Evasions

The truth may set you free, but not in Roadside, Maryland. Having its world premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival, Forrest Simmons's play is an insightful exploration of a truth so crippling to two characters' relationship that it transforms denial and sidestepping into art forms. George and Austin meet in a diner where the latter works as a waitress. Under false pretenses, Austin ends up taking George back to her apartment. Several cellphone calls from George's mother suggest that he has come looking for Austin for a reason. This plot point makes itself evident in the subtext fairly early in the show, though it's never plainly stated. The real strength of the play is watching two wonderful actors talk around it.

Director David Thigpen has whittled Simmons's script down to its barest essentials. Only a few bits of set dressing successfully signal each scene change. Despite the skillful staging, this is not a "high-concept" piece, and Thigpen wisely relies on the cast to communicate the text's subtleties.

George is an overgrown momma's boy—emotional and prone to tantrums when he doesn't get his way. He carries around a stuffed monkey that he hugs when anxious. He treads the razor-thin line between clownish and sympathetic; thankfully, Paul Whitty makes him a real person, pathetically funny and desperately lonely.

Austin, played by Dana Berger, wistfully conjures up a failed adolescence. She lives in a trailer paid for by her social worker and listens to a busted radio every night. Austin is a prisoner in her own town, and the experience has made her bitter, suspicious, and ballsy. She gives the character a wonderful potential energy—every action and reaction is different from the last.

Roadside, Maryland isn't a play about action—it is about the consequences of inaction. Both characters are trapped by their inability to see the truth about themselves. This self-denial allows them to connect on a genuine level, and the exemplary production suggests that change and redemption are possible, even in a small town such as this.

The Boys of Summer

Temperatures have reached record highs in the city lately, and many New Yorkers are dreaming of surf and suntans. For most, a day on the beach, away from this concrete oven, seems like a blissful fantasy. But the boys of Tybrus could potentially ruin the tranquility of such reveries forever with their new production, You're Out Too Far! Tybrus is a two-man comedy team that consists of Justin Tyler and Jonathan Gabrus. Tyler and Gabrus (TYler + GaBRUS = Tybrus) are the writers and stars of this show, a capricious look into the lives of Cooper and Riley, two eccentric lifeguards who act out "manly vignettes" to impress babes, fall into vivid dreams of homoeroticism, and release unspeakable bodily secretions into the ocean. If nothing else, Tybrus's production has expanded my vocabulary—I hope to use the word "hydrodump" in a sentence very soon. Whereas poop jokes and barf jokes are enough for some comedians, Tybrus will unflinchingly stick the climax of Good Will Hunting, as well as the profession of any poor sap in the audience, into the toilet too.

In fact, Cooper and Riley seem to be prisoners of Tybrus's sadistic sense of humor. There are enough gross-out high jinks in You're Out Too Far! to keep up with the American Pie movies, but to simply write this off as adolescent would do a disservice to the imagination behind it. Tybrus could have allowed these lifeguards to be one-note caricatures, but Cooper and Riley are two refreshingly divergent personalities.

Tyler's Riley plays his butch girl-chaser mostly straight, while Gabrus's Cooper is ill-equipped for lifeguarding. Among Cooper's many loves are "Dungeons and Dragons," three-day-old milkshakes, and keeping potato chips in his Speedo. This distinction between the characters allows Tybrus to form a hilarious and innovative narrative that never peters out.

Director Adam Pally obviously has a handle on Tybrus's sense of humor and has accommodated the two performers' strengths. As my undergraduate directing professor told us on the first day of class, the easiest way to become a successful director is to always work with brilliant people and never get in their way.

That said, one crucial problem with the piece was the use of UCB Theater's space. A huge black post in the center aisle blocks sight lines, affecting views of anything within a few feet of it onstage. Unfortunately, from where I was seated the "Lifeguard Station" was completely blocked. As a result, I missed what sounded like (based on audience response) a lot of good sight gags. Moving this action a few feet toward the audience members or away from them should solve the problem and would allow everyone the pleasure of seeing Cooper's "white and viscous" sweat.

The Upright Citizens Brigade has a long heritage of catering to unique voices and personalities in sketch and improvised comedy. Tybrus is a worthy part of this tradition, as Tyler and Gabrus provide stomach-turning tomfoolery of the highest caliber. And somehow this material, while at times disgusting, is as refreshing as a summer breeze. Tybrus will present You're Out Too Far! only two more times in August, so get your beach bags ready and wait for the whistle.

Taxicab Confessions

A taxi driver once told me that to get a feel for New York City, there is nothing better than taking a cab. Unlike riding the subway, a yellow cab puts the lives of eight million people on safe display through the windows, as you look out on the street corners and shop fronts. In La MaMa's studious production of The Lunatics' Ball, we get a sense of the city by looking into cabs instead. Adapted from playwright/poet Claudia Menza's book of the same name, Lunatics' Ball explores the aspect of New York life most familiar to permanent residents: coming and going. Nowhere else in the world do people fret so much about going a mile and a half to the east or six miles south. For this reason, New York City has developed its legendary transit system, which, let's be honest, doesn't always make commuting easier. Menza takes a cue from this unique phenomenon and uses mass transit as a metaphor for the city as a whole.

The play follows cabbie Mario, played with genuine NYC hauteur by Paul Albe, and the many strains of New Yorkers who occupy his backseat. Transvestites, voyeurs, and cowboys seek advice from our shrink in a box, and their peculiar stories also beg the question: Are there any normal people in New York City?

The answer, thankfully, is no. In La MaMa's thoughtful presentation, the wonderful cast fruitfully embodies a long list of New Yorkers, each with a unique reason for coming to the city and even some with pretty good reasons for leaving. Most of these characters, like all New Yorkers, are concerned only with getting to where they have to be in the next 10 minutes—not the next 10 years. Menza and director Harold Dean James play these characters against one another very well, and it's hysterical to see figures like Daniel Clymer's waiter, Josh, get service industry advice from the surly cabbie. "It's all about power," Albe's Mario growls. "For one hour, they got it and you don't."

The urban power struggle comes to a head—in, perhaps, the best single enactment of wish fulfillment I've ever seen—when Joy Kelly's sublimely courageous Chantal stands up to Lynn Eldredge's quixotic Fleur, the former being a past-her-prime lounge singer and the latter a gun-waving subway crazy. This scene climactically exposes the very real frustrations created when the hard-working middle-class commuter shares subway cars and park benches with the deranged and homeless. The scene is played masterfully and unapologetically by Kelly and Eldredge, who each bring humanity to what might have been a stale encounter in the hands of two lesser talents.

Stella Venner also deserves a special commendation—her character is a "listener," and almost a proxy for Menza herself, who absorbs the follies and triumphs of these city folk while never being allowed to comment on it. Venner's presence usually gave the audience and the other actors an alternative point of focus, which went a long way toward breaking up the long sequence of monologues.

