Southern-Fried Musical

In only a year's time, the original production of Pump Boys and Dinettes worked its way from Off-Off-Broadway at the Chelsea West Side Arts Theater to Broadway's Princess Theater, garnering a Tony nomination for Best Musical of 1982 along the way. The current revival at Manhattan Theater Source makes it easy to understand the show's appeal; this is an unpretentious hour and a half of good music and good times. Even if you're not a fan of country music, you will have a hard time not swaying to the rhythms put down by the talented cast. Franklin Golden plays Jim, an irresponsible yet lovable rascal who runs a garage along Highway 57 deep in North Carolina. When not taking his customers' cars out for joyrides or fishing with the boys, he spends his free time courting Rhetta Cupp, who owns the Double Cupp Diner down the road along with her sister, Prudie. But Jim's carefree ways have landed him on Rhetta's bad side. And he deserves to be there, after ditching a date with her in favor of the call of the catfish.

So Jim sings his odes to catfish, vacations, and the Southern lifestyle, backed up by Eddie (Zeb Holt), the silent bass player; Jackson (Mitch Rothrock), a bright-eyed scamp on lead guitar; and pianist L.M. While Jim may be the frontman, each member gets his say (except for Eddie, who really doesn't have anything to say). Still, it's L.M. (Michael Hicks) who steals the show by pounding the keys in a furious tirade against women ("Serve Yourself"), crooning about his star-crossed night with a country music star ("The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine"), and finally tap-dancing while accompanying the Dinettes on accordion ("Farmer Tan").

Over at the Double Cupp (which is actually just a few steps across the stage), Rhetta (Amy Heidt) and Prudie (Kate Middleton) accompany the boys, banging pots and pans and candy jars to provide percussion. They, too, get their share of the spotlight. The groove of "Tips" is nearly irresistible, and Rhetta's admonishment of her beau's behavior in "Be Good or Be Gone" makes for a fun ditty. The show stops dead for Middleton's performance of "The Best Man," revealing her amazing voice with its innocent-sounding timbre and perfect tone. But be prepared: these girls might at one point drag you out of your seat and up onstage to serenade you.

Of course, good performances by the cast almost invariably mean good direction. Since the performers in Pump Boys and Dinettes are this endearing, praise is certainly due to director Laura Standley. She guides the play's tone, making sure that every cast member lampoons his or her character type while displaying the affectionate respect that every culture deserves but that Southern culture rarely receives in New York theater. Even when playing Southern caricatures, the cast members invite the audience to laugh both at them and with them, charming the heck out of everybody in the process.

Also deserving praise is the stage design. On the Pump Boys' side of the stage, L.M.'s piano stool is made of old tires. On the Double Cupp side, the pies that come out of the oven look better than the ones at the diner across the street from the theater. And the walls are peppered with old tin soda and gasoline advertisements.

If you're looking for fun music and a show where the performers freely interact with the audience, you'll find that Pump Boys and Dinettes is a gem of escapist theater—complete with a free raffle.

Dead Zone

Don't let the title fool you; Welcome Home Steve isn't about Steve at all. Craig McNulty's play is about Steve's friends, a motley group with not much in common. Having met in writing school, they've managed to keep in touch for a number of years after graduation, despite the dramatically different lives each has chosen. The play begins with the friends gathering in Sheila's apartment to welcome Steve back from an extended jaunt in Turkey. But when they go to rouse him from his sleep, they find him cold. Steve has overdosed on a tiny portion of the heroin from a six-figure drug deal he was putting together.

While such a premise brims with dramatic promise, McNulty uses his characters as mouthpieces for weak arguments about responsibility and ethics instead of letting the conflicts inherent in his material run a natural course. As a result, his characters seem one-dimensional, which detracts from the script's finer-crafted moments.

Sheila is an ultra-spiritual hippie type; she was also Steve's girlfriend when he was not globetrotting on his various misadventures. Peter is a stoner, not quite busy laboring on his stoner masterpiece while paying the bills working behind the register at a taco shop. Billy is a horror writer living hand-to-mouth, in stark contrast to his Wall Street girlfriend, Holly. John has given up his writing aspirations for an unfulfilling life as a grade-school teacher.

Like filmmaker Kevin Smith, McNulty builds much of his dialogue from arguments over geek-culture standards; the play opens on Peter trying (and failing) to convince Billy of the artistic merit of graphic novels. Instead of eliciting the kind of understated performances Smith gets from his actors in films like Clerks, director Guilherme "Guil" Parreiras gives his actors free rein with the script, resulting in quite a bit of overacting, particularly by Joseph Amato, who plays Peter. While Amato eventually does get some laughs, his wild gesticulations and inconsistent mock-ghetto accents betray an insecurity with the material.

Once Steve is found dead, the play shifts to a more serious tone, and the play begins to lose its credibility. For some reason, nobody even thinks about or discusses calling the police when his body is found. Rather, all the characters agree to let Sheila perform vague and repetitive spiritual rites over the body, which conveniently allows for different characters to be left alone with each other, creating contrived conflicts.

When Peter and Billy decide to sell the heroin, John tries to talk them out of it. But the trio seems to be more concerned with debating the questionable morality of providing drugs to junkies than the legal ramifications of such actions. This, too, feels more contrived than natural, especially because the play never addresses what actually happens to the drugs.

A big twist comes at the end when one character confesses to administering the deadly dose to Steve. This prompts John, who hears the confession, to (finally) call the police, admitting that he was the one who unwittingly killed his friend. It would be a nice twist, except it leaves one wondering: if the evidence of the crime could be so easily faked/destroyed, why not let the blame for Steve's death fall on Steve?

