I'm sorry, but I found Jonathan Kent's new production of Faith Healer unwatchable.

I mean this literally. Jonathan Fensom's set for the show consists of some sparse furniture on a bare, open stage whose three walls have been painted a steely and unyielding dark, dark grey. Mark Henderson's lighting consists of sprigs or pins of dim light on the actor who is on stage at the moment (this is a monologue play, with the actors performing one at a time). The resultant barely illuminated stage pictures played havoc with my middle-aged eyes; after staring most of the day at a computer screen, they hope for something more loaded with color, contrast, and action to look at than the grainy, unfocused, stagnant sights that comprise Faith Healer. My eyes and I gave up the ghost at intermission and went home.

What I can tell you from having sat through the first act is that Ralph Fiennes is giving a fine, nuanced, appealing performance here, as a man named Francis Hardy who makes his living as a faith healer, traveling around small towns in Scotland and Wales and "performing" (his term) in front of audiences of the desperate and hopeless. Fiennes gives vivid voice to Brian Friel's talky script, creating a character who thinks a lot about his job and his place in the world, his so-called "gift" and how it relates to the abstract notion of faith.

I can also tell you that Cherry Jones seems badly miscast as Hardy's wife, Grace, a woman whose passion for her husband is approximately the same (enormous) size as her skepticism about his abilities; her concern for his emotional and psychological welfare is, apparently, the thing that binds her to a man she nevertheless steadfastly refuses to understand. Grounded, smart Jones never makes us believe in this odd, flighty woman; and directed by Kent to sit relentlessly still in a chair for her entire 35-minute monologue, she's hard to stay focused on. Jones's odd accent—American Midwestern except for Boston-y long a's—is difficult to listen to, as well.

As for Friel's play, it strikes me as lazy writing of the kind that has become more and more pre-eminent in the English-speaking theatre in the 20-odd years since he composed this piece. Its structure—four successive monologues—precludes the playwright from having to develop believable interactions among characters, which seems to me to be the hallmark of good dramatic writing; instead, he substitutes easy but undefined relationships between them and us, and I found myself wondering, repeatedly: who are these people? where are they? where do they think I am? why are they talking to me?

It's possible that some of those questions might have been answered for me had I wished to subject my eyes to another hour-plus of the severe strain of trying to look at this dim and static production's second act. (The lighting is so dark that from row K in the orchestra I could barely make out what was written on a large placard at least six feet high that is the most prominent set piece.) As things stand, the questions will remain unanswered...and I'm not feeling bothered by that at all.

Sherry Glaser is a terrifically likable comedienne—in her one-woman series of monologues called Family Secrets, she inhabits five members of a Jewish family from the Bronx who make new lives for themselves in that land of happiness and “I’m ok/you’re ok” inner peace, Southern California. They are quite funny, and they tell good stories in their respective monologues. They love to talk using their hands. If you are suspecting that much of this plays into sentimental Jewish stereotypes, you’re no shmegegi, but don’t get schmart. Glaser is fairly nimble with the monologues, and if they err on the side of sentimentality, they do so with a heartfelt and unapologetic lack of pretension. Each monologue begins with a song and ends with a lesson learned, but in between these characters sometimes reveal arresting, complicated lives and tenacious inner struggle.

Mort, the father, has a touch-and-go relationship with his pagan, bisexual daughter, Kahari (a name she chose in adulthood, shirking her birth name, Fern), and shares with us the embarrassment he felt when she danced with her lesbian lover in front of all the guests at his renewal-of-marriage-vows reception.

Bev, his wife, has the bravest and most affecting time with us. She was abandoned by her mother, a woman who went into an asylum and never came out. This made Bev resolve to be the perfect mother to her own family, and as a result of that pursuit, she was also institutionalized. She takes us on a journey of mental recovery and as she tells of many a dish getting broken, an urn getting sent Federal Express, and her life being saved by a therapist named “Bunny,” she does it all with candid, charming humor.

Glaser’s bottomless sympathy for the mother and father gives the personal details of their stories a uniqueness that transcends stereotype and wraps us up in fulfilling time spent with real people. When Bev describes the surprising sand-like texture of her mother’s ashes, or when Mort specifies his dance-floor homophobia in the barely audible mutter, “Not in my house. Not in my house”, it is confession. We feel alone with them in the room, bonded with an unflinching trust—a result of Glaser’s skillful one-person showmanship in these moments.

The disconnect that exists between us and Sandra, then, feels all the more jarring. Sandra is Kahari’s teenage daughter, and her life is a laundry list of after-school special traumas: bulimia, binge eating, drinking, unprotected sex, poor body image, and a belief that a boyfriend could solve all her problems. We see her find out that the boy who took her virginity and told her she “was the best” has cheated on her. We see her drag out her secret stash of junk food and begin eating herself into numbness. We even see her jiggle the parts of her body at us that shame her the most.

But none of this seems remotely to affect her. Glaser’s grasp on this character is the weakest of her five personas, and it feels more clichéd than anything in the show touching on Jewish culture. The truly vulnerable details that are buried under the mountain of this girl’s pain are never brought to light. She doesn’t tell or show us anything that makes her a three-dimensional individual, as opposed to a composite of adolescent angst. What does she feel before, during, and after throwing up? What does she feel when she binges on chips and candy that she hides under her bed? What does she feel about sex now that she’s had it with a guy who clearly doesn’t care for her? The answers to these questions might not keep a comedy afloat, but there is nothing funny about these issues, even on the surface. To present a character that is up to her armpits in them requires a “fish or cut bait” commitment from the actor to go the root of the problems. The candor bar is set too high by the characters preceding Sandra for Glaser to allow her problems to feel arbitrarily plucked from a grab-bag of adolescent troubles.

Family Secrets is a revival of the off-Broadway production Glaser performed in 1993. Bob Balaban is the director at the helm this time, and with a keen eye he has overseen the show’s excellent pace and use of Rob Odorisio’s simple but handsome blue-toned set. Glaser’s characterizations do not reach for the artistic mimicry that differentiate characters in the one-woman shows of Anna Deveare Smith or Sarah Jones; she relies heavily on wigs, fat suits, and multiple costume elements, but the costume change transitions are smoothly accompanied by her singing a song in the manner of the upcoming character.

The audience on the night I saw the show was putty in her hands. She had them remembering most of the words to “Hava Nagilah” (“Aren’t you Jews?” she chided) and belting out every blessed word of “Sunrise, Sunset” (“You are Jews!” she beamed). Glaser offers very warm-hearted reflections on the idiosyncrasies of familial relations—which for many people are not so warm-hearted. These characters are humorous and wise about their tight-knit, imperfect bonds, but it can’t be forgotten, even in a laugh and song-filled evening, that they are also very lucky, and very blessed.

It’s a matter of seconds into Ed Dixon’s new musical Fanny Hill (based on the book by John Cleland) before the title character warns the audience that she “wrote the most famous dirty book of all time.” Indeed, Cleland’s novel so shocked readers of the 1700s (and beyond) that it was banned in the United States until a 1966 Supreme Court decision rendered it openly readable. The stage version of Fanny quickly qualifies her claim—(“it’s not really dirty; it’s just my story!”)—but this admittedly likable production still never lives up to the audacity of its opening line, abandoning the potential for cheeky fun in favor of only mildly successful sentiment.

Fleeing the English countryside for London after her parents’ untimely deaths, Fanny Hill (the wholly appealing Nancy Anderson) finds herself broke and alone in the seedy city, where she sets out in search of a long-lost friend, Phoebe Davis (Christianne Tisdale). Overhearing her plight, madam-in-disguise Mrs. Brown (Patti Allison) offers the waif a room at her boarding house, pleasant accommodations full of other single, young women—including Phoebe, maid Martha (Emily Skinner), and German basement-dweller Esther Schwester (Gina Ferrall). The residents—all unrelated but referred to as “cousins”—welcome Fanny with open arms; but then, welcoming strangers with open arms is their business, and the raison d’etre for Mrs. Brown’s excitement at bringing yet another directionless but beautiful girl into her home. Mortified at the advances of Mrs. Brown’s unappealing clientele (not to mention those of some of her co-workers), Fanny escapes with the handsome if not-entirely-bright sailor Charles Waneigh (Tony Yazbeck). His kidnapping sends the seemingly luckless Fanny back to Mrs. Brown, where she is sold to wealthy Lord Hereford (David Cromwell), only to be returned yet again when he catches her red, er, handed with the amply-endowed and aptly-named Will Plenty (Adam Monley). Yet another forced marriage to the ancient but even more affluent Mister Croft (Cromwell again), timed nicely with his death and the unexpected return of her kidnapped first-love, leaves this self-proclaimed “woman of pleasure” with the happiest of endings.

Unfortunately, the audience isn’t quite as lucky. A host of appealing elements are in place—excellent performers (namely, Anderson, Allison, Skinner, Yazbeck, and Cromwell), delicious costumes and a fantastic and functional set by Michael Bottari & Ronald Case, and saucily compelling source material—making it tough to dismiss Fanny Hill entirely. More problematic, however, is Ed Dixon’s utterly forgettable score and virtually joyless book. Within minutes of leaving the theatre, I could not recall a single song from the production, save an irritating “clip clop” refrain that indicates travel. Some of the slightly more memorable scenes seem too close to other, much better-crafted musicals—the Cousins’ welcoming “House of Joy” evokes Annie’s “I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here”; Patti Allison’s Mrs. Brown sure does look and sound like a Les Miserables road company Mme. Thernardier; and I’ll be darned if two scenes in a London market don’t bear more than a passing resemblance to Oliver’s rousing “Who Will Buy?,” down to vendors offering strawberries and flowers. Most importantly, for a tale that begins with that pronouncement of being the “most famous dirty book of all time,” there is surprisingly little glee in Fanny’s self-exploration and rise to fame as London’s most renowned woman of pleasure.

There are witty moments, it’s true; the first sex scene between prudish virgins Fanny and Charles is a success as much because of its clever use of formal language to highlight awkwardness and downplay sexuality as for the immensely likable Anderson and Yazbeck. An obviously-intended showstopper, Mrs. Brown’s “Every Man in London,” is enjoyable enough for allowing character actress Allison to shine alone, but an unwarranted—and unrequested—encore detracts from its appeal. After that, the next extended joy surfaces towards the end of the musical’s second act, as Fanny and her colleagues entertain a variety of clients with odd fetishes via song and dance. By that point, though, the hardworking cast and the remarkable design can barely rescue this show from itself. For a work whose source material is subtitled “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,” Fanny Hill contains surprisingly little pleasure—for its characters or for its audience.

