Doris to Darlene, a cautionary valentine

Photo/Joan Marcus

Jordan Harrison's new play, Doris to Darlene, a cautionary valentine has well-earned the latter half of its name: the writing is exceedingly cautious, often delivered in a omniscient third-person that allows the characters to be in a perpetual state of introspection. Harrison handles the language very well, squeezing character into the rare lines of actual dialogue -- like the showmanship of producer Vic Watts ("I want tiny little children to hemorrhage their hearts out"), the weird music teacher, Mr. Campani ("If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it"), or the frustrated Richard Wagner, trying to overcome writer's block ("What would a dragon sing . . . if it could sing?") -- but this theatrical format is incapable of whipping our emotions into anything resembling the vomit-inducing power of The Ring Cycle. At times, Harrison speaks elegantly to the power of music, with Tom Nelis' Mr. Campani exciting us like the solipsistic conductor in Terrance McNally's Prelude and Liebestod. At others, as with Laura Heisler's overplayed sorrow as King Ludwig, the music is washed out by distant analysis. I admire what Harrison is reaching for in the three eras of storytelling (1865 Bavaria, 1960 doo-wop America, and present day), and even more so the way that director Les Waters spins the scenes in, like some DJ scratching on a rotating stage, remixing the actors into a variety of roles, and cutting them together with some nice orchestral cues. But I think that's showmanship more than a show: for instance, Doris (De'adre Aziza) is the least developed of the characters (Wagner and Ludwig already exist in our minds), and no sooner does she have a husband and career than she has lost both in a scene we can only imagine. The real story goes to The Young Man (Tobias Segal), who tries to come into his sexuality by pursuing his teacher, Mr. Campani; for him, at least, the music is seen as a promising, tantalizing hope of something better. Black notes on a white page; what does it bring anybody? asks Harrison, in a far too poetic, and all too unresolved ending. I couldn't say; but at least I was keyed up through the show by the cleverness of it all.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

New Amsterdames

Photo/Kila Packett

For Flying Fig Theatre Company, which looks to produce theatrical stories about women's lives, it is perhaps inevitable that they at last do a show about beavers. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Sadly, despite some clog-stomping numbers from the dames in question, and some fine physical work from De Beaver Twee (Arlene Chico-Lugo) and a narcoleptic pet, Knickerbocker (Nathaniel P. Claridad), New Amsterdames stumbles around, clunky in such big wooden shoes. Ellen K. Anderson's script is a skitterish bit of farce -- characters run around either trying to recover the lost deed to Manahatta, circa 1660, or to stop a modern-day flood -- but the split narrative between historical mock-ups like the timid Judith Bayard Stuyvesant (Michaela Goldhaber) or conniving Margaret Hardenbroeck (Jeannie Dalton) and the contemporary would-be meteorologist, Sweetie Chin (Tina Lee) doesn't work, especially when the worlds collide, thanks to the magic of the Great Beaver, Kitchi Amik (a rather bland Lucille Duncan). Heather Ondersma's direction keeps the show nimbly moving along (save for when five characters are on stage, in which case the blocking becomes as woodenly apparent as the stage) and Mark D. Spain's teeth-jutting masks give the beavers enough humanity to allow for the fact that they're talking, but Mrs. Anderson's script is littered with historical non sequiturs ("We're far from the village." "Ah, if you're African, you can't be buried in the town."), and these impromptu factoids slow the show way down.

West Bank UK

photo: David Gochfeld

Despite the premise that has a Palestinian refugee and an Israeli expat forced to share the same small London one-bedroom, this new musical comedy plays less like a Middle East Odd Couple and more like broad satire. By the time the two men have a brief and short-lived roll in the hay, we get the show's allegorical lay of the land: their negotiations concerning the space in the apartment, marked by initial suspiciousness, moments of seeming reconciliation, esclating hostilities, and finally violence, are meant to stand in for the ongoing battles in the Middle East. It's remarkable how much the playwright (Oren Safdie, who also directed) is able to get away with thanks to the comic-strip veneer of his material: the aim for the funny bone lets him drain the anger out of scenes (such as the one where the two men degrade each other's religions) while still making his point. If the material is not consistently sharp (a musical number in which a couple of tv newscasters lust for more Middle East carnage to boost their careers is the show's low-point) and the lyrics do not always flow as easily as the show's music (which is Middle Eastern-spiced and performed by an onstage, 4 piece combo) the show is at its best disarming, thoughtful comedy with the right amount of sting in its laughter.

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]