Theater Review (NYC): American Buffalo by David Mamet

This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

American Buffalo, David Mamet’s breakthrough play currently in an excellent revival at the Belasco Theater, may be a better source of explanation for the current economic crisis than you can get from any economist. Every exchange in the play has business on the mind; in the world of Donny, Teach, and Bobby, even friendship breaks down into business. The overwhelming sense of mistrust among these closest buds ultimately results in disaster on both the business and personal level.

American Buffalo is a tragicomedy, but all the play’s comedy comes from the humanizing effect of the word “fuck.” All the play’s tragedy results from the perils of the phrase “I don’t know.” On the television show You Can’t Do That On Television, uttering the phrase "I don't know" got you slimed. In the world of the petty Chicago crooks of American Buffalo, which could also be called You Can’t Do That in Business, uttering the phrase will get a gun pulled on you, or worse. Forget your economics textbook; try messing with Teach with a porous economy of information.

I’ll admit that when the cast of American Buffalo was announced, I was a bit frustrated. Not so much about the stunt casting of Hollywood stars who fit the roles but had no theatrical experience. I was more upset by the missed opportunity to see the poetic beauty of grizzly old white men on Broadway, a thrill that few but Mamet can provide anymore (where have you gone, Lawrence Tierney?).

But was the highly anticipated Broadway revival of arguably Mamet’s greatest play ill equipped for the task? Fuck you, this is David Fucking Mamet we’re talking about. Everyone involved in this production knows that this is too good of an opportunity to mess up, and though things are played relatively safe, everyone holds his own. Things are kept tight thanks to the direction of Robert Falls, a sensible director who, as the current Artistic Director of Mamet’s own Goodman Theatre in Chicago, was the only sensible pick for the job.

Keeping things in line is no small task with any Mamet play, but especially with American Buffalo, which may be the tightest, most definitive Mamet play, even now, over 30 years and 20 plays later. Every beat is concentrated into three actors, any of whom can throw the play off the rails at any time with a single stumble. The demand for that kind of precision is why, despite the star power of John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment, the real star of this production of American Buffalo is Mamet himself. That emphasis is portended by a pre-show reminder on behalf of Mamet to “turn off your fucking cell phones,” the most effective strategy I’ve seen yet. In terms of the star power, I predict that even those complete theater novices who come merely for the celebrity factor of the actors will leave the theater thinking “this Mamet guy is pretty good.”

Leguizamo, the biggest stage star of the production, is given the most free reign by Falls, in a role that Leguizamo not surprisingly nails. Teach’s mix of cockiness, explosiveness, and thinly-veiled vulnerability are all motifs that Leguizamo has explored extensively on stage in the past. The dialogue in his one-man shows may as well have been Mamet's. My only complaint was the drug-dealer costume Leguizamo was given. Cedric the Entertainer, whose best roles have been as paternalistic, straight-talking sidekicks, translates his onscreen persona naturally to the stage. Save for a couple of hammy moments, Cedric makes for a nearly flawless Donny.

The real X-factor is Haley Joel Osment as the hard-edged but incompetent Bobby. Osment, whose starry-eyed image and acting chops staked his name in films like The Sixth Sense and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, had become tainted in recent years with tales of teenage drunken escapades. Here, Osment reinvents himself from the preppy, puppy-eyed kid to the slummy, hard-talking young ingrate, and the transition is surprisingly successful. Some of Bobby’s naïvete mirrors past Osment roles, which helps ease the actor into the role. While it’s not a perfect transition, Osment does more good work here than most would have expected (included wisely deciding to keep facial hair for the role).

Any discussion of Mamet’s legacy can no longer avoid the laissez-faire conservatism and resentment of the left that Mamet recently espoused in his controversial Village Voice piece “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’” back in March. At that time, especially following the lack of sophistication in his latest Broadway smash November, it was becoming popular to dismiss Mamet’s importance. Sure enough, Mamet followed that piece with Redbelt, arguably his best movie of the last fifteen years, and he is now seeing two of his classic plays get Broadway revivals.

After seeing American Buffalo for the first time after the “brain-dead liberal" piece, I've found it’s simply impossible to dismiss Mamet’s vitality. It’s also hard to see how anyone could have assumed Mamet to be a true-blue liberal in the first place. What liberals saw as a reflection of the breakdown of American idealism in American Buffalo, Mamet saw as “just business.” Business can be awful, cold, and frequently destructive, but it’s the core of all human interactions. The story of the breakdown in American Buffalo mirrors the breakdown of the American economy: when crooked businessmen lack the information they need to do business properly, the lack of trust can only lead to disaster. Rather than see this as a product of a broken system, Mamet sees the outcome of American Buffalo as an inevitable consequence of the economic system America is based on: in Teach’s words, “The freedom…of the individual…to embark on any fucking course that he sees fit.”

---

American Buffalo by David Mamet. Directed by Robert Falls; Set and Costumes by Santo Loquasto; lighting by Brian MacDevitt. Photos by Carol Rosegg.

Starring John Leguizamo (Teach), Cedric The Entertainer (Donny), and Haley Joel Osment (Bobby).

American Buffalo is being performed at the Belasco Theater, 111 W. 44th Street. Tickets can be purchased at telecharge.com.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Osment to make Broadway debut in American Buffalo
• Haley Joel Osment Learns 'F' Word in Preparation for Upcoming Broadway Debut [Comebacks]
• Haley Joel Osment Making His Comeback on Broadway

Theater Review (NYC): As We Speak by John Patrick Bray

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics).

If there’s any reason to see As We Speak, an otherwise unbearable new play by John Patrick Bray, it’s to see how theater is slowly beginning to adapt to the Web 2.0 era. It seems virtually impossible to dramatize a generation who grasps their laptops like respirators, but as liberal grad student Noreen, Alyson Brock assumes a pose in the first act that people of my generation are all familiar with: hunched over a tiny screen, unable to turn away, willingly ignoring one’s surroundings, and unable to function in the world off the web. Minor technical difficulties aside, director Tom Berger and projection designer David Bengali succeed in maintaining an effective staging of this otherwise dull act, and sound designer Henry Akona keeps attention constantly tuned in.

There’s little else to redeem As We Speak, a play with a script, performances, and ambition that all reek of amateurism. The script itself has very little if anything to bring to the table. Though the director’s note speaks of multiple edits, somehow lines like “Go to Hawaii, wherever you can drive to” evaded the red pen. Attempts at humor unfailingly miss their target, and the balance between realism and fantasy, both in actions and realistic human emotions, never comes close to harmony.

