THEATER: 3C

Photo/Joan Marcus

Why are sitcoms so popular in America? Perhaps it's because nothing bad ever really seems to happen, at least nothing that can't be shrugged off and reset by the end of the episode. David Adjmi's intriguing remix of Three's Company, 3C, takes the opposite approach: nothing good happens, and the powerful spate of laughter that serves as the climax of the show is quickly followed, and ultimately stifled, by a deadening silence. 

The sitcom conventions are all there, most notably in the outlandish landlords, mentally unbalanced Mrs. Wicker (Kate Buddeke) and horrifically racist Mr. Wicker (Bill Buell). But the thematic structure of the play can be summed up by its subversion: a massive series of comic misunderstandings lead the fastidious florist Linda (Hannah Cabell) to first believe that their Night at the Roxbury-like neighbor Terry (Eddie Cahill) is sticking his dick in the nose of her ditsy, promiscuous roommate Connie (Anna Chlumsky) -- they're actually doing coke. ("How can I feel good when I have all of this white stuff coming out of my nostrils?") Her prudishness makes it difficult to explain this to her new roommate, Brad (Jake Silbermann), which leads him to believe that she's figured out that he's actually gay -- not just pretend gay, to fool the landlords -- an issue that makes her condemnations -- "I'm sick, you're making me sick to my stomach" -- wound him even more. Likewise, when Connie comforts this former Vietnam soldier, trying to get him to confront his trauma, he mistakes her solidarity as a confession that she's a lesbian: "Just today I was with someone [at the beach]. It felt nice. I love getting all wet." 

Jackson Gay does a terrific job of staging all the beats of this production: pratfalls for clumsy Brad ("Is there some sort of insupportable weight you're carrying?"), striking one-liners for Connie ("I just get lonely and needy. Boy, I hope I don't get raped!"), and a whole series of elaborate dance sequences choreographed by Deney Terrio that express the ways in which Linda attempts to get out of the body that she feels trapped in. Gay's also absolutely brutal and unrelenting in the pacing, so when Mr. Wicker abruptly starts masturbating an unwilling Linda, or when Terry's "faggot" teasing turns violent, the shifts are shocking, as if the characters in a Nickelodeon cartoon abruptly started acting as if they were in an HBO drama. The cast, without exception, is exceptional, with particular attention given to Cabell and Chlumsky, who get the lion's share of reversals and breakdowns. 

The best example of Adjimi's technique can be seen in a simple game called "Faces," which Brad and Linda play in an attempt to cheer each other up (or, more literally, to mask their true feelings). One person calls out an emotion, the other person displays it: elated, anxious. But whereas a sitcom might leave things at this level -- broad strokes of showing, not telling -- Adjimi digs deeper, demands more: carefree, with an undercurrent of fanaticism. These are things that shouldn't -- can't, really -- go together, and yet these contradictions are part of the all-too-human condition. Is it any surprise that Linda breaks down for real after attempting to convey "Anguish, with an undercurrent of sexiness"? That could just as easily be her life, or at least, it could be, if she only had the confidence to embrace her looks. 

Don't dismiss 3C, then, as being simple or silly, although it is, at times, both those things. If you like, you're welcome to try to laugh it all off -- surely we've come a long way since this 1978 setting -- but you'll most likely find, as these unlikely roommates do, that we're terrifyingly stuck in some ugly conventions and some uglier lies. Tune in, turn on, don't drop out.

THEATER: The Bad and the Better

Photo/Monica Simoes

"I'll have like this different level thing going for me where like the revolutionaries are all sentimental lovers and they all die because of it. It'll really just be a story about love but it'll be somewhat disguised as a cautionary tale about the hypocrisies of extreme principles." So says Venus (David Nash), a man who once wrote a play about anarchists, "The Sad Singers on Stanton Street," and who now hopes to use the impressionable and irrepressible young Faye (Anna Stromberg) to help him gain entree (and authenticity) to her anarchist friends: organizers Justice (James Kautz) and Charity (Selene Beretta); hacker Scotty (Nick Lawson) and his peaceful, foreign lover Edmond (Chris Wharton); and the violent revolutionary Inez (Regina Blandon) and her punk-poseur beau Nino (Byron Anthony). Oh, adds Venus, he'll have to avoid guns ("Nobody likes gun death on stage") and large casts, since the only thing producers hate more than expensive blanks is a big cast.

