nytheatre Archive
2003-04 Theatre Season Reviews

Signature Theatre Company presents seasons devoted to a single playwright, consisting of revivals of older works plus premieres of new ones, in part to enable audiences to observe and absorb the author's development and evolution as an artist. Certainly the Bill Irwin season is achieving this goal; in fact the current Signature offering, The Regard Evening, is essentially that mission in microcosm, pairing a 20-year-old Irwin creation, The Regard of Flight, with a sequel/reconsideration entitled In the Same Regard.

The Evening is, as Irwin devotees will not be surprised to learn, sheer pleasure: about a hundred minutes (including intermission) of blissful comedy and music, devised and performed by one of our theatre's authentic geniuses, along with two enormously talented collaborators. Irwin plays a version of himself—a New Vaudeville Everyman who says he wants to create a "New Theatre" but who actually only wants to make the world laugh and smile. He's caught in a literalized version of the classic actor's nightmare, awakening on stage in his bright-red-striped pajamas with matching sleeping cap; at a nearby piano sits musical director-cum-stage manager Doug Skinner, running the show with appropriate light-hearted accompaniment and barked-out commands to his performer, ordering him to change costumes or break into a dance routine at less-than-a-moment's notice.

But wait, there's more: just as Irwin is getting into a kind of groove, a Critic seated in the front row of the audience begins to interrogate him about the nature of the show.  Soon, the questions give way to an outright challenge as Irwin's antagonist—dramatically speaking, at least—bounds onto the stage and into the show. Michael O'Connor, another of Irwin's long-time collaborators, plays the Critic with precise pomp and brio; he and Skinner are perfect foils for Irwin's gentle innocent, eventually arousing him to frenzy, or as close to that as Irwin's easy grace can get.

The Regard of Flight includes trademark Irwin moves like the hat-juggling bit, the shrinking-man bit, the being-pulled-offstage-by-an-invisible-force bit, and the falling-down-on-stage-until-you-sink-behind-the-curtain bit; charmers all, even for their familiarity. There's also a little loose-limbed eccentric dancing, including his terrific, minimalist watch-the-barely-moving-foot move; I don't know of anybody this side of Baryshnikov with such control over every muscle in his body.

If you know Irwin's work—Flight or one of the later pieces—then you'll recognize a lot of what's going on; that's the point, more or less, of The Regard Evening, which continues after an intermission in beautiful counterpoint with the brand-new In the Same Regard, in which we revisit the same Everyman character two decades later.  He's noticeably older—a neat achievement for Irwin, who somehow manages to gain twenty years in fifteen minutes—and indeed a lot of Same Regard riffs on themes like aging and defining one's legacy; in common with the previous Signature show The Harlequin Studies this piece feels in places almost like a valedictory, ruminating on transitions and passing the torch.

But the best stuff in Same Regard picks up on Flight's recurring jabs at the foolish faddishness of earnest Performance Practitioners. Irwin zooms in on today's answer to environmental staging and deconstruction, namely multimedia and high-tech: the centerpiece of the Evening's second act is a hilarious and dazzlingly inventive gag involving a flat-panel screen and an animated Bill Irwin website logo that somehow gets itself entangled in a computer's hard drive. I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time.

Brilliant and dizzying and lighter than air, The Regard Evening is over much sooner than we want it to be, another reminder that Irwin has gotten older at the same rate that we have, his astonishingly nimble body notwithstanding (watch for the glorious somersault from a trampoline into a bed that takes the breath away at the top of Act Two). It's also a reminder of Irwin's brilliance, and his irreplaceability: clowning this intelligent, this ephemeral, and this joyful is rare as gossamer.

The Retreat from Moscow is about a young man whose parents' marriage collapses. Jamie is 32 and has for some time been physically and emotionally distant from his family, visiting only rarely and sharing little about his feelings or his personal/social life. But on this particular weekend trip back home, things change drastically: Jamie's dad Edward reveals to his son, after a bruising and embarrassingly exposed row with Jamie's mom Alice, that he is in love with another woman and plans to leave—that very day.

By the time playwright William Nicholson drops this bombshell on the audience, he's already stacked the deck rather heavily against Alice. What we know of her from her early Act One appearances is mostly unpleasant: she's stubborn (insisting that Jamie attend mass despite his protestations), argumentative (she recounts a mildly amusing anecdote about how she picked a fight with a computer store clerk), and relentlessly controlling (her sarcastic ribbing of husband Edward's wish to do the daily crossword puzzle eventually shames him into putting it down).

So Edward's announcement doesn't feel especially shocking: if anything, we're primed to believe that Alice's shrewish nature has driven her husband away. Nevertheless, it is Alice who quickly assumes the role of victim as soon as Edward walks out; though she seems entirely grounded (religiously as well as secularly), she appears utterly discombobulated by the sudden death of her marriage, threatening to kill herself and musing unhumorously about Edward's demise as well. Alice makes herself into a burden on Jamie, enlisting him to serve as go-between with Edward and manipulating him into spending more time with her and coping with her mercurial mood swings and tantrums. Edward, meanwhile, both folds further into himself—becoming more of a nebbish than he even already was—and blossoms under the nurturing if passive influence of his new lover.

The point of all of the foregoing being, I think, that along with their marriage, both Alice and Edward pretty much implode in the eyes of their loving if indifferent son: the real journey in The Retreat from Moscow is his, as he discovers that his parents are terribly flawed, terribly selfish, and terribly concerned with their own welfare ahead of his. He concludes that he has to learn from their examples, warts and all: what he goes through is as untethering and ultimately as profound as if one or both of them had died.

It's an interesting point of view for a play, and it mostly succeeds, in spite of the fact that Jamie is a very passive protagonist, while his more vividly rendered mother and father are essentially supporting (and imperfectly and impressionistically drawn) characters. The casting reinforces this structural difficulty: Eileen Atkins plays Alice with diva-esque zeal, delivering a mannered performance that seems calculated to prove that she can gain our sympathy even while embodying a thoroughly repugnant and unlikable person: Bette Davis' look-at-me turn as Mildred in Of Human Bondage comes to mind. Both John Lithgow (as Edward) and Ben Chaplin (as Jamie) defer to Atkins' whirlwind of a mother, which probably accurately reflects life in that household; but it throws Nicholson's dynamic out of whack, because Jamie is the character we wind up caring about.

There are other problems. Alice is editing a poetry anthology (it's not entirely made clear exactly why she's doing so), and, reflective of this conceit, Nicholson quotes liberally from Shelley, Rilke, Frost, Rossetti, and many others. Maybe too liberally: by the middle of Act Two, it starts to feel as though Nicholson is compiling his own poetry anthology instead of writing an original play. He's also, troublingly, saddled himself with a title that just doesn't seem to want to function as a central metaphor. The Retreat from Moscow refers to Napoleon's, after his disastrous Russian campaign; both Alice and Edward say in places that their marriage (and its subsequent breakup) is like that retreat, but their reasoning invariably comes across as forced.

All that said, The Retreat from Moscow is compelling, if a bit long-winded; certainly its perspective on divorce—from a grown child's point of view—is unusual and welcome. Chaplin, Lithgow, and Atkins hold the stage masterfully throughout under Daniel Sullivan's sturdy direction; as evenings at the theatre go, this one has an awful lot going for it.

The reason to return to a classic work of theatre is to see what new things we can find out about it in whosever hands it is currently entrusted. A production of Sheridan's The Rivals last spring was all about the foolishness of callow youth; the present revival at the Pearl Theatre Company, on the other hand, is squarely focused on the follies of the older and supposedly more mature.

This is due, largely, to the indomitable presence in the cast of Robert Hock, who is rapidly becoming my very favorite character actor, and who indisputably is the owner of this particular production as blustery, meddlesome, and overbearing Sir Anthony Absolute. Hock's Sir Anthony earns laugh after laugh of recognition as he demonstrates his special brands of hypocrisy, pragmatism, and something that is just this side of lechery—if he weren't such a lovable old rogue, he'd be a dirty old man. Thus, this Rivals peaks before the interval, when Sir Anthony and his son Jack share the stage in a brilliant, hilarious scene in which the father lectures the son on filial duty and then announces that he has chosen for him a rich wife. Sheridan's wittily epigrammatic tirade roars and sizzles in Hock's capable hands:

SIR ANTHONY: Why, what the devil's the matter with the fool? Just now you were all gratitude and duty.
JACK: I was sir—you talked to me of independence and a fortune, but not a word of a wife.
SIR ANTHONY: Why—what difference does that make? Odds life, sir! if you have the estate, you must take it with the livestock on it, as it stands.
JACK: If my happiness is to be the price, I must beg leave to decline the purchase.—Pray, sir, who is the lady?
SIR ANTHONY: What's that to you, sir?—Come, give me your promise to love, and to marry her directly.
JACK: Sure, sir, this is not very reasonable, to summon my affections for a lady I know nothing of!
SIR ANTHONY: I am sure, sir, 'tis more unreasonable in you to object to a lady you know nothing of.
JACK: Then, sir, I must tell you plainly that my inclinations are fixed on another—my heart is engaged to an angel.
SIR ANTHONY: Then pray let it send an excuse. It is very sorry—but business prevents its waiting on her.
JACK: But my vows are pledged to her.
SIR ANTHONY: Let her foreclose, Jack; let her foreclose; they are not worth redeeming.

Of course, unbeknownst to both, Jack's angel and Sir Anthony's livestock are one and the same; there's the fuel for the fun to come in The Rivals. And Hock's young co-stars more than hold up their end of things, especially Rachel Botchan, who plays the moodily romantic object of Jack's affection, Lydia Languish, and Christopher Moore, whiny indecision personified as Jack's chum Faulkland, whose doubting temperament almost destroys all of his chances for happiness with Lydia's plucky cousin Julia. Sean McNall's Jack is less convincing, I fear, for its slick off-handedness: I felt the careless knavery of the young man but not the passionate fervor.

