Shakespearean Echoes

Even the most ardent fans of Shakespeare may not have heard of Double Falsehood, which is getting a rare production by Classic Stage Company. It was only last year that the Arden Shakespeare decided to include the play among Shakespeare’s works, with an edition describing its shaky provenance. An 18th-century reworking of a collaboration reputedly by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, Double Falsehood is presumed by some scholars to be based on Cardenio—the holy grail of lost Shakespeare plays and the first collaboration of the playwrights, whose Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen have survived intact. (Fletcher, no slouch as a playwright, was half of Beaumont and Fletcher, and became the house dramatist for Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men, after Shakespeare retired.)

Some quick history. Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans closed theaters in 1642, and they weren’t reopened until after the English Civil War, in 1660, with the restoration of the monarchy. Many scripts from earlier in the 17th century ended up in the hands of playhouse owners or producers such as Lewis Theobald (pronounced TIB-alt). In 1727 Theobald’s repurposed version of the drama was staged. Though the play, which was based on an episode from Don Quixote, has been knocking around for more than three centuries, the Arden Shakespeare’s endorsement has given it unexpected attention. A production at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England is planned this year.

Passing through so many hands, the play retains surprising echoes of other Shakespeare works. Two brothers, the decent Roderick and the rakish Henriquez, are sons of a duke (As You Like It), who pretends to have died (Measure for Measure). Henriquez rapes the lovely Violante, then abandons her to pursue Leonora (Hayley Treider), whose father intends her to marry a suitor—Henriquez—against her will (Romeo and Juliet). Leonora’s true love, Clayton Apgar’s dashing Julio, exiles himself to a forest, where, dressed almost naked and smeared with dirt, he goes temporarily mad (King Lear).

The plot elements are common among Shakespeare, Fletcher, and their contemporaries, but the unfamiliarity of this text lends it freshness, and it moves swiftly (a Fletcher strength). The simplicity of Oana Botez-Ban’s design—a series of hanging Oriental rugs, with three on the floor, shifted back and forth—helps focus attention on the story, although in one case the budgeting of actors—Philip Goodwin as the magisterial Duke and distinguished Camillo—may confuse even attentive listeners. Director Brian Kulick has staged the play with a minimum of fuss and even eliminated CSC’s side seating.

The cast clearly relishes the opportunity to create characters from this neglected classical drama. Slate Holmgren as the slimy Henriquez manages to find layers in a stock villain. Even after Henriquez has “reformed,” there’s a lingering suspicion that he’s manipulating people, as he’s forced (the way Lucio is in Measure) to marry the woman he wronged.

Apgar, too, is a fine, heroic Julio. Playing the good guy isn’t usually as interesting as playing the bad one, but Apgar embodies charm and sincerity, strength and honor. And Jon DeVries as Don Bernardo, blessed with a rumbling voice and extraordinary command of verse, makes the most of Leonora’s alternately doting and scheming father, torn between love and greed. He’s a joy to watch whenever he’s on stage.

Only Hayley Treider’s Leonora, and to a lesser extent MacKenzie Meehan’s Violante, occasionally move with more gesturing than women of that period would, and Treider has a habit early on of falling into shrillness. (Botez-Ban has dressed the cast in clothes that mix peasants’ rags with evening dress but reflect no particular era, although they are of more recent vintage.)

Still, even with a Shakespeare name tag, the play never burns brightly. There are no speeches on the order of “To be or not to be” or “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” or “The quality of mercy is not strain’d.” Ardent fans who feel they’ll never have another chance to see a production of this historical curiosity are probably right.

Although Double Falsehood is close in temperament to Cymbeline or The Winter’s Tale, two late romances, it can’t touch them. Still, it has charms, good performances, and value beyond scholarship. One hopes that Kulick will start looking at all the playwrights of the period who have been overshadowed by Shakespeare. He’s found a topaz; there are diamonds still out there.

Chalking It Up

When Bertolt Brecht fled Germany for Hollywood in the early 1940s, he was commissioned to write a play for the actress Luise Rainer. The play was The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Rainer, though a devoted admirer of Brecht’s, eventually passed on the work. “I am Brecht!,” he reportedly sneered at the two-time Oscar-winner, “and you are nothing!” Despite this early hiccup, The Caucasian Chalk Circle represents one of Brecht’s richest and most popular works. The Pipeline Theatre Company takes up the Brechtian torch in its current revival of the piece at Theater for the New City, rendering a superb production that hits all the right notes in style and stride. With spry pacing, compelling brio, and a host of laughs, director Anya Saffir leads a savvy, resourceful ensemble. In the wrong hands, Brecht can easily slip into ho-hum heavy-handedness and didacticism, a danger that never threatens this production. Without skimping on the material, Saffir surges Brecht’s two hour and forty five minute tale ahead with remarkable command.

Replete with techniques and devices, from its projected captions to its bare set, that embody the tenets of Epic Theatre (a theatrical movement that Brecht developed and made famous), Saffir embraces the Brechtian model but is not intimidated by its shadow. She allows her cast to realize their roles with heightened vigor and ingenuity, resulting in a canvas of engrossing heroes, charlatans, villains and divas. Rather than resembling mere mouthpieces for Brecht’s themes, which still come across just fine, Saffir’s ensemble injects an impulsive zest into its array of characters that makes the work all the more flavorful and, yes, flat out funny. The Caucasian Chalk Circle offers more moments for humor than is typically found in a Brecht play, and the company takes great advantage of this asset.

Set during civil war, the play concerns two disparate storylines. The first centers on the heroine Grusha, maid to the powerful Governor and his wife. When war breaks out, the Governor is deposed and beheaded while his wife flees in terror, leaving their baby son behind. Finding the child, Grusha risks her life to protect it from the merciless hands of the uprising. The first half of the play traces her journey as she seeks safety for the young boy she’s grown to love. The other storyline involves Azdak, a borderline bum who, in the fluky chaos of war, is thrust into a position as an influential judge, where his wisdom and virtue reveal themselves in many verdicts that side with the poor over the corrupt elite.

The storylines converge when the civil war ends and the Governor’s opportunistic wife returns from exile to demand her child back from Grusha. They go before the judge, Azdak, who must choose the child’s mother. To do so, he places the child within a chalk drawn circle and, not unlike the tactic used by the Biblical Solomon, asks the two women to grab the child’s arms and yank him out of the circle in a potentially calamitous tug-of-war bout.

The ensemble, working together in near perfect step, is among the finest you will encounter. It seems unnecessary, and un-Brechtian, to single out actors from such a capable collective, but there are some standouts. Maura Hooper’s Grusha and Gil Zabarsky’s Azdak exhibit a steady calm and endearing earnestness as the play’s moral agents. Jacquelyn Landgraf is hysterical as the Governor’s Wife, and Chloe Wepper, Alex Mills, John Early and Brian Maxsween are all exquisite in a series of minor but highly memorable roles. Still, it is Michael R. Piazza’s performance as the Singer/Storyteller that holds the piece together. He sings and narrates us through the performance, serving as both an entity within the play and a conduit to the audience. A play like this, with so many characters, short scenes, and split storylines, needs an anchor. Never quaint or indulgent, Piazza grounds the action wonderfully.

Many of the actors also double as musicians, playing an assortment of instruments ranging from drums and piano to trumpet and banjo. Composed by Cormac Bluestone, the music in the piece is more than just an afterthought; it is at the core of the play and is performed expertly. Katja Andreiev’s many costumes achieve a lot with little, and Eric Southern’s set and lighting designs are stark, minimal and, in keeping with the Brechtian tradition, unafraid to reveal the guts of theatrical artifice.

“Terrible is the temptation of Goodness” is one of the more striking lines in the piece. Illustrated in the struggles of Grusha and Azdak, the line reflects the play’s central thematic question: Can virtue thrive in a society so conditioned to do wrong? With levity and pathos, the Pipeline Theatre Company takes us on an absorbing ride toward the answer. For those on the prowl for a hidden gem, this production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a promising place to start.

How He (almost) Killed His Lover

It is not so easy, in our all-embracing media culture, for the ardent theater maker to find an untouched taboo. Incest? Cannibalism? Defacation on stage? Nudity? All have been done, some already by Shakespeare. So it must be with some satisfaction for a playwright to find a subculture of human behavior that has, up to now, not been explored on stage. Terra Nova Collective’s Feeder: A Love Story by James Carter, directed competently by José Zayas, explores “Feederism,” a fetish for fat people. Noel, a nerdy web-designer (Pierre-Marc Dienett), connects via a chat room with Jesse-Marie Scott, a large woman (Jennifer Conley-Darling). Her size and her willingness to let him take control of her body excite him; she, for her part, is thrilled with the enthusiastic attention she receives. He becomes her feeder, committed to her continued expansion; she his feedee, willing to accept his “goal” of increasing her weight to 1000 lbs. When she passes 700 lbs. and is no longer able to stand, let alone move about or leave the apartment, her condition frightens her into contacting a former employer, a TV showhost, who rescues her and brings her to an upstate clinic where she begins to reverse the process she and her now-husband Noel (they married along the way) had initiated.

