Wintuk

There's magic blowing through the air. It might only look like flimsy pieces of paper "snow," and you can see the high-powered vent sending them through the theater in a Slava's Snowshow burst, can see the Sunday in the Park With George-level digital backdrop. But from the moment the first Cirque du Soleil performer slaloms down a hill, across an angled path center stage, and then back up a hill on the other side, you're a kid again, being utterly swept away. Wintuk is an aesthetic, intimate circus: there are no animals, and no high-flying acts. Instead, the focus is on the capacity of the human body to astound, whether through the first act's crazy gymnastic flips and acrobatic balancing acts or the second act's more subdued contemporary dances, the sort that make your single hula hoop seem lame, or shame you for not being able to climb a rope, let alone spin through the air and gyrate on one. It's also on the capacity of the human mind to imagine things: hence actors on stilts bring giant bird creatures to life, and bunraku artists lurk in the backdrop of giant ice golems that march across the stage as the actors sing foreign choral music. It is, admittedly, both an exciting and alien experience, and, as always, it is utterly spellbinding. Of particular note: a clever contortionist routine that gives new meaning to the word "rag doll" and an ever more precarious balancing act atop a tower of rolling pins. Of no importance: the plot, which introduces five breakdancing actors in dog costumes and a clown trapped in a garbage can. It's a whimsical breath of fresh air; go.

The Most Damaging Wound

Talk about range: Blair Singer's The Most Damaging Wound opens with a stream of curses and a flood of alcohol, builds from frenzy of casual crudeness into a series of subtle emotions and then--while still propelling itself through some wild antics--puts its hand on the pulse of Male Maturity, and keeps it there for ninety of the best minutes you'll spend in a theater. Chris Thorn delivers an impressive performance as he uses liquid courage to swing his character from comedy to drama and back again, and his energy helps to pull the entire play along, not that the rest of the cast, with their ease and real camaraderie, really needs much needling. Much of that credit must be laid at Mark Armstrong's feet: the best directors are the ones whose touch is invisible, and even with the actors just feet away in this intimate space, I didn't notice a bit of blocking. The theater needs more of this honest naturalism, and less of the bullshit machismo you'll find in a Neil LaBute play.

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The Most Damaging Wound

photo: Deanna R. Frieman

Here's a rarity: a bunch of guys (all hetero, save one) dealing with their issues of "masculine intimacy" in a play that isn't out to damn them or to damn testosterone in general. In this sometimes poignant and largely cliche-free dramedy (by Blair Singer) the buddies who reunite some years after college over drinks and pizza are believable regular guys whose bonds with each other, formed in post-adolescence, have been revised in the transition to adulthood. Some of their conflicts, such as the strain between the now-sober musician and the eternal drunk who used to be his best friend, seem like they're going to be been-there done-that but the resolves are not what you expect; others, such as the realization that a long-standing friendship had been based on idolatry, are things that guys are too seldom depicted talking credibly about. The actors give finely detailed performances that make it very clear that each of the characters' relationships to the others has been thought out: five guys, and one gal who shows up unexpectedly, add up to a high number of interpersonal dynamics and yet my bullshit detector almost never went off. Mark Armstrong's direction allows the drama and humor of the piece while keeping it all grounded in so believable and clear a reality that you could chart the rise of the liquor buzz just by how the actors move around the room. The level of acting is generally impressive in its detail but I must make special mention of Chris Thorn, who plays the kind of sometimes inappropriate, sometimes juvenille goofball you can't help but like no matter how hard you try. He not only puts over most of the play's funny business, he also precisely nails a dead-honest drunk dramatic monologue that is one of the play's most memorable highlights.

Yank!

There were about a hundred people bravely chancing the waitlist to get into one of the instantly sold-out "developmental" readings of Yank! at the York. With luck, the show will soon get a full-scale production in New York and all those who were turned away this time will get to discover one of the best new musicals of this decade. Yank! is one-of-a-kind: crafted as if it is a musical from the 1940's, but telling a love story between two WW2 military men that couldn't have been told then. (The Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven is the only pop culture antecedent I can think of.) The cast for this on-book, chairs-in-a-semicircle reading included Ivan Hernandez, last seen in the show during its initial development at NYMF a couple of years ago, along with Bobby Steggert, Nancy Anderson and Jeffry Denman, seen last year when the show played a critically acclaimed limited engagement in Brooklyn at Gallery Players. The show has always been deeply moving, and each revision makes it more so, but I can't deny that recent setbacks to gay marriage rights also helped to make this reading nothing short of heartbreaking. A wise person once said to me that the first two questions that should be asked about theatre are "why?" and "why now?". The answers here are that we need Yank! and we need it immediately.

As We Speak

Photo/Leigh Celentano

Let me be clear; I left As We Speak in a rage triggered not at all by a single word in this (re:) Direction performance, but rather by the feeling of wasting two hours of my life. I am not proud of bashing plays, I still find it to be reductive, but after sitting on this review for two days, I feel obligated to express what I truly felt about this empty play, from the simply bad aesthetics (an unlit stage, missed cues, a bland set) to the terrible acting (mumbled, hard to hear, recited), and on a larger scale, the overall problems with Tom Berger's static direction and John Patrick Bray's thoughtless script. Do I think it is easy to write a play, let alone to act or direct one? No. Does that give this group the right to lower off-off-Broadway's reputation? No.

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All About Eve

There's a limit to how critical I want to be of this on-stage reading: plenty of people donated their time and talent to raise money for the worthy Actors Fund cause, and I can trust on that score that it was a great success. I'll only say that too many roles were miscast and that it took three hours for the actors to read this adaptation of the screenplay: snappy quips don't fly in slow motion. Here's who was good: Brian Bedford as Addsion DeWitt - his characterization was spot-on and his line readings assured, you'd have thought he'd been playing it for years; Keri Russell as Eve Harrington - you could feel an edge in the character's strategic false modesty; and Jennifer Tilly who, in the "Marilyn Monroe" role of Miss Caswell, handily stole the evening with only a handful of deliciously delivered lines.