Unfortunately, nothing else in the play lives up to that one exchange between Fleur and Chantal, at least in terms of energy and pathos. Two stellar actors notwithstanding, the scene between Clymer's "aw shucks" ranch hand Jimbo and Cezar Williams's vivacious transsexual LaDenise plays exactly like what it is: a random pairing of contrasting stereotypes for comedic effect. Likewise, Clymer's final scene as a burnt-out actor, Kevin, expresses well the difficulty of "making it in the big city" but takes far too many twists to reach its inevitable conclusion. Too often, Menza's characters revert to a dense, heightened language that isn't usually appropriate and is never as convincing as when her more developed characters, like Mario, talk.

The scenic and video design, also by James, is adequate if not a little underwhelming. The effect of using two TV monitors to simulate the cab's windows is effective, until the second and third and fourth time I saw the bright green truck, when the video looped. Otherwise the design elements were all a considerable success. The alternate video for the cab ride to the airport was an especially nice touch.

The characters in Lunatics' Ball are, as cartoonist Scott McCloud says, profoundly isolated in a city of millions—idle chatter is how they navigate the boulevards of life. I think, like Menza, I finally understand what that cabbie meant by what he said to me. It wasn't that I would get a sense of the city by riding in a cab; it was that he got a sense of the city by driving one. The city, in Menza's estimation, is its people. This play is like the people, too: at times long-winded, rough, and eccentric, but, most important, heartfelt.

Bard in the Park

It's sunset in Central Park, and a man in a golf cart is driving around and emptying the trash cans. A few yards away, a 3-year-old is having a birthday party complete with balloons, picnic lunches, and shrieks of joy and discontent. It all looks pretty typical of parks around the world. Except for the Count of Rossillion, who can be seen stealing away to Florence in hopes of escaping a forced marriage to a woman of a lower caste. Only in New York. More specifically, only in Central Park, where the New York Classical Theater produces free stagings of the classics. Right now it's Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, and director Jay Paul Skelton has conceived an afternoon of entertainment that not only ends well but has a beginning and middle that are lots of fun too.

All's Well is one of the Bard's more peculiar comedies. Even more unsettling than two offstage deaths before the curtain's rise are the male romantic lead, who is pretty unlikable, and the story's moral, which seems to be that you can weasel your way into marriage, the army, or political power, provided you know the right people.

The right person is the ailing king of France who, upon being cured by a physician's daughter named Helena, agrees to force the object of her affection, the Count of Rossillion, into marriage. But Bertram, the count, wants little to do with Helena and spirits himself away to Florence, where he joins the army with his serpentine pal Parolles. If All's Well has a claim to notoriety, it is the "bed trick" by which Helena switches places with another woman, Diana, with whom Bertram plans to be intimate. As a result, Helena becomes pregnant and satisfies Bertram's marriage demand: that she mother his child.

The fun in this production is its kinetic energy. As the characters country-hop from Rossillion to France to Florence and back, the audience is led around one of the many ponds in the park. Along the way, Skelton gives us glimpses of the unscripted in-between scenes, like the theft of Parolles’s drum and his eventual capture. Shakespeare had both of these scenes occur offstage, but here they add flavor and diversity to the proceedings. If the audience keeps moving, then the production has no choice but to keep from being burdened by the play's sometimes long-winded text.

The entire cast deserves special commendation for its focus and audibility in the midst of such a distracting, unpredictable environment, even if Vince Nappo's howling Parolles and Elena Araoz's fiery Diana are the immediate standouts. On the evening I saw the show, there were a few well-covered line slips that bespoke a strong ensemble whose members are willing to look out for one another.

Sadly, when the sun went down and Classical Theater members began pointing flashlights at the actors' faces, it distracted a number of people in the audience and probably the cast too. Though understandable, this device broke the play's flow during the final scenes. Shakespeare probably never envisioned one of his comedies being played in pitch-black night. Raising the curtain an hour earlier would solve the problem, although weekday audiences would have to race here from the office.

This summer, many will likely be racing to Central Park to see the Public Theater's Macbeth. While that's sure to be a solid production, waiting in line for hours to squint at Liev Schreiber in the distance may shatter the mystique of free Shakespeare in the park. If that star-studded and sold-out show sounds unappealing, New York Classical Theater's dynamic and more traditional staging of Shakespeare may be a welcome alternative for some audiences.

Mixed Bag

When this Friday or Saturday night comes around, do your immortal soul a favor and go to church. No, not the big one on Park Avenue. I'm talking about the one that congregates in the downstairs cabaret space at Theater for a New City. This worship service is called Suck Sale...and Other Indulgences, and Evan Laurence presides as the high cleric of indulgent absurdity. Suck Sale is actually a collection of four performance pieces, two scripted and two improvised, that were conceived, written, and directed by Laurence. As the title suggests, he doesn't conceal the fact that this is his own self-indulgent ritual. Whether audiences take part in it or sit in respectful silence is up to them, and probably not even a concern to him. Laurence and his cast are having so much fun that it becomes a downright religious experience.

In the first piece, Suck Sale, Mimi Dieux-Veau invites two vacuum cleaner salesmen into her home under the pretense of deciding who has the best sucking machine. Dieux-Veau, played with disturbing sensibility by Tanya Everett, is a combination of Donna Reed and a tribal priestess. Brian Ferrari and Laurence play the salesmen, and each recounts the startling experiences that have led them into the melancholy life of heaving Hoovers, before the two learn they've been brought together for a different reason. From there the sanity of the situation fractures, as Priestess Mimi uses her ability to control the salesmen's movements like puppets and then actually turns them into Punch and Judy puppets for a while.

The piece gives way to some shtick in The Sybil, in which Laurence takes two suggestions from the audience and improvises a 10-minute scene. He successfully conjures up three characters: a man, his wife, and, well, a hemorrhoid goblin that is setting off firecrackers inside the man's rear end. Each of the characters, amazingly, has separate character arcs, voices, and styles of movement, and Laurence plays the scene until its inevitable conclusion. Unfortunately, this was an early performance in the show's run (opening night, in fact), and the house wasn't as charged as it needed to be for this kind of improv.

The small audience perked up a little for the third piece, Edith the Head Takes Manhattan, in which Laurence plays a disfigured World War II refugee, Edith, who seems to have lost her entire body. Laurence plays this bit in a magnificent giant head puppet that is bigger than his entire body. I am not really clear if this monstrous creation should be considered costuming (designed by Mary-Anne Buyondo, Corinne Darroux, and Josefin Sandling) or props (designed by Kate Odermatt and—who else?—Laurence). But my admiration goes to the appropriate member of the design team, because the puppet was spectacular.

