Less Than Perfect

Last month, the a cappella musical In Transit opened Off-Broadway at 59E59. Although flawed, I found the show charming and amusing, as I said in my review for offoffonline. This month another a cappella musical, Perfect Harmony, opened at The Acorn on Theatre Row. It seems that the success of Glee has spawned a burgeoning theater subgenre: shows with singing but without instruments. In the case of Perfect Harmony, I’d have to say, unfortunately, without glee too. I’ll admit upfront that I am a huge Glee fan (aka a “Gleek”). And, to be fair, Perfect Harmony actually came before the hit FOX TV show, premiering at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival, with an extended run as part of the 2006 Fringe Encore Series. It also enjoyed a sold-out run at The Clurman on Theatre Row in 2008 (see earlier offoffonline review) and most recently spent four weeks out-of-town at the Stoneham Theater in Massachusetts.

Glee and Perfect Harmony share many similar plot points and devices: a high school setting; classic character types (jock, nerd, closeted gay guy, slut, virgin); novel vocal arrangements of popular songs from the past; even the road to a national championship for dueling singing groups. In the case of Perfect Harmony, those competitors from an elite private school are the 17-time champs, The Acafellas, and their less successful female counterparts, The Ladies in Red, now going by their new name, Lady Treble.

But where Glee is indeed gleeful in its depiction of high school misfits brought together by their shared love of music, Perfect Harmony is less so. While there are some funny bits and a few moments of genuine musical magic, Perfect Harmony goes overboard by burdening its characters with not-so-subtle quirks that quickly become tiresome, even annoying: the Type A leader of the girl group constantly spouts malapropisms; the backbone of the boy band is essentially mute; the in-the-shadows, pushover manager of Lady Treble suffers from Tourette’s; the squeaky-voiced Serbian spitfire sings the wrong lyrics to all the songs. You get the idea. All the characterizations are excessive. While many in the audience laughed at these forced eccentricities, many others groaned at their obviousness. Put me in the latter category.

That’s not to say that a show like Perfect Harmony needs to be anything more than what it essentially is: a musical mockumentary, and a campy one at that. As conceived and directed by Andrew Grosso, there is a lot of potential in Perfect Harmony. In particular, some of the vocal arrangements by musical directors Ray Bailey and Adam Wachter of cheesy ’80s tunes are fun and fresh. (I won’t list the musical numbers so as not to let the cat out of the bag for those of you who may want to see the show.) And Perfect Harmony is a ripe parody of such recent saccharine Disney hits as High School Musical and Camp Rock.

But casting actors who can sing instead of singers who can act is the biggest problem with Perfect Harmony. Where the songs should soar (think of the resplendent “Don’t Stop Believin’” from Glee), most fall flat. It is hard to believe that the Acafellas, with their corny choreography and only passable vocals, could have actually won a national singing competition. Lady Treble is even less successful in its singing sections.

Furthermore, in a town as rich with talent as New York, it would benefit the show greatly if the cast were closer in age to high schoolers than graduate students (or older). None of them, aside from Jarid Faubel, who plays goofy athlete JB, and Kelly McCreary, as gotta-dance, Jesus-loving Meghan, even embody teenage mannerisms or body language.

The enthusiastic Faubel and McCreary fare best in a cast that is underserved by a chatty script that should spend more time singing and less time talking. Trimming 15 to 20 minutes of dialogue would greatly help quicken the pace. Trimming some of the weak jokes would help too. At close to an hour and 45 minutes, Perfect Harmony, simply goes on too long, fizzling out with a lackluster finale.

According to the press release, the producers are planning to move the show to another space following the run at the Acorn (which ends next weekend on November 13). My advice would be to find an auditorium with better acoustics or mike the performers to add a little more energy to the songs. Right now the 199-seat space swallows up the voices instead of allowing them room to breathe. A smaller venue might be a better choice as well to bring the audience more into the action. And please cut the obscenity at the end of Kerri’s song at nationals — as the Lady Treble manager with hidden talent, Marie-France Arcilla has the best voice in the cast and that unnecessary curse spoiled her one moment in the spotlight. (Arcilla also does double duty as flamboyant vocal couch Tobi McClintoch, one of the best — and funniest — moments in the entire show.)

With the success of Glee, there is obviously an audience out there for a show like this. And Perfect Harmony already has fans as evidenced by their multiple successful runs, popular website, and Facebook page. I’m not sure if the show is still in development, but with some tweaks and some recasting, plus a bigger, bolder final number, Perfect Harmony could inch closer to perfection. As of now, it still has a long way go.

Lost Soul

What do you get when you cross a Chinese folktale with video and dance? In the case of Soul Leaves Her Body, a joint creation of director Peter Flaherty and director/choreographer Jennie MaryTai Liu, the result is an inspired meditation on loss and belonging. The seventy-five minute production is divided into three segments. The first, Ancient Story, a dance theater piece choreographed by Liu, provides an abbreviated telling of the original tale: an overambitious mother fails to recognize the depths of her daughter’s passion. As the daughter, Liu wears a beige dress so light it almost looks like crepe paper. Costume designer Wendy Yang Bailey dresses her suitor (Sean Donovan) and mother (Leslie Cuyjet) with a similar attention to lightness and minimalism; the costumes evoke age and status, while their pale, earthy hues are subtle and soft.

Color is added, instead, by video, designed by Austin Switser. Projected onto giant panels behind the actors, each onstage character has a video counterpart (Wai Ching Who, Rachel Lin, Howah Hung) dressed in a brightly colored, traditional Chinese costume. Set against sharp white backgrounds, their white face paint streaked with pinks and blues, the characters’ introductory video images resemble contemporary fashion shoots. That raises cool questions about how these folk characters function. What, exactly, do they model?

Onstage, the three performers deftly execute minimalist choreography and simple, expository text with a quiet intensity, evocative of the energies that pulse beneath the protagonist’s surface passivity. At times, the choreography and design elements converge to create textured tension, as when, ever so slowly, the young women and her suitor dance past one another. Projected onscreen behind them, two sets of hands exchange an inky note. Brandon Walcott’s sound design underscores the moment with music that sounds like a heartbeat.

The middle portion of the triptych-like production, Contemporary Story, consists almost entirely of film. Written and directed by Flaherty, and set in contemporary Hong Kong, the filmed segment of Soul Leaves Her Body follows three siblings as they struggle to make ends meet – and, tellingly, to find a home. Whereas her siblings (Suetmann Wong and Leslie Ho) play fast and loose, running scams and running away from them, Yan Yan (again, Liu) is more pensive, preferring alone time on the family’s rundown boat to the bustle of the city. Flaherty’s film is heavy on both starling close-ups (the garish pink and green of a mahjong table; the teeth of someone talking on the phone) as well breathtaking panoramic views of the Hong Kong cityscape, bolstering the production’s sense of dislocation.

In the final segment of Soul Leaves Her Body, the stylized performance conventions of the earlier pieces give way to a dramatic exchange more typical of black box realism (Liu and Wai Ching Ho discuss shared cultural histories and lost loves) despite the fact that Improvisation on Ancient Themes, by Xu Xi, is arguably the least realistic scene of any in the production. Exactly how these two women come to speak to each other is never clearly elucidated, though haunting matrilineal powers seem to have something to do with it. Unfortunately, drained of the performative conventions (dance, video, film) which so effectively gird the earlier pieces, this concluding segment falters, and the production’s power gets lost.

Until that point, the production is an exemplar not only of the rich textures created by skillful interdisciplinary collaboration but of the dynamic possibilities ancient stories offer to contemporary artists.