As Jack's titular rivals for beautiful Lydia, Dan Daily and Dominick Cuskern score, respectively, as a pompous overblown Scotsman called Sir Lucius O'Trigger and a bumbling bumpkin named Bob Acres; Daily, in particular, cuts a memorable swath through the play with his thick brogue, puffed-out chest, and idiotic swagger. Carol Schultz has the play's other important role, that of Lydia's pretentious aunt Mrs. Malaprop, who famously mangles the English language even as she protests her remarkable facility with it. Mrs. Malaprop is indulging in a romantic folly of her own, conducting a secret correspondence with O'Trigger, and it is this melancholy but laughable aspect of the lady that Schultz gets just right: her fluttery attentions to Sir Lucius, and her stately deflation when he finds her out, manage to be both broad and touching at the same time.

Sheridan never lets us down for an instant; The Rivals is one of the funniest plays ever written. This staging, helmed by Robert Neff Williams, takes time to find it bearings; the second half, if never quite as blissfully perfect as the scene I mentioned earlier, flows gracefully and good-naturedly toward the expected happy ending. All in all, a pleasing and distinctive account of one of the English theatre's honest-to-goodness treasures.

The Foundry Theatre's new production The Roaring Girle is brazenly adventurous theatre and unapologetically political. So I'm loathe to come down too hard on it, given its obviously heartfelt and praiseworthy intentions.

But I would be lying if I said that The Roaring Girle succeeds either as theatre or agitprop. The fact is, this is a tedious play in an overblown production; sitting through it is a chore.

I think what director Melanie Joseph and playwright Alice Tuan are going for here is a freewheeling, 60s-style political satire. At least the beginning of The Roaring Girle feels that way: Louisa Thompson's busy set, itself a sort of Laugh-In joke wall littered with advertising, teems with cacophonous anarchy. In passing and almost at random, a rich kid makes an impromptu political speech; two ostentatiously overfed slobs careen across the stage discussing the kinds of cheese that were on last night's pizza; "haves" and "have-nots" take sides on issues of security, foreign policy, and freedom of expression. Lest we miss the point, the characters are clad anachronistically in doublets or gowns and designer sneakers; at one moment, a bust of George W. Bush briefly parades by us. Not so much traditional play as a happening, it's a bombardment of liberal attitude that, for a while, is refreshing.

But soon the lack of substance tells on it; and anyway, a plot intrudes—one so complicated and convoluted that it sweeps away anything that's in its path. It has to do with a renegade woman named Moll Cutpurse, who dares to dress as a man and challenge the local magistrate's authority. This magistrate has banned theatre (except an establishment run by one of his cronies); Moll is determined to put on a show, and finds an ally in the magistrate's rebellious son, who agrees to be her leading man. LOTS of stuff happens involving LOTS of characters, almost none of it compelling. The program tells us that generations of producers have called The Roaring Girle unproduceable, and they seem to be right, even in Tuan's mod update.

The politics and the satire, meanwhile, get lost in the shuffle: Tuan is so busy telling her story—and we're working so hard trying to stay attentive and follow it—that there's just no time for anything else. Perhaps a more familiar frame on which to hang their civil disobedience might have served Tuan and Joseph more felicitously.

As it is, Joseph's staging is scattershot, as are Thompson's enormous set and Doey Lüthi's deliberately anachronistic costumes—all bespeaking lots of money and effort but ultimately defeated by the incoherent and unwieldy script at The Roaring Girle's center.

Octave has fallen desperately in love with the winsome and beautiful Hyacinte, and he has married her in secret even though he's betrothed to the daughter of miserly old Geronte. His buddy Leandre (who is Geronte's son) has gotten mixed up with the giggly, bubbly Zerbinette, who is about to be carried off by gypsy marauders. Both young men quake at the thought of what their fathers will do when they learn of these romantic liaisons.

Luckily, Leandre's wily servant Scapin is on hand to save the day. In the course of Moliere's timelessly improbable play, Scapin swindles both Geronte and Octave's father Argante out of the money needed to abet the sons' schemes; he also manages to play a deviously dirty trick on Geronte that enables him to beat his master rather soundly with his own walking stick. By play's end, both sets of young lovers are headed to the altar (suitable social status for each lady having been fortuitously supplied); the general happiness is such that Geronte even forgives Scapin for his beating.

Familiar as all of this is, the Storm Theatre's current production of Scapin is undeniably welcome; do we ever tire of this lovable, anarchic rogue, who has been a staple of comedy from Plautus through Bugs Bunny? This revival features a contemporary, conversational translation by Jack Clay, and is directed with suitably antic attitude by Stephen Logan Day on a simple, whimsical set by Mary Houston that evokes the Roman Comedy roots of Moliere's play. The program informs us with disarming precision that we are in Naples in 1671, and so E. Shura Pollatsek's costumes reflect that time and place, with the aristocratic gentlemen clad in elaborate cloaks and buckles and sporting foolish, frilly wigs, and the ladies outfitted in simple but brightly colored period gowns.

One of the delights of this Scapin is seeing some actors who usually play serious drama letting loose with the high-energy comedy that's called for here. I'm thinking particularly of Hugh Brandon Kelly, who is constantly amiable as Octave's fretful servant Silvestre, and nearly stops the show in the scene when he is called upon to scare Argante by pretending to be a bellowing bully. Adriane Erdos proves similarly delightful as Zerbinette, especially as she giddily (and unknowingly) recounts the story of Scapin's swindle of Geronte to none other than Geronte himself.

In the title role, Shay Ansari makes a good effort, but he's arch rather than broad, which dilutes the comic potential. Stephen Logan Day and Ashton Crosby are invaluable as the old men, the unwitting butts of just about every joke. Tim Roberts is mooing petulance personified as Octave; Maury Miller is an effective if not so distinctive Leandre. Kelleigh Miller is glowing and good-natured as the guileless Hyacinte.

Aphra Behn is an amazing figure, historically speaking. She was one of the first professional female writers in the English speaking world, a spy for the Royal Court for almost twenty years, and one of the most prolific writers of the Restoration period. Virginia Woolf once said of her that “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Her greatest success as a playwright was The Rover, which is being given a much deserved production by The Brass Tacks Theatre Company & Happy Hour Productions.

The Rover is a comedy with teeth, always taking unexpected turns, exploring sexuality and power, and asking some unsettling questions about desire and loyalty. The plot is far too complicated to go over in detail. Basically, a group of English lads run about in old Italy, mixing it up with the locals as well as a few Spaniards, looking for wine, women, and song. One of the lads, Belville, seeks true love, while his good friend Wilmore, the rover of the title, seeks anything with a pulse. The object of Belville’s affection is Florinda, who has already been betrothed to another by an arrangement of her brother, Don Pedro. The play takes place during Carnivale, and is full of gypsies and harlots, drunken revelry and swordplay. What stands out in this play is the frank manner in which Behn wrote of feminine sexuality, which is most evident in the character of Angellica, a courtesan.

I found this production scrappy and full of life. It may be a little rough around the edges, but it's directed with flair by Lisa Jackson. The action never seems to let up, and each scene slides effortlessly into the next one. The one fault I found with the direction was the lack of focus some of the actors had when they weren’t speaking— particularly those playing the servants. Too much time was spent on bits between characters upstage while important exposition was being delivered downstage.

Peter Husovksy is quite fun as the libidinous rover Wilmore. He plays this alternately funny and repulsive character unapologetically, and always finds the humor in each scene he's in. Matthew Morgan, as Blunt, the fop of the English group, is reminiscent of Garth from "Wayne’s World." As Don Pedro, Joe Plummer is excellent. Plummer brings immense presence and class to the role, and my only complaint was that he wasn’t on stage more. And Melinda Ferrarracio plays Angellicca to sensual perfection, alternating expertly between brutal honesty and farcical jealousy.

The blocky, sketchy cartoons of Ben Katchor are vessels for a peculiar form of imaginary anthropology. In a succession of syndicated strips (anthologized in such volumes as Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and The Beauty Supply District), Katchor has drafted an absurd shadow version of Manhattan, in which the idiosyncratic minutiae of city life is examined as if it were the trappings of an exotic foreign culture.

Unlike his fellow cartoonist-turned-playwright Jules Feiffer, Katchor's wry observational humor is based as much on abstract ideas and inanimate objects as the foibles of human beings. As a result, I was very curious to see if Katchor's aesthetic made as natural a leap to the living, breathing medium of the stage as that of Feiffer, his forebear in this department. I'm happy to say that not only does Katchor succeed, but his ambition does Feiffer one better.

The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of Dr. Rushower is not only an amusing two-tiered title; it's the choice that must be made by Gingin Rushower, the musical's protagonist. Gingin (Mollie Weaver, gracefully girlish) is a student of literature, living at home with her father, a famous plastic surgeon and philanthropist who attempts to match her up with various "friends"—mostly successful middle-aged men who don't appeal to her at all.

One day, however, she reads about the plight of the laborers at Kayrol Island, a manufacturing hub in the South Pacific. There, poorly paid stevedores carry metal slugs (designed to give our micro-engineered electric appliances a heft they wouldn't otherwise have) through the chemical-saturated landscape, ruining their bodies and their souls in the process. Gingin's heart bleeds for these individuals, and Dr. Rushower (the genially stolid Tom Buckland) sets up an expedition to Kayrol Island, sending Gingin and Immanuel Lubang—a young, sensitive, handsome "friend" who studies the poetry of appliance instruction manuals (played with winning ingenuousness by Ryan Mercy)—to inculcate the slug-bearers with some higher aspirations.

Thus, just as Feiffer stretched his satirical lost souls to full human size in such plays as Knock, Knock and Little Murders, Katchor has brought his own wandering city-dwellers into a dramatic engagement with a larger world, critiquing globalization and misguided Western do-gooding in the process.

So how does Katchor do Feiffer one better? First of all, Katchor brings his drawings literally to life by designing the sets, which are all projected on a series of three giant screens flanking the stage. The interior of the Rushower penthouse, the jungles of Kayrol and, memorably, a montage of Dr. Rushower's friends, all surround the action, bringing the human actors into direct contact with the rough-hewn precision of Katchor's artwork.

