Commuting is Hell

What if you were waiting for a bus that never came? There are simple answers, of course — walk, complain, litigate, or maybe just go home. But what if you spent years, a lifetime, waiting? Tracing the same steps trod by Beckett in Waiting for Godot, Nobel-prizewinning Chinese writer Gao Xingjan constructs an uncanny reality centered around a bus stop. The Bus Stop is simultaneously a send up and a reconsideration of Beckett — for Gao’s characters wait is movement, carrying them from purgatory to the closest approximation of redemption: control of their fate. Though bleak, Gao’s vision is not without hope: movement is possible if you move. Gao’s existential queries are given voice by a diverse and entertaining cast of characters, seeming to be randomly united by their presence at a suburban bus stop. A silent man, a chess player, a young hothead, a fidgety girl, a mother, a student and a store director wait together for transportation to the city. As they wait, the old man frames the discussion, “When you stand in line according to the rules there are always those who don’t go by the rules.”

With the passage of time, these figures become more desperate, but also more intimate, sharing personal details, specifically their reasons for traveling to the city. The tragic question arises: if one does not hope or have dreams of a better life, what does the present, or the passage of time, mean?

To render this bleak, but familiar landscape Samantha Schect, also the show’s director, has designed a set with a swirling white circle beneath a wooden, cross-shaped bus stop sign at its center, directing the eye to this void. The entire set creates an atmosphere of endlessness and helplessness, of being sucked in to an unidentified center. Additionally, each group of audience seats, four in total, looks like its own bus terminal. With the repetition of structure, there is the sense of community, but by walling off each section, the seating underscores themes of alienation and desperation.

Though much of the existential musing is neither new nor mind-blowing, Gao’s play distinguishes itself with clever humor and criticism of Chinese society and government. The show’s program tells us that Communist Party officials labeled the play, which opened in Beijing in 1983, “spiritual pollution.” It’s not hard to see what provoked such a response. Gao’s characters initially regard waiting as an act of “social morality” — whether or not one has to wait indicates his station in life. That these people wait eternally signifies their meaninglessness in the eyes of the government. By setting opinions so ludicrous, but so common, against a ridiculous backdrop, Gao undermines this way of thinking, and kindly saves his characters from the void.

But salvation does not come easily, or quickly. The path is fraught with painful realizations. A young girl played with an endearing, yet heartbreaking level of anxiety by Alice Oh realizes that she will grow old and that, in the words of the mother, a woman’s life is waiting: waiting to get married, waiting to have children, waiting for them to age. Life is an eternal struggle, with eternally delayed gratification.

The concerns of the characters are most acute when they reveal what draws them to the city. The young girl was supposed to meet a man. As the possibility of a union dims, she is forced to blurt out: “I’ve become so petty…I know it’s not right to feel this way, but whenever I see city girls wearing those high-heeled shoes, I feel like they’re walking all over me and flaunting themselves to humiliate me…You can’t imagine how jealous I am.”

Thankfully, Gao balances the desperate notes with humor, animated most vividly by Jamie Grayson as Director Ma. Director Ma epitomizes the elitist who enjoys playing the system; he is happy with his station and cares nothing for his fellow men. Yet he finds himself stuck with this group because his bribes have failed. Throughout the play Grayson tickles the other characters like a giddy devil, enticing them to give up on the dream of the city and return to the comforts of home. His character is hilariously glib and Grayson hams it up, providing the easy laughter a struggling citizen desperately needs.

Though some of the jokes and criticism are lost in translation (the idea that one cannot sue a bus company is completely laughable on this side of the Pacific), the fact that a play condemned as pernicious by Communist officials resonates with an American audience attests to the strength of the writing and acting. If the show can occasionally be too funny to carry gravity, this isn’t necessarily a problem — who needs the philosophical quandaries of Beckett when you can get up and go?

Theater as Devotion

The Tidings Brought to Mary is 20th-century French dramatist Paul Claudel’s take on medieval mystery plays, which were based on Biblical readings, and originally performed by clergy until a papal writ in 1210 forbade them and guilds took their place, earning these plays the name “misterium,” Latin for occupation. Within the limitations of this form, Claudel’s poetic language and the cast’s energetic and heartfelt performances make what could be a dull recitation of religious maxims an affecting drama. If The Tidings Brought to Mary sometimes feels like a relic, perhaps its message will appeal to an audience living in a world of turmoil. For Claudel, the solution for a society in which the center does not hold is simple: the center is the cross—redemption and eternal glory through devotion and suffering. Set in 15th-century France on a farm in the Champagne region, the play opens with a moment of tension: Pierre De Craon, the town’s master builder, who is erecting a cathedral, suffers incredible desire for a young peasant girl, Violaine, which impels him to try to rape the girl. She foils his attempt, and it’s after this encounter that we enter the story. De Craon is shaken to the core, unhappy about both his desires and his inability to fulfill them, saying, “What man who loves does not want all he loves?” He believes his impure thoughts have marked him with leprosy (a commonly held conception in medieval Europe), which he conceals by wearing a robe.

Rather than criticize and spurn De Craon, Violaine feels deep compassion for him. She wants to share in his joy and grief, but he is overwhelmed by her empathy and happiness. After they circle each other with increasing tension, Violaine gives herself to Pierre, and kisses the leper, thereby sealing her terrible (here, a good thing) fate. Further complicating the narrative, this forbidden kiss is witnessed by Mara, Violaine’s jealous sister.

As De Craon, Douglas Taurel paces with apt gravity, and in the role of Violaine Erin Beirnard blinks with the innocence of a sacrificial lamb, but it would be nice to see the two actors feed off of each other more. The audience could perhaps then understand the depth of the “cup of sorrow” passed between them. As it is, their relationship seems a bit superficial, a recitation of their roles in society and in the drama. Perhaps with more performances the two actors will achieve a rhythm that will give this first scene the power it requires.

The nocturnal meeting between De Craon and Violaine, and most of the play’s action, take place in a space made to look like a stable. The biblical implications of every arrangement and set piece are thoughtfully executed in the Storm Theatre’s production. In particular, the lighting design stunningly renders the day’s changing light. We are made to feel that the farm’s humble spaces are as filled with God’s presence as a church. At times, the soft lighting can even make certain scenes look like works of religious art. But like a religious painting or icon, there is something stagnant about the play. With Claudel’s archetypal characters and obvious intentions, it’s as though one can only watch this story to satisfy preexisting mores.

Fortunately Mara is there to spice things up, incorporating shame, guilt, and the deviousness of a wicked sister. As Mara, Laura Bozzone flies into the play with exciting fury, and the huffiness and whine of a modern teenager. Such modern touches make the play feel more relevant and vibrant. Jenny D. Green’s performance as Elizabeth Vercors achieves a similar feat: she draws on familiar caricatures of shrewish wives, but also incorporates the self-aware nagging of modern comediennes.

Though Mara’s feistiness is enjoyable, Bozzone’s performance can come across as a one-note song. In particular, her tone in the final scenes calls for more nuance; is Mara truly unchanged?

Still, Mara’s fire makes her more relatable than Violaine, who’s all black and white. In considering Violaine, there’s little to do but marvel that all’s right in the world of the devout. The sinners are more interesting. It would be nice if the production looked more deeply at Mara, who must reconcile conflicting emotions and a confounding miracle. Unfortunately, Claudel avoids complexity, and the character lacks the depth of emotion that makes the complicated women of other plays electric and thought provoking (as in Macbeth).

Yet there is beauty in simplicity. As in many religious stories, good triumphs over evil: Violaine dies happily, her sister realizes the error of her ways, and the prodigal father is restored to his family. This production honors the play’s uncomplicated beauty with an earnest rendering, but one cannot help but hope for gray, like the complicated shade of the silver flower of leprosy, to cast doubt, and give us something to ponder.

Puppets without Masters

When the curtain rises in the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s production of The Historye of Queen Esther, King Ahasverus and of the Haughty Haman, four magnificently tall and colorful puppets dominate the stage. The puppets, like their human actor counterparts, are large-scale representations of the play’s main characters, and throughout the show echo the stage action like extended shadows. Unfortunately, these puppets are the most exciting aspect of the show, an awkward and lackluster take on an incredibly dated piece of 18th-century folk theater. A hit on the traveling marionette show circuit in the 1700s, The Historye of Queen Esther is based on the Bible’s Book of Esther. In the biblical telling, King Ahasverus of Persia holds a contest to name a new queen after his wife, Vashti, refuses an order to display her beauty for the King’s guests. The winner of this contest is Esther, a gorgeous young Persian woman who happens to be of Jewish descent, a fact she hides from the king, as advised by her stepfather Mordechai. Sitting near the palace gate one day, Mordechai overhears two royal attendants plot to kill the King. He reports their treachery, and they are executed. Mordechai’s respect for the King, however, does not extend to his prime minister, the haughty Haman. When Mordechai refuses to bow before him, Haman vows to kill him and obliterate his people, the Jews. Fortunately, the King learns of Mordechai’s honorable deed and vows to reward him, foiling Haman’s efforts. This leads Esther to reveal her true heritage, and the King amends Haman’s decree against the Jews, allowing them to defend themselves against persecution. He also orders Haman’s execution.

Incorporating stock comical characters, goofy word play, and distractingly loud instrumental accompaniment, the Czech Marionette Theatre’s take on this story is only slightly more chipper, retaining much of the content and structure of the Biblical version. Though the play ends on a happy note, with comeuppances to its villains, it isn’t really a show for kids, as it’s promoted to be. In addition to the on-stage hangings and Jew-hating, some of the verbal jokes involve advanced vocabulary that kids won’t understand, and punning that will make adults cringe. This is a shame, as children are likely the only ones to get much out of such a farce.

