You May Be Splendid Now

Photo/Aaron Epstein

Even if they've already grown up and left home, the question "It's 2:00 in the morning; do you know where your children are?" can leave some in a panic. Not so for the Carters: for the last six years, their twins, Lacy (Lauren Glover) and Skip (Nick Lehane), have been at Haverdale's public-access studio, taping a classy (read: undeniably cheesy) homage to Johnny Carson. But that's not the question playwright Dan Moyer's asking. Instead, recognizing that comfort can be crippling, You May Be Splendid Now begins at the end: the swan-song episode of "Up Late With Skip Carter."

It's a great premise, well-executed by director Will Brill and his chemically combustible cast, for it delivers all the unexpected surprises of a premiere as well as the high-rated drama of a finale, not to mention a wealth of rich "memories" to pull from. There's a sense of real history between the twins, and although Carl, their socially awkward sound guy, is very much on the outside of that duo, it's thrilling to watch him try to get more involved. (It's tempting to say that Gabriel Millman is criminally underused--except that he's always on stage, using his lizard-eyed expressions and silent stage presence to really add to the tension without stealing from it, the mark of an excellent actor.) The only stumbling point in the play is their guest, Branson Burger-James (Dan Wohl), who, despite being the saddest, least-frightening death-metal goth ever, adds nothing to the plot or themes of the play.

Fortunately, Moyer's concept more or less forces him to stay on topic, and the endearing goofiness of the banter between Lacy and Skip makes it easy to focus on their relationship. ("We wanted to hit the ground running," he says. "Ow," she replies, and then, as an intentionally overheard aside, "That was the ground.") And that's no surprise, given how complex these characters turn out to be: Lehane channels a mix between the daft innocence of Pee-Wee Herman and the bitter adulthood of David Letterman, while Glover starts out like a wide-eyed fan (ala Kristen Schaal on Flight of the Conchords) only to end up blossoming into a grownup with a wild streak (think Zooey Deschanal). Their strong connection and comic timing allows Brill to slowplay the crescendo in Moyer's script, which in turn makes all the action on stage feel more earned, and authentic.

Above all, You May Be Splendid Now allows that "you" to really be emphasized; it would take a hard-heart to look back on the bonds of family and friendship without our own empathy and regret.

Teaser Cow

Photo/Amanda Culp

If there's anything Clay MacLeod Chapman should have learned from researching the horrible deeds of the fast-food and livestock industries (to say nothing of the theatrical industry), it's that you can't rush it. Using a teaser cow's artificial vagina to capture prime bull semen may seem like a good idea at the time (well, an efficient idea), but in actuality, it's just a way for everyone to get fucked faster. That's what's happened here with Chapman's collaboration with the Greek-centric company One Year Lease: he's rushed to turn Crete into a corporation, and in doing so, has compromised much of his uniquely descriptive and subtle flavors.

While some of his monologues still work--particularly those focused on Minos (Gregory Waller), his wife, Pasiphae (Sarah-Jane Casey) and daughter, Ariadne (Christina Bennett Lind)--everything seems so explicit and exaggerated that it loses the texture that made it unique in the first place. It makes little sense for Daedalus (Nick Flint) to break into a song-and-dance explanation of the steroidal raising (some might say razing) of cows, and less for Theseus (Danny Bernardy) to abruptly shift from awkwardly feeling up Ariadne to turning her half-brother, the minotaur, into a pinata, save that the plot must go on. Jim Kane does a fine job as the disgruntled mascot, the Royal "We," but is far too tangential, whereas the Midwife, crucial to the plot, is masked by Babis Gousias's thick accent. Worse, though James Hunting has provided Teaser Cow with a wonderfully cruel kitchen set--cold, industrial steel and laughably "sterile" whites--director Ianthe Demos often obscures it with a scrim, or symbolic lighting, each time taking things further from the solid conditions that Chapman, and this play, work best under.