Secondly, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island is not a play but a musical, and a wonderfully effective one. Katchor's collaborator, Mark Mulcahy, has created a rock-inflected score whose deadpan coolness, like that of Katchor's words and pictures, belies surprising depths. Sung entirely through (and expertly played by a band of four), the score provides plenty of catchy melodies and clever recitatives, all of which have the ability to stand on their own beyond this Katchor-directed production. Mulcahy also appears onstage, in a trio of pivotal roles that bring his and Katchor's compositions to life on stage with an ideal blend of subtlety and stylization.

Together, the sets and the music imbue the narrative and characters with a dreamy quality that allows us to step outside the workaday world and observe familiar but fantastic versions of ourselves, making their way in a complex and confusing world. And is this stepping out not the reason we bother with the theatre in the first place?

Watchdog Theatre Company is doing an evening of short plays by, or based on stories by, Anton Chekhov. It's a modestly amusing evening, though eight Chekhovs in a row might be too much of good thing.

The evening kicks off with its most successful piece, Drama, in which Chance Muehleck hilariously portrays a famous writer being bored to death by an enthusiastic rookie playwright (nicely played by Kathleen Brown). Chekhov has fun kidding himself here, showing us excerpts from what seems like a relentlessly Russian tragicomedy. Muehleck has a blast comically broadcasting the effects of the great writer's tedium, which turn literally explosive by the play's end.

In the eponymous short play The Sneeze, former Ringling Brothers clown Harold Moeller demonstrates his gifts for physical comedy as a theatregoer who gets into trouble after inadvertently indulging in some projectile sneezing. This is the only piece on the bill that includes all eight actors of the ensemble, and they do adroit work in this (mostly) silent comedy under Blake Baldwin's direction.

Moeller is somewhat less effective in two more familiar short plays that require him to match words to his expert body language. In The Evils of Tobacco, he plays a put-upon husband who has been asked to give a speech on the titular subject to some kind of social club, but ends up publicly bemoaning his henpecked state instead. Moeller is funny here, but  he heads way over the top at the monologue's conclusion; less would probably be more in this situation. Similarly, he's one-dimensionally effete as Lomov, the young man who comes to ask his neighbor Chubukov for his daughter's hand in marriage in The Proposal, but winds up squabbling with both father and daughter about who has the better dog.  Indeed, Baldwin seems to be encouraging his actors (Jon Okabayashi as Chubukov and Beth Leckbee as Natalya) to overplay in this piece, draining an already unsubtle comedy of many of its laughs.

The Proposal, like most of the plays included in The Sneeze, is essentially a one-joke comedy, and the joke is always built around the characters' foibles: they're like O. Henry stories translated to Russia. They work best, I think, with characterizations that are as detailed and delicate as the ones that longer Chekhov plays call for; so Baldwin and his company's propensity for broadness often proves self-defeating. Even the less familiar works on the program, such as The Alien Corn, in which a provincial but rich Russian landowner casually insults his children's Parisian tutor, or The Inspector General, in which a government official who thinks he's traveling incognito learns what his minions really think about him, tend to wear out their welcome as the actors push the jokes too hard.

Which is not to say The Sneeze fails to entertain; the natural wit of the stories and the more restrained playing of Muehleck and Christopher Conant (cast as a servant in four of the eight plays) draw frequent smiles and guffaws. In the end, and as I said at the beginning, it could be that eight Chekhovs might be two or three too many for a single night.

What does great art do to people?

Terrence McNally explores this question, with wonderfully resonant results, in Full Frontal Nudity, the first half of the double-bill The Stendhal Syndrome, which is currently playing at Primary Stages. The art is Michelangelo's David, unseen by us except in projections on the theatre's rear wall. The spectators are three American tourists—Lana, a not-so-dumb blonde who missed this morning's breakfast; Leo, from Pittsburgh, an aggressively macho guy who is trying to put the moves on Lana; and Hector, a college instructor who recently lost his wife and child. Also taking in the great sculpture is Bimbi, their worldly European tour guide, who takes very seriously her mission to allow her charges to get the most out of their once-in-a-lifetime encounter with a work of rare and transcendent beauty.

It may not sound like a particularly dramatic idea for a play, but McNally makes it truly compelling, bouncing back and forth between the conversation actually spoken by these characters and the thoughts popping into their heads. The latter are often the most revealing: Hector's stream-of-consciousness ramble as he gazes lovingly at the David feels spectacularly real, for example, flowing naturally from his inability to find just the right words to describe what he's feeling to his random musing about what ever happened to Steve Reeves. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in the play, McNally nails how we really react to art: intuitively, unpredictably, and wide-rangingly. Most instructive.

Yet throughout McNally continually surprises us with insight about his subject. At one point, Lana decides that what she wants to do, more than anything in the world, is to touch the statue. Bimbi, though empathetic, advises against it; buttoned-up Hector is appalled at the idea. But Lana has a good reason: it's just an object, after all, a thing created by another human being—by definition, then, ripe for engagement rather than adoration. Unexpected wisdom and profundity emanates from an unlikely source.

Isabella Rossellini—cool, elegant, deliciously grounded, and ineffably luminous—anchors Full Frontal Nudity as the guide Bimbi. Michael Countryman (Hector), Yul Vazquez (Leo), and Jennifer Mudge (Lana) offer sturdy support.

All four re-appear in the evening's second piece, Prelude & Liebestod, but here mostly in service of Richard Thomas' bravura star turn as an egomaniacal conductor leading orchestra and soloist in a life-changing and -affirming performance of Wagner. Prelude is almost the obverse of Nudity, offering a glance at what it means not to enjoy art but to create it; it's also a practical illustration of the "syndrome" that gives the evening its name, with its leading character experiencing an erotic (as opposed to an intellectual) response to the grand music he is making.

The play happens inside the conductor's mind, revealing his thoughts about his work and his sex life. Watching from one box is his cool but glamorous wife (Rossellini) and from another is a male fan (Vazquez) hoping to find his way into the (bisexual) conductor's bed. Thomas is brilliantly over-the-top negotiating these two plus the unconfident soloist (Mudge) and the envious concert master (Countryman). Prelude is funny but it's a lot longer than it probably ought to be; McNally indulges himself with too many esoteric cultural references and a lengthy account of a sexual experience that borders on the pornographic.

The Stendhal Syndrome, directed with real flair by Leonard Foglia, is thoroughly entertaining and, at least during the first half, provides a good deal of intellectual stimulation as well. It is, by the way, a gorgeous inaugural production for Primary Stages' new space at 59E59, a venue that is happily both good looking and comfortable.

Both Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who fabricated a Pulitzer Prize-winning news story out of whole cloth in 1981, and Jayson Blair, the New York Times' overpraised journalist whose pattern of lies was exposed in a more recent scandal, are invoked in Tracey Scott Wilson's new play. In The Story, an ambitious, upwardly mobile African American reporter named Yvonne Robinson invents a teenager named Latisha, places her in the center of a sensational but made-up all-girl gang, and—the pièce de resistance—has her confess to the brutal, unsolved murder of a white public school teacher. Unhampered by the baggage that stops normal mortals from doing this sort of thing—morals, scruples, ethics, and so on—Yvonne brazenly executes her scam and engineers her way out of the dead-end "Outlook" section of the metropolitan newspaper where she has just begun working and onto the front page and the National Desk.

But if Cooke and Blair and possibly other famous liars have inspired Wilson's plot, they are not really the subjects of The Story. Wilson has something more important on her mind, and she puts it into the mouth of an older black woman named Pat, the "Outlook" editor, a feisty pioneer who was one of the paper's first African American reporters years before:

The things you say and the way you say them matters because words matter. When I was going through hell integrating this paper that was the only thing that kept me going, knowing the power of words to effect change.

This is drama, not journalism; and also not movie-of-the-week retread: The Story reminds us, palpably, that our actions—what we do and what we say—always mean something; that our lives have content as well as form.

It's a powerful message, and it is, for the most part, clearly and potently delivered in this fine new American play. In Yvonne and Pat, Wilson gives us two fascinating archetypal characters who represent the best and worst of their generations. Similarly, the two men who prop these women up stand in for other significant segments of the populace: a black reporter named Neil who thinks his street-talking bravado masks his insecurities about racial and sexual politics (Pat's assistant), and a white trust fund kid named Jeff whose latent racism is aroused when he drifts outside his comfort zone (Yvonne's boyfriend, who is also the Metro editor at the newspaper). The playwright places the four in proximity to one another, adds her catalytic tempest of the made-up Latisha scoop, and lets the volatile personalities duke it out, demonstrating some valuable and pointed lessons about life in screwed-up, image-obsessed, racially conflicted, present-day urban America. Here's Pat again, later in the play:

I can't believe you got past human resources. When they hired me they checked everything, including my pee. When you walked into the room I guess they thought they hit the jackpot. You were living, breathing, proof that black folks have and can make it to the promised land without bitterness, without blemish.

The themes of The Story are so pertinent and resonant that it's disappointing that Wilson fails to heed Pat's warning and falls prey to a trendy, superficial theatrical fad of the moment, filling her compelling script with MTV-quick-cuts and overlaps that constantly detract from her otherwise taut storytelling. This technique particularly sabotages her ending: The Story concludes with a zingy surprise, but it's almost trivialized by the twin melodramas Wilson plays out on stage just before.

Nevertheless, The Story emerges as one of the most thought-provoking and well-realized dramas of the season. It's been mounted with skill by director Loretta Greco at The Public Theater's airy Anspacher space. The cast is superb, led by Erika Alexander as Yvonne, Damon Gupton as Neil, Stephen Kunken as Jeff, and especially the invaluable and more-and-more formidable Phylicia Rashad as Pat. Sound support comes from Tammi Clayton as the spectral Latisha, Sarah Grace Wilson as the murder victim's widow, and Kalimi Baxter, Susan Kelechi Watson, and Michelle Hurst, who are terrific as seemingly dozens of other characters who drift in and out of this riveting, eminently watchable Story.