Ken Larson's scenic design stands out, lending the play some much-needed believability. The setting is the living room/kitchen of a Brooklyn apartment, and the stage looks every bit the part. From a toy basketball hoop on the wall to the lived-on couch, the set's distinctive touches give the actors a comfortable world to work in.

But while the production values are very good and the acting is professional, the script still needs work. Should McNulty find a way to color in his sketched characters and craft a more believable story arc, a subsequent rewrite might produce a fine play. As it is, though, Welcome Home Steve seems like a workshop production.

Noir Tale

With its standard detective-story plot, Rip Me Open has a wealthy, gorgeous blond who hires a rough-and-tumble private eye to investigate a case where nothing is as it originally appears. But there's a twist: the blond is a man and his hired gumshoe a woman, a world-weary secret shopper who takes occasional snoop jobs on the side for money. It's a clever beginning that turns the detective genre on its head, yet the play fails to build a story of substance around this solid start. As a result, Rip Me Open slows down early before eventually stalling out completely. Desiree Burch plays amateur investigator Lucinda Coolidge with a very believable working-class weariness. When a flamboyant and frustratingly enigmatic Sebastian Rumpford offers to hire her to find out more about his new lover, she initially hesitates; Sebastian seems like too much of a case himself to work for. But he has too much money to take no for an answer, and money is something Lucinda can't say no to.

Lucinda soon discovers that Sebastian's lover, a man who goes by three different names, has a lot to hide. But he isn't the only one; Sebastian himself refuses to disclose to Lucinda all the secrets of his relationship, including a mysterious and deviant act that may cost him his life.

As Sebastian, Michael Cyril Creighton displays natural comedic timing. His lounge-lizard crooning, faux-diva vamping, and prissy whining work in good counterpoint to Burch's straight-faced exasperation. But the straight man/funny man routine takes Rip Me Open only so far.

In addition to acting, Creighton and Burch are credited with co-writing the show with Kyle Jarrow and director Brian Mullin. The problems with their script are myriad. To begin with, they use the same simile-laden speech that is the foundation of clichéd detective stories. Initially hearing a secret shopper use this type of language adds humor to the story. But the language becomes repetitive, and as the show begins to take itself seriously, the continued use of a second-rate Sam Spade style is no longer funny, and the show becomes the same cliché it originally set out to mock.

Rip Me Open becomes more confused, and less a matter of genre manipulation, when it changes tone. It starts out as a lighthearted farce, then shifts into dark comedy before becoming experimental theater and finally ending as some kind of fantasy/tragedy. The Sebastian character borrows heavily from Will & Grace's Karen, someone too rich to understand the common world. He asks questions like "What's a Sizzler?" and remarks, "Oooh, Applebee's! That sounds quaint." Yet moments later he becomes an ashamed man, tortured by his perversion as he attempts to elicit pathos from Lucinda (and the audience) by explaining how special his lover makes him feel.

Eventually, Lucinda discovers that his secret sexual act is that his lover disembowels him during sex on a regular basis. How does Sebastian consistently survive such an ordeal? Were there trips to the emergency room? What about recovery time? The playwrights apparently felt it was unneccesary to consider such questions.

Witnessing Sebastian's torture prompts Lucinda to strangle Sebastian's lover to death and burn his house down. The next morning, Lucinda and Sebastian meet in a Denny's to discuss the darkness of their souls over pancakes. Are Sebastian and Lucinda the least bit worried that they might be imprisoned for the previous night's occurrences? Another question that the playwrights fail to address. The ridiculous nature of these events makes the script unbelievable, and the playwrights' inability to create a reality for these events to take place in makes the play nearly unwatchable.

The idea that Lucinda has seen too much of man's evil nature during her stint as a secret shopper is funny. The idea of a woman as a hard-nosed private dick and a man as her client is inspired. But the constant referential jokes (like the Applebee's line), potty humor, and vulgarity drag the show's high concept below lowbrow. The play's creators seem to be attempting to push the boundaries, but just what boundaries do they think they are pushing?

Creighton, Jarrow, Mullin, and Burch neglected the careful construction and emotional grounding that allow Sam Shepard's fantasy worlds and David Lynch's bizzare tales to appeal to their audiences in challenging, nonlinear ways. The foursome's dialogue parrots Raymond Chandler's language without adding any new perspective to it. Rip Me Open bills itself as "drawing on influences ranging from classic film noir to Dennis Cooper and Haruki Murakami," but its execution exposes it as a shallow and immature imitation of the works its writers admire.

Players's Tale

While the Gallery Players's theater may be located a few subway stops deep into Brooklyn, their production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play Take Me Out seems not too far away from Broadway. The main reason for the play's success is simple: each member of the 11-man cast gives a truly exceptional performance. It's difficult to single out any one individual when each actor performs at such a high level of quality. Noshir Dalal is perfectly cast to type as the gay golden boy Darren Lemming, star of the New York Empires baseball franchise. Ron Brice is more than solid as Darren's mentor and rival, Davey Battle. Even Nobuo Inubushi's understated acting as Japanese import player Takeshi Kawabata is compelling, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he spends most of the play completely silent.

But the night belongs to Jonathan C. Kaplan, who plays the self-acknowledged "smartest man in baseball," Kippy Sunderstrom. Kaplan takes the weight of the production onto his shoulders and swaggers around the stage as if the burden were no heavier than his jersey.

