Retro Girl Power

With the surprising introduction of Governor Sarah Palin to the presidential race, and the subsequent media coverage, the gender politics of Nowadays, a play written circa 1913 by George Middleton, seem fiercely, if bizarrely, relevant. Though some of the positions and jokes can feel as outdated as petticoats, The Metropolitan Playhouse’s exuberant production brings the play to wonderful (newfangled electric) light. As Middleton’s contemporaries did in the early 1900s, Americans continue to argue over the “proper” roles of women in society; for instance, whether it is fair to question a woman’s capacity to handle her maternal responsibilities in addition to those of the vice presidency. It is fitting that The Metropolitan Playhouse, an organization dedicated to unearthing unrecognized American works, focuses on such an American preoccupation, with hilarious results. To provide historical context, the early 1900s saw the gradual rise of the call for women’s suffrage, including the publication of Rheta Child Dorr’s “What 8 Million Women Want” (1910). That title happens to be a headline in the “Women’s Suffrage Edition” of the newspaper Will Dawson reads at the start of Nowadays. Dawson tries to dismiss the issue, but finds that his wife and daughter embrace the cause and its principles. As a proponent of women’s rights, Middleton pokes fun at its critics. At one point Dawson says to the newspaperman Peter Row, “… if we had woman suffrage, women would all vote like their husbands.” Row replies, “They say it would double the ignorant vote.”

Nowadays reduces the scope of such a grand debate by focusing on the issues of the Dawson family of a “middle western state.” The family includes a patriarch, Will, a comically gruff Frank Anderson, his lovely but lonely wife, Belle (Lisa Riegel), his cad of a son, Sammy (Matthew Trumbull), and his self-called prodigal daughter, the play’s spirit, Diana (an energetically wistful Amanda Jones). It is Christmastime and the holidays have drawn the Dawsons back to the homestead—their father hopes for good. As with many family gatherings, the expectations of the old generation grate against those of the new, and arguments ensue.

Thankfully, Middleton’s imagined family rows are much more entertaining than the real thing. Whereas the wayward habits of his son do little to ruffle Will’s feathers, Diana’s insistence upon leaving the roost to follow an artistic “calling” leave him red and stammering. Belle, being a progressive mother, encourages Diana, for she was similarly ambitious in her youth, but sacrificed her goals for marriage. In the role, Riegel is stoic and strong without sacrificing maternal warmth.

Belle’s choices and Will’s reactions form a referendum on women’s rights, but the gravity of the discussion is relieved by Will’s buffoonery, which also highlights the wit and charm of the women in his life—women who are capable of subverting his antiquated expectations to carve out unique identities.

In addition to prodding her father at every chance and inspiring her mother, Diana interferes in Sammy’s affairs by bringing a surprise guest. Betty Howe is a young woman who shares a secret with Sam, threatening to make a worthwhile man out of him. Where Jones’s Diana is chirpy, Trumbull’s Sammy is wormy and pale, his constant snarl obviously identifying him as the villain. However, given the tone of the script and its jokes, such caricatured portraits are in good fun. Indeed, as the patriarch, Anderson huffs in the familiar way of sitcom dads.

For all of Diana’s bouncy girlishness, Jones holds her own in battles with Anderson, proving that a domineering attitude can not only be practiced by a woman, but also used to propel her forward, rather yoke her to the past (as it does for Dawson). That Diana should succeed in her career as well as in her love life is an essential goal of the play, and she doesn’t have to sacrifice the feminine to achieve traditionally masculine goals.

As set designer and director, Alex Roe uses a cleverly arranged, intricate set to emphasize the strengths of the space. It is a delightfully intimate setting, which reinforces the lived-in charm of the home and highlights themes of claustrophobia and stagnancy. The presence of the audience and the absence of walls perfectly reflect Middleton’s efforts to bring the concerns of the private sphere to public attention.

However, as radical as the play was (it was rejected by producers), the institutions of marriage and motherhood are not torn down. Middleton playfully chips away at their foundations, but in the end, when his heroines follow their hearts, they do so in a progressive and a traditional sense. They can have their cake and eat it too, just as Middleton does when he mocks, but adheres to some standards of his day. Yet the play’s retro attitude and cheesy jokes are refreshing antidotes to the crude jokes of pit bulls and pigs that currently preoccupy the nation. Chalk it up to the timelessness of good timing!

Tales of Novice Veterans

College journalism instructors are known to devote hours of class time to the importance of simplicity. The best story ideas, many of them say, are ones that can be explained in less than a sentence, in between gulps of a happy hour special, and still inspire immediate curiosity. That author Yvonne Latty is also a journalism professor at NYU comes as no surprise, because the basis of her book-turned-play, In Conflict, is an example of a textbook story pitch. Her motif, she says in a film clip that opens the staged work, was to do what most news reports had not: turn the spotlight on Iraq veterans. Latty's book of interviews with soldiers was published in 2006 and turned into a staged version last year at Temple University. In Conflict's cast of Temple graduates and current students traveled to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer, and has remained intact for its Off-Broadway debut. Their connection to the material and their real-life characters is jarring and memorable--so much so, that the show's double-casting occasionally works against its focus on the individual.

The narrative opens with a video of a U.S Army recruitment commercial, complete with its familiar and inexplicably rousing jingle. The play's overall message is politically ambiguous--its characters speak against both anti-war protesters and the Bush administration--but the opening carries an ironic, tragic tone onto the brief scenes of drills and combat that follow. Both the actors and most of the characters they portray are young, handsome and spirited, increasing the element of war as tragedy before the audience even hears their individual accounts.

Most of the show's two acts are devoted to monologues that recall Latty's interviews with each soldier; some sit in wheelchairs at the Walter Reed hospital, while others sit slumped on chairs at coffee shops, hotel lobbies, military cafeterias or rental apartments.

While each story is different--Latty's group of subjects included immigrants, a Native American, a college girl, a gay man and a young father, for example--most of them share a structure and mood. Whether or not these veterans admit to post-traumatic stress at the start of their interviews, each begins with an aura of tense self-preservation that dissolves into anger, sadness or desperation. "I miss my strong, healthy body," says an amputee, despite insisting in a wavering voice that she feels grateful. "I went to die for weapons that weren't there," says another veteran, his knee furiously twitching under a cafeteria table.

The narrative evolves from one monologue to the next with short montages of war photos or pre-filmed clips of Latty reflecting on her research process. The stage design, consisting of overlapping panels that flip to alternate between a stylized American flag and a map of Iraq, offers a visually powerful, symbolic element to the story, and aids with scene-to scene transitions.

The narrative arc is vague at best, however, and although one should commend Latty for including such a variety of accounts in her research, there are times when the staged work feels much longer than its actual running time of 90 minutes. A potential need for an edit becomes obvious in the second act, in which many of the actors return onstage to take on a second character. The fault is found more in the play's organization, however, than in its stories. With a larger cast and a less monotonous structure, the work might feel less dragged-out.

In the end, however, this constructional flaw carries minor weight. Each war in recent history has certainly bred extensive first-hand accounts, but Latty's work reinforces the continuing need for Iraq-specific cultural examination. Until viewing In Conflict, one doesn't quite realize how little we comprehend about this particular war.

Inside Out

Their mission, which The Talking Band challenged themselves to accept: to construct a play around a set first created by a talented visual artist and designer, Anna Kiraly. Their result, the quirky Flip Side, is a two-dimensional piece exploring the surfaces of and gaps (or at least slivers) between two disparate, yet somehow connected, worlds. Don’t ask whether that means function follows form, or vice versa, or even which is which here. The best one can hope for is trying to be amused by its busy characters, terrific visual effects and cutesy music. The Hungarian-born Kiraly’s cubic set design is appealing especially in its mutability, as it evolves throughout the play, written by Ellen Maddow and directed by Paul Zimet, co-founders of The Talking Band. The set, being reconfigured by the actors and/or projected upon, is probably the play’s most intriguing and developing character. The geometric shapes become rooms, outdoor walls, or part of the background scenery. The set piece’s moveable, extendable parts seem to be constantly in flux by reshaping, adding scrims or plastic sheeting on which to project larger-than-life images or to provide other interactions with the actors. The creative use of the projected images is captivating, with the video also designed by Kiraly.

The play explores the collision (or at least co-existence) of two worlds, one of a Brooklyn Heights promenade-type of public space, called Drizzle Plaza, and the other, the crowded home of an extended family named Waterfall. (Hence all of the water imagery, more on this later.) Both sides house unhappy people with their share of domestic squabbles and general dissatisfaction with life. Billed as a comedy of “longing, misperceptions and mismatches,” the action seems too contrived and cartoonish to make much of an impact other than a visual one. The songs only heighten this effect, with a kind of sugarcoated, superficial sound.

