GUESS WHO'S BACK IN TOWN

The curtain opens on a dishevelled Bubba (Travis York) lying on the floor wearing only one orange sock, yards away from a contraption of bottles and gongs he has rigged to periodically go off and force him to pay attention. Pay attention to what, one might ask? And ask again when this play's rather arresting beginning begins to disintegrate into too many scenes with slow pacing and mundane dialogue before tying up all its plot elements neatly in the end.

(Pay attention to his research is the correct answer.)

Bubba's research involves investigating the history of ghosts in the town where he has grown up and still lives, albeit housebound and morose since his former girlfriend D'Lady (a crisp Sarah Kate Jackson) ran off three years ago.

As it turns out, once on the road, D'Lady also abandoned her partner-in-illicit-getaway and Bubba's best friend Jimmy (Mark David Watson). Abruptly ditched in Colorado, Jimmy then fell in love with a mystical woman living in a melon patch named Betsy (Keira Keeley), who has since hitchhiked to town on a mission to find Jimmy.

Other local inhabitants include community pillar and resident kill-joy Gloria (a dogged Marielle Heller) and Roy and Amory, a young married couple trying to conceive. Gloria eventually rescues the homeless waif Betsy (decidely lacking in any discernable skills beyond the melon patch) and showers passive-aggression on her newly dependent boarder.

D'Lady returns to town as the prodigal bad girl, stirring up layers of buried emotion in those who previously knew her. These scenes stood out because the tension during them was real, including an uneasy exchange between D'Lady and the married Roy (Ben Scaccia) and a heartfelt confrontation with Bubba.

However, one gets the impression that the playwright lacked faith that the story of a woman returning to face the wreckage of her past and the commotion she stirs up would be compelling enough without the extracurricular ghost activities. Unfortunately, these forays into the supernatural are confusing and distract from the main plot. The supernatural themes that continue throughout the play (imagined ghost sightings and the endless melon patch monologues) never really work except as a vague metaphor for people who find their way to this small town for resolution of some sort.

Solid direction and moments of honest acting by some of the cast (Travis York and a physically expressive Havilah Brewster as Amory in particular) helped to overcome the more confusing etheral elements. Yet, despite its promising patches, the play did not succeed in commanding my sustained attention.

“On the piano top, a nest of souvenirs...”

The Piano Teacher offers a portrait of one of “those brave ladies who taught us/ So much of art, and stepped off to their doom,” in the words of the late poet Donald Justice. Julia Cho, the author of this successful play, seems almost to have borrowed her characters, plot and atmosphere from Justice’s poetry and memoir about his childhood piano teachers; the following one in particular: On the piano top, A nest of souvenirs: paper Flowers, old programs, a broken fan, Like a bird’s broken wing. —And sometimes Mr. L. himself Comes back, recurring, like a dream. He brings Real flowers. Thin, Demanding, his voice soars after dark In the old opera between them. But no one sees the blows, only An occasional powdered bruise, Genteel.

The Piano Teacher is the story of just such a couple, as told by the surviving wife, Mrs. K, a lonely, widowed, retired piano teacher. (Donald Justice’s work also features a Mrs. K.) Luminously played by Elizabeth Franz, Mrs. K addresses the audience so intimately that she actually offers cookies to each person in the front row. We are enveloped in her warm, grandmotherly lap, drawn into the heart of her cozy home so effectively that we nearly fall asleep there, lulled by her gentle voice telling her gentle, slightly boring, slightly formulaic story. The story of a simple piano teacher devoted to each of her sweet but ordinary students; only one of which had talent amounting to genius... and he—here, at the first intimation of complexity, Mrs. K breaks off and stoutly returns to her rosier memories.

When complexity—human cruelty—finally does enter the stage, the effect strains the balance of the play’s mood and plot. Suddenly this is a play dedicated to undermining audience expectations of sensationalist drama: hints of deeply buried pedophilia eventually add to up a more ingenious form of molestation.

Taken in sum, it’s an effective story and Kate Whoriskey’s direction and Derek McLane’s scenic design bring it to life beautifully. The extraordinary Elizabeth Franz bears most of the responsibility and can enjoy full credit in what amounts to a tour de force one woman show for much of the play. Carmen M. Herlihy adds a terrific dose of vitality as a grown-up former student and provides the first allusions to the troubled past with fine subtlety.

When trouble makes its full appearance, it is in the person of Michael, played by John Boyd. Michael was Mrs. K’s lone pupil of genius and he returns to haunt her with terrible revelations about her late husband. It’s a highly demanding role, not least because of its brevity. Mr. Boyd’s performance of the disturbed young man borders on the formulaic: a manic yet formal delivery and overstimulated hands. This would amount to overkill except that his scarcely contained physicality threatens a bodily attack on Mrs. K—an attack which never comes. Here again, the audience experiences a healthy frustration of Hollywood expectations.

In the end, The Piano Teacher plays best in retrospect, where we can savor the extraordinary performances and the fine plot tensions at our own pace.

Substantial Pleasures

The Constant Couple is a constant delight. The Pearl Theater Company’s production of George Farquhar’s turn of the 18th century play presents a perfect example of the playwright’s lines,“What more can most substantial Pleasures boast Than Joy when present, Memory when past?”

This is a play that offers laugh-out-loud entertainment, provocative themes and terrific performances of both comedic theater and period music, all of which echo for days like a fetching melody.

George Farquhar’s youthful comedy invites us into a London teeming with colorful characters. Steadfast Colonel Standard wants nothing more than to win the charming Lady Lurewell. But his way is littered with scheming rivals, troublesome fops, and bumbling rustics, all of whom seem to have some claim on his lady love. Combining all the wicked joy of the jaded Restoration stage with the “novel” notion that faithfulness and integrity might have their uses too, The Constant Couple illuminates a world merrily careening between deceit and honesty, cynicism and hope—between the follies of the past, and the glorious possibilities of the future.

The quality of the production is so uniformly high, it’s not easy to single out specific scenes. The action unfolds in brilliantly flashing intercut scenes that never allow our attention to flag (although the sum is a bit too long, more on this below). Director Jean Randich and the production staff have collaborated in crafting an ideal context for the encounter of outstanding performances. Among them, a few deserve special attention.

Eduardo Placer’s performance of Clincher, a purple-wigged fop, is utterly unforgettable. It’s a simply hilarious role and yet Mr. Placer injects a strange complexity through his unusual physical command and delicate timing that is as unsettling as it is funny.

Bradford Cover as Sir Harry Wildair is everything we want from a pampered gentleman hedonist: he delivers brilliant epigrams and strikes elegant yet foolish poses as if he were born to them. What a chin—and libido—leads this character in and out of trouble.

Rachel Botchan’s Lady Lurewell is a perfect counterpart to Sir Harry: her clever elegance is as deftly performed by her delicate hands and heaving bust as by her musical oration. David L. Townsend and Dominic Cuskern offer wonderful characters and John Pasha delivers a convincing, if somewhat stilted, hero of the heart. Finally, Jolly Abraham’s Angelica manages a fine balance between romantic idealism and moral clear-sightedness.

The supporting cast is consistently strong and the musical interludes are exquisite.

The only complaint this reviewer has to lodge concerns the length of the production. I wonder whether or not the absence of a running time in any of the PR materials is intentional. It clocks in at more than two and a half hours and I think that some minor editing would benefit the whole.

However, any such objection to a play’s length might run counter to The Pearl’s irreplaceable mission to bring classical theater to contemporary audiences. And so, as I pointed out to my 14-year-old date, my goddaughter, we can trust this theater company’s decisions to render a fully authentic experience and thus focus our 21st century attention spans on something longer than a Hollywood movie.

Speaking of 14-year-olds, The Constant Couple is a great family bet, although audiences should be prepared for some robust bawdiness. When the pawing of certain female (or apparently female) characters elicited a few “ewws” from my goddaughter, I enjoyed a discomfort I never see her experience when she watches the most explicit music videos!

Hearts of Darkness

Noah Haidle’s Rag and Bone derives its title from the concluding lines of William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”: Now that my ladder’s gone,

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

The poem—the last stanza is an epigraph in the printed script—is about an artist whose creative juices have deserted him (the circus animals are a metaphor). Rag and Bone, a goulash of surrealism, fantasy, and absurdism, sporadically amusing and often confusing, feels like a dramatic version of an artist floundering for inspiration.

