Wall Street Scavenger Hunt

My interactive experience with RED CLOUD RISING began the day before the performance was scheduled to start. I received an email from Charlotte, Bydder Financial’s Director of Recruitment, preparing me for my upcoming recruitment session. “Oh God,” I thought, “I’m being recruited? I’m going to be tested?” I cursed myself for leaving The Inside Job off my Netflix queue. Luckily, no one asked me to crunch numbers or define “derivative.” Instead, my teammates and I were sent on an entertaining yet ultimately anti-climactic scavenger hunt through the financial district. Though it explored the relationship between technology and performance in some exciting ways, the creators of RED CLOUD RISING should perhaps also rent The Inside Job: I was underwhelmed by their attempts to thrill us. On the day of the performance, I find myself in an office building near Wall Street, sitting in a cushy swivel chair, chatting awkwardly with Charlotte about “the job” and watching a humorously vague and upbeat video about the joys of working for Bydder Financial. After taking our phone numbers, Charlotte sends us out into the streets, to be ‘tested.’ Our task is to deliver an envelope to another Bydder employee. To find the employee, we are sent on a scavenger hunt, led by text messages and phone calls. Things start to get interesting when an underground group, Red Cloud, contacts us, promising to divulge Bydder’s seedy underbelly. They start getting less interesting when Bydder’s dastardly plan (to privatize all the world’s resources) is revealed. “Hasn’t that already happened?” asked one of my teammates.

Despite the lack of intrigue and suspense, I had a great time running around lower Manhattan, problem solving and cracking jokes with a bunch of strangers I might never have met otherwise. And I see a ton of potential in what The Fifth Wall is trying to do, both in their attempt to imbue the game with real issues, and in their use of technology to extend the game beyond the event. The next day, I received an email from Charlotte, thanking me for my time and informing me that I did not get the job at Bydder. if I had been ‘hired,’ I wonder what would have happened next? The possibilities are many and thrilling. Though I wish The Fifth Wall had found a way to raise the stakes for its players, I applaud their exploration of the intersections between theater, gaming and technology, and hope they continue in this vein.

Teachers in Love

I probably should have had a better idea of what I was getting into by the title: Under the Blue Sky is not exactly original, and neither is the play. An exploration of unspoken love and obsession in the workplace, it aims to be specific in its focus on British schoolteachers. Instead, it strikes some very well-known chords: unrequited-feelings-between-best-friends (in G), unhealthy-obsession (D minor), and-love-that-overcomes-great-obstacles (C major, of course). It is relatively well-executed, but generally underwhelming. The play is split into three acts. Each is a scene between two teachers in which the nature of the relationship is revealed. In Act 1, we meet best friends Helen and Nick. They are making dinner, chatting, flirting, and all is going well until Nick, almost all at once, tells Helen he’s moving away, he knows Helen is desperately in love with him, and he doesn’t know how he feels about Helen. Helen is mortified, and then turns a knife on Nick, begging him to stay. In the end they decide they’ll go on holiday together in a few months.

Act 2 finds us in a bedroom late at night, with Graham and Michelle. Their relationship (and the scene) is a kind of grotesque amplification of Helen and Nick’s: Graham is obsessed with Michelle, and Michelle, aware of the fact, is planning to sleep with Graham to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. She is terribly cruel to Graham, who in response to this cruelty reveals that he has been stalking Michelle for years, taking photos of her with other men, entering her room at night, the whole kit n’ caboodle. Act 3 is a scene between Anne and Robert, good friends with 20 years between them. This relationship, despite its oddities, proves to be the healthiest and most plausible of the three: things end well for Anne and Robert, at least.

Performances are generally strong. Standouts include Sarah Manton, who plays Helen, jittery and staccato in her excitement and attempts to remain composed as Nick devastates and embarrasses her. Jonathan Tindle (Graham) also elicits empathy as he takes insult after insult from Michelle, quietly kindling with pain and anger as she carelessly hurls cruelties his way. Elizabeth Jasicki’s drunken ramblings as Michelle are far too drawn out; one gets the point (she is terribly selfish and mean, particularly to Graham) about 10 minutes into the scene, and it continues for another twenty. This also may be a fault of the script, which could use some editing, here in particular. Christine Rendel and Richard Hollis are interesting and entertaining as Anne and Robert, and convincing as good friends, but little chemistry exists between the two as lovers. After they confess their love to each other and kiss passionately, the two separate and spend the rest of the scene several feet away from one another, as though the revelation never occurred.

The space, the Kraine Theater, is one of those downtown beasts with lights that go on and off at will, and technical malfunctions are an expectation more than an exception. There’s a charm in this, but it cannot be ignored: the space refuses to let you forget you are in a theater, so you can’t fully lose yourself in what is supposed to be a kitchen or a back deck. Kristen Costa’s design attempts to acknowledge this in some ways, and ignores it in others. Sets for all three scenes are onstage for the entire play, and action is confined to 1/3 of the space each time, a very theatrical choice. But each set is pretty detailed, with multiple props and dressings: characters actually cook in the kitchen, which smells great, but ultimately backfires. It places too much attention on the set in a space that can’t support realism. Furthermore, it is unnecessary in this play that is about the relationships between characters, not the spaces they inhabit. In short, it distracts.

I should note that Under the Blue Sky includes some well-turned phrases and interesting back and forth, particularly in the first and third scenes. In each scene, the nature of the relationship between the two characters is revealed slowly, bit by bit, which provides some satisfaction in watching. David Eldridge has written a solid play. I just wish it managed to tap into something beyond the relationships themselves, revealed something about teaching, or even illustrated British culture. Mind the Gap’s mission statement is to bring British theater (and I would think British culture) to American audiences, after all. But change a few phrases, and the play could have been about American nurses or Canadian businesspeople. This play has nothing to tell us that we don’t already know. It entertains, but does not inform. See it on a first date, if you prefer theater to the movies, but otherwise, you’ll be OK without.

Brothers Brawl, Everyone Bawls

I do not have a great deal to say about Barefoot Theater Company's Teeth of the Sons , written by Joseph Sousa and performed at the Cherry Lane Theater, mainly because it does not have a great deal to offer. By cramming a series of melodramatic tropes into the storyline and presenting these tropes relatively solidly, it held my attention for its duration, but no more than an episode of General Hospital might. The biggest difference here is that General Hospital knows what it is and where it stands in pop culture today. Teeth of the Sons is mid-grade melodrama posing as high art, taking itself far too seriously to be stomached. The play begins with a reunion between estranged brothers Sam (steadily performed by Will Allen), who has been incommunicado for years, and Jacob, (played by Sousa) a mild-mannered Hasidic scholar. Sam has returned to their hometown, Brooklyn, because his girlfriend, Maddy, (Casandera M.J. Lollar) is pregnant, her family has kicked her out, and the two need a place to stay.

This lays the groundwork for a plethora of arguments between Jacob and Sam, Sam and Maddy, Maddy and Jacob, even Jacob and his long-time ex girlfriend Evelyn, who shows up as a bangled, beaded, long-skirted deus-ex machina near the play’s end. Arguments center on religious doctrine, familial duties, morality, and abortion. One would think that so much arguing would produce interesting insights into these subjects: one would be wrong. Little is said that hasn't been heard on an after school special. When characters aren't arguing, they are calming themselves down, or crying, or trying not to cry, on the phone to their estranged parents who come across as heartless, unfeeling, terrible people.

It is clear that Sousa and director Nicole Haron spent much more time thinking about plot than character development, which is problematic in a one-room play with three main characters. Inconsistencies abound: for example, we are supposed to believe that Jacob once was a carbon-copy of his brother, an irresponsible, care-free partier with no regard for anyone but himself. But Sousa's Jacob is so mild-mannered, so reserved and sweet that it's impossible to believe this is true.

