F*@#ing 'A

We’ve all been there. A ticking clock on the wall counts the hours that you’ve been trapped in this small room, waiting for some sign. Waiting for the door to open and for your fate to be pronounced. You size up the people around you, who are all either a joke to be ridiculed or a giant to be conquered. Meanwhile, a woman dressed in a black leotard puts her head between her knees, her butt in the air and says “Butter Baby Basket,” over and over again. Okay, so maybe not ALL of us have been there.

But even if you’re not one of the thousands of actors diligently reporting to open calls in New York, you’ll find something in Push Productions’ hilarious Actors are F*@#ing Stupid that addresses humanity’s universal obsession with attention, praise and, most importantly, seeing the other guy fail. Don’t bother to look for characters connecting on any genuine level. As in life, so it goes in the vicious acting community — it’s every narcissistic moron for themselves.

Ian McWethy’s new play surveys the broader landscape of audition culture, by bringing into focus four actors at a volatile try-out for an unnamed MTV movie. The auditions in question are being run by ill-tempered producer Bill Lawrence (think Scott Rudin on steroids) and Doug, a writer/director who takes his dumb teen comedy way too seriously. When the A-list celebrity slated to star in the picture bails, Bill and Doug decide to cut their losses (and their budget) by casting two unknowns in the lead roles. Enter Amy, Jennifer, Johnny, and Steve: four actors, at varying levels of baseness, who will do anything to get the part.

A realistic sense of anxiety saturates McWethy’s characters, and you get the feeling that he’s definitely been through at least a couple of “cattle calls” in his day. The ambling way a polite conversation about agents, day jobs or technique can escalate into a shouting match within minutes is quite funny. More importantly, each character seems to represent a different school of “actor marketing.” There’s the one with rich parents, the one with nothing but looks, the one willing to sleep with any producer in town—you get the picture. You won’t find any Lawrence Olivier’s in this catty crowd. But these different… ahem… viewpoints give the play an unpredictable atmosphere, where potentially any character can pop off at a fellow actor for no more reason than that they’re more marketable.

Director Michael Kimmel and the discreet Ben Kato (who designed both set and lights) keep any signs of their handiwork to a minimum, preferring instead to let McWethy and the splendid cast tell the story. Thankfully, there was no distracting splendor in Kimmel’s practical environment — just a few necessary pieces of furniture. With the exception of at least two awkward scene transitions, the show clicked along without interference.

As actors playing actors, it’s difficult to imagine someone NOT having a good time in this show. Roger Lirtsman, Susan Maris, Heidi Niedermeyer, and Wil Petre all – of course – have an intimate knowledge of the world McWethy is addressing. No doubt, they have all met some pretty similar characters in their careers. While they all nail the humor and subtlety of the piece, Petre’s clueless Johnny is particularly genuine. As manic producer Bill Lawrence, the tremendous Tom Escovar is probably the star of the show and is always appropriately loud, sleazy and sexist. Josh LaCasse almost proves himself worthy of sympathy as Doug, but in the end he delightfully proves to be just another loathsome Hollywood hack. In fact, only Carrie McCrossen’s character deserves any actual compassion here, as the vigilant casting assistant and punching bag.

So, after years of hard research on the acting circuit, McWethy’s thesis-like Actors are F*@#ing Stupid arrives at an honest, obvious and entertaining conclusion. Yes, actors are probably pretty stupid. They work so hard for years just to get a job for one day, selling sneakers or pretending to be a murder victim. But don’t blame them! Producers are stupid, too - they throw billions of dollars at dumb projects that will only make them millions back. Don’t forget about the stupid directors and writers! If they're not on strike to demand more money, they’re egotistically revising history or toying with our emotions. And you know what? We pay top dollar for all of it. That’s the point. Sure, they look dumb, but we’re giving them our money.

I guess we’re the ones who are f*@#ing stupid.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

It takes someone with an intermediate knowledge of the past twenty years of comics to fully appreciate Roundtable Ensemble’s production of Chris Kipiniak’s superhero drama Save the World. In the interest of full disclosure, my day job is in the licensing department of one of the “Big Two” comic book publishers; so I was more than up to the task. But this enchanted hammer comes down on both sides, because I doubt someone who couldn’t recognize when this resourceful production cribs heavily from influential comic works, like Watchmen, and Squadron Supreme would enjoy it as much as I did. A psycho-political thriller, Save the World follows a U.N. sanctioned superhero team, the Protectorate. When half a dozen natural disasters bombard the Earth simultaneously, the Protectorate suspects that they might be connected. Just days away from installing a U.N. authorized third party government in Jerusalem; the team’s members find their heroic principles fraying under the pressure. The play’s seemingly innocent title actually reveals its bleak ideology: “How far are you willing to go to save the world?”

There are certain aspects of the plot that borrow directly from the classic comics mentioned above, like the notion of superheroes taking over a politically unstable country and a last minute twist. Yet Kipiniak (who has written a handful of Marvel comics as well) also introduces super-characters with truly inventive abilities and compellingly ambiguous ethics. Take for example the team’s leader Aon, an obvious send-up on DC’s Superman. Aon’s never-ending battle against evil is just that—never-ending. As would probably be the case with such an obligated and powerful being, we never actually see Aon. He’s simply too busy to meet up with the rest of the team at headquarters. Nevertheless, Kipiniak shapes Aon into strong “absent character” through other characters’ remarks about him.

Superhero antics are not naturally suited for live theatre, so director and developer Michael Barakiva scores points for his success. Wisely, the super powers on display all function based on other characters’ reactions to them, like Stagger’s ability to slow down time or Quake’s invisible seismic blasts. The play’s few action scenes are impeccably staged, and there is a pervading sense of dynamism in the way Barakiva got the script on its feet.

The scenic, lighting and sound designs support Barakiva’s zippy staging. Shoko Kambara’s set design aptly recalls the “Hall of Justice” from the Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon. Scaffoldings upstage and on both sides allow the cast to depict different locations with ease. Shane Rettig and Nick Francone, as the sound designer and lighting designer respectively, work hard to make up for the lack of visible super powers. Umbra’s shadow powers, for instance, get their own mysterious look and sound. It’s all very convincing.

Thanks to Oana Botez-Ban’s sharp, but restrained costume design, each character’s super-duds ably classify their powers and personality; an obvious stand out being Stagger’s spectacular red/orange business suit. The black sash that Legend adds to his costume to honor a fallen comrade is a particularly endearing touch. The only costume that didn’t measure up is Future-Knight’s supposedly “advanced” suit of armor. Clearly a child’s plastic Halloween costume, the cheap getup made it very difficult to buy her as a legitimate superhero.

Outer trappings aside, all the cast members render their characters with great humanity. There aren’t really “good guys” and “bad guys.” These are morally conflicted people trying to do good or trying to live up to their potential, but failing in a big way. Christine Corpuz, who plays the uncertain Quake, brings this struggle to life very well. Again, the dapper Stephen Bel Davies as Stagger, the team’s English strategist, added just the right kind of zing to the proceedings; Davies hides his character’s comprised moral compass under his refined demeanor splendidly.

Kipiniak has certainly crafted a mature story, opting for cerebral “Biffs!” “Bams!” and “Zowies!” over the traditional kind. This production isn’t really appropriate for kids, which both helps and hinders. My only fear is that people who don’t share my enthusiasm about superheroes are going to feel put off by all the intensely serious melodrama. Not me— what interested me in seeing this super heroic tragedy on stage was its unexpected resonance with Greek and Shakespearian tragedies. Like those plays from antiquity, Save the World persuasively examines the quest for power and its dire consequences.

Cardboard Catharsis

Fictional human cruelty is a lucrative subject for the theatre. There is something righteous in our need to witness representations of horrific acts by some theatrical barbarian, and then see that barbarian brought to justice in the final act. In Bread and Puppet Theatre’s arcane new production, The Divine Reality Comedy, the infamous political action group attempts to dramatize the plight of prisoners indefinitely detained in Guantanamo Bay. The point is that there can be no catharsis as the end of this piece—the only barbarians that can be brought to justice, according to Bread and Puppet, are us. With a structure on loan from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bread and Puppet’s Divine Reality Comedy breaks down into the three sectors of the afterlife: Paradise, Purgatory and the Inferno. No fewer than thirty-four cast members use cardboard cutouts, instructional drop cloths and remarkably engineered puppets to teach audiences the inner workings of each realm. Except this isn’t Dante’s afterlife; Bread and Puppet intend for these short skits to present a compelling metaphor for the contemporary United States.

Heaven is a land of gross (but nonetheless policed) excesses whose citizens wallow in their status at the top of the divine ladder. The ringleader of the “Paradise” is a vaudevillian scarecrow Santa Claus, who takes sardonic glee in the oppression of his subjects. “Post-Paradise,” which apparently didn’t make the cut in Dante’s version, is a dainty cardboard horse dance. In “Purgatory,” all metaphors are abandoned in favor of hard facts about detainees in Guantanamo. Finally, in “Inferno,” we witness disquieting stage tableaus representing the cruel photos taken of detainees.

