The Way Rain Likes Grass

Taking it to the edge at the halfway house

By Peter Spiro
Directed by Jeff Dailey
American Theatre of Actors
Non-union production (closed)
Review by John Chatterton

This play starts out as a ``teacher's first day in a challenging class'' drama, so popular in films. Lorna (Sharon Laughlin, playing hooky from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and the LORT circuit), veteran of 17 years' teaching in fine academic high schools, must fill in at a residential facility for the treatment of drug addicts, where she soon learns to maintain order by giving her charges cigarettes for completing tasks. And where the dysfunctional mantra of students and teachers alike seems to be, ``I get the feeling you really don't like me.''

While Lorna is desperately trying to get her charges to learn the POWER method of writing (``Plan. Organize. Write. Evaluate. Revise''), a new colleague arrives. She first thinks Ray Byrne (real-life teacher Jason Margolis) is another delinquent. Indeed, as a lost sheep come back to the fold, he can talk the kids' language and even help them in practical ways--like counseling on how to face the judge at sentencing hearings.

Laughlin's performance was strong enough to justify the suspicion that this was a play about her character -- indeed, strong enough to blow everyone else off the stage. But the script gave her nowhere to go once the story becomes Ray's.

Ray runs afoul of the Catholic school authorities for teaching poetry by Bukowski and Whitman, neither of whom was shy about naming bodily parts. The ultimate scandal arises from sharing with his students a poem about the Pope's penis, as well encouraging a retarded student (Eugene, played touchingly by Derrick Begin) to bring charges of sexual abuse against one of the religious authorities. When Eugene can't accuse his abuser at a hearing, Ray is out.

The other inmates are Gary (Mark Ariall), who walks with a cane and obsesses in an inarticulate tangle about the wrongs done to him by society; Rob (Richard Collie), childishly obsessed with planes, guns, and military statistics and wanting nothing more than to join the Navy; Ralph (Dennis Kaiser), inordinately proud that he already got his diploma and so does not need to do any real work; Gus (Keong Sim), a tough guy who makes a weapon out of a stolen pencil-sharpener blade; and counselor Steve (Adam R. Brown), who plays word games with his charges but ultimately is interested only in maintaining the status quo. All were played with an economical sense of character and ensemble.

Ray helps each kid get over his current hurdle. As a clinic on teaching technique, the play gets an A for its contrast between Lorna's prescriptive approach and Ray's engaged one. It is only natural that the clouds of bureaucracy should shut off his little bit of sunshine.

Perhaps it is too cynical to point out the Christological references in Ray's characterization: he takes on the sins of the world; he baits the pharisees; he gives his disciples new names; one of them denies him; he heals the lame; and in the end he is terminated with extreme prejudice (but, perhaps on the third day, is only ``reassigned''). But taken on its own merits, the play efficiently (if obviously) tugs at the heartstrings.

The set (a desk, table, and trimmings), costumes (street) and lighting (some PARs) fulfilled their appointed tasks, although the lighting barely so, since the desk faced the wall and the lights didn't illuminate Lorna's face when she sat down. The staging had seats on two sides, facing each other; the blocking for the most part kept up enough of a flow not to favor one side of the audience over another.

This production showed a total commitment to a play that might have some faults but that has a big heart. All are to be commended for giving it the fair hearing it deserves.

Box Score:
Writing 1
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 1
Costumes 1
Lighting/Sound 1
Copyright 1997 John Chatterton

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The Crossing

Filet of soles

By Irene Glezos
Directed by Marilise Tronto
Flock Theatre Company
Equity showcase (closed)
Review by Marshall Yaeger

This operatic plot, about an ``ugly American'' woman lawyer who messes in Greek politics and saves the day, is early Marx Brothers--unless you're prepared to believe that a political prisoner of a ruth-less regime, whose feet were tortured until he could barely walk, could suddenly es-cape from prison, run into the countryside with police chasing him, carelessly get shot, but nevertheless elude his pursuers long enough to die--free at last -- in a cave where he and his estranged sister could reconcile.

