nytheatre Archive
2002-03 Theatre Season Reviews

With The Mayor’s Limo, playwright Mark Nassar and director Santo Fazio hark back to a bygone (but fairly recent) era when civil libertarians and community activists challenged, in practice and principle, the New York City Mayor’s Office and Police Department almost daily. Protests over municipal abuse of power, police brutality, homeless rights, corruption, etc., accentuated the civic strife that resulted when the very agents we had appointed to protect our civil liberties were sometimes the greatest threat to them. Notwithstanding its references to 9/11, this play seems devoid of the overnight compassion and civic pride that consumed New Yorkers who deified then-Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Though “the mayor” is never mentioned by name, The Mayor's Limo is quite direct in alleging the hypocrisy of elected officials and the ways that personal ambition wins out over principled action.

Lights up on three hardnosed, archetypal NYC detectives readying themselves (bullet-proof vests and all) for a big-time raid and bust. Det. Matty Kopac (James J. Hendricks), the veteran old-schooler, gives the orders; Det. Paul D’Amico (Patrick Michael Buckley), the hotheaded young gun, twitches and squirms in testosterone-fueled anticipation; and Det. Owen Gleason (Robert Stevens), the cynical middle-management type, prefers to think about the beers in the fridge they’ll enjoy later while processing the collared perps. Their politically motivated superior, Captain Gould (Kevin Alexander), crashes their party and cancels the big bust, offering them instead crowd control duty babysitting the mayor. Declining that assignment, they are left to process a regular, a hooker named Martel (Sharon Angela) who you know can’t afford to take the night off and proceeds to plead and barter for her release to no avail.

The atmosphere of the precinct room (the love child of “Barney Miller” and “NYPD Blue”) erupts when the rookie, Gilly (Michael Perri), barrels in with a feral, howling mess of man in tow (Mr. Nassar). Gilly, in his over-zealous desire to prove himself, tackled and arrested this “dangerous” criminal for urinating on the titular limousine, just as Hizzoner was exiting a church amid the jeering and taunting of protesters across the street. The captain and the mayor’s office infer that the act and the protest are connected and set out to make an example of the miscreant, who refers to himself merely as Banzai. Benny “Banzai” Lambo embodies the stereotype of the anti-social, psychotropic-drug-dependent dropout with a complexity and genius buried deep within. And here Nassar and Fazio tighten the screws as Banzai is branded terrorist, messiah, sociopath, prodigal son, and scapegoat, almost simultaneously.

Our three cops keep a workman-like grip on the precinct, and the performances of Hendricks, Buckley, and Stevens mirror those of their respective characters, their dialogue mostly exposition yet delivered with ease. Nassar reserves his juiciest banter for Banzai and Martel, and both Nassar and Angela step up, with a notable mention to Martel’s outfit, which begs you to pay attention. Banzai’s story involves family tragedy, squandered potential, disenchantment, self-imposed social exile, guilt, and repentance; in other words, his story is our collective story. While Banzai, through Nassar’s organic and natural portrayal, lives for us on stage, he exists as a noble yet flawed mythological figure, a conglomerate of all twelve of Jesus’ disciples. Nassar keeps it all moving pretty smoothly with the right-on dialogue, police talk, jibes and jabs as well as Banzai’s Belushi-like blunt irreverence. Angela’s Martel charms us even when she’s telling us how, during a coked-out bender with a girlfriend, she scammed some john out of his wallet while giving him a one-muscle massage. We cheer for the gal while cringing at the thought that at some point we could each be that sucker.

Fazio’s intimacy with the piece oozes throughout, allowing the performances to drive the story, his direction conspicuous in its subtlety. He paces the action well, with entrances and exits smooth and timely, underscoring his involvement in the development of the play. That said, several performances never transcend the utilitarian, expository pigeonhole of mainly secondary characters, but this detracts little from the overall strength of the narrative and production. The set by Tom Hooper, a spot-on cluttered precinct room, gives a sense of claustrophobia when filled with all the characters, and Rich Robinson’s moody, aggressive musical interludes add gravity and nuance to the humorous tension that unwinds at lights up.

Nassar’s play courageously keeps a dissenting voice alive while reminding us of the vulnerability and dependency that are inherent to human nature. His Banzai is the classic anti-hero we all hope we are on the inside.

Three sisters return to the family home to pay respects to their mother’s memory. But instead of a feast of feminine camaraderie, the members of this sorority snipe at each other with abandon. On the surface, The Memory of Water is a slightly superficial family drama: secrets are revealed and understandings are reached. But surprisingly, it’s the play’s earnestness that lifts it above the clichés.

In its present production by Invisible City Theatre Company at the Manhattan Theatre Source, Shelagh Stephenson’s play stages its character dynamics with sympathy and intelligence. As each sister grimaces at the too-familiar behavior of her sibling, she finds comfort in the mirroring frown on the other sister’s face. These shifts in alliances drive the play along. As they resurrect decades-old arguments, the women find that their memories disagree: more than one sister remembers being left at the beach, for example.

As is often the case, the youngest child, played with an unhinged loopiness by Kristin Woodburn, demands the most attention—she’s the type of girl who matches her winter coat to her panties. But it’s the middle sister, Mary, who earns the audience’s focus. As played by Elizabeth Horn, she’s desperate to control her emotions as she watches her sisters paint the walls with theirs. And of course, Mary cannot keep her composure, knows she cannot, and refuses to admit this to herself. This tension is part of what lifts The Memory of Water above similar works like Beth Henley’s campus classic Crimes of the Heart (or Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters).

To balance Mary’s internal tension, the eldest sister, Teresa, dominates the second half of the show with an unyielding resistance to any displays of sympathy for her sisters and, even more dramatically, to her husband: after a few drinks, her marriage turns into a scene from Edward Albee. As directed by David Epstein and played by Erin Roberts, Teresa lets loose the tirade that her sister Mary can’t allow herself. By the time of the inevitable rapprochement over the mother’s coffin, all three actresses have laid bare their characters’ emotions. Through their honesty, The Memory of Water displays that particle of truth that makes melodrama enjoyable.

On September 11, 2001, Americans formed the chorus to a true tragedy. From that catastrophe, playwright/director Neil LaBute has fashioned The Mercy Seat, a story (and a disappointingly small one) about the implosion of a relationship. When the World Trade Center collapses, white-collar professional Ben Harcourt is at his boss and mistress Abby’s loft a few blocks away to discuss their future together instead of attending a business meeting at the site. Now listed as one of the missing, Ben proposes that he disappear—fake his death—so that he and Abby can start a new life together. She, understandably, is appalled that Ben’s first thought is to exploit the tragedy.

New Yorkers had their emotional guards stripped in those days, and The Mercy Seat reflects that. The two superb actors playing Ben and Abby, Liev Schreiber and Sigourney Weaver, dance through their characters’ emotions with assured skill. They make Seat a wholly compelling evening, despite its egregious playwriting choices (more on that in a moment). Weaver (who acted in another theatrical reaction to September 11, The Guys) has the less interesting role, and one she’s built her career on: a powerful modern woman who seeks to express her emotions honestly without compromising her hard intelligence. Yet Weaver acts with passion, creating a woman whose world has almost literally collapsed but who has already decided to find her way through the rubble.

But Schreiber plays the character to watch, and strengthens his bid to be one of the great American actors of our time. His Ben has been struck dumb, not by the disaster but by self-pity. And as the play progresses, Schreiber shows that this reaction is Ben’s defense mechanism against making any sort of choice or connection at all. He puffs out his cheeks, snorts and rubs his legs, smiles and walks away, all to disguise the fact that he doesn’t want to think and never has. “I always take the easy route, do it faster, simpler, you know, whatever it takes to get done, be liked,” Ben reveals in a moment of self-analysis. Schreiber’s eyes widen and his head nods down, suggesting that Ben is now marveling at the depths he didn’t know existed.

Those playgoers familiar with LaBute’s worldview will recognize his sour view of human nature. In his films (Your Friends and Neighbors) and plays (bash), LaBute paints ugly portraits of shallow people through an excitingly terse and corrosive script. There’s only a little of that here, as when Abby points out, “You really dodged a bullet there,” to which Ben replies with a frank, relieved yet almost smug, “Plane. I dodged a plane.” But most of the hour-and-a-half script lazily sketches out its characters through discussion of shallow topics like Ben’s ignorance of popular culture. This demonstrates his self-centeredness, you see.

At its cold little heart, however, the central issue isn’t the catastrophe outside, but rather Ben’s refusal to have sex in any position except from behind. LaBute exploits his audience through a disingenuous tactic: by setting his play in Battery Park City on September 12, 2001, LaBute assumes that his plot carries the weight of the apocalypse. After all, he’s addressing the reactions and conflicts that arose out of truly awful tragedy.

But that’s not actually true: if LaBute had written the play to allow Ben’s faked death in another, lesser calamity—say, a flood or earthquake—the resulting drama would be the same. LaBute doesn’t illuminate the events of September 11 any more than a memorial candle set in front of a downtown firehouse; and it's considerably less sincere. The play is an aftershock, much smaller than the cataclysm outside Abby’s apartment, to the point of dramatic self-indulgence that mirrors Ben’s own. The Mercy Seat is a play worth seeing for its performances, but don’t expect a catharsis: September 11 is no tragedy in this play, it’s a dramatic device.

Just before settling in for some nighttime reading, Mimi sends her trusty teddy bear to check under the bed for monsters. Just to be sure, she takes a quick peek herself before leaning back on her pillow and opening her book. Mind you, Mimi is 28 and knows there's no such thing as monsters; the ritual (and the bear) are vestiges of an earlier part of her life that has mostly slipped away from her.

