nytheatre Archive
2003-04 Theatre Season Reviews

Garth Wingfield explores the lighter side of the sometimes scary world of dating in his new show, a program of five short comedies called Dating Games. First dates, mostly: four of the five pieces focus on that particularly treacherous phenomenon; but the entire evening is great fun, looking at the foibles of daters—of all varieties—with warmth, cockeyed optimism, and generous dollops of good humor.

The evening begins with Mary Just Broke Up With This Guy, in which Mary (Karin Sibrava), who ended her six-year relationship with Tony last Tuesday, throws herself headlong into the world of dating. We like her: she's sweet and smart, if still reeling a bit from what's just happened to her. But as Al Jolson once said, she ain't seen nothing yet. In about twenty minutes, Wingfield flashes through a year's worth of bad dates—fix-ups, personal ad replies, Internet buddies—that run the gamut from a psychopath who likes to torture rats to a magnificently compatible and likable fellow who happens, of course, to be gay. Michael Anderson plays all of these guys—I lost count of how many there are—and he makes them each special if entirely unsuitable. Mary Just Broke Up With This Guy is structured something like David Ives' classic Sure Thing, but Wingfield makes the conceit his own in this quick and quirky comic look at the perils of playing the field.

The Lunch Date comes next, in which Holly (Sibrava) confides in her friend Alice (Cynthia Babak) about the date she just had—with a woman from her therapy group. Thing is, Holly has just ended a long-term relationship with Matthew and has never thought of herself as a lesbian before. But she is one now... maybe. Wingfield has fun turning the notion of dating on the rebound on its ear, and gives his leading ladies juicy parts to sink their teeth into in the process.

The third item on the agenda is Cha-Cha-Cha, and it's the only one that focuses on people who have known each other for a long time—more than twenty years, in fact. At their high school reunion, Henry (Anderson) recognizes Sheila (Babak) right away as the popular girl on whom he had his first crush; she has trouble placing him, however, until he reminds her that he used to go by "Hank" and that he was the fat, unpopular boy in her A.P. English class. Cha-Cha-Cha is a wistful, bittersweet vignette about pasts, presents, and futures and the way all three can constantly surprise us. More serious-minded and less edgy than the other plays in Dating Games, it's touchingly evocative and wise.

My personal favorite among the five playlets comes next: Daniel on a Thursday, in which Kevin (Anderson) accosts Daniel (Eric Christie) in a bar and refuses to let go until he's bagged his quarry. Kevin and Daniel are strangers to one another, but that doesn't stop Kevin from pursuing line after improbable line of conversation with the perplexed and hapless object of his overwrought attentions. This is a very funny and very smart play, and it's filled with surprises, not least of which is how appealingly romantic a tale of two ordinary, not-so-young gay men—with not a whit of glamour between them—can turn out to be.

The evening concludes with the extravagantly broad Run, which takes place at a dog run in a trendy Manhattan neighborhood. Here Spence (Christie) and Suzanne (Sibrava) meet, while supervising their dogs (Scout and Steven, respectively; unseen but very much present in spirit). Wingfield again turns a cliché on its head, this time the "meet-cute" scenario, as the two manage to make very realistic fools of themselves as they fumble to connect. (Suzanne, for example, at one point remarks on how clean and straight Spence's teeth are.) Providing contrast and comic relief is Helen (Babak), the zealous overseer of the dog run. This is a charmer, and a provides a funny and sweet ending to this entertaining cycle of short plays.

All five pieces are directed flawlessly by Laura Josepher, and feature acting at the tour de force level by Anderson, Babak, Christie, and Sibrava. Everything about this production bespeaks professionalism; this is off-off-Broadway at its best, which more and more is New York theatre at its best. Regardless of the current state of your love life, Dating Games is a keeper.

It used to be that when you went to the movies, you got a feature, a short subject, and a cartoon—all adding up to a very full and varied evening of entertainment. The Deptford Players are applying the same formula to off-off-Broadway theatre with their New Play Festival, offering audiences an intriguing and surprisingly diverse trio of original plays for the price of just one.

The feature, so to speak, is Jeff Berry's Elizabethan-style verse comedy The Forest for the Trees. Written in brisk, witty, and highly actable iambic pentameter, this frothy tale is a paean to A Midsummer Night's Dream with a friendly moral neatly tacked on. It tells the story of Lord Steamfroth, an industrialist whose successful railroad concerns have left him blind to more fundamental matters, namely: (1) his daughter Marianne, who is now grown and wishes to marry a kind and honest blacksmith rather than one of the overblown titled suitors her father prefers; (2) his servant, Henrietta Brown, who has endured his bossy command out of sheer love; and (3) the plight of the Faeries, led by Puck, who can no longer roam freely because so many big steel rails block their passage.

All of these problems are satisfactorily resolved after an eventful night in the woods, during which a brooding Puck plots revenge on Steamfroth, while Marianne enlists the aid of her uncle Roger Goutfoot and a drunken Faerie called Juniper to help her elope with her beloved, a blacksmith named Black. Berry pays homage to most of the detours the Bard might be likely to take under similar circumstances, including a particularly charming one in which Steamfroth is transformed into a woman. Berry's most original touch is the neat railroad anachronism, which he posits and then ignores, keeping his characters firmly in their timeless Elizabethan setting, modern technology notwithstanding.

Michael Bernstein has directed Forest with the merry affection that it calls for, and most of the company deliver appropriately light-hearted performances, the exceptions being Jim Wisniewksi's too-heavy-hearted Puck and Bill Weeden's not-bombastic-enough Steamfroth. Jeff Catanese (Juniper), Lorree True (Henrietta), Craig Davenport (Black), and Jenny Marie Lambert (Marianne) are particularly delightful; the play's highlight is certainly Catanese's hilariously unsteady attempt to seduce the proper but almost-willing True.

After intermission, we're treated to Oooh, Vicar! Where's Your Trousers?—the cartoon, more or less—whose entire plot is summed up by its title. Dudley Stone is charming as the hapless (and mostly pants-less) title character in this brief and silly tribute to classic British farce, which features two sets of falling trousers and three or four doors.

The final item on the bill is John Martin's Gentleman and Scholar, a two-man play about a fairly egotistical professor who is being welcomed to the Afterlife by a polite, congenial gentleman. We guess who the gentleman is—and the specific post-mortem location where our hero has been consigned—right away; what follows is an unduly repetitive theological debate that might be interesting if it ever ventured beyond the traditional Christian teachings that it finally affirms. Gentleman and Scholar is a worthy idea for a play, but Martin doesn't take it very far, and as a result its nearly-one-hour playing time feels very long indeed.

It certainly couldn't be more different from The Forest for the Trees, which is what makes this evening so particularly unusual.  The Deptford Players are to be commended for offering theatregoers fare they can't find anywhere else; at least one—and quite possibly two or even all three—of these new pieces will likely be to everyone's taste.

Dionysus: Filius Dei is performed in Greek—is shaped by non-Western theatrical traditions—is accompanied by a band of live musicians influenced by the musical expressions of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas—has 22 actors—is over in less than 90-minutes—and is only one of the seven Greek classics currently in rep at La MaMa E.T.C.. All performed by Ellen Stewart’s Great Jones Repertory Company, this is a rare theatrical event—seven plays in rep—six revivals, the earliest being Medea (1972), and the most recent being this one, Dionysus: Filius Dei (2002), with a seventh play offering its world premiere, Antigone.

