Pregnant Pause

Many writers forget that in order to create a valid work of art in response to a controversial issue, be it the war, violence in the media, or the death penalty, a piece must integrate opinion into a narrative that both supports its thesis and entertains. Without a gripping story or intriguing, believable characters, all that is left is posturing. Girls in Trouble, the supremely entertaining work currently mounted at the Flea, demonstrates a keen understanding of all sides of the hot-fire topic of abortion. Playwright Jonathan Reynolds makes one smart choice after another in a charged work that never stoops down to mere demagoguery.

Reynolds understands that no matter where one might stand on the right-to-life debate, the underlying issue is one of respect: of feelings, of trust, of privacy, and that is what his work brings to life. As a result, it is one of the most engaging works I have ever experienced at the Flea.

Trouble, directed by Flea founder Jim Simpson, is a triptych of three unique vignettes that reveal the different mores of three time periods in the last fifty years. While this concept isn’t entirely new – HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk did very much the same thing nearly fifteen years ago – the work shows how little progress we have made as a society in tolerating each other’s differences and stepping outside our own solipsistic viewpoints.

Beyond that, Trouble also provides several meaty opportunities for its Bats, the astonishingly capable group of repertory players at the Flea. Andy Gershenzon captivates in the play’s first portion, as Hutch, a collegiate gool ol’ boy who races across state lines late one night with a friend, Teddy (Brett Aresco), to get his one-night stand, Barb (Betsy Lippitt) a crude illegal abortion. Hutch is trying to race Barb back post-procedure in time for her morning exam. Gershenzon is fully committed to playing his part as reprehensibly as Reynolds demands; there isn’t a false note in his portrayal of a character who wants to be unhindered in life with utter disregard for the damage he might leave in his wake. He is human, in many of the ugliest ways imaginable.

This sequence is familiar, particularly as Hutch and the gang finally meet Sandra (Akyiaa Wilson), the nurse who will help Barb, but Simpson’s genius lies in using the situation as a mirror. How much of ourselves do we recognize in Hutch, or even Barb? Would we behave in a similar fashion? How, in fifty years, has so little changed? Pay close attention to the subtle work of Aresco as well, who makes the malleable Teddy a perfectly realized example of tacit approval.

Trouble heats up in its second act in a great showdown between Amanda (Laurel Holland) and Cynthia (Eboni Booth). Set in modern times, Amanda is an NPR host with a gorgeous career, apartment (John McDermott did the set design) and daughter. However, she also has a problem: an unwanted pregnancy. Sunny is a pro-life advocate who bluffs her way into Amanda’s apartment to dissuade her from an imminent abortion. Reynolds has both Amanda and Sunny recite the expected rhetoric in defense of their respective sides, but in a way that informs the characters more than shouts to the audience. It is perhaps Reynolds’ greatest accomplishment that one can never truly infer his stance on this issue by play’s end.

Booth and Holland are incendiary. The irony is that the more the two women argue, the more similar they appear to be. While their battle royale is akin to a great tennis match, the two actresses are so in sync with one another, and Simpson helms the act so deftly that it plays more like virtuoso jazz piece. In essence, Reynolds uses Trouble as the sugar to help his medicine go down. Without shoving it down our throats, he makes his point clear. Regardless of one’s opinion, it is never right to turn a private matter into a public game that always requires a winner and a loser.

Booth is the evening’s MVP, appearing in all three sequences. She commands the stage for the first act closer, a daring spoken-word piece in which Sunny, a pregnant woman, laments her situation, the man who helped her get there, and the ramifications of her options. Booth nimbly moves around the dialogue and gets under the emotions. How she is able to play three so disparate women in the course of one show and not look exhausted is beyond me. I’ll let it remain her secret.

But it’s no secret that Reynolds and Simpson have created a must-see work. Trouble sheds light on a fight that shows no sign of stopping any time soon. It’s easy to be blinded when discussing a taboo subject. In an entertaining – no, riveting – way, this play reminds us that beneath the issues are real people. Regardless of their flaws, they cannot be forgotten.

Dress Blues

ReEntry, Emily Ackerman and K.J. Sanchez’s enthralling work currently gracing Urban Stages, is as relevant as a show can get. The play, culled from real-life interviews with many Marines, examines the difficulties involved in realigning to life in the States after serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it does so with no political judgment regarding the cause of such service. However, a show this well-honed would be a must-see at any time. Sanchez also directs ReEntry, following a successful run at Two River Theatre Company in Red Bank, New Jersey. Over the course of a year, she and Ackerman conducted interviews with war veterans and their families and shaped characters from these voices. This kind of testimony theater excels at being informative, even enlightening (i.e., Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank’s The Exonerated), but Sanchez’s adroit production goes one step further: it succeeds at finding the beating heart in this play’s narratives.

That’s precisely the key to ReEntry. Though these tales are hard-hitting (one voiceover recounts a father’s obsessive need to re-watch video news footage of an accident that took his son’s life), it finds just the right balance between dramatic entertainment and reportage. The stories are far too compelling to make us want to close our eyes or stop listening.

This is largely due in part to the show’s stellar quintet of actors who honor the servicemen and servicewoman sharing their stories. Joseph Harrell, acting as de facto narrator, plays the first character we meet. He’s a Marine Corps commanding officer who addresses us as though we are about to embark on a military detail of our own, lecturing on how in order to survive – and perhaps, take the lives of others – some mental re-wiring is required (if Harrell looks authentic, you’re onto something. In real life, he’s an erstwhile underwater Marine.) His performance is a beautiful embodiment of the dedication such a lifestyle demands.

Take, for example, the family of John (PJ Sosko) and Charlie (Bobby Moreno), both of whom saw combat overseas. Both find it immensely difficult to reset their mental clocks. Their mother (Sameera Luqmaan-Harris) and sister, Liz (Sheila Tapia), attempt to make sense of and justify their new temperaments. (Ackerman and Sanchez use this family as the home base for characters they introduce us to over the course of the evening.)

Mom also crosses a line, conducting a relationship with a soldier, Tommy, who was blinded in an accident that Charlie was lucky enough to survive. Luqmaan-Harris and Sosko also play Maria and Pete, a Marine family. Maria goes to great lengths to explain that they are a team unit – while she keeps the home fires burning and Pete fights, the suffering, fear and pride are equally shared at all times.

There is no single inherent dramatic conflict moving ReEntry along, at least not for those only inured to standard Aristotelian structure. Rather, each tale offers its own sense of heartbreak and emotional struggle. And in the aggregate, these individual stories add up to something much greater.

ReEntry addresses what these Marines have seen in the Middle East and also what they must react to upon the return to a “normal” life. Of course, there are problems waiting for them back on home turf as well. Charlie finds that his girlfriend has been cheating on him, and John is a powder-keg, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with no tolerance for the minutiae in which “civilians” get wrapped up. Moreno is a skilled performer, using great subtlety to distinguish between Charlie, a born follower, and Tommy, a natural leader. Sosko is outstanding, particularly in portraying John’s difficulty keeping his fury on a leash.

The women of ReEntry are not to be overlooked either. Luqmaan-Harris makes each of her characters unique and believable, and Tapia comes the closest to hitting Everywoman status. Their naturalistic work is endearing, and in the show’s greatest moments, riveting. Zach Williamson’s sound design and Marion Williams spare art direction also add to the show’s you-are-there effectiveness.

ReEntry is a work you won’t soon forget. There’s a word for a work this important, and it is one that applies to the play’s subject just as much: heroic.

Blood Lust

In the program that accompanies Sex and Violence, Travis Barker’s new play, the playwright admits that it was no less a source than his father who encouraged him to write a play about, well, sex and violence. Discouraged that his previous work, The Weatherbox, hadn’t transferred up to Broadway, or even Off-Broadway, his father purportedly suggested that those were the only two surefire draws for a massive audience. Appealing to such prurient interest may indeed get people in the door, but it isn’t necessarily enough to keep audience members in their seats, and that is precisely where this play errs. This four-character relationship drama may aspire to the fire of a David Mamet play, but it only manages to simmer at a low boil for its duration.

Marshall Mays directs this Kaleidoscope Theater Company production at Theater 3 in a sleek production designed by Arnold Bueso, but looks can only account for so much. Barker presents plenty of what, here: Jimmy (Jake Millgard) is married to Clair (Lauren Roth), who’s been cheating on him with the reptilian Chris (Tyler Hollinger). One night when Chris and Clair step out, Jimmy pays a visit to Molly (Kendall Rileigh), Chris’ aloof girlfriend. This evening, as one might expect, takes some disastrous turns involving, yes, both sex and violence.

But what Barker forgets to provide, and what ultimately makes Sex a hollow work, is the why. Why did Clair and Jimmy marry? And if they were at one point aligned, where did things go awry? Why does Clair tolerate any of Chris’ shenanigans? A work this gimmicky could get away with an emaciated plot only if it provides plenty of meat for its characters, but alas, Sex comes up deficient in that arena as well.

Tonally, Sex plays awkwardly as well. Baker’s mix of darkness and humor is awkward, and as events grow more dyspeptic, the play becomes downright off-putting. And yet, the play’s second act is an improvement over the first, which feels too static, consisting of little more than two distinct couples taking turns in separate scenes on opposite sides of the stage. Every time Sex focuses on Chris and Clair, for example, Jimmy and Molly are left alone on the dark for long stretches, and vice versa.

Nonetheless, while most of the play’s action occurs in the second act of Sex, there’s too much of it. Baker presents the theatrical equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. As the number of sexual and violent acts climbs (with considerable overlap between the two), with no allegiance to any character nor organic escalation of plot, there is no payoff.

In the past few years, Hollinger has proven himself to be one of the most vital presences on the New York stage, and he injects Chris with the appropriate amount of hedonistic sliminess. Rileigh, too, demonstrates mastery in her performance of a wounded soul.

Millgard and Roth, though, are saddled with far less-defined roles, since Clair and Jimmy don’t quite make sense as individual characters nor as a couple. Of the two, Millgard fares better, suggesting how being one of life’s perpetual also-rans can cause one’s fuse to blow. I’m curious to see what Roth can do in a different role that proves to be less contradictory.

