Simply put, the play is about the creation of a cultural monument.  You see, the characters aren’t building just any theater; it’s the Irish National Theatre of Ireland, and the first of its kind.  Dedicated to prideful threads of Celtic mythology, the performances are intended to uplift the spirits of the Irish people by reminding audiences of their own ethnic identity.  The momentum of the Home Rule Movement—the Irish demand for self-governance within the British Empire—had hit a speed bump with death of its charismatic leader, Charles Stuart Parnell (also known as the “un-crowned king of Ireland”), in 1891. Patriots needed some other vehicle to carry them through the gray days of turn-of-the-century Dublin.  So, why not an alternative outlet for self-expression, one that steers clear of Parliament and republican brotherhoods?  As the play’s protagonist Willy Hayes declares: “It’s not political.  It’s just theatre.”  But, really, one may ask: can the two be separated?  Can art be without an agenda?

Now, I admit: at first I was certain that the character of Willy was a fictional William Butler Yeats, while his protest-loving patroness, Eva St. John, was of course Lady Gregory, stewardess of the Irish Literary Revival. After all, the Abbey opened its door with Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan. And the women, well, both are cultural paradoxes; they’re daughters of Anglo-Irish privilege longing to “save” the impoverished lives of Dublin’s working class with a grand institution of the dramatic arts.  They’re the kind of women who, after inquiring about the rate of your rented apartment, respond with a “That’s it?”—as if half of your monthly salary is a pittance to them.  On the one hand the lowly loathe them, yet sometimes they’re forced to think: “Maybe they’re not so bad.”  In spite of their pomp and presumption, they seem to care about the Northsiders—the notoriously wealth-starved citizens who populate the land on the “wrong” side of the Liffey River—and perhaps “seem to” is enough.

After doing some research, I discovered the truth behind Dublin by Lamplight. Willy is West’s portrayal of producer William Fay, who along with his thespian brother, Frank, formed a touring company called W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company.  And Eva is Annie Horniman, an aspiring theater manager with gold-lined pockets and a friend of the Irish Literary Theatre, which was founded by no other than Yeats, Gregory, and playwright and political/cultural activist Edward Martyn (who must be the inspiration for the flamboyant, Nervous Nelly character, Martyn).  So, I was wrong, but hey, I learned something.

This is part of what makes West’s play so alluring. He unearths the facts that have been buried by the “big names” and their accomplishments.  You know, people like Yeats, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and actually—and this is a rarity among most poets and playwrights—sold books.  Lady Gregory is a bit more obscure, but her estate known as Coole Park is now a government-owned park in Ireland and it continues to be one of County Galway’s main attractions, thanks to the “autograph tree” inscribed by the likes of Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, and others.  But the Fay brothers, after working with the Abbey actors for four plus years, had a falling-out with the Abbey’s management and fled to the United States in 1908.   While Horniman, after purchasing the property for the actual edifice, moved back to England; as a British socialite, one might guess that she was fonder of Irish culture when admiring it from across the Channel. What West has done for these people, whose names have slipped from the pages of history, is rather endearing.  He has given them their “time to shine,” so to speak.  He has illuminated their characters for 21st Century theatergoers.

Etymologists speculate that the word “vaudeville” comes from the French phrase “voix de ville,” or the “voice of the city.”  In a way, West is finally giving William and Frank Fay and Annie Horniman their posthumous freedom of speech.  What would they have said about the Abbey, and about the sociopolitical climate of 1904 Dublin?  And is their contribution representative of the collective voice of the entire city?  It’s also important to know that Dublin by Lamplight debuted in 2004, shortly after the centennial celebration of Bloomsday, the day—June 16, 1904—on which James Joyce’s beloved epic novel Ulysses took place.  The tongues of Dubliners were flapping with all that is Joycean—what that man did for Ireland and their position on the literary map.  To me, it almost feels like West had his own agenda.  Did he want the Ulysses-induced Dubliners to remember the other pivotal event in Irish culture that occurred in 1904 (actually, and not fictionally, occurred that is)?  I think so.  I think West had an agenda, one that was veiled in humor, but an agenda nonetheless.

Maybe it’s like Yakov Bok says in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer: “There is no such thing as an apolitical man, especially an Irishman.”  OK, well, it’s really “especially a Jew” that Malamud writes, but I think this new version works just as well.

Dublin by Lamplight will be at 59E59 Theaters until Sunday, October 2nd. www.59e59.org.

Upon entering the Robert Moss Theater for a viewing of The Movement Workshop Group’s (MWG) presentation of Wanderlust, I had a flashback. It was the damndest thing. I was instantly transported to middle school, my mind compiling a montage of after-school special videos. “Why were the people on stage forming a semi-circle?” I pondered. “And why did they look like they were going to tell me to ‘just say no,’ or ‘it’s OK to wait?’”

Maybe it was the statement hair styles, unforgiving denim, and gold lame; I mean, the place looked like an incubator for the 80s (I’m pretty sure Jon Cryer’s doppelganger was the guitar player. Note: “Pretty in Pink” Cryer, not “Two and a Half Men.”) All I know is that I’m glad I returned from my nostalgic trip through the awkward years, finally reentering reality as the house lights dimmed. For this show is no after-school special. Other than being part of The Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, “New York’s premiere eco-friendly, socially conscious theater festival,” the players don’t preach anything. They’re just a motley troupe of actors, dancers, and musicians doing what they love and, really, having fun.