While Bread and Puppet’s new piece is visually arresting, even heart wrenching at times, it is also frustratingly opaque. While I don’t mean to diminish the efforts of Peter Schumann’s team in tackling these issues, it cannot be ignored that the execution is usually too casual and just plain confusing. For instance, the material is handled with very high levels of whimsy, like the Santa-crow and the horse dance. This is fine, but when wanton silliness commandeers the stage for too long – as in the horse dance – audience members might just give up on the piece. It is likely that the horse dance was an intensely profound metaphor that merely went over my head. Even so, it was far too silly for far too long.

Speaking of metaphors and silliness, both of these elements seem to gallop off with the horses once we get to “Purgatory.” After some highly effective non-literal recreations of society in the “Paradise” segment, the company jarringly presents clinical particulars about the indefinitely detained. This shift in mode quickly sobers the audience, but it also disrupts the overall unity of the piece. Had I seen the “Paradise” and “Post-Paradise” segments in another sitting, I would have never believed that they were part of the same play as “Purgatory” and “Inferno.” While each segment of the Divine Reality Comedy keeps true to its own tone, none of them sync with any of the others.

In spite of this unevenness, one can easily appreciate the jovial air with which the massive cast of volunteers commits to the material and the Christmas Pageant Aesthetic of its choreography, puppets and set pieces. The staging by no means attempts to preserve the suspension of disbelief. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are denoted by cardboard signs scrawled out in Sharpie marker. When a cast member dons one of the vividly imagined and executed puppet costumes, like the “Paper God,” the change is performed on stage without mysticism. The stoic witnesses to Guantanamo are not sent careening by their response to the horrific acts being committed in front of them, but rather by a push broom.

One scene in the “Paradise” segment offers a glimpse of Bread and Puppet at their best. As the cast members walk from one side of the stage to the other, they find themselves occasionally pursued by two giant black boots (made of cardboard, of course). The cast members swerve to avoid the boots, or else change their direction altogether, ever mindful of the presence of authority but determined not to let it interfere with their lives. Finally, the boots have backed the entire cast into a corner of the stage and will soon be treading on the lot of them. Then, one cast member clearly yells out “Hey!” A few more sporadic shouts follow. One by one, the tyrannized citizens of Paradise shout “Hey,” until they are shouting together as one voice. The power of this determined chorus backs away the boot heals of oppression, and the cast is free to walk in peace again.

This simple but dynamic scene galvanizes the purpose of Bread and Puppet, not only in regards to the Divine Reality Comedy, but also regarding the company’s entire manifesto going back to the Vietnam era: the ghastly truths of the world are sometimes best understood in their plainest terms. While I wasn’t enraptured by this particular piece, I recognize and applaud the work for its willingness to stand up and shout “Hey!” at the revolting events taking place at Guantanamo Bay.

The (Devilish) Assault of Reason

In the preface to his universally adored novel The Screwtape Letters, Christian author C. S. Lewis claims that “there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Now the author’s own “unhealthy” interest in devils and their practices has inspired the Fellowship for the Performing Arts’ sublime stage production at the Theatre at St. Clement’s; the only excess of which is the team’s intense delight in reinventing of Lewis’ text for a new audience. For the unfamiliar, Lewis’ deviously clever novel is comprised of thirty-one letters from a learned demon named Screwtape to his bumbling nephew Wormwood, who is attempting to win a mortal’s soul over to the “father below.” As it turns out, things are very academic in this Oxford Fellow’s vision of the netherworld. Every demon must graduate from an institution known as the Tempters Training College before heading to Earth to harvest souls for demonic consumption. Screwtape, now retired after an illustrious career, serves as his naïve nephew’s mentor in the art of steering human thoughts away from “the enemy” and (unknowingly) toward eternal oblivion.

When Screwtape was first published in 1942, Lewis’ keen insights into religion, war and the general state of the world served as a piercing reprimand to worldly cynics and devout believers alike. One can’t ignore the implications of mounting a production like this in the current climate of religious schism. A morbid curiosity might lead some contemporary audience-goers to consider what Screwtape would have to say about partial-birth abortion, for instance. The devil only knows.

This stage version by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean presents a complete and compelling depiction of Lewis’ snarkily astute narrative. Each letter to Wormwood is dictated by Screwtape (played by McLean) and dutifully transcribed by his demonic secretary, a necessary and helpful theatrical convention named Toadpipe (played by Karen Eleanor Wight). This allows Screwtape to strut about his study without vanishing into the physical business of writing, which is something that might have meant Loveletters-esque damnation for the piece. Undoubtedly, Fiske and McLean have performed some generous cutting and pasting of Lewis’ text. Most notably, their edits energize the last twenty minutes of the production.

Fiske directs Screwtape in a broad, fantastic style, calling to mind the quixotic milieu of film directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. The advantages of adapting the text and then directing the adaptation are clearly evident; all of Fiske’s stage conventions seem to have been custom built into the narrative. For instance, the process of sending and receiving letters involves Toadpipe scaling a serpentine ladder that extends the full height of the stage and waiting for a bolt of energy to pulse into a suspended mailbox. This theatrical Rube Goldberg is just preposterous enough to add a dash of necessary sorcery to the piece, but is executed so unpretentiously that it enhances Lewis’ text without distraction.

Fiske is fortunate to have this far-fetched exhibition rendered by capable artists like scenic designer Cameron Anderson, light designer Tyler Micoleau and sound designer Bart Fasbender. When you hear the words “one-person show,'' the expectation for technical design is (perhaps unfairly) very low. Imagine the glee in discovering that this one-person show takes place on an intensely raked stage cantilevered above a pool of fog, that it builds atmosphere with appropriately disturbing soundscapes in every scene and that it occasionally elicits mesmerizing explosions of lightening and hellfire. More importantly, the technical wizards implement this sensory icing with honors.

Of course everything hangs on Max McLean, who assails Lewis’ text with more politician than perdition. It is fitting that Screwtape frequently cites “jargon” as the best tool in a devil’s repertoire, because McLean’s ruthless command of the language alone proves enough to entertain. Even the demon’s exaggerated pronunciation of his own name betrays the aristocratic zeal of a Charles Dickens villain: “SKAH-ruuuue-WAH Tay-PAH!” McLean is less convincing, however, when the script calls for Screwtape to descend into bestial fury. Some of these snarling moments teeter on the brink of parody, but thankfully McLean always quickly reverts to his droll center. As the significantly lower-caste demon Toadpipe, Ms. Wight carries out her role’s growling and bone-gnawing with undomesticated charisma.

This disarming production of The Screwtape Letters, perhaps the most interesting piece of reverse-psychology in literature, will no doubt provoke the same theological musings among contemporary intellectuals that Lewis intended half a century ago. We must ask ourselves: are cynical pride and dismissive self-delusion really the “gradual path” to Hell?

If so, a lot of us are probably… well… screwed.

Round and Round

Television producer Joss Whedon recently suggested that people keep waiting for the proverbial dust to settle in their turbulent lives, only to realize that the settling dust is actually their life going on. Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio, the masterminds behind Troika Ranch's Loop Diver, certainly seem to echo Whedon's sentiment in their fascinating new production at the 3LD Art and Technology Center. In this modern dance presentation, the choreography is enhanced by strong multimedia elements, and each ingredient amplifies the central theme—the creation, execution, and ultimately destruction of patterns, or "loops," in people's lives. Six dancers garbed in subdued black move through an open playing space, which is interrupted only by three large projection screens. As the performers whip feverishly through the space, it takes only a few cycles to realize that their movements follow a very strict pattern. Each location, posture, and pose is rigidly defined.

The choreography hints at narrative threads, such as two performers who might represent lovers. We're not supposed to know the particular emotions behind their movements specifically—each caress, advance, or rejection is executed as if the players were robots pantomiming the human experience. As the piece progresses, the lights change slightly, and the performers pick up their pace. Then something tremendous, yet simple, happens. Two of the usually nimble performers violently bump shoulders as they pass each other. Simultaneously, the music becomes distorted. From there, the "loop" deteriorates into anarchy.

At first listen, the music is unspectacularly digital—seemingly random beeps and blips occasionally corrupted by static. Likewise, there is a simplicity to the performers' movements that might suggest an uninspired choreographer. But both of these initial conclusions would be wrong. Astoundingly wrong.

While Stoppiello receives billing as the head choreographer, two unique architects also guide the players' movements. EyeWeb and Isadora, two revolutionary computer programs, use cameras at either end of the performance space to map the performers' movements. The programs (one created by Coniglio) interpret these movements to create the multimedia elements of the show. These programs govern practically all of the musical and video elements, and in turn, the performers react to each change in the elements by improvising slight variations on their main choreography. These improvisations ultimately inform new media elements in the program, which inform new improvisations, and so on and so on.

