Arpeggio

Is Arpeggio a farcical look at our culture’s dependence both on electronic distractions and the consumerism driven by our obsession with celebrities? Or is it a drama about one slightly off-kilter girl’s unhealthy fixation? Is it a tragedy? A murder-mystery? A meditation on the isolation inherent in modern urban life? Even several promising performances can’t save Arpeggio from collapsing under the weight of all of the above.


Photo by Vanessa Lozano

Reviewed by Ilena George

When Midwestern Gerry (Allison Ikin) moves to New York, she does so alone: without friends, a job, or an apartment. After moving in with Zeb (Andy Travis), a neurotic writer who does not watch television or listen to music because “We fill our lives with this stuff that keeps us from thinking,” Gerry finds a devoted friend in Zeb and an arch-nemesis in Zeb’s childhood friend and current employer, pop singer Cindy Hall (Kristina Kohl). Part of why Zeb allowed Gerry to move in was because she was not as instantly wowed by Zeb’s connection to a celebrity as most of his prior roommates had been. Eventually, Gerry confesses that she is unmoved by Cindy’s celebrity because she is the secret girlfriend of soulful crooner Tobin Grey (Jonathan Albert). Or is she?

Punctuated by live music by Tobin and his band, one of the themes of Arpeggio is separating out truth and reality from the gossip and confabulation that surrounds celebrities. As Gerry, Allison Ikin embodies the perfect mixture of innocence and latent insanity. But once the initial mystery surrounding Gerry’s claim is resolved, the main thrust of the story remains the rivalry between Cindy and Gerry. Waiting for the escalating tension between them to erupt is not nearly as suspenseful as parsing out the enigma Gerry presents.

Although Zeb and Gerry’s interactions can be engaging and entertaining, the other characters feel shoehorned into the story. This is particularly true of Zeb’s boyfriend, Ricardo (Marino Antonio Miniño), whom Gerry marries in order to allow him to remain in America. But his tendency to rant about the country’s unfair immigration policies feels as though it belongs in a different play entirely.

The play is not quite intimate enough to be a piercing look at one girl’s fixation on a particular celebrity. Nor does it effectively hold up a mirror to the generation of twentysomethings looking for their place in the world: Gerry and Zeb’s on the nature of our unnamed generation and the fact that teenagers drive the economy as the biggest consumers of pop culture are sometimes insightful but more often stilted. “We define ourselves by our taste in music rather than our politics,” Zeb says. This flavor of conversation you might sample on the floor of a college dorm room at 4 am, but is perhaps not the most engaging way to make a point outside that venue. Nor was it a skewering of the over-the-top nature of celebrity lifestyles and society’s devotion to them. However, one moment that more successfully lampooned the current state of pop culture, especially pop music, was Cindy’s solo act, where she sings “Shopping Around,” while dancing with a chair. The fact that Cindy is much older than her target audience, her overtly sexual dance moves, and the song’s lyrics, (“I get my kicks shoppin’ around./Baby, that’s just how it is./A new voice speaks and I like the sound/Variety is sung in my key.”) which are a pretty fair, even generous, approximation of something you might hear on the radio, make for an entertaining opening to the second act and one that makes several points about the music industry without necessarily spelling them out for the audience. But soon afterwards, with the addition of a melodramatic murder-mystery, the play tries to wear too many hats. Gerry defined the show’s title, saying, “Arpeggio allows you to hear the truth of each note,” but in Arpeggio, the truths about society come through with static.
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Arpeggio by David Stallings, music by Alec Bridges
Directed by Cristina Alicea
45th Street Theatre (354 West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues)
November 1 – November 18
Tickets: $20-$25, (212) 352-3101 or www.theatermania.com

12th Night of the Living Dead

What happens when you cross Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead? You get the perfect Halloween treat: a zombified Shakespearean comedy that is a well-balanced mixture of clever, disgusting and hilarious.

Photo by Tony KnightHawk

Reviewed by Ilena George

The La Tea Theater, which houses 12th Night of the Living Dead, forever won my admiration earlier this year as the venue for Point Break Live!, a production based on the Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swazye film about an FBI agent who goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of bank-robbing surfers. The show involved a lot of audience participation, from soaking the first two rows, to holding them up in a “bank robbery” to actually using a member of the audience each night to play Keanu Reeves’ part. 12th Night has a similar appeal: The show is playful, a little ridiculous and completely entertaining.

Although the space lends itself to productions that have an informal feel to them, that’s not to say that the production is poorly put together. Quite the opposite is true. As a whole, 12th Night of the Living Dead melds together Shakespearean and modern references in several entertaining and smart ways. Lillian Rhiger’s costumes mix elements from modern clothing with period dress: The opening scene features Orsino and one of his musicians dressed in bathing suits over white stockings, while also sporting ruffs. The men wear modern suit pants modified to become trunk hose. Even Feste, who is a long-haired, round sunglasses-wearing free spirit in this production, has his jeans hemmed up to the thigh.

Surprisingly, and satisfyingly, the zombie trope is completely apropos for the Twelfth Night story: not only does much of the dialogue readily adapt itself to a more horrific situation (“What kind of a man is he?” asks Olivia, referring to the zombified Viola/Cesario. “He is of…mankind,” replies Malvolio.), but turning the characters into ravenous, cannibalistic zombies also perfectly illustrates the complete self-absorption of all the lovers in the play.

The show stays true to Shakespeare’s dialogue. However, since the undead are rather reticent, the conversations get more and more one-sided as more and more characters become zombies. But many of the characters are so caught up in themselves that they are utterly unable to see the terrible reality right in front of them. Duke Orsinio’s solipsism is especially hilarious; he forms a close bond with Viola/Cesario, thinking “he” is a willing audience to his (Orsinio’s) constant ramblings on life and love, never realizing the obvious—that “Cesario” is a woman and, at least in this particular production, undead.

From Larry Giantonio’s stoner Feste, to zombie Viola (Lindsay Wolf) and her insatiable hunger for human flesh, to Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Benjamin Ellis Fine) and his dead-on comedic timing, to gaunt and severe Malvolio, played by Tom Knutson, the vivid characters are in turn winning, funny and all completely doomed. Although the zombie comedy can start to lose its luster— at times, there is such a thing as too much zombie physical comedy or dribbling blood—the production includes enough gory surprises to keep the material fresh. No pun intended.

12th Night of the Living Dead is a delicious gorefest, including a (literally) visceral death scene near the conclusion and a grand mêlée ending, one that guarantees a bloody good time.