The basic weaknesses of the script speak to nothing of the problems of the play’s premise. As We Speak is a present-day adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here, which imagined a dystopian fascist America. The novel was written in 1935, a time when major world democracies were falling into totalitarianism with terrifying frequency. It seemed that the fundamental viability of democracy was breaking down, a concept that was also addressed by Brave New World, 1984, and even Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Yet, after fascism was defeated in World War II, all future attempts to revive Lewis’ novel seemed spurious. The idea of a totalitarian America was intellectually alluring, but subsequent adaptations usually had to resort to science fiction or alternate histories to make the scenario remotely plausible. Most successful attempts, such as Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, attained believability by reversing the results of World War II.

Bray, however, tries to update the premise to Dick Cheney’s America, post-9/11 and post-Katrina. Bray could be forgiven for the bad timing of the play, coming after an election that trounced fear-based conservative politics, had he dealt with those fears in any sort of interesting way. But Bray treats a fascist American uprising as a narrative inevitability that ultimately make the play simply boring. At the production I saw, not a single audience member clapped at intermission. I can assure you that was not due to awe.

Given little to work with, the cast can be forgiven for its uninspired performances. As Noreen’s Minutemen ex-husband Chad, Michael Littner doesn’t convince at all in portraying his conflicted loyalties. This results from his absurd characterization by Bray as well as the actor’s own lack of effort. The Greek Chorus of journalists is farcical, but not in a funny way, and tough guy Case Aiken isn’t all that tough. What none of the actors can be forgiven for is their lack of ability to project. It’s a small theater, but even so I could barely hear them half the time.

How much you’re willing to tolerate As We Speak depends on how willing you are to believe the title of the Sinclair Lewis book the play is based on. There are certainly some who believe America can devolve into fascism, and some may even believe it already has with the Bush presidency. For sure, there are also fascist parallels to be found in the Minutemen and Patriot Act. But the play’s 2005 perspective clearly reduces its impact. De Toqueville’s notion of a self-correcting democracy has proven to be stronger than even most liberals thought possible. Whether or not you believe America could ever fall into full-fledged totalitarianism and martial law—despite what some may think, the Bush presidency ain’t Nazi Germany—it’s hard to deny that there are institutions in place and core ideals preventing that from occurring. If there weren’t, we’d currently be talking about a Brownback presidency.

---

As We Speak by John Patrick Bray. Directed by Tom Berger; Costume Design by Erin Smiley; Projections Design by David Bengali; Set Design by Jack Blacketer; Lighting Design by Tim Kaufman; Sound Design by Henry Akona; Fight Choreography by Kathryn Lawson. Photos by Leigh Celentano.

Starring Alisyn Brock (Noreen), Anthony Rand (Travis), Michael Littner (Chad), Michelle Rabbani (Jennifer), Michael Bertolini (Harrison), Rajesh Bose (Stanz), Cary Hite (Man 1, Nov. 8-9), Kyle-Steven Porter (Man 1, Nov. 7, 10-23), Case Aiken (Man 2), Kathryn Lawson (Woman 1), and Sarah Engelke (Woman 2).

As We Speak runs through November 23 at the 14th Street Y Theatre (344 E. 14th St.). Tickets are available at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444.

Theater Review (NYC): Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry

It’s impossible to discuss Missa Solemnis or the Play About Henry without mentioning that I happened to see it the same day California's Proposition 8 was passed into law. The politics of Proposition 8 are virtually identical to those of 2000’s Proposition 22, the law that prompted the suicide of gay Mormon Henry Stuart Mathis (the one difference being that this time, voters were taking away rights that homosexuals had previously been awarded). In both cases, the Mormon church played a heavy role in bankrolling the anti-gay marriage efforts.

Playwright Roman Fesser had to contend with current events while creating a work of drama that could stand firm in its own right. He may not have completely succeeded, but the results are stunning. Through a deceptively cunning narrative structure, Fesser has forced audiences to internalize Henry Mathis's struggle, and Missa Solemnis succeeds as a play both timely and convincing in its portrayal of a tortured soul who, as in all good tragedies, is a noble human being trapped by circumstance.

It's important to remember that Mormon hatred of gays is not just homophobia: it’s an increasingly crucial part of an all-encompassing theology, a theology that is, to its adherents, perfect and infallible. Yet that theology stands in direct conflict with human biology, an all-encompassing system of beliefs in its own right. In New York, of course, the latter point of view dominates.

In a good Mormon household, conversely, the dividing line is much blurrier. Mormons accept modern medicine and general science, except when its ambiguities clash with a question that is inflexible in terms of Mormon thought. Above, I called Mathis a gay Mormon. Let me correct myself: there is no such thing as a gay Mormon. Central to Mathis’ struggle is the fundamental incompatibility of the Mormon belief, via Christianity, that attraction to the same gender is a wicked behavior, with the belief that homosexuality is innate in a percentage of individuals. An individual can combine the two as he pleases, but if he does so, he has stepped outside the bounds of Mormonism.

To a liberal New York audience, explaining rigid religious faith, especially a faith as peculiar as Mormonism, may as well be like talking to a Martian. I also expect that Missa Solemnis will consistently draw a majority gay audience. But in order for the play to work, Fesser has to put his audience deep into the Mormon mindset of Henry Mathis (played with unflinching earnestness by Matt Huffman). The results are jarring, and at times painfully awkward. Henry delivers lines like “My devotion to Heavenly Father is palpable,” and “I have felt the Holy Ghost before and I know with dedication and prayer he will guide me.” Contractions are eschewed, and the mannerisms, speech patterns, and meter seem like they are from another century. Fesser, a Long Islander turned undercover Mormonologist, struggles to reach a balance in these early scenes, not helped at all by his cold passion play-like opener.

But while these initial scenes may kill the play’s early momentum by telling rather than showing, they do succeed in getting you into Henry Mathis’ mindset. In the middle and later sections, when Henry actively confronts his demons, the nuances of his struggle become immediately clear. The yeoman work of the early scenes pays dividends when Henry meets with Bishop Robert Rhodes (Warren Katz), whose own sexuality is made somewhat ambiguous.

The story comes to full fruition with Henry’s love affair with Manhattan socialite Todd (Jai Catalano, who provides the character with the necessary effortless simpatico). Todd is baffled but intrigued by Henry's devout religious faith, and he remains open to Henry’s spirituality mainly because of the irascible charm of Henry himself. Todd’s view is most similar to that of a New York audience, but because the scene comes much later in the play, the focus stays entirely on Henry’s struggle. You can see in Huffman’s face just how drawn he is to Todd, but also how much his faith violently tugs at that attraction every time he lets it show.

In the play’s final scenes, we again see Henry trade teary conversations with his parents. This time, Fesser achieves much more urgent and well-written dialogue, as Henry announces to his parents that he has bought a gun. In the play’s devastating final scene at Henry's funeral, Todd solemnly introduces himself to Henry’s mother Marilyn (Gail Winar). The last line: “My name is Todd, Todd Elliot. I‘m from New York. I was a friend of your son’s.” There are larger themes at play in this final scene, where we see the humble introduction of Todd's world to Marilyn's under the circumstances of a faith-based tragedy. That kind of humble introduction is perhaps the only way these two worlds can ever come close to existing in harmony. If only it didn’t take tragedy to make sure that any future Proposition 8 will never succeed again.

