It’s War

The juxtaposition of two masterpieces by two giants of modern theater on opposite sides of the ever more relevant and explosive issue of gender is a New York theatrical event. Theater for a New Audience has paired Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House with the lesser-known The Father, by August Strindberg, a play written partially in response to the Ibsen play.

Director Arin Arbus and her creative team brilliantly use the same actors in similar roles in both plays and configure the theater at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in traverse with the audience on two sides of a fairly narrow but long stage. A Doll’s House, first produced in 1887, follows the 1937 Thornton Wilder adaptation. The Father, written in 1887, boasts a newly commissioned translation of from writer and director David Greig.

Both plays tell the story of a marriage that falls apart when a woman takes action on behalf of a husband or child in a world in which the society upholds male prerogatives. The law denies both women scope of action on critical matters in their lives. In The Father, it would deprive Laura (Maggie Lacey), the wife of Captain Adolf, the title character, of any say in the future of her child. In A Doll’s House, it turns Nora’s saving of her husband Thorwald’s life into a criminal act. What will Laura do when the Captain (John Douglas Thompson), her husband, announces his irrevocable decision to send their daughter away to school to become a teacher when she wants Bertha (Kimber Monroe) to remain home and study art? What will happen to Nora when her forgery of a promissory note on a loan is revealed to him just as, inconveniently, he is about to start a new job as the head of a bank?

In both plays the man is the provider, and the husband complains about his wife’s spending his hard-earned money (no concept of an economic partnership here!). Both women must connive to make their marriages work and get what they want, be it the nibble of a macaroon or the destiny of a child. In both, wives get in the way of their husbands’ careers, Laura in misdirecting her husband’s scientific letters detailing hard-won discoveries, and Nora in forging her father’s signature and potentially placing her husband in a compromised situation at his bank. Is it coincidence that the dramatic turning point of each play depends on an act of male violence? In The Father, Captain Adolf throws a lamp at his wife and the resulting fire is a tour de force of staging by Arbus with Riccardo Hernandez’s scenic design. Matters for the Captain devolve from there. In A Doll’s House, the violence is verbal. Thorwald’s berating of Nora when he feels his career and social standing are threatened fires Nora’s decision to leave the confinement of her “doll’s house.” The overlap of the two plays could hardly be more striking.

But that overlap is indeed the point, and it throws the different human, gender, and theatrical visions of the plays into far sharper relief. A Doll’s House is, of course, not just the dramatic rendering and canny analysis of the woman’s situation in the late 19th century; it is a manifesto that speaks boldly even today. When Nora’s husband, Thorwald, defends himself to his wife, saying, “No man sacrifices his honor even for the woman he loves,” and Nora responds, “Millions of women have done it,” the audience at the Polonsky erupted in applause. With humiliating clarity, Nora comes to understand how living in homes run by men has stunted her growth as a human being. “I’ve been living like a beggar, by performing tricks for you!” she tells Thorwald. “You and my father are responsible. It’s your fault my life has been wasted.” Maggie Lacey is commendable in both wife roles, and does especially well with the lighter shades of Nora’s passionate character.

In The Father, the Captain’s human growth has been stunted too, and in a manner parallel to Nora’s, since it is his profound and early attachments to women, plumbed to extraordinary depths in the play and in the harrowing and magnificent performance by Thompson, that undermine and doom him. Thompson’s performances as the husbands are powerful, but the Strindberg provides him with a role of rare emotional range in which he, along with the audience watching him, absolutely revels. The Father is a cri de coeur on behalf of husbands and breadwinners everywhere and the sacrifices that come with that role. At the heart of this painful play is not a heroic vision of manhood but rather a disturbing vision of male weakness. It is out of weakness that the Captain reaches to the law and social norms of male prerogative to counter the will of his determined wife.

At the same time, staging the plays in repertory works to Strindberg’s advantage. The tight construction of The Father, in which the suspicions his wife plants about whether he is Bertha’s father or not drive the Captain to insanity, makes the Ibsen work feel, at moments, contrived, as when Nora’s friend and foil, Mrs. Linden, makes the shocking decision to allow Thorwald to find the damning letter that will reveal Nora’s forgery. The psychological contradictions and depths of Strindberg’s portrayal of the Captain makes Ibsen’s portrayal of Nora's final resolve to leave her husband and two children appear less powerfully motivated by comparison. 

At the end of A Doll’s House, there is hope beyond the confines of the performance itself. Nora, who was courageous enough to undertake an extraordinary scheme to save a husband’s life, will surely succeed now that she has made the decision to save her own life.  And in the aftermath of battle, there is the possibility of a new woman and new man that will emerge from this process. The same is not true for the more despairing vision of Strindberg, in which the male is fundamentally powerless, and the entire family a rubble of destruction. Tellingly, it is the Captain’s own nanny, Margaret, beautifully played with unexampled tenderness by Laurie Kennedy, who tricks him into the actual straitjacket to which his madness has led him. For the noble Captain, there is no exit. Strindberg’s vision is as dark as Ibsen’s is radical.

Arbus and her marvelous casts invite us to place these plays beside each other and, in so doing, come away with a new understanding, not only of these works, not only of these playwrights, but of ourselves. Can great theater do more?

Theater for a New Audience presents August Strindberg's The Father and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House in repertory at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place) in Brooklyn through June 12. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, call Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.tfana.org.

An Epic Cut Down to Size

John Doyle has made a name for himself with pared-down productions, mainly of musicals—The Color Purple, now on Broadway; Passion and Allegro for Classic Stage Company—and his first foray into traditional plays for CSC, where he is the new artistic director, features that trademark minimalism. Peer Gynt, written in verse and covering a lifetime of its hero, who wanders from Norway’s fjords to the deserts of Arabia to find himself, is an epic journey.

Ibsen wrote his eventful play in 1867 but did not intend it for performance. After a change of heart, he asked his countryman Edvard Grieg to compose music for a theatrical premiere in 1876. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, which grew out of his incidental music, is one of the most lushly Romantic pieces of music of the 19^th century. Here, though, Dan Moses’ Schreier’s music features a couple violins that often drone long notes and underscore scenes, and choral writing that features humming by the six actors playing all the subsidiary parts.

The role of Peer Gynt itself stands as an Everest for an actor, yet it comes around far more rarely than Hamlet. Richard Thomas tackled it brilliantly in Hartford in 1989, under the direction of Mark Lamos. Thomas, plagued by boyish looks long after his years as John-Boy Walton, made the most of them in Peer Gynt and convincingly played the young Peer, while assuming the mantle of the older man easily.

At CSC, Doyle has cast Gabriel Ebert, a Tony winner for Matilda, and he’s the best thing about the production. Ebert conveys the young Peer with high-kicking brio and excess of energy, yet in the quieter scenes his maturity comes to the fore. It’s possible to have two actors play the part, but, reduced to less than two hours from four, this adaptation needs only one. The climax of Peer’s long search for his soul—which society claims he lacks—results in his peeling an onion for meaning, and finding nothing in the center. Ebert claws at it and pulls at it with his fingernails, his eyes reddened by the onion fumes, but with more a determined curiosity than desperation.

Peer is notorious for his tall tales. Returning home from wandering, he tells his mother Åse (Becky Ann Baker) that he has hunted a stag into the wilderness, wounded it, and then, about to kill it, been taken on a wild ride by the injured animal. Åse doesn’t believe him and rebukes him, but then comes around.

Even apart from his imaginary experiences, though, Peer’s life is chock full of incident. Åse tells Peer that his girlfriend is about to be married. Peer crashes the wedding and steals her away. He also meets Solveig (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), a young girl—she’s recently been confirmed, so she must be about 14—who falls for him. Then he flees the fury of the bride’s father; he arrives at the lair of the Troll King (Dylan Baker), seduces his daughter, escapes becoming a denizen of the underground, and begins a lifelong journey to distant lands, ending up finally in Norway again.

