Sam Shepard has always been a writer—perhaps the writer—whose work is most like catnip to up-and-coming theatrical young guns. Those who want to test their mettle find his plays the most challenging, and the most opportune, for this purpose. White Horse Theater Company can easily be counted among these ranks. Since their inception in 2003, they have produced three shows—True West, A Lie of the Mind, and States of Shock—all written by Shepard. Now, they can add a fourth one to that list: their current revival of The Late Henry Moss, a production that is fascinating and worthwhile, even if it is also uneven and somewhat disappointing.

The plot features Shepard's trademark blend of feuding brothers and wayward fathers. Two brothers, Earl and Ray, converge on the remote New Mexico home of their recently-deceased father, Henry, an alcoholic who left his family long ago. As the brothers try to put Henry’s affairs in order, decades-old family skeletons are dug up. Before long, Ray suspects that there may be more to his father’s passing than meets the eye, and he launches his own informal investigation to prove that.

Working in the more naturalistic vein that he has favored since the 1980s, Shepard’s writing here is strong. The conflict between Earl and Ray is palpable from the start, and convincing throughout. Henry—who gets more stage time than any other father figure in Shepard’s canon—is both a heartbreaking and pathetic figure. After years of watching Earl and Ray’s fraternal thematic ancestors in plays like True West and A Lie of the Mind, the audience finally gets to see the primary paternal force that shaped them all. One look at Henry’s raging, drunken shenanigans explains a lot about why all of Shepard’s brothers are such tortured, wounded souls.

Set designer Matt Downs McAdon’s terrific unit set immediately transports us to Shepard’s intended world. Henry’s one-room house is ramshackle and claustrophobic, decked out with telling bits of set dressing: a lone Dolly Parton LP, a worn-down map of Mexico on the wall, a stack of National Geographic magazines on the bookshelf. Debra Leigh Siegel’s atmospheric lighting design also helps, especially in the play’s numerous flashback sequences (all of which feature Henry). Subtle but clear light cues signify a shift back in time, and drive those transitions nicely.

The cast is game for tackling such difficult material, but only half of them are successful. James Wetzel is appropriately grizzled and cranky as older brother Earl, even if his performance never reaches the level of danger and unpredictability that Shepard indicates on the page. Alfonso Ramirez provides much-needed lightness as Esteban, Henry’s next door neighbor who is always quick with a hangover treatment of homemade soup. As the title character, Bill Fairbairn believably modulates between the highs and lows, the rage and the confusion, of a career drunk.

Sylvia Roldan Dohi runs into trouble as Henry’s girlfriend, Conchalla, which is understandable since the character serves solely as a metaphor. But for what, we never know, because neither Dohi nor director Cyndy A. Marion seems to know either. Their collective take on Conchalla never goes deeper than a cross between a shrill voodoo priestess and a booze-soaked frat girl. David Runco seems equally lost as Taxi, another character that neither actor nor director seems to know what to do with. This is too bad, because the character, as written by Shepard, provides enough hilarious opportunities for the actor playing him to steal the show. Alas, they mostly go untapped here. Runco endows Taxi with the kind of self-possessed quirkiness that would fit right in with the characters of a film like Napoleon Dynamite, but is inappropriate for Shepard. Most disappointing of all is Rod Sweitzer as younger brother Ray. His performance is consistently one-note throughout—defensive, sarcastic anger— even though Ray, as written, runs the gamut of emotions during the play. Hopefully, Sweitzer and Marion will work more on adding dimensions to Ray during the course of the run. Since he is the play’s anchor, doing so will only deepen the already-charged dynamic between the two brothers, and enrich the production further.

White Horse Theater Company is to be commended for consistently tackling the work of a playwright as challenging as Shepard. They clearly have a desire to do his plays justice, and are well on their way to assembling all the components necessary to do so. Practice will eventually make perfect for them. In the meantime, savor the opportunity they have given us to see a master playwright working near full power, and take advantage of it.

Great musicals typically get me in the gut. The Light in the Piazza—the finest new musical to reach Broadway in a very very long time—did something different: it hit me squarely in the heart.

It's a story about hope in the face of alarming and escalating evidence to the contrary—a show that says we can believe in a miracle to set us free, to redeem us, even when we know that it probably can't, probably won't. It's also—and this is why it's such a welcome breath of fresh air!—a show that says to audiences: we trust you, we respect you: we know you're grown-ups and you've lived in the world and you're going to follow us wherever we go: we don't need to pummel you into submission or resort to cheap theatrics to keep you entranced. And so, more hope—for the always tenuous existence of American musical theatre.

It begins in Florence, in 1953, a city just re-emerging from the terrors of Mussolini and World War II, a place nevertheless of nurturing history and spectacular beauty. We discover all of this in the opening moments of Piazza, from the expression on Victoria Clark's face as she makes her first entrance, clearly enthralled by whatever it is she's looking at—we don't literally see it, but she makes it real and vivid to us—and from Adam Guettel's evocative music, Michael Yeargan's gloriously spare set, and Christopher Akerlind's warm, glowing lights, which collaborate to create a stunning stage picture that stimulates our imaginations to locate this implied splendor.

Clark plays Margaret Johnson, the wife of a wealthy North Carolina tobacco company executive. She's on vacation in Italy with her adult daughter Clara (played by Kelli O'Hara, who is radiant in the role). The plan seems to be to revisit a passel of places where Margaret and her husband Roy spent their honeymoon, long before the War; but nothing goes according to plan on this trip. For almost immediately, a young Italian named Fabrizio Naccarelli (Matthew Morrison, youthful charm and exuberance personified) sees Clara and, as far as we can tell, falls head-over-heels. They meet in the piazza and when her hat blows off her head (a wonderful moment!) he retrieves it for her. Soon, he's everywhere: if they go to the museum, then he goes to the museum; if they happen upon a particular sidewalk cafe, so does he. He's dogged in his pursuit, and so against her better judgment, the protective Margaret gives in. She and Clara meet Fabrizio's family—his domineering father (Mark Harelik), who runs a men's tie business; his devoted mother (Patti Cohenour); his flighty older brother Giuseppe (Michael Berresse) and his unhappy sister-in-law Franca (Sarah Uriarte Berry). It is clear that Clara and Fabrizio are in love, and Margaret loves what that love might mean for both her daughter and herself.

And so, against her even better judgment, she lets the romance run its course. As a great playwright once said, such a course never did run smooth—and so there's an interlude in Rome, where the women temporarily escape Fabrizio's ardor; and there are passionate leaps ahead and disturbing steps backward after they return to Florence. There are excellent rational reasons why Margaret should rein Clara and Fabrizio in, and she knows them; but we're always aware—and this is tribute both to authors Guettel and Craig Lucas, who wrote the book, and to Clark's spectacularly smart performance—that Margaret never stops weighing her options. If I surrender to fate, or destiny, or irresponsibility, or whatever you want to call it, she seems to be thinking, am I really responsible for the consequences? It all comes together in a surprisingly affecting final song called "Fable," the name she gives to love; one of the wondrous things about this show is that it never comes together until that point, which is to say that everything that happens here—as in a person's life, one might argue—is absolutely necessary. Even the slow parts, even the sad parts; perhaps especially those.

Lucas's book is remarkable in its sophistication. He lets his characters think out loud and, with Guettel, makes them sing when emotion overtakes them. In this way, we take this life-changing journey with Margaret, with an immediacy and vibrancy that feels just about unparalleled in my theatrical memory.

Guettel's score—his first on Broadway—contains some lovely songs (no recitative!), including "The Beauty Is," which introduces us to Clara; "Passeggiata," a gorgeous ensemble number in which Clara and Fabrizio have what amounts to their first date, walking arm-in-arm through the streets of Florence; "Say it Somehow,"  and "Love to Me," both love songs for Fabrizio; "Let's Walk," a wistful duet for Margaret and Signor Naccarelli; and the disarmingly brief title song. If his lyrics don't always have the specificity that we'd wish for, his melodies soar and transport us. Significantly, his and Lucas's contributions fit together seamlessly, entirely of a piece.

The show itself has been mounted splendidly by Lincoln Center Theater. Bartlett Sher's staging feels flawless, especially in several mood-defining scenes that conjure the whole of Florence with deft economy. Jonathan Butterell's musical staging—which includes a few hints of tantalizing dance breezily executed by Berresse and Morrison—is fine. Piazza is the most visually arresting show I have seen in years: Yeargan and Akerlind always suggest rather than show, with breathtaking subtlety and elegance. Catherine Zuber's chic, appropriate costumes are the perfect complement, providing brilliant flashes of color and reinforcing what we know about the personalities of the people wearing them, from the amatory high fashion/Lollabrigida look of the frustrated Franca to the fresh pastels of Fabrizio and Clara.

In the end, when all was done, I found myself profoundly touched; Piazza pushes beyond what makes sense into a realm of ineffable and probably untenable optimism. It is at once lovely and dangerous, foolish and wise: after everything is lost, why not hope?

I could start this review by saying The Lonely Way is about "this" or "that"; but to do so would be reductive. This new adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1904 drama Der einsame Weg, translated by Margret Schaefer and Jonathan Bank and directed by Bank at the Mint Theater Company, reveals this work—hitherto unseen in New York, a shocking omission—to be a complex and challenging and spectacularly human play, a rich and involving drama of, among so many other subjects, the difficult and fragile nature of true connection among members of our species. This production makes for a triumphant debut, 100 years late, of an important and necessary work; it's another worthy effort by the Mint, whose place among New York's most esteemed nonprofit theatre companies grows surer with each opening night.

Its intellectual breadth takes in the thoughts of any number of philosophers who were Schnitzler's contemporaries, but The Lonely Way's form feels Chekhovian to me. Look at who inhabits this play: a professor and his dying wife; their two young adult children, both dreaming of how to get as far away as possible; a famous but now-blocked brilliant artist; a writer in the grips of a fatal disease; an aging actress whose economic situation has forced her to retire to the provinces; and a doctor who lives next door who is a wry observer of everyone's limitations, beginning with his own. Schnitzler gives them action, but it's their interaction—or the impossibility of it, perhaps—that's at his play's center.

The main conflict of the play concerns the artist, Julian Fichtner, and his determination to reclaim his son—23-year-old Felix Wegrat, who has grown up completely unaware that his true father is Fichtner rather than his mother's husband, the steady but unimaginative professor who raised him. The Professor is in the dark as well, though his wife—who dies young, between Acts I and II—has confessed the truth to their neighbor, Dr. Reumann; another neighbor, the writer Stephan Von Sala, also knows the facts of the case, as Fichtner's best and perhaps only real friend. Felix's younger sister Johanna, meanwhile, is in love with Von Sala and desperate to leave the home she no longer cares for or understands. Complicating matters still further is the actress Irene Herms, once Fichtner's lover, and now, on a rare visit to the city, confronted with her own betrayal at the hands of the man she loved.

