Triptych tells the intertwining stories of three women—a wife (Pauline), a daughter (Brandy), and a mistress (Clarissa)—all wrapped around one man. Set as a drama, this play unites these stories to form a portrait of the unseen man, Henry, and the web of emotions existing among all four of these individuals.

The play is mostly a non-linear roller coaster ride among the three women—a ride filled with soliloquies (for lack of a better word), phantom conversations with Henry, and bonding conversations among the women to tie it all together. Playwright Edna O’Brien creates characters who fearlessly approach one another about an obvious affair they only hint at. Her characters depend on subtle nuances and indirect conversation. We see three independent females allowing their lives to be shaped by their dependence on the love of the same man.

O’Brien’s writing comes off as a little uncomfortable to me—it seems unrealistic and stilted in a few spots. Although she accomplishes her goals of painting a picture of a man we never see and spinning three simultaneous stories without confusing us, I still felt that something was missing. Her characters do not seem to want anything from anyone else, and even come off as a little bit schizophrenic when they do interact with each other. They maliciously attack each other one minute, and kind-heartedly converse with one another the next.

As well, there are places where David Jones’s direction seems a little uncomfortable and unrealistic; moments sometimes seemed unclear and unmotivated. For example, Brandy’s attack of Clarissa seemed to come out of left field, not ringing true to anything we knew about this woman up to that point; and it's not staged in such a way that is comfortable to watch.

Ally Sheedy, of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire fame, plays Henry’s mistress, Clarissa. It's not a very successful performance: though her commitment to the role is apparent, she doesn’t seem viscerally connected to the British accent, and she seemed too aware of herself performing on stage. In contrast, Margaret Colin, who plays Pauline, is noticeably more comfortable in front of an audience. She captures the meat of her role, but I nevertheless didn't feel that she created a realistic woman here. Like Sheedy, she could play her intentions more directly. Newcomer Carrie Specksgoor plays Henry’s daughter, Brandy. She does a good job capturing Brandy’s childishness, love for her father, and youthful spark for life and new experiences. However, her overall accomplishment of making a journey did not show itself to me.

In retrospect, perhaps it was more the intention of the company to involve the audience only in an abstract way in the lives and events depicted in the play; if so, they have succeeded quite well. But though Triptych represents an interesting kind of theatrical experience, and certainly showcases a variety of talent, I ultimately found it unnerving to watch in spots, as the story unfolding in front of me did not seem to flow with realism or ease.

Growing old is not for sissies. In fact, there seems to be such a mythical fear of aging in the gay community that even a play like Trolls, which is intended as a celebration of age, uses only its two youngest cast members in its print ads: a 20-something in a tank-top (which he never wears in the play) and the youngest “troll” in the cast, who is supposed to be 42.

Even the producers, it seems, are convinced that none of us in this community would be interested in hearing about our own elderly. This, despite the fact that a very large part of any gay theatre audience is always made up of men over 50. And so the men in this play, like its producers, wonder if anyone will notice them, if anyone cares about the lessons they’ve learned or the wisdom they’ve acquired. It seems a silly question to be asking in a world where the straight community seems to have become vainer than the gay community (I don’t see many gay people having plastic surgery on network television), and more than a few gay men over 50 are in better shape than the 20-year-olds. So it is not surprising that Trolls, with book and lyrics by Bill Dyer and music by Dick DeBenedictis, is, more than anything else, a fun and light-hearted musical comedy. No big questions or major revelation. Just an hour and forty minutes of mostly entertaining musical numbers and warm reminiscence, with plenty of memorable one-liners and touching moments.

It is 1998, and a group of close friends has gathered in a home in West Hollywood for a potluck celebration and memorial. Boomie (Dale Radunz), the recently deceased, is a man of 60-something who in his much-too-short life has deeply touched them all. Through each of the friends’ tributes, we learn about the great impact Boomie has had on their lives, and a little about what life was like—and how it has changed—for gay men in this country. Somewhere near the beginning of the show, the spirit of Boomie himself makes an entrance and, unseen by his friends, attends his own memorial, adding commentary and returning the love and respect his friends so generously bestow. The device of having Boomie’s ghost on stage could easily have killed the entire show, but it is actually handled quite nicely. This is partly because Radunz is one of the strongest and subtlest actors on the stage. He also has a great singing voice, and he gets the best solo musical number in the show, "All This and Heaven Too," about all the people he is meeting on the other side.

Both the script and musical numbers are a bit of a mixed bag. There are moments and characters that seem rehashed and uninventive, but the characters usually redeem themselves with moments that work very nicely. Blane (Bram Heidinger), the “kid,” for example, was picked up by Boomie while hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard. Boomie didn’t have sex with him (of course), but took him under his wing and set him on the right path. The duet between Boomie and Blane, however (which I was sure would annoy me) is actually quite touching.

Juan (Albert Insinnia) was a struggling immigrant whom Boomie helped learn English and settle in his new home. His character brings guacamole to the memorial, and often seems like a caricature. But, okay, the Carmen Miranda number is great fun. Jo (Barry McNabb), the now post-operative transsexual, who is more about drag queen camp than tranny “realness,” received the greatest support and encouragement for her sexual reassignment from Boomie who, as it turns out, lent similar support and encouragement to Christine Jorgenson when she made her highly publicized transition. Jo does, however, get the entire crowd of geriatrics sweating to the oldies with a fabulous tribute to club life in the days when dance songs had words worth singing and moves worth remembering. Jo, in the name of camp, also has some truly funny moments including one of the best Judy Garland jokes—of all things—that I’ve ever heard.

I can’t not mention Mark Baker as Terry, the host. I’m guessing he is the oldest member of the cast, and he is certainly the campiest, beating out even the tranny by a nose. He also has comic timing as sharp as a pin, and a great ability to improvise, saving a moment when a drink accidentally spilled all over the floor (it was a preview). He does terrific physical shtick, recovering nicely from several pratfalls, and has far and away the highest kick in the line.

John Hoshko’s musical staging is fun in places and sweet in others. They’re supposed to be old, so Twyla Tharp it shouldn’t be. Director Pamela Hall has found nice moments for all her actors without ever letting things get morbid. She makes the dead man on stage thing really comfortable for the audience, which must have been challenging. If there is a message here it is a simple one: We each have a heritage to be proud of, and a life that is of great value to those we touch. An anthem of gay history written by the departed Boomie is quite touching on the subject, and is thankfully reprinted in the playbill. Trolls is a sweet and simple reminder of those who have come before us, and those who still walk among us who have cleared the path.

During the Great Depression, a group of wealthy men—many of them patrician WASPs of the very bluest blood—had the courage and foresight to ignore the short-term interests of their class and themselves and created the New Deal, kick-starting the broken American economy. They were led of course by Franklin D. Roosevelt (not a WASP, but very rich); one of their number—Roosevelt's Attorney General for four years, in fact; and before that a government labor mediator—was Francis Biddle, of the Philadelphia Biddles. Like Roosevelt, he parted ways with many in his family by (horrors!) turning Democrat and trying to find ways to raise up the downtrodden poor because it was the right thing to do. Trying is about Biddle, and though his is a story that would be worth telling any time, this particular moment—when a Republican-led government is bankrupting our country with record-high deficits while draining off funds intended for Social Security and (according to today's New York Times) civil service pensions to give the most affluent Americans tax cuts and tax incentives and to wage a unilateral war that we cannot afford—seems enormously efficacious.

Judge Biddle is no bleeding-heart, no push-over; he's just a decent, intelligent, principled man. We meet him, in Trying, at the very end of his life, when ill health (and not a little bit of self-indulgent hypochondria) limit his work activities to just a few hours a day in his office, over the detached garage of his Georgetown house, with his brand-new secretary, a young woman named Sarah Schorr who hails from Saskatoon, Canada. Biddle, 81, is crusty, curmudgeonly, and steadfastly set in his ways. His wife—who is never seen in this play but, thanks to playwright Joanna McClelland Glass's vivid script, we nevertheless come to feel we know—has warned Sarah that the Judge is a difficult employer: between his stubbornness and his occasional lapses of memory and concentration, he requires someone with plenty of compassion and plenty of backbone to keep him on track and out of trouble.

Sarah turns out to be Biddle's match and more; but before you start shaking your head and say, "Oh, it's that kind of play," be assured that Trying is much more than a sentimental battle of wills between a presumed old fogey and a spunky young upstart. Sure, Biddle and Sarah are going to come to depend upon (and care deeply for) one another before the metaphorical curtain rings down; but Glass really has more on her mind here than such gooey hooey. Trying is principally a treatise on what it means to grow old—to become less sharp, less self-reliant, less able to do the things that you were once renowned for doing brilliantly. We watch as Biddle—the great jurist who was the chief American Judge at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, among other achievements—fumbles with arthritic fingers trying to dial a telephone; we feel his acute embarrassment when Sarah confronts him with the fact that his checkbook is hopelessly out-of-balance. In the formidable person of the expert actor Fritz Weaver, Biddle's decline is neither tragic nor pathetic, just inevitable. This is a play full of sorrow and wisdom, mixed tightly together.

There's another kind of wisdom afoot here as well, though, and that's finally what makes Trying not only compelling entertainment but thoroughly timely. Every once in a while, Glass will move the conversation to one of Biddle's great liberal triumphs (or, most movingly, the source of his deepest regret—his culpability in the United States' incarceration of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II). At these moments, we are reminded what authentic statesmanship looks, sounds, and feels like. We could sure use some of this from our current leaders.

Glass's script is a bit more by-the-numbers than we might wish; exposition is a particular problem for the playwright, it seems, coming in big, obvious information dumps prefaced by, for example, Biddle's sudden and unaccountable need to update his vitae. However, the intelligent observations that Biddle and Sarah offer throughout the play more than offset the structural flaws. And a charming undercurrent of wit—especially a couple of running gags involving Biddle's devotion to ingrained grammatical principles such as not splitting infinitives—enhances the piece nicely.

As I've already indicated, Weaver is extraordinary as Biddle: a force of nature, but a stalwart one, sadly being cut down by the only enemy capable of doing so (i.e., time). As Sarah, Kati Brazda more than holds her own; her forcefulness and warmth draw us to her character, and make this match-up much more even than we expect at the outset. Sandy Shinner's direction is winningly unobtrusive. The production design—featuring a rich but homey setting by Jeff Bauer, appropriate costumes by Carolyn Cristofani, and evocative lighting by Jacqueline Reid—is just right.

I had a great time at Trying, not least because I got to make the acquaintance of two strong-willed, strong-minded, highly principled, and enormously admirable personalities—there's real inspiration to be had from such company. Francis Biddle died 36 years ago, but he still has plenty to show us about how to not go gently into the dark night—how to fight, until the end, for the ideas that matter most.

It clearly states, in the Book of Common Sense, that one should not have serious expectations for a play titled Tupperware Orgy. Nevertheless, being a fan of some of the artists involved in this project, namely the playwright/director, John DeVore, and actors Jeff Lewonczyk and Hope Cartelli, I walked in expecting to laugh my ass off and to be impressed with what I thought would be an intelligent, quirky, atypical comedy.