The story of Dionysus begins in the Kingdom of Thebes and ends with an ascent into heaven. As with many of the Greek myths, to understand the journey from beginning to end you need some version of Cliff’s Notes—or at least a synopsis in the program. Let me give it a shot—here goes! Dionysus is born. He is raised as a girl. Zeus sends Hermes to rescue Dionysus, who in turn transforms him into a goat. He matures into a healthy and desirable young man and falls in love with another male youth named Ampelos who is ultimately killed by a bull. Zeus transforms Ampelos’ dead body into a vine of grapes that he hangs around Dionysus’ waist and genitalia. Are you with me? Okay—so Dionysus travels to Attica and gives wine to Icarius and to a bunch of shepherds who kill Icarius in a drunken fight. Dionysus travels to Turkey and is given the gift of the Queen (by the King). Dionysus returns the offering with the gift of his loin-covering-grape-vine. Dionysus goes to Libia. He goes to Egypt. Pirates on the sea hold him for ransom. He marries Ariadne (after reviving her from near death). He travels alone to Phrigia where his grandmother, in an initiation that causes him to become more woman-like, purifies him. He travels to Bulgaria and restores its inhabitants' fertility. Finally he returns to Thebes—but is refused reentry. He is imprisoned where he transforms himself into a bull and drives the King of Thebes mad. The Kingdom of Thebes is given to Dionysus who travels to the underworld to retrieve his mother and to carry her up to heaven. Whew…did you get all that?

What is wonderful about this production is the utilization of dance and musical scoring to tell the story. The script is sung in a choral fashion with Greek intonations of text. Physically the piece seems to be influenced by the theatrical practices of Jerzy Grotowsky and Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret. It is a ritualistic, metaphorical retelling of mythology through symbolism and the extremes of vocal and physical expression, guided by the expert and experimental hands of Stewart, who serves as the production's writer and director. She incorporates the use of masks, puppets, and poignant prop and set pieces. In one scene, a large boat impressively drops from the top of the theatre as actors from either end of the vast space extend blue fabric on the stage floor for a wonderful effect of the sea.

Elizabeth Swados’ vocal score is intriguing and challenging with its tribal influences and gothic magnificence. Michael Sirotta’s music underscores Swados’ efforts with a constant drumming of anticipation and exuberance. The live musicians are integrated into the production; bringing an immediacy and vitality to the production.

What I find troublesome in the production is the inconsistent abilities of the performers—many of whom seem to lack the vocal and physical training to properly execute the demands of the production. Quite often choreography is out of sync and seems haphazard or unenergized, many of the leads have thin vocal instruments and strain for sound in spite of the assistance of body mics, and physically the entire company seems unaware of how to shape the beginning, middle and end of their physical gestures—particularly troublesome in a production that is telling its story through the use of the actor's body. I left the theatre frustrated—feeling as if I had watched a paint-by-numbers restaging of an innovative creation of theatre. Having sat with this thought for a bit—I am more forgiving, understanding the immense challenge of performing seven plays in rep. My hope is that the company will ground itself in future performances, their concentration levels will deepen, and their actions will rise to the occasion—equaling the integrity and breath of expression created by Stewart, Swados and Sirotta.

Don Juan is a man for all seasons—seasons of amor that is. His epic tale has been told by the most prolific of writers and in as many languages as there are women he has seduced: Baudelaire (French), Blok (Russian), Byron (English), De Molina (Spanish), Grabbe (German), Moliere (French), Mozart/Da Ponte (Italian), Shaw (English), and Zehentner (Latin), to name but a few. What is it about the legendary Spaniard that keeps him alive century after century? When I think of ways to articulate his character, I am puzzled because what come to mind are the least noble traits. To begin with, he’s a con artist and women are the canvas he paints and re-paints. He sets up secret mock marriages, which satisfies his wife of the moment, yet leaves him legally free when he tires of her charms. He is the Hugh Hefner of the 17th century—all voyeurism and elaborate celebrations with buxom women. So, where is the substance that deems it necessary to retell his tale over and over in plays, movies, operas, and poems? Perhaps what attracts us to Don Juan is not his sexual escapades. Could it be that he’s also an anarchist who fights against social expectation and religious piety? Maybe that’s why the church closed Moliere’s original production after 14 performances. Don Juan questions God’s existence and women are his means to struggle with God. Ah, yes, the story of original sin—the story that is a comedy yet tragically ends with Don Juan’s fall into hell.

Because it sent me in all of these interesting directions, the Chekhov Theatre Ensemble’s production of Don Juan is a compelling and smart theatrical experience. Gregory Maupin freely adapts the script from the Moliere, Byron, Shaw, and Da Ponte texts. Rene Migliaccio’s direction is inspired by the theatricality of the commedia dell'arte and its stock characters. He trusts whole-heartedly Maupin’s adaptation, and the actor’s articulation of the facial mask and the body’s gesture through movement. I applaud Migliaccio’s sense of economy in his staging and his ability to unearth deep human realities while guiding his actors through a form that requires skill, education and inspiration. Physicality, language, and fun—everything is there.

In this gender-reversed production, April Cantor is remarkable as Don Juan. She embodies Migliaccio’s vision with total command of her voice and body. She handles the language with precision and every gesture is executed with definitive ease. Rounding out the cast are T. Scott Lilly as Sganarelle (Don Juan's servant), and Liz Turkel, Yvette Feur, and Andrea Perlin playing a multitude of male and female characters. There is certainly inconsistency in the abilities of the actors— Perlin is least effective and most self-conscious, particularly next to the talent of Cantor—but the company as a whole works as a unified ensemble. Big physical acting—extreme and grotesque—has been shaped to perfection by Migliaccio’s vision.

I loved the gender play that dominates the casting of this production. It reminds us that we are watching a company of actors representing character types. It also places less emphasis on the objectification of women (although that is an important issue in the play), focusing rather on Don Juan’s battle with God and his existence as a man with unlimited willpower.

Russell Michael Schramm’s set is a suspended drop that resembles a large theatrical advertisement. The grandeur of his minimalist design creates a world that suggests both the 17th century and a backdrop for a touring company of the commedia dell'arte. Mario V. Leite’s detailed costumes capture the whimsy of each character. Russel Drapkin’s lighting poignantly illuminates the play's journey of earthy exploits towards a happy ending in hell.

Lorca's Dona Rosita the Spinster begins in 1895 in Granada, Spain. Rosita, a young and spirited woman, is betrothed to her second cousin. But suddenly word comes that he has been called to Mexico by his parents; the wedding must be postponed. Rosita's aunt sees this for the calamity it turns out to be: her nephew will not return to claim his bride; there will be no marriage; Rosita will become an old maid.

And so, indeed, it comes to pass. Act Two picks up the action fifteen years later, with Rosita still waiting faithfully, living a life of dignified misery. We observe her at her birthday party, entertaining three spinsters and their mother plus a pair of younger women who look upon her with a disquieting mixture of superiority and grudging respect. In Act Three, ten more years have passed, and Rosita and her aunt are preparing to move from their home to more modest quarters, the aunt's husband having died and Rosita's chances for matrimony definitively aborted.

The play is by turns comic and bittersweet, moody and vaguely socially conscious, and laden with symbols (especially gorgeous blooming roses—ubiquitous at the beginning, absent in the end—emblems of a lady's destiny: to be beautiful and ornamental when young, and to wither and disappear when old). It feels less like the Lorca tragedies we are familiar with, and more like Chekhov: though the climate is warmer and sunnier, the stifling inertia of Three Sisters and the lost elegance of The Cherry Orchard are both strongly recalled in Dona Rosita. Lorca has his stolid spinster share stage time with not only a dreamy-yet-sensible aunt and uncle, but also with a pragmatic and very opinionated Housekeeper and a variety of provincial locals, such as the narrow-minded, gossipy widow who is Dona Rosita's friends' mother, or the long-winded poseur-philosopher who is one of her erstwhile suitors. Colorful and eccentric and homely, these secondary characters are vivid and lively and interesting, in stark contrast to Rosita's stubborn motionlessness.

There's a strong sense of time and place in this play; but I wanted more information to help me understand it better. The relationships among the various friends, neighbors, and servants—economic and social—never felt clear to me; neither was the (theoretically self-evident) reason why Dona Rosita could not journey to Mexico to be with her fiancé. Lacking this kind of context, the play operates at a sort of remove: it's intriguing and entertaining, but never quite as involving as we might wish.

It has, nevertheless, been produced with the usual great care that we associate with Jean Cocteau Repertory. Director Ernest Johns keeps things moving briskly, even in the most dour moments. Designer Roman Tatarowicz has created a beautiful, evocative, impressionistic setting for the play, which is nicely complimented by Margaret McKowen's detailed period costumes. I was generally too aware of David Kniep's lighting, however, and not always certain what effects he was going for.

