Beyond Glory

****
Roundabout

The only frame of reference I had for Admiral James Stockdale, H. Ross Perot's running mate, was Phil Hartman's hysterical SNL impersonation of an out-of-touch, dim-witted old coot. Here in Steven Lang's one man play, Beyond Glory, he painted a different portrait: that of a courageous man who endured years of torture in Vietnam on behalf of his fellow soldiers. An enormous amount of respect and care went in to the presentation of 8 different soldiers who received the Medal Of Honor. Steven Lang, who adapted the book to the stage also portrays all the characters who performed enormous feats of bravery in WW2, Korean War, and Vietnam War. Very elegant, masculine and proud is Lang's work and I am very glad I went.

Saint Joan of the Stockyards

Photo/Rachel Roberts

Though Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards is filled with an overfawning look at communism and a deeply satirical stance on religion, Lear deBessonet has managed to take the alienating themes (and style) and ground it in the drama of a martyred innocent, our Jeanne d'Arc, brilliantly played by Kristen Sieh. It's hard at times to see Brecht, as Ralph Manheim's script has punched up the dialogue, and the cast delivers it with a real fervor, but it's not that deBessonet isn't trying to keep us alienated (the stage divides the audience and the props blockage the actors), it's that the avante-garde isn't as shockingly theatrical anymore, especially at PS122, a cultural center. Righteous indignation may be too expensive for the poor, but it doesn't look like deBessonet's team had to compromise for this production, and the polish, mixed with the industrial set, does wonders to bring Joan to life.

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One Thing I Like To Say Is

It is clear almost right from the start that Lina, central in this smart little gem of a new four-character play, is (perhaps defensively) prone to fantasy and flights of imagination: we know immediately not to believe that she grew up with a Scottish butler, even though she tells us she did, and when she says that someone "does not exist" after we've been listening to her tell us all about him, we're put on notice to listen attentively to sort things out for ourselves. The one-act play, written by Amy Fox and presented as the final show in Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks series, vigorously holds the attention from start to finish: it respects that we will intuit where a lesser play would simply tell us flat-out. Essential parts of the story (which is something like a collage of the most important moments between Lina and her brother) never fully concretize into facts. but that's part of what makes the show so interesting and dynamic: the looseness suggests that family history and mythology are open to change, built on memory's slippery slope, and it also honors the power of imagination in the face of painful disappointment and estrangement. As the relationships between the characters come into focus and we get the hang of the distinctively off-kilter and sometimes knowingly funny play (its strong point of view reminded me many times of quirky, intimate first-person novels) the play becomes quietly affecting and finally moving. If I had only one thing to say about One Thing I Like To Say Is, it'd be that if you have a chance to catch it before it closes on June 23rd, you should.

Off Stage: The East Village Fragments

Richard Sheinmel and Debbie Troche in Robert Patrick's "Camera Obscura."
Photo/Jim Baldassare

I take it that all of you reading this are theater fans; that said, why haven't you already seen Off Stage: The East Village Fragments? Peculiar Works Project, following up on their West Village version, has put together a historical homage, a walking-tour-de-force, of off-off-Broadway '60s plays (surreal, abstract, absurd, experimental, classical, satirical, happening) to help pass on the culture and teach us all more about the state of theater today. I saw a lot of glimmering talent in all those styles and performances, and I hope there are some producers out there who realize that this type of concentrated festival can do as much good, if not more, than a full-length summer series (if for no other reason than it being outside in the beautiful New York summer). I missed the West Village version because I didn't know about it: if you've read this far, you can't use that excuse. From The Public to La MaMa, it's time to really put the pieces together.

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Crazy Mary

photo: Joan Marcus

A.R. Gurney's new comedy demands more than a fair share of suspension of your disbelief: the institutionalized title character's transformation from delusional shut-in to giddy romantic is about as believable as the attending psychiatrist's matter of fact first-scene confession that he's been diverting her money to fund community outreach programs. Incredible business such as this makes it seem as if Crazy Mary might be meant to be more farcical than it is played here. While the two female leads do quite well by the material under the circumstances (Sigourney Weaver is particularly good at wound tight WASP) the most convincing (in fact, revelatory) performance comes from Michael Esper, who makes entirely credible his character's transformation from sullen to lovestruck.

Badge

I wish I'd live-blogged a review of Badge; then I wouldn't be stuck trying to recall the various off-kilter moments of this comedy. I liked the idea of a 28-year-old, Roy, trying to stay in the scouts because of how inauthentic the world around him made him feel, and there seemed to be something noble in the pursuit of all 122 merit badges, even though I have no idea what those are and don't find it funny that the one he's missing is in theater. I also stop laughing when everybody is over-the-top, and grow irritated when I can second guess the playwright long before the twist: at that point, the only thing left is the comedy, and as I already mentioned before, it's way over-the-top, fueled on hot-air monologues and dropping more and more sensible shreds of ballast with every passing minute. The finale strives toward a combination of farce and Fight Club, and to be fair, that's exactly what it achieves. But those two belong together as much as a 28-year-old in the Boy Scouts, which leaves Matthew Schneck's play even less authentic than Roy's world.