I realize that I may have made The Lonely Way sound like a soap opera, so I reiterate that what makes this play tick is not what happens but what its characters feel, wish, fail to say. Schnitzler uncovers the engines of his characters' personalities and lets us look at how they work: the tragically self-aware narcissist Von Sala versus the contrastingly cluelessly self-involved Fichtner, who knows only that he's a kind of superman and therefore can use people as it suits him, consequences be damned; the passionate Irene, bravely plowing ahead toward a life of obscure loneliness; the Professor, destined to lose his family one by one and a stranger to them anyhow. He perhaps understands the essential human situation best of all:

That's the way of the world: our children never really belong to us. As for other people... even our best friends are only guests in our lives; they get up from the table when they're finished—and vanish back into their own lives. It's perfectly natural...

Professor Wegrat's words here and elsewhere resonated so clearly with me that he felt like the wisest man on stage; but Schnitzler captures so much of humanity in his play!—again, reminiscent of Chekhov—making each of his characters the star of the show that is their life, playing out before us. Someone on stage is going to startle you by articulating what you know to be true—but only you will know which one.

A play this rich necessarily provides immense opportunities to actors, and happily for the most part they're met brilliantly by Bank and his company. George Morfogen, as Professor Wegrat, is at the peak of his considerable powers here, revealing alternately this man's vulnerability, foolishness, sadness, and fortitude, often in the subtlest and simplest of ways. Lisa Bostnar, as Irene Herms, provides the play's other powerhouse performance, a portrayal of a woman of strength, compassion, selfishness, and regret that is nothing short of heartbreaking in its precision. Ronald Guttman's Fichtner is rivetingly complex despite the single-minded arc of his character; he made me very aware of Fichtner's real affection for those he has misused and manhandled in his past, as well as the absolute illusoriness of his final stab at redemption in reuniting with his son.

The fine young actor Eric Alperin charts the jolting journey that Felix undergoes during the ten days of the play's action, losing a mother and then gaining a father he didn't know he was missing. And Sherry Skinker makes the mother, Gabriele, so interesting that we're sorry to lose her so quickly when she dies early in the play. Only Jordan Lage, as Von Sala, seems out of his element here—he looks too young and hearty to convince us that he's Fichtner's equal in years and temperament; and his characterization seems realized more through physical tics than a compelling inner life. The others in the ensemble—Constance Tarbox (Johanna), John Leonard Thompson (Dr. Reumann), Bennet Leak (Fichtner's Valet)—prove effective.

Vicki R. Davis's abstract set, decorated sparingly by Frank Gehry's stark mod furniture, is lovely; it provides a strong visual clue to the play's focus on ideas rather than conventional plot; Ben Stanton's lighting does an outstanding job establishing mood, time, and place. The costumes, by Henry Shaffer, emphasize the timelessness of the work and also give us something pretty to look at, especially in the case of Bostnar's and Skinker's wardrobe.

At the helm, Jonathan Bank does his usual expert work, giving each of his actors the platform they need to state their case and play to our sympathies. Many times throughout the play, the people on stage seem inordinately aware that that's exactly where they are—acting in the metaphorical drama of life that Shakespeare first postulated and that Schnitzler here almost mischievously revels in. If only all of us could be so clear about our choices and follies as we battle the unknowable destiny of events. Which is precisely what we go to the theatre to discover.

The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women, written and performed by film and stage actress Susannah York, is a collection of monologues showing the importance of love, be it romantic or familial, to Shakespeare’s female characters.

York's approach to Shakespeare is utterly without pretension. She becomes her characters without judging them and manages to beautifully communicate their thoughts and emotions. From Juliet to Lady Macbeth, Rosalind to Emilia, York expertly plays the spectrum of Shakespeare’s ladies. She embodies more than fifteen different characters, demonstrating a profound, and often unique, understanding of each role she undertakes. York excels at quickly changing from one character to another; in the course of a few minutes, she adeptly jumps from the broadly comedic Mistresses Page and Ford (from The Merry Wives of Windsor) to the strong, dominating Queen Margaret (Henry VI) to the tragic, heartrending Constance (King John).

To transition between monologues, York uses personal anecdotes, acting tips, and concise scene descriptions. During these interludes she is warm, funny, and personable. You feel as if you are in her living room. Then, seconds later, she is thundering about as Queen Margaret, eyes ablaze, confronting her enemies on the battlefield. It is remarkable to watch.

The set, designed by Kishan Khana, and the lighting, designed by technical director Christopher Bailey, are simple yet elegant, perfectly facilitating York’s many changes of character.

The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women is part of a series of solo British actor performances focusing on “classic literary character or text,” produced by the Federal Bureau of Entertainment (www.the-feds.com).

Along with providing insight into the many varieties of love in Shakespeare's women, York reminds us that while Shakespeare wrote his plays hundreds of years ago, the emotions, particularly those of love, represented by his characters are timeless. Constance’s speech in King John, in which she mourns her dead son, carries the same sentiment as any mother’s lament for a lost child, in any age, in any part of the world.

Susannah York’s The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women succeeds in showing us Shakespeare’s relevance today and reminding us why Shakespeare remains an important part of our culture.

My research has not been exhaustive on this point, but it looks to me as though there have been no more than a dozen major productions of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths in New York—probably fewer. The second—gorgeously documented in the lobby at Manhattan Ensemble Theater, where Resonance Ensemble is boldly and thrillingly mounting this play for a new generation of theatregoers—was one of ten works presented by the Moscow Art Theatre during its first American tour. The cast included Akim Tamiroff, Maria Ouspenskaya, Olga Knipper Tchekovna (that would be Mrs. Chekhov), and Stanislavski himself (shown in a magnificent photo that dominates the lobby display).

Well: wow. The Lower Depths—a play we study but, apparently, seldom do—turns out to be entirely worthy of such an esteemed collection of actors. And as adapted and staged by Resonance's artistic director Eric Parness, it's a revelation, instantly takes its place among the classic works of theatre, the ones that reveal truths about our humanity, the ones that need to be done again and again. Bravo to Parness and his colleagues for realizing this and unleashing this remarkable play on contemporary New Yorkers.

We surely can relate. The Lower Depths takes place in a windowless cellar somewhere in the middle of a city (in Russia, at the turn of the 20th century—but it could really be anytime and anywhere). Here dwell a dozen or so of the poorest of the poor—a cross-section of forgotten men and women: Andre Kleshtch, an itinerant locksmith with no customers, and Anna, his wife, dying of consumption or something similar; Kvashnya, a beggar or a peddler; Vassily, a thief; Nastya, a prostitute. There's also the Baron, once an aristocrat (possibly actually a baron), now sunk low due to addictive gambling and terrible luck; Bubnoff, a furrier who abandoned his business and his hopes when his wife and partner began a love affair; and Satine, another thief, but more of the white-collar variety. Also the Tartar, a lone Muslim among Christians and also the only one here with a recent job history, one that tragically ended when his arm was caught in the gears of a machine; he waits now for it to be amputated. And the Actor, his organism, as he calls it, poisoned by drink. And Alyoshka, and Zob, about whom we know very little. And finally, the new tenant—Luka, an old man who never explains his mysterious origins, but whose relentless practice of compassion and kindness proves to not-so-subtly disturb the delicate balance of existence in this awful, airless room.

This being a Russian play, it takes a while to sort out all of the foregoing: characters are referred to by different names (and listed in the program by still others); relationships and back-stories take their time in being clarified. Gorky and his faithful channeler Parness make us work to understand who these people are; this is, in fact, the main idea of the play—I almost don't need to say anything else to convey The Lower Depths to you, except this: that getting to know these people is unassailably worth the effort.

For conflict—as if these people's daily struggle to stay alive in a world whose apparent hostility is in fact merely a reflection of its utter indifference weren't enough—Gorky throws into the mix an avaricious landlord, Kostilyoff, who is the sort of grasping capitalist usually pitted against the hero of a Dickens novel; Vassilisa, his harridan of a wife, who has been carrying on with the thief Vassily, and who plots to have her husband murdered so that she can run the business herself; Natasha, Vassilisa's sister, in love with Vassily; and Medvedev, her uncle, an ineffectual member of the police force. Ostensibly, the love triangle involving Vassily, Vassilisa, and Natasha propels the plot, though The Lower Depths ultimately proves to be about the whole family of man—or at least this extraordinary microcosm of it.

The text is rich and constantly resonant, and a variety of startlingly modern ideas are put forth. (The play prefigures O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, for example, in its melancholy debates about the relative merits of truth and illusion.) But Gorky's primary argument is unwaveringly clear throughout: every life is of value; every human being, regardless of where they are or how they got there, deserves our compassion. It's so easy to forget this!—which is why the play's spectacularly sardonic ending packs such a wallop.

This is a huge work, and Resonance has done a fine, fine job mounting it. Designers Robert R. Sweetnam (set), Aaron J. Mason (lighting), Nick Moore (sound and music), and Sidney Shannon (costumes) collaborate to create an appropriately naturalistic atmosphere for this sad comedy. Seventeen actors bring Gorky's characters to vivid life; they make a great ensemble, but I will nevertheless single out a few for special mention: Maxwell Zener, who is the play's engine as the cynical Bubnoff; Patrick Melville, its conscience as Satine; and Stu Richel, its heart as Luka. Sean Dill (Medvedev), Aaron Lisman (The Actor), and Martin Treat (Kleshtch) are also particularly memorable.

Parness' adaptation and staging are wonderfully accessible; I'd love to see this production have a life beyond this off-off-Broadway run. It's being presented in repertory with Charles L. Mee's "response" to The Lower Depths, Time to Burn; I'll have a review of that piece ready in a day or so. Meanwhile, don't delay—there's a brilliant work of theatre waiting to be discovered in Soho right now.

We meet Solange first. She enters the ultra-glamorous bedroom of her employer, a movie starlet whom she calls—sometimes deferentially, sometimes ironically—only "Madame." She pauses to admire herself in Madame's vanity makeup mirror, pursing brick-red beestung lips, soaking in the decadent grandeur of the place. We feel how far out of reach is this display of conspicuous consumption to this humble young woman; we feel her desperate envy for it; and we feel her disgust at herself for feeling envious.

Such is the power of Amanda Jones's career-transforming performance in Jean Cocteau Rep's new production of The Maids; such, too, is the potent complexity of this seminal existential work by Jean Genet, which wraps desire, illusion, and ritual inside a bleak philosophical exploration of the limits to freedom and choice.  This production, tautly directed by Ernest Johns and designed by Roman Tatarowicz, Nicole Frachisseur, and Richard Dunham in a style frankly patterned after Hollywood '40s film noir, reveals Genet's intentions to stark and jolting effect.

Solange, inhabited with a gutsy take-no-prisoners savage intensity by Jones, is one of the maids; the other is her sister, Claire, who is played more politely, opaquely, and intellectually by Kate Holland. Claire soon joins Solange in Madame's bedroom, and we watch as they play out a scene which, we realize halfway through, is one they've played at many times before. It's a game, actually, that fuses the maids' infatuation with Madame (or, more to the point, with her trappings of gorgeous clothes, expensive jewels, and a sexy, dangerous boyfriend), their hatred of her, and their own self-destructiveness. Claire pretends to be Madame, and orders Solange ("as" Claire) to dress her for the evening; once the transformation is complete, the revenge fantasy takes over and "Claire" prepares to strangle "Madame," savoring a prelude to the kill that includes hideous insults and ominous threats. Inevitably, the game is forced to end before its consummation: the real Madame has in fact come home, and needs both her maids to attend her.