Amanda Jones, now in her third season at the Cocteau, shows real growth in her portrayal of Rosita, anchoring the play with a solid, stony, aching performance. Elise Stone and Craig Smith are, as ever, superlative as the aunt and uncle (it's nice to see this real-life couple play a devoted husband and wife on stage); in smaller roles, company members Marlene May, Michael Surabian, and Eileen Gleen all do fine work.

One of the great bonuses of life in New York City is that we have cultural institutions like Jean Cocteau Rep that have the resources and gumption to mount a lesser-known play by a well-known playwright. Work like this stretches the artists who interpret it and the audiences who view it; there's real value in that, and it mustn't be taken for granted. Pay Dona Rosita the Spinster a visit: it's a worthy evening of theatre.

Dose!, the new musical by Tim Aumiller and Scott Schneider, is pretty much a mess. It begins with Lilly Evans Hampton entering her New York City apartment—armed with packages from Popeye's and other eateries—and singing a song about how much she hates being fat and how she can't stop eating food.  Shortly afterward her friend Jamie, with whom she is obsessively and deludedly in love, stops by and immediately takes off all his clothes and jumps into Lilly's bathtub. The shock-value bar keeps getting raised as the first act continues: Lilly pretends to be pregnant; Lilly's gay best friend Bink sings a song in his underpants about his sexual habits with the refrain "I'm a faggot"; a woman named Angola rehearses a performance art piece topless just before agreeing to let Jamie shoot some heroin into her foot. Aumiller and Schneider are pulling out the stops to get our attention: it feels like an Andy Warhol movie with songs.

Then in Act Two they switch gears, turning Rent-ishly sentimental as Lilly discovers Angola on the street and agrees to save her life and Jamie deteriorates thanks to his heroin addiction and his inability to pay his dealer. The grimness climaxes with a maudlin song that seems to blame New York City for its characters' troubles.

And then Aumiller and Schneider take it all back with a Brechtian finale in which all of the actors (including one whose character has just been laid out in a coffin) sing a spikily facetious warning about the dangers of self-indulgence. Dose! wants to be Urinetown—not necessarily the loftiest of goals—but the parodistic urge arrives far too late, titular exclamation point notwithstanding.

What keeps us watching this unsavory stew is the constant evidence of talent: Schneider's music is sophisticated and interesting (and he provides expert accompaniment as musical director); Aumiller's staging is sharp and smart; and at least two of the cast members—Shanna Sharp as Lilly and understudy Taylor Hooper as Jamie make consistently interesting choices that makes us care about their characters in spite of their squalid two-dimensionality. I wouldn't mind seeing any of these folks in a show more sure of its purpose and less determined to be trendily shocking and hip.

When we discover a character named "Arlequin" on the list headed "Cast (in order of appearance)," we expect him to be the wily charmer who will dominate the evening, working all manner of deviltry to trump his so-called superiors and get his way. Marivaux's Double Infidelity defies our assumptions, for that is precisely NOT what happens. Instead, Arlequin is a guileless rustic earnestly in love with a sweet young thing named Sylvia. The schemer in the play is a cash-poor aristocrat named Flaminia, who marshals the considerable resources of her friend and benefactor the Prince to win Sylvia for him and Arlequin for herself.

She announces her intentions at the very top of the evening, signaling that it is the maneuvering and plotting that matters here rather than the outcome; indeed, Flaminia and the Prince seem serenely unconcerned that they are about to break up what seems to be a solid love match for their own selfish satisfaction. View their apparent callousness as you wish: are they exercising their prerogatives (obligations) as Arlequin's and Sylvia's betters? (They are certainly improving economic conditions for Arlequin and Sylvia.)

Or are they, more sinisterly, manipulating others simply because it is their whim; simply because they can? Director Beatrice Terry hints at such a Liaisons Dangereuses interpretation, giving Double Infidelity a bitter edge that Marviaux may have intended.  Satirical barbs aimed at exposing the shallowness and callowness of the upper class often fall flat in Terry's almost naturalistic staging, while the darker motivations of all four points on this love trapezoid take center stage in their place.

It makes for an interesting introduction to a work that isn't often produced; you will absolutely recognize the Marivaux of Triumph of Love here, but you might miss some of the lightness of that comedy. Not that you will be starved for laughs: there's wit aplenty here, and the broader stuff is in grand supply whenever Sean McNall takes the stage as an impossibly overstuffed pompon (called simply "Lord" in the program), who poses and preens in wildly exaggerated style and speaks an affected dialect of his own devising that mangles the language with hilarious pomposity, "vein" becoming "vvenn," more or less; a kind of sneering obsequiousness laced with ennui.

McNall threatens to steal the show at each appearance, but Celeste Ciulla, bright and lovely as Flaminia, more than holds her own; Rachel Botchan and Christopher Moore are appealingly coquettish and buffoonish, respectively, as Sylvia and Arlequin (though the decision to have Moore play his character in a classic commedia mask seems questionable).

Halloween is just around the corner, and I can't imagine a more suitable theatre offering to put you into just the right mood for it than Alternative Theater Machine's Dracularama. On so many levels: First, it's a quirky but faithful (in its way) retelling of one of the classic horror tales—you know, the one Bram Stoker wrote about a Transylvanian Count who turns out to be a vampire. It's also a valentine to the urge to tell this timeless story, on film, stage, and TV, in all its many versions from gothic horror to camp, this one included: that's the second level, where Dracularama celebrates the trick-or-treat impulse in all of us to put on a costume and pretend to be something we're not, all the while aware that it's just us underneath the spooky makeup.

And then, niftily, there's a final level—scaring the audience. At least a little bit.

It's a sly, dry, wry triumph: creator/director Jason St. Sauver has managed a neat hat trick of deconstructing not just Dracula but the whole post-modern theatrical process of deconstruction. Dracularama sends up a story, a genre, and itself, all at the same time. I don't want to tell you a lot about how this gets accomplished, because part of the fun is figuring out how Dracularama works. Suffice to say that what we're witnessing here is a contemporary, semi-serious restaging of the story, artily (and artfully) presented in earnest downtown theatre style with minimal sets, mod costumes, and deliberate anachronisms such as ingénue Mina talking to her boyfriend Jonathan Harker on a cell phone and Dr. Seward narrating bits of the tale via email.

Juxtaposed with this Dracula are layers of meta-Dracula: clips from various movie versions projected on screens behind the action; vaudeville-style posters bearing interesting Dracula facts; and an obviously overfunded artist-manager, referred to simply as "Host" in the program, who is leading a team of eager "Interns" through voracious research on the lives of Bram Stoker and Vlad the Impaler (aka Vlad Dracula, the real-life medieval ruler on whom Dracula is supposedly based) and discussions about sexism, racism and other themes in Stoker's original work. The Host is also, somehow, interviewing Stoker himself, though he must be long dead by now; as well as Stoker's wife and mother, all via some sort of miraculous satellite hookup.

It's hilarious and weird and filled with surprises. St. Sauver disarms and disorients by poking fun at avant-theatre conventions (lots of those hand-held lighting instruments, a screen that's placed such that most people in the audience can't see it) and also by employing said conventions in unexpected and elegant ways. It's funny, for example, that Dracula's first victim Lucy's makeshift sickbed is fashioned from a rolling TV cart with a cathode ray tube as headboard, but it's also fairly neat: that's what Dracularama is like. ATM's deconstruction actually brings the cultural iconography into better focus, all the while reminding us how foolishly self-indulgent theatrical exercises like this can become.

And yes, with ghost-story-round-the-campfire stealth, the show offers a few choice chill-inducers of its own.

St. Sauver's ensemble of actors is exquisite, with Michael O'Brien dead-on as the controlling, vaguely sinister Host, and Christiaan Koop, Roger Nasser, Jason Romas, and Marla Yost terrific as his overworked, underappreciated Interns. Matthew McIver is very silly as a Kenneth Mars-esque Van Helsing, while Steve DiGennaro is appropriately batty as Renfield. Andrew Allis, Vanessa Longley-Cook, and Becca Greene mostly play it straight as Harker, Lucy, and Mina, respectively; Richard Looney alternates between relentless cool as the dead Bram Stoker and controlled anxiety as Lucy's boyfriend Arthur. Looming moodily over the proceedings, as he must, is Christopher Rogers' mean, lean Dracula, intoning the four most famous words ever spoken by Bela Lugosi and then saying little else, yet remaining firmly in command.

