Everyone knows the classic tale of Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers bound to each other but kept apart because of an age-old family feud. Cry Havoc’s artistic director Kitt Lavoie has chosen to push the envelope and take the classic one step farther, with a very original spin. Lavoie and his ensemble ask “What if Romeo and Juliet were women—and that fact didn’t figure into their family’s reasons for wanting to keep them apart?” It’s an interesting question and one that they pose but leave up to the audience to answer for themselves.

Director Lavoie sets his version of the love story against a dark landscape of teenage angst-ridden love and friendship, filled with oversized leather jackets, smoking friars, and stirring violin music. The love story between Romeo and Juliet played by two women works considerably well. However, the duo portray the trials and emotional highs and lows of adolescence more successfully than their love for each other. There isn’t much passion, but there is a real sense of urgency, much like a teenager running amok without direction.

It's especially interesting to watch the interaction between Romeo and her friends, as there are subtle differences. Now Benvolio seems to take on the role of a “big brother,” and the group's gentle gibing takes on some boys' club mockery towards Romeo. Particularly intriguing is Mercutio and Romeo’s friendship, which has an added bit of sexual tension.

There are some slow moments, which are very noticeable because of the teenage temperaments of the leads. There are extreme highs and lows in energy and pacing.

Jenny Kirlin’s Romeo shifts between boyish charm and childish brattiness, moving about the stage at a frenetic pace. Kirlin is accomplished at portraying a reckless youth, grasping at anyone who will help her plight. Juliet, as played by Jane Pftisch, is solemn and dark, but is without much of the traditional vulnerability of the character. She engages in some self-mutilation, plays soulful violin, and shows rebellious bravado in the pivotal scene of confrontation with her father.

Being familiar with Lavoie’s work, I am always impressed with his eye for piecing talented ensembles together and his knack for creating brilliant landscapes of relationships. In this production, the smaller roles are filled with some stellar actors, notably the sublimely cast Will Harper as Friar Laurence, who brings remarkable sharpness, presence, and energy to this often overlooked character. Harper has great passion in every moment and line he delivers. Effectively portraying a mother who has long lost touch with who her child has become, Kerry Flanagan as Lady Montague brings self-involved and distant parenting to new heights. Christopher Cooper as Benvolio is a significant presence each time he takes the stage. Skilled with a sword and a quick tongue, he's an actor I’d be eager to see more of in a larger role. Graeme Gillis as Mercutio is a delight to watch as he delivers witty gibes and banter. Also notable is the performance of Ewan Ross, who plays a sinister and suave Tybalt.

As much as I enjoyed watching these characters, I spent much of the production straining my ears to hear. There was an ongoing projection and sound issue. The ensemble needs to work on this, as the high ceilings seem to swallow up all of the sound from onstage.

The fantastic abstract set of layered scaffolds, balconies, brick walls, and underpasses serves the production well, allowing quick movement and working hand-in-hand with the dark torrent of the story. The lighting, on the other hand, while in line with the tone of the production, robs the audience of the actors' faces in too many scenes; there are lots of shadows and several scenes are in nearly complete darkness (both sets and lighting are designed by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn). I did however love the use of flashlights in the tomb scene, and I am a huge fan of working interior set lights and enjoyed the charming lamppost.

The costumes by Jennifer Reichert were simple and effective but also added some fun moments like the (all female) guard clad in leather corsets.

Putting the occasional slow moments and projection problems aside, this is a solid production with brilliant production values, and is well worth a look.

“It is simply a question of scale… One gentleman murders another in a back alleyway in London for, let us say… the gold fillings in his teeth. They call that murder. But when the entire youth and manhood of a whole nation rises up to slaughter the entire youth and manhood of another, not even for the gold fillings in each other’s teeth, then society condones and applauds the outrage, and calls it war.”

Such is the phenomenon explored in Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, a thriller inspired by the sensational Leopold and Loeb case. Premiering on Broadway in 1929, the play is somewhere in between a socially-conscious drama where the audience is morally-indicted (such as J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls) and a boulevard murder mystery where the audience is titillated by the sly storytelling (a la Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap). While both of these plays were written a generation later, they nonetheless sprung to mind as I watched Rope, which is being presented by The Drama Dept. (et al) at the Zipper Theatre.

Director David Warren has wisely fashioned his production around Zak Orth, who plays Rupert, the lame, effete Oxford student and the play’s moral spokesman (quoted above), making an evening of theatre that is often electrifying—at least when Orth is on stage. But if the other sections of the play seem to lack tension, the fault is not necessarily with the director or his dependable cast.

British playwright/novelist Hamilton seems most interested in the moral inquiry model, so a lot of the details of the Leopold and Loeb crime that made it so horrifying have been stripped away (indeed, he denied that he was influenced at all by what has been called “the crime of the century”). Instead of two young men whose brutal and bloody murder of a 14-year-old boy was a further peak in their sexual and financial power play, Hamilton gives us two Oxford undergraduates who strangle a classmate just for kicks, hide his body in a chest, and then invite friends over (including the young man’s father) for dinner, which is incidentally served on said chest. The premise of the play is macabre, to be sure, but the suspense only lasts for so long—will someone open the chest and discover the body, or will someone…. not?

Warren has given his handsome male leads—Sam Trammell and Chandler Williams—a few light kisses and some other covert bits of affection, but that does make up for the anemic, exposition-heavy dialogue they must spout for the first 20 minutes. Still Trammell and Williams are game, turning in skillful and balanced performances as the arrogant, explosive Brandon and the soft-spoken and smoldering Granillo. Their initial party guests are the over-eager, hopelessly out-of-vogue Kenneth, and the lovely Leila, whose sole quality seems to be vivaciousness (both successfully played, as described, by John Lavelle and Ginifer King). Sir Johnstone Kentley, a sweet older gentleman, and his senile sister, Mrs. Debenham—the father and aunt of the dead fellow in the chest— follow shortly thereafter. (As Kentley, Neil Vipond has some particularly beautiful moments, such as his restrained distress when a phone call tells that his son has not returned home that night.)

But it is Orth’s Rupert, the last guest to arrive, who is the man to watch. He austerely concludes his speech above with “How, then, can I disapprove of murder, seeing that I have, in the last Great War, acted on these assumptions myself?... [Thus] I have proved that I don’t disapprove of murder. Haven’t I?” Clearly Hamilton intends for Rupert to be the audience’s stand-in: someone who is no longer shocked by anything. Yet as Rupert begins to suspect that his friend and school chum Brandon’s haughty wisecracks about there being a dead guy in the chest might be more than a sick joke, we witness our Everyman morph from a jaded know-it-all to a gulping, wide-eyed little boy.

This play is not a masterpiece, to be sure, but Warren and Orth have made Rope tauter than it actually is, a night in the theatre that digs its claws into one’s mind, haunting one for hours after.

Tom Stoppard's zany existentialist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead uses two minor characters from Hamlet to ask the questions "Why are we here," "What happens when we die," and "What does it mean to ‘glean’ what ‘afflicts' someone."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's doomed pals who Shakespeare introduced to audiences in Act II, Scene II in Hamlet (remember them?). In Hamlet, the two are old school chums of Hamlet’s, who are brought in to help Claudius and Gertrude figure out why the Prince is acting so crazy. Eventually the two end up dying horribly offstage (somewhere in Act III).

Stoppard decided to use these bit parts to examine the very nature of existence. Basically, our heroes sit around in limbo (or is it Elsinore castle?) waiting for the story of Hamlet to unfold around them. Occasionally they run into Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and the gang, who fire off their lines from Hamlet (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak in modern English when none of the Danes are looking, though). Sometimes our heroes hang around with the Player, who is the leader of the band of actor that put on “The lady protests too much, methinks” show in Act III, Scene II. Mostly, however, our two protagonists just try to kill time while figuring out why (if) they exist. It’s all very clever—certainly a classic work by one our finest living playwrights.

Although the script is very funny, this production, as directed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, showcases the grimmer aspects of the show. There is much analysis of the inevitability of death in Stoppard’s script (including a classic monologue from Rosencrantz about being buried alive), and this particular production seems to dwell on such thoughts more than many other productions. Makeup design and sound effects help make this production a bit creepier than most others, as does the use of some unusually lengthy, suspenseful blackouts with slowly building lights.

A running gag in the script is that everyone keeps confusing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (they occasionally even forget their own names). Here, the two are fairly well differentiated, with Avery Clark making his Rosencrantz into a likeable man-child of sorts, while Walter Brandes’s Guildenstern is a hyper-dramatic and authoritative leader (even though he isn’t actually leading anyone anywhere). Zack Calhoon gives a great turn as the Player, as well.

There’s a production of this play just about every season somewhere off-off Broadway, and this is certainly one to have a look at for both Stoppard fans—and those who should be.

The spotlight is narrow and sharp in Chris Thorpe’s smart play about the ravages of war. In a compelling ensemble performance currently showing at Urban Stages, Safety zooms in on a celebrated war photographer and captures the chilling psychological effects that war—as work—has on him and his family.

It begins in flashback with Michael, an arrogant photojournalist, being interviewed in a London hotel room by Tanya, an attractive reporter, about the upcoming exhibition of his pictures. She is familiar with his most famous photo, a picture referenced throughout the play. It is of a teenager running toward the camera with his gun extended toward the photographer. A body lies in the background. Tanya questions what happened before and after the photo was taken, wonders about the cumulative effect of such scenes on Michael, as she initially declines offers from the mini bar—but not Michael’s subsequent advances.

Once home in Northern England, we meet Michael’s wife, Susan, a translator who speaks seven languages, none of which help her understand the husband she once loved and now resents because he is always away. When he is home, they are in verbal combat. Fueling Susan’s resentment is the near drowning of their daughter, Alice, under Michael’s watch. A stranger saves Alice, and Susan invites him to dinner to thank him. Sean, the young, unpolished stranger, stands in relief to the urbane couple. He has served time, never reads a paper, sees Michael’s photographs as a bunch of dead people, and knows that Michael was torn between saving his daughter and capturing her drowning on film. The scenes alternate between the hotel flashbacks and the couple’s home, with additional scenes of Michael alone telling the audience what haunts him. One other setting, a bombed-out house in the Balkans where Michael dodges bullets, serves more to divert from the tight focus otherwise maintained throughout the play.

David Wilson Barnes shows us Michael in all his complexity: arrogant, defensive, impenetrable, and afraid. In denial, he states, “It’s never my fight,” not realizing that the brutality he sees through the lens prevents him from living his life without the camera. His fight should be for his survival. Of those he captures on film he says, “The dying see everything. You can’t hide.” He could be referring to himself, as a part of his humanity dies with each snapshot of another atrocity. During the monologue scenes, Barnes shows vulnerability that is all but otherwise hidden.

Susan Molloy gives her young reporter a sunny disposition in awe of her subject. It is clear from the start that she will land in bed with Michael.

Katie Firth balances the wounded wife with the intellectually accomplished woman. In the couple’s first scene together, Michael begins a conversation, “You forget, you know,” which sets her off into a long diatribe on the meaning of those four words. Firth segues from one interpretation to another, lending indifference, sarcasm, wit, and hurt to her monologue—all with the dead-on aim of a sharpshooter. This is a standout scene in Thorpe’s script, both in his writing and in Firth’s performance. It demonstrates the dexterity and nuance that his character, Susan, practices in her job and at the same time shows Susan and Michael’s strained relationship.

