Losing the Plot

Of the three plays open to critics at the Ice Factory Festival this summer, Losing Tom Pecinka, staged at the New Ohio Theatre by Morgan Gould & Friends, is most given to playfulness. Even with the story’s grey backdrop of Tom's death (an immediately evident plot point), writer and director Morgan Gould is more intent on good-humored self-mockery. But even with the occasional laugh that this meta-humor elicits, Losing Tom Pecinka struggles to elevate its story, and regularly defuses its own comedic fireworks.

The story surrounds the event of the eponymous character’s passing, and the destructive attempts of his friends in coping with it. The character Tom Pecinka (whose ghost and flashback-version is played by Zack Segel) is named after a real-life founder of Morgan Gould & Friends, and we assume that the title is a play on the actual Pecinka’s move to the Yale School of Drama. Janice (Tommy Heleringer, pretty in a dress) is a guilt-ridden ex-girlfriend, constantly at odds with Kai (Christopher Geary), Tom’s bitter best friend. Ryan Pecinka (Amir Wachterman), brother of the deceased and funniest of the lot, suffers silently in his love for Janice.

Wachterman is the undeniable talent of the show, straining laughter from even the most confused situations. His fairly ingenious dress-up as a sweaty tennis player, complete with a white sweater tied around his shoulders, making love-stricken speeches to Heleringer’s Janice makes for an uproarious incongruity. Heleringer himself is a shrill delight, making do with Janice’s oftentimes puzzling situational comedy to great effect. The entire cast bubbles with an underlying humorous energy, but their fractured dialogue and the intractable intent of Gould to exercise her didacticism, crowd out any real comedy. The plot is threadlike at best; Gould focuses more on unveiling her satiric takes on comedic tropes and stereotypes she has found in theater.

Indeed, the point Gould tries to make is that theater, and entertainment in general, has fallen into dreary, acceptable routines. These are routines from which her audiences need to be jolted out of; hence her lackadaisical attitude towards public relations (as evidenced by the production's promo). But the primary fault of Losing Tom Pecinka resides in its stubborn insistence on such satire. A heated discussion between Ryan and Janice, which held some potential for good drama, devolved into a satirical scientific run-on, the kind Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg would be proud of.

Even these scenes struggle to take off. We are left wondering whether the ghostly Tom that appears to Kai after his death is a comedic poke at depictions of the afterlife in traditional theater (perhaps Hamlet’s ghost?) or a product of Kai’s dramatic, psychological breakdown. It is only at the very end of Losing Tom Pecinka that we finally understand Gould’s directorial intent. Since the plot is a bare canvas, only present to hold the entire production together, the ending loses its finality and importance. Even after a seeming resolution to the play (all the characters huddle around Tom's grave in nostalgic remembrance), they all abruptly break into song, in an ineffable attempt at satirizing the musical.

There are moments of real hilarity, however. The ending is a particular delight to watch, since we are now certain that they’ve been making fun of our seriousness all along. Pregnant pauses and audience interactions with the cast produce considerable audience laughter, especially towards the end. Abrupt changes in time and place heftily undercut the sometimes-awkward interactions between actors, and keep us curiously waiting for the next scene. The sexual tension between Heleringer’s Janice and Wachterman’s Pecinka is palpable, but never serious. Even the eponymous character’s death is rendered comical, somehow. Yet, a willful need to jerk its audience out of its seated stupor and be “not boring” makes Losing Tom Pecinka a parody of itself: to be new and exciting might not be so interesting after all.

Losing Tom Pecinka ran from July 8-11 at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St., #1E) in Manhattan. For more information, visit http://www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

Souls Drowning in Sorrow

Dramedy very infrequently serves its stories well. Add to that alloy the well-worn narrative of an unfolding mystery, and one can easily overflow an already full cup. But Sea of Souls is an adamant proponent of such a mixing, so long as they can evoke every audience emotion from terror to laughter. Souls has a swift undercurrent of drama, cast over with ostensible shades of black comedy, all of which crashes together in a series of messy, heart-thumping climaxes. Ion Theater Company's presentation of this Southern-accented, surprisingly action-packed new play, has traveled across the country from it's home in San Diego to an off-Broadway reading at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. 

The play is like Picnic, in that its characters struggle to bury themselves under tough, yet brittle, exposures, and then it takes on something of a Tennessee Williams-like series of haunting personal revelations. Set in an unnamed mining town in the South, sometime in the late sixties, suspicions abound when a wandering folk singer from New York arrives at the town's bar (mysteriously named Sea of Souls—the acronymized cry for help is the production's first big clue to its audience) and won't stop asking about where she's from. When she clashes with Casey, the bar's bitter, sharp-tongued owner, Sam proceeds to uncover a series of clues about the small town's unsavory past. 

Perhaps Souls' greatest offering is the formidable Catalina Maynard, whose uncompromising, biting portrayal of the lead character Casey grounds the entire production. Casey's sharp tongue lashes out indiscriminately, and her stiff social graces provide everything from mild comic relief to extraordinarily fierce dramatics. Ms. Maynard's performance elevates Casey's character to that elusive kind of antihero likability, and few middle-aged matriarchs on stage can achieve that. With the potency of Ms. Maynard's presence, the other characters play up to her (with a singular exception), sometimes with affecting results. 

Abby Fields as the aptly-named Joan is the beguiling mystery at the heart of the play. She starts out as the mildly irritating moral center of Souls (she introduces herself by staring eerily at us and saying, prophet-like, "I know things. I have a gift.") But quickly, and quite beautifully, she evolves into a haunting symbol of her small town's deadly past, and it is in this transformation that we find Ms. Fields' strength as a character performer. Her powerful presence on stage is only rivaled perhaps by Ms. Maynard and Evan Jason Heil, the "new-in-town" deputy sheriff Roy whose aw shucks persona has no end to its audience appeal. 

Carl, the mischievous runaway and disillusioned Nam vet, is infected with a Kerouacian wanderlust typical to the sixties. Evan Kendig plays him with an endearing earnestness; it is easier to love the roguish Carl that it is to find commonality with the wandering Sam, played by the sometimes-interesting Rhianna Basore. Sam is something of a blank slate, and it is unclear if Ms. Basore meant to play her that way, or if it is an unforeseen consequence of an occasionally vacant performance. Carl and Sam are the thematic opposites to the dwellers of Souls' small town setting; Casey sets up a unique tension with the "Northerner" Sam who walks into her bar, bristling at the assumptions the former makes about her Southern hometown. Yolanda Franklin is delightful as Lila, the fast-talking foil to Casey's wrath and rage. Ms. Franklin portrays her with delicate intensity, as the only person who can control Casey's lashing tongue. Their banter seems a product of an eons-long friendship-turned-symbiosis, and provides a priming, emotional depth to Souls. 

