to narratives about the Holocaust and other moments of historical trauma. The opening scenes are charming, with a fair amount of comedy. The protagonist has a sense of humor, has struggled to achieve some success despite difficult odds, and has a core group of people who love him and are loved in return. Generally, our hero is shown to have some flaws: a tendency towards marital infidelity, perhaps. These flaws humanize him and make him more sympathetic. These relatively light-hearted moments are punctuated by moments of foreboding, reminding us of the tragic turn the story is about to take. Then the Nazis arrive, aided all too often by some of our hero’s friends and neighbors. Sympathy, guilt, remorse, and sadness follow, usually mitigated by a note of inspiration, nostalgia, and hope for the future.

Fabrik: The Legend of Moritz Rabinowitz, written and directed by the young theater company Wakka Wakka Productions, does not stray far from this time-tested formula and, indeed, audiences will find little that is unfamiliar in the script’s approach to history. Moritz Rabinowitz was a Polish émigré living in Norway, where he built a successful business and raised a family. He loved his adopted country and considered himself a patriot. He was also a vocal and articulate opponent of the wave of anti-semitism sweeping Europe. When the Nazis invaded Norway, he was captured and imprisoned in a Sachsenhausen, where he was reportedly beaten to death in 1942.

The spin on this iteration of the Holocaust tale, aside from its Norwegian setting, is the medium of the performance. Wakka Wakka’s inventive staging techniques, built around their Henson-ish puppets, supply a great deal of the charm of the production. The playfulness and virtuosity with which they explore the aesthetic and technical tools at their disposal make the story itself seem more unique than it otherwise might.

Three of Wakka Wakka’s four core company members serve as the cast: David Arkema, Kirjan Waage, and Gwendolyn Warnock (Gabrielle Brechner is the fourth member.) While it would be easy to write that the puppets (designed by Waage) are the stars of this production, the truth is that the puppets in and of themselves are not extraordinary; what impresses in this production is the implementation of the puppets, the skill and ingenuity with which they are employed.

In the opening scene, the Rabinowitz puppet is manipulated bunraku-style by all three performers (one controlling the head and right arm, one the left arm, and one the feet.) As new characters are introduced, the puppeteers split off from one another; the number of puppeteers controlling each puppet varies thereafter depending on the number of characters on stage and the technical demands of a given scene. Sometimes the performers are focused on the puppet, their faces turned in so as to deflect the attention of the audience. At other moments, the performers are face-out, drawing attention to themselves and to their medium as they perform alongside the puppets they control. Dream sequences, domestic scenes, song and dance numbers, political speeches, dances, violence, and transport by cars and boats are all depicted in the course of the play’s 85 minutes.

The small cast skillfully portrays a variety of characters in scenes both spoken and sung. Indeed, the Wakka Wakka ensemble prove to be more skillful actors than they are writers, clearly delineating characters that are somewhat flat in the script. While the story is powerful and the production impressive, the script does sometimes feel a little thin. While admirably avoiding the traps of self-importance and melodramatic excess, the writers have created only one fully-fleshed character; the rest are sketches.

Given that we have seen variations on this story so many times, it might well be asked why we need to see this one too. The answer lies, in part, in the somber promise to “never forget” but also extends into the story’s resonance with contemporary geopolitics. Two quotations in the program stand out in this regard. One is from former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who pointed out that even as we’ve made “never again” into a kind of mantra, genocide has proven alarmingly recurrent. The other is from Rabinowitz himself, who wrote in 1933 that “political isolationism, hatred, and the closing of borders are to blame for much of the tragedy in today’s world.”

