Midtown International Theatre Festival 2007 Reviews - Page 1

Addicted to Christmas
reviewed by Michael Criscuolo

David Patrick Stearns's new play, Addicted to Christmas, is actually two plays in one. The first one is a dark comedy; the second, an existential meditation. Both plays have their moments, but the second is the far more interesting one. It's a shame that Stearns doesn't introduce it until Addicted to Christmas's second act because, to my mind, that's when the play really starts.

Set in present day New York, Addicted to Christmas introduces us to Jody, a Christmas-obsessed young woman (she celebrates it every day) who saves sad sack Henry from throwing himself off the Staten Island Ferry. She brings him home, where Henry meets her roommates: Peter, a middle-aged party boy recovering from the Studio 54 days; and Al, a surly, hard-drinking older fellow with a penchant for strippers. Together the three roomies plan an elaborate heist to steal the decorations off the Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an operation they draft Henry for. The newbie is naturally reluctant and resists at first. But, he soon finds out that he has no choice but to help them.

Henry makes that discovery about the same time Stearns drops a bomb-sized plot twist that would impress M. Night Shyamalan. Far be it for me to reveal what it is, but it's substantial enough to send Addicted to Christmas into another, far more ambitious (and substantive) stratosphere.

The problem with introducing it as late as Stearns does is that it feels like a bait-and-switch. The audience cruises along for the first act thinking they're watching a loony, rambunctious comedy only to discover in the second act that they're actually watching a cosmic mortality play. The change is so sudden that one may feel a bit cheated—that is until they realize that Addicted to Christmas has morphed into a potentially far more satisfying endeavor. Audience members may then wonder why Stearns didn't make the switch sooner.

The cast was a bit shaky on the night I attended (I saw the first of their four scheduled performances), but will undoubtedly improve as the run progresses. James Patrick Flynn has trouble modulating Al's gruffness, but is otherwise a welcome veteran presence. As Henry, Andrew Giarolo sometimes speaks too softly to be heard in the cozy Where Eagles Dare Theatre, but makes up for it by being generally endearing. Billy Hipkins gets Peter's jittery energy just right, even if it sometimes is too much of a good thing. On a craft level, Jordana Oberman is the most accomplished performer here, but as Jody she sometimes strains too hard for laughs instead of just playing the situation. Director Shari Johnson needs to keep a tighter rein on her cast, although she does make the most of the snug playing space.

From where I sit, Addicted to Christmas has the potential to probe its own depths even deeper. There's a lot to mine, and I hope Stearns sees fit to do so in the future.

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DupleX
reviewed by Jo Ann Rosen

DupleX, a playful ten-cent drama by Scott Brooks, offers the prospect of suspense and the twists and turns of a thriller in a far-fetched plot that has a lot going for it. I arrived willing to accept inexplicable moments and irrational behavior. But, in the end, Brooks asks too much of his audience and I left with too many unanswered questions. Some of the shortcomings could have been satisfied by the director, Sam Viverito, but more on that later.

This amoral tale of greed starts with a young man, who shows an elegant furnished duplex apartment to a gruff immigrant more interested in peeking out the window than in the amenities of the flat, which he agrees to rent. Trouble heats up when the renter returns with an old Hasidic diamond dealer. There is murder, a squatter, a con game, a cop, and a twist. No one is who he seems to be. The plot is fun—perhaps more fun in the synopsis than in the actual telling since Brooks dramatizes the tale and then has the characters retell what we just saw. Editing to 60 minutes from 80 would do much to restore the suspense, and simplifying would do away with the need to justify the decisions the characters make. It would also eliminate questions such as, what makes the young man so insightful? And, what exactly are the con games being played? What makes Sergio think Abe stole the diamonds? Did he, or were they really his?

