Party Hardly

If you get invited to Beverly's party, don't go. She will tear you up. Expect debauchery. Expect her to either try to sleep with your husband or worry you about your children. She will also try to get you drunk. Now if you get invited to Abigail's Party, the 1970's play by Mike Leigh about a woman named Beverly who throws a sad little party, and you like to see people get drunk and try to sleep with someone else's spouse, then you might have a good time.

Abigail's Party is not a comedy. It has been called a "dark comedy," and that is more accurate. Though it shares many attributes common to satire (unexpected situations, making fun of a certain group), it has strong elements of tragedy, and in a way it can be seen as such.

True, during the performance there was a lot of laughing; apparently many audiences (and most reviewers) find it very funny. The New York Times called it "a merry slice of misanthropy." And yes, it is funny, although it is the kind of humor that makes you wonder why you are laughing. There is a pervading sense that the two middle-class couples and one divorcée sharing their lives with us onstage deserve more sympathy than ridicule. Their glib comparisons and nonchalant conversations about alcoholism, divorce, and domestic violence are a fiercely sad sort of humor. The play's focus on these poor schlubs is so intense that it ignites into flames, and the blaze, while short, is impressive. Yet it leaves the audience with little warmth.

Abigail's Party is in fact about Beverly's party. Abigail herself is never seen in the play, though her party is raging down the street. Abigail's party represents the longing for the other: the better party, the younger crowd, a better life.

At Beverly's sordid soirée, she and her husband Laurence, a middle manager (played frantically by Max Baker) who fancies himself cultured, are host to their neighbors for an alcohol-infused evening. Beverly is without a doubt the master of the house, and of the play, as she plots to perpetually harass her husband, placate Abigail's worried mother Susan (Lisa Emery), debauch the mousy newlywed Angela (Elizabeth Jasicki), and seduce Angela's brooding husband Tony (Darren Goldstein). In short, Beverly wants to ensure that everyone has a good time.

In fact, partying with Beverly (an aging trophy wife played excellently by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is worth it if you go prepared with a taste for the bleak humor. The strength of the piece lies in the poignantly understated desire that permeates every folly, foible, and fixation of the miserable suburban wrecks on display. Think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? minus the American academic intellectuals.

The dialogue sizzles with animosity and loathing. Husband and wife duos are more combatants holding drinks than partners in marriage. They valiantly attempt to harm each other, emotionally as well as physically. But with all the crisp dialogue, there is essentially very little plot. This may be a product of the improvisational script-development style that playwright and filmmaker Mike Leigh is known for. Leigh arrives at the first rehearsal without a written script, bringing instead a basic idea for the play. He relies heavily on what the actors contribute to this idea. The actors create the characters, and they look for their characters' motives to create the plot.

In the case of Abigail's Party, this leads to highly developed characters who drink a mean Cosmo but essentially have nowhere to go. The piece is more a shrewd meditation on the desires of middle-class English suburbanites in the late 1970's than a lucid narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, the "ending" seems like a copout that results because of time constraints, not the culmination of a finely tuned story.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (no relation to the playwright) is stunning as Beverly. She seduces, she chortles, she harasses, and she gets what she wants through a sashaying of her hips and her piercing, repetitive shriek of her husband's name.

Elizabeth Jasicki as the demure Angela is wonderfully nerdy, while Lisa Emery as the understated Susan strikes a fine note of balance. Darren Goldstein as the gruff former footballer Tony, Angela's abusive husband and the object of Beverly's desire, is dead-on: he is dispassionate, angry, threatening, and, above all, silent.

The set by Derek McLane, a kitschy 1970's creation, is fabulous. It's the nightmare post-disco décor that now older people were either too cheap or too poor to rid themselves of when they were younger.

Party on if you like. But if you laugh, just be ready to feel a guilty hangover.

Perchance to Dream

"And by a sleep to say we end / the heartache and the thousand natural shocks..." (Hamlet). You would go to sleep too. You would sleep if your husband yelled at you constantly in unintelligible corporate-speak. Or if your stepdaughter said she would cut off your hand in order to gain entrance to public housing. Or if it snowed salt. What would you do then? You would sleep.

