In a Fictional South, Something Familiar

Trembling in the grasp of a recession, we have been asked to reflect—most notably by President Obama—on the last time in our country’s history when blunders on the high level caused a state of economic emergency. The difference between the Great Depression and what many have coined “The Great Recession” is one of only three letters. But although Jacqueline Goldfinger’s The Oath is set in a Southern town during the Depression, she has asked us to not focus on this weighty parallel. “Whether the current economic downturn is the new Great Depression or not doesn’t interest me,” she states in her playwright’s note. "What really interests me is how pressure forces people to reveal their true selves," she continues.

It’s perhaps due to her deliberate subtlety that The Oath’s symbolism is so affecting. The story is laden with religious parallels, questions of female identity and themes of secrecy and familial duty, but the presence of a nationwide crisis that hovers over its cast of characters is what allows us to relate to them right off the bat—even before Goldfinger dismantles, in a startlingly effective manner, the initial archetypes that these characters represent.

The Oath’s poster, which depicts imposing church windows and the tagline, "a southern gothic tale," may easily evoke supernatural and creepy associations in a modern theatergoer, but onstage the work plays out as a straightforward family narrative. Set in a small-town parish in Florida, the play tells the story of a preacher (Anthony Crep) who becomes closely involved in the lives of the town's former minister’s three daughters (Louise Flory, Dianna Martin and Sarah Chaney). Their father, never seen onstage, has been confined to his bedroom for over a year with a condition that isn’t initially revealed, while the three unmarried women attempt to both run the parish and deal with the pervasive poverty and consequent desperation that’s currently affecting their community.

All three start off as stereotypes—while Deck (Martin) tends to the coffee pot and the laundry basket, Cebe (Flory) sneaks around town with different men in a rebellious tirade. Meanwhile, Ophelia (Chaney) casts an imposing, stiff shadow over the desk at which her father used to sit, charging community members money for blessings and counting her winnings. When Joshua arrives, he proceeds to push for the truth behind the reverend’s yearlong absence, and finds himself head-on with the sisters’ desire to conceal their individual—and collective—secrets.

That these archetypes give way to remarkable layers of moral ambiguity as the story progresses speaks to both the quality of the writing and the extraordinary devotion of the performers. Even when Cebe bursts into a sarcastic cackle, there’s a manic, rageful element to her seeming lack of rules that awakens our curiosity. Meanwhile, Deck appears so deliberately resigned to her role as an old maid that her momentary outburst early in the play hints at a deep-seeded trauma. While Ophelia’s turn from a stern, money-grubbing matriarch into a vulnerable, lonely soul feels hurried, she provides a steadier counterpoint to her more troubled sisters.

Like The Roundtable Ensemble’s recent tale of military wives, Silent Heroes, the world of The Oath is one ruled by invisible men. From the never-seen former preacher to the president of the church board and, most notably, Christ himself, offstage male figures control the choices of each of the play’s women. In a cleverly ironic setup, Joshua is nevertheless merely a visitor in a world of women. As the sole male cast member, Anthony Crep brings just the right element of earnestness and sympathy into Joshua. In his attempt to restore a community and a family, his loyal intentions sometimes give way to desperation.

More than many mainstream works, The Oath achieves a near-perfect equilibrium between the quality of its writing and its performances. Goldfinger has balanced her story nicely, enabling dynamic, revealing interactions between different pairs of characters, and balancing them out with several powerful monologues. Under the guidance of director Cristina Alicea, each of the actors seems to have understood the depth of the exceptional material, and showcases these characters to their full, sometimes frightening potential.

Gender Benders

Downtown queer theater doesn’t come more “out there” than Cracked Ice, a mélange of drag, music, circus acts, monologues, and campy costumes that plays as a kind of vaudeville fever dream about the current financial crisis and Bernard Madoff. Directed by Circus Amok founder Jennifer Miller, the show features contributions from Kenny Mellman, one half of the Kiki & Herb show; Deb Margolin, a veteran of Split Britches; and the Wau Wau Sisters. Be warned: The humor in the show is an acquired taste. This is the sort of thing you’ll like if you like this sort of thing. The level of comedy can be discerned from the punned names of the two main characters, the Liberty sisters: Statua Liberty (Miller) and Sybil Liberty (Carlton Cyrus Ward). The central conceit is that Sybil, without the knowledge of Statua, has invested the sisters’ money in a Ponzi scheme run by Madoff and, of course, lost it all. Miller and Ward play their characters as if they were Laverne and Shirley on speed, and Miller has directed others to the same level of hysteria, notably Salley May as a roller skater named Flo.

Even if the dialogue isn’t Noel Coward, it would help to understand the alternately rushed and swallowed lines from several of the cast. Even the Liberty sisters’ jokes, credited to Jay Leno, often fizzle because of a lack of comic timing or audibility. Rae C. Wright (who resembles Simone de Beauvoir) has the advantage of more measured speech in less frantic roles, as she cross-dresses as a plumber, who morphs into a woman named Bernadette, who is actually Bernard Madoff in disguise. I think. The rest of the drag in the show is in the English style. That means that there’s no attempt to disguise the facial or chest hair on the men (and Miller, who has a full beard and chest hair, doesn’t disguise hers).

Costumers Jonathan Berger and Charlotte Lily Gaspard have gone all-out on headdresses, spangles and boas, and Berger, who also did the sets, cleverly hangs mobiles of diamond shapes, in powder blue and silver spangles, over the audience, a nice visual play on the “ice” of the title.

Periodically, the Wau Wau sisters (Tanya Gagne and Adrienne Truscott) appear behind a two-dimensional bathtub with (painted cardboard) plants growing in it, and clopping on in Lederhosen and wooden shoes. (It’s a toss-up if they’re Swiss or Dutch.) They are the sons of Bernadette, apparently, who is Bernard Madoff in disguise.

Jokes are thrown out willy-nilly, as when the plumber enters and asks, “Anybody need their pipes cleaned?” And sometimes there are delightful turns of phrase: "I just tell the truth in a completely false way," says Bernadette/Bernie.

But the Keystone Kops–style slapstick grows tiresome; it’s not hilarious just to show up and throw things around. Interspersed with these antics are dances and songs, with music and lyrics by Mellman (Herb of Kiki & Herb). The songs provide amiable interludes, but it’s the physical aspects of the show that succeed best. They include the dexterous Miller and Ward juggling Indian clubs, courtesy of their experience with Circus Amok, and one of the Wau Wau Sisters singing a brief, 60-second song as the other holds a handstand for the full minute.

Melman at the piano also provides unobtrusive underscoring to much of the action as well, although Novice Theory, one of the various rotating guest artists who appear in the show, did a smashing accordion piece on the night I attended—one that he wrote.

Most impressive is the choreography by Faye Driscoll, one of whose pieces excels in silence. Driscoll’s dances are demanding and executed with vigor and synchronization by the cast. Unlike the rest of the show, they seem to have been rehearsed sufficiently. Certainly, when one of the funniest moments is the accidental loss of two wigs, and Miller herself looks unsure which wig to retrieve for her character because they are nearly identical, it’s a good guess that some aspects of the show haven’t been polished quite enough.

Puppets, But Why?

That Franz Kafka had issues with his father is perhaps common knowledge. That these issues influenced his work, particularly “The Judgment” and “The Metamorphosis” is also well known.  And so along comes Drama of Works, a renowned puppet theater, to split Kafka into three versions of himself in order to depict art imitating life. While the depiction is successful, it is unclear if it was necessary.  Kafka #1 is a wooden marionette, carved by Miroslav Trejtnar. The marionette has sunken cheeks and a sad disposition and is accompanied by a hacking cough. Kafka #2 is simply a wooden letter K, of which there are various sizes depending on how much control K has of the situation.  The third puppet is Gregor-Bug, complete with long feelers and six legs. That Kafka is a puppet is reflective of how he approached life—he could never speak out to his father (his thoughts scribbled down in a letter that was never sent), his engagement was eventually broken off, as he only communicated with his fiancée, Felicia (here represented by the letter “F”) through writing.   Puppet Kafka’s method of story-telling is fragmented. “The Metamorphosis” is cut in with episodes from Kafka’s own life as well as added “interrogation scenes” where Greta, the Mother, and the Father are interviewed by a empty suit puppet. Its story is where the piece falls down.  Chopping up “The Metamorphosis” makes it difficult to delve into the story of Gregor and his plight, as the audience is quickly pulled out of it and into the story of Kafka the man or the letter. The parallels between the man and his creation are evident and it seems redundant to hammer them home. Additionally, the interrogation scenes, meant to bring other Kafka works to mind, are unnecessary and add to the story where the story alone should suffice.   Though the story feels forced, and its attempt to examine the parallels between life and art obvious, the visual presentation of the play is stunning. The set is half sized, so that the puppets fit nicely but the human actors overrule the playing space. The balance between actors and puppets is finely maintained—this isn’t the type of puppetry where the puppeteer remains hidden behind a curtain. In fact, the visible puppeteering serves as yet another reminder of how outside forces acted upon and controlled Kafka and Gregor (pre-Bug and as Bug).   The puppets are a mix of traditional marionettes and found object constructions. Kafka finds himself interrogated by desk lamps while the boarder the Samsas take in are represented by shadows on the wall. The two most creatively constructed puppets were Gregor-Bug and the cleaning lady. Gregor-Bug consists of two overturned bread baskets, dish scrubbers, and long feathers while the charwoman puppet was made of a mop and a dusting brush, with a carved sponge for her face. Additionally, the two puppeteer/actors playing Gregor-Bug and the charwoman did an excellent job in bringing their puppets to life.   Puppet Kafka purports to examine the parallels between life and art, and what better way to do so then by mixing live actors with inanimate puppets? However, the way Puppet Kafka unfolds makes one wonder if the parallels need to be or should be examined in such a framework, as the stories are weakened by being cut up and mixed together. The presentation is pleasant and the concept intriguing, but Puppet Kafka never gets to the why and wherefore of the matter.

