Chicken Delight, written by John Glines about a dozen years ago and now revived by DJM Productions at their charming new L'il Peach space in Midtown, is a cute, fizzy, little gay sex farce. This means that it's all about a group of silly people racing around foolishly in an effort—never realized—to have sex with somebody; in other words, it's just like any other sex farce except all the characters in it are men. Glines is pretty good at this sort of thing, and so Chicken Delight (the title refers not to food but to a nickname given to young guys by their elders) is loaded with double entendres and outlandish coincidences. It's naughty, occasionally even dirty, but never vulgar.

The setup is this: a helpful fellow named Moose (never seen in the play) has lent his Tribeca loft to two of his friends for a weekend of fun (i.e., illicit) activity. The loft comes equipped with a hunky young houseboy named Harry and his lover, the disapproving chef/dance instructor Jesus. Jesus is the jealous/possessive type and when we first meet him he's fretting about Harry's two ex-lovers, both of whom are supposedly far far away.

The two weekend guests are Splash Gordon, a handsome and famous swimmer with an outsized ego and permanently waterlogged ears, and Brockley Spears, an improbably named, wealthy, effete Southerner. Each has invited a young man to spend the weekend with him; their regular "lovers" are both conveniently visiting sick aunts in Connecticut. If you think that's an unlikely coincidence, well, brace yourself: even unlikelier ones are still to come. This is, remember, a farce.

The young men eventually turn up, neither proving to be as intelligent or inexperienced or well-bred as advertised. Splash's guest is named Neal (leading to a number of jokes mixing up his name with the verb "kneel"; it's that kind of play). Brock's is the even dimmer Randy. You should be able to guess whose lovers—and ex-lovers—they turn out to be.

The fun is in all the wordplay—wicked and often terrible puns, suggestive remarks, and so on—and in the outsized characterizations that Glines provides these fellows. Everything proceeds,  lightheartedly and sexily, exactly as you expect. Jokes at just about everybody's expense abound. For example, at one point Randy tries to find some ambient music, and picks up the remote control for an unseen stereo system. He clicks through what amounts to a who's who of gay icons, from Barbra Streisand to Ethel Merman to Judy Garland, before turning the thing off in disgust. Glines knows his target audience.

Dave McCracken is producer, director, and designer of the show. It's a labor of love, and if the pacing isn't always as spot-on tight as it could be, it's a more than credible rendering of the script. The actors' abilities are somewhat variable, ranging from the clearly inexperienced Will Barrios and Brett Parks as Neal and Randy, respectively, to the more expert Christian Sebastian, who steals the show almost every time he appears on stage as the charmingly overbearing (and over-accented) Jesus. Michael Eisenbrown does a fine job as Harry, but Dale Church is hampered by the fact that he's too young (compared to the others on stage) for the role of Brockley Spears. Best of all is Gil Bar-Sela, who is hilarious as the empty-headed but full-of-himself Splash. Bar-Sela's characterization rises above caricature to fully-fleshed out satire, and is a treat to watch.

American Sign Language (ASL) can convey the most vulnerable emotions with the magic and grandiosity of fireworks. And when performed with the wit and celerity of an actress such as Alexandria Wailes, this intimate spectacle can upstage the well-meaning words of most any playwright. Mark Medoff, and his play, Children of a Lesser God, currently in revival by the Keen Company at the Connelly Theater (starring Wailes), meets with such a blessed / cursed fate.

The play, a love story with a social conscience, revolves around the relationship between Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who refuses to learn to speak, and James Leeds, a speech therapist who thinks her life would be much better off if she did. Sarah’s ostensibly stubborn resistance is really a fear that this compromise will corrupt her identity—what will her relationship be to the non-hearing community if she allows herself to participate in the hearing world? Medoff, like James, earnestly seems to suggest that this compromise is but a plank to further bridge the gap between her inner and outer worlds (indeed, other people are unknowable enough when they do share the same language). Yet beyond the pragmatism of it all, neither the therapist (nor the playwright himself) makes a very convincing case for verbal expression.

Words continually fail James, and Medoff’s most poetic verbiage cannot hold a candle to the vivid images ASL can conjure. I have not seen the play staged before, nor have I seen the 1986 film version, but I suspect this may have been the case in those, as well. In fact, this phenomenon may be by design. But the result, to put it plainly, is that James’s speeches—be they addressed to the audience (for he is also our narrator) or confessional reminiscences from his childhood (usually addressed to Sarah, but seemingly dictated by his capacity to sign)—are both didactic and dull.

Jeffry Denman does his best with them and is a suitable if not quite a fair match for Wailes, who already has the advantage of her character being utterly fascinating to both the narrator and the playwright, and whose signing and stillness are equally enthralling. (Attention must be paid here to Jackie Roth, who is credited as both the ASL translator and coach.) However, the Keen Company’s production does not have much else on offer.

Director Blake Lawrence has chosen to heighten a certain sacrosanctity in the play that she might have better worked against. James is overly-earnest, nearly ever-apologetic, but his moments alone with the audience (if theoretically few and far between) feel interminable; the moments of stage action without words or ASL (usually involving James and Sarah falling deeper into love or making up after a fight) come across as a little precious. (There are two lovely moments— one at the end of each act—which are notable exceptions.)

The ensemble—in addition to Wailes and Denman, a group of talented actors in not-terribly-thankful roles— has a rather awkward go of it as they navigate Nathan Heverin’s multiplatformed but flat-seeming set (though he does have a bit of platform that doubles surprisingly and nicely as a dinner table). And, obviously, there is more to the play as well, events that dictate the need for such an ensemble. But the subplots are just not as interesting to describe as what ASL and specifically Wailes can do without words, which is, at times, breathtaking.

You had to be there.

That's the one indisputable and defining thing about theatre: if you didn't see it, then you'll never see it. It's with this nod toward utter impermanence that authentic Broadway legend Chita Rivera concludes her electrifying new show—which explains why, among other things, you'll never really understand why Chita Rivera is legendary unless you've had the chance to see her do what she does in a dark room in front of a thousand strangers night after night after night, just as she's done for her entire, astonishingly long professional life. In Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life, we get taken to some pretty amazing "there"s: the "Dance at the Gym" in West Side Story;  the opening number of The Rink and the title song of Kiss of the Spider Woman (the two shows that won Rivera her Tony Awards); on tour with Call Me Madam and Guys and Dolls; the introduction of "All That Jazz" in Chicago.

For this reason alone, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life is pure gold. In the first act, she re-creates her first triumph, as Anita in West Side Story, performing Leonard Bernstein's glorious "Mambo" to choreography by—she reveals, for the first time publicly—Peter Gennaro. It's spectacular. Later, she recalls her first meeting with Gwen Verdon (and does a priceless Verdon imitation to boot), to whom she pays fitting and lovely tribute in "Nowadays," the song they introduced in Chicago.

 In the second act, she delivers the show-stopper to end all show-stoppers, a medley of numbers she introduced from several of her shows (including three Kander & Ebb gems, "Class," "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer," and "Where You Are") framed by a nifty new song by Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty. This comes right after a brilliant segment called "The Choreographers," in which Rivera provides what amounts to a master class on American musical theatre dance, explaining with splendid clarity the ideas and characteristics of the work of Jack Cole, Gennaro, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse, while the show's dancers illustrate them in silhouette behind a scrim and she demonstrates some of the finer points of each up close and personal. It's a breathtaking piece, magnificently executed by Rivera and her librettist Terrence McNally and director/choreographer Graciele Daniele: I don't think I've ever learned so much about these four artists in 30+ years of theatregoing as I did in the seven or eight minutes of this extraordinary tribute.

There's plenty more, of course, and it's true that some of it is not so exciting or impressive. Rivera's journey through her life is at once self-effacing and archetypal, tracing the arc of the Broadway "gypsy" life (i.e., the dancers who perform in the choruses of one musical after another, building a career, usually anonymously) in anecdotes, snippets of songs and dances, and reminiscences. There's a little bit of gossip: some famous names are bandied about (Antonio Banderas, Liza Minnelli, Elaine Stritch); some personal milestones are noted (the birth of her daughter Lisa, her embarrassment when she asked one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a drink at a White House reception). And there's more than a little shoptalk, which is clearly what she prefers trading in: sure, she got a big break and became a star, but it's evident that Rivera is still a gypsy at heart, and the sequences about ballet class and auditions, for example, feel genuine. The show's title is deliberate: this is not A dancer's life but THE dancer's life. And the passion at the core of that life turns out to be at once unyielding and ineffable; it's the thing that makes a legend do a show as rigorous as this one eight times a week when she's 70-something years old. She's got to be there until she has to stop.

Kudos to lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer and set designer Loy Arcenas, who have created a fittingly glamorous and abstract environment for the show; and to the small but high-powered corps of dancers who support Rivera brilliantly throughout the show (Richard Amaro, Cleve Asbury, Lloyd Culbreath, Malinda Farrington, Edgard Gallardo, Deidre Goodwin, Madeleine Kelly, Richard Montoya, Liana Ortiz, Lainie Sakakura, Alex Sanchez, and Allyson Tucker).

The finale trumps everything that comes before: Rivera performs "All That Jazz," with the original Fosse choreography meticulously re-created by Tony Stevens and danced to perfection by the ensemble. We're talking unforgettable; we're talking indelible; we're talking goosebumps. I didn't get to be there the first time this particular lightning struck on Broadway, back in 1975. Boy, am I grateful to be there now.

Judging purely on appearances, Christine Jorgensen Reveals should be a very simple little performance piece. It seems, after all, quite straightforward. Based on an hour-long recorded interview between Nipsey Russell and Christine Jorgensen from 1958, the entirety of the play's economical 49 minutes is a presentation of that interview. That, of course, is an extraordinary simplification of Bradford Louryk's gem of a performance, and it's also where the "simple" in this piece ends.

Jorgensen herself is something of a fascination. At one time considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, and one of the most publicized, she was a singer, dancer, and cabaret star who regularly toured the U.S., at one point being banned in Boston ("without ever having been there" as she so aptly describes it). She was also formerly known as George, an ex-GI based out of Fort Dix, and the first American operative transsexual.

Christine is witty, charming, and exceedingly loquacious. As for Louryk's performance, witty and charming are the only elements that apply. And they're the only one's that need to, as the entire piece comprises only the actual recording of the original interview, with Louryk, in full fifties stage-siren drag, lip-synching to Jorgensen's words, as collaborator Rob Grace, in prerecorded video form, lip-synchs to Nipsey Russell's voice while interviewing, well, Christine Jorgensen. To recap: A man is performing as a woman who used to be a man in the actual woman's voice and is being interviewed by a black man who is portrayed by a white man on video and speaking in the voice of the original man as recorded on vinyl. Got that? Good, because after about a minute and a half in front of Louryk's performance, that plastic remove disappears like the subtitles in a great foreign film. What you're left with is a compelling autobiographical account of this extraordinary woman's life including, but not limited to, her physical gender transition. The story alone is compelling, but when contextualized in the way that Louryk has done here, the sometimes brutal comparisons that arise between this interview's 1958 and our own time propel the piece from a Hall of Presidents-type academic study in character to something truly engaging and utterly contemporary.

