Betwixt and Be Twain

America’s fascination with Mark Twain never seems to fade. Performers like Hal Holbrook have made entire careers off Twain’s legacy. One Armed Man’s The Report of My Death owes no small debt to Holbrook and his five decades of portraying the wise—and wise cracking—Twain in productions like Mark Twain, Tonight! Yet, despite the proliferation of Twain impersonators, there’s always room for one more. Twain’s shoes are hard to fill. In Adam Klasfeld’s The Report of My Death Michael Graves gives it his best shot. In some ways, I even prefer his portrayal of Twain. Where Holbrook’s Twain is imbued with a somewhat loopy Einsteinian eccentricity, Michael Graves’ Twain is direct and firm. Graves, though, lacks Holbrook’s gifts for the pregnant pause and punch line delivery, particularly with outdated material that still retains only some of its zing. Unlike Holbrook, Graves can’t squeeze improbable laughs from a line like this: “It is always summer in India—particularly in the winter. They say that when Satan comes he must go home to cool off.” Yet, there is still something charming and serious about Mr. Graves. He believes in Twain, and this helps him to carry the show.

For The Report of My Death adaptor and editor Klasfeld has admirably stitched together disparate material, mostly from Twain’s famous world-wide lecture tour of 1895-1896, including much text from letters and Twain’s travelogue, Following the Equator.

Despite his prodigious wisdom and wit, Twain could be gullible. Having naïvely entrusted his literary assets to a swindling publisher and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the disastrous Paige typesetting machine (made obsolete almost instantly by a superior machine known as the Linotype), Twain was determined to regain his good name and re-pay his creditors. The tour that is the subject of this production permitted Twain to do so, in full, but took a severe toll on him. He was frequently ill and was away when his beloved daughter, Susy, died in Hartford of spinal meningitis.

The material remains fascinating and The Report of My Death commendably illustrates Twain’s progressive and even radical criticisms of religion, race, nationalism and human nature. Much of the material is remarkably contemporary. He rails, for instance, against the Philippine-American War, which America undertook ostensibly to free a nation. Twain soon laments, “We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.” (Sound familiar?) He speaks of Americans using the “water-cure” (a.k.a. water boarding) on Filipino insurgents. Twain more than a century ago described its dubious results: “under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him.”

Twain also noted the hypocrisy of the press; he was perhaps America’s first celebrity and even in his time, the press frequently shaded the truth and fueled rumors in its search for scoops. The production’s title comes from the morbid hope of the New York Journal that rumors of a bankrupt Twain’s death in England were true.

The “theater” for this production is the cleverly employed S.S. Lilac steamship at Pier 40 in the Hudson River Park. This unique marriage came about when Mr. Klasfeld responded to a Craigslist ad that offered the 1933 steamer for productions and other events. Seats are arranged on the deck and it’s quite a treat to listen to Graves recount Twain’s oceanic journeys as the steamer bobs gently in the Hudson. The night I attended, lightning flashed in the far off distance. The Lilac’s house cat, Iggy, a well-behaved but curious tabby, wanders the deck and might even rest for a while in front of Graves. Some occasional drawbacks are competing dins from party boats, airplanes and helicopters, and music from neighboring piers. Klasfeld’s utilization of the Lilac is an innovative way of presenting off-off Broadway summer theater in New York City.

Mr. Graves, as Twain, could use a bit more time with the script of a 90-minute production where all eyes are on him, almost all the time. He flubbed a few lines in the first half of the show I saw, and once awkwardly paused for what must have felt like an eternity to him while he tried to remember his next line. Yet, by channeling Twain’s famous irascibility and mischievous nature, he was able to minimize these slip-ups. With time, I think he will grow quite comfortably into this formidable role.

I recommend The Report of My Death not only to Twain aficionados but also to those seeking a pleasant evening of enduring wit.

Story Hour

A band of kooky librarians. A raised wooden library. A multitude of books. A multitude of stories. Company SoGoNo's latest iteration of their magnificent production Art of Memory is inherently fragmented. Culled from a wide variety of source materials and decorated with video projections and a sound design mixed live, Art of Memory spins familiar stories anew. Tellingly, the source material listed in the program consists entirely of writers, from Anne Sexton to Gertrude Stein, who used short literary forms as a means of approaching the epic. Relying on the Jorge Luis Borges short story The Library of Babel for both its overarching structure and its point of departure, Art of Memory features Lisa Ramirez, who wrote the script, presiding over walls of books in the raised library at the center of the performance space, complete with a card catalogue that's evocative as a relic of a previous time. It's interesting to note that Borges' story, which reads the universe as a library containing every imaginable book connected together, anticipated a sense of the internet. Yet thankfully, Art of Memory resists the temptation to present its stories in an explicit riff on web 2.0. The intertextuality at play here privileges the whimsical over the technical.

Rather than suggest a sense of modernity, the production's technical elements evoke a remembered past. Video by Matt Tennie and James short along with animation by Michael Woody is projected onto the library shelves in a collage of shifting images, creating the illusion of books with perpetually shifting covers in a terrific visual interpretation of the Borgesian library. Sean Breault's set design includes a forest of white trees to the left of the library and a glowing moon to the right. With Bruce Steinberg's light design, the space above the stage is punctuated by both tiny gold lights and a constellation of open, rumpled books. It's an effective rendering of the notion that the universe is a library. It's also gorgeous.

Appropriate to a play whose title alludes to collective memory, the production deals largely in fairy tales. Like their more explicitly literary source material, fairy tales elicit a sense of the epic through concise, richly symbolic storytelling. In tandem with Ramirez, Tanya Calamoneri (who conceived and directed the project), Heather Harpham, and Cassie Terman narrate and enact stories of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. Dressed in Victorianesque bloomers and then tooled beige dresses, their faces whitened (costume design by Mioko Mochizuki ), the weird sisterly trio inhabits the space beneath, around, and above Ramirez, though never enters the library proper. Fitting to a production which blurs distinctions between texts, the stories they perform borrow one another's motifs. Theirs is a storyscape in which the red shoes of The Red Shoes are locked in a Bluebeardian closet; where the inquisitive bride of Bluebeard becomes the penitent Girl Without Hands.

Calamoneri and Ramirez, with dramaturgical consultant Kenn Watt, clearly undertook extensive research in formulating the play. Yet Art of Memory is much removed from the well-researched, talky type of plays that often seem like they'd make better college lectures than works of art. Instead, Art of Memory is a production whose rich collection of stories and images are conveyed viscerally. It's not hard to imagine that its scenes could be individually sliced and taken out of context without losing their compelling effects, so tightly packed and precisely executed are each of the play's moments. As a carefully constructed whole, the effect is breathtaking: the production itself enacts the evocative fragmentation it purports to explore.

The Politics of the Box

The American Black Box, written by Scott Pardue and directed by Vincent Scott, presents themes of racism, consumerism, and the effects of international politics on individual American lives. All of these concepts are important and relevant in today’s society. Unfortunately, the play does not deliver the necessary elements for truly compelling drama. The inciting action for the play is the discovery of the fact that a substantial amount of a weed-killing compound, a substance which can also be used to make dirty bombs, has gone missing. In light of the recent promotion of Yasser, a Syrian immigrant, a fellow employee begins to suspect foul play. He insinuates that Yasser is connected to the mislaid shipments, raising the possibility of terrorist ties.

The piece devolves from here. All of the characters, including Yasser, seem mere sketches instead of full-bodied, complex human beings. It is hard to care about or for these individuals, as it is always unclear what they want and how their specific motivations relate to the larger political themes at stake. Transitions between scenes cover significant expanses of time and, therefore, a great deal of information is omitted from the play’s actual plot. The audience is left to guess at these elusive details, leaving many of the play’s subplots – and even its main dramatic thrust – unsatisfying.