Visually Creepy

Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen, produced by the Extant Arts Company Company and adapted by Nemonie Craven, is both creepy and entertaining. The play is directed by Sophie Hunter, who is not at all timid when it comes to mixing multi-media with classic plays. Thank goodness that you can view the ultra-cool set by Flammetta Horvat before the show starts, or you might find yourself distracted by its very unique and disturbing elements: different length wires with working light bulbs attached dangle from the ceiling, hospital I.V. bags hang over numerous potted plants spanning the back of the stage, a transparent cage created out of fish wire maps out the main playing area and three television screens separate the stage in thirds, showing a flurry of images that echo the actors' interior feelings. The play opens with Jacob Engstrand (Chris Haag), a poor working man urging his daughter Regina (Justine Salata), a ward of the Alvings, to come live with him. Things pick up steam when Pastor Manders (Anthony Holds) and Helene (Mrs.) Alving (LeeAnn Hutchinson), two very skilled actors, take the stage. The judgmental Pastor soon learns the err of his ways as horrifying truths about Mrs Alving, Engstrand and her son Oswald's past get revealed. Oswald Alving, expertly played by Paulo Quiros, is home visiting his mother for a mysterious, “indefinite amount of time.” As Oswald comes into the picture later in the play, more shattering secrets get disclosed and “ghosts” seem to be the cause for many people’s torment.

All of the characters in the play have dynamic revealing monologues that are pivotal to the story and possess extreme suspenseful elements. Unusual and identifiable sounds (Asa Wember), TV footage and non-naturalistic staging are used to enhance the suspense and subtext of characters in moments and scenes. But pay attention, because I found myself at times overwhelmed by visual and audio stimulation and missed key plot points. One in particular is a sexually driven scene between Mrs. Alving and the Pastor which is staged with Mrs. Alving slow dancing with the Pastor with video screens playing the couple in pre-filmed romantic embraces. All this is done while Mrs. Alving unveils the truth of her gruesome marriage.

Sometimes tension, sexual or not, is more interesting without explanation. I would have been happy for simpler staging to just allow these talented actors to act. Quiros, as Oswald, does just that and the results are excellent as he expertly plays torment, sexual desire, rage and ill health. The final moment, beautifully played between Mrs. Alving and Oswald, allows the play to end with a “wow!”

Ghosts is a dynamic adaptation, but the multi-media elements at times overpower the actors. Sometimes, less is more.

Expats on Parade

Letter from Algeria, by Michael I. Walker, could be a comedy of manners save for the tragic turn at the end of the play, the subject of the letter in the title. But Walker, a writer with a great facility for witty dialogue filled with literary and pop-culture allusions, reaches for weightier stuff, and that’s a pity. A play that begins as an amusing romp, with a bit of mystery about all four characters thrown in to keep us on our toes, ends with a dirge of a monologue (the letter of the title) and a tragic ending that undermines the amusing manipulations of the first act. Tim (JD Taylor) and Walter (Patrick Murney), two American students on their year abroad in Brussels, Belgium, allow Hugo (Rufus Collins), heir to a waffle fortune, to treat them to expensive gifts, meals and trips to Paris and Amsterdam. Goaded on by Ali (Amanda Jane Cooper), an American acting student who seems to be the mistress of and procurer for the bisexual Hugo, the quartet travels to Hugo’s estate in Algeria, where a fatal misfortune visits Ali and Hugo.

The playwright invites the audience to a game of fast-paced scenes, driven mostly by the excellent, highly energetic Ali, who seduces, flirts, pouts, charms and bullies Walter, an innocent from a strict household (clearly the fish-out-of-water here); Tim, a homosexual with a secret that is never quite revealed; and finally Hugo from one hedonistic adventure to the next. Except nothing in this play is quite as it appears. Ali’s attempts to make Tim and Hugo jealous by sleeping – or pretending to have slept – with Walter fall flat in the face of Tim’s and Hugo’s lack of interest in her. And Hugo’s Algerian Shangri-La is surrounded by hostile natives.

What begins as an amusing farce (even the locale of the first act – a dorm room in Brussels – is funny as the direct opposite of a romantic European place) turns in the end into maudlin melodrama. Walker does not allow us into the lives of his characters – Hugo remains a complete cipher, Tim and Ali’s motivations, beyond their need for money, remain obscure, even the revelation that Walter’s parents have died in a car accident and that he writes letters home to assuage his anguish does not inspire sympathy for a character who otherwise remains a blank. With essential information about the characters withheld, and the pivotal events in the play happening off stage, the play does not earn the emotional weight it claims.

The production of Letter from Algeria, briskly directed by Adam Fitzgerald and beautifully designed by Travis McHale (set and lighting), Amanda Jenks (costumes), Alex Wise (composer), and Ian Wehrle (sound), and expertly acted, could be a triumph if the play did not collapse onto itself.

A New Office Speak

The Memorandum, written by Vaclav Havel and revived by The Actors Company Theater (TACT) after an almost 40 year Off-Broadway respite, is long overdue. If you are the kind of person that enjoys absurd satires in the styles of Ionesco, Pinter and comedy clown routines, then like me you’ll love this play. I can’t get enough of the repetitive patterns, the slamming doors, the lazzis, the Pinter-esque scenes, the constant status changes, and the seemingly appropriate, but actually outlandish office behavior. All this is molded together expertly by director Jenn Thompson. The play is set in a generic corporate office and begins with Gross, the managing director played by James Prendergast, opening an indecipherable office memo written in a complicated and less emotional language called “Ptydepe." This language, unbeknownst to a flabbergasted Gross, has been designated as the new language of the corporation. Gross’s attempts at getting the memo interpreted as well as questioning its purpose bring him only corporate mumble-jumble, and idiocy. The villainous deputy, Ballas, exceptionally played by Mark Alhadeff, carries out his underlying evil plot of sneaking in this new language. Things get especially comic when Ballas bounces of his silent sidekick, Pillar or Mr. P (Jeffrey C. Hawkins).

Kate Levy as Helena and Lynn Wright as Hana, whose eccentricities involve exit lines like, “ See ya later alligator” or constant hair fixing, add to the comic jumble. Almost all of the characters' main concern is to know what's on the lunch menu. Joel Leffert deserves special recognition as Lear, the teacher of “Ptydepe,” because he actually had to learn it, and he did so with skill.

The almost white set with its semi-transparent screens and slick furniture on wheels makes the multiple scene changes speedy. The projections and quirky sound design by Stephen Kunken and what I assume are original music compositions by Joseph Trapanese entertain and mimic the style of play.

At times I did want to see more a of a heated conflict between Gross (Prendergast) and the sneaky Ballas (Alhadeff), especially when Gross has the rug pulled out from under him. But Gross’s constant state of bafflement could have been the point.

Havel’s structure of the play has later scenes mirroring most earlier scenes and moments but with a new point view as roles shift. This becomes quite comical, adding to the satire when each new but familiar scene is recognized. The only characters that seem to have real feelings are Gross and Maria, played by the appealing Nilanjana Bose. Maria is a young poorly treated office assistant who Gross encourages to think for herself. A nice touch is Maria’s final exit, when she wears a yellow hat, symbolically rebelling against the pallet of black and grey office wear by costume designer David Toser.

This Eastern European play by the prominent Vaclav Havel was written during the communist period, so its satiric point had more to do with censoring and communication. Today, we also seem to be finding newer and colder ways to communicate via email, texting, Facebook, Twitter etc., which was the point of “Ptydepe." Thanks TACT for reviving this play after so long.

