2002-03 theatre season reviews

2002-03 theatre season reviews nyc theatre info, listings, and reviews now playing: plays musicals for kids & families late night cabaret/comedy new this week by neighborhood more listings: coming attractions festival listings one night only venue listings: theatre district other manhattan outside manhattan help me choose a show: trip planner reviewers' picks stars on stage ticket information: how to buy tickets ticket discounts senior/student discounts explore nytheatre: subscribe to our newsletter interviews nytheatre factfile cds and books nytheatre buzz links blogs: martin denton (nytheatre i) michael criscuolo (nytheatre mike) nytheatrecast plays and playwrights review archives: current season previous seasons other media: rss feed podcasts about this site: sitemap reviewers/staff list your show nytheatre archive 2002-03 theatre season reviews show reviews on this page: generica, genesis: 7 breakthrough plays, ghosts, golda's balcony, gone home, great small works toy theatre festival, gun club, gypsy, habitat, hairspray, hallelujah breakdown, hank williams: lost highway, happy days, harbor currents, harlem song, havana under the sea, heard [but not scene], heat lightning, henry v, henry 6 parts 1-2-3, high priest of california, hold please!, hollywood arms, hollywood nurses, holy child, hospital, house of trash, how his bride came to abraham generica by martin denton · june 14, 2002 the scene, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improv, is sponsoring a month of performances at the metropolitan playhouse. eight companies are featured and you can't go wrong, whichever one you choose to see. as for me, i've been following jay rhoderick, kevin scott, and matt higgins—three of the four gentlemen who comprise centralia—for years now. they've hooked up with director/performer larry grimm and accompanist josh sitron for their current show, which is entitled generica, and is headed for this summer's new york international fringe festival, where it will, if there's any justice, break out with the unabashed fervor of urinetown. the thing is, these guys are very funny, enormously inventive, and spectacularly fearless. their show is improvised from start to finish (that may not be true of what lands in fringenyc). unlike most improv formats, there are no audience suggestions allowed or required. this works: let these five inspired madmen drive the car. we have enough to do just trying to keep up with the sudden turns and hairpin curves, all negotiated with astonishing felicity—panache, even—at breakneck speed. of course each centralia show is different. here's a broad outline of what happened at the one i saw recently. it began with a sketch about a bumbling youngster who accidentally kills his grandfather; then morphed quickly into a story about a young couple, circa 1900, enjoying an afternoon at a county fair, who end up taking home a large and very animated duck from the shooting gallery. from here we headed into a weird war film, in which asian nazis battled our boys in blue; then we followed one of those boys home for a meeting with his best buddy's girlfriend. somehow, we eventually wound up in a ceo's posh office where a poor sap was being sent to nepal to oversee the acquisition of a monastery. instantly, we meet the guy's wife and kids as they bid him farewell, and then we're in nepal (which had suddenly become tibet) where the now-acquired monks have opened a starbucks franchise and are entertaining a family of yetis. i've omitted some stuff (like the topical references to the world cup and donald rumsfield); hopefully you've got the flavor. the point is, with centralia, there's absolutely no way for anybody in the room to predict where we're headed at any given moment. what's guaranteed is that rhoderick, higgins, scott, grimm, and sitron will get us to that unknown ending point with intelligence, agility, and wit. a weird, wonderful, and totally off-the-wall evening is guaranteed for all. genesis: 7 breakthrough plays by andrew henkes · september 26, 2002 firsthand theatre project’s debut production, genesis: 7 breakthrough plays, is an entertaining collection of seven very different one-acts. the duration, style and themes vary greatly, thanks to the involvement of different directors and playwrights for each of the seven plays. the performance begins with title pending completion in which we see the evolution of a new script … from the characters’ point of view. the first character seems enthusiastic to have been thought up, but is not content to patiently wait to be developed and given purpose. instead, he actively begins throwing out ideas to the playwright (represented offstage by the sound of a typewriter) about what he would like to be and do. the performance improves with the addition of the female character, giving the first character someone to play off of (a wise choice by both playwrights). it is followed by a taste of heaven, a longer play about the relationship between two young men in late nineteenth century new england. this is perhaps the best of the plays, and is a compelling story told with heart and sweetness. it details the evolution of their relationship from acquaintance through friendship to affectionate love. both andy phelan and richard gallagher are excellent in their portrayals of the loving and candid young men. another delightful piece is paul called, a clever one-act with a wonderfully simple concept. sue and ned’s son, paul, is coming to dinner, and paul has called in a hurry to say that he is bringing someone, and that they won’t be happy about it. what ensues is the two conservative parents becoming more and more anxious as they come up with increasingly extreme suggestions of what it could be that they won’t like. definitely the comic highlight of the evening, i only wished that paul called were longer. it ends just as paul arrives, and i would have loved to have seen the situation develop further. ending the first act is a play called a little class which i found to be the most disappointing. the convoluted plot involves an encounter at a gay bar between a student and his nemesis/journalism teacher with whom he once had an affair. also at the bar that night is the student’s “husband” who works as a bartender, which provides the opportunity for all sorts of drama to arise. sadly, the script suffers from overly wordy dialogue, and the performance comes off as unnecessarily melodramatic. bagging groceries begins act ii with its series of four interwoven monologues spanning four decades and locations. there is the vietnam solider in ’72; the ivy league student in ’82; the street musician in ’92; and the prisoner in ’02. the title arises from each of the characters' longing for the days that they had simple lives working in grocery stores as teenagers. the way the lives come together holds our attention despite the low energy of the performance. jennifer hyjack is moving as a lost child of the nineties, and has some of the most interesting speeches in the piece. next comes how i caught my husband in fifteen trips to macy’s, a clever monologue in which a woman describes her obsessive pursuit of a gorgeous perfume sprayer who worked at macy’s. over the course of the pursuit, both the playwright and the actress find many levels and tactics for the character. still, the arc of the scene begins to die out too early, and by the somewhat surprising end, the energy has fallen off entirely. monica before and after finishes up the evening. it is an original and socially relevant piece about an obese woman who poses nude for her boyfriend. when the painting gains major critical acclaim and hurdles him to success, she is overwhelmed by embarrassment about her appearance, and loses a good deal of weight. successive paintings of her thinner and thinner selves leave the critics unimpressed and both painter and girlfriend unhappy. the acting is all very good, though as with others of the plays, i felt that the energy was not quite high enough. though well choreographed, the opening sequence, depicting two critics dancing on to the stage, seems irrelevant to the play and perhaps should be cut. given firsthand theatre project's mission to provide new artists with “a forum to be seen and heard,” i would consider genesis to be a very successful start for the company, and i would recommend it to any who have an interest in emerging artists. ghosts by martin denton · november 9, 2002 the overall effect of daniel fish's staging of ibsen's ghosts at classic stage company is to reveal all of the melodramatic creaks and flaws of a play generally viewed as a seminal one in the development of modern drama. it's hard to imagine that fish intends this; if he does, it's hard to figure out why he would. if he doesn't, let's just call this production of ghosts a misfired attempt at something-or-other, and hope the participants learn from it. christine jones' ultra-stylized set and scott zielinski's starkly minimalist lighting cue the audience from the outset that fish is going for something other than the realistic style that ibsen championed. fish plays with geometry and shadows to create stage pictures that are perhaps striking but don't particularly illuminate or inform what's happening on stage. his players recite rather than enact the tragic story at the heart of ibsen's play. the result is hard to sit through, emotionally remote, and, literally, very dark. (for most of the play, the only light source is an oversized window—but alas, it's raining outside, and it's evening.) the plot—about a hypocritical man whose legacy to his son turns out only to be congenital syphilis—feels foolish and overwrought under these conditions, because there's nothing fueling it: we are constantly distanced from, not engaged in, the story. the import of the piece, in terms of both theme and style, is diluted, if not entirely lost. the company is led by amy irving as the overprotective widow, daniel gerroll as the grasping pastor with whom she is actually in love, and tad schneider as the tragic son. lisa demont and david patrick kelly fill out the ensemble. golda's balcony by martin denton · march 25, 2003 to begin, golda's balcony is enormously effective theatre. tovah feldshuh gives just the sort of fierce, uncompromising, intelligent performance that you'd expect as israel's fourth prime minister, seen here in her late 70s, looking back on a long, extraordinary life. feldshuh plays meir warts and all, showing us qualities of tenacity and rigor that some would call gutsy determination (as, for example, when she convinces her boss david ben-gurion to let her travel to america to raise money for the then-nascent state of israel) and that others would call pigheaded willfulness (pushing her husband to live on a kibbutz and, later, abandoning him in favor of her political career). she gives us a tough and wise old bird in golda, and there's real electricity when she talks about the genesis, after the holocaust, of this new jewish homeland in the middle of the desert: the realization of a dream that quickly turned nightmarish when the armies of israel's five arab neighbors went on the offensive and, for decades, never really stopped. in recounting all of this, feldshuh and playwright william gibson help us understand how, against the odds, this ever happened; we watch—informed, as we must be, by the events of thirty years that have occurred after golda's balcony takes place—and we are grateful for the understanding that this history lesson yields. the story of this little old lady from kiev who became an american immigrant and then a founding mother of israel makes the politics and the ideology clear and human. the play, a one-woman show, teems with incident and characters, all evoked vividly by the skillful feldshuh. we meet members of golda's family, famous personages she worked with (or against) like moshe dayan and henry kissinger, and anonymous people who reminded her of the importance of her calling, like the children of concentration camp survivors who became israel's first new citizens after world war ii. images of many of these people are projected on the craggy walls of anna louizos' fortress-like set, and sounds of the people and places meir knew in her remarkable life occasionally filter in via mark bennett's sound/score. feldshuh channels meir with her own indomitable stage presence; she's abetted invaluably by costume designer jess goldstein (just the right green wool suit), makeup artist john caglione, jr., and wig designer paul huntley. when golda's balcony was over on the night i saw it, the audience stood for a prolonged ovation. i wondered: are they simply cheering feldshuh's work, or is something more charged happening in the room? as drama, golda's balcony succeeds admirably; how does it fare as history, as an artifact of the human experience? i'm not equipped to assess the accuracy or objectivity of gibson's account of meir's life; i suspect that it's largely correct, and as already noted, the play's ability to illuminate the zionist impulses that led to the founding of israel is impressive and valuable. but we know how the story will go on—bloodily, endlessly violently—in the years after golda retired. we have learned—one hopes—to see all the sides of this wondrous story—not just