PLAY: "Bill W. and Dr. Bob"

Photo/T. Charles Erickson

Considering that Bill W. and Dr. Bob is a play about the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, perhaps it's a good thing that the script, staging, and acting is so dry. Unfortunately, I am not a theatrical teetotaler -- I want my drama to get me drunk. For theatergoers who don't mind sipping from a lukewarm can of Pabst, Bill W. and Dr. Bob is a solidly flat night of history.

In just under two hours, the play speaks on alcoholism as a disease; unites the uncontrollably temperamental Bill Wilson (Robert Krakovski) with his childishly belligerent brother-in-arms, Dr. Bob Smith (Patrick Husted); and dramatizes their formation of and recruitment for AA. Playwrights Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey keep things light when they should be serious by overdosing on the self-deprecating humor, and when it's time to be serious, the actors belittle their too-scripted lines with hammed performances. Marc Carver manages to elevate his role (he plays all the unnamed men in the show) with some masterful character acting, but the overall pacing of this show can't be fixed with funny accents.

When Bill W. first meets Dr. Bob, he gives the Reader's Digest version of his first drink. Bill W. and Dr. Bob is very much a Reader's Digest version of a play. The edges have been softened, and characters don't hit rock bottom so much as skate softly across a slight depression. Because they haven't plummeted, their epiphanies are forced, and their performances remain more-or-less even, on account of having nowhere to go. The word "textbook" is a decent descriptor: director Rick Lombardo's superfluous additions of an onstage pianist (for "mood music") and needlessly shifting wooden panels are very by-the-book.

There are good moments in Bill W. and Dr. Bob, particularly when showing the power of brotherhood and simple communication to overcome even the strongest of liquid demons. But this good work is drowned out by a not-so-hidden agenda: the lionization of two people who, in all fairness, were more impressive when anonymous.

PLAY: "Dying City"

Photo: Sara Krulwich

The biggest problem with Dying City is that Sara Krulwich's lovely photo on the left captures more of the essence of the play than Christopher Shinn's forced passivity. It also means that Dying City, even at an intermissionless 90 minutes, is too long. The text that pads out the show is good, natural writing -- even charming at first -- but the heart of things between Peter and Kelly is all that really matters. The only thing worthwhile about Kelly's life as a therapist is the humorous nickname they give one of her clients ("Fucked Her So Hard She"). The only noteworthy thing about Peter's boyfriends is that he cheats on them; the only solid fact about him is that he's tried to suppress his childhood memories of his father, a Vietnam veteran. The contrived introduction of Peter's twin brother, Craig (whose scenes are set in a differently lit 2004, as opposed to the play's present of 2005), would be fine if Pablo Schrieber (who plays both roles) added a different sheen to each, or if Shinn didn't spend so much of the present recounting moments already written into the flashbacks.

There's also a problem with the gimmicky staging: James Macdonald did a wonderful job with A Number because he left things alone. He seems bored with Dying City, and it shows in his wobbly, imperceptibly rotating wooden plank of a stage. Granted, the Mitzi E. Newhouse theater is in the round, but having the perspectives in constant flux draws attention away from the action and cheapens the audience's attempt to get a grip on a play that's already elusive in theme. The earth is already subtly spinning; must the stage do the same?

Subtlety and subtext are often mistaken for the acts of a brilliant playwright, but they are more generally the signs of an absent conflict. From the moment Peter buzzes Kelly out of the blue-- Kelly, who is in the middle of moving--it's obvious that she doesn't want him there. And yet she continues to let him bully his way into the detritus of her emotional past with Craig; her emotional outburst at the end is as well-deserved as it is absurd. A therapist who can't communicate? That's worth exploring far more than a soldier who mistreats women, or an actor who doesn't know how to live his own life.

Shinn knows how to write, but Dying City feels like he's groping in the dark for a light. In the play, the title is immediately referring to Iraq, but that's too distant a theme in the play. John Stewart plays on TV in the background, and although Craig and Kelly argue about the war, they're not really arguing about the war. We're left to infer that the city dying is our own, the one gripped by isolation and loneliness, and an inability to communicate. Well, at least the play succeeds at doing just that.

FILM: "Reno 911!: Miami"

In the age of Cops, it's perhaps not as necessary to make fun of the police as it once was with Police Squad!, but if there's going to be a film about bumbling procedurals, I'm glad it's Reno 911!. Adapted from the Comedy Central series of the same name (you don't need to see one to enjoy the other), Reno 911!: Miami transplants the mock documentary to the big screen -- and to the bigger city of Miami, as the Reno cops are invited to attend a convention for police officers. (A paraphrased example of the film's humor: "We're going to Miami!" "But why did they invite us?" "Why? Well, I'll tell you. They invited us because... well, they invited everybody." "Right, yes! We'll take it.")

