Terre Haute

Peter Eyre does a flawless Gore Vidal and Nick Westrate a short-fused, intense Timothy McVeigh in this 80-minute drama (by Edmund White) that imagines the famous author interviewing the infamous Oklahoma City bomber. The two, given fictional names here, never met face to face: the play is an imagining of what they might have discussed if they had. For a long while, as the men suss out first the commonality and then the differences in their belief systems, the play has an electricity thanks to the excellent performances and the gravity of the men's topics. But the play backs away from true political complexity, and ultimately winds up more concerned with the well-worn subtext of the relationship between the men rather than with their ideas. Although the play held my strict attention for an hour, I found the final scene so disappointing and irrelevant that it ultimately cheapened and ruined the play for me.

Cornbury: The Queen's Governor

photo: Gustavo Monroy

Historical lore has long held, perhaps erroneously, that Edward Hyde (aka Lord Cornbury), New York's governor in the early 1700's until he was forcibly ousted from office, was an outrageous cross-dresser and rumored sodomite. This campy farcical comedy (by Anthony Holland and William M. Hoffman) depicts him as a silly lavender-scented fop whose lavish wardrobe bills nearly bankrupt the city. He's meant to be someone we cheer for, as the small minded Dutch citizens all but light torches to storm the Governor's mansion, but the play's sensibilities are decades out of date and lack any naughty kick: we're past cheering cross dressing for its own sake, especially when it's as cutified as it is here and divorced of sexuality. Before the play becomes hopelessly monotonous, David Greenspan's performance has some appeal - he can twist a line reading for maximum effect - but he would be a lot more enjoyable if he was the only one chewing the scenery. Instead, nearly every one in the cast is pitched for hysteria as if they're in a bad Mel Brooks movie. (One notable exception: Christian Pedersen) Paul Rudnick might have done something both funny and thematically interesting around the Cornbury myth but these playwrights simply use the character as an 18th century poster boy for diversity, with his Native American friend, African-American handmaiden, lesbian barkeeps, and Jewish accountant meant to lend him rainbow coalition cred (even as the play tries to score un-PC yuks off each).

The Judgment of Paris

Photo/Steven Schreiber

Austin McCormick's The Judgment of Paris could not have found a better place than the Duo Theater, the sort of decayed Moulin Rouge-type place, gilded proscenium and all, that signifies the cost of maintaining beauty. The free Ferrero Rocher on every chair (an expensive type of cheap chocolate) and Olivera Gajic's slightly frayed can-can costumes are further extensions of that thought; Marchese's interpretation of Aphrodite as the Russian mistress of a brothel solidifies it. While these consistencies hold things together, McCormick (and his Company XIV ensemble) are free to giddily romp through their spin on Paris's story. And though they pull from several sources (including, rather appropriately, Chuck Mee's Agamemmnon 2.0), it's their own text, which creates the sort of coherent throughline that experimental works benefit from. McCormick has labeled The Judgment of Paris as "a dramatic entertainment." Thankfully, he has not tarnished the beauty of either one.

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Aristocrats

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake

Photo/Monique Carboni

Every moment between a father and son adds up, creating and sustaining the dynamic that they will share for the rest of their lives. Dan LeFranc's brilliant Sixty Miles to Silver Lake packs seven years of development into one cramped car, the outstanding Joseph Adams and Dane DeHaan neatly unpack it, and director Anne Kauffman, as always, keeps the whole thing moving with a realism that encompasses even the dreamier bits at the end. By setting the whole thing inside a car, even casual exchanges take on a deeper level of intimacy, and by skipping (without missing a beat) through time, LeFranc is able to show how that intimacy develops (or not). It's the mark of a talented writer that he is able to reveal such recognizable characters without resorting to cliche, and the mark of an outstanding team that it never slows down.

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Krapp, 39

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Though he worries about it on stage, losing Samuel Beckett's character, Krapp, was the best thing to ever happen to Michael Laurence. Without that fallback, the actor is left with only bits of himself to show, and that allows this "autobiographical 'documentary' theater piece" to--if not transcend Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape--then at least to complement it. The whole conceit is pretty terrific, for in his efforts to prepare the way for a performance thirty years off, he delves all the way back to his childhood, musing not just on mortality but on the theatricality of life.

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