Love and Marriage

When a playwright presents a piece about a cancer survivor, the audience expects to be treated to a revealing glimpse of staring-down-death emotions or grueling treatment routines. Cancer is, after all, fairly well-charted dramatic territory and an all-too-common disease. Most people have had firsthand or second-hand experience with the illness, or at least have a strong knowledge of it through the news or made-for-TV movies. There really isn't a need for someone to tell us about how chemotherapy saps your energy and makes you bald, or how beating cancer forever defines you, both positively and negatively. In Reconstruction, author Clifford Lee Johnson III at least presents us with a more intimate format for the same old discussion by focusing on the attempts of breast cancer survivor Ally and her husband, Ford, to sexually reconnect when her cancer goes into remission. Ally is nervous about sharing herself and her body, despite Ford's insistence that he finds her as arousing as ever. One can understand Ally's reticence

Deadly Puzzle

Imagine a series of books, like Ukrainian nesting dolls, whose parallel plots lead the reader further and further back in time. And then imagine that the characters depicted in those books are real people who discover the books and are unnerved to read about themselves, as well as others leading parallel lives. That is the original premise of Canadian playwright Jayson McDonald's Jigsaw, an enjoyable mystery receiving its U.S. debut at the Wings Theater. Alas, the play, which McDonald also directed, staggers under this complex structure while recycling one too many horror genre clich

Friends Forever

"Ohmygod! That is, like, so totally cool!" If this is an expression you often hear around your house, you are probably living with a "tween." Journalist Michele Willens is credited with coining the term to describe the group of kids who find themselves stuck between two worlds: childhood and adolescence. In her play Dear Maudie, playing at the 78th Street Theater Lab, she explores the tight bond formed by two fourth-grade girls, Nicki and Maudie, as they struggle to make sense of their changing lives. One would be hard pressed to find another play whose target audience is tweens. There are no adults playing children, no patronizing tones or after-school-special themes, and no coming-of-age epiphanies. Maudie and Nicki are on the brink of becoming teenagers, not adults. They are trying desperately to preserve their innocence, not lose it.

The girls are realistically portrayed by two cute-faced young actresses, Allison Brustofski (Nicki) and Danielle Carlacci (Maudie). The production's success relies entirely on their personality and charisma, since the story is told through the letters and e-mails they write each other during class. As they read the letters aloud, other actors, seated on benches behind them, will occasionally rise to illustrate what they are typing. But the play mostly rests on their shoulders

All in the Family

We want to be normal. We need to be normal. We constantly calibrate our lives to land within the safe, normal margins of being. Try as we might to protect ourselves, however, tragedy can interrupt at any moment, shattering even the most elaborately constructed facades. The Transport Group's ambitious new musical, Normal, brings us up close to a quintessentially normal American family disrupted by a daughter's eating disorder. Although it sometimes veers dangerously close to cheesiness, this production is ultimately an immensely rewarding exploration of a family in crisis. Normal courageously exposes fractured lives and messy situations, where glaring abnormality has the power to precipitate epiphanies.

The Freemans are an emphatically normal nuclear family (father, mother, son, daughter), and they first appear to be quite cartoonish. They sing and dance in unison in the opening number, "Happy Family," but their disconnection from one another quickly becomes apparent. When teenage Polly (Erin Leigh Peck) tries to talk to her mother, Gayla (Barbara Walsh), over the sound of her hair dryer, they both stare straight ahead without making eye contact.

