Exploring a Modern Tragedy with Opera

“Tipped over. Such a gentle word for what happened,” sings the mother character as she remembers the Twin Towers. Creating an opera about 9/11 may also sound like a strangely refined approach to depicting such a horrific event, but Calling: An Opera of Forgiveness makes for a thoughtful version of the familiar story. Here, silence and darkness convey the first plane’s crash. In the immediate aftermath, screams are mimed and the fears and concerns of New Yorkers are sung in a smooth baritone or a melodious soprano.

Based on the book, A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero, by Wickham Boyle (directing and writing the libretto here), Calling follows one Lower Manhattan family on the day of the attacks and the month after. Things start out normally enough when the “Mother” (soprano Nicole Tori) drops her child off at school. The actors bustle through a morning commute nicely rendered by choreographer Edisa Weeks, singing of the “blue sky” as they move in front of a blue backdrop.

The early parts of the production do a good job of pitting these routine visuals against the ominous music composed by Douglas Geers and supplied by the onstage orchestra. The minor notes and pressing rhythm create an unsettling ambience. This builds until the volume of the instruments and pitch of the singers reach their climax and then stop for the critical moment.

Afterward, the orchestra sustains the same urgency and uneasiness by both playing classic instruments in unique ways and integrating electronic touches into the score. At one point, the cellist makes a rough, scraping sound by moving his bow across the high part of the neck, and throughout much of the show, the computer supplies a pervasive buzzing sound that’s downright eerie (and a bit reminiscent of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack).

Eventually, the mother decides to retrieve her daughter from school near the Towers before they fall. Tracing her path, Calling shows various angles of the event, from watching the burning building through an apartment window, to witnessing their collapse from the street, to reflecting and recovering at yoga class a month later. Throughout, Tori balances well between performing tough vocal passages and capturing genuine concern and confusion.

The lyrics range from insightful to verbose. Some of Boyle’s details are powerful in their simplicity, such as a parent making children turn away from the collapse or a worker staging fake rescues to cheer up frustrated Ground Zero search dogs. But other descriptions seem like they would be more at home on paper than on the stage. In scenes reflecting on the ash-covered streets, for instance, the actors stumble over some lines that aim for poetic effect, but end up sounding unnatural.

Still, the words and music frequently complement each other. In “The Clean Up,” the rescue effort looks and sounds like a funeral. A fireman (baritone James Rollins) sings the refrain “we work the pile,” in a rich, solemn tone, while the workers shuffle about with their heads down. It even seems like the singing trails off a bit on the last word, making it ambiguously linger between sounding like “pile” or “pyre.” But the most evocative moment comes at the end of the song: as it layers more instruments and vocal registers, listeners may feel trapped beneath the weight of the music.

While Boyle infuses the show with a few distinguishing details of her own experience, some of the elements in the show are a bit hackneyed. It would have been nice to see more unique specifics (such as the husband, played by Roland Burks, placing flowers throughout his devastated neighborhood) incorporated into the script, rather than some generalized experiences that anyone who watched news coverage remembers. However, Calling should be commended for its overall refreshing approach. It’s the type of tribute that should be seen and discussed.

No Strings

Truman Capote once said, “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make.” With Ko’olau, A True Story of Kaua’i, writer and director Tom Lee boldly strives to express this sentiment, in a play mainly without words. Not that there isn’t a big story to tell; the Hawaiian legend of Kaluaiko’olau (or Ko’olau) and his rebellion and escape from a forced separation from his family and threat of being deported to a leper colony in 1890s Kauai, is necessarily provided in the program. But this incarnation of the dramatic tale is all about showing rather than telling, using wheeled puppetry, live shadow and video projection, sporadic voice-over, and original live musical accompaniment, in the hopes of releasing the largely tragic story’s inner music and inspiration. The only problem is that if the viewer is not acutely aware of the facts or key details, its impact could be easily missed or misunderstood. It’s also unusual not to hear directly from the main title character in such an individualistic piece, and as taken from the original oral account in Hawaiian language by Ko’olau’s wife Pi’ilani, we’re admittedly seeing her story (which then might have then begged the title, The True Story of Pi’ilani). Not that we hear her words either, which might have been interesting had they been somehow woven in amongst all the other layered elements (and considering that her retelling was recorded by an American journalist in 1906). However, the theatrical elements chosen to communicate Pi’ilani’s testimony in a form beyond the traditional are well integrated and artistically executed, if still removed from a first-person’s perspective.

But if Pi’ilani’s voice itself isn’t heard, it’s nonetheless elevated and celebrated through the original music of La MaMa composer/musicians Yukio Tsuji and Bill Ruyle, who provide the perfect accompaniment. Their evocative compositions serve as the underlying language of the piece, using a combination of traditional instruments, unique percussives for sound effects and atmosphere, and the poignant sounds of instruments like the shakuhachi and hammer dulcimer. And to further honor tradition, certain musical sections were even inspired by the compositions of Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch.

The use of Japanese kuruma ningyo wheeled puppetry is quite elegant, with the performers working the puppets with such careful, focused attention that they become almost invisible while in plain sight. The gentle, nuanced manipulations of the puppeteers Matt Acheson, Marina Celander, Frankie Cordero and Yoko Myoi translate stunningly as an extension of their puppet-characters themselves, rather than the other way around. It’s almost like the performers personify an unseen energy force that could be imagined existing around all living things, again inducing the richness and spirit of Hawaiian culture. The four puppeteers maneuver the three main characters Ko’olau, Pi’ilani, and their young son Kaleimanu, while also embodying minimalist “extras” and scenery elements, becoming mountains or other obstacles for the characters to interact with on the otherwise empty stage.

The hand-carved wooden puppets themselves are economic, with faces like blank canvases for the performers to somehow enliven with their actions, which they do. Styled after Hawaiian woodcuts by Lee, the rough-hewn faces are also interesting in the context of Hansen’s Disease (better known as leprosy), as they appear somewhat mask-like with an ability to project either some kind of disfigurement or its inevitable covering.

Another element utilized to help tell the story is a large screen backdrop upon which live shadow and video are projected, adding even more dimension. Lee and Miranda Hardy, the lighting designer and shadow projectionist, used fascinating techniques like shooting through water, overlaying paper cutouts and other materials to achieve distinct perspectives, incorporating live shadow figures, and using a kind of revolving cutout carousel for background action and special effects. These also highlighted the lush scenery and rough territory of the island, again calling back the story’s intrinsic tie to the natural world. I was so interested in how these images were being created from a technical perspective, that I was often watching their production emanating from just in front of the stage, which might have taken me a bit out of the story at times, though I’m not sure all viewers would find this as distracting. It’s clear that much is being communicated, but it didn’t always completely wash over me as much as experiencing the intimacy of the puppetry and being affected by the music did.

Lee, who is of Chinese-American and Eastern European descent, grew up on the island of O’ahu, where he first heard the story of Ko’olau through a family friend. The tale had also once captured the imagination of adventurer/author Jack London, who wrote a short story, Koolau the Leper, in 1909, in which he co-opted it into a rather horrific and sensationalist interpretation. Lee’s piece as a response to London, attempting to return a sense of dignity, compassion, and celebration to the doomed, yet heroic characters is certainly successful, even if just a bit more development and integration could bring it to the seamless and encompassing Aloha that it’s very close to reaching.

Overexposure

If a woman blushed after her underwear fell down in public, Freud might say that it meant, deep down, that she actually enjoyed it. Take the housewife in Carl Sternheim’s early 20th century play, The Underpants: although she’s embarrassed after losing her bloomers while watching a royal parade, the experience ultimately unleashes her dormant passions. Filter this through the mind of Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin, who penned an adaptation in 2002) and you have the current production by The Gallery Players. Overall, the play comes off as quite charming, but this has more to do with the delightful cast than the script. With dialogue that often veers into shallow sitcom territory, some of the jokes are exhausting (if I listed every time a euphemism like “sausage” or “wiener” was used, I’d have no room to write a review). The ensemble, however, has a knack for infusing both their archetypal characters and the jokes with great timing and facial expressions.

The central couple, for instance, fits the classic blowhard-and-bored-damsel dynamic. Set in 1910 Germany, the show begins as Theo (Justin Herfel) is yelling at his wife, Louise (Catia Ojeda), about her wardrobe malfunction. He thinks it can only lead to ruin, starting with what he expects will be his immediate dismissal from his precious bureaucratic position. Herfel’s cranky beast act is a bit much at the outset, but he settles into it well, and even makes the entirely unsympathetic character enjoyable to watch.

Theo’s monetary concerns are assuaged when two men show up to rent their spare bedroom. While the guests are stark opposites – one, a romantic poet, the other, a mousy hypochondriac – they both witnessed Louise’s involuntary striptease and have developed a secret crush on her - so great a crush that they agree to share the small room.