Sean’s appearance at dinner doesn’t help. Jeffrey Clarke gives Sean the necessary awkwardness to show he is out of his element. Nevertheless, it is he who maintains the upper hand that evening. His presence reminds Michael of his failure to save Alice, and while Sean is not a scintillating conversationalist, he listens to Susan, something Susan has not experienced in a long time. Thorpe ratchets up the psychological drama by dropping at least one additional piece of information in each of 15 scenes. With all the reveals, there should have been at least a hint along the way of Michael’s final secret.

The one-act play, directed neatly by Daisy Walker, takes place in a beautiful, modernistic set designed by Kevin Judge that convincingly covers all but the bombed out house in the Balkans. Toward the end, the set shifts dramatically. The change is more jarring than telling. Patricia Nichols’s lighting is very effective in defining time and place and sheds a glow of warmth over the two side-by-side doorways even before the show begins. Kevin Christiana’s costumes work well. It is clear that Michael doesn’t need a mirror to dress in the morning or a designer to provide the garments. He is a man caught up in his mission. Samuel Doerr wrote original music and is responsible for sound design.

Safety points out the fragility of mankind, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. It is a thoughtful play that provides no net for its free-falling characters.

What are we to make of a biographical drama in which most of the characters are actual, often very famous, people, but other pivotal ones are fictional or fictionalized? Sally Clark's play Saint Frances of Hollywood, now at Manhattan Theatre Source, purports to tell the story of Frances Farmer, an actress who became a star for a very brief moment in the 1930s before a series of difficulties landed her in a state hospital, where she was committed by her own mother and remained, in and out, for the better part of a decade. Clark spends about half of her play's running time on Frances's incarceration: she shows us Frances being tortured via hydrotherapy and shock treatments, prostituted by a nurse, and undergoing a frontal lobotomy. Clark also shows us, in the livelier first act, Frances interacting with gossip columnist Louella Parsons, actor Leif Erickson (who was her first husband), playwright Clifford Odets, and director Harold Clurman.

But Clark calls Frances's doctor Betelguese, an obviously made-up name (although she identifies his successor correctly as Dr. Freeman). She gives Frances's second husband, Alfred Lobley, the silly name of Alfred Knobble; she calls her friend Jean Ratcliffe, who finished Frances's posthumous memoir Will There Really Be a Morning?, only by her first name (and implies that Jean's intentions were less than friendly); she has a character named Roy Dicksell stand in for Ralph Edwards (even though she accurately calls his TV show This Is Your Life). What are we supposed to do with such a mishmash of fact and fiction? More to the point: what are we supposed to believe in Clark's play? The frontal lobotomy—a pivotal plot hinge here—is even disputed in MTS's program note.

Clark has written what looks on the surface to be a straightforward, chronological biography. But with so much of its veracity feeling dubious, I think it's better to view Saint Frances as a work of fiction, albeit one based in a true story. Clark's Frances is a smart but insecure woman. Her mother, Lillian, is tremulous yet domineering: a slightly fanatic, very unhappy woman who has decided to live vicariously through her beautiful and intelligent daughter, whom she calls "Little Sister." Sharon Fogarty plays Lillian as a cross between Mama Rose and Amanda Wingfield; she has a terrific scene in Act Two in which, wearing Frances's tiara and pretending to be Frances, answering a fan letter, she successfully navigates over the deep end and shows us how deeply disturbed this woman—the most important influence on Frances—actually is.

Lillian's husband, Ernest, is an ineffectual drunk. Frances can't wait to escape from this stifling home in Seattle, Washington, and when she wins a contest whose prize is a trip to Russia, she at last breaks free. Upon her return, through machinations never clearly explained by Clark, Frances meets members of the Group Theater in New York (whom she idolizes, especially playwright Clifford Odets), and then wins a chance for a Hollywood screen test. Though she disdains movies, she goes to California to please her mother, and—reciting Chekhov unexpectedly—she wins a contract and quick stardom. (This last part, Chekhov possibly excepted, is basically true: Farmer made her most successful picture, Come and Get It, in her first year at the the studio.)

Odets turns up unexpectedly and asks her to be play Lorna Moon in his play Golden Boy. She gets a temporary release from her contract, does the play, wins over hard-headed director Clurman, and becomes the toast of the Group. There's talk of her breaking her film contract altogether and taking the play on tour. She gives huge sums to left wing causes embraced by the Group, notably the Migrant Workers Fund. And she's fallen in love with Odets.

Then Odets's wife, Luise Rainer, arrives. The party is over. The downward spiral begins. Subsequent scenes track Frances's crackup. She starts drinking. She turns nasty and abusive. She socks a makeup girl in the nose. She goes to jail. She goes to the Western Washington State Hospital at Steilacoom. She is sent home. She mauls her mother, who commits her to Steilacoom once again. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

It's a harrowing, even compelling, story. And the marathon role of Frances—on stage for virtually every second of the 2-1/2 hour running time—is indubitably actress-bait. But what's Saint Frances about, finally? If it can't be taken seriously as fact—and it can't—what does it have to tell us about the world or the human condition? I think Clark wants the play to be an indictment of some Establishment: Frances's trip to Russia, an essay she wrote at 17 called "God Dies," and her social consciousness are all used as evidence of her "otherness" by people in power—her career is "destroyed" by Louella Parsons because she may be a "Red"; her term at Steilacoom is exacerbated because she incites the other inmates to think for themselves and attempt to rebel against the nurses and orderlies (in a scene right out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

The play Clark has actually written suggests something different, though. Her Frances is essentially a weakling, controlled by her manipulative mother and an equally manipulative Odets, who manage to get her to do their bidding, her firm intelligence notwithstanding. Clark insists in the script that the actors playing Lillian and Odets also double as Jean and Dr. Freeman, and though both of these latter roles are practically cameos, the underlying idea is plain enough: Frances, if perhaps not a saint, is martyr to the strong-willed duplicities of these parent-figures who dominate her life.

Does it work? My companion, a young woman born after even the Jessica Lange movie Frances came out, found little relevance in this story, Frances Farmer's work being completely unknown to her and the deplorable conditions of mental hospitals circa 1940 having been mostly eradicated in the interim. As for me, I kept wondering what Clark was really going for. The first half feels like a B-Movie of Farmer's own time, filled with clichés and implausible occurrences, while the second half wavers between psychological horror film and broad parody (sample exchange: "DR. BETELGUESE: Are you a Communist? / FRANCES: Are you an asshole?"). Tone is a serious problem, ultimately, and director Daryl Boling never clarifies for us whether we're supposed to laugh or cry at what unfolds here.

Boling has overseen a mammoth production that mostly impresses, though. Set designer Maruti Evans has provided an oversized white platform on which Frances's life plays out, flanked by a pair of nifty white revolving doors (one of which doubles as a movie screen) through which the myriad people figuring in the story literally swing in and out. Stephen Arnold's lighting is effectively dramatic. Michael Bevins's costumes are terrific, and staggeringly numerous for an off-off-Broadway show.

Most of the cast members play many roles, and each has at least one moment to shine. Fiona Jones is memorable as Frances's annoying roommate at Steliacoom; Michael Shattner is pretty hilarious as her agent Ralph Schwab (who speaks in a Gilbert Gottfried shout most of the time); Dave Bachman is Barton Fink-ish as Clifford Odets; and Hank Davies is mostly sympathetic as Frances's hangdog dad. In the star role, Sarah Ireland works very hard, but I don't think she's quite found her Frances yet: the performance feels mannered and put-on, modeled on Kate Hepburn for Frances's lucid and assertive moments and Judy Garland for the drunk and crazy ones. Still, Ireland deserves kudos just for tackling this part.

So what's the bottom line? Big cheers to MTS and this crew for taking on such an enormous, complicated project, and also for introducing audiences to a Canadian playwright we're not familiar with. But some reservations about the script itself, and its intentions, and what it delivers—pro or con—vis-a-vis the memory of an increasingly obscure actress whose life was, if nothing else, unremittingly wasted and sad.

There is much said about the sacredness of the theatrical event and its similarity to a religious ritual. Few productions come close to realizing this sacredness, but the Wierszalin Theatre of Poland’s new production of Saint Oedipus, written and directed by Piotr Tomaszuk, is a reminder of the primal power that an evening in the theatre can possess. It is one of the most essential theatre works to premiere in New York over the last several seasons, and if you miss it, it will be your loss.

Tomaszuk bases his interpretation of the Oedipus myth on a medieval version of the story, filling this out with references to the original Sophoclean play, the book of Psalms, Kleist’s theory of marionette theatre, and Thomas Mann’s novels Doctor Faustus and The Holy Sinner, but in truth it’s entirely a sui generic reflection on sin, sexuality, and the soul’s entrapment in the body. Eva Farkasova’s organic costumes of plain linen, black leather, and sweeping robes (with a touch of the darker, disturbing primal atmospheres exemplified in Terry Gilliam’s more medieval moments) sweep all time into our time; Jano Zavarsky’s deep, spare set is an evocation of medieval elementalism: ragged drapes and straw curtains sweep across the set creating several playing areas; a Plexiglas mirror upstage, tilted precariously, poeticizes the space in a lyrical repetition of stage images. Across this set, Rafal Gasowski and Edyta Lukaszewicz-Lisowska revive not only the ancient story of Oedipus, but also the various means by which guilt, sexuality, and bodily experience are expressed, punished and repressed.

Tomaszuk’s script is not so much a play as a liturgy. As such, it’s comprised of repetitive images and phrases (“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be”; “The body is a trap”) that serve to annotate the story of Jocasta and Oedipus, as they attempt to expiate the original sin of the body’s entrapment of the soul. As son and mother, brother and sister, husband and wife, they exemplify all man-woman relationships; the guilt and terror accompanying sexual pleasure is demonstrated through a variety of images, from sadomasochistic costumes and practices to blood sacrifices. There is a beautiful, pure moment of physical calm and release in copulation here, bare bodies, having been self-anointed in a cleansing blue water that washes the blood from their hands, achieving graceful orgasmic precision; however, the pain of the play soon returns as Jocasta recognizes Oedipus as her son—as a bodied individual—in a moment of post-coital epiphany.

Rafal Gasowski is a haunted and haunting figure through the play, as he begins the play in the role of Mann’s demonic composer Adrian Leverkuhn, who introduces the idea of marionettes as the only truly free humanoid beings, then sidles into the character of Oedipus himself. Edyta Lukaszewicz-Lisowska is similarly extraordinary and chameleon-like as she courses through characters, including a midwife and a cardinal, during the performance. It must additionally be said that these hypnotizing, physically disciplined, and quite beautiful performers bring an emotional intensity to the evening it has rarely been my privilege to experience; at the curtain call, both Gasowski and Lukaszewicz-Lisowska seem more stunned than anything else, and looking these performers in the eye as they look at you, having experienced this ritual with them, is a profoundly disturbing moment indeed. The curtain doesn’t call for applause, but for awed silence.

And it’s disturbing because, like all good theatre and effective religious ritual, it poses a mystery at the center of human experience, a mystery beyond words or explication that can only be expressed through the body. Somehow the Oedipus myth has remained with us as a reminder of our ambivalent sexuality down through the last three millennia; Saint Oedipus does not condescend to try to explain it to us, but dares instead to invite us to experience this mystery with the performers, the celebrants of this secular communion, as they trace it from the Old Testament to our own time. If you are emotionally open enough to enter into this mystery with them, Saint Oedipus is one of the most powerful theatrical events of the season, if not the last several years. You will leave shaken and stunned, if not entirely purged of the elemental terror the Wierszalin Theatre’s play expresses.

Piotr Nazaruk’s music is a mosaic of rock-and-roll, spare percussive arrhythmic underscores, and quotes from Mozart’s Requiem: a musical accompaniment, appropriately atmospheric and hypnotizing itself, of this unique mass.