Imperfect but Intriguing

Dr Frankenstein is having a good year. In New York City alone, the past few months have seen the opening of the Mel Brooks spinoff musical Young Frankenstein, a more faithful musical adaptation of Mary Shelley's timeless novel, and even a puppet-theatre version. Now, Tada! has joined the bandwagon by presenting "A Perfect Monster," a new, short, and G-rated musical adaptation, by Tada! founder and Artistic Director Janine Nina Trevens (book) and Deirdre Broderick (music and lyrics), directed by Trevens. A crowd of whimsically costumed and acted monsters, fast-moving plot, and the empathetic performance of talented seventeen-year-old actress Saleema Josey as Sibyl, a mad scientist who is still in primary school, will have the youngest audience members captivated. Meanwhile, Trevens's allusions to many of the fable's most iconic incarnations, from Hollywood to Hammer, will keep adult chaperones reasonably well entertained.

The set is dominated by Sibyl's lab, which includes the requisite paraphernalia, including bottles of strange incandescent liquids on shelves and a Macbeth-style bubbling cauldron that promises to birth many a strange organism. It is all bathed in green and purple light, cheering up the foreboding scene.

Like Frankenstein's creature, "A Perfect Monster" is imperfectly made, yet undeniably impressive. The tale begins with music redolent of monster movies, and quickly introduces Sibyl, an antisocial young girl who has no trouble "making friends" -- out of random objects, such as "moldy french fries / and rhinoceros eyes" combined in the cauldron.

Dressed like a pint-sized Peter Cushing in a pastel frock coat, waistcoat, antique trousers and gaiters, Sibyl lives up to her name. The Roman mythological Sibyl of Cumaea was a mythological female clairvoyant who reportedly lived as a recluse in a cave. (Incidentally, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley resurrected the Sibyl in a later novel, disaster-movie precedent The Last Man).

At school, Sibyl is ignored and mocked by her classmates: the vain, pretty, and vapid Mary (Maya Park, alternating with Sophie Golomb), snotty, preppy jock Preston (Brendan Eapen), and class clown Charlie (Christopher Broughton), who tells stupid jokes that the kids, and apparently the audience, are expected to consider hilarious. When she gives a brilliant report on her "science" hobby -- the monster-making experiments -- they don't bother to listen.

Therefore, it's no wonder that Sibyl prefers to spend time with her menagerie of monsters. Unfortunately, each is a manifestation of Sibyl's own fears, frustrations, and seething self-hatred, from the indecisive three-headed Trio (Gabriela Gross, Sophie Silverstein, and Katie Welles) to the dancer with four left feet (Adam Mandala) and a creature dressed ridiculously in a McDonalds french fries container, who has a fork and spoon for hands. As the monsters explain, when Sibyl has a bad day at school, she comes home and makes a monster, then pours all of her rage onto that unfortunate creature.

Finally, Sibyl makes a "perfect monster" and best friend: a winsome female named Perfection (Jasmine Pervez, alternating with Ariana Sepulveda), who gets even with her classmates by beating them at their own games: respectively in sports, beauty, and joke-telling. Sibyl thinks that Perfection "belongs" to her, but must learn that "to make a friend" in the non-architectonic sense, one must be a good friend to others.

Having set up the fascinating problem of the child-heroine's insecurity and its diabolical manifestations, Trevens solves it rather too facilely and in a manner that seems unintentionally reactionary. When Sibyl finally learns her lesson, and resolves to treat her handmade "friends" as people and not objects, she abandons mad science for cake-baking. Soon, Charlie confesses his attraction to Sibyl, offering her a hand-picked bouquet of flowers, and defying Mary and Preston to befriend her and all her monsters. Problem solved.

I am not saying that this adaptation should have gone the way of the original, with alienation resulting in irrevocable catastrophe, but children can have great nonsense-detectors. An alienated, insecure girl will not be healed overnight by a boy's interest. Or, rather, if that's all that takes to bring the child out of her cave, that might be a problem in itself.

The monsters, with costumes constructed by Cheryl McCarron and the late Shelley Norton from concepts by Trevens, are delightful, and are unlikely to frighten even the most easily rattled youngsters. They are all benevolent. The one evidently based on Godzilla sports jazz shoes laced up with bright ribbons along with her scales and tail. Unlike in the source novel, there is no violence whatsoever, and no monsters are either destroyed or driven from home.

