A Magical Journey

Shakespeare’s rarely performed romance Cymbeline is a challenging play, for both actors and audience, but New York Classical Theatre’s new version is a walk in the park—literally. Director Louis Scheeder’s clear blocking and a judiciously edited script make for a delightful, accessible play. While the play’s Roman-era British lovers are constantly tossed between England, Italy, and Wales, the company leads the audience around what passes, in New York City, for a continent divided by water and mountains-the lakeside area of the north entrance. This is Shakespeare as a live road movie. It reveals the experience of the play’s weary travelers without ever making the audience weary. The plot of Cymbeline is romantic fluff with a serious and sinister undercurrent. The ineffectual, always dangerously underinformed King Cymbeline of Britain has a daughter, the princess Imogen, who has just married her lifetime best friend, the court-raised but not royally-born orphan Posthumus Leonatus. This disrupts the machinations of Imogen’s evil stepmother, who had been scheming for a match between the princess and her own stupid, crass son Cloten.

At the Queen’s instigation, Posthumus is banished to Italy, where he meets the scurrilous, stereotypically Italianate Roman courtier Iachimo, who bets Posthumus that he can make Imogen prove herself unfaithful. Posthumus’s acceptance of this bet sets into motion a plot that quickly veers toward tragedy. As the Queen and Cloten steer the royal family toward disaster, only Imogen and Posthumus can save them -- by reaffirming their belief in each other, and helping Cymbeline in spite of his abandonment of both of them.

The cohesive New York Classical company delivers many strong performances, and impressively, everyone’s speech is clearly audible in the noisy park. Most players do a great job of projecting without appearing to be shouting most of their lines. One scene, a secretive attempted seduction, is a rare exception.

As Imogen, Ginny Myers Lee gives a spirited performance that glues the episodic play together and gives the audience someone to root for. As the dangerously clever Iachimo and the dangerously stupid Cloten, respectively, Marc LeVasseur and Erik Gratton steal much of the show. LeVasseur’s haughty demeanor and Gratton’s farcical facial contortions are fantastic.

Once the going gets rough, Patrick Jones’s Posthumus exudes pathos, though he is less cholerically enraged at his apparent betrayal by Imogen than Michael Cerveris in Lincoln Center Theater’s production this past winter. As the Queen, Sherry Skinker plays the villainess with great subtlety. She is not the extreme, scary Machiavellian schemer that the character was as played, at Lincoln Center, by Phylicia Rashad, but a more convincing saboteur of her deceived husband’s kingdom.

Michael Marion's Cymbeline is tragically daft and often visibly bewildered, the unstable nucleus of this nuclear family who sends his children spiralling away. Finally, Michael Bartelle and Stephen Stout, as two forest-raised princes on the edge of adulthood, communicate both childlike wonder and the eloquence that eludes the clumsy Cloten.

Unlike LCT, New York Classical has intelligently cut the script down to a manageable length, removing extraneous characters, muddy political exposition, an entire family of archaic ghost figures, and—given that this is park theatre—all references to walls and furniture. Amelia Dombrowski’s costume design clearly delineates Romans from Britains—the former in haughty red capes, the latter decked with earth-tone Celtic plaid; and follows the English Renaissance theatrical convention of using contemporary costume—meaning, doublets and gowns—even in plays set in earlier periods.

To sum up, this Cymbeline is seamless, familial, and suspenseful, with more profound changes in the characters’ emotional lives than costume changes. Go see it, and let New York Classical take you on a truly magical journey.

An Epic Battle

Don’t Worry, Be Jewish, a musical now playing at the Promise Theater, features nothing less than a battle royale between good and evil for the souls of its young protagonists. Good ultimately triumphs – no surprise there – but the bigger revelation is the amount of talent on display on this show, presented by the Children’s Talent Development Fund. CTDF is a non-profit founded five years ago by Marina Lerner as an outlet and training ground for talented youngsters – specifically, youngsters who were first generation American offspring of former Soviet residents. CTDF provides rehearsal space and brings in professional coaches, directors, designers and choreographers to help these children hone their abilities.

Eventually, Lerner partnered with fellow parent and creative type Mark Kleyner to create “Our Talented Program,” one of the few current Russian children’s television programs. Kleyner has written, along with musicians and lyricists Alexander Butov and Brian Starr and translator Julia Burke, Jewish. The show follows the lives of Chaim (Nathan Kay) and Sherianna (Kristina Biddle), brought together as their siblings wed at a seemingly high-profile wedding (with reporters and stylists on hand).

Jewish takes on fable form as, in a magically realistic way, King Solomon (Tyler Hall and Mitchell Sapoff in alternating performances) and the Devil himself (Tyler Hall and Kaitlin Novak share the role) arrive to tempt the young children down different paths. As a result, the two must discover exactly what it means to be Jewish, and whether or not each wishes to reclaim the faith under which they have been raised.

Kleyner’s script could stand to be more fleshed out; it is not always clear, particularly in the beginning, who is who and whether the appearance of King Solomon and the Devil occur in real time or if they are figments of Chaim and Sherianna’s minds. But more importantly, Jewish is an outstanding vehicle for its cast, who are as richly talented as they are light on years. Kay ably carries the show in his leading role, and Biddle’s gorgeous voice calls out to Broadway.

The entire supporting cast is on par with the two leads. Novak, who portrayed the Devil in the performance I saw, is a natural singer-dancer, and relishes his time in the spotlight. Natalya Chamruk, Elina Rakhlin and Simona Meynekhdrun fully inhabit their small roles of photographers and stylists (particularly Rakhlin, as the dim bulb of the set). Sapoff wisely uses grandiose gestures for his role as the wise king, and Elan David Kvitko, one of the older actors in the show, was also a poised presence as a photographer – I wish he had been utilized more in the show.

Butov’s and Starr’s songs are also credible, including the title song, “Sunshine and Rain,” and “What Would Life Be Without Magic.” All of these songs find a catchy way to appeal to its young audience while still entwining aspects of the Jewish culture. Accordingly, orchestrator Alexander Ratmansky is also to be commended, as is choreographer Jessica Redish and lighting designers Michael and Stanislav Nemoy.

Jewish certainly aims high, requesting its young cast to enact very heavy themes – it does not get much weightier than questioning one’s faith. But Kleyner, who directs this solid show in addition to creating it, does an incredible job with his entire ensemble, instilling exactly what one might expect from the playhouse in which Jewish is performed: the Promise Theater.

Mark His Words

Some people are a jack of all trades but a master of none, while others, like the cast of BeTwixt, BeTween and BeTWAIN, appear to have seamlessly mastered a dizzying assortment of trades. Take, for example, the production's musical director, Danny Ashkenasi. He is also the writer of the play's book, lyrics and music, and is featured throughout the performance as a piano player and performer. BeTwixt, BeTween and BeTWAIN also has a strong multi-talented ensemble in Aaron Piazza, Jennifer Eden, Alexander Gonzales, Rachel Green, Andrea Pinyan and Michael Satow. There seems to be no end to the number of instruments this troupe can play: piano, flute, violin, accordion, oboe, clarinet, triangle, guitar, harmonica, maracas, wooden frogs – even forks and knives.

The ensemble never loses their zest or energy, an incredible feat considering the demands placed on their abilities in this packed night of music. The evening begins with some of Mark Twain’s lighter tales: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, A Genuine Mexican Plug, and Blue Jays. Ashkenasi’s musical adaptation of these tales highlights Twain’s humorous eye for life’s small details and people’s unique oddities. He has chosen works with topics that one would never imagine anyone could write a story about, let alone a musical.

The mood turns slightly bleaker in The Californian’s Tale; a mysterious account of a town mad with love over a young woman suspiciously absent from the scene, and Cannibalism in the Cars, a darkly comedic song that Satow delivers with the perfect blend of hilarity and horror. Act one concludes with Life on the Mississippi, a soft, trance-like tribute to the river that has become synonymous with the name Mark Twain.