The actors are given plenty to do, and they do play their various roles to the hilt, especially Will Badgett as old biddy Aurora and Uncle Oscar & Sue Jean Kim as Celeste and Cherimoya Waterfall, but overall, most characters seem fairly flat as written. At times they also are annoyingly shouty. With all the running around and doubling roles and funny costumes, I couldn’t help but picture the opening credits to The Simpsons, with the family members scrambling in from different places to wind up all together on the ubiquitous couch. I guess these characters are longing for something, but it doesn’t seem like there is much investment, or actual stakes (other than the writer’s manipulations in trying to tie it all together). From this, hilarity is supposed to ensue. A bit of puppetry designed by Ralph Lee and operated by Badgett and Kim is a bright spot amid all the chaos.

There’s plenty of water imagery, which works nicely as a special effect when characters are swimming, discussing the flooding out of a meddling downstairs neighbor, or when swept out of a neighborhood café and tossed unceremoniously into the street by inexplicable rising waters. There’s quite a bit of overlap made between inside and outside elements, natural and unnatural spaces. But there seems to be no real mystery or fascination about the oddity of these spaces that the characters inhabit (or the crossing over thereof), just a kind of general acceptance about it. Magic glasses, telescope powers, blips in their sightlines and/or consciousness all seem to be set up to entertain and amuse, but I wish there were something more interesting to see than fairly predictable people spying on each other, having nothing much to gain or lose, to whom “weird” things happen. It’s a laudable, ambitious effort, but maybe less maneuvering and a bit more wonder could have ultimately served this experiment better.

offoffonline Congratulates 2008 IT Award Winners

On Monday, September 22, 2008, the IT Awards (New York Innovative Theatre Awards) announced the 2008 recipients at the Fourth Annual IT Awards Ceremony held at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Energetic host Lisa Kron kept the audience in laughter and high spirits throughout the evening. Blue Man Group performed an opening number and some additional segments.

Highlights included the presentation of the 2008 Artistic Achievement Award to Judith Malina by Olympia Dukakis, the presentation of the 2008 Stewardship Award to Martin and Rochelle Denton by Kirk Wood Bromley, and the presentation of the 2008 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award to Boomerang Theatre Company by Leonard Jacobs and Akia.

Nested inside in the attendees' swag bags were full-size, hard plastic white frisbees. At first, audience members regarded these merely as pleasant keepsakes. However, during his introduction of the Outstanding Ensemble award, presenter Michael Dahlen asked the audience to form a temporary "ensemble" of their own by hurling these frisbees towards the stage en masse. After a pregnant pause, it became clear that he was not kidding, and 300-plus discs sailed through the air, striking the co-presenter squarely in the forehead, yet not, surprisingly, causing any lasting damage to either people or expensive equipment.

The event closed with a moving speech delivered by Edward Albee in conjunction with the presentation of the Outstanding Production of a Play award. He spoke about the original Off-Off-Broadway theaters, the great plays that he saw produced there 50 years ago, and the impact that the movement has had on his own life and artistic work. Finally, he concludes, "There are two theaters in the United States: the commercial theater, and the theater that matters. Tonight, we celebrate the theater that matters."

offoffonline congratulates the award recipients and nominees for their fine artistic work and the event's organizers for their valued support of the Off-Off-Broadway community.

More information about the IT Awards is available on their official website, www.nyitawards.com.

Williams's Modest Craft

Tennessee Williams's best plays are known for their brutal emotional honesty. This was gleaned from his confrontations with his family, his society, and, always, with Thomas Lanier Williams, the complex flesh-blood-and-mind person who sometimes was able to escape into the role of the great American playwright. Then, sometime after the critical failure of his play Orpheus Descending Williams started taking talk therapy from the wrong kind of psychologist -- virtually the only kind licensed to practice in those days. Dr. Lawrence Kubie convinced Williams that his homosexuality was a disease that needed curing, and tried to "cure" it. Williams had the sense to quit seeing Kubie, but homophobic self-hated would haunt his characters for decades. Williams spiralled further downward after the catastrophically young death, from cancer, of his longtime lover Frank Merlo. Williams "seethes with something like self-hatred," a Time magazine reported in 1962.

The plays that followed these events are disappointing, somewhat disingenuous, and increasingly unbelievable, from Suddenly Last Summer, in which the homosexual tourist gets his alleged just deserts by becoming dessert for a crowd of malnourished third-world street children, to the 1972 comparative critical triumph Small Craft Warnings, which is now being revived at the WorkShop Theater by White Horse Theatre Company. Billed as the best of Williams's "later" plays, is it actually a good play?

That depends on what you mean by "good." Psychologically realistic it is not. The most obvious autobiographical figure, jaded, lonely, and intellectually overqualified gay screenplay-doctor Quentin personifies every stereotypical defect that the psychologists of Williams's day ascribed to aging gay men. He even compares gay sex to an addictive intravenous drug, and claims to seek sex only with straight hookers. When his latest underage (of course) pickup not only confesses to reciprocating his desire but also refuses payment, Quentin flees.

Then there are the women. Williams's women come in three varieties, which sometimes overlap: the hysterical, domineering, and ultimately powerless wingnut, based on his mother; the helpless, hapless, witless basket case, based on his mentally unsound and ultimately lobotomized sister Rose; and the various unbelievable women who stand in for gay men, including, sometimes, as autobiographical figures. The two women in Small Craft Warnings fit the pattern. Obese, overbearing beautician Leona is a mean drunk who keeps a cynical, crude gigolo in her trailer home and mourns morbidly and with entirely too much erotic interest for her "faggot" (Williams's word) brother, who died of what she claims was "pernicious anemia," which, in her delusional protestations, made him gay by decreasing his virility with his red blood cells. (Remember the obnoxious sister-in-law of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof who is always bragging about her "red-blooded" Neanderthal sons?)

Far more monstrous in her pit-bullishness and hypocrisy than Lucrezia Borgia and Sarah Palin combined, Leona is not a real woman: she isn't human enough. Leona's sometime surrogate daughter-figure, sometime sexual rival Violet is the Rose Williams type, a skinny, filthy, battered and homeless prostitute who spends most of the play crying in the toilet. The most interesting character of the bunch, de-licensed, negligently murderous obstetrician and abortionist Doc, is merely a one-dimensional shadow of a character from Williams's lost better phase: the destructive yet insightful defrocked priest T. Lawrence Shannon in The Night of the Iguana.

These people are an unconvincing cross-section of human society, but they're a pretty good weather map of the storms that, by 1972, were raging at gale force in Williams's mind, and, to some extent, in his often hateful society. If we see this distorted cast of characters as as a Cubist portrayal of Williams at his nadir, writing from the wrongnesses he imbibed from the lips of docs who should never have been licensed in the first place, they reveal something truthful, and horrific. The play is over two hours long, however, and the point is made by the end of Act One.

The characters, damned to their drinking and other destructive behaviours, cannot, for the most part, change, grow, or learn. Occasionally, a moment of sublimity happens when Leona plays a recording of Tschaikovsky's "Souvenir Melancolique" on the juke box: it was her brother's song, she recalls. Leona talks over the recording, and Williams's language dances with the music. The cast try to animate these thinly sketched people, but except for Linda S. Nelson, whose Leona is a masterpiece of stormy charisma, it's a Sisyphean task.

The title refers to a weather report: the storm-stirred seas off the California coast will be dangerous for small boats. Each of the people propping up the play's bar is a small craft, defined by their lonesomeness and vulnerability, but also their beauty. Every person, Williams was able to recognize, even through the haze of fear, bereavement, homophobic brainwashing, professional disappointment, and alcohol, is a "craft," invested with the beauty of Tschaikovsky's wordless "souvenir" ("memory.") Unfortunately, all these people are also clearly "crafted" in the obviousness -- unintentional on the author's part, apparently -- of their artificiality.

Scrambled Genesis

Don’t go to Adam of the Apes expecting a Scopes-level debate of evolution vs. creationism. There are plenty of references to those philosophies, as well as a nod to intelligent design, but the tone of Oliver Thrun’s first full-length play—about Adam, Eve, and their primate relatives—is mischievously unorthodox and scrambles the Bible and Darwinian theory freely. It’s a mildly amusing burlesque that revisits touchy issues in an inoffensive way. Director Nora Vetter invests the story with the same spirit as that of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in their skits about the 2,000-year-old man. Adam of the Apes has a gentle, winning humor, and it plays off old myths by adding a knowing, contemporary wink. The eclectic music (chosen by Thrun) helps to set the tone, from The Monkees—naturally—to Jean-Joseph Mouret (the Masterpiece Theatre theme) to Harry Belafonte, singing “Day-O!” (aka “The Banana Boat Song”). And, of course, the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the kind of show that gets a chuckle from a chimpanzee declaring, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

This sort of humor can easily become tedious and precious, and it does here, too, at times, but what helps it tremendously are the game, young, energetic actors, led by the gifted Jonathan Craig as Adam, who is descended, with Eve (his sister here), from a chimpanzee, and is an evolutionary leap rather than a direct creation of God. Craig conveys affability and an easygoing manner, along with intelligence and dignity—particularly impressive, given that he has virtually no clothing and no props. Adam may be smarter than the others, but he’s not condescending. He’s a natural leader, blessed with a resonant speaking voice, an Everyman ancestor.

