nytheatre Archive
2003-04 Theatre Season Reviews

This month, you can take your kids to a world where everybody has blue skin, hedgehogs talk, and war is conducted by not inviting people to your parties. Or to a place where everybody is named Jacqueline; or to a land where "window" means "door" and "ceiling" means "floor"; or on an airplane trip to the moon.

Headquarters for all of these fancifully imaginative destinations is Theater 80, where Edward Einhorn and his Untitled Theater Company #61 have set up shop to present Fairy Tales of the Absurd. On the bill are three short plays, two of them written by the great absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco, the third by Einhorn himself. Their loony sensibilities should delight the kid in everyone, though they're specifically intended for the very youngest theatergoers. At the performance I attended, a small crowd of three- to six-year-olds seemed to be enraptured and having a blast.

The show begins with a brief curtain-raiser, Ionesco's To Prepare a Hard Boiled Egg, which is the one piece on the bill more for grown-ups than children. In it, Peter B. Brown, in chef's uniform and armed with one egg cup and one egg, lectures us on the titular topic (this after struggling to get his lectern down a narrow flight of stairs and onto the stage). Brown is hilarious as this extravagantly serious fellow, punctuating Important Details about the process with immense gravity, as when he carefully instructs us that if we want to make two or three hard boiled eggs, we will need to double or triple the recipe.

Tales for Children, written by Ionesco and adapted for the stage by Einhorn, follows. Set in Ionesco's own home, it imagines what life might have been like for his little daughter Josette, who, with the insatiable persistence of a three-year-old, demands a daily story from her often-weary daddy. Josette is played, by the way, by Uma Incrocci, at the controls of an absolutely adorable lifesize puppet/doll (created by Berit Johnson). Celia Montgomery takes the role of the housekeeper and also narrates; Father is portrayed with a charming mix of pixilation and sophistication, by John Blaylock.

So what might it have been like to be Ionesco's little daughter? Wondrous and wonderful, this play suggests. Father tells Josette about a family where everybody is named Jacqueline, prompting the little girl to tell strangers at the market about it when she inadvertently seems to come upon one of its members. He takes her on an airplane trip which eventually goes to the moon, from which they break off a chunk to munch on before heading to the sun. When she insists on getting a story while Father is trying to shave and dress, he tells her that he doesn't know where he is and sends her racing about the house looking for him. Who wouldn't wish for a parent like this? Tales for Children is sheer delight from beginning to end, engaging its young audiences' intellects and imaginations.

After a brief intermission, Fairy Tales continues with Einhorn's original piece, One Head Too Many. Equipped with the same surreal sensibility as Ionesco's work, this clever, meandering play feels like a cockeyed fractured fairy tale. It tells the story of Prince Jo, who wants to marry a beautiful girl (also named Jo). His mother, Queen Zilda, objects because (1) Jo is a scullery maid and (2)  the prince is betrothed to the powerful Princess Zzzzzzzzita (I'm not absolutely certain of the spelling of her name, sorry). Prince Jo visits a witch who works a spell that enables him to marry his beloved, but of course there's a catch: she will transform—in any way she wishes—Jo and Jo's firstborn child. I won't reveal too much more, but the name of this play (and the photo at the top of this page) offer a not-too-subtle clue as to what the witch has in mind.

One Head Too Many is funny and silly and playful; it doesn't exactly have a moral but it demonstrates any number of worthwhile values; it messes with storytelling and theatre conventions and keeps both adults and kids guessing as it delivers its quirkily convoluted story. Blaylock plays the clueless but well-meaning Prince (later King) Jo; Incrocci plays Queen Zilda, who abdicates in her son's favor so that she can make paintings of noodles, and also the unfortunate eldest princess Lilla, who winds up with an extra talking appendage sprouting out of her shoulders. Montgomery is the mysterious witch, while Brown narrates the piece and also supplies voices for several characters, among them a rather insistently petulant hedgehog. Good as they all are, the play is stolen by Ian W. Hill, who portrays a bowl of pudding and makes it the most personable and engaging talking food that I believe I've ever seen on stage.

You'll have to see the show to find out how a talking bowl of pudding figures into the story. When you do, you'll also be delighted by the inventive costumes by Carla Gant and the simple but entirely effective set by Michelle Malavet. Mostly, you'll be enchanted by the delicious variety of two writers' imaginations—Ionesco's and Einhorn's—as they take you and your family on a pleasant and happy journey to the cockeyed worlds beyond our own.

Fallout Follies is a clown show about the improbable subject (for a clown show) of a man who lives in a bunker following a nuclear holocaust and who may well be the last surviving human on Earth. Billed as a "postapocalyptic one-man variety show," it imagines how this fellow might pass the time all on his own with just a few seemingly random objects to keep him company. Company, as it turns it, is the thing he most desperately craves; and now that we come to the point, we understand that a clown show is perhaps the only way to tell this story: the ineffable sadness of such deep longing and loneliness might feel slight done as tragedy, but played for smiles it breaks our hearts.

At least it does in the remarkably capable hands (and feet, and head) of Devon Hawkes Ludlow. He's a young actor-dancer-mime-puppeteer from New Mexico who has developed this beautiful show with director Jeffrey A. Lewonczyk. He's got a wonderful, open face and an amazingly pliant body that bends to the whims of his apparently boundless imagination. A red clown nose and a neat white shirt, placed around one leg, transform into a delightfully stuffy companion who, after downing a bottle of booze, is happy to woozily play the other leg like a violin. A hand, wrapped in a white dishtowel, becomes a soulful coloratura singer. And the singular Ludlow body readily finds itself home to at least one other personality, as the performer stages convincing fights with himself and even, in one of the show's most hilarious set pieces, plays a deadly earnest game of Checkers with himself.

But Fallout Follies is more than just a collection of inventive comedic bits (though it absolutely is that): What makes this play special—indeed, what makes it a play—is Ludlow's thoughtful attention to creating and developing a believable, bittersweet Everyman, coping with the unthinkable quandary of being quite possibly the last man in the world. We understand almost as soon as we meet him that a modest little plant—the only other organism in sight—has become his most important possession. This chap craves LIFE—he searches for it on the makeshift Gilligan's Island radio that he listens to fitfully; he creates it ad hoc out of body parts and tools with his impromptu and endless anthropomorphizing. His respect for his one fellow living creature is affirming and tender.

And instructive: Fallout Follies, for all its ostensible lightheadedness, traffics in the most profoundly serious subjects, and proves remarkably apt in its conclusions. We can learn a lot from this sweet, sad little guy, forced to play Estragon and Vladimir all on his own, and entirely unsure that a Godot is ever going to turn up.

One of the key moments in Fame on 42nd Street occurs when one of the characters sings about his love for performing, crooning “I want to make magic.” The creators of this show probably intended to do just that with their high-energy, big-budget production. But—despite having had ten years to develop and sharpen this show in productions all over the world—all they've managed to make is a mess.

The story is familiar to most; focusing on a group of multicultural students from admission through graduation at New York’s High School of Performing Arts in the early '80s, Fame on 42nd Street is based on the movie and TV series Fame. Unfortunately the stage production loses or changes many of the original characters and doesn’t have the clarity that the film provided. The book, by Jose Fernandez, has more than its fair share of problems: time periods are unclear, and plot points are rushed and often feel unmotivated. A particularly jarring moment comes when one of the teachers actually mentions the movie Fame; this device completely distracts us, taking the audience out of the show entirely. The lyrics by Jacques Levy similarly suffer from a lack of thought. It seems like all the plot elements were given short shrift to include more production numbers; however since we’re never given the opportunity to get close to the characters, these big numbers lose their intensity and feel frivolous.

