As You Like It

The problem with mounting a free production of Shakespeare in the Park is that such an unadorned and ambitious job gets largely ignored, even when the company--Boomerang Theatre--is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Case in point, this blog entry, which I'm posting on 10/21. To their credit, the memory of a warm still-summer day brings a lot of positive memories to mind, especially of Jessi Gotta and Christian Toth, who play the man-swaggering Rosalind and the jocularly effete Touchstone to great effect. The overall effect of the play was that of a rowdy, fully energized troupe of actors getting together to have fun--something the folk music from Scott Lee Williams contributed greatly to--and what's most wonderful is how true to Shakespeare this natural, rambling play got from time to time. As You Like It, in particular, is a perfect play to set in the park (along with Midsummer), as it's light and frivolous comedy, the sort where you don't need to hear every word and are free to miss the jokes. As a critic, I couldn't help but think how nice it was to just lie back and enjoy this one.

Fringe/Bound in a Nutshell

For fans of Hamlet, Bound in a Nutshell is an exciting shakeup; for strangers to Shakespeare, it's one of the clearest tellings of this haunted tale, thanks largely to Chris Haas, whose Hamlet is violent yet fluid (like Bill Irwin). The adaptation's conflations and cuts create entirely new conflicts for the cast, and by keeping Hamlet imprisoned on stage throughout the entire show, it refocuses the play on his mental torture, and then juxtaposes it with a new, physical torture. Gregory Wolfe's ingenious staging plays each scene to the hilt: "too too solid flesh would melt" is defiantly delivered to a surveillance camera, so we can watch Claudius (Christopher Yates) and Gertrude (Kathy Keane) react to what is usually secondhand. When Hamlet yells "get thee to a nunnery," his words are unheard and unfelt by Ophelia (Monique Vukovic): she sits helplessly on the other side of a prison visitation cell's solid glass window, begging her lover to pick up the phone. Best of all is the poetic license taken with the imagery: Hamlet, strapped to a chair, being tortured into a confession of madness, sees Ophelia--who has just drowned--walk slowly and silently by. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it's hard to keep from waxing poetic on Moonwork's fantastic production. This is what it means to adapt a play, and on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being "not to be" and 5 being "wondrous strange," Bound in a Nutshell gets a perfect 5.

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See How Beautiful I Am: The Return Of Jackie Susann

The pill-popping, self-proclaimed "Queen of the '60s" and Valley of the Dolls author Jackie Susann is given the "interview quotes cut and pasted into a monologue" treatment in this brisk, solidly entertaining solo show at the Fringe Festival. The subgenre is hardly my favorite, and I'll admit to a groan when I realized this was to be yet another biography monologue that takes place tethered to the deathbed (cancer, age 56), but playwright Paul Minx smartly keeps things moving by organizing the material thematically rather than chronologically. British actress Debora Weston is captivating as Susann, never losing touch with the character's drive and hunger for sensation.

Summer Shorts 2: Series B

Photo/Carol Rosegg

For those of you who have been keeping tabs on this race, you know that there's only one thing I love more than aesthetics, and that's festivals--where else can you catch such an eclectic variety of shows all at once? Compressing so much work often leads to a lot of misfires, all at once, but it also means that when a show succeeds, it really leaves a mark. For Series B, that's Terrance McNally and Skip Kennon's mini-musical, Plaisir D'Amour. It's the most polished of the eight plays, with outstanding performances from Stephanie D'Abruzzo and Jonathan C. Kaplan as they chronicle a relationship from the desperate single life to the troubled married life and eventually, with their own children now married, to the comfortable afterglow of a once passionate life. Far too many one-acts, even decent ones, come across as ultimately empty etudes, but this musically simplistic piece does for a transient comedy what Prelude & Liebestod did for drama.

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Fringe/Tiny Feats of Cowardice

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Susan Bernfield's mundane fears (of everything) aren't nearly as interesting as the political musings of Rose Mary Woods (from Stretch). However, that makes her latest play exactly what it claims to be: a tiny feat, for Bernfield is captivating throughout, an Everywoman who, aided by Rachel Peters's music (a nice trick that has not yet become a gimmick), denounces single engine Cessnas, the constant worry of being a mother, the neverending precipices of the world and its possibilities: "Stolen passwords/stoned bikers/hungry sharks/malignant cysts." Her narrative jumps from a trip to Belize to her friendless childhood and surprisingly (but not that surprisingly) to 9/11, and the end result comes across like a Sondheim chamber musical, buttressed by charming lines like, "I think, ah, for you my dears, the sky's the limit. Please don't be astronauts." Daniella Topol, who directs, could help Bernfield a lot by helping to vary the levels of fluttery yet functional fear, but on the whole, it's a very winning performance, and a very winning play. On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being "My fears were completely justified," and 5 being "Frighteningly good," Tiny Feats of Cowardice gets a 4.

The King Is Dead

Photo/Jonathan Slaff

I'm not surprised that a play inspired by Stephen King is a little goofy and B-movie-like, but I do wish that Caroline V. McGraw hadn't gotten distracted by the superfluous and spangled Elvis motif, and that she spent more time focusing on her strong central character, Farrah; then perhaps director Jerry Ruiz wouldn't end up trying to maintain a creepy atmosphere all on his lonesome.

[Reviewed for Time Out New York]