PLAY: "Vital Signs: New Works Festival Series 3"

Between this week's series of one-acts and last week's, I think it's safe to say that Vital Signs has earned its name. These final four premieres share little in common -- there's a twisted fairy tale, a sequel to Our Town, a whimsically written parable, and a rhythmic love story -- save that they are all well-produced, honestly performed, and splendid to watch.

The opening play, Sharyn Rothstein's "Senor Jay's Tango Palace," uses a backdrop of that most passionate of dances as a cautionary warning to those who lose their spark. Marlo Hunter's direction (and choreography) lets Marmalade (Maria Parra) and Robert (Leo Ash Evens) loose in the background while Ben Johnson (Nick Merritt) and Senor Jay (Jose Febus) can only watch, as they do every night, their dreams flicker momentarily before them. They've also resigned themselves to the most dismal of dreams: Jay's is a rundown place, and Robert's more interested in groping the innocent Marmalade than he is in dancing with her. Although Ben's contemplative small talk is the highlight of the show, Jay's easy going nature is what sells it; Jay is another one of Rothstein's all-too-human failures: he humanizes everyone around him, even though he's lost his corazon.

The next piece, Cheri Magid's "The Lock," uses a staple of symbolism -- the fortress -- to look at the consequences of such imprisoning protection on The Lady (Carla Rzeszewski), and the truth behind such white-horsed characters as The Prince (Christian Felix). In a series of progressive scenes, simply directed by Blake Lawrence, Rzeszewski slowly kindles to life, blossoming before our eyes with a girlish vigor that keeps us rapt with anticipation. To tie each of the Prince's visits together, each one slowly dissolving the castle walls, Magid adds a Soothsayer (Alice Barden) whose simple poem haunts the proceedings with an eerily erotic message, full, like life, of foreboding and hope.

As for Sheila Callaghan's wonderfully written "Ayravana Flies or A Pretty Dish," the need for exotic excitement comes across a bit cryptically, but is completely carried by the characters: a shy (and English) Elephant (Fletcher McTaggart) and an excitable young cook, Olivia (Lauren Walsh Singerman). In a series of alternating monologues, Callaghan convinces us of how important it is that we really live and explore our world -- not just by vicariously throwing in foreign spices like cumin, or by working in an airport to be around those bold enough to fly, but by daring to take risks oneself, even when it may lead to disaster. McTaggart plays the elephant with the potential to soar, but it's Singerman who literally zooms across the stage, helping to make even the ambiguous portions of the script crackle with Callaghan's unique wit.

The final piece, It's Our Town, Too, is good -- but a bit exploitative. In the first scene, writer/Stage Manager Susan Miller introduces us to another town, a modern one filled with a gay couple, George and Louis (David Lloyd Walters and Dan Via) and a lesbian couple, Emily and Elizabeth (Alexis Slade and Amy Staats), who are about to see their adopted children Molly and Chance (Janet S. Kim and Jason Cruz) get married. By portraying modern relationships in Wilder's familiar model of family/town/community, Miller pays homage and makes a bold statement all at once. But her second scene, the "death" scene, seems to be pulled directly from the original Our Town, and seems to be placed there to mine our emotions without earning them: if the point is simply that gay, lesbian, or straight, there's no difference in the way we live, love, die, and grieve, then it's just overkill: the point is made already, now let it rest in peace.

All told, this twelfth installment of Vital Signs gives the impression that America has a fine and healthy heartbeat of new playwrights, ones who collectively draw from a rich culture of the past and actively develop -- with new voices -- a culture for the future.

PLAY: "You People"

Be they religious, obese, foreign, rebellious, or illegal, they're still people first, and The Shalimar's latest production You People aims to remind us of that, whether it's by doing a few rock numbers or a few one-act plays. This approach, while a bit sloppy and not as put together as LA FEMME EST MORTE (or Why I Should Not F!%# My Son), succeeds at being a lot like a melting pot of ideas, and there isn't a bad play in the bunch.