Faster—which is far and away the most interesting and exciting entry in this year's Brits Off Broadway festival—is the creation of a smart new London-based company called Filter. Inspired by, of all things, a book by popular science writer James Gleick, it tells the story of three young adults coping with the acceleration of life on Planet Earth in the 21st century. We see these three generally likeable people adopt different strategies and experience different amounts of satisfaction/happiness; inevitably, they're powerless to alter the pace of human existence—but some of them would sure like to try, and I for one know just what they mean.

The characters are Will, Victoria, and Ben. Will and Ben are flatmates and also co-workers at an advertising agency; their current project is to develop a campaign for a pension fund (not the sexiest of advertisers); their core "big idea" is to use an innovative "five-second spot" to build awareness of the product.

Victoria is a longtime friend of Will's—he has nursed a crush on her for decades, to which she's been at least officially oblivious—who has returned to London after a year abroad. That year was downtime following big success at a high-powered law firm; she dropped out (on her own terms, with enough cash to subsidize her fancy) and went around the world. Now she's back home but not entirely ready to re-enter the world she left behind. She immediately begins an affair with Ben and finds a temporary job as a phone operator for an event ticketing company.

The various threads of this story weave and sometimes interweave over the course of weeks or maybe even months (for a show about time, Faster's actual timeline is fairly loose). Things work out, some the way we were hoping, others the way we were expecting, and life marches on. Whether or not it is progressing is a question left for the audience to work out and is indeed one of the points of the play.

But the main idea here is the HOW rather than the WHAT: Faster is about how life is lived in the age of high technology, and not at all incidentally how theatre may be experienced under 21st century circumstances. The whole play happens in about 75 minutes, on a stage that's bare except for the occasional table or chair, with three actors as the main characters plus two others on the sidelines who portray everyone else that's needed and provide musical accompaniment and a dazzling array of sound effects (electronically, mostly; sometimes literally by pounding on a computer keyboard). The sound, which is designed by Chris Branch, Tom Haines, and Tim Phillips, is the most spectacularly noticeable element of this production and probably also the most effective: don't underestimate the evocative and suggestive power of the briefest of sound blips in setting up a situation or creating an ambience. Case in point: a restaurant that is established simply by the low-key clanging together of a single fork and knife. Branch and Phillips, by the way, are the on-stage actor/musician/sound technicians, and they're remarkable.

Just as important for our understanding of both the what and the how is the narrative structure. What it resembles most is hypertext, like we see on the Internet: segments—some of which are very very short, and several of which are reprised and/or performed repetitively, fuguelike—bounce around, chronologically but not necessarily linearly; our job is to pay attention and see where the play has traveled to with each new vignette. Filter accomplishes transitions and storytelling masterfully, and so this turns out to be not as tough as it could be: it's always clear what's going on, where we are, and how we got there. It's also often surprising—that's one of the neat things about this methodology. Just about everything in Faster plays out in a kind of shorthand—sometimes literally, as when Ben speaks aloud the text message he's sending to Vic's cell phone; much overlaps. It feels, in short, very much like our overloaded real lives, in which beepers, phones, emails, and oh yes actual living real people all vie for our apparently shrinking supply of time. Faster happens fast, as if against a pressing deadline; and it is this relentless pace that ends up conveying, unsubtly but elegantly, the evening's theme.

The actors are superb: Will Adamsdale (Will), Victoria Moseley (Victoria), and Ferdy Roberts (Ben) each creates a very recognizable type here, and probably the one you identify most with will signify volumes about who you are. That the three characters remain so completely human throughout is tribute to their talent. Director Guy Retallack and writer Stephen Brown must also be mentioned for contributions to a whole so seamless that it's very difficult indeed to know who deserves credit for what. The important point is that Faster is outstanding in every department. Some of the future of stagecraft is on view here; even if the sentiments are sometimes familiar, the presentation is innovative and often unique. This makes Faster must-see theatre for the adventurous and the curious. And I will certainly await eagerly whatever Filter comes up with next. Let's hope they'll find visionary producers like the folks at 59e59 to bring them back to America soon.

Who knew that the 1987 film Fatal Attraction would be so ideal for playful deconstruction? Obviously, Alana McNair and Kate Wilkinson did. As the authors and co-stars of the new comedy Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, McNair and Wilkinson poke scathing fun at the Michael Douglas-Glenn Close potboiler with lots of self-conscious humor, a Greek Chorus, and some martial arts action. With the help of Timothy Haskell’s inventive, no-holds-barred direction and a more-than-game cast, there are laughs aplenty. However, with all that it has going for it, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy’s secret weapon turns out to be none other than 1980s pop movie icon Corey Feldman, who looks like he’s having the time of his life in the lead role.

That’s right: I said Corey Feldman. Former child star of such films as The Goonies, Stand By Me, and The Lost Boys, Feldman hams it up beautifully as Michael Douglas (the three lead characters—Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer—are named after the actors who played them in the movie), doing a hilarious over-the-top impression of his character’s namesake (he even has Douglas’s trademark chin cleft drawn on). His performance is so broad that at any given moment he could be doing Douglas or channeling Lloyd Bridges’s performance from Airplane! It doesn’t really matter because the point is simply to send up Douglas’s image of masculine virility, which Feldman & Co. pull off successfully.

By the way, for anyone who doesn’t know the basic story of Fatal Attraction: a successful corporate lawyer cheats on his doting, perfect wife with an über-businesswoman who happens to be mentally unstable, and turns his life upside down as she begins to stalk him and harass his family. Back in 1987, this whole thing was played seriously (and inexplicably garnered six Academy Award nominations). But the FAATG team sees the silliness in their source material, and jazzes it up by adding a Greek Chorus that comments on the action by spouting Euripides and excerpts from early 20th-century home etiquette propaganda (there’s a perverse comic thrill from watching Michael Douglas mount Glenn Close from behind, screaming his own name in ecstasy and exclaiming “I am GOD!” while the Chorus extols the virtues of creating a comfortable domestic home for the family).

Then there’s the refreshing self-conscious humor that helps bring the proceedings down to earth further as the FAAGT team gleefully makes fun of themselves. In one group scene, a Chorus member stands next to Feldman with a legal pad on the back of which is written “COREY FELDMAN” with an arrow pointing towards the actor. When Close slashes her wrist in a desperate grab for attention, a Chorus member stands next to her with a pump so the audience can see the fake blood gushing. Feldman even busts out a few of his now-patented faux-Michael Jackson dance moves when Douglas first seduces Close (a scene which the Greek Chorus punctuates by repeatedly whispering “Would you like to fuck?” underneath their conversation).

There are also daffy touches thrown in just for laughs. After confessing his indiscretion to Archer, Douglas serenades her with the Styx power ballad “Babe.” In another scene, Archer finishes a conversation by stating, “Well, I’ve got to get back to my potatoes,” and then proceeds to do Tai Chi in the kitchen. Plus there’s a climatic martial arts battle in which everyone (including the Greek Chorus) fights Close.

Clearly, tongues are planted firmly in cheeks, and nothing is to be taken seriously. But, a show as broad and crazy as this one can’t succeed without a cast that is willing to jump off the deep end, and FAAGT is loaded with such eager thespians. In addition to the terrific Feldman, McNair has fun with Close’s fluctuating degrees of intensity. As the-way-too-domestic Archer, Wilkinson is perfect (one of her running gags—repeating saying “Hello?” into the phone whenever there’s no answer on the other end—is a clinic on how to properly milk a joke for everything it’s worth). Greek Chorus members Kellie Arens, Nick Arens, Ebony Cross, and Sergio Lobito all do a great job in their various roles. And, in an inspired bit of casting, Aaron Haskell (of Paris Hilton fame in last season’s I Love Paris) nearly steals the show as Douglas and Archer’s sexually ambiguous daughter.

With Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, McNair, Wilkinson, and Haskell have the makings of a cult hit on their hands. And Feldman begins an unexpected new chapter in his career. Hopefully we will see their work on New York stages for a long time to come. In the meantime, get yourself down to the 13th Street Theatre and see the show that refuses to be ignored.

The word "fuck," or a colorful variant thereof, is uttered some 139 times in Fatboy; in a 75-minute play, that amounts to nearly two fucks per minute.

I mention this not to be prurient, but merely to point out that Fatboy is a profane play, with neither manners nor subtlety. It means to offend, and it's testament to playwright-director John Clancy's mastery of his art that the repetition is aggressively and meaningfully assaulting rather than merely numbing. Using a technique that Alfred Jarry—whose Ubu plays are source and inspiration for Fatboy—appropriated from three-year-olds saying "poopy" or the like, the play does just what the three-year-old intends: it gets our attention. Fatboy is very entertaining in its grotesquely scatological way, but it's also precisely pointed, and not just a little bit scary.

Fatboy, the title character, is a glutton. The fattest, graspingest, awfulest glutton ever. Convinced that he deserves whatever he wants, he takes what he wants; ordinary scruples against stealing or killing just don't apply. He's awesomely gross in his greed and, as he progresses in the play's three acts from lowlife to prisoner to king, his uncanny ability to steamroll everyone in his path just gets more and more worrisome.

Fatboy's wife is called Fudgie, and I lied a minute ago, for perhaps it is she who is the graspingest, awfulest glutton ever. (She is not, however, fat.) She says, "Others should willingly, instinctively, give all they have to the fat man and me or they should be unmade." And she means this.

During the course of the play, we observe Fatboy and Fudgie in their home, where they bicker and quarrel like (as the press materials aptly have it) a live-action Punch and Judy, and where Fudgie rents out Fatboy's study to a handsome boarder who happens to be a professional assassin; in a courtroom, where they bicker and quarrel and where Fatboy subverts a trial overseen by a corrupt judge and a prosecutor whom Fudgie easily seduces; and in their royal palace, where they bicker and quarrel and Fatboy eventually orders his slave to destroy every living thing on Earth so as not to compromise his legacy.

In between these scenes, which play like, I don't know, Monty Python on speed with no censorial hand in sight, Fatboy and Fudgie appear before the toy-theatre-like proscenium that frames the set and appeal directly to the audience for their understanding and empathy. (This part plays like Brecht on speed.) In the end, Fatboy delivers an impassioned plea for the audience's continued apathy and willingness to allow leaders to destroy their and the planet's well-being, just in case the point hasn't quite been hammered home.