In the end, Sex subverts its author’s intent. This kind of play should leave audiences hot and bothered. Instead, all it provides is a winter chill.

Penny for Her Thoughts (Or Sometimes, More)

Brooklyn’s Gallery Players have long held a reputation for producing some of the finest productions at any level of New York theater. Recent stagings have included Like You Like It, Once On This Island, The Who’s Tommy, Urinetown, and Yank, all of which were stellar productions that supported the Players’ mission of providing the community with professional-quality theater at an affordable cost. And yet despite such a pedigree, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Players had bit off more than they could chew with their current choice of show, Caroline, or Change. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori, Caroline is easily one of the most important recent contributions to the musical theater canon. Could the Gallery Players pull off a show this profound?

The answer is a resounding yes.

Caroline is an incredibly complex show; esoteric and elliptical. Caroline may occur during a time of revolution, but it’s a show about a one-woman kind of revolution. The plot is little more than a conceit: Long-suffering Caroline Thibodeaux (Teisha Duncan), a black maid for the Jewish Gellman family, wrestles with ethical dilemmas and responsibility against the backdrop of social unrest and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.

And yet, at the same time, Caroline, a completely sung-through, operetta-style musical, is also a very interior show. All characters undergo major internal arcs. This certainly makes for an impressive work, but not an innately expressive one. Could the Gallery Players pull off a show this profound?

Every aspect of Jeremy Gold Kronenberg’s carefully nourished production – the first revival since Caroline’s initial, Tony-winning bow – is magnificent. First and foremost, of course, is Duncan, in a perfectly modulated performance of sustained intensity, the kind of work that bears remembering at the end of the season. And she isn’t alone in that.

Set in the fall of the 1963, Caroline takes place between two households. One is that of the Gellmans, who have relocated to Lake Charles, Lousiana, following the death of the wife and the father’s subsequent remarriage to her friend, Rose Stepnick (Eileen Tepper). The show charts the distance loved ones create and then must navigate between each other. Stuart Gellman (Peter Gantenbein), a clarinetist, is largely an absentee father, leaving Rose as both the guest and disciplinarian in her own home, trying to find an impossibly delicate balance.

We are also privy to the home life of Caroline, a divorced mother just barely able to provide for her four children, including Elyse McKay Taylor as eldest daughter Emmie. As perfectly articulated by Duncan, the 39-year-old Caroline’s life is barely above that of a prisoner, and with every upward glance and movement, the actress shows how riddled her character is with regret, both of choices made and of those which have never been made available to her.

What unites these two fronts is Caroline’s relationship with young Noah Gellman (Daniel Henri Luttway, a natural in a major role here), silently mourning the death of his mother and the recent upheaval in his family. Largely to her unwelcoming chagrin, Noah bonds with Caroline, even lighting her daily cigarette (Noah’s mother died of lung cancer).

Mostly to teach Noah a lesson but also to stave off personal guilt, Rose creates an intriguing form of punishment. She instructs Caroline to keep whatever change Noah leaves in his clothing when she does his laundry. Despite Rose’s unknowing condescension, and even though she does not want to take money away from a child, it actually makes a difference, and Caroline takes what she finds home.

This arrangement cannot abide forever, but Caroline is far too measured a show for Kushner and Tesori to let it erupt in a melodramatic way. Rather, the effects take hold in smaller, more humane ways that allow Luttway, Taylor and Teppe to shine, particularly when members of the Gellman and Thibodeaux households come together. Gael Schaefer, Bill Weeden, John Weigand make the most of their small roles as the grandparents; after a minimal amount of stage time they all feel intimately familiar.

Kronenberg’s entire ensemble is exemplary, and certain actors warrant special praise for illuminating portrayals of the household objects that have become some of Caroline’s truest companions. Marcie Henderson is wonderful as The Washing Machine, and Frank Viveros s terrific as both The Dryer and The Bus. Heather Davis, Markeisha Ensley, and Nikki Stephenson conjure the spirit of Supremes-esque ‘60s girl as The Radio. And I’d be lying if I said I was ever anything less than bewitched by Gisela Adisa as The Moon. (Bravo to Edward T. Morris’ set design, which allows the show’s action to move fluidly.)

The “change” of the title is both literal and metaphorical. For Caroline, there isn’t enough of it, and it can’t come fast enough, a sentiment echoed in Duncan's aching eleventh-hour number, "Lot's Wife." Caroline, though, is a show about the journey rather than any particular destination. And in the hands of Gallery Players, there is no greater chauffeur.

Battle Cry

Yank!, the durable and impressive musical currently playing at midtown’s Theater at St. Peter’s in a York Theater Company production, tells two different kinds of love stories. One is a fairly familiar one, told frequently, though frustratingly, for it should be unnecessary: the love that dare not speak its name. Conceived by brothers David (who penned the book and lyrics) and Joseph Zellnik (who wrote the show’s music), Yank!, subtitled “A WWII Love Story,” is the story of Stu (Bobby Steggert), whose great awakening occurred against the backdrop of the greatest generation.

Stu reports for service in the army at the age of 18. As he narrates to the audience, he knows he feels different, and expresses awkwardness with living – including showering – in such close confines with his fellow servicemen. That includes Mitch (Ivan Hernandez), a bunkmate with far more experience than Stu in many things (but as it turns out, not everything). It doesn’t take long before Stu realizes he has romantic feelings for Mitch, and it comes as a surprise to both that Mitch feels the same way.

The other love story at play in Yank!, though, is for storytelling itself. Building off of the Zellniks’ template, director Igor Goldin has crafted a production that hearkens back to an earlier era of musicals, specifically, the Hollywood canteen style of the 1940s. The brothers pay tribute to and utilize movie and musical clichés of that bygone time period – characters quote Irving Berlin and watch movies designed to boost morale or appeal to their testosterone. Some of these choices work better than others (an eleventh-hour ballet performance, though well-choreographed, feels shoehorned in and slows down the action).

Another choice that subverts some of Yank!’s power is a change made to the show’s framing device since its earlier incarnations at the New York Musical Festival in 2005, Gallery Players in 2007 (where it took home a New York IT Award for Best Musical), and the Diversionary Theatre in San Diego in 2008. Earlier, Stu narrated the show from a senior citizens’ home in his old age.

Now, Steggert plays a young gay man in San Francisco who finds Stu’s war-time diary and reads from it to the audience, finding solidarity with a kindred spirit from 65 years ago. This decision doesn’t quite mesh with the musical’s homage to 1940s war stories. It comes off as amateurish in comparison to the rest of the play, as though the creative decided it was necessary to make Stu's parallels to modern problems overt. Also, it removes the audience from the action more than it actually moves it along.

Still, that central story will grab the heartstrings of anyone with an open mind and an open heart. When Stu’s squad goes to fight on the frontline, Stu works separately as a photographer for Yank, the magazine written by and for servicemen during the war, under the tutelage of Artie (Jeffry Denman, who does double duty here – he has also served as the show’s choreographer.) Artie is a closeted soldier who educates Stu on the war, journalism, and, presumably, no-strings sex.

Perhaps in a bid to appeal to general audiences, Goldin and the Zellniks choose to jump ahead a year in the life of Stu and his erstwhile bunkmates, thus depriving the audience of crucial development of the lead character. He goes from being a young virgin to accepting who he is as a sexually active gay male in a bracket offstage. It isn’t that the action that follows, in which Stu and Mitch reunite with disastrous effect, isn’t important, but that action is foreordained; it feels like we only get part of their story.

Hernandez is terrific as the conflicted soldier caught at a crossroads between two paths of divergent risk, and he and Steggert share believable chemistry. Steggert nails the awkwardness of a young man trying to find himself and is wonderful when Yank! calls for him to sing and dance, but in many moments, he doesn’t seem to be acting in period. He delivers Stu’s dialogue with the casual inflections of a more contemporary character. This doesn’t detract from the vulnerable emotions he displays, particularly near the show’s end, but it makes him appear less polished than the rest of this mighty ensemble; there is a hesitancy that permeates his portrayal which is absent from that of his co-stars.

Other standouts of that ensemble include Denman, who is tough and yet also envious of Stu’s feelings for Mitch. His choreography, too, is spot-on. Tally Sessions also makes the most of a less featured role.

But enough about the men. Nancy Anderson dazzles as the lone actress in Yank!, playing a variety of roles include the mothers and girlfriends left behind, female pinups, a stern (though perceptive) WAC, and several singers embodying the style of 1940s female crooners heard on the radio. Her radiant presence elevates the show. It doesn’t just preach to the choir; she provides the numbers that turn the audience into said choir. It is a star turn that in no way outshines the work.

Yank! remains a lively piece of theater with its combination of a talented cast, great musical numbers, and an important, relevant message. It’s definitely a show worth enlisting in.

FRIGID Festival Provides a Wintry Mix of Exciting Shows

There’s no way around it; winter is always a long slog. Between icy sidewalks, sludge-ridden subways, and freezing temperatures – not to mention television options like the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and show biz award shows – it’s easy to find a reason to stay inside.

In the last few years, however, a new reason to step outside has emerged: the FRIGID Festival. Now coming upon its fourth year, the festival provides a forum for many theatrical artists to expand their audience, with no judgment based on thematic concepts or subject matter.

“Our Mission is to provide all artists, emerging and established, with the opportunity to produce their play no matter the content, form or style, and to make the event as affordable and accessible as possible to the members of the community,” said Erez Ziv of the Horse Trade Group, who is the managing director of FRIGID.

From where did the original idea of the festival arise? It emerged from a conversation Ziv had with Christina Augello, who heads the San Francisco Fringe Festival. “In the summer of 2006, Christina from EXIT Theatre came in to check out one of our venues for a show she wanted to do in NYC,” he explained, pointing out that the small world of Off-Off-Broadway is exactly what led their paths to intersect. “She was referred to Horse Trade by Elena Holy from the International Fringe Festival, who knew we would get along. As it turns out Exit and Horse Trade are very similar both in spirit and substance. We run very similar spaces and cater to similar performers and audiences.”