Now, the MWG claims to produce only works of dance theater that “transport audiences and the company members to higher, more inspired psychic states.” That’s a bit a bold; I didn’t feel spiritually elevated after leaving the theater, but director Leslie Guyton and her cast have certainly created a serendipitous atmosphere. The girl in gold lame, for example, is called Cosmos, and she cavorts about the stage swirling slivers of sparkling tissue paper on Characters A, B, C, and D. She’s creating scenarios for them—happenstance introductions and “accidental” rendezvous (at least they appear to be coincidences to oblivious pawns). You know the routine: girl wakes up on a folding table, explores her surroundings like a dumbfounded Eve, all alone until her Adam pas de bourrées onto the scene from the sideline. They both go googly-eyed, love at first sight. Then, suddenly, girl meets another guy, and Adam’s cast away. But wait, that’s not all: another girl cartwheels in to propose a triangular dynamic—of lust really, not love.

Maybe that’s where the title comes from, for the Characters aren’t exactly world travelers. They never leave their known world—neither physically, nor figuratively. Rather, it’s their sexual interest that is wayward. It’s their lust that is wandering. As for love? Are the initial feelings of attraction and emotional attachment between our Eve and Adam preserved throughout? Well, I’m not going to give it away, but what I will say is that if the premise of Wanderlust doesn’t intrigue you, the music should. The songs are original and the violinist, the globetrotting Josh Henderson, is phenomenal. Why the program dubs him as “AKA Justin Bieber,” I have no idea; his talent surpasses that of the teeny bopper and he’s not creepy, which is an added bonus.

Overall, I would predict that the 20-something Guyton has a boundless future ahead of her. What’s most impressive is that the choreography and soundtrack is all from scratch. While there is a thick coating of fairy dust on this particular piece, I hope that—and I believe that she will—dare to venture into more adventurous territory for her upcoming projects.

WANDERLUST will be playing at the Robert Moss Theater from June 5th until June 25th. For tickets please visit: http://www.planetconnectionsfestivity.com/ And for more information about the show: http://movementworkshopgroup.org/.

For some, anyway. But not for Maggie Brodie, the tortured soul of Douglas Maxwell’s “The Promise,” now showing at 59E59 Theater. Although the one-woman play is officially a Tartan Week event, for Maggie plaid is irrelevant; pride is not something that you can wash and wear. Rather, it is a token that can be inherited like a string of pearls or her father’s favorite tailoring shears (aka “The Persuader”). So you won’t see Maggie in earth tones. Instead, she’ll be dressed in gray—slinky skirt, jeweled cardigan—nearly monochromatic except for the shoes. They’re red, patent leather magnets for the eyes, and as you stare at their spiked heels, you think: “It takes a certain kind of woman to wear shoes like that.”

What it takes is fire, a brazenness that one wouldn’t expect to see in a snowy-haired , “twice-retired” school teacher. One might label her a spinster—an unwed, lonesome woman whose life is so fitting for a monologue. Marm, however, she is not. Maggie wields her sexuality like Montgomery Clift hangs his holster: slung around her hips, swiveling with each click of her step. Sex is what she’s good at it. She knows how to make a man tremble, how to make him scream, and she imagines that the trail of her bedroom endeavors is littered with a broken heart or two. Love was never an attraction for Maggie, for the only people she had ever loved disappeared in one way or another.  Her father, though, he never left.  He cut and stripped her psyche until it couldn’t be stitched back together. Bury your scars with booze and hide them beneath a cover of pride. That’s what she took from him.

She took it all the way to London, too, even after the incident that should have erased every trace of self-importance that she had once possessed.  It was her first “retirement”—the word an innocuous euphemism, a nod to Maggie’s crooked sense of humor (dismissed and outcast would be a more appropriate way to describe Maggie’s first bout with teaching).  Still, even after being vilified by the Scottish press, Maggie was able to pull herself back up on those heels and find a new job in the big English city.  Pride, you see, is immune to slander.

After thirty years in the classroom, minding the naïve “little Tragedies,” she had no intention of returning to work. But, when asked to fill-in as a substitute for a first grade class, she accepts the position.  Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision, for despite the headmaster’s jocular allusions to Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Jean Brodie—the acclaimed Scottish novel about a teacher and her favorite students—our Brodie, Miss Maggie, is far beyond her most flourishing years; in fact, she’s at her wit’s end, unraveling on stage. Yet, something remarkable happens that makes us doubt our initial judgment: a six-year-old student walks into the classroom on the second day, a Somalian girl whose Anglicized name is Rosie. She’s wearing red shoes, as well, and as Maggie studies her face, she sees her own reflection. While she can’t explain it, Maggie wonders if that’s what she looked like at that age: arms crossed, chin jutted—defiant, yet petrified.

This is the day that we relive with Maggie and it’s a peculiar—if not melodramatic—one, to say the least.  Rosie, we learn, is an elective mute.  The people of her community claim that she is possessed by devils, and in order to show respect for Rosie’s culture and circumstances, the headmaster informs Maggie that a shaman—along with his posse of sycophants—is to conduct a ceremony in the classroom (by “ceremony,” the headmaster means “exorcism”).  Maggie is appalled, but as a sign of late-onset maturity, she attempts to quell her rage—but to no avail.  As the performance proceeds, something ignites within the older woman.  The children are crying and the shaman, Mr. Waddad, is making a spectacle of Rosie who seems unfazed by the cacophony of chants, steeled in her silence.  Maggie orders the visitors to leave her classroom immediately.  The headmaster hears the commotion, rushes in and apologizes for Maggie’s behavior on behalf of the entire school system.  Xenophobic on account of her age, he explains.  She’s just not used to the modern, progressive educational environment.