John Di Benedetto gives the necessary rough, mafia-type edge to the renter, Sergio. Benim Foster as the Hasidic diamond dealer relies on caricature, but as his other character Larry—a smooth operator caught at the wrong end of a con game—he catches the tone and mannerisms of a Wall Street egomaniac. Dominic Marcus captures the posturing of a cop's authority when arriving on the scene. Michael Ferrell, in the role of Nick the real estate rep, doesn't seem committed to the slippery slide into crime, greed, and immorality. Nor does Jennifer-Scott Mobley prove convincing as the con artist. Both Ferrell and Mobley have the acting chops. It is the strong imprint of the director that is both needed and wanting. For example, instead of the crisp pace I expect from a thriller, Mobley and Ferrell seemed to relax into casual banter. A con artist like the one Mobley plays needs to look fabulous—all the time. Mobley's got the goods, but Viverito has her wearing jeans and little visible makeup. A character like Larry wouldn't give Mobley's Zelda two winks. Jazzing up her image would have made credible the scene in which Zelda waltzes around in diamonds. But in jeans? It is out of character. Especially when she knows everyone is looking for them. Diana DeLaCruz rounds out the cast as Molly, Zelda's accomplice, although I'm not sure what purpose this character serves.

Brooks has a story worth telling. However, the plot seems far more complicated than necessary. Editing and simplifying would help keep the actors at least one step ahead of the audience, and would remove the unnecessary questions that crop up and stick long after the show is over. DupleX is presented by the The Midtown International Theatre Festival and Badlands Theatre Company.

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The Shadow Pier
reviewed by Kimberly Wadsworth

Film noir is murky by nature, with lots of plot twists, double crosses, and sudden revelations of deep secrets. Jonathan Wallace's The Shadow Pier is almost a metaphysical comment on the genre—it's a noir play about a fictional noir film. However, I found his script and the production to be a bit murkier than the norm, leaving me with some unresolved questions at the end.

The fictional film, also called "The Shadow Pier," is the play's Maguffin—according to the plot, it received a single screening in 1952, and was promptly seized by the FBI under grounds that it was potentially "anti-American"; 50 years later, the film's creator, Ferry Tenbroek (Peter Reznikoff), gets a call from a stranger—played with intriguing creepiness by Jared Morgenstern—offering to sell him what he claims is the only existing copy of the film. But that's only one of the three stories told here; we also get to see Morgenstern as the FBI agent assigned to the original case in 1952, grilling Ferry's sister (Gayle Robbins), a co-producer (Reznikoff, again), and one of the cast members (Paul Pryce) about Ferry's possible involvement in the Communist Party. And we also get to see the cast take on scenes from the film itself, with Morgenstern and Robbins as a pair of young lovers, Reznikoff as a crime boss, and Pryce as a noble friend of the couple's.

The jumps from one storyline to the next, taken together, make for a tidy plot for most of the play. The film scenes come across more like a Douglas Sirk melodrama than as a crime noir, but the subplots neatly contrast the fantasy-and-thrills of the screen with the very real drama going on in the lives of the filmmakers. It's one thing when the all-American boy and his true-blue girl are standing up to the corrupt crime boss, but it's another thing to see the FBI agent threaten the producer, a Holocaust survivor, with exposure as a one-time socialist. Paul Pryce also has a telling role in this subplot as an African American actor, defending the filmmakers to the FBI—not because of their politics, but because they finally gave him a role that wasn't a stereotype.

However, the scene jumps lost me at first, as the scene and character shifts were indicated only through minor costume changes—adding a sweater here, removing eyeglasses there—and slight accent changes. The cast does a fine job of creating distinct characters, and I eventually got accustomed, but at first it was confusing (even one of the actors got lost the night I saw the show, when he accidentally left the eyeglasses that were his "costume change" offstage and thus nearly lost his place in the action). I understand that in a festival, the production does need to be bare-boned, but some kind of light change or sound change, something, would have helped tremendously. The "film excerpt" scenes in particular would have been a perfect place for an appropriately brooding musical underscore.