Not So Suddenly, Last Summer

For most recent high school graduates, the summer before college is a series of innocuous adventures: house parties, road trips, maybe the occasional hookup between shopping sprees at Bed Bath & Beyond. That’s not the case for beleaguered Allegra (Marnie Schulenberg), the heroine, or closest thing there is to one, of Adam Szymkowicz’s sharp play, Pretty Theft, which closes the Flux Theatre Ensemble’s 2009-2010 season. The Dartmouth-bound Allegra is the kind of good girl found in Tom Petty songs. Sympathy abounds for her: her mother is abusive and aloof, her father is dying, and she chooses to spend her summer working in a group home for troubled adults.

Don’t be fooled, though: Theft is in no way one of those formulaic, “that summer changed my life” works. Far from it, in fact, as anyone familiar with the playwright’s work can attest. Szymkowicz’s plays are of a more irreverent ilk. His dialogue is quirky but character-appropriate and while his plots aren’t quite linear, they’re not crazily labyrinthine either. Characters travel along jagged lines that occasionally intersect. This is refreshing because while we can’t foresee the path Theft takes, its destination seems completely justifiable when it is reached.

So when Allegra connects with Suzy (an effervescent Maria Portman Kelly), a classmate who excelled in promiscuity and petty larceny while Allegra majored in scholastics, one expects the show to hit the requisite notes of friendship, betrayal, and self-discovery. To Szymkowicz’s credit, Theft does (thanks in part to Zach Robidas’ spot-on portrayal of a doltish All-American teen boyfriend), and then, unsatisfied at merely appealing to the lowest creative denominator, moves way beyond that.

Allegra meets Joe (Brian Pracht), an autistic patient with a penchant for stealing other’s belongings and lashing out at his caretakers. The two, orphaned by the world in so many ways, develop an understanding that is both dramatically rich and emotionally satisfying. But Allegra surprises herself by finding connections between herself and Suzy as well, in a friendship that takes a half-step back for every step forward that it moves.

Szymkowicz entwines Allegra’s story with that of the enigmatic Marco (marvelously inhabited by Todd D’Amour), a grifter in a Western greasy spoon who flirts with his waitress, played by Candice Holdorf (in typical fashion, Holdorf makes the most of every scene, suggesting a lifetime of disappointment and settling for a character not even granted a first name). All of the principle characters are guilty of various types of theft - as the play title suggests - born of their various needs, but they share more than just this thematic kink. Eventually, these disparate characters’ lives will converge.

It is to director Angela Astle’s credit that these characters do so at a perfectly measured pace. She is a resourceful director who knows how to take advantage of every tool in her arsenal, including set designer Heather Cohn’s versatile production layout, in which the same set pieces evoke a ballet studio, diner, mall, and even a bedroom, within Tribeca’s Access Theater. (Kudos to the ensemble cast for so quickly executing these changes).

More importantly, of course, Astle has assembled a top-notch cast. Pracht is nothing short of a divine presence, heartbreaking and true, and Kelly navigates the tightrope of providing comic relief while suggesting Suzy’s deep vulnerability. Schulenberg, as anyone who saw her in last fall’s Angel Eaters, is a gifted actress, and it is a privilege to watch her carry Theft. She captures the nuances of what the costs and gains of a lonely life are. However, I would have liked for her to have explored Allegra’s darker impulses a bit further.

In a play about stealing, though, it is altogether appropriate to applaud D’Amour, who very nearly steals Theft by show’s end. I’ve praised the gravelly-voiced actor before for his work in What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends, and yet I was still struck by his expert portrayal, one so insidious that it creeps right up on the audience. Of course, in a production as well executed as Pretty Theft, as in life, the signs were right there all along.

It would be a crime to miss them.

Autonomantastic!

Historic con artists, gothic ghosts, duplicitous chess-playing automatons, slapstick-infused 18th century Austrian royalty, and ingeniously used pop-up books are just a few of the wondrous delights that intersect in Bond Street Theatre’s The Mechanical. Writer and director Michael McGuigan has created an endlessly inventive experience with an outstanding ensemble of actors in his sprawling historical and fantastical epic. The kaleidoscopic script centers around a mechanical hoax that toured Europe and America between 1770 and 1854. Known as The Turk, this Automaton Chess Player was invented to amuse Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and consisted of a box and a metal mannequin dressed to resemble a Turkish mystic. An accomplished chess player hid inside the box and made chess moves for the “thinking automaton,” defeating the likes of Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. McGuigan’s script combines the historical Turk with a re-imagined working of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

In the play, Mary Shelley’s ghost discovers that her legacy is endangered because the Creature resurrected by her Victor Frankenstein deserts her story and hides inside the automaton as the master chess player. She enters the world of her own, and McGuigan’s, fantasy to bodily possess characters and try to lure the Creature back into the plot of her own novel.

The actors in the ensemble create all the magic and mystery required with their highly physical and expressively energetic performances. In particular Joanna Sherman and Anna Zastrow are called upon to serve as exotic scenic elements, dancing sailors, Austrian and French royalty, and slapstick narrators straight out of a classic Three Stooges episode. Sherman and Zastrow make their diverse roles look effortless with impressive athleticism and the precise, physical specificity of Ninja masters or, well, at least, veteran vaudeville jugglers.

Meghan Frank is also delightful in a dual role (Mary Shelley’s ghost and Victor Frankenstein’s wife Elizabeth). She is referred to in the play as “quite beautiful, quite charming, and quite possibly deranged.” That seems to fit Frank’s evocative gothic creepiness and her aura of restrained mania.

Frank also served as the designer of a gorgeous puppet made of book pages (portraying the drowned little girl, whose death is blamed on the Creature). And with McGuigan, she designed projections that run throughout the play and provide fascinating context and ambience for the play.

Actors who can be magically captivating during long scenes where they have no lines but grunts—and do so working under a head wrapping that binds their face into grotesqueries—deserve special rewards in heaven. Joshua Wynter, as the Creature, turns his own body into passionate sculpture and embodies a deliciously sinister but compellingly vulnerable bundle of resurrected flesh.

McGuigan’s direction is the real star of the evening, though. The scope of vision for the play is broad and dazzling. The enchanting physicality of the choreographed transitions, the skillful use of puppets and flowing scenic elements, and the surprise introduction of pop-up books with miniatures of set pieces—it all combines into a uniquely exciting and charming journey.

Costume designer Carla Bellisio and a wonderful soundscape (uncredited) also contribute greatly to the allure of the piece.

McGuigan’s script, however, suffers a bit in comparison with the other outstanding design and performance work on the production. While the first act is almost entirely absorbing, the second act loses focus quickly. An unfortunate decision to bookend the script with an unnecessary sub-plot about a theatrical renovation contributes to a sense of messiness and makes the ending of the play seem drawn out. There are also a few moments where it feels as if McGuigan is writing a research paper on The Turk and not a dramatic portrayal.

For theater-goers who like a sense of adventure to their drama and the warm feeling of falling into a meticulously crafted (if occasionally over-sprawling) fantasy world, The Mechanical is certain to impress and entertain.

For tickets and showtimes, consult the venue’s website at www.theaterforthenewcity.net .

Sheep's Clothing

A man strung upside down from a high ceiling recites spoken word poetry into a microphone held up to him by a young woman on the ground, beside whom sits a table of technicians. Whether viewing the image silhouetted against a giant scrim peaks your interest or makes you roll your eyes is only a partial indication of how you will react to the whole of How Soon is Now?, a mixed media riff on vengeance by experimental performance company Bluemouth. Using the story of Peter and the Wolf as a point of departure, How Soon is Now? takes aim at the practice of exacting revenge in the name of justice. The production begins in the balcony of Brooklyn's gorgeous Irondale Center, a converted church, with a whimsical children’s cartoon, animated by Heather Schibli. The opening segment does more to ease audiences into the production than to set the show’s tone, which is a shame because How Soon is Now? has a cloying tendency to veer toward self-seriousness that a greater sense of whimsy would help undercut.

The production roves through the balcony before settling into the Irondale’s large main space, loosely constructed as a renegade courtroom (set by Stephen O’Connell and Don Woods). In place of the cerebral monologues that dominate traditional courtroom drama, How Soon is Now utilizes aesthetic elements to make its appeal viscerally. Film and video projections in muted hues (Cameron Davis, Stephen O’Conell, Sabrina Reeves and Richard Windeyer) create a backdrop at once dreary and kinetic. Music and sound (Richard Windeyer and Omar Zubair) underscore the performers’ spoken word and dance segments, while Zubair’s live percussion helps build dramatic tension.