This staggeringly innovative convention appropriately expresses Loop Diver's theme of incorporating disorder into living patterns. Does it work? At the risk of sounding naïve, the "loop" repetition seems too redundant in some portions of the show. Seeing the same dance sequence 20-plus times is part of the experience, but it doesn't always feel new or necessary. Eventually, you yearn for the slight deviations to become more dramatic.

About halfway through, the performers speak garbled sentence fragments into microphones. Curt phrases like "Impossible to discard" and "Change, don't change" read like verse poetry and also intensify the central concept. Still later in the piece, small groups of performers take center stage for short vignettes. Unfortunately, some of these solo dances went on too long to retain interest.

Assigning credit for the choreography is difficult. Stoppiello certainly deserves most of the kudos, but the performers are also credited with the creation of the movements. The staccato, robotic movements effectively convey the automaton-like mind-set in which people carry out routines. This provided some comedy later in the piece, when performers would find another person in their spot and would bump them and back up repeatedly, like a toy robot bumping a wall. Another excellent bit involved the performers desperately trying to discard their clothing but ultimately finding themselves unable to.

The piece requires that none of the performers stand out, and none do. Each is fully devoted to the style of the piece, and hearing them huffing and puffing as the movements get more intense only draws the audience in further. In addition, they all affected mindless expressions very well. Robert Clark, Jen (JJ) Kovacevich, Johanna Levy, Daniel Suominen, Lucia Tong, and Benjamin Wegman deserve praise for their commitment and ardor.

Coniglio's video projections are quickly edited and efficiently disorienting. In some nice moments, the performers move around the screens while videos are playing and cast striking shadows. The lighting design, by David Tirosh and Jennifer Sherburn, was minimal but proficient.

What Loop Diver lacks in grace it makes up for with originality and scope. Normally, modern dance, like abstract painting, elicits only an immediate emotional response. Troika Ranch's production certainly evokes that initial reaction, but it also manages to provoke interesting thoughts about the nature of our routines and habits. Perhaps the most profound idea: if the patterns in our lives are forged by our reactions to previous patterns being ruptured, who's to say—when the dust finally settles—that any true patterns exist at all?

Romance and Rebirth

Self-professed "storyteller" and two-time "Best in Fringe Festival" winner Antonio Sacre returns to the New York International Fringe Festival with his first new work in five years. This undeniably entertaining performance, Rise Like a Penis From the Flames—A Phallic Phoenix Story, chronicles Sacre's adventures with love, fame, and faith during the intervening half-decade. Though his audaciously (and misleadingly) titled monologue only concerns itself marginally with mythology and even less so with male anatomy, Sacre's piece frankly addresses many aspects of contemporary romance. As he recounts the story of his relationship with his wife during her rising acting career, we are led through tangential side stories. These vignettes don't inform the main narrative very much, but some hilarious episodes—like Sacre directing disinterested Los Angeles high school students in a production of Antigone aptly counterpoint the superficiality of his wife's new life in the movie biz.

Sacre's performance certainly confirms his day job as a storyteller and teacher in elementary schools. He describes each embarrassingly adult situation—like failing to pick up a girl at a singles club—as innocently as if he were in a fairy tale. Sometimes this juxtaposition works to great effect, but occasionally this wide-eyed mushiness threatens to cheapen his story's more adult themes, as evidenced in his lengthy, mawkish sermons dedicated to his wife.

While Rise is more schmaltzy than its misogynistic title suggests, Sacre's earnest account provides much insight into modern romance, with all its absurdities and calamities.

Note: This production is part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

Teenage Wasteland

Vanity. Bulimia. Teenage decadence. Depressing? No, fabulous! Produced in conjunction with the satirical celebrity-gossip Web site Jossip.com, Métropole Ink's glossy production of The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero warns about the gross excesses of teenage life inspired by Lindsay Lohan and other lawless starlets.

Marissa Kamin's play, much like the films Thirteen and Mean Girls, chronicles the decline of a studious and morally upright high school girl, whose desire to be popular leads her into a vapid existence where she's consumed by sex, drugs, and eating disorders. This production differentiates itself from its cinematic predecessors by integrating humorous headlines from Jossip.com along with real blog entries from teenage girls.

The innocent and nameless lead girl (played by Gillian Jacobs) receives coaching from Superstar, a Paris Hilton-like starlet and the voice of coolness, who convinces Jacobs to binge and purge herself into a size zero dress and, thus, into popularity. Jacobs and her "best friend forever," played by Anna Chlumsky, weather the harsh road toward graduation, which forces some typically difficult decisions on them. Should I have sex with my boyfriend? Which colleges should I apply to? Will it make my rear look smaller if I substitute pills and booze for food?

Throughout, Kamin counterpoints the fictional story with several revealing entries from actual blogs, which are delivered by Chlumsky. Meanwhile, Jacobs’s extracurricular partying and her illness take a toll on her studies. She meets with big disappointments and, ultimately, a real-life tragedy, on which Kamin based the play.

Kamin's script crafts a vivid picture of teenage angst, but it has some trouble reconciling its more satirical moments with its PSA-style melodrama. For instance, the scene in which Jacobs learns how to gag herself to induce vomiting is played for laughs, while the repercussions of this disorder are presented in a serious, cautioning manner. Kamin also laces her script with funny pop-culture references, like a line that suggests celebrity culture is done with the likes of J-Lo and is now "all about the Jessicas"—as in Alba, Biel, and Simpson.

While some current references generated laughs, other quips that mention Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton—seemingly oblivious to the former's death and the latter's recent re-imprisonment—seemed outdated and were met with awkward silences. The play's ending came out of nowhere, though it no doubt was included to emphasize the message that bulimia and vanity are bad while academia and wholesomeness are good.

Ben Rimalower stages the play in broad, alluring strokes. Projections, dance numbers, and a hip soundtrack provided by DJ Brenda Black ratchet up the script's trendiness. Rimalower obviously enjoyed staging the script's more vaudevillian scenes, where Jacobs imagines herself the author of a best-selling memoir or the star of a reality-TV show. These interludes express considerably more energy than the script's less fresh narrative scenes.

Likewise, Wilson Chin's metallic scene design and Ben Stanton's colorful light design suggest a swanky urban nightclub, even when the characters are in a bedroom. Since the two leads evaluate their significance by their ability to get into those kinds of clubs, it is an appropriate location for this satirical docu-dramedy to take place. Rimalower and his design team delayed the opening by a few days to work out some technical kinks, and they clearly took that opportunity to shine up the production's aesthetic aspects.

The exceptional five-person cast is the highlight here. Jacobs, as the angst-ridden heroine, accurately illustrates a high school experience familiar to teenage girls, with humanity and the requisite explosive emotions. Chlumsky particularly excels in her blog entry monologues by assuming various dialects to distinguish between different real-life girls. These roles, along with her B.F.F. character, afford her a fine showcase without devoting an excessive amount of stage time to her.

Kate Reinders's Superstar acts as the glamorous Greek—or chic—chorus in these proceedings, and she does so with lots of peppy vamping and charming pop-culture philosophizing. She previously played Glenda the Good Witch in Wicked, and that association only strengthens her role here as a demented "fairy godmother." Brian J. Smith and Christopher Sloan round out the cast by playing all the necessary male roles. Smith plays it uncouth as Jacobs's flaky boyfriend Jake, and Sloan twinkles in a scene as a female college tour guide.

Inventively staged and well intentioned, The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero achieves the "effortless perfection" its lead character so desires in every aspect except for its slightly uneven script. Regardless, this play serves a noble purpose in showing teenaged girls (and, sadly, too many Americans) that there are more fabulous things than being skinny, popular, and famous.

Strange Bedfellows

Strong-willed women are very much a part of the American political landscape, and one in particular as the 2008 presidential election approaches. Gotham Stage Company's solid production of Randall David Cook's Fate's Imagination offers both a look into the family life and history of a Hillary Clinton-ish presidential hopeful and some daring speculation on what might have made a woman like Hillary into such a political powerhouse. Cook's unfortunately titled play is about freelance writer Brock, who struggles to find his political identity as the son of a powerful New York senator, his mother Susan. Like Hillary, she has her eye on the White House. Brock's late father was also a senator—and, in another analogy to the Clintons, an adulterer. Late one night, an older woman, Lilah, approaches Brock on the street and says he strikingly resembles a long-lost lover. Then she bluntly asks him, "Do you want to go back to my place and fool around?"

To Brock, this chance encounter could be a novel-worthy "life experience," so he agrees. Soon, the two are involved in a passionate love affair. Unfortunately, it won't do for a presidential candidate's son to be dating a woman 30 years older, so Momma intervenes. Upon confronting Lilah, Susan discovers that Brock's "chance encounter" was anything but—Lilah is actually someone with a grudge and some pretty lurid political ammunition to use against Brock's parents.

