The Oud Couple

West Bank, UK is a musical romp through a political minefield: a musical comedy about a Palestinian and an Israeli forced to share a rent-controlled apartment in London’s West Bank. While playwright Oren Safdie and composer and lyricist Ronnie Cohen deserve credit for a certain measure of creative and political audacity, they bear responsibility for an almost juvenile rendering of a poorly developed storyline and puppetlike characters. When Israeli ex-patriot Assaf Ben-Moshe Benvenisti (Jeremy Cohen) breaks up with his German girlfriend and returns home to his rent-controlled flat, he discovers that Palestinian refugee Aziz Hamoud (Mike Mosallam) has taken over his lease. Their American landlord is torn between the two men and urges them to work out their differences and learn to live together in harmony. The allegory is in place and the timing of this show’s run in New York lands conveniently at the close of the Annapolis talks, offering journalists a soft angle to the story of renewed American efforts in the Middle East peace process.

This premise of personalizing a raging conflict is an ingenious one but the choices made here reduce the complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations to a sitcom punctuated with catchy tunes. Or rather, a series of catchy tunes run together with sitcom dialogue since the musical numbers almost overrun the straight dialogue. This may be a good thing because some of the songs have clever moments and the singing is quite good.

One regret of this reviewer is that the purely instrumental interludes aren’t more substantial. These interludes provide a welcome break from the camp of the show; in these moments, the pain and loss of the Middle East conflict come to life. Jessie Kotanski’s performance on the oud (Middle Eastern lute), in particular, offers a haunting, if losing, call for quiet contemplation. Three of the musicians’ (Scott Baldyga, Jake Shulman-Ment, Chriz Zaborowski) placement on the stage in a sort of central, windowed cage seems emblematic of their caged-in relation to the action, while the oud player is exiled to a balcony above the stage, making its notes all the more plaintive.

The two stars of the show are truly gifted performers and do an admirable job of infusing their highly limited roles with strong emotion and individuality. Jeremy Cohen spends a lot of the play in an undershirt flexing his considerable sex appeal and this is a great contrast to Mike Mosallam’s grandfatherly, overweight persona, corduroy- and cardigan-bound. And yet it is Mr. Mosallam’s homespun physicality that offers the most electrifying moment of the show when it suddenly explodes into dance in one of the final musical numbers.

In addition to the two main players, a parade of caricatures troops through the action, including a lesbian suicide bomber and a nymphomaniac Orthodox Jewish woman. The latter two are played, among other roles, by Michelle Solomon, who camps up each performance to the same painfully exaggerated degree. Antony Patellis offers a series of somewhat muted counterpoints to Ms. Solomon’s performances; it’s almost a relief to focus on his quieter version of the silliness.

Having voiced so many complaints about this production, I need to break a rule of criticism and describe the audience’s reception. It was glowing. Hearty laughter and applause greeted every short scene. I was reminded of my strongly negative response to one of the biggest musical hits of the decade: Avenue Q. If my evaluation and last night’s audience are any indication, West Bank, UK may be a runaway success.

“On the piano top, a nest of souvenirs...”

The Piano Teacher offers a portrait of one of “those brave ladies who taught us/ So much of art, and stepped off to their doom,” in the words of the late poet Donald Justice. Julia Cho, the author of this successful play, seems almost to have borrowed her characters, plot and atmosphere from Justice’s poetry and memoir about his childhood piano teachers; the following one in particular: On the piano top, A nest of souvenirs: paper Flowers, old programs, a broken fan, Like a bird’s broken wing. —And sometimes Mr. L. himself Comes back, recurring, like a dream. He brings Real flowers. Thin, Demanding, his voice soars after dark In the old opera between them. But no one sees the blows, only An occasional powdered bruise, Genteel.

The Piano Teacher is the story of just such a couple, as told by the surviving wife, Mrs. K, a lonely, widowed, retired piano teacher. (Donald Justice’s work also features a Mrs. K.) Luminously played by Elizabeth Franz, Mrs. K addresses the audience so intimately that she actually offers cookies to each person in the front row. We are enveloped in her warm, grandmotherly lap, drawn into the heart of her cozy home so effectively that we nearly fall asleep there, lulled by her gentle voice telling her gentle, slightly boring, slightly formulaic story. The story of a simple piano teacher devoted to each of her sweet but ordinary students; only one of which had talent amounting to genius... and he—here, at the first intimation of complexity, Mrs. K breaks off and stoutly returns to her rosier memories.