The second act is a musical adaptation of Twain’s popular travel literature, The Innocents Abroad (or The New Pilgrim’s Progress), chronicling the adventures of tourists as they trek through Europe in search of the Holy Land. Each stop on the tour is told through a series of songs, the most comical being Italy’s Michaelangelo, where the tourists have some fun with their stuffy museum guide asking if everything from Egyptian artifacts to pieces created a million years ago were created by Michaelangelo. Remember Me is another stand-out, addressing the somber moment every bright-eyed tourist encounters when their travels take them to Pompeii.

The length and complexity of each song does give the latter part of the evening a longer, heavier feel, especially given that these are not fluffy commercial jingles, but compact musical stories. But, while some musical interludes may feel weighty and unnecessary, none are uninspired. The actors appear to be having a great deal of fun with their roles. They commit to them without reserve, unafraid to twist their handsome features into ridiculous, ugly expressions.

Rachel Green, in particular, has a funny visual moment where she stands hunched over on a chair, neighing like a lame horse while simultaneously playing a violin, infusing a beautiful classical soundtrack into her own silly scene.

As the backbone of the production, Ashkenasi has an absorbing stage presence. When you have an artist this involved in their work you know you are seeing a fully realized vision that is deeply personal to that artist. There are special moments in beTwixt, beTween, and beTWAIN, outside of the story, where it is fun to watch Ashkenasi close his eyes on the sheet music and play the melody he hears in his head.

Mark Twain may have written the tales, but the collection of tunes belong to Ashkenasi and the six person ensemble of DiPiazza, Eden, Gonzales, Green, Pinyan and Satow, whose combined efforts give this production a fun and energetic life.

Might Have Beens

The script for Conor McPherson’s 2001 play Port Authority seems like a director’s dream: utterly bereft of stage directions, the play invites seemingly endless possibilities. Yet, their absence can also hamstring a director. How much license may one take with a play devoid of stage directions? In the Atlantic Theater Company’s current production of Port Authority, the answer is not much, and this otherwise riveting production suffers for it. Kevin (John Gallagher, Jr.), Dermot (Brian d’Arcy James) and Joe (Jim Norton) are, respectively, young, middle-aged and old, and each has a sometimes-heartbreaking tale of love and loss to tell. Sharing a bare stage and a large bench, the three men alternate their tales, rising and approaching the audience in turn: first Kevin, then Dermot, and then Joe. They repeat this process until each story is fully told.

Kevin is in love with a plucky young female housemate he knows he will never pursue. Dermot, likely an alcoholic, with a wife who married him because she pitied him, relates a humorous yet poignant tale of mistakenly being hired for a coveted job because his employers thought he was someone else. Joe, an adult-home resident, tells perhaps the deepest story of all, about an innocent yet guilt-ridden secret he has kept for decades.

While one character is in full-throated monologue, the other two rest on or around the bench, mostly oblivious to the actor who is speaking. Each has a characteristic waiting mode: Kevin is sullen and frustrated, Dermot is resigned, and Joe is puzzled and searching. Since the monologues of Joe and Dermot are very loosely interconnected, Joe might prick up his ears, almost telepathically, when Dermot mentions something related to him.

Because of their abilities to keep an audience rapt, the actors, particularly Messrs. d’Arcy James and Norton, save this play. Under Mr. Wishcamper’s direction, each actor basically stands there, delivering his monologue. The youthful Kevin moves most onstage, but his gesticulations seem reserved given the material he relates to us.

The gripping d’Arcy James and the affable Norton hold the audience’s attention all on their own, despite Matthew Richards' meager use of lighting and Bart Fasbender’s employment of only the faintest of background sounds to occasionally illuminate the words. Each actor would have benefited, at various times, from a spotlight. Mr. Richards dims the stage lighting, dutifully, only in the closing seconds of each monologue. The result is as predictable as knowing which actor speaks next. The play would have also benefited from, at least occasionally, darkening the inactive characters rather than continuously bathing them in dull florescent overhead lighting.

One wishes that Mr. Wishcamper and his cohorts had made more use of the Atlantic’s Linda Gross Theater’s considerable attributes. As a gothic revival church more than a century old, the space lends itself to the uniquely dramatic. Yet, the gigantic square stage platform is utilized conservatively. Takeshi Kata’s staging replicates a bare bones bus terminal, perhaps in accordance with the curious title of the play, though the only direction the script provides indicates that it is set in the theater.

Mr. McPherson’s monologues, characteristic of about half his plays to date, are composed of poetic and sometimes devastating stand-alone sentences, rarely longer than a few lines. On the page, they read like prose poetry. While the ultimate emphasis is, rightly, on these anguished words, so much more could have been done with this production of Port Authority that its own “might have beens” are almost fitting for the material. One feels that the production adds so little to those words.

Fortunately, the actors, for the most part, masterfully translate that material to the stage, though, ultimately, if I had to recommend one over the other, I would choose the book, particularly for those with imaginations more vivid than fluorescent.

War of the Words

For a play that is ostensibly about the unstoppable machine of war, about the moral quandaries and mythologizing of its participants and perpetrators, Irondale Ensemble Project's The Great American All-Star Traveling War Machine is an enjoyable, funny romp through several centuries of human history. Too smart to be a blaring critique, the show is a good dramatization of the magazine that inspired it: Lapham’s Quarterly, the first issue of which was entitled “States of War." The magazine included essays from critics living and deceased, and attempted to approach its subject from an objective and detached perspective. Though the Ensemble's approach is all encompassing, their compilation is clearly intended to criticize war. With such a grand scheme, the show can sometimes be an unfocused critique, but overall it is as complex as the emotions that fuel the war machine. The opening sequence features a song and dance that playfully mocks the ways war influences culture. A narrator (an ironically professorial Damen Scranton) gleefully prances and twists an umbrella, announcing a long list of conflicts. Things become less chipper with the mention of the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. While it is true that the audience is more likely to have strong emotions and personal connections to these more recent wars, the show is founded on a premise that no war is more “meaningful” than another (or, in the words of Mark Twain, “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”)

From the opener, the play shifts in time—in thematic, rather than chronological leaps—and includes an inspiring speech from General Patton (a fierce, yet playful Patrena Murray, who is astounding in all of her roles), a humorous exchange of telegrams between Kaiser Wilhelm II (Willie) and Tsar Nicholas II (Nicky) on the eve of WWI, Elizabeth I’s speech at Tillary, an AA meeting attended by Kurt Vonnegut, a petulant Nixon and a paternal Kissinger, plus more. Interspersed between the sketches and monologues are American pop songs, highlighting the vast cultural machine of distraction—vital for a nation, but no less disturbing for that.

The emotional jumps in the show require frequent and sudden shifts in tone. From the proud Elizabeth to a young soldier confronting his kill, Patrena Murray embodies these transitions best and thereby demonstrates the layers of man’s reactions to war. The rest of the cast is a multi-talented group of actors who share with their director, Jim Niesen, keen wit, cheekiness, and general ease.

Some sketches are less strong than others, and with such frequent changes in time, place, and perspective, the show can seem disjointed. This style links the show with a cabaret tradition that favors quick laughs over plot and character development. For example, the choppiness and questionable importance of a Rambo sketch and one about Alexander the Great point to some of the problems with covering so much ground. However, because of the skill of the actors, and the director’s trust in their abilities, the production is still compelling.

In addition to their talents as comedians, the cast is quite capable of churning out moving scenes that focus on the tragic losses of war. The most affecting are a piece that integrates the tale of a soldier’s death in WWII with the lyrics of an achingly lovely Australian war song, and an interpretation of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried .

Acknowledging the bravery, and power, required to fuel a war effort does not, however, amount to support, and the ensemble is made up of some conscientious objectors. Yet, the show does a great service to American tradition by exploring various perspectives to interrogate a collective past.

The Great American All-Star Traveling War Machine is a refreshing piece of theater that graciously avoids the easy propaganda of an issue play while still giving serious, if often ironic, consideration to the gravest of topics. Yet, because of the cabaret structure, the play has the unfortunate tendency to rapidly skate over the deep issues it raises. It might not be a wholly saving grace, but the finale is a neat and stunning summary of their ideas: a scene involving no fanfare, no iconography, no idolatry; just some faded jackets representing the emptiness of the endeavor, and a song bitter in its blind hopefulness: “We’ll meet again some day, some sunny day.”