“You can’t ignore science,” warns Adam as he explains to his chimpanzee relatives the way semen works (somehow he’s got a sample into a glass vial). And that’s long before he and Eve (Sana Haque) eat the apple offered by the snake. The consumption of that fruit from the tree of knowledge doesn’t bring on shame at their nakedness either, since Adam and Eve are already sporting the latest fig-leaf fashions. The lady Eve, meanwhile, has written a set of monologues about her lower orifice. Guess what they’re called? Unfortunately, Haque seemed uncomfortable with some of her lines and speaks with less authority and musicality than Craig, creating an imbalance between the two.

Working with a shoestring budget, Vetter creates nifty stage pictures: Three chimps in the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” mode; a line of “chimps” (the actors playing chimps dressed simply by David Zen Mansley in black long johns and long-sleeved pullovers) representing the evolution of man; and Craig as Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. There’s a strong trio of male chimps—with Al Miro providing a sweetly dense foil to the two smarter ones (Bill Bria and Matt Gerathy)—who adopt a repertoire of scratches, cocked eyebrows, and slouches that evoke their species. The women chimps sit together and pick nits off one another. As for actual scenery, some vines cling to an upstage wall, and a couple painted cutouts show high grass and a pile of apple cores. But the scenery is scant and leaves the black box space virtually untouched (and with an unfortunate echoing that muddies some of the louder scenes.)

For all its cleverness, Thrun’s crazy-quilt approach eventually wears out its welcome. He doesn’t dwell on any subject too long, but includes penis envy, male chauvinism, a woman’s right to choose, and men’s appropriation of God—in this case called Super Chimp—in their image. There’s a semi-important element in Adam and Eve’s discovering that they have a father, and then which chimp it is, but the play is essentially a shaggy-dog story that ultimately admonishes mankind to use the reason God gave us rather than to follow faith blindly.

Theater for a New City is committed to giving young playwrights an opportunity to have new work staged, and Adam of the Apes makes one hope that Thrun, a young playwright willing to deal with serious issues in a humorous way, will develop his talent by creating his own characters from scratch.

A Wonderful Aroma

To love lowbrow humor – specifically, in the world of theater – is to love Jacob Sterling, the deluded D-list theatrical celebrity brought so lovingly to life by the gifted veteran actor David Pittu in What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling. Of course, the lead character is a legend only in his own mind, but while this Atlantic Stage 2 show that may feature a talent-free hack, Smell itself is nothing short of terrific. Pittu is paired with a fellow comic genius, Peter Bartlett, who plays Leonard Swagg. Swagg is the host of “Composers and Lyricists of Tomorrow” (CLOT), which one imagines is a very seldom-seen show dedicated to the die-hard troubadours of the stage. But Sterling is essentially talent-challenged; like many locals, he lives for the theater, but has very little to contribute to the art form.

Ultimately, Sterling’s career has been one long case of arrested development. The sycophantic Swagg alternately praises Sterling as both an up-and-comer and also as a has-been, though his act never was and likely never will be, making him the celebrity equivalent of an Oreo cookie without the center filling. Yet Pittu’s performance prevents him Sterling from being a blowhard. His earnestness makes Sterling eminently likeable.

Sterling’s explanations – er, excuses – as to why he never enjoyed a more fruitful life in the limelight hit at the key strength of Smell: its knowing references to the world of musical theater. Sterling refers to the “two international crises” that stalled his career during the 1980s: AIDS and the British invasion of the American musical theater. Lines like these make it clear that Pittu understands its core audience of musical lovers. More importantly, the show’s lead demonstrates the right instinct by approaching the role with sympathy instead of cynicism. The actor – a two-time Tony nominee – modulates his arch sense of humor. Sterling’s life is one of self-delusion: he thinks his emotions are genuine, his ideas are original, and his bad luck is due to external circumstances rather than his own dearth of talent.

Pittu wrote the script and lyrics for Smell, while Randy Redd composed the music for the numbers in this show within a show. The miracle of this duo is that the songs work on two levels. First, they function as a mockery of commercial theater; but they are also substantial show tunes that stand on their own.

Take, for example, Sterling’s senior thesis musical, an adaptation of the Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin, which includes the song “He Died Inside of Me.” Or Mademoiselle Death, a musical re-enactment of the French action thriller La Femme Nikita. These ideas sound silly and implausible, at first, until one realizes that the existence of such film-to-stage productions as Legally Blonde, The Wedding Singer and the forthcoming 9 to 5musical are more topical than implausible. Additionally, these songs are catchy and irreverent enough to blend right into what can currently be heard in theaters both on and off the Great White Way.

Similarly, Sterling composes a musical called Real Tough Cookie in tribute to pop star Pat Benatar, following a template set on the Great White Way by All Shook Up, Good Vibrations, Mamma Mia and the upcoming Rock of Ages, a musical devoted in part to…Pat Benatar. This is what makes Smell so subversive: Pittu takes seemingly innocuous material and holds it up as a mirror to real life and exposes a lot of the clichés and hypocrisy that currently exist onstage.

Co-directors Pittu and Neil Pepe (artistic director of the Atlantic Theatre Company) do a wonderful job moving Smell along; it ends long before anyone has a chance to want it to do so. Pittu’s fellow cast members play a large role in this enjoyable distraction. Bartlett is outstanding as the overly ebullient talk show host, played with more than a nodding wink to James Lipton of Inside the Actor’s Studio. Then, close to the show’s end, a trio of young performers join the cast to sing an extended medley from Sterling’s upcoming Broadway debut, the fictitious Shopping Out Loud: Brandon Goodman, Matt Schock and Heléne Yorke, all of whom acquit themselves quite well.

It is rare to find a show that blends old-time heart with new-school skepticism the way that Smell does. Talented as the show’s fictitious star may or may not be, it is a testament that it is spirit which keeps the stage alive.

Neither Here Nor There

Female? Educated, with good genes, whatever that means? Age thirty-one or younger, a non-smoker, with no history of STDs and regular periods? You're in luck, young lady: you can find employment as a pregnancy surrogate! There will be a cycle of regular “blood draws” (yes, needles!) some travel, an invasive procedure and then of course the pregnancy, but it's a good way to make a life, and a living. Especially if you're broke. A quick Google search of the phrase “surrogate mother” throws up lots of clinics across America, from New York to Cincinnati to Portland, Oregon where women can give this gift to richer, less fecund women. In 2006, Oprah reported that increasing numbers of American women are exploring cheaper surrogates – the women of India. Screenwriter and playwright Jennifer Maisel saw that show and decided to write a play about the issue, There or Here. Maisel created Neera (played by Purva Bedi), a poor Indian woman who decides to put her body up for rent, and, later, starts rethinking the decision.

Unfortunately, Maisel also decided to limit Neera's scenes to a very few, give us zero insight into the character's thoughts, feelings, or struggles, and to focus her play on the self-centered, boring, and incoherently-rambling upper-class American woman who avails herself and her husband of Neera's gestational assistance. That decision weakens the potentially powerful concept --that decision, in combination with the play's many instances of bald exposition, psychologically improbable action, reduction of the complex subcontinental nation of India to a vaguely-depicted monocultural dystopia, and apparently purposeless nonlinear chronology.

Hypothethetical Productions's staging of the play, at the Fourteenth Street Y Theater, is made watchable by a few good actors. These are Bedi, playing, among her several roles, an Indian call center employee with an impressive range of facial reactions to her American callers' babbling rants; and Shalin Agarwal in the doubled roles of stoical, angry Indian cab driver Rajit and as Raj, a cheerful, pleased-to-serve Indian-American techie who is also the American mother-to-be's equally self-obsessed mother Ellen's (Judy Rosenblatt) improbable toyboy. Agarwal differentiates his two characters clearly, and is most expressive when his characters are silently watching and listening to the arguments of others. In these instances, his expressions and body language reveal more than the dialogue does.

Maisel's view of human nature often goes against the grain of observable life. The audience is expected to believe that the love of American couple Robyn (Annie Meisels) and Ajay (Alok Tewari) is worth saving, and makes it a shame that they haven't got kids with whom to share it. However, Robyn talks mainly about herself and her supposed needs. She and Ajay need a baby because Robyn has been diagnosed with cancer, so they'd better harvest the genetic material while they can -- without delaying the chemo, hence the surrogate. Ajay's hobbies include loudly declaring his total alienation from India -- where he was born -- in all but the genetic sense and buying phone sex from Indian sex workers at a call center.

Robyn also talks on the phone very often with a technical support worker at an Indian call center, who claims to be "Angelina" from "Tulsa." Angelina tolerates Robyn's use of her as a free psychoanalyst, best buddy, and general sounding board, even though it seems unlikely that this would not get found out and jeopardize Angelina's employment. Call workers do not generally have one-person offices, and, as anyone who has called a call center recently knows, "calls may be recorded for quality-assurance and/or training purposes."

