Venus In Fur

photo: Joan Marcus

David Ives' absorbing, consistently entertaining one-act isn't an adaptation of the infamous novel of erotic masochism "Venus In Furs". Instead, it centers on the power dynamic between a playwright/director (Wes Bentley) who's adapted the novel and the mysterious actress (Nina Arianda) he auditions to star in it. The framing conceit is a brilliant stroke - it allows the contemporary characters to both play out an S&M relationship that echoes the one in the book, while also challenging and commenting on it. The first third of the play is disarmingly funny: the actress storms in late to the audition seeming a clueless jumble of neurotic trivialities, just the kind of dime-a-dozen girl the playwright/director has been seeing and complaining about all day. When it's time to get to work she's a different person: intense, sensuous, unflinchingly present. The contrast results in a lot of laughs until we learn enough about the character to be actively suspicious and on alert. Bentley has the less showy role and does well with it - he wisely underplays and lets the character's hidden pathology rise to the surface incrementally, believably. Arianda's rich, many-layered performance is the kind of debut that makes your jaw drop. You watch her, marveling at her navigation of the role's changing moods and deepening colors, and think of dozens upon dozens of roles you want to see her play, everything from The Owl And The Pussycat to The Sea Gull. She's nothing short of astonishing.

A View From the Bridge

photo: Joan Marcus

It takes less than five minutes of watching Gregory Mosher's superb production of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge to realize why this particular drama is revived so often: aside from being tautly written and briskly paced, it is an ideal showcase into which a group of talented actors can sink their teeth. And in that respect, we seem to have hit the motherload. Playing brilliantly against type, Liev Schreiber gives his best performance to date (in any medium) as Eddie Carbone, the paranoid longshoreman who cannot shake a sexual attraction to his beloved niece, Catherine (Scarlett Johansson, in an electric Broadway debut). Schreiber burrows under Eddie's skin and manages to convey the wide array of Eddie's emotions, along with the guilt that they proffer. Fresh off her turn in the much-too-short-lived Brighton Beach Memoirs, Jessica Hecht steps into the role of another long-suffering Brooklyn matron--Eddie's neglected wife, Beatrice--with aplomb. A consistently solid stage actress, Hecht also scores a personal triumph here, genuinely reflecting Eddie's conscience. The rest of the cast, which also includes the usually cloying Michael Cristofer as a surprisingly effective Alfieri, is top-to-bottom terrific, and Mosher's fluid staging is refreshingly unimposing, allowing the actors to work their magic on the text. The entire evening is a testament to the power of American drama.

A View From the Bridge

Photo: Joan Marcus

Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, a story of love, obsession, and betrayal, has many flaws. Miller hammers in his themes again and again and neglects to convince us that protagonist Eddie Carbone is a good man, worth caring about in the first place. Also, the device of the lawyer telling us the story is clunky. But the current production, directed by Gregory Mosher, is so gripping that the flaws fade into the background. Liev Shreiber's Eddie Carbone is willfully blind to his own behavior and petulant and hurt when others judge him. His wife can see what is going on all too well, and the depth and searing reality of Jessica Hecht's performance does much to make this production the success it is. Scarlett Johansson, unfortunately, is not in a league with the other two, and while she doesn't hurt the show much, she doesn't contribute much either.

[title of show] (Boston)

Photo: Todd H. Page

Happily, the New England premiere of this 2008 Broadway musical comedy has two gifted performers at its center. Jordan Ahnquist and Joe Lanza furrow and shimmy their way through a lighthearted yet soulful dramatization of friendship and the creative process, with agility, panache, and musicality. Both have the ability to command the stage without hamming (though Mr. Lanza is a more than credible ham when he wants to be). The show itself feels a little pudgy around the middle, and there are a few vocal issues, but overall this production is a delightful evening of theater, with loads of energy, sprightly staging by director Paul Daigneault, and smart and boisterous choreography by David Connolly. Read the full review.

Present Laughter

photo: Joan Marcus

More than any other playwright save perhaps Shakespeare, the works of Noel Coward need to be executed precisely in order to be fully enjoyed. Largely plotless and populated with characters so preening and entitled that they're liable to make your skin crawl, productions of his comedies of manners rely heavily on actors who understand the cadences of his language and directors skilled enough to let the humor come from a solid reading of the text, rather than a pure reliance on pratfalls and slamming doors. Unfortunately, Roundabout Theatre Company's new production of Present Laughter (first seen at Boston's Huntington Theatre in 2007) is a misfire in nearly every conceivable way. Victor Garber, who is usually drier than Bombay Sapphire, is oddly frenetic as Garry Essendine, a stage actor and London playboy on the cusp of realizing that his youth is behind him. He intones his lines as if performing in a Shakespearean tragedy, while offering no feeling for either the wit or the remorse in the text. This approach feels out of place in Nicholas Martin's slick physical production, which would appear to call for a most straightforward rending of Essendine's post-midlife crisis. The supporting cast offers Garber no real support: From Brooks Ashmankas' embarrassing and anachronistic young playwright to the ingratiating Lisa Banes and Pamela Jane Gray as the women in Essendine's life, each performer seems to be overacting in their own terrible play. Only Harriet Harris' loyal secretary manages to delight, but it isn't enough. Present Laughter is an arduous evening with nary a laugh to be had.

The Man In Room 306

photo: Pier Baccaro

In this pedestrian solo one-act, Craig Allen Edwards plays Martin Luther King Jr. om the eve of the civil rights leader's assassination, holed up in his Memphis motel room and plagued by doubts. The portrait of King as written is not especially convincing - there's no trace of the talented strategist we know from movies like Boycott and the play The Conscientious Objector - and the playwrighting is labored: there's a limit to how often we want to sit still for passages that begin with a variation of "I remember when such and such happened". If King's remembrances have been shaped toward a purpose, it's one that attempts to remove the hero's halo and humanize him. But apart from a few stretches about King's relationship with his father, the material isn't intimate enough for the task. Edwards delivers most of the play's lines as if he's playing to a balcony that doesn't exist.