---

Missa Solemnis or the Play About Henry by Roman Fesser. Directed by Linda S. Nelson; scenic design by Marisa Merrigan; costume design by David B. Thompson; lighting design by Graham T. Posner; sound design by Justin Utley. Photos by Posner.

Starring Jai Catalano (Todd Elliot), Bill Fairbairn (Fred Matis), Matt Huffman (Henry Matis), Warren Katz (Bishop Bob Rhodes), and Gail Winar (Marilyn Matis).

Missa Solemnis or the Play About Henry runs through November 22nd at the TBG Arts Complex, 312 W. 36th St (3rd Floor). For tickets, call 212-868-4444 or order tickets online.

Theater Review (NYC): Harm's Way by Shem Bitterman

Harm’s Way is one of those plays that may get knocked as an excessively political play (or not political enough, by some standards). It may get knocked for the occasional clichéd line by playwright Shem Bitterman, or for being too long, or for being too unbelievable. I may have a hard time defending against any of those arguments, but I will refuse to budge in calling Harm’s Way a play of absolute vitality with a quick-witted intelligence, as close to Greek or Shakespearean tragedy as it is to current events.

Yes, some of the characters have archetypal qualities. But every one has a vitality and humanity that overcomes a lot of shortcomings. Deeply disturbed and sexually abused Bianca (Sarah Foret) may have simplistic dialogue, but it belies her inability to communicate on a human level. Stupid, ox-like private Nick (Ben Bowen), a confused, disturbed and frequently violent individual, is something of an existential hero.

And emasculated military prosecutor Major Jonathan Fredericks (Jack Stehlin), utterly defenseless against the circumstances of his life, is one of the most pathetic military officers you’ll ever see in a play. Fredericks’ values and commitment to the greater good—whatever that may be—are as strong as any good soldier's. By taking the muscle away from military might, Bitterman has shown military bravado for what is it: a thinly veiled farce which sounds stupid and absurd when uttered by a man without a gun in his hand.

The problem that keeps Harm’s Way from reaching the heights I fully believe it capable of achieving is a lackluster production from Circus Theatricals. I was surprised by just how uninspired the cast seemed to be, especially since their credentials far exceeded the average for off-off-Broadway. Also, Harm’s Way has multiple lines that border on cheesiness and cliché. With the right actors and direction, the power of the play’s deeper implications could overcome these problems. But the cast, helmed by director Steve Zuckerman, seems utterly lost about how to convey any of the play’s nuance, and looks like it is going through the motions. That’s bad in any play; in a play like Harm’s Way, which needs an enthusiastic cast to succeed, it’s a tragedy in its own right.

The major exception in terms of the cast was relative novice Sarah Foret (Bianca) who came up with a fantastic portrayal as the damaged, not-right-in-the-head army base brat. Foret is the only actor in the New York production with a consistent view of her character’s mindset. It would be easy to play a simple character simply, but Foret adds a level of maturity to Bianca’s damaged soul that gives the play a significant bump. The twist at the end of the first act, for instance, would seem contrived in a less capable actor’s hands. Foret shows just how much a strong actor can contribute to this play, and embarrasses the rest of the cast with her commitment.

As the tough war journalist Connie, Wendy Makkena gives perhaps the most human performance, but her role doesn’t gain enough traction for it to make a significant impact on the play overall. That could be a fault of the playwright, but it wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Stehlin’s performance wasn’t so maddeningly wooden, or if Josh Allen wasn’t so stupidly over the top as Nick’s war buddy Sammy. As the supervising Colonel, Eric Pierpoint delivers his lines flatly, as if we should already know them. That kind of performance is fine for a minor Shakespeare role, perhaps, but not for a role in a new play that is suppose to command authority.

Ultimately, Harm’s Way will not get the traction it deserves, and that’s largely because of a cast and crew that seems more disappointed in itself than committed to the task at hand. Bitterman will have to find a better group of actors to work with in the future, or else he will go criminally unnoticed.

---

Harm's Way by Shem Bitterman; directed by Steve Zuckerman; sets and costumes by Kitty Rose; lighting by Derrick McDaniel; original music by Roger Bellon. Photos by Jeannine Stehlin

Starring Josh Allen (Sammy Havesford), Ben Bowen (Private Nick Granville), Sarah Foret (Bianca Fredericks), Eric Pierpont (Colonel Hank Davis), Wendy Makkena (Connie Durrell), and Jack Stehlin (Major Jonathan Fredericks).

Presented by Circus Theatricals at the 45th Street Theatre, 354 W. 45th St., NYC. Oct. 18-Nov. 8. Playing in repertory with "Man. Gov." Thu. and Sat., 8 p.m. (212) 352-3101 or www.theatermania.com.

This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Theater Review (NYC): If You See Something Say Something by Mike Daisey

At first, the jump between Mike Daisey’s last two projects seems ungainly and almost impossible. Barely four months after shaking the foundation of contemporary American theater with his incendiary How Theater Failed America, Daisey is now tackling homeland security, a much larger, more complex, and more important issue. Yet, there is a link between Daisey’s previous screed and the more meditative, politically-charged If You See Something Say Something.

That link is economics. In Mike Daisey’s world, every pursuit one can take in life, be it artistic expression or thermonuclear war, breaks down very simply into humanity’s weakness for money. It’s that streak of cynicism that ties Daisey’s critiques of contemporary life to the last 200-odd years of Western theater. Some would say Daisey’s fury towards capitalism and flirtation with Marxism are irrational and dated. But as current events should make all too apparent, every human desire reduces to the stability of his economic situation. That’s something both radical Marxists and staunch capitalists can agree upon.

Lest you think by the title that Daisey is at Joe’s Pub just to carelessly rant about having to take his shoes off at the airport, If You See Something Say Something spans the Cold War, World War II, the founding fathers, and present-day Los Alamos. Modern homeland security concerns make up a relatively small fraction of the play. Daisey’s main target is the military-industrial complex; his thesis states that “if you keep a standing army, and it doesn’t do anything, it will find something to do,” a statement he repeats twice, first in reference to Eisenhower, then to Washington, DC. When the military, government, and corporate sectors converge, Daisey doesn’t just see a rise in paranoia: he sees a systematic manipulation of human weakness to get everyone to conform to a system that ultimately benefits no one.

Daisey is smart enough not to detach himself from the situation. He spends much time talking about his childhood fascination with Los Alamos, the Bomb, and the cleansing power of Total Destruction. Always willing to refer to his painful, traumatic childhood as a loser in the bowels of Maine, Daisey depicts himself as a comic-book-loving outcast (he compares Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to Skeletor), harboring pre-Columbine fantasies of annihilating all the sources of his misery.

