Getting Real

The subject of reality television wouldn’t seem to have a place in the world of New York theater. One is an artless medium in which people try to sell themselves as celebrities; the other is an ageless art form involving trained professionals collaborating to tell a story. And yet, Cut, Crystal Skillman’s strongly observed new comedy-drama, charts the quest of three young Los Angeles reality television writers for dignity and fulfillment. Drama is drama, it seems, no matter where you find it. Reality television is alternately known as “Unscripted” television, admitting that the true lives documented aren’t necessarily “real.” They are people playing canned versions of themselves. But even the term “unscripted” is inaccurate. Networks hire aspiring writers to find thematic links and build conflict based on the recorded footage of reality stars.

What is so smart about Cut is how Skillman is able to take some very traditional sentiments and merge them with a very current feel so that they never seem trite. And as a result, all three of her characters are instantly recognizable. Danno (Joe Varca) is the story editor of “The Ladies of Malibu,” a fictional look at the fabulous and base lives of some rich SoCal ladies, but he’s an NYU grad who went west with the hopes of becoming an actor. Rene (Nicole Beerman) is the off-camera interviewer, but at one time was a highly-regarded writer. And Colette (Megan Hill), who catalogs the endless hours of “Ladies” footage, really wants to dance.

The three fly into crisis mode when management rejects the original season finale they compile. Now they have just a few hours to cobble together an improved version (Kyle Dixon’s cluttered production office set, coupled with Grant Wilcoxen's smart lighting, is totally believable). Adding to the pressure is a series of individual personal crises afflicting each of these three writers that rivals the material they assemble professionally. Danno carries a torch for Rene and also bears an enormous amount of guilt for abandoning his sister. Rene is in the middle of a divorce, while Colette not only feels overwhelmed by the job, but is also guarding a secret.

There’s an obvious, if artful, irony to this. Danno, Rene and Colette are adept at looking at others' lives to tell a story. They can chart the path of the coulds, woulds, and shoulds for the five women of “Malibu.” But when it comes to examining where their own lives need to go, they each hit a blind spot.

Director Meg Sturiano nimbly stages the show, which is peppered by the three characters’ reality-style confessions to the audience, with aplomb. (The show’s back-and-forth flashback structure does, however, take a little while to get used to). Skillman’s monologues feel so emotionally honest that they are riveting. And the playwright has an equally gifted ear for dialogue. There are carefully measured cadences to the lines delivered by Danno, Rene and Colette, but the scenes feel realistic, never overly stylized.

This is, of course, also a credit to the cast. Beerman laces her scenes with traces of weariness and regret, suggesting an enormity about the Rene’s journey prior to “Malibu,” and there is an amusing counterbalance between her and Hill’s more frenetic Colette. In particular, Hill digs deepest to show a complex portrait of a woman who has to face some scary adult choices, and yet she never losses Skillman’s sense of humor. One monologue regarding mail-order pills is riotous.

Varca is a solid actor, but eventually some of Danno’s hemming and hawing does feel repetitive. It’s terrible to say, but I found myself wishing that the character wasn’t such a “nice” guy. Danno could benefit from some more darkness, and I would like to have seen Varca get to play him with more edge. Perhaps several more shades of aggressiveness would enhance Danno’s later exchanges with Rene.

That said, Cut remains a smart look at not only reality television’s role in society but also at the changing landscape for show business in general. Talented, hungry writers must increasingly forgo substantial work to take flimsier paying gigs. Here’s hoping that’s a fate that never befalls Skillman.

Life Is In the Folds

Five lives intersect in Paper Cranes, the new offering by Packawallop Productions. And though Kari Bentley-Quinn’s script might initially appear to follow a familiar path involving interconnected characters, there is plenty of interesting fodder in this sturdy work. The thru line in Cranes is pretty easy to grasp. Mona (Cynthia Silver) is a widowed mother of a nineteen-year-old girl, Maddie (Sarah Lord). Maddie, a young lesbian who has yet to come out, hooks up with the more sensitive, older Julie (Melissa Hammans), whose best friend is Amy (Susan Louise O’Connor). Amy, meanwhile, has begun a semi-anonymous relationship with David (Eric T. Miller), who is in the same grief counseling group as…Mona.

Yet as cut-and-dried as this description might be, Bentley-Quinn’s play is anything but. Director Scott Ebersold has collected a winning ensemble of actors who provide plenty of substance to Cranes. This show could have been a mawkish look at lonely hearts, but wisely sidesteps such a choice. It is actually savvy reflection of modern life and mating rituals. These characters all know how to find people. Meeting someone – even sleeping with someone – is facile to them.

It’s how to reconcile with what comes next that each member of this quintet must grapple with in their own way. They are all masking their own private hurt. Maddie, for instance, longs for her late father, who was her confidante. David has yet to begin recovering from his girlfriend’s untimely death. Even Amy, who at first might seem to be the most in-control of this group, has her own demons to keep at bay.

It almost seems unnecessary to mention how convincing the marvelous O’Connor is as Amy, but it should be said. The actress mines all sorts of depth to imbue the character with a sultry yet sad vibe. Amy knows she has a lot going for her, but there’s still something missing, and she doesn’t know how to fill that void. It’s a gorgeously calibrated performance.

Equally well-staged by both Ebersold and the team of Hammans and Lord is the budding romance between Julie and Maddie. Both actresses are certainly impressive physically. Their love scenes are a convincing look at a couple in the early stage of their relationship, when the body rush takes over and just a hint of awkwardness persists. But the emotional link between the two is equally accurate, demonstrating that despite a fifteen-year age gap between the two, they really might have a deep bond.

Miller, too, does an admirable job of channeling David’s dark side and slowly revealing just what might be motivating his actions. He is arresting in his scenes with O’Connor, but shares even more chemistry in his tender scenes with Silver, who melds weary and worry with dry humor marvelously. It is to the credit of Ebersold and his cast that they never manipulate the audience’s emotions. Our sympathy with each of these characters always remains organic.

Bentley-Quinn clearly has great affection for each of these characters. Even when they feel like familiar types, something we have seen before, she has drawn them so sharply that we soon learn they are all worth caring about and paying attention to. The same can be said for this smart production – and the playwright as well.

States of Mind

One of the great challenges, as well as triumphs, of live theater is the ability to communicate what a character is thinking without overtly saying so. A performer must be so in tune with his or her character that they are able to use every physical nuance and vocal intonation to make an audience experience the interior. How, then, can a performer communicate what is going on inside the mind of a character suffering from mental illness? That’s the challenge playwright Sharr White sets up for himself in the MCC Theater’s production of The Other Place. And despite stalwart Joe Mantello’s sensitive direction, this is also the problem in this wobbly and, ultimately, gimmicky play.

There is a saving grace to this production, however. Place is blessed to have its lead protagonist embodied by the phenomenal Laurie Metcalf, who gives one of the greatest performances of the year.

Metcalf is Juliana Smithton, a renowned, no-nonsense scientist. In her fifties, she has taken her pharmaceutical research and hit the road, speaking at conferences about a new protein therapy that fights mental decay. During one such presentation in St. Thomas, the improbable sight of a young woman in a yellow bikini distracts Juliana to the point of a breakdown.

Once back in the states, Juliana tells us that due to a family history, she believes she is suffering from brain cancer. She’s also facing other turmoil in her private life: her daughter, Laurel, ran away with Juliana’s assistant a decade earlier and has only begun to reemerge. And Juliana has filed for divorce from her husband, Ian (Dennis Boutsikaris, who was also Metcalf’s husband in last season’s glorious but short-lived Brighton Beach Memoirs revival), an oncologist who is cheating on Juliana with her neurologist, Dr. Teller (both Laurel and Dr. Teller, in addition to other roles, are portrayed by Aya Cash in a series of well-defined and distinctive performances).

However, the more we learn about Juliana, the less we feel we actually know about her. Is she right to think her husband is having an affair? Is her self-diagnosis of brain cancer at all accurate? What is to be made of the young woman in the bathing suit, or Juliana’s horribly awkward conversations with the estranged Laurel?

Taken linearly, there isn’t much to the central mystery in Place: what’s eating Juliana Smithton? That’s probably why White tells his story in such jagged terms, flashing back and forth from past to present, from St. Thomas to Juliana’s home and doctors’ office to her second house in Cape Cod (the “other place’ of the title). White offers many revolutions but few revelations, and the explanations he does hint at finally feel a little pat and disappointing. Plenty of style can never compensate for lack of substance, and Mantello cannot save Place, at a slight 80 minutes, from feeling both exhausting and alienating.