the miracle of a nation created literally from dust in the middle of an arid desert, but also the tragedy of displaced peoples and festering hatreds. the central crisis in golda's balcony is whether or not israel will use its secret atomic weapons against its hostile arab neighbors during the yom kippur war. meir bluffs and kissinger blinks, or so the story goes here; later, golda tells us that while she herself could not order the use of the bomb, she stepped down from her leadership post in part to allow others who could give that order to do so. is this a heroic figure? the world was so much simpler when i, as a kid, simply could unquestioningly regard meir and her beleaguered nation as plucky and righteous. the best thing about golda's balcony—and it may be entirely unintentional, i don't know—is that it trips up that quaint viewpoint, making us question everything that once seemed clear-cut in the murky fog of geopolitics. gone home by martin denton · december 13, 2002 in gone home, josh hamilton plays jack, a 28-year-old writer who finds himself unexpectedly at his boyhood home, a home he left under strained circumstances ten years ago. he hasn't looked back much since then, not till now. in the interim, he moved to new york city, became a reasonably successful writer, and married another writer, an intelligent young woman named kate. but we encounter jack on the capacious sofa in the seldom-used living room of his parents' house in the american heartland. his mother is at first angry at his sudden reappearance after so many years away, and then she's hurt because so many of the facts about her estranged son—like his marriage—have been learned second hand. jack's father is more understanding, updating his son about his own departure from the family, triggered in part by jack's. jack's sister suzie, who is somewhat mentally challenged, is happy to have her brother back and plans a trip to visit him and his wife in new york. we're aware, quickly, that jack doesn't seem able to get off of the couch; some memories move into focus and some details sharpen, but the overall experience remains subjective, incomplete, fuzzy, even a bit surreal. the strength of playwright john corwin's work here is that he holds his audience even as the artifice of the piece announces itself: gone home is not the play it at first seems to be, but to tell you more will spoil things unnecessarily. what you need to know is that where corwin takes us is interesting territory, and even if the journey is not 100% satisfying, it's well worth taking. one reason is hamilton's riveting, anchoring performance as jack: he becomes aware of his situation as we do, or maybe even a little bit after us; hamilton registers the fullness of jack's circumstance with enormous gravity and grace. his cast-mates are fine: kellie overbey as his mother, rob campbell as his father, callie thorne as his sister, and chelsea altman as his wife all register strongly. my initial reaction to james youmans' slightly off-kilter set was to resist it, but i found that it works wonders in context; laura bauer's costumes and jeff croiter's lighting are equally effective. gone home is directed by david warren with his customary sensitivity and skill. corwin, who is still something of a rookie playwright, has both talent and interesting things to say; he's a writer to keep an eye on. great small works toy theatre festival by trav s.d. · january 5, 2003 lest life in this benighted post-mtv dystopia convince you that all charm has fled the planet, your correspondent urges, nay, entreats you to catch one of the shows at the great small works' sixth international toy festival. run, don't walk, to your phone and order tickets. don't even pause to read this review. the show was sro the afternoon i attended. not only were there no seats left, but no available spots on the floor either. if you wait much longer, you might not be allowed to drive by the theatre. i caught one of the children's matinees, a bill of two short works hosted by the accordion-playing jenny romaine, who worked the crowd of unruly tots like a children's theatre jackie mason. romaine's job was to keep the proceedings moving and to provide us with a brief primer on the finer qualities of toy theatre (it's flat, miniature, mass produced, and was popular in england at the end of the 19th century). the result is a form that will be recognizable to any fan of terry gilliam's animation for monty python's flying circus (mostly because that is where he copped the style). but while the companies in the festival may be working in an antique form, they stretch its possibilities in modern directions. in our kitchen, great smalls works combined the formats of puppet theatre, toy theatre and a cooking show. a live cast member (roberto rossi) prepared a stack of real flapjacks onstage with ingredients supplied by 1-inch tall farmers and livestock from their little farms inside the cupboard. in the second piece, the dinosaurs of waterhouse hawkins, artist brian selznick worked with the aid of a videocam and projector, which magnified his strange little world up to silver screen size. (the house makes opera glasses available for viewing the productions lacking that electronic amenity). using a chest of drawers, fabric, a stack of books, some tiny bones, and some toy theatre cut-outs, mr. selznick tells the story of a man who built statues of dinosaurs in central park in the mid-19th century which were subsequently destroyed, and now lie buried there. he told the story without making a peep. not all of the shows are for children, in fact, most are not. and the ones that are, are eye candy no matter how old you are. to sweeten the pot, the here gallery is currently showing a "temporary toy theatre museum", designed and curated by allesandra nichols, that is an interactive treat all by itself. gun club by martin denton · march 5, 2003 gun club, the new play by the talented young playwright hunt holman, is a funny, touching, and ultimately sad tragicomedy about a kid who has slipped through the cracks. klaus is a high school student whose parents have divorced. he lives with his mother, val, whose new husband, charles, is a rather pathetic and obvious failure—a prissy writer who spends his days sleeping in his study. klaus' father, max, is also involved with a new mate, a waitress named tammy who is entirely unable to understand why max wants to spend time with klaus instead of with her. klaus is, not surprisingly, bitterly alienated by his family situation. but he perks up when his dad, honestly trying to reach out to him, offers to take him shooting at his gun club. at last, father and son have found an activity to help them bond; over his mother's strenuous objections, klaus goes to the club and is transformed. what transforms him, though, is not his father's companionship but rather a young woman named heidi, for whom he falls—hard—more or less as soon as he meets her. heidi is interested too, which is the biggest surprise of all for klaus, who is as awkward and inexperienced with girls as he is with guns. he pretends to be a little cooler than he really is: he tells heidi that he usually shoots guns in seattle, a city he's never actually been to, for example; when heidi asks him what his name is, he answers "justin," thinking that a boy-band moniker will go over better than his own strange anglo-saxon appellation. well, if you're thinking that all of this seems like a recipe for disappointment, you're right. worse, in fact: klaus is headed for catastrophe, thanks to the thoughtless self-involvement of his parents, who are more concerned with their own troubled relationships than with the needs of their son. playwright holman creates a terrible but entirely plausible scenario to illustrate his point. all i will tell you is that the second act of gun club is a heartbreaker. holman writes wonderful dialogue: val, who calls her ex-husband max "asswipe" in front of her son, has a great speech about how children need to earn their keep—at once funny and awful. holman's characters are vivid and they feel like people we know: he captures the whiny, petty egoism of narrow-minded tammy as she delivers unnecessary ultimatums to max, and the tentative, naive foolishness of klaus as he tries to chat up heidi with equal deftness. the cast of six is exemplary. brian sacca, a recent graduate of new york university, is impressive as klaus; he's a young actor to watch. irene mcdonnell gets the tough humor and the pathos of val, a wounded soul who knows—but refuses to acknowledge—that her second marriage is a bigger failure than her first. dannah chaifetz is terrific as shrewish tammy, and kevin hogan is just as fine as lily-livered charles. susan o'connor does her usual dynamite work as heidi. mark hattan gives us all the layers of perpetual loser max; he manages to get us to feel sorry for him, even as he says the wrong thing or makes the wrong decision yet again. the production is staged by amy feinberg, the artistic director of hypothetical theatre company. hypothetical does well to bring this play to audiences; the run is scheduled to end on march 23, but gun club is a skillful and important play and deserves a longer hearing. gypsy by martin denton · may 21, 2003 the good news is that we can once again hear gypsy's score in a broadway house. it sounds fabulous: from the first thrilling bars of its legendary overture to the bittersweet phrase from "everything's coming up roses" that ends the show proper, jule styne's magnificent, brassy music—the quintessential broadway score in many ways, don't you think?—is being performed flawlessly by marvin laird and his orchestra. what a pleasure. unfortunately, just about everything else that i have to report about this revival of gypsy falls more or less into the category of "bad news." to get it over with, with details to follow: bernadette peters is badly miscast as rose; sam mendes displays a significant lack of respect for and/or understanding of the show's intentions with his vulgarized, egotistical staging; the sets and costumes are, in general, unattractive; the supporting cast, while talented, suffers under mendes' direction and mostly fails to shine. if you love the show, if you saw tyne daly's remarkable performance fourteen years ago, you're almost certainly bound to be disappointed by this revival. yet, in the final analysis, gypsy is such a well-built enterprise that even a production this poor can't break it. it's still, in spite of everything, pretty swell to see in the theatre. gypsy, as you may know, is based on the memoirs of gypsy rose lee, a self-invented personality who worked her way up from burlesque to broadway with a self-mocking intelligence that today we'd call post-modern. she wrote books, appeared in films and radio and tv shows, and eventually became famous for being famous. (she was, for example, the subject of a whole song in the rodgers & hart musical pal joey.) she solidified her legend by committing it to print, in the form of her memoir gypsy, which tells the who-knows-how-true story of her childhood, growing up in the shadow of her very talented younger sister june and being pushed into show business by her indomitable stage mother, rose. it is rose who is the leading character of the musical gypsy, which traces a journey that begins in seattle, washington in the waning years of vaudeville. we watch rose maneuver and scrape to get her daughters into the "big time," and eventually she does, landing them, with the help of her agent/boyfriend herbie, in the orpheum circuit and eventually in a grand theatre called grantzinger's palace in new york city. but grantzinger tells rose that the he doesn't want the whole act—a fanciful if tacky affair worked up by rose called "dainty june and her farmboys"; all he wants is june, who he thinks can be trained and molded into a real actress. in the play's pivotal moment, rose refuses in a rage of invective: june belongs to her, not to grantzinger (not to herself either); she storms out of grantzinger's office and effectively destroys the one real chance that june has to achieve the dream of stardom that rose has supposedly been nourishing all these years. it's a complicated and defining moment in gypsy, one that makes it clear that what feels at first like a colorful and light-hearted chronicle is really a rich and difficult tale about parents and children and dashed hopes and dreams and oh so much more. what happens next—and if you don't know the show and don't want me to give it away, please skip this paragraph—is that june runs away from home and rose turns her considerable energies to the older daughter, louise, determined now to make her into a star. but vaudeville is pretty much dead by now, so the only booking that herbie can get the new act (called "rose louise and her toreadorables") is in a second-rate burlesque house in wichita. (they're the act that's supposed to "keep the cops out.") rose, louise, and herbie are at first mortified at where they've landed, but they decide to tough it out; after the booking, rose promises, she will marry herbie and leave her dream behind her. then the star stripper goes missing one night, and rose jumps into the breech. "my daughter can strip," she says, and in a matter of minutes, gypsy rose lee is