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12th Night of the Living Dead Adapted by Brian MacInnis Smallwood
Directed by John Hurley
La Tea Theater (107 Suffolk Street, between Rivington and Delancey)
October 25-November 10
Tickets: $18, 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com

Philoktetes

MacArthur Fellow John Jesurun’s interpretation of a classic Greek myth offers a succinct and visually compelling meditation on a long, unwinnable war and the alienation of a disillusioned soldier. The minimalist set and evocative imagery provide a beautiful and dream-like background to the aggressive verbal attacks the characters launch at each other.


Will Badgett, Jason Lew and Louis Cancelmi
Photo by Paula Court

Reviewed by Ilena George

Philoktetes was a Greek general who, while en route to battle the Trojans, was abandoned by his fellow soldiers on an isolated island after being incapacitated by snakebite. However, after ten years of unsuccessful struggle against the Trojans, Odysseus consults an oracle who tells him the only way to win the war is to find Philoktetes and take Hercules’ bow from him. Jesurun’s play begins where the myth ends: Odysseus and Achilles’ son Neoptolemus visit Philoktetes and attempt to enlist his help.

The production has a fluid lyricism, both in its dialogue, which possesses the solemn sonority of scripture (and which, at times, is actually selections from the Bible) and visually as well. Two big screens, one angled down on the wall and the other on the floor, project images of nature—water, the full moon—and more abstract images—colors, sparks and trails of light—which establish both a lulling and uneasy atmosphere. At times, the actors used a camera at the back of the stage to appear in close up and larger-than-life on the wall screen.

Though there is more narrative than action, Philoktetes unfolds with tension of a courtroom drama: The characters coldly interrogate each other while harboring simmering contempt. Jesurun's minimal set and subtle staging heightens the effect of every sharp word or movement. Louis Cancelmi as Philoktetes is especially mesmerizing; his taut and restrained delivery speaks volumes as to the disillusionment that comes with prolonged isolation and the anger stemming from a soldier separated from his war. Will Badgett as a stern and be-suited Odysseus and Jason Lew as Neoptolemus are similarly entrancing.

It is the language of the play that is both the most beautiful and terrible part of the production. The play begins with Philoktetes’ entreaty, “Listen to me,” and it is difficult to disobey. References to gods, goddesses, and mythical creatures are uttered nearly in the same breath as references to modern conveniences (Chinese take-out, room service, etc) and slang. Ranging from repetitive call-and-response exchanges to visceral invectives (“Have another blood and honey sandwich, Odysseus, and contemplate your future under the boot.”), Jesurun’s imagery invokes the grim specter of war and an emphasis on the slow corporeal and metaphysical rot that ensues. This sparse and evocative play is not one to miss.

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Philoktetes by John Jesurun
Directed by John Jesurun
Soho Rep (46 Walker Street)
October 13-28, 7:30 pm
Tickets: $25, www.smarttix.com

Soho Rep 99 cent Sundays

Cheap Seats Alert:

Soho Rep (46 Walker Street) which is currently showing the excellent Philoktetes, has instituted 99 cent Sundays. You guessed it, all tix are 99 cents. Visit www.smarttix.com or the box office.

None of the Above

Jenny Lyn Bader’s None of the Above features a Clueless-esque premise wherein a vapid teenage girl wins the heart of an intellectual older man, but with a higher education twist: A down and out linguistics graduate student takes on the challenge of tutoring an uptown girl toward a perfect score on the SAT. Emerging out of this familiar set-up are Clark (Adam Green) and Jamie (Halley Feiffer), two genuinely endearing characters with a common purpose and clever comedic timing.

Adam Green and Halley Feiffer in None of the Above
Photo by Carol Rosegg

Reviewed by Ilena George

Similar to its bubble-gum pink bedroom setting, the play is wrapped in a sugary sweet candy coating. And while it does at times have that unsatisfying feeling you get when consuming empty calories, the warmth the actors infuse into their characters breaks them out of their usual molds, saving them from becoming either too saccharine or too artificial.

From the absentee professional parents (one of whom is only reachable through the intercom on the wall) and omnipresent maids, to casual sex and drug and alcohol use and ostentatious displays of wealth, there is evidence everywhere of the many clichés applicable to a teenage Manhattanite attending private school. On the flipside of the tutor-tutee relationship, Clark, the tutor, is also introduced as stereotypically uptight: he counts words when people speak, uses five dollar vocabulary and absolutely loves tutoring. But we quickly learn that buttoned-down Clark hides some dark secrets and that Jamie’s claim that “Studying is just not me,” is also just a smokescreen for someone who is much brighter and much kinder than you might expect.

The characters quickly learn how to manipulate each other, coaxing out information in exchange for solving math problems, until Clark spills the beans about the preposterous contract he and Jamie’s father drew up when he agreed to be her tutor. Clark and Jamie realize they could both benefit from her acing the SAT and forge an alliance. From here, the plot turns loopily melodramatic, with the SAT escalating into a matter of life and debt.

But the two leads keep the escalating madcap plot within the realm of what’s emotionally believable. Green’s Clark is obviously charmed by Jamie’s mix of youth and sophistication and Feiffer’s irrepressible Jamie embodies that irrepressible interest many of us felt to find out who are teachers were outside the classroom. Green and Feiffer are both charming and each character’s reluctant fascination with the other keeps the action from getting stale when the play begins reiterating evidence that Jaime’s parents are never around, or that Clark has some serious baggage (from class issues to addictions). Added to the mix are some entertaining asides about the precociousness expected of private school kids, where Jamie periodically and off-handedly throws around esoteric bits of information she was taught at a very young age, including performing Faust in the 4th grade (“I was Gluttony,” Jamie shares wearily.).

The play has its rough patches, including some spots of clunky dialogue (“Clark, do you just think about the SAT all the time so you don’t have to deal with your real problems?”) and not completely believable teenage expressions (“Dumb as a doorbell,” “Cool your cookies”), and if over-the-top plot twists make you squirm, this may not be the bubble to fill in with a Number 2. But for a light-hearted, sometimes polysyllabic diversion, the answer is D: None of the Above.

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None of the Above by Jenny Lyn Bader
Directed by Julie Kramer
Lion Theater (Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street)
September 25-November 25, Tuesday-Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm,
Sunday at 3pm
Tickets: $45, Ticket Central (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com
$20 Rush tickets available the day of the performance at the Theater Row Box Office

The Shape of Metal

Sparked by a dying man’s denial of paternity, a daughter forces her aging, tyrannical mother to give up long held family secrets in this Irish family drama by Thomas Kilroy, directed by Brian Murray.