There is glory to be had, though, in the style of Eugene Lee’s smart set, a background wall of interlocking empty picture frames that also begin to resemble a DNA double helix, and Justin Townsend’s lighting, which smartly accents Juliana’s suffering, even when the source is undetermined. And Boutsikaris is able to construct a baffled but supportive husband, even when his motivations remain enigmatic.

Despite the written play's flaws, the marvelous Metcalf is what makes Place a can’t-miss event. The actress is able to overcome its organizational deficiencies and pull from a deep place of inner fury, fear and sorrow as she commands the stage. She’s equally moving when bellowing with rage at Dr. Teller and when sitting still, silently longing for the right words to say to Laurel. And she doesn’t fight to be likable, either, which only wins us over even more. As White’s compromised puzzle of a play comes together, the one image that becomes clearest of all is of this transcendent actress making hurt look so good.

Rough Waters

It’s nice when a classic work of fiction can make for a successful night of theater. Think The Grapes of Wrath or Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, their recent re-working of The Great Gatsby at the Public Theater. B.H. Barry and Vernon Morris attempt to do just that with a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Barry, the renowned fight choreographer, directs this production at the Irondale Center. And while it channels some of the more detailed, darker elements of the swashbuckling tale, the overall result feels a tad disengaging.

Part of the problem could be that the creative team is too eager to get to the fighting. For those unfamiliar with the tale, there is plenty more going on. Young Jim Hawkins (Noah E. Galvin) sets out on a treasure hunt after discovering a map on the dead body of a drunk seafarer staying at his mother’s boardinghouse. He cobbles together a de facto crew including Squire Trelawney (Kenneth Tigar) and Dr. Livesay (Rocco Sisto).

But if their quest was smooth sailing, there wouldn’t be much of a show, would there? That’s why the treacherous Long John Silver (Tony nominee Tom Hewitt), secretly trying to rally a mutiny, appears. There’s something about Silver – and it isn’t the rum – that Hawkins finds intoxicating, even as he catches on to Silver’s nasty ploy and gets threatened, then eventually kidnapped.

It’s not hard to see why. Hewitt is sensational as Silver, and gives real shape to a role that’s alternately played as benign comic relief or stereotypical villain. He makes Silver downright charming, and commits so fully to the role that we view him as a survivalist who adheres to his own code of honor and necessity. Additionally, Tom Beckett offers memorable turns as both Ben Gunn and Blind Pew. Tigar, too, provides plenty of gray strokes to keep the Squire interesting.

Galvin is the performer who buoys all of Island. His is more than a mere child’s performance – the actor is remarkably present, and he above all others is the one who makes the audience understand why Hawkins keeps asking for more trouble with Silver when he should cut and run.

There’s plenty of talent afoot off-stage, too. Stewart Wagner uses subtle but strong lighting cues to enhance Tony Straiges’s set design. Sound designer Will Pickens’ sound design and Luke Brown’s costumes seem authentic as well.

It is Barry who underserves his cast and crew with misguided choices. For example, Barry is blessed to have the performer Ken Schatz sing sea chanteys to demarcate the chapters of Stevenson’s story. As beautiful and haunting as his voice is, the effect serves to prolong a clunkily-paced production (with many children in the audience, a running time nearly two-and-three-quarters of an hour-long is a mistake. I noticed several children seated across from me sleeping with their heads resting on a parent’s lap or shoulder).

It seems that Barry looks at the text as a conduit to reach his fight sequences, when it should be the other way around. These moments should pepper an already-rich text. Instead, they dilute the rest of the action.

He has made one novel choice, however. Barry has choreographed his actors to paddle themselves around the stage on wheeled platforms to mimic ships at sea. This is resourceful and whimsical. One wishes that the rest of the play could have captured this energy.

Sadly, it must be said that when this journey has come to its end, there is precious little booty to be found.

Culture Clash: disOriented Uses Dance to Examine One's Roots

“Who am I?” is a question often asked in dramatic works; the search for one’s identity has been a familiar theme going back as far as Oedipus Rex’s trek to the Oracle of Delphi. Kyoung H. Park’s most current work, Theatre C’s disOriented, tackles that very question in a contemporary way, looking at what it is to straddle separate cultures.

disOriented is the story of Ju Yeon (Amy Kim Washke), a Korean immigrant living in New York. A family crisis forces her to visit her homeland and face the family and lifestyle she has abandoned, reflecting upon the choices that led to her geographical and emotional estrangement.

For Park, the road to disOriented’s evolution is also a long and winding one. “I wrote disOriented for the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writer’s Programme,” Park said. “During my residency, I actually wanted to write a political play; I had this really crazy dream of writing a play for world peace. However, at the Royal Court, I was handed a copy of A Raisin in the Sun and the suggestion to write a ‘debut play.’ I thought to myself: I’m going to have to write about my family, and I really don’t want to do that.”

However, the personal and the creative blended in a way that proved very fulfilling to Park. “When I was brainstorming for ideas, I remembered a bus ride I took in Seoul after visiting my ill grandparents, and I thought that it would be interesting to write a play about my mother’s line. Until 2005, I had never lived in Korea, but [going there] to meet my mother’s family was like returning to the motherland, and though I was reluctant at first, writing disOriented helped me learn my family’s history and find my roots in Korea.” It took four years for the play to take shape, including two workshops and a reading.

disOriented may tackle traditional themes of family and identity, but it is performed in a far more modern way, in keeping with theatre C’s mission of blending distinct performance art forms in order to tell Ju Yeon’s story, particularly dance, since that is the protagonist’s chief passion.

“I was trying to write a modern, Korean family drama, but I wasn’t able to make the play linear,” Park said. “I decided to keep the dancer and just dig deeper into the fragments of memories and history I was trying to write. Structurally, disOriented goes back and forth in time and place, and a Korean fan dancer kept on appearing on stage.

Once the story itself began to take shape, the next challenge was how to physically incorporate dance into the work. “The greatest challenge in fusing dance to the story was finding a performer who was well-versed in Korean fan dancing as well as contemporary western dance, and a choreographer who could help us both create the dancing narrative and integrate it into the text as scripted,” director Carlos Armesto (and artistic director of Theatre C) explains. It fell upon lead actress Lee, a contemporary Korean fan dancer with a background in ballet and modern dance, and choreographer Elisabetta Spuria, a frequent collaborator of Theater C, to create the dances for disOriented. The company worked together to determine how dance, movement, sound (including the snapping of fans) could coalesce in a way that furthered Park’s story and remained true to the work’s original Korean sources.

This, of course, is much easier said than done. “The greatest challenge in writing disOriented was remaining true to traditional, Korean cultural values while writing this play for Western audiences,” Park said. “Koreans are very expressive people, but we do a lot of non-verbal communication because unlike America (or the West), Korea is a mono-cultural society in which everyone shares extremely similar values, beliefs, and social practices. I had to negotiate how much I would write into the play as dialogue, and how much I would keep unsaid in the text. That active choice of not speaking certain truths, especially when they can be hurtful to others, is a bizarre and confusing choice for those who may not understand Korean culture.” The multicultural theme permeated the entire production of disOriented; collaborators come not just form Korea, but also Italy, Chile, Colombia, the Philippines, China and the United States.

All of which leaves a lot of the aforementioned non-verbal truths to be communicated through the show’s choreography. The dances in disOriented are scripted to underline specific themes and moments in the play, functioning both at a narrative and emotional level (influences include Pina Bausch, Mark Morris and Shen Wei Dance Arts). “We also use traditional, Korean percussion music as inspiration for the play, so the voices scripted slowly disintegrate into an almost percussive ensemble song towards the end of the play, and this progression is deliberate to examine how the modernization of society affects and transforms social units, such as a family,” according to Armesto.

disOriented may take place in a specific, foreign culture, but Armesto, Park and the rest of Theatre C have gone to great pains to make sure that all the elements portray a story about family struggles in an ever-changing world. Stories don’t get much more universal than that.

disOriented runs from February 16 through March 5 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Further information can be found at www.theatreC.org.

House of Love

Romantic comedies, so often a staple of commercial theater in the past, have largely been pushed to the sidelines. When was the last time a Barefoot in the Park or a Same Time, Next Year dominated a season? One has to go back a full decade to Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife just to find an original romantic comedy that was even nominated for a Best Play Tony Award. To matter, shows now need to possess a stylistic edge or bear witness to current issues; the rest, it seems, are little more than trifles compared to the weightier material around them. So it’s a thrill to see a show like Matt Morillo’s The Inventor, The Escort, The Photographer, Her Boyfriend and His Girlfriend, now playing at Theater for the New City. Morillo’s recent string of honest relationship plays (including All Aboard the Marriage Hearse and Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans with High Class Issues) have made him a recent star of the venue, but his current work shows just how sturdy the subgenre can be.