The central characters are George (Michael Chernus) and his brother Jeff, who run a ladder store. Jeff is enthusiastic about his work in an Up with People way. “I could sell a picture book to a blind man,” he tells George—a line that unfortunately rings false, since the dim but sweet-natured Jeff is too kind to do anything of the sort. Luckily, Matthew Stadelmann invests the role with a disarming innocence that makes Jeff the most sympathetic character.

George, meanwhile, is using the ladder store as a cover for selling illegally harvested hearts; he has told the gullible Jeff that they’re “widgets.” They’re quality hearts too: a pediatrician, a kindergarten teacher. Customers can even try them out. George performs the transplants himself, with the panache of Sweeney Todd—spasms of violence staged with arching spurts of blood by Sam Gold.

The latest person whose heart George has seized is a Poet (Henry Stram, chest bandaged bloodily, looking bewildered at his continued consciousness). He is befriended by a Hooker (Deirdre O’Connell, exuding shopworn sensuality and warmth) with a heart of you-know-what. The Poet and Hooker eventually cross paths with a Millionaire (David Wohl) dressed in top hat and tails, who wants a new ticker. “I can buy anything in the world but I can’t feel anything,” he tells George. “I want to feel the world, not just own it.”

Haidle’s use of archetypes is puzzling, and Gold’s production doesn’t clarify what the dramatist is getting at. Designer Oana Botez-Ban has decided the dress code for Millionaires is top hat and tails, but that also makes him look like a ringmaster—perhaps a private visual reference to Yeats’s poem?

Meanwhile, the Hooker's Pimp, who also goes by the nickname T-Bone, complains of being too kind-hearted for his business—even when he’s just smacked someone. Kevin Jackson deftly plays T-Bone’s surliness with just enough lack of conviction, but the towering black actor is flashily dressed by Botez-Ban in a white suit and hat, and plentiful gold chains. Unfortunately, among all the archetypes, a gaudily clad black man as Pimp reeks of bad taste.

Clearly the characters are all trying to find their way, and all are betrayed in some sense by their hearts, old and new. It’s unfortunate that Eric Shim’s sound design has percussion effect (perhaps a tympani) striking whenever one character punches another, effectively treating them as cartoons, since the actors manage on their own to keep a recognizable humanity in their character types.

Haidle’s talent for comic dialogue works only fitfully in this bittersweet work. One of the choicer exchanges occurs when George, who has kept his late mother’s heart in a cooler, wants a transplant of that heart. “The only problem is, I don’t know how to perform heart surgery,” says Jeff. Replies George: “I’ll talk you through it.”

But when the post-operative George, stocky and bearded, begins wearing a housedress and adopting his late mother’s alcoholism and smoking habits, it’s impossible to figure out what the point is. Or, at least, if there is a point that isn’t as obvious as: Love is unpredictable. Money can’t buy happiness. The heart betrays us all. Life is a bitch.

Survivors

Sara Falles does not fit the stereotype of an abused woman; in fact, she seems the least likely candidate to fall into such a relationship. She is strong, determined and unafraid to challenge her husband when she feels he is wrong. Playwright Jay Hanagan’s decision to focus on an abused woman with a clear sense of self-worth gives his play Softly Sara Falls a new and important take on the issue of domestic abuse. Softly Sara Falls is produced by Wizard Oil Productions, a relatively new company created to increase awareness of a variety of social issues. Domestic abuse is certainly a worthy issue of focus, though arguably an obvious one. Fortunately, the play does not merely state that Domestic Abuse Is Bad. Instead, it asks us a question that we do not consider often: How many times have you looked into the face of an abused person and not realized it?

The irony in Hanagan’s play is that even people who are abused miss the warning signs in others. The story does not focus on one suffering person, but several suffering people, all trying to avoid their crippling inner demons by concentrating solely on the future and never looking back.

A goofy young man named Reed (Michael Mattie) has a crush on Sara (Cecil Powell) but feels the wall she has put between them. He seems to always be happy, but the smile strains when the conversation turns to questions of his past. Sara’s best friend, Tanys, acts flippant and cute when she shows up at Sara’s house in cloud patterned pajamas hugging a bowl of popcorn to her chest for their big Saturday movie night. However, when Sara casually asks about the details of her relationship, she suspiciously clams up.

Even the antagonist Grant (Jonathan Ledoux) has a shady back-story, though the play does not use it to excuse his actions, only explain them. Sara knows from the beginning that her husband has skeletons in his closet; specifically a scarcely mentioned father who Grant’s siblings claim was prone to abuse. She urges Grant to confront these feelings rather than keeping them locked up inside, not realizing that she is lovingly encouraging years of repressed anger and aggression to rise to the surface.

Hanagan enhances this story by telling it in a non-linear format. Early in the plot Sara calls an advice hotline and narrates her story on-air as we watch it unfold before us. She starts with happy times, jumps to bad ones, and then switches back to the way things are now.

This forces Powell to run through a gamut of emotions ranging in extremes from frightened spouse to silly, playful friend. One scene ends with her cowering on the floor and another begins with her sitting poised and confident in a chair seeming sure that she has nailed a job interview. But in all scenes Powell comes across as a survivor, not a victim. There is a great moment where Grant pleads with Sara for a minute of her time when she tells him, in a controlled, furious voice, “No! Not even a second.”

Sara does not look like the face of abuse and she does not speak like a woman who would allow a man to abuse her, but it is important to acknowledge that her story is still plausible. All too often abuse is perceived to be written all over someone’s face in bruised lips and darkened eyes, but not all signs are so easy to read. Sometimes you find it in a bright, young woman who can speak enthusiastically of her future but never of her past.

Job Perks

Fans of bawdy humor, unite! Robert Farquhar’s Bad Jazz, at the Ohio Theater, pivots around a rather raunchy premise: Natasha (Marin Ireland) is an actress, and her director, Gavin (Rob Campbell), wants her to engage in an actual act of oral sex onstage instead of a stimulated one. Far from sensationalistic, however, Farquhar’s play uses this move as a starting point to address the blurry line between performance and reality. As Jazz unfolds, the audience is often unsure whether the actors are playing characters in real life, the play within the play, or some layer in between. In this way, Jazz is not unlike Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, similarly structured and posing similar questions. But is this play the real thing? That answer is yes, though perhaps not an unequivocal one. Jazz, directed by Trip Cullman, is not a play for everyone, as one devilish scene early on makes patently clear. Jazz may not be a dirty play but it is certainly an adult one. Though her boyfriend, Ben (Darren Goldstein) objects, Natasha opts to go on with the performance. What follows is the birth of a tangled relationship between her and co-star Danny (Ryan O’Nan) that bleeds on- and off-stage, leaving Farquhar’s audience to guess as to what exactly is going on. Are Natasha and Ben carrying on in real life or just in character? When are they themselves and when are they performing?

What makes Jazz so strong is that Farquhar never cowers behind his premise; he plays both the comedic and dramatic moments straight rather than opting for low-brow humor or self-referential witticisms. Ireland does a masterful job of shading in Natasha, making her sensual, determined and fragile with the right combination of both forced and tentative vocal delivery and posture. What is more, we get to see her evolve over the course of the show from naïve actress to experienced – and slightly bruised – lover. O’Nan, too, is fully committed. Ben is a physically demanding role, portraying coitus (the sex scenes are carefully, if perhaps not discretely, choreographed) and his bumbling character’s more nervous tics. Goldstein, too, is a forceful presence, one that I wish had appeared more often in Jazz.

All of the actors refrain from tongue-in-cheek banter, particularly Gavin. As the director with demons of his own, he is the catalyst for all of the action in the play. He constantly pushes the boundaries between Ben and Natasha’s relationship (and in doing so, their relations as well), stemming from his own frenzied pathos. As the play moves on, we learn far more about his self-hatred, particularly in a central scene involving rent-boy Ewan (Colby Chambers) that is as amusing as it is ultimately horrific. Susie Pourfar also plays several roles, most notably as the playwright of the play-within-a-play, but, unfortunately, none of them are sufficiently developed. I, for one, was left wondering what exactly troubled her.

