Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

For parents, theater can be a great teaching tool. Performances can expose children to art and other cultures (through the action onstage) as well as to ideas about self-control and group behavior (through the act of sitting in an audience). Most important, going to the theater is a bonding experience that can be continued through adulthood; as sons and daughters age, parents can look forward to taking them to more sophisticated fare. Family-theater purveyors the Paddywack Players are presenting Barry Kornhauser's This Is Not a Pipe Dream, a theater-and-art collage that delves into the formative years of Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte as well as the creation of theater. The show's messages, to be true to yourself and to follow your dreams, are familiar ones, but here they are wrapped in an imaginative, challenging production that appeals to the young set—with a few tricks up its sleeve to keep the adults tuned in, too.

Walking into the recently redone Richmond Shepard Theater (formerly the Vineyard), the audience is greeted to its first dose of surrealism, in the form of the theater space. The playing area—featuring cloudy-skied flats and children's wooden chairs suspended from the ceiling—is set up with half of its audience in front of it and half to the side, where the stage right "wings" would be. A projector is tucked away toward the main entrance.

The show opens on Magritte as an infant, captivated by a mobile (the airborne chairs). A character named the Interlocutor enters, explaining that we are seeing a play and that this is not actually Magritte, since he lived a long time ago. Rather, this is an actor playing a character named René who represents Magritte, just as Magritte's famous painting of a pipe (bearing the inscription "This is not a pipe") is only a representation of a pipe. Meta-theatrical tricks abound, as do wordplay, slapstick, visual gags, sound effects, and slides of the artist's work. Later in the piece, more serious themes about life and death begin to emerge.

Clearly, this is a play created with the attention spans of its key audience (children) in mind. The first half incorporates a lot of action and silliness, which made the younger audience members roar in appreciation. (Older audience members were fonder of jokes involving the breaking of the fourth wall, though everyone seemed to enjoy the broad, but still pretty clean, humor.)

With the little ones' interest captured, the show goes deeper, addressing Magritte's philosophies and following his search for his "lost" mother. (The painter's mother actually committed suicide by drowning herself in a river, but this is never referred to directly.) This section prompted a few boys and girls to pose questions to their parents, which, though a little disturbing to fellow theatergoers, should be seen as a positive reaction. Rather than ignore what they didn't understand, these tykes sought to understand it.

The actors did a fine job switching between performance styles, having to tackle realism, to-the-audience oration, and Keystone Kops high jinks in the show's 60 minutes. As the Interlocutor, Wali Collins used his strong baritone and expressive face to great effect. As René's parents, Alex Pierce (as a buffoonish stuffed shirt) and Isabel Steuble-Johnson (as a sympathetic voice of wisdom) endowed their characters with enough spirit to get them beyond caricature.

David Brown's René, however, was tough to pin down. Although Magritte was 14 at the time of his mother's death, Brown seemed at times to be playing a toddler, letting out infantile squeals and padding along in bare feet like a new walker. Then he would stand a little more upright and speak as an adult, with no explanation as to why his character was grown up for a few sentences. Perhaps a quick change of lighting or costume would have clarified those moments better.

Director Tracy Bersley has obviously put these actors through their paces; a lot of potentially chaotic scene changes and movements went off without a hitch. The slide show portion, which can trip up even the slickest of shows, seemed equally well rehearsed.

The press release for This Is Not a Pipe Dream suggests that it is "suitable for ages 5 to 105," which is a cutesy way of saying the show's appeal is "ageless." At the performance that I attended, the 5- to 9-year-olds in attendance were the most enthusiastic members of the crowd. (They were also pretty enthused about the free cookies given to them before the show.) Rather than market itself as an all-ages affair, perhaps the production should follow its own mantra of being true to itself and embrace its own wacky, dark inner child.

War & Peace

Anton Chekhov's most famous works are dense dramas about class, society, and love. Despite the plays' translation from Russian to English, a careful reader will have no problem understanding the text, but many actors would agree that acting Chekhov is harder than reciting stanzas of Shakespearean iambic pentameter. The characters' inner monologues are more important than the words they speak out loud; great care must be taken so that the actors don't come off as either one-note (by focusing on the outside) or inscrutable (by focusing on the inside). The 13th Street Repertory Company's presentation of TROIKA: God, Tolstoy & Sophia is about a different Russian writer, the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Still, playwright Peter Levy seems to have been greatly influenced by the country estate dramas of Chekhov in his structuring of this biographical piece, which does much to illuminate the author's life even as it suffers under its inspiration's shadow.

In the play, the 82-year-old Tolstoy has moved away from his fiction writing to focus on religious ideas, in part to atone for the debaucheries of his youth. Concerned that the high price of books keeps the poor from reading him, he's decided to change his will so that the royalties for his more recent work will go to his daughter Sasha, who will then refuse to accept them. He must do this behind the back of his wife Sophia, who claims she will need all of his revenue to support herself and their children after Tolstoy's death.

The author, backed by his publisher, doctor, and daughter, is increasingly at odds with his wife over money, spirituality, and sex, and is getting weaker by the day because of it. Into the fray comes Valentin Bulgakov, a poor university student and Tolstoy's new secretary, who refuses to take sides. Yet his growing affection for Sasha demands it, so he gets caught up in the struggles over Tolstoy's wealth, well-being, and eternal soul.

Levy has done his best to trim down the action to spotlight the primary and secondary conflicts, but there seems to be too many scenes, especially at the beginning, some of them lasting for barely a minute. The dialogue is stilted, consisting of general conversational pleasantries or Tolstoy's academic quips. Most important, the play is missing a strong narrative and dramatic arc, a misstep that can be made only collaboratively.

The actors and director fail to invest the play with a sense of urgency or consequences. Sophia's appalling behavior seems to come purely out of spite, not a blend of spite, fear, love, and all of the other emotions that come when your life partner is drawing away from you emotionally and spiritually, and dying as well. Sasha doesn't convincingly put forth the libidinous overtones of her dialogue, or how she can be both her father's daughter and a woman with very modern ideas (and an altogether too contemporary way of speaking).

Mike Durell's Tolstoy wasn't a very charismatic guy, but he did come across as a very learned and opinionated old man and drew the audience's empathy for the shabby way his wife treated him. The most effective performance was that of Mark Comer, whose Bulgakov was simple, earnest, and likable.

The goal of 13th Street Rep is to provide a place for performers and crew to learn their craft through putting on full-scale productions. It's commendable that it's choosing new works that are about more than modern people and their problems, so as to challenge and teach the company's members. But sometimes the lesson is that ambitious projects don't always make for good theater.