Not much actually happens during the play's first half, which serves merely to introduce all the characters. The task of narration falls to Kaplan's Sunderstrom, and he enthusiastically delves into the details of Darren Lemming's past, his coming out of the closet during a nationally televised press conference, and the arrival of the unfortunate savior of the season, the racist and intolerant relief pitcher Shane Mungitt. Even with the lack of action, Kaplan's energy—along with some well-timed jokes—keeps the production pushing forward, despite the script's self-indulgent need to begin with the story of Adam and Eve.

The play really gets started near the end of the first act, when Mungitt publicly admits to feeling uncomfortable in the locker room with his gay teammate. When the second act begins, Mungitt has been suspended, and the Empires have struggled without him. A public apology lands him back in the clubhouse, but although his talent puts the Empires back on top of their division, his presence creates tension in the locker room, a tension that ultimately leads to outrage and tragedy.

As Mungitt, Peter Hawk plays the white-trash right-hander with an understated presence that ensures he stands out on a stage that's full of full-of-themselves alpha males. His gruff voice and casual delivery try to steal every scene, seemingly without Hawk's permission.

Cully Long's set design is simple: the floor of the stage is painted in tan and green with a couple of thick, white stripes, as if it were an anonymous corner of a baseball field. Four lockers and stools sit on each side of the stage for most of the production. A platform upstage triples (pun intended) as the locker room's shower as well as a press podium and pitching mound. What serves to change the scenery are subtle lighting changes, designed by Travis Walker. And natural-sounding sound effects, such as running water, clicking shutters, and play-by-plays, help create a believable atmosphere regardless of how many props are present or lacking in any given scene.

The only noticeable weakness in the Gallery Players's production is the Pulitzer-nominated script itself. Greenberg's characters are little more than clichés: the dumb rookie Jason seemed a near carbon copy of Bull Durham's Nuke LaLoosh; the Hispanic players Martinez and Rodriguez serve no purpose other than to curse in Spanish; the wise, old Skipper is reminiscent of, well, every manager in every baseball movie ever made; and the flamboyant sports agent is so "gay" that he skips when happy and eats ice cream when depressed. What elevates the characters beyond stereotypes and makes the audience members care (and they care a lot) is the cast members' inspired performances. Rodriguez and Martinez's jokes about Kawabata's mother could easily fall flat but instead provoke belly laughs.

The stereotypes also make the play's moral messages come off a bit trite. In Greenberg's world, only ignorant people are racist and only religious people are intolerant hypocrites, but true friendships last forever. The script leaves a few conflicts somewhat unresolved in its attempt to be taken seriously as a social commentary, but it still can't manage to create more complexity and believability than a Julia Roberts story about a hooker with a heart of gold.

But never mind the playwright's attempts to dress up his lighthearted frolic as an intellectual tragedy. Take Me Out is two hours of fun, witty comedy. The clever direction, impeccable production values, and first-rate acting by the Gallery Players make this show a genuine must-see.

Chance Encounters

Travels, Tours and One-Night Stands is a theatrical pastiche that uses dance, dialogue, and live music to convey the joys and troubles of journeying through the world. But traveler beware: sexy though they may initially appear, one-night stands abroad are never a good substitute for a fulfilling relationship at home, and a series of skits with no plot, no conflict, and no real characters makes for a lackluster effort. Duane Boutte, Kim Ima, Onni Johnson, and Chris Wild begin the show as a quartet of strangers crammed into a cramped train somewhere in France. In an amusing skit, the uptight Boutte leans over, around, underneath, and on top of the other passengers in his attempts to get better reception on his cell phone as he conducts a rather loud conversation in French. Meanwhile, a more sensitive and friendly Wild breaks bread with Johnson and Ima.

When night falls, the passengers begin resting their heads on each other's shoulders, kicking up their legs on each other's laps, and innocently curling up next to each other. Boutte's ringing cell phone inevitably wakens them. Wild produces an accordion from his backpack and begins playing a Russian folk song. Initially upset with Wild for (ironically) disturbing his phone call, Boutte eventually takes up the accordion, and they all join together in a sing-along.

And so begins a series of scenes, each one creating a different backdrop for the actors to create different characters with different relationships to each other.

The cast members find themselves in Africa, captivated by natives performing tribal dances. Each of the four takes a turn as the dancing native while the others observe. Then the quartet is in a nameless place, struggling to set up a tent. And after that, they find themselves in India listening to live music being performed.

Wherever these four adventurers go, the set remains bare. Two boxes on wheels serve as luggage, a train, a perch, and a bench. Furthermore, the boxes contain all the effects used in the show, including a tent and a clothesline. The boxes even manage to house a cast member or two when necessary. The clever set designer, Gian Marco Lo Forte, deserves credit for creating the malleable and functional furniture.

But with only a few props at their disposal, the onus is on the cast to create a believable world around them, and to bring the audience into that world with them. While they succeed at the former task, they fail at the latter, leaving the audience asking too many questions.

Where is the forest in which these people are setting up their tent? What are their relationships to each other in each different scene? On the train through France, all four marvel at the sights passing by outside the train windows, but what are those sights? The audience watches while these four people watch, but watching isn't a very exciting action to observe.

More watching occurs later in the piece, as the cast members ogle a slide show of random locations projected onto the side of their tent. Other people's slide shows are always tedious to sit through, whether in a living room or here, in a theater. It does not help that each of the slides initially appears blurry, then slowly comes into focus. Also adding to the show's lagging effect are the scene transitions, drawn out for lengthy minutes as lights slowly fade out while the performers stand completely still.

