Suspending Blog for Time Being

Due to financial considerations, I’m temporarily suspending this blog. I started it because I was in a small-budget situation.

Now that I find myself in a no-budget situation, I’m going to have to reorder my priorities for the time being.

-Drew Davidson

Upcoming Off-Off-Broadway plays

I’m thinking about seeing a couple of the following off-off-Broadway plays, all closing the weekend of September 26-27. I only consider attending OOB plays that run more than one week, are at least 90 minutes in length and no more than $20 per ticket.

Better Not Touch That
Lift Studio, 126 13th St
$15 – brownpapertickets.com

The Brokenhearteds
The Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher St
$18 – seemoreshows.com

Dial “N” for Negress
Clurman Theatre @ Theatre Row, 410 W 42^nd
$19.25 – ticketcentral.com (or, $9 – TDF.org)

Emily: An Amethyst Remembrance
Kirk Theatre @ Theatre Row, 410 W 42^nd
$18 – ticketcentral.com ($9 – TDF.org)

The House of Blue Leaves
The Gallery Players, 199 14^th St
$18 – seemoreshows.com

Milk Milk Lemonade
UNDER St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place
$18 – seemoreshows.com

Rocky Philly
The Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr Ave, Brooklyn
$10 – brownpapertickets.com

Thunder Above, Deeps Below
TBG Theatre, 312 W 36th (Eighth/Ninth)
$18 – smarttix.com ($9 – TDF.org)

Dispelling the Ghosts (Notes from ‘Ghosts of Provincetown’)

WHY I WENT

I have a rule about this blog: No one-acts. I lied. Bad blogger!

I reneged because I’ve always wanted to see “Ile” staged. I have an affinity – no, a lust – for one-act plays from the Little Theatre Movement, of which the Provincetown Playhouse was an integral part.

Forget the love affair between O’Neill and Bryant. These two just don’t belong on the same program, at least not for that connection. She’s a curiosity and nothing more. Better to put her on a program alongside the stronger women writers of Provincetown, Susan Glaspell and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

While I have no interest in attending any of the gazillion one-act play festivals that litter the back alleys of Off-Off-Broadway, I am in awe of a capable dramaturge who can curate a program of one-acts from theatre’s past into a fluid narrative arc.

Anyway, from now on, I’ll stick to my rule of reviewing solitary plays of 90 minute’s length or longer. I prefer seeing new plays, so I won’t have the temptation to constantly refer back to the script.

WHAT’S RIGHT AND WRONG ABOUT THEATRE IN NEW YORK

New World Stage is the granddaddy of all Theaplexes.* Being on 50^th St, it almost seemed like they took a large 1500-seat Broadway theatre and chopped it up into tiny bits. Rather than staging a single multi-million dollar flop, NWS wisely picks small budgets with bigger appeal.

The genius of this particular Theaplex is in booking long-running, tourist-pleasing, bottom-feeding theatrical glitz. New World Stage is thriving while just a few blocks away Broadway is choking on its neon.

Look at what NWS has been presenting lately:

The Toxic Avenger. Trash, but the good kind.
Altar Boyz. Where gay sex is covert.
Naked Boys Singing. Where gay sex is overt.
My First Time. Did I happen to mention that it’s about sex?
Gazillion Bubble Show. A pop sop to the sexless and not-yet-sexual.

On a short term basis, they’re also booking a Hypnotist. Schlocky, you say? Well, this particular Hypnotist uses her power to cloud men’s minds to prevent them from undressing her with their eyes.

No wonder that so-hip-that-it-hurts Time Out magazine has put their brand on the theatre bar.

That said, I have to applaud NWS for leaving room enough for a new theatre company to use one of their stages for something a bit more pedestrian.

*A Theaplex is a conglomeration of small theatres in one large space, the theatrical version of a Cineplex.

THE SET

Less than a week after viewing the wondrously attired set of Greendale G.P., I had to stare at the vast sparse space of “Ile”. Tell me, are walls verboten in modern theatre? I can understand why Greendale couldn’t block off their acting spaces with walls, but for “Ile,” little effort was made to dress the set like a realistically real Captain’s cabin.

In the ersatz cabin there was – out of place on a ship two years at sea – a piano. There are good reasons why “Ile” isn’t staged very often and the availability of decent pump organs is one of them. The script calls for an organ, of course, as a piano on a long ocean voyage would be ludicrous. I mean, who is keeping this thing in tune?

THANK YOU

Following up on my survey of Programmed Gratitude, this program listed a modest six Thank You’s. Simple and to the point.

LATE AGAIN

I’ll give an automatic $100 rating to any play that starts exactly on time.

MY FAVORITE LINE

DEATH: “You’re all alike, you Suicides…”

“Ghosts of Provincetown” – 9/2 performance, at New World Stage #5

MY RATING: $5 – Though the second play was sweet and clever, it’s not worth your money or your time to sit through the first play

What if Captain Ahab had married? It certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from going to sea in search of his Folly. But it also wouldn’t have stopped him from dragging the little lady out to sea with him, either. Ahab’s passion drove him mad, and would likely have done the same to Mrs. Ahab as well.

Now imagine if Mr. and Mrs. Ahab had never crossed paths with the great White Whale in the first place. You’d still find him asea, pursuing whales, as many whales as he could reach. His passion wouldn’t be focused on capturing the greatest whale in the ocean, but in being the greatest whaling captain on the Seven Seas.