School Daze

A lot is asked of children's entertainment: it must be fun, educational, and clean, and cater to short attention spans. Young people make for tough crowds; they haven't yet mastered the art of feigning interest and will make it known if they're not enjoying themselves. And in New York, those who produce theater for children must contend with not only hard-to-please tykes but also their hyper-involved parents, who scrutinize everything before it's seen or heard by their little ones. The New Acting Company has recently started a monthlong run of Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a play adapted by John Olive from Louis Sachar's beloved stories. Featuring an architecturally questionable school building teeming with strange teachers and quirky kids, these tales make classrooms seem more friendly than usual while slyly teaching social behavior and Morality 101. In the hands of director Stephen Michael Rondel, Sachar's stories have been brought vividly to life in a colorful, engaging production.

The play opens on the class on the 30th floor. Most of the students have been turned into apples by their wicked teacher, Mrs. Gorf; class nerd Myron and best artist BeBe seem to be about to receive the same fate. Through a bit of resourcefulness, they turn their teacher into an apple instead, and the enchantment is broken on their classmates Dameon (who smiles all the time), Rondi (who's a bit of a bully), and LesLie (who is treated like one girl but is played by two girls in identical dress). The students are soon joined by a new teacher, Mrs. Jewls, who is kind, funny, pretty, and smart—the perfect teacher, in their minds. The rest of the show follows their class adventures, dealing with other teachers and their own personal challenges.

The biggest stars of this production are the set and costume designers. Gregg Bellon has created a marvelously loopy classroom by mixing forced perspective, a raked stage (slanting downstage), and bits of traditional classroom pieces (combination desk/chairs and a wide blackboard). Despite an overload of hues and props (books on desks, papers on bulletin boards), the use of perspective directs the audience's eyes up center toward the action. Bellon also employs an oversized puppet mouth above and to the right of the stage for announcements by the school principal, Mr. Kidswater; it's a cute device that makes a normally static voice-over entertaining.

Irina Kruzhilina's costumes combine swatches of brightly patterned material to create an entirely new sartorial language. Her pieces are a mash-up of rural Sunday best, bolts found in the sale bin at a fabric store, and Seussian architecture. It's a credit to Kruzhilina's talents that one can see a pattern (ha-ha) in her designs, when the characters could have been less creatively dressed in old clothes that had a few sequins here or an extra leg sewn on there.

The mostly young cast seemed to be having a good time, and their enthusiasm was matched by the adults playing their teachers and school counselors. Best of the bunch were Maxine Dannatt, as BeBe, and Carrie Heitman, as Mrs. Jewls. Though Dannatt was the youngest in the group, she conveyed the most charm and got the biggest laughs as feisty, "school's fastest drawer" BeBe. Heitman, saddled with the challenge of playing "the perfect teacher," was able to create a very warm, real person; the public school system would be only too lucky to recruit an instructor like this.

Reasonably swift blackouts between scenes and composer Andy Cohen's fun incidental music and sound cues helped move the show along. Rondel's directing kept the events light and fun without being cutesy, and brought fine performances out of his cast. In adapting the books, Olive wisely cut down the classroom size from 30 students to six, and included fun vignettes that also propelled several story threads.

Theater can be a great teaching tool; kids can see real people their own age going through similar challenges and learn how to handle them by example. But Sideways Stories is more than a lesson on good behavior for children. It is also a lesson on how children's theater can be clever without being dull, and amusing without being dumb.

History Lesson

An integral part of theater is the practice of producing older, lesser-known works. The term "revival" is used in these cases because of the literal act of bringing a dead show back to life, as well as the act of breathing new life into it through a fresh translation, staging, etc. The idea is that by modernizing a text, the gap between current and former experiences is lessened, creating a greater understanding of the work and, with luck, correcting the mistakes that kept it out of favor in the first place. Bertolt Brecht, while not exactly a household name, is known to theater historians and students as the creator of "epic theater." He did not want his audiences to sit passively, suspending their disbelief and accepting what was onstage as reality; he wanted them to acknowledge and transcend the artifice so they could see it for the political and social commentary it was meant to be. One of his plays, known as Fear and Misery in the Third Reich in the original German and as The Private Life of the Master Race in English, is a series of scenes that address the miseries brought about by the Nazi regime. These hardships range from a general culture of fear to the outright threat of the end of one's comfort, livelihood, and life.

In Binyamin Shalom's new translation, receiving its American premiere at Walkerspace, Germans sport Southern accents and use urban patois alternately with accent- and slang-free speech. There are also modern clothes in some scenes and period clothes in others. These devices are used to blur the lines between the situations of the past and present, and to stir the audience into analysis. How effective they are depends on the audience member's familiarity with (and enjoyment of) Brecht's purposefully alienating style.

In any case, they raise two questions. First, in using modern dress and contemporary argot, the production goes against Brecht's own concept of "historification," which is the placing of a historical event outside the recent memory of audiences so they cannot directly relate to what's happening onstage. (This allows the audience to keep a bias-free perspective on the event.) While it is true that during the play's first staging in 1938 viewers would find the action sadly relevant, it's likely that most theatergoers today will see this as world history and not personal history. It all boils down to what choice is more in line with Brecht's ideas about theater: a past we cannot remember or the odd juxtaposition of the "now" with the "then"?

Secondly, by making direct parallels between the suppression of free speech in Nazi Germany and in modern-day America (as the show's program suggests), is this production comparing our government to their government? Is it comparing the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and at Guantánamo Bay to the treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz and Dachau? At first glance, these comparisons would be highly offensive to the memory of the generations of people who died at the hands of the Nazis. At second glance, by belittling the comparison one is belittling the gravity of current human rights violations.

This production hits hardest when its audience is hip to the specific requirements of Brechtian drama. However, there's something for the empathetic theatergoer as well; "The Jewish Wife" (the titular woman leaves her Aryan husband to make his life easier) and "The Old Soldier" (about rationing at the dairy and meat markets) are moving, and "The Informer" (the evils of the Hitler Youth) is deliciously unsettling. Scenes tended to run a bit long, though scholars could debate whether this is done on purpose or is a fault of the pacing.

The assorted actors, young and old, blond and dark-haired, have clear voices and are comfortable with the performance style. Tracy Hostmyer's Jewish Wife (in the aforementioned scene) and Nicholas Daniele's Secret Police Officer (in "The Chalk Cross") gave especially strong performances; Hostmyer's plainspoken delivery and naturalistic style as the Wife was not rooted in any place or era, while Daniele's modern, boorish Officer was equally effective.