Thankfully, the central concept is largely untouched, largely on account of its cleverness: "We treat our meat like family!" proclaims Minos, but the way in which he and Ariadne shun the meat that is part of their family (the Minotaur) makes it clear that that's a less than sterling guarantee. "If you're ever wondering whether or not you were a product of love," he says, "I would have to say a product? Yes, most definitely. Of love? Maybe you should save that question for your siblings." The Minotaur's mother "loves" him so much that she needs to drink herself silly ("When you were little, you always loved it when I stood over your cradle, holding an empty gin and tonic in my hand") and his sister "loves" him to the point that "I would press that teddy bear against your face a little longer each evening, seeing just how long I could hold it there before compassion overcame me." (The midwife, too, tries to kill the Minotaur, as a kindness.) Cruelties, inflicted with the most mundane of objects, are the secret weapons of Chapman's arsenal, and there's nothing stronger than scenes in which Pasiphae explains the seismic pain of giving birth to a half-bull child, or cleverer than when Ariadne, desperate to be liked by her peers, goes cow-tipping, only to get stranded in a "living labyrinth of cattle."

Plenty of good ideas and good actors have been herded together in the making of Teaser Cow, but ultimately, beyond the scattershot presentation and crammed-together approach, what's missing is that industry catchword: synergy. You just can't mock industrial productions without it.

The Luck of the IBIS

Photo/Aaron Epstein

Not since Jollyship the Whiz-Bang has such an outlandish concept actually worked, but between Jonathan A. Goldberg's eccentrically beautiful narrative and Tom Ridgely's lavishly inventive aesthetic, The Luck of the IBIS is a top-flight production. Always one comically clever step ahead of the audience, Goldberg (who could just as easily have been named Rube) manages to operate on many levels at once, satirizing young-adult literature while at the same time being sweetly nostalgic for it. Of course, that's sort of the point--he's putting weight behind what appear at first to be frivolities, reminding us from the get-go that no matter what we invent, there are always consequences.

It's a lesson learned right off the bat: Metonymy Jones (Jocelyn Kuritsky), rocking a sort of goth-chic fashion, is looking for her twin sister, Parrhesia (Jessica Pohly), unaware that she's just been thrown into the sea by the lovestruck yet intensely superstitious Captain Kraken (Nathaniel Kent). To find her, she reunites with an old friend, the former child-detective Clewrissa Baumberg (Amy Landon). So far, that's riffing on Tom Swift adventures, Nancy Drew mysteries, and that's to say nothing of the Amish ghosts, colossal squids, and--of course--the looming father figure/secret villain, He (Brendan Donaldson). It's a sort of refrigerator-box noir, in which milk crates become airplanes, and Ridgley, who normally does musical mash-ups with the company Waterwell, is built for this sort of Calvin-and-Hobbesian rhythm.

The real secret, however, is that The Luck of the IBIS isn't nearly as zany as it sounds. All these antics--and talented actors like Kent play it to the ever-lovin' hilt, especially in his role as a Clewrissa's coffee-drinking chupacabre husband--are Metonymy's way of dealing with her own personal issues. Goldberg's writing sneaks up on the audience, too, because the story is written as a pseudo-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, so that scenes take on entirely new meanings as the past and future start to coalesce. And yet, it's never overbearing--in fact, even the most radical scene, in which a refugee shrimp (the hilarious Landon) recounts the fate of its people, is wholly believable and understandable. What it remains, however, is endlessly surprising: one scene in the play happens twice, but even though one of the characters has the same lines, the shift from her partner reveals a far more tragic interpretation.

Striking as it may seem, everything that occurs in the play is justified--even its constant references to Ronald Reagan. If you believe, as the play and the ancient Greeks do, that we create things to help forget the horrible cost of living, then The Luck of the IBIS is a terrific way to pay off that debt. And if you don't believe, well, isn't it wonderful to find a play that reminds us that it's not to late to learn to do so?

The Mike and Morgan Show

Photo/Aaron Epstein

It's been three years since Mike (Brian Miskell) lost his best friend, Morgan (Emma Galvin), but at last, he's coming out of his fugue--by writing himself into a play in which Morgan's still alive, appropriately called The Mike and Morgan Show. It's not wishful thinking, at least not in the hands of playwright Raphael Bob-Waksberg; it's wistful thinking, drama-as-catharsis. Nor is it self-centered to the point of isolation--quite the opposite, for Mike wants us to love Morgan, too, so that he can justify the depths of his funk. Thankfully, Galvin is all the excuse one needs to be indulgent; from the moment she steps on stage ("Yugga yugga, Mike!"), a crass, tomboyish ball of fire, we're in for a treat.