With children in mind, the play attempts to demonstrate a moral involving the danger of haughtiness, but it’s clear that the bigger issue is bigotry. The overwrought attempt to harvest a moral is just one problem. Whereas the moralizing is an oversimplification, the dialogue is a complication of a simple story. Theresa Linniham’s performance as Kasparkek (the Punch of the Czech version of Punch and Judy) is a welcome relief from the plodding tone. Though clumsy wordplay sometimes overshadows her skills at accents and clowning, she uses every opportunity to showcase her talents as a vaudevillian. Unfortunately, some of the other actors do not share her fluidness and eagerness to entertain, which further weighs the play down.

Though the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre is known for its post-modern approach to puppetry, which involves the obvious presence of the puppet master, they do not use this style to their benefit here, and the actors are upstaged by marvelously clever-looking marionettes. Created by Jakub Krejci, Michelle Beshaw and Emily Wilson, the cast of puppets is widely varied and incorporates odd instruments to delightful, surprising effect. Some have chalkboards or violins for chests, plungers for legs, hammers for arms, dazzling beads for a bosom—all of which relate to the personalities of the characters in witty ways. It’s a pleasure to see a new puppet enter the spotlight, but, sadly, this satisfaction wears off once the puppet begins to speak.

Perhaps The Historye of Queen Esther is doomed by its dreary source material to be a heavy-handed attempt at dealing with the complicated historical attitude toward Jews, but one can’t help but wish that the Czech Marionette Theatre group applied the innovation that produced its puppets to the live performance. Whereas the plunger and hammer limbs of the marionettes move with grace, the human actors are stiff and dull. If a carpenter like Geppetto could work his magic on this show, maybe the wood and the flesh would work together in greater harmony, and the material wouldn’t seem so ancient.

Deadly Serious?

At a funeral for actress Stacy Mayer, her eulogizer might say she was a charismatic comedian with great confidence and energy—almost enough to carry a clichéd show about funeral traditions. Though her performance in The Funeralogues is, at times, an admirable struggle, she perishes in the effort. I hope, for her sake, this is not what she will be remembered for. In the giddily irreverent hour-long Funeralogues, Mayer, as performer, and Robert Charles Gompers, as writer, cover the familiar, yet bizarre territory of public mourning, charting the progression of Mayer’s morbid obsession throughout her life. As in the brief eulogy above, Mayer dwells on the way she will be remembered. She also spends some time commenting upon the grief of strangers, but these parts lack the breezy, self-deprecating humor that Mayer excels at.

Adding to the irreverence, The Funeralogues is staged in the All Souls Unitarian Church. The church is outfitted with a “Quiet: service in session” sign, a guest book, hymnals, and its own piano player (Manny Simone, filling in for Jim Lahti) who provides plaintive renditions of songs like "Forever Young" and "Runaway Train."

The show gets off to a somewhat rocky start. Mayer takes some time to get comfortable, as does the audience, which tries to grapple with the awkward comedy of a highly polished monologue. By nature the monologue is self-obsessed, but in this show it can come across as woefully indulgent. Some of Mayer’s preoccupations are dull; in particular, her flashback to a Barbie funeral over which she presided as a girl is uninteresting and cloying. However, when Mayer’s humor takes a turn for the catty or self-effacing, she garners more laughs from the audience. For instance, when she considers the reckless possibility of saying what we really feel at funerals: “Let’s face it; you don’t get struck by lightning because God loves you.”

The show isn’t without charm, but Mayer and Gompers try to take on more than they can collectively chew. When the show tries to tackle the complex emotion of grief, it falls back on clichéd characters and perspectives. Mayer is capable of providing convincing turns of character—an elderly woman, the lone survivor in a large family; a crankily sad old man; a military officer and “death specialist” are given vivid life by Mayer, but they don’t really have a place in this show.

In the program, The Funeralogues is described as “a drop dead comedy,” and, at its best, it can be funny. The overall tone of the show is in keeping with this description, which makes the notes of melodrama ring all the more false. It is especially strange when Mayer recites an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s eulogy for two girls who died in an Alabama church bombing. Mayer frequently refers to funerals as “downers,” with the apparent intention of mocking the sometimes silly gravity we attach to our traditions. The MLK speech, as well as another one dealing with the death of two soldiers in Iraq, asks the audience to care in a way that the rest of the show does not.

It’s too bad The Funeralogues lacks focus and consistency; Mayer is likable as an actress and comedian, however, when she introduces serious outsiders into her warped world, it’s hard not to wish it would come to a quick end. Of course there is comedy in tragedy and tragedy in comedy, but here they make terribly strange bedfellows. Mayer, a leader of MC², or Manhattan Comedy Collective, has the enviable skill of making people laugh, but she squanders that all too readily here. Perhaps, for everyone’s sake, it would be best if this show went gently into the good night, while Mayer continues to rage.

Beyond the Sea

In the same way Herman Melville experimented with language in Moby-Dick, Carlo Adinolfi, in his one-man stage adaptation of the novel, manipulates his voice and body. With similar playfulness, The Whale, presented by Concrete Temple Theatre, addresses the ways and means of storytelling, producing an elaborate dance that pays homage to the awesome, but graceful power of the sea and to Melville’s original text. Adinolfi’s interpretation of Moby-Dick’s themes is a physical take on Melville’s tale which weaves the mysteries of the deep and the mysteries of man into a complicated linguistic and psychological web. But what it lacks linguistically, The Whale makes up for with stunning staging that draws parallels between the shapes fashioned by man and by God. However, like Melville’s maniacal Captain Ahab, Adinolfi takes on an impossible task. In excerpting from an intricate novel, Adinolfi cuts key details and the plot points that make a coherent story. For those unfamiliar with the text, the play can be confusing, jumping from monologue to action scene without narrative exposition. For audience members who have read Melville, The Whale, while bursting with energy and imagination, pales by comparison. Still, this exciting journey is worth embarking on—just as men are drawn to the ocean, they are drawn to good storytelling.

To the sound of ominous groans, the opening scene introduces a minor and forgettable character from Moby-Dick, the Sub-Sub Librarian. Melville makes this “poor devil” a meaningless creature by necessity, claiming: “Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong… Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless!” (Moby-Dick, xxxix). Whereas Ishmael narrates the novel, Adinolfi uses the Sub-Sub as his narrator, giving greater emphasis to the structural frame of a story within a story, but losing Melville’s characterization.

As in Melville, the Sub-Sub is there to contextualize the mythical significance of the Whale in social and literary history; the creature has captured man’s imagination for centuries, but is still mysterious. For this reason, he is the ideal subject for a story. Adinolfi’s Sub-Sub fantasizes about whaling voyages, bringing the drama of Captain Ahab’s pursuit of a giant and valuable sperm whale to vivid light with enthusiastic recreations. While the distinctions between the various characters in this drama are unclear, the rough transitions are smoothed over by Adinolfi’s child-like energy.

With equal fervor, Adinolfi stages the battles between predator and prey, in ever-changing relationship to each other, by morphing into both sailor and whale. To evoke the shape of the beast, he turns his back to the audience, flexing his broad back and twisting his legs into a fluke. His transformation demonstrates that storytelling is about more than words. All of his characters are bathed in ominous lighting (by Tyler Micoleau), and their speech is echoed with a portentous score (by David Pinkard). The set and sounds demonstrate the intoxicating but terrifying beauty of the sea.

The most stunning aspect of The Whale is its staging. Adinolfi, his crew and director Renee Philippi transform the stage into the limitless sea, showing scale through the use of model boats. As Adinolfi morphs into various characters, blocks of wood onstage take on different meaning: they are boat prows, library shelves, a pulpit and pews, and perhaps coffins. Adinofli also creates a boat skeleton from strips of wood, which is later shrouded in a white sheet to become the elusive Leviathan. The effect is lovely and eerie. The Whale is ghost-like, but the sheet ripples with the natural beauty of fins underwater. Compared to the other props, the white whale is enormous, and the projections of Adinolfi’s shadow onto a screen behind seem ridiculous.

The climactic meeting of Ahab and Moby-Dick shows Adinolfi at his feverish best. The story line is at its clearest, the metaphors too. Bathed in a red light, wrapped in the tangled ropes from his own ship, Ahab goes down spectacularly. Yet, as life rises from the Pequod’s wreck, the Sub-Sub Librarian re-emerges. The Whale has won the epic struggle, but the narrator retains control of the tale.

Adinolfi’s interpretation is powerful due to the performer's ability to go beyond words and to experiment with physical formations that demonstrate the profound shared relationships between all beasts. When the Sub-Sub Librarian sketches a whale skeleton on his arm, he is playing with this connection, just as Melville, in his introductory material, uses quotations to emphasize the whale’s influence. Though maybe not the letter, the spirit of Melville is very much alive in this staging, which likewise pays respect to its subject with a vibrant telling.

Big Boots, Little Emperor

It is not faint praise to say that Horizon Theater Rep’s production of Caligula (by Albert Camus) is better than one might expect. Phrased in almost entirely philosophical terms, Camus’s script, translated by David Greig, is “set in an unspecified country during the twentieth century” and features a self-obsessed ruler named Caligula. Camus is obviously indebted to the specific legacy of Gaius Julius Caesar’s extravagant madness. Like the real-life Caligula, director and star Rafael De Mussa’s ambitions are large, and it is not surprising that he falls short. However, Caligula’s actions make for a literally spectacular show, at times as gruesome and uncomfortable as a gladiatorial match. The twisted ironies—perversions that become normal through repetition—provide the humor that makes the show an entertaining, if ponderous, diversion. Taking inspiration from the strange history of Caligula’s reign, Camus’s play gives an explanation for his random acts of madness. After several years of respectable reign, Caligula began to exhibit the bizarre capriciousness for which he is remembered, in history and art. Among some of the more fantastic claims: that he treated his horse as consul; proclaimed himself Venus; and executed according to the nonjudgmental laws of logic. For example, when Caligula was reported to have fallen ill, a patrician offered to give his life for the improvement of the emperor’s health. Upon his recovery, Caligula took it. This sort of reasoning gives the play its shape and its voice.

