It is impossible to leave Syndrome without giving thanks for the ability to do so. For, in this excellent, nimble production written by Kirk Wood Bromley and presented by Inverse Theater and NEUROFest, we see the effects of Tourette's and how difficult it can be to leave the comfort and safety of a familiar room.

Syndrome takes place in a small, spare room, like one you might imagine in a 19th century asylum, with only a plain wooden chair present. The telephone rings and the character, Egon, does not pick up. Instead, he allows the recording to kick in, giving the audience a hint of who he is, and illustrating that, yes, in addition to everything else, he appreciates a bit of irony. Egon listens to the message from his mother—please, please join me and your father for dinner—which sets him off for an evening of Tourette’s Syndrome, manifesting itself in many ways: multiple personalities, rage attacks, bipolar disorder, echolalia (repeating), cursing, and, of course, tics. It is both highly theatrical and very educational, because notably, Timothy McCown Reynolds delivers a mind boggling performance—a visible and convincing reason why he cannot join his parents for dinner… or go anywhere comfortably save a neurological convention where all the attendees suffer from the eradication of their inhibitions.

In his explanation, Egon battles with Syndrome, his alter ego, for time and space, with Egon often losing. As he says, he is like a tourist in his own body, and Reynolds is adept at showing how painfully aware his character is of his own spectacle while having no control over it. The battle is not simply neurological. It is Emotional and Physical with large initial caps. He takes the audience on a journey of the disorder—its onset at age 11 when his father’s lip smacking at the dinner table reverberates until Egon cannot stand it any longer to the actual diagnosis at 26. Denial by his father, who suffers a milder form of Tourette’s without admitting it, does not prevent his mother from dragging Egon to doctors, who prescribe a variety of drugs with varying degrees of success. Syndrome deplores the drugs because they shrink his sphere.

Reynolds performs this physically demanding role with the agility of an Olympic gymnast, allowing the audience to see what is normally unavailable to them. Ten minutes into the performance, he has built a sweat and can slick his long curls back as if he has just washed them. He rolls his tongue around Bromley’s rapid fire wordplay, his rhyming, rhythmic language, as if it were his own.

For his part, Bromley captures the disorder close up: bursts of energy, frustrations, desire, self-loathing, and, yes, humor. Jeff Nash’s lighting heightens and enhances the script. John Gideon, responsible for sound, might have enhanced the answering machine messages for clarity, although they sound like the disembodied, often muffled, voices that are typically delivered at home. Karen Flood designed costumes. All in all, an energetic performance and fascinating evening.

Tabula Rasa, a new musical by Henry Akona and Robert Lawson, attempts to tell three stories. One is about Emily, a teenage girl in the present-day who has autism, and the effects of her condition on her frazzled parents and her unhappy, jealous older sister. The second is a re-telling of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, generally faithful if somewhat contemporized: the children's mother dies, the father's new wife throws them out of the house, they eventually find their way to a gingerbread cabin in the woods where a witch captures them and fattens them up so she can eat them. The third is based on a true story, about Victor, a French child found in an asylum circa 1800 by a doctor who is convinced that he can socialize this wild boy, thought to have been "raised by wolves," by teaching him language.

In the show, all three are told more or less simultaneously, with action from two or even three of the tales occuring at the same time on stage. Emily's doctor in 2005 is also Victor's doctor in 1800 (and he seems to know that he's living in two different centuries, which is a bit confusing). There's also a character called "The Wolf" who appears in all three tales, usually as narrator and/or commentator, but sometimes in the guise of another figure such as Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein. (This is also confusing; and the anthropomorphized wolf is very suggestive of Sondheim & Lapine's Into the Woods, which works to this show's detriment.)

In the first act, the linkage among the stories seems to be purely thematic—the notion that the world where each individual child lives (the "blank slate" of the show's title) is valid and worthy of respect, regardless of how it seems to fit into our adult/civilized ideals of what's "normal." So Emily's universe, defined by her autism, and Victor's, defined by his lack of socialization, are both presented as being innately valuable, and the insistence by doctors and other authority figures that these children conform is seen as narrow, limiting, and cruel.

In the second act, the plots collide while the thematic focus blurs, with characters from all three stories ultimately coming together in a grotesque climactic dinner party scene. I think Akona and Lawson want us to think about the ways that parents stifle the creative growth of their children by filling their "blank slates" with all kinds of judgments and preconceived notions; but the scene itself, even intended as a sort of Grand Guignol fancy, is really hard to watch. The clashes of time periods, historical figures, and theatrical styles muddy things still further. There's a great contemporary musical theatre moment in the middle of it all, in which Emily's sister Deirdre sings a song about her resentments and anxieties. Otherwise, Act II has very little music in it, which is a disappointment because the first act, mostly through-sung, is quite lovely; Akona and Lawson's score is definitely one of the show's strengths.

In the end, Tabula Rasa has to be classified as a noble but very flawed effort; I admire the creators' ambition and intelligence, though, and their skill and moxie in mounting this gigantic show in a modest theatre festival are quite remarkable. There are some good performances to mention as well: Ilana Becker, who really takes us inside Emily's head in a couple of choice numbers; Kyle Groff, who does some of the same as Victor, though he's been given less to do; and Erik White, appealing throughout as the Wolf, in all of his various guises. Ben Trawick-Smith and Catherine Yeager do nicely in the very underwritten roles of Hansel and Gretel (it's never clear exactly how their story meshes with Emily's and Victor's), and Andrea Biggs has some affecting moments as Emily's mom.

Gallery Players hits one out of the park with their production of Take Me Out (or scores a home run, or pitches a perfect game: fill in the baseball metaphor of your choice). Seriously, I saw the original Take Me Out twice—once off-Broadway and once on—and in neither case was the play presented with the clarity and emotional heft of this production. Director Tom Wojtunik and his terrific ensemble cast have done an expert job with Richard Greenberg's ambitious and occasionally unwieldy script.

The play is focused on a fictitious New York City baseball team called the Empires, a team with a great record and a great star, a fellow named Darren Lemming whose charmed existence is the stuff of legend, or fairy tales. Darren is rich, successful, adored by fans, and, as the product of a mixed marriage, racial icon and role model. And then one day, Darren decides to "out" himself, announcing to the world, without warning (and without precipitating incident) that he is gay. Take Me Out follows the ricochet effects of this announcement throughout the remainder of an eventful baseball season.

These effects turn out to be significant, dangerous, and, ultimately, life-changing. From his naive and untouchable golden-boy perch, Darren doesn't anticipate that anything is going to be different, but he's wrong, of course. Fans start to recoil. Teammates start to feel uncomfortable around him in the locker room. Morale starts to sag. And the team starts to lose.

A relief pitcher from the minor leagues, an undereducated mutt named Shane Mungit, is brought in, and thanks to his powerful arm the Empires start to win again. But when Shane goes on record as disliking having to work with "coloreds" and "faggots," Darren becomes furious. In fact, he contacts his business manager, Mason Marzac, to find out if he can afford to retire right this minute. Marzac, speaking on behalf of the outside world (for he and a legion of other gay men have become Empires fans on the heels of Darren's startling revelation of his sexuality), talks him out of it. But there are still more disastrous events to come.

Take Me Out takes in a great many themes during its 2-1/2 hour running time; the title is revealed to refer to (a) the notion of "outing" a gay man, (b) the idea of "taking someone out" in the sense of eliminating or killing them, (c) the concept of "taking someone out" of themselves by giving them a higher cause to believe in, and (d) the game of baseball itself, via allusion to the popular song that starts "Take me out to the ballgame..." All of these ideas get aired in the play, though not always with great precision or clarity: Greenberg's attempt to use baseball as a meaningful metaphor for America/democracy is clumsy and inconclusive at best; his exploitation of the gay/homophobia card feels similarly gimmicky rather than well-thought-out.

But there's a throbbing human heart beating inside this play, or eleven of them; that's the revelation that Wotjunik and his committed cast provide to us here. The actors are, in general, much younger than their Broadway counterparts were, which makes the naivete of the characters more palatable and more understandable. Noshir Dalal's Darren, in particular, registers vividly and emphatically: he shows us, at the outset, just how unexamined this superstar's life has been heretofore, which explains why he's so blasé about making a big splash without first testing the waters, and also why the resulting impact hits him so darned hard. Dalal centers the play urgently; it's a terrific performance by a young actor whom we hope to hear more from.

As Kippy Sunderstrom, Darren's best friend on the team, Jonathan C. Kaplan is similarly excellent. Theatre-goers may remember Kaplan from when he was just 12, as the son in the Broadway musical Falsettos (for which he received a Tony nomination); he's grown into a fine young actor with a warm, intelligent, ebullient presence that's just right for this character.

Jamil Mena, Miguel Romero, Joe Morretti, Nobuo Inubushi, and Kit Wannen fill out the Empires' jerseys with requisite humor and earthiness; Inubushi, who plays Kawabata, the Japanese pitcher whose only English is "Strike One, Strike Two," is particularly adept at capturing the alienation and loneliness of a man who has sold his soul to do the one thing he loves. Peter Hawk is splendid as Mungit, underplaying his coarse dopiness and emphasizing instead how much he has in common with Kawabata; he almost makes this villainous character sympathetic.

Rounding out the company, as the outsiders, are John Kudan, who plays the Empires' coach but is particularly effective in one scene as a disappointed Lemming fan named William R. Danziger; Ron Brice, who is intense and vivid as Davey Battle, a religious black player who is Darren's best friend; and Scott McGowan in the play's showiest role of Mason Marzac, here thankfully reined in by director Wojtunik, allowing Darren's story arc to take centerstage in the proceedings.

The set design by Cully Long is simple and ingenious: two banks of lockers that can be rolled on or off to create the ball park or other locations as needed; other design credits (David Withrow's costumes, Travis I. Walker's lighting, Aaron David Blank's sound) are quite effective. One of the smartest decisions Wojtunik has made is to dispense with the play's notorious shower scenes, which here are performed in pantomime and without a lick of fuss: the actors are naked for a few moments, but the gratuitousness is pretty much eliminated.

Throughout, this staging sacrifices big-picture flaunting in favor of a genuine emotional and physical intimacy that's not only welcome but seems to strengthen the play's humanity. The motivations of the various characters and the relationships among them all registered more clearly in this production than in the previous two I've seen; as they have done frequently in the past, Gallery Players has managed with this Take Me Out to take a contemporary classic-in-the-making and really let audiences see it for what it is, with purity and simplicity.

I’ll admit when I first realized that this production was in sunnyside, my outlook on the assignment completely changed, I was not looking forward to the journey to go out into Queens. But upon my arrival into the warm and inviting Thalia Spanish Theatre, that feeling immediately went away.

Of special note: artistic director Angel Gil Orrios has made the dramatic programming of Thalia bilingual, with alternating nights of performances in Spanish and in English; this kind of inclusion is rare in any specialized theatre. This in itself is worth making the short jaunt out to Queens to see this unique show.

Tango & Flamenco Fusion is a tightly woven combination of music and dance that comes across as an elegant concert or cabaret rather that traditional theatre. There is no narrative or text to the production, but it flows from musical number to dance number and back with grace and style.

The musicians (Bandoneon Master Raul Jaurena, Flamenco guitarist Daniel Casares, pianist Octavio Brunetti, bassist Jorge Longo, flutist Marco Granados, and drummer Sean Kipisz) are brilliant in every possible way. The transitions between songs are flawless and immaculate in precision, keeping the audience rapt in every note. But the real star of the night is guitarist Daniel Casares whose deft playing and natural charisma are remarkable.

Singer Irene Salas “Chanela” provided my favorite song of the night “Flamenco Song/Buleria” with her stirring presence and powerful voice. Not to be overlooked is singer Marga Mitchell who has undeniable star power with her classical voice and expressive manner.

The dancers are not as impressive as the musicians; there is a definite lack of consistency and sharpness in the numbers. That being said, each pairing definitely has its shining moments and provides entertaining performances. The Flamenco pair (Aurora Reyes and Rick Santiago or Yloy Ybarra—the program did not indicate who was performing on what night) have an excellent chemistry and strong flair for drama. Tango pair Sandra Buratti and Walter Perez provide the show with zest and passion, and Carolina Jaurena and Carlos Acuna are the standouts of the evening with their final dance number, “ Tango Dance-Lo Que Vendra” which is technically superb.

A true delight to the eyes and the ears is Fusion Milonga “La Soledad Y El Angel”, which seemed to be the audience’s favorite number of the evening. This song finally weaves the dancers and musicians together into one elaborate number utilizing the ensemble's talents to their fullest.

The set is simple and has a lovely aesthetic of softly colored polka dots, white gauze, and a multi-leveled stage where the musicians and singers perform. One of the simple but standout choices is to make the color scheme primarily white, a pleasure to the eyes. The lighting is also an impressive and well-thought-out element, simple and elegant, but adding dramatic punches when needed. (All lighting & production design is by Angel Gil Orrios.)

Soledad Lopez’s costumes are bright and colorful, serving the production well. Especially impressive is a yellow ruffled confection of a dress that singer Irene Salas wears.

Ideally, I would have loved to have seen a better “fusion” of the two art forms rather than a rotation of the two styles; the show does not seem to meet its goal of fusing the two elements but rather showcases the differences between the two. That aside, I did thoroughly enjoy Tango & Flamenco Fusion, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a beautiful, engaging evening of music and dance.

Since 1994 the United States Board of Immigration Appeals has recognized persecution based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status as grounds for granting political asylum. Tara’s Crossing is one of the first plays to address the issues faced by gay or trans refugees attempting to prove their claims of persecution while confined to U.S. immigration detention. Inspired by interviews with asylum-seekers from around the world, the play recounts the remarkable journey of an asylum seeker from Guyana who is male-to-female transgender—a woman who was born in a male’s body. Playwright Jeffrey Solomon has written a moving piece that challenges our understanding of gender identity and sheds light on the awkward retreat the United States—a country whose greatest strength has always been its many immigrant communities—has made in recent years to a position of isolationism and fear.

But Tara’s Crossing is not only an important piece of education at a time when both gay/transgender rights and immigration laws have been under serious attack. It is also quite captivating theatre, written with clever style and emotion, and seamlessly directed by Steve Satta, making the most of simple furnishings and sheer curtains that are pulled back to change time and location without losing a beat.

The story is largely told through the use of an external framing device: Tara (Aundré Chin), confined to the Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is being interviewed by Judith Bright (Emily Joy Weiner), an American actress who wishes to produce and star in a movie based on Tara’s ordeal. Through this device, Tara is able to step back and narrate parts of her own story as she brings the actress into her world to explore and learn for herself about its harsh realities. The actress, like Tara, experiences Tara’s awakening to her gender identity and the treatment she would be destined to receive from the world because of it. Later, the actress experiences the brutality and violence that she, like Tara, was not expecting.

As a small child Tara, born Terrence, already knows that, though physically a boy, she is a girl born into the wrong body—she is emphatically clear that she is not gay; being gay is something quite different. When Tara’s understanding mother leaves because of her husband’s beatings, Tara is left to be raised by her father, a working-class man like most in Guyana—like most in the U.S.—with little patience to understand or accept his “son’s” inability to behave like the other boys. As a teen, Tara goes to work in a video store where she is befriended by a coworker, Bibi (Nysheva-Starr, who also plays the mother), who becomes her understanding confidante. Tara seems to have found a friend and a place where she can be comfortable expressing her identity. But of course it is not long before trouble begins and the safety Tara has found is horribly shattered.

There is, of course, a second story here: the story of Tara’s re-victimization by the American immigration system where she is confined in detention for more than a year, despite the fact that she is a “low flight risk” because of family living near by. In prison she endures, day in and day out, the most common degradation faced by all transgender people: she is treated as—and expected to behave like—a man. She is attacked in the shower, and is often isolated for her own protection, as that is the best way the U.S. immigration and detention systems can come up with to keep her safe.

Aundré Chin as Tara gives one of the finest and subtlest portrayals of a transgendered person I have seen (yes, I’ve seen quite a few). He is fluid and respectful, never the slightest bit “campy” or exaggerated. He has given Tara the strength to have survived this far. But he has also not neglected to give her vulnerability and pain in important places. The humiliation she feels at being treated like a man instead of a woman is a very real and important part of understanding Tara’s story, and of understanding transgenderism. Chin’s strength as an actor is even clearer when, for a brief time, he cleanly steps into the strikingly different role of the young man who seduces Tara—played at this moment by the film actress—and then brutally beats her.

Emily Joy Weiner as the actress is also strong. At first she seems to be just a clueless “Hollywood” type, fascinated by Tara’s story only because it would be a good part for her. But soon she slips into Tara’s world where she is attacked and abused, and we learn about much of Tara’s painful experience through Weiner’s emotional performance.

Nysheva-Starr plays several roles, principally Tara’s supportive mother and understanding friend, Bibi. Ian Eaton plays several roles as well, including Tara’s shamed father and the prison guard who slowly comes to understand who Tara really is. Both actors are striking, using different well-done accents and distinctive physical and movement qualities for each character. Writer Solomon appears in a few scenes as Tara’s lawyer. It’s a nice portrayal of an accurately drawn character, honestly concerned and trying to stretch his understanding, yet bound beyond his control by the slow and often cruel judicial system.

The mission of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is “To promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan’s lower East Side, a gateway to America.” As co-producers of Tara’s Crossing, the Museum has made a bold step in achieving its goal.

Tarzan, the new musical spectacle from Disney Theatrical Productions, is in no way the bore that many in the critical community are labeling it. It's woefully uneven, but it's gorgeous in places and smartly inventive (in the same places): there's great art in Tarzan, and I think that the dazzling effects may be enough to turn this show into, if not a Lion King, then at least a Beauty and the Beast. Many of the youngsters in the audience seemed charmed by what they saw (along with quite a few of the oldsters), and in the final analysis, for an entertainment of this ilk, that's what counts.

Let me quickly summarize the plot for you, just in case you are somehow not familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs's famous story or the myriad films based upon it. After an English couple become shipwrecked during a storm off the coast of Africa, they and their infant son find themselves washed ashore in a dense jungle. The parents are killed, and the baby is "adopted" by a gorilla named Kala (she's the mate of Kerchak, the leader of the local tribe of apes). Against Kerchak's better judgment, Kala raises Tarzan as her own son. After he is grown, he encounters other humans for the first time in his life, in the person of a beautiful young Englishwoman named Jane, who has come to Africa on an expedition with her father, Professor Porter. Eventually Tarzan and Jane fall in love, and the two must make a choice: will they part, or will they stay together, even though that means that one of them must give up their home forever?

I'm glad to have gotten that out of the way, because the story—as rendered here in David Henry Hwang's sketchy, jokey, and occasionally smarmy book and (especially) in Phil Collins's dismal score (which is perhaps the most disappointing collection of songs ever assembled for a contemporary musical)—gets very short shrift in this adaptation. It feels flat and foolish; Tarzan's education—Jane teaches him to speak English, read, etc.—is particularly unconvincing, as is the entire convenient device of the villain, the Porters' bloodthirsty guide Clayton.

But who cares?—the book is a frame for some of the most original and glorious stage pyrotechnics that Broadway has yet witnessed. The architects of Tarzan's triumph are four in number. First, there's Bob Crowley, who has created a stunning visual style for the show that starts with his lush, adaptable set—a curtain of dense green foliage out of which characters pop every way imaginable—and culminates in spectacular costumes that include the neatest animal skins for actors since Cats (most of the characters in the show are apes, leopards, or other non-human creatures). Second and third are Pichon Baldinu (aerial design) and Meryl Tankard (choreography), who have created thrilling three-dimensional dances for their simian chorus, evocative leaps for the leopards, and all manner of bungee jumping, spinning, and flying for the title character and his pals. Visible harnesses don't detract from the effects one whit: it's cool to see people flying around on stage and, in a few exciting moments, directly over the heads of the folks in the center orchestra section.

Fourth and probably most is the work of lighting wizard Natasha Katz, which augments Crowley's spare designs to define space and location with a beauty and specificity that's downright miraculous, and gives the show a distinctive, unifying look that makes it unlike any other you've ever seen.

Together the work of these artists—the dancing and flying very well-realized by the show's large and diverse ensemble—transform Tarzan from the leaden book musical it could have been to a flying circus spectacle. It's precisely the right direction for Disney to be taking its shows, in my humble opinion: in the spirit of Disneyland and Epcot and other similar attractions, Tarzan takes its audiences to a place they've never been before, in this case a visceral, exciting fantasy Africa where humans can fly and gigantic exotic creatures can soar out of the floor in breathtaking splendor. It engages audiences the same way that Cats used to: its creators' imaginativeness challenges rather than stunts our own. When all the elements come together felicitously—and they do in at least half a dozen sequences during the show—the result is pure theatre magic: a genuinely frightening shipwreck and storm; a giant butterfly emerging without warning in the center of the auditorium; a dazzling garden of astonishing colorful flora and fauna showing Jane a vision of African exotica that she (and we) will never forget.

So, while I wish that a book and score might have been devised for Tarzan to match its extraordinary visual and movement elements, I confess that I enjoyed myself quite a lot at this show.

Let me note, before wrapping up, that Josh Strickland is a remarkably agile and athletic Tarzan, Chester Gregory II is engaging and funny as his sidekick Terk, Alex Rutherford (who alternates with Daniel Manche in the role of Young Tarzan) is impressive and never cloying, and Merle Dandridge and Shuler Hensley work diligently to put over the material they've been assigned as Tarzan's gorilla parents. (Jenn Gambatese and Donnie Keshawarz never rise above two dimensionality, however, as Jane and Clayton.) And, as I said, the ensemble is terrific, and what's more, they seem to be having a good time doing all that leaping and jumping and plunging and soaring and what-not.

A final thought: this is a show for kids. Keep that in mind. Leave your jaded self at home and enjoy the fun parts.

Appearing at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University for only five days, Lao She’s Teahouse provides a rare and exciting theatrical experience for those who have the opportunity to take advantage of it. Finishing a five-city U.S. tour, Beijing People’s Art Theatre in collaborations with Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America has brought one of the most popular modern plays in China to New York for the first time. An influential Chinese novelist born in 1899, Lao She lived through the major transformations of modern China from the Boxer Rebellion to the defeat of the Kuomintang (KMT) by Mao Zedong. Teahouse is a thoughtful and fascinating look at the rapid changes in Chinese history during his lifetime.

Teahouse is in three acts, with each act set in a different time period. Act One takes place during a day in 1898 after the failed One Hundred Days Reform Movement that foreshadowed the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Here we are introduced to Master Wang’s bustling teahouse and the customers who patronize it. Wang, an apolitical and practical entrepreneur whose philosophy is to try to get everyone to like him by being polite to everyone, minds his own business and tries to scrape by as deals are made, arguments are fought, and gossip is exchanged around him. The second act jumps to 1918, with China in the throes of civil war, and the third act occurs during a day in 1945 under the corrupt rule of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Party.

The show is performed in Mandarin; audience members who need an English translation can follow along with English subtitles provided by a large screen above the stage. Headphones providing a simultaneous audio translation did not appear to be available on the night I attended, however, so those unprepared or unable to follow written subtitles should be forewarned.

A parade of dozens of characters and scenarios from the trivial to the tragic flow through Wang’s establishment, and their ever-shifting positions and problems are the result of the disconcerting instability of the changing times. The individual faces, arguments, hopes, and tragedies may vary with the fluctuating political forces ruling China, but in spite of all the turmoil, certain continuities remain, such as the enervating influence of foreign powers, the corruption of state officials, and the poverty and misery of the Chinese peasant. This is reflected in Wang’s customers, who change even while the basic the elements of society they represent continue to exist.

For example, Master Chang may be a privileged Manchu bannerman during the Qing Dynasty, but under the KMT he is reduced to selling peanuts for a living. His character, however, remains constant in his generosity to those less fortunate and in his distaste for the influence of westerners upon his country. The pimp Pock-Mark Lui may be in trouble with the law in 1918, but his son is still carrying on a variation of the family business under the blessing of the new regime twenty years later. It may be a cliché to say that the more things change, the more things stay the same, but in Teahouse it is an engrossing and convincing meditation. What better place is there to consider this idea than in a social gathering place of one of the most consistently stable civilizations in history, during the period spanning its most recent and unpredictable upheavals?

Established in 1952, Beijing People’s Art Theatre has dedicated itself to naturalistic drama since its inception, and its remount of the play it pioneered in 1958 bears many resemblances in style to the classic works of Ibsen, Chekhov, and O’Neill. Nevertheless, Teahouse also seems refreshingly un-Western in the way it pulls back from the individual dramas to cast a panoramic look at society as a whole. The acting style of this enormous cast supports this. There are no flashy standout performances by actors chewing up the scenery. The company instead works as a true and effective ensemble, with each solid and reliable performance, from the major character of Wang to the customers quietly going about their business in the background, working quietly to support the overall piece.

What also makes this event remarkable is the lavish scale of this production. With a cast of more than 30 actors, Teahouse has a grandeur that would be unheard of for an off-Broadway drama produced by a U.S. theatre company. Crowds of customers, soldiers, and students pass through and behind the many storylines featured in this work, giving the play a rich texture one would normally see only in film. Likewise, the production elements match the cast in scope and detail. Using the design of the original production, the massive and evolving set of this remount artfully informs the audience of the culture and times, and along with the fantastic costumes, gives an immediate sense of all the changes that have taken place during the spans of years between each jump in time.

In the third act, two storytellers lament to an aged Wang that their profession has been replaced by pop songs and trashy musicals. One might be tempted to make the same observation about much of theatre today. The arrival of Teahouse in New York would argue the opposite, scoring a small victory for thoughtful and enlightening stories told with talent, artistry, and style.

Tim Aumiller's new play Temple has a lot of earnest aspirations behind it; I wish I could report that it achieves them.

Set, according to the program, in Washington, D.C. in the "not-too-distant future," it hypothesizes a U.S.A. where homosexuality has apparently been made illegal, prompting a group of underground gay activists to plot and execute a terrorist attack on various components of the federal government's infrastructure, including several court buildings (such as the Supreme Court), as well as critical computer systems (the group supposedly has access to a virus that can cripple these programs).

The play takes place in one of this group's hideouts in a building in Washington. When the action commences, one of the commandos, Russ, is in the throes of a major anxiety attack—it seems he ran away from the scene of the bombing he was involved in, ahead of his comrades, who include most notably a man named Jon. Jon is the charismatic leader of this "cell" and is also a former lover of Russ's.

Russ is joined almost immediately by a young man named Walt, who arrives with his mentally disabled sister Brenda in tow. Walt, another former lover of Jon's, is only indirectly involved in the attacks, having supplied some crucial information to enable the terrorists to get into the government building(s). For some reason (never disclosed, as far as I could tell), Jon has told Walt to come here to meet him.

Eventually the trio are joined by the rest of the squad—Jon; his current lover Remy, who has been shot and is now very badly wounded; Suzanne, a tough lesbian; and Kent, a straight man suffering noticeably from drug withdrawal, hired as a bombing expert. Kent is here to get paid; the rest are awaiting instructions from unnamed higher-ups who are supposedly going to call in with directions on a cellphone that is hidden somewhere in the room.

Aumiller's script follows this scenario through to its dramatic but often obvious conclusions. The adventure-movie setting doesn't feel like a natural fit for the playwright, unfortunately; lots of the action seems unconvincing or even downright bogus. Why would these gay militants hire a straight, drug-addicted man to help them? Why would Walt bring his sister with him to such a dangerous place? Why is Walt even here? Why don't the various characters get busy and look for the phone? Why don't they keep the radio on to find out what's happening outside?

But there's content in Temple apart from the caper, and it's here that we can glimpse what a potent and interesting piece of work this play might have been. Certainly the central notion of severe repression of homosexuals has resonance; it sounds like an "it can't happen here" kind of notion, but systemic "treatment" and/or incarceration of gays has happened and still does happen in lots of places, from Nazi Germany to Alan Turing's England to the United Arab Emirates right now. (There's a very interesting quote from the British website gay.com supporting that last assertion, provided in the program.)

In the play, Aumiller maps a future USA where religious "faith" is pervasive and essentially government-mandated; he suggests further that the government and media collude to deceive and "calm" the public by controlling access to information. These are provocative ideas worth exploring. Alas, Aumiller muddies his own waters by sometimes identifying the revolutionaries as homosexual and other times as atheists, as if those two groups were the same.

Temple is staged by Greg Foro in a vivid production that strains the resources of tiny Manhattan Theatre Source. The action occurs just inches away from most spectators, with some of the fight sequences really too close for comfort. There are some fine performances on view here, notably Audrey Amey as the very angry, very capable Suzanne; Lesley Miller as the mentally challenged Brenda; and Tom Macy as the unfortunate Walt. Shannon Michael Wamser begins at fever pitch as Russ and then has nowhere else to go; I kept wondering what all of his ruckus was about, and never really felt satisfied that I ever found out. Tom Baran has little to do as the wounded Remy, and Joshua Seidner does the druggy bit as Kent effectively enough to make me not want to be in the same room with him. Unfortunately, David Rudd is a disappointment in the lead role of Jon: he looks the part and possesses a very strong stage presence, but he consistently stumbled over and/or swallowed words, rendering his many long philosophical speeches less than comprehensible.

In the end, its noble intentions aside, Temple is not a satisfying work. I applaud Aumiller's integrity and commitment in trying to create a work that challenges so many aspects of the status quo; too few playwrights are willing to do as much. But I suspect that Aumiller has bitten off more than he can chew here, especially in trying to graft an action-movie-type scenario onto a more compelling play of ideas.

That's Not How Mahler Died is a living, breathing entity that will lure you in, wash over you, entrance you, and, finally, empty you out. 31Down Radio Theater and especially creator-director-designer Ryan Holsopple have built the kind of experience within the walls of the Brick Theater that eludes most theatre most of the time.

The story is a simple one. While Mike Sharpie, P.I., our eternally luckless and often hapless, processed-meat-and-cold-cut-devouring hero, is away, his lonely and bored wife Alma has an affair with cough-syrup-slurping architect named Wally. The affair, and how it plays out—leaving all three motionless and alone—constitutes the entirety of this very impressionistic narrative. The story itself is loosely based on the love triangle experienced by the composer Gustav Mahler that ended his marriage, but the narrative itself is all 31Down: part film noir period detective piece, part meditation on death and loneliness (a tribute to Mahler's obsessions and the last year of his life), and part technical installation. Ultimately, the play is as much about the story as it is about how the story is told. More sensorial theatrical experience than radio play and more performance installation than traditional theatre, Mahler is the kind of supple and alluring pure performance experience that you're unlikely to find in most theatrical venues.

31Down understands the direct and visceral effect of sound in a way most people are unlikely to even realize that they're missing when it's not there. A rotary phone rings. It rings again. It rings again, this time longer. It rings a fourth time, this time for a full 15 seconds. The unnatural plaintive ringing of this phone that takes a total of thirty seconds, tops, gives us more story than a five-minute earnest monologue ever could. We all simply know what that means. It's the essence of "show, don't tell." Add to this Mike’s feckless response to the unanswered phone: “Alma, I wish there was some way that I could leave you a message,” and the whimsy that is also inherent in the show shines through. The use of technical manipulations, intercut with potentially hilarious moments such as DJ Mendel’s Doc Freud lecturing Mike via television, allows the company to fully impress upon the audience a much larger patchwork of a story than a traditional play ever could. The show is so thick with sound and visual cues to the narrative that the very slim text is all that's necessary to tell the story beyond the experience of the play itself.

Holsopple is obviously an artist who agonizes over every detail, as not a moment, a prop, an effect, or a movement in this play is out of place. And I thank him for that. This is also a company that understands collaborative art. Holsopple's partners in technical crime—Jon Luton on lights, Tara Novak playing violin, Mirit Tal conspiring with Holsopple on the set and props, and Keunyoung Oh on video—obviously speak the same language as their director, and it is clear that they can build seamlessly on a communal shorthand.

Actors Lian Sifuentes, Frank Boudreaux, and Holsopple himself as Mike, live in this world completely. This is due to their collective and collaborative understanding of their place in this piece and their ability to hold up that side of the bargain. Unlike in traditional theatre, the actors hold the same (as opposed to greater) weight as the environment, making the media and visual elements (video, radio, sound, the simple play of light off of fog) equal partners in the elaborate telling of the simple story.

Possibly because the meditative aspect of That’s Not How Mahler Died often eclipses the laughs, the show can, on occasion, feel almost too even-handed, but that is a minor gripe when there is such a banquet onstage to take in. When the show ends, and we are all left in silence and complete blackness, the tiny sound of Sifuentes's voice pleading "hello...hello...it's me...I just want to talk,” it’s not only a thin-voiced emotional gut punch, shocking in its lack of environmental decoration, but a tremendously satisfying moment to leave the theatre with.

Musicians and installation artists have understood and explored the impact of sound and sound quality (from the sweetest music to the sound of chainsaws in traffic to the sound of radio static) coupled with environment for decades. But theatre artists have mostly left it to these others to explore these elements. The most notable exceptions to this have been artists like the Wooster Group and Richard Foreman. Finally, with the advent of the Wooster and Ontological-Hysteric offspring that's been in the offing for the last seven or eight years, theatre is finally catching up, and 31Down is riding this wave that will, we can only hope, continue to grow. And I will happily be watching all the way.

Passion and puppetry strike like the lightning that created the title character in The Adventures of Charcoal Boy, making this multimedia theatre work a joy to experience. The puppets pop out at you, the video sprouts like weeds, and the music stomps and flows over the whole thing.

The story follows Charcoal Boy on a journey that starts with life-giving lightning. Charcoal Boy is a fairly normal-looking brown tree branch who is thrust into the bleak world of a traveling cabaret show. The owner of the cabaret is a fella named Cathead. When we meet Cathead he sings a hilarious song about his resistance to getting fixed. At first Cathead rejects Charcoal Boy after his audition, but he soon discovers that Charcoal Boy has a hidden talent. His charred legs are like drawing sticks, perfect for sketching various figures as Charcoal Boy dances a gliding, skating dance. He meets another dancer/singer named Flame Girl, a beautiful rod puppet with a series of metal hoops for legs and a pristine porcelain face. She helps Charcoal Boy make it in this harsh world. There are other odd puppets made out of found objects that speak in noisy electronic nonsense that also help Charcoal Boy.

One of the unique conventions in this show is the use of large sheets of paper for the various sets. The ensemble enters with box cutters and slices out a new set on which Charcoal Boy can draw or on which video can be projected or out of which puppets can pop. It is such a simple device and yet so imaginative. But that’s what I’ve come to expect from Sarah Provost and Eric Novak, the show’s co-creators and designers.

Novak’s puppet designs are as resourceful as human adaptation. He uses found objects, beautiful pieces of art and homemade sculpture, to create some truly exquisite puppets of various styles. There are rod, Bunraku, and shadow puppets all incorporated into the action. The story itself is an archetypical journey and is somewhat compelling but not as much as it could be. I found myself a bit uninterested in Charcoal Boy’s plight. In fact, I found Cathead to be a more interesting character. The design of Charcoal Boy may be part of the reason: this puppet’s head has a very limited range of movement and I think that may have prevented him from being a bit more expressive. Cathead, on the other hand, has a large range of movements and he is also the only character that is voiced (and voiced very well by bandleader/composer Elyas Khan).

Khan is the frontman of Nervous Cabaret, a local band with one of the most distinctive sounds in the city. They play with so much passion that it is impossible not to get wrapped up in every note and every lyric. Khan wrote most of the show's lyrics (a few are written by Provost), and his touch of darkness and devotion is so potent that at times I hoped the song would have kept on going. The music is indeed so passionate that it in some ways overpowers the rest of the show. This did not make for a bad experience but quite the opposite. I loved this show. I felt pure elation at times. The conventions combined with the music and the well-choreographed puppeteers make this one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.

Director Provost puts a vision onstage that is seemingly straight from her mind, unaltered and dazzling. She guides the ensemble of puppeteers flawlessly forward in this dark yet hopeful world where anything can come to life. They are fantastic at manipulating the most subtle movements and creating a sense of gravity beneath the feet of their puppets.

I could go on and on about what makes this show worth a look but to save you time, dear readers, I’ll just say this— go see both shows in this year’s Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE (the other one is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which I reviewed here). You will thank yourself.

The Adventures of Everywoman, the first installment of a proposed four-part series “Biblical Bitches,” written and directed by Jeff Bedillion, is a clever idea with grand potential. However this production seems to strive for sexual innuendo and random song material rather than deliver a fluid show.

The play opens with a chorus of three women—Omega, Gallant, and Dominus—in the process of creating “woh-man” as a partner for Adam. Thus, the birth of Eve and her introduction to her mate Adam, a silent caveman type character wearing only a thong. Soon they discover sex and the traditional jokes of the unsatisfied woman follow, prompting Eve to leave for greener pastures.

In her travels through a post-apocalyptic-looking Garden of Eden, she meets Satin, a leather clad dominatrix, and her gaggle of lingerie clad groupies, “The Condiments” Saccharine, Ephedra, and Viagra. Dildos, spankings, and general stereotypical female neurosis ensue. It is revealed that Satin is Adam’s first wife, and she wants revenge upon both Adam and Eve.

Now, as Satin convinces Eve to travel with her to the tree of knowledge, back at home, Adam is in a desperate fit to find his lost Eve. Of course the inevitable happens: after a dance number with the tree of knowledge, Eve eats the apple, tempts Adam to do the same, and Eve gets reprimanded and punished by God.

Throughout the production, songs seem to go on far too long, and in most of them the cast members struggle vocally against the recorded synthesized music, which is played far too loud for the venue. Another challenge is that most of the numbers are pop or funk, but several of the singers have definite musical theatre voices which don’t always match up to the style of the songs.

The vibrant ensemble has great dedication and energy. Each actor is exceptionally committed to his or her role, delivering each line with enthusiasm. Jennifer Susi, as Satin, has a remarkable spark and presence and handles the challenge of her material with ease. Though Maiken Wise often struggles vocally, she portrays a likable Eve with a curiosity that's fun to watch. Margaret Spirito has some stellar vocal moments throughout and Danielle Morello sparkles in each scene; together with Stefanie Eris these ladies of the chorus have the standout number in the show, “Legend of the Tree,” a rousing R&B funk song.

This production unfortunately lacks a solid flow of pacing, the musical numbers need to be shortened and the costumes refined. It is my hope that Bedillion and his collaborators can refine their original idea (which really does have potential) before moving on to part two.

As you bounce around from festival to festival this summer, perhaps in search of theatre's Next Big Thing, don't forget to leave time for the granddaddy of NYC's summer theatre events, The American Living Room (TALR) at HERE. In the super-informal (thanks to the building renovations made possible by HERE's recent acquisition of their own space: hooray for them!) and relaxed (couches are intermingled with folding chairs) atmosphere of TALR, you will probably NOT see the next Urinetown or Matt & Ben, but you will see some of the most provocative, cutting-edge, smart theatre anywhere in town. Honest.

I say this from years of attending and loving TALR; and also on the basis of  seeing two nights at this year's edition. The program that I saw on July 25 was a double bill of the short play Aurolac Blues by Saviana Stanescu and the one-man performance piece Drinking the Kool-Aid by Fernando Maneca. On July 27, I caught Michael Lew's Yit, Ngay (one, two), a solo play performed by Alexandra Price. All three helped me remember why I started loving theatre festivals in the first place.

Aurolac Blues is as tight and compact and full a ten-minute play as I've ever seen; Stanescu compresses enormous amounts of information, not to mention emotion, within this oft-overused form. Two Romanian Gypsy street kids chat about their hopes and dreams while fighting the dark and the cold with a bag of Aurolac (a paint thinner; see this article). The boy, Elvis, says he's going to turn into a vampire and fly to America, where he will see skyscrapers, dance with beautiful women wearing lots of jewels, and eat a big hamburger at McDonald's. The girl, Madonna, tells him to find her namesake when he gets there and ask her for a dress, since she has so many.

Stanescu's language is poetic and precise and her vision is breathtaking and heartbreaking as she reveals truths about these two kids in a few deft strokes. The piece is beautifully acted by Jessica Andres and Neimah Djourabchi, both of them are entirely convincing playing children at least half their ages, with dancer Natia Kezevadze providing a stunning and spare counterpoint in movement behind the scene. The sharp direction is by Nina Hein.

Aurolac Blues, with its contemporary Eastern European version of the American Dream, turns out to be the perfect companion to Mareca's Drinking the Kool-Aid. Following a funny dream sequence, the show begins with a film, apparently being watched by Mareca's character on TV, about Elections in the United States. It looks like a public school educational film from the 1950s—where did Mareca dig this thing up?—and it's corny as heck.

Mareca then jumps back and forth between a scenario at the Red Kool-Aid Company, where a new product—Red Kool-Aid with Holy Water Crystals—is being introduced, and a quieter series of readings of stories about life in Portugal under the fascist government of Salazar (who was removed in a coup in 1974). The Kool-Aid sequences, featuring cool multimedia and deathless performance art, satirize American consumer culture and other aspects of our current Body Politic with scary accuracy. The readings offer stark and valuable contrast, and not at all incidentally help frame the opening film excerpt and another similar one that closes the show, in which the differences between Democracy and Despotism are explained. Mareca has a lot on his mind, and he's not at all subtle in conveying it. One of the smartest things he does is to make us rethink our initial reaction to the two films: we start off laughing at them, because they're so darned hokey and quaint; and then we realize, as the rest of the ideas and images in the show enter our consciousness, that the notions presented in them are much too vitally important for us to mock or take for granted. Especially in America in 2005.

Mareca bills Drinking the Kool-Aid as a work-in-progress, and the staging and occasional bits of his performance do still feel somewhat tentative. But the text is in excellent shape. I hope it gets done many many more times; ditto Aurolac Blues.

Lew's play is a fascinating exploration of the lives and relationships of four sisters in a Chinese American family. The two younger sisters, whom we meet first, were born in the United States after World War II, went to college and became doctors, and are married with teenage children. The two older sisters were born in China before the War, and joined the family years later—one was smuggled out of Hong Kong in the 50s, while the other was only coaxed to join the rest of the clan when she was about 60 years old.

Lew gives each of the foursome equal time; the piece's structure is in fact built around this premise, with the sisters each delivering two monologues apiece (youngest to oldest, then oldest to youngest), with transitional dialogues between pairs of siblings in between. The effect is a slow reveal of both the overall history of the family and the interrelationships and attitudes of its members. By letting each sister have her say, we get four perspectives on the story's ideas instead of just one, which is a smart and incisive way to deal with subjects as personal as intimate feelings about parents, siblings, children, and the pivotal notion of "home." It also makes Yit, Ngay an insightful examination of what so-called "progress"—or at least the distinctive brand of progress known as American culture—does to a family, for good and ill.

Lew's writing is vivid and surprising and wise. Alexandra Price portrays all four sisters in what's designed to be a tour de force for an accomplished actress. Price is too young and, I think, lacks the chops to quite pull it off; she lets us hear the play and meet these four remarkable women, though, and does so with affection and clarity, serving Lew's intentions beautifully. I wonder, however, how Yit, Ngay would work with four actresses instead of one: the connections (missed and otherwise) among these characters are so rich and deep that it might be valuable to give the audience the chance to see them played out in more naturalistic fashion.

Alas, all of the shows discussed here are gone for now. So check out some other evening(s) at TALR. If the past is any kind of guide, you will be challenged, stimulated, moved, and/or entertained.

In the program notes for The Amulet, New Worlds Theater Project’s artistic director Mark Altman admits that the play’s meaning is somewhat obscure. Although his notes are titled “for after the play,” they may read better as an honest advance warning.

Not that the writing has nothing for modern audiences to enjoy. The play, from a new translation of a 1906 Yiddish work by Russian playwright Peretz Hirshbein, is poetically rich. The story is simple—a blind ferryman (David Little) and his grown granddaughter (Hanna Cheek) are forced to flee their riverside home in the wake of a spring flood, and as they take shelter on shore, the girl rescues a mysterious stranger from the river (Daryl Lathon). He in turn rescues her from freezing to death, but enchants her so with tales of his home country across the river that after the flood she can think of nothing but joining him there someday.

Director Isaac Butler has chosen an intriguing approach to the production side as well, with a bare-bones set and lighting effects standing in for the storm and the riverbank. An onstage percussionist (Matt Temkin) plays throughout the show, his instrumentation standing in for the whistling wind and the rushing floodwaters. Two men sit along the edge of the stage throughout, serving as stagehands and extras; they are even on stage as the audience walks into the space, lighting candles and praying to themselves. (A health warning for some: part of the pre-show setting may involve the use of some sort of incense, as the room was very hazy when I walked in. [Editor's Note: Director Isaac Butler writes, "We use an Actors Equity-approved non-allergenic haze maker that is specifically designed to avoid health problems. There's no incense in the show."])

So there are lovely phrases in the play, and lovely images in the staging. But for a good chunk of the production, these two elements didn’t seem to fit together neatly. Little’s ferryman speaks in great circling loops of allegory, returning again and again to the same points in his speeches—and he indeed speaks in speeches, leaving his poor granddaughter with little to say for most of the first scene. Temkin’s percussion is definitely an intriguing element, but with a play this wordy, constant percussion might not have been the best idea—at times the actors were simply drowned out. Little especially was overtaken by the percussion at times, and some of the nuances of his speeches were lost, which made them sound even more repetitive.

Lathon stands out in his one scene as the Stranger—his character also repeats himself, but somehow he sounds emphatic and persuasive rather than redundant. The scene is something of a dance of seduction, though, so the circling and backstepping fit; even so, Lathon brings a delicate balance of innocence and ardor to his performance, and it’s not surprising that Cheek’s character responds to him.

I know that I’d find plenty of wonderful things in Hirshbein’s script if I were reading it on the page; the notes in the program speculate about several of the allegorical layers found in the work. I also know that I’d like to see some of these production elements in a play less bound by language. Pairing them just seems to add too many layers to the work, leaving them both somewhat out of reach of our understanding.

Your husband? Going to the same dinner as us?
I hope it chokes him.
 -Ovid, excerpt from Amores

Publius Ovidius Naso, known to the world as Ovid, was a poet whose themes of infidelity and the pleasures of life, though often frivolous, became immortal due to the wit, elegance, and technical rigor of his style. It's interesting to think about what his personal ethics were given the contrast between his chosen subject matter and form. The Art of Love, written by Robert Kornfeld, is based on the most difficult choice Ovid probably had to make, between exile and renunciation of his work. Unfortunately the playwright's timely and intriguing themes are hampered by an uneven cast and directing choices that yield more questions than answers.

The play takes place during the rule of Emperor Augustus, who, following the fall of Julius Caesar, wishes to maintain civil peace and order by enforcing standards of morality. At this time, Ovid is well known for The Art of Love, a handbook of seduction written in three books, two for men and one added by popular request for women. That is followed by Metamorphoses, an epic poem in fifteen books that recounts myths of the gods' follies and is feared by Augustus as symbolic of the human faults of himself and the leaders of Rome. Adding to the emperor's worries of public humiliation and questioning of his ability to rule is the fact that his daughter Julia is known as a sexual libertine influenced by Ovid's works.

The emperor exiles his daughter and asks Ovid to disclaim his writing. When Ovid refuses more than once, Augustus banishes him to Tomis, outside of what is now Romania, away from his beloved wife Fastina and family. There, Ovid languishes until his death, futilely corresponding with Augustus and later his successor Tiberius for forgiveness and the right to return.

In side plots that show the hypocrisy of the emperor and those scheming to rule, Tiberius, Ovid's false friend, plans to divorce his wife to marry Julia and then bring her back from exile and rule as Augustus's successor. Meanwhile, Livia, Augustus's wife, cajoles and then threatens Irene, the daughter of Ovid's best friend Cassilus, to become the emperor's young mistress. (I'm not sure exactly why. It could be because she knows that her husband has always had affairs and, given the new morality standards he himself has imposed, she wishes to protect them both from public censure by procuring a secret mistress herself. Or it could have something to do with the daughter being privy to private conversations between Ovid and Cassilus, thus forcing her to be a spy. Dawn Jamieson as Livia does not present a specific choice for her character's action and it is not clear how she herself feels about what she is doing.)

Director Tom Thornton does create a pace for the action that is fast-moving and he uses the playing space to good effect. This is most apparent in the play-within-a-play that is put on for Augustus and the use of an elevated area for both the emperor's quarters and Ovid's marriage bed. There are real relationships conveyed between Ovid (James Nugent), and Cassilus (Doug Stone), Tiberius (Stephen Francis), Augustus (Thornton), and Gett (Clyde Kelley). Each actor is believable in his role, most notably Thornton as the corrupt Augustus. However, Nugent's portrayal of Ovid, as committed, heartfelt and humane as it is, does not address the full complexity of a man who chooses banishment over being forgotten. We see him flatter the emperor, argue against free elections partly in order to keep his life of ease and prestige, but then leave everything so that his work may live after him. Is this a statement of personal artistic freedom against the state or a choice based on ego? He refers back to his ribald stories as made up and not based on personal experience. Is that the truth or is he making a decision to lie and save his work? If it is the truth, how does Fastina feel when he writes to her in exile that he is keeping company with a young girl (Nina Covalesky)?

There are beautiful costumes by Carolyn Adams that show us each character's standing in their society. Mark Mercante, the set designer lets us know exactly what the stakes are with a giant and intimidating mask of Juno over the emperor's throne. It is lit at moments to show the power of the state through the lighting design of Alex Moore. I think that if such specificity extended to all of the acting and directing choices, it would further deepen the world of this play and illuminate its worthy themes and fascinating subject.

Nelson Rodrigues's play The Asphalt Kiss has a splashy beginning, a disturbing yet compelling middle, and a terrific surprise ending. Sarah Cameron Sunde has staged it with style and rigor, on a cool, spare, multi-leveled set by Lauren Helpern that proves the perfect environment for this slightly absurdist, slightly magical, but mostly scarily realistic play about lies, manipulation, and different kinds of wanton power.

The Asphalt Kiss is about an ordinary young man named Arandir who witnesses a fatal accident—a bus hits a man waiting at a busy intersection. Just before he dies, the man asks Arandir to kiss him, and though Arandir doesn't know this stranger, he grants the dying wish.

Unfortunately for Arandir, he's been seen by lots of people, most significantly an ambitious news reporter named Amado, who decides that this odd act of grace should become fodder for sensational scandal. He bullies the police into investigating Arandir and his family, seeking motivation for a crime that didn't exist until Amado decreed it. Quickly, word gets out that Arandir and the dead man knew each other; that they were lovers; that Arandir pushed the man in front of the bus. Arandir's life is, of course, completely ruined by the innuendo and lies. So are the lives of many of those around him, including his young wife Selminha and the widow of the man killed by the bus. Arandir's father-in-law, Aprigio, is also ruinously affected, as the cycle of events forces him to confront truths about himself that he heretofore refused to acknowledge, truths that can remain unspoken so long as Aprigio lets himself buy into the web of deceit being propagated by the media and the police.

It's a riveting, fascinating story, and its accelerating horrors spin out with black humor that quickly morphs into disquieting cruelty. The thing that makes The Asphalt Kiss so resonant is the lock that the media and the government, working together, seem to have on the public consciousness. And what makes it feel like an especially pertinent cautionary tale is that the decision to destroy Arandir feels entirely arbitrary: Amado and his colleagues turn an innocent act of kindness into a colossal media fracas simply because they can—even the desire to distract the populace seems secondary to their need to exercise control randomly and ruthlessly.

The apparent powerlessness of just about everybody involved to resist the onslaught of this institutionalized and systematic machinery of manipulation gives The Asphalt Kiss its punch.

The play was written in 1960 by Rodrigues, who was then generally considered Brazil's most important playwright (he died in 1980). The influence of absurdists like Ionesco is very clear: Arandir reminded me of Berenger in Rhinoceros, a man standing alone against an irrational tide of dangerous conformity (in this case, acceptance of the mandated "truth" about the dying man's kiss). I think it's also worth noting that the play's story is fueled by another convention of that time that, one hopes, is no longer so acceptable, i.e., the idea that even hinting that Arandir was the dying man's lover would be, prima facie, sufficient to destroy his reputation and his life.

Alex Ladd's translation keeps the piece grounded in period and style, with rhythms that feel just a shade unnatural and stilted; I thought it worked beautifully. James Martinez and Charles Turner both anchor the play solidly as, respectively, Arandir and his father-in-law Aprigio. Also impressive among the eight-member cast are Joe Capozzi as the villainous Amado and Jessica Kaye as Arandir's wife.

Suicide. Prostitution. Drugs. Ritual Execution. Incest. Dick Cheney. Ah yes, the holidays.

Or at least: the holidays according to The Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee. For you'll find all this and more in this brand-new collection of very dark, very outrageous, and often very original short plays by some of the leading lights of indie theatre. There's something for everyone in this eclectic lineup, including a Hanukkah play where rabbis smoke joints and a Brechtian Weimar cabaret where Baby Jesus is literally and metaphorically tossed around like a political-economic football. The only thing that's missing here, in fact, is Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men (I think co-curators Jeff Lewonczyk, Hope Cartelli, and Michael Gardner are assuming you'll find plenty of that more traditional holiday spirit elsewhere.)

Now, before I tell you more about the individual plays, let me say something about the overall production. This is, like all Brick Theater endeavors, something of an epic extravaganza: I can't remember ever seeing a new one-act festival mounted by a company of this size with such high style. Production values dazzle: there are memorable costumes, sets, and lighting ideas; works of breathtaking high-concept; fine acting; and an abundance of good-natured (if often karmically-challenging) energy. Now all of this is scattered over a dozen different shows: the near misses greatly outnumber the outright successes. But the ambition is astonishing; you will not ever be bored.

There are two solo pieces among the twelve plays and interestingly they were the ones that worked best for me. John DeVore's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, directed by RJ Tolan and performed beautifully by Steve Sanpietro, is a touching and very smart monologue in which a man explores his own and others' deep and sad loneliness at holiday time. DeVore's writing is rich and full of unexpected touches, a few of which get us in the gut (something that doesn't happen very often in this Jubilee, which makes it all the more welcome). Peter S. Petralia's The Christmas Suicides, dazzlingly directed by Ian W. Hill, depicts a man lying on his back in front a mirror (allowing us to see him clearly, except it's a paneled mirror so the effect is more of a funhouse than objective reality). This man, Sam (played with splendid grace and control by Michael O'Brien), recalls for us all the Christmases when he tried to kill himself. With jolting simplicity, Petralia cuts right to the heart of profound sadness and its myriad sources.

Robert Honeywell's Ich Liebe Jesus! traces the sorry history of the exploitation of Christmas and Christ, from the Crusades, through the conquest and conversion of native populations in Africa and America, right up to the present day, with stops to acknowledge the most un-Christian contributions of Hitler, greedy corporations, and the current administration. It's all staged (by Jeff Lewonczyk) as a sort of Bob Fosse-meets-Bertolt Brecht cabaret, which is sensationally apt, and performed with precision by Honeywell, Lewonczyk, Gyda Arber, Sophia Skiles, and Angela Lewonczyk, with live music provided by Whitney Gardner (keyboard) and Meghan Stoops (clarinet). (The music is credited to Honeywell, but surely at least one of the songs is actually Kurt Weill's "Moritat," no?) Ich Liebe Jesus! is a brilliantly conceived indictment of modern complacent hypocrisy. It would work even better, I think, on a bill of more traditional fare; here, amidst such unrelievedly dark and subversive material, its shock value is slightly diminished.

Approaching Ich Liebe Jesus! in terms of thrilling, brazen inventiveness are Jeff Lewonczyk's Granduncle Tells the Children a Story of Kisselrite During the War and Young Jean Lee's Christmas. The latter puts centerstage a dollhouse with light shining from its windows, and lets us hear (via voiceover) the conversations transpiring within on a typical Christmas Day. It's a spectacular idea, and could have resulted in something as powerfully moving as the best of Thornton Wilder's elemental plays, if only Lee had resisted the impulse to naughtily shock us with rampant sex talk. The former attempts to invent a whole new religion and corresponding Christmas-like rite (the "Kisselrite" of the title), framed within a gentle parody of corny holiday-time nostalgia, as Granduncle does indeed reminisce about a Kisselrite of years gone by for a clamoring audience of nieces and nephews. This piece features some very sharp and very funny writing, as well as some excellent performances by Richard Harrington, Jessi Gotta, Mikki Baloy, and the masterful Fred Backus; costumes, by director Hope Cartelli—including the silliest winter hats and mittens I've ever seen—are delightful.

I also admired the novel and/or adventurous content of Eric Winick's M*E*N*S*C*H (a pair of rabbis smoke, drink, and talk sex on a break during an all-day marathon of Hanukkah services at a Reform temple); Danny Bowes's Walking Shadow (another examination of Christmas Eve loneliness, this time involving a high-powered female executive and a young man she has hired to be her "escort" for the evening; Susan Ferrara is particularly effective as the exec); and Jeff Tabnick's An Intelligent Design (a very cynical deconstruction of the "birth" of Christ and Christianity; Tabnick's cold and calculating view of organized religion is very smart, but it's undermined almost entirely by a gratuitous offensiveness that the play just does not need).

Damn Teddybears, by Alexis Sottile, is a madcap modern fairy tale (a la the Grinch) that is neither quite clear enough or funny enough to entirely work. Thomas Bradshaw's A Christmas Full of Family Love, about a brother in love with his sister, among other family dysfunctionalities, (and featuring Alicia Goranson, late of Roseanne, as said sister), seems more concerned with being way over-the-top than anything else. And Gary Winter's Execution of a Reindeer, about a young woman who travels to Alaska for the holidays (where she witnesses the eponymous event) and her mother, who speaks through a set of false teeth—well, I didn't understand what the heck this one is about. (The twelfth play, Jon Marans's Humbuggery, wasn't performed on the night I attended.)

The twelve plays are presented in two different programs (see the info at the top of this page for the breakdown); you can see one or both in a single night. This might be just what you crave after od'ing on Christmas Carols and Wonderful Lifes. But the dark vision of The Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee started to wear me down, too; I suggest keeping the holiday, theatrically speaking, in both ways.

The Black Bird Returns is an intimate play about a woman who is, as the old song puts it, torn between two lovers. Years ago, Kat and Cliff were together, but he eventually left the relationship. Cliff went on to marry Amanda, who is now pregnant with their first child. Kat is living with Roger. Suddenly, Cliff reappears in Kat's life, seeking to rekindle their affair. She is more than willing, especially when she discovers the dire life circumstance that has led Cliff to find her after all these years. Cliff seems able to fit both Kat and Amanda in his life. Can Kat accommodate two men in hers?

It's not an uninteresting story, but it's slight; Alexis Kozak and Barbara Panas's script doesn't provide a great deal of information about any of these characters—we never know what any of them do for a living, for example, or how any two met, or what keeps the various pairings together. The authors do spend a bit of time on a flashback, showing us Cliff and Kat years ago, and introducing us to a black bird that seems meant to be a symbol of something (though I have to confess it was never exactly clear to me precisely what). This gives us an investment in Cliff and Kat's relationship that's missing from the others presented in the play; a possible way to flesh out this short piece out might be to fill in some of the blanks in the Cliff-Amanda and Kat-Roger stories.

Also problematic is the fact that Panas, who plays Kat, has co-written a very unsympathetic role for herself. A lot of stuff happens to Kat in the play, and some of it is upsetting; but some of it is quite nice. No matter: this lady is inclined to always see the negative side of things, and her reactions to good news for herself or dire news about others in invariably to complain. She's really hard to like; I wondered why Panas wanted to create such a protagonist.

Amanda (Julie Jensen) is only marginally more appealing. But Cliff, especially as embodied by David Walters in the production's most accomplished performance, is more or less likable. Roger (Douglas Lally) is a bit of a cipher. Kozak's staging is workmanlike, using Nick Francone's unit set to generally good effect (it's a two-level apartment that serves as living quarters for both couples; it's only a bit awkward in the couple of scenes that apparently take place outside, which are staged in front of and behind a counter).

A one-woman show? On Broadway? Based on her memoirs (read: self-help books), produced by her husband, and billed as a “musical joyride”? Does Suzanne Somers know how many strikes she has against her? Who can possibly take her seriously after the stories about Three’s Company, after the diet books, after taking the job on Home Shopping Network? How can this one-person show be anything more than a sorry symptom of the Las Vegasization of Broadway?

For starters, it’s the quickest 95 minutes I’ve experienced in the theatre in a very long time. I’m not convinced that Somers is a rare and important artist—her acting is by turns funny, creepy, and over-the-top; her singing is heartfelt, loud, and pitch-approximate—but I will say this: she knows how many strikes there are against her, and she doesn’t care. She is confident, she is generous, and she is completely for real. And I left the theatre deeply moved in spite of myself.

Her story, spurred by the rather banal question “If you could live your live over again, would you make the same choices?,” is not the most tragic one: she was the child of an alcoholic and physically-abusive father, became a teenage mother and a check-bouncing felon, and was diagnosed with record-breakingly low self-esteem. (There is also the ever-present knowledge that she is a multimillionaire and is in awesome shape for anyone at any age.) But she tells us straight off that she is here to tell her story, because it’s the only story she knows.

Sometimes her methods are disturbing—like when she’s hiding in the upstairs closet, singing “If I Only Had a Brain,” while her father tears through the house in a drunken rage; sometimes she is camp incarnate—like when she dances on-stage wearing what can only be described as a white thunderbird floatie around her waist; and sometimes she is simply crass—like when she arrives on-stage with a cart of her wares which she sells on Home Shopping Network. She takes songs from the classic musical theatre and '60s lite rock and uses them to punctuate moments in very strange ways. Still, I found myself laughing out loud with her, and moved to tears by her story.

Perhaps this is because she is not trying to prove anything. She is not trying to justify her occupying 95 minutes of our time. Nor is she trying to legitimize herself as a stage (or any other kind of) actress. Everything she does onstage is one hundred percent fresh and alive, and that’s so much more than can be said for most of our juke-box and made-from-movie musicals.

Credit is also due to writing-directing team Mitzie and Ken Welch who have made a clean, clear, and sometimes (though not tremendously often) clever structure out of her life. Their lyric-revisions and original songs are competent-to-agreeable, and their staging is proficient with its limited vocabulary. Set and lighting designer Roger Ball has placed two screens on either side of the stage that keep a tight focus on Somers’s upper body, which is wise (her performance medium has been almost exclusively television)—sort of like reading supertitles at the opera as my theatre-going companion put it. Robert Ludwig’s sound design is actually exceptional, providing nuanced aural locations for each external voice, footfall, doorbell, etc.

There is something worth our time in The Blonde in the Thunderbird (named after Somers’s first feature film role in American Graffitti). For performers, this can be a study in being bold; for critics (both professional and lay), a lesson in being humble; and for everyone else, it can be simply a very good time.

A "blowin" is, apparently, an outsider, perhaps even a usurper (I guess it comes from the expression "blowing in to town"?). So The Blowin of Baile Gall's title character turns out to be a Nigerian named Laurence who has been hired illegally by contractor/entrepreneur Sam Carson, Jr., to be the fourth worker on a construction site at a house in Baile Gall, a town in Ireland. Sam tells Laurence that he must be called Lionel while he's at work, and furthermore that he needs always to stand out of sight of the road, just in case anybody from Immigration is passing through. And of course Laurence will be paid less for this job than the Irishmen and women who are Sam's other employees.

Laurence needs the job—he is trying to raise enough money to bring his mother over to live with him—and so he swallows his pride and accedes to all of Sam's dehumanizing terms.

Sam's other employees are a colorful lot: Molly Black, the painter, is approaching middle age with a much younger boyfriend, Stephen, in tow. Stephen works on the site as well—he's a recovering alcoholic with a short fuse and a bad temper; he's also not very bright and, as an orphan who was delivered to Baile Gall from some other distant Irish town, he sometimes seems as much a "blowin" as Laurence. Eamon Collins, the plasterer, who is Molly's age (and her former boyfriend), is a sad, mean dreamer and perennial loser who has a particular history with this particular house that they're renovating: it was once his family's, until a bitter rivalry with Sam's family caused them to lose it some 25 years ago. Eamon regards it as his property nonetheless and is wicked jealous that Sam—who emigrated to America and has returned successful and Yankee-fied—has the wherewithal to purchase the place from the English divorcee who currently owns it. Eamon, further, was hoping that the job given to Laurence would go to his worthless cousin, Bulldog, fueling an immediate rivalry with the Nigerian. And he's also illegally on the "dole" even though employed, which means that in addition to the foregoing, he's constantly worried that someone from the government will turn up to arrest him or worse.

If this sounds like a lot going on in a five-character play, well—that's what I thought too. Author Ronan Noone seems overly fond of exposition, for that's almost all that we get in The Blowing of Baile Gall's first act. Rather than allowing his characters to show us who they are, they constantly tell each other who are, which makes for a more passive, less engaging theatrical experience.

Nevertheless, Noone effectively creates a powder keg, placing these five volatile personalities in the close quarters of the old Collins family kitchen. When we leave for intermission, we're certain that an explosion is inevitable in Act Two, and Noone supplies more than one, and not necessarily the ones we've been specifically expecting. His theme is essentially that grudges breed evil: everything bad that happens in this play—including Laurence's exile from his homeland—stems from a desire to avenge some perceived insult to someone's good name or family. (It seemed to me that Noone squandered an opportunity to say something interesting about the modern-day refugee experience by having Laurence be essentially the same kind of man as Eamon--but it's his play and this is the point he seems to want to make about human nature.)

Director David Sullivan's staging is fine, on a richly detailed set by Richard Chambers, with equally appropriate costumes by Jennifer Caprio. The five-member ensemble is excellent. Susan B. McConnell is warm and spirited and fearless as Molly, the one truly admirable character in the piece, while Ciaran Crawford, Colin Hamell, and George C. Heslin offer rich, detailed characterizations as Stephen, Eamon, and Sam, respectively (Hamell perhaps overdoes the blarney a bit, but he's spot-on ridiculing Sam's Americanized lingo). Ato Essandoh is dignified and aloof as the African loner Laurence: you can sense the chip on his shoulder that he's just daring someone to knock off, as well as the wall he's built around himself that he's desperately wishing someone will allow him to tear down.

The Bogus Woman delves into the desperate world of a woman who attempts to flee her unnamed country for political asylum. Part of the Brits off Broadway festival, it is a one-woman show, in which actress Sarah Niles embodies this hapless woman entering Britain as a detainee, and the menagerie of friends and foes she comes into contact with.

In the spirit of candor, I feel it’s only fair to make an admission: I am one-woman (or -man) show-phobic. And something about this well-conceived show reminds me why. It is tremendously difficult to master this kind of performance, or to direct it, for that matter. While Niles is an extremely talented performer, whose characters spring to life under her touch, The Bogus Woman still ends up feeling disappointingly one-note. It lacks nuance or subtlety. It lacks humor. Now, again, I feel obligated to return to the point of this problematic form. How can one make a one-woman show about human rights violations subtle or funny? Ethically, does the audience deserve to be treated lightly when the all-too-real characters of the show are not? Ultimately, the ethics of brutalizing an audience are somewhat irrelevant: whether or not the audience deserves to be treated tenderly, they will not pay attention if they are not. The piece will lose the audience’s focus, thereby losing its own effectiveness.

The Bogus Woman falls prey to this trap of the solo show, demanding too much from its audience. It gives the audience all the worst, though very plausible, moments of a woman’s life, with almost none of the best. The show is relentless and, for the audience as well as the character, there is little to no relief. While again, ethically, this may be fair, artistically, it is not very useful. The brutality renders itself ineffective when it becomes predictable.

When the “bogus” woman arrives in her new country, she is subjected to being treated as an unwanted animal, penned up and locked away. She files for appeals with her well-intentioned but ineffective court-appointed lawyer, and she endures utter humiliations on the stand. The prosecutor accuses her of making up the murders of her husband, brother, and newborn baby, and says that her contention that she became pregnant from the rape that ended the attack is highly spurious and unlikely. In her country, the woman had been a writer and it was an article she wrote that landed her in the trouble she came to. She knows if she returns, she will be killed, but the prosecutor suggests, with the constantly changing government there, she may even “be welcomed back as a hero.” Even the person who sponsors her boarding eventually kicks her out so she can turn the room over to a more politically attractive refugee from Kosovo.

As an audience member, I began to expect only bad things to happen to this unnamed character, and, each time they did, I was less and less moved. In Hamlet, Shakespeare says, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” But wit is not the only thing best served by brevity. Sometimes the very essence of communication lies within the domain of the brief and concise. The Bogus Woman, which apparently began as a 15-minute piece, errs always on the side of giving too much information, when a briefer version would very likely, instead of saying more, leave the audience wanting more.

The material here is certainly worthy, and one gets the sense that the artists involved with this production have a very strong sense of purpose. The idea that attention should be paid to detainees, and their criminal dehumanization, couldn’t possibly be more relevant. Director Kully Thiari has done a good job of gathering a rather competent team here. The performance of Niles is staggeringly good, and often heart-wrenching. The lighting of the sparse space by Ciaran Bagnall manages to create very evocative environments, with almost a purely white palette. The set by Kate Unwin benefits from its bareness, and creatively makes use of its one prop, a thick wooden bench. The costume is not quite as strong, as the dress works extremely well for the protagonist, but is rather useless when Niles plays other characters, especially male ones.

But the script itself lets the piece down, drawing away from some of its own strengths by allowing for the atrocities it focuses on to seem utilitarian. As I mentioned, Niles’s performance is excellent, especially her mastery in giving each of her characters such a differentiated voice and bearing. But in the script, her characters often change so quickly that the effect of her portrayals is diminished and spread thin. Without a foil to play opposite her strong and compelling woman, Niles’s energy dissipates and doesn’t appear to be put to its best use.

I am sure that others might be more moved and impressed by this work than I was. Seeing the performer herself may very well be worth the trip. And, in spite of its flaws, the script speaks with an essential message, and is sometimes exceptionally strong. The show has made the long journey from Britain to New York, so perhaps a trip to 59th street is not too much to ask.

I must admit my first foray to see a Keen Company production has left me very impressed. Beautiful sets and costumes, an exceptional cast, a highly professional production—all for only $19. This is off-off-Broadway at it’s finest, a far cry from the low-budget, unevenly-cast shows that we sometimes see for that price. The shock of the production values alone makes The Breadwinner a great treat, though the show itself has much to recommend it.

Somerset Maugham’s rarely-produced comedy tells the story of a 1930s British family whose patriarch has decided to leave his post as a stockbroker, as well as his family, with only limited financial assistance, because, well, he’s bored of them. Watching each family member (and the members of the neighboring family as well) selfishly deal with the shocking news makes for great comedy, and Maugham’s script is certainly amusing. But it is Carl Forsman’s snappy direction and the comedic talents of the entire cast (no weak link here!) that make the comedy work so well.

The show is unexpectedly relevant to 21st century society. Though most families these days do not solely rely on the husband’s income to provide, the materialistic teenagers here (excellently portrayed by Joe Delafield, Virginia Kull, Margaret Laney, and David Standish), whine about having their own apartments, an allowance for living expenses, a new car, and a new tennis court. Though none of the actors ever breaks his or her period behavior, it’s easy to see them as modern teenagers complaining about just the same things. Much of the play’s charm comes from this startling juxtaposition, somehow simultaneously both quaint and timely.

Nathan Heverin’s set and Theresa Squire’s costumes expertly evoke the time period, effortlessly creating a world of pampered luxury. Though it’s difficult to single out performances among such a talented cast, Jack Gilpin as Charles (the Breadwinner of the title) easily conveys the frustration and humor being saddled with this crazy family. And Jennifer Van Dyck takes a star turn as the crazed neighbor, convinced that all this behavior has everything to do with her.

Keen Company certainly knows what they’re doing, and I have every expectation of their continued success. But what a shame it would be to lose this great company to the bigger theatres (and bigger ticket prices) of off-Broadway. I hope Keen Company continues to do what they’re doing—providing a great theatrical experience for a bargain price. They’re a sparkling diamond in the off-off-Broadway rough.

I'm not sure that a stronger play has opened on Broadway all season than The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial; and this revival, produced with integrity and care by a long list of producers who I will nevertheless name here by way of gratitude—Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Debra Black, Roger Berlind, Ronald Frankel, Terry E. Schnuck, Sheldon Stein, Barry Weisbord, and Roy Furman—is the most satisfyingly riveting and engaging show in town. Here is a theatrical experience that's not only intellectually and spiritually nourishing, but a riproaring grand time as well.

I'd forgotten how uncompromisingly moral Herman Wouk's play is: in our post-modern culture in which values have been seemingly relegated to the dustbin, it's a privilege to see a work that reminds us that, yes, people's actions do mean something: that there are ideals and ideas that stand above the mere tokens of "winning" and "succeeding."

The frame for this exploration of right and wrong is a military trial, the court-martial of Lt. Stephen Maryk, the young executive officer of the minesweeper Caine, stationed in the South Pacific during the latter months of World War II. Maryk is accused of mutiny: during a typhoon, he seized command of the ship from his commander, Philip Francis Queeg. Maryk's contention is that Queeg was mentally unfit to run the ship; that the ship was out of control and that Queeg's orders were inappropriate and potentially lethal to the crew. Queeg denies the charge, relying on his 15 years of experience in the Navy (with a spotless record), and intimating that Maryk and some of his cronies on the Caine had it in for their tough and tenacious commanding officer.

Defending Maryk is Lt. Barney Greenwald, a lawyer-turned-pilot who has recently been wounded and is serving time during his recovery as defense counsel. Greenwald tells his client from the outset that he doesn't approve of what he did, but that he will nevertheless do his best to win the case.

The prosecutor is John Challee, an old friend of Greenwald's and an impressive attorney in his own right.

The play charts, straightforwardly, the progress of the case, with Challee presenting his side in Act One and Greenwald delivering the defense in Act Two. The story is very familiar—and, in any case, easy enough to predict from the outset—and so the suspense lies not in whether Maryk will be acquitted but how: Wouk has masterfully crafted the thing like the best courtroom thriller, building to a terrific climactic sequence in which Queeg testifies for the defense, called to the stand by Greenwald essentially to prove that the tyrannical commander is indeed unfit for command. And then Wouk caps it with a coda that is a surprise—Greenwald reveals what's been going on behind his mercurial and enigmatic actions, and we learn who the real heroes of this particular mutiny and court-martial actually are.

Jerry Zaks stages the proceedings naturalistically and tautly, as if the play were brand new; designers John Lee Beatty (set), William Ivey Long (costumes), and Paul Gallo (lighting) never stray from the reality they're offering the audience, but neither do they stint—everything about the production is solidly first-class.

The ensemble is similarly top-notch. The showiest role is Queeg, and Zeljko Ivanek bites into it and delivers the brilliant performance that his fans know he has in him. He's engaging, even breezy, when we meet him in the first act; and then when he returns for his cross-examination, he seems to literally diminish right before our eyes. There's a moment when we see him go over the edge and, more than that, realize that he's done so; he reaches into his pocket for the marbles that are his own peculiar security blanket with a self-aware sadness that tells us everything we need to know about this man at this particular moment. But Ivanek invests Queeg with great complexity, and when he tells the tribunal that he's a kind-hearted man, we believe him. This portrayal is the stuff of legend, and when Ivanek, as Queeg, made his final long exit from the witness stand the audience rewarded him with the greatest possible tribute—a painful, deafening silence.

Queeg's nemesis, as it were, is David Schwimmer's Greenwald, a deft and carefully thought-out characterization that—and I hate to have to say this, but it seems necessary—bears no resemblance whatsoever to Ross Geller, the "Friend" that Schwimmer played on TV for years and years. No, this is a fine, theatrical performance, one that lets us slowly enter into the heart and soul of a conflicted and complicated man. Tim Daly, as Challee, has a less challenging role but nonetheless offers a rich and interesting take on it; he has a sublime moment in repose, during Queeg's cross-examination, when it becomes clear to us that he's realized for the first time that he's in danger of losing his case, and his stealthy, shark-like recovery from that realization makes for one of the play's sharpest surprises.

There are 17 other actors in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, some of them essentially supernumeraries, silently observing from the bench or at a party, but to a man, they're doing splendid work. Several of the supporting players have opportunities to make very strong impressions: Geoffrey Nauffts as Maryk's best pal, a budding novelist; Joe Sikora as Maryk, growing in confidence as he comes to know and understand his lawyer; Paul David Story as a young and sparsely educated signalman; Tom Nelis as a self-important Navy psychologist; and especially Murphy Guyer, in what may be the most perfectly natural performance I've seen on stage all season, as the prosecution's expert witness, an authoritative and by-the-books Navy veteran named Captain Randolph Southard. Anchoring the proceedings as the chief judge of the tribunal is Terry Beaver, who embodies the wisdom and justice that befit this particular office; I was heartened that this character, unlike too many contemporary counterparts, is able to separate personal from professional obligations.

Which takes me back to where I began, and to why I was so moved and stimulated by The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. This is, above all else, a play that explores and values principles, that understands that problems aren't black and white and that being victorious and being right aren't the same thing at all. The moral quagmire that Wouk examines here is uncomfortable and complicated, and, I'm afraid, very much out of fashion at the moment. I urge you to buck the trend and take this play's important journey to the heart of one man's convictions; let yourself get caught up in this powerful, compelling, and—best of all—very entertaining work of theatre!

The program that Women's Project provides to audience members at The Cataract measures 11 inches by 16 inches (it's folded in half, making it about the size of a standard sheet of paper; unwieldy to work with in cramped theatre seating). Like almost everything else about this production of Lisa D'Amour's play, it's too big and it's trying too hard; it also does the piece a disservice by failing to prepare us for the complicated doings we're about to witness. The big tab sheet has an "at this theatre" blurb and an appreciation of Wendy Wasserstein and a gossip column, of all things; what it doesn't have is anything to tell us that The Cataract takes place in 1883 in Minnesota, or a note, such as the one in the typed copy of the script that I received in my press packet, providing meaningful and useful context for the show.

For The Cataract is a very literary play—my perusal of the script suggests it works better on paper than in the theatre, in fact; for its ambitions to be achieved, people watching it can use all the help they can get.

The plot itself is fairly easy to follow and explain. Cyrus and Lottie are a married couple living in Minneapolis, still relatively frontier territory in 1883. They are in debt, and so they decide to take in a couple from the South as boarders. The man, Dan, goes to work with Cyrus building a railroad bridge across the Mississippi; the woman, Dinah (who is not necessarily Dan's wife), helps Lottie fitfully with household chores. The presence of the new couple proves unsettling in surprising ways, however: Cyrus discovers, fairly soon, that he is in love (or at least infatuated) with Dan. And Lottie starts to realize that Dinah's anarchic, free-thinking approach to life holds attractions as well.

The presentation, through script and staging, is something else, however. The set, designed by Rachel Hauck, is made up of enormous pieces of wood, some of them planks on the floor of Cyrus and Lottie's house, others representations of beds and tables. On either side of the "house" are two areas filled with stage dirt; these depict Lottie's garden and the bridge work site (sometimes they depict both at the same time). It's a striking design, no doubt about it, but it calls attention to itself more than it provides a workable space for the play to be presented.

And the play itself works hard to be oblique. The language is deliberately stilted and, with much of the action, repetitive: a good deal of the piece is variations on a theme, the characters undressing, going to bed, dreaming/night-walking, waking, breakfasting, and heading off to work or the day's chores. I sensed that D'Amour built all of this very carefully, but I wasn't able to decipher what she was trying to communicate to me. Similiarly, aspects of the play that are deliberately unconventional—Cyrus's Brokeback Mountain moments; Dinah's supernatural abilities (she complains of a headache and then pulls a flower from the inside of her head)—feel designed to convey something beyond their gimmickry, but darned if I could figure out what.

The Cataract benefits from four fine, ingratiating performances. Vanessa Aspillaga (Dinah), Barnaby Carpenter (Cyrus), Tug Coker (Dan), and Kelly McAndrew (Lottie) are as appealing and skillful a quartet of actors as you'll find on any NYC stage at the moment, and they made me want to understand these characters and, more important, what we're supposed to be gleaning about them and ourselves as a result of investing time in getting to know them. But the play itself—so stylized, so special, so evidently striving to be important and unusual—ultimately lets them and us down, very much like the oversized playbills that we're forced to balance precariously on our laps as we watch the show.

Though Jonathan Leaf's new play The Caterers seems earnestly to want to air some important positions regarding the troublous state of the Middle East and the world, it ends up going to war with itself, uncertain of whether it's a play of ideas or an action thriller. About halfway through, sensationalism wins out, and at the end of the evening, I felt that while The Caterers would make a terrific screenplay, as an intimate political drama it had lost its way.

The caterers of the title are David and Nina Weintraub, a married couple in their late 30s or early 40s whose vocation (and passion) is screenwriting but whose day job is to prepare and serve food and drink for functions like the one that's about to take place as the play begins—the premiere screening of a big new Hollywood film. The movie in question is written by one Sir Warren Heath, and is about the life of the prophet Mohammed. (The 1977 film Mohammed, Messenger of God is one of the inspirations for The Caterers.)

About 90 minutes before the festivities are set to begin, as David and Nina are making last-minute preparations, a Palestinian gunman bursts into their workroom. He carries two weapons and he quickly makes clear his intentions: he and his colleagues have come to stop the showing of this film that they believe to be blasphemous; while others (unseen) are getting ready to carry out their plan to blow up the building once the film's producers and audience arrive, this terrorist—who goes by the name Mohammed—will hold David and Nina hostage.

Within a few minutes, screenwriter Sir Warren turns up, and joins David and Nina as Mohammed's prisoner.

Nina and, to a lesser extent, David are angry and defiant, and also very worried about what will happen to their young daughter (at home with a sitter) if anything happens to them. Sir Warren is cool, engaging Mohammed in conversation that's intended to disarm him and also to reassure him that indeed the movie is not blasphemous: there are no visual depictions of the prophet, he tells his captor; the film is very respectful of and sympathetic to the Muslim cause. This leads to some discussions about politics, which raise valid (though very general) points about the oppression of the Palestinians, and also to some very ugly manifestations of anti-Semitism, not only from Mohammed, who blindly blames a "Jewish conspiracy" for all of his people's troubles, but also from Sir Warren (notwithstanding the fact that he is married to a Jew, or a "Jewess" as he calls her at one point).

At some point in the story, though, playwright Leaf goes off on a tangent about sexuality, and he gets himself tangled in it for a very long time. Mohammed, it is hinted, is a repressed homosexual (also possibly a virgin). He says he may release Sir Warren in exchange for sex; later he rapes Sir Warren and Nina: it appears, at these moments, that for all his righteous talk about freeing his people, what Mohammed is really interested in accomplishing here is freeing his libido. This turns out to be rather problematic in the context of Leaf's script, which starts to feel like an action movie at this point and never recovers. The second half of The Caterers is filled with fight scenes, brutality, violence, but very little logic. The characters start to behave like characters in a thriller (as opposed to real people), with their actions and reactions designed to build suspense and momentum (as opposed to reflecting realistic human behavior). The situation, which never feels particularly credible (why would Sir Warren wander into the caterers' work area? why is Mohammed trying to hold three hostages all by himself?), veers wildly into unbelievability. The play is always compelling, but its sense of purpose—beyond the vicarious thrill of watching people in a dangerous situation—drains away.

I was left wondering what Leaf intended his audience to get from the piece. Mohammed is presented as a psychological mess and a blind follower of ruthlessly bigoted ideology, so whatever case he is able to make for the Palestinian/Muslim side at the beginning of the play is pretty much voided by his subsequent statements and actions. Sir Warren, for all his calm self-assurance, is revealed to be a racist bigot himself, as well as baldly hypocritical and a coward. Nina, presented as a principled spitfire, nevertheless proves ineffective in articulating an ideological counterargument to fully support her position beyond the idea that her child deserves to have parents. David, locked in a closet for most of the play, is a cipher. Who's the hero here? What side are we supposed to take? I didn't feel that I learned much new about the issues underlying the deep tensions of Middle Eastern politics in The Caterers; the only real conclusion to come away with is that hostage-taking is bad business, which I think most of us already know. Sharper focus in terms of intention and theme would strengthen the play considerably.

The production, mounted by the Immediate Theater Company, is nevertheless very strong. It's well-staged by Jose Zayas, who never lets the tension drop, and features some very realistic fight choreography by Dan Demming. The cast, all of whom manage the intense physical action deftly, consists of Ian Blackman as David, Brian Wallace as Mohammed, Peter Reznikoff as Sir Warren, and the always remarkable Judith Hawking as Nina. Hawking, through sheer force of character, dominates the piece; moments when she screams to be released or when she is being raped by her captor are enormously affecting and excruciating to witness.

Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s 1622 play The Changeling is one of those Jacobean theatre masterpieces that is frequently praised (by T.S. Eliot, among many others) and little performed. It requires a large cast, considerable patience (for the plots in these things strain credulity), and a supple directorial imagination: the manifold rapes, disfigurements, and murders of the Jacobean sex tragedy invite both exaggeration and alienating irony that tend to undercut the plays’ profound moral contexts.

High praise, then, to TheatreRats, a very young company under the artistic directorship of Alexis M. Hadsall, which is presenting a paltry eight performances of Lauren Reinhard’s staging of the classic. The production vividly conveys the richness and sublimity of the Middleton’s painful vision of lust, murder, and love without either the alienating exaggeration or irony that would render it a Quentin Tarantino-esque parody of itself. Eight performances are not enough.

Beatrice is in love with Alsemero, a nobleman; unfortunately she is betrothed by her father Vermandero to Alonzo, another noble lord. Beatrice returns Alsemero’s attractions in secret, but condescendingly spurns those of Deflores, Vermandero’s psoriatic servant, who also lusts after her. Beatrice develops a plan: she sexually teases Deflores and urges him to murder Alonzo, vaguely promising him her maidenhead as reward. Deflores kills Alonzo and demands his payment from Beatrice; Beatrice withholds it; Deflores takes it by force. In the meantime, Alibius, the keeper of a nearby madhouse, has left his randy and sexually dissatisfied wife Isabella in the care and guardianship of his man Lollio, who is all too ready to allow Isabella to fulfill her fantasies right there in the madhouse, among the inmates.

The Changeling of the title refers specifically to one of Alibius’s inmates, an idiot whose attraction to Isabella turns him into a quite able and eloquent lover, but all of the characters are changelings in one way or another. Beatrice’s love for Alsemero turns her into a scheming murderess, and later she finds herself touched by Deflores’s ironic concern for her honor; Alsemero’s jealousy turns his love for Beatrice into a possessive self-love. And in the end all this love and lust and desire turns to death.

Director Lauren Reinhard displays the wisdom to stage the language and the passion rather than the plot, which is quite able to trundle along on its own with no help from the actors. The great beauty and chaos of the piece is in the heated, tactile quality of the language and the performances. Reinhard skillfully deploys a huge cast (nearly 20 in a theatre that may seat only three times that) across a nearly bare stage, and for the most part avoids the inevitable invitation to self-indulgence that these violent and sexual plays tend to engender. She doesn’t avoid it altogether: those writhing Bedlam inmates upstage through the entire length of the play can grow tiresome and distracting. But by and large her staging is remarkably sensitive, and the first act closes with an astonishing image of fear, vulnerability, sexuality, and violence: daring, provocative, and accomplished.

The TheatreRats ensemble here collected ranges across a wide field of experience: Malachy Orozco as the leering and scheming Lollio, in his first role fresh out of Montclair State University, promises a great career ahead of him; film and theatre actress Anna Chlumsky as Isabella brings a cheery and sexy earthiness to her performance and makes a terrific impression as a faux-madwoman herself.

But the highest praise for the performances must go to Sarah Tillson as Beatrice and Vince Phillip as Deflores. Beatrice is as lustful in her own way as Deflores is in his, her lust like his leading to the perversity of murder, and in this they begin to find affectionate sympathies despite Beatrice’s great beauty and Deflores’s deformity. Tillson plays Beatrice at first in entire control of the situation, confident in her ability to manipulate Deflores; she then slips more and more into fear and madness, losing that control in the end, and demonstrating more and more nakedness and vulnerability even as her clothing falls more and more into disarray; the deeper into madness Beatrice descends, the more skillfully and emotionally Tillson deploys and embodies the language. Phillip, on the other hand, glories in Middleton’s language more than any other member of the cast. Deflores is at first a villain, then a victim of his own desires. Phillip is fully the master of the violent imagery of the play and embodies it entirely and without reluctance, with much care given to the language’s disturbing energy and grace.

I also want to praise Jamie Askew, who in the smallish role of Diaphanta, Beatrice’s waiting woman, makes a quirkily intriguing character from a potentially dull part before being sacrificed to the lusts and fear of her mistress.

Credit for the spare but eloquent design is due to Lance Darcy (lighting), Vince Lingner (sets), Julie Pittman (sound) and Chole Marie Barrett (the often terrific costumes, especially for Beatrice, Lollio, and the madhouse inmates).

It seems that we are facing a revival of the plays of the Jacobean theater; between this production and Red Bull’s Revenger’s Tragedy earlier this season, the future bodes well for a new, fresh eye on these plays that more and more seem to reflect the violence, chaos, and oppressive puritanisms of our own 21st century’s times. And our young directors are taking them seriously rather than as an opportunity for facile jokes at the expense of a lushly lyrical English stage verse. With directors like Lauren Reinhard and ambitious and talented young groups like TheatreRats, I’m persuaded that these plays are in good hands.