That the Classical Theatre of Harlem is easy to find (just take the B or C to 145th Street and walk down four blocks) is the least of so many compelling reasons to see their terrific production of Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain. Perhaps the most compelling is that you will be truly startled and on edge for the entire two hours and forty five minutes you’ll be there.

Considered to be Walcott’s masterpiece, his timeless 1967 play begins with a petrified old man, Makak (the alarmingly real André De Shields), imprisoned in a Caribbean jail for acting on a messianic vision he received charging him to bring justice to his people who have been ravaged and reduced to slavery and physical and cultural impoverishment. In separate cells are two African thieves, and minding them is Corporal Lestrade (the chilly and chilling Michael Early), a mulatto militarist who, in between questioning, beating, and withholding food from his prisoners, expounds upon the differences between “Tribal Law” (or “Nigger Law”) and “Roman Law” (of which he is staunchly in favor).

What follows is a flashback: Makak is awoken from his potent fever dream by his friend Moustique (the droll Kim Sullivan), who becomes a charmingly conniving John the Baptist to Makak’s Messiah, when they descend the mountain to deliver his message. The first act ends with an almost-uprising at the market resulting in Makak’s arrest and Moustique’s death. The second half blurs dream and reality as Makak escapes with the two thieves to continue his divine quest for justice.

The director, Alfred Preisser (also the company’s artistic director and co-founder), has assembled a stellar group of collaborators in his cast, crew, designers, and musicians, making this poetic drama astoundingly theatrical. The twelve person ensemble is a force of nature, multiplying by thousands as they perform their songs (with eerily heartening music by William “Spaceman” Patterson) and dances (with Bruce Heath’s beautiful and intimidating choreography). Throughout the play there is a compliance that is menacing—to the White Man without and the internalized White Ideal within—and this is perfectly evoked in the atmosphere created by the designers (Troy Hourie’s sets, Kimberly Glennon’s costumes, and Aaron Black’s lighting) and the musicians (Patterson, Shayshahn “Phearnone” MacPherson, and Donald Eaton, et al). The cumulative effect is a haunting tension that is never relieved—you find it upon entering the theatre and only escape it upon leaving.

My singular discontent is that De Shields, in a most humble and fully-realized performance, is at times upstaged by the spectacular ensemble. It is not that he cannot hold the stage—on the contrary, most audience members forgo intermission to watch him dream in his cell. The focus seems intentionally shifted, and while it is true he is the product and prophet of his faceless people, the tribal attention leaves us oddly disconnected from the broken man who climbs back up Monkey Mountain at the end of the play.

Still, in light of the overwhelming virtues of this production, that is a mere quibble. The Classical Theatre of Harlem, whose recent revival of Jean Genet’s The Blacks: A Clown Show transferred to the East 13th Street Theatre after its initial run, is making theatre dangerous again. But don’t wait for this production to transfer (though if it doesn’t, that would be a great loss); take the B or C to 145th Street, walk south on St. Nicholas Avenue to 645, purchase a ticket, sit down, and surrender yourself to something new.

Potent, stirring, and stunningly theatrical, Drowning Crow needs to be on your list of must-see plays this winter and spring. Why? First and foremost, for the way that it breaks down and through barriers—this is a play that constantly surprises us as it blends music, movement, poetry, and performance genres old and new to create an authentically innovative theatrical vocabulary of its own: a surreal dreamscape of a play where past, present, and future collide in the idioms of spirituals, hip-hop and Nat King Cole. Playwright Regina Taylor's vision has been gorgeously realized by director Marion McClinton and designers David Gallo (sets), Paul Tazewell (costumes), Ken Billington (lighting), Dan Moses Schreier (sound), and Wendall K. Harrington (video), who together have conjured bold and rather visceral surroundings for this remarkable piece.

And if all that isn't enough to entice you to the Biltmore Theatre, then the chance to witness what is surely one of the finest ensembles on Broadway should. Led by Anthony Mackie in a breakout performance and anchored by the acclaimed actress Alfre Woodard, all of the members of this cast are doing extraordinary work, proving over and over again that old saw about there not being any small roles, just small actors. These actors' talents are huge and their creations are vivid and unforgettable. Bravo to all involved, and to Manhattan Theatre Club for bringing them to Broadway.

Drowning Crow is adapted, rather more faithfully than I expected, from Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. Taylor has translated not so much the words (Curt Columbus is credited in the program with that task) as the concepts, passions, and emotions of the earlier play, migrating them from pre-Revolutionary Russia to the contemporary American South. If you know The Seagull, then you know the story: Constantine Trip (aka C-Trip; he's a budding hip-hop performance artist, played by Anthony Mackie) lives on an estate in the Gullah Islands of South Carolina with his uncle, a prosperous but now ailing former Judge named Paul Nicholas (Paul Butler). It's summer, and Constantine's mother, the famous actress Josephine Nicholas Ark Trip (Woodard), is coming to visit; with her is her current younger lover, the successful writer Robert Alexander Trigor (Peter Francis James). In their honor, Constantine puts on his latest avant-garde play, which he's written for his neighbor Hannah Jordan (Aunjanue Ellis), with whom he is hopelessly besotted. Also on hand to see Constantine and Hannah perform are Sammy and Paula Bow (Stephen McKinley Henderson and Stephanie Berry), the overseers of Paul's estate; Mary (Tracie Thoms), their gloomy, alcoholic daughter, who is unrequitedly in love with Constantine; Simon (Curtis McClarin), a local schoolteacher, in love with Mary; and Dr. Eugene Dawn (Roger Robinson), longtime physician and friend to the family and Paula's lover. There are also the servants: Yak and Okra (Peter Macon and Baron Vaughn), Constantine's bandmates, and Jackie (Ebony Jo-Ann), the elderly maid.

As I said, if you know The Seagull, then you know pretty much what to expect as Drowning Crow's four acts unfold; if you don't, then you're really lucky because you'll be coming to this oh-so human comedy unencumbered. Taylor, as Chekhov was before her, is both amused and touched by the follies of her fellow creatures: Drowning Crow records, faithfully and perhaps a bit exaggeratedly, the perpetual self-involvement of these characters as well as the grand and often futile gestures they make in the name of love. The web of relationships is complicated—Simon loves Mary, who loves Constantine, who loves Hannah, who loves Trigor; Josephine is jealous of Constantine and Trigor's love for Hannah, and Constantine is jealous of Josephine and Hannah's love for Trigor—but the throughline, for each and every individual in this play, is clear, and so very much like real life: we want what we want, and we do what we must to get it.

Funny, sad, and compelling stuff, this; but it's not all that's on offer in Drowning Crow, which is why this play is finally so rich and so important. For Taylor has more on her mind than just human relations: she's interested, particularly, in the clash of generations at the heart of this story, and what that might indicate about life for African Americans—and Americans in general, I think—today. She's given Josephine a very particular history, a career that began at the Negro Ensemble Company in the heady years following the Civil Rights Era, and then peaked on television playing somebody's "mama" for ten years on a sitcom. Trigor, we are told, wrote a semi-serious novel before turning to films and now UPN comedies; the critics call him a good writer, he famously tells us—but not as good as Spike Lee.

Contrast these two middle-aged characters with C-Trip, who wants to create a new kind of theatre that will both deconstruct and  dismantle an ethos he sees embodied in plays like A Raisin in the Sun; and with Hannah, who idolizes Trigor and the easy fame he represents and longs to become a celebrity. Taylor maneuvers spectacularly through these variant ideas about theatre and culture and self-actualization, never forgetting that all of these concepts are at once very personal and entirely political. C-Trip rails against his mother's accomodationist values in a raw and beautiful hip-hop solo near the top of the show that is filled with bitter irony and humor. Josephine rages at her son's lazy inertia in a climactic third act speech in which she accuses him and his generation of thinking that Denzel Washington is Malcolm X just because he played him in the movies.