Such a man is Captain David Keeney. And Eugene O’Neill’s “Ile”, one half of the Ghosts of Provincetown program put on by Moses Mogilee Productions at New World Stage #5, tells the story of Capt. Keeney and his wife, Annie trapped in ice after two years of pursuing whales for their oil, “ile” in the Down East accent.

It’s a 30-minute play, so this synopsis will be similarly short: It’s the beginning of summer in the Bering Sea. A whaling ship is held fast in the ice as the crew’s two-year contract expires.

Capt. Keeney is beset by mutinous crewmen on one side (whose chief weapon is, apparently, litigation) and a distraught wife on the other side. When the ice breaks, two lives will be on the line.

Let’s pick on O’Neill first, shall we? This is not an important play, even when compared with his other one-acts (“Bound East for Cardiff” or “The Long Voyage,” for example), but it does have a great dramatic Conflict built into the story.

Problem is, O’Neill doesn’t explore the source of the conflict, only the outcome. It seems the only reason Annie Keeney wanted to go on a two-year voyage with her husband was because she couldn’t have children and was bored at home. This is not the basis for great theatre.

Then again, why did Keeney agree to take her along? He’s a stubborn and proud man (“I’ve got to git the ile!”), which makes it hard to believe that he’d give in to a woman’s tears. O’Neill shortchanges Keeney’s character again by making him cringe at the prospect of returning to port without a ship full of oil, and being laughed at by the other Captains.

The play’s one saving grace is the Conflict between two people on the edge; it was the one thing that director Jesse Marchese needed to get right for this play to work.

It didn’t work.

For one thing, Scarlet Thiele is miscast as Mrs. Keeney, unless we can believe that a ship captain’s wife travels with a home spa.

Thiele is woefully unprepared by life to handle a character with such a tenuous hold on sanity. When she says “I’ll go mad”, it’s an empty threat, for there’s no hint of madness in her eyes. The only sign she might be losing her grip comes from her earnest hand-wringing.

When Thiele strides deliberately across the room toward the end of the play, it’s nothing more than a fit of pique. It’s too purposeful, when she should be careening out of control. Her wild piano playing seems to be her attempt at pissing off her husband, rather than an expression of the darkness enveloping her soul.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Capt. Keeney is played by Brandon Hughes, boyish despite his beard. Without a lot of sea miles under his sea legs Hughes lacks presence, his entrance a walk-on, nothing more. There should be restraint in the Captain’s performance, but, like Bill Sykes on Prozac, there was no passion for Hughes to restrain.

O’Neill’s play dances on a knife’s edge. The success of “Ile” depends on how well the actress playing Mrs. Keeney wears her distress on the inside, and how well Capt. Keeney wears his distress on the outside. Neither Thiele nor Hughes are up to the modest demands that O’Neill’s brief play makes on what should be two middle-aged actors.

Eschewing an intermission, Marchese chose to segue from Annie Kenney’s play-concluding recital of Schoenberg right into Louise Bryant’s anti-war allegory “The Game”, with strobe lights a-flashin’ and crewmen a-set changin’

A character, whom we learn is Life, calls out seemingly random numbers. She’s soon accosted by Death, and we find out that they are two acquaintances from long ago, who’ve met often at the Universe’s gaming table. “Forget your losses”, the Devil invites Life, “and play again.”

“The Game” has much the same tone as the old familiar God-vs-Satan wrasslin’s over Job or Daniel Webster or some other such pour soul. Life doesn’t mind losing the game when Kings or soldiers are at stake. After all, World War I is raging and if all the kings and soldiers are dead, war will cease.

In walks a guitar-wielding youth, in the same situation as Job, ready to curse God and die because he has the gift of music, but no one to share it with. “Without Love, I can’t create Beauty.”

He shakes Death’s hand (“I’ve been looking for you for weeks”) but shakes off Life. (“I’m through with you!”). But Life pleads with Youth to reconsider: “It was desire, not love.” This sets up the subtext of the play, how we confuse desire with love, to our own enduring unhappiness.

As his fate is settled at the gaming table, an Actress walks in, seeking death because she, too, is not loved, even though she is desired by the hordes. Her fate, too, will be decided by a single roll of the dice.

Both Death and Life understand the game and accept its consequences, even though a single roll can bring doom to more than one. And Life cannot bear to lose a single game, as Death observes: “You play to win, I play for fun.”

It was consistently well-acted by all four participants: as “Death”, Collin Ware radiates just the right amount of smugness, knowing Death will always win in the end; and Joe Berardi as “Youth”, whose troubled artistic soul must create Beauty in order to live.

Compliments to Anna Mosher as the “Girl,” for her brief Duncanesque interpretive dance. As the play ends, “Life”, gently played by Jen Gartner, resumes calling out numbers, and as she chokes back the tears, we suddenly realize what the numbers signify and why she’s crying.

While Bryant is overshadowed by O’Neill, her play is more deserving of this company. In fact I would love to see “The Game” paired with “Aria di Capo”, another allegorical anti-war play, by fellow Provincetowner Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Bryant’s little play was a refreshing palate-cleanser that should really have opened the show (in front of a curtain). Because of “Ile”, the whole program had the feel of a High School drama club production. Or perhaps a third-string NYU black box staging somewhere in the depths of the East Village.

