Twisted Sister

The work of 27-year-old Polish theater troupe Gardzienice might properly be called Theater of Intoxication, as every sound and motion seems to both invoke the invisible and be possessed by it. In their performances, word truly becomes flesh. It is no wonder, then, that the late Susan Sontag called them "one of the few essential theater companies working anywhere in the world today." With Elektra, Gardzienice's latest "theatrical essay" adapted from the Euripides play of the same title, the group once again proves her right. The ancient story of Elektra and her brother Orestes begins with their father, King Agamemnon, returning victorious from Troy, only to be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Orestes is smuggled out of the city before he meets a similar fate, but Elektra is not so lucky: Aegisthus, worried that a royal offspring would seek vengeance for the murder, forces her to wed a peasant. Though the marriage remains chaste, Elektra is consumed with grief and anger

The Fight's the Thing

One good thing right off the bat: A Beginner's Guide to Deicide, like The Brothers Karamazov and Tess of the d'Urbervilles before it, stands proudly in the great literary tradition of spiritual discovery through buxom redheads with pointy weapons. Huh? In all fairness, I dozed in English class.

Nonetheless, there is a singular event occurring at Center Stage: the continuing evolution of a completely original theatrical aesthetic. The play surrounding it is terrible, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go.

A Beginner's Guide to Deicide tells the story of Lucy (Andrea Marie Smith), a redheaded schoolgirl who wields the aforementioned weapons. Lucy and her sister, Skeeter (Caitlyn Darr), travel through time on a mission to kill God (Dan Deming), along the way murdering the big guy's allies (Joan of Arc, Dante) and his enemies (Nietzsche, Martin Luther, Henry VIII). A stage manager (Nathan Lemoine) keeps things humming along.

The play is Kmart theology at its worst, the kind of half-formed ideas a rebellious parochial-school student concocts during Bible study

Religion on the Rocks

A meditation on divorce and the Catholic Church, Rosaries and Vodka chronicles the story of Posey Malone, a staunch Irish Catholic whose life is shaped by her ineligibility (as determined by church doctrine) to remarry after an abusive marriage. This could be a fascinating topic to tackle, but rather than being a fascinating life, hers is just depressing. As a result, the play focusing on it doesn't fare much better than the marriage; both are doomed from the start. On the eve of their wedding, Posey's fianc

The Immigrant Experience

"They've all come to look for America." That line from Simon and Garfunkel's "America" is central to the story of Seven.11.2005, now playing at the Lower East Side Tenement Theatre. The play and theater are a perfect fit. Located in the basement of a building constructed in 1863, the theater is surrounded by museums, gift shops, and stores dedicated to preserving the memory of immigrants who migrated to New York's shores long ago. The air is thick with stories, and everyone passing through is eager to hear one. Desipina and Company has taken advantage of this inquisitive atmosphere by producing Seven.11.2005, a South Asian production that respectfully and skillfully pays homage to the neighborhood's rich history while promoting tolerance for the diverse community currently residing there.

Both walls of this tight, century-old space, which is designed to resemble a 7-11 convenience store, are adorned with plastic shelves and several household items such as tissues, orange juice, coffee, and cigarettes. Upon examination of this set, one cannot help but wonder: Who are these people who work all day and night at 7-11s?

Seven.11.2005 blows the lid off this question in a series of seven 11-minute skits about South Asian immigrants from all walks of life trying to get by in America while working in a convenience store.

The play thrives in its setting. The stories are intriguing, the characters believable, and the dialogue custom-made for its predominantly South Asian audience. There were audible squeals of delight whenever they heard a familiar phrase or dialect spoken onstage.

The play kicks off with a lovelorn American man (Andrew Guilarte) and a woman (Lethia Nall) flirting in a Paris convenience store. She once immigrated to the same area of New York where he lived and attended the same four-year college before she returned to Paris. The American is intrigued by their shared geography, and his flirtation turns sincere until he realizes that their different life paths render a budding relationship impossible.

When this scene ends, Guilarte effortlessly slips from his role as a suave, romantic seducer to an obsessive, nerdy comic-book dork in a scene that played to big laughs and appreciative applause.

