What's My Line?

Photo/Genevieve Rafter Keddy

More cool than kitschy, more memorable than simply memorabilia, the live stage version of What's My Line? is both irresistibly honest and hokey at the same time. Men are gentle again, wearing tuxedos and pulling out chairs, and women aren't just women -- they're dames: gowns, gloves and all. It's a throwback to another time, but the comically "risque" questions are just as funny now as when this ran on late-night TV for 25 years, and with new panelists and guests "competing" (for fun) each week, it's simple commercial fun. I admit I don't know Betsy Palmer (one of four rotating panelists), but watching her ask questions like "Can I put this piece of wood in my mouth?" was great fun, even more so considering that the line in question ("line" is an old-fashioned way of saying "job") was that of Liang Wong, the youngest oboist ever for the New York Philharmonic. I certainly wouldn't go back on a regular basis, but it's a trip down memory lane, even for those of us too young to remember how things were way back when.

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Man Of La Mancha

photo: Ruiz Photography

Two guitars and a lot of bucket-drumming: that's the musical accompaniment in this all-male version of the classic musical now re-set in a modern-day prison. The young performers bring off the musical numbers well enough under the circumstances (although "The Impossible Dream" must be excepted: that anthem loses a lot of power sung to just strummed chords) but the production's directorial conceit is ultimately too problematic: there is so much business to tell us that these prisoners are merely acting out Alonso's story of Don Quixote that we never get the room to become involved in it, and we have no clue as to why it is powerful and inspiring. More damagingly, there is much confusion when some of the events in Quixote's story happen not to the characters in the play within the play but to the prisoners. The goal may have been to heighten the danger in the material, to emphasize the high stakes by illustrating how the story Alonso enacts with the inmates has relevance to their plight, but the result makes for a narrative mess. (The friend I saw this with, who had somehow never seen any production of Man Of La Mancha before, didn't have any idea what was going on.) Still, for those who are already well acquainted with the material, there are moments when this bold re-imagining is fascinating in its audacity: I'll never be able to hear about that Golden Helmet Of Mambrino again without thinking of its "golden" moment in this production.

Burning My Dreams To The Ground

**** (...out of five stars)

Michael Weller Theater

Full disclosure! This story-spieler is a friend of mine (we were both stationed in Normandy during the war). I caught the final dress rehearsal of Gregory Marcel's one person meditation on the success of failure and am happy to report that he is giving us a funny, intense, brisk, evening of engaging storytelling. Like seriously. Drawing on his own experiences as a child in Jersey and then a working actor in New York, he narrates his own personal search for that elusive concept known as "fulfillment". Mostly conversational with plenty of hysterical impersonations along the way (I was partial to his drunk horny chick character), his expressive personality and friendly chatty rapport with the audience was just so damn charming. Thumbs up old school. Oh yeah- and he's hot.

Runs till March 30th. Hurry. For more info and tickets go here.

Dead Man's Cell Phone

photo: Joan Marcus

Anne Bogart's tuned-in direction, G.W. Mercier's lean sets and witty costumes, Darron L. West's nifty soundscape, Mary Louise Parker's heightened, oddball performance heading up an able ensemble: everything is in place for Sarah Ruhl's latest flight of whimsy to soar. But it doesn't. After an intriguing set-up (with Parker as an awkward, disconnected introvert who begins answering calls to the cell phone of a man who's died at an adjacent cafe table) and some promising speeches that toy with the idea that our technological connectedness has actually made us more disconnected from each other, the overly precious and overlong play starts to grate on the nerves: so much quirky style to deliver so little.

Bride

Photo/Richard Termine

The first thing Father (Kevin Augustine, as a yellow, dessicated god) does in Lone Wolf Tribe's Bride is blow his own brains out. Unfortunately for him, as Monkey (Rob Lok) reminds him, pointing out a few key lines of the Bible, he's "everlasting," and with a shudder, he awakes. What follows is his attempt to fashion a messiah for a world that won't stop calling him with their woes. Weirdly wonderful, and filled with fantastic special effects, make-up, and the most disturbing puppets this side of R. Crumb, this show is a macabre dance between Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and some Terry Gilliam-like Brazil. This is twisted, clever, incredible theater: I strongly recommend this stark, beautiful puppet/human hybrid.

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The Fifth Column

Photo/Richard Termine

In his introduction to The Fifth Column, Ernest Hemingway writes that "while I was writing the play the Hotel Florida, where we lived an worked, was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells. So if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it. If it is a good play, perhaps those thirty some shells helped write it." Like the statement, his play is wishy-washy: at some points, an ironic, self-deprecating look at the lifeless insistences of counter-espionage, at others a cheesy romantic comedy styled in the mannerisms of '30s movies (the play was written in 1937), and also a play about slow, hot days -- Tennessee Williams with the booze, but without the passion. Everything about Jonathan Bank's direction of this play is slow, including the scene changes, and perhaps that's meant to help the text itself seem more urgent -- but it's a failure, even in the interrogation sequences. What once may have been a startling look at the dirty truths of war is now a passive play filled with cryptic remarks and unfinished characters.

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