Substitution

photo: T. Charles Erickson

In a role written for her, Jan Maxwell sounds notes of believable anguish and despair playing a suburban mom mourning her son, recently killed along with many of his classmates in a freak accident. As good as Maxwell is, as always, she can't rescue the play, which tries to quirk up its destination to the land of Hallmark by pairing the grieving mom with a kooky, full-of-life substitute teacher whose eccentricities (such as exercising in the classroom in his underwear upon their first meeting) are meant to be endearing but mostly register as incoherent and bizarre. (Not at all the blame of Kieran Campion, who does all that anyone could reasonably be expected to do with the part). The play is further dragged down by flashback scenes of two students who also died in the accident: their scenes don't flow into the narrative and quickly sink the show's pace.

Cry Baby

** (...out of five stars)

Broadway

Completely abominable? No, not at all. A run-of-the-mill, business-as-usual, generally forgettable big musical farce seems more like it. Everyone from the creative team to the performers are courageously bending over backwards to sell this ersatz Grease to the back of the Marquis, but the book and score are giving them little to work with. With no real secondary story to round out this musical (there are definitely secondary characters whose journeys each begin and wrap up in perhaps 6 lines throughout but that's different), we are left to follow our one-dimensional, mildly likable romantic leads from scene to scene to their obvious conclusion. And the journey along the way is littered with forgettable rockabilly songs and ballads that are both less delicious vintage Waters trashiness and more cutesy feigning as naughty. I want to be Harriet Harris's life-partner but not even her brilliance could make the ten mile long eleven o'clock "Let me explain everything!" monologue listenable. Not everything was forgettable though: Best. Choreography. Of. The. Year. Cheers Mr. Ashford! You certainly know your way around a posse of Drapes...(or is that a drape of Posses...?)

Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Stretch (a fantasia)

Reviewed for Theatermania

The 1959 Songbook

****
92 Street Y

What a great year from which to glean some of the greatest showtunes in Broadway history. A snapshot of everything running on Broadway in 1959 -including Gypsy, West Side Story, The Sound Of Music, Fiorello, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, among others- this was a heartfelt tribute to the golden age of American theater. Starring the über-talented Broadway stars David Burnham, Sarah Uriarte Berry, Sally Mays and Priscilla Lopez (all of whom were spot on in the final dress rehearsal I attended), they all tore through many of the more popular showtunes and also numbers from lesser known scores like Jamaica and Bells Are Ringing. This is a very fun evening exclamation point! One quibble: In a presumable effort to fit in as much as they could, the production was very cut and paste medley heavy. It should be ILLEGAL to only sing one verse of "One Hand, One Heart"... especially when you have the glorious David Burham and the glorious Sarah Uriarte Berry on hand to sing it. The same goes for glorious Sally Mays' one verse of"Rose's Turn". "Blasphemy!" cries the showtune junkie!

Vengeance Can Wait

Yukiko Motoya's Vengeance Can Wait didn't convince me that the wait was worth it. Paul H. Juhn has a marvelous deadpan, and his voice delivers not just one-liners, but one-worders. And his happy victim, Jennifer Lim, is talented enough to be verbally and physically self-effacing, an embodiment of the baggy clothes she wears. But beyond this stiflingly dry style -- a style that is absurd simply because of how laid-back the straight comedy is -- there's nowhere to go, and so the actors simply go there again, and again, and again. If you think that's funny, then this is the play you've been waiting for.

[Read on]

Rafta, Rafta

I'd rather see an original show struggle and fail, like Chuck Mee's cultural smörgåsbord Queens Boulevard, than to see something like Rafta, Rafta succeed at mediocrity. For me, Ayub Khan-Din's done little more than make an ethnic adaptation of Bill Naughton's All in Good Time, and much of the comedy, not to mention drama, feels forced. Scott Elliott does his best to dress things up with bright lights, cultural knickknacks, and his use of Derek McLane's two-story set, but the story isn't big enough to fill the house, nor is the acting firm enough to make it seem lively. What we want to see -- more of the rambling but chaotically lively wedding party, or more ruminations from the father-figure's proud and troubled past -- is covered up with cheap sexual distractions and farce: no wonder the main character is impotent.