A key weakness in the work lies in its regular tangents from the main storyline. This often occurs because characters engage in speechmaking, rather than dialogue driven by character interaction. In a crucial questioning scene, for example, depicting Yasser being contained in a cell in an undisclosed location, his interrogator goes into what appears to be a poetic diatribe. Like a direct-to-audience monologue that Yasser gives earlier regarding bullies, the speech reflects on some interesting political ideas but does nothing to drive forward the play’s plot or overall dramaturgical construction. In addition, Gina, the wife of one of Yasser’s coworkers, gives a meaningful speech about materialism in light of the human condition. The monologue seems to be part of some other play, not directly corresponding to the driving forces at work here.

Discussions of boxes are used as a thought-provoking motif throughout the play, manifesting themselves in varying forms from cubicles to cribs to jail cells. However, like most of the play, this element has little payoff in the grand scheme of the work.

The American Black Box tackles some important themes about what means to be American. It would benefit, however, from some clearer structuring.

Crossing Over

The prospects of a better life across the border are weighed against the tolls of migrating in Las Escenas De La Cruz (translation: “Scenes of the Cross”), a spirited, but over-the-top venture from the activist company iDO Theater! Spoken in both English and Spanish, Scenes of the Cross follows a group of refugees across the border, along the way illustrating the events that drove them from Mexico or the future travails that await them in America. Most of the young cast members make their stage debuts in this docudrama, which fluctuates drastically between life and death melodrama and romantic high-jinks that would be more at home on the Telumundo network. Working example: a scene in which the group leader (played with zeal by Maxy Jiménez) threatens to leave behind a snake-bitten youth packs a riveting punch, but the final segment where two newly dating immigrants discover that they are – sorpresa! – long-lost siblings feels like the wrong note to end on.

Overall, Tales offers a mixed bag of dignified intentions and hasty execution. But there is a unique energy and undeniable immediacy in the production’s rough style, bolstered by the fact that these young men and women are telling their own all-too-true stories. As such, the actors all display a touching, if untrained, commitment to the material. While the lighting design and staging lack any coherent style, the jumpy narrative chronology nicely affords a larger perspective, one which highlights the character goals that are achieved or, in the case of the young girl who’d like to go to school after arriving in America, not achieved.

Love Is All Around

Neil Simon remains one of the pre-eminent masters of modern American comedy. Few peers can match his penchant for hysterical character-driven dialogue and the way he can mine humor from even the most mundane of events. Ground Up Productions has revived one of Simon’s earliest, most signature works at the Manhattan Theatre Source, and it is a production of which Simon can be proud. That show would be Barefoot in the Park, about the yin-yang love match between cherubic Corrie Bratter (Kate Middleton) and her straight-laced lawyer husband, Paul (Guy Olivieri). After a whirlwind courtship, the two elope and move into a fifth-floor Manhattan walk-up. Apparently, the climb up to their apartment is quite a schlep, even by New York standards, as several servicemen and Corrie’s mother, Mrs. Banks (Amelia White) attest.

Director Lon Blumgarner lucks out in that the Source’s performance space lends itself perfectly to the Bratter apartment’s claustrophobic feel – the size of the stage is actually about as small as many starter apartments in the city. Blumgarner even goes one better than that by having several of the seats in the audience turn out to be furniture later delivered to the Bratters (not to worry, the seats are replaced by new chairs between the first and second act).

Barefoot looks at the different strokes between Corrie and Paul, which increasingly come to the surface as Corrie deigns to fix up her widowed mother with Victor Velasco (Eric Purcell), the intriguing upstairs neighbor. One of the great strengths of Simon’s original play is that Corrie’s and Paul’s sides both have merit and are both flawed. Since they rushed into marriage heart over head, they have yet to navigate the tricky road of compromise.

Additionally, one of the great strengths of this Ground Up production is that its cast does an impeccable job all around. First and foremost is Middleton, in what I can only hope is a star-making performance. The actress is outstanding, blending just the right amount of perky, petulant, vulnerable, and optimistic. It’s hard not to take your eyes off of her, but to her credit, Middleton sharply cedes the stage as frequently as she commands it, particularly when playing off of Olivieri. He has a trickier part, since Paul is so much more reserved, but the actor masters subtle hints to clue the audience into exactly what his character thinks at all times.

The supporting cast of Barefoot also delivers the material perfectly. White has the show-stopping role, as anyone familiar with the show knows. It is indeed a textbook comedic performance, with one terrific line followed by another (“I feel like I died and went to Heaven…and had to climb my way up”), yet White makes even more of the part, etching in the loneliness and insecurity Mrs. Banks endures. White also has a nice chemistry with her Purcell, who finds a very human chord in Velasco, so that the character never appears too hammy. Brian Lafontaine is also pitch-perfect in several scenes as a telephone repairman; I’d love to see what he can do with a bigger role some time.

I mentioned the furniture move between the first and second act; there is also another intermission between the second and third acts, which I presume is done to allow for costume changes. I wish there was a way to eliminate the second intermission; it does break up the momentum, and the third act is too short to require being broken out. Nonetheless, Stacey Berman’s period costumes deserve praise, as do Travis McHale’s set and lighting design.

This production is a pure joy. Though Barefoot is set in the winter, it unquestionably rates as one of the must-see shows of this summer season.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mama Too)

Yo Hot Mama(s)! is a fun soul-searching pastiche of two one-woman shows, Yo Mama(s) written and performed by Natalie Kim, and Hot Mama Mahatma, written and performed by Karen Fitzgerald. Both pieces offer unique female perspectives and the yearning for self-discovery that sometimes can occur in the unlikeliest of places. Kim’s piece, a coming-of-age story about a young woman swirling in the confusion of the true meaning of “home” and the distinct experiences of herself and her three mothers. She embodies these by playing herself, as well as bringing life to a myriad of other characters, including her natural mother (and father), her adoptive mother, and stepmother. She also interacts with an offstage voice – a therapist – and places herself into key scenes from childhood, situations with her boyfriend in the present, and more recent excursions in search of herself, like to a New Age-style retreat center. Her inclusive 15-page script is incredibly tight and well written; at the same time, it is funny, sad, and sweet. Her portrayal of a character based on herself feels real, told with appropriate candor, but with enough distance to navigate through the emotional journey. Kim is a joy to watch. We delightfully spin along with her as she eventually rediscovers the place of her own heart, finally finding a home there, at the same time welcoming us in. It’s a beautiful work of personal storytelling and the search for identity and belonging.

The swift direction and blocking by Kenneth Heaton help the transitions between scenes and flashbacks, also utilizing sound cues from the different cultures or time periods. The black box space is ideal for the piece, as Kim fills the various areas with her crisply drawn characters, making their accompanying surroundings easy to imagine. All of the elements work well together to get right to the “heart of the matter,” so to speak.

The second, and somewhat longer piece, written and performed by Karen Fitzgerald, Hot Mama Mahatma, directed by Matt Hoverman, also features a soul-searching female character. This time, the character is a woman later in life experiencing a rebirth of sorts, getting in touch with her sexuality, which had been repressed for many years (or maybe always). The only problem is that her sensual awakening is happening while on a spiritual retreat (usually celibate) and during travels alone through India, which leads to many humorous situations and huge awkwardness, which Fitzgerald fully reveals, leaving no holds barred. It’s a brave work, as female sexuality is still largely uninvestigated in our culture, not found in the fairy-tale mindset of Cosmo quizzes, daytime soap operas, or marriage-competition reality shows that the American psyche still often seems so mired in. Fitzgerald clearly tries to express something more visceral, deep, and real.