Cullum also makes one tactical error in staging this two-hour play without an intermission. I think it would have helped audiences digest the plot without destroying its momentum, and his actors are so reliable that they could have helped the audience dive right back into the material. Bart Fassbender’s music and sound design and Dane Laffrey’s costuming choices are also to be commended.

For the most part, however, Farquhar’s oddball plotting results in a tantalizing evening that asks many questions about the invasive role of performance in an actor’s life. The same question can be posed as to the effect of any kind of art in any artist’s life. That he allows his audience to ponder these questions without directly providing an answer is Farquhar’s greatest feat of all.

Terrorism Reaches Thebes

Take a wild guess which world leader this line describes: “His brilliant emptiness shines throughout the land.” Well, alright, it could be a great number of them, but New Moon Rep and Roust Theatre Company’s I Kreon leaves no room for doubt which W we’re talking about. The play focuses on one of the most important questions that the War on Terror has brought to the forefront – how must we treat our enemies? Between Guantanamo and Saddam Hussein’s ugly end, most Americans have this question floating around the landscape of their political consciousness, and adapter-director Aole T. Miller does well to bring his feelings on the topic into the shared space of the theater. However, this adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, one of our most basic reference points in creating political theater, ultimately chooses a tactic of mocking over serious debate. By the time Kreon, the thinly veiled equivalent to our own authoritarian leader, comes around to realize the error of his dogmatic ways, it is too late for him to rectify his actions. At that same point in I Kreon it is already too late for the talented company to produce a lasting impression on its audience.

As the title suggests, the production focuses not on Antigone (Claire Siebers), but on her uncle, king Kreon (played with an intelligent flare by James Luse). To a modern audience Kreon’s actions seem debatable at best. He refuses burial rights to his own son because he feels that he betrayed the homeland, in this adaptation by attacking and destroying two Theban towers. Kreon would rather leave Polynices’ body to the dogs. In one of the many strong lines spoken by the masked Chorus, Miller hints at the comparison he is drawing between the death of Polynices and that of Saddam Hussein: “What honor is there in killing a man after death?” the Chorus asks the obstinate king.

The Chorus, with their touching repetition of poetry, accompanied by the haunting recorded soundscape of the piece, do manage to provide some emotional depth to the production. Their fine Balinese masks and fluid movement conjure some of the Greek spirit of the play. But the adaptation’s “Greekness” - and while aiming to please a twenty first century audience, I Kreon definitely attempts to find a fifth century BC Athenian vibe - falls short with its main exploration, that of the character of Kreon. Where Sophocles gave the hard lined king un-ignorable strength of argument, Miller gives him laugh lines taken from various twentieth century villains. It is undeniably funny to watch James Luse's odd triple amalgamation of King Kreon, Dr. Evil and George W. spew lines such as "There is no compromise between the rights of slaves and those who rule the modern world." However, Antigone survived this long, and indeed is one of the classics that most interests modern audiences (this is at least the third production of the play this year in New York alone) because of the dual nature of the play. It is both subversive and traditional. It presents the establishment’s point of view while questioning it in the deepest possible way. It thrives on the tension between right and wrong, and on the complexity of every political act. This production’s great need to take a stand chokes the complexity out of the classic, and presents Kreon alone with the mess he created and deserves. It is for this reason that the emotions never quite grip, even when he finally does see that he brought disaster on himself, his family and his country.

The attempt to use a classic in order to let out a loud cry in opposition to our present political situation is to be applauded, as is the playful theatricality, the tasteful design (set and costumes by Shana Mckay Burns, lighting by Andrew D. Smith) and the well-rounded ensemble. But when your villain does not seduce you with his arguments, watching his downfall will not be the tragic experience Antigone was written to be.

Still Not Ready for Prime Time Players

The creators of spurn do at least two things right: they utilize films between set changes and they keep their sketch comedy show brief. Sketch comedy is not an easy art to master. spurn tries its best but, like other troupes before it, frequently comes up short. spurn has been together since 2001; this is the group’s tenth installment. The actors, particularly Greg London and Lara Jane Dunatov, are polished and intrepid, but their shine is repeatedly dulled by mediocre writing.

One gets the sense that the spurn creators really, really, really once wanted to work on Saturday Night Live; their whole act owes deeply to the legendary show. spurn’s sketches are at least as good as the current crop of SNL ones. However, since the experience of watching SNL right now is one of hoping desperately for just one gem in a growing pile of forgettable clunkers, that's not saying much. SNL is uneven at best and so, unfortunately, is spurn.

Several of the eight sketches fall flat because they are simply vulgar and hackneyed. Although the sketches average only five to seven minutes in length, during several of them I caught myself anticipating the endings, and wondering what the next one would bring. Many of the skits elicited curiously loud guffaws and hoots from a few members of the audience and, at times, I wondered if they were shills. After all, how loud can one laugh at punch lines about necrophilia and the word “vagina?”

Hard core sketch comedy fans will enjoy the show's fast pace and crispness. Others might wonder how it differs from a typical collegiate comedy revue. spurn shows flashes of brilliance; thy just don't come frequently enough. One of the stronger skits is “am i right, fellas?” in which four female college dorm mates try to pull off a television show about feminism. One of the cast members memorably refers to it as “The View with working ovaries.” The “show” predictably turns out to be anything but feminist and soon devolves into bickering among the cast members, one of whom later flees in tears after her mother calls the studio to tell her she has cankles. Another imaginative sketch is the final one, “shooters,” in which three guys at a TGIF’s bar compete to see who can insult girls the most quickly. One of them gets more than he bargained for, as the other two bolt in horror.

Another strong feature of the show was the use of inter-sketch films, a smart idea that alleviates the awkwardness of frequent set changes. One of the sharpest was “20th Century Fops,” a hilarious recurring bit about two lecherous eighteenth century dandies trying to make it in the modern world. The sketch is introduced by a classical music rendition of The Doors’ “Twentieth Century Fox.” The antiquated humor is absurd and the idea original. spurn’s videos are already big hits on YouTube and its own podcasts. Not all the films are equally clever, however: “Rape Lazer” is simply lame and offensive. spurn wants to offend, to push the envelope. That can be a good thing, but spurn too often takes an easy prurient path that results in the “been there, done that” kind of sketch that leaves one laughing only briefly. Well, maybe not really laughing—more like chuckling. I recommend this for folks looking for a quick evening of giggles and for those loyalists who are still fans of SNL.

Class dissed and dismissed

If a professor so intolerant that his rage is literally murderous doesn’t sound like the subject of comedy, then you aren’t living in the world of Eugène Ionesco. Enthusiastically residing in this deranged place are the cast of and the creative team behind The Collective’s production of Ionesco’s play, The Lesson . With the actors’ giddy insanity, the play becomes a comedy of ridiculous proportions that, while excessive compared to the wit of Ionesco’s text, effectively conveys his criticisms. By downplaying the darker notes, this production limits the social commentary in a play that mocks pedants. The Lesson is an increasingly bizarre exchange between an egomaniacal professor and his young student. A simple lesson turns malicious when the pupil has difficulty understanding her teacher. With characteristically destructive arrogance, the Professor dismisses his maid’s warning: “philology leads to calamity.” The Collective cheekily begins the show saying, “some people never learn.”

The production is enjoyable largely because of the hilarious portrayals by a talented cast, particularly Robert Grant as the Professor. Grant’s towering stature is a funny joke in itself (one echoed in the large shadows he casts on a gray wall). From the moment he enters the stage through a door frame that barely accommodates him, clad in knee-high black boots and a military jacket, he draws laughs. The decision to dress the Professor in military getup, instead of Ionesco’s requested cloak and skullcap, shifts the play’s indictment of power from the religious to the political. It is also a more blunt parody of a certain personality type.

The Professor dwarfs his pupil, played by the petite actress Rachelle Wintzen, dressed in a schoolgirl’s perversely sexual outfit. Initially, a strange dynamic sets the pair on equal footing—they are both very awkward—but the Professor’s dominance is soon clear. In the wake of his deep Germanic voice (the kind often used when mocking academics), the pupil’s squeaks sound more childish. From the start the Professor’s intentions seem less than pure; he rubs his hands like someone anticipating an acquisition.