He finds a kindred spirit in Sam Cohen, the deeply troubled, morally tormented father of the neutron bomb, who invented that ultra-efficient weapon partly to appease a similar fantasy. Rage at the political economy of the military-industrial complex was the bait for Daisey to create If You See Something Say Something. It was that deeply ingrained sense of longing that forced Daisey to fall into the monologue hook, line, and sinker.

Ultimately, If You See Something Say Something will probably not have the same impact on the theatrical community that How Theater Failed America did, but it does cement Daisey’s status as the finest, most unique monologist of his generation. Daisey’s often been compared to Spalding Gray, but he’s got an an attitude straight out of the the Angry Young Man movement, comic books, and punk rock. As today’s foremost self-described fat, angry asshole, Daisey has a perpetual itch to provoke that he will probably never be able to escape (he probably doesn’t want to, either).

Yet he’s accomplished that rarest of feats: mixing rage and a revolutionary spirit with a well-grounded intelligence and an ability to promote discussion, maybe even solid changes. If You See Something Say Something may not be as fresh as Daisey’s 21 Dog Years or as directly vital as How Theater Failed America, but as long as there’s a place for a voice to point out the injustice and political outrage that so many feel but few articulate, there will be a place for Mike Daisey. With the economy what it is, that place may only get bigger.

---

If You See Something Say Something, written and performed by Mike Daisey; directed by Jean-Michele Gregory; lighting design by K.J. Hardy. Photos by Kenneth Aaron.

If You See Something Say Something is performed at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater (425 Lafayette Street). The show runs through November 30. For performance times and ticket information, visit www.publictheater.org. This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Theater Review (NYC): Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn

Until I saw The Actors Company Theatre’s production of Bedroom Farce, I had never seen a staging of any play by Alan Ayckbourn. Such a statement is probably the reason why TACT decided to stage one of Ayckbourn’s greatest plays, Bedroom Farce. Despite the fact that he is one of the greatest living British playwrights, Ayckbourn’s work is almost never staged in the U.S. You can probably count the number of people in America deeply familiar with Ayckbourn’s work on a few sets of hands, and most of those fingers would represent British ex-pats. Watching Bedroom Farce, a classic, smart British comedy with an equally smart production, I was thrilled to have the privilege of finally seeing Ayckbourn. I also wondered whether any attempt to make Ayckbourn a bigger name in the States could possibly be successful.

Ayckbourn, still going strong at the age of 69, has often been called the British Neil Simon. A better parallel would be to call him this generation’s Noël Coward. Bedroom Farce is more akin to a postwar Private Lives, a funny, endearing examination of marital struggle that takes a simple structure and injects it with enough wit and genuine human emotion for it to reach a higher level than standard mainstream theater.

Each of the four couples in Bedroom Farce has its own crosses to bear, and each character displays alternating degrees of repression and emotional violence. Exploring the dynamics of repression and unleashed emotion was a Coward staple, but Ayckbourn’s particular innovation was to have the degree of these personality types differ within each character based on each situation. Ayckbourn is one of the best living playwrights exploring the inconsistencies in individual behavior, often mistaken for hypocrisy. The result in the case of Bedroom Farce is the kind of social comedy that, while still lighthearted and rather silly, reaches a higher plane of real human emotions that most so-called farces miss.

It’s understandable how frustrated Ayckbourn fans must be to see his plays staged in the U.S. so rarely. Thankfully, TACT’s production of Bedroom Farce, under the helm of director Jenn Thompson, doesn’t miss a beat. Set designer Robin Vest masters a vintage Ayckbourn dramatic space consisting of three beds for four couples on various planes of the stage. Every cast member seems in tune with his role, and no one in the cast or crew holds the show back in the slightest. If the goal was to give Ayckbourn a staging that fully showed off his talents to an American audience, TACT has succeeded tremendously.

The main problem with the production, which is of no fault of TACT, is that the play simply did not resonate with the audience at Theater Row the same way it must have at its original West End staging in 1977. The sarcasm of Scott Schafer’s hobbled, middle-aged Nick got the most laughs, and coming in close second was the Mark Rylance-like buffoonery of Mark Alhadeff’s Trevor. But the real emotional and comedic centers of the play, Trevor’s mother Delia (Cynthia Harris) and his wife Suzannah (Eve Bianco, who may have given the best performance of all), seemed more like peculiarities to an audience expecting a full-on farce.

While I loved the play tremendously, I could immediately see the reasons why Ayckbourn hasn’t become a larger star in America. All the intelligence, all the emotional tugs, and all the deeper intellectual themes that could stay with an audience beyond the theater are hidden in Ayckbourn’s deeper, subtle wryness. This wryness requires thinking in more general terms, and is a cultural trademark of Britain. Yet it doesn’t resonate at quite the same level with brasher Americans. The result is an audience with a prevalence of smiles, but a lack of laughs at what is supposed to be a very funny play. Perhaps Americans have a much harder time mixing comedy and flat-out farce than the Brits. There’s no need to blame Ayckbourn for the cultural disparity that has held back his American success, but then again, there’s no need to blame Americans for that either.

---

Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by Jenn Thompson; scenic design by Robin Vest; costume design by Martha Hally; lighting design by Aaron Copp; sound design by Stephen Kunken. Photos by Kunken.

Starring Larry Keith (Ernest), Cynthia Harris (Delia), Scott Schafer (Nick), Margaret Nichols (Jan), Sean Dougherty (Malcolm), Ashley West (Kate), Mark Alhadeff (Trevor), and Eve Bianco (Susannah).

Produced by The Actors Company Theatre at the Beckett @ Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd st. Runs through November 8th. Tickets can be purchased at Ticket Central. This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Theater Review (NYC): Something Weird...in the Red Room

Hell hath no fury like hipsters on Halloween. The East Village, long a domain for crazed Halloween festivities, is not letting a mere few weeks of waiting get in the way of its chance to drink and be weird. The Red Room at the K.G.B. Bar, a New York hipster institution ever since it opened in 1993, is the perfect place for a bunch of irony-worshippers to drink a few beers, watch a couple of bizarre plays, and chat with artist types. Something Weird…In the Red Room, a Rachel Klein joint, is a pretty emblematic example of how this generation’s artsy-fartsy youth executes theater: a few good ideas, some indie rock background music, sporadic funny moments, and lots of intentional clichés. In Something Weird’s case, an otherwise enjoyable night of eccentric theater is marred by a lack of artistic and creative discipline.

Rachel Klein, who is quickly becoming a key player in all things weird off-off-Broadway, has found two plays that play to her strengths as a director: circus arts, ghouls, and twisted dramatic logic. Sir Sheever and Aenigma are two imperfect plays that should have made up in spirit what they lacked in meaty production values or narrative fulfillment. Benjamin Spiro’s Sir Sheever, a play where mannequins come alive to good manners in a freaky would-be tea party, is smarter and more complete than its counterpart. It’s also the more conventional of the two. A deceptively traditional play that still features some funny moments, Sir Sheever overcomes its rather lazy fairy-tale elements and dramatic inconsistencies with attitude and some sparkling performances, spearheaded by the Abbott and Costello meets Edward Gorey pair of leads in Bret Haines’ Ralph and Kari Warchock’s Miss Elise.