Inventor is a traditional work; it honors the rhythm and roots of romantic comedies past. Its plot recalls Neil Simon’s early classic Plaza Suite, interweaving two separate tales taking place in the same location. In this case, it’s a Manhattan walk-up on the night of a punishing blizzard building (much credit goes to savvy set designer Mark Marcante).

The play follows five characters (conveniently delineated by the play’s lengthy title). The first act takes place in the apartment of Jeffrey (David R. Doumeng), a loner who’s made a mint inventing adult products. Adam has called for the services of Julia (Jessica Durdock) to act out a fantasy of his. Both are saddled with insecurities and disappointment, and break through the walls they have put up to get to really know each other and form a connection.

And while this could have been nothing more than the cliché-riddled stuff of stale sitcoms, Morillo (who directs his own play) makes Inventor utterly contemporary. The dialogue never seems stilted or false. Jeffrey and Julia talk like any couple today would talk, in totally polished fashion. This act is perfectly paced, with snappy dialogue on Morillo’s part and impeccable timing on the part of Doumeng and Durdock (the latter does a particularly effective job of shading in subtext to her character).

The second act of Inventor occurs upstairs, in the apartment of Karen (Emily Campion – the photographer) and her estranged boyfriend John (Tom Pilutik). Karen has given John a chance to redeem himself – he can have one affair to get it out of his system. John has very generously obliged, helping himself to Molly (Maria Rowene), a dancer who happens to have a longstanding connection to Karen and John.

This tale actually stems from an earlier work of Morillo’s (co-written with Maria Micheles), called Stay Over, and it stands as proof that a playwright’s work is never done. I reviewed Stay in its initial run two years ago and was not very impressed with it. At less than an hour it was overstuffed and puerile, and hardly stood on its own. It’s still not quite perfect; the situation starts feeling circular and it could be whittled down (at more than two-and-a-half hours, the play’s running time feels a bit bloated). However, the three actors are sharp, particularly Pilutik in a committed performance that’s unafraid to embrace John’s sleazy ways.

And when paired with the first act, the two tales work marvelously in tandem with one another. Expanding it has made the work better and lent thematic grandeur to Morillo’s subject, which is the way men and women relate to one another. The two acts stand as a perfect contrast to one another. Jeffrey and Julia hide behind fake guises and even fake names, and yet there’s a kernel of honesty and affection to everything they say to one another. The triangle of John, Karen and Molly, however, is quite casually blunt, and yet the things they say to each other carry no real currency. Words are just words to them, used to get themselves out of a situation, whereas with Jeffrey and Julia, it deepens the moment.

It’s quite fitting that in giving CPR to a past work of his, Morillo has gotten to the heart of the matter. Long live the romantic comedy.

Highway to the Anger Zone

In Kim Rosenstock’s new play, Tigers Be Still, it’s not just the big cat of the title that’s on the run – at one point a dog gets loose too. But while these animals run wild, their human counterparts are in varied cases of stasis in this introspective work from a very promising emerging playwright. Sherry (Halley Feiffer), a 24-year-old art therapist, is the connective tissue between these cocooned lives. These include her older sister Grace (Natasha Lyonne), who has retreated home after breaking up with her adulterous fiancé and brought half of his belongings – including his pet dogs – with her. Grace now spends her days in a fugue state, nursing Jack Daniel’s and re-watching Top Gun ad nauseum. The two sisters live with their mother, who has put on so much weight that she hides in her bedroom offstage and refuses to emerge, Gilbert Grape-style.

There are also several men attached to Sherry, including Joseph (Reed Birney), the principal of the high school where Sherry teaches but also the erstwhile prom date of Sherry’s mother, and his teen son, Zack (John Magaro), who becomes Sherry’s teaching assistant but is also in need of some therapy himself in the wake of his mother’s death in a car accident.

Rosenstock’s look at frozen lives is sharp but also painless; there is a plot, of sorts, that includes a tiger on the loose, but Tigers is really a character study. In this way the play calls to mind one of last year’s great triumphs, Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, in which characters’ seeming immobility actually had tons to tell and propelled the story along. Both shows have something else in common in the form of director Sam Gold, a genius at exacting nuance and depth from even the slightest situation.

And Gold does just that in Tigers. Grace, for example, could be a really self-indulgent showboating piece, but Lyonne does the work of dealing with the character’s pain beneath the humor to inject her with true pathos. Magaro, too, navigates the fine line between typical surly youth and emotionally crippled survivor with impressive skill: Zack engenders humor and sympathy as his complicated relationship with Sherry develops. Feiffer, too, is generous throughout the play, taking what could have been an annoyingly quirky leading role – Sherry has never had a job or a boyfriend, but comes armed with human insight – and instead weaving herself into the tapestry of an ensemble.

It’s Birney, though – himself a Circle Mirror grad – who runs away with his too few scenes in Tigers as the show’s most believable character. Rosenstock has made Joseph a character full of secrets, some of which he keeps from us (including a high school inside joke that remains between him and Sherry’s mother only) and some of which he keeps from other characters. A solo scene in which Joseph attempts to cancel his late wife’s yoga magazine subscription is a case study in grief and a textbook example of rich performance.

Tigers isn’t yet a perfect play. It would benefit from a little economy; if Rosenstock could cut down on the number of quick two-hander scenes, the play might feel less meandering as this quartet’s emotional journey continues.

And while it is a great compliment for the play to be a part of the Roundabout Underground series, the black box theater there is dreadful. With Gold’s actors often sitting or laying down, much of the action is quite literally impossible to see if one is not in the front row; a Cirque du Soleil member couldn’t do all of the craning and contorting necessary to see everything on that stage. (Still, what one can see of Dane Laffrey’s costumes and sets are worth it.)

Rosenstock’s play is proof-positive that many things in life are possible. Tigers can be tamed. People can get through grief. And it’s possible to write a smart, sensitive play that is pure joy to sit through.

Darkness Becomes Them

Both playwright Adam Rapp and downtown theater company The Amoralists are known for their in-your-face works. Consider the brute force of Rapp’s Pulitzer finalist, Red Light Winter, or the bravura work done in the extremist acting group’s magnum opus, The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side. These are creative forces who have never stopped in the comfortable middle ground. Fortunately, they take us somewhere far beyond in Ghosts in the Cottonwoods. This is Rapp’s first full-length play. Though written a decade and a half ago, it is only now getting its New York stage birth, with Rapp also onboard as director and the Amoralists joining him for the first time as the show’s collective surrogate mother.

Ghosts is a dark, measured play that predicts some of Rapp’s best works, including Winter and this summer’s The Metal Children and skirts some of the tricks that troubled other later works like Bingo With the Indians and Essential Self Defense. Thanks to set designer Alfred Schatz’s excellent tableau, we immediately establish the setting as a sort of Appalachian Gothic (the same image evoked this fall in Soho Rep’s Orange, Hat and Grace). Bean Scully (Sarah Lemp) shares a tough but close bond with her son Pointer (Nick Lawson) in their shack as they await the return of elder son Jeff (James Kautz), who has escaped from prison.

But other visitors will arrive first. William Apps is Newton Yardly, a badly injured bounty hunter who stumbles upon the Scully’s door. Remember that creepy hitchhiker who terrorized the characters early on in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Apps projects the same kind of secret horror onstage, adding the first dose of suspense to this white-knuckle affair. It’s hard to tell, at first, whether he is more of a threat to himself or to Bean and Pointer.

By the time we find out, though, Shirley Judyhouse (Mandy Nicole Moore) has also turned up on this rainy night, with a potentially destructive announcement: she’s carrying Pointer’s baby. The sense of dread, and overall intensity of Rapp’s show, only deepen further when Jeff and a friend of his (Matthew Pilieci) finally arrive.

Rapp has created a world of anomie here – rules, justice,and civility have no need to apply, and his cast treats this material with a seriousness requiring major commitment on their end. They work so well together that it seems wrong to single any of them out, but the work is so strong, I’ll do it anyway. Leading the pack is Lemp as the broken Bean, a woman who has retreated into her own world for reasons both explained and merely suggested. It’s a harrowing portrayal that I imagine left more than just this reviewer breathless by show’s end.

Lawson is uncanny as the son Bean has dragged down into the sinkhole with her, and the nimble way the two of them move and deliver Rapp’s brilliant backwoods idioglossia is impressively eerie. Apps, Kautz and Pilieci all go full throttle in their embodiments of menace, while Moore’s subtle choices add up to haunting effect.