As Maggie hides in the restroom, trying to cool her anger, she sees that Rosie has followed.  The girl motions to a stall, leading Maggie in: it seems that she wants to show her something.  Maggie recognizes the fact that if another teacher finds them, she will be in even more trouble.  Alas, she takes the risk.  She is enchanted by this quiet creature.  Rosie lifts herself up, placing one red shoe on each side of the toilet seat.  Slowly, she raises her skirt, scoots her underpants down below her knees and reveals her secret.  Maggie’s heart sinks at the sight and then, miraculously, Rosie speaks.  She trusts Maggie.  Somehow she senses that Maggie is the only one who can understand.

The details of Rosie’s story are never unveiled, but what we do know is that she is a chosen one—a demonized child—and according to Waddad, was desperately “in need” of a procedure.  Its end results are so horrifying that Maggie surprises herself; without hesitation, she ponders kidnapping the girl, loving her as her own, bestowing her pride upon the future generation.   And then she makes a promise, words of hope that Rosie could never forget.

Just before the lights go down, Maggie encounters Mr. Waddad.  She can see that he’s attracted to her fire.  She inches closer until the two stand squarely, shoulder to shoulder.  “It starts as a comforting thing,” she thinks aloud, “A man and a girl.  Could be a father and a daughter.  A pat on the shoulder.”

In the end, Maggie Brodie does a bit of persuading herself—a sort of persuasion that the audience hadn’t anticipated; even Maggie admits that it’s “overdone.”  She simultaneously redeems herself for the sins of her past while condemning herself.  You could call Maggie a lot of things—deeply disturbed, pitiable, a criminal—but you could never call her a liar.  Maggie will forever keep a promise.  She’ll gather her secrets, her pride, and her red shoes, and she’ll carry them all straight to the grave.

So, in a nutshell, on this Tartan Saturday—go ahead, wear your plaid and drink your pints of Bellhaven.  But, if you’re looking for something different, something darker—incendiary even—go see “The Promise.”  After all, it has everything that Burns’s Tam O’Shanter has: alcohol, seduction, the word “cutty sark,” blind pride, and much, much more.

Warning: Nowhere in Haunted is Stephen’s line actually uttered.  But it’s there, hovering in silence.  There are references to Othello and Hamlet, Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night, and Rudyard Kipling’s short story, Them; yet, it’s the unsung Ulysses that has the greatest presence.  Jack and Gladys Berry share a tragedy with Leopold and Molly Bloom: the loss of a child and the subsequent crumbling of a marriage.

As blissful newlyweds, Jack and Gladys conceived a child in the throes of passion, a son or daughter whose funeral arrived before its birth—a bloody sheet the only evidence of it ever having existed.  Jack never verbalizes the devastation, but Gladys, played by the vivacious Brenda Blethyn (two-time Academy Award-nominee for Little Voice and Secrets & Lies), can’t go a day without mentioning the loss that forever changed their lives.

An Englishwoman who is married to an Anglo-Irishman, Gladys is, presumably, Protestant.  Yet she is steeped in a guilt that is characteristically Catholic.  As a woman who idolized the lifestyles of royalty—always “[dreaming] of making an entrance,” according to Jack—she named their bedroom after a palace.  And Gladys believes that it is because they “went to ‘Versailles’ when [they] shouldn’t have,” during her pregnancy, that she had a miscarriage.  “You couldn’t get enough of me,” laments Gladys, “in those days…my blush-rose days.”  It is as if Gladys is insinuating: why couldn’t we be celibate for nine measly months—were we not satisfied?  God was giving them a baby and it wasn’t enough.  They still couldn’t quell their carnal desires.  After that, “we aged,” says Gladys and the blush-rose days ended.  The marriage “fell,” Jack concurs, as if their commitment to love one another had been tainted; it had broken from grace.

Everything was different after that.  Heartbroken and ashamed, the intimacy between Mr. and Mrs. Berry disintegrated.  Jack had an affair with a woman named Greta and Gladys was aware of it while it was happening.  She also knew that it hadn’t ended because her husband had a moral epiphany.  It had ended because the novelty had worn off for Greta; she saw the “real” Jack, and although he came from a wealthy family, his mother had left him very little.  Yes, he spoke grandly, imitating aristocracy like some sort of 20^th Century dandy—but Jack is a dreamer, not a doer.  He wasn’t going to take Greta anywhere she hadn’t already been.

Whether or not it was a conscious comparison—and, it may well have been seeing that O’Brien has written two books on Joyce—Jack, the casual thespian, is playing the role of Molly Bloom.  Of course, he’s a man, and instead of penciling in afternoon trysts with Dublin’s sleazy musician-slash-boxing manager, Blazes Boylan, Jack is cavorting about Blackheath, London with Greta, a woman whom one can guess is a textile trader of sorts (“She didn’t want your linen, your socks, your merchandise,” retorts Gladys during one of the Berrys’ red-faced squabbles).  It’s Gladys who is Leopold, Molly’s husband, who “could never like [sex] again”—not after the death of their eleven-day-old son, Rudy.  As a character who is often described as Jewish (even though his mother is Catholic), Leopold may not be experiencing a guilt like that of Gladys.  It seems that he is not so much concerned with the sin of sex, but rather he has a fear of being impotent, in terms of fathering another son.  What if he and Molly conceive a baby and it’s another girl?  The Bloom family name, after Leopold, would vanish.  And, if it were a girl, he’d still be utterly devastated if she were to follow Rudy to the grave.