Two major things hold back Sir Sheever. First, and perhaps most surprisingly, is Klein’s loosey-goosey choreography. With most of the actors playing mannequins for the majority of the show, Sir Sheever would seem like perfect vehicle for some of the staged movement exercises you learn in elementary acting classes. Yet, while the core of the motions are correct, the mannequins are not stiff enough for anyone to take the shock value of their eventual movement seriously. Whether it be a product of the relative inexperience of the cast or a lack of discipline in Klein’s direction, the looseness of the mannequins results in a play that seems more fun for the company than the audience.

The second major flaw is a completely traditional ending that can be predicted within the first fifteen minutes of the show. The moral of the story in an adult fairy tale play - as opposed to in children's theater - has to have a punchline that still shocks a mature audience. In the case of Sir Sheever, the ending simply seems like a cop-out.

Aenigma, though the weaker of the two plays, at least wins style points for being a little more daring. Playwright Sean Gill injects some theory into the weirdness, and Klein’s direction is a little sharper. The play can’t maintain a sense of flow, and occasionally borders on incoherence, but the premise of incestuous sisters being woven into and out of reality by a master manipulator is certainly deeper into left field. Aenigma could use a few rewrites and maybe an extra scene or two to reach its optimal level. Sir Sheever, conversely, has probably peaked.

---

Something Weird...in the Red Room. Featuring Sir Sheever by Benjamin Spiro and Aenigma by Sean Gill. Directed and choreographed by Rachel Klein.

Sir Sheever stars Candy Bloise (Euripides), Ted Caine (Fredrick), Bret Haines (Ralph), Abigail Hawk (Eunice), Megan O'Connor (Miss Prissypants), Michael Porsche (Robert), and Kari Warchock (Miss Elise).

Aenigma stars Jillaine Gill (Diana), Bret Jaspers (Tad), Dasha Kittredge (Body Rock Crew), Christopher Loar (Body Rock Crew), Rob Richardson (Mr. Green), Claire A. Sansaricq (Body Rock Crew), and Elizabeth Stewart (Charlotte).

Something Weird...in the Red Room runs through October 31st, Tuesdays at 8 PM and Fridays at 10:30 PM at 85 E. 4th St. Tickets can be purchased online at SmartTix.

Outstanding theater reviews: Villa Diodati, Taboos, and A Great Place to Be From

Don't have time to post them all but the links and excerpts can be found here:

Theater Review (NYC): Villa Diodati at the New York Musical Festival
With youthful energy suddenly emerging in musical theater, Villa Diodati seems at least 50 years out of date.

Theater Review (NYC): Taboos by Carl Djerassi
Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the Pill, sees his scientific perspective conflict with his dramatic one in Taboo.

Theater Review (NYC): A Great Place to Be From by Norman Lasca
The heat gets to the characters, but's that's as far as this ambitious play goes.

Theater Review (NYC): An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen

Staging Ibsen presents one of the biggest conundrums for contemporary directors. Like Edgar Allen Poe, Rene Descartes, and even Bob Dylan, Ibsen suffers from the fate of many revolutionary artists and thinkers who see their breakthroughs grow stale in hindsight do the work of their followers. Ibsen’s fate in this regard is particularly pronounced; all modern dramatists can, arguably, be considered his followers. Contemporary stagings have a hard time making 19th century drawing room dramas with well-made-play tendencies seem truly modern.

In the case of the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s staging of An Enemy of the People, however, any hint of modernity is shed in favor of the farcical, childish, and just plain stupid. Using a nearly half-century-old translation of Ibsen featured in one of the standard published editions, it’s hard to convey anything modern - this is still a world of pocket watches, smoking hats, “Pah’s” and “egads.” By playing closer to the 18th than the 20th century side of the play, the Phoenix Ensemble has sapped Ibsen of his strengths and cut out any chance for an interesting production. Instead, they’ve created a watered down, supposedly more digestible version of An Enemy of the People, a play that fights against the very notion of watered-down convictions.

The Phoenix Ensemble has a focus on elementary school education, and I suspect that the group chose to focus on the more childish sides of the play in order to attract more kids. At the production I attended, however, the youngest audience members were at least well into high school. Even if the farcical side of the play may attract kids, this production's intentional, gaping sense of the pre-modern 19th century world will turn away as many children as it will draw in. Perhaps more damaging, however, would be how this play could actively turn away those just beyond elementary and facing a critical period in a theatergoer’s life. If a young teen, newly acquainted with skepticism, were to see this production after hearing of the play's purported importance, I fear he’d never become a regular theatergoer.

The irony of such a safe, facile production is that Ibsen’s text demands of its audience the exact opposite of a feeling of safety and ease. An Enemy of the People is about a righteous man who doggedly refuses to back down from his ethical righteousness in spite of every conceivable obstacle thrown his way. Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the character at the center of the play, is a man of science whose sense of right and wrong clashes with the political demands of his community. He fights to shut down the highly profitable but highly unsanitary town baths not because of any political bias, but simply because it is the right thing to do.

It’s that same unflinching sense of duty that induced Arthur Miller to adapt the work in the wake of McCarthyism. Ibsen had tapped into the spirit of "truthiness" over a hundred years before Colbert. The political parallels to the current era, be it stem cells, off-shore drilling, or what have you, are obvious, perhaps too much so. These parallels make the play vulnerable to staging by intellectually careless companies; it seems that the Phoenix Ensemble has followed through on that vulnerability.

At the center of Ibsen’s modern cynicism in An Enemy of the People is Dr. Stockmann’s attack on the stupidity of the solid majority of his town in Act IV, but in this production the speech has a very different impact than Ibsen intended. Anti-populism, expressed by a man beaten down by political reality, was not a new theme—Plato made the same point with his philosopher-kings—but it flew in the face of every common sentiment of Ibsen's time. No one, in the 1870s or today, has known how to deal with the conundrums Ibsen raised. Unfortunately, when you apply this argument to a New York setting, the connotation is of comfortable New York art patrons who look dismissively at people living anywhere else in the country (in Jesusland, as a popular internet map refers to every non-dark blue American state).

This bastardized elitism is not the only element of this Enemy of the State that violates Ibsen’s spirit. Rather than show any realism or nuance in the plays’ characters, the Phoenix Ensemble’s production features almost nothing but caricatures. Particularly vulnerable is Jospeh Menino’s Mayor Stockmann, who lies somewhere between the Grinch and Mr. Burns. He makes Lionel Barrymore’s realism as Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life seem like Marlon Brando’s. The other perpetrator is Michael Surabian’s Aslaksen, who might have driven me to violence if he had said the word “moderation” in that same intentionally pronounced manner one more time. If there’s any hope to be found, it’s in Kelli Holsopple as Dr. Stockmann’s fiery independent daughter Petra. Ms. Holsopple is the only actor who seems to understand that realism is the entire reason why Ibsen gets staged anymore.