Reviewed by Ilena George

Crippled by arthritis, confined to her chair, famed sculptor Nell Jeffrey (Roberta Max) still runs and ruins the life of her younger daughter, Judith (Julia Gibson). As the Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainhaim dismantles her studio piece by piece to open a permanent exhibit of Nell’s work, Judith tends to the man her mother claimed was her father; his dying words bring the familial ugliness she had swept under the mental rug out into the open. In addition to the question of paternity, which, when grilled about it, Nell responds, “My life was very crowded in those days,” Judith wants to get to the bottom of why her disturbed older sister, Grace (Molly Ward) left thirty years ago and was never heard from again.

The Jeffery household as it was, which we catch glimpses of through memories and flashbacks, was a forcibly eccentric one. No men, frequent excursions throughout the world prompted by a whim, and the expectation that normal and ordinary lives are abhorrent. Throughout the play, Roberta Max provides an electrifying stage presence; it’s easy to see how a life under Nell Jeffrey’s roof could be both thrilling and terrifying.

Oscillating between lucidity and confusion, the past and the present, bully and victim, success and failure, Max’s Nell vividly embodies a woman once at the top of her craft, now battling her body’s inevitable decline. For Nell, Gracie is the ghostly elephant in the room; her failed first attempt at parenting. This is addressed somewhat heavy handedly through the presence of “Egg Woman,” Nell’s failed sculpture that has a prominent place in her studio and toward which Grace expresses a particular affinity.

Julia Gibson gives a stately dignity to Judith, but as the straight-laced foil to Nell’s eccentricity and brilliance, her character cannot hope to compete with her mother’s magnetism. Nell’s acuity, now evident through pithy one-liners on the nature of life, art and love and her tendency to call her acquaintances by oxymoronic epithets (“Splendid bollocks,” “the adorable shit”) make the slow deterioration of her mind a tragedy.

Like its protagonist, the play meanders in its second half, losing its urgent pace. The big reveal of what prompted Gracie’s sudden departure turns out to be as sordid as promised but not quite as shocking as expected and what seemed to me to be the main question of the play remains unanswered: Where is Gracie now?

Instead, Nell continues musing on modern art, in what she calls the “age of relentless artistic mediocrity” and tells stories about the men and artists she has known (including an odd but charming anecdote about Samuel Beckett and his love of German shoes). Irrelevant though her stories may be, and irreverent though she may be, I could have spent hours listening to the rest of her tales.

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The Shape of Metal by Thomas Kilroy
Directed by Brian Murray
59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street)
September 8-30, Tuesday-Saturday 8:15 pm, Sunday 3:15
Tickets: $21, Ticket Central (212) 279-4200

A Midsummer Night's Dream

After its poignant production of Romeo and Juliet, The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park sets its eyes on lighter fare with one of the Bard’s classic comedies. And you might be pleasantly surprised by who turns in the dreamiest performance.

Reviewed by Ilena George

For the first time in the nearly 10 performances I’ve seen of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is the show’s play-within-a-play that’s the highlight of the evening. The same elements that made the play-within-a-movie in Waiting for Guffman so great are at work here: Wacky and delusional characters you’re wholeheartedly rooting for and a so-bad-it’s-fantastic performance of a mediocre play.

The rude mechanicals, embraced by much warmer lights than the menacing blue of the Fairy Kingdom and the dim gray of Athens, shine through as the play’s most charismatic and gentle-hearted characters. The casting is genius; distinguished actors bring distinction to all the parts. Jason Antoon as Tom Snout, for instance, familiar to theatergoers for his role as the crazy-eyed bartender in Contact, plays the Wall between Pyramus and Thisby with a ferocity that’s both hilarious and winningly sincere. Ken Cheeseman as the stage-frightened Robin Starveling/Moonshine and Keith Randolph Smith as Snug/The Lion are similarly irresistible.

As for the slightly more prominent mechanicals, if anyone could get sixpence a day for playing Pyramus out of Theseus, it would be Jay O. Sanders’ Bottom. A character who is often self-centered and thoroughly annoying, Sanders’ Bottom is instead a gentle man (though not much of a gentleman), beloved by his peers (even when they find him exasperating) and hugely enthusiastic about almost everything. Tim Blake Nelson, from O Brother Where Art Thou? among dozens of other movies, plays nervous ringmaster Peter Quince to perfection. Last, but not least, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, whose face currently tops a multitude of cabs with ads for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, plays Francis Flute and Thisbe with perfectly timed sarcasm and some of the best physical comedy of the play.

Under Daniel Sullivan’s direction, Midsummer emphasizes whimsy and lightheartedness, with songs, magical slight of hand and bright colors. No lasting damage is incurred by any of the characters and the final tableau with everyone singing Puck’s last monologue in unison emphasizes new beginnings and hopefulness. Usually, I prefer Shakespeare a little darker, but Titania’s minions, played by eerie children who look like extremely well-dressed characters from an Edward Gorey story or a Tim Burton film, almost satisfy that craving. And not a penis joke in sight! (But in taking the bawd out of the Bard, especially in a play whose subtext screams sex, it does feel a little chaste.) As a whole, though, the play is a satisfying way to spend a late summer’s evening.

The Greenwich Village Follies

A light-hearted production with a heavy dose of love for the Village’s cultural heritage and Off-Broadway (and Off-Off and Off-Off-Off-Broadway) theater, The Greenwich Village Follies is high spirited and deliciously raunchy, offering an overview of the Village’s history in the form of an old-school musical revue.



Reviewed by Ilena George

Back in the early 1900s, the Greenwich Village Theater (long since razed and replaced with a commercial building) became famous for housing the Greenwich Village Follies, a smaller scale version of big budget Broadway revues popular at the time. The Follies made up in talent what it lacked in financing. But while the old Follies had the distinction of becoming the Village’s first production to transfer to Broadway, I highly doubt it had the pot dealer’s chorus line, the hilariously bad wigs and mustaches or the anthropomorphized painter’s canvas of Andrew Frank and Doug Silver’s current incarnation, playing at the Manhattan Theatre Source.

From Peter Stuyvesant to the Stonewall Riots, Poe to Pollock, pot to peaceniks, The Greenwich Village Follies brings the Village’s colorful characters and events to campy life. It’s a more self-aware version of Schoolhouse Rock meets the Ziegfeld Follies after being robbed and forced to replace all their costumes and props with cheap knock-offs. But the cheapness—put on display by having the set resemble backstage, with props carefully hung up or shelved and always completely visible—is part of the charm. The show and its performers are playful throughout, from the actors’ pre-show schmoozing with the audience, to the production’s self-deprecation (“Of course most of our theatrical tradition is filled with unemployment, anemic ticket sales, and scavenging closed shows for set pieces.”), to its inclusion of a Greenwich Village trivia contest. Just as playful and catchy is the music—just try getting the (absolutely dead-on) Washington Square Park pot dealers’ anthem out of your head. Although the performers—John-Andrew Morrison, Charlie Parker, Guy Olivieri and Patti Goettlicher—are all very talented, the production plays up its Off-Broadway status and avoids taking itself too seriously; weak spots and awkward transitions are pointed out and commented on for comic effect. The actors all address each other by name and at one point Patti segues from Guy’s recounting of various facts related to African-American history to her ode to NYU by saying, “Hey guys—not to be the little white girl who’s not interested in black history but I’m ready for my NYU song.”