Even more tantalizing, but frustrating, is the storyline set in the present. Ferry and a young film professor (Robbins, again) concoct a "sting" to get the film from Morgenstern, complete with clandestine meetings and money changing hands in a duffle bag. Morgenstern's character in this storyline is fascinating, but is ultimately a cipher—it's implied he's a sociopath, and a film buff, but we never get resolution as to why he's offered to sell Ferry back the film, whether he really intends to do so, or how he got the film in the first place. The present-day plot is also the only one that isn't wrapped up at the play's end—the "Shadow Pier" film itself is brought to a close and the 1952 investigation is tied up, but the very last scene of the play, set in the present, is a cliffhanger. Not that Chinatown or The Maltese Falcon sum everything up either—but this seemed more suited to a Saturday matinee suspense serial.

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I'm in Love with Your Wife
reviewed by James Comtois

Apparently Gary's wife is one hot dish.

How do we know this? Not because we ever meet her (we don't), and not because Gary won't shut up about how hot she is, but because both Gary's best friend and Gary's best friend's wife are in love with her and having hot steamy sex with her as often as possible.

In I'm In Love With Your Wife, Gary, a milquetoast doormat who is in some sort of therapy where he describes his feelings in colors to an inept therapist obsessed with Jon Voigt, meets with his best friend Paul at work one day. Paul confesses to him that, well, he's in love with Gary's wife, and that they've been sleeping together for a while.
Trying to put a stop to it, Gary meets with Paul's wife, Gail, who also confesses to an affair with Gary's wife (unbeknownst to Paul).

Rather than forcefully confront Paul, Gail, or even his wife, Gary decides (at the suggestion of his therapist, Dr. Feldberg) to go ahead with a planned dinner party with the two couples, with Dr. Feldberg attending and observing (along with his date Ruth, another patient who's an aspiring actress, who decides to portray herself as a forlorn Ukrainian woman).

As you can probably tell from the above summary, I'm In Love With Your Wife is a very silly comedy where the characters are very broad caricatures doing very unbelievable things for 90 minutes.

And therein lies the problem: this is a premise for a sitcom, not a 90-minute play. And by premise for a sitcom, I mean an episode, not a series. Alex Goldberg's script is too ridiculous and the characters are too thinly drawn for the audience to actually care about them beyond cheap laughs. In other words, are we really supposed to be emotionally invested in Gary's attempts to become assertive? Are we really supposed to care about Paul and Gail's marital problems, or worry if they discover each other's infidelities?

Some of the comedy works, like when Gail sensuously massages—well, paws at—Gary's difficult yet perky assistant Bethany to prove she's not gay. Some of it doesn't, like when Dr. Feldberg incessantly comes up with one-liners on all things Voigt.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I'm In Love With Your Wife isn't funny; it actually is. When the humor works, it really works. When it doesn't, it's very awkward and wears out its welcome very quickly. Ultimately, the play made me laugh loudly on several occasions, and the cast is quite amusing. In particular, Monica Yudovich as Bethany is thoroughly enjoyable every time she's onstage. Shane Jacobsen is also especially amusing as Gary's lothario friend.

Ron Palillo, best known as Horshack from the television series Welcome Back Kotter, is a bit hit-or-miss as Dr. Feldberg, although I'm not certain if that's the result of the performance itself or of my not being wild about his character's obsession with Jon Voigt.

If I'm In Love With Your Wife were a 20-minute piece, perhaps I could recommend it more. It's premise and tone is better suited in short form.

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Outroverted
reviewed by Richard Hinojosa

Outroverted is five shows wrapped into one. A different actor writes and performs each piece and each has its own director. Thematically the show is about folks that are outcasts, some by choice, others not by choice. It's like a small loaf of life cut up into entertaining and mostly digestible slices.

