PLAY: "Wonderland: One-Act Festival"

Wonderland is like one of those traveling carnivals: it's disorganized, it's creaky--the presentation is small in scale and low in budget--BUT . . . it's a thrilling chance to get outside the everyday. The very lack of polish is enticing, and the whole project is an opportunity to catch some new stars in an American Idol-like competition, where judges and audiences determine which of the sixty shows in the "Roller Coaster" round make it through to the twenty-show "Ferris Wheel," from there to the ten-show "Merry-Go-Round" and then the final, three-show "Free Fall."

I can only speak to the events of May 29th's "8:00" performance (delayed until 9:00), but the wait was certainly worth it. Like amusement parks themselves, the wait sometimes has to be worth it, and the mingling crowds of directors, actors, stagehands, and audiences made for some interesting pre-show fun. I also have to admit knowing one of the directors, Whitney Aronson, a classmate of mine in college. But set that aside: I write without bias and the four miniature plays were all entertaining in their own ways, each with a wide range of style.

For instance, Aronson's opening number, The Piazza (which has moved on to the "Ferris Wheel"), was a highly linguistic comedy by Laura Emack that revolved around a man's overblown descriptions and fantasies for his home. Whereas the other three shows all took place in a single scene, this one was filled with transitions (hindered slightly by a paucity of technical rehearsals) but the ambition of the lighting (a visit to a neighbor uses a single overhead light to project a flickering dankness) shone through.

In an entirely different vein was Like Batman (another "Ferris Wheel" contender), a show written and directed (and starring, due to sickness) Bennett Windheim. Structured like a short story, the play opened with the parents addressing the audience directly, to explain how their son had fallen from the roof, but then opens up into a more dramatic lead-up to the fall. Windheim's use of contrast between the poetic description of a plummeting cape and the everyday language of a domestic dispute served him well, but the viewpoints of two neighbors (a Jew and an Italian) ratcheted up the cliche a little too much.

The third show, Eulogy, was the weakest of the bunch: written, directed, and starring Alexis DeLaRosa, the work seemed very personal and, as a result, leaked energy all over the place. But even given the wild gesticulations, the accentuated stomping, and the repetitive blocking, the show had charm, especially with lines like "There are no superheroes--there's just one big supervillain, and that's time."

Of course, if it's lines you want, the dissing contest of Arthur Alleyne's In A Min had the audience cracking up as Jared Robinson and Hannah Davis went way over the top with some of the funniest, dirtiest laughs around. Some of the lines were certainly derivative ("Yeah, most people think I'm gay. [beat] Until I fuck 'em.") and others were straight off the street ("He's pissing sitting down he's so whipped") but the acting sustained the energy, as did Aronson's direction, which made a nice running gag out of an otherwise strained bowel movement.

I'll be heading back to see what makes it to the "Free Fall" round, but the best of the rest will be up before then (6/5 through 6/7) and your vote might help crown a winner. Just because the presentation's hokey doesn't mean the thrills aren't there; see what off-off-Broadway's brewing.

FILM: "Chalk"

Pop those books back open; it's time to go back to school, a place where time is recorded by the weeks, days, minutes, and seconds to the next holiday. Chalk has none of the dry, cough-inducing dangers of its subject: instead, Mike Akel's docucomedy is a nice, intentionally awkward look at how teachers cope with schools and why so many of them quit within the first three years. It's as serious a look as it is a funny one, and despite being scripted, it serves as a good launchpad for Morgan Spurlock Presents, an initiative to produce films with "social relevance."

The film grounds itself in four characters (rounded out by a brilliant ensemble of teachers and students): three teachers at different phases of their careers and a former teacher turned assistant principal. As the first-year newcomer, Mr. Lowrey (Troy Schremmer) is a mess, as much unable to manage himself as his class. He's the total opposite, in fact, from the third-year challenger for Teacher of the Year, the energetic and charismatic Mr. Stroope (Chris Mass). And it's quite another story with the overly competent and pushy second-year gym teacher, Coach Webb (Janelle Schremmer), who is so in control that she can't get a date. The different perspectives are competently handled, but because each character has such unique struggles, its sometimes hard to remember they're in the same school.

Then again, there's only so much a director can reveal in ninety minutes. Akel's best is drawn from short scenes with Mrs. Reddell (Shannon Haragan) that show her panicked attempts to stop fights, find students, deal with parents, and--worse yet--quell teacher complaints. The best moment of the film shows her covering for a late substitute teacher, glowing with the joy of being around students who want to learn.

The film isn't all roses, but it also lacks thorns. Mr. Lowrey is used as a punching bag, but Chalk is a comedy, and his nightmare class lacks the rough edges or violence of a more urban public school. However, it does give Akel the element of surprise: Lowrey's one explosive argument with a student is affecting, whereas Stroope's breakdown smells like melodrama. It's fine to use Teacher of the Year debates to illustrate another aspect of school, but it comes across as a political parable, and it doesn't seem as important as what Lowrey, Webb, and Reddell are going through. The delicate frisson of the classroom just isn't there, nor is the originality of events like the "Spelling Hornet," a slang spelling bee that teachers participate in for the students' entertainment. Instead of being played for laughs, Stroope would be better as a catalyst for big "behind-the-scenes" numbers--a faculty meeting, the teacher's lounge, happy hour--where his personality can get the ensemble loosened up and talking about their never-ending days.

Chalk is done very well, breaking into a genre that Christopher Guest has dominated for the last several years. It rings with truth and is very rarely smarmy: the only scene that calls for an immediate erasure is a dream sequence that is out of place cinematically, dramatically, and thematically. But that's Akel's homework: your do-now exercise should be to grab a bookbag (you can stuff it with snacks) and get down to the theater to watch Chalk. It's not just for blackboards anymore.