The first playful piece is Josh Liveright's Deseret Desire, in which we see two lovers getting all worked up with some serious kissing. Unfortunately for John (Justin Okin), Desiree (Laurie Naughton) will only take things so far on account of her religious beliefs ("butt stuff" is apparently OK from time to time -- ah, the vagaries of interpretation), and thanks to director Camilo Fontecilla's clever direction (the two sit at a distance from one another, responding to each other's kisses without actually giving or receiving them), we can actually see his frustration. It isn't long before John's agreeing to marry her, bring his kid up in the Church, hell, go to church himself -- anything for God, ahem, sex -- which says a lot about how some people treat religion in this country, especially when the sheets come off.

The next piece, Sharyn Rothstein's Miss Morley's Revenge is a more straightforward piece, and while it's nothing we haven't seen before, it's always a pleasure to see someone stand up for themselves, even when it's through the gaze of an impenetrable smile. In this case, Marilyn Hardy (Dawn Evans) is one of those self-righteous offenders who suggests "diets" and "moderation" like they've never been considered before, and Laura Morley (Kelli Lynn Harrison) just smiles and nods, being endearingly sarcastic as she plots her revenge. It's not a particularly deep play, but R. J. Tolan directs it without any menace, making it ordinary enough to remind us of just how often this well-intentioned discrimination goes on.

In Nastaran Ahmadi's Splinter, the discrimination is a bit more opaque. Man (Charles Semine) is an Irish student whose visa in America is about to run out. Woman (Jen Taher) would rather he didn't, as she's in love with him, but despite her desperate offers to marry him, he doesn't want to stay: "Being in America's only fun if you're American." It's an insidious comment, especially since Jessi D. Hill directs him as being so well-adjusted, happy, and normal; if we can't make this sort of visitor like us (the air has a smell, he says), who will like us?

Taking a more comic approach to the same thought is Hilly Hicks Jr.'s Blanco, in which an illegal immigrant, Blanca (Nina Freeman) tries to Google her American dream, with the help of her electronics store friend, Daryl (Blaire Brooks). Their discovery, through a gay video chat site, is that in America, you can not only achieve anything, but you can be anyone, and be accepted for it. Samuel Buggeln uses two unnamed actors (Chris McKeon and Chip Brookes) to bring the open gates of the Internet to life, but manages also to achieve a level of solemnity when "El Blanco" and "Army Cock" reveal who they are when they're not dreaming.

The best piece of the night is Michael John Garces' Tostitos, which is a rather frightening glimpse at disaffected youth in this country. Red (Andres Munar) rides around the stage on a bike, snarling at everything, while his punk hanger-on, Annie (Jenny Gomez) follows on a skateboard. Tanya (Barrett Doss), a good girl, has unfortunately fallen for Red, and he berates her even as he takes free sodas and candies from her, refusing to make any emotional connection. When Tanya's father, Danny (Edwin Lee Gibson) shows up, the two violently collide, and the lack of respect and understanding on both sides is frighteningly palpable. May Adrales doesn't hold anything back in the physical staging of this piece, which means she doesn't attempt to explain or justify the way these characters behave, and the piece is better for its mysterious bursts of anger, its violent teasing, and its aggressive banter (all of which Mr. Garces has refined far better in this short piece than in his last disjointed play, Acts of Mercy).

The evening transitions through each of these plays with songs from Davide Beradi and Tommy Smith, but with the exception of the last number, "You People," which actually engages the audience, these songs serve only to give the cast enough time to change the sets, and simply aren't clear enough; the direction from Shoshona Currier and Joey Williamson doesn't help either, as the 80s costuming doesn't fit the modernity of the other pieces, nor does it really speak to those people -- what they're doing is too easily identified with, too much a part of our culture. But if the play's the thing, then You People's got it.

PLAY: "a Good Farmer"

Photo/Rick Berubé

From the plain cabbages littering the floor of the Bank Street theater to the widescreen image of an empty road to the two men in the corner plunking light underscores on the piano and guitar, you wouldn't expect a Good Farmer to be a serious look at immigration. But after a bumpy opening, Sharyn Rothstein's new play proves to be as intelligently open as her last (Neglect): it doesn't judge her desperate and misguided townsfolk, it simply presents them as they are.

