THEATER - "Levittown"

After World War II, the architect William Levett built a series of model homes out of spare parts in order to provide GIs with cheap housing and a homey place to house their traumatic pasts. Playwright Marc Palmieri has done much the same, so much so that it would be just as fair to call this play Palmieritown as Levittown. Like Levett, Palmieri has built a series of scenes out of scraps from a greater work, and he’s provided his characters with a place to house trauma, but not to grow beyond it. Director George Demas struggles to express these ghosts, silhouetting them through the wall like skeletons in a closet, and it’s a good effect—but then we’re off on another tangent, and it turns out to be just an effect after all.

Palmieri’s writing is blissfully simple, and he’s endowed this family drama with a bunch of lively, entertaining characters. But these, like the literal tricks of light that allow for ghosts to rise from the dead, are fragile house-of-card moments, often blown over by the next in a series of scenes that can’t really settle on a central narrative. It’s just one dysfunction to another, from the son’s attempt to resolve the rift between his father and soon-to-be-wed sister, to the grandfather’s poignant (but aimless) encounters with the dead. You can’t make one a focal point without the other seeming irrelevant and when placed together it becomes an overlap of good ideas competing for space.

Furthermore, Levittown’s choice of exposition is ill scripted: obvious things are over-analyzed while the real hearts of these characters are left in a muddle. Yes, the mother’s obsession with meditation makes sense—but is cousin Joe nothing more than blue-collar comic relief? If we accept the son’s blind faith, how do we explain the father’s one-dimensional malice? Why must good old Uncle Jack come back, clad in firefighter gear, simply to spout some exposition about the “terrible” secret upstairs? More importantly, how does the sister’s fiancée go from being a reclusive nerd in one scene to being a take-no-shit jock in the next?

At least the acting is lends an air of solidity to all this bouncing about. As far as comic relief goes, Michael Laurence is a pleasure to watch as Joe, and Joe Viviani (who plays the war-veteran grandfather) has a masterful command over the silences that come with a good, clean haunting. Less astounding are actors Brian Barnhart (son) and Curzon Dobell (father) who exude meekness or intensity, but never learn anything from the other. The rest of the cast is good, and Palmieri’s script picks up as the number of people onstage grows. In these moments, Levittown seems lived in and well imbued with energy. But then come the ghosts, and cool as they seem, they’re such a drag.

THEATER - "Tommy Tiernan: Loose"

Cracked, the name of Tommy Tiernan’s last stand-up tour in the US, doesn’t really capture the aggressive joke-telling of this Irish comic. Loose, the name of this year’s tour, is much more appropriate. It’s wrong for the right reasons when Tommy’s at his best (tightly wound on a sensitive subject, like God as a selfish fucker, or the following knock-knock joke: “Who’s there?” “Not Mickey’s fucking dad!”). It’s right for the wrong reasons when Tommy ambles between highlights, leaving the audience to chew the cud through some unfortunate dead space. Luckily, there’s very little downtime, and there is a lot of laughter (hyena-like guffaws, up from the root of your soul).

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Macbeth"

Macbeth, when produced in scope and with a full ensemble, is a bloody Shakespearian play. Soldiers die en masse, chaos reigns, and power corrupts, absolutely. The Public Theater’s outdoor version, at the Delacourt Theater, is not only well served by the enormity of the space and the backdrop of mighty nature itself, but by Moisés Kaufman’s highly aesthetic approach. Here, corpses parade across the stage like a stricter version of Sweeny Todd, and 1940s sound effects collide with harsh modern lighting to rapidly contrast Macbeth’s guilt-ridden psychosis with the all-too-cruel world itself.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Pig Farm"

