DUCHESS OF MALFI and WINTER'S TALE (January 31st and February 22nd)

Photos, Top to Bottom: Tobias Segal as Young Shepherd and Ethan Hawke as Autolycus in The Winter's Tale; Rebecca Hall as Hermione and Josh Hamilton as Polixenes in The Winter's Tale; Poster for the Bridge Project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Maurya Lowry, Jennie Israel and Jason Bowen in The Duchess of Malfi; Jason Bowen and Jennie Israel in The Duchess of Malfi at Actors' Shakespeare Project.

How has it been nearly a month since my last posting? Life, I guess, being busy and somewhat stressed-out in my work and including a trip home to Victoria and Vancouver that included four (count 'em!) theatre/opera performances that I am not going to review here. But I will mention seeing the mad genius Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett's latest show at Vancouver's PUSH Festival, as well as a strong outing of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at Victoria's Belfry Theatre.

My last two shows here on the east coast half of my bicoastal life this year have been my first ever production of John Webster's revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi and the not-to-be-missed Sam Mendes production of The Winter's Tale (in rep with The Cherry Orchard) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Webster's play features a woebegotten widow who wishes to marry her loyal steward against her overbearing and jealous brothers' orders, and pays dearly for her actions. The Duchess comes to a sad and violent end, as does almost everyone else in this play of suspicion, secrecy and endless manipulation and retribution. What fun!

The Actors' Shakespeare Project production was directed by David Gammons, whose Lieutenant of Inishmore at New Rep was another buckets of bloodfest in the fall. Gammons is a fine director with a keen storytelling ability and focused eye for detail. Never was I unclear about who was who and what was going on in this play, as tense and paranoid conversations take place in supposed privacy that is always anything but that. The alley staging helped to foster this claustrophobic atmosphere tremendously, along with a simple and clever design of two huge doors at both ends, creating a palatial hallway. Door slams were timed for sound cues of echoing slams that reverberated and heightened the jail-like environs that became eventually a madhouse and charnel pit. What fun!

The acting was serviceable all-round with Jennie Israel playing an almost too likeable Duchess...I would like to have seen a bit more fire in her belly at times (perhaps a feminist revisionism on my part?) Jason Bowen played her steward/husband Antonio with charm and warmth and we felt his accidental slaying late in the play perhaps as the greatest loss, as he is probably the most innocent character here. The Duchess' two malevolent brothers are played with grim pleasure by Joel Colodner as a cross-dressing and lecherous Cardinal and Michael Forden Walker as the clearly would-be incestuous and psychopathic Ferdinand, who eventually kills his wayward sister. My favorite performance was by Bill Barclay as Bosola, conscripted by the brothers as a spy. He comes to see the injustice and insanity of what he is caught up in, and although he is guilty of much wrongdoing, he also tries to make amends before he too gives up the ghost. Webster writes Bosola in direct address to the audience and so we see the play through his eyes and Barclay gives the role a very contemporary interpretation; knowing, ironic and believable.

My one disappointment was in the quality of vocal work in the ensemble. In a repertory company dedicated to Shakespeare, I expected rich tones and perfect articulation and got mostly middling and pretty non-resonant voices with okay but far from crisp and precise diction. This is the area where this company needs to grow, and I'll see if there's any difference when their next show, Coriolanus, opens next month.

This past weekend I spent eight hours on a bus going back and forth between here and Brooklyn to see a three hour production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as performed by the joint British and American acting ensemble called, appropriately, The Bridge Project. It features some of the finest stage actors on both sides of the Atlantic working together. Film and theatre director Sam Mendes gives us a very fine interpretation of this challenging late play that features intense psychological drama in the first half that then fast-forwards 16 years into a pastoral romance/comedy and then ends up back where it starts, reuniting a royal couple torn apart by unfounded jealousy and abuse of power and celebrating the love of their long-lost daughter and her prince. (For a synopsis, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale)

The wonderful performance space of the Harvey Theatre at BAM seems custom-made for the plays of both Shakespeare and Chekhov. A restored ruin, the architects have left much of the ruination in place (brought up to code!), so we feel we have entered a theatre with much history, including some obvious hard times; cracked plaster, bare brick walls, peeling paint, rusty supports. It's so evocative and, come to think of it, would work well with playwrights like Beckett, Brecht, Williams... One of the most interesting theatre spaces I've been in for some time. Designer Anthony Ward honors this space, and creates a great touring set (these two shows are going on to Singapore, Auckland, London and Europe) with minimalism set off by real candles in sconces hung at varying levels upstage to create a starry backdrop of candlelight. Magical. Other than this we are given a carpet, a few pieces of furniture, beautiful lighting and excellent, excellent acting throughout.

Simon Russell Beale plays King Leontes with such clarity and force, and great empathy for this misguided man who loses almost everything as a result. There is much of the tragic heroes of Shakespeare's past plays in him; the jealousy of Othello, the petty yet overblown wrath of Lear, the soul-shattering realization of what he has done that reminds me of these two characters, and others all the way back to Oedipus. Beale is a big and powerful actor and one feels he is constraining Leontes, determined to retain his dignity even as he falls apart emotionally and politically...and when he allows himself to rage he pushes us back in our seats. The much younger Rebecca Hall plays his saintly wife Hermione with verve and a strong core that keeps her queen-like even in her baseless captivity for adultery and in the hearing of the banishment of her newborn daughter Perdita and death (from grief) of her young son Mamillius. The great Sinead Cusack plays Paulina, a wonderful role of a servant who, like Lear's Fool, has the unexpected freedom in this dramatic world to take the King to task for his wrong actions. She is another powerhouse actor and the scenes between her and Beale are a real treat. Her fierce protection of Hermione brooks no opposition and it is she who has the satisfaction of bringing Leontes and Hermione back together in the play's final scene.

The American actors (who all speak with their own accents, a wise directorial choice) might seem to be up against quite a challenge in the face of this crew, yet they do well. Of course, their trump card is the movie star Ethan Hawke, who appears late in the play in the comic role of the pedlar and petty thief Autolycus. Hawke hams it up to everyone's delight, playing the guitar and warbling like Dylan, entering one scene looking like Slash from Guns 'n Roses, and addressing the audience 99% of the time. But he is ably supported by his countrymen Richard Easton who does wonderful work with the Old Shepherd, who adopts the abandoned baby princess Perdita and rises to fortune as a result, and by Josh Hamilton as Leontes' best friend Polixenes, the source of the former's jealousy and later the father of Florizel (who falls for Perdita...of course!)

The only ones who suffer slightly here are the young lovers, who barely register in the midst of this star-power, and are not very interesting roles to begin with.

