BOTTOM LINE: An admirably tackled production of epic proportions, where literary shortcomings can be largely overlooked thanks to heavy doses of charm and grit.

“A marathon presentation of contemporized and abridged Sophocles plays?” you ask in disbelief? Yes, indeed, complete with modern lingo punch lines, scores of young men with impressive beards, and copious well-executed stage blood. What’s that you utter? “Sound like five-hours of a good time!”? Well, in fact, Sean Graney’s These Seven Sicknesses, now playing at The Flea Theater, slickly coasts by surprisingly quickly, with actors themselves feeding you during two intermissions, creating quite a packaged deal and quite a satisfying evening.

Graney’s mega-play takes the seven extant plays from ancient Greece’s most notorious playwright (ok, ok, top three), shortens them, gussies them up for a young, hip audience, and sets them loose in a fifties-esque infirmary. Each segment last about 45 minutes to an hour, and takes place in the main hospital corridor. Each generally results in death and bloodshed (as only the Greeks can do), only to be carefully tidied up by the white-clad nurse-chorus who oversee all, doubling as sirens as they sanitize. Taking their turn in the ward are Oedipus, Herakles, Antigone, Philoktetes, Ajax, Elektra and Orestes, among others.

BOTTOM LINE: A solid production of a seldom-produced musical gem, dealing with the restrictions of love in the Catholic community of Dublin in the 1960s.

It’s a rainy Dublin morning and the inhabitants of this damp and dreary city yearn for an escape from the economic constraints and the claustrophobic Catholicism that dictates their lives. Their form of escape? Art. In A Man of No Importance, Alfie Byrne (Charlie Owens), a bus driver with a penchant for drama, organizes a sort of community theatre that leads his fellow townspeople down a path of theatrical exploration and self-discovery. The result is an impassioned group of people whose hearts are bigger than their budgets, performing for nothing more than the love of their art. And the love of the art is something that is all too present in this production by The Gallery Players. Some budgetary restrictions may prevent this production from ever becoming truly polished, but scrappiness suits A Man of No Importance, and the intelligent direction and affectionate cast do the musical much justice. The heart of Alfie Byrne appears to be pumping through this Brooklyn-based company; so much so that it makes the trip to the theatre well worth the trek.

BOTTOM LINE: Monica Hunken's talent as both a performer and a storyteller makes this solo show immensely humorous and compelling.

As a bike enthusiast, performer and playwright Monica Hunken has an unusual pattern when it comes to international travel: she forgoes the use of trains and buses, preferring instead to bike across the country alone, using the unusual places and people she encounters as fodder for her work. The Wild Finish is the third installment in her bicycle trilogy, which includes the well received Blondie in Arabia, which chronicles her adventures in the Middle East.

The Wild Finish opens with Hunken lamenting that her only memories of her Polish grandfather are that of a sick man that brought out the worst in her mother. She spends countless hours of her childhood watching the strange, sickly man slip closer to death in his hospital bed. After her grandfather’s death from cancer her mother keeps his ashes in a bag in her bedroom. Hunken holds the bag in her hands as a young girl feeling the weight of a life, of “all the thoughts and dreams and ambitions never achieved.”

BOTTOM LINE: A smart, dark, and edgy holiday tale with three incredible performances, rock music, dancing, hooking up and deception. What more could you want?

Dedalus Lounge is a new play by Irish playwright, Gary Duggan, which had a successful run at the Dublin Fringe Festival several years ago and now is making its American debut, complete with a musical face lift by Anthony Rapp and Daniel A. Weiss. This darkly, charming tale takes place during the days before and after the holiday season in a small pub (Dedalus Lounge) in working-class Ireland where the lives of three long-time friends come to a boiling point surrounding the dramas of family and personal struggles as well as dealing with the issues of growing older and facing their ever evolving and complicated relationships. Danny (Anthony Rapp) is trying to get a Queen tribute band off the ground while his personal life is slowly crumbling apart around him; Delphine (Dee Roscioli) is involved in a high profile affair and the fact that her grandma is dying; and Daragh (James Kautz) is a mysterious drifter dealing with his own dark bag of tricks.

BOTTOM LINE: A visually impressive multi-media production with a cryptic, abstract story about a whorehouse airplane.

Stopped Bridge of Dreams is a pretty cryptic title, isn’t it? What is this “bridge of dreams”? Is it an actual bridge where dreams come true? Or is it a bridge that people dream of? Or perhaps a bridge between reality and dreams? And how is does a bridge become “stopped” anyway? To be honest, I cannot answer these questions, even after seeing the play that bears this title. In fact, I can't even tell you how (or if) this title relates to the play itself.

First and foremost, Stopped Bridge of Dreams is a multi-media feast of a show. There are large, rotating projector screens, cameras strategically placed around the performance area (“stage” would be a misnomer, as the performance unfolds in a rectangular space flanked on two sides by the audience) and a smattering of projected video footage. Some of the video elements are, as the press release states, “beamed in from remote locations.” Others are pre-recorded. Still others are projected images of the performers currently on stage, sometimes filmed through screens, sometimes filmed using an iPad that a performer is holding. Nothing about the show’s design is conventional and, in fact, the show’s writer/director/multi-media artist, Obie Award-winner John Jesurun, seems to have made most of his decisions as a reaction against conventional theatrics. The result is a sleek, futuristic, eyefull of a set that is almost constantly rotating, shifting and snatching up projected images.

BOTTOM LINE: A brilliantly written and constructed play dealing with issues of suicide and family dysfunction.

Daughters’ impatient appraisals of their mothers may be expressed in a simple rolling of their eyes. “Can you believe what she just said?” Mothers are clueless, they just don’t get it, and it is remarkable that they even manage to survive in the modern world. And mothers’ attitudes toward their daughters? Often not much better. Daughters are unappreciative, unaware of the sacrifices their parents made for them, and living in some high-tech dystopia disconnected from traditional values. “After all I did for her, this is the thanks I get.”

In the opening minutes of Joel Drake Johnson’s terrific play, The Fall to Earth, now playing at 59E59 Theaters, we are treated to a quintessential manifestation of that mother-daughter dynamic. Fay Schorsch (Deborah Hedwall) and her adult daughter Rachel Browney (Jolie Curtsinger) have just checked in to a run-of-the-mill motel. Fay, a low class, loquacious, unsophisticated, parochial, fiftyish matron, lives with her couch potato husband (a Vietnam War veteran and Rachel’s father) in a world of home cooked meals and land lines. Rachel, on the other hand, is a successful, well-traveled, thirtyish, divorced single mother and business woman, now residing in Chicago and completely comfortable in today’s more modern world of restaurants, room service, frequent-flyer miles and cell phones.

BOTTOM LINE: An educational, entertaining and emotional piece of puppet theater about three legendary women and their primate friends.

In the 1960s and 70s, famed archaeologist Louis Leakey selected three women to conduct extensive field studies of apes in their natural environments. Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas went on to make groundbreaking observation of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and orangutans (respectively), while also developing intimate bonds with individual animals. Their discoveries have forever changed our understanding of where we, as humans, fit into the spectrum of species. These three women are the collective subject of Leakey’s Ladies, the latest production of puppet theater from the Jim Henson Foundation-fueled company Drama of Works.

This show was originally conceived as three separate (and rather short) plays about each woman, written by Erin Courtney (Jane), Rachel Hoeffel (Biruté) and Crystal Skillman (Dian). The pieces, however, have been masterfully blended together into a single, coherent story that both characterizes the legendary women as individuals and explores how they corresponded, offered support, and sometimes disagreed with one another. It also portrays their relationship with their mentor, Louis Leakey, who becomes a sort of spiritual guide for them after he passes away. The scenes about each character overlap and bounce off one another, often linked by letters of correspondence read out loud. In fact, the stories are so seamlessly integrated, that it is hard to imagine that they ever existed in any other form.

BOTTOM LINE: This "Whodunit?"engages the audience on multiple levels through a mashup of live performance, video, and a host of musical genres.

Miranda is somewhat difficult to summarize, and, possibly, that’s how its creators want it. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a shot: Miranda is a multi-media sci-fi courtroom drama rock opera with audience participation. It will remind you of Blade Runner, Sweeney Todd, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, if you’re really hip, the cello-rock band Rasputina. Set in a parallel steampunk universe in which, it seems, the Civil War ended quite differently and the British Empire is still in full effect, Miranda crams a lot of food for thought into a short running time. The result falls somewhere between “feast for the senses” and “sound and fury.”

Miranda is being presented at HERE, a company that doesn’t produce theatre so much as deconstruct it, to the delight of the more adventurous segment of New York’s play-going class. Resident Artist Kamala Sankaram composed the music, co-wrote the libretto, and plays the title role; in a way, it’s fitting that a show with this many layers was brought to fruition by a multi-hyphenate. In fact, most of the cast is doing triple duty: they act, sing, and play instruments, sometimes all at once. This conceit worked like gangbusters in certain successful productions helmed by British director John Doyle, but is very difficult to pull off without the resources of the West End or Broadway; how likely is one to find a superb cellist or guitarist who is also a great singer and actor? Sankaram herself has a strong soprano voice, and the cast/band back her up with a sound that’s part rock, part musical theatre, and part opera.

BOTTOM LINE: Parsons Dance is back and better than ever—high caliber work that’s still audience-friendly.

Parsons Dance is back at the Joyce Theatre with two world premiere works and several favorites from the Parsons repertoire—bringing all the hope, romance, and fun that makes David Parsons' movement such a joy to watch.

Premiering this year are Round My World, choreographed by David Parsons to music created by cellist Zoe Keating, and A Stray’s Lullaby choreographed by Katarzyna Sharpetowksa with composer Kenji Bunch. Additional Parsons choreographic works being performed include Swing Shift with music by Kenji Bunch, a duet excerpt from Step Into My Dream to music by Dr. Billy Taylor, and the “stroboscopic masterwork” Caught. The company includes the striking and sportive Eric Bourne, Sarah Braverman, Steven Vaughn, Melissa Ullom, Christina Ilisije, Jason MacDonald, Ian Spring, Elena D’Amario, and apprentice Christopher Bloom.

Parsons is also presenting a kid-friendly “Family Matinee” on Saturday, January 14th at 2 PM which will feature Envelope, Hand Dance, an excerpt from Step Into My Dream, Slow Dance, Caught, and Swing Shift.

BOTTOM LINE: A humorous, if not particularly insightful, look at the greed of one Wall Street insider.

Capitalism has certainly come in for a well-deserved drubbing of late and Michael Yates Crowley’s Righteous Money craftily demonstrates all that is wrong with worship of the Almighty Buck.

The story centers on CJ (playwright Crowley plays the part in the English version; a fierce, bombastic Matthias Hesse enacts the role in the German version Gerechtes Geld). CJ is a former hedge fund manager whose wings have been clipped by the SEC. A master of reinvention, CJ now hosts Righteous Money, a TV talk show seen nationwide on CNBC. The program’s ostensible aim — helping the average Jane and Joe make a quick bundle — is, in reality, a foil to sell CJ’s latest treatise, a book called Buy the Recession. And — no spoiler here — CJ is a helluva salesman, a charismatic, fast-talking, wheeler-dealer of the highest order.

BOTTOM LINE: Austin McCormick’s Snow White is inspiringly impeccable, lavishly designed, and brilliantly executed by top talents.

Company XIV’s 2009 presentation of Austin McCormick’s Snow White was such a runaway success (winning critic’s picks and award nominations) that the company has remounted the production with new text by Jeff Takacs, and if you go to show, you’ll see why. Snow White is a remarkable feat of theatre and invention, skillfully interweaving dance, opera, acrobatics, aerial, projections, and design to create a perfect storm of performing arts.

Immediately upon entering the theatre, it is clear that this show is something special. The high, open space is fixed with a fantastical set including a silver tree with branches artfully hung from the ceiling opposite two opulent chandeliers. White fabric is perched aloft at the ready. There is a promise of something clever, gaudy, and grand waiting just on the other side of 7PM.

And McCormick’s creation delivers just that. Inspired by the Grimms’ fairy tale of the same name, this Snow White is a lush, polished, fresh presentation with gorgeous design. The stunning visuals meet McCormick’s magnificent staging to create captivating vignettes. Any given moment of Snow White could be a glossy photograph, and the sum serves as a real-time enchantment.

BOTTOM LINE: An inventive and important work of poetic theatre that's smartly contrived and incredibly affecting.

You know what sucks? War. You know who it sucks for? Soldiers and their families. In Goliath, a powerful one-act play, we see the pressure that surrounds fighting for one's country and the problems that arise when soldiers return home.

David (catch that biblical allegory?) enlists in the army after high school because he feels he has something to prove to his conservative, bigoted father. He finds his fellow soldiers and bosses to be equally conservative and bigoted. David participates in some stuff he regrets (deplorable, inhuman, torturous things to innocent Iraqis) and realizes that war has morally changed him, making him capable of awful things. It's hard to rejoin society after something like that.

Goliath tells this story through seven people's perspectives: David (Nabil Viñas), his mother (Monique Paige), his father (Kenneth Heaton), his young wife (Natalia Duong), his liberal sister (Samantha Cooper), his drill sargant (Dontonio Demarco), and his supportive best friend (Edgar Eguia). Through these vignettes, we see the toll David's experiences have taken on his support system. He withdraws and eventually removes himself from these relationships entirely. This talented cast finds the emotional strife in their stories without needing to comment on their circumstances.

BOTTOM LINE: A sharp-witted dramedy that speaks of this discord between older and younger generations of gay men.

Walking into the theatre one sees silhouetted beings casually sipping drinks and chatting amidst the disco music that emanates from the juke-box of a festive gay bar decorated for the holidays. Now, one may ask, what gay bar these days has a juke-box? Others may ask...what is disco? These questions undoubtedly are raised by a younger generation more familiar with Pandora Radio as the source for accessible pop music. This is the precise discord that Grant James Varjas addresses in his doleful new play, Accidentally, Like a Martyr -- the generation gap between gay men.

Playing at the Paradise Factory on the Lower East Side, the play is effectively staged in the same neighborhood in which its story takes place. The story begins in a gay bar whose bartender is noticing a bit of competition from a rival bar that has recently opened around the corner and appeals to a decidedly younger crowd. The bar where the story takes place is reminiscent of Cheers in that everybody knows everybody's name, and the bar-flies are old enough to have actually watched the original Cheers episodes; however the jovial manner of the sitcom is not translated to the stage. The inhabitants of this bar are far more caustic and acid-tongued, and to put it simply, bitchy.

BOTTOM LINE: A comical tale about two misfits’ disastrous seaside getaway, which in spite of its intent is rarely more than superficial.

Picture for a minute a middle-aged man still living with his mother. Someone whose sexual fantasy involves Betty Rubble (yes, the wife of Barny in The Flintstones) and who recites the complete line up of his favorite soccer team while nearing sexual climax. Add to this already daunting image a slap of social ineptitude and the inability to stay quiet for more than a few seconds and you have Eddie, the anti-hero and main character in Kissing Sid James, the new play presented at 59E59 Theaters as part of its 2011 Brits Off-Broadway festival. Eddie (Alan Drake), is simply put, one of the most awkward human beings alive. He has, however, managed to conjure up enough courage to invite Crystal (Charlotte McKinney), a tarty croupier he has met at his local casino, on a romantic weekend to a British seaside town. But as you can imagine, the weekend does not turn out like either of them had planned, and instead we are presented with a funny tale of misadventures, petit arguments and sexual mishaps. Add this to the poignant northern English accents and a strong repertoire of British slang (they must run the entire gamut, including classics such as “tosspot” and “wanker”) and you’ll be assured plenty of laughs throughout.

BOTTOM LINE: The simple but well written story raises larger issues about life direction and the bonds of friendship. This production's excellent performances and intricate set do it justice.

The vastly different ways people deal with grief is the central conflict behind much of the comedy and drama within Sans A Productions’s production of Exit Carolyn. The play centers on two best friends who lose their mutual friend and roommate Carolyn. Both of them cope with the loss in two vastly different ways. While Lorna (Anna O’Donoghue) has decided to cope by being over productive (while preparing to leave for work she does leg lifts while sipping her coffee and eats her cereal on the toilet). Julie (Laura Ramadei) becomes a permanent fixture on the apartment’s futon, gorging herself on grief basket pastries and watching episodes of Judge Judy all while numbing herself with repeated hits on her bong. In one of the many mornings depicted in the play, their different modes of coping are best shown by Lorna breathing in the aroma of her coffee with an audible sigh while Julie does the same with her freshly lit bong. Lorna has her sights set on pushing forward and being pragmatic, lining up new roommates to replace Carolyn. Julie however does not want things to move forward, and wants Carolyn’s room left as an undisturbed shrine to their lost friend. Aside from the nagging Lorna, Julie’s only connection with the outside world consists of her interactions with Carolyn’s brother Matthew (Jake Loewenthal), the two aid each other in coping, feasting on ice cream and sharing tokes all while trying to aid one another in filling in the hole left by the loss of their dear friend and sister. As the two become closer they become increasingly aware of a romantic spark they had ignored while Carolyn was still alive. Further comedic relief is provided when Lorna brings home the oddball Avery (Lauren Blumenfeld) as a possible roommate to replace Carolyn. Clueless Avery brings much comedy to the script through her often inappropriate (and sometimes unintentionally racist) observations. Despite Julie’s protestations, Avery moves in and begins to run her lightning bug supply business out of the home, eventually leading to conflict that propells Julie into a new stage of life.

BOTTOM LINE: Inconsistent but not terrible, it epitomizes off-Broadway hitting the bigtime.

To properly review Lysistrata Jones means double-duty for the critic — it is not one musical, but two. What follows are the reviews for the double header now at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

The first play of the evening occurs before intermission. Framing itself around Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, nodding to Greek theatre traditions with a processional entrance, and proudly joking that they can do as they please with their source since it’s public domain, the show proceeds to do just that. Candy colored, brightly lit visuals paired with forgettable pop-pastiche songs and often unintelligible lyrics bring to mind an episode of Glee. But instead of a conflict of high school club pecking orders, it is a losing college basketball team butting heads with their newly-minted cheerleading squad of girlfriends, headed up by Lyssie J (Patti Murin). Named for her Greek forbear by parents “on the fringes of society…they were theater majors,” Lyssie reads some Aristophanes Sparknotes (really) at the behest of quirky feminist Robin (Lindsay Nicole Chambers) and decides it is her destiny to make the team win by getting the cheerleaders to withhold sex. The script then attempts to be about sex without actually using the word “sex.” Instead, we get a song about “giving it up,” implying that sex is something they give to boys, despite their claims of enjoyment (“Why would I stop doing something I actually like for something I don’t care about?” asks one of the girls).

BOTTOM LINE: The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble breathes fresh life into this much lauded work which focuses on how a questionable painting leads to unearthing tensions in a longstanding friendship.

The question of what one perceives as valid art is the conflict at the heart of Yasmina Reza’s play Art. The play, which originally debuted in Reza’s home country of France and played on Broadway in 1998, is now being revived by the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. Although it's been nearly 13 years since the play first came to New York, its material still feels fresh and timely, especially in an era where the most famous artists of recent years have found a name through celebrity ties and pulling attention gaining stunts, rather than by traditional talent.

The play opens with Marc (Brian A. Costello) informing the audience that his friend Serge (Joe Menino) has recently spent 200,000 francs (although the actors speak in English with American accents the play retains its French references) on a questionable painting consisting of white diagonal lines on a white canvas. It is clear from Marc’s tone of voice that he thinks little of Serge’s taste in art and considers the purchase to be quite laughable. When Serge presents the painting to Marc he collapses in laughter and bluntly informs Serge that the painting is in fact, “total shit.”

BOTTOM LINE: A for-charity production of Neil LaBute's play about a man talking to his ex-girlfriends.

Neil LaBute’s Some Girl(s) tells the story of a man who decides to re-connect with a handful of ex-girlfriends before he gets married. He travels to Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle (again) to do so and, consequently, the play consists of five scenes that take place in five different hotel rooms.

The main character is called only “Guy,” a name-title that, as the story progresses, takes on the meaning that he is a kind of everyman (or, more specifically, straight white man). Guy (Michael Scott King) is perhaps well-intentioned at the most basic level, but he is also flawed with a sense of entitlement and emotional detachment that prevents him from really understanding any of the women he has shared a part of his life with. Each woman is like an object he has once possessed and now he is puzzled, perhaps wishing to know that, if he chose to, he could possess each one again. King maintains a consistent character throughout and never fully villainizes himself as he walks the line between genuine attempts at reconciliation and manipulations of the women’s emotions and sexuality. King is geeky, cute and superficially harmless, but shows that even the “nice guy” can cause irreparable damage to the women who want him.

BOTTOM LINE: A perfectly suitable night at the theatre; well crafted and enjoyable enough, though it probably won't blow you away (bad pun intended).

That insatiable urge for a real-life shoot-em-up story keeps the 1930s tale of outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow relevant. The story made headlines when, during the Great Depression, this seemingly wholesome (but actually sociopathic) young couple took to a life of crime as a means to survive (and because they were attention whores). Arthur Penn made their story into a movie in 1967 and several other incarnations of Bonnie & Clyde have popped up in various formats over the decades. It's not a huge surprise that musical theatre glommed on to the tale; although Bonnie & Clyde the musical avoids similarities to the movie and seeks to get to the historical root of it all, the story seems perfectly suited for the stage.

Bonnie & Clyde employs a talented team of Broadway mainstay creatives including composer Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll and Hyde, Wonderland), and director Jeff Calhoun (Big River, Grey Gardens). The cast includes an indomitable foursome: Laura Osnes as Bonnie, Jeremy Jordan as Clyde, Claybourne Elder as Buck (Clyde's brother) and Melissa Van Der Schyff as Blanche (Buck's wife). With powerful voices and heartfelt energy it's delightful to watch these performers breathe life into these misguided but not necessarily evil people. All of the talent is in order and all of the artists involved do good work with this show, but there's unfortunately a missing link, likely due to no fault but the alignment of the musical theatre stars.

BOTTOM LINE: Stick Fly is a messy play with a great cast, whose performances underscore just how much we’re missing when actors of color aren’t given the opportunities they deserve.

This season, New York has seen a number of new plays about wealthy families whose money can’t help them resolve their conflicts. In The Lyons (The Vineyard), Other Desert Cities (Lincoln Center), and We Live Here (Manhattan Theatre Club), we have watched parents, children, siblings, and significant others trying (and largely failing) to work out their issues; someone on stage is usually a writer, or musician, or painter, which either annoys the more practical members of the clan, or sets them aflame with envy. Stick Fly, the Broadway debut of playwright Lydia R. Diamond, also falls into this genre; however, her battling brood just happens to be African-American. Does that really make a difference? Of course it does. It doesn’t make the play great, but it does make it unique.

Stick Fly brings the LeVay family together at their vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend everyone expects to be tense — both sons are bringing their lovers home to meet the parents. One brother has followed in his father’s footsteps becoming a doctor, however, he knows that his mother will not be happy to see his white girlfriend. The younger son has already disappointed his parents several times by bouncing from career to career, but he seems ready to settle down with a smart, accomplished (black) woman who encourages his newfound identity as a novelist.

BOTTOM LINE: Alan Ayckbourn’s 75th play, a morality play set in modern day Britain, is intense, thought-provoking and definitely worth seeing, even if not quite up to the level of his usual work.

If it is true that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” then it is more than likely that, on its way there, it must pass through The Blueberry Hill Development, an imaginary dystopia envisioned by Alan Ayckbourn as the setting for his 75th play, Neighbourhood Watch. Produced by the acclaimed Stephen Joseph Theatre of Scarborough, UK, Neighbourhood Watch is currently making its US premiere at Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters and is the fourth of Ayckbourn’s plays to do so.

The Blueberry Hill Development is a British, middle class, suburban community, overlooking the Councillor Mountjoy Estate which is a lower class community, perhaps even a slum, at the foot of the hill below it. The Mountjoy Estate may be home to any number of thieves and ne’er-do-wells but the denizens of Blueberry Hill are no bargains themselves. Rather, Blueberry Hill appears to house a motley assortment of saints and sinners, victims and victimizers, paranoids, sociopaths, thugs, arsonists, and sexual deviants who, somehow, someway, have managed to hold it all together and maintain a viable community (albeit one suffering from the typical ills of modern suburban living such as petty crime and vandalism). Or at least the residents of Blueberry Hill have managed to hold it all together until the arrival of Martin Massie (Matthew Cottle), a God-fearing messianic Christian and his adoring and equally God-fearing Christian sister, Hilda (Alexandra Mathie).

BOTTOM LINE: Mad Women tells the growing-up story of John Fleck reflected by the lives of the two most important women in a gay man's life: his mother and Judy Garland.

For La Mama’s 50th anniversary season, they have brought back an old favorite from the West Coast: performance artist and professional portrayer of non-humans John Fleck. This visit, Fleck brings Mad Women, a new show he conceived, wrote, and performs with director Ric Montejano. Produced by The Katsales Theatre Company, the original run at The Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles received rave notices from local critics.

John Fleck is best known as Gecko on Season 1 of HBO’s Carnivale and for playing a record number of aliens in the Star Trek series. He is also a prolific performance artist whose self-scripted pieces include Side EfFlecs May Include. . . and Johnny’s Got a Gun.

Mad Women takes the audience on a whirlwind ride through episodes in the lives of Judy Garland, Josephine Fleck, and the people around them, but ultimately tells John Fleck’s own story. Fleck gives a fearless performances, sometimes madcap, sometimes calm, but always compelling. He takes on characters both remembered and dramatized and invites the audience into his own mind’s eye.

BOTTOM LINE: This evening of original one-acts based on well-known children's stories isn't completely "happily ever after," but does find many laughs and some drama in its new takes on old tales.

Fairy Tale, devised and produced by young theatre collective The Shelter (now in its third season), turns to children’s stories from across Europe and America for its source material. Our culture’s attachment to these tales seems unshakable; from Disney to Broadway to art-house cinema to this year’s TV line-up, a rogue’s gallery of lost children, talking animals, and wicked witches keeps kids and adults alike coming back for more. The Shelter’s current production is definitely for the grownups, and brings old characters firmly into the present (and, in one case, even the future).

Comprised of five short plays, Fairy Tale is hit-and-miss in its mission to inject novelty into stories the audience will already know well. The most successful pieces are, ironically, those that deviate the most from the original tales and enter playful alternative worlds. Beth Jastroch’s 3 Sisters and a Carnie (whose title suggests a radical new interpretation of the Chekov play) takes the premise of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and relocates it to Oklahoma, where three trailer-trashy young women face off with a tattooed ticket-taker outside the fun house. Jokes about boobs, scary clowns, and arson abound, and the cast, especially Edwin Sean Patterson as the “gruff” carnie and Aubrey Ball as the smartest, most bad-ass sister, nails the over-the-top comedy.

BOTTOM LINE: With shocking character twists and brutal family dysfunction, Derby Day will leave you gasping and glad these guys aren't your brothers. This show doesn't provoke empathy, but it's still really great theater.

There’s a point in your theater-going career when you’ve think you’ve seen every combination for dysfunctional families. You can live life with this assumption until you see Derby Day, who take the cake, every cake forever, in the bakery of dysfunction. Derby Day doesn’t just push the envelope, it rips the envelope in half, lights it on fire, and has sex with it. Audience members literally gasp as they watch the three brothers of Derby Day reveal shockingly terrible truths to about their abusive family history and beat the crap out of each other onstage in very realistic fight scenes at least a half dozen times. The levels of betrayal, deceit and total nastiness makes August: Osage County look tame. While playwright Samuel Brett Williams' new dark comedy maybe spends so much time demonizing the characters that you doesn’t feel inspired to root for them, it’s still an amazing piece of theater.

BOTTOM LINE: A complex look at one of life’s most vexing questions: Is this all there is?

There’s a point in most of our lives where we ask ourselves what we can do to make a dent in the universe — either on the macro or micro level. For some of us, this means reproducing, creating — or maybe just raising — a new generation to carry on our name and legacy. For others, the desire translates into working to produce something of lasting impact or beauty.

Hannah (Becca Ballenger) is presently confronting this dilemma and Friends Don’t Let Friends is largely her exploration of what has become a well-trod theme. But despite the familiarity of topic, the multi-layered story takes an unusual approach, causing the viewer to question the line dividing reality and either paranoia or fantasy. To be concrete, the story zooms in on Hannah’s workplace, a highly successful weekly TV sit-com where she has had a starring role for several years. Despite the steady work — a dream for most actors — the non-stop laugh track and banal script have started to wear on her. Worse, her character has become increasingly bitchy and she fears that the scriptwriters will marginalize her because she is no longer particularly likeable. “They could throw me out like spoiled milk,” she whines. Still, a question nags: Is Hannah being made expendable because her personal distress has started to show on camera, or is she distressed because of what is happening on stage? On top of this, her famous actor dad is seriously ill, pushing concerns about mortality front and center.

BOTTOM LINE: In many ways, I agree with the negative remarks other critics have said about this production. I still loved it.

A bit of background on me and my history with Godspell: I had purchased, in 2000, a CD recording of the York Theatre Production with Barret Foa, Chad Kimball, Shoshana Bean, Leslie Kritzer, and Capathia Jenkins. The recording, to my late teen ears, was incredible. I loved the score. But I had never in my life seen the show until this production.

I. Lurved. it. I Lurved it so much I add a 'u' and an 'r'.

The lukewarm critical response thusfar is correct: this Godspell revival is a hodgepodge, hyper-active production, lacking in any grit or real truth. Or at least by the time we got to the crucifixition, I was so numbed by the Lisa Frank Unicorn Magic that I got annoyed at the seriousness. It was interrupting my candy and feathers show high. I wanted more. I wanted more dance and joy and love and Hunter Parrish and trampolines and sparkly glitter. MOAR GLITTER, SHOW!

BOTTOM LINE: This erotically-charged work lacks a clear vision but offers plenty of dark humor and compelling ruminations on both sexuality and race.

Regardless of one’s final opinion of Thomas Bradshaw’s latest work, Burning, one has to admit that it’s certainly attention grabbing, with graphic on screen sex scenes, full frontal male nudity, incest, and authentic-looking drug use. While its content may not sit well with everyone’s sensibilities, its salaciousness guarantees that there is never a dull moment, even when it clocks in at nearly three hours.

The play tells four interconnected stories, all of which center around issues pertaining to race and sexual depravity:

Burning opens in New York City in the 1980’s with Chris (Evan Johnson), a fourteen-year old trying to attend a performing arts high school. He finds himself alone and orphaned after the sudden death of his mother. With nothing but dreams, he travels to New York City with the hope of being accepted into the high school and beginning a promising acting career. He convinces the gay director (Andrew Garman) and his boyfriend (Danny Mastrogiorgio) to take him in and is promptly turned into their personal slave: performing both sexual and domestic duties. The couple plays upon his naïveté by plying him with a copy of a Marquis de Sade book deriding human morality in favor of sexual hedonism. Chris interprets the book as his new life mission, believing that by exploring all aspects of his blossoming homosexual identity he will find direction in life. Meanwhile, the gay couple works alongside their friend Donald (Adam Trese) at developing a laughably terrible play about a middle aged man falling in love with a young Chinese girl he rescues from prostitution (its laughably shocking material serves to mirror the material of the Burning script).

BOTTOM LINE: A beautiful show; even with a few problems, it's totally worth it.

Carla Ching's new play, The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness, has a long, cumbersome title. But the show is lovely and enigmatic. The performances are exquisite, the design wonderful. The direction and writing are where this show suffers, but only slightly.

What the press notes say: It's a play with music and a live Twitter feed about kids growing up fast, children raising children, and shifting notions of home. When their father dies suddenly and their mother goes on a grief pilgrimage, Chinese adoptees Greta and Han are sent to live with their ex-rockstar uncle and his young girlfriend. Wrestling with the wilds of New York and their grief, Greta gets in trouble with the law and put in a court mandated reform program and Han runs away to play music on the street. On the edge of the wilderness, Greta and Han must ask themselves: If I can't go home, where do I go?

What I say: An incredibly moving, somewhat clumsy jigsaw puzzle of different times, tweets and texts, and astonishing performances. A bit overwritten at times and somewhat oddly directed, it is nonetheless a quiet and breathtaking story of breaking walls and letting go. I'm not often a fan of the 'nobody loves me' drama, an elephantine and rather obnoxious generalization for what is/are usually stories of family and/or love, because its very rare that there is anything fresh or magical about them. They are typically regurgitated pieces of leftover dressed salad. Not this play.

BOTTOM LINE: Private Lives tells a simple story with minimal character development, yet evokes plenty of laughter due to talented performers able to do justice to every one of Noel Coward’s jokes.

