Art History

Visual art, and modern visual art in particular, inspires the viewer to pull it apart, study it, and find out what makes it tick. Artists' signatures and titles are not enough information for the curious; one is compelled to know what the creator was using as a model, and why this model (a person, a landscape, a bowl of fruit) was considered worth capturing in time. Sometimes people use their imagination to fill in the historical blanks, as was the case with art lover Ron Hirsen. He turned an interest in Pablo Picasso's etching "The Frugal Repast" into a fact-and-fiction-mixing script for a show of the same name, now being produced by Abingdon Theater Company. But this work of art bears little resemblance to its namesake—it is more of a rough outline with scant shading.

In Paris in 1913, in the gallery of dealer Ambroise Vollard, the wealthy and creative sit down to a chicken curry dinner. Among them are the aforementioned host, American writer Gertrude Stein, her companion (and future writer) Alice B. Toklas, and the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. They discuss the Cubist movement and make other high-minded small talk until Picasso and his muse du jour crash the scene.

Though Picasso has not yet evolved into the genius that he will become, he is clearly the brightest star in this particular constellation. He complains about a woman following him, which is laughed off by those at the party. (His artistic reputation may not yet be well known, but his reputation as a womanizer is already legendary.)

Across the street, that woman joins a sad little man in a bowler hat. They are tightrope walkers ("aerialists" is the preferred term in the play) who are oppressed by their boss, poverty, and the illness that's threatening to take their young son's life. These characters remain nameless, referring to each other and their boy by affectionate gastronomical aliases. Their almost expressionless faces and nondescript clothing cement their existence as archetypes of the poor.

But the only things that belong to them—their faces—have been stolen by Picasso and turned into an etching that sits in Vollard's window. The couple decides to steal the picture and demand a ransom so they can take "the little dumpling" to the doctor. When the fortunate meet the less fortunate, they bond over their art but clash over their differing views on art.

There are questions raised about the commoditization of art and how to establish its value. The use of a realistic tone for Picasso's crowd, in contrast to the circus music and clownish movement for the couple, adds another layer: that of the disparity between the tenor of these people's lives and what happens to them. (The solemn artists wallow in frivolity, and the frivolous circus performers wallow in solemnity.)

The performers themselves all meet the requirements of the roles, but the flashier characters of Picasso (Roberto DeFelice) and his mistresses (all played by Kathleen McElfresh) allow those actors a chance to stand out. DeFelice makes a temperamental, sensual Picasso, and McElfresh exuberantly tries on many accents and identities as the comic relief.

The problem is with Hirsen's script, which is more concerned with wink-wink references to the historical figures' lives and endless nicknames for the man and woman than with having a meaningful conversation. This playfulness would be O.K. if the show didn't have the loftier goal of trying to make a statement about art.

Sometimes a play is just a play, and sometimes, to echo Gertrude Stein, "a play is a play is a play is a play." In this case, a play is not the play it wants to be. Perhaps if The Frugal Repast understood itself better and was less worried about understanding art better, the play would be content to be what it is—a frothy, "what-if" exercise played by a patron in an art gallery.

Dear John

There's a nefarious Hollywood influence that's made its way into theatrical press releases: the use of "pitch-speak," where a 90-minute show is reduced to a description that meshes two disparate pop-culture reference points. The use of phrases like "this show is History Boys meets Starlight Express," while effective at piquing the interest of theatergoers and critics, usually carries with it the implication that the production in question is not worthy of the reputation of either of the referenced works. In an ideal synergy of show and space, the Asteroid B612 Theater Company is presenting Hustler, WI at Chashama @ 217. The theater's entrance is right on 42nd Street, and the play's three characters (a prostitute, a john, and a pimp) look as if they could have wandered in from a pre-Giuliani Times Square. In lieu of cast or crew bios, the promotional materials include a line about how the play was "inspired by" Taxi Driver, among other gritty 1970's films. But instead of De Niro and Scorsese, the show delivers wan characterizations and a muddled script.

Blond streetwalker Kiki advertises her wares to the strains of a lewd club mix. She is approached by Clarence, an awkward young man hidden behind an orange cap, sunglasses, and trench coat. He has trouble speaking to her, especially when she tries not so subtly to arrange a date.

Once he manages to ask Kiki about herself, she turns cold, and her pimp, Bags (resplendent in a powder-blue leisure suit, silk shirt, and white shoes), comes over to handle the situation. Clarence explains that he's fascinated by their lifestyle and that he wants to be a pimp. He's chased away but soon finds Kiki and Bags in his apartment and in his life—for better, but mostly for worse.

Writer/director Michael Scott-Price's plot is clearly set up for Clarence to be the protagonist, Kiki the love interest, and Bags the antagonist. But the story isn't always told from Clarence's point of view. After the first scene, there are a few, quick, back-story-heavy monologues from him and Kiki, which disrupt the play's flow and seem incongruous. (Usually monologues are employed as a recurring device, not a one-off insertion of exposition.) One scene devolves midway into a pimp stand-up routine, and while it gets laughs, it compromises the production's integrity.

The piece's lack of shape extends to the direction as well; Scott-Price the director hasn't improved upon Scott-Price the writer's work. While Mike Keller, as Bags, pulls off a showy and complete performance, his fellow cast members do not fare so well. As Kiki, Ali Stover sells the audience on her sexuality and toughness, but she doesn't put over the drama as well. Besides her physical attractiveness, it's unclear what makes Bags and Clarence so protective of her.

Anthony D. Stevenson (Clarence) has the toughest challenge as the addled ex-serviceman. It takes a long time for his military past to come out, and even longer for the audience to realize that it's taken a toll on his psyche. (In the Vietnam era, a young guy in fatigues in the U.S. was assumed to have post-traumatic stress disorder.) Until then he's just a strange-acting guy who is not sympathetic or compelling enough to think much about. Instead of being cryptic, the character comes off as confusing. But then the press release's nod to Taxi Driver challenges this early-career actor to fill De Niro-sized shoes.

According to Asteroid B612's mission statement, the company intends to "operate more like a rock band than a theater company in terms of schedule." Maybe this rock 'n' roll aesthetic that it's chasing has led Asteroid B612 to its hip movie tie-in, anti-bio program. But rather than let the show speak for itself, this tactic only makes a curious audience member look at the program and the show more closely, and less favorably.

Stranded

One of the hardest things for an Off-Off Broadway production to do is establish mood in a quiet piece. Pocket-sized theaters sitting uncomfortably close to each other, or adjacent to bars, do not allow for the silences of natural conversation—they are either punctured by their neighbor's music or screams, or sound artificial and magnify the staginess of the affair. Moreover, most shows limit their sound design to intro/intermission/end music culled from the director's CD collection. In Michael Puzzo's The Dirty Talk, which has gone from 2005 Fringe Festival entry to published piece to Off-Off-Broadway run, the action takes place in an isolated cabin during a torrential downpour. Sound designer Elizabeth Rhodes has created an aural backdrop of rain and thunder, modulated in tone to go from barely audible to loud and intrusive, which puts the audience in the same room as the characters. It's a simple touch but a nice one, and it helps the actors along in this intense and involving one-act play.

Two men are stuck in a remote hunting shack in New Jersey: Mitch, a beer-and-babes type who's dripping wet from trying to fix his rain-flooded car, and Lino, a strange, withdrawn guy who is clearly not in his element. At first it's unclear what they are both doing at this place, and why Mitch is so hostile. It comes out that they "met" the night before in an Internet chat room and engaged in "the dirty talk," but they lied about themselves and their appearances, especially Lino, who was masquerading as a voluptuous blond babe. Faced with an awkward situation and lacking an escape, the two are forced to come to terms with the real truth about themselves.