Obies!

The 53rd Annual Village Voice Obie Awards were presented the evening of May 19, 2008 at Webster Hall, and yes, offoffonline was there.

This year's ceremony marks the return of the Obies to Webster Hall after their sojourn to the NYU Skirball Center. Attendees manifested enthusiasm concerning this change, and Webster Hall, with its flickering red fire lanterns, ornate molding and sometimes-scary relief sculptures, does seem like a particularly appropriate venue for an Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater event.

Co-hosts for the evening were Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp. Presenters included Jonathan Groff, Priscilla Lopez, Marisa Tomei, Bradley Whitford, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Julie White. Attendees enjoyed a rousing performance of two songs by the Passing Strange ensemble, leading some to dance along by their seats or even in the aisles.

For the first time, this year's Obies have been webcast, and the complete ceremony can be viewed at www.villagevoice.com/obies.

Congratulations to all those whose achievements were honored this year. We look forward to seeing more of your work.

The Winners:

Playwriting
Horton Foote, Dividing The Estate
David Henry Hwang, Yellow Face

Direction
Krzysztof Warlikowski, Krum
David Cromer, Adding Machine

Performance
LisaGay Hamilton, The Ohio State Murders
Kate Mulgrew, Iphigenia 2.0
Francis Jue, Yellow Face
Rebecca Wisocky, Amazons and Their Men
Joel Hatch, Adding Machine
Heidi Schreck, Drum Of The Waves Of Horikawa
Veanne Cox, Sustained Excellence of Performance
Sean McNall, Sustained Excellence of Performance
Ensemble, Passing Strange:(De'Adre Aziza, Daniel Breaker, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Stew)

Design
Takeshi Kata, Set - Keith Parham, Lighting Design, Adding Machine
Peter Ksander, Scenic Design, Untitled Mars (This Title May Change)
Ben Katchor, Drawings; John Findlay & Jeff Sugg, Set & Projection; Russell H. Champa, Lighting Design, The Slug Bearers Of Kayrol Island
Jane Greenwood; Sustained Excellence of Costume Design
David Zinn; Sustained Excellence of Costume and Set Design

Special Citations
Nature Theater of Oklahoma, No Dice
David Greenspan, The Argument
Best New Theater Piece: $1,000 Stew, Heidi Rodewald, Annie Dorsen, Passing Strange

The Ross Wetzsteon Award $2,000
Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project

Lifetime Achievement Award
Adrienne Kennedy

Obie Grants
Keen Company $5,000
Theater of a Two-Headed Calf $5,000

When the Audience Takes the Stage

Audiences beware: the fourth wall can’t protect you. At least, that seems to be the message behind the T. Schreiber Studio’s charming double billing of works by Christopher Durang and Tom Stoppard. As both contain a play-within-a-play, they thrust spectator characters into the limelight. In Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare, an accountant takes a wrong turn and finds himself being forced to replace an injured Edwin Booth in a mysterious production. In Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, two theater critics wind up participating in the show they’ve come to review. Durang’s Nightmare posits what would happen if a man, sans rehearsals (and, in this case, knowledge of his name or prior acting experience), was unexpectedly thrown onstage. The concept is amusing enough and produces a lot of great squirm humor. While you empathize with George Spelvin, the unfortunate and sudden actor, the sheer awkwardness of both the situation and how he handles it are hilarious. As Spelvin, Michael Black is an endearingly pathetic chump. He’s best when Spelvin actually tries to act and gets excited about his temporary triumphs. In these little victories (between many, many disasters), Black grins like a five-year-old who just won the class spelling bee. His surge of ridiculous confidence comes in the form of adding special accents or flourishes to his performance. As the audience knows a fall is inevitable, the fleeting second of success is precious.

The problem with the show is that the time allotted to the plot greatly exceeds the depth of the joke. He’s not supposed to be there, he’s uncomfortable, and he’s panicking. We get it. There’s really no reason to make this go on for longer than 10-15 minutes, but Durang seems to have really wanted to make his poor character suffer. We see a mash-up of words and scenes from Shakespeare, Noel Coward, and Samuel Beckett. The ensuing collage and butchering of assorted lines is entertaining, but could be curtailed. For an actor, perhaps watching this go on and on is cathartic. For an audience member, it’s boring.

In Stoppard’s play, two theater critics have come to watch a murder mystery, but are completely preoccupied with their own concerns. Moon (Julian Elfer), young and overly insecure, is distracted by office politics, while Birdboot (Rick Forstmann), old and overly excitable, is distracted by his libido.

Both actors make their characters equal parts blowhard and fool. Elfer gives Moon just the right amount of bumbling neuroticism as he obsesses over his status as a second-string critic and consistently tries to prove himself through pretentious analysis. As Birdboot, Forstmann nimbly shifts between self-righteous husband and skirt-chaser. Although he talks through the show, the experienced critic is still a stickler for the details: he whips out his binoculars during an onstage kiss to determine whether or not “her mouth is open.”

Modeled in the Agatha Christie mold, the show they’ve come to critique pans out like a comically campy live-action Clue. The satirical touches aren’t exactly original, but they hit the mark thanks to performances completely invested in the farce and jokes (and plot points) that are repeated so often they reach their comical apex the moment they should start to annoy you (this holds true particularly for a maid with a bulging-eye problem).

While both plays’ antics elicit chuckles, there is nothing exceptional, or particularly exciting, about them. With very safe pacing and style, the entire production seems to suffer from a strict dedication to tradition. Perhaps it is the firm footing provided by such experienced playwrights that convinces the director and actors to stay so close to the beaten path. Perhaps it is the fact that tradition can be beautiful (one look at George Allison’s old-school proscenium archway, velvet boxes, and chandeliers would say so). But without a stamp of originality, this two-play production fails to be distinct or memorable. Fourth wall shattering? Yes. Earth shattering? Certainly not.

I'll Trade You an Apple For A. . .

Who'd have thought that a golden apple could cause so much trouble? In the time before the Trojan War, Paris, Prince of Troy, is given an apple which he is to bestow onto the most beautiful goddess. Does he choose Hera, who promises him power; Athena, who promises him fame; or Aphrodite, who promises him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen? He chooses Aphrodite, and so Company XIV's The Judgment of Paris begins, tracing the course of the Trojan War from its very beginning. A piece of dance theater, baroque stylings and the can-can are featured as prominently as the story of Paris and Helen is.

The set is visible to the audience from the moment they enter Company XIV's space in Brooklyn. Scaffolds line both sides of the stage, under which are dressing and prop areas. The space in between is bare. Performers mill about, pulling on costumes, adjusting their hair, and casually greeting friends who enter. The lights dim, and a rousing can-can dance begins.

The dance is energetic, as is all of the dance in the show. When the war begins, four dancers move across the fog covered stage, two of the dancers lie on the ground and clasp the ankles of the other two, who drag the prostrate bodies over the floor. The strength of the dance makes the weakness of the acting and the much abbreviated story all that much more noticeable. Instead of allowing events to unfold on their own on stage, narration constantly interrupts the story, as if the audience needed to be reminded that it was watching a performance. The same actor portrays the narrator, Paris, and Menelaus, using the same well enunciated but flat tone for each character. It is unclear why Aphrodite, goddess of passion and love, should be the one to help ready the soldiers for war. At the end of the war, with Paris dead and Troy in ruins, Menelaus tells his (former?) wife Helen that she is a whore and a murder. His accusations seem odd and out of place, given that he considered her worth gathering an army and sailing off to war for.

The piece's treatment of Helen is interesting. Is she, as Menelaus says, a whore? Or a victim? Did she want to go off with Paris or was she just a pawn in an elaborate game set up by the gods before time began? The woman portraying her never speaks, yet we hear “Helen” speak, always through the voice of someone else. Her disembodied voice is evidence of the object that she has been made into, simply because she is beautiful. In the traditional Trojan War myth, Helen ultimately ends up returning home with Menelaus. The Judgment of Paris assigns a new, unfortunate fate to Helen. Suddenly, the erotic, alluring dances performed by Aphrodite's collection of cupids no longer seem so erotic or alluring when the completely victimized Helen is forced to perform them, a look of utter distress upon her face.