The execution of Ghosts is so perfect that one almost overlooks one puzzling problem with the show. Despite Rapp’s taut direction, it is unclear what the ultimate takeaway of the play is supposed to be. Ordinarily, that would count as a pretty damning charge, but Ghosts is such a solid oak that there is no point in cutting it open to count the rings. The curtain descends long before audience members can catch their breath enough to question what they have just witnessed. That’s more than enough to make this scary sojourn worth the trip.

Hiding Out

Protected, written and directed by Timothy Scott Harris, is about the sacrifices people choose to make for their loved ones, and the new directions these lives take as a result. We meet Langley Peterson (Jeff Paul) just as he has begun a new life, transplanted from New York to Albuquerque as part of the Witness Protection Program. Mourning the life he left behind (for reasons audience members can discover on their own) and fearing new connections he might have to make, Peterson keeps himself at a distance from others. But those pesky others just won’t leave him alone! His neighbor Mirna (Cam Kornman) snoops on him and then tries to play yenta with her OCD daughter Debra (Dee Dee Friedman), who has also rejected a life in New York to come to her mother’s aid. Langley’s new colleague, Matt (Matt Walker) is anxious to find a friend and thinks he might be able to win one over in the new arrival. Langley, meanwhile, is still trying to reconcile himself to this new life.

Harris shows a nimble hand as director, guiding the show along at a laconic pace and letting his actors be. But what he has written is more situation than story. Protected feels more like the pilot episode of a television series – Lost in the Southwest, perhaps? – than a complete work. We’re watching a group of quirky characters come together, setting the stage for future hijinks and misunderstandings (a major thread involving Langley unwittingly inviting Dee Dee to a gay bar gets way too much attention here). Still, the cast makes these off-kilter characters likable, especially Paul, who makes Langley appear as though he could come unhinged at any second. It’s a group that makes life in Albuquerque seem pretty darn tolerable.

Protected is part of the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival.

The Truth Will Out

Tall, with a mop of overgrown hair and terrible posture, Jamie (Trip Langley) is awkwardness incarnate. Fortunately, Trip Langley, the actor who plays this uncomfortable teen with secrets in the Nicu’s Spoon production of Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing, knows exactly what he’s doing. And he isn’t alone. While the play shows signs of age and Harvey’s script contains some holes that still need some filling, director Michele Kuchuk has assembled a top-notch ensemble to tell this sensitive and amusing tale.

Beautiful, which debuted in the early 1990s, looks at the lives of several neighboring families in working class South London. Jamie lives with his mother, Sandra (Julie Campbell), a bartender looking to expand the options for her career and her life, which also includes boyfriend du jour Tony (Tim Romero).

Jamie spends most of his days with his friend, Leah (Rebecca Lee Lerman), an attention-seeking rebel who has been expelled from school and harbors an unhealthy worship of Mama Cass, and Ste (Michael Abourizk), a classmate who lives to his other side with an abusive father and brother (occasionally seen but never heard). Eventually, Ste seeks asylum under Sandra’s roof, and literally finds himself sharing a bed with Jamie, who is coming to terms with his homosexuality.

Eventually, Jamie and Ste realize that they are more than just friends, though Harvey never fully explores Ste’s journey. Has he always wrestled with uneasy feelings regarding his sexuality? His decision to embark on a clandestine relationship with Jamie seems to happen in too quick, and too easy, a fashion, although both Abourizk and Langley go a long way toward suggesting their characters’ inner torment. They provide the tentativeness where Harvey’s play provides only forward motion.

The play also lacks narrative focus. Is it about Jamie’s journey of self-discovery, his burgeoning relationship with Ste, or the way Sandra must reconcile what she learns about her young son? The idea that she might have a problem with Jamie being gay is introduced late in the play. And a potentially important scene, in which Jamie and Ste sneak into a local gay bar, is mentioned instead of shown.

Leah is also a red herring. As played at least in Kuchuk’s production, she is there to provide comic relief and distraction. Lerman does a great job with her madcappery, delivering sharp dialogue with a highly enjoyable dose of venom, but her subplot becomes a distraction when it should entwine more naturally with that of Jamie and Ste’s – will her jealousy turn her into a viable threat to their secret? Or will her choice to support them put her in a dangerous position? Neither happens, and her character’s ultimate journey feels somehow lesser as a result (it should be said, though, she can do a wicked imitation of Mama Cass).

Langley gives a heartbreakingly nuanced performance, full of the anguish attendant with anyone’s uncertain teen years. I wouldn’t say that he and Abourizk share great chemistry with one another, but the two work very well together, sharing a naivete and the feeling of what it means to be ostracized. Their scenes together provide the heart of the show, which is why it can be so frustrating when the action moves away from them.

Campbell is also magnificent, and adept at adding subtext to fuse Harvey’s narrative disconnects. She channels the character’s earthiness as well as her frustration at not being able to balance everything. It’s a marvelously layered performance. Lerman and Romero deliver sympathetic turns, though their roles do not afford them as many opportunities to explore their characters. And Stephanie Barton-Farcas, too, deserves applause for choreographing a realistic second act fight scene within the limited space allowed by the Spoon. (John Trevellini designed the minimalist set.)

Harvey’s play gives us characters that we come to care about, but he has put them in situations that feel too canned. If he were to have upped the stakes, then Kuchuk’s cast would have a play worthy of their skills.

A Woman's Work

Tina Modotti is certainly a colorful public figure whose life, on paper, makes for a compelling story. Unfortunately, Wendy Beckett’s play Modotti, now playing at Theatre Row’s Acorn Theatre, turns out to be a misguided attempt at dramatizing such a colorful life. Modotti (portrayed by Alysia Reiner), nee Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Italy, immigrated to the San Francisco area as a teenager. She flirted with acting and modeling after getting involved with a bohemian crowd. Soon she embarked on a more successful career as a photographer.

However, Beckett, who directed as well, emphasizes the more dramatic events in Modotti’s romantic life, notably her tempestuous relationship with fellow photographer Edward Weston (Jack Gwaltney). Eventually, Modotti ends up in Mexico, where she begins rallying for political causes, and gets entangled with Communists like muralist Diego Rivera (Marco Greco) as well as writers Bertram (Mark Zeisler) and Ella Wolfe (Dee Pelletier).

The play becomes little more than a chronological catalog of events in Modotti’s life – the men that came and went, her stint in jail due to her activism. Modotti’s scenes provide a sketch of the facts (some, at least) of her life, but it doesn’t dig particularly deep into her personality. Beckett appears to have a lot of respect for the woman, but gives her little personality to demonstrate. Where does her fire come from? Does she ever feel a sense of loss for anything of the ideas or people on whom she turns her back?

Part of the problem with Beckett’s structure is that, by now, it feels tired; the linear narrative no longer possesses much dramatic power. There are a couple of options that would make Modotti stand more on its own. For one thing, she could focus on a specific period in the artist-activist’s life. The specific drama would provide a more contained dramatic structure as well as provide ways to elucidate Modotti’s personality.

Another choice would be to create a more subjective show instead of sheer biography. Does Beckett have her own theories as to what motivated the woman, why she treated men the way she did, or what really happened during her ambiguous final years? Giving this show more of a thesis would also give it more personality.

And yet Modotti should in no way be written off entirely, if for no other reason than the skilled performance of its leading lady. Reiner holds the stage for the play’s entirety, and even when the script doesn’t do justice to the character, the actress certainly does, showing how her insatiable appetite for life made her magnetic to anyone who came near her. One hopes she rebounds with a stronger theatrical vehicle soon. The other actors in the ensemble turn in serviceable work – Gwaltney, in particular, is a very charismatic presence.

I hold out hope for Modotti. It’s an imperfect look at an important woman, but it is not too late to bring this look into focus.

Couples Retreat

Remember how Bernard Slade’s play Same Time, Next Year caught up with its characters every several years to depict changing morals – and mores – over the course of time? (For those in need of a more recent example, I recommend the movie When Harry Met Sally, in which the titular couple met every five years until they were finally ready to fall in love). Alan Ayckbourn’s Joking Apart attempts a similar feat by having its four central couples meet over the course of a dozen years, shown in four-year intervals. His goal is to show how these various characters come to terms with their love lives, what’s attainable and what’s merely a pipe dream, and while it is similar terrain to that which has covered in better-known works like Bedroom Farce and The Norman Conquests, the playwright stumbles quite a bit in finding his footing here. Nonetheless, T. Schreiber Studio’s current production, directed by Peter Jensen – the New York premiere of this play – does an admirable job bringing this work to a new generation of audiences.

