House of No

It is December 31, 1899. The Stanhope family has gathered to close up the home of Alison Stanhope, whose poetry has become famous in the nearly two decades since her death. The surviving Stanhope siblings—the slightly strange Agatha and straight-laced John—have carefully controlled their famous sister’s public reputation. Now, on the eve of a new century, the discovery of a secret stash of Alison’s writings exposes a stark divide between the generations.

Inspired by the life of Emily Dickinson, Alison’s House by playwright Susan Glaspell, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 despite negative reviews and a meager two-week run. It was one of a string of controversial picks by the Pulitzer committee that eventually led to the creation of the New York Drama Critics' Circle. Metropolitan Playhouse’s production may be the first uncut staging of the play in New York since 1931.

At the heart of Alison’s House is the question of whether duty and honor or personal happiness and self-realization are paramount. Elsa Stanhope, who alienated her father John and gave up her good name to run away with her married lover, represents the values of the younger generation. John and Agatha hold up the example of Alison, who in a similar circumstance chose her good name, became a recluse, and subsumed her love in writing.

Unfortunately, artistic director Alex Roe’s respectful staging of Alison’s House does not reveal a forgotten masterpiece. While the text is solid, charming and often amusing, the central conflict between Victorian values and a youthful desire for personal fulfillment must have seemed out of date even at the time of the original production. Some of the lack of urgency is due to the production’s uneven pace. While the bulk of the production is performed in a leisurely fashion, the actors race through the climactic moments of both acts.

Another problem comes from the lack of a strong antagonist. John D. McNally’s John Stanhope is so genial and warm that his role as the representative of the past, a forbidding father who upholds honor at all costs, becomes blurred. Other cast members struggle, too. Blaine Smith can’t quite overcome the fact that he seems a decade too old to play the puckish Ted Stanhope, while Matt McAllister and Katharine Scarborough come across as visitors from another broader play.

Standouts in the cast include John Long as the weary, harassed Eben Stanhope, and Anne Bates as his wife, Louise, who cannot earn love despite molding herself into an ideal Victorian wife and daughter-in-law. Amanda Jones’ performance as Elsa is the highlight of the evening. Her touching performance drives scene after scene in the final act.

Roe has staged the play on a compact thrust stage, which transforms during intermission from a library in the public part of the house to Alison’s private bedroom, where all her secrets are revealed. The set serves the play well, especially during scenes involving many characters, although there are some problems with sightlines during intimate scenes (especially the play’s climax). Sidney Fortner’s costume design neatly illustrates the generational and social divides between the characters in Alison’s House. While the elder Stanhopes are clothed in sober browns and blacks, the younger members of the family—especially Ted and Elsa—wear brilliant red.

Metropolitan Playhouse’s production is a solid presentation of an underwhelming script. Still, it is a good opportunity to see a rarely staged work by the much-anthologized Glaspell. Perhaps Glaspell’s farewell to the Victorian age, with its rigid, hoary values, can still speak to the present day. Even now, young people struggle to find fulfillment in ways that make their parents want to shake their heads and say, as John Stanhope does, “I cannot bear your youth.”

Alison's House is running at the Metropolitan Playhouse (220 East 4th St. between Avenue A and B) in Manhattan until Dec. 13. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday-Saturday and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets: $25 for general admission, $20 for students/seniors and $10 for children. To purchase tickets, call 800-838-3006 or visit www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/tickets.

End(less) Game

An explosive and lyrical exploration of familial angst and decadence, One Little Goat Theatre Company's production of Ritter, Dene, Voss by Thomas Bernhard is many things: intriguing, troubling, often funny, and ultimately unsatisfying. Playwright Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) was a controversial post-war Austrian writer known for his bleak and misanthropic outlook. He has been compared with both Samuel Beckett and Ionesco because of his absurd, grim portrayal of the human condition. Reportedly, Bernhard was so disgusted with his compatriots that he stipulated in his will that none of his plays may be performed in Austria while they remain in copyright. Fortunately, that doesn't prevent Toronto-based One Little Goat Theatre Company from producing the New York premiere of Ritter, Dene, Voss.

Written without punctuation and filled with repetitions and word-play, Ritter, Dene, Voss is a poetic examination of the dysfunctional relationships of three wealthy siblings. The play, named for the actors who originated the three roles, concerns the homecoming of mad philosopher Ludwig (Jordan Pettle) from an asylum to the home of his older and younger sisters (Maev Beaty and Shannon Perreault), both actresses.

Surrounded by faceless and nude portraits of their parents and uncles, the older and the younger sisters argue over their brother's arrival, which the elder engineered and the younger resists. When Ludwig comes down for dinner, the sisters' quotidian existence explodes. Old wounds smart as the siblings talk past each other, the sisters competing for their brother's favor, and their ever-more-unhinged brother tries to force them to send him back to his asylum.

These are the kinds of family struggles which can have no satisfactory end, leading to wounds that never heal. Perhaps this is why the play ends so suddenly, offering no sense of closure.

Ritter, Dene, Voss is elegantly directed by Adam Seelig, who balances the restraint of the older and younger sisters with the frenetic behavior of their brother and creates some beautiful tableaux. Unfortunately, the few moments when the actors slip out of character to address each other, the audience, and the stage manager seem unjustified and out of place.

Beaty and Perreault are completely believable in their roles, and Pettle's Ludwig is at once compellingly charismatic and skin-crawlingly unhinged. His late entry introduces a much-needed, cutting sense of humor to the proceedings as he abuses actors, artists, and contemporary aesthetics at every turn.

Lighting designer Rosie Cruz creates some beautiful silhouettes, while the simple set and costume designs by Jackie Chau are attractive and serviceable.