Delighting in Caligula’s diabolical mania with a relish similar to that of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, De Mussa manages an ironically whimsical gravity. His deadliness is clear, but also desperately funny. The murderous acts are so extreme that there is no appropriate reaction—but it’s hard not to laugh at the absurdity.

However, because Caligula’s actions are based on a dogged commitment to the logical, each grotesque act is equally terrible. The plot, therefore, neither advances nor picks up speed. There are moments of tension, but overall it can be disappointingly dull. When nothing makes sense, everything makes sense—the play becomes so caught up in its twisted logic that everything is a bit too straight. As Caligula becomes depressed, claiming: “everything comes to the same thing. A little sooner, a little later,” the audience experiences a corresponding letdown.

If the other actors were as charismatic and energetic as De Mussa, perhaps the lack of tension would be a less glaring flaw. As it is, there is a general greenness and discomfort among the actors portraying the aristocracy. When they are plotting, Camus’s words feel about as dull and heavy as a Roman column. Among the other stars orbiting Caligula’s planet, Romy Nordinger as his wife, Caesonia, and Ben Gougeon as his henchman, Helicon, stand out for their performances. Still, there is no character to identify or sympathize with, just a powerful overarching concept.

The set likewise contributes to the show’s stagnancy. There is only so much room for the actors to move and interact when a table dominates center stage. This table is occasionally used to clever effect: to establish hierarchy, to show disrespect, to stand between two dueling personalities; however, it is just an object and in the end it takes up a lot of space that might be put to better use.

The table is part of a festive set that uses more modern examples of lavishness to echo the excesses of Rome. Little is done to explain or emphasize the particular music, wardrobe or set choices, but there is little about this interpretation that adds insight to a text that seems to prefer the power of the word above all else.

In the end it is Camus’s observations and wit, as well as Caligula’s fascinating story that provide the show’s highlights. However, though the writing is precise and perfect as a logically reasoned construction, the play’s failings are mostly due to the fact that the logic of absolute power is self-sustaining and fatalistically circular. When Caligula asks: “what god could fill a lake so deep?” the ensuing silence is profound. Certainly the gods of theater are not up to the task. Though he grasps at meaning, Caligula is left blinking at the void, with no more significance than when the curtain lifted. The theory of absolutes is complete, but at the cost of story and character.

A Second Coming...from the Bronx

Leave it to a New Yorker to distill hate, racism, and cynicism into a story about faith and redemption. In Amerissiah Derek Ahonen uses 27 years of city living to humorously portray the Ricewaters, a Bronx family living a perverse, but instantly recognizable version of the American Dream. The play’s remarkable achievement is tackling the bitter emotions that make us uncomfortable with literally irreverent humor. It’s a shocking thing to shock a New Yorker, and Ahonen, with his needle-sharp wit, left a stunned audience guffawing at the most inappropriate jokes. After this feat, there is something disappointingly cliché about the mystical ending, especially when the play’s realism makes the characters seem worth saving. However, the transformation of vitriol into touching comedy is in itself miraculous. The play revolves around Barry (Adam Fujita), a terminally ill man who has returned to his childhood home to die. Barry spends much of the first act cloistered in his bedroom, which gives us time to meet his family. Though it consists of stereotypes, the energy in each portrayal and the smart writing distinguishes the group as belonging uniquely to this play and to this singularly disturbed Ricewater family.

The family is in various states of denial, but Barry’s illness brings them together for a joint reckoning, which satisfies the guilty pleasure of laughing at their rottenness and hypocrisy. No ethnic group is spared their pointed anger, but the jokes within the play are filled with the good spirited self-awareness of theatrical humor.

In some ways the Ricewaters are oddly traditional, adhering to a custom of conspicuous consumption, and perceived moralistic liberalism, that has landed the patriarch, Johnny, and his daughter Holly in legal trouble. But Ahonen’s observations are fresh, his characters arrestingly eccentric. Holly is an angry, selfish alcoholic, but her transparency makes her sympathetic. When she later laments her need to do “what feels good,” it’s as though she knows of no other way to live; her superficiality is achingly pitiable.

Ahonen’s cruel and cynical characters would hardly be so engaging if it were not for superb performances from the cast. As Holly, Nancy Clarkson seems to buckle under the weight of her problems, and launches attacks with the particular bitterness of the insecure and unhappy. Though she struggles with a credible New York accent, her bitterness is simultaneously touching and disgusting.

Holly’s hate is mostly directed at Margi, Barry’s new age-obsessed wife, whose values stand in stark opposition to those of the Ricewater clan (Holly summarizes: “I hate calm women.”). Holly’s criticism extends to all members of her family and exemplifies their defiantly anti-Christian way of life. She is adamant, however, about identifying herself as a “bleeding-heart liberal,” as though it exonerates her. The family’s liberalism is an irony they are incapable of noticing, but it’s part of their quirky charm.

Rounding out this three-ring family circus are Johnny (George Walsh, who plays a delightful mix of Larry David, Tony Soprano, and everyone’s embarrassing uncle), Ricky, a recovering junkie, Loni, his emotional powder keg of a girlfriend, and Bernie, the evil neocon, complete with cross and self-serving biblical references. The recovering junkies are the most relatable characters onstage. William Apps’s Ricky is damaged like the familiar junkies of fiction, but his sensitivity highlights new depths in the archetype. Most poignantly, the bleakly comic assertion that this time, for real, he is off junk (which makes for a great punch line when the dying man is desperate for a toke). In this show, no stereotype is safe from ridicule. Beyond the liberal family there’s an interracial couple with a Scarface-clad wannabe rapper—a wannabe black person.

With selfishness and cynicism on jubilant display it might seem easy to dismiss a sick man with a messiah complex. However, though these figures seem hopeless, their dedication to Barry rouses the sort of compassion that begets forgiveness and redemption. When they forgo their skepticism to grant Barry his prophecies, the possibility of hope enters their lives, and the second act gives birth to several miracles: an unlikely apology from the unmovable father (who had once said “You gotta want to be right to be right”) and an unusual cameo from the sun.

Perhaps it’s disingenuous to pull a moral from a play that relishes in the vileness of its characters, but, when a strange black woman with telepathic powers arrives, Barry no longer seems like a joke; it’s just that the meaning of the miracle is unclear.

The salvation stuff aside, the show is an enjoyable antidote to the usual holiday fare about the joys and sorrows of homecomings. For this uniquely messed up American family, there is a uniquely American savior in Barry, the kind of Christ figure that can promise to get to heaven and make it impossible for those on Earth to cheat in sports.

A Tale of a Fateful Trip

Based on a play as wild and fantastic as the storm that opens the show, Classic Stage Company’s take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest deftly navigates the uneven seas, with its jolly highs and dull lows. When Prospero, the magician controlling the weather, restores calm, the play conforms to the expectations of a comedy, albeit with bizarre tangents, ending in marriage and applause. With impressive staging and clever sets, along with brilliant comic performances, the show is riotously funny and visually stunning. However, there are some disconnects, particularly involving Prospero’s speeches. Adherence to the letter of the script guides this production, which, though admirable, does not make it consistently accessible, and the viewer can sometimes feel lost at sea. As the lights go up, accompanied by a thunderclap, we see a small white ship, seemingly made of paper, perched atop a suspended quadrangle—a reminder of scale that also cleverly brings sublime natural phenomena to the stage. The ship’s inhabitants include Alonso, King of Naples, Antonio, Duke of Milan, Gonzalo, the King’s counselor, and Sebastian, Alonso’s brother. In the face of the storm they are weak and afraid, traits that will figure into their comeuppance. Also on board is Ferdinand, the King’s brave son.

The tempest that deposits the ship’s passengers on an island off the African coast is the work of Prospero, a magician with a score to settle. Mandy Patinkin plays up the ferocity and capriciousness of Prospero, his booming voice resounding with grave authority. Prospero inhabits the island with his beautiful daughter Miranda (a charmingly naïve Elizabeth Waterson), to whom he explains his reasons for raising the storm, and thereby fills the audience in on the history. The play’s weakest points are these explicative passages, which are long-winded and convoluted. Yet, such speechifying exemplifies Prospero’s boorishness, one of several character flaws that make him an unusual hero.

Prospero’s rage seethes as if the betrayal occurred yesterday when he recounts his usurpation by his shamelessly opportunistic brother, Antonio, and his flight from Italy that landed him, his daughter, and, amazingly, his entire library, on the island. Prospero’s supernatural powers derive from his books, and besides raising tempests, he spends his time commanding the spirit Ariel and the native Caliban, the disfigured son of the witch Sycorax, who died before Prospero’s arrival. Caliban is the opposite of the learned man: coarse, unintelligible, and obviously Other. Yet, despite the play’s judgments of Caliban, Nyambi Nyambi’s nuanced rendering can be discomfiting and touching.

As he enacts his vengeance, Prospero makes use of Ariel (an exhilaratingly shrill and mischievous Angel Desai). Ariel works her magic on Ferdinand (Stark Sands), whom Prospero wishes to marry to his daughter. Assuming the form of a sea nymph, she likewise charms the King and his retinue, sowing seeds of jealousy and anger, ultimately leading them to Prospero’s cell, where all of this scheming results in a slightly anticlimactic reckoning.

