Sand

photo: Carol Rosegg

Although the presentation is sometimes heavy-handed, and the play doesn't offer (or aim for) the neatness of a tidy narrative, there is plenty to admire about Trista Baldwin's serious and often spellbinding new play in which three U.S. soldiers find themselves at a gas pump in the Iraqi desert. The drama begins simply enough in straightforward fashion - the three seem to form a microcosmic sample of current-day American soldiers, encountering varying degrees of moral struggle with their mission - but the play soon begins toying with continuity and destroying our sense of security with what we are seeing. By the time one of three (the always excellent Pedro Pascal) enters as a fourth character - a boombox-toting Iraqi - the play has so effectively meshed reality and the hallucinatory that we are on high alert to tease the two apart. Yet, part of what is distinctive and interesting here is that figuring out what's real and what's not is not really the point of this war play. The confusion and the disorientation is. Sand isn't agressively abrasive but neither is it comfort theatre offering easy answers. Recommended.

The Lifeblood

Photo/Gerry Goodstein

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble puts on a beautiful work of political intrigue and dark drama that manages to be subtle and broad, funny and tragic, and well-staged throughout. I'm a particular fan of the heady physical rage that Craig Smith channels through his menacing Spymaster Francis Walsingham in contrast to the graceful but sharp tongue of imprisoned Queen Mary (Elise Stone, whose performance took a while to grow on me). Robert Hupp does well to keep things bleak yet hopeful in his staging of this historically entertaining play: only the final act of Glyn Maxwell's The Lifeblood is disappointing. Otherwise, this play is filled with rich villainy, scathing wits, and desperate souls.

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The Play About The Naked Guy

So I went to the first preview of my play last night (yes, in between bartending at West Bank Cafe and blogging shows I also write plays). I'm pretty gosh darn farking proud of it. Consider this your official invite. For more info and tickets click on the hyperlink as though you've never clicked on a hyperlink before. http://productions.eatheatre.net/listing.php?id=15

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The Wild Party

photo: Jennifer Maufrais Kelly

The Gallery Players' production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party isn't dark and dirty enough; without carnal excitement and a measure of danger in the air, the show becomes a long evening. There is good choreography, and some of the performers make a strong impression (Julie Cardia brings a touch of world-weary to Kate, and Tauren Hagans knocks the "Lesbian Love Affair" number out of the park) but the leads - appealing performers both who do well with the songs - don't convince as knocked-about rough-sex boozers and they don't have chemistry together. Without that, the party never gets started.

Betrayed

Photo/Carol Rosegg

That George Packer succeeds so well as a journalist-turned-first-time-playwright is a tribute to how rich and powerful the source material for Betrayed is. The number of Iraqi dead is always glossed over, especially as we try to avoid mentioning how many US troops have actually died, but that's not even considering how badly we've screwed some of the Iraqis who would help us. What Packer's play manages to do is show the ridiculous dichotomy of the Red Zone/Green Zone division of Iraq and the lack of real information that brings the government, and it does so through the idealism of Bill Prescott (Mike Doyle), a young US agent, and his three Iraqi co-workers: polite, Metallica-loving Laith (Sevan Greene); pessimistic, necessity-driven Adnan (Waleed F. Zuaiter); and the liberal, intelligent woman, Intisar (Aadya Bedi). The tragedies in this play are true, and therefore even harsher, and given the excellent acting, these human faces are even harder to ignore than when they were inked in The New Yorker. Pippin Parker's direction for the Culture Project is clear and crisp -- if it is a little too methodical, that's forgiven, along with Packer's lazy exposition, in the attempt to bring a powerful message back home.

A Bronx Tale

photo: Joan Marcus

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



Would someone who is obsessed with Kiki and Herb and who listed Xanadu as his favorite musical of 2007 be able to connect to a one man play about growing up around gangsters in the Bronx? Well it IS Chazz Palminteri and he was in Bullets Over Broadway- which means he can do no wrong- so I was open to giving it a shot. About a boy dipping his toe in the water of organized crime and the father who intervenes, Chazz presented this mostly fictional story as though it were an intensely personal memoir. Though the synopsis touts that Mr. Palminteri plays eighteen people, it was really eighteen variations on one streetwise tough guy who says "whasssamaddawitchyou?!" a lot. It would have been fun to see him play the black teen girlfriend but I don't assume tough guys from the Bronx do that sort of thing. What I really connected to was the local color of the piece. Chazz is a Bronx native and his script and performance were loaded with nuance that gave us a three-dimensional tour of a specific place and time. I feel like a more seasoned New Yorker having seen this production. Any one person plays about Staten Island out there? Bring it.

Also blogged by: [Patrick]