Once the two companies realized that they clicked, it wasn’t long before they had the makings of an exciting festival on their hands. But after deciding on the what, the next step was to decide on the when. “We figured the last thing NYC needed was another summer theater festival. It also keeps us from competing with other CAFF festivals and other USAFF (US association of Fringe Festivals) festivals,” Ziv said. David Lawson, writer and performer of Floundering About (in an age of terror), agrees that the timing of FRIGID (which, of course, gets its name from the outside temperature at this time of year) is a major boon to struggling artists.

“I work selling concessions on Broadway, so I know how dead the New York City theater scene can get in late February and early March (hence, the weeks when my tips bottom out). The FRIGID Festival is a way of acknowledging that and creating a festival in which things get HOT again.”

“FRIGID is our one chance every year to stand aside and let the artists experiment with their wildest ideas,” Ziv allows. But don’t take his word for it. The facts speak for themselves. In the past four years, FRIGID become an internationally recognized member of the independent theater world. Numerous FRIGID participants have gone on to produce their shows in other venues this year, including Martin Dockery’s last entry, The Surprise, which was selected for a special extension at the soloNova Festival and earned raves about in The New York Times.

All told, the FRIGID Festival will allow 30 theater companies to prevent their work. This allows for a diverse array of subjects, styles and genres. Lawson’s show, for example, is a serious look at coming-of-age in a post 9/11 Washington, D.C, and its attendant anthrax scares (not to mention the snipers ), while Alex Bond and David Carson’s Late Nights With the Boys adapts Bond’s novel about gay life in the leather bars of a pre-AIDS 1970s scene.

On the other hand, Dockery’s The Bike Trip is a more comedic, script-free look at the effects of LSD. 1/4 Life Crisis, for example, is a one-woman show starring Alison Lynne Ward about the challenges and disappointments faced by twentysomethings navigating their way through life. And Theatre Reverb’s Bonne Nuit Poo Poo is an experimental amalgam of text, streaming video, dance, and stream-of-consciousness humor, used to tell an unorthodox story.

While there may have been some initial hurdles in selling a non-curated festival to the press, the festival quickly took on a life of its own. “Before our first year I was worried that we might have a hard time coming up with 30 shows that wanted to participate in this brand new venture,” he said, “but we had enough submissions then to hold a lottery and have had more and more applications every year. We have seen past participants donate money to the festival and I am seeing the festival appear in more and more program bios from year to year.”
Yes, that’s right – Ziv did refer to a lottery. In addition to where it falls on the calendar, FRIGID distinguishes also itself from other local festivals – notably August’s annual Fringe – for two notable reasons. The first is the how the shows are chosen. According to Ziv, there is a fairly simple selection process: the first 15 shows get in automatically. “This year the first 15 slots were gone in two minutes,” Ziv said. Following that, the next 15 shows are determined by lottery. “The second 15 show are pulled out of a hat on Halloween. It is a totally random process and we as the producers of the festival have no way of ensuring that our favorite shows get in. FRIGID New York is a rare chance to give artists a space without gatekeepers.”

Anne Wyman, a performer in the Fancy Molasses production of pornStar, is awestuck at how quickly the festival as grown. “Audience numbers have gone up by 20% every year without fail. Last year our biggest problem was crowd control. We have found it necessary to open an offsite box office to help facilitate a quicker audience turnaround this year.”

Kristin Arnesen of Theatre Reverb appreciates FRIGID’S non-traditional spot on the theater festival spectrum. “I think FRIGID prefers…spoken word, interactive, solo, multi-media or multi-outré offerings,” she said. Since the process is non-juried, “you get in by early email entry or lottery – not a ‘panel’ that reviews your entry. Your presentation doesn’t have to be ‘theater’ in a traditional sense.” Dockery agrees, adding that FRIGID “is a place where artists have an opportunity to get their work out there without having to appeal to any one particular artistic director's taste.”

The other, more lucrative distinguishing aspect of FRIGID is that its artists keep 100% of the box office that their shows earn. “If 50 people each by a $10 ticket, then the show receives $500 for that performance,” Ziv explained. “The festival keeps no portion of the box office and no fees.” (Credit card purchases do pay a fee, but this is charged by the ticketing vendor rather than the festival and is added on top of the ticket price.)

This effect is not just financially stimulating but morale-boosting as well. According to Leslie Goshko, producer of Vodka Shoes, “That's almost unheard of. The festival says to artists, ‘Hey! You have something you want do? You have a play and need a home to do it in? Come on in, we have a spare room.’”

No. 11 Productions, which is mounting a re-telling of Medea at FRIGID, echoes the supportive vibe of the festival.. “The festival is small and personal. They really take a lot of care with each show and each performing group. Even after shows are set, they have gone out of their way to make adjustments and check in with individual artists. They let you know what will work and what won’t and have very clean and simple policies that make them easy to work with, and keep the atmosphere fun!”

Arnesen also appreciates the additional benefits of a FRIGID run. “In 2008, for the first time in our company's short existence we almost broke even financially from our production in the festival. FRIGID is probably one of the only places this is possible in Off-Off-Broadway theater where most companies pay for their own space, tech, costumes, set, marketing, and so on.

“Our participation in 2008 gave us our first review outside of ones in the Polish-language press,” she added. It was also the beginning of a continuing relationship with Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space. “We now have a residency there and host and perform in their weekly series, the Floating Kabarette, every Saturday night.”

For Bond, FRIGID allows her a different sense of fulfillment. “I’m too old now to march in demonstrations, so I persuade with my words,” she said. “David Carson and I have five opportunities to share my stories and to honor friends who are gone; we have five opportunities to fight intolerance.”

The festival isn’t exactly all art and no commerce, though. FRIGID New York is now an incorporated non-profit, and is in the process of applying for tax-exempt status, adopting bylaws and electing its first Board of Directors. FRIGID has also hired its first year-round staff member, Development Director Emma Katz, who will pursue funding opportunities.

Business acumen aside, though, it’s FRIGID’s indie spirit that pervades – and continues to provide for its participants. “It's a chance to produce original work in a supportive, artistic environment,” Wad says. “I think Fringe festivals are important, as they encourage fearlessness and originality in their participants. Theater, like everything else, can become very commercial – and I think it's important that we remember why we create art in the first place.”

The FRIGID Festival runs from February 24 to March. For a full list of shows, performances, and further information, go here: http://www.frigidnewyork.info/.

The Dream Lives On

Every January, we celebrate a holiday in honor of fallen leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Actor-playwright Craig Alan Edwards has gone even further, creating an admirable one-man show that pays loving tribute to the man who literally gave all for his cause. Of course, by now much is known about a figure as accomplished as King, and 306 provides little information that is new to anyone familiar with the man. As a result, the 59E59 production, directed by Cheryl Katz, works better as a dramatic exercise than it does as a fresh biographical sketch.

Edwards depicts King on the last night of his life, in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee (hence the title) on April 3, 1968. King was to attend a rally advocating for sanitation workers. Edwards uses whatever means he can, including a phone call (we only witness King’s side of it) and direct address to tell his audience as much as he can about the man.

We are then privy to such details as King’s poor eating habits, his laziness, his egotism (the size of the crowds that await him matter to the man), and, of course, his seemingly habitual cheating. Edwards has King recite some of his achievements as an activist in the Civil Rights movement, even giving him a humorous aside about Rosa Parks.

There are other details that, while never revelatory, are interesting. For instance, he at various points has aspired to have a career in both baseball and opera. King had an affinity for pigeons. He struggled for his father’s approval. He even longed to marry a white waitress from the North. These facts aren’t exactly shoehorned in in checklist form, but the seams do show.

Edwards’ work, both on the page and the stage, is serviceable and heartfelt. He clearly demonstrates a great respect for his subject. But Katz cannot find anything inherently dramatic about 306. The only tension that exists at all comes from the fate we know awaits King by show’s end, and that’s steeped in history, not this work. (A discovery that one of his belongings has been wiretapped could be more shocking than it currently plays).

The actor also deserves credit for going a long way to approximate King as a figure, rather than mimic him (could that even be possible, given how visually iconic a man King was and is?). He captures the cadences of the man’s famous speaking rhythms, particularly when emulating the reverend’s sermons.

In other moments, particularly ones never witnessed by the public, Edwards excels at finding King’s emotional center. When reenacting a toast Martin Luther King Sr. delivered to his son, Edwards shows a child still desperate for parental approval. And his admission that his marriage to Coretta Scott King is as much about being a public partnership as it is a love bond is not only strikingly human, it also feels very relevant to a modern audience.

Katz’s technical elements are certainly worthy of praise, including Charlie Corcoran’s period set design of the motel room, Jessica Parks’ props, and Jill Nagle’s lighting design. Andy Cohen’s sound work integrates radio outtakes from 1968 to further the effect of taking the audience back in time.

This is an entirely honorable project. It is well-researched and well-intentioned. It’s just never quite as inspiring as its subject.

A Fight for Flight

The title of American Soldiers, Matt Morillo’s newest play, is perhaps misleading. This is not another work about life among troops stationed in the Gulf or in any other line of fire. Instead, and wisely, Morillo has set Soldiers back here on the American home front. It is a decision that makes the play's subject matter, while still somewhat muddled, accessible to audiences. Soldiers takes place fairly close to home – Hicksville, Long Island, to be precise. It follows a couple of important days in the life of the Coletti family, as middle child and eldest daughter Angela returns home to her politician brother, party girl sister and widowed father after returning from the war.

Angela’s tour was not without its scars, most of which are internal and emotional. She lost a fiancé and has her demons with which to contend. This is a concept her father, Carlo Sr., (Stu Richel), understands all too well; he, too, is a veteran, having served in Vietnam. Soldiers doesn’t dwell on what bonds these two, however. What drives the play is Angela’s decision to create a rift in the household by moving to Colorado and uprooting younger sister Marie (Julia Giolzetti), as well as her erstwhile bartender boyfriend, Hutch (Nick Coleman), with her.