The Moses Mogilee players are not quite ready for prime time. They’re freshly-minted college grads out on a spree. Let them have their fun dressing up as older people, but for deity’s sake don’t charge the public money for it, or ask to be taken seriously.

Medical File (Notes – and SPOILERS! – from “Glendale G.P.”)

THE VENUE

Among the many clever-titled theaters throughout NYC, there is one that stands out for its sarcasm: Access Theater. Behind the title’s expectation of universal access for all, sits a theatre up 5 flights of stairs (it says “four,” but the first flight is a double one). I was told that there’s a small elevator to the rear of the building, but no one accessed it the evening I was there.

Like most NYC theaters, it was freezing inside, and stifling hot in the lobby. The acoustics were terrible because it was just one deep, open room. At least director Brad Saville was smart enough not to use the rear sections of the set.

THANK YOU’s

There were none! This was in stark contrast to all the other programs I collected this summer. It lack of thankfulness was doubly delightful because the both founders had a second chance to offer thanks through their biographies, but they passed up the opportunity. God, I love ungrateful theatre people! (<-sincerity)

My guess for the lack of gratitude is that the founders are beholden to no one. The Eastwind company is their vanity project, and they are determined not to let anyone steal their thunder. Good for you!

MEDICAL SATIRE

Even before I entered the theatre, the marketing had put me in mind of The Hospital, for which screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky won the second of his three Oscars.

According to the synopsis at allmovie.com, “The Hospital is a black comedy centering on Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott), a bitter, suicidal surgeon. While patients at the hospital die left and right due to the extreme carelessness and ineptness of the staff that surrounds him, …a mysterious killer has begun stalking the hospital, taking out staff members.”

Satire raises the stakes, and The Hospital did just that, turning the pressures Doctors face into life and death matters. Greendale G.P. pulled its punches and put no one’s life or sanity in real danger. If it’s going to work right, Satire has to have balls.

Nowadays Satire is left to extremist hacks like Moore and silly jokers like Baron Cohen. Why don’t we ever hear Paddy Chayefsky’s name invoked more often? Where are his pupils today?

MY TOP FIVE FAVORITE LINES

#5
Two docs talking about the Lothario drug rep:
“He’s a squirrely guy.”
“He’s just trying to get a nut like the rest of us.”

#4
One of the Hollywood Types, regarding Reality Shows:
“We’re less concerned with quality than we are in content.”

#3
Dr. Whitaker, showing off her cynicism:
“I’m a Doctor. I know a little something about Acts of God.”

#2
Colleen, to a whiner who is complaining about how difficult life is:
“Difficult is life’s M.O.”

#1
Dr. Fenton, when faced with an ethical dilemma:
“Fuck the truth!”

It’s one of the best lines anyone could utter in a Satire.

“Greendale G.P.” – 8/27/09 @ Access Theater

MY RATING: $10 – Pre-show promise went unfilled by biteless Satire

In a film or TV show, a director can create a brief scene that sets the mood before the script even kicks into gear. In sitcom parlance, this is the Teaser, and one of live theatre’s deficiencies is the absence of a Teaser.

Director Brad Saville (supremely qualified to interpret the playwright’s words) solved that problem neatly in the pre-show of his latest play, Greendale, G.P., now playing at Access Theatre on [lower] Broadway.

In the best pre-curtain scene I’ve ever seen, actors were scattered throughout the generously-sized set. This was no Freeze, for the play’s characters were seen busy going through their quotidian paces.

I was impressed by the set dressing, despite this being a seat-of-the-pants vanity production. The open 4^th floor space was set up to create 6 separate acting zones, representing a 3-doctor practice.

The set decorator (anonymously billed as “Eastwind Theatre Co.”) did a plaudible job of created a ‘white noise’ background, cluttered with furniture and implements, yet non-intrusive.

I worship at the altar of Naturalism, and the pre-show was a very natural intro to the play. Had it lived up to the pre-show’s promise, however, it would have given me my money’s worth

As the pre-show dragged on, I got to know these people and began sketching in a back-story for some of them.

The characters came more to life: the office manager shredding the docs of the docs, one of which was throwing darts at a wall chart of the human anatomy. Then again, maybe the actors were just getting antsy because the opening was delayed almost 10 minutes.

All in all, the pre-show activity created a perfect sense of real-time. I was about to be dropped right into the middle of the work day, literally watching a “slice-of-life”, with barely more plot than your typical episode of Seinfeld M.D.

If a playwright is going to skimp on plot, then he’d better be loading up on characterization. Sadly, what I witnessed was just an assortment of lightly-drawn characters who are little more than set dressing themselves.

Take Mark Warde, pretty much what you’d expect in a smarmy pill pusher. Ever the salesman, especially when the product is himself, Warde tries out an assortment of pitches on Colleen, who cheerfully bats each one away. She has the typical office manager’s tunnel vision, the only way to efficiently run an office.

Robert “Bobby” Fitzer, who’s hoping to intern in the office prior to applying for med school, is the son of one of the doctor’s golfing partners. His mere presence turns the staff into sadistic Drill Sergeants.

Yet it’s obvious the hazing is designed to turn him into the kind of hard-edged medic they are. This “Become One Of Us” ethic is the most frightening thing in the script.

Then there are two Hollywood Types who are casting for a reality show, America’s Next Top Doctor.  The three colorless doctors who practice in Greendale are definitely not ready for prime time.

