Face Value

Wanda looks smaller than her classmates. She walks hunched over and stares at the ground. At lunch she excludes herself before she can be excluded. Her tricks for making friends don’t work. At thirteen years old, young Wanda Butternut (Sandie Rosa) has a unique problem that she won’t outgrow with age—a large purplish birthmark covering the entire right side of her face. Eric H. Weinberger’s touching and energetic tween musical, Wanda’s World is far deeper than its colorful sets and smiling pigtailed characters would have you believe. Beth Falcone composed a clever score with contagious tunes that appeal to adults and tweens alike. Songs such as the malicious lunch room taunt, “She’s So Last Week,” speaks to common tween anxieties while “No One Can Know” pokes fun at their inability to keep a secret for more than ten seconds.

Sandie Rosa is wonderful in the way she evokes Wanda; she commits to this character in mind, body and spirit. Her smile is wide and endearing, her eyes bright and hopeful, but her words tinged with caution, as if one uncool phrase could turn the world against her.

Wanda tries to carry herself with confidence but when the other girls call her Blotchy she instantly deflates. She seeks refuge at home, staring into her bedroom mirror with a long wig that covers most of her face, pretending she has her own talk show where she helps girls like her. She tells her make believe audience to blend in, cater to others, and never arrive anywhere late (people stare at you) lest you make yourself a target in this cruel and unforgiving world.

Campaigning to be the leader of this world is Ty Belvedere (James Royce Edwards). Clean cut, well dressed and reeking of wealth and privilege Ty is the favorite to win the school’s upcoming Student Council President Election. He lists his attributes in a song aptly titled, “What’s Not To Like?”

The school bully, P.J. (Leo Ash Evens) and his lackeys can find several things. Thus far P.J.’s passive aggressive attempts at Ty-hatred have included bopping him over the head with a dangling microphone while he gives his campaign speeches. But this is no longer enough. PJ is planning a cruel prank that will use Wanda as a pawn in ruining Ty’s reputation.

Unfortunately, Wanda is the perfect mark. She will do anything for a chance at acceptance, including interviewing Ty for the school station. Surprisingly, Ty shows some class by not reacting to her birthmark. Encouraged, Wanda lets her guard down and glimpses of her true personality slowly emerge; she is a bright, thoughtful and selfless girl. Such qualities are so rare in Ty’s circle of friends that he becomes intrigued.

This moment is heartbreaking because of what we know is coming. We are hoping that Wanda will build up enough self esteem to endure the impending trick P.J. is going to play on her, but when the moment comes she is at her most vulnerable. At the lowest point in her life Wanda comes to the saddest realization of all: that there is no place in the universe for a face like hers.

Fortunately, there is a voice deep inside that warns Wanda of self-fulfilling prophecies. Her climatic song, “A Face Like Mine,” is one of the saddest tunes a young girl could sing. The song takes you through Wanda’s heart; we feel her struggle to find something positive about herself to cling to when times get bad.

Wanda’s World is smart to not soften this material. This play could have felt like an after-school special, but instead we get a musical character study of an unlikely protagonist; one that you cannot root for enough. Film critic Roger Ebert once observed that audience members are more likely to cry for a character’s goodness than sadness. Young Wanda Butternut’s journey to move from the shadows of life into the spotlight certainly supports this theory.

Unleashed

You don’t know what to expect when you first meet Davy and Brad. All you know is, it can’t be good. Their creaky, wooden home near the ocean is dark and dismal. The television set is on the floor, there are crates where chairs should be, beer bottles line every counter top and a Playboy magazine peeks out from beneath the couch. Brad (Ross Patridge), a man with bedraggled hair, long red pajamas and the bottom half of a grisly bear costume, sits on the couch sleeping with a knife under his pillow. He frantically wields the knife when startled by his brother, Davy (Joshua Leonard) who stomps into the room, frustrated with the lack of progress made in training their attack dogs.

Dogs is produced by the Grid Theater Company, recently founded in 2005 with a mission to find stories that focus on raw human emotions. In this respect, Norman Lasca’s intense character study, Dogs, could not have found a better home. His play examines the origins of our emotions, how they are shaped and, more importantly, how they shape us.

We learn that the attack dogs were at one time agreeable household pets. When the brothers purchased them they used a board with nails to instill anger and fury in the once friendly animals. The dogs were not born angry. Neither were the brothers. If they were at one time innocent children, their mother’s abusive boyfriends and currently impoverished living situation have changed that now.

There are many parallels drawn between the brothers and their dogs. Brad and Davy once owned two dogs that their father banished to a corner of the backyard so confined that the brothers remember it as being torturous, although their own surroundings seem just as dreary as the one they are describing. There is also a telling similarity in a soothing song the boy’s mother used to sing to the dogs when they were howling. Later, Brad croons this tune to Davy when he sees his brother doubled over on the floor whimpering like a kicked dog.

Davy’s wrist is wrapped in an Ace bandage due to a wound inflicted by his favorite dog, who bites when he is asked to sit. It is not until Brad points out that Davy’s attack command to, “Hit,” sounds too similar to the general command to, “Sit,” that Davy realizes the error in his training.

At times Davy and Brad are so clueless and idiotic that their antics are humorous, but when a flirtatious young woman named Viv (Jennifer LaFleur) starts hanging around their musty living quarters, their lack of common sense starts to feel more threatening than funny. They openly leer at her, although she seems accustomed to being leered at. When Davy reaches out a shaky hand to caress her cheek she tenses at first, then relaxes, as if resigned to the fact that men feel entitled to touch her without asking.

Leonard, Patridge and LaFleur are superbly nuanced in the way they convey emotion. Their body language says a lot but their weighted glances and glares say more. However, when they stop biting their tongues and start speaking their minds they practically tear the place apart. There is a lot of physical movement in this play and it is not long before the depressing little shack resembles a war zone.

Kenneth Grady Barker’s set lends itself to the undercurrent of hopelessness and depression with which all three characters struggle. They seem lost, both in the world and in themselves. The play's ending doesn’t exactly fill you with hope, but it does warn you to find a way out of your problems before they lead you here - a place where nothing that happens can lead to anything good.

Philosopher's Stone

Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? Nothing encourages deep, introspective thoughts like putting together a video for a dating service, or a press meeting, or the inquiring eyes of a room full of strangers. Each situation requires a person to look into the distance and tell whoever is out there - camera, press or audience - who they are and what they want. This is the groundwork Will Eno lays for his series of reflective, existential plays, Oh The Humanity and other exclamations, featuring five short stories that examine the human condition through an intensely philosophical but often comic lens. The two actors Marisa Tomei and Brian Hutchinson sometimes address their probing questions to the audience, breaking the fourth wall to ask, “What do you think?” They never wait for an answer. They know they don’t have to. Their questions are presented in such a way that it is hard to resist internalizing them.

Tomei and Hutchinson speak in engaging and conversational tones. They act like real people living in a real world, not abstract symbols representing something greater than themselves. Their topics may weave through a maze of complexity, but the dialogue stays simple, clearly designed to relate to audiences rather than confuse them.