Though most of the performers on stage are skilled dancers and musicians, their acting is, on the whole, forced, pushed, and entirely unnatural. A few performers somehow manage to escape this glut of terrible acting (which isn’t helped by the poorly written script—it would take a performance along the lines of Ewan McGregor’s in Star Wars: Episode II to make these scenes work): Michael Kary, Gannon McHale, Dennis Moench, and Peter Reardon should be praised for remaining grounded and believable amid the thin characterizations that the rest of the cast members offer.  The most valuable artistic contributions are Norbert U. Kolb’s set and Ken Billington’s lighting. During one of the show's many ill-conceived production numbers, “Dancing on the Sidewalk,” Billington and Kolb bring Keith Haring’s '80s sidewalk art to the foreground in the most vivid and period-appropriate moment in the show.

It’s almost insulting to see such a poorly executed show with a top ticket price of $75. With all its problems, it’s easy to understand why it took more than ten years for Fame to get to New York; what's not clear is why the producers didn’t find it necessary to fix their show before finally presenting it on 42nd Street.

Fiddler on the Roof is one of those rare shows that, try as you might, you can’t really do all that badly. The current revival, playing at the Minskoff, proves that theory. The production reminds one of how great the show is, while at the same time being a rather tepid evening of theatre. I went to see this production with high hopes—Fiddler is one of the all time great Broadway shows, a legend, and I had never seen it on the Great White Way. Sadly, due to some misdirection and miscasting of the lead role, the show comes off as a dull museum piece. It’s not horrible, but it’s not great. It’s a shame that all the money that obviously went into the show couldn’t buy more passion, theatricality, or humanity.

Fiddler on the Roof’s story is a simple one, based on tales by Sholom Aleichem. It follows Tevye, a milkman in Anatevka, a small, mostly Jewish village in Russia where everyone clings to tradition as the mainstay of their existence. The trouble is, the world insists on changing. This is made apparent as Tevye’s three oldest daughters, in succession, break the community's social rules as they each fall in love and marry. First, Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, rejects her arranged marriage to Lazar Wolf and pleads with Tevye to allow her to marry Motel, the local tailor whom she loves dearly. Then Hodel, the second oldest, not only chooses whom she will marry, she doesn’t even ask for permission. The last, and hardest for Tevye to deal with, happens when his daughter Chava falls in love with Fyedka, a gentile, and marries him in a Russian Orthodox Church.

Adding to Tevye’s grief for the old way of life, there is the outside world—namely, Russia, shortly before the communist revolution that would change the world forever. By the end of the show, the entire village is overcome by the tide of history, and swept away. Change, it seems, is the one tradition that people are never able to handle very well.

In the role of Tevye, Alfred Molina is miscast. Not only is his voice in the wrong register for the role, his quiet, pensive presence seems an odd choice for Tevye. This character is outsized, a great theatrical figure of a man who has daily conversations with God as he delivers milk around the village. Molina seems to be just the opposite of that—I don’t know if this was for fear of being compared to Zero Mostel, who originated the role, or just a bad choice on the part the actor— but the end effect is a rather dull portrayal. Randy Graff fares far better in the role of Golde, Tevye’s wife. Graff manages to be both larger-than-life and completely believable at the same time. On top of that, her singing voice is fantastic.

As Motel, the local tailor who is in love with Tzeitel, John Cariani is a histrionic amalgam of nervous tics and clown-like buffoonery. I found this performance amusing, but wished it had been toned down a bit, and that Cariani had been allowed to counter his comic antics with some basic acting. As Hodel, Laura Michelle Kelly gives a stand-out performance. Kelly has a wonderful presence on the stage, and a beautiful singing voice as well. As Yente, the Matchmaker, Nancy Opel turns in a solid performance as the comical gossip of the village.

But the direction, by David Leveaux, is perplexing. Leveaux seems to have done everything he can to make sure that this show is different from the original production—but not by coming up with inspired new ways of interpreting the book. No, he seems content to have people speak softly where the book calls for them to yell. In a show written for emotional, theatrical characters, Leveaux has opted to portray them as contemplative, rather dull people.

There are some other things about the show, though, that are wonderful. The scenic and lighting design, by Tom Pye and Brian MacDevitt respectively, are phenomenal. A sparse group of huge birch trees surrounds the playing area and is set against a huge backdrop of open sky, which creates both a sense of loneliness and awe. The orchestra, placed on stage like a band at a summer party in days of old, is excellent. The score flows along perfectly. And the dances, all with the original choreography of the late Jerome Robbins, are still a wonder to behold.

Boy, do we need Finian's Rainbow right now.

In the midst of a spring that's been too long in coming, Irish Repertory Theatre's revival of this 1947 musical fantasy is a ray of blessed sunshine. Think of it: actor/singers as good as Melissa Errico, Malcolm Gets, Max von Essen, and Jonathan Freeman performing classic songs like "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" and "Old Devil Moon" with nary a microphone or amplifier in sight. These folks are having a lark of a time bringing E.Y. Harburg & Fred Saidy's pixilated creations to life and singing Harburg & Burton Lane's standard-laden score—eleven main numbers, three of them bona fide show-stoppers. Though there are just a baker's dozen performers and two pianists, there's more infectious joy and wit contained on the intimate Irish Rep stage than in any dozen Broadway houses. This is glorious theatrical refreshment—don't miss it.

The story, told in abbreviated fashion in Charlotte Moore's brisk concert-style staging, concerns a dreamy Irish fellow named Finian McLonergan, who has emigrated to America with his lovely daughter Sharon—like countless others, in search of a better, more secure life. Finian is a strong believer in making his own luck, though, and to that end he has brought along with him a magic pot of gold, stolen—or "borrowed," as he terms it—from the leprechauns of his home country. His plan is to bury the gold near Fort Knox (the play is set in a mythical state called "Missitucky"), the theory being that it will grow in the rich American soil.

There are, of course, complications: the spot where Finian decides to plant his treasure is coveted by Senator Billboard Rawkins, a corrupt, bigoted, thoroughly nasty piece of work; he has been trying to cheat the local sharecroppers (many of whom are black) out of their land for some time now. In fact, Woody Mahoney, the spokesman for the sharecroppers, has just arrived with what he thinks is enough money to buy the land out from under the Senator; Sharon helps him out and the two immediately fall in love. Things get rangy when Sharon wishes the Senator would turn black, to understand the bitter effects of his prejudice; she happens to be standing right on top of the buried gold when she says this, and so unwittingly she gets her wish.

As if that's not enough, Finian is being pursued by one of the leprechauns he "borrowed" the gold from, a fellow named Og who, because the gold has been stolen, is slowly turning into a mortal. This transformation manifests itself in Og's prompt infatuation with Sharon and, eventually, with any female that moves.

All of this whimsy serves as backdrop for one of the wittiest, liveliest scores ever composed for the theatre. I've already told you there are three show-stopping numbers in this production; let me enumerate them for you now. First, there's a rousing, gently sardonic look at "Necessity," sung by the great, too-often-underused Terri White and members of the ensemble; White's smooth, warm contralto sounds glorious here, and when she breaks out into some scat singing and then a vivacious shuffle, she positively radiates joy. White is involved in the second ovation-grabber as well, the brilliantly comic "Begat," in which a trio of gospel singers befriend the now-black Senator Rawkins and persuade him to join them in a celebration of procreation from biblical times to the present day.

And then, in what used to be called the eleven o'clock slot, Malcolm Gets, as Og the leprechaun, has his way with "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love," winning the heart, I suspect, of everyone within hearing distance as he makes this sublimely raffish paean to wanton puppy lust indelibly his own.

