nytheatre Archive
2000-01 Theatre Season Reviews

Regnard's play takes place on a single frantic day in the household of Geronte, a miserable but wealthy old geezer who has convinced himself that he's at death's door. It begins with Geronte's sudden announcement that he intends to wed Isabelle, a beautiful young woman who is also the beloved of Geronte's nephew Valere. Assisted by his crafty servant Crispin and Geronte's saucy but sensible maid Lisette, Valere maneuvers Geronte not only into breaking his engagement to Isabelle but endorsing Valere's. But then new complications arise when Geronte reveals that he may leave some of his huge fortune to a pair of distant relatives who have recently sent flattering letters to him. Crispin undertakes to discredit these two with Geronte (who has never met either one) by impersonating them in most unflattering terms. Crispin next decides to impersonate Geronte himself, dictating a new will to the notaries Scruple and Gaspard. Eventually he gets caught, and the frenzied machinations that enable him to extricate himself from serious trouble propel the play to its merry conclusion.

All of this happens at breakneck speed, giving us little time to second guess this mercenary lot. This is a good thing. A Will of His Own, written about a generation after Moliere, feels a lot like his comedies, with a vaguely political/satirical subtext but, at least on the evidence of this translation by Michael Feingold, little of the master's artistry. It's clever rather than witty, and mostly lighter than air: it's not surprising that it hasn't endured the way that The Miser or The Imaginary Invalid (two plays to which this one is surely indebted) have.

Director Russell Treyz, sensing this, has wisely elected to turn A Will of His Own into a showcase for the topflight comedic skills of his company. Led by the estimable Burton, they have a grand time of it: Dominic Cuskern gets to bluster and bleat as a doctor called Enema and a sneaky notary called Gaspard; Celeste Ciulla makes a charming soubrette as the earthy Lisette; Christopher Moore scampers and scuttles as the duplicitous Valere; Rachel Botchan and Valerie Leonard provide elegant bemusement as Isabelle and her grasping mama. John Wylie is a hoot as Geronte, fussing and fuming at slights real and imagined caused by objects animate and inanimate.

And then there's the incomparable Arnie Burton, ingratiatingly ingenuous as Crispin, creating little masterpieces of comic acting as he impersonates Geronte's two unpleasant relatives (one of whom is a woman, decked out in a hilarious getup that will remind you of Charley's Aunt, opening and shutting fans with kabuki-like machine-gun precision). He then tops himself with a side-splitting impression of Wylie as Geronte in Act Two; fans of the Pearl, who have seen Wylie's distinguished array of performances there over the years, will particularly enjoy Burton's wicked caricature. (He seems to be enjoying himself, too).

Treyz isn't above incorporating shtick of all ages, sizes, and varieties to keep the laughs coming, indulging in everything from the delayed reaction reflex (performed in splendid deadpan style by Wylie opposite Cuskern's Dr. Enema) to fourth-wall-breaking antics in which Burton as Crispin dodges into the audience to save his hide. It ain't brilliant, but it works: A Will of His Own is a yockfest, from start to finish.

The Pearl Theatre Company is presenting, in repertory, Racine's Andromache and Regnard's A Will of His Own. The neat thing about repertory is the way that it stretches actors and audience members, taking them and us to very different places night after night. So on Tuesday we might see Arnie Burton's inspired clowning as the servant Crispin in the Regnard, while on Wednesday we find him immersed in the passions and turmoil of Pyrrhus in the Racine. It is, objectively, a good thing for everybody concerned.

But it doesn't necessarily guarantee great theatre. The Pearl's Andromache, which has been given a lucid if prosaic staging by Shepard Sobel, is worth seeing to get a taste of a theatrical genre that's almost never done these days. But it also illustrates why that's the case. Racine wrote, essentially, a succession of emotive soliloquies linked by offstage action. The play is, to put it mildly, difficult; without Racine's glorious language or a single spectacular over-the-top star turn it's hard to become engaged in it.

The story involves a round-robin of unrequited passion: Orestes is in love with Hermione (the daughter of Helen of Troy). Hermione, in turn, is in love with Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles; Pyrrhus is in love with Andromache, widow of King Hector (who slew Achilles and in turn was slain by Pyrrhus). Andromache loves only her murdered husband. (Poor Orestes.)

The play focuses squarely on the heightened emotions of this star-crossed quartet; because they are all of royal blood, their actions have grave consequences for their subjects. That bigness, though, is what's missing from this production: when any of the characters bemoans his or her current position vis-a-vis a love object, it feels more like soap opera whining than the stuff of classical tragedy. Earle Edgerton's translation, which does not utilize Racine's precise rhyming scheme, is partly at fault, I think. But so are the actors--Burton and Christopher Moore and Rachel Botchan and  Celeste Ciulla--none of whom succeeds in achieving the larger-than-life grandeur that this work sorely needs.

Peter Dobbins, who is the director of The Storm Theatre's transcendent production of As You Like It, told me that 90% of his success was in the casting. To wit: Jennifer Piech's lively and lovely Rosalind, an engaging and endlessly interesting performance filled with spirit and intelligence and curiosity and warmth, a radiant center to a luminous play. And Eric Alperin's Orlando: so earnest and eager and dewy-eyed a young romantic!--does any production in town right now boast such an appealing pair of young lovers?

Next, Storm Theatre regulars Dan Berkey, John Regis, and Colleen Crawford:. Listen to Berkey wrap his tongue around Jaques's famous "Seven Ages of Man" speech, bursting with a palpable relish not just for the sound of his voice but the very tenor of his own intellect. Or watch Regis as Touchstone, a leprechaun in the throes of love, let his country lass Audrey put flowers in his hair. Or observe Crawford, as sharp-tongued Phebe, engage in heated banter with Piech (as Rosalind, disguised as the boy Ganymede)--a delicious, masterfully timed catfight that we overhear with almost guilty pleasure.

And on I can go, mentioning William Joseph Brookes's vigorously evil Sir  Frederick, Brian J. Coffey's expansive Duke Senior, Kim Lindsay's wise and loving Celia, and Brian Whisenant's hapless Silvius; the pleasing singing and dancing of company members Maryanne Chaney, Cedric O'Gorman, and Eric Thorne; the invaluable support, in smaller roles, of Antony Ferguson, Carmit Levite, Gavin Moore, William Peden, and Bill Roulet. This is as assured (and well-spoken) a rendition of Shakespeare as you're likely to find in a New York theatre.

But, going back to Dobbins's arithmetic, let's talk now about that other 10%. Dobbins's vision of the piece is clear-eyed and simple; his touch is nimble and lighter than air. He's given us a sparklingly magical As You Like It, one whose oft-repeated story feels fresh, exciting, and involving until its very last loose end is neatly tied up in Act Five. At the same time, this is a show that never takes itself too seriously and never bogs down, content to let Shakespeare's intoxicating poetry cast its own particular enchantment on the audience.

Most fundamentally, Dobbins has cast a showman's eye on the piece, giving us a lively wrestling match near the beginning of the play (well-staged by Dan Renkin, and performed by Gavin Moore and Eric Alperin), and a pleasantly cathartic dance (choreographed by Maryanne Chaney) to close it. This As You Like It charms and entertains from top to bottom and from beginning to end. Shakespeare--nay, theatre in general--seldom gets done this well.

Frank Cwiklik's Bitch Macbeth is not easy to write about. It's a re-imagining of the Macbeth story, set in a post-apocalyptic netherworld where thanes are gangsters and witches are dominatrixes. It's a dark, brutal, pessimistic work about the hopelessness of hope: a self-described passion play whose central figure isn't crucified but rather whose life merely gives out, spent. It's moody and shadowy and endlessly disturbing, if not always intellectually satisfying.

It's also riveting theatre: Bitch Macbeth is a triumph of style and of context, a nonstop onslaught of images and sounds and movement that confront and jolt and amuse and astound us. Packed with irony and edge and gratuitous everything, Bitch Macbeth combines the depths of Shakespearean tragedy with the shallowness of a soft porn S&M video. It's an uneasy and often improbable mixture, but it never fails to fascinate. And there are moments when Cwiklik's staging honestly astonishes with its power and weird beauty.