(Note: The text of the play itself is a simple, rhythmic English, but the ten-minute-long prologue is in Polish; a translation is provided in the program.)

Randall David Cook's new play Sake with the Haiku Geisha takes place at a traditional lodge in a small town in Japan in 1993. Three foreigners—from America, Canada, and England—have completed two-year tenures as visiting English teachers, part of an outreach program sponsored by the Japanese intended to help increase mutual understanding between the people of Japan and the rest of the world. We're at the three young teachers' farewell party, and there is indeed a geisha here, who speaks only in haiku and serves her guests sake. All are invited to share a story about their particular experiences. These stories form the play.

Charlotte, the young woman from England, relates her tale in epistolatory fashion, delineating her correspondence with her aged grandmother, to whom she confesses some of the feelings of strangeness and loneliness as she becomes acclimated to her new life in Japan.

Brianna, who is quick to remind her Japanese associates that her native Canada is a different country than America, talks about two incidents. In one, she finds herself pursued at a party by a Japanese man who is determined to prove that his manhood is superior to that of westerners; she winds up confiding in him about the recent death of her boyfriend, which was the event that triggered her trip east. In the other, she is deeply disturbed when a group of children at the school, seemingly unknowingly, name their team mascot after Adolph Hitler.

The American, Parker, is a gay man, but he's from a conservative Southern background and has heretofore never acted on his sexual impulses. In the play's cleverest sequence, he talks about his feelings of isolation in a culture where homosexuality is actively denied—he recounts a dream where he has been asked to give a "Q&A" for the Japanese, and the subject turns out to be what it's like to be gay. He also remembers his first "date" with a Japanese drag queen.

The principal of the school, Mr. Hashimoto, also shares a story. His is about his childhood, and the reasons why his father insisted that every member of the family learn and speak English. And finally, our hostess at the lodge herself tells a tale, about how she came to be the Haiku Geisha.

The stories are all compelling (though the first one, oddly structured as a series of letters, feels long). But except for the principal's tale, these are all coming-of-age tales rather than the explorations of coming together that the show seems to be going for. The whole point of the exchange program that brings the teachers to Japan is to allow for a cultural sharing, but Sake with the Haiku Geisha ultimately spends very little time on this idea, and instead focuses on loneliness and romantic problems. I wanted to hear more about why the school children would choose Hitler as an icon. And I was interested in learning more about contemporary Japanese attitudes toward sex, marriage, and feminism, rather than just the very stereotypical "traditional" view depicted in the geisha's tale.

In the end, I didn't get the sense that these three young people had gotten very much out of their experience abroad—certainly very little insight into the Japanese people emerges beyond conventional archetypes.

Cook's framing device could be more clearly delineated, as well; in particular, director Alex Lippard's use of the space—which pulls us away from the lodge setting almost instantaneously, before we've really had a chance to absorb what it signifies—may not serve the playwright's intention.

The piece is performed by seven actors of varying skill. Particularly fine work is offered by Jeremy Hollingworth as Parker (he's nailed the American's Southeastern accent) and David Shih as Mr. Hashimoto.

In her newest work, Everything Bad and Beautiful, (no longer accurately called a one-woman show, in light of the Rebellious Jezebels, the four-piece band that stays on stage and plays throughout the performance), Sandra Bernhard shows what it really means to be an aging rock star. True, she's not a rock star in the traditional sense of the phrase—her vocals lend themselves more to cabaret, at moments—and she's far better known amongst the general public for her turn as Nancy on the sitcom Roseanne than for her musicianship. But then, she's also not an "aging rock star" in the sense that that phrase connotes of late, either (namely, the Rolling Stones eking out yet another world tour). Part rebellious show-woman swirling in a morass of identity politics, part wannabe supermodel turned maturing mom, and part old-time theatre diva, Bernhard manages to successfully incorporate her various personas into a richly entertaining work that integrates just enough of the edge that excites her long-time devotees and just enough change to show personal and professional growth.

Interestingly, Everything Bad and Beautiful's staging (uncredited) manages to reflect this dichotomy nicely. Seated stage left are the Rebellious Jezebels' pianist and bassist, spunky if slightly awkward white guys who seem to participate in the proceedings with relative order. And stage right are a less polished but appropriately edgy guitarist, looking like something of a relic from the '80s East Village, and the Jezebels' phenomenal backup vocalist, sporting a shock of pink hair and—towards the end of the show—a corset. Directly behind Bernhard is La Frae Sci, the multi-talented drummer / musical director who, together with the diva herself, is responsible for bringing the two sides together.

And come together they do, with tremendous success. Covers of Prince tunes and Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," a medley of Lita Ford's "Kiss Me Deadly" and Pink's "Just Like a Pill," and even a lullaby that Bernhard sings to her daughter all mesh nicely, alternating party-girl / girl power anthems with more mature interpretations that encourage satisfying reflection. She is helped immensely—although one has the sense that she doesn't really need it —by Ben Stanton's terrific lighting, moving the atmosphere back and forth between rock concert, solo theatre performance, and intimate cabaret. And the few theatrical devices that Bernhard and team choose to employ—namely, an onstage, mid-show costume change from flowery dress to T-shirt and jeans—heighten, rather than distract, from the proceedings.

Everything Bad and Beautiful is decidedly political—long one of Bernhard's strengths—though her commentary shows perhaps a bit too much age. Criticism of the Bush administration and the 2004 Kerry campaign cover territory that's been tread many times before (not to mention in much funnier and angrier contexts). Bernhard does her show—though not herself—a disservice in banter with the audience, showing that she still has the same fire and intensity that have attracted so much attention in the past; it's only a shame that she hasn't written more of it into the performance. When a heckler called upon her to comment on NYPD closings of gay bars in Chelsea, Bernhard's tirade in response—exhorting her largely gay audience to take better care of themselves ("They want to kill you, and you're doing it for them") proved among the performance's most electrifying non-musical moments. At the end of her impromptu, extended monologue, Bernhard expressed disappointment that she would have to return to her scripted performance rather than continue to talk with the audience. "They're expecting a show," she said.

She gives a show, and a fun and sometimes meaningful one; but the critical difference between this aging rock star and the ones who we're used to seeing is the thrill of potential. Far from being washed up, this compelling performer is still capable of really givin her audience a show that makes what might come next even more exciting than what's been there in the past, and maybe even what's there right now.

The professionals behind the musical Sarah Plain and Tall should be very happy, very happy indeed, because the cast of this spunky revival at the Lucille Lortel is filled with heart, generosity, and enthusiasm. Under the skillful direction of Joe Calarco, themes such as love, rejection, homesickness, and insecurity are tackled head-on without pandering to the young audience. In a theatre filled with children of all ages, there was barely a peep throughout. Why? Because, this is a show worth writing home about.

The lights rise on Anna, the pre-teen daughter of Jacob, a Kansas farmer who lost his wife during the birth of their son about nine years earlier. As lady of the house, Anna prepares breakfast, kneads the daily bread, and prods her optimistic yet dreamy brother Caleb into tackling his chores. Their needs are clear. Anna misses her mother and resents her brother. Caleb needs a mother, and Jacob still mourns his wife. Enter Matthew, a neighbor, who suggests Jacob place an ad in the paper for a mail-order bride. The ad catches the eye of Maggie in Maine, who is recently married and saddled with her husband’s outspoken sister—Sarah, both plain and tall, and with no prospects for a husband of her own. Seeing this as an opportunity to get Sarah out of her house, Maggie cajoles Sarah into answering the ad, setting the events in motion.

Kate Wetherhead wastes no time bringing Anna to life. She commands the stage with the first musical number, “Lady of the House,” creating a formidable spitfire of a character. She instills Anna with a vibrant sense of purpose, under which lies a layer of sadness and longing. Wetherhead stops the show when she hurls an honest yet bitter accusation at Caleb, and takes the unendurable silence that ensues, allowing the audience to react—and it does: with gasps, tears, disbelief. Anna may be lady of the house, but she is still a child, albeit a child without a childhood.

Gene Biscontini’s Caleb is all boy. He is not yet beaten by daily chores, and he is wide with wonder at the day to day. He alone is completely open to Sarah and all her peculiarities and Biscontini makes this behavior not only understandable but welcome. He brings light into the home and the touch of humor that distinguishes a house with children. He introduces the "Law of Kissing" as if he were an authority. His solo “Don’t Miss the Sea” demonstrates the sophisticated insight and empathy of which children are capable.

Jacob is a dour character and Herndon Lackey delivers the dark cloud that hangs above his character’s head. His craggy face and lumbering walk make him nearly unapproachable, and are ideal preparation for the relief we feel when he finally smiles at the end. He is perfect for the part.

And then there is Sarah. Tall, tall, plain, plain Sarah. Becca Ayers embraces this role and accepts the traits as if they were her own. She is slow to win Anna’s heart, making it all the more gratifying once she does. Ayers is both secure in the awkward skin of Sarah and emboldened by her character’s idiosyncrasies. It is as if by each successive rejection, she becomes more confident of her identity. When Jacob says, “You are impatient, impetuous, and peculiar,” Sarah doesn’t shrivel. Rather, she agrees. Thoughtfully, Jacob realizes that he actually likes those traits in her, too.

Two more actors round out the marvelous cast. Kenneth Boys ably doubles as the neighbor Matthew and Sarah’s brother, William—the first confident and open and the second henpecked and weak; Heather Ayers breathes vitality into both Estelle, Matthew’s beautiful mail-order bride, and Maggie, the arrogant, domineering sister-in-law who pushes Sarah out of the house. Although we know the ending before it comes, Julia Jordan, who wrote the book, gives the cast solid material and the cast never takes the easy way out. We are with the characters as they struggle from loneliness to a sense of community, never losing their individuality along the way.

The lyrics, by Nell Benjamin, do a good job of propelling the story forward, covering the nuance of the journey on stage. “Letters” introduces hope and the personal stakes for the characters. In “Sixty Cents” we understand Jacob’s misgivings and his last minute demand to be reimbursed for the ad. In “Is It Me You Want to Kiss?” we know that Sarah will only stay if she is wanted for herself and not as a substitute for the woman who died earlier. Laurence O’Keefe’s tuneful music fills the stage and offers the characters ample room for expression. The live orchestra, conducted by Jono Mainelli, assures this.

Michael Fagin’s simple farmhouse set consists of a table and stools and four movable windows on tracks. A shuttered window with a ladder provides views outside. Only Fagin’s interpretation of hay left me wondering, although it made for interesting movement on stage. Credit Chris Lee with the brilliant red opening sunrise. It commands attention. Anne Kennedy’s costumes complement the sentiments on stage: a gray drab sack of a dress for Anna and a bold golden travel ensemble for Sarah that threatened to shriek “Out of Place”, but didn’t. Like everything else in Sarah Plain and Tall, it works beautifully.

There’s a line in Coppola’s classic film Apocalypse Now that goes something like this: “…the officers refuse to let their men write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it’s obscene.” The irony of this statement is quite clear; but what is not so clear is the line that stands between acts of war and acts of excessive cruelty. And, as we tread this line we may ask, who is to blame when the line is crossed? Do we blame the officers that gave the order, the soldiers that carried out the order, or do we blame the society from which they spawn? This is the center (and always relative) concept behind Anne Nelson’s new play Savages.

The play is “an account from the Philippine-American War” and is based on the true story of a Marine Major named Littleton Waller. The occasion the play is the eve of Major Waller’s verdict in his court-martial. He has fallen ill and can barely make it through a day in the courtroom but he insists on clearing is name. Army General Adna Chaffee appears to be using Waller as a scapegoat due to the pressure being put on him from politicians in Washington. It would seem that Waller led a group of Marines who carried out questionable orders of cruelty. The orders were given in response to acts of cruelty by the enemy.