Talking Hearts

The Storm Theatre Company, together with the Blackfriars Repertory Theatre, presents Paul Claudel’s Noon Divide in an elegant, minimalist production co-directed by Peter Dobbins and Stephen Logan Day. Paul Claudel’s agony-filled ménage-à-quattre is given a competent reading in a theatre located, perhaps appropriately so, in the basement of the Church of Notre Dame on 114th Street. Noon Divide opens with the four characters - Ysé (Kate Chamuris), her husband De Ciz (Brian J. Carter), Mesa (Peter Dobbins, who also co-directs) and Amalric (Chris Kipiniak) - on the deck of an ocean liner on its way to China. Mesa and Amalric both have known and harbored passions for Ysé, while her marriage has lost the spark of passion. Several months later they are in Hong Kong, where De Ciz pursues, with ultimately fatal consequences, his love of money, leaving Ysé behind. Ysé and Mesa engage in a passionate relationship that leads to the birth of a child.

By act three, Ysé has left Mesa and joined Amalric, the earthiest of the three men. China is in the turmoil of the Boxer Uprisings, and Ysé and Amalric have prepared to blow up their house and themselves to avoid death at the hands of the rebellious Chinese. Mesa finds the two. A struggle ensues in which Amalric takes Mesa’s free pass but drowns trying to board the boat to freedom. Mesa and Ysé, in the final moments before the house blows up, come to reconciliation with each other.

Theater always involves translation – from text to stage, author’s intent to director’s concept, casting and scenic realization. In a play that originated in a foreign language and culture, such as this one, additional challenges arise. Will the poetry of Claudel’s writing, his framing of characters as archetypes, and his negotiation of the conflicts among them in long, rhetorical passages translate to a stage in a church basement in 2010? (Incidentally – no translator is credited in the program!).

The production here is respectful. The bare center stage with a starry-sky surround behind the audience allows for more movement than the directors use. The interesting sound design is subtle (too much so – indicating where it could provide substantial texture and even information), and the well-executed lighting provides atmosphere for each of the scenes.

However, rhetorical theater, with its long tradition in French theater, is not the strength of American actors. Chris Kipiniak, only slightly hampered by a too-tight suit that contrasts with his not so comical character, gives Amalric power and vocal presence, and Peter Dobbins as Mesa provides a serious performance that errs only in investing too much in the self-flagellation that Claudel offers as a form of love. Ysé has the thankless role of the Madonna-Whore who becomes the object of the three men’s projections, a character given little agency by its author. She is underplayed by Kate Chamuris, who looks the part, but only in brief moments in Act One gives her the vivacious energy that would explain her desirability to the men who adore and revile her, often in the same sentence.

I don’t know if a case can be made for the production of this play, with its psychologically, morally and even theologically questionable search for the reconciliation of the love of God with the love of the pleasures of the flesh. This production, keeping all the passion above the neck, fails to make the case. Mesa, as Claudel’s stand in, is too tortured (he suggests that Ysé is the cross he crucifies himself on). The middle act – set in a ruined graveyard – provides the most passionate language, but the directors chose not to invest in the physical possibilities of the scene, and as rhetoric it fails to generate the heat that would warm our talked-out hearts in this cool presentation.

Recreational Purposes

Oh what a difference a decade makes. When Reefer Madness: the Musical premiered in New York in October of 2001, its campy send-up of God, patriotism, and starchy clean Protestant values felt ill timed. The new musical, by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, had just run successfully in Los Angeles for over a year, and so a transfer to New York seemed like a logical step. Then came 9/11. The mood of the country shifted. Mocking America went ever so briefly out of vogue. Reefer Madness opened at The Variety Arts Theater to lukewarm reviews, and then closed quickly. Although the musical subsequently achieved greater successes – several international productions and a TV version soon followed – it didn’t make its way back to New York until now. This time around, Brooklyn’s Gallery Players has mounted Reefer Madness at a prescient moment in American politics. A tangled relationship to the country's cultural history is in the show's roots. Based on the 70’s cult classic film Reefer Madness, itself a re-cutting of the 1938 morality movie Tell Your Children, the musical addresses the evils of cannabis in a small American town. Tell Your Children was created to warn parents against the evils of “marihuana,” but any film in which a few joints drive people completely bonkers has the makings of a stoner comedy. The 70’s version, re-titled Reefer Madness, mocks the extremes of the original film, in which wholesome American teens go from quoting Shakespeare to becoming shiftless murderers and – worse? – engaging in premarital sex.

The musical, however, stakes out a different position for itself in relation to the 1938 original. While it indulges in heaps of campy exaggeration, the show also takes aim at the fear mongering which drives the original film. “We are taking down all the fingerprints/ of jazz musicians and immigrants!” goes a gleeful lyric from the musical’s faux-uplifting finale. Nine years and two wars after the show’s initial New York run, with tensions surrounding race and nationality dominating the current election season, the musical’s sardonic celebration of political scare tactics is utterly timely.

The Gallery Players’ production has a firmer grasp of history than its program notes, copied from Wikipedia (someone get these people a dramaturg!), might first lead audiences to suspect. Still, under the direction of Dev Bondarin, the show’s political undertones don’t develop as seamlessly as they might. Instead, when the production jerks from playful camp to pointed commentary, the shift feels unsupported. Stronger moments include the full company numbers “Listen to Jesus, Jimmy, a gospel riff, and the titular "Reefer Madness" a zombie-ish masquerade. Those numbers more successfully indulge pop culture aesthetics while applying them to the musical’s central warnings about media and messages.

Soule Golden’s costume design in particular does a great job of setting the show’s aesthetic, from monster masks (“Reefer Madness”) to feathery halos and white high heels (“Listen to Jesus”). The chorus’ most basic outfits – girls in bright primary colored dresses, boys in sweater vests and slacks – are pretty terrific too.

The six-person chorus of Reefer Madness is consistently excellent. Period appropriate, enthusiastic yet disciplined, they steal the show – and Joe Barros’ choreography helps them do it. Actors Jose Restrepo and Jaygee Macaougay also deserve special mention for their portrayals of Jack and Mae, the couple who lures the unsuspecting teens to degradation.

Next week voters in California will decide whether to legalize the drug that plays the real villain of Reefer Madness. If critiquing a politics of fear feels as timely as ever, the object of that fear seems to have shifted over the last seventy years. Then again, maybe not. At the opening weekend of Reefer Madness, after the drug leads to murder, false imprisonment, and cannibalism, an audience member was heard whispering to her companion, “that’s what happens if you smoke that reefer.”

A Kitchen Full of Wonders

When is a wisk not a wisk? When it is transformed into a Japanese woman on a journey to learn the secret of how air or fire can be held in paper. When is a pepper shaker not a pepper shaker? When it becomes a young African woman in search of the home of her bridegroom. In Folktalkes of Asia and Africa, Jane Catherine Shaw and her array of kitchen utensils are able to enact such magical thrills. Whole worlds are built on stage through the use of simple household objects. This children’s puppet play at LaMaMa is a delight for audiences of all ages. We meet Ms. Shaw as she is in her kitchen preparing some bread. She decides to tell some stories to pass the time as she waits for her bread to rise. The piece contains three folktales: a story from Burma about a hard-working rice farmer and the goddess of the moon; a Japanese tale about two women who must solve a riddle to please their beloved father-in-law; and an African legend dealing with two sisters who each wish to marry a local chief. All of these narratives are charming in their own rights. They convey simple, endearing and enduring messages through compelling characters in relatable situations. It is refreshing to hear folktales with which many audience members may not already be familiar. The stories are able to be surprising and heartwarming through their unexpected twists and turns.

What makes this play true magic is not the stories themselves, however. What is most remarkable in Shaw’s piece is the way she renders these tales on stage. The play is a puppet play, but there are no classically recognizable marionettes or even sock puppets here. Rather, she creates the entire worlds of all these stories through her interesting narration, marked by unique voices for each character, and her use of various common household objects. With the help of a touch of fabric and a little imagination these kitchen utensils easily and fluidly become whatever character our narrator needs them to be. These basic objects are as believable as any more detailed performative objects might have been in their places.