There is, for example, a scene when a character known only as Rbiter--who is some sort of impenetrable Godfather--is shown battering three separate adversaries via cell phone, all to the insistent beat of a Euro Pop soundtrack. It's not a song, not even a rap; and it's certainly not dialogue: it's like an aria of expletives, bursting with an unexpressed (perhaps even unfelt) passionate contempt. As performed by Bob Braden, it's spellbinding.

Other scenes depict a wronged and righteous young man called Small Asbury finding release (redemption?) in the act of making violent love to the man known as Other Thorn; a retro hippie hangout (complete with stoned beat poet, tonelessly reciting non-sequitur poetry in the center of the room), destroyed with eerily silent precision by Macbeth and Femme Macbeth; a slave auction; ritual bathings; even--and perhaps most idiosyncratically--Macbeth listening to a scratchy 78rpm recording of Macbeth. Every one of these moments has been staged with meticulous madness by Cwiklik, choreographed to a pulsating, nonstop soundtrack (or, in Act Two, a soundtrack consisting mostly of calculated silences). Cwiklik makes indelible stage pictures again and again, and achieves an intimacy in the space that feels dangerous.

Now the question must be asked: does all of Cwiklik's wizardry finally add up to something tangible? Probably not: Bitch Macbeth is finally potent but insubstantial. Threads of theme that emerge from the piece are more disturbing for their misogyny and misanthropy than for their honest evocation of a sick society, which is to say that the play talks too much about the evil stranglehold that Femme Macbeth has on her prey and too little about the political implications of Rbiter and his reign of intimidation.

But Cwiklik's talent and imagination are constantly in evidence. He is clearly a theatre director of budding brilliance, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

I'd be remiss not to conclude by saying that his vision is achieved by way of a remarkable company of actors, including Jennifer Clark (magnetic as Femme Macbeth), Douglas Terry (at once compelling and repellant as Small Asbury), Adam Swiderski (appealingly enigmatic as Other Thorn), Bob Brader (scarily ruthless as Rbiter), and Bryan Enk and Matthew Gray (scarily clownish as a pair of vaudevillian Repo Men called Rosenstern and Guildencrantz).

So it's somewhat surprising that the brand new hope theatre company, founded and run by the McAllister siblings (lately of Expanded Arts), gets to launch itself with this once-in-a-lifetime debut. The play, Edward III, is clearly not the best of Shakespeare, but its authenticity is, as far as my research can determine, well-accepted now by the appropriate authorities: this is an inherently interesting theatrical event even if it's not an ecstatically wonderful one. The McAllisters must be admonished, gently, for toying with a script that almost no one is familiar with--they've transformed some male characters into females, and so we can't tell, definitely, how much of what Shakespeare presumably wrote has been altered to accommodate that casting choice. But otherwise the McAllisters are to be congratulated heartily for bringing Edward III to the stage.

The story it tells is a fascinating one, depicting the beginning of the Hundred Years' War with France (setting the stage for the Henry plays), as well as the rise of Edward's son, the Black Prince, from careless youth to proud warrior (presaging, specifically, Henry V). A love triangle subplot, involving the King and the Count and Countess of Salisbury, adds elements of romance and intrigue. And numerous scenes of war, on and off the battlefield, provide opportunities for vigorous action and exciting choreography.

First hearing of the text didn't uncover any lost treasures; Edward III is clearly not in the same league as, say, Hamlet. But it's deftly written, often thought-provoking, and consistently involving. This production, co-directed by Heather Anne and Kelly McAllister, emphasizes the play's seriousness, to its detriment (a comic letter-writing scene, in particular, loses much of its humor). And I'm not sure that the sharply antagonistic relationship between King Edward and his son the Black Prince that is presented here is really supported by the text. But the staging is remarkable for its clarity, and is enhanced by a couple of very strong performances (Kelly McAllister's Edward and Emory Rose's King of France).

I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced, on the basis of what I saw, that this is irrefutably the work of the Bard. But I'm certainly not qualified to discuss this knowledgably; in any event, this is not the place to do so. What's important is this: given that a lot of people do seem to be sure about the play's authorship, Edward III needs to be seen and read and performed so that that evaluation can continue, and so that we can discover whatever unknown morsels of dramatic gold it may contain. So bravo to the hope theatre for giving us our first look at a work that we will undoubtedly be seeing again and again.

Muse of Fire Productions, a young off-off-Broadway theatre company, is doing a splendidly straightforward and entertaining rendition of Calderon's Life's a Dream at HERE. Using a contemporary adaptation by Adrian Mitchell and John Barton, director Dan Rigazzi and his company of ten actors give a clear and accessible reading of the piece. The emphasis here is on story-telling, centered around the related issues of honor and loyalty; the work's heavier philosophical questions about what is real and what is illusion are addressed, but given less weight. The result is a Life's a Dream that feels almost like a fairy tale, more akin to The Tempest than Hamlet. I wonder if that might not have been what Calderon had in mind in the first place.

The play takes place in Poland, where King Basil has imprisoned his only son Sigismund because of a horrific prophecy that the Prince will grow up to be a tyrant. The King decides to test his son--and destiny--by allowing him to reign for one day. Unfortunately, Sigismund abuses his power and seemingly bears out the prediction. The King reluctantly sends his son back to prison and prepares to yield his throne to his niece Estrella and nephew Astolfo.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Rosaura has arrived in the kingdom, bent on revenge against Astolfo, who jilted her. Her cause gets entangled with Sigismund's as the play moves toward its exciting conclusion.

Rosaura's companion is Clarion, a clown, who manages to get into various scrapes as well as sing a couple of delightful songs (music by Mark Rimple) that comment on the action. Peter Lettre embodies the role of Clarion beautifully, turning in the most accomplished performance of the evening.

For just under two action-packed hours, Sanderson and his company hold us rapt as they retell the famous story of Macbeth and his Lady and their vaunting ambition. Breathlessly and without interruption, scenes unfold in front of us and behind us--indeed, all around us--in this dark enchanted theatre, from the three weird sisters' anointing of Macbeth as King of Scotland to the final fateful duel between Macbeth and his mortal enemy Macduff. The relentless forward motion of the plot is paramount, played out in simple, gripping tableaux that are somehow at once raw and elegant.

Sanderson's staging is consistently ingenious. He brings Banquo back, silent but bloodied, to torment Macbeth in the banquet scene; he uses his chorus of actors to give life and voice, sensationally, to the three apparitions. Witches double as murderers to outstandingly sinister effect. 

Larger-than-life personages burst out of the darkness to command our attention: those three shrill witches to begin with (Lynda Kennedy, Kina Bermudez, and Lauren Barrett Porter); and then a pompous old Duncan (Brian O'Sullivan), a proud and hearty Banquo (Russell Marcel), an equally proud but strangely centered Macduff (Sean Elias-Reyes), a feisty and well-liquored Porter (Peter Loureiro), and all the other familiar characters. In the middle of it all are the coolly virile and powerful Macbeth of Michael Colby Jones and the savagely focused Lady Macbeth of Anna Cody. Happily refusing to wallow in their character's psychologies, these two actors make Shakespeare's murderous couple come alive with brutal fascination: they are, I think, the best performances of these roles I've yet encountered.

Even if you think you've seen Macbeth, unless you've seen the Gorilla Rep production you haven't: not so boldly or viscerally, at least. Actors and audiences, trooping through the darkness as the play wends its outsized and irrepressible course, are engaged and enthralled; thrilled by the joyous novelty of collaborating in the open air to create theatre, as our ancestors did, from nothing but earth and sky and the passion of some roaming players.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money, as produced by The Storm Theatre in its American premiere, turns out to be first and foremost an acting triumph for this young company. The Victorian Era ladies and gentlemen who populate Bulwer-Lytton's entertaining but diffuse romantic comedy fit the members of this ensemble like so many well-turned gloves. It's sheer pleasure to watch them.

Take Laurence Drozd, for example, a Storm regular whom we have seen as the tormented Stavrogin of Stavrogin's Confession and as the upright Captain Molineux in The Shaughraun. Here, as the most likably self-indulgent aristocrat this side of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Drozd reveals comic gifts we only suspected he had, tempered by a dignity and charm that make this fellow Sir Henry Graves more sympathetic than he has the right to be. (Drozd also has a lark doubling, briefly, as a builder named MacFinch, laying on a brogue thicker than pea soup.)

