Tynan's Anger

From the start of Princes of Waco, it's pretty clear that Robert Askins is writing about what he knows. The 29-year old Houston native has a smoothness in his Texas dialogue that comes from a native speaker, and the play streams so comfortably through the ins and out of the mythology of Texas and the Wild West that you almost forget that it's actively present. Only a handful of major American playwrights could match this kind of all-American darkness, and that list would include names like Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote, and Tracy Letts.

What makes Askins a remarkably precocious playwright, and what makes Princes of Waco such an enthralling theatergoing experience is the fact that in addition writing about what he knows, Askins already knows his audience. Despite the overwhelming Texan themes, Princes of Waco is a serious drama that deals with the ethical, emotional, and social issues it introduces with the same kind of nuance and perspective that most New York audiences demand. He's writing in a New York that is more open to darker straight plays than it has been in quite some time. He's also writing for the Youngbloods, arguably the most prestigious assembly of young playwrights, in the Ensemble Studio Theatre, which is increasingly becoming the all-around best place for new drama in New York City.

Princes of Waco starts off with a Jim confused preacher's son waiting for a bus on the day of his father's funeral, ignoring a beer he ordered at 8 in the morning while trying to start a future as a teen runaway. He meets a man in a bar named Fritz, a man who's been down that road and seen it all before, and can see right through Jim a mile away. In one of those seemingly innocuous first lines that sets the tone for everything else later on, Fritz tells Jim "you gotta drink it fur it to work."

Fritz's not trustworthy, but he's a natural mentor to Jim, who can see right through the lies of a repressed rural town, but not the lies of a man sitting right next to him. Fritz's "mentoring" results in Jim losing his stolen watch, turning into a felon almost instantly, and spending jail time after Fritz rats on him, and losing his underage girlfriend to his supposed father figure.

What makes the play isn't this story; which as far as general plots go, is one of the oldest in the book. What makes Princes of Waco so great is the kind of emotional weight, intellectual maturity, and complex social portrait that Askins weave. In Princes of Waco, no joke is made without a hidden motive, no one is innocent even if their motivations are understandable, no one changes all that much and even the biggest badass in the room is really quite puny and needy. In this mindset, you're either Jesus or you're damned, an impossible situation with no wiggle room, but one that it's characters still try (and fail) to wiggle out of all the same.

Of course, this kind of attitude would be nothing without the words to back it up. Askins finds humor everywhere it's to be found in Princes of Waco, and no one could accuse the play of being anything less than entertaining. The humor of the play is not as black as the play itself, and it creates a world out of its characters that's easy to enjoy on a basic level. Like the play's characters, Princes of Waco will draw you in with its charms, and leave you with a gut resonance that exists long after you leave the theater (without all the devastation the play runs through).

There's not much original about Princes of Waco, and that's okay; just because the play's tragedy is typical doesn't make it any less tragic. The magic comes, as Fritz points out, "ain’t…in the outcome just in the telling." Askins is able to tell a drama at 29 better than some playwrights can in their entire lives—as good as Princes of Waco is, the best is yet to come.

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Princes of Waco by Robert Askins. Directed by Dylan McCullough; set by Maiko Chii; costumes by Danielle Schembre; lighting by Ji-youn Chang; sound by Hillary Charnas; props by Renee Williams.

Starring Evan Enderle (Jim), Scott Sowers (Fritz), Megan Tusing (Esme), and Christine Farrell (Toasty).

Performances run through January 30, Thursday through Saturday at 7:00pm. Tickets are $18 and may be ordered at www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org or 866-811-4111. Running time: 2 HOURS.

Photo courtesy of Bruce Cohen.

Labels: 2009-2010, ensemble studio theatre, new york, off-off-Broadway, princes of waco, robert askins, theater review

There's little doubt in my mind that 2009 was the best year in recent memory for the revival of straight plays in New York City, and the year was bookended by two of the very best. In January, vaunted Chicago import Our Town turned what had always been a more intelligent play than its reputation preceded and turned it into an essential meditation on mortality in a jaded recession-era New York. The year ended with a revival of an even more unlikely source of contemporary weight: Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play Emperor Jones, a relic of pre-Golden Age American drama that, despite its importance, has been ignored due to its mostly outdated racial overtones. The Irish Repertory's production, now off-Broadway at the Soho Playhouse, is even more daring, just as entertaining, and features some of the most brilliant acting, stage design, and theatrical vision you're likely to find in New York at this time.

It's easy to see why Emperor Jones has gone so ignored. Emperor Jones helped make stars out of both O'Neill and Paul Robeson upon its premiere, and the play was already an American standard by the time Moss Hart was just beginning his career. Nonetheless, in an era when even Huck Finn can be too controversial for a high school English curriculum, the fact that the thoroughly WASPy O'Neill could take such a frank view of an egomaniacal escaped African-American dictator in the Caribbean, with such frequent, unblinking use of the world "nigger," has caused it to be mostly ignored in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. (It should be noted, however, that Emperor Jones was not traditionally performed in blackface; the most prominent blackface performance of the play was actually a postmodern, cross-gender casted revival by the Wooster Group in 2007).