In particular credit to the script and its writers, Glenn Paris and Claudio Raygoza, the dialogue manages to synthesize the nearness of an emotional apocalypse that every character on stage seems to be running from: Vietnam, spousal abuse, past murders, an abandoned child. Paris and Raygoza, also artistic directors, are keenly aware of their time period, and dress up speeches and arguments with the colloquialisms of that volatile time, the sixties. The characters take up an inherent residence in the cultural and political fabric of America in the sixties, yet never leave the diner tables and bar stools of their small Southern town. 

The mood of the production alternates seamlessly between sombre remembrances of said town's past, and the brisk diurnal rituals of 'good mornings' and humorous exchanges. The set itself beams with bright oranges, yellows and greens - overhead lamps glisten redly above the bar, and a colored jukebox sings soft folktales between scene changes (songs which happen to be original compositions by the sultry-voiced, and hugely talented, Linda Libby.) Most of the climaxes that clutter the ending (for there are multiple) take place in the dark, and more than one audience member shuddered at the bloodcurdling screams and bangs that suddenly reminded us that we were done laughing at Casey's sarcasm or trying to work out Sam's sorrowful origin story. Sea of Souls isn't realized fully until the explosive ending(s), but that's a good thing - it builds its mysterious stamina over time and sprints to a breathtaking finish. 

Sea of Souls ran until July 11 at Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street) in Manhattan. For more information, visit http://iontheatre.com/#ion-home-page.

The Devil’s Advocate

Classic Stage Company’s production of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, directed by Andrei Belgrader, doesn’t do away with Marlowe’s mighty line, but his pioneering iambic pentameter has a hard time keeping up with a good deal of lowbrow tomfoolery inserted by Belgrader and his co-adaptor, David Bridel. To be fair, Marlowe larded his play with comic relief, but the CSC production often strains for humorous effect. Early on, when two necromancers visit Faustus, they speak in silly voices for no apparent reason, one of them sounding like a hoarse Munchkin. 

The comedy helps leaven the well-known story of death and damnation for the medieval scholar with encyclopedic knowledge who seeks omnipotence as well. Besides Marlowe’s play, its most notable appearances are in operas by Gounod and Busoni and in a novel by Thomas Mann (the last is not easy reading).

By selling his soul to Beelzebub, Faustus gains the service of Mephistopheles for 24 years, but he fritters away all the advantages he has with childish nonsense. He tweaks the Pope and European rulers; he summons long-dead historical figures (including Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” in Marlowe’s phrase); and has himself a lot of sexual fun. Initially, Faust demands that Mephistopheles find him a beautiful wife, but Mephistopheles tells him that marriage is a sacrament of God, and because Faustus has renounced God, he must be content with concubines. That’s apparently not a problem.

Bridel and Belgrader have understandably changed a great deal. They have cut whole passages skillfully, dropping many references to classical myths and characters and adding plenty of business that's not in the original, including audience interactivity that’s surely more close-up than Elizabethan actors ever got to their spectators. The changes get down to the nitty-gritty, too, as the adapters substitute individual words for ones they deem too obscure for a modern audience, and update archaic locutions. Thus Marlowe’s

Faustus, begin thine incantations
And try if devils will obey thy hest
Seeing thou hast pray’d and sacrific’d to them.

is streamlined to:

Faustus, begin your incantations
And see if devils will obey your will
Once you have prayed and sacrificed to them.

The reworking is extensive, and only occasionally puzzling. Surely Marlowe’s “The framing of this circle on the ground/Brings thunder, whirlwinds, storm and lightning” not only has better iambic scansion than “The framing of this circle on the ground/Brings whirlwinds, tempests, thunder, and lightning,” but “storm” is also a word more commonly used than “tempest.”

As Faustus, Chris Noth handles the verse with clarity and intelligence, and he shows a troubled, ambitious, scornful spirit. But Faustus’s philosophical musings cannot sustain one’s interest entirely, so besides comedy, Marlowe includes pageantry (the Pope, an emperor, a selection of demons and phantoms) for the eyes. The pageantry here is pretty thin, but Bridel and Belgrader embrace the secondary plots more than that of Faustus, and the imbalance is noticeable. It’s present in the underlings enlisted by Faustus’s own servant, Wagner, who doubles as the Chorus: Lucas Caleb Rooney’s strapping Robin, who swipes Faustus’s books of magic with a barking, raffish energy to teach himself the dark arts; and then Robin’s own protégé, Ken Cheeseman’s idiot peasant Dick, who gives rise to plenty of punning. “I shall be the Devil’s Dick,” he cries exultantly, in just one of a series of Dick jokes that bump vulgarly against the higher-brow issues involving God and the fall of man. 

Zach Grenier brings a weary glumness to Mephistopheles, the devil who remembers longingly the joys of Paradise but who has adapted to the reality that he’ll never know them again. His glances at Faustus show what a fool he thinks the doctor is, and he seems the real tragic figure. Belgrader also includes a good deal of audience participation, as Mephistopheles sniffs out sinners at close quarters, and there is one clever twist as the Seven Deadly Sins are presented, although their forming a kick line as they whinny out a song is just directorial froufrou.

Still, if bumblers and hijinks diminish the tragic effect and Marlowe’s transporting poetry, the production retains integrity. And if Faustus’s final descent to the fiery pit isn’t likely to bring forth any catharsis, that’s partly because Faustus concerns himself with trifling pranks. It's too bad, though, that Belgrader couldn't imbue this production with a bit more gravitas.

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus plays at Classic Stage Company (136 E. 13^th St. between 3rd and 4th Aves.) through July 12. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday-Thursday and 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets may be obtained by calling 212- 352-3101 or visiting www.classicstage.org.

A Thief for Our Hearts

London’s eccentric thief Mary Frith wore men’s clothing and was supposedly known to be a pimp, pickpocket and reseller of stolen goods. She gained the nickname “Moll Cutpurse” after being arrested for stealing purses. Her reputation inspired playwrights Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker to create their comedy The Roaring Girl during the Jacobean era (1567–1625). The title is borrowed from young, drunk men who were called “roaring boys,” and they would pick fights on the streets. The Roaring Girl is filled with campy sexual innuendos and manipulative characters who challenge our cultural beliefs about gender roles, marriage and status.

In this fictionalized dramatization of Mary Frith’s life, Sebastian Wengrave (Jacob Owen) attempts to trick his greedy father Sir Alexander Wengrave (Matt Walker) into allowing him to marry his true love Mary Fitzallard (Anna Clare Kerr). Mary’s dowry is too small to meet Sir Alexander’s demands and he threatens to cut Sebastian out of the family. Sebastian tries to outwit his father by pretending to be in love with infamous thief Moll Cutpurse (Malloree Hill) so that his father will eventually prefer to have Mary as his daughter-in-law, and not an outcast. Sebastian’s plot is thwarted when Sir Alexander has whimsical Ralph Trapdoor (Max Hunter) spy on Moll. Sir Alexander unsuccessfully tries to have Moll steal diamonds so that he can frame her. Moll is too savvy and does not take the bait, and later unmasks Trapdoor when he pretends to be a wounded soldier.