Which is why she doesn't notice, though we do, that a furry paw is tentatively extending itself out from under the bed. Eventually the paw reaches all the way up to the bed itself, and behind it comes—what do you think?—a Monster. He soon does get Mimi's attention, and for this lonely and sad young woman, nothing will ever be the same again.

Thus begins Mary Jett Parsley's beautiful fable, The Monster Tales. This touching and inordinately wise play, lovingly presented by Boomerang Theatre Company, takes us on an exciting and fantastical journey into Mimi's imagination. The Monster has come to visit Mimi to hear some of her stories—stories she claims she doesn't know anything about, but that the Monster insists she makes up every night while she's asleep. He tells her a few of them, for he has memorized them, and soon, her capacity to dream and to wish reawakened by what she has heard, is able to concoct a brand new adventure for her visitor.

All together four tales are spun in the course of this magical play—stories that are full of wonder and wisdom. The first is about a wealthy old man who orders a bride from a factory. She is beautiful but diffident; unable to love her master, she instead falls in love with his servant, a good young man named David. The second story, my favorite, is about a lonely woman who discovers one day to her surprise that a little boy has sprouted up in her garden. What happens to the two as they squabble and then learn to love one another is genuinely delightful.

The third story is the saddest, in which a young woman withers away after the death of her beloved mother. But the final story—the one that Mimi herself narrates—is much happier: a tale of an old man who can make beautiful music simply by rubbing his hands together. His gift brings him great celebrity and acclaim, but also great responsibility, and he one day tires of sharing it with others. He tells everyone he can no longer make music and sets out to become a mason instead. Eventually his wife finds him out, but not before he learns an important lesson about life—a lesson, it turns out, that Mimi needs to learn as well.

Presley's writing is fresh and funny and insightful, and the tales her characters tell feel like authentic folk legends, which is a difficult feat to accomplish. She's blessed with a director, Amy Henault, who brings precisely the right light, ethereal tone to the piece—it would be easy for The Monster Tales to come across as either campy or cloying, but here it is neither. WT McRaw's witty, inventive, simple set is similarly effective, as is the lovely, evocative music and sound design provided by Ernie Rich.

The ensemble of six actors is just about perfect. Erika Bailey is outstanding as the play's sad heroine Mimi, at first mystified and resentful, but later amazed and enlarged by her adventure and reawakening. Peter Morr is plaintively netherwordly as the mysterious Monster. Four other actors—Ed Schultz, Jane Courtney, Scot Carlisle, and Nora Hummel—play the various characters in Mimi's stories, and they are quite wonderful. Carlisle is spectacularly winning as the little boy growing in the garden, while Hummel is human and warm as his astonished caretaker; Courtney is luminously melancholy as the sad girl who loses her mother. Schultz is downright magical as the man with music in his hands.

The Monster Tales is a charming little marvel of a play, reminding us that our lives are brief and precious and must be lived caringly and carefully. We all need a monster like Mimi's, once in a while, to wake us up to the gifts around us that we take for granted.

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz is everything you'd expect from an early 20th-century Polish avant-garde artist. He was a wild man in his personal life (at least in terms of sex and drugs; rock 'n' roll wasn't invented yet), misunderstood by his peers (very few of his many plays were performed in his lifetime, and his theories were dismissed as twaddle), and quite possibly insane. And, most importantly, his work is far-out, even by today's standards: unholy amalgams of surrealism, expressionism, naturalism, and just about any other kind of "ism," undercut by a cosmic sense of despair, and all created under the rubric of his theory of "Pure Form." It can also be quite funny; he called many of his plays "comedies with corpses," an entirely accurate label.

In all of his plays, Witkacy (as he liked to refer to himself) betrays a deep indebtedness to his European forebears Ibsen and Strindberg (and, to a lesser degree, Chekhov). Nowhere is this more evident than in The Mother, which is currently being revived at La MaMa by The Theater of a Two-Headed Calf (named for one of Witkacy's plays). The setup is redolent of a thousand other domestic psychodramas: a put-upon Mother (played here by the Talking Band's Tina Shepard) is driven to the limit by Leon Eely, her ungrateful-yet-dependent son (Jim Fletcher, a Richard Maxwell regular), who sucks her dry of money and affection in his struggle to become a great philosopher. Enter Leon's fiancée Sophie and her father (both portrayed by Suli Holum), who move in to the house which is already crowded with Dorothy, the maid (Barbara Lanciers) and the spirited presence of Leon's late father (Wilson Hall). It is in this last detail that the madness of Witkacy's method becomes apparent: not content to embed the late father's presence (à la Ibsen's Ghosts, which is directly referred to in the text), the specter of Albert Eely is an actual figure, flinging interjections at his wife and son through a translucent scrim.

The disjoints from reality as normally staged only multiply from here. Before Leon and Sopia appear onstage, their dialogue is enacted by the Mother herself, sporting a couple of baby-doll puppets bearing their names. The maid delivers entire monologues backed by the dissonant strains of an unseen band (wonderful stuff, conducted by composer Brendan Connelly). The actual curator of The Club at La MaMa, Nicky Paraiso appears onstage as… a theatre manager. When we first see Sophie's ancient father, he is portrayed by Sophie wearing a giant fright mask and a cloak that exposes her rather feminine gams. It's only a matter of time before Leon and Sophie turn to espionage and prostitution in order to make ends meet, and the Mother dies of a cocaine overdose.

Despite all the excitement described above, it's my regret to admit that the production harbors a number of dull passages. Having never been taken seriously in his lifetime, Witkacy had little need for an editor, and some of his dialogue tends to drag (even despite Daniel Gerould and C.S. Durer's expertly playable translation). For instance, a lengthy section in which Leon charts out his world-changing theories is scrambled through hurriedly, and rightly so—it doesn't make a lick of sense, nor do I imagine it's meant to. Other scenes, however, lack that brio. Though Shepard's performance in the title role is feisty and stylistically accomplished, the guilt and shame underlying her victimhood are never convincingly brought to life, and so the first section of the play, which she dominates, gets things off to a slow start.

The play truly comes to life with the introduction of Fletcher and Holum. Fletcher's Leon is the true center of the play; he manages to take an entirely unsympathetic cretin and wring out of him a vibrant portrait of a boorish bore who has absolutely no interest in the world around him. And, in her various roles, Holum presents an ideal counterpoint, her vibrancy a nice contrast to Fletcher's dreary monotone.

However, it's not until the final scene that Witkiewicz's plan reaches its full breadth. Suddenly the setting is a room without doors and windows. The Mother's corpse is underneath a sheet, and the band is now onstage. Leon urges the audience to take the situation as it is, without demanding it to conform to "real" life, much as they would the color red, or a chord of music. Into this nether space enters the Mother's younger self (portrayed by Holum) and the rakish Father, before he was hanged as a bandit in Brazil (long story). Distilled to pure essence, the psychodrama plays itself out in this puzzling shadow world, and a succession of strange surprises casts a distorting (or is it clarifying?) light on the previous events of the play. After an unexpected payoff, everyone goes home pleasantly disoriented.

In contrast to her 2002 production of Witkiewicz's Tumor Brainiowicz, which was full of elaborate costumes, puppets, and musical mischief (and also produced by Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf), director Brooke O'Harra takes a more straightforward approach with The Mother. Yes, there are still video monitors and other assorted gewgaws, but, like the final scene of the play, she has distilled all the caprice into a pure and tangible form. It's something to make an eccentric long-dead Polish avant-garde genius smile.

The Mystery of Attraction is about two brothers at the ends of their ropes. Ray, the elder, is a lawyer who is failing in private practice, in debt to the tune of twenty grand to a dubious character who collects his victims' bones, and stuck in a loveless marriage to a waitress he barely respects, let alone likes. Warren, the younger, is a police detective reduced to working clerical jobs because of a drug infraction, struggling with addictions to alcohol and other substances, and married to a woman who makes him feel inferior and who, not at all incidentally, was Ray's first wife (until a briefly alluded-to incident involving some kind of embezzlement scheme and a kitchen knife).

The play takes place on a difficult night in Ray's living room in which all the brothers' troubles—and there are others besides the ones I mentioned above; I figure you're entitled to some suspense if you decide to see the show—collect and multiply. Ray and Warren conclude that they have only one another to rely upon to fight their way out of the holes they have both fallen so deeply into. And they're almost certainly right, though it's not entirely clear at play's end whether they will ultimately be able to save each other or themselves.

Playwright Marlane Meyer is writing, I guess, about the results of unchecked desire: the mystery of the title seems to be why ordinary, presumably "good" men like Ray and Warren allow themselves to be seduced by money, sex, and pleasure, and consequently falter as moral beings. Now, this is essentially the same question that Edward Albee asks in The Goat, but that play somehow felt a good deal weightier than this one. The key difference, as far as I can tell, is that while Albee was interested in the effects of a horrible heinous act on his characters, Meyer seems more concerned with delineating the act itself. Or, in this case, acts: Meyer piles, implausibly and almost sadistically, every manner of depravity onto her protagonists' plates: pretty much every stock criminal act, from drug abuse to child abuse and from torture to serial murder, figures somewhere in The Mystery of Attraction's script.

Counterbalancing all this insidious evil is Ray's strongly developed sense of justice, which prohibits him from taking on the defense of the underage serial murderer fiancée of a rich and powerful businessman (and accepting his check for $50,000), which would easily keep Larry the Bone Collector at bay. Given everything else Meyer has told us about Ray, I found this particular bit of righteousness really hard to swallow. As, ultimately, I did all of this play, which seems to be crafted explicitly to allow audiences to wallow sensationally in other people's messes, in the name (I suppose) of some shallow and ill-formed moral revelation.