If all this sounds too serious, it's not. There is humor in the mix as well, although often the laughs are at the bluntness of Mitch's speech. As played by Sidney Williams, the character is deceptively complex; he's a wounded puppy one minute and a bear the next. Mitch's emotional journey over the course of the play is interesting without being gimmicky or untruthful. As the yang to his yin, Kevin Cristaldi's Lino is believable as a creepy Internet addict. A disaffected, scummy modern man, he allows a glimmer of humanity and loneliness to shine through his armor.

Director Padraic Lillis is careful to keep these men at a certain physical distance apart, and as their emotional distance narrows, so does the spatial gap between them. Lillis has also given his actors room to inhabit their roles while keeping a tight leash on their monologues, lest they become sprawling. Puzzo's script seems a bit cliché-ridden at first, but later his characters drop this "everyspeech" for words of their own. The author does a nice job with parceling out information about the characters' prior meeting so that their dialogue, which is mostly about killing time, does not make the audience feel as if it's killing time as well.

From Robert Monaco's masculine log cabin set to Sarah Sidman's natural lighting, every detail in the production contributes to a unique feeling of reality. At one point I tuned out for a second to consider how I'd get home with my bags without an umbrella, yet outside the theater it was a clear night. The world onstage had blended into the world offstage, and to this fine show's credit, one could not tell which was which.

Rakish Wits

"Good Off-Off Broadway theater is like a gourmet meal, and bad Off-Off Broadway theater is like a fast-food meal; the first doesn't stay with you long enough, and the second doesn't leave you soon enough." The above epigram is not featured in William Wycherley's witticism-filled Restoration sex farce, The Country Wife, now being presented by HoNkBarK! and Vital Theatre Company, but it certainly does apply. This feast of manners and innuendo presents two tasty acts over the course of three hours. It may not provide much food for thought, but it does sate one's appetite for bawdy humor and heaving bosoms.

While in France, an English scoundrel named Harry Horner hits upon an idea: if rumors are spread that he has suffered an impotence-causing accident, husbands will trust him around their virtuous (and unsatisfied) wives, leading to plenty of opportunities for no-strings-attached assignations. Upon his return to England, Horner entrusts the "secret" to the elderly doctor Quack to spread to the local gossips so that all of London is aware of his supposed condition.

Horner's friends—the amiable Harcourt, the lewd Dorilant, and the über-fop Sparkish—are appalled at Horner's loss of manhood and newfound revulsion toward women. Sparkish is improbably engaged to Alithea, whose wealth is the rake's only reason to wed her. This union is challenged by Harcourt, who falls in love with the affianced lady and sets about to woo her right under Sparkish's oblivious, powdered nose.

Trouble is also brewing for the jealous and extremely middle-class Mr. Pinchwife, who fears his marriage to the lovely country bumpkin Margery may be compromised by the pleasures of London society and flirtations from Horner and his compatriots. Having been out of town courting his wife, Pinchwife hasn't heard of Horner's affliction, and, in his efforts to keep Margery away from city vices, he leads her right to them—and to Horner.

Wycherley's tale, written in 1675, is full of the usual period messages: the middle classes are too moralistic and judgmental, and the upper classes care only about fun and appearances. While the author never met a clever quip or double entendre he didn't like, he smartly balances that with entertaining characters and a satisfyingly knotty mass of stories. His words work well in the mouths of the cast members—more than half are Actors' Equity members, and their region-free pronunciations and classical intonations sell the material. (Congratulations, vocal coach Linda Jones, on a job well done!)

Richard Haratine is delightful as the rascal Horner; the actor wisely avoids making his character sympathetic, yet at the same time he seduces us to his side. (Speaking of seduction, Haratine's verbal conquest of Laura LeBleu's Lady Fidget is sexier than anything with Fabio on the cover.)

LeBleu and Kristin Price (Margery Pinchwife) are two of the show's producers, which normally makes one skeptical of the casting process as well as the actor or actress in question's performance. Happily, both ladies are well cast and are clearly relishing the comedy in their roles. LeBleu makes a haughty and naughty Lady Fidget, and Price is adorable as the socially clumsy and high-spirited Margery. Special kudos must also go to Brian Linden, who plays Sparkish as an over-enunciating, ingratiating idiot, but with enough self-awareness and a morsel of realism to keep him from being too cartoonish.

Karl A. Ruckdeschel's splendid costumes are detailed and effective—particularly the towers of pink ruffles and silver embroidery for Sparkish's and Alithea's respective wedding ensembles. Set designer Brian Garber swathes the stage in burgundy fabric and open gilt frames, which act as windows and, with a tug of a painted shade, portraits. (The opulently dressed set's only drawback was that sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between locations.) Clearly, director John Ficarra should also have been credited as the show's choreographer; there is a lot of stylized movement (elaborate bowing, "fan language") that, when effective, is both entertaining and an extra bit of characterization.

If new plays are the children of the theater, then classical plays are the elders. We must continue to nurture the young in order to propagate the art form, while respecting and listening to the wisdom of the old so we understand why we want theater to flourish. The Country Wife is less like a stern grandfather and more like that unmarried great-uncle who sneaks you a drink at holidays and teaches you how to play poker for money. He's not exactly a good influence, but he's a whole lot of fun.

Swan Song

For many Americans, culture begins and ends in America. Though the occasional British play or Italian film might make a wave or two upon our shores, the biggest successes are usually local successes. Even in theater, where cultural exchange is encouraged (as in all arts), unless a show is coming from London's West End, its presence isn't often acknowledged by the public. LaMaMa E.T.C., whose bread and butter is overseas experimental theater, is now presenting Earth in Trance, a show written and directed by avant-garde hell-raiser Gerald Thomas. According to his two-and-a-half-page bio in the show's program, he and his Dry Opera Company are well known in both his native Brazil and Western Europe. He also directed several Beckett plays at LaMaMa in the early 80's.

With the double strike of being foreign and experimental, his is not a name that will jog memories in New York mainstream audiences. It's not likely that Thomas will win any new supporters with this blandly Americanized piece of meaningless atmospherics and political rants.

The scene is an overly fogged dressing room with 70's decor and an even older radio/intercom. (Asthmatics have a few minutes to reach for their rescue inhalers before the show begins.) An opera singer in a loosely tied robe is plagued by an outburst of news and static noises emanating from the old speaker. Then a swan slides its head through a hole in the wall and appears at the side of her vanity mirror.

She overfeeds the swan while delivering banal tirades on the current presidential administration and "salacious" stories about her sex-capades. As she avoids preparing for her entrance (she's essaying Isolde in Tristan & Isolde), she realizes that she is trapped in the room ... and we are trapped with her ... and she is still talking about George Bush and company. Clearly, hell is CNN filtered through the accented ravings of a mad diva.

There is a not-so-surprising "reveal" at the end that attempts to cast this nonsense in a more understandable light. But for a type of theater that's meant to push boundaries, there are many conventional aspects to the show and its staging. Dissonant, electronic-type sounds and bizarre dancing are well-referenced listings in the theatrical dictionary under "things that people hear/do during nervous breakdowns." The swan, which could have been such a beautifully abstract element, is too easily written off as a figment of the woman's imagination—and, indeed, she does psychoanalyze its relevance onstage!

