Our Dad is in Atlantis

Photo/Carel DiGrappa

There’s something admirable about the way Working Theater has extended their usual focus on the working class in order to look at two of the children left behind by an illegal immigrant. But you can’t admire a concept: their execution of Javier Malpica’s Our Dad is in Atlantis sinks from a lack of imagination. Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’s translation is flat and repetitious (he wrote far better in his own Blind Mouth Singing), Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set is a bland reddish lump of rubberized gravel, and Debbie Saivetz’s direction is slow and restrained. Even the actors – ten-year-old Sergio Ferriera (Little Brother) and twelve-year-old Steven D. Garcia (Older Brother) – seem uncomfortable: they lack a sense of play. There’s the occasional squeal from Ferriera and the momentary flash of a hard, steely presence in Garcia, but most of the play seems like a forced march through a desert.

That’s because Our Dad is in Atlantis is forced: at heart, it’s just a play about stuff. (Each scene is even labeled as such: “Stuff about the Countryside” and “Stuff About Terror” are the first two scenes.) All the drama takes place off stage – their father’s departure, their mother’s death – and the scenes just reinforce what the first scene establishes: that Older Brother must look out for Younger Brother. It’s less a play than a series of vignettes about brotherly affection – like something out of Junot Diaz’s Drown, only with less style and considerably less energy.
Our Dad is in Atlantis would greatly benefit from a sense of perspective. It’s hard to feel sad when their grandmother’s dies, for neither child ever grieves; it’s hard to believe that a bully drove a nail through Older Brother’s shoulder, for there’s so little physicality in the play; and it’s hard to understand what would drive these two children to cross the desert on their own when neither one shows any initiative. (At one point, Ferreira accidentally fell out of his chair. It was the most exciting moment of the play.) Without another character to shake things up, it’s just seventy minutes of the same old, same old.

Democracy in America

Photo/Yi Zhao

Red
Forget Obama and Hillary -- I want Annie Dorsen answering that phone at 3 in the morning. Proving that it takes a bit of a dictator to successfully run a democracy, Dorsen (who deftly directed Passing Strange) has taken a million (well, okay, 130) disparate voices and melting-potted them into a cool, excitingly unpredictable bit of theater. It's more performance art than theater, but only subjectively -- see Erika M.'s $100 purchase of "Two iconic images from Abu Ghraib enlarged to poster size, one of them captioned 'This is theater,' the other captioned 'This is not theater,' visible throughout the piece." As with the Neo-Futurist's Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, this is sense born -- sometimes forcefully -- out of nonsense, and pure piece of profit, to boot.

White
The show starts off simply enough, with the three game actors -- Okwui Okpokwasili, Anthony Torn, and Philippa Kaye (and David Neubert, who doesn't appear, but bought a "starring" credit for $100) -- lip-syncing purchased text. There's the political ("Rudy Giuliani?!? He didn't fucking rise to the occasion. (pause) Events stooped . . . literally . . . to his level."), the critical ("Judd Apatow's film Knocked Up is the perfect representation of the complicated inner life of a Modern Woman"), absurdly commercial ("Limited quantities no other coupon instant savings tax staples reserves the right offer non transferable"), and artsy ("I was at a motel by I-80, waiting for my girl to get out of shower when I saw the velvet landscape over the bed, and . . ."), all of which I quote because it is so American. But while such lines continue through the night (including some personal lines -- "Seth Lane, Kyle loves you!"), the show slowly builds from a soundscape into a work of art. The loose interpretations of consumer demands inevitably lead toward comic shortcuts ("Okwui 20 stories high, Tony in her basement" is cleverly done with a shadowy projection), as do straightforward presentations under certain circumstances (Daniel S.'s $5 "rim job" is given to a dinosaur during a $15 conversation "about a toy dinosaur with the first line 'I have a confession to make . . . I'm sexually attracted to you, Dino'").

Blue
Of course, the problem with Democracy in America is that it's slick, clever, and commercial, and absolutely nothing else, which is sort of a statement about the sort of theater that gets produced when money is creativity's bottom line. It's ADD as entertainment, and for all the fiercely directed moments, such as a high-stakes game of Russian roulette (pantomimed with a single, ominous bullet), there are plenty of moments -- "One performer on top of the others, with the text 'Ilan Bachrach is a sex god'" that have no room to maneuver, whether they're done with puppets or not. The element of surprise -- "A one minute scene lit entirely by the glow of audience cell phones" -- is wasted on a scene without any meaning, and the constant shifts in theme prevent the show from building to anything beyond the sarcastically delivered finale: "Buy NASCAR in America."

