The Cherry Orchard

photo: Joan Marcus

Sam Mendes' production of this Chekhov classic, which uses a new adaptation by Tom Stoppard, is a disappointment which fails to sound the needed notes of melancholy. The moments that ring true are few and far between: the talented cast, comprised of both British and American performers, doesn't register as a cohesive team, a problem that is compounded by staging that rarely creates the illusion that it's organic. Audiences coming fresh, without having seen another version before, might well question the play's reputation: the characters are reduced to stick figures.

A Little Night Music

A starry, likely once-in-a-lifetime cast assembled for what turned out to be a thrilling, unforgettable benefit reading of this Sondheim masterpiece, yet to be revived on Broadway. Some were revisiting roles played elsewhere before (Victor Garber, Marc Kudisch), but most were coming fresh: all showed up, despite the limited rehearsal time, with fully realized performances. Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave, the benefit's greatest casting coup, would have been more than enough on their own to make the evening special - Richardson's beguiling performance as Desiree capped with her nakedly emotional rendition of "Send In The Clowns", Redgrave's expert line readings bringing comic zing and fresh vitality to Madame Armfeldt - but all the casting was inspired. With her rare talent for barbing a one-liner, Christine Baranski has long seemed like she'd be a sensational Charlotte, and she was: the comic chemsitry between her and Kudisch, an absolutely ideal Carl-Magnus, was musical theatre heaven. I wasn't surprised that Stephen Pasquale aced young idealistic Henrik, but I was stunned that Jill Paice, an eleventh hour replacement for Laura Benanti, proved to be a revelation as child-bride Anne. Many have stumbled in the role, condascending to it rather than playing the girlishness with conviction, but Paice got it exactly right. As Petra, otherwise known as the servant who gets to sing "The Miller's Son" in the second act, Kendra Kassebaum was in the same league as Natascia Diaz, who brought down the house a few years back in the role at the Kennedy Center: high praise indeed. Because the full orchestra was center stage, and the actors seated to the sides except when needed at the row of stools at music stands, I sometimes found myself looking over at Vanessa Redgrave as she watched her fellow actors. Emotionally engaged, curious, highly attentive and ready with applause: she's not only the greatest living actress, she's probably the world's greatest audience member.

Psychos Never Dream

An unstaged reading of a new four-character play by Denis Johnson, clearly not meant for review. Still, I can't help mentioning that Deidre O'Connell was spot-on (isn't she always?) in the supporting role of a deputy sheriff.

The Shipment

Young Jean Lee's latest play, The Shipment, asks a lot of questions about racial identity and identification, but while she writes as directly as Thomas Bradshaw, her work here challenges the audience by imitating--perfectly--the very forms it comments on, be that urban dance, stand-up comedy, or song. There's a satirical send-up of one man's rise to rap stardom, hammy and full of stereotypes, but also a subtler one-act that deals with a dinner party gone wrong. By not hitting us in the head with the hammer, however, Lee leaves us waiting for the punch long after the show ends.

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England

Photo/Martin Kaufhold

Location, location, location is true, even with theater, for by setting his latest play, England, in an art gallery, Tim Crouch has managed to feed his neutral, restrained monologue by surrounding it with passion of another sort. In the echoes of the large gallery space, the text overlaps and starts to resemble a heartbeat. A brilliant ambient sound design by Dan Jones helps to add a throbbing intensity to the show, one heightened by the effect of standing up for the first half of the show. Just as photographs cannot capture the layers on a canvas, neither can a description of the pointedly flat script evoke the three-dimensional effect.

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Architecting

photo: Eamonn McGoldrick

It begins casually, house lights still up: we're the audience in a New Orleans bar while a singer and a guitarist perform a low-key set. Soon, however, the deceptively loose beginning gives way to a dynamic, thematically stimulating piece which throws a current-day Yankee real estate developer (who's come to demolish the bar) into conflict with the ways of the Old South. "It's like they're still fighting the Civil War down here" she says in a phone call home, as the people around her morph into the author of, and characters from, Gone With The Wind. The narrative structure of the piece (part of the Under The Radar Festival at The Public) is adventurous but purposeful - before long we're also watching a current-day Hollywood producer enlist an African-American film director (played by a white actor) to helm and star in an unfaithful, politically correct remake of the movie. Although overlong, and not always smoothly staged, Architecting is captivating mostly because it's uncomfortable - its high-minded ruminations on how we construct history don't go down easy when they play out in scenes such as the one (adapted from the novel) where Scarlett O'Hara defends a slave from the verbal abuse of a Yankee woman. If such scenes aim to show us nuance and contradiction, or the "truth of the times", they backfired for me. To use Gone With The Wind for its place in the American consciousness is one thing, but to invest in it as truth is another.