The singer herself, played by longtime Thomas collaborator Fabiana Gugli, is convincing as a diva type and as a woman losing her mind, but not as an opera singer. Perhaps it would be better if she didn't do any singing in the show, as a shallow, unsure voice was revealed. Gugli's character is not given enough personal things to say to evoke any strong empathy; her plan for turning the swan's fattened liver into foie gras makes her a villain until it becomes more obvious that the swan—and its liver—is an illusion.

Listening to this vanilla dialogue makes one wonder what the original Portuguese version had to offer. Was it about Brazilian politics or social issues? Were local aging celebrities name-checked? Part of the enjoyment of experiencing art made by another culture is its insights into that other culture. There are many local shows that cover U.S. current events, but I can't think of one that discusses present-day South America.

And if the point of the repetitively political dialogue in Earth in Trance was that those who don't acknowledge the ills of the world are doomed to be consumed by them, well, Dickens has already written a very traditional and beloved story about that one. It's probably on television right now.

A Capitol Idea

America is in a golden age of political satire. All of the stars have aligned to provide stellar opportunities for mockery: a self-serious presidency that's made questionable choices; a free and inquisitive press; and a public that understands that it can object to an administration's course of action without fear of being branded "traitorous." Heeding the call is a unique group of activists called Billionaires for Bush. Like Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, they have taken on the guise of supporters of our current regime in order to highlight its foibles from within. Their performing troupe, the Billionaire Follies, have taken to the stage at the Ace of Clubs to present Dick Cheney's Holiday Spectacular 2006, a skits-and-song revue that provides an early Christmas present to those who like their holiday carols pretty and their sketch comedy silly and dirty.

The show is hosted by Vice President Dick Cheney, with appearances by George W. Bush, Karl Rove, the Ghost of Ken Lay, and Lynne Cheney. The politicos and their billionaire supporters sing traditional melodies with twisted, big business-themed lyrics and play out parodies of A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. This special is presented as the warped dream of a holiday shopper knocked out in the rush for the season's "it" toy.

However, in a town where faux celebrity-hosted holiday specials are staged yearly, the framework is unnecessary—not to mention dangerous to those audience members near the shopper's front-row seat. (Several times during the show, she scuffles with a security guard and threatens to injure nearby patrons.) While the shopper is supposed to represent the voice of the common citizen, the crowd at a show like this is hip enough to see that the billionaires' message is a bad one. Besides, politicians often hold events to thank their financial contributors; it would be wickedly delightful to think of the gang in the White House putting on a show, Mickey and Judy style, as a gift to their moneyed friends.

Jamie Jackson lends Dick Cheney an air of theatrical malevolence and a fine baritone, and has the presence to carry off the job as M.C. David Bennett wouldn't win any George W. look-alike competitions, but he has the good ol' boy accent, excitable nature, and befuddled looks down pat. Moreover, his natural comic talents allow him to refer to cocaine as "booger sugar" and get a laugh instead of a groan. The cast of ladies is mostly there for sex appeal and high voices; while they fill that job admirably (especially the lovely soprano Kellie Aiken), it would've been nice for the boys' club to cede a little more stage time to the girls.

An hour goes by fast when in the company of entertaining folks like these. The Billionaire Follies has crafted a show with topical references that even the least politically aware Americans will get, and the repetitive nature of the carols drives home their message. If you find the Rankin/Bass animated specials a little too religious, and the Grinch a little too mushy, then Dick Cheney's got a spectacular he'd like to sell you.

Me and Beelzebub

If theater is about surprises, then good theater is about pleasant surprises. To those who go to see Algonquin Productions's presentation of The Devil and Billy Markham, prepare to be pleasantly surprised. The first surprise is that the show is performed not in a traditional theater space but in a sexy, low-lit lounge. Small cafe-sized and rectangular tables sit close together and within whispering distance of a bar serving drinks during the performance and afterward, for those who want to linger. Serving as the playing space is an open-mike setup at the front of the room, with a guitar and drums.

The second surprise is that the show's text, derived from an epic poem by Shel Silverstein, is less reminiscent of Silverstein's tender children's books, such as The Giving Tree, and more like a country music song. (The poem was first printed in a 1979 issue of Playboy.) The poem tells the story of a Southern man, Billy Markham, who loves to take all bets, and the Devil, who loves to make Billy miserable. Despite the fact that the odds are stacked heavily in Beelzebub's favor, the story is equal parts darkness and light, as Billy learns how to play the Devil's game—and to even beat him at it.

The third surprise is that this one-man show is one entertaining hour of theater. From the moment Britt Herring swaggers through the crowd and onto the stage, his Storyteller character captivates the audience through his portrayals of the dim and down on his luck Billy, the clever, cajoling Devil, and a few other colorful characters who come across their path. With only a guitarist, a percussionist, and a slick lighting design (courtesy of Evan Purcell) to back him up, Herring's dramatic baritone provides all of the scenery and special effects a theatergoer needs to visualize this fantastic tale.

As he struts and sweats his hour upon the stage, switching from character to character, Herring impresses with his commitment, memory, and stamina. Through the use of accents and posturing, he easily differentiates his characters and changes them with ease. Instead of scene changes, there are pauses between chapters of Billy's story for Herring to grab a drink or show off his harmonica-playing skills. He doesn't make it look easy to do a show by oneself, but he sure makes it look fun.

Some productions have Broadway aspirations, and some simply aspire to be staged and seen. A show like The Devil and Billy Markham is too compact in length and scope for a big stage, but it's just right for the Huron Club. Surprises can come in all sizes, and at all venues.

Northern Exposure

To most Americans, Canada is that strange nation to the north whose major exports are beer, hockey players, and Degrassi High. Our idea of the country is that of a colder, more rural United States where everything and everyone's a bit cleaner and a bit nicer. But Judith Thompson's play The Crackwalker, produced by New World Theater, shows a different side of Canada by focusing on the desperate denizens of Kingston, Ontario, circa 1979. The result is a harrowing, powerful tale of economic depression and mental illness. Therese is a mentally challenged manipulator and compulsive liar who makes her doughnut money by servicing gay men and sleeps on her friend Sandy's couch. Sandy, a rage-filled, emotionally damaged woman, is married to Joe, an abusive, womanizing gambler. Joe's friend Alan (who is seeing Therese) is a twitchy former addict with a tenuous grip on reality.

Sandy and Joe fight and make up as they try to establish a better life for themselves. Alan and Therese get married and have a baby, against the wishes of her social worker and with the misgivings of Therese, who previously had a baby taken away from her. Though Therese is no longer working as a prostitute, she is not bright enough to take care of a child or to realize that Alan is mentally ill and should not be responsible for her or their son. Even the relatively stable influence of their friends cannot stop the tragedy that is to come.

The reality of the events portrayed onstage is helped along by the theater space itself. The Access Theater is on the fourth floor of a building that evidently houses another performance space above it; at several moments during the performance, there were loud banging noises and voices raised in anger coming from upstairs. One could imagine them stemming from arguments among other tenants in Joe and Sandy's apartment building.

Tattered, mismatched furniture is easy to do on a small budget, but period costumes are not; design consultant Frankie Keane picked out some cute vintage duds for the ladies. Thompson's gritty script mimicked regular conversations in its language, rhythms, and the ebb and flow of conflict. Two characters would be at odds with each other but then talk themselves into agreement through their mutual ire against a third character. These transitions occurred so naturally that it was hard to remember who was mad at whom, as sometimes happens in life.