It's also easy to see imagine why a play of an egotistical black leader cursed by classic Greek hubris would resonate with New York theater audiences in 2009, however foolhardy the Obama comparison may be. Wisely, the Irish Repertory's Ciaran O'Reilly lets the superficial comparison speak for itself in O'Neill's script. Rather than the 4 hour+ blab fests for which O'Neill later became famous to literature scholars, but poison for most directors, Emperor Jones is a compact 74 minutes of raw human emotion, modeled after the Greeks.

At the beginning of the play, Emperor Brutus Jones is a dictator no less cocky, brash, or seemingly fully in command of his role as Oedipus or Lear. By the end, Jones' firm convictions in his manifest powers, both in the physical, metaphorical, and Machiavellian senses, ends up cursing his reign to a surprisingly early demise by a fickle, superstitious citizenry. Sound familiar?

More than any current event, however, what makes this particular production transcendent is three-fold. First and foremost, we have the awe-inspiring performance of John Douglas Thompson as Brutus Jones. After his deservedly award-winning turn as Othello last year, the Irish Rep couldn't have picked a better candidate to play Brutus Jones, a character whose cockiness, cynicism, and ultimate devastation reads on paper like Thompson's particular interpretation of Shakespeare . Here, Thompson ratchets up things to a higher level, switching between power-drunk haughtiness to nuanced vulnerability via the slightest eye-twitch in the play's first half. As Emperor Jones takes a more avant-garde turn in Jones' rush through the jungle in the play's second half, Thompson turns into a mad fool, but one completely congruous with the cocksure leader we saw just 30 minutes ago. It's a rather awe-inspiring transformation that defies easy description, and it more than makes up for the rest of the cast's lackluster performances. Either way, I have a hard time seeing Thompson not piling up even more awards that an off-Broadway show will allow.

Aiding to the smoothness of Jones' second-half shift is the remarkable design and choreography by the play's technical team. The creative team takes remarkable risks with its use of puppetry, masks, costumes doubling as sets, and background music that would be seen as stereotypical if it wasn't so perfect, the tech team, with a combination of theatrical and film and TV experience, mixes the use of indigenous stereotypes with that of the Jim Crow-era south to see Jones wrestle with his demons. If Willy Loman's daydreams seem at all dated in Death of a Salesman, Emperor Jones provides a crucial link between classic American drama and the Banquos, Ghosts, and Greek Choruses of theater's past.

Perhaps even more restrictive to staging Emperor Jones than the script is the stagecraft, which requires a kind of wizardry that for the last half-century years has mostly been dominated by erstwhile Artaud disciples. There's nothing absurdist about Jones' mad rush through the jungle to freedom, but with nothing else but Jones' internal monologue to keep the play running for the last 40 minutes, it's difficult to revive the play for audiences who go to legitimate theater expecting good dialogue more than good craft. The tech team hear wins by taking risks that almost always work.

All of this is remarkably audacious territory for director Ciaran O'Reilly, who took risks that far exceeded his critically praised work in 2006's The Hairy Ape, the more audience friendly of O'Neill's early classics. This play tackles some serious issues head on, in a context and style that makes most people uncomfortable. O'Neill could get away with this kind of frankness in 1920, when American drama was still raw and American pop culture was dominated by D.W. Griffith, but few Americans today could focus on the poetry and not the details of Emperor Jones.

Though O'Reilly's been in the States for several decades, he's a native of Ireland and a product of the generation of Irish drama that produced Brian Friel and Frank McGuiness (a generation marked by the wake of the rise to power of historically second-class citizens). Suffice to say, O'Reilly has the clout, both in terms of his resume, his biography, and his long-term vision, to bring Emperor Jones back to the American consciousness, in the right way, and at the right time. He knows where the historical parallels end and where the play becomes the thing, and has overseen a remarkable, seemingly impossible accomplishment in New York in 2009: he's taken an 80 year old play with archaic American values towards politics and theater, and turned it into the most visceral theatrical experience of this winter. The Irish Rep's Emperor Jones reanimates the heart of a theatrical legacy that had seemingly run dry eons ago.

