THEATER: The Hallway Trilogy (Part 1: Rose & Part 2: Paraffin)

[Note: Due to an unfortunate circumstance, I was unable to see Part 3: Nursing, by today's opening. Given how unrelated the first two plays were, and how strongly negative my reaction to them was, I've decided to run the review based only on coverage of Parts 1 and 2. Those were so disappointingly incomplete that I doubt anyone would even notice my omission, but since Nursing sounded the best of the bunch, and because Rapp's certainly capable of greatness, I wanted to be perfectly clear.]

Hallways are a means of transport, not really a destination in of themselves, a fact that is painfully obvious throughout the first two parts of Adam Rapp's Hallway Trilogy. By setting his three plays at fifty year intervals, from 1953's Rose to 2003's Paraffin and 2053's Nursing, Rapp gives himself the leeway to write more about time than character, but his exaggerated vagueness showcases neither. Instead, these plays relentlessly -- and pointlessly -- combine the many versions of Rapp, from the embittered Kindness to the absurd Essential Self-Defense to the violent Bingo with the Indians (lacking, most notably, the intellectual and emotional strengths questioned in The Metal Children).

Rose opens with a familiar scenario: a woman behind on rent, Mary (Julianne Nicholson), uses her femininity to "negotiate" re-entry to her apartment by sleeping with her ogre-like superintendent, Mr. O'Neil (Guy Boyd). Our sympathy fades, however, as it comes out that she's already somewhat of a gold digger, banished back to this Lower East Side tenement with her sister, Megan (Sarah Lemp), after her twice-as-old and many-times-as-rich fiancee caught her cheating on him. Rapp similarly strips away our feelings toward Orest (William Apps), a semi-talented Russian musician stuck caring for his obese mother, when the man abruptly scorns Megan (who he had at one point courted), going so far as to spit at her feet without cause. It's just as hard to care for Jerry (Louis Cancelmi), a nerdy, tight-strung guy: his obsession with Mary is so inexplicable and aggressive -- especially given his Princeton education -- that he's downright creepy.

Even the supposed heart of the play, Rose (Katherine Waterston), fails to leave an impression, mainly because her endearingly fragile mannerisms quickly give way to full-on delusions: she's yet another would-be actress, and she's convinced herself that Mr. O'Neil is actually Eugene O'Neill, whom she once auditioned for, even though the playwright has just died. In the sense that Rose is all about the shattering of dreams and the acceptance of a rather squalid reality -- the play ends with Rose's worried and loving husband, Richard (Logan Marshall-Green), hopelessly waiting for her to return -- it fits that era of dramatic literature. (To be fair, such tragedy has never really gone out of fashion.) But the play is stylistically at odds with itself: a silent clown named Marbles (Nick Lawson) causes mischief; a gangster stereotype named Louie Zappoletto (Danny Mastrogiorgio) drops in to take control of the building's management; Jerry is actually a secret Communist, which gives Rapp room to rant; and Rose just wanders off into an abandoned and supposedly haunted apartment, presumably to commit suicide. Let's just say these plots are far from synergistic.

We come to Paraffin with higher expectations, but it, too, is both a retread and a mash-up of other work. The familiar opening this time -- albeit graphically and effectively staged by Daniel Aukin -- involves the latest in a series of disappointments for the pregnant Margot (Nicholson), as she wakes up to find her rocker husband, Denny (Apps), passed out in the hallway, shirtless but unfortunately not shit-less. Despite her cautious kindness in cleaning him up, he attempts to pawn more of her things, which only makes his brother Lucas (Jeremy Strong), who catches him in the act, resent him -- and covet Margot -- even more. Thankfully, although Lucas is a disgusting human, who uses his Afghanistan War-acquired injury as an excuse to openly fondle his balls in front of his prude Israeli neighbor, Rahel (Maria Dizzia) and her straightforward husband, Ido (Robert Beitzel), Margot is a fully-fleshed character.