Most of Angela’s opposition comes from the two Carlos in her family, her father as well as brother Carlo Jr. (Tom Pilutik). They want her to stay, but for different reasons. Carlo Sr. is worried about the fissure of his family unit. Carlo Jr. has a more self-serving, professional agenda, but it is not a ludicrous one. He is more rational than his reactionary sister.

Soldiers marks a departure for Morillo, who also directs this production at the Theater for the New City. His past works were lighter romantic comedies (Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans With High Class Issues, All Aboard the Marriage Hearse). This play feels a bit more substantial, not so much because of the subject matter, but because his scenes of conflict feel less redundant and more motivated.

In his previous plays, Morillo’s characters sometimes talked in circles around each other. They yelled at each other only to do so again later with no additional narrative gain. In Soldiers, however, these characters walk in circles around each other, as they should. They may live or spend massive amounts of time under one roof, but they have carved out their own routines and private lives long ago, and they find it virtually impossible to reconcile their disparate interests (or lack thereof) with one another.

Morillo hits on several subjects rife with dramatic potential – post-traumatic stress disorder, family politics, even local politics – but he spends the majority of the play merely referring to these topics, depending on the audience’s understanding that, yes, bad things happen in war and in households. By the time we meet this family, the most dramatic aspects of their lives have already happened; we’re only privy to the falling action.

Soldiers also lacks a central protagonist for whom to root. Angela’s choices hover somewhere between self-deluded and appropriate, but we’re never sure which way to feel. Is her choice to go west a solid one? How much should we invest in her?

Carlo Sr., meanwhile, only emerges as a principal character in the play’s second act. In the first he seems to be little more than a doddering man with an alcohol problem and frustrations with each of his three children. Is he supposed to be the voice of reason?

It is to the outstanding Richel’s credit that even when Carlo Sr. feels like a minor character, the naturalistic actor plays him with major gravitas. His disappointment and weariness as a struggling patriarch are palpable from the start. Coleman, for his part, is also not to be overlooked. He overcomes a rather thinly-drawn character (why he agrees to trek along to Colorado is never made explicit) with an effortless performance that reeks of machismo-laden inertia.

The remaining trio of actors has a harder time with the material. I’m still not quite sure what Marie wants or where her loyalty lies, and Giolzetti also seems unsure of how make sense of her. Pilutik, a charismatic presence in Morillo’s Stay Over, feels more untethered in Soldiers. He paces around too much, with body language that would be better attuned to a lighter, more comedic work.

Reilly has the toughest time of all, though. She plays Angela with plenty of integrity, but lacks the haunted -- and haunting – attributes necessary to give the character more conviction. The Colettis’ political and religious beliefs should play out as total heresy to Angela. She should be appalled by what she views as total pretension. Her desire to move plays like a sheltered daughter ready to spread her wings when it really is the fight of her life.

Yes, Soldiers needs work, but it is a play already headed in the right direction. With some tightening and an infusion of drama, Soldiers could become a solid, topical work that speaks to exactly where this country is right now.

Home Fires Burning

Family dramas are one of the most tried-and-true storytelling genres. Perhaps that is why Chris Henry’s production of Sean Cullen’s Safe Home adds in a few extra elements – audio-visual effects, a non-linear storytelling approach. But all the tricks in the world cannot disguise the fact that this play still needs a lot of work. It’s not clear exactly why – Home has already endured development readings at Lincoln Center Theater, Primary Stages, and Stanford University (by the American Conservatory Theatre and a workshop production with New York's CAP 21 in 2008). With this much of an investment of both time and effort, one would think the central Hollytree family in the show would be far easier to relate to than this fractured tale allows.

Cullen sets Home in the early 1950s, during the Korean War. Eldest Hollytree son Jimmy (Eric Miller), aka “Lucky” has chosen to serve overseas. Not to spoil anything, since it is revealed during the play’s first scene, but Lucky is less than his name implies – he doesn’t make it back alive. Cullen’s subsequent seven scenes hurtle back and forth between 1951 and 1953 to show some of the fallout of Lucky’s death and some of the events that led him to make his fateful decision.

Except that in the aggregate, many of these scenes feel either incomplete or inconsequential. Lucky is unemployed and lost – his home life does nothing to help him feel grounded. His mother, Ada (Cynthia Mace, a reservoir of anguish), is a negative Nelly prone to antagonizing her family, though it is unclear why. Is she chronically depressed? Disappointed by life? Or was there an earlier specific incident that led her here?

Similarly, patriarch Jim (Michael Cullen)’s hands are always bandaged due to ambiguous work with radiators that perpetually causes them to bleed. He can be as volatile as his wife when angry, but gets provoked by the oddest of occasions, for instance, at the arrival of Claire Baggot (Katy Wright Mead), the girl Lucky left behind. Even if their motivations are questionable, Cullen and Mace are terrific at displaying regret and disappointment

Henry has difficulty finding the human elements beneath Cullen’s out-of-order storytelling structure. The audience never gets a chance to feel either conflict or chemistry in the flashback portrayals of Lucky’s attraction to Claire; the scenes play mostly as filler, with the momentum drained out of them.

Other scenes fail to register appropriately as well. Home misuses Hollytree brother Pat (an excellent Eric Saxvik) in his several scenes. One scene in which Pat tries to open Lucky’s coffin to see if his body is actually inside seems too dragged out. One wishes that Cullen would make good on this character’s potential. Is he doomed to follow Lucky’s path, or does he have more choices than his older brother? Another flashback scene, in which Jim feels threatened by Lucky, seems to short, as if Cullen the playwright needs to provide more background to warrant such paranoia. (Ian Hyland is impressive as John, the youngest Hollytree brother).

Perhaps part of the problem with this production of Home is a case of myopia. Is the playwright too close to his subject? In the program, he explains that Home emerged over a sixteen-year process inspired by his own family. His grandparents, Ada and Jim, lived and raised three sons in Buffalo, and one of his uncles was indeed killed in the Korean War. Before his death, he sent home a lengthy letter “from a cold and lonely outpost in Korea.”

It is likely that Cullen, the playwright, could not separate his family adequately from the work. He introduces issues but doesn’t explore any of them fully. Henry also makes no effort to further elucidate Cullen’s narrative choices, and then makes an additional poor choice: at one point in the show, a character with a cigarette in hand opens up a window onstage and leaves it open for the duration of the show. The freezing cold outside temperature then permeates the theater for the rest of the performance, making it difficult to attend to the play.

All of these factors make Home feel half-baked. There is a potentially moving, relevant story here, but it has yet to be unearthed.

Nothing Foul Here

Nearly a decade since its initial run, Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out can now be viewed as a period piece, of sorts. Out was a watershed play, addressing homosexuality and ignorance in the world of American sports in the wake of moderately controversial statements made by Mike Piazza and John Rocker. It crystallized a few offhand comments into a work of art. And yet even though it went on to nab the Tony for Best Play and land on the Pulitzer shortlist, Greenberg’s signature piece was not a flawless work. Greenberg’s themes in Out are as abundant as they are passionate, but it runs the risk of feeling like a polemic. Fortunately, director Fabio Taliercio manages to navigate past many of these hurdles in his deeply perceptive production of the show, presented by Brooklyn’s Heights Players. He focuses on the people behind the ideas, and makes the best of an extremely talented ensemble.

Most of the cast play teammates of the fictional Empires, a Yankees-esque team enduring a drought. Darren Lemming (Ugo Chukwu), a cocky (though not arrogant) mixed-race teammate meant to recall the stature of Derek Jeter, outs himself at a press conference. It’s a decision that affects the Empires and several other key individuals. To Greenberg’s credit, many of these consequences are unforeseeable.

Also to Greenberg’s credit is how well he endows several prominent roles. Lemming might appear to be the lead of Out, but there are several other characters drawn with less broad strokes. These include Kippy Sunderstrom (Seth Grugle), the play’s omniscient narrator, widely regarded to be the smartest player in the league. Grugle proves himself to be quite a polished performer in a layered role – he is able to suggest that he is a well-read, open-minded figure and still not quite understand how Lemming, a friend with whom he spends more time than with his wife and children, could keep such an important secret from him. (The actor also deserves extra points for mastering Greenberg’s demanding dialogue with the same nimble skill that Eminem displays when wrapping his tongue around rap lyrics.)

Of course, anyone familiar with earlier incarnations of Out will also remember that it’s the lone non-slugger who nearly steals the whole show. Mason Marzac (Nathan Richard Wagner), is Lemming’s accountant (and eventually more), but he also serves as a surrogate for Greenberg himself. The sheepish number cruncher becomes a fan of the great American pastime for the first time, ascribing the sport as a symbol of democracy.

Mason is a clever invention on Greenberg’s part – he explains baseball for those (given theater audiences, many) unfamiliar with the details of the sport, and acts as a cheerleader for those audience members that are already fans. Marzac is the jewel in this show’s crown, and Wagner shines. He nails Marzac’s several impassioned monologues in a turn that is as enthusiastic as it is completely endearing.

It’s the fourth pivotal character, though, that both Greenberg and this production have some trouble pinning down. The Empires recruit Shane Mungitt (Craig Peterson), a prejudiced hick, to be their relief pitcher. He saves the team but becomes a divisive presence when he speaks out publicly about his racist and homophobic beliefs.

Mungitt is a tricky character to play. Is he merely uneducated, socially awkward, or is there something more sociopathic toward him? A first act scene in which Lemming and Sunderstrom try to engage him plays awkwardly, and doesn’t do justice to Mungitt. As the play escalates, however, and Mungitt emerges as a more fully formed character, Peterson acquits himself better, giving greater insight into the pitcher’s malevolence.