In Tomei and Hutchinson’s first skit together, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rain, Gentleman (Hutchinson) and Lady (Tomei) stand onstage staring into a camera as they record their profiles for a dating service. The Lady is squinty-eyed and uncertain; the Gentleman is nervous and overly-revealing.

They speak fearfully of life’s sudden endings, the kind that happen before you know what hit you. Lady smiles thinking about the little things in life that make her happy, such as people applauding for something they really love. They talk about the naiveté of childhood, the broken relationships of adulthood, the illnesses and quirks that define them and the way they deal with stress. As Lady and Gentleman’s realizations intensify the lights dim until you can see nothing but their illuminated faces surrounded by darkness. And then the lights go out.

Most of the pieces end with a fade to black, with the exception of The Bully Composition, a truly memorable story that literally goes out with a flash. This vignette offers an unsettling examination of the photograph, specifically its purpose to capture a fleeting moment in time. Photographer (Hutchinson) and his Assistant (Tomei) ask: what does a photograph really capture? We do not know what the people are feeling, what they were doing before they posed for the picture or what they did after it was taken. We know their image but not their story.

Photographer then turns the camera to us, the audience. He wants to take our picture and muses at the many different stories that could come from each of us. He points out that we are all strangers to each other, yet each of us has our own unique history, a set of circumstances that brought us together to this time and place. The Photographer and his Assistant behave as if they can see our personalities surfacing on our faces, implying that if we could see it too we would be amazed to learn how deceiving an image is. Then the piece ends with an exploding flashbulb, a signal that the moment is gone, leaving us as just another image without a story.

Oh! The Humanity is the kind of play that rattles your world and makes you think. Eno’s writing forces you to contemplate both the intricacies of life and the intricacies in yourself. Fortunately, the process is not all headaches and misery. This is the kind of play that makes you want to run outside, share a story with a friend, get to know a stranger better and announce your presence to the world. After all, no one wants to end up as just another image.

Survivors

Sara Falles does not fit the stereotype of an abused woman; in fact, she seems the least likely candidate to fall into such a relationship. She is strong, determined and unafraid to challenge her husband when she feels he is wrong. Playwright Jay Hanagan’s decision to focus on an abused woman with a clear sense of self-worth gives his play Softly Sara Falls a new and important take on the issue of domestic abuse. Softly Sara Falls is produced by Wizard Oil Productions, a relatively new company created to increase awareness of a variety of social issues. Domestic abuse is certainly a worthy issue of focus, though arguably an obvious one. Fortunately, the play does not merely state that Domestic Abuse Is Bad. Instead, it asks us a question that we do not consider often: How many times have you looked into the face of an abused person and not realized it?

The irony in Hanagan’s play is that even people who are abused miss the warning signs in others. The story does not focus on one suffering person, but several suffering people, all trying to avoid their crippling inner demons by concentrating solely on the future and never looking back.

A goofy young man named Reed (Michael Mattie) has a crush on Sara (Cecil Powell) but feels the wall she has put between them. He seems to always be happy, but the smile strains when the conversation turns to questions of his past. Sara’s best friend, Tanys, acts flippant and cute when she shows up at Sara’s house in cloud patterned pajamas hugging a bowl of popcorn to her chest for their big Saturday movie night. However, when Sara casually asks about the details of her relationship, she suspiciously clams up.

Even the antagonist Grant (Jonathan Ledoux) has a shady back-story, though the play does not use it to excuse his actions, only explain them. Sara knows from the beginning that her husband has skeletons in his closet; specifically a scarcely mentioned father who Grant’s siblings claim was prone to abuse. She urges Grant to confront these feelings rather than keeping them locked up inside, not realizing that she is lovingly encouraging years of repressed anger and aggression to rise to the surface.

Hanagan enhances this story by telling it in a non-linear format. Early in the plot Sara calls an advice hotline and narrates her story on-air as we watch it unfold before us. She starts with happy times, jumps to bad ones, and then switches back to the way things are now.

This forces Powell to run through a gamut of emotions ranging in extremes from frightened spouse to silly, playful friend. One scene ends with her cowering on the floor and another begins with her sitting poised and confident in a chair seeming sure that she has nailed a job interview. But in all scenes Powell comes across as a survivor, not a victim. There is a great moment where Grant pleads with Sara for a minute of her time when she tells him, in a controlled, furious voice, “No! Not even a second.”

Sara does not look like the face of abuse and she does not speak like a woman who would allow a man to abuse her, but it is important to acknowledge that her story is still plausible. All too often abuse is perceived to be written all over someone’s face in bruised lips and darkened eyes, but not all signs are so easy to read. Sometimes you find it in a bright, young woman who can speak enthusiastically of her future but never of her past.

Rock On

Arpeggio is not a musical, it is a “play with music,” and yes, there is a difference. In a musical the characters break into song, in Arpeggio they break into rock ballads created by Alec Bridges. The play aspects demand that the audiences stay quietly in their seats, applauding respectfully when appropriate. The musical aspects urge the audience to stand, scream and whistle, especially towards the end when the onstage band turns the show into a rock concert. Still, referring to David Stalling’s Arpeggio as a play with music would only be acknowledging what it is on the surface, and if there is anything this story teaches you, it is that one must look below the surface. At its heart, Arpeggio is a tight, well-plotted psychological thriller in the same vein as nail-biting films, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female.

The play begins in a tiny New York City apartment decorated with only a couch, table, and bookcase, as the current owner, Zeb (Andy Travis) does not believe in TV’s, stereos or any other appliances that create noise. His little monastery is shattered when his new room mate Gerry (Allison Ikin) moves in with boxes of CD’s featuring her favorite male vocalist Tobin Grey (Jonathan Albert). Gerry owns dozens of life-sized Tobin Grey posters and an extensive collection of audio disks she recorded at each of his many concerts. But her obsession is more than just a crush; Gerry claims to be Tobin Grey’s secret girlfriend, explaining that he asked her to move to New York to be closer to him.

Ikin is perfectly cast as the ideal roommate. She has a shy, disarming smile, a cute bobbing ponytail, and an easy-going, laid back manner. Even as her darker side is slowly revealed, Ikin manages to preserve Gerry’s innocent, girlish charm, making her nearly impossible to distrust.

Gerry’s celebrity heartthrob, Tobin Grey, is more than just a poster in this plot. He shows up in person, not as a narcissistic celebrity, but as a regular guy who just likes making music. This rocker has a gentler side, which he demonstrates in a speech about the misconceptions his female fan base have of him. He sounds more sad than pleased to admit that he breaks a lot of hearts when young girls mistakenly believe he is looking at them when he performs his romantic ballads live.

We learn that Tobin Grey’s greatest talent is his ability to execute arpeggio notes on his guitar. Arpeggio, Gerry explains to us, is a musical term that refers to single notes being played in quick succession rather than all at once in a chord. When you play the notes separately you can hear the special sound that each one makes. Play them in a chord and the notes lose their unique, individual quality.

