The Possibilities/The After-Dinner Joke

No theatre is offering more bang for your buck--or return on your time--than PTP/NYC with their evening of one acts: The Possibilities, by Howard Barker, and The After-Dinner Joke, by Caryl Churchill. The first consists of four short plays, the second of 66 brief scenes. The shows are smart, thought-provoking, and often fun, and these productions are terrific. Together, they add up to an amazing evening in the theatre.

The Possibilities, from the late 1980s, includes a total of ten plays. I would be quite interested in seeing the six not included in this PTP/NYC evening.

The first play is The Unforeseen Consequences of A Patriotic Act, in which Judith (she of Holofernes' decapitation) refuses to embrace the role of heroine, despite the pleading of a woman (Eliza Renner) who wants Judith to be an example "to women everywhere." This Judith owns her sexuality, and her rage, and has no interest in censoring the blood and lust from her story. The excellent Kathleen Wise as Judith and the equally excellent Renner go head-to-head with great gusto, but, really, you can't mess with Judith and get away with it. It's a fine piece and bizarrely echoes the way that publicists may try to write a personality for a politician or actor that has little to do with the person and much to do with some goal, be it important or not, moral or not.

The Unforeseen Consequences of A Patriotic Act
Eliza Renner, Kathleen Wise, Marianne Tatum
Photo: Stan Barouh 

Judith & Vinegar Tom

Well-done political theatre can be invigorating, inspiring, and infuriating in the best way. Not-so-well-done political theatre, however, can be pretty tedious, as shown by the pair of one acts now at PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Company).

Nesba Crenshaw, Tara Giordano
in Vinegar Tom
Photo: Stan Barouh

Howard Barker's three-hander Judith presents the night that Judith, "a widow of Israel," meets with Holofernes, "a General of Assyria" and eventually cuts off his head. But first they talk, a lot: the cost of killing to both victim and murderer; the strange cravings of sex; the complex reality of power. Under the conversation throbs (or should throb) desire, not only for sex per se, but to remember how to feel.

In the PTP production, words win and ideas and desire lose, due to the directing (Richard Romagnoli), casting, and acting. The presentation is monochromatic, from the dark costuming to the deadpan pontificating. The sexual tension that could make the thing work is nowhere to be found. (Also, just to pick a nit, if you're carrying someone's head, it's heavy. It has heft. In Judith, it's carried like the rolled-up sheet it obviously is.)

Vinegar Tom, by Caryl Churchill, is more successful, but still a disappointment. Reminiscent of The Crucible (could any play about witches not be?), Vinegar Tom makes explicit everything that Arthur Miller left as subtext--and then some. Much of its honesty is wonderful: these women are sexual and strong and real. Their vivid characters provide a stark contrast to the restrictions that bind them. In the 18th century, they control little but their own souls, and even those seem up for grabs.