Robyn and Ajay are so unsympathetic and one-dimensional, I did not care whether they got anything they wanted, be that babies, phone sex, marital bliss, a cancer-free life together, or all of the above.

Making everything worse is the play's oversimplified India. For example, the play uses two languages: each scene is subtitled in both. They are English, and, well... Hindi? This reviewer doesn't speak any of India's languages, but recalls that there are more than one.

There or Here tries to say a lot of insightful things about intercultural interactions, India's economic boom, American outsourcing of vital and not-so-vital jobs, commerce in human bodies and lives, motherhood and metaphysics, but Maisel never digs deeply into any of these. Consequently, There or Here is neither here nor there.

Exploring a Modern Tragedy with Opera

“Tipped over. Such a gentle word for what happened,” sings the mother character as she remembers the Twin Towers. Creating an opera about 9/11 may also sound like a strangely refined approach to depicting such a horrific event, but Calling: An Opera of Forgiveness makes for a thoughtful version of the familiar story. Here, silence and darkness convey the first plane’s crash. In the immediate aftermath, screams are mimed and the fears and concerns of New Yorkers are sung in a smooth baritone or a melodious soprano.

Based on the book, A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero, by Wickham Boyle (directing and writing the libretto here), Calling follows one Lower Manhattan family on the day of the attacks and the month after. Things start out normally enough when the “Mother” (soprano Nicole Tori) drops her child off at school. The actors bustle through a morning commute nicely rendered by choreographer Edisa Weeks, singing of the “blue sky” as they move in front of a blue backdrop.

The early parts of the production do a good job of pitting these routine visuals against the ominous music composed by Douglas Geers and supplied by the onstage orchestra. The minor notes and pressing rhythm create an unsettling ambience. This builds until the volume of the instruments and pitch of the singers reach their climax and then stop for the critical moment.

Afterward, the orchestra sustains the same urgency and uneasiness by both playing classic instruments in unique ways and integrating electronic touches into the score. At one point, the cellist makes a rough, scraping sound by moving his bow across the high part of the neck, and throughout much of the show, the computer supplies a pervasive buzzing sound that’s downright eerie (and a bit reminiscent of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack).

Eventually, the mother decides to retrieve her daughter from school near the Towers before they fall. Tracing her path, Calling shows various angles of the event, from watching the burning building through an apartment window, to witnessing their collapse from the street, to reflecting and recovering at yoga class a month later. Throughout, Tori balances well between performing tough vocal passages and capturing genuine concern and confusion.

The lyrics range from insightful to verbose. Some of Boyle’s details are powerful in their simplicity, such as a parent making children turn away from the collapse or a worker staging fake rescues to cheer up frustrated Ground Zero search dogs. But other descriptions seem like they would be more at home on paper than on the stage. In scenes reflecting on the ash-covered streets, for instance, the actors stumble over some lines that aim for poetic effect, but end up sounding unnatural.

Still, the words and music frequently complement each other. In “The Clean Up,” the rescue effort looks and sounds like a funeral. A fireman (baritone James Rollins) sings the refrain “we work the pile,” in a rich, solemn tone, while the workers shuffle about with their heads down. It even seems like the singing trails off a bit on the last word, making it ambiguously linger between sounding like “pile” or “pyre.” But the most evocative moment comes at the end of the song: as it layers more instruments and vocal registers, listeners may feel trapped beneath the weight of the music.

While Boyle infuses the show with a few distinguishing details of her own experience, some of the elements in the show are a bit hackneyed. It would have been nice to see more unique specifics (such as the husband, played by Roland Burks, placing flowers throughout his devastated neighborhood) incorporated into the script, rather than some generalized experiences that anyone who watched news coverage remembers. However, Calling should be commended for its overall refreshing approach. It’s the type of tribute that should be seen and discussed.

Overexposure

If a woman blushed after her underwear fell down in public, Freud might say that it meant, deep down, that she actually enjoyed it. Take the housewife in Carl Sternheim’s early 20th century play, The Underpants: although she’s embarrassed after losing her bloomers while watching a royal parade, the experience ultimately unleashes her dormant passions. Filter this through the mind of Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin, who penned an adaptation in 2002) and you have the current production by The Gallery Players. Overall, the play comes off as quite charming, but this has more to do with the delightful cast than the script. With dialogue that often veers into shallow sitcom territory, some of the jokes are exhausting (if I listed every time a euphemism like “sausage” or “wiener” was used, I’d have no room to write a review). The ensemble, however, has a knack for infusing both their archetypal characters and the jokes with great timing and facial expressions.

The central couple, for instance, fits the classic blowhard-and-bored-damsel dynamic. Set in 1910 Germany, the show begins as Theo (Justin Herfel) is yelling at his wife, Louise (Catia Ojeda), about her wardrobe malfunction. He thinks it can only lead to ruin, starting with what he expects will be his immediate dismissal from his precious bureaucratic position. Herfel’s cranky beast act is a bit much at the outset, but he settles into it well, and even makes the entirely unsympathetic character enjoyable to watch.

Theo’s monetary concerns are assuaged when two men show up to rent their spare bedroom. While the guests are stark opposites – one, a romantic poet, the other, a mousy hypochondriac – they both witnessed Louise’s involuntary striptease and have developed a secret crush on her - so great a crush that they agree to share the small room.

Due to her husband’s complete lack of respect and passion, Louise welcomes the idea of an affair. As a result, the writer, Versati (Nat Cassidy), easily seduces her with his slick talk. Cassidy makes for a hilariously self-obsessed dreamer. His Versati is like the arrogant kid in your creative writing class that read all his work with a Shakespearean accent and flirted with whoever sat next to him. The pompous delivery never gets old (one favorite: when he doesn’t have a pen to write down a good line, he shrugs it off as “society’s loss”).

As Louise gradually starts to surrender to Versati’s ways, it’s enjoyable to watch Ojeda slide from reserved, polite housekeeper to passionate temptress (albeit an amusingly awkward one). The transition is realistically slow – a scene in which she attempts to be seductive is particularly funny – and Ojeda trades off well between serving as the straight man or comic relief.

The show works best when focusing on its own plot, rather than trying to attach it to the cultural moment. While the script is peppered with references to philosophy, poetry, and history, it doesn’t stay long enough on one subject to explore it in depth. As a result, the play becomes the sum of its one-liners.

No Strings

Truman Capote once said, “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make.” With Ko’olau, A True Story of Kaua’i, writer and director Tom Lee boldly strives to express this sentiment, in a play mainly without words. Not that there isn’t a big story to tell; the Hawaiian legend of Kaluaiko’olau (or Ko’olau) and his rebellion and escape from a forced separation from his family and threat of being deported to a leper colony in 1890s Kauai, is necessarily provided in the program. But this incarnation of the dramatic tale is all about showing rather than telling, using wheeled puppetry, live shadow and video projection, sporadic voice-over, and original live musical accompaniment, in the hopes of releasing the largely tragic story’s inner music and inspiration. The only problem is that if the viewer is not acutely aware of the facts or key details, its impact could be easily missed or misunderstood. It’s also unusual not to hear directly from the main title character in such an individualistic piece, and as taken from the original oral account in Hawaiian language by Ko’olau’s wife Pi’ilani, we’re admittedly seeing her story (which then might have then begged the title, The True Story of Pi’ilani). Not that we hear her words either, which might have been interesting had they been somehow woven in amongst all the other layered elements (and considering that her retelling was recorded by an American journalist in 1906). However, the theatrical elements chosen to communicate Pi’ilani’s testimony in a form beyond the traditional are well integrated and artistically executed, if still removed from a first-person’s perspective.

But if Pi’ilani’s voice itself isn’t heard, it’s nonetheless elevated and celebrated through the original music of La MaMa composer/musicians Yukio Tsuji and Bill Ruyle, who provide the perfect accompaniment. Their evocative compositions serve as the underlying language of the piece, using a combination of traditional instruments, unique percussives for sound effects and atmosphere, and the poignant sounds of instruments like the shakuhachi and hammer dulcimer. And to further honor tradition, certain musical sections were even inspired by the compositions of Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch.

The use of Japanese kuruma ningyo wheeled puppetry is quite elegant, with the performers working the puppets with such careful, focused attention that they become almost invisible while in plain sight. The gentle, nuanced manipulations of the puppeteers Matt Acheson, Marina Celander, Frankie Cordero and Yoko Myoi translate stunningly as an extension of their puppet-characters themselves, rather than the other way around. It’s almost like the performers personify an unseen energy force that could be imagined existing around all living things, again inducing the richness and spirit of Hawaiian culture. The four puppeteers maneuver the three main characters Ko’olau, Pi’ilani, and their young son Kaleimanu, while also embodying minimalist “extras” and scenery elements, becoming mountains or other obstacles for the characters to interact with on the otherwise empty stage.

The hand-carved wooden puppets themselves are economic, with faces like blank canvases for the performers to somehow enliven with their actions, which they do. Styled after Hawaiian woodcuts by Lee, the rough-hewn faces are also interesting in the context of Hansen’s Disease (better known as leprosy), as they appear somewhat mask-like with an ability to project either some kind of disfigurement or its inevitable covering.