Strange that a production that is well-designed, well-performed, and well-directed should be so unsatisfying. Not every story can have a pat conclusion, but one would hope for a sense of aesthetic completion. Instead, one leaves Ritter, Dene, Voss wondering why the house lights came up so soon. Nevertheless, One Little Goat Theatre Company's production is a good opportunity to see Thomas Bernhard's work. Those who admire poetic dramas and explorations of the dark side of human relations will find much to enjoy.

Good Bett

Ninety years after its debut, it's easy to see why Zona Gale's 1920 play Miss Lulu Bett garnered the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama awarded to a female playwright. Her work is at once a sparkling comedy and a curt indictment of the social position of women in the early years of the twentieth century. In Gale's play, the eponymous heroine has resigned herself to being an old maid and earning her keep as the household drudge for her brother-in-law, Dwight Deacon, a puffed-up, small-town justice of the peace. Lulu's life turns upside down after Deacon's ne'er-do-well brother Ninian arrives for a visit. When the lonely pair accidentally marry due to a peculiarity in the local law, Lulu gets a taste of both love and independence. Although the dubious legality of their marriage eventually forces Lulu to return to her former life, her spirit has been irrevocably altered.

Gale tenderly portrays all the women in the show, each of whom is constricted by the roles they are expected to play in society. Some characters' struggles are obvious: Lulu's chafes at her invisibility while her sister Ina transforms herself into a wheedling toady for her husband. Others, like teenager Di Deacon, suffer more quietly. Each woman, however, is trapped by social expectations which pass them from father to husband with no opportunity to know themselves.

Miss Lulu Bett is unusual in having had two different endings. Gale's original, feminist final scene is reminiscent of Ibsen's A Doll's House, with Lulu, like Nora, departing her hometown to work and to discover her own identity. A second ending, incorporated into the original Broadway production after a negative audience reaction, offers the heroine another chance at marital bliss. Director Kathleen Brant's current production seamlessly reaches a conclusion which is both satisfactory and poignant.

Brant has crafted an excellent, intelligent production, although she could have found more variety in the second act, which falters and becomes repetitive. Fortunately, the humor and honesty of Miss Lulu Bett compensates for its flaws.

The production is blessed with a number of excellent performances. Laurie Schroeder is perfect as Miss Lulu, deftly handling the character's transition from an under-appreciated shadow to forceful woman. Gerrianne Raphael creates a poignant portrait of Mrs. Bett, a woman who has suffered such losses in her own life that she supposes her daughter better off having nothing to lose. Meanwhile, Mary Ruth Baggott's Diana “wiggles and chitters” charmingly, beguiling both her family and the audience into underestimating her emotional compass.

As the bumbling neighbor Neil Cornish, Michael Gnat brings humor and humanity to each of his scenes. Anne Fizzard, however, teeters on the edge of caricature as Lulu's sister, Ina Deacon.

Miss Lulu Bett is also well-designed. Craig M. Napoliello's set seamlessly changes from a small-town dining room to a porch, which serves as a symbolic and literal threshold between Lulu's circumscribed life and her potential future. Napoliello's design is enhanced by Diana Duecker's lights, which create the illusion of a much larger space in the tiny WorkShop Theater. The costumes by Anna Gerdes are simple, yet in one moving scene painfully reveal the deprivation that Lulu has experienced in comparison to her nearest relatives. Jeffrey Swan Jones provides an intelligently-chosen soundtrack for the production.

Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett does not provoke the shock that Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House did forty years earlier. Nevertheless, it is a worthy play which has been lovingly produced. Catch it while you can.

Rewrites Wanted

There are lots of holes in Suzan-Lori Parks' The Book of Grace. One of them is the ominous open grave which one character digs in his backyard to deter another from rebelling. The other holes, unfortunately, are in the script, resulting in a production which is unsatisfying at its best. At its worst, it is downright dull. The play opens with a self-consciously poetic prologue introducing The Book of Grace's players: Vet (John Doman), an order-obsessed border guard; his battered wife, Grace (Elizabeth Marvel), who insists on seeing “evidence of good things” in her bleak and circumscribed life; and Buddy (Amari Cheatom), Vet's angry twenty-something son from an earlier marriage, who plans to give his abusive father three chances to redeem himself or he will take vengeance. A play about these three characters could have been explosive. Unfortunately, Parks never develops her characters beyond the cardboard archetypes of authoritarian father, self-deceived wife, and angry young man.

The Book of Grace takes it title from a collection of secret writings created by the title character to record all the good things that happen in the world around her. Determined to see the best in everything and blind to the flaws of her husband and stepson, Grace brings Vet and Buddy together again after a fifteen year estrangement. Hints of past sexual and physical abuse taint the father-son relationship as Vet dangles the possibility of a job and a promising future in front of his son.

The Book of Grace tries to be a metaphor for the dysfunctional attitudes which are at the core of contemporary American society. Its effectiveness is blunted, however, both by heavy-handed characterizations and by the uneven text. Parks seems to have discovered her characters as she wrote, taking up and discarding multiple threads without fully exploring them. With one dramatic and effective kiss, Buddy exposes his father's past sexual abuse. Soon after, however, this theme is forgotten and another shocking scene ensues. Grace and Buddy, who haven't seen each other since they were twenty and ten years old, inexplicably have sex within moments of their reunion. Later, Buddy develops an intense identification with home-grown terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh. Sure, there is some suggestion that Buddy had been “trouble” as a child, but other than a few broad hints here and there about the characters' pasts, no explanation is given for the characters' baffling and changeable behavior. All these flaws are compounded by a sudden and incomprehensible ending.

In a way, it is a shame that The Book of Grace is as much or more about Buddy as it is about the title character. While Buddy is never consistent enough to seem real, Marvel imbues Grace with a genuine sense of tragedy. In some ways, Grace is reminiscent of Mae in Maria Irene Fornes' 1983 play Mud. Small towns (and big cities) are full of Graces; good-hearted but cowed by husbands and brothers, they try to find some means of self-expression, be it via a night course or poorly written but earnest prose that they dream will become a bestseller. When Grace finally stands up for herself, the moment is electric.