John Regis, another Storm stalwart, works similar wonders with a cantankerous old bore called Benjamin Stout, fussing and fuming profligately under unwieldy but entirely appropriate muttonchops. And Peter Dobbins, the Storm's artistic director, whom we have heretofore not seen this side of the footlights, makes a strong impression as the play's hero, Alfred Evelyn. Evelyn is a penniless but very sharp young man whose love for the equally penniless Clara Douglas is unrequited. Or at least so he thinks: in fact, Clara loves him just as ardently, but her pragmatic nature forces her to reject his proposal, not wanting to subject Evelyn to a life of poverty.

Evelyn suddenly inherits a vast fortune from a distant relative, but his pride prevents him from pursuing Clara: he reasons that if she didn't want him poor, he wouldn't want her rich. Instead, Evelyn finds himself being wooed by Georgina Vesey, a bubble-headed but pretty would-be heiress; or more accurately by Sir John Vesey, Georgina's preternaturally greedy father. Evelyn concocts an elaborate plot to test Georgina's love, in which he appears to entirely bankrupt himself through luxurious living and wanton gambling.

What's interesting about Dobbins's performance is that he makes the inspired (though not at all obvious) choice of playing Evelyn as a diehard romantic, driven to this complicated ruse by the sheer desperation of his ardor. This has the effect of making the second half of Money, during which Evelyn conspires to ensnare not only Georgina and Sir John but a good deal of London's uppercrust, less cleverly satirical than Bulwer-Lytton perhaps intended. But it also makes for a far less heavy-handed--and a far more satisfying--conclusion to the evening.

Because, alas, Bulwer-Lytton is no William Congreve, nor even a Dion Boucicault, both of whose works (The Way of the World, London Assurance) appear to be his models here. Even judiciously cut by director John C. Davies, Money is undeniably overblown and overwritten, made pleasing only by Davies's shrewd pacing and knack for filling the stage with lovely pictures, and by the aforementioned excellence of the fifteen actors playing it.

Now's the time for me to mention some more of them: Stephen Logan Day, hissably villainous as Sir John; Colleen Crawford, lovely as the not-so-dumb Georgina; Elizabeth Roby, happily plucky and agreeable as the long-suffering Clara; Suzanna Geraghty, instantly appealing as Clara's aunt (and Graves's love interest), Lady Franklin; Hugh Brandon Kelly, canny as Evelyn's accomplice Captain Smooth; and, perhaps best of all, William Joseph Brookes as Evelyn's lawyer Sharp. Watch him, during the hilarious will-reading scene at the top of Act One, as he chastens some of the deceased's less-well-remembered relatives with the single utterance "Decency!"--in this case, a word worth at least a thousand pictures.

And so, fueled by the assured comic skill of Brookes, Drozd, and others--and anchored by Dobbins's puppyishly appealing hero--Money finally does pay off. (Sorry.) The Storm is to be commended for transforming what could have been a mere curiosity into a vibrant, lively evening of theatre.

This Peer Gynt is also brilliantly theatrical. Using the surreal paintings of Rene Magritte as a starting point, Lovins and his company of seven actors find startlingly simple but inventive ways to realize even the most fantastic elements of Ibsen's play in a tiny space and on a tiny budget. So cast members line up along the rear wall holding up open umbrellas to create a forest, and evocative objects like a chessboard and a telephone serve as masks for various supporting players populating the sprawling story. Seven actors portray more than seventy characters (not just people, but also animals and things); six of them also take the role of Peer for a portion of the play. Transitions, when one actor hands over Peer's bowler hat to the next, correspond to pivotal moments in Peer's story; they're remarkably lovely, keys to the beauty and grace of Lovins's staging.

At this point, a brief synopsis is probably in order. Peer Gynt is the proud, eager, good-for-nothing son of a poor farm woman. Rather than work, Peer spends his days dreaming and making up fanciful adventures, becoming something of a laughingstock among his neighbors. As the play opens, Peer's mother tells him that his one-time girlfriend is about to be married to someone more respectable; Peer crashes the wedding and has a final tryst with the girl. He then meets and falls instantly in love with the beautiful Solveig; and then he escapes from the village in search of  fame and fortune.

The remainder of the play recounts Peer's adventures on what turns out to be a lifelong quest. His travels take him, most famously, to the hall of the Mountain King (you'll enjoy the clever way that Lovins invokes the familiar Grieg musical accompaniment); and also to various forests, seas, and cities all over Norway and the world. Peer does battle with enemies both mortal and magical, but none is as dangerous as his final struggle for his own soul. Peer's love for his mother and for his faithful Solveig eventually help redeem him.

I'd be lying if I said that the story wasn't convoluted and confusing; Lovins doesn't solve this, but he diverts our attention from it by keeping us constantly engaged and entertained. When Peer somehow winds up in Arabia, for example, the sultry gyrations of three harem girls (two of them played by men!) prove intoxicating enough to eradicate any questions as to how Peer got there. Similarly, wondrously imaginative renderings of a shipwreck, a jungle, even an encounter with the Devil, move the story along vigorously. Lovins and his cast make such engaging and entertaining company that we cast aside any lingering doubts about where we might be going; we relax and let them guide us on Peer Gynt's fanciful and often far-fetched journey.

All seven actors are to be commended for their outstanding work here. Particularly memorable are Jeff Riebe, whose characters range from the young Peer to a dour but pragmatic priest to a thrillingly agile monkey; Catherine Rolfe-Day, who is an almost ethereal Solveig; and Davis Hall, who has a stunningly perfect moment as Peer's mother in her death scene. Salvatore Garguilo, Jane Mendez, Judi Polson, and Duane Domutz comprise the rest of the cast; each doing fine work in numerous roles.

No one does Peer Gynt these days, so to Expanded Arts and director Lovins we must express our gratitude just for letting us see it on its feet. But Lovins deserves more than that: he's clearly a talented and visionary young director whom we will certainly keep an eye on. 

Revolving Shakespeare makes a propitious debut with Queen Margaret, a riveting and highly theatrical condensation of one of Shakespeare's history tetralogies. Director Ralph Carhart is responsible for the excellent adaptation, culling and occasionally rearranging material from Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III to tell the story of Margaret, mercurial warrior queen to England's King Henry VI. Solidly played by an ensemble of a dozen actors, and filled with exciting duels and battles staged with brio by fight choreographer Dave Mason, Queen Margaret makes for engrossing drama indeed. This is theatre story-telling at its very best.

Carhart has distilled something like twelve hours of Shakespeare into about 160  taut, action-packed minutes. His emphasis is, necessarily, on narrative; what he achieves in Queen Margaret is a fast-paced roller coaster ride through the reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV, with a brief nod to the end of the Hundred Years' War with France (in a pair of neat scenes involving no less a personage than Joan of Arc), and with major emphasis on the War of the Roses, the bloody, divisive Civil War during which the houses of Lancaster and York battled for the throne. We observe warily as Henry's favorites are toppled, one by one (reminding us of events in both Richard II and Richard III); we witness the the Duke of York's audacious confrontation with the weakling sovereign; and then we watch, breathlessly, as Henry's vengeful queen takes arms against York and his thuggish sons (who will eventually become Edward IV and Richard III).

We're talking action, action, action here, all of it vividly played by Carhart and his company. It helps, of course, that the words they're speaking are Shakespeare's--even lesser works like these are filled with unfailingly beautiful language, spoken with authority and clarity by Carhart's actors. That latter point is extremely important, by the way: events and, especially, interrelationships among characters, are nothing if not complicated in Queen Margaret. Yet despite the innate complexity of the subject and the significant abridgments and deletions in the text, the convoluted and intricate tale of intrigue, betrayal, and plunder remains firmly in focus and entirely comprehensible.

That tale also includes Queen Margaret's own adulterous affair with the king's advisor Suffolk, discretely and succinctly depicted in a single, wordless scene behind a scrim. Inventive touches like this distinguish Carhart as a masterful story teller whose primary concern is keeping things interesting and understandable for the audience.