It's difficult to judge the success of a play that holds as its core value the wish to unnerve and manipulate its audience. The Private Life of the Master Race toys with its viewers, presenting moving scenes and snippets of horror, all prefaced by stilted, rhyming speeches. It is less important as a revival of Brecht and more important as a return to the values of the epic theater: questioning the political and social status quo, questioning the purpose of theater, and waking up a complacent audience. This is where it achieves its most meaningful success.

Right-Hand Man

An ambiguous (or open-ended) finale for a play works when audience members know just enough about the situation at hand and the characters onstage that they can formulate some ideas as to what's taken place and what's to come. In Pygmalion, for example, the reader is not sure if the flower-seller-turned-lady Eliza Doolittle will remain with her misogynistic mentor Henry Higgins or marry the love-struck (but bland) Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Yet enough is discovered about the personalities of these three that her future could merit a discussion. If that information were not as clear, it would not matter what happened to Eliza because the reader would not care enough about her or the other characters to suppose a guess. Indeed, the reader would be angry that George Bernard Shaw did not even bother to provide a conclusion after doing so little work with the characterization.

In Hard Right, David Barth's new play "set on the eve of the age of terror," a mysterious agent with unclear intentions disrupts what ought to be a quiet meet-the-folks evening for college student Henry, his girlfriend Greta, and Henry's parents, Barbara and Phil. It's not too much of a spoiler to say that the agent's objective is never spelled out. However, the author has dropped enough clues as to the nature of the family, the agent (Bob), and his mission that the observant theatergoer will be intrigued by this twisted, cautionary tale.

Being observant is, after all, the first running theme in this intense, intermission-less production. Well-to-do couple Barbara and Phil start things off by pacing around their tastefully decorated living room, waiting for sundown so they can break their Yom Kippur fast. They are also waiting for Henry, who's coming home from college with Greta so she can get to know his parents. As Barbara and Phil talk about trying to be more spiritual while also counting down the minutes until they can eat, two FedEx packages are left at the door. One is for their son, and one is for them; the latter is a letter from Henry's college (vaguely referred to as "State") informing them that a representative from the school will be stopping by the house to discuss certain changes in policy that affect scholars like Henry.

The son then appears, a tousle-haired, surfer-type blond (without the surfer speech) made hungry and paranoid by pot and booze, accompanied by his nose-ringed but more or less clean-cut girlfriend. As parents and girlfriend cautiously try to interact without upsetting the moody Henry, there is a knock at the door. Behind it is Bob, who introduces himself as the school representative. He is a tall man dressed in a bright blue windbreaker, khakis, and new white shoes. Observant (or maybe just suspicious) audience members may recognize this apparel as the kind that one wears when you don't want your face to be remembered later.

At first, Bob asks Henry gently probing questions, which Henry answers flippantly. Like many young college students, Henry has no major, no direction, and generally mistrusts the government (yet has only front-page news facts to support his mistrust). Bob responds negatively to Henry's ambiguity, and their surface cordiality quickly falls away.

To describe more of the plot points would take away the shock and surprise that's integral to the story. It should be said, however, that playwright David Barth does an excellent job of scripting the beginning of the show in such a way that when things turn dark, early foreshadowing allows the change in tone to occur without it being either predictable or unbelievable. The cast, as well, adopts a naturalistic style that sells the earlier moments very well. (The only thing that they didn't do so convincingly was portray "members of the tribe"; mother and son especially were a bit too Aryan-looking for this Jewish reviewer's eyes.)

And it certainly doesn't hurt the suspension of disbelief when actors are working on a set as beautifully designed and executed as this one, created by Mark Cruzan. Tasteful pieces, art that brightens walls without pulling focus, and a fully furnished room are all evidence of a designer's touch. It makes for a nice change from the poorly planned sets, decorated with scavenged card tables and mismatched chairs, that are the hallmark of amateur set dressers (and many Off-Off-Broadway productions).

In the end, the audience and the characters never get a read on Bob's true intentions. He represents the kind of nameless, faceless terror that always lurks in the world—a terror that gets a new name and face for every president and democracy-threatening crisis. All we can see are the bright blue windbreaker, the khakis, and the new white shoes. All we know is that we don't know what he's capable of, and when he'll strike.

Revenge on a Silver Platter

Subtitling films works because the performances are prerecorded and therefore predictable; it's easy enough to graft the words onto the picture and get them to sync up to the dialogue. Subtitling (or supertitling) opera works because the words are sung to a melody, and its meter can provide cues as to the proper placement of timely translations. But how does one add titles to a play? How can an actor's delivery be calculated so that the written word matches up with the spoken word?

La MaMa E.T.C., in continuing its tradition of bringing theater from around the world to the New York stage, is presenting an ambitious Italian transplant, The Last Night of Salomé. Performed in Italian with English supertitles (projected onto a discreet black screen above the set), this period piece starring two middle-aged women and one passed-out man has all the theatrics to keep the audience interested, but those not conversant in Italian may have trouble with the plot specifics.

The show opens one hour before dawn in a delightfully divey bar, the prewar, below-ground, brick-walled type. Lighted only by neon signs and weak yellow bulbs, it never gets a single ray of sunshine (and people like it that way). The bar is located in Rome in the 1950s, and its owner, Desi, is busy clearing bottles and verbally abusing her husband, the drunk and dead-to-the-world Buffalo Bill. Then a woman, formally dressed in rumpled clothing, breezes in and demands a drink.

Once the mystery woman removes her large hat, Desi recognizes her as Veronica Lopez, the famous actress currently appearing in Oscar Wilde's Salomé, which Desi has recently seen. Starstruck, Desi forgets that the bar is closed and studies Veronica like a scientist eyeballing a sample on a glass slide. Veronica, glad for the adoration and the alcohol, answers questions, performs, and generally abuses Desi's adulation. They discuss their careers, their husbands, and their desires in real time as it grows closer to dawn.

Perhaps out of the director's fear that only one set and few performers could grow wearisome (or that the language barrier could cause audiences to get bored), the show is highly stylized, peppered with dramatic sound and lighting cues and bold movement. Yet those moments, often played for laughs, don't take away from the authenticity of the experience. Credit must be given to Lydia Biondi and Carla Cassola for their committed, lived-in performances.

Biondi's Desi, a worldly woman trapped in a small-town life, becomes more fascinating as the contradictions in her character pile up. Cassola's Veronica (who, it could be said, is a small-town girl trapped in a worldly life) is selfish but also terribly needy, the kind of person who forms close attachments to people quickly but is quick to forget those attachments if they don't suit her. Veronica is one of those "actressy" characters that actresses love to play, yet Cassola wisely avoids romanticizing Veronica in any way but in Veronica's own mind.