Though the production attempts to work with the play’s sexual insinuations, given the over-the-top comical performances, the Professor’s sexual advances are funny rather than lewd. Instead, Grant’s exaggerated gestures and voice highlight his character’s immaturity and impetuousness. His relationship with his maid, played by Elizabeth Steinhart, similarly demonstrates his weaknesses. Though Steinhart is too young and attractive to be a matronly servant, her booming voice matches Grant’s, and she holds her own. Steinhart does a fine job with a character whose motivation is the least understandable. The maid is the only one who relates cause and effect, but she does not stop calamity.

The play takes a dark turn when the pupil begins to suffer from a toothache. The Professor grows louder and more threatening as the pupil becomes meeker and wearier. The lesson climaxes when his rage, combined with his exhilaration, lead him to stab his pupil. During this exchange the stage lighting (by Randy Harmon) assumes a more lurid vibrancy. In this light, the tension and speed of the escalating dialog become palpable; the sweat on the Professor’s brow glistens, as do his large teeth and wild eyes. When he releases his rage by striking the student, it is shocking, but expected.

The Professor’s transformation is strange in Ionesco’s play, but the turn in this production is less comprehensible. Since the overall tone is light, the Professor is never sinister, and his final actions seem too impossible to be taken seriously. Sometimes the production seems hesitant to explore the character’s darker qualities. For example, whereas Ionesco calls for the Professor to twist his pupil’s wrist, The Collective’s bouncy Professor timidly grabs her ponytail.

The humorous interpretations of the cast are reinforced by Jessica Forsythe’s direction. Forsythe uses the sitting and rising of the Professor and pupil to mimic the seesawing shifts in power. Mostly, she allows Grant to dominate the stage, as he does the lesson. Additionally, Forsythe wisely uses a sparse set. The large table/desk presents a formidable obstacle between the professor and his pupil, and acts as a second stage and prop. In one scene, when his student correctly answers a series of questions, the Professor grasps one end of the table with exceeding exhilaration, while at the other end she shrieks with corresponding excitement.

As strange as the dialog and plot often seem, the appearance of a Nazi armband is a reminder that a familiar world can be just as senselessly brutal. In the microcosm of the Professor’s apartment his behavior is comical, but for a society that laughs at his intolerance the implications of the unlearned lesson are disquieting. Even if such dark themes are only touched upon in this production, Grant’s performance alone makes the show worth watching. Considering that The Lesson is The Collective’s first production, it’s exciting to think about how the group will apply such fierce energy to other works.

Shock and Words

What else can be done with sex on the stage? Over the years, former “codes” about and attitudes towards sex have slowly fallen away or changed, leaving the modern stage an open playground for whatever sort of coupling a theater company or director can imagine. It seems nothing can generate a reaction of interest or wonder concerning sex anymore. Werner Schwab's The Round of Pleasure , based on Arthur Schnitzler's scandalous, banned (in 1920) play La Ronde , takes sex to a new place, a place where sex becomes almost irrelevant. La Ronde was composed of ten scenes, in which five men and five women swapped sexual partners, passing syphilis to each other. The structure of The Round of Pleasure mimics that of its precursor, although syphilis is gone, replaced by a chunky language and a sense of divorce, both among the ten characters and ultimately in the audience. The characters in Schwab's play wear either screw off or otherwise detachable sex organs. Occasionally, two characters will have sex while standing on opposite ends of the stage, each quaking and shaking in such a way that, divorced from the act associated with it, their actions become unnerving. The disembodied, dislocated couplings provide a backdrop for a play that shakes the conventions of its society, without rising to the point of critiquing it.

Schwab's characters speak a language which is at once familiar and unfamiliar. Michael Mitchell's translation takes into account the numerous grammatical mistakes, made up words (German being a language in which one can take several nouns, attach them to each other, thus and create a new compound), and archaisms found in Schwab's German. On stage, it is unclear whether the characters know what they are saying or not, and this is intentional. It is also occasionally difficult to make out what the characters are saying. Yet, while the words may sometimes float by unparsed, the incomprehensibility adds to the play instead of detracting from it. What the characters say is not as important as how they say it or what they are doing while they say it.

As the words pour almost controllably out of the characters' mouths, it is clear what it is each wishes to achieve in their encounters with one another. Power lies at the base of each coupling. A prostitute convinces an executive that her services are on the house and then, after the deed is done, expects payment. A landlord shoves his tenant's head under water, sticks his penis in her underwear, and afterwards her only response is “Ok, but no water at the next performance.” Do these people enjoy their sexual liaisons? The answer seems irrelevant.

Ildiko Nemeth's direction and Julie Atlas Muz's choreography ensure that meaning is conveyed at all times. Movement based interludes show the characters preparing and unpreparing for their scenes. The opening features the entire cast donning their genitalia and various costumes, over top of a basic white uniform, covered in white ribbons, which suggests at once an image of both straitjackets and zombies.

Despite its rather crass theme and crude language, a sense of beauty emanates from the production. The set, designed by Ms. Nemeth, Jessica Sofia Mitrani, and Joel Grossman, literally sparkles. Luxurious fabrics are draped across a bed stage right, and dragged across stage, draped over various characters as the scenes change. Over top of their white unitards, the women wear gold accented dresses or silky black lace.

The various visual and aural elements of The Round of Pleasure assure an enjoyable show for anyone seeking an evening of sensory stimulation. In the end, the show is not so much about sex as about the ways in which people manipulate and are manipulated, whether by other people or by the words they are forced to use.

Rock On

Arpeggio is not a musical, it is a “play with music,” and yes, there is a difference. In a musical the characters break into song, in Arpeggio they break into rock ballads created by Alec Bridges. The play aspects demand that the audiences stay quietly in their seats, applauding respectfully when appropriate. The musical aspects urge the audience to stand, scream and whistle, especially towards the end when the onstage band turns the show into a rock concert. Still, referring to David Stalling’s Arpeggio as a play with music would only be acknowledging what it is on the surface, and if there is anything this story teaches you, it is that one must look below the surface. At its heart, Arpeggio is a tight, well-plotted psychological thriller in the same vein as nail-biting films, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female.

The play begins in a tiny New York City apartment decorated with only a couch, table, and bookcase, as the current owner, Zeb (Andy Travis) does not believe in TV’s, stereos or any other appliances that create noise. His little monastery is shattered when his new room mate Gerry (Allison Ikin) moves in with boxes of CD’s featuring her favorite male vocalist Tobin Grey (Jonathan Albert). Gerry owns dozens of life-sized Tobin Grey posters and an extensive collection of audio disks she recorded at each of his many concerts. But her obsession is more than just a crush; Gerry claims to be Tobin Grey’s secret girlfriend, explaining that he asked her to move to New York to be closer to him.

Ikin is perfectly cast as the ideal roommate. She has a shy, disarming smile, a cute bobbing ponytail, and an easy-going, laid back manner. Even as her darker side is slowly revealed, Ikin manages to preserve Gerry’s innocent, girlish charm, making her nearly impossible to distrust.

Gerry’s celebrity heartthrob, Tobin Grey, is more than just a poster in this plot. He shows up in person, not as a narcissistic celebrity, but as a regular guy who just likes making music. This rocker has a gentler side, which he demonstrates in a speech about the misconceptions his female fan base have of him. He sounds more sad than pleased to admit that he breaks a lot of hearts when young girls mistakenly believe he is looking at them when he performs his romantic ballads live.

We learn that Tobin Grey’s greatest talent is his ability to execute arpeggio notes on his guitar. Arpeggio, Gerry explains to us, is a musical term that refers to single notes being played in quick succession rather than all at once in a chord. When you play the notes separately you can hear the special sound that each one makes. Play them in a chord and the notes lose their unique, individual quality.

This explains why we do not see Gerry’s true nature until her world has crumbled around her. She uses Zeb’s hectic circle of friends and lovers to disguise her real self, but as this group dissolves so does her protection. When Gerry finally goes solo she is surrounded by a band, under a spotlight, and in front of a microphone where she delivers a somber, beautiful rock ballad just as powerful as the one she idolizes Tobin Grey for singing.