Director James Macdonald is helped by solid performances from all three of his actors, who do the best that they can with the material they have been given. Macdonald comes up with some memorable bits of staging which capture the ambiguity and violence which lies beneath the surface of family relationships. At one point, Vet seems ready to greet his prodigal son with a hug but it swiftly turns into a pat-down. At another, Vet interprets one of Buddy's gestures as a victory “V” to celebrate the medal that Vet is about to receive. In fact, Buddy is indicating that his father has only one more strike to go before he will take revenge. Aside from a few moments, though, Grace generates surprisingly little tension.

Susan Hilferty's costumes are straightforward: Vet's impeccably creased uniform, Grace's pink waitress outfit, and Buddy's neutral jeans-and-undershirt ensemble each hint at the nature of their characters. Hilferty's only misstep is a red dress which Grace longs to have; although the dress is built up in earlier scenes, when it finally appears, it is too bland to reveal anything about Grace's interior life.

The scenic design by Eugene Lee is a metaphor for a crumbling American family. Detritus of other family dramas—a couch, a television set, an ironing board, and a kitchen sink—sit uncomfortably on a dirt floor. A encircling wooden path represents the outside world while upstage, a shovel and a pile of sandbags scattered with red sand lay beneath a huge highway billboard. The desolate landscape works both on a literal and a metaphorical level. With the addition of atmospheric lights by Jean Kalman and sound by Dan Moses Schreier (who provides a porn soundtrack which reads disturbingly and evocatively like sobbing), Grace is lovely both to see and to hear.

Unfortunately, a strong design and a few strong scenes are not enough to save The Book of Grace, a disappointing effort from a talented author.

Promises, Promises

Sometimes we just can't deliver on our promises. Conviction, currently playing at 59E59, looks like a compelling contemporary mystery wrapped around a fascinating true story from the era of the Spanish Inquisition. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the actors and the creative team, this version of the story never takes off. The premise of Conviction certainly intrigues: after an Israeli scholar is caught trying to steal a confession extracted from a priest by the Inquisition, a Spanish official attempts to discern what was attractive about that particular file. Upon examining the documents, the two men uncover the ill-fated love story of a 15th century priest, Andrés González, and a Jewish woman, Isabel. Andrés' writings reveal his struggles as a convert to find a spiritual identity as he rediscovers his heritage. Meanwhile, the scholar, Professor Tal, seeks clues about his own roots.

Despite the interesting premise, there are basic dramaturgical problems which hobble Conviction. The greatest flaw is the diluted and ill-constructed adaptation by Mark J. Williams and Ami Dayan, who also stars as Professor Tal and the priest, Andrés. The play, which is based on a novel entitled Confession by Yonatan Ben Nachum, was originally performed as a one-man show. For this production Dayan and Williams have attempted to transform the play into a three-actor show. Their transformation, however, is incomplete.

In its current form, Conviction all too often betrays its origin as a monologue. Dayan as Andrés continually delivers long speeches about events from his past as he confesses his religious and sexual sins to his mentor, Juan de Salamanca. Much of the time, his words lack freshness, and come across as premeditated.

Meanwhile, his fellow actors rarely have much material with which to work. Kevin Hart in the dual roles of the Director of the National Archives and Juan has the unenviable job of questioning a totally unresponsive Tal on one hand, and acting as a sounding-board for Andrés' lengthy stories on the other. Catharine Pilafas is lovely as Isabel, but is also let down by the text, which fails to explore the psychology of her relationship with Andrés, reducing it to melodrama.

A few moments in Conviction prove that the story could have soared. In one beautiful tableau, as Andrés speaks of his and Isabel's growing intimacy, the two lovers begin to strip and bathe in the river in a poetic reverse-baptism. Later, Andrés affectingly describes the violent event in his childhood which made him realize that he had been born a Jew. Finally, in one superb but regrettably short scene, sparks fly between Andrés and Juan when the older man's own secret is almost revealed. By then, alas, it is too late to raise the stakes effectively for their characters.

Although director Jeremy Cole succeeds with these moments, he would have served the show better had he explored the tensions between the characters. Instead, most of the events in the play remain safely and resolutely in the past, resulting in a production which lacks immediacy.

Jeremy Cole's minimalistic set—a black-painted room which serves as a backdrop for some lovely projections—provides the bare minimum required for telling Conviction's story: a table with chairs, a pair of black prayer stools substituting for a confessional, and a candle-encrusted alter which doubles as a second level for the actors. Occasionally, when aided by Jacob M. Welch's lighting design, the space transforms, but most of the time it remains nothing more than a stage peppered with a smattering of props by Annette Westerby which belong neither to Franco's Spain nor the age of the Spanish Inquisition.

Kevin Brainerd's brown and blue costumes are attractive and serviceable. Although the sound design (uncredited) is clunky and distracting, the music by Jon Sousa and Yossi Green is truly lovely. Overall, Conviction is a visually and aurally appealing production.

It is just a shame that it does not live up to its promise.

Our Times

“The people must be amused,” slurs the tippling circus-man Sleary in an early scene of the Pearl Theatre Company's current staging of Charles Dickens' Hard Times. If diversion is the goal, the Pearl delivers with this production: Hard Times is solid if not flawless, and its power only grows as the show progresses. Stephen Jeffrey's adaptation of Dickens' sprawling novel portrays a world in which fact is valued over fancy, numbers and tables are preferred over dreams and desires, and the individual's quirky inclinations are stifled in favor of stalwart practicality. Teacher Thomas Gradgrind tries to manufacture students as efficient as the looms in the factory of his industrial-tycoon friend Josiah Bounderby. No hypocrite, Gradgrind raises his own children, Louisa and Tom, on an intellectual diet devoid of fancy.