The Judgment of Paris is largely uneven. The show tackles too much at once in combining dance, theater, and a very large story into a scant 90 minutes. The result is a watered-downed attempt at greatness, evidence of a group of talented performers and a show that needs focus.

You Can't Take It With You

Medieval morality plays, instructive texts intended to convince audiences to lead more pious lives, served as a sort of early prototype for the after-school special. At the outset of the classic morality play Everyman, God sends Death to summon the title character. Unprepared for a reckoning with God, Every asks to bring someone along on the journey, only to discover that friends, family, and material goods – everything Everyman thought important – refuse to come along, and that ultimately, only good deeds can follow man beyond the grave. Fittingly, the current production at Looking Glass Theatre, which purports to produce theater while “exploring a female vision,” features a female Every (Charlotte Purser). That raises the question of how shifting the gender of a character intended as a prototype for all humanity affects a story. Under director Shari Johnson, the answer is: not much. Save its gender-bending casting, this is a production that allows the text to speak for itself, without grafting contemporary choices or questions onto it.

When it works, it does so because the themes of the 500-plus-year-old-play continue to resonate today. Though the play is steeped in the rhetoric and beliefs of Medieval Catholicism, as a parable, it favors universal abstraction over explicit cultural specificities. Each of the characters (Fellowship, Knowledge, Good Deeds, etc) is a personified form of an abstract idea.

The Looking Glass production opens majestically, with several cast members performing the role of God as a choral recitation. Calling down to the audience from above the stage, they appear to the audience as a formless celestial being wrapped in lighting designer Rachelle Beckerman’s awesome gold pinpricks of light. Once the action of the play becomes earthbound, so do the actors. Scenic designer Wheeler Kincaid’s set is covered in brown ropes and sack cloth; costume designer Mark Richard Caswell has outfitted the actors in earth-toned ensembles evocative of the Middle Ages.

Performing a singular quality poses an interesting acting challenge; The Looking Glass production would be stronger if Johnson had the cast meet it more uniformly. At times, the actors nail the personification of the ideas they embody, as when Kimberlee Walker portrays Strength with a buoyant confidence and Anne Gill depicts Discretion by carefully parsing her thoughts. Elsewhere, embodiment of a performative quality takes a backseat to pure enthusiasm performing; Megan Gaffney’s Knowledge is bursting with earnest energy but never comes across as, well, knowledgeable. The production is at its best in scenes that embrace the play’s explicitly instructive nature while remaining mindful of its details. Phillip Chavira and Jonah Dill-D’Ascoli in particular stand out as Kindred and Cousin, achieving a familial rapport while taking real pleasure in the presentationalism of their roles. It would be nice to see that balance of qualities elsewhere in the production.

The power of the morality tale in the Middle Ages surely derived, in part, from the steadfast belief of the performers in the profundity of their message. Yet, a sense of urgency and weighty import is absent from this production. In its place is a faithful presentation of a historic text. History buffs should take note.

Shipwrecked

The subtitle of The Accidental Patriot describes its protagonist, Desmond Connelly, as “Irish by birth, English by blood, and American by inclination.” Such a pedigree is sure to leave even the most well-adjusted expat with an identity crisis. Connelly, however, is remarkably stable. The same cannot be said for this play, which swerves all over the dramatic landscape. Presented as a swashbuckling history lesson on the American Revolution mixed with a father quest and a capella songs, it's not surprising that the show comes off a bit disorganized. The Accidental Patriot is essentially a revenge play. After a cocky British admiral sweeps into Boston and kills Connelly’s close friend in a duel, he vows to take the murderer down and hops on a ship to chase after him. After watching Connelly in action for a bit, it’s clear you shouldn’t do the following around him: bring up his family (a dead mom, an anonymous dad who abandoned him), question his patriotism for any one of the countries where he’s lived, or murder his friends. And throughout the play, people just can’t seem to stop doing these things.

With a bland script and an inconsistent tone, the show lacks cohesion. The cast seems absolutely adrift as they work through their scenes. As the production seesaws between hilariously bad and just plain bad, it’s hard to tell whether or not the comic portions are intentional. The ensemble, for one, shifts between acting distractingly overzealous (lots of grunting and side conversations) and bored as they sit in the background or even perform scene changes. As Connelly’s love interest, Liza Wade White has an American Katherine Hepburn accent that just doesn’t make sense coming from her British character.

The two actors that manage to rise slightly above the mess are Cameron J. Oro as Connelly and David Bengali as the pansy adopted son of his nemesis. Even when the play drags, Oro is quite charming with his big smile and smooth, deep voice. He easily fits the image of a leader men would rally around. An excellent comic foil, Bengali is all scrawny limbs and bad comebacks.

Bengali also designed the show’s sweeping playground of a set. The masts, nets, ropes, and barrels provide a nice springboard for the action-packed fight scenes. Cleanly choreographed by Barbara Charlene, these are the best parts of the show. The swordplay is further enhanced by much swinging, jumping, and climbing.

Unfortunately, the dialogue doesn’t pack the same punch as, well, the punches. When the answer to the play’s central mystery becomes painfully obvious (which happens about ten minutes into the show), the scenes drag.

A consistently campy tone and more jokes would add some much needed pep to the production. As Oro and Bengali so smoothly execute their amusing interactions, and the rest of the cast waits in dire need of comic relief, a stronger tone of parody seems like the best course. Until then, this ship is adrift.

Good Earnest Fun

For its latest production, The Pearl Theater Company delivers a tight and charming version of Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest.Despite a few moments of wobbling British accents and slightly off-the-mark casting, theatergoers are nonetheless sure to have a very pleasurable evening.

Set in late Victorian England, the play is a comedic farce that explores social hypocrisy amongst the upper classes. Its two leading men, Algernon (Sean McNall) and Jack (Bradford Cover), will go to any lengths to avoid social obligations that they would rather skip.

To sneak off to the city and escape his attractive 18-year-old ward Cecily (a dewy Ali Ahn), Jack pretends that he has a troubled brother named Ernest, and actually assumes the name Ernest himself while in London, even wooing a woman under his false name. Meanwhile, to escape tiresome dinners with his Aunt, Algernon is constantly visiting an ailing friend named Bunberry, a move he calls "Bunberry-ing." And as the lies and false identities compound and intermingle, they result in some very funny situations.

Wilde's most popular play The Importance of Being Earnest is full of dry and deft lines, delivered with skill and timing by both McNall (who makes a delightful dandy) and the more rooted but also talented Cover. The two men play well off of each other, and the opening scenes fly by.

When Jack/Ernest's ladylove Lady Gwendolyn Fairfax (Rachel Botchan) arrives on the scene, Jack's newly proposed engagement with her risks being stymied by the imposing and socially conscious Lady Bracknell (a less convincing Carol Schultz), unless Jack can produce proof of suitable lineage.

Botchan adds a unique dimension to Lady Fairfax, portraying an intelligence and an edge not normally attributed to her character. As a result, it is somehow less believable to hear her proclaim herself simply incapable of marrying a man whose name is not Earnest.

McNall's scenes with Ahn, as Cecily, highlight the second act, and Ahn exhibits a comfortable ease with Wilde's language. There are also some nice moments in the competitive tete-a-tete tea scene between Botchan and Ahn.

Director J.R. Sullivan guides his actors well throughout, though there are some scenes that could have benefited from less static staging, especially in the latter half of the play.

Harry Feiner's sets are especially lovely in the third act, when they are tinged with dusky pinks, and Devon Painter's costumes contribute throughout to the period effect.

Joanne Camp and TJ Edwards are charming in their respective roles as Cecily's governess, Miss Prism, and her sweet love interest, the Reverend Canon Chausable. Dominic Cuskern turns in solid work in two minor servant roles.

Overall the play is good fun, with great writing and some very charismatic cast members. It's worth a see!