The dance oriented piece, under the guidance of movement consultant Vanessa Walters, features choreography reminiscent of modern dance, European folkdance, and contact improvisation. The hodgepodge of styles is well suited to a production that celebrates a lot of different artistic elements, and when it works it does so because the performers execute their spirited movements with athletic prowess and artistic specificity. Often, though, the effect is muddled by the performers allowing their exuberance to overwhelm their control.

From the outset, How Soon is Now sides firmly with the persecuted wolf (Stephen O’Connell) and against vigilante justice. Yet the hour and fifteen minute production fails to fully develop that concept. Peter (Lucy Simic) rushes to the wolf’s defense, but aside from the character’s name, a connection to the Peter of the folklore is never established. Indeed, beyond its use of the folktale’s conclusion, when the town captures the wolf, as a plot device, How Soon is Now draws little from the fable. While the creators of the piece seem keen on audience communication, they fail to mine their myriad source materials for a translatable point. In the absence of dramatic clarity, potency turns to preciousness.

How Soon is Now? was collectively created by an artistic team of twelve. The energy of large group collaboration makes itself apparent in the shared enthusiasm of the performers; an outside eye might have helped them harness that energy to lend greater clarity to the performance. There’s a lot going on in How Soon is Now? that certainly resulted from a lot of dedicated artistic exploration. Without a director to focus the production’s disparate elements, its power gets lost.

Like a Horse and Carriage?

When a play opens to a happy, healthy couple engaged in happy, healthy foreplay, you know they're in for trouble. In All Aboard the Marriage Hearse, written and directed by Matt Morillo, the happy couples' segue from bliss to fury is quick but organic. Sean and Amy have been together for three years. He doesn't believe in marriage. She does. Morillo is a sharp playwright who who deftly intertwines comic zingers with impassioned disputes and understands how to pace his own script. His second published play, Marriage Hearse premiered last year at Theater for the New City, which has revived the original production. Nick Coleman and Jessica Moreno reprise the roles they originated, and their ease with both their characters and each other make the play work. As Sean and Amy, they are affable and impassioned, and their chemistry is terrific. If we as an audience didn't understand why they should be together in the first place, the play would fall apart. It doesn't: Coleman and Moreno quickly establish how well-suited their characters are, then spend the rest of the play mining the underlying friction that plagues their relationship. Amy and Sean both have firm, diametrically opposed convictions regarding marriage. The play consists of their all-night fight over the issue -- he gets the "logical" arguments; she the "emotional" ones -- but while their neatly scripted points are occasionally insightful, they are rarely fresh.

Even if you accept the play's traditional notion that women want marriage and men do not, the year-old play still feels dated. In 2009, the practice of upper middle class urbanites living in a committed, monogamous relationship without an official marriage license is hardly as radical as the production implies. Sean, and therefore the play, believes the primary problem with marriage is its permanence. Morillo's script argues that, should a couple fall out of love, they should be free to part ways without dealing with the hassles of church or state; it seems the play's real problem is not with marriage but with divorce.

Conspicuously absent from Sean and Amy's debate is any recognition of the current controversy over same-sex marriage, an improbable omission in an era when questions surrounding the definition and purpose of marriage are at the forefront of a national conversation. Each character could borrow rhetoric from both sides of that debate to terrific effect, enhancing their arguments and keeping the play from feeling like it belongs to a different decade. Instead, they rehash whether or not it's healthy for married couples to stay together for the sake of the kids, with Sean insisting, "That's what f-ed up our generation!" Really? At most, they are thirty-five-years old; the 1970s and 1980's were full of at least as much cultural insistence that children are strong enough to cope with divorce as concern that it leaves them scarred.

A sleepy question early in the play of whose turn it is to clean the kitchen is about the only indication that the play is set solidly in the twenty-first century. Even Amy and Sean's gendered professions feel plucked from a smart play of a generation ago: she teaches elementary school and he's a humorist at the New Yorker. It would be interesting -- and plausible -- to see someone stage a production of Marriage Hearse set slightly earlier in American history. Certainly were the play set a couple of decades ago, Amy and Sean's religious differences (he's Catholic, she's Jewish, neither practices much) could add more dramatic tension to the prospect of their nuptials. Instead, while their disparate religious upbringings nicely inform Coleman and Moreno's characterizations, the use of duel religions functions primarily as a way of emphasizing the multiple religious and political dimensions to the institution of marriage. That prevents the argument against marriage from becoming a polemic against a singular religious or political practice. It's a smart choice indicative of the play as a whole: structurally savvy in the service of character and plot but lacking wide social import.

"I'm not the first person to come up with this idea," says Sean of his marital skepticism. Indeed, he is not. One need only look to recent New York theater seasons to see marriage reexamined; last season's Drunken City by Adam Bock, at Playwrights Horizons, explored what significance marriage holds for contemporary twenty-somethings; the season before Paul Rudnick's Regrets Only questioned the importance of marriage at MTC. Curiously, the current production at Theater for the New City on the LES is not nearly so edgy as the productions further uptown. If it lacks potency as the political play it wants to be, Marriage Hearse succeeds as what it is: a character-driven love story.

The History of Stuff

Recent interest in the environmental crisis has spawned a new sort of genre in speculative fiction – the exploration of mankind’s long-term impact on the planet; most notably the tendency to leave our junk all over the place. Thanks to Pixar’s hypnotic masterpiece Wall-E, it is trendy to sift through future fossil records of refuse in search of meaning and, perhaps, a precise flash point where our wasteful race went wrong. In Wall-E, landfills of useless items choked out humanity's progress, but in Ashlin Halfnight’s contemplative new play, Artifacts of Consequence, our leftover stuff takes on a deeper meaning after civilization has fallen. At some unspecified point in the future, contemporary society has collapsed; leaving Ari, Minna and Dallas in an underwater repopulation facility, where they catalogue found items and tend to the other sedated citizens. We are never told exactly what ended the world in Artifacts – Cholera? Flooding? – but soon enough we become aware that food replacement pills from “The Department” are running short and internal tensions are running high. The arrival of a wanderer named Theo seems to brighten up sprightly Ari’s mood, but before long the pressure of maintaining the facility becomes too great for Minna.

Halfnight and the immensely capable director Kristjan Thor’s great conceit here is the strict ritual of archiving things like sneakers, literature, and Twizzlers. An invisible garage door opens along the apron of the stage and the characters present the audience with each knick-knack for evaluation. In cases of literature and plays, a troupe of groggy-eyed actors is awakened from sedation to read the words aloud. You see, Dallas (Jayd McCarty) was once a curator at the Smithsonian and he has trouble admitting that the food needed to save the human race is more important than the great literary achievements of history.

Halfnight and Thor present the small human moments just right – while singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma, a usually sedated actor (Tobias Burns) suddenly swaggers charismatically, caught up in the music; or allowing each character to savor a stick of chewing gum for the first time in years; or Theo’s (Marty Keiser) nostalgic smile as he cradles a Chewbacca action figure and delivers the line, “Laugh it up fuzz ball.” Yes, Halfnight and Thor often remind us, these are just things, but they are also adept signposts for our memories and, in dire straights, able surrogates for happier days.

The mood is almost spoiled towards the end, as the circumstances become more dismal and the “garage door” is left open. From there on, the characters frequently address the audience about their mental states or predicaments, which feels overly meta at best and like a cheat at worst. Eventually, Ari even remarks that she expected a better ending. Breaking the fourth wall is a proud theatrical tradition and, to be sure, an example of the practice is all but cited here in the evaluation of a passage from Our Town. But this sort of on-the-nose commentary seems tonally at odds with the subtle and specific world that Halfnight and Thor – not to mention the exemplary design team of Jennifer de Fouchier, Kathleen Dobbins, and Mark Valadez – worked so hard to craft.

Beyond that, there are some superbly honest flashes towards the end of Artifacts, such as an-all-too-truthful decision from Theo and a uniquely stunning ending beat. Overall, Thor’s comprehensive staging reinforces Halfnight’s wistful anthology of brick-a-brack and sentiment with unparalleled style. Sara Buffamanti imparts much heart to the piece in her role of Ari, the 80’s movie obsessed innocent coming of age in world much darker than Dirty Dancing suggested. Her romance with Keiser’s genial Theo lends the piece relief it would sorely miss otherwise.

McCarty and Rebecca Lingafelter (as Minna) are interesting parental figures for the other characters, and their bracing chemistry suggests that each possesses a rich past. While Lingafelter is at her neurotic best in Minna’s more obsessive-compulsive moments, she tackles her character’s eventual breakdown very respectably. And again, Tobias Burns, Hanna Cheek and Amy Newhall make great numb actors in their short scenes.

Through anthropology and atmosphere, Artifacts of Consequence searches for significance in the scraps of society and, more often than not, this formidable work finds it.

