From Up Here

photo: Joan Marcus

Twenty-eight year old Liz Flahive's play is a reasonably diverting but superficial comedy-drama that centers on a troubled teenaged boy who has just returned to his high school classes; we quickly learn that he was suspended after an incident with a gun, and that he's expected to publicly apologize at the next school assembly. The play's events are meant to lead up to that event, but we never find out very much about the boy or his motivations in the interim - the gun incident is little more than a plot device that paves the way for some tearful family scenes after a whole lot of quirky-adorable ones. And by a whole lot I mean an endless assault of them: Mom is high string quirky, Sis is sarcastic quirky, her boyfriend is awkward quirky. It all plays like a very special episode of Roseanne except that I didn't, despite the efforts of the playwright and the hard-working cast, warm to or believe any of these characters.

I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Give To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda

Photo/Gerry Goodstein

For a week, I've been unable to write this review, wanting desperately to do this play justice. I struggled to describe I Have Before Me . . ., for at a surface glance, it is a tacky: Sonja Linden has created a pretentious yet talented poet to stand in for the playwright, and this poet then instructs (and is instructed by) a fiercely intelligent yet emotionally fragile Rwandan refugee. But it's clear from the writing that Mrs. Linden was shaken to the core by her experiences: knife-sharp slivers of detail in this play cut holes in the facile frame, allowing for a fuller picture. More so, despite some missteps by director Elise Stone (none that are serious), Susan Heyward delivers a performance so textured that the show achieves its self-proclaimed goal: "Good writing makes you see what the writer wants you to see--and feel."

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Untitled Mars (This Title May Change)

Photo/Justin Bernhaut

If Miranda July made plays instead of movies, they'd look and sound like Jay Scheib's frenzied yet passionless, meticulous yet sloppy, artificial yet somehow realistic new play Untitled Mars (This Title May Change). As with his last work, This Place is a Desert, Jay relies on hyperphysical action to compensate for dry yet hammy dialogue (spam?), and uses multiple camera feeds and projections to create a visual mash-up of landscapes and emotions that's cool. But this coolness comes at a price, an arctic absolute zero that freezes out plot and gets lost in the fiction. All that humanity on Mars serves as a parable for human behavior -- we won't just terraform Mars, we'll psychoform it, too -- but it's only occasionally expressed well, as when Norbert (Balazs Vajna) rips a hole in his suit, literally dying of depression. Ultimately, it's hard to be taken seriously in anti-gravity, and Jay Scheib -- even with his abundance of creativity, fierce charm, and surprise -- never quite manages to do the trick.

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Fire Island

Reviewed for Theatermania.

thirty-seven stones (or the man who was a quarry)

Granted, there should be some level of discomfort in a play about a emotionally (and henceforth physically) traumatized man-child who goes around passing stones. But what unnerved me about Mark J. Charney's production was how rough the acting was, and how strained that made the text. I've liked past productions from Working Man's Clothes, but this play lacks the intense commitment of Penetrator or the comic charm of I Used to Write on Walls; instead, it uses a very obvious device (the medical condition) to parallel the many ways in which Edna (Mary Round) has ruled and ruined her son Nathan's (Steven Strobel's) life. After a while, the scenes are just the same old, same old, and director Will Neuman gets left holding the plausibility bill as he tries to pull laughs from a recalcitrant cast. If you crave the uncomfortably immature, look no further, but this is far from a working show.

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Dirt

photo: Jordan Craven

He has no right to sit on our park benches nor to foul up our air with his stink. He's a piece of shit who shouldn't even be looked in the eye. So go the disturbing, self-loathing confessions of an Iraqi immigrant flower peddler named Sad in this striking, provocative monologue (seen previously at the Fringe Festival and now at Under St. Marks). The play ultimately resonates well beyond the scope of one person's pathology and becomes a sometimes harrowing, often sorrowful statement about the damaging cycle of racism. How could it not, as we watch the hated hate himself and speak it back at us in a calm, even charming, manner? Although the play is a tad too long and once in a while feels dated (it was written pre-9/11, and doesn't address the fresh fear-based prejudices against Iraqis) its specifics are less important than its ultimate message, which is timeless and powerful. Christopher Dornig embodies Sad so fully and mines his monologue so deeply that I had to double-check the credits to be sure he wasn't also the playwright (he's not; the play is by Robert Schneider).