Apreggio may not be strictly about the music, but Stallings uses it in all the right ways to enhance the plot. The songs do not puncture the story but rather weave naturally into the fabric of its central themes and characters. Integrating a rock soundtrack into a psychological thriller is an ambitious combination, but it works -- except for the fact that you won’t know whether to leave the theatre discussing the story or jumping out of your seat to dance to its final notes.

Richard Reflects, Brilliantly

"I do mistake my person all this while," the future King Richard III (Michael Cumpsty) reflects after railroading his murder victim's wife into marrying him literally over her husband's dead body. "Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, / That I may see my shadow as I pass." Renaissance superstition held that devils cast no shadow, so Richard needs a mirror to assure himself that he is not really a devil. In Classic Stage Company's production of Richard III, Cumpsty's Richard's reflections are brilliant, in a variety of ways. The set, by frequent Kulick collaborator Mark Wendland, literally surrounds Shakespeare's famous sociopath with illuminated looking-glasses. The performance space is paneled with mirrors and illuminated by gigantic crystal chandeliers, which are reflected in both the mirrors and a gleaming, slick floor. Oana Botez-Ban's costumes combine sleek, timeless shapes with evocative colors. Groups are color-coded. For example, the princes in yellow; Richard's brothers and sister-in-law wear blue. The bereaved women who blame Richard for their menfolks' deaths wear shiny black-and-grey gowns that capture and reflect the chandeliers' glaring light. Despite being surrounded by reflective surfaces, however, Cumpsty's Richard and the court strenuously try to avoid seeing themselves as they are.

Cumpsty and Kulick's informed, unpretentious directing makes this a non-patronizingly accessibleRichard. Hand gestures accentuate a few of the script's most opaque archaisms, such as "moiety,'' and when the dialogue mentions offstage characters, we see them. For example, the play opens with Richard facing the upstage mirrors, and turning to contemplate his brother Edward IV, who stands frozen, also reflected, wearing the crown and embracing a red-velvet-garbed mistress.

When Richard says that his "winter" is "made glorious by this noble son of York," he gestures to his brother. Later, when Edward mourns their middle brother, Clarence, murdered at his apparent demand by Richard's treachery, the king crosses to the "Tower" mid-speech and embraces his dead sibling, while the court looks on.

Cumpsty plays Richard as a believable three-dimensional being, not a snarling caricature. His disarming affability seems dangerously genuine. Cumpsty’s casual, chatty delivery of the early soliloquies is more compelling than Sir Ian McKellen’s famous interpretation in Richard Loncraine’s 1995 film, and makes room for a huge change in persona when Richard finally lets his act fall apart.

Cumpsty’s Richard jokes with his enemies, and induces the audience to brittle nervous laughter. In one of the staging's most psychologically spot-on moments, Richard III presents his grieving sister-in-law, whose brothers and sons he has killed, with his superficially charming request to marry her one remaining child. Helpless and asked for a response, she laughs -- as in Chekhov's phrase -- through tears. Her reaction for once exposes Richard's absurdity. It is a laugh of dissent.

Among a strong cast, the other standout performance besides Cumpsty's is that of another bereaved dissenter, the former Queen Margaret, as played by Roberta Maxwell. Marching across the space like a general on the battlefield and delivering her "prophecies" with biting, confident lucidity, Maxwell reveals "Mad" Margaret as a surprisingly sane woman in a mad world.

Only the "prophetess" Margaret knows the real extent of Richard's destructive potential. When the women of the court crawl to her, demanding to learn how to "curse,'' Margaret gives us a haunted but patient orator and mentor figure. Maxwell's Margaret and Cumpsty's Richard are equals and opposites. Once as ruthless as him, she now sees herself in him as if in a carnival trick-mirror.

One weak point was the decision to distribute flags printed with Richard's insignia, a white boar, to the audience during Richard's election by the people of London. The passing of bunches of flags from spectators on the aisles to the middles of the rows was a distracting hassle. In order to participate in the flag brigade, this reviewer had to look away from the stage. While gazing at fellow spectators to see if any concerned citizens would refuse to hail Richard of Gloucester (yes, some did) this reviewer momentarily paid no attention to the impassioned speech that Buckingham (Michael Potts) was giving to the London populace. Directors as genuinely innovative as Kulick and Cumpsty need not rely on gimmicks.

Cumpsty and Kulick’s Richard III is the first production in Classic Stage Company’s Fortieth Anniversary Season. It will be a hard act to follow, but demonstrates why, unlike Richard, Classic Stage Company has enjoyed such a long and happy reign.

No Winners Here

“It’s so cutting edge it’s practically illegal,” one character says of the play they’re working on in Bingo With the Indians. “It’s like diamond-edged, Mom. That’s about as close as you can get to naming it.” Bingo, written and directed by Adam Rapp, indeed deserves credit for its bold style. The problem with plays that have edge, however, is that they can occasionally leap off them. With all its unbridled electricity, Bingo runs in many directions without ultimately choosing one.

The play is powerfully aggressive in every way. Its language revolves around cruel fighting or chilling manipulation, its movement is explosively violent, and its characters are malicious to the core. In fact, Bingo has such a confrontational tone that it occasionally feels like a direct assault on the audience. This is not unintentional. As the plot centers on three members of a struggling East Village theater company, the line between reality and drama is consistently blurred.

The “company” – director Dee, actor Stash, and stage manager Wilson – are trying to scrounge some funds for their latest production. Their solution: steal the cash from a small-town New England bingo game. The New Yorkers don’t take kindly to the local atmosphere and despise the theatrically impaired townies.

The unfortunate outsider who comes into their motel room is Steve, a sheepish 19-year-old whose parents own the place. He, it turns out, is “secretly interested” in theater and dreams of living in the big city like his visitors. Stash is merciless toward Steve, taunting him, roughing him up, and eventually stealing his watch.

The poor teen is so lonely that he still craves his bullies’ friendship. As Steve, Evan Enderle is absolutely fantastic. Thanks to Enderle’s perfect body language (hunched shoulders, anxious bouncing) and tone (every statement comes out like a hesitant question), Steve practically sweats a palpable blend of desperation and vulnerability. Watching him get bullied is tragic and emotionally draining. Most, it seems, for Enderle: at curtain call, the actor looked absolutely exhausted.

The play really hits its stride when Stash and Dee go to pull off the heist, leaving Steve and Wilson in the room. Wilson gets the amateur actor to read a script with him – one that happens to include nudity. Thanks to Rob Yang’s restrained performance, Wilson’s sexual manipulation of Steve is at once deeply disturbing and freakishly academic. Enhancing the interaction, Yang speaks in the kind of deadpan voice that’s usually reserved for psychiatrists or conscience-lacking serial killers (think Kevin Spacey in Se7en).

The other characters lack this depth, and the play’s poignancy (and point) seems to wither away after they return. They trade barbs that might make Mamet blush, but their dialogue and personalities become grating when they don’t go any further from there.

Since the only compassionate character is someone who works outside the theater community, it would seem that Rapp is making a point about how a life spent playing pretend might detach someone from reality. The three company members in Bingo assume new identities with names such as “Big Daddy” and hide in their new characters, betraying previous promises with disclaimers like, “I was acting. That’s what we do in the theater.”

However, it’s hard to imagine that working in theater would make anyone as ruthless as Bingo’s thugs. A bloody attack (a “company fight call”) that comes toward the end is inexplicably brutal – even by the angry standards established by earlier scenes.

Things spiral out of control from there, thanks to a bizarre Native American song and dance, and a rambling monologue.

The final lines, directed at the audience (returning to the play’s exploration of reality vs. theater), are a clever reprisal of earlier dialogue between Wilson and Steve. The latter commands, “Smile…Unsmile.” With its seesawing between dark comedy and all-out nihilism, it’s never quite clear which expression Bingo With the Indians wants us to make.