If only the plotting were as thought-out. Instead, it turns to the hackneyed, as Margot's best friend Dena (Sue Jean Kim) takes a message from the thuggish Polish stereotype Leshik (Lawson) -- one that involves various large piercing implements and horny, disease-riddled animals subsequently being unleashed on those holes -- regarding the immediate payment of Denny's considerable drug debt. As a result, Rapp is unable to focus on the impromptu sense of community the blackout causes to form between Margot, Dena, Lucas, and their neighbors: a socially awkward Kevin (Mastrogiorgio) and the kind, diabetic queen Marty (Boyd). He's too busy trying to juggle the unnecessary drama with an inexplicably absent Rahel and frantic Ido (even odder, considering it's unresolved) and with Denny's deadline, which comes to a rather anticlimactic (and unsurprising) end, given Lucas's boasts of owning a gun. During the highlight of Paraffin, Margot waxes over the way "one irrational moment can change your life," but all Rapp accomplishes is showing us a variety of irrational moments, sans consequences, sans life-changes, sans -- most crucially -- a real sense of life.

Dramatic flaws notwithstanding, Beowulf Borrit's wide and run-down hallway, which grows more and more decrepit between plays, gives the cast and the three directors (Rapp, Aukin, and, for Nursing, Trip Cullman) a realistic setting, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is to be admired for reconfiguring their interior to accommodate such a design. Additionally, Tyler Micoleau's lighting -- which gives a good sense of time passing as it filters through the fire-escape at one end of the hall -- is also terrific, especially when it comes to the varied sources of illumination during Paraffin's lengthy blackout. And Eric Shimelonis's sound design does a fine job of capturing the noise of the modern city, from alarms to dogs, it's filled with bustle. But aesthetics alone are a poor reason to attend the theater; they're wasted here, along with the fine roster of double-cast actors, from Cancelmi to Lemp and Nicholson. The Hallway Trilogy demonstrates only that Rapp is filled with ideas, not that he has any idea how to execute them; such laziness is the theatrical equivalent of squatting.

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash (1810-1846)"

Originally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 83.

There's a bit of Pale Fire in this, a story told through the gallery notes for the twenty-six portraits that make up the exhibition (and, consequently, life) of Edmund Moorash. There's also plenty of Millhauser's inventive, genre-creating artistry, given that Moorash was interested in a different type of art, quickly turning from his satirically rendered "realist" paintings (of the Hogarth sort) toward his own perspective-altering designs. As with the four Heretical Histories of his most recent (and excellent) collection, Dangerous Laughter, especially my favorite of the set, "A Precursor of the Cinema." By writing in a professorial voice, Millhauser gets to play with perspective of his own, particularly in the way he presents fictions as facts, blurring the lines so readily that we accept Moorash, and with him, his devoted sister, Elizabeth (whose diary entries provide further details on Edmund), as well as his best friend, William Pinney (who falls for Elizabeth), and William's sister, Sophia (whom he falls for).

The Phantasmacists attempt to capture the macabre, the eerie, the fantastic by the method of scrupulous precision; even their fondness for unusual effects of light (flickering lantern-light, cloudy moonlight, stormy daylight, the flames of hell) is expressed in an almost scientific method of distortion. Their concern for detail, for exact representation, for high finish and smooth facture, connects them with the academic art against which they appear to be rebelling. But Moorash, even in this early painting, has begun to dissolve the outlines of objects, to blur linear identity, to infect all parts of a painting with an energy that appears to erupt from within the canvas.

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THEATER: God's Waiting Room

The last thing an audience wants is to be told that they're entering limbo for the next seventy minutes, so it's a ballsy move on Ashlin Halfnight's part to have the characters in God's Waiting Room do exactly that. But it's a necessary risk: like Lathem Prince, an original piece running in repertory with this 2005 revival (and which also offered beer), the play is a time-jumping, fragmentary piece, and it's only by dropping your guard that you'll be able to follow these four denizens as they relive key moments of their lives, hoping to find the way in which they can finally move on. Although it's saddled with the late-series preaching of Lost and none of the mysteries of that island, Halfnight's flashback technique is effective and impeccably used as it builds to a tempestuous head. But the plot itself is held back by itself indefinite subject (and subjects): unlike his 2009 spiritual follow-up, Balaton, which focused on a family, God's Waiting Room doesn't seem to know where to go or what to focus on. In fact, it ends -- abruptly -- right as it's getting interesting.