Another element utilized to help tell the story is a large screen backdrop upon which live shadow and video are projected, adding even more dimension. Lee and Miranda Hardy, the lighting designer and shadow projectionist, used fascinating techniques like shooting through water, overlaying paper cutouts and other materials to achieve distinct perspectives, incorporating live shadow figures, and using a kind of revolving cutout carousel for background action and special effects. These also highlighted the lush scenery and rough territory of the island, again calling back the story’s intrinsic tie to the natural world. I was so interested in how these images were being created from a technical perspective, that I was often watching their production emanating from just in front of the stage, which might have taken me a bit out of the story at times, though I’m not sure all viewers would find this as distracting. It’s clear that much is being communicated, but it didn’t always completely wash over me as much as experiencing the intimacy of the puppetry and being affected by the music did.

Lee, who is of Chinese-American and Eastern European descent, grew up on the island of O’ahu, where he first heard the story of Ko’olau through a family friend. The tale had also once captured the imagination of adventurer/author Jack London, who wrote a short story, Koolau the Leper, in 1909, in which he co-opted it into a rather horrific and sensationalist interpretation. Lee’s piece as a response to London, attempting to return a sense of dignity, compassion, and celebration to the doomed, yet heroic characters is certainly successful, even if just a bit more development and integration could bring it to the seamless and encompassing Aloha that it’s very close to reaching.

The First Irish Theatre Festival: More than Friel to Shaw You

How do you build a bridge linking Manhattan Island with the Emerald Isle, and, in New Yorkers' eyes, the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland? For George Heslin, the answer was simple: create an Irish theater festival. That festival, First Irish 2008, opened on September 6th, with most plays running for three weeks. With all tickets prices at $21 or less, First Irish 2008 is one bridge that's definitely worth crossing.

An Irish actor and director who first came to the United States in 1996, Heslin has been a full-time New Yorker since 2000. He is the Artistic Director of Off-Broadway's Origin Theatre Company, which produces American premieres of plays by contemporary European playwrights. In early 2008, Heslin decided that Origin should produce the city's first-ever festival of Irish Theater. Soon, First Irish 2008 had offers of productions from eight theatre companies. Heslin garnered the cooperation of New York's City Hall, the Consulate General of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Bureau, and even Irish President Mary McAleese. "I never heard a 'no,' and that is the truth," he said.

First Irish 2008's repertory ranges from the American premiere of Broadway veteran Conor MacPherson's 1992 work Rum and Vodka to Amanda Coogan's "tableau vivant" Yellow, about the unwed mothers sent to Ireland's Magdalen Laundries to repent their alleged sins. Origin's contribution is End of Lines, a series of five short plays by Irish playwrights inspired by journeys on the New York subway. The resulting snapshots of New York life, as understood by travellers from someplace else, glimmer with oblique glimpses of the travellers and the places from which they came.

One End of Lines playwright, Ursula Rani Sarma, pointed out that what excited her about the project is the 'inspire' part. There is a whole lot of time when artists try to find ideas, when we try to find out what we have to say about the world. That's okay, but in being brought here and told to wander round the subway, to find inspiration, I was being told, 'that's okay. You're not wasting time. You're being inspired. Surely, spectators of Sarma's play and its four companion pieces will agree that her random reconnaissance was time well spent.

According to one actress who appears in End of the Lines, Paula Nance, the project is exciting in part because it incorporates the work of three Irish playwrights who are women, including two from the North, Sarma and Nance's play's author, Morna Regan. "I've written a thesis on Irish women playwrights," Nance told me, "so this is very exciting. There are a lot of great female Irish playwrights, and they don't get as much exposure as they deserve." Rani-Sarma agreed. "I'm pleased by Origin's support of women playwrights," she said. "It's about being aware, about having an awareness. That's very progressive." Of Regan, author of the critically acclaimed Midden, which Origin stage-read in May 2008, Nance added "I love Regan's gift for creating intensely complex women who find themselves in extreme situations, but have maintained fire and humour, and her ability to balance her characters' points of view, to make us see both stories in every conversation."

In the past few years, Broadway has played host to several Irish playwrights, including Brian Friel (Translations), Martin MacDonough (The Pillowman) and Conor MacPherson, (The Seafarer), whose work is famously distinguished by its lyricism, or, as Irish actor Mark Noonan puts it, "that witty storytelling." At First Irish 2008, Noonan will perform MacPherson's early one-actor play Rum and Vodka, stepping into the shoes of one of MacPherson's storyteller-(anti)heroes. Why this play? "Rum & Vodka was the first play I ever read, back in 2002," Noonan recalls. "It was my first move into the world of theater and I actually I used a snippet of it to audition for the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. It especially has value to me because of this." A departure point for Noonan, the piece also was for its author. "I think that Rum & Vodka is where Conor MacPherson first found his voice. I think it may be one of his best pieces of writing and in time will be an Irish classic." So when Heslin told Noonan about his idea of an Irish theatre festival in New York, Noonan said "that is genius, and I want to be a part of it." When not performing Rum and Vodka, Noonan wants to see "all" of the plays in the festival. "I'm a big fan of Gary Duggan"--one of the co-authors of End of the Lines, he added, "so I really want to see his work."

One critically acclaimed Irish playwright whom Origin introduced to American audiences is Enda Walsh, one winner of Ireland's prestigious Stuart Parker Award for first-produced-plays by emerging playwrights. Walsh's play The New Electric Ballroom was performed in New York earlier this year, and now, New York audiences can encounter more of Walsh's words at First Irish 2008, thanks to D.C.-based company Solas Nua. Who are Solas Nua? In 2004, Washington D.C.-based Linda Murray, who is originally from Dublin, noticed "a lack of representation for contemporary artists from her country in the US." With Dan Brick, she co-founded Solas Nua. According to National Public Radio, Solas Nua is "perhaps the only theater group in the country that produces nothing but contemporary Irish plays."

This company has since become D.C.'s second resident contemporary-Irish theatre company, along with the Keegan Theatre (which is also bringing a show, Liam Heylin'sLove, Peace, and Robbery, to First Irish 2008.) Besides producing Irish plays in the American capitol city, Solas Nua presents film festivals and literary events, including, says Brick, "a large book giveaway every St. Patrick's Day." Solas Nua started considering producing Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs after Murray saw the 1996 original production at the Triskel Arts Center in Cork. In 1995, Solas Nua produced it as their first-ever production. "It's exciting," Brick reflects, "that a new production of this play is our way of introducing ourselves to New York."

What is Disco Pigs about? "Two seventeen-year-olds on their birthday," Brick explains. "They were born at the same time, have grown up together and have created a separate world for themselves cut off from everyone to the point where they speak their own imagined language. In essence, the play is about entering life as an adult. One of the characters starts to realize that they can't exist in their own little bubble forever and the other doesn't. The tension comes as they start to experience different desires and thought processes." Walsh's plays are notable for their unpretentious lyricism, non-naturalistic conventions, and, as the London Times critic Brian Logan put it, "characters on the edge of madness." Brick agrees. "In fact," he says, "you could say that Disco Pigs is the play that defined Enda Walsh's style of writing. From this play forward, you can trace the claustrophobic environments and fierce language that recurs in all his other plays." When Heslin asked Solas Nua to bring a play to First Irish 2008, Brick and Murray "immediately got involved." While Brick is in town, he's looking forward to participating in First Irish 2008 not only as an artist, but also as a spectator. "I'd like to see the Canal Creedon Piece, When I Was God, he said, "and also catch some of the new plays written for the festival. And as I've performed Conor MacPherson's Rum and Vodka in the past, I'm interested in seeing that production, too."

If you'd like to hear more about contemporary Irish theater in America from the directors who bring it to life, First Irish 2008 will present a panel talk at the New York Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, with the kind assistance of Irish Rep, who have also donated to the festival much-needed rehearsal space. Don't miss the panel, titled Directing the Irish: From the Page to the Stage, on September 24th at six p.m.

As preparations for First Irish 2009 begin, which Irish and American theater companies will it showcase? Brick and Noonan, the two producers to whom I spoke, are already hoping to be back in New York at this time next year. "Of course we want to be part of First Irish 2009," Brick said, on behalf of Solas Nua. "If we're invited back, of course."

First Irish 2008's opening reception was held on Wednesday, September 3, at Mutual of America's Park Avenue offices. There, Norman Houston, Director of the British Northern Ireland Bureau, announced the news that the non-sectarian, non-governmental Independent Monitoring Commission has declared the IRA "no longer a threat to peace." Northern Ireland "isn't about conflict and division anymore," Houston said, "it's about creativity and energy. We're undergoing a renaissance." Theatre, one product of that creativity, is essential to building cross-cultural bridges, as it "helps us to challenge assumptions." Heslin agreed. "This festival is made up of individuals," he said, "and also groups, corporations -- and nations."