This section is "moderated" by David Slone, who reads from a text that describes Edith's journey from Europe to America. This text is not unlike the Mad-Libs word game; Slone reads a line of text like "When Edith swam across the Atlantic Ocean to America, she swam with..." and the audience decides that Edith swam "with mermaids." Laurence and Slone then would act out that scene. This sketch, unlike The Sybil, had the added pressure involved in completing the text Slone was reading, and unfortunately the giant head gag wore a little thin. Even so, the raw, creative ludicrousness of a gigantic head making love to Albert Einstein is something that demands respect both in its conception and execution.

The fourth and final piece, Four Better or Worse?, is the culmination of Laurence's sermon. Imagine Donald Marguiles's Dinner With Friends, except the two men have fallen in love with each other, and the two women seek spiritual enlightenment by summoning arcane tribal spirits that ultimately possess one and drastically age the other. Did I mention the mind swaps, the time-traveling fetuses, the multidimensional wormholes opened by alien anal probes (so that's what those aliens have been up to all these years!), or a messiah who is upset that his stigmata bleeds onto all of his alms money? Laurence crams every type of humor from the previous pieces into this final explosion of absurdity. It is all very raw and offers the appropriate sensory overload for the show's conclusion.

Aside from the lack of audience enthusiasm for the improvised segments at this particular performance, Suck Sale draws you in with the same morbid curiosity that attends driving past a car crash. Laurence consistently outdoes himself and takes the humor to another level, daring audiences to follow him. Even the lighting design and technical elements by Mi Sun Choi and Heejung Noh seemed to be improvised, and lighting cues that happened just a second too late added to the show's charming slipshod aesthetic.

Charming as Suck Sale is, it was clear the cast was a little nervous about whether the audience "got it." Smaller audiences are inevitably quieter audiences, and the lack of vocal response seemed to affect the timing and overall mood. There is a great wealth of strong material in Laurence's work, but a larger audience might coax out its absurdity better.

Mourning Light

Few topics today generate ill feelings like the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. With Theater for the New City's sometimes too ethereal remounting of Misha Shulman's Desert Sunrise, a proposal is made for a peaceful Holy Land in a play that uses grand spectacle and expressionistic techniques to communicate its ideas. But these tactics, though mesmerizing, come perilously close to swallowing up the story and its characters. In the southern deserts of Hebron, a cave-dwelling Palestinian gives temporary refuge to a lost Israeli. The men overcome their initial animosity by relating over the common elements in their lives: parents, work, music, and women. Especially women. Ismail's beloved is on her way to the campsite, and Tsahi's adulterous girlfriend has recently left him. When Ismail tells Tsahi he is planning to propose to Layla when she arrives, the men undertake an impromptu dance lesson. They are dancing when Layla shows up, and she is mortified to see her Palestinian lover dancing with an Israeli.

Layla proves to be less hospitable to Tsahi, but eventually they too connect over the mutual losses they have suffered in the conflict between their peoples. Soon, however, gunshots in the distance warn us that Israeli soldiers may have followed Layla to Ismail's encampment.

The three principals carry the weight of the play's subject matter well and don't shy away from the black comedy that it sometimes calls for. At one point, the two men enter into a morbid discussion of whose blood is the "cheapest" to Americans: Palestinian or Israeli. They eventually agree that Iraqi blood is the cheapest.

Haythem Noor's Ismail is a stalwart character of calm and gentleness; you believe he is a guy who hangs out with sheep all day. Jared Miller's Tsahi is equally melancholy and jubilant. Boisterous and quick to become emotional, Miller takes great care in recounting the tragic story of his character's life without flattening it into one note of sadness. And Alice Borman's Layla is a complex and masterful creation, both seductive and dangerous.

As playwright and director, Shulman is to be commended for bringing back this work after a successful run at Theater for the New City in 2005. A former Israeli communications unit commander, he presents a view of the conflict that is well grounded and unbiased. Neither side is glorified or demonized, and the characters are able to make choices as human beings rather than stereotypes.

Shulman urges audiences to look beyond the current situation to a better world, which is represented as a spiritual realm that we see in silhouette across a rear scrim. On its own, this shadow ballet serves as a bountiful representation of the Middle Eastern world, with animals and allegories that relate to the modern predicament. However, these spirited renderings threaten to overwhelm the story line and sometimes detract from the characters' interactions.

Dalia Carella's choreography consists of one- or two-person veil dances. Combining Arabic dance with Indonesian shadow technique and shadow puppetry, she presents many dazzling images on the scrim. Particularly striking are two birds of prey fighting over a small mammal, an obvious metaphor for the conflict over Jerusalem. These dances exist well within the barren elements of Celia Owen's set design. Covering the stage floor with sand suggests miles of empty land, and it is believable that Tsahi could become lost in this setting.

Along with his soulful score, musician Yoel Ben-Simhon "narrates" the play with interjected odes, originally intended for a chorus, that Shulman adapted from Aeschylus's Agamemnon. Unfortunately, this classical text doesn't always mirror the modern scenario as it should, and it remains unclear if these lyrical words are supposed to be the "inner voices" of the characters or some all-seeing god or both. The ambiguity only serves to confuse the audience.

Itai Erdal's lighting design, like the script, sometimes opts for otherworldly impressionism instead of naturalistic lighting; the only difference between day and night is an unfocused gobo of stars and a projection of the moon. It also feels like a missed opportunity that there isn't a representation of a sunrise in Sunrise.

The most regrettable of the piece's few missteps is at the end, where Layla meanders into the elevated language that is usually reserved for Ben-Simhon's narrator. It is hard to tell if she is praying or speaking to the audience, because the other characters seem to be able to hear her. This divergence in style leads to the play's emotional climax, where a chilling revelation is presented too hastily and is subsequently lost in the language of the ode.

Beyond these uneven points of style and design, however, it is difficult to criticize a work that seeks to educate theatergoers about things like Ta'ayush, the grassroots Israeli-Palestinian peace group Shulman belongs to. At best, this production is daring and provocative, even darkly humorous, in its exploration of a tragic and bloody dispute over territory. Shulman, Theater for the New City, and Ta'ayush demand education and humanity. The question remains whether their ideas will prove more significant than bullets. Desert Sunrise doesn't offer any easy answers.

Civil Unrest

The Civil War rages again in Doris Baizley's Shiloh Rules. On the eve of the Battle of Shiloh, one of the war's bloodiest battles, six women prepare in different ways: they organize their medical supplies, bemoan lost lovers, or sell Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. In fact, though, this isn't the real Battle of Shiloh. In Flying Fig Theater's spirited production, these women are preparing for a re-enactment. Shiloh Rules pits North against the South once more, this time against a backdrop of contemporary America. Representing the North are Clara (Kate Weiman) and Meg (Janine Kyanko). Clara is a seasoned re-enactment professional who has earned the title "the Angel of Antietam." Meg, her young protégée, is volunteering to earn extra credit as a nursing student.

