Widows

Photo/Colin D. Young

Widows is a political play that digs remarkably deep, showing the stubbornness, futility, fearfulness, and courage of passive resistance -- and of military governance. Ariel Dorfman's script is best when it wells up into a rapids of sound that could smash even the sturdiest of rocks on the shore, but director Hal Brooks has done a solid job throughout, confining the action to a raft of a stage that, while occasionally tilting, is never in danger of sinking. Of particular note is the paradoxical tone of the play -- a loss even in victory, a victory even in a loss -- that has Sofia Fuentes (the strong Ching Valdes-Aran) rebelling by waiting (because she cannot bear to wait any more) and her nemesis, the good-intentioned but naive Captain (the excellently tormented Mark Alhadeff) trying to avoid using the force that he knows will only weaken them all.

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Reading: Don't Fuck With Love

While Kate Matschullat has successfully modernized her adaptation of Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l'amour, in which a father tries to marry his son and his son's cousin (now a step-daughter), the philosophy of this play doesn't speak loud enough (despite the screaming title) to necessitate a revival, and this coming from someone who would love to see Jeanine Serralles playing so coy and intellectual a role. I have faith that it will get there in development with Red Bull, although I worry that while Lear deBessonet can easily direct this play (she connected well with the philosophical transFigures and got the heart of Brecht's St. Joan of the Stockyards), the mixed media of the cyberspace injected into the show might needlessly bog her down. I wonder, too, about the necessity of paparazzi who speak in verse . . . but these are just thoughts from a delighted audience member who knows this is a work-in-progress, and who is eager to see what comes next.

Under The Radar (Site-Specific)

-Small Metal Objects

Photo/Jeff Busby

The drug-dealing plot of Small Metal Objects may be slight, but the location -- a suspenseful South Ferry Station -- and the actors -- from diminutive specks to fully realized characters -- elevate it through the frisson of the unpredictable into the poetics of the ordinary. For once, we aren't tuning out the plights of our anonymous brethren, and by stopping our busy lives, looking around, and really listening, we get closer to the most beautiful thing theater can give us: a real sense of connection.

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-Of All The People in the World: USA

Photo/Ed Dimsdale

I'm not sure the routine assembly of rice into breathtaking mounds of statistics counts as a play (I've put it down for half of one), but the theatrical presentation of raw numbers is a staggering success. This international tour, Of All the People in the World, finally stops in the US (specifically the World Financial Center), and, using one grain for each person, shows us contrasts that are both serious and slight, as with the ratio of millionaires in the world to the number of refugees or "Number of viewers for the final episode of "'Sex and the City'" versus "Single Women in Manhattan." It's all bigger than you'd think and thanks to the sheer willfulness of counting and displaying all that rice, its obtuseness in the midst of a business sector: these things make the facts unavoidable, and all the more powerful.

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Pinocchio

photo: F. Brancoli Pantera

Marking the U.S. debut of a multi-disciplined troupe called Teatro Del Carretto, this production of Pinocchio is spoken in Italian but, except for a couple of relatively static dialogue scenes, it hardly matters. The show speaks the universal language of inventive, heightened theatricality (although it's too intense, and not intended, for children). Aided by an effective soundscape and using a minimum of props, the troupe performs their dark, dream-like adaptation of the tale in which woodcarver/father figure Gepetto is almost entirely absent: the focus is squarely on Pinocchio's determination to become fully human despite the harsh realities of the world. The story unfolds in a semi-circular arena: Pinocchio (Giandomenico Cupaiuolo, giving a physically expressive and memorable performance) spends the entire ninety minutes on the circus ring-like stage enduring each lesson in its turn. Thanks to the troupe's commedia approach, which includes mask work and broad physicality, there's a great deal of levity to balance the grim: the business with Pinocchio's broomstick-long nose is as amusing as his near-lynching is harrowing. Recommended.

Arrive early and have a look in the lobby at some eye-popping stills from other Teatro Del Carretto productions. Or poke around here.

Reading: David's Play

For all the obvious reasons, it wouldn't be fair to review the staged reading I saw of this new play by Tom Rowan. But I don't see any harm in saying that it concerns a group of theatre-minded college friends who reunite about a handful of years after graduation when one of them Broadway-debuts in a Duran Duran jukebox musical (as a character named....Rio.) I also don't see anything wrong with posting that the seven actors in this lively reading were judiciously cast in their roles and did terrific work: I was especially pleased to see Elizabeth van Meter, Bobby Steggert and Jake Alexander, who've each impressed before in other shows, along with Julie Fitzpatrick, Walter Brandes, David Lavine and Paco Tolson. I finally don't see a problem telling you that I would gladly see David's Play again when a full production comes to pass.

Under the Radar: Day 3

- Generation Jeans
Photo/Natalia Koliada

With so much weighty relevance behind it, Generation Jeans doesn't need to be very theatrical. Just like jeans themselves can be an act of rebellion in a country like Belarus, so too can words operate simply. Nikolai Khalezin, speaking in his native tongue, avoids doing too much because he wants to speak directly to us, and it works: his lack of refinement speaks toward a greater honesty. Even the DJ (Lavr Berzhanin), who at times is out of place, helps to unite the piece with samples of music that are wholly effective every time Khalezin pauses for a moment to reflect on his own freedom.



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- Terminus

Photo/Ros Kavanagh

If it weren't for Mark O'Rowe's clever verse (e.g., smitten/admitten, invective/ineffective, identical/antithetical) and graphic language, it would've been hard to sit through his ninety minute triptych of monologues, Terminus. Harder still given the taste of thick smoke in the air and the dim and sideways illuminated sight of the actors on stage. But the language justifies the appearance of demons (composed of worms), easy-going psychopaths, and matter-of-fact violence by elevating it to the metaphor of poetry. Though I'm not sure there's a hidden meaning to a man swinging from a crane by his entrails with a demons barbed tail sticking out of his mouth as he sings "Wind Beneath My Wings," it seems not only plausible in O'Rowe's world, but oddly humorous, too, an impressive feat for such a dark piece. (It brings to mind similarly glamorous works of violence, like The Lieutenant of Inishmore.)

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- Disinformation

There isn't a person out there who will leave Disinformation saying anything negative about Reggie Watts's voice: the man is an aural artist, capable of many octave-spanning notes, and that's without the assistance of his voice modulators and track-recorders, two twinned devices that let him layer distortions upon distortions upon himself. However, this show seems more like a sampler of what he can do than a statement of anything worth saying, and one of his faux-corporate slogans rings a little too close to home: "The More That You Use, The Less That You Are." That said, there isn't a person going to Disinformation who won't be amused. From his satirical intellectualizing (his stuffy accents are enjoyable) to his retro film clips, Reggie Watts really knows how to pick his words carefully (even at their most vulgar, his "Shit Fuck Sandwich" rap is still eerily specific).

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