born. the rest, literally, is history. the show ends with rose coming to terms with some of what's happened to her (in the mammoth "rose's turn," which has been described as a musicalized nervous breakdown); and then, perhaps, coming to terms with her now-grown and independent daughter. rose is like the everest of musical heroines: she's got an enormous personality and she sings a lot—seven big numbers, all written for the distinctive clarion voice of ethel merman. bernadette peters can't manage the songs at all: they're uncomfortable for her range and her style; she's constantly forced to cut off phrases that merman held for miles because she has to conserve her resources. she's made an interesting acting choice in tackling the role, playing her probably very much the way the real rose actually was—a small, determined woman who goes through life constantly angling for whatever tiny advantage she can muster to make ends meet at any particular moment. it's a concept that almost works. but when it's time for peters' rose to show us how great she would have been if she'd only had the chance, the smallness of this woman tells on her: "rose's turn" underwhelms, and we can't believe in rose's tragedy. nevertheless, one can't blame peters for wanting to take on this role, and she gives it a game, even novel, take. the same cannot be said for director sam mendes, who, first with cabaret and now here with gypsy, seems bent on undermining the greatness of classic american musical theatre. mendes keeps himself and his concept in the fore throughout, upstaging the script and the actors with regularity, with tawdry notions that constantly remind us that we're watching a musical, as if a brechtian frame were needed for this masterful exemplar of musical drama. so he makes miss electra, one of the strippers gypsy encounters at the grindhouse in wichita, not only tacky but a wigged-out drug addict, and he puts udders on the dancing cow that is june's co-star in her vaudeville act. cheap laughs, and vulgar ones at that: mendes, like his emcee in cabaret, likes to shout "it's me again!" throughout his shows. gypsy survives the assault, but it's not always pretty to watch. part of mendes' strategy is to direct his actors not to let their characters become emotionally involved with one another. so the rose-herbie relationship seems chiefly to be about sex, and the sisters' relationship, which is beautifully delineated in the song "if momma was married," seems not to exist at all. such losses are keenly felt. a few memorable moments nonetheless emerge: brooks ashmanskas turns his cameo as orpheum circuit manager mr. goldstone into a delightful little comic treat (he's also quite good as the burlesque house manager in act two), and julie halston (forced to play stoned and dumb as the aforementioned electra) delivers an honest and effective performance as grantzinger's secretary miss cratchitt. and some of the numbers can't help but entertain, notably "you gotta get a gimmick," which features electra and two other strippers demonstrating their art to louise, and "together, wherever we go," which is a bright trio for rose, louise, and herbie. alright, i've said my share. let's leave it this way: any production of gypsy can't help but be interesting; it's that good a show. i wish this one were better. but i'd be lying if i said it wasn't terrific to hear those wonderful songs blaring out of the orchestra pit. habitat by ken urban · may 31, 2003 canadian playwright judith thompson has stated throughout her illustrious career that her plays seek to portray the lives of the marginalized and disaffected. her new play habitat is no exception. but while the crackwalker or lion in the streets, two of her most well-know plays, describe down-and-out characters with an almost sociological eye, habitat finds thompson in a more explicitly political mode, and this is both the play’s strength and weakness. habitat’s u.s. premiere, produced by epic theatre center, is a success however thanks to its strong cast and the sharp direction of julia gibson. set in an affluent suburb in toronto, habitat concerns the social upheaval that ensues when a group home for troubled young adults is set up in this fastidiously groomed neighborhood. the home is run by lewis chance (craig rovere). as a working class man who watched his mother clean the homes of the well-to-do, lewis does little to quiet his neighbors’ fears about the house’s occupants. kath, a lawyer with knee-jerk liberal sympathies (melissa friedman), eventually becomes lewis’s foe. an early supporter of the home, kath’s liberal stance wanes after her mother, also a resident of the neighborhood, demands that kath take her side on the issue or risk never having a relationship again. while much of the play’s first act focuses on this faltering mother-daughter relationship, the real emotional core of the play is the friendship between raine (teri lamm) and margaret (rebecca schull). raine, a middle-class girl who just lost her mother to cancer and finds herself in the group home, finds an unlikely friend in margaret, the elderly woman who spearheads the neighborhood’s campaign against the home. the scenes between raine and margaret have real emotional impact as the fight about the group home heats up in the play’s second half. thompson sets up a conflict where the characters inevitably become talking heads for political viewpoints, the liberal lewis versus the conservative margaret. the jabs at the bourgeoisie and their “serious” concerns (such as what to wear to the opera and who’s bringing what to the book club meeting) are mildly amusing when juxtaposed with the problems facing raine, sparkle (james wallert) and the other kids at the group home. but after a while the story comes off a bit too simple. case in point: kath sells-out her liberal ideas just to please her mother margaret. this is not satisfying dramatically. kath becomes little more than a closet conservative, her liberalism nothing more than window dressing. this would be interesting if it were further explored, politics as nothing more than keeping up with the proverbial joneses. but the play only skirts the issue and as a result, kath has few places to go as a character. the play is also hampered by thompson’s generous use of monologue. when the audience is treated to a long speech about lewis walking six miles in the snow with his dying baby brother under his jacket, habitat verges dangerously close into the clichéd world of a tv movie-of-the-week. politics and drama are exciting bedfellows; the problem here is that too often one defuses the other, leaving us with sappy drama and simple politics. the good news is that the cast largely rescues the play from any cloying sentimentality. in particular, james wallert and rebecca schull as sparkle and margaret are excellent. as the eighteen-year old kid with a crush on lewis and a proclivity for lying, wallert’s sparkle captures the angst of unrequited love and the desperate need for connection. schull is a wonderful margaret, the mother who cannot love her own daughter nor stand up to her neighbors when she changes her mind. director julia gibson makes good use of her cast and keeps the scenes moving, allowing the second act’s short scenes to build to a satisfying conclusion. while habitat does not rank as one of the best plays in judith thompson’s canon, the acting and direction make epic theatre’s production strong, compelling and very much worthy of your time. hairspray by martin denton · august 21, 2002 brand new hit broadway musicals have a feeling and an energy all their own. hairspray has it. i had a wonderful time at this show, thanks to its peppy, rock&roll and sometimes r&b-inflected score; its engaging, enthusiastic cast; its joyous, effervescent choreography; and its charmer of a book, which takes in camp, kitsch, satire, and parody and tempers them all with a healthy dose of sentiment. hairspray is happy and silly and infectiously giddy; it's also fueled by a message that is heartfelt and honorable. it's loads of fun, it makes you feel good, it's even a little bit deliciously subversive: it ends, after all, with an overweight teenager, a black diva, and a drag queen singing their hearts out to tumultuous applause. yes, hairspray is the musical we need right now to remind us that things can always get better, no matter what we look like, as long as we're true to ourselves. i mean this statement entirely without irony, and the good news is that, ultimately, hairspray's creators do too. the show revolves around tracy turnblad, a chubby baltimore teenager whose impossible dream is to dance on the corny collins show on tv. it's 1962; corny is maryland's answer to dick clark. among the obstacles to tracy's goal, apart from the very important one of how she looks, are: her mother, edna, a gigantic homebound hausfrau who takes in laundry and urges her daughter to keep her dreams small; velma von tussle, former beauty queen (miss baltimore crabs) and waspish producer of corny's show; and amber, velma's little girl, a thoroughly obnoxious 16-year-old who is the current star of corny's show and is dead-set on becoming miss hairspray and also keeping her hunky elvis-wannabe boyfriend link larkin on a tight leash. oh, did i mention that the beauty title and link are also on tracy's wish list? the beautiful part is that tracy manages to get everything she wants, and manages to integrate pre-civil-rights-era baltimore in the bargain. a sticking point for velma, who is, not surprisingly, blindingly bigoted, is corny's desire to play "negro" music on his show. tracy trumps everybody by bringing link to an impromptu gathering at local black celebrity motormouth maybelle's record shop, and later bringing maybelle's son seaweed and his friends to dance on the air. the plot dabbles freely in anachronism, corniness, and sheer fantasy. when tracy meets link for the first time she immediately lapses into a grade-b movie musical number called "i can hear the bells," featuring a chorus of high school kids ringing improbably golden chimes. and when tracy convinces her shy mother edna to leave the house for the first time in years (to help her negotiate a contract as spokesmodel for a local plus size department store), a poster featuring the supremes-like musical trio the dynamites bursts to life and guides edna out of her fears in a joyous song and dance called "welcome to the '60s." indeed, though the plot is dense, things seldom bog down in hairspray, mostly because the singing and, especially, the dancing, never seem to let up. the first act contains, in addition to the aforementioned numbers, several other foot-stomping crowd-pleasers, including "mama, i'm a big girl now," in which tracy and two other teenagers sing counterpoint to their bossy mothers; "it takes two," link's rendition of a supposed top-40 hit; "run and tell that," which culminates in the big dance at motormouth maybelle's; and "big, blonde & beautiful," a sassy anthem put over by maybelle herself. act two peaks with a genuine show-stopper called "timeless to me," done in front of the curtain with vaudevillian panache by tracy's parents (that's harvey fierstein and dick latessa) with such blissful bravura that it earns an encore. and after that, there's still the zingy, tongue-in-cheek title tune plus the rip-roaring finale "you can't stop the beat," which guarantees that everybody goes home with a smile glued to his or her face. time now to give some credit where it's due. marc shaiman and scott wittman are responsible for the zippy score, while mark o'donnell and thomas meehan have crafted the funny book (from john waters' screenplay, of course). director jack o'brien and choreographer jerry mitchell, who last collaborated on the full monty, do stupendously good work here; mitchell, in particular, impresses as having really hit his stride with hairspray, creating dances that dazzle and delight without feeling overdone or overwrought. (the fact that they are being performed by what may be the most appealing ensemble of young dancers on broadway is a definite plus.) design-wise, the show is a sunny, gaudy feast. david rockwell's sets are hip and witty and fly magically around the stage. kenneth posner's lighting is appropriately bright and colorful. paul huntley's hair designs and wigs are spectacularly over-the-top, especially in the finale (the show is called hairspray, after all). and william ivey long has outdone himself, creating lollipop dreams of early '60s fashion for the chorus—all crinoline and sweaters in a loving tribute to bye bye birdie or something—and then topping himself with the admittedly plum assignment of dressing harvey fierstein first as a bedraggled divine and later as a cavernous carol channing—yes, edna gets to walk down some stairs in a spangled red dress; and yes, you ain't seen nothing quite like it. and now, let me tell you about harvey fierstein. although edna is not the largest role in hairspray, fierstein is unquestionably the show's star. or should i say, star: i haven't seen a performer engulf a stage quite like this since zero mostel played tevye in fiddler on the roof. fierstein is a mammoth, insatiable clown: everything he does is funny, and you can't take your eyes off him. whether he's throwing away a wry line, or