Due to her husband’s complete lack of respect and passion, Louise welcomes the idea of an affair. As a result, the writer, Versati (Nat Cassidy), easily seduces her with his slick talk. Cassidy makes for a hilariously self-obsessed dreamer. His Versati is like the arrogant kid in your creative writing class that read all his work with a Shakespearean accent and flirted with whoever sat next to him. The pompous delivery never gets old (one favorite: when he doesn’t have a pen to write down a good line, he shrugs it off as “society’s loss”).

As Louise gradually starts to surrender to Versati’s ways, it’s enjoyable to watch Ojeda slide from reserved, polite housekeeper to passionate temptress (albeit an amusingly awkward one). The transition is realistically slow – a scene in which she attempts to be seductive is particularly funny – and Ojeda trades off well between serving as the straight man or comic relief.

The show works best when focusing on its own plot, rather than trying to attach it to the cultural moment. While the script is peppered with references to philosophy, poetry, and history, it doesn’t stay long enough on one subject to explore it in depth. As a result, the play becomes the sum of its one-liners.

The First Irish Theatre Festival: More than Friel to Shaw You

How do you build a bridge linking Manhattan Island with the Emerald Isle, and, in New Yorkers' eyes, the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland? For George Heslin, the answer was simple: create an Irish theater festival. That festival, First Irish 2008, opened on September 6th, with most plays running for three weeks. With all tickets prices at $21 or less, First Irish 2008 is one bridge that's definitely worth crossing.

An Irish actor and director who first came to the United States in 1996, Heslin has been a full-time New Yorker since 2000. He is the Artistic Director of Off-Broadway's Origin Theatre Company, which produces American premieres of plays by contemporary European playwrights. In early 2008, Heslin decided that Origin should produce the city's first-ever festival of Irish Theater. Soon, First Irish 2008 had offers of productions from eight theatre companies. Heslin garnered the cooperation of New York's City Hall, the Consulate General of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Bureau, and even Irish President Mary McAleese. "I never heard a 'no,' and that is the truth," he said.

First Irish 2008's repertory ranges from the American premiere of Broadway veteran Conor MacPherson's 1992 work Rum and Vodka to Amanda Coogan's "tableau vivant" Yellow, about the unwed mothers sent to Ireland's Magdalen Laundries to repent their alleged sins. Origin's contribution is End of Lines, a series of five short plays by Irish playwrights inspired by journeys on the New York subway. The resulting snapshots of New York life, as understood by travellers from someplace else, glimmer with oblique glimpses of the travellers and the places from which they came.

One End of Lines playwright, Ursula Rani Sarma, pointed out that what excited her about the project is the 'inspire' part. There is a whole lot of time when artists try to find ideas, when we try to find out what we have to say about the world. That's okay, but in being brought here and told to wander round the subway, to find inspiration, I was being told, 'that's okay. You're not wasting time. You're being inspired. Surely, spectators of Sarma's play and its four companion pieces will agree that her random reconnaissance was time well spent.

According to one actress who appears in End of the Lines, Paula Nance, the project is exciting in part because it incorporates the work of three Irish playwrights who are women, including two from the North, Sarma and Nance's play's author, Morna Regan. "I've written a thesis on Irish women playwrights," Nance told me, "so this is very exciting. There are a lot of great female Irish playwrights, and they don't get as much exposure as they deserve." Rani-Sarma agreed. "I'm pleased by Origin's support of women playwrights," she said. "It's about being aware, about having an awareness. That's very progressive." Of Regan, author of the critically acclaimed Midden, which Origin stage-read in May 2008, Nance added "I love Regan's gift for creating intensely complex women who find themselves in extreme situations, but have maintained fire and humour, and her ability to balance her characters' points of view, to make us see both stories in every conversation."

In the past few years, Broadway has played host to several Irish playwrights, including Brian Friel (Translations), Martin MacDonough (The Pillowman) and Conor MacPherson, (The Seafarer), whose work is famously distinguished by its lyricism, or, as Irish actor Mark Noonan puts it, "that witty storytelling." At First Irish 2008, Noonan will perform MacPherson's early one-actor play Rum and Vodka, stepping into the shoes of one of MacPherson's storyteller-(anti)heroes. Why this play? "Rum & Vodka was the first play I ever read, back in 2002," Noonan recalls. "It was my first move into the world of theater and I actually I used a snippet of it to audition for the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. It especially has value to me because of this." A departure point for Noonan, the piece also was for its author. "I think that Rum & Vodka is where Conor MacPherson first found his voice. I think it may be one of his best pieces of writing and in time will be an Irish classic." So when Heslin told Noonan about his idea of an Irish theatre festival in New York, Noonan said "that is genius, and I want to be a part of it." When not performing Rum and Vodka, Noonan wants to see "all" of the plays in the festival. "I'm a big fan of Gary Duggan"--one of the co-authors of End of the Lines, he added, "so I really want to see his work."

One critically acclaimed Irish playwright whom Origin introduced to American audiences is Enda Walsh, one winner of Ireland's prestigious Stuart Parker Award for first-produced-plays by emerging playwrights. Walsh's play The New Electric Ballroom was performed in New York earlier this year, and now, New York audiences can encounter more of Walsh's words at First Irish 2008, thanks to D.C.-based company Solas Nua. Who are Solas Nua? In 2004, Washington D.C.-based Linda Murray, who is originally from Dublin, noticed "a lack of representation for contemporary artists from her country in the US." With Dan Brick, she co-founded Solas Nua. According to National Public Radio, Solas Nua is "perhaps the only theater group in the country that produces nothing but contemporary Irish plays."

This company has since become D.C.'s second resident contemporary-Irish theatre company, along with the Keegan Theatre (which is also bringing a show, Liam Heylin'sLove, Peace, and Robbery, to First Irish 2008.) Besides producing Irish plays in the American capitol city, Solas Nua presents film festivals and literary events, including, says Brick, "a large book giveaway every St. Patrick's Day." Solas Nua started considering producing Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs after Murray saw the 1996 original production at the Triskel Arts Center in Cork. In 1995, Solas Nua produced it as their first-ever production. "It's exciting," Brick reflects, "that a new production of this play is our way of introducing ourselves to New York."

What is Disco Pigs about? "Two seventeen-year-olds on their birthday," Brick explains. "They were born at the same time, have grown up together and have created a separate world for themselves cut off from everyone to the point where they speak their own imagined language. In essence, the play is about entering life as an adult. One of the characters starts to realize that they can't exist in their own little bubble forever and the other doesn't. The tension comes as they start to experience different desires and thought processes." Walsh's plays are notable for their unpretentious lyricism, non-naturalistic conventions, and, as the London Times critic Brian Logan put it, "characters on the edge of madness." Brick agrees. "In fact," he says, "you could say that Disco Pigs is the play that defined Enda Walsh's style of writing. From this play forward, you can trace the claustrophobic environments and fierce language that recurs in all his other plays." When Heslin asked Solas Nua to bring a play to First Irish 2008, Brick and Murray "immediately got involved." While Brick is in town, he's looking forward to participating in First Irish 2008 not only as an artist, but also as a spectator. "I'd like to see the Canal Creedon Piece, When I Was God, he said, "and also catch some of the new plays written for the festival. And as I've performed Conor MacPherson's Rum and Vodka in the past, I'm interested in seeing that production, too."

If you'd like to hear more about contemporary Irish theater in America from the directors who bring it to life, First Irish 2008 will present a panel talk at the New York Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, with the kind assistance of Irish Rep, who have also donated to the festival much-needed rehearsal space. Don't miss the panel, titled Directing the Irish: From the Page to the Stage, on September 24th at six p.m.

As preparations for First Irish 2009 begin, which Irish and American theater companies will it showcase? Brick and Noonan, the two producers to whom I spoke, are already hoping to be back in New York at this time next year. "Of course we want to be part of First Irish 2009," Brick said, on behalf of Solas Nua. "If we're invited back, of course."

First Irish 2008's opening reception was held on Wednesday, September 3, at Mutual of America's Park Avenue offices. There, Norman Houston, Director of the British Northern Ireland Bureau, announced the news that the non-sectarian, non-governmental Independent Monitoring Commission has declared the IRA "no longer a threat to peace." Northern Ireland "isn't about conflict and division anymore," Houston said, "it's about creativity and energy. We're undergoing a renaissance." Theatre, one product of that creativity, is essential to building cross-cultural bridges, as it "helps us to challenge assumptions." Heslin agreed. "This festival is made up of individuals," he said, "and also groups, corporations -- and nations."

More Information:
First Irish 2008 Website: http://origintheatre.org/1stIrish

When Harriet Met Sally

Carl Djerassi, one of the inventors of the birth control pill, may have helped usher in the sexual revolution of the sixties but, as a playwright, he is far from groundbreaking. Relentlessly formulaic is a more apt description. The plot runs like a movie on the Hallmark Channel; you quickly know exactly how Taboos will end. Harriet, a urologist, and Sally, a striking San Franciscan newscaster, meet on a blind date; the ultimate tediousness of this play is signaled on the park bench where they sit. Guess what? We find out that lesbians are normal people, too, with cute idiosyncrasies. Harriet simply hates jeans! And Sally can’t stand cell phones!