The music is lively enough while it's being performed by the Tada! company, but is immediately forgettable. The Tada! company, whose actors range in age from primary school to age 18, comprises a tightly directed and choreographed ensemble led by some very promising leads, particularly Josey and Perez. Most importantly, the cast appears to be having fun onstage.

Tada! makes certain that kids will never get bored by starting the play with a magic show, which fills the time during which the audience is led to their seats. The program is filled with games and activities for fidgeting young spectators. This is a great idea, but some of it is simply wrong. In a match-the-name-to-the-photo game concerning movie monsters, "Frankenstein" is the match for a photo of Boris Karloff in director James Whale's Hollywood classic Frankenstein: but Karloff played the creature, not his creator, Dr Frankenstein. Likewise, the answer to the question "Which author is responsible for the gothic legend of Dracula?" is arguably not the provided answer, "Bram Stoker," as Stoker adapted his story from a "legend" developed decades earlier, by Gothic writer John-William Polidori in his short story "The Vampyre."

Still, I must admit that I was also somewhat alarmed by the play's description of Sibyl's magical process as "science," and also by her happy abandonment of "science" for cake-baking. Possibly, parents who take their primary-school-age daughters to this show should afterwards have a brief chat about what science is, what it isn't, and how there are plenty of scientists--even girl scientists--who have made great friends, and not in seclusion, nor out of spare parts.

Blind Symbols

Oedipus at Colonus is a play in which the viewer gets the sense that behind every action, object, even emotion, lies a whole world of hidden significance. Even death, the grand subject matter of one of Sophocles’ final dramatic explorations before his own trek to the netherworld, is secret in this play. Handcart Ensemble’s current production of this rarely produced masterpiece represents this symbolic hidden-ness too well, allowing the words of Eamon Grennan and Rachel Kitzinger’s new translation to breathe, while the dramatic juice of Sophocles’ story remains hidden under sleepy layers of symbol. What remains is an aesthetically pleasing meditation on death, family and forgiveness which never translates into emotion. While the depth of feeling available in the writing is largely lost in this production, it is a worthy one in that it provides a sense of what one of the creators of our theatrical sensibilities had to say about three of the themes that continue to permeate our stages.

Oedipus at Colonus tells the story of Oedipus’ final hours. The blind old man has spent his life wandering homeless, and has finally come to a field in front of Athens, led by his faithful daughter/sister Antigone. He has come to terms with his own horrific mistakes (“If someone tried to kill you would you stop to inquire if he was your father, or would you strike back to revenge the blow?”), but still holds pains and grudges against his son and brother-in-law, both of whom make appearances in the play.

While many things take place over the course of the evening - characters come and go, arguments, persuasion and acceptance, a curse or two and some blessings – the drama is set up as the end of a journey, both physical and spiritual, of one of the world’s most pitied men. The action itself as if does not matter. Kreon kidnaps Oedipus’ daughters, and a moment later they return. Antigone (a strong performance by Emily Rogge) convinces her father to give audience to his son Polyneices, during which the blind man stands firm in his stubborn position. Oedipus comes into the play knowing its end, and his own, and the plenty of coming and going is simply a philosophical playground for a great writer to splash around in.

The production emphasizes the symbolic nature of the play, making the costumes, set and even the acting style stand out, thus continually pulling the audience in and out of the story. Director Karen Lordi-Kirkham stresses the ritualistic element of Greek theatre, and of this play in particular, through an imaginative treatment of Sophocles’ Chorus. A prayer bowl, myrtle branches, hand gestures toward the heavens, all remind us time and again that the theater was a religious place for the Greeks.

However, Lordi-Kirkham’s attempt while admirable, is muddied by her need to couple the ancient sensibility with an occasional catering to the aesthetics of a modern audience. As such, in the production certain scenes from the ancient tragedy bring to mind our own generation’s imagery for the future. The big showdown between Kreon and Theseus, for example, could have easily been a Star Treckian intergalactic dispute. The Chorus is transformed from one of elderly citizens of Colonus in the script, into a young female triplet that seem to conjure Buffy the Vampire along with the Furies, the ancient goddesses of the field, in Handcart’s production. The flaming red costume of Kreon, another symbolic choice that leaves its meaning backstage, could have possibly been further enhanced by a pair of Spock ears.