This explains why we do not see Gerry’s true nature until her world has crumbled around her. She uses Zeb’s hectic circle of friends and lovers to disguise her real self, but as this group dissolves so does her protection. When Gerry finally goes solo she is surrounded by a band, under a spotlight, and in front of a microphone where she delivers a somber, beautiful rock ballad just as powerful as the one she idolizes Tobin Grey for singing.

Apreggio may not be strictly about the music, but Stallings uses it in all the right ways to enhance the plot. The songs do not puncture the story but rather weave naturally into the fabric of its central themes and characters. Integrating a rock soundtrack into a psychological thriller is an ambitious combination, but it works -- except for the fact that you won’t know whether to leave the theatre discussing the story or jumping out of your seat to dance to its final notes.

Fear Factor

Halloween is in the air, and in the spirit of the year’s scariest holiday comes Greg Oliver Bodine’s Wicked Tavern Tales, an adaptation of three terrifying Edgar Allan Poe stories. Bodine’s adaptation keeps most of Poe’s original work intact with only a few cuts and alterations to compress the tales into three short works that flow together well, with each one delivering its own special jolt of horror. The product of these edits is not a watered down text, but a celebration of all things spooky. Wicked Tavern Tales has a certain thrill ride quality about it; even the entrance to the theater resembles the inside of a creepy Disney ride. Walking through a dark curtain, audience members will find themselves standing in a long, dimly lit hallway guiding them towards two towering wooden doors. Outside these doors hangs an ominous sign reading, ''Wicked Tavern.''

Staging the play in a century-old venue such as Manhattan Theatre Source provides many wonderful possibilities for establishing a haunted atmosphere. The wooden floors are naturally creaky and the red brick walls legitimately worn by time. The candles and lanterns that illuminate Gregg Bellon’s eerie, dark set do not take us into another time, but deeper into the one in which this room was actually built.

The chills are racing up your spine even before Narrator/Barmaid (Libby Collins) appears onstage to signal a start to the action. She answers the audience as if we have just asked a question, a question regarding our desire to hear a ghost story. Collins holds a lantern towards the crowd to light various faces and inquire as to how well they know their friends/neighbors/husbands/wives. She asks, because the characters in Poe’s three short horror stories, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Black Cat, met their demise at the hands of those they trusted.

The Tell-Tale Heart is arguably one of Poe’s greatest known works, and the opportunity to see it performed live is a treat you won’t find in a Halloween bag. Nancy Sirianni plays the crazed narrator, Ms. Moore, a woman driven mad by the evil-looking left eye of her charge, Old Man (Michael Patrick Collins). Sirianni captures every tick and nuance of the memorable character Poe constructed; she is pleasant and attentive to her employer and cheerfully frank about her justification for plotting his murder. When she hears his terrified beating heart the theatre flashes red and the sound grows louder and louder, drawing us all into her world of madness.

The Cask of Amontillado also focuses on a grisly act of murder, this time at the hands of a jealous, scorned lover named Montressor (Kevin Shinnick). This piece is hindered by some period-specific language integral to the story’s foreshadowing that sometimes gets lost in the dialect. Fortunately, Shinnick and Ridley Parson, who plays Montressor’s friend, Fortunado, appear to sense this hurdle and compensate for it with many hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions to indicate when something sinister is afoot. As Montressor proceeds to commit his final act of violence, it becomes disturbingly clear where the story is headed.

The night of horror concludes with The Black Cat, a segment filled with so many gruesome acts that one can see why it was saved for last. There is no topping the maniacal unwinding of Alfred (Ridley Parson) who matter-of-factly narrates the story from his cell on death row.

With these elements of horror, Wicked Tavern Tales is fun enough to exist solely as a holiday fare, but the eloquence of Poe’s language elevates it to something more. This play is not merely about shock value as the writing leaves you with thoughts and feelings to contemplate afterwards. However, you may want to hold off on such contemplation until after you have turned on all the lights.

Down To Earth

There are two stories going on in The Boycott. One features its writer, producer and one-woman star, Kathryn Blume, as herself, discussing her feelings about the general lack of attention shown to global warming and the little things Americans do every day that unknowingly harm the environment. The other story is the synopsis of a madcap screenplay that Blume wrote about a woman named Lyssa Stratton, who is campaigning for all women to go on a sex strike until the country takes global warming seriously. Blume originally wrote the screenplay with Hollywood stardom in mind (''dream casting: George Clooney'') but realizing the impracticality of this endeavor, decided instead to re-enact key scenes from the screenplay in front of a video camera and post the finished product on youtube. The Boycott interweaves personal monologues from Kathryn Blume’s actual life with her solo re-enactment of the youtube screenplay.

The result is a story that has way too much going on. Global warming is a real and pertinent issue and Blume has a lot to say about it, but her clear, heartfelt statements of the facts are more compelling than her frenzied re-telling of the fiction.

The story’s most passionate monologues are the ones that come from the depths of Bloom’s own experience; seeing a yoga center guzzling energy when their building is conducive to operating exclusively on solar power, and people in the supermarket who couldn’t care less whether their groceries are bagged in paper or plastic. There is a small tidbit about a time when Blume overheard a group of businessmen intelligently discussing global warming issues over dinner. The despair she feels at hearing their conversation end, ''basically, we’re screwed,'' drives her point home more than the entire retelling of the silly screenplay.

The screenplay, which reads like a mix between Austin Powers and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, suffers from too many personalities, many of which are too similar to be distinguishable. Blume switches from one character to the next by turning her head from side to side, but often her voice does not change enough for us to know who is who. She sounds like she knows what she is talking about, but the multi-character dialogue is recited at such a fast pace that it is hard to catch the gist, let alone the words.

This is a shame considering that Blume has some interesting knowledge to impart. When she sheds the screenplay and slips back into her own skin she is able to cleverly and comprehensibly articulate the damage we are doing to the environment, the most horrific example being the way our pollution has changed the way the planet looks from space.

During these scenes she often adopts a very casual tone, addressing the audience as if they are guests in her living room. In some instances, this laid back approach is cute and effectual, such as the scene where she turns on the house lights, waves at the audience and asks them to say hello to her camera. But when the tossing of a prop offstage goes awry she halts the narrative to giggle, ''Whoops that worked better in rehearsals.'' When the tone gets this informal it calls attention to the fact that we are watching an actor, not a character, and that takes us out of the story.

But all delusions of youtube fame and Hollywood grandeur aside, The Boycott has its heart in the right place, and when Bloom stops pretending to be five people at once and sits solemnly in a chair to deliver a slow, thoughtful speech about the Armageddon that awaits us if we don’t change our polluting ways, the message really hits home.

Land of Plenty

In Sharyn Rothstein's A Good Farmer, a widowed farm owner named Bonnie (Chelsea Silverman) befriends a bright, young Mexican immigrant, Carla (Jacqueline Duprey), who has been working illegally on her farm for seven years. The play focuses on Bonnie's unenviable predicament, one that many farmers face with every major crop season: the need to hire cheap labor to farm the land, and the knowledge that no legal citizen would work for such low wages. Like most farmers in the area, Bonnie employs about a dozen illegal immigrants, gives them coffee in the morning, and carpools their kids to school, but pays them poorly and works them to the bone. Rothstein spends most of the play trying to humanize Bonnie, perhaps in an attempt to make her a protagonist in our eyes. But it doesn't feel right. It is hard to sympathize with a woman who knowingly exploits her workers, never gives them a day off, and then wonders which she fears more: seeing her fellow PTA moms captured, interrogated, and deported by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement or losing her crops if there is no one around to harvest them.