The writer, who also played the hero-ine, dissipates the potential tragedy of her story in a shameless lack of self-discipline. Starting over the top and lingering, with lines like ``He struck her name from the dictionary,'' her scenes skip like stones over water, giving the players' emotions too little time to react naturally and piling up the problems from page 2. Thereafter, through 16 scenes, she repeatedly restates her conflicts, cuts to an emotional chase, or reveals something else that has left her be-wildered; or else she stops the action cold to indulge in an explosive, obligatory mono-logue.

Nevertheless, just about everything else was exceptionally fine. The director moved the large cast around with precision and taste, making excellent use of limited resources (such as a scrim near a doorway, or turning a large table into a wall); and got wonderful performances from almost every actor--particularly from D. J. Sharp, whose slash-and-burn Lieutenant was a proper Dostoyevsky villain.

Irene Glezos (the author) played the lead who sinks into an ouzo stew of con-spiracy, which includes a junta threatened by a letter as ominous as the Zimmerman telegram, a printing press, a fetish of bad feet (someone actually dies of extracted toe nails!), and incredible changes of heart explained by such lines as: ``I had to be sure I could trust you.'' Plus, she's lonely!

Coming to aid the heroine were Pat Dias as a shuffling, shaking torture victim (they beat iron pipes on the soles of his shoes until flesh popped the leather); Gerry Goodstein as a matchmaking uncle with connections to Spiro Agnew; Ricky Martin as a guard; Adam Roth described as a conspirator so full of life he danced (he was, but Dias did the dancing); Ben Schiff, with a finely penetrating voice; David Weck as the anarchist brother su-perbly done up in torture makeup; and Jeannie Zusy as an earnest Greek peasant whom the heroine patronized.

Peter Nigrini managed the set and lights just right, and Ian P. Murphy composed a sound plot that was as terrific as the author's plot was not--all except for the bird whose song got stuck on the same two notes throughout an entire pastoral scene.

Obviously the author dredged up a lot of what she saw in some very bad action movies (on a scale of 007, try 001). But what the hell? She'll probably make millions writing screenplays--after a villainous director slashes and burns her dialogue.

Box Score:
Writing 0
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 2
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 Marshall Yaeger

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Savage

Total theatre

By W.B. Yeats
Adapted & directed by Richard Eoin Nash-Siedlecki
The Ontological Theatre at St. Mark's
Equity showcase (closed)
Review by John Chatterton

Brave the man who throws himself into the black hole of presenting Yeats's plays. They require more than an audience of friends that doesn't shuffle its feet or talk. Yeats was a great poet, but he never got the hang of dramatic verse in particular or the dramatic form in general. Perhaps academics will see his dramatic works as experiments in creating a Celtic drama from its mythological roots, parallel with the Greeks' efforts in converting epic to dramatic forms. The Greeks succeeded; Yeats didn't.

That out of the way, the Ontological's conflation of three Yeats plays (At the Hawk's Well, The Only Jealousy of Emer, and The Death of Cuchulain) hit and exceeded the mark for subtlety and expressiveness. On a black rectangular platform in front of a blue cyclorama (with a peeling mosaic of clouds seen from high altitude), the various characters of the Cuchulain cycle (that's ``koo-kull-en'') acted out the story of his life: how in youth he discovers, but doesn't drink of, the well of immortality; how he has a son by a warrior queen, then unknowingly kills him in battle; how he is mortally wounded in battle and finally killed by a blind man for a reward of 12 pence. The story is haunted by the capricious and malevolent Sidhe.

