King Hedley II

photo: Carol Rosegg

I have to say it straight out: despite the obvious artistry of August Wilson's dialogue, the original 2001 Broadway production left me cold and unmoved. King Deadly I dubbed it. But what was broad in that production is now intimate and affecting for the revival at the Signature; what was stilted and false now flows like jagged, vital poetry, the kind that Wilson writes that turns monologues into theatrical arias. Could this play have receieved more care and could it have been better performed than it is here? I doubt it.

Scituate

***1/2

TBG Arts Center

(pronounced sit-you-wit -as in the sea town in Massachusetts) The stakes could not be any higher as playwright, Martin Casella, has chosen to begin Act 1, Scene 1 on the eve of the death of a man's lover. Stewart Lombardi, so distraught that he doesn't know what to do with himself, takes to his bed and will not get up. (I know this person very well.) This wonderfully acted play carefully takes you to that place where you are reminded of people you have lost in your life and allows you to muse over what that person meant to you- which can be difficult and wonderful at the same time. It also reaffirms that it's okay to be a self-indulgent mess... at least for a while. Though Scituate does invite you to believe in the supernatural, which I think somewhat betrays the realistic quality the play establishes, there is an honesty here that makes this a special night (or afternoon) at the theater.

Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Gutenberg! The Musical!

****
Actor's Playhouse

Fun! The conceit is that of a book writer and composer presenting to a house full of Broadway producers their new musical about the inventor of the printing press. The music was atrocious and the lyrics were abominable just as they should have been. The beauty of this show lied in the charm of these two passionate "non-actors" presenting with farcical archery their precious (dead) baby. The whole show had the needy salesman-like sensibility of an infomercial. Favorite line: Bud: "This cupcake is poisoned!" Doug: "I can't stop killing!". I guess you had to be there. So go.
(thanksSusan!)

Apostasy

Gino DiIorio's play, Apostasy, left me confused about a lot of things, but the one that stayed with me--and this is a bad sign--is wondering why it was such a surprise for a self-defined agnostic to convert to Christianity rather than defaulting to the lackadasical and irrelevant Judaisim (a dead horse in this play, if ever there were one). Frances Hill does some nice work staging the play (a dead horse itself, for the most part), and I enjoyed the sterile, state-of-the-art feel of Roman Tatarowicz's "come-die-here" cancer ward (a private Westchester hospice). When the actors weren't over-the-top, the dialog spun nicely, but it didn't go anywhere, and there was very little substance to this play: it might just as well have been called Entropy. There's medicinal pot, an abortion-clinic manager, and a televangelist . . . in the same room . . . and I'm still not laughing.

Oliver Twist

photo: Michael J. Lutch

This highly stylized production, a new adaptation of the Dickens novel, presents the story with menacing penny-dreadul imagery and Brechtian theatrical devices. Its vision is consistent and vivid and the stagecraft is impressive; you haven't seen an Oliver Twist like this before, and yet it's often more remarkably attuned to the authoral voice in the novel than any other version I've seen on stage. However, it is slow-going for the first half of the first act - with everyone forced into heightened posturing, it gets a little ponderous watching the initial parade of gleefully awful grotesques, and some of the devices (such as having the ensemble address the audience in grim musical speak-song) take some getting used to. Once little orphan Oliver is curled up at Fagin's den of thievery and the plot is relentlessly in motion, the show starts to have urgency and feeling and its distinctive style begins to seem shrewd, a way to wring more out of Oliver Twist than just melodrama.

Also blogged by: [David]

Number 14

photo: David Cooper

Back in town almost ten years after its first Drama-Desk nominated run, the Axis Theatre's Number 14 is a wonderful physical comedy (with masks! Lots of borderline-creepy cool masks!) that parents will be more than happy to sit through for the sake of their six to ten year olds. All of the skits involve strangers interacting on a city bus and almost all are winners: the buck-toothed neatfreak who has to share his seat with a slob who's hacking up a lung, the two hipsters who negotiate a date by holding up different pictures from the magazines they're reading, the line of suit and tie corporates who move as if one. Sure, the show is slapdash and isn't held together by anything more than the sentiment in one of its song lyrics ("Everyone is human on the Number 14"), and the show veers off course once or twice with (benign) social commentary, but with a runtime of just over an hour and so much giggle-inducing slapstick and jokery, the grin doesn't have time to leave your face.