Far from offering salvation, the fact-based and emotionally devoid world cultivated by Gradgrind is soul-crushing, contributing to the “hard times” of the drama's title. The crux of the plot revolves around Louisa, who enters a loveless marriage with the much-older Bounderby. When she encounters a seductive and sentimental rogue, she starts to suspect how much her father's philosophy has damaged her.

Jeffreys' adaptation is written in the tradition of another famous Dickens adaptation, Nicholas Nickleby, which was seen on Broadway during the 1980s. Winnowing the text down to a still-lengthy three hours, Jeffreys reduces the dramatis personnae to nineteen characters played by six actors. Unfortunately, he also preserves large sections of narrative during which the characters must describe themselves, their settings, and their own actions. While at times effective, the abundance of narrative in the first act leads to pacing problems. Fortunately, by the second act the characters and plot have been firmly established and this flaw in construction is less noticeable.

Artistic director J.R. Sullivan has staged Hard Times well, creating attractive tableaux and an upbeat tempo. He finds both the poignancy and the humor in Dickens' deeply-flawed characters. Sullivan is aided in this by the Pearl's resident actors, who navigate their multiple roles with aplomb. Rachel Botchen as Louisa captures her character's listless depression until she finally explodes in an emotional confrontation with her father (T.J. Edwards). Edwards, who is affecting as Gradgrind, is especially good as the hard-luck hand Stephen Blackpool. Sean McNall is excellent as Tom, the selfish and degenerate brother who brings ruin upon Louisa yet is not without a conscience.

The set design by Jo Winiarski is practical and workmanlike. A wide, thrust-style wood-grained set dappled with concrete slabs and an imposing brick wall emblazoned with Bounderby's name create an appropriately vintage Industrial Age look. Meanwhile, light designer Stephen Petrilli takes advantage of the painted over factory windows and hanging oil lanterns to create some stunningly atmospheric effects. Most of the time, the set design fades into the background, providing a neutral space for the performance, but on occasion, when enhanced by Petrilli's lights, the characters are transported to another world—most strikingly, at the beginning of the second act, when the economically oppressed “hands” hold a union meeting. The attractive costume designs by Devon Painter clearly define each of the characters.

Although the Industrial Age setting seems remote, Hard Times is surprisingly relevant to our current cultural and economic moment. As the divide between the rich and the poor is increasing, the American education system has become obsessively focused on test scores, facts, and memorization. Frivolous subjects like art, theater, and music, which feed the imagination, are increasingly devalued. The Pearl Theatre Company's production of Hard Times forces us to confront the kind of reality this mindset is creating. Is a world without entertainment and fancy tenable? As art institutions shutter across the nation, Dickens' entertainer Sleary pleads, “make the best of us, and not the worst.”

And the people are amused.

Hard Times in Hell's Kitchen

Two massive electrical outages during two very different decades provide a conceptual framework for J. Anthony Roman's Blackouts, currently being produced by Swandive Studio at Center Stage. The play, an exploration of the problems of addiction, family, and responsibility, has serious flaws yet manages to pose a few interesting questions. Blackouts' first act presents two married couples, Eddy and Sarah and Janice and Phil. Eddy is an artist who dabbles in cocaine while in the throes of creation. While Phil gives up his fly-by-night lifestyle in favor of a steady but unrewarding career, Eddy stakes his entire future on one gamble, quiting his job and betting on success as an artist. When his endeavor ends badly, Eddy descends into addiction, throwing his life and his family away during a blackout in 1977.

The second act picks up the family's story a generation later, in 2003, with Eddy and Sarah's adult son James living in the same Hell's Kitchen apartment with his wife Evy and newborn son. Roman's script falters with this second family, turning James and Evy's relationship into a reflection of his parents'. The impulse to show the generational effect of addiction is admirable, but the second half of the story comes across as a pale imitation of the first. The trajectory of the act is telegraphed from the moment that Evy enters and pours herself a glass of wine. Worse, in the final moments of the play, Roman shies away from James' dramatic and difficult decision to save himself by walking away from his alcoholic wife.

Nevertheless, Roman's script does some things very well. His writing has an almost filmic quality, full of short scenes which combine to form a portrait of his characters' lives; this is most effective in a powerful first act "montage" of scenes depicting Eddy's descent into the hell of addiction.

Roman also creates some solid characters. Sarah, for instance, is admirably drawn. Her final confrontation with her fleeing, drug-addled husband is heartbreaking and believable. The strength of her text is aided by a strong, understated performance by Jamie Klassel, who doubles in the second act as the appealingly goofy Cyan. Phil, strikingly portrayed by Zachary Fletcher, is a compelling foil to Eddy, and Lisa Snyder's flirtatious and materialistic Janice has such a strong personality that it would have been interesting to see more of her. Although Max Woertendyke is appealing as both Eddy and James, he tends to rush through his monologues, making his characters somewhat difficult to follow in their most pivotal moments.

Director Jill DeArmon's production is solid and exceptionally well-designed. Set designer Jen Price Fick has created an attractive urban apartment for the action, complete with exposed brick, grungy gray carpeting, and a cutaway wall which offers a view across the courtyard to the apartment of Eddy and Sarah's next-door-neighbors and best friends. The set is well-designed and the transformation from the first act to the second clearly depicts the different means and interests of the two different generations of inhabitants. Unfortunately, the intermission scene shift took an ungainly 30 minutes, much longer than seemed necessary.

The costumes, designed by Hollie Nadel, were solid, as was the lighting design by Joshua Rose, who created a highly realistic effect of headlights passing the apartment's street-front windows. Shane Rettig's sound design deserves a special nod; he provided believable street sounds which, when the city was plunged into the blackout, slowly turned into the frenzied honking and traffic noises of impending gridlock. He also managed to provide the show with a reasonably believable cooing baby.

Although the second act of Blackouts is disappointing, the play does divert and -- with the addition of appealing performances and strong design -- is a decent evening of theater. Hopefully, Roman will continue to explore these characters and concepts in his future work.

