Invest In Your Theater Experience

If you thought Governors Island was only for bicycling, picnics and electronic music concerts — think again! Because theater visionaries David Evans Morris and Kristin Marting have transformed the island's historic Pershing Hall into a "living market" for their latest immersive theater creation entitled Trade Practices, which kicks off the 2014-15 season at HERE Arts Center. Like our nation's economy, Trade Practices is intricately structured and impossible to wrap your head around. The rooms of Pershing Hall have been transformed into departments of a fictional currency-printing corporation, Tender, Inc. Each audience member receives a roll of cash and, accordingly, the power to invest their time and "money" into whichever storyline they choose. Part of the fun and frustration of Trade Practices (and immersive theater in general) is knowing that every audience member's experience must be different, and that one can't possibly see or experience everything.

By dividing the threads of action into separate spaces, Marting and Morris have created for themselves an unprecedented freedom to play with style and form. Within each plot line, the collaborators dive enthusiastically into genres such as satire, participatory theater, dance, melodrama, musical theater, and so much more. More emphasis is placed on unity of theme or thought than stylistic or aesthetic unity (as in Punchdrunk's cinematic behemoth of immersive theatre, Sleep No More). Yet this schizophrenia of style works wonderfully for the piece, ensuring that audience members are never, ever bored and never, ever sure what is going to come next. 

A particularly charming stylistic tangent is the musical numbers performed in the "Owners" story line, as well as every incident of full-ensemble choreography that takes place on the trade floor, where the entire audience convenes between each plot episode. These dance numbers smack of the virtuosic yet amateurish choreography of Elevator Repair Service productions, as well as the quirkily empowered dance moments in the work of Young Jean Lee (no surprise since Trade Practices incorporates actors and collaborators from both). Fully committed to the song and dance, the brilliant ensemble cast is present at every moment — be it wacky, heartfelt or politically charged.  

The complexity and thought behind the text of Trade Practices (written by Eisa Davis, Robert Lyons, Erin Courtney, Qui Nguyen, KJ Sanchez, and Chris Wells) indicates some serious dramaturgy and research, and the program indicates a bevy of bankers and financial workers that lent their knowledge to the project. There are times, however, that the finance-speak becomes overwhelming for those of us without a banking background. Rather than weighing down the piece, however, these moments only serve to enhance the feeling of intricacy and insurmountability of the economy — a formidable beast of our own creation. For audience members who are finance-savvy, the moments of intense economic debate are likely to be stimulating. Regardless, Trade Practices manages to unmask the relationship between money, power and the human condition. The results are messy, but undoubtedly thought-provoking (and worth the ferry ride to Governors Island).

Trade Practices ran until Sept. 21 at HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas). For more information, please visit www.here.org. 

Prince George of Broadway

The Mint Theater, upstairs in a loft building on West 43rd St., pursues forgotten plays with the vigor of a dachshund digging for moles. Over the course of 18 years, this dogged Company has unearthed a surprising number of theatrical treasures buried by time, as well as a few mislaid scripts (but only a few) of primarily academic interest. Since the Mint's founding, the professionalism of its productions has risen steadily. The company is now among the foremost nonprofit theaters in New York City. Next month an audience of unprecedented magnitude will see this accomplished group's work when London Wall by John Van Druten, presented on-stage at the Mint last spring, is telecast as the inaugural episode of Theater Close-Up, a weekly series hosted by Sigourney Weaver on New York public broadcasters WNET and WLIW.

While waiting for its television debut, the Mint has unveiled a top-flight production of The Fatal Weakness, a 1946 comedy by George Kelly, directed by Jesse Marchese. Last year, the satiric Philip Goes Forth, another Kelly revival at the Mint, was noteworthy for acting and design; the play itself proved more historically intriguing than dramatically satisfying. In The Fatal Weakness, sprightly, intelligent dialogue and engaging turns of plot overcome the liability of Kelly's sluggish, old-fashioned exposition. Even in its less engaging moments, The Fatal Weakness is an ideal vehicle for the Mint's two masters of high-comedy style, Kristin Griffith and Cynthia Darlow. 

In the 1920s, Kelly graduated from vaudeville (for which he wrote popular sketches) to Broadway, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for Craig's Wife. Though frequently satiric and always concerned with the follies of the American middle and upper-middle classes, Kelly's plays are too varied to be summed up in a phrase. The Fatal Weakness is an urbane comedy of manners which was presented originally by The Theatre Guild in 1946 with the great comic actress Ina Claire in the leading role. It played 119 performances, a respectable Broadway run for a non-musical play in those days and sufficient to recoup the producers' investment. Kelly was 63 when the play closed; he survived another 27 years, but The Fatal Weakness was his last new work on Broadway. Except for a 1976 television adaptation, introduced by Kelly’s famous niece, Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, The Fatal Weakness has hardly been seen since it closed on Broadway in 1947. 

The heroine of The Fatal Weakness, Ollie Espenshade (Griffith), is the kind of mid-century matron who would have been susceptible to the happily-ever-after hype surrounding the nuptials of George Kelly's movie-star niece to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. (That much-chronicled event took place less than a decade after the play's premiere.) Ollie's "fatal weakness" is a combination of sentimental heart and romantic imagination. After 28 years of marriage, she has discovered that husband Paul is having an affair with an osteopath (an off-stage character). As one might expect, Ollie is incensed. When her busybody friend Mabel Wentz (Darlow) procures details of Paul's clandestine activities, Ollie's fancy shifts into high gear; and, as Ollie's rose-tinted imagination transforms Paul and the osteopath into Abelard and Heloise, The Fatal Weakness barrels forward on an unexpected narrative route.

Griffith makes Ollie's extravagant unworldliness endearing and, for the most part, credible. Marchese has surrounded her with actors who have a knack for Kelly's kind of urbane, out-of-kilter comedy. In addition to Darlow (a consummate, poker-faced comedian), the cast includes Cliff Bemis as the wayward husband, Victoria Mack as the unsympathetic daughter, Penny, and Sean Patrick Hopkins as the bewildered son-in-law, Vernon. Patricia Kilgarriff wrings maximal humor from the role of a parlor maid whose purpose in the script is largely, perhaps exclusively, expository. Garbed in handsome costumes by Andrea Varga (including, most notably, lavish frocks and lounging attire for Griffith), the cast cavorts around a richly detailed drawing room, designed by Vicki R. Davis (with period-appropriate bric-a-brac and props provided by Joshua Yocom). The single stage set, which received a round of applause when the curtains first parted at a recent performance, features high reflective panels that ought to be distracting but, in fact, contribute a dazzling visual effect to the scenic design throughout the evening.     

The Fatal Weakness belongs in the company of those distinctively American high comedies written between the World Wars by Kelly's contemporaries Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story) and S.N. Behrman (No Time for Comedy). Kelly's plays have fallen out of sight to a degree that Barry's and Behrman's have not. With several more Kelly plays ripe for revival, the Mint may redress that situation in seasons to come. In the meantime, New York audiences are learning that there's more to George Kelly's story than that famous niece. 

The Fatal Weakness was scheduled to play through Oct. 26 but has now been extended through November 2, 2014, at the Mint Theater Company (311 West 43^rd St.). Running time is 2 hours and 20 minutes. Performances are 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. There is a special matinee at 2 p.m. on Oct. 15 and no performance on Oct. 14. Tickets are $55 and $27.50 and may be purchased at www.minttheater.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

A Long Trek to Bardo

For This Lingering Life, playwright Chiori Miyagawa has drawn elements from nine Noh plays. Initially, she writes in a program note, she wanted to “pay homage to the culture.” But once she began, she revised and adapted them extensively. Elements of the 15^th-century theatrical form remain—in its content (several characters are warriors, crazy women, or supernatural beings, such as ghosts or angels) and style (there’s an emphasis on language over physical action, and Becky Bodurtha’s excellent costumes draw on ancient warriors and peasants as well as modern-day dress). 