Readers of Ulysses will never know if Molly continued to cheat on Leopold with Blazes Boylan—or with any other suitors, for that matter.  What we do know, however, is that in O’Brien’s version, Jack continues in his charades as he courts another woman.  But, it’s confusing now.  He’s much too rickety—and, quite frankly, loopy—to be the same faux Knight in Shining Armor whom he tried to be for Greta.  So, when wide-eyed Hazel, a convent school elocution teacher, walks into his life, he can’t decide if he wants to be her lover or her paternal companion.  After all, she never knew her father, and that just may be the nightmare from which Hazel is trying to awake.

Of the three characters, Hazel’s history is the most veiled, and although she is pretty, her mystery may be the hook that lures Jack.  She reveals herself in morsels.  She says that she lived in an “institution” until she was five-years-old, and back then she was known as “Mary.”  We never find out what type of institution Hazel is alluding to, and perhaps she doesn’t know herself—memory can be awfully repressive.  It could be an orphanage, or her mother could have been in a mental home.  Maybe she was born in a Magdalene asylum, her mother a “fallen woman”—impregnated before marriage—and young Hazel was shipped off to England and put up for adoption.  But, we never receive the satisfaction of an answer.

After that foggy spell, Hazel has only memories of her mother, an Irishwoman who sold lace garments at the fairs.  What she wants from Jack is seemingly innocent.  He tells Hazel that Gladys is dead; she has no idea that she is, in fact, dismantling a home.  All Hazel knows is that this man cares for her, and since her mother is no longer alive, he is the only one.  Jack knows it, too, which is why he sells Gladys’s hard-earned possessions, as well as a few luxury items that his contemptible mother did not pawn at a consignment shop.  With the reaping, Jack buys Hazel a seaside apartment and insists that she try on—and consider keeping—his wife’s wedding gown.  It’s unclear whether this apartment is a pied-à-terre in Jack’s eyes, or if he envisions his actions as “providing,” lending a safe home for a humble young lady.  Certainly, the textiles that Greta was trading could have been lace, and in that case, could Hazel be Jack’s daughter?  Or, is that over-thinking it?  Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

With Jack, there are sweet spots and there are downright disturbances (i.e., the wedding gown incident).  He’s a dizzying character, if not frustrating.  But, portrayed by Niall Buggy (Brideshead Revisited, Mamma Mia!), he is tolerable, and at times, the audience may find themselves empathizing (and, perhaps, sympathizing) with the ridiculous sod.  Newcomer Beth Cooke, as Hazel, is a natural, delightful as the clueless catalyst for the final showdown between Mr. and Mrs. Berry.  Still, with all of that said, it is Blethyn whom you will remember.  Every year, we hear about Helen Mirren—how she is the British, “still fresh” 60-something actress who is flawless in her every performance.   But, Blethyn is just as talented.  The non-UK media should be shedding more light on Blethyn.  Watch her.  From her serious, Oscar-nominated roles, to Mrs. Bennett in Joe Wright’s rendition of Pride & Prejudice, to my favorite—playing alongside Craig Ferguson as a pot-cultivating widow in Saving Grace—she can play anything, and always with a fire.

As for O’Brien, she is, indeed, in her element.  The Irish woman who fled the green island like so many Wild Geese before her—Joyce, Beckett, and even McCourt—she writes Irish better when she’s away, where she can look at her motherland through a more worldly lens.  While the story is set in her current home of England, the characters’ words are nevertheless riddled with Celtic lyricism.  The dialogue contains questions with no answers, just segues into tangential topics.  The architecture of the play is non-linear, and there is absolutely—even if she tried to hide it—evidence of a Catholic upbringing.  Everything is real, a writer showing her true self.  Of course, this leaves for a loose, untidy ending.  As unsettling as that may be, at least it’s honest.  And, anyway, if Joyce doesn’t give us a hint as to what happens to the Blooms at the close of Ulysses, then why should O’Brien tell us what happens with the Berrys?

Haunted will be playing at 59E59 Theaters until January 2^nd: www.59e59.org

Mistakes Were Made, Craig Wright’s one man play starring Michael Shannon has just been extended until February 27th at The Barrow Street Theater. Shannon is mesmerizing to watch at full speed for 90 minutes with no intermission. He plays a theater producer trying to scramble to put together a Broadway show about the French revolution while dealing with a messy divorce and a situation involving sheep in the middle east. The only other characters on stage with him are his pet fish (performed by a feisty puppet) and his assistant whose voice patches in up to nine phone lines in at a time. Jumping back and forth between different phone lines, Shannon juggles conversations with up to eleven different people (including the fish) at a time. Mistakes Were Made is a funny, entertaining, well-written play but the big draw is the immense acting talent of Shannon- he was nominated for an Academy Award last year and delivered the most haunting performance this season on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. He is rumored to be playing the Iceman, contract killer Richard Kuklinski, in an up-coming film and is starring in James Franco’s debut directing feature. Twenty bucks says he wins the Academy Award in the next five years.

Photo: Ari Mintz

The Project, presented by Jazz Choreography Enterprises (JCE), is a showcase of fourteen distinct dances, ranging in style from the classic to the futuristic—the predictable to the unexpected.  Think of artistic directors Marian Hyun and Merete Muenter as curators: in order to exhibit the multi-faceted nature of jazz dance, they have selected pieces which feature choreographers and performers of various generations, cultures and levels of experience.  With the hope of keeping your attention, I won’t gloss over every routine; rather, I will present a smattering of the dances in order to give you a feel for its substance and scope, saving the “medalists” for last.