"Renaissance" is performed by Susan Rankus (also the show's producer). Rankus is reasonably funny and quite charming as a 19-year-old actor who lands a part in a Renaissance Fair and then falls for a 30-something Fair veteran. While I found her character entertaining, she plays the role a little too adolescent for the character's age and this makes the sexual innuendo seem out of place. Her director, Cheryl King, could have led her to a slightly more mature and edgy place to help with the innuendo and to contrast the cutesiness of her character.

The next piece, "Just Shut Up and Smile," is brilliant. Performed with quirky intensity and snarling sarcasm by Simona Berman, this vignette steals the show. It is itself broken into five segments with each one talking about society's expectations of female appearance and how women attempt to take control of their appearance. Berman's cynical view on this is apparent in the title of the show. I enjoyed the way her director, Diana Basmajian, starts her off at a fairly high level of intensity and then brings it down. Berman brings fire to every scene. She is hilarious, edgy, angry, and deliciously sarcastic.

The third piece, "Me and Stepin," is very well acted by Richie McCall. It is basically the story of the struggles of a black actor trying to overcome being cast in stereotypical black roles. He's even asked to do a Stepin Fetchit-type character. This evokes a dream or ghost of Stepin to speak to him. He realizes that Stepin opened doors for black actors, but what McCall doesn't point out is at what cost. McCall is without a doubt a fine actor, I truly enjoyed his performance, but his story lacks bite and originality.

"Holding Out," performed by Craig Durante, is the story of a young man's attempts to lose his virginity. Durante's character is a mundane wannabe rock star who comes to the very Zen conclusion that if he just stops thinking about it and let go he'll get laid. The trouble is, while the character finally lets go and goes Zen, the actor never really lets go and explodes. Durante holds back where I hoped he would hit the ceiling. Director Matt Hoverman might have pushed him to a little more orgasmic place so Durante could make that connection.

The final piece, "/out of character," is about a very funny and very real tech support guy who is obsessed with virtual domination of his gamer world. Performed flawlessly by Brian Bielawski this piece has the makings of a full length solo show. Bielawski is on point in this character but his story doesn't have much of a point other than entertainment. I wondered what he was trying to say with or about this character. Still, the piece is entertaining, much like an extended comedy sketch.

Put together the show makes for a decent night at the theatre. While most of the pieces have some room for improvement, I think summer festivals such as MITF are the perfect venue to work out the kinks.

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I am not a chimpanzee
reviewed by Robert Weinstein

The events depicted in Michael Stockman's i am not a chimpanzee, take place in the kitchen of Sam and Margaret Waxman's Park Avenue apartment exactly one year after the towers fell on September 11, 2001. Since that day, Sam and Margaret have developed a couple of curious coping mechanisms. Sam, once a successful lawyer, now spends the bulk of his days wearing pimp-daddy track suits and snorting cocaine under the kitchen table. He hasn't showered for close to six months and peppers his conversations with petty insults. Margaret, receiver of these nasty barbs, spends most of her days caring for Captain Noodles, Mallabee, and Dr. 10-Cents, the residents of the chimpanzee sanctuary in the Bronx Zoo where she volunteers. Margaret is so lonely at times she admits to slipping into the sleeping bag of one of her chimp charges. These mechanisms create a great divide between the couple and their individual relationships to reality.

Sam's solution to this problem, concocted with equal parts rage and frustration, is to hire a Jamaican prostitute named Ayla into their home in hopes of refocusing his wife's attentions from the chimps to himself. Ayla, costumed in a bright yellow tank top and incredibly short shorts, arrives with her own set of issues: this is her last job before taking off to Jamaica to get a handle on her own life. Her arrival on the scene provides a burst of sunshine into an otherwise gloomy environment—the three sniff enough cocaine to kill at least a dozen buffalo—and the play turns into a battle of wills which forces the happy couple to recognize the toll their loss has extracted.