As you can probably guess -- considering that Derek Ahonen, resident playwright of the Amoralists, is best known for his arrestingly good anarchist-lite family drama The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side, his comically exaggerated, somewhat cautionary tales of love (Happy in the Poorhouse, Amerissiah), and his epic-in-size casts -- Venus's speech is both a foreshadowing device and a tongue-in-cheek commentary. And like The Bad and the Better itself, it's filled with angst, layers, absurdity, and -- the beating heart beneath it all -- truth. If it's not exactly subtle, who cares: Ahonen's an angry, ambitious, and intense playwright, and you can't be explosive without being a bit messy, too. And, to be fair, the political machinations of the super-rich -- represented here by developer Zorn (Clyde Baldo) -- and legislative idiocy of our representatives -- seen here as the dodo-like Eugene Moretti (David Lanson), who's more concerned with comedy than policy -- aren't exactly subtle in the real world, either. 

As The Bad and the Better continues, the stakes grow increasingly high (and almost implausibly interconnected, except that Ahonen's working in extremes): Venus is actually an undercover NYPD officer, looking to entrap the anarchists, and his girlfriend Matilda (Cassandra Paras), who runs a cop bar, isn't always understanding of his duties and absences. Venus's brother, Ricky (William Apps), is a washed-up detective, whose nagging wife and teenager daughter (Judy Merrick and Sarah Roy) are driving him to have an affair with his all-too-pliable (and stalker-like) secretary, Miss Hollis (Sarah Lemp), all of which is distracting him from properly investigating a string of odd murder-suicides that may be connected to Zorn. And then there's Julio (Jordan Tisdale), a new cop who's obsessed with Rick's "legendary" killing of three robbers, even though their unloaded guns are what shunted to a remote detective position in the first place. 

Given the scope, it's hard to say whether the play would be improved by trimming some of the excesses (a lengthy conversation between three oafish cops about how to keep a woman from cheating on you) or if those excesses are the play itself -- after all, as Eugene puts it in a campaign advertisement, we're all familiar with those movies that are so bad they become good. And, above all else, shouldn't a play about anarchists be, you know, a little chaotic? It's all at least presently nicely, with scenes layered atop other scenes both in the script and through resident designer Alfred Schatz's set, which conflates a bar, office, bookstore, and several alleyways into a singular space. But while Daniel Aukin manages to keep up the energy nicely (to the point where it appears he's been working with veteran Amoralists like Lemp and Lawson all along), a few too many scenes wind up veiled in darkness, something that worked in the more sedentary 4000 Miles, but less so in the hectic The Bad and the Better. Then again, the final image he works into the play is a good one: the road for good, bad, and better intentions is paved with bodies, no?

The Bad and the Better is profane without quite being profound and too antic to ever feel authentic, but it's interesting, often uproarious, and always entertaining. Those lured in by the title or reputation of the company will not be disappointed.

THEATER: Sovereign

Photo/Deborah Alexander

Rest assured, there are no Ewok-equivalents in Sovereign, the third and final part of Mac Rogers's epic work of science-fiction theater, The Honeycomb Trilogy. In fact, after twenty years of resistance against telepathic, communal, bug-like aliens, there's not a shred of "cuteness" left -- at least, not in Ronnie (Hanna Cheek), the once-rebellious teenager who saw her astronaut father deliberately transport clutches of eggs from Mars back to Earth and later fought against her bug-sympathizer brother, Abbie (Stephen Heskett), "winning" at the cost of fifty-one suicide bombers from each commune -- including her beloved Peck; pretty much the last person keeping her emotionally grounded. No, the action of Sovereign picks up in the Pyrrhic ashes: Ronnie's now the governor of her settlement, a idol worshiped and whispered about by the resistance, but as we see from her callous judgment of Budeen (C. L. Weatherstone), a dim-witted farmer who unknowingly breaks the law, she's all but lost her compassion -- her humanity. 


Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and having already tackled domestic (Advance Man) and action-packed (Blast Radius) dramas, Rogers now tracks the mental anguish of the war by setting up a courtroom drama. In the middle of the night, Ronnie's loyal soldiers, the besotted yet childish Wilkie (Neimah Djourabchi) and stoic veteran Sharp (Daryl Lathon), have finally captured Ronnie's traitorous brother, Abbie, leaving her with no choice but to try him for attempted genocide -- lest he be ripped to shreds by a mob-like community, an act that would trample all over their fragile, newly budding judicial system. Ronnie's ambitious underling, Zander (Matt Golden), takes up the prosecution; the defense is left to Tanya (Medina Senghore), an ardent idealist who represents everything that Ronnie has been forced to excise from herself, the sort of person who all too easily condemns the sometimes necessarily brutal decisions of others. Also along for the trial, as reminders of what's at stake, are Fee (Sara Thigpen), who lost her children under the alien occupation, and Claret (Erin Jerozal), a "skin" (i.e., alien mind trapped in a human body) who is currently carrying Abbie's child, and who now fears that these retributive humans will kill the last children of her race. 