On TV, Reno 911! is mostly improvised, so the dialogue is naturally authentic. It's not clear how much of the film was written by the credited Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, and Kerri Kenney (all of who also star), but after four seasons on air, this group flows well together, and the chemistry makes for some great laughs. The film also allows for some great cameos, with small-screen comedians like Chris Tallman and Michael Ian Black right alongside bigger names like Danny DeVito and Paul Rudd.

Like Borat, the humor of the show is that although the stars are communicating directly with the audience through the cameraman, they seem happily oblivious of how idiotic they are. This allows them to make their comedy stereotypes into blank slates that provide a near-constant stream of laughs, from the cowardly alpha-male S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough) to the sassy, big-bootied black cop Raineesha (Niecy Nash) and her white wanna-be cohort, the pathetic Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney). The freshest dose of humor is provided, however, by their leader, Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon), who is well aware of how pathetic they are, and of how pathetic he is to need them as his only friends.

My admiration for Reno 911!: Miami stems from how well-directed and ambitious the film's sequences are. There are eruptions of blood to make Sam Raimi jealous, there are slow-car chase scenes that (because of the documentary film style) parody even parodies of car chases, and, in the best scene of all, a long pan of one wild night in the International Inn. Set to classical music, the film presents a wide array of comic gold as it moves from room to room on the two-floor building, ultimately climaxing with a zoomed out shot of what all of the officers ultimately wind up doing. This choreographed scene could stand on its own as a brilliant film; as is, it is sometimes dumbed down a little bit by the inept spoofing of Scarface.

Like Borat, much of the humor in Reno 911!: Miami involves wincing, and I won't repeat the best jokes here, because they are profane and because they deserve to keep their surprises. Just understand that there isn't anything in this film beyond the laughter: television characters don't grow any wiser on the big screen, especially when the comedy depends on their stupidity, and nothing ultimately changes. Why that would be a problem for anyone, I don't know: sometimes it's nice to just laugh.

PLAY: "The Jaded Assassin"

If you've been paying attention to martial arts movies, then you already know how that genre flick has grown into far more of an actual art form than the cheesy, badly dubbed, hastily edited films of our youth. Films like Kill Bill, with their choice lighting and dance-rhythms, have become more theatrical, not less, and so it should be no surprise to hear that Big Time Action Theater has put together a live-action response to the whole Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon era. Enter The Jaded Assassin.

The show, set atop a large gymnastic mat (for reasons that should be pretty obvious), uses only a backdrop for staging, though the place and setting aren't what's important. Instead, the script calls for a narrator (Laine D'Souza, stage left) and a Taiko drummer (Malika Duckworth, stage right), and everything else is pretty much left to the actors, who are as athletic as they are hammy. As the script meanders through spoofs of famous martial-arts conventions, the story tells of a young girl, Soon-Jai (Jo-Anne Lee), whose entire tribe was killed by a magical plague that conveniently waited until she had grown into the fiercest warrior in the land. Now, consumed by anger, she hunts the man responsible, an evil wizard named Rektor (Marius Hanford). Joining her is the lovestruck peasant boy, Ouyang Feng (Aaron Haskell) and his father, a wizard (Nick Arens) -- and between them, a whole bunch of talented warriors (Maggie MacDonald, David Solomon Rodriguez, Jason Schumacher, Tonie Tirado).

The Jaded Assassin keeps to a brisk pace: Michael Voyer writes only a few short romantic scenes (flashbacks between Soon-Jai and her dead love, Li), and Timothy Haskell throws in just enough stagecraft (from paper-mache-masked ghosts to bunraku puppet fights to a fullscale shadow war [using the scrim]) to keep the play original before handing the reins back to the fight choreographer, Rod Kinter. Even the fights are playful; this group must have just sat down and thought about what looked cool before thinking about how to stage it, because there are all sorts of gimmicks that are well worth the price of admission. From slow-motion Matrix spoofs to spring-loaded jumps and bungee-cord backflips, The Jaded Assassin is almost always successful. The one exception is a strobe-lit battle with the breakdancing Electricity, which is just a little too sloppy in execution. Aside from that, bring on the ball and chain, spear, sword, katana, and dagger, and turn up the "Seven Nation Army" and "Welcome to the Jungle" soundtrack (to name a few) -- it's time to get crazy on the stage.