In other ways, though, the play has little to do with the Noh experience. It consists of vignettes and features a multiracial cast and gender-blind casting. Those elements don’t detract from the whole, but they don’t add much either, except the recognition that a modern sensibility has had a hand in the production. The same goes for the time jumps between past and present, as well as elements of meta-theater, when characters break the fourth wall. “I must be the narrator,” says Meg MacCary’s Woman with Tragic Hair. “Hold on—I have no training as a narrator.” Later on Amir Darvish’s beggar son says to the remorseful father who threw him out, “Classically speaking, I should forgive you”—not only a meta-theater joke, but a meta-theatrical in-joke.

Ronald Cohen plays an elderly host (not the narrator), who helpfuly describes the stories at the outset. One is advised that characters from the five kinds of Noh plays will appear: a warrior, a demon, a woman, a ghost, and a deity, and sometimes more than one. In a program note, Miyagawa says she didn’t like any characters from the women plays, but she felt “duty-bound … to include at least one of them,” so she picked an angel from that group, and “discarded the plot entirely.”

Whether this picking and choosing willy-nilly really pays homage to Noh plays is beside the point. Miyagawa’s plundering of characters to fit into a new plot produces a play that hangs together awkwardly and never catches emotional fire in spite of a game company, Cake Productions. The multiple threads are held together by MacCary’s crazy woman with hair that grows straight up as she searches for her brother, who is blind. She encounters a number of the other characters on her quest to find Bardo, where spirits go after death and wait for reincarnation.

Among the 28 characters are a warrior from the 12th century (Stephanie Weeks, moving persuasively as the opposite gender) who threatens a man dressed in a modern suit (Enormvs Muñoz) with a sword. The man kills the warrior, finds the warrior’s flute and takes it; they seem to reenact the scene over centuries. Two young lovers (Marta Kuersten and Luke Forbes) stand on a floating bridge they use to meet, but the girl’s parents sabotage planks of the bridge, leading to the young man's drowning. Two young guys in tracksuits (Forbes and Vanessa Kai) show up, as does a gardener (Kai as a man) who is hoodwinked into believing the young daughter of the wealthy employer has the hots for him. Two modern-day backpackers (William Franke, who resembles a young Garrison Keillor, and Forbes) encounter a distraught mother in brightly colored clothing searching for her son.

Some moments work well, especially the tenderness in the  young lovers’ scene, and the occasional line startles: “Everyone alive is already haunted.” There are good comic moments, too, especially from MacCary, and a scene between Darvish and a small-town, park-bench gossip (Muñoz) is very amusing. Darvish also plays the mother of a slain man and in all his roles exhibits a vocally attractive performance, with a smooth, low resonance. But too much is choppy, elliptical, and confusing.

Director Cat Miller keeps the action moving, though at times the actors seem a bit stiff. Whether that is to reflect the stylization of the Noh originals is unclear, but the actors try their best to infuse flavors into what feels like a half-cooked goulash.

This Lingering Life plays at the HERE Arts Center through Oct. 4, with evening performances Wednesdays through Sundays at 7 p.m. and matinees on Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets, visit www.here.org and click on Sublet Series shows, or call 866-811-4111.

Odds Against Happiness

Some excellent performances give buoyance to Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy, a comic series of vignettes that are awkwardly interrelated but provide plenty of laughs as well as fodder for thought. The story follows a young black gay man from his troubled childhood through to adulthood, as if in snapshots. 

Phillip James Brannon plays Sutter, the son of a flashily dressed single mother (Jessica Frances Dukes) who has little patience for his childish questions about words such as “period” and “bootycandy.” (She explains the slang term as “the candy for the booty,” i.e., a penis). In Brannon’s strong, well-modulated performance, one can detect the seeds of shyness that continue into adolescence, when he has an obsession with Michael Jackson, including dressing like him. When Sutter tries to tell his family that a strange man has followed him home, his mother (now played by Benja Kay Thomas), as self-involved as ever, doesn’t believe him and even disturbingly suggests "you musta done something" to attract the man's attention. She and his stepfather ban him from school musicals and urge him to take up sports as a solution. “Kung fu,” recommends Lance Coadie Williams’s uninterested parent. 

Though his parents can't understand him, the unhappy Sutter reaches adulthood as a confidently gay man, aloof but with a quiet strength that belies his indifferent upbringing. Bootycandy, however, also includes scenes that seemingly have no relation to Sutter — a preacher (Williams) who announces to his congregation with wild flamboyance that he’s gay; a lesbian “divorce” ceremony that’s silly and a little stale; and a phone conversation among four black women (two each played by Dukes and Thomas) who are costumed with cleverness by Clint Ramos. 

O’Hara, who directed and is himself black and gay, has no qualms about satirizing the bizarre names some black parents give their children, nor about employing the drawling caricatures that once characterized shows like Amos 'n' Andy. If anything, the drawls are broader here. An older black woman on the telephone berates her daughter for naming her grandchild Genitalia: “How you gon go n name that chile genitalia fool?” The daughter in the sketch (Dukes, who excels at embodying dim-wittedness) sounds like a female Stepin Fetchit, but the effect cheerily gives the raspberry to political correctness. The scenes, although imparting a choppy feel to the play, serve to identify the social milieu surrounding Sutter. 

There is darkness, however. Eventually, in the second half, we learn more about the hero. Sutter’s close friend is Larry (Williams), and in a bar one night they pick up a straight white man eager for gay sex. There’s a horrific twist in which O’Hara shows us the profound damage created by Sutter's upbringing, and how reverse racism simmers. The only person Sutter can relate to, the only one who has ever encouraged him in his adoration of Michael Jackson, is his aged grandmother who raised him and now lives in a nursing home; but even she wants a bribe before she “recognizes” who he is. 

Unfortunately, Bootycandy sometimes indulges in meta-theatrical antics. In Act I, a white moderator (Jesse Pennington), assembles a panel of five black playwrights on the stage of Playwrights Horizons. O’Hara’s premise is that the five playlets we’ve witnessed are the works of the quartet, but the gag strains to make us believe that the playwrights don’t really know why they’re appearing in the panel discussion or what the topic is. 

In Act II, after a tense sequence, the actors rebel against the playwright/actor Sutter, and the fourth wall is again knocked down. There are hints of autobiography in Bootycandy (the moderator asks a black playwright how she got the surname O'Malley, and she answers, "Slavery"), but O'Hara hasn't transformed all of them coherently into a whole; there's a ramshackle feel to the work. Still, there’s no question that he's a playwright worth watching. 

Bootycandy runs through Oct. 12 at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves.). Evening performances of Bootycandy are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets start at $75 and are available by calling 212-279-4200 or visiting www.playwrightshorizons.org.

Young, Randy and Irish

The Irish are famous for their gift of gab, and Dylan Coburn Gray’s Boys and Girls, the play that opens the 1^st Irish Festival at 59E59 Theatres, fits into that tradition. The “play” is more accurately a series of monologues by four actors, all of them about youthful urges for sex. A young male called A uses the Internet for porn; C, a young woman, philosophizes about the most vulgar term for a vagina; B is a virgin and laments his decent upbringing with a hapless comic spin; and D has received a declaration of love from an ex-boyfriend she still hangs out with.

But the subject matter of teenage Irish sexual mores is parochial at best. Though at times Boys and Girls echoes writers like Synge, in its portrait of the Irish lower class, and Shaw, in its hints of social commentary, it is mostly like Joyce, with its obscure, topical Dublin references and heightened language — a mixture of Joycean stream-of-consciousness, modern rap, and Irish youth slang. The speech is likely not only to confuse but to alienate listeners. It starts almost immediately and doesn’t let up, as in A’s passage about trawling for pornography on the Internet:

“A pop-up offers a top-up on my penis, quick! Hop up on the table and shazoom! Ladies won’t be able to resist your mister’s va-va-voom. They’ll jump for that Topman-chinos-lump as they spy with their admiring little eye: a gee-busting hump-snake like a lesser man’s thigh.”