When complexity—human cruelty—finally does enter the stage, the effect strains the balance of the play’s mood and plot. Suddenly this is a play dedicated to undermining audience expectations of sensationalist drama: hints of deeply buried pedophilia eventually add to up a more ingenious form of molestation.

Taken in sum, it’s an effective story and Kate Whoriskey’s direction and Derek McLane’s scenic design bring it to life beautifully. The extraordinary Elizabeth Franz bears most of the responsibility and can enjoy full credit in what amounts to a tour de force one woman show for much of the play. Carmen M. Herlihy adds a terrific dose of vitality as a grown-up former student and provides the first allusions to the troubled past with fine subtlety.

When trouble makes its full appearance, it is in the person of Michael, played by John Boyd. Michael was Mrs. K’s lone pupil of genius and he returns to haunt her with terrible revelations about her late husband. It’s a highly demanding role, not least because of its brevity. Mr. Boyd’s performance of the disturbed young man borders on the formulaic: a manic yet formal delivery and overstimulated hands. This would amount to overkill except that his scarcely contained physicality threatens a bodily attack on Mrs. K—an attack which never comes. Here again, the audience experiences a healthy frustration of Hollywood expectations.

In the end, The Piano Teacher plays best in retrospect, where we can savor the extraordinary performances and the fine plot tensions at our own pace.

Substantial Pleasures

The Constant Couple is a constant delight. The Pearl Theater Company’s production of George Farquhar’s turn of the 18th century play presents a perfect example of the playwright’s lines,“What more can most substantial Pleasures boast Than Joy when present, Memory when past?”

This is a play that offers laugh-out-loud entertainment, provocative themes and terrific performances of both comedic theater and period music, all of which echo for days like a fetching melody.

George Farquhar’s youthful comedy invites us into a London teeming with colorful characters. Steadfast Colonel Standard wants nothing more than to win the charming Lady Lurewell. But his way is littered with scheming rivals, troublesome fops, and bumbling rustics, all of whom seem to have some claim on his lady love. Combining all the wicked joy of the jaded Restoration stage with the “novel” notion that faithfulness and integrity might have their uses too, The Constant Couple illuminates a world merrily careening between deceit and honesty, cynicism and hope—between the follies of the past, and the glorious possibilities of the future.

The quality of the production is so uniformly high, it’s not easy to single out specific scenes. The action unfolds in brilliantly flashing intercut scenes that never allow our attention to flag (although the sum is a bit too long, more on this below). Director Jean Randich and the production staff have collaborated in crafting an ideal context for the encounter of outstanding performances. Among them, a few deserve special attention.

Eduardo Placer’s performance of Clincher, a purple-wigged fop, is utterly unforgettable. It’s a simply hilarious role and yet Mr. Placer injects a strange complexity through his unusual physical command and delicate timing that is as unsettling as it is funny.

Bradford Cover as Sir Harry Wildair is everything we want from a pampered gentleman hedonist: he delivers brilliant epigrams and strikes elegant yet foolish poses as if he were born to them. What a chin—and libido—leads this character in and out of trouble.

Rachel Botchan’s Lady Lurewell is a perfect counterpart to Sir Harry: her clever elegance is as deftly performed by her delicate hands and heaving bust as by her musical oration. David L. Townsend and Dominic Cuskern offer wonderful characters and John Pasha delivers a convincing, if somewhat stilted, hero of the heart. Finally, Jolly Abraham’s Angelica manages a fine balance between romantic idealism and moral clear-sightedness.

The supporting cast is consistently strong and the musical interludes are exquisite.

The only complaint this reviewer has to lodge concerns the length of the production. I wonder whether or not the absence of a running time in any of the PR materials is intentional. It clocks in at more than two and a half hours and I think that some minor editing would benefit the whole.

However, any such objection to a play’s length might run counter to The Pearl’s irreplaceable mission to bring classical theater to contemporary audiences. And so, as I pointed out to my 14-year-old date, my goddaughter, we can trust this theater company’s decisions to render a fully authentic experience and thus focus our 21st century attention spans on something longer than a Hollywood movie.

