Adding Machine

photo: Carol Rosegg

Arriving off-Broadway after great acclaim in Chicago, this production of a new musical adaptation of the 1923 Elmer Rice play adheres uncompromisingly to its strong visual style: from the dark drudgery of the accounting office where Mister Zero spends twenty five years before an adding machine makes him obsolete, to the show's final setting in which the human characters are dwarfed by machinery, every design detail is purposeful and effective. The cast, forming a cohesive ensemble with well-judged period-accurate performances, are also one with the show's bleak and Expressionistic vision, and the musical's insistent, often atonal score (by Joshua Schmidt) is focused on telling this serious, cautonary story with steadfast determination. The show's accomplishments are obvious and numerous, and yet - after my initial excitement over the first half hour or so (which is mostly focused on Mister Zero's monotonous job and unpleasant home life) and its Pennies From Heaven vibe- I sank into a state of boredom in my seat. The music does phenomenally well when depicting the soul-crushing dullness of Zero's home and workplace, but after that it's too much of the same. And while the show is faithful to the events of the original play, it misses or misjudges most of the dark wit because of its singular determination to be "serious". It doesn't start out that way, but by the end The Adding Machine becomes a museum piece to be admired more than enjoyed.

Also blogged by: [Aaron]

RUS(H)

RUS(H) spends a lot of time slowly drifting through the memories that trap its three characters in the throes of lost passion, but James Scrugg's text -- and video -- finds legs in Kristin Marting's physical direction, Anabella Lenzu's passionate Latin choreography, and Qui Nguyen's dark homoerotic fight choreography. On those legs, it manages to walk the jagged line between passion and violence better than anything I've seen on stage recently, although it gets tripped up overdosing on certain technologies that add pretension, not tension. Sonny (frighteningly played by Lathrop Walker) steals the show as the anhedonistic meth addict willing to do anything -- no matter how debased -- for more "Tina," and though he brings out the worst in Rus -- who leaves his wife, Sireene (chandra thomas), to explore his own inner sadism -- he brings out the best in Luis Vega, who plays Rus. RUS(H) isn't much of a rush, but it's one hell of a bender.

[Read on]

Sisters' Dance

photo: Erica Parise

Since the plot isn't anything new (sisters reunite on the ocassion of their mother's death to settle their differences and divvy up the property) and the characters are dangerously close to stock (the uptight "good" sister who stayed behind to nurse Mom and the sexual "bad" sister who didn't, for the most prominent examples) a whole lot depends on the actors to bring Sarah Hollister's amiable but derivative play to naturalistic life. But unfortunately the actors seem to have been steered in the wrong direction toward exaggeration: when the bad sister's no-good stud shows up drunk in the middle of the night, for instance, he's only a couple of pelvic thrusts away from turning into a Beetlejuice-like lech. "Good" sister walks around in what looks like a granny dress with her hair in a bun (the play's most wince-worthy cliche is the moment when she lets it down): this kind of obviousness is at odds with the play's tender slice-of-life moments.

Artfuckers

photo: Carol Rosegg

The young super-privileged scenesters who are this play's characters (and I use that word loosely) are all relentlessly selfish, self-absorbed a-holes. Typically their brand of willfull narcissism is cause for satiric ridicule but here the insufferable brats are meant to be taken seriously as they talk through their dramas (unconvincingly, and usually in direct address mode) and whine about this or that speed bump toward their own fabulousness. Almost none of it smells of real life: the play is as shallow and unsympathetic as its characters. As a writhingly insecure artiste who suffers suicidally over a bad review in Artforum, Will Janowitz fares best of all the actors; as for the rest of the cast I look forward to seeing them all in something else.

Rock 'n' Roll

Photo/Joan Marcus

If, as Tom Stoppard mentions in his notes for Rock 'n' Roll, "Dramatists become essayists at their peril," then the good Sir is playing things incredibly safe with his latest play. Or maybe the music that drives his play (and his his semi-autobiographical lead, Jan) has put him in an altered state. You see, there isn't an essay in Rock 'n' Roll, not a single wrong note. What wordy sections remain -- largely lectures between teacher and student in the home of the scholarly (and, given Brian Cox's performance, far too stuffy) Max -- are shaken up, as in The Coast of Utopia, only with less melodrama, and more of a pressing moodiness. We can thank the undercurrent of political repression for that, a dark and shattering presence that Jan (the remarkable, hopefully Tony-winning Rufus Sewell) tries to block out from his bloc of Prague. What the play lacks -- and this is Trevor Nunn's fault as director -- is the theatricality of rock. The fragments of song that play during the blackouts are cheapened by the flimsy typocraphic (putting the crap in typographic) projections of liner notes (unnecessary -- in these moments without words, it's the music that's important), and Robert Jones's revolving set only heightens the text toward the end of Act I, when Jan stands in a sea of shattered records. Only then does the fragile, necessary escapism (turned to revolution) feel complete; the rest of the time, we must rely on Sewell's reedy squeals and fastidious fidgeting to excite us, or on Alice Eve's restless rebellion (first as the young Esme, then as Esme's daughter, Alice) to help us connect with the exceptionally natural text.

FRIGID '08: Fool For A Client

A self-made millionaire whose American Dream went horribly wrong thanks to "a saga of litigation", Mark Whitney would have good reason to be bitter. Instead he's become an ironist, and his sixty minute fact-based monologue (currently part of The New York Frigid Festival) is rich with darkly funny, often cautionary, observational humor. There are so many sharp and succinct one-liners that I stopped trying to retain them all and just let them come and go. Most are derived from Whitney's bullseye-aim at some of the injustices and flat-out absurdities of our legal system, but Whitney's eventual target is larger. It's a well-written piece, absorbing from start to finish, in which warm and conversational Whitney mines his real-life personal nightmare to warn against (among other things) blind faith in authority. That's a message that never gets old.