Imagine that: trying a human for genocide, even as you yourself prepare to extinguish an entire species -- and if there's one thing that Rogers excels at above all others, it's making us sympathetic to both sides. This is one point where the change in casting is particularly effective. With no disrespect to David Rosenblatt, his version of Abbie often came across as a bullied brat, lashing back against the world; Heskett (outstanding in this and last year's Brain Explode!), on the other hand, carries a haunted and hunted look in his eyes that balances his self-assured intelligence. When he proudly advocates his role in the invasion, it's clear that he truly doesn't see it as genocide, but rather as the necessary evolution of an all-accepting, violence-free new species. Heskett's disturbingly convincing, even in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- his Achilles-like arrogance. Equally compelling, however, is Cheek's portrayal of the emotionally scarred (and physically injured) Ronnie, a state-of-mind no doubt helped by her experiences in the demanding Pumpkin Pie Show. Whereas Ronnie's been the clear hero -- if by dubious methods -- of the previous shows, she's a more complex, fallen character now, and Cheek plays through her pain like a woman tethered together with barbed wire: she's all grim determination, with a precious few happy memories ("fingerblasting") to occasionally soften her up. 


Given that this final installment has so much history behind it, it's no surprise that Sovereign is the strongest piece of the trilogy, as just as the children have matured, so have the other elements. Sandy Yalkin's set began as a once-tranquil Coral Gables home and was later transformed into a grimy, run-down pregnancy ward; it's now a combination of the two, for while it's brighter and cleaner -- the seat of Ronnie's power -- it's also dominated by a shrine to the fifty-one martyrs who took down the first hive, and filled with reminders of the arduous years -- like the reapers that remain stacked against the wall. Amanda Jenks's costumes are terrific, too: Ronnie's military garb strikes a compromise between the utility that she required during the war and the style that she misses from her childhood; Abbie's tattered clothes tell their own story, too. As for consistency, we have director Jordana Williams to thank for the way in which Claret's anthropological and diplomatic actions mirror those of Conor, the original "skin"; for keeping the potentially overly comic roles of Budeen and Wilkie entirely within reality; and for the exceptional scenes between the newly cast Ronnie and Abbie, who pick off bickering -- and reconciling -- exactly where they've left off.

The strength of Sovereign's cast, the dedication of the crew, and proven talent of the playwright, are each reasons enough for me to highly recommend this show, even to newcomers. Throw in the fact that, buried within that harshness, there is still a great deal of genuine humor and hope, and I really must insist that you check out this production. Set phasers to stunning, and get your ticket today.

THEATER: Uncle Vanya

I don't think Chekhov ever used the term "creep" to describe his characters, and yet that perfect word choice is one of the little joys that makes Annie Baker's adaptation of Uncle Vanya so enjoyable to watch. The ennui of this piece transcends time, and so under Sam Gold's more than capable direction, their production is transported -- or suspended -- into a carpeted, '70s-style den, with the cast clad in jeans and lumberjack shirts, unencumbered by accents or the exaggerated import that sometimes accompanies the melodramatic moments. Instead, Baker writes from a place of sincere desperation -- an act that has the ironic effect of extending the cruelest moments from the most bubbling: a conversation between new confidants Sonya (Merritt Wever) and her young stepmother, the enchanting Yelena (Maria Dizzia), that is shut down by selfish professor (Peter Friedman), or a drunken moment of abandon shared by the generally dour Astrov (Michael Shannon) and dwindling Vanya (Reed Birney) that is defined by the fact that it will not be remembered. 


As for the one moment of romance that does occur -- after much hemming and hawing -- between Astrov and Yelena: it lasts scarcely for a second; it's a beautiful, tragic reversal on the "true love prevails" trope in which the woman flings herself into the man's arms, and all is well. No, the world of Uncle Vanya vacillates between Sonya's two mindsets: that "Truth, whatever it may be, is never as frightening as uncertainty" and that "Not knowing is better, because then at least you still have hope." Both are crushing, and if there's a single uplifting thought in this bleak play, it the observation Astrov makes: that at least we are all creeps, that the normal mode of human life is a tough one. 


These observations, and more, are made even more accessible thanks to Gold's intimate in-the-round staging, an act that ensures you will be close enough at all times to hear the actual labor of an actor's breathing -- even in something as simple as sleep. It's important that we have these utterly unromanticized moments: Gold doesn't rush over a single action in the play, and along with the naturalistic Baker is absolutely comfortable with silence. These are the true heartbeats: Vanya's confession of suicidal despair is merely the dramatic embellishment on what has been there the whole time. (This leaves the one lingering question regarding Andrew Lieberman's wood-framed set: why are the Russian letters for "Uncle Vanya" prominently set in the wall?)