The strong writing is complemented by the strong acting on display by the cast of non-union actors. Melanie Kuchinski Rodriguez brings a long-simmering bitterness and a great Canadian accent to the mostly reactive role of Sandy. Her physical confrontations with David Wesley Cooper, who believably plays the mercurial Joe, are fraught with danger and sex.

Karron Karr doesn't always succeed with the very stylized slang that Therese speaks, but she underplays her character's mental handicap even as she nails her mix of naïveté and sexual sophistication. Kelly Miller rises to the challenge of Alan, who changes from eccentric but lovable to psychotic and frightening in the course of the show.

On Broadway and Off-Broadway, Irish playwrights are now all the rage. On Off-Off-Broadway, most produced scripts are written by new local playwrights and Shakespeare. While it's important to foster the talents of young New York writers, importing plays like The Crackwalker can only add depth to the city's cultural offerings.

Song and Splatter

What is it about cult movies and stage musicals that seem to go together so well? Perhaps reality is pushed so far in cult films that the next logical step is for characters to burst into song. The Producers and Monty Python's Spamalot both had music and dance in their original film versions, so adding more of both to their theatrical reincarnations wasn't much of a stretch. But how do you explain the idea of turning a no-budget indie horror film into a mega-budget, Off-Broadway musical spectacle? Such is the case with Evil Dead: The Musical, based on director Sam Raimi's horror trilogy that grew campier and more popular with each installment until it peaked with 1992's Army of Darkness. These movies starred a then-unknown actor named Bruce Campbell, a no-nonsense Midwesterner with a prominent chin and a snarlingly hip delivery that gave lines like "Gimme some sugar, baby" catchphrase status among college students and "hipsterati." Raimi's blend of horror and humor worked because his movies were fun, earnest, and self-aware without being too snarky.

The musical's creators have mixed together the plot of the first two films and the famous lines and ending from the third, adding music, dance, and an extra cup of camp. What they've cooked up is an airy soufflé full of weak meta-jokes and a generic score. The audience, clearly hungry to see this material on the stage, gobbles up empty calories of winky references and a clever set design, not pausing to realize that maybe tonight's pop culture junk food isn't worth tomorrow's post-binge guilt at having spent $66 on a half-baked live version when you can spend less by buying the three DVDs.

There are some things that really work in this production: the cabin set is great, the direction and pacing are slick, and Ryan Ward (who bears a passing resemblance to a skinnier Bruce Campbell in the first film) is both charming and bad-ass as the hero Ash, possessing a great voice and a strong stage presence. The gorefest of Act 2 is well choreographed and certainly gives people in the $26 seat "Splatter Zone" their money's worth in fake blood.

But the script is drowning in mockery, and the faux-earnest musical numbers, while well rehearsed, are, for the most part, too clever for their own good. (The love song between Ash and Linda, "Housewares Employee," and Ash's song "I'm Not a Killer" do work, perhaps because Ward is able to put them over with enough earnestness to diffuse their sting.)

It's a shame that book writer George Reinblatt felt the need to punch up the original script so much; the source material, played straight, would have served up better laughs than some of the mean-spirited and downright uninspired humor put in its place. (A male character calling one of the female characters "stupid bitch" over and over again isn't funny, even if he winds up with his entrails ripped out by evil trees.)

As a fan of Raimi and Campbell's work, separately and together, I really wanted to like this musical (I've been on the show's e-mail list for months). Coming into the show, I tried not to have high expectations, assuming that it would be a lot like it was—all bouncy songs, movie lines, and blood sprays. But while watching it and thinking about it later, I realized there's nothing wrong with high expectations. This show just doesn't satisfy like the movie.

Love Bites

It's October, and the scent of fall has brought about a taste for blood for several local theater companies. Among the horror-themed productions competing for your Halloween dollar this autumn is Heartbreak, the latest collaboration between Horse Trade Theater Group and its resident company, Edge of Insanity. This sprawling, vampire-on-vampire crime story has too many scenes and not enough blood (literally or otherwise), but an exotic cast and some quirky scriptwriter touches make it more than just your average overly ambitious Off-Off-Broadway show. The action starts in a bar in New Orleans, where a mysterious man broods over a glass of cranberry juice as the town is evacuating for Hurricane Katrina. He is there to see a friend, and one suspects that seriously unfinished business is at hand. A waitress throws herself at him for a ride, and he says that if he returns to the bar, she can ride with him.

Over the next several scenes, the stranger is nowhere to be seen, and instead we are in a world of vampires and prostitutes, a world that one would think is still pre-storm N'Awlins but, according to the script and press materials, is New York City. (It pays to read, obviously.) Location becomes irrelevant, as the focus is on a particularly nasty vamp named Sirius, whose insatiable bloodlust is upsetting the delicate human/vampire relations in the town. His "family" (the creatures of the night who sired and were sired by him) is angry, the vampire council (which governs the undead) is angry, and the slayers (who kill them) are expected to roll into town at any minute to stop Sirius's carnage.

The slayers do arrive about halfway through, in a nifty introductory scene set to the Backstreet Boys's "I Want It That Way." For those classicists upset about the idea of the protagonists arriving so late to the party, know that Steven, the mystery man from the first scene, is one of them, along with Trisha, a tough, wry brunette in the "Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer" mold, and a hilarious Shahrukh Khan (of Bollywood fame) wannabe named Neehad. They meet up with Helen, whose brother Andrew has been taken in and bitten by the bloodsuckers, and plan to save Andrew and kill Sirius. It's vamps versus humans, slayers, and other vamps as the dead bodies start piling up and characters begin to disappear.

To the producers' credit, the show sports a company large enough that only three parts are double-cast; however, two of the double-cast actors play large roles and don't do enough with their costuming to disguise the fact that the guys they play are not supposed to be identical twins. The function of this large ensemble is to have enough victims to sate the needs of the playwright, but it helps that the creators have assembled a melting pot's worth of ethnic diversity and performance styles for one of the more well-rounded casts below 14th Street (or, for that matter, above 14th Street).

As Sirius, Robert Yang has a great time with his Southern-accented vampire run amok. He's charming and dangerously unpredictable, and pulls off the crazy act with a respectable amount of showiness. Vedant Gokhale is all business as Sirius's "brother" Noah, and all silliness as the singing slayer Neehad. For the most part, the other actors are remarkably restrained and serious in their portrayals, though Solly Duran is effectively and frighteningly mercurial (if a bit slurry with her diction) as the lovelorn Fran.

Author/director Marc Morales tells a challengingly long and scene-change-filled story but seems to lack the production values and rehearsal time to make it work. The space was a black box with a few shoji screens and simple black furniture aided by colored lights, which worked for scenes in a basement, a bar, and a nightclub but didn't cut it at the abandoned amusement park that houses the slayers' hideout. (Even fairy lights strung up on the back wall to resemble a faraway Ferris wheel and roller coaster would have set up the location without the use of a fancy backdrop.) Lines were often lost by under-enunciating actors or blaringly loud music, and movement was a little too blocked. Most unfortunate, the final "battle" was barely seen; the characters spent more time talking about it before and afterward than actually doing it. Nobody likes a tease, guys.

With so many choices for spooky entertainment, a theater company's got to pull out all the stops with such a production. Despite its flaws, Heartbreak has promise, a few good gags, and a plot that keeps the audience tuned in. And for students, the price of a ticket is only a dollar more than that forgettable horror sequel that's in the theaters.

