Memory

The ads make it sound like a highfalutin rumination on the indefiniteness of memory, and the plot description isn't exactly promising - we're going to watch actors rehearsing a play in which a woman remembers the early days of Nazi Germany? But Memory, the opening production of this year's Brits Off Broadway festival, is actually profoundly powerful and completely riveting; it's easily one of the best, most gripping plays I've seen so far this year. The conceit of having the play framed by its own rehearsal is not a convenient gimmick - the deconstruction shrewdly disarms the audience and makes us more emotionally vulnerable to the material, because we are never sure when the rug will be pulled out from under us. The play within the play tells a second story, in which an Israeli contractor has to force a Palestinian man out of his home to make way for the Bethlehem Wall. Of the many different echoes that reverberate from this play's juxtaposed stories, perhaps the most affecting is that we may remember the events of history, but forget its lessons. The production, transferred from Clywd Theatr Cymru in Wales, is knife-edge sharp and the performances (particularly Vivien Parry) are fierce and intense. Highly recommended.

Training Wisteria

The Cherry Lane Mentor Project teams a preeminent dramatist (in this case, Jules Feiffer) with an emerging playwright (Molly Smith Metzler this time) to give notes on a play in development. The plays (three this season) are then produced on Cherry Lane's smaller stage and open to the public for a brief run of performances. The productions are not meant to be open for review, and in the spirit of the Mentor Project, I'm going to respect that. From the I-Had-No-Idea Department: Sixteen Wounded, which eventually bowed on Broadway in 2004, was seen as a Mentor Project production at the Cherry Lane in 2002.

God's Ear

photo: Jim Baldassare

If you've been reading this blog, then you know that I'm easily aesthetically excitable, which is why I tell you that you must go see Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear (there's a 'pay-what-you-can' on Mondays). Full of a deftly repetitious but never monotonous rhythm (think Ives and Stoppard), this expertly directed comic tragedy allows its married couple to flounder through fits of logorrhea before finally stripping away the words they use for distance. The truly abstract portions are a little forced (GI Joe and the Tooth Fairy), but presented with such panache by Anne Kauffman that one is pretty much dared to take exception to a single line in the play. Obfuscation is just another tactic, but the exuberance of English here is so powerful that this strategy will literally be music to your ears. Did I mention the tremendous talent of the cast, especially Christina Kirk and hot talent Annie McNamara?

[Read on]

Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Betrothed

photo: Rachel Dickstein

Rachel Dickstein's Betrothed adapts three texts about women and marriage - Jhumpa Lahiri's Indian tale The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, Anton Chekhov's Betrothed and S. Ansky's play The Dybbuk - and succesively tells each story in highly theatrical, impressionistic terms. Choreography is integral to the stoytelling here, as is the haunting original music which underscores throughout, and the stage pictures are always visually rich and evocative. However, only the first of the three segments - Lahiri's story of a young modern-day Indian girl (sensitively played by Mahiri Kakkar) whose crushed hopes for marriage drive her to neurotic fits - struck me as wholly satisfying storytelling, partly because it is narrated by the ensemble. The other two parts of the triptych, adapted from more familiar works, are abundant in imagery and expressive movement but the price for that is muted dramatic impact. I appreciated their beauty and invention, but as if from a remove.

An Octopus Love Story

photo: Mike Klar

The love story of the title, between a gay man and a lesbian who agree to a sham marriage as a socio-political publicity stunt, sounds like it could make for a groanworthy sitcom-deep play, but Delaney Britt Brewer's comedy-drama is smart and snappy, and it's more questioning than you might expect. The play goes to places (about gay identity and about the importance of desire, for instance) that are unsettlingly messy and deeply human - there is sharp social observation under the play's entertaining surface of comic situations and nifty laugh lines. The shoestring production is less than ideal (some of the staging is clunky, and the set changes take too long) and I could quibble that two supporting performances are pushed to be too broad, but that doesn't hold me back from happily recommending this solid off-off treat by a new, promising playwright.

The Receipt

The Receipt is a postmodern comedy about urban life (London, but it adapts well to New York) that is so awash in cleverness that even the repetition is excusable as satire on city routines. Chris Branch and Will Adamsdale have a great chemistry together, and watching the energetic Will get bent entirely out of shape by the multitude of tormenting authority figures Chris plays is worth the price of admission alone. But you'll want to stick around for the truth beneath all that cleverness, which is that although we are fast becoming small, anonymous figures, happiness is what we make of it: what we choose to grab hold of. Here, it's a receipt that reminds Will that if we only follow the processed chain far enough, eventually we'll arrive at the real person on the other end of it.

[Read on]