Fitzgerald’s dance-like movements are lovely to watch, reminiscent of screen legend Rita Hayworth, and at times I could imagine her piece more fully realized and perhaps expanded into a musical comedy. The speeches tend to be a little long, and some of the situations repetitive, but she also portrays a number of familiar characters, as well as herself, with honesty and panache. It seems like musical dance numbers and a chorus of tempting foreign men could be called for, giving another layer to the je ne sais quoi romance, but Fitzgerald does bring that spirit to stage. Dressed in a gorgeous red dress and fully owning her story, she reveals everything she is both longing for and conflicted about. She also ultimately achieves self-realization, and I love that both women do so independently, and not necessarily by way of their men (as the fairy tale myth dictates). They both seem to demonstrate the lesson that it’s only a fulfilled woman who can truly, fully share herself with a man.

Described in the press materials as “Eat, Pray, Love run amok,” both pieces dovetail nicely together as a reflection of the current movement toward soul-searching, supported by such works as the inspirational Elizabeth Gilbert book, perhaps by way of the tell-it-like-it-is Mama Gena. Here, the main characters seek for their deeper selves, in one case for an answer to her intimacy problems, the other for a safe haven in which to revel in her rediscovered sensuality. Both Kim and Fitzgerald are skilled writers and performers, and they have deeply mined their own lives to create a moving, enjoyable, and intimate theater experience. Mother, may I? Oh yes, you may.

Holiday Strife

The phrase “Christmas in July” might evoke the charm of the 1940 Preston Sturges film or just the promise of holiday treats in a hot month. But it also comes to mind thanks to Sandra Goldmark’s splendid set for Lisa Ebersole’s strange new comedy-drama. The theme starts in the foyer, with a beautifully decorated Christmas tree, and extends into the pleasantly air-conditioned theater, where a maître d’ welcomes the audience to an elegant dining room at a resort hotel. The stage restaurant is decorated with a chintz swag, evergreens, red bows, and various Christmas ornaments. There’s a table at the center, and tables along the sides, where some audience members reside in ringside seats (for a slightly higher admission, which includes wine). There’s high-tone piano music appropriate to a five-star restaurant (at a West Virginia resort). Yet, although the date is Dec. 29 of this year, there’s nothing particularly futuristic about the bizarre happenings at the table where the Leroy family is dining.

At the center table two siblings await their parents: the forbearing, sanguine Jackie (nicely understated by Haskell King) and the easily irritated Kate (Lisa Ebersole, who is also the playwright). Father Joe (Buck Henry) arrives first: He shows up with some scraping on his face from his shaving, which Kate attends to, and the three begin to pick at one another while awaiting mother Kitty. Finally Kate goes to look for Kitty (Holland Taylor), who shortly after enters barefoot. Then things take a very odd turn: Their waiter (a silent, unruffled David Rosenblatt) delivers a note that says the Wilsons have kidnapped Kate.

Who are the Wilsons? Some family the Leroys know. Are they gangsters? Do the Leroys have terrible secrets? Is that why father Joe possesses a gun that upsets Kate? Questions abound, and the evening consists of little more than orchestrated entrances and exits by the Leroy family to find one another—Kate turns up eventually—and squabbles among the family members.

Kitty badgers Jackie to have a salad and insists on ordering a fruit salad even though Jackie doesn’t like fruit. Kate is shocked to hear that her father owns a gun. The family greets the restaurant owner, Chester (a jovial Keith Randolph Smith, who looks like a black Daddy Warbucks). The Bible-quoting Chester and his sister Tammy have been friends of the family since Jackie and Kate were children, it appears, and Chester may even carry a torch for Kitty.

Ebersole captures the elements of family life well—the small irritations and capitulations and overprotectiveness that ebb and flow in such relationships, and the alternating attempts to avoid difficult topics and the irresistible urge to pick at old wounds. Kitty, for instance, feels guilty about a mysterious incident of her abandonment of Kate as a child that Ebersole refers to obliquely.

It’s easy to see why the roles attracted such accomplished actors as Taylor and Henry. Taylor has mastered the overbearing mother in her years on Two and a Half Men, and she can make comic hay—even a haystack—with a line like “You’re an idiot.” She has superb timing for the sparse humor, but she also has moments of vulnerability as Kitty: the character’s forgetting her shoes seems to be an early indicator of memory problems, and Kitty frequently turns on a dime from insults to pleasantries.

She has a nice, tentative scene with Kate, and it’s clear they don’t communicate well. Meanwhile, Henry makes Joe irascible and obsessively attached to the familiar—his usual soup, drink and dinner, without variation—in the way of many elderly people. Yet he also has a good deal of charm and brings sympathy to Joe. Ultimately, though, the play feels like a lot of Sturm und Drang without a payoff.

Director Andrew Grosso paces it well, although all of the exits and entrances cannot escape feeling schematic, and each actor registers strongly (though perhaps the author least successfully). Grosso also keeps the tone of the family frictions at a reasonable level, one that doesn’t require Chester to ask the family to leave, for instance.

But the downside is that the play occasionally feels underpowered, and its ambiguities become frustrating. One feels that a lot happens but that none of it is genuinely momentous. Ebersole doesn’t seem to have a message other than that family ties are confusing and difficult, and her use of absurdism—Do the Wilsons represent all outsiders? What’s that kidnapping threat all about?—gives the play a quirky sensibility but leaves any message in it lingering in obscurity.

This Little Birdy Flew Home

Growing up is a tricky endeavor. The things you think you know shift and change rapidly, those you think love you disappear with the least provocation, and the whole learning process is incredibly difficult. Kate Mark's new, “impossible” play Bird House provides an interesting, fairy-talish way of examining the ups and downs of growing up. Every hour on the hour, two cuckoo birds pop out of their house to announce “kook” and “oo” to the delight of a youngish girl named Louisy. Her companion, Syl, is less impressed with the coming and going of the two birds. The two girls live in a tree house on the Bright Side. They live happily until an army of ants marches in and explains to Syl that they have come from the Lop Side, where there is war and suffering. Syl becomes filled with a sense of action and decides to dig a hole through to the Lop Side in order to help the ones suffering over there, leaving Louisy alone in the tree house.

Over on the Lop Side, Syl meets a little girl named Myra (played with joy and gusto by Kylie Liya Goldstein) who marches around on paint can stilts and calls herself a “Sarge Ant.” Meanwhile, a woman enters the tree house and thinks Louisy is her long lost Myra, a role which Louisy gladly accepts, at least for the time being. The two girls ultimately learn a lesson from their time apart and emerge from the experience changed.

Bird House is full of stunning imagery. The cuckoo birds fly the coop, somehow manage to end up in Syl's stomach and then fly out of her mouth. The silhouette of a rocking chair trapped in a tree is projected on a screen on the Lop Side.

The puppetry is clever—a large ant marches into the tree house, followed by a line of smaller ants. The wind carries an ax and a teapot across the stage. Birds slam into the windows of the tree house. The cast is very energetic and accurately conveys the innocence (or experience as need be) and growing pains of their characters.

Although it is highly theatrical and a visual treat, the story of Bird House suffers a bit. Many things are left unexplained, and seem to be there simply so that a bit of tricky puppetry can be performed. Older versions of Syl and Louisy are projected onto a wide tree trunk. It is difficult to understand why they are there and what they are saying. The characters are so exaggerated in terms of bravado or child-likeness that it is hard to empathize with them. Occasionally, their motivations are unclear and confusing.

Marks has a lot of great ideas floating about in Bird House, they just need to be given more definition in certain instances. Ultimately, the show is fun to watch for its visual tricks and the energy of its cast. However, it would be truly delightful and enjoyable if the audience was left with the sense that those tricks actually were headed somewhere.

What Price Freedom?