Some of the material covered, especially toward the beginning, feels geared towards out-of-towners—what self-respecting New Yorker doesn’t know that Washington Square Park used to be a potter’s field, or about the misogyny and prejudice behind the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?—but the production really gains steam in its second half. Especially in “Splatter Me All Over,” where Charlie Parker as Jackson Pollock’s canvas urges the inebriated artist to cover her with what would become the artist’s signature paint drips. Parker’s captivating vocals and her ability to rock the hell out of the canvas costume (a sheet with a whole in it, stretched between two poles) makes this clever song astoundingly good. Beginning with a double entendre-laden ode to the Village’s sex shops, to a charming barbershop quartet-style homage to the recently-closed Chumley’s (the bar responsible for the expression “86 it”), to the completely brilliant “Splatter” and the surprisingly touching “Stonewall Girls,” Follies morphs from a varied and playful recap of historical events to a meatier and sleeker glimpse at the institutions and people that have shaped the Village. It’s still cheeky fun, but with a double shot of nostalgia and appreciation thrown in that just doesn’t come through in the same way earlier on.

The play ends with a musical version of former poet laureate of Brooklyn, Walt Whitman’s poem “City of Friends,” which begins: “I dream’d in a dream I saw a city, invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;/I dream’d that was the new City of Friends.” With this capping off an evening of sincere New York love, only the hardest of hearts wouldn’t melt a little.

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The Greenwich Village Follies
By Andrew Frank and Doug Silver, original concept by Fran Kirmser
Directed by Andrew Frank
Manhattan Theatre Source (177 MacDougal Street)
July 6-28, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, Saturday July 28th at 7 and 9 pm
Tickets: $18, Theatermania (212) 352-3101 or www.theatermania.com

Doppelganger

Fusing quantum physics and urban legend, Feed the Herd’s Doppelganger uses a technologically sophisticated space—complete with interactive video and sound effects triggered by the actors’ manipulation of the set—in a trippy exploration of how the heart and mind deal with loss.

Reviewed by Ilena George

“What if there are two types of reality?” muses George (Jermaine Chambers) during an acid-fueled moment of clarity, “What if there is something other than linear logic?”

Doppelganger’s non-linear narrative poses this and other metaphysical questions by looking at two characters’ fragile mental states as they cope with grief following a traumatic death. George, originally an elevator-fearing corporate drone, becomes a frenzied risk-taker after witnessing his friend and co-worker Frank (Matt Hanley) fall out a window 40 stories up. Marcia (Heather Carmichael), Frank’s co-worker and erstwhile lover, hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since witnessing what remained of Frank after he hit the pavement. But Frank won't stay dead: both George and Marcia are haunted by various versions of Frank—from flashbacks to the day of Frank’s death, to Frank’s ghost, to his flesh-and-blood doppelganger. Potentially, Frank’s untimely demise sparked from an accidental meeting with his double, his doppelganger, while on line at a coffee shop.

Overseeing George and Marcia’s mental health, embodying corporate culture’s lack of soul and providing an overview of the double-slit experiment and other tenets of quantum physics is the office’s psychiatrist and motivational counselor, known only as The Doctor. Metha Brown’s eerie delivery and apparent omniscience, coupled with the set’s anxiety-provoking, quick-moving video projections of the characters stressing out, 40 stories worth of skyscraper rushing by and even relatively normal street scenes infuse ordinary objects and events—tables, papers, sleeping, speaking—with a sense of creepy malaise and anxiety.

The play consists of fragments—fragmented scenes, fragments of scenery, small personal objects suspended from the ceiling—that build on each other to depict the troubled mental landscape of these two characters as they try to sort out what exactly happened that day and what the aftershocks have been. Frank’s death consumes George and Marcia; they basically exist as characters only because of it and there’s something surgically clean about this obsession. Artistic attempts to parallel scientific principles with humanity and the human experience often don’t hold water. Just try reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. That is, saying something has a dual nature is not automatically the equivalent of a photon’s particle and wave-like characteristics. But Doppelganger allows the science some room to breathe, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions as to what exactly is going on. But while the science is evocative, Doppelganger’s visual representation of George and Marcia’s mental states is more striking.

But all these fragments put together create a portrait that still lacks a piece or two as almost nothing is fully explained or known for certain beyond the fact of Frank’s death (which may not even deserve to be called a fact). While the beginning and end neatly mirror each other, the story calls out for a few more pieces to make it complete. Perhaps a little too much is left up to the audience to fill in but if you enjoy a provocative challenge on the nature of reality in a uniquely equipped space, don’t be afraid to sharpen your mental pencils and color in the blanks for yourself.

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Doppelganger by Simon Heath
Directed by Emanuel Bocchieri
3LD Art and Technology Center (80 Greenwich Street)
June 23 - July 21, Tuesday through Saturday at 8 pm
Tickets: $25, Theatermania (212) 352-3101 or www.feedtheherd.org

Dark of the Moon

Rarely professionally staged, Dark of the Moon—a mythical story of witches and farmers set in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina—enjoyed a run on Broadway in the 1940s and has since lived on mainly in high school, college and community theaters. Thirsty Turtle Production’s take on this classically problematic play conjures up a cohesive and atmospheric look at the perils of prejudice and unquestioning adherence to religious dogma.

Reviewed by Ilena George

A Southern Gothic fairy tale with a dark side worthy of a Shirley Jackson story, Dark of the Moon offers a kind of story-telling that feels much larger and more epic than the space it's housed in might suggest. Based loosely on the 17th century folk song "The Ballad of Barbara Allen," Dark of the Moon presents a Romeo and Juliet-esque story about a woman and a witch-boy who fall in love and pursue a doomed relationship that both humans and witches oppose. John the witch-boy (Noah Dunham) makes a deal with Conjur Woman, an old woman with magical powers, who agrees to make him human for one year with the stipulation that he may remain human only if the beautiful (and loosely moralled) Barbara Allen (Sarah Hayes Donnell) stays faithful to him for one year. John must learn to live like a man—chopping wood, caring for his wife—but is forbidden to enter a church, which will almost instantly cast suspicion on him in the highly religious community he attempts to penetrate.