Dr. Kevin “K.C.” Cates, already helping himself to Warde’s offerings, ups his consumption when he finds out his wife is screwing around with an 11^th grader (who’s 18, we’re repeatedly assured).

Dr. Ariel Whitaker is the resident sexpot, the object of the talent search. I couldn’t tell if she earned her med school tuition on the catwalk, or on her back.

As for the cynical Dr. John Becker… excuse me, Dr. Sean Fenton…. he held the show’s center for the first third, then disappeared onto the golf course or into his office for long stretches of time.

The one colorful feature about the staff is that everyone seemed to have their petty prejudices, Colleen against Jews, Fenton against fat people, and everyone against interns.

Without much of a plot, I wasn’t expecting much of a cliffhanger. However, Act II started with a bang: a family emergency that created the play’s sole dramatic tension and was the source for a number of ethical questions, one of which allowed for “Fuck the truth!” as one possible answer.

The end of the play didn’t signal any loose ends being tied, but then again, a ‘slice-of-life’ play never ties its laces. Rather, it’s success depends on the characters we spend two hours with.

As Dr. Fenton, Penny Bittone—whose overactive eyebrows put on a lot of miles—threw away many of his lines because of a lack of clarity. Unbelievably, he possesses a strong, low voice, but he kept it in his head, a bad place to keep a voice in a cavernous space like Access. Even the women were easier to understand than Bittone.

In a theatre with better acoustics, Director Saville might have allowed the Writer Saville’s overlapping dialogue to actually overlap. With more confidence in the sound, the actors may have felt more comfortable stepping on each others’ lines.

William Apps IV (Dr. Cates) seemed to be forcing  his acting instead of letting the words feel their way out his mouth. His speech sounded like leather-jacketed rebel, or with maybe a touch of redneck. Supposedly the town of Greendale reveres him, yet nothing I saw in how the character was written or performed showed him in that light.

In the thankless role of Dr. Whitaker, Amber Bogdewiecz is saddled with the most poorly drawn character in the play, and it’s actually to her credit that she does a imperfect job of portraying her. No one should be forced to play such an unprofessional professional.

In real life, Dr. Whitaker would long ago have abandoned her practice to work for an overseas drug company giving “consultations” to schmucks trying to score cheap Viagra. Instead, at the mere thought of TV cameras, she launches into her Joan Crawford mode. Doctor, Dearest?

Playwright Saville created a handful of extra chess pieces to make the board look fuller, but the pawns he added had no influence on the narrative.

As Mrs. Harris, Carmel Amit is very good and very underutilized. In Act I she had little more to do than look hungrily at the candy dish on Colleen’s desk. Mrs. Harris was a stick figure, but at least Amit knows how to play anorexic.

Satire benefits from a little comic relief. That was Bobby’s role in the show, with Tyler Foltz securely in the driver’s seat. Bobby’s place was to react blankly to everything that was said and done around him. In this aspect, Foltz was perfect.

On the one hand, every sentence he uttered had the exact same inflection. On the other hand, his lack of reaction strengthened the humor in the situations he walked into.

In the dreadfully unreal Reality Show subplot, Zoe Metcalfe-Klaw, playing the CD’s PA, was the long bright spot. Her perky demeanor was deftly sycophantic, and her attempts at imitating her boss’s mannerisms was a demonstration of perfect timing, a shadow always a half-step behind.

The Reality Show plotline seemed like an attempt at adding a second target to the playwright’s dartboard. The Hollywood Types were so stereotypical that Satire was brusquely shoved aside by its crude cousin, Parody.

This play was “Hospital Lite”. Then again, that 1971 movie was written by Paddy Chayefsky, so any similar attempt to hit the medical industry would suffer by comparison.

Still, taken on its own merits Greendale G.P. is a weak attempt to stir our ire and disgust. If you really want to taste some bile, just pay a visit to any large medical practice.

For all the anticipation that was created by the pre-show, the opening scene (a prostate exam that provided no new insights into the intimate relationship between doctor and patient) sapped it all.

In a Satire, the opening scene doesn’t need to sucker punch the audience with Messages, but it should be marinate the meat with some flavor so it can be properly skewered.

Too, there were a number of missed targets that were never even put on the fire. Much more could have been made about the drug industry’s meddling in medicine. And all those drug samples: how many of them are actually reaching patients?

Important ethical questions were raised, like, How do you respond if a colleague does something illegal? Yet the answers given were more personal than medical, and the repercussions were never seen.

On the other hand, the stab that hits its mark the closest was the revelation that the medical system views us as Customers and not Patients. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s unnerving nonetheless to be reminded that we are all just numbers to most of the medical profession.

Heavenly Thoughts (Notes—and SPOILERS—from “Way to Heaven”)

Thanks

In what has quickly become a tradition for me, I’m counting the number of Thank Yous a producer includes in the program, and trying to figure out just why the producer felt compelled to thank these people. In this program, there are 28 Thank Yous.

• “the cast, designers and crew for their talent and generosity”, which, when translated, means They’re Not Getting Paid.
• one of the actresses’ Moms
• two theatre companies
• five Spanish cultural entities, including one website
• Special Thanks to tdf Costume Collection, your one-stop shop for the next time Prince Harry comes over to play dress-up.
• most interesting of all, thanks go to someone “incredible”. Hmmm… how does one go about impressing a producer as ‘incredible’…?