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The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill
Directed by Ciaran O'Reilly

Cast: John Douglas Thompson (Brutus Jones, Emperor); Dick Foucheux (Henry Smithers) Michael Akil Davis (Ensemble, Crocodile God), Jon Deliz (Ensemble, Dandy), Sameerah Lugmaan-Harris (Old Native Woman, Ensemble), David Heron (Lem, Native Chief/ Ensemble), Sinclair Mitchel (Ensemble, Witch Doctor)
Set design: Charlies Corcoran
Costume design: Antonia Ford-Roberts
Lighting design: Brian Nason
Original music and sound design: Ryan Rumery and Christian Fredrickson
Puppet design: Bob Flanagan
Choreography: Barry McNabb
Properties: Deidre Brennan
Stage Manager: Pamela Brusoski
Photo by Carol Rosegg

Performances of THE EMPEROR JONES are set to run December 15, 2009 through January 31, 2010 at Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam Street): Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8pm; plus 3pm matinees on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays (with Christmas and New Year's schedules to be announced). Tickets are $65 and are available by calling 212-691-1555 or online at www.sohoplayhouse.com.

Labels: 2009-2010, ciaran o'reilly, Emperor Jones, eugene o'neill, irish rep, John Douglas Thompson, new york, off-off-Broadway, theater review

13P Started as a collective of mid-level playwrights (e.g. regional and off-Broadway level) who were unsatisfied with the workshop process. It's interesting to watch that mission apply to American Treasure, which feels like a good play that would have been great with more workshopping. American Treasure is one of the few plays I've seen that manages to recover from an exceeding weak opening, which plays up the noir speak to a preposterously high level. This kind of over-stylized dialogue dies down as the plot takes over, but the dialogue does set you off from the plot from the start.

The play also suffers from a weak pair of actors who look lost and poorly disciplined. Playwright Julia Jarcho also directed the show, and the play could certainly have benefitted from an outside source to tighten up the play's pacing and loose ends.

Nonetheless, there's a lot of intelligence abound in American Treasure. The play takes traditional liberal tropes of overwhelming power structures and applies them at a local historical level. In American Treasure's vision, the power that controls your town is no different from the one that controls the national myth, which, as Jarcho astutely notes, was based on genocide. For a genre so dominated by Indiana Jones in American pop culture, Jarcho doesn't gloss over anything.

What could change about the play is a more refined sense of humor, as most of the plays comedy produces nothing more than mild chuckles. The atmospheric effects are great, and most playwrights would dream for this kind of technical design for a small scale show. A few of the playwrights in the 13P collective have already had greater successes since it was formed; Sarah Ruhl already has a Pulitzer nomination and a Broadway show under her belt. Jarcho, featured in the New York Times as a teenager, still has a lot of room to grow as a playwright, but she certainly has a precocious thematic flair. Modifying her knack for dialogue, and letting some of the collaborative processes into her work will only make her work better with maturity. 13P has allowed Jarcho to dictate her vision more than most playwrights, ignoring the fact that playwrights are dictators of their work like few other genres of writers.

Photo by Rob Strong.

Presented by 13P at the Paradise Factory, 64 E. Fourth St., NYC. Nov. 29–Dec. 12. Wed., Thu., Sat., and Sun., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 7:30 and 10 p.m. Tickets:(212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.americantreasuretheplay.com.

Labels: 2009-2010, american treasure, julia jarcho, new york, off-off-Broadway, Playwright, theater review

An adjustment of America's attitudes toward the sixties has been long overdue, and while Mad Men may be reminding people of how the adult world worked in the face of turbulence, August Schulenberg's The Lesser Seductions of History gets with the fresh faced college grads, caught in between the choices of the larger world and their personal demons. A crucial theme in Schulenberg's play is that the divide between personal and political, even in times of rapid change, isn't a black and white distinction.

The Lesser Seductions of History is a fantastic buffet of the sociology of a trying time, when everyone wanted to have a revolution, but not every revolution was on the same page. The sheer number of characters and story lines (10 characters and even more locations) in Lesser Seductions doesn't overwhelm the audience; Schulenberg was wise to trust the empathy inherent on theater to avoid getting lost in exposition or context. He's also taken the American narrative of any elementary school understanding of the '60s, (Beatlemania, MLK, Kennedy, Vietnam), and used is more as a backdrop to his characters, all of whom stay interesting even as they range from saintly, idiotic, and occasionally evil.

The characters you meet in Lesser Seductions aren’t all that different than the characters you see in modern young adult life: the hipster leader who brings people together as he manipulates, the mentally damaged woman trying to avoid the demons, the earnest minority member who becomes radicalized with the education he fought hard to achieve; the no-frills political advocate who can barely watch a politicIan on TV without screaming.

What Schulenberg has tapped into was that the '60s was the first time these groups, all of which had previously existed in private, saw an opening to get their cause heard. The faces of all actors start to turn wide-eyed and smiling around 1963, and, as we all know, by 1968 they are worn, burned out, and attempting to recover the shreds of happiness or normalcy.