A solid performance by Peter Judd as Oedipus does keep the production grounded. It is a somehow soothing experience to watch nearly two hours of a lead actor in blindfold who seldom moves from his seat. One can almost see a hint of Beckettian minimalism in Sophocles here. One of the evening’s strongest moments comes from a silent, still Judd, angrily listening to his son’s attempts to elicit his support in war.

The sum total of the evening is a pleasantly boring experience of a truly great play in a steady new translation. The opportunity to catch it may not return anytime in the next few decades.

Face Value

Wanda looks smaller than her classmates. She walks hunched over and stares at the ground. At lunch she excludes herself before she can be excluded. Her tricks for making friends don’t work. At thirteen years old, young Wanda Butternut (Sandie Rosa) has a unique problem that she won’t outgrow with age—a large purplish birthmark covering the entire right side of her face. Eric H. Weinberger’s touching and energetic tween musical, Wanda’s World is far deeper than its colorful sets and smiling pigtailed characters would have you believe. Beth Falcone composed a clever score with contagious tunes that appeal to adults and tweens alike. Songs such as the malicious lunch room taunt, “She’s So Last Week,” speaks to common tween anxieties while “No One Can Know” pokes fun at their inability to keep a secret for more than ten seconds.

Sandie Rosa is wonderful in the way she evokes Wanda; she commits to this character in mind, body and spirit. Her smile is wide and endearing, her eyes bright and hopeful, but her words tinged with caution, as if one uncool phrase could turn the world against her.

Wanda tries to carry herself with confidence but when the other girls call her Blotchy she instantly deflates. She seeks refuge at home, staring into her bedroom mirror with a long wig that covers most of her face, pretending she has her own talk show where she helps girls like her. She tells her make believe audience to blend in, cater to others, and never arrive anywhere late (people stare at you) lest you make yourself a target in this cruel and unforgiving world.

Campaigning to be the leader of this world is Ty Belvedere (James Royce Edwards). Clean cut, well dressed and reeking of wealth and privilege Ty is the favorite to win the school’s upcoming Student Council President Election. He lists his attributes in a song aptly titled, “What’s Not To Like?”

The school bully, P.J. (Leo Ash Evens) and his lackeys can find several things. Thus far P.J.’s passive aggressive attempts at Ty-hatred have included bopping him over the head with a dangling microphone while he gives his campaign speeches. But this is no longer enough. PJ is planning a cruel prank that will use Wanda as a pawn in ruining Ty’s reputation.

Unfortunately, Wanda is the perfect mark. She will do anything for a chance at acceptance, including interviewing Ty for the school station. Surprisingly, Ty shows some class by not reacting to her birthmark. Encouraged, Wanda lets her guard down and glimpses of her true personality slowly emerge; she is a bright, thoughtful and selfless girl. Such qualities are so rare in Ty’s circle of friends that he becomes intrigued.

This moment is heartbreaking because of what we know is coming. We are hoping that Wanda will build up enough self esteem to endure the impending trick P.J. is going to play on her, but when the moment comes she is at her most vulnerable. At the lowest point in her life Wanda comes to the saddest realization of all: that there is no place in the universe for a face like hers.

Fortunately, there is a voice deep inside that warns Wanda of self-fulfilling prophecies. Her climatic song, “A Face Like Mine,” is one of the saddest tunes a young girl could sing. The song takes you through Wanda’s heart; we feel her struggle to find something positive about herself to cling to when times get bad.

Wanda’s World is smart to not soften this material. This play could have felt like an after-school special, but instead we get a musical character study of an unlikely protagonist; one that you cannot root for enough. Film critic Roger Ebert once observed that audience members are more likely to cry for a character’s goodness than sadness. Young Wanda Butternut’s journey to move from the shadows of life into the spotlight certainly supports this theory.