The story plays out in a small room where Waller is being held. He is being guarded by a young and somewhat naive Army Corporal named John Hanley. Waller’s illness is being tended by a local Filipino girl named Maridol Amaya. These two characters seem to be the conscience of the audience in that they have nothing to do with the incident but are making judgments (or at least statements) based on their respective backgrounds. These are the characters that actually have a sort of transformation and eventually come close to understanding one another.

As for the story within the play itself, I was a little hard-pressed to find one. The play is long on somewhat heady banter but short on plot and action. For the most part nothing really happens. In fact, I found it hard to understand what was so interesting about Waller’s story that compelled Nelson to write about it. The play certainly does not elaborate on his tale, nor do the support materials provided to me. It is perhaps Nelson’s goal to highlight the issues rather than the actual story and if that is indeed the case then she does so very well. But I missed being provided the benefits of a whole story. I love theatre that requires me to think, but I go to the theatre to feel something for the character’s plight. I certainly left Savages thinking, but when the lights came up and the actors took their bows I felt let down because I wanted more than just a series of perspectives.

The ensemble does a decent job creating their characters. Julie Danao-Salkin as Maridol provides us with a fairly clear vision of the locals and James Matthew Ryan as Waller certainly has his moments, but Brett Holland and Jim Howard as Corporal Hanley and General Chaffee respectively merely create two dimensional renditions of real people.

Director Chris Jorie uses the intimate space at the Lion Theatre to its utmost and he keeps a tight pace, but he seems to have a missed a couple of key moments. One in particular comes in the penultimate scene of the play where the characters are all locked in debate. Had I not been listening carefully, I would have missed the importance of the things being said because the scene lacked the sharp rise in action needed to highlight the words. The scene instead falls flat and the relevance it has to our current conflict in Iraq is almost lost. I would think that bridging the gap between these two wars should have been Jorie’s top priority.

The production values of Savages are quite high. The costumes, provided by Rebecca Bernstein, look really great and Lauren Helpern’s set works just fine.

In the end, I think Savages is worth a look. It’s short, only 90 minutes, so you can’t feel like you’ve wasted your entire evening. There are those that may enjoy an evening of interesting perspectives on the nature of war and the violent acts war produces, but, for me, I need theatre that spins yarns that force me to feel as much as I think.

If I say that was Vera, then that was Vera. On account of I'm the one running things here. Is that clear enough? I think it is. When you go and get your own show, Dan, then you can say who's Vera and who is not Vera. Until then, Dan, while you're here in my show, Vera is whoever the fuck I say she is.

I’m the commander—see, I don’t need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

Two quotes, one from a maniacal quizmaster named Bob in C.J. Hopkins's magnificent new play screwmachine/eyecandy, the other from the President of the United States of America, juxtaposed here only to demonstrate how gosh-darned timely this particularly play seems to be.

screwmachine/eyecandy Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob (the full title) is one scary show. As directed by John Clancy and performed to perfection by David Calvitto as Bob, James Cleveland as his announcer, and Bill Coelius and Nancy Walsh as the victims—I mean, contestants—it's a breathtaking event: theatre not merely as cautionary fable or wakeup call, but as urgent attempt to drag its audience kicking and screaming out of their chairs and onto a stage—any stage—where they might regain their rights and dignity and engage in their world with passion and vigor.

The play looks like a game show; well, like a game show in a living room. Well that's where game shows take place, isn't it?—Simon Holdsworth's brilliantly antic set puts the TV at the center and the comfy easy chairs right in front of it, and then turns the whole thing around so that we understand that the place where we spend our lives is also the set of a TV show (which is, on some metaphorical level, precisely true as well).

screwmachine also feels like a game show: contestants (here, Dan and Maura Brown, a typical ordinary American couple from Johnstown, New York or Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or one of those towns somewhere) are in their ordained places, and to wild applause the host Big Bob makes his entrance and starts to behave just like a game show host. You know: chit-chat with the contestants, wads of cash in his pockets, the promise that rules will be promulgated and questions will be asked.

But this week, Big Bob's announcer Chip Devlin booms out the news that the rules are: there are no rules. The questions start to not make sense. Order disintegrates into chaos and violence. Bob stops pretending to like the contestants. The center does not hold; things fall apart.

What are Dan and Maura gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?

Because—and here's where screwmachine gets tricky—that announcement is for the audience (us, alive, in the seats in the theatre) as well. Everything about Hopkins's extraordinarily controlled script feels uneasy and uncomfortable; this is as much NOT like a play as the game being played out inside it is NOT like a game show. No rules: just people going nuts over winning products. What's that about?

If you've seen some of Hopkins's other works—the seminal Horse Country, for example—then you'll probably have a clue or two about what's afoot in this very unsettling theatre experience called screwmachine/eyecandy. This is a play that's defiantly and smugly not a play; instead, a happening that spirals in and out of itself, sucking us in to its faux world and then spitting us out again, trying to focus us on what's going on in this particular room expressly so that when we leave it we'll stay focused on what's going on in all the other rooms we go to afterward. It's not an easy ride; it doesn't want to be. But if you come prepared to listen, really listen to what's being said; to be wary of the cues and the angles that a slick host like Big Bob will drop and/or spew, then you can find yourself thoroughly shaken up when your hour in the theatre is finished.

Clancy's staging of this intricate puzzle of a play feels pretty near flawless to me, punching up the stuff that lets us into the thing and letting the rest of it unfold like a dream turning into a nightmare on fast forward. Calvitto is spellbinding as Bob, his concentration never wavering as he controls the entire universe of the show—which includes us—without ever making anything resembling human contact with anyone. Cleveland, offstage as announcer Chip Devlin and occasionally onstage as a scary gorilla-like version of Vanna White is terrific. Coelius is wrenchingly real as Dan, the hapless contestant, while Walsh makes a startling and moving journey from eager passivity to beaten-down self-awareness as Maura, the character who really is our surrogate, or at least our guide, into the all-too-recognizable world of screwmachine/eyecandy.

Theatre doesn't have to be this hard on an audience, but after the rigorous gut-punch of a show like this you realize that hard is good; affirming, even. The Dr. Strangelove and George Orwell allusions in the title are intended and entirely apt, by the way: see screwmachine/eyecandy; do not stop worrying.

For every brave ancient fish that climbed onto the land and figured out how to sprout legs, there are, demonstrably, millions that didn't: evolution seems to be the exception, not the rule, for most members of any given species at any given moment in history. This is where the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Edward Albee's play Seascape took me; I'm not at all sure that that's where Albee or anyone else among the creative team intended me to go.

In Seascape, a husband and wife—Charlie and Nancy—are alone on a beach, finishing up a picnic lunch and discussing lots of stuff, mainly what they're going to do next. Not next meaning right after the picnic, but rather next meaning now that their children are grown and beginning families of their own, now that they've accomplished the things they thought they were supposed to accomplish—what do they do now? In a nutshell, the two positions are: nothing (his) and something (hers). Though she's not especially able to come up with a specific and genuinely actionable suggestion, Nancy wants to go forward to some unknown but worthy destination, not remain inertly in the same place or, worse, regress, waiting in some retirement community for the end.

Their conversation is interrupted by the sudden appearance of another couple, Leslie and Sarah, who are younger but apparently just as conflicted. Also, they're lizards of some kind (vividly realized by Catherine Zuber's costumes, which are this production's standout element), with rough, scaly camouflage-skin, great waddles under their chins, and big, powerful tails. Quickly, both couples understand that they can communicate with each other, and eventually they understand that the question facing each is precisely the same—to evolve, or not to evolve?

It's a weighty subject, but it somehow feels light-headed much of the time in this play; as I said, I was more aware of those who don't make the leap that progress seems to demand (either through conscious choice or, more likely, because it never occurs to them to change), and that kind of torpid thinking runs decidedly contrary to my usual impulse. Why did the secure, unadventurous alternative appeal to me here? Why did I think, as Charlie and Nancy try to encourage Leslie and Sarah not to return to their comfortable underwater home but instead to stake out new turf on dry Earth, that the humans ought to mind their own business?

Seascape, it occurs to me, is a play about midlife crisis. In America, at least among our privileged classes, it's entirely possible to be "all done" while still a vigorous 50-something: kids all grown up, house paid for, retirement secure. I think the questions that Charlie and Nancy are asking themselves have to do with finding purpose beyond the obvious and ordained: if we can scale a higher mountain, shouldn't we? Mustn't we?

That's an option available only to those affluent enough to afford it, however, in all the different ways that anybody can afford anything. One of the things that jars terribly about this production is that neither Frances Sternhagen (as Nancy) nor George Grizzard (as Charlie) looks quite ready to tackle more evolving. I don't mean to be ageist here: I'm all for learning new things no matter how old you are. But Charlie's crisis of inertia is tragic in a 50-year-old; it feels almost beside-the-point in an 80-year-old. Grizzard and Sternhagen, grand actors that they are (and a pleasure to watch on stage under any circumstances, don't get me wrong), feel entirely miscast in Seascape. Grizzard comes across as worn-out physically as Charlie professes to be spiritually. And Sternhagen never conveys the deep, lively, constantly-in-motion curiosity and intelligence that Nancy seems to possess. I couldn't believe in what they were worried about.

Frederick Weller is superb, though, as Leslie, really showing us the conflicting emotions, needs, and desires that any sentient being experiences when trying to make a brave and astonishing leap into his own uncertain future. Weller's physicality is also tremendous here—he really commits to being a giant lizard, and I was particularly impressed by how gracefully he is able to slither up and down Michael Yeargan's craggy, sandy beach setting, often on his belly. Elizabeth Marvel does good work as Leslie's helpmeet Sarah.

Mark Lamos's direction is brisk enough, though it seemed to me that Nancy and Charlie spent more time than they should talking out to the audience than to each other. What I didn't feel anywhere in this production, except occasionally in Weller's performance, was a compelling reason for it: I left the theatre wondering whose idea it was to mount this particular old Albee play, and for what reason—because nothing I saw on stage engaged me enough or felt resonant enough to allow me to answer the fundamental question behind any big-budget revival: why Seascape, why now?

See What I Wanna See is a double-bill of two short musicals by Michael John LaChiusa. Both are based on stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the 20th century Japanese writer who is most famous for "In the Grove," which was filmed by Kurosawa as Rashomon and which is also the inspiration for the first act of this show, R Shomon. (The second item on the program, Gloryday, is based on "The Dragon.") Both pieces can be linked thematically to the title as well, but only superficially; they're very different from one another.

R Shomon, which I mostly liked, though in a dispassionate way, is a murder mystery: a man has been found dead in Central Park, killed a few hours after he and his wife left a showing of Rashomon in a Manhattan movie theatre. Whodunit? A thief confesses to the crime, claiming it as just another notch on his belt: "1951 will be remembered," he brags, "as the year Jimmy Mako terrorized New York City." The victim's wife confesses also, spinning a tale of assault, self-defense, betrayal, and finally a suicide pact gone awry. And the murdered man himself, speaking through a psychic who wanders into the police station, confesses, too—a suicide.

The reflexive joke is that this is the exact same story as Rashomon (or "R Shomon"—because one of the letters on the marquee wasn't lit), the movie that the victim saw just before he was killed. And the moral, stated up front in a jive-y swing tune that's the title song, is:

I see what I wanna see.
I know what I wanna know.
I don't need you
To tell me what's true.