For the South, there is Lucygale (Judie Lewis Ockler) and Cecilia (Cordis Heard). The former is a thrill-seeking FedEx tracker, while the latter is a "re-enactor" so engrossed in the world of the Civil War that no one has ever learned her real name or what she does for a living.

Meanwhile, Park Ranger Wilson (Samarra) stands to lose both her job and her dignity as an African-American in a re-enactment where some of the "soldiers" openly celebrate a society that made slaves of her race. And the Widow Beckwith (Gwen Eyster) gleefully imposes modern-day commerce on a historical event; selling food and equipment to both sides, she is a self-professed "Civil War re-enactment profiteer."

As the battle's action takes place offstage, the women dart on and off the field for various reasons. Those from the North portray nurses and "tend" to the soldiers' false wounds. The ladies from the South, however, are not allowed to actively participate in the battle and are forced to sneak around in Confederate soldiers' uniforms while they steal supplies from the Northerners. In both cases, the chief motivating factor is a race for the "Best Female Re-Enactor Award," which holds great prestige on the re-enactment circuit. Before long, the re-enactment gets out of hand: mock battles sprout up in parking lots, around port-a-potties, and at the park's visitor center. As the stakes (and potential for property damage) rise, the park rangers are called on to stop the re-enactment before someone gets hurt.

Directed by Flying Fig co-founder Michaela Goldhaber, Shiloh makes excellent use of the Gene Frankel Theater's space. The second act makes you believe the fighting is indeed occurring just outside the theater doors in the lobby. Onstage, where several locations and times of day need to be distinguished quickly, set and lighting designer Scott Boyd's choice to simplify the playing area with only a few elevated platforms is perfectly effective.

The cast, however, is the major reason for this production's success. Legendary screenwriting teacher Robert McKee once said you find out the true nature of a character when you force him or her to make decisions under pressure. Here, all six actresses carve out their characters vibrantly as individuals, yet each represents a demographic without generalizing.

Weiman's reserved Clara successfully builds to an amusing emotional breakdown after the organized re-enactment she prepared for so diligently deteriorates into chaos. Ockler's Lucygale pinpoints the comedy in her character's high-stakes situation by admirably exploiting a craving for excitement that is absent in the modern, workaday world.

As Cecilia, Heard gives an authentic portrayal of a 19th-century war refugee; her character could pass for Scarlett O'Hara's tough older sister. Kyanko's character, a squeamish Ivy Leaguer, gets accustomed to the "horrors of the battlefield," and when she is called on to treat an actual backfire wound without modern medical supplies, she plays the scene with joyful abandon.

Samarra's park ranger watches the proceedings with fresh eyes and continually provides a satisfying reality check to the absurd goings-on. Beckwith, meanwhile, is expertly played by Eyster as a no-nonsense entrepreneur. She takes puckish delight in exacerbating conflict between the other characters, both in the re-enacted battle and in the world of the play.

Alisha Engle's costume design further explores the contrast between past and present in the play and goes beyond antique costume rentals. There is a wonderful disclosure at the end, when we see the characters in their "civilian clothes" for the first time. Clara's subdued peach suit and Meg's college shirt tell us immediately who these characters were all along. In fact, Lucygale's Superman shirt might be a little wink. We're finally seeing their secret identities.

Unfortunately, three or four of the "wrap-up" scenes are likely to induce watch glancing. The battle's buildup and climax are fulfilling, but the dwindling action after that could use a boost or perhaps even a few cuts to get the play to its conclusion without fizzling out.

That said, Shiloh Rules remains a sturdy and whimsical piece. The comedy takes a backseat to the action and pacing as the play charges ahead with pointed social commentary and sardonic characterization. It is a proper salute to historical re-enactments, that quirkiest and most theatrical of American pastimes. This very easily could have been Steel Magnolias on a battlefield, but instead Shiloh plays by its own rules.

Gracefully Unhinged

The listing for Pennybacker on offoffonline.com reads, "Pennybacker is f*cking unhinged. Pennybacker is a cab flying off a bridge into the East River. Pennybacker is named for the greatest regional manager of a video rental store that ever lived, Adam Pennybacker, whose golden locks danced lyrically in the Virginia wind as he ran tapes to and from the new release wall. As such, Pennybacker is out to rearrange your alphabet, fool!" With such a cryptic and tantalizing description, this critic felt that his life would forever be lacking somehow if this—event? experience?—passed by uninvestigated.

Pennybacker is not really a cab flying into the East River. It's an improvisational theater troupe consisting of 10 members. To adequately assess the quality and success of an improv performance like this one, two questions must be asked. Is this group different enough from the limitless number of other comedy teams to add something significant to the genre? And, above all else, is it entertaining?

Whether entertaining or not, improvised comedy has a long history in this country. Professional improv as we know it today was nurtured here in the States, though the earliest forms came from commedia dell'arte players in 16th-century Italy. Such institutions as the Second City, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and Saturday Night Live, that mecca of late-night-TV comedy, have inspired many groups like Pennybacker in both Chicago and New York over the past 50 years.

Improv theater troupes act as a doorway into the bawdier and more playful regions of the theatrical experience. Improv doesn't aim to stimulate provocative thoughts in an audience, and it's not a herculean effort to evoke the emotional responses it gets. Nobody wants the doorway to our subconscious funny bone locked up tight until the critical moment of cathartic release. We want it to be f*cking unhinged.

Pennybacker begins very unspectacularly with the entrance of the company's members, who form a semicircle on the stage. A single-word suggestion is requested from the audience to get the ball rolling. On this night, the word happened to be "plunger." From there, the company members casually recounted a few experiences with plungers, including a surprising and delightful insight from Elizabeth Trepowski: "I clean my bathroom every day because it keeps me real." Keeping it real is what Pennybacker does best. With the evening's theme silently agreed upon, the company progressed organically into a series of scenes about toilets.

With their blatantly casual opening—reminiscent of a bathrobe-clad Tracey Ullman's signature sign-off—the company's members add honesty to the outlandish and historically over-the-top tradition of improv. They radiate an air of relaxation that suggests they would be performing even if the audience wasn't present. Though their online synopses and press materials suggest the more erratic energy of a developing company, their craft is polished and professional. The graceful system by which the members tag each other in and out of scenarios is closer to ballet than to SNL. There is no showboating. Each member is devoted to the success of the group as a whole. If a scenario begins to fail, another member quickly steps in to deliver the perfect punch line or redirect the scene entirely.