Pig Farm is a ridiculous comedy. That’s not exaggeration: Greg Kotis writes like a man freefalling through the sky while being devoured on the inside by piranhas even as his fingers spontaneously combust like fireworks on the fourth. And that’s ignoring both the surreal ending (pigs may not fly, but they might as well) and the farcical shifts in plot. Pig Farm isn’t near as good as Urinetown—much as director John Rando tries to carry that tune through to a straight show, with a bunch of lyrical blocking. But what it misses in cleverness, it makes up for in crudeness (and really, it’s a filthy, filthy play)--the most lascivious, delightful kind. The kind that makes you wonder how you ever watched a political satire without such "hams" before.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "The Busy World Is Hushed"

For a little over two hours, The Busy World Is Hushed lives up to its title. Not a single cell phone goes off during the performance—it wouldn’t dare. There’s too much life onstage for such a rude interruption, and though I despise theological thinking plays, Keith Bunin never proselytizes—he just uses God as an all-inspiring passion. The three actors of this tight, witty drama are all great enthusiasts (even though Jill Clayburgh is forced to reel it in to play the restrained “bad guy”), and director Mark Brokaw has no problem tapping into all that energy.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Clean"

Clean is not a sophomoric production. It’s not even freshmanic. It is a bit manic—thanks more to the nonsensical script and jittery, unbalanced acting than any actual cleverness—but if this type of gag-heavy writing was ever fresh, it’s long since rotted. If worth classifying, Clean belongs to the category of pop avant-garde, which is to say that it’s a dumbed-down eclecticism meant to be easily packaged for the lowest common denominator. It fails, by the way, at that, too.

The plot seems like a stream of consciousness cooked up while on acid, and held together only by the narrator cum hero, Fescue (John Kudan, whose gravelly squeal might not make it through the run). The whole cockamamie plot—not bad enough to be cult, or hip enough to be cool¬—would actually make a better subtitle for the show than as actual substance, and can be described simply as “How to get from the LIRR to Mars without really trying.” Sexy, dim-witted socialite Digby (Sarah Viccellio, who is both off-key and monotone) stumbles through a train compartment populated by blow-up dummies to a CD factory inhabited by a statuesque (read: pointless) robot named Elvis. She communicates with a film clip from 1927. She slaps her ass a lot and pouts, takes off her underwear and contemplates suicide, and learns nothing. Cheap sight gags follow in her footsteps, and when they don’t, they pop up on the multimedia “backdrop” that serves to set an even sleazier mood than the wide-open stage and flat characters. None of these are ever actually good or bad enough to be funny—kind of like a black hole.

Maybe it’s because so many of the actors flub their lines, seem unprepared, or deliver such strikingly unoriginal and expository monologues, but Nancy Rodriguez actually comes out of the whole thing looking like a good actor trapped in a bad play. Her character’s quirk—holding up a puppet to represent her daughter—turns out to be a blessing, as she gets to flip between two totally contrasting voices, even if neither seems to have much of a point. (The opposite is true for Bjorn Thorstad, who is crippled by his character’s unforgivable penchant for badly imitating Cagney and Brando.)

I hesitate to blame the director, Christopher Maring--after all, he was handed terrible material--but he might’ve made Clean tolerable had he a picked a discernable style of comedy and pursued it head-on instead of half-assed. But it’s the writer, Bob Epstein, who really should know better. Writing a play isn’t easy, I know, but calling Clean a play is what makes people think that it is.

MUSIC - Sonya Kitchell, "Words Came Back to Me"

Is there anything bad I can say about Sonya Kitchell, really? She's seventeen. She's a musical prodigy. She understands rhythm; she has passion; and she's quickly expanded beyond the folk of Joni Mitchell to R&B and sultry jazz. And, hey, guess what? She writes the stuff herself. There are plenty of talented young singers out there, especially of the feminine persuasion, but they're talented at regurgitating (in occasionally unflattering kareoke tones, as on American Idol). Sonya Kitchell is talented at music, too. So no, there's nothing bad I can say about Sonya Kitchell. And I have nothing but praise for her debut album, Words Came Back To Me. Well, almost nothing.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "The Gold Standard"