To listen to the like for an hour is to have one’s patience sorely tried. One ameliorating aspect is that the actors — Ronan Carey as A, Maeve O’Mahony as B, Seán Doyle as C, and Claire O’Reilly as D — have been directed by the author to deliver the lines conversationally, and, for the most part, the percussive forced rhymes of rap are less dogged here, but they’re still eminently noticeable, and it’s often a struggle to comprehend the meaning. (To be fair, hearing the words is easier than making sense of them on the page, and the Irish accents aren’t nearly so formidable as one might expect.) The casual delivery is welcome, but rhyme, sound, and alliteration still intrude so much that they become obstacles to understanding. Anyone who has listened to a Richard Wilbur translation of Moliere’s comedies in rhymed couplets will find that Gray’s play suffers by comparison. The following passage is an example of the strain:

"And regardless. Between pills and my arduous bout of self-lovin, the hard-on’s not turned on and there’s no fire lit in the oven. Worth holding out to acquit oneself well. Some other time, fingers crossed. Or so I tell myself. Over and over as with his arm round my shoulder I clontarfwards trudge. Such is a night out.”

This kind of aural pinwheel is interesting in small doses, but it also diverts attention from substance. Gray rhymes “uncouth” with “ruth” at one point, a show-offishness that grows irritating. Does anyone ever use “ruth” in conversation? Does anyone use "surcease"? There's an uncomfortable strain toward intellectualism that also undermines the narration.

The program comes with a glossary that covers such Dublin venues as the Button Factory (“Buttoner”) and HUSSLE (a hip-hop nightclub), as well as Jedward, who are “insane, blond, Irish twins who are kind of famous because of X-factor. They have really big hair.” Although the glossary will inform you that “gee” (with a hard “g”) in the first example above is a term for “vagina,” you won’t find “clontarfwards” in it. In any case, it’s unlikely that a viewer could remember any of them as they whiz by in the monologues. The effect parallels Shaw’s comment that “America and Britain are two countries separated by a common language,” if you substitute “Ireland” for “Britain.”

Although O’Reilly’s D seemed a little off vocally, the performances all suffice, with Doyle’s vulnerable but self-aware C a particular pleasure. The set is simply four chairs on which the actors sit, and occasionally rise and change places. Yellow light bulbs, 23 in all (by designer Ilo Tarrant), hang on wires above and behind them. But with so much conveyed by language, one longs for the vocal music of an Ian McKellen or a Michael MacLiammoir. That’s impossible, given that the actors are so young, and their training has only recently begun. 

Boys and Girls plays through Sept. 28, with evening performances at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, and on Sunday, and at 8:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Matinees are Saturday at 2:15 p.m. and Sunday at 3:35 p.m. Tickets are $25, with a $15 special price on Sunday nights.

Fuzzy Gore on W 42

A press release for the Puppet Shakespeare Players’ Puppet Titus Andronicus announces, first and foremost, that one of the show's producers is Dee Snider of Twisted Sister fame. As though that's not eye-catching enough, the press release hails this production as a “fresh, comedic take on Shakespeare’s ‘worst’ play.” Whether Titus Andronicus may fairly be dismissed as the “worst” play in the Bard’s canon is matter for debate; but this early tragedy is undoubtedly Shakespeare's most gruesome. So filled with horrors is the plot that Charles and Mary Lamb omitted it from their classic collection of Shakespearean tales for young readers.

Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus, perhaps in collaboration with George Peele, near the beginning of his career and possibly as early as 1591. The lurid plot, chockablock with adultery, murder, rape, dismemberment, and cannibalism, follows the tradition of Renaissance revenge tragedy. Many years after Titus, Shakespeare would transform the materials of English revenge drama into Hamlet, the most masterful revenge play of all time. Titus, with dramatic construction as gangly and ill-coordinated as an 11-year-old kid, shows little indication that this fledgling playwright is the genius of Hamlet. It's not hard to understand why the youthful, energetic Puppet Shakespeare Players approach Titus Andronicus with a lack of reverence.  

In creating Titus, Shakespeare relied on several sources, most notably Ovid’s story of Philomela and her sister Procne, wife of King Tereus of Thrace. Tereus rapes Philomela and excises her tongue to prevent her disclosing what has happened. Philomela outsmarts Tereus by chronicling her misfortune in a tapestry and sending it to Procne. The sisters get revenge by killing Tereus’s son and serving his flesh, disguised in a culinary treat, to the unwitting father. Ovid’s tale ends in metamorphosis: when Tereus tries to kill the sisters, all three are transformed into birds. Shakespeare's tragedy utilizes the elements of Ovid's tale minus the mystical conclusion.

Events in Titus Andronicus are so unrelentingly gruesome that imaginative stagings have often repelled play-goers. When Lucy Bailey’s production opened at Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank of the Thames earlier this year, the London Times reported that “the stage blood and mutilation” were “so realistic” that “spectators were dropping like flies.” Under Ryan Rinkel's direction, Puppet Shakespeare's Titus substitutes whimsy for horror. Adam Weppler employs appropriate swagger as Titus, the brilliant military strategist devoid of talent for life on the home front; and Sarah Villegas lends similar extravagance to the role of Tamora, wily Queen of the Goths, who wreaks havoc when brought to Rome as part of Titus's spoils of war. But the humans of this Titus Andronicus are upstaged by their fuzzy puppet colleagues. The real stars of the piece are the villain, Aaron the Boar (Aaron the Moor in Shakespeare's original), agilely manipulated by puppeteer A.J. Coté, and ingénue Lavinia, animated with remarkable vigor by puppeteer Mindy Leanse.  

This production of Titus dispenses with Shakespeare's first act, summarizing the action in a hip-hop inflected song. Much of what remains in the abbreviated text of this Titus is lost in haphazard declamation or chaotic staging. The Puppet Shakespeare adaptation consists largely of loathsome acts perpetrated on charming, Henson-esque puppets. The incongruous combination of gore and charming, plush creatures is arguably a commentary — rudimentary commentary, but commentary nonetheless — on the overheated materials of Renaissance revenge tragedy. 

At some moments during the show's two hours, it's tempting to speculate that Shakespeare, who was always mindful of the groundlings, might applaud the ribaldry of Puppet Shakespeare's take on Titus Andronicus. But it's pointless to rely on Puppet Shakespeare for anything in the way of insight about the Bard or the nature of tragedy. The slapstick of their Titus is relentless; the actors have at their disposal an abundance of silly string, which is supposed to be puppet puke. That's enough to keep most of the audience in stitches all evening.

Puppet Titus Andronicus, inspired  by William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, presented by The Puppet Shakespeare Players and STT Productions/Dee Snider at the Beckett Theatre (410 West 42^nd  Street) ran until August 16.

Kicking Feminism

Early in Micheline Auger’s Donkey Punch, frank banter and satirical jabs suggest the playwright has written a sex comedy. But Auger is out for more than just laughs. Gradually, in Audrey Alford’s production for the Ivy Theatre Company, the dramatist’s comedy-drama becomes a troubling look at the state of feminism. 

Two women are the focus of the plot: the plump, wryly comic Sam (Lauren Dortch-Crozier), easygoing and unhappy with life, and her high-octane friend Kareena (Cleo Gray), who takes on the role of Sam’s mentor. 

Kareena has recently put Sam in contact with Kyle, a man Kareena once communicated with online, but only briefly, before she met her boyfriend Teddy. Now also talking to Kyle online, Sam has discovered that he makes soft-core “horror porn” films; his latest is called Donkey Punch. Sam is reluctant to meet him because she assumes his work degrades women, but Kareena insists Sam is a prude and needs to widen her erotic horizons; she encourages a first date. (It’s at this point, ironically, that  a role reversal briefly occurs. An unenlightened Kareena learns from Sam the meaning of Kyle's title. It refers to a sexual practice — bizarre and obscure, judging by the surprised reaction of the audience — that heightens a man’s climax during intercourse.) 