Perhaps because of the disparity in all these causes, Schulenberg has chosen to embody the spirit of all causes in one character, aptly named "One" (Candice Holdorf). One serves as something of a cross between a Greek chorus, the Stage Manager in Our Town, and the narrator of a campfire story, much like the one recently scene in Universal Robots off-Broadway (a play Schulenberg has lauded in interviews and on his blog). While I would have much preferred Holdorf to be less fey and cheeky to the audience, Lesser Seductions of history demands a character like One, who draws the audience in to the characters lives. This is a play that would never work in a proscenium setting, and while it may never be performed in a commercial setting, the play works with a minimum of a disciplined and unified cast and crew (likethe Flux Ensemble that produced) with almost no limits at the maximum.

In fact, the major flaw of Lesser Seductions  is not anything to do with the cast or crew, but the space. The Cherry Pit theater is way too claustrophobic to fully express a play like Lesser Seductions, and director Heather Cohn has done a fantastic job simply to avoid having actors bump into anyone or anything in rapid transitions. In reality, however, the play would be ideally suited for a park, field, or open space. If Lesser Seductions had been produced in 1969; it would have been better than Woodstock; the play provides a clearer perspective of young American life than any acid trip ever could.

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The Lesser Seductions of History by August Schulenberg. Directed by Heather Cohn; Costume Design by Becky Kelly; Sound Design by Asa Wember; Lighting Design by Lauren Parrish; Set Design by Will Lowry.Photo by Tyler Griffin Hicks-Wright

Starring Jake Alexander, Matthew Archambault, Tiffany Clementi, Michael Davis, Candice Holdorf, Ingrid Nordstrom, Kelly O'Donnell, Jason Paradine, Christina Shipp, Raushanah Simmons, and Isaiah Tanenbaum

The production, presented by Flux Theatre Ensemble will play at The Cherry Pit (155 Bank Street) November 6-22, Wednesdays-Sundays at 7:30pm with Sunday matinees at 2pm. Tickets ($18) are available online at www.fluxtheatre.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101.

Labels: 2009-2010, august schulenberg, flux theater ensemble, new york, off-off-Broadway, the lesser seductions of history, theater review

A century later, a still-shocking trial provides criminally uninteresting theater


Those who purely value the socially conscious in theater will no doubt be thrilled by Terranova, a new drama by Pamela Monk and Dennis J. Loiacono. The play certainly explores an interesting premise, but Terranova struggles from a script that lacks any flow in dialogue and dramatic pacing. The script is so awkward that it ends upper boring than moving, resulting in a wasted opportunity.


Terranova takes an unconventional approach to the old world/new word dilemma of the American immigrant experience, and Terranova's premise and characters creates an interesting set of dramatic opportunities. On the one hand, the old world ethics of Josephina (Laura Lamberti) prevents her from fully acknowledging the ramifications of the horrific sexual abuse she grows up with. On the other hand, Josephina is in the Bronx, not Sicily, and the luxury provided by a fairer justice system produces a nearly irreconcilable differences in expectations. The ensemble of characters provide an interesting mix, from the establishment America of William Randolph Hearst (John Gazzle, who lacks anything resembling the gravitas you'd expect from Hearst), the compassionate but materialistic reporter Dorothy Dix (Raissa Dorff), and Josefina's counsel John Palmieri (Steve DiNardo), stuck in between the Italian ethical code and the opportunities provided by America.

All this would make a fascinating drama with a less painfully turgid and shallow script. Monk and Loiacono sacrifice anything resembling nuance in order to advance its larger conceptual themes. The cast constantly struggles to find the right tone, and almost no actor really succeeds, as much a fault of the script as the actors' lack of chops. The one standout is Lamberti as Josephina, the only actor able to provide raw emotion to seep through the scripta wordy script (her perpetual rants in Italian, Lamberti's native tongue, certainly help.)

Terranova is based on a real-life trial that was brought back to attention in an article by playwright and bioethicist Jacon M. Appel in 2004. Appel's article focused on just how unnerving the case was to most who had heard it previously. Public acknowledgment of sexual abuse was practically unheard of before then, and almost every facet of the trial, from its use of psychological profiling and the temporary madness argument, the application of yellow journalism to an individual's life, and Terranova's controversial acquittal, mostly a result of jury nullification.

All of this is dramatic enough on its own, and leaves open plenty of room for theatrical innovation. The play however, takes no risks whatsoever, and falls back on blunt describing the implications rather than showing them. Monk and Loiacono didn't necessarily need to resort to shock tactics to get the point across; then again, I've never seen a play that glossed over sexual abuse so carelessly. Terranova's failures end up making a better case for going into riskier territory. Because the script is so insufferable, and because the only thing remotely risqué about the play is its occasional racial epithet (epitheths that were thrown around much more carelessly in 1906) Terranova only weakens any sympathy an audience can feel for characters who were much more interesting in real life. Granted, Terranova suffers from a weak production, but there's so little to be enthusiastic about with this script that I doubt anyone could redeem it.

Terranova by Pamela Monk and Dennis J. Loiacono. Directed by Theresa Gambacorta; costume design by Natasha Daniels; lighting design by Adam H. Greene; music by Michela Musolino and David Pinkard.