Punch and Circumstance: A World of Puppetry From Charleville-Mézières to Brooklyn

For most New York theatergoers, it's a challenge to get to a show if it's in Brooklyn, Queens, or even at an especially remote location on the Lower East Side. So for a Manhattanite like me, the incentive to travel to northeastern France to attend the 14th World Festival of Puppet Theaters had to be big. The deal was sealed not because I'd have the opportunity to study puppet and marionette theater more closely, or because I'd represent the United States at an international young theater critics seminar, or even to make use of the five years of French I took in middle and high school. Those things were part of it, but mostly I just wanted to eat some really good French bread.

Every three years, the town of Charleville-Mézières (most famous as the birthplace of the original angst-ridden teen poet, Arthur Rimbaud) is overrun by puppeteers. They fill the theaters, the hotels, and even the streets, where a tall person with an eagle eye can always catch a show. At this September's festival, more than 250 productions were going on; I saw 16 of them, plus snippets of sidewalk performances.

Prospective audiences should be aware that they'll need two things to get through the shows: a strong command of the French language and a strong pair of hands. While there are a handful of shows in English and some without text, it would be a shame to miss the country's own contributions. (I also attended some so-called "sans texte" shows, which did have important voice-overs in French.) The local theater patrons also give extended rounds of applause at the end of shows. It's not uncommon for the performers to take three or four curtain calls for an appreciative crowd, which can be frustrating for those who didn't like the show, or who just want to leave quickly at the end.

The most impressive shows at the festival were the following:

Spectacle Traditionnel (Theatre National des Marionnettes sur l'Eau; Vietnam), which incorporated a huge stage of water in a display of synchronized movement and rural life set to music. In Vietnam, water puppet shows have been performed since the 11th century, yet the show was just as beautiful, imaginative, and entertaining as it must have been a thousand years ago.

Vampyr (Stuffed Puppet; the Netherlands), a gothic tale of fathers, sons, and the undead set in a European campground. Puppeteer/actor Neville Tranter can manipulate and voice two puppets while acting as a third person in a scene, without skipping a beat. While the story line wasn't very strong, the performance and show design were fabulous. If John Waters decided to stage a second-rate Tim Burton tale with puppets, it would look like this.

Le Remède de Polichinelle (La Pendue; France), a traditional Punch (of Punch and Judy) story hosted by a lanky, motor-mouthed Frenchman with a mohawk. The traditional beats of a Punch show (including love, murder, and escape from the police) were all here, along with a subplot about the female marionnettiste's attempts to create a miracle elixir that will cure Punch of his devilish behavior. Children and adults were in fits over the show, which relied more on movement than on scripted dialogue. The puppeteers took their time with the action, allowing themselves to have fun with the puppets and take the events to exaggerated and hilarious levels.

The shows that didn't work out as well were often hindered by poor scripts and high concepts. A German production called Intimitäten (Intimate Things) by Iris Meinhardt was literally artistic navel-gazing, as a woman used a minicamera to project her insides onto voluminous petticoats as she discussed her search to know herself better as a person. An Italian production called L'oiseau de Feu (The Fire Bird) by Teatro Gioco Vita used way too much dance and not enough shadow puppetry in a wordless piece about love and captivity. (I knew that the show would be too long when it was listed at 50 minutes but a narrator explained the plot in less than two minutes.)

Energized by all of the imaginative puppet theater that's being done overseas, I decided to look into the local scene when I returned from France. I'd seen Avenue Q and The Lion King but was hoping that Off-Off-Broadway would offer its typical low-budget/highly inventive take on the genre. As luck would have it, I came back just in time for the September edition of Punch, a monthly puppet showcase at Galapagos Art Space curated by the Brooklyn-based puppet theater Drama of Works.

Featured in this installment were Matty Sidle's short puppet films (starring Unicycle Baby Guy), DoW's Sid & Nancy Punch & Judy, Ceili Clemens with a short shadow performance, the Josh and Tamra Show (puppet improv), and Exploding Puppet Productions with a scene from Die Hard: The Puppet Musical. The performances were all fairly short, which worked for some concepts better than others. ("Short films" and improv work best in small doses; a Punch show and a movie-based "puppet musical" get funnier the longer they run.)

The Josh and Tamra Show seemed to be the group most comfortable with its puppets; Josh (the puppeteer) was obviously enjoying playing with the vocal characterization and body language of his "actors." Ceili Clemens's shadow puppets were beautiful, and it was interesting to see them paired with an original song, but her presentation would have been more effective if she had sung and someone else had manipulated the shadows (or if the music had been prerecorded). Her singing was rushed, which made the movements rushed—a shame, since shadow puppets ought to linger on the screen longer so the audience has time to absorb and appreciate them.

Sid and Nancy (the “first couple” of punk) as Punch and Judy is a great concept, and Sid & Nancy Punch & Judy had a swell production design: a graffitied cardboard box as stage; two-dimensional, black and white, graphic novel-style drawings of the main characters; and hypodermic needles instead of bats. However, the scenes were weighed down by dialogue; more "show" and less "tell" would have made the action smarter and more interesting, and played to the puppets' strength (physicality) rather than their weakness (emotion).

One-note jokes were the theme of the Matty Sidle shorts and the Die Hard scene, with varying degrees of success. Unicycle Baby Guy is a bald-headed creature with a unicycle for a lower half that travels through space having brief encounters with other bizarre creatures. The shorts are filmed in black and white with intentionally fuzzy picture quality and last just long enough for the characters to use slang incorrectly and for UBG to be rejected or comforted by those he meets. Their humor is derived from the complete absurdity of the language and situations, and from their abbreviated length, since scenes seem to be cut off early and end abruptly, leaving audiences surprised and unsettled by what they just saw.

Die Hard: The Puppet Musical contains its concept in the title; the humor is in putting clichéd action dialogue into felt mouths and adding an unrequited love subplot that is addressed in song. It was unclear to me if this is being developed for a full-length project or will ultimately be presented in single-scene length to different audiences. The song was the best part of the scene—or, rather, the slide show of two terrorists engaging in different attacks that was shown during the song. The more the script strayed from the original film, the funnier it became.

On the whole, I was left with the impression that puppet theater is still very much in its infancy in New York. Theater companies have the means and ingenuity to create good-looking, unique puppets, but they haven't yet fully explored the possibilities of the form. At the World Festival of Puppet Theaters, there was only one American entry: Huber Marionettes, which provided the marionettes in the film Being John Malkovich.

While beautiful to look at and entertaining to watch, this was a very traditional show. Here's hoping that groups like the ones at Punch continue to develop and maybe add some American avant-garde puppet theater to the big stage in Charleville-Mézières.

Couplets in Crime

In New York, one sees Shakespeare done every which way, from strictly faithful to ultramodern to "What were they thinking?" Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather adds another twist: turning a contemporary piece classical. Playwright/director David Mann has adapted the shooting script of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, replacing curses with couplets and silencers with swords. Not surprisingly, to those familiar with both Shakespeare and Mario Puzo's story, this tale of power, vengeance, and family covers familiar bloody ground found in Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and other works by the Bard, making it a perfect fit. After some initial titters at the eloquent language coming out of the mouths of characters like Sonny Corleone and the Don, the audience settled into the conceit and the show, which is a drama, after all. The killing of Sollozzo and McCluskey in the restaurant turns from a shocking character turning point to a steel-on-steel battle for survival. (It's best not to dwell on how Clemenza could hide a sword in a toilet.) Those who haven't seen the movie may be a little confused, since some scenes (like the horse's head in Woltz's bed and the death of Appolonia) are merely touched on in narration. The film's fans will be amused by the changes and then surprised at how they are drawn into the story again, even though this isn't the cast they're used to.