The main drama of the play stems from the insistence of the highly religious Bordo (Libby King) that her employer, Inidra (Diane Davis), finally come to terms with her past and death: with her fellow limboees, her laid-back husband Drummond (Ryan King) and his pregnant mistress Saskia (Sarah Kate Jackson). The problem is that this drama is blatantly contrived (especially a gambling-and-insurance-fraud twist); there seems to be little reason for the mentally unbalanced Bordo to be punished with this unhappy triangle. In addition, the romantic, character-building portions are too quickly overrun by the inevitable tragedy of their death; at times, the play appears to be fighting itself.

Because of the formless nature of limbo -- expressed here with a smoke machine -- Kristjan Thor's directorial talents are no real help, either. The other shows in the "Theater in the Dark, With Lights" series (which includes Lathem Prince and The Laws of Motion) had visual themes or interlocking scene-changes to communicate progression and place; here, Thor relies entirely on a dizzying pace that doesn't truly kick in until the last twenty minutes. So, given the subject, is it a success for God's Waiting Room to be neither heavenly nor hellish?

Short-a-Day: Steven Millhauser's "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon"

Originally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 76.

"Grapes swell on our slopes, deer graze in the grassy trench between our walls, and in the winding streets, bordered by houses of white-washed wood and clean stone, sunlight and shadow fall equally." So goes the last line of Millhauser's medieval semi-fantasy, reminding the reader that despite the title, the story is not just about a Prince undone by jealousy, a Princess driven to denounce an honest man, the Margrave made to suffer for his unbelievable chastity, or the Dwarf working to serve them all. It's about -- like much of Millhauser's work -- about the story itself, about the meanings locked inside the art of creation.

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metaDRAMA: Music To My Ears

"Hello Flux," reads a recent blog posting on the website of the Flux Theatre Ensemble. "I didn't know about your company or this show until I read the NY Times review. I noticed it because I have a friend who is obsessed with all things post-apocalyptic." The anonymous commentator, writing in a thread for "Audience Feedback" on their latest show, Dog Act, continues: "The cart is truly amazing. I could barely take my eyes off it. The costumes and props were also wonderful. I loved all the detail and care that had been taken with those specifics. Becky Byers performance was great! I also enjoyed the physical work done by all the actors." And how's this for honesty? The poster ends with this bittersweet notice: "The story didn't really grab me but there were some lovely moments and ideas in the text." Consider, however, that the author left this note on the actual Flux site -- not on the Times site, which already allows commenting, and not as an IRL comment to her doom-oriented friend. Now having actively contributed to Flux (and potentially reading some of the other posts on the site, which we'll get to a moment), isn't this author -- whether s/he liked it or not -- likely to check them out again in the future?

This is what I love about Flux: they're actively engaged with their audience, and I'm sure that once their show wraps this weekend, artistic director August Schulenberg (or other members of his company) may drop by their comment boards and add a few responses regarding intent or execution. And they're not just engaged with their audience -- they're engaged with their critics, too. Rather than simply cherry pick quotes -- and I'll use their response to my own review as an example -- note the following consideration: "He has some interesting thoughts about the structure of the second act - I myself find the song around the fire the final bonding experience that allows for the critical balance shift between Vera, Jo-Jo and Zetta - what do you think?" It's a lovely continuation of the conversation between artist and audience, critic-as-audience, and critic and artist -- not a disavowal of reviews, but not a "let's-leave-it-at-that" either. It's an attempt to communicate; more than that, it's a mark of determination on their part to understand and grapple with what might turn people off about shows -- not so that they can avoid doing shows like that in the future, but so as to work even harder on their part to make sure that they can turn those people on to shows of that nature.

Spider-Man is having focus groups, and I hear they've now hired Robert Aguirre-Sacasa to come in and fix up the book, but it's all the behind-the-scenes secrecy and lack of engagement with the public as a whole (ironic, for a show subtitled "Turn Off the Dark") that is spinning a web of gossip. I can't help but wonder what they, and other theaters -- particularly ones like Playwrights Horizon and Soho Rep, which have talkbacks and terrific online and in-theater material to give additional depth about the show -- might gain from following in Flux's footsteps and looking to sustain conversations with its audience, conversations that make it clear where everyone's coming from -- and where it's all going. I've said it a million times on this site -- in fact, I started this sub-series of posts, "metaDRAMA," because of it -- but it's all about sparking conversation about a show, and keeping that theatrical experience alive a little longer. Anything to that end, whether it's a complaint, a critique, or a compliment, is music to my ears.