Paging Pirandello

In 1921, Luigi Pirandello's groundbreaking play Six Characters in Search of an Author premiered in Rome to great acclaim and great scandal. The innovative plot, in which six characters rebel against their author and insist on living out their own realities, made Pirandello one of the earliest writers to investigate the relationship between a playwright and his characters. His work influenced major theatrical voices throughout the 20th century, from Samuel Beckett to Edward Albee. While the idea of a "show within a show" was hardly new (see Shakespeare), Pirandello's close examination of the back-and-forth relationship between a creator and his creation offered thrilling new possibilities for shedding light on how theater is made. Which is more authentic, illusion or reality? Do you write the play, or does the play write you?

With six demanding actors surrounding one flummoxed playwright, Frank J. Avella's The Bubble seems to channel Pirandello's classic work. Unfortunately, the meandering, unfocused script and muddled production do little to explore Pirandello's questions about reality and truth. With its content often messy and frequently misguided, this Bubble is best left intact.

In Act 1 we meet The Writer (Joe Pistone), who is feverishly, spasmodically trying to pen a new script. His subjects, however, are uncooperative, forcing him to rewrite characters, experiment with styles (opera, musicals, melodrama, and performance art all appear), and generally rip out his hair in frustration and despair. A truthful account of an author's woes? Perhaps. Thought provoking or interesting to watch? Sadly, no.

By Act 2, The Writer's play has moved into rehearsals, and we find the same six characters in new incarnations as part of the production

Fun by the Wayside

Wayside School was supposed to be a typical one-story school with 30 classrooms side by side, but it was accidentally built 30 stories high with one classroom on each floor. That is only the first of many strange things at this towering elementary school where cows roam the halls, tornadoes shake the building, teachers disappear, and classes are taught on a 19th floor that does not exist. At the peak of all this madness are the children who attend class on the 30th floor. In Sideways Stories From Wayside School, playing at Manhattan Children's Theatre, John Olive has compiled the best scenes from Louis Sachar's award-winning Wayside School series and compressed them into a clever children's play that captures the wacky playfulness of the award-winning books.

The story opens in the colorful 30th-floor classroom, with its yellow walls, purple tables, green stools, and a lopsided chalkboard. Large red apples with scared faces sit on three of the classroom's five desks. The remaining two desks are occupied by students Bebe (Anna Kull) and Myron (Brian Patrick Murphy). They sit rigidly in their seats while their teacher, Mrs. Gorf (Rachel Soll), speaks with the school's beloved janitor, Louis (John K. Kucher), who would like one of her apples. Mrs. Gorf is ready to oblige when Bebe and Myron cry out in protest. When Louis leaves, Mrs. Gorf informs the quivering children that, due to their outburst, they will soon join the others as ingredients for apple pie.

In self-defense, Bebe holds a mirror in front of her face seconds before Mrs. Gorf can wiggle her fingers and cast a spell. Mrs. Gorf cackles, the children scream, and the theater goes dark. When the lights return, there are five children standing in the classroom and a giant green apple where Mrs. Gorf once stood. This time when Louis returns looking for a bite, no one stops him from taking one.

With Mrs. Gorf gone, the children are sent a new teacher, the strange but kind Mrs. Jewels, whom they immediately fall in love with. She, in turn, instantly likes the children and accepts their eccentricities. Bebe is a lightning-fast sketch artist, and Daemon always smiles and counts accurately if not numerically. Myron pulls Leslie's pigtails until he is hypnotized into thinking they are rattlesnakes. Leslie can only read upside down, and Rondi is a compulsive gum chewer.

All the actors in this production have the right amount of energy and emotion to keep their characters lively and interesting while also incorporating hints of realism into their personalities. They groan, whine, stomp, and stumble in true first-grade fashion but go back to their zany Wayside nature when solemnly confessing that Mrs. Gorf's face haunts them in clouds and mashed potatoes.