Doyle’s adaptation touches on most of the events, but it makes them more real. The cue for this approach seems to come when the Bride says, “That’s the way—we mountain people. Everything has another meaning.” Yet the change pulls Ibsen’s play toward the naturalism that characterized his later work, and and even psychological realism, as Peer's struggles seem to become internalized. At times it underscores Peer’s search for himself with heavy-handedness. “Jack, be thyself,” says the Doctor, who is also the Troll King, clad by Ann Hould-Ward in a gray suit, paper crown and sunglasses. Later in the play, Peer becomes a successful businessman, entering in suit and sunglasses himself, and throws money into the air. It may suggest that in his pursuit of success Peer has become more troll-like, but it's also one of the few grand flourishes in the production. Characters like the Boyg, offering “Go round” as strange advice, don’t appear but are rendered as voices of the Chorus.

Although Doyle’s minimalist, modernist approach may force one to focus on the words, the loss of color and variety risks dulling one's senses and resulting in confusion. To anyone who has experienced a full production, this Peer Gynt seems intent on sensory deprivation. 

John Doyle's production of Peer Gynt plays at the Classic Stage Company (136 E. 13th. St., between Third and Fourth Avenues) through June 19. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by calling the box office at (212) 352-3101, Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visiting classicstage.org.

Fine, Blame It on the Woman

August Darnell and Vivien Goldman’s new musical Cherchez La Femme, based on Darnell's 1976 hit song of the same name, opens with “Let’s Dance.” It is rhythmic and hot, and the beat permeates the house. The music is recorded, but the singing is live and jumpin’—the party is in full swing. The scene is 1980s New York, just as Caufy Keeps, played by Isaac Gay, is about to launch a much-anticipated tour with his backup singers, the Lemon Drops. The story is loosely based on Kid Creole and the Coconuts and their extraordinary influence on disco—fusing it with Caribbean, Latin, and a whole lot of Cab Calloway.

The book by Darnell and Goldman follows Caufy from New York, where his girlfriend has left him, as he heads for Haiti. Heartbroken, Caufy skips the tour. Instead he takes his sidekick Stingy Brim (CB Murray), often referred to as “brother,” along with his personal assistant to find her in Haiti.

The plot-heavy story includes a young woman who has been stalking Caufy in New York and announces that she is his daughter from a tryst in Oslo 20 years earlier. The Lemon Drops, furious with his decision, head off on their own to become the toast of Paris. The many threads of the story require a suspension of disbelief—all the events appear to happen within days. Scenes in Haiti and Paris could just have easily taken place in a variety of clubs and heavily ethnic communities in New York.

Other aspects are also less than credible. A scene at Customs in Haiti is superfluous and made little sense in that Caufy’s illegitimate daughter shows up at the same time and is able to sway the argumentative Customs agents. With “Baby Doc” Duvalier in power, he has taken issue with Reagan and the U.S.—the Customs agents are more than happy to take a heavy hand with Americans. Act II opens with an odd cheerleader number that seems to have nothing to do with the story. The mother of Caufy’s daughter has an accent that is anything but Scandinavian, not to mention that, for some reason, she is also in Haiti.

The music is where the juice is, and credit (then, as now) goes to Darnell and Stony Browder Jr. Their commitment to the original style they created for Kid Creole, as well as the additional numbers written, completes the show. Add ’80s-inspired choreography by Kyndra “Blinkie” Reevey, and the energy is palpable. Showcasing the talented Kristina Hanford, the reprise of Cherchez La Femme with the full company brings down the house.

Cherchez La Femme belongs to Gay and Murray. As Caufy Keeps, Gay has the sex appeal, certitude, and chops to carry a musical. Stingy Brim, played by Murray, has the best lines of the show. Yet he seems to be challenged by the 2½-hour run time and too many story lines; hence, his delivery is rushed.

Angie Kristic is the director of Cherchez La Femme and, while it’s evident she brought a lot to the production, some editing of the extraneous stories is needed, along with smoother transitions between scenes and more tech rehearsals. The sound, more than anything, is a problem. There are too few speakers and they are poorly placed, with a heavy bass track producing unbalanced harmonies. For as much work as was put into creating and staging this production, the sound and the vocals deserve better.

Costuming (Adriana Kaegi) is pure ’80s, but a bolder color palette would work better, especially for the Lemon Drops. The baggy, zoot suit style of the period is correct; however, Stingy is in need of a good tailor. The choice of using necklaces as bribes for the Lemon Drops was a mistake given the lavalieres each is wearing, as they were difficult and too noisy to put on. Set design (Aaron Mavinga) is bare-bones and a tad too "high school musical"—spray paint, plastic martini glasses, and a cheesy room divider. The village set in Haiti is on point, but it is so far upstage that the distance from the audience has the actors scrambling to fill the space. The lighting (Joe Beahm) in Haiti is a little too soft, and the disco scenes missing the big ’80s flair; however, the fog is a cool touch in those scenes.

It’s rumored that the French meaning of Cherchez la femme—literally, “Look for the woman”—is sexist, meaning no matter what the problem may be a woman is often the cause. In this case, it’s more the lack of a stronger hand editing and some distance from the material, albeit male or female, to know what to keep and what to let go of. Cherchez La Femme has some really good bones—just a few too many to give it the long run it deserves.

Cherchez La Femme continues in The Ellen Stewart Theatre at La Mama (66 East 4th St., Manhattan), through June 12. Tickets are $35 for adults; $30 for students and seniors either online at www.lamama.org, by phone at 646-430-5374, or at the La MaMa box office: noon-6 p.m. daily.

She Won the Lottery

James Fritz’s play for two voices, titled Ross & Rachel, appears to have as its impetus the long-running TV show Friends. The characters of Ross and Rachel were one of the first to be known in the pop lexicon by one name, “rossnrachel”—inseparable and sometimes insufferable. Make no mistake, though: Ross & Rachel is no sitcom or walk in the park—those names aren't even used in the play.

Originally published as a paperback, Ross & Rachel is a tightly written tour de force for Molly Vevers, who easily modulates between “he” and “she” in this fast-paced drama. Fritz raises a number of questions and challenges about being in a relationship from the moment two people meet and how they interact with others at a party. Imagine a couple, not so much as individuals but as a couple conversing with others, practically talking over each other in side-by-side dialogues.

“How long have you two been together now?”
“You’ve still got that look about you.”
“Did you ever hear how we first met?”
“Right from the first moment I saw her, standing next to my sister, I knew.”
“Not now, honey.”
“Strap yourselves in, you’re not gonna believe this story.”
“They don’t want to hear about that.”
“You guys think that’s good? Tell them about how we got back together. She tells it better than I can.”

Vevers delivers this type of dialogue consistently for nearly 60 minutes. She is quite good in this challenging role, especially as the subject matter evolves into difficult, almost unimaginable events. A number of inquiries are examined and played out. Where does “I” end and “you” begin? Just how much will women often give up to be in relationship? Is it true that any man is better than no man? Does “until death do us part” really mean what it says?

Fritz wrote the male character as a typical guy. However, a revelation of an illness he has leads to a demand of her that seems hugely selfish. But the "Ross" character (those names are never heard throughout the work) doesn't seem written egotistically enough to warrant her acquiescence to his request. Or is she just mad?

Vevers begins the performance dressed only in a white cotton waffle-weave spa robe, holding a cup of tea and sipping from it casually as if to have a chat. Eventually she pours the remainder into the shallow pool she is standing in. She then fills the cup from the pool and proceeds to drink from it three times, spitting out the rancid water each time. Cringeworthy, but to what end? The action yanked the focus from the dialogue.

The design elements don’t help much. The lighting design by Douglas Green don’t live up to Vevers’ performance. Lighting appears as an afterthought—almost nonexistent light and a strand or two of twinkle lights hang overhead. Only at one point was the light dramatic enough to complement the brutal dialogue—when Vevers is lit crosswise, creating two distinct shadows on opposite walls. Alison Neighbor has designed a set featuring a shallow, round, black pool of water—which Vevers never leaves after the first 10 minutes or so—surrounded by eight votives on the floor.

To complete the play, director Thomas Martin has Vevers clap three times. The lights go to black, as if it were the “Clapper” lighting commercial or Jeb Bush begging an audience with “You can clap now.” Cue music. Vevers is too fine an actress and the dialogue too complex to incorporate silly moves and allow for a nonsensical set design—it’s unnecessary and distracting.