Most of Act 2 takes place in a flashback, where we meet Bonnie's good-humored but dying husband, David (Gerald McCullouch), and learn the hard luck details of Bonnie's life that have led her to reluctantly hire illegal workers. But the play spends too much time on this subject while a truly sympathetic character like Carla falls into the background, as does the overall issue of illegal immigration.

The playbill features an interview with Rothstein, where she says, "I wanted to write a play with a very smart, very strong woman at its center." She accomplished as much through Carla. She is intelligent, saucy, determined, and smarter than Bonnie, proving in many instances that she knows the world much better than those who are running it.

We are told that Bonnie and Carla are supposed to be friends, "best friends," according to the play's blurb, but that seems unlikely given the master/servant dynamic of their relationship. Duprey conveys that uncertainty in her acting; when she speaks to Bonnie, her tone is always cordial but never sincere. Her laughter is polite, almost strategic because she can see the way it makes Bonnie think that she might not be such a slave driver after all. When the two fight, Duprey's voice is strong and direct. She never loses her temper but often clenches her jaw as if she is biting her tongue.

There is a wonderfully telling scene where Bonnie first offers Carla the job of being a caregiver for her terminally ill husband, adding, only when pressed, that the job pays nothing and offers only food and lodging. When Carla balks at the offer, Bonnie snaps back, saying that she is being greedy and selfish to request anything in her position and that she should take what she can get and be grateful for it. A friendship laid on this foundation can only be a rocky one at best.

So who is the true villain in all of the illegal immigration controversy? Is it the government, which says you must be a legal citizen to work in this country? Is it Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, which rounds up immigrants who have been here for several years to send them back to the place they fled from? Or is it the farm and factory owners like Bonnie who knowingly hire illegal immigrants because they know they can work them harder and pay them less than someone with workers' rights?

A Good Farmer touches upon, but never fully explores any of these questions.

True Lies

Whoever said that honesty is the best policy must not have lived in Chantbury, London, during the 1930s, a time and place where honesty was often suppressed in favor of creating a world where marriages are perfect and everyone is your friend. This is the setting for Dangerous Corner, J.B. Priestley's soap-operatic comedy about the hidden love, lies, and betrayal that exist beneath the surface of picture-perfect lives. Dangerous Corner first opened on Broadway in the early 1930s after undergoing several rewrites following its original London production. It is presented here with all of the original dialogue restored, though it is hard to imagine Priestley tampering with such a seamless, tense story. Each excuse, glance, and flighty character gesture is a carefully constructed building block in a mystery surrounding the apparent suicide of a vibrant young man named Martin.

From the benign opening you would never guess you are about to be engulfed in a whirlwind thriller. Four well-dressed women sit in an elegantly decorated drawing room exchanging polite, but ultimately dull, after-dinner chitchat. Two of them, Betty (Jaime West) and Freda (Karen Sternberg), are married to successful partners in a publishing firm, while a third woman, Olwen (Catherine McNelis), seems content being single as long as she is part of their tight-knit group.

Later the men enter in suits and ties, tease the women, and help themselves to bottles of liquor. To add to the occasion, Freda casually offers cigars from a musical cigarette box to her guests, not realizing the life-changing conflicts this innocent gesture is about to ignite. All of the ensuing revelations can be traced back to this box, given to Martin the night he killed himself. Those who recognize the box must have been at his house on the day of his unexpected death, though no one has ever said as much before. Sensing that something is amiss, Martin's brother Robert (Chris Thorn) drops his manners and turns the party into an all-night interrogation.

Once the finger-pointing begins, the play turns into a deliciously enthralling melodrama of brash accusations and outlandish confessions. McNelis is the first actress to produce mascara-smudging tears in the midst of a passionate scene, instantly adding to the story's delight. If the actors acknowledged the outrageousness of the situation in their performances, the humor would be lost. It is their total and sincere investment in this material that pulls us into their wild world and makes us care about the outcome.

The theme of false truth and dirty secrets is heightened by the costumes. Sternberg makes great use of Freda's ability to deliver silencing cold looks and biting commentary while sashaying across the room in a glamorous studded evening gown. Justin R. Holcomb, understudying the role of Charles Stanton in this performance, is entirely convincing as an impeccably dressed businessman who easily announces shocking sins to his colleagues without ever losing the smile on his face.

By the end of the day, honesty has been utterly proved to be the worst of all policies, but in case there is still any doubt, Priestly rewinds the story from its emotional end to its benign beginning, showing us what would have happened if a popular radio tune had distracted the guests from discussing the musical cigarette box. The results are so radically different that it leaves you wondering about the benefits of telling the truth, and whether we, like these characters, would be better off just keeping it to ourselves.

Kids in the Hall

Angst The New Teen Musical is a play about teens, featuring teens, and even written by teens, who studied at the Young Artists Council of Youth Performance Company. The heavy teen influence easily appeals to a young, Internet-savvy audience. But those unfamiliar with the art of creating a profile and choosing your "top 8 friends" will have trouble understanding some of the story's central conflicts. A colorful musical number introduces us to the eight major characters: slut, popular girl, token black male, Jesus freak, stoner, closet gay man, intense overachiever, and political activist. Because they are all in the same creative writing class, geeky loner Tom (Eric Mayson) decides to add his new classmates to his top 8.

The story's strengths lie in the bubbly score, written by performer Eric Mayson. Mayson, a recent graduate from a performing arts high school, shows true veteran poise for not losing the gravity of a somber monologue when the stage lights accidentally faded to black in the middle of his speech. He displayed even greater mettle in the following scene when his character's climactic turning point was punctured by the opening notes of a party song. The obvious technical error could have destroyed the scene, but Mayson barely flinched and kept the moment together.

Where the play does need to be more careful is in the execution of its racially centered jokes. They walk a fine line between pushing the envelope and coming uncomfortably close to sensitive stereotypes. For example, a black student looking to connect with his race tries out tap dancing—a reference to minstrel shows? Later, when he tries to slip out of the class to avoid admitting he has not done his work, his teacher calls out, "Hey you, runaway slave," to summon him back. These are the kind of jokes that leave you unsure about whether to laugh or cringe.

But overall, the production is well suited for young audiences, who will enjoy seeing their language and culture reflected onstage. Creative writing teacher Mr. King (Theo Langason) talks to his students in "chat speak," a kind of Internet substitute language that breaks entire sentences down into three or four letters. "Did you think I forgot about you?" he asks the class loner. "ROFL!"

If you knew instantly that this meant rolling on the floor laughing, this play is for you.