Louryk's Christine is every bit what you may imagine the original to be. He brings us the classic 1950s intelligent socialite performer replete with indulgent eye rolls at Russell's "Let's dance" reaction to her assertion of her interest in men to the touching near-cry when detailing the few times that harsh words have come to her. Grace fills his space just as well, including Russell’s reactions from everything to water pipes banging in the studio to his producer signaling the end of the show off camera, while firmly focusing attention on his interviewee. Both performers bring a constant glint of fun to their performances and are so in their world that they keep the interest level from ever flagging while deftly walking the fine line of going "too big" without ever crossing over it.

Mention must also go to sound designer Rob Kaplowitz, projection designer Kevin French, and director Josh Hecht. All three of these men have spent such a great amount of attention to the slightest details of their work that they have allowed the simple stage set-up of an old time television studio—a hanging microphone and an actor in a chair —to become a fully realized and complete world. Kaplowitz has brought every sound from the recorded interview into this world, from the banging pipes to the tapping of Christine's fingernails on her chair, giving the actors a playground of sounds to reference and play with. French's video design keeps Grace's image from ever becoming a dull one through his use of static, cross frequency imaging, and the occasional vertical hold jump. Hecht has brought all of these elements together with a fine eye to the fact that everything on stage, especially in a piece with as many potential pitfalls as this could have, is active and alive, without ever drawing away from, and always focusing on, the subject of the performance: Louryk/Jorgensen.

Christine Jorgensen Reveals is far from an "evening of theatre", but what it is is a grand example of the impact performance can have in taking a single event in time and memorializing it in the best and strongest way possible, enabling that moment to survive and continue to affect the world in new and different ways around each corner. This is a bold and singular show. It also leaves plenty of time for you afterward to have a drink and talk about it for as long as it inspires you to, which is quite likely going to take some time.

The agent of suffering is Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (C.J.D.), a neurodegenerative disease marked by arrhythmic twitching, a staggering walk, and a swift deterioration of intellectual faculties. It can be both infectious and inherited, and unlike the decade or so Alzheimer’s takes for its onset and denouement, C.J.D. claims its victims—about 300 American sexagenarians annually—within a year of diagnosis. This is truly horrifying indeed. But the challenge in making a piece of theatre about the disease is that it must leave us with more than a sense of “Geez, I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”

Jordan, the sole performer and himself a neurologist in residence at Case Western’s University Hospitals of Cleveland, is a zany guy who is able to transition between silliness and sincerity with ease. One minute he’s playing the bongos in a grass skirt, and next thing you know he’s swooped down to the piano for some Beethoven. But the story he wishes to tell and the manner in which he wants to tell it are yet oil and water. His showmanship, his theatrical devises (including an arbitrarily applied voice-altering microphone), do not illuminate his subject—in fact, they undermine his passion.

And Jordan’s passion is precisely the point of this piece. We may describe an illness as dramatic, but it is difficult to really dramatize facts; the objective is to get to the human response: the terror, the humiliation, the humor in the experience of the illness. And he has something to say about a lot of things surrounding C.J.D.—the Bush administration and the people who voted him in; the dubious role of drug companies such as Pfizer in the health industry; the misperception of neurologists in contemporary medicine—but some of these topics are closer to the heart of this play than others. So there is, in fact, a passionate point to be made, but Jordan must sort through this abundance of ideas and convictions to build the argument he wishes to make.

C.J.D. is an entertaining ninety minutes. But C.J.D. can be more powerful than it is: transcending the lecture, the facts of the illness, and entering a more universal realm—the even more uncertain and bewildering phenomenon we call the human condition.

The thrill of discovering a bright new talent is one of the indisputable joys of theatregoing. Anyone currently seeking that thrill need not look any further than the new political comedy, Clean Alternatives, which features the work of an exciting new writer and an equally exciting actor—both of whom are the same person: Brian Dykstra. He has written a sharp, funny, potent, and oh-so-timely play about corporate greed and the environment; and he’s also giving a ferocious performance in one of the lead roles as a mercenary, big shot lawyer. The irony here is that Dykstra isn’t some fresh-faced newcomer who’s just magically appeared out of nowhere. He’s a prolific veteran who’s been around for years (see his website for further proof of this). But, this is my first encounter with him, so he’s new to me. And I couldn’t ask for a better introduction to his work. In a perfect world, Clean Alternatives would be the vehicle that exposes Dykstra to a wider audience, as both a writer and an actor. This is stimulating, whip-smart theatre that should not be missed.

Jackie runs her family-owned-and-operated business, which has been around for decades. One day, she meets with two lawyers, Mr. Cutter and Mr. Slate, who represent a large corporation, appropriately named Planet America. Noticing that her company operates at a small financial loss every month, Planet America offers to keep it, and her, fiscally afloat for the next ten years. There’s only one string attached. It seems that Jackie’s company and Planet America both manufacture their goods in the same Midwestern state. Therefore, the deal is contingent on Jackie agreeing to trade her company’s pollution rights to Planet America if, for any reason, she should go out of business any time in the next decade.

Cutter and Slate are quick to point out that the Planet America is not interested in buying her company, and are not asking Jackie to sell it to them. And, since the corporation’s board of directors would prefer to keep everything hush-hush, there is no written contract for Jackie to sign, or any other paper trail documenting this potential arrangement. A verbal or handshake agreement will suffice (especially since, as Cutter and Slate tell Jackie, both are equally as binding in court). What gives here? It seems that Planet America is positioning itself to pollute the environment more than it already does (Jackie’s is not the only company they’ve approached)—which, apparently, is more cost effective than switching their factories over to safer, more environmentally friendly equipment and practices. And, totally legal.

If Clean Alternatives was confined strictly to the negotiations between Jackie and the lawyers, it would still be an effective and entertaining production. Dykstra gets things going right off the bat, with the lawyers coming in and hitting Jackie with a one-two barrage of word games and doubletalk, then quickly move on to playing Bad Cop-Worse Cop. (These guys would fit right into several of David Mamet’s plays.) They so fill the room with their corporate sense of entitlement that when the two men finally pause, after several minutes of non-stop banter, Jackie asks, “Are you waiting for me to say something?” More banter and doubletalk ensues, with Jackie finally admitting, “I don’t understand what you’re asking.” Perfect. Cutter and Slate have got her right where they want her.

Or do they? Jackie turns out to be savvier than expected. And the lawyers aren’t as scary as they initially seem to be. Chinks in their armor start to show through. Slate dislikes being interrupted. Cutter has a lot of pent-up anger (towards women, the Chicago Cubs, and Steve Bartman), and frequently misuses language: “occstensibly” for “ostensibly”; “takin’ a cotton to” instead of “takin’ a shine to.” By the time the meeting ends (surprisingly, only halfway through Act I), it’s obvious that there’s more to Clean Alternatives than meets the eye. The men drop their game faces, and the audience sees new sides of them. Slate admits he can’t take this type of work and lifestyle any more. Working for “The Man” is no longer good for his mental well-being. Cutter reveals his extended foray into Eastern Religion. Once Jackie appears again, running for political office and delivering slam poetry-style stump speeches, it’s clear that Dykstra has more on his mind than just conference room maneuvering. Clean Alternatives is full of other surprises—about mankind’s search for meaning, the disparity between knowing what’s right and doing what’s right, and the civic power of the people—that I will leave for you to discover on your own.

Dykstra is smart enough to know that big business, and the other special interest groups who have the government in their pocket, really run the country. But, he’s also optimistic enough to think that people can still influence public opinion enough to strike fear in the hearts of the power brokers and make them change their tune. Both sides get equal voice in Clean Alternatives. Dykstra also leaves no ambiguity regarding where he stands on the issues he brings up. He asks questions and answers them (a rarity in writing these days), which gives the audience plenty of room to figure out which side they’re on.

The author also writes wonderful speeches, full of color, wit, humor, and revelation. They err towards the long-ish side, which works most of the time. There are a couple of instances where Dykstra seems to fall so in love with his words—especially their rhythm—that he momentarily loses sight of the larger picture he’s trying to paint (as does the audience). But, on the whole, his writing here is terrific.

Director Margarett Perry does a terrific job, making sure that everything coheres thematically. The centerpiece of Maruti Evans’s set—a $100 bill that covers the back wall—hovers appropriately over the proceedings. Jennifer R. Halpern’s perfect costumes—Cutter and Slate’s custom-tailored power suits, Jackie’s homespun business casual wear—speak volumes about the characters from the moment we first see them. And the acting is terrific. Sue-Anne Morrow is superb as Jackie, grounding her character’s liberalism in clear-eyed choice rather than starry-eyed optimism. Mark Boyett is excellent as Slate, making him both believably hard-nosed and sensitive. And, as Cutter, Dykstra is sensational, giving a hilarious, scene-stealing performance that is full of sly smarts and killer instinct.

And, what if Clean Alternatives turns out to not be the vehicle for which Dysktra’s considerable talents are “discovered” by the public-at-large? Never fear. At the rate that he seems to work, it’ll only be a matter of time (probably sooner rather than later) before they are.

Open movement: work of people asking themselves and each other, "What is necessary to do?" And as an artist, how to engage oneself actively with another human being? What is the practice of an artist who does not offer finished works of choreography, theater, or painting?....I am involved in developing craft in working conditions which have no intention of exhibiting or presenting artistic products. What kind of craft can develop? How are the qualities of presence, attentiveness, spontaneity, and simplicity spawned and cultivated as techniques much in the same way a dancer works on the plié?
    - Peter Rose, 1979

Historians know that in order to understand where we're going, we have to understand where we've been. Cleansing the Senses, an extraordinary theatrical happening all on its own, offers people who make, participate in, observe, and/or love theatre in 2006 a unique opportunity to (re)discover where much that we take for granted came from. Its creator and performer, Peter Rose, was one of the founders of P.S. 122 in 1979. Rose has returned to his one-time New York theatrical home to share this solo performance piece, and all who care about the kind of work done by P.S. 122 and its counterparts all over downtown Manhattan should take it in.

The piece lasts about an hour, and is essentially a stream-of-consciousness ramble through Rose's psyche and his past. He's assembled it from such diverse elements as poems by T.S. Eliot and Bertolt Brecht, one of Shakespeare's sonnets, excerpts from the works of James Joyce, a traditional spiritual called "Diamonds in the Rough," a blessing from the Talmud, and his own monologues from 1978 through the present. It's organized into seven "movements" (I'm adopting that term because Rose has labeled the show's components in the program a "Performance Score"; it seems to fit.) I didn't always follow the train of thought and indeed some of the pieces, in German, Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew, I didn't understand at all except in the most rudimentary fashion. But Cleansing the Senses comes together as a powerful piece, one that touched me deeply in a couple of places and provided me with important persepective about a lot of things that matter to me in contemporary theatre art.

