Off-Broadway: Painting Churchs & other revivals

Painting Churches

The Keen Company at Theater Row

written by Tina Howe

directed by Carl Forsman

Critics tend to thump for new plays over revivals, so I want to take a second to applaud the fine revivals of plays by American women right now. Edson's sharp Wit plays at MTC, which Vogel matches with How I Learned to Drive at Second Stage, and now Howe gets a nod from the Keen Company with Painting Churches. All three prove their stageworthiness by themselves. But it's good to see plays that were successful in their initial run get remounted. The productions serve to canonize the works and their writers, strengthening a modern tradition (which is larger and less rigid than a school or genre) of women writing great work. And it brings these plays from the '80s & '90s to a subsequent generation of theatergoers. I doubt these three shows are an incipient movement, but wouldn't it be cool if they heralded revivals of Fornes, Wasserstein, Congdon, and many others?

Of the three, Tina Howe's 1983 play is less dramaturgically flashy than Wit or Drive, presenting its three-actor family drama in a standard format of linear episodic realism. Its subject, a bohemian daughter who paints a portrait of her daffy parents, (wealthy Bostonians who have friends named “Spence Cabot”), offers minimal tension. Howe's style is elusive & challenging, subtly shifting dramatic focus along with audience sympathy from one character to another. A dreamy neoclassical set (Beowulf Boritt) captures her impressionistic tone, while the casual delivery of the actors (Kathleen Chalfant, John Cunningham, and Kate Turnbull) slowly plumbs deep pools of loneliness. Carl Forsman, however, directs the play with a forthright realism, perhaps a mistaken attempt to counterbalance Howe's limpid warmth with comedic whimsy. But Howe's lovely and humane play pulls loose from Forsman's anchoring, proving itself a sturdy script worth the revival.

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Painting Churches plays at Theater Row, closing on April 7. Tickets?

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Broadway: Wit

photo credit: Joan Marcus

MTC at the Friedman Theater

written by Margaret Edson

directed by Lynne Meadow

January 27, 2012

Cynthia Nixon sheds the glamour of her Sex and the City fame in her latest Broadway appearance. For the sharp, gripping revival of Wit, Nixon has shaved her hair clean off—scalp, eyebrows, and all—and her sole costume is a hospital gown that shows off not svelte calves capped by Manolos but spindly legs and bare feet. Nixon has spent most of the last decade-plus onstage in safe, middlebrow respectability, epitomized by her Rabbit Hole turn as a grieving mother, a role that was pure award bait (it won her the '05 Tony and Nicole Kidman an Oscar nomination in '10). Wit, with its cancer-battle plot, would seem to be more of the same. But Nixon and director Lynne Meadow prove that Margaret Edson's drama deserves its Pulitzer; the show, in turn, pushes them to find new vigor, intelligence, and boldness in themselves

In treating a woman dying of cancer, Wit refuses to fall back on the emotional safety of melodrama. The central role lets a middle-aged actress display dry humor, rigorous intellect, and the independence of a woman who's foregone a family for her career and excelled without apology. Nixon relishes the part. Maybe it's out of respect for the subject, but she avoids probing the character's emotional wounds (her usual approach to stagework) until the play's final scenes, when the displays of feeling have been earned. Meadow also refrains from her typically maximal style of direction: instead, she presents a black stage with a few skeletally white pillars, an absence of sound effects, and a finely clipped pace. This last quality, plus the work's intellectual rigor, makes the 100-minute, intermissionless drama neither exhausting nor brooding. Wit confronts the fact of human suffering with strength and proves itself a substantial drama.

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Wit plays at the Friedman Theater, closing on March 11. Tickets?

Glenn Beck is Right! or, My Obligatory Spider-Man Post

Glenn Beck saw Spider-Man, twice, & it doesn't surprise me too much that he lurved it. He's so obviously into spectacle: think of his beloved blackboards! Whatever his flaws, the man knows that entertaining the crowd helps to get your message across. So yep, he digs opera and he enjoys splashy Broadway musicals like La Cage aux Folles.*

I don't watch or listen to Beck's shows, so this is my first real experience with his straw-man M.O. At one point, he adopts a snooty, vaguely French accent that's meant to be a New York theater critic. Beck-as-critic has never heard of Bono, disparages rock music, and looks down his nose at comic books. Now I'm existential proof that theater critics can enjoy rock music & comics.**

But I also partly agree with Beck's point. For one thing, yes, there are Broadway musicals that rock out. But the genre's stylistic mainstream is still bemoaning how the Beatles edged West Side Story off the Billboard charts. The fact that we still distinguish rock musicals from … what, “conventional musicals”? says something. So does the fact that it took thirty years for punk rock to go from CBGBs to the St. James. And the genre has made few attempts, such as In the Heights, to assimilate hip-hop into its idiom.