This play suggests the power of the human imagination. Shaw’s play is a clear reminder to children and adults alike in the audience that our minds can transport us to exciting places if we only imagine them. Folktales of Asia and Africa reminds us that we do not need any sophisticated props of any sort to create whole worlds within our own homes. All we need is a good story to tell, one that we mix with pinch of ingenuity and a dash of imagination. Shaw’s play proves that with these simple ingredients, true performance magic can be created.

Scary Brooklyn

The Halloween Plays, running in Brooklyn through October 31st, is far from the only spooky offering of New York’s experimental theater scene this year – but it may well be among season’s the best. The production marks the first collaboration between the Brooklyn-centric Brave New World Repertory Theatre and Carroll Gardens dance theater group Company XIV. It’s is a stellar example of the artistic depths that can result from smart companies pooling their resources. The production’s opening act harnesses the distinct neo-Baroque aesthetic of Company XIV and applies it to the creepiness of the Halloween season. Inspired by the Marquis de Sade, Dénouement—A Murderous Masquerade is a dance to the death. Set at a royal masquerade ball where the host supplies his guests with a handgun and invites them to play a series of macabre party games, Dénouement is a meditation on love, lust and devotion, in all its creepy glory. With choreography and direction by Austin McCormick, Artistic Director of Company XIV, the skilled dancers demonstrate a flare for elegant violence.

The host’s narration does a suitable job of framing the story, but Jeff Takacs’ text is easily overpowered by Dénouement’s provocative dancing. That unsettles the balance of power so central to the story – the dancing guests ought to read as mere plaything’s of the host – but no matter. A costume drama is a rare treat in an evening of one acts, which often skimp on production values. Here, Zane Pihstrom’s set and costume design are integral to the evening’s indulgent presentationalism. Dressed in period-inspired reds, mauves, and golds, the performers radiate with athletic vulnerability from their powdered wigs to their high-heeled feet. An upstage tree and several chandeliers give the impression of a fashionable dance hall, while an ornate, metallic looking proscenium decadently frames the playing space.

Directors Nell Balaban and Chip Brooks make effective use of the proscenium during the Brave New World portion of the evening. Too Much Candy, a clever reimagination of Hansel and Gretel by Cynthia Babak, puts a grown Hansel suffering from OCD on a journey to recover his repressed childhood memories. The familiar, creepy Grimm tale unfolds behind the proscenium in disorderly fragments, while the shallow playing space downstage of the proscenium exposes Hansel (Stuart Zagnit) in the present day. He neurotically muddles through his responsibilities as a family man and regularly visits a psychiatrist; he suffers an inexplicable fixation with candy.

Psychoanalytic readings of fairy tales comprise a major strain of folkloric scholarship, and Babak milks great performative comedy out of such heady analysis (pun intended). When Hansel dreams that he is locked in a cage – recall that in the fairy tale, the witch cages Hansel to fatten him up before she eats him – his psychiatrist delivers a pleasantly self-satisfied interpretation. As the doctor, Brave New World artistic director Claire Beckman is pitch-perfect in her summation. “Perhaps the cage represents the part of you, your consciousness,” she tells her patient, “that is not letting you access the memories of your youth!” She offers similarly symbolic interpretations of the cannibalistic witch and the candy. It’s a smart deconstruction of a familiar tale that helps explain its enduring power – but perhaps not quite so much as does the enactment of the fairy tale itself. Equal parts hilarious and horrific, the staging of Hansel and Gretel is a welcome reminder that fairy tales, properly told, are downright eerie.

The concluding play of the production, Greg Kotis’ Salsa, is the most conventional short play of the evening’s offerings. Set at a diner, the play opens to two men seated alone, who bond over a love of spicy food – but partway through the scene, it becomes clear that something is amiss, and when the curtain behind the proscenium rises, sinister forces are revealed. Actors Kevin Hogan and Sean Patterson have a lot of fun with their roles as the gentlemen of the diner, as does Alvin Hippolyte, as the sinister force.

It’s refreshing to see an evening of one acts featuring work with such varied aesthetic sensibilities. Each act possesses sufficient distinction to stand alone as a solitary work. Taken as a whole, however, The Halloween Plays reveals that there is more than one way to spook an audience.

Judge Not?

Carrie Greanlea (Leigh Williams) is a caustic opera critic, brutal with a pen. She is married to Norman (Zac Hoogendyk), yet another opera critic. Unlike Norman, who questions his own competence, Carrie is unwaveringly and remorselessly critical of everything from Norman’s sperm count to the size of performers’ noses. The thing is, when it comes to arts criticism, she’s usually right. Carrie likely would have been quite disappointed with Critical Mass, the play of her own creator. The premise of Joanne Sydney Lessner’s slight work is that Carrie has, with a single review in Opera World, destroyed the career of Stefano Donato (Aaron Davis), an Italian tenor of questionable talent. Stefano, feigning destitution due to the toll that Carrie’s lacerating piece has exacted on his career, takes revenge by finding out where the critical duo lives. Suitcases in hand, Stefano proceeds to hijack their personal and professional lives, hinting at ominous Mafia repercussions should they decline to take him in. Like The Godfather’s Don Vito Corleone, Stefano makes them an offer they can’t refuse.

A major problem with the absurdly themed Critical Mass is that it’s not nearly farcical enough in its execution. Ms. Williams, a major character, is the weak link in the thematic chain; misdirected by Donald Brenner, she plays the shrewish, angry Carrie to the hilt, but her humorlessness torpedoes the part and, with it, the entire play. What we need from Ms. Leigh’s Carrie is a little I Love Lucy; what we get is a lot of Nancy Grace.

And Mr. Davis’ awful accent is almost unbearable. He overacts cravenly; fortunately, his character is somewhat likable. The standout performance here is that of Marc Geller as Cedric West, the editor of Opera World. Mr. Geller does his best with Lessner’s stereotyped writing – he’s gay and effeminate and channels Bette Davis. Chris Menard’s terrific scenic design truly gives the set the feel of a contemporary urban apartment.

It’s not entirely clear to me what Ms. Lessner (who reviews for Opera News) wants to say about critics of the arts. Should they pull punches to spare the feelings of artists about whom they write? Lessner vilifies Carrie for sticking to her guns, and pre-sets her as a miserable, bitter person. Yet, Lessner appears to praise the spineless Norman for letting his feelings (and other people) influence his critical opinions. And, at least through Stefano’s character, Ms. Lessner seems to advance the parental edict, “If you’ve got nothing good to say, don’t say anything.”

Sure, a negative review can dishearten, but so can a disappointing play; one should rightly expect more from the winner of Heiress Productions' year-and-a-half long playwriting competition. To Lessner’s apparent guideline above a critic might counter: “Why bother putting up a very mediocre play in the first place?” Though it’s crisply written, Critical Mass is chock full of stale characters and warmed-over jokes.

The cynical – the Carrie - part of me wonders whether Ms. Lessner, by preemptively hammering at critics, hopes to inoculate this play from the inevitable barbs. In the end, Critical Mass is an overlong one-trick pony. It’s got enough fuel for one act but its three punish the limits of reasonableness.

As Carrie at one point lectures Stefano: “Look, if you’re going to worship at the shrine of art, if you’re going to attempt to make a play for the pantheon of greatness, you have to be prepared to work hard and be prepared to be judged”. Having reiterated that, please don’t tell Ms. Lessner where I live.