There's a reason the final sequence takes so long, with characters departing one after another until only Vanya and Sonya are left working endlessly as the lights slowly dim. Sonya has already given her final speech about how unhappy people like them will go on and live, working without reward and enduring until they die so that they might then rest. But let's not rush that: we must wait and endure so that we might then understand what it truly means to live.

THEATER: Luther

The very funny concept behind Luther, the second of three plays running as part of Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks festival, is that Walter (Gibson Frazier) and Marjorie (Kelly Mares) have adopted a shell-shocked veteran, Luther (Bobby Moreno), whom they treat as a cross between a teenager and a dog -- an animal who doesn't know better and therefore can't be held responsible for his actions. Ethan Lipton wants you to laugh, sure, but he's got a serious end in mind, one that's well-directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, who amps up the pathos so as to make the savagery more shocking. On the one hand, the show is fixated on the artificiality of a callous business class; on the other, it's remarking on the very real difficulty in reintegrating soldiers that we've conditioned to be killers into society. By merging the two worlds at a corporate party -- which are about as far as they can get from one another -- Luther makes some salient points on inhumanity in general, and the ways in which we're desperate to connect.

Photo/Heather Phelps-Lipton

The script, however, could serve from some thematic tightening: Marjorie is having trouble fitting in, too, but her story is overpowered by that of a socially awkward technician, Morris (the excellent John Ellison Conlee), who serves as a cross between the two worlds. (To be fair, he's infectious; I can understand getting swept away by this particular creation.) Moreover, by focusing on Morris, he steps back from the extremes -- illustrated to a certain degree by the sock-people that puppeteer Crystal Finn is parading about -- and too often uses him to directly comment on themes that may more effectively be left unspoken. (Again, Conlee absolutely nails his heartfelt speech about animals, bullies, and forgiveness, as does Moreno, given his own opportunity; it just feels too direct.) Some jokes, too, are a little hard to puzzle out: what to make of Captain James (Pete Simpson) and his arbitrator, Fran Leibowitz (Finn)? There's not much of a conclusion, either: Luther voluntarily goes to prison (after maiming or murdering two people), where he's apparently having a fine time, but what's Lipton trying to convey? That we should lock up former soldiers? That, unlike Marjorie and Walter, we shouldn't ignore the psychic baggage of our wards, trusting that love alone can set it right? 

Luther is asking the right questions, then; it's just not really answering them -- just entertaining them (and us). 

THEATER: We Play for the Gods

At the heart of Women's Project Theater's We Play for the Gods is the sense that there are untold riches at the fingertips of the fourteen playwrights, directors, and producers -- all women -- and that we ought to let them out. Is it any surprise then, that this collaborative, eighteen-months-in-the-works production begins in a different sort of laboratory -- a scientific research center -- and with a literal genie of sorts, the blue-clad Provocatrix (Alexandra Henrikson), born in a mixture of test-tube tears? This energetic, chaotic creature of pure potential is soon put into the somewhat metaphoric hands of Simi (Amber Gray) -- lets call her a tireless director, who has lost her boyfriend over one too many empty-handed late nights -- who doesn't know what to make of her discovery. Her boss, the business-savvy Lisa (Erika Rolfsrud), wants to quickly produce this bold new thing, striking while the grant-money's hot, but it's the new temp, Susan (Irene Sofia Lucio), a literal poet -- MFA and everything -- who winds up the voice of reason, torn between the need to earn a living and her new muse's brash insistence that she drop everything and write.

This chaotic, comedic, and self-reflective plot is a good choice, given how many hands are in the pot, though the show so quickly works itself into a lather that directors Jessi D. Hill, Sarah Rasmussen, Mia Rovegno, and Nicole A. Watson end up repeating themselves. After all, there are only so many levels and secret doors to Jennifer Moeller's office-room set, only so many panicked breakdowns or dreams from the characters -- or terrific straight-woman responses from the humble secretary, Marla (Annie Golden). The show gets a little scream-y, and perhaps too overtly mythological in the monologues of its God, and the playwrights -- Charity Ballard, Alexandra Collier, Andrea Kuchlewska, Dominique Morisseau, Kristen Palmer, Melisa Tien, and Stefanie Zadravec -- end up backing down from their climax in a somewhat cryptic blackout/denouement. It all looks beautiful, mind you, but the final moment's flurry of post-it-notes doesn't have quite the same impact after all the coup de theatre that's preceded it. (I couldn't help but be reminded, too, of another nervy, comic office-place romp, Assistance, which ran earlier this year.)

But is it such a bad thing if We Play for the Gods gets a bit carried away, overly amused with its muse? This isn't a character-driven play, after all: it's a broad statement, a seventy-minute balls-to-the-wall work not of reckless abandon but of deliberate embrace, a study, then, of the effects of "emotional tears" and what the untapped chemical signals might do, if ever truly given the chance. It's also a marvelous showcase of neuroses for the actresses, particularly Lucio, who spends most of the play pulling the most pitiable faces as her possessed body wreaks havoc on the room. And if the play's a bit of a hodgepodge of floods, gales, and other disasters, then it's also proof that these tough women can weather anything: as the play somewhat hopefully (or wryly) concludes, who needs job security when you've got each other?