Ross & Rachel is strong and powerful, and it demands attention, and Vevers brings the words alive. What is striking is her drive to connect with each audience member, most telling in a monologue about coffee. She has a manner and a presence reminiscent of fine actresses from another era. This is her era, her time.

Ross & Rachel is part of Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th St., between Park and Madison Avenues). Performances run through Sunday, June 5. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25 ($17.50 for 59E59 members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.59e59.org.

The Tongue Is a Mighty Sword

Move over, James Brown. It’s time to add Joe Morton and Dick Gregory's names to the pantheon of hardest-working men in show business. In Turn Me Loose, written by Gretchen Law and directed by John Gould Rubin, Morton gives a tour de force performance as Gregory, the tireless civil rights activist and stand up comic known for his acerbic social satire on race and American politics.

Morton, of the hit TV show Scandal, adeptly captures both the younger and the older Gregory as the play moves back and forth in time. As a comedian, Gregory eloquently holds a mirror up to the contradictions in American society. Although he believes economics are at the root of many problems in society, he contends that “poverty is not the worst disease on earth. Racism is.”

Born in 1932, in St. Louis, Gregory says he had “black assets: fast feet, and a fast tongue.” He was athletic and outspoken, and when he was given a three-year contract at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club in Chicago in 1961, he was catapulted into another realm as an entertainer, not as a “shuffling minstrel, but as a 28-year-old star.” However, he often stepped down from comedy to take up the cause of the 1960s civil rights movement and march side by side with Medgar Evers.

Morton captures the conflict between being a performer and being an activist that caused Gregory to take pause at moments in his life. In a chilling moment, the young activist gets a bad feeling that he can’t shake before heading back down South to join Evers. But suddenly his son dies and he returns North to join his wife. Only two weeks later, Evers is assassinated; Gregory believes his personal tragedy spared his life. The dangers of activism and being a black man in the South in the ’60s were never more apparent. He realizes that the "racist system is nothing but a shadow. You got to dive through—every day could be your last.” He also realizes that bigotry is like the barb of an arrow piercing the skin. Gregory returns to comedy and aims, not so much to extract the arrowhead from the sides of American racists, but to shake them with enough laughter that it will fall out.

Morton’s voice has a deep timbre, and he has amazing reserve and control over both his voice and physicality. Often, while the tempo and volume rise, his body is restrained and still. Near the finale, sweat pours down his face, and instead of taking the handkerchief, as he does at times throughout the play, he forges through what he has to say: the power of his words is amplified by the apoplectic state of his face.

The raw immediacy of Morton’s performance, coupled with the power of Gregory’s message, incites some members of the audience to murmur “Mmm-hmmm” and “Yeah,” as if they are receiving a message from the pulpit rather than the stage. Also helping tell the story in a variety of roles is John Carlin; among other things he plays a bumbling mediator at a loss for words when Gregory delivers an acerbic diagnosis of the state of economics and its effect on all that ails American society.

It takes tremendous courage and intelligence to design and deliver the kind of comedy Gregory does. At 83, he's still going strong. Because of his work with the civil rights movement, and the way in which he has relentlessly, with humor, grace and a tongue like a sword, dissected the contradictions about race in America, the conversation itself has since taken a few twists and turns. For instance, Vin Diesel, who rose to stardom in The Fast and Furious films, declines to accept any racial pigeonhole. Rather, says one observer, Diesel presents himself as “a multiethnic Everyman.” The actor’s insistence on identifying himself as a human being, rather than by race, is an important step. As Turn Me Loose makes plain, it’s one that Dick Gregory has worked tirelessly for.

Turn Me Loose plays at the Westside Theatre (407 West 43rd St.) through July 3. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $79 and may be purchased by calling (212) 239-6200 or visiting www.turnmelooseplay.com.

 

Concealed and Revealed

“Camouflage: to be in plain sight, but not to be seen” is the undercurrent of Cal in Camo, about a family dealing with grim challenges. At the heart of the play are a husband struggling to provide for his wife and child; the wife who has little, if any, affinity for her newborn; and her backwoods brother, a man of few words, whose own wife has recently drowned. Given the somber plot, Cal in Camo is often surprisingly humorous, with actors who reach deep to pull out emotionally charged performances.

David Harbour plays Tim, who is languishing in a small Illinois town as a distributor of craft beer. His wife, Cal (Katya Campbell), is a stay-at-home mom. Their arguments may resonate as typical, but the writing by William Francis Hoffman delivers the stories wrapped in a unique casing. Relish the amusing moments, because Cal in Camo is a gut-wrenching play. The topic of Cal’s brother Flynt, his behavior at their wedding two years earlier, as well as his upcoming visit, is fodder for intense, fast-paced dialogue.

When he arrives, Flynt (Paul Wesley) just peels away another layer to the family secrets. However, it’s Wesley’s perfectly stilted delivery of Flynt’s simplistic view of the world that is bold: “You wanna bond with that baby...you take that baby dirty as she is....diaper dirty....you…strip her down...and you strip yourself down…and you get down on the ground you wrap your whole body around that baby….even though you might not know what you’re doin’ at all...that’s nature...nature knows what ta do.... like water knows where ta go...you just gotta let it find you.”

Campbell’s Sybil-like performance is striking; on one hand fighting with Tim, her unmotherly response to the cries of her child juxtaposed with her schoolgirl excitement to see Flynt. The reveal of their mother abandoning them and Cal’s experience in and out of foster homes is telling: “The way I grew up in all those different homes with all those different families...you learn not to want...you keep your eyes in front of you...if you don’t want they can’t take anything away from you if you don’t need they can’t break your heart…but I got caught up in this idea this picture of family this thing you had and I started to believe it.”

Harbour takes Tim's lack of trust to a new, in-your-face level—the performance is solidly Harbour. His sheer size next to Campbell takes on a brutish, commanding figure, and his resentment being dragged to rural Illinois by Cal is evident in every gesture, as well as everything he doesn’t say.

The opening scene with Cal on the floor attempting to pump her breasts of milk feels like it was put there for shock value. In that regard, it steals the thunder from the scene of Cal and Tim fighting about her inability to produce milk, which requires them to purchase formula.

Once Tim arrives home to the family kitchen, complete with sliding door to the backyard, John McDermott’s set design works harder. With Flynt standing on the porch, having just walked out of the kitchen, the set rotates, and he is standing on the back porch. Grant Yeager delivers crisp lighting design and, coupled with sound design by Amy Altadonna, creates the perfect storm scene. Altadonna’s baby cries are spot-on, whether through a baby monitor, from the other room, or coming from the traveling car seat.

Cal in Camo is meant to be uneasy, and director Adrienne Campbell-Holt makes sure of it. The dialogue is fast and the narrative hard, begging to be heard. Living is in the asking and yet being vulnerable to the answers; that’s where the heart grows. For the actors it is evident that they know the material and they listen; even more important, they respond in kind. The camouflage is ripped aside and the human spirit is revealed, bruises and all.

Cal in Camo continues at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place, just west of 7th Avenue) through June 12. Evening performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and at 7 p.m. and Sundays and Mondays; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturdays. Running time is 85 minutes. For more information and tickets call Ovationtix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.rattlestick.org.

Days of Drinking Games

Love has a hard road to travel to find itself, especially in this madcap world. It has never been easy for young adults to figure out the mating game, and in Half Moon Bay, a dark and witty new play by Dan Moyer, the lovers meet in the grungy bar of a bowling alley. The two-hander opens to Led Zeppelin and bright lights, then goes pitch-black as the Talking Heads blare in the darkness. The lights (by Mike Inwood) abruptly go full up to reveal Annie (Keilly McQuail) alone at the bar, where she meets the neurotic Gabe (Gabriel King), a gambling addict with too much time and money on his hands. The alcoholic Annie gives Gabe lessons on pickup lines. And so begins a dark comedy about the narcissistic, existentialist, and often self-destructive struggle young adults experience to find themselves.

Moyer’s intelligent yet poignant dialogue reflects what many go through at that period when a person realizes he or she is not a child anymore and is trying to play grownup, but doesn’t know how. Gabe asks, “You here with anyone else?” And Annie retorts smugly, “No I come here alone and bowl by myself, then I go home and cry when I lose.” Amid the humorous banter there is a serious undertone that mirrors the inner struggle of finding love in a hopeless place.