For a children's play, this is a surprisingly complex story with a strong central conflict, a moral dilemma, and a climactic ending where Myron and Bebe must confront their roles in Mrs. Gorf's disappearance. Because of these mature elements, this production lends itself to an older age group. It is perfect for grade school but could easily extend into adulthood, especially if you consider that the novel has been a favorite among young readers for over ten years.

For these reasons, Sideways Stories From Wayside School is a fun, intelligent play for children but also a guilty pleasure for adults and teens. Manhattan Children's Theatre wisely selects classic novels to adapt into children's plays so that children can appreciate the work for the first time while their parents and older siblings fondly relive it. This production proves you do not have to be a child to enjoy children's theater.

Housebound

The postcard for Off the Leesh Productions's Belly advertises, "She'll make you laugh, she'll make you cry, she'll make you forget yourself." This is no empty promise. Belly delivers. This one-woman show presents one hour in the life of Frannie, an obsessive-compulsive housewife who, despite her obvious quirks, is not much different from the rest of us. With a soft spot for the wondrousness of Hostess cupcakes and a disinclination for the bleakness of cubicle life, Frannie could be an American Everywoman. Except that she can't even remember what the weather was like the last time she ventured outside her house.

As Frannie awaits her husband Barry's return from work, she fills her days with housework, her only human interaction a harmless through-the-mail-slot flirtation with the postman. Then one day she enters her living room to find it filled with surprise houseguests

To Love, to Be Loved

In a sea of Off-Off Broadway productions, each vying for the same theatergoing audience, it is difficult not to be drawn in, or repelled, by a publicity line. For example, Firebrand Theory's production of Venus in Furs may suffer as much as it benefits from its proudly declared themes. As described, these themes

Role Reversals

Most people never remember what they scored on their SATs in high school. Yet when their children take the test, they suddenly remember all too well. Perhaps that is why some parents dress their children in Princeton sweatshirts from the time they are 5, whereas others pay tutors up to $200 an hour to prepare them for the impending exam. In Maryrose Wood's delightfully unique musical The Tutor, playing at 59E59 Theatres, two desperate Manhattan parents named Richard (Richard Pruitt) and Esther (Gayton Scott) hire a young alumnus from Princeton named Edmund (Eric Ankrim) to tutor their daughter for the SATs. They tentatively introduce him to their punked-out, heavily made-up teenager, Sweetie (Meredith Bull), hoping he will see the Ivy League potential in her.

Edmund sees something in Sweetie, but it is not potential. As a starving artist working on the Great American Novel, he sees young Sweetie as the perfect "cash cow" to subsidize his income while he writes, never imagining that one day this young girl could wind up teaching him.

With an onstage orchestra supplying the live music and a variety of complex scene changes sustaining the plot's fast pace, the cast and crew have no room for error as they scurry about in the darkness between scenes. The spotlights are perfectly timed, the orchestra is always exactly on cue, and everyone manages to get where he or she needs to be on this jungle gym of a stage. Often an actor will balance on a high platform while another rolls him into place. On many occasions, Ankrim dashes across the stage to quickly hoist himself atop the orchestra box, where the ceiling serves as his studio apartment's floor. It is impressive to watch how much is flawlessly accomplished in the few seconds the actors have to create their next setting.

When Edmund first appears to evaluate Sweetie's potential, he is obnoxiously well mannered and condescending to his student. Then one day in the library she asks to read some of his novel. Reluctantly, he shows her, but regrets it when she criticizes the mechanical way he writes. She offers suggestions, and Edmund is surprised to find that they help his writing. From there she becomes his trusted reader, giving comments, criticism, and general feedback at each of their sessions.

Eventually the two become close and discover that the best parts of themselves come out when they are together. Edmund's enthusiasm for writing fuels her desire to learn, and her unjaded vision of the world helps him to see his characters from a new perspective. Their bond strengthens to the point where Edmund cannot imagine writing without Sweetie, and Sweetie cannot imagine liking any other boy but Edmund. Unfortunately, he is oblivious to her feelings, and her girlhood crush leads to the play's main conflict, which has nothing to do with tests and everything to do with people.