Predicting which plays will stand the test of time and which will die out with their era is not always foreseeable. The farcical romantic comedy Private Lives is certainly a play that has endured since premiering in 1930, having been revived for over eighty years, turned into a film, and having once featured Elizabeth Taylor in a starring role. The plot might be simple, but playwright Noel Coward was a man ahead of his time. The appeal of the play with contemporary audiences can perhaps be credited to the fact that main character Amanda bears a strong resemblance to today’s women. Despite existing in an era in which women had few options professionally and little sexual independence, Amanda is financially independent and able to make her own romantic choices without worrying about financial support or social taboos. Amanda is truly anachronistic; perhaps this makes her a heroine with whom women of the 21st century can identify.

Shortly after ending a tumultuous marriage to her ex-husband Elyot (Paul Gross), Amanda (Kim Cattrall) finds herself a more calming spouse, as does Elyot. As fate would have it they both choose to have their honeymoon in Deauville France, staying in the same hotel in neighboring hotel rooms that share a balcony.

BOTTOM LINE: A gripping, disturbing period piece, based on a novel by one of the twentieth century's most important writers.

Before achieving literary immortality with the novels 1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell traveled to Burma (today called Myanmar) in the 1920s and served on its military police force. His experience there inspired his first novel, an examination of the British Empire’s rancid colonialism. Called Burmese Days, the book follows the misadventures of John Flory, an Englishman who vacillates between contempt for the British imperial system and intense self-loathing for his own moral failures. Like Orwell’s more famous works, it depicts a society defined by cruelty and fear.

The stage adaptation of Burmese Days, being presented at 59E59 Theaters’ Brits Off Broadway Festival, is stark and unsettling. Six actors perform on an almost bare stage, dressed in modern clothing that “suggests” colonial-era tropical garb. The multiracial cast takes on an abundance of roles, with white actors playing both European and South Asian characters, and vice-versa. At first, one fears the continual swapping of identities will prove confusing, but to the cast’s (and director’s) credit, the complicated story remains clear. Even more significant is the effect of seeing Asian actors portraying Anglo characters, particularly when they are expressing the condescending or racist views common among the British in the east. The visual irony underscores one of the play’s core ideas: imperialism is internalized by everyone it touches, both the conquerors and the conquered.

BOTTOM LINE: This well-tuned production of Rebecca Gilman's chilling script serves to fully illuminate its exploration of social maladies.

The sexual thriller plot of a would-be-suitor-turned-stalker is one that has been rendered many times on the silver screen. Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl follows this standard story, however, unlike the Hollywood thrillers, Gilman takes the set-up and uses it as a platform to explore problems with gender roles and sexuality within a patriarchal society. While the unfolding drama is no doubt suspenseful and eerie, it also serves as a vehicle to lament on societal problems, creating a work that is both entertaining as well as thought-provoking and socially critical. Harry Diesel Productions revived this much lauded play, showing the issues in the script are just as relevant today as they were a decade ago when the play first premiered in New York City.

The play begins when Theresa (Kate Dulcich, who also co-produced the production) halfheartedly agrees to go on a brief blind date with Tony (David Hudson), a man who knows a friend of a friend. Over beers the two engage in stilted small talk, awkwardly covering such topics as occupations and what type of car they drove in high school. Theresa is a driven magazine journalist and Tony is a computer programmer. While Tony seems fairly innocuous, his feelings of insecurity and sensitivity emerge at the great embarrassment he expresses over not knowing who Edith Wharton is. He asks for a follow up dinner date shortly into their conversation, and the first red flag emerges as he eagerly attempts to plan a trip together to a Yankees game far off in the future, implying his intent on immediate coupledom.

BOTTOM LINE: A terse and titillating two-hander, telling a tale of sexuality and gender power-play in life and work.

Though fairly well-trodden material, the exploration of the actor/director relationship usually serves to be an interesting one, due in great part to the overall parallel of acting for pay and acting in life. David Ives's spirited new play, Venus in Fur, now playing at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman theatre, is the latest addition to that subject area.

One dark and stormy New York evening, frustrated playwright-cum-director, Thomas, calls his significant other to complain about the thirty-five girls he’d auditioned that night, not one of them right for his precious lead role of Vanda, in the play he’s sure will be his first success. The piece, aptly titled Venus in Fur, is one about love and domination in the 19th century, based on a book of the same title penned by the father of Sado-Masochism. No sooner does Thomas hang up the phone and begin to pack up his things to vacate the dismal audition room, when the woman he’s been waiting for rushes through the door. Of course it is in no way apparent at first that she’s the one -- her nasal vapidity and cheap S&M get-up (to get into the role; the play is basically porn, right?) scream otherwise, as does her use of the selfsame contemporary colloquialisms Thomas had just been lamenting (like, whatever). But as soon as the persistent girl, who happens to share the name Vanda, convinces him to let her audition and begins to read, it becomes apparent that there is much more to this loud, leggy blonde than meets the eye. Becoming more and more captivated by each other and the power play of the script, the extended audition stretches into the night, and the line between Thomas and Vanda and the characters they perform dissolves into the thick air of the cell-like audition space, like so much steam from a hot shower.

BOTTOM LINE: Iron Curtain is a hilarious, fun musical comedy about showbiz, Soviets, and the sentimental side.

What’s better than a good old-fashioned 1950s musical? How about a musical ABOUT good old fashioned 1950s musicals! Iron Curtain captures the same charm and charisma of that warmer time in this singing romp about a down-and-out American songwriting team who are kidnapped by the Soviets and taken to Moscow to fix “the world’s worst propaganda musical.” It’s a little like The Producers meets Sunset Boulevard (but without Nathan Lane dressed as Norma Desmond).

Written by Susan DiLallo, Stephen Weiner, and Peter Mills, Prospect Theater Company first became involved with Iron Curtain in 2005 when they began to develop the script toward a production. The original 2006 mounting was awarded Best Production of a Musical by ITA. Since then, Iron Curtain had been reincarnated at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in Issaquah, WA, and now Prospect Theater Company is bringing it back for an off Broadway run directed by Cara Reichel and choreographed by Christine O’Grady.

BOTTOM LINE: Dinner theater in a bar with a story that carries a big twist.

To my knowledge, dinner theatre isn't usually edgy and bold, and there isn't usually booze, and it isn't staged in a bar. Among the theatres of Broadway sits a pub called The Mean Fiddler, where It Is Done, a new play by Alex Goldberg, offers exactly this type of theatre. It's a very cool experience and a bargain compared to the other theatres on the block.

It all starts with the bar itself. Guests are ushered downstairs to a room with bar tables and private bar. It reminds me of a friend’s suburban basement with wood paneling and Christmas lights lining the ceiling -- very cozy and "American" in spirit. There is even a jukebox playing Hank Williams Jr. and other country songs in one corner. I enjoyed my complimentary drink (comes with the ticket) and found a table to join as showtime came closer. Had I gotten there earlier (doors open at 6:30PM) I would have ordered food. Some of the entrees and appetizers I saw floating around were very tempting. As the last dishes were handed out the bartender announced the show would be starting and he took his exit.

Then the show began.

BOTTOM LINE: A play about zombies that is really more of a zombie tease, peppered with contemporary cultural references.

Brew of the Dead II: Oktoberflesh, the latest production from Dysfunctional Theatre Company, is the follow-up to the 2008 production Brew of the Dead. While the prequel explored the question, “When the Apocalypse comes, will there be beer?” Oktoberflesh proclaims to ask “Can the dead get high?”

The tag line, however, is not exactly relevant to the actual play, which is much more about the living than it is about the dead and is richer in references to Facebook and Twitter than to marijuana or other intoxicants. At no point does a zombie actually get high, so the proposed question is never really addressed. This isn't necessarily a problem and it doesn't effect the actual experience of the show, but it is indicative of the show's sloppiness, which comes through in other ways.

BOTTOM LINE: A dramedy about one man's critical error; it starts out light and ends up gravely serious.

For Donnie (Tom O’Keefe), life is great until it’s not. In Ashlin Halfnight’s new play, A Hard Wall at High Speed, Donnie goes from upstanding family man to pariah in one fateful day. As he realizes the gravity of his mistake, his psychological wellbeing also begins to unravel. His subsequent breakdown is not only personally destructive, but also takes its toll on his loved ones.

A Hard Wall at High Speed is essentially a character study based on what happens when a community’s frustration is unleashed on one person. Donnie becomes villainized because someone needs to take the blame. And the result is devastating for Donnie and his family, particularly his wife June (Sarah Kate Jackson).

Although this play is hardly happy, there are many comedic moments at the beginning as the characters and their relationships come to light. June is pregnant, Donnie’s career as a flight instructor is becoming even more lucrative, and no one seems to mind that Donnie’s quirky and maybe-deadbeat brother Trout (Johnny Pruitt) lives in the basement. When Trout’s girlfriend Marcy (Ryan Templeton) moves in, the biggest issue at hand is her slutty wardrobe.

BOTTOM LINE: A play in peril, a marijuana bust gone wrong, mistaken identity, and the ethical battle between what is right and what is legal pervade The Complaint.

Stoners and Oscar Wilde aren't usually linked together. However, it is this very image that kicks off Randy Noojin's new play The Complaint, suggesting that in the world of his play, not everything may be what one initially expects. Gary Ortega (Josh Adler), an actor about to tour in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest, and his director/weed dealer, appropriately named Bud (Michael Poignand), sit in Gary's apartment rehearsing the British dialect and getting high. In the following scene we are brought into the office of Police Officer Archer (played by Noojin himself) as an eager young woman named Gretchen (Amanda Ladd) tries to convince him to oversee the final part of her police training. We learn that the thread connecting these two stories is found in a complaint that Gary has filed against Officer Archer for using excessive force in a marijuana bust the previous year.

BOTTOM LINE: An appealing new comedy about cultural confusion.

I am not familiar with the Chinese language or Chinese business practices. So I sympathize with Daniel (Gary Wilmes), the eager but wholly befuddled American businessman trying to score his first deal in Asia, in David Henry Hwang's entertaining new play Chinglish. Daniel learns the value of a translator as he immerses himself in a different culture with a different set of rules.

Chinglish is a comedy with most of its humor coming from miscommunication. Daniel speaks only English, and he attempts to present his company's proposal to Minister Cai (Larry Lei Zhange), who speaks only Mandarin Chinese. Although both have translators, the meaning of the conversation is often lost in translation. This runs (not so subtly) parallel to Daniel's objective, for his sign company to create the new signage for the city's cultural center, as previous signs have shown faulty Chinese to English translations. Just as "Chinglish" signs aren't always clear -- the handicapped restroom sign says "deformed man's toilet" -- the dialogue between characters is often muddied -- Daniel's description of a steakhouse as "like my second home" is translated to "where he sometimes lives."

BOTTOM LINE: A compelling exploration into post-World War II identity and belief set in 1947 San Francisco.

After escaping from war-ravaged Poland during the Holocaust and settling in San Francisco, Rabbi Kroeller heads a small support group of Polish refugees, meeting in his apartment over tea, and sometimes cookies, to recount their trials and tribulations in the New World. Each with his and her own memories and past actions keeping them from truly feeling whole or able to acclimate, they also deal with being looked upon as immigrant novelties, damaged but fascinating goods, the un-understandable other. Matters become further complicated when a young pair of Jewish Polish siblings arrive begging for help, claiming that their non-Jewish, Polish guardian has been peddling them around the world, forcing them to steal and commit crimes, while also abusing them. The Rabbi brings the children into his support group and eventually holds a mock trial, attempting to determine the correct course of action to aid the poorly pair. After taking matters into his own hands, however, the Rabbi discovers some unsettling news about those he’s taken under his wing, but only after it’s too late.

BOTTOM LINE: A slow-paced rendition of the classic movie with impressive acting and wonderful music convincingly bringing to life the fantastical feel of Fellini’s characters.

La Strada Company is a New York based Spanish artistic company whose mission is to imbibe the New York theatre scene with a healthy dose of Iberian influence. With that in mind, you won’t be surprised to hear that their production of La Strada is, in fact, in the Spanish language (with English supertitles) and stars actors from Spain, Argentina and the the Dominican Republic. Having spent some of my infancy in Spain I was reveling in the chance to finally see some Spanish theatre here in “La Gran Manzana.” The play is an adaptation of Federico Fellini’s classic 1954 Italian movie La Strada, which won an Academy Award for best foreign film. I find it both interesting and unusual that a theatre company that looks to promote Spanish influence would give itself an Italian name, a fact that can perhaps be explained as the intent of the company to break away from any constraining logic and set its own unique path, or strada, amongst the New York cultural offerings. After all, presenting a staged production of Fellini’s Italian classic in the Spanish language in New York is certainly a courageous and unconventional proposition.

BOTTOM LINE: Three one-act comedies that are all enjoyable but unlikely to stay with you for long.

Relatively Speaking brings together three champions of comedic writing -- Elaine May, Woody Allen, and Ethan Coen -- presenting three separate one-act plays all directed by the venerable John Turturro (in his Broadway directorial debut). The commonality is family, and though the plays are all very different, they each deal with kin in some way.

A large and energetic cast keeps the production moving along, and pauses between the plays (including one full intermission) put a hard stop to the action so the audience can regroup for the next play. If you often find yourself bored and distracted at two hour-long theatrical events, this format might be a welcomed change -- with each play clocking in under 45 minutes, there’s not much time for lagging.

But the flip side is this: a short one-act comedy doesn’t allow very much time for character development or a fundamental rooting of the story, and the result becomes something more of a prolonged sketch. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just don’t expect significant substance from any of these plays.

BOTTOM LINE: Sweet, funny, touching, and really pretty depressing.

It sucks to be Joseph (Santino Fontana). He's the poster-child for misfortune. At age 29, he has lost both parents and bears the responsibility of caring for his elderly uncle and teenage brother. His father's very recent, maybe accidental death was the result of a teenage prank gone wrong -- now the suspect's future is largely in Joseph's hands. Joseph also deals with the bigotry that comes with being gay and Lebanese in a not so open-minded town in Pennsylvania. On top of that, he is searching for medical answers to a number of health problems likely indicating something quite serious. In Stephen Karam's new play, Sons of the Prophet, Joseph and his hardships are center stage; through humor and love we see him face it all, despite most odds stacked against him.

Fontana is quickly becoming a Broadway golden boy after a handful of tremendous performances (Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Importance of Being Earnest) and a collection of accolades. Though Sons of the Prophet is an ensemble show, it is very much Joseph's story. Fontana is perfectly suited in this role, giving Joseph a charming resilience that makes it clear why everyone relies on him. He's never whiny, but inescapably tragic. The rest of the cast is equally appropriate with wonderful, nuanced performances all around. Particularly engaging are Joanna Gleason as Joseph's widowed boss Gloria, and Chris Perfetti as Joseph's younger (and also gay...what are the odds?) brother Charles.

BOTTOM LINE: A great show, but a sadly uninspired re-staging despite many talented artists.

I’ve lived in Park Slope for almost a decade and have never gotten around to venturing over to the other end of my neighborhood to catch something at neighborhood staple, The Gallery Players. While every now and then something catches my eye, usually a staging of a long-gone Broadway musical, for whatever reason, the quick jaunt on the B67 has never come to fruition -- that is, until I saw that they were doing a production of Little Shop of Horrors. I have for some time had a hankering to see this show again. The score has been a part of my musical theater playlist for as long as I can remember (even before such things existed), and I was disappointed by the lackluster Broadway revival in 2003 (starring Hunter Foster and Kerry Butler).

To my surprise, The Gallery Players doesn’t feel like an off off Broadway theater. Located in a building that is reminiscent of a suburban high school (and probably because it's not in a Manhattan high-rise), it invokes the feel of a small community or summer stock theater. It is a somewhat mixed blessing that their production of Little Shop of Horrors also comes across as such. I’ve had the chance to see quite a bit of off off Broadway theater, and although the standards vary widely, it seems that there are two redeeming cornerstone values: either brand-new material, or a new take on old material. This production is neither of these, rather it's more obvious than inventive, and this feels very true to the vibe of the venue.

BOTTOM LINE: A fun, wacky, theatrical escapade that needs some defragging.

Ned (Anthony Manna) is a young man who lives in an indeterminate location, presumably to avoid the cops. He is an underground computer hacker/gamer, his computer is named Gabrielle (Ali Perlwitz in her very impressive NY debut), and his father (Bob Austin McDonald) suffers from dementia and believes he's the famous blues musician Mangella St. James. Ned furiously attempts to restore his father's memories as they are supposed to be, by way of a complicated drug regimen, pop quizzes with promises of prostitutes if all the answers are correct, and constant viewing of old home movies. When not tending to his father, he exerts control over the terrified internet populace, extorts money from Vietnamese companies and hacks his way around the world. Gabrielle (the computer) is his helper, informant, lover, protector, provider, caregiver and dependent. She guides him in his games, alerts him when he has mail, hides his IP address, and even finds porn for him. Interwoven in all this setup is a mysterious woman, (name of Lilly, played by Hannah Wilson), who inserts herself into the play at various times, and changes the whole story when she shows up as the prostitute Ned hires for his father.

BOTTOM LINE: Writer-performer Clay McLeod Chapman once again brings his dark, humorous and unique sensibility to the stage in this bare bones production.

Back in the summer of 2001, right before New York and the world were changed suddenly and forever, I was a volunteer at the New York International Fringe Festival. In exchange for my labor, I was offered free tickets to some of the many, many shows, and found myself sitting in a very small black box space called UNDER St. Marks, watching The Pumpkin Pie Show. No set, no props, and only one actor: Clay McLeod Chapman, also the playwright. He was supported by a small group of musicians. Theatre is hard enough when you've got a huge team doing it with you, but Chapman was out there almost alone and, metaphorically speaking, nearly naked. His performance -- a series of monologues in which lonely, frightened, and/or perverse characters testify to their pain or confess their misdeeds -- struck me as original, disturbing, and hilarious. I made a mental note to keep an eye on Mr. Chapman in the future.

BOTTOM LINE: A play about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which leans more towards sentimental far-fetched fable than historical reflection.

Taking place almost exclusively in a heavily researched rendition of Martin Luther King’s final small, unassuming motel room, The Mountaintop is a reimagining of King’s last night before his assassination on April 4, 1968. As King (Samuel L. Jackson) settles in to his motel he is met by motel maid Camea (Angela Bassett). What begins as an ordinary exchange with a slightly star-struck Camea turns into something more significant as the two reflect on the country's state of affairs and the future of the civil rights movement.

Don’t go to The Mountaintop expecting a historical recreation of King’s last hours. Much liberty has been taken to explore who King may have been in his private life, and considering King’s place in American society was as a near deity himself, seeing him portrayed as a mortal is somewhat unsettling. He curses, notes how horrible his shoes smell, and more than once makes an inappropriate comment or move towards Camea. These details are intentionally offsetting. Although charismatic and commanding, the King played by Jackson is also quite deliberately flawed. He isn’t the orator seen in documentary clips, but instead a normal person with grand ideas and several chinks in his armor, just as susceptible to death as the rest of us. Bassett, as the maid, is a mixed bag. There are times when the foul-mouthed language she uses feels stilted and moments where her over the top manic ramblings are grating rather than endearing. That said, in the last moments of the show, she delivers a fair sized monologue about the state of America that is pitch perfect, somewhere between painfully nostalgic and sensationally inspiring.

BOTTOM LINE: A poignant, funny, and emotionally intense play that explores the limits of loyalty, fidelity, and love.

Imagine learning that your best friend, someone you’ve known since childhood, has committed a crime so heinous that every legal system in the world would punish it? What if your friend claims that he did the deed not just because he wanted to, but because he also thought it would improve your life? Do you turn him over to the police or does loyalty require you to stay mum, no matter what? How about if blame shifts to a 17-year old kid with a criminal record but no ties to you or your pal? Do you speak up then?

These dilemmas form the crux of Any Given Monday, Bruce Graham’s disturbing, if at times hilarious, 2010 Barrymore Award-winning Best Play. Witty and provocative, the script explores not only how we rationalize — or condemn — serious offenses, but also how we normalize behaviors that may not be criminal but are nonetheless violations of decency, including racism, homophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism, and contempt for the indigent and disenfranchised.

BOTTOM LINE: A big city play about gay teens that hopes to open the minds of small town audiences. If any play can do it, this is the one.

The Bus is a new play with big aspirations. After its October run in New York, the 59E59 Theaters production will travel to Topeka, Kansas, with the explicit goal of holding performances in the hometown of the notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. After that, the play’s creators are hoping to stop over in a few more Midwest cities with similarly established institutions. With so much at stake, The Bus is a definite case of “go big or go home.” If New York, the theater capital of America (if not the world), is going to send a play out there to act as vigilante in communities with reputations for being hostile toward gays (and I mean really hostile -- like, protesting at funerals hostile), then that play ought to be an exceptional piece of theater, both in the story it chooses to tell and the way it goes about telling it. It ought to be theater magic.

Thankfully, The Bus is theater magic.

BOTTOM LINE: Kiki Baby is a new musical about a little girl whose singing takes her from a sweet kid to a star and the steady devolution of the people around her.

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), which has presented 300 new musicals as of this year’s offerings, is known for bringing high profile talent to the nurturing of new musicals, and this year’s Kiki Baby is no exception. Its creative team and cast are littered with Broadway credits and Tony nods including co-book writer, co-lyricist, and co-director Lonny Price (Tony nominee for A Class Act), co-lyricist and music writer Grant Sturiale (former conductor/composer for Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular), and orchestrator Michael Starobin (Tony winner for Next to Normal). The cast includes a slew of top-tier talent like Jennifer Laura Thompson (Tony nominee for Urinetown), all headed by the indomitable Jenn Colella as the titular Kiki.

Based on the Rene Fulop-Miller novel Sing, Brat, Sing, Kiki Baby takes us to 1931 Germany where a mother (Jill Paice) is lured by financial need into placing her daughter’s life into the hands of a musical impresario who promises riches and renown (Steve Rosen). An entourage is recruited from the rag-tag band of tenants in the apartment building to make four-year old Kiki into a star. It’s “a tale of fame, fortune, failed opera divas, dwarfs, sweatshop bosses, monumentally bad parenting, and what happens to a little girl when no one will tell her no.”

BOTTOM LINE: A solid musical adaptation of a classic piece of literature.

It's clear to see why Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has quickly sold out its limited NYMF run at the Signature Theatre. In a festival where many works are being thrust in front of the eyes of New York audiences for the first time and are asked to bring their A-game, Pride and Prejudice presents itself as a piece of polished theatre. This musical has already had several productions out of town and even brings most of the cast from these productions to strut their talents here in New York City. So it’s no wonder that what the audience sees is a smartly crafted and flushed out piece of musical theatre.

Playwrights Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs have taken Jane Austen's classic tale and put a slightly interesting spin on it. Instead of merely telling the story of Pride and Prejudice, they have chosen to have Jane Austen (brought to life with great complexity and nuance by Broadway veteran Donna Lynne Champlin) be an ever-present narrator of sorts who is busy crafting the tale in front of our eyes as she tries to create a follow up hit to her smash success Sense and Sensibility. It is a very interesting convention that allows us to look at the story's characters in a very different way.

BOTTOM LINE: Therapy gets analyzed in Aron Eli Coleite's The Family Room, a new play about a family of therapists dealing with their own dysfunction.

A comedy with a dramatic core, The Family Room puts teenager David (Tyler Lea) under the microscope. His father, Dr. Campbell (David M. Pincus) and mother Dr. Tate-Campbell (Nancy Stone) are therapists, and they decide that David needs to start seeing a shrink himself. However, David would rather avoid the couch charade -- being a teenager sucks, and that's the brunt of his problems. David is also rightly discouraged by the idea of therapy because people see their shrinks forever and and no one ever seems to get well. His parents prove this theory.

The play takes us through various scenes between patient and therapist: we see David with the inexperienced but ambitious Dr. Goodwin (Coco Medvitz); we see Campbell with his therapist Dr. Durant (Jacqueline Sydney); and then in a role reversal we see Dr. Durant as the patient of Dr. Schwartz (Jonathan Tindle). Finally, we glimpse teenage Jennifer (Leah Barker), patient of Campbell and secret girlfriend of David. These short vignettes clip right along and the characters' exposition falls out of admissions and realizations within these encounters. Not surprisingly, everyone is dealing with stuff, from chronic illness to divorce to self-esteem issues, with some prescription drug abuse thrown in for good measure. Personal turmoil abounds.

BOTTOM LINE: A sweet and sincere two-person musical about friendship.

Full orchestras are great, but there is something intimately haunting about a piano and a cello together, alone. Add two incredible vocalists to the mix, and the musical result becomes something beautiful but raw, refined but real. Time Between Us is almost entirely sung, its lyrics providing the narrative and explaining the characters' struggles. The combination of orchestrations and vocals together offer a downright lovely experience.

This is partly due to a first-rate cast: Kristy Cates plays Morgan and Kasey Marino plays Matthew. Both performers have voices that can bounce between standard Broadway flair and a grittier contemporary sound. They are reliable singers who sound fantastic together. And since the show involves a tiny cast (just three total, including the metaphorical "Man" played by Tom Rainey), they also have to act. Luckily, both Cates and Marino are adept performers who offer touching portrayals of friends growing up and growing apart.

BOTTOM LINE: The Seeing Place Theater gives a worthy performance of Patrick Marber’s brilliant script.

Romantic love and monogamous relationships are shown to be corrupt, ephemeral states in this performance of Patrick Marber’s well known work Closer. While many theater companies of a smaller size choose to perform original and relatively obscure works, The Seeing Place makes the ambitious choice to bravely tackle a work well known both on Broadway as well as on the silver screen.

As is the case with any play that exists as a film, it is hard not to draw comparisons to its cinematic sibling, seeing perhaps Jude Law or Natalie Portman in place of the actors on the stage. However, for fans of the film, the play is still worth a gander, especially since the final scenes show a completely different resolution, giving it a completely different overall tone from the film.

BOTTOM LINE: An intriguing story told in an intimate setting which, in spite of some great acting, falls a little short of being great overall.

I have a weakness for small, cramped New York theaters. I get that (perhaps naïve) feeling of being let into someone’s house and shown their most intimate possession, a production which can only be enjoyed by the privileged few who obtain a ticket. The Flea Theater precisely represents that type of venue, a place that has a knack for presenting interesting productions, some of which take place in their dark and almost air-tight basement space.

The Flea is currently hosting The Horizon Theater Rep’s production of Benito Cereno. This play is actually Robert Lowell’s version of Herman Melville’s novella, and it has not been seen in New York since the 1970s. The play presents the story of a ship full of New England seal hunters who encounter a Spanish vessel adrift in the ocean. When they board the vessel to offer their assistance, not all is what it seems on the Santo Domingo. The only Spanish officer left alive on deck is Benito Cereno (Rafael De Mussa), a rather speechless, disheveled aristocrat who has a constant air of gravity and absentness about him. Benito is relentlessly flanked by his black slave Babu (Jaymes Jorsling), who presents a surprising familiarity with the officer but whose joyful manner and seeming loyalty to his master make him a welcoming character to the Americans. Several slaves who have been freed from their chains linger around on board, giving what seems like complicit glances to one another while suspiciously eyeing their new guests.

BOTTOM LINE: A family drama that was developed using an innovative actor-based technique. The characters are strong, but the dialogue is stale.

Scotch Kiss is the latest show at The Seeing Place, a three-year-old ensemble theater company that strives to develop its shows as a group process. Scotch Kiss is an ambitious example of this, created through a series of scene workshops in which the actors improvise in order to better realize the depths of each character. In my understanding, the process of putting on a play is essentially reversed and the concrete dialogue that we see on the stage is one of the last elements to come into rehearsals.

Based on “true events,” Scotch Kiss follows the 80-something Scottish immigrant Adelaide “Addie” Turner (Mary Anisi) as she strives to create a life independent of her husband, William (Michael Stephen Clay), after 60 years of marriage. In the first scene, Addie’s son Dan (Ned Baker Lynch) and his new girlfriend Nancy (Amanda Baker) help her escape from her Brooklyn home while William is out grocery shopping, then drop her off to stay with her daughter Cora (Debbie Friedlander), a mother of two with a dependency on pink wine. What follows is a series of scenes in which the members of the family play their fated roles as they navigate a new situation. The plot almost constantly highlights the tug-of-war between dysfunction and love that is so common in family dynamics.

BOTTOM LINE: Spectacle, drag queens and puppets, oh my!

Puppets are magic. Anyone who can disagree with that statement hasn’t fully experienced being a child. Maybe they scare you, maybe they inspire joy, maybe you’ve been fascinated by their inner workings (I know I have). All of those feelings happen because they are magic. And drag queens possess a similar magic. Many of the same principles of illusion and imitation apply, and they are so much more than just a knockoff of “real.” Joey Arias is a true original, and Arias with a Twist pairs her brand of magic with that of Basil Twist and his cast of thousands. As the lights go down, the friendly voice that warns us to turn off our noisemakers also invites us: “let your inner child appear.” And what follows is an immense playground for that child.

BOTTOM LINE: Inventive direction and a delightful cast make The Select an event worth seeing.

No one isn't a Hemingway fan -- at the very least it's hard to be critical of The Sun Also Rises unless we're talking serious literary criticism (which we're not, so back off English majors). Elevator Repair Service has found its "thing" in presenting classic literature on stage and theatricalizing the shit out of it in the process. They started a few years ago with The Sound and the Fury, then found stellar success with last year's Gatz (an all day event that included a complete reading of The Great Gatsby), and they now tackle Hemingway required reading. The Select is an adapted version of The Sun Also Rises, and the production clocks in around 3 hours. While that's still a commitment, it hardly feels like one. The Select is so much fun you wish the party would go all night.

For those of you who slept through high school English class: the 1926 novel takes place in Paris and chronicles American Jake Barnes (the adorable Mike Iveson) as he and his chums fight for the love of Lady Brett Ashley (the even more adorable Lucy Taylor). Between lots of drinking, lots of fraternizing, lots of flirting, a trip to Spain and a bull fight, Jake and Brett try to maybe make a relationship work despite the inevitability that it's probably not going to happen. She's got a thing for other guys, and well, seemingly all other guys have a thing for her.

BOTTOM LINE: A well executed production of a classic post-realism Williams play.

To commemorate Tennessee Williams’s 100th birthday, White Horse Theatre Company is presenting his play Suddenly Last Summer, directed by Cyndy A. Marion, the company’s artistic director.

Most people are familiar with Williams as the author of such modern masterpieces as The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Fewer are familiar with some of his later, less conventional works like Suddenly Last Summer. After helping to define modern realism, Williams moved beyond it and began to write plays rich in symbolism and meaning, but replacing the natural with a stylized world. Such is the case with Suddenly Last Summer, Williams’s psychoanalysis-influenced “moral fable.”

Marion brings the designers and casts together to create that specific world. White Horse’s production includes an elaborate and somehow grand set by John C. Scheffler, delicious costumes by David B. Thompson, rich lighting by Debra Leigh Siegel, a lush soundscape by composer Joe Gianono and sound designer Colin Whitely. The soundscape provides a vibrant, effective underscoring for the action and dialogue, I only wish there were more of it because it added so much meat. And like many Williams shows, the lighting ties this production together, “illuminating” plot and meaning then culminating in a brilliant, illusion-shattering final effect.

BOTTOM LINE: A sometimes amusing but not very deep play about how much more important loving and honest relationships can be than material goods.

“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” That’s the biblical injunction but a similar secular version of that idea appears in Greek mythology as well, in the story of King Midas, whose ability to turn everything he touched into gold proved to be a curse rather than a blessing. Or in everyday terms: “Money can’t buy happiness.” And it is a similar message that animates Kithless in Paradise by Molly Moroney, now enjoying its world premiere at Theatre Row’s Lion Theatre: to wit, there are more important things in life than material goods.

Kithless in Paradise is set in San Francisco in 2009 at the home of Tim and Janice McCall (David Wirth and Liz Forst), who are hosting a dinner party for their house guests, Phil and Polly Barrett (Brit Herring and Tracy Newirth) who are visiting from New York. Tim, a successful money manager, and Phil, who is now very comfortably retired, are in their fifties and have been best friends since their high school days, even before they were classmates at Notre Dame. After graduating from college, Phil became Tim’s first client, engaging him to manage his $20 million portfolio -- an act which launched Tim on his successful career.

BOTTOM LINE: A political drama about three women who are invested in a senatorial election that, despite some strong performances and design, never quite lifts off.

Dally with the Devil is the story of three women involved in a political campaign. Charlotte (Erika Rolfsrud), who lives a remote life on Cape Cod and runs a political blog, is visited first by Irene (Elizabeth Norment) and then by Megan (Elizabeth A. Davis), who both drop her leads on stories intended to sabotage the opposing senatorial candidate. When Charlotte tricks Irene and Megan into a surprise meeting, however, the situation complicates as politics meld with the women’s personal lives.

Playwright Victor L. Cahn’s dialogue consists of a lot of hard-balling and political negotiation and, overall, proceeds with a sense of logic. These three women are smart, but come from very different backgrounds -- Charlotte is the journalist, Irene is the academic, Megan is the military intelligence. These are three modern archetypes of smart, assertive women and their respective careers inform the way they execute their research, their mud-slinging, and their negotiations with one another.