The shift from dark and dramatic Sicilia to light and American frontier-like Bohemia is a jarring one, as is the 16 year time-slip (aided by a delightful monologue, delivered by Time, but here delivered by Easton as the Old Shepherd, to great effect). And there is a bit of a sense that moves in oneself and the audience of "Get on with it, we want to get back to the good stuff back in Sicilia" as we sit through a long harvest festival and hoe-down, complete with songs and bawdy dances and red, white and blue balloons. This is Shakespeare bowing to new conventions late in his career, the growing popularity of inserting musical and dance interludes into plays, but his own genius shines through in the core story of jealousy, punishment and redemption. When Perdita is introduced to Leontes by her love Florizel (who has fled to Sicilia to escape his father's disapproval of their match, as she and everyone else believes her to be a poor shepherdess), the moment is so potent, so moving. Yet Shakespeare writes the actual revelations and reconciliations offstage and reported to us by court officials. He wisely saves the major onstage revelation/reconciliation for the famous final scene where Paulina takes the King and his newly-found daughter to see the 'statue' of his dead wife Hermione. Of course the statue is the real deal and Paulina brings her 'magically' to life and into the shocked but joyful arms of her repentant husband and lookalike daughter. Cue tears.

The Winter's Tale may not rank with Shakespeare's greatest plays, but in this intelligent and well-directed and designed production, with a troupe of actors beyond compare, it is truly a theatrical delight.

Hermione: What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come Sir, now I am for you again: 'Pray you sit by us, And tell's a Tale
Mamillius (her young son): Merry, or sad, shal't be?

Hermione: As merry as you will
Mamillius: A sad Tale's best for Winter: I have one of Sprights, and Goblins
Hermione: Let's have that (good Sir.) Come-on, sit down, come-on, and do your best, To fright me with your Sprights: you're powerful at it
Mamillius: There was a man
Hermione: Nay, come sit down: then on
Mamillius: Dwelt by a Church-yard: I will tell it softly, Yond Crickets shall not hear it
Hermione: Come on then, and giv't me in mine ear (Act II, Sc. i)

CABARET and THE CHERRY ORCHARD - January 14th and 23rd, 2009

Images (Top to Bottom): Cast members of The Cherry Orchard and production poster [http://www.centralsquaretheater.org/]; Cast members of Cabaret and production poster [http://www.newrep.org/library.php, http://www.newrep.org/cabaret.php]

These two most recent theatre visits bring to mind the saying "Context is All" (supposedly attributed to Margaret Atwood in a Google search, but whatever...). After the splendour of ART's The Seagull, it is hard to go back to the okay, middling, slightly humdrum productions I saw in the last two weeks.

To begin with New Rep's production of Cabaret, I was really looking forward to this show. I saw the movie decades ago and don't really remember it, although Liza Minnelli has her finest hour, that's for sure. And I've never seen it on stage. I was there on opening night and also for what turned out to be New Rep's Artistic Director Rick Lombardo's (and the director of the show's) closing night, as he's heading off to head up the San Jose Repertory Theatre. So there were some speeches and gifts on top of the usual opening night festivities. Lombardo has clearly made his mark on New Rep, directing many shows over his 12 year stint there. Alas, this final show is not his high watermark. While serviceable, this production lacks a keen edge and falters most in the miscasting of the central role of Sally Bowles.

Cabaret has an interesting history, composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb and premiered in 1966 (with the film version following in 1972), and based on a play by John van Druten (I Am a Camera) that in turn was based on a short autobiographical story by Christopher Isherwood. In 1966, the musical must have felt very cutting-edge, set as it is in Weimar Berlin on the cusp of the Nazi regime in the late twenties and early thirties. Young American writer wanna-be Cliff Bradshaw comes to Berlin for the exciting lifestyle and quickly meets British cabaret singer/stripper Sally Bowles at the somewhat seedy but compelling Kit Kat Club. She flees from a previous liaison with the club's manager and ends up living with Cliff, and despite his proclivities to 'play for the other team', they become lovers and eventually Sally is pregnant. During all this, we also meet Cliff's friend Ernst, his landlady Fraulein Schneider, her suitor the Jewish grocer Herr Schulz and another tenant in the boarding house, prostitute Fraulein Kost. All of this action outside the club is intercut with musical numbers in the club, emceed by 'The Emcee' a part made famous by Joel Grey in the film version (he originated the role in Harold Prince's 1966 production) and more recently by Alan Cumming in Sam Mendes/Rob Marshall's' remount in 1998. As the Nazis rise to power, and the love match between Schneider and Schultz is broken off to reflect the growing fear in Germany, things get darker and darker at the club and Cliff tries to convince Sally to leave with him, to go back to America for a white picket fence future. Instead, Sally sells her fur coat for an abortion and returns to the stage at the club, singing the title song in triumphant desperation as Cliff leaves the city and country just in time.

It is a powerful combination of entertainment and drama that centres around the character of Sally, a mixed-up lower class Londoner with stars in her eyes who cannot tear herself away from the false promises of fame and glory that the Kit Kat Club promises. Her relationship with Cliff and his growing real love for her and need to protect and care for her despite her self-destructiveness is what drives the show forward. In New Rep's production we have a quite good Cliff from David Krinitt, who plays his good-hearted American-ness very well, such that we travel along with him as he realizes with growing horror what is happening as Hitler takes power. While I found him less convincing as a bisexual (downplayed in this production, and maybe the stage version itself as compared to Bob Fosse's film version with the role played by Michael York), I did find him well-cast, with a pleasant singing voice and warm stage presence. I had more trouble with Aimee Doherty as Sally. She is so clearly an ingenue, very perky and pretty and can sing and dance, no doubt. But what was missing for me was the dark side of Sally, the narcissistic side, the vulnerable side, the self-hating side that leads her to equate the degradation and exploitation of the Kit Kat Club with success of some kind. I may not be crazy about Liza, but she was so right as Sally in the movie...all the big-eyed fragility and thin-skinned bravado that you see in her...echoing for so many of us right back through her to her tragically tormented mother Judy Garland, made her a Sally for the ages. And other actresses have also played Sally, I am sure, with these same complexities; Judi Dench (yes!), Natasha Richardson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and more. When Ms. Doherty sings "Maybe This Time", pleading with herself to finally catch a chance at happiness with Cliff, to be the winner rather than the loser, it should break our hearts but instead comes across as a pep-talk. Too bad. Doherty does fare better in some of the other production numbers and carries us home with the closing title song with lots of pinache..the plucky showmanship of Sally is all there...what's missing is the tragedy.

John Kuntz does better here as the Emcee, put through his paces with a choreography-heavy show that makes the bruises I saw on some of the dancers' legs after the show obviously not makeup. But his is suitably creepy as well as somewhat tragic Emcee as he morphs into a concentration camp victim of Nazism by the curtain (an addition that Mendes brought to his revival that has stuck). Cheryl McMahon as Fraulein Schneider and Paul D. Farwell as Schultz are both fine in their work; their love affair and its sad end were quite moving. Shannon Lee Jones does nice work as the ballsy whore-with-a-heart-of-gold Fraulein Kost. And the supporting company works well together on a set that switches back from inside to outside the club with the use of sliding set pieces and revolving doors. The show is well-orchestrated by a band (in drag!) on a second level upstage. I just found the whole package a bit ho-hum, and the few directorial flourishes--such as projecting newsreel footage of Hitler onto the stage floor--didn't go far enough or deep enough for me. But as I said in my caveat above, it'll probably take me some time, or another show that shocks me into wideawakeness like The Seagull, for me to regain my critical balance. So, three stars out of five for this Cabaret.