Aside from poor conceptual choices, director/choreographer Kim Ima created dance moves that are not really choreographed and hardly seem to be dance moves at all. She also gives her cast far too much room to improvise. With conflict entirely absent from every skit except the first, scenes drag on without purpose. The cast members' improvisations are repetitive, their movements too natural to provide any real entertainment. Boutte, Wild, Ima, and Johnson never really flesh out who their characters are supposed to be, where they are, and what they are doing there.

At an hour and 15 minutes, the running time of Travels, Tours and One-Night Stands could be easily cut in half without losing any content. Or perhaps the cast could do a better job of filling the given time by creating more complete characters and giving them purposes and reactions to the foreign worlds to which they travel. Otherwise, I'd suggest passing on the one-night stands and waiting for a real relationship.

Class Clowns

The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater touts itself for specializing in affordable, high-quality comedy shows, seven nights a week. It's hard to get more affordable than free, and Wednesday night's final show, School Night, is just that: free. As for quality, the show has its finer moments as well as its lesser ones. Emceeing the evening was Justin Purnell, who hyped the show up to high levels of expectation. His naturally likable personality made him more convincing than most emcees, but his between-skit banter tended to drag on too long, slowing down the show's pace and forcing the comedians to spend too much time trying to bring back the crowd's enthusiasm. Purnell's consistent use of "um" and "uh" betrayed a bit of discomfort in the spotlight, which also sapped the audience's energy.

The show's opener, Tony Camin, came on strong with some potentially offensive but truly clever jokes, but then quickly sank into witless grade-school humor. While his sex jokes were merely unoriginal, his material mocking people with mental retardation was offensive. His efforts to point out that retarded people are indeed retarded merited neither laughter nor applause.

Billy Merritt and Pam Murphy increased the laughs with their improvised show called "Bicker." Taking a key word from the audience, the two portrayed numerous bickering couples, cleverly weaving each couple's story line into the next couple's story line.

Daily Show correspondent Miriam Tolan and her skit partner, Jason Mantzoukas, exemplified improv at its best as they too portrayed a couple in a situation taken from an audience member's suggestion. Tolan and Mantzoukas seemed completely comfortable as their characters, easing into joke after joke while simultaneously building the world their characters inhabit. As a young married couple who met in rehab, Mantzoukas was a lovably homicidal and hilariously neglectful husband/father of two, while a deadpan Tolan doted on every one of her beau's psychotic flaws.

While attempting to introduce the night's next act, emcee Purnell was interrupted by his overbearing girlfriend, Sara Schaefer. A clearly obsessed Schaefer bounded onstage, stopping the show and producing a slide show of imagined romantic moments between the two lovers before strong-arming Purnell into a disturbingly well-choreographed ribbon dance that was like Olympic rhythmic gymnastics.

Chris Gethard played a slow-witted and comedically challenged Queens restaurateur named Uncle Billy. His terrible delivery of unfunny jokes was riotous, rivaling Tolan and Mantzoukas as School Night's best performers. Gethard was not just a comedian delivering his material but an actor giving a carefully scripted and brilliant performance.

Aziz Ansari entertained with his personal style of self-deprecating yet self-obsessed humor, and the duo of John Conroy and Rachel Hamilton closed out the show with another portrayal of a bickering couple. Conroy and Hamilton had some funny moments but found themselves at a distinct disadvantage, having followed two pairs of performers who were more adept at the same game.

The show started 20 minutes late, and with seven performances and emcee banter in between, it dragged on about 20 minutes too long. The comedians ranged from good amateurs to bad professionals to seasoned pros. As is the nature of improv, School Night is guaranteed to be different every time, with any number of performers appearing.

Still, at the unbeatable price of zero dollars, the show is worth the risk, especially if you find yourself bored, broke, or looking for an excuse to stay up late on a school (or any other) night.

Anatomy and Psychology

Soleil hates thongs. Devon can't stand to be objectified by her rugby-playing boyfriend but doesn't understand why her cousin Rebecca thinks she's such a prude. Rachel is hoping that the drastic, mood-altering side effects of her new birth-control regimen will soon wane so she and her boyfriend can wallow in the pleasure of unprotected sex. Elissa resents her father for being such a great role model.

And Jennifer is moments away from performing her first on-camera nude scene and needs her best friend, Katy, to support her decision to go through with it.

These women are angry. They are young, too. Some are clad in low-rise jeans, while others slink around the stage in miniskirts, corsets, and silk robes. Each one wears her emotional issues on her sleeve—or garter belt, as the case may be—and each one is a character in Matt Morillo's collection of monologues and one-acts, Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans With High-Class Issues.

Devon Pipers acts with manic fervor as the reluctant Jennifer in the show's finale, "The Nude Scene." She preens for the camera like a ridiculous peacock before abruptly halting the production so she can down a few shots of whiskey to get comfortable. Her onscreen lover, Barry, spends time between takes pumping iron to ensure he appears plenty sweaty, while the second-rate director tries to keep the production from descending into mayhem as the understated cameraman Kristoff clashes with the overstated Katy.

"The Nude Scene" is brilliant. The stakes are set high from the outset, and Morillo's script keeps the audience guessing whether Jennifer will actually doff her top. Every flubbed take leads her closer to going all the way before ultimately finding yet another reason not to. First, Katy is running late, and Jennifer just can't do it without her friend's reassurance. Then Barry, played by a hilariously dull Major Dodge, manhandles Jen's breasts and whispers suggestive catchphrases in her ear.