The Tutor plays with the notion that sometimes in life we are never sure who is tutoring whom. During the course of the story, a student learns from her teacher, parents learn from their child, and a teacher learns from his student. By the end, they all learn to lighten up, listen to each other, and not take life so seriously.

It is a relief to see a play that is not afraid to try something new and has a good time doing it. The actors have an infectious energy that makes you want to follow their story wherever it may lead. There are catchy original songs by the team of Maryrose Wood and Andrew Gerle, the most memorable being "Stupid Rich Kids," "Don't Eat Your Friends," "Me Artist, You Rich," and Esther's somber ballad "That's How a Life Is Made," sung beautifully by Gayton Scott.

This production is fun enough for all ages to thoroughly enjoy, but its subject will be especially significant to high school students. When the SATs descend upon them in their senior year, it would be nice if they could see a play poking fun at all the surrounding hysteria. As The Tutor astutely reminds us, it is only a test.

Prime Stoppard

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead put Tom Stoppard on the map in 1968, earning him a Tony for best play. He continued with much success: Travesties (1976 winner), The Real Thing (1984 winner), Arcadia (1995 nominee), and The Invention of Love (2001 nominee). Stoppard even won the 1998 Academy Award for his screenplay for Shakespeare in Love. All this without ever attending a university! Artist Descending a Staircase is one of Stoppard's early plays (1972) and was specifically designed for a BBC radio broadcast. A whodunit murder mystery centering around three octogenarians and an audio recording, the play proves problematic when mounted onstage. Reviewing the 1989 Broadway production, The New York Times wrote, "The precision of [Stoppard's] wit is not consistently equaled by Tim Luscombe's staging

A Joan Crawford Musical

In 1997 the Turner Classic Movie channel aired The Unknown, a rediscovered 1927 silent film by Tod Browning, who later directed the more controversial Freaks. Employing real circus freaks and Hollywood film stars, such as a young Joan Crawford, Browning walked a fine line between exploiting and celebrating the oddities of the entertainment business. New York Musical Theatre Festival and Page 73 Productions have attempted to bring the film to the musical stage, cleverly titling it The Unknown: A Silent Musical. Although numerous musicals have spotlighted the desperate lives of carny folk (Side Show, Applause, and Wild Party, to name a few), The Unknown offers something the others can't

Representation Is All

In one of its most basic forms, theater is about pretending

The Passion of the Antichrist

That the antagonist of a story is often more intriguing than its hero is nothing new. From its inception, Western drama has enjoyed titillating its audience with a view from the other side of the moral divide

Flying Human Puppets

Taking puppetry, music, and storytelling to new heights, Red Beads at the Skirball Center sends its audience Combine the morbidity of Edgar Allan Poe, the childish seduction of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the wonder of a Tim Burton film, and the showmanship of Cirque du Soleil, and you can begin to imagine a genre for Red Beads. No stranger to defying genres (and remaking them), Mabou Mines avant-garde artist Lee Breuer heads the mammoth artistic team that brings us Red Beads. Since 1970, when the group, named after a town in Nova Scotia, was formed, Breuer has written and directed a number of shows. In both Shaggy Dog Animation, which won an Obie for best new play, and a series of other shows, Breuer depicted zoomorphic characters (in a Kafka-like manner) using various forms of puppetry. Inspired by Bunraku, the highly stylized 17th-century Japanese puppetry that uses three black-clad puppeteers to operate one rod-puppet, Breuer was striving for an American theater that employed unconventional methods to address modern-day issues, such as feminism and sexuality.

Frank Rich of The New York Times once said Mabou Mines is "experimental theater at its most incendiary." But Red Beads is less an incendiary show than a sanitized form of entertainment. Departing from his usual affinity for political immediacy, Breuer stages a children's story.

The simplistic yet cryptic tale is adapted from Polina Klimovitskaya's original story, which is about a girl who is to receive her ailing mother's red bead necklace upon her 13th birthday, which is also Halloween. The text of this multimedia spectacle-poem is projected above the stage as opera subtitles. Sung arias and spoken word are used contrastingly to convey the dark tale.