Same again for the Central Square Theatre's production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (I know, I know..it's not even a fair fight is it?) Like Cabaret, I found this production serviceable but mostly uninspired. While it features some nice performances, it lacks an overarching vision that makes it more than a pleasant night out. I must also disclose my bias that I don't care for this Chekhov nearly as much as his other masterworks (The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya), although it does have some lovely moments.

The plot centres around landowner Madame Ranyevskaya and her family and friends, who are dealing with the forced decision to sell off her beloved cherry orchard and family home out of necessity to cover her debts incurred through a series of bad choices and irresponsibility. She returns from Paris (minus a lover who has betrayed her) to a home that she waxes nostalgic about with her brother Leonid Gayev, but that she is willing to forfeit for a return to Paris and her feckless man. Her daughter Anya and adopted daughter Varya become the victims of her folly as their lives suffer as a result. Former peasant farmer turned merchant Yermolai Lopahin saves the day and buys the orchard, thus taking over the property upon which he was raised as a serf, but cannot bring himself to ask for the hand of his beloved Varya (Chekhov was nothing if not acutely class conscious). She must go into servitude herself as her selfish adoptive mother leaves her behind to return to Paris...until the money runs out again. Amidst all this there are secondary characters who voice their positions from varied perspectives; radical student Pyotr who is preparing for revolution (which will come to Russia soon enough) and loves Anya, servants Yasha and Dunyasha who fall into lust with each other and ridicule their betters in the time-honored tradition of comedy, and old devoted valet Firs who inhabits his servitude to the bitter end.

Director Daniel Gidron brings nice clear portraits of all these characters to this production and makes the most of what is clearly a limited budget and a minimal set. Annette Miller plays Mme. Ranyevskaya with the required combination of charm and obliviousness, but she rarely lets the "Everything will be just fine" mask slip to reveal the unhappiness of this lost and self-described 'wanton' woman. Finding and mining more of these moments would deepen her work. Her brother Leonid Gayev is played by Michael Balcanoff with a ramrod spine and bluster that works well. All the younger girls in the production do nice work; Elise Audrey Manning is a sweet Anya, Varya a sharp and embittered Varya trying to break out of her own mold but failing and Darcy Fowler a warm and bawdy Dunyasha. Standout performance for me was Ken Baltin as the peasant-turned-merchant Yermolai Lopahin. His transparent love for this family he has known all his life combined with his growing sense of almost shame-faced economic superiority over them is well-wrought and touching, as is his hopeless and unspoken love for Varya. An actor with a clown-like demeanour, he brings a kind of sad dignity to the role that rings true.

The production itself is a bit rough around the edges in the design department. I'm fine with low-budget theatre... Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theatre and all that..and believe that the finest dramatic experiences can be had with little or no design elements. For me, it's always about the actor-actor and actor-audience relationship (Read My Book!!). That said, if you're going to put your actors in period costumes, you are obliged to get it right. Unfortunately, I was distracted by costume pieces that were all wrong...shoes with elastic gores, coats with zippers that looked like LL Bean barn coats. Some of the women's dresses were quite lovely, especially Annette Miller's, and I wonder if they were borrowed or rented, as the men had less consistent costumes, including an actor in a smaller role appearing in what was clearly a polyester suit at one point! My take on this is severe, I know, but I'd prefer to watch this show with the cast in rehearsal garb than to be taken out of the constructed world of the play by costume pieces that don't fit. This is especially the case when the set design is so minimal, thereby pushing our attention even more onto what the actors are wearing. Directors and designers, take note! Lecture over...so is this review.

THE CORN IS GREEN and THE SEAGULL - January 10 and 11, 2009

Photos, Top to Bottom: Karen MacDonald as the actress Arkadina and Mickey Solis as her son Konstantin in The Seagull, directed by János Szász. (Photo: K. Mitchell. [http://www.amrep.org/media/seagull/seagull01.html]); Poster for American Repertory Theatre production; Kate Burton and her son Morgan Ritchie; mother and son in The Corn is Green; Kate Burton in the poster shot and on the cover of an issue of American Theatre [www.huntingtontheatre.org].

Well, it's a snowy New Year in Boston and a busy weekend of theatregoing that took me from everything I can't stand about mainstream contemporary theatre practice in a star-driven piece of claptrap at the Huntington Theatre to everything I love about theatre in a radical and stunning revisioning of The Seagull at ART.

Unlike everyone else in this city, it seems, I went to see The Corn is Green because I was interested in the play by Emlyn Williams, not the star of the play, Sir Richard Burton's daughter Kate Burton. I now know that the playwright was godfather to Ms. Burton and a close friend of Sir Richard, which explains a lot for it is a very musty and fusty piece. Williams was a popular playwright, screenwriter and actor in his day, but his name, alas, will not appear on the long list of historical greats of the 20th century I fear, if this is his best-known work. The Corn is Green is apparently a semi-autobiographical play about Williams' escape from the Welsh mines to the halls of Oxford with the assistance of a well-meaning tutor in the guise of a wealthy British spinster, here called Miss Moffat. She arrives in the Welsh home she has inherited as a liberal thinker of the late 19th century, a believer in universal education, including education for Welsh-speaking miners and (good heavens!) women. Moffat brings along her colorful entourage of a reformed thief turned Salvation Army soldier/cook, Mrs. Watty, and Watty's ne'er-do-well daughter Bessie. Miss Moffat sets out immediately on her zealous mission of pulling the local boys out of the mines and into a school that she will found and teach in. One of the boys, Morgan Evans, stuns her with a descriptive essay about being underground (from whence comes the play's title) and her mission becomes focussed on saving him by preparing him for an entry scholarship to Oxford. Along the way, Morgan rebels against Miss Moffat (in a Pygmalion-like showdown), sleeps with Bessie and impregnates her, and wins the scholarship and a new life. The price that must be paid is Miss Moffat agreeing to adopt the illegitimate baby, thus freeing Morgan of his obligations so he can become "a great man of England' and work towards freeing his Welsh compatriots from the drudgery and dangers of mining life.

So that's the synopsis...for my money the play should be called The Corn is Corny. It is filled with stock characters, few surprises and little dramatic tension. Characters change very little, even Morgan's greatest revelation in the play, that there is a world "over the wall" in Oxford that he realizes he longs for, is a bit so-what. His emotional show-down with his mentor is also a tempest in a teacup...he grows to resent her treating him like a machine and demands she see him for himself..and this is interesting how exactly? Clearly, I don't think much of the play, so that leaves the production.