Starring Steve DiNardo (John Palmieri), Raissa Dorff (Dorothy Dix), Lucia Grillo (Concetta Reggio), John Gazzale (William Randolph Hearst), Laura Lamberti (Josefina Terranova), Joseph LaRocca (Gaetano Reggio), Joseph Mancuso (The Alienist), Margo Singaliese (Maria D'Angelo), Emilio Tirri (Giuseppe Terranova).

Terranova's last fringeNYC Encore performance runs tonight, September 22, a 7 p.m. in the Actor's Playhouse (100 Seventh Ave. South). Ticket Information: 866-468-7619; http://www.fringenyc-encoreseries.com

Labels: 2009-2010, Dennis J. Loiacono, Laura Lamberti, nyc fringe festival, Pamela Monk, terranova, theater review

Preserving the American Family, with More Compassion than Conservatism

When I saw Stain last year, Tony Glazer struck me as a playwright with a remarkable voice in terms of dialogue and scope, but one who took a particularly repulsive view of his characters and social dynamics. A year later, desperate for drama that invoked the same reaction, I found myself watching his follow-up, In the Daylight. Not only did In The Daylight confirmed my suspicions that Glazer was a playwright of remarkable skill, but also let me see what has to be the best new play of the year, one that's as invigorating to the American stage as August: Osage County, but perhaps even more vital.

Quite simply, In the Daylight exposes a timely strain of white suburban angst as it tries to find a place in an America that's turning away from that direction. It's easy to see a more misguided neighbor of the Feingold household taking the streets in a teabag riot. Martin Feingold (Joseph Urla, from Seinfeld and The Wire), a writer straight from Oprah's book club with a cryptically semi-autobiographical novel, has taken his much feared homecoming trip to deal with his father's ashes, 6 years after his father's death. Something is clearly amiss, and it's more than his mother's health.

What follows is an unremitting family drama full of suspense, terror and remarkable vision. While Glazer pulls no punches in In the Daylight, what makes the play truly extraordinary is the compassion that Glazer finds constantly throughout the play's two hours. On the one hand, the terrors of a dominant white patriarchal household are fully acknowledged, as the terrifying flashback with Martin's father (Jay Patterson) demonstrates. At least on a personal level, Marty, the play's primary masculine voice is no misogynist, despite his passing jokes to the contrary.

The Feingold father spends the rest of the play haunting the family, as the full details of his death are reckoned with despite Martin's desperate attempt to disown his past life. Martin's sister Jessica (Sharon Maguire) and mother Elizabeth (Concetta Thomei), are ruthless in behavior and motivation, but their ruthlessness is more out of a devotion to persevere than out of a desire to torment. Family loyalties are the consistent thread which unites the Feingold's despite the intrusion of a potentially dangerous outsider (Ashley Austin Morris's "Charlotte"). The Feingold family is as volatile and emblematic of its times as any in classic American drama, but Glazer's knack for dialogue and contained scope means he never has to resort to excessive melodrama.

All the elements that drew me to Stain present, but Glazer's, writing has tightened and improved on just about every level. In the Daylight's premise and execution are carefully and cleverly carried out, and the plays;s consistently entertaining streak makes it no less exciting to those who would rather go to the theater for pure escapism. Glazer's script is also aided by a uniformly excellent production,  including the direction of John Gould Rubin, a fantastic abstract technical design, and a cast of disciplined New York veterans fully committed to the project. Glazer takes some considerable risks with the plot twists of the play's second act, but he backs them up with both discipline as a playwright and proper respect for his characters and the audience. The plays closing image, recalling "American Gothic," is among the most affecting I've ever witnessed.
Ever since Obama was elected President, I have been looking for an explanation for the backlash he has received, something "reasonable" conservatives like David Brooks or Ross Douthat have not been able to provide. By reducing larger cultural themes to an individual family, Glazer has provided an empathetic meditation on what was lost when America devalued the role of the nuclear family and community, one that does not need to rely on intellect to justify its underlying beliefs. Glazer is something of a traditionalist, but he's neither anti-intellectual nor a zealot, which will no doubt confuse those Americans who don't know of any other kind of traditionalist. Nonetheless, the uproarious ovation the play received on opening night in the Upper West Side is indicative of just how transcendent this play could be.

In The Daylight uses the theater's unique ability to combine remarkable intellect with genuine emotion, without the pressures of a more commercial medium. In The Daylight invokes a chilling view of American life in the tradition of Shephard, Mamet, and LaBute, but with the distinctly contemporary perspective of a younger playwright entering his prime. I can't recommend it highly enough.

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In the Daylight, by Tony Glazer. Directed by John Gould Rubin; scenic design by Christopher Barreca; costume design by Andreea Mincic; lighting design by Thom Weaver; sound design by Elizabeth Rhodes. Photo by Gili Getz.