Brotherly Love

John Ford's titillating play 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore is a controversial work which plumbs the depths of incest, adultery, vengeance, and murder. Originally produced in the 17th century, Ford's sex- and gore-filled story about the love affair of a pair of siblings may seem slightly less sensational in our tabloid-centered modern world. Nevertheless, Toy Box Theatre Company's recent rendition is a solid, well-acted and well-designed production which definitely diverts. Ford's play follows the illicit love of Giovanni for his comely sister, Annabella. Unable to suppress his feelings, Giovanni confesses his passion to her. She reciprocates at once, consummating their relationship and rejecting all her other suitors. When Annabella's pregnancy forces her to marry the playboy Soranzo to cover up her transgressions, a cycle of betrayal and vengeance begins which can only end with a large pile of dead bodies.

Toy Box Theatre Company is offering a trimmed-down version of 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore which nevertheless clocks in at a hefty two-and-a-half hours. The loss of a single subplot doesn't harm the thrust of the story, but the trimmed cast of characters does lead to some improbable redistributions of lines, most notably when a regular friar suddenly has the authority to banish foreigners from the city.

This production is grounded by solid performances from the cast, particularly by Andrew Krug as Giovanni and Jessica Rothenberg as Annabella. Krug, intense and gaunt, handles Ford's verse well, while Rothenberg skillfully manages her character's transition from hopeful young love to despair. Their chemistry is particularly good during their touching first kiss.

David Michael Holmes is excellent as the slippery Vasques, a servant of Soranzo who dabbles in double-dealing with Hippolita (Sarah Hankins), Soranzo's enraged former lover. Hankins's jilted woman is particularly strong, as she finds both the anger and the vulnerability in her character. She's equally good as Putana, Annabella's nurse, who is complicit in her master's incestuous affair. The goofy Michael Nathanson is a memorably comic Bergetto, a dim-witted and self-centered suitor who is only too glad to be rejected by Annabella so he can pursue another, more humble mistress.

Director Jonathan Barsness stages the show fairly well, particularly succeeding in tension in the scenes between Annabella and Soranzo and between the two sibling-lovers. His only missteps – a few too many scenes are played in profile and a sex scene staged on the floor, where the action is difficult to see – are mitigated by the brilliant twist he cooks up for the final moments of the play. Strange miracle of justice, indeed!

The costumes, designed by Jennifer Paar, are lovely. Giovanni's striped sweater and jeans are perfectly complemented by Annabella's color-coordinated Catholic school-girl outfit, while Soranzo cuts a handsome, wealthy figure in a gorgeous blue and paisley robe. Bergetto's improbably bright outfits are standouts and immediately define his character.

The handsome and functional set design by Gian Marco Lo Forte also deserves a nod: 'Tis a Pity... is performed in a simple, three sided black box created from one black curtain and two purple walls with black wainscoting. Two long, table-height cubes pull out from the walls for fairly quick transitions and allow for a surprising number of different set configurations. The blood-red chandelier which hangs center stage is a particularly nice touch.

The lighting design by Simon Cleveland is attractive, though there were a few scenes when the center of the stage was notably in shadow. The live music, provided by Colonna Sonora (Brady Bagger, James Sparber, and Christian Serramalera), is a welcome and pleasing addition to the show. Despite the occasional flaw, Toy Box Theatre Company's production of 'Tis a Pity ... would be a pity to miss.

Less Is More

With all the theatrical marvels that modern technology can create, it is easy to forget that at its core, effective theater requires very little: an actor, an audience, and a good story to tell. Fiasco Theater's current production of Cymbeline is an excellent exemplar of how to create great theater with the most minimal of means. Using just six actors, a specially-designed trunk, and a trimmed version of William Shakespeare's words, the company creates an intelligently performed and thoroughly diverting production. Cymbeline, a rarely produced late work, is a romance filled with disguises, lost children, mistaken identities, and a love story which seems fated to be tragic, but has a happy ending. The elderly British monarch of the title, manipulated by his evil second wife, strikes out when his daughter and heir, Imogen, marries a honorable but low-born Roman named Posthumus Leonatus. Upon his exile to Rome, Posthumus makes a wager on his wife's virtue and is misled by his unscrupulous opponent into thinking Imogen compromised; enraged, he orders her death. Eventually, the action of the play moves to Wales where a battle between the Britons and the Romans results in reconciliation between the lovers and a reunion between Cymbeline and his two long-lost sons.

Fiasco's adaptation cuts the text down to a fast-paced two hours and fifteen characters and adds a whimsical a capella preshow announcement and several folksy, entertaining musical numbers. The trims work well, although it was difficult to track who was portraying whom during the first moments of the final scene, when nearly all the characters show up to contribute to the play's resolution. That stated, considering that a mere five performers portray fourteen of the characters, it's impressive how clearly and quickly they could establish their current identities.

Part of the credit for that clarity goes to the elegant direction by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, who also performed in the piece. Scenes were staged simply, yet with good composition and a surprising use of a few, well-chosen scenic elements. This Cymbeline is staged in a plain, white-walled room with nothing more than a couple of wooden cubes and a large, versatile trunk which was designed and built by Jacques Roy. Yet, the trunk becomes a kind of magic box of tricks, transforming seamlessly into a ship, a throne, a cave, a pool table, and a bed, among other things.

Whitney Locher's tasteful, two-toned costumes in brown and cream give the company the unified look of a chorus while simultaneously proving flexible enough to indicate different characters through minor adjustments. Imogen and the Queen's costumes are particularly successful; the former, a flattering-floor-length number with a split over-skirt, transforms into Imogen's boy disguise, while the latter, a saucy short dress on the wicked Queen, becomes a large-pocketed country frock merely with the removal of a belt. Sound, sometimes in the form of foley-style effects, is performed by offstage actors on a plethora of musical instruments, including a horn, guitar, banjo, recorder, a wind-chime and a set of pool balls.