On the night of this review, there were many Italians in the audience; they seemed to really enjoy the production, laughing at things when the English titles gave no indication of a joke and clapping enthusiastically at its end. For those who didn't parlano Italiano, there were still laughs and general understanding, though the laughs came at different times (upon reading the lines rather than hearing the joke told), and the words sometimes came a little too speedy to read when the fast-talking ladies got going.

Perhaps the only nonspeakers who should be discouraged from seeing The Last Night of Salome are those who obsessively need the words to figure out what's going on. The rest of us can rely on the strong performances and production values, which need no translation.

Prey for Salvation

In many ways, it's easier than ever to be gay in America. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has shown mainstream audiences that homosexuals can be cool, creative, and kind. Brokeback Mountain has shown that they can love and be loved, and that good wives and family ties don't "straighten out" the situation. Though there is, and probably always will be, opposition to the lifestyle, it is no longer a social (or literal) death sentence to admit your sexual orientation in most parts of the country. But what if we as a country started going backward instead of forward? What if the LGBT community were treated no better than child molesters, or worse? And what if this treatment was authorized, and, indeed, authored, by our own government? This scenario is played out in Temple, a chilling though oblique piece by Tim Aumiller.

The show opens with the appearance of Russ (think a blue-collar Sean Astin with a longshoreman's vocabulary) as he storms into an abandoned room with boxes and a covered couch and yells at nothing in particular. He's soon joined by Walt (a bespectacled meek type), who's brought his older sister Brenda (a mentally challenged religious type) to meet up with an old friend.

This friend, John, has masterminded a plot to take down the U.S. Supreme Court as well as a computerized database (housed within the court building) that tracks homosexuals in America in compliance with the newly passed "Samuel Laws." Walt, who provided schematics of the target, and Russ, who is also in on the attack, are there for a post-mission rendezvous with John to find out the next part of the plan.

John, their charismatic and handsome leader, eventually arrives with most of the rest of the gang: the twitchy, straight Kent; the unconscious Remy, wounded in the attack; and the tough-talking Suzanne. (The other two in their party have gone missing.) Everyone but Kent, a hired gun, is gay and committed, to varying degrees and for varying reasons, to the cause and to John. As they wait for a phone call that will provide a pickup location, personalities clash and much speechmaking ensues—speeches that clarify the stratagem that occurred as well as the reasons for its genesis.

Sadly, the more we learn about these revolutionaries, the less we care about them. Sure, their plight is terrible: when the authorities learn that someone "plays for the other team," he or she is forced to "register" and made to go through counseling and treatments. The person's parents are sterilized and tested as well.

But the play's characters categorize all heterosexuals and practitioners of organized religion as evil and believe that the loss of life, as long as it's not their own, is just part of their work. They spend most of the evening whining and fighting and being consoled by John, who talks about their cause with a persuasive fervor but ultimately comes off as a selfish manipulator.

The actors put forth believable characterizations, and David Rudd, as John, certainly has the magnetism to make it understandable why all of these men can't seem to quit him. Greg Foro's direction keeps the actors moving and the atmospheric tension alive. Yet the audience needs to have a likable protagonist in order to become emotionally invested in the events, however horrifying, and especially if they're fantastic.

There have been complaints over the last ten years that while gays and lesbians are finally starting to appear in films and TV series, they are often emotionally and sexually neutered. Yet their mere presence has opened the door for more complex portrayals in Queer as Folk and The L Word. Those shows offer characters who are defined not just by whom they sleep with but by who they are; the audience in turn identifies with them. The gang in Temple define themselves solely on the basis of their sexual identity, and while audiences may pity them for their situation, they'll be hard pressed to find any reason to like them.

Ladies' Night

The director's role in the creation of most productions is that of Ultimate Decision Maker. (S)he is in charge of making key calls concerning the script, the actors, the costumes, the sets—everything that is seen or said onstage. Some directors will have a specific vision of what the show should be, and will work to make that vision come alive. Others will work with their creative team to put together a greatest-hits compilation of all their strongest ideas. But what happens with a show that's missing a director? If the writer is living and involved with the production, not a syllable will be omitted from the script, even if scenes are overly long. Often, the actors will be given too much freedom and will indulge in unnecessary pauses. Most of all, there will be no overarching purpose or plan for the play, resulting in a limp night in the theater. This is the case with Ham & Egg, a decently performed, sometimes funny, but ultimately uninspired sketch show currently running at Under St. Marks.

Six sketches and a few videos feature Meg Kelly Schroeder and Pam Wilterdink, two thirty-something actresses who are skinny enough to pull off wearing micro-mini nurse uniforms and rocker spandex, and ballsy enough to play characters like snaggletoothed, jazz-loving sisters and middle-aged, middle-American bus drivers. Each scene is played with elaborate costumes and wigs to transform these ladies into women (and one boy) from different walks of life.

Generally, the live sketches tended to run a little long without decent resolution. Longer still were the videos, some picking up on the stage action, some telling their own stories, but all relying on the Family Guy idea that something dumb or awkward is amusing if left to go on for a ridiculous amount of time. There were also problems with the sound not syncing up to the picture, which made the short films seem even less short.

The scene changes were lengthy as well, probably to give the actresses time to change. Cleanup was done by Scott Myers (in purposefully unconvincing drag or in character from previous scenes), taking his sweet time to remove furniture or to add set decoration. (What Myers lacks in swiftness he certainly makes up for in popularity; on the night of this review, he seemed to have a lot of supporters in the crowd who loved his bits.)

The distaff duo's most effective characters were the ditzy blond nurses of "The Nurses" and the buttoned-up Victorian librarians in "The Eagle & the Hawk." It wasn't just that these were well-known stock characters that the audience had an easy affinity for. These scenes (the first and last of the evening) were highly stylized, and Schroeder and Wilterdink seemed to have a great time (and a natural instinct for) tapping into the soap opera and Masterpiece Theater genres. The writing was also wittier and more playful. Perhaps more than two scenes played so archly would've been overkill; still, that seems preferable to being underwhelmed by the rest of the show.

It's interesting to wonder what Ham & Egg could have been with a director. Instead of 90 minutes, it could've been a tauter 60. Instead of interminable film clips, it could've had quick gags (with quicker costume changes backstage to make up for time lost in the video segments). And instead of a slapdash production with flashes of brilliance, it could've been a streamlined show and a better showcase for its stars' talents.