The evening begins with “Rat Pack,” a glitzy number that harkens Atlantic City circa the 1950s, when dapper crooners like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. charmed the crowds at Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club.  Choreographed by Sue Samuels and Kelly Carrol, it’s fun and Fosse-like, though it won’t satisfy a discerning dance pallet.  This is fine, I suppose, since the Rats are merely an amuse-bouche for the thirteen-course meal to follow.  Skipping down the set list, we come to Christopher Liddell’s “Adavu Tandava,” a dance that evolves out of a rather sprightly—and, therefore, paradoxical—session of meditation.  Hyun plays a yoga guru with a following of four equally limber students.  The steps are uncomplicated and seemingly rudimentary, but the performance as a whole is as soothing as a cup of honeyed green tea.

Before advancing to the highlight reel, I’d like to mention “Mission: Impossible,” a cheeky romp-around choreographed by , or “Luigi,” as he his known to colleagues and admirers.  The dance features three fearless women, stealthily executing acrobatics to the tune of one of the coolest theme songs in Pop World history.  While it wasn’t one of my favorite pieces, I was impressed by this 85-year-old Luigi seated front row and center—unofficial “King for the Night.”  At first, I had no clue as to who he was, but after skimming through the program I found what I had been missing: Luigi is a legend, internationally known as a “Father of Modern Dance.”  He danced in such films as Annie Get Your Gun and Singin’ in the Rain, and later he taught the greats of both the stage and film: Twyla Tharp, Liza Minnelli, John Travolta and many more.  Here we were, I thought, sitting in a 235-seat theater, with a man who was granted a nickname by none other than Gene Kelly.

Modern status aside, I’d be curious to know how Luigi feels about Muenter’s “The Marathon.”  Five clumsy characters run in circles, occasionally toppling over one another as the chorus of Propellerheads’s “Velvet Pants” thumps through the house speakers:

He’s wearing velvet pants

That’s why she talks to him

He’s wearing velvet pants

That’s why she talks to him

(Repeat four more times).

Now, if Project were the Olympics of jazz dance, this routine would be my pick for the bronze.  Please know that I am not proud of my choice.  However, in my defense, just picture the sight to which the audience was subjected: Three girls pretending to be out-of-shape rock Lululemon gear (as if the precious duds could transform them into first-string athletes) and pump their legs, their heels beating against butt cheeks like pistons with each stride.  One guy, who looks like a poor man’s Ashton Kutcher, is fabulously gangly in sweat-wicking Adidas pants.  He is, obviously, the man in the “velvet pants,” yet it is the pocket-sized man—in the sunny tank tap and unfortunate red shorts—who steals the show.  He winks and pats “Ashton’s” rear-end as he files into the formation of this jog-slash-dance. Silly yes, but I would hope that even the most traditionalist jazz dance fans would appreciate the ridiculousness of “The Marathon.”  After all, the trademark of Singin’ in the Rain is of course the scene when Kelly and friends, enrobed in yellow slickers, cavort in an unbelievably impromptu dance.

Going home with the silver, we have “Palpitations,” choreographed by Liz Piccoli.  A triptych dance, each panel features a different couple, theme and song.  The first is a hippie frolic, the last an impish game of cradle-robbing.  While both sets feature dancers of remarkable talent, it is the center panel—the salty meat of the sandwich—that is the culprit for our irregular heartbeats.  The whole thing reeks of naughtiness.  He is shirtless, baring what appears to be an eight-pack, his linen pants hanging from the hooks of his pelvis.   His head is swathed in a kerchief, a style that very few men can pull off—and he does it, like some sort of sexy urban pirate.  His partner, a woman whose body is a perfect match, is nobody’s sweetheart.  Veiled by nothing more than a second-skin chemise, she and Sexy Urban Pirate tempt each other into slapping embraces that are sensual, almost violent.  There are certain moments when it almost seems as if they are gymnasts in Cirque du Soleil; they entwine, spinning themselves into what seems to be their own cocoon, somersaulting and coalescing into impossible positions.  “I’d love to kill you with a kiss,” sings the sultry Kate Melua, “I’d like to strike you down with bliss.” I’m not going to lie: I wanted to see that happen.  It would have been spectacular.  Then, after I thought about what I had just wished for, I wanted to go to confession.

So, thank God for the golden one: Svea Schneider’s “Perfect Prototype,” a wonderfully weird dance in which I reveled without a shred of guilt.  As disturbing as it may seem on the surface (think: dissembled mannequins), there’s something refreshingly wholesome underlying the entire charade.  After all, every kid who has ever been in a department store has wondered, at some point or another, “How should I reposition these mannequins to make this window display funnier?”  If only moms could be distracted—but, of course, they are invulnerable to foolery.  Therefore the dream has only thrived in the minds of children.  Until now, that is.

“Prototype” begins obscurely, so überly European.  All is muted except for the electronica, bumping through the theater, which for a few seconds feels more like a night club.  Gradually, a blue light casts shadows on the seven figures onstage.  They’re identical—plus or minus an inch, a pound or two.  Everything is black: bobs, bangs, turtlenecks, leggings.  It’s like watching an artsy version of “Sprockets,” the Saturday Night Live skit in which Mike Myers plays a German talk show host named Dieter.  Only here, there is no talking.  Fortunately, hilarity still ensues—and it’s a smarter, quirkier brand of comedy than that of Mr. Myers.

For the first minute of the dance, I was unaware of the mannequins.  I thought they were just women who happened to be seated.  Everyone was moving robotically— perhaps the sitters’ part of the dance had yet to start.  This sounds stupid—obviously, and I realize that—but I truly believe that I was not the only one who was flabbergasted when the five fleshed figures began plucking the appendages from the two synthetic figures.  It’s as if the actual dancers don’t have ball-and-socket joints; their kinesiology mimics that of fiberglass and hinges.  Their humanity becomes visible only when they create poses for the mannequins.  They’re creative, amusing and occasionally inappropriate.  Guaranteed: every child in the audience was rejoicing (inside).  Some, maybe, were squirming with jealousy.