BOTTOM LINE: A wonderful combination of Commedia dell’Arte and Story Theatre, engendering an exceptionally entertaining and creative work of Irish historical fiction.

The year is 1904, the place Dublin and, despite the city’s unspeakable filth and squalor, the air is redolent with revolutionary change. Thoughts of women’s suffrage are beginning to emerge. Dreams of Irish independence from Great Britain (or at least home rule) are prompting political (and sometimes terrorist) action. And in the midst of it all, against a backdrop of poverty and fury, whores, beggars, drunkards and rebels, a small troupe of actors led by Willy Hayes (superbly played in the best Chaplinesque manner by Jered McLenigan) have their own high hopes of launching the “Irish National Theatre of Ireland.”

That is the backdrop for this most extraordinary of plays, Dublin by Lamplight, having its New York premiere at 59E59 Theaters as part of the First Irish 2011 Festival of plays. This production is a theatrical delight, highly stylized and combining elements from silent movies, burlesque, slapstick, Commedia dell’Arte, and Story Theatre. Each of the six actors has a major role to play, but each also plays anywhere from another three to seven minor roles -- and they all perform absolutely wonderfully across the board.

BOTTOM LINE: A playful and hilarious adaptation of a classic playwright's work.

The New York Neo-Futurists are best known for their ongoing late-night show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes, in which the ensemble performs very short, numbered plays in an order the audience chooses. The company adheres to the aesthetics of “honesty, speed, and brevity.” Or, as the MC puts it, “we are who we are, we are where we are, and we are doing what we’re doing.”

In their most recent work, The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, Volume One: Early Plays / Lost Plays, directed by Christopher Loar at The Kraine Theater, the company takes on a now-staple of American playwrights: Eugene O’Neill. The introduction points out though, that to his contemporaries, O’Neil was considered a “downtown” artist. Thus, the Neo-Futurists are simply returning his work to its original and proper sphere: experimentation.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-designed set, skilled director, and convincing cast give life to this revival which examines the questions of memory of perception.

Knife Edge Productions, in association with Swinestars Productions, is presenting a revival of Stephen Belber’s acclaimed work Tape. Considering that the play is by now relatively well known, and was even produced as a film in 2001 starring former couple Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, it gives this production the chance to imbue its own unique interpretation upon the work. Following the film version of the play, in 2002, Belber also staged a well received revised version of the work in New York which includes a prologue and epilogue showing the characters at three different ages in their lives. This production however, sticks to the original script.

The play centers around three former high school friends who reunite in Lansing, Michigan. Jon (Neil Holland), now a filmmaker, has come to Lansing to show his film as part of a festival. His friend Vincent (Don DiPaolo) claims to be in town to support Jon, who comes to pick him up for dinner at the dingy Motel 6 where he is staying. While Jon appears to be the self confident golden boy, Vince is a disheveled mess, working as a small time drug dealer and volunteer firefighter in California. When Jon arrives at the hotel, Vincent postpones the dinner plans, plying him with marijuana and beer. While first the two engage in play fighting, back slaps, and jokes, all the hallmarks of heterosexual male bonding, Vincent soon drives the conversation towards that of Amy, a former classmate. Apparently Jon and Vincent were both involved with Amy. Vincent was Amy’s long term boyfriend, whereas Jon engaged in a prolonger flirtation that resulted in a sexual encounter.

BOTTOM LINE: Wonderfully chaotic romping tornado of a play with a first-rate ensemble cast.

Set in a New York suburb on New Years Eve 1983, J. Stephen Brantley’s Eightythree Down is a daring whirlwind of violence and taboo. Martin (Brian Mitchell) lives a safe life in his parents basement, occupying his time with records and facts about birds. He is woken on New Years Eve by his best friend from high school, Dina (Melody Bates), and two of her new acquaintances: Stuart (Ian Holcomb) and Tony (Bryan Kaplan). The trio, with each member representing various degrees of vibrant degenerates, has fled to Martin’s house looking for help after they find themselves in some big city trouble. What follows is an explosive hour of theater which at it’s very core explores the difference between living life and simply living, because despite the fact that Martin’s home is essentially invaded by a ban of drug addicted criminals who range in temperament from violent to victim, Martin’s cocoon of safety and sheltered suburban life make him the tragic outcast of this show.

BOTTOM LINE: Any production of Follies is certain to be a can’t-miss event, and this one is no exception.

If I could go back in time, one of the first things I would do is attend the original production of Follies. This now legendary production (staged by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, and well-chronicled in Ted Chapin’s book Everything Was Possible) all but guarantees that no revival can possibly compete – or so some would have you believe. Fitting, perhaps, for a show consciously concerned with the effects of nostalgia and romanticizing the past. But since we can’t go back in time (at least not yet), we at least have this often-stunning new production.

As compared to the much-derided 2001 Broadway revival (which I quite enjoyed), this revival is somewhat more traditional and expected: it is less decrepit and more grand. Eric Schaeffer’s staging and Warren Carlyle’s choreography are both well-suited to the material, if hardly revolutionary. And if not as opulent as the original production, this Follies at least acknowledges that there was some grandeur in the past. As the audience walks in to see the entire Marquis theatre covered in gray fabric, and looks at the crumbling proscenium arch, one gets a sense of the beauty that once was. And if this decay is perhaps a bit too picturesque for my taste, this minor flaw is soon forgotten because of the wonderful performances that follow.

BOTTOM LINE: An irreverent romp through a pseudo-Eastern European, wannabe Western culture that makes for an all-around enjoyable life-layover.

Though layovers have recently become the choice options for longer air travel journeys, The Berkserker Resident’s fictional country of Lapsburgh is certainly not one that should be getting a stopover pathway through it anytime soon. The Lapsburgh Layover, now playing at Ars Nova, is a quick jaunt through the the fictional Lapsburgh, which quite enjoyably proves beyond a doubt that, despite the heartbreakingly hilarious and darling attempts of the locals to woo layover passengers with the charms of Lapsburghian tourism and culture, Lapsburgh might need a little further development before attracting those mainstream flight paths.

“Welcome home?” declares the banner slung across the stage in Lapsburgh’s cultural embassy, the arrivals/waiting area for the recently de-planed audience members who await aircraft repair. All chintzy glitter and glitz, the room glistens with slightly off-kilter attempts at Westernisms, such as the banner, as well as bombastic displays of this fictional, but ever so familiar and more than slightly Eastern European, culture. This happy holding chamber of Lapsburghs and Lasburghisms is revealed after a short jaunt through airport security and passport control, assuring the mutual safety of citizens and travelers alike. Thanks to some airplane malfunctions on the flight that brought this audience together, we’re all stranded here in Lapsburgh for as long as it takes to fix the aircraft, which, as these situations usually do, gets more dire as the evening goes on. But no matter! These happy, smiley Lapsburghians are thrilled to entertain us in the meantime, with a fun little American-style noir dinner theatre piece they happened to have been working on (a charming little number that falls on the gamut somewhere between The Maltese Falcon and Guy Noir), with a few pro-Lapsburgh tourism remarks stuck in here and there for good measure. But we laidover passengers are not the only tourists in the area this evening; the presence of some rather unwanted guests, who get more and more disruptive as the night drags on, rather spoils the good time being had by all.

BOTTOM LINE: A provocative mix of humor and pathos about what it means to be The Other told from numerous divergent perspectives.

Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Invasion!, winner of a 2011 Obie award for playwriting, looks at The Other—in this case someone or something called Abulkasem—from a kaleidoscopic array of perspectives. Indeed, as the frenetic and often hilarious play unfolds, it becomes apparent that he or she is many things to many people: A bold planner of terrorist assaults; a lonely heterosexual man in a bar; a gay Egyptian who dreams of moving to America and becoming a dancer; and an apple picker working in upstate New York for a paltry $2.50 an hour. Or maybe Abulkasem isn’t even human. Perhaps the word is akin to other magical phrases—terms like shazzam, abracadabra, or wah-lah—and can be used as noun, verb, adjective, or adverb to manipulate whatever emotional response needs revving up.

If it sounds confusing, it is—and it isn’t. Either way, it doesn’t much matter. What matters is that audience members get a taste of the chicanery and chaos that have exacerbated racism and ramped up fear and loathing of the mythical Abulkasem, not just in the United States but throughout the West.

BOTTOM LINE: A conflict between man, wife, poverty and the need to do what is right sits at the heart of Temporal Powers, Teresa Deevy’s 1927 play newly unearthed at the Mint Theater. Set in a ruin in the poor Irish countryside, an evicted pair of squatters find a life-saving sum of money with dubious moral origins, and argue about which is right: to obey the law or to starve.

We come upon the Donovans, hardworking Mick (Aidan Redmond) and sour-faced Min (Rosie Benton) on their first evening in a dilapidated old ruin (designed by Vicki R. Davis, it is an interior but, oddly, painted to convey its own exterior). Min berates her husband for never being able to give her more, and how she has gone without fine things in her choice to marry him. Mick retorts that he could only do the work laid before him, at the moment, fixing their new home. In the course of this repair, he discovers a huge pile of cash — and is immediately certain they have come upon a criminal’s stash. As he declares he will take it to the authorities, Min argues that the only crime here is to remain destitute when the tools of salvation sit in your own lap. As the story unfolds, a cast of well meaning neighbors and at least one thief add their ideas and work their part in the events, which we feel from the very beginning can only end in disappointment.

BOTTOM LINE: Elysian Fields tells the imagined stories of Allan, Sebastian, and Brick, three gays whose offstage deaths are the catalysts for the conflicts in A Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly Last Summer, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Previously produced in LA, Elysian Fields marks GLAAD media award nominee Chris Phillips’s second play. Directed by John Michael Beck and Chris Phillips, Elysian Fields made its NYC debut as part of the New York International Fringe Festival with minimal sets but fantastic, dramatic lighting. Elysian Fields actually marks my favorite lighting in Fringe this year.

It’s such a fantastic idea. Without Allan, Blanche’s sensitive poet husband who killed himself, there would be no Streetcar Named Desire. Catharine would not have been summoned to Aunt Violet’s garden in Suddenly Last Summer if Sebastian hadn’t been murdered. And it’s his guilt and grief over Skipper’s death that causes Brick’s malaise in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Each of these characters is explored in a scene around the crucial moment preceding his death. And although there is an expectation with this play that the audience is informed about the three source scripts, the show could be appreciated without knowing the full stories.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-acted two person psychological thriller about obsessive love.

Tara (Isabel Richardson), a recently hired employee, is young, beautiful and newly-married and, from the moment he first laid eyes on her, co-worker Eric (Bob D’Haene) has been absolutely smitten. Indeed, not merely smitten but obsessed and not just with her physical beauty but with her “transcendence.” His love for her is not of this world but is on an entirely different plane.

Eric felt this way once before about another female co-worker eleven years ago and that didn’t work out well at all. But he has learned from experience and won’t allow himself to slip into a situation like that again. And so he does whatever he can to avoid any contact with Tara unless absolutely necessary: when he sees her coming, he turns the other way or ducks into an office or cubicle; if he’s invited to join a group of co-workers for lunch and he learns that she’ll be part of the group, he begs off; if she initiates a conversation with him, he makes every effort to cut it short.

BOTTOM LINE: An imaginative and daring production of an immensely relatable play. Perfect Fringe fare.

Cow Play is a simple story about two boys, a girl, and a farm -- and also a cow and a dead sister. Brothers Jed (Will Turner) and Mark (Alex Kramer) are the only two surviving members of a dairy farm family. Jed is quiet, brooding and steady and the responsibility of maintaining the farm falls upon his shoulders. Mark, on the other hand, is a whirlwind of academic whimsy who abandons the farm in pursuit of a life in New York City. The thing about Cow Play, however, is that the plot is only a small part of the experience, the real joy in play is how the story is told.

Director Charlie Polinger crafts a radiant mosaic of theatrical angles by encompassing a slew of methods to tell the story. Scenes overlap with one another, vaguely relevant monologues are performed, stop motion animation is used, a cow moos and is subsequently translated, movement and non-linear methods are intertwined. While using so many devices often isolates me from theater, as implemented by Polinger, they work to enhance, clarify and deepen the tale.

BOTTOM LINE: A daringly experimental, multimedia pastiche about the rise and fall of America in the Atomic Age, easily well worth the price of admission.

The bloom is off the rose in our relationship with the Atomic Age in Nuclear Love Affair. In this highly visual and experimental performance, American icons are juxtaposed against the backdrop of war and persecution that is the legacy of the atomic age. It’s this contrast that gives the play its weight. Beloved icons are mutated by the ravages of atomic radiation. A cross dressing Marilyn Monroe teaches the audience to duck and cover, Elvis becomes a traumatized soldier raping Vietnamese villagers. Lucille Ball becomes an electrified Ethel Rosenberg, the Weather Underground lays siege to Washington D.C. There are many comedic moments, but they only serves to highlight some of America’s darkest hours.

BOTTOM LINE: A remarkable new play that breaks new ground in form and structure.

What the Sparrow Said by Danny Mitarotondo, produced by The Common Tongue, and now playing at Teatro LATEA as part of the 2011 Fringe Festival, is an outstanding example of what the Fringe Festival is supposed to be all about. It is a wonderful example of a new playwright’s pushing the limits of his craft to produce a work that transcends traditional theatrical boundaries and that, notwithstanding its limitations, makes its audience sit up and take notice – if only to say “I was there when he first burst upon the scene.” For there is little doubt in my mind that Mitarotondo is a major new talent from whom we’re likely to be hearing much more in the years ahead.

What the Sparrow Said doesn’t really break any major new ground in a substantive sense: it is simply a variation on the oft-told story of two brothers who meet after several years of estrangement at their mother’s deathbed. But it does break new ground in form and structure: it is a non-linear, right-brained exposition of the relationships among a number of tangentially related characters which forces its audience to view it from a variety of perspectives (in much the way that Braque or Picasso may initially have engaged their audiences with their visual arts).

BOTTOM LINE: The Legend of Julie Taymor is a satirical Fringe musical re-imagining the recent Spiderman debacles as an epic disaster.

National news was abuzz for months in early 2011 about the struggles of the monolith Spiderman production, and gossip and rumors flew gleefully through the theatre industry. It was inevitable that someone would musicalize the madness of this real-life musical mess. Enter Travis Ferguson (book and lyrics) and Dave Ogrin (music and lyrics).

True to parady form, the names are changed to protect the shameful in the Broadway-based showtune romp, but with power-hungry visionary Julie Paymore creating her masterpiece “Spiderdude” at all costs (financially and physically), it isn’t hard to read between the lines. It reminds me of a Broadway Valley of the Dolls.

The two shortcomings of the show actually stem from its real-life roots. With such an outrageous reality as a starting point, the parody needs to be that much more extreme, and sometimes the show could have gone farther in the name of mockery, camp, and absurdity. Also, the show is very “insider.” Many of the jokes are nudges within the industry, which elicit self-assured chuckles from the theatreistas in attendance, but these jokes may be lost on a wider audience.

BOTTOM LINE: Puppet theatre tries to find the secret to happiness.

In 1901 August Strindberg had a near-psychotic episode that inspired him to bear “the child of [his] greatest pain": A Dream Play, a surrealist, expressionist exploration of human suffering.

In 2011, Joseph Jonah Therrien got an MFA in puppet arts and decided to adapt Strindberg’s work using mostly cardboard, paper maché and burlap. The result: Dreamplay, a visually engrossing societal critique featuring, among other things, a burping sock, 20-foot-tall lawyer jokes, and Mickey Mouse in a gas mask with purple sequined epaulettes.

The plot follows Agnes, daughter of Hindu god Indra, in her quest to ease human misery and redeem our species in the eyes of her father. Along the way she encounters dozens of strange characters. Some are fully formed, but most are archetypes and symbols. In one scene, for example, the four deans of government, big business, religion, and science argue about who gets to take credit for progress. Agnes descends further and further from Heaven until she is literally coated in mud and unable to remember her divine perspective. From such a depth, she can understand our pitiable condition and add her own lamentations to ours.

BOTTOM LINE: A tightly written, well-acted, three act dramedy that takes place on one tumultuous day in the life of trauma doctor Herman Kline.

Herman Kline’s Midlife Crisis opens in the somewhat messy kitchen of Liz and Herman Kline. Liz (Kathryn Kates), a long-suffering, bored, stay-at-home wife and mother, is drinking coffee and chattering about this-and-that, while an overweight, distracted Herman (Adam LeFevre) reads the newspaper. In due course Liz reveals the reason for that day’s angst: she has learned that Herman skipped yesterday’s lunch, missed a staff meeting, and was seen leaving the office of a particularly attractive female colleague, his tie loosened. Herman is aghast, but assures his wife that he is not fooling around. “I’ve been feeling like time is running out while I shovel shit in my mouth,” he confesses. He then continues, explaining that the night before a young stabbing victim — “he had the most angelic face” — came into the O.R. but was too far gone to be saved. Worse, he tells Liz that he discovered a bag of drugs deep inside the victim’s rectum, which, for reasons he doesn’t understand, he decided to keep. In short order Herman turns from middle-aged-man into gleeful kid — a child who knows he’s done wrong, but doesn’t care because he feels so exhilarated by the talisman he’s scavenged.

BOTTOM LINE: An interesting mix of stories, voices, and tones makes this series of short plays worth seeing.

59E59 Theatres offers the second half of their Summer Shorts Festival with their series B plays. For my money, they don’t pack as powerful of a punch as the Series A offerings (playwright greats Neil LaBute and Alexander Dinelaris are tough to beat) but are worth a gander nonetheless. The second half of the festival features some evocative scripts and strong performances.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-constructed one-woman show about an actress's lifelong relationship with the Anne Frank story.

Since its initial publication in 1947, Anne Frank’s childhood diary of her time spent in hiding has been one of the most influential and widely read works relating to the Holocaust. It has been translated into 67 languages, sold over 31 million copies, and been adapted for the stage and film.

Now, over sixty years later, Carol Lempert’s terrific new one-woman work After Anne Frank arrives at the Fringe Festival. Whether it is on stage or film, there have been no shortages of Holocaust related artistic projects (as Lempert says “there’s no business like Shoah business”), but this is not a traditional Holocaust-inspired work.

BOTTOM LINE: Ampersand is poignant and musical modern day Romeo & Juliet with an LGBT twist and cult classic potential.

To say that Ampersand: A Romeo and Juliet Story breathes life into a classic would not be doing this spectacular transformation justice. It substitutes folk music for olde English, trades American political punditry for family feuds, and is sexed-up with feathers and drag queens galore. Best of all, Ampersand steers clear of predictability and cliché, and tells an incredibly endearing and fierce love story. I left the theater incredibly satisfied with this new and improved interpretation of the world’s most famous love story, and rightfully obsessed with Mariah MacCarthy’s work.

Ampersand has all the plot points of the Bard’s R&J, but places the star-crossed lovers in Midwestern, small-town America. Their mothers -- played by men in drag -- are political opponents running for Mayor, and have a heated rivalry reminiscent of today’s political atmosphere. The classic set up is all here: Juliet’s engaged to a man that she’s not really interested in but is going along with it to be obedient to her parents, and Romeo is love sick after Rosalind. But in MacCarthy’s Ampersand, Romeo is a female local rockstar who uses her platform to mock Juliet and the Capulet family, and Juliet has a fiery mouth and a drug habit.

BOTTOM LINE: Big laughs and big heart make Molly Equality Dykeman the most loveable, pill-popping elementary school security guard this side of the five boroughs.

In The F*cking World According to Molly, Andrea Alton brings her outrageous foul-mouthed alter-ego Molly Equality Dykeman to the stage for an hour long rendezvous complete with poetry, dancing, storytelling, and all the sexual references a girl could want. I’ve admittedly seen Alton’s act before, and am always entertained by the butch zaniness that Molly brings. For this production, however, a more particular narrative threads the story, giving less of a stand-up comedy vibe with more emphasis on who Molly Equality Dykeman actually is. And this makes for a wholly satisfying evening.

Molly is a budding poet (put the emphasis on the second syllable of “poet”) and this production is framed around her first semi-professional poetry reading at an East Village bar. A recent break-up has left Molly heartsick and angry, and the event will hopefully also give her access to a new group of ladies. From poems about female sexual organs, to poems about doing things to female sexual organs, to blatant flirting with women in the audience, it’s pretty obvious what’s on Molly’s mind. And she isn’t shy about telling you just how much she loves sex.

BOTTOM LINE: Yeast Nation is a fun, outrageous musical from the creators of Urinetown. It's THE show in this year's Fringe.

With music and lyrics by Mark Hollmann and book, lyrics, and direction by Greg Kotis, the duo who brought us Urinetown are back this year with their new musical Yeast Nation starring Harriett Harris. Where Urinetown showed audiences a glimpse of a not-so-distant future where water is running out, Yeast Nation takes its epic queue in the opposite direction. At the beginning of time, the Yeasts are the first living creatures on Earth, and years of procreation and feasting have led to a food shortage. Throw in the onset of the new emotion “love” and a courtly struggle for power, and you’ve got a musical allegory of primordial proportions.

Being in the audience on opening night, I was reinvigorated for theatre and for the Fringe Festival at large. The house was packed with industry professionals and friends of the production, and the overwhelming energy was enthusiasm for something new, and an outpouring of support for artists taking a risk. It was the old saying, "I'm up here playing for all my friends" come to life. Last night, everyone was a friend of Yeast Nation, and we were all hopeful and energized for what could be.

BOTTOM LINE: A suspenseful play depicting two damaged characters’ attempt at a one night stand.

The New York theatre scene is often deluged with plays intended to shock audiences with their discussions and depictions of sexuality. This quality of sexual shock value is also often visible at FringeNYC, where shows mention sexual acts and/or genitilia in both their title and description, perhaps so they can garner a larger box office pull. Despite having “one night stand" in its summary, Gin and Milk shocks through its emotional suspense rather than its overt sexuality (though it still includes nudity and several blunt discussions of sex.)

While the plot does involve two strangers meeting in a bar, a one night stand is not an outcome the two have agreed upon or are sure will occur. The two were apparently set up by Christine, who hopes that if her friend Kate (Lindsay Luen) meets Robert (Eric Wdowiak), it might help Kate heal the scars from her recent break up. The two awkwardly sit in Kate’s apartment sharing a bottle of wine.

BOTTOM LINE: An incredibly engaging and beautifully constructed look at the life of Sissieretta Jones, an African-American opera singer who rose to fame at the end of the 19th century.

Every year when I am reviewing the Fringe guide to decide what to see, one or two shows that are different from my usual theatre fare jumps out at me. There is usually a show that is a bit off the beaten path, that plays to a half empty house, that no one I know wants to join me for, but that I wind up seeing. And without fail it is this type of show that I attend that blows me off my feet and causes me to spend the rest of the festival urging others to see it. The Unsung Diva is such a show.

Angela Dean-Baham brilliantly and effortlessly brings to live the true story of Sissieretta Jones, an African American opera singer who received international fame towards the end of the 19th century only to die in poverty, a victim of the era’s racial boundaries and the lack of opportunities for black artists of the time.

We join Madam Jones in 1927 as she frantically searches through her belongings for a pair of earrings that she must sell to pay off debt. As she rummages through her things she recalls her career and experiences as "the most notable Negro singer in the world."

BOTTOM LINE: Two full-length plays in one night ofter nearly four hours of highly theatrical fun that's not without its weirdness.

If you’ve got a night and are into unconventional theatre, Hotel/Motel should be at the top of your to-do list. This self-described “intimate experience of epic proportion” is that and more. Presented by The Amoralists, Hotel/Motel contains two full-length plays: Pink Knees on Pale Skin by The Amoralists’s own Derek Ahonen, and Animals and Plants by cult favorite Adam Rapp. The stories are totally different, but both take place in a hotel (or, a motel) -– hence, why they’re presented together.

To make the experience even more engaging, Hotel/Motel is staged at The Gershwin Hotel. Although it doesn’t take place in an actual hotel room, the playing space is set to look like one, and it’s just slightly larger. Each performance offers about 20 seats around the perimeter of the room. So you are close to the action…really, really close to the action. Here’s the good thing: these are not self-aware plays. There’s never an intention to mess with audience members or teeter between fiction and reality, and the first play never even breaks the fourth wall. Even though you’re right there with the characters, there’s really no discomfort or self-consciousness.

The plays are similar in tone: both offer insight into troubled characters coming to terms with their bad behavior. Both are very funny, very quirky, and very disturbing. Both inject a sense of anticipation for trouble to come.

BOTTOM LINE: An innovative and lively work that explores the dynamics of a married couple’s fragile relationship through differing scenarios that are not all linearly connected.

The title to Firework Theater’s new production stems from ancient Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon's writing, also titled Pillow Book, which focuses on examining life through a fluid collection of experiences that illuminate a greater overall idea, rather than one singular linear story. Playwright Anna Moench derived inspiration for her play’s style of disjointed scenes this way, and the fact that the play’s only props consist almost solely of piles of fluffy white pillows is a clever tie-in.

The Pillow Book opens with the characters sitting in a modular white ring lit by white fluorescent lights and lined with piles of white pillows. Above them floats another pillow replete with its own halo of fluorescence. There is a near blinding sea of immaculate whiteness, giving full focus to the colors and textures of the characters’ clothing. The play consists of three characters: Deborah (Vanessa Wasche), Deb (Julie Fitzpatrick), and John (Eric Bryant). Deborah seems to be a less inhibited version of Deb, a younger and more idealistic version of the same woman. Many of the scenes involving Deborah seem to be that of an idealistic young couple, still full of the excitement and freshness of their relationship whereas the scenes with Deb show the couple in more somber, older years when the freshness has worn off and the reality of their lives has begun to set in.

BOTTOM LINE: A slight one act precursor to The Glass Menagerie, well performed and directed, but likely of more interest to Tennessee Williams scholars, rather than to the general theatergoing public.

After more than sixty years, The Pretty Trap, Tennessee Williams’ one act precursor to his much better known autobiographical masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie, is only now having its New York premiere at Theatre Row’s Acorn Theatre. One’s inclination is to say “Well, it’s about time,” but that really would be overstating the case. Not that this very well done production by Cause Celebre isn’t likely to prove of great interest to literary historians in general and Williams scholars in particular; it surely will. But for the typical theatregoer, more interested in being entertained than in learning about a play’s evolutionary development, not so much.

The four characters in The Pretty Trap -- Amanda Wingfield (Katharine Houghton), Laura Wingfield (Nisi Sturgis), Tom Wingfield (Loren Dunn) and the Gentleman Caller (Robert Eli) -- are the same four characters who appear in The Glass Menagerie, but they are not nearly as well fleshed out in this earlier version. To be sure, Amanda, the one-time Southern belle, is just as obsessed with finding a husband for her morbidly introverted daughter Laura in The Pretty Trap as she is in The Glass Menagerie. But the overbearing narcissism and almost delusional bouts of nostalgia Amanda exhibits in The Glass Menagerie, which at times seem to border on outright personality disorder, are much less apparent in The Pretty Trap; here she is considerably more good humored -- indeed one might almost say “normal” (albeit still irritating). Houghton, incidentally, does a wonderful job of bringing this somewhat lower-keyed Amanda to life in The Pretty Trap and one might only speculate on how terrific she might have been had she been given the opportunity to play the even richer role of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie.

BOTTOM LINE: A joyful and endearing production with catchy music and that will transport you back to your high school days.

High school: don’t you remember that period of your life with a mix of both horror and nostalgia? The bustle of emotions and the desire to be cool (or at least to fit in) while prancing around with the latest gadgets in the hope that someone will notice. The discovery of the opposite sex as something truly intriguing; the innocence that led us to more uncomplicated friendships. That sense of not being understood by anyone and the personal rebellion against the seeming absurdities that life presents. So you can imagine my intrigue to find that Little Town Blues, a modern take on Chekhov’s Three Sisters, was set at a prep school somewhere in the middle of Iowa and that I was about to witness the struggle of an eclectic bunch of high school kids trying to figure out their purpose in the world.

Little Town Blues tells the story of three friends, Molly (Rachel Buethe), Olivia (Becca Ballenger) and Christina (Bianca Crudo) and their life experiences. Their daily interactions with their fellow students and friends from the neighbouring military academy is charmingly played out with a hefty dose of music, song and dance. While Molly, Olivia and Christina each have a distinct personality and character, they all share in common a deep sense of friendship, the feeling that any learning is futile if you’re still in Iowa and an intense emotional depth that will lead them to have more-than-your-average-kids-worth of situations to deal with. The play is essentially a tragicomedy, or rather a comitragedy divided in two parts, the first being a light hearted, hilarious introduction into the lives of these kids, while the second submerges them into the grief of a series of tragedies and the inevitable uncertainty that accompanies the end of high school.

BOTTOM LINE: A charming adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, appropriate for the entire family.

When I took my granddaughter Naomi (aged 10 1/2) to see Alice: A New Musical, I felt a bit as if we were about to descend into a rabbit hole ourselves. We were eagerly anticipating what we were about to see, more than willing to suspend our disbelief, and yet fearful that we might be disappointed by a limited off off Broadway interpretation of the book by Lewis Carroll that we both knew and loved so well. In my experience, off off Broadway plays, particularly adaptations of classics, are notoriously uneven: a few are delightfully creative productions but many others turn out to be pale imitations of the original works upon which they are based.

But in this case we really lucked out and emerged from our descent into the rabbit hole with broad smiles on our faces that would have done the Cheshire Cat himself proud. To be sure, Andrew Barbato and Lesley DeSantis (co-writers of the book, music and lyrics), in squeezing Carroll’s opus into a one-hour stage production, omitted many of Carroll’s best scenes. I must admit that if I had my druthers, I’d have preferred to have seen the play expanded to two hours, with even more of Carroll’s original work preserved. But given the time constraint, what remains is relatively true to Carroll’s book. There is Alice (Rocio Del Mar Valles) and her sister (Ashley Dawn Mortensen), the Queen of Hearts (Rachel Bahler) and the White Queen (Lizzie Klemperer), the Mad Hatter (David R. Gordon) and the White Rabbit (Cameron Perry), Tweedle Dum (Joe Chisholm) and Tweedle Dee (Devon Stone), all dutifully appearing on schedule to entertain an entranced audience.

BOTTOM LINE: A moving, realistic ensemble play about the struggles of being gay and on the backside of young in New York.

Set from summer 2008 to spring 2009, The Austerity of Hope follows a predominately gay and entirely disappointed group of friends in Astoria from Obama’s presidential campaign to just after the Oscars. It is a story of broken relationships, tested friendships, life choices, and growing up. And it is the story of a time and a place not too far from the theatre where it plays.

Written by Dan Fingerman, The Austerity of Hope is a clever, unexpected script that takes the audience through the emotional gamut from laughter to melancholy. The people and problems are highly recognizable to the Fresh Fruit audience, and I found the material personally very affecting. I especially appreciated the subtle distinction of the dissatisfaction of the Southern transplant gay played by Jacob Perkins. The catty gossiping and snideness within the group had me wondering if the play should be called, “What do you do when your friends are terrible?” but at the end of the day it is clear that these people care about one another.

BOTTOM LINE: An immensely humorous and inspiring solo show that examines one woman’s adolescence in Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1980s.

A childhood spent in public housing projects alongside crack addicts and criminals, getting robbed at gun point, and living in constant danger, might not seem the likeliest of comedic material, but performer and playwright Elaine Del Valle uses humor as a survival strategy, finding much of it in her far-from-ideal upbringing in Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1980’s.

Del Valle’s one-woman show bears somewhat of a resemblance to fellow Puerto Rican John Leguizamo, who explored his unstable childhood in Queens in both Sexaholix: A Love Story and the recent Ghetto Klown. Del Valle’s tale however, despite dealing with heavy-hitting events, is more glossed over than Leguizamo's work; she avoids topics such as sexuality.

The piece opens with a video projection providing a background on the grim world that is the Langston Hughes Projects in Brownsville. We are shown statistics on the poverty of the area and taken inside the project’s hallway. When the sheets serving a screen come down we see Del Valle cutely sitting on top of a trash can. With her wide smile, swinging Converse hightop clad feet, and high voice she easily evokes a girl on the verge of adolescence. Del Valle follows with a series of vignettes that show her from the onset of puberty through her senior year of high school, offering a girl trying to etch together happiness even in her difficult circumstances.

BOTTOM LINE: Victory is an intelligent, intrepid play with brilliant costumes and an extraordinary ensemble of actors.

PTP/NYC’s 25th season includes the U.S. Premiere of Howard Barker’s Victory: Choices in Reaction, directed by Co-Artistic Director Richard Romagnoli and starring four-time Tony nominee Jan Maxwell, in repertory with the premiere of Steven Dyke’s Territories and a revival of Neal Bell’s Spatter Pattern.