More Than Just Skin Deep

Theater, at its best, can cut to the heart of the human experience with little more than a story to tell, the actors to perform it, and an audience who witnesses the journey. The Foolish Theatre Company’s world premiere of Skin Deep sets out to do just that with a touch of humor and a camp flair. Skin Deep, written by Rich Orloff, is about a middle-aged couple, George and Liz, from Ohio, who inherit The Godiva Inn, a clothing-optional resort in Key West, from George’s estranged brother, Roger. During the play, the couple find themselves questioning who they are, what they believe in, and the choices they have made along the way. The Inn’s staff includes Clark, the desk clerk who moonlights as a drag queen, and Jane, the janitor who moonlights as a dominatrix. The antagonist is Fred, who is the catalyst for change.

The play is deftly directed by Jeffrey C. Wolf and energetically performed by a cast of five. Both director and cast make ample use of the comedic script while leading toward a more serious turn of events and personal revelation. George, performed by William Tatlock Green, and Liz, performed by Dee Dee Friedman, capture the essence of mid-western values confronted with alternative life-styles and perceived difference.

These two issues are most flamboyantly personified in Clark, played by Robbie Sharpe. Sharpe’s performance elevates the character’s campy dialogue and dreams of being a diva to a character that one cares about. Misunderstanding and assumption are humorously played out in a running dialogue between Jane the janitor, performed by Mary Theresa Archbold, and the wife Liz. As Liz embraces the possibilities she sees in their new lives and begins to explore what it means to be female, Jane teaches her to change the oil on the couple’s car. Their conversations are laced with references that are misunderstood by George, leading to further personal conflict and tension for his character. Fred as the sleazy businessman, performed by Timothy Scott Harris, brings the conflict to a head.

Scenic designer Craig M. Napoliello evokes the Florida Keys with his use of white wicker furniture with floral print cushions set against a backdrop of green shutters and white drapes. Although the action of the play takes place only in the lobby of the Inn, the use of multiple locations for entrances and exits as well as actor focus provide a sense of the total inn and its environs. Costuming by Jonathan Knipscher provides not only a key to passing time but also insight to qualities about each character and the changing atmosphere of the Inn itself. Also of note are the very good choices for pre-show and between scene music designed by director Wolf.

The Foolish Theatre Company’s mission may be to entertain and amuse, but Skin Deep offers that and a little bit more. It is a confrontation between and challenge to definitions of normal told with humor, caring, and a small dash of glitter. The production is entertaining, but Skin Deep couples this with something a little deeper – our humanity and ability to change.

Afraid of (Un)Afraid

In the moments before The Neo-Futurists’ new work (Un)afraid began, I was feeling pretty anxious. My anxiety was due to two words I dread to see connected to a theater piece I’m attending: audience participation. While I love the idea of involving and implicating audience members in productions, the possibility of actually being involved myself gives me hives. But, nevertheless, I went, and I’m glad I did. (Un)afraid has no plot to speak of. Rather, it feels more like a conversation: a wacky, fast-paced conversation with many props, masks and flurries of activity. The fantastic performers, Jill Beckman, Cara Francis, Ricardo Gamboa, and Daniel McCoy, who together wrote the show, employ a slew of performance techniques and styles, moving seamlessly from performative camp to intimate chatter. The discourse of the piece centers around fear, what we fear, why we fear, and what our shared fears say of our world today. The perspective is sharp and witty, at times grim and troubled, but not without bits of hope, glimmers of possibility.

When we arrive at the theater, we are given the option of sitting on the floor or in chairs in the back. Without fully understanding the consequences of our choice, my friend and I choose to sit on the floor. We realize too late that this choice makes us fair game. At various points we are pulled onstage to pose, dance, run, and speak with the actors. They also join us in the audience, at one point donning clown masks and offering flasks of whiskey (which I gratefully imbibe).

Between these moments of audience interaction are invidiual performances by each of the actors in turn. (Un)afraid is different each night: the exact pieces performed are determined by a “spirit,” with whom the performers chat through use of an ouiji board. On the night I attend, they call upon ghost-story writer M.R. James (more on him here: <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James wikipedia.com ). At four points in the show, they ask the spirit to choose a performer to perform the piece they have prepared for that point in the show. The chosen actor then tells a story, performs a monologue, or faces one of his or her own major fears head on. On my night, Cara Francis took a shot of cockroach-infused liquor, and Daniel McCoy attempted to eat a food he hates – a tomato. (Cara succeeded, but Daniel failed, vomitting into a trashcan two bites in.) All of the pieces are connected to greater personal issues: for Cara, a memory of unwanted penetration, and for Daniel, others’ disgust at his life as a gay man.

I love these pieces. They are intelligent, immediate and as truthful as an actor can get. There is something heroic about them: the actors take on something they fear and try to conquer it. They’re hopeful, productive, genuine. They feel like gifts.

In general, I am not sure what I think of the forced audience participation that happens throughout (Un)afraid. However, at several points, instead of pulling us on stage, the performers extend an open invitation, and we must choose whether to act or remain in our seats. These moments are fascinating.

One such moment occurs near the end of the play. Before it, Jill Beckman delivers a monologue about her fear of decision-making, which includes a (partially) colored pie chart that outlines what she would most like to be doing at any given moment (87% of the time, she’d prefer to be in bed, sleeping). The monologue has the feeling of a confessional: Jill is honest and vulnerable. It’s one of those exciting occasions where an artist taps into some experience that is specific to this moment in time: in this case, the overwhelming desire to do nothing in the face of the innumerable, frenzied choices and challenges that await us each day.

After her monologue about inaction is complete, Jill asks us to choose whether or not to act. She turns on a television, which is playing a montage of pain: dead bodies, bits of war and the like. Laying a remote down centerstage, she exits. Though Jill never tells us explicitly that someone needs to pick up the remote and turn the TV off to end the scene, it is implied. The air is tense: I wonder who will stand, and when? Should I do it? Am I sure it’s what we’re supposed to do? What if I’m wrong?

I am struck by the power of this implicit invitation, how unsure I am of what will happen, how I am forced to decide whether to act or wait for someone else.

I hesitate. I remain still.

The woman sitting next to me stands, picks up the remote, and turns the television off.

(Un)afraid is entertaining, challenging, strange and smart. I say go, brave the front seats, and accept the whiskey.

Ghost Stories and Stout

The Folding Chair Theatre Company presents a thoughtful, engaging production of The Weir by Connor McPherson at the Access Theatre. Ably directed in a simple loft space by Marcus Geduld, this poetic piece unfolds at the leisurely pace of bar talk among seasoned drinkers. Four men and a woman gather in a bar. The woman, Valerie (Lisa Blankenship), arrives last with Finbar (Richard Ryan Cowden), who is showing her the sights of this small village where she has moved. The bar, run by Brendan (Ian Gould), a gathering place for tourists during summer, is hanging on during the rest of the year thanks to a few regulars who gather there. As Valerie arrives, the regulars engage in a round of telling ghost stories that are woven from popular lore and personal experiences. Finally Valerie offers here own, painfully personal story, which moves the men to accept her as one of their own, offering friendship and comfort, along with copious amounts of beer and whiskey.

McPherson’s play is much like a shaggy dog story – entertaining if you get into the spirit, without amounting to too much in the end. But the telling, broken up as much by the drinking rituals as by interruptions where the characters reveal their pasts, their aspirations and their personalities, makes it easy to get drawn into its small world. The audience becomes eavesdroppers to this vanishing world where folklore still lives.