It took me a little while watching the show to realize what was irritating me beyond the banality of the script, until I saw that a follow-spot was on Ms. Burton throughout the entire show. It would require an essay-length treatise for me to outline the multiple ways in which this offends me, but suffice it to say, it does. This is not a Broadway musical, it's a drawing room period drama! Why does she require a follow-spot, does she think we can't see her without one? I am offended by this not just because it speaks to an unbelievable star ego (which is insufferable enough), but even more so on behalf of her fellow actors, as to me this special treatment is an insult to their work. If Ms. Burton were Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn, I might find the use of a follow-spot forgivable (and only if it were in the time period they performed this role, close to its debut in 1938), but she is not. She is an adequate enough actor, I have seen her on Law and Order and in some supporting roles in film, but she is not Vanessa Redgrave, Fiona Shaw or Kristen Scott-Thomas and her parading her 'star-power' in such a vainglorious way speaks to me of the problems with a theatre system that functions in this shallow, celebrity-driven manner (witness her appearance on the cover of American Theatre). Even worse, her son is not a particularly gifted young actor and I can think of a number of young men who could have brought more intensity, anger and passion to the role. Why were they not cast, and why was he? Don't get me started...

As for the remainder of the show, the Huntington always offers lovely design, as is in evidence here with a full set and costumes and a large acting company. Many of the supporting roles are played well, and I particularly liked the work of Huntington favorite Will LeBow as the local squire, Roderick McLachlan as Mr. Jones (manager of the estate) and Kathy McCafferty as yet another spinster (but a more soft-hearted and lovable version), Miss Ronberry. Kristine Nielsen as Mrs. Watty and Mary Faber as Bessie almost steal the show with their obvious pleasure in their respective roles, with Nielsen mining all the laughs in her part with ease and Faber playing the bad girl with a refreshing lack of conscience that really rings true (although the tight-fitting corsetted ensemble she wears in her final appearance made it hard for me to believe she had given birth 4 weeks earlier!) I also found the use of Welsh music, especially the male choruses, effective throughout.

Final word on The Corn is Green? Read Peter Brook's treatise on 'deadly theatre' and then get back to me.

My experience with Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, newly translated by Paul Schmidt and directed by Jano Szasz, was a polar opposite one to The Corn is Green, and succeeded in completely restoring my faith in the possibility for theatre to wake people up rather than put them to sleep. I love Chekhov's plays, as do most theatre (and even non-theatre!) people, for their vivid characterizations and bitterly truthful dialogue, and for the clear-eyed portrayal of the stultifying life of the minor bourgeoisie in Russia of the late 19th century. They are gems and it is a tragic loss to theatre that Chekhov died of tuberculosis at the age of 44...what other masterpieces might he have left us? That said, I have sat through a number of disappointing Chekov productions that, similar to my experience at the Huntington, felt like visiting a museum, all very precious and cut glass. How exciting it was, then, to walk into the auditorium of the Loeb Theatre and see a set design of a "theatre that's been dormant for thousands of years" (from an interview with the director in the program) designed by Riccardo Hernandez. Banks of broken down rows of theatre seats are scattered across the stage, on casters. The stage space is stripped to the brick walls, painted black, and all the props and lighting instruments are completely visible, as are the ASMs. Hanging over this dark and foreboding space are huge fragments of plastered frescoes of Russian icons by the great artist Andrei Rublev. And I mean huge...each one of the three portraits must be 10 or 15 feet across and they are angled over the playing space such that they hang precariously, almost as though they are in the process of falling onto the floor and are only temporarily frozen in their decay. And on the floor there is water, lots of water, pools of it in all parts of the stage.

When the cast enters in silence at the top of the show they slosh through this water, signifying what a significant element it will be. They sit in a bank of seats facing us for a moment while the deeply troubled protagonist, suicidal young man Konstanin, reads us a snippet of his play-within-a-play that has become the conceptual touchstone for Szasz' revsioning. All actors are in contemporary dress and there is a musical soundtrack of synthesized rock music that underpines a number of scenes throughout, including a full-on version of Guns and Roses' Sweet Child of Mine at the top of Act Two, with Konstanin riffing on the shotgun he will eventually use to blow his brains out, used as an air guitar. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore, nor are we on the run-down estate of Konstanin's mother (famous actress and neglectful mother Arkadina) and beloved Uncle Sorin.

Instead, we are inside Konstanin's mind in the moments before he pulls the trigger, and the play is fashioned as the "life flashing before his eyes" as he recalls the emotional traumas of the past two years. Konstanin longs only for his mother's love and approval and the love of the girl across the lake, Nina, who loves him back and has agreed to perform in his 'symbolist' drama for his family and friends. Arkadina scoffs at the pretentiousness of this performance and it falls apart with Konstantin exiting in a rage. Nina is very interested in meeting Arkadina's lover, the famous writer Trigorin, as she is dreaming of fame and fortune for herself (as opposed to the idealized life of an artist that Konstanin longs for). So these characters are sent spinning and colliding into each other, fighting and falling for each other in endless combinations of ever-increasing intensity and disaster. Their trials are echoed in the people around them who, as in all of Chekov's plays, suffer varying levels of unrequited love and/or general dissatisfaction with their lives.

The brilliance of Szasz' vision is in how well it works. Suddenly, we see Konstantin's past being performed for him and by him in his own memories, complete with their exaggerations and distortions. The emotional level of intensity becomes unbelievably high throughout (an exhausting show for the company, especially as most of them are sitting onstage observing the action throughout much or all of the nearly three hour running time), with every scene raising the stakes higher than the one before. This approach might quickly become histrionic and absurd, but because we know we're in a construction in Konstanin's mind, that he is therefore the playwright and director of what we're seeing, it makes sense that everything is so high-strung and on the edge. It turns out that Chekhov stripped entirely of any modicum of good or orderly behaviour, in other words, Chekhov reduced to the Id and Ego with the Super-Ego banished offstage, is some pretty potent dramatic potion. Both Arkadina and Nina are in short dresses, bare legs and high-heeled boots (all the better to sexualize you with, my dear!), and when Arkadina has a key scene with Konstanin where she changes his bandages after a first failed suicide attempt, followed by an encounter with Trigorin where she wins him back (temporarily) from his passion for the young and vulnerable Nina, it makes sense that she pulls both men down onto the floor and wraps herself physically around them. It makes sense that Konstanin loses it (often) and throws suitcases all over the stage, ranting and raving in his rage at his mother. The echoes of Hamlet and Gertrude are made loud and clear in this translation and interpretation. And that the play ends with the gunshot, rather than the original ending of Konstanin killing himself offstage and the doctor coming on to whisper the terrible news, so as to spare Arkadina (again, temporarily), we feel that of course it must be like this, how could it be otherwise? The greatest testament I can make to Szasz' work is to say that without a doubt I will never feel about, nor see, Chekhov in the same way again.