Sometimes life gets so oppressive that one has no choice but to attempt to escape, no matter what the risk. Such was the case for thousands of Cuban refugees, who built rafts for themselves out of wood and tires and risked the 90 miles of stormy sea between their island and Florida. Playwright Nilo Cruz was one such refugee, fleeing Cuba with his parents on a Freedom Flight in 1970 at the tender age of ten. In his play A Bicycle Country, receiving its New York premiere from the newly formed East 3rd Productions, three characters set off on the harrowing journey, leaving everything behind in hopes of starting a new, fulfilling life. The production is gripping and harrowing, with strong performances from each of the three leads. When the play opens, in 1993, Julio, who is recovering from a stroke, is instructing his nurse, Ines, on how he wants his life scheduled and run. Julio's friend Pepe watches, serving as a middleman between the two. Julio initially seems as though he is in control, but soon it is Ines who takes over, forcing him to do arm exercises and to walk across the room until he is finally able to leave his wheelchair and resume his life. Yet, Ines is not satisfied with this. The three are still trapped in Cuba, where their quality of life has decreased substantially. The dissolution of the Soviet Union has cut off supplies of gasoline as well as food. The description of Cuba as a bicycle country comes from this period, when Cubans were encouraged to travel by bicycle, a mode of transportation they were not previously familiar with.

The sense of confinement is conveyed well in the set of the play. Michael Mallard has designed a modular set conisting of wooden platforms and angular planks to represent first Julio's one room house and later the escape raft. The three actors fill the space both as a house and as a raft in a way that amplifies its coziness.

Julio's progress from being completely incapacitated to being free is a parallel to the trio's escape in the second act of the play. While the first act could do more to establish what is wrong with the characters' lives, the second act fully establishes the harrowing nature of the trip across the ocean on little more than a pile of tires. While the first act serves as mostly exposition, the second act is downright gripping. The outcome is uncertain until the very end—will the three make it? Or will their efforts have been in vain? Regardless, the fact that life is so bad on their island that they'd risk death just to get away is breathtaking. Act 2 of A Bicycle Country may be difficult for some viewers to watch. The trio run out of everything—smokes, and more importantly, water—halfway through their trip. Pepe and Ines start hallucinating, with Julio remaining the only sane individual. Lorraine Rodriguez does a terrific job as Ines, conveying a sense of hope even when all is lost.

In the her note accompanying the program of A Bicycle Country, dramaturg Shari Perkins challenges the audience to look at the world as Ines, Julio, and Pepe have, asking what we'd be willing to sacrifice in order to fix what we think has gone wrong. If we are to take a cue from A Bicycle Country, the answer would be a lot, and it would all be worth it in the end.

Everybody Comes to Tony's

From The Iceman Cometh toEverybody Comes to Rick’s, the play that became Casablanca, bars are quite the theatrical place to be. And why not? Between the free-flowing spirits and chance encounters with strangers, one never knows who one might meet, and what one might say when one does. Twins Honey (Rebecca Challis) and Troy (David Tully) experience both the highs and lows of that situation in Brian Dykstra’s Hiding Behind Comets, directed by John Trevellini at Nicu’s Spoon. The two are basically idling through life – no ambition, no real responsibility. The most pressing concern on this given night – for both of them, oddly enough – is when Troy is going to hook up with Honey’s friend Erin (Kiran Malhotra) and how early they can shut down the bar in order to head to a friend’s party.

Then in walks in Cole (Olivre Conant), an older gentleman. At first he seems innocuous enough, though as Comets unfolds, it seems as though Cole has an agenda all his own.

This development is both to Dykstra’s credit and his play’s detriment. The first half of Comets feels like a bit of a trifle, showing the aimless ways of young small-town life, and allows its three very talented younger actors to shine (no disrespect to Conant). As the play’s messages emerge, however, it drastically shifts the whole tone of the performance. The second half of the show, then, takes a drastic detour, shoving these three characters to the back burner as Cole takes center stage.

This shift might have made more sense in earlier incarnations of the play, which ran in two separate acts. Trevellini’s version wisely eschews the intermission, which makes for a better-paced, harder-hitting production, but one that nonetheless feels bipolar at worst and lopsided at best, making the show’s first half feel more like a mere prelude than a legitimate part of the drama.

Comets is a cousin of the various nature-versus-nuture works that have pondered whether a descendant of Hitler could also be capable of the Holocaust. Cole extensively relives the last days of Jonestown, the largest mass suicide in history. One of his chief questions is to ponder whether any living relatives of Jim Jones might be capable of the same atrocities.

Though Conant does a masterful job of escalating his character’s menace, delivering close to an hour's worth of powerful monologues, one problem with a lot of this dialogue is that Cole’s history lesson Jonestown will either feel like too much of a lecture to those unfamiliar with the topic or too redundant to those who remember it. Additionally, as Cole emerges as an obsessive figure who may or may not have a personal connection to Honey and Troy, the play reduces the two of them to passive characters. I watched Challis’s and Tully’s reactions during the latter part of the play, and the two do a tremendous job of remaining in character, perfect examples of active listening.

Yet what each of them does in the play’s early moments should not go unrecognized. Tully appears to be one of those actors who can tap into even the most minute detail; in just a handful of moments, I felt I knew a ton about Troy: his loyalty, his virility, his ability to stand up to adversity. Challis is blessed with juicier material, delivered with relish, particularly as she explains just how deep her connection to her twin brother goes.

Trevellini’s staging is also smart, but also comes with a minor problem. He makes the entire theater take the form of the bar, so the four characters move around the audience at various times. This plunges them right into the action, but it also means that at various points, various audience member’s views of certain characters are obstructed. Steven Wolf’s light design also adds to Comets heavy atmosphere without calling attention to itself.

Still, Honey, Troy, Erin and Cole are among the four more interesting people one is apt to encounter on a night out. Comets is a show worth patronizing.

Our Town, NYC

The Joys of Fantasy, presented by the Ordinary Theater, is one part experimental drama, one part indie rock concert, one part multimedia spectacle, and one part Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The sum total of this mélange of elements? A thrilling, memorable, thought-provoking exploration of our existential situation in a complex city in ever-changing times. The piece opens with an extended framing device, setting out both the play’s conceit – as an Our Town “revisited” – and waxing poetic on the themes inherent in such a project. This is done in a clever and profound way: actors quote from famous texts, they reference the audience and the fact that this is a play, and they reveal the play’s conclusion. All of these postmodern techniques combine into a clear and relevant reflection of what theater should be – a discussion distinctly grounded in the place and time in which it is presented but one which resonates universally by reflecting on what it is, quintessentially, to be human.

The stage manager device is maintained from Wilder’s work, but this lofty duty is split between three actresses who all comment on the action that takes place, and occasionally engage within it, but are never directly involved in the lives of the main characters. The central plot line centers around a young couple – Scott and Teri – who are torn apart after a phone call from Michael is received. Michael has previously informed our heroes both that they will never see one another again and that Teri will kill him (Michael) at the end of the second act.

All of the performers are compelling to watch. They portray “themselves” within this imagined world, supposedly playing out the fates that the text has laid out for them. In doing so, The Joys of Fantasy blurs the line between fiction and reality and asks the very real question of which way the mirror faces between art and reality. Do events happen on stage because they once happened in the real world? Or are they impelled to occur in life because they once transpired on stage?

The piece could use some tightening up. The second act is quite long and much of it feels like a digression. Despite this weakness, the play’s final moments are powerful and surprising, affecting the audience in such a way that the spectators can exit the house full of ideas to explore and impressed with the capacity of theater to express them.

This is an Our Town for the twenty-first century. It also seems to be an Our Town for the small town of the big city – transplanting the issues at stake in Wilder’s play to the Big Apple, throwing these questions into relief against an oft-complicated backdrop.