The scope and variety of ideas presented during this night's performance were impressive and diverse. For an evening that centered exclusively on toilet humor, office etiquette, and under-motivated Harvard students, the gags and situations were always fresh. There was never the feeling of "Didn't we just see this two minutes ago?" that can occur even in the upper echelon of improv.

Of course, Pennybacker is not exempt from the inevitable loss of focus that comes when a company member has gone too far. In one case, Lisa Reinke became trapped in two characters: an American woman who was impersonating a Japanese woman. This led to trouble interacting with other cast members, because some spoke to the American woman while others addressed the hysterically stereotyped Japanese character. After improvising herself into a corner, Reinke burst into laughter until she was "tagged out" by another member. Yet those who might think such a break in focus is unprofessional and not entertaining should remember that SNL cast member Horatio Sans seems to have made a living out of his inability to keep in focus.

In answer to the questions posed above, Pennybacker's uniqueness is subtle but substantial enough to be wildly entertaining. More important, the show is a resounding alternative for those who claim to be bored with more aggressively publicized improv troupes, and it is a fitting successor to the great companies of the improv underground. Once the alphabet of improvised theater has been successfully rearranged, it will probably spell "Pennybacker."

In a Frozen World

Theatergoers bold enough to brave the icy weather and take the L train to Brooklyn's Williamsburg will understand that The Snow Hen has found the perfect location. Situated away from downtown Manhattan and even a few blocks distant from busy Bedford Avenue, the Charlie Pineapple Theater has an isolated air. This isn't where your life happens; this is somewhere else, somewhere remote. Based loosely on a Norwegian folk tale, The Snow Hen expands on the story of a girl living in solitude in a snow hut after being abandoned by her parents. She continually fishes odds and ends out of the snow, and after a few years she's grown a plume of white feathers on her back. After the audience has observed the heroine's fascinating and bizarre existence, a towering stranger dressed in a long leather coat arrives, perhaps the only other person left in the world.

Director Oliver Butler has homed in on the play's haunting melancholy, and all elements of the production—design, sound, lights, performance—blend seamlessly into a cohesive whole. Besides Butler, the Debate Society's creative triumvirate consists of Hannah Bos, who plays the girl, and Paul Thureen, the stranger. As both writers and performers, they bring humanity as well as pathos to this farfetched and fantastical landscape.

From the moment Bos first slips her hands through the curtain and "invites" us into her strange little world, we become a part of her existence. Such is the miracle of her spontaneity that for the first silent minutes of the piece, as she picks her way through a multitude of props, there is no evidence of rehearsal or blocking. Instead, there is simply an ease of being. Bos never seems to be "acting"; she simply is, and her bleak yet somehow bright existence inside her snow hut seems as familiar to the audience as any childhood memory. With its laughter and tears, this life is a warm center of emotion within a frozen world.

Thureen's first appearance is shocking. Appearing nearly 9 feet tall in relation to Bos, the stranger is a monster bringing chaos to her world. Thureen wordlessly dominates the stage as Bos desperately tries to continue her life as it was before he came. But as he begins to discard layers of fur and leather (expertly crafted by Sydney Maresca), we see the man within the monster. The stranger seems to be susceptible to the girl's influence, and her spunkiness begins to revitalize him as he thaws out from the cold. Eventually, we realize that he is just as alone—and as vulnerable and capable of wonder—as she is.

The scenic design is both wondrously inventive and effectively oppressive. The child's Fisher-Price scale vividly illustrates that the girl has outgrown her home. More impressively, nearly every piece of the set is functional. There is an extension cord on the wall, and if one of the actors plugs in a hair dryer, it works. The floor has an ice-fishing hole, and if the actors lift the lid, there is water and a fishing basket. The wealth of gadgets and trinkets allows the actors to make discoveries throughout the course of the play.

Mike Riggs's light design presents an effective interplay between realism and artifice. Inside the hut, the lights are powered by a generator and fade as scenes progress. Frequent patches of sunlight add a stark contrast to the normally frigid tones outside. A quick glimpse of the northern lights, breathtakingly rendered, creates a greenish, surreal effect.

Nathan Leigh's sound effects include voice-overs by Pamela Payton-Wright and Adam Silverman, which occur naturally and heighten the loneliness. Every element of the design seems to have a slight echo, like music heard ringing on for miles. Or maybe the music is miles away, and we hear only the echoes.

The Snow Hen offers unique joys as well as sadness. To classify the play as experimental theater probably does it a disservice. Though some of the concepts and the performance style might be appropriate for that genre, the piece's overriding message about the need for shared existence will be accessible to anyone who sees it. Audiences may depart the theater feeling as if they've left a part of themselves in this mysterious little pocket of reality. As if somewhere remote and cold, a piece of us is cataloguing trinkets and hearing the echoes of a life long gone.

Tricks and Spirits

The veil between belief and disbelief is a fundamental element in the relationship between a play and its audience. If a play does its job, the veil should be transparent, allowing the viewer to move seamlessly from the real world into the fiction of the play. With Beyond the Veil, at Where Eagles Dare Theater, the veil seems barely existent, leaving all of the grinding nuts and bolts of the production visible to the audience. The production should stand out as a warning to theater artists whose scripts make promises that their budget cannot keep. John Chatterton's play follows a Victorian-era scientist, William Royce, as he sets out to expose the medium Florence King as a con artist. After the death of his wife and an inexplicable séance, Royce begins to believe that Florence and her mother may be more than parlor tricksters. Royce takes both women into his home and makes it his mission to scientifically validate Florence's abilities, even forming a bizarre sexual relationship with the ghost-like Trudi, a long-dead former lover from Germany.

In some places, the actors make very noble efforts. James Arden, Sean Dill, and Naama Kates, as Royce, the Vicar, and Florence, respectively, all bring a grounded sensibility to their characters, regardless of the sometimes farcical circumstances. Gregg Lauterbach has a tendency to ham and overreach as the foppish Lord Darnley, but ultimately his arrival onstage heightens the other actors' energy. Nora Armani's accent comes and goes, but her Mrs. King (Florence's mother) blazes to life in the second act. The pretty and likable Rachael Rhodes, playing Iris the maid, seems to have been given five or six lines as payment for doubling as run crew and manipulating the objects that Florence "levitates."

The production's real failure is the design and technical execution. Roi Escudero is credited as the sole designer of the scenic elements, costumes, art, props, and virtual effects, but she seems to be settling for things rather than achieving the production's true goals. Any interesting sequences building up to a ghostly visitation are ruined when the audience hears the slide projector click on and then realizes that the actors are marking time, waiting for it to project a brief and indistinguishable image of a ghost.

The script refers again and again to Royce's scientific equipment and his having brought this equipment into the main room (playing area), but it never happens. Even so much as a yardstick is kept offstage. There are numerous references in the text to lighting controls and a dial on the wall, both of which are tackily hidden just behind a jutting wall.