It's not just compelling, it's spooky: Fatboy is a play about laughing all the way to our mass destruction. Where Jarry was a kid poking fun at the establishment, Clancy is an authentic revolutionary poking and prodding at institutions theatrical and political in hopes of making his audience jump out of their comfort zone.

Clancy's staging is deftly economical and the design—Kelly Hanson's splendidly cheesy sets, Michael Oberle's exaggerated costumes that are half-circus and half-Greek comedy, and Eric Southern's effective lighting—suits the piece perfectly. The actors are terrific, making Clancy's larger-than-life characters even larger than that. Dave Calvitto and Jody Lambert are grand as second bananas (Calvitto's comic timing remains pretty much unparalleled as far as I'm concerned); Matt Oberg evokes laughter and an appropriate pathos as boarder, prosecutor, and slave; and Nancy Walsh is commandingly terrifying as Fudgie. At the center of it all is Del Pentecost in an epic and memorable performance as Fatboy, funny and horrible.

If words like the one I mentioned in the first paragraph offend you, then of course you don't have to see Fatboy, but in fact you're likely its target audience. In the end, as Lenny Bruce used to say, it's not the words that are obscene but rather the actions committed in the name of this or that cause. Fatboy is a loud and ornery wakeup call of a comedy; a mirror held up to an audience and then smashed with a hammer, with shards flying everywhere.

Fathom, created by SaBooge Theatre and presented by Soho Think Tank in their annual summer play festival Ice Factory, will remind you why you to go see live theatre instead of going to the movies or watching TV. It invokes theatricality as what separates theatre from these other mediums and makes the suspension of disbelief an artistic gesture on the part of the audience.

SaBooge’s concept of theatricality is based on unbridled imagination combined with naturalistic ensemble acting set against a backdrop of music, lights, and sound. Music makes up a large part of the aesthetics of the production. Musicians Peter Lettre and Jeff Lorenz play everything from a mandolin to a bass clarinet, dropping one instrument and picking up another like a two-man symphony on an assembly line. The set is so simple and yet so exquisite and its pieces are pragmatically used for anything. A suitcase and a plank, for example, make for a great row boat. A large swath of scrim makes for a perfect slice of underwater when lit with blue light and then it transforms into an awning. The ensemble works like a beating heart, pumping blood into living characters and transforming the set as if it were an extension of themselves.

The story they play out is a gripping tale of selfishness and the deep need to understand human nature. It is set on an island where convicts are sent from England to live out their sentences. This particular convict is a young woman named Sarah who was sent to the island with her infant child for stealing a single fish. She has been taken from the factory where she’d been working and put to work as a servant by a charitable lady named Jane. Jane’s husband Winston is a scientist who believes he has discovered a method of predicting criminal behavior by examining the lumps on the head. The story picks up at the arrival of Alastair, a young scientist’s assistant, who has come to study and catalogue sea shells. Alastair befriends Fabian, the now teenaged son of Sarah, and discovers that Fabian has the ability to breathe underwater. This launches Alastair on a campaign to flaunt Fabian in front of the scientific world as an extraordinary example of Darwinian adaptation.

All the characters except for Fabian harbor a selfish desire for something, but it is Alastair’s desire to exploit Fabian that comes in conflict with Winston’s need to believe that he is of superior stock. As they wrestle over the boy’s fate we begin to see that Fabian’s innocence is merely the tip of this iceberg of a theme. Below the waterline lie other themes of redemption, greed, the vanity of knowledge, and the triumph of the human spirit. If Fabian is to survive, his soul must learn to adapt to the greed of men just as his lungs have adapted to breathing water. It’s his innocence that eventually leads him to his only option.

The title of the play, Fathom, is quite brilliant. Its dual meaning (to fully understand and a measurement of water depth) runs through the entire play. Jeff Lorenz’s rich sound design also runs through the entire show. He takes us from buzzing bugs on a porch to the gentle splashing of the tide and then to an eerie underwater hum. Together with his wonderful original score Lorenz creates an unforgettable soundscape. Simon Harding is credited as production designer. If that means he designed the lights and set then he deserves the highest praise. The lights are dark and evocative and the set is versatile. Harding’s work is a perfect fit for this production.

The fact that SaBooge is a collective makes it difficult to give credit where credit is due. There is, for example, no credit given for the marvelous text. I assume that it is a devised script created by the members of the ensemble; I commend them for a job well done. Devised scripts are not always this polished. Richard Crawford is credited with collaborating on direction but there is not a single person credited as director so I must once again commend SaBooge, this time for the purity of their directorial vision. The show is evenly spiced with simple and yet very theatrical conventions such as the way a clothes line is created or the wind blows through the women’s skirts. There are some moments in Fathom that I watched with my mouth hanging open in astonishment. The beautiful underwater scenes are one example.

The cast turns out an outstanding naturalistic performance. They also double as stage crew, converting the set into whatever the script or direction calls for. Attila Clemann plays Alastair with the perfect amount of blind enthusiasm you might find in a young scientist. Andrew Shaver is cold and ridiculously superior as Winston. Kayla Fell plays Jane with a wonderful balance of quirkiness and righteousness. I loved Adrienne Kapstein’s painfully blank stares as the convict with a heavy weight on her soul. And Patrick Costello delivers a pliable and charming performance as the young Fabian.

Fathom is everything that theatre should be. This production should not be missed. I know I won’t miss anything that SaBooge puts out there in the future.

Goethe’s Faust, the man, is probably best known as an archetype of selling out, a pre-Freudian personification of the Id-Ego-Superego dynamic. A utopian idealist, he’s ripe for dramatizing. But Faust, the opus, with its uber-density of heightened language, hedonism, and profundity, has scared off all but the most ambitious producers and directors. Target Margin Theater's artistic director David Herskovits and translator Douglas Langworthy take up the challenge with a fully parsed exploration of more than 10,000 words and six hours of stage-time in an attempt to illuminate the “poetry and sensual life” of infamous Faust. Working in Classic Stage Company’s vaulted-ceiling theater, Herskovits and his design team make full use of the open spaces with operatic staging and ever-transforming set pieces that keep the marathon production moving briskly. Herskovits’s informal directing style, which includes actors pre-set and meandering on-stage and in the periphery, invites the audience, engages us, charms us. And yet the lasting impression I have of the entire experience is of the utter immensity and breadth of the material and the understanding that sometimes too much is just too much.

With that being said, Target Margin scores big with the design and staging of the material as well as with the top-notch cast. The brilliantly mobile set designed by Carol Bailey ranges from abstract (flats for mountains) to literal (a cathedral-sized crucifix) to sublimely ridiculous (a wine-spewing wooden bench), allowing for the abundant scenery changes to happen smoothly. Faust is portrayed by both Will Badgett and by Ty Jones as Young Faust with equal yearning for knowledge and satisfaction, but the physical transition rather than a mere make-up change to a younger Faust when he drinks the witch’s potion dynamically amps up the energy. Original songs composed by John King for Part I and by Katie Down for Part II to accompany certain verses with gothic but sometime silly orchestrations add nuance to the challenging translation of verse. All of these things combine to create an event, a magnum opus, inevitable I suppose when dealing with such epic material, but as an evening of theatre, it over-reaches and tends to the indulgent rather than the profound. While it’s an indulgence of reverence and provenance, it nonetheless seems worshipful, personal, and not communal.

To summarize the author’s plot synopsis, when Faust dabbles in some black magic, Mephistopheles (the devilish David Greenspan) drops in to tempt him with the proverbial proposition: the chance to explore his wildest fantasies and desires in return for his soul. Faust accepts, and Mephisto initiates Faust’s rejuvenation, whisking him off to woo Gretchen (the irresistible Eunice Wong). Faust seduces her, de-virginizes her, goes off to a bacchanal while she kills their baby and is condemned by the town and her own conscience. She eventually refuses to leave when Faust comes to help her escape. End Part I.

Part II. Mephisto takes Faust back and forth through time and epochs, summoning Helen of Troy and Paris to impress at court. Faust seduces Helen; they have a son who strives to climb to higher and higher peaks only to fall off one and die. Helen then vanishes into air. Faust wants to rule over land reclaimed from the sea; Mephisto tells him to help the Emperor, he does, and the Emperor gives Faust the land. Yet unsatisfied, he tries to steal the land of a poor old couple who end up dying because of this. Faust dies old and blind. When Mephisto comes to collect his soul, angels intercede and Faust ascends (his soul at least) heavenward.

I left out the section when Mephisto transforms himself into Phorkyas to ingratiate him(her)self to Helen. But that’s the point exactly. While noble, the attempt to present a dramatic interpretation of this piece in its entirety weighs down this poignant, passionate parable with unnecessary embellishments. These artists have spared little in raising this child of a play to full adulthood, but they’ve spoiled it. It doesn’t know any better. It wants what it wants; it’s Faust after all. But again, I find myself still impressed by many of its elements.

Herskovits allows his actors to accentuate the fact that they’re playing these roles, relishing their complicity in the seduction. Some grasp this more naturally than others. Eunice Wong plays Gretchen with an innocent awakening into womanhood that leads to a tortured repentance. Her emotional arc dominates the second half of Part I, overshadowing Faust’s story. Later, she plays ensemble roles with equal relish. Wayne Alon Scott purely cracked me up. Imposing physically, Scott possesses graceful control of his movements, jumping from a noble soldier destroyed by the fall from grace of his sister, Gretchen, to a witch’s monkey bouncing around taunting Faust. But his coup de grace is the puppet dance he does as Euphorion, Helen’s son with Faust who falls to his death. Seeing Scott’s attention to character focused through to this stick puppet brought a big smile to my face in the middle of the dauntingly dense Part II, Act I. David Greenspan, well, he’s charming, seductive, attractive, and every bit the cocky Mephisto required, and that’s not to say that it’s easily done. The cast to a person gives 100% for all 6-plus hours.

I commend Target Margin and Langworthy for realizing this monumental project and with so much detail and attention. They have created a piece for connoisseurs of theater and Faust alike. Designers, cast, producers should all be proud. But unfortunately, in spite of Langworthy’s lament in the program:

…sadly they [German classics] remain far from center-stage. A text as seminal as Goethe’s Faust must be set loose from the page and be allowed to find sensual life on the stage, for only there can it achieve its truest, fullest expression.

this interpretation falls short of providing a producible practical version. Nevertheless, Target Margin has set the bar rather high for future productions.