Utterances from the primary actors (Clove Galilee, Gob Besserer, and Ruth Maleczech) alternate with operatic solos (Wonjung Kim, Alexandra Montano, and Alexander Tall). A chorus of 24 New York University students synchronously dance and act out the story's narration, which is spoken in a raspy female whisper over the sound system. The effect is an epic, grand-scale rite of feminine passage beautifully unraveled before us in light (an amazingly versatile design by Jennifer Tipton and Mary Louise Geiger), fabric (by Basil Twist), and music.

Ushio Torikai, who composed the show's innovative music, synthesizes Asian musical traditions with Western tonalities and instruments, including violin (Tom Chiu), harp (June Han), oboe (Jacqueline Leclair), flute (Erin Lesser), cello (Stephanie Winters), keyboard (Rob Schwimmer), and various percussion instruments, such as the xylophone (Eric Phinney and Greg Beyer). Her postmodern pastiche waxes and wanes in relation to the action onstage, even offering occasional improvisational duets, as with the violin solo and the flight of the canary.

The visual embodiment of the canary (a wind-spirited yellow strip of silk) is the puppet creation of the extraordinary fabric connoisseur Basil Twist (of Symphonie Fantastique fame). Using wind instead of water this time, Twist paints an airscape with admirable effort but limited success. Big swaths of silk blanket the stage and impressively billow up to make hills, or are sucked under the stage to turn a grave into a black hole. But the sounds of working fans and the appearance of assistance wires and fabric snags interrupt an otherwise smooth flow.

Nonetheless, Twist does not fail to inspire awe. A basement scene where a number of black scarves devour a white one, representing a cat attacked by rats, is perhaps creepier than seeing the real thing. Twist's design and Julie Archer's costume scheme cleverly exploit the vertical plane that much of the show functions on (wire-suspended actors scaling walls, perpendicular beds). The show's pleasurably surrealist design evokes a sensual mutability of space and gravity.

Extending this effect are the show's puppets

On Our Knees

Why should the nation care about a harmless bit of screwing? This is the intriguing question posed by Monica! The Musical as it spoofs, ridicules, and cartoons our former obsession with all things Lewinsky. While in need of sharper focus, this entertaining show nevertheless has moments of brilliance, with real potential to provoke discussion of important issues, both personal and political. The action begins and ends with Bill Clinton, as we follow him in sporadic leaps from 1960's rural Arkansas through his rocky terms as president to his present-day digs in Harlem. Following a chronological timeline, we meet Hillary, Janet Reno, and a host of other political faces that lead to Bill's inevitable encounter with Monica, Kenneth Starr's investigation, and the national scandal that followed.

In a cast comprising several Urinetown alumni, it is perhaps not surprising that Monica! seems to take its cues from that celebrated former Broadway musical and its social satire. Characters are broadly drawn without limits, exaggerating the simple and grotesque, whether it's the overblown, Shakespearean evil of Starr or the vain effeminacy of George Stephanopoulos. And, of course

Brat Pack: The Next Generation

"You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." --John Hughes The Breakfast Club gave us more than a memorable hit from Simple Minds and a young Emilio Estevez. The film firmly cemented once and for all the quintessential archetypes of high school into popular culture. You were a Molly, a Judd, an Emilio, an Anthony Michael, or an Ally, whether you liked it or not.

Ten years have passed since The Breakfast Club debuted, but these conventions of teenagedom are still pervasive, making Sonya Sobieski's new comedy, Commedia dell Smartass, all the more relevant. Commedia dell Smartass, produced by New Georges at the Ohio Theater in SoHo, takes these archetypal characters and flips them upside down and inside out. Her "cheerleader" is a type-A Girl Scout obsessed with her future; her "jock" is a Fencer with Machiavellian instincts; her "sensitive outcast" is a pantaloon-wearing Clown of ambiguous gender; and her "nerd" is a shlubby guy named Henry who dreams of teleporting to the moon.