Drew Cortese may not be Al Pacino, but he makes a quiet, compelling Michael. Morgan Spector has a hint of Marlon Brando's marble-mouthiness in his delivery as Don Vito Corleone, but steers clear of a full-on impression. He's a bit young to be the father of the actors playing his progeny, but he has a boss's calm presence. Greg Derelian flexes both acting and bicep muscles in his portrayals of the hothead Sonny Corleone and the airhead Luca Brasi. The other cast members do equally well with iambic pentameter and playing multiple characters.

The program says the play has already earned a spot at a Houston theater next year. Mann's creation is not a show to go on Broadway or to win Tonys; it's a show to entertain, and to give smaller theaters the chance to do something more fun than another production of Romeo and Juliet. Of course, Shakespeare and Puzo were writing for the common man, so what better audience can their fictional love child hope to get?

Modern Orthodox

In order to create a one-person show, a performer must have had either a colorful job, a reversal of fortune (intentional or accidental), or a crazy family. Sandy Wolshin, the author and star of The Rabbi and the Cheerleader, was clearly destined to go solo, having achieved the trifecta. The daughter of an agnostic Jew and a religious Gypsy, Sandy describes the trials, tribulations, and talent shows that made up her childhood. She then moves on to her career as a "Raiderette," and to the emptiness in her life that she gradually defined as a spiritual vacancy. The last part focuses on her transformation from bubbly, unhappy cheerleader to shomer negiah Orthodox Jew, and how even converts can snare a handsome rabbi for a husband.

Wolshin is a singing, dancing, cheering, castanet-playing powerhouse, funneling her energy and need to be liked into every moment of her show. However, this desire to perform overshadowed the story, needlessly stretching out bits and overdecorating a tale that was interesting enough to go without embellishment. Though she is clearly multitalented, she would've been more interesting to watch with less non-integrated song and dance and more connection to her material. For a life that affected her so deeply, Wolshin hasn't yet found the words or the strength to let herself be vulnerable onstage.

The Rabbi and the Cheerleader has a lot of commercial potential; it's a modern-day fairy tale about how fame and good looks aren't anything without family and a faith in G-d. If Wolshin were to explore the piece even further, focusing a little less on entertaining and more on enlightening, she might find that the production could become both catharsis and calling card.

School Days

Besides death and taxes, the other "inevitable" event in most people's lives is the high school reunion. Those who weren't voted most popular or involved in sports tend to deliberate on their attendance, weighing the thought of seeing people they want to see against the thought of seeing people they never want to see again. Writer/actor Chris Harcum has turned his ambivalence into a one-man show, Some Kind of Pink Breakfast. He takes the audience back to the 1980's, where memories of his bizarre high school experience get muddled with the names of the characters from the movies and bands of the era. Using only a wooden folding chair as a prop and backed by sound effects, he creates various locations, from school to the family dinner table to his girlfriend's car at a make-out spot.

Harcum embodies his teenage self as well as the kids, relatives, and authority figures in his world, switching between personas by using a different accent and body posture. He gets the essence of these people across without the manic antics or slavery to perfection that mark lesser solo performers. Moreover, there's something so natural and honest about his acting; he puts up no emotional barriers between himself and his audience, which makes his storytelling all the more affecting and effective.

In the chorus to the theme from The Breakfast Club, the band Simple Minds sings, "Don't you forget about me." It is unlikely that anyone in attendance at Some Kind of Pink Breakfast will forget the events of Chris Harcum's past. Here's hoping that when his 20th reunion rolls around in 2008, he's already made other plans.

Take a Solo

A staple of the Fringe-going experience is the low-concept musical. Included in this year's crop is Air Guitar, the story of how one man had to put down his guitar to find his music. Written by Sean Williams, Mac Rogers, and Jordana Williams (creators of Fleet Week, which enjoyed a strong buzz at last year's Fringe), the show revolves around Drew (Stephen Graybill), a solo guitarist with dreams of glory that are bigger than his talent. When his best friend Steve (Michael Poignand) and his wife Celeste (Becca Ayers) discover the air guitar phenomenon, they inexplicably push Drew toward competing in the New York championship. Drew, however, feels that this insults his artistry and dismisses air guitar as a fad. His scorn is augmented by invisible pal/devil's advocate/world-famous air guitarist Ulrich (Jeff Hiller), who keeps popping up to berate Drew and tells him not to compete. Ultimately, Drew's undeniable talent for guitar-less strumming leads him on a path to adulthood and acceptance.

Backed by an overpowering backup band playing generic hard rock, the singers had a difficult time getting the lyrics across to the audience. Those that were understood were either entertaining in their real speech origins (like slangy recitative), clever in their mockery of college band poetry (like the hilarious "I'm a Busy Man"), or just boring in their clichéd take on human suffering. (It might have been better had the lyricist stuck to the first two styles, even if it meant sacrificing some pathos for wit.) The plot was driven ably by the simplicity of the scenes; clearly, the book writer knew that the gold was in the well-choreographed performance pieces and not in the apartment scenes.

After all, the money shot in a show called Air Guitar is, well, air guitar. There were many fine examples on display, as Drew and Ulrich committed fiercely both to their performances and to their musical simulation. Hey, once their Fringe run ends, perhaps Graybill and Hiller will make a trip to the finals in Finland?

Dream Play

Accents are important to me. I've cringed at Ibsen performed in western Pennsylvania with "Pittsburghese"-tainted vowels. I can aurally spot every mispronounced syllable when a Brit goes Southern belle. I'd rather Shakespeare be done with a standard Midwestern accent than a lousy pseudo-Cockney one (as it often is). So when the Texas twang started to flow at the beginning of the 78th Street Theater Lab's The Horton Foote Project, I braced myself for vocal disappointment. To my delight, the actors displayed a strong command of the sound of the local vernacular—in fact, it was the first of many delights in this moving dream play.

Culled from Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle, this 75-minute work centers on one regular guy (Horace Robedeaux) and his histrionic family. Horace catches the influenza that is sweeping his town and the country in 1918 and fights for his life on the living room couch. During his illness, he has vivid fever dreams of his past: as a child dealing with the separation of his mother and alcoholic father, as a teen bristling under the strictness of his unloving stepfather, and, as an adult, courting his wife and trying to create a stable home for her and their baby daughter.

The best elements of Foote's writing are on display here. The dialogue is colloquial but not pandering, and it's full of surprisingly honest comments about the characters' inner selves and their feelings for others. It is the dialogue, in fact, that draws the audience into the play, keeping a firm, warm grip on them. Although during the first time shift there isn't much in the way of visual or lighting cues to suggest that we are in Horace's flashback, in later episodes there is a subtle shift in the light's intensity, often followed by background noise, to suggest the new location.

Three actors portray Horace and the men and women in his life. As Horace, Stephen Plunkett wears his worn-down kindness on his face as he wearily accepts the flashing of his life before his eyes. Still, there's enjoyment sometimes in those eyes, especially when he relives the day he won his wife. The porch seduction scene, with Amelia McClain playing Horace's sweetheart Elizabeth, is about as perfect as a scene can get. The way that Plunkett and McClain move around each other, sussing out the other's feelings and drawing closer to confirm them, was beautifully staged (by director Wes Grantom) and played out by the actors.