Speaking of 14-year-olds, The Constant Couple is a great family bet, although audiences should be prepared for some robust bawdiness. When the pawing of certain female (or apparently female) characters elicited a few “ewws” from my goddaughter, I enjoyed a discomfort I never see her experience when she watches the most explicit music videos!

Paper Soldiers

In the second scene of this Gulf War play, four soldiers, lost in their tank, alternate between panic and story-swapping. The tank driver shares a surefire tip to get lucky with a girl: take her to an off-off Broadway play, “20 bucks a ticket... the plays suck... but it’s really dark and you can score a hummer in the back row.'' I hope someone scores here because the average theater-goer isn’t likely to be otherwise much rewarded by this play. The subject of Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats is veterans’ post-traumatic stress disorder; it’s a vital and timely issue and theater offers an ideal form to explore it. This production tries its earnest best with a Gulf War veteran staggering between news-charged sets: from an unhappy home to a flashbacked battle zone, thence to a VA hospital, and finally to a homeless encampment in a New York City park. It’s a good conceit, this looking back to the still-unresolved fallout of Bush Senior’s war to emphasize the crisis of the current Bush’s reign of destruction and its direct effect on individual soldiers. But the main character here, Sgt. John Brown, is hardly an individual; his persona is as generic as his name. (Any allusion to John Brown the abolitionist is too obscure to identify.)

Sgt. Brown’s journey across the stage is driven by sad formula, unenlivened by the stale dialogue of a CNN anchor on weed (Anderson Cooper trying to channel Abby Hoffman?). Played by Chris McGuire, Brown struggles to communicate with his wife (Abigail Ziaja) in various classic scenes of alienated partnership. The origins of Brown’s sense of guilt and isolation become clear in a long, loud flashback scene where his substance abuse and poor judgment cause the death of his three subordinates (Alfredo Diaz, Richard Essig, Robbie Rescigno). Blasting battle sound effects are one of the especially painful elements of this play; their combination with the shouted agonies of Sgt. Brown throughout the performance had this reviewer reaching for earplugs.

Poor Brown flunks out of the VA hospital, where he fails to impress Dr. Elsinore Zinn (Evelyn Voura) with his symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome—she isn’t buying it, or she doesn’t have space or funds for him, it’s not altogether clear in what way she is negligent. The doctor boots him out of the hospital at the same time his wife boots him out of her life. Brown has no choice but to join the Vietnam vet panhandler (Jeff Lyons) who opens the play in his homeless camp in the park. Eventually, Brown is even exiled from the camp.

Like the script and the direction, the actors’ performances are earnest and heartfelt but largely undeveloped. Alfredo Diaz stands out with strong vocal command and Chris McGuire manages to bring an energetic physical presence to difficult solo hallucinatory convulsions.

Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats tackles a tough and significant subject and deserves credit for that but I’d rather hear directly from the individual soldiers who inspired it than from their cut-out stand-ins.

Gunning for Hamlet

Mercy Thieves takes its title from a line in Hamlet describing a ship of pirates as “thieves of mercy,” an apt evocation of the brutal main characters, but this play owes more to Quentin Tarantino than to Shakespeare. The characters are ostensibly derived from Hamlet but what purpose this serves the story or the character development is unclear; one gets the feeling that the author has sought to lodge a weak plot in a canonic framework. Nevertheless, thanks to very strong performances and well-written dialogue, this gangster comedy achieves moments of high art and entertainment. We are introduced to the characters as we enter the theater: on the low-lit, curtainless stage the two players sit side by side, accompanied by a pair of legs stretched out on the floor from behind a bar. This pre-scene doesn’t do much to inform the plot, but the two main actors’ postures and attitudes already begin to establish their characters: Nick Stevenson as the smoldering DJ and Jeremy Waters as the ecstatic Mike. Both will be superb in their renderings of idiosyncratic hit men.