Atmospherically, the production uses simple sound and lighting tricks to great effect, from a string of lightbulbs in mason jars during a lightning and thunder-filled barn dance to rain sticks and an eerie plinking percussion during the scenes with Conjur Man and Woman. Hands down the best new take on the play was the decision to represent Conjur Man and Conjur Woman with seven foot tall wire and cloth puppets, helmed by four actors apiece. Appearing in the first scene of the play, their otherworldliness and mythic proportions set the tone for what followed.

Some other innovations worked less well: at the beginning of the second act, when John's witchly (and wicked) compatriots draw him out to cavort with them, the heavy black drapery blocking the light from chashama's 42nd street-facing windows was pulled back and the goings-on inside theater were visible to passers-by. A risky and gutsy move, to be sure, but one that detracted from the show for its "You're on Candid Camera" prankiness.

Crawford's direction and the strong cast of vivid characters nimbly avoid many of the play's pitfalls. The townspeople as a whole, and in particular the terrifically smarmy Preacher Haggler (Jake Thomas), optimistic and flirtatious Ms. Metcalf (Jessica Howell) and Barbara Allen’s bellicose jilted lover Marvin Hudgens (Matthew Hadley), take what could have been two-dimensional characters and instead provide a chilling portrait of how fear, prejudice, and the hive mentality can push an otherwise vibrant community into terrible acts. The witches provide creepiness during the first act, but the humans dish it out in the second with the evocative and unsettling scene where Barbara Allen gives birth and the religious revival where the town sanctifies rape in the name of God.

One spot where the play does occasionally falter is with the overabundance of rural, folk-speech that easily tips over into ridiculousness. Between the dozens of uses of "I reckon" to the many "that don't make no never mind," as well as references to stereotypically hick practices—drinking moonshine made from corn, eating squirrel meat and so forth—the play becomes, at times, difficult to take seriously. This isn’t helped by the play’s odd pacing, where scenes with fighting, singing and magic will be interspersed with scenes that barely further the plot. But the strength of the two leads—who are completely riveting to watch—the often joyous (if sometimes oddly timed) musical interludes of folksy songs, spirituals and ballads combined with the unexpectedly thought-provoking themes and images that give the play life, make Dark of the Moon worth taking a chance on.

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Dark of the Moon by Howard Richardson and William Berney
Directed and adapted by Ian Crawford
Collective P.A.S.T. @ chashama (217 East 42nd Street)
June 15th through July 7th
Tickets ($15): Smarttix.com or 212-279-4200

Escape from Bellevue

Rocking music and a heartfelt autobiographical confession about a rocker who falls prey to drug and alcohol addiction and finds a way back from the abyss, Escape from Bellevue is one not to miss.


Christopher John Campion in Escape from Bellevue
Photo by Carol Rosegg

Reviewed by Ilena George

“It’s like a surprise party for fuck-ups,” Christopher John Campion says of the intervention staged by his friends and family to try and get him into rehab. Campion, lead singer of the band Knockout Drops, recounts his experiences with drug and alcohol addiction, hospitalizations in the psychiatric ward of New York’s Bellevue Hospital and eventual recovery in Escape from Bellevue—a series of monologues interspersed with rock songs currently in an open-ended run at the Village Theatre.

Campion is charming, frank and wryly funny as he candidly explains the consequences of his former lifestyle, from losing his spot in his band, to losing his connections with family and friends. “I call these years the wonder years, because I’m still wondering what the hell happened,” he says. That’s not to say Campion does not seem to get a kick out of recounting some of his wacky encounters with rodeo clowns, psych patients, and benevolent deli owners. The show grew out of Campion’s autobiographical asides to the audience during Knockout Drops performances and the Drops’ music punctuates and adds depth to the narrative while the venue’s relatively small size makes the production feel like a personal rock concert.

The intimacy of the Village Theatre perfectly serves Escape’s confessional tone, as does Cameron Anderson’s spare but evocative set, reminiscent of an abandoned building—complete with stained old windows and exposed rivets—gives the production that unexpected but not unwelcome closeness of a stranger spilling out his life story in a dark bar. Between Escape’s content and settting, it is as if Campion and the Knockout Drops are speaking directly to each member of the audience; this connection and Campion’s charisma allows him to get away with discussing faith and “finding [his] light” without coming off as corny or clichéd.

Running at about ninety minutes without an intermission, Campion manages to cram in a lot of material, from the origin of the Knockout Drops, to three hospitalizations at Bellevue for threatening suicide (including one attempted hospitalization that ended instead with Campion being the first man in years to smooth-talk his way out of the hospital—giving the show its name), to drunken antics on the streets of New York. Lighting designer David Weiner similarly finds a way to unobtrusively fit in a range of neat tricks. Particularly effective are the harsh fluorescent lights signaling Campion’s first incarceration within Bellevue, which nicely bookend the show and provide a visual context for Campion’s eventual commitment to rehabilitating himself and his life, when they return during Campion’s third and final stint at Bellevue. This time, the fluorescents are joined with some warmer floor lamps as Campion discusses his change of heart. Although the ending feels a bit abrupt and less detailed than some of his other exploits, Campion’s compelling humor and pathos brings a dark time of his life into the light.

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Escape from Bellevue by Christopher John Campion
Directed by Alex Timbers
The Village Theatre (158 Bleecker Street)
Thursday-Friday 8 pm, Saturday 8 and 11 pm
Tickets ($30-45): Ticketmaster, (212) 307-7171

Sessions

One of the tag lines for Sessions, Albert Tapper's new musical about a therapist and his patients, is “Couldn’t we all use a little therapy?” Maybe we all need a little therapy, but to make it through this show, heavy sedation might be more useful.

Reviewed by Ilena George

Enclosed in the glass cage of therapist Peter Peterson’s office in Manhattan, Peterson’s patients engage in a group therapy session where all the participants loudly try to out-complain each other. Each character gets his or her turn to sing out their troubles and each tale of woe is more insipid than the last. Together, they manage to embody or describe every clichéd dilemma that drives upper-middle class Americans into therapy, from seeking and never finding Daddy’s approval to coping with Mommy’s alcoholism and neglect to making excuses for remaining with an abusive spouse. Set to forgettable music more appropriate for an elevator than a stage and with lyrics that are at best uninspired and at worst tortured rhymes (Examples: “I haven’t been feisty since my birth/But now I have a sense of my own self-worth.” “Think of me as a chocolate éclair/Let me run my fingers through your hair/I’m not wearing a sign that says, ‘Beware’”), Sessions has as many flaws as its characters have mental health issues.