Sobieski's irreverent style in this quirky commedia dell'arte pokes fun at hackneyed teenage stereotypes. Yet she does not denounce the existence of such stereotypes. As a result, she just might be the John Hughes of the post-9/11 generation. I mean this as a compliment: like Hughes, she has a clear insight into teenagers' lives, but unlike that iconic movie director of the 1980's, she avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality by employing a distinct snarkiness. At times, this snarkiness borders on pretentiousness, which may be Sobieski's goal. Not only is she riffing on pop culture archetypes, but she is also taking a shot at the presumed savvy of teenagers today, and at world that forces them to grow up too soon.

Sue Rees's simple set

In Love and War

In a desolate Israeli cafe overlooking the Plains of Armageddon, three very strange and mysterious people find themselves bonding over beer as they overlook this eerily quiet, centuries-old battlefield in Richard Lay's promising yet disjointed social satire, Lunch at Armageddon, at the Blue Heron Arts Center. Set on the balcony of this caf

Depression Lives

Soon of a Mornin': The Story of Gee's Bend Farms feels like the bare bones of a narrative that's wanting for more voices and more space to do it justice. After its one-hour run time has ended, your interest is piqued and you've definitely been entertained, but you feel as though you've been skimming the surface of these people's lives and could stand to go much, much deeper. Andrea Frierson-Toney has borrowed from the pages of early 20th-century American history to recount the story of Gee's Bend, Ala., and the slave-descendant quilters and farmers who lived there during the height of the Great Depression. We hear much of that story in the form of letters written by Annie Chambers (Megan Magil) and Freidberg (Fred Rose), who have been sent to Gee's Bend by the Farm Securities Administration.

Annie is a nurse whose modern practices, like sterilization and proper nutrition, are at odds with superstition and homemade remedies, while Freidberg is simply fascinated with the religious rituals and backbreaking work that he photographs. The interaction between these two outsiders and the community they've entered does not arrive fast enough or happen often enough. The play begins with their arrival at Gee's Bend by river raft, but they do not actually speak to the townspeople until several scenes later. Their arrival

Sofa, So Good

A bar with cheap drinks, a DJ spinning techno between scenes, the self-consciously urban artwork on the walls, the 10:30 start time (9 on Tuesdays), and the $10 price all give Slant Theatre Project's newest incarnation, CouchWorks, the ambience of a fun and intimate party scene. Seven topnotch playwrights with impressive r

The Other Woman

The Mistress Cycle, now receiving its world premiere as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, traces the lives of five very different women throughout history who share one common thread

Nothing Random About It

Our pets have their ways of communicating to us: a dog's whimper at the dinner table implies "Feed me!" and a cat's purring is a sign of pleasure. But what if animals really could engage with us in dialogue, not with sounds but with language? The Boomerang Theatre Company's world premiere of Francis Kuzler's new play contemplates just that. Set in the science department of an unidentified Eastern university and the expanses of the Little Delta Ranch somewhere in Texas, Giant-n-Variation tells the story of the titular twin talking bulls, a self-proclaimed "psychoevolutionary biolinguist" divorc

Those Wacky Ancients

Greek tragedies are a lot like daytime television, only trashier. They spill over with juicy plots and wicked details that read like a tabloid rag at the supermarket checkout. The worlds of Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, and Electra are populated by infanticide, matricide, incest, madness, and cosmically bad luck, all of which makes them ripe for one thing: parody. The Grift, in association with Bay Bridge and Push Productions, accomplishes just that with Jason Pizzarello's spoof-tacular new play, Saving the Greeks: One Tragedy at a Time, a breezy comedy full of laugh-out-loud merriment that pays homage to the melodramatic absurdity that is Greek tragedy. The plot is pure silliness, which is perhaps why it works so well. Tired of war and death, Dialysis (Brian Reilly) and Peon (Brian Normant) set out to bring some much-needed peace to ancient Greece. Their efforts lead them to create Betterland, a city where formerly doomed tragedians can start their lives over free from the misfortunes of their previous existences. Traveling from tragedy to tragedy, Dialysis and Peon gather inhabitants for their new utopia.