Victory is set in 1660 during the English restoration. Cromwell is dead and King Charles II has been brought back to England and restored to the throne. The widow Bradshaw (Jan Maxwell) discovers that by the King’s order her husband has been exhumed and the body desecrated for his part in the overthrow and execution of King Charles I. Bradshaw must travel to the corners of the Kingdom to collect his body, braving the chaos of the recently redirected peasants and a new influx of aging cavaliers. Meanwhile, at court, King Charles II grapples with the now less powerful status of the English monarchy and the politics of maintaining authority while appeasing the influential men who are responsible for his restoration.

BOTTOM LINE: A realistic view into the way tragedy can affect parenthood and the individual roads to healing -- with a great dose of comedy

Julius by Design is the first production by Fulcrum Theater, a new program which tries to address the low representation of playwrights of color in the New York theatre scene by offering a space in which they can write and produce their own plays. An interesting statistic led to their mission: while approximately 55% of the city’s population is considered of color, in the decade leading to 2009 the percentage of the city’s plays produced by people of color fluctuated only from 6-17% (go to fulcrumtheater.org to learn more). Kara Lee Corthron’s work thus constitutes the first fruits of the program with Julius by Design, a sometimes tragic, sometimes comedic but always engaging production at the Access Theatre.

The play is centered mostly in the living room of Jo and Laurel (played by Suzanne Douglas and Mike Hodge), a married couple facing the tragedy of the murder of their sixteen year old son Julius at the hands of another young man in a foiled burglary attempt. Although seven years have passed since the terrible incident, the couple’s interaction indicates that they are still striving to deal with the tragedy and that the wounds are far from healed. Jo, a former high school English teacher, fills her time writing letters to Pulitzer Prize winners and other literary celebrities who rarely respond. Laurel just sits on the sofa doing crosswords and has a recurring dream where his son Julius keeps arriving home at night to watch TV beside him on the sofa. Their otherwise lonely Thanksgiving is severely disrupted when a letter arrives from jail from their son’s repentant murderer Ethan (Johnny Ramey, who also plays Julius).

BOTTOM LINE: A feast for the eyes; intense, poignant and disturbing.

Chastity, sensuality, God, death, and a striptease of biblical proportions: these are the central players in Black Moon Theatre Company’s staging of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. Erotic, expressionistic and characteristically pushing the envelope on good taste, Wilde explores the story of the princess of Judaea and all of the factors leading to her disgrace and demise, including her lascivious stepfather, domineering but ineffective mother, and her near-inexplicable attraction to the prophet commonly known as John the Baptist.

Salome (Karina Fernicola-Ikezoe) prizes her chastity and, much to the chagrin of her mother, Herodias (Tatyana Kot), scorns all men who would dare defile her, most of all her uncle and stepfather, Herod Antipas (Alessio Bordoni). Her disdain fades when she encounters the prophet Iokanaan (Chris Ryan) who refuses her. Familiar with her budding sensuality and ability to tease to get what she wants, Salome is infuriated by Iokanaan’s derision; the first and only time she decides not to withhold, she is rebuffed. Agreeing to give Herod what he wants if she can have Iokanaan’s head, she dances the Seven Veils for her uncle, herself defiling the chaste beauty she once flaunted so proudly. Salome falls from grace to get what she wants, only to end up facing dire consequences.

BOTTOM LINE: A film-noir mosaic story.

The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP) has returned to New York City this summer for their 25th anniversary season. Three shows are performed in rep: Spatter Patter: or, How I Got Away With It by Neal Bell, Territories by Steven Dykes, and Victory: Choices of Reaction by Howard Barker. This weekend I saw Spatter Pattern at the Atlantic Stage 2. It should be noted that this is not an Atlantic Theatre Company production, but rather a production by an independent theatre company associated with Middlebury College.

Their minimalist approach might make for a simple stage, but that doesn’t mean the quality of detail isn’t there. Spatter Pattern is set on an open black stage with a simple silver block in the center. The cast of four includes two actors (Jeffries Thais and Adam Ludwig) playing individual characters while the other two actors (Lucy Van Atta and Christo Grabowski) play multiple roles. The story is told as a mosaic, and the collection of scenes eventually reveal the larger story about a college professor who allegedly murdered one of his students. The story follows the now former professor, Tate (Ludwig), and a semi-successful writer, Dunn (Thais), as their lives interweave with one another as they find themselves neighbors in a New York apartment building.

BOTTOM LINE: Master Class is a dramatization of one of the workshops Maria Callas hosted late in her career, in which her character is revealed through interaction with the next generation of singers and through flashbacks to high points both professionally and personally.

Currently at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club is producing a revival of Terrence McNally’s Master Class under the direction of Stephen Wadsworth. The original 1995 Broadway production starred Zoe Caldwell as Callas, winning her the Tony for leading actress in a play. Audra McDonald also won the second of her four Tonys for the supporting role Sharon Graham. Following Caldwell, the lead role in Master Class was played by Dixie Carter (Broadway replacement), Patti LuPone (London), and Faye Dunaway (tour). The current production stars Emmy and Tony winner Tyne Daly, Olivier Award nominee Sierra Boggess, Drama Desk Award winner Alexandra Silber, plus Jeremy Cohen, Garrett Sorenson, and Clinton Brandhagen.

Based on a series of master classes Maria Callas held at Lincoln Center at the end of her singing career, Master Class illuminates the life and struggles of the greatest opera singer of her generation, a controversial woman who overcame great adversity, revolutionized opera performance, and experienced a tragic love life of grand proportions.

BOTTOM LINE: A story of love and deception delivered beautifully by a strong cast and crew.

Adelaide, the protagonist of Karoline Leach’s play Tryst, is not exactly a blushing flower. Within the first few minutes of the show, while describing her coworkers at her sewing job at a hat shop, she says, “We’ve all got something wrong with us -- that’s why they’ve got us in the back room.” Tryst, like many stories, is about one of those “back room” people who wishes for a better life -- a husband, a good job, the luxury of traveling to Venice -- but accepts that it’s never going to happen. But one day, as she fatefully draws the hat shop’s window curtain aside during her boss’s lunch break, she encounters a man name George, whose attention forces her to think that her desires may just come true.

A tryst, by definition, is a secret meeting between lovers and in the case of George and Adelaide this comes in the form of a wedding and a trip to the seaside as a honeymoon; Adelaide promises George she will not tell her parents. However, it becomes clear (quickly to the audience, slowly to Adelaide) that George’s intentions may not be so sweet.

BOTTOM LINE: An entertaining and fun look at 400 years of Greenwich Village history in 80 minutes of song, dance, and comedy.

Ever wonder why the cobblestone streets in New York City’s Greenwich Village are so full of twists and turns — and so different from the rest of the island?

The Greenwich Village Follies has the answer, in a song called “Resist the Grid.” The tune is one of 17 high-energy numbers in the 80-minute Follies, and it reminds audiences that fighting City Hall is a time-honored tradition among Village denizens. To wit: the 1811 declaration that the neighborhood would be razed in favor of square blocks running north from Houston Street. Singer/actor Meghann Dreyfuss — whose fantastic voice and captivating stage presence are a boon to the show — belts out the reaction of local residents: “We like our triangles/No squares in the Village/Here is our identity/ Here is our community.“ Spirited protest, we’re told, forced the City to build the grid around the district, “which is why when you walk west of here you get lost,” she quips.

BOTTOM LINE: The Berenstain Bears is an excellent opportunity to introduce little ones to theater in a friendly, familiar manner.

It’s been many years since I’ve taken a visit to Bear Country. The children in my life are either a bit too young, or way too old for the beloved series of children’s book to play into my life, but returning for a visit via the new children’s musical, was an hour of pleasant nostalgia.

For those who aren’t familiar, The Berenstain Bears is a series of hundreds of books for young children that follow the action in Bear Town and the lives of one quaint little bear family in particular. Much like eighties sitcoms, each book always has a moral lesson and a neat little bow to tie up the story by the end. In this particular tale adapted for the stage, Sister learns not to talk to strangers, Brother learns to focus on school and Papa learns too much junk food will make him “fluffy.” There is nothing new or innovative in the plot, as is typical of children’s theater, but it is well produced and nicely put together.

BOTTOM LINE: An entertaining analysis of stereotype and prejudice through a New York city lens with some enthralling acting and a witty script (although it presents a few too many themes and characters).

Individuality and stereotype (this could be the title of a Jane Austen novel) are two conflicting forces which are strongly present in modern society, and which can often lead to inevitable and unpleasant contradictions. In a society that has little patience for nuance, we are all too easily slapped on with a label -- “conservative,” “liberal,” “hipster,” -- which nicely fits us into a homogenous collective. While no one likes being labeled (since it essentially renders our individuality onto a secondary plane) aren’t we all guilty of having done the same to others? It is precisely these and other such themes that are subject to studious and comical analyses in Yes We Can, played against the backdrop of our very own cosmopolitan-metropolis (cosmopolis?), New York.

Yes We Can is the latest creation from Down Payment Productions, written by Daniella Shoshan and directed by Alec Strum. It is set within the context of the 4 days prior to Obama’s 2008 election success, at the height of the ever-increasing expectations tagged onto him and the media’s hyperboles of how this event would likely welcome in a new, post-racial society. The play involves a series of interrelated vignettes which tell the story of a diverse range of characters on the streets of New York: Latino nannies sitting in a park, a Chinese shop owner struggling with his taxes, a rabbi who encounters Jesus (literally), and a foul-mouthed lesbian with some domestic violence issues.

BOTTOM LINE: A play that blends the classic zombie and western genres into an entertaining and clever stage production.

Some people just can’t get enough of zombies. For whatever reason, the idea of bodies rising from the dead with the single intention of hunting down the living has become a cultural obsession that, like the zombies themselves, just doesn’t seem to ever die. If you are among the zombie-fanatics, you shouldn’t hesitate to hop on the L train and see AntiMatter Collective’s production of Death Valley, a “zombie western” that has hit the latest frontier of the New York theater scene, at the Bushwick Starr.

Death Valley, written and directed by Adam Scott Mazer and Dan Rogers respectively, originally appeared as a five-episode series for Bushwick’s Vampire Cowboys’ Saturday Night Saloon and now appears as a play in five (short) acts. True to it’s hybrid-genre, Death Valley draws on the classic zombie themes, while taking place in the dusty expanse of the Old American West.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-acted, moving, new musical about legendary blues singer, Bessie Smith.

Ninety years ago, Blues singer Bessie Smith [1894-1937] had it all. As the most successful African American musician of the 1920’s — she outsold such contemporaries as Louis Armstrong and Alberta Hunter — she had fame, fortune, and notoriety. Dubbed “The Empress of Blues,” she played clubs in big cities and small towns across the country.

Big, brash, and sassy, Smith didn’t suffer fools and she was as quick to criticize the black record labels that rejected her as she was to slam the white racists who saw her as their meal ticket. When bigoted club owners ordered Smith and her band to use the back door, she refused; when the Klan showed up at a North Carolina gig, she stood up and ordered them to leave her the hell alone. Later, after snagging a record deal with Columbia Records, she boasted about selling 780,000 records in 1923, but never stopped looking over her shoulder.

Humble she wasn’t. But she was fascinating, and her life story — rife with alcoholism, devastating losses, and soaring highs — makes The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith a must-see production for anyone interested in U.S. race relations, women’s history, or the waxing and waning of popular culture.

BOTTOM LINE: The Germ Project is an unmissable collection of scenes taken from four full-length commissioned plays “of scope and adventure.”

In an effort to support more “epic” plays in the downtown new works scene, New Georges created The Germ Project to commission four “unproduce-able” plays and then fully produce the most dramatic excerpt from each. These four plays were developed through workshops during the preceding season where big ideas were pushed bigger which all culminates in this presentation of the most theatrically exciting moment from each script: The Germ Project.

Obviously flying in the face of limitation sounds risky, but it pays off in this evening of exciting, dynamic performances. Each play pushes boundaries with its language, content, structure, and storytelling, not to mention the phenomenal use of media throughout. For the first time in a while, I was thrilled by what was happening on stage, and I’m holding my breath that we’ll see more of these plays.

BOTTOM LINE: An enjoyable piece of political commentary with a snarky script and a talented cast.

Comparing the insatiable hunger associated with America’s rampant consumerism with that of a ravenous beast is not a unique view of the present state of affairs, though it’s certainly a message that bears repeating. Jason Grote’s new play, Civilization (All You Can Eat), is a snarky commentary on Americans' overindulgent, over-consuming tendencies. Set in pre-election 2008, Civilization, now playing at HERE Arts Center, cleverly revisits the various issues endemic to the nation just a few years ago and that indeed linger still.

Grote’s play begins and ends with swine: first the barnyard kind and later the corporate varietal. Big Hog (Tony Torn), a giant, all-observing though only obtusely-understanding penned-pig awaiting his time for slaughter, has decided that he’s ready to make his escape, ready to take leave of his prison and see the world outside. His mission and journey underscores the other stories in Grote’s play, the human stories, which all, more or less, boil down the same animalistic necessity: eat or be eaten. African American aspiring director, Zoe (Melle Powers), has taken on directing a demeaning Twix commercial to get her start, despite the nagging need to qualify her decision to direct the piece as a way to get in a foot in the door.

BOTTOM LINE: Smart storytelling to tell a sad story.

When you hear about a natural disaster, you're usually privy to the aftermath. TV cameras show devastated regions, dilapidated houses and residents who have lost everything. And so it was with Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, when those of us who weren't near the Gulf Coast saw footage of soggy wreckage and people on roofs waiting for help to arrive. But what happened when the hurricane hit? What happened to the people who looked death in the eye as they watched the waters rise?

Boo Killebrew's new play The Play About My Dad looks at the terror of Hurricane Katrina as the storm came to shore, through several intertwining vignettes. The stories are the memories of Boo's dad Larry, and both he and Boo are in the play to narrate. Larry (Jay Potter) is an emergency room doctor in Southern Mississippi; he also happens to be estranged from Boo (Anna Greenfield). Post-Katrina, the two reconnect and begin to rebuild their relationship; Larry tells Boo about his experiences during Katrina and together they write a play (this play) to illustrate both the story of the hurricane and also their relationship.

BOTTOM LINE: With a powerhouse performance by Nilaja Sun, No Child is an intense and theatrically satisfying production.

From the minute the lights go down and the school bell rings, Nilaja Sun enthralls her audience. Sun’s flexible face, specificity of voices, and detailed characterizations motor through the quick 60+ minutes that make up No Child. This award-winning solo show is back in New York after a successful 2006 run and a subsequent (inter)national tour. And it’s no wonder the show has been so highly acclaimed: Sun is freaking brilliant.

No Child looks at a rough high school in the Bronx, and the students and faculty who comprise the community. Sun plays nearly a dozen of these characters, including herself; she is at the school as a teaching artist under a grant to facilitate the production of a play with a particularly challenging sophomore class. With all hope and good faith, Sun optimistically embarks on the task, only to learn it won’t be nearly as easy to engage her students as she previously thought.

BOTTOM LINE: A wise, witty and exuberant new play about learning to love.

Oscar Wilde said it best: “To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance.” Long before Oprah, Madonna or Louise Hay, history’s most famous gay man was preaching self-love. It’s ironic and yet oddly appropriate. While gays don’t have a monopoly on suffering, I can personally attest that internalized homophobia continues to take its toll. And as the current Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s 1985 play The Normal Heart reminds us, we mustn’t underestimate the damage done by AIDS to the gay community and consciousness.

But as Bob Stewart’s hilarious and touching new play Fabulous Darshan illustrates, gay men are remarkably resilient. Perhaps because of these individual and collective challenges, we are strong, we are invincible, we are…well…fabulous.

Stewart’s theatre piece à clef centers on Ken Satchel (Tim Cain), a gay man of color, a certain age, and positive HIV status. Ken has carved out a successful career for himself in show business, and is securely ensconced in the longest running show on Broadway. Ken’s main resources are a keen sense of humor and a deeply personal spirituality. Like many exiles from traditional religion, Ken has developed his own rituals and beliefs, which include meditation and lively philosophical discussions with the Hindu god Ganesh (Mike Smith Rivera), a sort of wise and wise-cracking, don’t-worry-be-happy life coach.

BOTTOM LINE: A curvy girl with a legend’s name finds solace and recognition in that star’s story.

Finding Elizabeth Taylor started as a familiar conversation at a dinner party about a pretty girl with a famous name, and evolved into a one woman show. Now in its fourth incarnation, director Morgan Gould brings Elizabeth Claire Taylor’s story to life as part of the Planet Connections Festivity with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Hollaback!, a movement aimed at ending street harrassment.

Obviously Elizabeth Claire Taylor grew up aware of her famous namesake, but after struggling with weight, body image, and romantic issues all her young life, a deeper connection became apparent. In Finding Elizabeth Taylor, we follow Elizabeth Claire Taylor from elementary school to adulthood in her various endeavors to find love, happiness, and a smaller waist. Certain that being thin will bring her boys, acting roles, and contentment, Taylor puts herself through diets, Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, excessive exercising, and even an eating disorder before finding the strength to love herself as she is and to instead take her focus outward. Like an actress of the same name, Taylor becomes more than her looks, developing a social conscience and an activist’s heart.

BOTTOM LINE: A wonderful premise and an energetic bunch of performers: this production has room to grow, but much potential.

According to White House Wives: Operation Lysistrata, former First Lady Laura Bush is quite the feminist! With a big heart and a pacifist sensibility, Laura (Pamela Bierly Jusino) seems to be the antithesis to her husband. It's 2002, just before the US invades Iraq, and Laura takes action against this admittedly unnecessary war: she invites the wives of the Bush administration big-wigs to the Lincoln bedroom, under the guise of a redecorating meeting, to propose a plan to stop the impending war. There, Lynne Cheney (Mary Tierney), Alma Powell (Yvonne Farrow), Joyce Rumsfeld (Leslie Lynn Meeker), Stephanie Tenet (Kate Konigisor), Cherie Blair (Terria Joseph), and Condoleezza Rice's fictional lesbian lover called "Significant Other" (Natasha Yannacañedo), take sides for or against Laura's drastic plan. The proposal: to withhold sex from their husbands until they vote against Operation Iraqi Freedom.

BOTTOM LINE: Four plays with twists centering around sex and relationships.

Theatre for the New City is currently showing four plays by veteran playwright Mario Fratti collectively titled Quartet. Fratti is the author of myriad works, most famously Six Passionate Women which was then adapted to the popular musical Nine. Fratti’s works have been translated into 19 languages and performed all over the world; this is his third collaboration with Theatre for the New City.

Quartet is directed by actor Stephen Morrow, whose work has led to associations with Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller. The four scrips are brought to life by a troupe of indy actors including another charming turn by Jennifer Laine Williams, a hilarious performance by Dennis Wit, and a secondary role made leading by the gusto and good looks of Michael Sirow.

Quartet is billed as “four gay-themed plays,” but as the fourth doesn’t actual have any LGBT characters or issues, I would say the common thread is instead sex. There is also a recurring motif to have a twist/“aha!” moment, which is somewhat neutralized for the later performances if the audience recognizes the pattern.

BOTTOM LINE: A charming, appealing work that is able to convey both lighthearted humor as well as heavy-hitting drama.

Memory is a Culinary Affair's title comes from the main character Blanca’s (Michelle Concha) realization halfway through the play that her memory of any person or place is tied to food. There’s the upscale restaurant where she ordered ravioli and told her boyfriend she was leaving her home country of Argentina for New York City, the green squash she refused to eat when her mother was taken by members of the Argentinean dictatorship and never seen again, and the buttered croissant her father fed her when they fled the country, leaving their mother behind in imprisonment. Although the play is far less food-focused than one might presume (I was expecting something a little more along the lines of Like Water for Chocolate), Blanca uses food and restaurants to recall pivotal moments from her past.

Blanca and her American boyfriend Marc (Ben Bucher) prepare for the arrival of her sister Flor (Ydaiber Orozco) from Argentina. As they wait they complain about the heat, eat spoonfuls of melted dulce de leche ice cream (which Blanca proudly points out originated in her home country), and wonder about the identity of the mystery boyfriend Flor is bringing with her. In the corner of stage sits the ghost of Blanca’s mother Carina (Mariana Parma) who disappeared in Argentina one night and never returned; she watches her daughter and comments on her beauty.

BOTTOM LINE: Despite focusing on dark and dysfunctional family drama, the great cast and production elements make watching this play a highly enjoyable experience.

With summer finally getting in gear and holiday escapes on the books, bathing suits and sunscreen aren’t the only things filling up suitcases. The Atlantic Theater Company’s production of Through a Glass Darkly, now playing at New York Theatre Workshop, firmly points out the innate inability to leave looming problems at home when vacationing.

Bergman’s 1961 screenplay, finely adapted for the stage by Jenny Worton, tells the story of Karin (Carey Mulligan), a young woman teetering on the psychological point of no return while summering at a vacation home with her husband Martin (Jason Butler Harner), brother Max (Ben Rosenfield) and father David (Chris Sarandon). The small family unit oscillates around Karin, each member needing her for their own reasons: her husband, the doctor, to be able to give his undying, unending love and attention to; her brother, to have as an advocate and push to further connect with their father; and her father, as a challenging reminder of his wife, who also suffered from a psychological imbalance. As the summer days and insomniac nights draw on, though, the strain from the dysfunctional family trip takes its toll on Karin, with her psychoses piling up until her manic actions demand professional intervention.

BOTTOM LINE: A not quite outstanding new musical about four late twenty-something New Yorkers struggling with life’s questions, featuring some strong performances.

Next Thing You Know, the new musical having its New York debut at CAP21 this month, is in many ways a story you’ve seen before, whether on stage, on TV or on the big screen. The show is a little RENT and a little Singles, a little The Real World and a good helping of Friends, and there’s definitely a hint of Sex and the City. Now, this combination doesn’t necessarily make for a bad show and Next Thing You Know is actually infused with a good deal of talent. However, in order to enjoy it, you must not expect a story that blows your mind with originality or profound insights into the human experience.

We are introduced to four New Yorkers in their late twenties who all find themselves at the “Sullivan Street Tavern” on a regular basis. The central character is a curly-haired, would-be actress named Waverly (Lauren Molina). Waverly tends bar at the tavern with her best friend Lisa (Lauren Blackman), an ultra-femme lesbian singer/songwriter who is wishing to be swept away to Los Angeles by the woman of her dreams, but is beginning to think she needs to do the sweeping herself. Waverly’s boyfriend Darren (Adam Kantor) is so busy working at an office by day and pursuing his dream of playwriting by night that he isn’t giving her the attention she thinks she deserves. Just to make things appropriately complicated, Darren’s office mate Luke (Heath Calvert), a tall suave lady-killer (who, in modern vernacular, could easily be called a “douchebag”) is making moves on Waverly without realizing he knows the boyfriend she often complains about.

BOTTOM LINE: Hitchcock for the 21st century.

Starry Night Entertainment, in association with New York City’s The Bridge Theater Company, presents the latest from Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn, the duo behind acclaimed Vancouver-based creative team Dualminds. Their show Any Night is a phantasmagoric thriller about old problems unfolding in new ways. Anna (Hahn) is a dancer with a sleepwalking history who moves into a basement apartment beneath Patrick, an oddly charming tech geek (Arnold).

The play that unfolds would be a close-shot, multi-location production were it on film. The stage demands, instead, innovative and ambitious use of theatrical devices to tell the story, and it is these which distinguish the performance from mediocrity. Director Rob Jenkins and his design team (David Fraser on lights, Gord Heal on sound, Peter Pokornky on set and props, Erin Macklem on costumes) accomplish much with little in an economy that is stunning and artful. Transitions in lighting (from trembling disparate blue to stark and narrow white) and punctuations of sound (shattering glass, alarms, sighs) help to guide us through the nonlinear plot and recognize the deviations from objective reality.

BOTTOM LINE: Cute and effervescent. Nothing earth-shattering, just good fun and some laughs.

The show opens with a TV crew preparing the stage for a shoot of some kind. The producers are furious that the talent is stuck in public transit, no one can remember the name of the craft services guy, and Tabby (Dori Legg) sneaks into the studio to pitch her story to the harried and frustrated producers (Karen Stanion and Ryan Reilly). Security can't be found to forcibly remove her, so the producers (in a fit of boredom and frustration, perhaps) allow her to begin her tale, and that's when the real show starts.

Tabby and Lloyd (Ron Bopst) are married. They have an average income, an average house, an average teenage daughter (Kally Duling). They live in an average neighborhood in Average, USA. Everything about their lives is perfectly ordinary, until the day Lloyd comes home and confesses to embezzling from his company, and that his assistant, Lance (Ryan Colwell), has proof of his heinous crimes! Tabby, the brains of the family, orchestrates a meeting at the Red Lobster to persuade Lance to hold off on exposing her husband. After all, why expose someone of no importance? Tabby and Lance, driven by selfishness and greed, concoct a plan to elevate Lloyd (poor Lloyd) to new heights, and then, once Tabby enjoys the good life for a while, Lance will be free to bring him down and take his place. Its the perfect plan, so according to the laws of storytelling, it has to go horribly, awfully awry before the end of the show.

BOTTOM LINE: An entertaining production which can be enjoyed as a Shakespearean tour-de-force, an intellectual exercise, and an existential tragicomedy -– all at the same time.

Tom Stoppard is regarded justifiably as one of the today's greatest living playwrights, and it was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that more or less launched his career in 1966. The play is now being revived by Big Rodent in a very satisfying production at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex. This is an extraordinary work -- a tongue-in-cheek comedy and an existential and absurdist comedy all in one and it owes as much to Samuel Beckett as it does to William Shakespeare. On one level, it is a comedic spin-off from Hamlet, focusing on the misadventures of two minor characters from the Shakespearean play, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guldenstern. Shakespeare’s play begins with Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, returning home from his studies abroad, only to discover his father dead and his mother, Gertrude, married to his father’s brother, Claudius (who has assumed the throne). Hamlet is plunged into melancholy, which surprises Claudius and Gertrude (apparently none too bright, those two!), prompting them to send for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's college friends -- initially in the hopes that the courtiers might find out what ails him but, ultimately, to accompany him to England so that they might rid themselves of him entirely.

BOTTOM LINE: A fully realized new musical, as sweet as it is cheesy, that needs more than a low-budget festival atmosphere to really explore its potential.

You gotta love a new musical that affixes itself to a historical gem while still trying to construct a unique experience. The creators behind He’s Not Himself have undertaken a massive project, a two-act book musical that is as much a farce as it is a fully developed nod to traditional musical theatre. With a cast of five, an orchestra of three, and a run crew of several, it’s an awfully large endeavor for a summer theatre festival scenario. But the folks at He’s Not Himself are armed and ready, producing what amounts to an entertaining show, impressively polished given its production limitations.

He’s Not Himself is based largely on the little-known George Gershwin musical, Pardon My English, from 1933. In it, Gene (Jimmy Traum), a parking cop, unknowingly gets mixed up in some illegal gangster business when he hits his head and assumes a new identity, as the villainous Teddy the Bear. Gene tries to grapple with his split personality while in cahoots with bad guys Bonnie (Carly Voigt) and Benny (Marc Silverberg, also the playwright), who are out to rob the museum where Gene’s girlfriend Kay (Taylor Sorice) works as a security guard. Hot on their trail is malapropic detective Tom (Dexter Thomas-Payne). Obvious antics ensue.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent and long overdue revival of a nearly century old theatrical gem.

Rachel Crothers was one of the most successful American playwrights of the early 20th century; nearly 30 of her plays were produced on Broadway between 1906 and 1937. In 1921, she provided Katherine Cornell and Tallulah Bankhead with their first important roles in her play Nice People. In 1930, she was cited by Ira M. Tarbell as one of the “50 Foremost Women of the United States.” In 1939, she was awarded the Chi Omega national achievement gold medal by Eleanor Roosevelt. And in 1918, another of her plays, A Little Journey, opened on Broadway, ran for 252 performances, went on to tour the country, and was nominated to receive the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Yet today, A Little Journey and indeed Crothers herself might be all but forgotten were it not for the efforts of the Mint Theater Company. The Mint revived another of her plays, Susan and God, to considerable acclaim in 2006, and now appears to be on the verge of achieving a similar success with its current revival of A Little Journey. And for this, we owe the Mint Theatre Company, whose mission is to produce “worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten,” an enormous debt of gratitude!

A Little Journey is a wonderful play which should have been revived long before this. And the Mint Theater has done a truly first-rate job with this revival – in casting, set design, direction, costuming, and performances. This is one terrific production which can be enjoyed by anyone with an appreciation of theatre (but most especially by those whose tastes run more to the traditional than to the avant garde).

BOTTOM LINE: A lively, delectably decorated romp of a production with more amusing moments than stale ones.

Being lauded as Tony Kushner’s "most theatrical play," The Illusion has plenty to live up to, especially considering Kushner has made a name for himself by imbuing his boisterously theatrical pieces with ample bite and resonance. This free adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s poke at Neoclassicism is indeed highly theatrical, though cannot and should not be categorized with Kushner’s other work. Now playing at Signature Theatre’s Peter Norton Space, The Illusion offers more gum than teeth, though does so pleasantly enough.

One clammy French evening finds a remorseful, aging lawyer in a sorceress’s cave, hoping to discover what’s become of the son he banished many years prior. Though the man is unable to offer much of a satisfactory answer regarding his reason for forcing his son away, the sorceress agrees to conjure up images of the boy’s life for the old man to view, and the two clear the stage for these memories to unfold before them on the ornate cave’s walls. The handsome and wily man’s son is shown to have quickly found new interests post-banishment - particularly in the form of a rich maiden and her lady servant. Wooing and winning them both (unbeknownst to the maiden, of course) this same scenario plays out in two different settings, with the boy and his two ladies changing name, attire and location, though not plot line. Though the old man takes offense at this inaccuracy of the sorceress’s conjuring, he quickly resumes watching as the scene unfolds. The fraught love story ends badly for all involved, leaving the old man more sorry than when he arrived. All is not lost, however, and the sorceress reveals a slight loophole in the dismal outcome of the visions, as well as her hefty price-tag for the effort, before sending the old man on his way with pockets and spirits commensurately lightened.

BOTTOM LINE: A theatre/film mash-up that shines a light on our entertainment industry compatriots on the West coast.

Duncan Pflaster’s new play, Sweeter Dreams, exposes Hollywood for its egregious commercial intentions. Incorporating multimedia projected on a big screen up stage, Sweeter Dreams offers nearly equal parts live action and filmed components. The projected videos include movie trailers associated with the characters, and also the background for a popular movie review TV show starring Roberta leFay (a Roger Ebert type -- if Ebert were a catty starfucker). The screen also shows images that pertain to dream recollection when a character digs in her memory to recall a kooky dream.

Sweeter Dreams follows a screenwriter and director named Luisa, a.k.a. “The Female Fellini” (Heather Lee Rogers), and her young stud “discovery” Brad (Scott Freeman). Roberta (Clara Barton Green) is not a fan of Luisa’s although she is quite fond of Brad. The rise and fall of the characters and their intimate relationships are the focal points of the action, although all are professionally successful in their own right, and marital discretions are basically overlooked. Luisa’s husband Thomas (Douglas Rossi) is the counterpoint to the Hollywood narcissism, as he has a normal job and doesn’t subscribe to the limelight indulgence.

BOTTOM LINE: A broad, thought-provoking and enjoyable look at the effect of pornography on our lives and relationships.

These days, anyone who claims they have never seen internet porn is probably lying. Blue Coyote’s Standards of Decency 3: 300 Vaginas Before Breakfast attempts to explore what such ubiquitous sexual exposure does to our relationships with sex, with media, and with each other. Borrowing and slightly modifying a John Mayer quote for its title, these nine short plays explore our connection to being touched, voyeurism, loss of innocence, and knowing too much about your partner’s habits and history. Though a little compact and frequently exaggerated to great effect, these are all things that we’ve experienced in one form or another. For a show with a pretty big “number,” it’s relatable.

Far from a scathing denouncement of porn or its viewers, the plays are largely warm-hearted and lovingly poke fun at our habit of looking at naked people doing stuff. Some of my favorites included Bits by Bruce Goldstone, where a cluster of bits — as in a computer’s processor — are so bowled over by their owner’s viewing habits that they are bored stiff of showing him stiffies, and The Metaphor by Matthew Freeman, in which a female priest gleefully suggests we think of porn as an enhancement to our real-life sex lives rather than a replacement for it. The nerds in the audience (myself wholly included) will enjoy the highbrow/lowbrow Plato’s Retreat by David Foley, based on the allegory of the cave — no, it’s not nearly as vaginal as you might suppose — where pornographic shadows on the wall are easier to take pleasure in than the blinding glare of a pair of real breasts.

BOTTOM LINE: Despite an uneven tone, Just Cause offers a comedic look at directionless youth today who are willing to explore terrorism just to find a purpose.

