Tartuffe

Photo: Erica Parise

Tartuffe is a play for our time, wherever and whenever one sets it; judging from his new Great Depression adaptation, Jeff Cohen, Artistic Director of Dog Run Rep and director of this production, understands this. His verse is primarily conversational, but it is elevated where it needs to be -- elevated, however, not into self-conscious poetics, but into the tones and rhythms of high comedy, especially the American line that runs from vaudeville through the great TV sitcoms of the 1950s. To "fund" his vision of the play, Mr. Cohen has at hand an embarrassment of riches in the form of a superb cast, including Christina DeCicco (Glinda in the Wicked national tour), Tom Ford (By Jeeves on Broadway), and a somewhat underused Brian Linden, who was so wickedly foppish in The Country Wife two years ago. It's almost criminal that you only have to pay off-off-Broadway prices for the level of talent on display here. Go quickly, there are too few performances and not many seats at each.

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Figaro/Figaro

(re:) Directions Theatre Company's extended Figar-anza with music is an exercise in extremes and an interesting concept. Unfortunately, half is also an ordeal. In German-language playwright Ödön von Horváth's rather dark sequel to The Marriage of Figaro, Figaro Gets a Divorce, a time-transposed Count and Countess, the steward Figaro, and his wife Susanna have fled a 20th century Communist revolution into an unnamed neighboring country. While the fallen Count enters a downward spiral of gambling and depression, Figaro returns to barbering in a small town. But marital issues and conflicting ideals push the barber and Susanna apart, and she ends up alone, waitressing in a cafe. Exploring what happens to the fallen nobility and examining how the various servant characters at home and abroad might retain or transfer their loyalties is an interesting idea. But either von Horváth's play is very bad, or it has been adapted very badly.

Fortunately, at off-off-Broadway prices, you can get your money's worth just from the first half, a clever, cheery, mostly well-played, compressed telling of Beaumarchais' original late 18th century play, adorned with musical themes from Mozart's famous opera. It's a small tour de force of distilled, manic storytelling, expertly directed and nicely played. Gillian Wiggin's Susanna is especially delightful; in this telling she bears the greatest dramatic weight, along with her share of the comic, and does it wonderfully well. She alone makes the dreadful second half faintly bearable.

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Christine Jorgensen Reveals

Christine Jorgensen, world-famously sex-changed from man to woman in the early 1950's, is painstakingly brought to life before our eyes as Bradford Louryk lip-syncs to the (first?) transgendered celebrity's hourlong audio recorded interview from 1958. The piece is a breathtaking feat of theatre - Louryk's margin of error is nil, since even a cough would break the illusion - and it offers among many other things a fascinating peek at the era's societal attitudes about homosexuality and gender conditioning. Louryk may be limited to what Jorgensen said and how she said it on the recording, but his characterization is hardly limited by it - a full portrait emerges of a woman who met the public's freak-show fascination with grace, class, and candor.

Impressionism

The producers of Impressionism have delayed the opening because they feel that the play needs work. They are right. Since I saw an early preview, and since I didn't stay for the second act, I am not going to review the show as a whole. However, I must mention that the show's depiction of a native of Tanzania is amazingly racist and retrograde, not to mention completely embarrassing. Coincidentally, I was in Tanzania exactly a year ago, and I met smart, dignified, proud, hard-working people. I didn't meet a single person who danced around like some sort of wise native Tinkerbell with a soupçon of Mammy thrown in.

Universal Robots

Sometimes the second a show begins you know you're in good hands. I felt that way at the beginning of Universal Robots, and the rest of the show more than lived up to that initial impression. Using Karel Čapek's classic play R.U.R. as a starting point, playwright Mac Rogers and director Rosemary Andress have created an evening of theatre that makes me wish that the Tony Award people would recognize Off-Off-Broadway shows. Presented as a ritual of remembrance ("The year is 2009. The last human being died in 1971. Each year we gather together to tell the story that we never ever forget."), Universal Robots tells a story of pride, foolishness, love, and the corruption of power and reconsiders the meaning of the words "human" and "humane." It does this in an amazingly entertaining three hours that fly by as poets and scientists try to improve the world, robots are created and "perfected," people fall in love, and the human race manages to commit suicide in a method that is chillingly believable. The brilliant ten-person cast makes you feel like you've seen a cast of hundreds, all excellent. Jason Howard as Radius, a robot who gradually develops a soul, gives as good a performance as I've ever seen. The other wonderful actors are Esther Barlow, David Lamberton, David Ian Lee, Michelle O'Connor, Ridley Parson, Nancy Sirianni, Tarantino Smith, Ben Sulzbach, and Jennifer Gordon Thomas.

Happiness

wHappiness, currently in previews at the Lincoln Center Theatre, has excellent bloodlines; its book is by John Weidman (Pacific Overtures, Assassins) and its music and lyrics are by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie (Grey Gardens). But it does not live up to its creators' earlier works. The book is illogical (I'm not referring to its overall premise), and the characters thin. While some of the music is nice, there are no standouts at the level of "Will You," "Revolutionary Costume," or "Another Winter in a Summer Town" from Grey Gardens. For all I know, the lyrics may be wonderful, but they were frequently unintelligible due to murky sound and some iffy enunciation.

(Spoilers ahead!) The characters are dead people choosing a perfect moment in which to spend eternity. But Weidman, Frankel, and Korie seem more interested in being inclusive (which I support!) than in being believable (which I don't). I don't believe that Ken Page's character would choose to spend eternity in a moment when his boyfriend was desperately ill. I also don't buy that Joanna Gleason's character went from being a hippie doing good works to a nasty right-wing homophobe because at a reunion she discovered that her classmates made more money than she did (a twist that manages to insult both hippies and right-wing homophobes!). More importantly, I was not touched by anyone's story, and from the response of the audience (tepid), I was not alone.

Despite all this, I feel that the show has potential. I guess I just can't rule out those bloodlines.