Now the fact is that I've never read On The Road, and I don't know all that much about Jack Kerouac and the Beat Writers; but I mean to mend this hole in my cultural education now, and Francis Kuzler's play The Substance of John is what's inspired me to do it. I don't think John is quite "done" yet, and I certainly can't claim to understand all that it says or tries to do. But I recognize it as a worthily ambitious work of a smart and visionary young playwright, and the things it tells us about its protagonist—that's Kerouac—and the iconic abstractions that seemed to matter to him—America and Art—are provocative and exciting.

The Substance of John begins at the end, with a character called Elder Jack sitting at a bar drinking and free associating, and doing both things rather compulsively. Cut quickly to a scene 25 years earlier, in which Jack Kerouac, returning home to New York after an unsuccessful stint in the military during World War II, argues with his dad about this and that and announces that he's going away.

Kuzler jumps us back and forth like this, between the used-up old man at the bar and the restless young artist trying to find a place and a form to suit his art. We meet Jack's literary associates/influences—William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and eventually Neal Cassady, the free spirit who went on the road with Kerouac and inspired his most famous work. We glimpse Jack's three unsatisfactory marriages, and briefly meet each of his dissatisfied wives. We empathize with his put-upon mother, who endured a fairly derelict husband and then went on to endure an increasingly derelict son: John's second act charts a pretty terrible fall after a rise that peaked too sharply and quickly.

Near the end, Jack turns up in the same bar as Elder Jack, dressed identically and just as close to the end of his rope. The older man says  "j'arrive," giving us a moment of intense theatricality that tops everything that's come before. To be honest, John is wonderful only fitfully, interspersing family/homelife scenes that invoke—deliberately, I think—old-fashioned movie biography with impressionistic vignettes that utilize a host of theatre styles to conjure a dramatic analog to a jazz riff. There are breathtaking bits that soar with poetry, insight, and/or mood, like a meeting in the middle of Times Square between Jack and Huncke, the former jotting down almost everything the latter says; or, later, another street scene involving Huncke and a former circus clown who is supposed to deliver Jack a copy of his first rave newspaper review.

But other stuff doesn't work, either because director Cailin Heffernan and her cast don't see how to pull it off, or because Kuzler is trying too much and too many different things. This is a remarkably intellectual piece, and it's easy to lose track of it; detailed knowledge of the lives and works of Kerouac and his cronies is assumed, probably to the play's detriment (though I love that Kuzler glosses over all the famous stuff to focus on the mundane and the esoteric: is that how Jack wanted to live?).

The production, mounted by the energetic young Boomerang Theatre Company, is enormous, with a three-man jazz combo playing incidental music, a terrific impressionistic set by Katherine McCauley that's augmented by video projections that evoke time and place, and a 12-person ensemble. There are some memorable turns here, notably Bram Heidinger's instantly charismatic Neal Cassady and Sarah Sutel's briefly seen but utterly interesting Stella Kerouac, Jack's third wife. Shaggy and obviously fake long hair, moustache, and beard for Ben Masur's Allen Ginsberg are a mistake.

The Substance of John moves to its own beat, which is as it should be given its subject. It doesn't answer the riddles of Kerouac's sorry life—it doesn't really even try—but it dances around the heart and soul of its protagonist in fascinating ways. I'm ripe to learn more, and to hear more from Kuzler in the future.

The Thing About Men is a pleasantly diverting new musical comedy about a husband who, when he discovers that his wife is having an affair, quits his own home and moves in with his rival. His initial motive is to exact a vague but nasty revenge; but soon he finds that he likes the other fellow, and he sets out to help him win the woman they both love.

The best thing about The Thing About Men is its leading men. Marc Kudisch has made a career out of careful but extravagant portraits of big-voiced cartoons like Bye Bye Birdie's Conrad, Beauty and the Beast's Gaston, and Thoroughly Modern Millie's Trevor Graydon. What a pleasure to see him get to create a real, three-dimensional man! That's just what he does here, despite the limitations of a plot that veers toward both sex farce and fairy tale at times; Kudisch's character, Tom, emerges as a loving, big-hearted, disappointed, sentimental fool, one whom we find ourselves caring about despite all the bad decisions he makes and bad values he holds on to.

Ron Bohmer, meanwhile, is deliciously free-spirited, flighty, and—here's the shrewd acting choice—terrified as Sebastian, the irresponsible artist who becomes Tom's wife's lover. Parading around his "Downtown Bohemian Slum" digs (that's the title of one of the songs) like a latter-day hippie, in sandals and with long hair halfway down his back, Sebastian is a magnet for discontented yuppies, as both Tom and his wife Lucy demonstrate. Bohmer has fun in the role, and he manages to make Sebastian just as real as Tom, which is why against the odds we find ourselves rooting for both of the would-be rivals.

Bohmer and Kudisch are so darned appealing, in fact, that Leah Hocking's Lucy—severely underwritten in any event—hasn't got a chance: the ending we're hoping for is that Tom and Sebastian will run off together and ditch the two-timer for good. The Thing About Men celebrates male buddyhood first and foremost—note that Tom and Sebastian are absolutely not gay—and the appeal of their warm collegial fellowship, that American staple epitomized by Butch and Sundance, Tom and Huck, and so many others, infuses the show with a happy glow. It is, alas, firmly at odds with the much more grown-up naughty pansexual/ménage-a-trois-y feel that I recall from the film; it's also directly opposed to the politically correct midlife crisis detour that derails the show in Act Two.

But The Thing About Men breezes along satisfyingly if undemandingly for most of its length. Lyricist/librettist Joe DiPietro provides a fitful framing device of two observers, played by Jennifer Simard and Daniel Reichard, who narrate, comment on, and participate in the story in various guises. This allows Simard, who was in the original cast of DiPietro's hit I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, to morph into a variety of broadly funny characters, most memorably a chipper health club employee, Sebastian's flaky neighbor who reads palms, and a singer in a jukebox. Reichard is given less to do, but he earns a gigantic laugh as a relentlessly straight waiter in a trendy restaurant.

Composer Jimmy Roberts (who also collaborated with DiPietro on I Love You) provides a tuneful score that sounds great in the theatre played by a four-piece orchestra led by Lynne Shankel. Director Mark Clements keeps things moving swiftly, abetted by a clever Richard Hoover set design that incorporates several video screens on which are projected what amount to witty virtual props (projections are designed by Elaine J. McCarthy).

The Thing About Men assumes that infidelity is normal, which I find just a touch distressing; get past that, though, and the feel-good-ness of this new musical comedy is genuine. This is not a deep, thought-provoking Work of Art: DiPietro and Roberts only want us to relax and enjoy ourselves, and—with big boosts from the Messrs. Kudisch and Bohmer, both of whom deserve more plausible vehicles—they largely succeed.

"Chairman Richard Grasso said on Tuesday he’d give up a chunk of the money he was owed by the New York Stock Exchange to quell the clamor that arose after his $139.5 million pay package became a public issue."
   - CNBC, September 10, 2003

Talk about ripped from the headlines: can Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera ever be not timely? New York is blessed at the moment with a terrific Threepenny, one that gets right to the heart of this piece's eternal internals. Mr. Peachum, lord of London's beggars in the play and often Brecht's de facto spokesperson within it as well, ruminates about the natural rights of humankind at the end of Threepenny's first act, concluding

Who wouldn't want a little decent treatment?
It seems that circumstance won't have it so.

Circumstance indeed: director David Fuller follows Brecht and his savvy translator adaptor Marc Blitzstein past the obvious polemics to expose the ruthless capitalist in all of us, in a production that is searing, intimate, profound, funny, terrifying, and, finally, startling.

How do you shock a room full of worldly, sophisticated New Yorkers out of their complacency? You'll discover the answer when you head to Jean Cocteau Rep for this first significant theatrical event of the 2003 fall season. Presented deliberately claustrophobically on Roman Tatarowicz's masterful set, which looks like the dankest basement of hell—bounded by stairs and ladder steps, it's like Escher's Ascending and Descending with the lights turned out—Fuller's actors pour off the stage and into the theatre's aisles, launching nothing short of a full frontal assault against comfort and the status quo. Confronted with the struggle between "haves" and "have-nots" (or, probably more accurately, "have-nots" and "have-even-less-than-thats"), and forced to deal with a palpable tension between the safe haven of make-believe that we think theatre provides and the scary facts of life that this production keeps shoving right into our faces, we have no choice but to at least hear the call to action.

The Threepenny Opera is 75 years old now. Drawn loosely from John Gay's Beggar's Opera, it takes place in London on the eve of Queen Victoria's coronation. Peachum has made a science and a thriving business out of human suffering by licensing the city's beggars; Macheath (aka Mack the Knife) is the ruthless gangster kingpin who, with the police in his pocket, runs the rest of London's underworld. When Peachum's daughter Polly falls in love with and "marries" Macheath, her parents' response is to sell out their new son-in-law for a £40 reward. The dashing Mack is also betrayed by Jenny, a whore with whom he was once in business; Peachum, meanwhile, almost gets double-crossed by Mack's pal Police Commissioner Tiger Brown. Mack finally appears ready to meet his fate on the gallows at the end of the play, when a messenger from Queen Victoria arrives on horseback, reprieving him and honoring him with a peership.