Deceit and seduction are also played out in two other parallel stories about marriage. Laxton (Joel DeCandio) and Goshawk (Ryan Mills) both pursue taking advantage of two married women whose husbands eventually get involved. The ploys and subject matter from this era have withheld time and still translate to modern culture. The test of one’s character ultimately holds more weight than appearances and titles in this production.

After stepping off of a noisy downtown street and walking up four flights of stairs you will find yourself in a cozy space decorated with a rainbow carnival canopy. The warm hardwood floors are inviting as you find your seat at a red jazz club table and play with colorful feathers in glass bowls. There are amusing table signs with written tips for comprehending a Jacobean joke: “If you think it’s about sex, it is,” and “If you don’t think it’s about sex, it still is.” The actors suddenly appear from behind you and they will even put their feet up at your table without asking first. Director Anaïs Koivisto and this youthful, vibrant cast also bring choreographed sword fights and group brawls in beautiful period costumes.

The show runs for two hours and 15 minutes with a 10-minute intermission and might occur as long at first. There was a slight dead period right before the opening and the audience members were left waiting and wondering. However, the live singing, group dancing, and guitar and drum playing, will keep you entertained throughout the entire show.

Hunter consistently provides the needed stamina and physical comedy required to perform as foolish Trapdoor, and he becomes a guiding light throughout this production. His energy is complimented when he teams up with Gull (Quinn Warren) as a disguised soldier. The spunk and moxie that Warren brings to feisty Gull can be summed up when she says, “I am call'd by those that have seen my valour, Tearcat.” At times, Hill lacks the same level of power as the heroine Moll to carry out this show. She does capture some of the masculine characteristics of Moll, such as her stance, and she maneuvers through the sword fights with ease and grace. When challenged or questioned about Moll's reputation, Hill’s facial expressions appeared quietly surprised and passive. It could be more fitting for Hill to not avoid Moll’s defiant history, and instead own her past. If Moll were alive today, she would probably be living her life as she wished and have little or no regard for laws, social norms or being politically correct.

The Everyday Inferno Theatre Company delivers on their commitment to provide classic material to a wide audience while maintaining low production costs in The Roaring Girl. This production is one of two plays in a rotating repertory called Punks & Provocateurs. For those who appreciate Shakespeare and are interested in a sexy alternative, The Roaring Girl is worth your attention. It is not an everyday occurrence to experience Middleton and Dekker’s witty material performed in an intimate and unimposing downtown setting with an eager ensemble.

The Roaring Girl runs until June 21 at the Access Theater (380 Broadway between White and Walker Sts.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and matinee performances are Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by visiting punksandprovocateurs.bpt.me or by calling 347-291-1805.

A Spoiler in the Room

In her early film career, Bette Davis set herself apart by being willing to play characters who were unsympathetic; her bad women in Of Human Bondage and Jezebel were her tickets to fame and marked her as different from other studio stars. Jesse Eisenberg is equally unafraid to take on characters who are unpleasant—even loathesome. His performance as the cold and arrogant Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network won him an Oscar nomination. In The New Group’s production of his play The Spoils, he plays Ben, whose social graces are in much worse shape, and whose behavior is often repellent.

The actor's first two plays, Asuncion and The Revisionist, proved he was a promising dramatist. In the latter, he co-starred with Vanessa Redgrave, whose participation suggests she can spot talent, and, indeed, Eisenberg has not only written himself a terrific part in The Spoils, but he performs it with élan.

Eisenberg’s Ben lives in a high-flying modernist apartment (luxuriously designed by Derek McLane) purchased for him by his father; he shares it with a roommate he found online, Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar). Kalyan has come to the United States from Nepal to study business and has written a book; he’s not wealthy and probably couldn’t have come without Ben’s help. Ben, however, disdains capitalism and has altruistically offered Kalyan the apartment rent-free, though Kalyan is reluctant to take charity. When Ben runs into an old childhood acquaintance, Ted, who works on Wall Street and has the ability to help Kalyan, he is persuaded to bring Ted over for an introduction to Kalyan, even as he belittles Kalyan’s ambition to work on Wall Street.

The playwright builds the tension gradually in different ways. Ben badmouths Ted, particularly since Ted is about to marry Sarah Newburg (Erin Darke), a girl Ben has had a crush on since their ages were in single digits. He must, nevertheless, bolster Kalyan in his quest to land a Wall Street job even though Ben, a failed filmmaker, is disaffected and resentful of financial success in others. He talks an artistic game but he lacks inspiration. “I wish the world wasn’t a fucked up string of unfair situations that I seem to be embroiled in,” he declares with self-pitying confidence. He is also physically graceless, pushing his body into others’ spaces and sprawling all over the furniture.

Nayyar’s Kalyan is just a tad wishy-washy, manipulatable by Ben; Kalyan is devoted to his benefactor but not spineless. He is dating Reshma (Annapurna Sriram), a doctor who mistrusts Ben and speaks her mind to his face—another source of tension. Ben nonetheless tries to pull off outrageous gambits—claiming a back injury at one point—although Reshma suspects he’s faking. 

Eisenberg has given the rest of the cast solid parts, and director Scott Elliott has chosen his actors wisely. Michael Zegen’s Ted is a likable, decent guy, not threatening or ruthlessly businesslike but with a blandness that wears thin quickly. Sriram’s impassioned Reshma is often at the side of the stage, texting or making cell phone calls, as any doctor might—Elliott cannily attends to the details. Darke is exceptional as Sarah: mature, sensitive, and yet devoted to Ted. In a crucial scene, Ben confesses a cringeworthy, scatological childhood fantasy to her—one that is prepared for earlier when he tells it to Kalyan. (The playwright gets further mileage out of the story in a re-enactment; three times is a charm.)

In the end, though, Eisenberg’s play is less a portrait of a young generation than a character study of someone who hasn’t found his way and denigrates the paths that others have chosen in order to justify his own failure. The questions that roil underneath it are whether success should be judged on ambition or accomplishments, and whether an artist who cannot make money at his art is really worth anything. Ben attempts to concoct a film, based on the story Kalyan has told him, to impress Sarah; when he presents it to her, she sees immediately how bogus he is.

But Eisenberg’s brief coda highlights another crucial question: Can adults be hamstrung by events in their childhood that they barely remember? If so, he intimates, redemption may be possible. Something good that Ben once did may just help him to redefine himself.

Jesse Eisenberg's The Spoils plays through June 28 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St. between 10th and 11th Aves.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and on Sunday, and 8 p.m. on Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, with an additional matinee at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24. Tickets may be purchased by calling (212) 279-4200 or visiting ticketcentral.com.

Dean Martin at Cafe Verona

Shakespeare's best romances, whether they end in tears or in double weddings, start off fraught with comic possibility, and most stagings of The Two Gentlemen of Verona are intensely aware of that fact. Director Hamilton Clancy and The Drilling Company's production of one of the Bard's earliest plays is properly sensitive to said comedic potential, even in the somewhat chaotic environs of Bryant Park on a weekend afternoon. The play seems particularly popular this season, with an acclaimed production by Fiasco Theater running concurrently with this one. A three-storied stage serves as a set for both Cafe Verona and the Emperor's Court in Milan; Shakespeare's two gentlemen gravitate between the two cities, just as their inconstant affections flit from one girl to the next. 