Good Neighbors

Nowadays, actors are not content simply to be told what to do and say. Their discontent frequently leads them into the more powerful roles of writer and director. Sometimes they are looking for different means of self-expression. Sometimes they want to explore careers that don't end at age 50. And sometimes they just feel they could do the jobs better than the current crop. Jeff Daniels, known mostly for his film work, has been writing shows for his Michigan-based Purple Rose Theater Company for the past 15 years, a fact that the average moviegoer (and even theatergoer) may not know. But what's most surprising about his theatrical work is not that he's doing it but that, if Apartment 3A is any indication, he's doing it so well.

Producers Lisa Dozier and Traci Klainer are presenting Apartment 3A at the ArcLight Theater, a classic proscenium stage within a church and a fitting location for this spiritually minded piece. When the play opens, public television employee Annie Wilson moves into the titular apartment after catching her boyfriend "in bed" (or, really, on a table) with another woman. Her self-sought isolation in the new building is shattered by Donald, her nosy but well-intentioned neighbor across the hall. He pushes Annie to engage with the world and the people around her, including Elliot, a co-worker who's desperately in love with her. What Annie needs most is to discover her faith in the world so she can find her faith in love.

Amy Landecker's Annie is private, sarcastic, and introverted, but also very passionate, funny, and smart. Landecker makes sense of the open and hidden areas of the character's personality while at the same time hinting at further complexity. And her interactions with the other actors crackle with life and intensity.

As the quirky and faithfully married Donald, Joseph Collins finds a way to keep "nonthreatening" from being boring. And Arian Moayed invests Elliot with a boyish energy that becomes sexy once Annie, and the audience, catches on to his deeper passions and eccentricities.

Set designer Lauren Helpern has created an apartment set that most young audience members would find nicer than their own dwellings, with dark-wood floors and a lovely, powder-blue paint job. A projected TV logo on the wall and the conversion of the kitchen into an editing room transforms 3A into Annie's office, a very effective solution for streamlining the scene changes.

Daniels's script pops with witty exchanges that are neither too smart nor dumb for the room; every joke worked, even in a crowd that ranged in age from 20's to 70's. When the tone shifted from comic to serious, the author's words and the actors' delivery made for seamless transitions.

Valentina Fratti's assured direction kept the action moving along while allowing for the kind of pauses that occur naturally in awkward situations. The most refreshing aspect of this production was its polish—a rare and beautiful thing in Off-Off-Broadway theater.

Daniels has earned much praise recently for his acting in the indie film The Squid and the Whale. While no one would want to keep a gifted actor from doing good performances, one hopes that as a playwright he'll continue to turn out moving, character-driven plays like this one. Who knows? Perhaps one of these days he'll be better known for his side career than for his day job.

Poet in Exile

Governing bodies have a long history of silencing their critics. In The Art of Love, an opinionated but unsatisfyingly passive piece, playwright Robert Kornfeld examines how the Roman poet Ovid's innocent gibes at his fellow man's sexual proclivities earned him a spot on his government's hate list, and ultimately cost him his freedom and happiness. A famous writer and ladies' man, Ovid has been banished to the Greek colony of Tomis, where he has spent most of his days in his own company. After many months, he's decided to make a public appearance, where he'll discuss his famous book The Art of Love and present a performance on the circumstances surrounding his exile from Rome. Some of the townspeople gather to speak with him and end up being figures in the quietly engaging and sorrowful presentation of his past.

The Roman emperor Augustus, plagued with a wayward and immoral daughter and a cold, post-menopausal wife, can't get no satisfaction. He is at odds with his own morality, forced to uphold a public policy of zero tolerance toward sexual misconduct while needing to take a lover on the side to make sure he has sons to continue the line of succession. Augustus believes Ovid's works, with their playful talk about rape and adultery, are poisoning the minds of the Roman people, especially his daughter, as well as undermining the state. Ovid's only powerful champion is Augustus's stepson Tiberius, who begins to be seduced by politics and power plays once he is in line for the throne.

Through it all, Ovid's one source of strength and comfort is his wife, Fastina. For her, he has given up all thoughts of extramarital conquests, and he dedicates his life and writing to their love. His interactions with her in his performance/memories attest to how he misses her more than anything else in Rome.

James Nugent does great credit to the law-trained, romance-obsessed Ovid. His ability to answer directly the questions he wants to answer—and to dance around the questions he would rather avoid lending an opinion to—was enjoyable. There's a rationality to Ovid's passion, so that it wasn't weepy and feminine but a truthful and masculine emotion.

Tom Thornton's Augustus certainly has the gravitas and bearing of an emperor, possibly because he is also the director and people naturally deferred to him. But there were times when he took a bit too long with his speeches, and the pacing suffered from the director not directing himself. It was interesting to watch Stephen Francis take the future emperor Tiberius from a misfit stepchild to a calculating ruler. And as Fastina, Laura Lockwood radiated loveliness and intelligence.

Special mention (and great acclaim) must be given to set designer Mark Mercante, who took advantage of the soundstage-sized playing space and bedecked it with a marvelous interpretation of ancient Italian architecture. It's always refreshing when the proper budget and time are given to set design, as it often gets short shrift in Off-Off-Broadway productions.

Since there were no blackouts to signify scene changes, the lighting designer had the challenging task of keeping things visually interesting in order to hold the audience's attention. While Alex Moore did a nice job illuminating sections of the stage to define the boundaries of the scene's playing area, Thornton's staging was a little demure. This was particularly the case in the first act, when endless exposition and speechmaking slowed down the action. (Higher stakes and more energetic performances enlivened the second half of the show.)

Obviously, exile is missing from our country's punishment playbook; otherwise, people like Michael Moore and Jon Stewart would be missing from movie theaters and television. But censorship is still alive and kicking and making trouble for "troublemakers." It's good to be reminded that it is not a new phenomenon, so we can enjoy our current liberties and know what would be sacrificed if they were taken away.

Ye Gods!

What is satire? According to Wikipedia, it's a style of writing that "exposes the follies of its subject to ridicule...using irony and deadpan humor liberally." M. Stefan Strozier has written The Whales with the intention of turning a mirror onto New York theater and taking it to task for its indulgences, lazy productions, and liberal ideas. But though his views may be fashioned into an often thoughtful, Aristophanes-like satire, its presentation and performance is hampered by indulgent scenes, a lazy production, and half-formed ideas, which destroy the subtle irony and deadpan humor. In the play, the hermaphrodite god Dionysus is displeased with the current state of drama, particularly in the Big Apple. After some brainstorming with her Maenads, Dionysus sends them to find a crazy playwright to write a new show for a dramatic competition. If it is deemed good, the playwright will enjoy great rewards (including an Apple Mac laptop). They find their champion in Harry Alton, a former playwright and currently a homeless schizophrenic who lost his livelihood by writing a play called Hang All the Hippies at High Noon.