Cook's play is tightly structured, with only a few elements that don't work. There is some very good dialogue, like the frank line above, but a few lines seem as if they were forced into the script. For instance, when Lilah and Brock are talking about politics in her apartment, Brock suddenly exclaims, "Words can be more powerful than missiles!" That statement, blurted out so passionately during a quiet moment, hardly seems natural. Also, a scene where Susan speaks to her dead husband on an airplane is difficult to accept as realistic.

Despite the few bad lines, the script's overall voice is hip and relevant. In some of the best scenes, Block addresses the audience through his blog entries, where he speaks casually about both his new relationship and his desire to enlist and join the fighting in Iraq. These scenes are intimately truthful, and actor Jed Orlemann's delivery here is especially compelling.

Director Hayley Finn has wrapped Cook's script in a contemporary package that is an interesting cross between naturalism and high style. As such, the characters move and interact very unaffectedly in the love scenes between Lilah and Brock, while Susan's public appearance speeches are done almost entirely in strobe lights, to simulate camera flashes. Finn uses this dichotomy to great effect throughout, relying on strong design to keep the scenes crisp.

Robin Vest's innovative scenic design is a fairly realistic one-bedroom apartment, with some handy flourishes that facilitate the other scenes. When Susan is on an airplane, a small circular picture frame on the wall next to her lights up to simulate an airplane window. Aided by light designer Lucas Benjaminh Krech's cleverly placed lights, Finn's team manages to establish different locations very well. Lilah collects old photos, and the walls of her apartment are covered with these framed pictures. Vest and projection designer luckydave create some nice effects by projecting small images, like Brock's blog or photos taken of Susan, into the frames.

All three actors are first-rate talents. Donna Mitchell successfully channels Hillary Clinton's spunk and fervor without descending into parody. Her Susan is very grounded, and I was particularly impressed by a very small detail: the dispassionate way in which she spoke to her driver on her cell phone seemed appropriate for a woman of her stature.

As Lilah, Elisabeth Norment has an interesting challenge: she must be both motherly and attractive to Brock. Norment achieves both. Her character is a teacher, and she delivers several monologues about The Odyssey that effectively put the story into a surprising historical perspective.

At the center of this production is Orlemann's Brock. His character aptly serves as an example of his generation—he beams in his blogging scenes but sulks pointedly in a brunch scene with his mother. Brock searches for meaning in the Iraq war and his new love life, and Orlemann portrays his inner struggle with enthusiasm.

Like The Odyssey, Fate's Imagination has a lot to say about power, gender, and war in contemporary society. Even if it isn't perfectly scripted, the material remains challenging and ambitious.

Motel Stories

The Debate Society's latest play, The Eaten Heart, is based on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, in which people fleeing the Black Death tell each other stories. It's sort of like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, except Boccaccio's storytellers breeze through 100 stories in just 10 days. With Eaten Heart, Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen have conceived a more contemporary Decameron, set in the 1970s, where multiple characters intermingle in and around a highway motel. The two playwrights have taken Boccaccio's initial idea and converted it into a "shared lucid dream" that functions with its own bizarre logic. Bos and Thureen also play all the characters—among them, a magician who unintentionally shorts out a renaissance festival employee's TV, a man in special "invisibility underpants" who stalks the halls for women, and a jealous husband who checks into the room next to his wife and her lover. Even when the story lines don't cross, we often see two stories staged simultaneously in separate rooms.

Most of these stories offer plots with a fulfilling setup, development, and payoff. In the scene where Bos plays a traveling radio minister's wife, for instance, we are cleverly shown that she is unhappy with her husband and her perpetual life on the road. That way, when a short-shorts-wearing pizza guy (Thureen) shows up to deliver her lunch and then decides to go for a swim, we understand why he would make an impression on her, and why she would be willing to go to such bizarre lengths—like ordering a second pizza—to spend more time with him.

In other cases, however, the story lines are not as satisfying. The story of a girl who seems to be in love with a potted plant ends shockingly, but it's for shock value only.

Director Oliver Butler clearly had numerous challenges in mounting this script: two actors playing 15 roles, multiple stories that are not directly connected to each other, and a motel that must double for a lounge club and then triple for a family's dining room. But Butler's expert staging ties all these separate actions and locales together. At the climax of one story line, a motel room's bed is covered in dirt and then abandoned. In the next scene, the maid removes the soiled linens while she talks to the motel repairman. Ultimately, the bed is moved and becomes a dining room table at the end of the play. You can see Butler's skill at work in these stage transformations and neat transitions, which denote both the passage of time and a change of space.

Butler also wisely chose talented designers whose work nicely supplements the energy and complexity of his staging. Amanda Rehbein's scenic design is versatile and meticulous, with the stage consisting of one full "motel room" and two "half-rooms." The rooms are more or less the same with only small, believable differences, but the concept allows Bos, Thureen, and Butler to create some believable illusions, like having one character interact with another "invisible" character who is in the room's unseen half.

Mike Riggs's admirable lighting design is particularly supportive of the script's more dramatic and quirky elements, like a very realistic lightning storm halfway through the play that knocks out the motel's power, or an overhead spotlight that comes up when Bos is playing a lounge singer, indicating a change in both mood and scenery.

Costume designer Sydney Maresca and sound designer Nathan Leigh deserve commendation as well. With only two performers, Maresca's costumes are crucial in making the characters immediately distinguishable from each other. Thureen's magic bikini briefs, in particular, are hysterical and perfect. Maresca also uses wigs to distinguish the characters: even when Bos is out of her Renaissance-fair outfit, we recognize the character by the large braid in her hair. Leigh's vivid sound design completes the production, with peppy background music on the radio, fake period commercials on the TV, and the sounds of distant characters swimming in the motel's pool.

Bos and Thureen's performances are wide-ranging and always entertaining. In the pizza guy scene, they show they can be goofy yet genuine, and the result is very sweet. In a final scene at a dinner table, they play their characters' humdrum marriage completely naturally. At first, their understatement seems comical and baffling—we wonder how long we can watch these two make superficial small talk over their meal. But as the scene progresses and we learn the truth behind this quiet little dinner, amusement turns to horror. Given the revelation at the end, Bos and Thureen's subdued performance here is chilling.

Although The Eaten Heart is a well-acted play of significant depth, it is the surface aesthetics—the slick staging and the flawless production design—that elevate it above other Off Off Broadway productions. This is the second play, after last year's mesmerizing Snow Hen, in the Debate Society's trilogy based on literature about the Black Death. After two splendid productions of fascinating new plays, I'm eager to see what this company comes up with next.

Whatever and Whatever, Amen

If you've ever wondered how you were supposed to find God among the modern world's bafflements, like BlackBerrys and weight loss programs, then you probably need to go to Church. Not real church on Sunday morning, but playwright/director Young Jean Lee's latest production at P.S. 122. Church is an experimental worship service dedicated to the absurd, navel-gazing thoughts that run through our heads and how to reconcile them with Christian dogma. Lee's stream of consciousness play is funny and heartfelt but—probably on purpose—not always intelligible.

The setup and execution, like the best experimental theater, is simplicity itself: a tastefully restrained pulpit (designed by Eric Dyer) for four "reverends" who conduct a 45-minute service. This service includes song, dance, and a full choir at the end. Each of the four takes a turn giving a testimonial on how he or she came to Christianity, with the Rev. José (Greg Hildreth) handling the bulk of the preaching.

In his sermon, José gives a good example of how abstract and silly Lee's text can be: "The love of Jesus is a little baby goat that comes to you and kisses you and eats sand out of your hand. And the reason why I give it sand is that sand is warm and golden and kissed by the sun. And little baby goats like to eat things like tin cans."

Lee's point might sometimes be lost in the randomness of her text, but overall she seems to be commenting on the self-obsession inherent in modern society and how God doesn't, you know, like that. But sometimes, as in the example above, she is commenting on the randomness itself. As in her previous piece, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Lee shows a tendency to analyze the ways in which people keep talking around things, to themselves and to others. It is on this level that her new work succeeds tremendously: She asks us to consider if people have as much trouble talking to God as they do to each other.

Because of the play's zigzagging logic, Lee has trouble conveying a clear message. At the end of the "sermons," it is clear we are supposed to feel converted and sold on her opinions, but we are never really sure what we are converting to or what we are buying. This ambiguity is likely to ignite a few discussions after audiences see the show, but ultimately it probably won't get any further than a shrug of the shoulders and comments like "Who knows?"

The staging is very casual, and it is believable that this traveling ministry has set up temporary residency at P.S. 122. An apt example of the lack of dynamism in the blocking is when the three female sermonizers prepare for their dance number at the end. Instead of entering kinetically with the music, they clumsily move the podium out of the way and then slowly take off their shoes. The dance itself, choreographed by Fay Driscoll, is a lot of fun but purposely loose to allow the cast members to clinch their eyes tightly, shake their heads, and generally have a good, evangelical time with it.