And another thing: conventional American drama is still beholden to realism. At its best (like Ruined) it's socially relevant, a throwback to Ibsen; more often, it's domestic dramas like August: Osage County and Rabbit Hole. There are few successful shows that couldn't be translated easily into a movie. In the context of popular American dramas & musicals, a sci-fi superhero work of fantasy like Spider-Man really is alien.

I'm also surprised and impressed at Beck's reading of Spider-Man. He notes the that Spider-Man's powers derive from an atheist scientist's government-funded experiment, then points out that the Daily Bugle's demagoguery supports the scientist & condemns the superhero. Is the show as politically conservative as that? Despite reading the handful of reviews & talking to attendees, I couldn't say. Anyhow, regardless of his accuracy, by putting the show's content into its cultural context, Beck does the job of a critic. That's work that none of the (debatably premature) critics have done; they've mostly just lambasted the show for its dramaturgical problems.

My point is, resistance to Spidey within the theater community is a lot more complex than schadenfreude at the hubris of moneyed producers & starry creators. I have read intelligent theater critic takes Spider-Man down, pointing out valid flaws in the hopes that the critique might change the system, its tastes, & its tendencies. But (apart from Glenn Beck, of all people!) I haven't read or seen anyone celebrating how unconventional Spider-Man is or analyzing its content as well as its style. The circus of money and injuries have distracted us from asking some basic critical questions about the show and its context in the world and community.

Finally, lest you think I've turned coat and become a Glenn Beck booster, here's a final point. The asshole checks his text messages during the show! Then he shows the text message to your wife, so she can cackle at a dramatically weighty moment?! That's some shabby, juvenile behavior.


* Surprised at this? Nah. The show's parody of gayness is broad enough that a conservative can laugh at it rather than with it.

 ** Here's hoping I can write off my comic book purchases as work-related research this fiscal year!

Read Rebeck's Speech on Female Playwrights

Earlier this week, Theresa Rebeck gave the keynote address for ART/New York's vendor awards. And she killed, giving a hard-boiled lecture on female playwrights in American theater. Read it over your morning coffee; it'll tell you more about the state of the art than any feature you'll skim in the weekend Arts & Leisure section of the NYTimes.

Most of her speech is tough-minded and anecdotal. But she backs up her experiences with facts. An excerpt to whet your appetite:

Generally, over the last 25 years the number of plays produced that were written by women seems to have vacillated between 12 and 17 percent.

This is a disastrous statistic, and it is related to another disastrous statistic, which is the number of women writers and directors in Hollywood. This year 6 percent of films were directed by women, and 8 percent of produced screenplays were written by women, or women had a shared credit on them. That means 88 percent of all plays were written by men, 94 percent of all movies were directed by men, and 92 percent of all movies were written by men.

Women playwrights like myself have a lot of anecdotal evidence to support some pretty coherent theories about why this is the case. People in the power structure seem more mystified and often they don’t seem sure that there is a problem. (One of them actually said to me, not to long ago, “But Theresa, where ARE the women playwrights?” Seriously, he looked me in the face and said that.) Several artistic directors have expressed concern at the idea of 'quotas,' they really don’t like the word 'quota.' I don’t like that word either. Another word I don’t like is 'discrimination' and, 'censorship,' and I wish I could get them to dislike those words as much as they dislike 'quotas.' 'Boys club' is another couple of words I could very well live without. But since there is so much murky territory in language, I think this discussion of numbers is very useful.

Earlier in the speech, she points out a hard irony: “Back in 1918, before women had the right to vote, the percentage of new plays in New York written by women was higher. It was higher before we had the vote.”

In the spirit of fairness, Rebeck also notes that the '09/'10 New York season does offer a number of very good plays by women (and incidentally omits a few, like Suzan-Lori Parks' current show at the Public and Sheila Callaghan's upcoming one at the Womens' Project). Her list includes some of the best shows of the season.

Go see them. See the plays that women write, talk about them to your friends (especially those in artistic management!), interview the writers and build features around their work. Pay attention to this speech, circulate it among theater artists and audiences, and work on changing the facts it presents. It's the 21st century; time to act like it.

The Last Cargo Cult (The Public Theater)

The Last Cargo Cult

The Public Theater

December 5, 2009

Mike Daisey (writer)

Jean Michele Gregory (director)

In The Last Cargo Cult, Mike Daisey attacks a simple idea—money—from several angles. In a delightfully pinko series of slices and thrusts, Daisey detaches bills from their economic value simply by using words (which are also abstractions, right?), notes that it's illegal to burn a US dollar but not the American flag, and has ushers hand out the cash he's paid by the Public then asks the audience to decide if he's earned it.