It is important to note that there are no blackouts between scenes. When one skit ends, the actors quickly launch into their next characters. In a testament to their skill, they make these transitions smoothly and fully, shedding all traces of their previous characters like a dead skin.

However, one scene, called "Beckoning Cat," played too powerfully for its own good. It features a rowdy deadbeat (Jackson Loo) and a scheming convenience store owner (John Wu) plotting to steal a winning lottery ticket from a na

Inaction Figure

A classic is a resilient thing. Those who would seek to bend one to their will

Fat Man and Little Boy

Grotesquerie is proudly on display in Jessica Jill Turner's new play, Charlie Moose Makes His Move, onstage until April 10 at the Looking Glass Theatre. The titular character, played by Corey Patrick, is the worst kind of unbearable, egotistical bastard: he is convinced that he is a creative genius of unequaled brilliance, when in reality he can barely write for a bad soap opera. Charlie barks orders at his only friend, Simon, a fidgety, socially awkward 12-year-old, played with nervous abandon by Brian Sacca. And he is convinced that somewhere there is a coked-up stripper waiting patiently for his love, despite the fact that he has no evidence of this at all. Charlie is also disgustingly obese, weighing over 300 pounds, and has not left his chair in over a year.

If the sight of a giant lump of a man giving dictation to the most socially retarded boy imaginable isn't enough to give you a serious case of the heebie-jeebies, then perhaps a few other members of Turner's demented menagerie can raise the hairs on the back of your neck. There's Simon's mother, Nancy Tarbox (Kelly Eubanks), an aspiring sociopath whose path to enlightenment includes adventures in unwanted pregnancies and slamming her fingers repeatedly in a filing cabinet drawer.

There's also Gene Schiffer (Adam Tsekhman), Simon's twisted school psychiatrist, whose attempts at shepherding his students to proper mental health are offset by his Russian sexual repression. And then there's Honey Blank (Marci Adilman), who is, quite simply, the worst stripper in the world.

All of these widely careening elements, barely held in check by director Ashiln Halfnight's able hand, add up to one of the oddest, most hysterical, and most original pieces of theater I've seen in a long time. This is not because Turner and Halfnight trot out a few strange characters

Doo-wop, Shakespeare-Style

An updated version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Fools in Love interchanges ancient Athens for West Athens, Calif., and sets the play in the 1950s. This condensed, one-act adaptation is aimed at children, and, with copious amounts of physical comedy and a soundtrack of pop music, it proves that Shakespeare can be understood and enjoyed by even those generally (and wrongfully) deemed too young for it. The show opens with four lovers convening at a diner to sip sodas and lament their tangled love lives. Helena (Annelise Abrams) loves Demetrius (Antony Raymond), but Demetrius loves Hermia (Erika Villalba). That would be all well and good, as Hermia's parents want her to marry Demetrius, but her heart belongs to Lysander (Matt Schuneman).

Hermia and Lysander decide to elope, and both Demetrius and Helena follow them when they flee into the forest, where a group of resident fairies attempt to unravel and realign their heartstrings. Lovers' spats are also present in the woods, as Oberon (Andy Langton) and Titania (Margaret Curry) squabble over their own feelings and argue over the possession of a changeling child.

A cappella accompaniment to the action is provided by a group of doo-wop singers who drift in and out of the action singing 50's and 60's pop songs as a kind of Greek chorus. The oft-covered "I Will Follow Him" accompanies Helena's mad dash as she chases Demetrius deep into the forest, and when Hermia and Lysander sleep in the woods, the singers perform a snippet of the classic "Goodnight, Sweetheart." What the group occasionally lacks in pitch, they more than make up for with enthusiasm.

Besides that addition, however, the rest of the play stays the same. Though it is considerably cut down (while still running nearly two hours without an intermission), there have been virtually no changes to the language itself. Some characters have been tweaked ever so slightly to suit the time period, but little else needs to be changed to help kids get Shakespeare's comic characters. In this version, we have a pocket protector-wearing Lysander, and Peter Quince (Tom Falborn) and his gang are the diner's chef and busboys. The delightfully over-caffeinated Puck (Brandy Wykes) is constantly whipping out a steno pad on which he takes notes from the leather jacket-wearing Oberon.