All four sermonizers—Hildreth, Karinne Keithy, Weena Pauly, and Katie Workum—handle Lee's eccentric material very well. At times they erupt into fiery passion and jubilation, but usually they deliver the peculiar lines to great, deadpan effect. Hildreth's character has the most to say, and he moves through the text's sincerity and senselessness with calculated ease. In particular, his very serious delivery of a monologue about Satan and mummies is engaging and memorable. Likewise, Keithy's dreamlike account of rearranging a nativity scene and fighting villains with a superhuman angel was very entertaining.

Though I am loath to get too deep about it (because I don't really think that's what Lee would prefer), Church is a significantly moving and original piece with a lot to say about the delusions of egomania. It also challenges both cynics and believers to consider if Christianity might be the honest answer we're looking for in our lives. What's more impressive is that Lee takes a cue from our impulse-driven culture and cleverly compresses her new age gospel into a very funny and short program that's easy to download but takes time to decrypt.

Deep South

Early in Ashlin Halfnight's Mud Blossom, Camille Brown repeatedly slings a knife into a wall. She casually tosses the knife so precisely that the audience instantly knows there are potentially violent, even dangerous, events in store for these characters. In Emergency Theater Project's world premiere production, the playwright has crafted a taut, intricately packed world of family history and deceit for his well-defined characters to inhabit. As Camille plays with the blade, the audience is intimately aware that something in this quiet little house is going to rupture before the play ends.

Single mother June is doing her best to raise Camille, her only daughter, after the death of her husband. June and Camille live in the rural South in what has been the family home for generations, along with June's mother, Gongi. June is protective of her 15-year-old daughter, sometimes to the point of physically abusing her, while Gongi often acts as mediator.

Camille, meanwhile, is ready to run away to Quebec, or start messing around with boys, or anything that her mother doesn't want her to do. She also wants to know why her father is dead and why her mother hasn't been the same since. A harrowing chain of events forces these three generations of women to sort out their messy lives together.

The major action comes out in only a few sudden bursts, so most of the stage time is spent living with these characters. Halfnight's script also spends a good deal of time distinguishing the characters' voices from each other and developing their separate relationships. Each woman is instantly defined and has a tangible, overarching goal, even if there is no obvious conflict in front of her.

Halfnight also makes excellent use of atmosphere. For instance, Camille keeps digging up baby shoes in the flowerbed outside the house, and the radio warns of a serial rapist who uses a recording of a baby crying to lure victims out of the house. These two pieces of valuable sensory information play perfectly into the story's themes of buried truth and lost children.

Kate Pines's direction is impeccable, blending seamlessly with the script. Her take on the material doesn't force the play into places it shouldn't go—it stays true to the text and keeps the action and the characters moving. Regardless of what the women are talking about, there is always some small physical task for them to accomplish. There are several scenes in which the characters fold laundry without ever referring to that task in the dialogue. Likewise, June silently does the morning crossword puzzle with her coffee. These are both small but effective examples of adding activity and authenticity to the characters' lives.

Jesse Poleshuck's scenic design represents both the interior of the family's living room and the exterior of the yard very well. The structure is highly detailed in places like the kitchen but vague in others, such as the porch. This is particularly effective, because you get the impression that the whole stage picture was once a pretty painting that now has spots flaking off.

Above all other design elements, though, Bridget O'Connor's soundscape is the most powerful and driving. The Decemberists' music before the play begins is rockabilly enough to suggest the tone and location of the action but is just a touch off-kilter, warning us that everything in this world is going to be a little skewed. Music from Gongi's old clock radio lends effective atmosphere to the scene transitions and pays off in an intense hallucinatory sequence toward the end.

Corrine Edgerly, Jennifer McCabe, and Liz Myers are all superb actresses. Edgerly's Gongi is compellingly sweet, deceitful, and funny when necessary, but she also moves into the play's darker territory without hesitation. Playing an abusive parent is easy if you turn him or her into caricature, but McCabe's frustration as June is so accurate and familiar that it convinces us that everyone has the potential for violence under harsh circumstances.

Myers gives Camille a wonderful, genuine way of running over the other characters' lines that lets you know she's not really listening to what they say. She has two very difficult tasks in her role—delivering a lot of monologues to unseen characters and playing a teenaged character who has to grow up very quickly. She succeeds at both, and her performance drives the show.

With Mud Blossom, Halfnight has put together a textbook example of a great American play, one where all the elements of performance and design have allowed the Emergency Theater Project to present a stunning production.

Dot.Love

I try not to let myself become one of those jaded, cynical theater critics. I try to appreciate the hard work that goes into even the blandest of productions. But shows like Romance.com, now at the Richmond Shepard Theater, don't make it easy. Written and directed by Dramatist Guild member Joe Simonelli, the musical explores the pitfalls and perils of online dating, at a time when Web sites like E-harmony, Lavalife, and J-Date have become widespread. Simonelli's piece tries to capture the unique desperation and satisfaction that online dating engenders. We are introduced to Allen and Pam—he's an online dating junkie with the screen name "Commitment Phobic." She's a first-timer who calls herself "Cosmic Girl."

After a little prodding from her friend Linda, "Cosmic Girl" fires off an e-mail to "Commitment Phobic," like an electronic arrow from the Hotmail account of Cupid himself. In fact, freelance journalist Allen is so pleased with his success in online amour that he decides his next article will be titled—sigh—"Romance.com."

The two lovers hit it off and soon enter the normal, non-dial-up realm of relationships. They meet each other's bizarre parents and try to set up their equally zany single friends. Things turn sour when Pam discovers her boyfriend has written an article about what a sham online dating is and how he's used it to manipulate lonely singles like—gasp!—her.

All right, so Simonelli's book isn't King Lear. But it has a certain level of popular relevance, and it's sugary enough to keep audiences from losing interest. There are a couple of moments, mostly involving Allan's gregarious friend Bill, that are pretty funny. There are also a lot of clichés in the dialogue and a lot of attempts at "witty banter" that have the characters refusing to answer very simple questions. But often there isn't a whole lot to say, because the story flows fine, even if it is remarkably uninventive and predictable.

Simonelli's music is pretty basic too. There are a few good ideas for songs, like "Ya Got Deleted" and "Low Down Internet Blues," but the music isn't ever intrinsically connected to the story line or the characters. Again, it's fluffy, sometimes fun, stuff, but even now, two days later, I can't remember a single lyric except "Romance.com," which I recall only because it's also the show's title.

The cast works really hard—too hard in some cases. When Allen and Pam have to make out for a minute, he passionlessly tackles her into a wall, and the resulting scene is very awkward. Also, many lines come out false, as when Mike Sunburg's Bill speaks every other line in a different accent. None of this seems natural; instead, it's as if the director was trying to squeeze in untenable dialogue or stage directions that he just couldn't part with. Despite the effort, it doesn't always work.

Again, I have a great appreciation for the cast members. Their biographies say most of them seem to have traveled with the production from New Jersey, and there is a definite sense of dedication to the work. Jennifer Nelson has a generally very magnetic, expressive presence as Pam. Likewise, Ben Bleefeld, as Allen, is very easy to like and evokes a lot of sympathy at one point when he crunches his head into a laptop. Sundburg and Pam Del Franco are fun as the couple's factory-made crazy friends Bill and Linda. Katie Bass and Steve Fischer play Allan's and Pam's strange, conveniently single parents very well.

A musical like Romance.com is difficult to classify. It wasn't edgy and it wasn't wildly original, but the audience at the performance I attended certainly couldn't get enough of it. Perhaps this one can be written off with "there are different kinds of theater for different people." Perhaps I am jaded after all. Either way, I was logged off.

Brave New Bard

Just when you might think that Shakespeare's play about an exiled wizard has suffered the rough seas of time for too long and is only capable of landing on some remote island of mediocrity, a production like the one currently at the American Globe Theater washes ashore. And as old Gonzalo says in the play about his sea-worn garments, this staging of The Tempest emerges from the waters "new-dyed"—a crisp, vital reminder that Shakespeare still does theater better than anyone who's come along since. Readers are probably familiar with what is often considered the final play written solely by the Bard. Exiled Duke Prospero becomes a sorcerer supreme and the master of an enchanted island and its inhabitants. But when a ship bearing the men who sent Prospero packing sails by the island, the embittered wizard creates a great storm to bring his banishers to his island, where he can exact revenge. When Prospero's daughter, Miranda, falls in love with Ferdinand, son of one of his exilers, the necromancer's heart is moved, and he wonders if revenge is the right path after all.

Globe Artistic Director John Basil's staging and the show’s overall design take full advantage of the text's fantasy elements. If Prospero summons up a storm or causes a sword to fall from someone's hand, perfectly focused lights (by Mark Hankla) and potent sound effects (Scott O'Brien) enhance the illusion. Likewise, Prospero's right-hand fairy Ariel zips on and offstage, accompanied by an appropriately mystical "whoosh."

The best part is that all of these effects occur seamlessly—in the performance I attended, there wasn't a single missed cue. The lavish costumes (by Jim Parks) and angular, layered scenic design (Kevin Lee Allen) are vividly rendered and further strengthen the production's briskness. Someone accustomed to seeing low-budget Off-Off Broadway productions will find these professionally executed design elements quite refreshing.