On Fire

If it wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed it. Asking for It was written and performed by stage and screen veteran Joanna Rush, whose real-life acting credits range from the Westside Theater's Daughters with Marisa Tomei to the 1970s NBC movie The Killing Affair, with O.J. Simpson. The character she portrays in this one-woman show at the New York International Fringe Festival has a similar bio but a different name.

The show is about Bernadette O'Connell, an Irish-Catholic woman with a head of unruly red hair to match her fiery personality. Has Rush changed the name to separate herself from a deeply personal tale, or to give herself creative license to take a few liberties? One would hope for the latter, because O'Connell's misfortune with men is almost too bad to be believed.

She arrives in New York in her late teens, naïve and starry-eyed eager for her big break. One fateful day she accepts a late-night ride with a man named Brooklyn Bobby, who promises to help her career. When a young girl dressed provocatively enough to attract the attention of casting agents goes off with a man named Brooklyn Bobby, the night seems destined to end for the worse, and when it does, the police tell her she was "asking for it."

Rush is a bottle of raw emotion just waiting to erupt, but we do not get a sense that she is close to this material until the very end, when we witness an explosion of anger so intense and soul-cleansing that she can scarcely get back into character without clutching a Kleenex. This is the first real sign that the lines are more than just plot for the person reciting them.

In the beginning, the darkest moments of O'Connell's life are masked with comedy. Initially, Rush encourages us to laugh at her character's hardships, though this laughter always feels more designed to lighten the tension than tickle the funny bone.

We watch O'Connell's tumultuous evolution from eager young actress to desperate burlesque dancer, never sure where her winding path will take her next. She is often in the wrong place at the wrong time and a virtual magnet for crime. There are moments in her life that are nothing short of harrowing, and if Rush's life truly overlaps with the character she has created, it is a wonder she is able to tell this story at all.

Ghost World

Burn is an unfortunate example of what happens when good plays happen in bad venues. At the first performance it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. The sound system experienced technical problems so severe that the audience was prompted to applaud the tech team for being able to fix them at all, let alone in a timely manner. The show started 30 minutes late, the air-conditioner was not working properly, and the theater was so hot that half the audience members were fanning themselves with playbills. "Live theater, folks," a member of the production staff said, apologetically.

But while other productions would succumb to these obstacles, Creighton James's Burn transcends them. James is responsible for a former Fringe hit, Feud: Fire on the Mountain, seen in 2005. Burn is proof that lightning can strike twice at this festival.

James likes to create visual experiences for his audiences that summon up the sights and sounds of the period he is depicting. Set designer Quinn Stone sees this vision through, establishing a thoroughly eerie atmosphere onstage. We see the interior of a sparsely furnished, dimly lit old country cabin from before the Civil War. The cabin has an old, rustic feel, with smoky, spooky fog wafting through its walls, perfect for the opening of a chilling ghost story.

Fast-forward to the present day. A group of teenage tourists have set out to investigate the truth behind the ghost that supposedly haunts the land this cabin was built on. They are startled by a mysterious Man (Don Guillory), who has suddenly appeared to tell the tale. While the tourists observe the action from the wings, we are taken into the lives of a troubled Appalachian family struggling to make ends meet. One of them will become this infamous ghost, but which one is anyone's guess. There are several red herring characters, but only one with a story line truly horrific enough to become an eternally unsettled spirit.

The play is strong and entrancing, but with the heavily accented dialogue and the facial subtleties of the mute main character, Cady (Amy Hattemer), you have to work hard to overcome the poor visibility in certain parts of the theater. There were many swaying heads jockeying for better views, and frustrating moments where something would happen onstage to cause the right half of the audience to gasp, "Oh my God!" and the left half to frantically whisper, "What happened?"

But with strong acting, beautiful visuals, and haunting music that foreshadows the most unsettling moments, Burn is a tight, terrifying story that is worth craning your neck for.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.

Made to Order

There are times when waiting to get served in a restaurant can seem as futile as waiting for Godot. Dozens of worries can pass through your head. Are the other tables receiving more attention than you? Is it because of your race? Your age? Do you look as if you don't belong there? Have you done something to anger the waiters? Or are you even there at all? Kevin Doyle's surrealist comedy Not From Canada exists in this moment of social paranoia. Three friends sit around a table, examining their place settings as if they are strange, foreign objects. They study their reflections in the silverware, fiddle with the corners of their folded napkins, and then just sit there, jiggling their feet.

Finally, the man sitting in the middle, known as Cute Guy (Paul Newport), turns to the Cute Girl (Ishah Janssen-Faith) beside him and asks if he knows her. He must, she decides, since "all cute people know each other." Across from them sits Not-So-Cute Girl (Macha Ross). She self-consciously touches her frizzy blond hair, feeling for loose strands though it is pulled back in a bun and pinned down with several clips. She is not sure how she knows either of them, but acknowledges that figuring it out will make for good dinner conversation.

Ross later steals the show when she sheds her prissy persona long enough to deliver a hilariously ridiculous monologue about the extinction of pandas and her efforts to preserve their memory by purchasing entire shelves of clear liquid pump soap with little plastic pandas inside.

Ross, Newport, and Faith all deliver lively performances that do justice to the playful and funny writing. Doyle keeps each conversational thread fresh and interesting by having his characters explore the kinds of ideas and observations that are often blips on our minds' radar. Could your hand ever get stuck slipping money beneath a slot? Is it better to pump your gas or pay someone else to do it? Is a Taco Bell located inside a Target store still a Taco Bell or just another extension of Target? Cute Guy is particularly distressed because he cannot envision what his forefathers wore before the invention of wrinkle-free khakis.

The longer the diners wait to order their food, the hungrier they get, and the hungrier they get, the more they find their conversations starting to spin out of control. But the play spins with them, and it is an enjoyable, dizzying ride. It may not leave everything clear by the time it stops, but it will certainly give you a new perspective on ordering in a restaurant.

Note: This production is part of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival.

The Office

Co-artistic directors Britney Burgess and Matthew Nichols founded Zootopia Theater Company with the belief that "art should remove the boundaries and reflect the human animal," and what better way to show a person's animalistic nature than to put him in competition with another. Television has thrived on the dramatic premise that when a group of people working toward a shared goal are forced to co-exist in a small space, an individual's worst instincts will always prevail. In James Rasheed's dynamic dark comedy Professional Skepticism, we meet four frighteningly ambitious accountants with their sights set on becoming a partner in a prestigious South Carolina firm.

Set designer Andrew Lu has given new meaning to the phrase "paper trail," creating a string of enlarged Xeroxed balance sheets spilling from a giant manila folder hanging from the ceiling and connecting to a paper collage covering the entire back wall of the theater. A calendar suspended from the ceiling by a string of paper clips counts down the days until a big audit is due for a major client and personal friend of the company.

An explosive, bitter senior accountant named Leo (Steve French) is overseeing this audit with his two-man team of newly hired staff accountants, Paul (Matthew Nichols) and Greg (Wesley Thorton). Leo has good reason to be bitter; both his underlings have passed the dreaded certified public accountant exam on their first try, whereas Leo has been struggling with the last section for some time. (So difficult is this test that accountants are given up to three years to pass it.) To cover up for his own insecurities, Leo is constantly trying to instill new ones in co-workers, ruining office morale and hindering work conditions.

