Mare Cognitum

Photo: Elisha Schaefer

Mare Cognitum follows three twenty-somethings reliving the wide-eyed excitement of intellectual discovery they experienced in college. Or rather, that's what the playwright himself, David McGee, seems to be indulging in. Not enough happens; the characters' exchange of ideas can't carry 90 minutes of drama. When something does occur -- notably, one character's spiritual awakening, and at the end, a half-real trip to the Moon -- the production springs to life. Lena's (Devon Caraway) description of her church visit is a fine piece of writing, and Ms. Caraway brings it home brilliantly. It's one of the periods of focus that represent the promise of the play, which, tightened up, could be a powerful piece of theater.

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The Temperamentals

photo: Michael Portainiere/FollowSpotPhoto.com

Jon Marans' play is unfocused: it attempts to be both a history lesson about the gay activism of the Mattichine Society in the early 1950's and a bittersweet love story about the group's founders, Harry Hay and Rudi Gernreich. As a result it shortchanges both: we watch events unfold as in a history play that haven't been shaped for thematic impact. We lose touch with the activism - apart from affording the opportunity for get-togethers for some "temperamenatals" (a code word from the era for "homosexuals") the play doesn't illuminate the Mattichine Society; there's also a lack of dramatic urgency due to the absence of any strong enemy of gay rights in the play. The love story between the two men is too vaguely rendered to convince: despite the efforts of Thomas Jay Ryan as Hay and Ugly Betty's Michael Urie as Gernreich, the men essentially have halos stuck over their heads.

Go-Go Killers!

Go-Go Killers! is meant to evoke a number of B-movie genres, especially girl-gang flicks and those manic movies that featured go-go boots and hot pants -- all-American MST3K fare, in other words. Importing pop-culture genres to the stage and making creative use of them can produce spectacular theater, as Soul Samurai proved a few months back. But in this case, evoking is as much as the play can manage. Interspersing clumsy, overlong scenes with less-than-crackerjack go-go-inspired dance numbers does not automatically create a re-imagining, an homage, or even a parody. Here the setting is a post-global-warming New York, where rival girl gangs compete to murder the rich men who are enslaving their sisters. Sounds promising, in a trashy sort of way, right? But director Rachel Klein, who did better work with another genre piece last year, seems to have no idea what to do with Sean Gill's awkwardly constructed script. Go-Go Killers! boasts some good dancers and nifty costumes, but little else.

The Weirdness of Writing Reviews

A brief essay over at The Write Bunch.

Our Town

The production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town directed by David Cromer at the Barrow Street Theatre seems predicated on the theory that slowness equals significance. The play, a plea and a reminder to live mindfully, aggregates quotidian moments into a tribute to the beauty of being. In this production, however, the ponderous direction focuses too heavily on each individual moment, not allowing the gradual accumulation of meaning to creep up on the viewer. There is, however, one incredibly lovely, evocative moment when a curtain is pulled and suddenly we are given the experience of a life bursting into color and emotion.

The Singing Forest

Photo: Carol Rosegg

Is it possible to combine mistaken identities, accidental murders, jealous lovers, two different time periods, slamming doors, Freud, Starbucks, a psychiatrist ex machina, the Holocaust, rape, and reconciliation into one coherent, moving, comic drama? Maybe not, but in The Singing Forest, Craig Lucas comes close, with moments of brilliance and heartbreak along the way. Loe Rieman (the amazing Olympia Dukakis), severely damaged by the loss of her brother in the Holocaust and the seeming betrayal of her children decades later, has deliberately isolated herself from the world. Yet part of her still needs and wants to connect. A phone sex/therapy line, memories/hallucinations, and more coincidences than in a Dickens novel bring her face to face with her life, past and present, and help her achieve a measure of peace. Lucas's juxtaposition of farce and grim reality veers from starkly effective to uncomfortable and back again, and the varied plot lines achieve varied levels of success. Overall, Lucas has written a piece that is both messy and dazzling, impressive in its ambition even when it falls short. Beautifully directed by Mark Wing-Davey, with an excellent cast including Mark Blum, Jonathan Groff (whose ability to cry onstage is on a par with Bernadette Peters' and Alice Ripley's), and Susan Pourfar.