The show's other stars more than hold their own, by the way; when Melissa Errico (as Sharon) begins, unaccompanied, the first strains of "Glocca Morra," it's impossible not to be touched; ditto her performance, with Freeman (Finian) looking on, of "Look to the Rainbow." Von Essen (Woody) lets loose with lively renditions of "Old Devil Moon" and "If This Isn't Love." And the entire company has a ball performing the big ensemble numbers, "That Great Come-and-Get-It Day" and "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich."

So Finian's Rainbow, mounted with the enthusiasm and love that it deserves, reminds us of the wondrous thing that musical comedy can be at its very best. More to the point, it recalls a time when musicals, and the people who wrote them and the people who saw them, really believed in things, with all their hearts; our cynical, post-modern sensibility can't possibly conjure the beautiful conviction that the creators of this show clearly felt. Finian's Rainbow is satire; consumerism, capitalism, and especially racism (which Harburg denounces earnestly as "so idiotic" in program notes) all come under fire. More than we expect of this stuff holds up; there is in particular a wonderfully prescient exchange nestled in Act One. Senator Rawkins, before his transformation, is gassing to Finian and Sharon about the limited rights of his Negro constituents, and the latter two protest. This follows:

SENATOR: I don't know where you immigrants get all those foreign ideas!
SHARON: From a wee book called the United States Constitution. Haven't you ever read it?
SENATOR: I haven't got time to read it! I'm too busy defendin' it!

I almost popped out of my seat in recognition.

But the soul of the show is contained in Harburg's deceptively simple refrain for "Look to the Rainbow":

Look, look, look to the rainbow,
Follow it over the hill and stream.
Look, look, look to the rainbow,
Follow the fellow who follows a dream.

Watching this splendidly realized revival, we understand that Harburg isn't just writing about a fanciful Irishman with his "borrowed" gold; he's talking about everybody who has ever wished America. Harburg really believed in that dream of hope, and that's why we need Finian's Rainbow—so we can believe in it again, too.

Most Manhattanites rarely, if ever, find themselves in New York City’s “other” borough (I’ve lived here nearly 7 years and I’d never been), which is why Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center is such a pleasant surprise, despite the time it takes to get there. Along with a museum, galleries, a children’s museum, and botanical garden, the jewel in Snug Harbor’s crown is the newly renovated and reopened music hall, currently housing Fiorello! The powers-that-be have decided to be sufficiently ambitious with this production, featuring Tony Award nominee Tony Lo Bianco and a full orchestra alongside an enthusiastic young cast.

The rarely-produced show tells the story of New York City’s famous mayor LaGuardia, from his early days as a lawyer and then as a congressman, through his unsuccessful first mayoral bid and his second run, resulting (of course) in his election. Librettists Jerome Weidman and George Abbott have thrown in a couple of love interests for our mayor: his loyal assistant Marie, played by Lauren Dennis, and Thea, an Italian working girl played by Danielle Grabianowski. The two women have the best songs in the show, the beautiful “When Did I Fall in Love?” and “The Very Next Man.” Unfortunately, the rest of the score doesn’t ever reach this level; between that and the wordy book, it’s easy to see why revivals of Fiorello! are few and far between.

Despite the script’s flaws, the show is still interesting, particularly for musical theatre or New York history buffs. And the cast does a good job: Lo Bianco closely resembles LaGuardia, and Grabianowski’s beautiful portrayal of an Italian immigrant matches her lovely voice. Costume designer Christina Giannini clearly evokes the time periods with her choices, and the projections by Matt Downs McAdon, enlarged photos of old New York, fill the space nicely, eliminating the need for complicated sets.

But the real star here is the restored theatre, a lovely Broadway-sized house in the “wilds” of Staten Island. For $25, one can get a balcony seat and see a show with good production values, something unheard of on New York’s other island. Though the trip took me nearly two hours, those with more time than money and an interest in musical theatre would be well rewarded by venturing out to Snug Harbor to see Fiorello! and whatever they put on next.

The most interesting idea in First Lady Suite comes early on, during the segment called "Over Texas": Jackie Kennedy, conjured in a dream by her secretary Mary Gallagher, sings about what it means to be the President's wife: "We smile and wave/And drive so slow/Passing hundreds of people./What do they want?/Thousands of voices./What do they need?/All that I can do is/Smile and wave..."

The most compelling moment in Transport Group's revival of this chamber-ish musical by Michael John LaChiusa comes near the end, when Mary Testa takes over the stage as Eleanor Roosevelt's "friend" Lorena Hickok singing a bluesy autobiographical charm song. For once during the evening the music lets loose with something approaching real emotion; Testa, grand singing actress that she is, makes the most of the opportunity and steals the show.

The rest of First Lady Suite, frankly, I just don't get. After managing authentic empathy with Mrs. Kennedy, LaChiusa never gets close to uncovering anything  honest about his other subjects: he sticks to the sensational and/or gratuitous, having Mamie Eisenhower time travel with black opera singer Marian Anderson (!?!) to spy on Ike and his supposed paramour/driver Kay Summersby; Bess Truman upstage a talent-free version of daughter Margaret during a short music recital at a Christian Democratic luncheon; and Eleanor Roosevelt hitch a ride with Amelia Earhart while her aforementioned pal "Hick" snipes at her jealously from the plane's rear and wing.

Musically, the style is relentless recitative—determinedly grating mod staccato stuff that I just don't understand or appreciate; the kind of stuff that fills out scores by Finn and Sondheim, the difference being that with them it eventually resolves itself into something emotionally satisfying, while here it just goes on. (Others will undoubtedly disagree.) Testa is the only one of the formidable cast members assembled here who gets to really show off her chops; talented ladies like Donna Lynne Champlin (Mary Gallagher), Julia Murney (Amelia Earhart), and Mary Beth Peil (Eleanor Roosevelt) ultimately have very little to do, indeed. James Hindman, the company's sole male, gets virtually all of the evening's laughs, in drag as Mrs. Truman (a bad joke, not worthy of either LaChiusa or director Jack Cummings III). Poor Ruth Gottschall—the butt of a series of childish jokes  as Lady Bird Johnson, Margaret Truman, and Kay Summersby—spends most of her stage time either curled on the floor in the fetal position or attempting to sing while Hindman does his shtick.

All in all, I found the Transport Group's revival of First Lady Suite to be a chore to sit through; though there's absolutely evidence of talent in LaChiusa's work here, it feels resolutely like juvenilia, the insubstantial product of a cocky young artist's pen.  Apart from its curiosity value, I'm not sure what interest it holds for a current audience. (Others will undoubtedly disagree.)

This is the first professional production of Danish playwright Line Knutzon's First You're Born in the U.S. (a quick Internet search surfaced a workshop presentation in Brooklyn in 2002); for that alone, I am grateful to inMediaRes and Studio 42, because this is an intriguing work that deserves to be seen.

But I wonder how much of Knutzon we're really seeing in this production. I don't know this piece at all; but as I watched it from my seat at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, I was almost always aware that something seemed to be missing—a layer (or perhaps more than one) of reflective solemnity, of desperation or remove from reality. Twice during the evening, director Isaac Butler brings this lurking depth into focus. At the top of the second scene, an almost baroque breakup that has just been played out melodramatically in the play's opening sequence suddenly and jarringly recedes into unreality after we meet the eccentric agoraphobic sisters Lis and Pis, who have just watched it from their apartment window. Somehow, Butler and Hanna Cheek, who plays Pis, convey a melancholy sense of remove from what we've just witnessed, as if it had happened on TV instead of in the "real" world.