Tonight will apparently be different, however. Solange and Claire plot to do the murder in real life; they seem ready and able to turn their fantasy into actuality. To tell you any more is pointless: if you know the play, then you know how it turns out. If you don't, you want to stay surprised.

Jones, Holland, and Natalie Ballesteros, who is extremely effective as the self-involved Madame, make a persuasive team here; I was especially impressed at the way Ballesteros's Madame seems to occupy an entirely different universe than Jones's Solange, with Holland's Claire running interference, migrating between the two. Madame is a hateful symbol of thoughtless, classist noblesse oblige; importantly, we're acutely aware that she has no idea how her employees see her—just as we also always understand that the prison that Solange, particularly, seems to be trapped inside is mostly of her own fantastical making.

So there's plenty to think about as The Maids progresses and after it's over; also much to enjoy, for, defying expectation, this is a neat, entertaining puzzle of a play, engaging us as we try to comprehend the shifting relationships and resentments that bubble up and then dissipate among the three characters and their sometime alter egos.

It is an interesting point of human behavior that we are so “shocked” by the headline describing a brutal murder and yet we immediately turn the page to read the article (or to look for more pictures). I find the concept of simultaneous repulsion and attraction extremely fascinating. Escapist Productions’ striking revival of Jean Genet’s The Maids has a marvelous balance of attractive and repulsive elements.

The Maids is Genet’s first play and continues to be one of his most frequently produced, most likely because it contains such an irresistible study of the dark reaches of the human psyche. It is a one-act, running about 75 minutes, and is based on an actual event in which two sisters savagely murdered their employer. Genet does not try to reproduce the actual incident on stage. He is more interested in probing into the psychology of illusions, oppressions, and obsessions that lead up to savage acts.

The play opens with the two sister-maids absorbed in a role-playing game that they evidently play quite often. One pretends to be the mistress of the house while the other pretends to be her sister. The objective of the game is to end on a spectacular murder of the mistress, but they never seem to get to that point. They both love and hate their mistress. They want to kill her and they want to be her. Halfway through the play, when the mistress finally enters, she is not the completely pompous tyrant that we’ve been led to expect. Instead, she shows that she can be kind and generous though still superior. Still, the maids plot to kill her. In a scene that is very funny if not somewhat morose they try to kill her by poisoning her tea, but no matter how hard they try she won’t drink it. The mistress leaves again and they return to their role-playing game, this time with much more obsession and fervor because of their failed murder attempt.

Genet makes a point of shattering the maids’ illusions. They realize that only in their role-playing world can they accomplish what they desire—freedom from oppression. At the same time they recognize that their imaginary world is meaningless and they are crushed when their illusions vanish and they are left with who they really are. In the end, their obsession with killing their mistress leads to a bitter realization that death may be the only route to freedom.

The Maids can be a difficult play to stage. The language is heavy and the characters’ warped psychology can drive actors mad. Nevertheless, director Michele Chivu does an excellent job drawing out the pathos and spotlighting Genet’s twisted and sometimes dreamlike intentions. However, I feel that there is a certain amount of eroticism missing from this production (though it’s not completely absent). The script implies that the sisters are lovers, but I didn’t really get that from this production. Perhaps that is Chivu’s intention. Chivu brilliantly uses Thomas Dunn’s lighting design to connect mood with alternating bright and dark effects. Also, the staging of the play, with the audience sitting on both sides of the playing area, lends the performance a high degree of intimacy.

The actors are practically in our laps but this doesn’t affect their focus at all. The cast gives a stunning performance. The two sisters are played by two male actors. There is some controversy over whether it was Genet’s intention to have these two female characters played by men. Regardless of that, the two men—Ax Norman as Solange and Nate Rubin as Claire—most certainly pour their souls into these two women. Norman is explosive and disturbingly psychotic, especially in his final monologue. Rubin is thoroughly captivating in his obsession to be and to kill the mistress. Elizabeth Pitman plays the mistress ("Madame") with amazing zeal. She is instantly likable and gives the play a needed boost in pace.

The Maids can be a difficult play to watch, but due to the skill and vision of all involved in this production I found it hard to take my eyes off of it.

Free of indulgence in performance and design, Aquila Theatre Company’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King is remarkable for the ease, precision, and pleasure the company takes in simply telling the story. Just as the actors shift swiftly and comfortably from one character to the next, so the minimal costumes and set pieces are cleverly adapted to locales both exotic and banal. Much of this can be chalked up to the company’s extensive touring experience—the necessary economy of portable theatre. There may be no bold innovations here, but there is confidence and expertise at work, making of the economic something quite elegant.

Co-created by Peter Meineck (adaptor) and Robert Richmond (director), TMWWBK follows Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, a pair of British scamps who set off on a disaster-plagued journey to Kafiristan, a mysterious country just above Afghanistan, to persuade the natives, by virtue of their white skin and by way of their firearms, that they should be their new rulers. Upon arrival, they are hailed as not just kings, but messianic descendants of Alexander the Great, and Dravot, the more gregarious and ambitious of the two, is considered a god. The exo-story is set years later, when the ailing Carnahan visits Kipling (the author/narrator-cum-character), a former acquaintance and fellow Mason, to recount the terrible fate of this doomed enterprise.

Richard Willis and Anthony Cochrane imbue their hubristic characters with such endearing attributes that it’s hard to see them as responsible for their own reprehensible actions. Willis’ Carnahan is conniving but cautious, with twinkling eyes and a sly reptilian smile, while Cochrane’s Dravot, the more physically intimidating of the two, is like a big ostentatious bear who is too proud to run and too slow to hide. It is their friendship, too, that is so moving—mutually-admiring and sentimental; sometimes conflictual, but never internecine. Ruthless, imperialistic, gun-toting opportunists though they may be, to each other they’re a couple of mensches.

The more passive role of Kipling, the narrator, is played with alternate alacrity and alarm by the wide-eyed Louis Butelli. Though TMWWBK was written in 1888, Meineck has set his play’s present eleven years later when Kipling and his young daughter Josephine are indisposed with pneumonia during a family visit to New York. Thus we see a great deal of Kipling coughing, listening, sweating, and writing. And while Butelli gives a fine performance, his sickness and frailty are no match for the fireworks produced by the other two.

Meineck and Richmond, who also act as the production’s designers, have staged a clever, clear and lively adaptation. (Additional credit is due to Cochrane for his ominous score.) The Man Who Would Be King is theatre with trusty dramatic and physical confinements that are, for both the actors’ spirits and the audience’s imagination, at once playful and liberating.

Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 short story “The Man Who Would Be King” is a daunting narrative challenge, which moves fluidly through time and locations. It's about two roguish former British soldiers in Imperial India, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, who have a plan to make themselves kings of Kafiristan—an isolated land in the mountains of Afghanistan—with the help of their modern rifles and skill at raising an army. The people of Kafiristan mistake Dravot for a god, and he begins to rule under this false authority. I won’t say how it ends, but many have seen Kipling’s story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of colonialism, especially imperial rule without moral authority.

This musical adaptation of The Man Who Would Be King, by Neil Berg (music) and DJ Salisbury (lyrics) is at its best in the beginning of the story, when Dravot and Carnehan are in India, planning their adventure and dreaming of being kings. Berg’s music has a large, pop sound that makes the show's anthems soar; and the early chorus numbers with the ensemble as a group of British soldiers or native sellers in a bustling marketplace are energetic and successful. It is when the adventurers get where they are going that the musical loses its way. In Kipling’s story, the tribal people of Kafiristan are always mysterious and dangerous. By contrast, the Kafiristan of this musical feels more like the enchanted village of Brigadoon. In the song “The Way,” we are introduced to Kafiristan, and all the grit and invention of the earlier numbers is replaced by a display of colorful costumes, a dream ballet, and Roxanne—an ingénue ready and waiting for her romantic subplot. It seems that, instead of the unknown, this Kafiristan holds only familiar conventions.

When Dravot and Carnehan arrive (with no real explanation of how they are able to speak a common language with these supposedly isolated people) they too easily achieve their goal of becoming kings, and much more time is given to the invented romantic subplot between Roxanne and Carnehan. The second act also keeps Dravot and Carnehan almost entirely apart, which is a loss as their fraternal bond is the most engaging relationship in the play, and the more interesting love story (albeit brotherly love rather than romantic). I just hope that as this musical continues to develop it will keep the focus squarely on these two characters. Dravot and Carnehan are great roles for big personalities, and here they are properly filled by two excellent and charming actors, Tony Lawson and Paul Anthony Stewart.

The ensemble of this production is excellent, but the men have some credibility problems as the Kafiri warriors. Buff and scantly clad (showing tattoos that no one thought to cover with make-up), but without any sense of a culture, their combat dances seem more like a themed Crunch Gym class than tribal warfare.

Classical Greek tragedy is full of oracles, foreshadowing, and the notion of predestination; the audience can see something terrible unfolding inexorably but is not necessarily aware of what that awful fate will be. Classic murder mysteries, on the other hand, begin with the awful fate—someone is dead—and the story is a process of working backwards to unravel the cause of that tragedy. I’d never thought about the parallel between the two genres until I saw The Medea.

The Medea begins with a devastated Jason, lying amidst the wreckage of his life—his children, his new bride, and the king of Corinth, his protector, are all dead, all slaughtered by his former wife. The journey of the play is not, as in more familiar versions, from Medea’s rejection and exile from Corinth to Medea’s revenge on all those who reject her, but from the discovery and aftermath of a crime to its root cause. We know who did the crime, since early in the play we see Medea dragging the bodies of her sons out of her house and displaying them to Jason. But we are in theory finding out what motivated this woman who, at the beginning of the play seems to be a monster who coldly and dispassionately stabbed her two sons to death.

In actuality, although the backwards storytelling is intellectually interesting, I’m not sure it serves the character of Medea well. Director Jay Scheib’s narrative innovation does succeed in bringing pathos to the end of his play, because we’ve already seen the terrible effects that will be wrought by the seemingly simple actions taken at this point (the end of the play, beginning of the story). But inverting the chronology creates barriers to feeling any kind of empathy or even compassion for Medea. It’s hard to even want to understand her, after we’ve first seen her kill her children and throw their murder in her husband’s face, and then heard the Nurse (the excellent Aimee McCormick) describe the deaths of King Creon and his daughter, Jason’s bride, in excruciating detail—another set of heinous crimes committed by Medea.

Zishan Ugurlu’s Medea seems cold and curiously dispassionate at the beginning, since we don’t yet know about the various events that have made her shut off her emotions to allow herself to perform these terrible acts. In contrast, Dan Illian’s feverishly emotional Jason gains in sympathy by making his first appearance as the man who’s lost everything. Yes, the more complicated layers are revealed later, but the setup profoundly changes the audience’s relationship with Medea and with Jason—and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing for the play.