More Information:
First Irish 2008 Website: http://origintheatre.org/1stIrish

A Trivial City

Atomic City, a sixty-minute avant-garde performance art piece presently running at the LaMama Annex, is clever and certainly well-intentioned, but has nothing new to say; nothing challenging to ask. According to its publicity, Atomic City is a "tragic comedy." It is unclear why, as it elicits neither laughter -- through tears or otherwise -- nor shock and awe. Lacking in original insight or complex characterisation, this piece, by Fuerzabruta performer Jon Morris and Danish troupe Terra Nova, is merely smug and patronizing. The Atomic City looks very much like the world of Dr. Seuss's anti-proliferation classic The Butter Battle Book. Two groups of neighbors-cum-adversaries are divided by a wall. In this case, the wall is made of paper. As in The Butter Battle Book, as tensions between the groups mount, the wall gets taller. Soon, the characters risk being immured by their own fears.

Morris and Terra Nova have set up the Annex auditorium as an alley theatre. The two stands of seats face each other across the stage space. As the wall gets taller, it blocks each half-audience from seeing not only the actors on the other side, but the other half of the audience. Thus do walls, and conflicts, divide us and obscure our common humanity.

On each side of the wall lives a nuclear family. The paterfamilias of each is a white-coated scientist, a stock type in anti-proliferation parables from Dr Strangelove on backwards. At one point, the two scientists struggle to occupy the same white lab coat. They also have another point of contention: the pleasant, pecan-pie-baking, robotic-voiced, puff-skirted and aproned wife of one scientist has defied the wall to have an affair with the other. Her son notices, and is mad. The Narrator, who stands outside the wall, and provides both sides with increasingly large water guns, also notices and is faintly bemused.

On the sidelines, performers create nuclear missiles from pre-printed kits with crayons and tape. Evidently, in trying to protect the integrity of their nuclear families, and their own positions of sexual and social control, the nuclear scientists are going to destroy their families and the Atomic City.

On Atomic City's television gameshow, a red, white, and blue-dressed host invites contestants to participate in the "Final Termination," and invites the LaMama audience to welcome the guests who are so eager to play. He introduces one "Lisa Patterson, from Iowa," who "loves the smell of burnt rubber and anything on a stick!" How quaint and amusing those Red State Americans are, with their polluting cars, taste for unhealthy, cheap non-cosmopolitan food, and murderous drives toward "Final Termination." Surely we would never see any such thing in our more civilized parts, for example, Westchester County.

The show's political insight leaves something to be desired. "We want more walls," the publicity declares, "and less drama." In some situations, walls are stupid. The Berlin Wall and Lamar Alexander's idiotic plan to wall illegal immigrants out of the American southwest definitely are. Other walls, however, are more complicated. The Plaquemines wall in New Orleans is essential to keep out not people, but water. The very controversial Israeli wall traps and divides Palestinians, but also is arguably the logical consequence of attacks on Israeli civilians. Atomic City's platitudes about walls don't begin to address the questions that the building of real walls raise.

According to the publicity card, the Atomic City's "monumental" conflicts escalate from "trivial issues," such as, I suppose, the housewife's affair. This is disingenuous, as the issues that led to the real problem walls and to the carnage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are anything but trivial. It's a pity that, in Atomic City as in the Atomic City, those vital questions are never really explored.

When Harriet Met Sally

Carl Djerassi, one of the inventors of the birth control pill, may have helped usher in the sexual revolution of the sixties but, as a playwright, he is far from groundbreaking. Relentlessly formulaic is a more apt description. The plot runs like a movie on the Hallmark Channel; you quickly know exactly how Taboos will end. Harriet, a urologist, and Sally, a striking San Franciscan newscaster, meet on a blind date; the ultimate tediousness of this play is signaled on the park bench where they sit. Guess what? We find out that lesbians are normal people, too, with cute idiosyncrasies. Harriet simply hates jeans! And Sally can’t stand cell phones!

Flash forward some months. Harriet and Sally are now a happy domestic partnership and Sally wants a child. Harriet’s brother, Max, a sensitive Dudley Do-Right public defender who just loves everything, gladly donates his sperm to the endeavor. For some incredulous reason transparently essential to the introduction of conflict, Sally invites her long-estranged and fervent Christian fundamentalist brother, Cameron, a genteel Mississippian, to the fertilization party. Conflict ensues.

Later, Harriet, coldly detached from baby Tucker, and frustrated by feeling like a “bystander,” wants—no, needs—to have a baby of her own. The entire play is a vehicle for Djerassi to question society’s mores and ethical standpoints about assisted reproduction, through a discussion of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), a technique that injects a single sperm cell into an egg.

Molding the action around the characters’ availing themselves of various artificial reproductive techniques makes for a contrived plot with extreme situations. Cameron’s fanatically religious wife, Priscilla, happens to be childless, so Cameron gets one of Harriet’s embryos for Priscilla, without disclosing its source. Curiously, none of these people of education and means, aware of the possibly unprecedented situation they are creating, seems to have sought legal counsel, or even signed anything, telegraphing an inevitable argument about parental rights.

Djerassi stacks the cards by selecting the most stereotypical personalities he can find, so that nearly everyone is a caricature. The virulently homophobic Priscilla (fittingly nicknamed “Prissy”), hurls around Bible quotes and instantly drops to her knees in prayer when she thinks lustful thoughts. Although the work is structured, in part, as a comedy, the jokes are derivative and worn. There is exactly one genuinely funny line in the whole play.

Nothing is really very “taboo” in this production, either; in fact most of Djerassi’s general themes have settled comfortably into the realm of the passé, some already having been chewed over and spit out by Hollywood. And the characters are as vanilla and sanitized as they come. Aside from the obligatory girl-on-girl kiss (conveniently interrupted so it doesn’t get too far) the characters seem oddly non-sexual.

We have trouble caring about Harriet and Sally because they’re so clinical, so deliberate. Ultimately, I didn’t even care how, or if, these characters would navigate these uncharted philosophical waters. What I really wanted was a psychologist to sort out some of the issues of these self-absorbed individuals.

All the actors are competent but the only standout is John Preston as Cameron, who actually has some comedic chops and tries to make the best of the limp lines the script provides him. Direction by Melissa Maxwell is efficient, though we could do without the CD-101 light jazz-inflected scene changes. One dull arrangement adorns the entire play: a dining room table and some simple chairs set against white walls; it’s antiseptic and pallid, like the characters.

In the end, the play is too long, introducing layer upon layer of unlikely scenarios. Try as it might to grapple with profound questions of reproductive ethics, Taboos, ensconced as it is in a suffocatingly prescribed template, simply ends up shooting blanks.

Dark Matters

On the evidence of his new play, Three Changes, author Nicky Silver has been reading Joe Orton, specifically Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Fans of Silver’s loopy humor in works like The Food Chain and Raised in Captivity may be surprised by the dearth of laughter, let alone smiles, in this story of an Upper West Side couple, Laurel and Nate, whose life is taken over by Nate’s long-lost brother. Instead, Silver seems to have followed an impulse to create comedy of a more savage kind. The brother, Hal, played with calculated charm by Scott Cohen, has sought out Nate after years of no contact with his family. “By the time he was twenty we’d all lost track,” says Dylan McDermott’s resentful Nate of Hal’s escape from suburban boredom. Laurel (Maura Tierney), meanwhile, is estranged from her sister. However, she wants to foster a reunion between Nate and Hal, who reemerged on their radar as a Hollywood TV writer, creator of a show with a brilliant angle (one of the better jokes): “a single mother, six kids. And a bounty hunter by night.” Hal’s career is now at a downturn; he made a lot of money, but it all went to drugs and gay sex with hustlers. But he has been saved by Jesus and has religion—or so he says.

Not long after Hal has taken up residence, he weasels his 19-year-old, sociopathic boyfriend Gordon (played with louche nastiness by Brian J. Smith) into the family’s apartment as well. Splayed across a chair, one leg flung over an arm, conscious of his sexual attraction, Gordon cadges Hal for attention and money. If one has ever seen Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Smith's body language makes a potent visual connection. There’s no need to learn that Gordon has murdered an old woman to connect the dots.

But there are other Ortonesque touches, such as the cynicism about religion (though it is clumsy and underdeveloped), which is used by the unscrupulous Hal to foist himself on the desperately needy Nate and Laurel. And just as Ed, the brother of Kath in Sloane, turns out to be bisexual, so does Hal here—one of the title “changes”—as he begins an affair with Tierney’s weary, emotionally susceptible Laurel. Nate, meanwhile, is having his own affair with Steffi, a young woman who works at the cosmetics counter at Bloomingdale’s and wants much, much more than a casual sexual relationship.

Although Wilson Milam gets fine performances from his cast, and Neil Patel has provided an immaculate prewar apartment (the walls are scrims that gradually reveal interior rooms), their efforts are wasted on a play that just doesn’t work. Believability is stretched to the utmost after Nate is brutalized by Hal and does nothing—except drink and wilt. He doesn’t have the locks changed; he doesn’t instruct his doorman to prevent Hal and Gordon’s return. He doesn't do anything a reasonable person would, let alone a New Yorker.