Of course, we're tantalized to know what IS true; though I note in retrospect, that my companion talked about many things during intermission but not once did we ask each other which version of events in R Shomon was the "real" one. I think that's because the play, though cool, is also ice cold: there's some nifty stuff in it, especially musically (all of the Thief's songs, which are put over with sexy brio by Aaron Lohr, plus a tough-as-nails litany of recrimination called "No More," sung by Idina Menzel as the Wife), but there's no real romance, no heart—no passion at the core of the thing to explain why this story needs to be told one more time in this new way.

Gloryday, which I started out liking a lot, but then ultimately found very disappointing, is about a practical joke, or hoax, gone astray. A priest, suffering a crisis of faith after the World Trade Center attacks, removes his collar and retreats to Central Park, where he decides on a whim to post a sign stating that

In three weeks
On Tuesday
At one p.m. sharp
A miracle will occur.
Here in Central Park
Before our very eyes
From the depths of the pond
Christ will rise!

Of course, thousands and thousands and thousands of people decide to believe in the sign, and the priest finds himself at the center of a maelstrom that confuses and then redeems him. It won't spoil things much to tell you that Christ does not actually appear in the Pond at Central Park; but a miracle presumably does occur. I thought it was the spontaneous eruption of belief among half a million strangers (something that others would just call gullibility); my companion (I now believe correctly) pointed out that the priest's renewed faith in his calling was the miracle, Christ or no. What's missing from Gloryday is the cathartic climax that rightfully should accompany one or the other of these miracles. I suspect its absence is intentional: the link between Gloryday and R Shomon is that we all see what we wanna see. I'd argue that the way we "wanna see" the Eternal dwarfs the way we "wanna see" a pitiful solitary crime by, um, a lot. The creators of this show might argue back, postmodernly, that everything's relative and everything's subjective.

For the record, there is one other deliberate link between the two plays: the priest says, at the beginning of Gloryday, that his life "is like a sentence in which every word seems to be missing a letter"—but I have no idea what that means. Brief Rashomon-styled musical numbers about an adulterous medieval Japanese wife and her lover precede each of the two main pieces, as well, for (I guess) reinforcement of the show's theme.

Gloryday contains one grand show-stopping number, a reasoned condemnation of organized religion sung spectacularly by the great (though here woefully underused) Mary Testa as the priest's atheist aunt; it's called "The Greatest Practical Joke." Henry Stram plays the priest, and he's quite effective (he's great too as the fifth character in R Shomon, a janitor who discovers the dead body). Marc Kudisch plays the Husband in Act I and a CPA-turned-Central Park bohemian wacko in Act II; he doesn't ever get material that lets him shine. Lohr and Menzel are relegated to relatively minor roles in Gloryday.

Ted Sperling's direction is competent but perhaps lacks the inspiration that might help these pieces soar. The sets by Thomas Lynch are similarly just functional; Elizabeth Caitlin Ward's costumes are much much better than that, really pinning down the characters with a kind of fashion shorthand (with one glaring exception—the very weird Tarzan-y ensemble given to Kudisch as the accountant-gone-native).

See What I Wanna See is not an unenjoyable evening of theatre, and indeed LaChiusa's melodic gifts brighten it up frequently, and there's wit and surprise in the story-telling throughout. But there's never a pressing reason for the show; in flitting about from perspective to perspective, LaChiusa fails to ground himself in his own point of view. And, as I see it, that's ultimately problematic: the difference between a show that makes me forget about my little problems for a couple of hours and a show that, after just a couple of hours, I will never forget.

Very rarely, I get to see something in the theatre that is so wildly inventive and interesting, so challenging, and so different from anything I've ever seen before, that as I sit down to write about it I think (1) I am so lucky to have discovered this and (2) how the heck am I going to explain it? A quandary to be desired, believe me.

So here I am trying to write about Self at Hand, which fits the above description perfectly. This stimulating and preternaturally vivid multimedia performance work is the creation of poet Jack Hanley, who wrote the startling, provocative text, and Christopher Eaves, who directed and designed it. Eaves's contribution must not be downplayed, for one of the most exciting things about Self at Hand is its presentational concept, which is that all of the light on stage comes from video (also by Eaves) projected onto the stage—onto a white wall behind the performers and, almost always, onto the performers themselves. It sounds like it could be gimmicky but it resolutely is not: it's a valid and compelling way of making us see what's happening in this play; it's also quite beautiful most of the time, and essential.

The play itself unfolds in three parts. The first is the most abstract; it's called "The Myth of Not to Be" and is a brief tale of a six-year-old boy at his father's funeral, coping with mixed feelings of loss and anticipation. Hanley's text feels like a poem instead of a play here, and the intention seems more to evoke the futuristic world where the rest of Self at Hand takes place rather than to tell a concrete story. What we understand from the words and images is that technology has merged with humanity in ways that at once seem alien and inevitable: the body at the funeral will be made to stand up and speak; people talk to each other remotely via devices implanted under the skin.

"Tastes Like Robot" fleshes out this not-so-fantastical future and also begins investigation into the principal theme of Self at Hand, which is how we may truly comprehend our humanity in an age where it seems destined to drift away from us. In this module, a young man talks about an experiment he conducted on himself in order to validate whether he's a real human being or an android. It's the stuff of pulpy horror/sci-fi, but it takes on a gravity because the problem is so compelling to this fellow, whose actual authenticity as a person remains in doubt, all evidence proffered one way or the other notwithstanding.

And then, in the main event of the evening, we meet a woman who wants to know and feel and understand herself so much that she decides to have a transparent plate installed in her skull, so that she can watch her brain. When that's not enough to satisfy her curiosity about herself, she pries it off and initiates a hands-on investigation, poking and prodding around her synapses and neurons with first one finger and then, eventually, both hands. It's awful and awesome. The comic possibilities of such a venture are tossed around a bit, as when she brings herself to orgasm by squeezing just the right spot up there. So are the cosmic ones: the ending—the only one possible—reminds us that there are some things we cannot, must not, find out.

Hanley's language—direct and straightforward yet weirdly lyrical—tackles the gruesome preoccupations of these characters head-on, while Eaves's subtle, playful staging both defuses and comments on the events depicted. For example, the brain manipulations are all presented in silhouette, performer Cary Curran's fingers working like shadow puppets against the white screen to let us conjure in our mind's eye the unthinkable thing she's doing to herself, only to emerge every so often covered with stage blood. The final moments of "Tastes Like Robot" find actor Thom Sibbitt, as the man-or-android so bent on finding out what he really is, disappearing right before our eyes into an eerie background of videotaped white noise.

The places that Hanley takes us in this play are extraordinary: he thinks things I can't imagine myself ever thinking, and I love that he makes his audience confront constructs and concepts that are in no way obvious or natural. The visualizations that Eaves provides make the journey accessible and palpable; a lot of what he does here is to create analogs in our own experience for the far-out notions that Hanley comes up with, all with deft economy. So we grasp right away how things "work" in the strange universe of Self at Hand, from the levitating corpse that floats by the little boy in the very first module to the interactive live video therapy sessions that punctuate the third one. These collaborators really do conjure a brand new world for us to inhabit for a while. It makes for an intense theatrical experience.

Curran, Sibbitt, and (briefly, as the little boy) Eaves do remarkable work performing Self at Hand; Curran in particular vividly manages the changes in her character's mental and physical state as her brain manipulations proceed, transforming herself into different versions of this self-destructing woman without changing costume or makeup. The physical environment apart from Eaves's videos is stunning, including an evocative soundscape by Joshua Coleman and Eaves; simple, spare wardrobe by Nathalia Baca and Gary Baura; and styling and special effects by Baura.

This is an affecting, compelling, and entirely original work of theatre: its determination to push beyond familiar paradigms of what stories can be about and how they can be told on stage marks it as profoundly innovative and potentially important. I can't wait to see where Hanley and Eaves decide to take us next.

I've seen Daniel Jenkins play Mark Twain (in Big River) and Louis Ironson (in Angels in America), to name just two terrific performances. But I don't think either felt quite so indelible as his portrayal of Clyde, a lusty stud bull, in Separating the Men from the Bull. This new production from the Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret features Jenkins and Neal Lerner in seven vignettes about male relationships of varying stripes, styles, and species, and the heart-to-heart that Clyde has with his currently impotent pal Teddy is merely the cleverest in an evening of warm-hearted, witty fun. Lerner—no slouch in the acting department himself—is also the co-writer of the show, with Mike Heintzman. Under Becky London's brisk and unobtrusive direction, both actors and both writers sparkle.

But let me get back to Jenkins as Clyde: I don't know precisely how he does it, but he actually becomes bovine (as opposed to a man pretending to be a cow: he is a cow). He's not wearing a cow suit, just a little hat with cardboard horns on it, and he's obviously sitting on a straight-backed chair. But his whole posture, especially his hands, folded unnaturally into "hooves," suggests bull-itude; when he launches into a (slightly modified) version of "Fly Me to the Moon" at the finale of this delightful sketch, like some sort of four-legged Sinatra, accenting the song's title ("mooooon") and hammily (to mix animal metaphors for a moment) selling the line "in UDDER words..."—well, it really is stage magic.

Elsewhere in the play, Jenkins portrays a man who has come to an agency to hire someone to be his friend; a man who has accidentally shot his best friend while deer hunting and now is being told just how he can make that up to him; a Catholic boy sharing conversation and other stuff with his next door neighbor, a Jewish kid; the co-host of "ShyTalk," a cable access show for the introverted; a gay man stuck in a disco bar with his best friend, with whom he is in love; and a painter who, with a longtime friend, is on his way to bury the ashes of a recently departed loved one. Jenkins makes all seven of these men interesting, fully-formed individuals, as does his co-star Lerner with his characters. These disparate stories come together to form a neat cross-section of friendships, without pushing too hard to arrive at a particular moral or theme.

Mostly, the pieces are just very funny. The one about the little boys is hilarious, artfully capturing the wild innocence of youth as it shows us these two kids wondering (and sharing misinformation) about sex and plotting to run away to California, where they can get jobs at Sea World or the San Diego Zoo. The piece set in the gay bar starts off arch but becomes wise and touching by its conclusion; even more genuinely affecting is the last scene, in which two men sail down a stream to find the exact spot where their friend Janet has asked to have her ashes spread.

The atmosphere, as at the last UNNYC show that I attended, is relaxed and informal and pub-like, with drinks available in the theatre that you can bring to your seat (seating is at round tables arranged comfortably around the room).

I should add that Jenkins performed on crutches at the show reviewed, having just torn ligaments in one knee. He's a trouper and then some; so is Lerner, who did double-duty bringing props and costume pieces to the less mobile Jenkins. Their teamwork epitomized what Separating the Men from the Bull is ultimately all about—the rare bonds that make any copasetic pairing into something much bigger than the sum of its parts.

First of all, let me say that I have tremendous respect and admiration for the folks at the If Ensemble who, in selecting an inaugural production to launch themselves in New York's so-competitive off-off-Broadway scene, have chosen a challenging, unusual piece: Lanford Wilson's Serenading Louie. I wish more companies would stretch themselves and audiences by digging into the rich and diverse modern canon and producing work of this caliber.

Second, let me congratulate them on how much they've accomplished first time at bat. They've brought together a talented team of collaborators, all of whom have clearly worked hard on the play. They've done a commendable job producing and promoting the piece. And they've given audiences a look at a really compelling play that deserves to be seen.