modeling an outrageous ensemble, or taking a gentle turn around the stage apron with co-star latessa, he's a treat. this feels like one of those unforgettable performances that will eventually turn into legend. which is not to suggest that the rest of the cast is anything other than terrific. marissa jaret winokur, as hairspray's heroine tracy, is sweetly appealing and sings and dances with real aplomb. matthew morrison plays whitebread love interest link larkin with an earnest sincerity that wins everyone over; he, too, sings and dances like a dream. mary bond davis rocks the rafters with her numbers as motormouth maybelle, while linda hart as arch-villainess velma von tussle sizzles despite her character's cold heart. kerry butler (as tracy's dim-witted best friend penny), laura bell bundy (as willful amber), clarke thorell (as corny collins), corey reynolds (as seaweed), and joel vig (as a variety of clueless but powerful white men) all score in their roles. and musical comedy pro dick latessa, in what may be the role of his career, is sublime as tracy's ever-optimistic dad wilbur. latessa more than holds his own opposite the formidable fierstein, which is saying something; he creates a gentle, loving character who epitomizes what's best about hairspray: how many other shows on broadway feature such a tight-knit, caring, supportive family as wilbur's clan? alright, i've said my bit. go see hairspray; and even though tickets are going to be scarce for a while, go see it anyway. you deserve it. hallelujah breakdown by martin denton · january 13, 2003 "good-naturedly blasphemous" is how my companion described hallelujah breakdown, and i have to agree: ted lorusso's cheerful comedy of coming out and coming of age has a fine old time poking fun at some cherished beliefs. its main target is the fundamentalist christian church, in particular a congregation of holy-rolling, speaking-in-tongues born-again fanatics, into whose grips surprisingly comes rex lombardo, a confused gay teenager who is looking for love in all the wrong places. i need to backtrack a bit. set in a small town in the early '70s, hallelujah breakdown begins with 17-year-old rex lusting none-too-subtly after hunky andy dipper, who is starring as tony in the high school production of west side story. rex suggests that the two of them go to the prom together (stag, sort of); but andy counters that he must be in church that night, which is all that it takes to bring catholic rex (whom the nuns thought would make an excellent priest in a brief flashback) to the local christian church. that first night, rex inadvertently finds jesus and gets saved; soon, he comes under the wing of lulu lutz, voracious commander of the church's social committee, and her daughter deedee, who decides instantly that rex should be her husband. complications, as they say, ensue. some of them are very funny and many of them traffic freely and profanely with the sacred cows of american religion, which is not necessarily a bad thing, (though too much of it, as here, is not necessarily a good thing). suffice to say that rex begins to understand himself a little better during a prolonged dream/dance sequence with a jesus-lookalike named mike, who is played by the same actor as andy and who is wearing nothing but a short shepherd's robe with a plunging neckline. after many more adventures, including a comically pathetic attempt at lovemaking with the overripe deedee and an abortive visit to strange uncle steven in greenwich village, rex figures out his true sexual, if not spiritual, nature. (the fact that the play's payoff has to do with rex's burgeoning gayness tends to make all the swipes at religion feel somewhat gratuitous.) hallelujah breakdown emerges, finally, as a broad cartoon about a long, silly road to self-discovery. near the end, it starts to repeat itself, and consequently to run out of steam; but generally it's a fun, if slight, cockeyed coming-of-age saga. david bell is very good as rex, getting maximum mileage out of his stupendous naiveté. six other actors play the rest of the characters, two dozen of them; making the strongest impressions are tj gambrel as andy and assorted other objects of rex's lust, wynne anders as the relentlessly convivial lulu lutz (and also rex's mother), and nicholas wuehrmann, a veritable chameleon, who plays the reverend dipper, uncle steven, and several others. hank williams: lost highway by martin denton · december 18, 2002 i came to this show as a hank williams virgin: with the exception of that tv infomercial hawking a retrospective album of his hits, i've never heard or seen a hank williams performance in my life. so with no pre-conceived notions about the man or his art, i say now that i enjoyed hank williams: lost highway a great deal, and i am curious to learn more about the man and the music. i might even buy one of his cds. hank williams: lost highway, created and directed by randal myler at manhattan ensemble theatre (it has played elsewhere in the country before this new york engagement) is a reasonably straightforward biographical account of the too-short and apparently unhappy life of this seminal figure in american popular music. born in rural alabama in 1923, hank quickly grasped his natural gift for singing and composing while performing in a church choir. encouraged by his mother, lilly (the father seems to have been mostly absent), he formed a band called the drifting cowboys while still in his teens, and he quickly launched a career playing at local honky tonks. he met and fell in love with audrey guy when he was twenty, and thanks to her he came to the attention of fred "pap" rose of acuff-rose publishers. pap helped hank onto the popular louisiana hayride radio show and eventually to the stage of the grand ole opry, from which he became a national star. but success didn't make hank happy; alcoholism, exacerbated by a congenital back problem, pushed him into rapid decline. by 1952, just three years after his grand ole opry debut, he was fired on account of his drunkenness and mean temperament. on the very last night of that year he died in the backseat of his blue cadillac, on his way to a new year's day gig in ohio, of what was ruled heart failure but was almost certainly an overdose of a variety of drugs. it's a sad story, but it wouldn't be especially interesting if williams hadn't produced such enduring, wonderful songs. these are, unsurprisingly, the anchor of this production, and they're performed by jason petty as williams and myk watford, drew perkins, stephen g. anthony, and russ wever (who play the drifting cowboys) with enormous spirit and energy. highlights include rousers like "jambalaya (on the bayou)", "mind your own business" (performed to delightful effect inside one of the show's "book" scenes), "i'm gonna sing, sing, sing," and the finale, "i saw the light." perkins brings down the house with his fiddling on "sally goodin," and the cowboys, on their own, have a grand time on "way downtown," which becomes a primer on how what used to be called hillbilly culture found its way into the mainstream. myler frames hank's story with two other characters who help provide context for what his music meant. stage right, throughout the show, sits tee-tot (michael w. howell, in a memorable performance), an old black gentleman who taught hank the blues while he was still a youngster; he's williams' link to his music's roots. stage left, also throughout, is a waitress in an alabama truck stop (the excellent juliet smith); as the music comes at her through the radio that's parked on her lunch counter, its impact on a generation of americans is palpably demonstrated. other characters interact with williams more naturalistically in the show. audrey, hank's wife, is presented here somewhat unsympathetically; tertia lynch brings her to life anyhow, and does a terrific job recreating her terrible singing voice. hank's mama, lilly, is played by margaret bowman with a mix of vinegar and gallantry that proves ultimately irresistible. michael p. moran is fine as steadfast pap rose. if hank williams: lost highway has a weakness, it's that myler and his co-author mark harelik have chosen to dwell too long on their subject's downward slide. the show's second act spends too much time revealing a dark underside that adds little to our understanding of who williams was: sure, he was a misunderstood, unhappy drunk; so were a lot of artists: so what? the secret to this man's soul is in the words and music that he wrote and performed. so it's unfortunate that, for example, the giddily upbeat "hey, good lookin'" is used here to demonstrate williams at his worst when most assuredly it's an exemplar of williams at his best: a misstep, that. but in general, hank williams: lost highway succeeds in bringing a legend back to life. the pure and unfettered goodwill of the ensemble and the music is infectious; it's hard to imagine someone leaving the theatre without a smile beaming across his or her face. happy days by aaron leichter · september 25, 2002 if you go into the drama section of your local bookstore, you’ll probably find more books on samuel beckett than you will on any other playwright besides shakespeare. his plays inspire both scholarly and popular interest because they escape the bonds of such conventions as plot, instead expressing his theme through vivid stage-pictures that work on the viewer’s imagination. by trading realism for embodied metaphors, beckett examines a profound philosophy of “being.” thus, even though his work is full of intellectual observation, it engages its audience on a theatrical level that is impossible for most drama. yet, far from being dry and alienating, a good production of beckett’s work—such as the cherry lane theatre’s revival of happy days—provides its audience with many opportunities for both laughter and despair. in happy days, beckett subverts the theatrical tradition of action by immobilizing his heroine onstage. winnie is held by a pimple of earth that reaches to her stomach in the first act and, ominously, to her neck in the second. the “plot” follows winnie as she entertains herself in her immobile condition; a purse lies just within her reach, holding her toiletries and, also ominous, a revolver. the audience watches her go through her daily routine and listens as she prattles along. winnie, and her unseen husband willie, are all that is left of humanity. beckett gives no explanation for this; to do so would be realistic, and his plays don’t happen, in any real sense. of course, beckett’s style makes his actors’ jobs that much more difficult. the actress playing winnie must hold her audience’s attention, using only her voice, for nearly an hour and a half. joyce aaron makes this task look so easy that her audience may forget how little expressive movement she can make. her winnie remains undaunted by adversity by thoroughly preoccupying herself with her own trivialities. at certain moments when winnie’s focus fails and she becomes aware of her plight, aaron’s face registers a look that mixes bottomless despair with utter confusion. she occasionally sounds a histrionic note, especially when winnie tells herself stories to pass the time, but generally her performance is as good as any beckett fan could want. with such a vivid stage picture as a woman buried in dirt to work with, it’s a pity that set designer riccardo hernandez doesn’t come up with a unique take. lighting designer beverly emmons, on the other hand, cleverly ignores color, instead adjusting her light’s intensity to match winnie’s internal state. on the whole, director joseph chaikin doesn’t range far from beckett’s script—beckett’s legal estate is notoriously resistant to conceptual rethinking—but he shows a remarkable gift for digging into each moment in the play and mining it for all it’s worth. forty years after the play’s premiere at the same cherry lane theater in the west village, chaikin and aaron demonstrate that beckett’s script on the universal trap of existence is not a mere writer’s fantasy. they make the play live onstage, which no book can accomplish. both fans and newcomers to beckett’s world benefit with this production. harbor currents by martin denton · january 19, 2003 harbor currents, the latest evening of short plays from the harbor theatre, maintains the consistent level of excellence we've come to associate with this playwright-driven troupe. the plays this time around are weightier than usual, i think, with only one real comedy among them, the delightful blind date by donna spector, which opens the evening. in this witty piece, leah pike and charlie fersko play a pair of likable but opinionated 30somethings who find themselves hoodwinked into a blind date by the married couple who are their friends. spector never resorts to clichés here as she peppers blind date with all manner of unexpected turns. it's fast, funny, and unpredictable; and nicely staged by lennie mckenzie. fred velde and leslie alexander the well-meaning but interfering hosts. tony howarth's a million trumpets and stephanie lehmann's scattered consider two very different dysfunctional families, the former somewhat despairingly, the latter more sentimentally. trumpets reveals the bitter facts about a post-nuclear family, dealing with three teenagers whose