Richard (Michael Murray) and Anthea (Aleksandra Stattin) Clarke are a fairly modern couple. He’s a successful businessman and father, and she is a loving mother; the two, though unmarried, appear to be perfect partners. They are great cooks and hosts and love convening with their friends, old and new. But the more they interact with these friends, the more the cracks in everyone’s relationships begin to show.

For starters, there are the neighboring Emersons. Hugh (Michael J. Connolly) is a vicar who never knows quite what to say, and Louise, his worried wife (Alison Blair), feels resentment every time Hugh dines with the Clarkes, because she feels inferior about her own cooking prowess. Sven Holmenson (James Liebman) is the antithesis of Hugh; as Richard’s business partner, he’s an insufferably arrogant blowhard, but his wife, Olive (Stephanie Seward), too feels jealous of Anthea.

Then there’s Brian (Sebastian Montoya), who works with both Richard and Sven. His character feels like Ayckbourn’s most calculated creation in Joking. Each scene finds him visiting with a different girlfriend (always played well by Anisa Dema), but even though the program credits Dema as playing multiple roles, it takes a while to realize that each of her characters is indeed a distinct one from scene to scene. No matter, though, since Brian secretly pines for Anthea. And, as it turns out, so does Hugh.

But it is hard to imagine that this grass-is-greener story – purportedly Ayckbourn’s personal favorite of his works – was ever truly fresh. Joking is a fairly idle work; it is hard to feel a sense of urgency for these characters as the years go by. The play faces physical hurdles in addition to emotional ones. Despite Matt Brogan’s top-notch scenic design and Eric Cope’s lighting effects, several climactic tennis matches occur partially offstage, making it difficult for one to fully invest in the obscured action.

And yet Jensen’s cast respects the people they portray so much that ultimately, so do we. Stattin is a luminous presence, projecting both beauty and depth; it’s easy to see why she might be the object of such intense male affection as well as female derision. Blair and Seward both excel at projecting insecurity with comic finesse, and Connolly outdoes Ayckbourn’s own script to connect all the dots needed to justify some of Hugh’s incongruous actions.

All together, though, something feels absent from Joking. Slade’s show entwined comedy, drama, reflection on changing times and charming chemistry; the passage of years meant something had both been lost and gained for its two characters every time they reunited for another twist.

The four scenes in Ayckbourn’s work lack the same richness. There isn’t a dramatically compelling reason – or even a comedically diverting one – to substantiate a reason for each time these characters commune. While one would understandably want to watch these actors in a different piece, in this case, one also wants to run up and tell them that the party’s over.

Brawl in the Family

In the last few years, The Amoralists – a passionate group of players that includes founding members Derek Ahonen, James Kautz, and Matthew Pilieci – have created quite a name for themselves on the downtown scene with their blend of traditional storytelling structure and in-your-face comedy. Those who have missed their previous works are in luck, though: their 2010 season includes revivals of such recent works as The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side and Amerissiah, which just opened at Theater 80. Amerissiah, written and directed by Ahonen, falls slightly beneath the benchmark set by such shining lights as Pipers and the recent Happy in the Poorhouse. The play, still steeped in over-the-top yuks, probes fairly deeply, but Ahonen isn’t able to answer all of his questions as satisfyingly as one might hope. And yet a nearly perfect cast makes the experience a worthwhile one.

George Walsh is Johnny Ricewater, a used car salesman cum mini-celebrity whose questionable finances have gotten himself and business partner daughter Holly (the typically outstanding Sarah Lemp) into some trouble with the law. But Holly has even more pressing matters to deal with, including her estranged lawyer husband Bernie “the Attorney” (Kautz) and the impending demise of eldest brother Barry (Pilieci).

Barry has returned to the Ricewaters’ childhood home on Long Island in anticipation of his death as cancer gets the best of him. He’s comforted by the fact that he thinks he is the Second Coming (Ahonen’s title is an amalgam of the words “American” and “messiah”), a notion shared by an interracial couple (Nick Lawson and Jennifer Fouche) who arrive from the Midwest convinced that Barry can save their souls. Meanwhile, third Ricewater child Ricky (William Apps), a recovering addict, has come home with his new girlfriend Loni (Selene Beretta), also feeling the ache of rehabilitation.

Ahonen has assembled a team in the truest sense of the word. His ensemble is a group of talents that work incredibly well together, and their intimacy easily translates into a warts-and-all look at one seriously dysfunctional family. Amerissiah runs the gamut of humor to pathos, from scatology to spirituality, and these actors fulfill all of Ahonen’s demands with vivid brushstrokes.

But the show is also a little too dyspeptic for its own good. Ahonen’s works start out at a higher decibel than most shows and only continue to get louder and more hyper. This has worked in other shows but has a bit of a diluting effect on the material in Amerissiah; it is easy to gloss right over the show’s more inward, reflective moments because the play isn’t slow and silent enough in pockets. It is a two-tone show that should feel more blended together.

That is not to say that this dedicated cast eschews realism. On the contrary, the performances in Amerissiah provide plenty of gravitas in addition to mere entertainment (and they certainly entertain, with aplomb). Apps and Beretta navigate through thick subtext to shed extra light on their troubled characters. Pilieci and Walsh both convincingly portray men looking for more meaning, more connection, than their lives have provided to them, regardless of their accomplishments. And Fouche is a marvel as Carrie, the quintessence of devotion.

Additionally, Kautz and Lemp share a special chemistry as the exes who cannot untangle from their bond. The two are comic delights, with Kautz playing the milquetoast and Lemp engaging in full-throttle hysteria throughout the show. Lawson, too, as a closed-minded, epithet-spewing yokel, is a laugh riot. Only Aysha Quinn, as Barry’s ethereal wife, Margie, feels a little too meek and disengaged for this gang.

Still, despite stumbling through some of Amerissiah’s heavier tropes, Ahonen has excelled in another area. He has created another unorthodox family of chaotic characters. And in loving them even more than they love each other, he has managed to make them unforgettable.

Light Blue

Buddy Cop 2 sounds similar to the recent box office bomb MacGruber, like a spoof of 1980s action genre tropes. And it’s true that the play, written by co-stars Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and developed by director Oliver Butler, takes place in the 1980s. But beneath the polyester pants and Aquanet hair, there are a lot of smart, unexpected, and even dramatic surprises to be found. Buddy, presented by the Debate Society with the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, takes place in the local police station of Shandon, Indiana. Though it’s currently August, Officers Novak and Olsen (Bos and Thureen, respectively) are making sure things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Local girl Skylar (Monique Vukovic) is suffering from cancer and might not live to see the actual holiday, so the townspeople are singing and parading in her honor; the governor even makes plans to visit.

Meanwhile, the officers go on with their daily routine. Novak practices for a physical ability test that her male colleagues have never had to take. Olsen bides his time by playing bingo along with the radio. And fellow Officer McMurchie (Michael Cyril Creighton) stews at being passed over to work security for the governor’s visit.

Everything about Buddy seems to shriek “comedy!” And in the beginning, it seems to be playing along those lines. Novak gallops toward the front door every time a delivery arrives. The officers dig at each other and their quotidian routines engender knowing laughter from anyone who’s whittled time away behind a desk. An early scene in which Novak knocks down a shelf had me laughing harder than I had at a show in weeks.

But eventually, Buddy moves in a different direction. This isn’t at all a play about people acting funny, this is a play about a community coming together and how easy it is for people to understand one another without words even being said. Novak, for instance, appreciates McMurchie’s feeling slighted, and also makes some keen observations about Olsen.

Buddy, shrewdly paced by Butler, is also a play where the devil lies in the details, and boy do the talented actors in this show have those details down pat. Bos, Creighton and Thureen are able to fold the funny bits of the story into characterizations that carry real dimension. The outrage Thureen brings to losing at bingo is both humorous and scary at the same time; the forthright manner in which Bos has Novak describe her short-lived marriage is simultaneously endearing and heartbreaking. And the way the officers take turns lowering the volume on the radio when a phone call comes in is the kind of deft touch that shows respect and familiarity not found in a more run-of-the-mill slapstick comedy. And Creighton wields a mean slow burn.

Furthermore, Laura Jellinek’s design is also spot-on, recreating a claustrophobic office environment. (The actual Shandon police station has flooded, so the action takes place in a converted recreation center that comes complete with a functional racquetball court.) Mike Rigg’s lighting design also contributes to the realistic effect.