The Folding Chair Theatre, true to its name, presents the play in a simple setting: a few props, the characters appropriately dressed, candles placed around the large stage in an open loft space suggesting the flickering of swamp lights, the set otherwise lit with a few light bulbs and lamps placed on the set, create the apt atmosphere. The one sound effect is a howling wind whenever the door is opened. (No designers are credited in the program). The play opens with Brendan turning on lamps, cleaning tables, dusting frames of photos on the wall, his turning the lamps off closes it. These simple actions make us feel part of the place, invite us in, and indeed the audience, at the end of the play, is asked to step up to the bar for a pint or a short one.

Geduld’s staging is thoughtful and makes the best use of the space, while giving the actors room to let their characters evolve. The actors, using Irish accents that to my ear sound close enough if not perfect, are all excellent, well suited each to their roles.

A small play, without pretensions beyond its open-ended pointing to the possibilities of mysteries that may be part of our existence, The Weir could be dismissed as lightweight, but in this rendition it offers a lovely evening in the theater that leaves one with a smile and a longing for a boilermaker or at least a pint of Guinness.

Exciting Elements Prove Uncohesive

It was with high hopes that I attended the Pathological Theatre’s production of Bong Bong Bong Against the Walls, Ting Ting Ting in Our Heads at La Mama this past Friday.  The company’s artistic director (and writer/director of this production), Dario D’Ambrosi, has amassed a distinguished career as theatre artist both in Italy and New York.  The play interested me specifically because it was developed in collaboration with mentally-ill performers in D’Ambrosi’s company, and involved puppetry, a particular combination of elements I had never seen before.  I was certain the result would be new, inspired, and unique.   I was dissapointed.  Bong Bong Bong attempts to be insightful, but is instead painful to the point of farce.  The story, loosely told, follows Loga, (Ashley C. Williams) a school-age girl who breaks down in the middle of solving a math problem in class, and is either sent to, or dreams that she is sent to, a mental institution.  Here, she is controlled by a villainous psychologist (George Drance) and then comforted by a magical fairy (Theresa Linnihan) who guides Loga toward a kind of acceptance of her state of mind.  

The top of Bong Bong Bong is promising.  The first thing we see are the puppets: they are pale and gaunt with alien faces and doll-like eyes.  Designed in part by the institutionalized members of the Pathological Theatre, they possess a glimmer of what I was hoping to see: a perception of the world very different than my own. However, the puppets are dissapointingly under-used.  The actors seem to have little understanding of how to manipulate and work with them, and the relationship between actor and puppet is unclear and uninteresting. Further, the actors set them down 15 minutes into the performance, returning to them only to pull sheaths of fabric out of their stomachs at a “pivotal” moment.  One cares very little about their role and presence, and ends up thinking of them more as set pieces than anything else.  

The play is a musical, and the music is of the contemporary Broadway-style – jarringly out of place among all of the other, non-traditional elements in the piece.  The lyrics sound as though they are unwillingly jammed into the melodies, like a child attempting to write new lyrics to an old song on the spot.  With kids, it’s cute.  Here, it’s just painful.  

Overall, the piece is poorly directed.  There are scenes that last much longer than necessary, the pacing is strange, and actors often move about the stage randomly, seemingly at their own discretion.  It feels like the early stages of an experimental process, before things become tightened, specified and rehearsed.  

Redeeming moments do occur, thanks to two stand-out performers, Ashley Williams and Theresa Linnihan.  Williams is a dynamic actor, with an engaging stage presence and lovely voice.  At one moment, near the top of the play, Loga is asked to solve a math problem at the blackboard (x-y +2 =).  Her attempt unearths a swirl of colorful images and poetry: as she talks through her ‘logic’ and works herself into a frenzy, she draws trees and circles on the blackboard, concluding that x – y + 2 = “a big beautiful lake.”  Here and throughout the play, Williams strikes an impressive balance between intensity and empathy: she fully embodies Loga’s psychoses without alienating herself from the audience.  

Theresa Linihan gives a subtle, intelligent performance as Loga’s mother and also doubles as a delightfully idiosyncratic fairy at the asylum.  Both Linihan and Williams bring depth and meaning to their lines.  They give us a taste of the beauty the script could offer, had it been better supported.

Other performances are less impressive.  The two actors who play Loga’s fellow schoolchildren and inmates writhe and shriek across the stage, caricatures of mental patients that distract from the action in the scene.  Here, the lack of direction is most evident: I feel I am watching an early rehearsal, not a finished product.

Then again, performances that are messy and raw are not automatically terrible.  There is a beauty that can come of chaos, a kind of honesty and vulnerability that can potentially be more powerful than the most polished production.  I’ve seen it work best in one-man shows, where the material is as raw and personal as the performance.  However, the actors in this production are too distanced from the material for this to be true of Bong Bong Bong.  All are New York-based actors, and are not, as far as I know, members of D’Ambrosi’s company of insitutionalized performers.  It is as though D’Ambrosi has staged his company’s material with professional actors, and staged it in a way that he would have done had he been working with his company.  It is an ill fit, and it ultimately fails.  

The Grand Guignol Comes to Queens

There is plenty of ghoulish theatrical fare to go around this time of year. Even the most zealous horror buffs would be hard pressed to see the full array of Halloween-inspired productions popping up across the city. No other holiday elicits the kitsch, camp and blood-curdling screams like All Hallows Eve. The Secret Theatre throws its hat into the cauldron with Theatre du Grand-Guignol: Tales of Horror and Fear, five short plays adapted from the notoriously gory Grand Guignol Theatre of Paris. Ranging from the macabre to the farcical to the grotesque, the evening has its potholes but is never ponderous, serving up an ample platter of blood, guts and yuks. The Grand Guignol is a late 19th century Parisian theater known for its naturalistic representations of the lurid and grisly. Literally meaning “big puppet show”, the theater shocked audiences with its stark (if at times overblown) portrayal of violence, psychosis and eroticism. Anything was fair game. Dismemberments, beheadings, and scalpings were just some of the more common torments one could witness at the Grand Guignol. Playing on themes of insanity, revenge, lust, drugs, death and the fear of outsiders, the theater continued to operate, despite rabid censorship, until World War II.

Ably directed by Ariel Francoeur, Theatre du Grand-Guignol seeks to maintain a similar thematic and tonal structure as its original source. All of the themes mentioned above are reflected in the five tales. And, in the Grand Guignol tradition, the production flips from a dramatic piece to a comedic piece, from dark to light, to allow a respite from the savage by mixing it with the frivolous.

Two of the pieces on the bill, “The Final Kiss” and “Coals of Fire," are prototypical Grand Guignol. Both involve people seeking vengeance through extreme means. In “The Final Kiss”, heavily bandaged Henri (Christopher Jack Rondeau) has had his face melted with sulfuric acid. The culprit? His girlfriend, Jeanine (Jeni Ahlfeld), who returns offering Henri her apology. As you have perhaps guessed, Henri is in no mood to forgive. “Coals of Fire” is a two-character play about a wife (Elizabeth Heidere) confronting her husband’s mistress (Jeni Ahlfeld). The mistress pleads with the wife to divorce her husband so they can marry and consecrate their true love. The wife, blind and elderly, seems harmless enough, but we soon learn she is not interested in love for love’s sake.

“Tics, or Doing the Deed” is undoubtedly the most successful of the plays. Little more than a straight up sex romp, the premise is appropriately silly. A regal dinner party spins out of control as husbands and wives bed other husbands and wives only to have their lewd exploits revealed by nagging postcoital tics. To give away the individual tics would divulge the play’s payoff, which is worthwhile and well played by the ensemble. Sean Demers as Monsieur de Merlot, Amie Lytle as Madame de Merlot, Jenny Levine as Madame de Martin, and Kirsten Anderson as Venus are particularly game at milking the comedy out of this sardonic little slapstick.