In fact, there are very few flaws to be found in this Cymbeline. Perhaps at the beginning, the actors speak a little faster than was comfortable for the audience, and actress Emily Young's voice is drowned out by the musical accompaniment when she sings solo in the second act, but these minutia do not detract from the quality of the whole production.

The true reason for this production's excellence, however, is the work of the cast. It is clear that all six cast members – graduates of the Brown/Trinity Rep. Consortium – have benefited from their training. They clearly understand how to perform Shakespeare, making the complicated text into living thought for their characters. Jessie Austrian is radiant as the spirited, star-crossed Imogen, while Steinfeld is creepily charismatic as Iachimo, milking his scene in Imogen's bedroom for every laugh. Brody as Posthumus tears through an excruciatingly misogynistic monologue, but his obvious pain from Imogen's apparent betrayal makes this uncomfortable scene riveting. Although Andy Grotelueschen rushes through his first scenes as Cymbeline and Cloten, he hits his stride as a cringing chemist who foils the Queen's machinations by passing off a sleeping potion as poison. The cast is rounded out by Paul L. Coffey as principled servant Pisanio and Young, whose languid Queen is a suitably wicked stepmother.

When a production has what Fiasco Theater's Cymbeline does – uniformly strong performers, an elegant concept, solid direction, and a diverting text – there is no need for technology. The work stands proudly on its own.

Unrealized Potential

Comedy. Farce. Drama. Romance. Although audience members having a night on the town may not consciously classify the genre of a play they're watching, they are nevertheless gathering clues in order to understand its world. John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, for example, is a black comedy, mining uncomfortable topics for their humor without undermining their gravity. Unfortunately, The Gallery Players' current revival of Guare's 1966 play is so muddled that it has lost both its incisiveness and its sense of humor. The hero of The House of Blue Leaves is one Artie Shaughnessy, a middle-aged zoo-keeper from Queens who dreams of fame as a Hollywood songwriter but sees his chance for a breakthrough diminishing day by day. He's supported in his ambition through his lover, Bunny, who uses her only talent – gourmet cooking – to attach herself to the man she sees as her ticket to Hollywood. Artie's path to fame and fortune is hampered, however, by the need to care for his mentally ill wife, Bananas, whom he plans to commit to the sanitarium of the play's title.

Although an Act Two influx of zany characters – including a bomb-building alter-boy, a deaf starlet, and a trio of nuns – pushes the play towards farce, there is an edge of violence and despair which belies the work's lighter aspects. In the end, Artie recognizes the hopelessness of his situation, and with an agonized cry -- “I'm too old to be a young talent!” -- strikes out at the person he imagines is holding him back. He never understands what the audience grasps: the true obstacle to Artie gaining fame and fortune is his own lack of talent, evidenced by the old-fashioned, lackluster tunes he peddles. This is the bitter pill which firmly establishes The House of Blue Leaves as a true black comedy.

Director Dev Bondarin has failed to find the right tone for her production, mining neither the play's farcical elements nor its darker moments for their humor. Not even Artie's account of his first encounter with Bunny in a steam room, when her prattle about cooking aroused him so much that he immediately ripped off his towel and took her by force, leading to her deadpan observation that “there's a man in here...”, managed to raise a titter.

The lead actors -- Burke Adams (Artie), Stacey Scotte (Bunny), and Victoria Budonis (Bananas) – are all able performers, with Budonis in particular showing a good stage presence and a fine voice, but all three seem disconnected from one another and from the text. The actors in the smaller roles fare better. Alex Herrald's manic Ronnie Shaughnessy, Artie's AWOL son who tries to achieve notoriety by blowing up the Pope, injects some much needed energy into the end of Act One and the beginning of Act Two. Emilie Soffe is charming as a diminutive novice nun who reconsiders her holy calling, while Tom Cleary as Hollywood director Billy Einhorn offers Artie a tantalizing taste of life beyond Sunnyside, Queens.

Although the storytelling aspects of The House of Blue Leaves are wanting, Bondarin's production is handsomely designed. Ann Bartek's cozy box set, with its yellow and red floral wallpaper and cramped Pullman kitchen, suitably evokes New York in the 1960s, while the heavy iron bars on the window hint at the apartment's darker function as Bananas and Artie Shaughnessy's current prison. The only false notes in Bartek's design are the photographs which pepper the walls: the black and white 8 x 10s are so uniform that they appear to have been recently printed on photo paper.

Brad L. Scoggin's costumes suitably express each character's unique situation, from Bananas' grubby robe and nightgown, to Ronnie's outgrown alter-boy outfit, to Billy Einhorn's sophisticated turtleneck-and-tweed ensemble. The sound design by Chris Rummel is solid, with convincing street noise and an excellent facsimile of an explosion. Lighting designer Ryan Bauer creates attractive and occasionally poignant effects, particularly in the final moments of the play, when he gives Artie the spotlight he begged for in the prologue, and it turns out to be a pattern of blue leaves, as if Artie is trapped in the very sanitarium he had intended for his wife. That moment is truly a thing of beauty.

Nevertheless, strong design is not enough to overcome the shortcomings of this House of Blue Leaves. Without a clear sense of its genre and strong connections between the performers, the production flounders, leaving its message about the dangerous pull of celebrity and the soul-killing ache of mediocrity unstated and its humor ultimately unrealized.

Power Play

Though the powerful can be perverse, those who try to curry favor with the powerful are often even more so. Jean-Paul Sartre considered Jean Genet's Deathwatch to be reiteration of themes explored in the playwright's more famous effort, The Maids. Locked away in a cramped prison cell, two petty criminals vie for the approval of their idol, an illiterate murder by the name of Green Eyes. Genet's poetic thieves and killers conflate power, violence, and masculinity in their battle for dominance, but when one of them finally strikes out to establish his position, he discovers that glory is not so easily obtained. Aaron Sparks' production, currently running in the Fringe Festival, is billed as the US premiere of David Rudkin's translation of the play. Unfortunately, the lackluster production makes it impossible to judge the quality of Rudkin's rendering. Taking his cue from all-male productions of The Maids, Sparks has cast women in Deathwatch. Though interesting in principle, this concept falters because Sparks' company fails to embody the destructive machismo and barely-concealed homoeroticism which are central to Genet's drama.