Tupperware Orgy, which is billed as a romantic comedy, turns out to be a sort of “theatre of the absurd” play about a wild, violent, drugged-out group of friends on a particularly strange night. The play begins with a couple, Devon and Cath, played by Lewonczyk and Cartelli, having a fight in their apartment in a small town and breaking up before he leaves for work. Their neighbor Sally (Therese Ducey) shows up with a bloody pan that she has just hit her boyfriend Cameron (Jesse Shafer) over the head with. Cameron comes in and it comes to light that Cath used to be involved with him and that he is a total jerk. Soon, another friend, Sissy (Alyssa Simon), shows up, hurt and angry because her girlfriend, Emily (Milkki Baloy), has left her due to advice from a velvet Jesus painting.

As the night progresses, the characters get drunk and stoned. They make a big mess and there’s plenty of blood and a weird kind of female empowerment. They confront a serial killer (Peter Bean), and all three couples—Devon and Cath, Sally and Cameron, and Emily and Sissy—end up re-connecting—albeit bizarrely—which is the romantic part of the comedy.

The company of actors works well together, and they seem to have a lot of fun going all out. Alyssa Simon particularly stands out as Sissy, making some quick, hilarious transitions.

But for all the fun they seem to be having, I ultimately found Tupperware Orgy disappointing. I was hoping for—and I think Devore and his crew are going for—the charming quirkiness of a non-musical Rocky Horror Show. But, except for the strange female empowerment theme, the play doesn't seem to have much to say; and it's just not consistently funny enough for that not to matter. Who wants to just watch people do drugs & drink & be silly?

In Peter Dobbins's blissfully smart new production of Twelfth Night, Viola and Sebastian are a pair of Cuban refugees who wash up, separately, on the shores of an island called Illyria, near the Florida Keys. Twins and best friends, the two are sadly sure that each has lost the other to the storm that wrecked their boat; but they're determined to press on as best they can. Viola, whom we meet first, disguises herself as a male, Cesario, and gets a job as an assistant to Orsino, Illyria's Governor. Orsino isn't governing very much at the moment, however; this moony young man is trying, unsuccessfully, to woo Olivia, a beautiful American heiress who lives on the island. But Olivia, having recently lost both her father and her brother, isn't much up for wooing at the moment.

But when Viola-as-Cesario comes calling, Olivia sits up and takes notice. Almost immediately, she falls for this plain-spoken youth whom she believes is a man. Viola, meanwhile, realizes that she is in love with her boss. "Fortune forbid," cries Viola famously, comprehending the quandary:

O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a know for me t'untie.

Time does its bit, abetted by Sebastian's sudden arrival in Illyria; he has been rescued by a smuggler named Antonio who, though wanted in Illyria, agrees to help his young friend find his way there. Sebastian looks almost exactly like the disguised Viola, and so when Olivia lays eyes upon him, she thinks he's her beloved Cesario. Sebastian is confused, but not unwilling to accept her advances. Complications ensue.

Meanwhile, Olivia's uncle, a fun-loving rapscallion called Sir Toby Belch, is raising cain on his own, setting his rich but dopey acquaintance Sir Andrew Aguecheek on a number of expensive but futile errands (such as wooing Olivia), riling Olivia's stuffy estate manager Malvolio, and eventually conspiring with Olivia's personal assistant Maria to take revenge on that gentleman in a most nefarious scheme. And Feste, the pool boy who is apparently the only person who can make dour Olivia laugh these days, gets in on the fun as well. Complications multiply, and then, neatly, sort themselves out in time for a happy curtain.

If you're wondering why I'm going on about Twelfth Night as if it were something new and astonishing, well, it's because Dobbins and the folks at Storm Theatre have made it feel that way. Revivals of Shakespeare—especially the ones that try to graft some new time or place onto the presumably inaccessible original—can be tiresome, even deadly things. Not so this! Dobbins's translation of the characters from their fairy-tale sources to these very timely Western Hemisphere analogs is spectacularly apt: relationships and interactions that often seem murky or imprecise here feel entirely clear and comprehensible. The (never stated) reality of Viola and Sebastian's status as refugees informs and lends real weight to the otherwise lighthearted proceedings. And the energy and conviction of Dobbins's cast makes the familiar tale fresh and fascinating.

High spirits abound here. The comic characters—Sir Toby (Michael Daly), Sir Andrew (Matthew Simon), Maria (Heather Spore), Malvolio (Robin Haynes), and Feste (Greg Couba)—are played with genuine zest. Simon finds a wonderful joke in the script that has perhaps been waiting four hundred years to get unleashed, for example; and Daly, Spore, Haynes, and especially Couba all succeed in being not just funny but likable, and never cloying. The romantic characters, in the meantime—Orsino (Emmanuele Ancorini), Viola (Benita Robledo), Olivia (Julia Tobey), and Sebastian (Josh Vasquez)—convey both folly and ardor in equal helpings. Dobbins has inserted a couple of fantasy dance sequences (choreography by Enrique Crux De Jesus, lovely music by Skip Kennon) that give Robledo and Tobey a chance to show us what's inside their characters' heads and hearts—a nicely inspired addition.

Offering solid support are Mark Cajigao and Jamil Mena as Orsino's jaded policemen, Miguel Sierra as Olivia's pragmatic groundskeeper Fabian, and Jose Sanchez as a very earnest Antonio.

Todd Ivins has provided a beautiful unit set that conjures the subtropical languor of the play and this production's location of it; Michael Abrams's lighting, Scott O'Brien's sound, and Erin Murphy's lush costumes together evoke the place and mood prettily, and more extravagantly that you'd expect for a $19 off-off-Broadway show, to boot.

In every respect, the Storm's Twelfth Night is a success, rediscovering a classic play and inventing it anew. What a treat!

They start out angry—but thanks to logic, reason, persuasion, and old-fashioned common sense, they end up twelve reasonable men; that's the bulwark of American democracy, and it's why Reginald Rose's play, particularly in this exemplary production at Roundabout Theatre Company, is so cathartically comforting to see. I got to Twelve Angry Men the day after the election, and it turned out for me to be the best possible theatrical fare for that particular day. It's useful to remember—or at least to believe, for a couple of hours in the dark—that a lone voice of conscience can eventually carry the day.

I've never seen Twelve Angry Men in any of its various forms until now. It started, of course, as a live drama from TV's Golden Age in the mid-'50s; the famous film version stars Henry Fonda. So you may already know the story, but I didn't: it's about a jury who have to decide the fate of a 16-year-old boy accused of killing his father. The case appears at first to be open-and-shut, and when the first vote is taken, the count is 11 guilties, 1 innocent. Juror #8 has reasonable doubt. Over the next hour and a half—the play unfolds in real-time—he resolutely and painstakingly explains his position. Evidence that felt rock-solid is revealed to be dubious; holes in the prosecution's case—and very real sloppiness in the court-appointed defense attorney's—are uncovered. Most important, personal biases and prejudices of the jury members themselves are identified, examined, and stripped away. To tell you the outcome gives nothing away: it's clear as soon as the first vote is taken that #8 is going to change his peers' minds. No, Twelve Angry Men is a how-did-he-do-it rather than a whodunnit; maybe a why-did-he-do-it as well. As cannily crafted by Rose, it nevertheless contains plenty of suspense and every bit of the involving drama that a roomful of hot, tired, opinionated men will necessarily churn out.

The pleasure of it comes from getting to know each of the dozen jurors. Jim Carnahan and Mele Nagler are credited with the casting for this production, and they've done a spectacularly good job: not only are we in the presence of twelve exceptional actors here, but we're seeing them each play to strengths that are sometimes subtle or unexpected. Thanks to director Scott Ellis, they work together as a well-oiled ensemble; Ellis's taut pacing means that the tension never lets up and our engagement never flags. (A pause to acknowledge the excellent work of costume designer Michael Krass, who has put each of these gentlemen into a suit of clothes that allows us to start to understand them before they even utter their first lines; and the superbly realistic set design of Allen Moyer—a jury room so authentic-looking that we're sure that traffic noises outside the open window at stage left are genuine.)

Now let me introduce the cast. Juror #8—call him the voice of reason or call him the troublemaker, depending on your point of view—is portrayed by Boyd Gaines. Great choice! This is no statesmanlike man of the people such as Fonda would have played; this is a cold, steely fellow operating entirely from the intellect. He's very hard to like, which makes the plain truth of his case that much harder to accept. (Is his resemblance to certain recent Democratic Presidential candidates a coincidence?)

His main antagonist among the dozen is Juror #10, a loud-mouthed bigot who is certain of the defendant's guilt because he is one of "those people" (#10 goes on at length about the immoral habits of this group, which is, significantly, never identified). Peter Friedman throws himself full-force into this reprehensible character, with excellent results. The other important hold-out is #3, a blustery old businessman who Philip Bosco plays, with all the authority that his remarkable experience carries, as a tragic Willy Loman-esque figure, mired by insecurities and unhappinesses that ultimately impair his objectivity.

Our hero's principal allies are:

• Juror #9, an elderly gentleman  possessed of sagacity and shrewdness; Tom Aldredge makes him the senior statesman of the group, along the lines of Caesar Rodney in 1776.
• Juror #11, an immigrant who proves to be, as is so often the case in plays like this, more knowledgeable about American legal traditions than his native-born confreres. He's played with nobility and steadfastness by Larry Bryggman.
• Juror #2 and Juror #5, both seemingly milquetoast fellows who find confidence and their voices as the debate progresses. Kevin Geer and Michael Mastro take these roles; Geer is especially memorable showing us the transformation of his character, who as much as anybody may be viewed as the protagonist of the play.

The others, someplace in between on the spectrum, are:

• #4: A stockbroker, almost certainly the best-educated and most successful and articulate man in the room, played with vigor and authority by James Rebhorn.
• #6: A house painter, a regular Joe who earnestly wants to do what's right, imbued with warmth and intelligence by Robert Clohessy.
• #7: The joker, the funny guy; all he wants is to get out early enough to catch the ballgame tonight—John Pankow, naturally, nails him.
• #12: A young professional in advertising and sole representative of a younger generation that doesn't think about things in the same black and white terms as their elders. (He's the only juror who changes his mind more than once during the play.) Adam Trese helps us understand what's going on inside his post-modern skull.
• #1: The foreman, about whom we know almost nothing else; trying to keep the peace, and mostly succeeding. Mark Blum makes him vivid despite his shadowiness.

We watch these actors in repose and reflection as well as when they chatter or grandstand; they're all on stage throughout the entire play, and Ellis positions them so that they take turns at the center of things and at the periphery. I don't know how many hundred years of collective acting experience we're seeing up there, but wow—these guys are awesome to watch. Actors who want to learn more about their craft will be well-advised to get a ticket—as near to the front as possible—and soak in these performances.

(There is a thirteenth actor in the play, by the way: Matte Osian, as the guard.)

So, bravo to the Roundabout. They've taken a play that is, let's face it, no more than workmanlike, and mounted it with the respect and care it deserves. They've assigned a dozen meaty roles to a dozen fine actors and let them work their particular magic without encumbrance. And they've invited us to witness the result. It is, very much like the act of being a juror, a privilege.

La Ronde—Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play about ten characters who pair off in round-robin fashion to paint a picture of the nasty underbelly of lust and sex—is constantly being remade and reinterpreted by playwrights and directors. The twist that Frank Cwiklik has added—having each of the ten vignettes occur in a different decade of the 20th century, in a different spot in New York—strikes me as particularly inspired. But Twenty, the resultant play, turns out to be less about change than about something that stays the same, namely the sad impossibility of connection, then as now.