Every cast member has a profound grasp of the text, which is sadly a rarity in Off-Off Broadway productions of Shakespeare. As Prospero, Richard Fay has a lot of work to do—not to mention thousands of high school English teachers to validate. Even so, he doesn't buckle under the pressure of playing a character so familiar. Instead, he makes each speech and action his own by playing Prospero as a human, and not like the stock wizard character seen in most fantasy fiction.

Other standouts include the buoyant Elizabeth Keefe as Ariel and the implausibly funny Mat Sanders as Trinculo. Most surprising, however, is Uma Incrocci's fresh take on Miranda. She plays Prospero's daughter not only as a believable teenager but also with more dimension than is traditionally seen in this one-note ingénue character.

This staging hasn't added a dramatic new concept to Shakespeare's text, or tried to make it more relevant by setting it in another time period. Instead, the American Globe's production sticks to the text and highlights the dramatic concepts that were already there. The simple but theatrical story of The Tempest still resonates on a variety of levels, especially in the hands of such able artists.

Kung Fu Hustle

It's a perfunctory rule that you cannot, despite advances in digital printing, judge a book by its cover. One could therefore safely assume that an Off-Off-Broadway show cannot be judged by its postcard. I can attest that this is mostly true. But every rule must have an exception, and, lucky me, I was the one to find it. The postcard is for Big Time Action Theater and David Solomon Rodriguez's production of The Jaded Assassin at the Ohio Theater, and it instantly tells you everything you need to know about the tone of the show. This image of actress Jo-Anne Lee snarling and ready to strike with a katana sword can only elicit two reactions. The first is "I don't care what it takes, I'm going," and the other is "I don't care how much you want to, I'm definitely not going."

Part play, part martial arts exhibition, The Jaded Assassin was conceived by director Timothy Haskell as "the world's first original action play." Haskell's creation is a karate chop aimed at the excitable little kid in your heart, with a follow-up jab to your sense of irony. It is a kung-fu movie come to life onstage.

The story, scripted by Michael Voyer, is culled from just about every kung fu film cliché imaginable (as when the play humorously simulates dubbed dialogue) and is tailored to include as many martial arts battles as possible. We follow an ardent mercenary, Soon Jal, who is hired by the emperor of an "ancient" (and ambiguous) Asian country wracked by civil war. Seeking vengeance for a murdered lover, Soon Jal takes it upon herself to put an end to the meaningless war—but first she must quell the lust for war within herself. This necessitates killing every nameless soldier, elemental spirit, or zombie that has the misfortune of crossing her path.

I would estimate that 40 minutes of Jaded Assassin's 70-minute run time is, as the show's premise promises, fight choreography. These intricately structured fights were choreographed by Rod Kinter and typically feature Soon Jal fighting everyone else in the cast. The play demands several different fighting styles—hand-to-hand, sword fighting, quarterstaff, and even simulated Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-inspired aerial combat—and the cast performs them with considerable elegance. To further the kung fu film aesthetic, the melees are underscored either by intense, live taiko drumming or delightfully anachronistic contemporary music.

While critically appraising the production's script, design, and acting by normal theatrical standards would surely miss the point, it should be noted that Kinter, scenic designer Paul Smithyman, and lighting designer Nick Hohn augment the paper-thin narrative by keeping things simple. The focus here is the fighting, and everyone involved is clearly aware of that.

It is difficult not to single out Jo-Anne Lee as Soon Jal, because, much like Uma Thurman in the film Kill Bill, so much of the play rides on our belief that her character is an unhinged killing machine. Lee does not disappoint. Her reactions and her line readings are appropriately hilarious, but most important, her physical stamina is almost mesmerizing. Soon Jal is involved in nearly every fight scene in the show, and you never sense that Lee is even winded.

The rest of the cast matches the intensity of Lee's performance very well. Marius Hanford in particular, as Rektor, the villainous ninja/sorcerer, convincingly conveys the fervor of a punk rocker. Hanford and the rest of the ensemble are qualified and adaptable enough to perform the impressive choreography despite a lot of costumes, props, and even puppets.

I enjoyed the concept and execution of this show a great deal, which is why it pains me to admit that it's not a perfect production. In fact, the play's two largest drawbacks lie in the core concept: in a show that is mostly stage combat, the stage combat must be flawless. The cast members met the demands of the choreography most of the time, but when an audience has been watching 40 minutes of fight choreography, a missed block or even a split-second delay becomes painfully obvious.

The other problem is that watching the unbeatable Soon-Jal pound away at faceless thugs for over an hour gets tedious. As in the boring Matrix sequels, if a martial arts fighter is too invincible for too long it becomes, well, too much. Finally, there is a bizarre, even existential twist at the end of the play that is more likely to confuse than to blow anyone's mind.

So does The Jaded Assassin live up to its enticing postcard? The company executes the choreography with lethal precision, but the production's high style can't compensate for its rough spots.

Lights Out

Director John Hughes perfected the practice of mixing up archetypes and challenging social politics in his 1985 film The Breakfast Club. Yet he gave his story a fairy-tale ending: Judd Nelson jabs a fist into the air, the frame freezes and—hey, hey, hey!—the characters' newly open-minded universe is preserved forever. Unfortunately for real people, like the characters depicted in the Cell Theater Company's respectable production of Blackout, one incident isn't always enough to break social boundaries. When the lights went out in the summer of 2003, the streets of New York City, like the Saturday detention hall in Hughes's film, became a fertile place to yield unlikely bedfellows. Twenty-four hours without electricity put a businesswoman, a saxophonist, a globetrotter, a starving artist, and a newly transplanted Southerner on equal footing. In the aftermath, Collin (the disgruntled globetrotter) and Lena (the headstrong businesswoman) shack up, while Maggie (the New York City neophyte) takes up temporary residence with Alex (the penniless Seventeen writer).

Interestingly, Blackout concerns itself more with what happens to the characters after the lights come back on than with the blackout itself. These five people re-examine their lives in the city and try to milk as much magic and inspiration out of the titular event as possible. A sixth character ably represents this compulsion: Levi, a homeless man, finds a purpose in directing traffic in the absence of traffic lights, and he continues to do so long after the power is restored.

But the enchantment soon wears off, as Lena and Collin's affair goes sour and Maggie falls in love with her homosexual (and therefore uninterested) roommate. The original status quo is more or less restored by the end of the play, when two characters leave the city.

Michael I. Walker's script balances the poetry and clamorousness of city life perfectly, like referring to the Brooklyn neighborhood DUMBO as a "hopeless hipster elephant." Levi, the stock "crazy but enlightened hobo" character, is clichéd and overstated, but otherwise the characters are seldom shoehorned into stereotypes.

Walker's script spends time exploring the "blackout within"—or what went off (or on) inside the characters. They moralize about race relations, sexual identity, and the plight of the Prozac Generation in the big city. The foundations for a noble manifesto are in there somewhere, but Walker's good ideas become tiresome when forced into his play. Overall, the script is effectively composed, but, regrettably, it overindulges in the philosophizing. As a result, the play goes on for 30 minutes too long.

Director Kira Simring and production designer Gabriel Hainer Evansohn have built an intricate world for the play's characters to inhabit. Evansohn's multileveled, overlapping set vividly depicts the claustrophobia of urban life. Simring takes advantage of these levels by guiding characters under scaffoldings and behind staircases; these people are dwarfed by their surroundings, like ants scurrying frantically in an ant farm.

The lighting design, by Evansohn and Carl Farber, supports the scenic design nicely. During the blackout, the lighting designers convincingly suggest a candlelit city and otherwise do a fine job representing city streets and apartments. Unfortunately, one lighting cue was noticeably missed during the performance I attended, and the first half of a scene was played in darkness. This shouldn't be a big deal, but since the play hinges on lights being turned on or off at key moments, it cannot be ignored.

All the performers are well suited to the piece, and their characterizations are energetic. Kate Goehring channels Reba McEntire in her punchy portrayal of the pure-hearted Maggie, who is really the heart of the show. As Alex, Teddy Bergman convincingly projects both cynicism and buoyancy as needed. Darnell Williams adds much variety to Levi, which is a formidable task, considering that the character says essentially the same thing in every scene.

Almeria Campbell has much success in grounding her corporate yet impulsive character Lena. Ryan Patrick Bachand's Collin is a delightful, argumentative know-it-all. As Fitz, the club-owning saxophone player, Kevin Mambo is sensibly restrained.

Conceptually, Blackout is a fine idea for an anecdotal play, but the script lacks the polish to become as culturally relevant as it aspires to be. Even so, with this production a talented group of artists surmounts an undistinguished piece of writing.