And later, just before the climactic tea party that closes the play, Butler gives us a mostly silent, gorgeously evocative night of dreams, in which the play's six socially wounded characters fantasize connections that have heretofore been impossible for them to realize. Backed by Shelly Sabel's beautiful pastel lighting, the moment becomes pivotal—much more eloquent than a lot of what follows.

For much of the rest of First You're Born feels as though it's being played for laughs, the gossamer lightness that's called for replaced by rat-a-tat sitcom machinery that transforms this gentle, quirky comedy into a vaguely high-brow, neo-European Friends.

The plot begins with the breakup I mentioned earlier: Axel has decided to end his relationship with Bimsy on their first anniversary. Bimsy, needily on the rebound, catches sight of hypochondriacal loner Viktor and pushes herself onto him without even stopping for breath, showing up at his apartment with suitcases in hand, much to his surprise and—initially at least—consternation. Axel, meanwhile, returns to the apartment he shares with nerdy Tearman, and the two fret over plans to invite their neighbors Lis and Pis over for tea. The foursome does manage to hook up—they belong together—but it's Bimsy and Viktor whom we finally root for, because they alone seem able to escape from the weird, possibly self-imposed anomie that pervades the world of this play.

It's odd and disarming and eerily sweet; it's also funny in places, but not so you'd ever laugh at loud at anything. Yet laughs are aggressively sought by this company, and Knutzon's delicate script is consequently ever in danger of being beaten down by an unsubtle American sensibility. The men in the cast—Bradford Louryk (Tearman), Rob Grace (Viktor), and Geoffrey Arend (Axel)—are particularly culpable here: I know all three of these actors to be talented and smart, and so it is constructive criticism for me to suggest that they tone down their mannerisms, dig deeper into their characters, and find something closer to truth. Phoebe Ventouras (Lis) and Alexa Scott-Flaherty (Bimsy) should do the same. Hanna Cheek's lovely, much more complicated and interesting performance as Pis can serve as their model.

I'd like to revisit First You're Born with an ensemble more in synch with its ethereal sensibility. At least I think that's what's called for; actually it would be instructive to see another Knutzon work directly, for comparison and to aid me in reaching some conclusions about this still-unfamiliar playwright. Meantime, I am pleased to have been introduced to her. The good intentions of First You're Born's producers are entirely to be lauded: we see very little contemporary European drama in New York that doesn't originate in the British isles; we need to see much more.

Five Flights has been developed through the nurturing support of Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and their new play programs. The play was first presented at Rattlestick’s Exposure Festival 2003, a festival of fifteen new works-in-progress by emerging playwrights. Fortunately, Five Flights was chosen for Rattlestick’s 2003/2004 mainstage season. I respect whole-heartedly Rattlestick’s commitment to the process of development of new plays and the artists that create them. The focus here is not on the finished product, but the limitless possibilities housed in the imagination of the writer and how they are actualized theatrically. Five Flights still need further development, but it is currently parented by Rattlestick’s loving hands, and is certainly worthy of being seen.

Bock has written a play that explores the metaphorical equation of the dysfunctional family. Three siblings, a daughter-in-law, and an extremely high-strung religious fanatic must decide the fate of an aviary built by the siblings' deceased father. The aviary is a metaphor for the father and the birds that inhabit it are the cast of characters in this zany, though sometimes confusing, play. A son struggles to reconcile his memory of a distant and unaffectionate father. A daughter faces the loss of the man who doted on her. A daughter-in-law fights for the property she feels is owed to her, and a manic woman longing for connection to some higher purpose campaigns for a church she calls the Church of the Fifth Day (the day that God created birds).

Bock’s language is extremely poetic at times, with interesting rhythms, contrasted by moments of the simplest of naturalistic texts. Within the five-scene structure of the play, each character lends insight into his or her journey with outer-directed monologues that beautifully illuminate the secrets of their struggles. Holes do exist in the writing though, holes that beg for re-writes and further clarification. Often times the text is delivered at such a fast rate that it is difficult to digest the character’s thought process and the imagistic expressions of his or her wants and desires. This is true of the opening scene between the religious fanatic (Alice Ripley) and the daughter-in-law (Joanna P. Adler), in which I had difficulty deciphering the exposition that sets in motion their individual stories.

The cast as a whole is solid. In addition to Adler and Ripley, Jason Butler Harner, Kevin Karrick, Matthew Montelongo and Lisa Steindler round out the cast. Even though I appreciated the professional quality of all the performances, I question the necessity of all the characters written into the play. It seems to me that Bock is telling the story of three siblings dealing with the loss of their father and more emphasis needs to be placed on this reality. As of now, we are introduced to the in-law and the fanatic (outsiders seeking to profit from the sudden availability of the aviary) a local gay hockey player (exceptionally played by Montelongo) who falls head-over-heels for the son, and the hockey player’s teammate and friend (a character that easily could be cut without affecting the action of the play). It is interesting that the third sibling is absent from the cast of characters, but I wanted to know more about the significance of this. The tale of the offspring who has fallen out of the nest tells a loaded story, but as the play stands now, his story is told with inconsequential ambivalence.

Kent Nicholson’s direction finds its success in the simpler moments that happen between two actors. Conceptually he has chosen to delivered several scenes with actors staring out into the audience with a frontal focus. This stylized delivery seems self-conscious and out of place. He has included two choreographed scene transitions that force a comic tone on a script that is already inherently quirky and deeply effective.

Bock is a theatrical voice worthy of support. It is exciting to witness a play in process and a company like Rattlestick that is willing to take risks on emerging artists like Bock. I look forward to the evolution of Five Flights.

"For this is what the living do..."

To the extent that the sprawling, deeply affecting play Flesh and Blood can be summarized, the words above do it best. Spanning half of the 20th century, three generations, and 3-1/2 hours of real time, Peter Gaitens' drama, which is based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, is an epic of ordinary life; it overflows with incident but what happens mostly is that time passes: people are born, people die, people survive and go on. It's almost an Our Town for the new millennium: more inclusive and less provincial, more in tune to the sound-bite culture of modern theatregoers and less inclined to wax poetic or philosophic, it nevertheless tells us a lot about who we are at this particular moment in American history.

Less expansively, Flesh and Blood is just a great story, spectacularly well-told with rich and vivid theatricality. The set, by Christine Jones, is simplicity itself: the shell of a split-level house of the sort that dots the suburban landscape, dominated by an enormous staircase and framed by a tantalizing, lovely hint of woods. Director Doug Hughes ingeniously makes it serve as every one of the dozens of locations where the play unfolds, letting a slight shift in the light indicate that we've arrived someplace new and allowing his author, his cast, and his audience to fill in the rest.

It's a brilliant strategy that brings us into Flesh and Blood and keeps us with it throughout its prodigious length. The play begins with a prologue between a little girl and her father about a box that contains her grandfather's ashes. Jiggling the  box, she hears voices, not just of her grandfather but of all her ancestors. The predominant one, as the story proper commences, is that of Constantine Stassos, who leaves his native Greece as a boy and emigrates to America. Here he will meet and marry a pretty and determined young woman named Mary; they will have three children—Susan, Billy, and Zoe; he will prosper and move his family to a big five-bedroom house in Garden City, Long Island.

The three younger Stassoses will come of age in the Sixties, and those turbulent times will touch them each in different ways. Susan repeats her mother's pattern, marrying early to get away from a life that has become stifling and repellant. Billy goes to Harvard, changes his name to Will, and grows into his homosexual orientation in the early days of gay liberation. Zoe, perhaps the most complicated of the clan, spends wild weekends as a teenager in Manhattan, eventually befriending and being taken under the wing of a life-loving and -affirming drag queen named Cassandra (think Auntie Mame crossed with Mrs. Madrigal, then add a touch of Quentin Crisp).