Taliercio is a skilled and patient storyteller, and his production manages to undercut some of Greenberg’s other flaws. First of all, it’s a boon to have a cast that more closely resembles the actual age of a pro baseball team than the original production had; it lends the characters’ immature, sometimes misguided reactions added authenticity. Additionally, Lemming’s motivation for coming out is never clear in the text. He is a self-described loner, does not have a surging libido, and is not currently attached to anyone, so why bother, aside from the fact that it is necessary to ignite Greenberg’s plot? Chukwu goes a very long way to unmasking the man, suggesting a solitude and an intelligence that have been quietly eroding him from the inside.

There are several other players to be applauded here: Mike Basile provides necessary comic relief as the bullet-headed Toddy Koovitz, while Doua Moua is terrific as Takeshi Kawabata, the Japanese ball player who refuses to learn English in order to keep his game pure – Greenberg provides him, too, with a special monologue that the actor makes the most of. Bryant Wingfield also nails his scenes as Davey Battle, an opponent of the Empires but friend to Lemming.

I also commend Carl Tallent's moveable set, which, among other locales, serves as press box, clubhouse, and locker room. That last setting brings to mind the show’s most polarizing element, which is the nudity in the shower scenes. It’s far from gratuitous – these scenes allow the audience to either share or dismiss the players’ discomfort following Lemming’s coming out. What I do wish is that Greenberg had crafted an earlier scene showing how this was a nonissue prior to the announcement. Also, eliminating one of the production’s two intermissions might help allay the play’s few momentary lulls (it currently runs just shy of three hours).

Out still manages to make the most of its source material, though, and then some, in this intelligent production full of all-stars. They should be full of pride.

Star Wars

The Mint Theater is devoted to unearthing forgotten plays. Its mission, according to its website, is to reclaim these plays “for our time through research, dramaturgy, production, publication and a variety of enrichment programs.” They have mined a worthy treasure in Maurine Dallas Watkins’ So Help Me God, a 70-year-old play that’s slightly tarnished by time but still golden. Watkins’s influence has not been wholly ignored by time. Though God never got its due back when she was alive, the playwright enjoyed considerable success; her The Brave Little Woman told the story of Roxie Hart and was adapted into an early dramatic version of Chicago, which provided the blueprint for the Bob Fosse musical. Shortly thereafter, Watkins became best known as a screenwriter.

In fact, God resembles one of the most famous movies of all time. But if this backstage drama about the rivalry between the leading diva of her time and an ingénue that aspires to take her place sounds more than a little reminiscent of All About Eve (or, perhaps, Applause, its later musical incarnation), it shouldn’t; Watkins’s play pre-dates Joseph Mankiewicz’s work by more than two decades.

However, God does suffer a bit by comparison. It feels more primitive than the better-defined Eve, in which two actresses fight to be stars and both end up losing a piece of themselves. God is a bit more lopsided. Kristen Johnston is Lily Darnley, famous and a force to be reckoned with. She is rehearsing a play, “Empty Hands,” scheduled to begin its out-of-town tryout run. This is to be the work that solidifies Lily as a “serious actress.” Desperate not to take any chances on the play’s reception, Lily makes demand after demand, changing lines and altering her character completely so that the audience will like her even better than they already do.

If that audience could see her behind the scenes, however, they’d surely run the other way. Lily is a monster, as her fan Kerren-Heppuch Lane (Anna Chlumsky) learns when she sneaks into a rehearsal. Before long, of course, Kerren assumes the role of understudy. But Watkins never makes the starlet’s talons as sharp as the star’s. While her very presence threatens Lily, Kerren is no match for her; unlike Eve, Kerren will not stop at nothing to become a star. She merely takes advantage of certain circumstances as they are thrust upon her, the way anyone would. Kerren is neither bad nor purely innocent. What she is is forgettable, and as a result, hard to root for. Meanwhile, though Lily is basically evil, she is also far more interesting. Thus, the central conflict between God’s two leads is a lose-lose.

Watkins’ skill is winning when pointed at the other backstage machinations, which I imagine were far more revelatory when God was written than they are to a Perez Hilton-saturated generation. Hurricane Lily creates a revolving door of creative forces. She plots to replace leading actor Jules Meredith (Kevin O’Donnell) with arrogant British actor Desmond Armstrong (Matthew Waterson), while actor Bart Henley (John G. Preston) fights to beef up his own role. The hoops that these men jump through are both farcical and familiar, and give the play much of its bite. I was particularly impressed by O’Donnell, who combined elements of self-awareness and doltishness for Jules.

Other supporting actors who round out the “Empty Hands” company help as well. Jeremy Lawrence is terrific as Blake, the stage manager who becomes a human pinball, bouncing from one dictate to another. So are Ned Noyes as George Herrick, a playwright forced to make one compromise after another until his work bears no resemblance to its original form, and Allen Lewis Rickman as Mose Jason, a producer who might as well be a general at war. Catherine Curtin as supporting player Belle is also spot-on.

Bank’s play moves great, even churning laughter from some of Watkins’ more dated dialogue, until he returns to his leading ladies. Johnston, a towering actress with a thunderous voice, makes Lily a perfect blowhard, and gets the physicality down adeptly (especially after Lily has consumed a good deal of vodka). Chlumsky can communicate Kerren’s determination, but not the fire that propels her to carry forth against such a considerable foe. The character never transforms in front of the audience. She just reappears having made new choices; Chlumsky can make Kerren’s individual scenes work, but she cannot bridge the sizeable gap between them.

It may be that both actresses are underserved by the material; Lily and Kerren have very little time alone to go at each other onstage until the climax in the third act, which proves problematic for several reasons. God is a three-act play, but there is no intermission between the second and third acts, and it takes an awkwardly long time to change the set (still, Bill Clarke’s design is terrific, as are Clint Ramos’ period costumes).

More importantly, the third act is only one scene long, and it isn’t very long at that. Has Bank trimmed down too much, or was there simply not that much going on during the show’s climax? One leaves wondering if some of Watkins’ observations – which are dead-right almost three-quarters of a century later – have lost some of their dramatic edge in this adaptation.

But God certainly is a work worth discovering, both for its entertainment and its historical value. I look forward to seeing the next rare gem that The Mint Theater digs up.

People Who Need People

The four characters in Meg’s New Friend are readily identifiable. They’re upwardly mobile New York thirtysomethings, and more importantly, they’re all smart. Very smart. They are informed, responsible and open-minded. They know exactly where they want to be, and yet have no idea how to get there. Friend, directed by Mark Armstrong, is a story about human folly and intention, written by the Production Company’s playwright-in-residence, Blair Singer. He takes what could be a facile story about finding one’s place in the world and imbues it with plenty of texture. It is fast-paced, funny, incisive and nuanced. It’s hard to tell whether Singer’s writing, a uniformly marvelous ensemble, or Armstrong’s vision is responsible for this polished staging, so perfectly do all of these elements gel in a production at Manhattan Theatre Source that flirts with perfection.

Meg (Megan McQuillan) is a telejournalist who has yet to make good on her ambition, personally or professionally. In addition to getting stuck covering puff pieces, she’s stuck in a three-year relationship with Sam (Michael Solomon), her lawyer boyfriend, that seems to be flickering out. Her best friend, Rachel (Mary Cross), who is Samuel’s sister, is in a similar stasis. Though a successful ER doc, she’s nearing 40 and has not yet married. (It remains a bit unclear how long Rachel, who is about seven years older than Meg and works in an entirely different profession, has been friends with Meg. Did Meg meet Samuel through Rachel, or became friends with Rachel through Samuel?)

Rachel’s current boyfriend, Ty (Damon Gupton), seems like an intriguing prospect, however. He’s smart, funny, and teaches yoga and pilates to at-risk youth. He also happens to be black, a fact that matters more to Meg than it does to Rachel. Meg thinks Ty’s classes would make for a great story. She also makes a mission out of the man. Realizing that she has never had a true male friend, or black friend, Meg decides that Ty should be her first.

Friend unfolds in ways both unexpected and not, but it is far from skin deep. Though gender and race factor into the play, these issues remain on the periphery. And while Friend would work splendidly as sheer entertainment, Singer digs deeper; this is a play about people, not themes, and the playwright makes sharp observations about topics both topical and universal in a completely accessible way.

The crux of Friend is chiefly how people connect and the role language plays as both tool and weapon in their interactions with each other. These characters are hyper-articulate – Meg and Solomon rely on using language for a living – and are masters at the politics of talking, manipulating words to their advantage. Their capacity for language knows no bounds except for those that characters put up themselves.

Singer possesses a finely tuned ear to the rhythms of how people talk, how they hesitate, when they talk fast, and when they cut off their own sentences or those of others. They use words to shield how they feel, to say one thing when they mean something else entirely, to gauge others, even to provoke them. Sometimes, they even use language to lie to themselves. Other times, they go out on a limb and tell the whole truth.

In this way, Singer’s chosen dialogue really matters. Watch from scene to scene as various characters talk to each other, and witness the subtle shifts in power. Different characters drive different scenes. The way Meg and Sam talk to each other feels true, the way a couple who has been together for several years might speak. Sam speaks to Meg in an entirely different way than he does with Rachel – and after he has learned an important lesson, the dynamic in the way he and Meg speak shifts yet again. (Solomon makes smart, subtle choices in his scenes.)

Meg, for her part, shows entirely different parts of herself in the way she interacts with Sam and the way she interacts with Ty, and Singer’s words emphasize how their new friendship deepens over the course of the play. There are carefully calibrated differences in the way Meg and Rachel each talk to Ty as well.

Too often there is a self-awareness that cuts through the work when an actor knows that he or she has good material. Singer’s lines are lightening-fast and razor-sharp, but if his actors know it, their characters never do. They take their material and make it organic; there isn’t a false note to be found in Armstrong’s production. Like Mike Nichols, he is a master at peeling back the layers of ordinary people in ordinary situations while keeping the play fluid. April Bartlett’s scenic design and Isaac Butler’s sound work goes a long way toward achieving this effect as well.