Germ Warfare

Imagine a time when a doctor might refuse, out of plain arrogance or class entitlement, to wash his hands after conducting an autopsy. Imagine that doctor then using those hands to help a woman deliver a baby. Such practices, unthinkable now, occurred every day in 1840s Vienna and resulted in an uncontrollable epidemic of puerperal fever, an easily preventable bacterial infection that killed thousands of mothers, many desperately poor, while in labor. This all took place more than a decade before Louis Pasteur succeeded in convincing Europe of the germ theory of disease. Ben Trawick-Smith’s new play, What Happens to Women Here, part of Stone Soup Theatre’s Diagnosing the Present series, focuses on the efforts of one doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis (Morgan Nichols) who, years before Pasteur, realized but could not convince his colleagues of the contagiousness and simple prevention of puerperal fever. Distraught, he eventually descended into madness. Though the play is based on actual historical figures, Mr. Trawick-Smith has written the play as a work of fiction.

The play is set in two obstetrical divisions of a hospital; doctors run the first and midwives the second. The latter division has a much lower mortality rate. The midwives, Semmelweis observes, routinely wash their hands between procedures. The doctors, from a higher class than those they serve, conduct autopsies on the dead patients and then feel insulted if someone suggests they should wash their hands. Doctors, we are informed, do not get dirty.

The "science play" is a difficult sub-genre because its plot must usually conform to a larger scientific theory or story. Carl Djerassi’s plays about advances in reproductive science are perfect examples of this often precarious accommodation. What Happens to Women Here is only partially successful, as it tries to juggle a science plot along with a love story of sorts.

This parallel plot line follows Tobias and Theresa, a very young couple from different socio-economic classes. Theresa becomes pregnant and winds up at the doctors’ clinic. Eventually, the lives of Theresa and Semmelweis intersect in a predictable way. I’m not convinced that this plot line is entirely necessary to this 100-minute play, though exchanges between Theresa and her close friend, Carli (Jennifer Boehm), are helpful to illustrate that era’s sexual mores and myths.

While its scenes follow each other quickly, the production is sometimes workmanlike and didactic, recalling Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, the classic play about a nearly hysterical doctor who tries to warn his community about microbes at the local baths. What Happens to Women Here also wants to warn us of the dangers of willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence. Yet, it leaves some questions unexplained.

We never fully learn, for example, what motivates Semmelweis’ supervising physician, Johann Klein (Eric Rice) to discontinue the recommendation of Semmelweis that all doctors wash their hands, even in the face of irrefutable evidence. Klein has indulged the upstart Semmelweis twice regarding two of his ineffective theories. Semmelweis had posited one theory that priests ringing last rite bells cause the women deadly stress. Though such theories prove naïve, that history doesn’t explain why Klein clamps down on the only theory that proves helpful.

The play waveringly suggests that the autocratic Klein actually wants these women, who are young, poor and often prostitutes—dead. He somewhat improbably confides to Semmelweis that he had once fallen in love with one of his patients, who then died, so now he doesn’t seem to care about the women anymore. In any case, he declares, the hospital’s actual charges are the babies, not their mothers.

Mr. Nichols sometimes goes too far over the top in his eye-bulging portrayal of the increasingly mad Semmelweis, yet he captures the young doctor’s frustration in the face of maddening bureaucratic inertia. Ellen DiStasi is notable for her portrayal of a mature and no-nonsense midwife, suspicious of the haughty doctors and their practices. Jonathan Cottle’s set design is serviceable and uses the small space well, employing an office on a “second floor” where we see the “behind the scenes” intrigue. Jessica Lustig’s period costumes are imaginative and convincing.

What Happens to Women Here, if not "entertaining," offers a glimpse into a world where pregnancy once meant likely death. As a historical lesson, it succeeds, though it will probably be of interest mainly to those (and I am one) who are fascinated by those small historical steps that, in retrospect, are really giant leaps.

Welcome To The Dollhouse

If you don’t like your reality, create a new one. So believes young Lina (Kendra Mylnechuk, in this performance, Brenda Jean Foley in others) an imaginative young girl who can only cope with her loveless household if she regards her family as toys that “may or may not really exist.” Lina’s “toys” live in a fancy white dollhouse and reside in the idyllic Nantucket – not the one in Massachusetts, she explains – a different one that does not really exist. Written by Amy Fox and directed by Terry Berliner, One Thing I Like To Say Is takes audiences behind dollhouse doors into a reality so cold one can understand why Lina and her older brother, Toby (Brian Gillespie) spent their young lives trying to escape it.

Though presented by the Cockeyed Optimist Theater Company – a company whose mission is to share the “positive essence of being human” the optimism in this tale of broken homes and severed family ties is not immediately clear. But halfway through the production takes a surprising turn, blossoming into a sensitive and touching story about the resiliency of the human spirit to show love even when encumbered by a life where love has never been shown.

Wilson Chin designed the stage to resemble the whimsical interior of a dollhouse, decorated with brightly colored walls and lime green furniture. Even the characters look as if they were plucked from the shelves of a toy store.

Mylnechuk wears a bright pink dress that bounces when she walks. She has wide childlike eyes and a huge smile that refuses to leave her face, even in the worst of times. Gillespie also maintains a happy plastic front. He reveals his character’s insecurities in his nervously wringing hands and wild, unsettled eyes, always searching the room for an escape route.

Within the walls of this life sized dollhouse we meet Toby and Lina’s mother (played by Gillespie in earrings and a pink beaded necklace,) an unfaithful wife and drunk, and their father (played by Mylnechuk with a deep growling voice and reading glasses) also a drunk with a suggestion of violent tendencies. We also meet Lina’s alter ego -- a Scottish butler who dotes on Toby and manufactures happy moments to distract him from running away from home.

Toby is clearly the only ray of sunshine in Lina’s life and when their parents send him to reform school she stands in the center of her playroom, clenches her fists and screams with a deep, primal agony for her brother.

Sixteen years pass before a glimmer of optimism seeps into the lives of these doomed characters. It appears in the form of a lonesome teenager named Kevin (Michael Mattie) the possible biological son of either Lina or Toby. Though the siblings’ lives are hopelessly fractured when he arrives at their doorstep, Toby’s distressed wife, Sam (Jolie Curtsinger) graciously accepts Kevin into her home and more importantly, into her heart.

Sam is arguably the only sane character in this play. She fills the role that Lina wished a fictional Scottish butler could have filled years ago: a person strong enough and kind enough to hold her family together.

Fox’s tight, complex story arc acknowledges the depth of the siblings’ emotional problems but never judges their unusual coping methods. Their reluctance to completely surrender their childhood fantasies is understandable, especially since their shared imaginary games are the only pleasant memory of their past.

But in the spirit of optimism, this is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, what’s so wrong with living in a dream world when the people you love most are living there with you?

Sex and the Kitty

It all starts with a sociological questionnaire. Well, actually it all started as part of a Paula Vogel workshop for Yale School of Drama M.F.A. playwright Dorothy Fortenberry. Given the theme of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, with literary and artistic examples provided from the W.B. Yeats poem to other works, Fortenberry addresses the as-seen-on-TV version of female sexuality versus something a bit darker, more perverse, and certainly more funny. Her modern-day Caitlin and the Swan places the rather violent tale into the present amid three college-era gal pals, who have forged ahead into the new territory of adulthood, career, and relationships, while keeping each other as touchstones along the way. The play opens with the friends discussing the dubious success of a former classmate whose sociological study they all received, basically consisting of comparing notes among the young women’s “progress” in life. Caitlin, played by The Management’s talented Marguerite French, is a floundering, somewhat naïve SAT prep tutor living with her boyfriend Doug, an attorney. Her friend Priya, played in an excellent deadpan by Shetal Shah, is a busy resident gynecologist, a lesbian who seems too preoccupied for any relationship beyond a fling. And finally there’s Rachel, hysterically portrayed by Teresa Stephenson, who has fallen in love and started to cheat on her husband with, wait for it... a pig. No, not your typical brute, but the actual four-legged kind, whom she names “Pete.” They “met cute,” on a farm, etc., etc. The ups and downs of her affaire de coeur lead to much drama and heartbreak (as one might imagine), but also seems to incite Caitlin to act in a way that she’s never felt before, as perhaps do Priya’s NSA affairs, including one, she reveals, to do with a certain household feline named Emma. Sure, some excitement may have been missing in her relationship with straight-laced Doug, played by Fortenberry’s fellow Yalie Brian Robert Burns, but it’s while tutoring Bastian, portrayed sweetly by Jake Aron, that her desires alight onto a fixation. But in this askew world, it’s not even for the innocent 18-year-old student, but rather the wild swan that lives in his backyard pond.

Directed by The Management’s co-artistic director Joshua Conkel, who is well versed in expressing the left-of-center mindset (as shown in his own plays ), while rooting it squarely into a familiar pop culture landscape; his vision blends well with Fortenberry’s comedic writing. (You can tell Caitlin’s romantic notions are getting the better of her when she wistfully asks Bastian the swan’s name. He replies, “I call him, swan.”) Here, the female characters are largely unapologetic and bold in their behavior and relationships, and in Rachel’s case even a bit world-wearied, which is a relief to see versus the usual glut of SATC superficiality. The men, on the other hand, seem surprisingly sensitive and communicative. Caitlin’s boyfriend Doug is painfully honest and open about his feelings, instead of the presumed emotionally out-of-touch and/or sulky (or worse), especially when sex is suddenly taken off the table. Caitlin’s student Bastian seems fairly enlightened and understanding for having a strong crush on her and being, well, the hormonally-charged age of 18? (Or maybe this is all me and I’ve been exclusively dating cavemen all these years...)