That said, I add that director Jeff Cohen has done a more than commendable job putting The Mystery of Attraction on its feet, starting with a milieu-defining set of sterling authenticity (by Marion Williams) and including a generally excellent ensemble, most notably Barry Del Sherman as the severely damaged Warren and Deirde O'Connell as Ray's wife Denise, who awakens to the facts of her and Ray's situation in the play's most believable scene. Denise is the only character that Meyer doesn't saddle with some kneejerk despicable obsession or sin, and as a result O'Connell has the chance to make a real three-dimensional person we can root for and care about, and to her credit she absolutely does so.

You can hear "Love for Sale" and "I Happen to Like New York" if you go to the right cabaret on the right night. But where are you going to hear "I'm Getting Myself Ready for You," in which the girl, sounding very much like one of today's anorexic supermodels, sings to the boy, "If you still feel/I need a meal/I'll risk an olive or two"? Or "My Louisa," which deathlessly rhymes its title with "When I've enough in the bank/I'll buy me a swank/Hispano-Suiza." Or "Say it with Gin," which goes, in part, "Don't say it with music/It's early Irving Berlin/But if you want to woo her/And get a lot closer to her"... well, you get the idea.

The answer is: nowhere but at Mel Miller's latest extravaganza, Musicals Tonight!'s concert revival of The New Yorkers, which is chock-full of little-known Cole Porter treasures that still have the capacity to put a smile on your face some seventy-odd years after they were written. In addition to the aforementioned numbers are some that you may be familiar with but probably haven't heard very often: "Take Me Back to Manhattan," "The Extra Man," "I'm a Gigolo." There's the deliciously titled "Sing Sing for Sing Sing"—a song just waiting to be written, don't you think?; the bouncy "That's Why I Love You" (which anticipates "Friendship" from DuBarry Was a Lady) and the infectious "They All Fall in Love" (which echoes the more famous "Let's Do It"); there are even some quite credible love ballads, "Where Have You Been?" and "You're Too Far Away." All in all, a score to cherish, which is precisely why, ragtag book and modest production values notwithstanding, The New Yorkers is one of the most charming musicals in town at the moment.

Miller has taken more liberties than usual with this show, whose original book was credited to Herbert Fields but, built to order around star comic Jimmy Durante, indisputably featured special material (songs as well as bits) that wouldn't scan without Schnozzola himself delivering it. So this New Yorkers has been stitched together with a serviceable book adaptation by Miller and filled out with songs not included in the 1930 Broadway production but instead either dropped on the road or used in other Porter musicals. (If you're into this sort of thing, check out Robert Kimball's Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter to supplement Miller's program notes and trace the etymology of the songs; there's a fascinating story about "Love for Sale" that's worth reading.)

Or: just relax and enjoy the show. Many of the jokes fall flat seven decades after the fact, and some of the topical references in Porter's songbag are undeniably dated. But the melodies are fresh and the lyrics are astonishingly and consistently witty. Almost all of them feel like Porter on a lark, but coming as they do at the height of his prowess, they're giddy, wicked fun. (One of them, "I Dream of a Girl in a Shawl," is a particularly naughty joke.)

And they sound great—unmiked!—in Barbara Anselmi's easygoing arrangements, performed by a talented and tireless cast. Nanne Puritz, who has graced several previous Musicals Tonight! productions, is terrific as the ingénue, a bad-good girl named Alice Wentworth who falls in love with a bootlegger and sings about it in numbers like "Which" and "I Want to Be Raided By You." Her leading man is played by T.J. Mannix, who has a pleasing voice and manner. A young lady named Amy Silverman is assigned the role of Lola McGee, the good-bad girl who delivers "Love for Sale." Leslie Alexander and David M. Beris are on target as Alice's très riche parents, and Edward Watts is splendid as Mrs. Wentworth's boy toy, who sums his life story up with a deliciously performed "I'm a Gigolo." Ethan James Duff and Cristin Boyle play the secondary pair of lovers; Doug Trapp and Justin Roller triumph in virtually every scene in about a dozen different guises, including the waiter and doorman who sing about "My Louisa" (see first paragraph). Robert Lydiard plays the Durante role and gets to do "I Happen to Like New York" with unadorned gusto—gorgeous.

To cop from another Porter show, The New Yorkers is de-lovely. And from another: What a swell party this is. I had a ball.

Philosophy can sometimes kick up just enough dust on our wide plane of existence that our view is obscured. And metaphysics, as it’s now being applied at the Blue Heron Arts Center, can create a veritable sand storm to test the most persistent thinker. Kenneth Heaton’s The Ontological Detective wants to be a head-tripping piece of theatre noir, and it employs many motifs associated with the hard-boiled detective genre (at one point, our main character is sarcastically called Sam Spade). The questions of being and not being to which the play addresses itself are indeed fascinating, but they’re couched in a series of isolating scenes that never reward us on a deeply emotional or psychological level.

Clues begin to multiply that prove more self-serving than revelatory. First we have a crime scene being investigated by Detective Michael Luz and partner Robles; the victim is apparently a suicide, but the evidence seems to have been tampered with. Luz has a morbid habit of sketching these corpses, and drinks heavily to escape the memory of his dead wife. It’s no help that Robles reminds him of her, or that his boss, Detective Herman, is moving up the chain of command and becoming suspicious of Luz’s erratic behavior.

Luz and Robles are not the only visitors to this blood stained mattress, however. A clean-cut man known only as Skip has gotten there first, towing a black bag of dubious instruments. In what could amount to a disturbing one-person show, Skip (played with edgy magnetism by Charles Paul Holt) talks to himself, his cell phone, and the dead body all at length, trying to intuit the cause of the suicide. After quitting this “occupation,” Skip meets a nameless, vaguely threatening socialite known only as "The Young Man" who may or may not be his alter-ego; that’s assuming, of course, that Skip isn’t someone else’s invention, as well. Still with me? If you’d like to puzzle it out for yourself, you’re invited to “skip” the next paragraph.

Heaton has done his homework, and his attempt to dramatize a basic theological argument is laudable. The concept, as I understand it, is that Luz has created Skip, or the idea of Skip, in the same way that Man creates an idea of God, therefore proving the existence of God. But what gets lost here is the specter of Luz’s wife, which is vital if we’re to care about his downfall. She is never really present, despite a haggard and haunted performance by Christopher Mattox as Luz.

Other high points: Johnny Sparks’ finely tuned portrayal of the Young Man is entrancing, and Mark Sage Hamilton finds a rich variety of notes to play as Herman. Under the writer’s own direction, however, The Ontological Detective remains a frustratingly indistinct play of ideas.

The Other Side of the Closet is a compelling, thought-provoking, thoughtful account of a teenager trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation, and the impact this has on his family, friends, and school; and, in turn, the effects their reactions have on his own ability to deal with this issue. Coming out, in all its phases, is complicated, and this hour-long drama is uncompromising in its recognition of that fact. The young protagonist Carl has to deal with, among other things, not having any role models to help him understand his sexuality, and a clear awareness that society at many levels (family, school, religion, the world at large) is intolerant or openly hostile to homosexuality. Generalized homophobia is still allowed to manifest itself in America in ways that generalized racism or other forms of bigotry are not: the play begins with Carl and two of his high-school buddies indulging in some "fag-bashing"; the name-calling and stereotyping which kids are regularly exposed to are faithfully reproduced here, but reflected through Carl's not-at-all unique experience their destructiveness is brought sharply into focus.

Playwright Edward Roy has written an overtly educational work in The Other Side of the Closet, and director Mark Cannistraro, who runs New York's Sourceworks Theatre, is planning to take the piece to the City's high schools, which is a commendable goal. The fact of this very particular (and important) mission means that The Other Side of the Closet starts out somewhat formulaically, because Roy has a great deal of information that he needs to impart quickly. Roy needs to tell us about Carl's situation, first of all: he's a popular, smart 16-year-old who is ordinary and "normal" to all appearances. When Carl fails to turn up to watch videos with his friends one night, citing a "family thing," no one thinks anything of it; but when his best friends Rick and Justin spot him leaving a gay bar on Christopher Street, the results are swift and catastrophic. In their eyes, Carl is suddenly a stranger or perhaps even an alien, and even though Rick's more mature and open-minded girlfriend Paulette tries to explain that, except for this one thing, Carl is exactly the same person he always was, the boys are resolute in their bigotry.

Word quickly spreads through the school and Carl becomes a pariah. He is reluctant (afraid?) to tell his parents, and indeed his father is generally unwilling to receive the news when Carl is finally ready to talk to them. The school itself provides little in the way of support. Only Paulette, who has a gay uncle, offers Carl genuine understanding and counsel. So Carl, who is, above all else, sixteen years old, has a real struggle ahead of him. What will happen to him is deliberately left ambiguous by the playwright.

What's best about The Other Side of the Closet, apart from the imperative urgency of its message of tolerance, is the way that Roy piles up the complexities of its subject without providing us any assurance of happy endings or pat answers. People's feelings about homosexuality are wildly divergent, and Roy shows us lots of them: defiant gays and repressed gays, indifferent straight guys and mixed-up straight guys suffering from homosexual panic, supportive parents and ashamed parents, apathetic "others" who wish the problem would go away and supportive "others" who maybe go too far in preaching acceptance and pride.

The Other Side of the Closet certainly has an agenda, but it's never preachy and it's absolutely not prejudicial: this is a play that tells kids that it's okay to be what you are, but it's not necessarily easy to do so. The people who most need to see this play are almost certainly the ones who will be most rabidly opposed to its presentation in schools. But The Other Side of the Closet is not a "gay" play. Roy is a humanist, and his lessons of tolerance and acceptance apply to any set of people who are different from their peers.