The image of black Americans in popular culture is never far from these people's minds as they try to place themselves within a shifting society. The old overseer Sammy chats endlessly about iconic entertainers from the segregated past, asking Josephine if she knows the whereabouts of the Nicholas Brothers, or quoting an ancient exchange between Jack Benny and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. The schoolteacher does a mean Louis Armstrong imitation, and the doctor sings Nat King Cole tunes under his breath; Yak and Okra harmonize and breakdance to "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" And, in perhaps Drowning Crow's most transcendent moment, sounds of a church gathering across the bay inspire the old servant Jackie to burst gloriously into the spiritual "Didn't It Rain," in which everyone present (save Trigor) soulfully participates. (Watch Woodard's Josephine register her conflicted feelings about this song, silently and eloquently, as she listens and then joins in.) Whatever their differences, these characters are united by a past they cannot and should not forget. 

This collision of past and present is what finally fuels Drowning Crow and makes it such an extraordinary theatrical experience. C-Trip comments on the play's events with an omniscience that makes us understand that the whole she-bang is really happening inside his head, probably; explosive bits of video, dance, song, and theatrics erupt from his consciousness and onto the stage, framing the story and creating a kind of catalog of cultural references that have built and informed this young man. The play moves easily through four or five dimensions: is Jackie, the old caretaker, really here now, or is she simply a specter of the family's collective past? Are Yak and Okra even real? Drowning Crow is a fever dream of a play, probing the stuff of a young man's mind, heart, and soul.

To close, now: a paragraph to praise the extraordinary work of this cast. I've already told you that Mackie and Woodard are terrific; ditto the very accomplished Paul Butler and Peter Francis James. The production's two young actresses are downright revelatory: Aunjanue Ellis is radiantly life-affirming as Hannah (at least in the early scenes), while Tracie Thoms gets Mary's bitter resignation exactly right and makes her utterly sympathetic. Indeed, the tender details of each characterization give Drowning Crow its blazing vitality—Stephen McKinley Henderson's chipper nostalgia, Stephanie Berry's furtive hopefulness, Roger Robinson's relaxed ebullience, Ebony Jo-Ann's timeless, commanding presence. Together, they create not just family but community: a microcosm of humanity, reflecting back at us as they try to make sense of this confusing thing called life.

I found LABrynth Theatre Company’s latest show, Dutch Heart of Man,  strangely unsatisfying. It has all the elements a good show needs—a strong cast, excellent design, good dialogue—but somewhere in the process of knitting all of them together, the play got lost. It can’t seem to make up its mind. It begins like another version of Marty, Paddy Chayefsky’s classic romance about a working class butcher who finds love in working class New York circa the 1950’s. There is even a character named Marty, which I took as a sly nod by the playwright to said movie. But no—halfway through, the story gets morbid, weird, and cruel. Sometimes, pulling the old switcheroo on the audience's expectations can be exciting and fresh, and I suppose that is what both playwright Robert Glaudini and director Charles Goforth are going for, but the effect, at least for me, evoked little more than a ho hum. The script seems muddled, and the direction only made the muddling worse. I didn’t love the play, and I didn’t hate it. It was okay. Ho Hum.

The play revolves around the character Dutch, an inarticulate construction worker who often finishes conversations after the person he has been talking with has left the room.. Salvatore Inzerillo brings a lot of heart to the role, making what could be a stereotype of the dumb working man come to life. Dutch’s inability to finish conversations and say what he means leads him into trouble, to say the least. Dutch works with Marty, a foul-mouthed, self-centered ladies man who lives with his mother. David Deblinger plays Marty in such a way that I found myself liking this rather shallow character—always the sign of a good actor.

Dutch, we find out early on, has an unrequited crush on Florence, a gas station attendant. Florence, played honestly and strongly by Maggie Bofill, works two jobs and lives with her iron-lung bound mother. Yes, I said iron-lung. Early in the show, Dutch works up the nerve to ask Florence out, and they end up on a double date with Marty and Florence’s friend, fellow working-class gal Phyllis, played with panache by Wilemina Olivia Garcia. Up to halfway through the date, it seems as if this is a story about two people who find each other in a rather gritty, typical blue collar world. Then the worm turns, and the play becomes a rather weak melodrama about how Dutch’s limited means of expression tightens the noose on his world until it explodes.

I found the plot twists in the second half of the intermissionless play too far-fetched for what had started out as such a nice character piece, and a waste of a good cast. In fact, the entire cast is great, which is to be expected from this company. What I found lacking was any sense of connection. This production doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind what it wants to be. It starts out as a semi-sweet character study of a lonely man who can’t express himself, and ends as a melodramatic crime story about the working class folk. Also, several of the minor characters are written in a functionary way, without any depth or believability. For example, when Dutch goes to Florence’s place to pick her up for the date, we meet a “nutty” church lady, played by Portia—a talented actress who deserves better material. This character is written in a completely different style than the rest of the play, and sticks out like a sore thumb. I didn’t understand what a two-dimensional character was doing in the three-dimensional world set up at the beginning of the play.

The design is great. The stage is a gigantic construction site, with vignettes cleverly inserted all over the scaffolding. Narelle Sissons, the set designer, masterfully creates little worlds with an inventiveness I wish could have been lent to the script.

All in all, Dutch Heart of Man is a mediocre show from a very talented company. I hope that this is an aberration of their work, and not a sign of things to come.

Mark St. Germain's new play Ears on a Beatle has a provocative subject: the FBI's surveillance of John Lennon in the early 1970s, when, apparently, J. Edgar Hoover and Strom Thurmond both believed the former Beatle to be a threat to the security of the United States and were looking for ways to deport him; and President Nixon, in the year of Watergate, worried that Lennon's influence might hurt his chances in the presidential election.

Sounds ludicrous now, but also eerily familiar; St. German writes in a program note that he intends Ears on a Beatle to be both "an inspiration and a cautionary tale." I wish that he had actually accomplished that goal, but unfortunately Ears on a Beatle—though enormously entertaining and watchable—falters as either political commentary or documentary reportage. St. Germain has compiled a wealth of facts—many of them from one-time classified documents, on display in the theatre lobby—but he hasn't, or can't, tie them together satisfactorily. Was the Lennon case part of a grand conspiracy that included the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and, ultimately, Lennon himself? St. Germain tantalizes and teases but is finally inconclusive, making for fun melodrama but shaky history.

The play begins in Washington Square Park, where FBI vet Howard Ballantine is rendezvousing with his newly assigned partner, rookie Daniel McClure, to initiate the Lennon surveillance. St. Germain cheekily makes their code words lyrics from "I Am the Walrus," the first of many in-jokes for Beatles fans. Ballantine is gruff and professional and thoroughly square while the hip McClure is both maverick and loose cannon; the best thing about the play is the way that St. Germain resists a lot of "buddy movie" clichés  and develops his characters in unexpected but believable ways. We like both of them, especially in the persons of actors Dan Lauria and Bill Dawes, and their battles with each other and with the hopelessly mulish FBI bureaucracy engage us.

The production is further enhanced by St. Germain's own briskly informal staging, and by Eric Renschler's nifty set design, which is dominated by two walls of floor-to-ceiling file boxes, presumably filled with the voluminous FBI documentation of "the subject,"—true eye-catchers that also serve a neat purpose in the show that I will not give away here. Costumer David C. Woolard has fun dressing McClure in '70s protest garb. Producers Daryl Roth, Debra Black, and Leon Wildes (who was John Lennon and Yoko Ono's attorney during the 1970s) have not skimped in any department; though the script feels finally insubstantial, there is nevertheless an entertaining play unfolding here.

Metropolitan Playhouse, one of my favorite downtown theatres because of their commitment to thoughtful and engaging historically-flavored work, has now taken on perhaps its most ambitious assignment: East Village Chronicles, a sort of theatrical history of its home turf, the Manhattan neighborhood(s) variously known as the Lower East Side, East Village, and Alphabet City. Nine playwrights and five directors have collaborated on ten short plays, divided into two programs. Evening A takes place in the 19th century, and Evening B covers the period since then, up to the most recent historical roadmarker, September 11, 2001. It's a wonderful concept that is fairly well-realized.