What the "score" doesnt' hint at, not at all, is the variety and physicality of this remarkable work. Rose tells us in a program note that "the performance action is an attempt to confront the actor with his limitations...[to] challenge him and to reveal his humanity and vulnerability, the light within." Normally I'd be inclined to dismiss this as so much high-falutin' verbiage, but this is precisely what occurs in Cleansing the Senses. Though Rose clearly intends this piece to be performed for an audience, and though he sometimes connects very directly and individually with his auditors, it was always clear to me that Cleansing the Senses is for him—that the specific selections and the very demanding and complex physical movements comprising the work are meaningful and necessary to him.

He's moving through a journey here, a cathartic one; we're along for the ride. And, behold: the qualities of presence, attentiveness, spontaneity, and simplicity—I'm quoting from Rose; see the top of this review—are indeed spawned and cultivated. We leave the space—him, I presume, as well as us—in a state of heightened engagement and awareness, our senses not only "cleansed" but purged, ready to experience whatever's ahead with a renewed energy and sense of purpose. This is truly an inspiring theatrical event.

Let me add that there is a sort of narrative here, charting Rose's early career in New York, California, and Europe in the late '70s and '80s. It's fascinating theatre history and a bit of a cautionary tale as well, as Rose chides his younger self publicly for pinning his career hopes on an appearance on the TV program thirtysomething that I'm guessing never actually happened.

But the shape of the show and its implementation amount to a master class in the theatrical techniques that Rose and his contemporaries—disciples of Grotowski all—pioneered two and three decades ago: more theatre history, of a hands-on sort, not unlike the Wooster Group's most recent show, Poor Theater.

And then there's the hopeful subtext: a never-ending search for meaning and fulfillment, a journey through doors that are ever open but could someday close, an appreciation of the value of ritual and traditional forms for an ethos bent on inventing new ones.

A riveting, affirming, transforming experience, this: Rose has much to teach and share, and I am grateful to have had an opportunity to partake.

This evening of Noel Coward songs proves to be a bit of puzzlement. With two very worthy revues of Coward’s music already in existence, Oh Coward and Cowardy Custard, why attempt another? One could argue that the prolific artist certainly wrote enough songs for several more revues, but the quality of all the pieces will inevitably not be the same. I’m a big fan of Coward’s work and always welcome a chance to hear his material, but many of the songs in this show are already in the other revues, and some of the additional ones are simply not Coward’s best work.

The evening starts out with the unique premise that characters from four of Coward's plays are gathered to see him—Elyot Chase (of Private Lives) played by Tom Beckett, Judith Bliss (Hay Fever) played by Gerrianne Raphael, Tony (Star Quality) played by Zeb Homison, and Elvira (Blithe Spirit) played by Natalie Silverlieb. They are joined by the Cooper Grodin, who is billed simply as The Pianist (but occasionally joins in as a vocalist as well). John Haegele and James Ryan Sloan also appear briefly as non-singing hunky “eye candy” waiters. The problem is, that after introducing themselves as the characters, this theme is almost never mentioned for the rest of the evening.

Vocally there is a varying range of ability. The more mature cast members, Raphael and Beckett, seem comfortable with their material and capture the style of Coward more successfully than the others, who could also benefit from more sessions with their British dialect coach. Some of the high points include Raphael’s renditions of "I Like America" and "The Party’s Over Now" and Beckett’s "Mrs. Worthington" and "Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans." This show does have some gems that you won’t see elsewhere, but at over two hours including an intermission, it could benefit from some trimming.

Staging and choreography by Daniel T. Lavender are simple and effective, and the lighting by James Bedell has some nice mood moments. Set and costume design is by Anne Lommel, and special mention must be made of the instrumentalists, pianist Cooper Grodin, percussionist Jason Holmes, and bass player Byrne Klay. Their talents and ability to follow and support the vocalists adds immeasurably to the evening.

A dying woman planning her own funeral amidst a family motionless with shock and grief—the premise of British playwright Laura Wade’s Colder Than Here—is not exactly unmined dramatic territory. But Wade has kept the tone light and gentle, drawn an appealing bunch of characters, and has been rewarded with a terrific production at MCC Theater, under the direction of Abigail Morris.

We first encounter Myra picnicking in a cemetery with her formerly bulimic and heavily mascara’ed daughter Jenna, who seems too distracted by her current dead-end romance to wholeheartedly embrace this particular episode of “Let’s Find the Perfect Funeral Plot.” In fact, as much as her mother chirps about the practical aspects of her own death (from bone cancer) and warns her daughter that she needs to be prepared, Jenna only responds with bewildered defensiveness.

Alec, Myra’s husband, has a different manner entirely. When asked by Harriet, their much more put-together daughter, how he can read the paper when Mum is sitting on the couch across from him with mere months to live, he quips, “A watched pot never boils.” Myra breaks into bright laughter. Unsurprisingly, Alec’s brusque behavior belies a sappy core; he is not necessarily cold, just involuntarily chilly—much like their flat, whose state-of-the-art heater keep breaking down. (This particular metaphor gets quite a bit of stage time, the least compelling instance of which is the five minute one-sided telephone conversation that Alec has with the local repairman. It’s theatrically uninteresting and hardly worth the not-unexpected character revelations that emerge in this “conversation-about-something-else.”)

Still, under Morris’s direction, the play shines. Her designers—Jeff Cowie (set), Candice Donnelly (costumes), Michael Chybowski (lights), John Leonard (sound), and Brian H. Kim (projection)—all deserve heaps of praise. (I must single out Donnelly’s transformation of Jenna from angsty to affable, and Kim’s giddy design of Myra’s PowerPoint presentation concerning the arrangements for her own funeral.)

Judith Light’s portrayal of Myra is such that the thought of her being taken from this world is very sad indeed. Her Myra is pragmatic and brave without being steely or self-righteous; her warmth is unobtrusive but undeniably felt. Brian Murray softens the acerbic Alec without sacrificing the wit—his near-undetectable jolt when his daughter Jenna touches his shoulder says it all. Harriet, the golden daughter (owns a house with her husband with whom she has a gentle relationship), is the sketchiest of Wade’s characters, but Sarah Paulson resists a predictably austere and puritanical characterization: hers is a young woman who always chooses what is obviously sensible and genuinely cannot understand why other people (read: her sister) cannot do the same.

That sister, Jenna—as masterfully portrayed by Lily Rabe—is the broken-but-beating heart of this play. In the beginning, she, of the trio to be left behind, will clearly be most at-sea when Myra passes away. And she knows it. Surveying the burial ground her mother proposes, her expression is one of a bludgeoned owl. But through the course of the play’s hour and forty minutes (of which her character occupies a majority), we see her terror erode, and an eerie but welcome calm takes its place. She is, I think, the most universal model of grieving presented here. Just watching her makes us feel like things will ultimately be okay.

It's been seven years since the Columbine High School massacre took place on April 20, 1999, when two high school students went on a shooting spree that left 13 people dead and 24 wounded after their attempt to kill hundreds more by blowing up the school's cafeteria failed to come off as planned. While it's been a while since I've thought about Columbine, I remember that at the time, the incident commanded the attention of the nation and stood at the center of cultural debate in this country, sparking discussions about youth subcultures, school bullying, gun control laws, racism, parental negligence, police incompetence, and the possibly chilling effects of violence in the music, movies, television shows, and video games being consumed by American teenagers.

columbinus, a new theatrical work by a group calling itself The United States Theatre Project, addresses all of these issues in one fashion or another, but it is the alienation and crises of identity among high school teens that it chooses to focus on as its primary field of interest. Drawing upon the extensive evidential material related to the shootings—including the journals and video confessions of the killers themselves, as well as interviews with residents of Littleton, Colorado (the town where Columbine is located) and teenagers across the country—director PJ Paparelli and his cast of eight have created an archetypical high school filled with archetypical teenagers in order to help explain how and why the killings might have taken place.

The first act begins with a series of what feel like sociological experiments illustrating high school culture and society. For example, in "Selection," the performers enact a ritual of both personal choice and Darwinian struggle as they choose common items that act as symbols of identity, such as eyeglasses, a baseball cap, and a makeup compact. In "Identity," the teens—who are now transformed into familiar models like the Nerd, the Jock, and the Popular Girl—struggle to define each other and themselves. Juxtaposing external interactions with inner thoughts, Act One of columbinus continues along this path, creating a compelling world of lonely and confused adolescents hiding behind socially constructed stereotypes, reaching out to and then lashing out at each other in a universe of insecurity and uncertainty. Along the way we meet the two youths that represent Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris—the two perpetrators of the Columbine massacre—who fare the worst in this struggle to define and assert their own identities.

Like the John Hughes teen movies of the 1980s—and in many of the same specific ways—columbinus universalizes the high school experience in terms of a struggle for identity and acceptance (the montage at the end of the first act to The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" feels almost like an homage to the filmmaker's style), and while the take may not be all that original, it is skillfully directed and convincingly portrayed by a talented cast who consistently hit their marks. Furthermore, Paparelli and co-writer Stephen Karam have done a fine job constructing a text from their source materials that has the feeling of authenticity in terms of how real high school students might express their views of both their peers and themselves. Nevertheless, casting the events of Columbine in terms of a universal high school experience for me presents problems, for even the most alienated teens do not usually team up in an attempt to commit mass murder. Columbine was not a universal event, and an examination of the social pressures and anxieties of high school does little to illuminate how the pain of alienation triggered such a shocking and violent outcome.

When columbinus does choose to look at individuals, it focuses not on the victims, but on the killers, and as the second act of columbinus shifts away from high school archetypes to a portrayal of Klebold and Harris themselves, the piece seems to get more and more lost in what questions it is trying to keep alive. In spite of two excellent performances by Will Rogers and Karl Miller, and a well-scripted theatrical adaptation of the notes and home videos of Klebold and Harris, the shift from the archetypical to the literal seems arbitrary, and the two oddly fitting halves do little, either jointly or individually, to bring any new perspectives or insights to this tragic event.

The most arresting moment in columbinus is its stark retelling of the massacre, including an audio re-enactment of the first 911 call from a teacher and a grim moment-to-moment play-by-play of the terrifying ordeal in the school library where most of the killings took place. It is here that the piece is the most chillingly effective, but it is here also that the rest of the piece's attempts to contextualize and explain feel largely inadequate. The social constructs, personal psychologies, and cultural debates that are probed and illustrated up to this point are largely blown away by sheer incomprehensibility and terror of the retelling.

But it is not the teens, the killers, or even the event itself that gets the last word here, but the adults. In the few final moments of the piece, the ensemble takes on the voices of the confused and grieving parents and other adults directly affected by the event. It seems a rushed and odd choice, given that up to this point the adults represented in columbinus are so ineffectual and detached. Perhaps the point is to show how removed adults are from the world and cares of the teenagers in their lives, but given the focus of the piece and the research that was done, the group I'd most like to hear discuss the repercussions of Columbine are the teenagers who continue to face the social pressures that the piece implies played a role in leading up to the killings.

Most noticeably absent from columbinus are the victims themselves, and this missing element most clearly brings to bear the limitations of the universalizing approach of the piece as a whole. Of the actual 13 victims who were killed at Columbine, the piece tells us only their names, what social categories they might have fallen into, and how they died. Although columbinus ends with a somber blackboard memorializing the names of the victims, the piece as a whole treats the targets of the shootings as broad, if sympathetic, archetypes. By omitting the individuality of all but the killers, columbinus ultimately seems to miss what may be the heart of the actual tragedy.