After the Maenads visit Harry and his fellow homeless lunatics in dreams, Harry goes about working on a new play for the competition. He meets a starry-eyed NYU drama student named Melissa, who suggests that they get someone to produce a reading of the work. Their plans are thwarted by Joanna Higginbotham, a member of the theatrical establishment whose ideals are the antithesis of Harry's.

Soon they are in the presence of the Whales, who are sent by Dionysus to judge the competition. But instead of a duel between the plays, the Whales call for Joanna and Harry to debate their viewpoints, with each trying to make a case for his or her goals and rules for today's theater.

Sadly, Strozier felt the need to jazz up his honest critique with unnecessary rap duels and dance breaks, and to people his script with tired stereotypes. If a character is presented as schizophrenic, he doesn't need to say things like "I am not crazy, everyone else is crazy" to get the point across. This is especially true in a protagonist; how can the audience believe in a hero who says such unbelievable things?

Instead of playing out the satire in a deadpan fashion, the actors chew up the black-box theater, and too many pregnant pauses kill the show's pacing. Perhaps Strozier would've been better off getting an outside director to exert some discipline over the staging instead of directing it himself. The promotional materials for The Whales boast of its large cast. But when one person is onstage speaking and a dozen other people are also there, carrying out their own objectives, fidgeting, and so on, the words are lost and the number of people is a detriment, not an asset.

It seems the big point that Strozier is making is that there should be better theater, that people shouldn't spend lots of money for lackluster Broadway shows, and that the liberal artistic elite is mostly to blame for the sorry state of the arts. But other than vague suggestions about critics and publishers loosening their stranglehold over their industries and being open to new things, no other ideas (certainly no original ones) are put forward to fix what the playwright says is so broken.

The ability to question institutions and to incite change is an important right to have and to exercise. However, there must be responsibility in carrying it out. The message itself is not only significant; so is the way that it's delivered. This is especially true when engaging in intellectual battles, such as a call for better New York theater. If one cannot bring a superior, or at least equal, product to the table, then it is no longer necessary or relevant. Rather, it is only so much more detritus in an already litter-strewn arts scene.

The Winter's Tale

How does one critique a children's show? Should the reviewer attempt to look at things from a child's perspective? (Adults often underestimate the intelligence of youth.) Should the reviewer bring a young person along? (Kids aren't always easy to come by, and don't necessarily make the best company at evening shows.) Or should the critic try to keep an open mind, gauging the reactions of those nearby while ultimately feeling certain that a good production is easily spotted, no matter what its intended age group? Urban Stages is presenting holiday fare in the form of a modern, multi-culti version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. Adapted (or, really, mostly rewritten) by Stanton Wood, the story still centers on best friends Kay and Gerda. But instead of being neighbors playing in a rose garden in a European ghetto, they are neighbors engaging in playful rap battles in a New York City ghetto.

Kay's parents fight a lot, which makes him sad and angry, and vulnerable to a magical glass shard that falls out of the sky and into his eye. The shard makes him see only the negative side of things, so, frustrated because Gerda doesn't understand his pain, he runs away with the equally troubled Snow Queen. When Gerda notices that Kay is missing, she starts a long southward journey to find him. Along the way, she meets a mischievous, anthropomorphic river; a samba-dancing beach goddess; a robber maiden; and a reindeer, all of whom help her reach the Snow Queen's domicile at the South Pole.

The costumes are colorful, the puppets are inventive, and the actors are competent enough, so why did this production seem lacking? The original story was a quirky tale about a little girl's quiet faith in a Christian God, which gives her the power to cross the globe to find her best friend. Wood's version replaces this faith with a vague notion about the power of love; strange, then, that this show doesn't have much heart. The bits of story and character kept from Andersen's tale don't mesh with the new parts, and there was no consistency of tone. It came across like a puzzle completed with two different sets of pieces.

And yet, the highlight of the evening (based on audience reaction) was a new scene about Gerda bumping into the Giant Squid in the Lake. Designer Eric Wright has crafted an endearingly goofy, mobile squid puppet, which puppeteer/actor Ned Massey endows with a crusty, lovably offbeat personality. Adults and children laughed at this surprising character, which didn't perform in that kids' theater declamatory style, and certainly didn't try to teach tolerance or any other message. Granted, this encounter was supposed to be a bit of comic relief to break up an otherwise earnest evening, but why does "earnest" have to exclude "fun"?

At $30 per ticket, this is certainly a wallet-friendlier alternative to the traditional "Radio City Christmas Spectacular"

Radio Days

Before television, radio served as the living room theater of the times. Listeners would tune in to follow their favorite characters in serials that boasted drama, suspense, and romance, as well as sound effects (supplied by foley artists) so they could visualize the action. Now, that simple idea has been turned around by putting the living room in the theater, as in the onstage radio productions of Radio Theater. Its current show, King Kong, is running through the end of December at the Kraine Theater, which makes for a timely tie-in with Peter Jackson's new remake of the 1933 film. As in the movie, nature filmmaker Carl Denham has learned of a place called Skull Island that's packed with fantastic beasts, and decides to make his next picture there. But when he has trouble finding a female lead willing to make a sea voyage with his rough and tumble all-male crew, he scours Manhattan for a fresh face. He soon meets the down-and-out starlet Ann Darrow, who's grateful for a place to sleep and somewhere to eat. The sailors are wary of Ann at first, but eventually grow fond of her�especially Jack Driscoll, who professes his love, which Ann returns in kind. Upon arriving at Skull Island, they learn of the dreaded Kong, and Carl becomes obsessed with putting him in the movie. But his fixation has disastrous results.

The story of a gigantic ape, the man who wants him, and the woman whom Kong wants is not entirely suited to the radio format. There are battles between huge prehistoric beasts and the destruction of much of Manhattan by Kong, both of which can't be depicted by prerecorded sound alone. Adapter Dan Bianchi has added a narrator to advance the plot, which was a normal practice in these types of broadcasts. But between Collin Biddle's tentative vocal performance and the overwritten, half-baked lines he's made to say, the narration actually slowed down the proceedings rather than expedited them.

Though the concept would lead you to believe that this is supposed to be the re-creation of a sound booth where performers acted out their roles and then waited for cues (like AMC's TV show Remember WENN), the staging instead employs awkward entrances and exits and blackouts at the end of scenes. Since these actors aren't changing costumes and the show's not too long, why not keep them onstage? If the director was looking for a bit of visual flair, he could've employed a foley artist to come up with inventive, elaborate ways to provide sound cues, rather than the two sullen characters hidden behind a host of machinery.