An ambitious Proteus (Brian Patrick Murphy) woos a particularly fearless Julia (Tori Ernst) in Verona, while his friend Valentine (Andrew Gombas)—Shakespeare’s requisite love-mocker—goes to Milan to seek his fortunes. Both Valentine and Proteus fall hard and fast for Silvia (Kristin Piacentile), and later deal with the oncoming storm of nascent comedic devices dear to the Bard’s heart: lost love letters, cross-dressing women and fickle men. The unsurpassed star of the show is Chewy-Bear Aquino, the winsome little dog that plays Crab; he almost outperforms his master, Launce (Eric Paterniani). 

The comic performances are reliably humorous, with a fantastic Speed (Drew Valins) and near-incoherently accented Launce, played to perfection by Eric Paterniani. Bryant Park on a spring evening is anarchic, and the players strive to hold our attention; Brian Patrick Murphy struts about and gestures like a Mean Streets antihero (Mr. Murphy is involved in Mr. Scorsese’s upcoming Rock N’ Roll project), while Julia and her wonderfully sassy best friend Lucetta (Lauriel Friedman) engage in girlish banter and the odd catfight.

But there’s a reason why The Two Gentlemen of Verona isn’t performed on stage as much as other works in the Bard’s canon. Lines of love and longing that would later become peerless in Shakespeare’s romances are rendered lukewarm here, barring perhaps Valentine’s famous love monologue to Silvia. The words utterly redeem Clancy’s bumbling-in-love Valentine and give him the deep solemnity of a lovelorn, despairing man torn from his betrothed: "What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?"

Shakespeare’s early play depends greatly on the manic expressiveness and movement of its actors (it was performed with restless gusto by a Royal Shakespeare Company revival of Two Gentlemen last year), but Clancy otherwise mutes what might have been rip-roaring situational comedy in favor of schmaltzy music cues and no-fear-Shakespeare every man references (“I am one that am nourished by my/ victuals: Chipotle!” and “stop mewling like a bum on the L train!”). At times, there seemed to be more humor in the glances of passers-by eyeing the makeshift stage with the wary curiosity of watching a street performance and hearing Old English simultaneously. 

But the undisputed strength of this Two Gentlemen production rests on this theme: the easy forgiveness of friends. The neat double wedding that concludes this Elizabethan comedy could just as easily have been a funeral: when Proteus begs Valentine’s forgiveness for trying to steal his girl, there is a moment of unyielding hatred in Gombas’ raised fist, and the audience wonders (as it often does in Shakespeare’s dark comedies) if Valentine will go the way of Vergil’s Aeneas and strike down his mercy-seeking enemy. Instead, he lets his hand fall and embraces his best friend in forgiveness, as does Julia, who has a startlingly pre-feminist line: "it is the lesser blot, modesty finds/women to change their shapes than men their minds."

The set seems deliberately makeshift, with three raised platforms serving as a restaurant, an emperor’s court and an outlaw’s hideout (appropriately called Governor’s Island, in keeping with the production’s New York flavor) but set designer Jennifer Varbalow makes the festive Little Italy habitat quite endearing. The setting itself is unabashedly Italian, and Dean Martin’s lilting voice is a constant refrain between scene changes. Perhaps "That's Amore" too neatly captures the senseless scrappiness of love; it’s one of those songs that play on a loop in your head. So if you're looking for that elusive alliance between Shakespeare and New York City, this season's Bryant Park Shakespeare might just serve you with a decent caper through Little Italy and a few laughs for good measure. 

Presented by Bryant Park Shakespeare, The Drilling Company's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona ran from May 15- 31 at Bryant Park (6th Ave. at 42nd St.) in Manhattan. For more information, call 212-873-9050 or visit www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com and www.drillingcompany.org.

Life with Father, Irish Style

Hugh Leonard’s Da is a painful coming-of-age story being given an engaging and rare revival by the Irish Repertory Theater in its temporary home at DR2 Theatre off Union Square.

Set in a rural town in Ireland, Leonard’s 1978 Tony winner deals with Charlie, a middle-aged man who has returned to his family home after the death of his father. The memories he has are painful, and it’s clear immediately in Charlotte Moore’s production that Charlie feels some relief at the recently severed tie to his father. But Da isn’t done with his son: his ghost, a boisterous and peremptory Paul O’Brien, shows up to harangue and browbeat Charlie. And Charlie, for his part, feels resentments bubble up in him once again. As the play unfolds, one learns about the origins of their friction, as well as Charlie’s adolescence and working life. He is, in fact, an adoptive son to Da and his Ma (Fiana Toibin).

Clues come early on about how difficult Charlie’s life was, as the family prepares for the arrival of a Mr. Drumm who will interview Charlie for a job. There’s a battle over the shirt that Charlie is supposed to wear. (Adam Petherbridge plays the younger Charlie with a mixture of rebellion and Catholic guilt, while Ciarán O’Reilly shines as the more confident and calmer adult observing his life.) He doesn’t want to wear the one that his mother has patched, and his resistance causes a squabble and earns him a slap. 

After Sean Gormley’s thin-lipped, priggish Mr. Drumm arrives, Da, though warned to speak minimally, launches into praise of Hitler. (Some Irishmen supported Hitler because he was at war with their historical enemy, England.) Drumm, judgmental and bloodless, has nothing but contempt for Da, and he expresses it bluntly. Drumm offers Charlie a job nonetheless, with the warning that he shouldn’t stay in it too long—a warning that Charlie, a budding writer, doesn’t heed for more than a decade. A nice irony is that Drumm, unsusceptible to sentiment, gives Charlie sounder advice than his parents offer: “You’ll amount to nothing until you learn to say no.”

Leonard’s story slips from memory to the present and back, sometimes a bit strangely: older Charlie doesn’t merely watch his younger self in scenes—they converse about what’s going on, with the older self advising the younger. O’Brien’s Da is by turns morose, cheerful, overbearing, and proud, and it’s clear he will never be a figure his son will worship. In spite of the cozy warmth suggested by James Morgan’s crockery-filled parlor, this autobiographical play is also rife with unhappiness, stupidity, and emotional abuse. 

Leonard’s rich language— “Old faces. They’ve turned up like bills you thought you’d never have to pay”—gets full weight from an excellent cast. Although men are the focus, two actresses in smaller parts make the most of their single scenes. Nicola Murphy plays Mary Tate, a reputed good-time girl that Charlie wants but who has more sweetness than he appreciates. Petherbridge is terrific in the scene, alternately bashful and on the make, and Murphy brings true poignancy to poor Mary, initially aloof, then warming to Charlie’s charms. It’s to Leonard’s credit that Charlie, his own stand-in, comes off poorly. As Da’s employer of decades, Kristin Griffith arrives late in the play to deliver a clueless, insulting pittance to the man who has served as her gardener for years, while she eagerly gathers the bounty he has cultivated. Da is ever the apologist for his poor treatment, too proud to claim more than others are willing to give him, and that gripes the older Charlie. It undoubtedly reflects Leonard’s own struggle to find confidence in himself that he is never destined to receive from either father or mother. Yet, as Charlie finally learns, "Love turned upside down is love for all that."

