Young Frankenstein

Photo/Paul Kolnik

From the "there, wolf" visual pun that appears during a hay ride through a computer-generated forest to Igor's admission (after an oddly enunciated phrase) that he doesn't know why he's talking like that, it seems obvious that nobody really knows how any of the humor in the show actually got there. Sure, some was scavenged from the film version, by producers (Mel Brooks among them) operating like gravediggers in the night, and some came from a roulette wheel of sight gags spun by Susan Stroman, marching around like angry villagers, wielding torches, pitchforks, and whatever else they could get their hands on. But the score is incredibly weak, the talents of comic actresses (like Andrea Martin) and fabulous dancer/everythings (Sutton Foster) are put to waste, and few of the highly budgeted special effects offer anything that hasn't been seen on stage already (the trembling double-vision of a dream-sequence segue stands out as an exceptional visual moment). Even Roger Bart, as Frederick Frankenstein, brings little to the role beyond his wooden affability, shrill shrieks of astonishment, and quick little tongue (the patter of "The Brain" is one of the few songs that actually sticks, along with "Listen to Your Heart"). Diversions, like the Hermit and his "Please Send Me Someone," jut out of the framework because a suitable context hasn't been found for them, and too much of the stage version is disconnected from the plot itself. Musical theater needs to be more elegant than putting together Ikea furniture: it can't just be banged together by people too busy to follow the directions.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

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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