Yellow Moon

For something so simple -- four chairs, four actors, no lighting cues -- Yellow Moon is pretty complex. Subtitled "The Ballad of Leila and Lee" (though only one of the twenty short scenes is technically a ballad), the play follows the tragic romance formed between delinquent Lee and "Silent" Leila after an act of self-defense goes horribly wrong. It's a familiar story, so David Greig presents it in a mix of narrative voices, the result of which is an often muddled adventure that is defined more by language than acting -- a work of forced poetic perspective. Yellow Moon is less like a ballad than like an elaborate ballet, in which the dancers narrate every step.

So here's the familiar part: the good girl, Leila Suleiman (Nalini Chetty), is secretly naughty, an alienated Muslim girl who finds her reality between the glossy pages of celebrity magazines, and who only feels alive when cutting herself. As for the bad guy, "Stag" Lee Macalinden (Andrew Scott-Ramsay), he's just an awkward boy trying to drink his reputation to match that of the notorious father who abandoned him. The two fall in love (though it's a static sort of love, not an electric one), and, after an accidental death, find themselves at "8. . . the part of the story where Leila and Lee go on the run to the highlands and nearly die." (It's also the part where Greig strains credibility so as to better spin a tall tale.)

And here's what's new: after establishing these standard tropes -- adoration from afar, tense meetings, brief arguments, youthful conflict, and awkward groping -- Greig turns his attention to the interior, making the cast into a chorus of mental synapses that fire off alternating thoughts in response to the onstage action. Hence the inevitable sex scene comes across half as shy fumbling and half as "He puts his hand onto your hip and under your t-shirt, but he's anxious, he moves too fast. He puts his hand up your top but you move it away because you want him to slow down. He puts his hands between your legs but you move it away because you just want him to breathe, calm and slow and then he says: 'Do you want me to finger you?'"

At these moments, Yellow Moon finds an exciting momentum that is almost spellbinding. However, these scenes are constantly broken by reminders that we're watching a play, or worse, by the secondary characters -- like Holly (Beth Marshall), a B-list celebrity who mirrors Leila's obsession, but fails to flesh it out; and Drunk Frank (Keith MacPherson), the groundskeeper with a secret who forcibly befriends the two escapees, but remains a blank albeit gruff slate. These interruptions prevent the play from spiraling into melodrama, but they also tightly cap the emotions of the show. Guy Hollands uncorks things as best he can: he puts the storytellers in the round, forcing them to play out to the audience, and by restricting props, forces the glorified stage directions (mental directions is a better term) to match the physicality of the action -- hence Beth and Keith, while describing Leila and Lee's near-death experience on a frozen pass, must compete with Andrew and Nalini's physical reactions to that imaginary cold.

What you get out of Yellow Moon is really a matter of what you'll get out of Brits off Broadway: it's a chance to sample a foreign style of writing, performed at a top-notch level. Though that style may not be to your taste, as I found, there's still plenty to admire in the attempt.

crooked

As Laney reads her short story aloud, towering and hunching over her mother, she takes particular relish in her final line: "Instead of serving up lemonade, he served up bullets, straight between the eyes." What teenage daughter wouldn't want to shock their parent, especially one who blames her mother for leaving her father and moving her from comfortable Wisconsin to cruel Mississippi. (Never mind that her dad came into her room with a knife, thinking he was Abraham and she Isaac.) "Did you feel your arm hairs rise like you'd just been electrocuted?" she asks, halfway between a squeal and a gasp. "Well," her mother responds, ever the list-making pragmatist, "the ending comes out of nowhere . . . . maybe you should make it a little more realistic?" Ugh, mo-om!

The stories may be darkly fantastical (like short snippets of The Pillowman), and the teen angst may flood the set (much like From Up Here), but Catherine Treischmann never lets the clash between imagination and realism get the best of her. As a result, crooked's plot bends and twists just enough to let the characters go straight for the heart. It's this honesty that allows Laney to not only befriend Maribel -- a fellow outcast, shunned for her remedial status, obesity, and evangelicalism -- but to possibly love her. It's that naked need for acceptance that lets crooked make hell a necessity: "There has to be a punishment for people who sin and sin and keep sinning. If there isn't everlasting hell, then Hitler and Stalin and Deedee Cummings will never get punished for what they did."

