Chekhov's Chicks

Though the individual scenes that Elizabeth Rosengren has pulled from Chekhov aren't much more than exercises in Scene Study, the way in which she makes their ideas about love collide is a insightful (and hopeful) study in the bittersweet life. These pieces also culminate in a much richer interpretation of The Bear that is usually found in the light farce; it makes the evening into a delightful reintroduction to Chekhov's harsh hopefulness. Simply directed by Jewels Eubanks, the work twists between a study of acting and a study of love, marrying the two into a love of Chekhov that survives even the cryptic lighting (a forlorn moon beaming intermittently against the window) and occasionally melodramatic surface readings of scenes from Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya.

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Is He Dead?

photo: Joan Marcus

The premise of this farce, which has the painter Millet faking his own death in order to drive up the value of his artworks, doesn't lead to anything substantive about art and commerce; it's just an excuse to have a guy run around in a dress. It's easy to smile watching the seasoned farceurs in the cast (David Pittu and Byron Jennings, for instance - both deliciously hammy) and there probably isn't a director alive who knows as well as Michael Blakemore how to guide a cast in and out of slamming doors and mistaken identities. Yet the star clown here - Norbert Leo Butz - is an odd choice for this kind of thing: he gets by on the naughty-boy likeability that served him so well in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but he's in a different play than everyone else. It's likely that the sore thumb casting is intentional to put some extra zip in the so-so slow-to-get-going first act, but I couldn't help but wonder what someone like Jefferson Mays could do with the part.

August: Osage County

Photo/Joan Marcus

If I only had a script, I'd be able to sit here and dissect the powerful final scene from the second act (of three), an 11-person family meal that goes from comic pratfalls (awkward Little Charles and his spilled casserole), to a graceless recitation of grace (steady, sterile old Uncle Charlie), to a comic aside about the dangers of eating meat (according to precocious granddaughter Jean, meat is just a container for chemically processed fear), to a series of scathing, loveless remarks (from the shaky, pill-popping matriarch, Violet), to a physically violent breaking point (the frayed, eldest daughter, Barbara), and the hilarious blocking for what should be terrifying. This scene, which incorporates every bit of character introduced in the first hundred minutes, should be a chaotic mess, but it's so naturally written that you'd never notice. Between the excellent craft of these Steppenwolf actors, the layers of deep dialogue and nuanced thought from playwright Tracy Letts, and the impressively orchestrated direction from Anna D. Shapiro, this scene is a boiling point that captures not only the generational gap, but the emotional gap, too, and the way in which dysfunction has become the new function. Whether you're taking uppers, downers, or both, this show is the all-around riot of a show that it's literally cracked up to be.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

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.