From Thomas J. Pilutik's performance as hack director Spencer to Jessica Durdock's lusty interpretation of Katy and Jason Drumwright's mute-yet-furious Kristoff, the cast members who surround Pipers counterpoise each other perfectly. Different conflicts between different people arise at every turn in the script. Moments of calm are broken by outbursts of hysteria. One character storms onto the set the same moment another character storms off. Every joke is fast and funny, consistently topped by the gag that follows. It is nearly impossible to find a reason not to laugh at this ingenious farce.

Unfortunately, the same blitzkrieg attack isn't nearly as effective in the four shorts leading up to "The Nude Scene." Whereas Jennifer appears to be a conflicted and complex individual, the other women in Angry Young Women come across as erratic, one-dimensional figures.

As Soleil in "My Last Thong," Jessica Durdock cuts off her thong...while still wearing it. The daughter of hippies, Soleil finds thongs vulgar, sexist, and more than a little bit uncomfortable. Moreover, she can't believe her bra-burning mother could go from not shaving her armpits to trimming her bikini area and sporting a thong. She is disgusted that her 12-year old niece shaves her bikini area. And while Soleil does provide some amusing observations on women's body-maintenance routines, the monologue comes across as more of a rant than a character study. It isn't long before the monologue begins repeating its points, dulling the humor of jokes that weren't exactly side-splitters the first time around.

"Playtime in the Park" and "The Miseducation of Elissa" suffer from the same problems, repeating themselves frequently and airing complaints without any apparent purpose other than to complain. "Unprotected Sex" stands out somewhat from the others, but only because hockey fans Brian and Joe (Dodge and Thomas J. Pilutik, respectively) provide the audience with a reason to ignore the hormone-saturated caricature that is Rachel.

The cast also seems to be hyper-directed, gesticulating wildly and speeding through their dialogue without taking much time to even breathe between lines. As a result, the tongue-tied actors misspeak more than once.

Still, laughs are to be had throughout the production. Angry Young Women is an entertaining show, questioning the ideals of what women want to be, what men want women to be, and what both men and women are willing to do to get what they want. The first four skits prove to be a fun distraction, but "The Nude Scene" is worth the price of admission by itself, a truly great piece of theater.

Love and Death

With performances at the Ontological Hysteric Theater and an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art to its credit, 31 Down radio theater seems well qualified to be experimental. And true to experimental fashion, its production of That's Not How Mahler Died takes great risks as it attempts to explore the themes of death, voyeurism, and guilt. The payoff for these risks, however, is a definitive failure. Which is not to say that production values are lacking. Nor is the crew in any way untalented

No Shortage of Love

Written primarily as a rebuttal to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House but also as a critique of the flaws in feminist thought, August Strindberg's Miss Julie is a radical piece of drama that plays out the war of the sexes between an upper-class mistress and her valet while also managing to deride religion and high society. Despite its deep-rooted and highly controversial social commentary, the play is, at heart, about the ill-fated midsummer's night affair between the two lovers. Regarding Julie and Jean, Strindberg wrote: "Because they are modern characters living in a period of transition more feverishly hysterical...I have drawn my figures vacillating, disintegrated, a blend of old and new. My souls [characters] are conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul."

In Th

Absurdities

Panel.Animal is not a full-length play but two one-acts performed consecutively in one energetic performance. The first half of the production is called The Young War and centers around a panel of two men

Brothers and Rivals

Sam Shepard's True West is a story about the dichotomy of human nature, as expressed through the struggle for dominance between two brothers of seemingly polar-opposite dispositions. First produced in New York in 1980, it opened without the approval of the author, garnering lackluster reviews. Two years later, it was revived off Broadway by the now-famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Critical praise abounded for the text and for the acting of the play's two stars, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Now Brooklyn's Charlie Pineapple Theatre Company has brought True West back to life in a performance that

Ophelia and the Prince

When Berlin fell to the Allied forces in 1945, Heiner Muller's service in the German army ended. He returned to his home, then occupied by the Soviet Army. One war had ended. Another was beginning. Muller was 16 at the time. Mentored by Bertolt Brecht, Muller eventually established himself as Germany's premier playwright. The success of his translations of classic works as well as his controversial original plays allowed him to travel through Western Europe and even to America during the peak of the Cold War. His love of socialism, fear of capitalism, and hatred for dictatorships led him to write HAMLETmachine in 1986.

Brief though the text may be (12 pages or so, depending on the version), it is nonetheless epic. It has inspired productions that last days at a time. Directors tackling HAMLETmachine have employed the use of towering LCD screens, dozens of actors, and lavish sets in attempts to bring all of the nuances of Muller's dense script to life.

In the face of all the history and the high expectations accompanying HAMLETmachine, director Taibi Ann Magar has attempted something truly ambitious: she has cut away the pomp and pretension that surrounds the play, shifting the focus from the complex political mayhem to the emotional conflict between Hamlet and Ophelia.

The stage design is minimalist in the truest sense of the word. There are no sets, no backdrops, and no props, save for two chairs. Thus it becomes the actors' responsibility to create their own world and bring the audience in with them.

Jessica Pohly does just that as Ophelia. Not only does she deliver her difficult lines clearly but she also devotes herself wholly to the words and the subtext beneath them. This is most notably evident as she seemingly dies onstage during her monologue that begins "I am Ophelia. The one the river didn't keep." Critic Gordon Rogoff once wrote that the play might be better called OPHELIAmachine. Pohly does all that she can to support Rogoff's thesis, giving Off-Off Broadway a performance to remember.