View From the Top

Do the people we care about most end up hurting us? Can anyone scrape by with more than a minimum amount of dignity? Should we just stay at home and watch television for the rest of our lives? These difficult questions are addressed in Gotham Stage Company's impeccably produced presentation of Eric Houston's Becoming Adele. This one-woman play tracks six years in Brooklyn-ite and movie junkie Adele Scabaglio's new life in Manhattan. In three rooftop soliloquies, we learn that Adele and her husband, Doogie, moved from her parents' house in the boroughs to a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side. Adele tells us the story of their marriage, which seems to be one of convenience first and love only as an afterthought.

When Doogie is killed in a car accident (with a prostitute in the passenger seat), Adele finds herself responsible for building a life for their daughter. To complicate things, her relationship with her detached father has turned worse, and soon her mousy mother and senile grandmother come to live with her in the city. From there, Adele must face other hardships, like waiting tables at an upscale Manhattan restaurant and finding a man who really loves her for who she is.

The script for Becoming Adele is honest and funny in its best moments, but overwritten and confusing in its worst. This material is soliloquy in the purest sense: Adele is talking her heart out onstage to the audience, which can make for difficulties in the acting. Rather than having another character (even an "invisible" one) present in the scene, the actress playing Adele must sometimes come up with awkward reasons for talking out loud. For instance, before reflecting on the past six years, she says, "Boy, a lot has changed since I was last up here on the roof six years ago."

There is nothing particularly wrong with this format when it is well written, but a lot of the material is heavy with exposition that spells out every last detail. The play's three acts are set in three different time periods, which requires Adele to do a lot of speaking in the past tense. It might be the big day before Adele's new job, but since she's been hired, that victory has already been won. Throughout the play, we never see Adele making any big decisions or taking action—only reflecting on it.

Thankfully, every other element in the production injects vibrancy and life into the script. The choice of transition music, Antje Ellermann's scenic design, and Victor Maog's direction are all flawlessly executed. The music, which one assumes was selected by sound designer Elizabeth Rhodes, includes performers as diverse as the Beatles and the Cranberries, and like the best film soundtracks, it reflects both older and contemporary sensibilities.

Ellermann must have robbed some poor Upper West Sider of his roof, because the roof on which Adele performs is precise down to the minutest details, like an empty aquarium or sporadic little piles of leaves. Finally, Maog's direction allows all of these elements to work together. Adele interacts with the design elements naturally, as when she sits on a dirty old bucket or is yelled at by an offstage neighbor.

Of course Kimberly Stern, as Adele, must ultimately carry the show. Fortunately, she handles the script with earnestness and charm. Perhaps most impressive is her ability to navigate and enliven the long stretches of exposition. She also realistically evokes a handful of supporting characters through very distinct voices and gestures. Stern's genuine performance compels the audience to care about Adele, which ultimately saves the show from its weaknesses.

Adele is told in the play that the secret to life is to "just do what is in front of you" or to "just keep your mouth shut." Eventually she learns that there is a lot more to making the big decisions. Luckily, Stern, Maog, and all the other members of the production team seem to have learned that lesson too. Becoming Adele is an excellent example of a production exceeding its script. Better yet, it does so with a maximum amount of dignity.

Hard-Boiled

It was a gusty New York night, a night for intrigue and murder ... a night for theater. Of all the plays in the world, I had to walk into this one. The press materials for Vermilion Wine describe it as a tribute to the film noir genre, comparing it to classics like The Maltese Falcon. But this nonsensical homage suffers for 90 minutes and then dies without eliciting an ounce of sympathy.

The story goes something like this: It's 1948, and broken-hearted private investigator Ian Sinclair's new case is to track down Mrs. Maureen Monroe's missing (and presumed dead) husband. To complicate matters, a mysterious woman is sending death threats to the sultry socialite, and that anonymous lady might be Sinclair's former lover Rebecca. Sinclair revisits the grimier parts of his past and scrubs the truth out of a dirty situation, where rival P.I.'s, cross-dressing criminals, and a lawman with a grudge are all gunning for him. The show culminates with a four-way Mexican standoff that barely any of the characters survive.

So what did in Vermilion Wine? There are many suspects that could be responsible for this theatrical homicide.

A likely perpetrator is Hunter Tremayne's script, which clumsily skirts the thin line between tribute and satire. Vermilion certainly is a pastiche of film noir elements, like rapid-fire dialogue and stock characters such as a shamus and a femme fatale. But the dialogue is meandering, and its analogies sound more like vocabulary exercises. Irrelevant exchanges like "even a worm can dig too deep," "if you cut a worm in two, you get two worms," and "then I guess you'd have to love me twice as much" are overused to the point of annoyance.

Consistently, Tremayne's language opts for a heavy-handed style over substance. With a little tweaking this might work, yet some portions of the script are totally out of sync with the exaggerated film noir style. A poem written by Sinclair, for example, contains archaic words like "thee" and "thou." Unevenness like this hampers any potential the script might have had. I won't even touch on the ending, except to say that I have never known a noir piece to end with characters in heaven.

Tremayne's direction is also a little fishy. At times the audience is asked to take the play's incongruent world seriously, like the climactic gunfight with plastic guns that are not synchronized with their sound effects. We are supposed to laugh at other moments, as when Sinclair's partner limps around clownishly after being shot. This disparity might have been tolerable, if not for some directorial choices that were downright bizarre. For instance, there are two references to Sinclair being English, even though he is clearly depicted as an American. (Tremayne, who is English, played Sinclair in a previous production.)

Later, Sinclair visits an insane asylum where offstage cast members yell out "crazy talk" that sounds more like a gaggle of gremlins than a ward of disturbed patients. This was obviously intended to add a sense of darkness and danger to the scene, but all it did was make the audience snicker.

The cast members all have strong alibis. Some are required to perform strange material, but all commit fully to their roles. Phil Horton plays the Humphrey Bogart clone Sinclair without shying away from his clichéd character in the slightest. A poor young woman playing a waitress wears, perhaps, the most unflattering costume ever—a skimpy, cigarette-girl outfit that must have been ordered without her measurements on hand—and still makes it work. (The role of the waitress is uncredited, perhaps out of self-defense.) All the ensemble members dig deep into their characters, like a gumshoe trying to crack a case that doesn't have a solution.

With limited resources, technical director Pam Gittlitz creates some effective lighting that evokes the shadowy expressionism of film noir, but several confusing design elements were not vital to the play at all. Even though everyone in the theater could clearly hear when Sinclair dialed a rotary phone, a "dialing" sound effect was used. There are several anachronisms, too. In a story set in the 40's, Sinclair sings along to the Peggy Lee song "Fever," which wouldn't be released until 1958. Overall negligence like this betrays a production team that paid attention to all the wrong details.

In the end, it is sloppiness and inconsistency that undoes this play. The actors do their best, but the material, aside from a few snatches of decent dialogue, is terminally unworkable, even laughable.

Death Watch

A clown, a playwright, and an actress wait to die in a Nazi hospital that, through the magic of theater, exists simultaneously in the present and the 1940's. A connection between Nazi Germany and the contemporary New York theater scene is a tricky and potentially offensive one to make, but Visible Theater's intrepid production of Krankenhaus Blues attempts it nonetheless. Krankenhaus brings together Fritz, Bruno, and Anka, three characters who have been selected for the Third Reich's scientific experiments on "lower-caste" citizens (two are physically disabled and one Jewish). Yet when we first meet Bruno, he is a homeless, out-of-work theater professional in today's New York. Bruno's first monologue recounts a dream of being imprisoned in a Nazi hospital called the Krankenhaus. Soon enough, he actually finds himself there, with little explanation. Nor is there really any need for one; playwright Sam Foreman has constructed a free-form narrative that seems more interested in characterization and style than temporal logic.

Bruno, Fritz, and Anka mull over their wasted careers, in both New York theater and Weimar theater, and they fall madly in and out of love with each other, almost at random. The scenes play out as vignettes, each one endeavoring to connect the plights of abused, forgotten people in both time periods. As characters are gradually killed off by a looming Nazi nurse (an uncredited cameo by Angela DeMatteo, Visible Theater's managing director), the others barely seem to remember them after they've gone.

The three-person cast skillfully conveys the play's farcical and bleak material, along with a few snatches of sung music that were chillingly composed and performed by solo violinist Helen Yee. As Anka, Christine Bruno comes off as both seductive and repellent—she is an institutionalized, handicapped woman who wishes her father had acted on his sexual attraction toward her. The role is no easy task for an actress, but Bruno merrily revels in such social taboos.

Joe Sims's performance as the clown Fritz is a unique exercise in compounding stereotypes. "I'm a crippled, black queer with a background in commedia and mime living in Nazi Germany," he says early in the play. "Everything about me is political." Fritz gets most of the show's laughs by deadpanning his lines, until his impassioned oration toward the end of the play, which Sims delivers with superb precision.

Bruno, played capriciously by the fast-talking Bill Green, serves as Foreman's mouthpiece for commenting on the Holocaust, the theater industry, and society in general. Also the closest thing to a "lead" in this play, the character energetically drives the action forward by suggesting playful activities (like acting out a skit) or making doomed sexual advances toward Anka.