The Commandant’s Guide to Directing Non-Cooperative Theatre

If the whole world’s a stage, the Nazis excelled at Absurdist Theatre. This particular Nazi stage is a ‘show camp’, where the visitor is encouraged to take all the photos he wants. And what’s a theatre company without an Artistic Director, a forward-thinking visionary.

You can think of the Commandant as a nearly insane, micro-managing AD. That is to say, a typical AD. His first big task was in having his director, Gershom Gottfried, cut the cast down to 100. For those let go, this was the most unkindest cut of all.

For the Nazi’s concept of theatre, the Commandant was the ideal artistic director. Just look at some of the principles he instilled into Gottfried:

“Look inside your life to give the lines”.

The Commandant knows that the most effective liars actors are those who draw from their own experience.

And for those who don’t have the life experience to draw from, the Commandant teaches his actors The Method:

“Smile…and you end up happy.”

Considering the context in which this was said, this line is likely the most chilling one in the play.

Ask any experimental director why he’s setting Shakespeare in the Okefenokee Swamp, and he’ll tell you the same thing the Commandant told Gottfried:

“The same story can be told a number of ways”

The Commandant, who seems to have spent time in New York studying theatre, knew how to focus and motivate his actors. In a cruel variation on an old joke (“What’s my motivation?” “Your paycheck.”), the Commandant repeatedly reminds Gottfried to focus his cast with this motivation:

“As long as you’re here, you are not on that train.”

Finally, though the entire performance is plotted in greatest detail, the Commandant wants to keep the actors from thinking too much. Though the principle was unspoken, it’s obvious he was teaching the KISS system:

Keep it simple, schweinehund.

Marketing

Nazis!

It was a great marketing move to put a Nazi on the poster, along with what could be Anne Frank’s little sister. Nothing like having pro- and an- so starkly drawn so you can easily tell the –tagonists without a scorecard.

Also, the producers smartly provided a means to give feedback through an insert in the program. I take it as further proof that this play has a foreign pedigree, as American productions are never eager to hear back from their audiences.

Venue

Teatro Circulo is one of a series of postage stamp theatres intertwined with tight and tiny storefronts in the Neutral Zone between The Village and The East Village. The theatres are little more than glorified rehearsal spaces, made from castoff warehouses.

The feeling in the air was like a community theatre that had come to the big city, complete with bandanna-bedecked stage manager and bathrooms shared with the cast. In contrast, the crowd was touristy and eager to get back to their slivered hotels overlooking Madison Square Park.

Collaborators

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely audience….

The most insidious thing about Way to Heaven was in how it turned all of us in the audience into Collaborators.

The Commandant was a well-read intellectual with theatre training. In Nazi Germany, that kind of person could have been labeled an Intellectual or Homosexual.

But this Commandant made a deal with a Devil, to serve Him in exchange for his life and for the freedom to continue reading the classics. This Collaboration made him particularly effective, evil dressed in a veneer of culture.

The Commandant wasn’t speaking to the Red Cross worker, but to us when he was acknowledging our good intentions: “You heard monstrous rumors. …It’s your good will that brings you here.”

He subtly brings us into his world when he says of the Jews, that “they paint themselves as victims.” We find ourselves weakly accepting this lie, because it’s so easy to excuse our own passivity by blaming others for their passivity.

But there was one moment, and one moment only, when Gottfried spoke the unspeakable: “What if we refuse?”

The answer was instantly obvious to anyone who was chilled by the ambiguous ending to the 1975 spy thriller, Three Days of the Condor.

When the hunted ex-CIA man played by Robert Redford turns over incriminating papers to the New York Times, his handler calmly tells him, “What if they don’t print it?” If the allegations are not made public, Redford’s character risked his life for nothing.

In the same vein, the Commandant replies to the ‘Mayor’, with no threat of recrimination, “What if the man didn’t understand your gesture?”, what if he doesn’t include it in his report?

Nothing is more disheartening that the thought that a sacrifice will be an empty gesture. So, the Commandant convinces Gottfried that he had nothing to gain.

But Gottfried never considered that he had nothing to lose. Gottfried’s passive acceptance of the Commandant’s claim, made him a collaborator, too, in the fate of the Jews.

The Red Cross rep became a willing tool, because he was unwilling to challenge what he saw. He merely observed. The Commandant plays the audience, too, in the same way.

Audience members are by trained to be passive observers of life, watching but not getting involved. We don’t even clap at the end of a play, even when it’s obviously over. We cower quietly in the dark, waiting for someone else to begin clapping.

We, the audience, were taken in by the Commandant, to the point where I began to feel like I, too, was a collaborator in the cover-up. When he tells us, “Close your eyes,” I was there, too, and I was made dirty. I, too, was a collaborator.

“Way to Heaven” (8/12/09 @ Teatro Circulo)

MY RATING: $50 – Slow and confusing opening two scenes don’t detract at all from the subtle power of the final three

“The Way to Heaven”, Himmelweg in German, is a euphemism for the path that extended from a relocation camp for Jews, to the camp “Infirmary”, where those Jews are processed for slaughter. Though hardly referred to again, it becomes an unspoken presence in the show.

This is a play about postponing for a short time the trip down that path. If you’ve ever seen the 1980 made-for-television movie Playing for Time, you understand how soul-rending it can be to  play the marionette for a concentration camp Commandant.

The victims of such travesties would no doubt prefer a quick death to the shame of watching their friends and family march off to the gas chambers while they play-act to amuse the Nazis.