The piece is sharply cast, with particularly outstanding work turned in by Jon L. Egging as the pious but ineffectual King Henry; Lou Tally as the voracious Duke of York; Paul Coffey as the sensual, conniving Duke of Suffolk (and, briefly, as Margaret's young son Prince Edward); and Miles Phillips as both the preening, fatuous Cardinal Beaufort and the skulking, youthful Edward IV. Jamie Askew (as an array of messengers) and Juliet King (in several small roles, including Joan of Arc and a rebellious manservant called Peter) do fine work as well. Matthew Pendergast is somewhat unconvincing as the (relatively) aged Duke of Gloucester, uncle to Henry VI; but he's downright brilliant as the next Gloucester, better known as Richard III--I'd like to see him take on that role in the full-length play.

In the title role, Marci Adilman nicely manages Margaret's spectacular transformation from the naive princess of Henry VI, Part 1 to the duplicitous adulteress (Part 2); and from the admirable warrior queen of Part 3 to the shrewish old witch of Richard III. But it's probably inherently impossible for her to build a real character here: Margaret serves very different functions in each of the four plays, functions that are sometimes at odds with one another. She's a memorable supporting player in each of these works, and she remains somehow shadowy here despite lots of concentrated stage time: Carhart hasn't really succeeded in turning his heroine into a leading lady.

But he's succeeded, wonderfully, in capturing the spirit and intoxicating adventure of four of Shakespeare's earliest and least well-understood histories. Queen Margaret is a remarkable show, especially for a freshman theatre troupe. I can't wait to see what Carhart and company come up with next. 

Shakespeare's Richard II has been done frequently of late, but never with the vitality, clarity, or grace of this production, staged by Alexander Harrington for his Eleventh Hour Theatre Co. This shows breathes! The pomp and pageantry of the royal processions impresses us as viscerally as if we were Richard's subjects; the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, plotting, and scheming resonate with excitement and tension; the jousting and swordplay bristle and crackle with raw energy. And the set--an artful transformation of HERE's mainstage by Tom Sturge and Scott Aronow into a stark, stony, 14th century English castle--feels authentic: even in the summer heat, we almost feel a draft.

At the center of it all is Callum Keith-King, in a fierce and provocative turn as the tragic King Richard. This is an extraordinary, fearless performance: an uncompromising portrait of royal meltdown, from without and within. Keith-King's Richard starts out as a tyrant and a bully, fully convinced of the rightness of his actions and the divinity of his power. When that power starts to fall away from him, his fear is naked and terrible: cornered, like a deer in a truck's headlights, he darts into his destiny and falls apart:

For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings--

Usually rendered as a solemn interlude of nobility and grace, here Richard's great soliloquy is a bitter cri de coeur, a railing against the God he thought had ordained him to rule and at the same time a frightened anticipation of his own sad, sorrowful fate.

Keith-King's Richard does find some heroism in the final moments of the play, but just as the excesses of his reign never quite feel like villainy, so too does this eleventh hour shot at redemption fall short of glory. It's an epic, honest portrayal of an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary situation (or, to put it less flatteringly, a coward upon whom absolute power has been thrust): such is the breath of this king. Beautifully spoken and thrillingly acted, Keith-King's is a brilliant performance.

The same complexity and dimension is to be found in all of the key players of this Richard II. Ned Coulter plays Bolingbroke as a competent and well-liked middle manager who knows at some level that he's really a fraud (he reminded me, in some indefinable way, of George W. Bush). There's never quite the supreme confidence we expect from this part; instead, there's a sense of foreboding--that victory, even if deserved, will never be lasting and will never be sweet.

Yaakov Sullivan and Richard Mawe bring both the wisdom and the impotence of old age to their portrayals of Richard's uncles Gaunt and York. Patricia Newcastle and Etain O'Malley are remarkable as his aunts (Gloucester's widow and York's wife, respectively), showing us that these women's fierce and instinctive wifely loyalty and maternal protectiveness are also the only flickers of genuine humanity in a milieu that is otherwise rife with the artifice of intrigue, politics, and power games.

Perhaps most revelatory of all is Frank Anderson's Bishop of Carlisle, who pretty much staggers us with his climactic speech, in which he curses Bolingbroke and his followers for usurping Richard's throne. I had never understood so clearly before how personal this speech is: Carlisle is talking as much about himself (and the Church) as about the King when he says:

And if you crown him, let me prophesy
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act.

This is the key to Harrington's conception of Richard II: it's an epic portrayal of a society in transition. The transformation from absolute monarchy to populist government feels like a kind of progress, but it's also fraught with peril: the dark years of discord and anarchy that lay in England's future are keenly anticipated in this production. Thus Harrington makes a thoughtful connection between the events of the play and the events his audience is living through, without sacrificing Shakespeare's meaning or intent. And--aided by his skillful company of actors--he preserves, beautifully, the play's poetry and depth.

Frog & Peach Theatre Company's Richard III hits the nail right on the head: this is as accessible and focused a production of Shakespeare's messy play as any I've ever seen. Director Lynnea Benson has cut the play masterfully, placing the emphasis squarely on Richard's delicious treachery. With the interval smartly placed right before Richard's crowning, the two parts of the play neatly correspond to his rise and then his fall.

So the first half amounts practically to a one-man show for Richard, here richly performed by the Frog & Peach's artistic director Ted Zurkowski. With relish and panache, Zurkowski's Richard takes the audience in his confidence immediately with a briskly conversational "Now is the winter of our discontent..."; and as the bodies of would-be monarchs and other assorted enemies pile up, he continues to play to us, as dangerously charming as Mack the Knife.

Zurkowski undercuts the charm with an Olivier-esque hairdo, a small hump and a useless deformed left hand: his Richard, despite his perversely appealing cunning, is never anything but a monster. And as soon as the crown rests on that badly-coiffed head, he starts to fall apart. We watch as paranoia and guilt replace chutzpah and guile; by the time this Richard arrives on Bosworth Field to face Martin Carey's oh-so-noble Earl of Richmond, we know he's done for.

Though Zurkowski's performance is shrewdly and calculatedly scene-stealing, other players do get their opportunities to shine in this production. Best is Carolyn Sullivan-Zinn as Richard's mother, wisely resisting the urge to lament, and instead creating a complex and affecting woman. Other standouts in this better-than-average ensemble are Vivien Landau as Richard's sister-in-law, Joe Corey as Richard's ally Buckingham,  and Roland Johnson as a deliberate and dignified Stanley, one of Richard's enemies.

Dan Daily's portrayal of Richard III is unforgettable: it ranks with the very best Shakespearean acting I've ever seen. Daily gives us a rich and complex reading of this most heinous of the Bard's villains. He scowls out his opening speech--"Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York"--with barely concealed contempt for his audience; and though he will shortly try to win us over with a kind of reptilian charm, his malignant hatred of everyone around him is never far from the surface. As the manifestations of his singular cruelty mount, he becomes full of himself;  in the moment of his arrogantly abhorrent proposal to wed his niece Elizabeth, all traces of humanity disappear and he emerges wholly and horrifically a monster. When he is left for dead on the battlefield at Bosworth just a few scenes later, we feel real triumph at his destruction. The glory of Henry VII's crowning has never felt so immediate.

It helps, of course, the Daily's remarkable work is matched, note for note, in a production of stunning intensity and intelligence. Directed by Shepard Sobel, this Richard III is propelled by grand events and giant personalities: an unexpectedly noble Clarence meeting his end dramatically in the Tower; a noxiously vengeful Queen Margaret, spitting out curses at her York enemies; a grimly chastened Buckingham, reeling from Richard's brutal betrayal. Sobel lets Shakespeare's gorgeous language and breathless plotting play out larger than life and creates a riveting and vivid evening of intrigue, passion, and suspense that keeps us on the edge of our seats for a full three hours. It's an extraordinary achievement.