On first blush, Sonya Sobieski’s new play Commedia dell Smartass shouldn’t be a play that works, but thank God for New Georges, and their ability to see that it could.

Billed as an eccentric comedy featuring an overachieving Girl Scout who wants to get into a good college, a Fencer who reads Machiavelli, a Clown of ambiguous gender, and a guy named Henry, Commedia explores the typical archetypes and power plays of high school. And it does so in stellar fashion.

From the first moment of the show, when Nurit Monacelli’s playful Clown steps onto the stage to play the violin, followed soon after by the high school jock (a fencer!?!) and his schlubby geek friend Henry, you know that Sobieski is looking at the world of high school in a very special way. Commedia is rife with the trappings of the teen genre: bets to get someone to kiss you (but you fall in love instead), betrayal, parties that only the cool can attend, and the requisite final scene when we see that everything can never be the same again, but sadly, probably will. It has the joie de vivre and wide-eyed optimism of youth, sweetened by the bitterness of darker, underlying themes (that, thankfully, Sobieski treads very lightly upon—this is not a heavy play, nor is it an issue play).

It's a familiar enough story, both for those who love John Hughes and those who love Carlo Goldini. Dominant male A convinces sweet but inept male B to pursue beautiful female C, in this case through a masculinity-challenging but friendly bet. Upon having the first date, our normal fellow is in love with our beautiful young lady, and she with her unlikely paramour. Our alpha male, however, has planned this all along, and wants young lady C for himself. As he wreaks havoc on this budding relationship through manipulation and betrayal, the play unfolds in brutal and funny fashion, finally arriving at a happy but melancholic ending. And all the while the real outsider—call this character Pierrot or Ducky or just Clown—becomes the confidant, the friend, the advisor, the punching bag, and, ultimately, the one who survives, self intact.

As an inveterate fan of '80s teen movies, I went into this understandably skeptical. Many have tried, on both stage and screen, to emulate the universality, the angst, and the pure naiveté that John Hughes and his Brat Pack created so memorably 20 years ago, and generally they've failed miserably. Sobieski, along with her whimsically precise director Jean Randich, have discovered an equation for success in a couple of unlikely places: contemporary theatrical style and commedia dell'arte.

After seeing the show it seems like the most obvious of parallels. Teen flicks succeed through the use of universal stock characters, a trait specifically shared with traditional commedia. Likewise, both formulas require a stable of familiar stories and activities that an audience not only expects, but actively relates to. Most importantly, Sobieski and Randich take their characters seriously. They do not condescend, nor do they treat this as satire, and this lends the work the earnestness and honesty necessary for success.

However, it takes more than commonality of genre for this effort to succeed. There should be a reason for it to be in the theatre and not onscreen. That reason is spelled out in Randich’s stylized (but not overly so) direction, coupled with a quartet of actors who are at times spellbinding, at times heart-wrenchingly hilarious and angsty 16-year-olds, at times horribly vicious, and always terrific in their respective roles. Granted, Randich is not using traditional mask or bouffon work (with the exception of Clown, whose reasons for being so seemingly anachronistic are perfectly suited to the themes of the play) to make the connection between "commedia" and "smartass" (thank goodness), but she does capitalize on the fact that Sobieski has used the structure of commedia plays in order to allow the actors some great over-the-top asides and to thrust the play from a "kids being kids, can't they be mean" sensibility into the realm of allegory, another trait that this show shares in its bones with its predecessors.

Randich knows when to use style and when to let the script and the actors do the talking, and she balances these two sides with a precise and thoughtful love of the material.

Everyone involved in this production deserves accolades. Sue Rees’s minimalist playground of a set, coupled with Garin Marschall’s lights, manage to implicitly create every physical scenario to such a degree that, in my mind's eye, I recall every locale in distinct detail. No small feat without even a single scene change. Daniel Urlie’s costumes reflect both the breezy whimsy of the play and its more naturalistic setting.

It is the director, and her actors, however, who really bring the life to this play: Jessi Campbell’s Girl Scout who bursts into tears because her beauty makes the drug addicts at the halfway house hate themselves; Jesse Hooker’s evilly comic James Spader impression; Debargo Sanyal’s twitchy, insecure, and wildly endearing Henry; and Monacelli’s amusing, touching, and ultimately sad Clown. Together they capture the silliness and difficulty of teen tribulations, in a show that is one of the most satisfying larks that I’ve been present for in quite some time.

The night began with a few chuckles and I thought I was in for an hour of trite comedy about office politics and sexual innuendo. But at some point, Conference Room A turns into something deeper and much more fulfilling than that.

The story revolves around three officemates who work in a featureless corner cubical of a nameless company in the Financial District. The supervisor, Brent, is a conservative yes-man and somewhat of a wimp. His presence (and his whiny voice) command little respect from his co-workers. Robbie, on the other hand, is brash and charismatic. He’s not the ideal employee: he's always late and he has “attitude” problems. And finally there’s Jill, a beautiful intern (though she claims she’s not an intern anymore) who finds herself torn between the nice guy with a future and the bad boy who can satisfy her. There is not much of a plot but a lot of sex talk is bounced around and each character’s attitude regarding sex quickly becomes clear.

Brent is looking for a soulmate—the one true love he is absolutely positive is out there waiting for him. He even believes that he has “cheated” on her because he had sex with a girl in college. Jill is more complex and even a little confused. On the one hand, she is a wild party girl who likes dirty sex, while on the other she wants the security she feels she can only get from a conservative man that she can totally dominate. Robbie is also very complicated. He wants wild sex, sure, but he also wants friendship and, most importantly, loyalty. Robbie comes across as kind of a jerk, but he’s actually the most decent one of the bunch.

For me, it is complexities of the characters that really makes Conference Room A an engaging play. Playwright-producer Ben Cikanek slowly feeds us these complexities, filling in details about what at first seem like one-dimensional characters until, by the end, they are complete people with desires that go beyond their groins. Cikanek has each character manipulating the others, but what I found endlessly fascinating was trying to figure out just who is manipulating whom. Who is truly “playing the game” of office and sexual politics, and who dares to break away or break the rules and just be a real person? Granted, there are a few moments in the dialogue that don’t ring as real or true as they could, and there are few contrived exits that are obvious devices to get characters alone, but I’m sure these can be worked out.

The cast does a great job creating characters that I really began to care about. John Peery as Brent is so convincing as the spineless, soulmate-searching supervisor that I had to keep telling myself that he was just acting. Candice Holdorf portrays Jill with such depth that I saw her beauty as a grand entrance to a character (and actor) that I wanted to know more about. Finally, Josh Tyson as Robbie steals the night. He is a focused and volatile actor who is equally at home showing deep emotion as he is shooting off sarcastic and often offensive remarks.

Director Mike Klar does a good job staging the dynamics of the characters by at times placing physical obstacles between them, while at other times putting them right in each other’s faces. Heather Klar provides some attractive and indicative costumes.

Steven Fales was born in Utah and grew up in the Mormon Church. He seems to have always had some level of awareness that he was gay; certainly by the time he was sent to Portugal for his two years of missionary service he knew his orientation though he didn't yet act on it—that happened when he was at Brigham Young University, during a tour with a musical group called the Young Ambassadors. But the Church teaches that homosexuality is a sin, an aberration, something to be overcome, and so young Steven resolutely set about falling in love with a girl, getting married, and having children. Yet he knew he was still gay...

Eventually, matters in the Fales household reached a point of dysfunctional no-return: his wife Emily was unhappy and he was starting to roam. The emotional peak of Fales's one-man play Confessions of a Mormon Boy details his hearing before the Church disciplinary council, where he was excommunicated from the Church:

I knew they were not trying to talk Emily into working things out. In this case, divorce certainly seemed justified. And at the same time I knew some Church leader somewhere was counseling some gay young man to go ahead and get married. Another daughter in Zion would be sacrificed to straighten her husband out.

The second half of Confessions is about Steven's life after excommunication. Talk about a turnaround: he moved to New York, planning to fulfill his lifelong dream to become an actor in musical theatre. Instead, he quickly found work, first as a waiter and then as a male escort. Fales is nothing if not candid about his life as a prostitute, which earned him a great deal of money (all spent, apparently) and led him into a lifestyle full of rich johns, plentiful drugs, all-night clubbing, and a much reduced amount of self-respect. A self-help course helped him recognize this last point, and he tells us proudly at the end of his show that he's no longer escorting and that he's "starting to take a good hard look at my addictions. All of them. Ouch!"

No doubt, Fales has an interesting story to tell. He tells it compellingly enough in Confessions, which he wrote and which is directed skillfully by Jack Hofsiss; I'm just not sure why he's telling it in a theatre. For though Fales is always an engaging presence on stage, I never felt much of a connection between him and the audience or between him and the material: he reminded me of a motivational speaker more than an actor finding an authentically theatrical way to make his autobiography resonant. I was aware of withheld information (why did his parents divorce and how did that make him feel? where are his wife and kids now and how do they feel about him baring all, figuratively, night after night in the theatre?).

I was also, most problematically, aware of an inward focus that never wavers: "Then September Eleventh hit. No reservations were being made for my bed and breakfast. And I wouldn't be needed to cater. All parties were canceled."

Confessions left me cold: the story may be true, but it isn't particularly inspiring, and the connections that might have made it so just aren't there. That reference to the poor Mormon wife being "sacrificed" to straighten out her confused husband is delivered almost in passing in Fales's script. Confessions, finally, is Fales's confessional, and not much more; this is the stuff of a lucrative book deal and an Oprah appearance, not of drama.

A final note: Fales might want to clean up the latently racist patches—the long story about his first escorting client, a very stereotypical old Japanese man; the Latina receptionist at the health clinic—before he hits the talk show circuit.

In Putney, Vermont, a young woman accidentally hits a deer with her car; her boyfriend, who has difficulty remembering things, can't find the dead deer when he returns with a shovel to bury it, and so eventually his sister has to find the body and dispose of it. En route, she meets an ex-boyfriend and there is a momentary flash of regret/lingering romance.

In London, two brothers accidentally meet at Heathrow Airport and impetuously decide to go to Belgrade together that afternoon.

In Belgrade, a long time ago, the older brother has the exact same dream as the girl who buries the deer (she's in New York at the time).

Somewhere else, unspecified, now, a woman wanders out of her house in her nightgown with her husband's wallet and car keys, and mysteriously disappears.

This is the world of Bryn Manion's exquisite and exciting new play Force: Convergence, where pasts and futures collide (just as the title suggests) in hopes of building a meaningful present. Convergence is the third piece of the Force trilogy, begun by Manion in 2004 (the other parts are titled Wanderllust and Threshold); I've not seen the other two, and in a way I'm glad not to have: the gaps in the back story tantalize rather than confuse, enhancing the magic of this remarkable, impressionistic experience.