Fairies flit throughout the play, and their sheer number is what allows children's involvement in the show. Children (and the occasional adult audience member) are invited up onstage to take part in the group scenes. They are welcomed with open arms by the fairies, who all do excellent work guiding the children. The fairies also rev up the energy in the theater, clapping along and chattering amongst themselves.

Sometimes, however, the fun gets a little overwhelming, as the chorus chitchat can draw too much focus away from the main action. Particularly when trying to keep kids following the story line, distractions like these are dangerous.

Some actors failed in making the material accessible, while others were wildly successful. Some actors were funny but lacked the overt comedy that's needed in shows for kids. The actors who were triumphant in their efforts

Cruel to the Highest Degree

Michael Scott-Price has a lot to say. Much of it is said using four-letter words and racial slurs, making his Lynch PLAY a production not for those of a mild disposition. But American history (or history in general) is not for those with mild dispositions. Lynch PLAY makes sure that its audience is aware of this fact

Lights! Magic! Set Changes!

Faust in Love, now playing at the Ohio Theater, is part two of Target Margin Theater's adaptation of Goethe's masterpiece. This second installment of the production's trilogy, which will be completed next year, concerns the most well-known aspect of the Faust legend: his romance with Gretchen (Eunice Wong), a young and innocent girl. As the story goes, Faust (George Hannah), aided by the demon Mephistopheles (David Greenspan), successfully woos Gretchen with gifts, sleeps with her and ruins her reputation, and then abandons her by taking a little vacation to hell. Upon his return, he discovers that his lover has gone mad and is imprisoned for murder. Faust finds himself torn between his desire to save Gretchen and Mephistopheles's insistence that he save himself. Directed by Target Margin's artistic director, David Herskovits, Faust in Love is a slick affair, with plenty of sly winks and nudges to the culturally savvy audience. The show's self-aware theatricality serves as both its most impressive and most detrimental aspect. While Herskovits's attention to production values makes Faust a visual joy to watch, the style of the show is so attention-grabbing that it sometimes distracts the audience from the story itself. The lighting is distinctive and dramatic, the sound design is playful and engaging, and the set changes are fluid and magical. But against the ever-changing backdrop of such beautifully crafted shapes and colors, the characters' conflict and desires seem bland in comparison, despite the efforts of the energetic and talented cast.

The play really shines during its scene changes, unlike most shows, which simply try to get through them as quickly as possible. Herskovits turns these transitional moments into tightly choreographed mini-scenes, during which a flurry of movement is coupled with an exciting burst of music. As the show progresses, the set evolves, gradually revealing a striking depth that dramatically portrays a variety of locations and symbolically represents the distance that develops between Faust and Gretchen. During the transitions, the audience experiences a revelation of space, and when the curtains and flys are removed, one can almost feel a collective shiver of delight rolling through the crowd.

The play's heightened sense of theatricality sometimes works to great dramatic effect, as in Gretchen's prolonged silence when she describes holding her dead sister as a baby. During this scene, the audience's attention was rapt as she wordlessly rocked her empty arms, proving that silence really can speak volumes. At other times, the directorial choices seemed overly devised and even a bit smug.

For instance, a sparkly curtain often appears to hide certain actions from the audience. At one point, someone mimes stomping on a ukulele behind the curtain, while cartoonish sound effects add a comical effect. The curtain is removed to reveal a now-broken ukulele. Although somewhat amusing, bits of business like this often seem gratuitous and out of place. It is difficult to tell whether Herskovits is attempting to make the story interesting by highlighting certain aspects of it, or whether he is simply trying to distract our attention from the boring bits by using any possible means.

The last scene of the play, in which Faust attempts to rescue Gretchen, is a welcome relief from theatrical tricks and gags. Their confrontation is played out in a straightforward manner and thus generates one of the most meaty and thought-provoking interactions of the evening. Once the tongue-in-cheek commentary is turned off, the actors are allowed to get down to the business of really responding to each other, and it is a joy to see. Although it might be nice if there were more of these moments in the play, it is satisfying that Faust ends on this emotional high note.