[Read on]

Substitution

***

The Playwrights Realm

This play about a mother and substitute teacher wandering through the grieving process was written for the actress, Jan Maxwell. Thank Thespis she was available for the evening belongs to her realistic and heart-breaking take on the mom who is reeling over the death of her son. Every laugh, tear, and wring of the fist was earned as she stormed through this production with harrowing rage as though she were cornered by the entire world. She is supported by the handsome (and ripped) Kieran Campion whose nervous energy and adorable pluck matches Jan's intensity. Their scenes together are pretty damn riveting. Unfortch they are chopped up by erroneous scenes about a pair of the dead student's peers having long rambling teenage philosophical conversations about you know- teen stuff. The poor young actors are doomed from the start as we are forced to go from Jan Maxwell weeping uncontrollably to lets play a game! It seemed like two separate plays and I longed to get back to Jan every time the kids popped up. But not to fear 2/3 of this production is hardcore Maxwell and for that, it's totally worth it.

Cherry Docs

I wish that I could believe Mark Zeisler, who plays Danny, a liberal Jewish lawyer appointed to defend Mike, a Neo-Nazi on trial for an act of violence that led to a man's death. The plot, you have to admit, is hard enough to accept. I want to believe, so that I can get behind the sort of moment when Danny, holding his anger in check, refuses to punch Mike (who welcomes the violence, the language he understands best): "If I start, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop." Mike nods and gets really close to Danny: "Now you know how I feel." But because Mr. Zeisler doesn't seem genuine about any of this, we never know how he feels. Luckily, I'd recommend Cherry Docs anyway, solely on the commanding performance from Maximilian Osinski (Pablo Schrieber, look out!): I dare you not to shed a tear at his redemptive journey, going from smug and manipulative to conflicted and worried, and then from forceful denial to apologetic grief. As for David Gow's script and direction -- too much seems forced, especially the tidy final ten minutes; he would do well to listen to his characters.

[Read on]

UNCENSORED

Not a review, just heartfelt praise for the MCC Theater Youth Company (ah, memories). Their latest group piece, "Uncensored," combines spoken word with monologues and ensemble pieces, all of which are about the empowerment of these teenagers. Here's freedom of speech, whether it's about "skinny jeans" (trivial to some, crucial to others), the latest gossip on "Gossip Girl" or even, with a nod to the audience, where exactly the denouement is supposed to go, and what a play's supposed to be. (There's even a storybook presentation about the child-raping "muffin man.") "This is not a play," says one of the 26 actors on the stage. But it is: minds at play, and audiences engaging with them, and damned if there isn't enough clever splicing from the cast and director Stephen DiMenna to make the whole evening slide smoothly from segment to segment, even if the pieces themselves often crash up against one another.

The New Century

photo: T. Charles Erickson

How can you tell that the man sitting near you at the theatre is gay? A) he's saving the Playbill and B) he's awake. So go the quips from the title character in Mr. Charles, a one-act previously seen downtown a few seasons ago and now flanked by two new monologues - one starring Linda Lavin and the other Jane Houdyshell - to form a Paul Rudnick evening. (There's also a fourth piece, which brings all of the characters from the three preceding plays together, but it's generally banal and the less said about it the better). The Mr. Charles play, in which Peter Bartlett reprises the limp-wristed title role with delicious panache, is the only one that has something interesting to say - namely, that the social acceptance of gays has erased a once-prevalent brand of eccentric cultured pansy - but the Lavin and Houdyshell monologues make up in snappy comedy what they lack in substance. Lavin is marvelous and has perhaps never been funnier as a Jewish matron from Massapequa whose tolerance is pushed to its beleaguered limit by her childrens' "alternative lifestyles": the fun comes from watching the character try to stick with the program of unconditional love and acceptance no matter what the kids throw at her. The monologue performed (to astonishing perfection) by Houdyshell gets off to what seems like a rocky start when it appears that Rudnick is patronizing the character (we're asked to laugh at the macaroni-and-glue crafts that she makes, for example) but soon the playwright neatly inverts the message so that it pokes fun at supposedly sophisticated tastemakers. That slyness made it my eventual favorite of these one-acts.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Photo/John Castro

For better or worse, Hipgnosis Theatre Company has put the "fun" in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle. At times, that means a loss of specificity, and a sacrifice of strong opinion in favor of hammy polemic. At others, it means that straight actors like Rachel Tiemann and comic actors like John Kevin Jones come full circle in their arcs and drive home the vignettes that they, as central characters, link together. Ultimately, the narrow theater is a poor choice for theater-in-the-round, and yet Margo Newkirk's clever and uncluttered direction, Demetrios Bonaros's singing and arrangements, and of course, Brecht's neatly didactic writing, all rise to the occasion and turn out a neat little play that I only wish, like Azdak the judge, had tried neglecting order.

