Dance at Bataan

So far as dances go, Blake Bradford's Dance at Bataan is more or less a cha-cha: two steps forward, two steps back. On the back step, there are unsteady actors who look like they're being put through the paces, and a plot that covers way too much ground (PTSD may be the subject of Hannah's dissertation, but it's got little to do with the play). This rush of development forces the actors to show actions rather than to act on them: Jim Heaphy twitches his left arm and quivers his voice to show Mr. Edward's reluctance to speak with Hannah, and Christine Vinh gets so bogged down in playing Hannah as "a cold-hearted bitch" that she never shows any emotion. Moving forward, Blake's parallel story, a glimpse at Mr. Edward's experiences at Bataan (where one out of seven US POWs died)--is surprisingly comic, and the acting is sharp, though still too dispassionate for a dance. Blake's direction is often more emotional than the actors: though he stretches the imagery with too much repetition (Claire haunted by her husband, Marvin, and Hannah inexplicably visited by Tokyo Rose), this otherworldly presence (especially the violent Japanese soldiers, who are shown by pantomimed reactions) pulls good performances out of the actors, particularly Sarah Hankins, who doubles as Chris and Claire. Pick up the tempo, watch that posture, and tighten up the routine (by which I mean the steps of the plot), and Dance at Bataan may merit an encore.

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh

The clever script often manipulates passion to make a point, but on the whole, the able cast and precise direction make Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh an entertaining play.

[Reviewed for Time Out New York]

Yellow Electras

Chuck Mee would be proud of Peter A. Campbell's Yellow Electras, which patches together a series of existing adaptations, from the classic Greek dramas of Sophocles and Euripedes to the melodic Richard Strauss and Kandinsky operas. The buffet of styles buffets the viewer, with Peter Ksander's design stretching the three Electras (Genevieve De Galliande, Laura Heidinger, and Karen Rich) across three computer terminals, video conferenced up on one wall, while on the other, a chorus of sixteen girls look on, Brady Bunch style, through a series of digital boxes. This modernist approach is somewhat tacky, though aesthetically pleasing, but it's no surprise that the strongest segments--Rich's arias and Heidinger's violent breakdown--are grounded in physical presence rather than electronic transference. The collage, in itself, doesn't build up to anything--in fact, some of the snippets, which address acting itself, assert that "fragments, bits, and pieces do not give us a sense of the whole." What Yellow Electras does is illustrate a series of styles, a physical dramaturgy of Electra that will, unfortunately, largely be of service only to those who are readying themselves to adapt a Greek drama, and intermittently cool for the edgy theatergoer.

The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac

Photo/Lucien Samaha

Taylor Mac comes to us in drag, green-faced and glittery, with a thickly clumped wig, but despite his eccentric act (high energy rants modulated by ukulele), don't mistake him for an alien. He's a wildman, a performance artist born in the crucible of gay nightclub basements. The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac is a messy sampler of his previous solo shows: by the end of the night (after opening "Pandora's suitcase"), he's standing in a sea of old costumes. The overall topic of this self-proclaimed "subversive jukebox musical" is to pierce what "the bubble of preparation," in which America (and, by inclusion, audiences) attempt to shelter themselves from harm by "preparing for the surprise." Two things are made clear by the bubble of light that surrounds him: first, that Taylor Mac cannot be contained by David Drake's direction, and second, that for all his mania--singing breasts and all--there's nothing particularly shocking about Taylor Mac.

[Read on]

TRACES/fades

Photo/Gary Breckheimer

The postcard for Lenora Champagne's TRACES/fades has the image of a young girl wheeling her grandmother along at a high speed: both are giddy. Unfortunately, the actual production rarely has such glimmers of life. There are hints of humor, crackles of poignancy, and some terrific images from Robert Lyons's co-direction, but Champagne's depiction of Alzheimer's comes across as patronizingly as Nurse Harper's attitude toward her addled patients. A mournful set of images are projected onto the background, starting with snow, which Claire (Champagne) then emphasizes "makes a clean white blanket of forgetting." Soon after, Claire specifies that her mother, Ann (Joanne Jacobson), with her mind bundled in the depths of that blanket, did not expect this. Honestly, who does? Even the second half of the play, which takes place in a senior care center, seems more demonstrative than dramatic, with the dialogue straining to show us the highs and lows. (It doesn't help that Amelie Champagne Lyons, who plays Anne's granddaughter, doesn't really provide much of an energetic contrast.) Still, it's sensitive topic material, and the closeness of it to Champagne's heart is reflected in the quirky songs that her other 'inmates' sing, from Hilda's choked ability to remember those who have died in her life, but not the wars in which they died, to Delores's no-nonsense appreciation of eating, which serves as a reminder that they're living. For me, the strongest image is of the nurse restraining Ann to her wheelchair with a device that she explains as being "just like a cummerbund." It's not, but these little injustices and deprivations are where Champagne most clearly succeeds.

Boeing Boeing

Photo/Sara Krulwich

Not that Broadway needs more mindless entertainment, but here comes a commercial comedy: yes, I'm talking about Boeing Boeing. I like my comedy to be as crisp as airline peanuts, so I was happily surprised to see understudy Roxanna Hope as the kinky American stewardess (one of the three that bachelor Bernard is juggling on separate timetables), and pleased to see that there was merit to Mark Rylance's Tony win. As Robert, Bernard's straight-laced (soon-to-be unlaced) friend, Rylance is unapologetically apoplectic as he frets his way through one hell of a coverup, and he shows a marvelous range as he goes from mild-mannered to tentitively suave and hesitatingly sexual. (Think Bill Irwin.) But the rest of the cast made me feel as if were riding in coach: Bradley Whitford takes far too long to warm up, and when he does, he never seems as invested as Rylance, and the other two stewardesses, Gina Gershon and Mary McCormack (a jealous, sharp Italian and a booming, obsessive German) are so exaggerated that it's sometimes hard to understand what they're saying. This sex comedy may be about broads, but I'd have liked Matthew Warchus to make all the racing around just a little less broad: as tight, specific, and polished as Christine Baranski's deadpan.