PLAY: "Six Degrees of Separation"

Photo/Jennifer Maufrais

John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation is a tough play to revive: there are seventeen roles, but only really three or four parts, and a good director needs to find enough balance to make the show seem evener than it is. Tom Wojtunik, however, looks like he's riding by the seat of his pants, thrusting props onstage with the aid of two gloved Seussian hands, setting large dramatic scenes in elevated boxes within the backstage wall, and letting the actors generally do as they please.

In some places, Wojtunik's style seems natural: the shock value of a naked hustler, say, or the beautifully bookending image of a spinning, double-sided Kandinsky (my favorite artist). In others--particularly with the children, or when there are many characters on stage--the blocking looks staged, and the acting seems forced. For a show that talks about the death of imagination, it's a little worrisome to see so much generic work, but then again, it's hard to flesh out parts that Guare has intentionally underwritten, especially in ninety minutes.

The challenge of Six Degrees of Separation is staying a character and not becoming a point. Too often in this production--as with the four children, the friends of Ouisa and Flan, and the various detectives and policemen--the roles become examples of disconnection, rather than simply people who happen to be disconnected from one another. (Ben Roberts and Jacqueline van Biene, who play two naive lovers from the West, are proof that you can naturally be both a real person and a model of something at the same time.) And while placing phone callers in a raised black box within the wall seems at first like a good device, it makes it less alienating, and leads the actors to overemote.

However, where Guare has focussed his script is also where Wojtunik has done a marvelous job. Ouisa (Laura Heidinger) comes across well as the socialite wife (two millions dollars, two million dollars) who develops a conscience for the world around her, whereas Flan (Mark Hattan) provides a nice balance for her zeal by remaining a cold yet genial realist. As for Paul, Richard Prioleau really makes him seem like an autodidact, the sort of self-made genius who is an expert at fitting pieces together, which in turn allows him to fit in. His transformation from a rough street youth who slurs the word "bottle," into the self-proclaimed son of Sidney Poitier is a rich one, and the only regret is that his big final scene is at a remove, set (like all phone calls) deep against the back wall.

Ultimately, Six Degrees of Separation comes off more as a pleasant production than as a biting look at the meaning of, and connection to, life. The hurried pace of the opening runs out of breath in the sagging middle of the play, and the actors all seem uniformly pleasant, without a scrap of menace or, more unfortunately, presence. The bold exceptions, both in the acting and Wojtunik's direction, only emphasize the separation, and though there are enjoyable moments, I left the theater a little disillusioned.

PLAY: "Have You Seen Steve Steven?"

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Remember that time when you were a kid, and you thought you knew better than your parents? Or that other time, when you got older and you realized that, for all your rebellion, you were becoming your parents? Or that last time, when you were really old, and you didn't remember either of these times? Anne Marie Healy's new play, Have You Seen Steve Steven? is appropriately funny as it dredges through the truths of the first two things, reflected in a homey Midwest McFamily, the culturally klutzy (yet obsessive) Clarksons. But it's the third thing that at last turns the work into a frightening satire, with an affectingly disaffecting series of onstage dismantlings of both family and memory, those tenuous connections to actual life.

Unlike other modern satirists like George Saunders, Ms. Healy grounds her work in the laughable concerns of the Clarksons as they prepare for their old friends, the Dudleys. But wait! They're out of Shiraz, there's a bean dip stain--pimento!--on the sofa, and neither Mary (who's been boastfully preparing a "hot dish" to go with the Ritz Bitz) nor Bill (who's been basking in the glow of his SONY 9877 projector system) has showered yet. If anything, things are too normal, which leads us, along with the daughter, Kathleen, to suspect (in that Eerie, Indiana sort of way) the intentions of the soft-spoken, neon-orange-hatted, bear of a neighbor that is Hank Mountain. (Rightfully so, but still...)

Our concerns are whisked away, however, by the speedy and efficient pace of Healy's script, and Anne Kauffman's disconcertingly cheery direction (similar to that in The Thugs). Our concerns are set aside by the arrival of Jane and Dudley, who come across as a slightly more in-the-know (i.e., pretentious) version of Mary and Frank. In other words, they're the sort of people who "order" an exchange student so as to seem concerned, but can't pronounce her name (Anlor), nor care to learn it. Tommy, their son, doesn't buy into their consumerism, for which he is rewarded with the sobriquet "Mister Ex-Pat," nor is he especially interested in reliving old times with Kathleen, except for mentioning their old imaginary dog, Steve Steven.

