Viral

Based on Viral and Universal Robots (see review here), I would have to say that Mac Rogers is one of the best playwrights writing today. Rogers's compassion, insight, unique point of view, and dark sense of humor combine with his prodigious talents to create remarkable evenings in the theatre. Viral, which was part of the Fringe Festival and the Fringe Encores, focuses on a woman who Goggles the phrase "painless suicide." She ends up in what she thinks is a support group with Geena (the wonderful Rebecca Comtois), Jarvis (Matthew Trumbull), and Colin (Kent Meister), three losers who have a rather unusual favor to ask of her. Viral provides genuine suprises and the characters fascinate and remain sympathetic even at their worst. Director Jordana Williams has led the superb cast to perfectly calibrated performances, and the amazing Amy Lynn Stewart is perfect as Meredith.

Thunder Above, Deeps Below

It's quite a sight, this play, with lavish costumes, grandiloquent sound design, and a spectacular set by Sandra Goldmark. It also boasts some very fine performances, led by Maureen Sebastian, who was so good as the swashbuckling hero of Soul Samurai back in February. The material, however, is somewhat lacking. The script veers from overly self-conscious poetics to cliched and unrealistic dialogue. It's a testament to the skill of the actors that we nevertheless grow to like and appreciate these homeless teens, rooting for them to get to their Promised Land of San Francisco, just as we root for the production, which has many good elements, to reach the transcendent heights suggested by Sandra Goldmark's two-level, industrial-mythic set. It never does, partly because it tries too hard to escape the base world of humanity. The play's second flaw is the way the playwright weaves a perplexing and unnecessary element of magic through the plot. The scenery may be operatic, but the characters aren't mythic heroes; in spite of their sometimes unrealistic dialogue, the cast makes them seem real to us. That's why we like them. Applying magic to point their way and solve their problems seems like cheating. Read the full review. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Henry V

A few scenes seem rushed in this Queens Players staging, but overall this is a strong production of Shakespeare's stirring history play. Danny Yoerges makes a marvelous Henry. Early in the proceedings, he seems stuck in an angry declamatory style, but his character fleshes out methodically, until by the time the young boys guarding the storehouse are killed by the fleeing French cavalry, Henry's seething, buttoned-up rage is thoroughly believable. Subsequently, after the battle is won, he transforms handily into Katherine's arch, bright-eyed wooer. The story is told straightforwardly, without extravagant sets and props, and, except for numerous cuts, in a form Shakespeare himself would probably recognize easily. The cast is very large, which makes for effective charging unto breaches. Casting the members of the French court as women, from King down to Herald, might in another production seem experimental or even outrageous, but after initially absorbing the conceit, one takes relatively little note of it, in large measure due to Jennifer Ewing's suitably regal performance as the French king. Read the full review.

Photo: posttheater

Japan, early 1950s. With his country still reeling from the war, weapons engineer Masaru Ibuka (Alexander Schröder) dreams of founding a new consumer electronics company where he will run "the ideal factory" and help "reconstruct Japan." He will "eliminate any untoward profit-taking" and in the process "elevate the nation's culture." Doesn't sound much like the dog-eat-dog world of American business, and indeed it's not. heavenly BENTO, a German production which just ran for three nights in English at the Japan Society, uses narration, dramatic conversations, dance, and innovative video to tell a stylized but engrossing version of the founding and success of Sony, first in Japan, then in the US. The audience sits above a raised white platform which is both stage and projection screen. The players – two actors and a dancer – interact with projected images at their feet. One thinks of a boxing ring. One thinks also of a giant flat-screen TV. Read the full review.

The Pied Pipers Of The Lower East Side

****1/2 (out of five stars)
The Amoralists

Too many smart people have been urging me to catch playwright/director Derek Ahonen's giant three act play of which the postcard warns of "explicit sexual content and Utopian ideals". They were right to urge. Loaded with beautifully designed characters, crackling dialogue and non-stop action, this play of ideas sucked me in had me fully invested in the lives of this quartet of polyamorous modern-day hippies. Zooming between hysterically funny and tragically sad, the action never slows down as our tribe attempts to justify their lifestyle to a visiting relative and also to themselves. This production has recently (and deservedly) made the leap from off-off to Off, and my friends, it should be seen.

Make sure you check out the preview on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILwQVH6z3-M

Next to Normal

Photo: Joan Marcus

Some five months into its Broadway run, Next to Normal remains vibrant, polished, impressive, and heartbreaking. The actors, led by the indomitable Alice Ripley, were excellent to start with and have gotten even better, and I'm finally ready to forgive J. Robert Spencer for not being Brian d'Arcy James. I saw Next to Normal twice Off-Broadway, once in D.C., and once before on Broadway, and watching the show develop--the rewrites, the cuts, the new songs, the changes in emphasis, the maturing of the performances--has been an education in the development of a first-class musical. (My original review can be found here.)