Little Gem

The lovely and well-named Little Gem introduces us to three generations of women in an Irish family: Kay (Anita Reeves), on the "far side of sixty" and caring for her beloved husband, who has had a stroke; Lorraine (Hilda Fay), her daughter, who tries to keep her anxiety and unhappiness in check by keeping things very neat and clean; and Amber (Sarah Greene), Lorraine's teenaged daughter, in love with a young man who is not quite in love with her. Through alternating monologues, they tell us of their lives, loves, fears, and adventures, including Kay's foray into the land of sex toys, Lorraine's quest to do "one nice thing for herself," and Amber's unexpected but not necessarily unwanted pregnancy. Seeing Little Gem is like spending an hour and a half with three wonderful women who you wish didn't talk quite so much. (Personally, I would have much preferred a series of scenes with the women interacting--perhaps supplemented with monologues--rather than the turn-taking, straight-to-the-audience, no-variety approach.) The cast is top-notch: Sarah Greene completely captures Amber's unsureness and growing maturity (although her accent was more than occasionally indecipherable), Anita Reeves beautifully combines the heartbreak of having a seriously ill husband with deep gratitude for every day she has had with him, and Hilda Fay depicts Lorraine's love-inspired transition with a performance so total and so genuine that by the end of the play she looks like a completely different--happy!--person.

Smudge

Photo: Carol Rosegg

The ultrasound showed only a smudge, and now the real baby is no better defined--a large head, one eye, one leg, probably a girl. Her mother cannot even look at her; her father dotes on her or perhaps on an image of her in his mind. Written by Emmy-winner Rachel Axler and directed by Pam MacKinnon, Smudge attempts to combine comedy and tragedy, surrealism and realism, but it lacks the delicate touch necessary to make that combination work. The audience I saw it with fell silent after the first 10 minutes or so following some awkward guffawing from a handful of people. If Axler wants to examine women's fear of not bonding with their child and/or of having an unhealthy child, it might have been more effective to write a baby with at least a few human attributes to anchor the story to reality. And the pseudo-Exorcist touches add little but confusion. The cast, particularly Cassie Beck, is excellent and gets as much out of the uneven script as is there to be gotten.

Safe Home

photo: Alex Koch

This 90 minute one-act by Sean Cullen convincingly depicts a working class family in 1950's Buffalo whose eldest son Lucky (Eric Miller) dies in the Korean War. The otherwise straightforward play is arranged so that its scenes play out of order - we learn in the first that Lucky has died, and in the subsequent scenes watch the family either coping with the loss or interacting with him before he goes off to war. The structure isn't pretentious - it purposefully puts our focus directly on the family dynamics (more tough than affectionate) and allows the play's most affecting, emotionally loaded scene to catch us by surprise. The playwright does well with kitchen-sink realism - he judiciously scales the conflicts and the dialogue consistently rings true - but some of the characters have been left a bit sketchy on the page. The production uses projections at either end of the stage, partly to orient us about the flashbacks - I feared initially that the visuals would work against the play's quiet naturalism, but in fact they were restrained and sometimes used to evocative effect. The production also boasts a few very fine performances - Michael Cullen is at every moment convincing as the father, and Katy Wright Mead (in a supporting role) is absolutely spot-on in the play's most heartbreaking scene.

LEAR

Reviewed for Theatermania.

9. Smudge

Smudge is the first Women's Project show I haven't enjoyed in quite a while, and that's because I just don't believe it. I've no problem with Rachel Axler creating a one-eyed, one-tailed "baby" to stand in as a metaphor that's as equally abstracted as the modern marriage, nor in her using this nightmare scenario to explore the deep-seated parental fears of everyman Nick (Greg Keller) and everywoman Colby (Cassie Beck). But I do have a problem with Axler deciding to keep things smudged--primarily, choosing to ignore whether or not the baby is real (Pam MacKinnon's grounded direction doesn't help with this--it needs far more whimsy and terror), but also blandly mixing in a supertheme (the nature of probability--Nick's job at the census bureau--and how it factors into "love"), and taking the cheap road of throwing in a potential affair between Colby and Nick's sitcom brother, Pete (Brian Sgambati). The writing's also inconsistent and lazily comic: a drama that knows it isn't emotionally truthful enough to be a drama, and so attempts to pass itself off as a comedy instead. The smudge that's born in Smudge ends up being the play itself, not the baby within it.


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The Truth About Love...and the Usual Lies

Soprano Jessica Medoff, the fabulous Sorceress in Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas a year ago, showcased another side of her ability, weaving art songs and show tunes together, as she and her husband, the very talented pianist Michael Bunchman, presented a song cycle of their own on the inexhaustible subject of love. A highlight for me was Kurt Weill's "Surabaya Johnny," a hyper-passionate wail that can really take the measure of a singer; Ms. Medoff was all over that thing like a hungry lioness. "I Don't Care Much" from Cabaret was equally intense in a quieter way. To lighten the mood we had the very funny "Taylor the Latte Boy" together with its answer, "Taylor's Response" (sung artfully by Mr. Bunchman from the piano); the plaintively sweet "There's a Fine, Fine Line" from Avenue Q came across with understated sensitivity. The show also introduced audiences (at least semi-ignorant ones like me) to art songs by the likes of Aaron Copland and William Bolcom. One remarkable thing was the two performers' seamless connection; it's as if they can read each others' minds, piano and voice flowing together in perfect sympathy, and Ms. Medoff has a finely calibrated control, equally steady from pianissimo to fortissimo. The edifying and enjoyable program showed off her range without going overboard.