remarried parents are too self-involved to give them any attention. scattered is the reunion of a mother and her three children, after five years, to sprinkle the father's ashes in the pacific ocean. both plays are affecting, in different ways. trumpets is directed by mark edward lang and features anthony bagnetto, brian mcmanamon, and abby royle. scattered, staged by amanda selwyn, is acted by charlotte hampden, julianne carpenter, marc geller, and franny silverman. edmund desantis' sebresque is the most ambitious item on the program. set in a scary apocalyptic future, it tells the story of an ambitious news reporter who finds herself trapped in a desert as she pursues the ultimate interview. marc geller's staging emphasizes the sci-fi aspects, with the actors in heavy makeup and semi-darkness. wendy walker, christopher h. matthews, and andrew dawson are the players. jack hyman's perspective is the most powerful work on the bill; it comes second, but its ending packs such a wallop that i needed time to recover from it; it ought to close the evening. it needs to be seen, here and hopefully elsewhere. in it, lucy mcmichael plays a harried woman who is having a particularly trying morning, what with her husband's car not starting, her mother needing to go to a doctor's appointment, all those boxes that have to be brought upstairs—plus she's going to be late for work. hyman's title is precisely right, and that's all i am going to tell you. michael gnat is terrific as her husband (who has invented a device that disables nearby cellphones—neat!). the mother is played by georgia southcotte. the highpoint of an entirely successful program. harlem song by martin denton · august 3, 2002 six years ago, george c. wolfe collaborated with savion glover and reg e. gaines to create bring in 'da noise, bring in 'da funk, a celebration of the beat and not at all incidentally a retrospective both serious and thrilling of what it meant/means to be black in america. now wolfe is looking backward and inward again, focusing this time on the culture and society of a very particular place in the history of people of color in america, and mostly at a very particular time. the result is harlem song, the joyous, gorgeous, exuberant, intelligent musical revue that has relit the famous apollo theatre on 125th street and whose name looks to stay emblazoned on that historic marquee for many, many months to come. i don't say harlem song is perfect, because it's not: wolfe and his collaborators are finally overtaken by the enormity of their project, which is nothing less ambitious than to encapsulate the sounds and rhythms (and hearts and minds) of harlem, from its famous renaissance in the 1920s through its rebirth as a center of r&b and soul in the 1960s. along with the amazing music, wolfe wants to give us the social, political, and economic background; which, during the depression and the civil rights era, very much wants to be the foreground—this is important stuff, fascinatingly presented in photos and videotaped interviews with harlem old-timers, leaving us hungry to learn more. the main event here, though, is that remarkable music. wolfe and his music supervisors zane mark and daryl waters have chosen artfully: there's very little that's overly familiar here, but there's nothing that's not worth resurrecting. from duke ellington there's "drop me off in harlem," performed by david st. louis in a blinding white suit that conjures up memories of cab calloway. from count basie there's "joe louis blues," served up with sassy spirit by the indomitable b.j. crosby, the talented actress/singer who is this show's center and soul. there's a spanish-language version of billy strayhorn's "take the a train" (lyric by nilo cruz); a setting of langston hughes' "dream deferred" and another hughes lyric, "hungry blues" (music by james p. johnson) sung affectingly by crosby. contributions from less famous names include a rouser called "tarzan of harlem," written by irving mills, henry nemo, and lupin fein and sung by queen esther in a lavish feathery affair that reminds us of josephine baker; "miss linda brown" by alvis cowens, which occasions a show-stopping dance routine led by the limber gabriel a. croom and danashavonne rainey; and a sad but matter-of-fact depression ballad called "here you come with love" by jo trent, harry tobias, and neil moret, performed here by queen esther in what was, for me, harlem song's emotional highpoint. other numbers salute the great men of jazz ("uptown jazzmen," by waters and wolfe), the brilliant writers and artists of the harlem renaissance ("doin' the niggerati rag," by mark and wolfe), and the great groups of the '60s (sam cooke's "shake"). the finale is a nod to harlem's gospel tradition, pamela warrick-smith's "tree of life," in a rafter-raising rendition by the big-voiced crosby. choreography, by ken roberson, is lively and infectious and splendidly executed by an eleven-member chorus. the look of harlem song is stylish and elegant, with sharp, eye-catching costumes supplied by paul tazewell, a stunningly simple unit set by riccardo hernandez, giddy, evocative lighting by jules fisher and peggy eisenhauer, and miraculous multimedia projections by batwin+robin. more important, though, is the way harlem song feels. wolfe has an uncanny ability to capture the whole sensibility of a place and an era and at the same time showcase its remove and remoteness. i was very aware of my outsider-ness throughout the show: no matter how joyous or exultant the performers get, there's always an ache of oppression just under the surface, stopping us short when we let go and enjoy ourselves too carelessly. wolfe's connection with the material from the civil rights era feels more tentative than the earlier sections of the show; this could be a matter of temperament or merely of running out of time. in any event, the last third of harlem song is less effective than what comes before. ninety minutes is, finally, not enough to do all the evoking that wolfe and his company mean to do; i wish the show could be longer and bigger than it is. well, who knows: maybe if enough of us trek up to the apollo to hear this song it someday can be. havana under the sea by seth bisen-hersh · march 29, 2003 havana under the sea is a musical about cuban history. the book, originally in spanish, has been translated to english, while the songs remain in their original spanish. the show is really interesting and quite enjoyable. the show consists of a long soliloquy from st. celina. she has drowned to death and lives under the sea. welcoming us to her home, she recounts tales of her youth and then the rest of her life. she delves into subjects such as her mother, her father, the cuban revolution, losing her virginity, and going away from home. the speech is given directly to the audience, and she even playfully interacts with us. scattered throughout the dialogue are many spanish songs. they are all established songs, a bunch of which a lot of the audience recognized. they do not really fit the plot, but tend to elevate the emotional content that is felt at that point of the show. as the songs are all in spanish, i cannot give my usual harsh lyrical critique☺. musically, the songs are very romantic in style and passionate. they are a diverse lot, from tangos and mambos to heartfelt ballads and duets. the cast consists of two. doreen montalvo does an amazing job as st. celina. she is always in character. also, she plays with the audience really well. she sings beautifully and is a pleasure to watch. the other cast member is also the musical director and arranger, meme solis. he is a fabulous pianist who plays impressively without sheet music. he also has a nice voice and his duets with montalvo are wonderful to listen to. the plot might be a little weak, but the songs and the acting make up for it. thus, the show is basically a history lesson with traditional spanish music. my only complaint is i would have appreciated some subtitles or translations in the program instead of just concise descriptions of what each song is about. i would recommend this show to anyone who is interested in cuba and enjoys spanish music. understanding spanish is probably helpful, but not essential. the language of music is universal, after all. heard [but not scene] by martin denton · september 3, 2002 full disclosure: match, one of the two plays comprising heard [but not scene] is published in my anthology plays and playwrights 2002. that said, i am being as objective as possible when i tell you that this double bill of short plays by marc chun is must-see theatre. chun is an extraordinary talent—a playwright who breaks new ground in his work, where he reveals truths whose universality and profundity belie his young age and relative inexperience in the theatre. beep, the first half of heard [but not scene] is made up entirely of phone messages. most have been left on the answering machine of a young man named abe, who has been away for a ten-day holiday abroad; a couple are spoken by abe into other people's machines. together, they create a portrait of abe's life that is at once sketchy and comprehensive, introducing us to the people who matter to him and to events that will ultimately prove life-changing for him. beep shouldn't work on any level beyond gimmickry, but it does: chun has an uncanny knack for writing dialogue that sounds mundane and homely, yet is wrenchingly honest and genuine. and the plot, pieced together painstakingly so that it is revealed incrementally, is both more incisive and more emotionally grounded that you would expect in a play whose length is less than half-an-hour. steven gridley directs beep beautifully, with lone actor stephen douglas wood turning in a masterful performance that, though mostly silent, is loaded with nuance and import. match, the somewhat longer second half of the evening, follows five seemingly unrelated individuals as they relate accounts of portions of their lives that, we realize, link them together in profound and remarkable ways. here, too, the puzzle is part of the process, so i don't want to tell you much more. match is about randomness and fate and destiny and inevitability and how they are different and how they are the same; it's also about being responsible to yourself and to at least one other person in the world. i've seen and/or read it at least a dozen times and i still well up when it reaches its climax. gridley's staging is exemplary. it's performed, beautifully, by jessica calvello, james mack, andres munar, erin treadway, and stephen douglas wood. heat lightning by seth bisen-hersh · march 1, 2003 heat lightning is a rock musical that follows an elvis-inspired rock musician turned car salesman’s explosive extra-marital affair. in just one act, seth goes through many emotional stages as he tries to figure out what he wants. will he choose his loving wife, cris, who always has his breakfast and coffee ready each morning, or the luscious, sex-driven aurora who cannot get enough of seth in bed? the show begins with seth narrating his dreams about becoming a rock star. he tells about how he plays guitar every thursday night at this club, while during the day he unfortunately has become a car salesman. he talks about his lovely wife, cris, too. then the plot commences. we see seth at home; we see him at the club. one night a gorgeous woman, aurora, comes in and seduces him. seth is torn between cris and aurora. he eventually even goes to a therapist to sort it out, but decides he wants both of them because it’s what elvis would have done. however, cris senses seth is slipping away and comes to the club one thursday night. there she sees aurora, and the truth is known. conflict ensues, and i shall leave it at that to not give away the ending. heat lightning is problematic: the plot is mundane, and the songs fail to really reveal the emotions of the characters. the characters don’t come across as likeable, either. it’s hard to care whether or not seth ends up with cris or aurora because we can't really like any of them. also, the ending of the show comes out of nowhere and then fails to build or resolve, ruining what good stuff the show actually has. and—notwithstanding all of the above—the show has many enjoyable moments, which make it quite entertaining. although there are a few too many near rhymes and unresolved cadences for my taste, the songs are pretty good. the highlights include seth’s rant about “ordinary life” and “only everything,” a lovely love duet for seth and cris. the cast is wonderful. sean fri does a great job as seth and plays guitar fabulously. laura marie duncan as cris and coleen sexton as aurora do a great job battling for seth’s attention by belting up a storm! finally, jackie seiden and jennifer waldman provide excellent back up for seth’s band. so, heat lightning starts off fairly hot and striking, but eventually ends in confusion. it has good songs though, and a nice succinct book that keeps the show flowing, not to mention a talented cast. henry v by martin denton · september 18, 2002 moral clarity is, perhaps, the one thing we expect from shakespeare's henry v, which is why david fuller's staging of the great history play is so untethering. fuller has taken this play about a glorious war and made it neither