What structure there is in the plot is hopskotch: one step forward, two hops back fill us in on preceding stages in the story which, if played out chronologically, would reveal how empty the storyline is. The play traces one night in the lives of Mike and DJ, two hired thugs who have been given a mission: to find Harry. Harry proves to be elusive (he never actually appears onstage), and the two set off on a journey across Australia, unearthing and killing off their old friends and colleagues in their search. What Mercy Thieves really amounts to is a series of character sketches expressed through high and low-tech media and prop manipulations: from the large video screen backdrop where certain scenes unfold cinematically, to flashlight-driven chase numbers.

Director Craig Baldwin has done some interesting work in creating context for the frequent time and media shifts and in his efforts to convey violence and action on a small stage using simple means. Unfortunately, the overall effect is inconsistent and awkward. There are several car scenes that feature DJ driving a floating steering wheel while Mike fiddles with the radio dial or philosophizes. The two are seated in chairs behind an overturned table as the car. The effect is of two vaudevillians in a Model-T - not exactly noir. There is more vaudeville to come when Mike and DJ mime killing techniques; maybe this is a cool concept and it’s just poor miming, but the result is embarrassing.

Where the manipulation of time and context works, it works beautifully. The finest scene in the play is between Harry’s mother, Pru (brilliantly played by Victoria Roberts), DJ and Mike. DJ recalls his visit with Pru to Mike, as it actually unfolds. Mike asks questions from the future and, from the past—from her chair upstage—Pru rolls her eyes at Mike or gives him a cool stare. This simple treatment of gazes and stage positions succeeds where the props and screens collapse into gimmickry.

Throughout the play the level of performance is outstanding. Nico Evers-Swindell is excellent as he shifts between three characters; his Jimbo is one of the highlights of the play. Emma Jackson does a juicy “Sharon the Tart” and Paul Swinnerton is a perfect pub man, among other characters. Jeremy Waters dominates the stage with his explosive yet affable, murderous yet sensitive rendering of tender, homicidal Mike. Mercy Thieves may be on its way to Hollywood (the screenplay has been optioned), but it’s hard to imagine anyone but Mr. Waters in this role. The same could be said of the entire cast.

The Contents of Her Purse

The lights come up on a young man shaking a can of shaving cream. In the first of three shaving scenes, he gazes at himself in an invisible mirror positioned at about the third row of the audience and begins, with panache, to apply the foam to his nearly hairless chin. In each of the three scenes, due to a different interruption, the razor does not meet skin, and the foam is swabbed off with a towel. This disrupted act of self-observation and newly formed habit provides an ideal initiation to a terrific play about adolescent consciousness: David Holstein's True Genius, directed by Jill Sierchio. This is the story of a troubled 19-year-old boy's (Scooter) evolving relationship with his mother (Margaret), his imaginary younger brother (Jeffrey), his late father, his alcoholic therapist (Dr. Foyer), and his love interest (Lila). Dr. Foyer is called upon to help Scooter and his mother negotiate the father's emotional and intellectual legacy, but it's in the shrink's waiting room that the important work unfolds: Scooter meets the divine Lila, another teenage patient, who will draw him out of his delusions and fears. Props like the shaving cream, in the hands of this outstanding cast, organize the plot development and emblematize the emotional resonance of the characters' interactions.

A young girl unpacks her purse: a teen magazine, a pack of gummy worms (one bite, one thrown on the floor), a wallet, trinkets, a spoon, and a hammer (more on the hammer later). By the end of the play, Scooter, Lila, Margaret, and Dr. Foyer have all been unpacked, the contents of their psyches shaken out and dumped on the floor; picked through and eventually restored; inventoried but jumbled back into the dark chaos of the purse.

The boy and girl talk to one another's reflection in the shaving mirror from the opening scene. Staring at the "mirror" in perfect pantomime, Lila raises one arm and then the other, giggles in delight, then ducks to Scooter's other side. She lifts his left arm, then he sweeps his right hand around to cup her face and turn it toward him, away from the mirror. This animation of the adolescent conflict of self-regard and the attraction to the other risks heaviness, but these movements are so deftly choreographed and poignantly performed that the audience members become mirrored adolescents themselves.

These two young actors are remarkable in their own right, but it is a happy coincidence of styles and skills that brings them together on this stage. Perry Tiberio's performance as Scooter is coiled with explosiveness and craves the cool, irresistible charm of Regina Myers's Lila. These are beautifully crafted teenagers; it's hard to believe these actors have only a few years' distance from the age they portray. It's also a testament to their creative maturity that they have understood those years so well, so soon.