The fact that a bloodless euphemism like ‘the Way to Heaven’ was coined by this camp’s Commandant shows the Nazis’ depth of cruelty in turning genocide into a private little joke.

I was out of town the first time that Way to Heaven played the Burning Coal Theatre last January. It’s obvious how proud the Spanish Government is of award-winning playwright Juan Mayorga, because they’re financially backing this production.

With Cervantes, Lorca and Calderon a part of their heritage, it’s clear that the Spanish consider playwrights to be one of their leading exports.

I love getting to plays early, you know that by now. But arriving early seldom gives you an advantage Off-Off-Broadway. Coming early most likely means hanging out in a tiny, unfurnished waiting area until the House is opened at around the “Ten Minutes” call.

In retropsect, it was a good thing that I wasn’t let into the theatre so soon, as the large rectangular space between the two seating areas was covered with dried leaves. As the play progressed, I and many of my co-attendees started developing ticklish throats and mild allergic reactions to the leaves.

In Way to Heaven, a presumably Spanish Red Cross worker (a too-reserved Shawn Parr) is in Germany inspecting Prisoner-of-War camps. Because he and his co-workers are domiciled in a home once owned by a displaced Jewish family, he wants to know what’s become of Europe’s Jews, more out of curiosity than concern.

While internment camps have been a poorly kept secret, the Nazis had never before been called on it by a neutral party. So, rather than raise suspicions by barring access, arrangements are made for the Red Cross representative to check out conditions at an unnamed ‘model camp’ 30 kilometers outside Berlin.

The Nazis are here represented by the Commandant (a riveting Francisco Reyes), the personification of blond Aryan glory. He’s smooth and unctuous and knows how to disarm with charm and smarm.

The two are joined by the camp’s most respected elder, Gershom Gottfried (Mark Farr, suitably restrained), as they tour the camp.

Throughout his interaction with the camp’s residents, the rep can’t help but feel that there’s something unnatural about “normal” camp life. Even the Mayor speaks as if he’s reading from a script. To the Spaniard, “It’s all artificial, like a beautiful toy.”

The second scene zooms in on the children’s part in the charade. Among their group is a Little Girl of 9 or 10 (Samantha Rahn, seemingly born on stage), playing with a faceless doll down by a wooded stream. It’s the iconic image in the play.

The child does not represent innocence, for reality has long ago bludgeoned innocence into a stupor. Rather, the child represents the fragile hold on reality by a people that has said to itself “This can’t be happening” too many times to count.

The third scene is the Commandant’s restless monologue to the audience as if we were on that visit with the Red Cross rep. With his literate charm, soft, soothing voice, and controlled amity, the Commandant turns on its head a familiar characterization of the Nazi war machine; he represents the evil of banality.

The entire time he’s speaking to us he’s moving his chair from one end of the space to the other, fidgeting constantly in his seat. Is he trying to run away from his conscience?

We don’t have any clues to his true feelings, because Reyes’ Commandant is all veneer and no substance. His monologue ultimately degenerates into a comic explanation of the Final Solution, as he serves as the ringmaster of a Circus of Evil.

The ‘Mayor’s’ entrance marks the beginning of the fourth scene. The Commandant puts him in the role of Interlocutor, which is also a principle role in a Minstrel Show, that supreme example of racial humiliation.

The Commandant offers Gershom a Hobson’s Choice. To extend the lives of a small portion of the residents, and for a small portion of time, they are going to write a script together. This is the ‘play’ that the Red Cross man sees enacted.

Every “character” in the script is carefully plotted, with superfluous residents to be packed up and moved out, never to return.

The final blackout of the fourth scene is a tragic-comic dialogue about how the Red Cross visit went, like a scriptwriter and director comparing notes before the next performance.

In the final, fifth scene, we time jump one more time, to when the children have just gotten their scripts and Gottfried is trying to direct them. Gottfried tries to hide his frustration; he knows that they’re just going through the motions.

By the end of the play, I was astounded at how powerful the play was, even though it has covered ground that many a drama before has covered. This one found new nuggets of gold by focusing on the interchange between prisoner and prison-keeper and giving us a behind-the-scenes look, as it work, at the creation of artifice.

And this, despite the fact that Mayorga’s first two scenes were essentially unneccesary and distracting. For example, an opening monologue is a standard means of getting exposition out of the way early and easily. Yet, on and on Parr’s monologue went. Whatever happened to “Don’t tell them, Show them”?

A number of superfluous images passed through the second scene, which opened with youths of assorted ages listening at a door. A rabbi chants, a train approaches, and the children all lie down. What was that all about? Everything else in the play was straightforward, except for this symbol-laden scene.

While the Reyes’ monologue, in the third scene, paralleled the first, the Commandant’s held our fascination. Not just because of Mayorga’s smoothly bringing the audience into the conspiracy of silence, but through Reyes’ brilliant display of measured calm amidst the storm.

The fourth scene, between Gottfried and the Commandant is the single-most riveting section of the play. If Mayorga wants, he could boldly cut the play down to just these two antagonists, and then fully explore the conflict between reality and artifice, delving into the role that artists play in creating lies.

Let’s not talk too much about the trains. Their repeated intrusion drew focus away from the titular theme, which was about the the Sword of Damocles that was the path to the Infirmary.