The final two plays are “The Ultimate Torture” and “The Old House.” Originally written by Andre de Lorde, the most prominent of the Grand Guignol writers, “The Ultimate Torture” follows a band of survivors holed up and hidden away from an army of zombie-like creatures on the prowl. As the evil undead encroach on their lone refuge, the group is forced to make a series of desperate decisions concerning sacrifice and mercy. “The Old House," easily the most ludicrous of the five, presents two teens wandering into a haunted house only to be kidnapped by devil worshippers. As the worshippers prepare to sacrifice one of the virgin youths, The Devil (Greg Petroff) and Jesus (Timothy Lalumia) show up to banter whimsically over who should receive the virgin’s soul. It is unclear in the program how this piece is derived from the Grand Guignol and, given the content, it seems as though it was created in-house and slapped on to fill the evening. The goofy twists wear thin and the sketch-like quality of the piece cheapens an otherwise respectable slate.

By their very nature and age, works of the Grand Guignol have become parody. Culturally, with dime-a-dozen films like Saw and Hostel, and even TV shows like CSI and Dexter, our shock tolerance is much greater than it was a hundred years ago. This is why Theatre du Grand-Guignol is most effective when it is seeking laughs instead of gasps. When the material is played earnestly, rather than embracing its inherent melodrama, it comes off as heavy handed and absurdly tepid. Much in these plays is egregiously ridiculous. Contemporary productions of the Grand Guignol should consider heightening their approach to the work in order to meet the loftiness of its clichés, rather than beat it into realism and lose what’s fun and lively at its core.

'Tis the Season to Be Frightened

Tucked into an unmarked, abandoned-looking storefront on 27th Street, the Vortex Theatre Company’s NYC Halloween Haunted House is a far cry from the corn mazes and hay rides typical of Halloween fright fests. But urban legends can be just as frightening as pastoral ghost stories, and NYC Halloween Haunted House proves you don’t need to take the LIRR in order to get your Halloween thrills. Back for its second year, NYC Halloween Haunted House aims to terrify each participant, individually. Like Theater for One, the project that pairs one audience member and one actor together for the duration of a monologue, NYC Halloween Haunted House is a solo experience. Unlike Theater for One, however, Haunted House gleefully forgoes any pretense of democratic exchange. Participants are left alone and unguarded, at the whim of the haunted house and its cadre of creepy performers. Make no mistake: the cards are stacked in favor of the house.

Created by Josh Randall and Kristjan Thor, NYC Halloween Haunted House is a stellar example of artists making smart choices with the resources at hand: they place sensory deprivation high on their list of scare tactics. Consequently, the special effects at play don’t constitute spectacles in and of themselves. Instead, Randall and Thor cleverly use their special effects to heighten participants’ sense of isolation. The sound system plays ominous white noise. A fog machine obscures participants’ vision. So does the lighting design, which mostly ranges from dim to pitch black.

House rules state that there is to be no talking by participants during the Haunted House experience, which lasts about twenty minutes (screaming, however, is encouraged). Participants can’t even alert performers to their mental state by gaping in terror or grinning in delight: everyone is required to wear a surgical mask for the duration of the experience. Last year, at the height of the H1N1 epidemic, the masks signified pathogen panic and the threat of a mysterious disease. This year, thankfully, those significations have dimmed, but the masks are still plenty creepy. For one thing, they tend to make wearers uncomfortably conscious of their own breathing. In the context of the haunted house, of course, they also free the wearer from the burden of communication, allowing participants to more fully internalize the tantalizingly unnerving experience. (The white masks may also aid cast members in spotting participants in the dark.)

To reveal much more about the NYC Halloween Haunted House would spoil the fun of it. Suffice it to say that the cast members do an admirable job of balancing their dual roles as wardens and shepherds. They give participants the chills, but also clear instructions about what to do next. Managing the whole event and its steady stream of participants is an enormous challenge, but the Haunted House is up for it, efficiently moving participants from a group holding cell through their individual journeys around the house. For the truly frightened, the Haunted House takes a cue from BDSM play: calling out a safe word will bring the experience to a halt. And there is something in the house to frighten everyone.

What are you afraid of? The dark? Weird noises? Rape and murder? The NYC Halloween Haunted House has something for you…

Holy Wars

With The Human Scale, foreign correspondent Lawrence Wright has transformed his 12,000-word story entitled “Captives: What really happened during the Israeli attacks” about the Gaza Strip from the November 9, 2009 issue of The New Yorker into a one-man play. Informative, provocative, yet dramatically inert, audiences should expect more lecture than theater with this nonetheless dazzling multimedia presentation. With a gorgeous video design by Aaron Harrow as his backdrop, Wright leads the audience through the history and ongoing impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians. Using the 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still in Hamas custody, as its backbone, The Human Scale, offers an unsparing look at a contentious issue where both sides take the moral high ground and feel they are doing the right thing.

Much like Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which was turned into the play My Trip to Al-Qaeda (and recently an HBO Documentary directed by Alex Gibney) and even Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, The Human Scale is an amalgam of video, images, interviews, and other sources. Some graphic footage of bloodied bodies produced gasps from the audience. A Palestinian children’s show in which a cartoon-like character is stabbed to death by a Jew was a particularly disturbing example of how both sides dehumanize and demonize the other.

But as directed by The Public Theater’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, there is little drama in the way Wright tells the story. His fairness and impartiality somehow drain the life out of what he is presenting. He becomes instead a sort of talking head or narrator, like a 60 Minutes anchor desperately trying to keep his bias and emotions at bay.

What I found most problematic about the piece was the lack of Wright’s own response to what is going on around him. The only personal glimpse the audience gets is when he reenacts fainting from dehydration caused by food poisoning while interviewing members of Hamas. In addition, Wright’s way of showing leather-bound tomes and official-looking binders does not lend as much authority to his lecture as he might want. As the names, places, and dates add up, audience members may find themselves in a fog of information that is as confusing as the disinformation Wright is attempting to admonish. The addition of dramaturgical materials such as a Gaza Strip timeline and map in the program are certainly helpful to those who do not know a whole lot about this ongoing conflict, but these are simply not enough to wrap one’s head around such a complex issue without substantial prior knowledge.

Co-produced by The Public Theater and 3LD Art & Technology Center, this show may bring to mind the controversial play My Name Is Rachel Corrie about the American activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, but it reminded me more of Masked by Israeli playwright Ilan Hatsor, about three Palestinian brothers who struggle with ideological and personal conflicts about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The Human Scale shares with that drama a lack of overt moral judgment or political polemics, although The Human Scale seems to conclude that both Hamas and the Israeli government committed war crimes in the Gaza war, which is also the main conclusion of the controversial Goldstone Report which Wright cites in the show.

In a recent interview in the weblog The Gothamist, Wright said he hoped that they could take the play to Israel, Gaza, and Palestine for audiences on both sides of the issue. Another article in The Jewish Week suggested that portions of the play could be rewritten during the show’s run depending on current political developments, making The Human Scale a timely addition to the annals of newspaper theater. It is certainly a provocative piece that will get audiences talking. But the 90-minute show is really more like a glorified PowerPoint presentation than theater in the truest sense.

Greed Is GREAT-- On Stage, That Is

Michael Lew’s new play Microcrisis is a brilliant dark comedy about our current state of economic disaster. Developed in Ma-Yi Theatre’s Writer’s Lab, Microcrisis is being presented through HEREstay, HERE’s curated programming. Director Ralph Pena has assembled a stellar ensemble that includes Jackie Chung, David Gelles, William Jackson Harper, Lauren Hines, Alfredo Narciso, and Socorro Santiago. Microcrisis offers a wealth of fast paced comedy, social commentary and is ultimately a priceless theatrical experience. Bennett, played by Narciso, is a shady investment banker who puts the likes of Gordon Gecko to shame. He arrives in Kumasi, Ghana and takes over Citizen Lend, a non-profit bank that loans on “microcredit,” which is the practice of giving small loans to small businesses. The Citizen Lend office is run by Lydia (Hines), a bright-eyed Bennington intern who is more than happy to follow Citizen Lend’s protocol and give out loans at 2% interest. Of course, if you are a banker whose only goal is to make money, 2% interest is criminal. Bennett wheels and deals, linking Citizen Lend to Ivy Microloan, a small start up led from the bedroom of Harvard grad and boy genius Randy (Gelles).