Sparks' company also seems hesitant to dive into Genet's dingy underworld. Only Carissa Cordes as Green Eyes projects the hardened, guarded aspect of a prisoner. Meanwhile, the whole cast speaks with a drama-school crispness and uniformity which is inconsistent with the world of the play. Rather than tracing the delicate shifts in alliance which are central to characters' journeys, the cast plows through Genet's poetic text, making the production particularly difficult to follow. Consequently, the ninety-minute show crawls, offering neither entertainment or surprise to the audience; this one is worth passing by.

There's Something About Shakespeare

Perhaps one sign of true theatrical genius is the indestructibility of a text. No matter where it is performed -- whether in a high school, on a fully-equipped and technically tricked-out professional stage, or in a public park peppered with the interruptions of passers-by, the writing consistently delivers a certain level of enjoyment. Despite its wafer-thin plot, William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is that kind of play. The strength of the source material is fortunate, for Boomerang Theatre Company's current production in Central Park has little else to recommend it. The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare's early plays, is adapted from two Roman comedies by Plautus: Menaechmi, a play about two identical twins who are mistaken for each other, and Amphitryon, which features identical servants with the same name. In Shakespeare's adaptation, two sets of twins – conveniently, pairs of masters and servants who both go by the names of Antipholus and Dromio – are separated in infancy in a storm at sea. Twice the twins means twice the opportunities for mayhem-inducing mix-ups. When the grown-up Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse arrive in Ephesus in search of their long lost siblings, they are mistaken for their brothers, who are local residents, involving everyone in legal and romantic troubles. Even after four hundred years, the punchy comic patter and rhymed couplets are delightful.

Director Philip Emeott has collected a cast of wildly varying talent. His strongest performances come from Jon Dykstra and Steven Beckingham as the Dromios of Ephesus and Syracuse, respectively. The pair look eerily identical in matched costumes designed by Carolyn Pallister, yet their performances are vocally and physically distinctive from one another. Their scenes are the highlights of the production. Likewise, Michael Alan Read makes an impression as the slightly oily and obsequious goldsmith, Angelo, who ends up on the wrong end of the law thanks to the brothers' mistaken identities. Walter J. Hoffman gives a gloriously over the top, Addams Family-inspired rendition of the creepy Dr. Pinch, who tries to exorcise the confused Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus.

Too bad the other members of the cast are not nearly as strong. Sarah Hankins as Adriana, the disappointed wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, performs the role as an enraged harpy, throwing away any attempt at nuance; the meaning of her words is lost in a cacophony of noise, exasperated sighs, and growls of rage. Emily King Brown's Luciana is pleasant but bland as she tries to calm her sister and repulse the amorous advances of the man she believes is her brother-in-law. Neither woman seems to empathize much with their characters' predicaments, which – while comical – are also poignant.

Emeott has staged The Comedy of Errors on a hillside near the 69th Street and Central Park West entrance to the park. Geographically, the setting is interesting; its jutting rocks create a two-level playing space with a green hillside in the background and a dirt patch in front. The hillside, which masks the backstage area, creates the opportunity for the dramatic, long entrances which Emeott used effectively to introduce each scene. Unfortunately, Emeott rarely takes full advantage of the space's natural levels, often lining his actors up in the foreground. Curiously, the only characters who ever feel an urge to kneel or crawl on the ground are those costumed in shorts or short skirts, a detail which seems mighty convenient.

Boomerang Theatre Company's production of The Comedy of Errors skates by on the strength of its text, which is charming even when performed by an inconstant company. For those who come across the production on a weekend in the park, or watch it with the kids over a picnic lunch, it's diverting enough. At the same time, the production is disappointing: it has no heart. With all the theatrical richness of New York City, Shakespeare could be handled so much better.

Impossible Beauty

It's painful not to measure up to society's ideals. The ever-present modern media gorges its viewers on a steady diet of impossible beauty and unreachable standards. What's worse is that the standards against which women judge themselves are almost exclusively images of white beauty – a false example which leaves out a huge segment of the population. Is it surprising, then, that it's next to impossible for young women to develop a healthy self-image? Black Girl Ugly, a performance piece by Ashley Brockington, Nicole Cain, and Lee Avant which the authors are currently performing at the WOW Cafe, explores their own experiences in a culture which puts white beauty on a pedestal and pushes everyone else aside. Through monologues, scenes and movement, they transform their own personal stories into a kind of Everywoman account of growing up black in America. The resulting production, although rough around the edges, provides a touching, amusing and ultimately thought-provoking evening.

The show is composed of a succession of thematically-related scenes and skits tied together by movement sequences and voice-overs. Among the strongest scenes are those which cut through the polite, neutral surface which we show to the public to reveal the pain which simmers underneath. Particularly successful sequences include a church sermon in which the minister extols her parishioners to examine their roots and straighten their hair in order to be more like Jesus, and a hilarious sequence which pits a conforming corporate drone against a Black Pride job applicant. More brutal is a skit called “Someone Knocked Me Down” in which a young woman (played by Brockington) recites her exceptional academic accomplishments only to have them repeatedly torn to pieces by her onlookers, until she is literally bound and gagged by their judgments.

Black Girl Ugly's text-based scenes are generally stronger than the movement sequences. Although some are evocative, like the one in which the three cast members rhythmically twitch in front of a flashing TV screen, reacting to the unreachable ideals of the white media, at other times the dances seem unspecific. Their shape and flow are not fully polished, which undermines the story the performers are trying to tell. For example, a potentially excellent scene which reveals the interior monologues of the above mentioned corporate sell-out and very black applicant as they size each other up is marred by imprecise movement: because their gestures are generalized and don't perfectly match the voice-overs, it isn't always clear who is thinking what.