In the script, many of Florence's channelings occur by way of a spirit cabinet. The idea is that she is bound securely in a small space and therefore unable to produce the floating instruments and manifestations of ghosts that take place during the séance. As executed here, this device becomes laughable. The question of whether Florence is untying herself and flitting about Royce's study naked is answered when the audience can hear her disrobing and see her undoing the cords she was bound with. Most of Veil's special effects evoke only muted snickers when they should serve as a device to heighten the mystery and suspense. Even the simple manifestation of a chair being moved on its own volition is ruined when we see the "mover" brush the curtain just behind it.

Though the script suffers from some forced innuendo and double entendres, a lot of interesting character dynamics are at play. The repeated question of who is cuckolding whom reaches its crescendo at the start of the second act, and once the play settles into its more farcical purpose of producing the most elaborate con, the audience will no doubt find itself very engaged in what's going on.

Perhaps this production would benefit from a little variation in creative input. Here, the playwright also works as the theater owner, producer, and director. Any one of these tasks is taxing enough, and Chatterton seems to be juggling many responsibilities. The result is a production that looks thrown together, more along the lines of a "stumble-through" than a finished product. Also, with Escudero trying to fulfill all of the technical requirements, every area of design is bound to suffer. Separate lighting, scenic, and special effects designers might have focused more attention on the show's technical quality.

Beyond the Veil tries wholeheartedly to make daring choices but doesn't seem capably staffed to make the more spectacular moments seem smooth and believable. Tricks like floating instruments and projected ghosts are only able to trick the characters if they can fool the audience. Unfortunately, this Veil isn't thick enough to pull over anyone's eyes.

Catherine Filloux: Creating on a World Stage

 

Lemkin (John Daggett) and JP an informant (Christopher Edwards). Photo by Carol Rosegg

Playwright Catherine Filloux does little to hide her heritage. "My dad was born in the center of France, and he became an adventurer," she says. Likewise, her mother seems to have had her share of influence. "My mom was a very literate person who loved literature." Being of French-Algerian descent, her mother wrote poetry in both her native tongue and English.

Somewhere between the poet and the adventurer lies Filloux, the prolific author of such works as Photographs From S-21, Eyes of the Heart, The Beauty Inside, and Lemkin's House, which opens Feb. 9 at the 78th Street Theater Lab. Filloux's adventures in theater have allowed her to take on major international issues, such as genocide, that playwrights and audiences don't always want to confront. At the same time, her career has taken her across oceans and brought her back again.

She also has the sort of credentials an aspiring playwright can

only dream about. Filloux is the Fulbright senior specialist in Cambodia and Morocco, the recipient of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays' Roger L. Stevens Award, and the Eric Kocher Playwrights Award from the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

Her published work reveals her penchant for exploring the world. Whereas her father sailed from France to New York Harbor in a catamaran, Filloux uses her plays to traverse the choppy waters between nations and cultures. Something of an adventurer herself, she has had her work produced in Cambodia, France, Algeria, Turkey, and Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"We grew up in San Diego in this kind of schism of Algeria, France, and San Diego," Filloux explains. "So it made for a background of not really knowing where one belongs and feeling like an outsider."

Filloux's "outsider" status encouraged her to look outside of the United States for inspiration. "In France and Europe, there is more fighting and conflict than was visibly apparent growing up in this country. I was drawn to conflict, which is an appropriate thing for playwriting."

International and cultural conflicts are always at the heart of her writing. Eyes of the Heart is an exploration of the psychosomatic blindness that afflicted Cambodian women after witnessing the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in the late 70's. The Beauty Inside examines the Middle Eastern tradition of honor killings, where a woman who is raped and impregnated before marriage can be killed by her family.

"Both of these plays have repressive regimes and dire situations," Filloux says. "They're about tradition and family and utter evil. Honor killings are based on traditional tribal beliefs, but they happen all the time all over the world. They're happening right now."

Filloux's mission in theater, she admits, is to expose these evils. "For a while, these crimes were the 'best-kept secrets,' but they're not even secrets. They happen all the time, and nobody cares. And that's the problem on some level with doing this kind of theater. There's just a little wall that's been built up against these things, and to write theater about them is part of the challenge."

Her latest challenge is Lemkin's House, based on the life of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-American lawyer who invented the word "genocide" in 1944 and spent his life striving to have it recognized as an international crime. The play is set in Lemkin's afterlife, where his final rest is disturbed by those who have lived through modern atrocities.

"Lemkin's House comes from having explored a specific genocide, which is Cambodia, for many years and then realizing that genocide happens continuously all over the world and especially in the 90's with Rwanda and Bosnia," Filloux says. "These were enormous genocides."

Jean Randich, director of the 78th Street Theater Lab's production, points out that "a major task of Lemkin's House is to sensitize an audience to imagine crimes of both commission and omission that abet genocide."

"Catherine presents in short brutal scenes actual events from the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides," Randich says. "Interlaced with these are imagined scenes, sometimes politically provocative scenes, in which the reluctance of the West to get involved is addressed."

Randich adds, "One can't play the play without absorbing the historical background of three separate genocides-the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia."

Filloux's body of plays might suggest that she views such horrors objectively for the purpose of her writing, but that isn't the case. The strength of her work comes from the depth of her connection to those who suffer from these crimes. "I'll never get over the series of events that occurred with Rwanda," she says. "It was such a travesty on the part of the United Nations and its member states. In a hundred days, 800,000 people were hacked to death."

She finds great significance in juxtaposing the Rwandan massacres with Lemkin's quest to establish genocide as an international crime, which the United Nations did in 1949. As she notes, "The U.S. ratified Lemkin's treaty in 1988, and Rwanda occurred in 1994."

Still, Filloux understands audiences' reluctance to see plays that explore such topics as mass killings. "I think that people feel guilty," she says, "and they're not always able to enter those kinds of stories very easily." But in the case of Lemkin's House, she believes New York theatergoers are in for a different experience.

"What's interesting about Lemkin's House is that it's going to be, on some level, a comedy. There are a lot of ways of dealing with the subject matter," she says. "The comedy comes from the sort of absurd quality that occurs when we try so hard to do something against all odds. Those odds are human."

The 78th Street Theater Lab's production follows the play's world premiere in Sarajevo and a reading at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. "It's amazing because it was a reading, but I have to say it was one of the high points in my theater experience," Filloux says. "At that reading was the biographer that knows more about Lemkin than anyone. He was very supportive, and I was honored to meet him."

She finds the play's international production history most appropriate. "Lemkin believed in a world. The play is about forgiveness."