The fact that the characters are almost all unlikeable exacerbates the triteness of their problems. From cowardly and twitchy George (Scott Richard Foster), who can’t get over breaking up with a college girlfriend and who looks up to Dr. Peterson as the bastion of masculinity, to seductive but shrill Leila (Amy Bodnar), who unsuccessfully attempts to seduce the morally stalwart Peterson, the actors aim for flawed-but-human but hit only flawed instead. Two characters distinguish themselves as more sympathetic than the rest: affable Dylan (David Patrick Ford) who believes he is Bob Dylan (complete with harmonica, guitar and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth) and holds himself above the rest of the group, teasing them for their problems and refusing to his acknowledge his own and Trisha Rapier as the wounded but dignified Mary, who gives her character humanity despite having a stereotypical storyline as the victim of spousal abuser.

Playing mother hen to this unruly brood is Dr. Peterson (Matthew Shepard), a man who takes his work to heart and wears his heart on his sleeve. More sympathetic friend than impartial facilitator, Shepard’s Peterson is easily overwhelmed with emotion by his patients’ problems and his tortured navel-gazing—complete with “therapy sessions” with his subconscious (voiced by Ed Reynolds Young)—oozes with melodrama. Despite being credited by his patients as being far more composed and capable than they are, there is little proof he’s any good at his job, as several of the characters have major breakthroughs at the only group session the good doctor does not attend.

Sessions disappoints in part because the production does not lack talent. Most members of the cast, as well as director Steven Petrillo, are Broadway veterans and the quality of the singing is the play’s strength. But even excellent vocals cannot compensate for the tedium of so many woeful (and woefully similar sounding) ballads, broken only by the occasional ensemble number.

Aside from a few sight gags—a businessman chuckling at an issue of Highlights for Children, a Tom Cruise-inspired moment of couch-jumping—and Peter Barbieri, Jr.’s well-designed but clumsily operated set—complete with the mental health metaphor of an opaque glass wall—Sessions makes a series of bad choices it never bounces back from.
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Sessions
Music, book and lyrics by Albert Tapper
Directed by Stephen Petrillo
Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street)
May 30th to August 18th
Tuesday to Friday 8 pm, Saturday 2pm and 8 pm, Sunday 3 pm
Tickets: TicketCentral.com, 212-279-4200 ($50)

You Can't Take It With You

The T. Schreiber Studio's charming production of You Can't Take it With You brings us directly into the living room of a family who loves each other but can't seem to stop themselves from accidentally mortifying each other, getting one another arrested or nearly burning their house down. In other words, the kind of family one would hesitate to bring a significant other home to meet, rather than the other way around.



Reviewed by Ilena George

Before Meet the Parents’ Fockers and My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Portokalos family, there were the Sycamores in Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take it With You. The Sycamores are a deliriously eccentric family whose young daughter, Alice (Jacqueline van Biene), tries to keep a close rein on her family’s brand of free-ranging quirkiness when she brings her fiancé, Wall Street heir Anthony Kirby Junior (Jushua Sienkiewicz), and his parents home to meet her family for the first time. Only the stuffy Kirbys could resist the charms of the dozen people living under the Sycamores’ roof and the T. Schreiber Studio’s production of the classic play makes the Sycamore family innocent and endearing rather than frivolous and vapid.

From candy making to fireworks manufacturing, the Sycamores collect hobbies, most of which they do not excel in (to put it mildly). Mrs. Sycamore (Margot Bercy) starts but never finishes melodramatic plays while her husband Paul (Jerry Rago) builds fireworks in the basement and their adult daughter, Essie Carmichael (Jamie Neuman), has spent eight years trying to learn to pirouette from an overly enthusiastic Russian ex-pat who enjoys wrestling strangers to the ground. When not adding to their hobby collection, the family accumulates unplanned long-term residents, such as the milkman and the ice deliveryman, who show up one day and stay for years. The man behind the curtain of all this benign madness is the Sycamores’ patriarch and resident philosopher Martin Vanderhof (Peter Judd), whose personal philosophy is that everyone should pursue what makes them happy and not spend their life toiling away at work they despise.

Grandpa’s follow-your-heart message is not a subtle one, but what the character and the play as a whole lack in subtlety this production makes up for in kindheartedness. Judd’s performance lends sincerity and gravity to Grandpa, just as van Biene’s Alice is alive with the enthusiasm and innocence that lets her get away with overly naïve lines like, “Is there much rice in China?” Nearly all the adults display this childlike innocence, and the best moments come from their sweet quirks. Mrs. Sycamore, suffering from writers’ block, says, “I've sort of got myself in a monastery and I can't get out,” to which Essie replies, “It'll come to you, Mother, remember how you got out of that brothel.” There are moments when all the zaniness spills over into slapstick territory, particularly once the Kirbys show up, but they are mercifully few.

T. Schreiber Studio’s intimate theater makes the audience part of the family, bringing us right into the Sycamores’ tastefully, if erratically, furnished living room, designed by Ryan Scott. At times this up-close view may be a little too intimate: it is easy to see where the production cut some corners. But it also affords us a look of where they didn't scrimp: the simple but elegant costumes designed by Summer Lee Jack effectively capture both the time and the characters.

Elaborate and enthusiastically performed choreography set to period music covers the transition between some scenes; although the play’s characters are still fresh, more directorial additions such as this could have helped compensate for the many outdated jokes and references that do not have the same longevity. But while references to Childs or Schraft’s restaurants no longer resonate the way they once did, Grandpa would agree that a few hours in great company is something you can take with you.

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You Can't Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
Directed by Peter Jensen
May 24th through June 24th, Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 3 pm
T. Schreiber Studio, 151 W. 26th Street, 7th Floor

Don Juan in Chicago

Sex makes people do funny things. The Clockwork Theater’s production of David Ives’ Don Juan in Chicago pokes fun at the lengths people will go to in order to have sex, avoid it, or have it with that special someone (whether or not he or she shares the sentiment).

Reviewed by Ilena George

Vascillating erratically between comedy and drama, damnation and redemption, The Clockwork Theater's Don Juan in Chicago re-imagines the story of legendary lothario Don Juan, who makes a deal with the devil: immortality in exchange for the successful seduction of a different woman each night. The trouble is he’s not a particularly smooth operator and, like its protagonist, the production needs to add a little grease to its wheels.

With its reliance on one-liners and fast-paced comedy sequences, Don Juan in Chicago plays out with the timing of a sitcom. Kooky and heavy-handed light and sound tricks—lighting and thunder as well as cartoonish announcements of the Devil’s arrival—underscore the play’s dark-humored though light-hearted moments. Ives’ deft rhyming couplets and overblown Shakespearean ending, with parents reuniting with long-lost children and true love ruling the day, highlights the fact that the play works best when it’s not taking itself too seriously. Consequentially, its serious moments feel leaden and lifeless. In addition, Mike Cinquino as Don Juan morosely sleepwalks through all but the beginning of the play, leaving the heavy lifting to the non-titular characters, who are more than capable of carrying the action, particularly Doug Nyman as Don Juan’s long-suffering servant Leporello and Stephen Balantzian as Mephistopheles.

