The Devil's Disciple

Left at Intermish
Irish Rep

Sorry for ditching you, Patrick. I hate Shaw.

Apartment 3A

Annie (Marianna McClellan) needs help. She's broken things off with the love of her life after catching him neck deep in some gymnastic cheating, and she's just moved into a slum, trying to outrun her tears. What she gets is a new friend, Donald (Doug Nyman) an aggressively outgoing neighbor who shows up, LIKE AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN, to help her adjust. This means forcing her to confront everything she's been running from (which is everything: she "cares too much in a world that doesn't give a shit"). First up, her hopelessly smitten coworker, Elliot (a bland Jay Rohloff), who happens to be a Catholic. I'm not sure why that's important, except that Jeff Daniels, who wrote the play, turns the end of the first act into a twenty minute debate between unconvinced, liberal Annie, and inexplicably faithful Elliot. This is complicated by Annie's simultaneous recounting of these events to Donald, a trick of staging that director Owen Smith fails at. The second act, post-coitus, is even worse, as the discussion tries to link back to religion: her double-digit orgasm is a "gift from god." It's not clear why Elliot is suddenly so brazen, nor why Annie is so open with Donald, and aside from a passably comic routine, there's very little revealed about character. Ultimately, that's the problem with Apartment 3A: the door's wide open, but nobody's home.

Fabrik

Photo/Nordland Visual Theatre

At times reminiscent of the best in both Cabaret and Maus, Wakka Wakka's puppet-driven drama, Fabrik, is no less heartbreaking on its miniature scale. The play begins innocently enough, with a lighthearted song from the proud Jewish businessman Moritz Rabinowitz (David Arkema), and an introduction to some of his forty rules for success, and slowly grows darker. The first glimpse of something amiss is when socialite Mrs. Hansen (Gwendolyn Warnock, who plays all the female parts) deliberately snubs him -- in his own suit-making shop -- choosing instead to talk with Moritz's soft-spoken, Beaker-like assistant, Mr. Askeland (Kirjan Waage, who also created the puppets and masks). As things get darker, the troupe grows more creative in their displays, which in turn only heightens the effect of that horror. Only one play -- Cabaret -- has ever made me sob in a theater; Fabrik now has the powerful distinction of being the second.

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Me, Myself & I

photo by: T. Charles Erickson

****1/2 (...out of five stars)

McCarter Theatre Center

Princeton, New Jersey

Two down, two to go in this happy season of Albee productions! I'm just gonna sit here and drool for a few sentences- I hope that's not a problem. Just as fascinating and edgy as his recent production of Peter And Jerry, Albee's newest play, Me, Myself & I, provoked gasps of shock and hysterical laughter from our audience. This very theatrical, highly personal work concerned a mother- accused of being 'demented"- who is having terrible problems with her twin sons. Everything we've come to expect from an Albee production is here: the top notch cast (fucking Tyne Daly and Brian Murray!), tight direction (Emily Mann is on fire), fierce dialogue, ten dimensional characters, and those brilliant moments where you're caught completely off-guard. Favorite line: Maureen: "Cunt!" Mother: "You can't say that onstage!". Pay New Jersey transit $11.75 and they will pick you up at Penn Station and drop you off right in front of the McCarter theater in around 80 minutes. Princeton is gorgeous and the McCarter is the real deal. It was a very good day.

Hunting and Gathering

Photo/James Leynse

Brooke Berman's new play, Hunting and Gathering has the personal connection -- the playwright's been in and out of homes since the '90s (she writes about it on her blog) -- the hipster street cred of a YouTube tie-in, and a ticket initiative at the occasionally musty Primary Stages ($20 tickets through 2/2 with code PS35 if you're under 35). It's got an LED, Buck Hunter, and plausible definitions for words like "couch surfing" and "housesitting." But the big-box ideas of Hunting and Gathering are overflowing with Styrofoam wit; from Ikea to Park Slope ("a place where everyone pretends it's Woodstock"), it's all just glittery surface, a long stretch of disconnect between what's said (ahem, referenced) and what's experienced. This works well for the direction of Leigh Silverman, who dresses up the presentations as slickly as she can, emphasizing that home is what you make of it, and for the cast (especially Michael Chernus), who excel -- perhaps a little too well -- at playing in the shallows.

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Sunday In The Park With George

***
Roundabout

Second Preview Alert! No sense in elaborating on the performances as they will be evolving over the next couple of weeks. I assume the design is frozen so lets talk about that. The science of animated projections, which was the big gimmick in The Woman In White, is back again here in Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize winner and it's just as dim, faux and blurry around the edges. There is intermittent visual whimsy like when our George Seurat is narrating a conversation between a pair of dogs "rolling around in mud and dirt" but for this first Broadway revival to rely so heavily on the projections in a show that is so noted for its gorgeous scenic design was a bit of a let down. Aside from a few pieces of furniture and a couple of draped curtains (and no tangible Chromolume), all we have to transport us to La Grande Jatte is projected onto the walls via this digital trick that seems to still be in its novelty phase. Add to that a mere 5 person orchestra tucked away in a box stage left and we have a first major revival that came off looking kinda cheap.