Kinderspiel

Photo/Aviva Meyer

You'd have to be a foolyheadgirlthing to write a play set in an absurdly fictitious (but not improbable) cabaret in the Weimar Republic (1923) and to then quote Oscar Wilde's maxim: "All art is quite useless." You'd need quite a pair of balls to brag about how the expressionist theater company, the Kinderspielers, "dare to entertain you by completely wasting your time." And you'd need to be awfully clever to make a critic one of your characters, especially if her theory is that "frivolity is serious business."

I guess that makes Kiran Rikhye a large-balled, awfully clever, foolyheadgirlthing: her latest work with Stolen Chair Theater Company, Kinderspiel (child's play) is a double-bill that is avant-garde Cabaret ("infantile improvisation" meets lesbians and garters) when it comes to presentation, and starkly satirical when the plot is narrated to us "children." The play not only stands as a testament to the insane depression of the Weimar era, but illustrates the similarity between genius and insanity, and the odd power of art to transform one's perception of reality. Furthermore, by adding a journalist, Rikhye is also able to make an point about the danger of an explanation, with her mind clearly in favor of spontaneity and personal experience. (Do we demean things by giving them meanings?)

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The Beastly Bombing

photo: Kim Gottlieb-Walker

A Gilbert & Sullivan-soundalike topsy-turvy set during the current War On Terror and peopled with Nazi skinheads, al Queda terrorists, a war-happy President, a limp-wristed Jesus, and so on, The Beastly Bombing combines the nose-thumbing, shock for shock's sake spirit of punk rock with the sounds of sophisticated light operetta. While the sounds are sensational (Roger Neill's pastiche score is a delight from start to finish; I especially loved The President's "Major General"-like patter song: knowing little, caring less, that's the secret of this leader's success) and the musical numbers are enlivened by smart staging and terrificly funny choreorgraphy, the show's perverse politically incorrect pleasures wear thin quickly when it's clear that they're all the show has to offer. By the second act, when we are desperate for something more unifying in the material than its surly attitude and its conceit, the show instead goes even more madcap. The Beastly Bombing is a brat that hasn't grown up into a real smart-ass.

Emma

The score is pleasing and appropriate, with melodic lines and instrumentations that fit the time and place, and the book's events have been condensed judiciously while remaining faithful to the story. Yes, a lot of skill and intelligence have gone into this musicalization of Jane Austen's classic novel. What hasn't gone into this production is trust in the material: too often Austen's observational humor has been turned into buffoonery, with a couple of the supporting actors encouraged to ham it up shamelessly. The audience for a Jane Austen musical is not the sort that takes kindly to being underestimated.

Sympathy Jones

File it under "The Show Must Go On": Kate Shindle limped out on stage during the pre-show announcement to explain that she'd sprained her ankle the night before in Legally Blonde and that she'd be playing the karate-kickin' secretary-turned-spy lead in this final performance of Sympathy Jones while safely seated downstage. The rest of the cast would pretend she was where she usually was on stage. I have a feeling that this may have been the most fun performance of the whole run: everytime Shindle would mime karate chops from her seat and someone ten feet away had to react, the audience cracked up anew. It never got old. Since this was a highly unusual performance, I'm not comfortable saying so much about the show and the performances, except that the material is cute (more TV's Batman than Modesty Blaise), there are certainly some nifty era-appropriate songs in the mix here (I especially liked the Shirley Bassey-like opener) and Kate Shindle is more than a trouper: she's a star.

The Children Of Vonderly

photo: Matt Zugale

Most of this play's characters are "special needs" - no, make that *all* of the characters, since the matriach (Lynn Cohen, excellent) qualifies by dint of her mental breakdown near the top of the play. The playwright (Lloyd Suh) finds a good deal of mitigating humor in the "special"ness, but he's never condascending. The play, peopled with intriguing characters brought to vivid life by an exceptonal ensemble, begins as the newly widowed matriach calls a family meeting with the (adopted, adult-aged) children to declare, with angry exasperation, that they are now going to have to fend for themselves. It seems almost absurd and cruel, given their mental and physical handicaps. With Mom clearly unable to caregive, it soon falls on Jerry, the wheelchair-bound son, to hold the family together. As expertly and sensitively played by William Jackson Harper, Jerry is the play's compelling center, a convincing contradiction of anger and tenderness. I'm not sure if The Children Of Vonderly ends with a triumph or a defeat for him (and additionally, I'm not sure if the play aims for more thematically than it makes apparent) but I am sure of this: I found Jerry's story completely absorbing and Harper's performance outstanding.

Such Good Friends

photo: Donyale Werle

This (NYMF) musical mostly takes place behind the scenes of a television variety show before and during the Red Scare in the McCarthy era '50's: the close friends who work on the program spend the jovial first act laughing off the threat, and the far more serious second act giving (and reeling from) their testimonies at the HUAC hearings. It's a dramatically sound idea for a musical but this one (despite an excellent cast) has less punch than it could: it loses coherence (not to mention a moral center) when the tv star shuns one friend for turning traitor and then encourages another friend to name names. The show is further bogged down by too many musical numbers: if there were half a dozen less, the remaining ones would count for a lot more.