Starring Sharon Maguire (Jessica Feingold), Ashley Austin Morris (Charlotte Fontaine), Jay Patterson (Dr. William Feingold), Concetta Thomei (Elizabeth Feingold), and Joseph Urla (Martin Feingold).

Performances will run through October 11th, 2009 at the McGinn Cazale Theatre (2162 Broadway, 4th floor at 76th Street). Tickets are $35 ($30 during previews) for tickets visit www.vitaltheatre.org or call 212.579.0528.

Labels: 2009-2010, in the daylight, new york, stain, theater review, tony glazer

Whatever the flaws of Complete, a new play by Andrea Kuchlewska now playing as part of the FringeNYC Encore series, its intelligence cannot be questioned. Complete has a unique conceptual framework that displays the delicate balance between intellect, emotion, genuine religious experience and our inherent suspicion of those who claim to have all the answers. The religious implications of the American self-help guru, a trend which started in the '70s and has only become more widespread, have not to my knowledge been given this kind of treatment in a play. Certainly, none have applied the self-help guru to the graduate student experience while not directly invoking the names Osho or Timothy Leary.

Wrapping its framework around 4 players, Complete features two linguistics graduate students Eve and Micah (Lucy Owen and Zac Jaffe) who bond over their closeted affinity for prescriptive grammar. Also featured are Jack (Dylan Price), flexing through the roles of two competing, self-help groups as well the professors who mock Eve and Micah's meandering, and Evie (Sophia Nicole Rodyakin), and Abigail Breslin-like combination of the play's inner child and Greek chorus. Evie. Complete's stylistic touches, including non-linear scenes, audience engagement, and an eerie prologue, are not particularly new, and in some cases take away from the play's overall strength. Certainly the lackadaisical direction by Birgitta Victorson didn't help. Nonetheless, it's very difficult to think of the play working any other way. The confusion of emotional and intellectual intelligence is central play's ability to remain entertaining and interesting. The occasional confusions were a smart price to pay for the right general tone.

At the center of the play are Eve and Micah, the two characters that really drive this play to another level. A not-necessarily romantic relationship is sparked by a discovered their mutual disgust for "bad grammar," despite linguistics' devotion to being purely descriptive in regards to language usage. How Eve and Micah view their roles in graduate school, however, couldn't be more different. While Eve's passion for language is inalienably tied to her thirst for knowledge and emotional health, Micah is much more concerned with his status in the field and not embarrassing himself. What's particularly striking about Complete is its complicated and unconventional take on the effect these two motivations have. Eve is more willing to put herself out there in her devotion to the subject matter, and her obsession with details ultimately sours her relationship with Micah. Micah, on the other hand, feels a compulsion to hide his intelligence out of fear of public speaking and scorn. His insecurity becomes so paralyzing that he needs to turn to a guru to fill an emotional void, much to the disgust of Eve, who has a bad history with gurus.

The differences between the "The Training" and "The Program," the two competing, generic self-help groups are never fully explored. Instead, Kuchlewska focuses on the indistinguishable emotional tactics used by each group, involving repeated catchphrases, deceptive jokes and colloquialisms, and the occasional screaming and strong-arming. Kuchlewska doesn't focus on the behaviors of the converted; There's no Heaven's Gate or Jonestown parallels here. Instead, she focuses on the margins of the conversion process, making it more understandable, if not relatable.

Complete contains a full gamut of attitudes towards cult-like behavior and academic pursuit, without applying any particular value set to them. No doubt audiences will be willing to add their own beliefs to Complete. Yet, Kuchlewska has audience biases fully covered with her smorgasbord approach. All this could have easily resulted in a very messy, unwieldy production. In fact, Kuchlewska errs on the side of intelligence at the expense of natural dialogue, and there are at least two scenes that would be best cut out. But by providing pockets of pathos and humor in the script, aided by the veiled intensity of Owen and Jaffe, Kuchlewska turns Complete into a smart play that intimately grasps theater's ability to become an intellectual platform, without becoming a soapbox.

Labels: 2009-2010, Andrea Kuchlewska, complete (play), Lucy Owen, new york, nyc fringe festival, theater review, Zac Jaffe

"You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. 'Be careful of that guy,' you are told. 'He is a man with a past.' A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. 'Be careful of that guy, too,' he says. 'He is a man with no past.'

"Which of these two people do you trust less?"

- Chuck Klosterman

It doesn’t take much philosophical wisdom to see that a bad boy who doesn’t play by the rules is always more sexy than a neurotic nerd who draws within the lines. Yet the bad boys are not just the types you don’t take home to mother—they’re often the types who will commit the most horrible atrocities, yet will always be popular, or at least fascinating, in the public eye. Ted Bundy’s trial was filled with women giving him love letters and wedding proposals. CNN cuts from serious discussion of the war in Iraq to sensationalist chasing of Paris Hilton. The allure of a pure, romantic view of beauty is so powerful that it taints and corrupts anyone who possesses it. 