Herskovits stuffs a surprising amount of humor into the production, and the action proceeds at a pleasantly quick pace. He has successfully put a fresh, new spin on an old play, and the superficial elements of the production shine with style, grace, and a lot of charm. Although the characters may not inspire much empathy or interest, this is still a thoroughly engaging piece of theater, and Target Margin proves that there is more to a good play than simply a good story. In Faust in Love the set is not just an indication of where the characters are; it is the hat from which the magician pulls a rabbit. The costumes do not merely keep the actors from being naked, and the lighting creates much, much more than simply a lack of darkness.

Seeing Other People

The stage is almost too small at Jewel Box Space, where Alex DeFazio's hauntingly beautiful new play, Radium, is being produced. And this is exactly how it should be. At the opening, six actors (who play five characters) walk to and fro onstage, at times narrowly avoiding bumping into one another. The effect is one of cramped claustrophobia. The inhabitants of DeFazio's world barely have enough room to negotiate their way through life and are incapable of taking a course of action without knocking someone else off his own course. Radium follows the lives of five gay men who fall in and out of love and lust, and break each other's hearts, over the course of a year. We see three different strong relationships form and fall apart, in most cases for no real reason that the characters can understand. They cling to each other desperately but are equally quick to toss away their lovers if they don't fit into the carefully sculpted world they have devised for themselves.

The first thing we see, once the stage has been emptied of bodies bumping into one another seemingly at random, is J. (Bobby Abid) and Alexis (Nathaniel P. Claridad) loudly and graphically having sex. J. cruelly stops their lovemaking before either of them can find release and callously kicks the frail and fragile Alexis out into the night. The difference in their attitudes is as striking as the contrast in their physiques: J. looks as if he were sculpted out of stone, while a strong wind could blow Alexis over.

The human body, and a person's relationship to his physicality, is one of the main subjects of this lyrical and erotically charged play. J. can literally see only himself, and his body is

Unfaithful Servants

Dim the lights, hide the evidence, and slip into someone else's best clothes: it's time for rituals. Jean Genet's dark tale of fantasy and paranoia, The Maids, peers behind closed doors into the tormented lives of servants on the verge of cracking, and the masters who unwittingly live alongside them. Escapist Productions's version of this 1947 absurdist classic takes on a work by one of the most unique and defiant voices of 20th-century theater, playing it out with great ambitions though somewhat mixed results. The Maids is the story of two sisters, Solange and Claire, who serve together in the same house. Their work has pushed them to the edge of their wits, so they dream up a desperate scheme to frame their master and murder their mistress. While the mistress is out, they play at the murder, enacting it themselves. When she returns, however, and it comes to the moment to act, they bungle their carefully laid plans and cannot accomplish their revenge. The mistress escapes, suspecting nothing, but the maids' plan is already unraveling at a dangerous pace, and the two sisters are left alone again, fearing for the worst.

The Escapist production at the Chocolate Factory

Before the Eviction

The mythical Second Avenue subway has finally come into being. But the line is set to run right through the apartment of three young people living together on the outskirts of Harlem. ...A Matter of Choice chronicles the conflict that arises between the roommates as they face their inevitable eviction. The occupants of the apartment are an unlikely trio. Diggs, a white boy who grew up seven blocks from where they currently reside, is a direction-less, pot-smoking ex-messenger who endlessly defends his recent promotion to head of the mailroom. Chastity (Sarah Hayon) is a no-nonsense Latina girl and a loner (whether by choice or by circumstance is essentially the crux of her character development). Webb (Nyambi Nyambi) is an educated, gay black man involved in a tumultuous relationship with his boyfriend Michael (John Summerour).