With many simultaneous plots, the playwright is forced to abruptly tie his loose ends. There is a hasty wedding ceremony, the pardoning of Antonio, the release of Ariel from servitude, the embarrassing comeuppance of the play’s fools (Stefano, Trinculo, and the hopeless Caliban), and Prospero’s restoration as Duke. Ends neatly tied, the play concludes with a gentle epilogue from Prospero, who directly appeals to the audience for their indulgence and his release. Finally, he and the rest of the cast get the applause they deserve.

The production is worth seeing for the perfect buffoonery of Trinculo (Tony Torn, playing the silliest, most enjoyable drunk I’ve ever seen) and Stefano (Steven Rattazzi), whose performances recall a Three Stooges bit. Similarly, Antonio and Sebastian trade sarcastic barbs, mocking Gonzalo and the King’s other attendants. In these scenes, Shakespeare’s language glows with vitality.

Under Brian Kulick’s skilled direction, and with a marvelous set from designer Jian Jung, the play becomes a comedy of sublime proportions. Jung’s set makes use of Classic Stage’s cavernous space, and Kulick positions his cast across its many levels (in dirt, on ladders, atop a wildly spinning table, in the wings, and on platforms set into the back wall). Furthermore, the use of the quadrangle as a representation of sea and sky (on alternating sides) is ingenious and lovely. The golden sky, with touches of darkness, is painted, but is so lit and tilted as to seem to change with the tenor of the scene. The color of the clouded sky is echoed in the sand beneath it, and in Oana Botez-Ban’s lustrous but simple costumes of rich yellows and crisp whites.

The show is an energetically acted, brilliantly staged interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s most disjointed comedies. Despite its odd plot and unsympathetic hero, it can be a crowd-pleaser, and this production focuses its exquisite attention on the high notes.

Retro Girl Power

With the surprising introduction of Governor Sarah Palin to the presidential race, and the subsequent media coverage, the gender politics of Nowadays, a play written circa 1913 by George Middleton, seem fiercely, if bizarrely, relevant. Though some of the positions and jokes can feel as outdated as petticoats, The Metropolitan Playhouse’s exuberant production brings the play to wonderful (newfangled electric) light. As Middleton’s contemporaries did in the early 1900s, Americans continue to argue over the “proper” roles of women in society; for instance, whether it is fair to question a woman’s capacity to handle her maternal responsibilities in addition to those of the vice presidency. It is fitting that The Metropolitan Playhouse, an organization dedicated to unearthing unrecognized American works, focuses on such an American preoccupation, with hilarious results. To provide historical context, the early 1900s saw the gradual rise of the call for women’s suffrage, including the publication of Rheta Child Dorr’s “What 8 Million Women Want” (1910). That title happens to be a headline in the “Women’s Suffrage Edition” of the newspaper Will Dawson reads at the start of Nowadays. Dawson tries to dismiss the issue, but finds that his wife and daughter embrace the cause and its principles. As a proponent of women’s rights, Middleton pokes fun at its critics. At one point Dawson says to the newspaperman Peter Row, “… if we had woman suffrage, women would all vote like their husbands.” Row replies, “They say it would double the ignorant vote.”

Nowadays reduces the scope of such a grand debate by focusing on the issues of the Dawson family of a “middle western state.” The family includes a patriarch, Will, a comically gruff Frank Anderson, his lovely but lonely wife, Belle (Lisa Riegel), his cad of a son, Sammy (Matthew Trumbull), and his self-called prodigal daughter, the play’s spirit, Diana (an energetically wistful Amanda Jones). It is Christmastime and the holidays have drawn the Dawsons back to the homestead—their father hopes for good. As with many family gatherings, the expectations of the old generation grate against those of the new, and arguments ensue.

Thankfully, Middleton’s imagined family rows are much more entertaining than the real thing. Whereas the wayward habits of his son do little to ruffle Will’s feathers, Diana’s insistence upon leaving the roost to follow an artistic “calling” leave him red and stammering. Belle, being a progressive mother, encourages Diana, for she was similarly ambitious in her youth, but sacrificed her goals for marriage. In the role, Riegel is stoic and strong without sacrificing maternal warmth.

Belle’s choices and Will’s reactions form a referendum on women’s rights, but the gravity of the discussion is relieved by Will’s buffoonery, which also highlights the wit and charm of the women in his life—women who are capable of subverting his antiquated expectations to carve out unique identities.

In addition to prodding her father at every chance and inspiring her mother, Diana interferes in Sammy’s affairs by bringing a surprise guest. Betty Howe is a young woman who shares a secret with Sam, threatening to make a worthwhile man out of him. Where Jones’s Diana is chirpy, Trumbull’s Sammy is wormy and pale, his constant snarl obviously identifying him as the villain. However, given the tone of the script and its jokes, such caricatured portraits are in good fun. Indeed, as the patriarch, Anderson huffs in the familiar way of sitcom dads.

For all of Diana’s bouncy girlishness, Jones holds her own in battles with Anderson, proving that a domineering attitude can not only be practiced by a woman, but also used to propel her forward, rather yoke her to the past (as it does for Dawson). That Diana should succeed in her career as well as in her love life is an essential goal of the play, and she doesn’t have to sacrifice the feminine to achieve traditionally masculine goals.

As set designer and director, Alex Roe uses a cleverly arranged, intricate set to emphasize the strengths of the space. It is a delightfully intimate setting, which reinforces the lived-in charm of the home and highlights themes of claustrophobia and stagnancy. The presence of the audience and the absence of walls perfectly reflect Middleton’s efforts to bring the concerns of the private sphere to public attention.

However, as radical as the play was (it was rejected by producers), the institutions of marriage and motherhood are not torn down. Middleton playfully chips away at their foundations, but in the end, when his heroines follow their hearts, they do so in a progressive and a traditional sense. They can have their cake and eat it too, just as Middleton does when he mocks, but adheres to some standards of his day. Yet the play’s retro attitude and cheesy jokes are refreshing antidotes to the crude jokes of pit bulls and pigs that currently preoccupy the nation. Chalk it up to the timelessness of good timing!

Future Imperfect

The living room exposed to the audience in the Clockwork Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number looks unremarkable and familiar. Yet this symbol of family unity, of similarity across households, is re-imagined as a bizarre and frightening landscape. In this room, a father and son whose relationship is eerily abnormal communicate with clipped dialogue that sets the audience on edge. This is no kitchen-sink drama. Churchill’s play transports us to a sexless, amoral future in which science has perverted traditional family dynamics, along with clear definitions of self. This nightmare scenario introduces major philosophical queries that cannot be answered by the hopeless creatures asking them. In this hopeless world, Churchill’s sad characters find nothing that unites them and nothing that sets them apart. In focusing on an emotionless world, the play itself is too cold to be satisfying theater. A Number focuses on the fallout after a grieving father tries to replace his mysteriously absent biological son (or fill the void following his wife’s death) by cloning him. Rather than alleviate his sadness, this act brings terrible unforeseen consequences that deprive this man of a sense of worth, self, or happiness. With profound confusion he tries to speak to his son and the clones to understand what he has done, but every query further baffles all parties. In the end, there is only the hollow satisfaction of one clone that, in spite of all odds and without justification, is happy.

Unfortunately, Churchill’s fascinating philosophical questions do not make up for her inaccessible characters, particularly the stolid father, played without emotion by Sean Marrinan. The strange process of cloning has rendered this man powerless and useless. Rather than accept responsibility, he tosses around vague pronouns—“they were only to make one of you.” Though he is pathetic, he is impossible to sympathize with, which makes the role difficult. Perhaps Marrinan is wise to avoid bursts of emotion, but his stiffness is distracting. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that Marrinan and his co-star, Jay Rohloff (playing all versions of the “son”), never achieve a comfortable rhythm with Churchill’s fragmented dialogue. Hopefully with more productions behind them this style will come more naturally.

Whereas the father is reserved and cold, his sons are his opposite in several ironic ways. Appearing in three variations, the children haunt his life in ways that mirror the ghosts of Christmases past, similarly illuminating his transgressions. Though they are genetically identical, their nurturing, or lack thereof, has produced vastly different characters, each of which’s individuality is brought to energetic life by Rohloff.

The son in the first scenes, Bernard 2, is a thoughtful creature who is intrigued and frightened by his origins and unafraid to ask difficult questions. His curiosity brings the audience up to speed and even jogs the fuzzy memory of his father. But there is a profound sense of loss in their conversations: though tied by blood, the two have no past.

Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say that the appearance of Bernard 1, a bitter and violent child, introduces higher stakes into the drama. However, in this dull and lacking world, his crime does not stir passion or change. After Bernard 1 succeeds in what he might consider revenge, the disturbing questions persist. No scores are settled, no burdens lifted. Even with the arrival of a third clone, a happy-go-lucky simpleton, the humor is dark and short-lived. There seems to be no hope for this “family.”

Churchill’s preoccupation with perversions of the familiar is perfectly rendered in Larry Laslo’s set. In spite of its gentle mauve tones, the vast space—and the inability of the father and son to fill it—contributes to the sense that this is a cold reality. The audience stares into the living room like scientists watching an experiment. The clever set also features a window that showcases projections of an embryo’s development. The egg in the sky inspires questions of origin and underscores the father’s detachment. This ominous orb comes out only when the lights go down and attracts the attention of the father in a way that his crying son did not.

Though A Number addresses and explores fascinating questions of self, identity, and responsibility, the play often has the feel of a formal experiment. It is as though Churchill is so dedicated to showing the coldness of this future world that she forgets the live audience in the present, sacrificing dramatic tension in the name of form and ideology. It can be somewhat trying to watch a dramatization of a philosophical debate, but the issues she raises are interesting and provide much to consider upon leaving the theater. The problem is that while you’re in the theater, the story is not all that riveting, and it’s characters, perhaps by necessity, frustratingly forgettable.