Alone onstage with his yellow legal pad—but abetted backstage by director Jean Michele Gregory and a team of designers—Daisey is simply a storyteller, but an incredibly gifted one. He's got a knack for taking his own measure through remarkably candid self-disclosure. But he's less the heir to Spalding Grey—the resemblance is only formal—than to Kurt Vonnegut. A hilarious and dyspeptic observer of the human animal, Daisey weighs with equal irony a picayune moment in his marriage to Gregory and the mob behavior of hedge fund managers during last September's TARP bailout. 

Much of Cult describes Daisey's expedition to the South Pacific, where he met a tribe that uses cell phones but not money and worships a semi-mythical American GI in the form of a volcano. But the work is vitally political too; it broaches the taboo fact that on September 12, 2008, the world's economy nearly collapsed. Despite that seismic catastrophe, Americans do not have a post-9/12 mindset. Daisey means to provide a catharsis for our economic near-death experience. His success shouldn't be measured in the cash that audiences return to him but in the paroxysms of our laughter.

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The Last Cargo Cult plays at the Public Theater (425 Lafayette Street, betw. E. 4th & Astor Place), closing on December 13. Tickets?

American Treasure (13P)

American Treasure

13P at the Paradise Factory

November 28, 2009

Julia Jarcho (playwright & director) 

Julia Jarcho has written and directed a thriller about the blood curse of American history. A postmodern plot lifts its set-up from Dashiell Hammett—a waif asks a PI to find her sister's killer—but their search through history gets well and truly weird, more Pynchon than Chandler. It's not a spoiler to reveal that the theme of American Treasure is the genocide of America's native people, or that the spirit that animates this script is, in the end, an enigma.

Or it ought to be. American Treasure is compelling stuff, but it's also proof that playwrights should rarely direct their own scripts. With its fragmentary scenes and hopscotch structure, American Treasure should hurtle along like an Indiana Jones movie, albeit one written by Stephen King. But Jarcho saps her script by double- and triple-casting the actors, maybe to save cash or maybe cuz that's modern convention. But more actors would lend the conspiracy weight; in this show, some actors need to be hiding knowledge.

Still, I don't blame the performers. Jenny Seastone Stern, at least, has an uncanny presence that fits the show's tone perfectly (after her perfs here & in The Bereaved, I can't wait to see her again). Aaron Landsman, however, gets in the script's way, and ends up looking tense and confused. He doesn't communicate the double-meanings and dramatic ironies that the dialogue's packed with. But another director could've guided him better.

All this adds up to a stiff climax, which has Jarcho busily underlining the play's message instead of playing up the riddle of history. To say that American genocide is literally unspeakable makes a good graduate thesis but it's tough theater—although the lovely set, designed by Jason Simms to look remarkably like a human diorama at the Museum of Natural History, is itself a sort of winking clue that ironies can be staged. Jarcho's script gives me the heebie-jeebies; it's worth a read. But onstage, the mystery is missed.

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American Treasure plays at the Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street, betw. Second Ave & the Bowery), closing on December 12. Tickets?

Photo credit: Rob Strong

Or, (Women's Project)

Or,
Women's Project
November 11, 2009
Liz Duffy Adams (playwright)
Wendy McClellan (director)

The ebullient Or, (comma included) is a period drama, a sex farce, a spy thriller, a backstage comedy, even a bit of a feminist burlesque. That Or, can be so many things without spinning apart speaks to the strength of its 17th-century protagonist, Aphra Behn. The ex-spy was the first Englishwoman to make an independent living as a poet. So playwright Liz Duffy Adams dreams up a pivotal night in which Behn must compose her first play while handling two lovers (one of each sex) as well as a former contact with intel on a plot against England.

Adams plainly adores her heroine. Lucky she's got Maggie Siff as her indomitable lead. Siff's got perfect control over her pale face, strong jaw, and hard brow, which give silent expression to every thought. She's also a generous actor, listening visibly to her scene partners. Together, Adams and Siff give us a woman who is cool, intelligent, and devoted to her work—she never forgets herself even during lovemaking. As an agent too, she's a consummate playwright, appraising her contact's motivation and assessing the holes in his plot like she's his dramaturg.

The only problem is, Adams' exuberance threatens to derail her own dramaturgy. She draws a comparison between the 1660s and 1960s, but stretches it too far sometimes and finally drops it altogether. The confusion of genres means director Wendy McClellan must switch tones abruptly, and she doesn't always finesse it. But the biggest problem is that Behn doesn't actually do much except write, leaving other characters to do her dirty work. Uncharacteristically, she dithers over betraying her contact, and the plot demands she must literally sacrifice her spycraft for her art. Anyhow, Adams' strength is her dialogue: she deploys subtext deftly, exploring the 17th-century fondness for double-meaning in a lyrically modern idiom.