Handle With Care

Substitution, the first offering from Playwrights Realm, a new producing organization, is an honorable if imperfect inaugural show. Artistic directors John Dias and Katherine Kovner have found a playwright, Anton Dudley, with a poetic sensibility and a gift for language, particularly in his monologues, and some skill at creating interesting characters. But no playwright is without flaws, and Dudley’s virtues cannot disguise some implausible plotting. Jan Maxwell plays a woman known only as Calvin’s Mom, and it’s clear from her first monologue that she is deeply bereft and bewildered after her 16-year-old son has been killed, along with many other students, on a school field trip. Maxwell plumbs the agony of Mom, the resentment and anger and loneliness, all of which are exacerbated when she runs into Paul, a substitute teacher who had Calvin in his class. In the impossible role of Paul, Kieran Campion manages to create a character who is both fascinating and frustrating. Jittery and logorrheic and frequently juvenile, but earnest and boyishly charming, Paul is unbelievable as an adult and yet convincing as an impulsive, damaged man-child.

Two additional characters are Jule (Shana Dowdeswell) and Dax (Brandon Espinoza). They appear in a small upper aperture on Tom Gleeson’s minimal but serviceable set, whose only furniture is a desk and chair and whose walls are shades of blue, to suggest the lake that plays a crucial part in the story. Dressed in the costumes of superheroes of their own devising (actually, they’re by Theresa Squire), Jule is Winged Girl and Dax is Merboy, and as Dudley’s play unfolds it becomes clear that they are part of the field trip that Calvin is on, and that one of them just may have engineered the explosion that sank their boat and killed them and Calvin. Dax and Jule never interact with Paul and Mom, however: Dudley is telling parallel stories that only intersect at the explosion.

The title, Substitution, may apply to the personae of the superheroes that Dax and Jule assume, or to Paul’s teaching status, or to his attempt to become an emotional substitute for Calvin in Mom’s life, or to a figurine that Paul treasures because it reminds him of Calvin. Director Kovner keeps all those questions open as she guides the actors through the awkward plotting.

Dudley is writing, in part, about the fragility of life and the acceptance of death. Says Dax to Jule: “That’s the part I hate—that moment of no turning back?—that little sound, so fast you might not’ve even heard it and it’s like—wuh oh!—no more choices, something final happened. A little death.” Their conversation preceding the explosion is in counterpoint to the aftermath that Mom and Paul must deal with.

The world of the characters, however, stretches credibility. In what high school is ethics a semester-long class, like history? How would a teacher of that ethics class be able to justify to parents a boat ride on a lake, with the students dressed up as superheroes—never mind to a school board that presumably would fund the outing? Would school chaperones allow a student to go on the trip bare-chested, as Dax is, and especially on water? Even Jule is concerned about his catching cold—surely school officials would be?

An even more bizarre notion is that a person with Paul’s obvious instability would be hired as a substitute teacher and be promoted within weeks to assistant principal. (Apparently neither Dudley nor Kovner has heard of seniority or teachers’ unions.) "You’re a child yourself,” Mom tells him, and indeed, Paul’s relationship to Calvin is that of a child who forms strong attachments suddenly.

In spite of such flaws, the acting is committed and excellent. Brandon Espinoza as Dax captures youth’s sense of indestructibility, and Shana Dowdeswell is fine as the unsettling Jule, full of adolescent adoration for the unsuspecting Dax. Mom and Paul eventually bond as well, although a scene in which Paul, stripped to his briefs, performs drunken calisthenics for her on their first “date,” is plain preposterous.

Nonetheless, they all manage to create characters that hold one's interest. Whether that is an indication of Dudley’s raw talent or of the supreme skills of the players may not be answered until more of his work is seen. Certainly The Playwrights Realm has given him an auspicious beginning.

Slowly, With Love

If the best theater takes us to a world we do not know, then Ayub Khan-Din’s Rafta, Rafta... succeeds brilliantly. It is a study of two families, the Dutts and the Patels, both immigrants from India to Britain, and so assimilated that the younger generation speaks with cockney accents. That generation includes Atul Dutt and Vina Patel, whose wedding is being celebrated as the play opens. But because of misunderstandings, immature pranks, and impulsive moments that accumulate to a tipping point, the wedding night hits a major snag. The conflicts and crises in Rafta, Rafta… are generational, social, and sexual, and they are both universally recognizable and particular to the characters. Eeshwar Dutt (Ranjit Chowdhry) arrived in England poor and made his way through life as a factory worker. His son Atul (a slightly baby-faced but handsome Manish Dayal) is a movie projectionist, but he has ambitions, and Eeshwar cannot understand why Atul should expect more from life. “I worked in the factory all my life!” he exclaims, and one senses that he needs validation for his choices by having his son follow in his footsteps. But Atul sees opportunities in the world, and he wants the freedom to seize them.

During the post-wedding party at the Dutts’ home, Eeshwar gets drunk, belittles his son, and humiliates him into an arm-wrestling match that Atul loses. Atul’s younger brother Jai (Satya Babha) and a couple friends sabotage the marriage bed so that it collapses, and, before the night is over, the mood for consummation between optimistic Atul and his devoted Vina (Reshma Shetty) has been destroyed. In Judd Apatow’s hands, say, this crisis could easily be a smutty sex comedy about getting laid, but director Scott Elliott knows this story is far subtler. Shetty and Dayal communicate a love so certain between their likable characters that the rift that grows between them raises the stakes beyond those of any sitcom. It flirts with pain and the human condition, and is the richer for it.

Atul and Vina try to hide the problem but can’t, and pretty soon a forlorn Vina confides the situation to her mother, Lata (Sarita Choudhury). The crisis then exposes the secrets and the fault lines in the parents’ marriages, as Khan-Din skillfully strips away the facades of the Dutts’ and Patels’ unions. Lopa Dutt, played with loving wisdom and forbearance by Sakina Jaffrey, secretly drove away her husband’s best friend, Brijesh, but with good reason: Eeshwar was so attached to Brijesh that the latter accompanied them on their honeymoon. It was a deeper relationship that stood in the way of her own, and it had to end. “With a woman the home comes first,” she says, “not friendship.” She’s not about to let anything come between her son and his new bride, not even Eeshwar.

Lata Patel, meanwhile, has resented her daughter’s closeness to father Laxman (Alok Tewari), and got back at her husband in a Gift of the Magi sort of twist by persuading a young Vina to cut off her long, plaited hair, which Laxman loved. Laxman recognized it was an attack on him, and there has been no physical affection between the Patels since. Vina has resented her mother for the matrimonial chill.

Throughout, Khan-Din (who has based the play on another, called All in Good Time, by Bill Naughton) nimbly shows us a world in which the simple, silly mistakes of ordinary people are compounded through a lack of communication into formidable barriers to happiness. There are minor flaws—a running joke at the end is so overworked it gasps to the finish line—but on the whole <Rafta, Rafta… is a pleasure. (The title is the beginning of an Indian love poem that begins “Slowly, slowly….)

The New Group has mounted the production with great care. It requires a two-level set showing four rooms, and Derek McLane has obliged with a sumptuously colorful and detailed middle-class home for the Dutts. Theresa Squire’s costumes shimmer with color, jewels, spangles, and embroidery.

Elliott’s fine cast has found the emotional truth of the characters, although several still needed to work on technique at a press preview. Occasionally the accented voices became garbled, or they dropped below audibility in a fairly intimate theater. No doubt those problems will be worked out so that this fine play will look and sound even better.

The Value of a Letter

In an age where tabloids exploit the privacies of celebrities to an alarming degree, the question of whether a famous person has the right to have a private life or not is worth considering. What about after he is dead, can his private past become public knowledge? First published 120 years ago, Henry James' novella, The Aspern Papers explored such questions while exploring the lengths people will go to in order to get what they want. Turtle Shell Productions presents an able adaptation (by Martin Zuckerman) of the story, one that fully brings the characters and setting to life. As the play opens, a man, Walter, appears at the secluded Venetian estate of Juliana Bordereau. He is enamored with the garden and begs Juliana's niece, Tita, to convince her aunt to allow him to lease a few rooms in the house and also tend to the garden. Juliana lets him the rooms, but for a dear price. Walter's intentions are not at first made known, but as time goes on (and flowers continue to bloom in the stage garden, as if by magic), he makes his intentions clear, at least to Tita.