Three Changes lacks Orton’s rigorous grasp of classical structure or twisted logic (or any logic at all), and Silver undermines the dramatic scenes by breaking the fourth wall repeatedly to have characters stand on the apron of the stage and deliver monologues, which suck the momentum out of the play. At one point, four of his five actors stand and speak to the audience, then to one another. So these inner thoughts are overheard by the other characters? Or is it just lazy narration? At another moment, Steffi (Aya Cash) speaks about a scene that has just taken place between Hal and Laurel and wonders whether they will have sex—but it’s a scene her character could not possibly know about.

The metamorphoses suggested by the title include Hal and Nate’s switching roles. Suddenly Nate begins to wear glasses and Hal finds he doesn’t need his. The end features a new family unit, as does Sloane, but the tone is vastly different. Instead of the interloper receiving a comeuppance, Hal achieves the family he wants, at a gruesome cost. By the time he does, you will have long given up the expectation of any pleasure, let alone a point, from this unsatisfying stew.

Beauty and Confusion

Nine months remain for Alora and Linus before life changes drastically for the both of them. “A lot can happen in nine months” is a constant refrain throughout Andrew Irons’ Linus and Alora . At the end of that time frame, life can either begin anew or end. Given a terminal diagnosis of cancer, Alora calls upon her three imaginary brothers, Neal, Owen, and Arthur in order to cope as the rest of her time speeds by her. However, Linus, who lost his imagination as a small boy, had asked her to banish her brothers eight years ago. Yet now it seems he may need them more than Alora. Alora’s goal in bringing back the three brothers is to re-open Linus’ imagination, so that the pair can enjoy the next nine months more fully. Claiming to be pregnant, Alora refuses to go out into the real world, fearing that death is just a step away. She chooses instead to fly among the stars and converse with her imaginary son, Sam. The play takes the audience on a journey which is at times thrilling, beautiful, and confusing.

Alora sings a lot, as way to trace time and tell her story. Melle Powers, the actress playing her, does not have (or does not use) a soothing, melodious voice. Her songs are coarse and grating, the songs of a woman clinging desperately to something that is slipping away. Other elements of the production produce similar effects—a phone constantly rings loudly while a flashing red siren light goes off. Video projections, including a countdown timer, flash by on three surfaces and everyday sounds (the popping of fluorescent lights, a heartbeat) are incredibly amplified. At times the play feels reminiscent of Charles Mee, who is known for his use of pastiche in constructing his plays and for the surreal, magical worlds he creates. However, the amount of sights and sounds occurring onstage can be a bit much at times, particularly in the opening scenes. The amount of singing, dancing, and video work happening onstage makes it confusing to know where to look and what to pay attention to.

There is also beauty amid all the mayhem. The set, designed by Dustin O’Neill, features a hardwood ramp and a concrete-looking playing area with a square of AstroTurf in its center. A bright red telephone and a classy coat stand take prominent positions stage right and left respectively. The projection surfaces are dressed to look like three large windows, each with a single color background when they are not showing video. The brothers' costumes are snazzy and bright, especially when they don sequined jackets pretending to be the Pips.

In all, Linus and Alora is a beautiful story about love between two people and the way imagination can liberate one from the often sad facts of life. While it may get too busy at times, the direction and the script both show a desire to make theater exciting and fantastic, something which is often lacking onstage and yet certainly deserves to be there.

Magickal Elixir

If you’ve ever felt as though you've seen it all in theater (or anywhere for that matter), you must experience a Radiohole show. The award-winning avant-garde performance troupe now channeling ANGER/NATION at the Kitchen, gives another balls-out (literally) presentation, inspired by the underground occult films of Kenneth Anger , as confronted by the hatchet-wielding temperance movement leader of early 20th century America, Carrie A. Nation. These opposing forces (with similarly manic energies) are further challenged with slopping pitchers of beer (with free mug-fulls proffered to thirsty audience members), a grinding psychedelic soundtrack, costumes slyly layered from Anger’s images or other eras, real or imagined (featuring serious hairpieces, horned or otherwise wigged-out, a medley of various uniforms either missing key parts or with an occasional “extra” appendage, intense make-up, smatterings of glitter), fog effects, evocative background video, popping air rifles, and smashing bottles, all of which create an exciting and arresting experience, both aurally and visually.

The set looks something like the cyberpunk ship in the film The Matrix if it had been transported to a cabaret basement in Weimar Republic Berlin and exploded on impact. A dozen or more mini video monitors jiggle off the ends of sweeping tentacle-like stalks, playing various clips, while a pair of cherub-esque performers, Radiohole co-founders Scott Halvorsen Gillette and Eric Dyer, alternately play music, verbally riff, sling back drinks and trippy pills, shoot each other, sometimes step behind twin plastic curtains to change costume (and/or scene), and generally torment the imposing figure of Carrie Nation by flaunting their Dionysian existence.

Don’t bother searching for a traditional narrative other than maybe Veni, Vidi, Vici (with Nation as the one ultimately conquered) and yes, the pastiche is made even more complete by a drunken, largely unintelligible sort of frat boy Julius Caesar, played jovially by Iver Findlay, the show’s video designer (along with So Yong Kim and Radiohole), who ran all the technical elements from a computerized command center on stage. (This was fed directly into the Kitchen’s excellent soundboard, to great thunderous effect.)

The beleaguered Ms. Nation, portrayed by Maggie Hoffman, also a co-founder of the company (and showing her real life five-month pregnant belly), is of course highly offended by the decadence of all the men-children, and she attempts to clobber their deviant behaviors as well as their alcohol bottles with her mighty hatchet. Not being able to divide or conquer, she eventually goes off into a transformation of her own (we watch her muted struggles via a live Moon-cam, projected behind the stage), and when she re-emerges, she embodies a kind of high priestess or Egyptian queen slithering right out of an Anger film like Lucifer Rising (1980), having fully gone over to the “other side.”

Hoffman’s monologues sound interestingly more campaign speechy than the basic preachy I probably expected. Nation’s famous quote, “Men are nicotine-soaked, beer-besmirched, whiskey-greased, red-eyed devils,” is certainly enacted viscerally, while she sounds almost cheerful in telling her gloomy story. (In real life, the Bible-thumping, Midwestern Nation lost her first husband to alcoholism during a time when abuse had apparently become rampant. With no legal controls on the alcohol content of whiskey – sometimes proving to be lethal – it was common for men to drink away entire paychecks at their local tavern, leaving no legal or financial recourse for their possibly starving, physically abused, and/or abandoned wives and children at home.)

So is Nation an early feminist, albeit a misguided one? Here she rebirths herself or becomes a gut renovation (so to speak) via this equally subversive landscape. Perhaps Nation just grows up over the ensuing century, becoming a “liberated” (read: objectified and lovin’ it) female, willing to expose herself and cavort along with the rest of us sinners. Maybe crazy times call for crazy measures in every generation, even as we seem to long for some kind of temperance.

A delightful coda features Gillette and Dyer discussing a performance, under the jarring full fluorescent house lights, while Hoffman and Findlay change back into street clothes and pack up to leave. Some audience members make a hasty exit at this point, but the deadpanned dialogue (supposedly taken verbatim from a John Cage interview circa 1982) was such an ideal tongue-in-cheek denouement to all of the previous punk rock action, I secretly hoped it would continue on until the very last die-hards eventually slunk out. I thought it was actually the funniest part, a fitting surrealist American Theater Wing breakdown complete with drifty pauses, the whole thing reminiscent of an old Gary Larson cartoon showing a couple splayed out in their living room with the caption: “The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave.” So sit back, enjoy the rest of your beer (or Jesus juice), and savor the last drops of Radiohole’s Magickal elixir. Until they next conjure up something wonderful for us again.

The Magic is Somewhere Beneath the Surface

A confused teen runs away from home and lives on the streets, turning tricks to survive and using meth to dull the pain. A social worker/graduate student meets him in order to use his story as a part of her dissertation. Yet, she finds that this teen is different from other gay youths on the streets. This teen, Nihar, claims to be running from his foster parents, who just so happen to be the “King of Shadows” and the “Green Lady,” and who want to take him back into their world of darkness. Of course, the social worker, Jessica Denomy, thinks he is lying or delusional. In case you haven't guessed by now, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's King of Shadows is inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream . Nihar is allegedly the changeling boy fought over by Titania and Oberon in Shakespeare's play. However, despite his magical upbringing, we are never allowed a peek into Nihar's world. The action takes place in Jessica's apartment, or at the park, or else at other real places. The play tries to maintain a balance between the magical and the real, but ultimately remains firmly ensconced in reality. Instead of showing the magic behind Nihar, the play tells us of it. Jessica's teenage sister Sarah describes being attacked by one hundred “carnivorous butterflies” and Nihar describes the way in which other runaway teens are going missing, but butterflies and kidnapping are never seen on stage. A lot of time is spent having the characters stand under spotlights and narrate parts of the story, as if to serve as a reminder that a tale is unfolding before the audience and as a cheap way to fill in some exposition.