Cwiklik stays surprisingly true to Schnitzler's original here, beginning with an encounter between Delancey Street harlot Leocadia and randy young Italian immigrant Franco in 1907, and ending, some 92 years later, with a turn-of-the-millennium assignation in an Upper East Side apartment involving a presumably successful (though burned-out) writer named Ron and Leo, a high-priced escort. In between, we meet Marie, a flirtatious young maid; Alfred, a spoiled would-be artist; Emma, the sexually voracious wife of a successful businessman; Carl, said businessman, a repressed button-down type with a kinky side; Kitty, Beat Era free spirit; Robert, an idealist-turned-film producer; and Jessica, his hippie girlfriend who grows into a self-assured woman.

Twenty's ten scenes depict moments in each of these lives. Set against a historical/pop-cultural backdrop—with the music progressing from war marches to smooth midcentury jazz to hard-edged rock, and a panorama of socioeconomic circumstances playing itself out, from the tenement era to the Great Depression and from the Sexual Revolution to the AIDS Plague—Twenty takes in a great deal of our cumulative national experience. Yet the focus stays firmly on the ways that men and women relate to one another; building up steam as the calendar moves closer to the present-day, Cwiklik exposes the constancies of failure, desperation, and loneliness. Funny in many places and giddily goofy or off-the-wall in others, Twenty's predominant emotion is melancholy: this is indisputably the most pensive and quiet thing that bombastic auteur Cwiklik has ever attempted.

It's carried off in high style, though, thanks to Cwiklik's remarkable eye and ear for the telling detail as both director and designer; and also to the outstanding work of the nine-person ensemble, which consists of Sarah Bloom, Bob Brader, Lara Hughes, Tom Mazur, Josh Mertz, Kevin Myers, Lauren Seikaly, Moira Stone, and Cwiklik himself. Top acting honors have to go to Bloom, who does triple-duty as Leocadia, her disarmingly competent modern-day alter ego Leo, and the poignantly independent "free thinker" Kitty, and creates each so vividly and distinctly that she makes us forget that they're all portrayed by one person. Additional memorable work is turned in by Bob Brader as Carl, particularly when his nasty inner self comes to the surface; Lara Hughes as Jessica, who we see transform from EST-head to adulthood with spectacular authority; and Josh Mertz, hilarious as Robert, a head-over-heels poet who turns into a Type-A film executive in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

Twenty is engaging, entertaining, and even a little bit profound by its end. I am endlessly fascinated by the unexpected subjects that Frank Cwiklik turns his attention to, and never ever sorry to eavesdrop on whatever the latest one happens to inspire. There's certainly not been a La Ronde as original as this—at least not since Schnitzler dreamed the thing up in the first place. 

I'm not sure what to make of Two Brothers who are not brothers. This new drama by Paul Rawlings tells the story of Dix and Jack, two young men living in a small city in Georgia. Brothers-in-law (their wives were sisters), they have both recently undergone a devastating tragedy: the two women, along with all four of their children, were killed in a random shooting at a shopping mall. Dix is in the process of selling his house and moving (where to is never disclosed). In his emptying house, the scenes of this spare, intimate play unfold, as the two men try to come to terms with their grief and each other.

The major conflict of Two Brothers concerns the contrasting coping strategies adopted by Dix and Jack. The latter is an Evangelical Christian who believes that through prayer and faith he will eventually be able to put this terrible event behind him. Dix's specific religious leanings appear to be on the agnostic side; unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have any secular support structures (such as work, friends, or hobbies) that might serve the role that the Church does for Jack. Seizing this opportunity, Jack spends a good deal of the play trying to convince Dix to adopt Christ as his lord and savior, something Dix continually resists doing.

Is this play meant as an occasion for proselytizing? It feels uncomfortably so, especially during Act One. But interestingly, Jack never emerges as much more than a mouthpiece for the Church—he doesn't explain his faith in depth or with much passion, and furthermore he's presented to us as something of a hypocrite, willing, for example, to allow a friend who "can go" to a liquor store to buy him something potent to help him get through some of these sad, lonely nights. In any event, if Rawlings really wanted to convince us of the rightness of Jack's path, he would end his play with Dix converting and subsequently finding peace. But he doesn't: Two Brothers is ambiguous, even ambivalent, on this religious issue.

Yet religion is actually the only issue in the play, which means that Rawlings' script doesn't work any better as drama than as propaganda for the Church. Dix and Jack are the only characters in the play, and I kept wondering: where are the people these men work with? Where are their friends? Where are the friends of their late wives and children? What about the media coverage and lawsuits that must surely be occupying at least some of their time? Rawlings seems to want to zoom in on the crises of faith experienced by these very different men, but he simplifies their worlds rather too much to keep their stories compelling or resonant.

The production, which is staged by Sue Lawless, is competent; the two young actors playing Dix and Jack (Joe Thompson and John Jimerson, respectively, both making their off-Broadway debuts) acquit themselves nicely, but both are limited in where they can take their characters by the narrow scope of the script. The production design elements are all crisp and appropriate. And the show runs like clockwork: the curtain went up promptly at 8, the intermission lasted exactly 15 minutes, and the evening ended at 10 on the dot.

Typo is an intimate circus of two performers—Jamie Adkins (clown and acrobat) and Anne-Marie Levasseur (comedian and musician)—that leaves a number of vivid images on the mind for days afterwards.

These parenthetical job titles are from the program, however, and they are adequate, but not entirely accurate descriptions of what this pair can do. Adkins (who wrote and co-directed the show), for example, is too a musician, percussively bouncing the little rubber balls that he also juggles, balances on his nose, catches on the small of his back and handlessly guides around his body. Levasseur’s work is more athletic than it sounds—she has a lovely dance sequence (the choreographer is Cynthia Akanga) in which she occasionally spins above the ground from the base of a hanging lamp.

The premise of this nearly wordless piece is simple: the two are sitting in their rundown office—he at his typewriter, she at her piano—trying to think out some vaudeville acts. The stymied duo find inspiration not via the cerebrum, but through their preoccupied play with various unlikely objects in their workspace: wads of paper, gum, chairs, a ladder, etc. The set, lights, and music (by Guillaume Lord, Nicolas Descoteaux, and Lucie Cauchon, respectively) create a warm, wan womb of a space in which the two sometimes painfully conceive and deliver their ideas.

Adkins and Levasseur are showmen (or showmyn, or showpersons), to be sure; their presences are engaging, and I was drawn in by their every little trick. But it is their great skills and not their comic personas that make them a fun watch. Adkins has not yet found a distinct personality for his clown—he has the specifics, but no psychology, no soul. Levasseur knows her clown a bit better, but she is using too much muscle. I have no doubt that these collaborators will come into their own dramatically (by which I mean, their “characters”) the way they have theatrically (by which I mean, their “actions and activities”).

Oh, I forgot to mention (and perhaps this is to their credit) that Typo is marketed towards children. At the performance I saw the target audience certainly loved it—calling out instructions, giving guidance— but all the “participation” which I might have found either endearing or annoying, did not distract me from the ingenious spectacle on stage.

When we graduate from college we are struck with the notion that we can do anything…we are bound by nothing. Yet with all this opportunity and choice just mere inches from our grasp, all too often we freeze, paralyzed by the possibilities. In Unaccustomed to My Own Name, writer and performer Marta Rainer brings us back to what it was like to be trapped in such a world of fortune and depression. This solo performance, directed by Angela Petersen and presented at the Midtown International Theatre Festival, leads us through the story of Sofie, a recent Russian Studies graduate who has nothing to hold onto but her love for Russian literature and all those she crosses paths with in her life, while she’s searching for her self—in her bathrobe and pajamas.

In between personal therapy sessions in her bathtub, we are introduced to a barrage of characters who add to the comedy of her maturation: her motivating émigré mother, who just wants her daughter to get out of the bathroom and be normal; her recently engaged friend from high school who’s always encouraging her to find a man; and her Slavic alter-ego Sonya, who waters her buds of courage with a penchant for Bloody Mary drinking that Sofie wishes she could have. With Sonya’s determination, Sofie discovers more about her innate confidence, sex appeal, and capability to handle life than she thought possible. All she has to do is control Sonya.

Marta Rainer’s show is filled with comedy and a self-deprecating charm that makes her enchanting to watch. She is an extremely talented young character actress, whose ability clearly exceeds the challenges she’s given herself here. Instead of moving from character to character in a monologue structured show, she weaves all the characters of Sofie’s life into a more dialogue-based arrangement. This arrangement, no matter how unintentional, is ingenious almost. It works perfectly to tell the story, set the scenes, help the audience relate more closely with Sofie’s unsettled emotional state, and enhance Sofie’s inner dialogue with Sonya, all at the same time. Rainer has an incredible ability, as a writer and actress, to keep a dialogue alive between two characters, all by her lonesome. Her wit and intelligence saturate her writing and add to the beauty of her performance. She keeps the audience laughing even in the lowest moments of her enlightening search for self.

Anton Chekhov, as the program for the new rendition of Uncle Vanya from Volga Productions and The Open Book tells us, was a genius. He wrote characters and plays that could be played for both laughs and/or tears. He peopled his world with complex, funny, not-easy-to-pin-down human beings. There have been many different approaches to his work, varying wildly in style and intent. Some companies see his plays as comedies, bordering on slapstick. This is understandable, since Chekhov called most of his plays comedies. But there are also many productions of his plays that are played for tragedy. Some are long, turgid affairs, and others are magnificent evenings of theatre. In my opinion, there is no right way or wrong way to go after Chekhov’s plays—at least as far as the tragedy vs. comedy goes. However, there are always ways to muddy up said intentions; always ways to make a genius’s work seem less than it is—and sadly, that is what happens in this production of Vanya.

Uncle Vanya tells the story of a bunch of bored, burnt-out people with too much time on their hands. On an estate in the country owned by Professor Serebryakov, Vanya and his niece Sonya work and fritter their days away, contemplating fading dreams and unrequited love. When Serebryakov (Sonya’s father) and his new young wife Yelena show up, everything gets thrown into a state of disarray and confusion. As the residents of the mansion adjust to the new living conditions, everyone begins to question their position in life—both spiritually, and sexually. Sonya is in love with Astrov, the local doctor. Vanya is in love, or at least lust, with Yelena. Astrov, too, falls for Yelena—and Yelena seems to fall for Astrov, but can’t break out of her rigid social role as good wife to Serebryakov, a once important academic whose glory days have passed. Nobody is getting what they want or need in this world, and trouble ensues.

The show gets off to a rocky start, with blaring music, meant to set the mood, blasting out of the speakers. As the cast slowly enters, in a dirge-like procession, it becomes clear that this company is going for the more tragic aspects of Uncle Vanya. Everyone sits around, glumly speaking of their lives, taking long pauses to think about how tragic it all is. Some of the many pauses are over a minute long. I couldn’t tell if these breaks in the action of the play were meant to be comical, showing how seriously people take themselves; or whether they were intended to elicit sympathy for these sad people.

I was just about to give up all hope for the show when Peter Von Berg entered as Vanya. Von Berg is a shot in the arm, a light in the dark forest of this production. His Vanya is feisty and unpredictable, and his comic timing is perfect. He manages to capture both the comedy and tragedy of the character with ease. It was very confusing, however, to have such an animated performance onstage next to so many melodramatic ones. I found myself wishing that director Arnold Shvetsov had managed to infuse Von Berg’s vitality into the rest of the show. There are several good performances in the show besides Von Berg’s. As Yelena, Barbara Hammond exudes a fabulous mix of pent-up sexuality, regret, and just a hint of madness. As Sonya, Natia Dune is painfully shy—but her eyes are amazingly expressive.

