Bad Jazz

Photo/Carol Rosegg

To put it mildly, Adam Rapp just got fucked. Robert Farquhar's Bad Jazz is years ahead of Bingo with the Indians, both elegant and perverse. Trip Cullman's expertise as a director shows: the discordant theme runs out from the music, across an increasingly cluttered stage and through actors caught up in the catharsis of cursing. The play shifts from serious conversations about, say, the ethics of actually performing oral sex in a play into the farcical consequences of taking character too far in the rehearsal process, but only drops a beat with a small diversion into the director character's private life. The intensity is balanced by an exaggeratedly comic tone, and the thoughts are clearly delineated by the wonderful Marin Ireland (as free as I've ever seen her on stage) and gruffly garrulous Rob Campbell (think James Lipton + Sean Connery). There isn't a dull moment in the entire play (though the acoustics sometimes drop lines you're hanging onto the edge of your seat to hear), and though it's ultimately more mocking than meaningful, it's pretty visceral no matter how you parse it.

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Bingo With The Indians

photo: Joan Marcus

****

The Flea Theater

I somewhat agree with Aaron that this play is a "series of stray dots that happen to closely approximate a dramatic thought", however, within this unfocused structure lies those Adam Rapp hallmarks that I have fallen in love with: the borderline insane and vibrant characters, the gratuitous, yet obligatory profanity, the violence, the obsession with sex and the ridiculously high stakes. As a struggling theater company is in the middle of a bingo hall heist, a poor outsider and his mother are exposed to just what a sick and twisted culture the theater can be. Fun! I have never seen a poorly cast Rapp play (I wouldn't be surprised if he had a collection of future drama desk nominees chained up in a basement somewhere) and the entire posse here, from Evan Enderele's lost stoner to Cooper Daniels' rabid thespian (both pictured), completely understands and seems quite at home in Rapp's gritty, angry, whack world. The worst sin is to be boring and at Bingo With The Indians, I was on the edge of my seat.

Bingo With The Indians

photo: Joan Marcus

In the world premiere of this Adam Rapp play, we're holed up in a downscale New Hampshire motel room with some violent extremists who are planning to stick up the local bingo game...so that they can fund their edgy East Village theatre company. The military-fatigued artistic director, the sometimes hopped up and naked cokehead actor, the coldly manipulative stage manager - they come off like the cinema-terrorist band of outsiders in John Waters' Cecil B. Demented except that Rapp doesn't have the affection for his characters that Waters did, and since Rapp has directed this production, it's a fair assumption that the singular nastiness is exactly what he wanted. It wears thin quickly. Despite some interesting moments analogizing crime to theatre (when the artistic director is recalling the actor not following orders during the armed robbery, it sounds a lot like she's complaining about a fellow performer who's missed a cue) the black comedy in Bingo With The Indians doesn't build and it's never clear where Rapp is hoping his bullets will land: is he satirizing low-budget theatre, or political extremism? The play is like a long snarl, relieved (if that's the word for it) by a harrowing and graphic rough-sex scene. The six actors in the ensemble bring a high level of intensity, but their blood sweat and tears can't bring any real life into a script that is poison-hearted at its glib core.

Sister Cities

photo: Gili Getz

It's no longer a surprise that the productions at T. Schreiber Studio are marked by intelligent staging, committed acting, and sharp direction; I think I've lost count of how many classic plays I've seen impressively staged in their intimate black box space. This is the first time I've seen them present a New York premiere, and although I found the play (by Colette Freedman) to be disappointingly plotted (there's at least one contrivance too many, the second act isn't nearly as tight as the first, and it too patly resolves the play's most interesting conflict) it's hard to imagine that it could have been given a more thoughtful and entertaining production than this one. The story - of four half-sisters who reunite at their childhood home on the ocassion of their mothers' apparent suicide - is most successful as a naturalistic slice-of-life sibling relationship drama; the playwright is on solid ground writing conversations that unfold naturally, believably. Director Cat Parker, set designer George Allison, and virtually everyone in the cast of five (especially Ellen Reilly, whose wound-tight character most drives the play's action) should be commended for very fine, detailed work.

Theft of Imagination

Theft of Imagination is quite possibly the perfect show to see during the Broadway strike: it's a play about two rival nations with only thirteen days left to broker an end to their protracted (and silly, given how similar they are) war and it's free (though you'll want to leave a donation). It's also an example of how far you can push the imagination when it isn't being overwhelmed by the strobe lights and chorus numbers of the Great White Way: Theft of Imagination is performed very modestly, which rightly keeps the focus on David Negrin's well-paced and nicely progressive text. The cast, led by the charismatic young Max Hambleton, acquits itself well (though the adults of the play have some hammy, mustache-twirling lines) and though the play is an exhaustive study of negotiation tactics, it largely gets through its two-and-half-hours with a minimum of repetition (though future revisions should certainly look to pare down), and a surprisingly rich use of character, despite names like Introverted Boy and Outgoing Boy's Handler.

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Pygmalion

photo: Joan Marcus

Director David Grindley seems to have brought the qualities to this revival of Shaw's Pygmalion that helped to distinguish his Journey's End last season: namely, a keen attention to detail, a pronounced avoidance of sentimentality, and a high level of integrity. The result is one of the smartest and sturdiest productions of any Shaw play I've seen in years and easily one of the best productions to play at the Roundabout's 42nd street stage. Grindley doesn't make the mistake of trying to mine My Fair Lady-like romance moments out of Shaw's play: his direction emphasizes Shaw's social ideas and his class commentary. (Although My Fair Lady is my all-time favorite musical, it is a different animal than this play, its source: lost in the adaptation were many of Shaw's snappy observations, such as the irony that once Cockney flower girl Eliza is transformed into a respectable lady, the only thing that society allows her to sell is herself). Further elevating this production are its performances, particularly its two leads. While Claire Danes makes a thoroughly excellent Broadway debut, emphasizing Eliza's determination and inner strength, the bigger surprise is Jefferson Mays' daring, out-there take on Henry Higgins as a bratty overgrown Mama's boy. His is exactly the kind of new interpretation of a classic role that I like to see: it's not how it's been done in the past, but it sure makes a lot of psychological sense and it illuminates, rather than distorts, the character.