Pretty as a Picture

The aims of a playwright are not so different from those of a painter—both endeavor to present a representation of life that is viewed through the prism of their ideals. In Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh, Joel Gross has crafted such a richly imagined portrait of the life of the Queen, a friend, and their lover, that it’s easy to forget one’s history. With exquisite performances from the actors, the viewer is drawn into this fictional microcosm—a portrait in miniature that allows Gross to tell a sweeping tale that covers 20 years of the Queen’s life, leading up to the Revolution. If the ways in which history is bent to the interest of the artist are a bit too perfect, the flawless acting and the grace of the direction make it seem natural. After all, such perfection is expected, and admired, in a work of art. In Gross’s story, Marie is a pawn in the perverse love games of two manipulators: Elisabeth Louise Vigee le Brun, a beautiful young portraitist, and Count Alexis de Ligne, an ironic liberal. At the start of the play, Elisabeth, played with cruel flippancy by Samantha Ives, is seeking to gain royal favor to further her career. The opening scene sketches and nearly fills in her character: a charming, witty, but highly insensitive woman of low birth. The unevenness of the character—sometimes malicious, at other times tearful, gives Ms. Ives occasional trouble, but overall she manages Elisa’s mood swings and her impressive self-importance adroitly.

As Elisa paints she spars with her more-than subject, the Count, whom she mocks for his nobility. Their early flirtations humorously establish the tensions that will later tear them, and France, apart. At this point, however, class is the butt of every joke, and Elisa commands each punch line. Until Marie Antoinette, the 19-year-old Queen of France shows up, occasionally interfering, but also unintentionally fulfilling the painter and the Count’s designs. Though guileless and woefully stupid, the seemingly innocent Queen upsets the relations between the duo, setting in motion a dangerous ménage et trois that imperils them all.

As Marie, Amanda Jones is perfectly regal and excitingly free. In particular, in a scene in which Marie details the horrors of her deflowering by her husband, Louis XVI, Jones is as lovely as a portrait and yet refuses to remain still—she is the buzzing center of energy around which the other characters revolve. And despite her flaws, her girlish infatuations, and her ignorance, Jones’s Marie is quite sympathetic.

In rendering Marie as a hopelessly and helplessly sweet person Gross uses his boldest strokes. By making Marie sympathetic (a trait that emphasizes the wicked guile of those who use her), his queen is the victim. At one point Elisa says Marie was “born to be devoured by the mob.” Her friends who have likewise devoured her are therefore responsible for setting her downfall in motion.

Of course, with such a pathetic Marie at its center, the play gives little credit to what the Queen refers to as “the rabble.” The mob beyond Versailles is given voice through Alexis (an admirably game Jonathan Kells Phillips), who is made out to be an idealistic fool. By extension, the Revolution is represented as chaotic folly. While Marie falls victim to the intriguers, the revolting peasants are lawless monsters who cruelly mock the imprisoned Marie by giving her funeral flowers. Gross reverses the traditional caricature: while Marie is a fleshed out character with a range of emotions (not reduced to one fateful line), the peasantry is a faceless mob making impossible demands and baseless accusations.

Director Robert Kalfin puts the finishing touches on Gross’s portrait by placing his actors within frames onstage, with appropriately dramatic lighting and posturing. The audience’s gaze lingers the exquisite details of court life, specifically the costumes, designed by T. Michael Hall, which are gorgeous representations of the sumptuousness Elisa endeavors to capture on canvas.

In keeping with Gross’s tightly woven narrative, he uses controlling metaphors to emphasize the play’s themes. At its height, the era’s elegance is reflected in an impeccably dressed and mannered (i.e. silent) footman (Hugo Salazar, Jr.) who gracefully introduces characters and scenes. As the terror mounts, the footman becomes increasingly surly until he finally tosses off his powdered wig in anger. Standing in for the disgruntled peasantry, the footman is a simple means of representing the emotions of the lower class.

This representation underscores the focus of the show: the peasants are the unseen and unknown beyond the palace. Far more important to this story are the rises and falls of Marie’s temperament, and status. Though the victimization of Marie, and the opportunism of both Elisa and the playwright, can be frustrating given the historical context, the play is a touching, humorous portrait of the things in its frame.

Broad Strokes

To analyze the life of an artist seems a foolish, perhaps doomed, endeavor. Words are incapable of characterizing the magic behind the brush stroke, often seeming trivializing and petty, or unfairly sweeping. In A Brush with Georgia O’Keeffe Natalie Mosco’s lyrical script skips through the life of O’Keeffe, but fails to capture the vast beauty of her art. It could even be said that the play, mostly a lengthy monologue, dissolves the mystery of her art by dissection. Jumping quickly from scenes in a long life, Mosco spends considerable time and energy, but only skims the surface of the work and life of O’Keeffe. In performance the show’s title seems painfully apt: we are brushing the surface of something fleeting and impossible to hold. The play opens with the stark solitude of the older O’Keeffe. In the desert, with only wild turkeys and the enormity of her “myth” to keep her company, she muses philosophically about the problematic relationship between the artist’s life and her art: “They won’t understand my art any better if they see how I live: It’s all there on the canvas…Where I was born and where and how I live is unimportant—it’s what I’ve done with where I’ve been that should be of interest.” During the next hour and a half this key notion is disregarded, while Mosco covers the disparate places, the opportunistic people, and the various incarnations of the artist herself. Perhaps it’s appropriate that this survey is an inadequate way of exploring O’Keeffe’s canvases, but this kind of irony has no place in such a sincere production.

After introducing the wise, confident O’Keeffe, Mosco explores her troubled side in scenes from a sanitarium and her childhood. In covering such an eventful life, Mosco unfortunately follows the form of a jumbled timeline. Rather than follow a narrative arc, the show lists accomplishments like a résumé, hitting upon so many events that Mosco speaks with breathless speed. Perhaps some editing, or a narrower focus—fewer scenes, selecting a specific period or piece—would help.

Despite problems with the show’s premise, Mosco’s confidence and clear vision are impressive strengths when it comes to portraying an imporant female artist. She adopts the many incarnations of O’Keeffe, twisting her limbs gracefully to evoke the natural shapes one assumes danced in O’Keeffe’s mind. Still, the show drags and there is not enough movement to make up for such a text-laden script.

Supporting Mosco are two highly capable actors that similarly adapt to the multitude of parts. David Lloyd Walters, playing and representing the men in Georgia’s life, walks a fine line between boorishness and enviable confidence. He exudes the sort of clarity of expression and self-possession that Georgia cannot, highlighting the doubt that plagues and stifles her. Virginia Roncetti has the unenviable task of playing the female non-Georgias—less talented and either fawning or jealous. Even with this material, she is a playful chameleon who is entertaining to watch in all forms. Yet, the characters are often black and white interpretations that force the viewer to strictly adhere to Mosco’s point of view.

This controlling vision is further demonstrated through the use of a projector and screen that offer images of O’Keefe’s paintings and photographs of her and characters in her life. The photographs are wonderful, but the goofy revisions of O’Keeffe’s paintings inexplicably break down the work and set its pieces into motion. The animations are often crude takes on the paintings; stark contrasts to the serious artist portrayed by Mosco. It is an odd decision to modify the final object when we are asked to sympathize so much with the artist’s independent vision.

Unlike the projector, the show’s other backdrop, a strip of blue sky with wispy clouds, is a stunningly simple evocation of space and limitlessness. Though obviously a screen on a stage, when the sky appears it seems to come into the fullness of being with O’Keeffe’s conception of it. In its simplicity, this screen achieves what the collaged details of the projection do not.

Director Robert Kalfin deftly moves the actors around the screens, wisely mining the rare interactions between them for all their comic and tragic worth. Yet, his strict dedication to Mosco’s script cannot help a production that is stilted and lacking nuance.

Unsurprisingly, the play’s initial claims turn out to be true: after hearing the history, the art is not better “seen,” nor is the artist. It is unclear why Mosco, a talented writer and performer, understanding the complications of biography, commits herself so enthusiastically to this straightforward, unenlightening format. To learn more about an artist one should see an exhibit; as Mosco’s character states: look at her work, not at her.

War of the Words

For a play that is ostensibly about the unstoppable machine of war, about the moral quandaries and mythologizing of its participants and perpetrators, Irondale Ensemble Project's The Great American All-Star Traveling War Machine is an enjoyable, funny romp through several centuries of human history. Too smart to be a blaring critique, the show is a good dramatization of the magazine that inspired it: Lapham’s Quarterly, the first issue of which was entitled “States of War." The magazine included essays from critics living and deceased, and attempted to approach its subject from an objective and detached perspective. Though the Ensemble's approach is all encompassing, their compilation is clearly intended to criticize war. With such a grand scheme, the show can sometimes be an unfocused critique, but overall it is as complex as the emotions that fuel the war machine. The opening sequence features a song and dance that playfully mocks the ways war influences culture. A narrator (an ironically professorial Damen Scranton) gleefully prances and twists an umbrella, announcing a long list of conflicts. Things become less chipper with the mention of the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. While it is true that the audience is more likely to have strong emotions and personal connections to these more recent wars, the show is founded on a premise that no war is more “meaningful” than another (or, in the words of Mark Twain, “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”)

From the opener, the play shifts in time—in thematic, rather than chronological leaps—and includes an inspiring speech from General Patton (a fierce, yet playful Patrena Murray, who is astounding in all of her roles), a humorous exchange of telegrams between Kaiser Wilhelm II (Willie) and Tsar Nicholas II (Nicky) on the eve of WWI, Elizabeth I’s speech at Tillary, an AA meeting attended by Kurt Vonnegut, a petulant Nixon and a paternal Kissinger, plus more. Interspersed between the sketches and monologues are American pop songs, highlighting the vast cultural machine of distraction—vital for a nation, but no less disturbing for that.

