Have You Seen Steve Steven?

Photo/Jim Baldassare

America is at a place right now where our comedies are filled with nervous laughs and we use artificial farce (artifarcial?) to fit in beside neighbors, friends, and family who only serve to make us feel more alienated than ever. How else to explain affectingly disaffecting plays like God's Ear, The Thugs, and this new offering, from Ann Marie Healy, Have You Seen Steve Steven? Here, a sheltered Midwest McFamily grows up, going from charming comedy to frightening satire as Healy plays with memory to dismantle our notions of life. The plot might be a little repetitious, and foreign student Anlor never grows beyond a distracting joke, but the dynamic production is done with such aplomb--from Anne Kauffman's disconcertingly cheery direction to Sue Rees's eerily wide den to the cast's unsettlingly precise characters--that you don't mind going down the rabbit hole.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]

Have You Seen Steve Steven?

photo: Jim Baldassare

This latest offering from the collective known as 13P (the P stands for Playwrights) is broadly satirical and darkly creepy at the same time. We're somewhere in the Midwest on the blandly-decorated first floor of a suburban house, as the two-parent, one-daughter household entertains visitors: first another family who are "close friends" that no one remembers very well, and then mysterious, unsettlingly oddball strangers who seem to already know them. The tension in this smart, genuinely original play comes mostly from the vast gap between the broadly-played adults, who speak in maddening inanities, and the much more naturalistically-portrayed teens, who talk and behave common-sensically. The contrast gives the play an almost surreal edge. By the middle of the seventy-minute one-act, it's become so severe that the play feels like a jack-in-a-box, where even the adults bursting happily through a door could make you jump in your seat. That said, I felt a bit let down by the final thrusts of the play, which neatly further the theme but which are less than viscerally satisfying after all that terrific suspense. Nonetheless, this is a sharp production of a striking and memorable new play and if you're into quality off-beat, look no further.

The Ritz

***

Roundabout at Studio 54

I spotted playwright Terrence McNally standing outside Studio 54 scoping out the audience prior to the very first preview of the second Broadway revival of his 1975 gay bathhouse farce, The Ritz. After the first Broadway revival in `83, which disastrously closed after 14 previews and 1 performance (according to IBDB.com), I'm sure there is at least a bit of apprehension as to whether or not this latest Roundabout incarnation will sink or swim. In light of the fact that AIDS hysteria has calmed down over the years, our post-millennium audiences are probably a little more able/willing to look upon a gay bathhouse as a whimsical relic and not a sick den of infestation. Happily, the spectre of AIDS was nowhere to be found in this bouncy flouncy production. Score one for director Mantello! However, would this thin, dated farce have ever been revived had McNally not evolved into the major playwriting phenomenon he has since become? Probably not. Granted it was interesting visiting McNally's youthful, giddy voice as a green playwright, but in terms of farces, this isn't quite a classic. Generally does the show work? The audience laughed and clapped quite a bit and for the first preview of a door-slammer on Broadway, that's a definitely a respectable victory. Three great things: 1. Scott Pask's tri-level panorama of red doors and steamy hallways is GORGEOUS. 2. Brooks Ashmanskas, as a flaming, silken-robed swisher, is fucking hysterical and steals the show. 3. Three Hot Guy Alerts!- which, for the Hot Guy Alert committee, was definitely worth the price of admission.

Also blogged by: [Patrick] [Aaron]

FRINGE: bombs in your mouth

Photo/John Scott

Here's to putting the fun back in dysfunction, be it through arm-wrestling, beer-chugging, side-splitting shit-spitting stories, or simple honest sibling rivalries. I'll drink to Corey Patrick's bombs in your mouth, a compact comic drama that really defines the struggles of half-siblings Lily (Cass Bugge) and Danny (Patrick) to find meaning in their adult lives. To get there, they revert to their childhood antics, yet never seem crude, over-the-top, or false. Instead, director Joseph Ward leads them to sincere moments of acknowledged uncertainty, at which point the two look to each other for comfort, which they ultimately find. The shared jokes over cold spaghetti with tomato and ketchup sauce are as warm as the shared rivalries over cold beers, and the entire play is endearingly entertaining. Fantastic work; hope they bring it back soon!

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick | David]

Six Degrees Of Separation

photo: Jennifer Maufrais

It takes a couple of scenes for the ensemble to move at the needed clip (this is a play that hits the ground running) but once they do this smartly-staged off-off revival of John Guare's best-known play (at the Gallery Players, in Brooklyn) is absorbing and effective, approaching the expert balance of bite and wit that I remember from the original production. The compelling story - which begins as a college-aged black man ingratiates himself with a white upper class Manhattan art dealer and his wife by claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier - was inspired by Times-reported events of moneyed New Yorkers who were fooled by just such a con man. Guare's perceptive and compassionate play is both briskly entertaining and thematically rich, manipulating the story to riff on our connectedness to and our assumptions about each other. The two most important characters are Ouisa, the art dealer's wife, and Paul, the con man. Here, Richard Prioleau convincingly plays both sides of Paul - confident in the early scenes, desperate in the later ones; apart from the minor complaint that he needs more intensity for the Catcher In The Rye monologue, it's a solid performance. As Ouisa, Laura Heidinger is substantial and affecting, especially for the eleventh-hour "it was an experience" speech. The only let-down in the ensemble is that the three boys in the quartet of college kids aren't yet getting laughs out of their lines; I bet they will get there. Radiant standout supporting performance: Jacqueline van Biene, in the minor role of Elizabeth. After this and her performance in You Can't Take It With You a few months back at T. Schreiber, she's high on my To Watch For list.

Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story

photo: Sarah Lambert

Mark Folie's play about famed sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey takes too long to make itself known: the first act is competent and reasonably entertaining but (despite a non-linear structure) it doesn't seem especially distinctive, covering material that we already know with the emphasis on the scientist's gay affair. Things get far more interesting sonewhere in the second act, as it starts to become apparent that one of the playwright's aims is to gently question what Kinsey may have missed by putting sexuality coldly under a microscope. There are a couple of thought-provoking speeches near the end of the play - one, delivered by a madam who functions in the play like Kinsey's counterpoint, leads us to wonder if shame may be an important component of sexual pleasure. (There's also, unfortunately, a completely misguided video presentation at the end of the play that seems to come out of nowhere and is besides the point) The play isn't entirely successful building to the ideas that it finally presents, but it is at least a play with some ideas. I liked the wit of staging all of the play's action around a bed - the production would have a lot more punch if nearly everything else on stage was thrown out - and all four actors in the ensemble (Jessica Dickey, Wayne Maugans, Carter Roy and Melinda Wade) are excellent.