It's that thought, taken one step further, that obliges us to take this blind faith seriously. In the best scene of the play, Laney genuinely opens herself up to god, aching to believe in someone who can heal her heart, or at least her hunched back. Nothing happens, but while Laney retreats into bitterness, Maribel gives Treischmann an entry point to follow real faith: "I ask that you forgive me," she says, tearfully praying for her friend, "for not being a better witness to Laney, because if I had been a better witness, I know that she would have felt you, because I know you know never say no to anybody, and if Laney thought you said no, it must be because I did something wrong." And just like that, in the sublime calm that characterizes many of the modern plays tackling religion (think 100 Saints You Should Know), the two girls share a moment of rare beauty. The playwright describes it as electric: it is.

Although crooked is billed as a comedy, Liz Diamond does the play a real service by holding the play up to this level of performance, refusing to let this important clash of world views descend into cheap comedy. Carmen M. Herlihy's Maribel is absolutely heartbreaking, a fragile, isolated girl whose belief in invisible stigmata is just a step away from self-cutting. Herlihy fills the role out, refusing to be "stupid," "religious," or any other dismissively one-dimensional adjective. Instead, she's the most sympathetic of the characters (though no-one in the play is cruel: another reason why crooked is so tearfully powerful).

The play ends in the middle of the climax, with Elise (Betsy Aidem) expressing her love for Laney (Cristin Milioti) in religious terms ("I have a love for you that surpasses all understanding"), and Maribel confronting her religion with physical action. It's a broad moment, yet sharply specific too, though it's no surprise that a play with a name like crooked refuses to be bound to the straight and narrow.

Babylon, Babylon

Photo/Ken Stein

A cast of thirty, an epic story right out of 530 B.C., a fantastical emphasis on the sexual rites of Ishtar (sexy costumes included), and compelling and tumultuous choreography. It's a wonderfully daring illusion and incredibly ambitious challenge for the small, off-off-Broadway Brick theater. And for a while, that illusion holds: it's hard not to be stunned as the entire cast enters, pantomiming the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. After that, we're lost a bit in absorbing all the characters as they return, this time as worshipers of Ishtar, paying their fearful respects to the goddess of love and war as the Persian army barks at the gates to Babylon.

But after a while, the audience is close enough to see the illusion for what it is: an assembly of unfinished thoughts. Zakiti has brought her virgin sister, Alittum, to the temple, but Rasha Zamamiri plays the elder sister as little more than a horny Babylonian, and Melina Gag-Artigas just contents herself with sitting around, waiting for the dramatic focus to turn to her, just in time for her to suddenly kick up a fight when Sharrukin turns his eyes to her. At least Kamran Khan, who plays this ruthless role, has a clear goal -- he wants to fuck a virgin, and with the brothels all closed, he'll settle for the decayed and decadent worship of the temple. These aren't bad actors, but they exist simply to make noise and provide for the illusion of substance on stage. There's no narrative force driving them on, so when it's their turn (the other actors sit idly on their cushions), they have little more to do than pseudo-historical exposition.

It's very hard to hold up such a grant act under such close scrutiny, but with the cast sandwiched between two long rows of expectant audience members, it's hard to overlook the lackluster gaps, such as the fact that Labbu (Adrian Jevicki) is just a man in a white bodysuit, a mane lashed to his head and tail tied to his ass. And it doesn't help either that the young lovers, Iltani and Timgiratee (Gyda Arber and Fred Backus) and their friends, Amata and Demeetresu (Toya Lillard and Eric Bland) sound as American as apple pie, valley girl slang and all. Looking at The Sparrow (Aaron Barker), I always felt like I was watching an actor; after the show, he stood outside in his animal skins, smoking a cigarette in the afternoon sun. All these things stack the deck against the dazzling effect Jeff Lewoncyzk is going for.

The close proximity plays other problems too: perspective goes all out of focus, as when scenes overlap at opposite ends of the stage. Acolyte Niiqquulamuusu (Robert Pinnock) tells one story of Marduk, while Ku-Baba (Michele Carlo) gives her own take on the old gods, but it's hard to figure out what's going on: it's too much, too close, like getting caught up in the Tigris. The artificial climax just makes things worse, with the violent chaos being hopelessly comedic: fight choreography always seems a little ridiculous when punches are pulled inches from your eyes. And while we're talking of perspective, introducing a modern American soldier (Adam Swiderski), whether it's through the Cassandra-like Gemekaa's (Maggie Cino) vision or not, doesn't exactly ground the show in history, and strains far too much for political relevance (the ruins of Babylon are in Iraq) that should be beside the point of a show like Babylon, Babylon.

