ReWrite

Photo/Alex Koch

If you buy the meta-shtick of Joe Iconis’s ReWrite (he is writing a musical to deadline, and so writes about himself, and the one who got away) then you have to accept that Joe is writing music for selfish reasons: for his friends and for the warm glow of the afterparty. If you don’t buy the three one-acts structure, loosely connected by a melody and a character, then the show is an after-school special about confidence (“Nelson Rocks!”), a musical twist on Durang-style loneliness (“Miss Marzipan”), and a self-aware but fatuous look at musicals—[title of show] without the honesty (“The Process”). The end result is charmingly underwhelming: only as a character in his own play, The Writer (Jason Williams), does Iconis succeeds at having an emotional breakthrough.

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The Truth About Santa

***1/2 (out of five stars)

Kraine

Christmas annoy the fuck out of you? Yeah, me too. Which is why I so wholly connected with this slappy, mean-spirited, Santa-bashing stocking-stuffer of a musical downtown at the Kraine. This Greg Kotis joint features him and his real wife and two lovely real children (the von Kotis family singers!.........the family von Kotis!...). The story is simple and dumb and fun. The wife and kids run off to the North Pole with Santa who is basically a big, old, fat slut. Ms. Claus wants to destroy the world and the elves well.... they're not right. Revenge. Booze. Sex. It's what Christmas ought to be (and often is). Production-wise this is a pretty tight package. The pace is speedy, the sets/costumes are thrown together and fabulously crappy and the cast is hilarious. Note to Luisa Struss (aka Ms. Claus): With your gravely voice you sound exactly like Eileen Heckart. You should play her sometime.

ReWrite

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Prayer For My Enemy

photo: Joan Marcus

The acting in this production of the new Craig Lucas play is of consistent high quality, but Victoria Clark, whose contribution to the first half of the one-act essentially consists of delivering monologues, is especially outstanding. When the character she's playing eventually interacts meaningfully with the other characters - an extended family whose eldest son (Jonathan Groff) is about to return to duty in Iraq - it's clear that the play is at its core about grace and forgiveness. Unfortunately, the playwright has put a lot of other distracting business in our way and dulled the power of his message.

Improbable Frequency

This much-acclaimed musical, from Dublin's Rough Magic Theater Company, is the kind of unique and wacky that inspires cults, but I'm still scratching my head as to why it didn't do much for me. On paper, I ought to love it - it's like nothing else out there, it marches with integrity to its own drum, and it certainly isn't stupid. (In fact the script is on fire with clever wordplay; it's what held my interest through the first act.) The patter-rich music is entertaining and flavorful (one group anthem, "We Are All Of Us In The Gutter", is still with me) and there's nothing to complain loudly about as far as the ensemble goes. (In fact I found two of the performances - Peter Hanly as a crossword puzzle fanatic who is pressed into service as a code-cracking spy, and Sarah-Jane Drummey as a mysterios lass who may or may not be on his side - to be entirely delightful.) And yet after about an hour I had had quite enough: the setting of the story - namely, politically neutral Ireland during WW2 - seems irrelevant by the second act, and the zany silliness that ensues exhausted rather than charmed me.

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Reviewed for Theatermania.