At one point, Sam gets Jacob to take a shot of whiskey with him, and as Jacob does so, he cringes and grimaces like a boy who's never tasted it before. This is comical, but it makes no sense if he was once as big a drinker as Sam. Sam and Jacob are completely different in every way, from the way they carry themselves to speech patterns to complexion. There is nothing to indicate that they are brothers, that they share an upbringing and a past.

Near the end of the play, Jacob's high school girlfriend, Evelyn, shows up, and through an impassioned speech, Evelyn reveals to the audience that Jacob was not the nicest of guys at sixteen: he dumped her and then turned her away when she came sobbing at his doorstep. Evelyn tears into Jacob, and Jacob takes full blame for his former self. He confesses to taking cold showers to repent his behavior to her. No one ever brings up the fact that Jacob and Evelyn were kids when they dated, and likely made major mistakes due in large part to their immaturity. It’s an odd omission that suggests none of these characters (or the playwright) have gained much perspective over time.

The technical elements do not add much shine to this dull script. The set is realistically rendered, and would have worked fine if the director and designers hadn’t felt the need to emphasize the fact. There are many practical lights on the set. I have never seen lights turned on and off so often and so unnecessarily in one play before. Perhaps director Nicole Haran was trying to break some kind of record. I can see no other reason for making such a choice.

In conclusion, I would not recommend this play to most. Perhaps if you are particularly interested in Hasidic Judaism, the Holocaust, abortion, and soap operas, and there's nothing good on TV, and you live in the West Village already, and aren't interested in any movies playing...maybe then, you might consider Teeth of the Sons, but otherwise, I'd say pass.

Thrills, Chills and Interpretive Dance

After leaving the Mckittrick Hotel, I found myself with various souvenirs, including a creepy white mask, a saliva-covered ring, and a (fake) bloodstain on my shirt. I also had to contain the urge to run after interesting-looking individuals on the street - not an urge I usually have after an evening of theater-going. But there was nothing usual about this particular theater piece. Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More offers audiences full immersion into its heightened world of dark corridors and dastardly deeds, a night of escapism like no other. The night unfolds something like this: after "checking in" (getting your tickets), you head up a flight of stairs and through a series of disorienting dark hallways, emerging into a jazz-era bar complete with specialty cocktails and dimly lit little tables. You are called away from the bar in small groups, given masks, told not to speak, and herded into an elevator, which spits you out into a series of rooms: fully realized replicas of abandoned hospital wards, offices, bedrooms, eerie forests and graveyards, shops, banquet halls and bars, all dimly lit and constantly filled with moody music.

You are free to explore any way you choose: props are meant to be handled and picked through. The space is littered with texts, including books, clippings on the walls, ledgers, and letters, that invite you to open and read them and discover what you may. Entries are constantly being locked and un-locked and lighting and moveable set pieces change the look of a space so significantly that you could enter a floor three times and experience it in three completely unique ways.

After wandering around for a bit, you begin to run into actors, perhaps mid-action, or running from point A to point B. The latter was most exciting to me: after wandering around aimlessly, running into an actor felt like an important discovery. Something was going to happen, and if I kept up, I would see it happen, and others wouldn’t. I’ll admit I was often disappointed by the happening itself: scenes are primarily movement-based, and while interesting and well-executed, they never satisfied my expectations. When walking around, I could, from time to time, feel completely immersed in the world of Sleep No More , as though I had stepped into a noir film myself. But the dances took me out of the reality of the space, reminding me that I was watching a performance. The characters and plot are taken from Macbeth, and if you are familiar with the Scottish King’s tale, you can make meaning out of characters’ actions and interactions, but one’s experience is so fractured and incomplete that it is difficult to connect to these elements so as to care what happens to them.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have some sort of one-on-one experience with an actor. From time to time, actors will pull audience members into small rooms, locking the door behind them. I couldn’t tell you what goes on in these rooms, but I can tell you I ached to be pulled into one of them. I did, however, have an intriguing public interaction with a woman in a red dress. As she slowly, thoughtfully ate a chicken coated in a deep red blood-like sauce, she locked eyes with me, and continued to stare into my eyes for several minutes. Her gaze was penetrating, searching, intense. Eventually, she spit out a ring, motioned me over, and, without breaking her stare, put the ring on my finger. I am not sure if I could have participated in this interaction if it wasn’t for the mask I was wearing: it protected me, kept me anonymous, less vulnerable. Though it was thrilling to be brought into this woman’s world, it was a safe thrill, a comfortable thrill.

The designers, Felix Barret, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns, cannot be praised enough for the renovation of the McKittrick Hotel. Rooms are detailed and specific, sometimes realistic, sometimes terrifying strange or surprising, but never dull. Lighting, designed by Felix Barrett and Euan Maybank and sound, designed by Stephen Dobbie, adds a sense of magic and suspense, the constant feeling that ‘something is about to happen’ that is perhaps the most thrilling aspect of Sleep No More . And everything, everything is beautiful. Just stunningly gorgeous. It is a thrilling world to live in for a few hours.

In the end, the experience is what you make of it. It reminds me of a quintessential post-modern novel, most strikingly of House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which presents multiple possible ways of reading, offers puzzles in the text and invites you to dig deeper to solve them, making it easy to explore but difficult to come away with a full, unified understanding of the experience. However, the novel is filled with questions and musings that one can chew on for ages.

Sleep No More gives one puzzles to solve and choices to make, the thrill of potentiality and the chance to escape into a world much more beautiful than one’s own. But I came away wanting more: more connection to the characters and the narrative, more discomfort, more challenge, more fear. Sleep No More comes close to offering audiences a transformative experience but stops just shy of delivering. It is excellently produced and absolutely worth seeing, but not the end-all and be-all of theater experiences. See it, and dream on.

Familial Variations

If you’re looking for a romantic or traditional portrayal of a relationship, look elsewhere: KIN is about as unromantic as they come. Not only is it honest and without sentimentality, the main romance is all but absent from the equation. As it turns out, this is the genius of the piece: a relationship study that studies the relationships surrounding the couple instead of the couple itself. And it certainly helps that the writing is excellent and the cast superb. KIN is an honest exploration of the joys and burdens of being connected to people, a near pitch-perfect evening. KIN follows Anna, an Ivy League poetry scholar, and Sean, an Irish physical trainer, from before their first date to their wedding day, focusing not on the couple but their family and friends, the ties formed by their romance. Almost all scenes are between two people, and each gives us a portrait of the characters’ relationship. Some are longstanding, between brother and sister, best friends from boarding school, a man and his mistress. Others are formed only through Anna and Sean’s partnership, like that of Sean and Anna’s best friend, or Anna and Sean’s mother. Some are easy, some tense, many comical, and often revealing of the troubled nature of bonds between people.

Almost the entire cast should be praised for their nuanced work, supported greatly by Bathsheba Doran’s script and Sam Gold’s direction. Stand outs include Cotter Smith, who plays Adam, Anna’s father. Adam is an army man: stoic, reserved, speaking quickly in clipped sentences, as though still on duty. He seems unused to socializing with civilians, uncomfortable, which makes his desire and inability to connect with his daughter all the more painful to watch. Laura Heisler (Helena) and Suzanne Bertish (Linda) also give standout performances: Heisler is hilarious as a modern-day bohemian, waddling around the stage on 3 inch wedge sandals, yet forcing us to take her seriously at key moments. Bertish takes material that could be deemed melodramatic and keeps it truthful, drawing us in with dry wit that barely conceals real grief and trauma. I am least impressed with Kate Bush, who plays Anna: she makes the character cold and disinterested, impossible to empathize with and unconvincing in vulnerable moments.