[Read on]

Man Of La Mancha

photo: Jennifer Maufrais

A no-nonsense, thematically clear production of a musical that is very easy to muddle and ruin, the current rendering of Man Of La Mancha (at Gallery Players, in Brooklyn) is modest but effective and, on occasion, stirring. The directorial focus is squarely on telling the story with clarity and a minimum of fuss, as evidenced by choices that demonstrate unwavering trust in the strength and weight of the material. The production is fortunate to have a strong Aldonza in Jennifer McCabe, whose wrenching performance as the whore barmaid is sometimes like a stunning fit of controlled rage, and an enderaing Pancho in Robert Anthony Jones, whose "I Like Him" is one of the production's crowd-pleasing highlights. Although vocal stress kept Jan-Peter Pedross from making an ideal Cervantes at the performance I saw, his performance was otherwise well-judged and quietly touching.

The Accidental Patriot

Photo/Carrie Leonard

Having so enjoyed Kinderspiel and Commedia dell'Artemisia, the last two plays by Stolen Chair Theatre Company, it pains me to write this less than positive summation of Kiran Rikhye's The Accidental Patriot. As part of the company's CineTheatre Tetrology, the play mimics the swashbuckling genre of film, and while it gets the raucous energy of the large-scale swordfighting down, it loses something in emphasizing the melodramatic dialogue, and throws momentum to the overboard with a few sea shanties too many. The point where I draw my cutlass is that director Jon Stancato, in his efforts to remain faithful to the movies, replicates close-ups by pausing the action, bringing the actor into a center-stage spotlight, and having him continue from there as the rest of the cast carries on as if nothing's changed. The effect is artificial -- more alienating than Brecht -- and it bleeds over into the rest of the show, from the forced emoting to the by-the-numbers blocking. I get the intention, but I don't appreciate the result, and I spent most of the show hoping for an accident to force the actors to actually play off one another. I thought I'd have my opportunity when Liza Wade White, the ingenue, tripped over a sword while rushing to kiss the patriotic pirate (Cameron J. Oro) who had just revenged himself against her father (David Berent). Unfortunately, she didn't miss a beat. I go to plays to get away from such stoic theatrics, the unflinching resolve that celluloid captures so well; I was disappointed to find that The Accidental Patriot aspired to so little.

House

"Oh oh. Oh no. Here he comes!" says John Calvin Kelly, the electrifying actor taking on the role of Victor in Daniel MacIvor's one-man show, House. "He's ruining everything! I thought this was a PLAY! Stop! Stop!" Standing in the narrow aisle of the Red Room, surveying the audience and acknowledging the theater itself, John is stripping away the artifice of the show, and with that, he succeeds in removing the artifice of character, thrilling us with a performance that never seems forced, even at its most abstract. (Metaphors are literal to our "fucked up" narrator: his mother is possessed by the devil, with "eyes the size of turnips"; his father runs a circus act in which he's "the saddest man in the world.") As John speaks, he pulses with all the barely repressed rage at the idiocy in Victor's life, building up the walls of his house (HOUSE!) before hitting the next part: "My calming action," he says, ". . . used to be counting to fifty but it took TOO GODDAMN LONG!" Fritz Brekeller is a confident director, which means he lets John go out on a limb, but never so far that it snaps. It also means the focus stays on Victor's quest to find a place of his own: ignored at work, despised by his wife, and ridiculed at group, his life is unremarkable, to the point where "See ya tomorrow," "Call ya Friday," and "Wanna go for breakfast" seem poetic, for it "might not sound like poetry but it does if you never heard it and I never did." In the finest moment, Victor describes the only award he's ever won: first as a fantasy, then as it actually was, settling for each flaw with an increasingly bitter "Fine." Septic salesman or not, that's a lot of shit for one man to suck up, and kudos to John for keeping it all in with a slowly cracking grin.