Of course this is a hugely demanding show for the actors, who are asked to get soaking wet more than once and to throw themselves about the stage and at each other quite a lot. This version rests so much on Konstantin that a misfire in his casting would be a disaster. Fortunately, Mickey Solis plays the role masterfully, never letting up on the horror-filled self-examination that is the play inside his head. He turns a powerful flashlight on other characters at key moments, struts around in his punk plaid pants and ripped t-shirt and is both empathetic and ridiculous. There is hideous pain that he endures in his scene with Nina near the play's end--where she comes back to see him after 2 years spent with Trigorin, bearing him a child that died, being abandoned by him and reduced to a second-rate theatre career (close to prostitution in those days) that has driven her to the edge of insanity. Witnessing Konstanin rolling around in a pool of water and screaming in agony in the disbelief that Nina still loves Trigorin, makes it easier for us to understand why he welcomes the gun in his mouth. Solis seems born to play this role. ART founding member Karen MacDonald plays Arkadina with all the requisite selfishness and self-centredness required, plus the hyper-sexuality that Szasz layers on. But I have always felt Arkadina to not be a very rewarding riole to play, although it is so prized by older actresses, because she doesn't change at all...nothing moves her from her focus on herself and her needs and she is therefore a tough part to connect with, I imagine. Brian Dykstra does a wonderful job with Trigorin, making of him a kind of nihilist wolf whose disgust at himself and everything around him is palpable...the fact that he turns this disgust into fiction and art is just one of the many levels of commentary on Art made by Chekhov in this play. Another fine performance comes from another ART regular Thomas Derrah as the local doctor Dorn, who is so embittered with his life you can almost taste it. Overall, I feel the men here fare better than the women. The lovesick Masha (daughter of estate-keeper Shamrayev and his wife [who's in love with Dorn] Paulina), played here by ART Institute MFA student Nina Kassa as a goth, seems slightly beyond the actor's capabilities, both vocally and emotionally, although her physical work was nice. And Nina, played by Molly Ward, starts off well but does not go the distance for me. She is a more confident and sexual Nina than I've seen before, all long legs and ready to get down to it with both Konstanin and Trigorin, and she knows what she wants. But her final scene, one of the most challenging to make work that I know (how does one deliver all the "I am a seagull" lines and not make it look silly somehow?), she is not where she needs to be.

That scene does have a lovely directorial moment, though, which I wish Szasz had done more of in the show: At one point Konstanin can't stand hearing Nina anymore and so he picks her up and throws her down onto the stage where she goes immediately limp. He then picks her up again and almost literally throws her offstage, whereupon she turns right back around and enters again, continuing her emotional battering of him. It's like Konstanin wants to erase or destroy this memory, but he can't. And I thought about how that motif might be even more present in this ingenious and thrilling production; to have things repeat themselves, or go into slow motion or even backwards, to make this even more of a dreamscape in Konstanin's mind. I saw a production along these lines in London at the National in 2005, Theatre Complicite's production of Strindberg's Dream Play in a new translation by Caryl Churchill. I've never seen a play like it, the physical mastery and control of that company to take the audience into a dreamscape that sustains itself for 90 minutes nonstop, including whole scenes played forward and in reverse.

And this, finally, is the mark of a great theatre experience; that you begin to riff on it yourself, to imagine where the audacious and bold visions of directors like Szasz (and others) might take you when you consider the dramatic canon as living practice rather than pictures in a museum, frozen in time.

ROAD SHOW by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman - New York City - December 6th, 2008

Images: Production photos from the Public Theater's Road Show featuring Alexander Gemignani (L, above) as Addison Mizner and Michael Cerveris (R, above) as Wilson Mizner. Credits: www.daylife.com

Like many avid theatregoers, I'd walk a mile or two on my knees to see a Sondheim show, so it wasn't much to ask for me to catch a cheap bus ride down to NYC last weekend to see his newest creation, Road Show. Formerly, called Bounce, this show has had a troubled history, having been played out of town but undergoing major rewrites over a period of many years. This most recent and quite stripped-down version of the musical is debuting for a short run at the Public. Directed by John Doyle, who has previously directed remounts of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Company that won critical acclaim and new audiences for those older works, we are given what I can only describe as a chamber musical from Sondheim, in contrast to his grand orchestral works of the past. But a smaller Sondheim show still has his music and its moments, both in evidence here.

Sondheim and his collaborator John Weidman (who has worked with the maestro on another chamber musical with a difficult history, Assassins) are interested in telling us the true tale of two brothers, the Mizners, who represent the highs and lows of American capitalism in their wheeling and dealing across the country in the early part of the twentieth century. The show begins and ends with them speaking to each other from beyond the grave, trying to assign blame and vent bitterness about everything that went wrong in their lives. From this opening, we travel back to their youth, as they head off to the Yukon gold rush, world travels, high society, architecture, the development of Palm Beach and Boca Raton and other adventures along the way. All throughout the brothers are fierce rivals who fall-out often, only to be drawn back into each other's lives due to an irresistible connection, even love. And all throughout their tale is told with a full chorus onstage who take on multiple roles (including their mother and father always looking on, even beyond their deaths) as they weave in and out of the Mizners' triumphs and disasters.

The show is under two hours long, without an intermission, so sets off like a freight train and never lets up, more and more paper money thrown up by the fistfuls as the brothers Mizner gamble, cheat, lie, con, and create the lives that mirror in a funhouse version of the American Dream; distorted and deceptive, now fat now thin, now you see it, now you don't. Doyle has designed the set as well as directed, and it is most effective...a stacking of boxes, crates, file drawers that open and close for actors to reach into and pull out props and to climb over and position themselves on. Costumes are suitably muted with the womens' dresses printed with newspaper headlines, but there are plenty of fun add-ons such as hats, coats and boas. The musicians are offstage, unlike Doyle's other Sondheim revivals, where the actors played the score as they sang it.

Speaking of the score, Sondheim offers some small gems here, often reminiscent of older songs in their melodies and phrasing, but that seems a slightly unfair criticism of a composer so well-known and now in his late 70's. Of course there will be echoes heard by any listener reasonably familiar with his canon of works. All the full company numbers in the show were very enjoyable, marking key points in the Mizners' life journey; "Waste", "Gold!", Addison's Trip", "That Was a Year", "You" and "Boca Raton". There is little dance in the show, but lots of action and movement that provide an effective staging of each song. Other highlights are Alma Cuervo as Mama Mizner singing "Isn't He Something" about her neglectful son Willie, who has become a New York society member through marriage to a wealthy widow, while her dutiful and loving son Addison listens on in anger and hopelessness. Addison falls in love with a young man, Hollis Bessemer, whose contacts help Addison become a successful architect to the Palm Beach elite. He and Hollis song the most moving song in the show "The Best Thing That Has Happened".

The show features a strong company, all of whom sing beautifully and can act as well (as would be expected!) But the leads carry the show and both Cerveris and Gemignani do excellent work. Cerveris has the showier of the two brother roles, as Willie is the "bad" brother who manipulates everything and everyone around him, caring little for who gets hurt or what gets lost along the way. Cerveris gives a star performance in the role, eating it up with a very large spoon, with relish. But Gemignani wins our hearts as the more nuanced and empathetic Addison, who can't escape his two-timing brother, and in the end can't even deny he loves him.

All in all a satisfying show, despite troubles with the book that doesn't offer us a more complex rendering of the Mizners or other characters in their lives. It may not rank with Sondheim's greatest achievements, but Road Show still offers us a music-filled story worth the telling...and the hearing.