Annie realizes she’s an addict when she discovers she has genuine feelings for Gabe. Although both actors start out tensely over-animated in performance, as they live through what they are doing and build the emotional life of their characters, their desperation becomes compelling.

Reid Thompson’s set is so real it’s surreal, enhancing that unearthly feeling that alcohol and attraction can give. Pictures on the wall tell of past bowling championships; half-empty liquor bottles and dirty glasses whisper of other lost nights. The disarray of Annie’s apartment reflects the disarray of her life.

Choices by sound designer Janie Bullard and Thompson heighten the characters’ emotional state. The muted outside illumination that Inwood has artfully crafted for the Santa Cruz, Calif., setting is particularly effective, as is the way nighttime becomes daybreak as Annie switches from “party-ready” to “Get the hell out of here” mode after their evening together.

Thompson’s set is utilized fully by director Jess Chayes; the actors improvise and evolve in their experience together, and ultimately connect in this mad, mad world. Starting out quick-witted and terse, the evening ends poignantly still and emotionally moving. The play looks at broken children and reprimands society to offer more to them, underlining that young adults need guidance on how to love as well as maneuver through life.

In response to Annie’s story on bad pickup lines like “Your mouth is like a window to the tongue,” Gabe asks her, “It didn’t work, did it?” She sadly replies, “Of course it didn’t work.  Very much.” Yet a good deal of the play is about what is not said; it helps that director Jess Chayes’s choice of music sets the proper tone.

Thankfully, Moyer offers hope in the end for the lovers. After much fear and reluctance Annie does open up and allows Gabe into her heart. There’s a possibility for them to find a true connection.

Lesser America’s production of Half Moon Bay runs through June 4 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m.; there is an additional performance on Wednesday, May 18, at 8 p.m. For tickets, which are $19, call OvationTix at (866) 811-4111 or visit www.cherrylanetheatre.org/onstage/half-moon-bay.

An Ideal Betrayal

As Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s 2012 revision of his play The Judas Kiss, Rupert Everett has found the role of his career. Though he’ll always be more famous for films such as My Best Friend’s Wedding, his terrific performance in the production visiting BAM helps resurrect a play by the prolific author of Plenty and Skylight that had less impact in its Broadway debut in 1998. 

Neil Armfield's staging has given Hare’s play the heft of real tragedy. The Judas Kiss is set at two pivotal points in Wilde’s life: the first act takes place the day he is arrested at the Cadogan Hotel for gross indecency, following the collapse of his 1895 libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde’s younger lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie. The second takes place two years later, after Wilde has left prison and has settled with Bosie in Naples, living hand-to-mouth.

In both halves Wilde is seen to undermine his own best interests, all for the love of Bosie, played by Charlie Rowe as an arrogant, narcissistic worm in a light blue suit. (Costume designer Sue Blane clearly knows her stuff; it’s a color long associated with homosexuals.) The first act revolves around Wilde’s refusal to leave England, even as his old friend and ex-lover Robbie Ross (Cal MacAninch) urges him to. Yet Wilde foolishly won’t take the carriage that awaits to spirit him to the Continent.

Instead, Wilde tries his best to be unflappable, tossing off witticisms and demanding a meal of lobster before the police arrive to arrest him. Everett handles the timing and the wit with ease, and he’s physically right as well: tall, and in a fat suit, a bit stout, just like Wilde. He claims to foresee what is going to happen, yet, he says, “I have always had a low opinion of what is called action.” It's a witticism that contradicts his reckless decision to sue Queensberry for libel after being called a “sodomite.” Nonetheless, Everett inhabits the contradictions, the wit, the passion and the foolishness, in a multifaceted, riveting performance.

He’s equally as good in Act II, sitting almost the whole time in a straw hat and lap blanket on a chair in Naples. He and Bosie are in a lowdown hotel, and Bosie is picking up tricks. Tom Colley as an Italian fisherman is one of them; he spends most of his considerable stage time demonstrating that he has no body fat whatsoever. The frank nudity contrasts neatly with the scene that opens the play, when Alister Cameron’s dryly indulgent concierge Moffatt discovers his staffers, Arthur and Phoebe (Elliot Balchin and Jessie Hills), having sex in the darkened room taken by the Wilde entourage. Before Arthur leaves, Moffatt says they must have a talk about the situation later. Twisting a towel around his hand and snapping it ever so slightly, as if it were a riding crop, he warns, “I shall need to reprimand you in person.” His sexual impulses are glimpsed for only a moment, but it’s typical of Armfield’s detail. The contrast between the unruffled acceptance of heterosexuality vs. the disdain for homosexuality, as well as English repression vs. the later Italian vigor, enriches the story.

Hare is one of Britain’s most political playwrights, so barbs aimed at the class system are inevitable. Bosie is an aristocrat who naturally abuses the staff and loudly opposes Robbie’s common sense by insisting his highly placed acquaintances in the House of Lords will pull strings for Wilde. They don’t.

Moreover, Wilde and Bosie are only two sides of a love triangle. MacAninch invests the dapper, punctilious Robbie with an almost palpable unrequited affection for Wilde. His yearning makes their parting the most moving moment in the play. And Wilde behaves cruelly to Robbie, yet Robbie takes it with only the subtlest objection. 

Wilde is not, however, so blind that he cannot see Bosie’s callowness. When the arrogant youth declares, “I am already the greatest non-narrative poet in English,” Wilde flashes a scowl that’s priceless. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch for Hare to cast Wilde as a Christ figure, but it’s not hammered at heavily. The kiss of the title quickly follows, as Bosie has been bought out by an allowance from his parents and has packed his bags. The last glimpse of Everett’s Wilde, throwing his head back and laughing uncontrollably, hints at a classic architecture. He has given up everything for a young man who didn’t really love him; and he has sent away the man who did. The first act is tragedy; the second is farce.

David Hare’s The Judas Kiss plays through June 12 at BAM Harvey Theater (30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Place and St. Felix St. in Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets start at $30. Visit www.bam.org/theater for information. 

High on the Buy

Shoes and Baggage is a wildly entertaining one-woman show that explores shopping, and life. Written and performed by stage veteran Cheryl Stern (whose Broadway credits include La Cage aux Folles and The Women) and directed by Joe Barros, both actor and director do a marvelous job of using the cell theater, a small space that is more of a theater in the rectangle than the round. Nonetheless, all seats are good, and musical director John Dipitino’s soundtrack, performed by a two-man band with drum, keyboard and guitar, adds pizzazz and drive to the performance, but don’t overwhelm the diminutively sized actress.

Stern hits the nail on the head when she reveals her conflicted relationship to shopping. She manages a delicate balance between revealing the inner turmoil as well as the ameliorating effects of shopping during some of life’s more difficult moments. The dialogue is intimate but not, as kids today say, TMI (too much information). A self-confessed connoisseur of clothing, shoes and baggage, she recalls her experiences buying her first Louis Vuitton bag and to “buy, or not to buy” a pair of Louboutins that cost as much as her weekly paycheck.

Weaving in past experiences that go all the way back to childhood with more contemporary experiences, Stern does a fantastic job. She touches on relationships that have influenced and informed her appreciation for clothing. Two in particular are with Rena and Karen, whom she remains fast friends with in life and shopping. When Stern first meets Rena in a college acting class, she is completely taken by her. Dressed in a rabbit fur coat, Rena is “urban-sexy in a Bianca Jagger sort of way.” It turns out Rena can’t act but the two form a bond. Akin to this relationship is the one she forms with Karen while out walking her dog one day. Karen is a former Ford model and disco queen and, when they meet, the ad director of Vogue. They embark on many shopping excursions and Karen verses her in the world of couture.

Stern’s play is also an autobiographical account of her experience as an actress. She hilariously renders her experience as a cast member of The Women, a Broadway production that included Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Tilly and Kristen Johnston. She forms an unlikely bond with Tilly, who has a great appreciation for unusual jewelry and fashion. When Stern compliments Tilly on some rings she’s wearing, she captures Tilly’s relaxed and off-the-cuff cadence with her reply: “Super-cute, right?” They become friends with an appreciation for fashion, and after one particular shopping spree, nearly miss curtain call.