Evan Lubeck looks the part of the brooding Danish prince, but finds himself overpowered by Pohly. That he occasionally struggles with his lines is forgivable in a piece such as this, but Lubeck's real flaw is a failure to grasp Hamlet's emotional landscape. His Hamlet is a perpetually angry one, with occasional but brief bouts of sadness and confusion (always evoked with the same furrowed brow).

To be sure, Lubeck is not at all a bad actor, nor is his performance intolerable. Though not physically imposing, he uses his tall stature effectively to command attention. His abilities are best used toward the end of the famous "Get thee to a nunnery" scene, as he allows Hamlet's self-disgust and contempt for his mother to come out in his attacks on Ophelia.

The success of good acting, as well as the fault of inconsistent acting, lies with the director. With her lead actor, Magar seems to have made the common mistake of interpreting Hamlet as indecisive; he is far from it. As a result, her Hamlet is unfocused and fails to reach his full potential.

Magar creates very beautiful and tense visual scenes using nothing but two actors, two chairs, and lighting design. Her actors' movements are carefully choreographed, and the mere twitch of a wrist or widening of eyes grabs the audience's attention. However, the actors shift back and forth between naturalistic behavior and Grotowski-esque calculation. They are ultimately limited by Magar's direction, often remaining stoic for aesthetic reasons when the text calls for actions more explosive.

But if Magar fails to understand certain sections of the text, she certainly does not fail to grasp the larger themes that the author expressed. Muller describes his purpose for writing as such:

"What I try to do in my writing is to strengthen the sense of conflicts, to strengthen confrontations and contradictions. There is no other way. I'm not interested in answers and solutions. I don't have any to offer. I'm interested in problems and conflicts."

HAMLETmachine is certainly no exception to this rule, and Magar sets Hamlet and Ophelia onstage to explore all of their conflicts without distraction. No solutions are presented, and none are necessary. The nature of the text is such that it could easily have been misinterpreted and misused (as it sometimes is) as a soapbox for narrow-minded, anti-consumerist propaganda. But Magar refuses to trivialize the world's complex problems by offering answers, making this interpretation of Muller's classic one worth watching.

Parallel Lives

Mark Finley's new play, The Mermaid, is a story about two people: Judith, a simple and virginal college co-ed who is coming of age in 1962, and Martin, a gay man approaching his midlife crisis in 1998. Finley draws thematic inspiration from classic authors, quoting Shakespeare's Pericles, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night, as well as Jean Girandoux's Ondine. And though The Mermaid does not live up to its own lofty expectations, it is nonetheless an enjoyable tale about the far-reaching consequences of the decisions that people make. The play begins in 1962, with Judith practicing her audition piece for her university's upcoming production of Ondine. She is interrupted by Lee, a young gay actor with Broadway aspirations, and Reid, a clueless but charming athlete looking to boost his grade point average so he can stay on the team. Both Judith and Lee soon find themselves smitten with Reid.

Meanwhile, in 1998, Martin shares a drink with his actress friend Amy, who has just finished a rock opera version of Pericles. She is somewhat upset that Martin, an orphan himself, did not enjoy the classic tale of the Prince of Tyre's quest to find his orphaned daughter. Before long, Martin's boyfriend Ken joins the duo. A few years Martin's senior, Ken is ready to settle down and adopt a child, and he has found the perfect one. But Martin wants to try to find his birth mother and come to terms with his insecurities before becoming a father.

And so Judith and Martin stumble forward, making decisions that influence those around them

Cruel to the Highest Degree

Michael Scott-Price has a lot to say. Much of it is said using four-letter words and racial slurs, making his Lynch PLAY a production not for those of a mild disposition. But American history (or history in general) is not for those with mild dispositions. Lynch PLAY makes sure that its audience is aware of this fact

Deal With the Devil

Don Juan in Chicago begins with Don Juan in his 16th-century Spanish castle mixing potions and chanting Latin in hopes of conjuring up the Devil, until he is interrupted by his faithful servant, Leporello. Concerned about his master's well-being, Leporello attempts to convince Don Juan to give up his intellectual pursuits in favor of wining, dining, and women. But the not-yet-legendary lover harbors no concern for momentary desires of the flesh. A 30-year-old virgin, Don Juan has only one thing on his mind: immortality. With immortality, he surmises, it would be possible to discover the answers to all of life's questions, and he would take his place as the greatest of all history's thinkers.

Upon eventually succeeding in bringing Mephistopheles to the mortal plain, Don Juan declares his heart's desire, and the Devil agrees to give Don Juan (and unlucky Leporello) life eternal, with one condition: that Don Juan agrees to seduce a different woman every day before the clock strikes midnight. The deal is sealed in blood, and thus begins Don Juan's legendary sexual escapades. Comedic antics and dramatic moments ensue as four centuries of lies, love, and infidelity eventually culminate in one chaotic evening.

As the title character, Michael Poignand displays a wide range of talents as he transforms himself from the na

Leave Them Wanting More

Before I went to see The World of John Wallowitch, I didn't know that John Wallowitch is a New York City cabaret icon who has had everybody from Tony Bennett to Margaret Whiting record his songs. I wasn't aware that Andy Warhol created the cover for his first album. And I had no idea that Tosos II, the theater company that produced The World of John Wallowitch, practically founded Off-Off-Broadway and the gay theater movement. But I didn't need to know any of that to enjoy the show.

The show is a musical revue, stringing together 16 songs spanning the breadth of Wallowitch's career. There is no plot, and there are no characters to interfere with the audience's drinking (due to a two-drink minimum) and toe tapping. Plus, there are heavy doses of wit, sarcasm, and charm.