Flash forward some months. Harriet and Sally are now a happy domestic partnership and Sally wants a child. Harriet’s brother, Max, a sensitive Dudley Do-Right public defender who just loves everything, gladly donates his sperm to the endeavor. For some incredulous reason transparently essential to the introduction of conflict, Sally invites her long-estranged and fervent Christian fundamentalist brother, Cameron, a genteel Mississippian, to the fertilization party. Conflict ensues.

Later, Harriet, coldly detached from baby Tucker, and frustrated by feeling like a “bystander,” wants—no, needs—to have a baby of her own. The entire play is a vehicle for Djerassi to question society’s mores and ethical standpoints about assisted reproduction, through a discussion of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), a technique that injects a single sperm cell into an egg.

Molding the action around the characters’ availing themselves of various artificial reproductive techniques makes for a contrived plot with extreme situations. Cameron’s fanatically religious wife, Priscilla, happens to be childless, so Cameron gets one of Harriet’s embryos for Priscilla, without disclosing its source. Curiously, none of these people of education and means, aware of the possibly unprecedented situation they are creating, seems to have sought legal counsel, or even signed anything, telegraphing an inevitable argument about parental rights.

Djerassi stacks the cards by selecting the most stereotypical personalities he can find, so that nearly everyone is a caricature. The virulently homophobic Priscilla (fittingly nicknamed “Prissy”), hurls around Bible quotes and instantly drops to her knees in prayer when she thinks lustful thoughts. Although the work is structured, in part, as a comedy, the jokes are derivative and worn. There is exactly one genuinely funny line in the whole play.

Nothing is really very “taboo” in this production, either; in fact most of Djerassi’s general themes have settled comfortably into the realm of the passé, some already having been chewed over and spit out by Hollywood. And the characters are as vanilla and sanitized as they come. Aside from the obligatory girl-on-girl kiss (conveniently interrupted so it doesn’t get too far) the characters seem oddly non-sexual.

We have trouble caring about Harriet and Sally because they’re so clinical, so deliberate. Ultimately, I didn’t even care how, or if, these characters would navigate these uncharted philosophical waters. What I really wanted was a psychologist to sort out some of the issues of these self-absorbed individuals.

All the actors are competent but the only standout is John Preston as Cameron, who actually has some comedic chops and tries to make the best of the limp lines the script provides him. Direction by Melissa Maxwell is efficient, though we could do without the CD-101 light jazz-inflected scene changes. One dull arrangement adorns the entire play: a dining room table and some simple chairs set against white walls; it’s antiseptic and pallid, like the characters.

In the end, the play is too long, introducing layer upon layer of unlikely scenarios. Try as it might to grapple with profound questions of reproductive ethics, Taboos, ensconced as it is in a suffocatingly prescribed template, simply ends up shooting blanks.

A Trivial City

Atomic City, a sixty-minute avant-garde performance art piece presently running at the LaMama Annex, is clever and certainly well-intentioned, but has nothing new to say; nothing challenging to ask. According to its publicity, Atomic City is a "tragic comedy." It is unclear why, as it elicits neither laughter -- through tears or otherwise -- nor shock and awe. Lacking in original insight or complex characterisation, this piece, by Fuerzabruta performer Jon Morris and Danish troupe Terra Nova, is merely smug and patronizing. The Atomic City looks very much like the world of Dr. Seuss's anti-proliferation classic The Butter Battle Book. Two groups of neighbors-cum-adversaries are divided by a wall. In this case, the wall is made of paper. As in The Butter Battle Book, as tensions between the groups mount, the wall gets taller. Soon, the characters risk being immured by their own fears.

Morris and Terra Nova have set up the Annex auditorium as an alley theatre. The two stands of seats face each other across the stage space. As the wall gets taller, it blocks each half-audience from seeing not only the actors on the other side, but the other half of the audience. Thus do walls, and conflicts, divide us and obscure our common humanity.

On each side of the wall lives a nuclear family. The paterfamilias of each is a white-coated scientist, a stock type in anti-proliferation parables from Dr Strangelove on backwards. At one point, the two scientists struggle to occupy the same white lab coat. They also have another point of contention: the pleasant, pecan-pie-baking, robotic-voiced, puff-skirted and aproned wife of one scientist has defied the wall to have an affair with the other. Her son notices, and is mad. The Narrator, who stands outside the wall, and provides both sides with increasingly large water guns, also notices and is faintly bemused.

On the sidelines, performers create nuclear missiles from pre-printed kits with crayons and tape. Evidently, in trying to protect the integrity of their nuclear families, and their own positions of sexual and social control, the nuclear scientists are going to destroy their families and the Atomic City.

On Atomic City's television gameshow, a red, white, and blue-dressed host invites contestants to participate in the "Final Termination," and invites the LaMama audience to welcome the guests who are so eager to play. He introduces one "Lisa Patterson, from Iowa," who "loves the smell of burnt rubber and anything on a stick!" How quaint and amusing those Red State Americans are, with their polluting cars, taste for unhealthy, cheap non-cosmopolitan food, and murderous drives toward "Final Termination." Surely we would never see any such thing in our more civilized parts, for example, Westchester County.

The show's political insight leaves something to be desired. "We want more walls," the publicity declares, "and less drama." In some situations, walls are stupid. The Berlin Wall and Lamar Alexander's idiotic plan to wall illegal immigrants out of the American southwest definitely are. Other walls, however, are more complicated. The Plaquemines wall in New Orleans is essential to keep out not people, but water. The very controversial Israeli wall traps and divides Palestinians, but also is arguably the logical consequence of attacks on Israeli civilians. Atomic City's platitudes about walls don't begin to address the questions that the building of real walls raise.

According to the publicity card, the Atomic City's "monumental" conflicts escalate from "trivial issues," such as, I suppose, the housewife's affair. This is disingenuous, as the issues that led to the real problem walls and to the carnage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are anything but trivial. It's a pity that, in Atomic City as in the Atomic City, those vital questions are never really explored.

Dark Matters

On the evidence of his new play, Three Changes, author Nicky Silver has been reading Joe Orton, specifically Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Fans of Silver’s loopy humor in works like The Food Chain and Raised in Captivity may be surprised by the dearth of laughter, let alone smiles, in this story of an Upper West Side couple, Laurel and Nate, whose life is taken over by Nate’s long-lost brother. Instead, Silver seems to have followed an impulse to create comedy of a more savage kind. The brother, Hal, played with calculated charm by Scott Cohen, has sought out Nate after years of no contact with his family. “By the time he was twenty we’d all lost track,” says Dylan McDermott’s resentful Nate of Hal’s escape from suburban boredom. Laurel (Maura Tierney), meanwhile, is estranged from her sister. However, she wants to foster a reunion between Nate and Hal, who reemerged on their radar as a Hollywood TV writer, creator of a show with a brilliant angle (one of the better jokes): “a single mother, six kids. And a bounty hunter by night.” Hal’s career is now at a downturn; he made a lot of money, but it all went to drugs and gay sex with hustlers. But he has been saved by Jesus and has religion—or so he says.

Not long after Hal has taken up residence, he weasels his 19-year-old, sociopathic boyfriend Gordon (played with louche nastiness by Brian J. Smith) into the family’s apartment as well. Splayed across a chair, one leg flung over an arm, conscious of his sexual attraction, Gordon cadges Hal for attention and money. If one has ever seen Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Smith's body language makes a potent visual connection. There’s no need to learn that Gordon has murdered an old woman to connect the dots.

But there are other Ortonesque touches, such as the cynicism about religion (though it is clumsy and underdeveloped), which is used by the unscrupulous Hal to foist himself on the desperately needy Nate and Laurel. And just as Ed, the brother of Kath in Sloane, turns out to be bisexual, so does Hal here—one of the title “changes”—as he begins an affair with Tierney’s weary, emotionally susceptible Laurel. Nate, meanwhile, is having his own affair with Steffi, a young woman who works at the cosmetics counter at Bloomingdale’s and wants much, much more than a casual sexual relationship.

Although Wilson Milam gets fine performances from his cast, and Neil Patel has provided an immaculate prewar apartment (the walls are scrims that gradually reveal interior rooms), their efforts are wasted on a play that just doesn’t work. Believability is stretched to the utmost after Nate is brutalized by Hal and does nothing—except drink and wilt. He doesn’t have the locks changed; he doesn’t instruct his doorman to prevent Hal and Gordon’s return. He doesn't do anything a reasonable person would, let alone a New Yorker.

Three Changes lacks Orton’s rigorous grasp of classical structure or twisted logic (or any logic at all), and Silver undermines the dramatic scenes by breaking the fourth wall repeatedly to have characters stand on the apron of the stage and deliver monologues, which suck the momentum out of the play. At one point, four of his five actors stand and speak to the audience, then to one another. So these inner thoughts are overheard by the other characters? Or is it just lazy narration? At another moment, Steffi (Aya Cash) speaks about a scene that has just taken place between Hal and Laurel and wonders whether they will have sex—but it’s a scene her character could not possibly know about.