So much can be—and needs to be—said about the state of our very troubled union these days; I was hoping that Jean-Claude van Itallie—whose activist theatrical voice was one of the seminal ones in the Vietnam War era—might be just the playwright to say some of it. Alas, his new political protest piece Fear Itself is a disappointment, providing neither the razor-sharp satirical edge nor the well-articulated political perspective that can rouse an audience to action or even ardor.

Billed as a "farcical tragedy," Fear Itself strikes me mostly as allegory (at least the parts of it that are most successful do). Broad, parodic scenes depicting "Emperor Butch" and his cabinet "General Gin Rummy," "General Pow Pow," and "General Attorney Sing-Sing" are interspersed with segments set on a stark battlefield where Butch's children Adam, Eve, and Sergeant Junior fight and, in two cases, die in an apocalyptic war. The "Eve" character has real bite: she's presented at first as a kind of Cassandra, seeing a dying world that no one will believe in. Near the end of the show, a banner is unfurled bearing the message "Mission Accomplished" at the rear of the stage, with the bloodied and spent Adam and Eve arrayed on either side of it—it's the one really potent image in the piece, decrying the wastefulness of our current and past wars with silent eloquence.

But most of Fear Itself amounts to just so much haranguing and wheel-spinning. Emperor Butch is presented as spoiled, foxy, not-too-bright; under the thumbs of his "Big Mommy" (a Barbara Bush-like portrait, swathed in the inevitable pearl necklace, hangs above Butch's throne) and his advisor Rover (a witty touch: Karl Rove as canine; but whose tail wags what dog?); tenacious and imperial and uninformed; determined to wage war against the guy who defeated his Daddy instead of the (presumably) real bad guys who attacked his empire. There's nothing here that any critic of the current administration is going to argue with, but by the same token, there's nothing here that's terribly new or interesting either. Nothing dates as quickly as satire: Fear Itself fizzles because it's badly out of touch with current events (notice the presence of both a Powell and an Ashcroft stand-in in the character list, for example)—almost everything here is an echo rather than an urgent call. Van Itallie is angry, but his outrage seems focused on old news.

The production is directed listlessly by George Ferencz (it's possible that some of the low energy at the performance reviewed was due to a lack of preparedness, so maybe that's been resolved). The actors mostly seem to be going through the motions of their caricature/characters, with the notable exceptions of Jenne Vath as Eve, who is never less than compelling in a very small role, and Ken Pearlstein, who goes beyond Saturday Night Live-style impersonation to really attempt an exploration of what makes Emperor Butch tick. The script just doesn't give him the opportunities he deserves.

There will be, I hope, more theatre that will help us articulate how we feel about what's happened to our country and where it's going as we head toward the midterm election year. There's certainly enough material out there to feed theatre artists of any and all political persuasions. We'll keep on the lookout...

There’s nothing like going to see good sketch comedy. The genre can be so hit or miss—but rest assured that Fearsome hits more often than not.

Their particular brand of sketch comedy cuts straight to the laughs. It’s like comedy for comedy’s sake. There’s not a whole lot of political prattle or high-brow meaning hidden behind their jokes. What they do very well is break down a joke into its parts and gradually push it to funnier and funnier places. The even have their own Blooper Reel that is basically an opportunity to revisit a bit and take it in a different direction. Another great example of this pushing jokes as far as they can go is their Rewind bit where they take a scene of a newlywed game show and play it over and over, squeezing out laughs with every turn. The audience the night I attended went wild for this bit and many others.

Fearsome keeps a fast pace and uses short interlude sketches to fill the gaps between longer ones. A couple of these interludes are revisited and escalated just like the longer ones. I particularly liked the Keg Stand bit where a partier has their legs held up while they drink straight from the keg only to reveal how depraved they are when they turn around and face the audience. Some of the jokes push the edge of good taste, but to me that’s what defines good comedy.

The six-member ensemble is made up of equal parts girls and boys. (However, there is an uneven balance of penis jokes to vagina jokes.) They are all very funny in their own special ways. I really liked Alex Goldberg and Dan Zalevsky in the Girly Drink swordfight scene. Alex leads the pack in laughs. Chris O’Connor shines in the Loneliest Telepath scene. Katherine Bryant is a live wire in every skit she touches. Jaime Hayes is great in the newlywed scene. But for me, Shayna Ferm takes the night with her pure and unrelenting commitment to every role she takes on. Whether playing a dog or making out with the open air or strumming a Christmas tune to Al Qaeda on her guitar, she demands and deserves attention.

So check Fearsome out. They’re not as scary as their name may imply. And they don’t bite… hard.

Festen is the most powerful play I've seen on Broadway in years. It packs such an emotional wallop that it was all my companion and I could talk about for hours afterward; it's still weighing down my heart and my mind a full day later. But it's also a terrifically engaging suspense drama, featuring one of the finest casts assembled for the New York stage in recent memory; and it's a deliciously involving, thrilling theatrical experience to boot. If you care about theatre that challenges the intellect and the status quo, get to Festen now.

You will have to take my word for a lot of the foregoing, by the way, because like any good thriller, the heart of Festen is a secret—or rather, a complicated web of secrets—that I will in no fashion give away here. The play, which is based on a Danish film and play by Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov, and Bo Hr. Hansen, as dramatized by David Eldridge, takes place at the 60th birthday party of Helge Hansen (Larry Bryggman). (Festen is translated as "The Celebration.") Helge is a successful, very rich entrepreneur, and gathered here for this event are his wife, Else (Ali MacGraw); his three children, Christian (Michael Hayden), Helene (Julianna Margulies), and Michael (Jeremy Sisto); Michael's wife, Mette (Carrie Preston), and their daughter (Meredith Lipson/Ryan Simpkins); his father (John Carter); an old friend and lodge brother named Poul (David Patrick Kelly); and Helmut (Christopher Evan Welch), a former employee who is now Managing Director of Hansen's company. Also in attendance are the butler, Lars (Stephen Kunken), the maid, Pia (Diane Davis), and the chef, Kim (C.J. Wilson); later a surprise guest named Gbatokai (Keith Davis) will turn up.

What we notice almost immediately about the Hansens is their sense of entitlement and privilege. Else spends most of her energy maintaining decorum, regardless of what is going on around her (and MacGraw is spectacularly effective doing this, her movie star aura helping to make her the focal point of many a scene). Michael, the youngest child, snaps at the servants and spars (physically as well as verbally) with his wife. Helene, the middle child, fancies herself a champion of the underdog but thinks nothing of ordering Lars about. Christian, effortlessly suave in black tie, seems preoccupied; his twin sister, Linda, has died recently, and perhaps that's what's weighing on his mind.

Helge is affability personified.

We're aware that things are off-kilter by the time the dinner table slides onto the stage as if by its own power; it's set Last Supper-style, with the long side that's closest to the audience empty, as if the family and their guests are about to be put on display. The dinner party begins and then quickly goes awry when Christian makes his toast. He lets his father choose from one of the two speeches he says he's prepared. Helge chooses the wrong one, as it turns out (though probably he has no real choice at all).

And then, after Christian says what he has to say, the party starts to collapse under its own weight. The table eventually flies away, again on its own; the whole house seems to implode, in fact, as the family itself starts to rot away from the systemic corruption that's revealed to be at its core.

What's so ingenious about Festen is the way that it gets at this insidious, hidden-away truth, using theatrical models that look familiar and then suddenly turn on us, startlingly, joltingly. The Danish setting and the forced jocularity of the characters makes us feel in places like we're inside an Ibsen play; the weird juxtapositions of characters of different classes and ages remind us of Chekhov (Kelly's character, Poul, is a completely enigmatic presence, just like all those once-prosperous neighbors who are always inexplicably hanging around in plays like The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull).

Even the servants are in on it—up to their eyeballs, in fact, in complicity. Eldridge lulls us into a false sense of security and then pulls us down into the muck. The shock of recognition is palpable and dangerous.

Ian McNeil's production design is spectacular; ditto Jean Kalman's lighting, Paul Arditti's sound, and Joan Wadge's costumes (the one she's designed for MacGraw to wear at the birthday party is particularly triumphant, encapsulating a great deal of this woman's ostentation and uselessness in this single splashy but reserved outfit). Under Rufus Norris's flawless direction, the ensemble is magnificent, with standout work offered in supporting roles by Carrie Preston, Keith Davis, Stephen Kunken, David Patrick Kelly, and Meredith Lipson (who played the little girl at the performance reviewed). In the five leading roles, the stellar quintet assembled here is dazzlingly good: MacGraw and Bryggman are chilling as the parents, while Sisto, Margulies, and especially Hayden are enormously affecting as the troubled offspring.

Festen is great theatre because it leaves us shaken and uncomfortable; as the veil of truth slowly lifts over the proceedings, we watch the settled elders of the play attempt various strategies of denial, like so much lubrication to ease them out of culpability and back toward a satisfaction that they have assumed as if by divine right. The resonance is very clear and very upsetting. But will the people who most need to hear it manage to evade its stark cathartic message?

Ian W. Hill’s production of Richard Foreman’s text called Film is Evil: Radio is Good takes place primarily on the stage. That, alone, is so meta that it could make ones brains ooze out the ears.

But, lo and behold, through the magic of some ambitious direction, Film is Evil: Radio is Good becomes abundantly clear as a sort of mock-debate, and uses the witty-cum-wandering Foreman language to create a palpable sense of whimsy. Uses of film, music, silence, and light all become woven into the fabric of the piece's inherent struggles.

The struggle presented here, is between Radio and Film. The setting places one side, Radio, at a table adorned with party hats and well-groomed bourgeois guests. The other side, representing Film, is a table adorned with ragtag bits of detritus. Its sole practitioner is a character named, in Hill’s version, Ian Hill (played by Peter Bean). The other side is led by Moira Stone, a sort of fascist temptress, whose issues with the medium of film seem to come both from personal animosity, and some sort of Higher Power... perhaps “Radio Richard.” All the cast members use their own names onstage, expressing, in its way, how theatre is entirely different from either of the mediums in question.

Describing the comings and goings onstage would be a bit like describing an action sequence on film: you sort of have to see it. People talk in microphones, film is projected on a large raised canvas, a large two-dimensional egg is broken... you get the idea. Or at least, you will if you see this often philosophically challenging piece.

