To Be Or Not To Be

Photo/Joan Marcus

As MTC has stupidly begged the question, the answer, definitively, is "not to be." Nick Whitby's adaptation of the 1942 film To Be Or Not To Be is slow, under-rehearsed, badly staged (Faith Healer meets Gypsy), and unable to establish a tone--as Colonel "Concentration Camp" Erhard (Michael McCarty, one of the few good things about this show) points out at a gestapo soiree, "I've misjudged the tone of the room." Boeing Boeing, for all its flaws, knows that it is a sex farce, and the energy crackles through the play, building and building until take-off; not so for To Be Or Not To Be, which sputters through video clips and recordings that defuse the action. It's also horribly dated: even though "Heil myself!" stems from Lubitsch's original, it now seems like secondhand Brooks. Casey Nicholaw's direction is astoundingly aimless, as if he set out to direct The 39 Steps but wanted all the glitz of The Drowsy Chaperone, too. The space is badly used, and Anna Louizos's set could've taken some cues from Roundabout's revival of Twentieth Century. Erhard comments that Josef Tura, a hammy actor (hammily played by David Rasche, which is a most unkosher choice) did to Shakespeare what Germany has done to Poland; one could go a step further and compare what Germany did to Poland to what MTC has done to this film (and to a wasted Jan Maxwell).

Waves of Mu

It's a credit to Amy Caron's current obsession that Waves of Mu is able to tackle the heady neuroscience of mirror neurons in a playful way that won't go over anyone's head. But perhaps it should have: knowing exactly what's going on tends to make the individual demonstrations drag on. What's more, the cloying tone of the play gives out a lot of mixed signals: for instance, during a video interview with V. S. Ramachandran (whose work Caron is expressing through theater), an actor stands to the side, mocking his gesticulations. The art installation is cute, too, with its secretary-cum-thalamus, but this view of the mind doesn't connect with what follows--a multidisciplinary translation of mirror neurons that relies too heavily on video. All that empathy, and yet I often found myself being very self-aware, unable to relate.

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Kindness

photo: Joan Marcus

Adam Rapp's new play has some stray moments, many of which belong to Annette O'Toole. but they're hard to enjoy once it's clear that the play's lone conflict is the unconvincing and unwelcome suspense of whether the teenaged main character will bash his mom's brains in with a hammer. No matter how much cheap condescension Rapp (who also directed) heaps on Mom - we're cued for most of the play to snicker at her bad cassettes (Juice Newton, for instance) and at her awe of "Rent" (thinly disguised in the script as "Survivin': The Musical") - she's infinitely more interesting than her son, a walking and talking blank slate. A good deal of the play is devoted to his interactions with a mystery woman, a contrived character if there ever was one but at least Katherine Waterston's intensity makes her initially fascinating to watch.

The Master of Horror

Photo/Aaron Epstein

I don't want to say anything negative about the latest Blood Brothers anthology from Nosedive, so I'll try to just blame everything on Stephen King. By adapting three of King's little-known short stories, far from the goriest or most interesting, James Comtois, Qui Nguyen, and Mac Rogers have put straightjackets on their creativity, and their attempts to balance their styles with King's have led them to muddle through this show, all zombie-like. Effort and good intentions simply aren't enough to provide the show with a backbone, and without one, we don't really care how many times it gets stabbed, splattering blood all over the first row.

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Nightmare: Bad Dreams Come True

Timothy Haskell's fifth-annual haunted house, Nightmare: Bad Dreams Come True isn't likely to give you nightmares, especially if you're with a talkative or sarcastic group, but it's going to scare you at least once, and that's the most one can expect (or actually want) from the experience. More than that, there are at least four really original moments, which, to preserve their horror, I can only describe as involving a strobe light, a liquid stream, a locker room, and a giant face. However, the "play" lacks structure, and the ambiance diminishes each time you accidentally walk out a fire exit, double back on an unprepared actor, or worse, have an apologetic monster double back to get you. The moment-to-moment shocks are also a bit of a tease--worse, in fact than a strip club's champagne room, for not only can't you touch the performers: they can't touch you. This leads to some tame sections of the house, like the action-less Saw V room, or the Frankenstein exhibit. It's also remarkably short (well, you do run/stumble quite a bit), with our group in the dark for less than twenty minutes (both sections). It's ooky, but it's not altogether spooky. Snap snap.

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