Their first stop is Thebes, where they discover Oedipus (Tom Escovar) on the verge of blinding himself after having realized he has slain his father and bedded his mother. After saving Oedipus with the help of the blind soothsayer Teiresias (Alan Jestice), the tragically hip group makes its way to King Agamemnon's (Eric Forand) castle. There they successfully convince the bipolar Electra (Carrie McCrossen) not to kill the fatalistic Clytemnestra (Eva Patton).

Feminist outcast Lysistrata (Season Ogelsby) joins next, fighting her obvious sexual attraction to Dialysis, while Oedipus finds love (or at least lust) with Agamemnon's mistress, the psychotic seer Cassandra (Carey Evans). No sooner does doomsday housewife Medea (Valerie Clift) join the gang than they find themselves under attack by a neighboring city. When someone (literally) kills the messenger (Matthew DeVriendt), an infuriated Zeus (William Harper Jackson) steps off Mount Olympus to clean up the big mess.

Jason Pizzarello has written a thoroughly enjoyable script filled with droll witticisms, amusing one-liners, and groaning wordplay. He turns the Greek tragedy genre on its ear, gleefully exploiting the farcical possibilities and mining its rich comedic potential. Pizzarello's only misfire is his ill-conceived chorus. Although the chorus is an integral component of Greek tragedy, here it is extraneous and often disruptive, and its one-joke role grows tiresome.

Pizzarello's script is well matched in director Michael Kimmel. He has a firm grasp on his cast, guiding them to truly funny performances. Kimmel never takes the script too seriously, allowing the absurdities to pile up with giddy abandon. The one downside of his direction is his tendency to allow his actors to play to the audience, an off-putting choice that breaks the play's flow.

The actors are excellent. Embracing the ridiculousness of this farcical parody, the cast of 13 plays each line for all its worth. Jestice sets the self-deprecating tone with his opening monologue and keeps the action moving, delivering loads of zany zingers as Teiresias.

Reilly and Normant are sublime as Peon and Dialysis, making for a comedic dream team as they interact with a natural ease. McCrossen and Evans are effortlessly hilarious as the inexplicably British Electra and the crazy-nuts Cassandra. Forand, without ever changing costumes, plays four variations of the same role to dim-witted perfection.

Clift is a comedic gift. She morphs from the slightly off-kilter Jocasta to the oddly crazy Phaedra to the certifiably insane Medea without ever missing a beat. Oglesby, DeVriendt, Escovar, Harper Jackson, Patton, and Pete Mele lend outstanding support within this accomplished cast.

Despite a second act that drags in spots, Saving the Greeks ascends to Olympian heights. Pizzarello's clever script offers madcap adventures for these time-honored characters, and Kimmel and his first-rate cast prove this show is anything but a tragedy.

Master of Disguise

Leave your cell phones on, ladies and gentlemen, but keep in mind that if that phone should ring, you will be "instantaneously put to death." So begins the preshow announcement in Hi!, Amber Martin's high-voltage, one-woman, eight-character study. Delivered in a sweet and syrupy tone and dripping with knowing sarcasm, the announcement, like the show, leaves us mildly uncomfortable, slightly amused, and wondering just what might happen next. Winner of the Portland (Ore.) Drammy Award for Best Solo Performance in 2003, Martin has taken her eccentric cast of characters on the road in a show that works as comedy, tragedy, performance art, and mockumentary. The exhilaration of Hi! lies in its complete unpredictability. Martin has woven the lives of seemingly disparate characters into one volcanic whole.

In the smart style of Christopher Guest's mockumentary films (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show), she gives us brief glimpses into characters who are passionate about communicating who they are. And like many of Guest's films, Martin almost dares us to laugh. Beneath the easy jokes, there is an undercurrent of pathos and serious truth.

