Love Dr. Mueller

Baltimore bad girl, Haight-Ashbury hippie, punk-era downtown scene-maker: the chapters in Cookie Mueller's life may be varied and colorful but they're all evidence of an adventurer who lived by her own rules. One of the shrewdest ideas in this new play, directed and co-adapted from Mueller's writings by Kareem Fahmy, is to break the rules and have the three actresses in the cast of six take turns playing her in successive scenes. Each brings a distinct characterization, and yet each is valid: the conceit makes the show less about who Cookie Mueller was, and more about what her life was about. Most of the episodes are both era-evoking and funny - the snappiest one freezes the goings-on in a seedy Jersey strip club while Mueller deadpans her mixed feelings to us about doing "floor work" - and even the weaker ones - such as the too-brief peek behind the scenes of John Waters' underground cult classic Pink Flamingos - are entertaining.

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photo: Joan Marcus

David Rabe's excellent 1976 play, in which Vietnam-era soldiers just out of Basic Training are thrown into intense, escalating social conflict with each other while holed up in their barracks, seems to have been revived for, and directed with a focus on, its gays-in-the-military content. On that score, the production is engaging as a time-capsule that invites contemplation about what has and has not changed. Unfortunately the play's other themes are shortchanged, which drains the production of dramatic tension. Two of the actors seem to have been misdirected: Ato Essandoh disastrously so as Carlyle - the character comes off as a psycho the minute he bounds through the door, so the audience isn't forced to sit with the discomforting suspicion that racial stereotyping is behind the hostility he gets from most of the other guys. Brad Fleischer, as Billy, is asked to play so unimpeachably straight that there's no sexual tension with Richie, whose longing for him now looks masochistic. Still, it's great to hear Rabe's dialogue again, and two of the performances - by Hale Appelman and J.D. Williams - are exactly right.

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Reviewed for Theatermania.

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Reviewed for Theatermania.

Farragut North

Photo/Jacqueline Mia Foster

From the moment Stephen (John Gallagher, Jr.) appears onstage as a successful, 25-year-old press secretary who somehow still has morals, it's obvious that Beau Willimon can't wait to knock him down in Farragut North. Willimon plays politics in the same backrooms as Aaron Sorkin, but rather than pace around, he internalizes the gears, taking the focus off the Democratic primary in Iowa and putting the emphasis on what's underneath all off Stephen's gloss and spin. The result is rather Machiavellian: his enemy, Tom (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) undoes him with kindness; his friend, Paul (Chris Noth) undoes him with contempt; his lover, Molly (Oliva Thirlby) undoes him with compassion; and he completes the destruction with his own arrogance. Director Doug Hughes is accustomed to dealing with characters having a crisis of faith, as well as with addressing monsters who come clad in good deeds, which results in a well-oiled production that also manages to dip below the surface of politics.

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Dawn

Photo/Joan Marcus

Thomas Bradshaw's latest play, Dawn, is a challenging play. It's not subtle--his dialogue bashes us over the head with its gross exaggerations, and director Jim Simpson works with an empty stage so as to keep things transparent and obvious. However, by setting up his characters to fall--likeable alcoholics, intolerable saviors, abused annoyers--the play challenges our expectations, and aims to make our morals a little more fluid. The lead, Gerry Bamman, really helps on account of his sitcom-level likability, and the disgusting comedy of it all will unsettle you (especially on accounts of the double whammy of pedophilia and incest), whether you like it or not.

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