Laughter is the only medicine

Watching an evening of theater inspired by Bertolt Brecht could potentially be an exhausting and perplexing experience. Brecht’s concept of epic theater, according to which a play should provoke rational self-analysis and critical perspective, can inspire formal innovation, but also plays that are difficult to watch. Indeed, Brecht wanted the audience to think independently, and to effect social change. The Brooklyn Playwrights’ Collective is at an early stage in its project to write plays influenced by its favorite playwrights in alphabetical order; they are currently considering the work of Brecht. Their production, Beyond Brecht , includes plays that often attempt to mock classical theater (i.e. non-epic) and its reliance upon narrative and emotional stories, but which fail to provide inspiration for critical analysis. The influence of Brecht is most clear in the staging and structure of the plays, which use his devices for disrupting the illusions of storytelling to highlight the deliberate construction of a drama. These innovations include narrators that directly comment upon plot, interaction with the audience, self-conscious songs that break the flow of plot, and explanatory placards.

The first play performed, Fulana , might inspire independent thinking if the message was not so obvious. In Felipe Ossa’s play the title character is the embodiment of a capitalist agenda: an eager immigrant in a whorishly attractive French maid costume. The pitiful abuse of such persons is made clear, but is complicated by the abusive response of the oppressed. In the role of Fulana, Marisel Polanco carries herself with self-awareness and self-possession. Despite her assertiveness, the play’s plot and tone give little reason to doubt the crushing power of the American way of life. The narrative follows a familiar arc and the actors adhere to the stereotypes represented by their characters. The play hardly prods deeper consideration of the themes it introduces.

The second play, The Pithecanthropist (by Ed Malin), is the most energetic and philosophically engaging play of the evening. Using an overly self-conscious play-within-a-play it demonstrates the artifice of drama. In the play the leading character argues against romantic notions in favor of Darwinism. Played with impressive dryness by Chris Arruda, Prosper is a foppish intellectual who renounces the Romantic by donning an ape costume. That witty lines and an exaggerated accent creep through the mouth of an ape mask makes the device hilarious. To prove his theory, the self-proclaimed Pithecanthropist stages a drama that mocks knightly romances. Despite the uncharacteristic confusion of its characters, the story ends happily, undermining the argument of the play’s producer. It is a story with a mind of its own: the love of the characters brings resolution and mutiny against the creator.

The concept is strong, but constant campy jokes detract from the cleverness of the play. In particular, the rap songs are parodies so ridiculously bad that they are nothing more than that. Though the play mocks overwrought romances, it follows a reliable plot. Perhaps it represents a counter-argument to Brecht, making fun of the notion that drama could be used for political purpose. However, if the play did not include flights of illusionist fancy, there would be little left.

Some enjoyable use of Brecht comes in the interpretations of his concept of the “separation of elements.” In some of the plays, particularly The Resistible Rise of Fatlinda Paloka (by Marcy Wallabout), the actors deftly shift roles and registers. Playing an uptight Southern couple, Nick Palladino and Siobhan Doherty alternate between Seuss-like rhyming and carefully accented spite. Their bitterness is directed at the abrasive immigrant Fatlinda Paloka, whose eccentricities are humorously exaggerated by Erin Leigh Schmoyer. The acting is excellent, and the play is funny, but the underlying metaphor is hard to find. In a conclusion which arrives abruptly, Fatlinda’s blindly infatuated husband explicitly states a moral. That the meaning or purpose of this lesson is so unclear detracts from the play's better qualities.

A play with clearer direction, but less interesting style is Lucky in Love , written by Erin Browne. In a gesture to Brecht, placards list the action in each scene, but add little to the play. Several short scenes tell the story of unrequited love between female friends. The placards underscore the play’s dull straightforwardness. The characters and scenes aren’t fleshed out enough for the viewer to care, and the dialogue isn’t sufficiently meaty for contemplation.

The final play, “Sauté Your Face” (by Jerry Polner), consists of a good single punch line joke: a cooking show for ex-dictators in which instruction is command and brutality is art (or fruit salad). Mark Blackman energetically repeats the Generalissimo’s catchphrase, “I am great. You are crap,” but by the fourth time it is clear the joke has run its course. Fortunately, the playwright, unlike a self-loving dictator, knows when to cut things short.

In all of the plays the influence of Brecht’s formal contrivances is clear, but the underlying morality or the push for audience reflection is lacking. The plays don’t stimulate critical consideration of American society; rather, they highlight the difficulties in using this structure to interpret modern social problems. Though there are attempts to give “rational” purpose to these stories by acknowledging the artifice of the presentation, they are basically classical dramas. The commentary is too often an indictment, or the issue at hand too vaguely defined, to spark debate. If attending the show, expect to laugh some, but don’t expect an evening of provocative theater.

NOT JUST ANOTHER FACE IN THE CROWD

"They are the exact same color as my eyes. How impressive is that?" says no-nonsense businesswoman Ellen (a skilled and nuanced Esther Barlow) as she delights in a pair of earrings gifted to her by an anonymous suitor. "I am going to marry this person one day - I swear to God." Such is the tenuous conceit on which hinges this sometimes quite funny play executed by a thoroughly likeable cast. Can Jenny, the beautiful and seemingly ditzy lesbian lawyer-to-be (energetically played by Jennifer Laine Williams) win over workaholic Ellen by playing secret admirer? Can she get Ellen to see that she is the right "human" for her and not the right man she expected?

To the cast’s credit, they wring a great deal indeed from this questionable plot with the sheer exuberance of young actors who like to entertain and give themselves over fully to the job. It helps that the script is peppered with good one-liners.

Smitten Jenny is aided in her Cyrano-like pursuit by Ellen’s close confidante and gift-planting officemate Peter (Philip Graeme). Peter’s family seems to weigh heavily on his mind and impinge upon his daily life. Between a dotty cat-loving sister (camped up by playwright and actress Kate Hewlett) engaged to a witheringly shy boyfriend (Dustin Olson), and a lousy relationship with his cold and homophobic father, it’s a wonder Peter has time for his boyfriend of the same name (and numerous name-gags) Peter.

But, as Ellen’s romance in absentia blossoms (devoid of any connection to sparked real-life encounters with dreaded Jenny-of-the-Coffee-Shop), Peter must ask her if she is finally ready to surrender her rigidity and face her fears.

Fear is a topic discussed at length in the play. All of the characters are introduced (and brought back for intermittent monologues) via a 12-step meeting device -- where they confess their deepest fears (dogs, cats, infertility, being alone forever...with cats)to the audience. This technique is partially effective (and even, at one point, quite startling) yet can occasionally feel contrived.

Director Robin A. Paterson uses the stage well, as scenes shift easily from Ellen's office, the local coffee shop, and the 12-step style meeting of which the audience is a part.

For all the perpetual chatter about deep-seated fears, one might expect Humans Anonymous to be heavier and more probing than it actually is. The play is not a serious opus on the fear of homosexuality, and although it touches lightly on that nerve, lightly -- as in lighthearted fun --is the operative word.

Humans Anonymous succeeds mainly on the strength of the chemistry and timing of Williams & Barlow (both fine actresses) and the playwright’s sense of humor, which periodically bubbles over the top. It’s a good choice for a young crowd looking for an enjoyable night out at the theater.

Doing the Math

Math has never been the sexiest subject, but in David Auburn’s superb play Proof, the study of numbers anchors a fascinating, almost voyeuristic, look at a splintering family. The play nabbed both the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and the Astoria Performing Arts Center has produced an earnest, if not thrilling, revival of this razor-sharp drama. Each potent scene takes place on the back porch of a typical family home in Chicago, and we meet Catherine after midnight on her twenty-fifth birthday, sulky and slugging champagne straight from the bottle as she talks with her father, Robert, a famous and unrivaled mathematician and professor. But what appears to be a typical domestic scene quickly twists when Robert reminds her that his funeral is the following day. The play, like Catherine, hovers alluringly on the cusp of this madness. Is Catherine simply drunk and hallucinating? Or does she resemble her father—who eventually deteriorated into dementia—in more ways than in her prodigious mathematic ability?

Besides her father, who appears both as a ghost and in flashbacks, Catherine is joined by her tightly wound older sister Claire, who flies in from New York for the funeral, and Hal, one of her father’s graduate students. Claire is eager to put things in order, sell the house, and drag Catherine back to New York, while Hal is itching to get his hands on the stacks of notebooks in Robert’s office. Catherine assures him there’s nothing there, but he’s looking for a diamond in the rough—one last stroke of genius from Robert’s faltering faculties. When Hal plucks a potentially groundbreaking proof from the pile, the question of exactly what it is—and who wrote it—throws the trio into further distress.