The one place where Buddy seems to falter is in the monologues that break up the scenes depicting the officers’ monotony, delivered by Vukovic as Skylar and another character, Brandi. The way these are interwoven with the police station scenes never fully gels, and sometimes it creates an eerie effect. These speeches confuse rather than clarify the show's ultimate tone.

Still, the overall effect of the play is a very tender one. I went to this play to watch several strangers, and I left it feeling as though I had made several friends.

Hours in the Attic

Family ties are known to bind, but they’ve rarely been as constricting as they are in August Schulenburg’s challenging new play, Jacob’s House. Serving as both historical fiction and Biblical allegory, Schulenburg sets the bar high, and at times this very talented playwright’s heavy lifting feels like a bit of a reach. In this play, a Flux Theatre Ensemble production directed by Kelly O’Donnell at the Access Theater, Dinah (Jane Lincoln Taylor) and Joe (Zack Calhoon) are sorting through their father’s possessions in the attic of his house following his funeral. Since Joe is significantly younger than Dinah, his memories of Jacob, his father, filter through a different prism than the perspective of his older sister. Dinah fills him – and the audience, as well – in on some of the many stories of Jacob’s life.

It turns out that with the help of his mother, Rebecca, Jacob (Matthew Archambault) tricked his father, Isaac (Johnna Adams), into blessing him and tricked elder brother Esau (Anthony Wills Jr.) out of his birthright. Later, though he loves Rachel (Kelli Dawn Holsopple, Jacob ends up being manipulated into marrying her own older sister, Leah (Tiffany Clementi). Jacob eventually assumes an awesome amount of responsibility and power.

Do these stories sound familiar? Perhaps the names ring a bell? They very well might, since they come straight from the Old Testament. In House, Schulenburg takes these events and stretches them out over an elongated period of our nation’s history, covering everything from the American Revolution to the First World War.

The events set in the past are the ones that capture the audience most, not just because these are well-known tales, but because the stakes are so much higher. Even the entrance of Tamar (Jessica Angleskahn), a modern-day antagonist who becomes an obstacle to Dinah and Joe’s inheritance, feels more contrived than urgent. Tamar becomes too much of a storytelling tool, a device used to offer lots of exposition and instigate some of Dinah’s more confessional revelations to Joe. (This choice may be due to the fact that Schulenburg reportedly had little time to write the piece; when the rights to another intended show fell through, he drafted House in just a few days.)

Other aspects of the plot still feel somewhat undercooked – how exactly are these parables, so lovingly lifted from Genesis, supposed to inform the contemporary tragic story at the center of the show? And because Dinah, Joe and Tamar spend so much of the play introducing new information, one never gets the sense of any familial connection. They feel more like strangers telling their life story and finding random coincidences than demonstrating the intuitive understanding, both good and bad, that comes with the intimacy relatives share with each other.

And yet, as always, Flux has such sterling talent onstage and behind the scenes that their professionalism makes House an effort worthy of serious attention. O’Donnell proves to be a visionary, able to stage the historic and modern day scenes around each other without confusing temporal perspective. And Jason Paradine’s detailed set accurately recalls the effects that might litter a truly lived-in home.

Most of all, O’Donnell’s acting ensemble raises the game. The women have what I found to be the far more intriguing roles -– they are the ones connected to most of the show’s secrets and duplicity, after all -- and Angleskahn and Taylor sink their claws into their meaty roles. But while they get to drive most of their scenes, Calhoon has trickier terrain, since almost his entire role is reactive. It’s easy to get lost in such a part, but the actor navigates it quite convincingly. Archambault captivates as Jacob, charting the man’s most peculiar journey and shading in the character developments required to bridge one scene to the next. (Another choice, though, in which featured members of the cast play multiple roles, takes a while too long to catch onto.)

While I review House, I very much still see Jacob’s life as an unfinished one at this juncture. Schulenburg has his work cut out for him, but is clearly off to a great start. In continuing to build House, he couldn’t ask for a greater team of architects.

soloNOVA Festival Gives Solo Performers Center Stage

Theater festivals often require a cast of thousands – in addition to the actors, there are crew members, writers, producers, a director, and wranglers to keep the whole operation moving. terraNOVA Collective, however, has found a way to slim down the body count with its soloNOVA Arts Festival, now in its seventh year.

The solution? Put on a festival spotlighting solo performances. soloNOVA is New York City’s premiere site for solo performance. terraNOVA’s mission is to usher in innovative and original theatrical works; as a result, soloNOVA “celebrates those individuals who push the boundaries of what it means to be an artist, aims to redefine the solo form and uniquely invigorates the audience through the time-honored tradition of storytelling.”

That may sound like a tall order, but terraNOVA knows how to keep it simple. This year’s festival only has eight solo performers appearing in a main stage offering.

“We keep it small consciously,” says Jennifer Conley Darling, Artistic Director of terraNOVA Collective. “We want to bring greater production values, marketing efforts and greater care to each show we present. We want soloNOVA to be a springboard for the shows in the festival to go on to larger venues and festivals in the city, across the country and around the world.” Darling acknowledges that past shows have gone on to win awards at Edinburgh and enjoy successful Off-Broadway runs.

Avery Pearson, who appears this year in the show Monster, concurs that what makes soloNOVA unique is the hands-on attention Darling and co-director James Carter provide for their participants. “Jennifer and James give very specific focus to each production,” he relates. “soloNOVA decreased its productions from twelve to eight this year in order to increase the care given to each one.”

“It sounds cliché,” Pearson adds, “however, the reality is that most theater companies and theaters shy away from the solo form. It is a very challenging art form – one which demands an excellent script to hold the audience's attention. Strong acting, direction and production quality must lift the script off that page without alienating its audience. soloNOVA understands these challenges and continues to push forward to find the finest work, championing the solo art form.”

Darling agrees that it was lack of visibility for solo work that lit a fire for the festival in the first place. However, she didn’t just want to provide a home for run-of-the-mill solo performance. “We decided to reinvigorate this art form by curating a festival that showcased all genres, including dance, magic, clowning, puppetry, storytelling, monologues, comedians, etc.,” she explains, going on to point out that “our objective over the years is to get away from the solo form that only rehashes the performer's life story, and, instead, really focus on the ancient tradition of storytelling.”

But just because Carter and Darling strive to reincorporate the original artistic elements of the solo form doesn’t mean these performances are in any way primitive. Take, for example, Jesse Zaritt’s show, Binding, which fuses popular music, costume and puppet elements with interactive video to represent basic human emotion and tell of one man’s search for love and connection.

“What I examine with this work is not just the way a body responds to the drama of love,” Zaritt explains, “but also the potentially destructive or redemptive experience of being in thrall of a profound faith, spiritual transcendence, fame, or violent coercion.” Binding, according to Zaritt, uses these multimedia elements to portray “the connections and slippage between these volatile states.”

In a similar vein, Jessi Hill, director of entrant It or Her describes the show as “a black comedy about a man who meticulously creates an entire world of relationships with objects, in the absence of personal relationships that he has never experienced.”

Star Brian McManamon recognizes the universality of the show. “To me, the play is a partially veiled look at what it is to be an artist in the world. Andrew is an artist in the process of creating what he believes to be his life’s work and is desperate for his creation to leave an important contribution to the world – not an unfamiliar feeling for any artist, or, for that matter, this actor. He is striving for recognition and appreciation for his work from the world around him and those he loves. He ends up finding what he is looking for in the form of dozens of inanimate objects.”

soloNOVA has selected works that range from those dealing with the human heart to others that are almost shockingly relevant. Take Rootless: La No-Nostalgia, a bilingual cabaret about the emotional life of immigrants, starring Karina Casiano; given the passage of last week’s Arizona immigration bill, such a show couldn’t be more topical.

The show, which includes a diverse mix of songs in English and Spanish (with supertitles) that range from rock to tango, follows a confused immigrant who begins to forget her language, her accent and even her gender after many years away from her land. “While we hear the news about the laws attempting to control the entrance of undocumented people to the U.S,” Casiano states, “ Rootless gives a view of what goes on in the minds and hearts of migrants as we leave our whole lives behind and try to adapt to a new, often hostile country in search of a better life. It ponders the feelings of detachment and fear that our painful escape brings upon us but also proposes a self-critical view of the role our own countries play in pushing us out.”

Casiano also praises terraNOVA’s support. “Solo artists are used to having to work alone and, while we may take all the glory when it comes, we also carry all the responsibility. Counting on the support of a knowledgeable and hard-working company like terraNOVA Collective makes me feel ‘not-so-solo.’”

The multicultural aspect of soloNOVA is another plus. “As a Latina artist, I was especially pleased that the organizers of the festival were interested in my show about immigration,” Casiano says. “It not only brings diversity to their program but also allows me to reach an audience of both English and Spanish speakers who I feel will welcome a cool, fun, sexy approach to this hot topic.”