The show started off a bit slow. The first few songs were enjoyable, but failed to grab my attention. But Heather Olt soon had me doubling over with laughter with her rendition of "Dutch Ecology." The song itself is extremely sexually suggestive, tap-dancing along the line dividing naughty and dirty without ever crossing over. Yet Olt performed with such straight-faced na

All You Can Eat

I squeezed my way around the throngs of twentysomethings that had bottlenecked the path to the West Village bar, waiting to order their drinks in what they thought was only the line. Bumping into tables, stepping on shoes, I slowly traversed the packed floor of Junno's. I crossed over the makeshift stage: a lone microphone standing in a spotlight in a three-foot-square area at the back of the club. Elbowing my way to the bar, I signaled the bartender and took in my surroundings. This certainly was not an ordinary theater space. The press release I had been issued included only marginal information about the show, followed by a two-page, mostly incoherent, rambling story having something to do with fruit salad, Donald Rumsfeld playing Atari, and a Fanta being confiscated by the Secret Service. This certainly was not an ordinary show.

I thought that I was prepared for Deep Dish Cabaret. I thought that I was ready for anything. I was wrong.

The first performer of the evening was Stacy Nightmare (played by Karen Snyder), whose appearance lived up to her moniker. A wig (or was that actually her hair?) rested not-quite-right on her head. She wore glasses with fake eyes painted on them. And where her hands should have been, there were...lobster claws. She waddled up to the microphone and began delivering uncomfortably personal anecdotes about her sex life in a voice that sounded as if she was a love child born from the loins of Gilbert Godfried and Fran Drescher.

Though funny from start to finish, the high point of Stacy's set came as she was forced to take off her lobster claws so she could thumb through a collection of homemade Valentine's Day cards that were extremely vulgar, mildly psychotic, and absolutely hilarious. And yet, as offensive as Stacy Nightmare could have been, her routine had a very honest, self-deprecatory tone that kept the performer constantly in the audience's favor.

Jennifer Demeritt changed the show's atmosphere by reading an essay about her secret life. Corporate-world queen by day, Demeritt lets her bad side out to play a topless maid. Her essay provided a very interesting and stereotype-crushing (if not sometimes unfocused) dissection of the power plays involved in not just naked cleaning but all sexual relationships.

Again shifting gears, Clint McCallum performed as Butcher Slim, a honky-tonk guitar slinger who found musical inspiration watching late-night Star Trek reruns, among other things.

Patrick Borelli rounded out the first act. A seasoned stand-up comedian who has appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, he found humor in the minutiae of life and expressed it in a decidedly non-Seinfeld-esque manner. Borelli seamlessly blended improvised riffs with rehearsed material. His story about wearing a red polo shirt to Staples and consequently having another customer confuse him for an employee had everybody in the bar laughing hysterically.

The second half of Deep Dish Cabaret moved away from straight comedy and into solo performance art, which was decidedly more funny and less serious than it may sound.

A man (and apparently a somewhat well-known performer) calling himself Zero Boy recounted an evening of yelling at his TV, drunken lust with a stranger, and nuclear apocalypse, using only vocal sound effects, hand gestures, and facial expressions. His was a truly unique form of storytelling.

Audrey Crabtree continued the show with a (literally) speechless performance of her own. As a shy librarian named Wednesday, she flirted with the boys and girls in the audience, bringing them up onstage to flirt and dance with her.

But words and noise came back to Deep Dish Cabaret with a vengeance as Eric Davis emerged onstage as Agent Whitbone, a Homeland Security Department agent who couldn't seem to keep his pants up. Garbed in costume wings and a clown's nose, Agent Whitbone tried his best to convince the audience to take him and his solutions to terrorism (which included balloons and yelling) seriously, with no success.

Rounding out the night was Neal Medlyn, who lip-synched a cheesy ballad before tearing off his clothes, jumping on a table, and screaming, "I ain't got no privates!" A one-trick pony, perhaps, but a decidedly funny one to witness.

The evening was emceed by Commander Leslie Gaye of the British Royal Marines. Though uncredited, I have strong reason to suspect he was actually producer Stephen Kosloff. Drink in hand, Gaye sometimes slowed the show down by rattling on a bit too long about nothing in particular. He also lost the Deep Dish Cabaret raffle prize, which sidetracked the action. He drew a few heckles from the drunk and unappreciative members of the audience, but I think he handled it all generally well, moving the show along without major incident and creating the fun and raucous atmosphere that the performers thrived upon.

All in all, I have to say that I would highly recommend Deep Dish Cabaret to anyone that enjoys being shoehorned into a crowded bar in order to drink excessively and laugh continuously at a variety of weird, loud, and debauched characters. However, if this sounds unappealing to you, I suggest you stay far, far away from the next monthly performance. Far, far away.

Hallie Flanagan Sent Me

See here now, I'm gonna tell you about a show, but you can't squeal to nobody. It's a real secretive-type thing. They call it SpeakEasy, and they gotta keep it real quiet so the fuzz don't catch on. They won't charge you a fin to get in, but you do gotta be connected to find out where it is and how to get in. But I'm connected, so it wasn't no problem for me. I showed up to Galapagos Art Place on Saturday night with my dame in tow. When the moll at the door asked for the password, I let her know, "Hallie Flanagan sent me." She looked us over to make sure we wasn't no undercover fuzz or nothin

Bah, Humbug! (Or Not)

One of the things I dislike about Christmas is the inevitable onslaught of bad entertainment. Of course, there are a few seasonal classics that I will never grow tired of watching. But I would rather stick my tongue to a frozen flagpole than have to endure such garbage as Christmas With the Kranks or Surviving Christmas. Suffice it to say, I was a bit skeptical heading into A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol. But as I entered the Theater Under St. Mark's, the sight of an attractive woman in leather pants serving Jack Daniel's eggnog lifted my jaded spirits a bit, and gave rise to the hope that this show might separate itself from the rest of the holiday fare.