It’s not only the wild forays into shopping that Stern captures, but the addictive nature of it. While trying to return a sweater at a high-end retail store, she ends up leaving with a pair of pants and a top, in addition to the sweater she initially goes in to return. When she sings: “High, totally high from the buy…,” it explains the thrill of going home with new purchases. But then, when she feels compelled to hide them in the closet so her husband won’t see them, there’s the shame in knowing that they exceed her budget, and she failed in returning a sweater that wasn’t really perfect after all.

Stern outlines the way shopping can alleviate some of the stress that occurs in life. When friends get sick with cancer, or lose their jobs, or her father is in the hospital after a heart attack, shopping and an appreciation for clothing, shoes and baggage somehow make the moments more bearable. Yet, as Stern grows older, she comes to recognize that shopping is an addiction as serious as any other. She sings “High, totally hooked on the high, take another hit, like breathing air, oh the lure of what to wear.” Through Debtors Anonymous and self-help books filled with daily affirmations she comes to terms with the fact that shopping is only a high, and not a real antidote to life’s problems. It’s uncertain how she will live without the “high of the buy,” she says, but it seems like it’s time to try and face the music of her addiction, and let that “good buy” go.

Shoes and Baggage, is playing at the cell, 338 West 23^rd St. (between 8^th & 9^th avenues) through June 3.^. Take A/C/E train to 8^th Ave at 23^rd Street. Evening performances are at 7 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. No late seating is permitted. Tickets are $35. For more information, call (646) 861-2253, visit www.thecelltheatre.org.

No Regrets

The world premiere of Rising Circle Theater Collective’s production This Time, written by Sevan K. Greene and adapted in part from Amal Meguid's memoir Not So Long Ago, is an extraordinary example of juggling multiple timelines with exacting deftness. The storylines weave in and through one another, much like a memory comes in and out of consciousness. The underlying theme? A life of no regrets.

Delphi Harrington is brilliant as Amal, an overbearing, ethnic mother, one who professes to want only the best for her child but has a distinct opinion about everything. She exhibits the mannerisms and inflections of an older, well-traveled woman. Salma Shaw as her divorced daughter, Janine, comes to her aid when she has broken her arm bringing her home with her to recover. Janine is attempting to pack up her own home to put it on the market, downsize, and restart her life.

In flashbacks to 30 years earlier, the younger Amal, played by Rendah Heywood, meets a charming man-about-town, Nick (Seth Moore), at a party in Cairo. Heywood is cocktail-party elegant as she employs aloofness to counter Nick’s advances.

Nick: “Alone?”
Amal: “Married.”
Nick: “Happily?”
Amal: “Married.”
Nick: “Unfortunate.”

She eventually succumbs, wanting to be free of the oppression she feels in Egypt, yet comes to struggle with Nick’s life choices. 

A scene near the end has each of the four main actors taking a seat at the dining table, eating and arguing across one another, and at times sharing the same line. The actors’ timing is impeccable in this charged interaction, demonstrating a fluidity of movement between decades that brings the play alive. 

Amal: “You’re leaving.
Younger Amal: “I’m leaving.”
Nick: “You could use a break.”
Younger Amal: “I said I’m leaving.” Amal: “I said you’re leaving.”
Nick: “Good.” Janine: “Good.”
Younger Amal: “No, Nick, I want a divorce.”
Amal: “And what about me?”

The direction by Kareem Fahmy keeps the action moving smoothly  between decades. At times Amal remains onstage, as an observer, while her younger self and Nick interact. In one touching scene she “feels” Nick holding and whispering to her, as if she were the younger Amal, with the younger Amal standing just to the side, also experiencing Nick. 

Ahmad Maksoud dexterously plays multiple characters, including an Egyptian shopkeeper; Amal’s son, Hatem; and Janine’s younger love interest, Tom. Together, the cast brings the story of This Time to life using English, Arabic, and French. Their accents are delicious. 

Designer David Esler’s set of a house in Toronto circa 1990s transitions easily to an apartment in Cairo roughly 30 years earlier. The Toronto house is split-level with a dining room, kitchen doorway, and entry hall, stairs to a second floor, and a sunken living room. Employing five panels, scenic backgrounds transition from the skyline of Egypt to the coast of Rhode Island and winter in Toronto, gently helping to delineate location and time. 

The settings are enhanced by the sound design of Mark van Hare, from the opening sound of Edith Piaf modulating from house music to the distinct sounds of a phonograph playing in the living room. The costumes designed by Sarafina Bush are bold and smart.

Two quibbles. First, although the lighting by Scott Bolman is generally quite effective, it sometimes results in actors’ obscuring one another in shadow. It may be the result of a lack of technical rehearsal, but it can be distracting. Second, the end of the play is abrupt. The ever-giving Janine, whose children have grown and whose husband has gone, is at odds with her purpose in the world. “This is supposed to be my time,” she cries. “What the hell do I need?” The end is meant to feel generational, almost as if passing a baton from a strong woman to another strong woman; Nick’s presence is a distraction.

Too often, it seems, modern playwrights are challenged with creating a strong enough arc to engage an audience for two acts, instead relying on one long act. That is not the case with This Time. Greene’s storytelling is compelling and fresh, with engaging narratives. Piaf may have said it best, though: “As you leave, I can say, no, we will have no regrets.”

This Time is playing through May 21 at The Sheen Center’s Black Box Theater (18 Bleecker St. between Mott and Elizabeth streets). B/D/F/M trains to Broadway/Lafayette stop. For more information and tickets, contact The Sheen Center or visit sheencenter.org.

'Hommage' to an Idiot

Idiot, now at the lovely main space at HERE, is a feast of multimedia effects. With crisscrossed Persian carpets forming aisles that divide the audience into four quarters, video panels above, and heated Oriental rhythms in the background, the story unfolds. How to capture the innocence and depths of the epileptic Prince Lev Myshkin, portrayed by Daniel Kublick, in this theatrical version of and hommage to the great Dostoevsky novel? With a script that focuses on the tempestuous relations of four key characters of the Dostoevsky work; with philosophical riffs; with inventive use of video, light, and sound; with song, dance, gesture and interaction with the audience! This is immersive theater, a specialty at SoHo’s HERE, an award-winning theater organization devoted to the support of new work that cuts across artistic disciplines. Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues was developed at HERE.

If romantic triangles usually involve a triad, the triangle in this case has four corners: the lascivious Parfyon Rogozhin is obsessed by Nastasya Filippovna. Her hand in marriage, however, is also sought by the Prince who is, at the very same time, in love with the vivacious Aglaya Epanchin. The central conflict of the play, then, concerns the Prince’s love for both women.

The fallen, dissolute, but proud Nastasya Filippovna, fetchingly portrayed by Purva Bedi, disdains money (at one point she throws 100,000 rubles of Rogozhin’s money into a fire) and sees through the lies of others no less than the mind-reading Prince himself, who loves her “out of pity.” Lauren Cipoletti plays Aglaya. Also loved by the gentle Prince, and a beauty of good family standing, Aglaya shares much with him, including a great love of children. The blue-eyed, soulful and energetic Prince Myshkin, beautifully performed by Daniel Kublick, is the “idiot” of the title. 

Rogozhin is played with verve and flourish by Merlin Whitehawk. The audience is treated to extremes of passion of the most brutal and delicate varieties; a motif of execution to emphasize the underlying question of life, its purpose and the experience of it; as well as the stormy relations among a virgin-harlot dyad (the female characters), a lecherous drunk, and an invalid Prince who is spiritual and hardly of this world.

This is the third partnering of Robert Lyons (text) and Kristin Marting (director and choreographer) in the adaptation of a work by Dostoevsky. And theirs is a rollicking and “immersive” production, to say the least. The point of immersive theater is to move past the limits of merely “watching” a staged production in order to create an experience that is more active, richer, and, presumably, deeper by “immersing” the audience in multiple theatrical effects. Always, the question must finally be asked, what exactly was accomplished by all of these theatrical goings-on?