Manion has staged her work herself, in a big open space at the brand new New York Irish Center in Long Island City: the set looks kind of like an airy, spacious apartment, with rooms and locations mapped out (and a kitchen just visible off to one side). In this world, Manion creates what feels like the theatrical equivalent of a Robert Altman film—separate but overlapping stories, told non-linearly and even sometimes in stream-of-consciousness; a puzzle that approximates real life in that we are always able to make sense of it even though there are always pieces missing. It's a significant and worthy accomplishment.

Uniting the disparate tales are some coincidences and some common characters (even the silent wandering woman figures in some of the other stories here). Convergence meditates, over and over again, in different and increasingly complex ways, on the nature of memory and dreams; on the conflict between our desire to resolve, parse, understand all that came before and the impossibility of ever managing to satisfactorily do so. Manion peppers her play with breathtaking images that reinforce her main ideas: an amnesiac burying his fossil collection so that he can find it again; a pair of long-separated lovers finding each other in the midst of a chaotic political rally. With words and visuals, Manion creates a highly theatrical look at some of the fundamental forces that define our humanity.

Bringing the stories to life are a skilled cast of ten, of whom perhaps the most indelible is Shawn Mahoney as Rob, the amnesiac mechanic who can't remember where his girlfriend hit the deer. Liza Pross is touching and lovely as said girlfriend, Sara; Benjamin Beckley does double duty as Charlie Owen, the Vermont electrician who was once in love with Anne (Rob's sister), and a Communist rabble-rouser in London's Hyde Park. Also double-cast are Elizabeth Sugarman (as the woman who loves Anne's brother-in-law and a young Serbian woman who makes her living, apparently, by holding her breath in public) and Sarah Stephens (Anne's husband's Serbian translator and the holding-her-breath girl's sister/manager). Aaron Mathias is compelling as Anne's brother-in-law Brian, though Berto Colon, who has a tendency to swallow his lines, is less effective as Anne's husband Jack. As Anne, Wendy Remington really springs to life in the play's second act, particularly in her scenes with Mahoney. Anchoring the play (despite being most tangential to its primary storylines) are Randy Harmon and Karen Grenke, who are terrific as Hal and Lotte, the married couple who are suddenly torn asunder when she, in the very first scene, inexplicably walks out their front door.

I had been hearing very good things about Manion and Aisling Arts, the five-year-old theatre company she co-founded with Wendy Remington; I am very glad to have had a chance to see Convergence, which is a dazzling introduction to their work. I will look forward eagerly to whatever these young women do next.

Conversation with a Kleagle by Rudy Gray is one of those rare shows that is important enough and powerful enough to warrant strong support and a large audience even when a particular production isn’t top notch. In the case of this particular production, by 13th Street Repertory Company, the whole just doesn’t measure up to the sum of its rather impressive parts.

The program notes that this play won First Prize in the 2004 New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest. After seeing it performed, I can certainly appreciate the reason for this distinction. It is the tense and moving account of a black writer in 1920s America who passes for white in order to travel to Louisiana and meet with a Ku Klux Klan recruiter, known as a Kleagle. His identity is discovered, and he escapes relatively early in the play. As the play progresses, we watch in horror as the fallout from his infiltration unfolds. Pieces of his history are presented in flashback, and the man who helped him escape pays a terrible price.

Obviously, there are more than a few disturbing aspects of this play. Clearly evident is the corrupt Louisiana political system that turns a blind eye to the racial injustice, that is until it becomes financially beneficial to at least appear to crack down on the violence and mistreatment. Even more disturbing, and more important, is the casual demeanor of the Kleagle while discussing the absolute necessity of lynchings and claiming his heart-felt concern for the black community in the same breath. (Be warned, the “n-word” is used prolifically, but appropriately, in this play.) He easily, and with what he would call self-evident logic, compares the black citizens of the area to alligators (a vital part of the landscape as long as they stay in their place). The pride the Kleagle takes in both his mission and vision make my skin crawl. Indeed, much of this play’s power comes from its revelation of the true face and danger of racism, often hidden behind carefully crafted personal facades or strategically controlled government positions. It demonstrates the opportunity that remains to this day for unscrupulous people to manipulate the world around them and further a hidden agenda.

This entire production is good, but a bit raw. It feels more like watching a really good rehearsal. The energy is there, and the talent is there, but it doesn’t yet click together the way it should. Every single actor in this production has numerous moments to shine, and they should be proud of them. As the Kleagle, Chris Keogh is at his best when he is quietly describing his contemptible mission and when he is thundering away at the revealed writer. His performance goes a long way to making this production as unnerving as it is. The supporting characters of the various Klansmen are generally quite good. Unfortunately, there are so many flubbed lines, broken moments, and slight slips that the pace of the show gets repeatedly thrown off. These actors are talented, but haven’t yet reached consistency. Even Andrew Burns, as the writer John Watson, succumbs to this problem. He plays the character honestly and has wonderful, introspective moments, but he also has several times where he gives in to stock mannerisms or looks unsure of himself, slightly out of the moment that has been created around him.

The one notable exception is Blair Hicks as the writer’s savior, Tookie. Hicks is disturbingly real in this role. He commands attention every moment he is on the stage through the kind, conscientious attitude with which he imbues Tookie. His consistent and heart-wrenching performance is so true to life, it is agonizing to watch him. Aside from the loss he must endure, one of his most painful moments occurs when he comments in genuine surprise that he has discovered prejudiced people in Chicago just like in the South.

Cristina Alicea’s direction is fluid and serves this play well. The basic pacing of the production is effective, and she earns each moment of emotion and pain carefully. Julie Finch’s costumes are quite good and hold up well to the scrutiny presented by a very small theatre. Tom Harlan’s set is sparse and carefully crafted so that the various pieces can be moved and reconnected in a variety of ways to create everything from a bar to a train to a Chicago office. The remarkably smooth transitions in this play are equally due to the set, the direction, and the cast’s extremely effective handling of the set changes. Here too, unfortunately, there is inconsistency. There are two rifles, but one is a B-B-gun. The ropes they use are great, but the knife is slightly bent and clearly rubber. If everything were one way or the other (pristine or abstract), it would be fine. As it is, the inconsistencies become slightly distracting.

The saving grace is that this production runs for many weeks. There is simply too much talent involved in this production for it to just be good when it could be great. This play is an incredibly worthy piece of theatre, and my sincere hope is that the actors will find their groove and settle into a rhythm that will make this production everything it can be. However, even if they don’t, this is still an important evening of theatre that is worth your time.

In Coronado, Dennis Lehane’s new crime drama, the milk of human kindness is decidedly skim. One character sums up his attitude towards the battle of the sexes by declaring, “They fuck us so we’ll pay the electric.” Another character belittles her former lover by saying, “You stuck your dick in my mouth because you felt ancillary? Oh, boo hoo!” A father celebrates his grown son’s release from prison by giving him drugs and a hooker. Coronado is filled with such moments, often for their own sake. For as craftily plotted and carefully thought out as Lehane’s theatrical debut is, it breaks no new ground on its major themes: love, revenge, and the lengths to which people will go for both.

Set in an unnamed Western town, Coronado tells the story of three seemingly disparate duos: a young couple having an illicit affair; a nameless woman and her former psychiatrist, both smarting from an ill-advised affair together; and a father and son on the hunt for a missing woman and a stolen diamond. At first it looks as if these three pairs are unrelated. But as Coronado unfolds, it becomes clear that they all share a tragic and violent history.

Coronado features a fair amount of unpleasantness. Characters meet ugly and untimely ends, and shoot to kill with verbal jabs: they’re not the most likable bunch to spend two hours with. There’s also a detectable streak of misogyny in the play that is not altogether tasteful. (It may be true to the characters, but that doesn’t make it any more fun to watch.) But, Lehane seems to know these people very well. They feel authentic, and do not seem mysterious to him. He knows what makes them tick. And he crafts an intricately woven plot that holds a couple of genuine surprises (which I won’t reveal here). Lehane also knows how to push an audience’s buttons, be it with a well-placed turn of phrase or a perfectly-timed revelation. There are several parts of Coronado that are quite moving, partly because Lehane knows that love and revenge, those eternal themes, never get old. His writing has confidence, and he seems interested in spinning a good yarn, rather than making a statement. It’s that last part that ultimately dooms Coronado to being nothing more than Sam Shepard Lite: all of the intensity, but none of the mythic proportions. Theatregoers seeking substantial nourishment are advised to look elsewhere.

Coronado’s biggest asset is its cast, a crack ensemble whose energy and skill give the play its best chance to achieve greater heights. All the actors do a splendid job, but the standout performances belong to Rebecca Miller and Lance Rubin as the young lovers; Gerry Lehane and Avery Clark as the father-and-son team; and Maggie Bell as the missing woman. For his part, director David Epstein does a serviceable job, despite some awkward scene changes and momentum-shattering blackouts.

Coronado, ultimately, is a mixed bag. As much as I admire Lehane for trying a new medium on for size (he is already an established novelist and television writer), I wish he had something more substantive to say. Hopefully next time he will.

Corps Values is a new play by Brendon Bates, a young playwright whose only other full-length play, The Savior of Fenway (2003) made a strong impression on me. This piece, which is still a work-in-progress, is also a potent work of theatre, and with some trimming and focusing has the potential to be a very important one as well.

The story, told in flashbacks, concerns Casey Taylor, a young man who joined the Marine Corps to fight in the current war in Iraq. When his mother is killed in an auto accident, he is granted leave to return home to Pittsburgh for her funeral. But instead of reporting back to Camp Lejeune to complete his remaining six months of active duty, he opts to go AWOL.

Casey's dad, Wade, served in the Corps in Vietnam, and though it's clear that he and Casey's mom tried to dissuade their son from joining up, it's equally evident that Wade strongly disagrees with his son's decision, at least at first. Wade is unemployed and alcoholic; his war experiences pretty much ruined him for life. The dynamic between father and son—triggered by Casey's intention but in no way limited to just that subject—is a a key theme of the play.

The other is the War itself. Bates recognizes that an issue as charged as this is never simple, and so he shows us many of its sides. Wade believes that a commitment must be honored, as must duty to one's fellow soldiers (something he understands very well from his own tour of duty in 'Nam, which climaxed in the loss of a number of his buddies when he had to blow up a bridge that some of them were stationed beneath). Casey, on the other hand, has concluded that this war should not be perpetuated; should never, in fact, have even started. One of Casey's final words to his father gets right to the crux of the thing: how, he asks, could Wade (and by implication his entire generation) have allowed the war in Iraq to happen, knowing what they did about Vietnam and its aftermath?

Casey's motivation for this commendable stance—which he means to pursue by speaking with a group of Vietnam Vets against the War, at a rally in New York City—is somewhat cloudy, however. He's come home with some serious burn wounds that he supposedly got as the result of a suicide bomb attack. The truth about his injuries, when finally revealed, is even more harrowing, if that's possible; but the trouble is that having Casey tell us about the horrors of modern warfare, compelling as it is, just isn't specific enough to explain why Casey is so determined to quit this particular war. Corps Values is resolutely anti-war, ultimately, and intends to be anti-Iraq War as well, which makes it still something of an anomaly in a landscape that remains shockingly devoid of political theatre of this kind (satires abound; but the serious examinations of the current war that have turned up on NYC stages during the past year can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the ones that do appear are derided by the media). But its arguments are still too generalized to make an effective case against this war as opposed to all others; I hope Bates will sharpen this aspect of his play's thesis as he whips it into its final form.