Soon Polly succumbs to the forces of peer pressure

Earthbound

It was one small step for a man and one giant step for mankind, but what about womankind? Neil Armstrong spoke his now-legendary words while taking the first steps on the moon in 1969. Americans were glued to their TV sets, watching history in the making. Little did they know, however, that behind its bold advances, NASA was hiding a dirty little secret

In Revue

Spanning locations ranging from its mythical titular tropical island to the borough of Staten Island, and embracing such weighty topics as death and the passage of time, Roger Rosenblatt's Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos...Or What Am I Doing Here? covers a great deal of physical and emotional geography. Even so, with all the journeying going on at the Flea Theater, there is no destination in sight. Rosenblatt has subtitled Ashley Montana "Almost a Play," and as a result many of its broad sketches seem unfinished, despite a solid cast

The Return of the King

The Vortex Theater Company's production of Agamemnon is a feast for the eyes, ears, and even the nose as sight, sound, and smell join together in director Gisela Cardenas's bold new adaptation of Aeschylus's enduring tragedy. This innovative production is highlighted by strong performances and tight direction, and, despite a few wrong turns and an ending that overstays its welcome, it proves to be a unique theatrical event. Agamemnon tells the story of the great King's victorious return from the Trojan War. Anxiously awaiting him in Argos are his treacherous wife Clytemnestra (Linda Park), his faithful daughter Electra (Catherine Friesen), and his loyal citizens. Clytemnestra has ruled Argos during the King's 10-year absence with a secret hatred burning in her heart as she dreams of avenging her eldest daughter Iphigenia's death, a death for which Agamemnon (Jonathan Co Green) was culpable. With her new lover Aegistus (Seth Powers) by her side, Clytemnestra plots to murder the King upon his homecoming, with the impending action set against the backdrop of a great banquet.

Cardenas has written an inspired, if dense, adaptation. She reinvents the traditional Greek chorus as a team of chefs preparing Agamemnon's welcome feast. The Fates are transformed into three crudely mechanical dogs, brilliantly designed by Andrea Gastelum and maneuvered and "voiced" with excellent precision by a trio of actresses.

In addition, food is a major ingredient in this highly conceptualized adaptation. Much of the text concerns itself with food

Sock Puppets Gone Wild

Everything you need to know about Harvey Finklestein's Sock Puppet Showgirls is contained in the title

Get Surreal

"The hunchback took in the pregnant girl to hide her from high school until the baby popped out." Author Aimee Bender certainly knows how to get your attention. In her short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, each story begins with an irreverent statement designed to keep you reading. Bender neatly twists a phrase, bends a meaning, and bam

An Eye for an Eye

Hanoch Levin is well regarded in Israel as an outspoken voice of the stage. The original 1970 production of his landmark work The Queen of the Bathtub, an invective against Golda Meir's administration, caused nightly demonstrations in Tel Aviv. The play was deemed too great a risk, and the Cameri Theater ended the run after only 18 performances. It is not often that a performance makes itself known outside a theater's walls; that it is allowed to preach to anyone other than its well-cultured choir. And yet the Personal Space Theatrics's performance of Levin's Murder seemed to me less a wake-up call about the continuing danger of Middle East violence than a parade of that violence being performed for shock value. Audience members surround the performance space on three sides, sitting on risers that allow us to not only see the actors who perform so close but also to witness each others' reactions to the violence being enacted. Four television screens, bolted from the ceiling, depict real moments of violence and unrest in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Whether the fault lies with the text or with Michael Wielselberg's adaptation and direction is not an easy question to answer. This production, however, did not seem to live up to the praise that Levin's text has generated. Rather, it glorifies a chain of violence that could have been mitigated by the under-explained "Messenger" whose voice interrupted many of the scenes.

But a much larger question must also be asked: What power does theater have to heal and teach when the violence that it stages is being enacted much more dramatically, much more consequentially on the streets of Basra and Baghdad? Murder is an assault on the senses in the name of what, exactly? Catharsis? Understanding? Betterment?

In the play, a young boy who seems to be a member of a local insurgency is hunted down and cornered by four American soldiers in an unidentified country. They taunt and beat him until he is left cowering on the ground, pleading for his father. He is stabbed in the back, his eye is plucked out, and the blood from deep within him oozes from his mouth. Capable of neither mercy nor self-control, the soldiers kill the boy just as his distressed father comes to look for him. "So now I'm left with the body," the father sobs in a moment of utter despair.