THEATER: The Moose that Roared

Photo/Mark Veltman

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, while campaigning against his former protegee William Howard Taft and the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, was shot by John Flammang Schrank. The bullet was slowed by its passage through the folded speech in Roosevelt's breast pocket, resulting not only in a non-fatal wound, but in his decision to go on and give his speech regardless, even as he bled. "Friends," he said, "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!"

For that lovely bit of history alone, Chris Chappell & Patrice Miller's The Moose that Roared has earned its place in the Brick's Democracy festival -- but the two playwrights don't stop there. Chappell's a sound designer, Miller's a choreographer, and the two are more concerned with the internal landscapes of these characters than with a mere footnote in history. Flashbacks take us on African hunting trips shared between Roosevelt (the flat-out presidential Col. Justin R. G. Holcomb) and his son Kermit (William Weber); these emphasize the animal within all of us, and as the play progresses, Candance Lawrence's costumes begin to show patches of fur, ears begin to point and widen, and characters occasionally snort and stomp.

Other sequences follow Schrank (a conviction-filled Paul Murillo), as he kneels in a spotlight, speaking to an unseen, echoing interrogator: how threadbare and direct his mind is. To round things out, the play also features exchanges between a frustrated/betrayed Taft (Bob Laine) and his accommodating wife, Nellie (Ivanna Cullinan); these are the more plot-heavy sections, ensnaring Jesse Wilson, too, in his portrayal of Gifford Pinchot, the Chief Forester whose firing appears to have convinced Roosevelt to run for a third term. It's interesting, sure, but also overwhelming: there's a limit to how much psychological and physical information one can absorb -- especially if you know little about the history --, to say nothing of the philosophical musings (there's a bit of Shakespeare here, too).

The Moose that Roared is a bleak and challenging production, one that's still settling on its focal points (there is, for instance, an odd coda to the play, and there are a few overlapping sections that are all but impossible to follow), but it's also an unusual and absorbing experience. After all, you don't see many dramatic moments being shared between Hippo-Taft and Moose-Roosevelt.

THEATER: "Food and Fadwa"

Photo/Joan Marcus

Food and Fadwa opens with a crash course on Palestinian parties, a direct address from Fadwa (Lameece Issaq) to her studio audience that both fills us in on the premise -- Fadwa's younger sister Dalal (Maha Chehlaoui) is getting married to Emir (Arian Moayed), and Fadwa's beloved Youssif (Haaz Sleiman), who also happens to be Emir's brother, is flying back from New York for the celebration -- and then fills us up with an authentic recipe for baba ghanoush. This dish is a lesson in of itself, in that it illustrates Fadwa's tender feelings for her own "spoiled old daddy," her senile Baba (Laith Nakli); it is also representative of this deliciously stuffed play, in that food, family, and tradition are the ingredients that speak to life in war-torn, restricted Bethlehem. Fadwa's cooking show, incidentally, is fiction (it's a device that she uses to cope with the pressure around her), but the friction is real, especially when we learn how much she hates her traitorous cousin, the half-American Hayat (Heather Raffo), a Beard-winning Food Network star . . . and Youssif's employer and, now, lover.

There's no simple recipe that could be followed to describe or recreate the effects of this play; if Fadwa's secret technique involves speaking lovingly to your food, then director Shana Gold's heart must have been overflowing with (deserved) compliments to her cast and crew. That the play itself, written by Issaq and Jacob Kader, has been simmering in development for roughly five years, speaks even more to the fully realized flavors -- so much so that even the necessary table setting of plot and character establishment that consumes Act I comes across as powerful, interesting, and informative stuff. Most importantly, the cultural portion sizes -- and their presentation -- is such that you'll never feel overwhelmed; in truth, you'll feel at home. Familiarity, after all, is the way in which Food and Fadwa truly sinks its teeth into you; there may be valid political reasons for the 24-hour-curfew, or the endless checkpoints that turn the five-mile drive into Jerusalem into a five-hour affair, but from a household perspective, short on food, electricity, and nerves, it's impossible not to be moved.

Impossible, too, not to be uplifted by the hope that blossoms even in these conditions: when war postpones your wedding, turn the meal into rations for your trapped family; when your husband goes missing, show your faith and conviction by refusing to change out of your wedding dress; savor those beautiful moments of cleanliness and clarity: a shaving ceremony momentarily snaps Baba out of his fugue and has him calling for his oud; and make your own future, by planting and preserving the olive trees sacred to your family and food. That's the reason, at least, for the comic presence of Aunt Samia (Kathryn Kates), the constantly smoking and gossiping tough old broad who never ages a day and who knows that the true tragedy of a blackout is in not being able to vote for your favorite singer on Arab Idol: life goes on, no?