Auger has a good deal of fun with the contrast in sexual awareness between the high-earning Kareena and the struggling, diffident Sam, who has hitherto worked as an actress in commercials. “You’re a strong and independent woman,” Kareena exhorts Sam. “You should have a dildo.” Trying to meet her on less intimate ground, Sam responds (with a delivery that evokes a laid-back Jo Anne Worley): “Better health insurance would be nice.”  

Once Sam and Kyle (Jon McCormick) meet, a Pygmalion transformation occurs: Sam bleaches her hair, enlarges her breasts, and ends up the focus of a documentary that entails Kyle’s filming her wherever they go. The repressed Sam embraces life, but it upsets the worldview of the nominally liberated — actually controlling — Kareena. 

Unfortunately, Kareena’s a hard character to like. She is taken aback when Sam begins to talk about her sexual exploits and realizes that Sam’s experience now outstrips hers. A career woman with a vengeance, Kareena declares, “There’s a lot of fish in the proverbial ocean and I’m hot and make a ton of money.” Her feminism is a tangle of contradictions: she advocates pole dancing as “good for your core…it’s totally liberating” but defaults to feminist mantras as well, such as “Bitches before bros.”  

Perhaps the most objectionable thing about Kareena is her emasculating treatment of Micheal Drew’s sensitive Teddy. In Drew’s gentle performance, the strapping boyfriend cooks and attends to her tenderly, but never seems wimpy. Yet when Teddy tries to enter a conversation, Kareena rebuffs him with “We’re having girl talk.” When the accommodating Teddy declares, “I can be one of the girls,” she says, “No, you can’t.” (How many boyfriends would even make that offer?)

Although there’s little about Kareena that’s endearing or redeeming, it’s to Gray’s credit that one is able to feel the character’s confusion and pain even while withholding sympathy — and that includes after she is unexpectedly raped. (Crucially, she doesn’t protest; nonetheless, the sex scene is clumsily staged in a way that tries to be brutal and coy at the same time). 

Meanwhile, Kyle doesn’t conform to any of Sam’s preconceptions. She expects him to call women “bitches” and “hos,” but McCormick, in a nicely understated performance, turns out to be quiet, thoughtful and confident. 

Auger has created four fascinating characters, and situations that make one think, but she doesn’t really offer a diagnosis. Has feminism just created a huge muddle? Have the signals become so mixed, and the dialogue between the sexes so charged, that the old verities of feminism are no longer grounded in reality? Are men now just as much the victims? Auger’s coup is to provide an entry point of discussion.

Donkey Punch runs through Aug. 31 at the SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday and 6 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $45 and may be obtained by calling 212-691-1555 or visiting www.sohoplayhouse.com.

Agent of Change

Have you ever met a pimp? Or talked to a 19-year-old prostitute? Or tried to avoid your menopausal boss who keeps screaming for the stapler you know you didn’t take? For most people, the answer would be no. But for Helena D. Lewis, she has met these people and many more unique individuals.Call Me Crazy: Diary of a Mad Social Worker is a brilliantly written play, filled with poetry that makes you wonder, “did this really happen?” In her autobiographical one-woman play, Lewis recounts her interactions with 25 people in order to understand how she slowly lost her mind and why she became just as crazy as everyone else. 

With clear transitions between the scenes and distinguishable characters, Lewis did a beautiful job at constructing a play that is easy to follow and understand. While some character portrayals make the audience erupt in laughter, others make you question whether you should be laughing at these very off putting (and sometimes borderline offensive) impersonations. However, it is through the harsh realities that she forces us to face that we finally see that change cannot be made without someone as dedicated as Lewis.

This plays relies heavily on the audience’s ability to use their imagination.  When walking into the space, one must be prepared to see a mostly empty stage. The venue, Nuyorican Poets Café, provides Call Me Crazy a very intimate environment allowing the audience and Lewis to feed off each others' energy. Lewis uses the two long black flats on stage left and right to indicate a different location or character change. The only other set piece is a folding chair located in the center of the stage. In addition, Lewis only used roughly seven props that are easily stored in a pocket or hidden onstage. The very minimalistic set and props help keep the focus on Lewis and her powerful dialogue.

The less smooth transitions occur during the costume changes and lighting transitions. Although she does not change her costume for each character, the few costume changes that occur are a bit awkward. However, this is to be expected when one woman is playing all the characters and has only a matter of seconds to put on/take off a jacket or shirt.   

The lighting is predictable and did not have much of a design concept. It seemed as if the lights were used to add light to the stage rather than add depth to the design. Overall, the lighting was a very simple design — the lights changed color to imply a change in the mood or changed direction to prompt the audience where to look on the stage. 

However, the minimalistic design concepts are often overshadowed by Lewis’s performance. If you are looking for a funny and motivational show, Call Me Crazy is the show for you. Within five minutes, you will be hooked on Lewis’s story of how she strove to change the world for the people who are often ignored in our society. And by the end, you will finally figure out why this woman has sacrificed her sanity in order to be a true agent of change.

Call Me Crazy: Diary of a Mad Social Worker runs until July 27 at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (236 East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C in the East Village). Daily performances are held at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15. For tickets and further information, visit www.nuyorican.org.

Boxing Meets Broadway

Boxing. Broadway. Sound like uncommon bedfellows? Think again, because the current production of Rocky on Broadway — recently imported from its debut in Germany — successfully marries sports and big-budget theater.  Storytelling is not the goal of this musical, since most of the audience members are familiar with the underdog plot line of Sylvester Stallone's 1976 sports drama flick. Instead, Rocky is all about spectacle; in fact, the best thing about this musical is that it is unapologetically popular: loud, obvious and for the masses. Like any proper sporting event, Rocky is above all meant to be fun —  and in spite of its tired and uncomplicated storyline — it is quite possibly the most fun production on Broadway right now.

Rocky's strengths lie in its visual attractions. Supplying plenty of eye candy, Andy Karl (as Rocky Balboa) and Terence Archie (as Apollo Creed) lead a ripped ensemble of boxers, who spend most of their stage time half-clothed. On the design side, Dan Scully and Pablo N. Molina's cinematic montages of Rocky training flicker onto towering concrete facades of South Philly — a beautiful link to the musical's filmic heritage. The awe-inspiring sets designed by Christopher Barreca transition fluidly between Rocky's gritty apartment, a meat locker and a floating boxing ring. Visually citing famous scenes from the movie, part of the fun of Rocky is recognizing these iconic cinematic moments on stage. Even David Zinn's costume design is citational, skillfully duplicating Rocky's famous leather jacket and fedora hat.

With all this visual splendor, Rocky succeeds in delivering high-volume, in-your-face action in droves (especially in the second act). As mentioned before, however, this musical relies heavily on audience knowledge of the film's plot to "fill in the blanks" of its rather stupefying script. Adrian's abrupt disappointment in Rocky's decision to fight Apollo Creed, for example, is less contrived in the film. No bones about it, though: this musical is wholly unconcerned with plot development. Rather, its primary concern is to reproduce and spectacularize the relics of Stallone's filmic legacy. In a more serious genre, this would be a problem; but again, Rocky only presents itself at face value. It's a sports film musical — what more do you want?

Musically, however, Rocky falls somewhat flat. While dynamic songwriting team Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens' music and lyrics are enjoyable, they are not catchy upon first listen. Do not expect Rocky to deliver an exceptionally innovative musical score that will have you humming all the way home to Brooklyn. Similarly, do not expect performers with unmatchable vocal gravitas. This is not to say that the vocal performances are sub par: the chorus is certainly powerful as one, and Karl and Margo Seibert (as Adrian) match each others' tones quite well. Simply put, Rocky's production value depends far more on adrenaline-inducing spectacle than musical ingenuity.

The moral of Rocky's story is to come for the spectacle and stay for the boxing match. If you're looking for mindless summer fun and are sick of bumming around the movie theater, give Rocky a go.