Ayla is the spirit this couple and this show needs. She is voluptuous, sure, and her figure alone is enough to destroy a thousand marriages. But her unfettered joy acts as the perfect foil for the grief and neuroses that has consumed Sam and Margaret since the death of their son. Ayla gets Sam to shower by withholding sex from him; she gets the seemingly straight-laced Margaret sniffing cocaine like an uptight, suburban Tony Montana. But her greatest feat is opening the floodgates of their despair and forcing them to recognize the existence of the other. When this finally happens, the character's vulnerabilities are on full display. "Who died?" Margaret asks. "We did." Sam replies. In that moment I glimpsed the fabric torn by their loss.

I wanted to like i am not a chimpanzee more than I did. Stockman's script is full of intelligence but it felt as though director Douglas S. Hall focused more on its quirks than the humanity inherent in its comedy. This may be due to the fact that the characters spend as much time talking to the audience as they do each other, but the pacing, at times manic, glosses over the motors underneath their actions, which made the journey to its climax less immediate than it might have been. To its credit though, the audience laughed frequently and never lost interest, a testament to the skillful exploration of its themes.

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Nosferatu: The Morning of My Death
reviewed by Martin Denton

The story of Dracula (as Bram Stoker originally called him) or Nosferatu (as he's known in the F.W. Murnau silent film classic) is so entrenched in our contemporary mindset that we can typically recite its main elements by rote. How do you make something this familiar scary again? Ask Edward Elefterion and Stanton Wood, the creators of Nosferatu: The Morning of My Death, a classy and, yes, often terrifying new stage adaptation that looks sure to be one of the breakout hits of this year's Midtown International Theatre Festival.

This is technically the second half of a planned full-length version of Nosferatu (Elefterion informs the audience in a curtain speech that the whole show is expected to debut this October; watch for that). So the story here begins with the vampire Nosferatu's journey from Transylvania to London, where he will attempt to seduce and win Mina Harker, the wife of Jonathan Harker, the young man who has been tracking him and who understands the secret of his evil. As the play begins, Mina is having hallucinations (premonitions?) of Nosferatu's imminent attack, and her best friend's husband Arthur Westenra forces her to stay in the insane asylum that he runs, mistakenly believing that she will be safe there.

The plot quickly turns into a race against time: will Harker return to London in time to rescue his wife, or will Nosferatu get to her first?

The fact that we know how the story will end doesn't diminish in the least the suspense and sheer excitement that playwright Wood and director Elefterion conjure. Using a sort of "story theatre" approach in which the actors narrate the tale as well as act out its key moments, with minimal costuming and set and just a few props, the company finds the essence of what's really scary in this legend, and communicates it boldly and deftly. The sequence in which the crew members of the ship that Nosferatu is traveling on are murdered one by one is starkly chilling, even though it consists simply of some narration and sound effects. And the killing of the undead Lucy (Arthur's wife, Nosferatu's first female victim) is spectacular, using a theatrical device that heretofore has always seemed trite to me with dazzling impact.

The cast of six work near miracles to portray dozens of characters. Matt W. Cody, smartly used very sparingly in the title role, is terrific (and his makeup, by Courtney Daily, is top-notch). David Miceli as Westenra and Danny Ashkenasi as Renfield, Harker's bug-eating superior, are especially excellent (in those roles as well as in many others); completing the ensemble are Paul Daily as an earnest Harker, Emily Hartford as Lucy, and Jenna Kalinowski as Mina.

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The Executioner
reviewed by Loren Noveck

A story of revenge, thwarted romance, and vicious crimes in the Texas heartland, The Executioner is a somewhat ungainly mix of thriller, satire, musical, and melodrama. There are a lot of interesting characters in the mix—an upstanding female sheriff with a crush on her suspect, a smarmy judge writing his own campaign theme songs, a sociopathic waitress out to avenge her mother (a criminal who was executed by the state of Texas), her petty criminal brother who keeps crossing paths with a Mexican gang—but the whole thing feels overwrought.

The play basically tells the story of a crime spree—Barbara Ann and Cort Quartermaine, children of an executed killer, are out to kill all those who played a part in getting their mother wrongfully convicted. (Some of these crimes have taken place before the play starts.) The local sheriff suspects something is going on, but her romantic attraction to Barbara Ann (aka Delilah) complicates the case she's trying to make.