At the same time, Bates might consider removing some of the tangential plot points of Corps Values. In particular, the revelation that Casey is about to become a father serves only to muddy waters that are already sufficiently murky and tempestuous: it makes Casey's choices (prison versus six months more of service, probably at a desk job due to his injuries; a clear conscience versus selling out) less clear-cut—isn't he doing his future wife and child severe harm by opting for court-martial? This is an interesting quandary, but it feels tacked on to the play at the moment; I'd suggest that Bates either eliminate it altogether from his story, or bring it up much earlier in the piece and develop it further.

As counterpoint to Wade and Casey, by the way, are two other characters, career Marines both. One is Kyle, who served with Wade in Vietnam and now is a Colonel; Casey's godfather (though lately estranged from the Taylor family), he's keeping his eye on Casey, with questionable results. The other is Samko, the young officer who is summoned to try to talk Casey out of going AWOL. Both of these are interesting characters, and they provide valuable contrasting perspectives that make the play richer and more compelling than it might otherwise be.

This workshop production is directed by Michael Laibson on a functional but modest set. Randy Spence's fight choreography and Erin Andrea's makeup prove especially effective here. Stu Richel and David Robinette give the most accomplished performances as Kyle and Samko, with Jeremiah Cebulski offering a good account of Casey. But Don Striano, at least at the show I attended, doesn't seem to have gotten under the skin of his character, Wade; I missed the complex portrayal that would have lain bare precisely what makes this sad, lonely old man tick.

Bates's script is filled with choice imagery and ideas, and as I've already noted, with some sharpening of focus and streamlining of themes, Corps Values has the potential to be a riveting and timely drama. It's certainly well on its way to delivering just that.

Cirque du Soliel is a well-oiled machine that mass-produces rapture, and they have a heck of a product. I recommend taking New York Waterways’ ferry to the Randall’s Island venue; a sunset boat ride up the East Side of Manhattan is the perfect prelude to the out-of-this-world experience ahead.

This year’s offering is Corteo, or “cortege” in Italian. To save a trip to the dictionary, the English definition of “cortege” is: a train of attendants, as of a distinguished person; a retinue; a ceremonial procession; a funeral procession. Cirque uses all those images to spice the regular menu of human strength and dexterity pushed to inconceivable limits. Traditionally Cirque is a one ring circus, but Corteo pushes the edges of the stage as well. The familiar circle is stretched into a corridor that divides the audience in half, a setup that automatically turns the action into an ongoing parade.

Before the show begins, the performance area is covered by a diaphanous curtain with illustrations of angels, a kind of Florentine frieze as interpreted by Hallmark. Behind it fallen chandeliers and a bed are faintly visible. The scrim rises slowly and the first parade begins. There are giants, midgets, angels floating like Christmas ornaments across the dome of the stage. The procession goes by the bed, where Mauro Mazzoni, the lead clown, is waving. Hm, what’s that about? But the production doesn’t allow much time for questions, and none at all for answers.

Getting right down to business, four female acrobats strip down to old-fashioned underwear and do a routine on the candelabras, spinning and twisting and flying. This irreverence is carried over into a jumping-on the bed act, where pigtailed “little girls” bounce around with buff and sturdy “little boys,” climbing up bed frames, balancing, and tumbling back down again. And there is Mozzani in his bed again, getting angel wings. Is he dead? Hm, he comes dangerously close to plummeting through a trapdoor before flying away! This is followed by a spectacular hoop juggling act, another clown walking upside-down on a tightrope holding a candelabra, and four people dressed like donkeys who comically keep forgetting they’re dressed like donkeys. Suddenly the ringleader shouts, “This is supposed to be a funeral!”

Huh?

But despite this brand new information, there’s no pause in the action. Shoes travel across the stage without people in them, a woman in a sequined red outfit who might be the devil herself ascends a diagonal tightrope, and look, there’s an angel giving Mazzoni a beautiful gold and blue costume. Is that part of the dead clown funeral plot? Never mind, because two other clowns are about to play golf with a woman’s head, and look! One of the clowns is now the ball! But wait, a live marionette drops out of the sky, ready to play with Mazzoni who is, curiously, wearing a bathing suit. What happened to the fancy costume? But that can wait, because here are some muscular men in tutus and some ribbon dancers! And then the action slows into a beautiful sequence where Valentyna Pahlevanyan, who can’t be much more than three feet tall, is harnessed to a bouquet of clear helium balloons and gently floats all over the tent as Mozzani stands onstage, begging the audience to guide her back. Then an incredible teeterboard act, and . . . it’s over? Oh no! That’s just Act One!

There is a half-hour intermission to wander around the cool spring night visiting little tents that sell popcorn, wine, or souvenirs. And then the action begins again. This act is full of music, the performers whistling, drumming, working with the live orchestra that’s been playing throughout the show. Second act visual highlights are a ladder balancing act, a rain of rubber chickens, midgets performing in a tiny theatre, and the truly astonishing (even in this context) aerial duo of Dymytro Grygovow and Olesia Shulga. And there’s a final procession, the cast is singing, and Mozzani is biking through the sky. The audience is on their feet, cheering, the lights come on . . . and . . . did he make it to heaven? Is he going back to earth? Who cares! That was great!

And on the return boat ride, Manhattan looks different, and it’s not just the view from the East River. Even back in the urban parade, the city stays new, at least for a while. Cirque du Soliel has an absolute corner on the pure amazement market; no service provider in North America can even come close.

The most striking thing about this pairing of two one-act plays from Disgraced Productions is how seamless and thematically pure it is: though one of the evening's two pieces is a 35-year-old rock-n-roll fantasia by Sam Shepard while the other is a brand new piano bar drama by young playwright/director Robert Attenweiler, the pairing feels organic and inevitable: two wistful looks at the elusive American Dream, melancholy and redemptive at the same time.

The sympatico feel extends to the production itself, which features exemplary sets for both plays, designs that convey the naturalistic and dreamlike qualities of the plays with splendid precision while acknowledging the limitations of the Red Room's intimate space and the ethos of downtown indie theatre that Shepard helped pioneer and whose torch Attenweiler is certainly carrying. (The set designers are Bret Haines and John Patrick Hayden.) In between the two plays—which are presented here, savvily, as if they were two acts of a single play instead of as two separate works—Adam Groves plays licks on an electric guitar, the longing chords of that music being the main link between the two stories told here.

The stories go like this. Thick Like Piano Legs, written and directed by Attenweiler, takes place in a Lower East Side bar called Cedric's. It's supposed to be Tom's last night playing piano here, as he has for years, except the piano is inexplicably missing; for reasons that are never entirely filled in, Tom's heading south to Georgia for a gig that, as it turns out, may not really be there either. Those reasons seem to involve one of the bartenders, a pretty girl named Joanie; and they probably also involve Tom's propensity for drink. Filling out the tale are a tough-minded bartender named Jack and a sad barfly, Billie, who is trying to use a mysteriously-acquired bankroll to get some control back over her life.

Cowboy Mouth, written by Shepard and directed with aplomb by Hayden, takes place in an unkempt motel room where a woman, Cavale, has brought a stranger named Slim on the pretense of turning him into a rock star. Each of these lost souls needs that promise for a different reason, and even though it's clear that Cavale cannot deliver anything tangible, it's just as evident that somehow both lives are transformed by this encounter; maybe even something approaching salvation occurs for one or the other. A delivery man from beyond (or perhaps just downstairs) called Lobster Man makes an enigmatic third point to this surreal triangle.

Attenweiler's play is poignant and moving; it feels like the kind of understated slice-of-life that William Inge might write if he were living in the Lower East Side nowadays (though there are traces of O'Neill and Williams here as well). If the story and structure of Thick Like Piano Legs doesn't surprise, the poetic dialogue almost always does: there's real beauty here, suggestive of a nascent talent that absolutely bears watching. Attenweiler's staging is commendable as well, and if all four of the actors are noticeably too young for their roles, they nevertheless turn in good work here, especially Bret Haines as the bearlike bartender and Nathan Williams as the piano man at the end of his rope.

In contrast, Shepard's play is explosive: it's easy to see why his early work got people so excited and riled up. I love the mix of reality and unreality in Cowboy Mouth—it elevates what could be a cliched or coarse yarn into a rich and universal work of art. (Many contemporary playwrights—Adam Rapp comes to mind—could learn much from this.) Hayden's staging is sublime: claustrophobic, uplifting, and always startling. Becky Benhayon as Cavale and Adam Groves as Slim both do excellent work.

There are just a few more chances to catch this fine double bill. But I know I'll be watching for the next works from Disgraced Productions eagerly.

Cowboy v. Samurai, the new play by Michael Golamco at National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), is a very funny, very pertinent, and very smart riff on Rostand's classic romance Cyrano de Bergerac. It takes place in a tiny, remote town called Breakneck in the middle of Wyoming, in the present day. Here, Travis Park, a handsome 30-ish fellow of Korean descent, works as an English teacher in the local high school. In his spare time, he's also the secretary of BAAA (the Breakneck Asian American Alliance), a modest organization whose president and only other member is Chester, a foundling raised by Caucasians whose specific ethnic heritage is unknown and whose Asian American Pride is as strong and uncompromising as, well, Cyrano's faith in his oversized nose.

And then one day Veronica Lee shows up. A New Yorker (also of Korean extraction), Veronica has come here to teach and to find some breathing room, following a stretch of ill-starred love affairs. Travis and Chester are excited and, when they meet her (for she's a knockout, of course), more than interested. But Travis soon learns that Veronica has what she calls "preferences": she only dates white guys.

Travis's pal Del—a white guy: a cowboy whose rugged good looks and good nature compensate for his lack of intellect—falls for Veronica too. Del's a substitute P.E. teacher at the moment; he doesn't think he's got what it takes to woo the brainy and sophisticated Veronica. So he asks Travis if he'll write a note to her on his behalf. Travis does, and it turns the trick, and soon he's supplying Del with a steady stream of poetic stories and letters that lead in short order to Veronica inviting Del to move in with her.

Eventually Veronica learns the true identity of the author of the notes she's fallen in love with, and this leads to some serious exploration of self-identity and internalized racism by her and by Travis and Chester. What's up with her "preferences" regarding men? Why is Chester so worried about his ethnicity and about stereotypes of Asian men? What did it cost Travis and Chester to be the first and only Asians ever encountered by their isolated "all-American" neighbors?