Or at least, we would be, if it were just The Morgan Show; instead, the narrative is stiflingly rigid, locked into Mike's repetitions and neuroses (his Jewish parents, you might say, follow him around throughout the show) and too aware of its self-referential structure to build up momentum. (In fact, the play reaches a powerful conclusion about forty-five minutes in . . . and then continues for another thirty.) Lacy Post's direction struggles to resolve the give-and-take between Mike and Morgan; the set itself, which is just a bunch of meaningless lamps strewn around the stage, is an example of Mike; scenes in which the two decide to remake a bad memory as an old-school detective film are examples of Morgan.

The more energetic The Mike and Morgan Show gets, the easier it is to overlook its flaws. For instance, the build-up is often cleverer than the resolution, and some of the reveals come out of left-field (like much of the second season of Friday Night Lights). While it makes sense that the second half of the play will be more tragic than the first, given Morgan's ultimate, inescapable death; it's just unfortunate that Bob-Waksberg feels the need to slow down and strip away his winning wit in order to do so. "I'm not ruthless," says Morgan, "I've got plenty of ruth." In that light, The Mike and Morgan Show is sweetly romantic (though sadly, a bit too platonic), but too reck--that is, not reckless enough.

metaDRAMA: "So What's the Big Deal?"

James Patterson, who was profiled for this week's New York Times Magazine, had this to say about his detractors ("these people who call themselves open-minded but then make judgments about what I write"): "Well, these people like it. They're happy. So what's the big deal?"

It's an interesting question, and a fair one, especially given the recent spate of critic-proof shows--both in terms of those that cannot be commercially saved by praise, and those sugary bits of pap that soldier on despite those who hate them. More people will have seen MTV's "Jersey Shore" than will have seen Young Jean Lee's "The Shipment"--even with the latter now being available online. Despite the fact that Lee's piece does as much (if not more) to talk about the dangers of stereotype as MTV's programming does to sustain and nurture its cliches. The reason why we talk about "The Shipment"--or at least, why I emphasize theater reviews as opposed to the higher-hit-generating, wider-ranged film and book reviews--is because it's important.

To get back to Patterson, the "big deal"--and reason for criticism despite its "mass" appeal is that titanic name-brand authors not only drown out other voices--they rewrite them. As David Cote wrote in his review of Lear, "we lack a critical vocabulary to evaluate badly behaved plays; that is our collective cultural failure." If we focus only on Broadway (i.e., Patterson), we lose our ability to evaluate theater (literature). There is nothing inherently wrong with "enjoying" Patterson, but to give up on other authors because they aren't like Patterson--often without even giving them a chance--that's the big deal. In fact, that's the danger. (As my father often tells me, the danger isn't in people like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. It's in a culture that only listens to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and then calls that news.)

The fact that Patterson churns out nine formulaic books a year, many of which are co-written--ala the Stratemeyer Syndicate--isn't the problem, and he should take pride in the happiness he gives people. But the fact that his blockbuster publishing strategies, honed from his years in advertising, have wound up eclipsing other authors, authors who have original and valuable things to say--well, that's troubling.

If you go to Barnes and Nobles looking for a new book, and all you see are wall-to-wall displays for Charlaine Harris and Stephanie Meyer, you might not even realize you're missing the rest of the store. (It's even worse online, where it's harder to accidentally browse.) This is akin to the issue of Broadway, which makes it hard to tell that there's anything else playing. You've heard of Times Square and Wicked, but probably know nothing about Soho and Lear. (And if you do, perhaps because you're literate enough to recognize a big Don DeLilo-esque name, how about Access Theater and Luck of the Ibis?)

That's where criticism comes in. It has to slam your book, because that's the only way to make a reader pause long enough to consider that there's other stuff out there. Provide enough comparisons, show enough discerning and taste, and maybe you can convince people to give other works a chance, remind people that delicious as ice cream might be, it's a shame to spend the rest of your life eating nothing but ice cream. The fact that people enjoy junk foods is not a reason to blithely go along with supporting the junk food industry--it's a reason to point out the failings and to attempt to explain why a Patterson book is about as nuanced as a Twinkie.

In some ways, this gets to the whole argument that was going around the theatrosphere a few weeks ago, about the value of that great overshadower, Shakespeare, and about the importance of producing new works--even if (or especially because) they were not as good. Simply for the different, inspired ideas. To be stagnant or repetitive, to be entertained just for the sake of being entertained--that is the mark of nothing more than Zombie culture, with its forever cries of "Brains! Brains!" It was not until Conan O'Brien started doing things differently that his younger audiences started watching again, rapt and overjoyed once again by the surprising appeal of possibility.

The big deal is that there's no big idea, and people have grown to call that ideal.