Damascus

Quite simply, it's taken me this long to write the review for one reason: if I'm bored at a play, I'm going to be bored writing the review. Thankfully, with that dreadful bit of snark out of my system, I can say the following things about Traverse Theatre Company's production of David Greig's Damascus. (1) Critics only complain about bad microphones when they don't actually care what the person is saying. The rest of the time, they're listening too closely to jot anything down. (2) Don't prove yourself capable of linguistic nuance or creative narrative (as with Yellow Moon), for once you do, everything else you do after that will always seem all the more mundane, especially when it actually is. (3) If you're doing a straight play about differences in culture, don't set your play in a chain hotel's lobby. Also, if it's to be understood that someone is speaking foreignlish (it's implied that the actor is not actually speaking English on stage, but another language), make sure that's clear. Not every play can be The Internationalist. (4) Don't bore a critic. Even if he says he's got the snark out of his system, it'll still be obvious to everyone that he hasn't.

Endgame

I waited so long to write about this Mother's Day treat that I lost my program notes: that said, pardon my general recollections. Then again, it takes a good show to leave you with any pictures or images a month down the road, so understand that I found this production of Endgame to not only be visually striking, but emotionally accessible. Oddly enough, the high emphasis on the literary style of Beckett's words (such grand drabness otherwise) seemed to shift the story toward the metaphoric, with the play serving to reflect an artist's struggle to complete a work. Whether or not Beckett desired that metadrama on top of a play already loaded with the very real (yet statuesquely depicted) thoughts of death, I care not. Also worth noting, Max Casella was the star of this evening--though John Turturro held up well, despite (or perhaps because of) seeming to be in the grips of a Coen brothers film. Physical comedy is often spoken of as a motif behind Beckett's carefully choreographed shows, but it's rare to see a production that fully realizes the comic futility in acts as mundane as the absence and presence of a ladder.

A Seagull in the Hamptons

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

McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ

Director/writer Emily Mann has gifted us with an intense, extremely funny, heartbreaking "freely adapted" modern take on Chekhov's The Seagull. Maintaining the classic structure and the complex relationships in Chekhov's masterwork, Mann imbues this piece with wholly accessible post-millennium American language, and colorful recognizable characters (there's actually a goth chick in this). With a gourmet cast (standouts including Brian Murray, Larry Pine and Stark Sands), gorgeous scenic design, and of course the brilliant Emily Mann, we have ourselves something that is as good as or better than anything that is currently on Broadway. This is the second time I have taken the 70-80 minute train ride down to the McCarter in Princeton. You guys, it's totally worth the trip. Especially for this thrilling adaptation.

Man of La Mancha

Turns out that The Gallery Players are men of La Mancha just as much as Cervantes. Imagination (not to mention determination and passion) has taken their revival of Man of La Mancha pretty far. Jennifer McCabe doesn't have a very good vocal bridge, which sometimes makes her Aldonza a bit nasal, but she still gives a damned good performance, bringing so much passion and sorrow to the role that you may find yourself begging to be her knight. And Jan-Peter Pedross may not look (he's a bit too composed) or sound (either flat or singing in a lower key) like the Don Quixote you imagined, but his needs are palpable, and his actions are clear. As for Robert Anthony Jones . . . well, he's exactly the sort of Sancho Panza you expect, but moreover, he's exactly the sort that you need; talented enough for two, his personality is enough to carry the show wherever it might sag. That the ensemble has a few weak voices isn't really a problem: Martin Andrew's ominous set so perfectly resembles a prison that I just assumed those were actually convicts and just accepted them as rowdy additions to the show. Tom Wojtunik's to be commended for making it too hard for me to tell the difference.

Cherry Docs

photo: Caleb Levengood

A neo-Nazi skinhead, soon to stand trial for a brutal hate crime, is defended by a liberal Jewish legal aid lawyer in this two-hander written and directed by David Gow. Surprisingly, the play doesn't delve very deeply into questions of legal ethics, but it's otherwise by-the-numbers and easy to predict. What elevates it a bit above its disappointingly pat plotting is that Gow has written these two characters credibly and he's given them a lot of solid dialogue; he's also paced and directed the play sensibly so that the characters' confrontations are suitably taut and dynamic. He's fortunate that his two actors - Maximilian Osinski as the skinhead and Mark Zeisler as the lawyer - both give strong, emotionally intense performances that hold the attention even when the play is at its most formulaic.

Me

Kirk Wood Bromley's latest play, Me, doesn't really get to the heart of Mr. Bromley. (Unless we take his mash-up of placenta mythology, ecological warning, and fractious parents -- there's father, a hammerhead shark in a golden diaper, and a mother-as-sponge -- at face value. And that's not really the point of this comic play.) However, it does get to the heart of his style, with the entrance to the theater littered with the detritus of his past, from old props and clippings to epigraphs from his favorite influences. It's fair, then, to say that this is the sort of play I imagine John Ashbery might write if he were smoking peyote and unwinding on the guitar. It's a highly literate, linguistically comic, and utterly refracted, interrupted, and regurgitated work of theater. Well, just call me a baby bird then, 'cause I ate it all up, from the self-reference to the Joyce-worthy absurdism: "When someone's obliminal nodes excite your oceanic plasma, you are hookt." Job well done for director Alec Duffy, who somehow manages to keep the twelve actors playing Kirk fresh, interesting, and on point.