Despite my mixed feelings about the emotional impact of the central conceit, though, I found much of the production exhilarating and fascinating. Scheib’s script freely mixes Seneca and Euripides with radically different adaptations of Medea by the nineteenth-century Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer and the twentieth-century German writer Heiner Muller. The mix of language makes The Medea seem fresh even to those who are deeply familiar with the play (and I think having familiarity with the play definitely helps in appreciating what Scheib has done with it).

I found it deeply unsettling but effective to see Medea’s sons as beautiful adolescents rather than small boys, as I’ve always seen before. Although Oleg and Dima Dubson rarely speak (except when playing their second roles of Aegeus and Creon respectively), they have powerful presences, and the family dynamic is drastically changed by having the sons be closer to adulthood than babyhood.

The staging is also innovative and subtly adds another layer to the mystery-story concept. A large section of the stage, representing Medea’s home, is walled off into a realistically furnished and decorated room that is only visible in glimpses, when characters enter or leave it by the downstage door. Yet the room is wired with several video cameras that feed to monitors on stage, so the audience seems to see and hear much of what goes on inside the closed space. Video director and designer Leah Gelpe is a tangible, sometimes visible presence, circling with her camera(s) and giving us tantalizing peeks into parts of the story that are otherwise hidden from view. But we can never be entirely sure whether we’re seeing live video or previously recorded tapes—so we can never be entirely sure whether we’re seeing the behind-closed-doors truth, someone’s interpretation of that truth, or something that never happened.

Like the central concept, the staging can be frustrating; it conceals and obscures as much as it reveals, and it creates challenges for the audience in understanding and reacting emotionally to the story. But the piece overall provides much food for thought and makes a familiar work seem new, rich, and strange again.

Last night at the tiny Where Eagles Dare Theatre on West 36th Street, I saw a tremendous play about… about what? The interconnectedness of the human spirit? The transcendent power of love and desire? Big ideas on that little stage, for sure. But in the hands of seven talented performers, Mark Finley’s deceptively simple new play, The Mermaid, slowly unfolds into a complex tapestry that is thoroughly contemporary, richly moving, and engaging from beginning to end.

In 1962, Judith (Rachel Eve Moses), Lee (Paul Caiola), and Reid (Joe Tuttle) are students at an Indiana college. Judith, an aspiring actress, and Reid, an athletic scholar, are cast as the romantic leads in the school’s production of Ondine, a play about a mermaid that won a Tony Award for Audrey Hepburn in the title role. The play will be directed by Miss DuCane (Gail Dennison), the school's esteemed drama teacher, who softens each of life’s rougher moments with a tumbler of vodka. Lee, also an aspiring thespian, does not get cast, but becomes instead the teacher’s production assistant. Meanwhile, in 1998 the unemployed and possibly alcoholic Martin (Derek Staranowski) and his serious and stable partner Ken (Nathan Johnson) are struggling with the idea of adopting a young girl with some developmental problems—a mermaid of sorts—which is mostly Ken’s idea. Martin himself was adopted, and is struggling with his own identity. Their best friend, Amy (Karen Stanion), is in the midst of her own struggle, hoping to take the next major leap as an actress by landing an important part on a soap opera.

In ‘62, Rachel and Reid develop feelings for each other. As it turns out, Lee has similar feeling for Reid. I don’t think I’m giving anything away here. His character is clearly gay from the beginning. Caiola is heartbreaking as Lee when he comes out to Judith. It is 1962, and being gay is much more painful and traumatizing than it might be today. In Caiola’s hands, Lee’s agony is subtle and quite palpable. This moment is even more striking set against the relatively healthy ‘98 relationship of Martin and Ken (oh, Martin and Ken have problems, for sure, but accepting their sexual orientation is not one of them).

In ’98, Martin falls deeper and deeper into a personal existential depression, avoiding his own search for his past as a way of putting off the future and the adoption that will make Ken’s life complete. Both the script and Johnson’s performance as Ken are beautifully restrained here, revealing so much of the 39-year-old man’s paternal longing through his eyes and body language. The one full-out fight between the two men is also strikingly true-to-life, and immediately recognizable to any couple that has confronted serious, life-changing issues.

There’s not much more of the plot I can tell you about without giving too much away, but trust me, I have only scratched the surface here. The stories weave together in unexpected ways, and much of the delight of the play is in the many surprises and unexpected discoveries that the audience makes along the way about the characters and their relationships to one another. The one scene that does not seem needed is the opening of Act Two, in which all the characters come on stage together and Miss DuCane explains to them all, and to the audience, that two different time frames will be going on simultaneously, and that new characters will be appearing momentarily (some of the actors play small secondary roles in Act Two). This scene is completely unnecessary. The audience gets the setup by now, and will have no problem understanding the secondary characters either. Finley should trust his well-crafted writing and Barry Child’s clear and flowing direction which slowly reveals the relationships, both personal and thematic, between the characters in these two time frames.

Softening the serious edges is Gail Dennison as Miss DuCane, whose character is a catalyst and mentor. Dennison is so sharp and on target in her comic delivery that you cannot wait for her to come back on stage. Her performance is powerful and controlled, giving DuCane the eloquence and sharp wit she needs to center the action of that scene. Karen Stanion as Amy is also a bottomless riot, with many of the plays biggest laughs. I expect this from Stanion. I have seen her walk off with scenes in many other plays (will someone give her a sitcom already?). What surprised me here was her equally strong handling of Amy’s sadder more frustrating moments when… no, I won’t give it away.

Finley has given us complex characters and a well-crafted script, leaving us with many questions. These are stories that are bound to touch you; real human stories that deserve to fill a much larger theatre.

The Mistake, a five-person sketch comedy group, presents their new show Swelter as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, and while generally enjoyable, the evening comes off as more cute than hilarious.

The actors are all game for their material, which is a definite plus. Most sketch comedy comes off as the dalliance of ironic hipsters, more interested in the after-party than writing or performing a show. Sarah Engelke, in a variety of roles, and Jay Colligan (who looks like an in-shape Oliver Platt, and also plays the best characters of the group), are particularly noteworthy for their gusto and commitment to their parts.

I particularly enjoyed a sketch featuring Colligan as the host of a Brooklyn spelling bee, and although it’s not a focus of the sketch, Carrie Janell’s use of chewing gum as a prop was particularly hilarious.

The actual ideas for most of the sketches are relatively solid. Two sketches dealing with the repercussions of gay marriage are particularly well thought-out, and actually offer a little bit of social commentary.

What’s missing, though, is a strong follow-through for those ideas. Most of the sketches meander for a while, before finally getting to the idea. And then, they proceed to play with that idea on one level. The best sketch comedy takes an idea and literally runs with it, which none of these sketches (other than the Brooklyn Spelling Bee sketch) really do.

Although knowing where a sketch is going can feel comfortable, it’s not particularly laugh-inducing, and therein lies the main problem with this show… it’s not that funny.

In a city where there are dozens of sketch groups vying for your attention, is a sketch group whose main appeal is that they seem like nice people enough to get your attention?

Maybe. Solid ideas, which about 50% of these sketches have, is a good start. And personally, I’d rather watch nice people than talented jerks any day. With a LOT of editing of the material, and a little more emphasis on jokes, rather than just exchanges of dialogue, The Mistake could have a cute show that’s also funny.

One last piece of advice. If you’re going to have sketches about Fight Club, The Matrix, and The Simpsons, please realize that those are cultural references whose popularity peaked in 1999. By which I mean, don’t do those sketches. Thank you.

Years ago, when show music and pop music were more or less the same thing, the whimsical "what-if" musical theatre parody was everywhere: On Broadway in musical revues like Show Girl (what if a 20s musical comedy collided with The Threepenny Opera?); on the Sonny & Cher Variety Hour and the Carol Burnett Show; even in Mad Magazine (what if My Fair Lady were about a beatnik molded into an ad executive?) Heck, I wrote a few myself when I was in college (what if A Streetcar Named Desire were an MGM movie musical?).

Mostly, these parodies were staples of sophisticated nightclub cabaret. The Musical of Musicals—The Musical! is an example—five examples, actually—of the form: a quintet of ten-minute satires, any one of which would nicely cap a bubbly evening of wine and song in a smoky, dusky piano bar, here grafted onto one another to make the most modest of off-Broadway shows. The concept is simple: what if the same simple plot were the basis of musicals by five iconic composer/lyricists?

The story: Girl and Boy are in love but don't realize it. Girl is behind on her rent. Her Landlord threatens to marry her himself if the rent isn't paid. Girl seeks advice from an Older Woman. Boy comes through at the eleventh hour with the money. Happy ending. Curtain.

The composer/lyricists: Rodgers and Hammerstein ("Corn"), Stephen Sondheim ("A Little Complex"), Jerry Herman ("Dear Abby"), Andrew Lloyd Webber ("Aspects of Junita"), and Kander & Ebb ("Speakeasy").

You don't need to know a huge amount about musicals to guess how it all plays out. The R&H piece is all trite sunshine and saccharine, with the occasional dark cloud (a la Jud Fry in Oklahoma!) for contrast. The Sondheim segment riffs on dissonant music and complicated rhyme schemes. The Herman tribute is a witless, hopelessly out-of-date star vehicle for a witless, hopelessly out-of-date star. The Webber rip-off features cheap loud music, bad lyrics, dull recitative, and special effects (played in this no-frills environment by a fog machine). The Kander-Ebb bit combines Cabaret and Chicago into a murky, nasty, decadent, Fosse-esque mishmosh.

Some of the material (music by Eric Rockwell, lyrics by Joanne Bogart) is dead-on hilarious, such as this deathless lyric from "Aspects of Junita," which feels entirely stitched together from actual Tim Rice non-sequiturs and is put to one of those pretending-to-be-seriously-contemporary boring melodies that pop up all over Song and Dance and Sunset Boulevard:

Behind the 8-Ball,
In seventh heaven
Dressed to the nines,
With 5 o'clock shadow

I don't understand a thing you say
We never talk anymore.

First come, first served
Playin' second fiddle
Gettin' the third degree
What's it all for?

The opening of "Speakeasy," a devastating parody of "Wilkommen" called "Hola, Aloha, Hello," is similarly brilliant. But a great deal of the material is less inspired; once the main jokes of "Corn" and "A Little Complex" have been delivered—i.e., Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals are dippy and corny, Sondheim is depressing and unsingable—the parodies really have nowhere to go. It should be noted, too, that in searching for the lowest common denominator of these varied bodies of work, Rockwell and Bogart often do the masters an injustice: it's one thing to make fun of Tim Rice and quite another to reduce Oscar Hammerstein to a faux-hymn whose refrain is "Follow your dream / Don't ask me why / Follow your dream / Until you die."

What makes The Musical of Musicals as palatable as it is are the infectious high spirits of its creators, who both perform in the show and seem very much to love doing so. Rockwell, at the piano and also singing the five versions of the Landlord, is devilishly delightful, especially in the Webber and Kander & Ebb segments, when he pays wicked homage to, respectively, Michael Crawford's overmiked Phantom of the Opera and Joel Grey's overbearing Emcee. Bogart, in a succession of Older Woman parts, is never less than a hoot and usually much better than that: she does the aforementioned R&H-inspired "Follow Your Dream" in a deadpan Peggy Wood contralto that is quite funny; a devastating Elaine Stritch imitation in the Sondheim bit; and some grand (though seemingly out-of-place) Marlene Dietrich shtick in "Speakeasy."