Because Leo is high-strung, he drives his colleagues crazy, and the result is a group of paranoid, scheming, plotting characters, all of whom have been stripped of their likability. Senior accountant Margaret (Britney Burgess) comes off as the most sympathetic, being the only woman working in this male-dominated world, but even she has a manipulative side, using her sex to manipulate her drooling co-workers. Greg is sympathetic in the beginning for his attempts to bond with the office outcast, Paul, until his true reasons for doing so are revealed.

In his role as the company whipping boy, and his clueless, buffoonish nature (he's prone to bursting into silly little boogies when he thinks no one is watching), Paul has all the makings of a sympathetic character. But the story's moral center hinges on the fact that he is not. Professional Skepticism shows the ways in which intense competition can corrupt even the most unlikely of characters. Early in the audit, Paul shows no signs of being an aggressive, manipulative man, and yet those qualities exist inside of him, erupting like lava when he is pushed to his breaking point.

But although they are not likable, the characters are all extremely entertaining to watch and so over the top that you find yourself drawn to them and their outrageous, unapologetic attempts to destroy one another. Bridges are being burned left and right, each character becomes an island unto himself or herself, and all are trying desperately to deceive themselves into believing they are better off this way.

Still, the heaviest moment in Professional Skepticism is a character-driven scene near the story's climactic ending. All four accountants rush into their shared office after a major revelation threatens their livelihoods. After pointing fingers and hurling accusations in an earth-shattering screaming match, they wear themselves out and stand there, staring at one another, perhaps realizing for the first time how utterly alone they really are.

A Night at the Opera

Tom Rowan's The Second Tosca is all about drama—the drama we see onstage when we go to the opera and the drama that we don't see happening backstage in the dressing room. "It's a bunch of egomaniacs jockeying for supremacy," jaded manager Stephen (Carrington Vilmont) tells a young opera groupie. "And that's just the directors and designers." But beneath the drama is a genuine passion for music, and for opera itself. Rowan displays an intimate understanding of the world he writes about, offering a comedic but also serious and respectful look into an industry so intense that everyone, from the cast to the crew, is willing to give his or her life to it—in some instances, literally.

The Ghost of Angelina Rinucci (Eve Gigliotti), a beloved, former Tosca star from opera's golden age who fell to her death onstage at the Opera California house, now haunts the premises, less distraught over losing her life than at never being able to take her final bow. Now, Lisa Duvall (Rachel de Benedet), who scorns her profession's pretentiousness, is stepping in to understudy the Tosca role that Rinucci died playing, on the same stage she died on.

Benedet brings many dimensions to her paradoxical character. Though she is surrounded by adoring people, she always seems lonely—a powerful figure who fills the room with her talent but is known for little else. She's not really a diva, but she knows how to play one onstage. Duvall stands in contrast to the woman she understudies, Gloria Franklin (Vivian Reed), who bursts into a room oozing of importance, snapping her fingers, stomping her feet, thrusting her little white dog at underlings to walk, and letting everyone know a true diva is in the building.

In one of Reed's best monologues, Franklin puts the production's pompous conductor, Aaron Steiner (Mark Light-Orr), in his place for telling her starry-eyed assistant, Darcy (Melissa Picarello), to forget opera and pursue a career in community theater, a critique so stinging the girl actually winces. Darcy runs out of the room in tears, and Franklin charges in like a gun-blazing cowboy, telling her own harrowing back story about a poor young girl facing many obstacles on her road to stardom, and concluding with her thoughts on where Steiner can stick his opinions about a young person's talent.

At first it's unclear whether Franklin will prove to be friend or foe to Duvall, who worships the star as much as the rest of the company does. Nevertheless, Franklin seemed to connect the most with the audience, almost as if she was the devil they know, unlike Duvall, who, in jeans and a tank top, often looked like a misplaced duck in a world of swans. As Franklin, Reed could hardly deliver a monologue without someone from the audience yelling "That's right" or "Hm-mmm."

Rowan's story takes us out of our seats and into this world. When the Ghost of Rinucci sings in her resounding operatic voice, the lights dim and the powerful notes fill your head. In that moment, you're not in an Off Off Broadway theater but in a 4,000-seat opera house.

The set, designed to look like an opera house's backstage, looks gritty and lived in. Even before the characters enter, a great deal of activity appears to have taken place there. There are silk scarves thrown sloppily over hooks, coffee mugs on the makeup counter, long curly wigs plopped atop mannequin heads, and notebooks scattered across the assistant stage manager's workstation.

Like the opera, The Second Tosca is ripe with melodrama, providing juicy subplots involving Duvall's wildcard brother/manager Stephen and the hilariously dorky Juilliard opera groupie Nathaniel (Jeremy Beck), who finds himself being drawn further into his idol's world than he ever could have imagined.

With the show's two-hour, 35-minute running time, it is a credit to director Kevin Newbury's fast pacing that his production never drags or starts to feel long, and it ends with a great note of closure. Ultimately, it's a fun, crowd-pleasing show with special appeal for anyone who's ever been, or wanted to be, backstage at an opera house.

Family Ties

One of the strongest elements of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's comedic three-act play You Can't Take It With You is the heaps of feel-good energy it piles on to its examination of an eccentric family's dynamics. Often family dramas are told through major moments—holidays, weddings, funerals, and milestone birthdays—but not so in this play. We are not meeting its main characters, the Sycamore family, in a momentous time when everything is about to change, but on a day when everything is exactly the same as it's always been and, one hopes, always will be. Director Peter Jensen certainly had his hands full with this staging. You Can't Take It With You is a 19-character play set in a small room where almost all 19 cast members are often onstage at once. The space is further constricted by the Gloria Maddox Theater's tiny size, making a small room feel even smaller. Fortunately, this feeling of tightness lends itself to the overall experience, giving the audience members the sensation that they are sitting in the Sycamore family's living room, just another member of their ever-growing tribe.

Many of the house's residents are visiting or live-in friends rather than members of the family. There is Rheba (Shirine Babb), the sassy maid; Rheba's unemployed boyfriend Donald (Peter Aguero), who acts as the Sycamores' cook; Kolenkhov (Laurence Cantor), a tightly wound Russian dance teacher; Gay Wellington (Kathleen Isbell), a washed-up, drunken actress who crashes on their window seat; and Mr. DePinna (John Mulcahy), who visited the family nine years ago to deliver ice and never left.

After spending a morning with this off-the-wall clan, it is easy to see why. Though admittedly different from your typical American brood, they are completely open-minded and accepting when it comes to strangers in need. They are also joyful, pleasant people content with one another's company and anyone else drawn into their vibrant circle of life.

Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (Peter Judd) is the patriarch of the family, which includes a daughter, Penny (Margot Bercy), a perky woman who has been working on plays ever since a typewriter was accidentally delivered to her door eight years ago; her husband Paul (Jerry Rago), who makes fireworks in the basement; and their two daughters, Essie (Jamie Neumann) and Alice (Jacqueline van Biene). Essie loves to dance and is always practicing around the house, though after several years of lessons she can do little more than bow gracefully. Alice is the black sheep, which in this family means she is really more of a white one. Not only has she found success in a banking job on Wall Street, but her boss's handsome son, Tony (Josh Sienkiewicz), has fallen in love with her.

