In Spite of Myself, Antionette LaVecchia's solo show about growing up with her Italian immigrant mother, is an admirable showcase for her talents as a performer. These talents are considerable: LaVecchia clowns, sings, and dances (a little); she impersonates a passel of engaging characters including her mother, her father, an exuberant Italian movie star (think Sophia Loren crossed with Anna Magnani), a brassy woman named Debbie DiPippio who teaches a college class called "How to Be a Perfect Italian Daughter 101," and her own vagina; and she executes a tour de force climactic emotional match-up between herself and her mother that highlights her acting chops.  Her physicality is especially impressive: her talking vagina, conjured by her marvelously expressive hands, is hilarious in its recognizability (and out-of-control disposition). She begins her play by re-enacting her own birth, taking the roles of both mother and emerging infant; and she includes a delicious interpretative dance in which she portrays the demon that her mother keeps worrying she is turning into.

All in all, it's a remarkable workout and a lot of fun to witness. Where In Spite of Myself falters is in the writing, which, though funny, is more by-the-book than we might hope. LaVecchia's framing device is inventive—the play takes place on the day she has moved into a new apartment, after having divorced her husband, and as she rummages through one of her boxes, she finds objects that remind her or suggest to her the various vignettes that comprise the show. Some of these, like the "devil" sequence or the bit involving the loquacious Ms. DiPippio, are little fantasies. But most are reminiscences, and it's here that In Spite of Myself wears a bit thin, for though LaVecchia has a lot of amusing things to say about her mother, the portrait that emerges is of a generic overbearing European immigrant Momma—there's not much difference between this woman and, say, Andrea Martin's character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding or, for that matter, Dan Greenburg's archetype from four decades ago in How to Be a Jewish Mother.

Also problematic is the fact that although LaVecchia lays out the conflict between herself and her mother and then provides a neat resolution, neither character really undergoes any real transformation. Lacking a protagonist, this is show-and tell more than a play.

But it's very enjoyable and, as I said, a terrific showcase for this very versatile and engaging actress. I suspect the objective here is for LaVecchia to entertain us and to let audiences see what she can do; if so, she has succeeded beautifully.

The production itself is mounted with appropriate simplicity under Ludovica Villar-Houser's practiced directorial hand. Douglas Filomena's lighting is the most conspicuous design element, and as usual he makes a little go a long way, illuminating LaVecchia's performance with ingenuity and style.

Fans of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team are currently in mourning, following the last June's definitive defeat in the Finals and the subsequent firing of guru coach Phil Jackson and trading of MVP Shaquille O’Neill. Back in the 80s, though, the Lakers won five NBA Championships, and had a historic rivalry with the Boston Celtics. Playwright John Adams uses the competition between these two teams as a catalyst for change in his play In the Shadow of a Dream.

Set in 1985, during the NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Celtics, the play follows the journey of a nineteen-year-old basketball prodigy named Joey. Joey is a die-hard Celtic fan as well as a violent homophobe. When a male undergrad hits on him after a college basketball game, Joey nearly beats him to death. Joey is kicked off his basketball team and put on probation, where he assigned to take care of Buck. Buck is a middle-aged gay man who is dying of AIDS. Buck, as it turns out, is also a Lakers fan.

Joey’s homophobia is not something he is willing to let go of easily and Buck unremittingly brings this to the forefront of their conversations. It isn’t until Buck forces Joey to drive him from Ohio to Los Angeles to see the NBA finals before he dies that they learn to accept one another, even though they are rooting for different teams.

In the Shadow of a Dream tells a straightforward story about redemption and acceptance. Adams’ writing makes the story both funny and touching. David Little is captivating as Buck, bringing relentless energy to the character. As Joey, Jeff Wigadre is honest and sincere, allowing himself to take an emotional journey. Director Alec Harringto does a nice job of letting moments germinate, but could have served the play by quickening the pace.

Adams does not write a Hollywood-style happy ending to the play. Instead he ends the story with a note of sadness and longing, leaving the audience in the same boat as today's fans of the Los Angeles Lakers.

The subtitle of Deb Margolin’s solo performance piece Index to Idioms is “A Performance Novel,” and it’s a very apt description of the piece, which is an elusive piece of theatre: sometimes the play feels like a poetry reading, sometimes like hearing your favorite book read out loud by your favorite storyteller, sometimes like eavesdropping on a slightly-too-intimate confession by a stranger. There are many times, in other words, where it doesn’t feel like a play at all—but in an intriguing, beautifully written, and emotionally resonant way.

The play is composed of thirteen segments—chapters, if you will—each a riff on an English-language commonplace in the form of a story from a mother’s life. Some of the stories describe moments of extraordinary significance—the birth of her first child (under the idiom “cut it out”), her first meeting with the man who would become her husband (“rub someone the wrong way”)—and some of them crystallize a particular small moment—an encounter with a suburban neighbor in the grocery store (“come alive”), her daughter’s nursery-school holiday play (“know one’s own mind”). Part of the pleasure of watching the piece, in fact, is in the little light bulbs that go off when you find yourself able to follow the train of thought—often an extremely concrete or literal one—that led from the idiom (flashed on a slide at the beginning and end of each scene) to the story. But even the small moments become the occasion for luminous flashes of insight and wryly sharp observations of the mother’s family, colleagues, and neighbors.

The writing often feels like narrative prose, rather than dramatic monologue—it’s thick with precise, layered adjectives and bristling with crystalline description and there were times when I wished I were reading rather than hearing it so that I could linger over a particular turn of phrase. And yet the joy Margolin takes in the language and in sharing the stories with us, and the transcendence of the emotions summoned by the play, make it inherently and intensely dramatic.

Part of what makes the play work off the page is Margolin’s performance as the play’s single character. This suburban mother of two children who has survived cancer and is struggling intermittently to jump-start her writing career shares many autobiographical details with Margolin, but nonetheless feels distinctly fictional. The slightly objective quality of the writing helps in this—there’s a formality of sentence structure and pacing that creates a distance between performer and character, or writer and teller. Margolin tells each of the stories as if they’re new to her, as if she’s wrestling with the language and making the emotional discoveries along with the audience.

Director Merri Ann Milwe has wisely kept the staging simple, letting the language stand on its own merits, and allowing Margolin to engage the audience in a direct way. The only real visual elements are the slides, which add some color and mood, but seem almost incidental (though it’s nice to see the idioms opening and closing each scene).

Ultimately, I think the experience of this show is best summed up by Margolin herself, in a passage prefacing her description of her child’s somewhat anarchic performance as a penguin in the nursery-school play: “I am brought to tears by even the smallest child or the oldest lady who dares in all generosity to take the stage and hold the light on her body, who has at once the hubris and the humility to offer herself to me, to my judgment and delectation, in that way.” What makes Index to Idioms special is Margolin’s generosity as a writer and performer, and her humility before the transcendent moments to be found in the most ordinary places—in the clichés we use without thinking every day.

Inky, written by Rinne Groff, is a play about a couple, Barbara and Greg, who hire (just for food and a couch to sleep on, without pay) an immigrant nanny, Inky, to take care of their newborn baby boy. As Inky becomes more comfortable with the family and starts to acclimate, each family member becomes attached to her, and their lives come apart. Greg, a workaholic and a bit of a wimp, feels constantly driven to work more hours to earn more money to please his greedy wife. Inky starts to take over his roles in the family as she becomes his wife’s confidante and takes his older daughter Allison to and from school (which he used to do). Barbara, a money-hungry, domineering, disinterested mother of two, constantly insults her husband and pushes him to work for a bigger house and a promotion, all to earn her ever-unreachable love. Inky points out Barbara’s disinterest in her children and criticism of her husband and inspires Barbara to listen more closely to what goes on around her and to question whether privilege keeps her from experiencing anything “real.”

The couple’s daughter, Allison, never appears on stage until the end, but the other three characters talk about her. As Inky starts to teach Allison some boxing moves, Greg disapproves and orders her to stop. Inky also cooks up a scheme involving Girl Scout cookies and shows Allison how to make money.

Inky herself, a youthful, savvy girl who speaks in broken English and comes from a place she describes as near a big lake, is obsessed with Muhammad Ali. At the top of the show and between certain scenes, Inky recites Ali’s monologues and punches the air like a boxer. In these monologues, Jessi Campbell (as Inky) is extremely charming and funny; the monologues themselves were my favorite part of the piece. Campbell has made physical choices with her acting so that, in all scenes, she is almost always on the move, and these choices fit well with her footwork when she imitates Ali.

Overall, though, the play feels fragmented and messy. Part of the problem is that the “wise immigrant” formula (difficult to do well because it’s so cliché) annoyed me. And part of the problem is that there are too many themes that aren’t tied together tightly enough: The father’s descent into illegal activity because of his drive; the mother’s desire for a more “legitimate” life; the immigrant’s desire to be a success, modeled after the great American fighter; the parents’ concern about their daughter who may be too afraid of things. This is all too much. The end of the play seems to hinge on the fact that Allison has evolved to the point that she is no longer afraid to go swimming, but since Groff does not put Allison on stage until the final scene, and since there are so many other things going on, the moment doesn’t have its intended impact.

If I take a hint from the center page of the program, which features, among other quotes, “When there are no values, money counts,” by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, it appears that Groff may intend for the overriding theme to be how a family’s obsession with money has made them lose touch with who they are. If this is the case, Inky, herself obsessed with money, may serve to point out to the family, through her imitation of their values, how money has made them dysfunctional. Though that is certainly part of the play, there are so many other things going on that this point just doesn't come across clearly.

In contrast to the plot problems, some of the technical aspects of the play are superb. The lighting designer, Sarah Sidman, successfully creates the illusion of specific times of day as sunlight shone through a stage right window with vertical blinds: there’s the perfect 5:00 a.m.; there’s the perfect noon. The sound, designed by Robert Kaplowitz, is fun, including one clip of a comedian talking about Muhammad Ali (forgive me if this is a well-known clip I should recognize but don’t). And Robert Brill's set, a cleanly painted, sterile, upscale apartment, complete with an accurate “period piece” wall decoration, is a perfect reflection of the couple’s inner workings.