But another highlight of this production is the dream ballet, fantasy, and live action sequences choreographed imaginatively by Croft Vaughn and starring the gifted dancer Elliott T. Reiland. Reiland wonderfully interprets both the non-speaking Pig, in full costume and with all of the usual misbehaviors (finally, a guy I can recognize!), and the Swan, in a pared-down stylized form, who seems unruffled by Caitlin’s unspeakable desires. How she resolves this adds the shock and true anguish lying at the bottom of Fortenberry’s piece, and while tough, I admire her for taking it all the way.

The movements are evocative, visceral, funny and even frightening, and very well presented. I’m somewhat surprised that not a single feather was used on the Swan costume, which might have been a nice touch, as well as potentially being more suggestive, and certainly not out of place amongst the other toys and props used throughout, which made their appearance courtesy of adult-toy supplier Babeland. (Maybe a quick trip back down to the store on Rivington Street?) But regardless, Reiland communicates it swimmingly. Also the details of the hair and make-up on Stephenson as Rachel in key scenes are downright inspired.

Under St. Marks is a tight space, but feels cozy and well utilized. The simple set pieces – from bed to shelving unit, to outdoor seating to coffee bar, express what they need to and are changed up by the actors as we watch. Even a simply-fashioned tree signifying the outdoors is a minimalist achievement. This is a delightful pond of talent definitely worth dipping into. Just watch those fingers!

Fading Signals

Resembling something from David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Jim Findlay’s set for Stephanie Fleischmann’s and Christina Campanella’s Red Fly/Blue Bottle teems with antique clocks, radios, microphones, analog tubes, light bulbs, television sets, chairs, record players and valises. All these items are meant to represent the passage or documentation of time. At the back of the stage, The Old Lady (Black-Eyed Susan) sits in something like a ham radio booth, examining insects through a microscope. She classifies them by genus and species, and marvels at their years of pupation. She attempts to recapture time by offering each, however insignificant it may be to others, a place. She recounts what Fleischmann has described elsewhere as the play’s “important threshold moments;” like a Pavlovian dog The Old Lady pairs events with stimuli such as the buzzing of a fly or the flicker of a lightning bug. With the refrain “another soul swallowed,” she documents peoples’ disappearances.

What exists of a plot is simple, though blurred, and mostly sung to the often eerie music of The Operator (Campanella), who employs old Acetone organs, accordions and toy pianos to achieve the sounds of a clandestine sideshow. A character called The Man (Chris Lee) leaves for a war and ultimately disappears. Such interruptions open giant existential holes in his life and that of his lover, Clarissa (Jesse Hawley), who may be a younger version of The Old Lady and who spends the rest of her life ruminating on those moments and their ripple effects. The explosion of a clock is a metaphor for the permanent separation of the two young lovers. The Old Lady later says the clock can be repaired, but it’s missing a spring which isn’t made anymore.

Clarissa obsessively tries to reconstruct time and understand its passage by assembling and re-assembling objects at her threshold moment and by repeatedly speak-singing their names as if she were reciting a language poem: “pin clover thread cufflink feather spoon spring pin clover thread cufflink feather spoon spring.” Like incantations, each action and recitation is imbued with potentially apocalyptic meaning.

The technical aspects of Red Fly/Blue Bottle are masterful and beautifully executed. Peter Norrman’s video and particularly Mirat Tal’s expert live video work anchor this piece in both the present and the past. There is an unbelievably great scene where The Man (Chris Lee) rides a train to his unknown destination. Scenery flashes by and he is being filmed and projected onto another screen, where we see him from another vantage point, in black and white, slowed down, on what appears to be vintage film stock. This ingenious device places him simultaneously in the present and the past. Like the Old Lady, marveling at how time changes organisms and swallows souls, The Man marvels at how time rips people from each other, leaving nothing but awe: “See my hand. It held hers.”

Despite its dazzling technological work and fascinatingly creepy music, Red Fly/Blue Bottle sometimes becomes tedious, falling victim to its own preciousness and fable. The themes occasionally become bloated, as what exists of the narrative doesn’t have enough meat to sustain it. Yet, the sheer technical brilliance of its creators saves the day.

The most powerful, and indeed, poignant part of the work is also the most accessible. Old photographic portraits of people, presumably all dead, flash in rapid-fire succession across the several video screens of various sizes that adorn the stage. Voices from all around soon call out names and nicknames, even the pet names of lovers, as the photos flash and the music builds.

It’s as if they’re calling out from a video cemetery of sorts, vying simply to say the name of the deceased, to fix the names in space and time, to affirm their existence. It’s the indescribable mystery of where time goes, fleeing with its possessions, that so obsesses Fleischmann and Campanella. It’s as elusive as a blip on a video monitor, a flash of a lightning bug—first here, now there—or a garbled radio message traveling from the past through space.

Red Fly/Blue Bottle is another in a recent spate of bold experimental pieces that largely eschew plot and linear narrative in favor of challenging theatrical devices that foreground aspects other than text. This production will greatly reward both the novice and the connoisseur of new downtown theater.

Triumphant Celtic Revival

Four-plus hours of early 20th century drama may not sound like your idea of a great way to spend a weekend, but the inventive and intrepid Irish Repertory Theatre has put together a production that might just change your mind. Presented over two evenings, The Yeats Project is comprised of eight fully-staged one act plays by William Butler Yeats. During the Rep’s Yeats festival, all of Yeats' plays (26 in total) will grace the Irish Rep stage as either readings or full productions from April 8 to May 3. The evening billed as Cycle A features Yeats’ very first play, The Countess Cathleen; The Cat and the Moon; and On Baile’s Strand. Irish Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Charlotte Moore directs all three plays.

The Countess Cathleen is a quaint morality tale with Faustian overtones set in “olden times” Ireland. Given the benign quality of the script, it comes as something of a shock to find out that, when first produced in Dublin by Yeats in 1899, dozens of police officers were called to the theater to repel protesters, a Catholic Cardinal and Catholic students signed vehement protests, and the local newspaper wrote vicious condemnations daily. All of this took place because the play’s saintly Countess Cathleen, who sells her soul to save the starving populace, is spared by God at the end of the play. In 1899, when you sold your soul to the devil, it was unacceptable to expect (or depict) any outcome but the worst. A play about a merciful God who forgave the sin was blasphemous and unacceptable.

In a modern context, the text seems almost whimsically virtuous. Terry Donnelly (Countess Cathleen) and Fiana Tiobin (Oona, her nurse) manage to imbue their performances with enough urgency and reality to keep the play from sliding into melodrama, and Patrick Fitzgerald’s delightfully manic demon enlivens things. Director Moore creates a rather static world, and the actors seem uncomfortably placed at times. But a large scrim at the back of the theater featuring an outstanding series of projections by designer Jan Hartley provides context and enhances the mood of the play with gorgeous Irish landscapes and castle interiors.

One of Yeats’ prose comedies follows, The Cat and the Moon, which features an increasingly likeable Fitzgerald as a blind beggar and Sean Gormley as his crippled companion. The men have come to a saint’s shrine to beg for cures for their afflictions and end up descending into delightfully entertaining squabbles over injustices, imagined and real, that they have committed against one another. Justin Stoney, Amanda Sprecher, and William J. Ward are introduced as a wandering troupe of musicians and quickly become on of the major high points in the production. This trio play pipes, lutes, violins and drums to great effect in plays throughout the two nights. In particular, Stoney dazzles on a simple recorder-style pipe and sings Irish folk songs as if he were born to do nothing else.

About On Baile’s Strand, Yeats said, in his notes to Notes to Poems 1899-1905, that it “must always be a little overcomplicated when played by itself. And that is something of an understatement. The play is part of a cycle of five plays Yeats wrote about the legendary Irish king Cuchulain. It is play of great lyrical power and prowess, but demands a lot of the audience. The play discusses at length the political pressures of the emerging unification of feudal Ireland and is burdened with a lot of exposition for a rather simple story. Cuchulain once loved a fierce Scottish queen who has sent her son to her court to kill him. At its best, the play feels like one of Shakespeare’s lesser known history plays. Kevin Collins manages some riveting moments as King Cuchulain, despite having some of the most cumbersome dialogue. And Stoney creates a menacing yet still deeply-touching character with The Young Man.

Cycle B, the second evening, includes The Land of Heart’s Desire, directed by Moore, and four plays directed by producing director Ciarán O’Reilly: The Pot of Broth; Purgatory, A Full Moon in March, and Cathleen Ni Houlihan.

The Land of Heart’s Desire was, during Yeats’ lifetime, his most-produced play. It is easy to see the charm of this simply presented fairytale about an newly-married Irish country girl who is seduced away from hearth and home by a wicked fairy child. Standout Fiona Tobin, as the young wife’s bitterly complaining mother-in-law Bridget, delivers a wonderfully realized and recognizable Irish shrew. Ward (Bridget’s husband Maurteen) and Peter Cormican (as a hapless Catholic priest Father Hart) are also superb and make the language sing as they try to persuade the young wife not to run off with the fairies. Director Moore slightly deflates the energy in the play by introducing the supernatural element, in the form of Sprecher (the Fairy Child) rather bluntly. Although Sprecher is a likeable young actress, skipping onstage in something that looks like an Ice Capades outfit and proclaiming yourself a fairy child only works well in drag shows.