With an already turgid translation that should have never been used for any staging after 1980, director Amy Wagner has her cast rush through the text without letting anything sink in (at two hours and 40 minutes, I’m sure the rushed delivery was intended to shorten the play to under three hours). Rushed, nearly inaudible delivery is bad enough with a contemporary play; it’s even worse when “egad” and “Pah” are not even close to the most antiquated terms used.

So while there are certainly political parallels to the present in The Enemy of the People, the most pressing parallels of the Phoenix Ensemble’s revival are to the contemporary state of theater itself. In an era when few companies will dare risk offending an audience and losing ticket and subscription sales, we’re seeing a lot more productions like this Enemy of the People. It's all too common that revivals of aggressive plays go against the originals' aggressive stance with populist, bumbling productions. To make Ibsen really relate to a modern audience, we need some brave soul to go crazy with the text, someone who is not afraid to distort Ibsen into something much newer. We also need a director who is willing to make sure there is not a pocket watch to be found. It seems no one else wants to take the risk of offending one’s contemporaries, so let me offer my uncensored, journalistically dangerous suggestion to the Phoenix Ensemble that, like Dr. Stockmann, spares no exclamation points: GROW SOME FUCKING BALLS!!!!!

---

An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen. Directed by Amy Wagner; translated by Rolf Fjelde; set and lighting design by Maruti Evans; costume design by Suzanne Chesney; sound design by Elizabeth Rhodes (music composed by David Nelson). Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

Starring Laura Piquado (Mrs. Stockmann), Josh Tyson (Billing), Joseph J. Menino (Mayor Stockmann), Tom Escovar (Hovstad), John Lenartz (Dr. Stockmann), Brian A. Costello (Captain Horster), Kelli Holsopple (Petra Stockmann), Jack Tartaglia (Morten Stockmann), Dmitri Friedenberg (Eilif Stockmann), Angus Hepburn (Morten Kiil), and Michael Surabian (Aslaksen).

An Enemy of the People runs through September 20th at the Connelly Theater. It is performed by the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble.

This review was originally featured on Blogcritics.

Theater Review (NYC): A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally

Normally, flights of fancy in legitimate theater are a dangerous prospect. They can get too confusing or absurd for an audience to follow, and unless you tread carefully, your writing can end up seeming lazy. When you set the ground rules that Terrence McNally sets in A Perfect Ganesh, however, your opportunities for being fanciful are virtually limitless.

The overwhelming theme of A Perfect Ganesh is pantheism; the play emphasizes the interconnectedness of humans to each other and to the rest of the world, and how blind Westerners can often be to the lives and environments of even those closest to them. When, in the opening monologue, we meet Ganesha (Gary Mahmoud), the Hindu god who is “in your kiss” as well as “in your cancer,” we allow ourselves to see a whole, free-flowing unity in everything that happens in the next two hours. To criticize inconsistency in A Perfect Ganesh would just be bad karma.

To contrast Ganesha’s world to our own, McNally gives us perhaps the pinnacle (some would say lowpoint) of the Western sensibility—two wealthy ladies from Greenwich, Connecticut. Kitty and Margaret think India offers a respite from a lifetime of trips to the Caribbean. Soon, however, we learn of larger spiritual longings that plague these two. They have come to India to heal, both for emotional and physical purposes. Both have suffered tragedies that have caused irrevocable damage to their souls, and both get lost in their attempts to recover the good spirits that the women are too damaged to find again.

A Perfect Ganesh, which deals with homophobia quite prominently, was a Pulitzer finalist in 1994. It lost to Albee’s Three Tall Women, perhaps a safe pick after another gay-themed play, Angels in America, had won the Pulitzer the previous year. McNally would go on to win back-to-back Tonys for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class. As a result, A Perfect Ganesh has slipped through the cracks.

As the WorkShop Theater Company’s revival proves, however, not only is Ganesh one of McNally’s best plays (it may even be his best), but it’s one whose relevance has only grown stronger. In an era where America has become increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, where sections of America have grown hostile to other sections, and where spirituality has been squeezed out by technical and socioeconomic demands, A Perfect Ganesh is a crucial reminder of just how close to each other we really are, yet how distant we can often seem.

Unfortunately, the WorkShop’s revival leaves something to be desired. In a play where ethnicity, dialects, and characters change constantly, it’s crucial that actors are able to handle all the shifts, and communicate them to the audience clearly. In Peter Sylvester’s production however, it’s unclear whether slips of the tongue are due to intentional language divides or actors simply missing their lines. A play with such majestic themes could also use a more expansive production, and while the problem can’t be blamed on WorkShop’s modest space, the production still feels too cramped and neurotic for the play to feel completely natural.

The production values mar what are otherwise some excellent performances. In particular, Mahmoud, who maintains his Ganesha mentality through multiple characters, commands the stage with his voice, his pinpoint-precise facial expressions, and a confidence that never drops despite all obstacles. As Katharine, Ellen Barry truly stands out as a Connecticut housewife with white-trash roots who, unlike her cold, bitchy fellow traveler Margaret, is unafraid to let herself get lost in emotion and wonder at the new world she’s seeing.

As Margaret, Charlotte Hampden does very well playing up the Connecticut stereotypes, but has a harder time expressing her character’s more human side. Margaret is always shut off, and her unflinching inability to open up is a necessary element of the play. But when she recalls some legitimately tragic experiences, it would be nice if we could see some trace of human emotion.

Nonetheless, it is a credit to the WorkShop Theater Company that it reminds us of a forgotten McNally classic, and that it reintroduces a play dating from deeper into the Culture Wars, one that showed us that even when hostilities at all levels of humanity are at a high point, we’re more connected than we initially appear. McNally used the power of live theater to harness that closeness; it’s up to us to take it with us after we leave the theater.

---

A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally. Directed by Peter Sylvester; set design by Aaron P. Mastin; costume design by Cynthia D. Johnson; light design by Duane Pagano; sound design by Peter Carpenter. Photos by Sylvester.

Theater Review (NYC): The Chalk Boy by Joshua Conkel

The Chalk Boy, perhaps more than any other play in recent memory, treats teenage girls as more than caricatures. Its characters are all human beings with human problems, whose flaws are just as tragic as those of characters from Chekhov, Caryl Churchill, or Ibsen. Their identity crises and their views on religion, destiny, and hope touch the same themes that have been touched by thinkers far removed from small town America. Two of the girls resort to witchcraft for the same reason people have been resorting to religion, drugs, art, or any other form of escape for as long as there’s been civilization: being alive is too painful without some sort of outlet.