I must admit that I left the show at intermission, for personal reasons. I am sure there are many fine moments in the second half of the show, but I'll bet that the fundamental problem that I observed in Act One continued; specifically, a lack of a sense of cohesion. Each character seems to come from a different world—and the director has not managed to bring them all together.

The translation, also by Shvetsov, seems to want to rarify every word Chekhov wrote—as if the words of a genius must be elevated and grand. Antonin Artaud, the actor/theorist/lunatic, once famously demanded that there be "no more masterpieces,” by which I believe he meant no more approaching art like something otherworldly, above most people, and/or snooty. If something is treated like a holy relic, it becomes difficult to integrate it into everyday life—it becomes stilted. Shvetsov’s translation and his direction, put Chekhov’s words so high on a pedestal that I lost any sense of connection to the play. Perhaps this production works better for purists and classicists, but for me, it fell flat. What a shame.

Tim Miller does not claim to be subtle or groundbreaking—he does not expect his audience to be shocked, for example, by the multiplicity of meanings available in the title of his new performance piece, US (now running at P.S. 122, of which he is also a co-founder). In fact, it is this assumption of intelligence and sophistication in his viewers that allows him to boldly go where so many men have gone before and find nuances that are fresh and stimulating.

In a black tank top and track pants and toting a big brown suitcase that would be convincing luggage only in a production of The Music Man, Miller arrives onstage and announces that he and his partner, Alistair, are leaving the United States at the beginning of October, because that is when Alistair’s visa ends and there are no federal laws in this country that legitimize gay marriage. What follows is, at first, an exploration of the relationship between the U.S. and us (meaning, primarily, gays and lesbians). From his suitcase, he produces a stack of musical theatre albums and provides pithy explanations for how each show is an allegory for the gay experience in America.

In other hands, this would be a dream of an opportunity for a musical theatre queen to rattle off quips and anecdotes for the camp-cognoscenti. But Miller’s analyses are straightforward and arresting: Oliver! is about a young boy who is not afraid to ask for more, to dream of abundance (while by and large, Miller contends, most gays and lesbians have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting paucity); Fiddler on the Roof reflects, in the unacceptable romance between the youngest daughter and the Russian soldier, the hardship many couples must endure when one partner is facing deportation (i.e., Tim will move far from the home he loves to London with Alistair where he can be with the one he loves and feel at home).

But Miller has larger concerns (not that the foregoing are insignificant). He is interested in Us as the U.S. and how we perceive and are perceived by the rest of the world. With the current administration, we are increasingly isolating ourselves from the rest of the world and it seems our only interest in another country is how useful it is to us: will it unconditionally “yes” us in our war-waging? Is the image of a naked Vietnamese boy catching fish in a stream on the cover of a National Geographic (a pile of them are included in Miller’s suitcase of metaphors) an expression of genuine humanist curiosity or, as Miller intimates, a noble "cover" for exotic porn?

It is more than understandable why Miller is expressing his ambivalence about being affiliated with our nation on the eve of his departure. Indeed, at the end of the show, Miller finds himself having to decide whether to pack or discard the American flag. Most of us haven't reached a point where the choice is so necessary or clearcut. But with a president who increasingly defines the world, even within our own country, as Us and Them, we may be heading there a lot sooner than we expected.

Expectations can be dangerous. The press materials for Verbatim Verboten don't actually say that the show is politically-minded or that it's theatrical; it's neither, but I went thinking it would be both, with catastrophic results.

What it is, really, is an hour of stand-up comedy, performed by actors and comedians. The twist is that the material is not original—it's "borrowed" from court and police transcripts and other similar sources, the words of famous people at their not-so-best. The theme of the show on the night I attended was the law, and so we were treated to re-enactments (recitations, more accurately, at a microphone with virtually no production values) of Marion Barry's arrest for cocaine possession in a DC hotel room; Jenny Jones's testimony at the trial of Jonathan Schmitz (who murdered another guest on her TV show); a taped discussion between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp; and acres and acres of Woody Allen's appearance at the custody trial following his separation from Mia Farrow.

The idea is that this is stuff we were never supposed to hear (although some of it is extremely familiar); and that it's funny if repeated verbatim and relatively uninflected though often out of context. And indeed, there is a certain amount of humor—gallows or otherwise—inherent in some of this material; there's also curiosity value in the less well-known bits, like Jim Morrison's cocky stint on the witness stand during his trial for indecency. But there was nothing jolting or even remotely interesting here: Marion Berry's a foul-mouthed druggie, Richard Nixon's a scary reactionary, Monica Lewinsky's an airhead. What else is new?

The jokes wear thin almost immediately. The evening's running gag—having each of the five performers take turns pretending to be Woody Allen by putting on his trademark black-rimmed glasses and nasal whine (each trying to outdo each other by punching up the pronunciation of "SOON-YEEEEEE")—was pretty much DOA.

Some of the trouble with the evening is attributable to the five performers at the show attended, who were Billy Eichner, Carolyn Ficksman, John Flynn, Molly Franklin, and Wayne Henry. I've seen Eichner on stage elsewhere and he's a talented guy, but for some reason his sole idea here was to shout all of his lines. Franklin's performance was funny, especially as Morrison and as a Bosnian delinquent's mother. The others' were not. Host Justin McElwee provides patter before and between each of the vignettes, some of which only last a few seconds; he is very much of the world of stand-up.

For the record, the press release promises a rotating cast that includes a number of better-known downtown theatre celebrities like Jonny McGovern and David Drake, but it's not clear when or how often they actually perform.

Verbatim Verboten is assuredly not theatre: it's stand-up—the kind of thing that's fun to watch, I guess, when you're in a crowd of people drinking. In any event, it's so NOT my kind of thing that I'm kind of sorry to have had to review it. Bear that in my mind when you decide whether it might be your kind of thing.

Week 3 (reviewed by Martin Denton):

The final program of this fall's Vital Signs festival contains four short plays, all of which turn on the subject of life and death. (I think that this is serendipitous rather than deliberate, but quite interesting nevertheless.)

Two of the pieces are serious. Falling, by William Borden, is a kind of meditation on 9/11. In it, a Jewish woman on the first day of a new job and a Muslim man on the final day of an old job find each other as they jump out of a window high up in the World Trade Center. What do they think as they fall? What might they say, or want to say? Borden writes movingly on the combination of things, trivial and momentous, that might run through someone's head during their final seconds of life. Falling is very short—almost as fast as the actual fall from the top of the twin towers would have been—but makes a strong impact. It's been sensitively directed by Aimée Hayes and is well played by Rachel Burttram, Amir Darvish, and Tom Moglia.

 The other thoughtful drama on the bill is Kellie Overbey's Overhead. It's very sharply staged by Linda Ames Key and features Marty Grabstein as a stereotypically Type A New Yorker trying to get back to his job at a car dealership after an illicit afternoon tryst; but it's pouring down rain and he has no umbrella. Under the eaves of a Church's front door, he meets up with an African gentleman (portrayed with quiet dignity by Michael Anthony Walker) who has an umbrella but doesn't want to share it. Their conversation takes turns that are sometimes predictable and sometimes surprising; Overbey is concerned with perspective and, to a lesser degree, fellowship. Overhead feels a little overwritten to me, but it's themes are indisputably important and it succeeds in striking a resonant chord with its on-the-run urban American audience.

The two comedies of the evening are Jesus Hates You by Robert Shaffron and Suspense by Ian Finley.  The former is a satire in which a "rehabilitated" gay man and lesbian talk about how their having found religion has "cured" them of their sinful lifestyles. Now married, they're celebrating their first anniversary of something less than sheer bliss until they are interrupted by Betty DeGeneres, mother of famous lesbian comedienne Ellen. Shaffron's got a good idea here but I didn't find that it quite worked (especially the vaguely surreal intrusion of Betty). Paul Adams directs; Wynne Anders, Amy Bizjak, and Peter Herrick are the actors, the last-named of whom scores particularly well.

Suspense, another satire, is my favorite of the evening's offerings. It parodies thrillers of the noir and English manor house variety, with a selfish socialite wife, her ineffectual husband, their strange children, and his dashing brother intertwined in a web of romance and intrigue that's as dense as it is ridiculous. David Hilder has staged the thing masterfully, with a quartet of fine comic performances delivered by Julie Evan Smith (wife), Damian Buzzerio (husband), Nancy Jacobs (daughter), and Paul Romanello (brother). (The other child is played by a cloth dummy.) Finley's intricate plot involves motives ranging from incest to inheritance and weapons that run the gamut from revolvers to banana peels. It's very funny.

Week 2 (reviewed by Robin Reed):

Six shows in two hours. A mini-marathon of sorts…

First up is Never Never Land by Laura Rohrman. Pete comes back to see Wendy, the girl who’s always had his heart. It sounds like your basic boy-meets-girl kind of story, except the twist is that Pete has come back from the dead. Turns out that Pete fell on hard times and Wendy, in pursuit of her own dreams, was never quite able to commit to saving him. Elise Falanga plays the spooked-out Wendy. She exists on stage almost entirely on the verge of tears and never really finds another place to go. This might be due in part to the experience of director Habib Azar, which according to the program, comes largely from directing soap operas. Wayne Asbury is engaging as Pete.

Next up, The True Love Story of My Parents by Elizabeth Meriwether. This charming little piece shows the evolution of the relationship of the parents of a sweet young girl played with charismatic sincerity by Natalia Payne. Her part is clever—a silent narrator who relays scene changes through handwritten placards. Carolyn Baeumler and Ed Vassalo as Mom and Dad are smart, funny, and daring actors who take Shira Milikowski’s sharp direction and run. I was fortunate enough to see another of Meriwether’s plays (Nicky Goes Goth) in the FringeNYC Festival. Her writing is immediately engaging and masterfully subtle while being bold with pop culture and compellingly self-referential in her commentary on the human condition. This was also directed by Milikowski and they are a winning team from whom I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more.

Defacing Michael Jackson by Aurin Squire tackles two very heavy issues in two very different ways. Black kids in rural Florida in the '80s brace themselves to deal with the rumor that “the crackers is comin’” while watching the "Thriller" video ad infinitum on one kid’s parents’ new-fangled VCR. The race issue is blatant in the language and handled very well by the very funny cast. DeVon Jackson leads us through the story as the slightly nerdy but streetwise narrator Obidiah. There is a huge sense of “well, there goes the neighborhood” when it is found out that (gasp!) a white family is moving in. The persnickety young neighborhood gossips who deliver the news (Niketa Calame and Lloyd Watts) are delightfully antagonistic, firing off an insipid verbal tennis match of “your mamma” vs. “you so ugly” jokes. Jack, the white boy (comically played by John Ramsburg), moves into the neighborhood thereby moving in on their turf. With Jack comes Obidiah’s challenge: facing his burgeoning sexuality. The sexuality issue is not as overtly or broadly tackled as the race issue, but it makes sense in the world of the play. These are a bunch of kids in the '80s (yes, THE dance number from "Thriller" makes an appearance and is a hilarious little retro slice of funny) on the brink of finding their place in the world.