The title to Zack Russell’s play Just Cause might serve as the response the young terrorists at the center of the story would use to explain their actions -- including kidnapping and an attempt to blow up the Empire State Building -- which seem to serve no underlying political ideology, instead just giving listless youth something to do.

Russell considers this work to be a response to the 1979 film The Third Generation, which explored the political climate in Germany during the 1970’s in which political activists and terrorists took action without clear cause or forethought. Russell applies this idea of thoughtless action to modern day Brooklyn, focusing on six twenty-somethings supported by their upper-middle class parents, who, in lieu of employment, become laughable revolutionaries, recruited and controlled by a man known as August (Greg Engbrecht).

BOTTOM LINE: Solid Broadway fare; never surprising or challenging, but moderately enjoyable nonetheless.

It always surprises me how much people LOVE themselves some singin’ nuns. When I saw Sister Act, the people sitting behind me in the theatre RAVED. From what I could overhear, they saw a few Broadway shows a year, and this was one of their recent faves. From the overall audience response, it seemed many in the theatre agreed. So while I can’t count myself as the biggest Sister Act fan, I have to admit that it is a big brassy musical that will appeal to many who come to New York looking for a fun Broadway show.

So why my lack of enthusiasm? For the most part, there is nothing wrong with the show (well, almost nothing). It just isn’t all that special or memorable. The book, telling a story familiar to those who have seen the 1992 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg (a producer of this musical), is serviceable. The story, although relocated from San Francisco to 1970s Philadelphia, is pretty much the same as what I remember from the movie. Deloris Van Cartier, a gangster’s struggling singer-girlfriend, witnesses a murder and goes on the run – to a convent. Initially reluctant, she brings new life to the horribly comatose church choir, and soon the group is spreading their soulful love all over town. Douglas Carter Beane has added some new material to the London production, including a lot of typical jokes, like those about gay men ("two bachelors who deal in antiques") that are generally only funny to those who have never met one.

BOTTOM LINE: The immense amount of talent in this show fortunately eclipses the somewhat underdeveloped material.

I Married Wyatt Earp attempts to give the women of the Old West a few hours in the spotlight by following the story of Josie Marcus (Mishaela Faucher), a young woman who left home against her mother’s wishes to follow her love, Wyatt Earp, out west, by way of performing in one sketchy theater after another. Structurally, I Married Wyatt Earp feels like two separate productions. There is a story about the strong women of the Old West which is spirited and occasionally engaging, and a latter day catch up with two of the women, which is far less charming.

Josie’s story as a young woman is told through a series of flashbacks while her older self (Carolyn Mignini), along with the older Allie Earp (Heather MacRae), get together for an evening of reminiscing and rehashing as they debate how their story should be used in a movie. The present day scenes are largely irrelevant. They serve as a narrative for the more involved flashback scenes, but the adage “show don’t tell” came to mind every time they'd begin to narrate. The switch back and forth between the present and the past felt clunky to me: the music, pace and style of the two worlds are subtly different but don’t mesh together well. Somewhat ironically, these present scenes felt the most stale and dated. The flashbacks are much fresher and more exciting to watch.

BOTTOM LINE: A witty yet impactful look at two New York couples and the difference a baby can make.

Babies: they’re little, they’re cute, and they compromise otherwise healthy adult relationships. They also can define a family. In Daniel Goldfarb’s polished dramedy Cradle and All, one little screaming bundle represents the conflict at hand for two Brooklyn couples.

Claire and Luke seemingly have it all in their schmancy Brooklyn Heights digs. They are good looking, well dressed, and professionally successful (more or less). In their mid to late 30s and together five years, they are unmarried and don't appear to have plans of settling down into a traditional domestic situation. This would be fine, except that Claire desperately wants a baby. Across the hall, Annie and Nate negotiate parenthood, as the proud and burned out parents of an 11-month old. Their life has taken a drastic turn to poopy diapers and plastic teething toys, although music posters on the walls echo of their past, hipper life. Annie and Nate's disheveled existence is the antithesis to Claire and Luke. The couples are well acquainted with each other, and throughout Cradle and All, grass-is-always-greener references are made to a very different lifestyle.

BOTTOM LINE: A poetic 20th century comedy in the tradition of Shakespeare brought back to life in this off off Broadway revival.

If you like Shakespeare, but have seen more productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream than you care to remember, you may want to head downtown to Walkerspace and check out Parenthesis Theater’s revival of The Lady’s Not for Burning. Christopher Fry, the writer who hit it big with this show in both London and New York in the late 1940s, didn’t exactly strive to recreate Shakespeare’s writing. Why would he? He’d be as likely to succeed at painting his own version of the Mona Lisa. Instead, he smartly wrote his own fresh story that doesn’t hide his admiration for the old Bard.

The Lady’s Not for Burning is set in the middle ages (the program claims “1400, more or less exactly”) and the action is set into motion by three main plots: Nicholas Devize (Jared Thompson) is trying to steal his brother Humphrey’s (Matthew Baldiga) fiance, Alizon (Gwen Ellis); Richard (Isaac Woofter) shows up at the house of Mayor Hebble Tyson (Danny Makali’i Mittermeyer), claims to be the devil and demands to be hanged; and Jennet Jourdemayne (Anna Olivia Moore) also arrives at the mayor’s house, fleeing a mob that is accusing her of witchcraft. The plot is really a web of subplots that work their way through several misunderstandings and changes of heart toward a conclusion that is logical but not predictable.

BOTTOM LINE: A charming, delightful and first-rate revival of Shaw's seaside comedy, appropriate for the entire family.

You Never Can Tell is one of George Bernard Shaw’s lesser known works, relatively infrequently performed in the United States, which is why we owe a special debt of thanks to the exceptionally talented cast now bringing it to life at the Gloria Maddox Theatre at T. Schreiber Studio and Theatre. Originally born out of a bet in 1897 that Shaw could not write a seaside comedy (a popular theatrical genre in England at that time), the play succeeds in offering both a comedic and insightful look at the institutions of marriage and the family, the “war between the sexes,” the “modern woman” of that time, class stratification -– indeed, all of the issues that Shaw focused so much of his attention on throughout his extraordinary literary career.

BOTTOM LINE: The good by far outweighs the bad in this solo show, which is both immensely humorous and heartbreaking.

Peggy Guggenheim (Judy Rosenblatt) lived under the public eye as heiress to the Guggenheim family fortune. Although she inherited millions, rather than billions (due to her father leaving the family business), Guggenheim spent her life devoted to fostering artists and the arts. She nurtured great artists by sending them stipends, helping to keep starving artists like Kadinsky from starving. And she opened up her bed to some of the great artistic minds of the twentieth century, claiming to have had affairs with numerous famous men including Samuel Beckett and Yves Tanguy.

Woman Before A Glass covers a five year span of Guggenheim's life, ranging from 1963-1968. Divided up into four segments, the play explores different times in her life from various locations within and just outside her Venetian home. While often humorous and wry, the story also tackles the darker aspects of Guggenheim's life.

BOTTOM LINE: An intense, compelling, and occasionally funny adult drama about the amorous foibles of six characters.

David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky — winner of the 2001 Time Out Live Award for Best New Play in London’s West End, among other honors — looks at the ways love hurts and heals. Set in England, the action of this taut and well-acted three-act takes place between 1996 and 1998.

Scene One opens in Nicholas’ slightly messy kitchen. As the lights come up he is slicing and dicing. Helen, his guest, has just arrived. Well-dressed and affable, the thirty-something woman seems nervous and it is unclear if this is a first date or if something else is going on. As the pair begins to talk, Nicholas [played by Stuart Williams with the perfect blend of charm and cruelty] tells Helen [a fragile, insecure Sarah Manton] that he invited her over because he has something important to say. He then makes what turns out to be a hurtful admission: He has applied for a new job and plans to leave the rough-and-tumble public school where he and Helen teach for the imagined splendor of a private academy. Helen is aghast, not only because of the political ramifications of Nicholas’ intended move, but because the shift shatters her dream of a romantic liaison with this charismatic chum. Denial meets miscommunication in this heartbreaking encounter.

BOTTOM LINE: A thrilling yet sentimental play that is worth a look in and of itself, but mostly because it's a significant showcase for some remarkable performances.

It’s incredible how much whimsy, energy and optimism are evoked in Jerusalem, fitting merely into the ramshackle front yard of a trailer home. The trailer belongs to Rooster, played by the phenomenal Mark Rylance. Jerusalem tells the story of this aged local legend and the ragtag bunch of youth that both idolize him and mock him.

Jerusalem isn’t the type of theater that is easily consumed and then neatly placed onto a shelf, fully digested and understood. It’s three acts, sometimes slow, sometimes riveting, and takes time to sink in and fully germinate. Heavily influenced by English myth and folklore, Rooster’s character is a modern day Puck, a pied-piper of wayward adolescents and a drunken, charismatic, charming degenerate. The story doesn’t so much drive forward as it meanders. The main plot follows Rooster as he interacts with the community's teenagers. He is part father figure, part friend, part drug dealer and part magician to the wayward youth of the town. On the surface he is a drunk has-been, but in reality his character is not quite what it seems. There are several subplots, but Jerusalem isn’t much about action and the subplots seem irrelevant at times.

BOTTOM LINE: Narrator 1 offers a clever twist on the narrative device, creating an original, immensely humorous comedy.

Character development is often easier in the realm of literature than it is on stage or screen, where we are not privy to inner thoughts. Dialogue as the sole relay of language can becomes problematic when books are adapted into other forms -- the language can get lost in the art. Narrators, who can share with us the unseen back stories and inner motivations of characters, sometimes alleviate this problem. In Iron Jaw Company’s Narrator 1, playwright Erin Browne takes on the narrative device, intentionally overusing it to comedic effects. In telling the story of would-be lovers who never quite seem to connect, Browne utilizes two narrators to reveal the thoughts and emotions the duo cannot find the words to express to one another.

The narrative pair, known simply as Narrator 1 (Jennifer Harder) and Narrator 2 (Aiden O’ Shea) serve to illuminate the confusing relationship between Zara (Cotton Wright) and Dan (Marco Formosa), two college friends now in their early thirties, whose friendship seems strained by an unarticulated sexual spark the two seem far too socially maladroit to fully communicate. As both are writers, they tend to over think and over analyze every situation; as a result, they often say the wrong thing at the wrong time or become paralyzed with anxiety. Narrators 1 and 2 give us a glimpse into the overly sensitive stream of concerns darting beneath their deceitfully calm or sometimes defensive exteriors.

BOTTOM LINE: An energetic, screwball parody that makes for an evening of pure joy and refreshing entertainment.

In order to fully enjoy the delightful new musical The Sphinx Winx, you only need to know the roughest outline of history. During the time of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra VII was once a vain queen of Egypt who was in love with Marc Antony. Political intrigue occurs and tragedy follows as both commit suicide, Cleopatra by an asp. The Sphinx Winx takes a sharp left turn from its source material here and never looks back, getting a lot of mileage out of playing against these audience expectations.

Cleopatra, played elegantly, if not histrionically, by Erika Amato is a slightly-past-her-prime queen, bored with her doting and lecherous husband Julius Caesar, the Roman governor of Egypt. It seems the coffers are running low as the Soothsayer, played with comic talent by the rubber-faced Ryan Williams, kicks off the high-jinx by reporting that a man will be arriving soon, one whom Cleopatra assumes will be her new plaything. It turns out that a barge is arriving that very day carrying Antony. He has arrived to investigate why Egypt has not been paying its monthly taxes to Rome. Upon laying eyes on Cleopatra’s stunning handmaiden, Crecia, he promptly falls in love with her. What ensues is a screwball comedy of Cleopatra pursuing Antony, Antony pursuing Crecia, and Caesar dodging the investigation (clearly he’s been up to something). Complicating matters is Lunia, Caesar’s daughter cursed with a tin ear and, much to everyone’s dismay, a penchant for singing or rather screeching . . . loudly. She will do anything for attention including sabotaging Antony and Crecia’s love.

BOTTOM LINE: This experimental work is a collection of vignettes featuring music, movement, dialogue and other creative techniques.

A simple, well-designed set -- featuring a giant quilt, old-fashioned shelves and a hanging mandolin framing an otherwise empty stage -- greets the audience as they enter the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre. It immediately evokes the old Midwest and conveys a certain mysterious drama to come. As What Happened in Ohio begins, music is heard from the back of the house and the four actors, Priscilla Holbrook, Ashley Nease, Stephanie Viola and Nathan Richard Wagner, enter singing and playing acoustic guitars. This homey, all-American folk-inspired song is rousing and a lovely introduction to The Roadster's first production.

When the song concludes, however, the tone takes a turn with one character's violent outburst. This begins -- and conveys -- the experimental quality that the production will take on. The Roadsters use short bursts of dialogue, choreographed movement, singing and other theatrical techniques to present this tale.

BOTTOM LINE: A complex confessional-format story told by four well-developed characters.

Navy Pier is the type of show that could strike panic in the audience before it even starts. Coming into the 50-seat Studio Theatre, you are greeted by the music of Sigur Rós--atmospheric, yes, but so abstract that the lyrics are sung in an invented language (“Hopelandic” is what the band from Iceland calls it). Even more indicative of a potentially overly-intellectual theatre experience is what is on stage: four chairs and nothing else. All signs are in place for a 90-minute show that consists of nothing but talking. And indeed, this is precisely what Navy Pier is.

By sacrificing many of the elements that people seek out in theatre (props, scene changes, actors actually moving around on stage) in favor of a format that looks more like a community board meeting, a show like this risks being boring or tedious. However, InProximity’s current production of Navy Pier sparks with more than enough energy to keep the audience listening to every line.

BOTTOM LINE: The “50th anniversary” revival of How To Succeed is super fun, and Daniel Radcliffe is super charming. Even those who aren’t fans of Harry Potter will likely walk out grinning from ear to ear.

If you haven’t heard, Daniel Radcliffe is on Broadway again, and this time he isn’t stripping naked and getting all erotic with equines (meaning – you can take the kids). He’s starring in a new revival of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, last seen on Broadway in 1995 with Matthew Broderick and Megan Mullally. This fast-paced production is one of only two musical revivals on Broadway this season (along with Anything Goes). And in my opinion, it is one of the season’s few must-see musicals, especially if you’ve never seen a production before.

How To Succeed… is a somewhat satirical look at mid-century “good ol boy” corporate culture; the show is one of only eight musicals to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Radcliffe plays J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who, with the help of a little book (the title of which gives the musical its name), attempts to climb the corporate ladder in record time. As he makes friends and influences people, Finch draws the attention of everyone at the firm of World Wide Wickets, including his arch-rival Bud Frump (the boss’s nephew) and sweet-as-pie Rosemary Pilkington, his eventual love interest. With the help of a fantastic script (including voice-over narration by Anderson Cooper), a terrific score by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls), and Rob Ashford’s snappy direction and athletic choreography (just wait till you see the dance in the mailroom!), this big, bold, and brassy production speeds you along to the deliciously inevitable conclusion.

BOTTOM LINE: A fascinating yet heart-wrenching story that will move you from laughter to sadness in an intense emotional rollercoaster, one you will still be pondering several days later.

Picture yourself dead for a minute. A sudden death. A death which did not give you time to put your affairs in order, to tidy your room or to sort your papers for the year’s tax return. You’ve left behind a heap of possessions, some as meaningless as a grocery receipt from your local supermarket, or a rosé bottle of wine you’d been saving for the spring. Others as prized as your old family photo album and your daily journal where you’ve secretly poured out your thoughts. Now picture them being heaped into a large locker, in no apparent order, and put under lock and key. What story would these items, your items, tell to someone who opened that locker? What would they think of you?

Christopher Borg and Joey Rizzolo, the show’s writers and main actors, precisely embarked on such a journey to explore the lives of two unknown families through their apparently forgotten possessions. In order to write the play they went to a default locker auction at a storage location in the Bronx and bid on the contents of two lockers. With almost archeological zeal they meticulously catalogued each of the more than 1500 items, no matter how seemingly worthless, and set on the mission of piecing together the lives of the proprietors of these possessions. The result of this investigation is the New York Neo-Futurists' production of Locker 4173b. Rizzolo and Borg play "Joey" and "Borg" (essentially, themselves) as a couple of cultured, curious and creative urbanites with a little too much time on their hands. Clad in some ridiculous explorer uniforms, they present the items to us in the form of a museum exhibit, delivering their explanations with the extravagance and passion of real explorers embarking on a journey of discovery.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-written, emotionally evocative story examining the divergent generational modes of addressing marriage, grief and mourning.

The generation into which we’re born dictates much of the way we perceive and react to situations. With the enormous impact of technology on everyday life, too, reactions are often filtered through our devices, further distancing how recent generations perceive things, versus their predecessors. Bekah Brunstetter explores this divide through the lens of grief, mourning and widowry in her new play, Be a Good Little Widow, now playing at Ars Nova.

Tucked away in a fresh and cozy domestic residence, child-like bride, Melody (Wrenn Schmidt), spends much of her life in an eager state of waiting for the return of her oft-travelling husband, Craig (Chad Hoeppner). Still learning much about herself and her own ambition, having graduated college only a few years earlier, Melody patiently passes hours consuming reality television. A tragic trip, however, leaves Melody alone and violently thrust from wife to widow. Craig‘s coldly stoic mother, Hope (Jill Eikenberry), member of the Widow’s League, swans in with pointers and guidance, though eventually the small cracks in her sturdy façade begin to buckle. With no normalcy to return to, both women eventually find, through shared solace, new senses of themselves.

BOTTOM LINE: A satire set in the not-too-distant future, Future Anxiety presents a world devastated by pollution and misuse where hysteria and hilarity meet.

The Flea theatre’s current offering Future Anxiety is set, well, in the future, when the environmentally unsound practices of our times have resulted in a hot, acidic, hostile planet at the end of its time. Written by Laurel Haines and directed by Jim Simpson, Future Anxiety is both a cautionary tale and a satire, using a spoonful of hyperbole to help our modern fears go down. For instance, the script contrasts the disturbing idea that strawberries are extinct with, in the same sentence, the absurd concept of a new, hyper weather disaster: tornadocaines!

In Haines’s perceived future, not only are most of the things we love no longer surviving, but debtors are sold into slavery, usually to China (China now being the dominant country on the globe). The audience is led through this time and place by five concurrent stories: the mad genius who wants to build a spaceship to flee Earth, a businessman of few scruples searching the globe to exploit the last remnant of the cocoa plant, a struggling young woman who has been forced to take a job in collections, a group of reanimated people who had been frozen in our time and have woken up to new bodies and a shocking Earth, and a Chinese soldier who takes an interest in the debtor poet slave whom she oversees. Between these ongoing stories are smatterings of delightful episodes and monologues of reaction to and commentary on this apocalyptic world.

BOTTOM LINE: One of Dion Boucicault’s “three Irish plays,” The Shaughraun is a melodramatic family-friendly romantic comedy set in the time of the Fenian Uprising in Ireland in 1866.

The Shaughraun, one of more than 150 plays written by Dion Boucicault over a century ago, is now being revived in a cheerful production at The Irish Repertory Theatre. Boucicault was a master of melodrama and The Shaughraun, like many of his other works, is a swashbuckling romantic tale of honor, bravery, love and betrayal. To be sure, the plot is formulaic and the characters are stereotypical. But the play still provides an afternoon or evening’s entertainment for the entire family, both because of the exceptional talents of the cast, and because swashbuckling, romantic comedy-dramas of this sort are just plain fun.

Here’s the recipe for the play. First, take three lovely Irish colleens, each enamoured of a different man. Arte O’Neal is in love with Irish patriot Robert Ffolliott, newly escaped from an Australian penal colony. Then there is Moya Dolan, in love with Conn, The Shaughraun, a fiddlin’, poaching vagabond and loyal friend to Robert. Finally, there is Robert's sister Claire, who is in love with Captain Harry Molineux, the British officer in charge of the unit sent to recapture Robert.

BOTTOM LINE: 30 bucks for an outstanding play in the West Village? Yes please. (Hurry...it closes May 14th.)

This is the kind of theater that I love and desperately search for -- a show in an intimate space with quality acting and an engaging story. The fact that the ticket is actually affordable makes Teeth of the Sons a rare gem. From the beautiful Cherry Lane Theatre, tucked in the West Village, to the detailed set, everything about this tight show was a joy. This is the kind of uniquely New York outing that I’d gladly bring my friends to.

Teeth of the Sons is about human emotion and religion. It isn’t a preachy play in any way and is actually very modern, dealing with contemporary life. The story centers around Jacob (Joseph Sousa, also the playwright) and his brother Sam (Will Allen). Jacob lives in modern day Brooklyn and has become an Orthodox Jew, taking on all of the practices that come with it, including dietary restrictions, observing the Sabbath, going to Temple regularly, and studying the Torah.

BOTTOM LINE: A Broadway show that would have limited appeal if it weren’t for Nina Arianda’s astonishingly alluring performance.

At the risk of sounding irritatingly cliché, I’d like to say “there’s a bright new star shining on Broadway.” To fully understand what I mean, you’ll have to attend a performance of Born Yesterday, the revival of Garson Kanin’s comedy that first showed at the Lyceum Theatre in 1946.

Kanin’s play itself is liable to be hit-or-miss, mostly because audience members these days are all too familiar with this kind of story: New York Tycoon travels to Washington to strike a shady deal involving politicians and corporate mergers. Tycoon stays in a ridiculously lavish hotel with his blonde girlfriend, who is dumb and cute and not properly mannered. Audience sympathizes with girlfriend. Girlfriend gets smart. This is a revival of a show that fit comfortably into a cultural trend in its time and, though it may be entertaining, Born Yesterday is far from fresh. Without some true Broadway vibrancy, this could be the show that makes you wish you saved your money and stayed home, reading Raymond Chandler or watching old Film Noir. But it isn’t.

BOTTOM LINE: The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret explores the archetypes and challenges of gender in this country through vignettes of the trials and triumphs of nine various characters along the feminine/masculine spectrum.

Originally produced a year ago, Mariah McCarthy’s The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret is being revived by the new GLBT playwright-driven theatre company Purple Rep. It runs in conjunction with the premier of Larry Kunofsky’s The Un-Marrying Project for the company’s Gay Plays for Straight People (and also gay people). These two playwrights are also the founders of Purple Rep.

Genderf*ck Cabaret explores nine characters: four male, four female, and one androgynous, all of whom comprise a complete representation of the gender spectrum. These nine characters, who are all loosely related and sometimes dating, interact with one another and with their own gender-based foibles in a series of exhibit-style episodes. The audience is guided through this investigation by the “androgynous, omnipotent M.C.”

BOTTOM LINE: This highly engaging drama offers interweaving storylines that explore the struggles five characters face in coping with the past, and finding meaningful connections and sexual fulfillment. A compelling production that never has a dull moment.

Sometime in fifth grade my class embarked upon reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a Japanese girl who develops cancer due to radiation exposure from the US bombing of Hiroshima. She makes a thousand paper cranes in the hopes of fulfilling her wish to live. Gifted playwright Kari Bentley Quinn used this story as inspiration for her new work Paper Cranes. Much like the primary school story, it merges drama and sentimentalism with enough grit to make it feel like a reflection of real life rather than over the top melodrama.

Paper Cranes centers around five lost individuals trying to find love, closure, and sexual fulfillment even with their baggage and less than perfect circumstances. Amy (Susan Louise O'Connor) sets her sights on engaging in anonymous sadomasochistic sexual encounters with men she meets online, hoping for a brief moment to transcend the pain and confusion of her existence. She eventually meets David (Eric T. Miller), who is hoping to find solace from the pain of recently losing his girlfriend in a brutal murder.

BOTTOM LINE: Likable characters, a gifted cast and an intricate set partly make up for a story that never feels fully resolved or fleshed out.

There are mistakes we make in life that haunt us; situations we relive again and again as we imagine what we would have done differently. If we can't find a way to correct our errors we are stuck living with the damage done. This is the case for Lou Perino (Richard Fancy) in Pacific Resident Theatre's production of Julia. Lou is a man who has spent fifty years haunted by one terrible night at the tender age of 18, in which a fit of anger and frustration led him to mistreat his best friend Julia (Marley McClean), with whom he was secretly in love. When young Lou (Justin Preston) tells Julia he is being deployed to Korea the next day, all of his long hidden emotions come slipping out, but instead of a heartfelt confession they wind up manifesting in anger and jealousy. After the war, Lou leaves town, without returning to make reparations with Julia.

Fifty years later, Lou hears that the department store where the two worked is being demolished, and returns to their hometown to track down his long lost love and make amends for his behavior. Lou chances upon Julia's troubled son Steve, who runs an illegal gambling business from his coffee shop, spending his days chewing tobacco and fielding bets. Lou also crosses paths with wisecracking Frank, a former coworker from the department store, who sympathizes with Lou despite knowing how upset he made Julia.

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BOTTOM LINE: The Family Shakespeare raises key questions around the timely issue of censorship. These larger questions, along with a gifted cast, make for a compelling production.

In the 18th century, the original works of Shakespeare were rewritten for the stage, spawning multiple new versions of the Bard's classics. Many of these were revised to censor scenes and plot elements that were deemed too shocking for audiences during this time. (Hamlet's Ophelia, for example, dies from tripping and taking a nasty fall, rather than from drowning herself.)

Among the well known revisionists was the Bowdler family. MTWorks' new production, The Family Shakespeare, focuses on the Bowdler family, exploring the changes they go through after their father's death. Despite being based around true events and real historical figures, playwright David Stallings takes liberties in his script, adding conflicts that may not be factually accurate in order to make a larger statement about censorship's inherent problems. At the center of the story is Henrietta Bowdler (Cotton Wright), who is lost without the guidance of her father, still clinging to the world of make believe he bequeathed to her through his love for the worlds within Shakespeare's plays.

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BOTTOM LINE: A modern adaptation of a classic that might just as well have been left unchanged, though it offers some enjoyable spectacle along the way.

There are certain stories that will always be timeless. Among this privileged group exist stories that confront the core of the modern human condition: the ongoing and constant quest to align the pieces of fractured self and recreate the whole, as is the case in Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. But when grown-up Alice is thrown into Wonderland, now playing at the Marquis Theatre, she winds up looking for more than just herself.

This adaptation features an adult Alice (Janet Dacal) in Queens, New York, whose fall down the Rabbit Hole comes in the form of a quick ride down her building’s service elevator. Her marriage rests on tenterhooks, her writing career is crumbling before her eyes and her daughter’s old enough to see that the d-word (divorce) is just around the corner. Laying down for a quick nap after a hard day of attempting to teach English in the New York Public School System, Alice sees that pesky White Rabbit scurrying through her apartment and down to the service elevator. She follows him straight into an exuberant, technicolored Wonderland. On her mission to return home before her daughter notices her absence, Alice encounters all the quintessential characters from the classic, each slightly contemporized -– a hep-Caterpillar, a Zoot Suited Cheshire Cat (El Gato) and hunky boy-band leader, Jack the White Knight. But when Alice impresses the Queen of Hearts a little too much, the vampy and sinister Mad Hatter (with the help of Adam Duritz lookalike, Morris the March Hare) decides Alice must pay. The battle royale (more words than fists) rages in Wonderland’s bizarro world through the looking glass, ultimately ending with both Wonder-worlds and reality back in their right order.

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BOTTOM LINE: A historical drama that lacks a strong story.

Until this year, many people had not heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. March 25, 2011, marked the 100 year anniversary of the catastrophe where 146 laborers, mostly women and children, met their fiery demise. This year, several news features and documentaries, memorials and art exhibits, serve to remind us of the impact that this incident had not only on improving factory working conditions but also the hand it had in fueling the reform movement at the turn of the century, as well as changing the shape of labor laws in this country, including the right for workers to organize. (How apropos, what with the Union controversies going on right now.) One such reminder is the historical drama, Triangle, written by playwright Jack Gilhooley and historian Daniel Czitrom, presented as part of The Great American Play Series at 59E59 Theaters.

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BOTTOM LINE: A poorly conceived Broadway show with a bad prognosis and a big star.

You’re going to have to scramble if you want to see Kathleen Turner in High on Broadway. The show is closing on Sunday, less than one week after its opening performance. And really, it’s the opportunity to see Ms. Turner’s assured stage acting that saves this sinking ship from being a total waste of your time and money.

Turner plays Sister Jamison Connelly, a foul-mouthed nun who agrees to sponsor Cody Randall (Evan Jonigkeit), a 19-year old with a drug problem. Our pleasantly un-nunnish nun of a protagonist is at first (and repeatedly throughout) hesitant to work with Cody, but is convinced (and re-convinced) that she is the right person for the job by Father Michael Delpapp (Stephen Kunken). Over the course of the show, Father Delpapp unloads an arsenal of reasons why Sister Connelly is the right person for the job, ranging from her own past as a drug addict, to its necessity for her spiritual journey, to his personal stake in Cody’s recovery (who, it is revealed, is Father Delpapp’s nephew).

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BOTTOM LINE: A mesmerizing, visual treat that manages to transfer the emotional conflict of Bukowski's work, Women, into dance.

"All I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics, whores, ex-prostitutes, madwomen. When one leaves another arrives worse than her predecessor. “Don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.” -Charles Bukowski

Dancing to poetry does not sound like an easy task, and yet Company XIV pulls this off seamlessly with Lover.Muse.Mockingbird.Whore, creating a compelling dance performance out of Charles Bukowski's work, Women. Austin McCormick's production looks beyond the work's tones of misogyny and disrespect, fully fleshing out key female figures and expressing their emotional and sexual states. The work pulls from Bukowski's text four female figures: the ever allusive Scarlett, the woman at the center of 'I'm In Love," the "green antelope" from "18 Cars Full of Men Thinking of What Could Have Been," and a voluptuous blonde, who seems to receive the majority of Bukowski's hate-tinged desire.

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BOTTOM LINE: A great cast and a clever script make Love Song a simple tale that offers a highly enjoyable performance.

Oftentimes, when one acquires a new sexual interest they are overcome with an emotional high, one that fades as reality sets in and they realize that perhaps they are not actually in love. For Beane, the main character of Love Song, produced by Don't Eat the Pictures and Wellfleet Harbor Actos Theater, this emotional high proves to be life changing for both for Beane and those around him. While the realness of his love is questionable, it proves to be greatly beneficial in the end.

The play opens with Beane (Andrew Pastides) sitting morosely in his spartan apartment. His depression and listlessness are communicated through a lamp that slips out of Beane's grasp, rising too high for him to get the light that he needs. Later his despair is shown further when the walls of his apartment literally begin to close in on him. These two clever tricks communicate effectively Beane's troubled state of mind.

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BOTTOM LINE: Wisdom of Obscurity and Paper Dragon are sister shows about disillusioned youth in London and New York respectively, running in rep as part of NyLon Fusion's transatlantic initiative.

NyLon Fusion is currently running two related shows in rep at Manhattan Theatre Source: one by a British author set in London and one by an American playwright set in Brooklyn. Both plays deal with nests of disappointed friends who are being pushed to find a stronger grip on their lives. Company co-founder Elliot Joseph's script was selected first, and then Alisha Silver, a member of the NyLon Writers Collective, was commissioned to write an American response. Both plays have corresponding themes and share structural similarities, but are distinctly different and representative of varying national perspectives.

Wisdom of Obscurity hinges on the story of Sammy, a layabout who is ignited out of stagnation by the Tao Te Ching and teams with a violent homeless man, Jim, to start a movement against escalating chip prices at the local Chinese joint. This new crusade leaves him with little patience for the confusion of his girlfriend Vanessa, his romantically estranged roommates Amelia and Kes, his newly rich poet friend Vince, or his mouthy landlord Victor. Emotions come to the head as does the fight against Chang's Chips, and trial by fire may change these friends' lives forever.

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BOTTOM LINE: An innovative dance theater piece, Nuevo Laredo draws from Day of the Dead traditions and current Mexican mobster stories to tell an abstract story.

Two stories unfold in Nuevo Laredo, the new show from the El Gato Teatro dance theatre company. The first is a confession, given by “El Sicario” (David Hale) about his previous work as a hired killer (“El Sicario” is Spanish for “the hit man”). The other story is an abrasive and dangerous seduction between “El Chayo” (Carlton Cyrus Ward) and “La Santa Muerta” (Audrey Lane Ellis). Take note: “El Chayo” is the nickname for a real life Mexican drug lord who died in a gun battle in 2010 and “La Santa Muerta” is the female “Death Saint” who is traditionally worshipped in Mexico on the Day of the Dead.

The two narratives are twisted together and conveyed through a combination of speech, dance, and simple special effects. Take, for example, the opening scene in which El Sicario is sitting in a chair, visible through an archway, at a far corner of the stage. He draws an image of a graveyard in a notebook, which is projected onto a screen above the stage. He begins his confession, saying “You don’t know me” in Spanish. English subtitles appear on the screen. In this manner, he slowly works his way into his story.