Of course, all that’s in the undercurrent of what is in actuality a very funny play. The darker implications of the story are hidden in a black box of teen girl slang, with “kisses, bitches” and enough “bitches” “sluts” and “ho-bags” to convince you that you’re in high school all over again. Linguists argue that the popular bitchy middle- and high-school girls are the origins of new developments in American English, and while I’m too far removed from this period to say if playwright/director Joshua Conkel’s catalog of slang is completely accurate, he’s certainly developed a deftly-tuned ear for the meter and intensity of teen girl speak.

Marguerite French and Mary Catherine Donnelly narrate the play (they’re, what do you call it…omniscient!) as Trisha Sorensen and Lauren Radley, leaders of the Christian Varsity Youth, giving a presentation and hoping you’ll drink the orangeade they made. Both actors provide the comical framework and help establish a brilliant use of the limited Under St. Marks venue. They also take on any other role that is needed in a pinch, and while the fourth-wall breaking is somewhat too lackadaisical for my liking, it does provide Conkel with a number of tools for his storytelling. The play is somber, but almost always funny; its presentation is adolescent, but still intellectually challenging.

Another of The Chalk Boy’s greatest strengths is the unflinching honesty and bleakness it ascribes to small town America. Clear Creek, Washington is “one of those towns,” Conkel puts it - and as a native of one of those towns himself, his insights into the utter despair that grips these small towns is spot on. The play also highlights how blind most theater audiences—and New York audiences in particular—can often be to how the other half of America lives.

The play centers around the presumed abduction of a relatively popular boy named Jeffrey Chalk, who has gone missing and is presumed dead. This has been a problem with Clear Creek in the past and will continue to be. A curfew is instated, mothers and teachers become paranoid, and girls who are in love with Jeffrey start behaving even more nastily than they did before.

Chalk’s disappearance is the main motivation allowing the girls to feel comfortable asserting their own feelings about life, love, spirituality, and all that blah blah blah. Penny Lauder (Jennifer Harder) is perhaps the most complete character in the play; she experiences a false pregnancy from Jeff but refuses to believe it's false, with the same intensity and obvious futility with which she refuses to believe that Jeff is dead (futility is a recurring theme here). She sees herself as either unlucky, unredeemable, or just plain unlovable, destined to follow in the footsteps of her trailer-trash mother who also had a teen pregnancy. Her vaguely creepy, obviously confused friend Breanna (Kate Huisentruit), future Smith College material, tries to express love and affection for Penny that she knows can never truly be reciprocated until she gets out of this shit town.

The actors often struggle with the wide-ranging, constantly shifting emotional baggage of the play, both explicit and implicit. Conkel makes jokes about his characters’ limited vocabulary, yet they sometimes take on large themes in language too astute for a fifteen-year-old. But perfect consistency was a goal that Conkel was rightly willing to overlook with The Chalk Boy for the larger pursuit of taking the small-town American teen girl into existential territory, and his results are almost always grippingly poignant. You’ll more readily drink the comedic orangeade during the play, but you’ll leave it with a much deeper affliction.

---

The Chalk Boy, written and directed by Joshua Conkel. Starring Jennifer Harder (Penny Lauder), Marguerite French (Trisha Sorensen and others), Kate Huisentruit (Breanna Stark), and Mary Catherine Donnelly (Lauren Radley and others). Photo by John Alexander.

The Chalk Boy runs through September 20 at the Under St. Marks theater. Tickets can be purchased here.

This review was initially published on Blogcritics.

Theater Review (NYC/Fringe Festival): Creena DeFoouie and The Redheaded Man

Weird always has a place in theater, and the Fringe is one of the only opportunities in New York for strangeness to truly run wild. Creena DeFoouie, a show that claims to be “Ab Fab meets Addams Family by way of Rocky Horror,” is both stranger than the Broadway conversion of the last and as surreally funny as Ab Fab.

As the titular character, revenging her sister Mary Annabel’s murder by killing mental patients (basically, a less morose Sweeney Todd), Charlotte Barton-Hoare is the weirdest female British performer we've seen this side of Helena Bonham-Carter. In terms of her performance as Creena, Barton-Hoare has as much skill as she lacks shame. That only means good things for the production.

What hurts it is the lack of a coherent story. True, Rocky Horror didn't have much of a plot either. But although Creena at least tries to build a somewhat coherent narrative, the result feels rushed and tangential when it should just feel fun. Empathy is clearly not the emphasis in such a bizarre play, but if you’re going to introduce a lost-love subplot and actually solve the murder you introduce, common courtesy is to make the events clearer. As it stands, the show wavers between a weird variety show and a classic revenge plot.

That doesn’t mean the action is all that hard to follow, and at moments the play can take hilarious, manic turns. With a dildo fight between Creena and clueless copper Superintendent Hardon (James Hoare), a creatively choreographed murder of a patient (also played by Hoare), and a pitch-perfect closing image, there’s more than enough creativity throughout Creena DeFoouie to keep the show thoroughly entertaining.

The show took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm last summer, and now with a successful run in New York, it should be seeing a larger production in England sometime soon. Maybe around Halloween.

---

The final Fringe show I saw took me through the largest range of emotions and opinions of any show I saw at this year's Festival. At first I was somewhat angered by The Redheaded Man’s unassertively staged hallucinations, by mentally unstable architect Brian (David Jenkins), of the title character (Bruce Bluett). I am generally offended by caricature portrayals of mental illness in any medium, and in addition to playwright Halley Bondy frequently playing Brian’s borderline schizophrenia for laughs, we also get a Cheri Oteri-like pill-pushing quack shrink (Dr. Jones, played by Michelle Sims). In sum, after the first half hour, I was more disgusted than moved.

Against my expectations, the play sneaked up on me. I had figured The Redheaded Man to be a Harvey-like play where a mentally unstable man hallucinates a friend (in this case a visible imaginary friend). What followed, however, was more the unraveling of a psychological history, in the vein of Equus. The result was a somewhat more nuanced, if rather preposterous, depiction of mental illness. Ultimately, The Redheaded Man looks at how people - both the sane and the far from sane - deal with the traumatic but crucial moments in their lives, and how those moments can even make us better people.

Brian and Dr. Jones are not the only people who need to spend some significant time on a couch (though they’re the only two who would be better off in a straitjacket). Brian’s best friend, roommate, and adopted brother Jonathan (James Edward Shippy) constantly wavers between the two poles of romance and familial ties. The lack of a normal young adult life - Brian has taken it from him - has clearly taken its toll. Jonathan is the most well-adjusted individual in the play, which for someone in his situation constitutes nothing short of a miraculous feat of strength of character. Not surprisingly, every time we see Jonathan, we want to see more of him.