Ripe Time’s mission is to “develop and present ensemble driven theatre infused with rich language, visual power, and physical rigor.” Every element of this purpose is richly present in their current production of Innocents, a new stage adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel The
House of Mirth. The turn-of-the-century New York novel, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, tells the story of Lily Bart—an independent woman who has become a curious figure in her social circle for turning down “good marriages.” Hers is a large personality that does not fit the expectations for women of her time. In a description of Bart early in the novel, Wharton says that she is like “a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of a drawing room… with a streak of sylvan freedom in her nature.”

Orphaned and living on a small inheritance, her independence has cost her. It is expensive to keep up with her better-funded friends—especially when favored activities include playing bridge for money—and as a result she has fallen deep into debt. Her vulnerable position and these “gambling debts” (as her slanderers lump all of her spending into this, most-damning category) soon attract those who would exploit her weakened state—such as a wealthy, married man who offers to help her “better invest” her money, but who actually hopes to turn her into a concubine dependent on him. Beyond the men who would exploit her waning status, Lily endures the even deeper betrayal of women in her circle who tarnish her reputation with public slights, providing fodder for gossip columns. Throughout this decline, Lily is offered hope in the person of Lawrence Seldon—another individual with a streak of freedom in his nature, who admires exactly the qualities that her peers scorn her for—but she is unable to make the leap to be with him.

Director Rachel Dickstein tells this story with a seamless blend of text, music and movement, making the most universal and visceral elements of Wharton’s classic—such as hope, fear, jealousy, and shame—tangible. In a straightforward, realistically-styled production these raw feelings might be lost under a layer of pretty speech and petticoats. But Innocents’ compelling movement sequences—choreographed by Dickstein in collaboration with the ensemble—bare the passionate life that is just under the surface of these well-spoken characters' mannered interactions. This heightens the emotional stakes and broadens the narrative to make the piece not just Lily’s story, but an exploration of the repressive society that, as Wharton says, has captured her.

The concept of confinement is vividly executed by the design of the production as well. Susan Zeeman Rogers’s ingenious set is a collection of imposing iron gates that swing and lock to form a variety of backdrops and barriers—all the walls of a cage. Though most of the center of the playing space is empty, Tyler Micoleau’s lighting design—with instruments often shooting through Rogers’s gates to great effect—creates a rich multitude of settings and tones and helps smooth transitions between dialogue and movement. The beautiful original score by Katie Down, a recorded composition of cello, piano, and violin, also provides flow to the heightened storytelling. Ilona Somogyi’s costume design undresses women’s clothing of the period to expose the constricting bottom layer, the corset, and in every scene we can see the painful-looking crossed lace which binds the garment and forces the body into the ideal shape of the time. The lack of dress over the corset also leaves the women’s arms exposed, which is helpful in allowing more of a range of movement in the physical sequences.

The ensemble of seven actors are uniformly excellent—an experienced and versatile group who speak and move crisply and with sharp characterization. Paula McGonagle creates a sympathetic, engaging performance as Lily Bart, especially when she is at her most vulnerable. When Lily is betrayed with a public humiliation, or reeling from the near-sexual assault of her married benefactor, McGonagle takes the emotional impact as body blows. Left breathless and weak from these encounters, McGonagle conveys just how tenuous Lily’s place in the world is, with sheer drops on every side. Andy Paris makes Lawrence Seldon a charming kindred spirit for Lily. Unlike Lily who is corseted and spied on, the freedom of movement his being a man allows him is subtly physicalized in the way he circles around her in their scenes.

Innocents comes to the Ohio Theatre after being developed in previous workshops and showcases. The gains of this commitment to process show, as this is a fully-realized and layered piece. The spoken text of the adaptation is poetically spare and does not get mired in more exposition than necessary. Perhaps throughout its development, passages of text were let go of when it was found that more of the story could be shown in the movement, which required less to be said. This is beautiful, sophisticated theatre, and a steal at its modest ticket price.

Meet Cherry Pitz. Cherry was born and raised in the town of Nowheresville, "last exit off the Highway of Broken Dreams." She and her father, a drag queen, live next door to a toxic waste dump. Her boyfriend, Johnny Angel (whose name is accompanied by a flourish of Shelley Fabares' hit song of the same name, which Cherry, depending on her mood at the moment, encourages or waves for the piano player to stop), fell into the toxic waste "goo" and developed super powers that literally "flew" him out of Cherry's life. And thus begins her "autobiographical" story of how she embarked on her journey to tinsel town to become a "star in 22 days."

That's Cherry. Now meet Cyndi Freeman, author/performer of Inside Cherry Pitz. Freeman, with many positive reviews and well-deserved acclaim to her credit, is certainly in command of the stage and thrives as a solo performer. Whether it's Elvis impressions, balancing on 5-inch heels, or hopping from one voice to another, Freeman is a glowing laser beam that you can't help but glue your eyes to throughout the whole show. This woman is on. So on, in fact, that when breaks character to laugh at herself or flirt with an audience member, her retransformation back into her role is all the more engaging than before.

After all of the characters (Isla, the Nazi-like madame at the "Chateau de Girls"; Daisy, the 2-pack-a-day diner owner; etc.) have been introduced and developed, the show can seem a bit slow at times, but its ebbs and flows never fall short of being pure, talented, and somewhat burlesque (at one point, she strips down to a very tight and revealing bodysuit/skirt) entertainment. Inside Cherry Pitz is a gem: a pink-wigged, leopard-print, hip-girating gem.

Charles Bloom is clearly a talented composer and lyricist, but Insomnia: a New Musical Comedy for which he has written the book, music, and lyrics, is unfocused and indulgent. Perhaps some of this is due to its vague premise.

Currently playing as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, Insomnia is about Brad, a writer, who cannot sleep. Whilst not sleeping, he is fantasy-visited by his father, his straight best friend, his lesbian best friend, his potential boyfriend, and his potential future son. (He also has some conversations with his landlady, but it is unclear, both in the writing and in the staging, whether or not she too is an apparition.)

The intermissionless 105 minutes go something like this: Brad cannot sleep and may also be suffering from writer’s block, so he conjures one figure in his life after another, identifying a conflict, having an epiphany, and coming to a predictable resolution (i.e., his dad is upset his son is gay, but they talk and then he gets over it; his lesbian friend wants a child with him and finally he says he’ll think about it, etc.)

Some of these interactions are confusing: Clint, his best friend, pops in every so often to sing a sobering advice-song, “On The Road To What You Want,” but it is unclear what trouble of Brad’s he is specifically addressing. His landlady, Sylvia, a former B-movie scream queen (who offers up the same tired joke easily twelve times about saving the world from this or that giant killer fruit or vegetable) is inexplicably emotionally invested in Brad’s getting some rest. And all we see of Dan, Brad’s love interest, is their initial meeting at a museum and their subsequent on-line encounter and meeting in person on the sleepless night in question, at which point Dan announces that he’ll be taking a job in Paris, unless Brad would like for him to stay.

Often, when a writer writes about a “writer,” it is a not-terribly convincing cover-story for said writer’s personal diatribes—a therapeutic exercise that results in a work that is half-solipsistic, half-generalized. In Bloom’s case, many of his songs are engaging—emotionally-rich melodies and funny well-crafted lyrics. Some standouts include “What If?” (Brad’s stalling song before he introduces himself to Dan) and “An Ordinary Guy” (Dan’s smitten song after that introduction). The cast performs them vigorously—particularly effective are Richard Todd Adams (Brad), Christopher Sloan (Dan), and Eric Millegan (in a number of small roles, including Nick, Brad’s possible future son). But despite their committed delivery, with such a flimsy context, the songs feel incidental, without the dramatic impact of being borne of a solid and satisfying story.

In Intrigue and Love, a rich and powerful baron plots relentlessly and unscrupulously to solidify his position of influence with his Prince. First he contrives to extricate the Prince from a scandalous entanglement with a notorious lady by marrying said lady to his son. When that scheme runs afoul—for the son is in love with someone else, the beautiful daughter of a common music teacher—he and his henchman hatch a new plot: they jail the music teacher and his wife and then tell the daughter that the only way she'll see her parents again is to write a fraudulent love letter to the Lord Chamberlain. The baron arranges to have this letter conveniently "found" by his son, who (he thinks) will assume the worst and give up his lover for the father's choice. This plan, too, goes awry: the tragic result, by the end of Intrigue and Love, amounts to no fewer than five ruined lives—all for the sake of one avaricious man's political advancement.

The Baron, von Walter by name, learns that he has a worthy opponent in his son Ferdinand. The year is 1776, and though the locale is a German principality, thoughts of freedom and revolution are in the air; it is mentioned at one point that a platoon of local men has been mustered by the authorities to serve as mercenaries in the war in America. Ferdinand, stuck inside an aristocratic and feudal tradition that's about to implode, hears the call for independence, for self-determination for all men: his argument against his brutish father is not just that he wishes to love whom he chooses, but that he wishes to live as he chooses.

So this early play by Friedrich von Schiller surprises with its weight and—for its time—its daring. It was written in 1784, before the French Revolution, yet it's a very revolutionary play in places, which is why it's such an interesting find. And in its indictment of an upper class fixer who cares nothing for the common folk he stomps on to achieve his selfish ends, there's a kind of resonance (Enron? Martha Stewart?) that gives the play particularly relevance to 21st century America. Bravo to Jean Cocteau Repertory for sniffing out this relatively little-known piece and giving it a hearing today.

Bravo, too, for the fine new translation that they've commissioned from Lynn Marie Macy. The play straddles the line between heaving 18th century romance and a more modern suspense/thriller sensibility; so too does Macy's language artfully manage to feel accessible without being anachronistic and to wink at the excesses of Schiller's floridity without making fun of them. David Fuller's staging walks this fine line beautifully, as well, with the admittedly over-the-top machinations of von Walter and his allies and enemies all played in naturalistic style, while larger-than-life theatricality is reserved for the relatively minor characters of the Lord Chamberlain and the music master's wife, who function here almost as (much appreciated) comic relief.