I support the idea of Democracy in America, but ultimately, it fails to represent America. Only the left-wing half is adequately covered (perhaps right-wingers, having already bought major news outlets, see theater as a state they can afford to skip in the general election). As such, there's little dialog provoked by all the views -- all of which skew to the comic, save for a brief quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes -- and the show serves as little more than a self-indulgent in-joke. A funny, quite funny in-joke, at times . . . and perhaps that's enough of a reason, coupled with Annie Dorsen's direction, to see it.

Hostage Song

Photo/Samantha Marble

Out of context, it's just a precious, awkward moment between new lovers as, over dinner, Jim meets Jennifer's parents for the first time. The banter is genuine, as is the way the two (Paul Thureen and Hanna Cheek) bask in each other's presence, and the way the father (Clay McLeod Chapman) develops a distaste for Jim's work as a private contractor while the mother (Hannah Bos) thinks everything he says is cute. Familiar territory, to be sure, but then again, that's Chapman's style (as in volume of smoke). Horror is expressed in beautiful images of poetry, and violence -- never quite explicit -- turns beauty into a thing of fear. For you see, in context, Jim and Jennifer are actually blindfolded, and the two other actors -- clad entirely in black -- are simply a dream (and at other points, memories, or their captors).

This cruelly imaginative device works a sublimely sorrowful magic -- a magic that's even stronger when side monologues from Jim's wife (Bos) and son (Abe Goldfarb) reveal that Jim has already been killed, and that even the plot's onstage fantasy (magical realism, without the hope of magic) is nothing more than the past. It also fits the style of Hostage Song, an indie-rock musical (with music and lyrics by Kyle Jarrow) that dwells in active contradictions -- where the sensation of being beheaded is likened to that of a balloon floating freely into the sky, or where characters run the risk of being abducted from their songs, mid-note.

These moments are all starkly directed by Oliver Butler, who distills his cleverness (The Eaten Heart) into the sort of minimalism necessary to hold the distinct pieces of the show together. He uses empty space (and a few eerily out-of-place objects, like an upturned file cabinet) to close in on the characters, forcing them, in essence, to displace all that terrifying emptiness with their imaginations. (Mike Riggs's lighting helps, too, to focus our attention on the elegiac monologues.) Furthermore, by acknowledging the artifice of the show -- the band (Drew St. Aubin, Paul Bates, Jonathan Sherrill, and Mr. Jarrow) is just behind the back wall's three revolving panels -- Butler is able to use Jarrow's music to add the emotion that Chapman's exceedingly smart but necessarily restrained text lacks. This is another contradiction that works, as the deliberate script bleeds into the emotionally charged lyrics of the show.

Within those contradictions, Hostage Song also finds a rare sort of honesty that allows it to be affecting despite the marked lack of realism. When Cheek and Thureen sing, Goldfarb often harmonizes with them (in either a solid baritone or ethereal falsetto), but whereas Goldfarb -- as an outsider -- sings with the once-removed perfection of a recording, the hostages burst out with a rawer, coarser sound. Jarrow's music jags them onward with a false hope that turns even upbeat melodies into starkly pessimistic tunes given their unavoidable fate. Even through that, these Everyhostages find glitter even in the dark of death. (The final image of the play, stripped of illusion, is worth the ticket.) Now, if the characters can make the best of a bad situation, just imagine what this creative team -- a veritable "downtown supergroup" -- is able to do given the best of a good situation. Better yet -- don't imagine it. Go downtown and see it for yourself.

Better Late Than Never: "Six" and "B-Alive"

Just because the expectation that I'd be able to single-handedly review every production in New York City was more than a bit naive, that doesn't mean I'm not going to try. Here are some short reviews for two shows -- both worth mentioning -- that I caught on their closing nights.

- Six

A one act is certainly the right place to experiment, and this festival of Six one-acts (part of Second Generation's Eleven series, which also premiered a full-length play and four staged readings) serves as both a warning and a shining example to playwrights looking to find their voice. A sad and simultaneously uplifting story about the trappings of style, each play tries something a little different, a little wild.

With some, like Sung Rno's The Trajectory of a Heart, Fractured, the presentation throws the plot: you know you've gone too far when the characters are taken over by the central metaphor. With others, like Moustache Guys, it's enough just to hold on for the ride: Michael Lew's Fight Club spoof spends so much energy trying to build on its cascade of mustachioed cameos (where else can you find video-game icon Mario and Gangs of New York's Bill the Butcher) that it never grounds its protagonist's plight. (Tail, Ralph B. Pena's stalker monologue, forgoes a plot, and succeeds simply as an over-the-top character piece, thanks to Jodi Lin's performance.)