Wilson wrote Serenading Louie more than 30 years ago. It's a kind of cautionary tale about the Silent Majority (i.e., Wilson's own generation, the folks who came of age in the late '50s/early '60s, a placid era sandwiched between more dramatic defining shared events like World War II and the Counterculture). For these people, the traditional American idea of success—the kind that protagonists of Arthur Miller plays pursue so blindly and recklessly—feels fraudulent; but it's so easy to lapse into. Alex is a wunderkind lawyer who is about to be drafted to run for a seat in Congress; he's got a romantic streak that makes him infatuated with the anti-war activism of college kids a dozen years younger than himself, but he's also strongly pragmatic. His pal Carl, who was the star of the football team when they went to Northwestern University in Chicago, is now an unstoppably successful (and wealthy) real estate developer. Carl is married to Mary, another friend from college; she's a spoiled daughter of privilege who is now, somewhat inexplicably, having an affair with Carl's accountant. Alex is married to Gabby, who, significantly, did not go to Northwestern; she's in a weird unexplainable funk at the moment, and he's not exactly sure why he's so completely exasperated by everything she does.

Wilson sketches out telling details about these four in fascinating ways in Serenading Louie. The first act feels conventional and even a little turgid as it lays out the basic circumstances of the story. But Act Two keeps pulling us up short. Its first scene—the one that director Lisa Mitchell and her cast pull off with the most  assurance—fills in informational gaps about the characters in unexpected ways: the relationships we thought we comprehended get turned on their heads as we come to know these four people more deeply. And its final scene, in which the various conflicts arrive at simultaneous denouements, pushes daringly out of conventional narrative structure, turning the play's conclusion into a scary collision of moments that are almost unbearably visceral.

Mitchell and her actors try to make it feel contemporary, but there's an essential Vietnam Era-quality about this piece that makes it feel very much of its time (early 1970s) though not dated. People don't behave quite the same today as they did then, and so there's a tension between the completely unaffected casualness of the actors and the more buttoned-up characters they're called upon to play. That said, all four of the young performers here do commendable work. Nate Rubin conveys Carl's inner conflicts very effectively (though he doesn't look like the going-to-seed ex-quarterback described by the other characters). John Samuel Jordan is convincing as Alex, projecting particularly well the longstanding camaraderie with Carl and Mary that's lacking in his relationship with his wife. Erin DePaula plumbs Mary's emotions when called upon, but she seems smarter and more responsible than her flighty character ought to. Similarly, Cadence Allen eventually communicates Gabby's sub/unconscious rootlessness, but in the play's early scenes she comes across as more of a ditz than she probably should.

Mitchell's staging is sensitive, but the pacing is slack in places: most of the scenes, especially the final one, feel like they should move as quickly as the excellent central one in which the characters reminisce about their college days. The production values are fine, including a realistic set by Juliet Gabrielle, appropriate costumes by Felicia Maria, and evocative lighting by Lucie Novak.

Seven.11 Convenience Theatre, a program of new one-act plays about Asian American life, is very charming and funny. The central idea—each play is set in a different 7-11 convenience store—sparks a zesty playfulness in the program’s eight different writers that would fit right in on a television show like Saturday Night Live or MADtv. However, despite its good humor and its well-intentioned stab at promoting ethnic diversity, Seven.11 Convenience Theatre offers no new cultural insight into Asian American life.

The best plays here mine a rich vein of zaniness that provides laughs aplenty. In Jackson Loo’s Kung Fu Hustle a young Chinese American man sets out to learn Kung Fu (“I should be able to do this. It’s part of who I am!”) so he can win the heart of an attractive martial arts instructor. Samrat Chakrabarti and Sanjiv Jhaveri’s Who Killed Mr. Naidu First? turns a convenience store owner’s murder investigation into a musical comedy whodunit. In the futuristic The Old New World J.P. Chan makes a 7-11 a battleground for archeological superiority between two 22nd-century global superpowers. A nerdy store clerk throws a monkey wrench into a junk food pit stop for two teenage runaways, on the lam from an arranged marriage, in Elizabeth Emmons’s Undone. The authors here all come up with inventive and interesting little details: the protagonist in Kung Fu Hustle is learning martial arts from Kung Fu for Dummies; the made-up codes and protocols in The Old New World are complicated enough to rival the Geneva Convention; and there’s more than a couple of unpolished teenage bon mots in Undone (“Wait! You’re running away? But you still have my jacket!”).

The other plays in Seven.11, while providing some equally great moments, feel sub-par when viewed next to their more accomplished counterparts. In Vishakan Jeyakumar’s Jaffna Mangoes, a store clerk and two regulars trade insights about women and dating. Two former high school flames reunite awkwardly and unexpectedly at the 7-11 in Celena Cipriaso’s Homecoming. The protagonist of Rehana Mirza’s Bombay Screams, an out-of-work Broadway actor (he was in Bombay Dreams) slaving away at the local convenience store, must decide between assimilating into “normal” (i.e., white) society for the sake of his career or embracing his ethnicity. All three are promising, but feel unfinished in their current states, either because of a paucity of plot (Homecoming, Bombay Screams) or meaning (Jaffna Mangoes). The germ of an idea is there in all three, but for now it remains only a germ.

The larger problem affecting all the plays in Seven.11 is one of relevancy. There’s no doubt that everyone here is talented, but the point of this show, produced by Desipina & Company, remains a mystery. If the point is “to nurture the works of underrepresented multi-ethnic individuals, as well as empower female artists to tell their stories,” as stated in Desipina’s mission statement, then Seven.11 does just that: all of the playwrights meet at least one of those criteria. But, if the point is also to “acknowledge the unique differences that exist within the Asian American communities,” as another part of their mission statement claims, then the show must be counted, in part, as a failure. Those differences, as real as they may be, are never seen, talked about, or dealt with. In fact, Seven.11 could be accused of the same reactionary assimilation reflex that the protagonist of Bombay Screams suffers from. There is almost nothing about the production that seems to be exclusive to the Asian American community. On the contrary, all the plays in Seven.11 feel like they could be about any ethnic group. Maybe that’s the point: that the Asian American community is no different than any other. But I still couldn’t help feeling as if there were an element of pandering to it all. Yes, working and shopping in a convenience store is a part of Asian American life, but I find it a little disheartening that the creators of the show think that the best way to illuminate the nuances of their culture is to buy into the cultural stereotype of the 7-11 clerk. As funny and well done as some of these plays are, there is nothing illuminating or enlightening about that.

On a more positive note, the seven-member cast is good across the board. Bill Caleo, Meetu Chilana, Andrew Guilarte, Sean T. Krishnan, Jerold E. Solomon, John Wu, Alicia Ying all bring good energy and well-honed comic timing to Seven.11. Director Darrow Carson maximizes the laughs and keeps the show moving at a good clip, navigating scene changes with ease thanks to Shana Solomon’s mobile sets that allow each store location to be reconfigured quickly. Jenny Fisher’s fun costumes and Jeff McCrum’s serviceable lights also add nicely to the overall production.

Seven.11 Convenience Theatre is a good idea that needs some more refining. Desipina & Company is to be commended for promoting the work of up-and-coming multi-ethnic writers of both genders. But, if they want the rest of the world to look at them beyond the narrow scope of ethnic stereotypes, they need to look at themselves that way first.

Described as a multi-media piece, Shelter is exactly the kind of hard-to-categorize performance for which the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival provides a home. Exquisitely conducted by Brad Lubman, the piece uses orchestra, film, and a trio of sopranos to meditate on the idea of shelter—an evocative notion which to this team of artists includes the simplest of protective spaces, but also the storms which need to be held at bay; the grandeur of architecture through the ages, but also the transitory nature of even the most impressive edifice. The imagery also asks us to consider the mundane comforts of home, the isolating nature of suburbia, and the longing for emotional refuge. With very little melody to be heard, waves of minimalist arpeggios and minor scales merge with a constant stream of film images and projections, all carefully orchestrated in an oceanic flow. Ultimately the piece is a sort of poetic thrill ride, evoking the vulnerability and ingenuity of human civilization in the face of the awesome natural and social forces of the earth, and distilling them into a compact construction of sights and sounds for concertgoers.

The BAM Harvey Theater is my favorite theater in New York; with its carefully and beautifully designed sense of decay and age, it is the perfect setting for this piece. The German orchestra musikFabrik sits onstage beneath a skeletal set of four natural wooden arches, but the performers relate themselves to the audience as they would in a traditional piece of concert music, leaving me to sit back in my chair and let the music and images wash over me. The sopranos who make up trio mediæval are dressed in '50s style white cocktail dresses, with white scarves and pumps, and form a sort of Greek chorus, observing the images and singing their responses in carefully sequenced scale fragments, extended contrapuntal polyphony, occasionally singing together in choral harmony. The words are carefully enunciated and beautifully sung in the disembodied straight tone of early music, though the dissonant minor music and driving rock / minimalist rhythms are anything but old-fashioned. The singers’ Norwegian accents further strip the text of any sense of normal conversation. Any sense of individual identity is held in abeyance to the larger formal structure of large-scale chamber music.

The film images move with the fluidity of a dream across an enormous theatre-sized screen behind the orchestra, and a second set of images on a scrim in front of the orchestra. These two surfaces create a light box in which lives a constant tide of images moving on top of images, in a visual equivalent of harmony. The visibility of the orchestra within this visual stream never lets us forget this is a presentation—not a movie of a story to get lost in. The first movement begins with footage of a stormy ocean crashing against a boardwalk, and the last movement shows 80-year-old, deteriorating archival film of a town adrift in a Katrina-scale flood. The severity of the flood images, displayed for poetry and beauty in conjunction with a symphony, sat oddly given my awareness of recent natural and human disasters. It was a curious luxury to sit in the shelter and sanctuary of a concert hall, contemplating such images of devastation.

Between these images of overwhelming natural power, the projections modulate through a haunting sequence of images: rapidly moving shots of the desert, like the opening to some existential road movie, fade into giant, abstracted images of frame houses, over which flutters a giant, ghostly lace curtain. Time-lapse images of children sleeping summon a parental desire to protect them from the storms and speeds that preceded. The fourth movement, “American Home,” reaches for a sort of grandeur during which the singers sing a list of materials used to build a house: “concrete – 20 yards / reinforced steel – 1000 feet / lumber – 1000 2 x 10’s, 2 x 6’s, 2 x 4’s.” Composed with a square bombast, the projections include exquisitely textured architectural drawings, epically filling the space over the stage. The projections move slowly, creating a sense of the entire room rising to the heights.

The fifth movement, “Porch,” displays comforting old home movies from the '60s of neighbors or a family relaxing in their yard. The music and text, however, prophesy modern, technological conveniences: “First came screens against the bugs / Then came glass against the chill / … The street became so loud with cars and trucks / Passersby diminished / Inside there is air-conditioning.” The movement of the films gradually fades into a long, electrical line across the stage, like an old TV set’s spark before shutting down. This allows the three singers to come downstage and sing a beautiful contrapuntal piece directly to the audience: “I want to live where you live.” For the first time, they sing directly to us, almost as if they had emerged from some cybernetic TV void to seek the simplicity of direct interpersonal contact.

For all the sturm and drang—literally!—the piece achieves only a very formal connection with the audience. The rhythmic intensity, the visual density, the polish and virtuosity of the ensemble add up to a remarkable clarity and directness that left me feeling alert and intrigued. Somehow, though, I wonder if the materials of the piece—involving 30 artists—might have more to offer than a sense of aesthetic satisfaction. Nevertheless, it left a pleasant taste in my mouth—a sign of how far the techniques formerly known as avant-garde have come.

If you cherish fine acting, then you may want to look in on Shining City, where Brian F. O'Byrne is giving one the season's loveliest and most evocatively understated performances as a priest-turned-psychologist named Ian. Since he's a therapist by trade and for much of the play's running time we're watching him at work, what we see him do mostly is listen; he does so with an eloquence that takes us inside his character's head and heart non-stop.