In the world of True Genius, adults are feckless but powerful; their whims have devastating consequences. Nancy Evans's performance as Margaret nails the adolescent's vision of a mother: alternately commanding and cajoling. Ken Scudder does his best to account for the makeup of the weakest character, the therapist, by veering between a boot camp counselor and a needy failure. The effect is cartoonish, but it works here because what we come to understand by the end of the play is that we have been transported to Scooter's exaggerated adolescent world: we have come to inhabit his "memoir"—the notebook he carries throughout the play.

So, in the same way that we can appreciate the sweet, shambling appearances of the imaginary younger brother, we see the therapist as a pathetic drunk and the mother as the all-powerful holder of secrets and keys to our fate. But in this version of his own story, Scooter finally contrives to extract a new truth from his mother, one that somehow transforms her into a more docile figure who, at the conclusion, promises to "cook more and take better care of you and the house." The abruptly happy ending is justified if we attribute authorship to Scooter. If, however, we choose to address Holstein as the author, we might prefer a less tidy conclusion.

To return to the hammer: It is in Lila's bag and is never put to use, never explained. There it is, on the cover of the playbill, but, to my knowledge, it's never accounted for in the play's action. This, I believe, is as it should be. Who can explain all the hardware in anyone's psyche? Why try to force the delicate ferocity of family and romantic relationships into reductive clarity? I found myself wishing that the imaginary brother, who disappeared when Scooter and his mother had their breakthroughs, would pop back out again at the end, hammer in hand, to break another garden gnome. (You'll have to see this play!)

Jeeves on Sunset Boulevard

The exclamation point in the title of this comedy is a good indicator of what's to come: strong emphasis delivered to otherwise pale material. The sparkling dynamism—perfectly executed exclamation points—of Gerrianne Raphael's performance as Gloria Desmond infuses an atmosphere of excitement into the formulaic plot, a mystery-comedy set in the 1930s. A mysterious stranger is invited to the elegant country home of aging film legend Gloria Desmond, where he encounters a lovely young countess, a substitute butler, and a priceless necklace. All the elements are in place for a Wodehousian adventure, and thanks to some strong performances, audiences won't be disappointed if like, this reviewer, they are devout P.G. Wodehouse fans. It's a great satisfaction to see a melodramatic doyenne like Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha, "the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth" (Wodehouse), come to life on the stage. Raphael's Gloria Desmond spins even weak dialogue into gold; every pose and verbal flourish is on the mark.

While the other performers are at risk of being outshone by the radiance of Raphael's performance, Marnie Klar and Adam Raynen largely rise to the demands of their roles as the imposters Lady Fortescue and Alfred the Butler. Klar manages to be alternately goofy and elegant as the occasion demands, while Raynen offers a consistent performance as an amiable butler—overly consistent, because the dual identity of his character offers missed opportunities for a more complex portrayal of the butler's criminal side. Harold Busby (Davis Hall), the mysterious stranger, is comically creepy in wig and fake moustache, props that nearly steal the show in the final scenes.

Playwright Norman Beim also directed, and some of his decisions seem to stem from a desire to compensate for the flatness of his dialogue and story arc. Some of the play's best moments revolve around sound effects: a dinner gong followed by jolting sounds that cause the characters to flinch compulsively; a dramatic strain of music that accompanies each mention of the Mandarin Necklace. But even these moments are formulaic—funny because they are somehow familiar from television effects?—and when the chorus from Carmina Burana fills the theater, the last crutch is in place.

The high point of the script unfolds when the mysterious Harold Busby confronts the butler and Lady Fortescue about the Mandarin Necklace. A game of throw-and-catch—or one-sided fetch—ensues with an exchange of aliases between Busby and the butler: "Willy the Weasel?" "Louis the Louse." "Louis the Louse?" "Winnie the Pooh." Lady Fortescue throws one in, "Spot the dog."

This verbal give-and-take will be echoed by the physical comings and goings of the necklace in later scenes. A nice conceit, but somehow I felt, once again, a sense of déjà vu. The danger of relying too heavily on formula is that everything becomes fraught with cliché. Especially within the confines of such a recognizable vehicle as a screwball Sunset Boulevard.