Performances of Da by the Irish Repertory Theatre take place through March 8 at the DR2 Theatre at 103 E. 15th St., off Union Square. Evening curtains are at 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Matinees are at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Lighter Side of Communism

It's probably safe to say that George Gershwin’s notion of Russian drama as he described it in his classic “But Not for Me” is probably what most people think of it: “I’ve found more clouds of gray/Than any Russian play could guarantee.” It's to Moira Buffini’s credit that her 2007 adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s play The Suicide will come as a surprise to anyone who thinks Russians don’t write comedies.

Buffini, herself a playwright (Loveplay, Dinner), has dug out the laughs in Erdman’s 1928 satire, renamed Dying for It, while keeping the pointed social commentary on the desperation of ordinary Russians a decade after the Bolsheviks took power. Although the play is rarely revived, it is not completely obscure: it was seen on Broadway briefly in 1980, with Derek Jacobi starring.

As the play begins, life for the hero, Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick), and his wife, Masha (Jeanine Serralles), is anything but peachy. They’re poor, he’s hungry, and they sleep on a bed in the hallway of a tenement house, with blackened stairs, acutely peeling wallpaper, and no privacy. The Communist revolution hasn’t brought the prosperity hoped for by the poor. Moreover, Semyon’s mother-in-law, the opportunistic Serafima, inhabits the room off the landing.

The despairing Semyon complains of a lack of food, much like the tramps in Beckett's Waiting for Godot. When he finds an advertisement for playing the tuba under some floorboards, he thinks he has the ticket to wealth: he’ll learn it and be paid for playing. But just from looking at Slotnick, who brings a Sad Sack quality to the character, it's evident that things aren’t going to pan out. His struggle with the tuba comes to an amusing but bitter end. Semyon decides to commit suicide, and runs off to buy a gun, leading to a comic chase to rescue him that involves his upstairs neighbor, the bearish Kalabushkin (CJ Wilson); Kalabushkin's lover, Margarita, who owns a popular bar; and Yegor, a postman and devout Communist who lives upstairs.

Semyon returns with the gun, but before he can use it, Erdman introduces a variety of colorful characters eager to delay his promised death until they can further their own ends through influencing his suicide note. They include Aristarkh Grand-Skubik, a dispossessed landowner who wants Semyon's note to blame the government; Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna, a romantic who wants him to dispatch himself for her in the name of love; and Father Yelpidy, a dour Orthodox priest who wants Semyon’s death to stand for the godlessness of the current society, in hopes it will bring people back to the church. Civil servant Yegor steps in to urge Semyon to “do it for the Party…you owe them everything.” Last to put his two rubles in is Patch Darragh as Viktor Viktorovich, a poet (“I am the voice of the Russian man,” he declares); he wants Semyon to declare in his note that Russia needs art.

This string of visitors to Semyon might have become repetitive, but director Neil Pepe has cast some splendid comic actors in the roles, and they’re varied enough not to wear out their welcomes. The ever-reliable Robert Stanton is a dapper and high-minded Aristarkh; Clea Lewis is a squeaky-voiced, beckoning Kiki; Peter Maloney is a delightfully high-kicking, hard-drinking cleric; and Ben Beckley as the straight-arrow Yegor reveals some creepy sexual inclinations.

As Semyon, Slotnick uses his nebbishy looks and deadpan delivery to create a character floundering with neurotic bewilderment. But he is also an Everyman for these tough economic times of chronic unemployment: “I have no dignity, no labor, no value at all,” he says. Slotnick manages to keep a balance between hope and despair, so that one is always guessing whether he will or won’t shoot himself. Seralles has some comically explosive moments as Masha, and Mary Beth Peil as her manipulative mother has one of the slyest comic lines in the play, as she offers a bite to the priest: “Father, I poked around and found a little bit of meat. I know you’d rather have a biscuit, but it’s chicken-style stew.”

Erdman’s play was banned in the Stalinist era, and it’s easy to see why. But apart from its politics, it still has a lot to say about the importance of work and the effects of unemployment and poverty on people’s lives. With Buffini's refurbishment, Dying for It proves astonishingly apt for the times.

Dying for It plays at the Atlantic Theater Company, 336 W. 20th St., through Jan. 18, with evening performances at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, which are $20 and $65, call OvationTix at (866) 811-4111.

Surrounded by Aching Hearts

Dating in New York City has often been represented in situation and romantic comedies, from On the Town to First Date the Musical, and on TV shows like Sex and the City. In fact, the neuroses and eccentricities of New York singles have provided inexhaustible fodder for playwrights and screenwriters.

Add to this mix director Michael Counts’s immersive theater experience, Play/Date, a collection of 22 one-act plays about the dating scene in the Big Apple. The plays—which stage hookups, breakups, and everything in between—take place simultaneously in an actual nightclub, Fat Baby, on the Lower East Side. This production’s greatest strengths lie in its design: the stimulating lighting by Ryan O'Gara and Marcello Añez’s sexy soundtrack, along with Counts’s staging, create an experience that surrounds the audience. The production’s weakness, however, is an overall inability to convey many honest or original messages about the trials and tribulations of dating in New York City.

Just as any other night at Fat Baby, audience members must wait behind velvet ropes before entering Play/Date. Though the interior of the club is emptier than it would be on a regular night, the rave lights are on, and the bar is open. But the bar is only one of the spaces where these solo and small-cast one-acts take place: various concurrent scenes take place at the tables upstairs, on the dance floor, and in dark enclaves around the club. There is even a series of projections, in which the texts of a character on a cellphone are displayed on the wall behind them.

For the most part, the simultaneity and technique of the short plays are managed impressively well, though there are some moments when it is hard to hear performers. As with many immersive productions, audience members are generally able to roam about and watch any scenario they like; these free-form periods are interspersed with moments when the action comes together in choreographed spectacle. As the plays progress, characters and audience become progressively drunker—for the performers, this means the usual fights, along with regrettable phone calls and lurid meet-ups in bathroom stalls. Because of these simultaneous storylines, one will find it impossible to see everything that Play/Date has to offer in just one visit.

While the physical space of the nightclub is thrilling to explore, and the ensemble is talented and committed, the plays that I encountered do not really say anything new or different about New York City dating. Overall, they mostly redistribute the tired narratives that are already prevalent in television, movies, and theater. Many of the plays overreach in their commentary on technology and its insipid ubiquity through dating websites, social media, and smartphones.  