Auburn deftly positions his characters as if they were numbers in a complex equation, aligning and shifting and repelling them to create explosive conflict. “She’s not my friend, she’s my sister,” says Catherine of the fussy Claire, and the sisters’ tumultuous relationship is particularly riveting. It’s the electrifying push and pull of two diametrically opposed (yet related) personalities: Catherine, who gave up going to college to care for their father, is bitter about her sacrifices and yet shattered by his death, while Claire, jealous of the intellectual aptitude shared by her sister and father, overcompensates by trying to take care of her intractable sister.

In this solemn production, intense musical passages underscore and drive the transitions between the scenes. These original compositions, by Jeffrey Campos, place the rumbling chords of a piano and the moaning of a cello into furious counterpoint—the instruments rub up against each other in both harmonious and dissonant patterns, much like the relationships that percolate in each scene.

Michael P. Kramer contributes yet another fantastic set to APAC (his designs for Picasso at the Lapin Agile and A New Brain were similarly sumptuous), this time creating a cozy yet damaged domestic zone, complete with picture windows and peeling paint. Lighting designer Erik J. Michael adds even more depth to the set, from the warm golden lamplight within the house to the eerie shadows from the trees. Like the bars of a prison cell, these dark slim slivers seem to trap Catherine in her anguished world.

Director Tom Wojtunik also seems to get ensnared—in the rapid-fire delivery of Auburn’s dialogue. He has elicited composed performances from his actors, but in many scenes—particularly the opening father-daughter conversation—the actors trade lines with a breathlessness that effectively locks down emotion and steamrolls over much of the humor. There’s snap and vigor in these pithy exchanges, but they often blot out the dimensionality that makes these characters so interesting.

For example, Catherine’s tough-as-nails exterior is shaded by a very real vulnerability—namely, her fear that she will end up like her father. She resists her sister’s help, but she’s eventually seduced by the goofy Hal, who manages to cut through her spiky shell. As played by Catherine Yeager, however, this Catherine is all blunt edges. Infusing her performance with noxious sarcasm, Yeager turns Catherine into something of a cartoon, rolling her eyes out at the audience after nearly every line. Her most poignant moments come in a flashback in which she tenderly cares for her father—here, she finds the varied layers that would give Catherine much-needed complexity in the other scenes.

Catia Ojeda turns in a poised and refreshingly witty performance as Claire, and Richard Vernon makes a believable, if slightly too easygoing, Robert. (One gets the feeling that the nutty professor would be a bit more idiosyncratic.) Richard D. Busser fares best as the industrious Hal; he brings a winning, loose-limbed charm to the nerdy student who is determined to be cool, at least cool enough to impress his advisor’s brilliant daughter.

At its best, Proof peers in on family strife with the irresistible intimacy and immediacy of eavesdropping; when these actors stop “performing” and allow Auburn’s writing to take fire, their charged conversations transform their lives, and the math, into compelling—even sexy—equations.

Cracks in the Facade

Harrison Williams’ Glass Houses is a Rubik’s Cube of a play, a multi-layered and entertaining work of drama, the action of which is punctuated by mini-lectures from one of the main characters, Bill, a marine biologist who explains in painstaking detail his research on the fascinating Venus Flower Basket, the self-referenced metaphor of the play. The Venus Flower Basket, we are told, is a silica-based sea-sponge found in the deep waters around Japan and the Philippines. The sponge, assimilating surrounding minerals to build its glass-like structure, forms a symbiotic relationship with tiny shrimp, usually two, sometimes three or more, which it traps forever, housing, feeding and protecting them from predators in exchange for their own waste products, which it then uses to support itself and sustain its perfect crystalline biosphere. The play’s characters, as you might guess, are likened to the shrimp (um…except perhaps for the waste product part). Because the metaphor is so obvious as the central conceit of the play, it is wisely revealed right from the very start. Such self-referential analysis could quickly become tiring to an audience but, miraculously, it doesn’t, thanks to strong performances from all four actors, particularly Randy Anderson playing the campy Nick and Brian Morgan as Bill. Nick and Bill, a couple living together for more than six years, invite Nick’s former lover, Mike (DR Mann Hanson) and Mike’s new fiancée, Stef (Stephanie Farnell-Wilson), to their Hoboken apartment for dinner, and present them with an engagement gift: a nearly perfect specimen of a Venus Flower Basket. Add to the mix a few bottles of wine and the fact that Mike has never disclosed to Stef his relationship with Nick, and it’s all an easy recipe for fireworks. Fireworks do ensue. Not only is Nick still in love with Mike, but we learn that he also has an interesting association with Stef as well.

Ultimately, the play asks, “Who are the poor shrimp in this drama?” Are they Mike and Stef, embarking together on a potentially troubled life due to Mike’s bisexuality? Are they Bill and Nick, trapped in a false relationship where Nick longs for someone he can no longer possess? Are they Mike and Nick—is Mike really in love with Stef or is he in denial about his true sexual orientation? Is marriage the trap? Are relationships, straight or gay, snares by definition, quagmires of compromise? Mr. Williams suggests that all of us are trapped in some way—we all construct glass houses from our fragile beliefs about ourselves and others, denying a truth here—lying to others there—and when a crack forms in that house, whether self-inflicted or as a result of a stone thrown by another, we realize just what brittle, delicate creatures we really are. All this makes for compelling and worthy theater. At the play’s climax, Nick and Bill engage in a tense and uncomfortable confrontation that would make you turn away if the acting wasn’t so riveting.

Like mastering the Rubik’s cube, there’s always a logical and inevitable conclusion, and the play’s ending is forced, all of its pieces wrapped up too tidily. But, like the cube, the real action is in the confusion and the endless possibilities, and Glass Houses offers much for the audience to ponder about the fragile structures we build for ourselves.

Minimalist Horror

Henry James’s ghost story “The Turn of the Screw” has intrigued generations of readers as well as artists. British composer Benjamin Britten turned it into an opera. The 1898 story was also filmed (and retitled The Innocents) with the late Deborah Kerr as the governess sent to Bly, a remote country estate, to care for the niece and nephew of a London bachelor who has become their guardian. Jeffrey Hatcher’s 1999 stage production is a bare-bones tour de force for two actors that takes some structural liberties but preserves the frissons. Among the tweaks Hatcher makes is to assign all the secondary roles, including that of Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, to the male actor and to make Flora, the niece, so shy that she doesn’t speak at all. The play therefore elevates Miles, the young boy, to the center of the battle between the governess and the phantoms. The whole is performed without scenery or costume changes. Still, in Don K. Williams’s beautifully directed production, James’s story feels distilled rather than downsized.

Hatcher’s play compresses the action into seven days, announced like a diary by Melissa Pinsly’s young, callow and romantically infatuated governess. Hatcher introduces the possibility of her repressed sexuality in the first scene, with subtle humor and yet more sexual innuendo than James could employ. “I need a woman,” announces Steve Cook’s uncle to the prospective governess, referring to the job of raising his wards. And when she agrees to the stipend, he says, “A satisfied woman, our very goal in life.” After she accepts the position with barely contained excitement, he notes dryly, “I have seduced you.”

The great critic Edmund Wilson pointed out in his 1938 essay The Ambiguities of Henry James (just republished in a collection by Library of America) that it wasn’t until 1924 that a canny critic noticed that only the governess sees the ghosts. The question of whether they are real or figments of her overly romantic imagination and a repressed sexual infatuation with the uncle enhances the eeriness of the tale. (Both the film and the opera include visible revenants.) Hatcher’s treatment adds a weirdly incestuous element, establishing the intentions of the male and female ghosts, Peter Quint and Mrs. Jessel, to inhabit the bodies of the innocent children and be reunited.

Once at Bly, the governess (who goes unnamed, as in the story) meets Mrs. Grose, and the sightings begin. Pinsley negotiates the various mood swings of the governess—from elation to apprehension to an almost evangelical hysteria and determination—very well. Cook, dressed in a frock coat for all his characters, differentiates them vocally or, in the case of Miles, by adding a sullen hunching to his shoulders.