These characters are mirrors, and the cast goes to great lengths to mine the kernels of truth Singer has planted within them. They map the places where each is confident and where they are not. Meg, for example, is beautiful, charismatic, and talented, and yet comes to realize that she has actually engineered some of the roadblocks she has encountered in life, and McQuillan nails this character’s development in an astute, emotionally bare performance. Gupton, too, is outstanding, and makes sense of a complicated character. He shows how a red-blooded male can be giving in some ways and self-serving in others and not necessarily be bad. Cross brings a great duality to her scenes. She’s hysterical and heartbreaking all at the same time.

I have refrained from saying too much about what happens in Friend, though there is plenty to discuss afterward. Singer has crafted a smart play that never once condescends to his audience, and with it, the Production Company proves just how alive Off-Off-Broadway can be.

She Like Girls: A Cry for Consciousness

The senseless hate crime that ended the life of twenty-one year-old Matthew Shepard may have put a face on violence against people in the LGBT community, but it in no way ended such discrimination. A Wikipedia search reveals more than 40 known fatalities in similar situations in the following eleven years. The recent release of the book Remembering Matthew, written by his mother, Judy, honors her son’s legacy and serves as a reminder that the fight for compassion over cruelty is a fight still being waged.

The upcoming She Like Girls is a similar plea for tolerance. This Working Man’s Clothes Production, premiering at the Ohio Theater on December 3, is written by Chisa Hutchinson. The playwright tells the story of Kia Clark (Karen Eilbacher), an African-American teenager who happens to be gay. As her relationship with inner-city high school classmate Marisol Feliciano (Karen Sours) matures, the couple find themselves facing increasingly hostile treatment from their peers. Though the play itself has fictional elements, Girls is inspired by actual events.

“What drew me to telling this particular story is the fact that on the one hand you see this story all the time on stage, but on the other you never see it on stage,” Hutchinson said. “I just mean that it's a regular love story, but the love is between people who are conspicuously underrepresented in theater.”

And yet, Hutchinson avows, her play is universal: “Everyone knows what it's like to discover love.”

The story of Girls is harrowing, to be sure, but Working Man’s Clothes has a history of unflinching shows, including To Nineveh (a 2006 NY IT Awards winner for Best Play), Many Worlds, and Penetrator. The company, whose artistic council consists of Adam Belvo, Darcie Champagne, Jared Culverhouse, Terry Jenkins, and Jake Platt, prides itself on putting on productions that never compromise, works that have something to say. And it’s clear that these passionate players have a lot to say about this show.

“She Like Girls has a great human story at its heart, namely, that of the blooming love relationship between Kia and Marisol,” co-star Adam Belvo said, “but more importantly, it’s about how this relationship affects the surrounding community. WMC has always found ways to find the human elements in shows and bring them to life. Here you have two inner city girls who, in spite of a generally disapproving community and monumental hardships surrounding their choice, decide to choose each other, love, and self-actualization instead of hiding behind what society and their community tell them is ‘right’ when it is so obviously wrong for them.”

Is the company worried about finding an audience for such hard-hitting material? “There is no dancing around facts, a girl was murdered,” Champagne, said of the events that constitute Girls. “The play is difficult, [but] we love it, we salivate for it. We love the challenge. When we read something and it moves us, then it's on for us-- we operate from a very visceral, emotional place.

“I am so over entertainment for entertainment's sake,” Champagne continued. “Escapism is just being too lazy to be held accountable. I know that may sound harsh, but we see the world around us and want to try to influence it or reflect back somehow. If you come to see this play, it will leave an impression. You will think about it later. To me, that makes it relevant.”

“There are still incidents of hatred and misunderstanding that continue to plague gays and those with sexual preferences that fall outside of relationships involving ‘one man, one woman,’” Belvo said. “The show brings to life the story of someone coming to terms with who she is, and becoming this person without being ashamed or afraid, which is always an important life lesson to be learned and repeated, no matter what the circumstances are.”

Director Jared Culverhouse agrees that the show is not only timely, but also accessible. “I grew up as an only child with a single mom in a welfare household and I think the way that this poor community is represented [in the play] is honest and human. The play isn't about being poor or being gay or being young, it’s about dealing with what you've got and trying to make the best out of what you have. Too many plays that take place in a poor community only focus on the negative aspects. This play may deal with an unhappy subject, but it's written with a smile on its face.”

Smiles may help, but Hutchinson acknowledges that she definitely met resistance when trying to get her play off the ground. “It's been hard convincing them that I'm not trying to convert them or get them to be okay with homosexuality. I'm just trying to get them to be okay with people, she said. “Fortunately, this play comes with a very loving and supportive community attached. Not just the LGBT community, but a community of artists and activists and other humans who just really like the play and want to see it evolve. Many of them are coming to this production and they're going to see how kick-ass WMC is and spread the word.”

Belvo agreed: “Fighting against adversity plays a major role in this script, something I feel WMC handles well and excels in putting on stage.”

Girls may have found a proper home in Working Man’s Clothes, but the whole company had difficulty keeping its house. The Ohio’s literal lease on life is in constant question. “Spaces are really hard to come by nowadays,” Champagne explained. “Real estate in the theater world is rough right now and so many theaters are closing. It's insane to me that even The Ohio Theater is in danger of shutting down – it’s one of the last great theaters in this city. It's a sad state of affairs.”

Nonetheless, the company has not lost focus on the main task at hand, namely, shedding light on the human cost of ignorance and intolerance. “The biggest challenge has been balancing the beauty of a life with the violent tragedy that ended it,” Jenkins said. He hopes that Girls will foster awareness of the “impact hate can have or has had on human life, which will hopefully instill in the audience an awareness of the consequences of complacency, an awareness that will motivate them to act.”

“I hope people are able to come away with a greater understanding of and respect for the hardships young people face in coming to terms with identity questions, specifically their sexuality,” Belvo said. “Also how communities deal with these issues, from the perspective of parents, teachers, and peers. Most importantly, that issues of violence and discrimination against the LGBT community are not a thing of the past, that these problems continue to plague us. We need to be vigilant in helping to end them.”

Perhaps Culverhouse sums up Girls’ appeal best: “The wonderful thing about this play is that it deals with real people,” he said. “To me, as a director, there is no subject more relevant than the human condition.”

New Friend of Production Company Presents True Test of Self

Most actors thrive on playing a diverse array of characters. Roles that force them to stretch. Roles that challenge them. Roles that require them to question the inner recesses of someone entirely different from who they are.

So what happens when an actor is cast in the juicy role of…herself?

That is exactly what has happened to Megan McQuillan, the actress who plays the title role in Meg’s New Friend, written by Blair Singer and mounted by The Production Company. Well, not exactly. McQuillan doesn’t portray herself, per se; she plays Meg, a local New York television features reporter who realizes that, in this current environment of hope and change, none of her friends are African-American. The tide turns when she encounters the African-American boyfriend of her best friend. So how much of Meg the actress overlaps with Meg the character?

“I think the character of ‘Meg’ and I talk and think alike in many ways; we share the same sense of humor and I think we could probably play twins, we look so similar!” joked McQuillan. However, the actress got serious, explaining that she sees her character as someone distinct from herself. “I think the mistake would be for me to approach this as ‘playing myself.’ She's not me, and I'm doing the same kind of work I would do on any role – finding out what's driving her, why she does what she does. At the same time, though, the language feels great in my mouth. It feels familiar in a way. That's really fun to work on.”

McQuillan credits Singer for crafting a role that feels so real and so rich. “The story itself is drawn wholly from Blair's creative mind,” McQuillan explained. And while Meg the character may be lifelike, the life reflected does not belong to the actress. There is a thick line between the two Megs. “In real life, I myself have a really diverse group of awesome friends, and a very happy romantic relationship, so [what happens in the play] is purely fiction.”

“Audience members aren't really playing off any knowledge of the ‘real Meg,’” director Mark Armstrong said. “Which is not to say that the role doesn't tap into things she does especially well as an actress, because it certainly does.”

McQuillan and Singer first worked together in another Production Company work, last year’s The Most Damaging Wound (also directed by Armstrong). “Blair talked to me last winter, right after we finished working on Wound, about a script he was working on,” she said. “The lead character was named Meg, but he assured me that it wasn't really ‘me’ me.”

Friend is not the first time that Singer has written a play in which an actor was called upon to play himself. In his last work, Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas, which recently ended a run at Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse, Emmy-nominated actor Modine also played a fictitious version of himself.

This endeavor, however, required less in the way of research. Singer said that he was very impressed by McQuillan. “Meg is a real talent, very confident, beautiful, and also vulnerable,” the playwright explained. “I committed to create a character for her since I knew where I could stretch her. I wanted to create a role worthy of her talent and really push her.” After a pause, Singer added: “This play definitely pushes her.”

Singer stresses that the character of Meg really is just that, not a reflection of the actress. He knows very little of her personal life, the details of which never surface in Friend. “After my initial picturing of her in the show, the character just took off,” he said. “She gets the rhythms of the character, the humor, the self-deprecation. I knew [the character] wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t going to be a victim.” Singer is also quick to point out that McQuillan took ownership of the role. “There was some resistance in the room,” Singer confessed to watching McQuillan make the namesake role her own. Regarding some of the choices she made, “sometimes I saw them differently.”

In fact, if the character of Meg is true to any real life individual, it is actually that of the playwright, not the star. “Though I’m very happy with my life,” Singer, who is married and has a young daughter, admitted, “certain things could always be better,” citing his own career trajectory as an example. “Some things have gone my way, and some have not. I thought Meg [the character] was an interesting vessel to channel my thoughts about…wanting to be better at life, professionally, personally. Meg [the actress] was open to that exploration.”

It should be said that Friend is no one-woman show. The cast also includes Mary Cross, Damon Gupton, and Michael Solomon, who also shared the stage with McQuillan in Wound. “It's spectacular fun to be sharing the stage with this company of actors as well,” McQuillan said. “Talk about talent!”

The company has worked hard to ensure that their show is accessible to people of any name. Singer developed the play over the last year, refining Friend over the course of several readings. It was even part of MCC’s Playlabs series last spring. “The MCC reading was pretty special. There was a warm audience, and the feedback from that night was super positive,” McQuillan said.