And that, readers, is the New York Jazz Choreography Project in a nutshell.   If the JCE’s goal is “to present choreography in a variety of jazz styles,” then they’ve certainly succeeded.  They’re next Project will take place in March of 2011.  Check out their website for more information on performances, classes and workshops: www.jazzchoreographyenterprises.org.

That’s where playwright/actress Elisabeth Gray comes in.  After all, it’s about time the legendary literary figure and her fatal kitchen appliance be separated.  Gray’s daring creation, “Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath,” now showing at 59E59 Theaters, aims to convince the audience that Plath is not a two-dimensional poster girl for suicide.  She is frazzled and aching with depression, that is true; but, at the same time, she is also stunningly brilliant, loving, and witty as hell.  In other words, she is all over the place.  She is a full-fleshed human being.

Contrary to the title’s indication, Plath’s name is never mentioned on stage.  Instead, Gray presents to us Esther Greenwood, heroine of The Bell Jar, and Olson, the personified oven.  If you have read the novel, then you know that while Esther is not a mirror image of Plath, the plot does include events that emulate true occurrences in Plath’s life.  The coveted (yet disappointing) editorial internship with a snooty fashion magazine, a failed suicide attempt at the age of 20, the consequential institutionalization and electroshock therapy sessions—Esther and Plath are almost identical in these respects.  So, although we have to be conscious of the fact that “Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath” is fiction, it is impossible to look at Esther without seeing Plath.  And that’s fine.  It’s very much the point.

When we first meet Esther (played by Gray), it is February 11, 1963.  She is in the kitchen of her London flat, hunched over, her head swallowed whole by Olson’s square orifice.  She has just entered Stage 3 of hypoxia (or, widespread deprivation of oxygen in the bloodstream): vivid hallucination.  The dream-world version of Esther uncurls herself from out of the oven, her ruby dress and matching pumps gleaming—all is prim except for her hair, which stands up on root as if charged by lightning.  Looping about the room, her mind is slowly broiling into oblivion when suddenly her eyes fix upon Olson, whose stovetop burners are blinking wildly.  He begins to communicate with Esther as if mimicking Charlie Brown’s teacher: “wha-wha-whaa-whan-wha.”  The oven wants to know why—why did she believe that death was her only resort, her mind’s only chance at tranquility?  “Because,” she answers, with agitation, “life was putrid, Olson, and pointless and painful.  Life should be better than that…Life should be perfect, as perfect as a poem.”

Just then, a video sequence is projected onto the cloth backdrop, shuffling photos of Esther, her husband Ned Pews (a blatant caricature of Plath’s own husband, British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes), their two smiling children and a so-called “Babylonian whore” who could pass as Esther’s twin (Gray’s depiction of Hughes’s mistress, Assia Wevill).  The montage flickers on like an awkward home video only to be halted with the flash of a title card: “The Better Tomes and Gardens Show.”  Now our minds are fogged.  But Esther, as if she knew this would happen, assumes the role of TV hostess.  Today, she declares, the menu consists of a Fifty-Two Liar Lasagna, Black Tar Brain Soufflé and a Perfect Life.  Cue the invisible studio audience “oohs” and “ahs,” and off Esther goes, reeling through her post-Bell Jar memories in the tidy format of a domestic queen’s cooking show.

For those of you who are Plath enthusiasts, you can probably guess the ingredients for these recipes.  For those of you who are not as familiar with the author, well, it goes something like this: Esther’s stellar academic record earns her a free ride to the most prestigious graduate school in England, there she meets the mysterious yet dashing Ned, they have a whirlwind marriage, pop out one daughter and one son and then Ned decides to play house with another woman.  Lasagna: done.  On to the next dish, Esther sees her dreams crumble, she retreats to a state of depression similar to that of the Bell Jar at which point she decides it’s “The End.”  And there’s your Brain Soufflé.

In a nutshell, this play portrays the final decade of Plath’s life, which may not seem original, but Gray absolutely deserved the Edinburgh Fringe Festival First Award (for “Innovative and Outstanding New Writing”) that she won in 2007.  It’s refreshing to be introduced to the humorous side of Plath.  I had always imagined there was one, as there is a pulse of sarcasm in her writing, but Plath has never been laugh-out-loud funny, as she is here.  When Gray reenacts Esther’s intercepted phone call with the Babylonian whore, the crowd all but erupts; a woman in the front row cackled as if she were in the comforts of her own kitchen.  Esther claims that the Babylonian whore tried to disguise herself as Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “I am a literary friend in London,” says the home-wrecker.  The rocky Russian accent is admirable in its own right, but what’s even more impressive is the fact that Gray has done her research.  At Smith College, Plath wrote her thesis on (the real) Dostoyevsky: Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky’s Novels.  The Babylonian whore, oddly enough, is a sassy wink at Plath.

And if Gray knows that tidbit of her subject’s history, then she most certainly knows that Plath had planned on producing a sequel to her only novel.  In 1970, after the seven-year ban had been lifted, Aurelia Plath wrote a letter to Sylvia’s editor at Harper & Row.  In it, Aurelia recalls one of the last conversations that she had with her daughter.  Sylvia had attempted to explain her motives for The Bell Jar:

What I’ve done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it’s a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown…I’ve tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar.  My second book will show the same world as seen through the eyes of health.