Donna Mitchell's direction is subtle and crisp. There is no room for elaborate staging in the Dorothy Strelsin Theater. Coupled with this spatial limitation is the fact that some of the actors actually are disabled. This requires characters to cross the stage only when they absolutely must, and Mitchell and the cast make every physical movement count.

The theater's compact space also adds a lot to the piece's claustrophobia. Mitchell makes ample use of the theater's intimacy; characters can sit in seats with audience members and are free to address them directly.

Kimi Maeda's minimal scenic design is certainly effective, but I found myself wanting a more striking representation of the Krankenhaus. A few chairs and a small table suggest many things, and perhaps that was the idea: to accommodate the script's time jumping. But without a splash of signifying color or a distinct piece of furniture, the line between suggesting "anywhere" and suggesting "nowhere" becomes very thin.

Paul A. Jepson's lights are efficient but unremarkable; the theater's playing space is simply too limited, and the lighting grid is too close to the stage. The good news is that everyone had an up-close look at Kimi Maeda's richly detailed costumes. All three characters wear some variation of a striped, concentration camp uniform; Bruno's is faded and torn, Fritz wears the pants under his robe, and Anka's pants are cut off into shorts.

Unfortunately, Krankenhaus Blues suffers when Foreman indulges himself in the play's "theater commenting on theater" formula. As Fritz expresses in his final monologue, the play deals with homelessness, genocide, and incest, but the characters don't really reflect on those things; instead, they use them as tools for reflecting on theater and art. At the end, though, Fritz manages to deflate some—but not all—of the play's self-important pretensions by attacking the structure and style of the play itself.

Despite its heavy-handedness, Krankenhaus Blues is raucous in its political incorrectness and at times blazingly clever. The three-person cast deserves most of the credit for this production's vitality and zing.

Culture Collision

Can racial identity overpower one's individuality? Has globalization already glossed over the subtle beauties of cultural diversity? Are all Korean people fundamentally evil? Glib questions like these are posed, evaluated, and ultimately dismissed in playwright Young Jean Lee's staggering and luminously defiant new play, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, which opened this week at the HERE Arts Center.

Lee also serves as director of this autobiographical production, which traces a somewhat dotted line through her own heritage as a Korean-American as the play ponders the strong, culturally Korean aspects of her upbringing. In counterpoint is the influence of American culture, in the form of an insipid and self-absorbed relationship between two white Americans. There is no real story line; instead, Lee presents us with chaotic impressions of Korean and American culture and repeatedly crams them into intensely funny scenes.

Representing her Korean side are three women clad in traditional schoolgirl chima jeogori dresses (vibrantly designed by Colleen Werthmann), who act out skits in Korean. This chorus only sporadically speaks or sings in English, but it is clear that the true nature of the women's revelry is much darker than their attitudes suggest. Nearly all of the blocking in these segments suggests self-destruction—a masochistic instinct that Lee quite angrily suggests might be present in all minorities.

Stuck in the middle of Lee's culture collision is a character named in the playbill as "Korean American," who has deep ties to both societies. This character, who addresses the audience directly, is clearly Lee's proxy. Dressed casually in jeans, Korean American (Becky Yamamoto) hilariously alternates between anger, submission, and apathy in her search for meaning.

The cast handles the irreverent material with ease. The obvious standouts are Yamamoto, who is adorable whether she is goofy or incensed, and Juliana Francis, who is captivating as the scatterbrained White Person 1. The chorus of Korean women, consisting of Jun Sky Kim, Haerry Kim, and Jennifer Lim, creatively depict a twisted version of Korea, one focused on mutilation, Christianity, and, well, America. Rounding out the cast is Brian Bickerstaff, who plays White Person 2 with appropriately graceless candor.

Eric Dyer and Jesse Hawley's scenic design effectively evokes a Buddhist temple: three unpainted wooden walls and a matching floor, complete with Zen gravel paths leading into the theater. The lighting design, also by Dyer, is subtle but highly effective. In another nod toward globalization, several rows of fluorescent lights flicker on and wash out the traditional Asian set when the white characters take the stage.

The play itself is beyond categorization, which Lee openly admits in the script. In one dance, set to "All I Want for Christmas," the Korean women mime numerous methods of suicide, each more horrifying than the last. This scene is the perfect illustration of the show as a whole; it seems to indicate some deep-seated self-loathing, yet it is presented with farcically overblown characterizations and dance routines, which are amusingly choreographed by Dean Moss.

Perhaps more interesting, Lee gives the last word to the white American characters. The last 20 minutes or so are devoted to Francis and Bickerstaff struggling to make their relationship survive in the face of disgust, alcoholism, and absurdity. Their romantic involvement is never completely clarified; we know they are living together, but whether they are married is left unanswered. Although they seem unable to part, they continually attack each other with hurtful verbal abuse and criticism of drinking habits. Quite quickly, however, they switch gears and speak adoring sonnets to each other.

This strange cycle causes so much turmoil that Francis's character dreams that the two have health insurance to pay for couple's counseling. In her dream, they "learn how to be humble and realistic." This seems to be a reversal from a speech made earlier in the play by Korean American, when she insists that all minorities hate white people yet secretly want to be them. Now we are presented with two white Americans yearning for the same traits that made Yamamoto's character detest her own race.

Granted, that is probably reading much further into Lee's breathtaking work than she would like. The reason the play is so enjoyable is that it surprises and shocks at every moment. The juxtaposition of culture and identity is so vivid that audiences can't help but laugh. Unique, sophisticated, and profound, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is exactly the sort of downtown gem of a play you hope to discover.

A Science of Love

Sue Rees's white, Orwellian set sits in pristine stillness before The Dispute begins, an engineered paradise unspoiled by the folly of man. In Neil Bartlett's new adaptation of Pierre Marivaux's 1744 play, the National Asian-American Theater Company and director Jean Randich show us a connection between this artificial Eden and reality TV. This unique perspective propels an acrobatic production into the upper echelon of high-style reinterpretations of classic texts. The Dispute concerns the fruition of an 18-year experiment dealing with the mechanics of love and original sin. The Prince decides to woo Hermiane by settling a longstanding debate over which sex is the first to falter in love. Conveniently, the Prince's father had had the same dispute with his lover years before, so he constructed an isolated environment where four orphans, two men and two women, were each raised alone in separate areas. The Prince releases the childlike foundlings, now grown, into his manufactured Eden so that he and his lady can witness both the purest form of love and the original romantic betrayal, as the four interact with other humans for the first time.

Randich and her first-rate designers present Marivaux's text convincingly as a work of science fiction. The costumes, shrewdly crafted by Kirian Lanseth-Schmidt, suggest a carefully constructed, sterile environment. The notion of using the scientific method to explore the highly irrational behavior people display while in love is both humorous and profound. In keeping with this, Rees has devised a set that equally captures the energetic design of a playground jungle gym and the austere ambience of a hospital. Robert Murphy's sound design punctuates the institutional mood with some effectively shrill alarms and whistles.

It is the gymnastic staging and the streamlined concept that give the production its life. The characters are seen hanging up and down, climbing, and, most important, playing. Randich has invigorated the centuries-old text with a stylish simplicity that captures the characters' youthfulness as they play their way through their first love affairs. The voyeuristic nature of an experiment like this validates her assessment in the production notes that this is an "18th-century reality show." Stephen Pertrilli intensifies the vitality of Randich's staging with pleasant contrasts of colors and funky MTV lighting.

Thankfully, the cast matches the concept with intensity and vigor. As the four romantic leads, Jennifer Chang, Alexis Camins, Olivia Oguma, and Lanny Joon exhibit copious amounts of energy and commitment to their roles as innocents. As they discover things as obvious as their reflections and the anatomical differences between them, all exhibit a believable, and endearing, naïveté. Jennifer Ikeda and Alfredo Narciso, as Hermiane and the Prince, both display their characters' higher-class status well and even throw in a touch of humanity here and there. Ikeda's initial facial reaction to the Prince's project seems to be the one time anyone ever questions the morality of raising four children in isolation. Mia Katigbak and Mel Duane Gionson play the children's caretakers and provide a strong, logical center in the form of wry comic relief.

The only misstep occurs at the end, when Meslis and Dina (played well, albeit briefly, by Claro de los Reyes and Annabel La Londe) suddenly emerge and seemingly refute the entire premise—that betrayal in love is inevitable. These two new characters love each other unconditionally, but whether they were raised together or separately isn't fully explained. Soon after their arrival, a quick wrap-up from Hermiane and the Prince suggests that the whole experiment was inconclusive, and the lights go down. All of this is presented to the audience in what felt like less than three minutes. Such an abrupt conclusion may leave some audience members cold or asking, "Wait ... what happened?"

But the all too brief ending is forgivable in light of the other merits of this wonderfully conceived production. The Dispute speaks to the voyeur in all of us, cynically concluding that both men and women are destined to fail in love at times. Conversely, it presents an optimistic story about the pure, scientific origins of affection and truthfully captures the enthusiasm of newfound love.