That out of the way (there's more story in there, actually, some of it hard to follow despite copious program notes), the story was told balletically and lyrically. The balletic component included fine music performed by David Morgan Sollors, Christopher Caines, and Harris Wulfson. (Sollors took credit for sound design, engineering, and sound effects, some of which were startling.) A rich texture of dissonance, open chords, chanting, wordless vocalizing, and electronic sounds perfectly evoked the darkling spiritual plane on which Cuchulain's struggle takes place. The dance component of the ballet varied according to the skill of the dancers, perhaps being most effective with Fand, a woman of the Sidhe, performed in silver leotard by Dana Bledsoe. (She was also incarnated as the Guardian of the Well and The Morrigu, Goddess of War.) For the most part, the strategy behind casting the performers seemed to be weighted (correctly) to their acting abilities, but all gave at least a solid account of themselves in Interpretive/Improvisational Dance 101. Strong voices and a direct adaptation of the text made for a clear lyrical component.

The other principals were the Old Man at the Well (Paul Tavianini), overgrown with white kudzu from his long wait for the waters of immortality (Mr. Tavianini also appeared as the blind man, with conehead and Xed-out glasses); Cuchulain himself, a Celtic biker/warrior (Matt Mabe); Aoife, warrior queen, in hot pants and mesh stockings (Sarah Lindsey); Emer, Cuchulain's wife (Johanna McKeon), dressed in black, peasant-style; Eithne Inguba (Megan Johnson), dressed in white, Cuchulain's mistress; Bricriu of the Sidhe, painted red with a snake tattoo and a withered arm, threateningly played by Timur Kocak; Emer transformed (J'aime Morrison); and a hard-working chorus, in brownish robes, gray masks, and bare feet (Sonja G. Moser, Lindsey, and Kocak), who provided much of the background vocalizing and movement while the story was unfolding.

Is it fair to beat Yeats over the head with the Greeks? Perhaps not. But Sophocles could make high tragedy from a fragment of Cuchulain's tale (killing an unrecognized blood relation). By that measure, Yeats fails. (Choreography, Christine Suarez; sets, costumes, and masks, Dawn Robyn Petrilk; lighting, Alex Radocchia.)

Box Score:
Writing 1/Music 2
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 1
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 John Chatterton

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Light up the Sky

Fireworks

By Moss Hart
Lightning Strikes Theatre Company
Directed by Monika Gross
Synchronicity Space
Equity showcase (closed)
Review by Sarah Stevenson

Actually billed as ``A New Look at Moss Hart's Light up the Sky,'' the Lightning Strikes production was a fairly high-concept undertaking. The result, however, is more intriguing than effective. Director Monika Gross added a series of monologues between the three acts. Taken from Hart's autobiography Act One and beautifully delivered by D. L. Shroder, as the ``ghost'' of Moss Hart, these excerpts, anecdotes by the author concerning such topics as his first play's first read-through and the ``magic'' of opening night, are heartfelt and endearing. They also, however, transformed an already long play into a three-and-a-quarter-hour event. In addition, the incredible ``nice-ness'' and warmth of these monologues detracts from the biting satire about the theatre presented in the play itself.

For Light up the Sky is a play about theatre people, and it admits that some of them are truly awful. Hart's script takes place on opening night of a play designed to shake up the world of theatre -- to be, well, ``art.'' The audience does not see the play in question, but rather are witnesses to the backstage melodrama, as the cast, director and playwright affirm its brilliance and their love for each other (before the curtain opens), decry it as awful and despise each other (after the audience derides the play), and then miraculously renew their faith in it (and love for each other) after the glowing reviews come out. The play itself is absolutely ingenious, and the cast was excellent. Jonathan Gray's emotional director Carleton Fitzgerald, Faye Jackson's excitable leading lady Irene Livingston, and Patrick McCaffrey's seemingly inarticulate playwright stopped well short of caricature and provided delightful comedy. They were aided by a superb entourage, including Lizzie Peet as a quiet writer, Lou Kylis and Fred Harlow as garish but well-meaning producers, Rochelle Stempel as Irene's eccentric mother, and Wallace Wilhoit, Jr. as her businessman husband. D. L. Shroder also deftly played playwright Owen Turner, the character presumed to be modeled on Hart himself.