Dirt

Photo/Jordan Craven

Watching Dirt gave me theatrical blue balls. The script's repetition is fine -- necessary, even, so that Robert Schneider can impress upon us the way in which a culture thrusts a mentality of unworthiness upon immigrants (especially illegals). And the dim lighting, which makes it difficult to establish an emotional connection to the script, is at least qualified by protagonist Sad's electrical problems. I'm even willing to forgive Paul Dvorak's broken transposition of setting, from Germany to America, because even with ideological discrepancies, there's enough meat to Sad's struggle to light a fire under our asses. But all that this production manages to do is tease us -- the play promises to give us a release, but Christopher John Domig only snarls for a moment before taking it all back and reversing his position, settling -- always settling -- right back to where he began. That's frustrating enough, but when coupled with David Robinson's shaky direction -- he refuses to let Sad just exist, and needs to keep qualifying the long monologue with improbable changes in lighting -- it starts to get annoying. And above all else, Dirt fails the most important goal of a monologue: it speaks to no-one in the audience. We sure are talked at a lot, but there's never any sense that we're a necessary part of the play. Were we not there, I'm sure Domig would act exactly the same, and without that desperate desire to actually communicate something -- a problem compounded by the protagonist's tendency to lie about everything -- it's just a lecture, performed in darkness, with a slant that doesn't accurately mesh with America.

B-Alive!

Photo/Worldwide B

There's really not a lot of ballet in B-Alive, a story (told in dance) of the love between a hip-hop youth and a prim and proper lass. But you won't hear anybody in the audience complaining: they're too busy vibrating in their seats as the b-boy Gorilla Crew breaks down the house. The plot is a little ridiculous, but then again, so are the moves, and B-Alive b-eats out shows like Jump! because it is willing to take itself seriously, backing up the tricks with actual emotion (as shown by the fifteen-minute free-style curtain-call/encore).

Not that the show isn't willing to fool around: the thuggish dancers, who have a more vibratory and harsher stomp to their rhythms (but still a fluidity all their own), are great comic relief, even as bad guys to the heroic dancers who just like to freestyle. And Ahn Byungkoo's direction gets pretty inspired at times, with a black-light battle in which our hero confronts comes into our distressed damsel's dream and fends off an army of glowing, sinuous, spider-like dancers. There are plenty of moments of simple cheese, too -- as with the pompous self-seriousness of the local record shop owner or the playful sternness of the whip-like ballet teacher. The choreography (from Han Sangmin, Kim Woosung, and Shin Ilho) always evens things out, and while there are a few numbers that could be pared down in the interests of specificity, the show only lasts about seventy minutes -- I say, if you've got it, flaunt it.

Our Dad Is In Atlantis

photo: Carel DiGrappa

The two pre-teen Mexican brothers who are this play's only characters are essentially abandoned by their father (whose poverty compels him to head into the States to find work) and left in the care of their strict grandmother. When she dies, they're sent off to an uncle who regards them as cheap labor and treats them even more shabbily. Finally, after reading their dad's letter postmarked from Atlanta (which the younger boy misreads, hence the play's title) the two summon the courage to run away and sneak across the border themselves. The play (by Javier Malpica) has obvious social relevance but isn't preachy: its distinction is that it maintains its focus, over the course of its ten vignettes that total less than ninety minutes, solely on the boys' conversations. There's a gentle poignancy in the boys' dynamic, as the younger brother's unrealistic expectations of America are at odds with what the older, wiser brother knows. The two young actors (Steven D. Garcia and Sergio Ferreira) are natural and have a credible fraternal chemistry together, but their job of carrying the entire play is made more difficult by uninteresting staging and a fundamental sameness to the play's vignettes: the characters go through a hell of a lot of change, but the characters are written to repeatedly respond to it in much the same ways.