Babylon, Babylon

Photo/Ken Stein

For a while, Jeff Lewonczyk's ambitious illusion, the thirty-man Babylon, Babylon, holds up. But the writer/actor/director stacks the deck against himself, putting the audience so close to the action (lined up against opposite walls) that the lack of drama becomes all too apparent. Nothing sustains the momentum of the overall piece; it's just that there's so many characters on stage that it seems like things are developing, when in fact we're just watching lots of under-developed pieces. It is any surprise, then, that when they all collide in a forced climax that the whole thing seems more than a little ridiculous?

[Read on]

Alice: End Of Daze

photo: Carol Rosegg

There's one long section in this experimental, surreal variation on Alice In Wonderland (currently at La Mama) that holds our strrict attention: we watch the performers enacting a kind of torture ritual with highly stylized, somewhat slow-motion movements in front of a wall of projections of Inquisition scenes, set to a modest but sonically strange and dramatically haunting soundscape performed by Edward Herbst. This is the show's most effective stretch because it gives the audience something specific (that is, torture in the name of religious purification) to use to decode what's happening on stage. Besides this sequence, too much of the show is otherwise thematically obscure: the intended exploration of "the nature of time, visual perception and consciousness" (according to press notes) doesn't prove to be much of a driving force to organize the material. Instead we watch nine year old Alice (played by Mari Andrejco, an actress in her sixties) wander from one moment to another and we're often as lost as she is.

Monster

Is the imagination of evil what enables it? This is the moral dilemma at the heart of Daniel MacIvor's monologue, Monster, and the scene connecting its characters is one of the most gruesome tortures I've ever heard (from 1998, predating Saw). However, the play struggles with itself to display this conceit, and Avery Pearson -- while believable and frightening as Adam, the angry voice from the darkness who would "rather be a blackout than a burst of light" -- is forced to undermine his menace every time he plays Janine, an all-too-innocent bystander, or emulates Denise, a clucking movie assistant with a long neck and tiny bladder. Pearson is far stronger when playing men like Al, the quietly angry boyfriend to Janine, and Joe, an addict who, in a burst of clarity, sees a new life for himself. We lose the nuance of the play, for a young boy obsessed with "the Boyle torture" only comes across as a shrill and excitable Pearson. We lose the subtlety of character, too, when they're reduced to tics or share the same vocal tricks, an actor-generated weakness. This is where the director, Steve Cook, should have stepped in. But like the staging itself, which keeps the actor far from the audience, the show is hands off, and as such is more about an actor showing off than an ominous display of the darkness within us all.

Alice: End Of Daze

???

LaMaMa

As I have stated before, I am often the king of not getting it. I was completely lost in this post-apocalyptic, experimental take on Alice In Wonderland (maybe I was supposed to be). There were a lot of interesting things happening onstage and it seems there was a boat to get on but I missed it. Is this a brilliant piece of theater? Or is the emperor wearing no clothes? Thank GOD Patrick was there with me. He's smart. I look forward to his review. He'll tell us what to think.

Hostage Song

photo: Samantha Marble

In this risk-taking, altogether unique and strikingly unsentimental indie-rock musical, Jim (a Pentagon contractor) and Jennifer (a news reporter) are blindfolded and held hostage in a dingy cell somewhere in an unnamed foreign country. There isn't any rising action, by design - the show is a series of riffs on the prisoners' situation rather than a conventional narrative, with hard-driving, grunge-tinged songs punctuating the wholly convincing book scenes (which are remarkable for their skillful blend of cold-eyed dread and gallows humor). The result is certainly vivid and it's easy to see why discerning freshness-seekers have turned this little downtown musical into a tough ticket: the show defies music theatre conventions both in subject matter and form. Yet in the end the terrific songs (by Kyle Jarrow) and the accomplished, haunting book (by Clay McLeod Chapman) add up to less than the sum of their parts: a little more plotting would change that and make the show more unified and satisfying. As the hostages, Hanna Cheek and Paul Thureen are especially remarkable for conveying a range of emotions while blindfolded and unable to show the audience their eyes. Abe Goldfarb scores with his perfectly judged delivery of an especially haunting monologue that is, for me, the show's most powerful scene.