Starting off Act II is a very short one-woman piece called Mina by Kyoung S. Park. Mina is a Korean girl who grew up in Lima, Peru. Played very honestly by Deborah S. Craig, she tells a tale of living in the middle of many cultures: being Korean (with very old-school parents) in a Latin country and the downside of falling in love with a Japanese man. I would have liked to have seen more of this piece. It was under ten minutes long, so just when I thought I had a handle on her complicated racial makeup and was ready to settle into the story, it was over.

The next piece, Coyotes, is another very brief play. It seemed like it took more time to change the set than to do the show. The story is simple: husband and wife in bed, she hears noises and wants him to check it out. The noises are howling coyotes and their pet dog is outside in the yard, presumably about to be attacked. The wife briefly talks about her shock and disgust at the fact that the Academy Awards were still presented in the wake of September 11th. I think writer Catherine Gillet may be trying to scratch at a metaphor for the (forgive the pun) dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood. Perhaps, had there been more time to work out a little more story or develop the relationship of the couple, something might have resonated with me. Again, the minute I was starting to think I got it, it was over.

The evening finishes up with #9 by Chisa Hutchinson. This one gets off to an exciting start with a white woman outfitted Little House on the Prairie style, and a mammy-type black woman in blackface. Out from under their dresses pop two short-suited black men (also in blackface, a la Pigmeat Markham) who dance ecstatically into the audience to dole out baskets of fried chicken and money. When the excitement from that number subsides, we cut to the story of another white woman, sexually unsatisfied with her white, Wall-Street-working husband, who has a hot affair with a platinum blonde black man she encounters on the Number 9 train. He takes her to places she’s never been—geographically (Harlem) as well as sexually. This is interspersed with a silent modern dance that relays the intricacies and difficulties of an interracial relationship and silent mimicry of the often unrecognized painful diversity of a New York City subway ride. Confused yet? I certainly was. The major downfall of this piece is its ambition. Hutchinson has got an obviously intense and striking vision and enough material in #9 for at least three separate pieces. Each of the story lines in #9 could stand separate examination; together they are just too much for a one-act.

Week 2: The Bacon/Mingus Triptych & Loners

Francis Bacon created some disturbing images of violent beauty. He once commented, "There is an area of the nervous system to which the texture of paint communicates more violently than anything else." His startling, subconscious style sucks your guts out to the point that you wear them displayed and dangling. In this same manner, Charles Mingus pours his guts into the minutia of every note. He once said in an open letter to Miles Davis, “Music is, or was, a language of the emotions… My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry yet it's real because it knows it's angry.” The combination of these two incredible avant-garde artists in Eric Novak’s The Bacon/Mingus Triptych creates an ecstasy of sight and sound like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

When you enter the Cino Theatre at Theatre for the New City, the first thing you notice are three distinct playing areas. It is the triptych of sets, so to speak, in which Novak will present his visionary three-part show. (Bacon himself was fond of creating three-part paintings known as triptychs.) In the first part, entitled "Myself When I Am Real," we are introduced to a character whose face looks very much like a Bacon self portrait with distorted features that seem to be pieces of a puzzle that has been haphazardly put together. He begins to play the piano along with music from Mingus Plays Piano. And then his head explodes into its components and his pink flesh pours over the façade. It is literally a mind-blowing sequence. The next segment is an amazing piece of shadow puppetry that tells a short story of love and death on the high plains of the Serengeti. Novak segues into the next part with a creepy vulture that flies on and perches stage left. Part Two, entitled "Fact Leaves Its Ghost," is an extraordinary climax in a show that already has many visual and auditory peaks. The puppets are spot-on three-dimensional renderings of Bacon’s work. This segment looks as though it may have been inspired by Bacon’s Three Studies for a Crucifixion. I don’t want to give too much of the action away because some of it is shocking and beautiful and best left unexpected. The final part, "Diane," seems to be a return to the first part except another character has come into the picture.

Novak’s design for this show is truly amazing and even eye-popping at times. The puppeteers Stephanie Braun, Lute Breuer, Emily DeCola, Duncan Gillis, Jessica Scott, and Aaron Unger do a fantastic job animating these somewhat complex puppets. Each segment is perfectly timed to the Mingus soundtrack. I cannot overstate Novak’s brilliance in merging these two artists’ work into something altogether unique and captivating. The show times in at about 70 minutes but it felt more like 20 minutes. This is testament to the show’s enchanting effect. However, there was one part of the show when I was briefly snapped back into real time. The splayed-open head and the resulting pink flesh that pours over the façade doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go. I became very aware of the puppeteers writhing under the pink sheet that represents the character's flesh and I lost interest in the action. Also, as you may have noticed, I have described four segments in this “triptych.” I’m not sure if the shadow puppet segment is meant to be an extension of the first part or a prelude to the second or even e a segment of its own. It is most certainly beautiful and well done, however I was unclear on how it fit into the rest of the program.

The Bacon/Mingus Triptych is like a work of art that has jumped right off of the canvas and been set to some of the best music ever composed. Novak has done well by both Francis Bacon and Charles Mingus. If they were able to see this ingenious production, I’m sure they’d pat each other on the back and say “nice work.” And then they’d sandwich hug Novak and hopefully buy him a drink. He well deserves one.

*** *** *** ***

There are people who are born into this world knowing full well what they are going to do with their lives because they have been blessed with an extraordinary talent that they discover very early in life. The creator of Loners, Preston Foerder, is among this unique group of people. His bio says that he discovered that he wanted to be a puppeteer when he was only two years old. Since then Foerder has forged an amazing career in puppetry and he has been awarded some of the field’s top honors. And from what I saw last night at TNC, rightfully so.

Loners is made up of 13 short scenes that total up to about 60 minutes of pure puppet poetry. There are no words and none are needed. Foerder is a master of sight gags and unexpected sequences. He almost exclusively uses hand puppets with intricately detailed faces. The show opens with a piece he calls "Fanfare for the Common Man" in which a little red-headed puppet climbs to the top pedestal of a three-tiered stand like those used in the Olympics. Foerder interacts with his puppets as puppeteer and as a character in the scene. He is an interesting man to watch. He brings a human element to his show that in retrospect seems indispensable. I won’t attempt to describe each scene here because there are so many, but I will name a few that stuck with me. The second scene, "Motel," is very funny and poignant. It is a hilarious look at fear-mongering in this country. The fourth piece, entitled "Lunch," combines the strange and wonderful with a side-splitting effect. It’s a comical look at the joys of sharing even when you only have one thing to share. Another memorable piece is called "In the Back Row." It stars two sleeping men and one enthusiastic woman at the symphony. She is a “back row conductor” who becomes so wrapped up in the music that she literally floats on air. Finally, the last scene, "Life in a Goldfish Bowl," is an erotic and dark day in the life of a goldfish. It is a great finale. Foerder chose his ending scene well.

Foerder’s whimsical style is well balanced by his clever probing of the human condition. Much of it sort of reminded me of the work of Charlie Chaplin. Sure, some of it is predictable but we still laugh because, much like an old vaudeville routine, it is timelessly funny. I did think that "Motel" was a little bit passt its time—its themes have been done to death over the last few years—but it still stuck in my memory. Most of the scenes have at least one unexpected piece of action that elicits a giggle. I was also very impressed with Foerder’s sets. There must be eight or nine small units that he brings on throughout the show. James Latzel’s light design adds perfect accents to the various sets and Tim Schellenbuam’s sound fills in the space between scenes seamlessly.

I mentioned that Foerder's piece "In the Back Row" has a music lover floating above the audience in ecstasy. I could not help but think, as I looked around at my fellow audience members, that some of them were feeling the same way.

Week 1: The Lone Runner & Project B

I love eccentric genius stories. They charge my imagination and transport me to a world where quirks and creativity play seesaw all day. Jane Catherine Shaw’s revival of her extraordinary mixed media show, The Lone Runner: The Mythical Life Journey of Nikola Tesla, is no exception.

When you enter the big theatre at Theatre for the New City, the only things you see are two large white sheets hanging from the ceiling at center stage and a podium with a music stand on it at stage right. You hear some very earthy nature music playing softly in the background. The lights go down and immediately come up behind one of the sheets, revealing the shadow of the play’s narrator moving slowly and deliberately. She begins to speak softly and poetically. Finally, she steps through the sheets and takes her place at the podium. This short yet highly effective intro carries you into this mystical world where an inventor brings us gifts from the gods.

History has not been kind to Nikola Tesla. Indeed, if you mention his name to people of my generation they will most likely think you are talking about the '80s rock band Tesla. The fact is, he is responsible for some of the most important inventions of the 19th century including: the induction motor, the hydroelectric generator, alternating-current power (in everyone’s home today), radio/broadcast technology, remote control, fluorescent lights, and the Tesla Coil. He was also an early theorist in X-ray technology, microwaves, robots, missile science, and particle beam weapons. And this is the short list of his achievements.

Shaw uses expressionistic techniques such as projections of words and pictures, narration, and sparse lighting to take us through his life. She manages to show us the inside of this remarkable man’s mind. The show moves very slowly and yet I found that I didn’t get bored because the actions and visuals that Shaw provides held my attention for the entire 70 minutes. It does fall into the trappings of a history lesson at times, but that didn’t really bother me. Overall, Shaw amazes us with scenes such as Tesla’s revelation in Budapest of how he could create the rotating magnetic field and a beautiful (yet hard to understand how it relates to the story) scene with the giant blow-up cat that he played with as a child. I also liked the scene where he lists some of his quirks. It is a rare moment of humor in the show. The press info says that a jumping-off point for the show is the fact that Tesla was in love with a white pigeon that he met while feeding birds in the park. Shaw cleverly dresses the narrator (or, as she’s listed in the program, the Muse) in a flowing white dress. I enjoyed the way Shaw has her step into the action at the end, when she becomes the pigeon and carries Tesla to his death.

Kelley Schoger is alluring and exact as the breathy muse in the white dress. Her voice is like a lullaby and her constant presence on stage has a grounding effect that I think Tesla himself would have enjoyed. The small Tesla puppet, operated skillfully in Bunraku style by puppeteers Ceili Clemens, Hjördis Linn, and Michael T. Kelly, is also a very strong presence. (However, because of his small size I feel this show might work better in a more intimate space.) The other puppeteers Eva Lansberry, Frank Dowd, and Elisa Hevia, round out this well-coordinated ensemble.

There are several engineering references that went over my head, as well as several expressionistic conventions that I didn’t completely understand, but they don’t detract from the production as a whole. The Lone Runner is a tight production. It creates a look and feel that is as eccentric and inventive as its subject.

*** *** *** ***

Project B is three short plays in one fantastic night of theatre. Two of the plays, Come and go and Eh Joe, are by Samuel Beckett. The third, Still. Sounds., is by the production’s creators Sarah Provost, Nancy Salomon Miranda, and Jane Stein. Some people find Beckett difficult to understand and sit through, but Project B creates an atmosphere that allows its audience to become wrapped up in the action (or lack thereof).

The night begins with Come and go. We see three old ladies in large hats and different colored coats sitting on a park bench. Each lady has a separate puppeteer who also provides her respective voice. Beckett coined the word dramaticule (literally playlet) to describe the very short plays that he wrote in the latter years of his life. In many ways he created a genre all his own with this style. Come and go is about five minutes long and has about 20 lines all together. The central action is a whisper that is repeated three times, followed by an appalled “No.” We assume the whispered message is something very dramatic such as “Does she know she’s dying?” Each woman gets the chance to be the whisperer and to be the subject of the whispering. Each character knows the fate of the others but they don’t know their own. There is something innately dramatic about that fact.