Denis Gawley, Dennis Kyriakos, and Martin Everall played a trio of drunken Shriners, whose stylized debaucheries provided bizarre but satisfying interludes. Outfitted with cardboard masks and two-dimensional versions of those little red hats with the tassels, they added a glorious note of absurdity to a sometimes over- serious interpretation of the script. Other characters periodically donned their own masks, but the logic behind when and why they did it was completely obscure, and thus added nothing to the piece.

The boldest directorial move was a mixed blessing. Gross chose to set each act of the play in a different phase of production. Thus Act One was set up as a first reading, with the actors in street clothes around a table; Act Two was performed as a first off-book run through; and Act Three as an opening-night performance. While this perhaps provided the non-theatre professional an intriguing glimpse into the theatrical process, it also proved that there is a reason people do plays off-book with full sets--it is really boring to watch actors sit around a table and read!

Set design was by Shelley Lee, lighting design was by Maria L.Rosenblum, and costumes were by Valerie Marcus. All three were outstanding.

Box Score:
Writing 2
Directing 1
Acting 2
Set 2
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 Sarah Stevenson

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Ashira 69: Collector's Edition
Superheroines Collide!

Comic candlepower

By Catherine Castellani
Directed by Caroline Jauch
Tennessee Project
House of Candles
Non-union production (closed)
Review by John Chatterton

Thirty-two productions in 10 years earns a certain amount of respect, but it is nevertheless natural for a stodgy old fart with refined tastes to feel a certain reluctance to see such a show as this. A reluctance not mitigated by an opening scene of superheroines in costume engaged in obviously phony pro-wrestling combat. Pow! Biff! Bap! (Choreography, Cyrus Khambatta.)

So why did this play grow, and start to warm the gristle of an old (by comparison) man's heart? And when?

Perhaps after intermission, when it turned out (on rereading the program) that the nine superheroines in question were played by four eager, athletic, and obviously versatile women. That's what happens when the old eyes start to go--those damn programs get harder and harder to decipher. (Not that the light in the aptly named House of Candles was any help--the production looked like it was staged in Khufu's pyramid.)

The very forgettable plot has superheroine Ashira crossing the chemical wastelands of New Jersey to take on Czar Newt, who controls the world from the top of the Spike, which rises 2000 stories over Megalopolis. Some supervillains get in the way. Newt is overthrown, but Ashira, double-crossed, must run away to fight another day. With her new-found good buddy (read: royal pain in the ass) Desire (pronounced Desiree).

But the actress who plays Desire (Amy Brennan) also plays Rott Weilah, coerced by the evil Freezia Sleet (Jennifer Murray) to fight on the Newt's side, with her team of dogs. Also one of the bad girls, though ambivalently so, is Alley Class (Chris Cunningham), chief socialite atop the Spike -- at least as far as the 700th floor. Into the mix are thrown The Poisoned Pixie, whose super-skill is healing (also played by Chris Cunningham); the whimsical, pixielike Ahimsa (played by the otherwise evil Jennifer Murray); Stephen Hawkingish Sangue Froid, computer hacker; and the delightfully butch Rita the Reckless -- the latter two played by Damaris Webb, who also played Ashira. All clear now?

Not that the writing was bad. Keeping all these characters coming and going (and changing costumes) requires serious writing for the stage. And keeping the touch light is a must. (But what of those delightfully serious moments, such as when Rita says that bugs' hitting the windshield is training them to think, so that they will eventually evolve into creatures that don't need to hit the windshield?)