Tickets for Rocky can be purchased at the Winter Garden Theatre (1634 Broadway between 50 and 51st Sts.) by visiting Telecharge.com or by calling 212-239-6200. Performances run Monday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. A limited number of day-of-show rush tickets will be available at the box office on a first-come, first-served basis. Rush tickets are $35 (Tuesday through Friday) and $45 (Saturday and Sunday). Rush tickets will be become available at 10 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon on Sunday for performances on the same day. Rush tickets are subject to availability and limited to two per person.

More Ado in Harlem

The Public Theater presentation of Much Ado About Nothing, with a starry cast performing in the bucolic setting of Central Park's Delacorte Theater, is likely to be among New York City's most sought after tickets. Up at the 133rd Street Arts Center, What Dreams May Co. Theatre and Queens Players are currently offering another Much Ado, hardly publicized but well worth a visit. In a perfectly ordered New York City, the masses of would-be theatergoers who fail to score seats for Much Ado in the Park (and those unwilling to sacrifice a day to waiting in line for free tickets) would find their way to Harlem to see the handiwork of 14 unknown actors, directed by Nicole Schalmo, in a tiny, second-floor auditorium with a minimum of scenery and equipment. 

Much Ado About Nothing is a rowdy mixture of the silly and the serious. The central plot comes from classical Greek literature via 16th-century Italian sources — Ludovico Ariosto and Matteo Bandello — and Edmund Spenser's English epic The Faerie Queene. The story concerns Claudio (Gregg Ellson), just home from war, who spurns his bride, Hero (Christina Sheehan), at the altar. Hero is virtuous, but circumstantial evidence, contrived by the toxic Don John (Jonathan Emerson), suggests otherwise; and Claudio has been taken in by Don John's scheme. Hearing Claudio's harsh accusations, Hero faints away; her father, Leonato (Rafael Svarin), claiming she's dead, concocts a plan to clear her name and punish Claudio's arrogance. Things are dire until a band of bumbling rustics — constable Dogberry (Kenny Fedorko), his sidekick Verges (Nathan Beagle), and two officers of the municipal watch (Kate Fallon and Meghan Blakeman) — unwittingly thwart Don John's conspiracy.

There isn't much that's plausible about the misunderstanding between Claudio and Hero or what follows it; and, based on that implausibility, W.H. Auden has declared that Much Ado is "not one of Shakespeare's best plays." Yet throughout the past four centuries, this relatively dark comedy has been a crowd-pleaser. Its popularity is due, in large measure, to the subplot in which Hero's cousin Beatrice (Aimee Marcelle) and Benedick (Gonzalo Trigueros), a military comrade of Claudio, are tricked into falling in love with each other. The opinionated, sharp-tongued Benedick and Beatrice are among Shakespeare's most vivid creations; and Auden aptly describes them as “the characters of Shakespeare we’d most like to sit next to at dinner.”

The youthful cast handles both verse and prose with confidence and brio. Fedorko, adept at low Shakespearean comedy, makes Dogberry a highlight of the proceedings. Emerson, a forceful, nuanced Macduff in the What Dreams May Co. Macbeth last December, does what he can to lend verisimilitude to a one-dimensional role; his Don John is an exuberantly villainous cartoon, enormous fun to watch but inexplicably malevolent.

As in most productions of Much Ado, the evening belongs to Beatrice and Benedick. Shakespeare uses the reluctant lovers as tools to skewer the conventions of courtly love; Marcelle and Trigueros (presumably guided by Schalmo) ensure that Beatrice and Benedick are always emotionally complex and convincing. Marcelle is a striking comedic presence, compellingly vivacious without upstaging her compatriots. She's well-matched in raillery and romantic chemistry by Trigueros's Benedick. The pair navigate a credible, touching transformation from prickliness to devotion. 

In addition to being the production's director, Schalmo is responsible for costumes and, with Emerson, for the lighting design. She has transferred the action of the play from Renaissance Messina to a small town in the American Midwest. This conceit, applied with a light touch, works very well for a story of deception, backbiting and intrigue; and it frees the actors of anxiety about speaking Shakespeare's lines in their natural accents. 

Schalmo and her self-assured cast keep the action moving at a swift, consistent pace and make the most of the modest dimensions of the 133rd Street Arts Center stage. With no design fripperies to distract the audience, the production is focused throughout on the humor and beauty of the Bard's text. The simplicity of this Much Ado turns out to be a formidable asset.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, presented by What Dreams May Co. Theatre, in association with Queens Players at the 133^rd Street Arts Center (308 West 133rd St. between St. Nicholas Ave. and Frederick Douglass Blvd. in Harlem), runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. through June 21. Tickets: $18. For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/495842 or call 1-800-838-3006. 

Sexy Star Vehicle

A “village bike,” one learns in the script of Penelope Skinner’s new play, set in an English country town, is slang for a woman who has slept around — she has been ridden by everyone. At the Lucille Lortel Theatre, that description eventually applies to Becky, a young wife who is newly pregnant but not showing. Vividly embodied by film star Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha), Becky exhibits a growing erotic desperation as her husband, John (a superbly blockheaded and smug Jason Butler Harner), seems to have lost interest in having sex. But though MCC Theater's production of The Village Bike initially has the makings of a sex comedy, Skinner has much more on her mind.

Becky gradually tries to spark John's libido by watching porn movies, but nothing seems to help. At the same time, she has bought an old bicycle in the town so she can get herself out of the cottage and get some exercise, in spite of John’s overly solicitous worries. He’s the kind of guy who is more in tune with the rights of free-range chickens than his wife’s needs.

Skinner’s early scenes are laden with comic double entendre. When Mike, a plumber who has come to fix John and Becky’s leaking pipes, needs to be paid, Becky can’t find her checkbook. “What can we do?” she asks, clad in a shift and a skimpy robe. “Is there something we can do?” It’s a scene out of a porn film, delivered by the sexy Gerwig with enough ambiguous lubricity to make Max Baker’s wide-eyed handyman wonder what kind of solution she has in mind.

When Oliver Hardcastle, the seller, delivers the bike to Becky, he and Mike discuss it in language that confuses the sexually volatile Becky: “She’s a pretty one, though.” “Gorgeous.” “Hardly been ridden.” But the bike chain is not quite right, and so Scott Shepherd’s strapping Oliver promises to repair it. At the moment, however, he’s dressed as the historical character Dick Turpin in a redcoat outfit, since he’s a re-enactor in village pageants nearby. (His name and costume also suggest a nod to She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith, a comedy with a character named Hardcastle that is about people assuming disguises for “romantic” reasons.) The older Oliver is also married, but his wife, Alice, has a high-powered job that takes her away from the village for long periods. Inevitably, fixing the bike becomes fixing Becky's sexual needs.

Ultimately, Becky finds herself more satisfied by the sex-without-love she has with Oliver than by the love-without-sex at home, and she takes risks to keep the fulfillment going. She and Oliver explore fantasies, such as rape-by-intruder and making videos. Skinner’s play is not so much about sexual needs as about the ways that men and women use each other. Under Sam Gold's direction, the point is made that Becky finds herself imprisoned by her marriage. And Becky’s friend, Jenny (Cara Seymour), a chatty but well-meaning neighbor, confides her frustrations at the absence of her husband, Jules, who has a job that takes him abroad. Intellectually stultified, she still advocates parenthood for Becky even as she confesses it destroyed her self-esteem and her desire for sex. But she masks her disinterest from Jules, just as Oliver seems to hide his affairs from his wife, Alice. Or does he?

With nobody to confide in, Becky becomes more and more dependent on her trysts with Oliver, and more desperate to solidify her relationship with him, even as she loses all sense of herself. Gerwig charts a course from befuddlement and dissatisfaction to tearful desperation and near-insanity. Stooping, she still fails to conquer. It’s a harrowing journey.

Shepherd brings a devil-may-care attitude to Oliver, yet Skinner implies he might be far more dangerous than Becky realizes. Harner fills a thankless part, that of a man so obsessed with social issues that he is clueless about his personal life. Talking of the apparently repaired pipes, he says, “They haven’t made a noise. Doesn’t mean it’s fixed. If something makes a noise, then stops making a noise, that’s when you should be really worried.” He has no idea it applies to his own marriage. It’s merely one of many moments to ponder at length in Skinner’s deftly plotted drama.