Pretty Theft, a new play by prolific playwright Adam Szymkowicz, clearly identifies with this problem, and wrestles with it throughout. At the center of Pretty Theft’s epic struggle is Joe (Brian Pracht), “a man with no past,” who lives a preposterously sheltered life in an assisted living facility, subjected to harsh, traumatic treatment if he so much as kisses the one beautiful person who takes an interest in him. On the other side, we have Marco (Todd d’Amour), the “man with a past” who can steal beautiful things with ease, be it by stealing a painting or raping a teenage girl, and knows with utter conviction he will never be caught.

Szymkowicz loosely based Pretty Theft on Charles Mee’s Hotel Cassiopeia, which examined the glorified life of box artist Joseph Cornell. After seeing Hotel Cassiopeia at the Court Theatre in 2006, I was disgusted by how the precision of the SITI company could be applied to a play that was so aimless in its examination of a celebrated artist’s life. Conversely, Pretty Theft, which only takes from Cassiopeia the character named “Joe” who is fascinated by ballerinas, has a relatively clear and larger thematic aim: the simultaneous allure and danger of beauty. Yet Szymkowicz, who is a more enthusiastic but less precise playwright than Mee, can’t seem to find a way to bring it all together. Pretty Theft is an admirably ambitious play, but one that can’t find a center to bring it all together. Part of the problem is utilizing eight actors and even more characters. By trying to tell each character’s story, he loses us along the way.

In general we are focused on the turbulent, traumatic summer before college of Allegra (Marnie Schulenberg), who despite having nearly everything going for her can’t seem to break herself out of a nearly permanent funk. Everyone around her senses her purity and naïveté, but all react to it differently, be it her wild childhood friend Suzy (Maria Portman Kelly), who admires the kind of lifestyle Allegra is able to maintain (great college, great boyfriend, great resources), or her dimwitted boyfriend Bobby (Zack Robidas), whose resentment of Allegra is backed by the same societal logic that lets Marco know he will get away with his crimes.

While society may simply allow Marco to get away with horrific acts, his own reasoning is more complex. A cross between a poet, philosopher, and sociopath, Marco is the only character who understands the realities of the value of beauty in today’s society, and he is as disgusted by that valuation as he is drawn to it. When we first meet Marco, he claims to be “retired” from his job of stealing beautiful things. By the end, he’s committed the most horrific kind of theft imaginable. Like Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Marco is the only one in the play with the courage and shamelessness to exploit a cultural weakness that is vulnerable to exploitation. The last time I saw d’Amour, he was putting his hyper-gruff voice and attitude into a comedic context in last summer’s exceptional, underrated What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends. Here he’s taken that persona to its natural extreme, and I’ll be damned if d’Amour doesn’t give one of the better performances as a villain I’ve seen all year.

Yet we never really get full resolution of the fates of Marco, Allegra, or Suzy, possibly because Szymkowicz, like most male playwrights, downplays the psychology of rape, even as he explores the execution and societal significance of it in gruesome detail. Allegra and Suzy’s relationship, tone, and attitudes are constantly shifting, more a product of out-of-sync, inconsistent playwriting than a conscious attempt to regularly shift definitions of beauty.

What Szymkowicz does understand, however, is the effect socioeconomic scale has on standards of beauty. While Joe finds anything even remotely associated with ballerinas to be beautiful enough, and Allegra’s status awes Suzy, Allegra can never seem to win her mother’s approval, and Bobby is too jaded even to comprehend how breaking up with Allegra after her father’s death may be in poor taste. Even in his evilness, however, Marco is able to see Allegra’s combination of physical, intellectual, and emotional beauty with a clearer eye than anyone else in the play. Ultimately, the most irredeemable character ends up saving the play by bringing Szymkowicz’s message home. Whatever flaws exist in Pretty Theft, it is certainly fascinating, even when ethically dubious. For a play meant to examine exactly that conundrum, I suppose that is all that matters.

Pretty Theft is presented by the Flux Theatre and runs through May 17 at the Access Theater Gallery, 380 Broadway. Photos by Isaiah Tanenbaum. This review was originally published on Blogcritics

Labels: 2009-2010, adam szymkowicz, chuck klosterman, flux theater ensemble, new york, off-off-Broadway, pretty theft, theater review

If you’re looking for the most savage depiction of the plight of the college-educated young woman struggling to manage work/life balance, don’t look to Sex and the City, Real Housewives of New York, or even the Fight Club spoof on last week’s 30 Rock. Instead, you’ll find it at UNDER St. Marks in Caitlin and the Swan, yet another fine production by The Management. In an adult working girls' night out, everything is going relatively normally until you hear a beast bellowing from behind the stage so loudly that it seems more fitting for a Martin McDonagh play. Yet it turns out that the bellow is from Peter the Pig, the new physical relationship (or as the kids call it these days, fuck buddy) of married, bored, and still virile Rachel (Teresa Stephenson). Peter, in the world of this play, isn’t just a metaphorical pig. 