One of the festival highlights is introduced next, The Pot of Broth. This exuberant and joyous comedy is laugh out loud funny from the first moment, when Donnelly (Sibby) runs across stage screaming bloody murder and energetically chasing down a bedraggled chicken. The play is a simple Irish folk story in which a Tramp stops by the house of a miserly woman and tricks her into feeding him dinner using nothing but his wits and a bucket-load of artful lies. Fitzgerald could not be better as The Tramp. Blessed with tremendous charm and more than his share of brash Irish blarney, Fitzgerald fills his role with an oily obsequiousness that is pure pleasure to watch. Equally delightful, as the miserly and domineering Sibby, Donnelly evokes huge laughs from the audience with every screech and avaricious glance. She is truly an actress at the top of her game. Completing the festival’s best cast, Cormican, as Sibby’s long-suffering husband John, balances her fiery energy with a placidity and slyness that is richly rewarding.

Purgatory is an interesting play that combines a chilling Irish ghost story with elements of the Biblical Isaac and Abraham story. An Old Man (Corrigan) tells his son, Boy (Stoney), the story of his parents’ disastrous marriage and the tragic consequences of their misalliance. Jan Hartley’s wonderful projection of an old Irish manor house helps tell the story in dramatic fashion. However, the actors seem to be trapped in a plodding moroseness that overshadows the complexity of the language. It does not come off as an evolving character study of an initially likeable but ultimately sinister character, but more like the final brooding confession of a melodrama villain.

The lavish and beautifully directed fourth play of the evening, A Full Moon in March, is one of Yeats’ most fully developed ‘dancer plays.’ Although there are dances in several of his plays, the ‘dancer plays’ are classified thusly based on their integral use of dance, masks, ritual, Japanese Noh elements, and experimentation with movement. A Full Moon in March plays on the Salome story and features a cold Queen (Amanda Quaid) who has offered her hand in marriage as the prize in a competition to determine the best singer in the realm. When a grotesque Swineherd (Collins) enters her bedchamber to compete, he learns that she uses the competition as an excuse to cut off the head of competitors that offend her. This is because she is “cruel as the winter of virginity.” The antidote to her cruelty is a consumptive, passionate dance with the swineherd’s severed head, wherein his blood might enter and fertilize her barren womb. The action is underscored with beautiful songs and music by our traveling minstrels (Stoney, Sprecher, and Ward).

A Full Moon in March is the most fully realized play in the festival, and you feel as if Yeats might have sat in and overseen rehearsals. The immediacy and accessibility for modern audiences comes as something of a surprise after the earlier plays, with their quaint and old-fashioned air. Special kudos to costume designer David Toser for the heightened and passionate look of this piece. Quaid is fantastically ferocious and brings just the right balance of harshness and fragility. Collins is utterly transformed by a brilliantly creepy mask from designer Bob Flanagan. Director O’Reilly deserves tremendous credit for seamlessly pulling off an extremely challenging script.

The closing play for Cycle B is, appropriately, the play Yeats received the most critical success with, Cathleen Ni Houlihan. The Cathleen Ni Houlihan mentioned in the title refers to an Irish queen who, in song, represents Ireland itself. The play is set during the 1798 Irish rebellion, which was aided by the French. The plays opens showing us a happy Irish household preparing for the wedding of their young son Michael (Collins). His father (Ward) has eager plans for the bride money. His mother (Donnelly) hopes to send his brother (Stoney) to the priesthood with their new wealth. His brother is looking forward to a puppy the bride has promised him. Into this house enters a strange woman in a dark cloak, Tobin, beautifully vibrant, as Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Cathleen speaks darkly about losing her “four beautiful fields” and about how she can’t return home because there are “too many strangers in the house.” The mother and father see only a strange old woman in need of charity. But Michael and the audience begin to realize the woman is Ireland herself. When the French troops land, Michael must chose between domestic tranquility and fighting for his beloved Ireland.

The politics are as relevant and the emotions just as stirring today as when Yeats wrote Cathleen Ni Houlihan. It is sparsely staged and subtlety performed, choices which contribute to the simplicity and strength of the message. All in all, the play is a rousing conclusion to a truly epic and largely successful adventure in dramatic revival. Yeats would be proud.

A festival pass good for one admission to all Yeats Projects events is $100. Single tickets to both Cycle A and Cycle B performances are $65 and $55. For more information and a detailed calendar of events visit http://www.irishrep.org.

Paint it Black

Watch enough of the “I Love the [insert decade here]” pop culture shows on VH1 and you’ll be familiar with Michael Ian Black, one of their most frequent talking heads. The comedian, a graduate of sketch comedy troupe The State, has also been seen on several other television programs, usually playing various riffs on himself. Black has branched out, slightly, in recent years, and become an author. In 2008, he published My Custom Van ... And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face. Joe Jung of Project: Theater has refashioned roughly a dozen of these comic essays into their current show, My Custom Van, directed by Jung. Black’s theatrics may be zany, but they aren’t inherently theatrical; it’s just sardonic humor. So the onus falls on Project: Theater to build from Black’s foundation and fill the stage.

And fill they do, to a point. Project: Theater achieves half of its mission, which is to “produce engaging, creative and entertaining theater with an emphasis on works that are new,” and Van (which can be seen at the Upper West Side’s Drilling Company Theatre). This production does just that, selecting roughly a dozen vignettes from Black’s book and magnifying them in some of the most enjoyably over-the-top ways imaginable.

Van is a night of ribald humor. Its characters, all inhabiting some corner of Black’s mind, are all id and no superego. This show can get loud and dirty, and is probably best enjoyed by a younger audience.

Take, for example, M. Ian Black, the blustery character played by Andrew McLeod (all character names are pretty much spins on that of the author). M. Ian recounts in great detail his many conquests from the previous weekend. The man is an arrogant cad, prone to overstatement and over sharing, but McLeod, clad in a business suit and orating with the bravado of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, gives a performance of hilarious bluster.

Josh Tussin turns the volume up even higher in a pair of scenes as “M.I.B.” In one, he brags about having sported an impressive array of facial hair; in the second, he rages about throwing the most awesome taco party ever. It’s hard to imagine from where the actor draws his energy. I’ll let him keep that a secret.

The whole ensemble, which also includes Amanda Byron, Brian Frank, and Jung himself, is rock-solid. And Chad Lefebvre’s stellar lighting and projection design becomes an important character throughout the evening. But despite their immense talent, Van’s fractured episodic structure of chapters feels far less consequential than did their last production, a marvelous revival of The Secretaries. Here, all the pieces are in play, but they remain just that: pieces. It’s more like a night of consistently smart stand-up routines than a coherent work.

And it must be said, I’m not sure what this work does to support the other half of the Project: Theater mission, to stimulate “an immediate and compelling dialogue between artist and audience by asking questions rather than giving answers.” Van is great fun, but doesn’t take on a life of its own at the end of the evening. If questions were posed, I’m not sure I heard any beneath all the irreverent humor, impeccably delivered as it was.

Jung and his skilled cast and crew deserve much praise for turning Black’s writing into a stage piece. It may not be full of insight, but it sure is full of laughs.

High Fidelity

So, not only are you a young African American woman searching for identity in Berkeley, California, with a granola chewing, enlightened mom, while all your friends live in the-significantly-less-enlightened Oakland; your aunt is also the legendary Civil Rights activist Angela Davis. Oh, and you’re named after her too. Good luck. No wonder Eisa Davis spends so much of her dynamic, exuberantly autobiographical play, Angela’s Mixtape, listening to the radio.

Presented by New Georges and the Hip Hop Theater Festival, Angela’s Mixtape tracks Eisa’s journey into womanhood through a rich tapestry of music – sometimes sung, sometimes recorded. This is her “mixtape” of human experience, a sort-of thesis proposal for her collegiate aunt to see if Eisa measures up to the strong Davis women who reared her. As in the best hip-hop, Ms. Davis samples influences as varied as Marx, Debussy, and Back to the Future in her pursuit of self.

And does Davis’s “tape” make the cut? Absolutely. A sharp, unifying staging from director Liesl Tommy imbues Davis’s bouncy narrative with the perfect rhythm. Eisa’s questions about fitting in, classifying her race to friends, and later, wrestling with her family legacy, mature naturally in the story and are often punctuated with harmonic bits of a capella singing. Music, Davis proves, keeps time superbly.

Davis, who was recently on Broadway in Passing Strange, might have trouble surmounting that intertext, since Mixtape covers a lot of the same ground. Race, family, and music figure heavily into both pieces, but Davis’s script carries a potent political charge and draws an interesting conclusion about art as activism. Where Passing Strange was content to be a fun ride from adolescence to adulthood, Mixtape’s protagonist emerges from her larval stage actualized and equipped to take on social injustice, like her aunt did in the seventies.

Only one aspect felt self-indulgent – a scene near the end when Eisa directly asks Aunt Angela if she has lived up to her name. Eisa’s struggle with this is discreetly transmitted quite well throughout the play, but something short circuits in the blunt stating of it. Suddenly we see Eisa, the playwright asking for approval, as opposed to Eisa the character, which puts audiences in an uncomfortable position.