The costumes (Luanna Cook and Chris Cunningham) were amusing, sometimes sexy, and appropriate. (Undoubtedly Sangue Froid's was borrowed from Mutt Repp's Planet of the Mutagens.) The choreography of the principals and the ``chorus'' of villainesses (Amy Gabrielle Leban-Goodbar, Joy Kilpatrick, and Cyndi Ramirez) put Hulk Hogan and his ilk to shame. The set (Chris Cunningham), just painted triangles on the walls, a triangular platform halfway up the upstage wall, and an apartment for Alley Class at the top of the Spike (in a loftlike space often used as an ``above the stage'' at the H. of C.) was functional. The aforementioned lighting (Rachel Rushefsky) suffered from a paucity of instruments as well as some (notably those supposed to be illuminating Alley Class's apartment) aimed elsewhere. (Sound design, Tom Tenney; voice over, Jennifer Culvert.)

Going to Stanton St. used to be like strolling through Beirut. It's gotten better, at least in the warm weather; there's a Hispanic restaurant open nearby and plenty of eyes on the street.

Box Score:
Writing 2
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 1
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 1
Copyright 1997 John Chatterton

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The Godsend

We've met the aliens, and they is us

By Richard Willett
Directed by Charles Loffredo
I.R.T. New Directions Theatre
The Samuel Beckett Theater (Closed)
Review by Sarah Stevenson

Extraterrestrials landed here last year. Gail is sure they said they'd be back tonight. The others think she's crazy. But they come, bringing messages of peace and goodwill, channeled through Gail. Sound trite? Maybe. But playwright Willett has wisely chosen to keep the aliens as a backdrop, and the focus securely on his characters, whose complex (and quite human) interactions provide a solid core to the piece. The aliens (never present on stage, mind you) are merely an interesting catalyst to a human drama.

Willett's exposition is somewhat clumsy in the opening scene, as he embarks on the difficult task of establishing what happened ``last year'' in order for the audience to make sense of what happens ``tonight.'' The words ``don't you remember..., `` precede a few too many sentences. But once he has established the necessary background, his excellent feel for characters takes over, and the play becomes riveting. He was aided by Charles Loffredo's subtle direction and by an outstanding cast that functioned beautifully as an ensemble.

Gail (Patricia R. Floyd) and her partner Beverly (Judy Stone) have been through a rough year, as Beverly fears Gail's obsession with aliens has taken over her life. Likewise Susan (Jamie Heinlein) and her husband Jeff (Glen Williamson) enter bickering. Joe (James Sutton) has brought the only newcomer to the cabin, his new girlfriend, Angela (Cindy Chesler), an arch-conservative who never even attempts to mesh with the others. The house party was completed by Wendell Ward's Henry, an unabashed queen whose speech is made up almost entirely of Academy Award acceptance speeches -- a device which started out amusing, quickly grew tiresome, but then, by its utter inanity, eventually became funny and charming.

As the characters are confronted by a presence that none of them can understand, they react in tellingly different ways, experiencing varying degrees of excitement, fear, incomprehension, rejection, and even relief. By packing his characters into a small cabin and confronting them with the unknown, Willett has created a microcosm of emotions that is truly astounding, and completely believable.

At only one moment does the play seem contrived. The power goes out, the TV comes on, and Henry, alone in the room, is offered a slide show of moments from his life. Henry as a boy, Henry in college, Henry's lovers, Henry's friends who have died. This journey through his life comes across as slightly forced. In a similar device, but one that is far more effective, Angela hypnotizes Jeff, regressing him in time in order to find out whether the aliens were really there. She takes him back to various points in his life, with startling and poignant results.

Andris Krumkalns' spare and elegant set proved what can be accomplished with just a few well-angled platforms. John Adams, Jr.'s lighting was effective, as were Julia Van Vliet's straightforward costumes. The Godsend combined an excellent play by an extremely promising playwright, a solid director, a talented cast of actors, and a few really good designers. To have all these elements not only working, but truly working together, was an achievement indeed.

Box Score:
Writing 2
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 2
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 Sarah Stevenson

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Just Tell Them You're From Scarsdale

Put the scars back in Scarsdale

By Adrienne Alitowski and Gary Marion
Directed by Gary Marion
Performed by Adrienne Alitowski
Solo Arts Group
Non-union production (closed)
Review by John Chatterton

The narrator -- presumably, as far as the audience knows, also Alitowski -- graduates from theatre camp to work in the theatre; from being a child would-be poet in Scarsdale to writing dramatic sketches.