Macy herself takes the role of Frau Miller, the would-be scheming wife plotting to give her daughter away to the most successful suitor she can find, not knowing that her interference is going to be the catalyst for the dire events that follow. Macy puts her just this side of harridan and shrew, with enough good intention to make us like her and a complete lack of self-awareness that almost makes us pity her folly. Jay Nickerson is her match and more as Herr Miller, a good man who loves his daughter above all else and wishes that her happiness and peace in the realm had not somehow gotten so inextricably bound together. Nickerson's bombast, reserved for his wife, is hilarious; his courageous and sentimental sides, seen by the others, are always vivid and believable.

Cocteau vet Angus Hepburn has a field day as von Walter, never confusing unadulterated greed with evil and consequently showing us a very human villain, as comprehensible as he is reprehensible. Ralph Petrarca is appropriately slimy as von Walter's snake-like private secretary, the aptly named Herr Wurm; while David Ledoux is both funny and a little bit insidious as the foppish coward von Kalb, the Lord Chamberlain who becomes von Walter's unwilling accomplice and, later, victim. As the young couple at the center of the story, Chad A. Suitts and Natalie Ballesteros are suitably overwrought. Suitts is smartly earnest as the rebellious young Ferdinand. Ballesteros, cast a little against type as the virtuous heroine Louisa Miller, is best when the plot allows her to deal self-sufficiently with von Walter and his dastardly plots, less convincing when the script calls upon her to swoon and faint at fairly slight provocation.

The most interesting character of all, played here by Amanda Jones with great conviction and panache, is Lady Milford, the British harlot who has been the Prince's mistress and is cause of much of the trouble. Schiller gives her a most surprising arc to play, which I won't reveal here because it's the neatest thing in the play: Jones is excellent as a haughty woman whose perspective gets tempered by events that fly out of her control.

In the end, despite a running time that's longer than what's customary nowadays, Intrigue and Love proves entirely compelling: we become absorbed in what these people are thinking and doing, and we care how it all comes out—to the point, even, of leaning forward at the edges of our seats during the climactic scenes that cap the second and third acts. Why ask more than that from the drama?

What I liked best about Theodora Skipitares's almost-all-puppet adaptation of Euripides's classic script Iphigenia At Aulis is that she cuts a typically long Greek play down to an hour of powerful theatre. In that hour I saw a very moving play about self-sacrifice.

The play opens with Agamemnon, the King of Greece, hunting and killing a sacred deer, a deed for which he must pay the price later. We are then told the story of the kidnapping of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, brother to the King, by the Trojan Paris. All of Greece rises up to attack Troy for this insult. The goddess Artemis is angered by Agamemnon killing her sacred deer and demands that he sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia lest the Greek army meet with “unfavorable winds” in their assault on Troy. He declares that Iphigenia will marry Achilles, who is at the front awaiting battle, but actually intends to offer her as a sacrifice as soon as she arrives. He sends his servant ahead with a message containing his plans but the servant has the message forcibly taken from him and Agamemnon’s plans are revealed. His wife, Clytemnestra, elicits the help of Achilles to protect her daughter. So the play’s themes are revealed as Iphigenia’s fate hangs in the balance.

Skipitares’ adaptation holds a lot of resonance for me because she does such an excellent job of highlighting Iphigenia’s amazing transformation. In this way she makes all the deception and betrayal secondary to the selflessness and miraculous aspects of the story. She tells the story with equal parts of imagination, wit, and tragedy and she makes it all look and sound so beautiful.

Cecilia Schiller collaborates with Skipitares on some exquisite Bunraku style puppet designs. The puppeteers have the puppets strapped to their bodies and speak from behind them as if they were giant masks worn by ancient Greek actors. Skipitares draws from her actors an even, hyper-realistic style that never falls into the realm of presentational acting but rather emphasizes the pathos of the story.

Iphigenia is the only main character that is not entirely represented by a puppet. I imagine Skipitares does this to underscore her humanism by making her a real human. When Iphigenia first enters she is animating a small doll-like puppet as herself, but only half-heartedly; and halfway through the scene she tucks the puppet into her belt and plays the rest of the scene as a real human. We don’t see this small puppet again until the very end when there is a shadow puppet segment.

The actors do an excellent job breathing life into their respective puppets. John Benoit delivers the right amount of hubris and rumination as the King torn between his family and his country. Nicky Paraiso is quite funny as the servant/old man character whose face is his own but who has the body of a puppet. Sonja Perryman plays Iphigenia with a great deal of sincerity and she has a lovely singing voice as well. Chris Maresca is perfectly arrogant as Achilles, and Amanda Villalobos and Alissa Mello are enjoyable as the two flesh and blood chorus members among statuesque puppets. However, it is Carolyn Goelzer who turns in the most powerful performance as the strong and defiant wife and mother Clytemnestra. Her skillful puppet animation coupled with her talent as an actor makes her the most unforgettable performer in the show.

Coming in a close second is Yukio Tsuji, who provides the show with live percussion. His dexterity and delicate touch enhances Tim Schellenbaum’s fabulous musical score and punctuates the show with moving and oftentimes chilling sound. Finally, Peter Ksander’s lighting design supports the tragedy very well.

Greek tragedy can be cumbersome but Skipitares makes it accessible. The songs, the music, the acting, and the puppets make this production great for audiences of all ages. So, even though this play is set around the Trojan War, in this case you should not be afraid of Greeks bearing gifts.

Irrationals is a new musical by Jon Marans (book and lyrics; he's best known as the author of Old Wicked Songs) and Edward Thomas (music; an eclectic resume including seven gold records as well as the cult flop Mati Hari). It's playing off-off-Broadway at the American Theatre of Actors, which has lately served as a breeding ground for such new work as Bare and Urinetown. It doesn't feel finished to me, but it may have potential should its creators decide to keep developing it. It certainly functions as a worthy showcase for some talented young performers and Thomas's eclectic, catchy music.

It tells the story of a year in the life of Nick Marco, a one-time Wall Street analyst who, for reasons never made explicit but clearly having to do with the breakup of his family and his own ruinous drug addiction, is now teaching geometry at the New York High School for Arts and Humanities. The show focuses particularly on Nick's fifth period class, which is made up of eight very bright but non-math-oriented students. In the best Room 222 tradition, they're a veritable cross-section of teenage humanity. There are two white students, Andy and Kristen, who used to be a couple; now she's pregnant and he's trying to reignite their relationship (though it's hinted that he's not the child's father). There are two African American brothers, Reggie and Desmond, the former a bright but misunderstood lad who speaks five languages and wants to go to Duke University; the latter a smart but tough kid who has grown up too soon following the death of their father—he now supports the family as a drug dealer. There are two more African American kids: Zenovia, who affects a preppie look and wants to be Diane Sawyer when she grows up, and Delia, a moody man-trap who used to date Desmond. There's also Miguel, a bright Hispanic kid who lives with a mysterious grandmother; and, finally, Kimm, daughter of a Japanese mother and Jewish father, a budding lesbian who plays the cello.

Irrationals deals with the trials and tribulations of this group as they cope with their assorted sexualities, economic situations, and other problems. It feels a little like Welcome Back, Kotter as they develop unrealistically chummy relationships with Nick (and seem to be taking up all his time); it also feels a little like Rent-goes-to-high-school, as these disparate, desperate youngsters sing their sorrows and desires to an up-tempo rock beat.  Marans hasn't quite got a handle on any of these eight characters, however; they all still feel like clichés and ciphers: the promising black kid becoming a drug dealer, for instance, isn't exactly an original idea.

Also problematic, bookwise, is the fact that the play is actually about Nick. His son, a troubled teen named Chris, is a recurring character (though we understand pretty quickly that their conversations are happening in Nick's imagination). Irrationals' main throughline is about Nick learning how to be a better parent from his students. But so far this idea isn't nearly as well-articulated as the story lines involving the eight kids; nor is it well integrated with them. So there's a certain disjointedness to the show: the kids have the most stage time, the most interesting things to do, and most of our sympathy, while Nick, the protagonist, is off on the sidelines.

Book problems are nothing new, of course. Where Irrationals shines is in the music department. There are a number of songs that are arresting, entertaining or both. I especially liked the opening, "Stick It Out," sung by the students, and also Miguel and Delia's duet "Parallel Lines." There are also a few pieces that are baldly misconceived, notably "Our Own Family Business," which tries to make a peppy dance sequence out of Desmond's drug trade. "Zenovia Rap" is deliciously infectious, but its subject matter—rumors that a classmate is gay and has disappeared—is similarly questionable.

Jim Walton plays Nick, and he does a commendable job, but he hasn't all that much to do. The other grown-up character is his teaching colleague Sharon Groomes, portrayed at the performance reviewed by Cicily Daniels (Nicole Lewis takes over this role for the final week of the run). Daniels takes the spotlight in a disco number called  "Don't Even Try"; but she's stuck fighting a cliche, too—the sassy, buxom black woman with Attitude. Most of the actors playing the students look at least ten years too old for their roles; Rodney Hicks (Desmond) and Merideth Kaye Clark (Kristen) make strong impressions nonetheless, both of them singing and acting very persuasively. Brandon Michael Arrington (Reggie) indicates real talent as well, especially as a dancer. Greg Pierce (Andy) needs to guard against a tendency to channel Anthony Rapp's performance in Rent.

It will be interesting to see if Marans and Thomas and their collaborators choose to continue to work on Irrationals and, if so, what it will evolve into. They certainly have a lot of raw material to work with. Hopefully by seeing what they've got on stage, they can focus and sharpen their concept and create something interesting and original here.

Hobo Dinner Productions has great taste in source material—the early '60s anthology The Twilight Zone is arguably one of the best written series in television. It used science fiction to create parables—terse stories that begin in our world, and then reality is given one twist, resulting in a morality tale where normal people suddenly find themselves in a paranormal situation. For It Came From The Twilight Zone, three teleplays, two by Rod Serling and one by George Clayton Johnson, have been adapted for the stage by three directors. It is a spirited undertaking, with mixed results.