What struck me, immediately, is that Radio is a medium that you’d expect Hill (or Foreman, or both) to support above film. The arguments against film in this piece are hard to deny: Film captures things as they are and leaves little room for the imagination. Radio allows the listener to use their own mind, projecting an image beyond verisimilitude.

The question of Film is Evil: Radio is Good seems not to be, in truth, whether either is superior to the other, but in fact, whether the debate is worth having. There are images of fascism throughout the piece (two young women in military garb work in support of the Radio Tribe), which denote that placing absolutes, or even expressing the superiority of one form of expression over another, closes down debate, and at the very least, makes a fetish of what is denied. The physical representation of one side winning over another (the “end of film”) is expressed as something tragic. The resolution, you may well find, speaks worlds to a culture that is immersed in these sorts of artistic and cultural debates, awash in noise. It’s also interesting in current context: Foreman’s own latest foray is a first venture into the use of film himself.

The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Alyssa Simon, Ms. Stone (whose delivery of the words “Cleveland, Ohio” actually made me laugh a little too loud), and the deadpan Peter Bean as Hill’s avatar.

Suffice to say, I heartily recommend a trip out on the “L” train to see director Hill’s work at the increasingly essential Brick Theater. It’s a rare play that presents three of the foremost mediums of our storytelling (Radio, Theater and Film) in such brilliant and evocative contrast.

Finding Pedro, written by James Heatherly and Lisa Gardner, is, at its heart, a very sweet little play. Heatherly, who plays ALL the characters—something like ten parts—just wants you to have a good time while you attend a party in God-Knows-Where, Texas. He picks three audience judges at random for the show’s finale, and gives away a lovely parting gift to one lucky audience member.

In Finding Pedro, resident society grand dame Gwendolyn Perry gives her annual formal gala in which three finalists compete for “the highly coveted Commodore Perry ‘Distinguished Gift to the Community of Sherrill’ Philanthropic Award.” First, New York transplant and society wannabe Coolie Juiceman yearns to win although she is contemptuous of all the hicks around her. Second, Flynn Stonewall, one of those hicks, has never been to such a fancy dress ball and is completely mortified, not to mention hopelessly clumsy, in the presence of the rich and semi-famous. Third, Pedro, a non-English-speaking Mexican gardener who is most mysteriously a no-show—much to the alarm of his boyfriend Tommy, who is also Gwendolyn Perry’s nephew. Could Pedro have run away? Or was he kidnapped? And who will be the winner?

Both the play and Heatherly have a great deal of charm, although at 90 minutes, it’s much too long and Heatherly’s energetic bopping up and down from chair to floor to change characters wears thin after an hour. Fortunately, Lisa Gardner’s direction keeps the show and the story ever moving with few moments of stagnation. Heatherly packs a lot into his stage time: he has a slow dance with himself, a fistfight with himself, looks pregnant, looks refined and inscrutable, talks white trash, talks Long-Gisland-ese and even sings. He looks great simply dressed throughout in casual light blue button-down shirt and white trousers, and he has a nice singing voice—although I’m not sure what the song is doing there, other than Heatherly giving himself the opportunity to sing it. (Not a quarrel, just a comment.) I also liked the airy, elegant set designed by Jared B. Leese. I could almost smell the honeysuckle and hear the cicadas.

As far as the script goes, I would have liked to see more of Gwendolyn’s domestic servants Frank and Carl, whom I found much more interesting than busybody do-gooder Evelyn, or loutish Ricky, who storms the party in search of his wife. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that Heatherly and Gardner may be doing themselves a disservice by keeping Finding Pedro a straightforward narrative when there is a wealth of opportunity for telling the story first in monologues through the eyes of these wonderfully quirky characters and then culminating with the frenzied here-there-and-everywhere interaction that Heatherly does so impressively.

But Finding Pedro is a fun night at the theatre, and I look forward to seeing what Heatherly, Gardner, and producers Saturday Players come up with next.

In Five Course Love, Gregg Coffin’s light and campy musical comedy, we get an evening that is more than entertaining—it’s a ton of fun. The spotlight shines on Coffin’s lyrics and music, with kudos going to the three actors who sparkle in all 15 roles. The biggest star, however, is Emma Griffin, who directs with near perfection. In Five Course Love, Coffin gives us five simple love stories, each with a different twist and in a different restaurant: Texas barbecue, Italian trattoria, German cabaret, Mexican cantina, and diner. The set stays the same while the actors rip through costume changes and bolt through songs that reflect the different cuisines—all with appropriate accents and at 120 miles an hour.

The evening kicks off at a Texas BBQ restaurant where Matt, simple and clueless, meets hot, buxom Barbie. All goes swimmingly until she finds out his name is not Ken. Rejected, he leaves, and after a quick costume change, we find ourselves at a trattoria, where Gino and Sophia are meeting for a tryst. Three musical numbers later, the Mafia don, also Sophia’s husband, shows up for the denouement. At the cabaret, Gretchen, the German dominatrix, flicks her crop in Kurt Weill-style until she drives her lover, Klaus, into the hands of the available waiter, Heimlich. In the cantina, Guillermo and Ernesto vie for the heart of Rosalinda. Love is no less present at the diner, where the waitress Kitty pines in vain for the brawy, brainless greaser, Clutch. But, this is not about plot, remember? The story is a vehicle for Coffin’s real strength—lyrics and music—and he delivers a trunk load of campy humor, because in Five Course Love the right people have come together to make it work. Griffin’s fine direction gives it gratifying polish.

She takes nothing for granted, demanding accelerated pace, volcanic energy, and precision from start to finish. She knows how to use broad gestures and pushes a little further than expected for well-deserved laughs. She extracts impeccable timing from the cast, reducing the most jaded to downright giggles. Jeff Gurner, as the feisty, intrusive owner/waiter at Dean’s Old-Fashioned All-American Down-Home Bar-B-Que Texas Eats fills the stage with personality and lassos the audience early on. Gurner is exquisitely nimble with props, particularly in the bar-b-que vignette. Heather Ayers tarts it up as Barbie, and John Bolton’s Matt, who cannot believe his good fortune, joins her in the invigorating musical number, “Jumpin’ the Gun.” The campy rejection comes a moment later when Ayers delivers a hilarious, deep-throated, Nashville-type ballad of “I Loved You When I Thought Your Name Was Ken.”

Ayers and Bolton play all the romantic leads and Jeff Gurner captures the essence of what it is like to be a waiter in each of the five establishments, abetting and aborting love. It is not only the crisp direction and excellent performances of these three actors, or the romp of Coffin’s music/lyrics. Mindy Cooper delivers inventive choreography that keeps the actors on their toes. All this energy radiates into the audience for 80 minutes of fun.

Quick changes find Ayers’ and Bolton’s characters, Gino and Sophia, entwined at an Italian trattoria reflecting operatically “If Nicky Knew.” Although the vignette predictably winds up with “Nicky Knows,” it is how they get there that matters; Gurner’s Carlo, the enabler and rat, is there at the right moments, and the three of them use their props to good effect.

Southern, Italian, German, and Mexican accents are used where appropriate. While they enhance the performance considerably and seem authentic, they should never obscure the lyrics. This is what happened in the German cabaret vignette, making it the least successful of the five sketches. Ayers delivered “No Is a Word I Don’t Fear” with confident strut, but I really wanted to hear the words, too. At the Mexican cantina, Guillermo and Ernesto vie for the heart of Rosalinda in a witty, melodramatic duet called "Pick Me." Gurner and Bolton, with the help of Cooper’s choreography, make this one of the stand out numbers of the evening. In an unscripted moment at the performance reviewed, Bolton lost his mustache, and, professional that he is, remained in character with his forefinger above his lip, providing an unexpected comic bonus for the audience.

Meanwhile, at The Star-Lite Diner, Kitty, the geeky waitress, soaks up romance novels—all the love stories we have just witnessed—while she delivers her anonymous love letter to the illiterate Clutch. He, of course, doesn’t get it and leaves her heartbroken. But don't worry, the eveing ends on a high note that brings the show full circle.

Hats off to Bettie O. Rogers for hair design and to G. W. Mercier for his whimsical costumes. Of particular note are the masked man’s costume, Rosalinda’s flouncy ensemble in the cantina number, and Gretchen’s raincoat in the cabaret. Mercier's workable sets are unobtrusive, save a mark of kitsch for the arch outlining the proscenium where knives, forks, and spoons playfully splay on a mirror. A four-piece band under the direction of Fred Tessler sits visibly above the stage donning toques. And, two offstage singers, Erin Maguire and Billy Sharpe, offer depth where needed. Lighting and sound are by Mark Barton and Robert Kaplowitz, respectively.

It would not be difficult to imagine Coffin teaming up with someone who is strong in book, freeing him to compose and write a full length musical, although Five Course Love is more than a pleasing hors d’oeuvre. The excellent actors offer delightful campy performances, drawing well-earned laughs. Add intelligent lyrics, appealing music, clever choreography, and energy—what’s not to love?

Flat!, created and presented by The Operating Theater, describes itself as a show which is “inspired by the exploits of the BBC and similar lowly budgeted productions” that sets out to “combine video, animation, and live action to engage in a dialogue with the public through the paper-thin façade of American actors badly pretending to be a British family.” This description sheds a little light on its intention, but does not necessarily relate to the resulting effect it had on me.

Flat! creates a sitcom through the balance of live acting and edited film sequences which are interspersed as if in one continuous stream of events. I found the video component to be quite fun, even though the transitions between the video and live acting and vice versa are not always clear-cut. Truly, the video itself seems to be the star of the show. It is impeccably filmed, edited, and produced. The video also helps to frame the context of watching twelve episodes of this sitcom through its scrolling credits and an annoyingly catchy theme song, which seemed to take on the role as the sparse connective element between episodes. Midway through the show, I could not get the song out of my head: “We’re different but we agree, so let’s build a little family . . . in our family, in our family FLAT!”

Yet, beyond this, it is difficult for me to identify the plot of this show, or sitcom, for that matter. The humor is consistently dry. Much of it is campy, while some of it is just tasteless. For most of the show, I felt like I really had never jumped on the bandwagon of laughter. The show is the product of a giant handful of creators. It is clear, however, that the show is pulled unstably in a myriad of directions by its talented ensemble cast of eleven actors, its team of twelve writers, and its directors and producers.