Susan, Will, and Zoe's stories are sketched in broad strokes here, in part due to the necessary economy of a (relatively short) stage adaptation, but mostly because Gaitens has chosen to make their mother Mary the central figure of this saga. This turns out to be a wise and very rewarding decision, for Mary has heroic stuff in her, although it's not terribly obvious when we first get to know her, in a monologue about the significance of making a special Easter Bunny cake for her growing family. It's mostly through Mary's eyes that we witness the ups and downs of the Stassoses, which, without giving too much away, include extramarital affairs, divorce, marriage, catastrophic illness, and untimely deaths. Mary's key relationship in the play is not with Constantine or any of her children, but rather with Cassandra, who teaches her about acceptance and survival: "Life is full of surprises," he tells her (and us); "We're mysterious creatures."

That Mary is played here by the always luminous Cherry Jones solidifies her position at the center of Flesh and Blood; Jones is transcendent in the role, creating a complicated, changing woman whose search for reasons to exist ultimately brings her a kind of redemption. Jones anchors a superlative ensemble, which also includes Jeff Weiss in the to-die-for part of Cassandra (in which his natural warmth and intelligence serves him beautifully); Jessica Hecht as elder daughter Susan and Martha Plimpton as younger daughter Zoe, both of whom find layers and depth in their characters that make us want to know more about them than a single evening of theatre can afford; John Sierros, whose towering Constantine is infinitely understandable and ineffably sad; and, in smaller roles, Chris McGarry, Patricia Buckley, Sean Dugan, and Airrion Doss. Peter Frechette is sympathetic as Will's boyfriend Harry, but he hasn't much to do. Only Gaitens himself, as Will, fails to really make an impression; I left Flesh and Blood wishing I understood the Stassos prodigal son better and not sure whether it was Gaitens the writer or Gaitens the actor who was letting us down.

Indeed, Flesh and Blood—galvanizing, magisterial, hugely compelling—is not without its flaws: the second act could certainly do with some tightening; some situations and set pieces feel repetitive, and I'm not sure that the final scene, an epilogue, is entirely necessary. But this is overall a stunning work of theatre, and I'm very glad to have seen it. It has much to tell us about the business of living.

I've been a Will Power fan ever since I saw him in his solo show The Gathering, which played at P.S. 122 a couple of years ago. His new piece, Flow, developed and directed by hip-hop theatre pioneer Danny Hoch, showcases Power's amazing versatility, but I found it ultimately less satisfying than earlier works. I've seen Power channel his remarkable stage energy into building vivid, three-dimensional characters, bringing a community and culture to life. Here, the energy and charisma remain, but the stories he tells lack depth and detail.

The framing concept of Flow is that Power has been anointed one of his community's storytellers: "I wanna teach you the old stories, and then you go make 'em new." The stories he tells us are about six other storytellers—his mentors, more or less; what he does to make them new is deliver them in hip-hop vernacular. Almost the entire play is in verse (though not as soaring or soulful as we might hope), and the entire performance is propelled by rhythm and graceful, exciting, nonstop movement. It's not music theatre and it's not dance; what Power does is something different: a kinetic yet (paradoxically) word-based theatre form that has the capacity to electrify. The next piece Power creates will, one hopes, add the substance that will make his theatre truly essential.

But for now, we content ourselves with cursory meetings with the six storytellers who are Flow's main subjects. They're a colorful lot: Breeze, an old man who earns money for his booze by giving impromptu storytelling performances on the street; Jacoba, a smart and sassy schoolteacher; Preacha Man, a clerk at Whole Foods who dispenses righteousness and wisdom with every bag of groceries; New Groun, layman urban anthropologist, who knows the history of every building and every lot in the city; Besombee, a dance instructor whose class includes helpings of folk wisdom; and Swea P, a teenage girl developing her own hip-hop style, a voice of an emerging generation.

Power introduces us to these characters and briefly inhabits them; Hoch has wisely mapped out a section of the playing area for each to occupy, and Power supplies posture and vocal tics to sketch them out. They're interesting people and we want to know more about them, but Flow seems determined to eliminate them almost as soon as introductions are complete. The unifying idea, it turns out, is that they've all met with messy and/or untimely deaths, thus compelling Power to tell their tales in order to keep their spirits alive.

It's a contrivance that Flow doesn't need; Breeze and Swea P and Jacoba and especially New Groun fascinate and engage all on their own. We want less of the narrator's self-justifying explanation and more of the narrative.

The production features a live mix by DJ Reborn (whom the program bills, perplexingly, as "musical director") and fancy footwork executed by Power flawlessly ("additional movement" is credited to Robert Moses). A higher-tech-than necessary set, whose centerpiece is a backdrop on which relevant images are occasionally projected, was designed by David Ellis; it doesn't detract from Power, but the actor is so compelling all by himself that it doesn't add much either.

I suspect that if I hadn't already seen the genuinely graceful and affecting ways that Power has been able to meld hip-hop and theatre conventions, I might have been more jazzed by Flow. As it is, aware of the galvanizing theatre that Power can create out of rhythm, rhyme, and an empty stage, I am disappointed by Flow. But it wouldn't surprise me if what comes next is a real breakthrough.

If life were like a fairy tale—if good people got what they deserved and bad people were punished—then Pieter-Dirk Uys would be a humungous star, known not just in his native South Africa, but all over the world; and not just known, but respected and beloved. I say this not only because Uys' message of activism and individual responsibility is compelling and important (though of course that's part of it). No, I say this because Uys is a performer of the first order: a brilliant actor-comedian-satirist with commanding stage presence and impeccable timing. His solo show Foreign Aids is at The Club at La MaMa for three weeks, and the thousand or so fortunate New Yorkers who will get to see him there (at fifteen bucks a head) should count themselves lucky. In that fairy tale world I mentioned earlier, he'd be headlining at Radio City Music Hall.

Because his most famous creation is the outrageously egomaniacal lady Evita Bezuidenhout (self-proclaimed "most famous white woman in South Africa"), the obvious frame of reference for Uys is Barry Humphries; and indeed, another of Uys' characters (Evita's sister, Bambi Kellermann) drily notes that Evita is often called South Africa's answer to Dame Edna Everage. She continues by asking, "But what's the question?"—nailing the superficiality and irrelevancy of such a comparison. Sure, Dame Edna proudly speaks her mind; but Evita and Bambi are absolutely fearless. Uys tells it like it is in Foreign Aids, which means that the laughs of recognition pull us up short time and again here. Dame Edna's humor reinforces our illusions of superiority and comfort; Uys' explodes them. It's powerful, provoking, and ultimately empowering.

Foreign Aids begins with an appearance by Mrs. Bezuidenhout, decked out in a stunning over-the-top creation that reflects both her high-flown aspirations and her condescension to her black African confreres. Evita explains that she's been asked by the South African government to apologize to New York for Apartheid. ("We're very sorry... that it didn't work out.")

When her set is over the lights go out, and then they come up again to reveal Uys matter-of-factly removing his Evita drag, stripping down to unglamorous underwear and then slipping into comfortable, unpretentious black shirt and trousers. Uys' transformation is downright breathtaking: I love the straightforwardness with which he debunks his own illusion. It's not that Evita Bezuidenhout doesn't exist—Uys chats about her throughout the show, genuinely comprehending that she's alive in the South African consciousness (she has her own website and her own TV show: check out http://www.evita.co.za); it's just that, despite what she may believe, she's not all that important.

