Alone Together

In Theatre Lila's debut production, The Waltz of Elementary Particles, nine actors illuminated like fireflies encounter one another much the way I imagine electrons would if electrons were human bodies. After what can only be described as a birth sequence of sorts, these free-flowing entities of light and purity put on the trappings of modern city-dwellers, primarily through very simple, bold costume additions. From there, through increasingly frenzied, repetitive gestures, each of these individuals reveals what drives his/her day. In all cases, they are driven by media that tell them to buy more, to be more, to achieve more. Ultimately, the particles lose their particle-ness and in exhaustion confront the unknown: the audience.

Sounds a little sci-fi, right? A little artsy, maybe? Well, it is, in its way. But this is one of the best pieces of theater I have seen in five years, and it takes a little explaining as to why.

There are arguably two types of theater: narrative and experiential. While most theater contains aspects of both, the narrative kind dominates our expectations. Most of us expect to be told a story, because written plays with clear story lines dominate our concept of what theater is and should be. But what of this other, shape-shifting thing called experiential theater?

Experiential theater is as it sounds: an experience. While stories can be thrilling or insightful or subject us to rapid-fire ideas or emotions, theater can have a higher calling beyond being a story's vehicle. Experiential theater taps into forces of nature, rhythms deeper than our consciousness, and a collective sense of being. Heady stuff indeed. But the hallmark of a piece that works is actually an absence of muddled thought

A Comedy

Poor Madame Ranevskaya. She is in debt, and the dire state of her affairs leaves her with little option but to auction her estate and its splendid cherry orchard. When presented with alternatives by the wily yet earnest businessman Lopakhin, Ranevskaya is immobile: she simply cannot forsake what took generations to build. In her thinking, to do anything other than wait for a miracle is to comply with the seemingly inevitable change about to consume her family and bring about its demise. And this is a comedy?

Well, that is debatable. Are we really meant to care much about Ranevskaya? In The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov gives us a number of clues as to what he thinks of her. She's wanton. She's gullible. She abandons her daughters to go off and squander their inheritance on her extravagant whims. She has no spine and cannot bear to say no even to the most unreasonable requests. She thinks primarily of herself and her nearly delusional woes.

David Epstein, whose direction I loved in ICTC's recent production of Arcadia, has chosen to direct a show that is a wart revealer of a play. It takes guts. His cast is talented and full of an earnest zeal to feel and express their heady emotions. They are costumed marvelously (with the exception of a few unfortunate handbags) by Michael Bevins and have a lovely and appropriate set on which to play, thanks to Ed McNamee.

But something is off. I have a suspicion as to what it is: Ranevskaya. As played by Cindy Keiter, Ranevskaya's ceaseless crying jags are given a gravitas they do not deserve. And from that core all the other characters seem to crash like sentimental dominoes into each other. There is such pregnancy of thought, such precious period delicacy loose onstage, that the production often feels as if there is something very serious afoot. But with such a hollow heart as Ranevskaya at its core, who can't help feel cheated by emotions that are at best misguided?

Chekhov added two little words to the title of his play. The full title is The Cherry Orchard, A Comedy. What he knew, but very few people have ever listened to, is that Ranevskaya is a silly, obnoxious woman. Chekhov wrote a play about social change, asserting that the maudlin sentimentality of the landed class is nothing more than the childish antics of spoiled brats incapable of sharing, unwilling to cast off their faulty sense of entitlement for a new world order. Epstein occasionally has his cast nearly there, but not quite.

It is difficult to tell actors not to feel or that what they're feeling is wrong and inappropriate. Every modern acting class points to the legitimacy of emotions as the truth behind acting. It is difficult to cut what you love. But look at what Chekhov said about the play's first production, in 1904: "How awful it is! An act that ought to take 12 minutes at most lasts 40 minutes. There is only one thing I can say: Stanislavsky has ruined my play for me." You might recognize the director's name. And yes, some of Chekhov's criticism could be aptly applied to ICTC's production.

His play could be timely, if only the production took a step to make it so. Do we sympathize with the Enron executives who lost the millions they unlawfully gained at the expense of their employees? Do we think it is reprehensible when Kathie Lee Gifford is ridiculed for using child laborers from Third World countries while her son Cody tromps around redefining "spoiled"? Do we all nod our heads in assent when President Bush tells us how much he sympathizes with the poor single moms of America? Of course not. This is the same point behind The Cherry Orchard.

That said, I love this company. They have a voice, they have style, and they love what they do. The pitch-perfect near miss of a proposal scene between Varya (Beth White) and Lopakhin (Gerry Lehane) is both delightful and painful. It alone is worth admission. White's Varya is well calibrated, dancing the difficult line between absurdity and genuine emotion with grace and ease. Varya is arguably the only character punished with a fate she does not deserve, and White does her justice, then swiftly moves on. Lehane's Lopakhin is a worthy and conflicted counterpart.

Indeed, ICTC is a company worth getting to know, even if this production lacks clarity of purpose.

Locks and Keys

The Flying Machine's Frankenstein is more fable-like in duration and style than it is reminiscent of Mary Shelley's gothic nightmare. I am glad of it! I have had enough poor adaptations and loud, clanking monsters to satisfy my need for bastardized gothica. Look no further than Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation to look upon a real monster. I do not mean to cast a negative light on Shelley's book; it is a great book. The contemporary artists who fail so magnificently at adapting it, on the other hand? Well, fortunately for them, the Flying Machine is here to show us all how to adapt bravely. The ensemble tosses Shelley's narrative to the curb and starts fresh with the tale of a young scientific savant, Victor Frankenstein (Robert Ross Parker), and his penchant for giving life to toads and drunks.