Our Dad is in Atlantis

Photo/Carel DiGrappa

While I admire Working Theater's goal to shed some light on the consequences of immigration in the working class -- Javier Malpica's Our Dad is in Atlantis focuses on two brothers left behind in Mexico -- this play sinks faster than Atlantis itself. The presentation is unimaginative, the translation is flat and repetitious, and the direction is so restrained that it stifles any life the young actors (10 and 12) might have. Come to think of it, the play itself isn't that good: Malpica doesn't follow through on the struggle of these two brothers; instead, he just strings together a series of vignettes about "stuff" and leaves all the real drama -- their abandonment, the death of their grandmother, their violent interactions with so-called friends -- on the side. The first scene establishes the likeable relation between the whiny younger brother and the steely attempts of the older brother to be a man, but each successive scene is just more of the same. Having an adult character would've helped to give some perspective -- additionally, having a more plausible ending would've helped to give the show some closure; as is, the play is just a lot of empty talk.

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A Little Night Music

photo: Richard Anderson

Baltimore CenterStage's production of the Sondheim classic (which happens to be one of my all-time favorite musicals) isn't exactly elegant: the interludes from the singing chorus have been tricked up with some cheapening, overly sexual business of the switching partners around a divan variety, and most of the cast's performances haven't been directed to evoke the manners and social codes of the turn of the century. There's also the problem that Barbara Walsh, who'd probably make a wonderful Charlotte, is not ideally cast as Desiree, and that Maxwell Caulfield, playing Karl Magnus with amusing bluster, is not up to the vocal demands of his role. And yet the show still makes for an enjoyable evening thanks to fluid staging, several vibrant performances and - of course - the strength of the material. (When will we ever get to see a Broadway revival?) Particularly good are Sarah Uriarte Berry as Petra and Josh Young as Henrik.

The Happy Time

photo: Stan Barouh

This infrequently revived 1966 Kander & Ebb musical (now at Signature's small black box Ark theatre, in Virginia) has been given a warm and intimate production that renders the earnest, tuneful score with just three musicians. The low-key, chamber-musical approach allows the charms of the simple intergenerational story to play out gently, without much fuss: it emphasizes the bittersweet, quiet nostalgia of the material. That goes a long way toward disguising that the book (newly restored to include cuts made before and after the original Broadway production) is amiable and pleasant but more than a little pat. Also, it too heavily favors the world-weary photographer who returns home to his quaint French-Canadian village rather than the impressionable nephew he dazzles and leads astray: the story would have more emotional resonance if we saw more of it through the adolescent's eyes. Nonetheless the show - besides boasting an often lovely lesser-known score - is enjoyable and well-performed: although Michael Minirik (as the photographer) could stand to put more zip in his early scenes when we're meant to see that his character's worldliness excites the nephew, his performance is otherwise strong and natural; Carrie A. Johnson is sweet in her "girl left behind" role without being sticky; as the nephew, Jace Casey is charming and free of child-actor preciousness. Best of all is David Margulies, whose seasoned know-how as the boy's grandfather is at all times a joy to behold.

Hostage Song

****

Horse Trade Theater Group

Billed as "the new indie rock musical" this scary, odd bird of a musical was bold and fascinating. Two blind-folded American political prisoners held captive in an unspecified location find comfort in each other through silly games, role-playing, and of course, song. Paul Thureen and Hanna Cheek's chemistry runs deep. Neither of them are truly great singers but the simple rock melodies written by Clay McLeod Chapman, Kyle Jarrow and Oliver Butler, prefer great expressive people who can act the hell out of them, which Paul and Hanna did expertly. I've never seen a musical quite like this one- which means GO!