The company is exemplary, with especially outstanding work turned in by Jonathan Peck (Buckingham), Paul Niebanck (Sir James Tyrrel), and David Toney (Clarence). All of the women in this production are terrific, too: Anna Minot is a dignified and human Duchess of York, Glynis Bell's Queen Elizabeth is fiery and proud, and Judith Roberts is heartstoppingly strong as poor wronged Queen Margaret. Rachel Botchan even succeeds in making Lady Anne's ready submission to Richard's two-faced treachery believable, no easy task. All four actresses bring real dimension to these roles: I've never seen the lamentation scene ever played so effectively.

Beowulf Borrit has designed a simple and spare unit set which, when combined with S. Ryan Schmidt's stark lighting, serves to create the perfect environment for Sobel's vision of the play. In its final moments, as Richard is left alone with his demons (which, shrewdly, are never actually shown to the audience), he sits at the edge of the stage in a single, shallow pool of light--isolated, finally, physically as he has always been emotionally.

This Richard III is a triumph for all involved, but especially for its director Sobel and its leading player Dan Daily. I urge you to head over to the Pearl Theatre Company at once and see Shakespeare the way it's meant to be done: their clear and passionate vision of this oft-performed work is not to be missed.

There have only been perhaps a dozen professional productions of Rosmersholm in New York City in the last hundred years, with the result that this powerful play by Henrik Ibsen remains relatively obscure here. So thanks are certainly in order to the Century Center's Ibsen Series for giving us a look at Rosmersholm. Their revival, sharply directed by J.C. Compton, reveals the play to be a significant one, blending a harrowing plot line with interesting political and social commentary.

The story goes like this: John Rosmer, a respected citizen, is recovering from the suicide of his late wife, who plunged off a bridge near their home about a year ago. Assisting him is the fiery young woman Rebecca West, with whom he has heretofore had only a platonic relationship; now, as Rebecca exerts more and more influence over John's political and public life, he decides he would like to marry her. But complications arise in the form of Rector Kroll, who warns Rosmer about Rebecca's radical thinking. Later, when newspaper editor Peter Mortensgaard, a man with a scandal or two in his past, appears at Rosmer's home, Rebecca is forced to confront some unsavory actions of her own.

If it sounds like soap opera, well, it is: but Rosmersholm is resolutely high-minded in its depiction of sensational behavior; it's also so well-crafted that we hang on the edge of our seats waiting to see how it all comes out.

Rebecca West, a good woman who does one terrible thing, is a smashing role: one can just imagine the likes of Meryl Streep or Stockard Channing sinking her teeth into it. Kelly Overton isn't experienced enough to pull it off; I suspect with more time to develop and hone her characterization, however, that she might correct that. Dean Harrison is a trifle wooden as Rosmer (but then that's appropriate to the role); William Broderick as Kroll and especially Tamara Daniel as the inevitable maid are quite good.

But the play's definitely the thing, here, and particularly because of its rarity on the New York stage, the Century Center production ranks as a real treat. It's performed, by the way, in the elegantly appointed ballroom above the Century Center theatre--the perfect setting for this and the rest of Ibsen's living room dramas.

Cory Einbinder's achievement in this production of Spring Awakening is nothing short of extraordinary. He's recast Wedekind's seminal symbolist tragedy as an expressionist morality play, setting it in a stark, perversely macabre universe of shadow and light, one that mirrors the dangerously repressed and hypocritical society that the play exposes. Stunningly theatrical, moodily evocative, and even a little scary at times, this Spring Awakening crackles with invention and intelligence. Einbinder is a director of exceeding promise; this show is going to be gone too soon (after just a two-week run!), so most of us will need to content ourselves with whatever he's planning to do next.

Einbinder's work also makes for a spectacular introduction to this play. Written in 1891, and first performed (in a heavily censored version) in 1905, Spring Awakening deals frankly and provokingly with the sexual awakening of a group of German adolescents. Only one of them, Melchior, seems to have a clear understanding of sex; his friend, the slightly backward Moritz, is too ashamed to even talk about it, and requires Melchior to write out a list of instructions for him rather than explain things face-to-face. Wendla, the pretty teenage girl that Melchior eventually makes love to, can't get her mother to tell her anything of the facts of life; and so when she becomes pregnant she remains ignorant of her situation. Another schoolmate, Hans Rilow, is so steeped in religious guilt over his sexual urges that his masturbation ritual resembles nothing so much as self-flagellation.

I don't want to give too much away if you don't know the play, so suffice to say that ignorance and parental disapproval and repression yield unhappy, even tragic, results for most of the characters. Only the appearance in the final moments of the play of a mysterious man who may be the Devil (but more likely is simply a living manifestation of man's free will) suggests that for at least some of Wedekind's troubled teens better times may lay ahead.

It's all rather potent, sensational stuff, even for today; one can only imagine how it must have been received in the Victorian era in which it was originally written. Einbinder helps us do exactly that, vividly, with a brooding decor inspired by the artist Edward Gorey (but, tellingly, lacking his playfulness). The photos at the top of the page give a hint, I hope, of the oppressive environment that Einbinder has provided for his young characters to grow up in; what's missing are the towering monsters that Einbinder makes of their parents and teachers, skulking colossi seven feet tall treading horribly and ominously through their charges' lives on gigantic boots that look and sound like cement blocks.

It's a gripping, compelling vision that generally illuminates Wedekind's themes. Even, as occasionally happens, when Einbinder's dazzling visual style feels at odds with the play, it never fails to arrest and disarm us.

Einbinder obviously doesn't achieve all of this on his own. Paata Uta Bekaia is credited with costumes (which are magnificent) and "additional art"; Joel Griffin is responsible for the indispensable soundscape which finds aural equivalents for Einbinder's phantasmagoric stage pictures.

The four principal characters are vividly and intelligently realized by Tim Cusack (Moritz), Max Arnaud (Melchior), Alanna Medlock (Wendla), and Grant Moninger (Hans), all of whom deftly balance childlike naiveté and adolescent angst with astonishing realism. Moninger's masturbation scene, in particular, ranks as tour de force: so painfully naked are the youngster's conflicted emotions evoked that we feel like voyeurs (though we hardly see anything at all: Einbinder and company are out to jolt our senses, not satisfy our prurience). Cusack gets a grand ghoulish moment in a graveyard in the play's final scene, as well; watch for it.

A program note tells us baldly that Spring Awakening is funded "out of the pocket of a day carpenter and his pitiful savings," which leads me to two conclusions. First, imagine what wonders Einbinder could accomplish with the bankroll he deserves. And second, imagine what passion and vision this young man must possess to have created so much with so little.

Why do we have theatre?

The easiest answer I can give you, for the next month anyway, is: see The Cherry Orchard at the Pearl Theatre Company.

It's all there: the sparkle, the glamour, the bon-mots; the laughter, the drama, the passion. The moments where you find yourself suddenly stunned--breathless--by the sheer, terrible truth of what's on stage; and the moments when you surprise yourself with a tear in each eye, from the same terrible truth. Thanks to the genius of Anton Chekhov and the dedication and talent of a remarkable corps of actors and behind-the-scenes personnel, this Cherry Orchard holds up that mirror to nature that Hamlet talked about: the play is the play of life itself, neither more nor less--but up close where we can see it.

And, to get back to my original question, where we can begin to understand it. This is a production filled with good intentions and with empathy: there are no villains here; and no heroes either--just people being human. How much there is to embrace and wonder at and love in such creatures!

The play, like most of Chekhov's work, is famously about almost nothing: Lyubov Ranevskaya, a loving but irresponsible landowner, returns to her Russian estate after five years in Paris. Lyubov and the rest of her family are hugely in debt and about to lose their home.  They are equally unable to see their way out of this situation: Lyubov and her brother Leonid spend most of the play's four acts not doing anything about their predicament; Lopachin, a speculator whose family were once serfs on Lyubov's estate, eventually buys the place with plans to cut down the cherry orchard and rent the land to summer cottagers.

So Lyubov and Leonid are by nature as ornamental but ultimately useless as the cherry orchard that dominates their property; but that's finally not what's important about the play or the production. Chekhov shows us the decay of the Russian aristocracy and all that, sure; but what The Cherry Orchard really does is show us the hearts and souls of all sorts of people. Some reach out for others in time of crisis while others pull away, retreating into themselves; some rise to the occasion and some flail badly. But they're all breathtakingly real, presented with  honesty and compassion so palpable that it almost hurts.