The metamorphoses suggested by the title include Hal and Nate’s switching roles. Suddenly Nate begins to wear glasses and Hal finds he doesn’t need his. The end features a new family unit, as does Sloane, but the tone is vastly different. Instead of the interloper receiving a comeuppance, Hal achieves the family he wants, at a gruesome cost. By the time he does, you will have long given up the expectation of any pleasure, let alone a point, from this unsatisfying stew.

Beauty and Confusion

Nine months remain for Alora and Linus before life changes drastically for the both of them. “A lot can happen in nine months” is a constant refrain throughout Andrew Irons’ Linus and Alora . At the end of that time frame, life can either begin anew or end. Given a terminal diagnosis of cancer, Alora calls upon her three imaginary brothers, Neal, Owen, and Arthur in order to cope as the rest of her time speeds by her. However, Linus, who lost his imagination as a small boy, had asked her to banish her brothers eight years ago. Yet now it seems he may need them more than Alora. Alora’s goal in bringing back the three brothers is to re-open Linus’ imagination, so that the pair can enjoy the next nine months more fully. Claiming to be pregnant, Alora refuses to go out into the real world, fearing that death is just a step away. She chooses instead to fly among the stars and converse with her imaginary son, Sam. The play takes the audience on a journey which is at times thrilling, beautiful, and confusing.

Alora sings a lot, as way to trace time and tell her story. Melle Powers, the actress playing her, does not have (or does not use) a soothing, melodious voice. Her songs are coarse and grating, the songs of a woman clinging desperately to something that is slipping away. Other elements of the production produce similar effects—a phone constantly rings loudly while a flashing red siren light goes off. Video projections, including a countdown timer, flash by on three surfaces and everyday sounds (the popping of fluorescent lights, a heartbeat) are incredibly amplified. At times the play feels reminiscent of Charles Mee, who is known for his use of pastiche in constructing his plays and for the surreal, magical worlds he creates. However, the amount of sights and sounds occurring onstage can be a bit much at times, particularly in the opening scenes. The amount of singing, dancing, and video work happening onstage makes it confusing to know where to look and what to pay attention to.

There is also beauty amid all the mayhem. The set, designed by Dustin O’Neill, features a hardwood ramp and a concrete-looking playing area with a square of AstroTurf in its center. A bright red telephone and a classy coat stand take prominent positions stage right and left respectively. The projection surfaces are dressed to look like three large windows, each with a single color background when they are not showing video. The brothers' costumes are snazzy and bright, especially when they don sequined jackets pretending to be the Pips.

In all, Linus and Alora is a beautiful story about love between two people and the way imagination can liberate one from the often sad facts of life. While it may get too busy at times, the direction and the script both show a desire to make theater exciting and fantastic, something which is often lacking onstage and yet certainly deserves to be there.

The Magic is Somewhere Beneath the Surface

A confused teen runs away from home and lives on the streets, turning tricks to survive and using meth to dull the pain. A social worker/graduate student meets him in order to use his story as a part of her dissertation. Yet, she finds that this teen is different from other gay youths on the streets. This teen, Nihar, claims to be running from his foster parents, who just so happen to be the “King of Shadows” and the “Green Lady,” and who want to take him back into their world of darkness. Of course, the social worker, Jessica Denomy, thinks he is lying or delusional. In case you haven't guessed by now, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's King of Shadows is inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream . Nihar is allegedly the changeling boy fought over by Titania and Oberon in Shakespeare's play. However, despite his magical upbringing, we are never allowed a peek into Nihar's world. The action takes place in Jessica's apartment, or at the park, or else at other real places. The play tries to maintain a balance between the magical and the real, but ultimately remains firmly ensconced in reality. Instead of showing the magic behind Nihar, the play tells us of it. Jessica's teenage sister Sarah describes being attacked by one hundred “carnivorous butterflies” and Nihar describes the way in which other runaway teens are going missing, but butterflies and kidnapping are never seen on stage. A lot of time is spent having the characters stand under spotlights and narrate parts of the story, as if to serve as a reminder that a tale is unfolding before the audience and as a cheap way to fill in some exposition.

However, what the story lacks in actual, visible magic is made up for by the design elements of the show. Wilson Chin has a constructed a space where couches and stairs slide out of torn poster-coated walls. Lightning storms and purple fog materialize out of nowhere, thanks to the design by Jack Mehler. The fog and lightning serve as the physical evidence that Nihar may actually be what he says he is.

Likewise, the cast does a decent job in bringing their characters to life. Aguirre-Sacasa has provided the actors with fully-fleshed, meaty characters. Kat Foster, as Jessica, is able to elicit equal parts sympathy and revulsion for her character. She went into social work because she had the money and nothing better to do. She truly cares, but is rather unlikeable at times. Yet, it is difficult to not feel sympathy for her by the end. Likewise, Satya Bhabha is completely believable as the lost and fearful Nihar. He plays his role with enough strength and wonderment that it is never certain, until the play's end, whether he is crazy, or a liar, or really a magical being. Richard Short and Sarah Lord round out the strong cast as Jessica's police officer boyfriend and younger sister.

The stage elements do their best to enhance the play, but what is ultimately at issue is the script. It never delves deeply enough into the world of Nihar, choosing instead to depict Jessica's reality and suggesting that we are meant to stay in the realm of the real and not leap off with Nihar through portals into the land of fairies and who knows what else. King of Shadows does an adequate job of showing the reality of social work but never dares to create fully the world that it itself implies.

Magickal Elixir

If you’ve ever felt as though you've seen it all in theater (or anywhere for that matter), you must experience a Radiohole show. The award-winning avant-garde performance troupe now channeling ANGER/NATION at the Kitchen, gives another balls-out (literally) presentation, inspired by the underground occult films of Kenneth Anger , as confronted by the hatchet-wielding temperance movement leader of early 20th century America, Carrie A. Nation. These opposing forces (with similarly manic energies) are further challenged with slopping pitchers of beer (with free mug-fulls proffered to thirsty audience members), a grinding psychedelic soundtrack, costumes slyly layered from Anger’s images or other eras, real or imagined (featuring serious hairpieces, horned or otherwise wigged-out, a medley of various uniforms either missing key parts or with an occasional “extra” appendage, intense make-up, smatterings of glitter), fog effects, evocative background video, popping air rifles, and smashing bottles, all of which create an exciting and arresting experience, both aurally and visually.

The set looks something like the cyberpunk ship in the film The Matrix if it had been transported to a cabaret basement in Weimar Republic Berlin and exploded on impact. A dozen or more mini video monitors jiggle off the ends of sweeping tentacle-like stalks, playing various clips, while a pair of cherub-esque performers, Radiohole co-founders Scott Halvorsen Gillette and Eric Dyer, alternately play music, verbally riff, sling back drinks and trippy pills, shoot each other, sometimes step behind twin plastic curtains to change costume (and/or scene), and generally torment the imposing figure of Carrie Nation by flaunting their Dionysian existence.

Don’t bother searching for a traditional narrative other than maybe Veni, Vidi, Vici (with Nation as the one ultimately conquered) and yes, the pastiche is made even more complete by a drunken, largely unintelligible sort of frat boy Julius Caesar, played jovially by Iver Findlay, the show’s video designer (along with So Yong Kim and Radiohole), who ran all the technical elements from a computerized command center on stage. (This was fed directly into the Kitchen’s excellent soundboard, to great thunderous effect.)

The beleaguered Ms. Nation, portrayed by Maggie Hoffman, also a co-founder of the company (and showing her real life five-month pregnant belly), is of course highly offended by the decadence of all the men-children, and she attempts to clobber their deviant behaviors as well as their alcohol bottles with her mighty hatchet. Not being able to divide or conquer, she eventually goes off into a transformation of her own (we watch her muted struggles via a live Moon-cam, projected behind the stage), and when she re-emerges, she embodies a kind of high priestess or Egyptian queen slithering right out of an Anger film like Lucifer Rising (1980), having fully gone over to the “other side.”

Hoffman’s monologues sound interestingly more campaign speechy than the basic preachy I probably expected. Nation’s famous quote, “Men are nicotine-soaked, beer-besmirched, whiskey-greased, red-eyed devils,” is certainly enacted viscerally, while she sounds almost cheerful in telling her gloomy story. (In real life, the Bible-thumping, Midwestern Nation lost her first husband to alcoholism during a time when abuse had apparently become rampant. With no legal controls on the alcohol content of whiskey – sometimes proving to be lethal – it was common for men to drink away entire paychecks at their local tavern, leaving no legal or financial recourse for their possibly starving, physically abused, and/or abandoned wives and children at home.)

So is Nation an early feminist, albeit a misguided one? Here she rebirths herself or becomes a gut renovation (so to speak) via this equally subversive landscape. Perhaps Nation just grows up over the ensuing century, becoming a “liberated” (read: objectified and lovin’ it) female, willing to expose herself and cavort along with the rest of us sinners. Maybe crazy times call for crazy measures in every generation, even as we seem to long for some kind of temperance.