Even when Ian is alone—as he is a good time of the time, for he's just left his fiancée and their small child for a new life on his own; plus he's just opened this office in a quiet but fitfully unruly building in Dublin—O'Byrne offers us keen insight into this man. Watch him flick and flick and flick an uncooperative lighter with continual frustration and see how out-of-sorts and off-kilter Ian's life is at the moment. Watch him—hilariously—try to wrap a big droopy stuffed teddy bear in not enough wrapping paper, and understand the sadness, the inadequacies, the compromises and compensations that define this unfulfilled existence.

O'Byrne's string of great performances has been uninterrupted since he first made a name for himself in The Beauty Queen of Leenane (and includes The Lonesome West, Frozen, and last season's Doubt). This is another milestone for him. His work here is certainly the most compelling reason to see Shining City, which is being presented on Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Biltmore, a house that is probably too large for this intimate, playful drama.

It is, mostly, a ghost story; that's familiar terrain for author Conor McPherson, who here places his trademark monodrama style within a more traditional multi-character play format. Ian is the protagonist of this piece, and in two sharply written scenes we meet his fiancée, Neasa, who becomes increasingly desperate as she realizes that Ian is serious about dissolving their relationship, and a young man named Laurence with whom he engages in some tentative romancing as a kind of test of his true orientation and nature.

But for most of Shining City, we observe Ian in the presence of one of his patients, a businessman named John who is having a rough time getting over the death of his wife. She was killed in a freakish tragic accident, but as John's reminiscences proceed we come to understand that it wasn't just the terrible suddenness of her death that has turned his life upside down—he is carrying around with him huge wads of guilt, some earned, some perhaps not. His sessions with Ian—in particular one at the center of the play in which he recounts the history of a mild extramarital liaison—help us discover the ghosts that are haunting John, and help him exorcise them.

They also awaken the ghosts that Ian is trying to flee from. Whether the physician is able to heal himself I will leave for you to discover and decide for yourself.

Oliver Platt plays John, and his characterization is complicated and compelling, though it's hampered by a haphazard and inconsistent Irish accent; he's best when he's not attempting it, as I wish he had not. (Dialect coach Deborah Hecht appears to have met with little success here, with the play's other two actors, Martha Plimpton and Peter Scanavino, also failing, somewhat distractingly, to convince us of their Irishness.)

Platt has the play's most technically demanding job, which is delivering the very long monologue on the therapist's couch that reveals many of the secrets and themes of the piece. It seemed to me that director Robert Falls let him (and us) down badly by keeping him immobile on the couch: it's hard to watch someone talk without moving for 20 or 30 minutes. Why didn't Falls let Platt move around a bit?—this isn't a Beckett play, after all, and even if the reality of the situation might be slightly compromised, what would be gained in audience engagement would more than make up for it.

Plimpton and Scanavino have much less to do, but they do it quite well, especially the latter, who creates an authentically interesting young man in just a few minutes of stage time.

In the end, though, it's Ian's story and it's O'Byrne's play, and even with a very odd final surprise seemingly tacked on at the end, Shining City makes for generally satisfying theatre.

Stuart Warmflash's new play Shortly After Takeoff is a tender and affecting coming-of-age story. It's about Ethan, a teenager living in a town in suburban Long Island in the late 1960s. His father died some years ago; his mother works during the day, is going to school at night, and spends most of whatever spare time remains protesting the Vietnam War. His brother Chip is away at college, and when he's home he's fixing things or seeing his girlfriend.

Ethan is clearly very bright, but he's obviously a loner. He's got no friends and is something of a misfit socially—his penchant for talking to himself (or, during a biology lab, the frog he's dissecting) doesn't help matters much. He's also an artist: he loves to make sculptures, and he's good at it. But his mother doesn't take seriously this one thing that he loves, pushing him on a more traditional path toward college and a profession.

The play focuses on two key incidents in Ethan's adolescent life. In the first act, the mother, Rosie, receives a marriage proposal from a dentist named Chester. In Act Two, a stroke of fate causes one of the most popular (and prettiest) girls in school, Karen, to require Ethan's aid and discretion. Together, these events help Ethan push along toward figuring out who he is and, more important, who he's capable of becoming.

Warmflash has crafted the piece commendably, with lots of winning and often funny dialogue, especially in the scenes involving the two brothers:

ETHAN: Richie said unhooking a girl's bra isn't easy. Is there some kind of method?
CHIP: Yeah, get the girl to take it off herself. Next.

The boys' relationship feels completely real, due in no small part to the playing of Eric Shelley and Anthony Bagnetto as Ethan and Chip, respectively. Shelley, with a long list of credits, pulls off the very difficult task of convincing us that he's a teenager, while Bagnetto gets the disagreeable sullenness of the college kid who hates being home for vacation when he could be somewhere—anywhere—else with his friends. The chemistry between the two young actors is palpable, too.

There's a similar naturalness on stage between Patricia Kalember, who plays the boys' difficult mother Rosie, and Lucy McMichael as her sister, the (generally) more easy-going Ann. Rounding out the ensemble are Bruce Mohat as the awkward Chester and Adelia Saunders as Karen.

The plot twist in the second act that brings Karen to Ethan's side against the odds feels a bit unlikely, but otherwise the story is always compelling and engaging. In the end, Shortly After Takeoff reminded me of The Glass Menagerie and Broadway Bound with its theme of a young man getting ready to take leave of his domineering mother; if this piece doesn't quite plumb the depths of Rosie's character, it nevertheless gives us, in Ethan, a sympathetic central character whose course interests and concerns us.

Warmflash has directed his own script skillfully in this first full production from Harbor Theatre Company. Production values are all splendid, especially Mark Symczak's economical set and Jeffrey E. Salzberg's very effective lighting design.

If actors don’t have a traditional script or an audience, are they still acting? That is the question posed by Show People, a new comedy by Paul Weitz that is fixated on the idea of performance, and what constitutes one. It’s one that would be worth asking if there weren’t other nagging questions at the center of Show People. Like, why was this play written? And, why is it being produced? Despite its intention to celebrate and poke gentle fun at its eponymous title characters (at least, I’m assuming that’s its intention), Show People’s cosmetic and half-hearted attempts to address its theme only serve to underscore what it's really about: the author’s deep, blistering contempt for actors.

Perhaps I’m just being sensitive, which could be since I’m an actor, too. And as such I know first-hand that Weitz’s long list of grievances against the thespian profession is, by and large, true. Actors can definitely be greedy, selfish, shallow, vain, stupid, silly, petty, overly sentimental, and short on both objectivity and good judgment…but that’s only part of the time. The rest of the time they are some of the most loving, generous, funny, charming, intelligent, grounded, and level-headed human beings on the face of the earth. Those positive qualities are what’s missing from Show People. Weitz, instead, focuses solely on the negative aspects with the ferocity of a man with an ax to grind. (Inexplicably, too, I might add. The reason for his ire is never revealed.) This one-sided myopia makes the play a little less than enjoyable and a little more than distasteful.

For the record: the play’s protagonists, Marnie and Jerry, are two middle-aged Broadway actors who have been out of work for several years. Desperate for both money and work, they accept an unorthodox job posing as the parents of an eccentric rich yuppie, Tom, for the weekend. He’s planning to propose to his pretty, young fiancée, Natalie, and wants to impress her with a harmonious, picture-perfect family unit. Hence, the stage is set for Marnie and Jerry to give what could be the performance of their lives—except that no one will be there to see it. Jerry, an old-fashioned stickler for learning lines and going to rehearsal, is skeptical that what they’re doing could even be called acting. “If this is acting, where’s the script?” he asks early on. Marnie assures him that they are acting, but in a fashion that he’s not used to. Despite being given an entire backstory for each of their “characters” by Tom, these veteran thespians find themselves in the increasingly uncomfortable position of having to improvise. Jerry shudders at the mere mention of the word.

Little do Marnie and Jerry know that, as much as they need to keep their real identities a secret, Tom and Natalie each have secrets of their own to keep (to say more would spoil the plot, so I won’t). Slowly, as everyone inevitably reveals what they’ve been hiding, Show People goes from weird to weirder.

Whether Weitz knows it or not, Tom and Natalie’s secrets also serve as critic-proof defense mechanisms. They show the depth of his contempt, but can’t be discussed in this forum because doing so would give most of the story away. What’s a poor reviewer to do? Blow the show for everyone for the sake of proving a point, or keep the play’s secrets intact and hope that readers will take it on faith that the show is flawed without being able to tell them completely why? Even though I choose the latter, it’s still an infuriating conundrum.

One thing I can say is that Show People, on top of its condescending scorn, doesn’t make a lot of sense. How easy it is to accept the initial set-up (i.e., Marnie and Jerry accepting the job) will depend upon the individual theatre-goer. Personally, I decided to go along with it. But, as things progress—and revelations continue to pile up—Show People strains both plausibility and credibility. Why anyone—even the actors that Weitz constantly turns his nose up at—would behave the way these characters do defies logic. Starting halfway through Act I, about the time Natalie reveals her secret, there’s just no rhyme or reason to it.

This is a shame, because a lot of Show People is very funny. Everyone’s reaction to Natalie’s homemade blueberry muffins (spiked with horseradish, no less)—a collection of stone faces, wide-eyed in disbelief, chewing very slowly—is tried-and-true comedy at its best. A game of Charades evolves into an uproarious contest of spot-the-theatre-reference. And Tom’s insistence on calling Marnie and Jerry by their characters' names, even when Natalie isn’t around, is amusingly creepy. Of course, with a cast this good, one expects a few laughs. Show People’s four-person ensemble of Ty Burrell, Judy Greer, Debra Monk, and Lawrence Pressman turns out to be its biggest asset, by far. Their presence gives the play a credence it otherwise doesn’t earn or deserve. Director Peter Askin helps mightily in this regard, successfully hiding how thin and vindictive the play is until, upon Tom’s big revelation late in Act II, he no longer can. The contributions of set designer Heidi Ettinger, lighting designer Jeff Croiter, and costume designer Jeff Mahshie are also of the highest quality.

But the fact remains that Show People is a play without a purpose, except to give Weitz a chance to vent his spleen. What is the audience supposed to learn from all of this? What do they get out of this play? And what is Second Stage Theatre, a reputable institution that has launched the careers of many gifted actors, doing producing a play that holds those craftsmen in such low regard? Shame on them. And shame on Weitz. Whatever issues he has with the acting community, I hope they’re all worked out before he comes around again.

A musical version of Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha is no more far-fetched than, say, a musical about Charlemagne's little-known son Pepin; but Andrew Frank and Doug Silver's toneless coming-of-age show Sidd feels misbegotten alongside Pippin, the now sort-of classic Bob Fosse show that Sidd resembles in a number of ways. Both shows depict young men who set out on journeys of self-discovery, visiting a variety of strange and exotic places before settling down in homely surroundings. More to the point, both feature bland title characters who are by definition less interesting than the folks they encounter (and let me note up front that Manu Narayan, recently of Bombay Dreams and added to this cast late in previews, does a valiant job trying to overcome the script's deficiencies in terms of providing him with a suitable starring role).

Of course, Pippin had Fosse's masterly sense of style to provide unity and pizzazz; Sidd, while nodding in one unsuccessful scene to Fosse, has virtually no coherent sense of anything going for it. Besides the jazzy dance sequence that finds its ensemble donning bowler hats and sashaying across the stage like fugitives from Chicago, Sidd has a comic second-act opener that could have been written for Avenue Q, a lengthy climactic musical sequence that reminds us of Sondheim, and an anthemic closing number that repeats the protagonist's mantra "We are always on the way" as often as Rent's finale repeats "No day but today."