What's so great about this show is that its blatantly cynical happy ending surprises and disheartens us at the same time: it's hard to sit through Threepenny's catalog of man's inhumanity to man without being at once entertained and ashamed by it all. Especially here at the Cocteau, where Fuller and his robust actors play not just the pageantry and pomp of the thing but also its ugly melodrama, for all that its worth—a relentless round of betrayals in the name of self-interest that impugn the benignity of  human nature rather savagely. Amy Lee Williams' Polly sings about the seductively lethal "Pirate Jenny" with so much edge that we fear for our lives a little bit; Elise Stone's Jenny philosophizes about the betrayals of Caesar, Macheath, and other great men in "Solomon Song" with a bitter mixture of regret and pragmatism that pierces the heart. Weill and Brecht's sardonic pastiches—the jubilant march in which Macheath and Tiger Brown reminisce about their days of butchery in His Majesty's Army, the mock sentimental aria with which Macheath proclaims his devotion to umpteenth conquest Polly—still resonate and surprise, particularly as performed here with utmost conviction and sincerity by Chad Suitts' dashing, slick, amoral Mack (with able assist by Abe Goldfarb's hopelessly corrupted politico Brown). Marlene May and Angus Hepburn, as the Peachums, rip into their starkly cynical material with dire relish, demolishing any hope we may have of holding onto an illusion or two before the evening is out.

The smaller roles are just as vividly played, by the way: company veteran Harris Berlinsky is deliciously insidious as a constable on the take, while newcomer Joey Piscopo makes a guileless everyman out of Peachum's new recruit Charles Filch. Danny Dempsey, Brian Lee Huynh, and Timothy McDonough are quintessential exploited dupes as Macheath's gang.

Threepenny proves here to be relentless and horribly prescient in its attack on the corruptibility of the powerful; in Mack the Knife's stealth we detect portents of Hitler and other gangster tyrants, while in Peachum's ability to make things mean whatever he wishes them to we are reminded of more contemporary politicians and entrepreneurs than we care to name. Work like this won't be going out of style anytime soon, I'm sorry to report; we must be grateful to Fuller and his company's clear-eyed and entirely unflinching vision, which makes this tawdry, rowdy "opera for beggars" the most artfully and shockingly pertinent show in town.

One Saturday in March in the year 1911 here in New York City, 146 people died in the span of 25 minutes in the infamous Triangle Factory Fire. At the time, it was one of the worst disasters the city had ever known. What made the fire all the more horrific was the fact that most of the victims were young immigrant women who had been locked into the rooms they were working in on the upper floors of the building, and whose only means of escaping the flames was a leap out of the window. The Actors Company Theatre has taken the events that led up to the tragedy, and the trial that followed it, and created their latest offering, The Triangle Factory Fire Project.

The first act of the show deals with the fire itself, and its immediate aftermath. Act Two focuses on the trial. The play is narrated by William Shepard, a journalist of the time played with quiet restraint by Jamie Bennett. In between the narrative and the more naturalistic scenes are several choral readings of headlines of the day. There is a brief amount of set-up before the main event of the fire, showing union organizers of the time struggling to get better working conditions for people like the women of the Triangle Factory. This includes a union meeting at Cooper Union where we meet Margaret Schwartz, an immigrant woman who somehow manages to give an impromptu speech on the same stage with Samuel Gompers and Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont. Schwartz also works at the Triangle Factory, and it’s pretty clear that she is doomed to perish in the fire.

The main chunk of Act One is given over to the fire itself. The details of what happened are horrific and tragic—dozens of workers locked inside while the temperature rose to intolerable degrees. This is the most exciting and well-staged section of the play, and the most devastating. At one point, we hear Shepard’s actual description of what is was like to watch one person after another leap from the building, preferring to die on the pavement than in the fire. I have read and heard that description many times; it is heartbreakingly shocking in its immediacy and clarity.

After the fire, there is the clean-up, the search for survivors, and the identifying of the bodies. In Act Two, the trial against Issac Harris and Max Blanck, the co-owners of the factory, takes place. Their lawyer, Max Steuer, is more than a match for the somewhat inept D.A. for New York, Charles Bostwick. While it is never a great shock to see the wealthy evade prosecution for nasty deeds, it still riles the soul. Steuer is a master at discrediting witnesses—a move all too familiar to someone like myself who grew up watching Perry Mason re-runs and all the various Law and Order shows.

The script consists mainly of actual testimony, first person accounts, and newspaper reports from the time the fire occurred. According to the press release, director Scott Alan Evans has avoided naturalistic scenes and banal back story in favor of stylistic elements including monologues, scenes, spoken headlines, and advertisements. This is at first a clever, funny, and nice way of giving the audience an idea of what people were seeing and hearing in New York circa 1911. But it’s a one trick pony, and is used entirely too much. The best parts of the script come when we see real people reacting to incredible circumstances. At the end of Act One, there is a beautiful scene where a tired and immensely sad policeman tries to find people who can identify bodies that are burnt beyond recognition, using the few facts the fire has left—a ring with someone’s initials, a red dress, etc. It is the scenes such as that one, that are more concerned not so much with being clever as with conveying the simple pathos of the situation, that work best.

The cast is excellent, each member a chameleon able to switch identity at the snap of a finger. Standouts include Jamie Bennett, as William Shepherd, Issac Harris, etc.; Kelly Hutchinson, whose dexterous ability to change characters almost in front of your eyes is a marvel; Timothy McCracken, who among other things manages to make the thoroughly unlikable factory owner Max Blanck come across as a human being and not a mustache-twirling villain; Scott Schafer, whose Max Steuer is a perfect study in creepy, slick lawyering; and James Murtaugh, who plays, among others, the policeman trying to get all the bodies I.D.’d with grace and dignity.

The direction by Scott Alan Evans is inventive and moves well. The design—sets by Mimi Lien, costumes by David Toser, and lights by Mary Louise Geiger—are beautiful, evoking the period and character. I do think the script is not quite finished, but am sure that Christopher Piehler, who developed the text with Evans and the company, will be able to iron out the rough points the next time this show is done.

The Tricky Part begins—casually, informally, disarmingly—with Martin Moran strolling onto the stage; the house lights haven't even gone down yet, and here's our star, chattily delivering the "turn off your cellphones" announcement. Somehow, this sets the tone for all that's to come. The Tricky Part—not conventionally a play or a one-man show—is a conversation about Moran's life. He does almost all the talking, but the nature of the thing is discourse or dialogue; what he talks about, and how he talks about it, is so compelling and so thought-provoking that we are entirely engaged throughout; and it's so breathtakingly intimate and personal that it feels like there's no one else in the room except you and him. The Tricky Part is timely and important—it's about, in part, Moran's sexual abuse, from age 12 to 15, at the hands of a pedophile camp counselor. The experience of the show is at once rich and harrowing: Moran is managing to raise awareness and consciousness as well as to perform a healing, even cathartic act for his fellow victims. Mostly, though, I think The Tricky Part is for Moran himself—very public therapy in the arena where he's chosen to make his life, as an actor: a play of compassion and understanding: a necessary step to moving onward. It's riveting storytelling and thus very successful theatre, but to say only that diminishes it. This is a work of enormous courage and humanity. Its honesty and insight are inspirational.

Moran sets the stage for his tale vividly, talking about the Colorado neighborhood where he grew up and especially about the Catholic School where he spent his formative years. If any body or institution comes in for criticism in The Tricky Part, it's this parochial system where he was educated, or mis-educated, as a boy. He recalls the two emblems hanging on each classroom wall, side by side: a clock and a crucifix; he jokingly remembers that the positions of the hands on both were the same when school let out at 2:45pm. He muses about some of the nuns who taught him, and re-creates a particularly seminal speech—pun kind-of intended—delivered by a priest about the sinful nature of non-procreative sex.

Hints about other aspects of his childhood pop up: a family being torn apart by imminent divorce; a sense of (physical) smallness and inadequacy; the palpable relief when one of the neighborhood bullies, a bigger and older kid named George, surprisingly became his friend after he began a paper route. Through George, young Martin hooks up with Bob, a counselor and sometime seminarian who invites the boys to spend a weekend with him at a ranch high up in the mountains. Moran sketches in details with increasing thoroughness as his story nears its climax, zeroing in finally on the fateful evening when Bill violated every sacred trust and took advantage of a scared, excited, tantalized, terrified 12-year-old boy. Moran says later, simply, "I had no consent to give," and that's the meat of it; but the tricky part (as Moran explains elsewhere in the play, in slightly different context) is that nothing in the world is black or white.

And so The Tricky Part explores the shades in between, and the journey from there to here and from then to now, stopping unexpectedly at a veterans' nursing home in California where Moran sees Bob once again, finding not quite closure but completion, of a step in a process that continues right through today, on the stage of the McGinn/Cazale, where performing this extraordinary solo piece—slightly different every night, I am certain—brings him that much closer to whatever the next step is.

Moran, who I've seen and admired in Bells Are Ringing, A Man of No Importance, and Titanic (among others), brings his formidable skills and talents to bear here, but there's never anything actorly about The Tricky Part; in terms of its subject and its form, it feels unfair to use the standard dramatic yardstick to measure this show. (That being said, I will state that Seth Barrish's direction is spot-on in terms of maintaining pace and interest, and that Heather Carson's lighting and Paul Steinberg's attractive set do precisely what they need to.) The fact is, I can't remember ever witnessing a confessional monologue at once so probing and so spare as this one: similar experiences—the work of Julia Sweeney or Tim Miller, for example—were both stagier and less raw than this is. Moran has thought a great deal about the events he chronicles here and what they signify, but he hasn't packaged his thoughts: he really is laying himself bare, which is pretty amazing. I hope that audiences find truth and hope in this work. And I await whatever's next for Moran.

If you’ve finally tired of the summer proliferation of Elizabethan blank verse in New York’s parks but still want to relax to outdoor performance, you might try Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love instead. Across the Channel and a century after Shakespeare, Pierre Marivaux exchanged poetry for prose, devising a delightful style that earned the term “Marivaudage.” More than just a way of writing, Marivaudage turned the drama of romance inside-out: it refocused romance from external obstacles of traditional comedy (like greedy parents who favor rich suitors) to the internal psychological world of hesitation and confusion. Passion was no longer how one acted, now it was how one thought. Two centuries before Freud, Marivaux moved love from the heart to the head. He almost literally invented what we all know as modern love.