In addition to playing Elizabeth, McClain gave memorable turns as Horace's petulant younger sister Lily Dale, and as the middle-aged Mrs. Coons, a Bible-thumping busybody whom Horace meets on the train to Houston. Chris Grant does a fine job filling out the male roles, most notably as the menacing stepfather Pete Davenport and Sam the gravedigger.

The question posed by The Horton Foote Project is, How can human beings stand all that comes to them? The answer that the show comes up with is, They can stand it with the support of a loving family. As Horace breaks away from his toxic early years and strives to own his own business and his own life, he finds the strength to do so in Elizabeth—just as this production finds its strength in its cast and crew.

Jazz Hands

Ah, the exuberance of wannabe theater professionals! It's so dear to witness their silly rituals of mock Oprah interviews, coaching each other's monologues, and … painting the toenails on their prosthetic feet? Triple Threats, now playing in its New York premiere at the Independent Theater, is not your average tale of actors being actors. Written by Los Angeles-based thespians-writers Alec Holland and Melissa Samuels, the play shows us the psychoses and bad behavior that can arise when untalented, unbalanced performers go through years of rejection. Unfortunately, it also shows us what happens when a decent play is not allowed to let its plot unfold gently and wears its craziness on its sleeve.

Actor-singer Bruce and actress-dancer Shirley share dreams of stardom and a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. They consider themselves "triple threats" because, between the two of them, they're actor-singer-dancers. This is only one of many delusions that fuel their manic and fairly art-free existence. They don't take classes, choosing instead to perform along with the TV. They're looking forward to living on easy street once a settlement check comes in from the insurance company to compensate Shirley for her severed foot. Most delusional of all, they don't realize that they have no talent, and that their blind support of the other's career will always keep them from knowing the extent of their talentlessness.

Into the fray comes Kenneth, a fellow hyphenate (writer-director) who's looking for a place to live while he finishes writing a film. Kenneth is a foreign entity to Bruce and Shirley: a good-looking, fairly well-adjusted guy who's talented and having a big moment in his career. The roommates accept him into the apartment, with an eye toward bedding him and being cast in his film. Unfortunately for the new guy, he has no idea the lengths to which these two desperate people will go.

Holland and Samuels have written a mildly amusing black comedy that really requires the audience to sympathize at least in part, or even just in the beginning, with Bruce and Shirley. It shouldn't be clear right away that Kenneth shouldn't move in with them, or that they are anything but harmless, silly people who are a little high-strung.

However, the actors playing the actors let loose right away, showering the stage with their mania. Josh Painting's Bruce is a self-centered, egomaniacal closet case who fears that disclosing his sexuality will keep him from being cast as a romantic lead, not realizing that (a) he doesn't hide his homosexuality at all and (b) his "unconventional" looks will keep him from attaining leading-man status. Kat Ross's Shirley is a shrill, jumpy sycophant who trusts Bruce to do the thinking for both of them. If they started their characterizations at a 2 and then gradually worked up to a 10, we might be inclined to feel sorry for them rather than hate them.

As Kenneth, Richard Tayloe turns in a surprisingly strong performance as the normal third wheel. He takes the thankless job of straight man and radiates a naturalness and kindness, being an Everyman without stepping into Superman territory. Somehow he justifies his character's turning a blind eye to Bruce's and Shirley's come-ons in the initial interview, making us believe this guy's so hard up for a place to live that he'll deal with just about anything.

The apartment is fabulous, after all; Elisha Schaefer has clearly been hitting TKTS and the kiosks at the Port Authority for Broadway show handbills to adorn the red walls of their little place. The set design is cleverly extended along the walls of the house, with a piece of furniture propped up behind the audience to suggest that the theatergoers are sharing the space. There's also a bit of choreographed dance in the second half that uses a black light to turn the apartment wall into a stage. It would've been more effective, however, if this segment had been kept brief, with the music fading out; the joke is merely in the act of dancing, not in the way they dance.

It should be said that the performance seen for this review was on the first night of previews, and that the show was slated to open a few days later. If during the next set of performances the director is able to focus more on the setup of the dark material that is to follow and less on the comedy, he and his team could build a fine little show. In a city that often seems to be 50 percent actors, they've certainly got a captive audience.

Hell Is Other People

Surrealism works best onstage when it's introduced immediately (from the time the audience members take their seats) or gradually (as it works its way into the play's structure, slowly becoming more dominant). Because we live in a realistic world, we assume that what we see will be realistic, even going so far as to "suspend our disbelief" and accept a few pieces of furniture and a painted wall as someone's living room. At the Gene Frankel Underground, Nosedive Productions's The Adventures of Nervous-Boy (A Penny Dreadful) starts out as a monologue-and-scenes piece focusing on a twitchy social misfit who feels as if he's cut off from the priorities and anxieties of his fellow New Yorkers. The ambient sounds of subway cars and idle bar chatter fill up the awkward pauses in his conversations. But soon we realize this is not the New York we know. This is a distinctly more evil, more rotten Big Apple, and this clever "comedy-horror play" mixes insightful dialogue about loneliness with a lovely bit of ultraviolence and pitch-black irony.

Nervous-Boy is a freelance art designer whose job and lifestyle allow for minimal human contact. He makes enough money working for clients from home that he doesn't need a roommate, and he unwinds by drinking in bars where other solitary people do the talking for him. Though his personal choices seem to be made with isolation in mind, he occasionally speaks of escaping his general feelings of dread by rejoining the world, until a meeting with someone "in the world" reminds him why he shuns it.

Nervous-Boy goes out to meet his friend Emily, a narcissistic, cellphone-dependent actress who talks loudly about nothing, much to his disgust. Their evening continues when they go to an avant-garde performance piece in Chelsea (which avid theatergoers will sadly recognize and laugh at) and an after-party. The more he interacts with Emily, the more he relaxes and starts connecting to the world. But there are no happy endings in store for him, and his life starts to get stranger, bloodier, and full of devils and zombies.

Playwright James Comtois could have made an interesting but forgettable show about the alienation one can feel in a big city. Instead, he's chosen to heighten these themes by introducing supernatural characters and death in order to wrap the audience in the protagonist's alienation. It's a risk, and it's good that he took it. (If you can't take risks Off-Off Broadway, where can you take them?)

The plot is helped along by Mac Rogers (Nervous-Boy), who is believably antisocial but also strangely magnetic. His intelligence and sincere conviction make him at times admirable, at times pitiable, but always watchable. As Emily, Rebecca Comtois avoids caricature in her portrait of the silly young actress. The ensemble members play a number of characters, and they are adept at being hilarious in one scene and slipping into the background in the next.

Sarah Watson's lighting design employs a subtle redirection of light in order to indicate scene changes; it's a smart way to keep the show going and allows the action to "reset" without plunging the audience into total darkness. The much-in-demand Qui Nguyen of the Vampire Cowboys Theater Company has stepped in to do some fine fight choreography in an elaborate bar brawl. Oh, and a few surprisingly "dressed" characters will have pre-show program readers going back to makeup designer Cat* Johnson's bio once the house lights come up.

In the real world, freelancers who choose to can live like shut-ins, like the protagonist in The Adventures of Nervous-Boy. But in the real world, most of them aren't friends with stoner demons. For those who want to escape into someone else's personal hell, the Gene Frankel Underground provides an entrance.