Adams and Siff's vivacious Behn so dominates Or, that it's easy to forget the rest of the show. A pair of actors play a dozen extra roles, complete with quick-changes—Kelly Hutchinson's turn as Nell Gwynn, a sort of 17th-century Marianne Faithful, is especially delightful. The design elements cohere beautifully, with a set and costumes just sumptuous enough, their bright colors underscored by deft lighting and adding to the high spirit. Or, is a juicy, overstuffed delight, a rococo concoction of sex, spies, and stagecraft.

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Or, plays at the Women's Project (424 West 55th Street, betw. Ninth & Tenth Ave.), closing on December 13.

Americana Kamikaze (PS 122)

Americana Kamikaze
PS 122

October 28, 2009
Kenneth Collins
William Cusick (co-creators)

Americana Kamikaze (teaser) from Temporary Distortion on Vimeo.

I'm not into horror, mostly because I don't find fear too thrilling (mostly it's just stressful). But Temporary Distortion's Americana Kamikaze offers the sort of scare that I imagine others find in the genre. After a quick shock or two early on, this cutting-edge merger of stage acting and video drops the standard kit of scares. Instead, creators Kenneth Collins and William Cusick build a sort of dramatic hall of mirrors designed to unsettle the rational mind.

Collins and Cusick leave just enough traditional dramaturgy to keep the audience engaged. The plot's got several characters, and it does come to a climax. It sees a Japanese salaryman (Ryosuke Yamada) slowly losing his grip after having witnessed an uncanny attack by a succubus upon a couple in a subway station. But this straightforward description erases what's so cool about Kamikaze: its structure is shaped like an infinity sign.

The play cuts back and forth across time, and the characters relate dreams and urban legends, but there's no narrative signposts to help you orient yourself in the story. Yamada's unhinged everyman doesn't provide an anchor for the literal-minded either. He's got the draggy monotone of someone whose mind has been befogged by his glimpse of horror. Kamikaze is the dramatic equivalent of an MC Escher print: your mind can't find the point of focus.

It's not all great, even for those who like their horror cerebral and their theater hermetic. When the show breaks its sleek modern atmosphere—as it does in an ironic parody of a sad-sack karaoke song—its strength and focus ebb. And a subplot involving an American couple seems lifted from another genre altogether. But on the whole, Kamikaze is one seriously disturbing show, a 21st century haunted house for the avant-garde.

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Americana Kamikaze plays at PS 122 (150 First Avenue, betw. E. 9th & E. 10th St.), closing on November 14.

Embraceable Me (Theater Row)

Embraceable Me
Theater Row
October 26, 2009
Victor L. Cahn (writer)
Eric Parness (director)

It's a truism that goes all the way back to the Greeks: drama requires conflict. And yes, Embraceable Me has an overt conflict, a version of the When Harry Met Sally struggle to shift from friendship into romance. But the problem with this show is, the opposites-attract characters of Allison and Edward (the chemistry-free duo of Scott Barrow and Keira Naughton) are too amiable to strike sparks. They remark on (but don't wrestle with) job frustration and romantic disappointment. Does she drink too much? He may think so … or he may just be teasing. Did loveless parents screw him up? Perhaps, but it's vague. The script shies away from thorny emotions and discomfiting actions (though to be fair, so do the actors). When one finally does muster up enough bitterness to insult the other, she uses the limp epithet “icicle.” A scene of vicious rancor would've gone a long way, building momentum and enlivening the characters.

That, in turn, would've given the illusion of something at stake. As it is, I can't tell what drew the company to the script, or why Cahn felt compelled to write it. Certainly, no one seems inspired. Parness's direction consists of fussy blocking around Sarah Brown's cluttered set (I wish she'd jettisoned the bookcases to show off her cool chalk-drawn backdrop). The script, pointlessly structured mostly as direct address, undermines Barrow and Naughton's aimless performances by making them speak to the audience more than each other. Even at a intermissionless 70 minutes, Embraceable Me is gormless and dull.

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Embraceable Me plays at Theater Row (410 W. 42nd Street, betw. Ninth & Tenth Ave.), closing on October 31. Tickets?

Photo credit: Jon Kandel

The Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement

The Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement
Under St. Marks
October 16, 2009

Clay McLeod Chapman (writer)

You'd expect a play about graduation to be vernal and forward-looking, but Commencement is a better fit for autumn. The reason is, it involves a school shooting. It's a subject I don't find that compelling, so I credit Clay McLeod Chapman's triptych of monologues with offering something more than the typical Manichean morality of violent perversity in the white suburbs. In fact, Commencement is a cool, brisk ghost story edged with melancholy.