Playwright Jon Kern's plotting shifts gears from languid to feverish midway through. The first part of the play seems to be a flashback from the point of view of one of the murder victims—or perhaps a flash-forward, since his actual death scene is at the very end of the play—and lingers over setting up local color: the town diner and its pie, the upstanding sheriff and her refusal to accept free food, the sweet-as-sugar waitress and her deadbeat brother. Once the murderous plan is revealed, though, the pacing gets fast and furious as Barbara Ann's control starts to slip, leading to a climactic closing scene that's full of blood, over-the-top musical numbers, and the serious mutilation of a pie.

I found myself a little confused by the overall timeline. The narrator, Fred (the executioner of the title; he administers lethal injections at the local women's prison) begins the play talking about his death at the hands of Barbara Ann Delilah Quartermaine. The rest of the play, logically, takes place in flashback, going back to establish a flirty relationship between Fred and Delilah, and the setup for the crime—both the back story of the Quartermaine siblings and their current crime spree and its planning. But when they commit another murder—still before we see Fred's death within the world of the play—Fred greets the new victim in the afterlife (for a little musical number).

The acting is generally strong, especially Kelly Eubanks (Sheriff Santos) and Melinda Helfrich (Delilah/Barbara Ann)—although even they sometimes struggle with the exposition-heavy moments.

I couldn't quite get a grip on the piece stylistically—sometimes it felt tongue-in-cheek and aware of the satirical potential in its melodrama, but a lot of the time it seemed to be playing it straight, and taking its revenge plot seriously. The musical numbers—though some of the songs are terrific taken by themselves—add to the stylistic instability. Some of the numbers fit into context—Barbara Ann remembering a lullaby her mother used to sing and then the band taking it up—and others felt more like characters spontaneously bursting into song as in a more traditional musical—the sheriff's lovely lament before she has to arrest the girl of her dreams.

There are a lot of promising pieces in The Executioner, but they don't quite add up to a satisfying whole.

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Stray Dog Hearts
reviewed by Steven Slate

Padraic O'Reilly's play Stray Dog Hearts is billed as "Glengarry Glen Ross meets Ab Fab." This tagline grabbed my attention immediately, and for the most part the play delivers. The story takes place in an art book publishing house recently bought out by an Australian media mogul. The characters are passionate about their work and struggle with the fear of whether they'll be forced to sell out their dignity by publishing mass marketed garbage. This struggle all takes place while they're being antagonized by a mysterious dwarf. It's an interesting topic to explore and O'Reilly definitely defied my expectations with a refreshing treatment of it. It lived up to its promise of blending fast paced witty dialogue with complete absurdity.

The real standout in this show is Lila, a fast talking go-for-broke Southern woman with a sharp tongue played masterfully by Kimberley Bailey. Bailey really steals the show and gives the perfect example of what should happen when sharp writing and a committed actor are combined. This character is reminiscent of Patsy and Edina from Ab Fab but Bailey's performance is all her own—completely original. If Bailey puts that much commitment into all of her work then casting directors will be fiercely battling over her in the near future.

Another standout is Stephen Jutras's portrayal of the mysterious dwarf who crashes the office. He proves to be quite versatile and plays the role as believably as it can possibly be played. Unfortunately, the mystery of his character is a little too much. Rather than being intrigued by his role I found myself wondering why the other characters were content to have him hang out in their office all day with no apparent purpose. While the play did have a wonderful style this is one reason that I wasn't swept away by it. Nevertheless when all is said and done Jutras left me impressed, not only by his acting chops but also by the skill with which he performed a few well choreographed slapstick comedy sequences alongside Marc Santa Maria and Mike Digiacinto.