BOOK: "The Terror," by Dan Simmons

The Terror isn't historical fiction -- unless you believe in giant demons summoned by Esquimaux shamans -- but with such believably accurate, painstaking depictions and details, Dan Simmons's latest novel might as well be. He takes liberties with the story of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, a voyage that destroyed the HMS Terror and Erebus, but his studious fiction is certainly entertaining.

Written with a cinematic flair, this epic, almost 800 page yarn leaps from character to character with an instantly intimate tone. Although the narrative is third-person (with the exception of some Authentically Capitalized diary entries by the ship surgeon, Dr. Goodsir), the oppressive circumstances endear us to all but the vilest of characters, especially as we realize that Simmons is introducing such a large cast (out of 126 shipmates, at least twenty get their time in the spotlight) so that their inevitable deaths are both more dramatic and more affecting.

And what deaths! For a book that is as much about snuff as it is survival, this is the true Final Destination. If it's not bad enough to be iced in the wintry grip of the endless night and unflinching sea, the crew is mutinous, there's poison if you eat (and scurvy if you don't), the temperature hits negative 100, the sun disappears for months at a time, and there's a giant polar monster (ten times the size of the already fierce white bear) stalking them. Simmons gives us a few flashbacks early in the novel (and a few delirious dream sequences later on), but he keeps the focus on the struggle, and the struggle alone. In a brilliant, time-saving technique, he manages to gloss even important scenes by switching to narrators who are better situated to encapsulate what has just happened. As a result, there is very little repetition, and the scenes Simmons chooses to show us seem more vital and important for their telling.

Of course, not all of these work as well as others: characters like Harry Peglar and John Bridgens are superfluous explicators, included only because of their intellectual ability to link their inhuman adversary with Darwin's early theories. Simmons romantically links the two, but their love is so unconsummated that it is as distant and unnecessary as their story. More often than not, however, the different character perspectives give us a broader view of how the ship works: Blanky, the ice master, gets to demonstrate his deep knowledge of the ship when he is forced to flee the monster in an adrenaline-pumping chapter. Irving's peeping on Silence, a mute Esquimaux girl they "found" on the ice, offers us a lovestruck window into Esquimaux culture; even Captain Franklin, a religious teetotaler, provides a bumbling steadfastness to balance the courageous crassness of the central character, Captain Crozier. (If one wants to make the correlation between Franklin and George W. Bush, "deciders" both, I leave it to you.)

Bold as the book is in its plotting, Simmons doesn't go for much stylistically. His writing is well-honed from his science-fiction background: descriptions crackle with visual flair and dialog does more to accentuate a character than anything else ("You hairy arse-licking rat-fucking piss-drinking spawn of a poxy Highgate whore!"). But the monotone of the third-person narrative does occasionally drift, and the plights of certain characters sometimes bleed into each other's stories. Things are never described the same way, but the same things are often brought up, and the best chapters are the ones devoted to unique events, like the ill-fated Carnivale thrown on New Year's Eve, or the futility of frozen funeral:

"Again we walked back across the creaking, squeaking, moaning ice alone, under the stars dancing in the Cold this time...," "I was always aware of that cold, black, vertical, lifeless and lightless slab of insensate Stone behind me...," and "I can imagine the fusillade of snow pellets already working to eradicate the letters on the wooden headstones."

Simmons also has an uncanny way of making unusual terms easily accessible for the layman. Beyond the descriptions of the ship's inner workings and outer riggings, past the delegation of responsibilities (and privileges) aboard an English ship, and further than the tale of a desperate march across miles of uneven ice, the Esquimaux characters and accessories spring to life as if they were common utilities:

"This vehicle has runners made up of small and carefully shaped pieces of scavenged wood interlinked with walrus ivory. It uses shoes of whalebone and flattened ivory rather than just a layer of peat paste on its runners, although [they] still reapply a layer of ice to the runners several times a day. The cross sections are made up of antlers and the last bits of wood they had, including the sleeping-shelf slat; the rising rear posts are composed of heavily lashed antlers and walrus ivory."

Despite the repetition of "walrus ivory," that's still a nicely poetic description, one that slides right into the text, from the alliterative "sleeping-shelf slat" to the "rising rear posts." Both technical and illustrative, it's an example of how well Simmons ties everything together.

The Terror is a bleak, almost masochistic tale of brave, stupid men. The constant close encounters keep readers on the edge of their seats, and the story is rendered even more gripping by the knowledge that every day, death creeps a little closer: man struggles with beast, nature, and himself, all at once. Finally, the author's own savagery toward his own characters lends his novel the excitement of a show like Lost: no character is safe, and no question is ever neatly answered . . . we need to see more.