In Wilder’s Our Town, death is inevitable because that is life. In The Joys of Fantasy, death is violent and sometimes forced, yet somehow still seemingly preordained. This play is a brilliant theatrical experiment on universal themes. It both makes these issues relevant in a new day and age and reminds us that, while the external trappings of human existence may change, the fundamental, essential elements remain the same.

Do the Twist

The five short pieces in Rising Sun Performance Company’s Twisted are more akin to long-form comedy sketches than to plays. That’s ok, though, because most of them are quite entertaining, and a few are genuinely hilarious. Two of them are funnier than anything I’ve seen on television in years. Justin Warner’s “Head Games” is an uproarious bit about King Herod bringing the nonchalant and seemingly ungrateful Salome the head of John the Baptist on a plate, as she has demanded. When he notices that her other favorite foods are specialty pastries like ladyfingers and “virgins’ nipples,” Herod realizes he has made a grave error. Chris Enright, who reminds me quite a bit of Will Ferrell, is side-splittingly funny as the hapless Herod, trying to keep Herodias and Salome from seeing what he’s brought home in a basket.

Similarly, Tom Kiesche’s “Nurturing Bond” is a clever sketch that also gives you a little to think about. A Tony Danza-ish Michael McManus plays a twenty-five year old man who is attached to his mother—literally. Joined by an eight-foot long umbilical cord, the severing of which would result in one of their deaths, the man, who is a bartender, and his mother (Melissa Ciesla) spend their lives doing everything together. He keeps her in the shadows as he disastrously tries to pick up women who soon retire to the ladies' room to vomit. He blurts out, incongruously, “I wanted to be an astronaut.” Dejected, he ponders a fateful decision.

Mark Harvey Levine’s “The Kiss” is a light, tender comedy about two young friends—(Jonathan Reed Wexler as Denis and Flor Bromley as Allison)—who just can’t seem to declare or come to terms with their affection for each other. Denis visits Allison to let her know that he is going on a date, but first he would like to practice his kissing skills on her to see if he is any good. What ensues is a cute, lighthearted and thorny romp through young adult longing.

Less successful, though still entertaining, are the two sketches which bookend Twisted. Matt Hanf’s “Teddy Knows Too Much” is about a young boy, jealous of his sister, who plots against his family and confides it all to his teddy bear. If you’re a fan of Family Guy you’ll instantly recognize Billy’s (Peter Aguero) debt to the character of Stewie. The script is frenetic and silly; Mr. Aguero has some comedic chops but only sometimes manages to salvage it.

Kitt Lavoie’s “Party Girl” falters because it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a comedy or drama; ultimately it’s neither. Phillip (Billy Fenderson), a young attorney, visits a strip club to celebrate his cousin’s bachelor party and realizes that his PhD-candidate girlfriend, Lorelei (Becky Sterling) is working as one of the strippers. The script is derivative—Tom Hanks’ early film Bachelor Party comes to mind—Phillip’s unseen father is even involved in the festivities.

Overall, Twisted is a solid comedic offering. A few of the cast members could fit in easily on Saturday Night Live. Despite the confines of their small black box space, the actors are often capable of pulling off some challenging physical comedy. Rising Sun Performance Company is a youthful, enthusiastic company and I look forward to seeing more from them, perhaps with some contributions from female playwrights next time.

If you’re looking for a summer evening of wacky comedy before dinner or drinks, you’ll be in the right place with Twisted.

There's Something About Shakespeare

Perhaps one sign of true theatrical genius is the indestructibility of a text. No matter where it is performed -- whether in a high school, on a fully-equipped and technically tricked-out professional stage, or in a public park peppered with the interruptions of passers-by, the writing consistently delivers a certain level of enjoyment. Despite its wafer-thin plot, William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is that kind of play. The strength of the source material is fortunate, for Boomerang Theatre Company's current production in Central Park has little else to recommend it. The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare's early plays, is adapted from two Roman comedies by Plautus: Menaechmi, a play about two identical twins who are mistaken for each other, and Amphitryon, which features identical servants with the same name. In Shakespeare's adaptation, two sets of twins – conveniently, pairs of masters and servants who both go by the names of Antipholus and Dromio – are separated in infancy in a storm at sea. Twice the twins means twice the opportunities for mayhem-inducing mix-ups. When the grown-up Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse arrive in Ephesus in search of their long lost siblings, they are mistaken for their brothers, who are local residents, involving everyone in legal and romantic troubles. Even after four hundred years, the punchy comic patter and rhymed couplets are delightful.

Director Philip Emeott has collected a cast of wildly varying talent. His strongest performances come from Jon Dykstra and Steven Beckingham as the Dromios of Ephesus and Syracuse, respectively. The pair look eerily identical in matched costumes designed by Carolyn Pallister, yet their performances are vocally and physically distinctive from one another. Their scenes are the highlights of the production. Likewise, Michael Alan Read makes an impression as the slightly oily and obsequious goldsmith, Angelo, who ends up on the wrong end of the law thanks to the brothers' mistaken identities. Walter J. Hoffman gives a gloriously over the top, Addams Family-inspired rendition of the creepy Dr. Pinch, who tries to exorcise the confused Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus.

Too bad the other members of the cast are not nearly as strong. Sarah Hankins as Adriana, the disappointed wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, performs the role as an enraged harpy, throwing away any attempt at nuance; the meaning of her words is lost in a cacophony of noise, exasperated sighs, and growls of rage. Emily King Brown's Luciana is pleasant but bland as she tries to calm her sister and repulse the amorous advances of the man she believes is her brother-in-law. Neither woman seems to empathize much with their characters' predicaments, which – while comical – are also poignant.

Emeott has staged The Comedy of Errors on a hillside near the 69th Street and Central Park West entrance to the park. Geographically, the setting is interesting; its jutting rocks create a two-level playing space with a green hillside in the background and a dirt patch in front. The hillside, which masks the backstage area, creates the opportunity for the dramatic, long entrances which Emeott used effectively to introduce each scene. Unfortunately, Emeott rarely takes full advantage of the space's natural levels, often lining his actors up in the foreground. Curiously, the only characters who ever feel an urge to kneel or crawl on the ground are those costumed in shorts or short skirts, a detail which seems mighty convenient.

Boomerang Theatre Company's production of The Comedy of Errors skates by on the strength of its text, which is charming even when performed by an inconstant company. For those who come across the production on a weekend in the park, or watch it with the kids over a picnic lunch, it's diverting enough. At the same time, the production is disappointing: it has no heart. With all the theatrical richness of New York City, Shakespeare could be handled so much better.

A Bumpy Flight on the Bird Machine

Despite its charming and appealing design and puppetry work, Concrete Temple Theatre’s Bird Machine never quite takes flight. The featured puppets evoke the expected sense of wonder and delight, but the script and basic production flaws prevent it from really soaring. This interesting “puppetical” features a script that plays out like the book of a musical with periodic interludes of puppetry inserted like songs. The story centers around an Imperial groundskeeper, Vince (Michael Tomlinson), in a fantasy medieval world who tells a story to a group of orphaned children about his own culpability in their parents’ murders.

Vince’s story takes us fifteen years into the past, to a birthday gift challenge issued by the Emperor (Jo Jo Hristova). Vince and his friend Leo (Carlo Adinolfi) are competing to present the Emperor with the most delightful and appropriate gift in order to earn the coveted position of Imperial Architect.

Leo, in a nod to Leonardo Di Vinci’s legacy, constructs a flying machine by observing the flight of birds. Vince builds the Emperor a small jewel garden that projects a garden, woodland animals and falling snow. Eventually the contest spirals into tragedy and Vince launches a bitter campaign to seek revenge on the Emperor for his indifference and smug sense of privilege.