There were arresting moments in this production. On several occasions, the sound of the Prince’s speech is engineered so that his words are somewhat muffled and have the distant sound of an echo, brilliantly suggesting the interiority of his spoken thoughts. At another point, the Prince is deeply moving as he wanders among the audience, accosts individual audience members and soliloquizes on the subject of human love, bringing some in his audience to tears.

But, for the most part, inventive use of video, gesture and dance, the dramatic story and interludes of deeper rumination do not, finally, cohere to immerse us in anything more than that spectacle itself. We are entertained but, finally, not enlarged in the course of this production.

It is unfair to require the depth of spiritual exploration and of character that is the greatness of the large and rambling Dostoevsky novel. This is another work entirely, in another genre entirely. The achievement of Dostoevsky cannot be condensed into a mere 75 minutes. But it is not unfair to ask that the heart and soul be moved in the course of those 75 minutes and, given the extremes of human feeling and experience brought into view, moved deeply. That, one would hope, is the real goal of the best work in experimental immersive theater.

Idiot plays through May 21 at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Ave.; entrance on Dominick Street). Performances are at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.here.org or by calling (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5 p.m. until curtain on show days).

The Secret's Out

Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey is a delicious observation of a well-lived, if secret, life that is easily enjoyable even if one hasn’t heard of the subject. A writer, illustrator, and animator who is best known for his macabre cartoon books for children, such as The Doubtful Guest and The Unstrung Harp, and the opening graveyard credits of the PBS series Mystery!, Gorey left a treasure trove of ephemera and memorabilia when he passed away in 2000. Drawing from 1,074 items in Gorey’s home, writer and director Travis Russ has crafted an engaging script, assembled a trio of charming and vibrant actors and a production team that bring to life a vision of the artist, brimming with creativity. 

Phil Gillen, Aidan Sank, and Andrew Dawson play Gorey at three stages of his life: in his early 20s after college, in his late 30s, and just before his death, in his mid-70s. They interact easily with one another and occasionally break the fourth wall to address the audience. Although the dialogue carries an undercurrent of “What would you tell your younger self?” it has much more to it.

In one instance, it’s clear the older Gorey (Dawson) knows the answers to the younger Gorey’s query but won’t say, leaving the younger version (Gillen) visibly shaken. In the moments where the older Gorey relives events from earlier days, Dawson shines. Sank, the middle-aged Gorey, delves into the collection of vintage postcards of dead children with curiosity and deference. What is unique about the actors is that all three share similarities, including mannerisms and inflections. However, each delivers the attributes of the character in keeping with his period of Gorey’s life.

Russ and Carl Vorwerk, who designed the set, fill the intimate space with memorabilia, creating an atmosphere in keeping with Gorey’s collecting habits. Three tall, open-shelving units are filled with leather traveling cases, LPs (including Balanchine, a Gorey favorite), a Harvard scarf, and a myriad of notebooks. The back wall is complete with hundreds of 8½” x 11 sheets of paper with Gorey’s drawings and writings.

Lighting and projection designer John Narun uses the wall  to display videos including a clever projection where the elder Gorey “climbs” into a white frame and draws moving characters on the wall. Narun’s lighting is brilliantly crisp and dramatic. At times it is so striking that, when Gillen and Sank are seated around the writing table, their shadows on the back wall subtly appear to move in and out from a single person. Sound designer Emma Wilk with music arrangement by Chad Stoffel have an absolutely blast with an old phonograph using music from the 1940s as well as creative sound effects, in particular for the 8mm film projection.

 

Gorey was known for his passion for cats, and in his later years wrote puppet shows complete with libretto. In homage, Russ writes for the elder Gorey: “I’m currently working on Madama Butterfly. It’s just community theater, but it fills the days. Now, I must warn you, this is not your standard, traditional Madama Butterfly. It is a modern—slightly bastardized—version. Very pastiche.” He goes on to say that the part of Madama Butterfly is played by a homeless Abyssinian cat, here created by puppetry designer Elizabeth Ostler and manipulated by Gillen and Sank.

There is a moment or two near the end where Gorey falters and seems unsure where it should end. The scenes and transitions linger a little too long, and it’s evident that the play is winding down, but when? Having used a voice-over interview previously, the use of it again seemed redundant for the finale.

For the greater part of the evening, Gorey is smart and cleverly crafted from the things the quixotic artist left behind. Gillen, Sank, and Dawson make the absolute most with the great material provided, as well as one another, in a well-equipped playground. Even seated with their backs to a third of the house, they never forget the audience, engaging them at every turn. The young Gorey enjoys one of the best lines, “You know, my friend Ted Shawn, the choreographer—he used to say, “When in doubt, twirl.” Gorey never has to resort to twirling.

Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey is playing at HERE, 145 Avenue of the Americas through May 22. (Entrance is on Dominick Street one block south of Spring Street.). Take C/E trains to Spring Street stop. Tickets are $18, For more Information and tickets, visit  www.LifeJacketTheatre.org or here.org, or call 212-352-3101. 

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

The Marvelous Wonderettes, a 2008 jukebox musical that is being revived at Theater Row, shows how far women have come since the days of the Drifters, with naive bobby-socksers at the high school gym lost in crinolines and pink. Roger Bean’s playful show features a nostalgic storyline that spans the decade 1958-68 as it focuses on the lives of four women in high school and then, in the second act, at their 10-year reunion.

Christina Bianco plays the bossy, fiery Missy, who is in love with their teacher, Mr. Lee. Kathy Brier is Suzy, happily in love. Jenna Leigh Green is the vamp, Cindy Lou, and Sally Schwab portrays the ever-duped-in-love Betty Jean. Each character represents a different aspect of women’s issues, whether it’s marriage, work, or loyalty, and the story follows the evolution of women’s rights. As the girls weave their narrative of life since the high school prom around the lyrics of the old favorites straight from the American Bandstand Top 10 charts, the audience gets a sparkling overview of women’s struggles to make their dreams come true.

Under the direction of Tom and Michael D’Angora, the top-notch cast share a glimpse at that journey as they deliver the lyrics of the oldies but goodies, such as “Leader of the Pack” and “Son of a Preacher Man.” The production is full of color and glitz; it feels like memory—the way the mind’s eye makes it pretty and delusional about how simpler the times were then. It is not a thought-provoking, deep show, even though Bean hits on some serious themes, such as women coming together in sisterhood rather than being pulled apart by the social forces that have often oppressed them, though the themes are not fully realized yet.

The women sing with superb harmony (the musical director is William Wade) and dance, perfectly synchronized, to the choreography of Alex Ringler. The well-rehearsed moves work beautifully as the women swirl in their jelly-bean-colored prom dresses, created by Bobby Pearce. All the chiffon and crinoline in rhythm with the music makes an audience sway and bask in the joy of more innocent times. 

William Davis has designed a crisp, clean set of right angles and Day-Glo colors—exactly what is remembered of those halcyon days. With family-friendly slapstick, the direction is perhaps a bit too over-the-top in its pantomimed physicality, but at the same time it is faithful to the period variety shows like those of Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason.

The high school competition between Cindy Lou and Betty Jean over the unseen, two-timing Johnny has the potential to make some important points about women and how they are pitted against one another because of society’s codes, but as yet isn’t strong enough. This becomes more obvious in the second act, when the girls come back to perform at the 10-year high school reunion. A very pregnant Cindy Lou, crying her woes over a faithless husband, embodies the issue of staying committed to a marriage and raising a family in an unhappy union.

Meanwhile, Missy, who is still trying to catch Mr. Lee and yet hold onto her own identity, is a clear reflection of the issues of independence women faced during this period. As the girls rally around her and berate the unawares Mr. Lee (played by an audience member brought on stage), reminding him that “He doesn’t own her,” the ladies improvise terrifically.

This is a classy production with a group of very talented young women. Although it’s a fun blast from the past, we really have come a long way, baby.

The Marvelous Wonderettes is playing at the Kirk Theatre (410 W 42^nd St.) in an open-ended run. Evening performances are at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit http://www.theatrerow.org/kirknowplaying or call (212) 239-6200.