The play operates at first as a farce, with pratfalls from Frank as he tries to cover up the bean-dip stain and sight gags from a parade of personality-stealing puffy coats. But between the creepy neighbors (Hank is joined later by a sprightly old maid, Vera) and Tommy's gloomy realism, the show keeps transforming into something more sinister. The smiles we took to be genuine are quickly exposed as screw-on, and though there's love between the parents, it's one of deadening comfort, not livening passion. At first, the mispronunciation of Anlor's name (Rumbone, Rambone, Randor, Ranflor, ultimately the commercially captivating Rambo) is amusing, but as the night goes on, it becomes more like a sick joke on everyone involved.

As for Have You Seen Steve Steven? itself, Kaufmann has nailed the mood, Healy has caught the rhythms, and the cast has vibrantly brought it all to life. There's certainly room for the quirky discomfort to be repetitious, and the play's conclusion is so extremely--almost militarily--staged that it's hard to follow ("NETWORK IS PANINI!"), but the production itself is so crisp, so genuinely warm, that we follow these families into the hell of growing up (as Thomas puts it, right before breaking down, "Yeah. I'm. Totally taking this like a man..."). By no means is Steve Steven an easy play (I'm not sure I understand it all), but it is enjoyable, especially in the quiet, honest and awkward moments between the performers--moments where, for a second, it looks like they're just about to really connect, only to just as suddenly dismiss the impulse with a well placed Midwestern "wull." The whole cast is exceptional, but Alissa Ford and Tom Riis Farrel (Mary and Frank) pivot between needs particularly well, and Matthew Maher (Hank) is easily one of the year's most memorable villains.

The one gripe I will take up with the play is that it's hard to take Anlor seriously, and her role in the play's conclusion confuses more than it coheres. It's not the actress's fault--Jocelyn Kuritsky is alarmingly funny--but given that there are already two strangers at the dinner party, and that the play is mostly an attack on the walled-in American lifestyle, there just isn't any need for another Other.

What there is room for (as fresh young plays like God's Ear, The Thugs, and Dead City have demonstrated) is for discomforting comedy, for we are now, more than ever, living in a world where our laughter comes veiled in the shadow of our collective nervousness.

PLAY: FRINGE, "bombs in your mouth"

Photo/John Scott

The bombs in the mouth from Corey Patrick's provocative title turn out to be nothing more than a poetic usage of popcorn, but the play is still plenty provocative. Bombs in your mouth is a compact comic drama about half-siblings reuniting in their Minnesotan home after six years to grieve the father neither of them loved. It isn't long before they start grieving their own more important failures, abetted by a few beer-chugging contests, some scatological childhood memories, and the sort of raging emotions that put the fun in dysfunction.

Patrick's script doesn't explain the dementia that led their father to write his memoirs on a roll of toilet paper, Kerouac style, nor the sudden snap that made Lily (Cass Bugge) write one of her ad spots as a whore thanking Valtrex for reducing her herpes long enough to get her bent over a table every now and again. Instead, the story puts us in their shoes, surrounding them with the frightening detritus of a life half-lived: cold spaghetti with tomato sauce and ketchup, Jello mold, beer, and Vikings blankets. It's not apparent at first what particular stick is up Danny's ass (Patrick), until we learn that his life--his entire world--goes only as far as the Pump 'n Pay he works at. He's not an alcoholic so much as a survivalist.

The greatest accomplishment of bombs in your mouth is how quiet something so raw can be. Director Joseph Ward understands what so many people in charge don't: that the sincerity of not knowing is a powerful, sympathetic, forgiving notion. As a result, there's not a moment that isn't focused and crisp, even if many of those moments are either nonsense arguments that rise out of agreements or are broken confessions of uncertainty. For all that the show yo-yos from highs to lows, Ward and his cast make it look more than natural: they make it plausible. By the end of bombs in your mouth, it's not just the squalling siblings who love each other: we love them, too.

PLAY: "The Australia Project II: Week 1"

Theater should do more than entertain, it should also inform. After all, every monologue is laced with ideas, every character with opinion, and every play with unique perspective. In the strong first week of The Australia Project II: Australia Strikes Back!, four playwrights give us their view of America, a full two hour sample of various styles and wonderful ideas ranging from the pregnant metapauses of Pinter's Explanation to the exuberantly sprayed tangents of The Port. There's New York through the dystopically glazed eyes of avalanche-dwelling Caroline (Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart), and then there's 1892's empire-gripped Australia, seen through the eyes of a loyal lighthouse keeper (The Melancholy Keeper of the Deep, Deep Green). The night goes easily from reverent to fervent, and despite the different tones, the plays do well to complement one another, covering up the occasional shortcoming with general freshness.