Tomlinson, Adinolfi and Hristova bring some inventive humor to the thin fable. Tomlinson, in particular, reaches for a genuine emotional center for his villainous, yet deeply sympathetic character. His opening monologue starts the evening off well, and his presence and beautiful voice are continually striking as the performance progresses.

Hristova is also a standout with her delightfully self-obsessed Emperor. She brings big, over-the-top energy and a sense of fun that is exactly right. Adinolfi has several scenes working with puppet partners in which his physicality is very engrossing.

Six puppeteers (Brian Carson, Ayako Dean, Leat Klingman, Megan O’Brien, Zdenko Slobodnik and Stacey Weingarten) in black masks create a magical world of transformation and grace. They turn a miniature town into functional furniture before your eyes, manipulate gorgeous skeletal birds to create migrating flocks, and believably depict large crowds of fearful peasants with tiny paper doll style puppets.

Despite all the bewitching interludes of splendid craftsmanship, the show never manages to be as engaging as it should be. There is no real emotional involvement with any of the characters and confused and disjointed dialogue mars the generally solid performances.

The real disappointment is the lack of smart pacing that manages to make a one hour show feel endless. Director Renee Philippi slows the action down continually with long transitions and unnecessarily drawn-out dead spaces. The enchantment of the puppets wears off when weighted down by the deadly tempo.

Theater-goers with a special interest in puppetry, who like their puppets to have more romance and intelligence than Kermit, the Fraggles, and Bert and Ernie, will find a lot to like in Bird Machine. But it is a rough flight for anyone looking for sharp and satisfying theatre.

For tickets and showtimes, consult the Concrete Temple Theatre’s website at www.concretetempletheatre.com.

Reading the Grains

Subway musicians may be just another part of the daily commutes of ordinary New Yorkers, but an undeniable aura of mystery nevertheless surrounds these oft-overlooked talents. Performing evergreen melodies on instruments ranging from steel drums to violins, letting out sweetly trembling vocal lines in foreign languages or setting up impromptu jam sessions on subway platforms, these truly independent musicians provide a soundtrack to our routines, carrying on their performances whether or not we pause to listen. We are unlikely to search for these individuals’ Twitter updates or online calendars of upcoming performances, but every once and a while, as the shriek of a passing car drowns out their melodies, we may wonder what kinds of lives they lead beyond these grimy platforms. It’s this element of curiosity that brings an added allure to vocalist Rosateresa Castro-Vargas’s one-woman show on her childhood in Puerto Rico. As her recollections of family coffee sessions give way to a deeply disturbing secret, we desire to know more than she is able to reveal in a thematically busy, roughly hour-long performance. Castro-Vargas makes no reference to her days spent singing underground, but as it draws to a close, we are left wondering how an individual with her set of experiences approaches her work as a performer.

From its first moments, Tomando Café is a tribute to the allure of domestic rituals. In the glow of dim, yellow lamps and tiny candles, the audience is asked to choose their seats at round tables, creating the illusion that we have been personally invited to share a cup of coffee with the narrator. As Castro-Vargas enters in a long, pink dress that matches her buoyant curls, she greets each audience member individually and lets out a mystical, operatic melody to describe the experience of drinking coffee. “Café,” she sings, jumping an octave and releasing the second syllable as a tingling, shimmering extension of a simple exhalation.

Interwoven with tales of her childhood community’s coffee traditions is a complex and disturbing portrait of the end of a childhood. Through seventeen short scenes, or “gulps,” Castro-Vargas narrates her experience of growing up in a world in which a young woman’s purity was so strictly revered that a fear of shame kept families from exposing situations as severe as child molestation. When Castro-Vargas recalls standing in the kitchen and attempting to make out the whispers of the family’s women in the next room, the simple phrase of “what are they hiding?” reveals layers of silent anguish.

The performance relies almost entirely on her expressive, organic voice that has a simultaneously angelic and conversational quality. Castro-Vargas’s only accompaniment is Toni Franco’s acoustic guitar, and because the intimate space reveals even the slightest errors in breathing and every imperfectly placed note, her performance is startlingly brave. By the most part, Castro-Vargas is up to the task, and displays an unpretentious magnetism that allows us to trust her. She is more a storyteller than a natural actress, however, and on occasion we notice her obviously correcting her lines after a careless start.

Priscilla Flores and Yasemin Ozumerzifon alternate in the chameleonic role of Server; they announce the start of each scene, serve coffee and crackers to audience members ("milk or sugar?"), and interact with Castro-Vargas in various scenes. On a few occasions, the character even breaks into an improvised dance and pulls audience members up to join her and Castro-Vargas on the floor. When she interacts with Castro-Vargas, her role is more to create a figurative dynamic than play the specific role of friend, mother or grandmother; in fact, she remains silent almost for the entirety of the play.

Castro-Vargas’s playful presence and light, organic style both benefit the play and work to its disadvantage. She includes several heavy-handed metaphors in the material— including Little Red Riding Hood as a molested child and Medusa as the healing goddess of anger— ultimately causing the material to become overcrowded with symbols. The play’s most powerful moment comes at the end, where a reprise of her first, seemingly carefree song suddenly contains a deep sense of sadness and regret. When she finally announces that she “[needs] some air” and steps out the door, we are left holding our breaths, but simultaneously wondering what she might say if she were asked to return to us.

Sympathy for Mass Suicide

The Laboratory Theater’s entry into The Brick Theater’s Antidepressant Festival, Le Mirage, is a rich and rewarding exploration of the vicious extremities of faith and outlier thought systems where religion is nothing but a fatal intellectual virus. Le Mirage dramatizes the story of an intricately ritualized, self-annihilating religious sect, The Order of the Solar Temple, using pre-existing theological tracts and dissonant choreography. The text of the hour-long performance piece is taken from lecture transcripts and texts published by this bizarre French Canadian extremist group.

The cult’s beliefs incorporated a confluence of the rituals of ancient esoteric secret societies (like the Knights of the Templar and the Rosicrucian society), Holy Grail legends and fervent ecological purification ideals. The end goal of this sinister theology was to persuade the cult members to purify themselves by transmitting their soul to the planet Jupiter via mass suicide and ritual murder.

The cult’s history is bloody and malignant. In 1994, one of the group’s founders allegedly labeled the infant son of a follower the antichrist and ordered that the baby be stabbed to death with a wooden stake. The cult members obeyed with enthusiasm and shortly thereafter began a series of “Jupiter transit ceremonies” that ultimately left behind 74 bodies, neatly arranged in star patterns.

Since plastic supermarket bags were a symbol of the ecological pollution the Order believed was corrupting humanity, many of the suicides involved members tying the bags around their necks to suffocate slowly.

A talented and beautifully committed trio of actors (Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan and Oleg Dubson) convey a range of vivid impressions within the taut, abstract framework constructed by director Yvan Greenberg. The trio portray a fictitious Las Vegas chapter of The Order in the last stages of preparation for departure to Jupiter.

The cast’s French-accented readings of the Order’s writings are underscored with a satisfying soundtrack (designed by Greenberg) that includes ethereal New Age music (composed by François B. Nouvel-Ậgel, Richard Wagner and Gabriel Fauré), bursts of jolting static and ominous rhythmic pounding.

The easy choice in a production of this sort would be a didactic condemnation of the group that dismisses the feverous devotees as aberrational lunatics. But the immediacy the actors bring to their recitations and the purposeful purposelessness of their intriguing ritual dances somehow make the cultists’ piteous need for connection sympathetic. These lunatics come across as real people willing to believe that a personal invitation to a degrading death will erase lifetimes of unfilled longing.