All of this is valuable and worth discussing: Golamco's script frames its discourse shrewdly in very personal contexts so that it never feels polemical or, more important, theoretical—non-Asians in the audience understand clearly and feel keenly the effects of prejudice that Travis, Chester, and Veronica are reeling from. One of the really fascinating choices that Golamco makes here is to illustrate the divided soul of the contemporary conflicted Asian American man by breaking the Cyrano character into two parts. Chester is the one with panache—the quixotic warrior for noble causes, in this case that of an Asian American community of two; the one given to grand gestures and romantic ideals (at one point in the play, he steals the Golden Spike that commemorated the first transcontinental railroad, deeming it a symbol of repression of his Chinese ancestors). Travis is the one with the soul of the poet and the loneliness of the hopelessly rejected; when he elects to help Del win Veronica, how much of his fantasy self as a non-Asian man is he projecting into the love letters that pour out of him?

So Golamco's title, which at first glance appears to be about the conflict between Travis and Del, really refers to the dichotomy represented by Travis and Chester—they are cowboy and samurai, dueling aspects of a self-image in need of cohesion and repair.

NAATCO's production of Cowboy v. Samurai is excellent, featuring sharp, well-paced direction by Lloyd Suh, a terrifically spare but evocative set by Sarah Lambert, and outstanding production values. A brief fight sequence between Travis and Chester, featuring nunchucks and choreographed by the expert Qui Nguyen, is a particularly fun highlight. Joel de la Fuente, C.S. Lee, and Timothy Davis all do fine work as Travis, Chester, and Del, respectively; Hana Moon's portrayal of Veronica comes off as a bit cooler than might be entirely desirable however—she makes the heroine of the piece a little bit hard to root for. But overall this is really commendable work, not least for bringing a provocative and entertaining play to the stage that raises some valuable questions about the potent side effects that racial identity and stereotyping can have on how we see each other and ourselves.

If nothing else, Bosley Theatrical Productions has made a very bold move. In choosing to revive Crave, the late Sarah Kane’s penultimate work, as the company’s second outing, they have drawn a line in the sand about the kind of daring and audacious plays that they intend to present. On courage and moxie alone, for this choice, I give them an A. Crave is an extraordinary and an extraordinarily difficult play, and by the books, the company, comprising a group of recent American Conservatory Theater graduates, has the talent to make a well intentioned attempt at reviving this play, although, under Justin Quinn Pelegano’s direction, it sadly falls short of the mark.

Crave presents four characters called, simply, M, B, A, and C. It explores, quite bracingly, the nature of craving, of feeling a desperate need for something that you do not, and may not ever, have. Written more as a “text for performance” (as Kane called it) than a narrative play, it is constructed as a series of poetic, jarring, and fragmented statements by each character as they navigate a messy and dangerous psychological landscape in various attempts to understand and survive everything from sexual urges to familial histories to love and death. It is both a meditation and a pained scream. In dramatically and poetically fetishizing everything from the urge toward sexual “deviance”(“I am not a rapist, I am a pedophile”), the fear of constant regression (“why can’t I learn”), and anger at familial relations, amidst an avalanche of other “unthinkable” topics and ideas, Kane’s play illustrates, quite viscerally, the overly traumatized minds of these four characters, but holds an undeniably strident and deep-seated belief in beauty and hope for some kind of life.

Presented with the actors facing the audience for nearly the entirety of the play’s 50 minutes, the intended expressionistic style of this production seems at odds with the many naturalistic choices made by the actors and their director. Andrew Lu’s spare set creates a placelessness onstage that is fascinating and deepens both the stage and the activity on it. His elegant lighting allows for an eerie breadth of possibilities, of which he seems keenly aware. The actors very quickly create a rhythmic pace with Kane’s words, less a conversation than a barrage of undiluted emotion that, if the momentum were allowed to keep, would make for a frenetic, wrenching and diabolically affecting evening. This style lasts only moments, however, and quickly becomes slave to stagecraft.

The company has identified two pairs of characters and used the words of the play to justify two relationships that they then focus on. The first couple is a young drunk that wants to have sex with an older woman and that woman who wants alternately to both have a child and not have one (the same woman? Hard to say). The second is a businessman and his homebound wife. He spends much time listing the wonderful things that he would like to do with her, while not doing them, and she slowly breaks psychologically under the stress of repression until she explodes in sexuality.

There is a bold but flawed choice in this approach. It is a huge break from what you would expect from such expressionistic words, and could be interesting. However, in reining in the possibilities of perspective, it eliminates and homogenizes the multitude of voices at play in the text, dulling them, controlling them, and ultimately neutering them. Despite the fact that the actors regularly step into other character voices to keep up with the script, the simple fact that we are focusing on two superimposed relationships identifies much too keenly what we should and shouldn’t be paying attention to in the play and does not allow for the wash of direct, unfiltered emotion and drama that the words themselves supply.

Three of the actors, and Pelegano himself, seem to be in their safety zone working in a traditional, naturalistic context. The actors identify the character relationships and dive in. Even when speaking to each other, while generally continuing to focus out to the audience, the actors’ deep character work leads us to feel as though they are looking right at each other. While something I would normally praise, this stylistic break, being far from alienating or effective, makes us, the audience, realize just how far they are straying from the words themselves in order to have relationship moments onstage. Julie Fizpatrick, in the role of “C” is the only one onstage immune to this. She is in her own world, inhabiting her own special part of the play, and, no matter the line, allows the words of the play to pour through her, letting us in on this character’s isolated and very deeply personal pain. She allows the agency of the words of the play to overshadow the agency of the actor, or a character, and serves the play splendidly.

If this were a play of a different sort, a Sam Shepard, or an Edward Albee, where real characters must deal with extraordinary, sometimes abstract or expressionistic scenarios and events in the form of a traditional narrative, I feel that I would be applauding Bosley Theatrical Productions for the skill at which they present and penetrate these characters' inner lives. Unfortunately, with Crave, where the play itself is both the inner life of the characters and the characters themselves, I can only ask that they do this play, and not a Sam Shepard or an Edward Albee.

Domestic unrest is alive and well in cul-de-sac, John Cariani’s new black comedy about the malaise of yuppie suburbanites. Tempered by a comforting surface of absurdism, Cariani gives his play an undercurrent of melancholy. Even though there’s a lot of humor here, cul-de-sac is a cautionary tale about the dangers of taking what we have for granted. For all of the characters, the grass is always greener on the other side of their white picket fences.

Taking place on a “nice summer evening” now, cul-de-sac examines three separate households. Joe and Irene Jones are the golden couple of the neighborhood: they have two beautiful kids, two fancy new cars (which the Jones’ bought “to help us feel like we used to feel. Like dreamers. Like we could go anywhere and do anything.”), and, most importantly, they are still in love. The neighbors watch through their windows with envy as Joe and Irene dance happily in their living room every Friday night, like clockwork.

On one side of the Joneses live Jill and Roger Johnson. He has just been skipped over for a big promotion at work, and needs some sympathy. But Jill is too distracted to be much help. She’s worried that they’re not keeping up with their neighbors, covetous of their possessions, their lifestyle, and their happiness. “We don’t have the right to be happy. We have the right to pursue happy,” Jill says ruefully, as if such a thing were already out of reach for her. “We only get to chase it.” Usually accepting of the status quo, Jill is not content to do so today. She wants to talk about why it takes a little more than ordering pizza to make her happy, and why she and Roger keep putting off having that baby they claim to want.

On the other side of the Joneses live James and Christy Smith. She has been bedridden and housebound by depression for the past year, but has made a special effort to get up and shop for dinner today (which she hasn’t done in some time). When James gets home before she can start cooking, he pleads with her to always have dinner ready for him because “that’s the least you can do: I go out there and get us the stuff and the things we need to survive and you can stay inside as long as you need to, but only if you start takin’ the steps you need to take to help us get back to being what we used to be.” This leads to an in-depth discussion about the root of Christy’s depression, the dearth of sex in their marriage since its onset, and their own childlessness.

Then there’s Joe and Irene. A peek inside their home reveals more than a few cracks in their perfect façade. They keep a detailed log of their weekly routines, and fear any deviation from the norm. When in doubt, they consult the logbook and do whatever’s written. What gives? To say more would give away one of cul-de-sac’s many surprises. Suffice it to say that Joe and Irene’s reasons for sticking to the usual are far more sinister and unsettling than their neighbors could ever imagine.

Cariani’s writing here is excellent. His use of overlapping dialogue gives the play a hint of madcap screwball comedy—a good touch considering the deep veins of sadness he taps within the characters. Steeping the humor in modern, everyday neuroses helps make his points. Early in the play, Jill points out to Roger a discovery she made in her day planner. Her schedule on this day is packed: doctor’s office, hair salon, shopping center. Then…

JILL: Mmhmm And…what’s it say right there?
ROGER: Have the baby. (Beat.) Have the baby?
JILL: Yeah. I didn’t do that today. Did all that other stuff. But not that. Today was our target date.
ROGER: Our what?
JILL: Target date. For having the baby. We picked it a few years ago—when the Joneses had the twins, actually. Remember?
ROGER: Yeah, but I don’t remember picking an actual day…
JILL: Well, I do. We said that we should have a baby, that a few years from now would be a good time to have a baby. And a few years from now is here.

Later, in the second scene with Christy and James, food becomes a euphemism for sex as they argue about what to eat for dinner (she offers to make salmon; he wants to order pizza). This scene is a particularly striking, as Cariani uses their repetition of the phrase “I’m starving” to raise the stakes, and has enough finesse to make his point without hammering the audience over the head with it.

However, for every clear-eyed profundity he offers, Cariani serves up an equal amount of laughs. In the third scene, ordering a pizza (which figures prominently in cul-de-sac, representing the easy, convenient rut everyone’s life has fallen into) turns into a comic battle of wills as the Joneses fight over which way they do it most often. Do they order from Sal or Whitey? Tomato slices or pepperoni? Their reliance on the logbook is both hilarious and scary.

Director Jack Cummings III has a perfect understanding of cul-de-sac, and stages it beautifully. His and set designer Sandra Goldmark’s thematic conception of the play uses an actual cul-de-sac as the playing area. Each couple is limited to their section of the stage, so, in a way, they’re all trapped. The rest of the stage, thanks to both Goldmark and lighting designer R. Lee Kennedy, is green—indicative of both the Jones’ perfect front lawn, and the envy with which the neighbors view them. As with Cariani’s writing, Cummings’s direction is clear as a bell, but not so obvious that the audience feels like they’re being assaulted by symbolism. Kathryn Mohe’s costumes are right on the money, as well. And Tom Kochan’s original score (played live on the piano by John DiPinto) is a nice touch.

cul-de-sac’s cast gives a collective tour-de-force performance. As Jill and Roger, Robyn Hussa and John Wellman communicate the necessary pathos through the audience’s laughter. Monica Russell and James Weber, both of whom are heartbreaking in their respective desperation, follow them superbly as Christy and James. Closing out the evening with a chilling blast of denial are Cariani and Nicole Alifante, both marvelously frenetic as Joe and Irene. cul-de-sac’s blend of comedy and drama presents many challenges, all of which these actors navigate with the greatest of ease.

cul-de-sac examines the dark side of that idyllic tree-lined street that looks so good from the outside. Inside are unfulfilled dreams and aspirations: lost, neglected, forgotten, and ignored. Cariani gives us a potent wake-up call here. Think twice next time you’re about to order that pizza.