Her palette of women includes a Bible-banging Christian at a religious revival, a country music devotee at a desolate Southern burger joint, a faded rock star who has to have her voice box removed after singing like Alice Cooper, and a bitter nightclub singer at a Vegas club performing Whitney Houston covers. The characters have all fallen short of greatness; like "B" list celebrities, they are out of the limelight, a step or two (or four) away from the big time. Martin says they all "seek salvation" in their own way, and she argues for the importance of even the most peripheral of stories. She delivers honest and incandescent snapshots of each character, forcing us to focus on each individual, no matter how eccentric. It is important, she suggests, to really listen to what people have to say.

Her comic work can be likened to that of Amy Sedaris, who is similarly unafraid of contorting herself into appalling grotesques to make a statement about character. Martin makes the process behind these contortions visible by "performing" her costume changes onstage, applying makeup as she sings, hums, dances, or otherwise gyrates to a seamlessly spectacular soundtrack. The set resembles a child's dress-up closet, with coat racks full of costumes and a dressing table lined with wigs and makeup. Director Howie Baggadonutz utilizes the set and space to its full capacity as Martin turns her body into a canvas, showing us the many possible evolutions of being human.

With Martin serving as writer, producer, performer, and sound designer, Hi! is clearly a labor of love. She has an incredibly expressive, rangy voice, and she brings a jaw-dropping precision to her characters' physicality. No matter what she is doing, she is thoroughly enjoyable to watch onstage.

Still, if you are looking for traditional narration, Hi! may not be the show for you. But if you enjoy ballsy, entertaining social commentary wrapped in stunning characterization, go have a look at Martin's dazzling array of faces. When she finally takes her curtain call, she is so utterly unrecognizable from her many guises that you'll find yourself asking, "Wait a second, who is that?" And you'll definitely be glad you left that cell phone off.

No Holds Barred

Isobel, the ghost of a 7-year-old Portuguese child, hovers over a chain of loosely linked vignettes that depict people in extremis in the Alternate Theatre's gripping production of Canadian playwright Judith Thompson's 1990 drama A Lion in the Streets. Thompson's themes could be ripped from The Jerry Springer Show: infidelity, assisted suicide, sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, sex and the disabled. Thompson fearlessly puts her foot to the pedal and doesn't let up. In the process, her characters scream in rage, keen in despair, and attack one another physically and verbally.

In less capable hands, all this would quickly devolve into melodrama or farce. But Thompson brings such intelligence, empathy, and humor to the task that the results are often revelatory. Helped by a talented cast of young actors who juggle multiple parts, she convinces us that we are watching real people act out their primal urges, even as the unfolding events become less and less realistic.

Thus a well-heeled mother (Tracy Weller) calls a meeting of parents to hysterically blast the working-class day care provider (Amanda Boekelheide) for feeding their kids sugary foods. A man (James Ryan Caldwell) tracks down a boyhood friend (Nathan Blew) in a quest to rip out his memory of their homosexual encounter. A severely disabled woman (Boekelheide) rises from her wheelchair and performs an erotic dance with her fantasy lover (Blew) before a straitlaced reporter. A soccer mom in sweatpants (a riveting Rachel Schwartz), humiliated by her husband's public declaration of an affair, begins a striptease for him in front of his lover and their friends in a desperate ploy to win him back.

To pull off the play's whipsaw swings in mood requires a talented design team, and the group that Canadian director Kareem Fahmy has assembled rises to the task. Of particular note is the work of Andrew Lu on lighting and Andrew Papadeas's sound and music. To pack the biggest emotional punch, Fahmy has smartly coached his actors to play their roles to the hilt without ever crossing over to caricature.

It's not surprising that a play as ambitious as Lion in the Streets is imperfect. The first act is much stronger than the second, and at two hours and 40 minutes, the play is a half-hour too long. Tania Molina, a big-boned woman, has the thankless task of portraying the child Isobel, who speaks broken English and has little of interest to contribute. The play's conclusion