Moments in the performance suggest that the Laboratory Theater is working to be inheritors of 1950s beat poets. During a long section at the beginning to the piece, the cadence of their voices and the hypnotic movement are slow to transform into deeper forms and Audrey Hepburn’s endless beat poet parody in Funny Face comes unpleasantly to mind. And the elements the group incorporates to depict the Las Vegas setting are never interesting and consistently unbeneficial. But once the structure coalesces into a decidedly sinister invitation to join the Order on a journey to “a new world made of other times, other heavens” it is hard to look away.

Dargel, Donovan and Dubson are compellingly genuine through the piece, and the final images of the cult's painfully deliberate suicides are especially searing and potent. The lasts few minutes of their performances will haunt you long after you leave the theater.

Le Mirage is an unforgettable and chilling experience of religious fervency that should not be missed during its short festival run.

For tickets and showtimes, consult The Brick Theater’s Antidepressant Festival website at www.bricktheater.com/antidepressant.

Food for Thought

There’s never been a family quite as tight as the foursome at the center of Derek Ahonen’s The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side. There is Billy (James Kautz), a would-be revolutionary with a substance-abuse problem; Dawn (Mandy Nicole Moore), a young runaway who emerges from an abusive background; Dear (Sarah Lemp), a former lawyer whose utopian ideals make her the de facto “mother” of this group; and the volatile but impassioned Wyatt (Mathew Pilieci). As we find out over the course of stiflingly hot week in the studio apartment they share above the vegan restaurant (from which the show gains its title) in which they work, this quartet is bonded by more than just home, job, and shared philosophies on life. Hearkening back to the communal families that emerged in the 1960s, Billy, Dawn, Dear and Wyatt are more than just a nuclear group – they also share each other. They are involved with each other sexually, and have frolicked together in every possible permutation. Their arrangement works for them, and needs no judging until two outsiders enter the action and throw all of their beliefs into question.

The first of these characters is Billy’s younger brother Evan (Nick Lawson), whose conservative beliefs serve as a stark contrast to the lifestyle his brother and his friends have enjoyed. Though the substance of the play, echoes of free love, fight the power, and antiestablishment come straight from the 1960 and 1970s, the play’s structure stems from an earlier era. The idea of the outsider entering a group and being introduced to a different way of life is a classic – Kaufman and Hart employed the “fish-out-of-water” theme all the time.

What is so remarkable about Pied Pipers, though, is that Evan – the “fish” in this story – isn’t the protagonist with whom we need to identify. It is to Ahonen’s credit just how quickly he and his cast get the audience to identify with the show’s main characters. By the time of Evan’s entrance, we are firmly on the side of these tenants, and though we may find some of their decisions flawed, we want to understand more about where they came from.

Part of the reason why may be that the Amoralists, the production company mounting Pied Pipers, have lived with these characters for a long time. The production, currently staged at P.S. 122, played a previous run at the Gene Frankel Theater in 2007, and everyone involved possesses a palpable love and respect for the play’s characters.

More important, though, is the amount of discipline and trust the actors have among each other. Ahonen’s script calls for his cast to endure many emotional and physical demands (which is why, despite a nearly three-hour running time, Pied Pipers always feels electric and never boring), and they all rise to the challenge with performances that feel full of conviction.

Kautz is extraordinary. He makes Billy a font of disappointment, stripping away the character so we can see how his regret over actions both taken and never taken have led him to drugs and alcohol. I love Moore’s pixie-ish qualities (though think her character’s attraction to Evan felt a little unjustified), and Lemp somehow manages to make her character’s speeches explaining their lifestyle feel authentic, when they could have felt merely didactic. Most astonishing of all, though, is Pilieci’s powerful work, which can best be described as Pacino-esque – full of both vitriol and vulnerability at once.

There are two more names that must be mentioned. The first is Malcolm Madera, another wonderful actor who joins the play’s second act as Donovan, the landlord who has allowed Billy, Dawn, Dear and Wyatt to commune in their apartment for free in return for work at the Pied Pipers. Donovan, a wealthy man with a wife and child hidden off in the suburbs, has supported these characters for his own purposes. As these emerge, Ahonen’s themes and questions come into a focus. I loved the bits Madera employed to show how slick Donovan was, trying to come off as a friend but showing that he was the dominant member of their relationship at all times. As he stomps around their pad, he uses everything he can to show that he, in fact, owns them. Alfred Schatz is also to be praised for his note-perfect set, which effectively becomes a seventh character.

Ahonen’s play is never one-sided. We understand why Dear’s thinking is hopeful but flawed, and why Donovan’s philanthropy is so self-serving. He asks important questions and, while Pied Pipers offers plenty of reasons, leads the audience to arrive at their own answers to them. What is abundantly clear, however, is how important all six of Ahonen’s characters are to him as people. Love stories don’t come any purer than this.

Arsenic Kills Me

Arsenic may not have a place in everyone’s cup of tea, but Horse Trade and the Dysfunctional Theatre Company serve up a wickedly delicious brew with their production of Joseph Kesselring’s chestnut Arsenic and Old Lace. Director Eric Chase has assembled an outstanding cast who manage to make even the most dated material in the 1939-penned farce fresh and enjoyable. Of course it is hard to figure out why anyone would stage this community theater warhorse in the heart of the hip East Village. I suppose the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Kesserlring’s writing of this classic is reason enough. And if the play seems out-of-place and slightly irrelevant today, the faithful direction and the true-to-period acting make it a satisfying look back at an edgy black comedy from the 1930s.

The tightly constructed plot revolves around the nefarious murdering duo Abby and Martha Brewster (Marilyn Duryea and Vivian Meisner, respectively), sisters who lure lonely men to their home pretending to have a room for rent. Vivian serves the men an elderberry wine concoction made from her own recipe. “For a gallon of elderberry wine, I take one teaspoon full of arsenic, then add half a teaspoon full of strychnine, and then just a pinch of cyanide.”

On the day that he becomes engaged to the girl-next-door, Elaine (Jennifer Gill), the Brewsters’ nephew Mortimer (Rob Brown) discovers a freshly killed body hidden in the window seat at his aunts’ home. A brother that believes he is Teddy Roosevelt (Teddy played by Peter Schuyler) and a brother recently escaped from an institute for the criminally insane (Jonathan played by Justin Plowman) add further madcap mania to fill out the three acts of the play.

Jonathan and his accomplice Dr. Einstein (Ron Bopst) show up with a dead body of their own to be rid of, and the case of mistaken corpses keeps everyone entertainingly baffled. A dizzy swirl of police officers, a prospective lodger, and visiting doctors swell the cast size to an impressive thirteen. Notably, there is not a single false note in Chase’s casting. Even the small detail, repeated in the script, of Jonathan bearing a resemblance to Boris Karloff is happily met in Plowman’s scowling mug.

Duryea and Meisner anchor the show with wonderfully understated and nostalgic presences. Duryea and Meisner effectively invoke a sense of aging Victorian matrons with old, classic movie voices and expressive hauteur. It is a wonderful treat to see women over 50 on the stage, as that seems rarer than seven-legged frog sightings, unless, of course, said actresses are terrible. But Duryea and Meisner never disappoint and remain luminous highlights of the production.

Equally effective, Rob Brown seems lifted from a screwball 30s or 40s comedy as Mortimer Brewster. Mortimer, an unwilling drama critic who delivers scathing reviews to Broadway dramas, finds himself caught up in a private, domestic drama that leaves him dizzy and desperate. Brown plays Mortimer’s bewilderment and frantic aimlessness to brilliant comic effect. Plowman and Bopst are delectable in their roles as bumbling villains who invade the house, unwelcome, and insinuate themselves by force of will. Gill’s spunky take on the forgettable, miffed girlfriend Elaine and her charming 40s mannerisms are a welcome and lively surprise. And Yanni Walker makes magic as the drunken Officer O’Hara, a frustrated playwright/policeman who forces Mortimer to listen to the plot of an outrageously implausible and painfully long idea for a play.