In the middle monologue, Chapman pictures a high school haunted by a “bogeyman mascot”: the late, yet still vital, valedictorian played (as the other two characters are) by Hanna Cheek. This, the best of the three stories, suggests a primal rupture in the community, which will be healed in a private ceremony: the victim's mother has the shooter's mother recite the late valedictorian's unfinished, unrecited speech. It's a mournful moment, a paean that captures what's tragic about violent, too-early death.

Commencement is strong stuff, and moving. But Chapman can be too writerly. His best conceit involves a pen-pal friendship between the future shooter and the class valedictorian in the margins of library books. His strength lies in his prose style, which paints evocative metaphors and pictorial observations. But he comes up short when he tries to create characters. The first and third monologues take the POVs of the mothers of the pen-pal students. But Chapman doesn't quite show us how the attitudes of two mothers must've given birth to their children's personalities.

Fortunately, he's partnered with Hanna Cheek. This very fine local actress bridges the gaps that Chapman's monologues contain. She uses her tone and manner to peel away her characters' wounded psyches and subtextual impulses (which is usually the writer's job in character monologues). Cheek's skill at transformation and her range of emotion would make Commencement worth seeing even if the monologues were duds. This autumn ghost tale is a treat.

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The Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement plays at Under St. Marks (21 St. Marks Place, betw. First Ave. & Avenue A), closing on October 31. Tickets?

Photo credit: Cedar

Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons)

Circle Mirror

  Transformation

Playwrights Horizons

October 10, 2009

Annie Baker

   (writer)

Sam Gold (director)

Who knows what to expect, with a mystical title like Circle Mirror Transformation? But on the other hand, there's the realistic set—a generic rehearsal room, a mirror along one wall—doesn't inspire flights of imagination. Somewhere between the title's fancy and the set's mundanity is the show itself: an quirky bit of meta-theater.

Circle tidily takes place within a six-week community center acting class. The set-up offers room for the gentle mockery of acting exercises, especially when performed by a set of four over-earnest adults (the lone teen sulks, “Are we gonna do any 'real' acting?”). It also doubles as a clever device to open up the five characters. Though it initially sketches in broad strokes, the silly exercises slowly fill in the characters' vulnerabilities and aspirations. What's more, the script manages to suggest that there's a larger story to these befuddled adults and their sardonic voyeur, but that we're only getting the in-room snippets of it.

Annie Baker's script benefits from several extremely talented Off-B'way mainstays like Reed Birney (who plays a vulnerable middle-aged divorcé with gusto). But the standout is newcomer Tracee Chimo as that solo teen. Though Chimo initially plays the clown, goggling at the ludicrous behavior of the adults, she slowly emerges from her shell to display her new confidence and self-understanding.

With its simple scenario, there are short stretches of Circle that frankly are a little dull, a fact that Sam Gold's direction can't overcome. And non-theater types may resent the knowing chuckles that the in-crowd delivers every few minutes. Circle doesn't bowl you over with pyrotechnics or boggle you with plot turns. It's a cameo, yet with its small but satisfying catharsis, it's quite lovely.


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Circle Mirror Transformation plays at Playwrights Horizons (416 42nd Street, betw. Ninth & Tenth Ave.), closing on November 1. Tickets?

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

Killers & Other Family (Rattlestick)

Killers & Other Family
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
September 21, 2009

Lucy Thurber (writer)
Caitriona McLaughlin (director)

I'm thrilled to hear that Killers & Other Family, Lucy Thurber's fever-dream of a drama, has extended its run. It may not be perfect, but it's such an intense 80 minutes that my critical faculties are overwhelmed by its ambition. If you love modern American theater, you must see Killers. Got it?

The show's depiction of savagery invites comparisons with Sam Shepard or Adam Rapp, but the dark sociopathy at the play's heart reminds me most of Jim Thompson, the '50s crime novelist nicknamed the Dimestore Dostoyevsky. Partly, it's the set-up, pulp-simple yet stagy enough to power a one-set/two-scene drama: Lizzie's past catches up when her on-the-lam brother hides out at her NYC apartment with her murderous ex-boyfriend Danny. But Thurber invests her scenario with metaphoric weight, showing how the repression of childhood trauma rips apart the illusion of adult safety.

Much of the credit for the Rattlestick's stupendous production goes to Samantha Soule's fearless performance as Lizzie. Soule throws herself into whatever the script (and her nightmarish ex) demand, but ties everything together with conviction—it's all in her reading of the line “I never did change, I just moved the pieces around.” She's partnered expertly by Shane McRae as Danny: you can see the neural misfires in that sicko's brain.