The Triumph of Love shows Marivaux halfway between the old romance and the new. Princess Leonide, in love with the stolid Agis, must disguise herself as a man because his guardians are raising him to overthrow her government. But her machinations aren’t the drama: that comes from Leonide’s effect on Agis and on his hyperrational family. As soon as she (he) arrives, the entire household’s madly, pathetically, stupidly in love with her. Leonide leads on men and women alike, sometimes pretending to be a boy, sometimes a girl pretending to be a boy, whipping the house into a frenzy of love notes, exchanged portraits, and bribed servants, until she’s sure of Agis’ love for her. Then she whisks him away to marriage, leaving her enemies in the cold.

In the New York Classical Theatre’s Central Park production, director Stephen Burdman gets the audience’s blood moving as quickly as the characters’. At the scene break, and more and more frequently as the dénouement approaches, Burdman moves the action fifty feet along the path, leaving us to hustle after Leonide and her lovers. The actors fly into the scene from over a berm or out of a copse, matching the absurdities of love with the visual absurdity of 18^th-century aristocrats in Central Park, complete with tricornered hats and décolletage (production designer Andréa Huelse created the elegant costumes).

Burdman seems so preoccupied with these larger concerns of pacing and staging that he’s left the actors on their own for the refined feelings. Jenn Schulte is a princess in control of the situation, although you’re never quite sure when she’s following a plan and when she’s improvising. If Leonide has it all figured beforehand (as Mira Sorvino played her in the passable film version of Triumph last summer), she’s a lot more cold-hearted than if she abandons herself to the forces of love. But still, Schulte seduces with words, launching Marivaux’s pretty phrases into the twilight. And she, more than anyone else in this Triumph, adjusts her acting for the outdoors, using her expressive mouth to telegraph her emotions to the growing crowd.

Love’s reckless enthusiasm is found in Margaret Reed’s scene-stealing giddiness as Leontine, Agis’ adoptive mother. On the cusp of a good-looking middle age, Reed gets her complexion up as she frolics like a teenager. As her brother Hermocrate, Curt Hostetter hams like a television actor, mimicking expressions rather than actions. A Voltaire-like rationalist philosopher, Hermocrate’s world is crumbling because of Love, the unpredictable variable in the equation of life. But you wouldn’t know it watching Hostetter, who tenses his jaw and marches up and down with pigheaded resolve from start to finish. The several servants fill their roles well, especially Jenny Langsam as the adorable maid Corine (who’s discovering love for the first time).

Unlike Shakespeare, Marivaux’s prose script is immediately accessible, especially in Stephen Wadsworth’s adaptation. This accessibility—and probably the anachronistic costumes—pull passersby in throughout the two-hour running time. The leafy glades of Central Park do more for Triumph than for most outdoor theater, lending the August humidity to the heat of love. Love has never seemed so timeless.

It’s a rare occurrence when a show with a gimmick actually uses it to create a unique and interesting theatrical experience. Such is the case with The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World, a show that takes place almost entirely in total darkness. This is not just a show for the ears (though it is that); this is a full sensory experience—the actors walk all around as the audience feels them passing by. The blackness actually adds to the experience, bringing up questions of appearances and morality while challenging traditional theatrical conventions.

The theatre is set up in a most untraditional fashion. The stage is quite small, and the seats are set up with two aisles at a 90 degree angle so that they intersect the space. The actors use these aisles to move among the audience members throughout the show. The play begins with the cast enticing the audience to see their sideshow, their starring attraction the “ugliest woman in the world.” As they draw back the curtain to reveal her, the lights go out and the show truly begins. Telling the story of Julia’s life from her conscription into the sideshow through her untimely death, and the impact of her death on her discoverer/owner, Julia Pastrana explores the importance of outward appearances and how they affect how people are seen. Since we must assess Julia by her voice and words alone, we can’t judge her in the same way characters in the play can, which makes for an interesting duality between our perceptions versus the characters' perceptions.

Author Shaun Prendergast’s use of poetic imagery fits the show perfectly; being unable to use their eyes, the audience is forced to come up with their own images based on Prendergast’s words. Julia has to describe herself to the audience; the language she uses presents a clear and horrifying picture of her appearance, even though we never actually see her. Erin Williams gives a strong performance in the title role, and the entire cast is quite capable of meeting the challenges of the script, moving through the darkened space with total confidence. The company has the added challenge of playing multiple roles throughout the evening, and the characters they create are startlingly unique, especially since the only changes the actors can affect are vocal ones.

Director J.V. Mercanti has done an amazing job collaborating with sound designer John Moros and the cast to create vivid soundscapes for each moment of the show. The noise doesn’t come from one place, but rather bombards the audience on different levels and from different directions. At all times the sounds are carefully orchestrated, usually with a scene going on in the foreground while background noises complete the effect—transferring the audience to a Mexican village, the circus camp, a hospital, and many other locations. At no point are we confused as to where we are—the clarity of Moros’ design combined with the precision of the cast-created sounds provides a comprehensive mental picture of the setting.

Unfortunately, this fantastic show is only running for another week—go see it before it closes or you will miss out on one of the most fascinating theatrical experiences of the season! Don’t worry about the darkness: it’s not too scary, the actors won’t reach out and grab you in the middle, and if you need to leave, an usher will escort you out. It’s always exciting to see a show that uses the live experience to its best effect—a play that needs to be a play, not a movie or a novel. The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World is a play that’s being told in its best form, and is worth seeing. It’s only $20—you shouldn’t miss it!

The Truth About Blayds is one of those plays that make life very hard for a theatre reviewer; for it has right in its middle a Terrific Secret, the content of which, I must confess, I hadn't been able to guess at all, and which I therefore daren't reveal here. But you see, it would be so much easier for me to explain this play to you—and illustrate how charming and clever it is—if I could just let the cat out of the bag,  at least partway. I won't, though, because it would be horrible of me to spoil an experience this delightful. Just go see it at the Mint Theater (and see its partner-in-repertory, also by A.A. Milne, Mr Pim Passes By), and then we can discuss it over tea and cookies later.

Not convinced yet? My, aren't you the stubborn one! Okay, I'll tell you a little bit about Blayds. It happens in the Study—handsomely appointed in dark, rich wood; filled with books (bravo to set designer Sarah Lambert for dreaming up the perfect home for this play)—of Oliver Blayds. Today is his ninetieth birthday; he is, as everyone in England knows, the last surviving Great Poet of the Victorian Era, a man revered throughout his country and throughout his lifetime; friend to Tennyson and Carlyle and oh so many others; inspiration to generations of younger writers.

One of these younger writers, a critic and sometime poet named A.L. Royce, is actually on hand, to offer greetings to Blayds on this special occasion on behalf of his colleagues. We meet Royce as the play begins, chatting with his friend Oliver Blayds-Conway, the 23-year-old grandson of the Great Man, a likable if slightly callow fellow who has found a position, and indeed his niche, in the world of politics. They are soon joined by Oliver's sister, pretty, opinionated Septima Blayds-Conway; and shortly thereafter by their parents, William and Marion. The former is the officious, generally humorless secretary to Mr. Blayds; the latter, Blayds' elder daughter, is a vague, dithery, but well-meaning woman; the two put me in mind of the Bankses, the just-off-kilter parents whom Mary Poppins goes to work for. The final member of the household, not counting Blayds himself, is Marion's sister Isobel—about forty now, and dedicated to caring for and nursing the old man, as she has done for some eighteen years; but once lively and vibrant and indeed, as we quickly come to find out, acquainted years ago with Mr. Royce. Very well-acquainted: he asked her to marry him then, but she said no. Her father needed her, to help him with his valuable work.

As Act One builds to its close, and old Blayds at last appears, to be toasted and feted by his relatives and Mr. Royce, we become aware that Something Is About To Happen. Milne—playful here as in Pim and the Pooh stories—isn't about to show all his cards before intermission; but there's never any doubt that the Truth About Blayds is going to be revealed, and when it is, it will shake up everybody in this household. The hows and whys are the stuff of Acts Two and Three, and I've already told you I'll not utter a word. You will have fun learning what it's all about. Milne will tickle you with some light but merited satirical pokes; there will be laughter of recognition. He will also cause you to think about this and that, offering up defenses of a moral-type position and also a more pragmatical one. He will even—but you've already guessed this!—throw in a bit of romance.

It's a charmer of a play, and director Jonathan Bank, who has remarkable affinity for Milne, has staged it beguilingly. The cast is superb. Jack Ryland is splendid as old Blayds, utterly living up to the build-up that precedes his entrance without being either monstrous or doddering. Jack Davidson and Kristin Griffith, as the senior Blayds-Conways, are terrific: Davidson's all fuss and feathers while Griffith flits and flutters; somehow, we like them in spite of their foolishness. James Knight (Oliver) and Victoria Mack (Septima) offer fine contrast, balancing exuberance, irreverence, and spoiledness with aplomb. Stephen Schnetzer is solid and steady as Royce. Lisa Bostnar's Isobel—whom we see literally come to life on two different occasions in two different ways during the course of this play—is radiant, intelligent, and thoroughly appealing; the story's warm, passionate center.

Bank's designers—Theresa Squires (costumes), Mark T. Simpson (lighting), Jared Coseglia (sound), plus the aforementioned Sarah Lambert—all make impressive contributions: The Truth About Blayds is one of the more sumptuous of the Mint's productions, which is both apropos and exciting. The work of this off-Broadway company just keeps getting better and better; Bank continues to discover for his audience forgotten but authentic gems like this play, and all we have to do is show up and savor them.

And that's the truth about Blayds.

The fans of Soap who were in the audience on the night I saw The Two and Only applauded when Bob* finally made an appearance on stage. He looks and sounds great, by the way: same '70s coiffure and same nasty attitude.

Now, we're talking about a dummy here (sorry, a Wooden-American); but it's testimony to ventriloquist Jay Johnson's considerable artistry—and to the cheerful willingness of an audience to give in to illusion at the slightest provocation—that this inanimate doll would get its own ovation. This is, in fact, precisely the point and raison d'etre of The Two and Only, Johnson's one-man, multi-character show at the Atlantic Theatre: that ventriloquism is at once an art form and a kind of magical conjuration. Performers like Johnson—and Edgar Bergen, Paul Winchell, and many others before him—believe enough in their creations to call them their "partners"... and we find ourselves believing in them too

How can Bob not be real? He's right there in front of us, insulting Johnson the same way he used to put down Chuck on TV.