Even those who dismiss the cultural aspects of this play as a mere garnish -- such a humorously depicted "visual aid" of the labyrinthine checkpoint system -- and who might call this a literal kitchen-sink domestic drama would have to pause at such consistent performances. Issaq in particularly is a pleasure to watch, slowly fraying from her hyper-friendly "television" personality to a pitiably jealous spinster, her wide smile cracking each time her father slips away. Sleiman's terrific, too, swapping between a slick, jocular bravado with his family and a raw, heartfelt emotion within his attempts to get through to his soon-to-be father-in-law.  As for Nakli himself, his character's moments of lucidity (in flashbacks and occasionally in the present) are so powerful that they make his general confusion all the more devastating. It's harder to speak about Raffo and Moayed's characters: the former's is meant to be overwhelming (and distasteful), whereas the latter's is saddled with the most blatantly (and blandly) scripted portions of the show: it's hard to see Hayat and Youssif as an item.

Despite that, Food and Fadwa remains a treat for your theatrical taste-buds: sweet, sour, bitter, occasionally salty, and overall umami.

THEATER: "No Second Acts" (A & B)

Democracy's a lovely thing -- everybody ought to have their voice heard -- but it's dangerous, too. After all, popularity, volume, and ideas aren't always enough to string together a coherent thought (as many a Republican candidate discovered this year), let alone to fill out a short one-act, as some of the contributors to No Second Acts: A Collection of Short American Lives are surely now aware of. Each of the two "bills" (A and B) features five playwrights and three directors and an abundance of energy, and while it's wholly remarkable how little common ground there is between them, that common ground is, unfortunately, the rawness of these productions.

The standouts, then, are those shows that come in with a fully developed voice, or an easy-to-convey theme. Jeffrey Lewonczyk's "Shit the Future Says" imagines a world in which Internet memes have replaced politics; our country, led by President Cat (Annie-Sage Whitehurst), goes to war with an angry troll named David (Marc Landers). It's a pop-culture battle, as the heroic Dramatic Chipmunk (Leah Carrell) and Wolverine-like Honey Badger (Timothy Reynolds) face off against Charlie Bit My Finger (Kitty Lindsay) and Pedobear (Cara Moretto), all to save the world from the embittered former YouTube sensation (David After Dentist). South Park may have gotten there first ("Canada On Strike"), but under Pete Boisvert's playful direction, the live version's an enjoyable treat. 

Likewise, while the philosophy in Eric Bland's "Tsipiras in Athens" may have gone somewhat over my head, Michael Criscuolo's steady direction does a fine job in charting this all-too-human discourse; the same can be said for the way Hope Cartelli casually handles the clever banter in James Comtois's "Moving Forward," in which two former lovers (the past) chat awkwardly while stuck in line waiting to vote (the future). There's also Gyda Arber's "Votes for Women! A Stage Play for Grades 3-8," which is, remarkably and unironically, exactly what it purports to be, complete with "Applause" cue-cards and light audience interaction, and August Schulenburg's "All Good Ending," which, as the title implies, salvages much of a tediously performed history play by throwing in a The Shipment-like twist.

More muddled or rushed, then, are plays like Stephanie Swirsky's "Quorum of Friends," in which a college girl settles important issues -- like how to respond to a booty-text -- by having her friends vote, and Justin Maxwell's "I'm in Al-Qaeda," which subverts expectations by having Man (Ryan Shams) continually shock his airline seatmate (Kari Swenson Riely) with his confessions of being a CIA-kidnapped goat-herder turned Al Qaeda member. The premises of both are fine, but the brevity of each makes the plotting seem flimsy and the conclusions unsupported, and neither rises above its own jokes. This applies, too, to Alexis Sottile's "Occupy Poofy," though its inability to make a statement might be the statement . . . it's so silly and ridiculous -- intentionally so, what with the dance montages or soap-opera revelations -- that it has to be intentional . . . but what's the intent? 

As for Crystal Skillman's "Cheer," the idea of two teachers finding love and a way forward in the midst of student protests is a fine one; I just wish it was clearer what they were fighting for. (I suspect I may have missed something here, though there's definitely a vagueness that may be unnecessary.) Finally, there's Ian W. Hill's "The States," which has a lot of blood, abuse, and pain, and is set in some sort of war-ridden world in which sirens blare and lights flicker under the stress of intermittent bombing. The title implies that it's an allegory, perhaps about the ways in which the abuses of our strong country against the weak and innocent will come back to haunt us . . . but it's ill-defined and difficult to watch. But hey, as the theater festival promises, such is democracy, and who can argue with such diverse and ever-evolving results? 

