Nemesis

**** (...out of five stars)

Shetler Studios

Upon moving to New York, for approximately ten minutes, I fancied myself an actor. Many of the reasons why I wised up and happily settled into a rewarding career as a bartender are addressed in this very funny and vehement tale chronicling the epic relationship of two actor buddies whose careers take two distinctly separate paths. Insecure actors standing around measuring each other's cocks (metaphorically, you dirty birds) is nothing new but Michael Buckley's script, which deconstructs the all too common diseases of unconfidence and overwhelming jealousy rife in the acting community, is loaded with crisp, edgy dialogue and two vivid characters you could easily find chanting through their sides at Actor's Equity headquarters. Mr. Buckley, who also plays the poor serious actor who can't get a break, is surprisingly charming even as he complains about his waiter-job or neurotically lists out all the reasons why he should be far more successful than the world will allow him to be. And Will Poston (HGA!), as the statuesque Hottie McHotHot who rockets to stardom, proves that it takes a really good actor to play a less than great one. The chemistry between these two bros is dead-on perfect and natural and they are selling it old school here. Check out their Youtube page. (I love it when theatrical productions have previews. That's like enterprising and post-millennium and stuff.) Thumbs up! http://www.youtube.com/user/stepstonemedia

Kindness

Photo/Joan Marcus

Kindness is the first glimpse of actual humanity that I've seen in an Adam Rapp play: digging deep into the repressed darkness between a mother and son (including a staggering performance from Annette O'Toole), but also into the deep love that drives them together, there are some sad and powerful moments. But Rapp, trying too hard for single-scene naturalism, generates a worthless plot that eats up the vast majority of the play, almost as if he's afraid of growing up. Instead, he has the talented but misplaced Katherine Waterston exude hipness, making implausible choices that go nowhere.

[See also: Patrick's take]

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.

[Read on]

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?

[Read on]