A delightful coda features Gillette and Dyer discussing a performance, under the jarring full fluorescent house lights, while Hoffman and Findlay change back into street clothes and pack up to leave. Some audience members make a hasty exit at this point, but the deadpanned dialogue (supposedly taken verbatim from a John Cage interview circa 1982) was such an ideal tongue-in-cheek denouement to all of the previous punk rock action, I secretly hoped it would continue on until the very last die-hards eventually slunk out. I thought it was actually the funniest part, a fitting surrealist American Theater Wing breakdown complete with drifty pauses, the whole thing reminiscent of an old Gary Larson cartoon showing a couple splayed out in their living room with the caption: “The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave.” So sit back, enjoy the rest of your beer (or Jesus juice), and savor the last drops of Radiohole’s Magickal elixir. Until they next conjure up something wonderful for us again.

The Secret Lives of Asteroids

What’s smaller than a planet, larger than a meteoroid, and a favorite subject of science-fiction writers? The easy answer is an asteroid, of course, but its particularities are harder to define, especially for the average human (or theatergoer). But leave it to experimental risk-taker Mac Wellman (an oft-feted Obie Award-winning playwright and professor at Brooklyn College) to attempt to humanize this outer-space phenomenon and thrust it center stage. In 1965UU-- his adaptation of a constellation of his own short stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds--he charts the imaginary histories of actual asteroids, creating a playful, surreal world that is as foreign to most of us as the surface of the moon.

Your enjoyment of this brief fantasy will depend on your ability to suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in what you don’t – and most likely never will – understand. It’s a discombobulating experience, in both content and execution, and the shapeless plot might leave you feeling as if you, too, are floating through space. In the end, 1965UU proves to be more satisfying as a cerebral exercise than as a theatrical one.

Within the rectangular confines of the Chocolate Factory Theatre, a long runway stretches wide before the audience. There’s a low, ominous rumbling in the background, from which Dr. Ravanello (“Nello, for short”) materializes, slumped in a chair. Clad in a dark robe, thick goggles, and white athletic socks, he introduces himself as part of “Planetoid 1965UU” and becomes our guide to this stark world, a place where he has only three companions: Alphonse Bedo, the hefty, sardonic barometer of an object’s reflectivity; Umberto the Polisher, the gruff, bearded leader, who shines everything to gleaming perfection; and Rosalind, whom they all desperately adore, and who whizzes by at lightning speed in her own orbit.

Asteroids, as it turns out, are studied within surprisingly human terms – assigned to families, given intricate names, and tracked by origin. Behaviorally, however, they can be both predictable and unpredictable (hence their forbidding presence in sci-fi scripts), and Wellman observes them here in an intriguing, yet often alienating, parallel to the human condition. How much do we (or can we) determine our fate? What forces must be in place for us to collide?

Wellman creates an unfamiliar landscape and then fills it with recognizable emotions, including infatuation, unrequited love, jealousy, loneliness, and ennui. Particularly fascinating are the “No-Lookies,” which Nello calls “our interior theater” – scripts that literally float through the universe, just waiting to be enacted. Do we drift through the universe only to imbibe and perform various scripts that have been penned for us?

But as fascinating (and worthy) as many of these questions are, they are delivered through a confusing clot of theatrical devices and bizarre scenarios. An actress (Heather Christian) sits at one end of the stage, lit with “bluish-green dust,” and reads the lines that are occasionally projected on the back wall of the stage in a robotic, spacey voice. At the beginning this includes the stage directions; later, she repeats a fortune-cookie mantra: “What is must stand alone; stand still.”

And she doesn’t just speak – she simulates the acrobatic flatulence of one character via her microphone, providing just one of the jarring pockets of humor that percolate randomly throughout the production.

With his taut, reptilian gaze, Paul Lazar makes a game, if unremarkable, interpreter of the planetoid, and his planetary cohorts make only brief, often bizarre, cameo appearances.

For all its off-putting weirdness, 1965UU benefits most from Wellman’s poetic language: one moment finds us within “the deep umbrella of the darkest velvety night shadow,” and in the final scene, Nello tells a compelling story about a “vividly vermillion” radish. The tale culminates when, in a moment full of suspense and anticipation, Nello reaches into his pocket and asks us to look at an object. As he unfurls his fingers to reveal his palm, he presents his treasure to the audience. In a way, it’s a final test to qualify us for understanding this world. His hand, as it turns out, is empty – unless you happen to see something there, of course.

Future Imperfect

The living room exposed to the audience in the Clockwork Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number looks unremarkable and familiar. Yet this symbol of family unity, of similarity across households, is re-imagined as a bizarre and frightening landscape. In this room, a father and son whose relationship is eerily abnormal communicate with clipped dialogue that sets the audience on edge. This is no kitchen-sink drama. Churchill’s play transports us to a sexless, amoral future in which science has perverted traditional family dynamics, along with clear definitions of self. This nightmare scenario introduces major philosophical queries that cannot be answered by the hopeless creatures asking them. In this hopeless world, Churchill’s sad characters find nothing that unites them and nothing that sets them apart. In focusing on an emotionless world, the play itself is too cold to be satisfying theater. A Number focuses on the fallout after a grieving father tries to replace his mysteriously absent biological son (or fill the void following his wife’s death) by cloning him. Rather than alleviate his sadness, this act brings terrible unforeseen consequences that deprive this man of a sense of worth, self, or happiness. With profound confusion he tries to speak to his son and the clones to understand what he has done, but every query further baffles all parties. In the end, there is only the hollow satisfaction of one clone that, in spite of all odds and without justification, is happy.

Unfortunately, Churchill’s fascinating philosophical questions do not make up for her inaccessible characters, particularly the stolid father, played without emotion by Sean Marrinan. The strange process of cloning has rendered this man powerless and useless. Rather than accept responsibility, he tosses around vague pronouns—“they were only to make one of you.” Though he is pathetic, he is impossible to sympathize with, which makes the role difficult. Perhaps Marrinan is wise to avoid bursts of emotion, but his stiffness is distracting. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that Marrinan and his co-star, Jay Rohloff (playing all versions of the “son”), never achieve a comfortable rhythm with Churchill’s fragmented dialogue. Hopefully with more productions behind them this style will come more naturally.

Whereas the father is reserved and cold, his sons are his opposite in several ironic ways. Appearing in three variations, the children haunt his life in ways that mirror the ghosts of Christmases past, similarly illuminating his transgressions. Though they are genetically identical, their nurturing, or lack thereof, has produced vastly different characters, each of which’s individuality is brought to energetic life by Rohloff.

The son in the first scenes, Bernard 2, is a thoughtful creature who is intrigued and frightened by his origins and unafraid to ask difficult questions. His curiosity brings the audience up to speed and even jogs the fuzzy memory of his father. But there is a profound sense of loss in their conversations: though tied by blood, the two have no past.

Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say that the appearance of Bernard 1, a bitter and violent child, introduces higher stakes into the drama. However, in this dull and lacking world, his crime does not stir passion or change. After Bernard 1 succeeds in what he might consider revenge, the disturbing questions persist. No scores are settled, no burdens lifted. Even with the arrival of a third clone, a happy-go-lucky simpleton, the humor is dark and short-lived. There seems to be no hope for this “family.”

Churchill’s preoccupation with perversions of the familiar is perfectly rendered in Larry Laslo’s set. In spite of its gentle mauve tones, the vast space—and the inability of the father and son to fill it—contributes to the sense that this is a cold reality. The audience stares into the living room like scientists watching an experiment. The clever set also features a window that showcases projections of an embryo’s development. The egg in the sky inspires questions of origin and underscores the father’s detachment. This ominous orb comes out only when the lights go down and attracts the attention of the father in a way that his crying son did not.

Though A Number addresses and explores fascinating questions of self, identity, and responsibility, the play often has the feel of a formal experiment. It is as though Churchill is so dedicated to showing the coldness of this future world that she forgets the live audience in the present, sacrificing dramatic tension in the name of form and ideology. It can be somewhat trying to watch a dramatization of a philosophical debate, but the issues she raises are interesting and provide much to consider upon leaving the theater. The problem is that while you’re in the theater, the story is not all that riveting, and it’s characters, perhaps by necessity, frustratingly forgettable.

Foreman's Bandwagon

Since 1967, the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, housed in the East Village's 200-year-old St. Mark's Church, has provided New Yorkers with regular doses of its founder's trademark cluttered-symbolist-folkloric-multimedia-Surrealism. They hysterically practice ontology—the study of the nature of existence itself, complete with trips through the collective subconscious and visual delights such as giant hummingbirds, alien seances, and model planes piloted by gangs of baby dolls. A good deal of this is provided by Foreman's productions of his own plays, but, as Artistic Director of the Ontological-Hysteric, he has also been broadening the tradition by inviting other, often emerging artists to try out his ideas, and their own, in the Ontological Incubator. The Incubator is a wonderful program, because, let's face it, not all theatre audiences like Foreman's plotless phantasmagorias straight up. Some, however, might be more open to Foremanesque performance if it has the semblance of a traditional narrative. The Incubator's latest presentation, The Brainium Brothers and Sons Theatrical Outfit's The Two Sisters, or Douglas Mery, Next to Nothing! (A Play About Witches Under Pressure), draws heavily on Foreman's bag of tricks, and his sumptuous visual style, but also follows a story, a Southern Gothic family drama centered on a pair of orphaned sister “witches” who tell fortunes from their pageant wagon.