THE SEAFARER by Conor McPherson - November 16th, 2008

Images: New York poster, production photos of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. Credits: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/07/theater/Sea1450.jpg, http://images.broadwayworld.com/columnpic/TheSeaFarerLogo.jpg,

It's been nearly a month since I saw this show at Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company, housed in the multi-stage Boston Center for the Arts. It is the third McPherson play I've seen (following his The Weir (1999) and Shining City (2006)), and the third Irish play thus far in Boston this fall. McPherson is closer to Brian Friel than Martin McDonagh in his love of storytelling, even of the supernatural, but allies with McDonagh in this play populated as it is by the Irish underclass. Set on Xmas Eve in a rundown basement apartment in a dodgy part of Dublin, the all-male cast of characters feature brothers James "Sharky" Harkin and his older brother Richard, recently blinded after a dumpster-diving mishap. A dedicated boozer and welfare bum, Richard tries to get his brother to join in the holiday festivities with his other layabout friends Ivan Curry (a doltish sidekick who'd rather drink with Richard than face his wife and kids at home) and Nicky Giblin (a handsome fun-seeker who's taken up with Sharky's ex-girlfriend). Sharky has returned from working down south and is trying to change his ways, including swearing off the drink, when Nicky brings over a new friend for a night of drinking and cards; Mr. Lockhart.

We soon realize, after establishing the characters and their histories quite effectively (including the requisite McPherson touch of telling a ghost story), that Mr. Lockhart is the Devil and Sharky is his Daniel Webster. Lockhart tells him he will play poker with him for his soul, bargained away in desparation many years before after a bar-room beating gone wrong. Act Two continues on through the night with plenty of humor and dramatic tension as we wonder who will prevail in this ultimate game of chance and fate. Of course, being set on Xmas Eve and ending on Xmas morning is a bit of a giveaway that a happy ending for Sharky is in store, so it's not too much of a spoiler to say that Sharky and Richard head off to early Mass and Mr. Lockhart heads back to Hades without his catch.

The plot seems slight, but the craft that McPherson brings to his dialogue amongst these five characters is never less than taut, revealing and often laugh-out-loud funny. And Sharky, who has clearly had a rough past filled with many mistakes along the way, wins us over as a protagonist who wants to reform and then is faced with a fight for his life when Satan shows up to collect his soul. Much of the humor in the play lies in the fact that only Sharky and Mr. Lockhart know what's really going on, while the other three men get progressively drunker and rowdier over their cards. And we find ourselves caught up in the classic Faustian struggle for more life, always more life.

SpeakEasy's production is finely directed by Carmel O'Reilly, Artistic Director of a local Irish theatre company called Sugan Theatre. She has cast some of her favorite actors, it seems, as three out of the five actors in the company have appeared in Sugan shows. These three actors (Billy Meleady as Sharky, Derry Woodhouse as Mr. Lockhart and Ciaran Crawford as Nicky Giblin) fully inhabit their respective roles. Woodhouse in particular plays the Devil with such cool assurance that the temperature in the theatre appears to drop when he enters. A monologue he gives at one point to Sharky is masterful as he describes his loathing for the "insect-like" human body he must inhabit to stalk the earth in Xmas Eve, collecting debtors' souls. Meleady gives us a fine Sharky, striking a clear balance between the troubled and hot-tempered man he has been and the better man he wants to be. Larry Coen does a nice job with the slightly slow but essentially nice Ivan and Bob Colonna plays Richard with the blustery bravado of a man who has lost his way in the world, but is determined to survive, if only to drink himself to death. Colonna was still struggling with some lines when I saw an early performance in this run, and I imagine McPherson's quick and sharp text must offer a major memorization challenge to actors. The rewards, however, are great; McPherson continues to write plays that impress me with their inherent love of story and storytelling that is so much part of the Irish culture he wants to transmit on stage.

ROCK 'N' ROLL and FAITH HEALER - November 7th and 12th, 2008

Top to Bottom: NY production of Faith Healer by Brian Friel [http://www.monstersandcritics.com/arts/news/article_1159604.php]; Publick Theatre's production poster [http://www.publicktheatre.org/08season/season.html]; Rene Augesen as Esme and Manoel Felciano as Jan in Huntington Theatre's Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard; Rene Augesen as Esme and Jack Willis as Max in same; Broadway poster for Rock 'n' Roll blogs.villagevoice.com]

Two solid productions by two fine playwrights this last week in Boston. Tom Stoppard has had a long career dating back to the early 1960's and his plays deserve their reputation for both content and wit. His earlier works eschewed political content, but Stoppard became involved in human rights organizations such as Amnesty Inernational and his later plays have directly addressed a number of socio-political issues. His plays also do not tend to lack in scope nor ambition, such as his trilogy The Coast of Utopia which examines the development of radicalism in 19th century Russia. So it is in his most recent play Rock 'n' Roll, which covers a time period from 1968 to 1990 and follows the lives of Max Morrow, a communist Cambridge political science professor, his wife Eleanor and daughter Esme, and his Czechoslovakian student Jan.

The play begins in the heady days of 1968 in Cambridge, when Jan is deciding to return to Prague in the wake of the Velvet Revolution that promises more freedom to his people. He has fallen in love with Western rock 'n' roll and wants to bring the music of the Velvet Underground, Zappa and the Stones back with him. He also has eyes for his prof's pretty 16 year-old daughter Esme, hippy love-child incarnate. Max disapproves of Jan's desertion, but sends him on his way. From here we move back and forth between Cambridge and Prague over the years and witness many major events, both emotional and political: Max's beloved wife Eleanor succumbing to cancer; Jan being watched, threatened and eventually arrested and imprisoned for his political resistance; Max visiting Prague and Jan from time to time, often delivering a hot new record from Esme; Esme becoming a young single mother raising her daughter Alice; Gorbachev, perestroika, glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union; the rise of Vaclev Havel and Jan's return to academia at the end of the play.

A lot of territory for one play, but we are in the hands of a masterful playwright and our interest in these characters and their development over such a long time period never flags. Each scene is mostly held in tight focus, often between two or three characters (aside from one large luncheon in Cambridge late in the play...the only time the stage feels really populated). So it is the conversations that take place between these characters over this 22 year period that engage us. Ideas and philosophies are spun out, for certain, but they are always rooted in real lived experience. If Jan strikes us as somewhat naive and idealistic after his return to Prague, it is not too long before events move him into a painful awareness that freedom has a long road ahead before finding its way into Czechoslovakia. If Max strikes us as a bit pompous and absurd, a bit of an oxymoron, the end of the Cold War tests him to the core and he finds a persistent belief in communism that sustains him, even in his bitterness at the compromises made by so many. If Esme begins the play as a flighty flowerchild, she ends it as a mature woman who has successfully raised a talented and caring daughter, who has cared for her aging father and who is finding her way to happiness. And only Stoppard can get away with pulling the rug out from under his audience in the final moments of the play in revealing that all along we've been witnessing a love story that has taken 22 years to come into being. Happy endings all around...Surprise!