Years later, we find that the man is a seething victim of despair. He has become what the soldiers once were

Ladies Who Improv

What Women Talk About is the theatrical equivalent of throwing spaghetti against a wall and seeing what sticks. Rather than keeping to a script, its cast creates an introductory scenario ahead of time and then largely improvises the specific action and dialogue. The performances have an overarching plot line tying them together, but each evening lifts out of the episodic structure enough to stand out on its own. And while the walls of the Kraine Theater remain pasta-free, the place does resound with much earned laughter. Women centers around Lauren Seikaly as Bonnie, an in-control casting director, and her three less tightly wound friends: Katharine Heller as free spirit Sara, Brenna Palughi as the promiscuous Sophie, and Lynne Rosenberg as the self-deprecating Jean. The premise for this performance found the ladies preparing for a red carpet event devoted to Bonnie's client Jude Law. As they ready themselves for the evening, the actresses ad-lib away, discussing everything from Law's sexual proclivities to the art of female grooming, including plenty of swearing and scatological humor.

It's unclear exactly how much of the show is mapped out beforehand and how much develops during the run; the program says the actresses have created their characters over the course of the last year. But this quartet is quite a well-oiled machine. Despite the occasional awkward pause and several occasions where the actresses talk over one another, the cast is remarkably in sync. Heller in particular is a font of spontaneous energy. On average, she probably threw out more bons mots off the cuff than her fellow cast members did.

But each actress contributes admirably. In fact, while Seikaly seems to improvise less dialogue (though one throwaway line confusing rapper Kanye West with Cond

More Light! More Light!

I have a confession to make: this was my third time seeing Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Several years ago, as a teenager visiting Chicago, I saw the original Neo-Futurists troupe, which boasts the longest-running show in the Windy City. I was mesmerized. I adored the show the way other adolescents might idolize beatnik poetry, Japanese anim

Criminally Sane

If the Elizabethans had formulated nihilism, George F. Walker's Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline could very well have graced the stage 400 years prior to its original 1977 production. Set in late 19th-century Europe, the work is filled to the brim with revenge, rape (or attempted rape), swordplay, and the requisite pile of corpses. The only thing marking it as a thing of our time is the author's wicked awareness of the emptiness of all the machinations

Murder, He Wrote

William Shakespeare in blue jeans. Christopher Marlowe in a Superman T-shirt. All anachronisms aside, if you are a fan of either of these playwrights

Fractured Western

Anyone heading into The Great American Desert at the 78th Street Theatre Lab expecting standard cowboy fare will be in for a pleasant (and sadly, quite short) surprise. Be forewarned: this is not your father's western. And yet it does have something for everybody: slapstick comedy, poetry, frontier life, even a touch of the avant-garde. Director Garrett Ayers has adapted the play from a little-known 1961 work by journalist and author Joel Oppenheimer, but it isn't his first attempt at bringing Oppenheimer's work to life. In fact, the production marks Ayers's third outing with Desert. This makes sense, given that his company is named the TryTryAgain Theater.

Oppenheimer's plot itself is fairly minimal, which is fine, as it makes itself quite adaptable to many different performance options. The gist is this: three cowboys, played by Brian Frank (Old Cowboy), Ben Rosenblatt (Gunny), and Erin Gorski (Young Cowboy), are on the run. From what, it isn't made exactly clear. Meanwhile, a Greek chorus of sorts, consisting of Wyatt Earp (Christopher T. VanDijk), Wild Bill Hickock (Maurice Doggan), Billy the Kid (Andrew McLeod), and Doc Holliday (Brian Sell), comments on the action from further upstage.

Ayers cleverly integrates some vaudevillian tricks into Desert. For sound effects, he has the actors mimic the action while a fellow cast member on the side of the stage provides the actual sound. For example, when a character is shaving, another actor can be seen rubbing sandpaper. When one character pantomimes slapping another, an actor (usually Joe Jung or Emily Moulton) creates the sound. Ayers's antics extend to the visual as well, including a pie in the face.