But when style melds with substance, as in Julia Cho's Round and Round, the result can be heartbreaking: George (Joel de la Fuente) plays a linguist who simply can't find the words to stop his wife, Mary (Jennifer Ikeda), from leaving him. Kate Whoriskey's direction completes the picture, changing genres where appropriate to emphasize the Romance of it all, or the Tragedy, and this device allows Cho to reset time or to speak to the audience without ever seeming cheesy or out of place.

- B-Alive

Photo/Worldwide B

There's really not a lot of ballet in B-Alive, a story (told in dance) of the love between a hip-hop youth and a prim and proper lass. But you won't hear anybody in the audience complaining: they're too busy vibrating in their seats as the b-boy Gorilla Crew breaks down the house. The plot is a little ridiculous, but then again, so are the moves, and B-Alive b-eats out shows like Jump! because it is willing to take itself seriously, backing up the tricks with actual emotion (as shown by the fifteen-minute free-style curtain-call/encore).

Not that the show isn't willing to fool around: the thuggish dancers, who have a more vibratory and harsher stomp to their rhythms (but still a fluidity all their own), are great comic relief, even as bad guys to the heroic dancers who just like to freestyle. And Ahn Byungkoo's direction gets pretty inspired at times, with a black-light battle in which our hero confronts comes into our distressed damsel's dream and fends off an army of glowing, sinuous, spider-like dancers. There are plenty of moments of simple cheese, too -- as with the pompous self-seriousness of the local record shop owner or the playful sternness of the whip-like ballet teacher. The choreography (from Han Sangmin, Kim Woosung, and Shin Ilho) always evens things out, and while there are a few numbers that could be pared down in the interests of specificity, the show only lasts about seventy minutes -- I say, if you've got it, flaunt it.

Almost an Evening and The American Dream/The Sandbox

Photo/Doug Hamilton

Almost an Evening is the right name for Ethan Coen's three one-acts (now transferred to 45 Bleecker): it's almost an evening of theater. Unfortunately, the middle third, "Four Benches," is an empty punchline, and the strained final piece, "Debate," never achieves the effortlessly bleak comedy tackled so well in the opener, "Waiting." The slick, spirited cast keeps the show oiled enough to do more than squeak by, particularly Joey Slotnick, who, despite his character getting stuck in a hellish sort of limbo, is never static himself. Operating with a sense of the sublimely ridiculous, F. Murray Abraham plays God Who Judges with such Carlin-like brio that he earns a slap on the wrist from God Who Loves (a fine Mark Linn-Baker): "This is not David Mamet." No, it's certainly not. But by being acutely aware of that, Almost an Evening gets by with a consistently terse minimalism that's matched by Ilona Somogyi's old-fashioned costumes, Riccardo Hernandez's specific and to-the-point sets, and Neil Pepe's economic direction. (Only Donald Holder's lighting was off, but that's more a problem with the cues than the design.) You may have to stretch the metaphor that Young Woman and Young Man (Atlantic founders Mary McCann and Jordan Lage) use to discuss their relationship, but these plays fuck you in the pussy, not in the heart.

Photo/Gabe Evans

In the first half of The American Dream, Edward Albee's revival of two of his early and absurd one-acts, the first thing you'll notice is probably the color scheme: a red and blue chair, divided by a love seat, with a faded background of American stripes and bars, looking more like a circus prison than wallpaper. That's all fitting, for Mommy (Judith Ivey) and Daddy (George Bartenieff) are -- though they seem tame at first -- animals, living, breathing embodiments of that savage (and soon to be savaged) American Dream. However, the ensuing eighty minutes of awkward pronouncements ("I just giggled and blushed and got sticky wet") have aged about as well as the emasculated, shuffling Daddy -- they have little impact. Part of this is the acting, which is either wooden itself (granted, Lois Markle is a last-minute replacement for Grandma) or as paper-thin as the character: as Young Man, who is literally the American Dream, Harmon Walsh bears a huge responsibility on his shoulders, but he neither snuffs out his emotions nor instills the character with a sense of strength, and this leaves his role with a great deal of ambiguity, as does the play (which isn't even theater of the absurd at its finest). As for The Sandbox, which is shorter than the intermission preceding it, at least it and its Angel of Death (Jesse Williams) are swift.