The sisters are personifications of two of the modern age's most powerful inspiring daemons: religious and scientific curiosity. The resulting script, co-authored by Matt Cosper and director Anthony Cerrato, is a bit rough around the edges, and gets off to a slow start. It trades on some rather tired conventions, but is nevertheless enchanting, mainly for its visual style and smart, humanizing acting.

The older of the two witches, played by Melissa Miller as a gritty yet sultry pragmatist, possibly represents science; the younger (Tara McMullen) searches for her dead mother and is prone to fits of religious zeal. The two struggle to control each other until the arrival of a drifter (Aaron White) with a gunshot wound, the titular Douglas. At one point, he refers to himself as "Modern Man." Soon, this poor guy is entangled in the sisters' love-hate relationship, and seduced, tormented, and endangered by them.

The battle between science and religion, and the legend of "modern man" tormented by demoniacal abstractions symbolized by ruthless and hysterical “witches” isn't exactly avant-garde, but The Two Sisters, or Douglas Mery, Next to Nothing! is entertaining. There's a truly magical moment when the trio of characters are caught in the pageant-wagon in a storm, and an interesting divided-lady circus trick. Miller is a particularly gifted actress, showing her character's toughness, loneliness, and harsh love for her uncontrollable sister, whose beliefs and behaviour frighten her terribly.

Kaitlyn Mulligan's set is one of the most delightful and ambitious I've seen in awhile: a faded turquoise "gypsy wagon" with windows that open all sorts of ways, increasingly revealing more and more of its interior, with a skirt of dusty gold cloth, perched on a wilderness hill covered with the dust of the earth and ultimately revealing several holes with buried secrets. There are some incredible special effects that I really shouldn't describe in advance, heightened by Stephen Arnold's sublime and suspenseful lighting. Jason Sebastian's sound design effectively mixes modern influences with ominous noise and folksy tunes.

In the set design and blocking, the oddly-shaped space of the Ontological is ignored rather than treated as a challenge: one of the pillars holding up the ceiling bisects the set for no aesthetic reason, and this reviewer's view of a monologue was blocked because the actress stood immediately behind that pillar. Annie Simon's costumes are great, a combination of Depression-era South workaday clothes and bright, shiny, clashing motley of medieval jesters.

The Brainium get off some good lines and images. “You don't love me—you'd do what I say if you loved me,” the religious sister rants, like a petulant God. “Why is it that I've come here?” the man asks. “To dig,” he's told, and tossed a spade. To dig for what? Answers, or his grave? There are also moments in which the dialogue becomes pretentious and clichéd. “I do not desire the end of the world,” one of the witches cackles. “My desire is the end of the world!”

Other cliches are trotted out: “Frankenstein” and "Einstein" are often name-dropped; the sisters perform brain surgery, with the older, scientific one analyzing the man's brain and the younger, spiritual one trying to inscribe it by writing on a giant book.

When the man tries to find his stolen raccoon-fur hat—his symbolised true self—he is confused by identical hats appearing on the heads of both sisters at once. Which is authentic? Foreman's own plays tend to raise often original questions about the nature of consciousness, reality, and memory. The Two Sisters only rehashes an old feud.

In short, the script of this play needs a little further work, but the show is entertaining and eye-catching, with a fantastic central performance. Foreman fans in particular should not miss it.

Going for Baroque

What comedy divine from blank verse springsWhen Judith Shakespeare's fairest Comp'ny brings A play-in-mostly-verse, by Hagen, Paul Of Pope's Rape of the Lock, to that great hall Known as the Duo, in East Fourth Street fair! Through Pope's old words they've blown some fresh new air.

Here, Pope's the narrator, and matches wits With actors playing Lock, and pitches fits. His off-stage-left critique is first intrusive Declining, later on, into “abusive.” Pope's view of humankind's not optimistic, So in the flesh he's sadomasochistic.

They've cast as heroine Belinda (she Of threatened curl) one who in truth's a “he” (John Forkner.) Pope himself's played by a “she”: Miss Littlestone--Soul of Hilarity! Her Pope sneers--he's a misanthropic grouch-- Whilst Forkner's 'Linda lolls upon a couch Set in a set made decadently garish By cloth of gold worth half a wealthy parish.

(In keeping with a Judith Shakes tradition Some girls play boys; boys girls: for the position Of gender in this world is social -- learned. That's shown true when the roles are thus o'erturned.)

Paul Hagen's “Popish” language is delightful: His Seussic verse is comic and insightful. He vivisects the paranoid A. Pope Who with "improvisation" cannot cope. (When one bold actor adds to “nymph” an “-o” Repeatedly, it causes quite a row.)

Lock's play-within-a-play recounts the tale Of Goldilocks (Belinda), red-lipped, pale Who to her joy and horror, is pursued By one too-rakish, scissors-wielding, rude And popular (unfortunately) Baron (Played by Miss V. Morosco, who does dare one To think she's somehow channeling James Dean And Malkovich's Valmont: suave, and mean.)

With sharp tableaux Jane Titus smartly blocks The action well, engaging as she mocks Pope's vanities, and his renowned creation. Miss Darling's costumes show smart combination Of Pope's time's clothes and ours: gowns, frock coats, bows One pair of bluejeans, plus, perched on one nose A pair of plastic glasses. When the play Is mostly over, the actors suddenly break into a more realist prose style, gang up on Pope, and struggle for control of the story.

This twist is not exactly original: it reminded this reviewer of the scene in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods in which the disgruntled fairytale characters violently gang up on their smug, self-distanced Narrator. After Lock's coup de cast, the script goes on perhaps a few minutes too long.

Ultimately, however, The Rape of the Lock is a riotously fun evening, equally likely to amuse and provoke both the original poem's fans and critics, as well as the uncommitted and uninitiated. As The Rape of the Lock is the first full production derived from the Judith Shakespeare Company's Resurgence new adaptations development program, I look forward to encountering the next product.

Some Like It Hot

Little more than hot air connects the quartet of monologues that comprise Norman Lasca’s A Great Place to Be From. As a severe heat wave makes its way across Midwestern America, four individuals share stories both devastatingly honest and comical about Important Moments in their lives; events that led them to a major change or epiphany. However, these four monologues remain fundamentally disconnected thematically, leading one to wonder if Lasca created these vignettes as anything more than a showcase for his diverse work. As it currently stands at the Kraine Theater, where Place kicks of the Babel Theater Project’s new season and runs until September 27 under Geordie Broadwater’s sometimes overly restrained direction, the play still feels like a work-in-progress.

Contrary to his show’s title, Lasca takes his audience to some rather ugly locales in the human psyche. His inaugural monologue, “Stars in the City,” finds Paul (Matthew Johnson) detailing sex with his girlfriend while bemoaning the waning emotional intimacy between them. “Transfusion,” for another example, explores the lengths to which D (Jacques Roy) will go to save an animal. There is also “Phantom Limb,” in which housewife Anne (Kim Martin-Cotten) nurtures a long-simmering fetish.

These emotional crises are rife with dramatic potential, but Lasca undercuts his own work by making it too literal. He should be showing his points onstage, not telling them to his audience. This is more difficult to do in monologue form with just one actor and his or her dialogue on stage, but he can still let some ideas emerge on their own rather than feel compelled to make them all explicit.

His actors are certainly good enough to depend on. Roy delivers a sterling performance as a disaffected hospital orderly who resorts to extreme measures to save the life of his pet dog; he immerses himself completely in Lasca’s arch dialogue and makes every image easy to conjure up. Andrew Zimmerman, too, shines in “Battle of Bunker Hill,” as a disenchanted grocery store employee going off on a tear about his overly patriotic boss. These are two performers who know how to pick up incomplete material and hoist it above their shoulders.

Johnson, on the other hand, cannot do the same thing in “City.” Despite the amount of information Lasca has his character share with the audience, we know very little about Paul and his girlfriend. Whereas Roy and Zimmerman are able to hint at what their experiences with their dog and boss, respectively, mean to them, Johnson’s monologue feels more like recitative. His line readings all follow the same delivery pattern, punctuated with a grunt, and so we never if we can take his lines at face value or need to read between them. I wish Broadwater had done more to flesh out this performance.

Also, “Phantom” feels distinct – and, it should be stated, long – enough to warrant a production of its own rather than being attached to Place on some sort of theatrical rider bill. It feels like a shame to shoehorn this monologue in, since Lasca again has the good fortune to see his work enacted by a real pro. Martin-Cotten is so at ease onstage with just herself and awkward material – involving a kinky use for a leather sling that has escalating emotional effects on its user – that I could have sworn I was watching a real person’s confession. Martin-Cotton uses the slightest gestures and glances to convey a host of conflicting emotions, from arousal to shame to denial.