The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour, starring Bell, shares Rootless’ topicality. “My solo show is a mix of stand-up comedy, personal stories, pop cultural criticism, slides, video clips, and good old-fashioned American freedom of speech,” Bell says. “It's like a tea party... but for the good guys.” Bell also says that anyone who attends Curve with a friend of a different race gets in two-for-one.

If there is harmony of any kind to be found in regard to the festival, it’s among all of the solo participants, who unanimously praise terraNOVA for their unwavering belief and support. In fact, the relationship begins to paint Carter and Darling as the parents of eight super-happy children.

And apparently, they are parents who reserve judgment on subject matter. How else could Erin Markey’s Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail, an autobiographical piece about how her life as a stripper became more complicated after she fell in love with a fellow dancer, make it into the mix?

“There is a lot of assertive nurturing happening,” said Markey. “They really believe in solo work, which is such a niche genre; there really aren't a lot of other organizations that specifically support solo work in the same way. terraNOVA’s investment in live solo work keeps me batting my lashes and making phone calls. They're very hands-on with the artists. We are in contact nearly every day and have been for a long time.”

And while some of the works in soloNOVA look at the world, others reflect inward. Remission chronicles Dan Berkey’s experiences with schizophrenia. “Its primary purpose is to incite curiosity and questions about the condition, which has been maligned by the media and other questionable and outright spurious sources,” Berkey says. Shontina Vernon’s show, Wanted, follows a ten-year-old girl from the West Texas town of Lamesa, who is sent to a juvenile detention center after she forges eight thousand dollars in checks trying to achieve her dream of becoming a singer.

In addition to the eight solo shows, performer Nilaja Sun will receive the soloNOVA Artist of the Year award. “Nilaja's work on No Child… and as an arts educator truly exemplifies the embodiment of a solo performer,” according to Darling. The honor will be bestowed on May 21, and will feature student performances and testimonials on how No Child affected their lives.

“Every year we aim to get new audiences to at least one show in the festival and they are never disappointed,” Darling says. It would be hard for anyone to argue that they haven’t made good on their goal.

soloNOVA runs from May 5 to May 22. For a full list of performances, please visit http://www.terranovacollective.org/.

The Sounds of Silence

There aren’t any UFOs or three-fingered ETs to be found onstage at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, where The Aliens, Annie Baker’s newest play, has its world premiere. Instead, we get one insecure teen and two rough-and-tumble slackers, all of whom stand in marked contrast to the supremely assured, delicately nuanced work in which they appear. As its very name informs, Rattlestick is a venue interested in nurturing the works of talented playwrights, both new and enduring. Take, for example, Noah Haidle’s Rag and Bone from several seasons ago, Lucy Thurber’s Killers and Other Family and Mando Alvarado’s Post No Bills from this fall. These are thoughtful, enthralling works whose only shared trait is how distinct they are from one another.

Aliens fits right in line with its predecessors, thanks, of course, in large part to Baker, a keen observer of human folly. She eyes minutiae with a magnifying glass, making the small seem not just obvious but vital. This was a skill apparent in her debut, Body Awareness, as well in Playwrights Horizons’ Circle Mirror Transformation, one of this season’s unquestionable triumphs.

In addition to its cerebral observations, Baker’s newest play shares some more physical attributes with Circle. First and foremost, Sam Gold directs both, and why break what’s already fixed? The two are a miracle team. Also, on a surface level, both plays occur in small-town Vermont. While the characters of Circle, however, signed up for the community center acting class in which they all met, the three leads of Aliens end up together behind a local coffee house simply by staying put; they have nowhere else to be.

KJ (Michael Chernus) and Jasper (Erin Gann) are two thirtysomething ne’er-do-wells who have never managed to stray far from their hometown for long. KJ went off to college, but dropped out early on due to a psychological problem. They seem to pass all of their time in their hangout, with KJ singing songs and Jasper writing his first novel.

The two balk at first when Evan (Dane DeHaan), a high schooler newly employed at the coffee house, asks them to leave and take their vagrancy elsewhere. But if Evan doesn’t get the response he wanted, he gets something greater: Jasper and KJ gradually initiate him into their tiny fraternity. All three, it turns out, have been rejected from the world at large, making them the “aliens” of the title (The Aliens was also a potential band name once upon a time for Jasper and KJ.)

Gold knows just how to move his play along while still letting it breathe, making a comfortable rhythm out of Baker’s text. The fascination of Aliens comes from just watching these people be. They are in no hurry to get anywhere. Watching them onstage reminds one of sitting around on a lazy day with friends; that much of their interaction feels inconsequential does not mean it is boring. In fact, the characters’ stasis makes for a rich experience. Jasper and KJ feel that the world doesn’t get them, and have accepted it. Evan, then, is the play’s great hope since he is on the precipice of discovering just what the world might have in store for him.

One key element that adds to the rhythm in these scenes is silence. Baker has her three men-children not speaking almost as much as she provides them dialogue. Far from creating dead air, this adds to the authenticity. It is a choice that makes total sense; when friends know each other as well as Jasper and KJ, there isn’t a whole lot to say. (KJ’s drug use also explains his often muted effect.) We get as much insight into their friendship from what they don’t say as from what they do. Conversely, Evan’s natural hesitations and quiescence only emphasize his awkwardness as an outsider.

Baker’s road could be a tricky one to navigate if not for her immensely talented cast, who go to great effort in order to create Aliens’ effortless feel. Chernus synthesizes a ton of internal emotions in a physically disciplined performance that lets the audience glimpse some of the demons that taunt him. A second-act scene in which he repeats the word “ladder” as a calming ritual should be the stuff of legend. And Gann is every bit his match as his more charged friend; Japer channels his passions into his novel, though he doubts it may ever be heard (his protagonist remains nameless).

Evan ends up being the fulcrum on which Baker’s subtle action pivots. DeHaan is a phenom, suggesting how badly Evan needs to belong somewhere without ever showing it outright. Evan is a turtle emerging from his shell for the first time, and the marvel of DeHaan’s performances is how he chronicles this emergence in such small, believable gradients. There isn’t a false note to be found, particularly in the moments in which he watches and reacts to the things Jasper and KJ tell him throughout the show.

Baker’s ability to see and hear people as they are has allowed her to create characters that are compellingly real. I went in to see Aliens and I left feeling as though I had made several friends.

And You Thought Your High School Was Rough

Don’t be mistaken: Alice in Slasherland, the latest work by the geek-chic stage combat virtuosos that are the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll’s fabled tale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; it’s not even connected to Tim Burton’s current film remake. But one would also be mistaken to miss out on this highly enjoyable, skillful production. The closest any action gets to Carroll’s classic is in the character naming of Slasherland, written by Qui Nguyen, directed by Robert Ross Parker, and playing at HERE Arts Center. Carlo Alban plays high school outcast Lewis, nursing a crush on childhood friend and cheerleader Margaret (Bonnie Sherman). Much to his chagrin, this feeling is not reciprocated. Margaret leaves a Halloween party with the more popular Duncan (Sheldon Best).

Frustrated, Lewis unwittingly channels some carnivorous demons to his high school, leaving it up to him, Margaret, and an odd, largely mute woman named, naturally, Alice (Amy Kim Waschke) to fend these deadly creatures off. Alice is an amalgam of La Femme Nikita and Samarra, the young girl from the Ring movies. Waschke’s portrayal has her speaking and moving in halting rhythms. We think she’s on the side of the good guys, but we’re never quite sure.

Slasherland could come off as merely mindless, derivative drivel if it weren’t for two things. First of all, the technical skill at play here (nothing strange to those who have seen other Vampire Cowboys shows like Fight Girl Battle World or Soul Samurai) is absolute wizardry. Nguyen’s fight choreography is adroit without ever crossing the line into being too violent; despite a healthy amount of blood spatter, Slasherland knows it is a send-up of teen horror flicks but never tries to enter that canon. It’s happy enough to mock from afar. Additionally, Matthew Tennie’s multimedia design provides for some hysterical moments, including a “sneak preview” that runs at the show’s commencement. Jessica Shay also is to be commended for her outstanding costumes.

The second thing elevating Slasherland is just how fun it is. Nguyen and Parker have invented some ingenious theatricalities to keep their show both fun and fresh throughout. These include a death montage set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (don’t worry, it plays much better than it might read) and a teddy bear puppet named Edgar who joins Lewis, Margaret and Alice in their quest to annihilate bad guys. (David Valentine takes care of the puppet design.) Best deserves extra props, so to speak, for his ability to operate Edgar and personify him with hedonistic wit.