But any minor discomfort will be worth it, because Ms. Davis is a joy to watch otherwise. Deftly communicating a wide range of ages and intents throughout, she truly feels at home amid Clint Ramos’s beautiful light-boxes, photographs and scenic design. Dancing or sulking, she attacks every action with copious amounts of energy. In a particularly affecting moment, Eisa decides to describe herself as mixed-race to schoolmates, and her immediate reaction of both relief and heartbreak is intensely honest.

Kim Brockington, Denise Burse, Ayesha Ngaujah, and Linda Powell provide fine support for Davis in a number of roles, usually distinguished by smart costume triggers from designer Jessica Jahn. Only Ngaujah occasionally eluded recognition, when swapping between Eisa’s stepsister and cousin. Powell, as Angela, has an unenviable task, as her legendary character is talked about for much of the play. But Powell plays it cool and subdued, allowing our knowledge of her activist days to fill in any blanks. Brockington and Burse as Mom and Grandma both give very genuine, fully rounded performances.

Angela’s Mixtape is an intricate compilation of influences, full of music and meaning, of heart and heritage. From collections like these, our lives gain perspective. Sometimes these tracks need to be lined up and properly ordered before you can make sense of them.

Peck a Little, Talk a Lot

The layout for Diana Basmajian’s production of Limonade Tous les Jours, the Charles Mee play about May-December love in the time of croissants, is such that the audience sits on either of two sides of a small stage area at Chelsea’s Cell Theater. It’s a tight squeeze, and a problematic one as well. Anyone not sitting in one of the two “front” rows often has a difficult time seeing much of the action. What is clear from any seat, however, is what a star turn Eleanor Handley is giving as Ya-Ya, a divorced Parisian cabaret singer. She meets Andrew (Austin Pendleton) at a café. He’s in his fifties, while she is in her twenties, but the two share something in common. They are both coming off of failed marriages, Andrew to a woman a decade his junior and Ya-Ya to another older man who cheated his marriage away.

The two share something else as well: a love for the word. The two sit together and talk, and over the course of Limonade talk a great deal more. And their willingness to talk about their mutual aversion to love somehow leads to a love affair between the two of them.

Limonade follows a series of conversations between these two characters about the nature of love. Andrew thinks with his head, while Ya-Ya follows her heart. But while Mee’s play wants to show how love can find a way, his work actually has a different problem. He never makes clear why these two characters wouldn’t stay together. They come together immediately and fall into bed almost as easily. Any wall that either of them puts up feels inorganic, meant to stall the work’s inevitable outcome.

Basmajian’s direction shows plenty of smarts. Since the entire action occurs in the same space, she utilizes effective transitions like co-star Anton Briones’ impressive tap number (choreographed by Erin Porvaznika) and several filmed scenes of the lovers frolicking through the streets of Paris (video design is provided by Tee McKnight) to help distinguish between scenes. This suggests some texture to Andrew and Ya-Ya’s relationship, that time has gone by and they have forged a real connection in the moments they share between scenes. And Hilary Noxon’s set is quite functional.

However, other decisions do not work. In addition to the difficulty seeing both leads at the same time, several scenes depict the lovers in post-coital bliss, in such places as a makeshift bed and bathtub. Handley strips down to her undergarments while Pendleton removes nothing more than his shoes, glasses and camera. This inequity is distracting. Either have both actors strip down for realism or let them both pantomime having made love. I spent too much time wondering why this decision was made, and it distanced me from the action.

Truth be told, aside from several Edith Piaf torch numbers ably sung by Handley, there is very little action in Limonade. What there is is plenty of conversation. However, the emotional center of the play never builds. Both characters’ beliefs are clear from Mee’s first scene. We know as much about them twenty minutes in as we would if the play were to carry on for another two hours at the same pace.

Both lead actors seem to be operating on different levels as well. Pendleton is a terrific actor (The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, The Little Foxes) in addition to being an esteemed writer, director and teacher, and he underplays his role here almost too much. He can be so stoic that I often doubted he had any real investment in his affair. The splendid Handley, on the other hand, is a luminous presence and is far more ebullient, as her age naturally dictates. Passion oozes out of every pore of her body. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her onstage – which is why when Limonade asks Andrew to fall out of love with Ya-Ya, it’s too much of a reach.

What Limonade is ultimately lacking is an obstacle, something to put Andrew and Ya-Ya’s burgeoning relationship in jeopardy and make those watching truly care about them. As it stands right now, the only obstacles are those between the audience and the stage.

Failed commitment

Fans of Tina Howe’s work will recognize familiar touchstones in her new play: a preoccupation with Boston WASPs, artists and poets; women of strong convictions; and the thorny relations of parents and children. There’s also her fondness for hats, which goes back to Painting Churches, when Fanny Gardner first appears in a bathrobe and hat; here Jane Alexander assumes an identical ensemble. Alexander plays Catherine Sargent, a cousin of John Singer Sargent and a renowned painter in her own right, who is “legally blind,” a term frequently applied to patients with macular degeneration. Her affliction is not stated, but Catherine describes her vision as “just a bit blurry on some edges,” which fits the bill. Divorced from one of the brahmin Lowells, Catherine has been taken away from her comfortable surroundings in Boston by her son, Royal (Jack Gilpin), a Columbia professor of poetry with a special interest in Yeats. Royal wants her near him, though he rarely visits her, and she abuses him for it.

Catherine’s residence is a nursing home in Riverdale, N.Y., where she encounters a new roommate, Rennie Waltzer (Lynn Cohen). Rennie is a fizzy Jewish woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and in need of a wheelchair or walker. As depressed as Catherine is, Rennie is the opposite.

Catherine is a devotée of the painter Manet, and in one of two really engaging moments in the play, she describes why the artist’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe—a reproduction hangs over her bed—is a crucial work in art history: it’s because Manet showed a naked woman sitting on a picnic blanket. “It wasn’t the fact of her nakedness that was so shocking, but its implausibility,” she tells Rennie’s family. “Placing a naked woman in a public place sounded the call for artistic freedom, telling the artist he could paint not only what he wanted, but how.”

It’s a mantra that Howe, who also wrote Coastal Disturbances, Museum, and Pride’s Crossing, might marshal in defense of Chasing Manet, which is rife with implausibility. Anyone familiar with assisted living or a nursing home will find little credibility in director Michael Wilson’s production. Apart from the loud mayhem of the patients’ cries, this facility is so wildly off base as to appear that Wilson and dramaturg Rachel Ely haven’t done any homework.

First off, partial blindness is no reason for Catherine to be in a nursing home. She is mentally sound and no danger to herself, unlike the other inhabitants; she should be in assisted living. Why Royal has put her in a nursing home is not explained. And if she is legally blind, she would have learned to use a cane, yet she doesn’t use one and none is on stage. Even more absurd is that medicine, including sleeping pills, is left on side tables in easy reach of the blind woman and the Alzheimer’s victim. This facility is bucking to have its license revoked—if it has one!

Howe’s plot and tone combine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Golden Girls, with Cohen playing a role akin to the dotty Sophia in that sitcom, and Catherine as an acid Beatrice Arthur. Rennie is full of malapropisms—“division” for “diversion,” “pottery” for “poetry”—and she grins and goes off on loopy outbursts. Nevertheless, Catherine hatches a plan with Rennie to escape. They’re going to “chase Manet,” as it were—to do their own thing and head for Paris. One is supposed to cheer their indomitable spirits, but it’s hard when the drama is so contrived.

Then, too, Howe indulges in the facile comic maneuver of having old people swear like today’s teenagers to get a laugh. Catherine calls a “Bronx cheer” vulgar, but moments later is dropping the F-bomb on poor Royal. Catherine rhapsodizes about being caught by her ex-husband in flagrante delicto with a younger art student—classy, isn’t that? And Catherine is also cruel. “Beauty was never your strong suit,” she tells Royal, in one of her offhand observations. By the time Howe has the two senior citizens singing an anthem to stool softener, you’ll be itching for social services to close down this institution.

Alexander understands Catherine’s frustration, restlessness, and indomitability, but the part squanders her talents. Cohen has a field day hamming as the scattered Rennie, yet makes the most of one painful scene when she realizes her husband has died. Other actors assume multiple roles effectively, and David Margulies has the second fine speech, as a silent patient who suddenly snaps into a riveting monologue that reveals him as an archeologist who discovered a mystical treasure in the Fertile Crescent. But there’s very little value in this infertile tale.

Tuff Tawk

Whether it be the Jonas Brothers, ALF or the Twilight series, most of us have our own guilty pleasures: people or works that are in no aesthetic sense good but that always put a fond smile on our faces. For the narrator played by the masterful Zachary Oberzan in Rambo Solo, that work is First Blood -- not the film that gave birth to the Sylvester Stallone franchise, but David Morell’s 1972 debut novel on which Ted Kotcheff’s film was originally based. Solo is Oberzan’s attempt to lovingly reenact the novel. He doesn’t play himself, per se, nor does he actively play the character of wronged vet John Rambo. Instead, he plays an aficionado with a Stallone drawl, addressing an audience to whom he speaks with the familiarity of new friends seated on the floor of Soho Rep’s Walkerspace.