Walter is an academic, and is after letters written from the late poet James Aspern to Juliana, in order to complete his biography. Tita, played in a chaste but beguiling manner by Elisabeth Grace Rothan, who has fallen for Walter, allows him to think that she will aid him in his quest. The play is suspenseful; never at any time is one able to predict the outcome. Will Tita win Walter? Will Walter get the papers? And, do we even want him to get them? The entire time, it is uncertain whether we can trust Walter, or whether we can trust any of the characters, as each is so bent on obtaining their desires that it seems they may put aside all reason and invoke any rationale in order to do so.

The intriguing story is aided by the elements of the stage. The lighting, designed by Shaun Suchan, features deep blues and purples, which enhance the blue color of much of the set and furniture. Throughout the play, the originally dead garden is transformed into a living oasis of color. The costumes, by A. Christina Giannini, are exquisite and capture the style of the time. The actors each do a fine job. Carol Lambert, as Juliana, a 150-year-old woman, conveys strength while simultaneously seeming as if she may give out at any moment. Kelly King, as Walter, is charming, while Rothan is convincing as an isolated, slightly desperate spinster.

In the end, who do we side with, the scholar who wants personal information for the sake of academia or the woman who clings to her privacy? As each character has good and bad sides, it is hard to choose, although James makes his point clear enough in the end. The Aspern Papers is an engaging show, proof that literary adaptations are able to lift themselves from the page and become fully alive.

Beyond TKTS: A User’s Guide to Cheap Theater Tix

When the Off-Off-Broadway movement exploded onto the New York theater scene in the 1960s, it went with the territory that noncommercial theater would be affordable theater. The reputation stuck: to this day, the affordability of downtown theater is often touted as one of its greatest selling points. Yet, with production costs on the rise, downtown ticket prices are also moving upwards. Even $15-20 tickets can quickly add up for anyone who sees a lot of plays.

The TKTS booths, which provide great same-day discounts to pricey Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, have long been a popular starting point for anyone seeking discount tickets. When the Theatre Development Fund opened its first TKTS booth in 1973, TDF was a newly-formed organization aiming to bolster New York theater revenue by increasing their audience numbers. Today, long lines of tourists and hometown theater lovers alike wait eagerly outside the two booths, now located in Times Square and South Street Seaport, which offer phenomenal discounts of 25-50% to some of New York's most popular Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.

Navigating discount tickets to less prominent productions can be trickier, in part because downtown discount programs tend to be less centralized. There are, however, a plethora of discounted tickets available Off- and Off-Off-Broadway for enterprising (broke) theatergoers. These range from special cheap ticket performance nights held at individual theater companies to more traditional reduced rates for students and seniors, as well as promotional mailing lists and standard rush tickets.

Sundays in particular have become a great night for cheap theater. This season, SoHo Rep instituted the cheapest discount ticket program in town. On Sunday nights, all mainstage productions cost just 99 cents. Interested audience members would do well to purchase the 99 cent tickets in advance, as the performances have been known to sell out fast. Also special this season, The Joyce, founded as a dance theater 25 years ago, currently offers $25 Sunday evening tickets in honor of its anniversary season.

Another great Sunday theater option is New York Theatre Workshop, where regularly priced tickets range from $55 to $75, placing NYTW on the expensive end of the downtown ticket continuum (across the street, Off-Off- stalwart La MaMa has never raised its ticket prices above $20). To keep its programming accessible to all theatergoers, five years ago NYTW instituted CheapTix Sundays, through which all Sunday performances cost $20. These cash-only tickets are available only at the NYTW box office; however, unlike similarly priced rush tickets, CheapTix may be purchased in advance. NYTW Marketing Director Cathy Popowytsch notes that edgier productions, like the Elevator Repair Service's The Sound and The Fury (April Seventh, 1928), currently playing at the Workshop, tend to be especially popular with CheapTix audiences. Sunday performances attract a slightly different demographic than the theater does other nights. "The audience tends to be younger on Sunday evenings," Popowytsch notes, "but we also get many senior citizens."

Students and seniors can also find cheap tickets through a number of rush ticket programs targeted especially at their unique demographics. A comprensive list of student and senior discounts available for current productions is maintained by nytheatre.com at www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/discounts.php. Interested participants should note that, unlike theaters with official cheap ticket nights, these tickets are often sold only on the day of the performance. This is especially true of programs geared toward students. Some venues, such as The Vineyard Theatre, which maintains a $20 student rush program, reserve a limited number of student rush tickets to sell at each performance. Other venues, like Playwrights Horizons, simply turn any unsold tickets into rush tickets an hour before curtain, when student tickets are priced at $15. For student tickets, remember to bring along a student ID.

In recent years, a number of theaters have expanded student rush tickets to include wider demographics. Perhaps in part because twenty-somethings have long realized they could just hold onto their old college ID cards in order to take advantage of student discounts, and partly as a way to bring younger audiences into the theater, several theaters around town offer discounts aimed at young audiences. In addition to its $15 student rush program, for example, Playwrights Horizons runs HOTtix, $20 tickets for twenty-something theatergoers, based on availability an hour before each performance. Other theaters offer rush tickets to all theatergoers regardless of age, including The Public Theater, where Rush Tix are available to the general public an hour before each downtown performance. When planning a last-minute trip to the theater, investigating the production's rush ticket policy is never a bad idea. Because rush tickets are based on availability, they are always something of a gamble, so it's a good idea to arrive early, especially when rushing a particularly popular production. Some savvy rushers find it helpful to phone the theater's box office before setting out.

For anyone willing to sift through email, several mailing lists that compile promotional discounts are enormously useful. The TheaterMania Insiders Club sends regular emails detailing discounts to both commercial and independent theater productions. While the Insiders Club is free of charge, for fees starting at $99, members may join TheaterMania's Gold Club, which offers discounts and occasional comp tickets to Broadway productions. Information on both programs, as well as well as general discount ticket information, is available at TheaterMania.com.

Other good promotional email lists include Ticket Central's Student No Rush Program, which allows students to reserve tickets for preview performances of Ticket Central productions (www.ticketcentral.com/snr_home.asp) and Goldstar (www.goldstar.com) which offers discounts to live performances and events for about the price of a movie. Goldstar weekly emails offer discounts to an incredible array of events, the diversity of which make it unlikely that all of the Goldstar performance discounts will appeal to all Goldstar members. The fantastic deals Goldstar currently offers, including half price tickets to both trippy performance art spectacle Fuerzabruta and Disney on Broadway's sugary Mary Poppins, make the emails well worth perusing each week.

As a slightly longer-term solution, audience members who are particularly fond of the work of downtown theater companies and venues may find it helpful to visit these organizations' websites and sign up for their individual email lists. Many use these lists to offer their fans discounts or even free admission to previews and performances early in the run of a new production.

Signature Theatre, meanwhile, has taken a different approach to discounting tickets. Rather than include promotional offers on mailing lists or offer select discount ticket nights, Signature accepted funding from Time Warner to greatly reduce the cost of all tickets at every performance. What began in 2005 as a program through which, in honor of Signature's 15th anniversary, all tickets cost just $15, has today become the Signature Ticket Initiative, which pledges to keep all tickets to $20 through 2010. While naysayers express concern over the potential effects of corporate sponsorship on art, Signature proudly points to the program's successes. According to audience surveys, the Signature Ticket Initiative has resulted in consistently sold-out houses as well as 30% of audience members identifying as under 35 years old. The surveys also show that half of all audience members have not previously attended a production at Signature, indicating the discounted ticket programs, in addition to benefiting young theatergoers, benefit theaters as well.

At NYTW, Popowytsch concurs. She finds that, rather than detract from full-price ticket sales, the CheapTix program brings in a different audience. "It is helping us get new people through our doors," she says.

Check Please!