PLAY: "The Eaten Heart"

The Eaten Heart, a flawless work of theater performed by The Debate Society, takes place in the Motel "Decameron," a modern version of Boccaccio's epic collection of bawdy allegory. Here, the action takes place in a series of three parallel motel rooms (only the central one is fully exposed), and presents only glimpses of a wide range of characters. But those glimpses, handled by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, are so nuanced (and yet so subtle) that the entire evening is rich with the effect of many lives fully lived. Bos can go from being a raging temptress to a coy loner or a panic-struck singer, often in the same breath. Thureen, a perfect match, turns awkward into quietly sadistic and feeble into gleefully daft, as much satyr as saturnine.

The show only runs an hour, but that time gives us everything from a magician's panic-stricken collapse to a married woman's brief and childlike encounter with the pizza-delivery guy. The absurd is refined by the unsettling jocularity of a man who thinks the voodoo underwear he's wearing makes him invisible; the grotesque is present in a potted plant with some very special soil; the humanity in the brief connection between a pot-smoking sexpot and a mute repairman.

Impressive as these lives in miniature are, the technical precision of this show is what sets it apart. Director Oliver Butler's inventive ability prevails across the entire show, along with that of Amanda Rehbein's conjoined motel rooms, Mike Riggs' thunderstorm-creating lighting design, Sydney Maresca's thousand-and-one costumes, and Nathan Leigh's illusion-creating ("slight-of-ear") sound effects. Along with the outstanding cast, the show continually defies our expectations of the space, and is then able to suckerpunch us by defying our expectations of the characters.

By the time the show ended, I had by no means had my fill of The Eaten Heart: every segment was fresh and filled with theatrical magic. From the expert use of silence to the genius of overlapping two disparate strangers from different times in the same room at the same time, Butler has already found the way to transmute the mundane into the seductive. Such theatrical alchemy has turned The Eaten Heart to gold; indulge it now while you still can.

PLAY: "Lipstick on a Pig"

The big problem with Linda Evans' vague drama Lipstick on a Pig is that it seems so old, from the recycled ideas to the sluggish pace of the plot and the frequent gaps between lines. However, I can't even use the obvious old saying about putting lipstick on a pig to explain where the show goes wrong, because David Epstein's direction does nothing to dress up this play (certainly not the work he did for Coronado): it is what it is, and there's never any confusion about that. Instead, it's just four actors speaking through a stifling silence, set against a bland wall or in a blander hospital bed, and with a randomly rising and ebbing flow to the lighting that is both soporific and out of place.

For all that's wrong with it, the central concept has a lot of promise: an ailing and estranging father winds up with only two family members willing to donate their kidney to him. His daughter, Eaton (pronounced "Eden") is there out of obligation, but also to find an explanation for the childhood cruelties, and his brother, AJ, is there to pay back an unspoken debt -- or perhaps to incur a new one with Eaton. Dennis Hearn, who plays AJ, is a believable sot, the drunken loner who manages to be creepy and charming at the same time. But his interactions between brother (John Farrell) and niece (Christa Kimlicko Jones) are always shadowed by a bit of pretension, and though the family isn't close, it isn't until late in the second act that they seem like anything but strangers.

In two acts, the play is stretched and the interstitial moments are filled with exposition, a lot of which is provided by the unnecessary fourth character, Whitney (Alexis Croucher), who is the nurse in charge of the transplants. The bedside drama becomes unfocused every time she enters, and there's an air of artificiality about her whole role in the procedure. Lipstick on a Pig starts off knowing what story it wants to tell, but never follows through on the drama we'd expect (is AJ actually Eaton's father?) and ultimately dissembles into a shallow pool of melodramatic moments.

PLAY: "The Chronological Secrets of Tim"

The Chronological Secrets of Tim is an energetic melodrama about relationships, but it's not wild enough to titillate, and it doesn't answer enough questions to entertain. The show is one lengthy tease, and the final product makes one a bit blue, so to speak. The writing is intentionally comic, mixed with heavy splashes of roundabout MTV-like chatter, but like Tim himself, the farce just needs to try harder to account for itself. How do you account for a show running long enough to merit an intermission when it's built around a man sitting on a ledge, threatening to jump? How does that premise last two hours? Granted, the rookie negotiator proves that we're not grounded in reality, and that's cemented by Tim's ex-girlfriend Alexandra showing up, and more so when Tim's latest ex-girlfriend Amanda arrives. Not that either of them pulls him down from the ledge, or that either of them really has a reason for being there. They're as much plot devices as they are chances for playwright Janet Zarecor to belittle the self-centered, cheating, egotistical Tim. (Why his parents think he's gay remains a mystery, just like the mysterious journal entry whose threatened revealing is the climax of Act I.)

Sarah Ali does a nice job of focusing our attention on the wings for the chronological flashbacks that occur whenever one of the girls reads from Tim's sexcapade of a journal, and she manages to evoke setting and character with a bare minimum of props. All the actors do a fine job of switching mood between past and present, but it's telling that the show only seems to be alive when it's in the short, segmented realm of the past. There, the narrative has clear actions (or at least a clear punchline); in the present, the single action is stretched beyond plausibility and far too much into monotony. When things are shaken up in the second act, they're not only inconsistent with the limited character and need of the first act, but they don't even pay off.

The Impetuous Theater Group produced The Chronological Secrets of Tim, and it's a good name for their company, as this effort comes across as eager and headlong. (Even the advertising seems rash: why the name Tim is spelled with the lightning-bolt of Harry Potter will forever remain a mystery.) The actors make the most of it, particularly Liz Bangs, who plays all the miscellaneous hook-ups of yore, but after an hour, it's no longer as much fun to watch themselves futilely throw themselves at the script. At that point, we're watching for someone to throw themselves out the window.