Despite their differences, they are extremely close

Flashback

In Brooklyn's refreshingly roomy St. Ann's Warehouse, the Wooster Group is remounting its 1999 creation House/Lights. The city's champion of the avant-garde has temporarily abandoned its snug Manhattan home, and, while the breathing room is welcome, one cannot shake the feeling of being dead-bolted into an asylum. A conflation of Gertrude Stein's 1938 play Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights and Joseph P. Mawra's 1964 "lesboitation" film Olga's House of Shame, this 75-minute multimedia trip takes the audience on a mind-searing journey through sound, space, psychology, and sex. One of the Wooster Group's founding members, Kate Valk, plays both Stein's Faustus and Mawra's Elaine in a seductively manic performance. The nimble and gorgeous actress defies age, time, and space

School Days

Ask anyone if he or she has ever heard the story Miss Nelson Is Missing, and you will most likely be answered with a gasp of recognition followed by a wistful sigh of "I loved that book." Originally published in 1977 by Harry Allard, Miss Nelson Is Missing is a book that has been passed down from one generation to the next, and now to yet another crop of youngsters in the musical adaptation playing at the Tribeca-based Manhattan Children's Theatre. Since this story comes with a dedicated built-in audience, there is very little a theater can do wrong in the retelling of it. The remarkable thing about Manhattan Children's Theatre is just how much it manages to do right. The stage resembles a quaint, little storybook town, with a green, pink, and yellow ice cream store next to a bright pink police station. The scenery's centerpiece is the schoolhouse: a brick building with white doors that unfold into a classroom complete with a chalkboard, a map of the world, and four little desks.

While this silly, colorful story expertly caters to the toddlers in the audience, it gives more than a few winks of acknowledgement to the adults who accompany them.

For example, when the soft-voiced, rosy-cheeked, angelic elementary-school teacher, Miss Nelson, attempts to engage her unruly students in a history lesson, she is horrified that the children cannot even answer the question "What is the name of the president?" One pigtailed student guesses, "Dick Cheney?" A boy with a spitball-stuffed straw dangling from his mouth answers, "Arnold Schwarzenegger!" Just when Miss Nelson thinks the lesson cannot go any worse, a third boy cries, "Martin Sheen!"

Desperate to regain the attention of her four sweet but dizzyingly hyperactive students, Miss Nelson takes matters into her own hands and turns up "missing." In her place she sends a "substitute"

Love and War

A deer slowly bounds across the wide-open stage and finds a spot to rest and feed. Dark, percussive music plays as the animal is spotted by a man hunting in the woods. He very slowly, silently removes an arrow from his quiver, pulls backs, and shoots. The arrow pierces the deer's chest, and it shakes and struggles in pain until it finally falls dead to the ground. The man is King Agamemnon, and little does he know that this small act will displease the gods and set off a tragic chain of events for himself and the whole of Greece. The opening of Theodora Skipitares's Iphigenia burns a powerful and haunting image into the minds of the audience. What's more remarkable is how this effect is fashioned by Bunraku puppetry, a traditional Japanese art form. The deer is carefully manipulated by three performers

Lost in Space

The dangers of creating a piece of theater through collaboration are as numerous as the potential rewards. When the process works, the result is an organic fusing of many different artistic voices into a single, overarching vision. As with a choir, the power and nuance of such a synthesis can be staggering. When the process fails, however, what emerges is a disastrously confused and meandering hybrid of intentions, divided and unable to stand. Unfortunately, The Astronomer's Triangle, the latest communal effort from CollaborationTown, now playing at Studio 5, runs afoul of many of the process' snares and offsets these with too few of its benefits.

Our narrator and protagonist is a prim cartographer (Jordan Seavey) who professes that things as intangible as love can be mapped. He has devoted himself to the welfare of an old friend (Geoffrey Decas), an astronomer despondent over his failure to cull from the stars clues about life's origins. In the breaks between forcing his astronomer friend to get out of bed and eat, the cartographer manages to strike up a relationship with a quirky local waitress (Boo Killebrew), who claims she communicates with her own private star.