Chase pads two of the play’s smaller roles, Officer Brophy (Michael DeRensis) and Officer Klein (Craig Peterson) with a sort of narration that starts the play off with a slapstick turn-off-the-cell phones speech and act closers and introductions that are surprisingly effective. DiRensis and Peterson sell these bits with panache and personal charm. They must be charming, because padding a two and half hour play is usually deadly and infuriating.

If you are anxious to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the penning of a seminal American dark comedy (and who isn’t?), Arsenic and Old Lace is a satisfying, nostalgic indulgence that shouldn’t be missed.

For tickets and showtimes, consult SmartTix at www.smarttix.com .

Impossible Beauty

It's painful not to measure up to society's ideals. The ever-present modern media gorges its viewers on a steady diet of impossible beauty and unreachable standards. What's worse is that the standards against which women judge themselves are almost exclusively images of white beauty – a false example which leaves out a huge segment of the population. Is it surprising, then, that it's next to impossible for young women to develop a healthy self-image? Black Girl Ugly, a performance piece by Ashley Brockington, Nicole Cain, and Lee Avant which the authors are currently performing at the WOW Cafe, explores their own experiences in a culture which puts white beauty on a pedestal and pushes everyone else aside. Through monologues, scenes and movement, they transform their own personal stories into a kind of Everywoman account of growing up black in America. The resulting production, although rough around the edges, provides a touching, amusing and ultimately thought-provoking evening.

The show is composed of a succession of thematically-related scenes and skits tied together by movement sequences and voice-overs. Among the strongest scenes are those which cut through the polite, neutral surface which we show to the public to reveal the pain which simmers underneath. Particularly successful sequences include a church sermon in which the minister extols her parishioners to examine their roots and straighten their hair in order to be more like Jesus, and a hilarious sequence which pits a conforming corporate drone against a Black Pride job applicant. More brutal is a skit called “Someone Knocked Me Down” in which a young woman (played by Brockington) recites her exceptional academic accomplishments only to have them repeatedly torn to pieces by her onlookers, until she is literally bound and gagged by their judgments.

Black Girl Ugly's text-based scenes are generally stronger than the movement sequences. Although some are evocative, like the one in which the three cast members rhythmically twitch in front of a flashing TV screen, reacting to the unreachable ideals of the white media, at other times the dances seem unspecific. Their shape and flow are not fully polished, which undermines the story the performers are trying to tell. For example, a potentially excellent scene which reveals the interior monologues of the above mentioned corporate sell-out and very black applicant as they size each other up is marred by imprecise movement: because their gestures are generalized and don't perfectly match the voice-overs, it isn't always clear who is thinking what.

Black Girl Ugly would have benefited from stronger direction than Kiebpoli Calnek provided. The show's flaws are of the kind which usually arise when performers direct themselves without the aid of an off-stage critical eye. The director should have clarified the physical storytelling and might have improved the flow and rhythm of the piece as a whole, which was heavy on movement for the first half and on monologues for the second. Opening the show with one of the excellent monologues -- such as the one in which Brockington compares growing up in America as a black woman to having a disease, commenting “there are so many signs of your inferiority, if no one is telling you differently, how do you grow up strong?” -- would have established the thrust of the show much more quickly and cleanly.

The design elements for Black Girl Ugly are simple and functional. The set design -- a black box dominated by a downstage stool covered with identical white baby-dolls – is a suitable frame for the show. The sound design by Brockington and Rob Paravonian – which is dominated by echoing voice-overs – is weaker, for although it establishes a dreamy, self-reflective tone, it also occasionally makes the text difficult to understand.

Performers Cain, Avant, and Brockington form a solid ensemble and are all appealing. Brockington, however, stands out for her magnetic presence and heart-felt acting. Her material is also the most rawly personal and thus the most compelling in the show.

Black Girl Ugly is the kind of theater which places demands on its audience. Viewers must be ready to absorb and respond to the experiences of others – experiences which many, if not all, of the audience shares. For those who wish to laugh at the familiar and ponder the tragicomic situation of black women in America, it's a good choice. Black Girl Ugly is an earnest piece, and its brief one hour running time feels like the prologue to a much longer conversation.

From Russia With Laughs

From Russia With Angst, the new production from the WorkShop Theater Company, takes on one of the theater’s all-time greats – Anton Chekhov. Rather than reviving one of Chekhov’s oft-done dramatic works, the company instead chose to adapt five of his short stories for the stage, reimagining them in the context of our twenty-first century world. The result is a joyous, thought-provoking, modern re-envisioning of these classic stories, one that speaks directly to the times in which we live. The performance is broken down into five vignettes, each using a different story as its source. “Death of a Government Worker,” adapted by Jonathan Pereira and directed by Katrin Hilbe, centers around a man who cannot seem to bring himself to ask his government employer for the raise which he, his wife, and his newborn, enormous son desperately need. Instead, he finds himself consistently sneezing, spitting on, or otherwise mistreating his important, albeit potentially shady, boss. The piece is dark and humorous, and honors the poetry of Chekhovian writing. The story arc, which slowly but surely unveils the possibility of corruption within this regime, rings true in a modern world. The scene is most effective when it is least realistic; its true beauty lies in its stylized moments.

The next scene, “We’ll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet,” written by Scott C. Sickles and directed by David Gautschy, takes us back to New Year’s Eve 2000. We meet a Central Park carriage driver attempting to pick up some fares and confronting the pain of the recent loss of his young son. This scene is perhaps the least powerful of the five – it lacks either the acerbic wit or the overwhelming social relevance that the other scenes have in bounty. Still, it is moving and sad, a solid reflection on the difficulties of human connections in a world motivated by rapid advancements.

“Joy,” by Robert Strozier and directed by Elena Araoz, focuses on a young girl who has found recent Internet “fame” on YouTube. She comes home gushing to her parents about a video of her singing topless on a table at a party which was filmed and recently released for broadcast on the popular website. This scene is the most overtly hilarious; Sutton Crawford, who portrays the young Ginger, is appropriately shameless and charming in her description of the video’s contents. Joseph Franchini and Carrie Edel Isaacman could remind any viewer of his/her father and mother, alternately supportive and embarrassed, depending on the moment.

Timothy Scott Harris’s “In Country,” which he also directed, is the most dramatic of the scenes. It starts out as a humorous interlude about a middle-aged woman being set up on a date by her father with a man he met in a bar. However, this seemingly innocent encounter ends up revealing much more than just an attraction between the two. The man, Steve, is grieving a son who died in Iraq, leading to questions of what exactly American ideals are in this day and age, what it is to be American, and what precisely it is that one fights for in this country.

The final scene, a condensed five-act play entitled “Misery, Apathy, and Despair,” is the true gem of the evening. John McKinney has done a brilliant job incorporating various references to Chekhov’s dramatic works into a parody that is both effective and hilarious. Richard Kent Green’s direction is reminiscent of so many Chekhov parlor dramas, grounding the piece as a Russian period piece and then subverting the genre. The piece is charming and witty, being both true to the storylines of Chekhov\'s plays and honest to the sorts of reactions audiences often have to these works.

From Russia With Angst provides a wonderful night’s entertainment. The only aspect of the production that did not quite work was the projections between scenes, displaying text from the original Chekhov story and then from the impending adaptation. Although it was interesting to compare the two, I am not sure what this device added to the overall presentation. However, this is a truly minor comment in light of this enjoyable and compelling work of theater. Chekhov is alive and well in this play, if a little reconfigured.