Uys spends the rest of his 100 or so minutes on stage telling us about his work, introducing us to other characters (some real, some fictional), and railing against the willful, stupid blindness of people in power. His subject, almost exclusively, is the AIDS epidemic, which the current South African government officially refuses to acknowledge: President Thabo Mbeki says he knows no one with HIV. Uys is appalled, and after you hear the raw numbers and the horrific case studies, you will be too. Uys tells us that he spends most of his time visiting schools all around South Africa—notably in black communities where schools are spectacularly poor and underfunded—entertaining and educating young people about safe sex. The real tragedy of AIDS is that it can be prevented, but too many people on the frontlines don't have information or access to it. Young African men are being exposed to urban legends claiming that sex with a virgin will cure them and so thousands of children are raped.

Uys defuses the seriousness with well-placed humor, much of it barbed, all of it calculated to get the attention of anyone within earshot. Mbeki is the most visible target, and admittedly some of the references went over my head, my knowledge of South African politics not being as detailed as it might be. But Uys is an equal-opportunity and internationally-minded satirist, and so Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and President George W. Bush all make appearances in Foreign Aids. Uys' uncanny impersonations of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu (both of whom he greatly admires) are highlights, as well.

And then there's Bambi Kellermann, an elderly ex-barmaid who was once married to an ex-Nazi. Uys morphs into Bambi gradually, in full view of the audience, applying eyelashes, lipstick, earrings, makeup, high heels, and then—in another smashing tour de force—a colorful cape that turns his simple costume into a fabulous ensemble. Bambi travels with her late husband, or rather his ashes, inside a carved wooden box. She muses candidly about her life with Kellermann, who was a concentration camp official, recalling a dinner party in Paraguay in the '50s attended by Martin Boorman, Joseph Mengele, and Adolph Eichmann in her world-weary Dietrich-esque manner. There's a method to Bambi's madness, of course: Uys' audacity in this sketch is shocking, provoking, in a good way—he makes us pay attention to what he's saying, and makes us draw relationships between his outrageous joke of old Nazis at a barbeque and the way each of us lives his or her life, right now, today. If only America had a humorist even half as willing to bite the hands that feed him...

Sigh.

If life were like a fairy tale, we wouldn't need people like Pieter-Dirk Uys to throttle the status quo and shake us out of our ill-conceived complacency. But it's not, and so we do. I am grateful that La MaMa has decided to mount Foreign Aids and allow its audience to make Uys' acquaintance. Now: you've gotta see this show! Maybe we can get Pieter-Dirk Uys and his extraordinary cast of characters to stay here a little longer, and to return a lot more often.

I wasn't expecting to love Four Beers. What I knew about it—four middle-aged guys in a New Jersey watering hole, talking over beers (because the TV set's broken and they can't watch the game)—sounded like too-familiar territory. Ho hum.

Which only proves that assumptions count for nothing, in the theatre as in life. Talk about disarming!—David Van Vleck's play turns out to be a sly charmer, and rather smart to boot. In Roger Danforth's robust staging, it's also a tour de force for the five middle-aged actors who inhabit it—who must, one suspects, have jumped at the chance to create these vividly human characters. Four Beers is warm, funny, touching, and occasionally profound as it explores the American Dreams of its quintet of Regular Joes. It's sort of an Iceman Cometh for the suburban married man—the guy who wakes up one morning and realizes that he's almost ready to retire but he hasn't done the things he meant to do. Just because these guys don't cling to their pipe dreams with a poetic O'Neillian desperation doesn't mean they don't have any.

The play focuses on four friends who obviously meet once a week at this particular neighborhood bar for drink and fellowship. They are: George, a gruff and opinionated low-brow who runs an auto mechanic shop; Frank, milder and fidgety, a dry cleaner; Phil, the most sophisticated of the group, an entrepreneur whose enterprises have fizzled down to a single photo store; and Mitch, a barber, sweeter and dizzier than the rest, but also more sensitive. (Think, respectively, Archie Bunker, Barney Fife, Barney Miller, and Ed Norton—that's reductive, I know; but sometimes shorthand helps.)

Because, as noted, the TV is on the fritz, the men find themselves forced to have a conversation. Their chat covers lots of ground, from speculations about the nature of God to reminiscences of their childhood dreams to sad dismay at the sorry state of their financial affairs. The topic that everybody keeps returning to is infidelity, in particular that of Frank's wife, Vivian, which, though entirely unproven at this point, preoccupies Frank distressingly. His suspicions prompt George to admit to at least one indiscretion of his own (with a much younger woman, he claims), and cause Phil to muse about taking a "vacation" from his marriage. For his part, Mitch is very much in love with his wife, Cindy, though she's never recovered from the death of their young son of leukemia twenty years before.

It's interesting talk that makes us look twice at these men and ourselves; but none of it really crystallizes until the fifth character shows up. Mel is the play's Hickey, kind of: a recent widower, he's the catalyst for whatever decisions and/or life changes that the others will make as he alternately cries into a succession of double ryes about his loss and muses guilelessly about his future. Van Vleck has written this character very skillfully, tying up loose ends you'd forgotten about as Mel, getting foolishly drunker by the second, shakes our four heroes up irrevocably.

Of course I'm not going to give away what happens: you need to see Four Beers to find out for yourself. When you do, you will likely relish, as I did, the exceptional talent on display on stage. Robert LuPone (Phil), Lee Wilkof (Mitch), and Peter Maloney (Frank) nail roles that they seem to have been born to play; Guy Boyd is less a natural fit for the relatively uncivilized George, but he renders him vividly nevertheless. Their excellent work notwithstanding, it is Michael Cullen who winds up stealing the show, delivering a performance of comic brilliance as Mel, perfectly capturing everything that's pathetic, heart-rending, and annoying about this ordinary fellow who hasn't figured out to cope with the loss of his wife.

The show is spiffily produced at Rattlestick Theatre, with an attractive and serviceable set by Roman Tatarowicz and appropriate costumes by Jenny Mannis. It looks like it could easily be moved to a larger off-Broadway space, which is where I predict Four Beers will land soon; this affectionate comedy about roads taken and forsaken feels like a natural for a commercial run, and deserves to be seen by lots and lots of people. I'm certainly rooting for this dark horse to become the sleeper hit of the season.

If you are even just casually interested in the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, you will likely find no new information, factual or theoretical, in Keith Reddin’s Frame 312, now running at the Atlantic Theatre Company. If you are not especially interested in these events but would like to see a compelling new drama, you will also find this play rather dissatisfying. If you are curious but know very little about these events and simply have a couple of hours to kill, then you might find this production worthwhile.

In suburban New Jersey, 1998, Lynette, a former Life assistant editor, is celebrating her 60th birthday with her two children: Stephanie, a good-hearted, if mildly antagonistic young woman on anti-depressants, and Tom, a pushy self-absorbed family man. Throughout the day, Lynette has daydreams of her time at the magazine, circa the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Singled out to take notes during the viewings of the “Zapruder film”—that is, the ubiquitous 8mm home movie capturing the murder in vivid detail—she is privy to the compelling evidence that soon thereafter became the foundation of an abundance of divergent conspiracy theories.

And Lynette’s involvement doesn’t stop there: she is then put on a train bound for Washington, D.C. to place the original film in the hands of J. Edgar Hoover himself, and her tortured dwelling on the graphic images of the tape is eclipsed by her fear that she’ll be snuffed by the government as she suspects JFK was. However the delivery goes off without a hitch, and soon thereafter Lynette settles back into her normal life, quits Life magazine in order to become a housewife and a mother, as she supposes she should. But not before her dying boss gives her something that will forever link her to this chain of bizarre and fascinating chain of events.