Of course, in a show this epic, there are also bound to be spots of brilliance: the morality of slavery is exaggerated by Kullaa's (Robin Reed) reign over Yadidatum (Siobhan Doherty) and Ubar (Danny Bowes), but the two secret lovers find some nice quiet moments. The same goes for Belshazzar (Michael Criscuolo), the prince-in-hiding, who speaks politics with his cousin, the High Priestess (Hope Cartelli) just as easily as he falls for the sweet mountain girl, Ettu (Iracel Rivero), a person so non-judgmental and sweet that she might as well be the anti-me. If only there were time to develop the story instead of simply conjuring it up, Babylon, Babylon might find true magic. Instead, I found myself always looking up the sleeve and behind the curtain of every scene, waiting and wanting to be impressed. That would've been a small miracle.

God's Ear

Photo/Carol Rosegg

"I lost my umbrella," says Ted, struggling to find a place within in the stifling normalcy from which he can speak to his wife. "You could have bought a new one," responds Mel (short for Melanoma, but more appropriately, for Melancholy). "I wanted to get home," he punches back. "I'm glad you're home," says Mel, clipping into the rhythm (a sort of verbally repetitious but vocally fresh beat, the sort relentlessly fueled by subtext). "I'm glad I'm home, too," says Ted, pausing only for a moment before adding, "I missed you." "I missed you, too," Mel replies, simply. "No, but I really missed you," says Ted, with the sort of banal logic on which the fate of the world, or at least God's Ear, hangs. "Those are just words to you," he continues, "but I mean it." And that's the miracle of Jenny Schwartz's writing: for all the patters and patterns, underneath the monologues steeped in cliché or those surrounded by trivia, she means it, every last word. (I'd expect no less from a playwright who retypes every word in every draft.)

This literary aestheticism is necessary, too, for God's Ear is about a family trying to cover up their sadness, first by burying it under the surface, then by refusing to talk about it, and finally by shushing it away, either with streams of directed nonsense or with an anesthetic and forced normalcy. The play pits the dark truth against the pretty fiction, at times speaking entirely from subtext (imagine a commercial Chekhov), and then turns to a magical realism in which figments like the Tooth Fairy, GI Joe, and "a transvestite stewardess with a gun to my head," take on flesh. As they burst to the surface, the characters descend into their own personal underworlds, meeting in the midpoint of reality and fantasy, though always grounded by the gentle cadence of the text. At one point, when Ted is asked what he wants by a "transvestite stewardess with a gun to my head" that he has conjured up, he faces his son's tragic death:

I want to watch my son grow up and get married. Or grow up and not get married. I don't care if my son gets married. I just want my son to grow up and be happy. I just want my son to grow old and be safe. I just want my son to outlive me by a million and one years. By a million and two years. I just want my son to outlive me by a million and three years. I just want my tears to roll up my face instead of down my face. I just want my tears to defy the laws of gravity. I just want my son to defy the laws of nature. I just want a drink.

This is the sort of exaggerated truth that leads to deep revelation, a technique on par with the off-kilter plots and characters of, say, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone. In another scene, Mel -- provoked by the powerful prodding of her daughter's "Why?" -- quickly crescendos through a series of accusations: her husband uses call-girls because he's lonely, bored, weak, and pathetic. That this isn't true is beyond the point (Ted attempts an affair with Lenora, another lonely soul, looking for the right mix of compliments and liquor to drown out their grief); in the wake of their son's death, all that exists for these characters is what is within their own minds.

If the play sounds difficult to digest, worry not: the show is superbly directed by Anne Kauffman, who takes the text -- off-kilter as it is -- literally enough to make it work. Kris Stone's staging is a smooth blue-paneled floor, shiny and unblemished at first, but slowly pockmarked with problems, as characters surface from beneath the panels, metaphors springing to life from the repressed underground. The same goes for Tyler Micoleau's lighting, which one could almost call poetic, in the way it dabs, dashes, and caresses the action -- never brightly illuminating any one thing, but always keeping our attention fixed on the drama. Aesthetically, the design is as pitch perfect as the dialog -- even Olivera Gajic's costuming fits the characters, with loose, baggy clothing (or a disheveled suit) given to the mourners and a tattered wings for the Tooth Fairy.