In the course of The Two and Only, Johnson—who is a lively, smart, and ingratiating performer on his own—explains the mechanics of his craft, and the physics of it (the key is that light travels faster than sound, so when we see lips moving, we decide that the sound we hear an instant later must be emanating from those lips). Fascinating, and yet it doesn't finally matter: Johnson sketches a face quickly on a dry erase board, right before our eyes, and the minute it starts "talking" we buy into its "existence" wholeheartedly.

That face (which sings "Just a Gigolo") is just one of the wonderful characters who join Johnson during this delightfully entertaining show. Others include: Nethernore, a vulture whose bark, so to speak, is considerably worse than his bite; he performs a lightly macabre parody of "My Way" celebrating the joys of eating decaying carcasses. There's also a very silly snake (one of Johnson's earliest creations, from his childhood days as a budding ventriloquist), a toy ball with big eyes that reminds us of one of Senor Wences' puppets, and Squeaky, a round-faced young man who was Johnson's first professional "partner."

My personal favorite is Darwin, a very giddy and cheerful chimpanzee with a big silly smile planted on his expressive, fuzzy face. This irrepressible fellow loves to monkey around (pun entirely intended): he heckles audience members, tells terrible jokes, and concludes his act by singing "Send in the Clowns" in chimp language—the most memorable rendition of that hallowed song, I must tell you, that I have ever witnessed.

In between turns with his various collaborators, Johnson talks about his career—including some choice anecdotes about the making of Soap—and about his passion for his art. The show is fun, informative, and constantly warm-hearted; Johnson's reminiscences about his mentor Arthur Sieving, who carved Squeaky for him when Johnson was just 17 years old, are tender and moving .

The Two and Only will make you laugh a lot, and it might even make you cry. It will open your eyes to an art that is neither known nor celebrated enough these days: the sheer novelty of seeing someone perform stuff like the "box routine" is a knockout all on its own Johnson is extraordinarily good at what he does, and he obviously loves doing it. His joy is infectious, making The Two and Only one of the most pleasant theatre experiences around.

* Bob is the ventriloquist's dummy who was a recurring character on the long-running ABC TV sitcom Soap.

The Public Theatre is to be commended for producing The Two Noble Kinsmen, a rarely performed play co-authored by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare at the end of his career. The authorship of the play has long been debated. Some say that Shakespeare only wrote part of it. Some say he didn’t come anywhere near it. Whatever your belief in regards to who penned the piece, the play is worth doing.

The plot of the show is a fairly typical Shakespearean tale. It starts out almost exactly like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Theseus, Duke of Athens, about to marry the great Amazon queen, Hippolyta. But before the nuptials can begin, three mourning queens from Thebes show up to tell Theseus how bad things are in the land of Oedipus and Creon. A war breaks out, and Palamon and Arcite, the two noble kinsmen of the title and citizens of Thebes, are captured by Theseus’ army and placed in jail. While there, they both fall in love with Emilia, sister to Hippolyta. At the same time, the Jailer’s Daughter falls in love with Palamon. From there, it gets nasty, with betrayal and unrequited love moving most of the story along.

The script itself is, I thought, quite interesting. The main characters are all a little flawed, as is usually the case with plays by Shakespeare—or people calling themselves Shakespeare. The plot gets no clean, happy ending, like some of the Bard’s earlier works. In fact, director Darko Tresnjak calls it the “flip, sinister side a A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It.”

I wish that there had been more of that sinister side in evidence in this production. For example, in the course of the show, the character of the Jailer’s Daughter goes mad—but instead of giving us a scene that seems by the text to be heart-wrenchingly creepy, the scene became all about the mad girl posing like the headpiece of a tall ship. Not that there is anything wrong with that—but there's nothing to back it up; the director seems more concerned with creating beautiful stage pictures than with getting the actors to connect to one another. Later in the play, when the two kinsmen address their armies before battle, the gods Mars, Venus, and Diana are seen upstage, in opulent masks and costumes. While this is visually very pleasing, it steals the thunder from the speakers' words. And concentrating on the visuals at the cost of the spoken word in any play from Shakespeare or his contemporaries is always a mistake. Still, this is a fine play, and I hope it will find a home on more stages in the years to come.

The cast, for the most part, turns in a lackluster performance. Jonathan Fried does a solid turn as the Jailer, as does Doan Ly in the role of Emilia. Ly is one of those rare actors whom you can’t help but watch the entire time she is on stage. She brings both passion and intelligence to her portrayal. Both of these actors speak the speech, as it were, trippingly on the tongue. As the Jailer’s Daughter, Jennifer Ikeda starts out strong, but her breakdown scene—which is very reminiscent of Ophelia’s mad scene—is as I said, a bit over the top. Liam Craig is tragically funny as the inept wooer of the Jailer’s Daughter.

The design is serviceable, although the jail set by David P. Gordon, wobbles entirely too much for the audience to suspend its disbelief and accept that the two kinsmen couldn’t break out of it. The costumes by Linda Cho are beautiful, especially as worn the by  the gods in Act Two. The sound, by Michael Creason, is overbearing at times, and instead of furthering the story, takes the audience out of it.

The Violet Hour, the new play by last season's Tony winner Richard Greenberg, is about a young man who is one day granted the power to learn his future. The mechanism for this divination is a magical (unseen by the audience) machine that spews out paper by the carload, every sheet containing text from books written thirty, fifty, eighty years in the future (the play is set in 1919). The books, it turns out, are all about John Pace Seavering (our protagonist) and his circle of associates, and so John—who is plagued by indecisiveness and shuns making plans—is confronted with the outcomes of all the decisions and plans he's ever going to make.

In an interview published in the show's playbill, Greenberg helpfully informs us that The Violet Hour is about "prolepsis.... dealing with the future as if it has already happened." This unfamiliar word sent me to my American Heritage Dictionary, where I found this:

pro∙lep∙sis 1. The anachronistic representation of something as existing before its proper or historical time, as in the precolonial United States. 2.a. The assignment of something, such as an event or a name, to a time that precedes it, as in If you tell the cops, you're a dead man. b. The use of a descriptive word in anticipation of the act or circumstances that would make it applicable, as dry in They drained the lake dry. 3. The anticipation and answering of an objection or argument before one's opponent has put it forward.

Alas, Greenberg is as freewheeling with his history and his playwriting as he is with his vocabulary: indeed, elsewhere in the same interview he says "Even 1919 is a bit of a cheat here. It should be closer to '24 or '25, but I like the cuspiness of 1919."

So here is The Violet Hour: cuspy, I guess, but not particularly clear or revelatory or well thought-out. Greenberg's central notion—name it what you like—is a neat one: if a smart, introspective person were able to know everything that lay ahead in his life, what might it mean to him? What might he learn? Greenberg doesn't offer even a wisp of a suggestion, ending his play as if it were a Twilight Zone episode merely with a cautionary you-can't-alter-your-destiny platitude and then calling it a night, sending his five characters out for an evening of bland, predictable theatre.

It's discouraging because, even apart from its intriguing hook, there is much in The Violet Hour to arouse interest. During the course of the play, Greenberg has his characters meditate on the implications of World War I; the nature of fame, celebrity, and durability; the eternal tension between art and money; and the appropriation of famous people's lives by academicians and others who would interpret events they didn't participate in. (That's just a sampling: Greenberg is here, as ever, wonderfully curious about just about everything and writes about each momentary obsession with keen acuity.)

But the fascinating chit-chat is framed on a story that lacks internal logic or consistency. John's big problem—the one that his miraculous bout with the supernatural helps him solve—is whether to publish the long, meandering, possibly brilliant novel written by his best friend Denis McCleary or the heartfelt, rags-to-riches memoir of his girlfriend, an African American singer named Jessie Brewster. Now, John actually has no problem at all—only Jessie's book is ready to publish right now; Denis' clearly requires months of editing—but let that go: I got stuck on the whole idea of Jessie, a black woman in 1919 who is (a) a huge American stage star, (b) about to have a book that she wrote published by a white American publisher, and (c) going to attend the theatre with said white American publisher without incident. The only prolepsis in The Violet Hour is this wholly unbelievable (for 1919) character; even Greenberg's suggestion of the mid-20s strains credulity.

I was also enormously distracted by another character, who goes by Gidger (and endlessly harps on the fact that no one seems to know whether that's his first name or his last). Shrill and effeminate, he's at least in part a device to bring up some issues about sexuality that feel otherwise like red herrings (are John and Denis secretly in love?); his place in the play and in John;s life is alarmingly, perhaps willfully ill-defined. Described as Seavering's assistant, he (and only he) gets to experience the books from the future along with John—why?—and he even actually starts channeling anachronistic pop culture references (though John does not), presumably to provide some comic relief. I didn't get Gidger at all, especially in the annoying one-note performance of Mario Cantone.

Which brings me to the production itself, which initiates Manhattan Theatre Club's new Broadway home at the renovated Biltmore Theatre (it's lovely and comfortable). Robert Sean Leonard, who stars as John, is up to his usual excellent standard, but castmates Scott Foley (Denis), Dagmara Dominczyk (Denis' fiancee, Rosamund), and Robin Miles (Jessie) bring virtually nothing to their roles. Evan Yionoulis's staging similarly offers little in the way of elucidation to Greenberg's loose and sloppy script; Christopher Barreca's fantastical set more or less anticipates the play's leaps, but doesn't make them any clearer either. Jane Greenwood's costumes, particularly for Dominczyk, are just (uncharacteristically) ugly.