Most of the fragments are straightforward reminiscences from a life that seems to have traveled an untroubled arc from youth to the present, with much more to go.

Unfortunately, the quality of the writing sometimes suggests the very qualities the writer would want to escape, so that instead of separating herself from her subject in ironic retrospect she unconsciously steps into self-satire. Thus, when she works as a waitress and wants to overcome the blues caused by a failed affair, she mentally writes fragments of poems with each check. A clever idea, showing economically how to turn art into a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, the poetic fragments sound like the sort of poetry a waitperson might write on her breaks, which is like having van Gogh escape his troubles by painting by numbers.

Some of the purely narrative prose (``The room perfumed with our passion'') reaches for purple majesty, too. (Is that what people smell like in Scarsdale when they ... you know ... do it?)

The piece contains many little sketches of persons Alitowski apparently met in life, thumbnailed with competence and precision. (Some wander in and out for no apparent reason, such as the purse-thief who calls up and pretends to be the thief's friend.) Some were told with obvious shtick-- like the kid shtick, the grandmother shtick, the southern-stripper shtick, the running-around-to-get-the-set-organized shtick (which is like running around to get the house in Scarsdale ready for the guests)....

The title reflects a mystical stretch to the writing: basically, when you get to heaven, just tell them you're from Scarsdale. Perhaps it is necessary to be from there to understand such chauvinism. There's a mystical subtext here, culminating in the performer's reuniting herself with her ur-self on the mountaintop of experience, but it's neither explained clearly in the narrative nor borne out by the sketches.

And that's too bad, because Alitowski's evident energy and humor made this a pleasant evening -- but one that begged for a life story that had been dragged over a few more rocks, for a point of view more twisted by self-consciousness. Perhaps if some of the characters had fallen a little further from the tree -- surely they have substance abuse, philandery, and spousal S&M in Scarsdale? -- the evening would have seemed more like a forbidden peek through someone's back window.

A dramatic monolog should be dramatic -- it should have characters made up for the occasion -- rather than being pleasantly autobiographical. Unless you've had a hell of a lot more dramatic a life, that is. (James Lecesne's Word of Mouth is a marvelous successful example of the genre.) Switching from the first to the third person point of view would also air out the piece's redolence of a family album and give it more potential as a commercial theatre piece.

On the technical front, Alitowski used a variety of props on a mostly empty stage. The lighting was undimmed, mostly warm PARs, and could have used some variety to help set off the different moods aimed at by the sketches.

Box Score:
Writing 1
Directing 1
Acting 1
Set 1
Costumes 1
Lighting/Sound 1
Copyright 1997 John Chatterton

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Getting Married

Dash my buttons!

By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Craig Rhyne
Westside Repertory Theatre
252 W. 81st Street (874-7290)
Non-union production (closes May 11)
Review by Marshall Yaeger

Treating marriage as if it were a vaccination or a baptism, Shaw's play picks it up and turns it inside out. Sadly, the institution doesn't quite pass inspection.

But the production did. Moving a dozen people around a minuscule stage (just arranging rehearsal schedules!) must have been a masterful test for the director's admirable skills.

The hilarious Christopher Marotta drew his foppish character with virtuosic speech and perfect timing. He was wonderful.

Also remarkable was Tyler Hayes, whose flesh voluptuously stretched her costume. This ``fine lady wasted'' constantly explained her choice of spinsterhood--never quite convincingly. Perhaps her character's name, ``Lesbia,'' was a clue. It provoked guffaws from the sold-out audience at all the wrong times.

Peter Ruffett played her constant suitor, a ``sentimental noodle'' of a general (in a band leader's costume) dashing his buttons about.