The first episode of the evening, “Four Characters in Search of an Exit," is the least successful at transporting us to the unknown because it runs into theatrical territory that is too familiar. The story finds a very unlikely group of characters—an Army Captain, a Clown, a Ballerina, and a Cowgirl—trapped in a high-walled, open-topped room with no doors. Three of the four have settled into this trap, but the newest prisoner, the Army Captain, refuses to accept this situation and works tirelessly to escape. This strange scenario, this image of Hell it would seem, was probably chilling for a 1961 audience (after all, one of The Twilight Zone's greatest assets was that it was playing on television, perhaps the most straightforward and realistic medium). However, modern theatregoers have a different reaction: lights up on a soldier, clown, ballerina, cowgirl, and no exits makes us think that we are in Absurdism, where we have probably traveled to in black box theatres before. Though not the best choice of episodes, the cast still give it their all. Particular mention goes to Martin Lain, who as the Captain has the classic Twilight Zone leading man task of refusing to accept the illogical situation he is in, and gives a heroic, full-body fight, including climbing the invisible walls.

The second episode, “A Game of Pool,” translates much more smoothly to the stage. Jesse, a man obsessed with perfecting his game of pool, says aloud that he would give anything to challenge the late Fats Brown, who everyone says was the best. He gets his wish and Fats appears to accept the challenge, with the stakes of the game to be Jesse’s life. Both of the actors in this two-hander, Tom Bartos as Jesse and W. Emory Rose as Fats Brown, do an excellent job of keeping up the tension as they go about their game. There is a table and sticks, but the balls are mimed, making us need their reactions to track the progress of the game, a device that makes the piece feel intimate, like a series of close-up shots. Compliments to director Charmian Creagle for keeping the piece properly quiet and slow, and using the small Producers Club space to advantage. It is the most rewarding piece of the evening, and best captures the atmosphere of the original series.

By contrast, the final piece feels too rushed. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is adapted from one of the most popular and memorable episodes of the series. It is a story of Cold War paranoia: Maple Street, seemingly a block of Anytown, USA, suddenly experiences a complete power outage, which also cuts off all radio and even kills the batteries of cars. A comic-book reading child exclaims the cause is a spaceship that has just passed overhead and—we all know that portentous things are always extra-scary when kids say them—he also foretells that there are monsters coming, and that there are people amongst them who are working with these monsters. With no other explanation for what is going on, the citizens of Maple Street begin to embrace this ridiculous idea, and the fear of their own neighbors grows into a hysterical witch-hunt, with tragic results. This is great material, but it needs a slower pace than it gets here, so that there's a chance for the hysteria to build. Also, too many of the actors play panic too early on (and true hysterical shrieking is not pleasant in such a small space). An exception is John Grady who, as everyman Steve Brand, tries to understand the situation moment to moment—you can see him trying to remain civil while fighting off the panic. The ensemble of the piece could have used the tone he plays.

It Came From The Twilight Zone is a fun evening, but this late-night show needs to be tighter to achieve the difficult task of actually delivering chills.

It’s About Time, a new show written by Jessica Bowser and directed by Adam Bernstein, is an ingenious mini-spectacle that combines live theatre with electronic music and both live and pre-taped video to create the surreal deconstruction of a depressed young man’s personal epiphany.

The Chocolate Factory, located in Long Island City, couldn’t be a more appropriate venue for Confluence Theater Company’s very impressive production, which makes its world premiere after being presented as a work-in-progress in The Chocolate Factory’s Fresh Meat series in July 2004. The theater space is bare and cold and apparently occasionally doubles as an art gallery. The set design by Sarah Pearline is extraordinary. The black box stage is actually white, as are most of the set pieces—with the exception of a black futon bed that gets moved around so much that it almost becomes its own character. The far upstage wall serves as a giant video screen bordered on each side by the calendar cells of a magnified day planner. The overall effect is stark, sterile, cool, but creepy.

In It’s About Time, there are frequent references to a nebulous (offstage) entity known as The Praxis of IT. According to Dictionary.com (first definition), “praxis” means “practical application or exercise of a branch of learning.” So It’s About Time’s main character—the curiously named “Bang”—isn’t oppressed by a high-tech supervillain, a la Lex Luthor, or even by some lofty, bureaucratic, maybe-even-doesn’t-exist boogeyman, like Big Brother of Orwell’s 1984. The Praxis of IT happens to be a corporate self-help program on time management to which Bang becomes fanatically addicted so that he can avoid confronting the most frightening enemy of all—himself.

It’s Bang’s birthday and the night of the end of daylight savings time—he gets one extra hour. What is he going to do with it? We see through deliberately disjointed flashbacks, streams of consciousness, progress soliloquies that he videotapes live, and visits to the bowling alley, that Bang’s beautiful girlfriend, Maya, has dumped him, he hates his job, hates being alone, hates his life. Now, in accordance with the gospel of IT, Bang compulsively refuses to do even the simplest things that don’t achieve goal-oriented, quantifiable results. Goals are friends. Dreams—like the love of a woman or bowling the perfect game—are enemies. But Bang is not nearly as alone as he believes himself to be. There’s quirky, pretty Ritza, an assertive bowling alley attendant, who’s sweet on him and patiently waits in the wings for the right moment.

And then there’s Bing. Bing wears lots of hats. He’s Bang’s id, sense of humor, conscience, sub-conscious, subtext—a sort of mute guardian angel who follows Bang around and does all of Bang’s feeling for him. Bang is aware of Bing but he only occasionally acknowledges him, even when Bing is literally trying to smack some sense up side oblivious Bang’s head. Finally the moment comes when Bang can no longer ignore Bing, and the two characters engage in a furious brawl.

David Lillich gives a riveting performance as Bang, a formerly smug, minor league paper pusher now so desperate to give his life meaning that he makes it about nothing, except the efficient passing of time. Rather than take the morose path, Lillich’s determinedly upbeat portrait of Bang makes him more unnerving and pathetic than the scariest Amway apostle, but his charm still comes through. As Maya, Bang’s ex-girlfriend, Christine Ryndak is effectively sultry and aloof, but her lines tended to be delivered in blasé monotone. Maya’s wonderfully shrewd monologue about the timeless necessity for bartenders couldn’t quite live up to its point as a result. We don’t see that much of life-embracing Ritza, a free spirit whose gentle persistence helps coax Bang out of his emotional swamp, but she is appealingly played by Jenny Tibbels. Fortunately, Tibbels gets her own brief moment in the spotlight with a monologue that defies political correctness and defends the incomparable social and psychological benefits of now and then going out for a smoke.

The standout performance comes from Craig Fitzpatrick as Bing, Bang’s suppressed psychic shadow. Bing has only a few moments of dialogue,  in a dream sequence, when he actually "is" Bang, and in which the metaphor “being up a tree” becomes literal. The rest of the time Bing is mute. He bops hither and thither on the stage like a fussy, ineffectual nanny, pleading silently with Bang to stop doing this to yourself, stop doing it to me. Fitzpatrick has an open, vulnerable, animated face that deftly conveys Bing’s frustration and compassion towards Bang. There was a moment I almost didn’t see because the focus was on the downstage action. Bing, far upstage, gives a tiny wave of his hand and, ignored as usual, exits. It was sweet and sad. His absence was significant, and I missed him.

My admiration for Adam Bernstein, as well as his tech crew, is boundless for the execution of this most complex piece. The actors are marvelously synchronized, especially Lillich and Fitzpatrick. The presence of multimedia is indeed integral to the message of the show—although I’m not entirely sure what that message is—not just techno-cool eye candy. Bowser’s non-linear text has a few scenes of lucid narrative, the rest is in non-sequiturs. The story is nonetheless ultimately cohesive and relatively easy to follow, like dreams that make perfect sense while you dream them but not when you try to analyze them later.

It’s About Time is still a new, young piece with some bugs to work out of its program, but even at this stage it’s terrific.

One of the hardest things about staging Chekhov is getting the tone right; most of his plays are something like existentially bleak comedies, or bemused tragedies, or perhaps oddly depressing social satires. Humor, pathos, and a fairly cynical view of human nature need to mingle without sliding into either farce or melodrama. Ivanov is not one of Chekhov’s best plays—but the National Asian American Theatre Company’s production of it makes it worth seeing, because they understand Chekhov. Director Jonathan Bank and an excellent cast capture the elusive, evocative emotional landscape of Chekhov, where the audience never quite knows whether to laugh or cry.

The play is about the tribulations of Ivanov, an impoverished gentleman farmer, and his social circle: his uncle, the even more impoverished Count Shabelsky; his Jewish wife, Anna, who is dying of tuberculosis; Anna’s self-righteously honest doctor, Lvov, who despises Ivanov for his neglect of his wife; Borkin, the hapless estate manager; the Lebedev family (a local dignitary, his moneylending wife, and their daughter Sasha); and assorted Lebedev hangers-on.

But ultimately, it’s a psychodrama about Ivanov himself. He has lost all savor for his life—he’s fallen out of love with his wife, and hates himself for it; he’s lost interest in the pastimes that used to engage him; he can barely stand to hear himself speak. He tries to rediscover his passion for living in an affair—and, after Anna’s death from tuberculosis, in an engagement—with Sasha, fifteen years younger than he. Sasha romanticizes Ivanov’s angst, and feels drawn to him because she wants to rescue him—but in the end, she cannot save him from himself.

In the clear light of the 21st century, we could confidently label Ivanov clinically depressed—and what’s most striking about the play is how modern its characters’ psychological states still seem. Bank has gotten his actors to reach up through the sometimes stilted language, through the archaic details of the plot and setting, and really grab the audience’s emotions. As Ivanov, Joel de la Fuente captures every nuance of a man who sees himself turning into someone he despises, and only despises himself more for not being able to stop. De la Fuente forces us to understand Ivanov’s pain in exquisite detail, without holding back on any of the character’s worst qualities: his self-absorption, his selfishness, his violent temper and childish outbursts.

Similarly, Michi Barall, as Sasha, brings fresh, contemporary emotional truth to a character whose main problem is (fortunately for 21st century women) somewhat outdated—she’s a bright, capable young woman who has only one choice available in her life: whom to marry. Sasha wants to love someone terribly flawed, because propping up her husband is the only purpose she can imagine for herself—and the more of a mess he is, the more of a challenge she has. And Barall beautifully captures the heartbreaking optimism of the bad choices we make in love, and the unshakeable confidence of youth, that ability to rationalize even the most incredibly destructive of those choices.