The emotional jumps in the show require frequent and sudden shifts in tone. From the proud Elizabeth to a young soldier confronting his kill, Patrena Murray embodies these transitions best and thereby demonstrates the layers of man’s reactions to war. The rest of the cast is a multi-talented group of actors who share with their director, Jim Niesen, keen wit, cheekiness, and general ease.

Some sketches are less strong than others, and with such frequent changes in time, place, and perspective, the show can seem disjointed. This style links the show with a cabaret tradition that favors quick laughs over plot and character development. For example, the choppiness and questionable importance of a Rambo sketch and one about Alexander the Great point to some of the problems with covering so much ground. However, because of the skill of the actors, and the director’s trust in their abilities, the production is still compelling.

In addition to their talents as comedians, the cast is quite capable of churning out moving scenes that focus on the tragic losses of war. The most affecting are a piece that integrates the tale of a soldier’s death in WWII with the lyrics of an achingly lovely Australian war song, and an interpretation of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried .

Acknowledging the bravery, and power, required to fuel a war effort does not, however, amount to support, and the ensemble is made up of some conscientious objectors. Yet, the show does a great service to American tradition by exploring various perspectives to interrogate a collective past.

The Great American All-Star Traveling War Machine is a refreshing piece of theater that graciously avoids the easy propaganda of an issue play while still giving serious, if often ironic, consideration to the gravest of topics. Yet, because of the cabaret structure, the play has the unfortunate tendency to rapidly skate over the deep issues it raises. It might not be a wholly saving grace, but the finale is a neat and stunning summary of their ideas: a scene involving no fanfare, no iconography, no idolatry; just some faded jackets representing the emptiness of the endeavor, and a song bitter in its blind hopefulness: “We’ll meet again some day, some sunny day.”

Crimes of the Heart and the Pen

When the mesmerizing Elena Abril Fiero casts her spell it is nearly impossible to escape entanglement, obsession, something akin to rapture. This near-religious experience is perfectly realized by the cast and artistic crew presenting Mary Fengar Gail’s The Judas Tree , a journey into madness. Gail’s world, in which the beautiful and the macabre live side by side, is stunningly rendered with superb acting, a grim chorus, and subtle lighting effects. It is easy to imagine oneself in Fiero’s sanctuary and to believe in the supreme power of myths, but it is equally easy to focus on the shifts in tone and to emerge from the trance. When her sacrificial practices are removed from the garden haven and scrutinized in a California courtroom, the abominable nature of her crimes is clear, her culpability, less so. Cloaked thickly in metaphor, the story of Dorothea Puente, a California serial killer who murdered nine elderly boarders in her home and buried them in her yard, becomes a mystical tale about the self-proclaimed priestess, Elena Fiero, who sacrifices victims to the Madreguera, a sort of earth goddess. The story is bewitching, but like much art that draws from “true” crime as its inspiration, it often comes dangerously close to fetishizing horror, and worshipping playfully at the cult of the serial killer.

The murders committed by Puente bear scant resemblance to the dramatized sacrifices executed by Fiero. There was nothing romantic about her actions—she killed and then forged her victims’ social security checks to live in luxury—and, unceremoniously, she sits in prison to this day.

Where Puente was obvious and cold, Fiero is complicated and fiery with passion. Gail has imbued the character with the sort of mad, fascinating messianic dreams and visions that bring allusions to Christ, Mayan ritual, and mother goddesses. As Fiero, Roseanne Medina is a vision: absolutely beautiful, she embodies the cunning and the fierceness of the character, while still making her alluring. With her charm and looks, Elena entraps lost souls with the intent of sacrificing them to the Madreguera. These sacrifices yield a heavenly garden of vibrant color. Notably, the set does not literally feature a garden; the flowers are figuratively represented by light that spreads across the floor in a pattern reminiscent of stained glass.

There are many moments in the show where rapturous devotion is faithfully and sympathetically created. It is impressive that Lorca Peress, as director, resists the urge to judge her characters, something that Gail believes society is too quick to do. That burden is placed on the audience, toward which the actors direct their testimony throughout Fiero’s trial. Gail uses the frame of a courtroom drama to launch into her more romantic, sensual story, told through the use of flashbacks and monologues. Representing the most bewitched character, Arturo Salvia, a former detective, performs these monologues in his tortured, transformed state: a tree. Specifically, he has changed into a Judas tree, signifying his betrayal of his former lover, Fiero.

The play’s structure and severe character turns require deft transitioning from the actors and the director. With rare exception, these changes occur gracefully. As Salvia, John Haggerty shifts wonderfully from the stereotypically skeptical detective to a breathlessly emotional tree. His physical morphing and the show’s choreography (by Jennifer Chin) bring to vivid life Gail’s poetic impulses. In an impressive sequence, Silva is digging up the garden, afraid that his worst fears will be realized. To demonstrate the task and its haunting nature, the Chorus Corpus Flora (five talented singers and dancers) acts as the earth being parted (a visual that corresponds with the themes of the play).

While the garden scenes are among the production’s finest moments, it is in the poetic mode that the play loses its footing. Some lines are striking in their spare, raw evocation of natural splendor, with the ability to find exceptional parallels between the world of plants and the world of men. Other times, these connections seem forced, the metaphors over-extended, the puns silly (e.g. “barking up the wrong tree” and “treedom”).

At times this production is alluring portrait of fanaticism, but its shortcomings highlight the impossibility of qualifying insanity, or trying to develop a metaphor to control it. While the show leaves it to the audience to judge, there is no way to understand a character such as Fiero, and it is left with a hauntingly empty feeling about her fate and a bleak sense of the world she leaves behind. Gail’s poetic and occasionally obsessive exploration of this character is compelling, but the perverse nature of this investigation and its presentation are left unexplored.

Poe as Comedian

Watching The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether , a dramatic adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, I was struck by the desire to find the original and read it alone, to hide in a corner and allow sinister thoughts to take root in my imagination, consume my mind like ivy, and terrify me. Poe’s skill for evoking suspense, tension, and paranoia is undeniable, and his best works render internal terror palpably on the page. Unfortunately, these talents are not as strongly employed in this theatrical version of The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether . In the story, a foolish Visitor is received for a dinner at an insane asylum in the French countryside. Though the hints of pending doom are anything but subtle, the Visitor persists in his curiosity, leading him to uncover the obvious (and therefore less terrifying) truth about his hosts. That this revelation produces a lackluster climax is one of the major problems with a dramatic retelling.

However, as with Poe’s story, the production begins with promise: foreboding organ music, simultaneously piercing and deep, introduces the show. As credits roll, shadow puppets float into view, and eventually two figures emerge to tell the tale. The puppets, beautifully and intricately designed by Candice Burridge (also the show’s director), are a throwback to a performance mode popular in the mid to late 1800s (Poe’s era).

The shadow puppetry is endearing and funny, but conveys none of the dread that builds so gradually and surreptitiously in Poe’s stories. Still, with the perkily spooky music, written by John Vomit, the light style is enjoyable. The music echoes the creations of Danny Elfman, composer for many of Tim Burton’s films. Indeed, much of the shadow puppetry is reminiscent of Burton’s stop-animation films.

Though it does not add suspense, the shadow theater is the most effective element of the production. The mode allows for the narrative to take center stage, and Poe’s cleverly wandering sentences, packed with the glorious adjectives and exclamations of 19th-century American literature (Capital! Cavalier!), can be focused on. However, when the screen is turned off and the actors appear onstage (a scene change that uses a cleverly v-shaped set designed by Mark Marcante), the charm of the shadow theater dissolves.

As the Visitor, Dan Drogynous is physically as lovely a rendering of Poe’s sensibilities as the puppets: his face is perfectly pinched and sallow, his hair as wilted as a dying flower. However, he struggles to master the tone and pace of Poe’s language, which prevents the audience from becoming enraptured by the tale of the asylum. The Visitor’s curiosity leads him to investigate the asylum’s famous “soothing method,” according to which the keepers of the asylum never contradict the patients, but reinforce their delusions as though real.

Upon entering the asylum, the Visitor meets a diverse group of eccentrics, led by Monsier Maillard. In the role, Zen Masley booms impressively, projecting through a mop of a mustache. He leads a group of perversely strange characters, which include three puppets. The cast is jubilant and frenzied in its madness, but the reason for using puppets is unclear. Certainly it is easier to make a puppet look like a frog or a teapot than it is a man, but there is greater humor in the perception of the madman that he is a teapot, and in the sane man’s perception that he should not contradict him.

For all of his probing, the Visitor is rewarded with a grand show. Costume designer Susan Lasanta Gittens has vividly imagined the gaudy accoutrements described by Poe—beads, feathers, and bad makeup abound, and the characters prance about like children that have raided mother's vanity. Amidst this prancing, the cast trades the spotlight in a series of monologues that would alarm any sane visitor and prompt a hasty retreat. Yet the visitor stays, hypnotized by Maillard. However, screams from within the asylum disrupt the dinner, and arouse the Visitor from his stupor. He again asks questions and uncovers the frightening revelation about Maillard and his cohorts.

In the case of this show, the conceits of storytelling do not necessarily translate well to the stage. It is deflating that the narrator is the character who is ever seeking, and being sought by, the terrible and the bizarre. Since he is telling the story in the past tense, we know that whatever harm or misfortune befell him was not so horrible. With this knowledge, the story becomes, rather than horrific, a satire of treatments for psychosis in the 1800s, as well as a commentary upon social understanding of psychoses. The problem is that Poe’s talents as a comedian and satirist are not as brilliant as his ability to haunt, and this production does little to make the story more compelling.

Madness!