Oberzan explains how his obsession with the Morrell novel was borne from a viewing of the film on HBO as an adolescent. Afterwards, he bought the novel and read it ad mauseum. In Solo, he narrates Morell’s entire original plot, occasionally commenting on its incongruities and sometimes pointing out how it differs from the film. He also offers legitimate analytic commentary about such things as the bond forged between Rambo and Sheriff Wilfred Teasle (one of the characters hunting down the renegade soldier, played in the film by Brian Dennehy).

Nature Theatre of Oklahoma created Solo. The genesis of this show is purportedly a recorded phone conversation that took place between Pavol Liska and Oberzan. Liska and Kelly Cooper co-conceived and directed this meta work, whose novelty stretches almost all the way through the end of the performance (the show’s last fifteen minutes could have been abbreviated). But there are two things that elevate this original work.

The first is Solo’s overall structure. Oberzan performs his reenactment against a triptych of videos depicting three different versions of the actor giving the same performance in his own studio apartment. (Peter Nigrini is credited with video work and Matt Tierney with sound.) Not only does this satisfy a basic element of audience curiosity (who doesn’t sometimes wonder about the personal details of a performer while watching him or her?), but it is fascinating to see how well-prepared Oberzan is. His live performance matches at least one of the recorded ones almost perfectly at any given time. When Oberzan’s live presentation may skew off by a second or two, he easily realigns his performance to one of the other videos in no time. (It appears that an earpiece he wears keeps him on track.)

The second reason is Oberzan himself. The dynamic performer completely immerses himself as the narrator with enough octane to fuel this avant garde monologue piece. He makes the speaker a three-dimensional man, odd enough to be hopelessly devoted to a dismissed pulp novel yet passionate enough to think that perhaps the work is worth re-examining. He makes his persona’s boneheadedness oddly lovable, and his exuberance absolutely contagious. After a while, the speaker’s gruff rhythms make the dialogue sound like its own kind of poetry.

Particularly amusing is how Oberzan wholeheartedly embraces his own low-rent storytelling techniques. He throws M & Ms on the stage floor to simulate gunfire, and hides under a towel in his bathtub when Rambo must hide from his enemies in a riverbed. And his ebullience for the tale is contagious. He establishes a connection with the audience from the onset of the show, creating a communal feeling that never dies.

Here’s hoping that Oberzan and Nature Theatre of Oklahoma will take on the forgotten Stallone arm-wrestling classic Over the Top next.

Of God's and Atoms

Uneasy nuclear paranoia radiates from Trinity 5:29, Axis Company’s brisk, deftly staged meditation on Robert Oppenheimer and the test of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Rather than a straight docudrama, director Randy Sharp has opted instead to focus on the historical weight of the test, often evoking religious allusions to good effect. Brought to Los Alamos by President Harry S. Truman, Oppenheimer and his possibly communist lover Jean Tatlock find themselves faced with a giant wooden crate, within which resides an unseen atomic conductor. Their every movement around the crate is watched closely by General Groves, who eventually brings Tatlock’s political leanings into question.

At Los Alamos, Truman is more God than President – making his lapdog Groves the over-achieving archangel, I suppose – and the piece frequently experiments with Biblical allegory. In one segment straight out of Genesis, Tatlock entices Oppenheimer to peer inside the giant crate, though Truman has expressly forbidden it. Later, Oppenheimer stands in for Jonah when he is trapped in the crate. Indeed, these religious citations provide a perfect context for the creation of the atomic bomb: what is the extent of mankind’s power? What is the extent of mankind’s right to dabble in such power?

Trinity’s script (no singular playwright is credited) is terse and cryptic, as though every line of dialogue shields a well-guarded secret of national interest. At one point, Tatlock tries to spoon-feed Oppenheimer radioactive condensation from the conductor under threat from Groves, a fascinating scene that clearly illustrates the desperate sense of life and death hanging over Los Alamos in July of 1945. While someone seeking an informative biography of Oppenheimer might be disappointed, the snappish, abstract text offers a worthy examination of his historical significance.

Director Sharp and his designers economically create a spooky, sanitized aesthetic using only tinny period music, hard lights and a few set pieces. The staging is meticulous and purposely rigid, probably to highlight the military aspects of the narrative. Brian Barnhart, Marc Palmieri and Britt Genelin turn in solid performances as Truman, Groves and Tatlock, respectively, but Edgar Oliver’s Oppenheimer is a bizarrely theatrical creature, nearing the realm of farce. Not an inappropriate choice considering Oppenheimer’s larger-than-life historical status, but next to the more grounded cast members, Oliver’s velvety line readings evoked old Hollywood more than nuclear physics.

And then after forty-five minutes, Trinity 5:29 ends abruptly in a flash of light. My audience was dumbstruck by the swift intensity of the piece, blinkingly wondering if the play was really over or if it was just intermission. Despite some unevenness in the cast, Axis Company’s rumination on man’s destructive atomic destiny closes aptly – a blast of radiance and then nothing.

Far From the Tree?

The tennis-court style staging of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, directed by Kathleen O’Neill, puts one immediately into the action and witty repartee of one of George Bernard Shaw’s best plays, without feeling the least bit self-conscious. The minimalist set, designed by Ben Salzbach for the black box space is at once intimate and all-encompassing, sandwiched between dual risers of viewers, a perfect vantage point to observe all of the nuances and developments (and perhaps other viewers’ reactions) volleying back and forth among the six talented players. From the first moments of the play when we meet Miss Vivie Warren, played crisply by Caralyn Kozlowski, the modern young woman drawn by Shaw circa 1893 is so contemporary that we feel as if we might know her. Her distant yet generously supportive mother, Mrs. Warren, is a former prostitute and current “manager” of several brothels across the continent. Joy Franz brings depth and humility to the superficially stereotypical, yet complex character, especially in her lapses back to the girl she once was, torn between her limited options and burning ambition.

The conflict between these two strong women, both somewhat defined by their circumstances, whether comfortable or trail-blazing, incites the next two hours, with nary a dull moment in the swiftly paced four acts. With its biting feminist perspective, shifting relationships, and social commentary as only Shaw can deliver, the play created such a shock in his time that it was immediately banned after publication, causing an eight-year delay in its production on the London stage.

In his extensive Author’s Apology, Shaw addresses his critics, further elucidating the need for meaningful social criticism, which is often (even today) totally misunderstood. This case directly evokes our current climate, like the ongoing debate over sex education, for example, becoming politicized and being misconstrued as condoning behavior instead of preventing disease, now a global health concern. The issues in Shaw’s essay are fresh, and the backstory of Victorian England’s response to his play further contextualizes his work for us now.

On a lighter note, upon stepping into Manhattan Theatre Source, I’m informed by my savvy companion that the same Greenwich Village location once housed Fred Leighton’s dress shop (when he was still importing clothing from Mexico, before moving uptown and into celebrity jewelry design). It’s a colorful tidbit, and the lobby does still feel a bit like a showroom, complete with a welcoming violinist, Jennifer Axelson, playing in front of the telltale shop windows, and an inviting café space and gallery/bookstore further inside. But it’s upstairs in the black box theater space where the real transformations happen now.

Joseph Franchini’s performance as Praed is also a gem, from the time he nervously approaches to meet Vivie and becomes inexorably drawn into the family’s drama. He too is a rather helpless and limited product of his station, as you could argue is Mrs. Warren’s “business partner,” Sir George Crofts (his title somehow making him all the more repulsive), played by David Palmer Brown. That each character wholeheartedly believes in his own standpoint and worldview, whether with a sense of naïveté or entitlement, makes their interactions captivating and provocative to watch throughout the performance.

Two other male characters, Frank Gardner, played suavely by James Dutton, and his father, Ashton Crosby’s bumbling Reverend Gardner, further complicate matters as a potential love interest for Vivie, and perhaps her mother – present and/or past – respectively. (Confusing? Yes!) Their unique positions round out the plot in intriguing and amusing ways.

Like the tennis match setup, we’re watching for chinks in the armor, machinations being conceived or enacted, perhaps crafting our own theories. Franz’ Mrs. Warren deliciously flirts, manipulates, schemes, performs, and finally pleads her desires, trying anything to insinuate herself back into her daughter’s life. But once Vivie learns the whole truth about her mother’s choices, it may be too late. And Mrs. Warren’s concept of love-as-ROI, the commodity that has dictated her entire “professional” life, just doesn’t seem to be working this time around. At the same time, Vivie is not unlike her mother, matter-of-factly making a choice and trying to strike out on her own. The bottom line for women here: no matter what the circumstances, one’s choices can often be severely limited. Many salient points, brilliantly woven through by Shaw, are up for modern conversation.

Finally, the wonderful costuming by David Withrow also expresses the ideas of the play beautifully. Mrs. Warren’s fine dress, high style and overall affectations directly contrast with Vivie’s smart tied-back dress/riding trousers and ankle boot combo. She often sports the tools of her trade, and while the others seem content to revel in their hats, gloves, canes, and other accoutrements, Kozlowski’s Vivie eschews hats, picks off her lace gloves finger by finger, and fidgets with her pouches, watch and pens. Praed’s hat and tight suit are perfect for him, and all of the characters are well clad and coiffed, evoking the period as well as the individual roles they’ve chosen in their society. And it all fits like a glove (or to be more site-specific, like a Fred Leighton import).