To reveal this last part would be unfair, because though it is not terribly surprising, it is the only surprise the play’s got. This is too bad, because the Atlantic Theatre Company has a history of surprising productions of new and classic plays. Frame 312’s director Karen Kohlhaas and several of her cast members have been directly responsible for said productions. Here, though, no one seems particularly inspired or excited.

Reddin has taken on a subject much more interesting than the play he has delivered. What is contained in the program notes—a well-written double-sided insert—and what we watch the characters watching (but don’t actually get to see for ourselves) when they view the Zapruder Film hugely upstages Lynette’s one-note moral dilemma about whether or not to come forward, more than thirty years later, with not even a piece of new evidence, but rather an authentic, if valuable, piece of old evidence.

Praiseworthy are Walt Spangler’s set and Robert Perry’s lighting, which create a terrifically normal house and backyard for this woman who is terrified of standing out. Mary Beth Peil is fine as the older Lynette (the younger Lynette, played by Mandy Siegfried, is written so flatly, that the actress cannot be blamed for following suit), and Elizabeth Hanly Rice as Stephanie provides a few touching exchanges with her mother. Kohlhaas, too, deserves credit for this, but she is also partly responsible for the theatrically inert flashbacks, where the older Lynette sits and watches her younger self stand in a pool of light and have a number of stolid and portentous conversations. (Peil’s focus, under these circumstances, is commendable.)

The JFK assassination is as topical and relevant now as ever; it is a debate that is still ablaze. Reddin’s play tells us this without making us feel it, reducing the controversy to embers when it should be fanning the fire.

From My Hometown is, first and foremost, a celebration of rhythm & blues. In just over an hour and a half, we hear three dozen songs, from "Chain Gang" and "Dock of the Bay" to "Me and Mrs. Jones" and "Walking the Dog." Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, the Isley Brothers, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown all get their due, in rousing renditions put over with energy and style by the spectacularly talented three-man cast, Kevin R. Free, Andre Garner, and Rodney Hicks. By the end of the show, the audience is clapping along and cheering enthusiastically.

But From My Hometown is not simply a retrospective revue. It tells the story of three young men who meet outside the Apollo Theatre in Harlem on a September day in 1980, each of them dreaming of glory as he auditions for a singing gig. We know these men only by the names of the cities they come from—Philly, Detroit, and Memphis—and even though their characters are sharply drawn by the actors who portray them (Hicks, Garner, and Free, respectively), we always understand that our heroes are emblematic of everyone who's ever left their home, short on money but long on hope, yearning for their shot at the big time.

These fellows can sing and they can move: while they're waiting for their callbacks, they put on an impromptu show on the sidewalk on 125th Street, doing a sort of challenge routine as they each attempt to prove that the musical roots of their hometown is superior to the others'. Of course the winner in this contest is the audience, as the men glide through a half-dozen classics like "What a Wonderful World" and "Land of a Thousand Dances," with smooth choreography and blissful harmonizing.

We follow them through the rest of their day, up to their callback. When that doesn't go according to the plan, From My Hometown gets a bit serious. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that the three men learn that they are stronger united than alone. Once they understand this important lesson, they are able to achieve their goals. The finale is a joyful outburst of song and dance by the now-famous R&B trio Unity, from the stage of the Apollo Theatre ten years later.

From My Hometown is a success in virtually every department, largely because its creators have kept things streamlined and simple: they stay focused on the themes of fellowship and respect for heritage, and they let the music work its singular and sincere magic to do the rest. Kevin Ramsey's staging is fast-paced and fluid, and the choreography (by Ramsey and Leslie Dockery) is evocative and loaded with energy and exuberance.

All three of From My Hometown's ingratiating and skillful co-stars do outstanding work. Garner is sleek and chic as proud Detroit, Free is lovable as the countrified Memphis, and Hicks is smooth and magnetic as the ever-hopeful Philly; all three are great in the musical numbers, solo or blending effortlessly in the show's many trios (the score even includes a mini-tribute to R&B's three-man groups). A four-piece band led by Jo Lynn Burks keeps the music pumping nearly non-stop, making From My Hometown an infectious crowd-pleasing good time from beginning to end.

The subject matter of Bryony Lavery's Frozen is indisputably compelling. 10-year-old Rhona has disappeared on her way to her grandmother's house; five years later, her remains are found, along with those of half a dozen other little girls, in a shed belonging to a sad loner named Ralph. Fifteen years after that, Ralph—in prison, now, with no chance of parole—is interviewed by a psychologist from America who is studying the brains of serial killers, in particular the hypothesis that their abusive and murderous behaviors are caused by physical defects resulting from injuries and/or the overmanufacture of toxins in reaction to childhood stress. At the same time, Rhona's mother, Nancy, now a victim's rights activist, decides she wants to meet Ralph: she wants to tell him she forgives him, and she wants him to understand how much he hurt Rhona and, by extension, herself and her family.

The doctor, Agnetha, tidily sums up the idea that is at the heart of Frozen: To decide whether or not we can forgive an act of evil, she tells us, we must first determine whether that act is a sin or a symptom.

That's an interesting notion, and Lavery spends most of her play doggedly exploring it. Ralph is repugnant but clearly damaged; though we never get very many details about his childhood, it's certain that he suffered severe emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his mother and assorted step-fathers. Agnetha conducts various tests that bolster her thesis: Ralph can endlessly list items to be found in a supermarket, but he fails a less structured test (to list words beginning with an "f"); he can hop on his right foot but loses balance as soon as he attempts to hop on his left. Parts of Ralph's physical brain material are distorted or missing—his inability to feel (or even comprehend) remorse seems to be based in lack of capacity rather than something more ephemeral. Nancy, meanwhile, finding outlets for her pain and grief, turns bloodthirsty rabble-rouser until finally (unconvincingly, years later), her neglected surviving daughter teaches her tolerance and urges her to forgive and move on.

Rich, fascinating stuff, this; so why does Frozen leave me so cold? Two reasons, I think. First, Lavery stacks her deck a little more deliberately than she needs to. The arc of the play is apparent within ten minutes—Lavery doesn't grow characters so much as manipulate them, and us right along with them. I felt myself being very consciously guided to a conclusion all the way through Frozen; I prefer it when a playwright trusts me to reason things out on my own.

Second, and possibly even more problematic, is Frozen's structure. A great deal of the play is told through monologues—indeed, Nancy has only one scene with Ralph and only two with Agnetha; Ralph and Agnetha interact only in formalized interview settings. Thus, we're denied the chance to see these people interact in human ways (which contributes to that manipulation I just mentioned). And Lavery proves very ineffective in solving the chief problem of the confessional structure, i.e., who are these people talking to? Especially when Nancy was speaking, I never knew. If the playwright can't place her characters inside some kind of reality, how are we supposed to?

So form finally mattered more to me than content in Frozen, which, if you're a regular reader of my reviews, should surprise you; it demonstrates how dispiritingly alienating this play turns out to be. Lavery is not helped much by director Doug Hughes, who responds to the lifelessness of the format simply by having his actors move all over the theatre; or by the show's designers: Hugh Landwehr (set) provides a sparse minimalist backdrop, a couple of chairs, a table, and nothing more; Catherine Zuber (costumes) goes the other way, creating a veritable fashion show for Swoosie Kurtz as Nancy, who shows up in a new outfit every time she arrives on stage.

The actors, not surprisingly, do fine work, though: Kurtz is less comfortable playing the young mother in Act One, but she's riveting and commanding in the play's second half, especially when (at last!) she's given others to play against in real conversations with Agnetha and Ralph. Brian F. O'Byrne is mesmerizing in a Hannibal Lechter way until we get under the skin of his character; then he's heartbreaking. Laila Robins has the thankless, mostly expositional role of Agnetha, and she manages it with customary finesse.