Despite an ending that tries to tack on a much happier (and loftier) twist on what had otherwise been fairly dark in subject matter and fairly light in tone, the play partially redeems itself with its creative series of dirty jokes. After all, even the devil enjoys a good laugh.

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Don Juan in Chicago by David Ives
Directed by Owen M. Smith
Kirk Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street
May 26th-June 9th
Tuesday-Friday at 8pm, Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00, Sundays at 3:00
Tickets: 212-279-4200

Phallacy

As the title’s pun suggests, Phallacy amounts to a 90-minute penis joke. The fact that the joke is told by Carl Djerassi, inventor of oral contraceptives and one of the world’s leading chemists, makes it funnier, but does not fully redeem this exhibition of puerile professional one-upmanship couched in a lecture.

Reviewed by Ilena George

In Djerassi’s Phallacy, art and science butt heads, step on one another’s toes and refuse to see eye-to-eye. Based on a real-life incident, an art historian and her assistant struggle against a chemist and his assistant to get to the truth behind a sculpture assumed to belong to Roman antiquity and later proven to be a Renaissance copy of an ancient sculpture. The accomplished ensemble cast makes their two-dimensional characters likeable but the play's flaw lies in its story: Djerassi mines what is possibly the least compelling aspect of the statue’s story in what becomes a childish and dull debate of the merits of art history versus those of chemistry through a technologically sophisticated prank war.

From the staging to the plot, the play hangs on its characters’ unwillingness to see what is directly in front of them. Dr. Regina Leitner-Opfermann (Lisa Harrow), director of the antiquities division of Austria’s premiere art museum, has literally written the book on a sculpture of a young man she has long attributed to the Roman period. When challenged by scientific evidence presented by chemist Dr. Rex Stolzfuss (Simon Jones) about the sculpture’s anachronistic elemental composition—too few trace elements in the bronze for the technology of the Roman period—Dr. Leitner-Opfermann shrilly refuses to acknowledge Dr. Stolzfuss’ research, just as she chooses to ignore some of her own research that casts doubt on what she chooses to believe about the statue. In a fit of pique, during which Jones practically rolls his eyes at her and winks at us, she throws Stolzfuss out of her office, sparking a race between the two sides, who share the stage but not a common purpose, to see who will be the first to publish conclusive proof as to the statue’s true origin.

Underlying this clash is an ill-fated love story. Dr. Leitner-Opfermann’s young colleague Emma (Carrie Heitman) and Stolzfuss’s assistant Otto (Vince Nappo) are in a secret and somewhat contrived relationship. Their relationship becomes a pawn in the power play between the two professional heavyweights as Dr. Stolzfuss uses information Otto gleaned from Emma to trick Dr. Leitner-Opfermann with pieces replicating her beloved statue, with one small but important adjustment Dr. Stolzfuss knew Dr. Leitner-Opfermann would overlook: the angle of the statue’s penis.

The human element gets lost quickly in this world where professional achievement means everything. Nappo and Heitman, while their performances are solid, lack real chemistry and their pairing seems doomed from the outset. Dr. Leitner-Opfermann’s marriage also failed and she develops a sensual but asexual relationship to the statue; she is intensely aware of each of the statue’s parts but pointedly skipping over any mention of his reproductive organs. Harrow shines in her description of the statue and her level of attention to its details; she conveys a wistful longing both for the object and for what she has had to sacrifice in pursuing it.

But the play’s real emotional core remains lodged in dimly lit flashbacks to an interaction between a soldier and a veiled woman, whose “costumes” are cleverly projected onto Nappo and Harrow. The soldier tells us he is Don Juan of Austria (bastard son of Hapsburg King Charles V and brother of Philip II) and the Austrian villager who hides behind a veil reveals her identity as Don Juan’s mother. Along with their identities, the pair reveal to us the statue’s true origins, an issue the present-day characters will continue to squabble over until the last possible moment.

Any elementary school student could have stepped in and offered these characters a lecture on compromise. The play flirts briefly with the idea that there is room for art in science, science in art, a personal life in addition to a professional one, but the conclusion leans more toward the idea that to be truly devoted to your discipline, you need to serve it with a slavish dedication that shuts out all else.

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Phallacy by Carl Djerassi
Directed by Elena Araoz
May 18-June 10
Tuesday through Saturday, 8PM
Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, 3PM
Tickets ($35), 212-239-6200 or 800-432-7250
Cherry Lane Theater
38 Commerce St.

stirring

If, in 100 years, an anthropologist unearthed Shalimar Production’s stirring, which (for those of us in the present) includes speed dating after select performances, it would provide a snapshot of what life is like for trendy 20-something New Yorkers living in Williamsburg and the East Village, looking for love. In addition to insights into the perks and perils of internet dating, he or she would get a good sense of what bands were hot on the indie scene and what kinds of clothes and hairstyles you needed to be considered cool. Watching stirring feels like opening a time capsule too soon: It’s full of witty, sharp and observant references about being young and in New York, but lacks in substance.


Rachel Plotkin, Kim Gainer and Brandon Bales in stirring


Reviewed by Ilena George

Stirring follows seven characters searching for love online, focusing on the lives of James (Matt Bridges) and Sasha (Kim Gainer), an already established couple who are drifting apart and attempting to find solace with others. Inspired by actual online personals, stirring feels like a loosely connected series of worst case scenarios, chronicling all the things that can go wrong when you pursue someone over the internet.

During bouts of unnecessarily frenetic staging in an awkward space forcibly coerced into serving as a theater, Trip (Jack P. Dempsey) and Laura (Rachel Plotkin) explore their kinkier sides, Ryan (Brandon Bales) comes to terms with his sexuality after meeting Daniel (Joey Williamson) and Joy (Jen Taher) draws the short straw in the online dating lottery time and time again.

Discussed at length is how to present yourself online: how to structure a blog entry or a personal ad, what level of deception is acceptable or necessary. The wittiness of the writing and the cast’s energy generally compensates for the play’s thinness in plot and character development. The characters are hollow, without pasts or depth, embodying types just as easily identified by their costumes (designed by Ariella Beth Bowden) as what they say or do: the hipster in a monochromatic sweater, rectangular black glasses and Converse sneakers; the tech-savvy girl in boots and a dress with buttons down the front and a big thick belt; the sleazy guy with a shirt open one button too far. Yet the ensemble’s strong performances still invoke sympathy when dating turns disastrous.