Who knows? Maybe there’s a little Meg in all of us.

Meg’s New Friend plays at Manhattan Theatre Source from Nov. 29 through Dec. 20. For more information, please visit http://www.productioncompany.org/index.html.

Singles in the City

Boyfriends may come and boyfriends may go, but the dating game will last forever, as will works dedicated to the crusade. Kiss Me on the Mouth, Melanie Angelina Maras’ paean to looking for love, fits squarely within this rubric. Yet even with the addition of another playwright – the smart Stephen Adly Guirgis directs Mouth -- this play still feels somewhat unrealized. Amy (Megan Hart) and Christina (Aubyn Philabaum) are lifelong friends navigating the New York dating circuit. One brief scene serves as prologue before each woman attaches herself to a man of varying commitment and credibility, so what we initially learn about the two female protagonists is limited. Amy is the guilt-ridden one of the two, citing Mother Theresa as a hero; Christina, on the other hand, is independently wealthy, likely alcoholic, and far more experienced.

Before Amy can get herself to a nunnery, though, both women have hitched their wagons to troubled trains. Andre (an amusing Troy Lococo), a Latin lover, manages to seduce Amy with his transparent, if humorous, lothario ways. It’s clear this relationship is going nowhere, but it takes Amy, who I assume has indeed dated in the past, far too long to realize this.

Amy eventually becomes a supporting player, however, as Christine’s relationship emerges as Mouth’s A storyline. She starts dating Gabriel (Ken Matthews), a tortured artist prone to hiding his love away. Their relationship looks like it might have potential at first – they take things slow, Christine opens up to him. As the play moves along, though, both Christine and Gabriel seem to do an about-face, making various repeated choices designed to self-sabotage.

Maras’ structure, still in somewhat raw form, has benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, Philabaum and Matthews get the opportunity to dig deep into their characters. Philabaum manages to justify her character’s need for gratification by suggesting that a neglectful upbringing has left her deeply empty inside. It’s a harrowing portrayal that emerges as the evening’s star turn. Matthews also imbues Gabriel with massive insecurity; he puts his art before his relationships but recognizes that he does so at his own peril. We see why a relationship between Christine and Gabriel might actually work – and while it can’t.

But we cannot learn about all four characters at once in this play. Some need to be established, while others provide revelation. Maras’ play needs to either focus on Christine and Gabriel’s relationship, or on Amy and Christine’s close-but-complicated friendship, but it currently straddles the line. Christine, we learn, has seduced past boyfriends of Amy's, and Amy has known about this duplicity. So why do they remain friends? It might be best for Maras to have provided more interaction between the two women at the play’s beginning, and fewer scenes involving both of their burgeoning relationships. Somehow, we need to know more about Amy and Christine, even if it means knowing less about Gabriel and Andre (limited as that character is to begin with.) Hart handles her material very capably, but she should have more of it.

This leads into another problem with the play: Guirgis would be wise to use fewer scene changes. There are too many short scenes in Mouth, which breaks the momentum. A show this minimalist shouldn’t require its actors to move one or two pieces of furniture on and off stage constantly. Laurie Helpern’s modern set, paired with Melissa Mizell’s lighting, does the trick just fine.

I like Maras’ voice, and look forward to hearing more from her. Mouth has plenty of potential, it just needs some work - like any good relationship.

Nothing Rotten Here

Tom Stoppard’s metatheatrical work Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was one of his earliest major successes. Premiering over four decades ago, this alternate perspective on the events of Shakespeare’s Hamlet hit on such themes as death, fate, solitude, and other existential matters, and did so with humor and élan. No wonder it brought him the first of his three Tony Awards for Best Play. What a relief it is then, to see Cat Parker’s well-executed rendering of this masterpiece at T. Schreiber Studio’s Gloria Maddox Theater. Eric Percival and Julian Elfer are the title characters, sent for by the newly crowned King Claudius, though they have little idea as to why. The two pass the time with an epic coin-flipping contest, which, in the absurd fashion that pervades Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz wins 92 consecutive times. This rejection of the laws of probability suggests to the two that they may not be entirely in a world of their own free will, but perhaps “within un-, sub- or supernatural forces.”

This tongue-in-cheek storytelling style pervades the whole show. Though the action portrays what takes place offstage during Hamlet, knowledge of that show is helpful but not mandatory. Claudius manipulates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, childhood friends of Prince Hamlet, to spy and report on him. Hamlet, however, in a rare act of follow-through, outsmarts them and sends them to their deaths. From their vantage point, however, all that they can see is how insane Hamlet’s ranting seems.

Later, after the two characters witness “The Murder of Gonzago,” Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a ship that is supposed to take the prince to England with the troupe that staged the performance. During this voyage, however, they are ambushed by pirates and lose their prisoner before resigning themselves to their fate.

And while Stoppard elevates his title characters to lead status, he also comments on how ultimately insignificant they remain. They exist in their own universe, unable to make sense of much of the world around them, and occasionally confuse their names, suggesting just how interchangeable they appear to audiences. At various points throughout the play, the two characters hit upon sage philosophical truths, only to dismiss or forget them as quickly as they first devised them.

Rosencrantz is blessed by two dazzling performances. Percival and Elfer are outstanding, giving energetic, rich and touching performances and demonstrating a terrific grasp of the cadences of the language (Page Clements is credited as the dialogue coach). Percival makes Rosencrantz a lovable dolt, while Elfer makes Guildenstern the more Type-A of the duo. He devours the role with relish.

Of course, the entire ensemble is to be commended. Erik Jonsun is The Player, a traveling actor, and delivers a stunning turn that hits all the comedic, melancholic and sympathetic notes for which Stoppard’s play so effortlessly strives. Additionally, the other performing actors who make up the acting and troupe and pivotal characters from Hamlet (mere minor characters here, of course), are uniformly excellent.

Parker opts to stage Rosencrantz in the round, which contributes to the sense of incomprehensible chaos the leads share, and moves the dense show quite fluidly. Karen Ledger’s costume design also deserves mention, as does Michael Hagins' authentic fight choreography.

Stoppard used Rosencrantz as a bit of a smokescreen, a palatable way to ask tough, defining questions about the art. What makes a character? What does it take to tell a story adequately and convincingly? The answers are all here in Parker’s production, proof that the playwright’s show is aging just fine.

Two Hearts That Beat As Two

In real life, a relationship requires two parties being connected to each other in order to work. Onstage, however, three parties must be in sync to portray a successful relationship – the two lovers as well as the audience. Edward and Allison, the two characters whose on-and-off romance provides the heart of Victor L. Cahn’s new play, Embraceable Me, may be able to get under each other’s skin, but they have a much more difficult time reeling the audience in. As envisioned by Cahn, Edward (Scott Barrow) and Allison (Keira Naughton) are really more like chess pieces than characters; the audience is familiar with their story and the moves these two will make. We first meet them at Edward’s New England country house. Several years after college graduation, both have made headway in their respective careers and have moved on with other love interests after an intense but abortive relationship that saw them progress from friends to significant others to exes.

However, a connection remains, even as Allison tells Edward that she has gotten engaged to a man she has known for mere months. It’s clear that Edward, while rarely the aggressor in his interactions, still carries a torch, and that Allison is testing to see if any interest remains. What follows then is a series of flashbacks to the belabored milestones of their relationship, partially reenacted by the two actors, partially dictated directly to the audience. Embraceable documents the stops and starts in their relationship as told in both flashback and narration.

But this whole journey is rather moot. It is a fait accompli that they believe they belong together and will ultimately end up with each other, so the play’s action feels both foreordained and inconsequential. A romantic dramedy such as Embraceable can still survive even if the plot provides short shrift. All that’s needed is convincing chemistry between the two leads.

Unfortunately, in this case, Edward and Allison feel mismatched, due in part to Cahn’s undernourished writing and also in part to the actors on board. Barrow does more heavy lifting. It is a mature performance. Edward is certainly a milquetoast, a vulnerable and passive intellectual, but his portrayer manages to make Edward’s frustration with his parents harrowing in addition to suggesting a normal male sexual appetite lurking beneath his docile exterior. We also get to watch him grow as his scenes continue. While he makes it clear that he would love to live with Allison, he also makes it clear that his life has taught him that he could live with or without her.

Naughton, who has proven her ability to command the stage in such previous shows as Hunting and Gathering and the Rivals, has a more difficult time shading in her character’s subtext here. In comparison to Edward, Allison has to drive the scenes. She asserts herself in scenes as the more driven of the two, but the performance feels too guarded. Several emotional scenes involving a medical scare for herself and the loss of a family member feel threadbare, lacking the digging required in order to portray attendant emotions like fear, weakness, or, most importantly, dependency. Meanwhile, Naughton should have let loose far more in a different flashback scene in which she humiliates Edward in front of his graduate school colleagues out of jealousy.

As a result, though the audience may be told repeatedly of it, they never actually feel a deep bond between Edward and Allison, let alone a love connection. Director Eric Parness seems to have been more engaged with the show’s technical elements, some of which impress more than others. Sarah B. Brown’s set uses the small space of the Kirk Theater effectively, providing several distinct spaces to represent various locations. Nick Moore’s sound design, on the other hand, calls too much attention to itself, distracting more than providing convincing ambient noise. And the transitions between the narration to the audience and the dialogue-driven scenes should be more seamless.

Barrow proves he is certainly a performer to watch, but Embraceable lacks both charm and conviction. I couldn’t help but wonder at show’s end if Edward and Allison stay together because they feel it is their characters’ destiny or simply because there was never anyone else around.

You Jump, I Jump

The Oldsmobiles may take place on New York’s Manhattan Bridge, but it has nothing to do with cars. Instead, journalist-playwright Roger Rosenblatt’s slight, two-character comedy at The Flea looks at a married couple in their twilight years who have decided to jump into the East River before their bodies – and, perhaps, minds – begin to betray them. Yet, when dealing with two characters (literally) on the edge, it’s best for their play to have some as well. Oldsmobiles is a comedy, but it is hard to tell exactly where Rosenblatt, whose work also includes the eccentric Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos, intends for his play to fall on the humor spectrum. Is this merely dry humor, or is it sentimental? Is it a dark comedy, or something more absurd, along the lines of David Lindsay-Abaire? His choices render the play safe and rather hollow, leaving it to director Jim Simpson, The Flea’s founder and artistic director, and his winning cast to shade in some necessary humanity and provide it with some bite.