This performance was at the Kraine so my buddy and I used this as the perfect opportunity to hang out until 10:30 and check in on Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind- the 30 plays in 60 minutes dash. We had a blast. XO

Kiss Of The Spider Woman

photo: Joan Marcus

This top-notch revival of the Kander & Ebb musical (at Signature, in Virginia) deviates from productions I've seen before by always keeping Molina, the fey window dresser serving time in a brutal South American prison, front and center. Molina's fabulous musical-number fantasies of screen goddess Aurora are generally not allowed to completely take over the stage: we never forget that they are products of his imagination and his means of momentary escape. This focus makes solid dramatic sense and strengthens the story's thematic throughline: as Molina develops feelings for his cellmate Valentin (a political prisoner who is initially disgusted by him) it's more clear than I've ever seen it before that the musical, which both celebrates and cautions against escapism, is essentially organized to follow Molina's maturation from his adoring fan-love of Aurora to his real-life love of Valentin. Seemingly in the interest of containing the fantasy numbers within the reality of the prison, Aurora is always dressed in black: I think that's overdoing it, as the production is so strong that it could afford to give us a flash of Molina's "technicolor dreams" and still make its point. I'd have a hard time coming up with anything else to quibble about. It's no surprise that Natascia Diaz is a knockout as Aurora - whether she's the sensational center of a dynamic dance number or she's haunting the peripheries of the stage with foreboding mystery, Diaz projects the tantalizing allure of a movie star: we instantly believe that her Aurora is an obsession-worthy, authentic screen icon. (It's often said that it takes a star to play a star: you do the math) What is surprising is that Will Chase and Hunter Foster, actors who wouldn't immediately spring to mind to respectively play Valentin and Molina, are both riveting. Chase delivers a heartfelt "Marta" and a stirring "The Day After That" but, more to the point, his performance is distinguished by its avoidance of seeking audience sympathy: he's deep into playing the role and gives no impression of trying to manage what we eventually think of the character. It's at first a shock to see Foster going femme-gay as Molina but the strength of his acting gets us to quickly recover and believe it: half-measures wouldn't do here and Foster fearlessly goes full force into the swish zone. His resounding success with the role is he makes the affectations seem to organically come from the character's insecurities and timidities: his limp wrists are expressing character from the inside out, not defining it from the outside in.

Hostage Song

Photo/Samantha Marble

If the creative dreamteam of director Oliver Butler (The Debate Society), playwright Clay McLeod Chapman (The Pumpkin Pie Show), and songwriter Kyle Jarrow (A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant) isn't enough to convince you to buy a ticket for Hostage Song, then you just don't like downtown theater. This is the rare show that works on all levels, from Chapman's arresting metaphors to Butler's relentless direction, Jarrow's serrated anthems, and the cast's raw honesty. Speaking directly and tragically to the unreality of being held hostage, Chapman's text puts precious, awkward situations out of context as soon-to-die Jim and Jennifer (Paul Thureen and Hanna Cheek) try to find some light behind their blindfolds. It's beautiful and genuine, and works a sublimely sorrowful magical realism (only without the hope of magic itself) that the energetic songs and minimalistic direction only help to enforce. I'll be going back to this one before it closes.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

Democracy in America

At times, Democracy in America is hysterical; that, coupled with Annie Dorsen's direction (of Passing Strange fame), is perhaps reason enough to see it. and perhaps that's enough of a reason, coupled with Annie Dorsen's direction, to see this excitingly unpredictable work of theater. (More performance art than theater, but that's subjective and beside the point.) The problem with Democracy in America is that it too accurately depicts America: it's slick, clever, and commercial, and nothing else. It's ADD as entertainment, and for all the fiercely directed moments, such as a high-stakes game of Russian roulette (pantomimed with a single, ominous bullet), there are plenty of moments -- "One performer on top of the others, with the text 'Ilan Bachrach is a sex god'" that have no room to maneuver, whether they're done with puppets or not. The best moment involves Okwui Okpokwasili giving a rim job to a dinosaur (yes, you'd literally have to be there); let that guide your moral and monetary compass.

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The Homecoming

****1/2

The Cort

Wow. I loved this play. Going to a gorgeously produced revival of a play or musical that I have never read or seen is right up there with a medium rare rib eye or an expensive bottle of wine. With its expertly designed dialogue and its controversial subject matter centered around a family, Pinter's The Homecoming reminded me a little of Albee's The Goat (another play I went apeshit over). The cast is near perfect with Raul Esparza turning in yet another intense, multi-layered, intelligent performance as a horny son who hates his family (I love you, Raul xo). And Eve Best- amazing. As the only girl in this cast of five boys her feminine presence is amplified up to 11 and as she moved in slow motion through this play I couldn't take my eyes off her. Thumbs up old school.

