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: "When the Messenger is Hot"

Photo/Jay Geneske

I haven't read When the Messenger is Hot, the book of short stories by Elizabeth Crane that has been adapted by Laura Eason and developed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company (now visiting from Chicago as part of the 59E59 GoChicago! Festival). But lines like "watching the morning sun glint off his crack-pipe made me realize that maybe Steven and I weren't meant to be" easily make the jump from print to stage, the sort of self-conscious poetry that the narrator of her own play can get away with. Crane's voice (distinct, fresh, and delightfully deprecating) makes the jump, but the play itself doesn't totally work: it comes across exactly as what it is, a series of short stories that have been crammed together into an 80-minute play, more fractured confession (three actresses simultaneously play the lead, Josie) than solid narrative.

The pace works best when focussed around Crane's elegant fable, "Return from the Depot!", in which a daughter refuses to accept her mother's cancerous death and is vindicated when her mother returns, three years later, to chalk the whole thing up as a misunderstanding. It's a plucky piece, and the mother (Molly Regan) is a real firecracker of a broad, all curses and charm. The surrounding collection of stories, however, focus on Josie's inability to find a man who won't horribly mistreat her, and Coburn Goss (who plays all the men) doesn't have enough personality to keep these scenes fresh.

The play becomes a three-person monologue, the internal-made-external patter of the three Josies (Kate Arrington, Lauren Katz, and Amy Warren). There are a few segments where this works, such as in "Year at a Glance!", where the women glance back at their first year of grief and assess where they are: "I realize I am marking time in 'Days since.'/I join a support group./I quit the support group because it's depressing./I feel surprised it's depressing./I notice I am marking time in 'Months since.'" The quick banter here is necessary, and works to show the rapid and totally distinct shifts in a person's mind. But it's often more distracting than hilarious, something director Jessica Thebus must have noticed, as she has Kate Arrington grieve alone when her mother "disappears" again. There are some moments that can't be shared, and Arrington's performance, a flood of tears that dry up into an enabling laugh, is proof that the story isn't flawed, just strained by the presentation.

PLAY: "Kinderspiel"

Photo/Aviva Meyer

You'd have to be a foolyheadgirlthing to write a play set in an absurdly fictitious (but not improbable) cabaret in the Weimar Republic (1923) and to then quote Oscar Wilde's maxim: "All art is quite useless." You'd need quite a pair of balls to brag about how the expressionist theater company, the Kinderspielers, "dare to entertain you by completely wasting your time." And you'd need to be awfully clever to make a critic one of your characters, especially if her theory is that "frivolity is serious business."

I guess that makes Kiran Rikhye a large-balled, awfully clever, foolyheadgirlthing: her latest work with Stolen Chair Theater Company, Kinderspiel (child's play) is a double-bill that is avant-garde Cabaret ("infantile improvisation" meets lesbians and garters) when it comes to presentation, and starkly satirical when the plot is narrated to us "children." The play not only stands as a testament to the insane depression of the Weimar era, but illustrates the similarity between genius and insanity, and the odd power of art to transform one's perception of reality. Furthermore, by adding a journalist, Rikhye is also able to make an point about the danger of an explanation, with her mind clearly in favor of spontaneity and personal experience. (Do we demean things by giving them meanings?)

Her focal point is Louisa Reissner (Alexia Vernon), a popular burlesque dancer who is cast out of the spotlight when insane inflation (the program notes put it at 1.3 trillion marks to 1 dollar) dwindles her audience. Louisa flees into her own mind to sustain that flame of popularity, retreating into an innocent form of self-indulgent, childlike play, at which point she is stumbled upon by Max (Cameron J. Oro), an effeminate playboy with a mouth so full of candy, that he walks around, eyes glazed with the pointlessness of it all. Louisa's unforced behavior and deconstructed grammar ("Whatever we wants to, that's the pointy.") sparks a life in him that he thought lost, and the two begin to play.

They play so happily that the narrator, Heinrich (Sam Dingman), not only calls off his own suicide, but begins to sell tickets to their late-night sessions in an abandoned underground nightclub, finding the purpose the war took from him. As the play continues, they are joined by Sonja (Liza Wade White), an experimental, hands-on journalist who is thrilled by what she sees as a political statement (not to mention turned on by the loose Lousia), and Anna (Layna Fisher), a conservative widow who wants the dream, but can't overcome her inhibitions ("If things aren't clean, they're dirty").

Under St. Marks is the ideal theater: designer David Bengali pretty much just exposes the dingy frame of the space and then adds floor lights (not to take away from his work; it's so authentic). And from what I've seen, Jon Stancato is the ideal director: though Stolen Chair credits the entire cast and crew with Kinderspiel (such experimentations are the reason to support individual companies), Stancato is ultimately like the third-grade art teacher whose students make great fingerpaintings because he knows when to take the paper away from them. There's also a deeper sense of purpose to the lengthy cabaret demonstrations when in Stancato's hands: they build (along with Rikhye's script) to a point at which the playing is less innocent and more political, intentional or not, and the imaginary delivery of a stillborn child is a harsh scene.