Is like, Daniel Roberts found an engaging character, latched on to him, and rode him all the way home. Is like, the script is full of such clever dialogue that you don’t mind the standard “man steals other man’s girlfriend” plot. Is like, the rhythm of this eccentric Korean poet, this hurdy-gurdy machine of broken words and fortune cookie statements, fuels something so much bigger than itself that The Gold Standard appreciates in value with every minute he’s on stage. In the words of the playwright, is like life is a dream for people like that, but “only problem is world full of alarm clock.” Well, this is the play that lets you stay in that dream.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

BOOK - Steven Millhauser's "Martin Dressler"

Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer isn't filled so much with dreaming, or at least not the dreamy, poetic writing of a fantasist, so much as the down-to-earth essence of observation and a sense of the minute. Millhauser's work is meticulous and detailed, and sharpened by an expert's aesthetic taste. However, pages occasionally plod along with little more pacing than a plausible, realistic depiction of turn-of-the(-twentieth)-century New York, Els and all. Portions resemble the economic platitudes of Horatio Alger, others lean towards the infinitely lavish imaginings of Borges, and while the middle ground Millhauser takes is unbalanced, it is captivating.

Just as Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale captured perfectly the Americana of a rising city, so too does Martin Dressler, the main difference being the strict classical realism that Millhauser has fettered around his neck. To compensate for his historicism, he elevates the language to a rhythmic conglomerate of description (the best kind of textbook): “Martin liked the sound of the reins slapping the cab-horse, the thump of baggage on the roof over his head, the shaking bouncing seat and the shaking bouncing window from which he looked out at buildings that bounced and shook in the rattle of high wheels and the bang of horsefeet."

Character, too, is handled in the same fashion - all at once, to set the scene, followed by the natural unfolding of such a personality: "...Mrs. Louise Hamilton, a buxom bustling handsome dark-haired lady whose large black eyes were skilled in the expression of disdain, outrage, dissatisfaction, and astonished disbelief that the simplest request had been handled with such ineptitude." The unfortunate truth is that these skillful passages are merely setting the stage, and that it takes two-thirds of the book to start making conclusions. The romance is doomed, not because the two characters, Martin and Caroline, are dreamers, but because they never clash. It’s clear that Caroline is a mirror to the beautiful, physical city—a ghost, shallow by comparison—but their situation lingers too long in the periphery, all for the sake of an ever-deepening foundation. The payoff isn’t a bad one, but isn’t the most efficient use of that meticulous labor. (In fact, Millhauser’s recent short stories reveal that he’s able to describe the same concept within four to five pages).
Rather than skipping to the heart of things, we get a procedural courtship, Martin’s slow rise from bellboy to clerk to cigar shop manager to restaurateur to hotel owner, and a lot of baroque flourishes on the burgeoning city. The story finally boils over with the construction of Martin’s new hotel, The Dressler, with its underground shops and architectural cunning.

"Long articles . . . praised the building's boldness of vision, its structural ingenuity, its ability to overcome sheer massiveness by means of an elegant design that led the eye upward through three major groupings to the two-story mansard roof with its tower, and if one journalist chose to complain that the building was 'wasteful,' that the facade was so heavily ornamented that it put him in mind of a gigantic wedding cake, even he felt compelled to acknowledge the exuberance of the Dressler, its sheer delight in itself."

Millhauser is an architect in writer's clothing: sentences like those almost merit a nomination for the Pritzker.

After savoring in the publicity and advertising of the hotel, both of which allow Millhauser to churn out more of this fanciful "construction," he decides to create an even bigger one: the New Dressler, replete with seven underground levels, which include:

"a campground with tents in a brilliantly reproduced pine forest with swift-flowing streams; the deck of a transatlantic steamer, with canvas deck chairs, shuffleboard courts, and hand-tinted films of ocean scenery displayed on the walls; a wooded island with log cabins in a large lake with a ferry; a replication of the Atlantic City boardwalk, complete with roller-chair rides, as well as half a dozen streets crowded with theaters and movie houses; a health spa with mineral baths; and a national park containing a geyser, a waterfall, a glacier, a small canyon, and winding nature trails."

