Lizzie Borden

Photo: Carl Skutsch

The songs in this new rock musical are set in heavy-metal modes, but little about the score screams "genre." It's loud, but never painfully or confusingly so, and it's edgy, with some gloomy imagery, but in essence it's comprised of simply wonderful tunes, with satisfying crunch, engaging and well-crafted lyrics, and bright (okay, dark) pop hooks. Fortunately the sound designer (Jamie McElhinney) keeps the levels sensible, mics the singers well, and mixes everything properly, so one seldom misses a lyric. Even more fortunately, the four-woman cast is absolutely stellar, wonderful actors with clear, powerful voices that cut through the tight band's rock bombast without trouble. There are no characters but the four women: Lizzie herself (a supremely confident and perfectly fetching Jenny Fellner); her older sister Emma Borden (a sharp and funny Lisa Birnbaum, who has a powerful alto); her regally coiffed but passionate friend Alice (a radiant Marie-France Arcilla); and the maid, Bridget (a fierce, punked-out Carrie Cimma). The choice to leave out the elder Bordens seems a little odd at first, but its wisdom quickly becomes apparent as we're plunged into the closed, claustrophobic world of the sisters' half of the divided household. An early song between Lizzie and Alice takes place in the barn, where Lizzie escapes her hellish home life to tend her beloved pigeons. Artfully lit and shadowed by lighting designer Christian DeAngelis, it is beautifully, movingly performed, as is most everything in this sharp-as-an-axe show. Read the full review.

Lizzie Borden

Photo: Carl Skutsch

Can murdering one's parents with an axe be a woman's path to empowerment? In the excellent rock musical Lizzie Borden, it certainly can. Lizzie, abused, in danger of being disinherited, and lacking options, finally decides that freedom lies in ridding herself of her incestuous father and her horrid stepmother. After an attempt at poisoning them fails, she grabs an ax and, well, takes matters into her own hands. Lizzie Borden (with book, lyrics, music, concept, direction, and musical direction by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt) beautifully combines a kick-ass score, strong lyrics, surprising humor, sweet sexiness, cheerful anachronisms, and an eerie atmosphere. The multitalented designers Caleb Levengood (scenery), Christian DeAngelis (lighting), Jamie McElhinney (sound), Bobby Frederick Tilley (costume), Carrie Lynn Rohm (hair and makeup), and Zoë Woodworth (video) manage to evoke a vivid, attractive, and affectingly creepy time and place in a small space on what must have been a small budget. And the four actress-singers--Marie-France Arcilla, Lisa Birnbaum, Carrie Cimma, and Jenny Fellner--are heartbreaking, satirical, funny, sexy, real, and larger-than-life, sometimes all at the same time. And can they rock! Special notice must be paid to the superb Jenny Fellner as Lizzie. Fellner's transition from repressed to explosive is calibrated perfectly, and she performs with her heart, body, and soul--and with great intelligence. (A few small quibbles: the lyrics were occasionally difficult to hear; both acts end with whimpers rather than bangs; playing unrelated rock music during intermission hurt the mood.) At The Living Theatre at 21 Clinton Street in the Lower East Side.

Our Town

Having always believed that Thornton Wilder's Our Town is one of the few irreproachable works in the American dramatic canon, and always lamenting the fact that I'd never seen a truly terrific production of it, I attended David Cromer's ridiculously acclaimed production at the Barrow Street Theatre with something greater than the highest hopes that I, too, would be mesmerized by it. And, well...I wasn't. The magic of this particular play is two-fold: the language is beautifully simple but also theatrical, and the play itself, which premiered in 1938, is unapologetically progressive, meta-theatrical before the term existed. That's the idea that Cromer seems to be pursuing with his deconstruction here, but I couldn't help but feeling that three-quarters of this production felt no different than any community theatre mounting of the play. It isn't until the coup-de-theatre in Act Three--which I won't reveal, but which happens to be the most un-Wilderian aspect of the production--that the audience somewhat understands the feeling Cromer was trying to achieve. It doesn't help that Emily Webb (Jennifer Grace, dreadful) speaks her lines as if she were a mental patient, or that her suitor, George Gibbs (James McMenamin) acts like he's in the slow class at Grovers Corners High. Thankfully, two pitch-perfect performances stand out: Jason Butler Harner, the first Stage Manager I've seen who is neither glib nor overly earnest; and Lori Myers, simply heartbreaking as Mrs. Gibbs.

Spinning the Times

Part of the Origin Theater's 1st Irish festival, this production brings together brief new works by five female playwrights. Though the writers all hail from Ireland, it is a highly international evening, and director M. Burke Walker seems to have chosen the order of presentation with care, as one might map out a world tour. It begins with Rosemary Jenkinson's The Lemon Tree, which takes place in a modern-day Belfast where violent echoes of the Troubles linger, and linger. Young Kenny likes to stir up mischief with his pals and harass the local Catholics, but he's affected more than he'd like to admit by an encounter with an American relief worker drumming up aid for Palestinians in Gaza. As embodied by the lanky, magnetic, and focused Jerzy Gwiazdowski, who dominates the stage seemingly effortlessly, Kenny is not merely a fully realized creature, but bigger than life in that believable, language-soaked Irish way. Ms. Jenkinson has the exceptional storyteller's talent of deriving large truths from small fictions. Her play is a compressed, polished marvel, practically a poem, with not a word out of place, nor, thanks to Mr. Gwiazdowski and the exquisitely skilled direction, an extraneous gesture. Read the full review, covering all five plays.

Candide Americana

Photo: Edward Elefterion

[possible spoilers in this paragraph] What if Candide were a modern young refugee in the United States from Bosnia? What if he remained convinced that this is "the best of all possible worlds" despite living through a ferry accident, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina--and seeing his tutor hanged and believing the love of his life to be dead? What if seven people seemed like a cast of twenty? What if no one sang?

You'd have Candide Americana, the Rabbit Hole Ensemble's extremely enjoyable version of Candide at the Fringe Festival. Playwright Stanton Wood's updating of the story is apt and well-done; the minimal props and costumes provide a simple yet effective backdrop for funny and sad story-telling; the cast is protean, talented, energetic, and polished; and director Edward Elefterion keeps everything moving at a pace that parallels the breathlessness of Candide himself as he goes from disaster to disaster.

Two--and only two--complaints: (1) It needs some trimming (as has every Candide I've ever seen), and (2) I really missed "Make Our Garden Grow."

As You Like It

Photo: The Queens Company

Extraordinarily well directed by Greg Cicchino, this Queens Players production of Shakespeare's comedy triumphs. While historical opinions on the play have varied, we can safely say, reinforced by the elastic Claire Morrison's animated and expert performance, that Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's most fully realized and interesting female characters. If, as the clown Touchstone lectures, "The truest poetry is the most feigning," it is nonetheless the rhymes carved in the trees by Rosalind's swain, the passionate, lovelorn Orlando (the effective Anthony Martinez), that keep hope burning, not to mention the story. Director Greg Cicchino has a gift for focusing his actors' strengths, and for creating moments of unscripted, silent humor that move the action swiftly along. From his fine cast he draws out a number of standout performances in the smaller roles as well as the leads; indeed, despite the dominance of the Rosalind-Orlando storyline, the production is the very model of a modern ensemble piece. Leave it to Shakespeare, in the loving and crafty hands of a director like Mr. Cicchino, to bring to glorious life the human tapestry in all its poetic good cheer under the rumbling elevated trains of Long Island City. Read the full review.