East Village Chronicles offers a sweeping, panoramic look at a city and a country on the move—snapshots of Americans (and, consequently, of America) at regularly scheduled intervals. Herewith, the plays, their periods and subjects:

   ▪ Astor and Irving by Michael D. Jackson: Multimillionaire John Jacob Astor engages writer Washington Irving to write his biography, early 1800s
   ▪ The Exploitation of Joice Heath by Trav S.D.: P.T. Barnum's first "attraction" is a Negro woman whom he claims is George Washington's 160-year-old nurse, 1835
   ▪ Manhattan Drum Taps by Craig Pospisil: A black man hides out from the Draft Riots in a white woman's home, Civil War
   ▪ If Cleanliness by Michael Bettencourt: An Irish immigrant struggles with cholera, religion, and Emma Goldman, 1880s
   ▪ Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeutschland by Anthony P. Pennino: A German immigrant loses her son and husband in the Slocum fire, 1904
   ▪ Ragtime Galz by Renée Flemings: Women become aware of various social issues, including birth control and unionization, thanks to Margaret Sanger and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, early 1900s
   ▪ Bring Back Lillian Wald by Mary Baldridge: Lillian Wald debates the Devil, time period unclear (Wald was active from the 1890s until about 1920)
   ▪ Kosher Brew by Erica Silberman: The Jewish heir to a kosher winemaking company wants to play jazz, 1970s
   ▪ 225 by Staci Swedeen: A young woman from Kansas moves into an Alphabet City apartment, only to meet the ghost of an earlier inhabitant, 1980s
   ▪ Goodbye to All That by Anthony P. Pennino: In the afterlife, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee killed in the World Trade Center attacks meets a Slocum disaster victim, 2001

Trav S.D.'s contribution about Barnum and Joice Heath is delightfully entertaining as it makes a sucker out of  the man who said "There is a sucker born every minute" (I won't reveal the particulars of Mr. S.D.'s nifty surprise). And Michael D. Jackson's play,  depicting a meeting between Astor and Irving, is fun and illuminating, particularly when a wealthy businesswoman named Maria Williamson, the owner of a chain of brothels, arrives to shake things up. Both of these plays are particularly satisfying because they encapsulate American archetypes so very well; Jackson, especially, has chosen his subjects cannily, pitting the rich, unscrupulous, acquisitive, and very pragmatic Astor against the more modest, more spiritual, puritanical Irving to reveal the colorful contradictions that comprise the American character.

Other pieces fit more awkwardly into the tapestry: Bettencourt's If Cleanliness and Silberman's Kosher Brew feel very specific with regard to character but very generalized with regard to time and place: Silberman drops in a date (March 8, 1970) and a place (Fillmore East), but there's little else in her piece to tie it to the East Village at a particular moment in history. And Baldridge's Bring Back Lillian Wald doesn't even try to evoke period, instead fantastically putting its title character on a contemporary news program to debate a devil whose views are alarmingly similar to the current administration's (itself a sadly reductive notion).

A few plays find their authors trying something interesting and/or new, and not quite achieving it, which is par for the course in an evening of one-acts such as this. Renee Flemings' Ragtime Galz is fascinating and admirably conscientious, but by tackling two very important social issues—Margaret Sanger's early efforts to educate women about birth control and the horrendous working conditions that led to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire—she simply bites off more than she can chew in a half-hour play. Craig Pospisil weaves the political rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln and the poetry of Walt Whitman around a bitter drama involving a black man seeking refuge in the home of an Irish immigrant during the Civil War Draft Riots—an intriguing idea that doesn't quite cohere. Staci Swedeen's 225 is built around a terrific concept, that the newcomers reclaiming the East Village must not lose sight of the rich and varied history of their neighborhood. But it's not developed sufficiently to pack the emotional wallop that it could. Pennino, who was the leader of this project, makes a stab at tying things together thematically in the final piece, Goodbye to All That, but it feels incomplete.

But of course kudos to all these artists, who have managed to create two genuinely engaging evenings of theatre in a remarkably short period of time. All five directors plus designer William Kenyon, stage manager Gavin Walker Smith, and the uncredited costumer(s) must all be acknowledged for pulling things together with enormous professionalism and polish, particularly given the tight time frame (Pennino tells me that all ten plays were written, cast, and mounted in just four months) and an off-off-Broadway budget.

Huzzahs, too, to a hard-working company of actors, several of whom take three or four roles in the course of the two evenings. Among those making strong impressions: Andrew Firda as Astor, Barnum, and the Devil (a trio of roles any actor would kill to play, I imagine); Jane Petrov as Maria Williamson and as the Irish housewife in Manhattan Drum Taps; Phillip Bettencourt, singing beautifully a capella in Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeustchland; Christina Romanello as a spunky Margaret Sanger; Lisa Barnes, ditto, as both Emma Goldman (in Auf Wiederschen, Kleindeutschland) and Lillian Wald; and Laura E. Johnston, a delightfully buoyant presence as Joice Heath.

I am full of respect for all the artists who worked to bring East Village Chronicles to fruition; and it is because of that that I offer a couple of closing thoughts about the project as a whole. I would have liked more historical consistency—Wald and Goldman seemed to appear out of sequence, and most of the mid-20th century was absent altogether; why? I had a clear sense of inclusiveness, particularly with regard to women's issues; yet there is too much of some things: Emma Goldman figures in no fewer than three plays; Irish immigrants dominate (again, three plays). I missed the richness of the New York City melting pot: where, for example, are the Chinese, whose culture is so integral to the Lower East Side?

Finally, I think it's telling that the emphasis here was so much on tragedy: riots, disease, disastrous fires. Boundless optimism is relegated here only to bounders like Astor and Barnum: is that the vision our playwrights really have for their town?

Currently at Irish Repertory Theatre is Eden, a two-person play by Eugene O'Brien that tells the melancholy story of a broken marriage. It's beautifully performed by Catherine Byrne, whose work here is honest and nearly heartbreaking, and by Ciarán O'Reilly, who is appealing and affecting even if he seems at least ten years older than the man he is portraying.

The plot revolves around Breda and Billy, a married couple who have drifted apart. She—long coping with a weight problem—has at last slimmed down and regained some confidence, and she makes a date with her husband to meet at a local disco for what she hopes and expects will be a meaningful reconciliation and renewal of their relationship.

But Billy, afraid to be interested in his wife as he battles impending middle age, has other plans for the evening. He's been fantasizing about bedding the grown daughter of one of his mates, and has managed to convince himself that she's ready to do the deed on the very same night, and commencing at the very same disco.

The inevitable collision—which we know is about to happen even though neither character does—leads to pathetic defeat for Billy and unexpected affirmation for Breda. The entire play is pitched toward Breda, which makes this conclusion satisfying, and Byrne's luminous, understated presence amplifies our empathy for this intelligent woman who is full of sadness but not bitterness. O'Reilly, jocular middle-aged leprechaun that he is, softens Billy's edges: a 50-year-old man licking his wounds after a 20-year-old girl rejects him is much easier to take than a 35-year-old doing the same thing.

Playwright O'Brien has structured Eden as two monologues recounting the events of the fateful evening, delivered alternately by Breda and Billy. It's a choice that adds a layer of artifice to the proceedings: I was very aware in this play that I wasn't sure who the actors were talking to, or why. Byrne, in particular, is always clearly in the moment even though the stuff she's talking about has presumably happened to her character in the past: the perspective that ought to come with time is missing here, even though the format seems to require it. So I felt distanced from Breda and Billy and the things they were describing—precisely because they were describing rather than discovering.

Nevertheless, Eden is worthy of your attention; O'Brien's vivid writing will bring to mind bittersweet memories from your own checkered past, I think, as you ponder and savor this tale of a mismated and misbegotten pair.