But Ayers doesn't strictly opt for the broad and bawdy. He also finds many grace notes in Oppenheimer's work; he even opens the play with an Oppenheimer poem. And he also peppers the performance with historical "commercials" that fit the context of the action, including a treatise on the many languages spoken by American Indians and the use of the horse as a domesticated animal.

If Desert sounds as if it is all over the place, that's because it is. It's Ayers's well-heeled ensemble cast that grounds the work, which runs a very taut 50 minutes. All of them demonstrate a remarkable amount of energy and focus necessary to keep the show running. Frank and Rosenblatt, in particular, stand out from the pack, though everyone involved seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

Ayers has turned the show into a labor of love, creatively fusing old genres and styles into something fresh. Unconventional as it is, Desert should not be viewed as off-putting. This would seem to be the case, given the small audience turnout on the night of this performance. And that's a shame, because everyone else is missing out.

Tabloid Victim

It is a great testament to Nelson Rodrigues's brilliance that his writings remain as relevant today as they were when first written nearly half a century ago. In his play The Asphalt Kiss, set in 1960's Brazil, Rodrigues takes on bigotry and media corruption. Forty-five years later, his meditations on homophobia and the media's propensity toward sensationalism over journalistic integrity are still very pertinent in contemporary America. The Lord Strange Company, as part of a monthlong celebration of Rodrigues's works at 59E59 Theaters, embraces this relevance with its premiere of a compelling new adaptation of The Asphalt Kiss. Considered a seminal figure in the Brazilian theatrical canon, Rodrigues was seen as a successor to Eugene Ionesco and a precursor to Harold Pinter. Full of rapid-fire dialogue, his plays deal with the dark side of human existence, featuring larger-than-life characters haunted, even obsessed, by their inner demons. With The Asphalt Kiss he created the carioca tragedy, a play examining the lower classes of Brazilian life, an idea that was unheard-of before Rodrigues's works.

The Asphalt Kiss explores how a simple act of human kindness is perverted by a scandal-obsessed society. As Arandir (James Martinez) and his father-in-law Aprigio (Charles Turner) prepare to cross a busy intersection, a man is struck down by a bus. When good Samaritan Arandir fulfills the dying man's wish and kisses him, an unscrupulous reporter (Joe Capozzi) who witnesses the event turns the compassionate act into salacious front-page news. Tabloid journalism spins into overdrive, and Arandir's life is turned inside out as his friends and family slowly turn against him.

As Arandir, James Martinez is a revelation. Imbuing him with a quiet resolve, Martinez delivers a multilayered and thoughtful portrait of a truly good man trapped in an impossible situation as his world disintegrates. It's a raw, compelling performance of astonishing depth.

As Arandir's lovesick sister-in-law D

Under Terror

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something," says a gun-wielding terrorist to a trembling husband-and-wife catering team. "We are fighting to eliminate you." If this line sounds scary in a fictional context, you may not want to know that it is a direct quote from Hussein Masawi, the former leader of Hezbollah. In the pulse-pounding play The Caterers, playing at the 29th Street Repertory, fact and fiction are blended together as writer Jonathan Leaf reimagines the events in a 1977 hostage situation where Islamic terrorists stormed buildings in protest of a film called Mohammed, Messenger of God.

The Caterers opens in a tiny lobby two hours before this controversial movie is to premiere. Caterers David Weintraub (Ian Blackman) and his wife, Nina (Judith Hawking), bask in the preopening excitement, discussing their own dreams of screenwriting stardom while arranging bottles of wine and water on a linen-white table.

Suddenly, a bearded man in blue overalls barrels through the door wielding a gun. He immediately informs the Weintraubs that he is a terrorist, they are his hostages, and they can call him Mohammed. Moments later, the film's British writer, Warren Heath (Peter Reznikoff), enters, ecstatic to be at his premiere. By this point, the tension in the room is suffocating.