When pressed, the cartographer learns that this star occupies not only part of her body

Standards Change

Eastern Standard

Southern Gothic Solo

Angela Forrest is a great performer. She is funny, expressive, and, at times, even captivating. In her one-woman show, Profile of a Saint, she portrays 10 characters and never leaves the audience guessing who is who. When she is in character

Life Under Occupation

The West Side Theater is slightly dank and musty and not at all inviting. At one point, midway through the show, the lights in the theater suddenly go out, and the crashing sound of bombs exploding interrupts the silence. It transports you to another, much darker world. It is nighttime in Iraq. There is no water, no electricity, only candlelight. It is powerful and real. We know the politics, see the pictures, and hear the rhetoric. Americans held hostage, Iraqi protests in the street, and gunfire in Fallujah. The war in Iraq has raged in one form or another for nearly three years, leaving hundreds killed, thousands injured, homes destroyed, businesses burned, and a country liberated. We all know the story.

But what we do not know is the whole story, and it is one that needs to be told. The Six Figures Theatre Company, in adapting the "Girl Blog From Iraq"

In Limbo

Your body is lying on a lumpy mattress in a hospital bed hooked up to loud beeping machines via various tubes. A pump breathes artificial air into your dormant lungs. Family members stand at your bedside berating themselves for not saying "I love you" enough, or fighting over your inheritance while they stare at your limp figure. Your body is in that bed, but your soul is not. You are not dead; you are not alive. You are "between worlds." Such is the fate of the characters in the Chekhov Theatre Ensemble's ethereal and intuitive production of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's tragic Between Worlds. A nearly bare set is enclosed by two walls joined to form a corner. One wall contains an exit labeled A for "accidental," and the other has a similar exit leading to Corridor D for "deliberate."

In the center is an elevator, through which enters a young man, Colin (Patrick Jones), unaware that he has just crashed into a tree at 100 miles an hour. He is greeted by two hooded assistants who don't speak but are able to tell him that he is to take up temporary residency in the "hotel." And this is just the beginning of a day or so at a place that houses people between life and death.

The Two Worlds Hotel is presided over by the elegant but icy Dr. S., played coldly but with just the right amount of tenderness by Jennifer Shirley. Other guests include the saucy cleaning lady, Jesse, portrayed in full raunchy glory by Andrea Seigel; a not-so-clairvoyant Magus played not so subtly by T. Scott Lilly; and an uptight Chairman of "the Board," portrayed by Max Evjen.

Prior to the second act, the hotel is visited by a regular guest, the innocent Laura, played by an illuminating Sara Barker. Laura has been wheelchair-bound for years and uses her trips to the hotel as a chance to escape the paralysis that has troubled her on earth. As Colin begins to understand the nature of the hotel while falling heavily for Laura, the other tenants anxiously await their fates, which will be determined by the elevator that has brought them there. When it is their time, they will be called to the elevator. If they are to survive, the elevator will bring them down to earth. If they are to die, the elevator will travel up. In the meantime, they must wait and contemplate the lives they have led.

Between Worlds tackles quite a few heavy subjects, namely death, the afterlife, destiny, depression, knowledge, sanity, and second chances. Since the play never gives any concrete answers to these questions, the audience is forced to draw their own conclusions, even regarding the outcome of Colin, who closes the play as he steps into the elevator and awaits his fate.

The play is ripe with witty and sometimes poignant one-liners, such as Colin's remark to Dr. S., "I never thought death would have such good legs," and Dr. S.'s scornful, "Using alcohol. The method [of suicide] used by cowards." The dialogue has a very natural, Mamet-esque feel to it, but the play itself is more in line with European playwrights like Heiner Muller, who use fantastical ideas and strange theatrical conventions, such as the mute assistants and the ambiguously gendered Dr. S. Director Ragnar Freidank's German background surely contributes to the avant-garde feel.

The acting is consistent and realistic across the board. The best dialogue takes place in the rushed exchange between Laura and Colin just before he is to be cornered into the elevator. He feverishly asks her simple, seemingly mundane questions about herself so that he may remember her when he is gone, and she replies just as excitedly, causing his exit to be indefinitely postponed. In fact, each time a guest enters the elevator and the doors close, there is a moment when we hold our breath to wait for the result, which is not always what we expect.

Overall, Between Worlds has a sort of unfinished feel to it, as if a small something has been lost in the translation. The play confronts death with such brazenness that you can only wish that you'll never end up a guest at the Two Worlds Hotel. Even so, the polished acting and intriguing subject matter turn the two hours into a visit worth making.