The actors in the comic roles have a harder job, as their characters don’t have such strong emotional arcs. But they also give solid performances, finding the wry social comedy in Chekhov, especially Orville Mendoza as Borkin, the estate manager who’s always one get-rich-quick scheme away from striking it big, and Daniel Dae Kim as the priggish Doctor Lvov.

One interesting casting choice is Deepti Gupta as Anna, another somewhat thankless role. Anna is both dying and terribly neglected by her husband. She’s also been disowned by her Jewish family after converting to Christianity to marry Ivanov. Gupta brings out the inherent pathos and loneliness in Anna’s plight. Much is made in the play of Anna’s Jewishness, and where the rest of the cast is East Asian, Gupta is an Indian actress who stands out physically, which calls attention to Anna’s alienation from the other characters.

The production elements are simple and serviceable; the costumes by Elly van Horne stand out, especially in the wedding scene that closes the play.

Ivanov was Chekhov’s first full-length play, and it’s definitely lacking in the complexity and sophistication of character development that would make his later plays so justly renowned. (Although it does exemplify Chekhov’s famous aphorism that if there’s a gun on stage at the top of the play, it must be fired in the last act.) The comic elements are a little too broad; the exposition can be heavy-handed; the tragic elements reach toward tear-jerking. If you’re looking for the best of Chekhov, Ivanov might not be your first choice, but if you’re looking for a Chekhov production that speaks to the emotions of a modern audience, this Ivanov is an excellent place to start.

“Pa-shit!”

This is the word that broke theatre open, ripped apart society, and let loose insanity, surrealism, immediacy.

At least, if we take Elizabeth Swados’s word for it.

JABU is a mishmash of surrealist icons, theatrical and literary history, labored modern-day political references, and a lot of good old-fashioned American musical pluck and vigor. (There's even a parody of a Broadway medley.) It is a nostalgic history of a world that was never so simple, where a single word caused a revolution in theatre and thought, and where Alfred Jarry—an insane, pretentious, drug addled midget—is a tender romantic hero.

Jarry lived from 1873 to 1907 and wrote his most renowned work at the age of fifteen. Ubu Roi is still studied in colleges, and performed by experimental and classical companies alike. Elizabeth Swados, with a keen eye for visual and narrative storytelling, has taken the story of Jarry’s short, crude life and interspersed it with scenes from his masterwork. At crucial moments the stories intersect: when Jarry is drafted, Pa Ubu starts a war, while at the very end we see Ma and Pa Ubu tending the dying Jarry as if they were the parents he lost.

The play is narrated by the character of Madame de Rachide. A married lady known for her literary salon, she develops a personal and sexual infatuation with Jarry. Danielle Levanas is conscientious and beautiful, but struggles with Madame de Rachide’s raw perversity. Matt Wilson adeptly evokes Jarry’s eccentricities, but he is still a handsome guy, far from the midget monster the play describes.

And that is ultimately the problem. There is nothing gross or dangerous about this production, despite the toilet used as a dais. We are told of horrors we never see. One character tells us “self-destruction is messy” but that’s a concept, at best. One of the grossest, most surreal moments is when puppets of Jarry’s diseased organs talk to us, and I couldn’t help wishing for more moments like it.

Swados is not afraid to tackle dense ideas and the production is expertly executed. It has catchy music, strong voices, a talented cast, and intriguing visuals. But it also has the cliché of the artist as a mad genius who relies on drugs to get through the day and who has only one piece of good work in him. Swados feeds us the formulaic dream of living fast and dying young, perhaps knowing that although Jarry himself is dead, the reality he lived and wrote is no easier to bear.

ABIE: Then listen dear, let him think your name is Murpheski.
ROSE MARY: You mean, I'm to let him think I'm Jewish until he likes me?
   - from Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols (1922)

The premise of Jewtopia, the new and apparently very successful comedy by Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, is that Chris O'Connell, Catholic, wants to marry a Jewish girl—any Jewish girl—because then he won't have to make any more decisions (because, presumably, she will make all the decisions; Jewish girls are "like" that). Chris asks his childhood friend Adam Lipschitz (who is Jewish) to help him learn to "be" Jewish so that he can achieve his fantasy. In exchange, Chris will give dating advice to Adam, who needs to marry a Jewish girl in order to please his Jewish parents and grandmother; Chris, though apparently unsure of his ability to seem Jewish enough for a long-term relationship with a Jew is quite the lad when it comes to picking up Jewish women at singles mixers or online at www.JDate.com, the website that he calls "Jewtopia," where 500,000 lonely Jewish people can search in cyberspace for the Jewish mate of their dreams.  (JDate is a real website. I tried to get on it this morning, just out of curiosity, but I couldn't access it.)

In the play's first scene, Chris proves his Jewish mettle to an initially skeptical Adam by successfully completing a variety of Hebrew prayers such as the Sh'ma and the blessing over wine. Adam demonstrates his ignorance of Jewish culture (he calls himself a "bad Jew") by not knowing what year Israel became a state and not remembering the name of the Barbra Streisand movie Yentl. Adam, by the way, is a 30-year-old lawyer who has not been to synagogue since his bar mitzvah, where he humiliated himself by exposing himself to the congregation and then running naked around the bimah three times. Chris, also 30, is a systems analyst. It's not clear when he last when to church, but he says in the final scene of Act I that he has "a friend in Jesus" and despite living amongst suburban New York Jews all his life thinks it's okay to say things like "Jew you down" to a rabbi.

There is one grievously insulting moment in the play, in which Adam explains the Yiddish word "schvartzer" to Chris, telling him that this derogatory label for African Americans is okay to use among other Jews but not in front of Blacks. Chris proves he has caught on to this inherent racism by crying out, later, that he loves everybody—"even schvartzers."

Adam asks Chris at one point why he doesn't convert to Judaism (and Chris actually announces his plans to do so—including, of course, getting circumcised—ouch!). They talk about this momentous personal decision as if it had the weight of, say, switching from mocha frappucino to latte at Starbucks.

Fogel and Wolfson, self-described "nice Jewish boys," are self-aware enough to apologize in advance, in a program note, for the offensiveness of their play. What they don't apologize for is the fact that this comedy isn't particularly funny. The audience that I was part of barely laughed at anything in Act I: not at the cheesy "costumes" in which Adam allows himself to be photographed for JDate as he assumes the four online personas that Chris advises him to take on (such as a rapping "Club Jew" or a forelock-wearing Hasid—"King Jew" in Chris's words); not at the grilling that Chris undergoes at the hands of the pushy mother of his new Jewish girlfriend; not at the sight gag that ends Act I, in which Adam dresses Chris is a flak jacket loaded with necessary "Jewish Man" supplies (Visine, Pepto-Bismol, Metamucil, etc.).

In any event, I'm entirely at a loss to understand the appeal of this play which, I learned today, is now officially earning a profit. A hundred years ago, when immigrants from all over the world were converging on Manhattan's Lower East Side, escaping poverty and oppression in hopes of a better life in a country whose language and customs were entirely alien to them, a theatre tradition sprang up in which these groups made fun of each other, using ethnic humor to grapple with the fearsome clash of cultures. But time passed and things changed, and even a wildly offensive (by today's standards) play like Abie's Irish Rose could celebrate, finally, that the Irish and Jews who supposedly hated each other could successfully come together to create a new kind of American family. Doesn't a Jewtopia push Jews back into the ghetto they've been trying to escape for the past century?

With Jubilee, Musicals Tonight! settles into its seventh season and third home (at the 45th Street Theatre, following a long stint at the 14th Street Y). Producer Mel Miller's vision is still the same: to mount concert-style revivals of lesser-known musicals, more or less unabridged and unadapted, and to showcase Broadway-caliber talent in some of the leading roles, all at off-off-Broadway prices. Devotees and followers of this series should not be disappointed by this latest presentation.

Jubilee was written in 1935 by Cole Porter (music and lyrics) and Moss Hart (book) while they sailed around the world; it's as larky a show as either ever came up with, filled with winking caricatures of pals like Noel Coward and Elsa Maxwell plus lots of inside and/or campy references to a slew of other famous people, from Countess DeFrasso to Neysa McMein. (One of the questions that kept popping into my head as I watched this revival was: How many still living will recognize all the names that Porter and Hart continually drop?)

The story of Jubilee concerns four members of a royal family (not England's; Ruritania's, perhaps?) who, bored with their duties, decide to run away from home. The King, a gentle and simple-minded fellow, wants to spend time practicing his "string tricks" and winds up becoming stooge-of-the-moment to Fabulous Party Giver Eva Standing. The Queen, an earthy dowager, is interested in making the acquaintance of hunky movie star Charles Rausmiller, who plays a Tarzan-like character called Mowgli on the screen; she says it's because she wants him to help her with the breast stroke. The Prince is similarly nursing an infatuation with American singer/dancer Karen O'Kane, who is the hit of Cafe Martinique thanks to her beguiling number "Begin the Beguine." And the Princess desires to spend time in the company of Eric Dare, the world famous actor-writer-singer-director-producer-Renaissance Man of the Theatre.

Hart and especially Porter have a hoot sending up Maxwell, Coward, and Johnny Weismuller. The score, which holds up much better than Hart's long and talky book, has more of Porter's trademark comic list songs than usual, several of which appear to have been written for his own enjoyment. There are also some grand pastiches here, including two Coward takeoffs, "The Kling-Kling Bird" and, more successfully, the wittily simple-minded "When Love Comes Your Way." The most famous song in the score, "Begin the Beguine," is also meant in jest—witness this piece of the lyric, for example:

I'm with you once more under the stars
And down by the shore an orchestra's playing,
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

But the melody is so infectious and danceable that it can't help but be the show's hit tune; it's nice to hear it performed live in the theatre. Ditto "Just One of Those Things," a quintessential Porter composition about sophisticates falling out of love. Here he talks about "a trip to the moon on gossamer wings"; as Sondheim has noted, nobody else could get away with it, but Porter seemed to live it.

Which is why the confectionary score for Jubilee, of which these are just some of the highlights, is so worth having performed. Jubilee is stronger than lots of musicals of its era, but its requirements—eight excellent performers capable of delivering star turns, plus numerous and elaborate sets and costumes—mean that we won't be seeing it on Broadway anytime soon. Enjoy its considerable charms, then, in unamplified glory in this production; and forgive the unevenness.