The Huntington Theatre production is directed by Carey Perloff of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Perloff has directed many Stoppard US debuts and she does a fine job here, with an excellent cast in-hand. The three leads (see photos above) are all seasoned actors who immerse themselves in their characters and the quick, sharp dialogue that is Stoppard's trademark. I especially liked Augusen's doubled roles as Eleanor (Max's wife) and Esme (as an adult). She is a fine actress, reminds me somewhat of Laura Linney, who reaches the emotional depths and heights of her roles with great facility. Felciano and Willis are fine as Jan and Max and their scenes crackle with mentor/student (read: Father/Son) tension. These three leads are ably supported by the rest of the ensemble and an effective and impressive set design by Douglas W. Schmidt and lighting by Robert Wierzel. My only minor complaint was the volume of the rock 'n' roll songs used throughout as transitions. Okay, we may be a graying audience who are filled with nostalgia for the music of our youth, but that's no excuse not to turn up the volume! The Stones must be heard at 11, not 10 or 9 or 8, on the dial. Start me up, indeed!

Last night saw me as one of a tiny audience of 8 souls at the tiny Black Box Theatre in the Boston Centre for the Arts complex on Tremont Street in South Boston. We eight hardy ones were treated to a gem of a play by yet another very significant living playwright, Ireland's Brian Friel. I was in his Dancing at Lughnasa a few years back (2002) and was delighted to have the opportunity to embody one of his characters and live in the world he creates in his work. Faith Healer is an earlier play of Friel's, written in 1979, although it has been revived recently, most significantly in the Dublin/NY production with Ralph Fiennes (see image above).

The play is made up of four monologues delivered by three characters: Frank Hardy, a 'faith healer' who has spent over 20 years travelling from town to town 'performing' his acts of healing for those in enough despair to attend his shows; his wife Grace, who has left a comfortable upper middle-class Irish family and run off with Frank, condemning herself to a hard love and an equally hard life; and Teddy, the Hardys' faithful cockney manager who is with them every step of the way and who reflects back on this time with the audience, eventually revealing the truth of the deaths of both Frank and Grace, and his grieving for them. We are not given a clear timeframe for the play, but it feels like it may fall somewhere between the 1940s and the 60s.

Hardy's opening monologue gives us his point of view on his life and the mixed curse/blessing of a gift that only occasionally works. So he is mostly a charming charlatan who can under certain circumstances cause a miracle cure or two (or in one case, 10). He describes his wife as his mistress and is somewhat dismissive of her, although we get hints of deeper feelings, and he satirizes his manager Teddy, yet we see how much he depends upon him. Friel then shifts time and location to a flat in London where we meet Grace, widowed and deeply depressed. She gives us a very different take on Frank, who she absolutely loved despite their frequent battles and his infuriating behaviour (drinking, disconnecting), even after the stillbirth of their baby and Frank's appalling refusal to be there for her during this trauma.

The second act gives us Teddy's perspective on events, his devotion to Frank and unspoken passion for Grace. He is the one who is always there, through thin and thinner, and he tells us of the miraculous night when Frank cured all 10 people in the audience and of another night when it seemed Frank knew the crowd was out to get him...and eventually did. He also tells us of Grace's sad end and his lonely task of identifying her body. Frank returns for a final monologue that relives his final night on earth, and gives us a brief glimpse of the fleeting yet precious gift he may (or may not) have possessed.

So Friel is experimenting Rashomon-like in this play, presenting the same story through the eyes of three protagonists and letting us come to our own judgments about where the truth may lie. He is also drawing on some very primal Christ-like metaphors for Frank, Mary/Mary Magdalene for Grace and the Disciples for Teddy. We humans always want to sacrifice our prophets, right? It is a quiet but powerful piece, terribly demanding on both actors (who use direct address throughout) and audiences (who are challenged by the lack of dialogue and the intimacies of direct address). It demands excellence.

The Publick Theatre production may not give us James Mason (who first played Frank), or even Ralph Fiennes (who I imagine was excellent in the role), but does a fine job nonetheless. The company's Artistic Director Diego Arciniegas plays Frank and has a strong handle on his character, delivering his lines with simplicity and honesty, sometimes letting us see the charisma that must have swayed his audiences in the past. I liked the physicality he brought to the role, and the sense of both sadness and acceptance of fate that seemed to underpin his monologues. Susanne Nitter played Grace with a quiet ferocity, a woman who is so wrapped up in her memories of loss and regret that it must make sense to us later on that she has killed herself; a tough order for an actor who has about half an hour on stage! Yet Nitter drew me in and when she tells us of the birth of her stillborn son, on the side of the road outside a desolate Scottish highland village, we feel her desolation, her abandonment by her beloved Frank, who so often rejected and enraged her, yet who she clearly cannot live without. Gabriel Kuttner is a bit young for the role of Teddy, but he does a masterful job of it. It is probably Teddy who wins most of our empathy in this play, as (like us) he is the watcher, the enabler, the outsider. The love he feels for both Frank (a tough love indeed) and Grace (an even tougher one) is undeniable, although presented in an almost entirely unsentimental way. He only cracks when he tells us about having to identify Grace's dead body...then he goes back to his drinking...alone.

I was very moved by this play, and director Nora Hussey has clearly spent the necessary time with each actor so that the arcs of their interlocking stories and diverse viewpoints are complementary. She even asks each actor to remain onstage throughout another character's monologue, an act of selfless generosity that seems to reflect the deeper themes at work in this sad yet memorable piece; theatre at its most simple and most potent.

LT. OF INISHMORE and COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT - October 30 and November 2, 2008

Top to Bottom: Colin Hamell as Padraic and Lynn R. Guerra as Mairead in NRT's Lt. of Inishmore (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/10/31/seeing_red_in_inishmore/);Poster design for American Repertory Theatre's The Communist Dracula Pageant (October 18 to November 9, 2008); Photo from 2006 NY production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore (http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/theater/reviews/28inis.html?pagewanted=all) featuring David Wilmot and Kerry Condon; New Repertory Theatre's poster (October 26 to November 16)

Well, it was a hit and a miss in my theatre-going adventures this past week. I made my way out to the somewhat bleak suburb of Watertown last Thursday night (its saving grace a discount mall with Filene's Basement, Marshall's etc.!) to the lovely and quite new Arsenal Center for the Arts, home of the New Repertory Theatre, now in its 25th anniversary season. I have a hate-love relationship with bad boy of Irish playwrights Martin McDonagh...I hate that I love his work. The over-the-top violence in his plays, the often sick levels of psychopathology of his characters, the bleak worldview...if only he wasn't so damned smart and funny to boot. This play, one of his entire oeuvre written in a nine month stint in the early 90s when he was in his early 20s (enough to make him well-hated right there!), is one of the Aran Islands Trilogy. I saw another one, The Cripple of Inishmaan, at Victoria's Belfry Theatre a few years back, and although I felt it was overwritten, I enjoyed it. Inishmore brings new meaning to the term 'black comedy' as McDonagh skewers Irish terrorism in a satirical story of a cat, his IRA splinter group sicko owner Padraic and the small Aran island community he comes from, off the coast of Ireland.