After my friend and I saw Killers, we wondered if the tonal instability (seesawing from fine-grained naturalism to lyric surreality and absurdist violence) was a problem. But I think Killers has the dream-logic of a fairy tale, one aimed at 21st-century urbanites. If McLaughlin can't quite sustain a sense of imminent danger, or if Aya Cash, as Lizzie's wholesome roommate, breaks the tension a little too jarringly, it's all outweighed by the way Thurber depicts violence as a real threat and not as a plot crutch. Killers is raw, wild theater for our time, a drama that's bracingly alive.

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Killers & Other Family plays at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place), closing on October 17. Tickets?

Photo: Sandra Coudert

The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side (Theater 80)

The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side
Theater 80
September 13, 2009
Derek Ahonen (writer/director)

One of the many surprises about Derek Ahonen's Pied Pipers is how traditional it is. Artists generally design a work's structure to mirror its content. But this tale of tribalist radicals is a shaggy melodrama that your grandmother could follow happily, as long as she's okay with a splash of youthful nudity. But what makes Pied Pipers a true pleasure is how its characters are radicals, its structure is conservative, and its moral substance is liberal—that is, non-judgmental.

This open-minded approach to character is Ahonen's strength (not incidentally, it's also the mission of his company, The Amoralists). His script's an actor's dream: all six roles mingle good and bad attributes, which get displayed through their actions and interactions. The quartet of titular hippies are lovely goofballs: idealistic but sanctimonious, they'd be parodies of knee-jerk radicals if they weren't so lovingly portrayed. Tastes probably vary, but I especially enjoyed Sarah Lemp's understated perf as the most mature (relatively) of the Pipers.

Like most melodrama, Pied Pipers' plot could be tighter. The second act starts to drift till a new character arrives to raise the stakes. And an out-of-nowhere epiphany helps to resolve one Piper's loss of faith. These flaws do feel a little cheap, but only in retrospect. In the moment, they're all part of a lovely, bittersweet play. Ahonen's clearly fond of his little tribe, and so, it seems, is everyone who sees this show. The Amoralists aren't just a company worth following (and I definitely will). They've created a play that deserves revivals in dozens of small theaters in hip neighborhoods across the country.

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The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side plays at Theater 80 (80 St. Mark's Place., betw. First and Second), closing on October 5. Tickets?

Oohrah! (Atlantic Stage 2)

Oohrah!
Atlantic Stage 2
September 11, 2009
Bekah Brunstetter (writer)
Evan Cabnet (director)

I'm thrilled to see a new playwright's work onstage. The play, by new (to me) playwright Bekah Brunstetter, has a naturalistic, Chekhovian dramaturgy that demonstrates compassion and objectivity. Her dialogue is specific to place, time, milieu and personality, an invisible style that's a rare and valuable talent. And she gets structure: she's got a subplot that's as substantial as the main plot without overwhelming it.

Brunstetter uses that craft to depict the homefront during the Bush Wars: an officer's return to civvies and a handsome young man's hunger to join up despite his asthma. A ode to work, Oohrah! shows how service gives these men purpose. The actors in the Atlantic's production grab the opportunity to play such rich characters. Darren Goldstein, as the demobbed captain, stands out in a uniformly good company, showing the quiet physical confidence of a career soldier and the inadmissible anxiety of a warrior during peacetime.

But the play's ragged thread is that it doesn't portray women's sacrifice with the same keenness. It suggests that their dutiful sacrifice doesn't carry the same sense of fulfillment that the men's does. But the final scene, which brings together the play's three female characters, lacks the power of the previous two scenes of masculine fortitude. This scene peters out, and so does the play. This production is also hampered by merely-serviceable direction from Evan Cabnet, who overindulges in Brunstetter's only substantial flaw, a generic fondness for Southern eccentricity.

Still, Oohrah!'s value is its honesty in approaching a question that too many dismiss out-of-hand: why men (and women) serve in the military, especially right now. Brunstetter, in possession of intelligence and craft, offers an answer.

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Oohrah! plays at Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th St., betw. Eighth & Ninth), closing on September 27. Tickets?

Coney Island Avenue (NYTW)

Coney Island Avenue
SixDollarsInMyPocket Productions
August 11, 2009
Charles L. Mee (writer)
Anjali Vashi (director)

This review comes too late to encourage audiences to see Charles Mee's Coney Island Avenue, which closed last weekend. Too bad, because it was a pretty good production by an exuberant young company. It moved quickly, it was never boring, and it had that over-caffeinated, go-for-broke artistic sensibility that's best Off-Off-B'way in the thick heat of August.

To bring Brooklyn to life, director Anjali Vashi unpacked her toolbox of experimental devices: modern dance (popular, modern, and ballet), recorded and live music, backdrop projections, ambient noise, no fourth wall. She'd suggest the borough's bustle by placing intense conversations or focused speeches in front of scenes involving violent, mimed activities. She'd insert beats that lacked context, like a girl in a bikini hunting for her lost top or a dancer in googly antennae scuttling around like a cockroach. All she forgot was projected text, a la Brecht.