The sound effects, whether of trains, a circus, or of the Nazi war machine, were almost always jarring. The trains never were a vital part of the narrative, nor did mechanized sounds add anything to the Commandant’s monologue, except to force him to raise his volume, and perhaps move about a tetch more excitedly.

The strongest actors, as the anchors to this story, are Reyes and Rahn. The director, Matthew Earnest, gave them the chance to connect with the audience, and they followed through with energy and honesty.

It’s hard to imagine any actor in New York inhabiting a role as completely as did Reyes. He’s deserving of bigger opportunities if he chooses to stay in New York. Never descending into cliché, he spoke like an intelligent man pleased with the opportunity to show that intelligence.

His acting craft was on display when Gottfried was making long-term plans for a shul. The Commandant allowed the ‘Mayor’ to make all the plans he wanted, then broke out in a childish giggle. It was the laughter of a man who knew something his counterpart didn’t, and it was bone-chilling.

On the Debit side, Reyes’ German accent was inconstant and weak. In an perfect world, an equally talented German actor would have been available to play the Commandant, so that Reyes could switch roles and breathe life into the opening monologue.

Rahn, as the Little Girl, played a role that was considered a key one by the adults who created this charade. The Little Girl is scared; she knows she’s being watched. And Rahn captured beautifully the mounting terror as the Girl vainly tries to hold on to reality and fantasy at the same time.

All in all, Way to Heaven is about a path, a path to a larger theatre, a larger audience, a larger box office, and a larger critical response.

It’s playing at Teatro Circulo, 64 E 4^th St, through Sunday, August 23. Check smarttix.com for tickets.

After the “Water” was Turned Off – Notes from ‘Walter vs the Water Authority’

• Trite Phrase That Still Rings True

WALTER: “The government can’t just slop the trough and expect us to eat.”

• Walter the Libertarian

Why is it that people cheer libertarian characters in the movies (Shenandoah, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Braveheart, Brazil), yet won’t nominate one for President?

Walter is a stubborn libertarian, which is to say he’s a libertarian. His situation is not unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority’s asserting authority over local waterways back in the 30s. In fact, it feels like this play was recreating Southern water fights from the New Deal era.

Walter was sick and tired of government telling him what to do. Sadly, what should have been a simple play about a man with nothing left to lose, it paints a picture of ignorance in the face of scientific progress. Yet libertarians aren’t backwards backwoods retards (this isn’t Deliverance). You would never suspect that by how Walter is written.

• Eminent Domain

In order to ratchet up the tension, Scott’s script tosses in the threat of seizing Walter’s home by Eminent Domain. While the script is ostensibly about one man’s fight versus an all-encompassing utility, Eminent Domain is a big issue today because a good land is hard to find.

Eminent Domain must be declared in the courts, so there’s no way that Tom and Ray could have approached Walter’s house unless they already had the judgment. Instead, all we had was Ray’s vague threat to ‘take it by Eminent Domain’ without any mention of whether they’d already gone to court and gotten the order. Only the court could order Walter to hook up.

Of course, if Walter had listened to Laura, he would have gotten a lawyer who would have told him that. But that wouldn’t be the Walter Scott had written.

I have difficulty suspending disbelief in a play that flouts serious legal issues. It’s sloppy writing. A playwright should not get into the habit of inaccurately tossing about chilling phrases of jurisprudence that manipulate the audiences’ emotions. That’s what Hollywood is for….

• The Theaplex

The play was held in another on New York’s many Theaplexes, but one with the intelligence to simply name its individual theatres A, B and C. “Walter” was on the theatre’s undercard, assigned to the Black Box Siberia of C.

What’s a Theaplex? It’s the theatre world’s equivalent to a Cineplex, where three to six small, if nondescript, theatres in a that could hold a single costly Off-Broadway theatre.

Earlier in the week I attended a play at the Theatre Row Theaplex on W. 42^nd St. The biggest difference between that theatre and 59E59 is the same difference between two cinemas like the old Roxy and the Empire 25 on 42nd St.

Whereas Theatre Row has a luxe lounge with comfy couches, 59E59 provided no waiting area, except for a bench that was less comfortable than the non-Equity waiting area outside the AEA offices.

On top of that, Theatre Row’s lack of a concession stand was refreshing. Even ignoring the prominent New York Times article praising the theater’s E-Bar, the wait time is pleasantly passed near the windows overlooking E 59^th Street.

59E59 has an unfortunate scheduling policy called “Line-‘em-up-and-pile-them-in”, which involves scheduling all three theatres within 30 minutes of each other, with the largest theatre (and the earliest show) just inside the entrance.

They forced three theatres’ worth of audiences to mingle in a space little bigger than a Soho studio apartment. It resembled Field Trip Day at the Hayden Planetarium.

• Program Issue

The theaplex’s program, a large tri-folded glossy waste of supporters’ generous donations, seems chiefly designed to show theatergoers their good taste in donating to such a classy company.

It was not utilitarian, as programs should be, nor was it informative like the ubiquitous Playbills are. One of its great deficiencies was in providing no background whatsoever about the play that they took such great pains in producing.

Like, when was it set? I had a difficult time believing that it was contemporary. They speak as if they’re part of the Obama-era recession, yet this is an issue that hasn’t been controversial since the 1930s.

By the way, if you remember my Notes from “Sweet Storm”, I counted 47 Thank Yous in that program. Smartly, the producer, Chris Rinaldi, included only seven Thank Yous in the program. Now this is a man I’d like to meet at a cocktail party.