Yellow Moon

I didn't really go for the style of Yellow Moon, in which four plainly dressed actors basically narrate their way through each other's stories, as I found the plot to be a derivative adventure story. I did, however, like the language David Grieg showed himself to be so in command of, and I found myself drawn to the physicality of each actor, doing their best to conjure up some external imagery for all the internal talk coursing between them. The play is one of forced (poetic) perspective, and is less like a ballad than an elaborate ballet, one in which each dancer narrates the other's every step. It's observational, yet, because it's narrated by the actors, quite revealing, too, especially when it stumbles upon the awkwardness of youth -- the "sex" scene between Lee and Leila is spellbinding.

[Read on]

When Is a Clock

Matthew Freeman's new play When Is a Clock is begging to be reset. At its heart, there's an ornate metaphysical mystery (something of a cross between Paul Auster and Jorge Luis Borges), with the sort of creepy poetry that allows dandruff to be described as "shavings . . . like someone put a little cheese grater to his milky skull" and a woman's transformation into a clock as "Her legs curled up inside her, her arms wrapped backwards, her head lowered into her widening neck. All of this sounds so . . . thundering and bizarre. But it was graceful. Like origami." But around this well-fashioned analog core, there's a slick, winking digital comedy that seems like effluvium from Mr. Freeman's recent, pointed one-acts (Trayf and The White Swallow). A clock can track both night and day, but When Is a Clock would keep better time if it excised the shallow office scenes, toned down the exaggerated cop, and focused on the family drama. (I make these criticisms because the plot is a blast of originality, and the playwright has a strong, richly descriptive voice that I'd just like to see used for more than pure entertainment.)

[Read on]

Little Flower Of East Orange

photo: Monique Carboni

As Therese, an ailing, wheelchair-confined widow whose determination to not be a burden on her grown children is either saintly selflessness or passive-aggressive martyrdom, Ellen Burstyn is unfussy and direct: she achieves her effects so simply that you don't see any "acting". This is an extraordinary performance that should be getting more attention than it is. It's at the center of Stephen Adly Guirgis' engrossing but somewhat messy new play which has much in it that is raw and intimate: I don't know anything about the playwright's personal history but the scenes he's written between Therese and her son (an intense, compelling Michael Shannon) have a seering honesty that seems to have come from anguished searching. The authenticity of these scenes is more than enough to recommend the play, despite its unruly, humor-spiked first act. Also excellent: Elizabeth Canavan, playing Therese's daughter whose "could fall to pieces at any moment" exterior disguises a solid inner strength.

The Four Of Us

**** (...out of five stars)

MTC

Like From Up Here, this other current MTC offering is also pretty damn great. Centering on the rocky friendship between two young writers, this Itamar Moses play's brilliance lied in the depth of its two characters and the fascinating structure that had our story bouncing backward and forward all over the timeline of their relationship. Michael Esper, who recently kicked some ass in Crazy Mary and Me, Myself & I is on a roll here giving another youthful, intelligent and very honest performance as a jealous struggling playwright. The handsome , sensitive Gideon Banner was also dead on for his role as a shy boyish novelist.

I went to two great plays in one weekend. Thanks MTC! Can't wait for Top Girls!

The Four Of Us

photo: Joan Marcus

A plot synopsis will tell you that Itamar Moses' new comic drama concerns two buddies who are both aspiring writers and that one becomes wildly successful while the other does not. But that's only what's on the surface: the highly enjoyable two-hander mines a lot more than the envy you expect from their dynamic. Although the flashbacks and flashforwards are once or twice a tad disorienting, and a couple of scenes may go on just a bit too long, the play has a pleasurably relaxed ryhthm that allows us to savor the often funny and easily identifiable ways that the characters reveal themselves. The play is wise, amusing and quietly touching in its depiction of a friendship between two well-meaning, likeable people that can not hold as is against life's changes: you don't have to be a writer to relate to that. The snappy production (at MTC's smaller space) also boasts two excellent performances from Michael Esper and Gideon Banner, who have believable good-friends chemistry together and who both perfectly nail the style of the piece. Highly recommended.