Gorgeous lighting from Karl Chmielewski adds immeasurably to the mood. He creates deep shadows upstage that the characters draw back into, and from which the ghosts materialize in shadows, insubstantially. Chmielewski also uses sidelighting in a noirish way, and his choice of colors, notably indigo and amber, is just as evocative in setting the right tones for scenes.

The actors add most of the sound effects. Cook, for example, announces the time of a chiming clock. They make creaking noises and whooshing noises, and occasionally Hatcher contributes to the atmosphere of dread a stunning line like “The house hissed of snakes.” Although the narrative slackens occasionally, the play builds to a wild, insane climax, more effective than James’s sturdy prose evokes on the page.

The original story begins with a framing device, but James drops it by the end. Hatcher, however, returns to it, and we learn what happens to Flora and the governess. The coda is dry, black, and ironic, and leaves little doubt that the governess is a figure to beware.

The (Devilish) Assault of Reason

In the preface to his universally adored novel The Screwtape Letters, Christian author C. S. Lewis claims that “there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Now the author’s own “unhealthy” interest in devils and their practices has inspired the Fellowship for the Performing Arts’ sublime stage production at the Theatre at St. Clement’s; the only excess of which is the team’s intense delight in reinventing of Lewis’ text for a new audience. For the unfamiliar, Lewis’ deviously clever novel is comprised of thirty-one letters from a learned demon named Screwtape to his bumbling nephew Wormwood, who is attempting to win a mortal’s soul over to the “father below.” As it turns out, things are very academic in this Oxford Fellow’s vision of the netherworld. Every demon must graduate from an institution known as the Tempters Training College before heading to Earth to harvest souls for demonic consumption. Screwtape, now retired after an illustrious career, serves as his naïve nephew’s mentor in the art of steering human thoughts away from “the enemy” and (unknowingly) toward eternal oblivion.

When Screwtape was first published in 1942, Lewis’ keen insights into religion, war and the general state of the world served as a piercing reprimand to worldly cynics and devout believers alike. One can’t ignore the implications of mounting a production like this in the current climate of religious schism. A morbid curiosity might lead some contemporary audience-goers to consider what Screwtape would have to say about partial-birth abortion, for instance. The devil only knows.

This stage version by Jeffrey Fiske and Max McLean presents a complete and compelling depiction of Lewis’ snarkily astute narrative. Each letter to Wormwood is dictated by Screwtape (played by McLean) and dutifully transcribed by his demonic secretary, a necessary and helpful theatrical convention named Toadpipe (played by Karen Eleanor Wight). This allows Screwtape to strut about his study without vanishing into the physical business of writing, which is something that might have meant Loveletters-esque damnation for the piece. Undoubtedly, Fiske and McLean have performed some generous cutting and pasting of Lewis’ text. Most notably, their edits energize the last twenty minutes of the production.

Fiske directs Screwtape in a broad, fantastic style, calling to mind the quixotic milieu of film directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. The advantages of adapting the text and then directing the adaptation are clearly evident; all of Fiske’s stage conventions seem to have been custom built into the narrative. For instance, the process of sending and receiving letters involves Toadpipe scaling a serpentine ladder that extends the full height of the stage and waiting for a bolt of energy to pulse into a suspended mailbox. This theatrical Rube Goldberg is just preposterous enough to add a dash of necessary sorcery to the piece, but is executed so unpretentiously that it enhances Lewis’ text without distraction.

Fiske is fortunate to have this far-fetched exhibition rendered by capable artists like scenic designer Cameron Anderson, light designer Tyler Micoleau and sound designer Bart Fasbender. When you hear the words “one-person show,'' the expectation for technical design is (perhaps unfairly) very low. Imagine the glee in discovering that this one-person show takes place on an intensely raked stage cantilevered above a pool of fog, that it builds atmosphere with appropriately disturbing soundscapes in every scene and that it occasionally elicits mesmerizing explosions of lightening and hellfire. More importantly, the technical wizards implement this sensory icing with honors.

Of course everything hangs on Max McLean, who assails Lewis’ text with more politician than perdition. It is fitting that Screwtape frequently cites “jargon” as the best tool in a devil’s repertoire, because McLean’s ruthless command of the language alone proves enough to entertain. Even the demon’s exaggerated pronunciation of his own name betrays the aristocratic zeal of a Charles Dickens villain: “SKAH-ruuuue-WAH Tay-PAH!” McLean is less convincing, however, when the script calls for Screwtape to descend into bestial fury. Some of these snarling moments teeter on the brink of parody, but thankfully McLean always quickly reverts to his droll center. As the significantly lower-caste demon Toadpipe, Ms. Wight carries out her role’s growling and bone-gnawing with undomesticated charisma.

This disarming production of The Screwtape Letters, perhaps the most interesting piece of reverse-psychology in literature, will no doubt provoke the same theological musings among contemporary intellectuals that Lewis intended half a century ago. We must ask ourselves: are cynical pride and dismissive self-delusion really the “gradual path” to Hell?

If so, a lot of us are probably… well… screwed.

Glamour in a Gumshoe

From the wholesome adventures of Nancy Drew to the neo-noir high-school high jinks of TV’s Veronica Mars, the girl gumshoe has carved out a solid niche in popular culture. In Kelly Link’s fantastical short story The Girl Detective, the title sleuth doesn’t have a perky name—adept at solving tricky cases and nabbing criminals, the Girl Detective is on the hunt for her missing mother, whose name (she suspects) may very well be the same as her own. And to say it out loud might just be bad luck. Under the inspired vision of director and adapter Bridgette Dunlap, the Ateh Theater Group has revived its acclaimed production of The Girl Detective for the Crown Point Festival. As in its 2005 adaptation of Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (another collection of surrealist short stories), The Girl Detective presents an enchanted dreamscape filled with charged ideas, vivid colors, intriguing premises, and precious little solid ground. Dunlap has an acute eye and an undeniable talent for riffing on the bold, eclectic, and downright bizarre; even when this production loses a bit of its steam, it still keeps us looking for what might be just around the next corner.

The production blares to life in a colorful montage of bodies writhing to a jazzy, frenetic beat. The Girl Detective (the haunting Kathryn Ekblad, in a pretty blue dress and headband that evoke Alice in Wonderland) gracefully breaks up fights, returns purses to their rightful owners, and generally makes the world right.

But all is not right in her own world. Ignoring her father’s pleas, the Girl Detective has stopped eating. Instead, she visits—and devours—people’s dreams. Slipping through the subconscious world, she’s on the lookout for her mother, who vanished when she was young. Is her mother dead? Or on vacation? And why won’t anyone speak of her? When she gets wind of a story about tap-dancing bank robbers, the Girl Detective suddenly feels like she might be on the right track.

As they create designer Emily French’s appropriately minimalist sets, the energetic ensemble scurries on and off the stage, and it is through their direct address that we learn the most about the Girl Detective, in both what she is and what she is not. “The Girl Detective doesn’t care for fiction,” one character remarks. But, “she feeds her goldfish,” adds another.

Still, despite this accumulation of random facts—and the insights of the Guy Detective, who sits in a tree to “detect” the Girl Detective—the wispy central character remains mysterious and hazy, as does the plot. The story extends from “real” life into the underworld, but there’s not much to distinguish these settings (which may be the point). Ultimately, the Girl Detective’s quest gets a bit lost in the weird and wonderful tapestry that surrounds her.

Dunlap provides an often captivating animation of Link’s story, and she crams a vibrant assortment of styles—including tap and swing dancing—into the narrative. These sequences are polished and pulsating, but they often linger too long, and the overall pacing of the show drags at times. Ill-placed, shadowy lighting further obscures the production.

Clearly, the ever-elusive Girl Detective, that master of disguise, is meant to be a metaphor for our search for what we’ve lost. But the story—and this production—doesn’t have enough punch or snap to jolt us out of our apathy. It does, however, form a lovely, if somewhat spacey, meditation on loss, which is becoming a familiar theme on New York stages, from The Civilians’ pithy musical Gone Missing to the lyrical grace of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. These productions, along with The Girl Detective, explore loss from stylized, wacky angles—here’s hoping they ultimately find their way to more solid ground.