Writer James Comtois's version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol opens on the ghost of Jacob Marley lamenting his fate at having to teach Scrooge the same lesson, year after year, and of having to tell the same story to audiences year after year.

Throughout the play, Marley will continue his complaining, and his co-workers, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, will join in to gripe about their thankless and endless task of bringing annual enlightenment to one bitter, cranky old man. They even go so far as to contemplate smothering old Ebenezer to death, holding a pillow just inches above the slumbering Scrooge's face before thinking better of it. The ghosts decide to find other ways to break the tedium, keeping themselves amused by smoking cigars, drinking coffee, and ad-libbing lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias while they lead Scrooge through all of his life's formative moments.

The production is about as bare-bones as a production can be. A foldaway bed, a table, a coffeemaker, a window, and a clock on the wall are the only props to grace the stage. But lighting designer Chris Daly does a great job in providing a unique atmosphere for each scene. The talented actors also invest themselves fully in their characters and their lines, enticing the audience to leave the Theater Under St. Mark's and travel with them to Dickens's London. Their fervor makes it easy to indulge this fantasy.

Much creativity is used to fill out the cast as well. Many parts are played by actors pulling double and triple duty. This gives the cast the opportunity to really ham it up, as men play women, women play men, and adults play children, walking around in a prolonged squat because, well, children are shorter than adults, I guess.

The carolers who anger Scrooge with their good tidings are homemade, cardboard-cutout versions of Kenny and Cartman from the TV show South Park. Tiny Tim is a monkey hand puppet.

With all these ridiculous characters, it seems as though the play might dissolve into absolute chaos. But it doesn't, with Patrick Shearer's downright nasty portrayal of Scrooge providing the serious edge the play needs to succeed. Shearer commands the stage with his imposing presence. At the performance I saw, he slammed the window shut on the aforementioned carolers, only to have the window fall off the wall onto the ground. Not missing a beat, he slammed the downed window shut again and gave it a kick for good measure. His is truly the best performance I have seen on off-off Broadway all year.

Christopher Yustin also stands out as the jaded Jacob Marley. He puts the audience in the mood for fun by eliciting laughter from the get-go with the hilarious and nuanced delivery of his opening monologue.

The performance of A Very Nosedive Christmas Carol that I saw was not perfect. A few lines were flubbed. There were a couple of problems with the props. And the noise from a nearby restaurant could be heard constantly. But I had a hard time getting caught up in the negatives, as I was laughing for the better part of the 75-minute show.

Smash Mouth's version of War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" and Joey Ramone's take on the George Weiss/Bob Thiele standard "What a Wonderful World" served as musical interludes between scenes. I think Nose Dive Productions approached this project as a musician would approach a cover song, changing it around a little bit. They also had a lot of fun, and they let their audiences have the same.

Your Mom

Wrestling, punching, kicking, fighting, drinking, cussing, having sex...Winter Miller's The Penetration Play is full of aggressive alpha-male machismo from start to finish. The play's main characters Rain and Ash are in a constant state of competition, bullying each other, smacking each other around, and even spitting in each other's faces in a constant power struggle. Sound like too much testosterone for you to handle? Well, it isn't. Rain and Ash are girls. And the only other character to grace the stage is Maggie, Ash's mother. Sure, there is talk about Ash's newly re-discovered boyfriend, Rich, as well as some discussion about her father, Bill. But all things phallic are surprisingly absent from a play whose title might lead one to think about, well, all things phallic.

At the onset of the play, Rain and Ash jog into Ash's family's beach house. Ash begins looking for her parents, and Rain bets, "...they're having hot sex in the attic." Rain goes on to mimic traditionally male sexual motions even after Ash assures her that her parents have not had sex since "...Nixon was shredding tape."

This sex talk leads them almost immediately to begin talking about Rich, an old flame of Ash's that has recently been rekindled. Rain responds at first with casual indifference, then with aggressive disapproval and it becomes clear that Rain is very, very jealous of her best friend's lover. The two girls poke and prod at each other the rest of the first act, testing each other's physical and emotional limits before a truce is called so they can prepare for a night out with Rich.

Rain returns to the beach house early, finding herself incapable of watching the woman she loves make out with a man she loathes. She inadvertently stirs Ash's mom Maggie, who is more than happy to entertain Rain with cheese, wine, and stories of the past (and where her life went wrong). But it is not long before Rain begins to see where Ash's attractive qualities come from. Sex, more sex, and teary-eyed-yet-fiery confrontations ensue. In the end, no character is spared uncertainty and heartbreak.

The dialogue that Winter Miller sets down on the stage for her characters is very conversational, which makes her characters as believable and tangible as anyone I know off-stage. And both the ambiguity and ambivalence present in the play's resolution feel strikingly close to the same emotions present at the end of any relationship I have ever had.

Mia Barron's portrayal of the accidental heartbreaker Ashley is filled with a balance of sexual energy and innocence, making it easy to understand why her best friend (as well as a number of young men) would fall head over heels in love with her.

The set is every bit the upscale Jersey shore beach house it is supposed to be, thanks to scenic designer Robin Vest. Little touches such as ornate wallpaper and the delicately decorated cheese tray really make the world of the play come to life.