Oh, and a labyrinth beneath that, in case you weren't sold already.

It's a shame that it takes Millhauser so long to get to this point: he's quite inventive, and all the reality up until this point seems rather thudding in comparison. Sure, the textures and descriptions are articulate, accurate, and important, but at the same time, they seem to lack the life that Millhauser begins to capture in these late pages. By the story's close, even the city has come to life: "For what struck him was the terrible restlessness of the city, its desire to overthrow itself, to smash itself to bits and burst into new forms. The city was a fever-patient in a hospital, thrashing in its sleep, erupting in modern dreams."

In the biggest parallel of all, the book resembles the city: the old remains, but changed so much that it hardly seems the same after all. The change, in this case, happens to be for the better, but the hasty conclusion (or end of Millhauser’s rope) ends the fever dream too soon. That said, the novel can’t help being a disappointment, albeit a spellbinding one.

THEATER - "Arabian Night"

The nice thing about the modern fairytale is that even when it’s not particularly affecting, the presentation’s always worth the price of admission. I thought this about Devil Land; I feel the same about Arabian Night, The Play Company’s import from prolific German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. The script, which bounces back and forth between the thoughts of five mysteriously drawn-together tenants on a hot and magical night, comes across largely as wordplay—more a narrative trick than a necessity. Furthermore, Schimmelpfennig’s disparate blend of comedic drama often causes the one to obscure the other (as if the revolving narrative wasn’t already dizzying enough). And yet, while some might object to the sudden twist that places one character inside a bottle of brandy, and another in the middle of an Arabian desert, others might allow themselves to be entertained by the stupefying absurdity of it—a circus of the uncanny.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Security"

Security isn’t a play: it’s a collection of playful riffs on a theme—perfect for such an intangible ideal. The majority of these are political farces (an easy topic), from the elusive double-talk of government to gun control to the circus of world affairs. Two focus on the off-again-on-again rights of women, from the smarmy Victorian work of marital blackmail (“The Proposal”) to the sexually liberated American woman today (“100 Years War”). There are also pure character pieces: the gun-toting elderly couple of P. Seth Bauer’s “Killing Squirrels in Sleep Hollow,” the type of inadvertent racists who, nervous that there’s a robber downstairs, take the time to point out that “You don’t know he’s a Mexican. He could be black.”

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Nerve"

According to the cast bios, playwright Adam Szymkowicz is currently studying with Christopher Durang at Julliard. This is a good opportunity for him to work with a master in the field of jittery, dark, serio-comedic storytelling, and a chance for Szymkowicz to turn this entertaining “scene”—I hesitate to call Nerve a play—into a more rounded piece. For seventy minutes, Susan (Susan Louise O’Connor) and Elliot (Travis York) sit across from one another at a bar table, on a real-life Internet date, and throw their manias at each other. This makes Nerve an extended version of that very same scene in Durang’s Beyond Therapy, which may explain his current position at Julliard. Szymkowicz throws in a few surreal glimpses into the character’s minds—one likes to choreograph dance to calm herself, the other likes to play with a British-accented puppet—but the sum total is cheap theater: shallow and callous. (The nerve!)

That such a one-dimensional topic (the date gone wrong, spiked with obsession and depression) manages to stay endearing and sharply humorous for the first two-thirds of the play either speaks well of Symkowicz’s ability or exposes what’s really on the average theatergoer’s mind. A little of both, perhaps, or maybe the free beer that comes with every ticket makes it a looser atmosphere. No matter how relaxed the audience may be, however, it’s hard to commiserate with the two-person cast: the blocking keeps them sitting at a high table on an already elevated stage. The theater has already constructed a bar at ground level—had the action taken place there, with the audience sitting at tables around them, the intimacy might’ve lent some emotion to the show. Instead, it’s like watching something exciting from way over on the other end of the bar.

Congratulations to O’Connor and York, who more than keep pace with the dialogue and manage to play such comedic roles with such straightforwardness. It’s a shame their commitment to these “characters in need of commitment” (that’s a double entendre) never develops Nerve into anything more than a brief and quirky fling.