Dirty Old Mastermind

The pursuit of sex, and the humor in the pursuit of sex, seem never to go out of style. The scandalous pleasure that Niccolo Machiavelli’s most famous non-political play, The Mandrake , generated among Italian audiences back in 1518 (it is said even Pope Leo X was “intrigued”) can still be found in sections of this Pearl Theater Company production. The bawdiness of the play, translated here by Peter Constantine, operates as both a strength and a weakness in this particular version of the classical sex farce. At its best moments, the show is a well-directed ensemble comedy with brisk pacing and well-researched movement. But, at its worst, the (blue) humor seems stretched and thin, and the actors come off as infantile caricatures.

Machiavelli’s tribute to ancient Greek and Roman comedy, The Mandrake , tells of a young Florentine named Callimaco (Erik Steele) who will go to any means to justify his lusty ends, and to sleep with the beautiful and married Lucrezia. To do so, he hatches a devious plot with the help of an unemployed matchmaker, Ligurio(Bradford Cover), to convince Lucrezia's plodding husband (Dominic Cuskern) that in order for the couple to conceive a child, Lucrezia must drink a mandrake root potion and sleep with a total stranger (who will die shortly thereafter.)

Dominic Cuskern, who plays the soon-to-be cuckolded husband to the wily team of Callimaco & Ligurio (who do their best work off of each other), is the standout actor of the show. Both likeable and a complete comic putz as Messer Nicia, Cuskern's work is real and measured, never over the top, even in the most schticky scenes that have him feigning deafness while Ligurio bribes a money hungry Friar (TJ Edwards) to further persuade Lucrezia to surrender her virtue in accordance with the new plan.

Scenes involving multiple characters proved most funny and effective, as the actors' timing generally worked when in a group. And there was a welcome sense, from many of the actors (including Steele, Cover and TJ Edwards) that small pieces of stage business had been thoroughly explored for effect.

In period costumes by Barbara Bell, the actors made good use of Harry Feiner's set of the town of Florence. In particular, the long-anticipated evening of lovemaking between Lucrezia and Callimaco was inventively staged.

While not without flaws, this Renaissance comedy revived by The Pearl Theater Company merits a viewing for the timelessness of its humor, and some memorable moments created by its actors.

The Tragedy of the Issue Play

When Euripides composed The Trojan Women his play represented a timely criticism of Greek imperialism, as well as a commentary on cycles of fate. In 417 BC Athens had recently emerged from a ten years' war with Sparta, and was preparing to attack Sicily, a move that would prove disastrous. In his contemporary adaptation, Alfred Preisser uses the structure and some of the themes of Euripides’s drama to address modern issues, incorporating the horrific stories of female victims of the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The two plays share as their focus the suffering of women at the hands of men, but the neat parallels end there. Preisser’s “radical re-imagining" of Trojan Women introduces many raw emotions, but the varied critiques are unfocused and the ideas are not well connected. The result is a production that has moving material, but ultimately fails to move.

The play attempts to consider the complicity of the powerful in the suffering of the meek at “the bottom of the world." This is but one of many weighty topics addressed, but not fully explored. In addition, the groups producing the piece, the Harlem Classical Theatre and Harlem Stage, claim missions to tackle race issues in art. In creating a piece that tries to reflect these issues and ideologies, the show sacrifices character development and narrative structure.

Even with the show's problems, several elements of the production are still chilling and effective. Troy Hourier’s well-designed post-apocalyptic landscape of industrial wreckage invokes the grand, but fleeting achievements of civilization (Penn Station). In the opening scene, a girl clings to a chain-link fence like an animal. Her bitter speech ignites a chorus of women who chant the terrible fates of their people: rape, death, and destruction. To tell the stories of the African women, Preisser cleverly retools the traditional Greek chorus, giving it many different voices, which makes the suffering experienced seem both exceptional and tragically common.

The dramatic effect of the chorus is enhanced by Tracy Jack's smart choreography. Though the women speak with individual voices, they move as a unit. At first their combined force is brute and animal-like; they gang up on Helen, screaming at her and calling her names. Their hatred echoes that of the men who terrorize them; a parallel they realize too late.