Director Cannistraro has staged the play with forthrightness and conviction. He has cast it with five young actors whose commitment is as inspiring and remarkable as their talent: Richard Tayloe (Carl), Vincent Briguccia, Melissa Carroll, Charlene Gonzalez, and Willie Mullins. The piece moves swiftly, drawing energy from its youthful setting and the urgency of its themes.

The raw immediacy of theatre makes it the right place for people to gather and confront issues like homophobia and try to solve them. Bravo to Edward Roy and Mark Cannistraro and their excellent company for tackling this important problem with so much courage and insight and honesty.

Sharon Fogarty's "anti-musicals" aren't like other people's musicals. Her current project, The Overdevelopment of Scott, is a free-wheeling science fiction morality show: it's loose, earnest, gentle fun.

The time is a hundred years in the future; the place is a genetics laboratory in New York City where seven "subjects"—human lab rats—are studied and mistreated by a pair of disengaged technicians. Technician 1 wants to "overdevelop" the specimens (i.e., render them no longer useful), so they can be "put out to pasture" and he can retire; Technician 2, unrequitedly in love with 1, hopes that retirement will also lead to domestic bliss together. But newly hired assistant Scott (who was once a research subject himself) foils the technicians' plans.

Fogarty uses this plotline mostly as framework, though: the bulk of The Overdevelopment of Scott is devoted to vignettes and musical numbers about the seven lab humans, each of whom has been genetically altered to allow for study of a particular attribute. They are: Esther (bred for sex addiction), Freddie (raised by television), Gracious (eating disorder), Rita (cosmetics), Tammy (bred to be a good listener), Tito (effects of TV violence), and Virginia (smoking). They're a lovable bunch, and the incipient uprising that Scott provokes is entirely satisfying.

The show covers a great deal of ground: in addition to its obvious points about genetic research, lab animals, and various kinds of addiction, there's material ranging from philosophical meditation on life and death to a barbed musical number about how bad most Broadway musicals are. The piece has the easy structure of early musical comedy, with room for topical asides and even specialties (like Freddie's TV riff, which capitalizes on actor Jason Grossman's witty impressions of the likes of Johnny Carson and David Brinkley). There's also a really sweet love song, "True Love Stores," which is sung touchingly by Tammy (Anna Hayman).

Anti-musical as it may be—some of the performers don't even try to stay on key, just as some of the lyrics don't even try to rhyme—it's sweetly affecting; The Overdevelopment of Scott works, mostly because Fogarty and her energetic cast so clearly mean it. It is, finally, a trifle, but a slyly thought-provoking one: images will linger, tastily, long after the curtain has come down.

Rather than focus on an individual’s shift of fortune, as most Greek plays do, Euripides’ Phoenician Women captures the fate of entire generations. In a parade of characters and episodes, Euripides stages the battle between Oedipus’ two sons over the seven-towered city of Thebes. Euripides hasn’t written a subtle dissection of politics, destiny, or the psyche, but rather a history pageant that’s almost Shakespearean. So while it lacks the personal dimensions of Oedipus or Medea, The Phoenician Women presents tragedy at a more expansive level.

There’s a lot of play for a director to cover. Director David Travis stages it as a spectacle: more than in most Greek theater, these characters are wholly conscious that their actions are public. Each actor creates an identity that conforms to this concept, yet as an ensemble they lack a consistent style. Michael Aronov, as the demonstrative Eteokles, plays to his populace (and the audience) with external characteristics like a cocky, slightly effeminate swagger; Keith Davis, as his sibling enemy Polyneikes, builds his role from the inside out by vocalizing his thoughts. When the scene adds Sybil Lines’ melodramatic mother Jocasta—all warbling voice and sawing gestures—it has a discordant feel; there’s no sense of place.

The chorus is a ready tool to unify the production. But rather than utilize them, Travis adds a second chorus of televisions around the stage. Most of the time, both the images and the chorus are superfluous to the action. But both choruses work well when together they describe the impersonal forces of gods: when the chorus of women cry, “Ares, why are you in love with war?” the monitors show a sequence of planes… bombs… targets… explosions.

As gods, these televisions watch the performance along with the audience. Like Greek gods, they’re a cool, distant presence. But they don’t humanize and unify the action the way the chorus usually does. Because The Phoenician Women includes so many events and characters, the titular chorus ought to provide a center. Without that heart, the inharmonious qualities of this production leave the audience with the sense of many parts that is less than their sum.

I always forget how funny and delightful The Pirates of Penzance is until I see it in the theatre again. There's a reason that an operetta remains popular for 120-plus years: because it's really, really good. Sir Arthur Sullivan's melodies are pleasing and lilting and, when appropriate, bouncy and/or stirring. W.S. Gilbert's lyrics—here, as is not always the case, just about entirely preserved in their original form—are clever and engaging, sometimes tongue-twistingly complicated and other times roguishly silly. As staged here with requisite brio and charm by David Fuller, Pirates elicits smiles and sighs of pleasure and guilty, giddy giggles. There may be, at the moment, a more entertaining place to spend $19 at the theatre, but I don't know where it is.

The basic story remains, as ever, about Frederic, a flawless young man who, through a sorry mix-up perpetrated by his devoted nurse Ruth, was apprenticed to a pirate while still a boy. Now, on the day he turns twenty-one, Frederic has completed his indenture. The Pirate King wants him to stay on, but Frederic explains that he is a Slave of Duty, and now that he is his own man, he must devote himself to the extermination of the piratical menace of his former compadres.

A group of young ladies happens along, and Frederic instantly falls in love with one of them, Mabel. The pirates arrive and threaten to carry off the women, but they are stopped by the appearance of Major General Stanley, who dazzles them with her pyrotechnic diction and then, aware of the pirates' one great weakness, tells them she is an orphan. Well, they can't fight an orphan!—and so they retreat, until Act Two, when additional silliness ensues. It should not surprise you that by the end of the show, not only are Frederic and Mabel back together, but everyone in the cast has paired off, including the two bumbling policemen whom Frederic has enlisted to help defeat his former associates.

Fuller and his colleagues at Theater Ten Ten have set Pirates in Penzance, Nova Scotia, near the site of the Penzance College for Women (I don't think these are real places). Major General Stanley has the first name Constance and is a lady rather than, as usual, a man (she earned her rank in the Salvation Army, in case you're wondering); this substitution works beautifully, with Jillian Hemann delivering the goods in the show's most famous number, "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General," even at warp speed in an encore, at the Pirate King's behest. The policemen are Mounties, of course, but just as silly as ever, thanks to the delicious comic playing of Jason Wynn (who looks a bit like Stan Laurel) and Michael Bertolini (who looks a bit like Dudley DoRight's boss).

The pirates are, well, pirates, and they are performed with relish by Abe Goldfarb, Kevin Vortmann, and Christopher Guilmet. Goldfarb and Vortmann are costumed by Lynn Marie Macy to look like crosses between the McKenzies from SCTV's "Great White North" and the two Darryls from Newhart—and they behave with just the ingratiating dopiness you'd expect. Guilmet, meanwhile, is spectacularly good as the Pirate King: lean and handsome, he has a gorgeous, lush baritone and a dancer's grace; on top of that, he's a fine comic actor, and possesses a commanding stage presence. He's virtuosic and hugely watchable; agents and producers in search of a Broadway musical leading man need look no further.

The ladies are just as wonderful. Jill Johnson is a winningly comical Ruth. Dara Seitzman, Tamara Spiewak, and Kirstie Bingham create lovely harmonies as the three students. Leah Horowitz sings sweetly as Mabel, and is a fine foil for Dan Callaway, the production's excellent juvenile as Frederic. Note that the singers are not miked, which is hard enough to come by these days, and that their voices are grand. We're hearing Sullivan's music as it was meant to be heard.

Oh, and I haven't told you about Charles Berigan yet. He appears, in outlandish garb, again thanks to the ever-resourceful Macy, at the beginning of each act, with a cleverly invented reason to sit down at the on-stage piano and start playing the show's music. He is, as always, a splendid accompanist.

Don Bill's choreography is lively and exciting; it even ventures out into the auditorium for the second act favorite "With Catlike Tread, Upon Our Prey We Steal." Wynn and Bertolini kick up their heels in the policeman's song as well, and Johnson, Guilmet, and Callaway share some fancy footwork in their Act Two opener about a particularly curious paradox regarding Frederic's birthday.

Wit, good taste, and good fun rule the day. It is indeed a glorious thing to see Theater Ten Ten's Pirates of Penzance.

Remember when Abby Storch, the 1,100-pound transvestite, fell down a well in Plank, Washington? For days, the nation sat glued to its televisions as round-the-clock news teams covered the rescue operation. We decried the media circus and marveled at our humanity at the same time.

Okay, perhaps that never actually happened.  What has happened, however, is that Jeff Whitty has written a play about this fictitious event, and it is hands down the best and funniest comedy so far this (admittedly still young) year.

In The Plank Project, a director named Micah Blanch gathers six earnest young actors to join him on a journey to the small town of Plank, Washington, to interview the people who knew Abby Storch and were involved in the tragedy that led to his death. The objective: to create a work of documentary theatre about Abby's story and about the story of Micah and his actors creating this work of documentary theatre. (Read it again: it makes sense.)

Micah and company, fueled by grants from the Exxon Corporation and aided by fundraisers thrown by Susan Sarandon, make the trek from New York to Plank some forty times and conduct more than 11,678 interviews. "This," intones the front page of the program, "is what they found."