The three puppets have excellent detail in their faces and the three puppeteers Provost, Stein, and Chris Maresca do a fabulous job bringing their minimal actions to life.

The next piece, Eh Joe, is a film. This piece was originally written for the BBC in 1965. It’s about an older man who sits alone in his room and is forced to listen to the voice of a woman who represents one of his discarded lovers. She tells him that she is not a voice in his mind and seems to operate in conjunction with the camera because it never moves when she is speaking. As he sits and listens to her berate him for his past deeds, the camera moves closer and closer to his face. Beckett directs the actor to be “impassive except insofar as it reflects the mounting tension of listening.” Beckett saw the act of listening as inherently dramatic and liked to create tension between the lack of movement and the narration.

Project B gives us three large screens to look at for Eh Joe. Two follow Beckett’s intention and have the camera push in slowly until we see an extreme close-up. However, the screen in the middle gives us a different and refreshing perspective. We can see the man's whole body and all the ticks and scratches that come with the mounting tension. The puppet has amazing detail in his face. For a moment there I thought it might start sweating. He is animated with great precision by Provost, Maresca, and Amanda Villalobos. I’ve seen many of the Beckett on Film series that came out not too long ago. I’d say this puppet version deserves to be in that series.

The final piece, Still. Sounds., fits in very well with the other Beckett plays because its writing is very Beckettian. It stars an old lady who is reflecting on her life. She keeps trying to think of the title of a song from her past as we hear what I assume are pieces of it played. She is operated Bunraku-style by Provost, Maresca, and Villalobos. These three move around the stage together in what appears to be a well-choreographed dance. Part of Brian Hallas’s sound design creates that old-timey radio sound for one of the voiceovers that really transports you back in time. Jeff Nash provides the perfect side lighting for Stein’s simple yet evocative set.

Altogether the show lasts about one hour. It is an hour well spent. I found the simplicity so engaging that I sat there after the show was over for at least ten minutes. The odd thing is, I wasn’t the only one. The audience was small (it should be packed) but I only saw one couple get up and leave right when it was over. The combination of Beckett’s dramatic value and Project B’s production value makes this a show worth seeing.

I know that I take too much for granted; I think most Americans do. Which is why a play like Alberto Bonilla's Walking to America is so important: we need a good slap in the face to jolt us out of our complacency, and to remind us why, in an election year where key American values seem to be at stake, those values are so fundamental and so worth cherishing.

The slap that Bonilla and his collaborators deliver is the hard, fast wallop of truth. Bonilla learned on National Public Radio about a Honduran boy named Palo who walked more than 2,400 miles from his native country to California, in search of the better life that he only knew about from American television. Walking to America tells a brutal, sad, terrible story of hardship—of a boy who lost his mother to Hurricane Mitch and has had to fend for himself of the streets ever since; a boy whose only relief comes from watching commercials through shop windows or sniffing glue; a boy who survives his journey northward via prostitution, a dangerous job in a fireworks factory, or, most of the time, begging for spare change. The inhumanity illustrated here—some institutionalized and systematic, some just the result of a thoughtless or preoccupied heart or mind—makes us ashamed to be human. We know it's not exaggerated, that it's all true—that we prefer, when we can, to turn away.

But Walking to America makes us look at the cold facts head-on. Palo's story is remarkable—most boys don't have the inspiration to seek a new life thousands of miles from home, let alone the determination and spirit to actually spend two years on the road trying to make it happen—but the experiences he goes through are all too common. With simplicity, in stark, minimal fashion, Bonilla (who also directs) recreates a brutal, random killing on the street in Tegucigalpa, Palo's hometown, and the sheer horror of Palo's escape from the oven-like conditions of  a truck packed with a human cargo of illegal aliens on their way to work at ranches in California. He also shows us some rare moments of human kindness and generosity, such as Palo's encounter with a good-hearted priest in a poor El Salvador church.

Most powerfully, he juxtaposes among these vignettes from Palo's journey iconic moments from our own daily lives. Faux commercials—for products that make us look better, run faster, increase our sexual potency, choose our baby's gender—are projected on the theatre's real wall in between scenes from Palo's life. These are at once tantalizing flashes of the way of life that Palo aspires to, and ugly reminders that, as John Guare's Ouisa Kittredge says in Six Degrees of Separation, this paltry thing—our life—is not enough to be envied. Images of kids eating sugar-soaked cereals and contestants on a Fear Factor-like "reality" show eating leeches—representations that tell the truth about our culture right now—hover in our consciousness as a nurse pronounces the contents of Palo's stool: "traces of arachnid, roaches, worms..."

Facts provide Bonilla with a terrible ironic ending to his story; the play ends with actors setting up on the stage displays of information about Latin American street kids, provided by organizations like Casa Alianza (http://www.casa-alianza.org) and Amnesty International (http://www.amnestyusa.org).

Walking to America has something very important to say to its audiences, but it would fail if it didn't deliver the message so well. This is a very skillful play, smartly adapted by Bonilla from documentary evidence and his own experiences in Honduras, and sharply directed and produced with potency on an off-off-Broadway budget. Six actors—Susan Kerner, Ed Lane, Quinn Mander, John Andrew-Morrison, Jessica Myhr, and Angela Paz—portray the dozens of people that Palo encounters during his travels, and they do so expertly. As Palo, Orlando Rios is nothing short of remarkable, inhabiting this heroic young man with rich humanity and the kind of humble nobility that we wish we encountered more often in our daily lives.

See Walking to America because it's gripping, compelling, necessary theatre. Don't take work like this—or the subjects and themes it conveys—for granted.

We’re Still Hot is clearly designed to be a funny, raunchy show, a night of laughs for middle-aged women going through menopause (remind anyone of any other off-Broadway musicals currently playing?). Perhaps my lack of enjoyment stems from my distance from the aforementioned condition, but I suspect it has more to do with the lacking script, which unfortunately can’t quite bring itself to be truly entertaining or funny.

The show follows three high school chums who have come together to put on a revue for their 35th reunion. Kate, a failed writer, has created a script about menopause and enlisted the performing talents of Cynthia (who mysteriously declined a scholarship at La Scala) and Marnie, a successful businesswoman. Since the show requires four parts, they recruit cleaning woman/Hungarian actress Zsu Zsu to join them. Despite the straightforward plot, writer J.J. McColl spends much of the play manufacturing conflict where none exists (all four women have coincidentally slept with Cynthia’s husband at different points, and each is upset about their lives, though not because of any external forces). The majority of the simplistic songs (co-written with Rueben Gurr) add nothing to the plot (and seeing the women “rehearse” the numbers for the show quickly grows wearisome).

Even more distracting is the recorded or recorded-sounding music—during the curtain call the actresses gestured to an invisible keyboard player backstage that I suspect doesn’t exist. Shame on the producers for allowing such terrible music quality at $55 a pop.

Trapped in the muddle are four very talented singer/actresses: Marnee Hollis, Deirdre Kingsbury, Jane Seaman, and Deborah Jean Templin. Despite their considerable talents, they are unable to right this sinking ship. Is this all that is out there for women of a certain age? What a sad state of affairs, then, that these gifted women have no better vehicle for their abilities.

The audience, packed full of tourists, seemed content enough, enthusiastic with the novelty of attending an Off-Broadway show. But they, as well as the cast, deserve better. I haven’t seen Menopause The Musical, but I’m curious now to see if it handles the subject any better.

When the audience first enters the Lucille Lortel Theatre before the start of What of the Night, the new one-person show about the life and writing of Djuna Barnes, they are met by the sight of a scrim (which hangs in front of the stage for the entire performance) on which typewritten characters are projected, like letters on a page. Beyond the scrim, one can make out the dim outline of an apartment on stage. And, in the middle of the stage, obscured by shadows, stands a column or pillar of some sort. Or so one thinks. Once the show begins, and the lights come up on stage, it is revealed that the pillar is none other than What of the Night’s star and co-author, Jane Alexander. She has been standing still on stage for half an hour. When she lifts her head and begins to move about the stage—giving us our first glimpse of Barnes at home, listening to her tape recorder or pecking out some words on her typewriter—performing the first five minutes in almost complete silence, one can feel the pressure drop in the room. Alexander is such a talented actress that she can make such a start compelling without a word. Draped in an elegant old robe, armed with a walking stick and a sour look on her face, Alexander conjures a physically frail and emotionally jaded old woman. She has invested a lot into Barnes, so much so that we feel as if know her before she begins to talk.

Barnes, as we learn from the program notes, lived in Salinger-esque seclusion in her Greenwich Village studio for more than forty years. Director Birgitta Trommler cleverly symbolizes this seclusion with the scrim—serving as an intentional barrier between Barnes and the rest of the world—and by keeping Alexander on stage for the pre-show: life goes on around her without ever knowing she is there.

However, those are the clearest and most meaningful aspects of What of the Night. For once Alexander begins to speak, things are all downhill. The show strives to illuminate Barnes’s life and art, but falls victim to a relentless and frustrating opaqueness that obscures what was important about her and why her work should still be remembered. I assume that Alexander captained this vehicle partly because of an interest in Barnes. If so, then she should be applauded for her entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately, the end result is so embarrassing and confusing that the whole enterprise ends up reeking of pet project indulgence.

A little background on Barnes (who was unknown to me before now): one of five children, she became the sole breadwinner for her family when her father threw her mother and siblings out of the house, and quickly made a name for herself as a journalist, poet, and playwright. She moved to Paris in 1921, and became part of a social and literary circle that included James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Peggy Guggenheim. It was during her years in Paris that Barnes met the love of her life, Thelma Wood. Their stormy relationship formed the basis for her most famous work, the 1936 novel, Nightwood, which was championed by Dylan Thomas. Following the American and British publications of Nightwood, Barnes moved to New York in 1940, and lived in self-imposed exile until her death in 1982.

Alexander and her collaborators, co-authors Trommler and Noreen Tomassi, attempt to cover a lot of ground in What of the Night by including both young and old versions of Barnes; Thelma and her Nightwood alter-ego Robin; and Nightwood’s protagonist Dr. Matthew O’Connor (all played by Alexander). Changes of scene and character coincide, and happen often, but not always with clarity. I think the play’s structure is intended to mirror Barnes’s own thought process—a delicate commingling of memory, reality, and fiction, where real and make-believe people meet on an equal playing field. In theory, this idea is bold and interesting. But, when put into practice here, it does not work. While it is often easy enough to tell when a scene change is occurring, it is not always so easy to tell which character Alexander is playing. The authors establish the multi-character device early enough, but without any explanation—it is never completely clear that that is what’s going on. Furthermore, they fail to provide any exposition for each new character, or place them in any context. What their connection and importance to Barnes is is never made entirely clear. Personally, I wouldn’t have known any of this if the show’s press representatives hadn’t thoughtfully provided me with a copy of the script and an extensive bio for Barnes. Without access to those helpful resources, regular theatregoers will be at a severe disadvantage.

All of which makes What of the Night highly un-illuminating. Aside from the obvious knowledge that Barnes was a crotchety old broad, viewers will learn very little about her. Alexander and her collaborators seem to take it for granted that the audience is already well-versed in Barnes lore. This is a grave mistake, as it prevents anyone who sees What of the Night from entering Barnes's world fully and seeing it through her eyes, thereby understanding it. A high crime for a biographical play.