As we know, Sylvia never got around to that second book; in her last days, she was busy hammering out the dark, confessional poems of her Ariel collection, each one like a nail in her coffin.  Maybe it would have been nice to see an optimistic, complacent Sylvia.  Really, though, even if she did wish to be that person, it wasn’t who she was.  She was never going to see through a “lens of health,” so to speak.  The recipe for a Perfect Life is quite simple as there’s only one step: reduction.  Strip oneself of one’s passions, aspirations, and, well, happiness and you’ve got it.  How could that be perfect?  It would only fall flat.

What Gray has done is take the realistic route: she produces her own potboiler of a sequel for Plath—on stage—as it would have been, featuring the same Esther, enduring her adult life beneath that same imprisoning bell jar.  In that respect, I think that if Plath had lived long enough to write her follow-up to The Bell Jar, Gray’s edition may still be more satisfying. Because, with all of her joking aside, Gray doesn’t skimp out on the upsetting details; she doesn’t alter the ending.  For the most part, the story rings true.

My only complaint is that, before Esther dies, she repeats: “He’ll find me here, he’ll find me here.”  As a Plath fan, I have always wanted to believe that it wasn’t Hughes (or Pews) who pushed her off the edge.  As fragile as she was, I don’t think one person could have broken her.  In her poem, “Lady Lazarus,” Plath says: “I have done it again/One year in every ten…And I a smiling woman./I am only thirty./And like a cat I have nine times to die./This is Number Three…I do it so it feels like hell./I do it so it feels real.”  I can relate to those critics who speculate that perhaps Plath was convinced that the suicide attempts—an extreme form of self-destruction—were a source of creativity.  They were sort of like muses—twisted muses—yet inspirational all the same.  I realize that this may be a naïve interpretation, but if she was in fact “confessional” in her poetry, she had 6 more tries—with or without her husband.  And with each attempt, we’d have more novels, more poems, more knowledge of Plath.  She could have become the U.S. Poet Laureate, and maybe just then, people would respond: “Who is Sylvia Plath?  Why, she was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.”

May you rest in peace, little oven.

“Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath” will be at 59E59 Theaters until October 31^st, 2010. www.59E59.org

Springtime, 1916.  Irish expatriate and soldier-turned-outlaw Trooper O’Hara is adrift in the baring woods of Southern Ohio.  Thirty-some years away from home, Trooper’s leather face is furrowed, the fire of his hair all but extinguished by the darkness he has seen; he is a man changed by America.  Having crossed the mark of middle age, Trooper is ready to end his odyssey, to bid goodbye to his fellow fugitives and ride the Eastertide back to County Sligo, Ireland.  There is just one thing he must do before he leaves: visit White Woman Street, where he will implore the mercy of a certain ghost.  For only then, he believes, can he reconcile with his conscience, “wipe the slate clean and go back to being what he was.”

So begins Sebastian Barry’s White Woman Street, now showing at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Chelsea.  At its heart, it is a classic tale of atonement, overlaid with themes of exile, loss of innocence and the deception of memory.  While the audience can see the impossibility of Trooper’s dream, realizing that there is truth to that old saying “you can never go home,” Trooper, for all of his experience, is blinded by a self-preserving naïveté.  It is not that he is unprepared for the journey ahead, but that “home” no longer exists. Tucked away in the American wilderness and oblivious to worldly events, Trooper is unaware of the recent insurrection in Dublin, a bloody rebellion led by Irish republicans against British rule. Old Ireland persists in his mind alone; and even if Trooper sees home again, he is unlikely to recognize it.

Still, in at least one way, Barry seems to suggest that Trooper has never left home.  Upon his arrival in the States, Trooper enlisted in the American military and was sent to fight in the Indian Wars.  The morbid similarities between the Irish and the Native Americans is lost to no one, including Trooper, who coldly remarks, “Ever see an Indian town—the tent towns? Put me in mind of certain Sligo hills, and certain men in certain Sligo hills.  The English had done for us, I was thinking, and now we’re doing for the Indians.  You asking Trooper why he never killed?  I seen plenty killed.  I don’t say I didn’t.” It’s not that America is so different from Ireland; it’s that here, Trooper finds himself on the other side of the gun.  Although he never murdered with his own hands, as the play unfolds we learn of one death in particular—that of a beautiful Indian girl, from a brothel on White Woman Street—for which Trooper blames himself.  Guilt is the reason why he left the army.  And he is not so much hiding from the law as he is from his past.

In all honesty, this is not Mr. Barry’s best work.  But, the man is one of the most accomplished wordsmiths of our century—a poet, novelist, and of course, playwright—and, thus, one can overlook this fumble.  After all, White Woman Street made its debut back in 1992, and it was one of Barry’s earliest attempts at the style known as “interlocking monologues.” At times, the pieces of this play don’t exactly “click,” but if the theatergoer is willing to jam them together, the resulting picture is well worth the extra exertion of imagination.  For anyone who had the privilege of watching The Pride of Parnell Street (which made it’s way to 59E59 Theaters last September), or has read his novel The Secret Scripture (short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2008), it’s obvious that Barry has since mastered this artform.  Just think of White Woman Street as “A Portrait of Sebastian Barry As a Young Man.”

White Woman Street will be at the Irish Repertory Theater until June 27th.

Cast and Crew of Parwaz Playhouse’s debut production, Glass.

New Yorkers often forget that the theater is a treasure. For when you live amongst the fixed twinkle of Broadway, the art of mimicking life can become as repetitive as a bodega or a yellow taxi. But the theater is not something that we should take for granted; it is that one place where we can go to see ourselves through our eyes only, and not through the eyes of the media, which are too often narrowed by societal constraints.