In Microcrisis everyone is interested in getting more, and it is this need that Bennett manipulates. Even Clare, an insecure securities rater played by Jackie Chung, is no match for Bennett’s schemes. In Lew’s world, we all have a price and Bennett just has to name it. Won’t sell out for twenty million? How about twenty-one million? With the possibility of making so much money so quickly, details are irrelevant. Nobody wants information, everyone just wants cash. Even Lydia, for all of her good intentions can’t resist the lure of being wined and dined in Monaco. Why be good when you can be rich?

If we are to take Lew’s portrayal as somehow hitting close to home we realize that Bennett does what he does because he can, because we let him. We are easy prey for a fast talker who does not take no for an answer. The only person in the play who is not interested in having it all is Acquah, a Ghanaian businessman, played by William Jackson Haper. Acquah only wants his initial microloan, no more, no less. When Lydia tells him to take more money he says “What do I need with 10,000 cedis?”

Pena and his design team have an exquisite attention to detail. In one scene Bennett is playing racquetball with Frankfurt, his former boss and current Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, also played by Harper. The court is in a former basement bank vault and the echo created by Rettig’s sound design delightfully enhances and animates the space.

Microcrisis is funny, scathing, and ultimately tragic. One of Acquah’s refrains throughout the play is “this is a joke,” and by the end of Microcrisis , you realize there is nothing funny about the awful truth of our current crisis.

Take the A (Cappella) Train

A musical about the New York subway? Didn’t Lincoln Center do that in 2009 with Happiness, from the creative team (including director/choreographer Susan Stroman) that collaborated on the smash hit Contact? But where Happiness concerned a disparate batch of New Yorkers in an underground limbo who are actually dead, In Transit from Primary Stages has a lot more life in it. Although it’s not always a smooth ride, this new musical has a lot of appeal in its 90 minutes. And did I mention that the whole thing is sung a cappella? Gleeks, buy your tickets now! Seven performers play over 38 roles from aspiring actress and struggling financier to enterprising coffee cart owner and sassy token booth employee. When the individual members of the septet are not singing lead, they are providing backup or creating a cavalcade of sound effects. This is a musical with no instruments but the voices on stage. The cast list in the Playbill and accompanying insert names the performers by both vocal range (Bass, Alto, etc.) and various characters played. Throughout the performance, reggae, hip-hop, rock, and pop are interspersed with dashes of doo-wop and barbershop.

The four composer-lyricists — Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth — have worked on the show for almost a decade, with productions at the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival (where it was called Along the Way) and the 2008 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. This incarnation, tightly directed and staged by Joe Calarco (Shakespeare’s R&J), who also helmed the terrific Burnt Part Boys at Playwrights Horizons earlier this year, is set on a expertly designed subway platform courtesy of Anna Louizos. The characters of In Transit are trying to get from place to place like all New Yorkers who use the subway as their main form of transportation. Paths cross and lives intersect, with both daily minutiae and extraordinary meltdowns witnessed by an ever-changing parade of nameless, faceless straphangers. The rhythms and sounds of life for urban commuters are always on view on the subway.

Besides the outstanding direction and design, the best thing about In Transit is the flair and forte the seven principals bring to the material. Creating an a cappella musical requires not only acting and singing skills, but also precise timing. It is high praise to say that the cast makes this Herculean task seem effortless. Chesney Snow, one of New York’s premier beatboxers who has actually performed on New York’s subway platforms, deserves a special shout-out for providing the propulsive percussive foundation as Boxman. In addition, Celisse Henderson displays impressive vocal chops and keen comedic timing, especially as the aforementioned, scene-stealing MTA clerk with an attitude. And Steve French, who sings Bass, also gets props for bringing the Bowser (from Sha Na Na) persona into the 21st century with his multiple roles.

As staged in the intimate 196-seat Theater A at 59E59, there is a lot of humor in the show that will appeal to residents of the Big Apple. But because of their esoteric quality, many of the jokes will fall flat on out-of-town theatergoers who may not yet possess an insider’s view of Gotham. And while the characters are presented as New York archetypes, their stories end of being more commonplace than inspiring, more trite than universal. The very talented Denise Summerford as Jane, hopeful thespian, and equally skilled Tommar Wilson as Trent, semi-closeted gay urban professional, seem more than capable of handling roles with more depth. The timing in the middle and the end of the show could use some tightening too. Although the first 20 minutes zip by in a whirl, In Transit is paced more like a local than an express.

These are, however, minor quibbles with a show that can be truthfully called utterly charming. Because of its big city-centric themes and humor, In Transit might not transfer well to regional theater or even Broadway. But it’s a thoroughly enjoyable trip about the noise of New York for lovers of musical theater. And did I mention that the whole thing is sung a cappella?

A Play of Miracles

Every once in a while, there is a work of theater that is remarkable in some way: thrilling, touching, unforgettable. More infrequently than even that, on the rarest of rare moments, there is a production that is not only somehow remarkable but also pure art, a representation of what theater can (and perhaps should) be. I Fiorretti in Musica – Opera in Danza presented by Pioneers go East Company is one such work. In its sheer simplicity, it is utter genius. The play tells the story of Saint Francis, divided into four chapters: “Assuming a Life of Simplicity,” “Preaching to the Birds,” “Taming the Wolf,” and “Thieves and Beggars.” Yet any attempt at summarizing would not even remotely approximate what this production actually is. The story being told – one of self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and faith – would be compelling in its own right. This play, however, rather than being a traditional theatrical narrative, is an exploration of the various elements that can combine in the theater. The piece incorporates music, dance, painting, poetry, puppetry, and junk sculpture, emphasizing just how integrative of an art form theater can be.

The storytelling elements are isolated from one another; no character who sings also performs in the central action. Rather, the various components seem strategically layered one upon another. This technique adds a unique richness to the piece while also highlighting how limited traditional storytelling may, in fact, be. All of the pieces of the theatrical puzzle compliment each other beautifully, from the way light reflects off of costumes to how the music pairs with the dance movements.

There are truly memorable, striking moments in this play. In the first chapter, the ensemble surrounding Francesco pelt shoes at him, cruelly and maliciously. Yet Francesco engages them in a game, forgiving them instantly and offering to them the chance to follow him. This moment is touching and profoundly human. Each of these episodes is punctuated with paintings projected onto the backdrop and poetic text describing what is happening in the scene. These elements add to the richness of the overall work. Although any individual component would tell a certain aspect of the tale, by bringing them all together, the story is rendered in a multifaceted manner that no single element could present.

Life appears to spring forth in this performance. The random trash and scraps of paper that are assembled to create a slew of birds seem to come alive through the careful choreography of the puppeteers' motions. The set is evocative, showing ways in which mundane detritus can become the most magical of playlands. The use of everyday household objects to create the world of the story goes beyond the merely clever. At times, it is so well-conceived that it borders on the astonishing.

This is a special work of theater. It takes a heartfelt tale and presents it in new and innovative ways. There are moments within this performance that will linger long after the house lights come on. Perhaps, these moments will stick with the viewer for a long time to come. For this reason, I Fioretti in Musica is a production not to be missed.