“Walter vs. the Water Department” (8/5/09) 59E59, Theatre C

MY RATING: $5 – clichéd ‘Loner vs. the World’ had me rooting for the world

The title, “Walter vs. the Water Department”, generates a lot of good will, first of all toward the playwright, Benjamin T. Scott, for providing a clue to the play’s theme (unlike As Bees in Honey Drown). Obviously Scott wants me to choose sides before the play even begins.

So it was that I found myself thinking, “Why yes, I, too, have had an adversarial relationship with the Water Department. This fellow Walter seems like a regular chap. I like him!”

Arriving early gives me a chance to glean even more clues about the play, to pick up vibes, and to have the childish pleasure of strolling right through the set.

Let’s see… the presence of a tri-fold flag means there’s a dead soldier in the family. A deer skull high on the wall means Walter is a hunter (and too cheap to pay a taxidermist). An old black landline telephone means that he’s a Luddite (or else it betrays a limited budget for props).

On top of that, the pre-show music is folkie, with a twinge of country waltz.

So, before the show even begins, I knew Walter to be wedded to the comfortable past, sure to have a difficult time adjusting to an unforeseen future. I like him!

That good will was quickly dissipated in the opening moments of the play. This Walter is no sympathetic hero, but a gun-toting loner from the white trash side of the tracks.

Without much subtlety, the lights come up on Walter Murch (Ron McClary, avoiding Survivalist tropes) sitting in his favorite chair, with his favorite gun (chillingly played by a WW I-era Daisy  BB gun). His emotionally battered wife, Laura (a youngish Jenny Burleson), cowers against the back wall. This opening tableaux is quickly shoved aside for a series of flashbacks.

Walter is indeed a very traditional man who lost his job in the mines. He also lost his son recently in Iraq, which proves to be a blow more difficult for him to endure.

The Murchs live in the unfortunately named Livewell Valley with their son Joey (Cody Neeb, looking more like a surfer dude than the high school football player he is), who has grown up and away from his Dad.

Walter is being forced to hook his home into the new town water line. He resists, quoting a creed we can all subscribe to: “Why pay for something I can get for free?”

His nemesis is young Water Authority engineer Tom Anderson (Abeo Miller, fresh out of drama school), fresh out of engineering school. Tom acts so determined to run that line into Walter’s place, it makes me wonder if they now have assertiveness training at RPI.

The only two people in the town Walter can count on to stand by his side are his best friend, Petey (C. K. Allen), and Ray (Greg Skura), the local lawman and Walter’s old school chum.

But Walter’s stand is putting Petey in a tight spot and Ray has no choice but to enforce the law. Walter feels betrayed, and when he reacts bitterly, we know that this play can only climax in a hail of words.

It only took a couple minutes to decide I definitely didn’t like this guy. Walter had his mind made up before the curtain rose, so, there isn’t really much inner conflict.

Laura pleaded, ‘We need someone on our side, get a lawyer’, but Walter refuses. It’s one thing to be a loner because you’ve been abandoned, but when you cut yourself off from others, you’re not going to get any sympathy. Is that really what the playwright wants for his protagonist?

Come to think of it, is Walter a protagonist or antagonist? He surely antagonizes everyone around him….

The thread in Scott’s script that snaps most easily is the narrative timeline. For example, Joey comes home from the big football game and seemingly 36 hours later is running off to join the Army. One scene transitions into another with little sense of continuity.

Also, the setting of the play was presumably a dying mining town in the Alleghenies of modern Pennsylvania. However, it felt and sounded like it was Depression-era Tennessee. I guess it could be Scott’s metaphor for the times we live in, but Walter is really like a stubborn hillbilly (getting in at least one “y’hear”), reflecting a Southerner’s distrustful attitude to the progressive ways of Northerners. (Think John Goodman as Pap Finn in Big River, railing against the “Guv’mint”.) As the fresh-faced Water boy, Tom, notes about Walter, “You’re a character, aren’t you? I wasn’t sure you existed…”

Wife Laura is a poorly drawn and little respected character, the Meg of the family. She has no meaningful lines that move the plot; she merely reacts.

That’s a shame, because Laura could play a pivotal role. To my mind, half the characters are inconsequential to the play. Petey, Tom, even son Joey are all superfluous to the main theme.

This is a dramatic short story. So strip it down to its essence: Walter’s struggle with his inner demons, with his wife Laura on one shoulder and the Authority, in the person of Ray, on the other.

The dialogue, even if it slanted South, was realistic, and realistically acted. McClary, playing a one-note character, at least he played that one note with finesse.

Playing Laura, Jenny Burleson seems much too young to be a mother of two recruits. Whereas McClary uses his beard to show his age, Burleson doesn’t have that option.

Though I adore OOB theatre, one of its biggest problems is a difficulty in getting adults to play adult characters. Just look at poor young Abeo Miller, who plays Tom as a freshly-minted engineer.

Both juvenile actors, Miller and Neeb, were bereft of much character. In contrast, Allen and Skura, playing Walter’s cronies, inhabit their characters effectively in their brief time on stage.

Strip this play down to McClary’s Walter, Skura’s Ray and an older, more weathered actress playing Laura, and director Paula D’Alessandris could make this a more riveting study of a man’s unraveling in the face of modern pressures to leave the cold comfort of his painful past.

“Walter vs. the Water Authority” runs through August 14, at 59E59, 59 E 59^th St.