BOTTOM LINE: An impeccable production of an ambitious new play with a lot to say about who we are.

Playwright Larry Kunofsky loves breaking rules. Like the rule that unless your name is Kushner or Stoppard your plays should not be over 90 minutes. Or the one about keeping casts small and plots simple and straightforward. Kunofsky’s new play, The Un-Marrying Project, is an ambitious exploration of our current political, artistic and ethical zeitgeist. The play is complex, thought-provoking, and frequently entertaining. It’s also a jumble of ideas and plotlines that has, as that famous philistine Emperor Joseph II said of Mozart, “too many notes.”

But you may not notice. The production is cleverly directed by Rachel Eckerling, wittily designed and beautifully acted. An ensemble of 7 actors play 19 roles, each skillfully delineated with a fair share of nuance. And if the nearly 2 ½ hour duration sometimes feels long, there are enough funny lines, stimulating ideas and nifty technical effects to keep you riveted. Well, almost enough.

BOTTOM LINE: A comically fulfilling new play well worth seeing but far from perfect.

"The Motherf**ker With the Hat" is a ballsy title for a ballsy play (at least of the commercial Broadway variety). Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jesus Hopped the A Train, Our Lady of 121st Street), this witty and twisted domestic drama of sorts offers big laughs while chronicling the lives of some substance abusing New Yorkers. The script is finely executed, balancing bawdy language, one-liners and snarky humor with a certain sweetness surrounding leading man Jackie (Bobby Cannavale), an ex-con with a heart who really wants to do right. Cannavale's portrayal of this well-intentioned recovering alcoholic conveys sympathy, despite some poor life choices. And this makes for genuinely entertaining storytelling.

Jackie is trying to clean up his life. He gets a job, takes his 12-step program seriously, and dreams of settling down with his girlfriend Veronica (Elizabeth Rodriguez). That is, until he discovers an anonymous hat on her table and vengeful fantasies begin to take over his otherwise noble ambitions. As Jackie attempts to "be nice," a motto promoted by his new employer, he finds out that its sentiment is subjective. Seeking the help of his sponsor Ralph (Chris Rock), Ralph's girlfriend Victoria (Annabella Sciorra) and his cousin Julio (Yul Vásquez), Jackie tries to grapple with his disintegrating relationship and his future, while maybe staying sober along the way.

BOTTOM LINE: A bizarre, disorienting work with a complex, hard to follow storyline that alienates the audience but succeeds in ruminating on how technology isolates us sexually.

Epona's Labyrinth, a co-production between South Wing Theatre Company and the Japanese art collective Nibroll, returns to the theater's familiar multimedia terrain, in which productions frequently examine the effect technology has on the way we perceive and connect with others. Epona's Labyrinth goes further, however, showing technology and corporate mindsets as corrupting influences on human sexuality. Press materials for the production describe the work as "a surrealist psycho-sexual drama," which puts it lightly, as the plot is so twisting, dizzying, and absurdist, that audience members may have trouble following the many bizarre events that unfold for those unfortunate enough to reside within the walls of the play's mysterious hospital.

BOTTOM LINE: Unlike any theatrical experience you've ever had. Part themepark, part Shakespeare, Sleep No More is completely immersive theater everyone should experience once.

For quite a few reasons, I almost missed the British theatre company Punchdrunk’s New York installment of Sleep No More. I had done quite a bit of research on the production before biting the bullet and making the trek out to Chelsea to see it (for me, anything west of 10th Avenue is a trek). From what I read ahead of time, I wasn’t sure it was going to be my thing; phrases such as “performance art” and “non-verbal acting” made me quite nervous. I like words and plots and structured scripts. I like fourth walls and assigned seating and personal space, and Sleep No More has none of these things. What this production doesn’t have becomes quickly irrelevant though, because what it does offer is an intricately designed, impeccably executed alternate reality for its audience to step into.

BOTTOM LINE: A powerful take on a taboo subject that requires a fair bit of theatrical adventurousness.

“I ent gonna deny. I ent gonna play regret like I should like I should –- should I play polite? We're family we're beyond –- and family don't do polite do they?” says Sister 1 (Quincy Tyler Bermstine), harshly laying it out for hurting Dawta (Heather Alicia Simms) and the audience in the third scene of Born Bad.

The way this scene is played -- with Sister 1 humorously nasal, smiley, and most frighteningly of all, ambivalent, while talking about something as dark and disgusting as what is first unsaid, but is by now guessable as Dawta's sexual abuse at the hands of her father (Michael Rogers) -- wonderfully establishes the many questions and attitudes that the taut, 70-minute play will attempt to explore, and what makes it memorable. Because in Born Bad, it's more complicated than a case of did-he or didn't-he. It's more a case of do-they-care or don't-they.

BOTTOM LINE: This once radical gay show has transformed into a friendly, off Broadway commercial staple aimed at straight women.

The first question that comes to my mind when I hear that Naked Boys Singing! has been running off Broadway for nearly 12 years straight is “How?” or, more specifically, “Is the novelty of men naked on stage that appealing to that many people?” After seeing the show, though, the answer is clear: Naked Boys Singing! has evolved from a fringy gay show into a commercial staple of off Broadway and the main way they have accomplished this is by changing the target audience.

Walking into the theater, it is immediately clear how far Naked Boys Singing! has come from its origins at the historic Actors Playhouse in Greenwich Village, a couple of blocks from the Stonewall Inn (often considered ground zero for America’s gay rights movement). For those who have never been, New World Stages is off Broadway’s answer to the “multiplex” cinemas that are an integral part of today’s mega-malls. The night I attended, Naked Boys Singing! was playing on “Stage 2,” across the way from Avenue Q and a few doors down from a children’s musical titled Freckleface Strawberry.

BOTTOM LINE: A hilarious whirlwind romp through every movie genre imaginable, intertwined with a surprisingly sweet tale of survival.

It’s only a matter of time before the Vampire Cowboys become a household name among the theatergoing community of New York. I'm not sure why I, myself, wasn't more familiar before checking out their current production, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G. I asked my theater companion for the evening, and she agreed that although she recognized the name, she had never seen their work. Our bewilderment lasted mere moments, until we got to our seats. Even before the performance began, the Vampire Cowboys promoted their brand with a large “VC” projected onto a screen for the duration of their preset. Excited applause from a good portion of the audience erupted as the lights went down: they knew the Vampire Cowboys brand; several times throughout the show, a character would state something along the lines of “that’s not very 'Vampire Cowboys' of you, Playwright.” Even though this was only my first Vampire Cowboys experience to date, through some brilliant self-referential brand promotion, I’m pretty confident I know what they’re about and what can be expect from them in the future; even more important, I’m enthused about it. They not only pimp their brand shamelessly, the deliver the goods.

BOTTOM LINE: Metaphysical quandaries and serious subject matter, communicated by Robin Williams as a sassy tiger.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is an engrossing new play by prolific young playwright Rajiv Joseph (in his Broadway debut). Although the production has just opened in New York, it comes to the East coast highly regarded after two successful runs in Los Angeles in 2009-2010 and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Right away you expect some serious substance, and Bengal Tiger eagerly delivers.

Quirky and playful yet wholly mournful and philosophical, Bengal Tiger offers its audience a spectrum of emotion. Set in Baghdad in 2003, it follows the journey (read: demise) of Kev (Brad Fleischer) and Tom (Glenn Davis), two American soldiers serving in the war. As the play begins, they are stationed at the zoo, but after a hungry tiger has his way with Tom’s hand, Kev is given new duties as Tom is sent home to recover. The trauma of this incident sets of a chain of events that shake Kev and Tom to the core, as if war itself wasn’t disturbing enough. As they try to reclaim their senses of self, images of the past haunt their grasp of reality.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent original musical about two couples separated by ten years, yet uniquely connected.

The dynamics of straight relationships have been so thoroughly mined by contemporary Off Broadway musicals (i.e. The Last Five Years; I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change) that one could be excused for casually dismissing Tomorrow Morning. That would be a mistake.

The latest mainstage offering at the York Theatre, Tomorrow Morning is a careful and tender look at two relationships over the course of one evening. For the first couple, the next morning is their wedding day, and the start of their new life together. For their second couple, the next morning brings their marriage to a conclusion, when they sign their divorce papers. The juxtaposition of these two couples' journeys—one at the beginning of a marriage, one at the end— may sound slightly clichéd or even painfully obvious. But in this piece, the two parts fuse together to create a richly layered narrative and compelling evening.

BOTTOM LINE: The Killing Room is not for the faint of heart, but if you have the stomach for the darker parts of man, treat yourself to this beautiful and visceral knife twist of a play.

American audiences are not likely to be familiar with playwright Daniel Keene, who is well established in Europe and also in his native Australia. But if his newest offering, The Killing Room, is indicative of anything, we should sit up and pay attention. Twin brothers Cy and Ed, ancient and decrepit, have presided over the end of civilization and now rule the remains of the universe from a stark honeycombed fortress/hospital. They are kept alive with blood transfusions, organ transplants, and the standard post-apocalyptic mush made from bits of humans. All that remain are their caretakers, a single chipper nurse and doctor with a leather fetish, and Somula and Vomula, the twins’ garish wives. These remnants of humanity, if you can call them that, are occasioned by the return of Cy and Ed’s long dead children, craving vengeance.

The Killing Room is inspired by the ancient Greek story of Atreus and Thyestes, twin brothers who committed fratricide and then waged a violent war with each other, stealing and re-stealing the throne of Olympia, spurring a blood feud that would last for generations. One Year Lease Theater Company commissioned Keene to write this play, and he has managed to capture the tone and energy of Greek drama in an accessibly modern piece. It is gutsy, bloody, horrifically depraved, and marches inexorably towards its necessarily violent end like a slowly moving train.

BOTTOM LINE: A musical theatre lover’s dream, If It Only Even Runs A Minute is one of the only places to hear songs from shows (many unrecorded) that ran for “a minute” on Broadway.

Are you dying to hear songs from The Little Prince and the Aviator, Onward Victoria, and Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don’t You Ever Forget It)? Granted, you may not know how to answer that question; unless you’ve eaten at Joe Allen and memorized the wall of flop shows, these titles might mean nothing to you. So for those who haven’t read Ken Mandelbaum’s Not Since Carrie, these shows are “famous” for running a nanosecond on Broadway, perhaps closing on opening night, or even closing during previews. In the parlance of commercial theatre, these are famous flops--the supreme failures that went unrecorded, unpublished, and almost unremembered.

The tough thing about musical theatre, as opposed to straight plays, is that musicals really only come alive when you can hear the music. A show without a cast album is essentially a show that doesn’t exist. And this is where Jennifer Ashley Tepper and Kevin Michael Murphy come in. In their ongoing concert series If It Only Even Runs a Minute, Tepper and Murphy, with the help of a bevy of musical theatre performers, prove over and over that even the floppiest flop has something to offer. Or rather than flop, Tepper and Murphy prefer the term “underappreciated”, observing that “rather than good musicals and bad musicals, there are musicals you love, and musicals someone else loves.” This beautiful sentiment is a guide to the warmth and fun fostered throughout the evening.

BOTTOM LINE: A politically provocative stand-up comedy show.

As anyone who has ever watched The Daily Show with John Stewart knows, comedy can often do more to educate and sway public opinion than a debate in Congress. This is exactly the point of Laughing Liberally, a new stand-up show produced by “Living Liberally,” an organization “dedicated to creating social communities around progressive politics.”

The show is in a basement comedy club in midtown and its atmosphere is laid-back and inclusive. The performers talk to the audience like old friends, beginning a conversation with “you know when you—” or “don’t you hate it when...?” They poke gentle fun at individuals’ laughs or “awww"s. Topics range from race to religion, from education to marriage equality. And for the New Yorkers in the audience, there’s plenty of fun made of gentrification and the MTA.

This show is not, however, for your grandmother. Or that cousin visiting next week who insists dinosaur bones were put on Earth by Satan to make good Christians doubt. The content is sometimes racy or crude, and the message is pretty much for liberals by liberals. The show doesn’t aim to politically convert. Rather, it seeks to share and celebrate those opinions we liberal city-folk already hold.

BOTTOM LINE: The Book of Mormon is somehow both jaw-droppingly ill-mannered and adorably innocent, not to mention one of the best new musicals in recent memory.

Oh, hyperbole—you are so dangerous. The trouble with rave reviews is that sometimes, when folks finally get to see the show, their expectations are far higher than any show could possibly live up to. I want you to see The Book of Mormon, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So I won’t say that it is The Best Musical Ever! (It isn’t). Or The Best Musical Comedy Since The Producers! (the epitome of overrated musicals). Or even The Best New Musical of the Season! (in many ways, The Scottsboro Boys was just as good, if a lot less fun). But it is easily the best new musical currently playing on Broadway.

If you’ve seen Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, you will have some idea of the treats in store for you here. Like the 1999 movie, The Book of Mormon has a story line and lyrics that go far beyond the edge of “proper decorum.” I don’t want to overshadow the score’s truly excellent music. But if you blush at foul language, be warned. Oh my god, be warned. At times, The Book of Mormon makes the South Park movie look like The Sound of Music. Yet while The Book of Mormon is foul-mouthed, offensive, blasphemous, and incredibly rude, it is also one of the sweetest, most innocently hopeful musicals I have seen in a long time. And the fact that it manages to be both is a key factor in its success.

BOTTOM LINE: A master of the one-man show returns to Broadway to rock the house with his tales of art, life, and showbiz.

While I’ve actually liked a lot of the one-man shows that I’ve seen, somehow the proposition of seeing one single person take the stage and dare to entertain an entire crowd hits me with trepidation every time. The stakes are high, and with the wrong performer, it can make for a long evening. But John Leguizamo is a one-man show veteran, who has earned his stripes and his place on the Broadway stage. He is also one of the most talented and compelling actors I can think of. While Spawn was not a very good film, I was completely enthralled by his performance as the Clown. But along with his numerous film performances, he is also known for his previous one-man shows Mambo Mouth, Spic-O-Rama, Freak, and Sexaholix…a Love Story (the last two were on Broadway).

Ghetto Klown sets out to tell the story of where these one-man shows came from. And from the beginning, Leguizamo warns you that this is a cautionary tale of what not to do. It all begins in his childhood, with his family’s migration to Queens. Leguizamo explains his early passion for performing and how he was pointed down the path of theater. But this is not Inside The Actors Studio. Ghetto Klown is filled with dancing, blasting music, other characters, and humor that will have you laughing from deep in your belly.

BOTTOM LINE: A big splashy Broadway musical that is almost too fabulous for its own good, Priscilla is still a great time, as long as you aren’t looking for depth and character development.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert tells the story of three drag queens (well, two drag queens and a transsexual) who travel in a bus from Sydney to Alice Springs (which is sort of like traveling from New York to Las Vegas, but driving entirely through desert). On their fabulous journey across the Australian outback they meet all sorts of unfabulous straight folks and take every opportunity they can get to “dress up in women’s clothes and mouth the words to other people’s songs.” The musical is based on the wonderful 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but is far more fantastical. There is always a chorus of back up dancers on hand to turn any song into a production number, even when Bernadette, Mitzi, and Felicia are stranded in the middle of nowhere. The musical adds a trio of actual women, often flying over the main action, who sing many of the songs. Like the chorus from nowhere, these women have no role in the story; they exist solely to allow the star performers to lip sync along, since (as we’re reminded several times) in drag performance, the art of the lip sync is foremost.

It feels unfair to compare the musical to the movie, since they are two totally different pieces. After all, part of what makes the film so starkly beautiful is the vastness of the Australian outback, something impossible to communicate within the confines of the Palace theatre (and it is probably for the best that the team doesn’t even try). But this is hardly a re-envisioning of this material. In fact, the plot of the musical hews incredibly close to the film, almost scene for scene (Stephen Elliott, who wrote and directed the film, also co-wrote the book of the musical). I was surprised by how little is changed. Elliott and co-writer Allan Scott have kept almost all of the secondary characters and plot points, much of the same dialogue, and many of the same songs, including “Go West,” “A Fine Romance,” “I Love the Nightlife,” “Shake Your Groove Thing,” and of course, “I Will Survive.”

BOTTOM LINE: While perhaps not for everyone, this excellent production of LaChiusa’s very “adult” musical should be high on the list of any musical theatre connoisseur.

The Transport Group, one of my favorite off Broadway theatre companies, has recently started doing shows in non-traditional spaces. Last year saw The Boys in the Band, an excellent revival of a play about gay life in the 1960s, in which the setting (a New York apartment) was recreated in a downtown loft. Last summer they did See Rock City, in which the audience sat in lawn chairs that began the evening as an abstract sculpture. Hello Again receives similar treatment, although since the action spans various decades and locales, the downtown loft setting is more atmospheric than site-specific. If you don’t mind (or in fact enjoy) more complex musical composition that lacks simple, catchy melodies (which describes pretty much all of LaChiusa’s work, including Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See), then I highly recommend this production.

BOTTOM LINE: A spotlessly performed ensemble production of Shakespeare’s comedy by a leading off off Broadway theatre company.

Now in its third season, Guerrilla Shakespeare Project is known for presenting shows at a caliber that sets them apart from their indie theatre contemporaries, and their current rendition of The Taming of the Shrew is a fine example why. Directed by Kim Martin-Cotten, GSP’s Shrew is a jocular jaunt through a very “now” Shakespeare with a lively cast of classically adept actors performing in the clothes and accoutrement of today.

One of the things to be counted on from GSP’s productions is an ingenious design using next to nothing. For example, without incorporating anything specifically period, the costumes of Shrew convey character and place, coming together as a complete picture. Similarly, the set is mainly a background of plywood boxes and frames, but that plywood creates a specific space, gives levels for staging, and shifts to form new settings as the characters travel. The highlight to me, though, is the use of an old lady's rolling walker for the character Gremio. Martin-Cotten is recognizing that this is a play and using that inherent imagination to further the magic and merriment. The world she creates is exquisitely makeshift chic.

BOTTOM LINE: A very good but less than perfect production of a brilliant and intellectually challenging play, with some outstanding performances.

Tom Stoppard is arguably one of the world's greatest living playwrights and Arcadia, one of his best plays, is widely recognized for its contribution to contemporary theatre. Originally produced at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1993 and directed by Trevor Nunn, it won the 1993 Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Play that year. When the first New York production opened two years later with an entirely different cast, it won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and was nominated for the 1995 Tony Award. And two years ago, when the play was revived in London under the direction of David Leveaux, it received even more glowing reviews than it had 16 years earlier, thus setting the stage for its eagerly anticipated current return to Broadway with a new cast under Leveaux's direction.

BOTTOM LINE: A clever pairing of solo shows inspired by one of the lesser-known horror fiction masters.

I tend to think of H.P. Lovecraft as somewhere along the lines of “Edgar Allan Poe, Part II.” Though diehard Lovecraft fans may take issue with such a simplification, it can be a helpful starting point for those who aren’t familiar. Still, while H.P. Lovecraft is not necessarily a household name, many fans of horror fiction insist that he is just as influential as Poe and Stephen King.

Lovecraft lived and wrote in the early 20th century, a time of radios and automobiles, but his stories generally have a Victorian sense of candlesticks and quills, a la Poe. His stories also tend to integrate supernatural phenomena with narrators who are rapidly losing their sanity, creating the double-edged sense of horror that, too, is also often associated with Poe.

Things at the Doorstep, the new double-bill show at the Manhattan Theatre Source, can work as a solid introduction to H.P. Lovecraft, or -- for those who already know and/or love him -- as a welcome ode. The show consists of two one-man performances, the first of which is a direct adaptation of Lovecraft’s short story “The Hound” (adapted and performed by Greg Oliver Bodine). The second, titled “I Am Providence,” is an original work written by Nat Cassidy that uses Lovecraft’s style and themes to tell a present day story. Taken together, the two plays make for a unique evening of theater that is entertaining, educational and strangely unsettling.

BOTTOM LINE: A stylistically bizarre and light-hearted comedy about an alternative story of the conception and birth of Jesus.

Mother of God! is the latest production to stem from the New Perspectives Women’s Work Lab. Written by Michele A. Miller and directed by New Perspectives founder Melody Brooks (see an interview with Brooks here), this play provides a farcical alternative to the well-known Christian story of the conception and birth of Jesus. This comedy frames the biblical account as a convenient explanation which can satisfy the personal interests of the involved parties: Mary’s family honor, Joseph’s mental sanity, and the political aspirations of the chief priests in Jerusalem.

The play presents young Miriam (Keona Welch), who is to be married off to Joseph (Charles R. Gerber). In spite of his wealth, Joseph isn’t exactly the ideal husband: he’s not too big on the looks, he’s a few decades past his prime and he’s true to the biblical image of the Pharisee - outwardly pious while inwardly hypocritical. While pondering on this daunting prospect, Miriam encounters an angel, or rather, as the play clarifies, a hunky itinerant actor still disguised as the Roman God Apollo from his latest gig. Their passionate encounter leads to her pregnancy by the “God’s fire,” and will set the scene for most of the comical events that follow. In the meantime, the three wise men from the East – the Magi - are shown in a somewhat different light than their gospel counterparts. Casper and his contriving soviet buddy Melchior are convinced they can make a quick buck off the paranoid King Herod, and have recruited a Chinese astronomer, perhaps the only one in the play with some real wisdom to offer, to help them fain knowledge of the stars and their forebodings. The characters and their different associations are extremely funny, and are supported by the fact that the play simply overflows with Jewish stereotypes, which reach near hilarity in Hannah, Miriam’s mother (Marisa Petsakos), the epitome of a stereotypical Jewish mother.

BOTTOM LINE: A clever satire on paranoid post-9/11 American culture. Timely, intelligent, and straight-up hilarious, this show is a must-see for anyone who enjoys a good parody of daytime news coverage or court TV.

The central character in Clifford Chase’s Winkie is Winkie the teddy bear: not an actor playing a teddy bear, an actual glass-eyed, brown fur, huggable stuffed animal. After providing comfort to three generations of the Chase family, most recently the youngest son Clifford, Winkie has now willed himself into life. Unfortunately, Winkie is soon accused of heinous acts of terror, and of spearheading a massive terrorist organization on American soil. He is captured, tortured, and taken to trial. The trial is the main setting of the play, and drama unfolds as witnesses take the stand to take down Winkie.

The 9,678 charges brought against Winkie are awesomely absurd. They range from acts of terror and treason to three types of sodomy, corrupting the youth of Athens, and teaching evolution to schoolchildren. The embodiment of all the things “real patriotic Americans” fear, of course. The trial is brought to you via Dan Abrams in an MSNBC Investigative Report, complete with pretentious pauses, overly dramatic teasers, and circular reasoning. The witnesses that suggest Winkie’s innocence are villainized and dismissed, and those who use the right buzzwords (such as Homeland Security, Islamic Extremism, Potential New Threats, Osama Bin Laden, and Proud To Be An American) are applauded.

BOTTOM LINE: A delightful family-friendly tale of adventure and romance set in the time of the Irish Rebellion in 1798.

Arrah-na-Pogue, Or, the Wicklow Wedding, written by Dion Boucicault in 1865, is wonderfully uplifting entertainment suitable for the entire family, that is too infrequently staged in America and deserves to be better known in this country. A joyous, adventurous, romantic Irish comedy-drama, it has all the ingredients one seeks in the theatre and too seldom finds: charming tales of love (requited and unrequited), romance, marriage, honor, fidelity and betrayal, swashbuckling escapades, and causes and relationships that both men and women are willing to die for. It is Damon and Pythias, Robin Hood, Casablanca and King Arthur, all rolled into one, set during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, expressed in the most lyrical language for which the Irish seem to have such a flair, and punctuated at just the right moments by a rollicking performance of an Irish step dance by Jennie McGuinness and a lovely rendition of “The Wearing of the Green” by Michelle Kafel.

BOTTOM LINE: A wonderfully theatrical piece, in which a solid play becomes unforgettable because of several beautiful and energetic dance/movement numbers.

If you saw Black Watch, then you have some idea of the beauty and wonder that choreographer Steven Hoggett is capable of. (And if you didn’t see Black Watch, I urge you to check it out when it returns to St. Ann’s in April). With co-director and choreographer Scott Graham, Hoggett has created another piece of theatrical magic. Far superior to much of the theatre that plays in Manhattan, Beautiful Burnout is absolutely worth the trip to DUMBO.

Beautiful Burnout is, at its core, a fairly traditional play about a boxing gym in Scotland. Owner Bobby Burgess (a wonderfully grizzly Ewan Stewart) coaches four young men, and one woman, who all want to move from the amateur circuit to the professional arena. Some do, and some don’t, creating tension and conflict among the trainees. As we see them warm up, spar, and discuss strategy, we learn about the scrappy world of amateur boxing, and about what can happen during three minutes (the length of a round). And through one of the boxer’s mothers (Blythe Duff), we also see what it is like to watch a loved one participate in a sport that some view as noble, but which others find barbaric.

BOTTOM LINE: Like watching a near-flawless indie movie live.

Pristine production values, heartfelt performances and a captivating personal conflict lie at the core of Good People, a new play (which could easily be a movie by a respected indie house), now playing on Broadway. This new dramedy by David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) is an ideal vehicle for its tremendous cast which includes Francis McDormand, Estelle Parsons, Becky Ann Baker and Tate Donovan. And the story itself is a treat to experience –- Lindsay-Abaire finds the humor in a tragic tale about the division of class in 21st century America. His message is insightful, but not didactic, and Daniel Sullivan’s direction allows the tale to unfold in a way that elicits sympathy on all sides. This is a quality piece of theatre, suitable for all tastes and, well, classes.

Frances McDormand plays Margie, a mostly endearing lower-class woman who has been dealt a tough hand. Now middle-aged, she has spent her life in Southie, a poor neighborhood outside of Boston. And she’s never been able to escape. A series of unlucky circumstances have kept her in a sort of American Dream purgatory –- it’s visible but out of reach, probably indefinitely. But Margie soldiers on and tries to make the best of things, that is, until she is fired from her job at the Dollar Store and has to do whatever it takes to find work so she and her disabled adult daughter don’t get evicted.

BOTTOM LINE: Entertaining family-friendly theatre complete with pirates, buried treasure and a live parrot.

Although modern footage of pirates involves machine gun-hoisting adolescents in speed boats off the coast of Somalia, most of our popular notions of piracy conjure up images of one-legged ruffians and their irreverent parrots, treasure maps where “X” marks the spot, and mutinous sailors walking the plank to their doom. We owe most of these perceptions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s 19th century adventure novel Treasure Island, and so it is not surprising that Vernon Morris and B.H Barry’s staged effort of the story at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn seems wonderfully familiar, even if you haven’t read the book.

BOTTOM LINE: Mis-cast, mis-directed, and mis-guided in its sentiments, this movie and television star vehicle currently playing on Broadway is a miss in my book.

That Championship Season won the Pulitzer Prize for best play in 1972. In 1973 it won a Tony award for best drama. Soon after it closed on Broadway, and a year and a half later, it fell off the cultural radar. It did not make the canon of American drama; it did not become one of those standards that one sees in every community theater across America. It did become a TV movie of the week. Some might see the new revival on Broadway, with a powerhouse cast of very popular television and movie stars (particularly Kiefer Sutherland from 24 and Chris Noth from Sex and the City) as the opportunity for this little-considered play to get its due. In fact, one of the producers is named Second Chance Productions.

The play does have some wonderful dialogue, including well-crafted revelatory monologues for each character and truly funny one-liners (handled with perfect timing and delivery by Jason Patric), and enduring themes that are both universal – what does it mean to be a man? – and very American – what does it mean to be a man? On the other hand, maybe there are some pretty good reasons this play quietly drifted into obscurity.

BOTTOM LINE: A solid production of a rarely produced play that shows a brief glimpse into the lives of a Northern England semi-pro rugby team during the course of a single game.

The Changing Room is an extremely intimate documentary drama that follows the lives of several working class athletes’ pre- and post-game rituals as they compete in an ordinary game of rugby. The play premiered on Broadway in 1973 and was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Play. The audience is given a rare look into the lives of these simple people as they struggle with the obstacles of everyday life. It’s sometimes said that theatre cannot be about the ordinary, but that does not apply to The Changing Room. What makes it so great is that it is about just that, the ordinary lives of ordinary men. It a true “slice of life” where it’s not about playing the game, or even who wins the game, it is truly about the relationships of these men and how they interact when their guards are totally down in the most sacred of places, the changing room.

BOTTOM LINE: Good Brecht. See this if you think theater should have a conscience. Or if you loved those choose-your-own ending books as a kid.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a very ambitious play. Brecht famously (or infamously, depending on who taught your favorite drama class) demands much of theater. Not just of actors, of direction, of design, of audience, but of Theater with a capital “T.” We are supposed to go into a performance with a set of ideas and go out of it having examined, perhaps even questioned or changed, those very same preconceptions. Pipeline Theater Company, founded in 2008, picks up the playwright’s gauntlet in their latest production. Do they rise to the challenge? Brecht would roll over in his grave if I made your decision for you.

The show is set in the late nineteenth-century and follows the story of an abandoned child and the search for his true maternity. Does he belong to the aristocratic mother who birthed him, or the peasant woman who risked all to raise him?

BOTTOM LINE: An intense and intellectual domestic drama that draws from Jewish folklore.

In a pivotal scene that follows one of the many mystical moments in Besharet (pronounced “ba-SHARE-it”), one character asks another, “Would you rather be a dybbuk or a golem?” Both, we learn, are bodies that operate as vessels. But, while a dybbuk is a living person who channels dead souls, a golem is a soulless vessel intended to help the living. The scene is important because, if you are not familiar with Jewish folklore, it gives you some insight into what Chana Porter had in mind when she wrote the play.

In a sense, Besharet (which, we learn, means “soulmate” or something akin to “destiny”) is a typical domestic drama, set in New York City in the early 1980s. Samuel (William Tatlock Green) is a Jewish lawyer who lives on the Upper East Side with his wife Ruth (Olivia Rorick). Ruth desperately wants a baby, a desire which Samuel avoids discussing because Ruth has a condition that leaves her in a constant state of fatigue. Meanwhile, just to make things more complicated, Samuel’s law partner Renee (Tia Stivala) is expecting a baby, but can’t seem to get along with her husband, whom we never meet.

BOTTOM LINE: Explores a repugnant fetish gone awry to make a larger statement about how our internet-centered culture affects our relationships and sexualities.

It is undeniable that the internet has changed the way humans connect sexually. Those who cannot find adequate sexual partners on their own can now utilize dating sites, chat rooms, and online communities to find possible connections. For those whose sexual predilections are on the fringes of what is socially accepted, the internet has been revolutionary in allowing fetishes and fantasies to be explored through online discussion, pornography, and by meeting in real life those who share the same fixations. This ability to connect with anyone from anywhere in the world also allows for communities to spring up, like those for sexual fetish niches. TerraNOVA Collective explores this phenomena through their latest production, Feeder: A Love Story.

Jesse (Jennifer Conley Darling) and Noel (Pierre-Marc Diennet) are emblematic of this online niche phenomena, as a couple who connect online, and later in real life over a shared passion for the feederism fetish – men who find sexual arousal in feeding overweight women and from fetishizing their rotund bodies. This can be so incomprehensible to mainstream sensibilities that its depiction is often the stuff of either comedy or total revulsion. (My first exposure to this fetish was via the movie City Island, in which a teenage boy steals his mom’s credit card to access a feederism website, which consists solely of an overweight woman cooking elaborate feasts and then devouring them on camera.) While Feeder’s script certainly does draw plenty of laughter from the audience, the fetish is painted as a serious undertaking.

BOTTOM LINE: An adventurous journey into low budget fun.

No. 11 Productions’ Oregon Trail is adapted from the classic video game of the same name, which is now celebrating its 40th anniversary by rolling out versions for the iPhone and Facebook. And now it has found its way to the Frigid Festival. If you are familiar with the game, you will be well rewarded for your patronage as the musical is sure to take you back to the dysenteric days of your youth.

Haley Greenstein steals the show as Hope, the self-sacrificing conscience of the wagon party, always willing to give up a piece of her clothing to help.

But the whole cast offers a high-energy performance and the enjoyable songs (jam-packed with inside jokes) are sure to leave you laughing.

Orphaned Hope and her brother Jebediah (John Bambery) have “picked up stakes” from Independence, Missouri in search of their Manifest Destiny. The dramatic through-line, more than just the overcoming the perils of making it 2000 miles to Oregon, follows the siblings as they reveal the mystery behind the deaths of their parents.

BOTTOM LINE: Spy Garbo’s stunning and atmospheric visuals, rounded out by strong performances, create a captivating philosophical inquest into history, propaganda, and film.