Bringing Home the Bread

Six men who work in a bread factory call themselves “bread plant operatives,” a glamorous, James Bondian phrase to describe a life of working-class burden, in Richard Bean’s Toast. First staged in 1999 and now revived at 59E59 Theaters as part of Brits Off-Broadway, with Snapdragon Productions, Bean’s freshman play is littered with such comeuppances to the class divisions inherent in British society. Its main players are blue-collar breadwinners (and bread-makers) who live paycheck to paycheck; they are given to cursing creatively, and often, about their jobs, their wages and their “lasses.” Bread isn’t the only thing that’s baking in Toast; director Eleanor Rhode imbues nervous energy into a production that proves both raucously entertaining and moving. 

It’s the 1970s, and a side-burned Blakey (Steve Nicolson), the foreman at the Rosedale Street Bakehouse, is clocking in. In the canteen, he (obviously) makes himself a cup of tea, before grudgingly greeting Colin (Will Barton), a harrumphing, middle-aged man with strike wages to complain about. Three other players also enter: Peter (Matt Sutton), a talkative young man with an ambitious itch; Cecil (Simon Greenall), an ever-smiling, avuncular bread-maker and Dezzie (Kieran Knowles), a former ship’s deckhand with a new home, and incidentally, a loving wife who takes hot-water baths—a luxury in their lives. Lumbering through these life-threads is Nellie (Matthew Kelly), a bread mixer at the factory for 30 years and the type of man who works ceaselessly and unquestioningly till senescence overtakes him. 

At the behest of his (unseen, yet somehow still present) boss Mr. Beckett, Blakey takes a student called Lance (John Wark) under his wing. Immediately out of place in his tweed jacket and crisp, affable accent, Lance is an outsider in the blue-collar bubble of the bread factory. We, like Lance, slowly grow accustomed to the spirited slang of Northern English accents: “‘Kinell!” “Are you pulling my plonker?” He might as well be from another country, as the audience is, and still feel the same rift in social connection. The other workers immediately nickname him “Sir Lancelot.” But in due course, Lance begins to tease and pull at Toast’s existential strings; class conflict is negated in the face of wanting to live a meaningful life, it seems. 

All are worried, some violently so, that the factory’s central oven will break down and put them all out of work. When a tin inside the oven gets jammed, tempers flare and panic sets in. It’s indicative of the weight and salience these men afford their jobs. To say that Nellie’s work is his life seems a conflation of identities—his life’s work is baking bread. His legacy is baking bread. A threat to their labor, which shares so intimate a friendship with life for these characters, is tantamount to sacrilege. “The bakehouse is my church,” says Blakey, for there is no other arena of life that exists so dependably, and so religiously, as his work at the bread factory. 

Unsurprisingly, Bean’s particular brand of screwball satire, most famously shown in One Man, Two Guv’nors, is found only in shades here. Peter and Cecil carry on a balls-grabbing competition; Blakey gives his crotch a great deal of unconscious comic readjustment as well. Yet for all of Toast’s good humor, farce gives way to a darkly spiritual kitchen-sink drama.

Rhode’s trump card is Matthew Kelly’s devastatingly haunting portrayal of Nellie, the ever-laboring, broken yes-man. Arms varicose with dermatitis and lungs heaving with cigarette smoke, Nellie’s monosyllabic dialogue leaves plenty of room for an actor of Kelly’s ability to indulge in invention, and he does not disappoint. Even Kelly’s deadpan stares take on uncomfortable, survivalist meaning. Is his reticence keeping him sane as he mixes bread day in and day out, year after year? John Wark’s Lance is a chattering antithesis of sorts to Nellie’s silence, yet has the most trouble keeping his wits about him as the play proceeds. 

The fairly stifling vacuum of factory life, so apparent in the nervous, chaotic conversations of the characters, is almost nonexistent in the physical space that Toast occupies. Set designer James Turner has made the canteen a blinding white and pastel blue; stark white light bathes the canteen (Mike Robertson is the lighting designer) almost constantly. Swinging doors lead out towards the factory, while a Max Pappenheim’s constant soundtrack of grinding machinery plays behind each performance. Holly Rose Henshaw has provided appropriately understated clothes that affirm the greatest concern of the characters: their job. 

But spread on every open surface is a fine film of white flour. It sticks to the walls, on door handles and the forearms of the workers—it is the non-erasable costume that the characters wear, reminders of their station. Matt Sutton’s Peter hastily wipes every chair before sitting down on it, but it manages to stick to his bell-bottomed jeans all the same. 

Richard Bean’s Toast runs in the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59^th St., between Park and Madison avenues) through May 22. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday at 7 p.m. and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $70. To purchase them, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.59e59.org.  

Vive ‘Le Dingdong’!

Director Hal Brooks unbridles five actors in The Dingdong, Mark Shanahan’s updated adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s 1896 farce Le Dindon. He propels it even further into the absurd by having those five actors bring to charming, boisterous and nuanced life 12 distinct characters.

The farce begins with Lucy Vatelin (Rachel Botchan), a married woman, attempting to slam the door on an overzealous suitor, Pontegnac (Bradford Cover). With Pontegnac’s arm and leg precariously lodged in the door, she is leaning against it, insisting he go away. “Everyone this side of the Seine heard you shout that you wanted to make passionate love to me!” she complains loudly, while screaming for her husband to save her. Unfortunately, Pontegnac is an old friend of her husband (Chris Mixon). 

Lucy has another suitor, Redillon (Brad Heberlee), who calls on her as well. With Vatelin out of the room taking a business call, Redillon and Pontegnac square off. Meanwhile, Mme. Pontegnac (Kelley Curran), suspecting her husband's infidelity, has followed him to the Vatelins’ home, where Lucy, worn down, makes a pact with Pontegnac, agreeing to have an affair with him if her husband should ever be unfaithful. Pontegnac knows full well he hasn't been.

The first-act characters include Fabiola (also Curran) as Vatelin’s Italian lover, who has traveled to Paris (with her Hungarian husband) to find him and profess her love. The second act introduces even more, at The Hotel Ultimus, with doors slamming, a 17-year-old bellboy and a Parisian policeman (both played by Heberlee), luggage mix-ups, a French chambermaid, an old, practically deaf woman (Botchan) with uncontrollable flatulence, and a New Yorker named Mandy (Curran).

Two multifaceted performers capture the pure essence of farce in their multiple roles. Kelley Curran bursts onto the stage as the epitome of a sophisticated, bold Frenchwoman and shortly after reappears as an Italian lover with all the bravado of an early Sophia Loren. Act II opens with Curran as Mandy and, only to outdo herself, she closes the play as a fetching French maid. Wigs, costumes and shoes take an actor only so far in a role—Curran is each character.

Heberlee is also a delight, energetically embodying three characters—the flamboyant, sex-driven Redillon (who is a doppelgänger to Feydeau), the bellboy and the policeman. It is his role as Redillon in Act I, at one moment writhing on the floor and professing his love to Lucy, and in the next attempting to explain to Vatelin why he is on the floor (he is cleaning, after all) that is the most endearing. During the standoff with Pontegnac the actors pose like two preening cocks in the farmyard, arguing who is the greater lothario (“I would never discuss matters of intimacy with another man’s wife”).

Cover appears to have the most difficulty playing multiple characters, relying on his best Tim Conway impression, at times shuffling or gasping before each line. Act I finds him and Botchan in awkward and unnecessary movements with odd pacing.

Designing a 1938 French townhouse, Sandra Goldmark uses striking black and white striped walls, a sunrise-yellow floor, and tone-on-tone fabric chaises for Act I. Lighting designer Mike Inwood adds a wonderful layer of sunlight streaming through a lattice window. In Act II, at the Hotel Ultimus, there are bright green and yellow panels with a matching headboard and bedspread. A brief set change and the scene becomes the Honeymoon Suite of the Hotel Rue Cromartin, where the stagehands, decked out à la Marcel Marceau, replace the fabric with bright red floral patterns, as well as a painting of the Eiffel Tower.

Working in concert with the set designer, costumer Amy Clark mixes and matches contrasting colors and patterns. Her attention to detail with smart wigs and colorful hats, down to gartered socks and Redillon’s man-about-town look, is like pure icing on a Pimm’s Cup cupcake from Prohibition Bakery.