As I hope you can see, Whitty has nailed the phenomenon he's parodying—uh, studying: The Plank Project recalls most closely Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project, but it contains echoes of the works of Anna Deavere Smith and others as its company of six "actors" (actually five—one of them, hunky Lorne Gross, is a construction worker whom Micah has brought along as his, shall we say, protégé) variously narrate the events of their journey and recreate many of the interviews they conducted with Plank's residents. The result masterfully deflates all of the self-important pretentious excess of the genre.

Whitty has fun, too, poking holes in the armor of just about every kind of somebody involved in institutional theatre, from the tastemakers and bandwagon-jumpers who anoint and accept the Next Big Thing (the faux program for The Plank Project tells us that Micah Blanch's previous show, "The Gay Martyr," "is being performed at over 185 regional theatres this upcoming season") to the double-talking proponents of ethnically diverse casting (Micah has a million excuses why Danita, the company's African-American member, isn't "right" for the various characters she wants to portray).

So The Plank Project is smart as well as funny. One of the smartest things Whitty does is keep the running time to just 75 minutes: even a parody as cleverly outfitted with jokes and absurd situations as this one can't sustain itself for all that long. Director Erik Sniedze provides a wonderfully simpatico staging for the piece, mining the characters' deadly earnestness to great effect. Shrewdly, the show is cast with excellent actors who are allowed to act: even though the credentials of some of the Project's "members" look dubious in the supplied "program," Sniedze makes sure that nobody tries for cheap laughs by doing any obvious bad acting. Indeed, all six performers are outstanding. Mike Doyle plays Lorne and Micah, among others, indicating which one by zipping or unzipping his jacket. Saidah Arrika Ekoluna plays grounded but disenchanted Danita with real intellect. Jenn Harris plays an ex-dancer (with no knees) named Katrina and brings her vividly to life along with several of the Plank characters.

Matthew Lawler and Nat DeWolf have less to do as actors named Dexter and Sean, but they get the lion's share of showy Plank-ians, including hilarious and dead-on portrayals by DeWolf of a fisherman named Tom Lepley, a pizza delivery boy named Bobby Simpkins, and a crane operator named Alan Tingle, and equally deft and imaginative turns by Lawler as Plank Mayor Norman Robbins, folksy doctor Ethan Folkey, and Merle Darlington, a rather suspicious individual who claims to be an expert on digging.

Lisa Jolley threatens to steal the show, nonetheless, as actress Diane Stone, who is so breathlessly centered and in touch with her feelings that she veritably explodes with self-knowledge; Lisa-as-Diane is also terrific as Eleanor Parsley, an ambitious part-time Avon lady who figures prominently in Abby Storch's story.

The Plank Project is not, perhaps, destined to become an American classic (as the "program" portentously portends). But it's awfully funny, and extremely well put together: this is downtown theatre at its merry, subversive best. Whether or not you've seen all the shows that are its targets, I expect you'll find plenty to recognize and laugh at in this smart and sassy show.

Here, more or less verbatim, is what my theatre-going companion and I said to each other during intermission at The Play What I Wrote:

 - "What do you think?"
 - "It's very funny. I laughed hard in places. They're very good."
 - "I thought so too."
 - "Do you like it?"
 - "No."
 - "No."

That's the paradox about The Play What I Wrote, and it's still true after Act Two, I'm afraid: it's very funny, filled with witty wordplay, terrible puns, and lots of brilliantly executed physical comedy, slapstick and otherwise. But it never quite takes off—there's never that feeling of elated euphoric release that comes from laughing so hard that you embarrass yourself. The reason, I think, is that the premise wears itself out rather quickly; more important, the perpetrators of this comic showcase—the UK-based duo of Foley and McColl—just don't come across as very likable. The night I saw the show, much-vaunted mystery guest Roger Moore got by far the biggest ovation; my sense was that the audience wasn't taking to the show's stars at all. I know I didn't.

Which is not to say that Sean Foley and Hamish McColl aren't talented. Foley has limbs of, apparently, rubber which he applies to eccentric dancing, outsized pratfalling, and the silliest walking this side of John Cleese to artful and hilarious effect. McColl, ostensibly the straight man (don't straight men always get top billing in comedy teams?), can time a laugh impeccably. Together, they indulge in clever and/or silly wordplay and other feats of foolishness that are enormously amusing. No gag is too broad or well-worn for these two, who unabashedly fall off walls, dress in silly costumes and drag, and even hit somebody in the face with a custard pie during the course of this silly evening. (That somebody, by the way, is Toby Jones, as a character called Arthur who is the pair's perennial stooge, and a very good one.)

The nonsense has been grafted, loosely and post-modernly, onto a plot whose premise is that Hamish, unhappy that he never gets any laughs, has written a play called "A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple" which he wants to perform on Broadway. A producer named Mike Tickles supposedly becomes interested in this preposterous property (Mike Nichols is an actual co-producer of The Play What I Wrote) and it looks like the boys are bound for New York if they can just find a bankable star to appear in a key supporting role. The identity of that star is the show's hook, with a mystery celebrity guest turning up in Act Two (as already mentioned, it was Roger Moore on the night I was there; Kevin Kline was the guest on opening night) and being made to indulge in brief banter with the boys (who called Moore "Sean Connery's son" and "Pierce Brosnan's father" and then seemed to confuse him with Mary Tyler Moore) and also to appear in a scene from "Tight Squeeze" in a silly 18th century costume and then in drag.

It's interesting that the show isn't particularly designed to make the guest star look good; or maybe that was just more of Foley and McColl's icy vibe, for these two didn't connect with Moore one bit and don't, in fact, seem particularly happy to have made it to the Great White Way at all. They go through the motions of their routines but nothing feels anything other than well-rehearsed and entirely calculated. Certainly nothing feels spontaneous—a format that seems to cry out for the occasional topical ad lib yielded, at least on the night I was there, not one. I don't mean to pick, but Foley and McColl just don't generate much in the way of goodwill. (And I don't think it was just me, either: someone I spoke to at intermission was all set to leave after Act One, so poor a time was he having.)

None of which, strangely, is intended to give the impression that The Play What I Wrote doesn't work; it does, on its own terms. But don't expect the nonstop laughter of, say, Act Two of Noises Off: this show has peaks, but it also has valleys. Notwithstanding a questionable $81.25 top, the producers are doing things to make the show affordable to what surely is the target audience, i.e., students (see rush policy info above); landing some younger, hipper guest stars than Liam Neeson and Zoe Caldwell (who have both appeared in the show) might help the show sustain a run.

One of the few drawbacks of my job is that it gets harder and harder to find classic works of theatre that are entirely unfamiliar to me; the thrilling experience of encountering a Life is a Dream or a Way of the World for the very first time happens, by definition, less and less often.

So I was eagerly looking forward to The Playboy of the Western World, the famous 1907 comedy by John Millington Synge, a play that, for no particular reason, I have neither read nor seen in all my decades of theatregoing.  It's being revived by Irish Repertory Theatre, who have staged it once before; this production is directed by the reliable Charlotte Moore.

Alas, whatever charms and wonders Synge's play contains failed to materialize for me here. Buried beneath this dull production, under a muddle of frequently impenetrable thick brogues, is a comedy about hypocrisy and blarney. But nothing on stage sparks the imagination or tickles the fancy.

The story centers around Christy Mahon, a young man who wanders into a tiny village in County Mayo telling an incredible tale about how he killed his old da'. Christy instantly becomes a local celebrity in this town of small-minded gossips and provincials; he particularly catches the eye of sharp-tongued Pegeen Mike, the comely young lass who runs the local watering hole. But when his father turns up—very much alive, of course—Christy's new found fame as the "playboy of the western world" starts to disintegrate.

It seems to me that a larger-than-life braggart is what's called for in the role of Christy; Dara Coleman delivers precisely the opposite, in a moody, listless performance that never sets off even the tiniest of sparks, let alone catches fire. Derdrui Ring is more vivid as Pegeen Mike, as is Aedin Moloney as the Widow Quin, who turns out to be Christy's one ally when the town turns against him, but neither of these feisty ladies finally managed to hold my interest. In fact, it was John Keating, as Pegeen Mike's dull suitor Shawn Keogh, who made the strongest impression on me, which is clearly not the way this piece is supposed to play.

So boredom turned out to be my chief reaction to this Playboy of the Western World. When basic plot points such as whether Michael Flaherty is in fact Pegeen Mike's father (as he indeed proves to be) fail to register, something is clearly amiss.

I liked David Raphel's set, which makes  ingenious use of Irish Rep's somewhat problematic space. But Kirk Bookman's lighting keeps the characters (and consequently the audience) too much in dim light. And I wondered why David Toser had all of the play's young female characters barefoot in the dead of winter.

The Storm Theatre must, first of all, be commended for its enormous, audacious vision this season. In successfully reviving Shakespeare's Tempest and Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory in repertory on an off-off-Broadway budget (and charging theatregoers off-off-Broadway prices), they have proved that fine theatre can be had whenever there's a worthwhile story to tell and sufficient commitment, imagination, and intelligence to tell it.

That said, let it be noted that The Power and the Glory is not the timeless classic that The Tempest undeniably is, and as a result the experience of this play, though entirely compelling, is not so substantial. What we have here is a taut, intriguing tale about a self-described "bad priest" who is also, due to the peculiar circumstances of the remote province in Revolutionary Mexico where the story takes place, the last priest, all the others having been driven away or killed by an atheistic state that has outlawed the Catholic Church.

