Distracted

Question: What is the line dividing a young boy’s healthy, energetic behavior from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Answer: That’s what the mother (Cynthia Nixon) and father (Josh Stamberg) in Lisa Loomer’s entertaining new play Distracted would like to know. Jesse is an enthusiastic, recalcitrant nine-year-old with a great love of the word “fuck” and all its related permutations. His teacher complains about his behavior, but is she just too overwhelmed with her 28 other students to allow him to be himself? His psychiatrist is ready to medicate him. His father thinks he’s just a normal boy, with a normal boy’s wildness. His mother doesn’t know what to think, but she suspects everything is her fault.

Loomer takes this family’s particular situation and then pulls back to examine how it fits into today’s overmedicated world of endless media stimulation. Her approach, combining family comedy-drama with meta commentary, is largely effective; Distracted is funny and moving. The cast is solid, with standout work from Peter Benson as a series of well-meaning doctors. At the early preview I saw, the show was in very good shape, albeit some twenty minutes too long. With some trimming, and more time for the actors to grow into their roles, it might well become excellent. Distracted opens on March 4.

Chuck.Chuck.Chuck.

Photo/JJ Lind

The title of Immediate Medium's latest work, Chuck.Chuck.Chuck. is apt, for they have captured the text and the sound of William Falkner's As I Lay Dying, in which the Bundren family self-destructs while attempting to bury the matriarch of their family. JJ Lind's aesthetics are as playfully fluid as the various narrative styles of the novel, as is his cast, a bunch of stone-cold-serious jokers. If such outside-the-box theatrics (despite being performed in what is, essentially, a dirt-filled sandbox) must be called "experimental," then consider this experiment a success.

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Ruined

Reviewed for Theatermania.

The Wendigo

The killer first line of Eric Sander's adaptation of The Wendigo establishes that it will be more streamlined than Algernon Blackwood's original 1910 short: "Our hunting party brought back no moose that year." Matthew Hancock's direction ensures that it will be smoother, for while his cast has accents, they're not exaggerated (saving us from accidental comedy). But despite all the slashing, the production isn't a killer, mainly because despite a terrific cast (led by Nick Merritt's smooth transitions from "ominous narrator" to "excited novice hunter"), the aesthetics fail to capture the mood. Based on M. L. Dogg's music and Erik Gratton's deep voice, this sort of Blair Wendigo Project, in which the evil is never really seen, might have been better suited for radio. Still, Brian Tovar's lighting does the best it can--pinpoints piercing the blackness--and for all that Nicholas Vaughan's set is a minimalist rendering of black poles as dead trees, there's plenty of lively worrying done on stage. More action would've gone a long way, but I won't penalize the Vagabond Theater Company for being true to the adaptation; in fact, I look forward to seeing what they'll do next.

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The Wendigo

Tales like Algernon Blackwood's classic "The Wendigo" electrify our fur by pricking at our most primitive, arboreal fear: that of becoming prey. "The Wendigo"'s direct descendant, The Blair Witch Project, took a modern approach, made possible by the medium of film: it placed the audience behind the eyes of the characters. One can't do that in the theater, of course. But one might imagine staging a wordy story like "The Wendigo" by turning it inside out, snaking deep into the minds of the characters in some other way. Playwright Eric Sanders has chosen to tell the story straight, though. Essentially true to the action of the original, his 45-minute version relies heavily, as did the original story, on atmosphere. Here it's created by the trusty trappings of B-movie horrordom: insistent sound effects, spooky music, sudden and extreme lighting changes, a murky forest set - along with that modern theatrical staple, projection. But this is "The Wendigo" minus the rich texture of Blackwood's prose, and the special effects don't fully make up for that.

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Leah's Train

Photo/Michael Ou

As will surprise absolutely no-one, the train in Karen Hartman's play Leah's Train is a metaphor: "Time seems to stop on a train." This may clarify some of the delusional theater that follows, but it in no way justifies the tale of a mother, Hannah (Mia Katigbak), and daughter, Ruth (Jennifer Ikeda), caught in the shadow of their migratory ancestor, Leah (Kristine Haruna Lee). Saying that it does is akin to saying that anyone who prizes a kaddish cup, that apparently most synechdocal of objects, is Jewish. (Which is what this play does.) Nobody wants to see last-resort theater, but that's what Jean Randich's direction feels like: "We didn't connect with this play, but here's our best shot."

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