From Up Here

Photo/Joan Marcus

I took the weekend off from criticism so that I could just revisit some plays I very much enjoyed (Hostage Song and Too Much Light Make the Baby Go Blind), but a few things worth mentioning regarding From Up Here. First: it's exceptionally well cast, and it plays to the strengths of emotionally introspective Tobias Segal (Kenny), awkwardly outgoing Will Rogers (Charlie), serious yet friendly Brian Hutchinson (Daniel), and excitably charming Julie White (Grace). (The rest of the cast is great, too, I just haven't seen them in anything before.) Second: the only thing holding Leigh Silverman back from perfection is her own perfection -- that is, she just makes her plays too aesthetically pleasing. That honey-colored sweetness worked for Well, but it sanded off the pulp from Beebo Brinker, defaced Yellow Face, and kept From Up Here far from any real danger. I love her work, I just want to see her dig into it. And finally, Liz Flahive's script is pretty dead on, from the angst of an ignored sister (Aya Cash) to the conflict of a favored aunt (Arija Bareikis): those people who leave Stage I thinking the play is just about Kenny's emotional bottleneck are missing the whole point: we're all up there. Some of us just fall better than others.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind

I didn't get to see new TMLMTBGBer Alicia Harding do very much in my latest (but first of the year, and thus eligible!) trip to The Kraine, but I did get graham crackers, a bag of Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies (Christopher Borg, if you've googled yourself, yes -- they are that good), and a little too much exposure to Joey Rizzolo's adolescent dreamscape. Highlights include "The Council For Food" -- did you know food was good for you? -- the sweet, shared encounter of "The day I showed my hand," and the hysterically self-referential "MELTDOWN! DON'T CALL THIS PLAY, IT'S FULL OF LIES!" Oh, and they finished the show, it was still a deliriously fun evening, and they've got a new website. Pin pin, anyone? Pin?

crooked

What do The Pillowman's insane fiction, the gushing angst of From Up Here, and the sublime grace of 100 Saints You Should Know all have in common? Nothing. But the best of all three plays is present in Catherine Treischmann's superb new play, crooked, which, for all the twists in plot, never has the characters do anything but go straight for the heart. As Maribel, Carmen M. Herlihy excels as a fragile, isolated girl whose holds onto religion as a necessity: invisible stigmata make her important (and keep her from self-cutting), and Hell is the place where people like Deedee Cummings will rot for being so mean. It's a view of religion that can't be easily dismissed, and a character that can't be summed up with a one-dimensional adjective. She is joined also by the masterful Cristin Milioti, who plays Laney with such a desperate need for approval that even she is startled by her rebirth as a "Holiness Lesbian," and by Betsy Aidem, who makes Elise, Laney's mom, so solidly pragmatic that she's hardly recognizable a few glasses of wine later. Director Liz Diamond finds ways to enhance the magical world we live in, but she never strays from the electric realism of the play. What are you waiting for? Get bent!

[Read on]

From Up Here

****1/2 (...out of five stars)

MTC

Of the three of us Showdowners, I liked this play the most. Loved, in fact. This story about fractured family trying to rebound from a very serious incident that went down at the high school was very modern, sensitive and wholly engaging. Loaded with colorful, stressed-out characters crashing up against each other yet also desperate to reach out and hold each other, From Up Here was pushing the same buttons in me that last year's 100 Saints You Should Know did- another play that I flerging loved. Everyone in this cast is delivering some great performances with Julie White leading the pack. The desperate mommy angst emanating from her aura was heartbreaking and I wanted to climb onstage and give her a big fat gay hug.

The Country Girl

Stage chops: you can file them under Use 'Em Or Lose 'Em. I've long considered Morgan Freeman to be among the best actors of our time but his return to the stage (in this Mike Nichols-directed revival of the Odets classic) could be generously described as underwhelming. Three weeks into previews, his performance is so tentative he practically vanishes on stage. I left at intermission. Almost nothing in the first act landed as it was supposed to - Freeman, Peter Gallagher, and Frances McDormand, a mismatched trio of actors if ever there was one, seemed to each be working in a different performance style which made for a numbing non-starter. Nichols was at the back of the house dictating notes, but it's a cinch that "replace the stars" was not one of them.