The Set-Up, a contemporary play about modern relationships featuring writer and director James Lindenberg, and currently playing at The ArcLight Theater, offers some laughs and some recognizable moments of dating angst but ultimately does not distinguish itself. In this new play, Bill and Doris, a happily married couple (Scott Cunningham and Jennifer Danielle) introduce two of their chronically single thirtysomething friends over dinner: Carolyn, a striking but tense Wall Street attorney (Tara Westwood) and Robert, a laid-back teacher (Lindenberg). While the pair do not seem an obvious match, their friends insist that they were made for each other.

The initial double-date is a disaster and touches nicely on some of the potential faux-pas of a set-up. Carolyn becomes annoyed at Robert's flirting with a young waitress (Tracey Weiner), and Robert is intimidated by the $250 bottle of wine that Carolyn orders and insists on paying for. To top it off, serious chinks in the armor of what seemed to be a solid marriage for Doris and Bill are revealed.

Over the course of the rest of the play, Doris and Bill’s marriage slowly unravels, as fate puts Carolyn and Robert in each others' paths again with unexpected results.

The strength of the play comes from the fact that the erstwhile couple exhibit both honesty and vulnerability in their sometimes very well-written monologues about the trials of being single in the city. Westwood in particular does a nice job in displaying a range of emotional colors. The scenes involving four characters are particularly enjoyable as the pace picks up and real tension becomes evident.

The less successful elements of the play are plot twists that are so neat as to be unbelievable, some patches of less-than-interesting dialogue, and an unnecessary scene involving Carolyn and her father.

Danielle turns in a solid performance as a frustrated wife, while Scott Cunningham’s Connecticut yuppie has a slightly forced overeager quality. In contrast to Carolyn and Robert, the characters of Bill and Doris do not seem three-dimensional, but are instead simple foils for the central love story.

Weiler shines in her cameo as the aggressive and oversexed waitress, and the dance sequence between her and lothario Tony (Major Dodge) is one of the highlights of the show. Dodge does fine work in his multiple roles of Tony and Ted, but misses the boat when playing Carolyn's father.

Overall, audience members will find some amusing moments in this uneven new play delivered by an energetic young cast.

Strange Fascination

The Actors Company Theatre’s (TACT’s) production of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row faithfully and utterly brings to life the pathos and deep longing for which Tennessee Williams’ characters are known. TACT received special permission from the Williams estate to produce the play in New York for the first time in more than thirty years. In this tender and affecting tale of unrequited love, John Buchanan, Jr. (Todd Gearhart) is a young, upwardly mobile physician and bacteriologist. He returns on holidays to his family home in Glorious Hill, Mississippi. To describe John’s mother, Mrs. Buchanan (Darrie Lawrence), as doting is to grossly understate her behavior. She hugs her “Little John,” nuzzles him, massages his feet, and never misses an opportunity to “rescue” him from his insecure and eccentric young neighbor, Alma Winemiller, who has, since childhood, secretly and painfully loved John from afar.

Alma desperately desires to experience the wide world beyond Glorious Hill and the puritanical household in which she resides with her minister father and mentally damaged mother. Alma is rigorously controlled by her father, the Reverend Winemiller, who constantly rebukes her for her animated manners, her nervousness and other idiosyncrasies—stammering, sometimes hysterical laughter, and conducting a daily feeding for the local bird population in the town square.

Nicknamed the “Nightingale of the Delta” for her singing appearances at municipal functions, Alma is bursting with energy and love for the world of ideas, yet, with only the social interaction of a set of bristly oddballs at Monday night gatherings, she is suffocating and rapidly becoming a spinster. Alma laments that those who can give the institution of marriage an aspect of transcendence are precisely the ones who somehow remain alone.

The play itself, despite numerous incarnations starting with Williams’ 1941 short story Bobo, remains flawed. Its ending is forced and may appear to some as oddly dismissive of Alma, whose existence so dramatically implodes at the departure of John from her life that she utterly, and perhaps incredulously, reverses her values. An allegorical plot line about a relative who, in financial straits, deliberately burns down his mechanical museum, the Musee Mechanique in New Orleans, and along with it the famous “Mechanical Bird Girl,” never really gets traction and remains unresolved.

Yet, the acting is often stunning and more than compensates for any faults in the text. Mary Bacon is heartbreaking and pitiable as the stifled Alma, settling desperately for a sad and contrived New Year’s Eve fling at a seedy motel with the uncomfortable John. Darrie Lawrence bestows a cunning ruthlessness to Mrs. Buchanan, who will do anything to separate her ambitious son from his weird neighbor. Larry Keith’s Reverend Winemiller is a model of resolute prudishness and arrogance. And, as “Little John,” Todd Gearhart walks an appropriately fine line between a fascination with Alma that approaches one he might hold for a specimen in a laboratory, and true admiration for her unique qualities.

Bill Clarke’s set features a beautiful mesh back screen that imbues a dream-like quality to the characters who pass behind it; the play begins and ends in its murkiness. David Toser’s costuming expertly captures the play’s pre-World War I period and lends a proper formality to the staunch uptightness of virtually all the characters. Lucretia Briceno’s lighting and Darryl Bornstein’s sound so uncannily mimic holiday fireworks that several audience members visibly flinched, startled.

This production successfully provokes the audience to consider just what qualifies a person as “eccentric.” The cast adeptly accentuates the flaws of their characters. Mrs. Buchanan, harboring detailed and precious fantasies about what Little John’s children will look like, is certainly far from “normal.” Yet, her status, self-regard and admitted smugness protect her from being thought of as “odd.” Likewise, Reverend Winemiller, obsessed with social protocol and appearances, protects himself from scrutiny by attacking Alma and appearing to care about his deranged wife. Alma, sadly, has no such armor and would distrust it even if she did.

The fact of the matter is that everyone in this play is eccentric in some way—from the obvious disorder of Mrs. Winemiller to the inability of Little John to tear himself from the ordered and mapped out trajectory which his mother has devised for his life. In its questioning of what eccentricity really is, this is a sure-handed and faithful performance of a lesser-known but nonetheless accomplished play in the Williams canon.

How do you fit twenty five actors on a ten foot stage?

The play opens. We hear some party music, and all the actors filter onto the stage for the final moments of the year. After the party we are left with the hosting couple drunkenly cleaning up the mess, as they talk about their failure to have a child. From that scene we move on through the year, one scene for each month, going through Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, the Fourth of July and other such monumental calendar events. In each month we meet another one or two, sometimes more characters with no relation to any of the others we’ve already met. What does it amount to? A cute evening of theatre, which easily brushes off the surface of your consciousness. A Year in the Life of Twenty Five Strangers Living in a City by the Lake, is an attempt by playwright Matthew Fotis to pull some of the non-theater-going masses out of their living rooms and into the public space. From the opening moment, which recalls the atmosphere of the sitcom Friends, this is a play written for a generation who expects its art to reflect the easily digestible content of its more mind-numbing forms of popular entertainment. And Fotis should be commended for trying to lure his generation with what they are looking for, while sprinkling some deeper material into the mix in order to take them beyond the box.

However, in his collage of 20-30-year-old life in Chicago, the playwright makes no real demands of his audience, allowing them too much distance to reflect upon the scenes and characters, without ever pulling them in to engage in the images emotionally. And aside from a few select moments, the material fails to continuously stimulate the mind toward challenging reflection.

That said, it’s a fun evening. Director Shaun Colledge makes good use of the tiny space of the intimate Parker Theatre, into which, in certain moments, he squeezes all of his twenty-five actors. Colledge manipulates his large cast to provide a sense of space when it is needed, or to heighten the claustrophobia of other moments. In one of the funniest scenes, a back room party mess erupts between two intermingled couples, and Colledge nails the comedic setup of the clever moment, which could easily be interpreted as bad drama.

The acting on the whole is good, although it is the scenes where the actors feel most comfortable in which the play flourishes. David Stadler and Michele Rafic are perfectly at home in their scene as a married couple on vacation in Paris. The familiar bickering over whether what will revive the relationship would be another tourist attraction or an afternoon on the bench in the park (guess which gender wants what!), flares into delightful comedy with Stadler and Rafic’s concise exacerbations. Jennifer Bishop and Ben Rosenblatt are endearing as the young couple in love, about to separate as they head to different colleges. Corey Shoemake and Adam Ferguson are funny as the gay meteorologist and the waiter he hits on in an emergency room.