Victor is plagued by thoughts of his deceased mother and a puzzle box he never solved. Driven by his haunting memories, his life is built around using his genius at solving impossible scientific problems. Problems like death and biological inferiority, for example.

In a sweet, socially awkward scene between Victor and his long-suffering maid, Sonia (Adrienne Kapstein), the eccentric, obsessive scholar reveals he has recently revived a hapless river toad. When he cautiously carts his beloved marvel off to class to show his professor and fellow scholars, he triggers a series of events that will catapult him through acts of pride, violence, stupidity, pathos, redemption, and, ultimately, contentment.

Thematically, the production immediately calls to mind Russian and Eastern European masters such as Kafka, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky (program notes cite his Crime and Punishment as an additional source). Director Joshua Carlebach uses a bizarre, almost antediluvian aesthetic to highlight the deeper questions at stake in Shelley's tale. In Carlebach's world, characters are not quite human, which seems to imply we are all a tad monstrous at our core.

Along with writer Jason Lindner, Carlebach homes in on the philosophical, but also scientific, ramifications of human interference in the natural world. Victor is most obsessed with reversing entropy, the second law of thermodynamics (for example, perfume sprayed into the air cannot condense back into a bottle). His obsession leads him to break a law not only of the physical world but of the universe itself. Death cannot be conquered. But where Victor is stymied, Carlebach and Lindner offer a glimmer of hope. Together, they posit a world that can be changed, but perhaps should be changed only in small ways with slight acts of kindness and compassion.

The set, designed by Marisa Frantz, is immediately remarkable: a series of windows randomly attached to one another flank either side of the stage to create two transparent, changeable, moveable pieces endlessly reconfigured and manipulated by the actors. The window units do much to drive the whirlwind of events in this momentous single night in Victor's life, and do much more in suggesting a sense of location and atmosphere in each scene. With the addition of an upstage window unit on pulleys, the scenic elements alternate between practical and symbolic usage; clocks and guillotines come to mind. I will wager the ensemble will continue to discover new ideas in such a creative environment throughout the run.

With so many ideas, such clever design, and exemplary ensemble acting, what struck me most effective about Frankenstein were the moments of stillness and simplicity. Carlebach sets his scenes with Young Victor (Tami Stronach) so cinematically and delicately that innocence itself becomes a distant, untouchable world. The adult Victor's plight reminds me of the proverb that knowledge increases sorrow. In poor Victor's case, the more he knows of the world's systems and of science's functions, the less able he is to appreciate a cup of tea. The information makes him so anxious and troubled, he cannot live his life.

Carlebach and Parker effectively make the play turn from its manic course with nothing more than a music box. So as Victor learns he cannot conquer death, he also releases his hold on the childhood he can never recapture. It is an exquisite moment, dealt with lovingly, and it captures the grace and optimism of the Flying Machine.

Reason and Romance

When I closed the final page of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia eight years ago, time slowed. My head spun with more ideas than I could handle. Heartache crawled up the back of my throat. For the first time, I was able to see that what is in our heads can also be in our hearts, and the more relentless we are as thinkers, the more relentlessly we can love. Arcadia takes place in both the early 1800s and 2004. Hannah Jarvis and Bernard Nightingale are a modern-day pair of scholars independently visiting the estate of a landed aristocratic British family. Hannah seeks to unveil the identity of the Hermit of Sidley Park, while Bernard attempts to peg a murder he believes to have happened at the estate on none other than Lord Byron. Hannah and Bernard's scenes alternate with those involving a youthful tutor (Septimus Hodge) and his charge (Thomasina Coverly) from the time period Bernard and Hannah are studying.

The enormity of Arcadia is staggering. Stoppard takes on literature, science, mathematics, and philosophy; he questions predestination and the nature of God; he dramatically pits intellectual rivals against each other and effortlessly stirs up an engrossing narrative of graceful simplicity.

Every scene contains a core dramatic arc that shouldn't be hard to play correctly. Stoppard's dialogue is ferociously intellectual but full of nuances, wit, and beauty. He uses an enormous aristocratic estate as his setting and allows the play's action to bandy between two centuries. In short, he outdoes himself.

Against such magnitude, Invisible City Theatre Company's (ICTC) production is startlingly intimate. The ensemble is working in a very tiny space with crisp design elements. Rather than admiring the morning room of Sidley Park from afar, the audience is in it. In this space, with these people, it is impossible to avoid succumbing to the quickly paced frenzy of ideas, impossible not to feel as though we are part of the fabric of that world.

Kudos to ICTC for having the courage to mount this gigantic play in such a tiny space; their decision is counterintuitive, but it pays off magnificently. Rather than observe arguments, we are enveloped in them. And as Bernard, Hannah, and Valentine Coverly (Avery Clark), a graduate student studying mathematics, assert, the arguing itself is trivial, but the passions that drive the arguing are the reasons we live.

ICTC turns out a uniformly well-acted show: sound ensemble acting with intelligent, heady, passionate performances all around. Actors go to school so they will have the chops to play Septimus, should the opportunity arise. Adam Devine gets under Septimus's skin and does not look back; he's rakish and heartbreaking and totally swoon-worthy. Christine Albright's Thomasina is precocious, brilliant and innocent. The delicacy of their relationship is heightened by the restraint in David Epstein's direction. Rebecca Miller's Hannah and David Ian Lee's Bernard are delightful contemporary contrasts