The play's silly characters, screwball antics, and lighthearted look at the world made it an instant hit when it was first staged in the 1930s, while America was suffering from the Great Depression. At that time, most people had little else than their families, and You Can't Take It With You played an important role in reminding them of the value in that. In 1937 the play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and it has since stood the test of time. Though some references and characters are obviously nods to the political climate of the 30s, they are still funny to a contemporary audience, if no longer relevant.

Overall, there is a lot of passion in this play, found not only in its themes but also in its execution. Jensen knows this work and clearly understands the elements that make it special and appealing. He has added his own personal touches to a classic tale, including scene transitions that feature the characters dancing their way offstage, tossing props to each other as they exit. This effectively prepares the stage for the following scene while keeping the actors in character and the audience in the story.

Peter Judd is excellent as Grandpa, particularly as he delivers a hilarious and yet strangely reasonable monologue to an IRS man (Blake Hackler) about the income tax and why he refuses to pay it. He also drives home the story's central themes about living life on your own terms and following your heart, even if the world considers you crazy for doing so.

The combination of these poignant themes, powerful writing, and loving direction sends you from the theater with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, and that is something you can always take with you.

Away With Words

There are many unavoidable conventions in the art of storytelling, especially in the boy-meets-girl genre, also known as romantic comedy. Mark Greenfield's frenetic comedy I.E. in Other Words, featuring a 14-member cast from the Flea Theater's Bats troupe, falls snugly into this category. The play takes a lighthearted look at the innocence of puppy love, focusing its attention on the trials and tribulations of a small-town country boy who leaves his childhood sweetheart behind to chase his dreams in the big city. The traditional themes, stock characters, and emotional undercurrents all apply, but once the play opens, it becomes immediately clear that there is nothing conventional about Greenfield's eccentric writing style and wildly imaginative tale.

I.E. in Other Words opens in the country, with sunlight pouring in the house as the Goodman family gathers around to eat the cucumber sandwiches that their niece Jen (Elizabeth Hoyt) has prepared. A young man named Sam (Teddy Bergman) interrupts their lunch, making suggestive overtures toward Jen while Pop Goodman (Malcolm Madera) threatens him with a shaking cane and Ma Goodman (Mary Jane Schwartz) says, "Something upbeat, contrasting my husband, which indicates that I'm rooting for you Sam in your quest to nail my niece."

The characters often communicate like this, snubbing conventional dialogue while giving us a fill-in-the-blank conversational blueprint to work out on our own. For example, rather than simply tell a dirty joke, a character will say, "Insert some innuendo here." Later, when Sam leaves Jen to move to the city, he asks her to "insert a moving monologue about how expanding our horizons will help us."

But this is not to say that the characters do not speak in actual dialogue. There are many precious one-liners and quick-witted exchanges here, especially since the actors are free from having to plod through trivial matters like obligatory exposition, a back story, and obvious references to the passage of time.

Everything about I.E. in Other Words is different and unique, including its outstanding cast. Greenfield's dialogue does not roll off the tongue easily, and yet the Bats were able to execute it error-free at a rapid-fire pace. Because the cast is so large, there is always something going on in every corner of the stage, whether it was characters whispering sinisterly in a corner or popping up unexpectedly from the wings to chime in on an impromptu musical number.

There is also a wonderful use of lights and staging, especially as the plot makes the transition from the light and breezy world of Localtownsville to the dark and dangerous land of City City. In this transition's first jarring image, snarling individuals lunge at the audience, an exaggeration of what many first-time visitors to a city might expect to see upon arrival. A naïve-looking Sam seems to step off the bus into a black hole, where he is trampled by pedestrians, easily conned by criminals, and harassed by a Bad Cop (Jaime Robert Carriollo), who dislikes tourists asking for directions.

But romantic comedy enthusiasts who think they know how this will end need to think again. From the opening moments to the closing monologue, I.E. in Other Words is as unpredictable as the young love it celebrates. Two childhood sweethearts coming of age and moving in separate directions have a slim chance of making their love last. The play, on the other hand, moves effortlessly from beginning to end without ever losing an ounce of charm.

Greenfield and director Kip Fagan have created a much-needed expansion of a familiar genre. Whereas many romantic comedies can feel like Xerox copies of each other, I.E. in Other Words offers a refreshingly new method of storytelling that stands out as a true original.

Wrinkle in Time

It is plays like Lisa McGee's Jump! that make you wish theater had a rewind button. This fragmented narrative contains a mosaic of interconnected scenes that eventually merge to form a darkly comedic tale of six strangers who find their lives intersecting in the most unexpected ways. Structured in the same nonlinear style as movies such as Pulp Fiction and Memento, Jump! moves back and forth through time, interweaving a series of ridiculously coincidental moments that all take place in the final hours of New Year's Eve. The story's unconventional storytelling method demands that you pay attention from the very beginning. To ensure that we do, the first line of dialogue is shrieked by a drunken Staten Island woman named Hannah (Meredith Zinner), who screams "Happy New Year!" into a nearly empty bar before darting outside. Only one man, Ross (Jordan Gelber), is there to hear her. He sits alone, drinking beer and nervously cracking the shells off peanuts.

He is soon joined by his skittish friend Johnny (Stephen Plunkett), who stumbles in with an orange gym bag containing a gun. We learn that a string of bad gambling choices has saddled them with a debt too large to pay back. And so they have been strong-armed into being hit men, with their target a man named Pearce (Tim Spears) who apparently owes more money than they do.

But Jump! is a comedy, and so even as tragedy unfolds, the story remains upbeat and witty, with zinging one-liners, zany characters, and top-notch acting to keep it afloat. Plunkett and Gelber make the most of their bumbling hit men shtick, especially in a scene where Ross insists that a tightly wound Johnny play the Madonna CD they found in their hot-wired car. And Ali Marsh, Sarah Grace Wilson, and Zinner are delightfully over the top as three Staten Island barflies, throwing back tequilas, trading snappy remarks, and bonding over their mutual disdain for a former friend, Greta (Bree Elrod), who has mysteriously backed out of their New Year's Eve plans.

It is important to absorb every detail of the women's drunken blathering, as their slurred speech contains important clues to the story's outcome. The second time Hannah shrieks "Happy New Year!" antennas should go up. The phrase now has an entirely different meaning, serving as the moment where past, present, and future are about to converge.

But despite its nonlinear structure, Jump! is not a difficult story to understand. McGee hides her clues the way parents hide Easter eggs, in really obvious places where they know the kids will look. She basically gives us the ending but keeps us guessing about how we are going to get there. As the play nears its climax, the key scenes start to fold into each other, and everything comes together nicely save for one annoying plot point that doesn't seem to fit where we know it belongs. McGee wisely waits until the very last second to show us where it goes.

