crooked

What do The Pillowman's insane fiction, the gushing angst of From Up Here, and the sublime grace of 100 Saints You Should Know all have in common? Nothing. But the best of all three plays is present in Catherine Treischmann's superb new play, crooked, which, for all the twists in plot, never has the characters do anything but go straight for the heart. As Maribel, Carmen M. Herlihy excels as a fragile, isolated girl whose holds onto religion as a necessity: invisible stigmata make her important (and keep her from self-cutting), and Hell is the place where people like Deedee Cummings will rot for being so mean. It's a view of religion that can't be easily dismissed, and a character that can't be summed up with a one-dimensional adjective. She is joined also by the masterful Cristin Milioti, who plays Laney with such a desperate need for approval that even she is startled by her rebirth as a "Holiness Lesbian," and by Betsy Aidem, who makes Elise, Laney's mom, so solidly pragmatic that she's hardly recognizable a few glasses of wine later. Director Liz Diamond finds ways to enhance the magical world we live in, but she never strays from the electric realism of the play. What are you waiting for? Get bent!

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From Up Here

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

MTC

Of the three of us Showdowners, I liked this play the most. Loved, in fact. This story about fractured family trying to rebound from a very serious incident that went down at the high school was very modern, sensitive and wholly engaging. Loaded with colorful, stressed-out characters crashing up against each other yet also desperate to reach out and hold each other, From Up Here was pushing the same buttons in me that last year's 100 Saints You Should Know did- another play that I flerging loved. Everyone in this cast is delivering some great performances with Julie White leading the pack. The desperate mommy angst emanating from her aura was heartbreaking and I wanted to climb onstage and give her a big fat gay hug.

The Country Girl

Stage chops: you can file them under Use 'Em Or Lose 'Em. I've long considered Morgan Freeman to be among the best actors of our time but his return to the stage (in this Mike Nichols-directed revival of the Odets classic) could be generously described as underwhelming. Three weeks into previews, his performance is so tentative he practically vanishes on stage. I left at intermission. Almost nothing in the first act landed as it was supposed to - Freeman, Peter Gallagher, and Frances McDormand, a mismatched trio of actors if ever there was one, seemed to each be working in a different performance style which made for a numbing non-starter. Nichols was at the back of the house dictating notes, but it's a cinch that "replace the stars" was not one of them.

Barcinda Forest

To be honest, Barcinda Forest isn't ready for review or for viewing, but they've asked for both, so I'll oblige on behalf of those who come after me. The "environmental" story by Janeen Stevens is one-dimensional and hokey (think Fern Gully, only without the animation), and Barry Gomolka's staging for Original Intent Theater -- which aims to fit the problem of producing plays on a "small, relatively inexpensive scale" -- actually causes problems. Hoyt Charles uses classical periaktoi to change scenes (a nod to their mission statement to "revisit theatrical conventions"), but the actors are the ones who have to spin them around, and the crude illustrations on them -- like fourth-grade art class -- are more distracting than revealing. And although Georgien's costuming for the blue jay, deer, wolves, and spirits of the forest is color-coded, only one of the actors actually attempts at the physicality of that animal (Johnny Ferro): the rest just look like humans standing around in clothes with leaves or boas stitched on them. Finally, the choice to have the animals speak in blank verse and the two men -- land-developing Cash Cutter and his innocent, journalist son, Paul -- in prose is a good one, but one that requires precision and smoothness from the actors. Here, the two worlds -- animal and human -- don't clash so much as they bleed together, and that's why Barcinda Forest is rough.

Young Frankenstein

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

Broadway

I finally lost faith in the Tony Awards after Jay Johnson's ventriloquist act won Best Special Theatrical Event over Kiki and Herb (straw. camel. back.). And so I am emotionally prepared to deal with the scary notion that Young Frankenstein may snag a Best Musical nomination away from the brilliance that is Xanadu. Never mind that YFrank is the same spoofy Broadway joke delivered much better in The Producers, or that all the songs sound the same and are generally forgettable, or that the only genuine laughs come from the hard working actors and not from the book or score, it looks good on paper, it employs a lot of people and it will tour well. I smell the stench of nomination.

Fire Island

Photo/Diego Bresani

At heart, Fire Island is a love story, but the scenes keep branching into what Mee labels "riffs" (which is at least an honest assessment of his collaging). Bob -- a punk-clad critic -- justifies this by saying that all Greek plays are love stories: despite the tragedy, everything always happens for love. Again, while the text may support these wild claims, the rhythm of the piece doesn't: the clown's molestations are tame, Susan has a knife that she never uses, and Catherine wins Hiroko back with nothing more than pity. What's missing is anything more than the love story -- that is, the impetus for us to continue watching. Fire Island is a place, not an excuse for piecing together rambling, unremarkable characters, and technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Nothing compels Fire Island to be a play rather than a novel, and placing the audience in the midst of the action only works when there is action, which Kevin Cunningham frequently keeps just out of reach, projected in three dimensions, but still remarkably flat.

[Read on] [Also reviewed by: Patrick]