The Occupant

**** (...out of 5 stars)

Signature

Though I found the conceit ("Inside The Actor's Studio"- style-man-interviews-celebrity) to be a little too safe and not terribly interesting, I still loved the ideas, insight and rich character featured in Edward Albee's new biographical play about famed sculptor, Louise Nevelson (if you don't know who she is, you're forgiven early on). The focal point of this 2-act conversation is the story of the birth to death/up down up down etc. journey of a powerful, unique, damaged, fascinating artist. Along the way we learn a great deal about the pitfalls and black-eyes that can tazer a human flat on their back . We also get a Signature-Theater-eye's view of how, in spite of (/because of) all the jolts and setbacks, no matter how many years it takes, some persistent artists can find themselves and create their greatest works. This point really pops and it was truly inspiring in that respect. Mercedes Ruehl is pretty fucking splendid. As usual. In other news, I am googling the hell out of Louise Nevelson.

Jollyship the Whiz-Bang

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Jollyship the Whiz-Bang is a riot from start to finish: if anything, its subtitle ("A Pirate Puppet Rock Odyssey") is a bit of an understatement. Think Avenue Q as performed by Tenacious D with a healthy dose of irreverence by way of Family Guy, and if that doesn't have you rushing to buy a ticket, you might as well stop here. Jollyship uses the rock music to remain serious, even as it plunders the depths of self-satire and goes overboard (in a good way) with its crass puppets. Nick Jones and Raja Azar have been performing since 2002, and though they've added members to their crew (most excitingly, Steven Boyer, a very funny vocalist, and an endearing crab), the play seems to have grown organically: in other words, the comedy flows naturally, jarring only in the sense that you'll be convulsing with laughter. Sam Gold helps to think both inside and outside the box, tightening the parody as well as the prosody, and while the crew may never reach Party Island, the audience certainly will.

[Read on] [Also reviewed by: Patrick]

Edward Albee's Occupant

photo: Carol Rosegg

Who's afraid of Louise Nevelson? I dare wonder if Edward Albee is, since his tribute to the sculptor so gingerly tip-toes around her that she typically comes off as no more fleah and blood than a statue. We watch her interviewed in the afterlife as if for a magazine article: the interviewer once in a rare while offers a weak challenge but the gloves never come off. He's there to say 'what happened next" and "tell us more" while the great lady talks in quotation marks. Despite the deadly dull conceit, the play has the intrinsic interest of one great artist paying homage to another, even if it is an Inside The Actors Studio gloss job. As Nevelson, Mercedes Ruehl gives a fiercely intelligent, technically proficient but somehow wearying performance. She's an actress reaching to play an eccentric, when what is desperately needed is an eccentric actress.

A Dangerous Personality

Photo/Monique Carboni

There's very little tension in Sallie Bingham's A Dangerous Personality, a major dramatic stumbling block that the show never quite manages to get over. However, Martin Platt's clever direction manages to pull off a comedy instead, a fittingly ironic fate for the late Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, whose struggle to establish the Theosophical Society ended with her being debunked as a fraudulent mystic. From the gilded yet frayed Lamasery (richly designed by Bill Clarke) to a sweltering house in the Hindu Quarter of Bombay, characters keep standing up for New Age idealism (religion without the Church) only to ultimately stoop to comedy. Theater's a bit of a trick, anyway, and for what it's worth, the finale proves that Mrs. Bingham has something up her sleeve after all.

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Suspicious Package

I never thought I'd end up in acting in a show with The Playgoer, but thanks to Gyda Arber's pleasantly interactive "iPod noir," Suspicious Package, I spent 45 minutes running around Williamsburg in a felt hat, tailing a sleazy producer and chatting up a seductive heiress and her sexy showgirl sister. Each of the four roles has its own voice-over, but mine (the detective's) proved to be an amusing mash-up of stereotypes and witty one-liners ("She was a tarantula on angel's food cake"), and Aaron Baker's voiceover, fitting the golden age of radio, not only provided my backstory with plenty of boozing and gambling, but got me in full-on gumshoe mode. I'm a fast walker, so I wound up with some spare time between scenes (each "actor" meets the other "actors," one by one, by following the on-screen cues on their Zune Media Players): however, sitting on various stoops, looking out at the modern, fast-changing Brooklyn streets, listening to classic radio rebroadcasts, I didn't mind at all. I was too busy enjoying the unique experience.

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The Hired Man

Photo/Tristram Kenton

Whatever Melvin Bragg's lost in his condensed adaptation of his epic The Hired Man has been partially made up for thanks to Howard Goodall's music, a lively bunch of chorus numbers and operatically light chamber music solos that nonetheless pack a punch. But director Daniel Buckroyd is all business, and substitutes intimacy for tableaux, ending up with more of a revue than a musical. In truth, the rapid pace of Act II, which jumps from Katie Howell's airy "You'll Never See The Sun" to the talented Richard Colvin's moral aria, "What Would You Say To Your Son?" and from David Stothard's unyielding, unionizing "Men of Stone," to, of course, the ensemble's "War." It's not smooth enough to excuse the melodrama of a collapsed coal mine or a sudden illness, but the finale's resolution of all those counter-melodies shows that for all its ups and downs, all that hard work is ultimately worth it.

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