All the same, the whole of these four monologues add up to less than the sum of their parts. I certainly hope Lasca continues to work through the three monologues that serve as the evening’s first act (at close to an hour-and-a-half, “Phantom” gets the second act to itself). He can certainly delve deeper into the darker aspects of these situations. His places do not have to be neat and tidy to be considered great, but they should be more completely explored.

Party of Five

The Invitation, Brian Park’s new play at the Ohio Theatre, opens mid-dinner party to a collection of middle-aged urban sophisticates. Under the direction of John Clancy, dinner conversation clips along at a pace just short of stylized; within minutes, the banter covers Tchaikovsky and Rodin, London and Machu Picchu. This is the sort of play where characters trade barbs by accusing one another of name-dropping James Joyce. Publicity materials call the production “a revenge comedy” and, as promised, it’s not long before the characters’ jovial cracks sharpen into sly attacks on one another. Marion (Katie Honaker), the hostess of the party, takes sardonic aim at those far away (black people, vegetarians, the retarded) and closer to home (her husband David, played by David Calvitto, a verbose book editor whose own publishing house has recently rejected his own book). Honaker servicably delivers Marion’s remarks but never musters the crackling glee that her glib cruelties seem intended to possess.

When tensions between Marion and David reach a breaking point, they exit with the dirty dishes, momentarily taking leave from their guests: John and Sarah (a well intentioned couple played by Paul Urcioli and Eva van Dok) and Steph (Leslie Farell, as a smart woman whose birthday the dinner party is intended to celebrate, an oddly inconsequential detail). Moments later David returns, drenched in blood (“I edited her! Edited her right out.”)

The revelation of Marion’s bloody end could make for a sharp, darkly funny button to the piece were the play to end right there. While material built into the first scene might merit further development, the subsequent scene fails to deliver. Instead, Urcioli and Farell are made to traipse around the stage covered in blood as Calvitto giddily gushes about Shakespeare, Bellini, and how much he hates his wife. The premise wears thin within minutes; the play lasts much longer.

Despite its lengthiness, the second scene of The Invitation reveals neither depth of character nor increased understanding of the play’s absurdist world. A bizarre through-the-door exchange with a girl scout selling cookies plays out less like an insightful fragment of Americana than an improv comedy premise gone flat. Clancy’s direction fails to carve character development out of the one-note script; throughout the scene, David stays jubilant. Steph stays appalled. John stays affably accommodating.

And Sarah stays in the hall closet: when she panics in response to the bloody events, her husband locks her there, despite (because of?) her shrieking and begging. Then she is all but forgotten. Her absence allows for The Invitation’s attempt at a snappy ending; it also raises serious questions about its treatment of women. That the play is about men who butcher their wives and lock them in closets when they make too much noise is never appropriately addressed; wives are dangerously beside the point.

Somewhere inside The Invitation is an absurdist exploration of what happens when analytical criticism becomes wholly divorced from human connection. But like an uneasy dinner guest, it talks a lot without properly expressing itself.

The Sounds of Silence

Contemporary Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's Sa Ka La, now being produced by Oslo Elsewhere, has all the ingredients of a standard-issue domestic traumedy, from the estranged adult siblings and their significant others gathering for a birthday celebration, to an impending death in the family, to grudges, repression, and secrets itching to reveal themselves, including, of course, adultery. The recipe should be familiar to anyone who's seen the recent New York stagings of Crimes of the Heart, Festen, or The Clean House, or read the Washington Post's review of August: Osage County. Here we go again, this reviewer assumed, and settled to wait for the inevitable eleventh-hour confession of poverty-driven-stinginess, child abandonment, incest, or whatever. Then Fosse proved this assumption absolutely wrong.

As Henning (Frank Harts) and Johannes (Raymond McAnnally) wait for their wives--a pair of sisters (Birgit Huppuch and Marielle Heller)--and joint mother-in-law to arrive for the mother-in-law's sixtieth birthday party, another story unfolds on the same stage, which, in the world of the play, is a hospital room across their nameless city. The sisters' Mom has had a stroke, and her daughters are with her and a sympathetic but acerbic Nurse (Jacqueline Antaramian) at the hospital, waiting for their mysterious estranged brother (Noel Joseph Allain) to arrive. Meanwhile, everyone has failed to inform Henning, Johannes, and their friends (Anna Gutto and Mike Caban) that Mom's party has been called off, much less why. None of these people are much good at communication: the proliferation of mundane secrets, adulteries, and grudges demonstrates that. They remain in the dark partly because they prefer it to difficult knowledge; partly because the people who supposedly love them want them in the dark. Meanwhile, Mom, her muscles partially paralyzed, struggles to speak. The gibberish title phrase -- "Sa Ka La" -- is nearly all she is able to utter. Like the Ancient Mariner, she must communicate this truth -- whatever it means -- to someone in particular before she can find respite in death.

What does"Sa Ka La" mean? Nothing I can tell; maybe nothing Fosse knows, either. A dynamic, chillingly realistic actress, Kathryn Kates communicates the urgency of Mom's desire to communicate, without shedding any light on her message. Other questions remain unanswered as well, about details of the lives and conflicts of the sparsely drawn yet totally psychologically genuine characters. This is no accident. It is as if Samuel Beckett, the playwright of absolute minimalism, had convinced Fosse's fellow Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, the master of realism, to agree to a collaboration. Fosse, translator-director Sarah Cameron Sunde, and a sharp, tightly-knit ensemble cast make the conflicts real, so the details take a back seat to the suspense, the tension, and the screams inside the silences.

Sunde's blocking increases the deliberately infuriating sense of missed communiques; of characters passing each other in the figurative night. Characters in both locations cross in front of each other. In one scene, a character in the party room and one in the hospital stand back to back, almost, but not quite touching.

Jo Winiarski's scenic design reveals the outlines of hospital room and party room at once. It consists of an unencumbered platform, a hospital bed, a tiny table bearing a birthday cake almost levitated by a bunch of bright blue-and-white balloons, and a wall of wide, tall glass windows. The ice-blue, grey, and white tones of the set also possibly suggest the icy shores of Norway, at least as this reviewer, never having seen those shores, imagines them. At the same time, the room could be anywhere. Jen Caprio's costumes, in matching shades of blue, gunmetal, white, and sunrise-orange, allow the characters to stand out against the sets while fitting in the overall color scheme.

The only area in which this play doesn't entirely work is the dialogue's repetitive inclusion of the word "yeah." The first few "yeahs," denoting affirmation, nonchalance, fear or boredom or helpless verbal litter, are fine. People talk like that, yeah. But then when you can, yeah, hear thirty seconds of yeah, dialogue, in which the word "yeah" is spoken, yeah, seven times--yeah, seven, yeah, it starts to sound like a gimmick. Like Mamet's first naturalistic, then overdone signature expletives. But that's a small glitch in an otherwise compelling production of a play that has taken too long to find an American audience. Far too long, yeah.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Enter this production with the mindset that it is not a play, but an experience. The weighty drama, HIM is poet/playwright/painter E.E Cummings’ method of showing his estranged daughter, Nancy, the world that prevented him from being her father. That world is the circus. Presented by The Longest Lunch, and equipped with a capable ensemble of actors with a great well of energy to draw from, HIM takes the stage with some built-in obstacles. The biggest obstacle is: Cummings purposely wrote an incomprehensible play because he believed experiencing art is more important than understanding it.

There are two sides to HIM’s plot. One half is a semi-autobiographical account of the way Cummings’ marriage to his first wife, Elaine, dissolved, taking his only child with her. The other half is a circus that the main character of HIM, also named, HIM (Dan Cozzens) has written and proceeds to show to his wife, ME (Elan O’Conner). ME doesn’t understand it. HIM tells her she is not supposed to. “Just watch,” he urges.

The audience would best heed this same advice. Though HIM does have a very human story at its center, the bulk is a vaudeville circus where each skit is just as bizarrely baffling as the one before it. “What was that about?” ME dares to ask after one particularly puzzling piece. “Chaos,” HIM tells her as if it should have been obvious.

Cummings’ dialogue is rich with poetry that Cozzens recites with perfect fluidity. The imagery is vivid and a few select sentences stand out for their simple profoundness (“I held my husband up to the light today and I could see right through him.”) Cummings' level of intense analytical thought is a challenge to sustain for the play’s long running time. This performance ran at three and a half hours with one intermission.

Fortunately, The Longest Lunch makes the most of that one intermission. Hot dogs, popcorn and free cups of soda and water were served, filling the lobby with the familiar sights and smells of a circus.

Despite its burdens as a heavy and lengthy play, Him offers something not often found in modern day theater: a believable recreation of the vaudeville era.