The Priest travels about the countryside, fighting for his own survival and performing the sacraments of the Church—at great peril to himself and others—on the rare occasions when he can. He winds up in jail after a fruitless attempt to procure some wine (also illegal); then a miracle of sorts happens when a rigorously righteous and idealistic Lieutenant frees him, unaware of his true identity. We meet the Priest next in a town across the border, restored to the pulpit and sanctimoniously overcharging his impoverished parishioners for baptisms. (He said he was a bad priest.)

But love for humanity and absolute devotion to God eventually lead the Priest toward martyrdom and, presumably, salvation. It makes for a powerful second act curtain, but the transformation is largely unrealized by actor Timothy Roselle, who failed to convince me that the protagonist had journeyed beyond the exposed hypocrisies of his character.

Elsewhere, the play works well. There are commanding performances by Bernardo De Paula as the Lieutenant and Rob DeRosa as an unnamed Mestizo who serves as catalyst for the Priest's fall and subsequent redemption. And  director Stephen Logan Day manages the enormous company (by off-off-Broadway standards) ably, and keeps the action moving liquidly within Martin T. Lopez's skillfully designed set.

Here's a musical version of Mark Twain's famous, charming story about two ten year-old boys—Prince Edward of England (son of Henry VIII) and his double, Tom Canty, the good-hearted son of a petty crook—who switch places for a while, both learning a lot about life in the process. It's certainly a workable idea, and the songs by Neil Berg and Bernie Garzia are pleasant and well-crafted.

But the rest of The Prince and the Pauper is, I'm sorry to say, a mess: this is as ineptly put-together a musical as I can remember (especially in light of the off-Broadway credentials and the $55 ticket price). I'm talking about really shockingly amateurish problems like being able to see a stagehand's pole pushing a table onto the stage; or a lighting effect executed so clumsily and slowly that your eye actually travels to the lighting instrument at the top of the stage; or a number of principal characters shod in what look like Skechers sneakers, complete with anachronistic rubber tread.

The unit set, by Dana Kenn, fills the stage of the Lamb's Theatre so snugly that an inordinate amount of action is placed in the mezzanine or in the auditorium, causing viewers to crane their necks and try to figure out where the actors are. Headset microphones are jarringly inappropriate (are they even needed in a house this small?).

The book bungles chronology and manages to make an exciting story into a ploddingly dull play. I overheard a little boy in the audience ask his father at intermission whether the second act would last another two hours (the first act clocks in at just over one hour, but I know just what the youngster meant).

A number of talented performers, including Rob Evan, Michael McCormick, Stephen Zinnato, and the two young men who play the title roles, Dennis Michael Hall and Gerard Canonico, work hard to rise above the poor production they're stuck in. We will hopefully get to see each of them in more suitable shows in the future.

The Pumpkin Pie Show is back, and just as wacky as ever. For those of you who have never been, a Pumpkin Pie Show generally consists of a bunch of story monologues, this time five in number and all loosely about "The Birds and the Bees," accompanied by the wacky two-person (but this time three-person!) band One Ring Zero (who, incidentally, just put out a CD). What ensues is an evening of lovely, naughty perversion.

The stories are, as always, written by Clay McLeod Chapman, who also performs in the first and last tales. An amazing storyteller, Chapman is extremely animated and demands attention. His entire body gets into his characters, giving them realism in their absurdity. The other three stories are performed with extreme talent by Hanna Cheek. Cheek is a perfect match for Chapman in her ability to be so convincingly and completely in the moment. She gives three nicely varied and emotional performances.

The stories in "The Birds and the Bees" start out really humorous. The first two are the best, and also most aptly fit the sexual theme suggested by the title. The first monologue is delivered by a seventh grade boy in sex ed class, who is just discovering sex for the first time. The second monologue is hilarious, about a mother trying to persuade her boy not to have sex after the prom. The next one, which is kind of disturbing, deals with a mother and daughter in a burning fire. There follows a fairly funny piece delivered by a jealous bridesmaid at her sister's wedding. The final story, a preacher’s final sermon, kind of meanders.

All of the monologues are accompanied by the awesome sounds of One Ring Zero, which consists of Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst. Anthony Mascorro pleasantly joins them on the trumpet. To me, the music is the highlight of the show. Camp and Hearst play on the most obscure instruments, and it is such a pleasure to watch and listen to! They capture the essence of every line of Chapman's stories. Furthermore, they provide great musical interludes between monologues.

Overall, The Pumpkin Pie Show continues to succeed as an off-the-wall type of entertainment. The cheap price and convenient location (above the KGB Bar in the East Village) make it a swell addition to any Friday or Saturday night. Its innovation and perversion combine to great effects. And if that is not enough, the writer actually welcomes you to the show, shows you to your seat, and then thanks you on your way out!

With their riveting revival of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Fovea Floods theatre company once again reminds us what theatre is for. Led by director Josh Chambers, they've crafted a production that amplifies and illuminates the themes of this cautionary tale inspired by the rise to power of Adolph Hitler; they've also found ways to make the piece timely and resonant in the era of Osama bin-Laden and George W. Bush. Most impressively, they've created an engulfing theatre experience that constantly engages and challenges its audience, using devices and iconography familiar and strange to pull us into the savage, off-kilter world of Brecht's gangsters and thugs, making us complicit in and responsible for what happens in this (our) world in a palpable way. This is absolutely must-see theatre.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, written during the '40s but not produced until 1958, tells the story of a gangster who rises to power in the Chicago grocery protection racket through intimidation and brute force. Arturo is a rough, uneducated country boy from Brooklyn (Brecht's knowledge of American geography was always sketchy). When he finds out that the seemingly incorruptible scion of the Chicago business community Dogsborough has in fact been corrupted, he blackmails and bullies Dogsborough into making him his lieutenant-cum-heir apparent. When scandal and murder conspire to bring Dogsborough down (engineered, of course, by Arturo and his men), Ui takes command and commences a brutal reign of terror over the city's grocers. As the play ends, Ui has completed his own anschluss and taken over the neighboring town of Cicero as well.

The parallels between this story and Hitler's are blatant and overt, and Chambers emphasizes them in this production, with actors providing a sort of running commentary on the rise of the Third Reich on video monitors surrounding the playing area.  At the same time, images and lines throughout conjure more contemporary allusions: Chambers, true to Brecht's intentions, I think, wants to make sure we remember that brutish demagogues like Ui and Hitler can spring up anywhere and anytime if we're not careful. The word Resistible in the play's title is key here: the moments when good men (and women) might have paused to halt the rise of Ui and his thugs are clearly delineated.

As it is, in the play and too often in life, the gangsters and the businessmen are indistinguishable from one another. Chambers captures Brecht's Marxist perspective beautifully in several scenes that pin responsibility for Arturo rather squarely on the capitalists. Somehow, even nowadays, with communist regimes a memory, the ideas ring true.

Ui is staged with energy and diligent high-concept by Chambers. Virtually every one of the play's scenes relies on a different theatrical device or artifice for its style, with, for example, the opening an exquisitely choreographed gangster ballet and the climactic second act trial scene a circus-like series of blackouts. The effect of this choice is to sharpen our wits: the constant barrage of new ideas keeps us on our toes and listening and watching ever more carefully. It's all interesting and all beautifully executed by a cast of 22 remarkable actors. In places, the sense of foreboding and menace is spectacularly potent—Sam Mendes' Cabaret can only wish to cast such a spell on its audience.

Ui himself is portrayed by Jon Bernthal, who wisely eschews imitation of either Hitler or any other obvious archetype from Corleone to Soprano. He is, instead, a brooding everyman—which is much scarier. When we witness his transformation from second-rate hoodlum to masterful gangland leader, aided by a hammy old thespian (brilliantly played by Robert Lehrer), his acquisition of the surface trappings of power is quite horrifying. He transmutes Lehrer's stagy promenading into something just shy of a goosestep; when he addresses the crowd, his arms lock unnaturally at his sides, as if from the elbows down they belong to somebody else.

Ui's key lieutenants are played with equal mastery. Timothy Fannon is loyal henchman Ernesto Roma, wrongheadedly building up his guy with the pathetic fervor of Burgess Meredith in a Rocky sequel. Sandro Isaack delivers a chillingly smooth, physical performance as ruthless underling Emanuel Giri. David Gravens is similarly nasty as Givola, whose flower shop offers cover to Ui and the gang. Other standouts in this excellent company include Chris Weilding as a convenient baritone; Justin Fayne as Ted, the omnipresent and possibly omnipotent news announcer who narrates the play; and Jane Pickett, memorable in a brief scene as an enemy of Ui whom we meet, bloody and battered, right after she "rolls off a truck."

Theatre seldom is as involving or visceral as Fovea Floods manage to make it: their Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is the most electrifying, exhilarating show in town bar none right now. If you care about theatre—if you care about the world you live in—this is a play you do not want to miss.

Audiences are often surprised to see a play that truly addresses their lives outside the darkened auditorium. They can be squeamish when they see people onstage stripped of metaphor and poetry or depicted as anything less than noble. Humans can be luminous beings, it’s true, but we’re also venal and petty. And with ever more alarming frequency, our fears of the world’s absurdities—and the absurdities themselves—seem ready to outstrip the ability of art to depict them. Just in time to save us from the sanctimony and safety of high art, an incredible production of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui proclaims from the footlights that the world, both onstage and off, isn’t what it should be.

Bertolt Brecht, a practicing leftist who developed his craft in the decadence of prewar Germany, wanted to administer a moral enema to German culture before it collapsed (listen closely to the lyrics of “Mack the Knife,” the breakaway hit from his Threepenny Opera: vicious bourgeois gangster Macheath is Tony Soprano seventy years earlier). When Germany caved in to fascism despite his radical jeremiads, Brecht fled to America. While eking out a living like so many other European expatriates by churning out Hollywood scripts, Brecht wrote Arturo Ui, a parable about Hitler set in gangland Chicago.