Barcinda Forest

To be honest, Barcinda Forest isn't ready for review or for viewing, but they've asked for both, so I'll oblige on behalf of those who come after me. The "environmental" story by Janeen Stevens is one-dimensional and hokey (think Fern Gully, only without the animation), and Barry Gomolka's staging for Original Intent Theater -- which aims to fit the problem of producing plays on a "small, relatively inexpensive scale" -- actually causes problems. Hoyt Charles uses classical periaktoi to change scenes (a nod to their mission statement to "revisit theatrical conventions"), but the actors are the ones who have to spin them around, and the crude illustrations on them -- like fourth-grade art class -- are more distracting than revealing. And although Georgien's costuming for the blue jay, deer, wolves, and spirits of the forest is color-coded, only one of the actors actually attempts at the physicality of that animal (Johnny Ferro): the rest just look like humans standing around in clothes with leaves or boas stitched on them. Finally, the choice to have the animals speak in blank verse and the two men -- land-developing Cash Cutter and his innocent, journalist son, Paul -- in prose is a good one, but one that requires precision and smoothness from the actors. Here, the two worlds -- animal and human -- don't clash so much as they bleed together, and that's why Barcinda Forest is rough.

Young Frankenstein

**1/2 (...out of 5 stars)

Broadway

I finally lost faith in the Tony Awards after Jay Johnson's ventriloquist act won Best Special Theatrical Event over Kiki and Herb (straw. camel. back.). And so I am emotionally prepared to deal with the scary notion that Young Frankenstein may snag a Best Musical nomination away from the brilliance that is Xanadu. Never mind that YFrank is the same spoofy Broadway joke delivered much better in The Producers, or that all the songs sound the same and are generally forgettable, or that the only genuine laughs come from the hard working actors and not from the book or score, it looks good on paper, it employs a lot of people and it will tour well. I smell the stench of nomination.

Fire Island

Photo/Diego Bresani

At heart, Fire Island is a love story, but the scenes keep branching into what Mee labels "riffs" (which is at least an honest assessment of his collaging). Bob -- a punk-clad critic -- justifies this by saying that all Greek plays are love stories: despite the tragedy, everything always happens for love. Again, while the text may support these wild claims, the rhythm of the piece doesn't: the clown's molestations are tame, Susan has a knife that she never uses, and Catherine wins Hiroko back with nothing more than pity. What's missing is anything more than the love story -- that is, the impetus for us to continue watching. Fire Island is a place, not an excuse for piecing together rambling, unremarkable characters, and technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Nothing compels Fire Island to be a play rather than a novel, and placing the audience in the midst of the action only works when there is action, which Kevin Cunningham frequently keeps just out of reach, projected in three dimensions, but still remarkably flat.

[Read on] [Also reviewed by: Patrick]

God's Ear

photo: Jim Baldassare

Last year, after seeing this play at 13th Street Rep, I wrote this:

"At first the use of language in Jenny Schwartz's play is exciting and bold: the people talk in nearly non-stop cliches and elliptical phrases, and sometimes repeat a sentence or an exchange with minor but meaningful variation. Initially, as we watch a married couple struggling with each other over the death of their child, it makes for thrilling theatre: the highly-stylized fractured speech is like the music of profound anguish constructed from the superficial sound bytes of everyday talk. But then other whimsical characters begin to figure into the play - a transvestite airline stewardess and The Tooth Fairy, to name two - and the expressionistic language doesn't have the same impact coming from their mouths."

While I still have those same complaints about the whole of God's Ear, now enjoying a transfer to the Vineyard Theatre with most of its team and cast intact, I must also say this: I've seen over two hundred shows since, and few have lingered in the memory as this one did. Hearing the play a second time, I was reminded how uncommon it is to encounter a new playwright whose work speaks in an exciting, truly theatrical and genuinely unique voice. Schwartz is certainly worth getting excited about and this play, although ultimately problematic, is a must-see for playgoers who are interested in bold new work.

God's Ear

Photo/Carol Rosegg

I'm having trouble writing a capsule review of God's Ear: there really isn't a single moment that I can easily omit. That's to be expected from a playwright like Jenny Schwartz, who rewrites each draft from scratch, so that the rhythms not only continue to build, but are perfect in the process. Anne Kauffman, who takes the script seriously -- and literally -- creates a heartbreaking world, and the cast, carried over from last year's production (with the exception of Rebecca Wisocky, who now steals the show), have made even characters like the Tooth Fairy seem plausible. We imagine things because we are sometimes too full of reality to face it. Face it; God's Ear is unmissable.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]