Rainbow Dickerson's portrayal of Brianna the receptionist is both fun and believable. Santa Maria pulls off some physical comedy with absolute finesse as the struggling publisher Brodsky. Both actors show high levels of commitment and talent which make their roles shine as much as possible. Unfortunately, Brodsky's character's dialogue feels forced and unnatural too often.

Overall the cast delivers a great performance and really seems to gel as an ensemble. They seem infinitely comfortable together on stage, their timing is impeccable, and their slapstick segments are spot-on. This must be due to the directing talents of Jennifer Gelfer. Unfortunately some of the dialogue falls flat, and some of it's confusing; hopefully O'Reilly will make a few changes to the script. His character Lila clearly shows that he's got what it takes write engaging dialogue.

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Out of the Flames
reviewed by Richard Hinojosa

"The Devil made me do it" has long been an excuse for our own choices. But what if all this time the Devil had been wrongly accused of all the evil in the world? What if he just wants to be forgiven, accepted, and even loved? This is the premise of David Marken's Out of the Flames, a play that tries very hard to burn very brightly but unfortunately has little fuel to make a flame.

The Devil's name is Delcio and he's in love with a girl named Jessenia but her overbearing father won't allow them to marry, so he sends her to some far-off undisclosed land. Delcio is heartbroken though not for long. He soon finds a new love interest in a servant girl named Martiana who works for an arrogant castle owner named McKenzie to whom Delcio shows undeserved compassion. He is eventually pursued by townspeople armed with pointy sticks and only his buddy, Basem, attempts to help him escape.

Marken makes his premise clear enough in his advertising but he fails to follow through in the action of the play. I thought I was going to see a play about the true nature of evil but this play sheds no light on that. The Devil doesn't have any of the problems one would think the he'd have. He's mostly concerned with getting the girl and that's fine, but it has nothing to do with what the play professes to be about. Sure, I understood Marken's theme but that's mostly because he spoon-feeds it in a "here's what you're supposed to learn" speech at the end. His writing is packed with dime novel clichés and heavy-handed exposition.

To make matters worse, director Natasha Matallana brings little vision, structure or production value to this show. There are way too many blackouts accompanied by clunky and mostly pointless set changes. Stylistically, her actors are not on the same page; however, to her credit she does keep them moving along at a good pace. The acting is really the saving grace of this production.

Daniel Kennedy is adequately passionate as Delcio, and his two leading ladies, Devin Dunne Cannon and Katie Ritz, are equally talented. I also liked Geoffrey Parrish in his small but funny role. But it is Luke Tudball that rises above all as Basem. Tudball creates a hilarious character, making me wish he was in a leading role because the other lead actor, Alan Altschuler as McKenzie, speaks his lines as if he were reading them off the inside of his eyelids. Ken Scudder as the Father plays a good angry man but that's pretty much all he does.

The fuel for any play is its text, but unfortunately this Out of the Flames has nothing to burn.

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Take Me America
reviewed by Daniel Kelley

The story of Take Me, America is simple: it's the journey of nine refugees from various parts of the world seeking asylum in the U.S. Through the interviews each character has with immigration agents, the audience learns about the refugees' lives, dreams, and fears. Along the way, the audience also encounters the immigration agents, and learns their stories—and how they deal with the pressures of their job.

In the program notes, the creative team behind Take Me, America, composer Bob Christianson and lyricist/book-writer/director Bill Nabel, remark that they are not trying to take sides in the political debate about immigration, but rather explore the human stories of people seeking asylum in the U.S. While they manage to stay away from the politics of the issue, they also, sadly, stay away from any sort of human depth, tending instead towards stereotype and caricature. For instance, the refugee from Sudan sings about how he wants to be "village chief" and have a "100 cow wife," the Chinese poet recites cryptic poems while stereotypical "Asian" music plays overhead, and, worst of all, the only Muslim refugee ends up being a sleeper-cell terrorist ("No one knows me now / but I made a vow / Soon I'll draw my sword / and Allah's Reward"). By portraying the characters as stereotypes rather than people, it feels as though the creative team behind Take Me, America is patronizing the characters, diminishing their stories and the stories of people like them.