One cannot even begin to discuss The Themantics Group’s latest production, Cupid and Psyche, without first mentioning the glorious technical team. Michael Moore’s set is a delightful symphony of white, with a large gold frame at the back of the stage. The mortal world is confined by the frame, while the immortal world has all the space and unconstricted movement of center and downstage. Erin Elizabeth Murphy’s bright and colorful costumes offset the white netherworld of the gods, and the subtly powerful lighting design (especially the soft candle lights that hang from the ceiling, almost like stars) by Lucas Benjamin Krech really bring this mythological world to life. It is an impressive and astonishing achievement.

Aphrodite is suddenly feeling her age because a new rival has appeared on the scene; the mortal Psyche is so accidentally beautiful that Aphrodite dispatches her son Cupid (with whom she has a contentious relationship) to dispose of Psyche. Instead of killing her, however, Cupid becomes smitten with Psyche, and with the help of Apollo, spirits her away to be his bride, much to the dismay of Psyche’s jealous older sisters. Playwright Joseph Fisher retells the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche, and while the play is at times fun and engaging, it seems more to be an intellectual discourse about the nature of love and beauty rather than a timeless romance filled with action and a zest for life. The characters each bring their own specific point of view: Aphrodite sees love as power; Apollo as a intellectual war; Cupid as a boring job; Psyche as the ultimate journey; Runt (Cupid's friend and confidant) as a pragmatic adventure; and Psyche’s sisters, Maleen and Kris, see love as a prize to be stolen.

Johnny Sparks as Apollo and Nick Cearley as Runt stand out in the cast with their excellent command of language, and Jeannie Dalton as Maleen and Kim Schultz as Kris have a fine comic turn in Act Two. Sparks and Cearley play well off each other, and their interactions with Lanette Ware (Aphrodite) crackle with energy. Cupid, played by Jonathon Todd Ross, and Psyche played by Stephanie Janssen, are not nearly as strong. In fact, Ross spends most of the play shouting at Janssen, that it seems like he is not even talking to her, and as a result one can’t understand how Psyche would ever fall in love with such a bully. Their relationship never seems built on anything substantial.

Directed by Alex Lippard, the play is deftly staged, but most of the comedy seemed to miss its mark, and perhaps the pacing would have been quicker if the set changes were not so unnecessarily long. The monologues written by Fisher sometimes detract from the action of the story, and the need for mobile phones as a means of communication between the gods seemed out of place and incongruous. Nonetheless, the play is a fine attempt and I am eager to see The Themantics Group's next production.

There are any number of good reasons that you will want to see Farm Avenue Productions and Joseph Smith's beautifully mounted presentation of Deborah Grimberg's life-affirming play Cycling past the Matterhorn. But the main reason may well be the opportunity to see some of the finest acting in town. The entire cast of five is more than first-rate, and in the three leading roles, Shirley Knight, Brenda Wehle, and Carrie Preston are giving performances that are very special indeed.

Knight plays Esther, a 56-year-old woman who is trying to cope with two simultaneous life crises: her husband Martin has left her for a much younger woman, and she's just learned that she has an irreversible condition that is going to make her blind within a few months. Esther's response to these challenges is, in her words, to re-invent herself: she joins a gym; she has a (very furtive) one-afternoon stand with a neighbor; she joins a cycling club and takes a tour with them of Switzerland. She does all of this despite moments of doubt and not a little wallowing, especially when she's around her daughter, 24-year-old Amy, a young woman who is struggling to come into her own and is very fearful that her mother's loneliness and disability are going to make that harder for her to accomplish.

Amy, played by Preston, supports herself as a psychic; this is the one and only talent that she seems to have, and that talent is the one and only positive thing about Amy that she and Esther seem to agree on. Esther is otherwise hyper-critical about her daughter: everything from the clothes she wears ("I've had shower curtains that hang better than that") to the decisions she's made about her life comes under fire. Amy decides to face her impending crisis—having to care for her demanding mother—by not facing it. Instead she tries to talk Doug, the good-natured American that she's been casually dating, into marrying her and taking her with him to his home in the U.S.

Preston and Knight bring these women to vivid life; they make these difficult and not always easy-to-admire ladies easy to understand and to like, quirks and all. Knight has some moments where her frustrations are so affectingly evident that it's hard not to rush on stage to help her out; she also makes the biggest challenge facing Esther—loneliness—utterly palpable. Preston, meanwhile, shows us Amy's transformation from uncertain kid to assertive young woman, and even seems to physically change in the process, exuding a radiance and inner beauty in the play's final scenes that somehow weren't there before.

Their chemistry together is terrific; we always believe that they're mother and daughter.

Filling out the family is Brenda Wehle as Esther's sister Anita. One of those loquacious, savvy, lived-in older women who can always be relied upon, Anita offers counsel, commentary, and occasionally more practical support to her sister, always in inspired lower-middle-class world-weary fashion. Wehle inhabits this woman; her way with a wisecrack means that she often threatens to steal the show from her co-stars, but her centered pragmatism anchors the character and the family so that's ultimately indispensable but not over-the-top. The scene that opens the second act, in which Knight's Esther knits while Wehle's Anita does the daily crossword, chattering inanely about this and that, is the show's emotional center—the performances here are so assured and natural that it's like spying on real sisters in a real kitchen. And it moves us just the way that something that ordinary and candid should.

Ben Fox is immensely likable as Amy's good-natured boyfriend, who helps her figure out how to grow up; Nina Jacques is remarkably natural as Joanne, one of Amy's clients, who is often around solely for comic relief but who also, in her way, abets Amy on her journey. Of course, it's the interplay between mother and daughter that finally allows each to find their way, and Grimberg's script is wonderfully positive without being cloying or inauthentic. Knight has a splendid second act speech in which she recalls the eponymous bike trip that gave her the confidence and insight to move on with her life, and it's to the actress's (and playwright's) credit that we're left wondering if this actually occurred, or if she just "invented" it, to bolster her belief in her re-invented self. This is finally the great strength of Grimberg's play—that it has the complexity and depth of real life; nothing's pat here, despite a great deal of incident.

Eleanor Holdridge has staged the play with deft economy on a very spare set by Beowulf Boritt. Kiki Smith's costumes are a highlight, particularly the offbeat ensembles worn by Amy and the thrifty chic affected by Anita (don't miss the earrings!).

Cycling past the Matterhorn is intimate, and comfortable within its small confines. It's a warm, honest slice of life of the type seldom put on stage these days. In the very capable hands of Knight, Wehle, Preston, and company, it's a real treat.

In today’s world of self-promoters, overachievers, hyperbolic moneymakers, and obsessive bodybuilders, Cyclone, a new, tightly-woven play by Ron Fitzgerald at the stunning Studio Dante, focuses on a cache of characters whose biggest collective achievement is getting through the day. Each has a take on life and to Fitzgerald’s credit, we care. He offers crisp dialog, precise timing, and dark humor. But, much of the strength of this two-act play (with intermission) rests in the setup and the slow reveal of the characters’ relationships. So I will try not to give too much away.

The story follows Mitch, an alienated alcoholic in his 20s, as he searches for a place to put the ashes of his recently deceased father. Mitch lives with his girlfriend, Erin, in a dilapidated mobile home in the middle of New Jersey’s nowhere. In his search for a resting place for both his father’s ashes and his own state of mind, Mitch runs into a variety of characters who aggravate his frustrations, making it impossible to resolve his dilemma.

All the characters have a skewed, if not narrow, outlook, but it is Mitch who simply can’t figure out how the day-to-day works. Hamish Linklater captures Mitch’s glossy-eyed drunken stupor and his sense of alienation. He displays quiet rage when his character tests boundaries, he delivers lines with youthful bitterness and wry humor, and shows how tight a system can be when all communication is shut down. What is not clear is his character’s journey. Linklater depicts the alienation so well that he gives no indication that his character cares a glimmer about anything, even his girlfriend, Erin. It is not evident in the beginning when he is being seduced by her or toward the end when he tells her he has packed their things to move to Alaska. These should be huge moments that anticipate change in him, but they are missed moments.

Marin Ireland instills Erin with modest purpose and small signs of strength. She tries whatever female wiles she has to make Mitch remember what they had when they first rode the roller coaster of the play's title. Her character is the hope of the play and little by little we learn that she alone expects more from life than she is getting. Although she appears to be a pushover at times, she never does what she does not want to do. Though she is not sure what she wants, she makes a choice that supports what she says to Mitch: your life can be whatever you want it to be. As it stands, Erin is the protagonist.

Lucas Papaelias beautifully encapsulates the many slow-witted clerks of the world into Bob, reminding us that small, frustrating moments can be very, very funny. Papaelias understands the awkward body language and the hesitant speech patterns of his character, and he is a pleasure to watch. The audience knows that Bob will never be more than a clerk, but even he, with all his limitations, has an ‘aha’ moment that signals that maybe, just maybe, he might.

In a bar scene, we meet Joe, a bartender of the old fashioned sort. Michael Cullen brings understandable weariness to his barkeep, escaping the stories of his clientele by watching game shows on television. Cullen artfully combines the feeling of being anesthetized by his customers’ small talk with disgust at what he sees on TV. He saves heated and hilarious admonishments for the guests of The Price is Right, ignoring those in front of him. This brings to fruition his one piece of philosophy—life is ugly.

Jeremy Davidson delivers all the cocky self-confidence needed for the know-it-all cop, Martin. He balances his interest in the roving ashes, in Erin, and in pinning various misdemeanors on Mitch like a man who knows what he is after. Two other characters round out the cast. Steve, a junkie, played by Matthew Stadelmann, reminds Erin what she is missing simply by paying attention to her; and Jim, played by James Hendricks, is a meddling neighbor who borrows beer and delights in the fact that his dog relieves himself on Mitch’s property.

While the script is filled with sad-sack characters, Fitzgerald has given them clever dialog, humor, and desperation. They add up to real people. What he has done best is hitch the relationship of one character to another in subtle and surprising ways. This keeps the plot moving forward at a clip.

There are other reasons to see this fine play, which is ably directed by Brian Mertes. Start with the set. It provides in perfect detail a fully-stocked convenience store, a well-stocked bar, and a deteriorating mobile home—all on a teeny stage without a curtain and without blackouts. Credit Victoria Imperioli with this fetching and inspirational feat. She is also producer, costume designer, and decorator and co-owner of Studio Dante. David Thomas designed the sound, which hits the right keys both in the music selected and in the sound effects. A scene at the Jersey shore might have been misconstrued had it not been for the oh so subtle waves lilting in the background. Tony Giovannetti designed the effective lighting.

Studio Dante itself is reason to go. Seating only 65 patrons, it is an ornate jewel box of a theater with wall coverings beginning inside the box office and continuing throughout the theater. Gold leaf is everywhere and the seats are replicas of Louis XVI side chairs. It is a visual delight.

There are many bright moments in this play. For the characters Erin and Mitch it is the memory of a ride on the Cyclone. For the audience, it is Ron Fitzgerald’s wit, sensibility, timing, and credible characters. Well done.