Nonetheless, Oldsmobiles engenders some additional questions from the onset that linger beyond the show’s curtain call. For instance, though the audience sees only the couple, the Oldsmobiles themselves have opted to turn their demise into a media free-for-all, having contacted the press to alert them to their imminent double suicide. Why would such a seemingly low-maintenance couple turn a personal decision into such a circus? Such commentary about the media’s role in tragedy would likely feel out of place, not to mention redundant in this play.

Not that Rosenblatt even has time to shoehorn that in his barely hour-long play. Instead, we watch as the couple, smartly played by Richard Masur and Alice Playten, snack and reminisce on the bridge as reports and morbid onlookers (including a school field trip) gather below. But their conversation sounds largely inauthentic. They discuss how they met (as Olympic athletes in 1964) and where their children live (or think they do), but these are conversations that couples with the intimacy of decades together don’t need to have; they’re expository, meant to give the audience information, but done in an inelegant way.

These conversations also beget another question. At times, both husband and wife (referred to in the script only as “He” and “She”) have apparent lapses in memory. He forgets that he is retired and misremembers words; She forgets that her son is married. Is this supposed to be a cute gambit? An inside joke the two play on each other? Or is it the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease, a term brought up once but dismissed instantly? Treating that idea with short shrift is a mistake; if it has played a role in their decision to end their lives, that needs to be fleshed out. It also alters the show’s tone, which works best at its more darkly comical (case in point: their stunt draws such a crowd of boats in the water that they run out of river into which they can plunge).

Something unquestionable in Oldsmobiles is that both actors breathe an enormous amount of believability into their roles and their relationship with each other. Masur underplays his part; one gets the impression that there is real frustration underlying his choices, even if we never learn the source. Playten, meanwhile, walks a tougher tightrope, since her character is the one less convinced their choice is the right one. Regardless of Rosenblatt’s material, though, the two are always convincing as a perfect fit of a couple.

I credit Simpson with a large degree of that. His direction is a case of both sense and sensibility. He steers Oldsmobiles clear of melodrama while never ignoring the fact that these are dignified human beings who have made a choice, even if the audience questions how careful their contemplation has been. Jerad Schomer’s smart set, simulating the bridge, also deserves mention.

Oldsmobiles would function better as part of a bigger piece. I would rather see it as one of several segments in a review of Rosenblatt’s oddball work. That way, I would be able to gain a greater understanding of his tone and diversity as a playwright and clarify this view from the bridge.

Estrogenius Festival Turns Ten As It Celebrates Female Voices

A host of theater festivals around the city spotlight various groups, from fight artists to Latin American performers. The Estrogenius Festival, to provide another example, celebrates female artists, and is among the more successful festivals of its kind – it is currently in its tenth annual season.

Estrogenius was founded by Fiona Jones, who is also one of the founding partners of manhattantheatresource. “I kept looking at all the under-utilized female talent around me,” she says, “and felt I had to do something about that.” The festival’s mission is to provide creative opportunities to female artists, ranging from the emerging to the seasoned professional, in a variety of disciplines.

Jen Thatcher, co-executive producer of the festival, agrees that Estrogenius exists “to celebrate the under-served voices of female artists and to encourage men to explore interesting, complex female voices and narratives.” The first festival, in 2000 ran for two weeks, consisting of a program of ten short plays, music, and a visual art exhibit. Jones “has inspired all of us and provided a woman-friendly artistic environment in which we could all work,” said Kathleen O’Neill, who directed a show in Week Three of this year’s festival, and has worked with Estrogenius since its inaugural season.

By now, however, Estrogenius has evolved into a five-week-long festival. Each of the first four weeks features a different program of five plays each. The final week is the Estro Encores week, which features audience favorites from the first month of the festival.

In addition to the short plays, there are also evenings of Sola Voce (solo pieces), a visual art show, pre-show music on the Windowbox stage, two evenings of GirlPower (featuring works written and performed by teen actors), two performances of Women in Motion (a dance component), and two evenings of Voices of Africa, which benefits Nigerian girls’ education. Voices of Africa is part of a collaboration with the Peace Corps Niger, the Young Girls Scholarship Program & Pangea, in which New York area performers recite poetry, music and prose of Nigeria. All proceeds from Voices of Africa go to the Young Girls Scholarship Program. Thus far, Estrogenius has sponsored the education of 27 girls in Niger, a west African country where the literacy rate among women is less than 8%.

Thatcher explained the submission process. “We accept open submissions from around the world. For the short plays, we typically receive hundreds of submissions.” Reader panels of at least three people then review the submissions, score them, and present their recommendations to the producers. The recommended pieces – which Thatcher says she considers the Estrogenius “finalists” – are then reviewed by each week’s producer and assistant producer, who make the final selection of plays to be included in their week of programming, “with an eye to offering a smorgasbord of styles and themes in each week,” according to Jones.

From the top recommendations, each producer chooses five plays for her specific week. “Every submission is carefully considered and every submitting artist gets a response,” said Jones. “We are frequently complimented on our rejection letters, if you can believe it!” This year saw 200 submissions, with 50 finalists and, ultimately, 20 selected pieces. According to Jones, over the years they have had submissions from 35 states and five countries.

In the spirit of diversity, Estrogenius is also no Lilith Fair tour. “Men are a huge part of Estrogenius,” Thatcher said. “In the first place, there are tons of male acting roles. Secondly, each year since the festival’s inception, we have had at least one play written by an ‘honorary chick,’” she went on to say. “We love the fact that there are men out there writing great parts for women and we want to be sure they’re encouraged!”

“Since 75% of the professional theater in the United States is driven by men, we felt it was important to encourage men to explore their female voices,” Jones added. She said that the only distinction is that “men have to submit material appropriate to a celebration of female voices, while plays by women can be about anything.” Jones also explained that the panel reviews submissions on a gender-blind basis. There are three short plays penned by men in this year’s lineup.

More than gender, it seems clear that the one common thread among all Estrogenius participants is the passion they all share. O’Neill cites the camaraderie and connection to the “artistic development of so many people” as the aspects she loves best about it.

“In every Estro festival there have been the exquisite moments that only live theater can give, where the immediacy of the actor transports the audience,” O’Neill continued. “What a celebration! It is what New York City is all about for all of us.”

More information about the Estrogenius festival can be found here: http://www.estrogenius.org/estro/index.html

Little Girl, Big Show

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s long life on the frontier certainly provided her with plenty of storytelling fodder – enough, at least for eleven novels and ten television seasons. And yet somehow, when many of the early highlights are compressed into one piece, as they are in Little House on the Prairie – The Musical,” currently playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the work feels oddly lacking. It is likely that the creative team of this family-friendly musical relies too heavily on fans of the long-running television incarnation, which starred Michael Landon as Pa Ingalls and then-child star Melissa Gilbert as protagonist Laura, to be the chief audience. Well, Gilbert may be all grown up, but she’s still attached to the Prairie. Now, she plays Ma Ingalls, a much slighter role, but one that nonetheless is designed to draw in nostalgists.

I say this because the show does very little to stand on its own. Despite a long out-of-town tryout process – Prairie has already played the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and has replaced much of its original book and score – the show still plays as though it is in draft form. Rachel Sheinkin replaced Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley, the original scribe who first helped shape the musical, and perhaps some of her narrative grace notes went with her. (Donna di Novelli provides the lyrics.) The current result plays mostly as a checklist of boldface events from the early novels.

I say “current” because I firmly believe that Prairie still has plenty of room to grow. It certainly isn’t lacking in talent, particularly in the form of Kara Lindsay in the leading role of Laura, a precocious young tomboy. Over the course of the show, Laura learns to mind her parents and schoolteachers, support her family when older sister Mary loses her sight, make amends with nemesis Nellie Oleson, feels the joy of breaking through to schoolhouse pupils, and even finds a love of her own (there’s little mystery as to who the lucky guy might be when the talented Kevin Massey first appears as Almanzo Wilder.) Lindsay, who is also a terrific singer, ably plays beneath her real age, and gradually bridges Laura’s maturation in ways the episodic script doesn’t provide for her.

But what the show cannot do is delve into the culture of the lifestyle it sets out to portray. Director Francesa Zambello erred in similar fashion with her last show, the musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Both shows impress as spectacles, but offer less beneath the surface. The technical elements are there, but they lack inspiration. Similarly, Michele Lynch choreographs several professional ensemble numbers, but they feel rote and do little to enhance the story.

As a result, one never feels the hardship of prairie life, even as a raging fire destroys the Ingalls’ wheat prospects, nor does the viewer get the chance to fully grasp the details of the Homestead Act that grants the Wilders and the other settlers their right to sojourn to the unsettled Dakota territory in the first place. Instead, the audience is stuck watching them from afar, as events befall the Wilders in too fast and frequent a manner. The view gets a little better in Prairie’s slightly protracted second act, when Laura comes into her own as both teacher and woman; one hopes that this storytelling sensibility will work its way into more of the show as it continues its run.

Nonetheless, Alessa Neeck and Carly Rose Sonenclar hold their own with the material as Laura’s sisters, and Loprest acquits herself well as the mischievous Nellie. Steve Blanchard is a solid Pa Ingalls. In fact, the weakest link in this musical chain is actually Gilbert herself. The actress handles her dialogue with the ease of a pro, and proves she can dance with the best of them during the show’s curtain call, but her talk-singing though the show’s eleventh-hour number, “Wild Child,” leaves a bit to be desired.

Still, there is nothing in Prairie that cannot be improved with some effort. The Ingalls’ journey is one worth taking, and hopefully, one that will continue to improve in time.