With What Then, Rinne Groff has written a truly innovative dramatic farce about marriage, a reflection on dreams, and a frightening premonition of environmental degradation. As the play begins, somewhere in the not-too-distant future, Diane, a middle-aged accountant, quits her job to spend more time at home, asleep on her kitchen countertop. Diane is no narcoleptic; she is instead what her husband Tom calls a "champion" sleeper. In her dreams, she becomes increasingly involved in a somnambulist fantasy about being an architect and creating the perfect housing project, replete with amphitheater, community garden, and velvet people mover.

Tom, the eternal realist, chastises Diane for quitting work and spending all her time sleeping to create her illusionary edifices. Diane reminds him that her new "profession" is just as elusive as his, since the vaguely ominous, environmentally devastating corporation that he works for is more concerned with creating acronyms and circular professional jargon ("You saw the Public Forum for the Public?") than creating actual products.

Meanwhile, Tom's daughter (and Diane's stepdaughter) Sallie, a drug-addled opportunist who would attempt murder for the sake of an apartment, convinces her boyfriend, Bahktiyor (or, to his friends, Tom—let's call him Tom 2), to steal Diane's blood as she sleeps. Sallie plans to use the fluid to pass a blood test so she can be eligible for government-subsidized housing.

While attempting to abscond with the hustled hemoglobin, Tom 2 inadvertently wakes Diane. She shares with him the idea for her marvelous structure. Entranced by her vision, Tom 2 quickly falls in love with her. He abandons Sallie and her scheme and soon becomes Diane's co-conspirator, traveling with her through consciousness and unconsciousness, becoming an architect of dreams and helping her build, as it were, castles in the air.

It's no surprise that they turn to sleep, given the nightmarish scenario that Groff has conjured. Dust storms, government-issued gas masks to be worn in the living room, massive global warming, and dried lakes are just a few of the treats awaiting us in this post-apocalyptic setting.

Two musical numbers add an implausible yet humorous note, though admittedly the first one drags a bit. The first whimsical number, "What Then," comes just after Sallie, in a frenzied tantrum, attempts to kill Tom 2, her now ex-boyfriend. The song is a catchy little ditty that, given its place after such a serious scene, shows the profound range of emotions in the play. The second number, "Sorry for Myself," makes great use of a Fisher-Price children's microphone, highlighting the playfulness that's evident throughout the production.

Director Hal Brooks, after recently ending his Pulitzer-nominated stint as director of Thom Pain, brings a revelatory quality to the play, finishing scenes on twists instead of inevitabilities, imbuing reality with a tinge of the fantastical, and schlocking up the farcical.

Long-time Clubbed Thumb member Meg MacCarthy plays Diane as if she were in a daze, which, given the part, a kind of sleepwalker among the awake, is exactly right. Husband Tom, played by Andrew Dolan, is good but somewhat stiff. Merritt Wever boldly attempts the difficult part of Sallie (who changes drastically throughout the play), though she often seems daunted by the challenge. Piter Marek, as the immigrant boyfriend-cum-dream-builder Bahktiyor, delivers a solid performance, at once playful and tragic, and displaying a great degree of depth.

If what dreams may come are anything as sweet as What Then, then keep dreaming.

Exposed

Through a Naked Lens is a fictionalized account of the unrequited gay-love story involving Herbert Howe, an acerbic Hollywood journalist, and Ramon Novarro, a Mexican immigrant who became a successful Hollywood leading man in the waning days of silent film. Herbert, whose gossip columns and brutally honest expos

After the Riot

Producing a historical piece has its advantages and its disadvantages. The work has elements of a plot already created, and it often has a readymade audience. It also has a tendency to be weighed down by the facts, with the event itself often ill suited to the mechanics of theatrical presentation. Some of the advantages are apparent in the Alchemy Theater Company's fictionalized historical piece Haymarket, but nearly all of the disadvantages are present as well. The play is loosely based on events surrounding the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in the late 1800's, when anarchists and socialists squared off with police during a march in support of the eight-hour workday. In the confusion of the confrontation, an unknown instigator detonated a bomb, killing several policemen. Police then opened fire, and several workers were killed. In the aftermath, four anarchist leaders were hanged, among them Albert Parsons (Dennis McNitt), who, along with his family, is fictionalized here.

In the first scene, we are introduced to his daughter, Lucy. Her mother, also named Lucy (both are played by Squeaky Moore), has put her in an insane asylum because the events of her father's past haunt her