Filloux seems happy with her place in the world. Working in both Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway settings, she has found the perfect vehicle to pilot her course from country to country. As Randich says, "Catherine is a tremendously ambitious writer, which is both the joy and the challenge of the work."

But even stronger than Filloux's passions about injustice and atrocities is her devotion to her chosen art form, which she hopes will carry her through many more uncharted regions of the human experience.

"The love affair I've had with theater is really something that I feel is strong after 20 years," she says. Yet she also notes with some concern that "it's so sad on some level that the theater is challenged and fragile right now."

The future of theater, Filloux believes, can be found in the noncommercial scene. She has worked as a playwriting professor at Bennington College in Vermont, the New York University Dramatic Writing Program, and Ohio State University, where she seeks out fledgling writers who share her passion for exploring Lemkin's "world."

"I'm so attracted to young playwrights who make that commitment," she says. "To me that's exciting."

Lemkin's House, directed by Jean Randich, is playing at the 78th Street Theater Lab through Feb. 26. Performances are Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.smarttix.com.

Play Back

Did he or didn't he? Should he or shouldn't he? Will she or won't she? These questions broadly describe the major dramatic issues at the heart of Stephen Belber's Tape, playing at the Abington Theater and the inaugural production of the Underground Artists Theater Company. The company's mission statement says Underground Artists seeks to "illuminate new works and resurrect the old." Tape has been resurrected, but the experience is not entirely illuminating. The play's setup reunites old high school friends Vincent and Jon in a Motel 6 in Lansing, Mich. Vincent has made the trip to see Jon's film premiere in the Lansing Film Festival. Small talk gives way to Vincent's true motive in catching up with Jon after ten years: Vincent wants to know if Jon date-raped his high school sweetheart.

A heated argument leads to a tape-recorded confession of guilt. But before Jon can appropriately respond to this breach of trust, Vincent hits him with an even larger surprise: Amy, the girl in question, is on her way to the motel.

Jay Pingree's economical scenic design works well with Kogumo Dsi's lighting to lock the audience in the motel with Jon and Vincent. The Abingdon Theater's intimate, three-quarter thrust stage is appropriately used to show that no one is getting out of this room until a resolution is reached.

Jayson Gladstone (Vincent) and Benjamin Schmoll (Jon) present a persuasive portrait of a friendship that has been long smoldering with jealousy. Vincent is clearly the more dominating character in terms of stage presence and volume, but Schmoll gets a lot of mileage out of struggling to match his partner's intensity and intentions. Jon is like an ignored sibling: with a friend like Vincent, it's no wonder he became a filmmaker, since apparently that's all he could do to be heard. Randa Karambelas adds a logical center to the threesome as Amy, by fully embracing her character's prosecutorial side. She doesn't hesitate to render judgment immediately and emotionlessly on her two high school loves.

Tape is a study of the complex mechanics of guilt and responsibility. The text of Belber's script leaves little room for embellishment, and it would be a disservice to try to force a broad concept on the piece. That said, director David Newer fails to present a vital or unique staging. The argument between Jon and Vincent reaches its peak very early in the play and fails to rise or fall with any variation afterward. Newer directs in long strokes of "anger" and "remorse" without allowing the actors to explore the more intricate tones. The script's strength should be enough to carry any production, yet here the play never lives up to its multifaceted potential.

Instead, this production feels like a conservatory scene study, performed before a live audience. Each of the three actors is given his or her moment of focus. Schmoll's awkward apology to Karambelas for the rape, Gladstone's realization that his interference has further complicated the situation, and Karambelas's defiant gambit when she pretends to have both men arrested—these defining moments radiate with humanity in the hands of these actors. Here, the script is used as an educational tool to reach these moments for the cast, but nothing more. As a result, the play never gets its moment.

For those unfamiliar with previous stage and film versions of Tape, Underground Artists' production will serve as a good introduction to the material and to the questions Belber asks about digging up old skeletons. If the goal in producing this script was to provide an able vehicle for the freshman company's actors, it succeeds. But if Newer and his cast's intention was to perform a revealing "resurrection" of the play for new audiences, perhaps they should have left it undisturbed until they could present a more adventurous production.

Strung-Out Knockout

"They haven't built a mental institution that can hold me," Christopher John Campion declares, standing atop a series of stepped blocks upstage, like an Olympic marathon runner receiving the gold medal. Campion's defiant, drug-riddled words reverberate off the walls of the Paradise Theater on East Fourth Street. Suddenly, you realize that the walls aren't padded for soundproofing. Escape From Bellevue and Other Stories takes us into the infamous hospital's psychiatric ward as it follows Campion, the front man for the New York-based band Knockout Drops, through an autobiographical odyssey of drug abuse, rock 'n' roll, and rehabilitation. The play alternates between selections from Knockout Drops' latest album and an off-the-cuff recounting of the highs and lows of Campion's personal battle to get sober.

His life story is familiar to anyone who has seen an episode of VH1's Behind the Music. There is an unwritten and tragic rite of passage for many in the music industry, one that takes an artist to the brink of self-destruction, and Campion is no exception. The difference is that he has courageously decided to relate his story onstage. In four years, Campion managed to land himself in Bellevue three times, and he also became the first person since 1963 to escape.

His presentation skips among the more interesting anecdotes, with Campion playing himself and effectively evoking all the other characters. We learn of his drug problems as he recreates a trip to North Carolina, where, after a wedding, he finds himself in a men's room doing cocaine with a rodeo clown. The fallout from being caught by his girlfriend leads Campion deeper into addiction, alcoholism, and eventually homelessness.

After he announces he will kill himself, Campion's friends have him forcibly taken to Bellevue to detox for the first time. A struggle with the orderlies leads to a Thorazine injection, which leaves him incapacitated. When he awakens, he describes a cuckoo's nest of inmates and counselors worthy of the institution's reputation. After a few days of detox, Campion is released, only to begin the same vicious cycle again.

The second time he finds himself in Bellevue, Campion behaves himself to avoid the Thorazine, and through a happenstance of mistaken identity, he performs his career-marking escape. Though free from Bellevue, Campion remains a prisoner of his own demons until an intervention from his estranged brother sends him to Bellevue for a final time.

Director Horton Foote Jr. deserves a lot of credit for the piece's breakneck momentum. The incorporation of videographer Chris Cassidy's video interludes, which are sometimes more relevant to Campion's sense of humor than his story, adds a stimulating variety to the proceedings. Light designer Harry Rosenblum creates an interesting combination of lighting suitable for both concerts and a dreary institution like Bellevue, using very little equipment.

But the real star of the show is the music of Knockout Drops, which consists of Tom Licameli, guitar/vocals; Phil Mastrangelo, bass/vocals; Vinny Cimino, drums; Paul Giannini, percussion; and Campion, lead vocals. Standout numbers include "Vicious Freaks," a power anthem to burnouts and rejects everywhere, and "Wrong Turn," a quieter meditation on the cyclical nature of recovery and relapse.