The production does have some good things going for it. John Nolan's mellifluous voice is criminally underutilized in the small roles of the host and Captain Englehorn. His "day job" is radio announcing; why not employ him as the narrator? Donna Heffernan plays Ann as a husky-toned angel of the streets, but she also has fun with a few celebrity impersonations at Kong's New York City coming-out party.

Still, it's not enough to make up for the slow pacing of what should be an exciting and fun event. Upon exiting, one young audience member said, "[The postcard] said, 'King Kong live onstage,' but you didn't see him!" Maybe a more imaginative production would have allowed him to.

Gay 90's

All men are created equal, but all theater is not. The quality of a show depends on the talent and budget on hand, which marks the difference between Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway shows. Then there are companies that choose to focus their energies on producing strong plays, playwrights, or performances. T. Schreiber Studio trains actors at all levels and produces full-length productions in order to give its students practice in developing a character through the rehearsal process and the show's run. This is not to say that the company doesn't put equal effort into its presentations' design elements; its main goal, however, is to allow the actor to do his or her work. T. Schreiber's current production of Love! Valour! Compassion! does just that.

Terrence McNally's brilliant piece on the changing landscape of gay life revolves around eight men who stay in the summer home of celebrated dancer/choreographer Gregory Mitchell over three holiday weekends in 1994. Fortysomething Gregory is in a four-year relationship with the 20-ish, visually impaired Bobby Brahms. "Old married couple" Arthur Pape and Perry Sellars are celebrating 14 years together. Failed British composer John Jeckyll has brought along his newest boy toy, dancer Ramon Fornos. And admitted musical theater queen Buzz Hauser is staying (and dealing with AIDS) alone. John's twin brother James, also in the advanced stages of AIDS, eventually comes over from England to join them.

John's lover, the hot-bodied, often nude Ramon, proceeds to throw the group's dynamic out of whack. He seduces Bobby, flirts with Arthur, and makes Gregory feel old. Sebastian LaCause (and his sculpted, tanned physique) fits the role's aesthetic requirements, but he is a little old to be believed as a cocky twentysomething.

Moreover, one would think a certain amount of animal magnetism is what draws people to Ramon. (Wouldn't it make sense that Bobby's attraction to him is based more on pheromones, since he can't see Ramon's ripped abs and Ramon is not very bright or personable?) But LaCause is a little too cool to play such a (supposedly) hot customer.

The rest of the cast delivers strong performances. Gary Cowling sparkles as Buzz, transcending the character's "tragic clown" surface to find shades of optimism and defeat. This is a person staring down death, and yet the audience is able to care about him without feeling buried by the gravity of his situation. John Lederer handles the potentially bland character of the affable, driven Gregory by lending him a quiet intensity that fills in what the author has left out.

Kenneth John McGregor, playing both the caustic John and the bubbly James, differentiates between the two through his voice and mannerisms, though they share a similar ennui. Peter Sloan and Terry Wynne have a natural chemistry between them as Perry, the cynical lawyer, and Arthur, the bleeding-heart accountant. Collin McGee plays Bobby as a na

Soap Satire

The function of a satire is to exaggerate the inanity of "serious art." Good satire will make the audience laugh because they recognize the embellished source material and feel pride in doing so

Love and Marriage

When a playwright presents a piece about a cancer survivor, the audience expects to be treated to a revealing glimpse of staring-down-death emotions or grueling treatment routines. Cancer is, after all, fairly well-charted dramatic territory and an all-too-common disease. Most people have had firsthand or second-hand experience with the illness, or at least have a strong knowledge of it through the news or made-for-TV movies. There really isn't a need for someone to tell us about how chemotherapy saps your energy and makes you bald, or how beating cancer forever defines you, both positively and negatively. In Reconstruction, author Clifford Lee Johnson III at least presents us with a more intimate format for the same old discussion by focusing on the attempts of breast cancer survivor Ally and her husband, Ford, to sexually reconnect when her cancer goes into remission. Ally is nervous about sharing herself and her body, despite Ford's insistence that he finds her as arousing as ever. One can understand Ally's reticence

Anytown, USA

Much has already been said about the fast pace and short attention spans that define our modern culture. Gone are the days of Greek dramatic festivals and Noh theater, when a captivated audience would watch plays for hours on end. Even the works of Shakespeare are being edited for time, not out of sympathy for actors who would have to memorize large amounts of dialogue but out of consideration for the modern theatergoer. Against this trend, the Orphanage is presenting Anathemaville, the three-act love child of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and the best-selling Sam Walton: Made in America. With a running time of four hours (including two intermissions), Scott Venters's drama is bigger, nastier, and more politically charged than Wilder's play, but nowhere near as relevant.

The evening begins with narrator Leo Jones talking about some of the troubled denizens of this town, who all work at (and are controlled by) a fearsome one-stop-shopping mecca called UberMart. Bernard White models his conduct after the strict UberMart manual, in hopes of advancing through the ranks. David Thompson has abandoned his classics studies at college for a dead-end retail job and a twisted sexual relationship with his half-sister, the alcoholic and vitriolic Kathleen Thompson.

Warren Steuss is a suicidal closet case who secretly pines for David when not being repulsed by the affections of Verda Williams, who speaks in an unintelligible rasp due to a tongue of circus-freak proportions. Verda is so enraptured by Warren that she doesn't realize the enemy she has in Sir Galahad (aka BJ), a devotee of role-playing games who's completely surrendered to the reality of his gaming character and who sees Verda as a fierce beast in dire need of slaying. Overseeing the crew is Bob Robertson, the morbidly obese manager who loves Hostess Sno Balls and his truck Maggie.

These characters are joined in Act 2 by Carol Kennicott, the daughter of one of the chain store's founders and a revolutionary-in-training. Through her misguided manipulations, she awakens the emotionally dormant David and turns him, too, against UberMart. Their dreams of a coup, like their lives and those of their co-workers, soon unravel, and we follow the deceased David as he travels back from the afterlife to Anathemaville, trying to figure out the meaning of it all.

So why does this play come across as full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Perhaps Venters should have looked more closely to his original source. Though Grovers Corners is full of characters, there is a focus on the immediate families of Our Town's two young lovers, George and Emily. That focus then tightens on the couple in Act 2 and on Emily in Act 3. In the town of Anathemaville, however, all ten main characters are given their own elaborate story arcs, and the duo that we're supposed to care about (David and Carol) do not actually meet until the middle of the second act.

Still, kudos must be given to the actors in this production, who have thrown themselves into their roles and admirably tackled hundreds of pages of dialogue. John Ivy, in particular, is immensely enjoyable as the scene-stealing Sir Galahad, investing equal measures of goofiness and gravity into his portrayal of what could have been an irritating one-joke character.