For there are indeed things that could be improved (and some surely will be during Jubilee's run; I saw the second performance).  Thomas Mills' staging and choreography manages to be both haphazard and routine—frequent auditors of the Musicals Tonight! shows are going to recognize all the moves, but not necessarily with particular affection. The casting also appears to be uneven, with only a few of the leads really hitting their marks—the ones who fare best are Ed Schiff as the King, Melissa Lone as the Princess, Keith Gerchak as the Prince, and Sebastian La Cause as Mowgli (though he's defeated by the non-costuming convention of the show; the joke of the Sophie Tucker-ish monarch admiring his rippling muscles makes little sense when he's clad in a polo shirt and slacks). Leslie Ann Hendricks makes "Begin the Beguine" the evening's musical highlight, but she doesn't seem to have a take on "Just One of Those Things" yet—that may come with time. Patti Perkins (Queen), Cynthia Collins (Eva), and Justin Sayre (Eric) all flounder, seemingly miscast in the three roles that are, admittedly, the toughest, mainly because their prototypes haven't been around for so very many decades. But Michael L. Walker, as a mischievous younger prince plus numerous other ensemble roles, has a most engaging presence; and Michael Shane Ellis serves as sturdy anchor to the narrative as the Prime Minister.

Part of me wanted Miller to cut some of the extraneous-feeling text—Hart's libretto is long; have I said that already?—but part of me is grateful to get an unexpurgated Jubilee, warts and all, to savor and appreciate some 69 years after the fact. That's always been the most valuable service Musicals Tonight! provides to the theatre community. We want them to keep doing it: the season ahead promises rare looks at The Chocolate Solider and The Apple Tree, plus the American premiere (!) of a show by Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse.

The drama department at the all-female Connie Francis College is staging a production of Shakespeare’s very male-heavy Julius Caesar, with women in all the roles. Appearances to the contrary, the play is a fitting choice, since these women—shallow, vain, and power-hungry—live in a rigid social hierarchy echoing that of imperial Rome. As bushfires threaten the campus, Julianne, robbed of the flashy role of Brutus (given instead to Megan, Julianne’s rival and the director Peter’s current plaything), is relegated to the smaller title role, and it’s not long before she reverses her circumstances by muddying the divide between theatre and real life.

That’s the plot, and it’s a promising one. However, playwright David Starkey doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Not antic enough to be an out-and-out spoof, but not believable enough to be anything else, Julianne Caesar’s indecisive tone blunts any interesting points it might have made. This is best illustrated by a nasty murder at the play’s center: unsure of whether to play it for laughs or take it seriously, Starkey and director James Duff flirt with both but never commit to either, making the event and its repercussions unsatisfying for head, heart and gut alike.

Up until that point, however, there’s some breezy fun to be taken from Starkey’s ethnographic exploration of the modern American Valley Girl. The action moves quickly if not incisively, and the actors all do their best to sharpen the fuzzy material—especially the Amazonian Allison McAtee, whose Megan is an imposingly bitchy cartoon of arrogance, and James Andrew Walsh, who manages to invest the clichéd role of pretentious director with some panache. The rest of the women do an admirable job of forging individual variants on the Poor Little Rich Girl archetype, creating a full Vanity Fair of petulant, spoiled floozies.

As Julianne, Janine Barris does her best with a confusing role that bears the burden of the play’s contradictions. Julianne is meant to be the hero, but her unsympathetic nature would allow her to be so only in the sort of black comedy in which the cruelest acts are made amusing by being depicted without the least shred of judgment. At the moment, uncomfortably straddling satire and sincerity, Julianne Caesar is neither nasty nor nice enough to be an effective vessel for either.

Julie, produced by Theatre-Arts Connection, is an adaptation of Strindberg’s realist classic, Miss Julie. David I.L. Poole’s show relocates Miss Julie to a surrealist landscape of a remote Stockholm island, and incorporates text from Shakespeare, Charles Mee, and Nordic mythology.

Julie is an ambitious production. Strindberg’s play alone is demanding, and Poole’s company sets an extremely high goal for themselves in taking on extra work in the textual additions and their visual aesthetic. In their own words, “T-AC’s Julie is a re-imagined surrealistic assemblage that borders on art installation and vivid tableaux vivant.”

Julie is the story of the wealthy daughter of a Count who, in his absence, begins a dangerous affair with her father’s servant Jean. Jean is engaged to another servant of the household, Christine, but has lusted after Miss Julie (and the her aristocratic life) since he was a child. Once Julie initiates the affair, she finds herself trapped by Jean’s deception and cruelty—and by her conflicting longings to be loved and in control.

The design—not unlike an art installation, as the company suggests—is a major component of the production. The set is surrealist, complete with a blue-black checked floor that is uprooted and replaced by the characters depending on their mood. It's interesting to look at, extending into the seats of the house, making the servants not only visible there at all times, but also on the same level as the audience. But it seemed to me to be mostly ineffective in terms of giving the audience information about the world of the play.

The costumes are convincingly period, but strangely not subject to the same symbolic treatment as the sets. The sound design is filled with water and waves, highlighting the director’s decision to place this production on an island, but very little else suggests that this relocation has happened, from a Swedish kitchen to a tiny isolated land mass.

Strindberg's naturalism is not abandoned completely in this performance, but is diffused by additions to the text and choreographed surrealistic interchanges. The actors’ intentions to each other are unclear, and sometimes their actions seem unmotivated, In some moments, the actors relate to each other in the same time and in the same scene. In other moments they are visually and symbolically assembled, as in a dance or a picture, transplanting them from realistic time and space. Indeed, this production often seems more concerned with assembling "snapshots" than bringing the play together as a whole.

The performers deal with the objects on stage (mirrors, clothing, beer and bread) more than they deal with each other, making the connection between Jean and Julie hard to fully glean. Their relationship comes across as ambiguously angry and vague rather than sexually charged and hierarchically complicated. Catherine McNelis, who plays Christine, Julie’s cook and Jean’s lover, does infuse this production with some moments of dynamism and clarity. McNelis captures Christine’s religious fervor with unexpected clarity. She escapes seeming simple or fanatical. In this world of confused symbols, Christine’s devotion to her principles make her the easiest character to relate to in Julie. McNelis also seems most comfortable with the moments of surrealist and non-naturalistic story telling. She is steady and convincing as the wronged lover, and the voice or moral authority.

Not much insight is gained by the splicing of other texts into the Strindberg. The story of Miss Julie is, for the most part, unchanged here. With a few exceptions, the extra texts only hinder the momentum of the greater play. They tend to be recognizable (as from Macbeth) and a little distracting from the topic at hand.

What is probably most lost in this production is Strindberg’s subtlety. His carefully crafted revelations of his characters and their complicated motives are not totally tended to by this Julie. The design-centric production is a little too heavy handed and explicit, and the quieter themes of the play are lost.

Of course, Julie is not claiming to be Strindberg’s original play. It aims at something a little different. In fact, T-AC states their interest clearly: “[Later in life] there was a shift in Strindberg’s writing style. Strindberg wrote [his] later works within a ‘dream logic’... In this new adaptation of Julie, T-AC has tried to achieve his later style.” The concept of doing one of Strindberg’s early works in his later style is an interesting one, but proves itself a truly complicated undertaking. Julie is a somewhat troubled production, never exactly realizing itself as an art installation or as a play. It doesn’t quite find its voice but is full of strong intentions and bold artistic choices.

Scholarly debate has long raged over the identity of the hero of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Is it the title character, the legendary ruler who Shakespeare reveals as full of frailties, physically weak, and tragically susceptible to the flattery that ultimately coaxes him to his death at the beginning of the third act? Or is it Brutus, the noble Roman spoken of by all as a genuinely honorable man, who assassinates his ruler for the good of his country?

The play opens with Caesar’s victorious return to Rome. As he addresses his restive subjects, Brutus is prodded by Cassius to consider whether Caesar is truly fit to rule. This gives voice, it seems, to Brutus’s pre-existing doubts, and he—reluctantly, with much convincing of self and many caveats to the other conspirators—signs on to a plot to assassinate Caesar before he is offered, and accepts, a crown. Despite evil portents all around, Caesar is persuaded to come to the Senate on the Ides of March, where he is stabbed by each of the conspirators in turn.

After Caesar is dead, though, things do not go entirely as planned, which is largely Brutus’s fault. It is Brutus who persuades the other conspirators not to kill Caesar’s chief lieutenant, Mark Antony, along with Caesar, and Brutus who allows Antony to eulogize Caesar, which spurs the populace to outrage. What results is civil war with Brutus and Cassius on one side and Antony, Caesar’s nephew Octavius Caesar, and the somewhat irrelevant Lepidus on the other.

The casting of Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as Brutus seems to put Daniel Sullivan’s lavish Broadway production firmly on the side of Brutus as hero. It’s Washington who gets the above-the-title billing, and the close-up of his face on all the show’s promotional materials. Unfortunately, Washington’s performance doesn’t hold the moral or emotional center of the play—he often seems tentative or shy rather than truly conflicted, and uses broad, sweeping gestures instead of embracing the breadth and sweep in the language itself. Washington is a likable Brutus, but not a noble one.

However, William Sadler’s Julius Caesar also lacks heroic stature, seeming instead petulant, which leaves an odd vacuum at the play’s core. It leaves the audience open to be swayed by whoever’s giving the most convincing performance of the moment—often the very strong Colm Feore as Cassius, sometimes the impassioned (though occasionally hard-to-understand) Eamonn Walker as Antony, and, in her few scenes, Jessica Hecht in the thankless role of Portia, Brutus’s wife.

Now, to a certain extent, the production’s lack of a moral center does put the audience in the position of the play’s Roman mob, whom we watch being easily converted from one cause or allegiance to its complete opposite by the powers of oratory. This is most notable at Caesar’s funeral, which is (coincidentally, or not?) one of the play’s strongest scenes. Played simply in front of a dusty proscenium curtain and addressed directly to the audience (with actors planted in the aisles to cheer at appropriate moments), this scene brings out the best in both Washington and Walker. When their job is to persuade the audience, both unleash effective rhetoric and the force of their personalities. Here, Washington’s quiet gravity works to persuade the mob his cause is just—until Walker’s sarcastic flourishes make a mockery of Brutus’s words.