John Murrell's translation of The Cherry Orchard is light and spirited and contemporary: it's the most accessible rendering of one of Chekhov's works that I've ever come across. Director Joseph Hardy's staging is as natural as walking. The Pearl's acting company is superlative: perfectly cast, these thirteen artists have never been better. Joanne Camp's Lyubov is certainly the centerpiece of the production, and she is extraordinary, giving us at least three moments of transcendent perfection, the kind that bring up the goosebumps. But I'll not soon forget Dan Daily's Lopachin, seething with exasperation as Lyubov and Leonid seemingly will themselves to misapprehend his pragmatism; or Edward Seamon's bumbling old Pishchick, suddenly momentarily wise and elegant taking a final leave of his old patroness Lyubov.

And I'll be remembering and treasuring Robin Leslie Brown's savvy but wistful Carlotta; Arnie Burton's earnest student Trofimov; John Wylie's venerable Feers; and Christopher Moore's arrogant yet appealing Yasha. And I am filled with admiration for Robert Hock and Dominic Cuskern who succeed, here, in making fully dimensional (and recognizable) men of Leonid and Yepichodov--both too often played as mere caricatures.

Beowulf Borrit's simple set makes the interesting and intelligent choice of not showing us the famous cherry orchard, allowing us, instead, to see it in our mind's eye every time Lyubov or someone else gazes at it with adoration or melancholy. Irene V. Hatch's costumes are appropriate and often quite lovely, and Stephen Petrilli's lighting serves the piece beautifully.

See the Pearl's Cherry Orchard. It's the one must-see work of theatre in New York at the moment. It--almost--makes the rest feel redundant. 

Protean Theatre Company's rowdy adaptation of Moliere's The Doctor in Spite of Himself is as close to a Three Stooges comedy as I've ever seen in the theatre. Characters pummel each other constantly, often with big plastic hammers.; there's even an example of Moe's trademark two-fingers-in-the-eyes gambit. To all of this slapstick mayhem, director Owen Thompson adds burlesque clowning so broad and bawdy that Minsky himself would have blushed: leering, groping, even a simulated gynecological exam at one point.

Lest you think all of the comedy is of the physical variety, I hasten to mention that the script (adapted by Thompson from a translation by Guylaine Laperriere) brims with puns, bad jokes, anachronistic topical references, hip-hop slang and 'tude up to here. There are also, very occasionally, flashes of genuine wit. And there's a visual joke (presumably devised by set designer Rychard Curtiss) that is absolutely priceless.

Result: plentiful laughter; but the guilty kind, mostly, I fear. This Doctor In Spite of Himself may be truer to Moliere than we'd like to admit, but that doesn't make its nonstop aggressive clownishness any the less desperate: this is a show determined to entertain, whatever the cost.

Which is not to suggest that I wasn't guffawing along with the rest of the audience--I was. But that doesn't alter the fact that shtick like this--and this show is almost all shtick--works best in the hands of genuinely funny actors. A more skillful ensemble would have to work much less hard to put over The Doctor In Spite of Himself, and a better--and far funnier--time would be had by all. As it is, only Lisa Ann Goldsmith seems to have any real flair for comedy. Keith Michel, in the punishingly demanding main role of Sganarelle, works hard to get his laughs, but he never engenders our empathy and so his job is twice as difficult.

The story, by the way, is the stuff of classic farce: A lazy, drunken woodcutter named Sganarelle is mistaken for a brilliant doctor by the servants of a rich merchant whose daughter has contracted a mysterious ailment. Sganarelle embraces the sudden wealth and privilege of his new position, even if it seems to come at the expense of an inordinate amount of beatings. And he of course helps "cure" the merchant's daughter by scheming to unite her with her true love.

As I've said it's diverting, though on the broad and vulgar side. Thompson might want to rethink some of the "faggot" jokes (apropos Sganarelle's actual trade) as well as tone down the stereotyped street talk of the servants (mightn't it be funnier if the rich kids were steeped in hip-hop culture instead?).

Filing out of the Bouwerie Lane Theatre at intermission for The Merchant of Venice, I was struck by how skillfully William Shakespeare and director Eve Adamson had pulled me into their story. We'd watched as Portia had suffered while the Princes of Morocco and Arragon competed for her hand, and sighed happily when her true love Bassanio arrived to correctly solve the riddle of the chests and won her. We'd witnessed Jessica's escape from her bitter father Shylock with her beloved Lorenzo. And we'd seen Shylock himself make his vengeful bargain with the merchant Antonio, demanding a pound of flesh if the 3,000 ducats he'd lent the merchant were not repaid on time. Now, as the first part of the play ends, comes news that Antonio's fleet is entirely lost, and he will be unable to pay the debt to Shylock. And we're thinking, in spite of ourselves: what's going to happen next?

Such is the magic that Adamson and Jean Cocteau Repertory work here: they come to The Merchant of Venice as if new, and they make us see it--really see it, I mean--for the first time. What's revealed is an enchanting comic fairy tale romance on the order of Midsummer Night's Dream or Much Ado About Nothing, filled with ardent lovers, poetic flights of fancy, foolish devices, disguises, and tricks. The Venetians, save Antonio and Shylock, are young and full of themselves; Portia and Nerissa are smart and spunky and obviously very much in love with Bassanio and Gratiano.

The heinous villain of this fairy tale--for there must be one--is, of course, Shylock, and he is presented here, entirely unapologetically, as exactly that. He's a Jew, but he could just as well be an Evil Hun or an Inscrutable Oriental--it's the mysterious otherness that matters, not the specific ethnicity. Harris Berlinsky plays him with the same treacherous relish that he might give to Richard III or Iago, which is precisely right: Shylock exists solely to play Wolf to Portia's Red Riding Hood, and even though Shakespeare supplies him with a couple of terrific speeches that add a layer of complexity to his character, he's never meant to be anything other than evil. And--because this is a comedy--we're always conscious that he's ultimately no more dangerous than Much Ado's Don John or The Tempest's Caliban.

Which is not to say that Shakespeare's--or Berlinsky's--portrait of the Jew Shylock is not nevertheless problematic. Of course it is: the difficulty of this play in 2000 is that its four-centuries-old attitudes cannot sit comfortably with us. Adamson deals with the problem by transporting us resolutely to 1600, allowing us to see the play very much as it was seen by Shakespeare's audiences--which is to say, as a rousing, crowd-pleasing entertainment, an edge-of-your-seat romantic adventure. We should take Shylock and his bloodthirsty demand for a pound of flesh only as seriously as we take Portia, whose father devised that crackpot scheme of the gold, silver, and lead chests, and who successfully impersonates a learned judge without being recognized by her husband.

Berlinsky is, then, a deliciously nasty Shylock, albeit one who can disarm us when he turns on the rhetoric (as in "Hath not a Jew eyes..."). He stands alongside an excellent cast, with Elise Stone, as Portia--a portrait of unassailable goodness--offering the most memorable characterization. Craig Smith's melancholy Antonio, Jolie Garrett's headstrong Bassanio, Jason Crowl's loquacious Gratiano, and Angela Madden's pragmatic Nerissa are also beautifully played. And Mark Rimer, assaying both of Portia's unsuccessful princely suitors, is hilarious.

Robert Klingelhoefer's light-hearted unit set adds to the ambience, as do Margaret McKowen's slightly dotty costumes, Eve Adamson and Harold Mulanix's appropriate lighting, and Charles Berigan's clever musical score. It all makes for a surprisingly fresh and--yes--charming Merchant of Venice, one that reminds us that if a play like this is worth doing nowadays, it's worth doing right, free of baggage and apology. Bravo to Adamson and the Jean Cocteau for having so much respect for their audience. Even in this age of political correctness, aren't we able to tell the difference between a real Jew and an absurdly fake one?