Penelope Skinner's The Village Bike is running until July 13 at the MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St. between Bleecker and Hudson Sts). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 p.m. on Sundays. There are no performances on July 4 and 7. For tickets, call MCC Theater at 212-727-7722 or OvationTix at 866-811-4111.

Looking Forward to Looking Back

Nostalgia is a powerful thing — it connects us all to a collective memory, reminding us constantly of better days when we were, perhaps, our better selves.  In the midst of the 2010s, when everything from our fashion to our music to even our social media outlets (hello, instagram) derives inspiration from a previous era in one way or another, it is interesting to note the ways in which we are exploring our past. The Mad Ones — which has made its mission to "investigate cultural memory and nostalgia" — are doing just that in their latest outing, The Essential Straight and Narrow, currently playing at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher Street, Ste. 1E).

The play starts when we meet a woman named Jo (Stephanie Wright Thompson) on the set of what looks like a motel room. It is presumably the 1970s, and the movie script she is privately rehearsing is also presumably a cheesy 1970s cop drama. There is a record player in the corner and a bedspread in off-colors: shades of mustard yellow and burnt sienna, just in case you had any doubt when this play took place. The opening scenes start out with Jo practicing a phone conversation and immediately pull you in with humor as Thompson pulls practically every slapstick move known to man while managing to ground it in reality. A hard thing to pull off, and something Thompson does throughout the play with ease and grace. It is this very skill that endears the audience to her, which is important as we start delving in and out of her character's memory. Moments later, the scene with Jo at the telephone "dissolves" — theatrically, of course — into a memory, in a motel room not unlike the one she is playacting in just moments before.  

Here, other characters emerge: there's the charming Miss Debbie (Marc Bovino), a transgender woman Jo befriends; Paul (Michael Dalto), the quiet guitarist to Jo's former music ensemble; and Gram (Joe Curnutte), the gruff and standoffish vocalist. With each recurring flashback, we see snapshots of the group's time together in the motel room: a friendly bout of "The $10,000 Pyramid," a Dia de los Muertos-themed arts and crafts session, a country-folk-rock rehearsal, a crazy Halloween party soundtracked by James Brown and local urban legends are just some of the antics they get up to over the course of the night. With Laura Jellinek's set design, as well as Mike Inwood's lighting, we completely become immersed in these scenes, however brief they may be. (Also noteworthy are Asta Hostetter's costumes, which also delight in the weird and wonderful fashions of the '70s. I mean, flared jeans with cowboy boots, anyone?) 

Adding to the immersion are the actors themselves, displaying a natural rapport and believable ease in their exchanges, creating a voyeuristic feel to each scene. In their respective roles as Paul and Gram, both Dalto and Curnette provide more-than-sufficient support to Thompson, complementing her often self-conscious Jo with their characters' quiet self-awareness. As the vivacious Miss Debbie, Bovino steals more than a few scenes, not only leaving the party-goers in his thrall, but the audience, as well. Rounding out the cast is an equally scene-stealing ensemble; in particular, Blake DeLong as Barrett, a headdress-donning party crasher who not only steals scenes, but also booze, and — of course — "the new James Brown!" 

Despite its title, the play isn't a "straight-shooter" — when it comes to dispensing information, instead opting to leave it up to the audience to come to their own conclusions.  What this critic has come to conclude is that The Essential Straight and Arrow is less an examination and more an ode to our past selves and what we once hoped and dreamt. Just as Jo's past struggle as a musician is reflected in her "current" struggle as an actress, perhaps what we can glean from the play is the idea that we must look back to our past in order to journey on into the future. The road ahead might not be a straight shot into success, but perhaps it's the getting there that's worth looking forward to.

The Essential Straight and Arrow ran at The New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher Street, Ste. 1E, between Greenwich and Washington Streets) in New York City until June 14. For more information, visit www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

Central Park or the Forest of Arden

Often, when New Yorkers think of theatre in Central Park, they think of the Public's Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre. Flying under the radar of the Delacorte, however, are other theatrical happenings taking place in the nooks and crannies of Central Park.  One of these lesser-known jewels is the New York Classical Theatre, who have been performing their signature "panoramic theatre" in public outdoor spaces such as Central Park, Prospect Park and Battery Park since 2000.  Under the artistic direction of Founder Stephen Burdman, the New York Classical Theatre has most recently applied their panoramic style (a roving, interactive experience that adapts each script to its location) to Shakespeare's As You Like It.  While staging moveable theatre in a park has its obvious difficulties -- such as lighting, sound, and seat comfort -- the overall experience of As You Like It is a delightful summer treat for all ages.

The performances in this play deserve special applause.  While some of the movement is a bit grandiose, this is probably an attempt to fill the unique and sprawling space of Central Park-as-stage.  The cast works together to keep energy high and the pace clipping.  Rin Allen breathes new life into the cross-dressing Rosalind, delivering her lines with vocal color and physical playfulness.  Clay Storseth delivers Jaques' beloved "All The World's a Stage" monologue with insightful nuance.  Also notable is Antoinette Robinson's sassy Phoebe.  Overall, the ensemble has an excellent command of Shakespearean language, making the plotline accessible to even the most inexperienced Shakespeare audiences.

New York Classical Theatre employs crafty design techniques to overcome the obstacles of staging As You Like It outdoors.  Once the sun goes down, company interns whip out an arsenal of flashlights to light the action.  While only partially effective in illuminating the faces of the actors, this makeshift lighting technique creates a magical, "summer camp" type of atmosphere that trumps any expensive lighting system in town.  Similarly, without amplification, the actors must use extra projection to compete with the rich soundscape of the park:  birds, crowds of tourists, people on cell phones, passing ambulances, etc.  These moments of aural interference, however, only enhance the excitement created by the re-articulation of a public space like Central Park.  As you move from scene to scene, be sure to sit close to the action so you can catch most of the lines spoken by the talented performers.  Also, since you will be sitting on the ground, bringing a picnic blanket might not be a bad idea. 

Unlike the Shakespeare in the Park series at the Delacorte, audiences need not wait in long lines to get tickets.  New York Classical Theatre productions are completely free and you can show up at any time to join.  For anyone who enjoys both serious theatre and summer fun, As You Like It is an enchanting summer treat.

Performances of As You Like It runs at Central Park (West 103rd Street and Central Park West) on Thursdays through Sundays until June 22. Performances in Prospect Park (Long Meadow near the Picnic House - 5th Street and Prospect Park West) run every night, June 24–29. Performances in Battery Park (meet in front of Castle Clinton) run Tuesday through Sunday, July 1– 27. All performances are free, begin promptly at 7 p.m., and last two hours. For more information, call 212-252-4531 or visit www.newyorkclassical.org.

Missed Connections to Happiness

In a program note to one of the current productions of his plays at 59E59 Theaters, British playwright Alan Ayckbourn acknowledges a debt to J.B. Priestley. Priestley’s inventive splintering of time in plays like Dangerous Corner, Ayckbourn writes, has inspired him. Thus the simple time frame of Ayckbourn's early masterpiece Absurd Person Singular (1975), which charted the changing fortunes of its six characters over three Christmases, led eventually to Communicating Doors (1994), where stepping through a door in a hotel suite takes a character back 20 years. In 1999 came the tour de force House and Garden, which have to be played in adjacent theaters simultaneously, so that characters from House exit into Garden, and vice versa, and actors work in two plays in one evening.

Ayckbourn also plays with time in his newest work, Arrivals & Departures, a comedy that may rival Woman in Mind (1985) and Wildest Dreams (1991) as one of his darkest.