Fellow cast members Craig Fols (Boy) and Lovette George (Girl) are less assured, in part because their roles—the backbones of each parody, I should add—are less specific than the ones Rockwell and Bogart have given themselves. Fols has to be Curly and Billy Bigelow—two very different characters—at the same time in "Corn"'; in "A Little Complex," which gets its inspiration mostly from Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George and Company, it's never clear who he's supposed to be at all. George, meanwhile, disappoints as she fails to rise to the occasion twice, never coming close to channeling either Patti LuPone or Liza Minnelli in the final two entries of the evening. (It occurred to me that perhaps Fols and George are getting bored; they've been involved with this show since its original incarnation, off-off-Broadway, nearly a year-and-a-half ago.)

The Musical of Musicals—The Musical! is undeniably an entertaining evening, especially if you know enough about the authors being parodied to appreciate Rockwell and Bogart's frequent allusions and musical jokes. But it does feel awfully trifling: it comes in at just 75 minutes or so plus an intermission. And even though it's been moved to an off-Broadway house (and is charging off-Broadway ticket prices), it remains bereft of sets, costumes, effects (save that lone fog machine), or an orchestra to back up Rockwell's piano. Certainly the material would provide terrific opportunities for a witty designer to have a blast (cf. Alvin Colt's immortal costumes for Forbidden Broadway). A production value or two would go a long way toward making the show feel less, shall we say, thrifty.

Marc Spitz’s new comedy, The Name of This Play is Talking Heads, squeezes a lot of meaning into a short amount of time. Clocking in at just under an hour, Talking Heads serves as both a sharp satire on the shallowness of entertainment and an effective cautionary tale about the dangers of mass cultural brainwashing. That’s quite an achievement, and one well worth seeing.

Pete, a music journalist for a reputable national magazine, has been invited to appear on a music television program highlighting the “Top 100 Rockatrocious Moments in Rock History.” While watching comedian Frankie tape his segment of the show, Pete is appalled to learn that Frankie does not think up his own extemporaneous witty comments. Rather, he is fed all his material and told what to say. When Pete defends his right to say what he wants on camera, he enters into a comic battle of wills with the show’s director, Tom, which threatens to turn fatal.

Spitz’s targets in Talking Heads are the countless “music punditry” programs that proliferate on both MTV and VH1. He writes as both a satirist and a concerned citizen. His jabs at the superficial nature of these shows are pointed and hysterical. Tom tells Pete that the incentive for appearing on TV is not to serve an informational purpose, but to gain “exposure” for oneself (a by-product of which is the opportunity to have sex with any woman one wants). He also confesses to Pete that people don’t watch these programs to hear in-depth analysis of the topic: they just want to laugh and escape the hardships of the world and their respective lives. Therefore, Tom makes sure that he guides the content of the show to meet those criteria. His message to Pete is clear: to be entertaining is more important than to be real.

Spitz is clearly indignant that such programs lull viewers into cheerful complacency with corporate-approved content, instead of providing the edgy, insightful, and off-the-cuff entertainment they promise. He uses Pete as his mouthpiece to warn us against compliance with such shows and the networks that produce them. If the nation continues to watch such programming, then we as a people are choosing to buy what Corporate America wants us to think. Though Talking Heads is funny throughout, and downright hilarious in places—– as in the scenes when Pete trips himself up trying to impress the network’s sexy, no-frills make-up artist, Dolly, while Frankie deploys his scuzzy charm to win her over—Spitz’s message encouraging freedom of thought and expression is most potent (especially since he sandwiches it between belly laughs).

In fact, Talking Heads proves itself to be an ideological descendant of George Orwell’s 1984. The final showdown between Pete and Tom, in which the latter tries to make the former play by the rules, is reminiscent of (and comparable to) Winston’s torturous interrogations at the hands of O’Brien in Orwell’s novel—both in its twisted logic and its frightening clarity.

Director Andy Goldberg keeps things simple and clean, focusing on the play’s theme and moving Talking Heads along at a brisk pace. The actors—Valerie Clift, James Eason, Matt Higgins, Brian Normant, and Brian Reilly—display crack comic timing, and all turn in excellent performances.

The Name of This Play is Talking Heads is both fun and good for you. Strong medicine rarely tastes this good. I suggest taking a healthy dose of it before it’s all gone.

There are two occasions when Tom Kleh's new musical The New Jersey Trapezoid rises to the blissful heights of silliness that it's striving for. They both come early in the second act, after wealthy businessman Horace T. Calthrop and several members of his senior management team have been supernaturally kidnapped by a band of pirates who, via some sort of time warp, have arrived from 1804 on their ship to the New Jersey shore at the present day. In the midst of these difficulties, Calthrop and his brainy secretary Sylvia steal a moment to explain how they really feel about each other, in the clever ditty "You Are New Jersey to Me." It's one of those fun list songs, a la "You're the Top," and Jeff Farber and, especially, Jeanne Tinker put it over with verve. If only Kleh had seen fit to write three or four more verses ironically invoking the various treasures of the Garden State, he'd have had a bona fide show stopper on his hands.

Shortly thereafter, Calthrop's villainous lieutenant Jerry Conway, played with grand style by Tim Douglas Jensen, turns up to teach the ship's crew about modern-day methods of piracy in a similarly funny song, "Learn to Use the Pen and Not the Sword." This number culminates in a delightful dance, nicely choreographed by Jeff Edgerton and showing off the ensemble to really fine advantage; it's real picker-upper. The downside is that Brett Essenter relentlessly mugs throughout the song (as he does whenever he's on stage), throwing off the balance in a most unfortunate manner.

These hints of genuine talent and showmanship made me wish for much more from The New Jersey Trapezoid. Kleh, Edgerton, and several members of the cast certainly have the capacity to create a pleasingly giddy musical comedy from this very original idea. My sense is that Kleh is going for Urinetown-meets-The Pirates of Penzance, when what he should be doing—as he does in the two numbers cited—is something less artificial and more quirkily his own.  For the Pirate Captain and his inamorata, a romantic young woman from the 21st century named Amy, he gives ponderous old-fashioned love songs with titles like "On This Resplendent Night" that are neither lovely nor funny. And for the audience weaned on self-referential post-modern musicals, he supplies an entirely unnecessary literal reference to Les Miserables and countless other examples of shtick that mostly fall flat.

Jensen and Tinker stand out in a very uneven cast; others doing notable work here include Edward Anthony as one of the pirates and Mick Bleyer as Craig, Amy's boyfriend who also gets kidnapped when the pirates find themselves caught up in the titular occult phenomenon (which is explained to be similar to the Bermuda Triangle). Logan Lipton works gamely to make a character called the Eggman amusing (so named because he loves to eat eggs, especially from turtles). And Erin Williams provides a real breath of fresh air in her brief appearance, near the end of the show, as the Captain's true love, Lady Everdown.

Edgerton's direction and choreography is solid throughout, as is the very pleasant accompaniment by pianist Linda Dowdell (who is also musical director) and percussionist Don Boyle. Jeri ana Hochberg's costumes are bright and colorful, but the set by Tania Bijlani is disappointingly drab and minimal.

I guess I don't really know what happens to prostitutes when they get old; Paula Vogel, in her newish play The Oldest Profession, suggests that some of them, like Ol' Man River, keep rollin' along. The five working girls in this sad little dramedy are somewhere near or even past 70, and yet they're still turning tricks. This strikes me as highly unlikely, and it ultimately has very little to do with the work's actual themes. It amounts instead to a gimmick—springboard for a whole bunch of exploitative risqué dialogue (watch five little old ladies talk dirty!); a central conceit built around an extended vulgar joke. All in all, it's quite a disappointment.

And that's in spite of the truly stellar lineup of actresses who are on stage. Katherine Helmond (of Soap and Who's the Boss? fame) is arguably the most famous, and she gets to play Mae, the madam of this bordello, shepherding her four septuagenarian "girls" with an iron fist and an earthy voodoo sensibility (she's from New Orleans) until her Alzheimer's gets the best of her. Carlin Glynn (who won a Tony Award for, of all things, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas some years ago) plays Lillian, the most sophisticated of the group—indeed, the only one who seems to have absorbed New York City life in a believable way during the fifty or so years that she's lived here. Joyce Van Patten, Priscilla Lopez, and Marylouise Burke fill out the stable as, respectively, bossy and grasping Ursula, sexy and spirited Edna, and ditzy but lovable Vera. These are very talented ladies; but only Glynn, possibly because of her Whorehouse credentials, registers remotely credibly as an aging streetwalker. Vogel's over-the-top concept, which requires us to believe that 80-year-old retirement home residents are willing to pay these gals ten to twenty bucks for a few minutes in the sack, taxes even their considerable abilities.

What's left for them to do—and they generally do it very well—is to play the pathos. Vogel's main point really is about the way Americans throw away their elders, and the sense of loss and waste as these ladies grow sicker and frailer and poorer is genuine. The play's six scenes span the four years from the first time Ronald Reagan was elected President through the second, and I don't think that's at all random—Vogel's other key idea here is that that administration (and I think it's fair to assume she wants us to infer the same about the current one) systematically disempowered the old and infirm with economic theories and policies designed to serve the rich rather than the truly needy. Had Vogel given her five senior citizen heroines a less flashy profession; she might have been able to make her case more powerfully than she does here.

But instead Vogel and her actresses are trapped inside a "hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold" cliché wrought enormous. I was very troubled by the questions begged by Vogel's premise: Would prostitutes who began working in the 1920s be likely to have even survived to 1980, given the lack of penicillin, effective birth control, and legal abortion during most of their careers? Would prostitutes working for so many decades remain so devoted to their madam and their work? Wouldn't they be really, really tired instead? The Oldest Profession wants us to believe in a noble sisterhood where I suspect none could actually exist. This is a serious misstep.

So, too, is the play's formulaic structure (literally, scene followed by somebody dying followed by another scene followed by somebody else dying and so on). The deaths are played as ascensions to some Beautiful Bordello in the Sky and are heralded by a musical number performed by the hooker in question. Glynn gets "I'm No Angel" (and she delivers it with real brio); the others are saddled with much raunchier material like "Sugar in My Bowl" and "If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sitting On It" that—and this is actually a compliment—they're not particularly equipped to put over.

In the end, it wasn't much fun to see these actresses who we've enjoyed on stage and television for decades put through such uncomfortable and distressing paces. Burke finally fares best, I guess, but even she has to battle the gnawing improbability that someone who looks like she does could earn even subsistence wage in the sex business. By trying to sentimentalize something that so clearly defies such treatment, The Oldest Profession turns out to be very ugly indeed. What a shame.