As for the cast, there's a reason most of the actors from last year's production are being used again. These lines live within them, and I can't imagine hearing Mel (Christina Kirk) speak without that lisp, or Ted (Gibson Frazier) speak without that stubbly regret. The one newcomer, Rebecca Wisocky, is the right choice: she now steals the show -- so infectiously giddy that her Lenora's vulnerability is all the more sad. From the menace in Matthew Montelongo's stewardess ("There's no need to panic, but you certainly shouldn't relax") to Judith Greentree's matter-of-fact Tooth Fairy ("Aloe is nature's way of saying sorry"), these actors find otherness, but never abandon the basic humanity that anchors the entire play -- in particular, Monique Vukovic, who, as the daughter, Lanie, delivers a long monologue comprised of trivia ("Did you know that avocados are the good kind of fat?"). As she speaks, she emulates other people, but the effect doesn't make her seem too old -- rather, she seems too young, trying to hide her age with an impersonation of TV wisdom. All the actors -- and let me not leave out Raymond McAnally's rootin'-tootin' "normal" Guy -- have such remarkable ranges that the staggering scale of this script seems to be no trouble at all.

God's Ear is highly recommended, on all levels, as an alternative play that manages to be more than an original voice or a clever device. I'm not repressing anything beyond a wall of grief, so whereas Jenny Schwartz has to take the long road, I'll be direct: you must see this heartbreaking show. It is fresh, funny, poignant, and a phenomenal use of talent.

When Is a Clock

Photo/Kyle Ancowitz

Matthew Freeman's new play When Is a Clock is begging to be reset. At its heart, there's an ornate metaphysical mystery (something of a cross between Paul Auster and Jorge Luis Borges), with the sort of creepy poetry that allows dandruff to be described as "shavings . . . like someone put a little cheese grater to his milky skull" and a woman's transformation into a clock as "Her legs curled up inside her, her arms wrapped backwards, her head lowered into her widening neck. All of this sounds so . . . thundering and bizarre. But it was graceful. Like origami." But around this well-fashioned analog core, there's a slick, winking digital comedy that seems like effluvium from Mr. Freeman's recent, pointed one-acts (Trayf and The White Swallow). A clock can track both night and day, but When Is a Clock would keep better time if it excised the shallow office scenes, toned down the exaggerated cop, and focused on the family drama. (Don't get me wrong: I like Freeman's talented usual suspects, Matthew Trumbull and David DelGrosso, but here, they are more distracting than helpful.)

Just to be clear, Gordon (Tom Staggs) describes himself as such: "I bloom. I molt. I get well. I get ill." When his wife, Bronwyn (Tracey Gilbert), suddenly vanishes, it's not a total surprise: Gordon is soft, and he has raised his idiotic son, Alex (Beau Allulli) to be the same; as he puts it, he's not even strong enough to be abusive. However, these-grand-scheme-of-things declarations ("I decided, then and there, then and there, that I was going to be in love with her") are at odds with Gordon's decisive quest to find his wife, a chronologically fragmented romp through Pennsylvania. They also don't match up with Gordon's affairs; Lucy (Megan Tusing) points out, after she's had a "towel laid under her ass," that he doesn't even bother to hide the ring. Nor do they match with the way Staggs plays the role -- how (or really, why) a milquetoast like him goes about picking up underage girls is beyond me.

Bronwyn, on the other hand, has significantly more development: she longs for change, not just in her routine life, but in her own physical body. ("I'll always have only my eyes. My hands. My wrists.") As a result, she is drawn to the creepy, soft-spoken Sean (Ian Gould, who makes the role a bit too childish), the metaphorical and actual other man who is able to transform her into a clock. Unfortunately, many of these key scenes are set behind a scrim that's never transparent enough. I'd say that Kyle Ancowitz chooses this staging to represent moments that happen outside Gordon's narrative voice, except that scenes between Alex and the Cop operate without any such illusion. What's more, while these lines read well in a script, on stage, shuffled between off-handedly comic moments, it's easy to miss Bronwyn's lack of empathy: "If you can't take care of your children, you will not learn how to. If you can't cry when something terrible happens, but you can cry at Kleenex commercials, in the end, you will find yourself empty and cold and that's not something you can decide. [Pause] I cannot do anything. I could not. I could not do anything."

I make these criticisms because, for all that, When Is a Clock is a blast of originality. Mr. Freeman has a strong, richly descriptive voice that is well-served by the stretches of desolate narrative, and the complex ideas at play are the better for all the simple details. At one point, Sean describes the invention of the moving image, a device created from the pure desire to know and capture what is happening. This is what the good playwright does; as he puts it, "We watch things move, because it's impossible." However, the playwright falls into his own trap, for the reverse of that purity is what the moving image became -- simple entertainment -- and with such overt and unnecessary comic scenes weighing down that elegant motion, When Is a Clock is just going around in circles.