The world of theatre has so many varied offerings these days, and it can become difficult to draw lines between plays, performance art, and multimedia productions. But regardless of what you call it, all this boundary blurring creativity is great, exciting, challenging even, as Spy Garbo shows. Playwright Sheila Schwartz professes a “long career devoted to parallel research obsessions and graduate academic projects [that] connect film and propaganda.” Spy Garbo is the natural brainchild of such a career. I am hesitant to call it a play, although it succeeds at being a cracking good piece of theatre. If you can keep up with the dense exposition, it is beautiful to look at, engaging, and thought provoking. It contains daring and poetic language, and even delivers a few laughs. However, I never felt it in my gut, and the drama between the actors is little more than pretext for philosophical exploration into how film and propaganda shape history. The action is argument and only the idea of the stakes is high.

Francisco Franco, Wilhelm Canaris, and Kim Philby, played by Steven Rattazzi, Steven Hauck, and Chad Hoeppner respectively, are vying for the role of hero in each of their own stories, as well as to be the one to outshine Garbo, the super spy named for the famous actress. Most audience members will have heard of Generalissimo Franco. Canaris and Philby are more obscure historical figures. They were both double agents during World War II. All three, depending on which side of history you stand on, are worthy of praise or vilification. In Spy Garbo, they are stuck in History’s Limbo waiting both for vindication and for Garbo (the spy, not the actress). Together they reveal their shared histories, argue over interpretations of facts, and fight for their reputations before the omnipresent and judging History, which, as conceived by Schwartz, is more of a force than an idea.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent production of a classic Greek play that can be enjoyed on several levels - political, philosophical, and psychological - with some outstanding performances.

Iphigenia at Aulis, the last play Euripides wrote, was likely first staged posthumously 2,400 years ago, a year after the playwright’s death. The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble has now selected that play, in a superb translation by W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr., as the first work in its planned three year celebration of ancient Greek drama. And we are delighted that it did: this is an excellent production of a wonderful classic, well-staged and professionally performed, and it deserves a longer run than it will be getting.

Helen, the wife of Menelaos, King of Sparta (John Lenartz), has run off to Troy with Paris, a Trojan prince. All of the kings and leaders of Greece are bound by oath to join Menelaos in a war against Troy to retrieve Helen. Agamemnon (Joseph J. Menino), Menelaos’ brother and King of Mycenae, has been appointed commander of the combined Greek forces but they are stuck at Aulis, on the Aegean Sea, unable to set sail for Troy because there is no wind. Kalchas, a soothsayer, has suggested a solution: that the goddess Artemis has withheld the winds and has demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia (Kelli Holsopple) before she will allow Agamemnon and his troops to set sail for Troy.

BOTTOM LINE: The Bitter Poet laments his love life through irreverent poems and songs in this one-man performance.

Poor Bitter! He just can't find Ms. Right despite years of trying. But he sure has a knack for dating disasters, as is evidenced through songs and poems detailing such seemingly optimistic but inevitably devastating escapades. Kevin Draine, as the unlucky romantic, dons leather pants and a shiny gold smoking jacket as he rocks out on guitar. With a style that is sometimes reminiscent of a downtrodden Eddie Izzard and sometimes more manic Ed Helms, Draine does his best to create a unique character in Bitter, who comes off as a normal, albeit quirky, New Yorker. For my money, I'd prefer to see an even grander caricature with a more-developed persona. It's hard to go too far in red velvet boots.

Bitter tells the audience that this isn't one of those plays you'd expect to see in a theatre festival, and that it doesn't have a moral. True enough, although it's full of good advice. For example, don't start dating a 28-year old who's about to leave for a vacation in Nepal. When trying to woo a downtown performance artist, don't talk about your future house in a New Jersey suburb -- she probably won't be into that. Bitter expounds on topics ranging from his affinity for strippers (and the pheromones that accompany a lap dance), to the necessity of throwing out how-to books. One-liners such as "I first sang this to my therapist in 1998" pepper the performance in between songs.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent revival of a typical Western-themed Sam Shepard play, with outstanding performances all around.

Founded scarcely a year ago by Rich Ferraioli and Kirk Gostkowski, Variations Theatre Group got off to a roaring start in 2010 with its first production, The Shape of Things, directed by Ferraioli and starring Gostkowski (see my review of that earlier play). And the dynamic duo hasn't slowed down since.

For their first production of the 2011 season, they selected Fool For Love by Sam Shepard. Originally produced more than a quarter century ago, Fool For Love is somewhat typical of Shepard's American West themed works. Here Eddie (Gostkowski), a rodeo cowboy and "Marlboro Man" wannabe, and May (Christina Elise Perry), whose relationship is more complex than it might at first appear, sustain an angry on-again-off-again, love-hate relationship that is not only interrupted, but accentuated, by the arrival of Martin (Collin Meath), the mild mannered man whom May began to date in Eddie's absence. The cast is rounded out by The Old Man (Charlie Moss), who appears at different times, but only in the imaginations of Eddie and May.

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BOTTOM LINE: I Love You [We’re F*#ked] is a concert with a narrative and a message featuring the songs and stories of the charismatic Kevin J Thornton.

This week only, down in the bleak basement of the Under St. Marks theatre, you can catch the original songs and real-life stories of Nashvillian Cassanova Kevin J. Thornton as his tour takes him through our fair city and its annual winter theatre festival.

I Love You [We’re F*#ked] falls somewhere between a concert and a cabaret, with songs tied together by anecdotes and a personal viewpoint on living. It’s the kind of show where you mostly just want the performer to ask you out. And somewhere between the kooky lyrics and the smooth baritone, a catharsis happens. You’ve been having such a great time listening and laughing, it takes a moment to realize the topics at hand: life and love and how we cope. And you feel better.

BOTTOM LINE: An absurd comic romp about the search for true love in the internet age.

I went to see Pretty & Papi on Oscar night and boy, am I glad I did. This quirky, creative, unpretentious show was, I'm sure, much more enjoyable than Hollywood's parade of commercialism and artificial glamour. Plus the Frigid Festival is a perfect antidote for the increasing gentrification and homogenization of New York City. With its eclectic mix of shows chosen completely at random, Frigid makes even the Fringe look mainstream.

Pretty & Papi is a comic performance piece created and performed by the talented trio of Leah James Abel, Rebecca Houlihan and Olivia Hallie Lehrman, and produced by Awkward (At Best) Productions, whose mission is to "confront the world with reality through a blend of comedy, stupidity, acrobatic skill, and good old fashioned charm." The show delivers energetially on all counts, and though the original reality show premise was abandoned after press materials went out, perhaps it's for the best.

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BOTTOM LINE: A show that attempts to bring a fresh modernity to the classic detective story.

The Mysterious Mystery of Mystery Street is one of the more ambitious productions to take the stage at the Frigid Festival. Considering this, it is not too surprising that the show comes across as only partially-realized, like it is trying on a few different outfits in order to see which suits it best.

At its core, The Mysterious Mystery is a classic detective story, and many of the character archetypes are included with a blatancy that is often absurd: there is the woman in a red dress, the corrupt political figure at the heart of a scandal, and the two-man team of detectives, one of whom is clearly the sidekick. There is also a clear effort on the part of the writer to achieve the kind of straight-shooting fast-paced dialogue, teeming with twists and misunderstandings, that was popularized in the 1940s by Raymond Chandler and film noir in general.

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BOTTOM LINE: A pleasantly innocent musical respite from the more typical gritty, grungy and edgy fare one tends to encounter at theatre festivals. Appropriate for the entire family.

Irving Berlin, one of the greatest songwriters in American musical history, wrote an estimated 1,500 songs over the course of his life, providing Melanie Gall, the playwright and star of this production, with ample material from which to select the dozen numbers she strings together in relating this very abbreviated story of Berlin's life. Playing the role of Berlin's childhood friend, vaudeville singer Rebecca Rosenstein, Gall uses her well-trained operatic voice to belt out number after number in a fashion designed to remind us of the relative innocence of America in the early 1900s.

Gall, who is accompanied on the piano by John Murphy, eschews the traditional Berlin classics such as "White Christmas," "Easter Parade," "There's No Business Like Show Business," and "God Bless America," all of which you've probably heard so often that you wouldn't care if you never heard them again. She opts instead for a number of his lesser but more humorous tunes that you may never have heard before, including "If You Don't Want My Peaches, Don't Shake the Tree," Don't Take Your Beau to the Seashore," "If That's Your Idea of a Wonderful Time," and "Keep Away From the Fellow Who Owns an Automobile." Her choices are good and risque by the standards of the early 1900s but perfectly innocent by today's standards. It all makes for an enjoyable hour's entertainment.

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BOTTOM LINE: A particularly well-put together festival piece about grit, connection and consequences.

Produced by Rising Sun Performance Company, Goodnight Lovin' Trail is a tale about morality, worth, value, humanity and the weight of sin, wrapped up in a bite sized 40 minute package, with a pretty little song stuck on top as a bow.

The play takes place in a Texas truck stop diner, where two strangers, Lee, a waitress and single mother (played on the night I saw it by Olivia Rorick) and a nameless cowboy type referenced only as Coffee and Cigarettes (played by Nic Mevoli on the night I attended), cross paths as the drunken cowboy attempts to find his lost guitar. Rorick and Mevoli work beautifully together and form a fast believable intimacy. Rorick particularly does a brilliant job of portraying a deeply layered rich character instead of a Texas caricature.

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BOTTOM LINE: Confused twenty-something male attempts to bed all of his girlfriends as a way to gain sexual confidence and closure in light of a breakup; short on insight and depth, big on laughs.

The plot of Fucking Girls -- an emotionally immature man revisiting his ex-girlfriends to gain insight over a recent breakup -- is a plot line commonly visited (see: High Fidelity). However, unlike the aforementioned film, Fucking Girls is, as the title suggests, more about revisiting exes for literal fucking rather than about gaining closure or emotional redemption. While this makes the work lack both emotional depth and insight towards the uncertain world of modern dating and sexuality, it still packs plenty of laughs.

When James (Jon Bass) is dumped by his long term girlfriend he finds himself uncertain about his romantic future. When his cretinous best friend Mike (Brendan McCarthy) suggests that he partake in a one-night stand to get over his break up, James shoots down the idea, confessing that his last girlfriend was the only women he ever slept with. Apparently, before meeting his most recent ex, James dated a succession of women who, he believes, all lost their virginities to the guy they dated after him, engaging only in chaste relationships with him.

BOTTOM LINE: A one-man-show with a cat.

London, Ontario’s Stars & Hearts Company presents Boat Load at The Red Room Theater. The show is performance at its most elemental: no costumes, mimed props, implied set, human sound effects, and minimal lighting design. Just a man and some people watching him. And it works. It works very well.

Creator/performer Jayson McDonald is a natural storyteller with practiced talent and years of experience doing similar shows in his native Canada. He blurs the line between fiction and reality, playing a young actor not unlike himself who lives in a town (presumably) not unlike his own. He plays every character, not in a series of monologues but rather in a series of one-man dialogues. The most beautiful moment is when he is playing a friend listening to “him” and is silent, nodding, reacting, frowning, with such specificity that we know everything being said by “the other guy.”

BOTTOM LINE: John Milton's classic poem comes alive in this spirited solo show.

How I wish Paul Van Dyck's one-man performance of John Milton's 17th century poem "Paradise Lost" had existed during my days as an English major. For Van Dyck turns an arduous English literature class reading into sexy, sinful fun, bringing the classic work alive with CGI animation, puppetry, the Rolling Stones, and ceaseless passion. I found myself surprisingly riveted by Van Dyck's inspired performance that truly brings alive Milton's vision.

The focus of "Paradise Lost" is the biblical tale of Adam and Eve's original sin. Van Dyck uses puppets for the characters of Adam and Eve. He takes on the roles of God, Satan, an angel, and Satan as a serpent, cleverly using the stage's white curtains as both the serpent's coil and as the angel's wings. As the puppets do not have movable faces, he also uses his own expressions to convey those of Adam and Eve. Bars of classic rock accompanied by computer animated flames and Van Dyck's versatile voice bring Satan to life.

BOTTOM LINE: An ambitious endeavor, The Hallway Trilogy only partly succeeds. Rose, the first play, is well worth seeing. But the next two parts, Paraffin and Nursing, are both primarily concerned with shocking the audience; those looking for something more substantial may leave disappointed.

The Hallway Trilogy consists of three separate plays, Rose, Paraffin and Nursing, all set in the hallway of the same New York City tenement building, but taking place over the course of a 100 year period. Rose is set in 1953, on the day after the death of Eugene O'Neill; Paraffin on the first night of the 2003 blackout, and Nursing in 2053 in a disease-free New York. The three plays are billed as a "trilogy," but that term is used rather loosely. Although all three of the plays are set in the same place, that doesn't provide anywhere near the unifying force that a true trilogy requires; if each of the plays had been set in a different building, nothing would have been lost. And underscoring this lack of unification is the fact that characters in one play do not appear in another; indeed, there is no evident relationship between the characters in one play and those in any other.

In Rose, we meet the denizens of a Manhattan tenement building in 1953 and a few other questionable neighborhood characters. The plot revolves around the title character (Katherine Waterston), a fading ingénue who almost snared the starring role in a Eugene O'Neill play. Failing to get it tipped her over the edge and, on the day following O'Neill's death, she has embarked on an odd quest to find him, convinced that he is still alive.

BOTTOM LINE: A very animated Egyptian man (played by a woman) struggles to get his passport approved in this engaging and surprising solo show.

Under St. Marks has a very gritty feeling. The handful of shows that I’ve seen there have been low-budget theater or comedy shows that fit the tone of the East Village block. Funny stands out as a show of a different breed. It is not that it's "un-hip" but at its core it's a substantial piece of quality stagecraft.

Denmo Ibrahim portrays a middle-aged Egyptian-American accountant who is trudging through the annoyingly meticulous process of applying for a US passport. Again and again he goes through the line only to discover that one detail of his application is not correct and he must start all over again. Misery, yes, but the man does not let it dampen his spirits or determination as he exudes his frustrations and determination to get it right.

BOTTOM LINE: A deliciously weird and satisfying hour tackling the obstacles of defining love, featuring Chaplin-esque videos and noir puppets.

Joe Mazza asks that dire, age-old question, one as unanswerable as it is timeless: What is love? With the help of his scrumptiously odd alter egos (puppet and human alike), Mazza's The Hyperbolist takes a satisfying couple of swings, and backhands, to try and find the answer.

Blustering in with hyper-lingual energy, Mazza welcomes each audience member individually with a very firm handshake. His silver-tipped Kewpie hair and blacked-out eyes evoke the cartoon villain from The Incredibles, while his hyperbolic ebullience, vocal range and black velour t-shirt conjure up Robin Williams-esque sentiments. And by the time the lights dim to introduce the first of an evening's worth of charming characters (a lovable tramp of the Charlie Chaplin variety), it seems as though this question of love will find, at the very least, an hour's worth of amusement with an interesting bedfellow.

BOTTOM LINE: A comedic solo show that explores how the societal pressure to find a romantic partner can be an unsolvable problem.

ONEymoon: A Honeymoon for One is the story of Caroline, who, having given up on the chance of finding a husband, decides to marry herself. Through a sequence of monologues, songs and skits, Caroline explains her past dating failures and takes us through her solo wedding ceremony and tropical honeymoon.

Caroline is played by Christel Bartelse, who also co-wrote the play with her partner Jimmy Hogg. Bartelse’s performance captures the right combination of chipperness and desperation to make Caroline believable, but with an undertone of neurosis and obsessiveness that explains why she is no longer able to deal with the uncertainties of dating.

BOTTOM LINE: The Shorebound Swim with a One Click Kick is a pithy snapshot into a laboratory’s ludicrous love triangle.

Theasy’s own Markus Paminger penned The Shorebound Swim with a One Click Kick, an irrational “tragedy of reason.” Humorous and homicidal, this play is a little Sweeney Todd and a little Rocky Horror but without the musical numbers. Instead, Shorebound Swim gives us a mad scientist, a lovelorn house boy, a psychotic lab assistant, and an ingénue-turned-harlot. As you can imagine, mayhem ensues.

And while the script is sometimes speech heavy, it’s continuity of time in the action gives grounding to the conceptual nature of the play. There is also a beautiful rhythm to the text. This show is like a complex poem, sometimes you feel it more than you follow it, but in the very best way.

BOTTOM LINE: Depression is a heck of a thing, but sometimes all you need to lift your spirits is a bit of perspective and some good old-fashioned, roll up your sleeves, can-do. The optimistic musical Sky Boys: The Building of the Empire State Building has both in spades.

Set in the 1930s, against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Sky Boys tells the story of Mickey, a streetwise kid with enough pluck to sneak himself up the steel girders of a skyscraper in search of the best job in town, but not enough to look down. There he takes up with a crew of Mohawks who are working the high steel, and apprentices himself to the legendary photographer, Lewis Hine. Sky Boys, adapted for stage by Barbara Zinn Krieger, is a beautiful fable about conquering fear, building dreams, and repairing family, a man's pride, and a country's vision. And it is educational to boot!

Sky Boys is not breaking new ground here, but it does not need to. When it comes to children's theatre, simple is best; as an adult, it is a pleasure to take a break from subtext and intrigue. It is also refreshing to watch the retelling of a great moment of American history without narration by David McCullough (though secretly, I would have loved it). And as always, the eternal American trope of retelling our shared history is, "Oh we did it before and we can do it again."

BOTTOM LINE: A political piece with equal parts hilarity and gut-wrenching truth about the shape-shifting power of hot-button words.

What if someone called you "abulkasem"? What knee-jerk reaction would you have? Would you assume you're being praised or insulted? Would you conger up images of political radicalism or terrorism or airport security checks? Ably confronting the fascinating evolution of political buzzwords, The Play Company presents Jonas Hassen Khemiri's, INVASION!, now playing at walkerspace.

This delightfully cutthroat new American translation of Khemiri's script (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles) tidily coasts through 75 minutes of lush neologic development. At the play's outset, "abulkasem" has been introduced into the high school cafeteria as the new buzzword, enjoying a gamut of meanings (pejorative to complimentary), but eventually settling on something tantamount to "super awesome" as in "She's crazy abulkasem!" Vignette after vignette shows "abulkasem's" latest association and power (one man's chosen seductive pseudonym, one woman's attempt to save conversational face among peers) building upon each other to ultimately create a new super-word packed with emotional baggage from left, right and center. Before long, with its magnetic ability to lend itself to blanks for adjectives and nouns, "abulkasem" ends up on the Security Council's radar as threat #1.

BOTTOM LINE: Adults play like children to raise larger questions about the role of art in society.

Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Kinderspiel, a revival of the 2007 Stolen Chair Theatre Company production, focuses on adults who return to the playtime of their childhood as a means of escaping the harsh realities of life in Berlin during the tumultuous 1920s (in which Germany suffered the brunt of blame for World War I and the country found itself in economic ruin). Soon enough their play is seen as the stuff of artistic expression.

Louisa Reissner (Liza Wade Green) works as a cabaret dancer whose stardom is plummeting. Once the toast of the night club world, she now performs in dingy bars for paltry tips. Kinderspiel opens with her lackluster, mechanical performance of a dance routine that was intended to be coquettish in its original choreography, but now has been rendered dreary and haunting through Louisa's apparent disinterest. Lost and directionless, she chances upon a stairway to the basement of an abandoned club where she finds a slew of abandoned items and turns them into makeshift toys. Louisa lives alone in the darkness for days on end, her activities consisting solely of sleep and playing make believe.

BOTTOM LINE: Political differences lead to witty banter in this romantic comedy.

During the 1992 presidential election between Clinton and Bush, an unlikely romance blossomed between James Carville, the strategist behind Clinton’s campaign, and Mary Matalin, who was working on Bush’s campaign. These star crossed lovers serve as the inspiration behind At Hand Theatre Company's new bipartisan romantic comedy The Body Politic. Things do not work out quite as smoothly for the fictional characters at the center of this play, however.

Although this set up has been seen before -- the Carville/Matalin romance also served as inspiration for the strikingly similar film Speechless -- enough time has gone by to give freshness to this already traveled terrain (the play’s script provides multiple nods to the real life duo.)

The play opens with two opposing presidential canidates trapped together in a broadcast studio alongside their campaign staff. As the two opposing teams exchange barbs and quips, the youngest members of each team, Democrat Trish (Eve Danzeisen) and Republican Spence (Matthew Boston), begin a sexual tension-heavy flirt session that includes insulting each other through alliterative adjectives. In the following scene, we see them argue the merits of their political affiliations over martinis. Both the actors and the script shine during these one-on-one "debates."

BOTTOM LINE: A family drama that explores the complexities and tensions that arise from family relations and how they are exacerbated by distance and time, as well as cultural and generational differences.

Two-thirds of the way through disOriented, five major characters take the stage in a sequence in contrast from the rest of the show. The central character, Ju Yeon, is conspicuously absent from the stage but her role is clear: she is the tie that binds these people together (the on-stage characters are her mother and father, her two sons, and her husband). In a sense, the audience becomes Ju Yeon as the characters alternate lines that illustrate their individual quirks and demands, punctuated by the abrupt snaps of a paper fan opening, as a dancer moves dizzily among the actors. The effect is indeed disorienting, and I realized then just how difficult life must be for Ju Yeon. She is essentially torn in five directions as she struggles to meet the demands of some of her family members while shrinking away from the others.

DisOriented centers around Ju Yeon’s first journey back to Korea since she left many years before when her husband asked her to move to New York with him. A death in the family drives her to return to her native country and to her parents, who she had abruptly abandoned. In New York, Ju Yeon attempts to hold together a family that is drifting in many different directions, while dealing with a lingering sense of obligation to her parents half a world away.

BOTTOM LINE: Great acting combined with very realistic dialogue make this show about sibling relationships painfully real, yet comforting.

In Your Image is the story of two brothers searching for meaning and each other's acceptance as they gather their deceased father's belongings in his filthy apartment. Their multifaceted relationship is revealed as they sift through layers of trash and empty booze bottles carelessly strewn about by the man who abandoned them twenty years prreviously. Drama unfolds as they quip about why their father left, and the boys blame each other and themselves for their father's weaknesses. When we meet the father in the second act in a flashback, his initially sympathetic demeanor becomes as repulsive as the disgusting apartment he lived in.

Roger Clark carries the show as the handsome and cooler older brother Chris. Chris still has fond memories of his father taking him out as a child, but over time has developed a distaste for his passing out drunk in the park and taking him the to the pub. You rightly get the impression that he blames his awkward younger brother Warren, played by Rob Benson, for making his father leave when Warren was just a baby. Rob wants to spare Warren from those feelings, but can't help himself when Warren draws comparisons between Chris's behavior with his own family and their fathers'.

BOTTOM LINE: Stolen Chair Theatre Company's Stage Kiss is a gender-bending farce with humorous irreverence for all things: from the Greek gods to Shakespearean quotes, from aging breasts to rotting deer.

Stolen Chair Theatre Company dubs Stage Kiss, a play they originally produced in 2006, a “blank verse love-letter to Charles Ludlam,” the 1980s Drag Queen of Farce. With all its cross-dressing, mistaken identities, coincidental entrances, and double entendres, I can think of no more appropriate tagline myself.

The performance tackles heavy issues: the value of virginity, the transmutability of gender, the alternate permutations of the traditional “couple.” It pays homage to Shakespeare, even mimicking exact lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Ill met by moonlight, proud [Titania]/ What jealous [Oberon]” and Puck’s famous epilogue “If we shadows have offended…” But Stage Kiss does not take itself too seriously.

BOTTOM LINE: A cross cultural fictional tale, based on a real life Rockefeller, with an anomalous point of view. Absolutely worth the time!

True story: In 1961, 23 year-old Michael Rockefeller, son of future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, was on an expedition in New Guinea studying the Asmat tribe when the pontoon boat he was in capsized off the coast. Instead of waiting for help, Rockefeller attempted to swim to shore, and neither he, nor his body, were ever seen again. There has been much speculation regarding what could have happened to Rockefeller; many believe drowned on the swim to shore, others believe he was eaten be an alligator, a known danger in the region. Perhaps most interestingly is the idea that he was eaten not by an alligator, but by another human. Based on Christopher Stokes short story of the same name, this is the premise that Jeff Cohen's play The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller explores.

Loosely based on the facts surrounding Rockefeller's disappearance, the show weaves together a scenario in which he could have feasibly ended up a victim of murder and possibly cannibalism (although cannibalism is really a mere footnote in the show). Arriving fresh-faced and eager to learn about culture, Rockefeller (played by Aaron Strand), immerses happily into the Asmat culture and forges a cross cultural friendship with the Asmat artist known as Designing Man (played by Daniel Morgan Shelly). Despite their limited interaction with one another the bond between Designing Man and Rockefeller is the heart of the show, and when social and cultural conventions press Designing Man to consider killing Rockefeller, the emotional conflict he has feels deeply sincere.

BOTTOM LINE: A theatrical experience unlike any other, where the audience is acutely aware of the community created around them.

Writer and director Zach Helm (Stranger than Fiction, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium) adapts Interviewing the Audience from storyteller Spalding Gray's original 1980s performances. The show's premise breaks down artificial boundaries normally observed through live theatre: the subjects are real audience members and they dialogue informally with Helm on stage. There are no rehearsals and no prior planning. Through these conversations, participants expose bits of information that are far more banal than I was expecting, but that are still uniquely evocative. Learning about these folks on stage encourages self-reflection in the rest of the audience and also builds a community atmosphere. The social experiment of it all is totally captivating.

Helm is the consummate host on a set that feels like a comfortable Jonathan Adler living room in some down-to-earth designer's loft. He asks leading questions without seeming pushy, instead making real connections with his subjects and providing opportunities for meaningful conversation. Sometimes it's two-sided as Helm is happy to throw his own anecdotes on the table when necessary.

BOTTOM LINE: Vieux Carré, a groundbreaking revival of a little-known Tennessee Williams memory play, is a fantastic example of what The Wooster Group does best: launching you into an alternate and totally engrossing reality while challenging and engaging your mind, senses, and emotions.

The Wooster Group's version of Vieux Carré makes a compelling argument for the power and immediacy of avant-garde theater in the digital age, and the need for mainstream theater to move beyond stick-in-the-mud realism if it wants to maintain audience interest in an era when people can consume excellent acting, writing and production values all from the comfort of their La-Z-Boy. Led by iconoclastic director Elizabeth LeCompte, The Wooster Group specializes in technology-intensive theater that manages to highlight raw and physically demanding live human performances, breaking down barriers between old and new forms in a way that is radical and feels totally necessary.

Blending the intensity of a rock concert with complex text and characters, along with virtuosic performances by some of the best stage performers anywhere, this production of Vieux Carré upends the familiar Tennessee Williams tropes, transforming them into an ultra-surreal reality. Through its strangeness, one begins to feel the heat, the danger, the need and the longing that suffuse this autobiographical play. The final take away is a deep, cellular-level understanding of what Williams might have experienced in both his inner and outer worlds while he was living in a boarding house in the French Quarter of New Orleans as a young gay man at the tail end of the Great Depression. One feels simultaneously liberated and oppressed by the place and its inhabitants, feelings heightened by the unrelentless pace and sensory onslaught of the performance itself. It is truly magical--if you are game; highly experimental, this production is probably not palatable to everyone.

BOTTOM LINE: Dog Act is an innovative, playfully dark comedy that will romance your love for the magic of theatre.

Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act is, above all, a play about preserving humanity in the face of deprivation and loss. The downfall of society does not mean the downfall of man. This touching play follows Zetta (Lori E. Parquet) and Dog (Chris Wight), a traveling vaudevillian troupe of two, as they make their way across the barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once the United States. They are walking east, pursuing a gig in China, towing their cart behind. There is a lovely Waiting for Godot quality to this hopeless prospect.

With only each other to rely on, the troupe encounters and takes in beleaguered Vera (Liz Douglas) and Jo-Jo (Becky Byers), the remnants of yet another vaudevillian troupe who have lost their cart and crew. Unbeknownst to them, their progress is threatened by wasteland scavengers who are in close pursuit.

But the real drama lies between Dog and Vera, who early on recognize one another and a shared, forgotten past. Dog is in hiding, going so far as to give up his humanity through a voluntary species demotion. He is ‘putting on the dog’ in shame, as it were, and the past is catching up with his act.

BOTTOM LINE: I really liked this production of a rarely staged play; it might need more time to gel, but it will hopefully continue to improve throughout the run.

The Witch of Edmonton is your classic classical play. Intrigues, murders, seductions, secret marriages, false allegiances, wenches, witches, and whores. It is basically an entire week of primetime television in two and a half hours, except there is also the delightfully elevated language and genuinely funny jokes that you won't find in primetime.

The basic plot is straightforward - well, as straightforward as any Jacobean play. Girl meets boy, girl is already pregnant with another man's child, girls swears eternal fealty to the boy and they get married. Boy hies off to his father, who has plans to marry him off to another girl with way more land and money, so he and his son won't be ruined forever. Boy agrees to marry second girl, because nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Oh, except for the crazy old woman who lives under the stage and one night accidentally comes upon a devil who sucks her blood in exchange for mischief making of her choice. She sets the devil on her tormentors in the town, including our erstwhile hero, who in a fit of devilish mayhem, kills his second wife to be with his first wife, and blames her murder on her ex-suitor and his friend. Classical tragicomedy-type chaos ensues.

BOTTOM LINE: They can’t all be Streetcar. Milk Train isn’t a flawless play, so neither is this production.

Staging Tennessee Williams' 1963 play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is an audacious task, and Michael Wilson (whose bio boasts 19 Williams plays) admirably steps up to the challenge for this current production playing off Broadway at the Roundabout. One of Williams’ least produced and least revered works, Milk Train is, well, kind of faulty in both form and narrative. This current production fails to pack the emotional resonance one expects from this great playwright, but it’s hard to tell who’s to blame. This is not to say that the production isn’t enjoyable – led by Olympia Dukakis, the cast is more than competent – but I couldn’t help feel a nagging emptiness by the time the final curtain fell.

Williams’ trademark Southern melodramatic style is in full swing in Milk Train, although the story takes place in Italy and is often rather funny. Flora Goforth (Dukakis) is an American elderly widow on the brink of death herself. In her sweeping ocean-side villa, she dictates her memoirs as her secretary Blackie (Maggie Lacey) records them. Flora is extravagant, eccentric, and filter-less, but she is also terrified of her impending death. As she gets sicker, she also gets deeper into denial. Her mood swings and general disdain for reality make her a challenge to work for, and Blackie, herself recently widowed, is ready to quit…until a chiseled stranger appears at the villa: Christopher Flanders (Darren Pettie) makes himself welcome and the reason for his visit begins to unfold.

BOTTOM LINE: The jokes fly, the characters are broad, the songs are beautifully sung, and believe it or not, it all really happened.

Exclamation points: love 'em or hate 'em, they're here to stay. How else would we show enthusiasm, whether real or feigned, in all those emails and texts? And how else would we come up with titles for musical comedies? The drab novel Oliver Twist becomes Oliver! Thornton Wilder's lackluster Matchmaker is transformed into Hello Dolly! Dour old King Lear triumphs as Lear! The tragic Anna Karenina lives happily ever after in Anna! Death of a Salesman would be…well you get the point. The Road to Qatar!, a new musical now playing at the York Theater, deserves at least two exclamation points for all the very real energy and enthusiasm it generates. It's a zippy, zany 95 minutes. But whether you love it or hate it will definitely be a matter of personal taste.

The Road to Qatar! takes place in New York City, Dubai, Bratislava, London, Qatar, and, though the program doesn't say so, the Catskills. It's easy to see why composer David Krane and book writer/lyricist Stephen Cole, self-described as "two short Jewish writers," chose a Borscht Belt comic style to tell their true story. Borscht Belt humor has an inherent sense of the absurd, the exaggerated, even the surreal — all of which fit their tale of writing the first American musical to premiere in the Middle East. But it can also be broad and shticky, and rely a LOT on gags, puns and wisecracks, not to mention stereotypes and clichés. (Manipulative, overbearing Jewish mother anyone?) Of course it's fun and ironic to see Mansour, an Egyptian producer, channel Henny Youngman with his line "Everything in Egypt is very old. Especially my wife." Bad dum pum. Rimshot. Think Ishtar: The Musical!

BOTTOM LINE: Despite a delightful lead performance by Francesca Faridany, Atlantic Theater Company's revival of turn-of-the-century farce The New York Idea leaves a person thinking that some ideas are better left unrealized.

Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint the missing ingredient that makes an evening of theater a near-miss rather than a winner. The New York Idea should be a no-brainer for a night of old-school theatrical fun, as it is adapted by David Auburn of Proof fame (the original script was written by Langdon Mitchell, hugely popular in his day but largely forgotten with the passage of time), directed by Broadway and off Broadway veteran Mark Brokaw, and cast with a stable of actors whose resumes are chock full of great credits. Even the charmingly unrenovated Lucille Lortel, a miniscule proscenium theater with red velvet wallpaper and orchestra seating whose back row is no more than 20 feet from the stage, promises to transport the nostagically-inclined to an era when a theater ticket was expected to provide a simple night of diversion and nothing more. The script, a simple comedy of manners featuring several erstwhile divorcees and their various lovers, provides the necessary plot machinations, stock characters and zingy one-liners to make it a perfectly good vehicle for delight. Unfortunately, the whole production seems to be running on ethel rather than the necessary high-octane fuel. In other words it is missing that single key element necessary to period comedy: joy. This production chugs and sputters along its domestic little road, functioning more like an oldsmobile station wagon in need of a tune-up than the zippy little convertible it needs to be to transform the twists and turns of a predictable comedic plot into Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Oh well.