Rest assured, we now know that two young men (both by the name of Imran) have the enlightened-mindedness to not be so jaded. Co-founders of Parwaz Playhouse, the first major Pakistani-American theater company, Imran Javaid and Imran Sheikh have created a self-described “sanctuary” for the creative people within their cultural community. This month, the Playhouse presented its first project, Glass, at the annual Downtown Urban Theater Festival in the East Village. The festival strives to promote “diversity in theater” by speaking “to a whole new generation whose lives defy categorizing along conventional lines.” Glass does just that; at DUTF, it was a hit with Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis alike. In fact, only three of the ten shows featured at the festival sold-out and Glass was one of them. The play, which debuted at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café back in November, is set in the editorial office of a newspaper in “a nation much like Pakistan.” Written by Javaid, Glass challenges the present and future states of its set nation by dexterously weaving a tapestry of political discussion, philosophical rumination, wry humor—and, yes—even a hearty dollop of badminton.  And the players of Parwaz do so, all of it, within a tight, 20-minute frame.  While all of the actors give commendable performances, it is Sheikh (portraying editor, Khalid) and Adeel Ahmed (copyeditor, Mohsin) who are particularly entertaining with their natural, needling banter.

Clearly, Javaid and Sheikh have embraced their status as pioneers for the Pakistani-American dramatic arts, and with such a honed focus, it’s hard to believe that they have only known each other for one year.  The two met during the production of Wajahat Ali’s Domestic Crusaders, a play about Muslim-Americans living in a post-9/11 world that was hailed by the New York Times, the BBC, Time magazine and Academy Award-winner, Emma Thompson.  After Crusaders, the Imrans became restless, ravenous to feed their people, who they feel have been theatrically-starved. Up until now, that is.

“You see,” explained Sheikh in an interview, “There is a rich history of artistic ability and intellectualism within [the Pakistani-American] community. So, through the medium of theater we will re-awaken that, and show it to the world. Good theater is a study of the human condition, we think. And there is a maelstrom of imagery of Pakistanis and Muslims in the media.” Unfortunately, that image is too often negative. And so, Sheikh adds, “It is nice to be able to shine a light through that and show us not necessarily as negative or positive, but just us as we are—to show that we are the same thinking, feeling, rational human beings as everyone else.”
That is the mission of the Parwaz Playhouse, its moniker a mirror for the troupe’s refreshingly romantic ideas.  The first part of the name is derived from a term which appears countless times within the ghazals, or lyrical poetry, of the modern Pakistani writer/philosopher/politician, Allama Iqbal.  In one ghazal, Iqbal writes: “Ascend oneself to the point where even God Himself asks you, a man, ‘Tell me, what is it that you desire?’” In another: “‘You are an eagle.  Your parwaz is among the mountains.’”  Well, the Playhouse, they want to be heard.  And their parwaz is among stages, scattered all across this twinkling city.  Don’t take your opportunity to see them for granted.

Although DUTF has come and gone, Parwaz isn’t taking the summer off. Currently, the company is working on a few films, as well as preparing for a full-length, 90-minute play scheduled for this Fall. More info here.

Despite the darkness surrounding the three main characters of Annie Baker’s newest play, The Aliens, the show sustains a playful levity throughout much of its less than two hour runtime.  Under Sam Gold’s direction, The Aliens is most alive when the two leads, a couple of thirty-something male vagabonds, and a seventeen-year-old restaurant employee about to do a stint as a counselor in training at a Jewish band camp, are seen struggling to negotiate their relationships.

This happens most explicitly at the end of the play’s first act when Evan (Dane Dehaan), a rising high school senior, joins his older, hippy-slacker new friends at a makeshift July 4^th literary salon on a picnic bench behind the Vermont restaurant where he works.  Scruffily bearded Jasper (Erin Gann), recently heartbroken, reads aloud from a Bukowski-inspired novel in which his protagonist fondly, if not narcissistically, recalls his girlfriend proclaiming him a genius.  When Jasper finishes reading, his best friend KJ (Michael Chernus) dances in celebration before hugging Jasper ebulliently. “Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.  Oh my god,” says KJ, praising his friend.  “That was really cool,” says Evan sincerely.  “That was really really cool.”

Jasper’s novel—a road story written in patches of purple prose—is not good, but we want it to be, just as KJ does. The scene works so well because these men are banding together against the dismal situations of their lives.  It is touching to see them fulfill one another’s emotional needs.  KJ needs to believe that Jasper is a great novelist, and Jasper needs KJ to believe it. It is a privilege to witness this odd friendship unfold before our eyes.

The scene’s intensity grows when Jasper won’t let KJ drink from Evan’s stolen bottle of peppermint schnapps and we learn that KJ has an alcohol problem.  “This is so fucking pointless,” shouts KJ.  “I could march over to the liquor store and buy whatever I want.  I’m thirty fucking years old!”  This conflict is compelling—there is a dangerous rift between the close friends.  The fear is that they might not be able to save one another.

When the play takes a surprising turn in the second act, however, the drama seems to lose its way. While still compelling, the characters make a bit less sense in the play’s second half, and we have less reason to care about them.

Nonetheless, all three performances are superb.  Most notably Michael Chernus as KJ captures just the right combination of innocence, wide-eyed enthusiasm and desperate sadness.

And one more thing is clear: Annie Baker writes lovely characters and lovely scenes. There are plenty of both in The Aliens.  Watching these three take care of one another is gratifying.  Baker finds subtle drama amongst unusual people, in surprising places and situations, where most of us wouldn’t think to look.

Written by Annie Baker and directed by Sam Gold, The Aliens is at the Rattlestick Theater from April 14th until May 23^rd.