The American DreamThe Sandbox

photo: Gabe Evans

The American Dream, the first half of this double bill of early Edward Albee one-act gems, is widely regarded as a landmark masterwork of American absurdism although it can't, despite the whiff of Ionesco that it puts in the air, be fully categorized so simply. The targets of its dark, indelibly disturbing satire are specific: as Albee once said, the play is "an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society". Seeing it now, directed by the playwright nearly fifty years after it was first performed, is to again recognize not only Albee's influence on American drama but also the force of this play's bite: has any other playwright sunk teeth as hard into American complacency and commonplace cruelty? This production boasts two flawless performances by Judith Ivey and George Bartenieff - both understand the heightened style and confidently deliver Albee's dialogue. The production is less effective when Lois Markle joins them but that probably won't be the case by the time you see the show: the actress was an eleventh hour replacement and was clearly still working through the role at the performance I saw. As Markle is central to the evening's second play (The Sandbox, which clocks in at about fifteen minutes) it understandably was not yet where it needs to and will soon be. But never mind: there isn't any good reason to miss these Albee-directed Albee plays.

Silver Bullet Trailer

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Faint praise for me to say that of all the current productions prizing the death of The American Dream, Silver Bullet Trailer is at least the most fascinating failure. Julie Shavers's script has some great zingers (which makes it more interesting than Paradise Park) and Dan O'Brien's direction is at least more creative (especially in its use of videography) and contemporary than The American Dream/The Sandbox. Right now, Shavers's play is being held up by her own performance as a banana-mayonnaise-eating hillbilly, and from the few moments that don't feel completely overdone. Still, far too much of Silver Bullet Trailer comes across as an overzealous, characterless mash-up of George Saunders short stories, with far less focus and far less punch. Some of that blame rests with actors like Sean-Michael Bowles, Benjamin Ellis Fine, and the three gals playing the burlesque Buckle Bunnies, for Dan O'Brien gives them a suitably creepy staging that they just don't take far enough. But most of the flaws remain with Shaver's script, which gets so focused on satire and symbolism that it loses sight of character entirely.

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Juno

photo: Joan Marcus

Watching this Encores! version of the 1959 musical based on Sean O'Casey's downbeat tragicomedy Juno And The Paycock, it is easy to see why the musical was not a success when it premiered: too much of the first act tries, counterproductively, to provide levity and merriment and the source material resists being reshaped to oblige. It is also easy to see why the musical has attained some measure of cult status: the score (by Marc Blitzstein) is a shining gem, a sophisticated and dramatically expressive collection of Irish-tinged songs that range from the stirringly anthemic to the delicately lilting. However problematic the show, this astutely directed, often gloriously performed staged-concert production (directed by Garry Hynes) showed the piece to spectacular advantage: what worked here worked magnificently, and what didn't work probably never could. As the put-upon, salt-of-the-earth matriach of the hard-luck Boyle family, Victoria Clark gave a detailed and superbly judged performance that honored the spirit of the material. This was not the kind of performance where the diva plays poor and downtrodden while winking to the audience that she's only "acting": Clark disappeared into the role. Celia Keenan-Bolger rendered the Boyle daughter with touching vulnerability: the show's musical highlight was the mother-daughter duet of "Bird Upon A Tree", a deceptively pretty but deeply sad song that expresses their mutual longing to be freed from their hardships. (A second noteworthy highlight: the lovely ballad "One Kind Word" as superbly and sensitively sung by Michael Arden.) Although the pathos in the show's opening number - in which Dublin's Irish witness one of their own being murdered in the streets - was played so broadly that I half expected to see Officer Lockstock and Little Sally among the ensemble, the cast seemed otherwise at the right pitch for the material. Of special note were the male dancers (led by Tyler Hanes, playing the Boyle son who'd lost an arm fighting for Ireland) who performed a spellbinding and physically demanding second-act dream ballet as choreographed (with vital dramatic expressiveness) by Warren Carlyle. For me, Juno's most lingering stage picture is of those five dancers leaping through the air in unison, each with an arm behind his back under his shirt.