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14th Street Y (344 East 14th Street)
Tickets (212-868-4444): $15
Performances: Monday @ 7:00 / Thursday – Saturday @ 8:00

MUSIC - Push to Talk, "Push to Talk"

There’s one forgettable track on Push to Talk’s self-titled debut album, and unfortunately, it happens to be their first, “Haunting 56th Street.” GET PAST THAT! Push to Talk, a rock band proudly alternative in their crooning and scale-sweeping melodies, is fantastic. These songs feature uncomplicated yet incredibly catchy beats, with a melodramatic flair for a more classic '80s rock, and they’re a pure pleasure.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

MUSIC - Boom Boom Satellites, "Full of Elevating Pleasures"

Boom Boom Satellites didn't want to wait to remix other groups...so they made up their own songs and remixed as they went along to get that up-tempo dance hall feel. They may have just been fooling around, dabbling out from their roots to see what sort of electronic music they could grow, but the effect of their CD, Full of Elevating Pleasures, is one of throwing down the gauntlet. "Hey," they shout, "tell me everything's not a little bit better in techno." A techno-color dream coat? Sure, I'll buy that.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

BOOK - David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green"

Jason Taylor, the stammering, bullied, average protagonist of Black Swan Green, may only be thirteen years old, and he may think the world (or at least this titular Worcestershire village) revolves around his problems. David Mitchell, however, the ambidextrous author behind this child's narrative, knows that there are bigger things, and though he never leaves this small portion of England, he manages to cover the breadth of 1982 in a series of thirteen succinct chapters, each a short story in that never-ending tale of life.

Under the cloak of innocent youth, Mitchell deftly moralizes and assimilates a whole history of culture, ranging from observations on the hated gypsies to a failing marriage to the Falkland war. ("War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins . . . War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers, it's a lottery.") For the majority of the novel, however, we stay focused on Taylor's struggles to fit in with the societal caste system of his peers, from his mimicry of a cigarette-smoking cousin, to his possible induction into a secret club, to his secret double-life as Eliot Bolivar, the poet of Black Swan Green.

Not for a second does the novel feel repetitive, even as Taylor faces the repeated humiliations not just of his peers, but his own internal voices, Maggot and Hangman (personifications of his rage and stutter). No real surprise: Mitchell showed the world with Cloud Atlas that he could turn a Nabokovian phrase in any genre, and now that he's sticking to one, he runs the gamut of wordplay, from alliteration to onomatopoeia and back, replete with neologisms and slang that run slick as silk across the page. "When a stammer stammers their eyeballs pop out, they go trembly-red like an evenly matched arm wrestler, and their mouth guppergupperguppers like a fish in a net."

When you have an uncanny ability to write prose like that, the subject often doesn't matter -- you've crossed into an aesthetic and comedic form of prose that subsists on its own belletrism. But without going surreal, like Tom Robbins, Mitchell remains grounded, like a far more playful Twain, and uses almost Burgessian slang (e.g., "grinny-zitty," "bumfluff") to pepper his resourceful passages on the troubles of youth. If it seems implausible that almost every single misfortune comes Taylor's star-crossed way, think about your childhood: didn't it seem that way?

Energetic and ambitious descriptions often rule the day in Black Swan Green, but because of their delicious details, they don't usurp the plot: they subsume it. "A peardrop sun dissolved in a sloped pond. Superheated flies grandprixed over the water. Trees at the height of their blossom bubbled dark cream by a rotted bandstand." The best passages in the novel do both, and how better to end this review than with Mitchell's best:

"Now her grubby soles met like they were praying. Now his skin was glazed in roast-pork sweat. Now she made a noise like a tortured Moomintroll. Now Tom Yew's body jerkjerked judderily jackknifed and a noise like a ripping cable tore out of him. Once more, like he'd been booted in the balls. Her fingernails'd sunk salmony welts into his arse. Debby Crombie's mouth made a perfect O."