It is fitting that Campion attires himself in a striped jacket, which is more appropriate for Barnum & Bailey than a rock concert: he is an able ringleader for this multimedia circus. With charisma and whimsy, he endears and distances himself in relation to the audience, capturing the mystique of an underground rocker without bypassing the heart of his story.

Escape From Bellevue will appeal to more audiences than those it puts off. Those already familiar with Knockout Drops will be pleasantly surprised to find added meaning in the music through Campion's self-deprecating monologues. Theater buffs will discover an ingeniously effective approach, which gives the work an edge lacking in most modern musicals.

Bellevue might not have been able to hold Christopher John Campion, but the Paradise Theater is a suitable lodging for his charisma, his music, and his story of redemption.

Good Grief

They say comic strips are a four-color funhouse mirror of reality. With Peanuts, Charles Schulz used four panels to reflect on universal childhood traumas. In Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, playwright Bert V. Royal returns the favor by holding up a mirror to Schulz's creation and giving the Peanuts kids teenage problems. His play finds the high school-aged CB lamenting the loss of his beloved beagle, who has been put down after falling victim to rabies. It seems the entire gang here has mutated into rabid versions of themselves. Matt, who grew up under a perpetual dust cloud, is now a violent germaphobe who will not tolerate being referred to by his childhood moniker, Pigpen. Tricia (Peppermint Patty) and Marcy are Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie types, though Marcy still calls Tricia "sir" every once in a while. CB's sister continues her search for identity, as a Wiccan; Van has turned to marijuana and Buddhism after being robbed of his blanket; and Van's sister is locked away in a mental institution for pyromania, and it doesn't look as if any number of 5-cent therapy sessions will provide her a way out. Finally, Beethoven finds himself the object of the ridicule and social misunderstanding that so often come with being a musical prodigy.

The subtlety of Trip Cullman's direction keeps these characters from being pigeonholed as mere stereotypes and effectively lets us discover each of their Peanuts counterparts, with a few hints from Jenny Mannis's Gap-inspired costuming. Issues of sexuality, substance abuse and self-discovery, common to adolescence, are deftly made more profound by our familiarity with these characters.

Off-Broadway could hardly hope for a cast better suited to depict the teenage experience. Eddie Kay Thomas endows his CB with the same frustrations, albeit more sexual than football related, that endeared his illustrated counterpart to generations of readers. America Ferrera, as CB's sister, gives a touching salute to the plight of younger siblings everywhere. As Van, Keith Nobbs engagingly captures the need for meaning beyond materialism. Though Matt's need for cleanliness and his homophobia may seem a little forced at first, Ian Somerhalder skillfully uses his character's obsession to drive the play's darker scenes.

Likewise, Logan Marshall-Green's sexually confused Beethoven provides an empathic center for the play. As Tricia, Kelli Garner vibrantly channels Anna Nicole Smith with a hint of Peppermint Patty without falling into caricature. Marcy remains a bespectacled, multifaceted enigma in the hands of Ari Graynor, and she is equally at home recounting the history of the spork and free-styling hip-hop beats. Van's committed sister appears in only three scenes, and Eliza Dushku doesn't waste them. She revels in the unpredictability of her character and avoids becoming a "you love to hate her" clich

Shades of Gray

I'm sitting on an extremely uncomfortable and upright couch in the smallish Dixon Place theater on Bowery. My girlfriend, Jenn, has instantly chosen a better seat. I agree to move to the more comfortable couch. Jenn briefly entertains the idea of changing seats again, and I veto the notion. I am the theater critic, and I'm letting my girlfriend dictate our seating preference. Well, enough is enough, I say to myself. We will sit here and watch the opening night of Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century. I will watch it impartially and keep an open mind. And I will not allow any preconceived notions I have of Spalding Gray to inform my opinion.

Josh Lefkowitz, writer and performer of Help Wanted, has made plain his admiration for the late, great playwright in all publicity for the piece. Now, here we are on our new couch, looking at a small table bearing the weight of a tasteful tablecloth, a small bottle of water, and about 30 or so pages of unbound typing paper. These items are heavier than they seem, for they carry with them the weight of a man's life—Gray's entire career and body of work. Lefkowitz better be ready to do some heavy lifting, I think to myself.

The strength of Lefkowitz's arms is not the concern here. He hefts a very heavy text on his own and even makes note of weightlifting in the piece. The instant shock of the first several minutes of the piece is that it is performed entirely within the modus operandi established by Gray, author of such well-known monologues as Swimming to Cambodia. Is this imitation or homage? I find myself, as Lefkowitz does many times in the script, asking myself, What would Spalding do?

In Help Wanted, the author details the story of his script's creation. In the two years leading up to its writing, we follow Lefkowitz through a couple of dead-end jobs, his 20th birthday on Sept. 11, 2001, and eventually a move to Washington, D.C., that results in his first legitimate employment as a working actor. At the story's climax, Lefkowitz comes face to face with his great hero, Gray, just months before the latter's death. Lefkowitz's own story and writing evidences the strengths that he praises in his mentor's work. Help Wanted carefully skirts "the balance between specificity and universality."

As a performer, Lefkowitz crackles on every page and every line. Whether he is embodying characters (like his girlfriend, his parents, and even Gray himself) or chanting a self-composed "Geena Davis" empowerment mantra, he radiates an air of relaxation and calm, a charming eye at the center of his hurricane-like coming of age story.

While reliving the familiar college exercise of writing a research paper in an hour, Lefkowitz openly admits that academic miracles of that nature occur only through "plenty of plagiarizing." On a broader level, he is addressing the question at the forefront of any audience member's mind: Is Help Wanted a justifiable work of plagiarism? Has Lefkowitz swiped Spalding Gray's medium (just as a critic might imitate Gray's monologue style when reviewing this show) to further his own career? That's what I was thinking when I left Dixon Place at around 9:30 that night.

On the way to the 6 train, we stopped at Botanica Bar on Houston Street so I could use the bathroom. Jenn noted that my choice of restroom was funny. On many nights we have visited Botanica. In fact, Botanica is where I took Jenn to introduce her to my friends for the first time, two of whom had decided they would get married on the bench just outside. Botanica is familiar territory in the sprawling, uncharted and unnumbered streets downtown.

It was there, in a haven of comfort on Houston, that my opinion of Lefkowitz's piece cemented itself. As a first-time writer, he is testing the waters of storytelling in a familiar pool. It is clear in the text and performance of Help Wanted that Gray taught him how to swim. Based on the precision and clarity of his strokes, the strength of Lefkowitz's craft should take him to Cambodia and beyond in the years to come.