Rarely do we appreciate the fact that many romantic love songs from musicals were written by gay male composers and lyricists to their lovers, only to show up on stage sung by a woman. Imagine if you dare, the cumulative rage of these numerous lovers of Andrew Lippa, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and others, snowballed into one complete nut case, Micah!, portrayed pathologically by Micah Bucey. The Only Thing STRAIGHT is my JACKET, written by Paul Hagen, is a musical review of ten well-chosen songs, complete with hilarious monologues expressing their homosexual inspirations. Under the Hitchcockian direction of Paul Mazza, Micah! enters screaming, flinching, choking, and twitching, complete with straight-jacket, guards, and a psychiatrist. His fierce, head-to-toe-clenched, explosive energy lasts for almost the entire play. Accompanied by the sweet mute Drew? (Andrew Edwards) at the piano, whose musical comebacks are astonishingly understandable, Micah! proclaims himself as a "Homosexual Immortal" who has suffered for eons the heart-ripping thievery of women who has stolen songs that were meant for him.

Bucey keeps the audience riveted—like rodents pinned to electrodes and forced to watch bad TV—with one eye on the nearest exit. Although the text is, well, hysterical, I felt the audience was heavily concerned as to the well-being of this actor, who actually draws blood from his own neck with his fingernails while serenading an audience member. This might have been an accident but, when splashed, it looked and felt like real blood, sweat, and tears—oh, and enough hair goop to hold the moon in orbit.

About two-thirds into the play, Micah! gets a welcome shot in the ass by his shrink, performed to perfection by Briana Mandel, and once he is sedated, we finally see the beauty that is Micah Bucey. An angel of gayness with an endearing high baritone voice, a compassionate and generous solo performer, particularly in his dreamy rendition of Menken and Ashman’s "Somewhere That’s Green."

If you don’t mind the schizophrenic presentation and the basic danger involved in being nuzzled by a psycho, you’ll enjoy the demonic "Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)" by Cole Porter, a virtuoso "Losing My Mind" by Stephen Sondheim, and the supernatural "Tom" by Michael John LaChiusa.

Perhaps there's a more sugarcoated way to relay this social dilemma than this Liberace-on-acid approach, but if Bucey has the calories and arteries to run this show beyond the Fringe, I could see a handsome following of similarly jacketed rebels. It's very funny and the audience really bonded, especially out of fear for the poor, sweet girl in the front row of the audience who Micah! pretended to strangle during one of his more out-of-control moments.

Few Hollywood icons have provided more fodder for drag queens and other satirists than that legendary egomaniac and madwoman, Joan Crawford. And few performers, it would seem, are more up for the task of re-chewing this cud than the self-described postmodern male actress, John Epperson, a.k.a. Lypsinka. It would seem to be a match made in camp heaven, a joining of forces that was predestined. The Passion of the Crawford is an evening of illusion that was almost inevitable, and as one would expect form Epperson, there are many moments of subtle brilliance. There are also, however, places where the piece is far too easy for a performer of Epperson’s caliber. Passion, which might have been a superior evening of nightclub performance, is almost not worthy of the uniquely original talent and energy of Epperson, or his alter-ego, Lypsinka.

After an opening act featuring a recreation of a magician who worked on one of Crawford’s films, Epperson lip-synchs/reenacts—in its entirety, it appears—one of Crawford’s final interviews, along with Steve Ciuffo playing the interviewer. It is the late sixties or early seventies, and Joan is reflecting upon her career, her marriage, her children, and various aspects of popular culture. Each time the interviewer mentions her daughter Christina—the author of the scathing biography Mommie Dearest—Epperson wipes his hands together as if brushing some dirt away. The interview includes commentary about Bette Davis, the studio system, and more than one remark about marijuana use by today’s young. There are interjected moments of flashback as well, such as the infamous Christmas interview with her adopted children in which, among other things, Crawford lays out the rules of the peculiar system she has created for her children to earn, keep, and often give away their gifts.

The interview, the longest section of the evening, is an interesting glimpse of the world through the eyes of an older woman who has lived a life completely out of touch with reality, and who is now descending even deeper into complete, isolated madness. It is funny in places, sad in others, and morbidly fascinating. It is also about twice as long as it should be, with many uninteresting sections that could easily have been cut to make the humor and satire more focused. Also, watching Epperson seated in a chair throughout, I found myself missing the frantic energy, clipping choreography, and organized chaos that characterizes much of Lypsinka’s best stage work.

Epperson/Lypsinka then recreates Crawford’s performances of two favorite works of literature, Desiderata, the classic declaration of the essentials of living a peaceful life, and a dramatic interpretation of the importance of caring for our children. Through the lens of the media’s twenty-something year dissection of Crawford’s life, the irony of these pieces is both witty and quite creepy. Her choices of material shed light on the complete blindness she has regarding her own psychosis. Like the interview, these moments from Crawford’s late career are obscure enough to seem original and interesting, despite the many severe beatings this dead horse has endured. But again the performance itself is a bit too easy and unchallenging for Epperson.

Later in the show there are more classic Lypsinka moments, such as a performance of a house mix of Crawford lines (and a handful of Dunaway-as-Crawford lines) ending in an unexpected film reenactment. The energy here is what I love most about Lypsinka. The Passion of the Crawford is certainly an entertaining evening. I just wonder why someone like Epperson, who has made a career turning the completely derivative art form of lip-synching into a vehicle for some of the most creative and original stage work, is settling here for material that is less than striking.

“You are the salt of the earth.” Jesus declaims to the audience at the beginning of Dario D’Ambrosi’s new play The Pathological Passion of the Christ. In the Bible (Matthew 5:13), Jesus continues by asking, “but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”  In many ways, this sums up my feelings about D’Ambrosi’s hour-long exploration of Christ. The show begins as one thing that is quite engaging but then it very quickly changes its flavor; I felt as if the salt of the play had turned to rock. As it turned out, this show is not the show I came expecting to see.

D’Ambrosi does not give us much of a plot. The show is mostly talking heads. It opens with an actor playing Jesus who is trying to perform a play set at the Last Supper but he is interrupted by the cleaning lady. She is in turn interrupted by another character, and that character is interrupted by yet another and so on. Then there is a short film interlude, which was my favorite part of the show. (A note to the squeamish: you might want to close your eyes during the film and ask the person next to you to tell you when it’s over.) Then Jesus delivers a powerful and truly moving monologue while some gripping images flash on the screen behind him.

This piece is inspired by D’Ambrosi’s work with Mel Gibson, as the Roman soldier who brutally whips Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. The violence that accompanied playing such a role led D’Ambrosi to reevaluate his feelings about Christ and the pain and emotion of his story. The press info says that the show is an exploration of the similarity between Jesus’s story and the stories of many mentally ill people today. That piqued my interest; I thought this play would be a look into Jesus’ mental health. But it isn’t at all. Instead, it strikes me as more of a look into the mental health of the other people who influenced Jesus’s life, who D’Ambrosi uses to represent a slice of modern society.

For example, D’Ambrosi’s Pilate character gives a speech about being castrated as a young man in prison and then he washes his hands of Jesus. However, I didn’t understand why he was washing his hands of Jesus because the speech is about his own problems. I felt the same about all of the other characters’ speeches. Mary delivers a very self righteous, “poor me” speech that doesn’t seem to fit her character. Peter denies Jesus three times just as he does in the Gospel but in the context of this play he has no reason to do so.

So here I am, waiting for D’Ambrosi to address the state of Jesus’ mental health, but instead all the other characters are complaining about their own problems and hang-ups. Then I think: "Maybe the playwright is going to have Jesus respond to these people’s problems." But he doesn’t do that either. The characters begin to argue amongst themselves. D’Ambrosi makes some very interesting comments on the mental health of the general public and the effects our various mental states have on our faith. Overall, the play is more concerned with shining a light on us than with revealing new clues about the psyche of the characters it is representing, especially the title character.

The entire ensemble is very talented. Arthur Adair plays a perfectly peaceful Jesus. He radiates a level-headed thoughtfulness that draws you to him. D’Arcy Drollinger is great as both the cleaning lady and Satan. Drollinger’s energy is inescapable. I really enjoyed Alexander Platt’s harsh interruption of Judas. His raw ironic timing picked up the pace of the show a bit. Peter Case, Brian Glover, Jonathan Slaff, and Shawneeka Woodward are all very good as Peter, Pilate, Caiaphus, and Mary respectively. D’Ambrosi’s direction keeps actors in a very evenly affected acting style. I liked DJ Potter’s lighting design, which subtly shows a cross on the stage floor. And as I stated earlier, the film work by D’Ambrosi is as shocking as it is compelling.

D’Ambrosi is a very talented writer. There are some lines and moments in this play that are exceedingly beautiful. However, it is frustrating when a show is promoted as being something that it is not. Still, I believe the show is worth a look.

The Penetration Play is the second production of the playwrights’ company 13P, whose simple mission is “We don’t develop plays. (We do them.)” Created by thirteen promising young writers who wanted to see their most ambitious, challenging work produced on its own terms, rather than workshopped, read, and endlessly debated through development programs, the company will fully produce one play by each of its writers over the next several seasons. The company’s entire resources are put at that writer’s disposal while their play is up, so what you see onstage is, in theory, the playwright’s dream production of her (the company comprises 11 women and 2 men) work.

Rob Handel, 13P’s managing director, reportedly asked Winter Miller for her “most outrageous play, the one that no theatre would touch.” Miller has taken that challenge and written a slap in the face to those theatres who would be scared off. The Penetration Play does indeed go to some taboo-fraught places, but it’s also almost absurdly producible: a smart, elegantly simple three-character play for strong women actors that moves like lightning—any theatre that wouldn’t touch it is missing out.

The set-up is basic: Ashley, in her late twenties, has again begun to date her high-school sweetheart, the guy who (at least in her mother’s opinion) got away. She invites her best friend, Rain, down to her parents’ summer house to meet the guy. Rain, who is not-so-secretly in love with Ashley herself (though Ashley seems—perhaps intentionally—oblivious to this fact), skips out on the meet-and-greet dinner and winds up having a late-night heart-to-heart with Ashley’s mother Maggie.

That’s pretty much it, in terms of a plot. Almost the entire play is composed of fast-paced, snappy scenes between two of the three characters (Ashley and Rain or Maggie and Rain; Ashley and her mother barely communicate) over a twelve-hour period. The dialogue is quick, simple, sometimes a little glib. But in a compact eighty minutes, the play poses big, heartbreaking, life-changing questions about love, desire, betrayal, taboos, secrets, the “dreadful, wonderful predictability” of marriage, and the lies we tell ourselves and each other to get through the day.

The play bills itself as a “comedy about things that aren’t funny.” But a lot of the humor comes from characters laughing at themselves, which can make the comedy a little bittersweet. Director Josh Hecht keeps his cast expertly walking the boundaries between sardonic self-deprecation, existential dread, and pouring out their hearts to each other at the slightest prompting.