The Vampire Cowboys have also assembled a cast that knows how to deliver dialogue with the right dollop of camp. Alban and Sherman seem to be having a terrific time onstage and deliver great tongue-in-cheek performances. Andrea Marie Smith is hysterical as both a bitchy teen and an additional character who appears at show’s end who might be even more evil.

Waschke handles Alice’s craziness with care. On the page, her character is the hardest to understand, and therefore the least funny, but Waschke plays her scenes with such mastery that it is sure to elicit guffaws from anyone playing close attention.

The only element of Slasherland that feels gratuitous is Nguyen’s back-and-forth narration. The play skips around to moments in the past and then back to the present within the week where the show’s action occurs. It is actually more confusing to do this than let the play move linearly. I wasn’t sure at various points when Alice and Lewis had first met and how much they had bonded, and what the extent of Duncan and Margaret’s relationship was. Just let the demons wreak havoc and get their comeuppance in the proper order.

Fortunately, that’s what happens for the most part. It’s hard to re-fashion a movie of any kind for the stage, harder to still to do it well. And yet that’s what Slasherland achieves. Nguyen, Parker and the rest of the Vampire Cowboys have taken a dismissed movie subgenre and created a production that should be seen by all. Or else.

Phantom Whim

Carmichael (Christopher Walken), the main character of Martin McDonagh’s new play, A Behanding in Spokane, has spent the last 47 years searching for his left hand. However, an absent palm and five digits is nothing compared to what is missing from this play: purpose. Behanding, playing the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, finds Carmichael holed up in a dreary hotel room in an unnamed town. Marilyn (Zoe Kazan) and Toby (Anthony Mackie) are a couple of scam artists who have answered his online ad and said they have Carmichael’s missing hand. (He explains that when he was younger some bullies had the missing appendage severed by a speeding locomotive.) Unfortunately, the couple has been caught red-, er, black-handed, when Toby provides a hand clearly belonging to a man of another race.

Carmichael then holds Marilyn and Toby hostage in his dingy room while he leaves to investigate a lead Toby has provided; he has lit a flame working its way down to a tank of gasoline. As directed by John Crowley (A Steady Rain), there’s no Hitchcockian tension here, though. He plays Behanding for laughs, and as a result, the stakes feel quite low.

McDonagh’s earlier plays, like The Beauty Queen of Leenane trilogy, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Pillowman (also directed by Crowley), were masterful works but punishing affairs. They were as lacerating for the audience as they were for his characters. But they also provided thoughtful social and existential comedy (so, too, did McDonagh’s overlooked 2008 movie, In Burges).

Behanding is, I suppose, best described as a black comedy. Marilyn and Toby never really seem in peril. Its tone is humorous instead of tense, and McDonagh seemingly intends for his play to be taken at face value. Compared to his other plays, though, Behanding -- the playwright’s first American-set work – feels utterly lacking. Is he branching out, trying for something more commercial, or merely being lazy?

The play also suffers from a kind of identity disorder. It is unclear whether Crowley and McDonagh aim for realism or surrealism. Though both Marilyn and Toby sit handcuffed in the hotel room, a working telephone is within Toby’s reach. (In several humorous exchanges, Carmichael’s unseen mother calls on it.) If the show were aiming for realism, there would either be no phone or it should not work. And if Behanding skewed on the side of something more surreal, the play should emphasize that they know a phone is there but come up with contrived reasons not to use it. The current result makes the play feel unfinished and slapdash.

The excellent Sam Rockwell plays a fourth character. He’s Mervyn, the hotel’s desk clerk, who is just looking for an opportunity to save the day. I don’t know if Behanding was written specifically for Rockwell or Walken, but it certainly plays toward both actors’ irreverent acting styles. There are divergent effects, however. Rockwell specializes in playing disarming men-children, as in Choke and Snow Angels, so Mervyn is a perfect fit. But Rockwell tailors his performance to the character, making sense of the hotel employee’s quirks so that the audience understands where he is coming from when he is dealing with other characters.

Walken, on the other hand, plays vintage Walken here, and the effect is a distracting one. His shtick – tuff tawk and over-enunciation of odd syllables – has provided him with a lasting persona, but that persona can be a hindrance. It makes his performance feel like a caricature, and takes the audience out of the scene. Such familiarity with Walken’s demeanor also detracts from any threat the actor might possess in his scenes. His Carmichael makes one’s initial reaction one of laughter when one should be cowering. I would be interested to see how a different actor would approach this role. (It should also be said that Carmichael is offstage for a great deal of Behanding, and while he is, the play does not miss him.)

McDonagh saddles Kazan and Mackie with the play’s most thankless roles, though. The characters reminded me of half of the Scooby Gang; the two are so hapless one wonders how they ever thought they could pull off Behanding’s central scam in the first place. Mackie holds his own; he’s actually the only actor of the four who commits enough to making it look like his character might actually be in danger, and he does so while still embracing the play’s innate humor. Kazan, however, comes off as more amateurish. Her line delivery is manic and shrill. McDonagh intends for her to be alternately a clever operator and a damsel in distress, and I didn’t believe either persona.

It isn’t fair to penalize McDonagh for creating a play that is lighter than the rest of his oeuvre. In its defense, Behanding is diverting and will please anyone looking for a healthy dose of star power. Still, one cannot help but wish that beyond all the eccentricity, the show had something more to say.

The Ladies Who Lunch

Desiree Burch, Cara Francis and Erica Livingston offer no greater proof of the daring and immediacy to be found in New York theater than in their current work, The Soup Show. The three are part of the New York Neo-Futurists. The Neo-Futurists (or “Neos,” as they refer to themselves) are a group of self-actualized performance artists. Their mission is to create “a world in the theater which has no pretense or illusion,” with no suspension of disbelief. A prop doesn’t substitute for something else, and they use their own names rather than portraying character. In other words, to paraphrase La Cage Aux Folles, they are exactly who they are.

And who they are in Soup, sharply directed by Lauren Sharpe, are three confident and comfortable women, sharing themselves with an audience. Be warned: there is nudity, and plenty of it. From start to finish, pretty much, we see Burch, Francis and Livingston nude onstage. Yet this nudity is in no way offensive or shocking, In fact, after merely a few minutes, one is too busy listening to what the women have to say to be distracted by what they are – or are not – wearing.

Soup is essentially a variety act, a review of sketches tied together by the notion of female solidarity and resilience. At the evening’s commencement, all audience members are handed out pencils and instructed to sketch one of the three actresses. It’s a powerful move, and defines the difference between being naked and being nude – the former is vulnerable and the latter has power. They claim their appearance before the audience before anyone in the audience has the chance to feel embarrassed.

At the center of the stage, not to mention the show itself, is a big hot tub that the three women periodically enter but more often add various items from the evening into. Soup itself is a bouillabaise of stories taken from the performers’ own lives as well as interviews and images put forth by the media.

For instance, Livingston shares her personal feelings about the battles in raising her stepdaughter and the lessons she wishes for her to learn. At the same time, she creates recipe and tries to catch ingredients like eggs and flour into a mixing bowl – this could look somehow sloppy or misguided, but Livingston’s and Sharpe’s touch makes it both personal and a perfectly theatrical way to present how messy parenthood can be for anyone. (You can bet that those ingredients will also find their way into the hot tub.)

Throughout Soup, the performers intermittently quote from sources’ thoughts about women. While one reads, another holds a magnifying glass up against various parts of the readers’ body. One way to view this is that even when women are recounting one’s thoughts, their physicality will always also be under the microscope. All three performers are sublime, and it should be said, work so well together I found myself thinking of the three women as one cohesive unit rather than three separate actresses.

Sharpe’s show is both slick and substantive, moving at a fast clip but never too fast for the audience to process the humor and the emotions that have just been introduced. And while much of the show is deeply personal, it’s also raucously fun. Burch invites a man onstage and shaves half of his face. And in what is sure to be the evening’s most talked-about sequence, Francis demonstrates a special talent she has honed over time.

This combination of deep thought and crudity meshes together perfectly. It allows the show’s three stars to embrace who they are in their entirety. No one can ever be summed up by one simple description, or even a few. Soup explores how each person is a mash of complications and contradictions. One of this show’s key strengths is that beyond supporting any feminist perspective, it espouses a human one.

Another heavy moment of the show occurs when Burch strips down the notion of what motherhood can mean. This perceptive monologue is immediately, followed, however, by a request for anyone in the audience to step onstage and give them a hug. Who wouldn’t want to?