Early in Denis Woychuk’s new rock musical, Attorney for the Damned , a narrator poses the question: “What makes a hero?” The musical, a warped, nonsensical journey through the criminal justice system, doesn’t really try to deal with this question. So, instead, let’s contemplate another question: What makes a good musical? Is it a good book with catchy songs? A heavy moral issue? Spectacle? It’s not an easy question to answer, but I think it’s fair to say that Attorney misses the mark. Even with lots of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, the show fails to sustain audience interest, as well as its own credibility. Founded on a weak premise (an innocent attorney who had wanted to help "widows, orphans, and the poor," but now defends "perps who like to fuck, then fight”), the production completely devolves into a bizarre farce that, more bizarrely, tries to make a statement.

The plot, though wandering and incoherent, initially focuses on Laura Skyhorse (Allison Johnson), a young defense attorney who tries to assuage her guilty conscience by defending the mentally ill. Skyhorse is part Native American, but it seems that the sole purpose for this background detail is to allow her counterpart, the bitter Assistant District Attorney Vancussy (Juliana Smith), to make racist comments. The ADA’s racism is just one of several jabs Woychuk throws at lawyers. As with the show’s other criticisms, his complaints about the profession are often silly one-liners (e.g.: “where do vampires learn to suck blood? Law school”). Though some of these lines are humorous, their appeal is overshadowed by the show’s meaningless preoccupation with sex.

Woychuk is a former lawyer himself, who for some years defended the criminally insane. The job left him with guilt and inspired much self-analysis, some of which has taken public form: a book, articles, this musical. Yet, no matter how exciting and emotional his cases were, this presentation is a ridiculous romp that rouses confusion, if it rouses anything at all.

The show’s lyrics are among its faults, but though the actors are required to sing such lines as "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven/But my wife turned out to be/Not in love with me,” their performances are the most entertaining parts of the show. In the lead role, Johnson sings with a sweet conviction that matches her character, while Denny Blake and Pat Mattingly, playing the mentally ill, bring a soulful, raspy sound to their numbers. As Vancussy, Smith offers an appropriate contrast—she opts for the pop style and brash belting that go with her pumps.

Even with the cast’s solid performances, the production drags. Part of the problem is the frequently awkward positioning of the actors. They spend so much time serenading the audience that there is no chemistry between them; their relationships are unbelievable and uninteresting. Perhaps, if more scenes featured shared numbers, rather than solos, this would be less of an issue.

As the production drags, the plot plows ahead with a series of extremely unlikely romances. First, the headstrong prosecutor, who happens to be a nymphomaniac, desperately solicits the sexual attention of a psychologist, Dr. Marcus Blake (a peculiarly jubilant Ray Fisher). Another scene features Dr. Blake and Skyhorse testing the doctor’s mind control device in a perverse way. The show ends with the dizzyingly incomprehensible: sex between the ingénue attorney and her recently freed client, a criminally insane man who had cut off his former girlfriend’s finger, in a deserted subway tunnel where the two are hiding from another criminally insane man who is hunting them down and trying to kill them.

At this point, are you thinking about heroes? Are you thinking about the plight of the insane, or the errors of the “justice” system? Or, to put it in the words of Vancussy, who directly asked the audience, “are you still with us?” The delayed and weak response from the audience answered her question perfectly. And how could one be expected to be interested in a show that can hardly stay on one topic long enough to offer insight, that opts for cheesy, glib, and offensive jokes over wit, that somehow, no matter how unlikely, finds sex when its looking for heroes?

For a man who has taken some time to reflect on his past, Woychuk’s musical is full of odd choices: why has he created a show that treats its characters cruelly, and is so explicitly sexual, yet confounded? If the writer and his director want the audience to ponder questions of heroism, to be entertained, or even just to “stay with them,” creating unsympathetic characters and dull songs isn’t the way. Perhaps Attorney for the Damned is not as unredeemable as its characters, but it would take quite a bit of rehab to make things work.

Lives Adrift

There is something shamefully exhilarating about watching crazy women teeter at the edge of the deep end. Kristen Kosmas’s new play, Hello Failure , a clever and funny exploration of the ways people cope with loneliness and introspection, gives the audience this kind of detached perspective, allowing one to consider the way it feels looking in versus looking out. While watching others in pain is perversely cathartic, it is hardly comforting. In ways charming, witty, and sad, Hello Failure covers the vast and confusing mental landscapes of seven submariners’ wives. The play follows the women’s intertwining lives as they struggle with a profound existential loneliness that seized their lives with their husbands’ extended departures. They are all disturbingly quirky, and yet often seem like robots attempting to perform scripts that rarely work. At regular meetings the women struggle to define their lives so that they may live in the world with relative success. Sadly, their efforts mostly fail. The women share the stage and their problems throughout, but cannot reach self or joint understanding. Their disjointed experiences give the play its structure, which means that there is little plot development, but the dialogue and the actors are clever enough to sustain the show.

Echoing the disjointed emotional states of the characters, director Ken Rus Schmoll moves his actors around a stage divided to simultaneously present scenes in several locations: a cramped bathroom, a car, and a room in a museum. Through the seamless shifting between breakdowns and near-breakdowns, the audience gets to experience something like living inside a fractured mind. The show revolves around the chatter that occurs when people are waiting, but this idea is neither as simple nor as innocent as it might sound. Occasionally, one longs for something to happen, just as these women do. The fact that nothing changes reinforces the agony of waiting.

At first, the play’s overt means of presenting disjointed beauty can be frustrating (it’s as though the characters are too cognizant of their performances). However, the play takes a welcome turn when we leave indecipherable monologues for the dynamic meeting juxtaposed with Rebecca’s mad dialogue with a vibrant ghost (a masterfully absurd Matthew Maher). As Rebecca, Kosmas assumes the toughest role. Though Rebecca’s madness can seem contrived, her speeches are not without lovely and unique observations, made more touching by Kosmas’s childlike excitement.

That a play about suffering and emotional breakdowns is so funny is a testament to Kosmas’s fantastic and whimsical sense of humor. The playwright has a wonderful way of finding the humor in casual patterns of speech; idioms are distorted by their presence in this alternate reality and grammar is is playfully interrogated. The women occupy a quirky, but devastating other place defined by deceptively barbed chatter, tenuous social connections, and a handbook filled with Soviet-style advice on how to manage the “stages of deployment.”

Amidst such strange surroundings, it would be easy for an actor to lose touch with the audience. Delightfully, all of the actors inhabit their characters with a level of naturalness that is engaging and perfectly in tune with the tone of Kosmas’s script. Indeed, the actors are so well in tune with each other that they can recite the same monologue simultaneously. When Rebecca and Kate (played with aggressive jubilance by Joan Jubett) share the stage and a speech, their different approaches to the same script demonstrate their subjective, unique pains, despite the seemingly obvious similarities between their experiences.

In some moments, the cleverness of the script is distracting, and the show is self-conscious to the point of philosophical detachment. However, the concluding speech, a joint monologue performed in unison by the entire cast and directed at the audience, is a self-conscious, but bold and effective way to tie together some of the previously scattered messages about anguish. Kosmas uses each character’s specific plight to address the feelings of disconnectedness that plague modern life, and unites them at the end to attribute the problem to self-obsession. The final scene suggests that the most healing shift could be away from the self, which might be the only way to ignore troublesome thoughts about how one “fits into the scheme of things.”

Hello Failure initially seems like it will be an absurd fantasy: Rebecca writes a letter to a dead man, a submarine inventor named Horace Hunley, who later makes a magical (and hilarious) appearance in her bathroom. But as much as these women dream, as much as they try to take part in alternate impossible worlds, they are, pitifully, in a world where men cannot fly and submarines sink, where the house does not fall apart even as you do. In such a world, the question arises, how does one cope? Could the answer be so simple and so devastating as one cannot?

The Tragedy of the Issue Play

When Euripides composed The Trojan Women his play represented a timely criticism of Greek imperialism, as well as a commentary on cycles of fate. In 417 BC Athens had recently emerged from a ten years' war with Sparta, and was preparing to attack Sicily, a move that would prove disastrous. In his contemporary adaptation, Alfred Preisser uses the structure and some of the themes of Euripides’s drama to address modern issues, incorporating the horrific stories of female victims of the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The two plays share as their focus the suffering of women at the hands of men, but the neat parallels end there. Preisser’s “radical re-imagining" of Trojan Women introduces many raw emotions, but the varied critiques are unfocused and the ideas are not well connected. The result is a production that has moving material, but ultimately fails to move.

The play attempts to consider the complicity of the powerful in the suffering of the meek at “the bottom of the world." This is but one of many weighty topics addressed, but not fully explored. In addition, the groups producing the piece, the Harlem Classical Theatre and Harlem Stage, claim missions to tackle race issues in art. In creating a piece that tries to reflect these issues and ideologies, the show sacrifices character development and narrative structure.

Even with the show's problems, several elements of the production are still chilling and effective. Troy Hourier’s well-designed post-apocalyptic landscape of industrial wreckage invokes the grand, but fleeting achievements of civilization (Penn Station). In the opening scene, a girl clings to a chain-link fence like an animal. Her bitter speech ignites a chorus of women who chant the terrible fates of their people: rape, death, and destruction. To tell the stories of the African women, Preisser cleverly retools the traditional Greek chorus, giving it many different voices, which makes the suffering experienced seem both exceptional and tragically common.

The dramatic effect of the chorus is enhanced by Tracy Jack's smart choreography. Though the women speak with individual voices, they move as a unit. At first their combined force is brute and animal-like; they gang up on Helen, screaming at her and calling her names. Their hatred echoes that of the men who terrorize them; a parallel they realize too late.

Toward the end of the play, when Hecuba recognizes the blindness of her former perspective, the group of women executes a gentle series of synchronized movements. No longer screaming, they sing and perform hand gestures that seem to mimic the rising and setting of the sun, as well as the rhythmic beat of rowing. One is a metaphor, the other a Cassandra-like envisioning of what is to come.

