Departures

Kristen Palmer's Departures is a distillation of the love story into our fragile modern world, a show about two tentative lovers who fall into each other--at first out of convenience and carnal needs--and find something there that's sweet and scary all at once. Whether or not it could last, could work, is something that Palmer doesn't try to answer: instead she shows us their first true hookup, and then cuts three months ahead to Cara's return to America, a death-knell of a date that has been "etched into the back of [Andrew's] eyelids" since they first started dating. Palmer doesn't turn to any cheap dramatic tricks: everything is already there, in quiet even tones, that focus on longing, loneliness, and irrational (or rational) fears. Kyle Ancowitz provokes action by setting the whole affair in the narrow frame of a half-pipe, with the audience along the long ends, looking down into the pit of a messy flat. Distance is the third character in this play, though Travis York and Keira Keeley already have perfect chemistry with each other, and the show works so tragically well by keeping a slow, natural pace that leaves the ending up to the audience. I strongly recommend it, though dress lightly as the theater is sweltering hot.

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When the Messenger Is Hot

Photo/Jay Geneske

Laura Eason's adaptation suffers from multiple-personality disorder. The underlying core of Elizabeth Crane's When the Messenger is Hot makes for some fine anti-romantic comedy, but Steppenwolf needs more time in development. This collection of short stories is still disjointed and repetitious, and the eighty minutes aren't nearly as fast as the narrative patter. In truth, the play seems a little too hastily assembled, and the few moments that work are either focussed on the stronger plot of a mother seemingly returned from the dead, or on her daughter's inevitable coming to terms with her grief. These moments are adeptly handled by the foul-mouthed charmer of a mother (Molly Regan) and the rational-in-all-things-but-love daughter (Kate Arrington), but they're muddled by the constant stream of men (all similarly played by Coburn Goss) and the other Josies (Lauren Katz and Amy Warren, fine actresses who just seem out of place here). Beneath all that clutter, how can we see the messenger?

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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.