Flat! is simply unclassifiable; I was never really sure what it was trying to be. Experimental theatre? Performance art? A farce? A spoof? A parody? Digitally-enhanced theatre? Flat! is all of these. The ravaging and eclectic mix within it may be entertaining for some, while for others—simply mind-boggling.

For some people, reality TV offers them a chance to be a part of a world that they admire and a shot at their 15 minutes of fame. The fact that they will most likely have to expose their vulnerabilities in front of millions of people matters little to them. The casting directors for these shows, particularly the dating shows, are looking for extreme personality types like “The Asshole,” “The Nympho,” or “The Nice Guy” so they can pit them against each other because that makes for “good” TV. We sit in our living rooms and watch them make fools of themselves so we can feel better about ourselves. I think that’s the main point the Flirting with Reality tries to make. And it does so in an interesting way.

There are just two actors. One plays a casting director and the other her cameraman, and they in turn play the 50 different personality types that come to audition for a dating show called "The Love Limo." The casting director is herself “The Bitch” and he is “The Nice Guy” and their relationship is sort of a reality show in and of itself. Their opposing personalities make for a lot of good conflict, just as it would on television.

They squabble over the ethics of the way they judge the people that come in to audition. Issues such as race and “TV ugly” are bounced around though they never really land anywhere. We begin to see that they both have a lot to offer each other and wonder if they will make a “real” connection. But in the end reality is really real (not TV "real") and manipulation rules the day.

Playwright Suzanne Bachner makes broad swipes at stereotypes and pokes at a few serious issues but never really searches for any truth behind all of this categorization of people. I think her intention is to just make fun of the whole idea of these shows and the people who (1) cast/produce them and (2) want to be on them. She certainly succeeds at that. There are moments of great comedy in Flirting with Reality. A lot of them are pretty lowbrow (sex jokes mostly), but there are a few times when the relationship between the casting director and the cameraman reaches a decent sitcom level of humor.

Actors Felicia Scarangello (also credited with the show’s conception) and Alexander Warner show some great versatility. Scarangello is especially adept at transforming her body to fit her characters. Warner delivers a sort of standup-comedian-mixed-with-sincerity performance that really works for most of his characters.

Director Trish Minskoff keeps the pace buzzing along. At times I had trouble keeping up. She sets up some really intense physical situations between the two actors. I also liked how she placed the various characters all over the stage instead of solely in front of the camera.

Flirting with Reality is a good time. I laughed a bit and I didn’t have to think too much. In that way, it is sort of like reality TV.

Attempting to articulate everything that happens in a Radiohole show is a losing battle. The unfettered experience of seeing the Brooklyn-based collective’s work will always trump any description of it. Frankly, after it trumped the description, it would probably also lecture it while wearing a homemade tutu as soon as it finished with all the dry humping, but that’s beside the point.

In the last several years, Radiohole has taken on German epics, spaghetti westerns, a vast frozen wasteland, Situationists, and the Baader-Meinhof gang to name a few (generally while swilling beer and gyrating maniacally), but now, with Fluke (Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep) or Dick Dick Dick, they’ve found their metaphorical White Whale. Well, they’ve taken on the story of Moby Dick at any rate, and everything that goes along with that, facing down the vastness of the ocean, the smallness of man, the fear and isolation of being at sea, and, of course, mortality.

Fluke is, very distinctly, the Radiohole version of Moby Dick. It’s the Melville classic as seen through the eyes of three explorers lost at sea, imagining life, death, and Esther Williams; searching for the whale while all the time transforming into it. This is Radiohole we’re talking about, so it’s much weirder and more esoteric, definitely less direct, than all that, but the skeleton’s there. And “eyes” may be the wrong word, as you rarely see the eyes of anyone onstage. When they’re not wearing sunglasses, Eric Dyer, Erin Douglass, and Maggie Hoffman are performing blind, quite literally, eyes closed with whiteout painted eyeballs on the back of their eyelids. This is no small feat, considering that they still occasionally engage in their regular doses of frenetic choreography.

In fact, much of the company’s mainstay aesthetics have landed intact at P.S. 122, but this is a very different Radiohole that we’re watching. The loud music still erupts at times. The Do-It-Yourself set and technological instruments coupled with various sundry gadgets and toys are here, controlled from the stage by the performers. The opaque poesy and looped logic and collage text of found and original writing are all intact. What’s interesting about Fluke is that it’s like watching this volatile, rowdy, and crazed company’s fiery aesthetic through water, miles and miles of it. It muses rather than assaults. It expands instead of explodes. It’s slower, quieter, and disturbingly tranquil, but it has the feeling, much like the ocean’s depths that the play claims to plumb, that there’s something aggressively dangerous just below the surface, something not fully able to be seen.

Fluke begins, literally, and plays out, figuratively, as something of an exercise. As the audience enters, there are Dyer, Douglass, and Hoffman in exercise gear being led through a fairly by-the-book calisthenics routine by Scott Halvorsen Gillette from a monitor upstage. They retreat to their prep table and get ready for the show as Dyer introduces us to Gillette and Gillette describes exit strategies for the theatre. Think of it as an elaborate curtain speech as delivered via live web cast from Vermont.

Sound effects are fewer and farther between than in most Radiohole shows, and there are far fewer words. But the ever-present “Sounds of the Sea” album seems to fill in the gaps between unusually philosophical musings, generally coming from Dyer. Most of the show plays out in chairs or is confined to the three single-person rocking boats that the company supplies, so when Hoffman breaks out and climbs the ladder to the crow's nest and clips herself in to lean deftly over the edge, or when Douglass (joined by Hoffman and Dyer later) dances on the shaky springboard “land” at the front of the stage, there’s a distinct feeling that they’re stepping into the unknown. And, in a sense they are, because, as noted before, they’re doing it with eyes closed exposing only their whiteout fish eyes.

It feels a little dangerous, and would be, for less disciplined performers. There’s the biggest rub about a Radiohole show: No matter the material or the presentation of it, you always want to see what these performers will do next, usually because it’s engaging (at worst) and mind-blowing (at best), but also because, honestly, they might really hurt themselves. Not to mention that they’re all just so good. Hoffman is by far one of the most extraordinary performers in New York right now and has more expression in her painted eyelids than anyone in the mainstream, and Dyer gives the impression that even if pushed out of the boat, he would continue to write poetry, performing madly for the water rushing by while actively rejiggering the boat’s engines, less to save himself and more to just make really cool noises.

Once called the drunkest, highest company in New York, words like anarchic, punk rock, wild, scrappy, and vulgar are routinely applied to the group, but with Fluke and its quieter, unsentimental thoughts on isolation and aloneness, new and unexpected words can be added to the list, such as—believe it or not—meditative and contemplative. Not to say that Radiohole has never approached the profound before. They have. Generally, though, they choose the profoundly perverse above the merely profound. This time around, the company is defying expectations by doing what they do best: the unexpected. About 20 minutes into the show, Douglass says to Dyer two simple words: “you’re changing,” to which the other responds simply: “everything changes.”

In the context of the play the two are discussing the fact that they are lost at sea and slowly changing into fish, but after watching Fluke you’re left with the clear feeling that this company is trying something new, exercising change. It’s a bold experiment, muting their signature style for something more expansive, and I would say it succeeds and is worth the attempt. Fluke is also not only philosophy and musings. Radiohole is still a smart, hyperactive group that sets out to have a debauched good time, and, as it succeeds, happens to run across the bigger secrets of the universe. When they get back to land, I have no doubt that the party will be waiting for them.

Follies of Grandeur is a pseudo-autobiographical play that recounts playwright Ross MacLean's adventures in the early 1970s when he worked at a Hollywood strip joint called the Ivar Theatre. The play starts off with a Narrator (openly MacLean's younger self) explaining to the audience that he used to work as the stage manager at the Ivar, which was once a legitimate theatre, now fallen on hard times, and reduced to a den of sin.

The show is mostly serious, but it does have a few nice comic moments, especially when showing the unglamorous side of the sex industry, such as the deliberately lackluster dance routines of the strippers. One such gag has a stripper who neatly folds each item of clothing she removes during her routine and stacks them at the foot of the stage. Another girl simply walks onstage and drops her jeans, with a half-hearted "Tada!" gesture. All of this happens on a set designed by Michael Muccio, which looks just like a disreputable burlesque house, with broken-down chairs and a creaky runway (not to mention a liberal amount of used Kleenex wads scattered throughout).

These comic moments appear only infrequently, though, and MacLean mostly tries to genuinely engage the audience in the lives of his characters. MacLean begins by telling the audience that he didn't much care for the inhabitants of the Ivar at the time, but looks back on them with fondness. The audience, alas, doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight here, and must spend 90 minutes with a group of thoroughly unlikable people.

These characters consist of three dancers who are embittered, stoned, or completely self deluded. A fourth girl enters the story about halfway through the show, but isn't more finely developed than the others. The men who patronize are filthy perverts who don't evolve much beyond that image. MacLean's alter ego is tolerable enough, but the rest of the gang just aren't that interesting, sympathetic, or even the type that one can grudgingly respect.

There's also not much story to be had; the thrust comes from the newest dancer Melody (Jennifer Dominguez) who drifts into Hollywood looking to be a star and finds herself at a third rate meat-market. There isn't a whole lot of resolution to her story, and there are a few red herrings thrown out too, like a brief scene where she blurts out that she was molested as a child. Much of the story also follows the younger version of MacLean, but this doesn’t go anywhere either, and has its own share of red herrings, such as a few references to his bisexuality.

The cast gives it their all, but the cliché characters, even if based on real people, simply overstay their welcome. By the end of the show it's still not clear why MacLean looks back fondly at these people, or just what made the Ivar so special.

There’s no way to anticipate the delightful performance of Forever Plaid that awaits you as you approach the entrance to The Greek Cultural Center, the temporary home of Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC). As you walk down Hoyt Avenue, there’s no indication that there’s a theatre nearby, and when you do finally locate the address, you discover the venue is reached by walking on a path through what appears to be someone’s front yard. The small basement theatre space is less than glamorous, with its low tin ceiling, awkward “L” shape, and a large pillar situated in the middle of the audience.

The creative minds behind the production have, in fact, used the small size and scrappy feel of the venue to their advantage. Forever Plaid works magic in this little room with just talent, a piano, and some lights. With the actors an arm's length away from the front row, much of the evening’s enjoyment comes from the four talented actor/singers’ close proximity to the audience. Their energy is infectious, and there’s a certain excitement that comes from knowing that there’s no faking it here; these guys ace the difficult tight harmony singing and genuinely win the audience’s hearts.