Entering the theatre, we are quick to notice a slight figure seated in an oversized chair, with a small table by her side. She writes a few lines in a child’s composition notebook, then peers out into space. She gets up, paces several steps, sits again, twiddles with a loose hair, toys with her cuticles, writes again. This is Sylvia Plath.

Edge takes place on the last day of writer Sylvia Plath’s life, just a few hours before her suicide. Fully aware of this fact, she will spend her remaining time telling the audience of all the slights that have befallen her; all her disappointments; all the people and events that made her who she is. Additionally, she gets her chance to deride and disparage those who have wronged her during her life and will do so after her death.

Playwright Paul Alexander has written extensively on the life and works of Sylvia Plath and has a decided point of view. Essentially, he blames a great deal of what happened to Sylvia on the two main men in her life—her father and her husband, poet Ted Hughes. Both were cold, domineering and distant, and both abandoned her, her father by dying when she was eight years old; her husband by running off with another woman. By focusing on this however, questions are left unaddressed. What were the influences and ideas that came together to form the feelings and soul of a poet whose work impacted an entire generation? Why was she so very self assured as a writer, and so insecure as a person?

Notwithstanding the script’s limitations, Edge’s Sylvia Plath is brought vividly to life in a mesmerizing performance by Angelica Torn. Addressing the audience—and she deliberately addresses the audience to tell her story—she affects the slightly imperious, rushed tones of a "Smith girl" (think Gloria from Auntie Mame combined with any of The Group). Yet when the narrative stops so that Sylvia can recreate for us a specific event, Torn’s performance changes completely. Now her delivery can go from childlike adoration (as she recounts episodes with her father) to flirtatious and insecure (as she relives her early years with Ted Hughes) to sardonic and catty (as she remembers her husband’s mistress). Torn gives us a complex, nuanced portrait of a troubled woman; there is an emotional undercurrent as she recounts specific memories that in another’s hands would probably fall tragically flat.

The play is expertly directed by Alexander, and beautifully enhanced by the work of lighting designer Joe Levasseur and sound designer Dennis Michael Keefe, who convey changing moods with a baby’s cry or a subtle shift in light.

Eight Days (Backwards) begins with a long monologue, delivered with impeccable affectation and comic timing by Randy Danson, about a middle-aged, middle class Jewish lady whose husband has surprised her by suddenly becoming interested in S&M. As Gloria, speaking on her cellphone to an unseen friend, warms to her subject, she reveals progressively more intimate details about her first experience playing dominatrix to her husband (whom we see at the side of the stage, played by Bill Buell in a deliberately embarrassing get-up featuring leather and a frilly maid's apron).

Eight Days (Backwards) ends, per its title, exactly one week before, in a bar where Frank (Gloria's husband) is having a quick drink with his pal Izzy. Frank's got a shopping bag with him, and when Izzy peeks into it while Frank hits the mens' room, the audience titters right along with him; though Izzy kindly doesn't mention it, we know that he's thinking: Frank, you pervert, you're busted.

Bookended somewhat surprisingly between these mean-spirited, overtly sensational vignettes is a much more thoughtful play about a group of New Yorkers trying to deal with loneliness and purposelessness. Their destinies are bound through random connections and, more potently, missed connections; we watch the tales unfold backwards which means we know how they're going to come out, which works better than you might expect. The stories that playwright Jeremy Dobrish tells here concern a widowed business executive involved with a much younger woman; one of his colleagues, stuck in a loveless marriage and an unfulfilling job, who is having an affair with his Mexican immigrant housekeeper; and the son of yet another colleague, adrift in the big city after graduating from college, looking for some reason to live another day.

Dobrish evokes these bittersweet lives—with the emphasis on bitter—deftly. Some of the decisions that he and director Mark Brokaw make feel a little calculated (like having Chirstopher Innvar, as the man with the Mexican housekeeper, rise out of his bed nude for no good reason; or having David Garrison, as the widower, apparently prematurely ejaculate in a brief flashback); these choices connect, in the worst way, to the pandering excesses of the prologue/epilogue, and give us a Dobrish—whose work has been seen off-off-Broadway for about a decade—slumming uptown like a latter-day Woody Allen.

But at their best, the scenes at the heart of Eight Days (Backwards) show us the simple, trivial details of what life is like. The highlight is the scene involving Jonathan, the recent college grad (played by recent Graduate Josh Radnor) and a fortune teller. The latter is portrayed by Randy Danson in a complicated, multilayered performance that ranks among the finest acting I've ever seen: we're keenly aware, throughout the scene, that this woman is a charlatan and at the same time precisely the wise seer that Jonathan needs right now. It's a shame that nothing else in the play rises to the level of this episode.

Brokaw directs with customary flair on a stylish mobile set by Mark Wendland. Each member of the ensemble does his or her best with what's dealt them, which means that Danson emerges as the star of the evening in the showiest roles and Radnor makes a nice impression as the eminently sympathetic Jonathan. Barbara Garrick is stuck in two bitch-lady boss roles that reek of misogynism—there's that Woody Allen influence again. David Garrison, Christopher Innvar, Bill Beull, and Daniella Alonso deliver solidly in two roles apiece.

Publicity materials for Tim Robbins' new play describe it as a "ripped-from-the-headlines satire"—which was true (kind of) last November when Embedded debuted in Los Angeles. Today, a year after the start of the War in Iraq which is its target, Embedded is old news.

It fails as agitprop because events have passed it by: Robbins needs to be talking about insurgents setting off car bombs and attempts to write constitutions if he wants to engage our political consciousnesses in March 2004.

And Embedded fails as comedy—satire is supposed to be funny, isn't it?—because its approach is so heavy-handed. Robbins bludgeons Condaleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfield, and other higher-ups in the Bush administration, rendering them as one-dimensional green-eyed monsters. When a parodic sketch leaves me feeling sorry for Dick Cheney because it is so grossly one-sided, well, something's wrong somewhere. Throughout his play, Robbins balances Hollywood-style post-'60s hippie-ism with a very contemporary political correctness, taking care to direct his anger at the War while showing only compassion for the men and women charged with fighting it. Fair enough; but the resultant mawkish sentimentality that characterizes much of Embedded is capable of yielding nary a laugh or jolt.

And jolts and laughs are clearly what are intended. Embedded intertwines three sort-of narratives: The first is about embedded journalists in "Gomorrah," who receive boot camp training from (and never ultimately escape from under the thumb of) a kick-ass drill sergeant-type who would be by-the-book stereotypical were it not for his penchant to quote from Broadway musicals. (This conceit, which Robbins must imagine to be very funny, is not.) The idea here is that these journalists become slaves to the war machine, subject to unprecedented censorship and bullying; it's the most potentially shocking material in the show, but it's buried beneath the jokey attitude and a subplot involving a crusading reporter who manages to thwart the establishment and Get The Truth Out (Hawkeye Pierce as a newsman, played by an actor who bears a striking resemblance to the playwright).

The second strand depicts, somberly, the daily lives of some of the servicemen/women in "Gomorrah," one of whom will remind you of Jessica Lynch, the soldier who was dramatically rescued from an "enemy" hospital last year.

The third part takes us inside the White House (no president in sight, however), where characters named Dick, Gondola, Pearly White, Cove, Woof, and Rum-Rum—grotesquely masked and lit—plot and plan the conflict that will make them all richer and more powerful. Robbins has these folks consulting their Palm Pilots to choose the "best" day for the hostilities to commence and rehearsing noble-sounding excuses for why each of them avoided military service in their youths. Reductive and childishly mean-spirited, these little scenes prove unfunny and unedifying.

And by the way, what's up with all the disguised names? Is Karl Rove going to sue? Is Iraq?

At any rate, Embedded emerges, finally, as a sadly squandered opportunity. An interview in the press kit quotes Robbins as saying that the show was put together in six weeks, and that compressed timeframe shows badly on stage: Robbins' direction is as scattershot as his text; performances and design all lack polish and finesse. Of course, something genuinely inspiring on the political front might make us forgive such lapses, but as I've already indicated, there's not much of substance to take away from this show.