Although there are some unexpected moments involving hand puppets, alien conspiracy, and a random shirtless woman, they are overshadowed by the production's sexiness, reading ultimately as trite rather than meaningful. Overall, there is something more generous to be said about dating in this crazy city, something that these plays are too short and too scattered to capture. Play/Date is worth seeing for its production elements and site-specific location, but do not expect to walk away with an especially nuanced understanding of the New York City dating experience.

Show times for Play/Date are Sunday through Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Fat Baby (112 Rivington St., between Essex and Ludlow streets, on the Lower East Side). Tickets start at $55 for general admission; reserved tables are $75. The new $95 "Friends with Benefits" ticket option includes reserved priority table seating with waiter service, plus an opportunity to fully interact with the performers in specially created scenes that take place at the table. Tickets are available by calling Ovationtix at 866-811-4111 or visiting www.playdateny.com.

A Cop and Clowns Walk into a Bar…

The lights are dimmed, the room is silent. “You can sit here,” the usher says. “Oh, and don’t forget this.” As if it came out of thin air, it appears between his finger tips and he places it in the palm of my hand. I look down, and there it is — a bright red clown nose. I look up and realize that everyone in the room is a clown with the same red nose. I look back and a clown appears out of the darkness into the doorway I had just walked through. I knew then that this was not a regular clown act.   

Now I know what you are thinking, and no, this was not a nightmare. It was the set of Clown Bar — a show about a cop named Happy Mahoney who returns to his old clown life to figure out the murder of his brother, Timmy, and seek revenge. Written by Adam Szymkowicz, this play combines the visual familiarity of the bright clown costumes and exaggerated clown make–up with the 1930s gangster’s ambiance. 

In this performance directed by Andrew Neisler, the audience is introduced to the world of the play with red noses of their own, waitresses dressed in proper clown attire, and a 15-to-30 minute pre-show. The stage is set up so the actors have the space to perform on a small stage at the very end of the room, as well as walk up and down the center row of a very cozy bar. From the beginning to end, the vibrant costumes and well-designed set captures your eyes. Throughout the show, the lighting perfectly frames the actors to help the audience look in the right direction while the mime pianist makes you laugh as he plays the appropriate tune to set the mood or to help support a singing number. 

Credit must also be given to the actors on the stage. With a straight face, the cast delivers ironic word play, double entendres, puns and even bad jokes that keep the audience in their seat wanting more. To be able to get the audience’s attention no matter where in the room they deliver a line is a reflection of their talent. Clowns such as Petunia (played by Jessica Frey) and Dusty (played by Salty Brine), catch your attention and make you fall in love with their characters, no matter how many clowns they may or may not have killed that day.

The only warning I give to you is to be careful where you sit. On the one hand, while the cozy atmosphere of the bar adds to the world of the play, it causes some audience members to have partial view. For example, although it's exciting to sit on the small stage to be close to the action, depending on the angle, some of the staging can be lost if you are too close or too far away. 

On the other hand, by sitting that close to the action, you are able to interact with the actors. While some audience members are sprinkled with the glitter of the gun shots, others become a part of the act. 

Overall, these criminal clowns are successfully able to take the audience on a ride into the underbelly of clown crime in order to solve the murder of Timmy Mahoney — the unfunny clown. Although I only chuckled a few times, the impressive set, costume and talent makes it worthwhile show. Just be ready for puns and a room full of clowns — and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Clown Bar ran through Sept. 27 at The Box (189 Chrystie St. between Stanton and Rivington).

Invest In Your Theater Experience

If you thought Governors Island was only for bicycling, picnics and electronic music concerts — think again! Because theater visionaries David Evans Morris and Kristin Marting have transformed the island's historic Pershing Hall into a "living market" for their latest immersive theater creation entitled Trade Practices, which kicks off the 2014-15 season at HERE Arts Center. Like our nation's economy, Trade Practices is intricately structured and impossible to wrap your head around. The rooms of Pershing Hall have been transformed into departments of a fictional currency-printing corporation, Tender, Inc. Each audience member receives a roll of cash and, accordingly, the power to invest their time and "money" into whichever storyline they choose. Part of the fun and frustration of Trade Practices (and immersive theater in general) is knowing that every audience member's experience must be different, and that one can't possibly see or experience everything.

By dividing the threads of action into separate spaces, Marting and Morris have created for themselves an unprecedented freedom to play with style and form. Within each plot line, the collaborators dive enthusiastically into genres such as satire, participatory theater, dance, melodrama, musical theater, and so much more. More emphasis is placed on unity of theme or thought than stylistic or aesthetic unity (as in Punchdrunk's cinematic behemoth of immersive theatre, Sleep No More). Yet this schizophrenia of style works wonderfully for the piece, ensuring that audience members are never, ever bored and never, ever sure what is going to come next. 

A particularly charming stylistic tangent is the musical numbers performed in the "Owners" story line, as well as every incident of full-ensemble choreography that takes place on the trade floor, where the entire audience convenes between each plot episode. These dance numbers smack of the virtuosic yet amateurish choreography of Elevator Repair Service productions, as well as the quirkily empowered dance moments in the work of Young Jean Lee (no surprise since Trade Practices incorporates actors and collaborators from both). Fully committed to the song and dance, the brilliant ensemble cast is present at every moment — be it wacky, heartfelt or politically charged.  

The complexity and thought behind the text of Trade Practices (written by Eisa Davis, Robert Lyons, Erin Courtney, Qui Nguyen, KJ Sanchez, and Chris Wells) indicates some serious dramaturgy and research, and the program indicates a bevy of bankers and financial workers that lent their knowledge to the project. There are times, however, that the finance-speak becomes overwhelming for those of us without a banking background. Rather than weighing down the piece, however, these moments only serve to enhance the feeling of intricacy and insurmountability of the economy — a formidable beast of our own creation. For audience members who are finance-savvy, the moments of intense economic debate are likely to be stimulating. Regardless, Trade Practices manages to unmask the relationship between money, power and the human condition. The results are messy, but undoubtedly thought-provoking (and worth the ferry ride to Governors Island).

Trade Practices ran until Sept. 21 at HERE Arts Center (145 Avenue of the Americas). For more information, please visit www.here.org. 

Prince George of Broadway

The Mint Theater, upstairs in a loft building on West 43rd St., pursues forgotten plays with the vigor of a dachshund digging for moles. Over the course of 18 years, this dogged Company has unearthed a surprising number of theatrical treasures buried by time, as well as a few mislaid scripts (but only a few) of primarily academic interest. Since the Mint's founding, the professionalism of its productions has risen steadily. The company is now among the foremost nonprofit theaters in New York City. Next month an audience of unprecedented magnitude will see this accomplished group's work when London Wall by John Van Druten, presented on-stage at the Mint last spring, is telecast as the inaugural episode of Theater Close-Up, a weekly series hosted by Sigourney Weaver on New York public broadcasters WNET and WLIW.