It is interesting to see this bouncy production, with its light touches and easygoing atmosphere, as another attempt of theater artists to find a voice for their art form in this generation. I can’t say that Ten Grand Productions succeeds in taking today’s sensibilities and infusing them with greater depth, but they do offer some sweet little dishes to munch on as theater artists search for the way to reflect our present onstage.

As They Like It

The convoluted stories and colorful casts of Shakespeare’s plays are just begging to be thrown into clever environments — for every “traditional” production, you’ll find one that twists the story into a surprising new incarnation. Twice within the past few years, the pastoral comedy As You Like It, with its feuding families and domestic strife, has resurfaced in an unlikely setting: nineteenth-century Japan. Kenneth Branagh helmed a made-for-TV BBC film version in 2006, which won both accolades and awards. Now, on a slightly smaller stage, the ambitious Prospect Theater Company also vaults to feudal Japan in the new musical Honor, which borrows loosely from the play’s confused couplings and mistaken identities.

The source material is problematic, not because of the writing, but because of Shakespeare’s superhuman ability to thread together disparate themes and moods. With a nod to the elite and a wink at the groundlings, he weds lovely, elevated language and sophisticated ideas with spurts of crass humor and crude behavior.

Unfortunately, this deft mesh of styles forms the central problem with Honor, which struggles to find a cohesive voice. The issue isn’t Shakespeare — it’s the challenge of adapting such resonant material.

It's not that writers Peter Mills (book, music, and lyrics) and Cara Reichel (book and music) haven’t constructed an interesting mix of characters and situations. When the power-hungry Katsunori violently dethrones his older brother, Takehiro, their kingdom is ripped apart. Takehiro and several of his men flee to the nearby forest; his daughter, Hana, fearing for her life under her uncle’s rule, disguises herself as a man and sneaks away with her cousin Kiku in tow. Eventually, Hana and Kiku cross paths (and fall in love, of course) with yet another set of brothers. Yoshiro is desperate to avenge their father’s death at the hands of one of Katsunori’s men, while his older brother, Ichiro, pledges allegiance to the new kingdom.

These characters form the dramatic part of the story, with music to match: eruptive, emotional ballads that echo the big-hearted sentimentality of Les Miserables — with a delicate, guitar-plucked, Asian influence. Animating such one-dimensional characters is also a challenge, and the performers mostly acquit themselves well. Diane Veronica Phelan shows some winning tomboy moxie as the resolute Hana, but she and Vincent Rodriguez III, as the spirited Yoshiro, don’t bring much dimension to these flat characters.

However, this being Shakespeare, there are also less moody plots afoot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most enjoyable aspects of this comedy are, well, its comic characters. As the court fool, Nobuyuki, David Shih’s unrestrained performance initially sticks out as too over-the-top. But, as he prances and puns his way through the woods — as appointed and begrudging bodyguard to the two young girls—his knowing delivery and impish physicality provide some well-anchored (and much-needed) comic relief. Unfortunately, he suffers a bit from an overlong and overly metaphoric ballad about a “Little Gray Stone” game that circles into oblivion (but does contain the wonderfully cheeky line, “I’m determined to be indeterminate”).

A subplot involving an endearing forest family brings out the production’s best music — Romney Piamonte brings a lovely lyrical voice and superb comic timing to Kuro, a lazy son who has fallen head-over-feet in love with Mitsuko, a neighbor girl played with wide-eyed, dim-witted charm by Jaygee Macapugay. Mitsuko, of course, is smitten with the cross-dressing Hana. Reichel and Mills have penned a fantastic trio for Mitsuko, Kuro, and the elfish Nobuyuki, in which smart lyrics laced with irony convey the humor of their misplaced affections.

Erica Beck Hemminger’s sleek set mixes simple screens with Evan Purcell’s vibrant lighting to create a sumptuous landscape for the performers. Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum has arranged some gripping fight scenes, and choreographer Dax Valdes uses actors holding tree branches and poles of bamboo to inventively depict the forest scenes. Sidney Shannon’s stunning costumes — featuring glossy kimonos in a bouquet of colors — also add to the production’s visual beauty.

However, the design’s cohesiveness only underlines the unevenness of the songs and stories. A confusing structure randomly places an enthusiastic full-cast anthem midway through the first act; not only do the performers emote and belt as if this were the finale, but Reichel also sets up a tableau of characters and relationships that seem unfamiliar and strange this early in the story.

“What does honor mean?” Hana asks as the production begins; as it closes, we don’t have a definitive answer. Still, it’s always a treat to see what the Prospect Theater Company dreams up — recent daring productions have included The Rockae, a hard-rock version of The Bacchae, and West Moon Street, an elegant Oscar Wilde-an comedy of manners. Honor may seem like a work in progress, but it’s definitely a project worth pursuing.

Myself and I

With its large cast, meandering plot, amalgamation of performance styles, and musical numbers accompanied by piano and guitar, Me, Kirk Wood Bromley’s new play at the SoHo Tank, often feels campy – summer campy. It’s a play that would work well at an outdoor ampetheater on a woodsy campus. Under the direction of Alec Duffy, Me is the kind of charmingly weird production that parents would come to see their children in because, well, they pretty much have to. Or do they? Parent-child relationships are at the heart of the production, which press materials call “a theatrical mediation on self-identity,” though it might be more apt (though just as awkward) to describe it as a meditation on the self-conception of conception. And birth. And childrearing. A lot of imaginative thought and diligent research has gone into this ambitious project – dramaturg Joe Pindelski’s program notes on theories of pregnancy and placenta provide particularly useful contextualization – but unfortunately, when rendered onstage, those ideas are seldom cogent.

The production opens to the thirteen-member cast entering the stage dressed as a sort of museum guide team, with small name tags pinned to each of their blazers. Whatever is printed on the nametags is too tiny to read, but that may be the point: in this moment, they all play Me. “The Earth is my Womb” they sing, as they enter the space carrying small black flashlights. The twin themes of environmentalism and gestation form two major components of the play: a series of poetic, post-modern pontifications on the self, and an adaptation of the Chinese Yangtze River Dolphin story, which tells of a mythological woman drowned by her father.

As the white dolphin Baije, Sarah Melinda Engelke brings confident enthusiasm and a clear sense of purpose to what could be a confusing role. Although, for purposes of the story, her identity is not always clear, Engelke lends Baije an otherworldly sparkle that alerts audiences to the character’s power. Her scenes with Drew Cortese and Brenda Withers, who deliver disciplined performances as the myth’s parental figures, are especially strong in the second act, when the characters – and, by extension, the audience – begin to understand their world. It would be helpful if such clarity came sooner.

The carefully calibrated depiction of myth contrasts wildly to the rest of the production, which is packed with unabashedly over-the-top performances (Bob Laine portrays the character “Dad” with the Southernest of Southern accents), cheeky meta-theatricality (cast members frequently offer one another acting suggestions) and dreamscape-like silliness (parents embodied as a giant sponge and hammerhead shark, costumed by the immensely imaginative Karen Flood). Yet, rather than work in tandem with the dolphin myth to create a cohesive whole, the larger-than-life flourishes and adornments of these scenes overwhelm the myth’s stylized simplicity.

Composer John Gideon’s musical numbers help weave together the disparate elements of the production. So do scenes in which the full company comes together as "Me" for poetic exchanges of semi-related dialogue. These scenes are entertaining depictions of the complex, often conflicting concerns of the self. “I wonder if that one guy responded to my email,” says one cast member; another wonders, “are my gestures of need sufficiently aloof?”

A plethora of puns undercut potential preciousness of these scenes, but in a production two and a half hours long, even the cleverest wordplay grows tiresome. Still, fans of Bromley’s work should make sure to see the production, not only for his signature punning, but for the insight that Me provides into the mind of the prolific playwright.