Waiting For Godot

photo: Joan Marcus

It will always be a matter of taste and for debate: does Beckett's play mean nothing, or, everything? All can agree that two men wait, in vain, for another called Godot, passing the time in a bleak vaudeville. In this (Roundabout) production, the vaudeville is in fine form - how can it not be with the skilled clowning of Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane? - but the bleak is shortchanged: the production has no feeling of heft. John Goodman and John Glover do fine work in the supporting roles.

Waiting for Godot

Photo: Joan Marcus

From the moment the curtain rises, revealing the astonishingly beautiful set, this is a Godot well worth seeing. How Santo Loquasto manages to make an array of gray boulders both forbidding and gorgeous is beyond me, although I'm sure that Peter Kaczorowski's emotionally evocative lighting has more than a little to do with it. Bill Irwin, John Glover, and John Goodman are superb (and while I'm far from a Nathan Lane fan, I give him credit for tamping down his Nathan Lane-ness and actually playing Estragon.) Although I have seen four previous productions of Godot, I once again found the play surprising, funny, moving, bleak, true, absurd--and new. Exit the King strikes me as an extended skit; Godot strikes me as profound. (For the record, in this production, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for God-doe, not Guh-doe.)

The Gingerbread House

photo: Carol Rosegg

The lights are barely up on the mod-austere set when a husband (played by Jason Butler Harner) suggests to his wife (played by Sarah Paulson) that they sell their two kids - don't they deserve to be happy and free from the parental duties that have stressed their once fun marriage? The heightened acting style (under Evan Cabnet's direction) and the severe set design prep us for an absurdism that Mark Schultz's play doesn't follow through on: eventually, we're asked to invest in the situation as if it was real rather than as the absurd allegory it first seemed to be about the selfishness in our culture. The acting is unified in style and tone, but Bobby Cannavale, as the outrageously slick baby deal broker, comes close to stealing the show.

Desire Under The Elms

photo: Liz Lauren

Desire under *what* elms, you might ask: there isn't a one anywhere in sight in this overheated tricked-out O'Neill revival, directed with a heavy-handedness (by Robert Falls) that brings the play's tragedy dangerously close to melodramatic camp. It doesn't quite get there but there are plenty of moments you'd be excused a hoot or two. O'Neill's play, like his Mourning Becomes Electra, re-sets Greek tragedy in twentieth century New England - in this case Dad takes a young new bride who falls in immediate mutual love-hate lust with her new stepson, her one rival for the old man's farmland. Falls seems to play the characters as archetypes in a grand operatic tragedy, but he revels in the young ones' lust so salaciously that it's hard to take it any more seriously than As The World Turns. Brian Dennehy does fine, commanding work as the old contemptuous farmlord, but Falls pulls focus from one of his most dramatic monologues by simultaneously staging a hot and heavy pantomime for the lovers. Carla Gugino, sounding more and more like Judy Davis, couldn't be better but Pablo Schreiber, who strips naked in the one of the play's too-stylish wordless interludes, could find more layers as the hotheaded son.

Pretty Theft

photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum

In this new play (from Flux Theatre Ensemble) by Adam Szymkowicz, the two lead male characters have markedly different impulses toward beauty - one, a traumatized group-home shut-in, wants to worship it while the other, a smooth-talking millionaire art dealer, seeks it for a darker purpose. Our likable but not especially judicious young heroine (played with sensitivity by Marnie Schulenburg) encounters both in the occasionally quirky-funny but generally unsettling play which is distinguished by a playful Mee-like collage surface and unifying undercurrents of sadness and of danger. I mean no disrespect to the theatrical economy of Angela Astle's clarifying direction nor to the playwright when I say that the material could be easily shaped into a screenplay: it has indie-movie sensibilities and attitude. Stand-out performers in the generally strong cast also include Zack Robidas, who provides howling comic relief as the heroine's appallingly selfish boyfriend, and Todd D'Amour who (as in What To Do When You Hate Your Friends last year) is excellent at conveying subtext.

The Singing Forest

photo: Carol Rosegg

Never let it be said that playwright Craig Lucas sets easy tasks for himself: this three-act, nearly three-hour effort (at The Public) moves from Holocaust drama to door-slamming farce and back again while intertwining events in modern day Manhattan with flashbacks from Nazi-occupied Austria. The result, as directed by Mark Wing-Davey, is an occasionally fascinating mess that doesn't cohere or resonate emotionally despite a game cast (headed up by Olympia Dukakis). You sense that the dizzying swirl of interconnected characters and the overarching theme of identity are aiming for something larger, even epic, but the play's moments remain small and isolated from one another: this is a play that adds up to less than the sum of even its best parts.