But to what end? Mee's script (available online) offered nothing specific to Brooklyn, except an obligatory quote or two from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. There was no plot or theme holding the montage structure together, no sense of setting or character. Most big cities have hipsters, immigrants, carnivals, and folk songs; just look one borough over. Vashi and her company of diverse actors, dancers, singers, and bodybuilders made the stage into a fun place, but it never felt like home.

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Coney Island Avenue played at New York Theatre Workshop (83 East 4th Street), closing on August 16.

A Lifetime Burning (Primary Stages)

A Lifetime Burning
Primary Stages
August 8, 2009
Cusi Cram (writer)
Pam MacKinnon (director)

A Lifetime Burning is one of those dramas about rich New Yorkers in crisis: not my favorite genre. But it's got a few saving graces, especially a performance by Jennifer Westfeldt that spackles over the cracks in her character. She's Emma, a blonde socialite in a swank Soho apartment (gorgeously decorated by Kris Stone) who's fabricated an impoverished East Harlem childhood for her glossy new memoir.

The reason Lifetime works as a play is that playwright Cusi Cram actually dramatizes her characters' intelligence. Where most playwrights suggest smarts by plugging characters' mouths with facts and wit, Cram's therapized New Yorkers deduce each other's motivations by observing behavior. Cram provides fodder for these deductions by nesting flashbacks within a confrontation between Emma and her bourgeois sister. The structure works better than the plot itself, which climaxes with Emma confessing her most recent spiral was triggered by a romance (with a teen from East Harlem—see how that connects?) that ended in date rape and, later, an abortion.

Emma's a little too diffuse to be a great role, but Westfeldt draws the loose strands together. Her seesawing emotions and febrile impulsiveness imply that Emma's white-hot intellect is inseparable from the curdled chemical cocktail of her mind. And director Pam MacKinnon is one of the Off-Broadway's best: the show's a la mode tone is essential to its pleasure, while its momentum keeps the playful structure clear. In its brisk 90 minutes, A Lifetime Burning satisfies an audience without testing our patience.

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A Lifetime Burning plays at 59E59 (59 E. 59th Street) thru September 5. Tickets?

Al's Business Cards (Theatre Row)

Al's Business Cards
At Play Productions
August 6, 2009
Josh Koenigsberg (writer)
Laura Keating (director)

It's not easy to write a good comedy, so I'm willing to forgive the length of Al's Business Cards (55 minutes). Writer Josh Koenigsberg has the mechanics of humor down, spinning a smart plot from a simple situation. He riffs on a gag from Seinfeld—half-Indian Al Gurvis is mistaken for Hispanic, while Eileen Lee, despite her name, isn't Asian at all—but where Jerry and the gang took aim at America's boorish behavior, Koenigsberg draws out deeper issues.

In its short runtime, ABC touches on cultural identity, immigration, home ownership, divorce and addiction. By rooting the story in the cultural moment (and not just thru pop references), Koenigsberg increases our stake in Al. It helps, of course, that Azhar Khan is so affable as Al, a schlub who makes one dumb remark for every two smart ones and is self-aware enough to aspire to more.

At heart, ABC is an unlucky comic romance. Al meets Eileen, a real estate broker, after their local NJ printer has mixed up (and misprinted) their business cards; he mistakes her flirtatious hustle for romantic interest and gets drawn into her disastrous love life. As Eileen, Lauren Hines plays well with Khan and rattles off her banter with flair. Director Lauren Keating keeps the momentum up, even when scenes drag and supporting actors flag, and gets mileage out of an obviously tight budget. In its too-short hour, Al's Business Cards may be about as substantial as a sitcom, but it's an honestly funny sitcom.

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Al's Business Cards plays at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street) until August 22. Tickets?

The Columbine Project (Actors Temple Theatre)

The Columbine Project
Actors Temple Theatre
Aug. 5, 2009
Paul Anthony Storiale (writer/director)

On the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School, Paul Anthony Storiale means to provide fresh insight into a shocking story. But his play, The Columbine Project, is a fumbling and wooden mess that tosses out the same confusion of answers that the talking heads on a 24-hour news network would offer.

The title suggests that Storiale was inspired by the drama-journalism of The Laramie Project, a suspicion reinforced by the montage structure that mingles interviews, court transcripts, re-enactments of 911 calls, and fictional dramatic scenes. Storiale indicts everyone and no one: blithe parents, bullying jocks, winking school administrators, incompetent officials and cops, hormonal teenagers, video games, and the murderers' own sub-Nietzschean philosophy.