Feeder: A Love Story, told from the moment when Noel finds Jesse gone, alternates his and her narrations, much of them in flashbacks. Both speak into “webcams” that become parts of video-blogs of their meeting, their life together, the progress toward his goal, and her decision to quit the process. In the last scene they meet in a pizzeria, where the finality of their separation becomes clear and acceptable to both of them.

Feeder tells its story in simple terms, often with humor, and with little attempt to judge the characters' behavior. Yes, she leaves him in the end, and the very real possibility that continuing on to 1000 lbs. might have led to her death is alluded to. But his encouragement on the way to their goal, and the affection they have for each other, are portrayed straight by the capable Mr. Dienett and the very charming Ms. Conley-Darling, without moralistic editorializing. Ultimately, their story is that of any couple fascinated by each other to a point, and who then go separate ways. The particular details of their attraction and eventual separation could almost be exchanged for any other shared interest which one partner eventually outgrows – no pun intended.

What makes Feeder: A Love Story interesting to me is the way in which the electronic media are used to tell the story. The set, a large square with a projection screen on one side, is surrounded by 10 monitors, in which the audience can see, captured by cameras, what they see on stage, with only slightly changed viewing angles. The “blogs” both characters are “feeding," the chat rooms, the community of like-minded fetishists who buy the films that Noel produces about his and Jesse’s project -- these are always present. This makes the audience and its voyeurism part of the much larger virtual world. We are participating in something that, to a large degree, owes its existence to the web. The excitement of their relationship is that it is not only a private experience but also one instantly shared. In fact, Noel does not fully comprehend Jesse’s need to get out into the world again, because thanks to the Internet, they ARE out in the world.

Ultimately, a small, private story is enlarged by its presentation, by appealing to our interactions with social sites, blogs, and web-cams. It could be told without all these trimmings, and would be a minor voyeuristic excursion into a taboo world. Told as it is, it assumes the semblance of importance beyond its simplistic core. Ambivalent as I often am about the use of all this technology, which relies upon a type of viewing to which we are now very accustomed, here it is an apt visual metaphor. Screens become the grantors of reality [guarantors of authenticity?], the avatars of the larger world, as a small story is “fed” into the world wide web and takes on a social presence beyond the lives of the characters.

Silly Boys

Peter and the Starcatcher is a fast paced, witty theatrical romp about Peter Pan's journey to becoming the high-flying champion of adolescence that we now know him to be.  Based on the recently written novel of nearly the same name by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the story is as whimsical as the original tale, with an additional dose of topical camp. The play begins on the Neverland, a ship bound from England to the island Rundoon.  Lord Aster is on a mission for the Queen (God save her) to transport a trunk of starstuff, magical dust from the stars, to Rundoon to be destroyed.  But several villains have their eye on the trunk as well, including ‘The Stache’ (the man who will one day be Hook), the most dreaded pirate in all the seas.  Also onboard The Neverland are three mistreated orphan boys, and Molly, the precocious thirteen-year-old daughter of Lord Astor.  Molly befriends the boys and, when her father is kidnapped and the starstuff endangered, enlists them on a mission to help her destroy the starstuff before it gets into the wrong hands.  They all end up on a tropical island, inhabited by angry natives (the Mollusks) and a bloodthirsty crocodile.

Though the plot may sound silly, the pleasure of this tale comes from its telling.  It is told by a talented and totally in-sync ensemble of twelve, who jump from character to narrator to piece of furniture at the snap of a finger.  The play is presentational and text-heavy - normally ingredients for a trying 2 hours, but it's quite the opposite.  It works because of the pace of the piece: actors race through the text, sometimes leaving the audience gasping to catch up, but even if one fails to grasp the meaning of a phrase or sentence, we remain entertained by its rhythm, cadence, and delightful delivery. 

Rick Elise's script joyfully celebrates words, cramming alliteration, rhymes, and other bits of wordplay into nearly every line.  Black Stache (a hilariously show stealing performance by Christian Borle) gets some of the best lines.  One gem comes early on in the play, soon after we meet the brute: "But know this, Len – mine is a far, far heavier burden.  For I am the end of my line.  No heir apparent with no hair apparent; no bonafide heroes to hunt.  And without them, what am i?  Half a villain; a pirate in part; ruthless, but toothless – The Final Stache.”

The set is malleable yet detailed – an open space with walls that represent the innards of a ship in act one and a tropical island in act two.  Lighting shifts help to transport us from scene to scene, and location to location, but the ensemble does just as much, if not more, on this count.  As they rearrange themselves in different configurations, so the space is rearranged to become a school room, a tiny cabin, or a quiet hallway.  With the help of props like rope or human-sized palm leaves, the ensemble transforms from pirates to doors to a dense forest to schoolchildren and back to pirates in mere moments, dashing from position to position to help tell the story.  It is a triumph in ensemble work and some excellent, inventive direction by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers. 

Though they may show off their word prowess and ensemble-work chops, these fellows are not afraid to make fun of themselves. In Act 2, Peter and the soon-to-be lost boys try to charm their way out of being killed by the Mollusks by telling a story, which they act out together, until Molly unveils herself and stops them, saying, “You abused the concept of the theater collective; it was too much for me.”

The cast of Peter and the Starcatcher is almost entirely male, with the exception of the exceptional Celia Keenan-Bolgier, who plays Molly.  Both Bolgier and the character she plays hold their own among a sea of testosterone: Molly is a strong-willed, feisty girl, braver and smarter than the pitiful lost boys she bosses around.  She's funny, too, but often overshadowed by the bombastic gags that center around ideas of maleness: men in drag, men with flamboyant, homosexual tendencies, etc.  It seems to be a favorite topic, at least of Timbers, who inserted this kind of humor into Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson every chance he got.  In a play that is so smart in so many ways, this humor has the feel of a boys' club blockbuster, which is disappointing.  

Still, I came away from Peter and the Starcatcher quite entertained, and even moved, near its end.  Elise, Timbers and Rees maintain the heart of the Peter Pan stories: the pains of growing up, the desire to remain young and innocent, to escape, to forget.  Therein lies the beauty of all Peter Pan tales, and Peter and the Starcatcher certainly holds its own in celebrating the spirit of childhood and dramatizing its end.  It's an excellent addition to the canon, and a  hell of a joy ride.

The Dark Side of the Luna

Us vs. Them begins with a scene featuring a Big Gulp and a bi-lingual argument set against a backdrop of piped in Christmas music. This sets the tone for Dark Luna’s inaugural production, which is equal parts dark comedy and family drama. Though the concept of family dysfunction revolving around forced holiday togetherness is not completely original, it is the earnest acting of the eight member cast, and the cohesive design concept, that keeps Us vs. Them from seeming cliché. Written by Wesley Broulik, who also plays Howard, Us vs. Them has an engaging plot with well rendered characters and just the right amount of mystery. Yet, the play still manages to showcase the actors over the writing. In a series of scenes we are introduced to sisters Nicole (Siouxsie Suarez) and Katy (Maria Itzel Siegrist), firefighter Kris (Christopher Halladay) and his daughter Dannie (Dannie Flanagan), and Nicole’s girlfriend “T” (Michelle Steaton), T’s father Eddie (Eric Michael Gillet), T’s sister Barbara (Brooke Page) and Barbara’s husband Howard (Welsey Broulik). The links between these individuals and their stories are often re-contextualized as the play moves along.

I was continually drawn in by the relationships among the characters rather than the words themselves, which is clearly something that director (and actor) Michelle Seaton has fostered. Each actor not only connects and listens to his or her scene partners, but also maintains the same level of engagement in the creative scene changes. As the lights go down on the minimalist set, actors moving their props and set pieces stay in character, noticing and reacting to each other and the changes being made to the space.

Ed Hill's set is decidedly simple and effective, consisting of a couch, a chair, and several cardboard boxes, while the walls are covered with a web of string, adorned with photographs of the various characters. Since the set itself creates an aesthetic of connectivity, these transitions serve to increase the audience’s sense of company and collectivity. In other words, when set against a stage decorated with a literal web, the in-character scene changes reaffirm the Us vs. Them mentality that exists in theater. Even in between scenes, the actors are onstage and in the web, while we are outside of it.

The moments in which actors are really looking and listening to each other are thrilling to watch. They happen here, though they rarely happen in monologues. The language seems to force the actors to push a little too hard, partially because of the amount of anger demanded in their monologues. Characters anger quickly and stay angry for large parts of scenes, causing the individual speeches to lack the dramatic arcs better rendered in the dialogue. For example, Nicole (Sioxsie Suarez) is less believable in her rant to her lover “T” (Michelle Seaton) about T’s drinking than she is seconds later in an impassioned dialogue about the nature of their relationship. Despite the occasional “thigh slap” or “sighing out” (two common acting tics) that accompanied some of these monologues, each and every cast member was able to engage me at certain moments. A standout scene occurs later in the play between Barbara (Brooke Page) and Dannie (Dannie Flanagan), who both give beautifully nuanced and genuine performances.

In a play about the various forms of love and family, Dark Luna ends up showing us the importance of these themes both within the play and in the environment of a theater company. Both require hard work, love, and support. Though this play might not be profound in its written words, the production as a whole has a lot to offer. Us vs. Them is a journey to the dark side of the moon, with Dark Luna’s passionate actors and artistic/production team as guides, which is worth the sometimes bumpy ride.

Haunting

Mimic, written, performed and composed by Raymond Scannell and directed by Tom Creed, mixes haunting drama, poetry and storytelling. The best thing about this play is the writing. Eerily creepy, moody and poetic in style, the play begins at a pivotal moment at the tragic end of the story and then goes back to explain the journey. The play for the most part is not uplifting, as we are dealing with a character’s journey into possible lunacy. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be impressed. Mimic tells the tale of Julian Leary, the only adopted son of the Leary family, growing up in Ireland in the1980s during a time of great duress. We learn that Julian feels isolated due to his adoption, but has a unique talent for mimicking iconic figures and playing piano almost constantly and always loudly. Because of his antics, his father decides to confine that behavior to a dark cold basement where the piano is moved and an old mirror keeps him company. Filled with loneliness and despair, he further develops his skill for mimicry to the occasional delight of his mother and his adoring sister. We see snapshots of his life - his decline into drugs, successes and failures, his intense love for his sister - all the while paralleling a very desolate time in Ireland.

There is no denying that Scannell is gifted both as an actor and as a poetic writer. He uses rhythms and an innovative style in telling his story. He doesn’t ever say, “and then this happened…” ; instead he speaks in the present tense, painting pictures with words that keep you on your toes, since events may take a second to register. Throughout the play, Scannell peppers imitations of Columbo, Jimmy Stewart, his mother and other characters. His depiction of Conn, a character addicted to plastic surgery, is especially creepy.

Scannell underscores the entire play with atmospheric piano chords and sounds. This at times accentuates his performance, but its constancy throughout makes the piece feel moody, which Scannell’s energy as the storyteller also matches. I felt the piano at times keeps him at an emotional distance and I found myself sometimes wishing that he would get up from it in order to embody his characters more freely.

Scannell's eyes are decorated with a black liner and drawn lower lashes. Their wide-eyed appearance, in combination with low lighting, gives a haunting effect reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe. The set by director Tom Creed - a grand piano and a long horizontal mirror hanging directly behind the piano - proves perfect and symbolic. The line “his face caught between two parallel mirrors” makes for an interesting concept. Are we to assume the fourth wall (the audience) is that other mirror? Additionally, red siren lights hanging from the ceiling coupled with fluorescent tube lights on the floor accentuate different pivotal moments of the play.

A question arises in the play as to what type of mimic Julian might be: a batesian mimic (a harmless being mimicking a predator) or an aggressive mimic (a predator mimicking something harmless). My main question was: why did Julian become a mimic, or what caused him to become one? Sometimes great entertainers come out of highly dysfunctional families or depressed eras. We do know mimicry helped him escape Ireland in the dire 1980s for a career in the States, but where he ultimately lands is gloomy.

Rough Waters

It’s nice when a classic work of fiction can make for a successful night of theater. Think The Grapes of Wrath or Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, their recent re-working of The Great Gatsby at the Public Theater. B.H. Barry and Vernon Morris attempt to do just that with a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Barry, the renowned fight choreographer, directs this production at the Irondale Center. And while it channels some of the more detailed, darker elements of the swashbuckling tale, the overall result feels a tad disengaging.

Part of the problem could be that the creative team is too eager to get to the fighting. For those unfamiliar with the tale, there is plenty more going on. Young Jim Hawkins (Noah E. Galvin) sets out on a treasure hunt after discovering a map on the dead body of a drunk seafarer staying at his mother’s boardinghouse. He cobbles together a de facto crew including Squire Trelawney (Kenneth Tigar) and Dr. Livesay (Rocco Sisto).

But if their quest was smooth sailing, there wouldn’t be much of a show, would there? That’s why the treacherous Long John Silver (Tony nominee Tom Hewitt), secretly trying to rally a mutiny, appears. There’s something about Silver – and it isn’t the rum – that Hawkins finds intoxicating, even as he catches on to Silver’s nasty ploy and gets threatened, then eventually kidnapped.

It’s not hard to see why. Hewitt is sensational as Silver, and gives real shape to a role that’s alternately played as benign comic relief or stereotypical villain. He makes Silver downright charming, and commits so fully to the role that we view him as a survivalist who adheres to his own code of honor and necessity. Additionally, Tom Beckett offers memorable turns as both Ben Gunn and Blind Pew. Tigar, too, provides plenty of gray strokes to keep the Squire interesting.

Galvin is the performer who buoys all of Island. His is more than a mere child’s performance – the actor is remarkably present, and he above all others is the one who makes the audience understand why Hawkins keeps asking for more trouble with Silver when he should cut and run.

There’s plenty of talent afoot off-stage, too. Stewart Wagner uses subtle but strong lighting cues to enhance Tony Straiges’s set design. Sound designer Will Pickens’ sound design and Luke Brown’s costumes seem authentic as well.

It is Barry who underserves his cast and crew with misguided choices. For example, Barry is blessed to have the performer Ken Schatz sing sea chanteys to demarcate the chapters of Stevenson’s story. As beautiful and haunting as his voice is, the effect serves to prolong a clunkily-paced production (with many children in the audience, a running time nearly two-and-three-quarters of an hour-long is a mistake. I noticed several children seated across from me sleeping with their heads resting on a parent’s lap or shoulder).

It seems that Barry looks at the text as a conduit to reach his fight sequences, when it should be the other way around. These moments should pepper an already-rich text. Instead, they dilute the rest of the action.

He has made one novel choice, however. Barry has choreographed his actors to paddle themselves around the stage on wheeled platforms to mimic ships at sea. This is resourceful and whimsical. One wishes that the rest of the play could have captured this energy.

Sadly, it must be said that when this journey has come to its end, there is precious little booty to be found.

Lost in This Masquerade

Now celebrating its 12th season, New York Classical Theatre has staged peripatetic dramatic productions in Battery Park, Central Park, and, in its indoor debut, the World Financial Center, with last year’s Hamlet. Again partnering with Arts > World Financial Center (who curate a series of free performances, exhibitions, installations and festivals), NYCT’s delightful production of the rarely produced Restoration comedy The Rover makes ingenious use of the soaring downtown structure as audience members follow the show around the 3.5-acre site

Every 10-15 minutes the scene — and thus the scenery — shifts. Random passersby either ignore the proceedings and go on their way or become part of the audience. When this production of The Rover began, there were about 40 people watching. By the end, the number had swollen to at least 120, if not more.

Written by Aphra Behn, the first female playwright in the English language, The Rover is “a timely fit for Women’s History Month this March” (per the press release) for its feminist themes and presaging of women’s rights. Behn served as a spy under King Charles II, and The Rover cleverly plays with the ideas of perception, identity, and disguise.

Set in 17th century Naples during Carnival, the morally murky world of this comedy of manners is filled with dirty jokes and language battles between the masked and masquerading principals. Adopting the structure of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and further upping the ante with an additional couple, The Rover pairs up a trio of jaunty lads with three similarly natured ladies. Trickery is the name of the game for all the lovers-to-be (with a special shout-out to costume designer Oana Botez-Ban for dressing everyone in varying shades of appropriately passionate red).

The main couple, Willmore and Hellena, bear a striking resemblance to the Bard’s Benedick and Beatrice, with their witty banter and constant one-upmanship. The cocksure M. Scott McLean is well-endowed with ample charm and good looks, fitting for the man-about-town Willmore. And April Sweeney as the saucy Hellena, destined for the nunnery yet anxious to sow her own wild oats in the guise of a sexually liberated gypsy, is a fitting foil for the rakish womanizer.

Purists beware: this version of The Rover is substantially cut to a lightening fast 80 minutes. A major subplot in the original text has been completely excised, but the main crux of the story remains the same: a day in the life of a libertine.

The constant motion of the show — including sword fights and live music — adds a ritualistic element to the proceedings, as the actors and audience members go up and down staircases, around pillars, across mezzanines, and through hallways. The action of the play takes place in front of, beside, behind, and around the spectators.

The involvement of the audience and the elimination of the fourth wall is a particularly intriguing aspect of the show. Spectators can even volunteer to be Carnival “revelers.” The brief interludes between scenes, as you walk from place to place, also allow for quick conversation about what has just happened or what is to come, unlike a traditional theater setting, where talking is strictly verboten.

The production ingeniously melts into its decidedly non-classical setting, especially in the Romeo and Juliet-esque balcony scene where we first meet the alluring courtesan Angellica Bianca (Vanessa Morosco) and the wacky and aerobic scene in the dome-ceilinged lobby of One World Financial Center that makes clever use of the staircase and escalators. The polychromatic marble so prevalent in the design of WFC helps differentiate each space into unique locations.

The final scene, staged in the vaulted Winter Garden, is a frantic farce of masks and unmasking, with the audience creating a circle around the action. Unfortunately, because of the enormity of the space, many of the actors’ voices got swallowed up, especially if they were facing away from you.

Likewise, the jovial song-and-dance pageantry that ends the show is somewhat stunted by its surroundings. Where it should be bold and brash, it is subdued and lacking in volume. Perhaps miking the able-voiced McLean as Willmore, who leads the celebration, would correct this problem.

But minor quibbles aside, The Rover is great fun and a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. Under the tight direction of Karin Coonrod and the expert trimming of the text by artistic director Stephen Burdman, the entire troupe meets the challenge of staging the show in such an unusual space with vim and vigor. Roving around the World Financial Center as a fellow Carnival carouser in The Rover is a true joy.

Burning Pestle Neither Hot nor Bright

The Queens Players present (apparently for the second time around) a seldom-produced comedy by Francis Beaumont,The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Despite all the noisy clamor and much running about, a cast that does not lack talent fails to make the case for this revival. A theater company is about to begin its presentation of “The London Merchant” when a rich grocer and his wife noisily disrupt the proceedings and insist that they not only insert Rafe, their apprentice, as actor, but also provide a new plot for the evening. The company half-heartedly agrees, while trying to continue the performance of their play, a hackneyed domestic comedy which contains elements of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Inserted into this story are the disruptions of the noisy grocer and his noisier wife, and the plot performed by their apprentice and his two helpers, a Don Quixote-like play about the Knight of the Burning Pestle and his adventures. The stories occasionally cross paths, with the company attempting to keep the apprentice off-stage as best they can, with little success.

Director Richard Mazda, working with a large cast of actors of varying comedic skills, attempts to bridge the several divides which separate us from this piece by encouraging his actors to perform in the most broadly farcical style they can muster. This creates a number of problems: The mugging acting style erases the distinction between the three story centers that collide here and deprives the play of its bones. The eclectic choices and contemporary touches, performed with great skill by some (notably the comedically talented Alexander Styne), and the wildly divergent performance styles set up separate worlds for individual characters without these “worlds” ever coming together as an ensemble performing a single play.

The humor Beaumont finds in the burning pestle, making its appearance here as a wooden phallus mostly attached to Rafe’s belt, and the double meaning of the burning pestle as a symbol of sexual prowess as well as of syphillis, might be great fun to explore with teenagers, but such “bawdiness” no longer provides the humorous punch it may have once possessed.

Mazda dresses his actors mostly in moderd duds with some hints at "period" (short capes, hats etc.). The grocer's and his wife's costumes are the most elaborately period-suggestive. Here, as in the acting approach, the director misses an opportunity to distinguish the three groups of characters that are at odds in this play. The empty space set (with pieces that are rolled on and off by the actors) works well, as does the eclectic mix of props (Alexander Styne rides in, in his first entrance, on a child's tricycle), though again, the eclecticism does not support the structures of the play but simply adds random schtick to individual characters.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a much drawn-out evening (at over two and a half hours, despite the economical, empty stage setting which allows for quick scene transitions), where the actors work furiously at their various comic bits to a mostly stone-faced audience. The impression is that of an under-conceptualized production that relies on the text as given by Beaumont, in a production that is painfully overacted and fails to make a case for its existence.

Heaven on My Mind

What do the atomic bomb, a girl in white attending her prom, and infomercials for seeds have in common? On the surface, it seems, nothing. Yet Heaven on Earth , written by Charles L. Mee and created by Witness Relocation and Ildi! Eldi, includes all of these elements in a consistent and a coherent way that is equal parts hilarious, thought-provoking, poignant, and joyful. This true work of art grapples with the complicated questions of what it means to be mortal in a world in which life could end, suddenly, at any moment. To summarize a specific plot in this play would be difficult and perhaps contrary to the play’s intentions. Knowing too much of what will be seen on stage also could spoil one wonderful aspect of this play: its element of surprise. Each scene, each detail included, is an unexpected treat.

This play does not have a traditional structure. Essentially, the it is a collage of scenes that all have something to do with the human condition and the concept of finding a “heaven on earth.” The characters contemplate a genius scientist’s notion of being uploaded into cyberspace as a form of immortality; a film is screened of a man reminiscing about his childhood during the Dust Bowl; a racecar driver discusses his recent experience in a major competition and the thrill of the race; etc. Are any of these aforementioned situations examples of heaven? Can there be joy in the worst possible circumstances? Would living forever be more wonderful than only living a short while but in that time frame having had someone’s love and having reciprocated those feelings?

The direction of this piece is consistent and the collage works beautifully to riff on the themes being addressed without feeling heavy-handed or too straightforward. The piece incorporates poetic text, compelling physical movement and dance, film, technical effects, even showtunes. What could come across as a hodgepodge of elements is, rather, expertly conducted by Dan Safer. Safer, as director and choreographer, is able to cleverly counterpose text on one notion with movement or stage business meant to evoke another. The stage pictures here are sumptuous feasts for the eyes and the text is unconditionally brilliant, whether it is evoking bizarre and charming humor or presenting hard-hitting and emotional realities of what it means to be human.

Mee is a true artist in his playwriting and this work is no exception. The words, full of subtle meanings, can resonate in a viewer’s head long after the play has ended. Each line of text raises important questions without providing direct, succinct answers. The actors all have great skill in how to turn a phrase, pacing their speeches with perfect timing. In addition, the movement work in this production is exquisite. All of the performers are superb in their various roles, showing their range of performance abilities. Also worth singling out is the lighting and set design by Jay Ryan. The lighting is perfectly linked to the tone of the atmosphere in each scene and the set, in its clever simplicity, is utilized ideally for a play of this nature.

Heaven on Earth is a poetic reminder of the transience of human life. Despite numerous possibilities of heavens, there is no way for us to know that our advanced human civilization will even be remembered, much less that our insignificant individual lives will have made any impact. And yet, this play is a celebration of precisely that seemingly insignificant blessing known as life. Do not wait for a heaven; do not even spend your finite days searching for one. Life itself is a heaven and this play is one of life’s pleasures, not to be missed

Russian Winner

Geoffrey Rush, currently an Oscar nominee for playing a serious, thoughtful character in The King’s Speech, lets loose with a comic tour de force in Belvoir Theatre’s revival of Diary of a Madman, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story that he first played in 1989 for Australian director Neil Armfield. The revived production is a swansong for Armfield, who is retiring as artistic director of Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney. Occupying the stage alone for most of the time, Rush plays Poprishchin, a minor clerk in a Russian bureaucracy circa the 1850s. Dressed by Tess Schoenfeld in period clothes—he wears a dark green velvet coat with breeches and a cravat, and sports a fringe of long, lifeless red hair—he looks like a Cruikshank engraving of a Dickens character. The top of his head is bald, except for an eruption of red in an isolated quiff at the front, and his dyspeptic volubility is rather like W.C. Fields on speed.

Poprishchin harbors feelings of superiority—he’s a gentleman, he continually points out to the Finnish servant (Yael Stone), Tuovi, who attends him but barely understands Russian. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Poprishchin gets no respect—the soup he’s fed is just broth, while a boarder downstairs who works for the Interior Ministry is fed dumplings. He badmouths his landlady as a former streetwalker, and while trying to assuage the feelings of poor Tuovi that Finns are good, he mutters, “Lapland barbarians who converse mainly with reindeer.”

The character takes on the appearance of a old-time vaudevillian under Mark Shelton's sometimes harsh footlighting—and his turn is brilliantly handled by Rush. There’s a bit of meta-theater as Poprishchin interacts with two musicians—Paul Cutlan and Erkki Veltheim—who contribute choreographed sound effects of rain, horses’ hooves and writing with a quill pen—at the last, the violin saws dissonantly. “I don’t even know you!” he declares in exasperation when the music becomes intrusive to his story. Cutlan and Veltheim between them play saxophone, violin, guitar, clarinet and gongs.

The vaudevillian ethos extends to moments when Poprishchin interacts with the audience, as he asks someone to hold a cup of tea. But mostly he narrates his character’s diary, the story of a low-level bureaucrat whose menial job it is to provide sharpened quills for his superiors to write with. Poprishchin grumbles and grouses about the injustices done to him like a precursor of Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners and, like Walter Mitty, he constructs a fantasy life, in which he woos the boss’s daughter, the lovely Sophia (Stone), and he is rightfully rewarded. But he also becomes oddly delusional, convinced that two dogs of hers are exchanging love letters, which he tries to retrieve. Gradually, as his fantasies become more outlandish, he becomes the madman of the title, less a figure of foolishness than one of pity. In his final, most ruinous fantasy, he believes he’s the rightful king of Spain.

Guiding the audience through the comedy and the bitterness requires a range of emotions, and Rush moves from daffiness to dire straits with aplomb. Not just does he inflect the words and pause brilliantly (especially when he reads the dogs’ love letters), but he moves with a dancer’s grace—it is a surprisingly physical performance. Helping the mood changes, too, is superb lighting by Shelton, from sides, casting long shadows on the walls, to blue night streaming through the skylight, to crossing spotlights that impart a clownish, jack-in-the-box appearance to Poprishchin.

Gogol’s story may not be on your list of reading, but there can hardly be a better substitute than seeing it come alive in this riveting adaptation.

Popping the Question(s)

Anyone who has ever thought, while seated on a therapist’s couch, “this would make great material!” is in luck. At Interviewing the Audience, running this month at The Vineyard Theatre, writer and director Zach Helm invites select audience members to join him on a pair of great looking chairs while answering questions about themselves. Anyone who has never harbored such a fantasy -- or who would rather see a live talk show for free -- should head uptown to a Letterman taping. Originally created by monologist Spalding Gray in 1981, Interviewing the Audience reverses Gray’s standard storytelling technique: rather than drawing on his own autobiography, with Interviewing the Audience, Gray questioned audience members about their lives. In the years since Gray’s 2004 death, both personal storytelling (The Moth) and audience interview programs (This American Life) have become cultural mainstays; both can trace their roots, at least in part, to Spalding Gray.

Gray’s own work, however, continues to receive attention in its own right. At P.S. 122, an ensemble of actors performed selections his monologues as part of last month’s Coil Festival. At HERE, Lian Amaris recently staged her own monologue in response to his acclaimed monologue-turned-film, Swimming to Cambodia. And film festivals the world over are screening Everything is Going Fine, Steven Soderbergh’s new Spalding Gray documentary. With Interviewing The Audience, The Vineyard joins the Gray-enthused fold.

Each performance of Interviewing the Audience consists of three audience interviews. Whereas Gray conducted his production with a specific set of questions, Helm prefers to let his chats meander. He likes to point out whenever his interview subjects say things that are particularly meaningful or revealing, and like a therapist – or theater director – says it back to them in easily digestible sound bites. (“When you’re on your own, you make your own” he surmised last week when a young set designer/ Starbucks manager described a correlation between independence and innovation.) To Helm’s credit, these platitudes never feel forced – just, frequently, trite.

An oriental rug and a square patch of lighting, bolstered by red and black pendent lamps hanging from the fly space, create an intimate setting for the conversation, while The Vineyard’s deep proscenium creates a theatrical frame for each conversation. A glass coffee table functions as a sort of protective barrier between the house and the off-white chairs on which the interview takes place, sturdy enough to keep interview subjects from feeling over-exposed but light enough to grant audience members a full view of the stage picture. Helm matches the set’s comfortably mod aesthetic, from his gray argyle sweater down to the red stripe of his socks. Such carefully conceived production values go a long way toward marking the performance as a piece of theater, working to separate it from the sort of people watching made possible at coffee shops all over the city (where admission is the price of a latte, not a $50 theater seat).

Helm takes pains to emphasize the ephemera of the production. He begins each show by announcing the date (“This is the January 8, 2011 performance of Interviewing the Audience”) and closes each evening by reminding audiences of the date, adding with a certain degree of solemnity that the evening’s performance can never be repeated. That may be so – but one gets the sense that while the specifics of each performance vary, the production is unlikely to change in any substantive way.

It is hard to imagine Helm’s formula (ask audience members how they came to the show, ask perceptive-but-not-probing follow up questions, comment on how meaningful their conversation is) eliciting wildly different evenings. In the original productions, Spalding Gray’s use of uniform questions perhaps better created opportunities for difference by placing the focus on audience response (and not just on a friendly chat). Even rich variety requires structure.

Culture Clash: disOriented Uses Dance to Examine One's Roots

“Who am I?” is a question often asked in dramatic works; the search for one’s identity has been a familiar theme going back as far as Oedipus Rex’s trek to the Oracle of Delphi. Kyoung H. Park’s most current work, Theatre C’s disOriented, tackles that very question in a contemporary way, looking at what it is to straddle separate cultures.

disOriented is the story of Ju Yeon (Amy Kim Washke), a Korean immigrant living in New York. A family crisis forces her to visit her homeland and face the family and lifestyle she has abandoned, reflecting upon the choices that led to her geographical and emotional estrangement.

For Park, the road to disOriented’s evolution is also a long and winding one. “I wrote disOriented for the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writer’s Programme,” Park said. “During my residency, I actually wanted to write a political play; I had this really crazy dream of writing a play for world peace. However, at the Royal Court, I was handed a copy of A Raisin in the Sun and the suggestion to write a ‘debut play.’ I thought to myself: I’m going to have to write about my family, and I really don’t want to do that.”

However, the personal and the creative blended in a way that proved very fulfilling to Park. “When I was brainstorming for ideas, I remembered a bus ride I took in Seoul after visiting my ill grandparents, and I thought that it would be interesting to write a play about my mother’s line. Until 2005, I had never lived in Korea, but [going there] to meet my mother’s family was like returning to the motherland, and though I was reluctant at first, writing disOriented helped me learn my family’s history and find my roots in Korea.” It took four years for the play to take shape, including two workshops and a reading.

disOriented may tackle traditional themes of family and identity, but it is performed in a far more modern way, in keeping with theatre C’s mission of blending distinct performance art forms in order to tell Ju Yeon’s story, particularly dance, since that is the protagonist’s chief passion.

“I was trying to write a modern, Korean family drama, but I wasn’t able to make the play linear,” Park said. “I decided to keep the dancer and just dig deeper into the fragments of memories and history I was trying to write. Structurally, disOriented goes back and forth in time and place, and a Korean fan dancer kept on appearing on stage.

Once the story itself began to take shape, the next challenge was how to physically incorporate dance into the work. “The greatest challenge in fusing dance to the story was finding a performer who was well-versed in Korean fan dancing as well as contemporary western dance, and a choreographer who could help us both create the dancing narrative and integrate it into the text as scripted,” director Carlos Armesto (and artistic director of Theatre C) explains. It fell upon lead actress Lee, a contemporary Korean fan dancer with a background in ballet and modern dance, and choreographer Elisabetta Spuria, a frequent collaborator of Theater C, to create the dances for disOriented. The company worked together to determine how dance, movement, sound (including the snapping of fans) could coalesce in a way that furthered Park’s story and remained true to the work’s original Korean sources.

This, of course, is much easier said than done. “The greatest challenge in writing disOriented was remaining true to traditional, Korean cultural values while writing this play for Western audiences,” Park said. “Koreans are very expressive people, but we do a lot of non-verbal communication because unlike America (or the West), Korea is a mono-cultural society in which everyone shares extremely similar values, beliefs, and social practices. I had to negotiate how much I would write into the play as dialogue, and how much I would keep unsaid in the text. That active choice of not speaking certain truths, especially when they can be hurtful to others, is a bizarre and confusing choice for those who may not understand Korean culture.” The multicultural theme permeated the entire production of disOriented; collaborators come not just form Korea, but also Italy, Chile, Colombia, the Philippines, China and the United States.

All of which leaves a lot of the aforementioned non-verbal truths to be communicated through the show’s choreography. The dances in disOriented are scripted to underline specific themes and moments in the play, functioning both at a narrative and emotional level (influences include Pina Bausch, Mark Morris and Shen Wei Dance Arts). “We also use traditional, Korean percussion music as inspiration for the play, so the voices scripted slowly disintegrate into an almost percussive ensemble song towards the end of the play, and this progression is deliberate to examine how the modernization of society affects and transforms social units, such as a family,” according to Armesto.

disOriented may take place in a specific, foreign culture, but Armesto, Park and the rest of Theatre C have gone to great pains to make sure that all the elements portray a story about family struggles in an ever-changing world. Stories don’t get much more universal than that.

disOriented runs from February 16 through March 5 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Further information can be found at www.theatreC.org.

The Church Against the Stars

The Starry Messenger by Ira Hauptman is a drama based on Galileo’s emotional dilemma over whether to recant his theories on the rotation of the earth and how his decision will affect him and his family. The Catholic Church calls his ideas heresy, saying it has long been established that the earth is the center with the sun revolving around it. The play opens with Castelli, Gallileo’s young idolizing assistant, played by the likable Jeremy Rish, looking through a telescope in an effort to see four moons surrounding Jupiter.The Starry Messenger, titled after a treatise written by Galileo in 1610, expresses some of those ideas about planets and moons. Early in the play we meet our threatening conflict: two mafioso, red clothed Cardinals, Zacchia and Borgia, played expertly by Louis Vuolo and Brian Gagne respectively. Jorge Luna as Vincenzio, Galileo’s bastard son, serves as a breath of fresh air throughout the play. Vincenzio’s only concern is removing his illegitimate status and Luna plays this with non-calculating delight. David Little as Galileo is a solid performer and aptly carries the play.

Galileo’s other children, his two illegitimate daughters, were sent to live in the convent as nuns. Marnye Young plays Victoria/ Suor Maria Celeste, a passionate devoted daughter with dental problems, to full heights. Young, as Maria Celeste, is torn between her pressures of the church vs. her belief and a devotion to her father. Young plays extreme anguish well but I feel that more tenderness and subtlety might have rounded out the performance.

Elisa Matula does an admirable performance as Livia, Sister Arcangela, the insane daughter suffering from demons and visions of torment. Playwright Hauptam ads an interesting and entertaining element as the source of Archangelica’s visions are glimpses of of modern day. This causes her to spew contemporary science and physics terms which no one except the audience understands. Her terrifying vision of the invention of a bomb especially resonates, making the point that Galileo’s theories could be the beginning of a path to evil.

The sharp choice to make the set a theater in the round proves quite successful. Innovative greenery and solar elements by Megan E. Healey, costume and set designer, disguised the lighting grid adding uniqueness to the minimalist set of moving benches. Costumes seem appropriate to the period. Vincenzio’s flamboyant and pretentious outfit to celebrate his legitimacy is a cause for a chuckle.

The staging by director Susan Einhorn is innovative and the actors frame themselves well on equal portions of the stage in a wholly organic way. Einhorn creates a seamless ensemble with a team of very committed actors. Jeff Greenberg, the lighting designer, deserves recognition for his ingenious rotating star display on the stage floor. This rotating light show is especially paramount following scenes of conflict between Galileo and the Cardinals.

Death is prevalent in the time period that this play is taking place. I could have gone without the dramatization of both sisters’ deaths in the play as they border on melodramatic. However, I was itching to see the death of Carndinal Zacchia. In one scene Cardinal Borgia (Gagne) warns Zacchia about his health issues as he gets over excited in his vehemence directed at Galileo. I found myself distracted in anticipation of the moment when Zacchia keels over, which he never does.

The Starry Messenger is a well acted drama on all counts. Though, as the playwright says, it is not entirely historical, it might serve as a refresher to our origins in science and space.

Dying Souls

The star-laden cast of Three Sisters is sure to draw eager audiences to Classic Stage Company’s home on 13th Street. But in a season that has seen the failure of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, stars are no guarantee of success, so it’s necessary to affirm that Austin Pendleton’s production of Chekhov’s play deserves to be a hot ticket. A year after their father’s death, the siblings of the title, who are daughters of a general, languish in a backwater of Russia. They share a home with their brother Andrey, socializing frequently with officers from the local garrison and discussing their happy memories and hopes of returning to Moscow, where they grew up.

But it’s the future that’s on the mind of the new commanding colonel, Vershinin (Peter Sarsgaard), smiling and luxuriating in their warmth—and particularly in the company of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s captivated Masha. Vershinin philosophizes that society will get better and better, perhaps only gradually over generations, but mankind is always advancing. In the present, however, there is only uncertainty: “There’s no way we can guess what will be considered important and serious, and what will be considered petty and silly,” he tells the sisters. It’s the genius of the play to show the characters’ fine spirits slowly degenerate and their hopes dwindle over the years.

Top to bottom the cast is irresistible, from Jessica Hecht’s stalwart, sensitive Olga, to Juliet Rylance’s lovely, distressed Irina, to Anson Mount’s brooding loose cannon Solyony. They include servants—George Morfogen’s deaf-ish, hangdog Ferapont, Roberta Maxwell’s fearful, occasionally grousing Anfisa—and the military men garrisoned in the town—notably Eben Moss-Bachrach’s cultured and gentlemanly Baron Tuzenbach, smitten with Irina, and Louis Zorich’s bluff military doctor, Chebutykin, who has given up drink but adheres to a fatalistic view of life at odds with Vershinin’s.

As they all grapple with destiny, they are painfully human and foolish: Irina, for instance, is sure that a life of work will be fulfilling, but once she has a job, she finds it stultifying, and the working class life alters her behavior in a way she dislikes. The sisters find their cultured upbringing—speaking foreign languages, playing music—is relentlessly eroded by their surroundings. Even Vershinin’s sunny outlook grows dimmer as he deals with a possibly insane wife and her suicidal impulses.

“Most of the people in this town are so vulgar, so unpleasant, so stupid,” Masha complains to Vershinin, with whom she has an affair to escape her arid marriage. “Vulgarity upsets me, it wounds me; I get physically sick when I see someone who lacks finesse, who lacks kindness and gentleness.”

Filling that bill is Marin Ireland’s Natasha, the irritating, wheedling upstart who captures the heart of Josh Hamilton’s passionate Andrey and then, in marriage, turns him into a morose cuckold. Nattering about her offspring and maneuvering the sisters out of their rooms and eventually their home, Natasha is the essence of crassness. (Paul Huntley has provided her a marvelous wig, so that when Ireland stomps around, curls bounce around like she’s a bobble-headed doll.) It’s part of Chekhov’s genius that one is never sure that Natasha might not have been a better person if the sisters had treated her better; her first hints of bad behavior feel like the worm turning, but as she continues, she becomes heartless.

Pendleton’s direction is superb; he even takes judicious liberties. During the Act III fire, Olga, echoing Masha’s delicacy of feeling, complains of Natasha’s insensitivity after she yells at the aged Anfisa. Here Anfisa doesn’t exit when Chekhov indicates it, but huddles for protection in Olga’s lap for many more lines during Natasha’s tirade. The director makes another canny interpolation by adding a kiss when Solyony declares his love for Irina; the trembling soldier leans in slowly and their lips touch. It works beautifully, and the romantic tension between the actors is electric.

The missteps in the production are minimal. In Paul Schmidt’s translation Natasha calls Andrey “Andy,” and it sounds bogus and grating; also, an occasional phrase—e.g., “You are the limit!”—seems too modern for the characters. One also has to gloss over the fact that Sarsgaard’s Vershinin is equal in age to Masha and Olga and could hardly have remembered the sisters as “little girls,” but otherwise he’s fine as Masha’s easygoing, optimistic lover. When he departs at the climax, leaving Masha to her husband, the dull, doting schoolteacher Kulygin (Paul Lazar), Gyllenhaal responds with rafter-shaking hysterics.

It may be that Ira Gershwin was thinking of Three Sisters when he wrote the lyrics to “But Not for Me” (“With love to lead the way/I’ve found more clouds of gray/Than any Russian play could guarantee”). Chekhov’s play has plenty of gloom, it’s true, but this production is exhilarating, essential viewing.

The Bumpy Road to Love

How I Fell in Love is a play with a simple message: Keep looking for love and never give up. There’s not much to chew over or reflect on after one leaves the theater, but a sterling cast and savvy direction by Jules Ochoa make Joel Fields’ play a treat for theatergoers. Heavily reliant on alternating monologues, the work focuses on two people who only meet about a third of the way through, after the audience learns their disastrous and comic dating histories. First up is Tommy Schrider’s Todd, a warm, somewhat naïve carpet-layer who recounts his misbegotten amours with a wry appreciation of his bad luck.