Padraic has left the IRA as it's not militant enough for him and when we meet him first, he's quite cheerily torturing a pot dealer who sells to school kids. The scene is both horrifying and funny as Padraic prepares to slice off the dealer's nipple (of his choice) after already having taken off two of his toenails. This jollity is interrupted by a phone call from Padraic's father Donny, who has been caring for his son's beloved cat Wee Thomas. Wee Thomas, we know, has been killed in an unfortunate accident and panic is spreading through the village as everyone knows what Padraic is capable of when he is seeking justice and revenge. Sure enough, Padraic returns home in haste and is met at the ferry dock by young Mairead, who fancies herself a rebel-in-training and idolizes Padraic, and the two of them fall instantly into passionate love. As Padraic tries to find out what has happened to Wee Thomas (and is preparing to execute his father and Mairead's layabout hippie brother Davey on suspicions of a cover-up), the tables are turned when he himself is taken by the splinter group he has splintered off from. His crime? He is too radical and too violent even for this ultra-radical and ultra-violent terrorist branch of the IRA! So he is marched out to be shot, but his love Mairead comes to the rescue (we've already learned she's blinded a herd of cows with her air rifle, so it's not too much of a spoiler to find out that she can do the same with wanna-be executioners). There follows from here a climactic scene of unending gore as Padraic and Mairead take out the now-blinded trio of assassins and then force Donny and Davey into cutting up their bodies for disposal. One final twist, which I won't divulge, leads to a new Lieutenant of Inishmore taking over from Padraic, Wee Thomas arriving home safe and sound after all the bloody mayhem, and drunken losers Donny and Davey wondering where it will end.

There are morals beneath the surface in McDonagh's plays, to be sure (although this play is lighter-handed than the real downer of The Pillowman), but he is also out to entertain...and he succeeds. His ear for dialogue is terrific and the characters come off the stage as fully rounded and yet completely uncliched...all of them are originals, even the smaller roles. And the New Rep impressed me mightily in my first visit by offering a production that was flawless. A top-notch acting ensemble with fine performances from everyone, Irish accents and all. A lovely set design by Janie E. Howland (who also designed the recent Follies I saw at Lyric Stage), nice lighting and sound (some great musical choices for scene transitions) and some effectively gory stage blood and body parts props. But my highest praise goes to the director David R. Gammons; he has steered this production with a clear hand throughout. Every scene has its beats presented with clarity, the show has a constant rhythm and pace and his staging of the climax where Padraic and Mairead perform a pas de deux of murder was inspired. The strongest direction I've seen so far this season.

One additional thought on violence onstage: I've written about this before (see my review of Rage on my Victoria theatre blog at http://www.vicreviews.blogspot.com/ ) and generally speaking I'm not into graphic depictions of violence on stage or screen, although I admit to enjoying a good action flick from time to time...which makes me a hypocrite I guess. And as I watched Donny and Davey chatting away as they slice off fingers and heads of dead bodies at the end of this play, I wondered how an audience would respond to a film version of this play, where these actions would be depicted as much more real than is ever possible on stage. Stage props of bodies never look real, and when guns go off and actors burst blood caps in their mouths and SMs set off explosions that cover people with blood, we laugh (in this play anyway), partly because of the fakery. One of the scene transitions late in this show has two murdered characters carry their own dissected corpses back on stage, place them carefully, then squirt the other actors and each other with bottles of stage blood...now that's funny! Theatre can hold its own to film anyday at the level of psychological or emotional violence, but at the level of physical and visceral violence, the sense of fakery is what protects us. And in McDonagh's way off-kilter world, it also gives us a chance to laugh our way through the actual memory of the deaths of thousands in the struggles to free Ireland, oftentimes Irish killing Irish, as is always the sad case in a civil war. I recently saw Ken Loach's powerful film The Wind that Shakes the Barley about this very thing, and it comes down to brother killing brother. Believe me, it is no laughing matter. Thank goodness for the theatre and for playwrights like McDonagh who insist on entertaining us as they press our faces into the endless muck of humanity.

Speaking of muck of humanity, the next show I saw features two of the biggest mucks in the endless row of assholes who ran countries and murdered their countrymen (and often beyond) in the twentieth century, a cheery little theatrical revue about Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu of Romania called The Communist Dracula Pageant by Americans for Americans with Hallucinations, Phosphorescence and Bears (the title alone sets off alarms doesn't it?). The Ceausescus ruled Romania and engendered a brutal cult of the personality for over two decades, repressing their people and driving the country back to the middle ages. When there was a revolt in December 1989, mostly as a result of the perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union that spelled the end of European communism, not too much fuss was made worldwide at the news that the tyrant couple had been arrested, put on trial, found guilty of genocide and summarily executed.

This seems a somewhat strange subject for theatrical investigation, but I was game to see what playwright Anne Washburn and the ensemble company of ART would come up with. What I saw, unfortunately, was a hodgepodge of a docudrama that feels unfocussed and unfinished, performed with professional bravado by a company that must shake their heads in the dressing room after every show and then head off to the nearest bar. The 105 minute show starts off quite well, framing the play as a pageant performed for the Ceaucescus to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of their infamous ancestral countryman, Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula. The intertwining of Dracula's tale with the Ceaucescu's seems promising, but things quickly devolve. What we then see is a mishmash of scenes and monologues that purport to take us through the last days of the dictatorship, up to their execution. But there is no throughline to the play, nothing for the audience to hang onto, or quite frankly, to even care much about. The Ceausescus are hardly worth our empathy, nor is Dracula, so we could engage with the Romanian people who won back their country. But no one is presented to us in any depth, actors keep turning out to us and telling us this scene is as transcribed from trial transcripts or videotapes (Why tell us this? Can we not read program notes? Are we not literate and educated audience members? Please don't talk down to me...I hate that). To add to the lacklustredness and so-whatedness of it all, the production is poorly directed by Annie Kauffman (how sad is it to slam a show directed and written by two women...sigh). She has a clearly talented group of 16 actors (16!!), including lead actors Thomas Derrah (Nicolae), Karen MacDonald (Elena) and Will LeBow (Dracula/Functionary) whose resumes include dozens of ART past productions and clutches of awards for their work (I saw LeBow in Huntington's season-opener How Shakespeare Won the West). Clearly, she doesn't know what to do with them. Scene transitions and the internal staging of scenes feels clunky, there's way too much dead air, and she hasn't found an effective way to make the randomness of the script (po-mo anyone?) theatrically engaging. Sure, there are projected scene titles and even some videotaped scenes...what there isn't is excitement, innovation or even very much energy. The actors do their best with what little has been given them, but I felt for them at curtain call, bowing to a "smattering of polite applause" (one of the projected surtitles referring to the reception of Ceaucescu's final public speech). My collective creation bent would have tossed both the playwright and the director out of the rehearsal room and let the actors have at it (with open-minded designers and maybe an excellent dramaturg)...chances are they could have come up with a show ten times more thrilling than this somewhat limp fish...too bad.