Rather than paint the theater with cheery, bright colors, set designer Kaitlyn Mulligan selected worn and faded hues. The effect is a set that looks used and lived in. One can imagine the stage’s wrinkled red curtain and creaky tired props being dragged across a dusty countryside from one town to the next. The theater even smells like the carnival, largely due to the thick aroma of herbal cigarette smoke that permeates the room.

The female ensemble performers look authentically Burlesque in their top hats, slip dresses, fishnets and garters, tapping in a line like a tawdry group of Rockettes. But the most eerie element is Michael Hochman’s lighting design: dark green and deep purple bathe the performers, giving them a creepy, otherworldly feel.

Whether or not this display ever impressed Cummings’ daughter, Nancy, is not mentioned. There is a scene where Cummings describes the wonder of seeing a child in a crib while the ghost of a young girl paces around the outskirts of the room, appearing to be listening with some sympathy.

But the moment is burst by ME. Does HIM want to be a father or not? That is the reality of the situation and reality, HIM says, kills the bohemian soul. Hopefully, Nancy does understand her poet/painter/playwright father on some level. The Longest Lunch certainly seems to share his mindset. Their production has captured the aspects that Cummings loved most about the circus by recreating the smoky fantasy of vaudeville that clearly touched his soul.

A Giant Play for Little Spectators

Literally Alive Children's Theatre, based in the Players Theatre in the West Village, has been making a name for itself as a producer of low-tech, high-concept theatre for families with young children. Literally Alive's recent adaptation of The Little Mermaid garnered criticism that compared it positively to Disney's multimillion dollar stage version. Now, for their contribution to the First Irish 2008 festival of Irish theatre, Literally Alive's Michael Sgouros and Brenda Bell have unveiled an original adaptation of Irish writer Oscar Wilde's children's story "The Selfish Giant." The result is visually delightful, with spirited acting and some of the most creative audience-participation and attention-getting techniques I have seen in children's theatre. It also transparently reveals the challenge of adapting this Victorian Christian evangelical morality tale for a multi- or non-denominational modern audience.

An hour before each performance of The Selfish Giant, Literally Alive holds a free pre-show workshop, in which show puppet designer Julia Darden helps children to make shadow-puppets out of construction and crepe paper, up on the Players' stage. The puppets, shaped like flowers and snowflakes, are then used in that day's show.

The audience participation continues in the play's prologue, in which Todd Eric Hawkins, who will play the Selfish Giant, asks the children in the audience to guess "what you need to put on a play" ("Acting!" "Costumes!" "Lights!") and then introduces them to the company members who provide these elements. Hawkins identifies each of the actors and names their roles. This will be helpful later, when human performers represent birds, seasons, sleet and snow.

Then the story begins. The Selfish Giant does not want anyone else to play in his garden; even he doesn't play in it himself. He has made his rule clear, on a sign that reads "TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED." When the Giant goes off to visit his cousin in Cornwall, whom he doesn't much like, his beleaguered servant, Patrick (energetically played by Sal Delmonte), throws open the gates of the garden to the children of the neighboring village, which is as poor as the Giant is rich. (In the original story, Wilde explains that these children have nothing to play with except stones and dirt from their unpaved roads.)

When the Giant returns, he is furious, and replaces the cautionary sign with a stone wall. That keeps the kids out for good, but also drives away the birds, the flowers, and even Spring, causing it to be perpetual winter in Narnia. Or whatever country this is.

The triumph of Winter is one of the most captivating moments in the play. The season is represented by a dancer (Stefanie Smith) in a fluffy, floor-length white tiered skirt and a huge white hooded cloak that blows about her as she dances with partner in an ice-colored suit. He lifts her and spins and she flies, scattering snow and freezing air. The Giant is dismayed by Winter, but for the audience, she is a wonderful sight. The accompanying music, composed by Sgouros and performed by Sgouros, Laura Jordan, and Kristin Smith, has a lovely marimba part reminiscent of falling snow.

Then the story experiences some growing pains. Children sneak into the garden, and the Giant suddenly learns to like them -- especially one whom, he suspects, is an apparition of himself as a child. Why this change? He has learned that a garden kept selfishly apart from the world cannot bloom, and happily announces a goal to rediscover his inner child.

This is a bit odd for a play directed at the 3-10 set, who presumably have not yet lost their inner children because they are allowed to be children in the outer sense. However, in Wilde's story, the little boy who gives the Giant his attitude adjustment mysteriously has nail marks in his hands and feet. In Literally Alive's modernization, we will reach salvation by psychology and letting go of our grown-up seriousness, selfishness, and repression, an updated moral that's at least as silly as the original one.

To be fair, much Victorian-era European writing for children presents a fairly serious challenge to the modern adaptor. Most of it was intended to teach a few doctrinaire principles: that salvation after death is worth making sacrifices in life, that the rich should share their wealth with the poor through charity rather than through political reform or revolution, and that the prime example of both these principles may be found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

From Hans Christian Andersen's original "Little Mermaid," who died for unrequited love but gained an immortal soul, to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Little Eva and Frances Hodgson Burnett's pantheon of rich, spoiled children who must learn humility and charity before regaining security, this is the formula. A few brilliant writers -- Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie -- broke the rules, compelling children in their stories and audiences to confront the complexities and absurdities of the real world. Oscar Wilde, in writing "The Selfish Giant," was no such rebel.

Despite this, "The Selfish Giant" has some redeeming qualities. Literally Alive deserves kudos for translating them for a new generation of theatregoers.

Three's Company

With gay marriage and civil unions more common in urban centers, it was inevitable that gay sex comedies would become a genre to be explored. Terrence McNally broke the first ground with The Ritz back in 1975. Since then there have been a number of gays-gathering-for-a-weekend plays, but few that examine aspects of gays in committed parental relationships. Peter Mercurio’s ambitious Two Spoons examines what happens when two men who are in a committed relationship and raising a son are presented with the opportunity for a three-way during a business trip to Philadelphia. It’s a premise that sometimes holds the promise of a gay version of The Seven-Year Itch, but it ends up a muddle.

To be fair, Two Spoons means to be more than a farce, and it frequently exhibits a serious tone. Mercurio’s two protagonists, Grant James Varjas’s neurotic, twitchy Steve and Brian Gillespie’s centered, easygoing Larry, convey the struggles of all parents with being role models, instilling discipline, and nurturing the talents of their offspring (a 3-year-old named Matthew). But, in their seventh year together, during a weekend away from New York, they find themselves in a steam room being cruised by a young stud and tempted into a threesome.

Like Tom Ewell in The Seven-Year Itch, they fumble their way through a seduction with gentle humor and later fantasize about other possibilities. The objects of their lust are all played by a cherub-faced Thomas Flannery, Jr., who resembles a muscular Tintin, quiff and all. Varjas and Gillespie show off skillful timing and genuine chemistry, and their scenes have a natural give-and-take; they’re a solid core for a play that stumbles when they’re not working together, and sometimes even when they are.

Mercurio knows the way a couple operates (he and his partner have a child, according to the program notes) and has tapped that to create two characters who are genuine and likeable. But he has also chosen a fluid, often incoherent, structure. It relies heavily on narration, as Steve and Larry address the audience and explain what they’re feeling during a lot of narrative crosstalk.

Under Chuck Blasius’s direction, the switches from narration to scenes, or reality to fantasy, aren’t as cleanly made as they should be, and a good deal of confusion results. And until the first-act curtain, following an overlong seduction scene (nicely choreographed by Robin Carrigan and lighted with strobes by Rob Hilliard like a silent film), it’s not clear where the play is going. But Steve has been transformed by the encounter, and wants to “leave the door ajar” for more fooling around.

As universal themes go, whether or not gay parents should have extramarital sex is a niche issue, but it fits snugly into the mission of Other Side Productions, which presents plays of interest to the gay community. The point of Mercurio’s work seems to be that explicit rules must be set forth for parents as they are for children. But the child as presented here is the most problematic and negligible character.

Described by Steve’s mother as “three going on 23,” the toddler speaks like a teenager, quotes Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms, and takes on numerous bit parts, including a waiter at Franklin’s favorite tavern and a towel boy at the hotel, both of whom Steve mistakes for Matthew. Now, no child of 3 is likely to have personality traits that summon a grown-up doppelganger, no matter how fanciful Steve’s imagination is. The character is simply too diffuse for the actor DeVon Jackson to make convincing, let alone engaging.

There is some good writing, though, side by side with the problematic, and the production raises an interesting philosophical issue about stage nudity. Mercurio’s script specifies that it’s not necessary for this play and is, in his opinion, distracting. But nudity has been around since Hair 40 years ago, and if there is such a thing as gratuitous nudity, there must, conversely, be essential, or at least reasonable, nudity. When the sex object in a sex farce (or that part of the play written as such) is demurely covered by a dancer’s belt, it becomes just as distracting. More important, it leaves anyone who hasn’t read Mercurio’s stipulation with the unfair impression that the actor is not fully committed to what would seem to be the needs of the role.

Two Spoons has some accomplished acting, and with some editing and tightening, and a more consistent tone, it might work, but at present it carries promise more than anything else.