Stolen Chair bills itself as a company dedicated to the "theft" of "historical performance styles," but it's a crime for which they'd never be convicted. Between this and their recent Commedia dell'Artemisia, they're dramatic Robin Hoods, stealing from a rich theatrical past and producing for a poorly educated present, and I look forward to their next production.

PLAY: "The Children of Vonderly"

Photo/Matt Zugale

The Children of Vonderly is a delightfully full new play from Lloyd Suh that is, more than anything else, playful. Keeping in tone with the upbeat eccentrics of the Vonderly household, Suh redefines normality in every inch of his script, from "anti-semantic" jokes to quirky dismissals of religion and sassy wordplay ("a motherfucker's fucking mother"). Even the few moments that are more repetitious than paralleled are enjoyable: closer to sports replay than sitcom rehash.

The play opens on the seventh and last day of Shiva, the Jewish period of mourning (in this case for the Vonderly's adopting father), a period that has only "amplified the weird." Jerry (William Jackson Harper) carts himself around in a wheelchair and yarmulke, trying to take care of his sweet but mentally-stunted sister, Sasha (Jackie Chung) and his shy, mountainous brother, Abraham (Shawn Randall). Unfortunately for him, it's his grief-stricken mother, Norma (Lynn Cohen), whom he ought to worry for, and after her prolonged, opera-worthy histrionics ("You stupid ingrates, I love you"), another of his adopted brothers, Benjamin (Stephen Jutras), decides to have her committed. Jerry's world, already fragile enough thanks to the glass house set design by Sarah Lambert, grows even shakier when his other siblings, bumbling Noah and weak-boned Georgia (Hoon Lee and Maureen Sebastian), announce their plans to elope. But wait, there's more: as Jerry loses himself in drink, mourning his own realized dreams for traveling with Georgia, Benjamin asserts himself again, hiring a supervisor, Chuck (Paco Tolson), to watch over the house.

For all that plot, the play runs remarkably smooth, and without any degeneration into farce. Instead, it's a comic drama that comes closer to identifying what truly makes a family than most plays I've seen this year. Credit where due to director Ralph B. Pena, who gracefully livens the interludes with breezy music and short, silent essences of scenes in the background (a picnic, a basketball game). The show is also grounded in the phenomenal casting, which keeps the characters from sliding into caricature or stereotype. They're funny, but they're not being handled with kid gloves, and their emotions (the chest-thumping "I love you") are pure.

The Children of Vonderly covers a lot of ground, and everyone involved in this outstanding production keeps up the pace. Ms. Cohen, in her few scenes, manages to be domineering, fragile, and then sweet; Mr. Lee swings from passionate to lost to weepy and back again; and Mr. Harper, stuck playing the stubbornest of the bunch, still manages to make his repetitious arguments sound new, as if he were a Rumpelstiltskin of words, spinning them into gold.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter might want to tie an ad campaign in with this Ma-Yi production: for a show more than two hours long, it's remarkably spry and effortlessly involved. Not for lack of a better word, but because it's the right word: The Children of Vonderly is fun.

PLAY: "True Genius"

David Holstein's play has a lot of promise, but not much genius. Rather than tackling the issues head on, Holstein prefers to have them poke their imaginary heads out from behind the bedposts, or, once they're out, to stuff them into a closet--ahem, armoire--so that he can get back to the funnier stuff. Like Dr. Foyer, the jokey, alternative therapist who psyches out his own patients with erratic behavior of his own. Or Lila, a pathological fabulist who gets by on her cute anti-socialisms and pre-punk forwardness. Our main character, Scooter (Perry Tiberio), seems redacted from the play: there, but all but mute. And without that spark, he's simply a foil for the manias and passions of the playwright, a focal point that we can't relate to, and therefore can't sympathize with when we realize how many of his friends are in his head.

Jill Sierchio does a good job of staging the work, but like Holstein, she's too tentative about her craft. There are very few direct moments, and while this amplifies the effect of good moments (like a shaving-cream kiss), it leaves a lot of dead space, or half-felt emotions, drifting through the theater. Ken Scudder is good as Dr. Foyer, but he's only able to steal the show because his role has more drama than anyone else's: his wife has left him because he cheated on her, he's occasionally drunk, &c., &c. Not to mention he has all the good observations, too ("A liar knows he's lying; a pathological person doesn't), which just goes to show that Holstein is approaching the play too much as an intellectual.

The show is also held back a bit by some of the actors. I won't judge a child actor on the same scale as his peers, especially in a small-scale production, but Tyler S. Gulizo is aimless on stage, and his role as Scooter's imaginary little brother seems forced. Likewise, Nancy Evans, who plays Scooter's mother, doesn't manage the range of emotions necessary to deal with a violent, self-destructive son: pity, resentment, weariness are all washed out by blank grief. She has her moments, and--granted--she's not getting much from Mr. Tiberio, but the actors must find a way to make it work.

Ultimately, True Genius seems at odds with itself: I don't expect a play (especially a self-titled play) to be genius, but it's just not true, and the revelation of the "true genius" is surprising only because it's an irrelevant point tacked on to what should be the focal point of the play: a boy's escape from his secluded self with the help of a liberated liar of a girl.