Less can be said for Lydia (Bondy), however, a seemingly innocent girl smitten with Brian who frequently borders the line of stalking. While we ultimately realize that Lydia’s attraction to Brian is rooted in guilt about their linked childhoods, her plan to meet Brian is too carefully crafted to be considered anything other than pathological. There is a lot of discussion about how Lydia might be as deranged as Brian. Less talked about is whether Lydia’s presence is legitimate even though it could emotionally crush an already vulnerable individual.

Still, the play’s conclusion about what not to tell Brian, and why, is the emotional crux. It's what ultimately redeems an otherwise inconsistent play, one backed by a rather smart and solid production. Yet, if the play is really going to go places, that ending sentiment needs a stronger, more fleshed-out emphasis. The Fringe is exactly the place to realize this.

---

Creena DeFoouie by Charlotte Barton-Hoare. Directed by James Hoare; choreography by Haruka Kuroda. Starring Barton-Hoare and Hoare.

The Redheaded Man by Halley Bondy. Directed by Jessica Fisch; set design by Lara Fabian; costume design by Nicole V. Moody; lighting design by Paul Toben; sound design by Mira Stroika; video design by Jesse Garrison. Photo by Garrison. Starring David Jenkins (Brian), Bruce Bluett (The Redheaded Man), James Edward Shippy (Jonathan), Michelle Sims (Dr. Jones), and Bondy (Lydia).

Both shows were performed at the New York International Fringe Festival. More information about the shows can be found at http://www.creena-defoouie.co.uk/ and http://theredheadedman.com/.Creena DeFoouie photo by Reg Beaudry.

Theater Review (NYC/Fringe Festival): The Boy in the Basement and Kansas City Or Along The Way

For one reason or another, third-wave feminist sexuality has had an awkward transition to the stage. Perhaps that lack of relevant material is what makes The Boy in The Basement by Katherine Heller, a hilarious, smart play about liberal arts college nymphomania, seem so fresh and welcome. With the more traditional Feminazi being performed not too far away at the Players Theater, The Boy In The Basement addresses feminine sexuality in a manner that is always tasteful and often poignantly real. Anyone who’s shared a complicated living arrangement with oversexed early-twentysomethings knows the drill, and this is a play that can bring in young people and repulse the Greatest Generation types. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of theater we should be seeing more of.

The Boy in the Basement purports to be a live action romance novel, the format in which it was originally written. Indeed, the story conforms to all the conventions of the genre, including flowery sexual narration and an intentionally formulaic plot. While the trappings of such a structure may limit the play to Fringe-like venues, there’s a reason Boy was converted into a play. Enacting a story that would otherwise merely be described allows the play to constantly poke fun at romance novel conventions, ultimately giving it more authenticity. The format also lets the audience meet some particularly inspired and perfectly complementary characters that make up this Macalester College student house.

We have the dominant, aggressive Venezuelan Xandra (played by Heller), who uses her foreignness—complete with brilliant broken English dialogue—to her sexual advantage. We also have Aurora (Anna Stumpf), raised as a hippie, with more Eastern sexual leanings (at least in theory). And we have the tough and practical if still lascivious Clarissa (a standout Lynne Rosenberg), who defines her sexuality as “some old fashioned who’s -ya-momma.” All three vie to seduce Lance Speedworth, an extremely attractive and large-packaged intruder into their home (he was stealing to support his dying sister) whom they punish by making him their slave—and not the kind of slave who performs traditional labor, if you get my drift. Contrasting with all the other three is Anna (Meghan Powe), a virgin farm girl from northern Minnesota who, while staying completely oblivious to the intentions of her housemates, falls in mutual love with Lance.

Anna’s sexual awakening is the only part of the script where I feel the writing could have been better, but Heller’s done more than enough to prove herself with The Boy in the Basement. The play is at least partly autobiographical—in the playwright’s note, Heller contends that “her housemates wanted [her] to tell you that none of the stuff in this play actually happened even though it did." It is unclear whether Heller can go beyond an homage to the romance novel, and this may end up being the lone or rare play in a young romance novelist’s career. But with her sharp eye for social and sexual dynamics, there’s a lot of room for growth.

---

Kansas City Or Along The Way has one quality that almost no other Fringe Festival shows has: it’s a revival, or at least a pseudo-revival. Rising playwright Robert Attenweiler’s Depression-era tale centering around a chance meeting on a southern Ohio train car was first produced as a workshop two years ago, before Attenweiler had much else on his résumé. Structurally, the play recalls Faith Healer and Homebody/Kabul in its use of combining multiple characters' monologues to form an unreliable narration and mask the true plot details until the play’s end.

But what Faith Healer and Homebody/Kabul’s structure had that Kansas City does not are distinct starting and ending points between each monologue. In those plays, as in most great monologue plays, we could spend enough time with a character to fully build relationships with all the characters in the picture. While the constant rotation between the monologues of Joseph (Adam Groves) and Louise (Rebecca Benhayon) certainly makes the situation more confusing, it also prevents the play from building any sort of momentum or sense of attachment. The narrative and chronological relationship between the two monologues is unclear until the climactic meeting scene at the end, which serves as the play’s only moment of dialogue. It’s not surprising that this is the most compelling portion of Kansas City Or Along The Way, as we can finally see Joseph and Louise as human beings, as opposed to intermittent performers.

Part of the blame for the choppy feeling has to go to director Joe Stipek, who fails to provide the show with the precise timing of cues that the script requires. Additionally, while Groves and Benhayon do a respectable job in their performances, they don’t project well, which really kills the show in an acoustically challenged space like the CSV Cultural Center’s Milagro Theater. Groves also plays some Woody Guthrie-inspired songs he co-wrote with Attenweiler, one of which opens the play. The awkwardness of this opening sets the tone for the rest of the awkward timing that follows. The plot itself is pretty interesting, but its redeeming qualities are mostly betrayed by Kansas City’s structure and execution.

---

The Boy In The Basement by Katherine Heller. Directed by Neil Balaban; set design by Sean Tribble; lighting design by Grant Yeager; original music by Jon Quinn. Starring Hller (Xandra); Nick Fondulis (Catherine DuCheval); Tom Macy (Lance Speedworth); Meghan Powe (Anna); Lynne Rosenberg (Clarissa); Michael Solis (Randy, Felipe); and Anna Stumpf (Aurora) Photo by Luke Ratray. The remaining performances are 8/21 at 11:45 p.m. and 8/23 at 10 p.m. at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St.

Kansas City Or Along The Way by Robert Attenweiler. Directed by Joe Stipek; set design by Bret Haines; lighting design by Justin Sturges. Starring Rebecca Benhayon (Louise) and Adam Groves (Joseph). The remaining performances are 8/17 at 12:30 p.m., 8/18 at 7:45 p.m., 8/21 at 3:15 p.m. and 8/23 at 9:45 p.m at the Milagro Theater at the CSV Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street. Photo by Robert Attenweiler.

Tickets to both shows can be purchased at www.fringenyc.org

This review was originally published on blogcritics.