The story, as you may know, revolves around Alceste, a man whose impatience with the hypocrisies and gamesmanship of society has led him to renounce it entirely. ("No. No Exceptions. I loathe everyone.") Alceste determines to make himself the misanthrope of the play's title, speaking only the truth no matter how harsh, and no matter the consequence. When he insults a preening nobleman named Oronte, giving an honest opinion of the quality of a ghastly sonnet composed and recited by that gentleman, he winds up on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

The only person that Alceste claims to love is the lady Celimene, in spite of the fact that she is the darling of the social set he most abhors. Celimene is renowned for her brittle and quick wit, which repulses Alceste; he berates her for her "corruption" and willfully mistrusts her fidelity. When Arsinoe, who is also in love with Alceste, repeats some nasty gossip about Celimene, their relationship is put to a severe, perhaps final test.

McLucas tells the familiar story with style--panache, even--and with a sensitivity and depth that is often lacking from other renderings of Moliere. His Alceste, brilliantly played by Christopher Black, is at once hero and villain of his play (and, indeed, of his life): his disgust with the insincere poseurs who surround him, and his desire to live honestly and simply, are entirely worthy and admirable; but the unfettered zeal of his cause, and--especially--his hypocrisy in his own dealings with Celimene, make him as big a fool as all of his self-appointed enemies; as big a fool, to be sure, as his fellow title characters in Moliere's canon (q.v., The Miser, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Imaginary Invalid, etc.).

Celimene, embodied here to perfection by a radiant Angela Madden, is Alceste's match and more. When she and Alceste at last confront the troubled nature of their love for one another, real sparks fly: Madden and Black show us that something authentic and important is at stake here. Coming after four acts of impassioned but empty playacting--which is precisely what Celimene's sniping wit and Alceste's misanthropy amount to--it's almost a shock. As The Misanthrope draws to its conclusion, it's not at all clear what lies ahead for Alceste or Celimene.

If Madden and Black make their characters more human and three-dimensional than we are generally accustomed to seeing them, the rest of the company contents itself with broad, outsized performances that are enormously fun and entirely appropriate. They are aided, invaluably, by costumer Robin I. Shane, who has provided the men with ribbons and walking sticks and wigs that are sight gags all by themselves. (Today's high fashion will undoubtedly make our descendants roll in the aisles three hundred years from now, too.) Jolie Garrett and Harris Berlinsky are particularly foppish (and foolish) as a pair of marquises who fancy themselves rivals for Celimene's affection. Jason Crowl is hilarious as the whiny Oronte; Taylor Bowyer has fun as both Celimene's and Alceste's servants; and Craig Smith, looking for all the world like Captain Hook on shore leave, is unforgettable in what amounts to a cameo as the Guard sent to arrest Alceste.

Tim Deak and Jennifer Herzog are appealing as the younger and more reasonable Philinte and Eliante, giving us, gratifyingly, a romantic couple to root for. And Elise Stone is blisteringly funny as Celimene's rival Arsinoe; her scene with Madden, spewing insults at one another with honeyed venom, is a comic highlight. (Arsinoe to Celemine: "But many would believe, untrue or true./You must seem chaste; merely being chaste just won't do.")

McLucas's staging is swift and sleek, bringing the show in at just over an hour and a half. It's a wise, wonderful, witty evening, that may just make Moliere seem new. 

After their initial forays into tragedy, Andromaque and The Wild Ass's Skin, the last thing I expected from the fine young theatre company known as Handcart Ensemble was a raucous, high-spirited comedy. But happily that's precisely what they've got for us in their third New York production, a new translation of Carlo Goldoni's farce La Lacondiera titled The Mistress of the Inn. Briskly staged by Adam Houghton, and deftly played by a cast of eight, this is a bright and funny entertainment, one that solidifies Handcart's reputation for worthy, adventurous fare.

The story of The Mistress of the Inn centers around Mirandolina, a smart and self-assured young woman who, as the title suggests, runs an inn in a town in Italy. Currently on hand there are the Marquis of Forlipopli, an impoverished but very noble nobleman, and the Count of Albafiorta, who is less refined but has plenty of money. These two are pursuing Mirandolina rather foolishly, with their offers of protection and expensive gifts reluctantly accepted but never requited. Also in the picture is Fabrizio, Mirandolina's servant; he, too, is in love with her.

The plot spins into motion with the arrival of the pompous cavalier Ripafratta, a young braggart who proudly proclaims disinterest in all women. Mirandolina decides to punish the arrogant Ripafratta by making him fall head over heels in love with her, something she is able to accomplish in short order. Complicating matters somewhat are Ortensia and Dejanira, two actresses posing as noblewomen who arrive at the inn the same day.

The fun comes from watching Mirandolina bait her line and then reel the sputtering and fuming Ripafratta in. Additional amusement is provided by the poseur Marquis and the ostentatious Count, as they fall over themselves and each other to win Mirandolina and, during a temporary respite, the visiting Ortensia and Dejanira. It's all the stuff of classical farce, with a happy ending guaranteed for our heroine and each of the men in her life getting exactly what he deserves.

It's a script loaded with grand comic opportunities, and this ensemble generally makes the most of them. Kevin Ashworth is a little unsteady in places as the Marquis, but he gets the overblown pomposity exactly right and he's quite funny in some of the more physical scenes. Ian Gonzalez is a suave and handsome Count, and earns his share of laughs as well. Meredith Higbee (Dejanira) and especially Carolyn Stone (Ortensia) are fine as the actresses, while Veronique Enos is an appealingly self-possessed Mirandolina. Tod Mason is a splendid foil for her as Fabrizio.

The real stars of this production, though, are Handcart stalwarts Barrett Ogden and J. Scott Reynolds, as Ripafratta and his servant. Ogden, who gets better every time I see him act, is masterful as the proud cavalier, earning his comeuppance with his unchecked obnoxiousness in Act One, and then bearing it, with absolutely no dignity whatsoever, in Act Two (see photo, above). Quite simply, Ogden's Ripafratta suffers as no mortal ever has, to hilarious effect.

Even funnier is Reynolds, as Ripafratta's valet. Outfitted absurdly like some renegade doughboy, and loping weirdly behind and around his master with ironic subservience, Reynolds's every move is side-splitting. His chemistry with Ogden is terrific, too: their comic pairing as master and servant recalls, say, Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein.

 Add to this mix the sure comic touches provided by director Adam Houghton and property mistress Christy Summerhays--most notably a tray loaded with the tiniest wine goblets ever contemplated--and The Mistress of the Inn is indeed as deliciously lightheaded as one could hope. Kudos to all involved: I can't wait to see what the Handcart Ensemble comes up with next.

The first half, before intermission, is sometimes rough going: the single-minded, unheroic descent of King Leontes into jealousy-induced madness is awfully hard to take. Leontes, ruler of Sicilia, imagines that his wife Hermione has been unfaithful to him with his best friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia; he eventually drives Polixenes away and sentences Hermione to death. Though her sentence is commuted when Leontes at last sees the error of his ways, the news of the death of their son kills her almost immediately thereafter. The dense dramatics of all this are, as I said, tough to deal with, unless you remember that they exist simply to (a) give the actor playing Leontes lots of intricate soliloquies to speak, and (b) set in motion the complex and implausible plot that Shakespeare will so masterfully unfurl and then neatly tie together in the airier, sweeter second half of the piece.

And how airy and sweet it is, especially in the hands of Kulick and his accomplished ensemble! The main story of Leontes's daughter, Perdita, and her romance with Polixenes's son Prince Florizel, resounds touchingly and refreshingly with the innocence and exhilaration of youth: Erica N. Tazel and (especially) Jesse Pennington are as appealing a pair of juveniles as any director might hope to conjure. The subplots surrounding Perdita's adoptive father and his clownish son, meanwhile, are played to the hilt, with Bill Buell (pere) and Michael Stuhlbarg (fils) mining the comic potential of their roles without ever straining or becoming annoying.

And then there's Bronson Pinchot, in the relatively minor role of Autolycus, a petty thief who helps push things along with the merest of motivations throughout the second half of The Winter's Tale. Pinchot, who is the production's biggest name by virtue of his years on the sitcom Perfect Strangers, turns out to also be its biggest asset: his Autolycus, appropriately enough, steals the show right out from under its main characters. When Pinchot plays, the audience has fun: unbounded by any reality other than the one he creates in each moment on stage, he morphs from crafty beggar to zealous courtier to bawdy balladeer with the cunning and speed of a living and breathing Warner Brothers cartoon. Yet somehow the theatrics are never cheap; the Bard's spirit thrives in Pinchot, who is clearly doing--here, at last--what he was born to do.