I think there may well be a worthy and compelling play somewhere in the mire of underbaked notions that currently comprises The Violet Hour. But it hasn't been coaxed out yet. The play's title—which comes from the title Denis has chosen for his unwieldy novel—is supposed to refer to New York at dusk. I kept thinking of Frank Loesser: "When the smell of the rain-washed pavement comes up clean and fresh and cold/And the streetlamp's light fills the gutter with gold" ("My Time of Day," from Guys and Dolls; about a New York City pre-dawn). Precise, gorgeous evocative imagery, that. Greenberg's, in contrast, is all muddled.

Richard Harland Smith’s adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Viy opens with the large cast of actors (17 strong) on stage, hanging out, reading, relaxing, as the audience fills in. All of a sudden they are called to (in Russian) to start the play, and we’re off on a low-tech journey that has the cast providing a thrilling soundscape for many scenes, reminding us that theatre can be effective without fancy hydraulics, Broadway budgets, and huge sets.

The story follows Khoma Brut, a philosophy student who has a run-in with a witch during his travels. Soon thereafter he is called to pray over a dead girl’s corpse for three nights. The task proves more difficult than it sounds, as the corpse ends up being that of the witch, and it awakens each night, to Brut’s dismay.

Writer/director Smith brings a modern sensibility and feel to this story, while still firmly rooting it in the 16th century. Fresh and funny dialogue abounds, filled with contemporary references that make us feel as if we’re watching a present-day show, not a historical piece. Costume coordinator Lou Kylis has pulled together a variety of looks to clearly evoke 16th century Russia, which helps to ground us in the time period, despite the modern script.

Though the cast’s performances are uneven, the good ones are really good. Stand-outs include Stephen Aloi, hysterically funny as Brother Grigory, one of Brut’s instructors; Julie Hera and Suzanne Levinson, who demonstrate superb comedic timing as two bickering sisters vying for Brut’s attentions; and Jeremy Schwartz, who anchors the show as Brut, displaying talents for both comedy and drama in this challenging role. Designer Noemi Millman effectively uses the minimal lighting to clearly change between locales and time of day without distracting from the action on stage.

Lightning Strikes’ current offering entertains and amuses; a great many laughs are to be had in this fun evening. It’s great to see actors using the near-forgotten art of simple storytelling to present an engaging and enjoyable tale.

Once Upon a Time…

Ripple Productions’ second excursion, The Wheat and the Moon, explores the importance of myth, and the universal themes that run through different cultures and time periods. Playwright Shawn Hirabayashi has woven together three stories of separated lovers to create an evening that celebrates storytelling, myth-making, and the value of love.

Using three stories as its base—the African myth “The Wheat and the Moon,” “Orpheus and Euridice,” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Rose and the Nightingale”—The Wheat and the Moon follows the fortunes of Hafizi and Nitida, a pair of star-crossed lovers who refuse to allow death to separate them. In their journeys they come across several gods as well as Apollo’s bard Orpheus, who is inspired by their story to create the famous “Orpheus and Euridice” tale. Hirabayashi has also brought in many other myths, which the couple tells to each other throughout the play, really making the celebration of myth the polestar of this production.

Director Erin Brindley keeps the play moving, but still allows time for intimate moments between the characters to flourish. Standouts in the small cast include Benjamin Thomas as Hafizi and Max Davis as each of the gods; his physical transformations between characters are fascinating to watch. Brian Macinnis’ set of a huge tree is the perfect backdrop for this universal story, effectively setting the mood of the piece.

Brindley and Hirabyashi have succeeded in creating a tale of their own from the many tales that make up The Wheat and the Moon. I would have liked to see a bit more focus to the script (and there was a little too much singing that seemed to be lacking a melodic line—no composer is credited), but all in all the production is a great exploration of story-telling, perfect for all ages.

Near the end of The Wild Duck, a character named Relling, a doctor, says "Don't use that exotic word ideals—not when we've got a fine native word—lies." He adds, shortly afterward: "Deprive the average man of his life-lie and you've robbed him of happiness as well."

The social consciousness that so often sits at the center of Ibsen's plays is mostly beside the point in The Wild Duck. Instead the playwright is looking inward, at what sustains people. The answer, he sadly decides, is illusion; in this rarely-done play, currently on stage at Jean Cocteau Repertory, we see another side of the work of this seminal dramatist, the antecedents to the psychological probings of writers like Eugene O'Neill.

The play is in part a sort of mystery, as we slowly uncover the facts about the life of Hjalmar Ekdal. His father, a lieutenant in the army, got involved in the lumber business with a wealthy entrepreneur named Haakon Werle. Things turned ugly when their company was discovered to be illegally logging on state property; Ekdal went bankrupt and was sent to jail, while Werle managed to shield himself from both outcomes and continued to prosper.

Now, years later, we learn that Werle has taken what seems to be a fatherly interest in young Hjalmar, setting him up in a photography business and even introducing him to Gina, once a housemaid in the Werle establishment and now Hjalmar's hard-working and supportive wife. Hjalmar's pride and joy is his lively and preternaturally sunny 12-year-old daughter Hedvig, but she is also, as he himself says, his deepest sorrow because she is tragically going blind.

The events of The Wild Duck are set in motion by the return to town, after seventeen years away, of Gregers Werle, prodigal son to Haakon. Gregers has come home to settle some scores with his father, for whom he barely conceals a deep contempt; but as he gets reacquainted with Hjalmar, who was his greatly admired friend and schoolmate years before, he begins to realize that Hjalmar's world is built on a foundation of deceptions and lies. It's not hard to guess what Gregers suspects—about the relationship Gina once had with Gregers' father; about the true reasons for the elder Werle's sudden interest in Hjalmar; even about Hevdig's actual parentage. What Ibsen depicts, wrenchingly, is Gregers' relentless effort to open Hjalmar's eyes to all of this. He hopes that Hjalmar, once he understands the truth, will become a better man for it. But Gregers turns out to be just as deluded about Hjalmar as Hjalmar is about everything else; as Dr. Relling portends, when these men have their illusions stripped away, the results are tragic.

It's certainly a compelling drama, even if a little heavy-handed in places (especially in the symbolic use of the eponymous wild duck, which feels as ungainly as Chekhov's similar employment of a different bird in his Seagull; I guess this stuff was thrillingly novel a century ago). Director Eve Adamson has pared down the text (in Rolf Fjelde's translation), which makes the overall running time more manageable; but I wonder if she's excised too much of Hjalmar and Gregers' back story—coming to the theatre with no prior knowledge of the play, I was confused by Gregers' motivations; it was only after I read the script at home that I understood that Hjalmar was a kind of "golden boy" in school whom Gregers more or less idolized. This is essential to a full comprehension of The Wild Duck's themes, I think; here, particularly given Michael Surabian's defeated, rather hangdog Hjalmar and Chad Suitts' buoyantly idealistic Gregers, it's hard to feel much compassion for either character.

But the strong supporting cast bolsters the play's meaning potently, especially Harris Berlinsky as the cynical, pragmatic Dr. Relling and Eileen Glenn as the equally grounded Mrs. Sorby, a middle-aged lady of experience who is about to be engaged to old Werle. These two characters are wonderfully modern and the actors give the piece real heft.

Fine, valuable work is also offered by Angela Madden as Gina; Erin Scanlon, very convincingly twelve as Hedvig; and Tim Morton as old Ekdal.

Robert Klingelhoefer's stark set, Adamson's trademark sun-and-shadows lighting, and Ellen Mandell's moody music all serve the piece well. This is a worthy, if perhaps not quite ideal, introduction to a work that we don't get to see very often; it certainly got me to think about Ibsen and his influence in new ways.

David Greenspan is the reason to see Target Margin’s otherwise uneven take on Goethe’s Faust, entitled These Very Serious Jokes, and currently running at HERE. As Mephistopheles, Greenspan effortlessly disarms everyone he encounters with his wan smile, effete drawl, and terribly unconvincing modesty. This bedeviling ease is the perfect antidote to the scholarly Doctor Faust’s disenchantment with the noble knowingness of academia. But it is not Faust’s eagerness that makes his soul-selling pact inevitable; from the moment Greenspan’s archfiend appears in heaven to wager with the Lord on the doctor’s spiritual incorruptibility, it is clear that, biblical lore aside, this demon has never heard the word “no.”

Greenspan's pitch-perfect sophistication, however, is often at odds with the production’s over-accommodating flavor. We are treated to numerous unsurprising “We’re doing a play up here!” jokes, such as the one about the actor who begins a speech, but is interrupted by another actor who reminds him that those lines were cut. Or the one where the actor feigns impatience when a sound cues goes “awry.”

David Herskovits, Target Margin’s artistic director, has with set designer Carol Bailey and costume designer Kaye Voyce, decorated the stage with a school-pageant-chic aesthetic—heaven is a white sheet of paper with tape-on cardboard clouds, populated by white-bedding-clad angels, sporting plastic harps and haloes—which is more flippant than subversive, more of an artistic signature than a service to the play. I became worn out watching these very gifted people do these very serious jokes in a very smart aleck way. Such would-be dramaturgical and theatrical erudition should compliment the play, not compete with it.

Still, the primary school desks strewn across the stage are a sound thematic echo, and could be used to even greater effect. The music (composer uncredited) is elegant and haunting, despite the self-consciously jarring sound cues. And Lenore Doxsee’s lighting is on par with Greenspan’s performance by virtue of its deep eerie intelligence.

Douglas Langworthy’s translation is fine, but as in any faithful adaptation of this play, the shift from dramatic literature to compelling theatre does not occur until the Faustian pact is made and the devil and his consort begin their travels. This happens roughly one hour in and, even with Will Badgett’s committed portrayal of the doctor, Greenspan is the sole performer who successfully transubstantiates the poetry into play. I should note here that the current production, running ninety minutes, is only the first third of Goethe’s text; the company plans to present the entirely of this work over the next few seasons.

The play begins with a Dedication, delivered in a velvety half-voice by Purva Bedi, whose luscious presence is thereafter absent until her first brief appearance as Gretchen, which concludes this episode. The remainder of the ensemble, while a talented bunch, can be enervating to watch, because they have been encouraged to be all-too-knowing in their slick portrayals. T