Pinter's Explanation, by Ross Mueller, is the somber opening act, a piece pregnant with Pinter's pauses, though far less snappishly playful. The lengthiest of the one-acts on display, it features Michael Szeles and Mary Cross as former lovers, now reunited nineteen months later to work on adapting an Australian play. Unfortunately, while Man has an ulterior motive (he wants to rekindle a relationship he soured with the repressed jealousy of her success), Woman has only monetary reasons for being there, and the emotional core of the play is one-sided and ultimately artificial. The good moments stem from the discussion of theater itself, something that artistic director Mark Armstrong knows how to steer. That conversation is certainly more exciting than Man's recitation of the monologue-within-a-play, and of Woman's angry rant at Man's selfish nature.

Far better is the hit of the night, Anthony Crowley's The Melancholy Keeper of the Deep, Deep Green. Bridgette Dunlap, who often directs adaptations of magical stories for the Ateh Group is well-suited for this tale of an American, Richard (Kevin O'Donnell), who travels to the past to convince Patrick (the excellent Andrew Lawton) to leave the lighthouse dark for an evening. Aside from the undertones of the costs of determinedly "right" American interference, the story focuses on the twinned labor and love of a honest man, a story built with rich, rusted language like "He emptied his lungs through his mouth," that brings to mind Clay MacLeod Chapman's volume of smoke.

Then there's Lally Katz's Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart, a peppy parable about what life means, when you strip away the false and fancy lights of the city and look for the love underneath. Here, New York is already dead, and it lives on only as a VR haven for suicides. MySpace New York, as it is called, is on the verge of crashing, and we follow Caroline (Nicolle Bradford) as she falls for Thornbury (Ryan King) and his sad Father (Joe Menino), who fears that he cannot save his stubborn son a second time. Katz leaves a lot to the imagination, as does Kara-Lynn Vaeni's direction, but the modern conversations are eerily prescient, and we can almost see the city flickering out.

Week 1 ends with Wesley Enoch's The Port, a one-man show starring Emma Jackson as a frantic traveler who opines directly to the audience on a slew of reasons why she hates (but doesn't really hate) Americans as she packs her port (Australian for suitcase) to travel somewhere else. This cram-packed rant is not only an impressive performance, but the most open of the pieces, shouting out pearls of wisdom about the importance of getting lost in the world (Pinter's Explanation also emphasizes this).

I end this review by emphasizing the same thing: it's necessary that we lose ourselves from time to time in thoughts that are not our own. Without that, we risk eventually becoming lost to the world, and stagnant within ourselves. Week 1 continues through Sunday, and Weeks 2 and 3 run 9/20-9/23 and 9/27-9/30 at chashama.

PLAY: FRINGE, "Jamaica, Farewell"

It's no surprise that Debra Ehrhardt is working on a screenplay: her autobiographical one-person show, Jamaica, Farewell seems to be the Hollywood version of her "escape" from Jamaica. That's a shame, because Ehrhardt is so likable, with the sort of easily excitable yet fully dramatic storytelling personality that makes you want to watch and listen to her (the accent doesn't hurt either). But she's bogged down with making everything bigger, and that distracts from the quieter moments where Ehrhardt seems to really connect with the audience, as when she gives a tearful goodbye to her drunk, yet beloved father.

The play is divided into two distinct halves (interrupted, actually, by the sort of blackout that usually marks the end of a show). In the first, our hero (going by the name Debby Ann Phillips) recounts her dreams of America, all from the precocious stories she tells in school straight to her modern day visions of an idyllic "other." Remembering the story of a maid who married her way to America, she clings to the first American she finds: a faceless CIA agent who speaks in the monotone of classically one-dimension film heroes. Though it's conceivable she might woo her way to the US through his connections, she instead gets involved in an illegal smuggling operation, trying to seduce her CIA stooge into unwittingly transporting $1M across the border.

The next half of the play details all the ways in which this plan goes wrong, and Ehrhardt, the engaging storyteller, grows increasingly frenzied as she goes from the slums to even worse places, like Pigeon Town and Jackass Ridge. She has some adventures with some colorful characters, like the owner of a bordello, a pot-smoking driver, and a Satan-like rapist, but the story lacks a real emotional engagement with anybody but the narrator, and this turns some of her art into redundant, self-serving hype. Which is not to say that Ehrhardt herself is a fabulist or shameless self-promoter; it's just that her story often seems to be happening either to someone else or under the shield of an audience. Like a Hollywood movie, then, it's entertaining, but only up to a point.