A Shaw comedy that stretches probability to the breaking point requires actors who never lose their cool. Unfortunately, Richard Van Slyke seemed about to have a heart attack at almost every point. The soft-spoken Douglas Treem, on the other hand, took gentility a tad too far for this production. Even the actors leaned forward to catch such dubious wise words as: ``It's a mistake to get married but a greater mistake not to.''

Don Scimé was the attractively bewildered bridegroom; and Ray Rue as the greengrocer dispensed his wisdom to the upper classes.

Displaying dyspeptic asceticism worthy of a Marshall Applewhite, Aaron J. Fili was amusingly disagreeable throughout. Also fine were Dawn Denvir, Ruthanne Gereghty, and Laura Spaeth.

Ann Coatney, in an elegant speech as naked and poignant as Shylock's defense, delivered Shaw's ultimate exposure of the political crime of marriage. Indicting male characters representing mind, spirit, and flesh, she delineated the pain of marital discrimination against women. ``We gave you our Soul and you wanted our body--was it not enough? ''

Richard G. Tatum's lights were fine, and Regina Garcia's rickety set, with stone floors and stenciled wallpaper, amused. Wigs and whiskers excelled, and the costumes were mostly fetching, although sometimes it seemed as if the actors grabbed their dress or coat from a hand-bag left in Victoria Station.

What, beside dashed buttons, was Shaw up to in this play --which, outside the political arena, lacks all emotional resonance? He seems to argue for a spotless sexuality, which only little boys could think nasty. But evidence that he matured, himself, enough to be married, was lacking. No doubt he wanted to write as amusing and successful a comedy as Oscar Wilde, but with more intellectual bite.

Wilde never touched on true love in his plays. But he knew what it was.

Box Score:
Writing 2
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 2
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 Marshall Yaeger

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Heartbreak

Lies, half-lies, and recriminations

By Jack Heifner
Directed by Steven Williford
The Lark Theatre Company
120 W. 28th St. (246-2676)
Equity showcase (closes May 10)
Review by Scott Vogel

Jack Heifner's rather baldly titled drama explores the life and loves of Jason, a semi-successful gay novelist whose mysterious death provokes his four surviving friends to embark on a searing examination of the last year in Jason's life. Their near-surgical reminiscence turns out to have its personal motivations, however. You see, Jason was working on a book containing thinly disguised versions of his friends, all of whom mount the stage, each hoping to separate reality from fiction, to determine, as one character puts it, ``what he got wrong.''

Accordingly, the play shuttles back and forth between the present and the past, real-life and the novel, each twist and turn smoothly handled by the director. In one virtuosic moment during a failed Thanksgiving dinner, Pamela (Beth Glover) remembers telling the others she was studying to become a nurse. Others remember the scene differently -- Pamela had said she was studying to be a secretary, hadn't she? Pamela is aware of this but was hoping to use this opportunity to correct the past. The past, ever insensitive, instead plays as originally experienced, followed by an immediate shift to an acting-out of the parallel scene in Jason's novel, in which P's character is now studying to be a hairdresser!

The sudden reality shifts might have proven tortuous for a less-talented cast; this one was uniformly up to the challenge. Patti Whipple was especially fine as Helen, a romance novelist who first met Jason at a writer's workshop and now laments that his novel is ``the only piece of crap ever written about me.'' Beth Glover's Pamela was a hilarious (if occasionally campy) Arkansas belle ``put on this Earth to answer phones.'' Randall McNeal was solid as the bitter, self-hating Jason, whose only constancy in life is a new boyfriend every few months. Michael Edward Sabatino did well in the underwritten part of Vince, who, despite being in his 30s, still goes to Florida every year for Spring Break, and Andrew Lincoln was energetic (often too much so) in the role of Mark, Jason's boyfriend, or ``private whore/sex toy,'' as he is charmingly called.

