Standing Clear

Standing Clear, a new group comedy from the Coffee Cup theater company, has a very simple message: our anonymous city is a hotbed of comedy, you just have to take off the iPod long enough to listen, put down the book long enough to look. But while that's true of the actual subway, it's sadly not the case with this random assemblage of "stops" (scenes). For all that material, the show is rarely even skin deep: that's worse than an episode of MADtv. It's rather telling that Ishah Janssen-Faith and Jack McGowan, the two actors credited with writing the show (with additional material from the cast), choose to play almost identically annoying busybodies: they're after cheap laughs. Barbara Kerger's direction keeps the train running on schedule, but had there been an emergency brake, I'd have pulled it: there are too many real subway stories for me to sit through such wasted potential.

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Crother Spyglass/The Resistible Rise of Fatlinda Paloka

Although this double-bill from Serenitas Media was open for review, it came across more as a learning experience for both writers and the director, and as a showcase for a few actors struggling to put meat on their bones and meat on their roles. Timothy Dowd writes like a Mamet-in-training: what he needs to work on is his specificity. In Crother Spyglass, Ray Crother (Brendan Wahlers) comes across both as a slick Roma-like salesman and as an insecure Aaronow, and it makes it totally unclear whether he's setting up young Adam (a sheepish Timothy McDonough) and what exactly he wants out of Christine (Erin Leigh Schmoyer), a character who is far too flat to stand up to Ray. (That she does anyway speaks to the artificiality of the plot.) Marcy Wallabout's The Resistable Rise of Fatlinda Paloka is in much better shape: she just needs to reel in her characters a little bit. She's made a nice parable out of the conflict between the homegrown Southerners, Jimmy and Jolene Earp (the hysterically tight Nick Palladino and Siobhan Doherty), and the Paloka clan, who they perceive as loud and obnoxious immigrants, gobbling up their culture and replacing it with pizza (which they're addicted to, complaints not withstanding). But Mrs. Schmoyer goes far too far into a faux-Borat as Fatlinda, and only Mr. McDonough, as the bluegrass-loving Blerim, manages to make the deeper message about cultural acceptance actually stick.

photo: Scott Suchman

The Signature's austere, superbly realized production of a newly revised version of The Visit is extraordinary music theatre of high quality: Terrence McNally's adaptation of the grim morality tale has great dramatic impact, and the cohesive Kander & Ebb score rates consideration with some of their best work. After a flawless first act, the storytelling missteps - once we know the dark reason why the world's richest woman has descended on the desperately poor town where she grew up, we have limited patience for the romanticized remembrances of her first love (even if it is George Hearn taking the trip down memory lane about Chita Rivera.) The two stage vets are riveting, often using stillness to great effect, and Hearn - who has a challenging job as the emotional center of the cold-eyed story - has a subtle and profoundly sad moment in the second act that moved many in the audience to instant tears. Rivera's character walks around with a cane thanks to a wooden leg, but the show nonetheless contrives a way for her to have an Ann Reinking-choreographed dance number. Is there anyone with blood in their veins who is fool enough to complain about that?

The Mystery Of Irma Vep

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Vincent River

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Even one of the actors in Vincent River says it: "The penny's dropped." Of course it does: Philip Ridley has rigged the show to make his words drop like bombshells, carefully controlling the show to keep it suspenseful. But he doesn't need to: he has deep characters and, at least in this production, excellent actors for this haunted two-hander (Deborah Findlay and Mark Field). Ultimately, by rigging the flow of information, he bottles all the humanity in the show, and makes the plot the least interesting thing of all. And with his focus more on a detached procedural than a compelling drama, Vincent River comes across more as lazy river than whitewater thrill.

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The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist

Don't let the flimflam, vaudeville, exaggeration, or absurd plot shifts of The Honest-to-God True Story of the Atheist fool you. Dan Trujillo's an incredibly sharp playwright, conflating the cures of the Church with those of a Viagra huckster ("It'll put the stone/in your bone). The play is well-served by director Isaac Butler's familiarity with both the playwright and actors, for the writing requires flawless shifts between the presentational and the intimate. Not only do all three actors (Daryl Lathon, Abe Goldfarb, and Jennifer Gordon Thomas) have the range necessary to switch from mock-selves ("slapstick realism," if you will, concerning a pissed off Jen and her arsenal of gag weapons) to colorful characters (watch Abe's head explode as he yells "stupid fools"), but they look as if they've doing this show for years. The purpose of comedy is to lift the weight of the world off one's shoulders; religion aims to carry a similar burden. How appropriate, then, to find a show willing to take on both at once: that's a medicine worth taking.

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