The show's worst moments are the fictionalized scenes, for which Storiale should have his dramatic license revoked. They resemble generic TV versions of teen life and digress to offer shaggy ironies (one of the boys was born on September 11!). The actors display the worst cliches of their craft, like staring off into space above the audience's heads when they're saying something profound. As the show goes on, a white spotlight means to give these moments even more gravity. The show finally hammers itself home with a speech that begins, “The world changed on April 20, 1999.” and ends with an acoustic version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. No matter what Storiale's intentions were, theater this clumsy is a disservice to the victims' memories.

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The Columbine Project has an open run at the Actors Temple Theatre (339 W. 47th St.) from July 27.

Coraline (or, A Theatrical Concept Album)

All season, I'd been anticipating MCC's Coraline. It's got some top-notch artists: a novel by Neil Gaiman adapted by Stephin Merritt (of Magnetic Fields) and David Greenspan (of some truly mesmerizing perfs off-B'way). Director Leigh Silverman brought out some of Off-B'way's most interesting talents, starting with an imaginative flair by casting middle-aged Jayne Houdyshell as a nine-year-old.

The story (if you missed the quite good animated movie) sees the bored titular kid exploring her new suburban home. She's especially curious about a bricked-off door which, at night, becomes a portal to a mirror universe. There she finds her Other Mother, who showers her with love and attention. But a hep stray cat advises Coraline that she escape before she's eaten by the Other Mother, who's actually a witchy monster.

Silverman isn't a flashy director, but generally she's clear and uncluttered; here she's downright reserved. She dispatches Gaiman's most ominous visual -- denizens of the mirror world have buttons rather than eyes -- with a dull gesture instead of a flourish. As the Other Mother, Greenspan's unconventional presence is also muffled, despite the diabolical treat of a role. His adaptation is also bland (a word I never thought I'd apply to Greenspan) but at least it defers to Merritt's work.

Because Coraline may be dull to watch but it's worth listening to. The performances have more substance aurally than physically. Merritt, fashioning a modern style on grand, toy, & prepared pianos, provides a sonic canvas that's far richer than the show's visual one. His work, played superbly by Phyllis Chen, is probably enough of a draw; the virtue of lackluster staging is that it's unobtrusive.

Recently I've been listening to a pair of narrative rock albums: the Thermals' The Body, The Blood, The Machine & the Decemberists' Hazards of Love. Merritt's work on Coraline is just as musically strong as these, but it's ahead of them story-wise due to Gaiman's craftsmanship. I'd suggest Merritt & the cast book time at Electric Ladyland Studios a few blocks away & record the show. Coraline is a much stronger concept album than it is a work of theater.

MN visit: Kushner at the Guthrie

While in the Twin Cities to celebrate our upcoming wedding, Lady Hotspur & I saw Tony Kushner's new play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide*, at the Guthrie. Lady H. noted that the show could lose 45 minutes. Of course, a 105-minute Kushner play is farfetched. But we did see a work-in-progress, so please read my notes accordingly.

The basic conflict is a clever irony: a family of Marxists gather to decide who'll inherit their home. Or that's the pretext, anyway: the patriarch, Gus (Michael Cristofer), has called a vote (w/ a consensus rule) on whether to kill himself. Gus is a zesty role: a Brooklyn-bred Italian-American, a former dockworker & union leader, and an overbearing father who, ironically, is closer to his daughter than to his two sons.

The family's architecture is solid, rooted in their shared history but living in a dramatic present. But it's also where the script needs work. Of the three children, Kushner focuses mostly on a queer love triangle between the elder son, his husband and a hustler. This subplot loops, drifts, & sometimes just kills time, but it never quite justifies itself. And it's at the expense of the younger son, who fades away in the third act and takes other minor roles with him. I'd like Kushner to pare the romantic subplot (maybe resolve it earlier, in Act 2?) and add substance to the youngest son.

Probably the show's great strength isn't the script, or Michael Greif's direction (which is inversely related to the number of actors onstage -- the more there are, the less sure he is). It's the cast. Linda Emond (as Gus's daughter) and Kathleen Chalfant (as his serene, gnomic sister) again prove they're perfect vessels for Kushner's characters. Cristofer matches them, esp. in a final speech where Gus describes an earlier suicide attempt, conflating sex with death in an almost mystical way. But the youngest son and the hustler both need actors with more presence.

It's odd to see radical Kushner try on the most traditional American genre, domestic realism. All that family resentment, the threats of suicide and revelations of quasi-incest, and a juvenile rage at the American way of life! It's not a dialectic, it's a cacophany. The genre's thrills & twists suit him well, but he's still learning how to deploy them. Something to look forward to!

I also can't wait to catch the play in its final iteration: comparing the '01 draft of Homebody/Kabul with the '04 version was a rare dramaturgical experience. Meanwhile, my MN pals should catch it now.


* full title: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism & Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures