Dead Man's Cell Phone

Photo/Joan Marcus

Dead Man's Cell Phone is a marvelously quirky, beautiful love story. It's incredibly specific in tone, with poetics taking precedence over sense, but between Sarah Ruhl's easy control of language, Anne Bogart's gentle aesthetic minimalism, and the cast's unequivocal focus, the show works. It is, however, marred by a sloppier second act that reaches for extremes that end up blurring the precise magic of the first (and no wonder, given that Ruhl spent a year between acts). Sloppy or not, I've got no complaints at seeing more of the magnificent Mary-Louise Parker, who despite playing a mousy, timid do-gooder, is arresting even with her short, sparing snippets of text. Her physical control (and her powerful pauses -- I'd kill to see her do Albee or Pinter) fill in the rest of the blanks, and even seem to justify the aphorisms about cell-phones that are thrown around by the other characters, particularly the cool and direct Mrs. Gottlieb (Kathleen Chalfant) and her shadowed son, Dwight (David Aaron Baker), who anchor the show. It isn't so important that we make something of dead man Gordon's (T. Ryder Smith) monologue, or of Jean's arrival in a Beckett-like hell (think Play Without Words I), so much as we let the show, with its weird, wonderful rhythms, wash over us.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

The Poor Itch

Photo/Joan Marcus

The Public Lab is selling itself short: not only is their production of The Poor Itch about as far as you can get from "barebones"; it's also incredibly rich, not just in content, but in the insightful glimpse it gives us of a playwright's mind. John Belluso died before completing his tale about a disabled (physically paraplegic and mentally PSTD) Iraq veteran, but his friend, Lisa Peterson, has boldly directed his play anyway, filling in the blanks by having actors read his notes for unwritten scenes, and by staging multiple drafts of scenes in quick succession. (Think of David Ives's Sure Thing, only not as a comic gimmick.) This choice also gives a nice parallel to Ian's deterioration over the course of the play: Act I is largely finished, but Act II is a much rougher beast, not just from the fragments that exist, but from the overarching attempts at symbolism and deep-rooted themes linking America and war. Especially for $10, this is a must-see.

[Read on]

The Drunken City

*** (out of five)
Playwrights Horizons
Now in Previews.


Bachelorette party in da house! Swooning ladies loaded up with engagement rings and high heels hit the big city for a night out on the town in this playful, if a little slight play by Adam Bock. Every one's happy and every one's sane until one too many drinks have been drunk then all the hell- she breaks a'loose. Old School. There are many laughs here as our girls compare engagement rings and as our cast devolves into those loud, slurring mobs you see stumbling out of bars at 5am. We've got a very sexy cast here that keeps things moving along (a number of the actors seem as though they've actually had experience being drunk in real life!). And if the script was a little thin and predictable I left this sweaty, sloppy, blood-shot romp without one hint of a hangover.

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Fight Girl Battle World

photo by: Jim Baldassare

***1/2 (out of 5 stars)

Vampire Cowboys

With its endless fight scenes, wacky characters, puppets, wigs, bangs, pows and thwacks, this sci-fi cartoon play wants nothing more than for you to laugh your ass off. Sustained by a tireless comic ensemble trying very hard to not only bust up the audience but each other as well, this silly bring-a-beer-to-your-seat garage play revels in its over-the-top sensibility. The evil and horrible human race has been destroyed- all but one male and one female- and the rebellion's task at hand is to hook this saucy girl and serial killer dude up and have them mate to avoid extinction of their species. Fun! It's not Checkov, or Asimov, but stupid theater like this is a great stupid date play. Take a hot drunk with you. It'll probably get you laid.

Drunk Enough To Say I Love You

photo: Joan Marcus

The playing area seems nothing but a black void except for the loveseat where Sam (the American) and Guy (the Brit) have a man-to-man entanglement that looks like an unhealthy enmeshed love affair. But only the slightest amount of personal specificity is given and it's quickly clear that what we're hearing out of their mouths is not the talk of lovers but of two nations in bed with each other, with (Uncle) Sam bending Guy to his greedy, destructive will at every turn. The two don't even need to finish their own sentences - even their intimate, casual exchanges are jagged fragments spiked with loaded foreign policy buzzwords. They talk in commonplace, intimate tones of epic-scale horrors: the effect (most especially in one scene where Sam, curled up under a blanket, coldly lists methods of prisoner torture until his masochistic lover returns) makes for boldly provocative, politically charged theatre of a blood-curdling potency. The fourty-five minute play (yes, you read that right, and it feels precisely the length it should be) might sound in the retelling like a crafty, overly academic exercise, but it isn't: it is driven by a such a palpable moral outrage that despite its not-one-extraneous-word polish it often feels like it was borne of one explosive burst of focused anger. The playwright (Caryl Churchill) even finds mitigating moments of dark humor without letting its fueling rage below a boil. I wonder about a thing or two (shouldn't Guy be a good deal older than Sam, for instance, to keep with the metaphor?) and I must admit that the play's relentless condemnation of American policy and of Britain's spineless submission to it could easily shut down some theatregoers as it opens up others. But whether you agree with Churchill's overarching statement or not, this is jolting, must-see theatre that wants to disturb and strongly provoke us, and it does.

Fight Girl Battle World

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Looking to have a qwarding good time? Then check out the high energy, action comedy adventure Fight Girl Battle World, a theatrical send-up of science fiction with some innovative fight choreography up its sleeve. Hot chicks, sarcastic robots, and bad-ass aliens: rarely does theater get so blatantly entertaining. Knowing your audience well enough to open with outtakes between an action-figure Boba Fett and his tonton buddy leaves the door wide open for creativity, and Vampire Cowboys Theater Company milks it for all its worth: a soundtrack ripped from Tarantino, a passively subversive riff on the creation myth, and some puppet spaceships fighting one another with karate kicks. Oh yeah, it's on.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]