All three actors give sharp, smart performances. Kathryn Grody, as Maggie, has the most complex emotional journey within the play, and stands out because of the deftness and subtlety with which she handles it. Mia Barron as Ashley and Mandy Siegfried as Rain are also terrific, especially in building up a friendship that’s shown in their physicality as much as in their language. The ways that Hecht keeps these two always scuffling, wrestling, challenging each other with their bodies becomes especially important because the nature of the friendship itself—how and why these two became friends and have remained close for so many years—is almost entirely in the subtext rather than in the writing itself. This elision can be a little bit frustrating, since that friendship is the motor of the plot. But Miller, Barron, Siegfried, and Hecht make us believe in the relationship even if we never completely understand it, keeping up a constant edge of aggression and sexual tension, while still clearly showing the affection between these two.

The production design is equally strong. Robin Vest’s perfectly detailed set wreaks a jaw-dropping transformation of the black-box Mint Space into a spacious upper-middle-class summer home, complete with crown moldings, decorative plates on the walls, and 1970s-ish patterned wallpaper in the kitchen. Vest’s precision is complemented by Paul Whitaker’s clever use of practical lighting—the table lamps, sconces, and ceiling fixtures we see on the set. The music in Eric Shim’s sound design provides contrast, and a reminder that the pristine suburban world we see onstage is a bit alien to Ashley and Rain.

The Penetration Play is not easy to describe without giving away its secrets, and at times it’s not easy to watch, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Based on the evidence of this outstanding production (as well as 13P’s first show, The Internationalist), the company’s work is going on my must-see list—both for the quality of the playwriting and for their passion for and commitment to producing those plays beautifully.

The Penis Monologues: Men Speak begins with the three actors on stage talking about seeing The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s highly regarded play about woman’s sexual and body issues. All three say they found Ensler’s show interesting, informative, provocative, but ultimately exhausting. “What about us,” they wondered. “What about the penis?”

I wondered this myself before seeing the play. What about the penis? What about what the penis represents? What about men’s sexual and body issues? Is there enough material here to fill a ninety-minute play? Historically, the vagina has been ignored, abused, misunderstood, disrespected, objectified, commercialized, flaunted, hidden, and mutilated. There is a wealth of material there to be explored, with many important social, religious and political contexts and implications. But what about the penis?

I decided before seeing this play that the penis might certainly supply enough material to fill out a script. Men do, indeed, confront a great many issues revolving around the realities, fantasies, and expectations of what the penis is and what it supposedly represents. The Penis Monologues: Men Speak, however, is mostly either predictable or underdeveloped. Written and directed by Robert Watts, and based on actual interviews, it only scratches the surface of what I still believe could have been a more interesting and important discussion.

There’s more than one piece about penis size, of course. In one simplistic parable, a well-endowed man brags about how great his life is because he’s been with so many girls he “can’t even remember their names.” No girlfriend ever. In another, a man simply explains how, regardless of other qualities or accomplishments, it is the size of a man’s penis that defines the man. Do you know anyone who believes this?

There’s a seventy-two year old man (played like ninety-two, in my opinion) who puts the passion back into his marriage with Viagra. It’s cute, but not at all creative. There are much more interesting Viagra stories: men who take it even though they don’t need it, men who take it so much they are afraid not to take it, men who take it to counteract the effect of condoms or party drugs. In another funny but simplistic scene, a romantic fantasy date is ruined when the speaker loses his erection trying to put a condom on. The speaker makes condoms seem incomprehensibly demanding and unbearable to negotiate (see “Viagra”).

Some of the pieces are quite serious. In one disturbing piece, a married man with HIV is safe with his wife, but not with the women he fools around with. He once told one of them he needed to use a condom because he was positive, and she wouldn’t sleep with him. Why didn’t he just say he wanted to use a condom because… have you read a newspaper in the last 20 years?! Do women really reject men who want to use condoms? There is one pretty powerful piece about a man whose penis gets amputated due to penile cancer. It’s moving, but even this piece makes men seem pretty stupid. “It doesn’t matter that I have a wife, three children, and four grandchildren. I have no penis.” What?!

The one gay character in the play is a vulgar and offensive stereotype. Hand on hip, snapping his fingers, he tells us how his macho father rejected him, and how he “chose” to be gay and have sex, night after night, with countless men who “love” him like his father never did. Has this New York playwright/director never met a real gay man? Later we meet a man who is either supposed to be this character’s father or “every gay man’s father.” He is equally superficial and uninteresting, spouting his disgust and disappointment without even the slightest subtlety. No hint of remorse over losing his son, or regret over letting society dictate his feelings. Nothing to make him three-dimensional.

Actors Lev Gorn, Christian Johnstone, and Steve Luker are all fine, with Gorn standing out in places. All, I’m sure, would fare well with better material. The set is simple with carpet-covered benches at different levels that are underused.

The People Next Door, a play by Henry Adam that is now at 59e59 as part of their Brits Off Broadway festival, is about Nigel Brunswick. Nigel—26, the result of a sad, brief fling between a Pakistani Muslim man and a lower-class English woman—is one of life's forgotten people. Psychologically damaged, addicted to drugs and cigarettes and booze, he's ill-equipped to do much of anything; he lives on the dole in public housing someplace in England, where his neighbors are Mrs. MacCallum, a dotty old Scots woman who talks to her late husband's photo, and a prostitute whose 15-year-old son, Marco, is Nigel's closest pal.

For all his relative poverty and isolation, though, Nigel is a pretty happy guy. Until, that is, his flat is invaded one morning by an aggressive cop named Phil, a post-9/11 Rambo type bent on catching terrorists. Phil has evidence that Nigel's half brother Karim is a terrorist, and he wants Nigel to help locate him. To persuade Nigel, he gives him some drugs, only to threaten later on that he'll arrest him for possession if he doesn't cooperate. So Nigel does, infiltrating a mosque and eventually wearing a "wire" to spy on the Muslim men he encounters there.

Meanwhile, Marco has a fight with his mum that culminates in her beating him up pretty badly, after which Nigel takes the boy in to live with him. And Mrs. Mac (as she's called), after letting Phil convince her that Nigel might be a terrorist himself—which leads her to go snooping around Nigel's flat and almost kill somebody—has an accident with her gas stove that sends her to live with Nigel as well while her place is being renovated.

So The People Next Door marries two themes—Nigel's manipulation by the police, which leads him to discover possible enlightenment in the Koran (turns out he likes going to the mosque); and Nigel's domestication by his new makeshift family. It's interesting and often warmly and/or darkly funny, but it's a lot for one play to successfully deal with, and I'm not sure that Adam finally makes the deeper points about either subject that he intends. The politics of The People Next Door are mostly facile: Phil is a boob, and a corrupt one at that; actions of him and people like him in the Establishment drive people like Nigel to seek solutions elsewhere, maybe in religion, maybe in suicide bombings. The relationships, meanwhile, are the stuff of sitcom, with gangsta rapper-wannabe Marco bonding with conservative old Mrs. Mac over Mince and Tatties.

Two final scenes, "resolving" the Phil/Karim subplot, both feel tacked on and gratuitous.

There's stuff to commend The People Next Door to an American audience, notably the chance to hear the homespun wisdom of a bona fide survivor of an actual attack on her homeland by another country (Mrs. Mac, who lived through the Nazi air raids of London), along with the somewhat jarring experience of seeing 9/11 through our closest allies' alien eyes. But I never fundamentally believed this play: I don't think that police are desperate enough to turn someone as obviously unreliable as Nigel into an undercover operative; and, much as I'd like to, I can't really buy the transformation of the denizens of a multicultural housing project into a loving family of latter-day Waltons.

The production, imported from Scotland (where it premiered at the Traverse Theatre about two years ago), is expert. Miriam Buether's design places all the necessary locations neatly into a single, deliberately cramped unit set. Ian Grieve's staging is brisk and urgent. Performances—all four of the actors being original cast members—range from Mary McCusker's marvelously spry and witty take on Mrs. Mac to Mark McDonnell's over-the-top bluster as Phil the Cop. Daniel Redmond, who plays Marco, is fine, but he's starting to look a little old for this part. Ronny Jhutti, in the central role of Nigel, is outstanding, showing us the many sides of this sad, neglected little man. He's a hero to root for, despite his bad ways. He deserves to have a more plausible play than this one built around him.

Waterwell, the smart and vigorous young theatre company responsible for The Persians, subtitles this piece "a comedy about war with five songs." That's accurate; I'd suggest "a postmodern vaudeville about war and Aeschylus's seminal play about war" as an even more vivid description. With a blend of merry deconstructionist / avant-garde exuberance and passionate idealism that almost borders on sweet naiveté, these energetic artists have created a hugely entertaining, enormously affecting, and utterly contemporary meditation / response / plea for sanity around the oldest extant play in Western civilization. If you know Aeschylus's Persians I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what these folks have done to it in a quest to make it timely and resonant. And if you don't, you'll actually see a surprisingly clear and faithful adaptation of it here, one that drives all of the original's main points home and will, I hope, make you want to find out more about what the classical Greeks had to say about politics and life.

Waterwell's approach to classic theatre is to pull it apart like a quilt, remaking each section in a new and accessible style that conveys the content while somehow commenting on it at the same time. This is oft-attempted and almost always perilous: risks of preciousness, egoism, gratuitousness, and many other dangers are rampant. One of the reasons I think Waterwell manages it so successfully here is that their production of Persians is intended to be genuinely enlightening and responsible rather than subversive or self-referential. Their intent here is, I think, to communicate the play as honestly and clearly as possible in terms of its themes and values—artistic and cultural, in addition to moral—while at the same time drawing on the company members' strengths as performers attuned to contemporary popular culture and styles.

So the show opens with a Fosse-esque musical number inviting us into the play and introducing its principal ideas and characters: the performers are literally in bowler hats and black pinstripe suits as they gyrate tightly to the first of Lauren Cregor's engaging tunes. There follows a series of sketches/scenes in which the main incidents and ideas of the famous play are reinterpreted in often unexpected ways—a sitcom family that could almost be The Simpsons introduces us to life in Persia during the war with Greece (c. 472 BC); the glamorous Persian Queen Atossa, decked out like Judy Garland in the "Get Happy" number of Summer Stock, bemoans the hubristic decision made by her son, King Xerxes, to launch the invasion without provocation, jeopardizing the stability and sanctity of an empire that, at the time, was the most powerful on Earth. Later, a messenger's recitation of the dire final defeat of the Persians is accompanied by a stylized boxing match inspired by Charlie Chaplin movies (in which, tellingly, a referee played by the same actor who plays Xerxes keeps pushing the faltering Persian fighter back into the ring); and Atossa's dead husband, the great King Darius, emerges from the grave singing a slick funky tune, complete with a pair of backup singer/dancers doing harmony and cool synchronized moves. An expositional interlude features two actors singing counterpoint—one in Persian, about the necessity for war with Greece; the other in English, about the necessity for war with Persia (or Iran, or Iraq, or Bin Laden, or whoever... the politics of this show are not particularly subtle).