Ui (rhymes with “phooey”), a small-time hood, leverages evidence of bribery between the vegetable industry and an esteemed public official into financial, political, and above all, criminal power. He buys judges to execute innocent citizens, liquidates henchmen without remorse, and takes over a nearby town by killing its local vegetable importer. Like Hitler in 1941, Ui has consolidated his power and stands unopposed.

Of course, if Brecht had only wanted to warn the world about Hitler his play would have become obsolete after 1945. But Arturo Ui reminds its audience that the German people (here represented by a crowd of grocery store owners) helped the Nazi regime by passively accepting them, and that the audience must stop those crooks who claim to work in the people’s interest. It also underscores the evil of the Nazi party, who are rightly remembered more for their heinous moral crimes than for their more conventional political offenses. And this reminder is where the production, directed by Simon McBurney, replicates Brecht’s ideas and script in exhilarating ways.

McBurney creates a kind of carnival atmosphere for his actors to clown around in. And his actors are some of the best in town: Steve Buscemi, Dominic Chianese, Billy Crudup, Charles Durning, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Chazz Palminteri, Tony Randall, and as Ui himself, Al Pacino. Unlike other star casts, Arturo Ui is stocked with performers who have earned their fame with skill. All the audience needs to know about Giri, an assassin who wears his victims’ hats, is communicated by John Goodman surreptitiously reaching his wiggling fingers for an enemy’s fedora.

McBurney has rubberized the human body and distorted the action into cartoon proportions, as when Goodman and several thugs tiptoe across a courtroom with a drum of kerosene en route to burning down a witness’ warehouse.

Pacino is a marvel in the title role. He’s become too big for the screen in the last decade, all arms, eyeballs, and attitude, but these ticks work to his advantage in the onstage circus. His lines are voiced in a moronic Jerry Lewis singsong: Ui is an idiot who happens to be more vicious than everyone else is. He begins winning when he understands that the powerful are also dishonest (when he finds out that the local politico has accepted stock from the vegetable trust, he’s shocked: “But that’s corrupt!”). With a few lessons from Tony Randall’s Actor—in a cameo scene about theater that’s sharper and more hilarious than the whole of The Producers—Ui learns how to show the world one face and his associates another.

All of these elements come together in a stunning coup de grace. Ui speaks to the masses, his face projected behind him and his voice booming from a microphone. His gestures look somehow familiar, like those of contemporary politicians. The actor and the mechanical reproductions fall out of sync. Eventually, Pacino shuts up as the projection of Ui rants on, proclaiming that all America must be made safe with guns, soldiers, bombs, and even missile defense. Pacino comes forward to the lip of the stage, peels off his little brush of a mustache, and delivers the epilogue. Brecht, McBurney, and Pacino speak as one: it takes every member of the audience to stop men like Ui. And in the lobby is posted one of Brecht’s poems:

The common folk know
That war is coming.

When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.

My job offers few pleasures so great as the discovery of a new play. Sometimes circumstance (and the occasional gaping holes in my dramatic education) allow me to experience that pleasure with a piece already familiar to millions; such is the case with Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals, which is being given its belated Martin Denton premiere right now by Titans Theatre Company. One might quibble about this or that detail of the production, but there's nothing but gratitude and praise to be heaped on these folks for their selection of material. For The Rivals, which was last done in New York, as far as I can tell, for one week three years ago by The Acting Company, is a wonderful, very funny, pretty much near-perfect play.

I'm tempted, in fact, to call it the funniest and best-made comedy between Shakespeare and Wilde (surely someone else has already said something just like that); it certainly presages The Importance of Being Earnest in terms of attitude, plotting, and sheer, elegant wit. The story goes more or less thus: Lydia Languish, aptly named upper-class practitioner of indolence and slave to fashion, will come into her large inheritance only if she weds the man of her aunt's choosing; consequently (and obstinately), she has determined to wed only someone her aunt disapproves of, and she believes she has found just that man in the passionate but somewhat rough-hewn Ensign Beverley. Unbeknownst to Lydia, however, Beverley is really Jack Absolute, son of the upstanding Sir Anthony Absolute. Jack has been wooing Lydia incognito because he thinks it's the only way to her heart and her fortune, both of which he is much interested in. Of course, Lydia's aunt, one Mrs. Malaprop, chooses none other than Jack Absolute to be her nephew-in-law, prompting Lydia to want nothing to do with this young man who, as I just explained, is the very person she had intended to marry.

That's the kind of play this is; a subplot details Lydia's friend Julia and her on-again, off-again romance with Faulkland, a man whose obsessive jealousy constantly contrives to alienate him from his beloved. Another deals with the foolish and rather half-hearted pursuit of Lydia by Bob Acres, a gentleman fop who worries more about how things look than what they mean, while still another is concerned with lusty Irishman Lucius O'Trigger's courtship of Lydia—only his letters have been mischievously misdelivered by Lydia's servant Lucy to Mrs. Malaprop.

It's all told in language that positively glitters with witty brilliance, in a very accessible adaptation that boils down five long acts to two hours and a quarter including an intermission. Sheridan's characters are beautifully etched and thoroughly memorable, and one has indeed become legendary, Mrs. Malaprop's very name having slipped into the language for her habit of using words incorrectly, as in "she's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" or "he can tell you the perpendiculars." (I was surprised and delighted to discover just how frequently, and how hilariously, Mrs. Malaprop misspeaks—virtually every one of her lines contains a classic malapropism.)

Director Heather Ondersma has staged the piece with energy and sparkle, and if at the performance reviewed some of the cast members hadn't yet quite wrapped their tongues around Sheridan's prodigiously abundant and difficult words, just about everyone on stage had a handle on The Rivals' requisite high style. Particularly good are April Armstrong as willful Lydia Languish (doing a splendid job with a delicious tirade about her misfortune at being wooed by a rich man), Bruce Fuller as the gung-ho Lucius O'Trigger, and Collin Biddle as Acres' cowardly manservant David. Fine work is also offered by Barry Ford and Christine Campbell as the two stodgy hypocritical elders, Sir Anthony Absolute and Mrs. Malaprop.

The production's one serious misstep is the costume design by Kate Cusack, which I suspect is intended to comment on the superficiality of the play's characters but, except for two extravagant paper wigs worn by Sir Anthony and Mrs. Malaprop, manages only to be odd or confusing or both. Minimal set elements, framed attractively by, well, a big golden picture frame at the rear, work very nicely indeed; they are by Michael Moore.

Titans Theatre Company is a fairly new addition to the off-off-Broadway scene, and on the basis of this first production reviewed, a welcome one. Certainly their choice of this classic comedy, too rarely given a look by their contemporaries, is an excellent one. If you've never seen The Rivals, I suggest you take in this production right away.

In the old days, musicals begat hit pop songs (not like now, when too often hit pop songs beget musicals). So it was with The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd, which was written in 1965 by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, and whose score features at least four tunes that will be familiar to anyone who was alive back then: "A Wonderful Day Like Today," "Where Would You Be Without Me?," "Who Can I Turn To?," and "Nothing Can Stop Me Now!" Even if you aren't sure you remember them, you will find yourself grinning with recognition when they pop up in the current, truly delightful revival of Greasepaint, at the 14th Street Y under the auspices of Musicals Tonight!

It's a welcome visitor, and not only for giving us the chance to hear these songs again. The entire score is charming: they're not exactly theatre songs the way we've come to understand that term, being at once sophisticated and easily extractable. "Who Can I Turn To?," for example, turns out to be a character's plea with God, though when Tony Bennett recorded it subsequently it felt like the plaint of an abandoned lover. Such was the particular talent of songsmiths like Bricusse and Newley, whose work came at the tail end of the golden age of musical comedy.

Greasepaint itself, notwithstanding the nature of its songs, is a kind of primitive ancestor of what we nowadays call the concept musical—a show built around a notion rather than a story, which then assumes a particular shape to suit that notion: form dictating content, rather than the other way round. Bricusse and Newley's Big Idea in Greasepaint is to examine the British class system and its apparent corollary of maintaining the status quo. They zero in on two characters called Sir and Cocky who, in a series of scenes (sketches, more accurately) exemplify the eternal struggle (game?) between the haves and the have-nots. In the end, they are forced to realize that their symbiosis is both more complicated and more potentially changeable than either initially believed. Greasepaint mostly comes down on the side of Cocky and the common man; it feels naive in 2002, but when this show first appeared, its politics were probably viewed as radical (especially its uncompromising take on racism).

I'm not saying that Bricusse and Newley achieved their intentions all that well—it's a primitive show, as I said, because lack of precedent and, perhaps, self-confidence forced them to pull punches all over the place. The form they chose for Greasepaint is British Music Hall, but the resultant musical numbers are even looser than they have to be (see the comment about "Who Can I Turn To?" above). They made an interesting decision to have just the two main characters, with occasional and very brief visits from a Negro, a Girl, and a Bully. More characters might have made the show less a showcase for two stars than it evolved into.

Eventually, Chicago got the formula right. But Greasepaint is an intriguing, though flawed, show, and it's great to see it on its feet, for—I believe—the very first time in New York since it closed nearly forty years ago.