Unfortunately, the aggressive rants of the women characterize the play’s approach and tone. Certainly, they have cause for such bitterness, but the material would be more affecting if the tone and the performances were more dynamic. This isn’t to say that all of the performances are ineffective. Zainab Jah is calm and confident as the commanding Helen. Although Helen seems to be a selfish manipulator, the subtlety of Jah's performance leaves room for interpretation. Also interesting is the character of Talthybius, played with sly wisdom by Michael Early. The modern interpretation turns the Greek messenger into a wormy bureaucrat, and his “ugly circles" of speech provide the show's comic moments (a welcome turn after the many horrible displays and the moralizing).

There is a lot that Preisser is trying to do with Trojan Women , and the production suffers from its grand, but undefined ambitions. Whereas Euripides moved his play around the central character of Hecuba, this adaptation lacks that kind of central focus, and introduces several different ideas, most of them somewhat obvious criticisms.

Euripides' play is an interesting vehicle for a critique of modern society, but the themes and structure of the adaptation could benefit from some tightening and a stronger, narrower focus on the African women's accounts, or a more specific connection to the civil wars in Africa. When the audience looks through the fence at Troy it might be looking into a distant mirror, brought up close and personal, but the production’s message is too hazy to inspire critical self-assessment, or change.

Practicing Divinest Sense

The private world of Samuel Finkelbaum is both a purgatory and a haven, a tragic and tender place brought to life in exquisite detail by the Blue Heron Theatre and the Mirth A Theatre Company. In their bitterly humorous production of The Puppetmaster of Lodz , by Gilles Ségal, the presence of the minutiae of daily life and the performance of household rituals make the lives of the Holocaust victims immediately tangible. However, rather than simply elicit shock and sympathy, Gilles Ségal’s clever structure and the cast’s solid performances present a complex meditation on the unique guilt of a “survivor." It is a testament to the strength of Ségal’s writing and of Robert Zukerman’s nuanced performance that Finkelbaum can be seen as both exceptional and representative—the survivor whose life is proof. Within Finkelbaum’s apartment, his day is composed of normal activities, performed for the audience in real time. There is something cozy and hypnotic about the execution of familiar tasks, and about the uncomplicated dialogue between two people in love. The audience soon discovers that the dialogue is only a wistful monologue that Finkelbaum speaks to a puppet. His world is anything but normal. This is Berlin in 1950, and outside his apartment great changes are happening. At least, that is what those on the other side say. Throughout the play, the building’s concierge (played by Suzanne Toren) tries to convince Finkelbaum, a Holocaust survivor, that the war has ended. However, as someone who knows the cruel fate of those who blindly believed, Finkelbaum resists her explanations and refuses to leave.

Zukerman is nothing short of astonishing as he follows the manic turns of Finkelbaum’s monologue. With his skilled performance, the Puppetmaster’s seeming insanity is at once charming, funny, and deeply sad. There is never a moment when his humorous lines alleviate the sadness or guilt of his life, and the viewing experience is appropriately uneasy. As a puppet master, Finkelbaum is at his happiest and most entertaining when he is composing his grand show: “The Tragicomic Life of Samuel Finkelbaum." In this performance within a performance, Zukerman’s comedic talents range from hilarious slapstick to bitter satire. Ralph Lee has designed a varied cast of eerily human puppets to star in Finkelbaum’s show. Throughout the play, Zukerman manipulates these forms with haunting dedication. In particular, the reenactments of crimes committed in the camps are scenes of horrifically wanton destruction.

As the concierge, Suzanne Toren shifts between the morbid curiosity and tentative guilt of an average citizen. With stubborn insistence, she presents what she believes to be credible witnesses to the American and Russian occupation of Berlin. That these witnesses (all played with entertaining variation and pitch-perfect accents by Daniel Damiano) recall the puppets Finkelbaum uses to fill his life and tell his story, cleverly demonstrates that stories are being told on both sides of the keyhole.

The distance between the inside and outside of the apartment appears to be an unbridgeable gap until Finkelbaum’s companion in escape makes a sudden appearance. Schwartzkopf, played by Herbert Rubens, is a calm and commanding presence, unlike his wild and distrustful friend. Their very real affection is a heartwarming change from the previous scenes with puppets. But the heartwarming interlude quickly turns heart wrenching. Though Finkelbaum has lived, he has not escaped, and the world holds nothing for him. After the reunion, he holds his real friend and his imaginary wife, and laments the fact that he is unable to go mad.

The cataclysmic horror of the Holocaust is emphasized by the complicated set and lighting designs of Roman Tatarowicz and Paul Bartlett, respectively. Because Finkelbaum moves through a cozily cluttered apartment and performs the routines of any man, his life assumes a familiarity that contrasts with the singularity of his past and present. The faithful recreation of a lived-in apartment is achieved with the detailed set and the wonderful lighting design. The small overhead light in Finkelbaum’s apartment casts a consistently homey glow. In the play’s grotesque moments, the light turns greenish, Finkelbaum’s complexion appears sickly, and the room becomes unfamiliar. It is clear that he will always be alternating like this between darkness and light, and that for him the war will never be over.

The play’s power is timeless in a very disturbing way. As the playwright points out, the human world is always the home of horrors, whether cataclysmic or comparatively small. The crimes of men against men are constantly renewing themselves. Perhaps, then, it is not so crazy to live in constant disbelief. The Puppetmaster of Lodz is not a self-contained story, but part of a narrative of human history that continues to this day and demonstrates that it is not Finkelbaum who is mad, but the world on the other side of his keyhole.

Class dissed and dismissed

If a professor so intolerant that his rage is literally murderous doesn’t sound like the subject of comedy, then you aren’t living in the world of Eugène Ionesco. Enthusiastically residing in this deranged place are the cast of and the creative team behind The Collective’s production of Ionesco’s play, The Lesson . With the actors’ giddy insanity, the play becomes a comedy of ridiculous proportions that, while excessive compared to the wit of Ionesco’s text, effectively conveys his criticisms. By downplaying the darker notes, this production limits the social commentary in a play that mocks pedants. The Lesson is an increasingly bizarre exchange between an egomaniacal professor and his young student. A simple lesson turns malicious when the pupil has difficulty understanding her teacher. With characteristically destructive arrogance, the Professor dismisses his maid’s warning: “philology leads to calamity.” The Collective cheekily begins the show saying, “some people never learn.”

The production is enjoyable largely because of the hilarious portrayals by a talented cast, particularly Robert Grant as the Professor. Grant’s towering stature is a funny joke in itself (one echoed in the large shadows he casts on a gray wall). From the moment he enters the stage through a door frame that barely accommodates him, clad in knee-high black boots and a military jacket, he draws laughs. The decision to dress the Professor in military getup, instead of Ionesco’s requested cloak and skullcap, shifts the play’s indictment of power from the religious to the political. It is also a more blunt parody of a certain personality type.

The Professor dwarfs his pupil, played by the petite actress Rachelle Wintzen, dressed in a schoolgirl’s perversely sexual outfit. Initially, a strange dynamic sets the pair on equal footing—they are both very awkward—but the Professor’s dominance is soon clear. In the wake of his deep Germanic voice (the kind often used when mocking academics), the pupil’s squeaks sound more childish. From the start the Professor’s intentions seem less than pure; he rubs his hands like someone anticipating an acquisition.

Though the production attempts to work with the play’s sexual insinuations, given the over-the-top comical performances, the Professor’s sexual advances are funny rather than lewd. Instead, Grant’s exaggerated gestures and voice highlight his character’s immaturity and impetuousness. His relationship with his maid, played by Elizabeth Steinhart, similarly demonstrates his weaknesses. Though Steinhart is too young and attractive to be a matronly servant, her booming voice matches Grant’s, and she holds her own. Steinhart does a fine job with a character whose motivation is the least understandable. The maid is the only one who relates cause and effect, but she does not stop calamity.

The play takes a dark turn when the pupil begins to suffer from a toothache. The Professor grows louder and more threatening as the pupil becomes meeker and wearier. The lesson climaxes when his rage, combined with his exhilaration, lead him to stab his pupil. During this exchange the stage lighting (by Randy Harmon) assumes a more lurid vibrancy. In this light, the tension and speed of the escalating dialog become palpable; the sweat on the Professor’s brow glistens, as do his large teeth and wild eyes. When he releases his rage by striking the student, it is shocking, but expected.

The Professor’s transformation is strange in Ionesco’s play, but the turn in this production is less comprehensible. Since the overall tone is light, the Professor is never sinister, and his final actions seem too impossible to be taken seriously. Sometimes the production seems hesitant to explore the character’s darker qualities. For example, whereas Ionesco calls for the Professor to twist his pupil’s wrist, The Collective’s bouncy Professor timidly grabs her ponytail.

The humorous interpretations of the cast are reinforced by Jessica Forsythe’s direction. Forsythe uses the sitting and rising of the Professor and pupil to mimic the seesawing shifts in power. Mostly, she allows Grant to dominate the stage, as he does the lesson. Additionally, Forsythe wisely uses a sparse set. The large table/desk presents a formidable obstacle between the professor and his pupil, and acts as a second stage and prop. In one scene, when his student correctly answers a series of questions, the Professor grasps one end of the table with exceeding exhilaration, while at the other end she shrieks with corresponding excitement.

As strange as the dialog and plot often seem, the appearance of a Nazi armband is a reminder that a familiar world can be just as senselessly brutal. In the microcosm of the Professor’s apartment his behavior is comical, but for a society that laughs at his intolerance the implications of the unlearned lesson are disquieting. Even if such dark themes are only touched upon in this production, Grant’s performance alone makes the show worth watching. Considering that The Lesson is The Collective’s first production, it’s exciting to think about how the group will apply such fierce energy to other works.