Gold does a beautiful job emphasizing the central theme of KIN through staging. Actors change the set between scenes, and, more interestingly, are onstage from time to time, watching scenes seemingly unconnected to them. The first time this happens, Sean's mother and Uncle watch an interaction between Anna's father and his long-time lover. All of a sudden, four characters who have never met, who would have no connection to one another if not for Anna and Sean, are sharing the stage, one group taking interest in the others' lives. Gold is using theatrical tools only here, creating an experience that cannot be reproduced on film: the experience of seeing bodies in space together, bleeding into one anothers' worlds. We see that the characters both are and are not present in the scene; they are and are not watching. The actors become spectral in a way that is all the more eerie due to our knowledge of their actual, physical presence.

The penultimate scene in KIN brings this staging technique to an exquisite conclusion. Everyone assembles in Ireland for Sean and Anna's outdoor wedding, despite an overwhelmingly intense storm. As Helena attempts to officiate, screaming over the rain, fog fills the stage until we can't see a thing. As it begins to clear, a structure is rolled on downstage, a three dimensional frame that acts as various rooms throughout the performance, and Sean and Anna enter. Costumes and some vocal reverb tell us we're in a memory, what seems to be one of Sean and Anna's first dates. We listen as they learn about each other, their families, their ghosts. It is the first time the two are in a scene alone together, but we soon realize even now this isn't the case: as the fog clears further, we see the wedding party, still on stage. In the moment, without knowing it, Sean and Anna are beginning to bring all of these people together, and the family gets to watch it happen.

Anna says, "It's awful, isn't it?" Sean: What is? Anna: Getting to know someone.

It's a beautiful way to end the play: a perfect confluence of text, image and thematic material. But the play does not end. Instead, we are pulled back to the wedding day, to Anna and Sean laughing at their flooded ceremony, a confession from Sean that he's afraid to die, and a reassurance from Anna that they won't for a long time. To go from something so profound to something so obvious and cliche, and end there, is disappointing, to put it mildly. Fear of death permeates the play. It does not need to be stated. At this moment, and a couple of others, I wish Ms. Doran had had the guts to cut. Fingers crossed for future incarnations.

Still, no question, KIN is an astute portrait of the troubled ties that enfold and ensnare us, and it is beautifully rendered by the entire company.

Silly Boys

Peter and the Starcatcher is a fast paced, witty theatrical romp about Peter Pan's journey to becoming the high-flying champion of adolescence that we now know him to be.  Based on the recently written novel of nearly the same name by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the story is as whimsical as the original tale, with an additional dose of topical camp. The play begins on the Neverland, a ship bound from England to the island Rundoon.  Lord Aster is on a mission for the Queen (God save her) to transport a trunk of starstuff, magical dust from the stars, to Rundoon to be destroyed.  But several villains have their eye on the trunk as well, including ‘The Stache’ (the man who will one day be Hook), the most dreaded pirate in all the seas.  Also onboard The Neverland are three mistreated orphan boys, and Molly, the precocious thirteen-year-old daughter of Lord Astor.  Molly befriends the boys and, when her father is kidnapped and the starstuff endangered, enlists them on a mission to help her destroy the starstuff before it gets into the wrong hands.  They all end up on a tropical island, inhabited by angry natives (the Mollusks) and a bloodthirsty crocodile.

Though the plot may sound silly, the pleasure of this tale comes from its telling.  It is told by a talented and totally in-sync ensemble of twelve, who jump from character to narrator to piece of furniture at the snap of a finger.  The play is presentational and text-heavy - normally ingredients for a trying 2 hours, but it's quite the opposite.  It works because of the pace of the piece: actors race through the text, sometimes leaving the audience gasping to catch up, but even if one fails to grasp the meaning of a phrase or sentence, we remain entertained by its rhythm, cadence, and delightful delivery. 

Rick Elise's script joyfully celebrates words, cramming alliteration, rhymes, and other bits of wordplay into nearly every line.  Black Stache (a hilariously show stealing performance by Christian Borle) gets some of the best lines.  One gem comes early on in the play, soon after we meet the brute: "But know this, Len – mine is a far, far heavier burden.  For I am the end of my line.  No heir apparent with no hair apparent; no bonafide heroes to hunt.  And without them, what am i?  Half a villain; a pirate in part; ruthless, but toothless – The Final Stache.”

The set is malleable yet detailed – an open space with walls that represent the innards of a ship in act one and a tropical island in act two.  Lighting shifts help to transport us from scene to scene, and location to location, but the ensemble does just as much, if not more, on this count.  As they rearrange themselves in different configurations, so the space is rearranged to become a school room, a tiny cabin, or a quiet hallway.  With the help of props like rope or human-sized palm leaves, the ensemble transforms from pirates to doors to a dense forest to schoolchildren and back to pirates in mere moments, dashing from position to position to help tell the story.  It is a triumph in ensemble work and some excellent, inventive direction by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers. 

Though they may show off their word prowess and ensemble-work chops, these fellows are not afraid to make fun of themselves. In Act 2, Peter and the soon-to-be lost boys try to charm their way out of being killed by the Mollusks by telling a story, which they act out together, until Molly unveils herself and stops them, saying, “You abused the concept of the theater collective; it was too much for me.”

The cast of Peter and the Starcatcher is almost entirely male, with the exception of the exceptional Celia Keenan-Bolgier, who plays Molly.  Both Bolgier and the character she plays hold their own among a sea of testosterone: Molly is a strong-willed, feisty girl, braver and smarter than the pitiful lost boys she bosses around.  She's funny, too, but often overshadowed by the bombastic gags that center around ideas of maleness: men in drag, men with flamboyant, homosexual tendencies, etc.  It seems to be a favorite topic, at least of Timbers, who inserted this kind of humor into Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson every chance he got.  In a play that is so smart in so many ways, this humor has the feel of a boys' club blockbuster, which is disappointing.  

Still, I came away from Peter and the Starcatcher quite entertained, and even moved, near its end.  Elise, Timbers and Rees maintain the heart of the Peter Pan stories: the pains of growing up, the desire to remain young and innocent, to escape, to forget.  Therein lies the beauty of all Peter Pan tales, and Peter and the Starcatcher certainly holds its own in celebrating the spirit of childhood and dramatizing its end.  It's an excellent addition to the canon, and a  hell of a joy ride.

Trouble in Texas

People like to examine their origins via art. Virginia Woolf, Tennessee Williams, The Coen Brothers, and many, many more have all at one point or another created fictional versions of their childhood homes. About writing out her experiences, Woolf once said, “It is only by putting it in to words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me.” Perhaps playwright Stephen Bittrich is attempting to do something along these lines in his play, Home of the Great Pecan: that is, turn his hometown, Seguin, Texas, into something else so it can no longer hurt him. However, he doesn’t make Seguin ‘whole’ so much as laughable. The Drilling Company then runs with the silliness of the script to the point of absurdity, making Home of the Great Pecan mildly entertaining at best, disturbing at worst.

The play goes something like this: during preparations for the annual Pecan Festival, the town’s beloved Great Pecan is stolen, which sends everyone in a tizzy. Meanwhile, Tammie Lynn Schneider is determined to get her boyfriend Greeley Green to stop fooling around and marry her, by any means necessary. And all the while, strange lights flash and rumors of flying saucers are whispered left and right.

Design elements of the production are nicely executed: the small stage is adorned with Texan flags and Christmas lights, with panels that spin to create different locations and flexible set pieces used in varying ways. Miriam Nilofa Crowe’s lighting design is impressively versatile. Both she and set designer Jen Varbalow use the materials at their disposal to the fullest. They create a workable, malleable space for the company to play in.

The rest of the work does not quite live up to its surroundings. There’s something that rubs me the wrong way about this production’s tone. Almost everyone in the town of Seguin comes off as a bit unbalanced and laughable. One begins to wonder if Bittrich wrote himself into the play as the young, angry misfit Yankee Chucky Connors, and if Home of the Great Pecan is a kind of adolescent revenge against the town that never made him feel welcome.

But, I have to acknowledge that there are moments when characters exhibit signs of depth, and some relationships hint at complexity. Greeley, while sharing a beer with his best friend Ed, waxes philosophical about the meaning of life and the needs of man. Near the end of the play, we learn that Sonia, the Hispanic owner of the beauty parlor, has a thing for Les, the small-minded hardware store owner. These bits interest me, but are dissapointingly underdeveloped.

Instead, director Hamilton Clancey focuses on comedy. Loud comedy. Bombastic comedy. Often, ineffective comedy. The best example of this is the scene in which we meet Reverend Pat, played by Scott Baker. We are treated to (or made to endure) one of the Reverend’s sermons. He screams and shouts and waves his arms and dances around the stage, sweating and spitting profusely. It’s terrifying and grotesque. And then, one scene later, we have to watch as the still-dripping Reverend attempts to seduce the young Rose – and succeeds! Their kiss is cringe-worthy.

One performance I do enjoy is that of Amanda Dillard, who plays Pricilla Rotweiller, a young hopeful for the Miss Pecan crown. As she’s rehearsing her acceptance speech, she is sugary sweet, but her demeanor drops the second her mother interrupts her: Dillard growls her response. The theft of the Great Pecan hits her hard and leads to a hilarious, righteous breakdown. I only wish someone had pointed out the size of the space to her: her screaming literally hurt my ears at times.

It seems like The Drilling Company wants to produce work that tests the senses, that’s visceral and in your face, while Home of the Great Pecan wants to be something else entirely (a romantic comedy/indie flick, perhaps). Maybe they just aren’t meant to be together. One wonders what would happen if this company got their hands on some Artaud - that could be out of this world.

War and Play

"I am speaking to you now of how bodies are transformed into different bodies" says a Churchill-like voice, crackled and fuzzy as if coming through an old wireless radio as his words are projected on a screen center stage, over an image of Earth. So begins Pants on Fire's adaptation of Metamorphoses , currently running at The Flea Theater. Though the proclamation sounds sweeping and serious, this production is anything but. Rather, Pants on Fire's Metamorphoses interprets the theme of transformation as might a vaudevillian or a circus performer: the ensemble transforms itself into slap-happy caricatures of musicians, puppeteers, and entertainers of all kinds, transforming the tales in Metamorphoses into fodder for their fun-making. Director Peter Bramley and his company have produced some highly theatrical, well-made, entertaining work. The company sets Metamorphoses in 1940's Britain, during WWII. Narcissus is a Bogart-esque film star, Cupid's a knicker-wearing schoolboy, and Echo bears a striking resemblance to Rosie the Riveter. These references aid in making the stories more accessible, something Pants on Fire strives to do in all its work and certainly achieves here. They are also adept at creating a specific, non-realistic and wonderfully whimsical world to play and perform in. Nearly everything the versatile cast of seven does is humorously stylized and exaggerated. Set and sound is low tech but inventive: music is either performed live by the actors or pumped in through an old-fashioned phonograph. The actors vocalize all other sound effects, at one point creating the sound of a passing plane they’re ‘watching’ fly by, effectively adjusting their volume as it approaches and quickly recedes.

The set is a thing of theatrical genius. Designed by Samuel Wyer (who also designed puppets and illustrations in the piece), it primarily consists of a series of five or six panels that the actors move around the stage at regular intervals. These panels transform the tiny Flea theater into multiple spaces, suggesting everything from a lake to the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Most fun is when actors shuffle the panels around the space, revealing someone where no one had been a moment before, as if by magic.

Pants on Fire is all about using the theatrical tools at their disposal, and they work them to their fullest here, incorporating song, dance, puppetry, body doubles, and inventive costume pieces, among other things. At one point, a woman lifts her skirt, revealing green tulle ruffles underneath which, thrown over her head and combined with her brown tights, transforms her into a pretty convincing tree.

While the entire ensemble is formidable, I find Eloise Secker, (who plays the aforementioned tree among other roles) particularly exceptional. With chameleon-like ease, she morphs from one role to the next, unrecognizable at times. She can mould her face like putty, putting it to use as anything from a young spurned lover to a severe political villain. I particularly enjoy her portrayal of Medusa as a dowdy housewife in a flowered nightdress.

Despite the fact that many of Ovid’s stories end tragically, Pants on Fire's telling of the tales keeps them light. The troupe's Metamorphoses takes the concept of transformation and enacts it, actively transforming set, sound, and story from one thing to the next, joyfully celebrating the possibility inherent in the idea that things are always changing.

That is, until the play’s final moments, when the piece takes a sharp left turn. Tiresius, the blind oracle, is asked what the future holds. He responds, “War...between nature and man!” He continues to describe the world’s return to chaos, due to man’s inharmonious dealings with nature, as images of natural destruction appear on the CS screen. All of a sudden, we are meant to understand Ovid’s stories as warning tales of our future doom. It is so idiosyncratic with the rest of the play that it feels tacked on, almost as an afterthought.

But, thankfully, the moment is brief, and the play ends not with it but with the crackly Churchill voice, reciting Ovid: "The world is changing. Heaven and everything under it will take on new forms, as will the earth too, and everything here upon it, as even we will, for we are a part of it also, not merely bodies, but winged spirits." To my ears, it strikes a more hopeful tune, as does the rest of the play. Its actions speak louder than its tales.

So, despite the random global warming tie-in, I say go see Pants on Fire’s Metamorphoses before this jolly band of Brits fly their way back to England like the winged spirits they are.

Mid-Life Crisis

A Small Fire, by Adam Bock, is an excellent play that is less than excellently produced. The play is a study of a marriage thrown into crisis mode. On the brink of her daughter's wedding, Emily Bridges (Michelle Pawk) loses her sense of smell. What begins as something minor and manageable quickly turns devastating as Bridges' sight and hearing fail her as well and she becomes completely reliant on her husband, John (Reed Birney). Pain and frustration build as the couple begins to cope with their impossible situation, struggling to keep from losing one another entirely. The play takes place over a short period of time, perhaps a few weeks, and much is unknown: we know little of the characters' past, and their future, the major ways in which Emily's illness will change the Bridges' lives, is left uncertain. This short time span allows us to share in the Bridges' dawning realization of what is happening to Emily, to imagine the horror of suddenly finding oneself cut off from one's world, living in darkness and silence.

Bock's script doesn't situate the Bridges in a particular class or location, but the colloquialism of the characters' speech, when read, seems to connect the characters, to bind them as a family. He uses (or doesn’t use) punctuation to score the rhythms of his characters’ speech. For example, talking to his daughter one night, John says:

“She is I know she is. But. I don't know how it happens but somehow you can get tied to each other. You're gonna see with Henry. Your Mom and I we're different about some things but I'm lucky she didn't like being alone because I can't. I can't be.”

While Pawk leans into these rhythms, sometimes overplaying them, Birney muffles them, adapting the text to his own way of speaking. This distances the characters from one another, as if they are living in different worlds, different plays even, which cheapens their otherwise stellar performances.

This lack of unity and specificity is a fault of the production as a whole. The set design is vague and tells us little about who or where the Bridges are. Several sound bytes sound like (possibly are) instrumental covers of indie rock songs, jarringly out of place. Even the costume design is odd: Pawk speaks roughly but dresses exquisitely, and the juxtaposition is confusing. This all makes it more difficult to enter into the Bridges’ world and really care about their struggle.

The production does manage to execute the play’s few lyrical moments beautifully. The lighting design (by David Weiner) enhanced the tone of several scenes, heightening the mood and increasing the drama in subtle ways, never overbearing but quite affective. At the end of one scene, all lights go down save one just behind and above Emily, just for a moment, before all goes dark. The moment is a visual illustration of her extreme isolation, and the clarity of it is striking.

An equally striking moment occurs when Emily is having a dream. While her recorded voice describes the dream, where she can see and hear and smell again, she stands downstage, looking out into the audience. Upstage, panels move aside to reveal a beautiful, billowing, blue-green curtain, which, with the help of lighting, completely transforms the space, taking us from the Bridges' home to an ethereal otherwhere. The moment is an accomplishment in scenic prowess, and an example of how much can be done with relatively little.

Just after this dream comes the play's resolution, one that wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the brief time span of the play. Emily awakes from her dream, out of bed, disoriented and upset, and John attempts to comfort her. Slowly, sweetly, they begin to kiss, and this moves into passionate love-making. The scene is expertly staged: it is intense, beautiful and honest. As they reach orgasm, the audience also experiences a release, a release of the tension and frustration that their situation creates. It is a relief in the realization that despite everything that separates them, the Bridges are still able to connect, however momentary that connection may be.

Still, these highly dramatic or theatrical moments are the exception: the bulk of the play is conversation, and it would have been much better served if the director, Trip Cullman, had focused more on text and less on billowing curtains and steamy love scenes. A Small Fire is a strong play, but this production does not quite do it justice.

Bros, Brawls, Booze and Shubert

If you are looking for the one seasonal play to see this winter, Three Pianos is it. Exhuberantly directed by Rachel Chavkin and written/performed by the beyond talented trio of Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy and Dave Malloy, Three Pianos is so many things: funny, intelligent, irreverant, self-referential, self-deprecating, sad and beautiful, to name a few. After winning an Obie for its run at the Ontological Hysteric last spring, it’s been repolished and moved into New York Theatre Workshop, and is now a more elegant but no less honest version of its former self. The premise is as follows: three friends hanging out on a cold winter’s night, drinking and joking and arguing, stumble into a discussion of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, about which they joke, argue, and perform, drinking copiously throughout. One of the three, (Dave Malloy) recently broke up with his girlfriend, and the comparison between his twenty-first century depression and coping mechanisms and the melancholic, romantic wanderings of the narrator in Winterreise allows the trio to weave their own relationships to Winterreise and one another into their discussion and performances of Shubert’s beautiful and strange song cycle.

The gorgeous set (excellently designed by Andreea Mincic) resembles an apartment downstage and a wintery wasteland upstage, with large, bare tree branches and vertical fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. As the trio delve further into their imaginings inspired by the piece, they pull props, like an 18th century lamp, or a mail carrier’s tricycle, from unexpected places. One of my favorite gags is when Malloy pulls a bottle of vodka from a small birdhouse. He and his fellow castmates are eager to share the booze, serving us wine before we take our seats and passing more bottles around at several moments during the play.

A prominent feature of the set is its namesake, the three pianos, which the performers use together and apart. I know little about the art of piano playing, but in my opinion, all three men are superb. I am further impressed by the variety of things they manage to do with these instruments, constantly re-arranging them into different configurations on the set, often playing them as they go: at one point, they arrange the three pianos in a triangle facing inwards, and rotate in a circle, playing and singing as they move. A highly entertaining and impressive feat.

When not wowing us with piano bravado, the trio spends a good amount of time arguing, especially as the play progresses and the alcohol runs dry. They argue about the music, how to represent it and talk about it, what to include and leave out. The discussion is often lighthearted, but it can get intense. At one moment, Malloy says to Burkhardt and Duffy, “…sometimes when you start talking, and talking, and talking, I hate every single thing you’re saying, and it makes me want to, literally, literally, gouge out your eyes. With a piece of glass.”

These moments bring forward the trio’s creative process, their struggles and tensions, which reminds us of the subjectivity of the piece, that Three Pianos is more about Duffy, Burkhardt and Malloys’ relationship to and struggles with Winterreise than it is about Winterreise itself.

Throughout Three Pianos , we rarely get to hear Winterreise without bits of gimmick attached to it, which is fine with me: it’s fun and keeps things moving. It also sets us up for the final moments of the piece. Near Three Pianos’ end there is a long silence: in it, we feel the trio’s exhaustion. Malloy plucks at a couple of random keys on the piano. Finally, Duffy breaks the silence with a, “Sooo…”. These sounds somehow inspire Burkhardt, who asks Duffy and Malloy to repeat and tweak them. He says to Duffy, “Alec, can you say that word you’ve been saying, um, differently? Or just say a different word…?” Duffy responds with, “sooo whaaat…?” asking the question that may be on the minds of his audience. So what? What are we supposed to take from this piece, all the irreverance, the arguing, the alcohol?

It continues: Alec: Rick, you know my life is totally fine without us doing this…things are going well for me and I’m really happy. Rick: Oh.

A pause.

Malloy:I wonder how my ex is doing. I wonder if she’s cold.

The three begin the final song in Winterreise, “Der Lieermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man),” a quietly haunting piece, played and sung simply by all three at their pianos. It begins to lightly snow on the winter waste-land. It’s a beautiful moment, and a kind of answer. Three Pianos shows us the pains of creation and collaboration, the ways in which we cope with dark times, and the beauty and poetry within that darkness. It is an important piece of theater that you will regret missing. So go, enjoy the wine and song. I promise no eye-gouging urges will occur.

A Winter Tale

Michael and Edie, a new play by Rachel Bonds, produced by the Greenpoint Division at The Access Theater, is thoughtful, quiet and sad: a play steeped in winter’s muted tones.  The play primarily takes place in an urban bookstore in late November and early December, and tells the story of two of its employees, whose names are the title of the play.  Michael falls for Edie on his first day of work, but Edie is less enthused.  As the play progresses, we learn of the familial ghosts that haunt the characters’ pasts and presents and watch as a playful friendship forms between Michael and Edie admist stacks of books and heavy snowstorms.  Dark, yet sweet, Michael and Edie is a fine piece of new theater. The play is populated by a cast of idiosyncratic characters, who are, for the most part, very well cast.  Matthew Micucci, who plays Michael, is pleasantly awkward, with doe eyes and an eager smile.  Edie, played by Stephanie Wright Thompson, darts around the stage with a hint of humor, suppressed by sadness.  Both performances are nuanced and endearing, though I find myself wishing for more chemistry between these two would-be lovers.  The first half of the play finds Michael mooning over the uncertain Edie, which is believable enough, but the scenes in which the two are meant to be connecting feel a bit forced.  

Some supporting actors give equally excellent performances.  Jocelyn Kuritsky, who plays Michael’s little sister Sarah, a depressed, anxious teen, is nasal and angular, both comedic and tragic in her adolescent pain.  Gabel Eiben, who plays John, the bookstore owner, creeps up from behind bookshelves and darts around the stage, looking shifty.  One gets the sense that the director,  Robert Saenz de Viteri, used this actor’s personal quirks to their best advantage here, achieving some much needed bits of comic relief.  I am less impressed with Jacob Wilhelmi, who plays Edie’s dead brother, Ben: next to his gifted castmates, he comes off as rather bland.

In all aspects of the production, there is an interesting dichotomy between dark moods and child-like playfulness. Lighting, designed by Natalie Robin, is low and muted, with emphasis on saturated blue backlighting.  The inventive set, designed as an art installation by Hugh Morris, is a combination of piles of books and wire structures hung from the ceiling, bent to look like bookshelves.  While taking inventory at the bookshop, Edie and Michael rattle off names of famous novels and authors, striking the structures as they go, which produces a musical-sounding clang: something between a windchime and churchbell.  

The set’s musicality is sometimes lighthearted, as in the aforementioned scenes, and sometimes sober.  At a particularly serious moment between Sarah and Ben, Sarah knocks together two of the structures in passing, and they clang again and again, rhythmically, solemnly, giving the moment a kind of ceremonious weight.

Rachel Bonds has written a play that is at once lyrical, contemplative and mournful.  Her interest in the passage of time and seasons is a theme beautifully explored in both text and tone, and then further developed in the production's design and direction.  However, in its embrace of winter’s quiet,   Michael and Edie, lacks a sense of urgency:  I do not care enough about these characters and their stories for the piece to move me or change me in any way.  These people are in pain, I know, but I don’t feel it, and I cannot quite enter into it.  Perhaps a little warmth would have been useful here.  But there is no doubt that Bonds is a talented playwright, and The Greenpoint Division a company worth watching. I look forward to seeing their future work.

A Lesson in Urban Planning

Leaving Irondale Theatre after viewing the Civilians’ In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards, I felt like I just left a dinner party where I was the only one who didn’t know anything about the major topic of conversation. Therefore I had to sit for several hours and quietly sip my wine, watching jargon fly and faces redden, feeling confused and tired, unable to develop an opinion and needing an aspirin. The difference being, in In the Footprint , they argue to song, and I get no wine. The production’s press release states that “ In the Footprint is inspired by interviews conducted by The Civilians with real-life players in the years-long controversy about the Atlantic Yards Project, which will bring high-rise housing and a basketball arena to the rail yards in downtown Brooklyn.” (For more information on the controversy, go here: wikipedia.org/Atlantic_Yards .) The company attempts to tackle the issue thoroughly and fairly, and more or less does so. However, it fails to stir me: after the final bows, I am not sure what I think about the issue, and more importantly, why I should care.

The style of the play is documentary theater reminiscent of Anna Deveare Smith’s one woman shows, performed by an ensemble of six. The majority of the piece is comprised of monologues taken from interviews conducted by The Civilians over the course of two years. The set is barebones, and extensive video projection is used throughout, not unlike a trumped-up classroom presentation.

Interspersed throughout the play are musical numbers, composed by Michael Friedman in contemporary Broadway style. They don’t appear enough to call the piece a musical (they term it “a play with music”) and are used primarily as tools a la School House Rock, to introduce names of organizations or eminent domain-related terms. The style and music operate to alienate the audience from the material, so that they may analyze it objectively. Because of this, I get no sense of the community the story is about (Prospect Heights), and why I should care about its possible demise. What does Prospect Heights look like? Feel like? Sound like? Certainly not a Broadway musical.

However, there are upsides to this alienation effect. One benefit of being disconnected from the piece is that I get to admire the actors’ work. I love watching talented actors play multiple roles well, and these actors certainly excel at it. I actually didn’t realize there are only six actors in the cast: there were so many varied characters, I thought the ensemble numbered at least eight.

Matthew Dellapina and Donnetta Lavinia Grays deliver particularly standout performances. Their portrayals of community members and activists provide me with a few brief moments of empathy. Grays is one of those actors who can enthrall while doing nothing more than standing still, listening, in character. What a treat to get to watch her do so.

Another treat occurs about two thirds into In the Footprint . Here, the structure of the play breaks and instead of speaking one at a time to the audience, various characters come together and argue with one another face to face. All of the major ideological and racial tensions surface in an explosion of finger pointing and heated words. One realizes how complex this issue really is, stemming from highly contentious issues: gentrification, racial inequality, and real, deep seated anger. For a moment, the play strikes a chord: one understands the situation as indicative of issues bigger than Atlantic Yards and more painful than housing relocation.

In my opinion, that chord is not struck nearly enough. The press release claims that “ In the Footprint is an examination of how the fate of the city and its dwellers is decided in present-day New York and what might be learned from this ongoing epic of politics, money, and the places we call home.” But what might be learned remains unclear to me. Further, I am not moved to care enough about this event to try to figure it out. In the Footprint is an informative piece of theater that teaches us about the Atlantic Yards controversy, but does not show us the neighborhood it affects, its sounds and sights, and its unique flavor that the project is ostensibly destroying. It gives us a situation that is more or less over and leaves us puzzling over what to do with it. If you are particularly interested in and knowledgable about this issue, it may be worth your while. Otherwise, it’s just too much of a headache.

Women on the Verge of Who Knows What

There is something eager and earnest about Tin Lily’s production of Fefu and her Friends . Maria Irene Fornes’ provocative and challenging play explores the private and public dynamics of a group of women, their personal and collective joys and struggles. I am not intimately familiar with this play: Tin Lily’s production was my introduction to it. I gleaned that Fefu and Her Friends is a challenging piece of text with a multitude of plots and subtext, riddled with moments of lyrical unreality. However, in Tin Lily’s production, much of what it is attempting to do and say is lost on me. Despite earnest intentions, the cast and creative team of Tin Lily’s Fefu do not seem to fully understand the play they are producing, and therefore, neither do I. Fefu and her Friends is set on a day in 1935 in Fefu’s home, where a group of women are assembling to plan a fundraising event. The play has an interesting structure: while the first and third acts are basically straightforward, the second act is unique. The first act takes place in Fefu’s living room and introduces us to the eight women and their general relationships to one another. In the second act, four scenes occur at once in four different locations in the theater, or four different “rooms” in Fefu’s house. The audience splits into small groups and moves from room to room, viewing each scene in turn. These scenes are more intimate and revealing. The third act brings us back to Fefu’s living room and the big group, where the intimate revelations of the previous scenes seep into the public space, causing a kind of tragic unraveling.

The lack of clarity in the piece comes through most clearly in individual performances. Tai Verley’s Fefu is muddled and erratic. I feel little empathy for Fefu, because I do not understand her as a character, and I wonder if Verley does, either. Nora Williams, who plays Julia, a woman in a wheelchair with a dark past and prone to hallucinations, leans too far into the character’s meakness and comes off as dull. I am generally more impressed with the supporting actors. Kyle Williams, in particular, is an excellent Paula: humorous, endearingly quirky and uncertain. However, even she goes through moments where it seems as though she is unsure why her character is saying what she is saying. I found myself wishing they, or their director, had spent more time attempting to understand the text and characters.

Tin Lily’s production of Fefu is staged at the Center for Performance Research, a space in Williamsburg that is better equiped for art installations than theater. There is little flexibility in terms of lighting. All instruments are exactly the same: the small, ungelled lights often seen in gallery spaces, and they do little more than light up the room. At several moments, the play slips somewhat jarringly into other realities: hallucinations, dreams, poetry, and lyrical monologues that feel very different from the majority of the text. These moments would have been well served by atmospheric changes: shifts in lighting and sound. Tin Lily Productions attempts this at one or two moments, but the equipment at their disposal proves inadequate, and the moments fall short.

Fefu is not without strengths. Joshua David Bishop’s set is simple and flexible, evoking the art deco style of the period with geometric shapes and the absence of frills. It works well in the space, which is set up in a thrust configuration. The backs of the couch pieces are empty frames that one can see through, so they never block the audiences’ vision. The director, Jillian Johnson, takes care to stage scenes in such a way that the entire audience gets a good set of stage pictures: a noteworthy feat, with a large cast in a small space.

If nothing else, the play presents a truthful portrait of intimacy between women. One of the best scenes is a water fight that takes place on and off stage in Act Three amidst bursts of giggles and shouts, a joyful study in ordered chaos.

The joys of female friendship are perhaps under-portrayed in contemporary American theater, and it is gratifying to see them explored in Tin Lily’s Fefu. However, I think Fornes is saying much more about womens’ lives than this production brings to light. Further, it is unclear to me what this play, written in the 1970’s about a group of women in the 1930’s, has to offer an audience in 2010, and this, in my opinion, is the biggest failing of the production. Tin Lily Productions is an energetic company, no doubt, but it needs to focus its energy and say something clear and specific, if it wants to make any sort of impact.

Afraid of (Un)Afraid

In the moments before The Neo-Futurists’ new work (Un)afraid began, I was feeling pretty anxious. My anxiety was due to two words I dread to see connected to a theater piece I’m attending: audience participation. While I love the idea of involving and implicating audience members in productions, the possibility of actually being involved myself gives me hives. But, nevertheless, I went, and I’m glad I did. (Un)afraid has no plot to speak of. Rather, it feels more like a conversation: a wacky, fast-paced conversation with many props, masks and flurries of activity. The fantastic performers, Jill Beckman, Cara Francis, Ricardo Gamboa, and Daniel McCoy, who together wrote the show, employ a slew of performance techniques and styles, moving seamlessly from performative camp to intimate chatter. The discourse of the piece centers around fear, what we fear, why we fear, and what our shared fears say of our world today. The perspective is sharp and witty, at times grim and troubled, but not without bits of hope, glimmers of possibility.

When we arrive at the theater, we are given the option of sitting on the floor or in chairs in the back. Without fully understanding the consequences of our choice, my friend and I choose to sit on the floor. We realize too late that this choice makes us fair game. At various points we are pulled onstage to pose, dance, run, and speak with the actors. They also join us in the audience, at one point donning clown masks and offering flasks of whiskey (which I gratefully imbibe).

Between these moments of audience interaction are invidiual performances by each of the actors in turn. (Un)afraid is different each night: the exact pieces performed are determined by a “spirit,” with whom the performers chat through use of an ouiji board. On the night I attend, they call upon ghost-story writer M.R. James (more on him here: <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James wikipedia.com ). At four points in the show, they ask the spirit to choose a performer to perform the piece they have prepared for that point in the show. The chosen actor then tells a story, performs a monologue, or faces one of his or her own major fears head on. On my night, Cara Francis took a shot of cockroach-infused liquor, and Daniel McCoy attempted to eat a food he hates – a tomato. (Cara succeeded, but Daniel failed, vomitting into a trashcan two bites in.) All of the pieces are connected to greater personal issues: for Cara, a memory of unwanted penetration, and for Daniel, others’ disgust at his life as a gay man.

I love these pieces. They are intelligent, immediate and as truthful as an actor can get. There is something heroic about them: the actors take on something they fear and try to conquer it. They’re hopeful, productive, genuine. They feel like gifts.

In general, I am not sure what I think of the forced audience participation that happens throughout (Un)afraid. However, at several points, instead of pulling us on stage, the performers extend an open invitation, and we must choose whether to act or remain in our seats. These moments are fascinating.

One such moment occurs near the end of the play. Before it, Jill Beckman delivers a monologue about her fear of decision-making, which includes a (partially) colored pie chart that outlines what she would most like to be doing at any given moment (87% of the time, she’d prefer to be in bed, sleeping). The monologue has the feeling of a confessional: Jill is honest and vulnerable. It’s one of those exciting occasions where an artist taps into some experience that is specific to this moment in time: in this case, the overwhelming desire to do nothing in the face of the innumerable, frenzied choices and challenges that await us each day.

After her monologue about inaction is complete, Jill asks us to choose whether or not to act. She turns on a television, which is playing a montage of pain: dead bodies, bits of war and the like. Laying a remote down centerstage, she exits. Though Jill never tells us explicitly that someone needs to pick up the remote and turn the TV off to end the scene, it is implied. The air is tense: I wonder who will stand, and when? Should I do it? Am I sure it’s what we’re supposed to do? What if I’m wrong?

I am struck by the power of this implicit invitation, how unsure I am of what will happen, how I am forced to decide whether to act or wait for someone else.

I hesitate. I remain still.

The woman sitting next to me stands, picks up the remote, and turns the television off.

(Un)afraid is entertaining, challenging, strange and smart. I say go, brave the front seats, and accept the whiskey.

Exciting Elements Prove Uncohesive

It was with high hopes that I attended the Pathological Theatre’s production of Bong Bong Bong Against the Walls, Ting Ting Ting in Our Heads at La Mama this past Friday.  The company’s artistic director (and writer/director of this production), Dario D’Ambrosi, has amassed a distinguished career as theatre artist both in Italy and New York.  The play interested me specifically because it was developed in collaboration with mentally-ill performers in D’Ambrosi’s company, and involved puppetry, a particular combination of elements I had never seen before.  I was certain the result would be new, inspired, and unique.   I was dissapointed.  Bong Bong Bong attempts to be insightful, but is instead painful to the point of farce.  The story, loosely told, follows Loga, (Ashley C. Williams) a school-age girl who breaks down in the middle of solving a math problem in class, and is either sent to, or dreams that she is sent to, a mental institution.  Here, she is controlled by a villainous psychologist (George Drance) and then comforted by a magical fairy (Theresa Linnihan) who guides Loga toward a kind of acceptance of her state of mind.  

The top of Bong Bong Bong is promising.  The first thing we see are the puppets: they are pale and gaunt with alien faces and doll-like eyes.  Designed in part by the institutionalized members of the Pathological Theatre, they possess a glimmer of what I was hoping to see: a perception of the world very different than my own. However, the puppets are dissapointingly under-used.  The actors seem to have little understanding of how to manipulate and work with them, and the relationship between actor and puppet is unclear and uninteresting. Further, the actors set them down 15 minutes into the performance, returning to them only to pull sheaths of fabric out of their stomachs at a “pivotal” moment.  One cares very little about their role and presence, and ends up thinking of them more as set pieces than anything else.  

The play is a musical, and the music is of the contemporary Broadway-style – jarringly out of place among all of the other, non-traditional elements in the piece.  The lyrics sound as though they are unwillingly jammed into the melodies, like a child attempting to write new lyrics to an old song on the spot.  With kids, it’s cute.  Here, it’s just painful.  

Overall, the piece is poorly directed.  There are scenes that last much longer than necessary, the pacing is strange, and actors often move about the stage randomly, seemingly at their own discretion.  It feels like the early stages of an experimental process, before things become tightened, specified and rehearsed.  

Redeeming moments do occur, thanks to two stand-out performers, Ashley Williams and Theresa Linnihan.  Williams is a dynamic actor, with an engaging stage presence and lovely voice.  At one moment, near the top of the play, Loga is asked to solve a math problem at the blackboard (x-y +2 =).  Her attempt unearths a swirl of colorful images and poetry: as she talks through her ‘logic’ and works herself into a frenzy, she draws trees and circles on the blackboard, concluding that x – y + 2 = “a big beautiful lake.”  Here and throughout the play, Williams strikes an impressive balance between intensity and empathy: she fully embodies Loga’s psychoses without alienating herself from the audience.  

Theresa Linihan gives a subtle, intelligent performance as Loga’s mother and also doubles as a delightfully idiosyncratic fairy at the asylum.  Both Linihan and Williams bring depth and meaning to their lines.  They give us a taste of the beauty the script could offer, had it been better supported.

Other performances are less impressive.  The two actors who play Loga’s fellow schoolchildren and inmates writhe and shriek across the stage, caricatures of mental patients that distract from the action in the scene.  Here, the lack of direction is most evident: I feel I am watching an early rehearsal, not a finished product.

Then again, performances that are messy and raw are not automatically terrible.  There is a beauty that can come of chaos, a kind of honesty and vulnerability that can potentially be more powerful than the most polished production.  I’ve seen it work best in one-man shows, where the material is as raw and personal as the performance.  However, the actors in this production are too distanced from the material for this to be true of Bong Bong Bong.  All are New York-based actors, and are not, as far as I know, members of D’Ambrosi’s company of insitutionalized performers.  It is as though D’Ambrosi has staged his company’s material with professional actors, and staged it in a way that he would have done had he been working with his company.  It is an ill fit, and it ultimately fails.  

