Something Weird . . . in the Red Room

How did Rachel Klein end up stuck with material more ambiguous than Michael Jackson's last music video? She's a fantastic choreographer, so she makes the dancing effectively creepy, but she fails to find a way to direct through the schlocky Swiss-cheesed plots from Benjamin Spiro ("Sir Sheever") and Sean Gill ("Aenigma"). In "Sir Sheever," Ralph (Bret Haines) plans to rob Miss Elise (Kari Warchock), but rather than overpower her, ends up being cowed into taking part in her terrible tea party, and when they both find out that her odd collection of mannequins are real, they just roll with the punches. (I don't mind watching the cast imitate dolls--Ted Caine and Megan O'Connor are especially good at it--but I'd like them to have a reason for doing so.) In the far more unfathomable "Aenigma," Klein is at least given a clever set of flashbacks at the opening that allow her choregraphy to work with the show rather than in parallel to it, but when Charlotte (Elizabeth Stewart) kills Mr. Green (Rob Richardson) over a videotape of her sister, Diana (Jillaine Gill) . . . and then the whole thing turns out to be a psychic manipulation by the mindlessly evil Tad (Bret Jaspers), who in turn is trying to save the world . . . well, you see where this is going. (Just in case you don't: there's also an interpretive chorus, the "Body Rock Crew.") The moral, ghouls and girls, is that if you go to see theater and end up watching dance, then there's something rotten going on.

Blasted

If Samuel Beckett had balls, he'd have written Blasted, a graphically offensive, utterly savage play about the deprecation (and depreciation) of human life, starting with something trivial as "mild" rape and moving into a full-on role-reversal (from a symbolic Enemy) and then to the darker stuff: not, "I can't go on, I'll go on," but "I can't go on, but there's no bullets left in my gun, I'm blind, and I can't find a way to kill myself."

I've got a lot more to say about this excellent production from Soho Rep, but know that Sarah Benson is a masterful director who manages to keep the brutal realism present even through the wicked symbolism at the end, and that all three members of the cast (especially Marin Ireland) are so palpably suffering through this play that you owe it to them to stand up and applaud (assuming you can find your footing after they floor you). They've set their aesthetic and dramatic standards ten times higher than in The Thugs: don't let my backlog of reviews keep you from getting tickets while the play gets extended!

Two Rooms

Photo/Aaron Epstein

Despite Lee Blessing's heavy-handed metaphors and Peter Flynn's too-literal direction, what ultimately matters is not the room, but what's inside it: on that account, Angela Christian and Michael Laurence acquit themselves nicely as a husband and wife separated by a terrorist's political demands. If only their emotional journey weren't constantly interrupted by the bland and all-too-familiar use of an ice-cold government agent, Ellen van Oss (Adinah Alexander), and a manipulative reporter, Walker Harris (Patrick Boll), not to mention the slide-show accompanied political lecture. Two Rooms was revived for its relevancy (it's otherwise a rather lifeless play): in that case, the audience needs to be trusted a little bit more.

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Eureka!

Photo/Jocelyn Gonzales

If one is going to call Edgar Allen Poe's Eureka a prose poem (it's an essay), one might as well call Hanon Reznikov's theatrical adaptation of it a play. But if one wants to be honest to the hard work that Judith Malina has put into the choreography, it's far closer to interpretive dance: Fuerzabruta for the New Age crowd. It's a beautiful idea, re-creating the Big Bang by using the audience (and dancing/acting cast) as component parts, but being so close to the action, striving to follow the cues, makes us work too hard to appreciate, let alone hear, "the rhythmical creation of beauty in words." The end result feels like doing the work of an Alexander class while watching Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi, with a big self-congratulatory "Let The Sunshine In"-type conclusion. The Living Theater's committment to larger-than-theater work is admirable, but the question you need to ask is, do you feel transcendental, punk? Well, do you?

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Reviewed for Theater News Online.

Brew of the Dead

The jovial energy and rough yet polished performances of the ensemble in Brew of the Dead makes the production seem as if it's been poured straight from the tap, though it's clearly gotten a good oast-like rehearsal process under Justin Plowman's direction. Though the simple "flee zombies and drink beer" plot isn't far from the cheap "drinkability" humor of a Bud Lite commercial, the pun-heavy result ends up resembling a Guinness: dark, frothy, and practically a meal in a can. Patrick Storck's puns are fresh and clever (although, with lines like "insert Tab A into zom-B," you may need a drink), and he's clearly been eating some pop-culture saturated brains, as there are references to everything from Shaun of the Dead to the crowbar-wielding hero of the Half-Life video games. The cast, however, really sells it, especially Peter Schuyler and Amy Beth Sherman, who go over the top, but have so much fun doing so that we're happy to just drink along for the ride.

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