In this respect, Jump! feels like an interactive experience. When the final piece is revealed to us, those who instantly figure it out will have to laugh at the cleverness of the plotting, whereas those staring blankly at the stage will probably still be piecing it together. Amusingly, when the lights came up and the audience was filing out, a chorus of voices suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, now I get it!," followed by delayed laughter.

Fortunately, Jump! lends itself to a second watching. It is short, quick, intermission-less, and so engrossing that it is over before you know it. And once it is, you'll have trouble resisting the urge to dump the puzzle pieces back on the floor and solve it all over again.

At Your Convenience

Desipina & Company's popular series of seven 11-minute skits, aptly titled Seven.11 Convenience Theatre, has returned for its fifth season. Currently running at the Henry Street Settlement, the production once played at another historic location, the basement of the Lower East Side's Tenement Museum, where it utilized that prime location to fulfill the company's mission of challenging stereotypes related to the South Asian and Asian-Pacific American immigrant experience. Though remnants of that mission still remain in the show's current season, its insightful slice-of-life approach to storytelling has given way to a more edgy and raucous style. The skits offered in this installment will be more appealing to an audience eager to have fun than one yearning for an enriching cultural experience, which is hardly touched upon except in one skit, "Café Ceilao" by Vishakan Jeyakumar.

This skit gives us a heartfelt look into a rarely examined corner of life by showing the blossoming relationship of two Sri Lankan immigrants who meet in a small cafe housed within a 7-11. The story is well paced, touching, and intelligent, striking the right balance between comedy and poignancy and exemplifying what it means to create work that bridges the gap between cultures.

The preceding skit, "Bachelor Moon" by Thelma Virata de Castro, also has its heart in the right place, telling its tale of longing and loneliness through letters written between two former college pals (Jackson Loo and Ka-Ling Cheung) whose friendship has drifted apart. This is followed by Janet S. Kim's "How Convenient," a comical meeting between a lovelorn superwoman (Anita Sabherwal) trying to woo Rocket (Jackson Loo), a second-string superman. While both skits are solid and well plotted with strong acting, it is unclear how either relates to the stereotypes facing immigrants or convenience store employees.

The same is true of the opening skit, "The Professional." The title refers to an actress who cannot act "professional" when rehearsing her part because she believes her co-worker is sleeping with her boyfriend. The story is light and entertaining, and Ka-Ling Cheung is adorably funny as the wrongfully accused colleague, but there is no insight to be gleaned here.

In the fifth skit, "We Are History" by Jon Kern, we meet a spunky 7-11 cashier named Martha (Ka-ling Cheung), who is working in her father's store when tourists come through the door taking pictures of what they claim to be a crime scene that memorializes her own death. Kern has successfully constructed an eerie and tense story, and though it says nothing about Asian-American culture, it does make good use of its convenience store setting.

"Bollywood Blueberry Brainfreeze Bonanza" by Debargo Sanyal features Seven.11 Convenience alumnus Sanyal, a standout actor from past seasons. In this skit he is strictly the writer, although his antagonist, an egotistical Bollywood star (Andrew Guilarte), is curiously named Debargo Sanyal. After delivering a zany Slurpee promo for MTV, Sanyal is rendered unconscious when he actually tries the brain-freezing drink. Lying on the floor, he is stripped of his clothes by two half-dressed potheads who proceed to take over his MTV segment. The whole premise is so over-the-top ridiculous that you can't help but laugh and enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for the final skit, "Bikram & Cheeckochio: The Musical," with lyrics by Michael Lew and Rehana Mirza and music by Samrat Chakrabarti. A parody of Pinocchio, the main character, Cheeckochio (Meetu Chilana), is cursed with a rear that grows larger whenever she makes a racist remark. To become a real girl, she must drink a 7-11 Slurpee. What starts off as an interesting premise is quickly drowned in an excessive amount of pornographic references and "ass" jokes. The narrator (Jackson Loo) even flashes a full-page spread from an adult magazine to the audience, a questionable prop to use in a skit with humor catering to an under-21 audience.

Fortunately for this production, it has a lively, dynamic cast of performers who could not be boring if they tried. There is no doubt about their ability to deliver an entertaining evening of theater, but in light of other seasons and past Desipina & Company productions, it is disheartening to see the show's original zest for social change and cultural commentary become lost in a cloud of fluff.

High Art

There's an interesting quote by a photojournalist named Jacon A. Riis, who once said, "I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at a rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow, it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." This quote perfectly sums up the life of Clovis (Annie McGovern), a passionate painter from the 19th century, who suffered an emotional breakdown after a lifetime of being hammered away at by a society that did not treat women as equals. Heather McDonald's feminist drama Dream of a Common Language spotlights Clovis and other female painters like her, who struggled to earn respect in an industry dominated by men.

Dream of a Common Language is not always an easy play to follow, because the dialogue does not sound authentic and natural. The characters often speak slowly into the distance, as if every word they have to say is an important piece of profound, life-altering advice. When the cook, Dolores (Kelli Lynn Harrison), recounts memories from her past, the lights change and beautiful, melodramatic music composed by Chip Barrow and John D. Ivy and performed by Barrow and Zsaz Rutowski fills the theater, even when the speech is not deserving of such a dramatic score.

These stylistic elements do not always work in terms of enlightening us to the true natures of the characters. But they do not detract either, since the characters are all artists, highly emotional and explosive artists at that, who are not fluent in the art of small talk. Clovis's husband, Victor (Kerry Waterson), in particular loves words too much to waste them on pleasantries. But Clovis is guilty of this too, only acknowledging her son, Mylo (played by child actor David Kahn), when his comments refer to her paintings.

The story opens in Clovis's spacious backyard garden, where she frequently retreats to reflect on her past. McGovern plays Clovis with a whimsical, airy nature, expertly constructing a multidimensional character that is both jaded by life and able to see the world with all the wonder and splendor of a young child.

Victor shows considerably less dimension. He has been so conditioned to think of women as inferior that he does not realize how shattering his comments are to his already fragile wife. His ignorance feels unjustified, because there is no evidence of the weaker-sex stereotype in the women he surrounds himself with.

One of his best friends is a strong-willed and determined painter named Pola (Suzanne Barbetta), one of the few women to be admitted into his arts academy. It is she who finally pulls Victor aside to lecture him on how little things can make a big difference, citing as an example the way he often refers to her paintings as "illustrations."

But his biggest offense is to throw a dinner party for fellow painters and colleagues while banishing his wife and Pola to the backyard garden. Shunned from the table, the women invite Dolores to join them in opening a few bottles of wine as they throw their own, liberating, no-boys-allowed party. Before Pola's arrival, Victor had complained that Clovis does not smile anymore, but when we see her in the garden, surrounded by friends who support and believe in her, she is flushed, radiant, and giggly.

McDonald keeps the driving reason for Clovis's breakdown a secret until the end of the play, but suffice it to say that despite all of Victor's best intentions to repair his relationship, it is hard to root for his success. McDonald has created a wonderful, free-spirited character in Clovis, making it hard to forgive the person who plays a significant role in delivering the hundred and first blow that finally breaks her.