At a railway station, Quentin (Bill Champion), the director of a police task force, is planning to intercept a seemingly slippery and dangerous criminal, “codename Cerastes.” Quentin is directing a squad of agents in their disguises, and things are going egregiously wrong. One “father” holds his “baby” by the feet; a female “tourist” mangles a would-be Norwegian accent. As Quentin notes, “The closest she’s ever been to Norway is Botswana.” In short order, though, Quentin has other worries. A young female police officer, Ez (Elizabeth Boag), who is about to be discharged from the force, is assigned to his unit to protect the only known eyewitness who can identify Cerastes, a bluff old Yorkshireman named Barry (Kim Wall), who arrives by helicopter.

The story then journeys in flashbacks to Ez's childhood and adolescence, as scenes alternate between her recollections and the inane attempts of Barry to talk to her. Her father dies in military combat, and she develops a deep-seated hostility toward men, feeling abandonment. Eventually she joins the police force. Even though she shrinks at anyone's touch, she has a romance with a man named Rob, but at her insistence there is no sex. At 23, she is constantly morose and, unfortunately, one finds it difficult to sympathize with her. Boag is suitably dour, and suggests that Ez has unresolved daddy issues.

Act II is when Ayckbourn pulls off one of his expected theatrical tricks: the action of the play starts over (with subtle adjustments), and this time we follow Barry's early life — marriage, children, overbearing in-laws — through flashbacks. A man who seemed eccentric, charming, and harmless turns out to be as deeply unhappy as Ez. In what is surely one of the bleakest endings of any Ayckbourn play — and it feels like a forced plot twist — Ez and Barry finally find a connection.

Well-known Ayckbourn themes are reworked here. Among them are the unseen misery of people who seem content and confident, and the incompetence and pettiness of people who hold authority (echoing 2011’s Neighbourhood Watch). The dramatist's observation of the British middle class is as astute as ever.

Although Ayckbourn intends Arrivals & Departures to be in a more serious vein, fans who are used to his generally comic spirit will find this atmosphere predominantly tragic. That’s the playwright’s prerogative, of course, but the comedy and tragedy here jostle each other uneasily. The harshness of Ez’s character, though it abates in the second act, when Barry is the focus, is off-putting. A confrontation between Ez and Rob’s parents touches abruptly on British class friction, and the final portrait of Rob that emerges doesn’t square with the patient, decent character that Richard Stacey has created.

Nonetheless, under the author’s direction, the actors do a fine job bringing this thorny anomaly to life. As part of the Brits Off-Broadway festival, 59E59 is offering a generous helping of Ayckbourn (he has written 78 plays), with visiting productions from the playwright’s own Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough: a revival of his 1992 play, Time of My Life, is also being presented, and though it, too, has a serious side, a third bill contains two one-acts under the umbrella title Farcicals.

Arrivals & Departures, Farcicals and Time of My Life play in repertory through June 29 with marathons on Sundays. For tickets and times, visit www.59e59.org.

Eve of Destruction

Samuel D. Hunter’s fine play The Whale made a big splash last season at Playwrights Horizons (the young playwright received a special Drama Desk Award). Now he has returned with The Few, an absorbing drama at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater about working-class people flailing in their efforts to survive. Like The Whale, it benefits from canny direction by Davis McCallum.

The talented Hunter has carved out northern Idaho as his stomping ground, just as Lucy Thurber has claimed western Massachusetts. His play A Bright New Boise first brought the Idaho-born dramatist acclaim in 2010. He writes with immense sympathy for people who are isolated and at the end of their rope. You could easily guess that from a glimpse of the living conditions in Dane Laffrey’s set for The Few: the interior of a trailer home that’s cluttered with shabby furniture, shelves with papers, and various ancient computer equipment (it’s 1999, and Y2K has everyone jittery), all sitting under a water-blotched ceiling.

The Few opens with a standoff. Bryan (Michael Laurence) and QZ (Tasha Lawrence) stare at each other, tension thick in the air. Four years earlier, shortly after the death of their good friend Jim in a big-rig accident, Bryan disappeared without a word and hasn’t been in touch. In the interim, his ex-lover QZ has taken over the small paper that the three founded for long-haul truckers — it’s called The Few — and transformed it. Once it featured thoughtful articles by Bryan that struck a chord with big-rig drivers, but that business model, she says, was doomed. Now it relies on classified ads from lonely truckers looking for partners — they call in periodically with their ads, such as “All-American in search of American honey. Like long walks and the second Harry Potter book… All shapes and size welcome, please be under 60.”

QZ seems implacable in her fury: she taunts Bryan with the information that she’s met someone way better than he, though their correspondence is by letter. Harsh and unsentimental, she adds that their dog ran onto the Interstate and was squashed dead. But Bryan still holds the deed to the property. Grudgingly, she allows him to pull out a cot and stay.

Bryan’s settling in is not a complete triumph, and Laurence is excellent in conveying his weariness and brusqueness; the part calls for him to be a cipher for a long stretch, but he makes Bryan compelling. The character must contend with Matthew, QZ’s 19-year-old assistant and Jim’s nephew, who has been thrown out of his home. Since then, QZ has looked after him. As the castoff teen, Gideon Glick gives a startling and assured performance: gawky, nerdy, twitchy, often comical, yet full of unexpected nerve. For years he has secretly awaited Bryan’s return, because Bryan’s articles inspired him when he was 15 and he wants to restore The Few to what it was. Unluckily, an element of Hunter’s plot hinges on Matthew’s being the confidant of brawny truckers and their deep desires, which is not credible.

Nonetheless, McCallum and his cast conjure the feel of people on their last legs, and the wreckage of 20^th-century idealism on the brink of a new millennium. (Passing references to Tetris and floppy disks underline the need for an attitude adjustment toward the future.) Hunter suggests that QZ’s blanket defense of the profit motive is unacceptable, yet an unfocused idealism is no answer either. The final moments of his play bring hope that the profit motive rampant in the new millennium will not totally smother selflessness, and that Bryan and people like him will find some way to lend help to those who need it.

The Few plays at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place) through June 21. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. There is also a matinee on Saturdays at 3 p.m. For tickets, visit www.rattlestick.org or call Ovationtix at 866-811-4111.

Lost in Baltimore

For more than three decades, New York Theatre Workshop has nurtured cutting-edge dramatists such as Harry Kondoleon, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, and Athol Fugard. The company introduced Rent to the world in 1995; but, only in recent seasons have musicals -- Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, A Civil War Christmas, and the innovative revue What’s It All About? Bacharach Reimagined -- become a major aspect of NYTW's artistic profile. The current offering, Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, is an eccentric music-theater piece about Edgar Allan Poe's last days. Although credited to an authorial committee of six, Red-Eye to Havre de Grace has a singular theatrical style that's as bracing as any of the music-theater pieces mentioned above. 

The six people who have “created” Red-Eye to Havre de Grace are the show’s director and scenic designer (Thaddeus Phillips), its choreographer (Sophie Bortolussi), the actor who plays Poe (Ean Sheehy), siblings who composed the musical score (David and Jeremy Wilhelm), and Geoff Sobelle (listed merely as “co-creator”). Jeremy Wilhelm handles multiple roles, sings and plays guitar and clarinet; David Wilhelm is the production’s pianist. The sole performer not credited as an author is Alessandra L. Larson, who dances the ghostly role of Poe’s wife Virginia. 

Poe, a master of the literary macabre and, arguably, the first professional writer in American history, died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Forty years old and a resident of the Bronx, he had been traveling during the preceding weeks, giving lectures and readings, searching for literary work, raising money for a journal he intended to start and, possibly, laying the groundwork for a move to Virginia. After stops in Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Norfolk, Poe boarded the wrong train and arrived in Maryland by mistake. His confusion may have been a function of illness or of alcohol or laudanum (both of which figure prominently in his biography).

Red-Eye to Havre de Grace opens with a prologue spoken by a man (Jeremy Wilhelm) who introduces himself as Steve Reynolds, “a ranger for the United States National Park Service stationed at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia.” Ranger Steve is in New York, he says, to give audiences a little background on Poe. His speech, which captures the enthusiasm of an obsessive docent, covers Poe's origins, his turbulent personal life, the variety of his literary output, and his desperate hopes for Eureka, the metaphysical treatise “which he believed to be his greatest work, in which he offered  the full explanation of the origin and annihilation of the universe.”