Nobody's explosive, though: Frozen is, true to its name, a frigidly remote take on a topic that under other circumstances might make the blood boil. A strange theatrical experience, this—as unemotional and dispassionate a journey as I can imagine through a maelstrom of emotions and passions.

Justin Reinsilber's solo play Fucking Love ends so abruptly that you're not really convinced its over until the lights come up. I'm guessing that what we're seeing here, presented by a pair of outfits called bipolar productions and WEJ Productions in association with LAByrinth Theatre Company, is a work-in-progress. I hope so: Reinsilber certainly has a great first act.

As it stands, Fucking Love recounts Reinsilber's betrayals at the hands of three women. First and saddest is the abbreviated tale of his mother, a sad woman with a penchant for booze and drugs who died when Justin was still a boy. Second—and sketched out in richest detail—is his first New York "girlfriend," a woman with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship for more than a year; a relationship that, needless to say, ended badly. The third, which frames the hour-long monologue, is of more recent vintage: a breakup that imploded even before things got genuinely romantic.

Reinsilber delivers all of this as straightforward autobiography, so I guess it's all more or less true: assuming that's the case, the most striking thing about Fucking Love is how maddeningly detached Reinsilber is from the events he narrates. Moving through the emotions and arcs of circumstances that are alternately dire and euphoric, he's virtuosic but sterile. The material is all pointed, but he seems to be forcing himself not to have a point of view. I don't know why; I do know that this lack makes it tough for the audience to have one.

It's possible that this problem will be solved with the addition of the sorely-needed rest of the show; as mentioned, as is, Fucking Love is both entertaining and engrossing but terribly unsatisfying because so incomplete.

As for Reinsilber, who has done work as varied as cutting-edge off-off-Broadway for LAByrinth and a well-known Volkswagen television commercial (he's the guy who licks the car), he proves himself an excellent performer—intense, compelling, and sympathetic against the odds. It's this obvious talent that makes us hope he'll take the time to turn Fucking Love into the real, heartfelt play that it has the potential to be.

A handsome young man is standing in the cabaret space at HERE, naked except for a pair of gray underwear. Two thick metal horns coil out from his headdress. On stage a woman with a sliver-painted, expressionless face; blonde wig; and a clear phallus makes like a funky robot. Next to her another man gyrates wildly, his jockstrap fabricated from discarded plastic computer bits, wires, and twinkling electric lights. A woman with bare breasts and a clear plastic skirt rubs up against a guy whose only costume is a baseball cap, sunglasses, and body glitter. I watch all of this from my perch on top of a staircase. Covered head-to-toe in metallic body makeup, with only a tiny piece of fabric and strategically-placed pieces of tinfoil to keep me on the legal side of decency, I bathe in the glow of a film projector as it splatters my body with the luminescence of a vintage Seventies porn movie.

Welcome to CREAMACHINE—the performance event that wonders, “Do androids dream of interlocking parts?” and the kick-off party for FUSE at HERE Arts Center. FUSE: the NYC Celebration of Queer Culture is the GLBT child of Queer@HERE and Dixon Place’s HOT! Festivals, and I’ve been assigned to cover its birth. But when Stephen Kent Jusick asks me to go-go for his modern-day happening, I can’t resist getting more directly involved. If nothing else in the festival quite matched the merrily anarchic spirit of Stephen, DJ Econ and Dancetube’s naughty nostalgia for the early days of discotheque and Times Square blue movies, the sheer volume and variety of work currently on view gives one hope that Downtowners are determined not to let Will and Grace be the defining text of contemporary homo sex.

Over four days of theatregoing, I saw pieces in both the main series and in the "Bang-a-Gong" works-in-progress side bar. However, even the “finished” work varied widely in the sheen of its polish, and if it wasn’t always clear what exactly was being reflected back to us, trying to make out the forms in this mirror was a large part of the fun.

I could do without what was being reflected in Michelle Goldsmith and Ben Spatz’s The Desert. I mean, I thought nothingness was so last century. I do have some questions for its creators, though, like in what fit of hubris did they think it was okay to charge an audience $15 to watch three actors ineptly improv an hour-long scenario in which no interesting dramatic interactions occur? And why did it take two of them to non-direct this? Or perhaps my pique was the emotional effect they wanted.

Much more successful was Glenn Kessler and Brian Savelson’s All the King’s Men, although it, too, ultimately succumbed to youthful self-indulgence. Kessler and Savelson portray Alex and Derek King, the Florida preteens who murdered their father in order to stay with the 40-year-old Rick Chavis, whom Alex claimed was his lover. The brothers were sentenced to multiple-years terms in separate juvenile detention facilities. Kessler and Savelson’s play spins an epistolary fantasy in which the brothers fight, make-up, rehash their crime, flirt, and plot over their years of incarceration through the letters they write to each other. They also send missives to other famous murdering brother pairs, and Alex produces a steady stream of love letters to Rick. Shadowing all of their interactions is the knowledge that when they turn 18 they will both transfer to the “big house,” a locus for homosexual predation and desire.

This is far from a documentary exploration of what happens to children when they kill, however. From the moment the boys enter, we know that the “truth” we will be experiencing is highly subjective. Alex is dressed as Pierrot, his holding pen more like a glamorous star’s dressing room than a prison. Derek, on the other hand, lives surrounded by books—a monk’s cell rather than a murderer’s. As the years go by, Alex becomes increasingly flamboyant, gripped with the old-school drag queen’s obsession for preserving his youth as he approaches the ripe-old age of 18, while Derek insulates himself in an impenetrable introspection. The boys also have a tendency to break into numbers by artists such as Morrissey, Joni Mitchell and Jerome Kern—Alex’s “turns” campy while Derek’s are filled with edgy angst. That in reality the two boys in question are probably not at all familiar with any of this material seems beside the point (not to mention the way this performative strategy reinforces rather tired notions of “gay” and “straight” when these boys’ sexuality is more complicated than those two categories, to say the least). This is where the play began to lose me—after the fifth of these musical interludes I was gone. Not only do they stretch what at most is an hour-and-a-quarter piece to nearly two, but Kessler and Savelson’s imposition of “their” music on these two damaged children erases the real people in a way that becomes increasingly creepy as the evening passes. It’s a shame because the scene where Derek’s father (on video) teaches him to swing a bat achieves a perfect balance of irony, danger and pain. After being betrayed by their parents, lawyers, police and “friend,” their betrayal again here onstage is particularly unbearable to watch.

Of the two solo works-in-progress I saw, Janis Astor del Valle’s Transplantations was a solid evocation of her dislocations between the Latino/White, lesbian/straight and suburban/urban worlds. If her piece was at times a bit sentimental for my tastes, del Valle is an undeniably compelling performer and her story of never quite fitting in with any one group is still necessary for a culture that insists on fixing identities into either/or binary systems. A more direct approach to talking to the audience would help her ideas land with even greater force.

I thought I was going to hate Skot Hess’ Daddy’s Boy when he entered with full gay camp guns blazing. But by the end of this excerpt from the longer piece, that entrance proved to be just the first of several cunning moves on the part of Hess and director David Drake. Hess presented the section recounting the story of the disastrous run in Provincetown of his previous show about a transgender country singer. Clear-eyed about the unique mix of economic exploitation, compulsory hedonism and faux brotherhood found in the places where gay men choose to vacation, Hess had us rooting for him to overcome the rainbow assortment of idiots standing between him and Cape Cod stardom. His failure becomes in its telling a triumph. I eagerly await the full-length version.