BOTTOM LINE: The Joyce hosts Parsons Dance in three separate nightly programs featuring retrospectives of David Parsons' works culminating in world premiere performances.

Parson’s Dance, a contemporary movement company in its third decade, is premiering three new works by David Parsons incorporated with previously seen dances by the choreographer. The company is running three programs in repertoire (Programs A, B, and C). Each features two world premieres and four classic Parsons works. I saw Program A, which consists of The Envelope, Sleep Study, Mood Swing, Portinari (world premiere), Caught, and Run to You (world premiere).

Overall, the program gives audiences a lovely and diverse night of intricate movement, however there are distinct variations in strength from piece to piece which left me disappointed. Some of this can be traced to the dancers themselves, all of whom have impeccable proficiency in movement, but occasionally lack some performance capacity. The weakness of the dancers to emote is most apparent in dramatic episodes. Also, when all of the dancers are staged in large groups, there is a glaring lack of presence from some of the core movers.

Still, these cracks in the plaster do not color the entire night.

BOTTOM LINE: Part glittery drag show, part political satire, Taylor Mac returns to New York with a show that is all entertainment.

Come for the glorious glitz Taylor Mac is known for, stay for the delicious and often scathing commentary on radical activism in America. Feisty, fun and flamboyant, Mac's new play, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, is now playing at LaMaMa.

True to the title, and based on Mac's actual experiences, the story follows a rag-tag bunch of radicals (ranging from mind-warped hippies to Native American-loving Belgians) on their cross-country on-foot sojourn from New York to atomic bomb testing facilities in Nevada. Beginning on January 31st, 1992, this nine-month trek was to protest Indigenous People's land rights and nuclear research.

Starting out happy and wholeheartedly behind their cause, the cast of twelve buoyantly discuss their mission and firm belief in their ability to shut down the nuclear site. But the feel-good patchwork quilt of radical beliefs blanketing the group begins to show its seams the further into the journey the team gets. Suddenly, questions about purpose, sexuality and the possibility of success from radical activism rush in and announce themselves, much like cars passing them on the road, loudly dispersing the group into smaller cliques.

BOTTOM LINE: In Flipzoids, written by Ralph B. Peña, a beautiful centerpiece performance by OBIE winner Ching Valdes-Aran and an inspired set design elevate a flawed play into a worthwhile production.

Ma Yi Theater Company first produced Flipzoids in 1996 at Theater for the New City, an off off Broadway institution in the East Village. The production featured direction and set design by Loy Arcenas and a lead performance by Ching Valdes-Aran, for which she won a best actress OBIE Award. Fifteen years later, the company has paid homage to their own work by reviving not just the play, but the production itself. The current production features the same set design, same lead actress and same director as the 1996 version. This is an unorthodox choice for a theater company, but the artistic director, who also happens to be the playwright, apparently felt good enough about the first production to make a bid for legitimate off Broadway status. Based on the merit of the sensitive, deeply poignant and delightfully funny work of Valdes-Aran, I would agree. However, the overwritten and structurally flawed script intrude on the characters it seeks to portray. They are interesting unto themselves and need to be left well-enough alone to play out their drama, but instead Peña makes the characters narrate their own and the other characters' action, and inserts a bevy of heavy-handed monologues, creating the impression that he doesn't trust himself or the audience to undestand the points he is driving at.

Charles Busch, the immensely talented playwright -- whose credits range from Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (which ran for five years in the 1980s as one of the most successful plays in off Broadway history) to The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife (which ran on Broadway for 777 performances in 2000-2002 and received a 2001 Tony Award nomination for Best Play in the process) -- has scored another resounding success with The Divine Sister, his delightfully zany latest production now playing at the Soho Playhouse. This wacky send-up of Hollywood’s classic nun films from The Song of Bernadette to The Singing Nun to Agnes of God (with side excursions along the way to “girl reporter” flicks, The Da Vinci Code, and James Bond movies) relates the tale of Mother Superior of St. Veronica’s school and convent (played in drag with politically incorrect abandon by Charles Busch himself) and her coterie of oddball denizens of that institution.

BOTTOM LINE: Old-school comedy and clowning -- in suits and with a modern twist.

Last night I visited room 17B. It’s an interior office that is filled from floor to ceiling with gray filing cabinets and three doors. Oh, and there is also a xylophone...and a gong...and a few other small percussion instruments, as well. What appears to be a very drab office environment is about to become an extremely lively and explosive stage that four actors will soon fill.

Mike Dobson, Brent McBeth, Danny Gardner and Joel Jeske make up this four-man team. Their colorful, posed, high energy entrance is one of the best comedy intros I've ever seen. They do a great job of pulling the audience in and setting up their show. And then the bits begin. Mike reads from note cards and goes over a few show notes. There are some very funny jokes in this piece that get the audience primed for participation and anticipation of where the show is going to go.

BOTTOM LINE: An empathetic and unflinching look at war and its human consequences.

I'd never heard the phrase "honey brown eyes" before last week. I thought it might refer to a folk song by James Taylor — something wistful on an acoustic guitar. I couldn't have been more wrong. Stephanie Zadravec's play is a point blank depiction of war in all its brutal, dehumanizing horror. Thankfully it's also a story of humor, kindness and possible redemption.

From the moment the lights come up on Honey Brown Eyes, we are witnesses to violence. The setting is the Balkans in 1992, as Serbian militias are "cleansing" eastern Bosnia of Muslims. According to Zadravec, though "20,000 women were systematically raped…the genocide of this war was largely ignored and quickly forgotten." She's right. We here in the United States rarely feel the pain of the wars we wage. And though no Americans appear in the play (our direct involvement came later), our influence is felt in the relentless presence of American pop culture — rock music, sitcoms and even informercials.

BOTTOM LINE: A writer sells his soul in this “bromance” meets “frenemies” story.

It takes a special breed of character to continue pursuing a career in the arts. It takes courage and conviction, ambition and talent, and of course, it takes money. Lots and lots of money. Especially in Hollywood. ScreenPlay, by Scott Brooks, follows the lives of three best friends who went to film school together. Fifteen years after graduation, none of them are making movies. That is until one of them becomes a multimillionaire.

Dean (Jonathan Sale), the most talented of the trio, is miserable in a dead-end graphic design job. Suzie (Heather Dilly), the one at the center of the unrequited love triangle, is a travel consultant searching for a purpose. And Graham (Brooks), the A-student, ends up filthy rich from a dot-com idea. When the three reunite, Graham reveals that he wants to take his millions and become a movie producer. After a night of partying and reminiscing, Dean shares with his friends his latest screenplay, The Conductor, which previously he had only shared with his fiancee, Lisa (Diana DeLaCruz), and his sock drawer. Immediately Graham recognizes the potential in The Conductor to become “the next Schindler’s List,” (something Lisa earlier tried desperately to convince Dean of). Graham wants to produce the movie but there is a catch -- he wants to take credit as screenwriter. Dean, who is broke and struggling to make ends meet, sells his screenplay and his byline for $250,000 only to find he has sold more than what he bargained for when the movie is a hit and nominated for an Academy Award.

BOTTOM LINE: A timeless classic gets the royal treatment in this hilarious revival.

If there was ever a doubt that Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedy The Importance of Being Earnest is a timeless classic, the current Roundabout Theatre Company production erases any such skepticism. In the assured hands of director/star Brian Bedford and his excellent cast, the play is as funny and wise as ever. Earnest playfully skewers not only the Victorian society in which it is set, but the perennial fickleness of human nature. Even for harried, media-saturated, 21st century New Yorkers, the laughs of recognition are all there; and if there are few surprises in this faithful production, that is just as Mr. Bedford intends. Why trifle with perfection?

Wilde's great genius is his keen understanding of the paradoxical quality of life. Worldliness or spirituality? Pleasure or duty? Seriousness or triviality? Most of us live somewhere in between, though we may try to present masks of consistency and conformity to the world. Wilde himself lived a notoriously double life, and paid a heavy price for flouting his society's rigid code of behavior. Fortunately the people in Earnest suffer no such punishment. The course of true love may not run smooth, but it does end happily.

BOTTOM LINE: An intelligently written, well plotted drama of a family in crisis, brought to life by a marvelous ensemble cast. Don't miss it!

We've all seen plays of this sort before (perhaps too often): A traditional family gathering where family members question their unexplained recollections, level accusations against one another, and confront their unresolved resentments. Denouement: To the relief of the actors on stage (and all too often to the relief of the audience as well), important unexpected truths eventually emerge. This is such a longstanding theatrical artifice that it is, by now, a virtual cliché in the hands of a less capable playwright than Jon Robin Baitz. But Baitz is no ordinary playwright and in Other Desert Cities, his contribution to this genre, he has created a terrific new play which may turn out to be one of this season's big hits. You won't be wasting your time on this one!

BOTTOM LINE: A new play about a dysfunctional family: it has some funny moments, but it's a heavy piece of theatre. Ethan Hawke and the rest of the cast are quite wonderful.

Family doesn't always come first although it certainly takes center stage in Thomas Nohilly's new play Blood From a Stone. A grittier, less caricatured August: Osage County, this family drama makes you feel like a few interventions are in order. It's billed as a dark comedy, and while there are certainly laugh-out-loud moments, the harsh reality of the struggles at hand overpower any gag meant to lighten things up. But committed performances and thoughtful writing make Blood From a Stone a completely engaging experience, even with its faults.

With a three act structure and a clock-in time around two and a half hours, Blood From a Stone gives itself a lengthy tenure to reveal its characters and their conflicts. About a working class family in Connecticut and the adult children who are less than independent, all six characters embrace opportunities to explain their bad choices; they are all guilty of their own wrongdoings without being completely villainous. The result is a rather hero-less unfolding of the subsequent drama. It's hard to loyally take a side, as everyone is responsible for their own poor decisions.

BOTTOM LINE: A funny and original spoof of science fiction movies featuring audience interaction.

Imagine a goofy, good natured mash-up of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and "Mystery Science Theater 3000," with touches of Ed Wood and Monty Python, and you'll start to get the feel for The Annihilation Point, a comic romp created and performed by the Philadelphia theater collective The Berserker Residents. BR's inspired brand of silliness is the result of collaboration and a shared taste for alternative live comedy that draws on audience interaction. "Because madness was made for sharing."

The interaction begins in the lobby of the Abrons Arts Center where the audience is divided (without explanation) into groups Z and B. The two groups are led separately by Hazmat-suited guides through a maze of hallways and "decontamination chambers" into a theater made to look like the control room of a spaceship. The Abrons's concrete bunker construction provides the perfect ambience for BR's low tech, high concept humor. The sets, props and costumes are zany and ingenious.

BOTTOM LINE: Richard Skipper as Carol Channing. He sings her songs and does her schtick.

Richard Skipper as "Carol Channing" in Concert is a lightweight yet entertaining way to spend an hour and twenty minutes. Skipper has been portraying the legendary Carol Channing for twenty years and he has it down pat. The mannerisms, the wig, the lipstick and the big infectious smile are all there and if the photos in the lobby are any indication, he has the full backing of Ms. Channing herself. The show is like sitting in Carol Channing's living room as she tells you stories and sings all the songs that she is best known for; it's easy to forget that you are watching an impersonation rather than the real thing. Skipper talks directly to the audience and interacts with them throughout the whole show. He learns the names of some in the audience and then refers to them at times throughout the night. They feel comfortable enough to chat back to him and Skipper has a way of making what they are talking about fit seamlessly into whatever the next song might be.

All of Channing's biggest hits are in the show. Hello, Dolly and Gentleman Prefer Blondes are well represented plus a few other songs that are fun to hear. One song that came up more than once was called "Widow's Weeds" and was from a recording that Channing made in the '60s. Of all the songs that she is known for, it seemed an odd choice to be featured so prominently. However, there is no doubt that Skipper sounds just like Carol Channing every time he opens his mouth.

BOTTOM LINE: Four plays about human connection make for a thoughtful evening of theatre.

The Common Tongue is a new theatre company passionate about collaborative creation. Their mission of creative unity is invigorating and inspiring, so much so that Theasy was pleased to highlight the company as our January Featured Artists (read the interview with artistic directors Lila Dupree and Danny Mitarotondo here).

Their latest production is a collection of four short plays, all similarly topical. The common thread is connection, specifically how individuals communicate, or at least try to. The production is named Connect Five although its exhibits only four plays -- the secondary title, "Four Plays. One Audience," does the math. This idea of dissemination is brought to life from actor to audience, taking the theme a step further and reaffirming The Common Tongue's agenda of unification. It's not only about what's happening on stage, the audience experience is just as integral.

BOTTOM LINE: Phobophilia is a video puppet show featuring a live tie-in performance and blindfolds.

The high thrill of Phobophilia comes at the start when the audience is broken up into small groups and led through the biting cold to a cement room in the basement of the theatre. There, everyone’s possessions are taken, they are blindfolded, then lined up and led inside. At this point, the blindfold is anticlimactically removed and audience members take their seats. It’s a brilliant gimmick, but in ends up as little more.

The blindfolds might be a parallel to the first image portrayed: a man standing on a block with a sack over his head. Although considering the philia of the phobia, it might also be a matter of titillation.

Once all are settled in their seats and the show gets going, the man on stage quickly relinquishes his position as primary focus to a video projection. This artful video draws on elements of animation -- it is one of the best integrations of projected image and real space that I have seen. The video-art style narrative of the projection plays out on a changing backdrop which acts as a stage for the action of the film, and eventually becomes so complex as to mimic a diorama or puppet show. For example, at one point the main character in the film chases a chimerical tease through door after door. The two figures are filmed and projected. The doors through which they enter and exit are created by moving parts in the board on which the film plays. It’s fantastic.

BOTTOM LINE: A musical revue of cheesy girl-power tunes meant to entertain, not enlighten.

It doesn't feel right to review Girl Talk according to traditional criteria because it's a different kind of show with a very different agenda. This interactive musical revue has a loose story and three somewhat developed characters, but that's just necessary framework to explain why these ladies sometimes break into song. It's certainly theatrical with three energetic women grabbing the spotlight and showing off their extraordinary voices, but it's not theatre in the artistic sense of the word. There is nothing artsy (highbrow or lowbrow) happening at Girl Talk: it exists purely for its audience's enjoyment.

It's a lot like an R-rated Bat Mitzvah with copious sex jokes and a DJ replaced by vibrant performers (who are likely all under 40, although they talk an awful lot about the perils of menopause). Instead of glow necklaces, the audience is encouraged to don hot pink boas and light-up tiaras, and instead of sweets there are several cocktail servers at the ready. The music is similar: Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and The Pointer Sisters. And yep, they even do the Macarena. Audience participation isn't required but it is welcomed, and there are several chances to get on stage and dance with the ladies should you feel inspired to do so.

BOTTOM LINE: Metamorphoses is an updated adaptation of Ovid’s work by the same name performed with music and movement by a tight ensemble.

Pants on Fire’s new devised adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was brought to The Flea from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by the Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation after its run there won both the praise of the local press and the Best Of Edinburgh Award. That’s a lot of prestige to live up to, and this production does it.

When audiences arrive at the theatre, the cast is already waiting in the lobby performing songs in their fanciful forties get ups. The WWII era clothing and hair is at once elegant and whimsical. It is also highly dramatic, automatically conjuring ideas of heroics, separated lovers, and good times at a canteen!

But the drama of the wardrobe is just a foil to the telling of Ovid’s stories. Using projected films, movement, puppetry and original and devised music, this ensemble jumps in and out of roles, leading the audience through tale after tale, each familiar but told in a new and theatrical way. Ovid’s myths are ones most audiences know, but Pants on Fire’s playful approach to telling them allows the audience to reacquaint and reexamine these stories and their themes.

BOTTOM LINE: Really funny, kinda weird, certainly quirky and comfortably old-school, Buddy Cop 2 is downright delightful.

"Nothing is what it seems" is the tag line for Buddy Cop 2. Not only is that true within the framework of the story, in which cops in a small town get a moment in the spotlight as their grieving community comes together, but it's also true of the production itself. The Debate Society produces experimental theatre and even though this show feels like a campy spoof of 1980s small town America, it's not really what it seems either.

Buddy Cop 2 is not only humorous, but it's also totally irreverent so you never know what's coming next. That approach to storytelling creates an entirely captivating production. The quirky realism that permeates the show is really just a mirage, a manipulation of the audience's comfort level so The Debate Society can play with dramatic strategies. And it works brilliantly. For example, sinister music creates an air of mystery so every time there's a knock at the door you get the feeling that shit's about to get real. It doesn't matter that you're duped every time because the tone has been methodically set.

BOTTOM LINE: A terse and tidy absurdist exploration of America's extremist tendencies.

"You need an actor to save you," a Will Ferrell look-alike of the Weatherman variety declares early on during the performance of Freedom Club. And indeed, someone who acts can be just what the doctor ordered for ailing countries, but if acting alone, those someones can also be the weak link that brings down the whole system. This multifarious gamut of extremism in America is amusingly explored in New Paradise Laboratories and The Riot Group's taut production now playing at The Connelly Theatre.

A 75-minute, moving tableau that begins in 1865 leading up to Lincoln's assassination and ends in a not-so-distant-or-different 2015, this parable serves as a firm reminder that polarized, violent extremism has never been too far from the American pulse. Jeb Kreager's sweaty and passionate John Wilkes Booth is the perfect egomaniacal actor: so quiveringly self-involved in the "act" he's defined for himself, he rebukes his own family when questioned about his bizarrely frenetic goal. Jump ahead a hundred or so years and Kreager plays the staunchly left Jeremiah, who begs his so-called militant compound members outside of DC to finally take some decisive action after too long merely protesting the closing of the final Virginian abortion clinic. Whether left or right, the topicality and obsession of political beliefs and their unwavering ability to invite anarchy throughout America's short history is less-than-subtly illustrated, though quite enjoyably so.

BOTTOM LINE: Captures the theatre producer persona and all the raving characteristics that go with it; a hilarious script and brilliant performance make Mistakes Were Made highly enjoyable.

Michael Shannon is one of the hardest working actors on any New York stage right now. His manic theatre producer caricature in Mistakes Were Made operates at maximum energy in an extended scene of frenetic desperation. Craig Wright's new play snapshots 90 minutes in one producer's life, and this (mostly) one-man show lets the audience indulge in Shannon's inspired characterization.

The producer in question is Felix Artifex, a hard-working guy with Broadway aspirations and downtown credentials. He finds his would-be break with a new play (aptly titled Mistakes Were Made) about the French Revolution (irreverence abounds). And with some crafty coercing he convinces a big time movie star to commit to the project. While casting decisions are being worked out, Felix juggles actor demands regarding the script with the unwavering playwright. At the same time, fundraising attempts become perilous, as the dangerous sheep industry overseas takes captives and threatens the project’s financial stability. And Felix’s composure unravels.

Happy Holidays, Theasy readers! Hoping everyone has a wonderfully theatrical holiday season (in whatever way you wish to interpret that). We will be back in January with more reviews and New York theatre insight, but until then, we hope you have a chance to get to the theatre before the end of the year.

Reasons to go to the theatre this holiday season:

1. You have time off and can finally get to that show you've been wanting to see
2. Impress out of town guests
3. Last chance to check out over a dozen productions that will close in January
4. Always a good date night option
5. Like your traditional Christmas movie, but way better

While I can't say that this particular season of theatre is full of must-see shows, there are still a few gems on Broadway and off this time of year, and the next two weeks are a great time to venture to the Theatre District. Plan accordingly -- tourism is in full swing so shows sell well. But with the holidays and obvious holiday distractions that keep people preoccupied, you can certainly get seats to most theatrical offerings. Click the link for our suggestions...

BOTTOM LINE: A fishy mystery comedy with a huge helping of stupid.

Okay, I know, mammal. Whale are mammals, but "a mammaly mystery comedy" doesn’t sound right. This play is about a land whale. Well kind of, it’s really about a murder and solving it involves a land whale (I regrettably can't reveal exactly what a land whale is without giving away part of the plot).

The Land Whale Murders takes place in 1896 New York. Teddy Roosevelt is the police commissioner and the whale oil trade is in full production. A group called “The Four Elementals” convene to discuss their passions for earth, sea, air and fire. At their meeting a noise is heard, resulting in the sea elemental's murder...by a fish. No, the fish doesn't commit the murder, but is instead the weapon, lodging in his chest like a dagger. A whodunit is unleashed.

BOTTOM LINE: An absurd adventure where two insane people meet for a date at a restaurant with an obsessive waiter.

Inspector Sands' devised comedy Hysteria has played in London, Brighton, and Edinburgh and now it's been brought to New York as part of 59E59's annual Brits Off Broadway series. It is currently playing in rep with the company's other original piece If That's All There Is.

Hysteria is based on the T.S. Eliot poem, about two disturbed people on an awkward date with a desperate waiter. In quick bursts of exposure and recovery, these three character each lose control and spin into, well, hysterics. Between these outbursts, each is tightly wound while trying to contain him/herself. It's a marathon of energy on the part of the actors, and in Hysteria audiences can see some of the great physical performances of this season.

The show includes mime work (mostly with props), body parts gone missing, suspenseful champagne openings, and outrageous banana antics. It's the kind of production where the charming performances engage the audience from the beginning and the show progresses as a communal experience.

BOTTOM LINE: A glimpse into a virtual New York inhabited by suicides, where one woman still believes in her chance to find love.

Post-apocalyptic New York isn't all that different from the New York in existence today: rife with good coffee houses offering gluten-free pastry options, attractive but unavailable men, and an overall unhealthy attachment to social networking sites. But it's that familiar, naive hope of love that resonates most in sci-fi drama Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart now playing at HERE Arts Center.

Lally Katz's new play depicts Aussie Caroline's journey to MySpace New York and back home again, both as narrator and main character. Though she is still living, she explains that New York is now only peopled with suicides and rubble, but has been rebuilt through the social networking site MySpace and exists much as it did previously. That is, except for the fact that the majority of residents are dead and the sense of reality is a mere façade. Some living beings inhabit MySpace New York, too, attempting to recreate the relationships they had with the suicides during their lives. Called Avalanche Dwellers, the living are looked upon with disdain by the suicides who want nothing to do with them.

BOTTOM LINE: The story of Mr. Berry, an elderly man yearning for youthful romance, is an overly labored affair that is just saved by Brenda Blethyn's nuanced performance as Berry's wife.

Mr. Berry (Niall Buggy) is an unemployed, aging lover of literature dependent on his less educated, equally aging wife, Gladys (Brenda Blethyn) for financial support. When Hazel (Beth Cooke), a starry-eyed elocution teacher wanders into his life, full of literary quotes and innocence, Berry is instantly smitten. He gives her the idea that his wife has passed away so that he can have her over while his wife is at work, under the pretense of wanting elocution lessons. He begins a fundamentally chaste relationship with her that is too obviously driven by a romantic nostalgia for his youth and that of his wife, who used to be a wildly beautiful and sexual woman. Gladys has the same yearning for her youth although she expresses it in a cruder fashion—which makes it all the more poignant. Ms. Blethyn breathes humor and pathos into every word she speaks and every look she gives. When Berry complains of fictional aches and pains, Gladys says "It's no good reading Hamlet — Hamlet will not help," and reveals more about her middle-class roots, practical mindset, and general bewilderment at her husband better than anyone I can imagine.

BOTTOM LINE: As the Eyes of the Seahorse is a collaboration of live music and modern dance. The Philadelphia husband-wife team brings to New York a "happening" of performance that features both the original music of the band The Mural and The Mint and the original choreography of Nichole Canuso Dance Company.

Michael Kiley and Nichole Canuso have a beautiful marriage; it is one of music, dance, collaboration, respect and love. They bring to the stage a piece of themselves and their actual marriage, in the form of a vulnerably transparent collection of thirteen song vignettes that features both dancers and musicians trading roles throughout.

The current music venue standard is a wiley come-if-you-will dank business that lends itself to dark bars with shoddy sound systems. As the Eyes of the Seahorse aims to shatter that model with a fresh and beautiful presentation of original music, placing the band's set list in a theatre with pictures conceptualized with a choreographer interested in more than the boobaliscious Britney Spears money-making tour. This is different. It is subtle, it is alive and breathing, and it captures the mood and intention of lyric and chord progression with such simple clarity, joy and care that the audience experiences a happening rather than a play. It is almost like watching a music video of The Mural and The Mint's work. I can liken it to a Michel Gondry movie or watching an art installation through an amber-colored glass.

BOTTOM LINE: A very entertaining live blind date happening in front of your eyes with a skilled improviser and comedienne.

I recently met Mimi. She is French, full of personality, fun, creative and has a red clown nose (but don’t tell her that I mentioned the nose). A fellow audience member made a comment about her nose at the performance I attended, and Mimi stopped the show to express her hurt feelings. Wouldn’t you feel bad about yourself if someone commented on your physical abnormalities? Mimi is a clown, but not exactly a circus clown; as any great clown does, she possesses a sense of wonder and innocence. Not that she isn’t grounded. In fact, she is very witty and quite down to earth. Unfortunately, at every performance of Blind Date, she finds herself stood up.

What’s a girl to do? Pluck another date right out of the audience, of course! In Blind Date, Mimi invites someone to join her on stage at a French café. They talk. They find out about each other. They exchange interests. Oh, and they drink wine. As a matter of fact, everyone in the audience gets to drink wine if they choose. The waiters in the café are found in the theater and entryway before the show starts so every audience members can enjoy a glass themselves. Of course, not every date goes smoothly and the gentleman suitor might have a little trouble saying the right things. The solution? A timeout box. Here Mimi can converse with the date and coach him on how to perform a little bit better. Mimi can also get the help and approval of the audience on how the gentleman can improve his manners or romantic moves. And the date evolves. It isn’t just talking: the music starts and perhaps they will dance.

BOTTOM LINE: The best post-apocalyptic puppet show you probably haven’t heard about and need to see.

Look at the picture above. You see that black thing with all the white dots on it? That is a baby universe. Sounds strange, I know, but it is actually quite sensical. Basic astrophysics tells us that the universe is constantly expanding. So is a baby universe, thus setting the stage for a brilliant puppet show that is probably off many people’s radar.

Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The sun is dying and human life has retreated to its last structure. In order to survive, man has learned how to recreate tiny universes that hopefully will expand enough to create a new earth which man can repopulate. But the experiments have been failing, and the baby universes have been dying off -- none have been able to fulfill what they are bred to do. In order to raise these baby universes, nun-like women take on the responsibility. A mother-child relationship is formed and the universe grows from a tiny ball into, well, something much bigger. This entire time the baby universe has a living, breathing personality that interacts with the humans and other creatures. It acts like a growing child and the magic of puppetry works well as a theatrical conceit for the story.

BOTTOM LINE: A light-hearted musical review that breezes by and makes you laugh out loud more than a few times.

If you are wondering why anyone would write a musical about golf, the top ten reasons are given to you in the first song. Suffice to say that creator Michael Roberts and director Christopher Scott have managed to make a show about golf entertaining and enjoyable. While it's certainly not Shakespeare, the cast of four along with musical director Ken Lundie take the audience on a two hour jaunt through the greens and over the sand traps covering every single angle of the sport. As the opening number says, they've got songs about golf, skits about golf and jokes about golf. SPOILER ALERT: The number one reason to write a show about golf? Ball jokes. Lots and lots of ball jokes.

Golf: The Musical plays much like a Saturday Night Live sketch, with each of the actors (Tom Gamblin, Lyn Philistine, Brian Runbeck and Christopher Sutton) portraying different characters throughout. There isn't really a plot since each song and skit stands on its own. Some of the numbers work better than others, but the strong cast is able to get laughs with pretty much anything that is given to them. The beauty of a show like this is if you don't like one scene, in two minutes there will be something completely different happening. It is also fun for the audience to see what character will arrive next.

BOTTOM LINE: The Atlantic Theater Company turns in a practically perfect Pinter production! See it and enjoy theatrical mastery on every level.

This production is sooo damn good -- nearly as good as the Thanksgiving dinner I ate the next day, while I was feeling thankful to have seen these two fantastic Pinter one-acts so beautifully realized.

In The Collection, written in 1961, Pinter pits two couples against each other and embroils them in a mysterious web of lies, attraction, and competition, both sexual and professional. Director Karen Kohlhaas and her ensemble of actors have found the inner timing of the characters, so that the long Pinter pauses seem totally organic, as do the verbal sparring and subversive humor. Scenic designer Walt Spangler uses the thrust stage of the Classic Stage Company theater (note the production is not at the Atlantic’s own space in Chelsea) to create two picture perfect side-by-side London flats, separated only by a floating telephone booth used to wonderful effect. Bright and subtly humorous costumes designed by Bobby Frederick Tilly II perfectly capture the mod-moment of London in the early 60’s, and a detailed and inventive lighting design by Jason Lyons enhances the expert work of the actors and the skillful, almost choreographed staging by Kohlhaas.

BOTTOM LINE: An impressionistic and intriguing collage of the turbulent life of Peter Sellers, with an engaging performance by David Boyle.

One wonders what motivated British playwright Carl Caulfield to take on the daunting subject of Peter Sellers. The timing, at least, seems perfect; the chameleonic actor died exactly 30 years ago at the age of 54, shortly after his second Academy Award nomination. Just before being struck down by a heart attack, he was the subject of a Time Magazine cover story titled "Who Is This Man: The Many Faces of Peter Sellers." In 2005, he was voted #14 in a list of the top 20 greatest comedians by fellow comedy insiders. Peter Sellers was an artist who deserves to be remembered and appreciated.

He was, however, notoriously elusive and enigmatic. During a 1977 appearance on The Muppet Show, he told Kermit "There is no me. I do not exist." Nevertheless, a 1995 biography spawned a 2004 biopic, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, with Geoffrey Rush in the title role and an all-star cast. What can we learn from Being Sellers, an "endearing portrait" of a genius who is both unknowable and overdone?

BOTTOM LINE: Tony Award winner Dennis O'Hare's brilliant performance as Norwegian nutcase Elling makes an otherwise ho-hum stage adaptation a thoroughly enjoyable piece of theater.

Broadway's Elling is the most recent work to jump on the "bromance" bandwagon. Based on the novels of the same name by author Ingvar Ambjornsen, the play tells the story of two Norwegian nuts that meet in a mental institution and whose relationship evolves from that of roommates to best friends to platonic life partners (read: an old married couple).

Elling (Dennis O'Hare), an eternal mama's boy and aspiring poet with a knack for making up stories, is moved into a psychiatric hospital and assigned to live with Kjell Bjarne (Brendan Fraser), a lovable oaf of few words whose life goals seem only to include eating, sleeping, and losing his virginity (which, at over 40, is completely understandable – and enough to drive any sane man crazy).

BOTTOM LINE: An investigative theatre piece that tautly coasts through the past couple years of neighborhood debate regarding The Atlantic Yards Project in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn, in addition to rivaling Chicago for the spot of third largest city in the country if it were to secede from New York City, is a culturally and ethnically diverse borough that sports the hopeful motto "In Unity There is Strength." Generally, neighbors cohesively co-habitate despite a constant morphing of the borough, although certain hot-button issues do occasionally shake things up.

So it goes with The Atlantic Yards Project, the contentious construction venture that will result in a massive, multi-billion dollar sporting arena smack in the middle of an already very bustling part of Brooklyn. In The Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards, the new play by The Civilians, is a documentary-style theatre performance based on interviews with residents from the affected neighborhoods. Pieced together through short scenes and songs, In The Footprint is a valiant attempt to illuminate the issues The Atlantic Yards Project has unearthed in this particular cross-section of Brooklyn.

BOTTOM LINE: A thought-provoking investigation into the limitations of language and the pitfalls of miscommunication in the broadest sense - particularly in regard to male-female relationships – and all presented in a charming story book style.

The Language Archive, by Julia Cho, now playing at the Roundabout Theatre, treads familiar ground in its explorations of language and the consequences of miscommunications between men and women – but it does so in such a delightful, original manner that it makes the whole endeavor more than worthwhile.

The basic story line is a simple one: George (Matt Letscher) is a professional linguist who runs an archive dedicated to the preservation of dying languages and who speaks a dozen languages (including the artificial universal language Esperanto) himself; yet he is somehow unable to communicate effectively with his own wife Mary (Heidi Schreck). She is hardly able to communicate with him either.

BOTTOM LINE: Boylesque spoofs the upcoming film Burlesque (and its showbiz dramedy predecessors) with drag queens and ga