Stitching

Last time I saw an Anthony Neilson play, my knuckles went white. But his latest, Stitching, is as "in-yer-face" as a G-rated horror film. Not that the content's childish: this two-hander deals with soft-core sadism in the wake of a psyche-shattering moment. But the cast is too cute and cuddly to be much of a menace, the slow-paced direction gives us far too much time to get off the hook, and the scenes distractingly jump about in time. Both playwright and director work better with active material, and this constant sense of adagio hurts them, and constantly cuts off the actors, who turn to therapeutic devices and role-play rather than actually confronting their emotions. Even the one scene where Stu (Gian Murray Gianino) snaps at his girlfriend, Abby (Meital Dohan) pulls back, as if fight director Maggie Macdonald is using a safeword from the get-go. It's a little like watching an experiment on NOVA, with each step carefully planned out. But even here, Stitching fails, for it demonstrates nothing.

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Washing Machine

Photo/Michelle Enfield

The show is still just as aesthetically stunning as when I covered the premiere in 2007, but it didn't carry the same punch as last time. It's still a pretty nifty production, though, and I guess one should expect a washing machine to be somewhat mixed.

[Reviewed for Time Out New York]

Goodtime Charley

Wishy-washy milquetoast guy, decisive headstrong gal: a game match for a musical comedy, no? No. Not when the guy is Prince Charlemagne and the gal is Joan of Arc and there's the Hundred Years War and that burning at the stake on our minds. It's easy to see why Goodtime Charley flopped on Broadway back in the mid-'70's - it tries to whip up comic froth from material that is better suited to drama, and its tone is all over the place. The current street-clothes staged reading at The York doesn't do anything to convince that the musical's concept is anything but wrongheaded, but it does do one huge thing sensationally right by having Jenn Colella play Joan of Arc. At last, here's a role (the most interesting in the show, despite the title) that gives Colella the chance to shine and she does, bringing an intensity to her solo numbers that makes them sound like showstoppers.

Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy

There's a nifty moment near the top of Cirque Dreams (consumer warning: no relation to Cirque du Soleil) where one member of the acrobatic troupe walks across the stage bent at a ninety degree angle and costumed as an ostrich. It's the only bit in the first act that showed fresh theatrical imagination; there may be others in the second, but I was not about to find out for myself. The garish costumes (they're meant to be jungle animals, but most look like unitards made out of shredded neon-colored streamers) and the drippy power ballads (of the follow your dreams and reach for the stars variety) don't do the gymnast performers any favors. In the absence of an artful, cohesive presentation, the world-class feats of athleticism get very old very quickly.

Occupant

Occupant isn't a play; it's an interview. If you can get past that, there's a nice steady rhythm and intimacy to the conversation between The Man (Larry Bryggman) and Louise Nevelson (Mercedes Ruehl). But the total lack of action and obstacle makes this into a passion project for Edward Albee, and for people like me who know nothing about Nevelson, it's hard to appreciate the painstaking work Ms. Ruehl takes to remain in character (even when a cell-phone rings). There's a bit of playfulness in the idea of storytelling, as The Man corrects Nevelson's active imagination, but Christine Jones's set doesn't come to life until the climax of the play, and despite the talents of both actors, nothing significant ever seems to occupy the stage.

Heist

Heist has a killer opening, as mastermind plotter The Sturgeon (Rachel Jablin) goes over their plans for a bank job with associate Seahorse (Jeff Clarke). To distract passersby from the sound of Blowfish's (Amanda Boekelheide) explosions, they're going to infiltrate "a one-woman show set in Indira Ghandi's vagina." To keep things interesting, things go wrong: Seahorse falls for Ophelia (Tracy Weller), the vain vaginalist, and Blowfish is forced to turn on her comrades in order to get the necessary explosives out of the sneering Jaguar (Christopher Ryan Richards). If you can get past the fact that the pieces of Paul Cohen's plot never lock together (Ocean's Thirteen, this is not), the show has plenty of individually funny bits, from Jacques Coolidge, the taste-making theater blogger who "steers the ship of culture to the dangerous shoals of invention" and "blogs directly to [the audience's] loins," to Ophelia's script ("The velvet vulva of inchoate yearning"). Just listen to Maureen Dowd's vagina: go see Heist, go see Heist!