In a world where the Bard's plays are often restricted to 120 minutes, writing a show that clocks in at twice that length smacks of self-indulgence. And if Venters's main intention is to be heard, he makes it tough when the message is this long and unclear.

Dating Games

The New York International Fringe Festival has many types of shows. There are solo shows written by and starring a person who's gone through hell and back. There are multimedia pieces that have the tendency to illuminate or enervate. Then there are the "hyped" shows, usually featuring a semi-celebrity in its cast or a pop culture reference in its title, or possessing some intangible quality that translates into an "it factor." Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies was one of the festival productions singled out by several publications as being a hot ticket. But unlike Silence! The Musical (based on a hit movie) or Bridezilla Strikes Back! (a one-woman show based on the writer/performer's experiences on the reality-TV series Bridezillas), which are also big sellers, Fluffy Bunnies has built its word-of-mouth solely on the success of its stage show in California. Besides a lot of sex talk, it is not as gimmicky as one would expect. In fact, writer/director Matt Chaffee has created a pleasant way for twenty- to thirtysomethings to spend 120 minutes at the theater.

The four main characters (Tommy, "Baby Boy," Nick, and "Re"/Jennifer) spend some of their time on abysmal dates and the rest of it recounting said dates over beers at the bar where Jennifer works. Chaffee has got around the "show, don't tell" problem with retelling events by showing the person on his date but having him turn around to comment to the other three at the same time.

Their problems are familiar but still amusing: Baby Boy (Samuel Bliss Cooper) doesn't like women with a past, Nick (Richard Gunn) is hung up on an ex who is clearly just interested in having a good time, and Tommy (Chaffee) and Jennifer (Jenna Mattison) bicker and counsel the other two rather than go on their own dates (or go out with each other).

Comedy ensues in the realistic, peppy banter among the four friends and in the characterizations of the dates. Baby Boy's first date, Yvonne, is lovely, strange, and not too bright, and freaks him out by moving too fast. (Sangini Majmudar does an excellent job playing the nuances of Yvonne's neuroticism and challenges the audience's sympathies with a sniffle or a well-timed crazy outburst.) Nick's obsession with Tessa is made all the more ridiculous by Jackie Freed's vacuous, sex-crazed (but believable) performance.

Though at times the foursome talks a bit too fast for informal conversation, they have a great ease with one another that really helps sell the show and their group relationship. Mattison's sassy girl-next-door, Chaffee's sarcastic Everyguy, Gunn's hunky but clueless romantic, and Cooper's insecure wannabe player represent the whirlwind that is modern dating, in all of its permutations.

Most important, the audience really got into it, with some members commenting that they'd seen the show several times. And isn't inspiring people to see some theater what the Fringe is all about?

Rethinking the Bard

In a summer season full of Shakespeare, it's important to discern the reasons behind a theater company's choice of Elizabethan programming. Some groups produce the Bard so they can offer challenging acting roles and easily marketed entertainment. At these shows, you can expect the text and tone to be traditional, so the audience's enjoyment of the piece is based on an appreciation for the story line and its execution by the actors and director. At the other end of the spectrum are the groups that go high-concept, believing that Shakespeare's tales could be better expressed through a change in time period, place, circumstances, etc. With these shows, their success largely rests on how well the group integrates its vision into the show's framework while also proving that the change was a valid one. (Good leads cannot save, or excuse, a Hamlet performed on a spaceship.)

The CRY HAVOC Company calls its current season the 2005 Season of Questionable Distinctions. Their productions are "focused on issues of the intersection of gender and culture

Roman Times

There are differing opinions floating about concerning the value of the scores of theater festivals that pop up in New York every year. Based on the success stories from these events, it's clear that their strongest asset to the artistic community is in identifying promising new playwrights and composers. At the Midtown International Theater Festival, a theater company appropriately named Unartistically Frustrated is presenting End Caligula, a smart, funny new play by Sean Michael Welch. As with most festivals, performances are scheduled back to back, to the detriment of those who like their theater to start on time. (On this particular night, the show began 20 minutes after its listed start time.) The three-quarters-arena black box with the fire engine-red seating contained a few props and set pieces originating from recent times. It was clear that this take on the famously equine-philic Roman emperor would be transported to the modern day.

The story begins as a middle-aged senator, Chaerea, tries to convince younger senator Sabinus that action should be taken to overthrow the Emperor Caligula. Much fun is had in the back and forth between the men, as the literal-minded Sabinus dissects Chaerea's statements even as he struggles to understand them. There are no satisfyingly concrete reasons given for their dissatisfaction in Caligula as a leader, though there is talk about the outrageous ways he supposedly entertains his houseguests.

Indeed, even when the man himself is brought onstage (accompanied by an amusingly tough-talking female soldier), there is nothing evil or crazy about him. Perhaps the stories spread about him are the fictional work of his Uncle Claudius, the stuttering, softheaded historian who may not be as dim as he lets on.

When the senators present Claudius with Caligula's report on the war in Germany, the elder gentleman mentions his nephew's strange affection for his horse. Upon leaving, Chaerea and Sabinus encounter news reporter/gossip hound Apostolus, played here as an oversexed, short-skirted, TV anchor-coiffed dame. Fearing that she'll write about their assassination schemes, Sabinus reluctantly ponies up the pony rumor. (History can fill you in on the rest of the story.)

Ryan Blackwell (Sabinus) and Matt Scott (Chaerea) make a fine team as the funny man/straight man duo. They seem to enjoy a strong rapport and ably handle the tricky and copious dialogue. Jesse Sneddon's Caligula is an enigma, all cool affability without displaying enough madness or sanity so you can make up your mind about his capability. As Claudius, Offie Sherman does a shticky, stuttering clown act in public, but comes across much differently when he's alone writing in his journals.

The cross-gender casting of the soldier and Apostolus does not strain credibility. Still, while Katherine Harte underplays as the Secret Service-esque strongman, Heather Lasnier overdoes it in Apostolus's flirtatious pursuit of a story. It would've been interesting to see her use the "helpless female" approach, so plausible in the patriarchal times portrayed, to get what she wanted.

Playwright Welch's story employs an interesting revisionist history, giving enough back story without becoming a documentary, and enough clever wordplay without stopping the action. As directed by Stacee Mandeville, the cast is given lots of stage business, much of which earns its own laughs.

In a summer bursting with productions, the theater audience has a lot of choices in genre, location, and price range. At the same time, it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. For people who like original, intelligent comedy, go for these grains.