“I'm working on myself now, trying not to be so negative,” he confides as he describes a meeting with a metal-folk band singer named Crystal (Roya Shanks) and his pursuit of her. The evening devolves as Crystal “flits off to the other side of the room, dancing with some girl in a way that looks very bisexual,” says Todd, whose wingman Ron ends up connecting with Crystal.

Meanwhile, Polly Lee’s neurotic Nessa, a British doctor, works in a hospital alongside a strapping medic named Eric (Mark Doherty) who, she discovers too late, is married. She’s fallen for him hook, line, and sinker; she fantasizes about a life-and-death situation in which she saves Eric but alas, the wife perishes. Then Nessa unexpectedly finds him weeping in the coffee room, and Eric discloses that his marriage is falling apart. Her hopes soar, and before long they are having an affair.

Simultaneously Todd has moved on to a woman named Louise (Shanks again) at a barbecue. They seem to hit it off, although, says Todd, “I keep looking over, wondering … when some beefy boyfriend will appear and thank me for entertaining her while he was at the gym bench-pressing his Porsche.”

The rocky preludes to Todd and Nessa’s emotional miseries eventually lead to their meeting in a therapists’ waiting room, where they seem the ideal solution for each other. They connect as friends, and begin an affair, which hits the skids, bounces back, and is sorely tested. Fields, who has written teleplays for Ugly Betty and Dirt, provides a generous helping of emotional colors as well as comic moments that make his play more satisfying than the average rom-com movie. There may be nothing new in the stresses that Nessa and Todd face, but they feel important at the time.

“Flowers from men are not acts of generosity,” Todd advises Nessa after she’s been impressed by Eric’s sending her blooms following a bad patch between them. “Why don’t women get this?” he asks. “You get flowers and you get all mushy and think, ‘Oooh, he sent flowers...’ But what you really should be thinking is ‘What did he do?’ or ‘What does he want?’ ’Cause those are the only two reasons a man sends flowers.”

Ochoa’s direction keeps the feelings raw and honest, even if, at times, the dialogue veers toward a Lifetime movie (“I'm sorry. It's me. It's not you. You're a marvelous, splendid human being. And this time with you, it's as close as I've ever come to actually touching what's really in here...”).

Schrider and Lee make the soapiest moments work, however, and they also exhibit a persuasive chemistry that drives the play forward and keeps one caring about their characters—a good thing, since appearances by Eric and Louise are infrequent, though welcome. Late in the play, though, Nessa’s weepiness (Lee is adept at turning on the waterworks) and her tendency to sabotage her future with doubts just slightly unbalance one’s sympathies.

Wilson Chin and David Arsenault pull the audience into the Abingdon’s small space by decorating the surrounding walls with images of Los Angeles—Chateau Marmont, a neon bar sign, the skyline—interspersed with color rectangles, Mondrian-style, in hues like pumpkin, celadon and federal blue. A couple pillars have Joseph Cornell-like boxes, from which, for instance, Nessa fetches a book, writing pad and pen. The modern setting is warm, inventive, and efficient.

How I Fell in Love is an apt title for what promises to be a “date play,” and it delivers in spades. But anyone who goes, single or attached, is likely to have an enjoyable time.

Trouble in Texas

People like to examine their origins via art. Virginia Woolf, Tennessee Williams, The Coen Brothers, and many, many more have all at one point or another created fictional versions of their childhood homes. About writing out her experiences, Woolf once said, “It is only by putting it in to words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me.” Perhaps playwright Stephen Bittrich is attempting to do something along these lines in his play, Home of the Great Pecan: that is, turn his hometown, Seguin, Texas, into something else so it can no longer hurt him. However, he doesn’t make Seguin ‘whole’ so much as laughable. The Drilling Company then runs with the silliness of the script to the point of absurdity, making Home of the Great Pecan mildly entertaining at best, disturbing at worst.

The play goes something like this: during preparations for the annual Pecan Festival, the town’s beloved Great Pecan is stolen, which sends everyone in a tizzy. Meanwhile, Tammie Lynn Schneider is determined to get her boyfriend Greeley Green to stop fooling around and marry her, by any means necessary. And all the while, strange lights flash and rumors of flying saucers are whispered left and right.

Design elements of the production are nicely executed: the small stage is adorned with Texan flags and Christmas lights, with panels that spin to create different locations and flexible set pieces used in varying ways. Miriam Nilofa Crowe’s lighting design is impressively versatile. Both she and set designer Jen Varbalow use the materials at their disposal to the fullest. They create a workable, malleable space for the company to play in.

The rest of the work does not quite live up to its surroundings. There’s something that rubs me the wrong way about this production’s tone. Almost everyone in the town of Seguin comes off as a bit unbalanced and laughable. One begins to wonder if Bittrich wrote himself into the play as the young, angry misfit Yankee Chucky Connors, and if Home of the Great Pecan is a kind of adolescent revenge against the town that never made him feel welcome.

But, I have to acknowledge that there are moments when characters exhibit signs of depth, and some relationships hint at complexity. Greeley, while sharing a beer with his best friend Ed, waxes philosophical about the meaning of life and the needs of man. Near the end of the play, we learn that Sonia, the Hispanic owner of the beauty parlor, has a thing for Les, the small-minded hardware store owner. These bits interest me, but are dissapointingly underdeveloped.

Instead, director Hamilton Clancey focuses on comedy. Loud comedy. Bombastic comedy. Often, ineffective comedy. The best example of this is the scene in which we meet Reverend Pat, played by Scott Baker. We are treated to (or made to endure) one of the Reverend’s sermons. He screams and shouts and waves his arms and dances around the stage, sweating and spitting profusely. It’s terrifying and grotesque. And then, one scene later, we have to watch as the still-dripping Reverend attempts to seduce the young Rose – and succeeds! Their kiss is cringe-worthy.

One performance I do enjoy is that of Amanda Dillard, who plays Pricilla Rotweiller, a young hopeful for the Miss Pecan crown. As she’s rehearsing her acceptance speech, she is sugary sweet, but her demeanor drops the second her mother interrupts her: Dillard growls her response. The theft of the Great Pecan hits her hard and leads to a hilarious, righteous breakdown. I only wish someone had pointed out the size of the space to her: her screaming literally hurt my ears at times.

It seems like The Drilling Company wants to produce work that tests the senses, that’s visceral and in your face, while Home of the Great Pecan wants to be something else entirely (a romantic comedy/indie flick, perhaps). Maybe they just aren’t meant to be together. One wonders what would happen if this company got their hands on some Artaud - that could be out of this world.

House of Love

Romantic comedies, so often a staple of commercial theater in the past, have largely been pushed to the sidelines. When was the last time a Barefoot in the Park or a Same Time, Next Year dominated a season? One has to go back a full decade to Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife just to find an original romantic comedy that was even nominated for a Best Play Tony Award. To matter, shows now need to possess a stylistic edge or bear witness to current issues; the rest, it seems, are little more than trifles compared to the weightier material around them. So it’s a thrill to see a show like Matt Morillo’s The Inventor, The Escort, The Photographer, Her Boyfriend and His Girlfriend, now playing at Theater for the New City. Morillo’s recent string of honest relationship plays (including All Aboard the Marriage Hearse and Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans with High Class Issues) have made him a recent star of the venue, but his current work shows just how sturdy the subgenre can be.

Inventor is a traditional work; it honors the rhythm and roots of romantic comedies past. Its plot recalls Neil Simon’s early classic Plaza Suite, interweaving two separate tales taking place in the same location. In this case, it’s a Manhattan walk-up on the night of a punishing blizzard building (much credit goes to savvy set designer Mark Marcante).

The play follows five characters (conveniently delineated by the play’s lengthy title). The first act takes place in the apartment of Jeffrey (David R. Doumeng), a loner who’s made a mint inventing adult products. Adam has called for the services of Julia (Jessica Durdock) to act out a fantasy of his. Both are saddled with insecurities and disappointment, and break through the walls they have put up to get to really know each other and form a connection.

And while this could have been nothing more than the cliché-riddled stuff of stale sitcoms, Morillo (who directs his own play) makes Inventor utterly contemporary. The dialogue never seems stilted or false. Jeffrey and Julia talk like any couple today would talk, in totally polished fashion. This act is perfectly paced, with snappy dialogue on Morillo’s part and impeccable timing on the part of Doumeng and Durdock (the latter does a particularly effective job of shading in subtext to her character).