For some lucky people, a book brings that much pleasure too, and if it's possible, Black Swan Green, the best book of the year, will leave you with that perfect O.

THEATER - "Dead City"

“Yes I said yes I will yes,” reads Joyce’s Ulysses, and it ought to continue with, “see Sheila Callaghan’s new play Dead City.” Callaghan’s work is inspired by Joyce, but not so much in plot as in the telling: a one-day account of Samantha Blossom’s (get it?) life and her fated encounters with Jewel, a starving poet. With a set of earthy revolving walls and a projector screen, director Daniella Topol flings open Callaghan’s already loose words, and for a hundred minutes, the city becomes like an oyster filled with infinite pearls.

Through a series of encounters in various Manhattan locales (like The Strand), Dead City traces the everyday struggle to feel like one exists. The internal creeps into the physical, which is where we see echoes of Joyce (though Callaghan’s beautiful language is her own). One minute, Samantha is catching up with an old friend, the next, that friend is asking about Samantha’s dead son. At a massage parlor, two masseuses are suddenly grilling her about the affair she’s contemplating with her postmodern online beau. Later, her thoughts project across the wall in a multimedia frenzy of stream-of-consciousness, and, in a dream sequence, as animation. For all the surreal tactics and alternative forms of expression—like a flying taxi—none of this seems out of place; Callaghan has created a fluid, lyrical world that riffs on reality as if it were jazz (which, if it’s not, should be).

To accommodate the myriad characters, Dead City presses an ensemble of five to the limit, casting each in at least three roles. Some are clearer than others (like the endlessly talented Rebecca Hart), and some are more versatile (like Alfredo Narciso), but the whole ensemble reeks of talent. Outside the ensemble, Elizabeth Norment (Samantha) centers and uncenters the show with her brilliant mental oscillations, while April Matthis (Jewel) grows more genuine by the minute.

Save for a humorous funeral, there’s nothing dead in Dead City; this sweeping production revitalizes an art form that prefers to imitate. This is the real McCoy, illusions and all, and like Ulysses, should soon fit the oxymoronic bill of a modern classic.

THEATER - "The Field"

John B. Keane wrote The Field forty years ago: all that means is that the adjective “timeless” fits now, right beside “brilliant.” Most positive phrases fit this colorful drama, and Ciaran O’Reilly’s direction overruns the few flaws in the script, like the two-and-a-half-hour length or the second act’s repetitious proselytizing. Under O’Reilly, the length is justified as an opportunity to remain in the company of such fine, engaging actors, and at least the overbearing exposition is boisterous.

The Field is simple dialogue wrapped around a simple plot—a plot of land, in fact, that a gentle widow has hired honest, hardworking Mick Flanagan, barkeep cum auctioneer, to publicly sell. Problem is, local bully ‘The Bull,’ feels entitled to the land since he’s leased it for the past five years. Keane’s characters are more human than most, which is to say that they’re flawed: Mick is pressured into cheating the woman, and when an outsider shows up to buy the land, it’s more surprising that The Bull weeps over killing the man than the actual murder itself.

The second act grows rather preachy and contrived, as the sergeant and priest attempt to break the lie of silence that surrounds Carriagthomond. They moralize and condemn the fearful villagers who won’t finger the killer, but at the same time, Keane makes it clear that he’s on the villagers’ side. He even uses the questioning as an opportunity to further develop character: Flanagan’s wife, Maimie, has a meltdown after discovering she’s pregnant with a tenth child, and Flanagan’s son grows disgusted by his father’s cowardice. Of course, it’s ultimately the actors who have to show those nuances onstage, and not a single one falls short: Orlagh Cassidy, Marty Maguire, and Ken Jennings (to name a few) go so far as to make Broadway look flimsy.

The Field is a struggle between old values—The Bull wants to farm the land—and new ones—Dee wants to pave the property. Modern theater often does the same: new works pave over the rich life of the land. The Field doesn’t cut those corners: it lives and revels in them.

[published 6-6-06 in Show Business Weekly]