There is no doubt that Alexander is a powerful and vital actress. But her gifts are wasted here, in service of a script that does not deserve them. That she helped write it makes What of the Night all the more disappointing, and must give one pause to ponder her intentions. What she wishes to impart about Barnes—or what interests her about Barnes—remains a mystery throughout.

I had a splendid time visiting the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel and enjoying Karen Akers in her new cabaret show When a Lady Loves. Akers's voice is unique—a contralto, I guess, rich and throaty and full of nuance, especially when she applies her perfect diction to bring either a new or deeper understanding to a song you've heard a million times and thought you knew all there was to know about. Examples: "The Rose," which she did as an encore at the performance I attended, and which suddenly felt sincere in her understated rendition; "I Got Lost in His Arms" (from Annie Get Your Gun), sung lovingly and movingly as the most straightforward of ballads; the Gershwins' "They Can't Take That Away From Me," put over with a clarity and simplicity that many artists miss as they play with the irresistible melody.

The theme of the show, as the title suggests, is love; all of the numbers deal with this universal subject. The best come at it from surprising angles. Cole Porter's "The Laziest Gal in Town" is the comic highlight: performed atop Don Rebic's piano, with her long, long legs draped luxuriously down the side, the song epitomizes a kind of decadent elegance without making us wish for Dietrich even for a second: it's a hoot. Akers roams around the room a bit for "You've Got Possibilities," the perky charm song from It's a Bird It's a Plane It's SUPERMAN!; she makes its ingenuous aggression quite playful.

More serious are my two favorite numbers of the evening. You almost don't realize she's started singing Rodgers & Hart's "I Wish I Were in Love Again" (from The Boys from Syracuse) until she actually says the title line in the song—she's slowed the thing down and made it wistful and melancholy; it's such a persuasive performance that I don't think the standard peppy patter approach will work for me anymore. And her take on Sondheim's "Like It Was" (from Merrily We Roll Along) feels entirely definitive. She loses herself in songs like this, but she takes us with her to the special place where she's singing them.

The hour-long show also features selections by Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Lionel Bart, Jerome Kern, and De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson. The feeling throughout is of relaxed elegance and sophistication, which Akers and the Oak Room both exude in equal measures; there's a surprising and happy intimacy to the experience as well, and I frequently fancied that Akers was singing directly to me, though I knew she wasn't.

Things aren't always as they seem.

Reginald Walmesley, scion of Walmesley Chase and a rising star in the Foreign Office, is in love with Emily Rowbottom, a sweet young woman from Vermont. They wish to marry, but they face several obstacles. Reginald's parents, Sir Cedric and Lady Delia, are impoverished (it's 1934, the height of the Great Depression); he is facing prison time for unpaid debts and has taken rather badly to drink, while she is set upon Reginald marrying a rich but ungainly local girl to help reverse the family fortunes. There's also Emily's aunt Millicent, a conservative and highly temperate spinster who is her niece's stern guardian and protector, empowered by the terms of Emily's late father's will to keep the girl from marrying until she turns 25 (i.e., four years from now). When Emily and Millicent come to visit, Lady Delia tries to sabotage the impending nuptials by inviting her eccentric sister Daphne for the same weekend. By coincidence, Reginald's long lost cousin Willard, who goes by Buck, is also visiting that weekend, from Texas (Delia and Daphne's third sister married an American oilman).

This is the set-up for Miriam Jensen Hendrix's new play When Aunt Daphne Went Nude; it's a plot suitable for, say, a zany British sex farce or a Kaufman & Hart-style screwball comedy, with the title suggesting just what sort of raucous second-act climax we're likely to get. But as I said: things aren't always as they seem. Aunt Daphne's propensity for taking off her clothes is no mere loony whim; she is, in fact, hardly the benignly odd but lovable old girl we're expecting. Nor is Millicent the dour push-over we're likely to type her as; nor is Buck just another American innocent abroad. Even dear little Emily will turn out to have brains and a backbone before Hendrix gets through with her in this table-turning, mind-bending, most unusual darkish and serious comedy.

To reveal too many of Hendrix's surprises will ruin things for you. Suffice to say that Aunt Daphne has gotten herself mixed up with a strange cult-like group of embittered,  formerly rich people who believe that Jews are to blame for most of their problems and that the nascent dictator of Germany, Adolph Hitler, is their savior. When she gets herself fired up, as she does more than once during the course of this eventful weekend, she can be pretty inflammatory. However, it's Lady Delia—who is only too happy to agree with her sister if it means getting rid of the unwanted American daughter-in-law-to-be—who is really scary: simple answers are so enticing to the desperate.

Keep your eye on Buck, too; even though he and Aunt Daphne are on opposite sides of the fence (Buck theorizes that Hitler is the antichrist), they are peas in a pod when it comes to fervent belief in this or that obsession.

When Aunt Daphne Went Nude is indisputably earnest in its good intentions, but in terms of execution the results are only mixed. Hendrix isn't as fluent a playwright as her material demands, and so a lot of the political content feels more obviously inserted than it should; the big blow-up in Act Two surrounding Aunt Daphne's threats (of Nazism and nudism) reminded me of the scene with the Upsons in Auntie Mame—commendable for bringing up the issue, but nevertheless somewhat out of the blue. Director Keith Oncale, on the other hand, doesn't seem as comfortable with the purely comic aspects of the play, which contributes further to the production's imbalance; there's a reticence and a tentativeness to the humor and the physicality that makes me wonder whether the (mostly very experienced) cast has gotten all that they need from him. Anchoring the cast are Jane Titus in the title role, Patricia Hodges as Lady Delia, Roy Bacon as Sir Cedric, and Lucille Patton as Millicent Rowbottom—talented and capable veterans all; the standouts, though, are two of the younger actors, Tarah Flanagan, who proves delightfully spunky when at last given the chance as Emily, and Josh Shirley, whose aw-shucks Texas cowboy Buck, reminiscent of a certain sitting American president at times, is a hoot.

Elegant sets and costumes are provided by Gregory Tippit; Doug Filomena does his customary fine work as lighting designer. Susanna Baddiel also deserves special mention as dialect coach, helping the actors achieve a variety of useful accents, from Aunt Daphne's calculatedly cultivated Queen's English to Millicent's terse New England twang.

Because, the United States has traditionally been Israel's ally rather than that of her Arab neighbors, a play like When the Bulbul Stopped Singing can feel a bit like hard medicine to an American audience: it's tough to be told that the "good guys" may sometimes be "bad guys."

But to just stop there is to miss the point of this quietly inflammatory solo theatre work. When the Bulbul Stopped Singing is narrated by a Palestinian—a real person, Raja Shehadeh, on whose memoir this play is based—but its perspective is humanist, not political: Palestinian leaders come in for just as much criticism as Israelis here. This is a play about living a productive, loving life despite the waste and wreckage surrounding one; a requiem for the lost souls and wanton destruction that the violent impulse locked inside mankind all too often brings about. "How like a game it all seemed," Raja muses sadly upon viewing the carnage of the 2002 attack on Ramallah, "a game planned by violent men with grand ambitions, a game played by infantile men who scrawl the name of their leader on a plastic lion."

When the Bulbul Stopped Singing covers a three-week period, in March and April of 2002, during which Israeli tanks rolled into (and over) much of the West Bank city of Ramallah, cornering Yasser Arafat in what looked and felt like (but was not) a martyr-like last stand for the beleaguered leader of the PLO. I remember watching the siege on television; I even remember one scene that Raja describes in vivid detail, something he too witnessed on TV: "...a woman standing on a pile of rubble, her hands flaring up in the air, crying out, 'Jarrafo el shuhada bil jaraafat,' 'they scooped the martyrs with the bulldozers'."

But the play is mostly not about combat or its aftermath; it's about a man trying to feel normal in abnormal times. Raja is trapped alone in his house when the siege of Ramallah begins, his wife, Penny, having gone to a conference in Cairo. Raja is a writer and a lawyer; once an activist, now all he wants, like most of humanity, is to live quietly and be left alone. He's a Christian, by the way, a detail that further reminds us that the "them" being invaded in Ramallah were not just a batch of Muslim terrorists.

For days, he waits fearfully for Israeli soldiers to invade his house, as they did his brother Samer's; to terrorize him with scary weapons and big talk and disrespect his possessions and values by wantonly tearing the place apart. With relief, he finishes his current book and emails it to his publisher, glad that this work, at least, is now safely out of the hands of any would-be enemy. He endures curfew and, during the rare hours when it is lifted, bleak trips to the town center to try to find supplies in stores filled with rotting merchandise. He talks on the phone endlessly to friends and family, checking in on one another. The noise outside is enormous and relentless.

That he gets through all of this—and presumably would get through it again, if and when he has to—is a tribute to human resiliency. That he does so without imploding, without hating, is a tribute to his own humanity.

When the fighting is over, he and his wife Penny (now safely back from Egypt) tour a makeshift exhibition of the carnage:

On the last wall was placed a giant photo collage showing damage to various homes and institutions in Ramallah. I scrutinized the pictures. These acts had not been committed in the heat of battle when a soldier is in fear of his life. The destruction was willful and premeditated. Young men with guns walked in to other people's homes in broad daylight and began breaking, smashing, and destroying... What had made them so full of rage and hatred?.... What will become of them, these young men, when they finally go home?

This is a story that everyone should hear, unsettling and un-traditionally theatrical though it may be. Christopher Simon is the remarkable actor bringing Raja Shehadeh to life in a performance that is riveting and loaded with intelligence; David Grieg is the playwright who dramatized the story, putting it before audiences who will likely otherwise never hear of this man; and Philip Howard, artistic director of the Scottish Traverse Theatre, is the director. To all of these men go our honor and gratitude. Anthony MacIlwaine, the designer, has created a fascinating environment for the piece, a stark white room that represents all the locations Raja takes us to, dominated by what looks like a gorgeous middle eastern carpet on the floor. This turns out to be a mirage made out of purplish-pink sandy material, stuff that Raja can draw maps in or, when the mood demands it, stamp on and destroy—a reminder of this tenuous thing that life always is.

As I listened to Raja describe conditions during the siege of Ramallah, I thought to myself how lucky Americans have always been, never (so far) having to live through an invasion of their homeland. How would we cope? Would we find the dignity and grace that Raja does to endure and transcend? As soon as the performance was over, a woman near the front of the audience jumped angrily out of her seat and shouted, to no one in particular, that when she came to the theatre she expected to be entertained. I don't know the lady, but I feel sad that she couldn't open her mind and heart to hear this play, let alone appreciate how privileged she is to be able to spend a peaceful hour or two in the company of strangers and get to hear—anything.

Meet Greta, Marilyn, and Marlena. No, they're not a sister act from The Lawrence Welk Show.  They're the Sisters of La Casa De Los Almas Perdidos (The House of Lost Souls). Yes, they're nuns: just not the kind you've ever come across in a musical comedy.

This is NOT The Sound of Music.

Sister Greta is a shopaholic. Sister Marlena is a little bit man-crazy. And Sister Marilyn writes plays, including one that has just won a $5,000 prize. And boy, can they use the money! It's 1992, somewhere in El Salvador. A revolution is raging and a terrible drought has dried up the rivers and reservoirs. Yet the sisters at Almas Perdidos have not given up hope, and their faith is rewarded by that much-needed check and, almost simultaneously, the arrival of Father John Connolly. Both give the order the shot in the arm they've been waiting for.