pro-war (the way olivier did in his famous film version) nor anti-war (as alec harrington did in a production a few years back at la mama), but instead profoundly subversive. jason crowl's warrior king is a good and caring man who nevertheless leads his country in a dangerous and purposeless crusade; he's a moral man who does evil in the name of righteousness. fuller expands shakespeare's play with a prologue and epilogue that turns henry into a tragic hero, but of course the real tragedy that fuller is warning us against is the one that befalls nations that let their leaders talk them into war in the first place. i'm not sure that the play itself quite supports fuller's concept; this is an occasionally rocky henry v, with scenes like the ones depicting the french enemy's leaders as a bunch of high-handed, arrogant knaves feeling somewhat out-of-place, especially when the rape of the french countryside (and its common residents) is rendered potent with very specific vietnam war-era imagery (see the photo at the top, which shows henry about to kill an anonymous french soldier). but it's honestly shocking how resonant some of the plot elements of henry v turn out to be in america in 2002. henry says, at the play's beginning: now are we well resolved; and by god's help and yours, the noble sinews of our power, france being ours, we'll bend it to our awe or break it all to pieces. shortly thereafter, the king and his closest counselors excise a trio of potentially treasonous men swiftly and mercilessly. something in the mood fuller brings to these scenes reminds us sharply of current events. interestingly, i found myself re-thinking not what i believe about president bush's iraqi war plans, but rather what i believe about shakespeare's play and what it has to tell us about unquestioning allegiance to a leader who seems bent on doing the wrong thing for the right reason. as i said, the fit isn't entirely comfortable; but this is a valuable production because it's so polemical. it's also passionate: fuller has chosen this play carefully, and the issues he wants to explore as he bends it to his purpose are worthy of our attention. giles hogya has fashioned a physical production (sets and lighting) that is both visually arresting (stunning, in places) and thematically useful. hogya and fuller create memorable stage pictures out of silhouettes and fog that remind us of the murkiness of moral posturing. susan soetaert's costumes—variations on camouflage, mostly—are less successful in my view, grounding this henry in a specific time and place. (note that the costuming echoes the director's choice to make the french soldiers and citizenry—apparently—vietnamese, which is spectacularly evocative in a few key scenes but makes us wonder why princess katherine is so resolutely french.) crowl makes a complex henry—here ingratiating, there explosive, always charismatic and commanding and confident. harris berlinsky takes the role of the chorus, narrating the parts of the story that won't fit on what shakespeare famously called the "wooden o" masterfully. other standouts in the 12-member ensemble include christopher browne, jolie garrett, and michael surabian, each of whom plays several different characters. this is a discomfiting henry v, which is perhaps exactly what we need right now, and for that david fuller and his colleagues at jean cocteau repertory are to be congratulated. whatever you make of it, this production is going to shake you up and force you to look hard at this piece and what it means and what it has to teach us. and that's as fine a reason to go to the theatre as i know of. henry 6 parts 1-2-3 by aaron leichter · april 8/12, 2003 the three parts of henry vi are some of shakespeare’s earliest and least-performed scripts. into this trilogy of history plays shakespeare corrals a century of civil war to examine the failure of leadership through partisan politics. part 1 opens with the coronation of the infant henry vi and a power vacuum at the head of state. nobles stake their “rightful” claim to the throne and cut down the opposition. england is devouring itself like a snake eating its own tail. no one person unifies the country (or the dramatic focus) until the final acts of part 3, when the hunchbacked richard of york confides in the audience that he will kill his brother to win the crown. with a canvas the size of england and france and the length of a century, director ivanna cullinan lets the rhythms of history speak for themselves. she trusts shakespeare’s skills instead of imposing her own vision on the play, and she trusts the audience to draw connections between the episodes. her stage, a stark white box with a throne against the back wall, focuses our attention on the black-clad actors. cullinan paces the plays leisurely, so the audience can check their programs or just let their minds wander a little. and while the judith shakespeare company is dedicated to casting women in most of the roles, cullinan’s gender-blind (and color-blind) casting doesn’t make an issue of it. her focus, like shakespeare’s, is all humanity. it’s no surprise with such a huge cast that the ensemble is uneven and occasionally amateurish. but cullinan has cast most of the key roles well, and their performances buoy the rest. the cycle begins with the funeral of henry v (whose conquest of france shakespeare would later immortalize). with a child as their king, the nobles indulge in power-jockeying and soon lose france to joan of arc through petty rivalries. their factionalism also begins to tear at the seams of the state. but the play doesn’t really get started until midway through, when the young duke of york opposes the duke of somerset in an arcane point of law. this legal triviality produces the wars of the roses. this early in his career, shakespeare couldn’t move fluidly between plots yet. but he also hasn’t given the play a dramatic focus until the duke of york’s entrance. susan ferrara, as york, is the first of cullinan’s many intelligent casting choices. in battle after battle, ferrara sweeps her fellow actors up with her physical intensity, while in court scenes, she hurls her words with bravado. she walks with a swagger and talks with a scowl, and she’s clearly trouble for england. shakespeare, early on, cribbed his style from his contemporary christopher marlowe. in part 1 especially (possibly his first play) shakespeare uses a galloping verse that favors pomp and classical allusions over character and plot. this poetry swamps many of the actors but not, crucially, jason howard. as the english knight lord talbot, howard uses his voice’s natural resonance to power his presence. his plummy bass legitimizes his heroism so that he stands out against his countrymen’s vanity. talbot’s a symbol of henry v’s golden england, and when he falls on the battlefield, it’s the end of chivalry. from these heights, shakespeare moves into the roil of the populace in part 2. filled with merchants and peasants, part 2 might be shakespeare’s most class-conscious work. although the lower classes are stupefyingly foolish (and welcome comic relief), they’re also horribly exploited by the misrule of the fractious nobility. shakespeare—who always sees the mob lying dormant in the multitude—illustrates the need for compassionate leadership. the anarchic center of part 2 is the populist rebel jack cade. mary e. hodges, as cade, raises her fist in a black panther salute, and she beats up a guy just for walking onstage. as cade’s sidekick dick the butcher, carey van driest is hyper and flamboyant, like a kid pretending to be a pirate. van driest also steals several scenes as the cold-blooded clifford, who swears vengeance on the duke of york for killing his father. she stalks the battlefields of england like a terminator, putting her stage combat training to heart-pumping use. by the end of part 2, the duke of york has laid claim to the throne of england. shakespeare and ferrara really let york loose, and the character begins to confide to the audience through soliloquies. york takes center stage, reveling in dissemblance, brutality, and ambition. before his inevitable death, he introduces his two sons, edward and misshapen richard, to the court. these two young men are so focused and vivid that they seem to win the kingdom simply through dramatic force. richard is especially compelling, and arguably shakespeare’s first full personality. lisa marie preston contorts her shoulder and arm into a hunch without aid of a prosthetic, a constant visual reminder of the actor’s focus. during her character’s soliloquies, preston’s black eyes bore into the audience with a killing gaze. she underplays the bombast, and never upstages her fellow actors even though she’s always somehow in command. she’s richard through and through. as her older brother edward, alyssa simon isn’t as consistently good but has more moments of brilliance. she cannily sums up her character through gesture rather than by exploring a psychology that young shakespeare hasn’t supplied. her edward sits on the throne in such a way that shows a comfort at being the center of attention. when the time comes to go back to the battlefield, she shrugs off her lover’s lethargy with a roll of her shoulder. her simple style makes edward dangerous. simon and preston juice up the proceedings right when it’s needed. by the third part, the audience is exhausted by speeches and battlefields and betrayals and vendettas and corpses. simon’s and preston’s dominant presences signal the end of england’s anarchy. the ascendance of these sons of york demonstrate a will to tyranny that even their father york lacked. their diabolical energy is the negative of henry vi’s holy impotence. as a king from infancy, henry simply has no context for the earthly desires that spur his subjects to civil war. suzanne hays, as the titular monarch, does more than anyone to hold the three parts together. her henry remains gentle and still through the trilogy, a pivot around which the realm spins out of control. hays’ kindly face seems at once childlike and adult. hays charts henry’s maturation through his philosophical musings, from the child’s callow rhetoric to the adult’s poignant observations. she makes this historical arc into a tragedy of innocence. three shakespearean history plays in two days could seem like a forced march, but the “concert performances” of henry vi at the judith shakespeare company are more like an overnight hike in a national park: those with the stamina will discover rare and incredible sights. die-hard shakespeare fans can watch a young playwright experiment with his medium: in part 2, he steals a line from marlowe’s tamburlaine (“to ride in triumph through persepolis”), and changes it to “to ride in triumph through the streets,” then in part 3 edits it into the great “to ride in triumph over all mischance.” casual viewers will be engaged by all the commotion, as actors run onstage to clang swords thrillingly. it’s good dirty fun, a cross between a family melodrama and a medieval action flick. and after nine hours of english butchery, infighting, and rebellion, audiences reenter the world on 42nd street with a subtler awareness of history’s epic rhythms. high priest of california by martin denton · february 15, 2003 theatre doesn't get more compulsively watchable than high priest of california, the new production at 29th street rep. this play—the only one ever written by charles willeford, who is best known for crime novels like miami blues—tells the story of a used car salesman named russel haxby who sets his cap on alyce, the young, inexperienced bride of a washed-up prizefighter named blackie victor. in four taut, riveting scenes, we watch russel operate: seductive but respectful, he starts off respecting alyce's limits—indeed we're not sure, at first, whether he even has the upper hand as alyce seems to be the one doing the baiting and luring. but by the time the plot has taken some dizzying and often surprising turns, it's absolutely clear who's going to wind up on top. russel even finds time to sell one of his "dreams" (i.e., a used automobile) to stanley sinklewicz, the lazy, married lover of alyce's cousin and roommate, ruthie. high priest of california is played out in the noirish style that has become 29th street rep's hallmark, all on a single, claustrophobic set designed by mark symczak with atmospheric lighting (stewart wagner) and music (tim cramer). director leo farley keeps tension high throughout, making us second guess what seems to be happening on stage at every turn. is alyce the pure, devoted wife she seems to be? is blackie as punchdrunk as he seems to be? is russel on the level? admittedly, some of these questions turn out to be red herrings, but they keep us engrossed as the proceedings unfold. david mogentale is slippery and charming as russel in a performance that's nuanced and complicated; it's a kick to see mogentale so dapper and oily after the more brutal fellows he usually portrays at 29th street. paula ewin threatens to steal the show whenever she's on stage as the earthy and determined ruthie; james e. smith is edgily convincing as the lost fighter blackie, and tim corcoran is swell in the play's smallest role, as an accommodating cop. jerry lewkowitz (stanley) and carol sirugo (alyce) are