Finally, we're left wondering what Embedded is for. Tickets are fifty bucks a pop (and I don't see any evidence that the proceeds are going to any charitable or political group): Robbins, it seems, isn't just preaching to the converted, he's preaching to the well-heeled converted. I'd like to think that a movie star who just won an Academy Award could find a more populist way to spread a message he believes in.

Since seeing Theatre for a New Audience's revival of Engaged, I have come across two separate published pieces asserting how much Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest  was  indebted to this earlier play by William S. Gilbert. See Engaged and you'll agree that that's true, as far as it goes; but you'll also discover, I think, the reason why Wilde's play is a staple of the modern repertory while Gilbert's has faded into relative obscurity. Earnest trumps Engaged in scope as well as sheer wit: Gilbert's satirical fable, though funny and clever in its way, is relentlessly one-note, and that note is rather a sour one. Beyond its academic value, it seems to have little to recommend it.

At least, that's what I conclude from this acrid production. The story concerns Cheviot Hill, a rich but overly thrifty fellow who tends to fall head-over-heels with every woman he sets eyes upon. Because of this, he has a protector of sorts, one Belvawney, who is paid £1000 a year to keep him from getting married. If and when Cheviot does succumb, Belvawney's income reverts to a Mr. Symperson.

Thus does Gilbert equate matrimony with a business transaction; the whole of Engaged sets about proving that everybody will do anything for money, love (if it even exists) be dashed. Cheviot proposes to three different young ladies, each of whom is eager to improve her financial situation by accepting. The outcome ultimately hinges on whether Cheviot was actually standing in Scotland or England when he made one of those proposals—a device that can only be called Gilbertian, the kind of whimsical frivolity that fuels his best collaborations with Sir Arthur Sullivan.

But there's no Sullivan here to provide bright and airy music to temper Gilbert's sardonic cynicism; that's why Engaged finally feels so claustrophobically repetitive and disagreeable. Director Doug Hughes (admittedly brought in as a last-minute replacement for Gerald Gutierrez, who died in the early stages of this production's assembly) hasn't found a way to make the jokes feel bubbly or the characters likable. The cast lets us down as well: James Gale, as a bombastic Scotsman called McGillicuddy, comes closest to setting off some sparks of interest, but he turns out to have the briefest role in the play, just a few lines at the end of Act One. All of the others, including the usually appealing Jeremy Shamos as Cheviot and the skilled veteran John Horton as Symperson, just push push push to land the jokes, with very little joy and far too much artifice.

Holiday-Family-Dinner-Apprehensiveness (“HFDA”) is given a fresh, funny and ferocious dissection in Ain Gordon’s Epic Family Epic, or The Hell Family Supper (written specifically for Dance Theatre Workshop in 1988, where this revised version is currently in production).

Family holidays are notoriously hectic, anxious, uncomfortable events. Rarely, however, do we get to see beneath the hackneyed depictions of the domestically-consumed mother, the glued-to-the-TV father, the cheek-pinching aunt, etc. Gordon gives us a vivid idea of what is going on underneath for the Hell Family as they prepare for their Thanksgiving, and it is hell.

There are, for one thing, many characters and only seven actors. Each performer does not so much play several roles as s/he is simply inhabited by several identities. One woman, for example, tells the audience she is Aunt Tess PLUS several other relatives, aged 39, 72, 8, 45, etc., some of whom are living, some of whom are recently deceased, and some of whom died years and years ago. These spry ramblings in which the characters explain to us their circuitous family history are often hilarious.

But there is also a feeling of wartime in the exchanges between the characters—a careful diplomacy in the stifling decorum. They are held captive, enduring one another’s banal family-get-together interrogations, while covertly trying to contextualize themselves at this dinner table of strangers. “How do I relate and how am I related to these people?” is the funny/sad leitmotif.

We are overwhelmed along with these shell-shocked characters; we feel their xenophobia. Gordon, who also directed this bullet of a production, accomplishes this with wit and no wasted words. Unlike the many personalities they each individually host, this ensemble of character/storytellers know each other remarkably well. The chaotic focus bounces from actor to actor like an effortless game of racquetball.

“Why do we have to fight the battle when we didn’t declare the war?” asks one character. The war, for Gordon’s men and women, is not over the turkey or the television set, nothing so tangible, identifiable, and stoppable. These characters were born on the battlefield, without a single idea as to whom their compatriots might be, much less a notion of what they are supposed to be championing. For an hour, we can feel how much they yearn to be debriefed, and neither they nor we are given an easy catharsis. But leaving the theatre, I felt lighter, taken care of, entertained, and, for a little while, all my holiday-family-dinner apprehensions were exorcized.

If some group or other decides, at the end of the current theatre season, to give an award for best performance as a farm animal, then Ben Scaccia has to be the shoo-in favorite. Scaccia is currently appearing in Overlap Productions' new show Eureka!, in which he plays a character named, simply, Bull, and who indeed is a bull (the last one on earth, it turns out; playwright Elizabeth Horsburgh posits in this futuristic sci-fi morality comedy that the bovine population on earth became virtually extinct sometime in the 21st century). Scaccia incarnates said Bull to perfection, showing us what we humans would probably call his dumbness and his guilelessness—but of course neither one of those descriptors truly applies: what Scaccia gets so right in his performance is the innocent animalness of this instinctive beast, and his gloriously tuned-in-to-nature nature.

Which is precisely what Horsburgh is writing about in this imaginative, surprising, funny, and sweet play. Eureka! is the story of Belle who is a high-powered Type-A business woman, glued to her desk and her cellphone. Her husband, Boris, misses the much less stressed-out girl he married years ago, and when he hears a commercial promising total relaxation and happiness at a remote ranch, he's quick to sign her up for the program. Trouble is—and here's just the first of Horsburgh's wondrously startling leaps of faith—the ranch is really a laboratory for a mad scientist named Barnaby Boomerang (the sixth, or the seventh: he never uses the same numeric suffix twice), who has decided to reverse the planet's cow shortage by mating a human woman—properly treated with bovine hormones—with the aforementioned last surviving bull.

Bear with me: Horsburgh and her enitrely simpatico director Susanna L. Harris manage the tone in just such a way that their play doesn't turn into a bestiality gross-out or a retread/rebuttal to The Goat. Instead, we find the unsuspecting Belle achieving genuine happiness and relaxation at the ranch, as advertised, as she munches contentedly on some grass and, eventually, wanders naked through the pasture toward her soulmate, Bull. Belle discovers—or is it rediscovers?—the qualities that her responsibly adult existence eschews, and it's hard not to empathize with her when she turns down Boris' plea to leave the farm and return home.

Act Two brings severe plot twists that complicate Belle's newfound happiness and cloud the sunny clarity of Horsburgh's loss-of-innocence theme. In the end, it is only Bull who really gets what he wants, which may be profound but is also rather sad. The ride that Horsburgh takes us on in Eureka! is terrific fun nevertheless, thanks to all the unexpected turns and authentically witty notions and situations that she supplies.

Credit must be given, of course, to the actors, especially Scaccia, who brightens up the stage with his every welcome appearance; also Jacqueline Mazzarella, unwavering in her conviction as frustrated, sad Belle (who believes, perhaps accurately, that she is going crazy as she undergoes her remarkable transformation) and Trevor Davis, appealingly deranged as the very strange scientist Boomerang. Michael Nathanson has the toughest job as Boris, whose character feels still unfixed in the script, morphing from nice-guy slacker at the beginning of Eureka! to vindictive monster by the end. Indeed, I'm hopeful that Horsburgh will take another look at her second act and find a more satisfying conclusion to Boris and Belle's part of the story. There may just be a splendidly wise play lurking in here, and it'll be terrific if Horsburgh and her collaborators are able to coax it out.

Final kudos go to set designer Peter Ksander and costume designer Jessica Gaffney, both of whom solve the not-at-all trivial logistical challenges of the script—several scenes take place in a pasture with the leading lady supposedly naked and having a dalliance with a bull—with wit and ingenuity on an off-off-Broadway budget. Michael Brunschwiler's lighting helps capture the mood as well, and of course Harris's buoyant staging makes it all hang together, so that we believe that Belle may have found, at least temporarily, her own Garden of Eden, resting lazily in the shade of a big old weeping willow.