Forever Plaid has a strange premise: a '50s-style guy group named Forever Plaid has returned from the dead (they were killed in a car accident on the way to their first big gig in 1964) to perform the ultimate show they never were able to in life. They sing sentimental standards and novelty tunes in the vein of The Four Freshmen and The Hi-Los, and having finally performed the show, they believe they can move on from limbo. During the show the guys squabble about their individual personality quirks, girls, and, mostly, music, which provides great opportunities for some very funny gags. But the highlights definitely are the musical numbers themselves, which are by turns hilarious and touching.

These kinds of groups were as famous for their in-sync choreography as for their close harmonies. Director-choreographer Brian J. Swasey faithfully recreates the style including infinite variations on dipping a mic stand as if it were a dancing partner. Swasey’s handling of an 11-minute speed rundown of all the famous Ed Sullivan regulars exhibits expert timing, as does “Caribbean Plaid,” an audience-interactive calypso number which brings Act One to a rousing close. Both numbers feature wonderfully funny props provided by Tracey Theatre Originals.

The four gentlemen playing the Plaids—Shad Olsen, Ryan J. Ratliff, Joseph Torello, and Frederick Hamilton—are terrific and the show is a great showcase for each of their talents. They are equally adept at crooning sensitively or executing over-the-top comic bits. Olsen is charming and magnetic as the lisping Sparky and is a vocal standout in his solos. At the top of Act Two we also discover that he is a talented pianist. Ratliff, as Jinx, impresses with his beautiful high tenor voice and expert comic skills; his rendition of “Cry,” which he carefully builds to an emotional and vocal frenzy, stops the show. The nerdy bass Smudge is played by Torello, who exhibits a comic flair and also a great voice, the full range of which is well-used by the end of the evening. As Frankie, the Plaids’ leader, Hamilton is appropriately on edge as he tries to keep a good face on things, even when they go uncontrollably wrong (as in the number “Perfidia”). Near the end of the show, Hamilton delivers an impassioned speech which is the evening’s sole moment of real dramatic weight. Musical Director Jeffrey Campos on piano and Byrne Clay on upright bass provide great accompaniment and support, and Campos is to be commended for his part in helping the four singers nail the very difficult tight harmony arrangements.

Ultimately Forever Plaid is fun for all—a well done evening’s entertainment with lots of laughs and great music. If hearing “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” sung by a quartet of young men makes you misty, you may just get a bit of genuine nostalgia out of the evening as well.

P.S. 122 opened its fall season with Forget Me Not, an exquisite piece of interactive experimental theatre created by the performance art duo Praxis. Comprised of the husband and wife team of Brainard Carey and Delia Bajo, Praxis has been engaged in exploring the sacred moments of the human experience with intimate and personal interactions since its formation in 1999. With the recent and unexpected death of Carey’s mother in April of this year, Praxis decided to use its physical and symbolic concepts to create a piece that experientially explores life and death in a two-act event that is both provocative and profound.

Greeted with the offer of a nurturing hug from both Carey and Bajo, we are then quickly separated and whisked away to wander through a carnival of interactive experiences curated by the ensemble of performers that Praxis has assembled. There is an intoxicating quality to the event, and all of our senses are appealed to directly in some way. But Act I of Forget Me Not—entitled “Tools for the Living”—is more than just a rave. While most of the experiences have an element of immediate gratification to them, many are also evocative of one’s journey through life. Some of these include a kiss, an intimate interlude with someone of the same or opposite sex, a physical competition, a place to heal your wounds, and a corner where you can view the world from different perspectives, all alluded to symbolically with beautiful simplicity.

There is also a cult-like feeling of initiation that is evoked by these backroom encounters and that is heightened by the seductive guides luring us by the hand and whispering their suggestions in our ears. But any initial distrust is dispelled by the sense of warmth and sharing that emanates from the piece’s creators, which is transmitted to us by the rest of the ensemble. All of the offerings are truly offered and not coerced, and ultimately what you choose to experience and how you choose to experience it is left largely up to you. Do you go back for another thumb-wrestling match or another chocolate kiss? Do you sit and watch others experience what you have already gone through? Do you stare and ponder images of childhood on a television screen? What you bring to “Tools for the Living” is inescapably part of the event itself, which at times manifests itself quite literally. I opted not to check my bag when I entered, and found myself weighed down with literal and symbolic baggage as I went on my journey. Eventually I stopped looking for stimulation and started to ponder my surroundings and my experiences. At that moment we were all, without warning, confronted with death.

Of course all along you know this is coming at some point, so there is a somber inevitability that leads to “Tools for the Dying,” the second act of Forget Me Not. As the audience sits together for the first time watching disparate images on a screen, we listen to the retelling of the story of Carey’s mother’s diagnosis with pancreatic cancer and her subsequent life and death. As we ponder the story, one by one we are escorted backstage, never to return. I was one of the early ones, and had barely realized this process was happening before I was approached and told it was time to go. Not realizing I wasn’t coming back, I left my bag and my companion behind without saying goodbye. While being taken early and unexpectedly was a profound experience, it was apparently at least an equally profound experience to be taken late. One by one the people around you disappear and leave you more and more alone, while a steady stream of coffins rolls from backstage to the theater entrance. By the time someone comes for you, you are somewhat prepared, but still not completely knowing what to expect.

Forget Me Not may be an important performance art collaboration, but it is also an effective and exciting experiment with the theatrical form. In its unique exploration of life and death, Forget Me Not creates individual experiences that are at the same time communal, blurring the lines between performer and artist and the personal and universal, and in doing so manages to live up to its creators’ lofty goal of pointing to what is sacred and profound in human interaction. Forget Me Not closed at P.S. 122 on September 13th, but I hope the future brings more opportunities to experience Praxis’s bold vision and stimulating work.

Fountain of Youth takes place in St. Augustine, Florida and follows Alexa Ruiz, a young coroner, as she investigates the mysterious death of a perfectly preserved elderly couple. Through her investigations, she meets an eclectic band of characters: Teresa Rodriguez, a retired supermodel who is now the caretaker of the mansion where the bodies were discovered; Javier Figueroa, Teresa’s bodyguard and Alexa’s former sweetheart; and the many employees of the manse, from the personal assistant to the wild chef. The audience also travels back in time to the discovery of the Fountain of Youth and meets navigator Antonio de Alaminos, who is determined to find the same fame he has given others through his work.

Noemi De La Puente plays all of the characters in the play (which she also wrote). It's part love story, part mystery, part social statement, sort of like Clue meets the History Channel: Girl has mystery, girl re-meets boy, boy helps girl solve mystery, girl and boy are given a choice to have their wildest dreams come true or do what’s right. The show also spends time subtly asking why our society is so youth-driven.

Puente tries to cover a lot of ground, and she hits most of the marks though misses others. Moments such as Javier and Alexa realizing that Teresa is ancient and could only have had help from an unnatural source are a bit sitcom-like; and the sequence in which Alexa, trying to figure out what to wear to meet her former love, brings out half the contents of her closet including a ladder of shoes, is funny at first but goes on far too long. On the other hand, the relationship between Javier and Alexa is portrayed with such strength that it forces you to feel for Alexa. The characters of Antonio Alaminos and the old woman guarding the Fountain of Youth bring delightful satire and wry wit into play.

So, though there are some parts of Fountain of Youth that drag a bit, Puente’s vivid characters keep the audiences interested. It is clear that Puente really understands her characters, and delivers each with gusto. She has a delightful childlike manner and it's refreshing to watch someone who relishes every moment on stage with such joy.

After the performance I saw of Fragment at Classic Stage Company ended, a man in the row ahead of me uttered, “Well, that would have been better as an acting exercise: Creating something out of nothing.”

By “nothing” he meant no given character or narrative, and none is be found in Fragment’s text, assembled by director Pavol Liska and collaborator Kelly Copper from the lost works of the ancient Greek playwrights Sophocles and Euripides. Seven plays of Sophocles exist in their entirety today, out of 120 written. We have 19 of Euripides’s plays, out of 90. Fragments of these playwright’s lost bodies of work are the only evidence of the full dramatic texts that once were, and they offer few clues about the plots and characters they helped form. And yet, they speak on philosophies that are hardly alien to us.

Not even the entire sky would suffice
If God
Were writing down men’s sins
Nor he himself to examine them and send punishment to each.
There are no Gods in heaven.
There are not.
No…
There are not…

Liska and Copper have attempted to string together a number of these sagacious nuggets into an hour-and-fifteen minute, three-character evening. Two men and a woman (Zachary Oberzan, Tony Torn, and Juliana Francis) are at a wine-and-cheese party with us, decked out in business casual clothes. There is some light music. They begin to talk about the nature of man, but because their lines are coming from different plays, they are not having a dialogue so much as a speech contest. When they are not speaking to each other or us, they often take seats in the house, which is arranged in an alley stage style, similar to a joust, with audience on two sides of an elongated playing area. When the actors stand to declaim from one side or the other, it is not unlike British Parliament minus the wit.

Liska has given considerable effort to staging events that segment the evening (i.e., characters deciding to dance, flip the food table over, cry, etc.), and all three actors connect with their text in compelling and rooted performances, especially Torn, who brings an immeasurably valuable goofiness to an otherwise down-faced evening. But the piece seems to be running on fumes by the end. Though the running time is only slightly over an hour, certain speeches get repeated, and my attention began to wane as arbitrary directorial choices seemed to attempt distraction from the fact that there is not enough tension, conflict, or character in the text for a full-length performance. The party “business” cries out for a textual narrative that creates stakes high enough to care about, and the speeches beg for context once one begins to follow the other like a hit parade of lugubrious poetry on all aspects of the human condition.

The characters need clearer relationships to one another, or given circumstances that are more sharply drawn. The status difference between them is never consistent or closely examined. An uncertain fear about the times bonds them, as it does us all, but their expression of vulnerability is shackled by the non-sequitur nature of the dialogue, which presents a tricky problem. The text of Fragment does not dwell on any one topic for long, because there isn’t enough text on any one topic to support that. Contemporary conversation at a party is similarly tangential, but the flow is smoother because eloquence isn’t prioritized—not so with these ancient texts and their zeal for profundity. Fragment is rarely able to establish momentum because its topical weightiness—war, wealth, marriage, religion, etc.—requires more textual dexterity from the speeches if they are to blend into one another. Instead the characters are forced to switch gears often, rhetorically slamming the brakes down on topics with grave proclamations, and lurching forward with a new subject upon the next word.