George Feydeau is one of the most famous writers of bedroom farce, and Mark Shanahan’s adaptation is a remarkable homage. Witty banter, along with exaggerated physicality, are at the heart of The Dingdong. Even the most pursed lip might be cajoled to laugh out loud.

Performances run through May 15 at the Pearl Theatre, 555 West 42nd St., (212) 563-9261. Tickets are $65 regular, $85 premium ($40 members, $20 student rush, $20 Thursday rush). Visit pearltheatre.org for specific dates and times.

Laughs, Both Light and Hearty

By the time that Richard Brinsley Sheridan premiered The School for Scandal at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1777, the era of licentious, innuendo-ridden Restoration comedies had long passed. So, too, had the more recent heyday of sentimental comedies, which sanitized the dirty-minded plots and dialogues of the Restoration in order to produce what Sir Richard Steele called “a pleasure too exquisite for laughter.” With its good-hearted lovers and amoral gossips, Sheridan’s The School for Scandal fell somewhere between Restoration and sentimental comedy. Red Bull Theatre’s production of Scandal, directed by Marc Vietor, delightfully balances this classic play’s sweet, charming love story and its bawdy, boisterous comic gags.

Examining the foibles of 18th-century British society, The School for Scandal weaves several plot lines together.  First, there is a salon of gossips, led by Lady Sneerwell, who keep a collective ear to the ground for any and every morsel of news about town. Lady Teazle, the young wife of Sir Peter, is one of Sneerwell’s lackeys and is becoming dangerously flirtatious with Mr. Joseph Surface. He and his brother, Charles, are vying for the love of Maria; but while Joseph is after her family fortune, his financially ruined yet idealistic brother truly loves her. Meanwhile, the brothers’ uncle, Sir Oliver, returned from the East Indies, decides to observe his nephews’ affairs in disguise. 

Known for its curation of historical works with heightened language, Red Bull Theater is a venerated and well-supported Off-Broadway institution. The production values of Scandal’s costumes, lighting, and set design are remarkably high. Anna Louizos’s functional and dynamic set beautifully absorbs the precise lighting design by Russell H. Champa. Louizos and Champa take few risks in their designs, but this simplicity suitably frames the more ornate costumes and acting.

The wigs and costumes by hair designer Charles G. LaPointe and costume designer Andrea Lauer are themselves characters in this show. LaPointe’s wig creations for the play’s active gossips (including Lady Sneerwell, Mr. Snake, Lady Teazle, and Mrs. Candour) are as overdone and extravagant as the stories these characters fabricate in their salons. Lauer takes some historical liberties with her costume design, such as Mr. Midas’s mobster look and Lady Sneerwell’s leopard-print bodice, but her real shining moment is in her selection of colors and textures. Lustrous brocades, sparkling lace trimmings, dainty rosettes: down to the last detail, Lauer’s costumes take center stage in every scene. Viewers will delight in the curtain call, when the entire costume design comes together, revealing a veritable rainbow of characters.

This is not to say that the actors are upstaged by the resplendent costumes. On the contrary, the cast brings forth a delightful, stylized, and measured ensemble performance. This is an especially formidable accomplishment because of Sheridan’s love of soliloquies, which offer an actor plenty of opportunities to ham it up at the expense of other cast members. Each actor takes his shining moment, but no character seems to be pulling all the comic or dramatic weight.

As Sir Peter Teazle and Lady Teazle, Mark Linn-Baker and Helen Cespedes manage to elicit some likability amid their constant bickering. Though they are not so likable, the gaggle of society gossips is alternatively hilarious. Led by the Tony-nominated and Obie-winning Dana Ivey as Mrs. Candour, these colorful characters drum up energy and humor whenever the production begins to lull. Also notable are the vocal and physical comedic choices of Sir Benjamin Backbite (Ryan Garbayo), his uncle Mr. Crabtree (Derek Smith), and especially the foppish Mr. Snake (Jacob Dresch). Quadruple-cast in the small roles of Rufus, William, Hastings, and Trip, Ben Mehl manages to find a different delightful quirk for each servant.

Overall, Vietor’s direction emphasizes the skills of these well-trained actors, as well as the polished design elements. The infamous screen scene in Joseph's parlor is delightfully blocked for maximum ridiculousness. The pacing flows, and the jokes are well-timed.

The scenic transitions are their own little mini-vignettes. The production is, in a production sense, largely flawless. Paradoxically, the play's flawlessness is its only fault—and this is also the weakness of Sheridan’s genre. While it is nice to escape to a world in which good is good and bad is bad, the polished morality and well-made plot of The School for Scandal may feel too much like a fairy tale for a viewer to relate to it on a more personal level. Nonetheless, the production elicits laughs both light and hearty and is an excellent example of the genre.

Red Bull Theatre's The School for Scandal runs through May 8 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St. between Hudson and Bleecker). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available at the Red Bull Theatre’s website, redbulltheater.com, or by calling (212) 352-3101.

Sins of the Past

Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald’s When I Was a Girl I Used To Scream and Shout, directed by John Keating, at the Clurman Theater, captures the tensions that often exist between parents and children. In this case, the play centers on a mother’s attempt to reconcile with her daughter. Morag (pronounced “MORE-ag”), played primly with repressed exuberance by Aedin Moloney, treats her daughter, Fiona, to a seaside holiday on the Scottish coast—to the town where they once lived.

Morag has a difficult time connecting with Fiona, who, at 32, is childless and unmarried. Morag is upset that Fiona hasn’t given her any grandchildren and tells her that “every woman needs to have a child” and, later, “a woman’s body is a clock that runs down rapidly.” Fiona, played by Barrie Kreinik with the needed detachment that comes from a childhood of disappointment, is also a vegetarian, a lifestyle choice that her mother understands as little as her marriage and childless state. In John Keating’s production, Luke Hegel Cantarella’s simple set allows rapid scene changes between the past divisions and the present encounter of the two women. The whole is enhanced by the lilting music of Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains.

Morag talks a blue streak and, as Fiona says, “cares passionately about everything: life and a ham sandwich.” Morag has packed not only tea in a thermos, but coffee and a picnic basket full of sandwiches and other goodies. Morag is clearly prepared for the activities that people undertake in life, but not really for life itself. She has believed so firmly in the traditional institution of marriage that it led her to make choices that deeply affected Fiona. Five years after Fiona’s father left, she finally met a new man whose work will take him to the Middle East. Morag makes arrangements for Fiona to live with the family of her best friend, Vari, played with spunk by Zoe Watkins. But Fiona wants her mother to stay. After all, she’s only 15.

Morag, however, chooses the new man over her daughter, and while she’s making plans to leave, Fiona is looking for ways to make her stay. She finds what she thinks is a surefire solution: getting pregnant. Having explored her sexuality with Vari, Fiona lures Ewan (Colby Howell), a winsome boy a few years older than her, and one whom Vari had let kiss and fondle her, to the beach and tells him she’s ready to have sex. He’s eager to lose his virginity so willingly gives in. Fiona gets pregnant as a result of that encounter, but the plan backfires, and her mother still goes off with her new husband. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and Fiona’s sadness over her past abandonment engulfs her. We see why Fiona’s mother wants to reconcile with her daughter, but it’s very hard for people to change. Morag only knows one way: her way. Her ideas about life hang in delicate balance. If she didn’t believe in what she had done—choosing a husband (a man) over her daughter—life probably would have broken her.

In comparison to Fiona’s childhood friend Vari, who has let herself become fat as a result of an unsatisfying marriage and three children, Fiona is thin and independent. Vari calls Fiona a “privileged feminist.” However, in reality Fiona is haunted by the ghosts of the past. She carries her confusion and resentment silently into the present. At the end of the play, when her mother begs her to talk to her, Fiona sits stonily beside her, but the fight is gone. Perhaps the barriers of contention have finally been torn down on this seaside excursion. At least, the vision of the three women eating a soft ice cream and sharing a shot of whiskey indicates a ray of hope that the wounds of the past and the relationship between mother and daughter will eventually be repaired. 

Fallen Angel Theatre Company's production of When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout is playing through May 8 at the Clurman Theatre on Theater Row (410 W. 42nd St. between Ninth Avenue and Dyer Street). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $46.25; for more information visit fallenangeltheatre.org or telecharge.com.