One could make a case that director Daniel Sullivan has intended exactly such a state of ambivalence, that his interpretation of Julius Caesar is all about mob psychology, the vacuous hole at the heart of politics, and the fickle allegiances of the modern electorate. However, I think it would be somewhat of a stretch, especially for the second half of the play, which comprises a confusing and bloody series of battle scenes. The play as a whole feels more like a set of good intentions that never quite gel.

In the end, the most exciting thing about this Julius Caesar may just be its audience. It was a joy to see a Broadway house packed with excited, ethnically diverse, and relatively young people—which I have to think is due to Washington’s presence onstage. For getting young New Yorkers excited about Shakespeare, he is certainly to be commended.

To its credit, the press release above for K.I. From “Crime” attempts to prepare audiences for an atypical night at the theatre—two languages, two rooms, no stage, all above the loading dock of a vacant midtown building. However I can report that this barely scratches the surface of the most audacious, bewildering performance I have seen in my life. This show is not a relaxing audience experience, but I recommend it to those with a taste for adventure and oddity in their theatre diet—oh, and maybe that rare New York theatergoer who is tired of plays in English.

Yes, the press blurb specifically advertises English in this play, but be forewarned: if Russian is not one of your more fluent tongues, you will not understand at least 80% of what Oksana Mysina says in what is essentially an hour-and-a-half monologue—no intermission. She only occasionally utters an English sentence, mostly to quickly summarize what she elaborately describes in Russian for long stretches of time.

Mysina plays Katerina Ivanova, a penniless mother of two who has just lost her second husband, and is grappling with the relentless aftershocks of that tragedy, including eviction by her landlady and humiliation by old friends of her late husband who won’t come to her aid. Also a setback is her tuberculosis-afflicted brain, which is ever more frequently malfunctioning. Mysina is a much-celebrated stage and screen actress in her native land—she is the recipient of the Nika Award, Russia’s equivalent to the Oscar. Her brilliance is wholly evident in this performance, even with the vast quantity of words that were unintelligible to me. To have a glimpse at how this is possible, watch an excellent screen performance with the sound off. You will see that artful acting expresses itself powerfully in a myriad of ways beyond the spoken word. Watch for eyes that are present, expressive, and vivacious; body movements that profoundly speak to status, age, emotion, and honesty. Mysina is a master of these elements, and much of Katerina’s plight can be gleaned from them alone.

She connects with the audience in a bold, fearless manner from the moment of her entrance. Casting audience members as guests for this madwoman’s memorial dinner in honor of her husband, she pleads and jokes with us one moment, and berates us the next, often for our inability to follow her simple Russian instructions. She, at times, sits in the audience and talks to the individual next to her as if they had been old friends for years. She ad-libs (in English) at latecomers taking their seats, and at audience members who are wearing particularly puzzled facial expressions. A glorious comedic moment came when she confronted one such man, saying “What is wrong with you? You think this is a theatre?” He stammered out a reply in the affirmative, and got a scoffing chuckle from Mysina and a roll of the eyes that surprised the uneasy audience into loud laughter.

Her performance backs away from no moment of the wrenching hopelessness that one might expect from anything inspired by Dostoyevsky. Katerina is caught in the catch-22 predicament of hiding her desperation from the aristocracy that is quickly forgetting her, the stress of which causes her only more desperation. Mysina gives this character tremendous restraint at the beginning of her monologue, allowing only her eyes to hint at pain hidden away. But slowly and with gathering speed, she bravely journeys to fierce emotional territory, taking out her bitterness on the audience, God, and her three taciturn children, played by Elizabeth Boiko, Bridget Clark, and Eugene Vovk. They rarely open their mouths except to sing upon a shrill command and rough shove from their mother.

Director Kama Ginkas, another titan of the Russian theatre, has created a passionate environmental staging of this play by removing the barrier of a traditional stage, and having the audience travel from one room to another in the midst of the show—the first representing the immediate outside of Katerina’s home, the second being the interior where the dinner takes place. An additional and superb theatrical element of Ginkas’s staging is the ladder that drops from the ceiling of the second room, representing Katerina’s death journey away from her troubled life. It has a pendulum-like swinging motion that Mysina joyfully employs to lend all the more ecstasy to Katerina’s final speech.

Ginkas and Mysina would do well to translate more of the Russian, if the show is to remain at an hour-and-a-half. I simply lost patience with not being able to understand what she so passionately tried to express, and was not placated by the dry, lengthy plot summary inserted into the program. However, a memorable performance it remains, crackling with as much (if not more) live presence and exciting energy as any 100%English show I have seen in recent days.

If I were one of the valiant, quick-on-their feet, real-live improv super-heroes and heroines who perform Ka-Baam!!, I'd probably start this review off with a clever pun like "Ka-Baam!! is Ka-razy, Ka-rageous, Ka-lossal fun," or perhaps a faux newsboy tagline like "Extra! Extra! Ka-Baam!! Delivers K-O, Leaves 'Em Laughing Loudly."

But alas, I'm just an Internet Theatre Reviewer, so I'll simply say that I had a blast at Ka-Baam!!, which is one of the niftiest and charmingest evenings of improv I've encountered, and I bet you will too. The premise is neat: audience members fill out a little slip of paper prior to the show, on which they provide made-up names of super-heroes and villains. These are then used by the evening's host, the astonishingly adept "Simperin'" Stephen Wacker, to animate a veritable parade of live-action comic book sketches. Eight performers (plus Travis Ploeger, who provides appropriate sound effects and music from a perch at the side of the stage) create the potpourri of unlikely good guys and baddies, totally on the fly, as Wacker reads out the silly suggestions (which included, on the night I attended the show, Neon Ned, Ambiguous Man, Sympathetic Girl, Snow Man, and Secretly Asian Man).

One of the reasons Ka-Baam!! works so well is that Wacker and director Asaf Ronen have devised a variety of frameworks/games with which to present these dynamic (and dynamically-created) characters. Some are introduced in brief vignettes that purport to explain how the super-hero got his name/special powers; others look like familiar TV fodder (such as a "public service announcement" by Ambiguous Man about the dangers of drugs—the subject having been suggested by an audience member). The centerpiece of the evening is a two-part adventure in which three of our super-heroes/heroines battle a nefarious evil-doer and his henchmen (-persons?). Consider the awesome responsibility: the cast members have to  get themselves trapped in the villain's lair and figure out a far-fetched but plausible way OUT again, all in the space of 20 minutes or so.

Which brings me to another reason that Ka-Baam!! is so successful: these folks are good. Wacker is the best improv editor this side of Clive Anderson (the original host of Who's Line Is It, Anyway?), and his troupe—Adam Bloom, Katherine Heller, Michael Martin, Jeff Miller, Jamie Rievera, Stefan Schick, Eliza Skinner, Ainsley Waller, and Dave Warth—are a lightning-fast, ego-free, splendidly oiled ensemble. Not just very funny, they're smart and sophisticated: this is a show where the humor never degenerates into potty jokes or sophomoric unsubtlety. And a surprisingly large percentage of the material lands squarely on target, as surely as Secretly Asian Man's karate chops—pow! bam! zonk!—will unfailingly fell his enemies.

So, I wholeheartedly recommend Ka-Baam!! to just about anybody. There's only one more performance this year (on December 20), but with luck there will be a longer run next year. I'll know I'll be eager to tune in again, whatever the time, place, or station.

Kasimir & Karoline, written in 1931 by Odon von Horvath, has been adapted by director Pavol Liska and brought to Classic Stage Company in a rare modern translation. Translation is, in many ways, the essence of this production. Its strengths and its weaknesses are intrinsically tied to translation, not simply of the language, but also of the setting, from a 1930s Munich Oktoberfest to a 2000ish New Jersey Rocktoberfest.

Kasimir & Karoline is essentially the story of two lovers, and the play begins in the midst of a mounting tension between them. Kasimir has just lost his job and so he begins to complain of life’s essential unfairness, predictably bringing down the mood of Karoline and all those assembled for the Rocktoberfest party. Interrupting dance breaks with nihilistic soliloquy, Kasimir can’t even appreciate Karoline’s and the crowd’s awe at a towering zeppelin as it makes its astonishing appearances. For Kasimir, the zeppelin’s greatness only reminds him of his own insignificance.

Soon Kasimir becomes belligerent to Karoline, prophesizing that now that he is unemployed, she will soon leave him. Kasimir’s brutality towards himself is relentless—his shame at losing his job fuels such hysteria that now it is only a matter of time until Karoline will leave him. Whether Kasimir’s joblessness actually aggravates Karoline is unclear (she swears it doesn’t), but what is clear is that Kasimir’s fear of letting Karoline down becomes a splinter between them, directly alienating her from his grief while slowly turning her into his antagonist. Forced to defend her position, Karoline (already possessing a thick Jersey accent) vehemently protests—and briefly channels a rare performative synthesis between Dolly Parton and J. Lo, dodging her head and wagging finger at Kasimir, insisting “A re-hal womahn st-hands by her mahhn.”

The tension increases, when under Kasimir’s oppressive tirade, Karoline blurts out, “Maybe we just ain't meant for each othah!” It is the unintentional beginning of their slow and painful estrangement. From then on, they begin to be constantly interrupted by intrusive outsiders and persistent bad luck. And so Kasimir and Karoline continually miss each other, in spite of their efforts to reach out and to make amends. Both become entrenched in circumstances that they wouldn’t normally be in: Karoline plays the role of tramp that Kasimir has been casting her in, and Kasimir is dumbly led into criminal conduct. Their hopes to remedy their own situations, and their love affair, become further disrupted when each becomes the objecs of someone else’s desire.

Considering that the play is almost a century old, playwright von Horvath deals with surprising immediacy in issues that have haunted humankind, but especially lovers, with dogged persistence: issues of misunderstandings between the sexes and high aspirations with low returns. Liska is nevertheless quite obviously interested in making the text relevant to modern audiences; hence some of the unusual tactics employed in this adaptation. Unfortunately, some of these are much more successful than others.