THEATER: Signature Theatre's "My Children! My Africa!" "Title and Deed" and "Medieval Play"

Given that Kenneth Lonergan's Medieval Play is running in the Signature's largest space, I have to wonder if artistic director James Houghton was aiming for a Dante-like vibe in the space's three current shows. Though some may argue about the occasionally muddled dramatics induced by the scholastic setting of Athol Fugard's My Children! My Africa!, the outstanding cast (and stand-out Stephen Tyrone Williams) mark the production as true Paradiso. Then there's the intentionally vague and philosophically slight nothingness of Will Eno's latest, Title and Deed, in which a stranger (Conor Lovett) speaks about transience and distance with the same weight he's given to adaptations of Beckett's novels and shorts: could there be a more fitting Purgatorio? That, of course, leaves Lonergan the ignominious honor of representing Inferno with his unredeemably bad punchline of a play, Medieval Play (the lack of ingenuity extends far beyond the title): nothing here, really, that you haven't already seen a better form of in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

You see, My Children! My Africa!, even at its worst, most lecture-y and didactic moments, has the advantage of conveying real importance to American audiences. If it falls prey to schooling us, it is at least at the hands of the very gifted James A. Williams, and it is at least motivated by the relateable frustrations of his character, Mr. M., who fears for what will happen to his country when the youth finally rebel against the inequalities of Apartheid (the play takes place in the autumn of 1984). Clear passions and heartbreaks drive these lessons, as Mr. M. attempts to take two disparate debate students -- his would-be prodigy, the roiling Thami (Stephen Tyrone Williams), and the bright and affable (and white) Isabel (Allie Gallerani) -- and show them that there can be a non-violent path to unity. Fugard has the master playwright's ability to empathize with all of his characters, but given his subject matter, it's easy to assume that he writes to instruct because he truly believes that ignorance is the true root of evil. (All of the characters expound on this to one degree or another.)

If only we knew each other, if only we were willing to listen, we might be able to actually move forward -- which is how the play begins, with Isabel's arguments in favor of women's equality beating out Thami's societal defense (in an all-boys school, nonetheless). The other argument Fugard makes is that "Without words, a man can't think": that's what makes the pending student boycott so awful. In order to fight for freedom, Thami must now give up certain other freedoms, including the most important of all: the ability to think for one's self, to be something other than an animal. This is how the didactic dialogue transcends itself: it is spoken with breathless conviction and staged, by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, with real sparks flaring up, despite the lack of actual contact between any two characters. 

The opposite is true of Will Eno's Title and Deed, which seems to operate in a vacuum. Christine Jones's set hangs geometric shapes in mid-air, looking like shrapnel frozen in time, and Ben Stanton's lighting is plain and straightforward: no tricks up these sleeves, it announces. The same can be said for Andrea Lauer's unassuming costume: Conor Lovett's character, after all, can be from anywhere except here, and is meant to be as nondescript as possible. Personally, this sort of work makes me uncomfortable -- fidgety -- and structurally, the show has even less of a narrative than Eno's Thom Pain. At the very least, however, one can appreciate how far away Lovett appears to be, even when he's standing on a narrow sliver of stage near the front row. (Or how dedicated he is: even as a fire alarm interrupted the performance I attended, he remained all but frozen on the stage, to the extent that if not for the momentousness of the alarm, you could easily have assumed it was a part of the show.)

In any case, Title and Deed hints at a sign-signifier sort of relationship, or the noun and verb, the connection between the here and there, the way in which things are done. Eno's choice, then, to do so little is a brave one, as are his imprecise "translations" of famous idioms: "The eyes are the windows of the eyes" or "Home is where the placenta is buried." But it's also a dangerous one: the lack of momentum or real connectivity between moments means that you could basically run the show in any order, and that's not exactly a mirror of life . . . more an example of lifelessness. (Once you're dead, every moment is the same.) Being a critic here is more like being a dream analyst . . . but then again, sometimes dead air is just dead air. 

And of course, sometimes noise is just noise, as is the case with Kenneth Lonergan's Medieval Play, a work that had to have been produced under threat of thumbscrews. The work begins with Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) and Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) shooting the shit in a weird hybrid vernacular that lazily mixes "ye" and "fuck" (one assumes for shock value). The two soldiers are pillagers of the lowest order -- though they're wise enough to think through the sociopolitical changes the current Hundred Years' War (it's 1376) will bring about: anything to get a laugh, right? Things change, however, when Sir Ralph, motivated by a sudden sense of morality, refuses to rape an abbey full of nuns, and instead contracts his company to Cardinal Robert of Geneva. Unfortunately for him, the church is just as bloody, and his attempts to leave it behind to do real good -- let alone to define it -- are constantly undone by his baser instincts and his poorer timing. This, incidentally, is Lonergan's point, which he gets around to after two-and-half long-winded hours; Catherine of Siena (Heather Burns) narrates as Pope Clement VIII (John Pankow) and Pope Urban VI (Anthony Arkin) send their armies to fight the Great Schism, and as Ralph faces his once-loyal companion, Alfred, he announces "Oh well, some day things'll be better." (Except they're not. Get it?)

