West Bank, U.K.

Photo/David Gochfeld

So, imagine there's this apartment, right? And this Jewish guy, Assaf (Jeremy Cohen) who has been subletting the apartment for two years, suddenly returns home to find that there's a Palestinian man, Aziz (Mike Mosallam), living there. Assaf demands his home back, but Aziz refuses to go, and the landlord -- who happens to be a sex-starved American girl (Michelle Solomon) -- forces the two to share the apartment. At first, things are great: after all, according to the two of them, they share the same hook nose, the same taste in food, and similar songs, like "My Hometown"; the two even start sleeping together. But their relations quickly sour, and it isn't long until they've split the apartment down the middle; such a thing could never happen, right? But just in case that wasn't clear enough, Oren Safdie widens the scope in a nonsensical way to fit in songs about diplomacy (the American landlord finds out she has a Russian brother), the sensationalism of the media ("We like the action hot, hot, hot/when people get shot, shot, shot"), suicide bombers ("72 Virgins"), the dream of home (the country spoof, "Here's My Passport, Please Don't Turn Me Back"), the necessity of violence ("Nothing Works Better Than Force"), and an outsider's fear of it ("I'd like to cut you up/(beat) but it's tea time!"). Many of these segments are currently strained, but at least they make a point in an often comic tone, are well-sung (if sometimes drowned out), and have an excitingly ethnic orchestration by Ronnie Cohen (which includes the oud). What's not currently working for West Bank, U.K. is how these skits are all crammed together: the play becomes a musical sitcom. Additionally, songs that have no parallel, while clever, confuse the point of the play: too many are about slutty girls ("Addictive Personality" for one; in another, "Why can't a girl be nasty and love God?"). Still, the play ends on absolutely the right note: with all the comedy aside, and the two roommates circling each other, knives out, in a dance to the death that will have no end.

The Seafarer

Most drunks know that the bottle can lead to hell. In Conor McPherson's lively and briskly entertaining new play, transferred nearly intact from The National, it's literal: the mysterious Christmas Eve visitor to a house of hard-luck Irish drunks is The Devil personified, out to collect on a secret longstanding debt by way of a high-stakes poker game. While the play moves along engagingly at a comic clip, wringing laughs out of the whiskey-soaked logic and dysfunction of the drunkards (who, save one, are clueless that the Devil is among them), an undercurrent of dread snakes cunningly through the play once McPherson reveals the sobering gravity of the game. McPherson taps into a particular brand of alcoholic shame and self-loathing that give his supernatural story a haunting, lingering resonance beyond what might be expected of a typical ghost story: the play can be taken as an allegory or simply enjoyed as a good Faustian yarn. Either way, it's a richly evocative piece of work and this superbly performed, expertly directed production is highly recommended.

The Receptionist

Photo/Joan Marcus

So as to not give anything away about The Receptionist to those who have not seen it, this is a perfect modernization of a famous old poem by Martin Niemoller. I had the opportunity to hear Adam Bock speak out about this, his latest play, at the Prelude '07 festival earlier this year, and he explained that it was written for the City Stage audience, and so the main character is a 50-something receptionist, happily married to a man who shares her mania for teacup collecting (she turns her nose at coffee mugs). Jayne Houdyshell plays this woman, Beverly, with the grace of a fallen diva, the center of attention even in an administrative role, and she relishes in collecting and dispensing gossip. In case Beverly doesn't strike a chord with you, she's also joined in the office by Lorraine Taylor (a very funny Kendra Kassebaum), the ditz of a flirt, and by Mr. Raymond (a somewhat vague Robert Foxworth), the professional elder of the company. The point is, these people could just as well be us, which makes their actual job, revealed toward the end of the play, somewhat more chilling, as well as what happens to their Northeast office, as carried on tidings from the easygoing Mr. Dart (Josh Charles, a bit stiffer than on Sports Night). Bock's writing is superb, as it channels the interruptive nature of the front desk into some very staccato conversations and nails the provocative silence that forces smaller and smaller talk. Furthermore, Joe Mantello's direction (again with the sliding sets from Blackbird), is a better fit for Bock's writing; his comic timing and delight in patter help the actors seem effortless on stage, and his theatricality (looming file cabinets, an eerie video cameras) matches with the unspoken threat of the mood-setting opening monologue.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

OH, THE HUMANITY and other exclamations

***1/2

The Flea Theater

Like in his Thom Pain (based on nothing), here in Will Eno's hour of 5 short plays, we are again exposed to his very unique, hyper-philosophical voice and characters who are struggling to make sense of themselves and world around them. When a playwright's voice is so startlingly original (a marriage of deep, harrowing insight and a conversational, matter of fact tone), it takes a while for the audience (or at least me) to learn the language and I have found his work to alternate between thrilling and confusing, moving and boring. Enter The Spokeswoman, Gently about an inexperienced airline representative making a speech about a recent plane crash, and The Bully Composition about a photographer and his assistant taking a photograph of the audience shimmered with sadness and humor and were the best of the five. Unlike in her current film, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, Marisa Tomei's oozing sexuality is muted honing in on the very down to earth and naturalistic actress that has always been present underneath the eyeliner and the boobies. She is perfectly cast here as is Brian Hutchison who shoots out fear like laser beams through his blood-shot, watery eyes.

The Piano Teacher

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Like her contemporary, Adam Bock, Julia Cho's The Piano Teacher plays with judo-like grace and strength, against our expectations in order to better unnerve us, and to create an air of unease, even in the coziest of homes, and with the friendliest of narrators, former piano instructor, Mrs. K. (Elizabeth Franz). Kate Whoriskey does her best to tear down the boundaries between audience and actor, her most overly familiar (and therefore effective) act is to have Mrs. K. open the show by sharing some of her stockpiled cookies with the front row. Her suspense, she says, is now our suspense, and as the darkness creeps in on her, with the flickers of light drawing our eyes to something as innocuously menacing as a ringing phone, one can't help becoming fully involved. Is her former student, Mary Fields (Carmen M. Herlihy) as well-adjusted as she seems? Is Michael (John Boyd) even one of her former students? And was her husband, Mr. K., just doing crosswords with the children in the kitchen as they waited for their lessons? Save for one moment of unrestrained violence (that actually comes as a relief to an audience weighed upon by intense, sharply crafted pp suspense), The Piano Teacher will leave you on the edge of your seat, trusting nothing, fearing everything.

[Read on]

Becoming Tennessee

The new Artistic Director of The Emelin Theatre (in the Westchester town of Mamaroneck) has big and bold plans for the house, which include a major renovation to accomodate big musicals and the addition of a second small black box theatre for plays. His first season has included a series of concerts and new works; this one, a reading of a new musical which concerns Tennessee Williams' first week off the bus in New Orleans, has undergone some revision since it was workshopped last year at the O'Neill Center. As it was a reading and not open for review, I don't want to say too much about it, except that Brian Charles Rooney - without benefit of costume or makeup - ably captured something recognizable of Williams in his portrayal of the playwright as a green twenty-eight year old. (Everyone in the cast was well-suited to their respective roles, in fact: I especially also liked Jerry Dixon, whose character serves as something of a bad influence on Williams). The show's book is essentially solid, depicting several key relationships that shape the young man into an expressive artist, and the score is well-suited to the time and the place of the story: one section of music, which covers Williams picking up a soldier and spending the night with him, is transporting and lyrical: it's still lingering in my head days later.