The goofy, satiric quality of Ranger Steve's prologue puts the audience on notice that Red-Eye to Havre de Grace is no common-and-garden docu-drama. The scenes that follow draw on Poe's verse and prose, including letters and a mystifying passage from Eureka. The authors of the play don’t strain to link effects to causes, choosing instead to dramatize in visual and musical terms the grief that consumed Poe following the death of his very young wife (who was also his cousin) and his anxiety about how to promote his literary career while supporting himself and the mother-in-law (also his aunt) whom he adored.

Red-Eye to Havre de Grace is a succession of provocative images rather than straightforward narrative. Scenic designer (and director) Phillips and lighting designer Drew Billiau provide a visually arresting environment through which the actors navigate the complex movements of Phillips' direction and Bortolussi's nearly mesmerizing choreography. The direction and design are enhanced by the Wilhelm brothers' beautiful, varied musical score. Rosemarie McKelvey's simple, picturesque costumes contribute a great deal to the visual effect of the piece, as well.

For 90 minutes, the actors of Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, enact Poe's turbulent emotions and disintegrating intellect with engaging theatricality. The authors wisely avoid reaching for explanations of things that are lost in the interstices of the historical record. Red-Eye to Havre de Grace may do little to dispel the mystery of Poe's last days, but the authors and actors shed considerable light on what it means to strive and hope and grieve.     

Red-Eye to Havre de Grace is running through Sunday, June 1, 2014, at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th St.). Performances are 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday; 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; 3 p.m. on Saturday; and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $85, $40, and discounted to student groups of 10 or more. Ticket information at www.nytw.org or by calling 212-279-4200.

A Pirate Quagmire

Exiled dissident Edward Snowden shivers in a cramped cabin in Siberia. William Kidd is hung for piracy charges that he didn’t commit. A young Bobby Culliford is both a victim of bullying and bully himself. What do these scenarios have in common? Pretty much nothing and Nolan Kennedy’s original play Bully Me Down does little to convince us otherwise. While the enthusiasm of Letter of Marque Theater Company’s gung-ho ensemble is admirable at the very least, their performance chops are overwhelmed by Bully Me Down’s baffling quagmire of a script. 

It would be one thing if Bully Me Down’s chief flaw were the discordance of its three outrageous plotlines, but there’s something even more disturbing about the tone and content of this script. While it’s somewhat socially acceptable to crack jokes about a whistleblower like Edward Snowden, and even more appropriate to lampoon a several-hundred year-old seaman like William Kidd, the theme of bullying seems to be in an entirely different (and more serious) realm. The bullied teenager Bobby (played by Scarlet Rivera) delivers a school speech about “bullycide,” which is the unfortunate neologism for bully-related suicide. Instead of driving home any real message about this real-world problem, Bobby’s subplot smacks of a bad after-school special, dreadfully eclipsing the actual gravity of the actual issue of bullying. It’s worse than off-color, it's insensitive; and this play would be better off without it.

Despite it's dramaturgical sufferings, Bully Me Down does have certain points of charm.  Worth the trip to Brooklyn itself is a puppet version of Barbara Walters from the bust up, designed and constructed by Serra Hirsch. Especially agile at Barbara-handling is Welland H. Scripps, who manages to coyly flash the puppet’s red-lacquered fingernails as she conducts her interviews with various characters throughout the play. All of the performer’s accents, especially Scripps’ and Kennedy’s, are delightfully overdone and consistent. Also of note is the company’s original and re-imagined musical score: the tune of the song, “Bully Me Down,” is sure to stick in your head, and the musical fun continues during a wacky dumbshow during intermission. Best of all, the performances are free and take place in various bars around Brooklyn, so you can have a beer with locals and enjoy the community vibe.

Overall, Letter of Marque Theater Company’s Bully Me Down suffers from some pretty serious dramaturgical tangles, as well as some unfortunate staging decisions (like word association during improv scene transitions). The script could use renovation, and the cast another week of rehearsals. That being said, you could do worse on a weeknight than hang out in a bar watching some weird (and free) community theater. So if you’re in for a silly and irreverent time: grab a beer, turn off your inner critic, and give Bully Me Down a try.

Bully Me Down runs through May 21 at various bars around Brooklyn. Performances are Sunday through Wednesday at 8 p.m., except for Sunday, May 18, when the performance starts at 3 p.m. Tickets are free. To reserve, call Letter of Marque Theater Company at 718-246-2211. For specific venue locations, visit http://www.lomtheater.org/bmd-performance-schedule.html.

Pushing Comic Revenge to the Brink

It is very difficult for a critic to express one’s full appreciation of a performance without addressing the complexities of the experience. Even if a show does not satisfy, a production requires so much labor from a diversity of voices that define the theatrical event that it would be unfair for a critic to raze over a work without acknowledging the moments of brilliance. The Deer Players’ production of The Brink of Us is not a successful play, yet some elements make it a unique work.

The play opens with a short prologue delivered by the character of Elliot, played by Tom Kelsey, explaining his close relationship with his sister. He is very emphatic about how they shared certain experiences that others would not have understood. Many years later, after his sister committed suicide, Elliot has invited his group of friends to spend a weekend at his cabin in the woods. Yet as they drink and consume every drug with which they experimented in their youth, civility starts peeling away and the audience discovers Elliot’s real motive for inviting them over: he believes that one of them killed his sister.

The people at the cabin are basically divided into four couples. There is the egotistical Alex, played by Julia Piker, a published writer who does not worry about revealing the most embarrassing secrets about herself. She arrives together with Max, played by Zachary J. Smith, who seems to faithfully follow all of Alex’s whims. Then there is Sean, played by Daniel Cuff, and Liz, played by Annelise Nielsen. They appear to be a very normal young couple, when in reality both are dealing with her nervous breakdown, whose ripples are still felt from time to time. After the audience is given a chance to meet the first two couples, Sebastian, played by Peter Staley, bursts in with an energetic indifference stereotypical of a young corporate lawyer. His girlfriend, Ellen, played by Linda Tardif, arrives separately already demonstrating that she will be the complete opposite of Sebastian. Finally, there is the host’s girlfriend, Sally, played by Starr Kirkland, a childish presence whose innocence shines among this group of apparently broken individuals.

The cast does a great job with what they are given, yet suffers from the script’s confusion in how it wants to tell its story. The playwright, Delaney Britt Brewer, takes the traditional yarn of older friends coming together and noticing how each one has changed, yet pushes it down a much darker path. This darkness involves death, revenge, the loss of innocence, betrayal, and coming to grips with an obscure past. Nevertheless, when the story initiates this much more interesting journey, the play becomes an almost farcical comedy. The combination of drama, comedy and horror is very difficult to achieve and I admire the bravery of the artists to do so, yet it bogs down a play that shows so much promise. The characters go from dealing with a seriously dark secret to enthusiastically eating a tablecloth due to extreme hunger. Later one comes out clownishly drenched in blood while another one gives a sweet rendition of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” in the middle of the play’s most chaotic build-up. Kara-Lynn Vaeni’s direction does not add cohesion to these moments and so the audience is lost in its midst. The whole world that is contained within Elliot’s cabin and which shows moments of Hitchcockian humor and gloom, sadly crumbles at the end. Yet there is enough flair in the turns taken by the story and in the way that it is acted to ultimately demonstrate the talent behind the work, even if it suffers from a loss of focus.

The Brink of Us is presented at South Oxford Space (138 South Oxford Street between Atlantic Avenue and Hanson Place in Brooklyn) through May 17. Performances are Fridays through Sundays at 8 p.m. with an extra performance on Thursday, May 15 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 for the general public and $18 for students. These can be purchased online at http://brinkofus.brownpapertickets.com or by calling 1-800-836-3006.