However, what the story lacks in actual, visible magic is made up for by the design elements of the show. Wilson Chin has a constructed a space where couches and stairs slide out of torn poster-coated walls. Lightning storms and purple fog materialize out of nowhere, thanks to the design by Jack Mehler. The fog and lightning serve as the physical evidence that Nihar may actually be what he says he is.

Likewise, the cast does a decent job in bringing their characters to life. Aguirre-Sacasa has provided the actors with fully-fleshed, meaty characters. Kat Foster, as Jessica, is able to elicit equal parts sympathy and revulsion for her character. She went into social work because she had the money and nothing better to do. She truly cares, but is rather unlikeable at times. Yet, it is difficult to not feel sympathy for her by the end. Likewise, Satya Bhabha is completely believable as the lost and fearful Nihar. He plays his role with enough strength and wonderment that it is never certain, until the play's end, whether he is crazy, or a liar, or really a magical being. Richard Short and Sarah Lord round out the strong cast as Jessica's police officer boyfriend and younger sister.

The stage elements do their best to enhance the play, but what is ultimately at issue is the script. It never delves deeply enough into the world of Nihar, choosing instead to depict Jessica's reality and suggesting that we are meant to stay in the realm of the real and not leap off with Nihar through portals into the land of fairies and who knows what else. King of Shadows does an adequate job of showing the reality of social work but never dares to create fully the world that it itself implies.

Future Imperfect

The living room exposed to the audience in the Clockwork Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number looks unremarkable and familiar. Yet this symbol of family unity, of similarity across households, is re-imagined as a bizarre and frightening landscape. In this room, a father and son whose relationship is eerily abnormal communicate with clipped dialogue that sets the audience on edge. This is no kitchen-sink drama. Churchill’s play transports us to a sexless, amoral future in which science has perverted traditional family dynamics, along with clear definitions of self. This nightmare scenario introduces major philosophical queries that cannot be answered by the hopeless creatures asking them. In this hopeless world, Churchill’s sad characters find nothing that unites them and nothing that sets them apart. In focusing on an emotionless world, the play itself is too cold to be satisfying theater. A Number focuses on the fallout after a grieving father tries to replace his mysteriously absent biological son (or fill the void following his wife’s death) by cloning him. Rather than alleviate his sadness, this act brings terrible unforeseen consequences that deprive this man of a sense of worth, self, or happiness. With profound confusion he tries to speak to his son and the clones to understand what he has done, but every query further baffles all parties. In the end, there is only the hollow satisfaction of one clone that, in spite of all odds and without justification, is happy.

Unfortunately, Churchill’s fascinating philosophical questions do not make up for her inaccessible characters, particularly the stolid father, played without emotion by Sean Marrinan. The strange process of cloning has rendered this man powerless and useless. Rather than accept responsibility, he tosses around vague pronouns—“they were only to make one of you.” Though he is pathetic, he is impossible to sympathize with, which makes the role difficult. Perhaps Marrinan is wise to avoid bursts of emotion, but his stiffness is distracting. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that Marrinan and his co-star, Jay Rohloff (playing all versions of the “son”), never achieve a comfortable rhythm with Churchill’s fragmented dialogue. Hopefully with more productions behind them this style will come more naturally.

Whereas the father is reserved and cold, his sons are his opposite in several ironic ways. Appearing in three variations, the children haunt his life in ways that mirror the ghosts of Christmases past, similarly illuminating his transgressions. Though they are genetically identical, their nurturing, or lack thereof, has produced vastly different characters, each of which’s individuality is brought to energetic life by Rohloff.

The son in the first scenes, Bernard 2, is a thoughtful creature who is intrigued and frightened by his origins and unafraid to ask difficult questions. His curiosity brings the audience up to speed and even jogs the fuzzy memory of his father. But there is a profound sense of loss in their conversations: though tied by blood, the two have no past.

Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say that the appearance of Bernard 1, a bitter and violent child, introduces higher stakes into the drama. However, in this dull and lacking world, his crime does not stir passion or change. After Bernard 1 succeeds in what he might consider revenge, the disturbing questions persist. No scores are settled, no burdens lifted. Even with the arrival of a third clone, a happy-go-lucky simpleton, the humor is dark and short-lived. There seems to be no hope for this “family.”

Churchill’s preoccupation with perversions of the familiar is perfectly rendered in Larry Laslo’s set. In spite of its gentle mauve tones, the vast space—and the inability of the father and son to fill it—contributes to the sense that this is a cold reality. The audience stares into the living room like scientists watching an experiment. The clever set also features a window that showcases projections of an embryo’s development. The egg in the sky inspires questions of origin and underscores the father’s detachment. This ominous orb comes out only when the lights go down and attracts the attention of the father in a way that his crying son did not.

Though A Number addresses and explores fascinating questions of self, identity, and responsibility, the play often has the feel of a formal experiment. It is as though Churchill is so dedicated to showing the coldness of this future world that she forgets the live audience in the present, sacrificing dramatic tension in the name of form and ideology. It can be somewhat trying to watch a dramatization of a philosophical debate, but the issues she raises are interesting and provide much to consider upon leaving the theater. The problem is that while you’re in the theater, the story is not all that riveting, and it’s characters, perhaps by necessity, frustratingly forgettable.

The Secret Lives of Asteroids

What’s smaller than a planet, larger than a meteoroid, and a favorite subject of science-fiction writers? The easy answer is an asteroid, of course, but its particularities are harder to define, especially for the average human (or theatergoer). But leave it to experimental risk-taker Mac Wellman (an oft-feted Obie Award-winning playwright and professor at Brooklyn College) to attempt to humanize this outer-space phenomenon and thrust it center stage. In 1965UU-- his adaptation of a constellation of his own short stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds--he charts the imaginary histories of actual asteroids, creating a playful, surreal world that is as foreign to most of us as the surface of the moon.

Your enjoyment of this brief fantasy will depend on your ability to suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in what you don’t – and most likely never will – understand. It’s a discombobulating experience, in both content and execution, and the shapeless plot might leave you feeling as if you, too, are floating through space. In the end, 1965UU proves to be more satisfying as a cerebral exercise than as a theatrical one.

Within the rectangular confines of the Chocolate Factory Theatre, a long runway stretches wide before the audience. There’s a low, ominous rumbling in the background, from which Dr. Ravanello (“Nello, for short”) materializes, slumped in a chair. Clad in a dark robe, thick goggles, and white athletic socks, he introduces himself as part of “Planetoid 1965UU” and becomes our guide to this stark world, a place where he has only three companions: Alphonse Bedo, the hefty, sardonic barometer of an object’s reflectivity; Umberto the Polisher, the gruff, bearded leader, who shines everything to gleaming perfection; and Rosalind, whom they all desperately adore, and who whizzes by at lightning speed in her own orbit.

Asteroids, as it turns out, are studied within surprisingly human terms – assigned to families, given intricate names, and tracked by origin. Behaviorally, however, they can be both predictable and unpredictable (hence their forbidding presence in sci-fi scripts), and Wellman observes them here in an intriguing, yet often alienating, parallel to the human condition. How much do we (or can we) determine our fate? What forces must be in place for us to collide?

Wellman creates an unfamiliar landscape and then fills it with recognizable emotions, including infatuation, unrequited love, jealousy, loneliness, and ennui. Particularly fascinating are the “No-Lookies,” which Nello calls “our interior theater” – scripts that literally float through the universe, just waiting to be enacted. Do we drift through the universe only to imbibe and perform various scripts that have been penned for us?

But as fascinating (and worthy) as many of these questions are, they are delivered through a confusing clot of theatrical devices and bizarre scenarios. An actress (Heather Christian) sits at one end of the stage, lit with “bluish-green dust,” and reads the lines that are occasionally projected on the back wall of the stage in a robotic, spacey voice. At the beginning this includes the stage directions; later, she repeats a fortune-cookie mantra: “What is must stand alone; stand still.”

And she doesn’t just speak – she simulates the acrobatic flatulence of one character via her microphone, providing just one of the jarring pockets of humor that percolate randomly throughout the production.

With his taut, reptilian gaze, Paul Lazar makes a game, if unremarkable, interpreter of the planetoid, and his planetary cohorts make only brief, often bizarre, cameo appearances.

For all its off-putting weirdness, 1965UU benefits most from Wellman’s poetic language: one moment finds us within “the deep umbrella of the darkest velvety night shadow,” and in the final scene, Nello tells a compelling story about a “vividly vermillion” radish. The tale culminates when, in a moment full of suspense and anticipation, Nello reaches into his pocket and asks us to look at an object. As he unfurls his fingers to reveal his palm, he presents his treasure to the audience. In a way, it’s a final test to qualify us for understanding this world. His hand, as it turns out, is empty – unless you happen to see something there, of course.