Gypsy

URGENT: Music theatre fans should get tickets for the Encores production of Gypsy. Immediately. Don't even read the rest of this review, because there is nothing I could say that you aren't going to hear again and again over the course of the three week run, and beyond. You're going to hear that Patti Lupone is a sensation, the vital bulldozing force of nature that many of us have been waiting for in a Mama Rose. You'll hear that from the first moments of the overture, the score is brought to glorious goosebump-raising life by the full orchestra. You'll hear that this is, at last, a Gypsy in which everyone is bringing their best game and every moment works, even the ones you might think you are tired of. There'll be richly deserved praise for Boyd Gaines, the most substantive Herbie since Jonathan Hadary, and for Laura Benanti, the most convincing Louise I have ever seen. But praise is deserved top to bottom here: this is a dream Gypsy, in which great care and wisdom have been spent on putting across both the music and the story; I haven't seen the dynamics of the central characters' relationships made as clear ever before. A better Gypsy than this I don't expect to see in my lifetime. And yes, I know, that's a lot of praise for anything to live up to, but since you are buying tickets instead of reading this, you can find it all out for yourself.

The Witches Of Eastwick

photo: Joan Marcus

The musical of John Updike's The Witches Of Eastwick - revamped for its American premiere at the Signature in Virginia - is the kind of not-so-guilty pleasure that can turn grown-up music theatre lovers into happy grinning idiots: it's bawdy, silly, bump and grind fun. Subtle and nuanced it ain't, as three New England divorcees unwittingly conjure up a horny devil as their dream man who turns out to be the Devil himself, but who's looking for subtlety from a ribald R-rated lampoon like this? Like Bye Bye Birdie, this show is all about the pelvis. The show's occassional breaks in the rhythm - a blandly overearnest subplot, just one or two songs that don't fly as well as the rest of the score - can't stop the undulating, irresistible beat. As the horndog Devil, Marc Kudisch's hip-thrusting, lip-licking, sex-on-legs performance manages to be as blatantly cocky and raunchy as it is funny and winning: the audience falls in love with him on sight. And the three actresses who play the witches of the title - Emily Skinner, Christiane Noll, and Jacquelyn Piro Donavan - are a formidable dream team: individually each is perfectly cast, and collectively the three have completely believable best friends chemistry and a heavenly blend of singing voices in their trio numbers (one of which ends with them flying up and out over the audience - sure beats Elphaba hoisted up behind a giant poncho, folks)

Hamlet

photo: Carol Rosegg

A modern-dress production in which the Danish prince snacks on a bag of movie popcorn and Ophelia wears an ipod, Shakespeare Theatre Company's Hamlet has the interesting idea of emphasing the youth of the title character: it's Hamlet as tossle-haired, shirttail-showing, backpack-wearing adolescent. It has its moments, but in all it sounds a lot more fun on paper than it has turned out on stage, mainly because Jeffrey Carlson is asked to rage through the title role at fever pitch and there's not a lot of variety in or relief from what amounts to a three hour fifteen minute sobbing tantrum. I've liked Carlson in just about everything I have seen him in but I don't think he's right for this: he's too extreme to communicate an adolescent rebelliousness that we can relate to. Additionally, it's never clear in this production how the character's "mad" behavior differs from his norm: if that's part of the point, that adolescence is a kind of madness in itself, then it's ill-defined and doesn't come across the footlights. Good performances are turned in elsewhere: Robert Cuccioli and Janet Zarish, as Claudius and Gertrude respectively, are vibrant and strike some notes of newlywed carnality; Michelle Beck is a memorably emotional Ophelia and Kenajuan Bentley a credibly honor-driven Laertes, Ted van Griethuysen brings a welcome, comforting old-school polish as the Gravedigger. Even with so little to do as Horiatio, Pedro Pascal is natural and easy on the ears: he knows how to make Shakespeare sound effortless in his mouth.

Mr. A's Amazing Maze Plays

The question presented by Ateh Theater Group's futurist performance of Mr. A's Amazing Maze Plays is: Are you hip enough to head out to a theater at 10:30 on a Friday night and guide two characters through a sinister yet farcical house in what can only be called a Choose Your Own Play? No longer filled with just the saccharine of the children's play Alan Ayckbourn wrote in 1988, director Carlton Ward has intensified the edges and made this show into the type of cloying, high-fructose corn syrup that can blow a somewhat sober crowd away. A rowdy, emotive production, led by an impeccably over-the-top ensemble, Mr. A's Amazing Maze Plays is an inventive eighty minute adventure. Just don't lead them up the wooden ladder.

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I Google Myself

photo: Max Ruby

An entertainingly pulped-up 70 minute black comedy, which begins as a needy masochist latches on to a gay porn star who happens to share his name, I Google Myself makes a lot of delicious (and sometimes lurid) fun out of our human need for recognition and connection in the information-soaked culture we live in. Playwright Jason Schafer overboils the plot devices and turns of events to Jerry Springer Show temperatures but that's part of the point: these characters (including a third, a seemingly normative mellow stoner who blogs his poetry) are probably the psychos we are afraid might be lurking behind anonymous screen names on the Internet, but underneath the sensational and ridiculous they are all too recognizably human and familiar. The fast-paced show intends to be more fun than deep and it is, but if it's a bit of a cartoon at least it's a smart one, and this production (from Theatre Askew, devoted to new "queer" plays) is put over very well by its cast: all three men are perfect and perfectly in sync. As the porn star, Nathan Blew lets you glimpse something behind the smug, hypermasculine mask; he reminded me of Marc Kudisch doing arrogant. As the stoner, John Gardner is believably laid back and does slow-synapsed amusingly. And best of all, as the stalkerish masochist who is the play's center, Tim Cusack is simultaneously able to be funny and to render harrowingly needy. And he has a quality that is essential for this play to work: you just like him, no matter what.

Washing Machine

Photo/Ben Kato

Washing Machine is a spin cycle of sorrow, going from the curious beginnings to the tragic, asphyxiating finale. This aesthetic foray into minimalism allows actress Dana Berger to maximize her connections with the various characters she plays, and with the audience itself. Writer Jason Stuart and director Michael Chamberlin don't presume to know what led to the drowning of a five-year-old girl in a washing machine, so they focus instead on the emotional reverberations of this single ripple in the pool of life. The pivots from character to character are harsh, but their stories are soft (not wrinkle free). Doing the laundry is a perfunctory task; seeing Washing Machine is more like watching perfection.

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