While waiting for its television debut, the Mint has unveiled a top-flight production of The Fatal Weakness, a 1946 comedy by George Kelly, directed by Jesse Marchese. Last year, the satiric Philip Goes Forth, another Kelly revival at the Mint, was noteworthy for acting and design; the play itself proved more historically intriguing than dramatically satisfying. In The Fatal Weakness, sprightly, intelligent dialogue and engaging turns of plot overcome the liability of Kelly's sluggish, old-fashioned exposition. Even in its less engaging moments, The Fatal Weakness is an ideal vehicle for the Mint's two masters of high-comedy style, Kristin Griffith and Cynthia Darlow. 

In the 1920s, Kelly graduated from vaudeville (for which he wrote popular sketches) to Broadway, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for Craig's Wife. Though frequently satiric and always concerned with the follies of the American middle and upper-middle classes, Kelly's plays are too varied to be summed up in a phrase. The Fatal Weakness is an urbane comedy of manners which was presented originally by The Theatre Guild in 1946 with the great comic actress Ina Claire in the leading role. It played 119 performances, a respectable Broadway run for a non-musical play in those days and sufficient to recoup the producers' investment. Kelly was 63 when the play closed; he survived another 27 years, but The Fatal Weakness was his last new work on Broadway. Except for a 1976 television adaptation, introduced by Kelly’s famous niece, Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, The Fatal Weakness has hardly been seen since it closed on Broadway in 1947. 

The heroine of The Fatal Weakness, Ollie Espenshade (Griffith), is the kind of mid-century matron who would have been susceptible to the happily-ever-after hype surrounding the nuptials of George Kelly's movie-star niece to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. (That much-chronicled event took place less than a decade after the play's premiere.) Ollie's "fatal weakness" is a combination of sentimental heart and romantic imagination. After 28 years of marriage, she has discovered that husband Paul is having an affair with an osteopath (an off-stage character). As one might expect, Ollie is incensed. When her busybody friend Mabel Wentz (Darlow) procures details of Paul's clandestine activities, Ollie's fancy shifts into high gear; and, as Ollie's rose-tinted imagination transforms Paul and the osteopath into Abelard and Heloise, The Fatal Weakness barrels forward on an unexpected narrative route.

Griffith makes Ollie's extravagant unworldliness endearing and, for the most part, credible. Marchese has surrounded her with actors who have a knack for Kelly's kind of urbane, out-of-kilter comedy. In addition to Darlow (a consummate, poker-faced comedian), the cast includes Cliff Bemis as the wayward husband, Victoria Mack as the unsympathetic daughter, Penny, and Sean Patrick Hopkins as the bewildered son-in-law, Vernon. Patricia Kilgarriff wrings maximal humor from the role of a parlor maid whose purpose in the script is largely, perhaps exclusively, expository. Garbed in handsome costumes by Andrea Varga (including, most notably, lavish frocks and lounging attire for Griffith), the cast cavorts around a richly detailed drawing room, designed by Vicki R. Davis (with period-appropriate bric-a-brac and props provided by Joshua Yocom). The single stage set, which received a round of applause when the curtains first parted at a recent performance, features high reflective panels that ought to be distracting but, in fact, contribute a dazzling visual effect to the scenic design throughout the evening.     

The Fatal Weakness belongs in the company of those distinctively American high comedies written between the World Wars by Kelly's contemporaries Philip Barry (The Philadelphia Story) and S.N. Behrman (No Time for Comedy). Kelly's plays have fallen out of sight to a degree that Barry's and Behrman's have not. With several more Kelly plays ripe for revival, the Mint may redress that situation in seasons to come. In the meantime, New York audiences are learning that there's more to George Kelly's story than that famous niece. 

The Fatal Weakness was scheduled to play through Oct. 26 but has now been extended through November 2, 2014, at the Mint Theater Company (311 West 43^rd St.). Running time is 2 hours and 20 minutes. Performances are 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. There is a special matinee at 2 p.m. on Oct. 15 and no performance on Oct. 14. Tickets are $55 and $27.50 and may be purchased at www.minttheater.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

Odds Against Happiness

Some excellent performances give buoyance to Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy, a comic series of vignettes that are awkwardly interrelated but provide plenty of laughs as well as fodder for thought. The story follows a young black gay man from his troubled childhood through to adulthood, as if in snapshots. 

Phillip James Brannon plays Sutter, the son of a flashily dressed single mother (Jessica Frances Dukes) who has little patience for his childish questions about words such as “period” and “bootycandy.” (She explains the slang term as “the candy for the booty,” i.e., a penis). In Brannon’s strong, well-modulated performance, one can detect the seeds of shyness that continue into adolescence, when he has an obsession with Michael Jackson, including dressing like him. When Sutter tries to tell his family that a strange man has followed him home, his mother (now played by Benja Kay Thomas), as self-involved as ever, doesn’t believe him and even disturbingly suggests "you musta done something" to attract the man's attention. She and his stepfather ban him from school musicals and urge him to take up sports as a solution. “Kung fu,” recommends Lance Coadie Williams’s uninterested parent. 

Though his parents can't understand him, the unhappy Sutter reaches adulthood as a confidently gay man, aloof but with a quiet strength that belies his indifferent upbringing. Bootycandy, however, also includes scenes that seemingly have no relation to Sutter — a preacher (Williams) who announces to his congregation with wild flamboyance that he’s gay; a lesbian “divorce” ceremony that’s silly and a little stale; and a phone conversation among four black women (two each played by Dukes and Thomas) who are costumed with cleverness by Clint Ramos. 

O’Hara, who directed and is himself black and gay, has no qualms about satirizing the bizarre names some black parents give their children, nor about employing the drawling caricatures that once characterized shows like Amos 'n' Andy. If anything, the drawls are broader here. An older black woman on the telephone berates her daughter for naming her grandchild Genitalia: “How you gon go n name that chile genitalia fool?” The daughter in the sketch (Dukes, who excels at embodying dim-wittedness) sounds like a female Stepin Fetchit, but the effect cheerily gives the raspberry to political correctness. The scenes, although imparting a choppy feel to the play, serve to identify the social milieu surrounding Sutter. 

There is darkness, however. Eventually, in the second half, we learn more about the hero. Sutter’s close friend is Larry (Williams), and in a bar one night they pick up a straight white man eager for gay sex. There’s a horrific twist in which O’Hara shows us the profound damage created by Sutter's upbringing, and how reverse racism simmers. The only person Sutter can relate to, the only one who has ever encouraged him in his adoration of Michael Jackson, is his aged grandmother who raised him and now lives in a nursing home; but even she wants a bribe before she “recognizes” who he is. 

Unfortunately, Bootycandy sometimes indulges in meta-theatrical antics. In Act I, a white moderator (Jesse Pennington), assembles a panel of five black playwrights on the stage of Playwrights Horizons. O’Hara’s premise is that the five playlets we’ve witnessed are the works of the quartet, but the gag strains to make us believe that the playwrights don’t really know why they’re appearing in the panel discussion or what the topic is. 