Black Girl Ugly would have benefited from stronger direction than Kiebpoli Calnek provided. The show's flaws are of the kind which usually arise when performers direct themselves without the aid of an off-stage critical eye. The director should have clarified the physical storytelling and might have improved the flow and rhythm of the piece as a whole, which was heavy on movement for the first half and on monologues for the second. Opening the show with one of the excellent monologues -- such as the one in which Brockington compares growing up in America as a black woman to having a disease, commenting “there are so many signs of your inferiority, if no one is telling you differently, how do you grow up strong?” -- would have established the thrust of the show much more quickly and cleanly.

The design elements for Black Girl Ugly are simple and functional. The set design -- a black box dominated by a downstage stool covered with identical white baby-dolls – is a suitable frame for the show. The sound design by Brockington and Rob Paravonian – which is dominated by echoing voice-overs – is weaker, for although it establishes a dreamy, self-reflective tone, it also occasionally makes the text difficult to understand.

Performers Cain, Avant, and Brockington form a solid ensemble and are all appealing. Brockington, however, stands out for her magnetic presence and heart-felt acting. Her material is also the most rawly personal and thus the most compelling in the show.

Black Girl Ugly is the kind of theater which places demands on its audience. Viewers must be ready to absorb and respond to the experiences of others – experiences which many, if not all, of the audience shares. For those who wish to laugh at the familiar and ponder the tragicomic situation of black women in America, it's a good choice. Black Girl Ugly is an earnest piece, and its brief one hour running time feels like the prologue to a much longer conversation.

Newsflash from Agincourt

If Warlike Harry was alive today, then he had better be photogenic. While the hero of William Shakespeare's Henry V existed far from the prying eyes of the public, Jessica Bauman's multimedia retelling of the play, Into the Hazard, broadcasts its hero and its politics onto the small screen. The resulting production succeeds as a solid version of Henry V, but fails to make its intended political point. For all intents and purposes, Into the Hazard is a streamlined version of Henry V which uses Shakespeare's text almost exclusively. Like in Shakespeare's play, the newly crowned English monarch, Henry, shakes off his former reputation as a ne'er-do-well and leads a ragtag army to war in France. On the battlefield, the young king proves himself against overwhelming odds, defeating a field of French foes and claiming large swathes of France for himself. Often, Henry V has been staged as uncritically patriotic, such as in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, but the text itself is far more ambivalent about the justice of Henry's actions. Bauman underscores this aspect of the text, ending her production with the Chorus' lines about England's subsequent bloody loss of all its newly won French lands.

Bauman was inspired to undertake her adaptation of Henry V in response to the relentless media spin which accompanied 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Into the Hazard is intended to provoke audiences to question the insidious interplay between the organs of the news and the actions of the state, Shakespeare's play does not lend itself to the reinterpretation.

Bauman's concept places a TV screen center stage. Upon entering the theater, the first thing one notices is a large television set playing a game sequence from a first person shooter set on an urban, Middle Eastern battlefield. With the help of video designer Austin Switser, Bauman has transformed certain scenes and speeches from the play into newscasts, reality shows, and documentaries, which she intersperses between the live-action scenes. Helpfully, she has added a prologue between a stuffy academic and a star-struck reporter which explains the play's complicated backstory. The video interludes are amusingly incongruous, but also occasionally illogical. For example, when a TV newscaster publicly announces the treachery of two of Henry's associates and broadcasts their mugshots, one wonders why the traitors are so shocked when they are apprehended by Henry in the next scene.

The problem is that Bauman has grafted modern assumptions onto an antique work. Speeches that were written to be played out in public (such as Henry's St. Crispin's Day speech to the troops) have been shoved into dark back rooms, drastically reducing their power. Others, which were written for private communication between the Chorus and the audience, are broadcast to the world, slathered with an irony which undercuts their poetry. In the end, the only media sequence which effectively does what Bauman intended – that is, raise questions about media spin and its relationship to war – comes at the end of the play. Immediately after a scene which portrays Henry's attentions to Katherine as akin to rape, a press conference plays in which the King of France announces the couple's marriage. The image of the blank-faced couple standing in the background is truly chilling.

The production is not helped by Nick Dillenburg's performance as Henry V. Although he cuts an appealing figure, his thoughts and motivations are impenetrable and his line delivery flip, no matter what the content of the text. Although this may suffice for playing contemporary leads, it is not satisfying in Shakespeare. Henry's lack of internal conflict and passion make the second act – which contains the king's most rousing speeches – drag. Dillenburg is much better as the callow French Dauphin, slouching, whining, and bragging his way into a disastrous war.

Fortunately, the five actors who share the rest of the roles – Erin Moon, Trevor Vaughn, David McCann, Luis Moreno, and Scott Whitehurst – are all strong. Vaughn as Pistol is both believable and charismatic, while Moreno steals every scene he is in as the garrulous Welshman Fluellen. Moon's performances of both a boy soldier and the Princess Katherine are exceptional.

Bauman has done a fine job directing her ensemble, staging the play cleanly and formally on Christopher Akerlind's spare set. Using nothing more than a metal platform, a door, two chairs, and buckets full of soil, she creates interesting and elegant stage pictures. The ensemble's methodical stacking of dead soldiers' shoes after the battle of Agincourt is particularly moving. Akerlind's simple, warm lighting design is both attractive and understated and Emily Pepper's costumes are effective and clearly delineate the many characters, even when the whole cast changes into desert fatigues for the second act.

Viewers hoping for a radical re-envisioning of Shakespeare will be disappointed. However, although Into the Hazard has not fully succeeded as a retelling of Henry V in a media age, it is a perfectly enjoyable, well-performed and carefully directed production of Shakespeare's play.