In the end, my fellow audience member’s keen observation about acting exercises vs. productions speaks to the best part of the evening, the cast. If Fragment were in the hands of less intelligent and capable performers, it is easy to imagine that same gentleman leaving in a far worse mood, having gotten not much meaning at all from the scant text. The actors find the emotional core of each fragment, and convey it to the audience with accessible humanity. The piece’s text as a whole, however, does not give them enough to build toward, and we are left with an excellently recited series of monologues. When one ends, there is no mystery about what is coming next, but only drab certainty that it will be another speech. That may satisfy a recital audience, but theatre audiences like the one I was in will leave restless, having wished for more.

Francoise changes her mind, a new play written and directed by Robert Honeywell, is about a man, Paul, and a woman, Francoise, and the odd course of their nascent relationship. It starts out winningly in a Starbucksy coffee shop where each of them is alone, ostensibly reading (she's studying something in a notebook, he's flipping through Sexuality in the Movies) but actually trying to negotiate a first meeting with the other. He peers over the top of his book, then strolls over to her table where, suddenly self-conscious, he picks up a piece of trash on the floor with pretend purposefulness. Then she checks to see if the coast is clear, drops her pen, and accepts it from him when he hesitantly retrieves it. It's a classic "meet cute" but it's a great hook, especially as staged here by Honeywell in a series of charming, economical blackouts.

The next segment of our story proceeds in similar fashion, as the two spend more time together. The progress of the courtship is almost cinematic, with quick cuts from a park where Paul is incongruously blowing bubbles to a bar where they dance and have too much to drink to a showing of Jules et Jim at the Film Forum. They learn little bits about each other: he tells her that he fears tedium more than anything, offering as an example being stuck in the middle of reading Remembrance of Things Past. She reveals that at one time she wanted to be a nun, and is now a graduate student in a religious studies program. (Interestingly, we never find out what Paul does for a living.) The stuff they tell about themselves belies what we observe, for he seems like a buttoned-up slave to structure while she comes across as a wackier free spirit; and what happens next comes at us almost out of nowhere, subverting the chipper Barefoot in the Park-style romance that's been playing out thus far.

What happens, briefly, is that Paul and Francoise wind up in a bathtub, in their underwear, taking turns tying each other up and reading religious literature aloud. During this long scene, which encompasses at least half of the play's running time, the lovers vex, tease, and torture each other with favorite passages from the Bible, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, and other texts; they also engage in monologues about the nature of God, freedom, desire, and similar weighty subjects. Much of what they say is interesting and provocative, but the bondage/bathtub kinkiness undercuts it: the effect for me was not of being disturbed or riled up, but confused.

Peter Bean underplays likeably as Paul, while Celia Montgomery delivers what seemed like excessive intensity as Francoise. Jana Zenadeen, playing a host of phantom figures in several fantasy interludes, is consistently fine.

I suspect that Honeywell intends his play to be less serious than it feels here: I think Francoise is meant to be a tour through, as the press release has it, "God's greatest hits" rather than the scary cautionary tale about fanaticism that it ultimately becomes in this production. Nevertheless, Francoise dips into issues that are generally taboo in contemporary discourse, for which it earns my admiration; it certainly tackles the moral values that this festival trades in with a vigor rarely encountered in the theatre.

James Lapine’s new play, Fran’s Bed, has a lot of things going for it: hot-button subject matter, big name stars, some fine direction, and generally good acting. Why, then, does it feel like Fran’s Bed never adds up to more than the sum of its parts?

The story focuses on Fran, a middle-aged woman trapped in an irreversible coma in an Arizona hospital room. She ruminates on her life while her family—her husband and two daughters—decides whether to let her live or die. As the play unfolds, it’s revealed that things were less than perfect at home. Both spouses, at one point or another, were having extramarital affairs. Fran was addicted to prescription painkillers, and her current state is the result of an overdose that may or may not have been accidental. Her spouse, Hank, has been a genial but distant husband and father, given to small talk but weary to discuss anything more substantial. The favored position that their younger daughter, Birdie, has always held in Fran and Hank’s eyes has taken its toll on their older daughter, Vicky: she has developed a seething inferiority complex and gone on to a life of suburban single-motherhood anonymity, while Birdie has become a wealthy, high-powered New York businesswoman.

Lapine peppers Fran’s Bed with many interesting little tidbits. A dinner table flashback, from Vicky and Birdie’s high school years, illustrates the family’s flawed dynamics poignantly. Another scene, detailing Fran and Hank’s very first meeting, is sweet and charmingly awkward. Fran’s extramarital activities get the cold light of day shed on them as she and her lover reveal the real reasons behind their trysts. And, a very funny coma-induced dream, played out on the television in Fran’s hospital room, puts the family in the middle of a daytime soap opera. (Kudos, also, to Lapine for giving voice to the rarely noticed or talked about sexual desires of senior citizens. Fran and Hank’s respective longings for physical intimacy are a refreshing alternative to today’s youth-driven sexual culture.)

But, Lapine comes up short where it really counts: namely, the point of it all. Why is Lapine telling this story? To tell us that making the decision to either end or continue one’s life is a personal one? It is, indeed—but that’s not exactly news. Lapine, thankfully, stays away from making Fran’s Bed a political play (although, if one were to read it that way, the conclusion might rub the liberal left the wrong way). But, he doesn’t seem to have any opinion on his subject matter, one way or the other, and his reasons for wanting to tell this story are never made clear.

As director, though, Lapine works his usual magic. A mastermind of dressing up underwhelming scripts with stunning visuals (cf., Passion and Golden Child, to name two examples), Lapine does the same here. The physical production—by set designer Derek McLane, costume designer Susan Hilferty, and lighting designer David Lander—is impressive, dominated by Fran’s hospital room and a vast array of moveable curtains that suggest other locations. The soap opera hallucination is particularly inspired: the TV in Fran’s hospital room, which has been hanging innocently from the ceiling the entire show, suddenly turns to face front, revealing Fran and her nurse, Dolly (who is addicted to soaps), in a pre-taped send-up of daytime dramas, featuring the rest of the clan. (This segment also, ingeniously, covers a scene transition—another one of Lapine’s specialties.)

Lapine usually does good work with his actors, as well, and Fran’s Bed, for the most part, is no different. Brenda Pressley shines as Dolly; Harris Yulin performs with ease and authority as Hank; Heather Burns makes Vicky’s discomfort around her family tangible; and Marcia DeBonis and Jonathan Walker provide solid support in a variety of smaller roles.

The weak links in the cast prove to be the two stars. As Birdie, Julia Stiles is game but in over her head. She rushes/forces/ignores her character’s inner transitions, and never seems as comfortable on stage as her fellow castmates. As a result, her performance comes off as stiff and artificial. In the title role, Mia Farrow is a puzzlement. Her Fran is equal parts looniness, immaturity, and fragility—none of which I can discern as being justifiable or not. In Farrow’s defense, I will say that the role is poorly written—there are too many questions left unanswered (is she really suicidal or was the overdose just an accident? is she clinically depressed or just going through a rough patch in her marriage? is she really crazy or are the painkillers just making her so?), so it’s difficult to know who Fran really is. But, Farrow does nothing to help clear things up, relying heavily on a hodgepodge collection of characteristics left over from her Woody Allen film roles. Which isn’t automatically a bad thing, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly original, nor does it necessarily come across as the character Lapine has written.

There is a good play buried somewhere inside the current production of Fran’s Bed, but it needs more focus and specificity from Lapine in order to be uncovered. Until then, it remains floating in a state as nebulous as the coma the title character finds herself in.

The world underwhelms Tom X. Chao, the downtown comedian giving his second festival installment at the Brick with Freak Out Under the Apple Tree, after his brilliant demon-worship orientation at last year’s Hell Festival, How To Invoke Pan. Chao is a party pooper of the first order, and his humor stands sentinel on the wall of dispassionate observation. Freak Out Under the Apple Tree brings together the cream of his sketch-writing crop, and it is scheduled to deadpan its way through the Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals. But first stop is the Brick Theatre in Williamsburg, where his vigilant crabbiness is warning against such threats as gasbag tourists who spout on about the beauty of San Francisco, actors who believe improv is the ultimate artistic product, and smug partisans who have settled on the Big Apple side of the endless New York vs. Los Angeles debate.

Chao presents five sketches, and enlists the quirky talents of straight lady Erin A. Leahy in most of them. The jewel of the night is certainly the second sketch, “A Walk in San Francisco”, in which Chao narrates a re-enactment of a touristy date he had while a resident in that city. Leahy admirably sells the ridiculous zeal of the woman, Leslie, as she reverently calls out the proper name of each San Franciscan landmark, like Adam naming the creatures of Earth as they are divinely formed out of clay before his eyes. Chao, as narrator, maintains a startlingly poetic detachment from the outing until he can no longer stand his walking brochure of a companion. Allowing himself as much passion as he can muster, he utters an oath at the city and asks what San Francisco knows about anything except taking a backseat to L.A.

Chao is surgically precise at tapping into what some might called a jaded vein of humor, but what his fans might more positively label as defiance of society’s menacing pressure to feel joy. Don’t be fooled by all the energy flying out of it, his sketches suggest, the happy brain is not firing on all cylinders. As Leahy’s creepy tourist demonstrates, the ghastly underbelly of positivity is Orwell’s “groupthink.” When a less-than-rapturous evaluation of the San Franciscan landscape is shocking enough to elicit guffaws from people who live 3000 miles from it, then perhaps it spotlights an opinion that is becoming a tad too ingrained for the comfort of many.

"Freak Out Under The Apple Tree" is in fact the name of an improv carried out in the third sketch by Tuesday, a fame-craving actress played with zany verve by Leahy. The title is her literal description of the improv scenario that winds up taking her down to the floor on her back, writhing and whimpering as Chao observes stone-faced. The dynamic here, a sort of Tigger vs. Eeyore portrayal of the world, is explored with irreverence and wit throughout the show, and plays to the strengths in Chao’s point of view. He is a talent worth following, a comedian whose unique delivery sharply jabs the ridiculous and mundane, and remains watchful of the rest—eyeing his targets.