The translation is peppered with a strange juxtaposition of text from the original German and modern colloquialisms. It is not long into the play that the terms “fraulein” and “dude” are used with equal alacrity. This is probably the funniest of the many attention-drawing elements employed in this production.

The actors are made to spin themselves around to get from one place to another—this unexplained, circuitous movement is oft, but not always, used as a means of getting to and fro, and most of the actors look stilted and uncomfortable doing it. Also strange are the tendencies of the characters to touch or indicate their genitals whenever they say that they’ve been “thinking.” It becomes distracting and doesn’t really make a point regarding the essential problems of sex within the play, which are already very clear.

Some of the best comic material is regarding the playwright’s references, through the mouths of his characters, to the “all-purpose magical tent.” For indeed, the main set piece, which serves as the location for all of the events that the audience cannot see (but which are alluded to) is a prominently featured, but enclosed, tent. At times it is an ice cream stand, from which characters emerge with actual cones, while at other times it is a parking lot—the scene of a disastrous crime caper late in the play. Jian Jung’s set is sparse and elegant, extremely useful and delicately minimal. It is a great help in transporting the audience to a dreamy world, which bears some resemblance to our own. Also notable is the sound, an appropriately creepy, haunting set of arrangements borrowed mostly from Disney animated pictures.

The tools which imbue this staging with its endearing unusual-ness are also the ones that detract from its essential strength. Nevertheless, Liska's Kasimir and Karoline—so ambitious in its existence in a simultaneous Jersey/Germany landscape—is a dedicated production, blessed with a strong cast and with risk-taking, creative directing.

Rob Reese’s comedy Keanu Reeves Saves the Universe, a broad spoof of sci-fi movies and all things Keanu, throws in everything including the kitchen sink. There are references aplenty to The Matrix (a character named Dorfeous), Star Wars (a character named Dark Hater), and Star Trek (a character named Schlock), and dozens more to other cultural signposts like 2001: A Space Odyssey, War Games, The Greatest American Hero, and the video game Donkey Kong. As you can see, KRSTU is all over the place, which is both a blessing and a curse. Its inherent looseness fosters the kind of loony attitude the play needs to succeed (which it does about half the time). But, that same looseness also gives it an ADD-type quality that makes KRSTU feel like an hour-long comedy sketch. The novelty of this is fun while it lasts, but unfortunately it doesn't last the entire show.

The plot—which features a crew of futuristic space hotties traveling back in time to kidnap Keanu Reeves so he can save the universe—isn't the point. KRSTU wants nothing more than to lovingly send up an entire film genre and its own namesake—which it does very well. When Keanu Reeves wonders aloud which of his films is about cold fusion, one wants to shout out to him, “Chain Reaction!” When one of the space hotties shouts “Iceberg!” as their vessel lurches out of control, one laughs at the Titanic quote. But, as the show progresses, one realizes that KRSTU does not aspire to anything more than such easy laughs. Once it becomes clear that the entire show is nothing more than an extended game of Spot-The-Reference, the joke starts to wear a little thin.

But, KRSTU does have several things going for it, including an enthusiastic cast that is game for anything. Standouts include Dave McKeel as Dorfeous, and Marcus Bonnee as an amusingly over-the-top Keanu Reeves. There is also terrific stage combat from fight choreographer Alan Estevez. His excellent re-creations of Matrix-type martial arts battles and a hilarious Star Wars light saber duel are both worth the price of admission alone. Plus, there’s a trio of strolling trumpet players that make humorous periodic appearances (to say more would spoil the fun of them).

Writer-director Reese has a fertile imagination and a good sense of humor, but he needs to tighten up the show’s pacing and fine tune his company’s comic timing. The actors often take lengthy pauses after a punchline, trying to milk laughs. But, the abundance of such pauses slows the show down, and lessens the impact of the jokes. Setting a breakneck pace, so that KRSTU is always one or two steps ahead of the audience, would be beneficial.
 

Dan Rather, as the program for Kenneth—What Is the Frequency? helpfully reminds us, became CBS news anchor in 1981, replacing Walter Cronkite. These were gigantic shoes to step into; Rather was the tenacious attack dog who epitomized everything Richard Nixon resented about the press, while Cronkite was the avuncular, trusted influence who had presided over epochal events like the Kennedy assassination and the Nixon resignation with dignity and calm. Cronkite ended his newscasts with the final-but-chipper signature "That's the way it is"; Rather searched vainly for a different catch-phrase that would work for him. At some point, I came to realize that Rather's promotion to the top of the CBS anchor heap was his American tragedy—here was a journalist who lived for the thrill of the chase, attempting to re-invent himself behind a desk.

Paul Allman sees Rather differently. In his play Kenneth—What Is the Frequency?, he gives us Rather as a ticking time-bomb, a disaster waiting to happen, or more accurately, a madman forever courting disaster. Rather was mugged one night in 1986 on the way home from dinner at a friend's home on Park Avenue—he was beaten up by two still unknown assailants who kept asking him, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" Some might call this bad luck or a sign of the times, but Allman chalks it up to karma. As portrayed by Tony Wherry, Rather is an entirely unsympathetic character, bumbling and tactless and supremely egotistical. The play feels, in fact, almost like another mugging.

Now I must add hastily that I think that in large part this is not intended by the author. Kenneth—What Is the Frequency?, which is based on a magazine article that Allman wrote in 2001, tries to connect—on the basis of very little tangible evidence—Rather's life with that of writer Donald Barthelme. Both men were born in Texas and went to college in Houston at about the same time, both served in the Korean War, both returned and took jobs at Houston newspapers. Both, most pivotally, were affected by Hurricane Carla in 1961—Rather first came to national prominence for his gutsy coverage of the storm, while Barthelme suffered a severe setback in his then-job as director of the Contemporary Arts Museum when the storm gutted his plans for an attention-getting opening.

Rather and Barthelme never met; the connective tissue is that mysterious phrase uttered by Rather's muggers, which Allman suggests refers to some of Barthelme's stories, in which the name Kenneth and the phrase "what is the frequency" both appear. It's all in the service of a dramatization of one of the principles of quantum mechanics—that two electrons can touch and then go off on entirely different paths, thousands of miles apart, yet still somehow affect one another's movements. It's cool, it's literate, it's often funny; one of the characters says near the end of the play (referring to some other work of art) "I enjoyed it but I didn't understand it," and that's supposed to sum up at least one possible experience of this play.

But—I didn't enjoy it. Allman has chosen to write about actual people, and that alienated me terribly. His Rather is, as I have already suggested, a cruel caricature of the real man; his Barthelme—who is presented as host of a cooking show and then as a patient, dying of cancer in a Texas hospital—is elusive and enigmatic. Like his writing, I suppose; but I don't know Barthelme's writing at all—how many average people do?—and lacking that background, a good deal of the play's resonance was lost for me, I daresay.

Kenneth—What Is the Frequency? is, nevertheless, diverting in its way. Eric Nightengale's staging is fast-paced, polished, and continuously inventive. For example, whenever Barthelme puts on the radio to hear the weather report, an actor (Adam Erdossy or Phillip Douglas) sits at the side of the stage in front of a faux microphone, intoning quietly and monotonously in perfect imitation of a static-y AM radio voice. (Erdossy, it should be noted, is terrific in this and a variety of other small roles, including Rather's assistant, Tommy.) And the uncredited sets, which include a witty TV set that Rather steps in and out of, are delightful.

Kikker immediately establishes itself as sweet and reassuring. It has soft and friendly puppets; a frightened young boy soothed by his pretty blond mother; and the ultimate lesson that people are good and adventure is right around the corner. If you happen to know a four year old, go and plan a play date. There is plenty to occupy her, and enough surprising visuals to hold adult theatergoers’ attentions as well.

Kikker is based on a popular series of books for children by Dutch author Max Velthuijs, whose stories of Frog and his friends Hare, Pig, and Duck have been translated into 27 languages. The main character of Theater Terra’s production is a little boy named Max. As Max copes with fears of his family’s upcoming move, these wise and simple stories come to life and teach him to look at the situation in a new way. The culmination of the play is when Frog meets the world-traveled Rat. Although Hare, Pig, and Duck shun Rat as a stranger, Frog embraces Rat’s newness and learns all about the world. At the end of the story, Rat leaves to seek yet more adventures. Frog asks Rat where he is going, and Rat tells him he is going somewhere exciting, like “Nepal! Jamaica! New Jersey!”

This production is a puppet show that borrows much from Bunraku, a form of Japanese puppetry that uses puppets three quarters the size of a person and clearly visible puppeteers. This creates a layered experience. On the one hand, you can choose to watch the simple children’s puppet show. But on the other, the formidable puppeteers are plainly visible as they run around, play characters, change sets. Jawi Bakker as Little Pig is one of the best parts of the show. Watching this big, solidly built bald man voice and operate the little girl puppet is one of the piece’s finest bits of magic. But the skills of Dick Feld, Theo Terra, Christa Lips, Marieke Van Der Sluis, and Marie-Claire Witlox are not to be underestimated. They are simultaneously artisans absorbed in what they are making and members of a very unusual dance company.

There are small puppet and large puppet versions of all the characters, and the production uses the various sizes to show depth of field and create other feats of illusion. The full size Bunraku puppets are animated by attaching the puppet’s feet to those of the puppeteer, leaving human hands free to manipulate the puppet’s arms and head. But depending on the needs of the scene, sometimes hand puppets or tiny dolls are used instead. Rat’s goodbye scene shows him shrinking in the distance, and Max has the whole menagerie in his bed.

The set is simply a larger, more abstract puppet. The piece takes place on a stage bare except for a bed and packing boxes, but these few elements are full of surprises. Puppeteers turn the boxes like a Rubik's cube to reveal various scenes and set pieces, including Little Pig’s house. The bed becomes a table. The bed linen becomes snow, with feathers drifting lightly down from the pillows. A sheet of plastic wrap becomes a convincing river. All these little touches transform Max’s world into the world in the books.

While not the most satisfying production for an adult to attend alone, the New Victory once again offers a quality piece of children’s theater. The characters, story, and action are sweet and straightforward for the children the piece was meant to entertain, but everyone can appreciate the magical stagecraft. As the little girl behind me exclaimed, “As soon as he reads a story, it happens!”