To add an extra shot of self-awareness, after several of the performances, singles who attend the play are given the opportunity to meet through speed dating. One of the issues the play addresses is how difficult it is to make a connection and giving audience members a forum to attempt this is clever. But the appeal of internet dating partly lies in its anonymity, which speed dating cannot preserve. The night I attended there were so few males signed up that cast members were roped into it as well. However, it was much like the play itself: fun as long as you don’t think too hard or look too closely.
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stirring by Shoshona Currier and Charles Forbes
Directed by Shoshona Currier
March 16th-25th, speed dating after 3/17, 3/24 (straight), 3/23 (gay, men only)
InterArt Annex, 500 W. 52nd Street
Tickets: $10, $20 for speed dating, www.theatermania.com

BFF

Should we hold ourselves accountable for bad decisions we made when we were too young to understand the consequences? Featuring two solid performances in a play that toes the line between true-to-life and cliché, Anna Ziegler’s BFF, WET’s latest production, examines how a close friendship between two teenaged girls becomes the lynchpin in both their lives.


photo by Max Ruby
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Reviewed by Ilena George
BFF tells two stories in parallel: the budding romance between the mysterious Lauren (Sasha Eden) and Seth (Jeremy Webb), is set against Lauren’s recollections of Eliza (Laura Heisler), her best friend from childhood, and the tragic and inexorable arc of the girls’ friendship. When Seth and Lauren first meet, Lauren introduces herself as Eliza, and from that moment Eliza’s fate is sealed. In flashbacks, we see Eliza’s slow, irrevocable downward spiral, contrasted with Lauren and Seth’s relationship taking flight, faltering, and ultimately recovering. Despite the play’s true-to-life qualities, the predictable outcome feels more tedious than satisfying.

Winning performances by Webb and Heisler distract from the story’s shortcomings. Webb’s Seth—who introduces himself by saying “I’m a banker. I mean, I work in a bank.”—has more than a few neuroses and an acute case of logorrhea but Webb charms rather than annoys. Heisler’s awkward Eliza, who is trying to grow up at her own pace, elicits strong sympathy for being unapologetically herself and paying the ultimate price for it. Witnessing the raw emotion that literally spills out of Heisler in the final scene of BFF is the most affecting moment in the play.

The play’s weakness lies in its foundation: the main character, Lauren (Sasha Eden), trying to fit in with the popular girls as a teenager and trying to find self-definition of any kind as an adult, lacks the vibrancy of the loudly vulnerable characters around her. The role itself is somewhat thankless; Lauren desires are those of the clichéd teenaged high school girl and her dialogue matches them. But Eden doesn’t make us like Lauren, or even love to hate her. She is in every scene but is the least fleshed-out of all the characters.

The set and music consistently work in concert to weave between the past and the present. The simple but effective music between scenes evokes nostalgia. Cleverly using projections and short videos as part of the set, the production makes the most of DR2’s relatively small space, bringing us to Lauren’s girlhood bedroom in the ‘80s, to a modern-day Manhattan coffee shop, to the side of a pool and beyond with a minimum of scene-changing acrobatics. This is an easy play to relate to: We are these characters or, at the very least, have known them. All three silently cry out to each other for help and are met with either silence or misunderstanding; a tragedy that only the audience fully witnesses and aches for.

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BFF by Anna Ziegler
directed by Josh Hecht
A WET Production (Women's Expressive Theater)
DR2 (103 E. 15th Street)
February 17th-March 24th
Mondays through Saturdays at 8pm
Tickets (www.wetweb.com, 212.239.6200): $25-$35

The Burial at Thebes

Exploring current political issues through an ancient lens, The Eleventh Hour Theater Company presents a topical but tepid production of Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles' Antigone, entitled The Burial at Thebes.

Frank Anderson as Creon, surrounded by members of the Chorus.

Photo by Jonathan Slaff

Reviewed by Ilena George

The question of what it means to be a patriot during wartime has become increasingly relevant to our society. Seamus Heaney's new translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, explores this question, and works to sound out the resonance and parallels between the current American political landscape and King Creon's dictum of either obeying his mandates or being branded a traitor to Thebes. Director Alexander Harrington takes some risks in his interpretation of the ancient story, but it is Heaney's translation that stands out most notably in this otherwise uneven production.

Antigone, the doomed-since-birth daughter of Oedipus' accidental incest with his mother, insists on burying her brother Polyneices, killed while battling the city of Thebes. King Creon has declared Polyneices to be an enemy of the city, unworthy of burial, and Antigone refuses to accept this; she buries her brother and is buried alive as punishment for defying the king. Standout performances from Frank Anderson as Creon and Jessica Crandall as Antigone pit the two main characters against each other as worthy adversaries: Antigone has youth and religious conviction on her side while Creon relies on his position as all-powerful ruler. Antigone is an easy character to fall for, and despite Creon's poor rationale for his decisions, he still evokes pity as an old, stubbornly dogmatic man watching all he's worked and stood for ripped from him by a young girl.

Heaney’s poet’s eye provides a graceful lyricism to his translation that alternates between poetic description and accessible idiomatic speech. His interpretations of the choral sections were powerful when half-spoken and half-sung by the eleven members of the chorus; the words seemed meant for song. Except often the chorus' singing was underscored by Carman Moore's oddly upbeat-sounding music, which jarred with the tragic events the chorus described and lessened the words' impact. Overall, the play lacked cohesiveness; the chorus switched from its operatic recitations to different styles—including a section styled after spoken-word and one with a rhythm that seemed more appropriate for ballroom dance—that abutted each other and felt awkward and inconsistent. This was just one rough edge to the production; the staging was at times gauche—speeches delivered with the actor's back to the audience, chorus members placed in positions that blocked the audience's view of the stage—and it wasn't just Moore's music that was inconsistent in tone. The performances of the rest of the cast were not on the same level as the leads, both in terms of skill and in the style of delivery.

The bare-bones set and costumes, including cheekbone-highlighting face paint eerily reminiscent of death masks, were simple but effective, allowing Heaney's translation to remain the real focus of the show. For hardcore aficionados of the classics, that alone may make this production worthwhile. For those less devoted to ancient drama, a trip to Barnes and Nobles to browse Heaney's translation may suffice.

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The Burial at Thebes, translated by Seamus Heaney,
directed by Alexander Harrington.
January 25 - February 11, 2007
La MaMa E.T.C. (First Floor Theatre), 74A East Fourth Street
Thursday through Sunday at 8:00 pm plus Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm.
Tickets: $18, Box Office (212) 475-7710. Online ticketing available at www.lamama.org