Why shouldn't Gabe (Borden Hallowes) resent illegal immigrant Carla (Jacqueline Duprey), for taking jobs he believes are entitled to him as an American? Why shouldn't Rosemary (Elizabeth Bunnell) call Mexicans lazy, given that when it comes to doing work in her world (she's "CEO" of the PTA), they're too busy "working" elsewhere? And why shouldn't Bonnie (Chelsea Silverman) employ the only people willing to work for her, especially when it's the only way for her to save her farm and raise her child, given the cancerous death of her husband, David (Gerald McCullouch)? Underlying goodness, if it truly exists, is of no use if stifled by unconscious bigotry, and good intentions are so easily blinded by misdirected anger.

It takes Rothstein a little while to lay it all out, however, and the first act is sloppily one-sided (pro-immigration). For the first hour, the right-wingers of the show (Rosemary and Gabe) are exaggeratedly mean or comic, and the strong, working mothers (Bonnie and Carla) can do no wrong. (The one missing archetype is the bad farmer, but that's another play.) But after a menacing confrontation in a cornfield between Gabe and Carla ("No such thing as a good person. There's lucky and not lucky and that's all there is."), the play makes it a lot harder to defend any one person.

The second act opens, seven years earlier, with Carla unable to speak good English, and Bonnie doesn't want to hire her. As an audience, we already know that these seeds will turn out ripe, but it's easy to see why so many people, trapped in the immediate now, are afraid to trust. Nobody becomes friends overnight, but given time, even the most disparate of people can come together if their hearts are in the right place. As Carla points out to the immigration officer (and Jacqueline Duprey's sincere indignation is what sells the heart of this play): "We're just like you. With less choices."

PLAY: "Neglect"

Not much has changed since I first covered Neglect last October. What few tweaks there are, are almost all for the better. Playwright Sharyn Rothstein has made her already compact work even tighter by strengthening the parallels between the polite young schemer, Joseph, and the pushy, self-centered matriarch, Rose Anne Hayes. Director Catherine Ward has succeeded in focusing our attention on the "safety" of one's home by cutting away the outer world (in the original production, the hallway was visible), and making the space even smaller. Although the final minutes of Neglect still seem a bit forced, they've increased the stakes by removing a gun (which cheapened Joseph's sincerity and remorse) and revising the fight choreography to more resemble the height of pathos rather than violence bordering on absurdity. In other words, Neglect is as well-worth seeing now as it was last year: it is a brilliant slice of racial relations, social struggle, and the plight of the poor.

The play is a natural tale of depression, but without the bogging politicizing of other social writers; as a result, Neglect seems more immediate and pressing than similar works like Raisin in the Sun. There's only one scene, cramped into a small inner-city slum apartment during a Chicago heatwave, and the show is only an hour long. More than enough time for a talented young playwright like Rothstein to paint a vivid picture: you can even see the sharp edges of the facade melting in the unrelenting heat and pressure of the show. While the characters may start with nothing -- lumps of coal, really -- by the end of the show, they've developed, at least for the audience, into diamonds in the rough.

The greatest asset of Neglect, however, is its talented performers: William Jackson Harper and Geany Masai. Their reprisal is so perfect that it's hard to image any other actors ever playing these parts. Geany Masai is a full-bodied woman and she's got the full-bodied voice to go with it, from the deep commands and questions of a stern woman, to the clucking uh-huhs of a rumormonger and storyteller, all the way to the high-pitched squeals of a delighted little girl (despite her age). She moves with a heaviness I wouldn't wish upon anyone, rocking several times in her seat before getting the momentum to stand, only to shrivel up with suspicion and fear. As for Harper, you can see his mind constantly in action: his role is like that of an urban Hamlet, a gentle intellectual who is forced by circumstance to do something he does not wish to do. It also gives him a real arc, going from a patient, smiling worker to an anxious, scowling thief. His performance is instantly accessible and his choices are neatly motivated and driven completely by his interactions with Masai: the two are completely in sync.

Neglect is impressive not just for its actors, direction, or smart writing, but for the poignancy of the piece. My heart goes out to these characters and their situation, and I think the newly staged end of this play is an absolutely perfect statement of our isolated states of America: togetherness found in loneliness.