Jason, at one point, asks a critical question -- ``why are we friends?'' It is a question for which the playwright gives no satisfying answers. The banter is amusing and believable, but a dark current of anger and ridicule runs through the play, which also contains a fair amount of cruel put-downs and fat jokes. The characters' mutual loathing becomes overwhelming at times, threatening to destroy the sympathy one must have for them in order for a piece like this to work. Why these people put up with a miserable curmudgeon like Jason -- who indulges in even further cruelties -- is a mystery at least as interesting as the one surrounding his death and is not solved by all the hugs and ``I loved him''s that close the play. Perhaps there is not enough at stake in this drama. (After all, the book was a novel, and he changed their names, for goodness' sake!) But the characters' quest for truth might have mattered more, proved more poignant, had Jason been someone they could truly love and then feel betrayed by.

A strong sense of connection was achieved by Carol Brys's costumes. The designer very effectively used burgundy, brown, and blue-green to subtly create a sense of intimacy among these disparate souls. John Michael Hultquist's lighting was equally subtle and apt, not to mention crucial to a play of shifting realities. Larry M. Gruber's set was spare and appropriate. A final tableau on the Golden Gate Bridge was particularly beautiful.

Box Score:
Writing 1
Directing 2
Acting 2
Set 1
Costumes 2
Lighting/Sound 2
Copyright 1997 Scott Vogel

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The Most Important American Playwright Since Tennessee Williams

When talent slides into the gutter

By William Shuman
Directed by Elaine Smith
Abingdon Theatre Company
Judith Anderson Theatre (closed)
Review by Adrienne Onofri

``You are passionate, I'll give you that.'' This line from Act 2 of The Most Important American Playwright Since Tennessee Williams was inadvertently ironic. The new comedy by William Shuman suffered from a glaring lack of passion. There was none between the two lovers, nor was there any between the title character and his longtime fan.

Shuman borrowed from The Man Who Came to Dinner and Deathtrap in fabricating the tale of A. Richard Cutter, a Pulitzer- and Tony-winner once touted as ``the most important American playwright since Tennessee Williams.'' Cutter has fallen on hard times--brought on by a combination of alcoholism, writer's block, and dementia--and has been living on the streets for two weeks, when he calls on Willy, an aspiring playwright who wrote him a fan letter eight years ago. Cutter moves in over Willy's objections and proceeds to derail Willy's career as well as his romance with an actress named Angie.

Too many elements conspired to keep both the comedy and the intended poignancy of the play from being effective. First, there were some unrealistic details in Shuman's script. Cutter's greatest plays are titled Oedipus Flexed and Iphigenia in Spandex. Do those sound like the work of a visionary? Another unlikely incident occurs when Willy and Angie are offered work off-Broadway and initially turn it down for insubstantial reasons. What artist would pass up such an opportunity after chasing it for so long?

In addition to the script flaws, flat performances prevented the audience from caring much about the characters. Nicholas Piper, who looked and sounded like a male Helen Hunt, was too young for the role of Willy. Lee Steinhardt's Angie seemed more like a businesswoman than an actress, and Steinhardt displayed none of the emotional wounds that the ex-addict Angie was supposed to bear. There was no chemistry between Piper and Steinhardt, which rendered unaffecting the scenes in which they break up and Willy pleads with Angie to take him back. Ed Steel e was OK as Cutter, but his relationship with Willy did not generate any sparks. After the first scene, any semblance of Willy's reverence for Cutter is gone. Willy and Angie relate to him as if he's an ordinary person they've known all their lives. Because the characters and their relationships were poorly develop ed, the highly charged final scene did not pack the punch it meant to.

What the show had going for it was a well-furnished set that depicted Willy's apartment, although the decor may have been too nice for someone of Willy's means. A set couldn't redeem this play, though; its title was more interesting than anything in it.

(Sets, George Xenos; costumes, Carol Brys (see also Heartbreak, reviewed in this issue); lighting, David Castaneda; sound, Maelstrom Music.)

Box Score:
Writing 1
Directing 1
Acting 1
Set 1
Costumes 1
Lighting/Sound 1
Copyright 1997 Adrienne Onofri

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