The man singing in Persian (Farsi, actually) is Arian Moayed, who, in addition to taking the role of Xerxes, frequently plays himself—i.e., a young American actor who emigrated to the United States from Iran when he was five years old. The tension of having someone of Persian ancestry on stage in this show is exploited in numerous interesting ways here, as when the final tragic monologue of the defeated King is rendered in Farsi. Here and in a few other places, Waterwell finds its way into the play via ancient ritual instead of pop culture, employing chants and heightened speech to remind us of the potency of Aeschylus's unadorned dramatic poetry. This brings a second tension into the proceedings, that of the traditional versus the iconic.

The creators of this show are also its performers—the aforementioned Moayed, Tom Ridgely (who is also the director; kudos), Hanna Cheek, and Rodney Gardiner. They all do terrific work here, showcasing particular talents like Gardiner's musical ability, Ridgely's flair for comic impersonation and athletic dancing, Cheek's assured parody of divahood, and Moayed's range as comic and dramatic actor. Choreographers Kate Mehan and Lynn Peterson have supplied the company with appropriate moves that conjure a variety of theatrical styles. Cregor's songs, performed by Jeremy Daigle on guitar and Joe Morse on bass (and both on percussion), are tuneful and fun.

There are the occasional missteps here, to be sure; that's to be expected when artists take risks. But for the most part, The Persians works, and the cumulative impact is breathtaking, realizing the tragedy and humanity of the play's message with power and acuity.

In a season that has been filled with terrific performances, I'm not sure that there has been one so vividly memorable as the one Billy Crudup is giving right now at the Booth Theatre in The Pillowman. There are lots of things to admire about this new play by Martin McDonagh, and just as many to deplore and/or wring your hands about; but Crudup's work here—his most impressive since his excellent turns in Arcadia and Bus Stop—along with that of his estimable co-stars Michael Stuhlbarg and Zeljko Ivanek, makes this must-see theatre for fans of great acting.

Now I need to explain a few things right away. First, you're asking "what about Jeff Goldblum?" Well, Goldblum, the other top-billed star of this show, has been given the least interesting of the four principal roles; he acquits himself well enough, he just never rises to the ineffably moving place that his colleagues do, stuck instead mostly cracking wise in a sitcommy way that draws laughs and is even occasionally a little scary but never seems entirely honest or authentic. (The writing is at least partially responsible.)

Second, you want to know what I mean by saying that there's much to admire yet much to deplore in The Pillowman. Here's where things start to get complicated. The long second scene of the play's first act—it probably lasts about an hour; I didn't clock it—is transcendent and magnificent. In it, a young man named Katurian (Crudup) is thrown into a prison cell occupied by his older brother Michal (Stuhlbarg). Katurian writes short stories—he's got about 400 of them—and although only one has been published so far, he knows they're good and believes that they're the most important part of his life: the most, perhaps only, significant and worthy thing about him. Michal is slow, due to brain damage that happened when he was a child (Katurian explains what happened to him, but I will let that be one of the many jolting revelations for you to discover when you see The Pillowman yourself). Suffice to say that Katurian has cared for Michal since he was 14 years old (their parents having died then); that the two have a deep bond of love that, along with Katurian's stories, is pretty much their only sustenance.

Katurian and Michal don't know why they've been arrested and imprisoned. In the play's first scene, we see Katurian being questioned by two policemen, Detective Tupolski (Goldblum) and Officer Ariel (Ivanek). We're told that they live in a totalitarian state (unnamed); Katurian's initial assumption is that somehow something he wrote is being interpreted as anti-government, which he not only denies but willingly volunteers to correct if only someone will show him what's objectionable. But Katurian, and we in the audience, soon understand that he's not suspected of political crimes at all. Katurian's stories have what Tupolski calls a "theme"—of brutal, surreally imaginative violence against children. And some of the more horrific ones have apparently been acted out in real life.

Much of The Pillowman is given over to Katurian telling his stories. He tells a couple of them directly to us, with actors performing them in dumb-show behind him. During the terrific scene with his brother, he tells a few more, including a brilliantly elusive ghost story about a character called the Pillowman, a 9-foot-high gentle bogeyman made entirely of pillows (his teeth are little pillows, his fingers are pillows, his head is a big round cushion with button eyes) whose job is to go back in time and convince children to kill themselves so that they can avoid the unhappiness and misery that awaits them if they grow up. Another story, as opposite to that as it's possible to be, I suppose, is of the Little Green Pig, a robust and optimistic individualist who likes being a little bit peculiar.

The thing is, McDonagh's writing here is spectacularly good—these stories are veritable masterpieces of the genre in which Katurian works, and Crudup's delivery of them is chillingly, achingly brilliant. The scene between Katurian and his brother is itself another perfect specimen of the very same genre: a grand, affecting ghost story that toys and tantalizes and then moves intractably toward a stunningly terrifying conclusion.

But—and here's where I come to the parts of The Pillowman that keep me from wholeheartedly loving the thing—surrounding this is lots and lots of artifice, and I don't know what it's for. The second act takes place in the interrogation room, with Ariel and then Tupolski spending time questioning Katurian, and threatening to torture and kill him. Ariel seems intent on actually solving the murders at hand, and, as played by Ivanek with a ferocious intensity, becomes a comprehensible adversary for our anti-hero. But Goldblum's Tupolski approaches his duties with a postmodern detachment that seems to come out of nowhere, operating with a gallows humor that feels only gratuitous and mean. McDonagh has proven that he can write better than this: he's being lazy here, or perhaps intentionally sensational—maybe a bit of both.

And here's something else, even more disturbing. Though it's always very clear that no one in The Pillowman advocates murdering children, nevertheless much of the play is occupied with vivid, detailed accounts of just that. At some point, a place of satiation is reached—and then we start to shut down against the horror, desensitized. When does a harmless thrill around a campfire turn into pornography?

So I have reservations; but I nevertheless feel that The Pillowman is unequivocally terrific theatre. It's not for everybody, but it sure is well done. Design elements—sets and costumes by Scott Pask, lighting by Brian MacDevitt, sound by Paul Arditti, and music by Paddy Cunneen—are seamlessly unobtrusive, which is to say they're outstanding in always supporting the production without ever calling attention to themselves. And John Crowley's staging is masterful—he keeps us riveted throughout, even when we suspect (as I did several times, and I'm still not convinced I was wrong) that McDonagh is just jerking our chains.

The Homecoming

The Homecoming, Harold Pinter’s play about an unexpected family reunion, reflects the jealousies, insecurities, and sibling rivalries that exist in every family, and he shows how patterns repeat themselves from generation to generation. There is no shortage of family scars in this play, but in true Pinter fashion, the wounds run deep enough to take one’s breath away.

Simply told, a man comes back unannounced to his childhood home in North London after a six-year absence to introduce his wife to his family. The family, comprising his father Max, two adult brothers, Lenny and Joey, and an uncle, Sam, receive the couple unconventionally, with the woman’s presence changing the dynamics and the hierarchy.

At the beginning, we meet the male enclave. Max is the seedy patriarch, who sets the bar high when it comes to belligerence. He occupies the only comfortable chair in the house as he spews nastiness to family members. Even his dead wife is reviled. Howard Parke embraces this role in all its complexity. He skewers his face and nervously works his lips to show that vituperative words are never far from his lips. He wears the weariness of old age under his vest of combativeness, with rare moments of tender memories surfacing. One is of his wife, whom he left for periods of time under the care of a friend and his brother, Sam.

Sam, played by Fred Tumas, is a broken bachelor, defeated by his brother and by life in general. A chauffeur by profession, he used to drive Max’s wife around, those being among the most delightful moments of his life. Tumas brings sad resignation to this role, his posture weary enough to make one cry. With the slow, deliberate closing of his eyes, Tumas shows his character cannot take much more.

Lenny, the middle son, is up for a fight. He neither fears nor acknowledges his father, except when he chooses to challenge him. Jason Weiss delivers a cocky, edgy character, who makes an undemanding living by renting rooms to prostitutes. Joey, the youngest, a quiet and reclusive sort, works diligently at his boxing only to hear that both his offense and defense are wanting. Eric Percival lends the necessary insecurity to a man who has no skills, no support, and nowhere to go.

It is this house and this psychological drama that Teddy and Ruth walk into. He, a doctor of philosophy at an American university, is the source of considerable pride and jealousy. His beautiful wife, once a body model and now mother of their three sons, appears content. But then they speak. They are cold, awkward, and uncommunicative. It is as if Teddy has learned that successful people do not openly bicker, and in this way he stands apart from his family; yet like his family, he does not communicate. It is another generation without love, warmth, or compromise. Todd Reichart and Patty Parker play the attractive couple. Reichart brings fresh-faced vacuity to emotionally packed moments, forcing the audience’s jaws to drop as they witness the bizarre unfolding of events. Parker, as the lone female, maintains her edge with robotic detachment, ultimately negotiating her spot as the head of the family and earning her seat in the comfortable chair—with all eager for her favors.

The ties in this family are strong, but it is a place without support, compassion, or any semblance of communication. The characters are starved for affection, fighting for recognition or acknowledgment, with no one to give it. Actions that make a house a home are present, but they occur at the wrong time with the wrong people. There are cuddles and kisses, but not between husband and wife. Max cooks for his family, but withholds food when they are most hungry. There are no simple hellos or goodbyes, no absent touches to connote warmth. Instead, Ruth responds inappropriately to a kiss from Lenny and then one from Joey; they find themselves rolling on the floor. Teddy stands with their packed bags, observing dispassionately. He leaves for home and his three sons, allowing a family cycle to repeat itself for the second, possibly the third time, and setting the stage for a repeat performance in the home in America.

Terry Schreiber, artistic director of T. Schreiber Studio, directs with a keen eye for detail and an excellent ear for pregnant pauses. Scenic design, costumes, and lighting work beautifully. Credit Hal Tiné, David Kaley, and Andrea Boccanfuso, respectively.

The Birthday Party

The title of Harold Pinter’s play, The Birthday Party, may appear to be simple and straightforward, but like everything else in this disturbing drama written in the 1950’s, it is at once misleading and accurate. A birthday party connotes eager anticipation, happiness, and a time when the guest of honor is the center of pleasant, if not joyous, attention. In this case, none of this is true—except the anticipation.

The story begins with a working class couple, Meg and Petey, who run a modest boarding house. Their one guest is an angry young man named Stanley who has lived there for about a year. The dramatic action, occurring over two days, heats up when two new boarders, Goldberg and McCann, arrive. When Meg tells them it is Stanley’s birthday, they encourage her to celebrate with a party in his honor, despite Stanley’s protests. The party ensues, with drink, dance, and games.

The characters border on stereotypes, yet there is something about them that is a little off. Are they likeable? No! Befriendable for more than the 2-½ hours? No! All this uneasiness, yet it is difficult not to be drawn in by the dynamics of Meg, an Edith Bunker type with nary a flicker of a bulb upstairs, serving cornflakes to her passive husband Petey and Stanley. Sexual undercurrents pervade from the start: between Stanley and Meg, at the party between Goldberg and Meg’s friend Lulu, and then between Stanley and Lulu. Pinter dispenses with obvious character motivation and background, partly, I think, because we are all passing through—not expected to know everything about the characters just as there are hidden motivations in real life. At the end of the party, the theatre turns pitch black, and the audience is finally in sync with the play—physically and literally in th