Producer Mel Miller has done a fine job mounting it. As is his custom, he's filled the ensemble with hard-working, talented folks: the chorus of Urchins consists of Amy Epstein, Lauren Lebowitz, Adrienne Pisoni, Sandie Rosa, Jennifer L. Rose, Margie Stokley, and Heather Stone, and they're terrific, each exhibiting a distinct personality and yet all working together seamlessly. They sound great—seven pristine unamplified (!) voices harmonizing assuredly on a very tuneful score. Mamie Parris is suitably doll-like as the Girl; Drake Andrew is quite amusing as the Bully; and Jimmy Rivers is riveting as the Negro, singing his number "Feeling Good" with forceful exuberance.

For his leads, Miller has done very well, casting the accomplished actor David Edwards as Cocky and the inimitable living treasure George S. Irving as Sir. Edwards has the unenviable task of trying to keep us from noticing that every inch of his role was tailored to the outsized personality of Anthony Newley. By the time he sings his heartfelt "Who Can I Turn To?" at the Act One finale he has succeeded in doing so, and when he leaps into the exhilarating "Nothing Can Stop Me Now!" in Act Two he has made the character his own. Irving, meanwhile, is spectacularly good in a role he was born to play—all bluster and bully and malevolence concealed under a veneer of grace and charm. He wraps his deep and sonorous voice around the script's terrible puns and mock-banal lyrics with relish; nobody sounds like him, and it's a thrill to see and hear him in such utterly fine fettle.

The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd will never be considered a great, or even a pretty good, musical—it's too clearly a compromise between the desire to say something socially important on the one hand and the need to entertain audiences with showbiz know-how on the other. But at $19 it's perhaps the best musical theatre bargain in town: not only do you get great songs, a talented cast, and two exceptional star performances, but you even get something interesting to talk about afterward.

The Seven has more energy, more vitality, and more raw theatricality than just about any new musical I've seen this year. The Seven is a hip-hop musical by Will Power based on Sophocles' Seven Against Thebes. Defying expectations, perhaps, the classical story of Oedipus's two sons who go to war over their kingdom is told here most faithfully. The characters move and talk with the contemporary cadences of hip-hop; but what they say, and what their story means, are the eternal human truths first uttered thousands of years ago.

The Seven begins with the banishment of Oedipus from Thebes (following, you may recall, the discovery that he had killed his father and wed his mother); as he departs, he places a curse on his sons Eteocles and Polynices. These two decide to rule Thebes alternately, with Eteocles going first and Polynices scheduled to take over in a year's time. But of course after a year in power, Eteocles is unwilling to relinquish the throne even to his beloved brother. Polynices gathers an army (the Seven Against Thebes) and attacks Eteocles. Eventually, the two brothers face one another in battle and, fulfilling their father's curse, murder each other.

Power's rendition, which features music co-authored with Will Hammond, direction by Tony Kelly, and movement by Robert Henry Johnson, presents a strong anti-war, anti-tyranny, anti-oppression platform. The most potent moments in The Seven are those featuring the common people of Thebes, the ones whose daily lives are shattered and destroyed by the jealousies and whims of their rulers. Power uses vivid, colorful language to make his themes accessible and pointed, and Kelly and Johnson provide spellbindingly primal choreography to propel the tale forward quickly and relentlessly. Hammond and Power's music is appropriately evocative and stirring. The climactic battle scene is staged perhaps more abstractly than necessary—I felt the creators pulling back from the essential tragic nature of the piece. But overall, The Seven is a brilliantly crafted work, bringing musical theatre into the 21st century for perhaps, at least to this observer, the very first time.

Appropriately, just seven performers comprise the entire company, all of them outstanding (and one of them, Venus Opal Reese, even better than that). The Seven played only two performances at the 3rd Annual New York Hip-Hop Theatre Festival this summer. But we need shows like this one to help us redefine what theatre can be and connect it to a younger audience. Producers: here's a property worth looking at.

The Shady Maids of Haiti, John Jahnke's arresting new play, takes place during the Haitian slave uprising of 1803-4. A program note provides the background:

On August 27, 1802, Napoleon approves a decree reestablishing slavery in Haiti. On January 1, 1804, the soon to be Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave, proclaims independence for the first black republic, and soon after orders the slaughter of all remaining French islanders. He is later killed and dismembered by the "mulattos" for siding with the Africans in issues of land disbursement.

The Shanghai Gesture, a 1926 Broadway play unearthed by The Peccadillo Theater Company and the Yangtze Repertory Theatre, is a lurid melodrama with an excessive style that would’ve been commonplace 70 years ago but is unlike anything around today. Mother Goddamn, the owner of “the biggest bordello east of Suez” carries out her vengeance against Sir Guy Charteris, who, decades before, had seduced her, stolen her inheritance, and left her pregnant. Of course, her plot comes crashing down upon herself as well as Charteris and several unlucky young men and women.

This new adaptation of Gesture, by Joanna Chan, is probably less baldly racist than John Colton’s original, but Chan’s addition of colonial politics to the themes gives Colton’s plot too much credit. Like all melodrama, this is a play about action, not ideas. Chan and Dan Wackerman, the director, haven’t thought out the problems of remounting a creaky period piece: too many oversized emotions, stereotypes, superfluous characters, and quaint moralities stand in the audience’s way of really enjoying Gesture.

Only a few performers really tear into their roles. In the show’s biggest failing besides the script, Jade Wu’s Mother Goddamn lacks the intelligence and emotion to carry out such a long-planned scheme: Wu is too mechanical and studied. Only the technical elements accomplish their roles with finesse, particularly Chris Jones’ red, white, and black ornate set, which is, aside from Camilla Enders in a minor role, the only sexy element in the play. By superimposing grad school politics over an already hoary play, Chan, Wackerman, and company offer their audience nothing except silly nonsense.

With his newest production, The Show, Marc Morales continues his exploration of a new way to do musical theatre in the 21st century. As he did in his recent The Lounge and, to a lesser extent, Galaxy Video, Morales has devised a sort of collage of pop culture references—music, text, and images—to reflect some of what's going on in today's world. Morales tells us in the program that The Show is his emotional response to the events of 9/11 and their aftermath, and as a result his vision here is dark and pessimistic, quite a contrast to the more lighthearted tone of his previous works.

The Show begins with a pair of masked guards dragging a prisoner before some kind of Big Brother-ish judge/leader. This prisoner is Marty, a downtown theatre artist who is certainly a stand-in for Morales himself; the playwright-director has projected himself into the center of his worst nightmare. Marty's new show, "Urban Circus," has been deemed too dangerous for public consumption by Them (i.e., The Powers In Charge, represented only by a Voice); as a result, Marty is being tortured and, presumably, the show is being closed down.

Interspersed with scenes of Marty facing his faceless accuser—and he stands up to him/Them rather bravely—we see "Urban Circus." It's an underground cabaret, hosted by a slippery character called the DJ, and consists of covers of popular songs, off-kilter skits that plunge headlong into the waters of political incorrectness, and insistent, radicalized poetry. Morales has drawn eclectically from all over in fashioning the show, from Cabaret and Fosse (applied, coolly, to "Staying Alive" from Saturday Night Fever) to Eminem and, I think, the Beat poets. Some of the bits are knockouts, such as a strangely touching "Empty Garden" and a deliberately broad sitcom-ish skit about four frighteningly amoral high school students.

Other moments are less successful; more to the point, many feel random and don't coalesce smoothly into Morales' hodgepodge of a structure. Lots of the most pointed commentary—and there is a good deal of this in The Show, directed mostly at President Bush and the recent war with Iraq—is strident rather than satirical, which tends to reduce its bite. On the other hand, it's always clear where Morales stands; such unambiguous demarcation is as rare as it is commendable.

A company of ten, led by the excellent Brett Warwick as the DJ and Joseph Langham as Marty, performs The Show. Bradd P. Baskin's scenic design—a set of drawings that serve as backdrops—is fascinating and quite beautiful.

It's interesting: plays like Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon (1920) feel like vestiges of long ago, while George Kelly's 1924 comedy The Show-Off feels modern and timely. Sure, there are references that date the play: a gadget called a "wireless" is a curiosity; people talk about earning $130 a month, and so on. But the characters that Kelly captures so acutely aren't at all old-fashioned; in fact, they're archetypes for ways of thinking that come off as highly contemporary. And the attitudes that Kelly aptly satirizes here—provincialism vs. get-rich-quick—remain very much with us today.

That's why Metropolitan Playhouse does us such a service in reviving The Show-Off just now. As we struggle to figure out where the heck we are, it's useful to find out where we've been—and to discover that we haven't wandered nearly so far off as we may have suspected.

The Show-Off of the play's title is Aubrey Piper, a young man who works as an ordinary clerk at the Pennsylvania Railroad but fancies himself a tycoon-in-the-making. Aubrey is a blowhard, and a liar: he exaggerates his position and his salary and his contributions on the job to impress his girlfriend, a besotted young woman who ought to know better named Amy Fisher. Not that it really matters to Aubrey who his audience is: he's just as apt to tell a perfect stranger that his mother-in-law's house is his own and that she lives there on his graces. When Aubrey gets into an automobile accident, his main concern is that his name is in the papers.

Though Amy is taken in by Aubrey's big talk, the rest of her family is not. Chief among Aubrey's detractors is Amy's outspoken mother, a provincial and unsophisticated woman who shares Aubrey's love of endless, meaningless gab though she'd never realize it let alone admit it. There's no love lost between Aubrey and Amy's father, certainly; likewise, Amy's brother Joe, a would-be inventor who fiddles around with radios and rustproofing formulas, and her sister Clara, the unhappily married wife of a successful businessman, see right through Aubrey's posing.

Kelly messes with his audience by making Aubrey and Mrs. Fisher, who are the most interesting of his characters, also the most unpleasant. They're extreme examples of