In addition to this fundamental conceptual flaw, Take Me, America features flawed book, lyrics, music, and direction. Nabel's lyrics are predictable, trite and, at times, illogical—most notably when one of the refugees, who happens to pregnant sings, "Feet have swelled to Triple D's / Can I have a tissue please?" Christianson's music is derivative—it sounds like generic synthesized background music for pop songs, and often serves to puncture the drama rather than heighten it. Nabel's book is not much better, heavy-handedly spoon-feeding the audience information about the moral questions involved in immigration. Nabel's direction relies entirely on musical theatre clichés—at times it's hard to believe that Take Me, America is not a parody of itself.

What prevents Take Me, America from becoming a complete parody, however, are the performers. From start to finish, the performers do a martyr's job of attempting to use every trick in their arsenal to sell the show. Of particularly merit is Ana Maria Andricain who, in spite of the lackluster character she is given to portray, is earnest, endearing and touching. Andricain has a really marvelously clear and beautiful singing voice, and a committed and engaging stage presence. Jan Leslie Harding is also to be commended for doing everything in her power to squeeze laughs out her part, and the script.

Take Me, America takes an interesting and original concept and fills it with clichés, gross sentimentality, and over-simplified views on a complex issue. The only thing that keeps Take Me, America afloat is the cast, who do everything in their power to save the show. However, nothing can save Take Me, America from itself, except extensive research, rewriting and re-conceptualization.

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four unfold: a story with song
reviewed by Natasha Yannacanedo

Katie Lemos, the writer and director of four unfold, begins the show with an inviting smile and a heartfelt welcome. She radiates warmth and love. Lemos gives the standard spiel about turning off cell phones and introduces the play in such a manner that you really want to fully embrace the journey of the show.

four unfold tells the story of four friends. One of them, Tess, has contracted HPV (the human papillomavirus; a sexually-transmitted virus that affects both women and men). As the show progresses, her HPV develops into cervical cancer. Lemos educates us about HPV in the program, but I felt she should educate us more about the virus in the actual text of the play. But four unfold is a play about characters instead of a driving plot. I wanted the characters' relationships with one another to fuel the journey of the show.

I appreciate Lemos's serious subject matter of HPV; most people are still very ignorant about this virus and I love that she deals with this topic. However, she drops a vital monologue about Tess contracting HPV at the top of the show, and I found myself struggling to remember the details of that first monologue for the rest of the play. Also, there is a narration device that this play does not need and interrupts the flow; in one particular place it is just plain cheesy.

Abigail Taylor does not display the emotional depth necessary for the complex role of Tess. She fails to elicit the empathy we as an audience so desperately want to feel for this character. Perhaps she was having an off night and could not quite access the emotional availability she needed for this performance.

Jonathan Greg gives an incredibly solid and committed performance as Aden, a man coming to terms with the meaning of commitment, being true to himself, and rejoicing in new found love.

Sarah Spritzer as makes this play worthwhile. Her acting is specific, exuberant, and refreshingly delightful. She is genuine and authentic in her approach to the work.

TJ Moss is perfectly cast as the easy going Sam. With his big, adorable smile and positive energy, you can't help but like him. Overall, his acting is effortless and smooth. He has great charisma. Moss sings several songs with a comforting, familiar voice, but I could not make out many of his lyrics. I felt frustrated because I wanted to know how the songs were supporting the story.

Moss and Spritzer's incredible sexual tension throughout the play keeps you very intrigued and engaged. However, I left feeling unsatisfied that they never kiss even though the implication at the end seems to be that their relationship will turn romantic.

I attended opening night and the show received a standing ovation. Lemos has some wonderful characters, great subject matter, and beautiful words. However, I would love for her to work on the plot structure and cut the narration device. All in all, four unfold is definitely a play worth seeing.

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