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?

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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.

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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.)

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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!

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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]