Toward the end of the play, when Hecuba recognizes the blindness of her former perspective, the group of women executes a gentle series of synchronized movements. No longer screaming, they sing and perform hand gestures that seem to mimic the rising and setting of the sun, as well as the rhythmic beat of rowing. One is a metaphor, the other a Cassandra-like envisioning of what is to come.

Unfortunately, the aggressive rants of the women characterize the play’s approach and tone. Certainly, they have cause for such bitterness, but the material would be more affecting if the tone and the performances were more dynamic. This isn’t to say that all of the performances are ineffective. Zainab Jah is calm and confident as the commanding Helen. Although Helen seems to be a selfish manipulator, the subtlety of Jah's performance leaves room for interpretation. Also interesting is the character of Talthybius, played with sly wisdom by Michael Early. The modern interpretation turns the Greek messenger into a wormy bureaucrat, and his “ugly circles" of speech provide the show's comic moments (a welcome turn after the many horrible displays and the moralizing).

There is a lot that Preisser is trying to do with Trojan Women , and the production suffers from its grand, but undefined ambitions. Whereas Euripides moved his play around the central character of Hecuba, this adaptation lacks that kind of central focus, and introduces several different ideas, most of them somewhat obvious criticisms.

Euripides' play is an interesting vehicle for a critique of modern society, but the themes and structure of the adaptation could benefit from some tightening and a stronger, narrower focus on the African women's accounts, or a more specific connection to the civil wars in Africa. When the audience looks through the fence at Troy it might be looking into a distant mirror, brought up close and personal, but the production’s message is too hazy to inspire critical self-assessment, or change.

Everyday horrors

The British company 1927 has titled its show with an overly familiar phrase that unfortunately gives no clue to the invention, precision, and joyous theatricality of its work. The four principals combine mime, music, film, and narration into an intoxicating mix of 10 twisted stories and some nifty fillers that evoke the gruesome fairy tales of Shockheaded Peter. Evil lurks everywhere in the world that 1927 conjures up, even among the most seemingly innocent and mundane events. There’s no false sentiment here about childhood. If you see a little girl in a pinafore, you’d better run for your life. There are three performers in 1927, all in whiteface and looking like mimes and behaving like silent film creations from Chaplin or Lloyd or the Hal Roach studios. Pianist Lillian Henley, in black and a beret, plays an upright throughout the evening, setting the tone with bright melody or ominous minor chords. Suzanne Andrade, with a black Louise Brooks bob, is writer and director as well as performer. The stories need a dry wit to work, and both she and her co-star, red-haired Esme Appleton, show a devilish sense of humor, as well as a breadth of talent. (During one story Appleton plays a glockenspiel, and the costumes she has designed, almost all in neutrals, suggest an interwar period of boarding houses, aproned mothers, lace-trimmed clothing, and strict social mores).

The two women deliver cautionary tales of actions that have fire-and-brimstone consequences. One is about gingerbread men revolting and attacking a baker with icing guns (“The streets run red with raspberry jam”), and another, which might have been penned by Edward Gorey, focuses on two neighbors in a lethal rivalry over topiary gardening.

Paul Barritt, the fourth and equally crucial collaborator, has created the company’s projections. The fillers are two-dimensional cartoons, variations on a theme: two women see a body lying in a room and try to help it, but as soon as they grab hold of the arms, it turns into the devil, and they are dragged away to hell; at another time they are on a boat, and a drowning man they attempt to save turns into Old Scratch and they end up in the briny. (The latter, presumably, is the source of the title.)

But more often the projections, which have been given the blips and marks of vintage silents, work in tandem with Andrade and Appleton, who have adapted themselves with clockwork timing to the cartoons and tableaux projected behind them. In “The Nine Lives of Choo Choo le Chat,” for instance, the various demises of the cat are catalogued, and score is kept on a projected chalkboard. The loss of one feline life comes amid an Old West attack by Indians. As the doomed cat stands amid arrows arching back and forth, one two-dimensional arrow suddenly pierces her three-dimensional skull in Steve Martin style. At another moment Choo Choo holds a carmine umbrella that attracts projected lightning, and zap! Catastrophe.