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love

A glowing crimson heart adorns the front curtains of the June Havoc Theater, greeting audiences to the Abingdon Theater Company's new show, Elvis and Juliet. This clever visual aid, formed by two shining, carefully placed, and "gelled" spotlights, could also represent the combination of Fred Willard and David Rasche, two red-hot comedic talents who lend their brilliant timing and, yes, heart to Mary Willard's joke-heavy, plot-light script in this breezy production. The year is 1989, and newly engaged Yale seniors Juliet Jones and "Aaron" Lesley have spent their last month at college in a whirlwind courtship brought on by a mutual love of numbers and science. But before they can get married and take jobs in Washington, D.C., it's time to meet the parents. When Juliet starts asking direct questions about her fiancé's family, "Aaron" shamefully confesses that his first name is actually Elvis and that his father is a professional Elvis impersonator. Juliet, who we learn comes from Connecticut literary bluebloods, is surprised but agrees to come with Elvis to his parents' home in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, in the blue suede-furnished living room of the Lesley family mansion, patriarch Art (Fred Willard) and his wife Becky (a former exotic dancer) await their son's return from school. They are joined by daughter Lisa Marie (a vapid Madonna wannabe) and Art's brother Joey (David Rasche), who does a Rat Pack tribute act. Elvis's father is excited about his son's return from school, as he's booked them a gig at a hotel, where they'll appear as "Double Elvises."

Once the prodigal son and his intended appear, there's a clash of values, as the Lesleys fail to understand why their son wants to leave Las Vegas and become an economist. The clashes become more intense when the group travels to New Haven to meet Juliet's equally (but oppositely) offbeat family. Will Elvis and Juliet ever make it to the altar? When they do, will it be a little white church in New England or a drive-through chapel on the Strip?

Despite the titular homage to the tragic Shakespearean love story, there never seems to be any doubt that these two nerdy kids will make it. The script by Mary Willard (Fred's wife) presents only minor obstacles, mostly created out of bickering, that hardly seem insurmountable; one simply waits for the characters to talk themselves back into agreement. The story's structure seems more like a frame for larger-than-life characters and lots of jokes. They're good jokes, though, and a good cast has been assembled to tell them.

As the goofy young lovers, Haskell King (Elvis) and Lori Gardner (Juliet) are very endearing misfits who are both products of and completely different from their families. Willard plays Art as a misogynistic blue-collar guy who just happens to impersonate Elvis for a living, in a very subtle, straight-man performance. At the other end of the spectrum is Rasche, whose Uncle Joey lives like a member of the Rat Pack, using his booze-and-broads talk to mask the soul of a poet.

Christy McIntosh's Lisa Marie was the most over the top of the characters, but she sold the majority of her lines. (She was also the butt of the show's funniest joke; when the weight-obsessed Lisa Marie claims she is talented, Art responds that "dieting is not a talent.")

All of the actors have a way with comedy and portrayed very natural family dynamics, right down to the classic rhythms of arguing siblings. Director Yvonne Conybeare coaxed fine performances from her cast and made sure that no laugh was left behind. However, some of her staging was a bit too naturalistic and made for sloppy stage pictures. (While people in their living rooms don't think about upstaging each other, people on living room sets in theaters need to do so.)

During a long set change between the first and second scene in Act 1, the lighting designer employed motorized lights that swirled and changed colors and shapes in kaleidoscopic fashion. The audience laughed at this simple distraction from the heavy lifting going on behind the curtain. Elvis and Juliet definitely benefits from having colorful stars on display.

Bloomsday Revisited

Retellings of famous works can be a dicey proposition. If the original is well loved, a new version will face harsh scrutiny by the old version's admirers. Yet just as great movies can be made out of good books, sometimes another author's fresh take on a classic can streamline the story and illuminate the points that the source material tried to make. James Joyce's Ulysses, a large book dense with complex thoughts and literary styles, may be familiar to English majors and fans of Irish literature, but it has not exactly cracked the mainstream. The work itself is a reworking of Homer's The Odyssey, so it's appropriate that it, too, has received a makeover, courtesy of playwright Sheila Callaghan. Her version, Dead City, cuts down the number of characters and switches their genders, tosses out plotlines, and transplants the action from early-20th-century Dublin to late-20th-century New York. In so doing, her judicious pruning has allowed the germ of Joyce's (and Callaghan's) ideas to blossom.

"Blossom" is, indeed, the surname of the main character, Samantha, whom we follow over the course of a day. Her morning routine of making breakfast in bed for her singer husband Gabriel is thrown off by the appearance of a jasmine-scented letter from Gabriel's new (female) booking agent. Concern over her spouse's infidelity and the stability of their marriage informs her choices the moment she puts foot to sidewalk.

As Samantha goes about tending to obligations (chatting to her heavily pregnant neighbor, attending a funeral, having a business meeting), she keeps running into Jewel, the troubled poet daughter of her carpenter. Jewel has not gotten over her mother's lost battle with lung cancer and seems to be on her own fast route to mortality through a life of alcoholism and indolence. Samantha finds herself drawn toward protecting the young woman, while at the same time envying her independence from responsibility and people.

Apart from Samantha and Jewel, the rest of the cast fills multiple roles as the people whom the two main characters run into during the day. The performers work on a set of minimal props and movable stonewalls, assisted by projected images and text that announce each scene's location and time of day. Cameron Anderson's utilitarian set design works well with William Cusick's photo-realistic (and sometimes hilarious) projections to create a world that the audience readily accepts as both normal and the far edge of normal.

The strong acting ensemble carries the story through its wanderings in and out of the regular world, so that the digressions into fantasy and inner monologues seem natural. As Samantha, Elizabeth Norment is a strong and sympathetic lead who projects such a rich inner life that she seems too genuine to be merely a script's creation. Norment's commitment enriches her scene work with the other characters, so that even short exchanges have a sense of verisimilitude.

As Jewel, April Matthis is so tortured and unhinged that one starts to imagine the growls of her empty stomach and the stench of booze and body odor from her clothes and unwashed skin. (It's great to see a performer playing a homeless person who doesn't look like a college student in precisely torn togs.)

Callaghan's script makes many references to Joyce's book. Both set their stories on June 16 (also known as Bloomsday to the Irish writer's fans). Samantha Blossom (the Internet consultant) is a direct nod to Ulysses's Leopold Bloom (the advertising-space salesman), just as Jewel (the grieving young poet) is similar to the book's Stephen Dedalus (the grieving young writer). The most amusing and inventive parallel is the scene that Joyce sets on "the strand" (a term used for major thoroughfares in England) and that Callaghan sets in the Strand (the independent bookstore in downtown Manhattan). To Callaghan's credit, the allusions do not seem shoehorned in but work as organic parts of the new story.

The only part of Ulysses that didn't work as well in Dead City is Gabriel's final soliloquy. In the book, Bloom's spouse Molly is given a chance to express her own viewpoint on some of the events of their shared past. Since readers can see the number of pages left in a novel, they can readily accept the change of protagonist and adjust their sense of the novel's narrative arc according to how close they are to the back cover.

In the play, however, Gabriel's speech came across as less of a denouement and more as an extra scene that was ill-advisedly tacked on to the end. Perhaps it was because the audience members were so emotionally invested in Samantha that they were not interested in listening to her adulterous husband.

Well-written, original plays are not a regular part of New York's theatrical landscape. It's a delightful surprise when one appears, even if it's a revision of an already published work. Yet it's dismissive to think of Dead City as just another link in a historical chain. Sheila Callaghan's play is a unique and completely contemporary bit of magic.