That her friends don’t walk out in disgust is a sign that playwright Dorothy Fortenberry did not have realism in mind when writing Caitlin and the Swan, but the emotional plight of the women who make up the play is as real as anything. All three of the central female characters have a different species that brings out their animal instincts: Rachel her pig, Indian lesbian gynecologist Priya (Shetal Shah) a cat, and Caitlin (the exceptionally versatile Marguerite French), whose indecision becomes the central focus of the play, the Swan that haunts the lawn of the too-smart-for-his-own-good Bastian (Jake Aron) whom Caitlin is SAT tutoring.

As the choreography, costumes, and names indicate, Caitlin and the Swan is something of a revisionist feminist adaptation of Swan Lake: in addition to the gender reversal of who woos the swan, while Tchaikovsky’s ballet focused on marriage and commitment, Caitlin and the Swan focuses on pure sexual desire. The endings are reversed as well; the ballet ends with a sad but beautiful romantic image of forlorn lovers falling into the sea, while Fortenberry’s play ends happily with Caitlin satisfied with her life but having had to perform a senseless act of violation and destruction to trigger that ending.

The impossibility of total happiness is a common enough theme, but it applies especially to the female graduate of an elite undergraduate education. In today's world, the Working Girl romantic vision of the dual life of a professional woman has been shattered, but the Stepford Wives vision hasn't come back either. Instead, we now have a real world where 60% of female graduates of Yale plan to sacrifice parts of their careers when they have children, where the ever-increasing dominance of the online word is plagued with rampant anonymous misogyny — yet the Sex and the City myth of being able to live single life to the fullest still pervades our culture.

Fortenberry, a Yale School of Drama alumna who may very well have conceived parts of Caitlin and the Swan while that debate raged at Yale, has a keen eye for reducing larger social mores to the world of individual characters — however twisted that world may be — without reducing the characters themselves. Occasionally, she can let these larger themes override naturalistic dialogue or total consistency, but her occasional lapses in Caitlin and the Swan are more than made up for by the originality in her expression.

Along with director Joshua Conkel, who showed his willingness to depict the role of rural deviancy in a larger American framework in September’s The Chalk Boy, Caitlin and the Swan marks The Management’s rapid ascent towards becoming one of the leading voices of downtown Manhattan theater; The Management's audience has grown with each production I’ve seen, and if the economy forces theater dilettantes to go further off-Broadway to avoid high ticket prices, all the better, as half the shows currently on Broadway don’t have the keen vision of what American theater needs that The Management has constantly displayed through black box productions.

Finally, there's another cultural factor in play here that may make Caitlin and the Swan an even more significant work in future generations. With themes of bestiality expressed so frankly and without a consideration for realism, Caitlin and the Swan may be the first major play to address a subculture that most online media users caustically acknowledge, but few outside that world dare consider. Rick Santorum supporters, hide your eyes: we now have a play that addresses furry fandom in full force.

For those without exposure to the full underbelly of the Internet, furry fandom is the online subculture of anthropomorphized animal enthusiasts, often with a sexual fetish involved. If you’ve interacted with college or high school students recently, read enough Inside Baseball Internet nerd blogs, or researched the history of Second Life, you’re probably aware of this culture. If not, be prepared for the next alternate lifestyle battle our culture will be facing, shortly after American society has addressed the homosexuality and transgendered debate.

This fetish freaks me out, but I've learned not to question cultural trends once they become established on the Internet. Once that issue becomes a mainstream topic, however, expect future generations to look at Caitlin and the Swan as a launching point in the theatrical debate. Whether or not she has intended this to be the case, Fortenberry has taken the furry fetish and both made it real in her theatrical world, and expressed how real-world members of the subculture can address the issue. For the moment, however, it's just as easy to treat Caitlin and the Swan as a fun, smart, and raucous experience that addresses current American issues in The Management's trademark slanted style, in addition to pointing to where things are going in the future.

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Caitlin and the Swan by Dorothy Fortenberry; directed by Joshua Conkel; choreography by Croft Vaughn; original music by Colin Wambsgans; sound design by Adam Swiderski; costume design by Caite Hevner; set design by Timothy McCown Reynolds; lighting design by Kelsi Welter and Conkel; photos by Moira Stone.

Starring Jake Aron (Bastian), Brian Robert Burns (Doug), Elliott Reiland (Pig/Swan), Marguerite French (Caitlin), Shetal Shah (Priya), and Teresa Stephenson (Rachel).

Labels: 2009-2010, caitlin and the swan, dorothy fortenberry, Horse Trade Theater Group, joshua conkel, new york, off-off-Broadway, the management company, theater review, under st. marks