The Reluctant Evangelist

Partial Comfort’s production of A Bright New Boise , running at the Wild Project through October 2nd, achieves the exact goals the company has set out to accomplish. According to their mission statement, Partial Comfort wants to produce work that is immediate and accessible, work that sticks with the viewer “long after the curtain has fallen and the houselights have been raised.” Much to my chagrin, this play has taken root in my gut like a hearty bowl of oatmeal. Boise is a devastating portrait of contemporary American life and the beliefs and fears that sustain and divide us. It is funny, familiar, tragic and exquisitely produced and performed. The play centers on Will, an evangelical Christian whose church has met scandal surrounding the death of one of its young members. Will moves to Boise and takes a job at the local Hobby Lobby in an attempt to connect to his estranged teenage son, Alex. In the Hobby Lobby break room, Will meets and interacts with his various co-workers: his boss, Pauline, (hilariously played by Danielle Slavick), Alex’s older brother, Leroy, an art student whose work consists of t-shirts with slogans like “You will eat your children,” (John Patrick Doherty) and Anna, who, like Will, hides in the store after closing so that she can read in the break room (Sarah Nina Hayon). Will does his best to avoid discussing his past and his faith, but this proves impossible, and tensions escalate quickly.

The characters in A Bright New Boise are all desperately attempting to find meaning in a world of corporate chains and low hopes. The tragedy lies in their inability to reconcile their belief systems with those of their peers.

The play's aesthetic is hyper-realism. Samuel Hunter’s script and Davis McCallum’s direction are nuanced and subtle. Jason Simms’ set is incredibly detailed and fully operational: the appliances work, the florescent lights glow unflatteringly on the steel and plastic furniture. The actors’ performances are equally specific. Their unconscious ticks and gestures pervade the scenes, at times communicating more than the text.

No one is more adept at this than Andrew Garman, who plays the mild-mannered Will. Garman’s portrayal of Will is subtle and quietly tragic: everything, from the way he sits in a chair to the way he sets up his bagged lunch on the break room table communicates his discomfort, vulnerability, and most strongly, deep, deep pain. Will’s pain is so palpable it is difficult to watch him, but we cannot look away.

Will’s attempts to connect with his son are particularly painful. Alex is an awkward but intelligent teen, prone to panic attacks and attention-seeking lies (accurately and poignantly portrayed by Matt Farabee). In one scene, Will nervously mentions to Alex that he listened to a band Alex likes. Alex asks Will what he thought. Will responds, “It was really pretty.

ALEX: Pretty? WILL: Yeah, and – ALEX: (under breath) Jesus Christ WILL: - overwhelming.”

In performance, these last two lines overlap, and Will’s “overwhelming,” which he forces out while rubbing his eye and shifting his feet, is missed by Alex, and only just heard by the audience. It is awkward, difficult, and damn heart wrenching.

McCallum seems intent on making Will difficult to hear and see. For example, Garner plays a couple of scenes with his back to the audience and his face in profile. In another scene, the lights are left dim, making it difficult to see Will’s face. These choices seem to echo Will’s discomfort in his surroundings, his desire to conceal his past and his inner turmoil. It somehow has the opposite effect: the more Will tries to keep his pain private, the more blatant it becomes.

The first act of Boise is markedly different from the second. The first act is an experience: without articulating it in the text, the production hits a nerve, makes apparent a kind of wound that is specific to this country and this moment in time. The audience understands it viscerally, emotionally. The second act attempts to put this wound into words: the characters discuss the beliefs that drive them and we see these same beliefs divide them. Watching the second act, I am more detached, less invested. I wish I had been able to watch both acts in one sitting: had there not been an intermission, I wonder if the play would have maintained the emotional intensity that was so strongly present in the first act.

Still, A Bright New Boise is an excellent production. Though anything but bright, it is undeniably accurate, and absolutely heartfelt: a searing and thorough portrait of the culture wars in America. It left a real impression on me, one I don’t imagine I’ll soon forget.

Post-Colonial Entertainment Entertains but Does Not Grip

The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller excellently subverts some well-known stereotypes, but fails to involve the audience on a deeper level. At the top of the show, the ensemble enters, moving slowly like animals on the hunt, wearing wooden masks, war paint and small bits of cloth, surrounding the sleeping Designing Man (played by Daniel Morgan Shelley). Suddenly, Half Moon Terror (David King) wakes Designing Man and together they jump and yell animatedly in a foreign tongue. I feel like I’ve seen this before. The scene freezes, and a spotlight shines on Designing Man. In the tone of a curious scholar, he states, “Half-Moon Terror and I were talking politics at the edge of the swamp when the billionaire’s son first appeared.” The juxtaposition of image and sound is funny and unexpected: I laugh, not just at the actors, but at myself, at my surprise that a ‘savage’ could be articulate, intelligent.

Unfortunately, Designing Man’s initial tone of academic curiosity is the main note in Jeff Cohen’s adaptation of Christopher Stokes’ brilliant short story. Michael Rockefeller is directed by Alfred Preisser and produced by Dog Run Repertory Company at the West End Theater. The play deals with the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, anthropologist and son of NY governor Nelson Rockefeller. M Rockefeller went missing in 1961 while studying the Asmat tribe in Papa New Guinea, and was never found.

Stokes’ smart and poignant story imagines the tale from the Asmats’ point of view, told by the tribe’s talented, sensitive artist, Designing Man. Cohen’s adaptation, though smart and funny, fails to capture the emotional depth of the piece that made Stokes’ story so powerful.

In the script, Cohen relies too heavily on the original text, giving large chunks of it to Designing Man, who pulls away from the action of the scene to deliver these monologues directly to the audience, as would a narrator. Much of what could be performed is instead described, and in Designing Man’s academic tone. We are again and again pulled away from the action, therefore unable to connect to the characters and deprived of moments of pathos.

An example of this is a scene between Designing Man and his wife, Breezy, (sweetly performed by the spry Shannon A.L. Dorsey). Designing Man has been wrestling with the word “love,” a word unknown (as word and concept) to the Asmats at this point in time. Breezy’s face sparks a revelation for Designing Man, and he says to her, vulnerably, earnestly, “Love. You are love to me.” Breezy stares, unresponsive, for a fraction of a beat. I lean forward, my heart about to break for Designing Man. But the scene freezes, and Designing Man pulls away, describing Breezy's response instead of letting us see it. I sit back, disappointed.

Various strengths of Michael Rockefeller are worth mentioning. I took particular note of the masks, designed by Kimberly Glennon. Worn by a chorus of Asmat spirits and made of a kind of light wood, they are hauntingly simple, portraying gaunt faces with deep empty sockets in place of eyes.

Unfortunately, the other design elements do not aid in turning these masked figures into ethereal beings. The set and lighting are insufficient; the designers do not manage to fully create a unified world. Granted, the specific quirks of the West End Theater, like its colorful, decorated walls, are difficult to hide; they are a constant reminder that we are in a theater, not Papua New Guinea.

In the end, the production’s main strength lies in subverting the audience’s expectations. Two scenes besides the opening are particularly striking in this regard. The first is a montage of sex scenes between Designing Man and his friend’s wife, Plentiful Bliss (the hilarious Tracy Jack), in which Plentiful Bliss attempts to engage Designing Man in serious debate amidst gruntings, thrustings and hair-pulls.

The most satisfying, though, occurs near the play’s end: at a pivotal moment, the ensemble breaks out in a highly energetic and entertaining ‘tribal’ song and dance, the likes of which we’ve yet to see in the play up to this point. At its close, the character Bringing Man (a solid performance by David Brown, Jr.) appears, speaking to us, the audience, as tourists who have just witnessed an ‘authentic’ ritual by ‘authentic’ Asmats. Suddenly we’re implicated as colonial travelers, made to question our enjoyment of the ritual we just witnessed.

Though these moments are entertaining, and momentarily give one pause, they fail to deliver lasting blows. In the end, the staged version of The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller does not live up to the richness of its source. Cohen and Pressier fail to fully translate the heart of the text into theatrical language; that is, spectacle, bodies onstage, the power of two people connecting, or failing to connect, in real time. One might as well stay home and read the story.