less persuasive, to my mind; sirugo, in particular, doesn't give off the carroll baker-baby doll vibes that seem essential here. nevertheless, high priest of california is a cool and compelling evening out, as giddy and guilty a pleasure as the pulp fiction milieu it so determinedly evokes. hold please! by nick brandi · march 7, 2003 for those mavens of top-notch off-off-broadway developmental theatre who are in search of a venue other than the heralded west 50s aerie known as the ensemble studio theatre, might i suggest something nice in the east 20s? east 24th street to be exact, where the blue heron arts center is hosting the new york premiere of playwright annie weisman's savvy comedy hold please, a round dramaturgical triumph and a resplendent feather in the cap of its producer, the working theater. it is the 1990s: the invasion of the padded cell otherwise known as the office cubicle has arrived, as well as the height of that lovely little paranoia fest called political correctness. cube kin erika (emma bowers), agatha (laura esterman), jessica (jeanine serralles) and grace (kathryn rossetter) are nestled in the office kitchen, having their weekly "heart-to-heart," in which she who has the floor must be in possession of the cheesy stuffed heart that entitles her to discuss only her "feelings." spearheaded by the agenda-minded agatha, it seems one of the senior execs is up on sexual harassment charges, and it is, ostensibly, agatha's gleeful responsibility to marshal the troops and see to it that said hapless bigshot is strung up by his executive parking space. somewhat ambivalent about agatha's shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality are jessica, who spends much of the day doing vaginal muscle-strengthening exercises under her desk; and erika, who is up to the same part of her anatomy in the clandestine affair she is having with a different, married, senior executive. insouciant toward it all, however, is the ultra-easygoing betty crocker of the cabal, grace, who'd much rather knit booties than boot senior management. as things unfold—thanks in part to set designer jim youmans' utilitarian swivel sets that convert from the kitchen to the office with a simple 180 degree turn—we come to learn that no one is quite who she seems on the surface. and while the office itself faces a nicely metaphoric "skeletonizing" of staff, each of the four principals has her own skeleton tucked away in cedar. this is no oleanna. unlike mamet's putatively neutral and decidedly polemical drama, weisman takes a firm stand and makes wry commentary about the hypocritical quasi-fascism of blind political correctness—even if it comes at the expense of her sisters in the workplace. but hold please is just as well written and paced as it is brave: thought-provoking when it wants to be yet never sacrificing its charm—or its mirth. when lily-white jessica shares with her colleagues her decision to metamorphose into a secretarially themed rapper named whiteout, the sampling she gives them is genuinely hysterical and prompted spontaneous applause from the audience. to that end, copious credit goes to serralles, who discharges her rather preposterous character with credible quirks and timing. but serralles is part of an ensemble, and each of its constituents rises admirably to the occasion for this play. as erika, bowers is both sexy and guileless. rossetter, meanwhile, manages to insinuate her seemingly simpleminded character with a subtextual wisdom and experience that fleshes out grace's dimensionality. the most technically deft, however, appears to be esterman, who nails her character to a tee, all while making it look effortless—a true hallmark of good acting. of course, this wouldn't be the case without the conspicuously scrupulous direction of connie grappo, who seems to have nurtured every detail and nuance of this production in the conception of a truly slick, tight and ready-to-wear piece of stagecraft. thankfully, weisman gives both director and cast a lot to work with. i'd like to hear what else she has to say. hollywood arms by martin denton · november 6, 2002 hollywood arms inspires such a complicated response! one of its co-authors is carol burnett, as beloved an entertainer as my generation knows; and the other is her late daughter carrie hamilton, whose entire life, right up to her untimely death last winter from cancer, was lived in the public eye, including occasional appearances as her mother's adorable little girl. the broad outline of hollywood arms' story is well-known to us, through burnett's 1986 memoir one more time and the countless talk show appearances that followed its publication: burnett's parents separated when she was very young, and as a result she was raised by an eccentric but loving grandmother; her parents were loving, too, but distant, and both alcoholic. the grandmother—nanny, as burnett always called her—was the one who inspired the signature ear pull. we know all of this and bring it with us to hollywood arms; it's impossible to judge the piece with any kind of objectivity. at least, that's my story: carol burnett brings out a weird protectiveness in me, and so as i watched her thinly disguised life story i couldn't help but root for it, and for helen, burnett's alter ego in the play; and that was true even as i recognized that the play is far from perfect, dramaturgically speaking; and it was true later on when i thought about what burnett might be trying to accomplish with this piece (purging demons; allocating blame and guilt; solidifying a legendary/pseudo-mythic back story for herself, à la gypsy rose lee). like i said: a complicated response. the bottom line, though, is that i really love this show, for not entirely rational reasons that are now hopefully somewhat clear. here's how it plays out on stage. it begins—following a brief prologue that establishes the rest of the play as a flashback, and a longer expositional prologue set in texas where we learn the basic facts of helen's family life—in 1941, in hollywood, where helen and nanny have come to live in the same building (the eponymous hollywood arms) with helen's mother, louise. louise is struggling to become a journalist, garnering infrequent assignments from fan magazines and dreaming of hitting the "big time" where she can interview the likes of cary grant for photoplay. helen's father, jody, is in a nearby sanitarium, recovering from tuberculosis and intermittently drying out (for he is a chronic alcoholic). nanny and louise bicker constantly: nanny is pragmatic (though her shadowy past suggests it was not always thus), while louise is a dreamer. one thing they argue about is bill, a reasonably well-off older man who wants to marry louise, something nanny is entirely in favor of, though louise is reluctant to comply, arguing that she's not in love with him. caught in the middle is helen, who we watch grow from a scared, compulsive 10-year-old to a self-reliant, independent young woman. she is both raison d'etre and calming center of her dysfunctional family; the memories she shares with the audience about growing up are sometimes unhappy and sometimes blissful and always unconventional. hollywood arms proceeds episodically through adventures like helen's first stage appearance (as glinda in a school production of the wizard of oz), louise's short-lived career as a bookie's assistant, the birth of helen's younger step-sister alice, and—climactically—the event that changed helen's life, when she steps in for a malfunctioning movie projector (she is by now at ucla, supporting herself by working as an usher) and entertains a crowded theatre full of patrons with her comedy and her singing. it's involving, emotional stuff, in part because we know how it's going to turn out—helen is going to get away from this toxic environment and become a star on broadway and then an even bigger star on tv. but it's compelling, too, because it's so very well presented here: hollywood arms boasts a top-notch director in harold prince and as terrific a cast as any on broadway. michele pawk has the plum role of louise, the perennial loser who drinks herself into oblivion, and she gives it all she's got in a resoundingly powerful performance. frank wood is tragically eloquent as the sad, sickly jody; he plays in a much lower key than the histrionic females around him, and the contrast is palpable. the supporting cast includes leslie hendrix, who is great as louise's knowing pal, dixie; nicolas king, who is adorable as dixie's budding juvenile delinquent son, malcolm; patrick clear, perfect as steadfast boyfriend bill; and emily graham-handley, who is touching as helen's younger sister alice. as ten-year-old helen, sara niemietz is heartbreakingly good and never never cloying; as the grown-up helen, donna lynne champlin rises to the very difficult task of portraying a still-crystallizing version of an iconic personality. she stops the show, literally, in the scene where she describes to her family that pivotal moment in the movie theatre, performing a very burnett-like comedy bit and then capping it with a glorious a cappella rendition of "i'm always chasing rainbows" that earns her a well-deserved and prolonged ovation. and then there's linda lavin, who here lays claim to being broadway's newest great lady with a performance that deserves to become legendary. if you saw lavin as eugene jerome (read neil simon)'s unhappy mother in broadway bound fifteen years ago then you already know how spectacularly well-realized her nanny is: lavin knows this woman, and brings to every moment she's on stage the lifetime of disappointments and slights and hardships that her character has endured. it's a wonderfully vivid portrayal: we feel her vulnerability and the steely will she's fashioned to protect herself; and in the show's emotional highpoint, we meet her insecurities and deepest fears head-on. hollywood arms tells its sad story with sentiment and humor, and does so beautifully. it's great, purgative theatre, and is a fitting and worthy tribute to its subject. hollywood nurses by michael criscuolo · september 14, 2002 hollywood nurses is exactly what it bills itself as: "a pulp dime store novel come to life." with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks, authors sheila head and peter m. marino have a blast turning two of the medical profession's finest into scandalous tramps. a womanizing western star, an overweight teen singer, and an aging movie queen are just some of the many tinseltown notables resting at holly view sanitarium, hospital to the stars. when a preying gossip columnist (voiced by julie halston) threatens to air the stars' dirty laundry, nurses jenny tyler (denise wilbanks) and suzanne medford (jennifer r. morris) must protect them from scandal. unfortunately, they get caught up in scandals of their own while trying to throw holly view's annual christmas party, and trying to keep a lid on the hospital's brand new secret cure for alcoholism: lsd. you can guess the rest. the cast—which also includes adrianne frost and fred berman, each playing four different parts—attacks hollywood nurses with wild abandon. all four are talented and funny, work well together, and are clearly having a lot of fun on stage. director ted sluberski maintains a fast pace throughout, and comes up with some inventive comic staging, including an extended lsd trip sequence. head and marino are equally inventive, and very funny writers. even though hollywood nurses eventually gets away from them (once the drugs come in, the script falls apart), the jokes and their overall sense of humor keeps the show coasting on a giddy high. holy child by martin denton · may 29, 2003 joe lauinger's new play holy child, which premiered as part of gallery players' black box new play festival, is an intriguing, genuinely satisfying work. its first act takes place in an italian restaurant in suburban new york, where the four dicamillo brothers—vic, tommy, patsy, and bernie—have reunited, for the first time in a very long time, to discuss some urgent family business. vic, the eldest, is an expansive goomba type, who inherited their father's company and also his bullying temperament; he's married to kathleen, who clearly wields the power at home despite his big talk. patsy, next-to-youngest, works as a coach at a local parochial school. good-natured and perennially dissatisfied with life, he is currently in the midst of an affair with a 15-year-old student. the youngest brother, bernie, is a lawyer who once worked for the aclu and now is a public defender in manhattan. he's the black sheep of the clan, by which i mean he left home, got a good education, married a smart jewish lady, and never looked back. his estrangement from his brothers—they don't know, for example, that he has a 2-1/2-year-old son—is the source of tremendous tension. but bernie is not the problem today: tommy, the second son, is the brother they've come to discuss. tommy is a priest, but he's no longer allowed to do anything except preside over the occasional wake. he has cracked, and though lauinger shrewdly never lets us in on the exact details of what tommy may or may not have done to alarm the higher-ups in his parish, the man we see—an anti-social drunk suffering from serious hallucinations/delusions—is clearly a