So, too, is director Brian Kulick. His emphasis here is on storytelling: he takes the helm of this difficult play commandingly and assuredly; his certainty that everything is going to come out nicely is both apparent and infectious. The play is sharply cast with actors who speak the poetry of the piece beautifully (standouts include Randy Danson as a passionate Paulina, Jonathan Hadary as an earnest Antigonus, and Henry Stram as a passionate and earnest Camillo; Keith David, as Leontes, soliloquizes prettily but unemotionally, however). And, behold: this is a Winter's Tale to delight the eye as well as the ear. Riccardo Hernandez's stunning, elegant set, framed by a giant gilded painting (in Sicilia) and an astonishing grove of a dozen manicured trees (in Bohemia), serves the production masterfully; so do Anita Yavich's appropriate though unspecific costumes and Kenneth Posner's lovely lighting.

So surrender to the beauty of the verse and the setting (I mean the natural one in the Park), don't fret too much about the sometimes-lugubrious first act, and revel in the blissful serenity of The Winter's Tale. Summer nights were made for exactly this sort of magic.

Half the people in my row failed to return for the second half of Troilus & Cressida, and I can't say that I blamed them: this 3 1/2-hour- long marathon from Theatre for a New Audience is, more than anything else, dull. It's directed by the celebrated Sir Peter Hall and it's a virtually uncut and generally uncompromised production of a Shakespearean work that almost never gets done, so there are some academic reasons to sit through it, to be sure. But there's usually a good reason why plays almost never get done, and it has to do with their quality. Forgive me, Bardophiles, but Troilus & Cressida simply isn't very good. 

Which isn't to say that with substantial cuts and imposition of a strong point of view about what it's trying to say about war, politics, and love (its three main subjects), it couldn't succeed. Alas, Sir Peter has done neither of these things. According to he show's publicist, Sir Peter cut just 50 lines from a very long text; I wonder why he bothered. And he certainly hasn't provided much in the way of focus to this production. Instead, he seems determined to remain entirely objective about the play, presumably so that audience members may make up their own minds about what Shakespeare wanted to accomplish. That's a worthy aim, I guess, but it makes the thing almost relentlessly unengaging; even the battle scenes feel staged and artificial, like slow-motion scenes from a martial arts movie. There's no one to root for and nothing to care about--except, perhaps, how much longer until the finale.

There's one memorable performance in the show, Tony Church's wily and articulate Pandarus, the procurer who brings the title characters together for their brief, thwarted affair. It's a pleasure to hear the play's verse trip off his tongue. And some will like Andrew Weems's caustically vile Thersites (the "deformed and scurillous Greek" who speaks for the common man in Troilus & Cressida); think Kramer (from "Seinfeld"), disenfranchised and impoverished in ancient Greece.

Other performances of merit include Philip Goodwin's Ulysses and David Conrad's noble Hector; Tricia Paoluccio's Cressida shows occasional flashes of inspiration as well. But Joey Kern is at sea as Troilus--uncomfortable with the language and entirely lacking the sexual combustibility that his character requires.

Tom Rowan's production of Twelfth Night at Theater Ten Ten is a delight from start to finish. Rowan has located Illyria, the magical island where this comic romance takes place, in the Italian Riviera in the 1950s; but the setting is really just a frame of reference, reflected in Kari Martin's stylishly rustic unit set and especially in Erin Billings's attractive period costumes. The feel of the piece is as timeless as it must be, and if the emphasis here is on the comedy, there's real satisfaction to be had as the love triangle involving Orsino, Olivia, and Viola works itself out.

The story, for those who don't know it, begins when Viola arrives on Illyria following a shipwreck in which she believes her twin brother Sebastian has been lost. Viola decides to disguise herself as a young man, called Cesario, and enters the service of the local Duke, Orsino. Her duties mostly turn out to be the wooing of Olivia, the lady with whom Orsino is infatuated. Naturally, Olivia has no interest whatsoever in Orsino, but is quickly taken with Cesario (Viola). Meanwhile, Viola finds herself falling in love with Orsino.

Frequently interrupting all of this are Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's Falstaffian uncle, and his addlepated chum Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is halfheartedly wooing Olivia himself. With Olivia's saucy servant Maria, these two also delight in tormenting Olivia's priggish major-domo Malvolio, most notably by deceiving him into believing that Olivia is in love with him. Eventually Sebastian arrives on the scene unharmed, and things work themselves out. Under Rowan's deft, light hand, nothing important ever seems to be at stake, with the result that a good time is had by all--with the possible exception of poor Malvolio, who stalks off vowing revenge.

The comedy is paramount in this production, particularly the rowdy shenanigans of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, here portrayed with enormous spirit and panache by Lou Tally and Aaron Morgan. Tally's booming voice and jovial good-humor more or less anchors the play, while the gangly, limber Morgan recalls Ray Bolger with his expert physical clowning. Watch him, for example, in his duel with Viola, especially when Sir Toby at last removes the sheath from his sword: sheer terror is seldom this funny.

James Doherty's Malvolio also grabs his share of the laughs, notably in the famous "letter" scene, when he is fooled into thinking that Olivia loves him. Also contributing much to the general merriment are Diane Buglewicz, in a very sensible turn as the maid Maria; Miles Phillips, as Feste, a wandering minstrel whose singing is entirely pleasing; Meghan Shea, as a sturdy, likable Viola; Paul L. Coffey, just as appealing as the fun-loving naif Sebastian; and Judith Jarosz, wickedly sophisticated as Olivia. Jarosz is terrific in her scenes with both Shea and Coffey, by the way; I love how she makes Olivia into a woman who's been around the block a few times, rather than the pallid, lovelorn creature we're accustomed to seeing. She's more than a match for Chris Meyer's sexy, moonstruck Orsino; and the play's happy ending feels more satisfying than usual for it.

Jason Wynn has contributed some lovely songs for Feste to sing--honestly pretty original compositions, these, worthy of a rehearing. In this Twelfth Night, they are indeed the food of love--a feast within a feast, in this effervescent, magical concoction of romance and comedy. 

How do you make something that was outrageously and outlandishly objectionable and obscene a hundred years ago into something similarly provocative today? Christopher Carter Sanderson and his Gorilla Repertory Theatre have found an entirely successful solution with their production Ubu is King!, which re-imagines Alfred Jarry's early surrealist satire as a thoroughly contemporary romp in the park. I mean this literally, by the way: Ubu is performed in Washington Square Park, one of Gorilla's traditional stamping grounds. And as played by ten high-energy and high-spirited actors, watched over by director Sanderson (himself on the drums), the emphasis is entirely on having fun. 

Sanderson's approach to Ubu is, I think, the best possible one. Jarry's play, with its repeated "merdes" and deliberately offensive dialogue and plotting, nevertheless barely registers as mildly naughty in this a world where There's Something About Mary is considered mainstream comedy. Wrapping Ubu up in a free-wheeling commedia dell'arte sensibility, complete with a road-box containing props and masks and a giant phallus and buttocks for the actor playing Ubu, is grandly satisfying. And if some of the play's satirical jabs still manage to draw a little blood, well, so much the better.

The best of Sanderson's staging ideas is to have a different actor play Ubu in each of the plays ten scenes. This allows all ten of the players to get his or her moment in the spotlight, and they all rise to the occasion with alacrity. (It also means that everyone gets a crack at shrewish Mama Ubu, as well as various other characters such as Captain Manure and King Wank.) My favorite Ubus were Andre-Phillippe Mistier and disarmingly petite Aedin Moloney; and I loved Eric Dean Scott's Manure, so to speak.

The plot, by the way, revolves around Ubu's plan to murder King Wank and seize the crown of Poland for himself. Ubu turns out to be such a vile and tyrannical king that everyone eventually turns against him, and the play ends with Ubu heading off to a distant island to start over. (Guess which island.)  The story serves principally as occasion for broad comedy of all sorts, ranging from foolish slapstick to scatological humor to inevitable puns like the King's declaration that "Wank has its privileges." Trust me: the audience is having such a good time that no one bothers to groan.