Warren is a self-centered man whose true nature is revealed when he takes a drastic measure to save his own life while putting someone else's at risk. David and Nina are a resourceful couple who attempt to talk their way out of the situation, even complimenting Mohammed by noting that he does not seem like a typical terrorist. Smirking, he replies, "You encounter us regularly?"

Mohammed is played frighteningly well by Brian Wallace, and the audience finds itself pulled into this claustrophobic lobby where you start to see every prop as a potential weapon. This is the type of story where you desperately look for a loophole, some small point of implausibility to assure you that this could not really happen. But Leaf has covered every base. There is no way to escape the room or to reason with a hateful, violent man who is willing to kill everyone in it.

The Caterers forces its audience to confront an issue they spend every day trying to avoid. Terrorists are the bogeymen in the closet, threatening to strike when we are rushing to a subway, starting a day of work, or even walking down the street. Moments before Nina and David were held at gunpoint, they were watering lobby plants. Before Warren was Mohammed's tortured captive, he was a wealthy, honored writer eagerly anticipating the opening of his film. Their situation is disturbing on many levels, the most being our deepest fear: that this can happen to anyone at any moment.

It is also important to note that Leaf does not take sides or preach politics in the play. World issues are occasionally discussed, but there is no Bush-bashing, no criticism or praise of the Iraq war, no attack on conservatives, and no praise for liberals. The core issue is Mohammed, Messenger of God, which the terrorists do not want people to see because they think the film will disgrace Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.

Whether it truly does, the terrorists will never know because they refuse to watch it. This is the issue Leaf stresses the most: the "conclusions people come to without looking at the evidence." People will lose their lives over the premiere of an unseen film, based entirely on paranoid speculation.

This tightly plotted play moves at a fast pace with no intermission to break up the suspense or spoil the illusion that you are trapped in the room. Because of this, the anxiety level can get quite high, and several audience members were crying or covering their mouths in horror. When the play ends, it is hard to shake the feeling that you have just spent the past 80 minutes locked in a room with a terrorist.

Laughs and Torments

A neurotic Jewish playwright, a crippled psychotic actress, and a disabled, gay black mime sit together in a German hospital, biding their time until a Nazi nurse puts them out of their misery. While this may sound like nothing more than the makings of a severely misconceived joke, these are the vital ingredients of Sam Forman's Krankenhaus Blues, a surrealist riff on disability, genocide, and show business. Forman's astonishingly fresh script

Of Excess and Incest

Behind its pomp, the Italian city of Parma festers and pullulates with lust and greed. Everyone has secrets, and is faithless to them. Violence, nihilism, and corruption rule the day; love itself is just a lubricant to more swiftly fetch one to the grave. The atmosphere of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, John Ford's 17th-century classic play, is like the black calk on a mirror's back, reflecting Romeo and Juliet's lightsome and impassioned Verona in macabre distortions. Whereas Romeo and Juliet were merely star-crossed lovers, the lovers in 'Tis Pity are double-crossed as well. As dramaturge Ben Nadler writes, "In Ford's play the nurse ends her life being tortured, the friar gives up on his young ward, the clown is wrongly assassinated, and the lovers just happen to be incestuous."

A bright young scholar, Giovanni, falls in love with his innocent and beautiful sister Annabella

Fertilize or Die

Please don't be put off by the title. Or the Japanese. Billed as an "eccentric live comedy," D.K. Hollywood's We Are the Sperm Cells makes a triumphant return to New York after a successful run last March. Vibrant and electric, hilarious and exciting, this production is one of the most artistically fulfilling and shamelessly enjoyable evenings of theater I've experienced in a long time. Every day, a narrator informs us, five million gallons of sperm are launched throughout the world. But where does it go? Here we follow 10 Boiler Maker sperm cells (the strong, courageous "Navy Seals" of sperm cells) on their fertilize-or-die quest to find an egg. While sperm cells have been voiced and animated elsewhere in pop culture (Woody Allen's 1970's comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask and the 1980's hit movie Look Who's Talking are two divergent examples), the creators of We Are the Sperm Cells present sperm embodied by humans