In Act II, after a tense sequence, the actors rebel against the playwright/actor Sutter, and the fourth wall is again knocked down. There are hints of autobiography in Bootycandy (the moderator asks a black playwright how she got the surname O'Malley, and she answers, "Slavery"), but O'Hara hasn't transformed all of them coherently into a whole; there's a ramshackle feel to the work. Still, there’s no question that he's a playwright worth watching. 

Bootycandy runs through Oct. 12 at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd St. between 9th and 10th Aves.). Evening performances of Bootycandy are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets start at $75 and are available by calling 212-279-4200 or visiting www.playwrightshorizons.org.

Kicking Feminism

Early in Micheline Auger’s Donkey Punch, frank banter and satirical jabs suggest the playwright has written a sex comedy. But Auger is out for more than just laughs. Gradually, in Audrey Alford’s production for the Ivy Theatre Company, the dramatist’s comedy-drama becomes a troubling look at the state of feminism. 

Two women are the focus of the plot: the plump, wryly comic Sam (Lauren Dortch-Crozier), easygoing and unhappy with life, and her high-octane friend Kareena (Cleo Gray), who takes on the role of Sam’s mentor. 

Kareena has recently put Sam in contact with Kyle, a man Kareena once communicated with online, but only briefly, before she met her boyfriend Teddy. Now also talking to Kyle online, Sam has discovered that he makes soft-core “horror porn” films; his latest is called Donkey Punch. Sam is reluctant to meet him because she assumes his work degrades women, but Kareena insists Sam is a prude and needs to widen her erotic horizons; she encourages a first date. (It’s at this point, ironically, that  a role reversal briefly occurs. An unenlightened Kareena learns from Sam the meaning of Kyle's title. It refers to a sexual practice — bizarre and obscure, judging by the surprised reaction of the audience — that heightens a man’s climax during intercourse.) 

Auger has a good deal of fun with the contrast in sexual awareness between the high-earning Kareena and the struggling, diffident Sam, who has hitherto worked as an actress in commercials. “You’re a strong and independent woman,” Kareena exhorts Sam. “You should have a dildo.” Trying to meet her on less intimate ground, Sam responds (with a delivery that evokes a laid-back Jo Anne Worley): “Better health insurance would be nice.”  

Once Sam and Kyle (Jon McCormick) meet, a Pygmalion transformation occurs: Sam bleaches her hair, enlarges her breasts, and ends up the focus of a documentary that entails Kyle’s filming her wherever they go. The repressed Sam embraces life, but it upsets the worldview of the nominally liberated — actually controlling — Kareena. 

Unfortunately, Kareena’s a hard character to like. She is taken aback when Sam begins to talk about her sexual exploits and realizes that Sam’s experience now outstrips hers. A career woman with a vengeance, Kareena declares, “There’s a lot of fish in the proverbial ocean and I’m hot and make a ton of money.” Her feminism is a tangle of contradictions: she advocates pole dancing as “good for your core…it’s totally liberating” but defaults to feminist mantras as well, such as “Bitches before bros.”  

Perhaps the most objectionable thing about Kareena is her emasculating treatment of Micheal Drew’s sensitive Teddy. In Drew’s gentle performance, the strapping boyfriend cooks and attends to her tenderly, but never seems wimpy. Yet when Teddy tries to enter a conversation, Kareena rebuffs him with “We’re having girl talk.” When the accommodating Teddy declares, “I can be one of the girls,” she says, “No, you can’t.” (How many boyfriends would even make that offer?)

Although there’s little about Kareena that’s endearing or redeeming, it’s to Gray’s credit that one is able to feel the character’s confusion and pain even while withholding sympathy — and that includes after she is unexpectedly raped. (Crucially, she doesn’t protest; nonetheless, the sex scene is clumsily staged in a way that tries to be brutal and coy at the same time). 

Meanwhile, Kyle doesn’t conform to any of Sam’s preconceptions. She expects him to call women “bitches” and “hos,” but McCormick, in a nicely understated performance, turns out to be quiet, thoughtful and confident. 

Auger has created four fascinating characters, and situations that make one think, but she doesn’t really offer a diagnosis. Has feminism just created a huge muddle? Have the signals become so mixed, and the dialogue between the sexes so charged, that the old verities of feminism are no longer grounded in reality? Are men now just as much the victims? Auger’s coup is to provide an entry point of discussion.

Donkey Punch runs through Aug. 31 at the SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday and 6 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $45 and may be obtained by calling 212-691-1555 or visiting www.sohoplayhouse.com.

Agent of Change

Have you ever met a pimp? Or talked to a 19-year-old prostitute? Or tried to avoid your menopausal boss who keeps screaming for the stapler you know you didn’t take? For most people, the answer would be no. But for Helena D. Lewis, she has met these people and many more unique individuals.Call Me Crazy: Diary of a Mad Social Worker is a brilliantly written play, filled with poetry that makes you wonder, “did this really happen?” In her autobiographical one-woman play, Lewis recounts her interactions with 25 people in order to understand how she slowly lost her mind and why she became just as crazy as everyone else. 

With clear transitions between the scenes and distinguishable characters, Lewis did a beautiful job at constructing a play that is easy to follow and understand. While some character portrayals make the audience erupt in laughter, others make you question whether you should be laughing at these very off putting (and sometimes borderline offensive) impersonations. However, it is through the harsh realities that she forces us to face that we finally see that change cannot be made without someone as dedicated as Lewis.

This plays relies heavily on the audience’s ability to use their imagination.  When walking into the space, one must be prepared to see a mostly empty stage. The venue, Nuyorican Poets Café, provides Call Me Crazy a very intimate environment allowing the audience and Lewis to feed off each others' energy. Lewis uses the two long black flats on stage left and right to indicate a different location or character change. The only other set piece is a folding chair located in the center of the stage. In addition, Lewis only used roughly seven props that are easily stored in a pocket or hidden onstage. The very minimalistic set and props help keep the focus on Lewis and her powerful dialogue.

The less smooth transitions occur during the costume changes and lighting transitions. Although she does not change her costume for each character, the few costume changes that occur are a bit awkward. However, this is to be expected when one woman is playing all the characters and has only a matter of seconds to put on/take off a jacket or shirt.   

The lighting is predictable and did not have much of a design concept. It seemed as if the lights were used to add light to the stage rather than add depth to the design. Overall, the lighting was a very simple design — the lights changed color to imply a change in the mood or changed direction to prompt the audience where to look on the stage. 

However, the minimalistic design concepts are often overshadowed by Lewis’s performance. If you are looking for a funny and motivational show, Call Me Crazy is the show for you. Within five minutes, you will be hooked on Lewis’s story of how she strove to change the world for the people who are often ignored in our society. And by the end, you will finally figure out why this woman has sacrificed her sanity in order to be a true agent of change.

Call Me Crazy: Diary of a Mad Social Worker runs until July 27 at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (236 East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C in the East Village). Daily performances are held at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15. For tickets and further information, visit www.nuyorican.org.