The second act of Inventor occurs upstairs, in the apartment of Karen (Emily Campion – the photographer) and her estranged boyfriend John (Tom Pilutik). Karen has given John a chance to redeem himself – he can have one affair to get it out of his system. John has very generously obliged, helping himself to Molly (Maria Rowene), a dancer who happens to have a longstanding connection to Karen and John.

This tale actually stems from an earlier work of Morillo’s (co-written with Maria Micheles), called Stay Over, and it stands as proof that a playwright’s work is never done. I reviewed Stay in its initial run two years ago and was not very impressed with it. At less than an hour it was overstuffed and puerile, and hardly stood on its own. It’s still not quite perfect; the situation starts feeling circular and it could be whittled down (at more than two-and-a-half hours, the play’s running time feels a bit bloated). However, the three actors are sharp, particularly Pilutik in a committed performance that’s unafraid to embrace John’s sleazy ways.

And when paired with the first act, the two tales work marvelously in tandem with one another. Expanding it has made the work better and lent thematic grandeur to Morillo’s subject, which is the way men and women relate to one another. The two acts stand as a perfect contrast to one another. Jeffrey and Julia hide behind fake guises and even fake names, and yet there’s a kernel of honesty and affection to everything they say to one another. The triangle of John, Karen and Molly, however, is quite casually blunt, and yet the things they say to each other carry no real currency. Words are just words to them, used to get themselves out of a situation, whereas with Jeffrey and Julia, it deepens the moment.

It’s quite fitting that in giving CPR to a past work of his, Morillo has gotten to the heart of the matter. Long live the romantic comedy.

Send in the Clowns

Wacky and delightful, Room 17B now playing at 59E59 is the most recent conjuring of stage magic from acclaimed comedy troupe Parallel Exit (This Way That Way, Cut to the Chase). At just a hair over an hour, Room 17B provides laughs aplenty with a thoroughly modern blend of physical comedy, dance, mime, and slapstick. The controlled and precisely choreographed chaos creates much merriment. The audience, comprised of a mix of ages (including a number of children at the show I attended), thoroughly enjoyed the frivolity from start to finish.

The intimate, 50-seat Theater C at 59E59 is the perfect venue for the zany antics of this talented quartet of clowns. With an evocatively lit set fitted out by three-time Drama Desk nominated designer Maruti Evans with wall-to-ceiling filing cabinets, the space includes three doors — each marked “Room 17B” — which provide three times the opportunities for comic entrances and exits.

Without giving away the twenty or so scenes that make up the show, suffice it to say that Room 17B is a beguiling blend of music and mayhem in the vein of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton — influences directly cited by the members of Parallel Exit. With exaggerated movements and little to no dialogue, the fearsome foursome of funnymen act out various personae of office workers (boss, minion, kiss-up) in a variety of glee inducing gags. The office-like setting sets up a show in which power struggles between the players becomes the main conceit.

Some of the bits are more successful than others, but none of them fail to elicit at least a giggle or two. Many of the shticks produce heartfelt guffaws. The opening “dance” number, in particular, is energetic and hilarious as it introduces us to the agile performers: Mike Dobson, Joel Jeske, Danny Gardner, and Brent McBeth.

Like The Three Stooges plus one, each performer creates a distinct personality with little more than a raised eyebrow or a goofy frozen smile. The mock enmity between frenemies Gardner and McBeth generates some gut-busting moments. And the charismatic Jeske (Audience Choice Best Clown Act in 2009) practically steals the show with his wordless tomfoolery.

Special praise should also go out to Dobson’s excellent marimba work and alluring original compositions. His musical accompaniment is like a cross between Lionel Hampton and Danny Elfman, adding a wicked yet playful element to the onstage shenanigans.

Fluid direction by Parallel Exit Artistic Director Mark Lonergan keeps the action at a necessary lightening pace. There are a few moments that could, however, be tightened up, such as the semi-confusing “Blimp Demolition Derby” bit. And the “Peking Opera” joke falls a little flat from an intense build-up that produces little payoff. But the “Pigeon in the Park” and “Rival Ice Cream Truck Drivers” mimes are laugh-out-loud hysterical.

Cackles and chortles also come from improvised audience participation segments. Fearful ticket holders are forewarned that no one is safe from the mock humiliation that awaits. And all attendees should be sure to read the wonderfully designed program very carefully before the show since it provides many clues for the jokes to come.

Hands down, Room 17B is one of the most thoroughly entertaining hours I have spent at the theater in ages. This circus of cut ups, dressed in business suits, act absurd and desperately try to one-up each other. It is no wonder the troupe was nominated for a 2008 Drama Desk for Unique Theatrical Experience. Parallel Exit is simply unparalleled.

Fire and Ice

Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman shows that the late, rarely performed masterwork has unexpected juice. Unlike A Doll’s House, which provides a window into the pre-feminist past that has changed mightily since that play was written, this 1896 work is a timeless portrait of a man whose pursuit of wealth leads him to ruin. The splendid Abbey Theatre production at BAM is a demonstration of the riches to be found in lesser-known Ibsen works. The plot touches on art vs. business, work vs. family, and especially the dangers of the pursuit of power. There are even occasional elements that recall the folkloric Ibsen of Peer Gynt: Borkman’s boyhood working in the mines is suggested by the clangor of picks and shovels in Ian Dickinson’s sound design. “Down there it sings, the iron ore,” reminisces Borkman to a companion.

At the outset, Borkman is living as a hermit on the second floor of a manor house. Convicted of embezzlement at the bank he ran, and released from prison eight years earlier, Borkman sees only two regular visitors: his old clerk, Foldal, and Foldal’s daughter, Frida, who plays piano for him.

The first floor is occupied by Borkman’s wife, Gunhild, who has not set eyes on him since the trial. The estate, however, is owned by Ella Rentheim, Gunhild’s twin sister, who installed Mrs. Borkman there following the notorious case—Ella’s funds at the bank were the only ones untouched by Borkman, who once loved her. Moreover, after the trial the emotionally devastated Gunhild allowed Ella to raise her son, Erhart, until he was 14. The boy returned to Gunhild at the time of Borkman’s release, and Ella has not seen Erhart in the eight years since. And only rarely does son visit father.

Now, however, Lindsay Duncan’s world-weary Ella is dying, and she has come to see Gunhild, precipitating a struggle among the three older characters for the possession of Erhart (Marty Rea). Gunhild, played by Fiona Shaw with maternal smothering and fierce resentment at her lot, demands that Erhart stay with her and care for her. Ella wants to free him from Gunhild so he can spend the next few months with her. And Borkman (Alan Rickman) expects his son to clear his name.

But Rea’s Erhart is unbowed by their power and remains his own man: he is in love with Mrs. Fanny Wilton (Cathy Belton), who has been abandoned by her husband. Their relationship perhaps draws on Ibsen’s own late-life infatuation with a younger woman and his disdain of social mores: Fanny is older than Erhart, and she isn’t divorced.

Although the trio of principals have emotions frozen in the past, under James Macdonald’s direction the lead actors find passion, pain and humor in their frigid lives. Tom Pye has set the play in a dark void with huge snowbanks circling the perimeter of the stage, suggesting both the coldness and isolation of the characters.

Borkman is chillier than some of Ibsen’s heroes. His monomania for power, though he intended to use it for the betterment of society, has disrupted and ruined the lives of his family, Foldal, and everyone who invested with him. (Think of Bernard Madoff.) And though he claims to be the victim of an injustice, Borkman is arrogant and unbending both in his carriage and his opinion of himself. Yet Rickman gives him a polish and pride that elicit one’s sympathy for him. And Frank McGuinness’s translation allows him what feel like comic aphorisms worthy of Oscar Wilde. When Borkman claims to have wanted power in order to bring happiness to the world, Gunhild rebukes him: “You had power to make me happy—did you use it?” Borkman responds, dryly: “In a shipwreck, someone always drowns.”

Ella, who was in love with Borkman before he ceded her to his rival, lawyer Hinkel, in exchange for Hinkel's helping him advance at the bank, has never loved anyone else, with the exception of Erhart. Duncan makes her a woman stronger in composure and intelligence than passion, but one feels her desperate need for her nephew.

Ibsen leavens the grim story with large amounts of humor. Shaw in particular finds laughs where one least expects them. When Ella asks Gunhild if she doesn’t occasionally meet Borkman, Shaw almost throws away the line, “Bump into him at parties, you mean?” Her performance is masterly in timing and intonation.

If at times the play becomes melodramatic, and the last scene notably so, it is more Ibsen’s fault than that of the superb cast embodying the tortured souls of his grim yet fascinating play.