wreck. he's about to be shipped upstate to a home for retired clergy called holy child, and it is this event that has precipitated the reunion of the dicamillos, even drawing bernie back into the fold after who-knows-how-many years away. what lauinger does, in the first act of holy child, is simply put these four disparate men into a room together and see what happens. he keeps it real, with few out-and-out explosions; instead, the brothers peck away at each other the way real families do. vic and patsy are curious about bernie, and envious of him, and afraid of him; bernie is intimidated by his older brothers and feels superior to them at the same time. everybody is worried about tommy, though perhaps for different reasons; tommy, meanwhile, less out-of-it than he lets on, delivers scathing criticism of his siblings in the guise of "messages" from their dead mother, who apparently speaks to him. the scene builds to neat crescendos and then to a surprise climax that i won't reveal here. the undercurrent, significantly, is always the bond these four men share; they wouldn't think to call it love, but that's what it is. the four actors who portray the dicamillos get the conflicted relationships exactly right, and their characterizations draw up deeply into the family and makes us care about each brother. joseph carrao plays vic as proud and self-assured and hugely insecure; james doherty is masterful as the alcoholic priest tommy; david keller gives us all of the buttoned-up otherness of bernie; and gene forman, in perhaps the most affecting performance of the evening, shows us patsy's big, though damaged, heart and the desperation that has driven it to find love in the arms of a teenager. heidi carofano plays the waitress, lucille, with sass and spirit. when holy child's first act ends, we want to know what's going to happen to these characters, and lauinger obliges—in part—with his second act. this is set at the holy child home, and follows tommy through some of his rehabilitation toward something approaching self-knowledge. it's written in an entirely different style than the first act: where the restaurant scene is taut and naturalistic, the holy child sequences are expansive and philosophical, surreal and/or fantastical. tommy talks to ghosts, and he has an enormously satisfying encounter with a vision of the blessed mother (played by carofano with humor and spunk, practicing her yoga while she dispenses advice). we don't see as much of the other brothers as we'd like, which is disappointing. but lauinger points to a hopeful future for the disturbed tommy, who turns out to be the play's title character as well as the plot's catalyst. this is my first visit to the black box festival, by the way, and i am impressed with the production values and the quality of the work; three more weeks, featuring nineteen short plays altogether, follow, and on the basis of what i've seen, they should be well worth checking out. (two more plays by lauinger are coming up, as well as one by fellow plays and playwrights 2001 author joshua scher). as for holy child, i wish it long life beyond the black box; it's a fine, thoughtful play about families and relationships and the path toward self-understanding. it has some smart things to tell us, and i hope it is able to continue to do so. hospital by jeffrey lewonczyk · march 15, 2003 it's hard to know what to say about hospital, because it's hard to know what happened. and it doesn't help that, though the confusion is big, there's very little actual information to be confused about. perhaps that's a feat in itself. i can't tell, i'm too confused. hospital is an ongoing "serial" presented by the axis company, in yearly installments of three episodes each. each year a man gets put into a coma for a different reason (this year he's accidentally bumped off by hit men), and wanders through the wasteland of his unconscious mind until he dies. and apparently his unconscious mind is a hospital, just like the hospital his body may or may not be lying in. and there are some incompetent doctors and nurses, and some whale hunters. and that's about it. it would perhaps be unfair to judge the part without the whole, but the axis company takes great pains to declare that each part can be viewed separately, without the others. fair enough. but clocking in at just under a half hour (about a third of which is taken up by film projections), and with no storyline to speak of, the first episode of the current cycle presents precious little to hold onto, and even less incentive to come back for more. there are a few interesting images (a drunken hippie nurse; masks made simply of copy paper with eyeholes cut out; the whalers' furry costumes), but none of them is attached to anything. additionally, the tin-eared absurdist dialogue (the usual deadpan who's-on-first fare), and half-hearted staging (such as a song and dance by the whalers that goes frustratingly nowhere) further beg the question: why? i was left feeling very confused— and not, i hasten to add, in the fruitful and resonant way. in order for ambiguous and dreamlike narratives to work, there need to be a number of concrete footholds for audiences, so that they have a steady place to stand while they see the world shifting around them. perhaps the overall listlessness of the acting, writing and staging was meant to anchor the semi-abstract nature of the piece, but all this blasé attitude really did was further dissociate me from any interest i might have already had. it's almost as if the reality of performing the piece in front of an audience had completely slipped the mind of its creators. there were some chuckles on the night i was in the audience, but i, for one, felt slighted. and confused. did i mention i was confused? house of trash by martin denton · july 14, 2002 midway through the first act of the revival of house of trash, during a song whose chorus literally goes "i like to drive my truck/hucketa, hucketa, hucketa huck," a pair of biker babes appear from nowhere, like pages of hard times magazine come to life, to sing backup. when this rouser of a number ends, just as the audience is about to burst into applause, the doorbell rings ("i like to drive my truck" is sung in a living room). such is the sublime madness that director frank cwiklik brings to trav s.d.'s populist musical farce. i can't say that everything cwiklik has done with this audacious, giddy show entirely succeeds, but it is undeniably provocative and always interesting. house of trash concerns bob maggot, a garbage man who moonlights as a baptist preacher, and his clan. they include a wife who believes in "haints" and watches wrestling and reality tv all day; a step-son who is in love with a goat (trav s.d. anticipating edward albee by a couple of years, here); a son whose psychological profile pretty much screams serial killer (to whom, naturally enough, preacher bob gives a rifle as a cure for masturbation); and a step-grandson who is usually high on glue and cavorting with a weird girl who says her mother was with the manson family. house of trash, which its author says is based in part on a play by the roman poet terence, grafts classical farce onto america's great unwashed, for fun and, one hopes, intellectual profit. cwiklik stages the first act like a brechtian anti-musical, with characters coming downstage to talk or sing to us about their place in society's pecking order (often accompanied by a church choir robed in green plastic garbage bags). all the while, the far-fetched plot, which intentionally seems to be torn from the pages of the weekly world news, unfolds. cwiklik's take on the second act is more severe, proving that the line between broadest comedy and scariest tragedy is about one atom wide: it plays darker than i would have expected, an aching sociopolitical protest that feels heavier than perhaps the script can bear. music is provided by the maggot family ramblers (brian bair alternating with jamie boyaca on drums, plus greg solomon on bass, and pete hennan and bernie li on guitar) who perform adam swiderski's buoyant arrangements of the eight songs beautifully: there are four more live musicians here than at the broadway musical contact. the cast, which includes frequent cwiklik collaborators like michele schlossberg, moira stone, and josh mertz, is as energetic and fearless as the show requires. how his bride came to abraham by martin denton · march 21, 2003 we begin outdoors, near the border between israel and lebanon in the early '90s, where every inch of land was potentially a battlefield. in the darkness, we hear the sound of two israeli soldiers talking, and then, an enormous explosion. one of the young men has stepped on a landmine and, we find out, has had his leg blown off. the other young man limps into view (in the middle of the audience), clearly in pain, one foot bootless and bloody. he hears a sound: from the other direction, an intruder, covered from head to toe, nears his path. his immediate assumption is that this person must be his enemy. the stranger operates under the same assumption and tries to disarm the soldier. and though we know that we're watching two actors performing in praxis theatre project's production of karen sunde's how his bride came to abraham, we are trapped with them in a landscape of fear and hatred, recreated with painstaking and heartbreaking verisimilitude by director courtney patrick mitchell within the brutally intimate looking glass theatre space. in such close quarters, the enmity and distrust felt by these two anonymous human beings is bald and palpable and terrible. the immediacy can't help but move us—the first of many shattering moments in this triumphant production of sunde's still-timely play by one of off-off-broadway's best young companies. as soon as the soldier, searching for weapons, puts his hands on his unknown assailant's chest, he realizes that it's a woman; abashed, he draws away long enough for her to pull free. she leads him downhill into a primitive dwelling and he warily follows. this, she tells him, is her home. she surprises him by tending his wounded foot. and so the story of abraham—for that is our young israeli's name—and how his bride comes to him, begins in earnest. sunde's script covers a lot of ground in a single 100 minute-long act. abraham and sabra (she eventually reveals her name, after much coaxing), recognize that they will need to spend the night together: his unit is engaged in battle and cannot pause to rescue him; she can't risk navigating the heavily-mined area in darkness. thrust together, they let their guards down, slowly. she cooks a pot of potatoes to which he contributes some tinned beef; he talks about his home and family in jerusalem and she tells a story about a bird looking for shelter in an olive tree that turns into a dream. it doesn't surprise us that these two young people connect on this night, despite the fact that he is an israeli while she is palestinian. but what does surprise us is why: they're looking for warmth and solace, yes, but each also seeks something greater. the way of the world being what it is, neither will find it. how his bride came to abraham trades in specifics of the israeli-palestinian conflict, some of which are no longer up-to-date. but the broader aspects of the human condition that it illustrates—that we are so willing to blindly hate and to kill over stuff we can't see or even define—are entirely pertinent. eavesdropping on abraham and sabra as they fight and love and fight again, with the sounds of occasional shelling in the distance and a keen sense of danger outside the door of the hut where they've found temporary shelter, is instructive: there are people on the planet living under these conditions today and every day. mitchell's staging is taut and smart, highlighting the sad and awful resonance of sunde's play. it's performed on a magnificent set designed by jenny sawyers, lit starkly and realistically by josh bradford. the costumes by janine marie mccabe are exactly right and the sound design by jason atkinson, incorporating evocative music by daryl gregory, is splendid. praxis has done a superb job mounting this piece. amir babayoff and maya serhan do outstanding work as abraham and sabra. babayoff conveys abraham's innocence (he's just 19 years old) and his warmth and his anguish with remarkable felicity; his is an unforgettably explosive and emotional performance. serhan gives us, in contrast, her young character's savvy (from years lived as a refugee) and also her passion. each lets us understand the complex and often conflicting feelings that this israeli boy and palestinian girl are dealing with as they negotiate this dangerous and rapturous night together. how his bride came to abraham does not offer a carefree evening of entertainment, but it does offer comfort: in a way, the timing of this engagement could not be more propitious. see it for the perspective it can provide about our current situation; see it, too, because it is superbly affecting theatre. search nytheatre.com search the web this page updated tuesday, november 13, 2007 10:13 am copyright © 2007 the new york theatre experience, inc. all rights reserved. home contact us privacy policy mobile.nytheatre.com

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