The problem is that very little on view here suggests that authors Silver or Frank actually believe in the enlightenment that their hero acquires (as opposed to Rent, which positively brims with Jonathan Larson's life-affirming faith). Sidd limps along like a made-to-order 21st century musical comedy, borrowing forms and gamely entertaining its audience because it's sup posed to, not because it has some burning need to communicate or edify.

Narayan lends much-needed star quality to the proceedings, as does Gerry McIntyre (at least in the second act, when he hits his stride as the Ferryman who helps Sidd find enlightenment). Dann Fink gets a moment in the limelight as well, performing a likable duet, "Everbody Needs Something," with Narayan. But Arthur W. Marks (as Buddha and others) and Marie-France Arcilla (as Sidd's childhood friend Valerie and others) call attention shamelessly to themselves throughout. Michael Bevins's costumes conjure a variety of Eastern cultures with no sense of consistency (are they in India, where Hesse's book takes place, or in China, as some of the costumes seem to suggest?); while Maruti Evans's simple unit set—a carpet covering the stage floor and rear wall—hardly seems sufficient for an off-Broadway musical with a $60 top.

Sidd has already announced its closing as I write these words, so it's on its way to joining the long list of sometimes worthy failures that constitute the vast majority of American musicals ever produced. It's tough to make a great musical. Let's hope that the creators of this one have gotten some enlightenment that will serve them well on their next attempt.

Gallery Players' revival of Side Show is very entertaining, and at $15 per ticket, one of the true theatre bargains in town at the moment. This musical, which was seen on Broadway in 1997, tells the story of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Siamese twins who had a brief moment of stardom in vaudeville and then in Tod Browning's famous film Freaks. Taking only a few liberties with the facts and the chronology, Bill Russell's book for the show charts the rise of the Hiltons from a backwater side show to success in vaudeville to a publicity stunt featuring the wedding of one of the twins to one of their promoters to the arrival of Browning for the play's still rather jolting climax.

Structurally the show looks like Dreamgirls (which also features a score by Henry Kreiger), with a first act all about climbing the ladder of fame and a second act about coping with the personal relationships and sorrows that follow. Because Side Show is set in the early 1930s, in the waning days of vaudeville, it also reminds us of Gypsy, and indeed director Matt Schicker and choreographer Joe Barros have done a splendid job re-creating the tacky/glorious milieu of that great American entertainment form in its decline.

What sets Side Show apart from those two musicals and pretty much all others is, of course, the singular characteristic of its leading ladies—that they are conjoined at the hip, and presumed by just about everyone they come in contact with to be incapable of leading a "normal" life. Their first song has them telling us "I want to be like everyone else," but whether that can actually happen is sadly always in doubt. Schicker and his company play the story straight, without subtext, as an affirming tale of self-actualization: the twins end the first act wondering "Who will love me as I am?" and our sympathy is wholly with them and with the notion that, no matter what "affliction" any of us has to cope with (using a word from another of Russell's song lyrics), everybody is entitled to love and be loved.

Tiffany Diane Smith and Kristen Sergeant play Daisy and Violet, and they are very effective in creating separate individuals who have to go through life together. (They're less convincing in realizing the deep, strong bond that exists between the sisters, however.) Jimmy Hays Nelson is fine and likable as fresh-faced Buddy Foster, the usher with big dreams who discovers the girls in the side show and teaches them to sing and dance; he's also Violet's love interest. Matt Witten plays Terry Connor, the impresario who becomes the girls' manager in vaudeville (and the man Daisy falls in love with); he's a tenor singing a baritone's songs, which is problematic, and he's missing the depth and emotional ambivalence that Terry seems to be experiencing in a performance that's pleasing but somewhat glib. Neither couple exudes much in the way of heat; neither, unfortunately, does Melvin Shambry as Jake, the African American onetime "Cannibal King" from the side show who is the girls' closest friend and is secretly in love with Violet. Shambry fails to do justice to the score's big rousing love song, "You Should Be Loved," and the devastation of Violet's rejection of Jake doesn't register as a result.

But the show biz scenes all fizz and sparkle with exuberance and style. Schicker and Barros have made the show's opening into a discomfiting voyeur's paradise, with a menacing Boss (played with brio by Greg Horton) exhorting us to "Come Look at the Freaks" while a disquietingly authentic-seeming side show slithers and snakes around him. Schicker has put two authentic "freaks" on stage, billed here as Exhibits #9 and 10, in real life a duo named Roc-It and Amazon from the Disgraceland Family Freak Show; they do thinks like hammer things up their noses and suspend bowling balls from their earlobes. It all makes for a dazzling opening, and one that evokes the seedy, sad, disreputable environment from which we can only root for Daisy and Violet to escape.

When the girls hit vaudeville, the numbers they perform are all smashing: "When I'm by Your Side," the number with which they audition for Terry, has them juggling and jumping rope in naive unison; " We Share Everything," their show-stopping breakthrough, includes a delightful giddy Charleston and some sweetly tacky faux-Egyptian dancing, singing, and costuming.

Schicker uses the intimate space to maximum effect, and the show moves smoothly and quickly through numerous scenes, all delineated elegantly yet sparely by Joseph Trainor's sets, which consist mostly of movable wooden panels on wheels painted as placards representing the various show business destinations that the Hilton sisters arrive at as the story progresses. Melanie Swersey's costumes are terrific and plentiful throughout.

There's something lost in this fun production, however, and that's the deeper meaning that I believe the authors intended for their story. In the published text, and on Broadway, the show opens with the company singing "Come Look at the Freaks," about themselves, while dressed in street clothes, reminding us that there's a freak (i.e., an individual) inside every single one of us. The actresses playing Daisy and Violet begin and—wrenchingly—end the show separately, not "joined together." This concept helped make Side Show not just about searching for/deserving love but about asserting selfhood in an uncompromising way: the show's signature song "Who Will Love Me As I Am?" stops being a plea for pity and tolerance and becomes instead a challenge to understand and accept. Schicker and his company haven't tried to mine this particular depth of Side Show, and I'm sorry about that.

But what's here is undeniably enjoyable and highly professional. For those that didn't get an opportunity to catch this show when it was in New York nine years ago, this is a splendid opportunity to catch up with a rich and charming score and an authentically original and unusual musical play.

The first act of Mario Fratti's Sister, which is currently being presented at La MaMa in a capital production staged by Pamela Billig, seems to be about the ways that a young man's attitudes toward love, sex, and responsibility collide and clash with woman's notions of same. You'll note that I said "seems to" just now—that's because in Act Two, the issues of the play change, in a manner that's unexpected and surprisingly pertinent (and, if I were to give more away, I'd ruin the piece for you). Sister turns out to be about the relative nature of relationships: it reminds us that we can't ever know what someone else experiences in any particular pairing, and lets us contemplate the ways that perspectives change when the stakes between two people are dramatically transformed.

There are just three characters in this play, a mother, a daughter (Rosanna), and a son (Carlo). They live together in an apartment in Milan; it's 1964, and the mother, abandoned a long time ago by the now-absent father, keeps house while the two grown children work at jobs. Rosanna is about 40 and stuck in a cycle of bad relationships with men that she attributes to a long-ago romance gone terribly wrong. Carlo, in his early 20s, is just feeling his way around the world of dating and love, and as he reveals in long conversations with both his mother and his sister, he's trying to balance a latent machismo (inherited from his father? somehow programmed into his genes by the Y chromosome?) with more progressive, feminist-type ideas. He is, in short, a very typical sort of guy, learning about women in a household filled with dominant examples of same.

Rosanna is almost reckless in her social habits, staying out all night with strange men who sometimes beat her up when she says "no." Carlo is very protective of Rosanna, which makes sense under the circumstances: isn't that a natural brother-type thing, anyway?

The mother seems lately to be unusually interested in the sexual habits of her adult children. Most of the first half of Sister consists of dialogues between her and Rosanna and Carlo, in which she is trying to understand more about what they think about sex and love, and perhaps also trying, after all these, to understand what went awry in her own marriage.

In between, some unnamed man keeps calling on the phone.

Fratti cannily shapes Sister as a domestic drama, but it's actually something of a suspense tale, and that's all I will say about that. Director Pamela Billig has staged the play briskly and intriguingly, focusing on various relationships of mother/son, mother/daughter, and brother/sister. The set by Eugene Brogyanyi is effectively spare and impressionistic; Debra Stein's costumes are appropriate and indicative of these particular individuals. Shan Willis and Brian Voelcker offer excellent, well-thought-out performances as Rosanna and Carlo, really letting us inside these people's heads and hearts; their scenes together, especially a climactic one in the second act, are the best in the show. Less successful is Eleanor Ruth's portrayal of the mother, which seemed to me to be more one-note and superficial than it might have been. Had Ruth let us futher into the mind of her character from the outset, some of what follows in the story might have felt more organic.

Fratti—who works as a theatre critic and who, consequently, I have gotten know as we make the rounds seeing various shows all season long—once told me that the most important thing about playwriting is to have a great ending. Sister exemplifies that credo: its ending is a knockout, and I urge you to head over to La MaMa and experience it for yourself.

Slightly Known People, the five-person sketch troupe, are now Seeing Other People (that's the title of their new weekly show, Saturdays at RiFiFi). The evening I caught was a veritable comedy extravaganza—Ziegfeld in the East Village, sort of—with four guest-star groups contributing sketches, songs, and videos along with SKP's own stuff. It made for a most amiable evening of entertainment.

SKP is Erik Bowie, Mel DeLancey, Stu Luth, Dan Maccarone, and Josh Mertz. Messrs. Bowie, Maccarone, and Mertz are alumni of one or more of the informal stock companies that formed around indie theatre heroes Ian W. Hill, Frank Cwiklik, and Trav S.D. (that's how I know them); and their acting experience informs their work as comedians here. (Mr. Luth and Ms. DeLancey's backgrounds are unfamiliar to me, but they're doing good work here too.)

The show I attended was, I was told, a first for SKP, in that it had a theme—Bad Choices. To everybody's great credit, the theme was adhered to admirably throughout by all involved, without stretching the point and without making a big deal about it.

SKP's sketches included a bit about a family who spend their "game night" playing a version of Trivial Pursuit that has questions about their own family secrets—a very clever idea, nicely executed in writing and performance; a running blackout gag involving gross jokes about a cabbage patch doll; and a bad-taste quiz incorporating PowerPoint slides and a touch of audience participation.

A Week of Kindness contributed a couple of amusing sketches, my favorite of which involved two competitive dads at the zoo (great punch line). Armed & Ridiculous—a duo comprised of Mark Annotto and John Payne—were represented by two clever videos, the first of which was pretty funny (about the dating exploits of a hapless guy, played by what looked like a Lego doll), and the second of which (about a morning-after) had a great hook but then went on a bit long. Mavis Jay, a musical group, did a medley of "Bad Choices" rock songs, which started off with The Police's "Roxanne" (splendid and uncanny Sting parody by lead guitarist/singer Dave Ebert)—their segment was a lot of fun. Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz, the last guest group, offered the most original sketch of the evening, in which two bowlers defy each other and, eventually, the time and space continuum, as they work up to more and more spectacular "send offs" for their strikes. This piece was brilliantly conceived, I thought, with an internal logic that completely clicked and a subject matter that's timeless rather than self-referential or parodistic. The two group members who performed the piece, Lou Perez and especially Greg Burke, made us buy into the premise and never let up. I will be keeping my eyes open for more of their work.

The show ended with SKP's signature finale, "We Like to Drink," which is a very catchy tune about what it sounds like; company members offer shots to the audience during the song. You don't have to be drunk to enjoy this show, and in fact the ambience is so jovial and good-natured that you may as well not be; and after even a generous 90 minutes of comedy, the night's still young enough for you to do whatever it is that'll hold the mood.