Barritt’s brilliant work occasionally includes assemblages of old photographs. In an episode called “The Lodger,” one sees the character’s room through a keyhole; a roach scuttles around; and some kind of liquid seems to run down the front of the picture. Combined with the eerie, underplayed narration of two little girls spying on the lodger, the result is unsettling laughter. “The lodger arrived without warning at an unsociable hour,” one girl intones. “He was a French man who didn’t appear to speak any English, or any French.”

Another episode, “The Grandmother,” includes audience participation, and the audience member who is hijacked disappears into the projection dressed as grandma and endures onscreen ordeals at the hands of the twin girls. It's a tribute to the high order of the live performance, music, and projection that one worries about the fate of the shanghaied participant inside the film. The macabre delights in this show won't surprise anyone who knows the offbeat companies that P.S. 122 presents. Here's another winner.

Playing Roles While Others Eat Them

Two characters sitting across a café table: anyone who has ever attended a short play festival or worked on partner scenes in an acting class is probably familiar with the format. Etiquette, by Anton Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali of the international Rotozaza company, is undeniably a café play. A ticket to the production requires not watching the performance, however, but enacting it. Of the many diverse offerings in The Public’s Under the Radar Festival, Etiquette perhaps most literally embodies the Festival’s name. Staged at a single table in the East Village’s bustling Veselka Café, Etiquette takes place under the radar of most of Veselka’s patrons. And though the table reserved for the production is next to a window, there is little to alert passersby to the fact that those sitting at it are engaged in anything other than typical café conversation.

A closer inspection would breed suspicion: both patrons wear headphones (separate instructions inform each participant as to what to say and do) and instead of food, the table is lined with a number of unusual miniature objects. If most café plays are staged with bare bones sets and adhere to realism, Etiquette reverses the convention. Set in a live café, the instructions that participants receive at times force them to forgo realism entirely.

Abandoning realism while in a “real” environment enhances the playfulness of the experiment. It also raises serious questions about what constitutes performance, both onstage and in daily life. How formalized need a performance be in order for it to be considered theatre?

That the characters which the production asks participants to play are specific and gendered, with exact lines and precise gestures, provides the project many of its formal elements. But if those around the performance are unaware that it is taking place, then the participants perform their roles solely for one another. Within the play, however, the characters themselves appear to perform for each other as well. In that respect alone, the project engages multiple levels of performativity – and requires participants to engage in them as well.

If everyone around the performance is indeed unaware of it – and that’s a significant if – it certainly does not mean that the participants are unaware of the public sphere of their performance. Staging the play in a setting not traditionally theatrical yet explicitly public is a key aspect of elevating the experiment to a level of theatricality, as opposed to a game of childlike make believe or simple role playing. To what extent does the presence of others affect an intimate moment?

A café is ideally suited to such an experiment in that it provides a unique balance of public and private space. The presence of uninitiated strangers is intimidating and can make participants feel self-conscious. At the same time, the strangers’ close proximity yet lack of attention has the potential to be deeply liberating, even thrilling, for the participants.

Etiquette is influenced by Godard’s 1962 film Vivre sa vie, and Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House, both groundbreaking works that examine women’s struggles for agency, and familiarity with them will enhance participants’ experience of Etiquette. Yet even participants without knowledge of the source material will find aspects of the play that resonate with them. Anyone who has ever sat across from a stranger in a café – or who has sat in a café and people-watched – will recognize the situation enough to feel comfortable in it.

The only absolutely essential quality for participants to bring to the piece is a willingness to spend half an hour engaged in a quirky performance experiment. For those who are game, the project will be a delightfully unique, entertaining exercise in communication. After half an hour of asking participants to blindly follow instructions and providing them with words to say, Etiquette will leave them with a lot to talk about.