The script offers slim pickings to its actors, and only the oversexed and Valley Girl-like Halley Feiffer really tackles it with enough energy to bring home the laughs. (Okay, C. J. Wilson and Kevin Geer have a few fine character moments, too.) As for the rest of it, it's undone -- like Ralph's attempts to do good -- by Lonergan's self-indulgent direction. Admittedly, the show doesn't open for another three days, but there isn't a single joke that doesn't go on at least fifty percent too long (the bland fight sequences, especially between Niccolo and Ralph; a sequence detailing the importance of "modern etiquette"), to say nothing of all the material that's been left in far beyond its expiration date (the whoring and bullying done by some French cardinals, the idol-worship directed at Catherine of Sienna). The most genuine laugh is an ad-libbed one, when the knights draw their swords on the audience after a cell-phone rings: "What the fuck is that?" 

The South Park creators can be forgiven for occasionally plucking the low-hanging fruit that surrounds them -- they're often writing, directing, and producing an episode in only seven days. Walt Spangler, who has designed an un-impressive cardboard set, can be forgiven, as his work is still more substantial than (and compliments) the playwright/director's. It's hard to forgive Lonergan, however, for anything here: this underacted, overwrought, repetitive, juvenile, and largely unfunny Medieval Play deserves nothing less than a swift excommunication.

THEATER: Takarazuka!!!

Photo/Heather Phelps Lipton

Japan's Takarazuka Review appears to be such a glorious contradiction of ideals that it seems almost impossible that it's never been the subject of a play before. Consider: it's a school of theater in which young girls (and girls only) are trained, almost militarily, to play both the male and female roles in soap-opera-like adaptations of Western musicals (and the occasional cultural folktale). That is, a rigidly controlled zone of utter freedom and expression; a place where the poor daughter of a fisherman, Yuko (Jennifer Ikeda), can become a James Dean-level "top star" of the company -- but only for two years, before she's replaced (as is tradition).

Playwright Susan Soon He Stanton can be forgiven, then, for gushing a bit enthusiastically through Takarazuka!!! (look at those exclamation points!), choosing an overtly expository device for her entree -- Nigel (Paul Juhn) is a half-Japanese British filmmaker, here to observe Yuko's 1975 "swan song" and subsequent replacement by Rui (Angela Lin) -- and inserting some jarringly artificial explanations of Japanese concepts of truth and identity into her scenes, most notably one in which a random old man on a train (Glenn Kubota) demonstrates the difference between tataemae (the facade) and honne (the truth). Moreover, by pairing her physical plotting -- Yuko's mental breakdown, Nigel's besotted behavior, the fine line between the obsession and escapism of a fan, Junko, or the closeted feelings of a fellow Takarisian (a well double-cast Brooke Ishibashi) -- with a metaphysical ghost story involving a "cursed" and suicidal former star, Akane (Lin), whose path mirrors Yuko's, Stanton is stylistically excuse some of the rougher patches. (To say nothing of the appropriate use of melodrama and song in the piece: there's a terrifically unsettling rendition of Tom Jones's "Delilah.) It says a lot -- credit surely due in part to the visually gifted director Lear deBessonet -- that the repeating motif of tataemae/honne manages to sneak under the audience's skin, despite being so baldly presented.

All that acknowledged, Takarazuka!!! would do well to ease back and stop rushing -- perhaps to split over two acts that do more to parallel the shifts between Yuko's on-stage control and off-stage collapse. We learn, toward the end of the play, that Nigel's mother was a Takarisian; it'd be nice if this detail appeared to inform more of his actions or to drive his (perhaps Oedipal) desires. And while deBessonet adroitly stages the supernatural occurrences (a red scarf falling from the sky; candles/lives snuffed in the darkness; the eerie echoing between Akane and Yuko), the show's depictions of actual sequences from Takarazuka could stand more rehearsal: the songs, dances, and performances from the play-within-the-play are not dissimilar enough from Takarazuka!!! to sustain the desired illusion.

To be fair, this production is a part of Clubbed Thumb's always ambitious Summerworks series, and there's more than enough meat here to merit further productions. It's only that, having caught a glimpse of real magic and powerful insights into the psyche, it's impossible not to ask for more.