He has enabled us to organize here at the orphanage in unimaginable ways [says Sister Marlena about Father Connelly]. For instance, we no longer have to force upon the children our Catholic laws. We let them keep their pagan saints and statues, talismen even. We don’t even force them to speak English. John insists we try to speak Spanish to them. And he’s been so helpful with our musical. If only he weren’t a priest.

He's not; he is in fact an American entertainer/revolutionary named Zeke, and he's soon joined at Almas Perdidos by his old friend Jake, who he introduces to the nuns as Father Francisco Lopez. Before the show is over, these five will write a musical comedy and free dozens of counter-revolutionaries from a Salvador prison. Lovers will unite, confessions will be heard, and Sister Marilyn will hear voices and wear a blue lame mini skirt.

Welcome to the world of Where Sleeping Gods Lie..., the mirthful and mischievously subversive new musical by Sharon Fogarty. Fogarty, one of downtown theatre's most inventive and, I fear, underappreciated geniuses, pokes gentle but very serious fun at organized religion and religious dogma, American interference abroad, and musical comedy in this pixilated and unabashedly modest little show. When the nuns find out that Sister Marilyn has won the playwriting contest, they sing:

MARLENA: We’ll buy cream colored ponies
For the children to ride
MARILYN: Crisp apple strudel
So they’ll feel something inside
GRETA: And we’ll cook the wild goose with the moon on her wings
And then we’ll sing our favorite thing is…
ALL: Everything. We are in need of everything!

When things take a turn for the worse, later on in the show, Father Lopez (who, you will recall, is not actually a priest—not even Catholic, he doesn't think) leads the sisters in a prayer:

Dear God. How could you do such a horrible thing to a plane full of people? What the hell is the matter with you? Do you think it’s funny? To send a plane full of people to a starving country, only coming here to help us out, maybe even release some innocent prisoners and then you just dash them from the sky like so many bugs under a magnifying glass? What the fuck is your problem? Amen.

This is NOT Nunsense.

Zany, naughty, sweet and deliberately (slightly) slapdash, Where Sleeping Gods Lie... is performed with vigor and warmth by a cast of six, all of whom are regular Fogarty collaborators. Karen Christie Ward, Catherine Rogers, and Fogarty herself are delightful as Marilyn, Greta, and Marlena, respectively; Fogarty also gives herself a delicious cameo as a villager named Senora Discontenta con Todos whose musical confession to Father Connolly is one of the show's comic highlights. Matthew Porter plays a variety of supporting roles very humorously, most notably a prison warden who is also the improbably smooth Master of Ceremonies of a touring prison entertainment (his musical number, a hilariously overripe attack on the American propensity for world domination, is sort of awesomely politically incorrect at the moment). Jason Grossman is terrific as Father Lopez, making the most of a couple of opportunities to steal the show for a few moments, one when he teaches the nuns to dance (in the improbably titled "Cheeks Together..."), and the other when he improvises jazz riffs around an "Alleluia." Steve Deighan is Father Connolly, believably embodying a transformation from disorientated opportunism to empowered conviction as his character takes the strange and wonderful journey depicted here.

Irreverence has seldom been this devout; reverence has seldom been this much fun. I commend When Sleeping Gods Lie... to you heartily: this is off-off-Broadway doing what it does best—taking audiences to places they probably never dreamed of going, with healthy dollops of entertainment and enlightenment along the way.

Where You Now Shall Go, a new theatre piece by Stone Soup Theatre Arts, is about a solitary man wandering the world looking for a suitable place to lead his people. His travels take him to a variety of strange places, none of which will do, because each of them exists under oppressive, arbitrary rules that curtail individual freedoms. The first is a whimsical domain where everybody plays hopscotch all day long—but nobody's ever allowed to move out of the confines of their own personal "board." Another is a land where slaves toil in the fields for the benefit of a malevolent ruler who controls not only all of the means of production but the means of communication as well. Yet another is an exotic country where people are restricted to using only one of their five senses.

The point of this is easy to discern, especially given a program note that says "To have the gift of speech, of assembly, of protest, is to have great freedom; however, with freedom comes responsibility. It isn't exclusive: to be truly free, we must ensure that others are also."

The vehicle for this exploration of our First Amendment duties and privileges is allegory, an extremely difficult and delicate form; I respect the folks at Stone Soup for their chutzpah in even attempting it and for their imagination and wit in fashioning an original tale that feels timeless and ingenious if occasionally a bit heavy-handed. What's to be admired even more is the stagecraft that director Randy Anderson has devised to make this story dazzlingly theatrical: gorgeous imagery like the use of umbrellas to represent huge flying buzzards, and  very specific gestures and movements that define each of the strange lands we visit during the play with real economy. The central image is especially striking—a puppet, animated in turn by different subsets of the seven-person company, in the role of the wanderer. The puppet has neither head nor body; he's defined by his clothes—shirt, pants, shoes, and a baseball cap that shows us where he is at all times, whether it's atop his invisible head or being held, respectfully, by unseen hands.

In between the episodes of the main story are interspersed monologues which recount some of the company's personal experiences touching on the First Amendment; several of these are quite interesting and pointed, such as one that depicts (disappointing) moments in the life of a political activist working on the streets of New York ("Excuse me, do you have a moment to hear about Greenpeace?").

The piece, which lasts about an hour, is performed with enormous energy by the ensemble, who also wrote it; their names are Nat Cauldwell, Teresa Jusino, Marsha Martinez, Maria Schirmer, Shawn Shafner, Ben Trawick-Smith, and Rachel Wahl.

In William Hamilton’s hilarious new farce, White Chocolate, Brendan and Deborah Beale, an aristocratic couple—she's Jewish and he's a WASP—wake up one morning in their Fifth Avenue triplex to discover that overnight they have become black. They are still themselves “inside,” as they realize, but their skin color, their features, have been inexplicably changed. After getting over the shock and confusion, they attempt to proceed with this special day, a day in which Brendan will learn whether or not he has been selected to be the new Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To further complicate matters, Brendan’s sister Vivian, another Boston Brahmin, is visiting after discovering that her husband is having an affair with his much younger secretary. Brendan and Deborah’s daughter, Louise, is also dropping by today to announce her surprise engagement to an Asian Harvard senior, an event that should have been the race issue of the day.

So how does Hamilton get through this terrain without offending anyone? By offending everyone, of course, with doses of laughter generously poured throughout. The script was deemed too politically incorrect for a West Coast production, but no one in the diverse audience at the Century Center for the Performing Arts seemed to be more offended or less amused than anybody else.

Best known for his satirical skewering of the WASP-ocracy in his New Yorker cartoons, Hamilton has a great deal of experience with one-liners, and the script is rich with thoughtful jabs and witty punches. But there are broader strokes too, from which every absurd morsel is wrung. In one long hilarious scene that will have you squirming in your seat, the drunken sister, thinking she's at some sort of race-themed costume party, appears as a black-faced maid. Is this more offensive to black people or to WASPs?

I was certainly drawn to this play because of the cast. I am a big fan of Lynn Whitfield, who plays Deborah Beale, and who has never looked more stunning than here. She nails the role of the self-proclaimed Jewish Princess, a role one might not easily imagine her in. She is commanding on stage, with an effortless movement quality, and a strong, unique voice. Her character, a columnist for a society magazine, is a catalyst in many ways, more excited than horrified by what has happened. She embraces this fabulous new look—she wishes she were blacker, in fact—and the experiences it will open for her.

As Brendan Beale, Reg E. Cathey pulls out all of his classical training. Best known to me as the nastiest ruler of the Oswald State Penitentiary in the HBO series Oz, he is a delightful surprise as the confused society patron who takes a witty pleasure in his own social stumbling and new self-awareness. At the performance I saw, Cathey accidentally split some of the 150-year-old scotch central to the scene onto the library desk. In a wonderful bit of improv, Cathey found a moment later in the scene to dip his fingers in the spilt scotch and lick them; a moment when one more drop of scotch might be just what is needed.

And then there is Julie Halston as the comic foil, Brendan’s sister, Vivian. She begins the play with nuanced satire, finding layers of commentary in every line. In a conversation with the black woman she does not realize is her sister-in-law, she proclaims her tolerance, pointing to her abolitionist heritage as evidence. But she has already assumed the woman to be hired help (before noticing her Oscar de la Renta suit), revealing the very subconscious racism she now denies. As the character gets drunker and drunker, she becomes manic and self-revealing, leaving a wake of laughter in her unstoppable path. Nowhere more than here does the play refuse to tiptoe lightly over its delicate subject matter. It is the type of role actors pray for, and that few can completely handle. Halston shamelessly devours it.

If the play doesn’t say anything particularly profound about race, maybe that’s best. The audience left the theatre unscathed, and thoroughly entertained. Maybe, on one level, race is just the costume we wear. Maybe we should “all just get along.” One thing is true for sure. It’s always a good idea to take a look at ourselves, and at each other, and have a good, hearty laugh.

A son or daughter’s search for one or both of his/her parents has the eternal potential for enchantment and catharsis. Not only is it the premise of numerous fairy tales, but it is a life-long project for all of us beginning when we are quite young. Some of us are trying to fathom a parent who has died; others to “get” one who is still living. It can be a quest to uncover a father’s true identity or an inquest into a mother’s violent death. The motivations feel endless—to atone, exorcise, forgive, avenge, confirm, or disprove—but all successful searches ultimately lead to a useful bit of self-knowledge.

Michael Raynor is a fantastic performer and it is worth going to see his one-man show, Who is Floyd Stearn? for that reason alone. Too, the play itself has a lot going for it: we watch him zip through time from ages 3 to 35 to 9 to 24, etc., as he tries to put together the story of why his father abandoned him seemingly without a second thought when he was seven years old. But the impact that the journey has on him—one that ultimately brings him peace—is not yet as intense or satisfying for his audience.

I say “not yet” because many of the elements are here for a compelling narrative: a chance encounter with a cousin that is straight out of Dickens (if Dickens happened to write erotic fiction on the side) which leads to a surreal meeting with his paternal grandmother whose memories are distinctly at odds with those of his hard-working, but martyrous mother—a high school valedictorian made to marry and procreate rather than go to Harvard, as she had hoped. None of his sources (which are few, and I’ll address that momentarily) can agree on what sort of man Floyd Stearn was: passionately paternal or a deadbeat dad? No one can agree on whether he had one or two or any college degrees, and even his burial ground is unknown.

Raynor does honest, specific, and moving embodiments of his family members, and is vibrant as himself. But from a dramatic standpoint, there needs to be a better investigation in order for this personal obsession to become a shared one. The conclusions that he comes to—based on first-hand information from only his mother and his grandmother, in addition to his own memories from childhood— feel almost too easy, too acceptable. If he is personally fulfilled by these discoveries, I’m genuinely happy for him. However, I, as an audience member, wanted to know how his sister, just a year older, factored into this quest; I wanted him to get on the Internet and do some sleuthing. I wanted him to find where his father was buried. I feel I’ve missed a critical step in his process, an event that might make me feel as bewildered as he is at the beginning and as at peace by the end.

Larry Moss certainly deserves quite a bit of credit for coaxing and guiding such excellent performances out of Raynor, but I think, given the nature of the project, he shares a bit of the fault for not pushing him further, if not in his actual exploration, than in the depth and scope with which he shares it. Still, I believe Who is Floyd Stearn? is an entertaining and very promising piece of storytelling with untapped powers. What Raynor (and Moss) need do is turn our interest into fascination; our curiosity into obsession.