A selection of what's happened on the Boston stages

Amazons (Robert Auletta) and The Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem (Charles Mee) -- These two one-acts are the maiden productions of a new theatre in Harvard Square, funded by deep-pockets human rights philanthropist Greg Carr.  The two plays are tongue-in-cheek satires about the anxieties of middle-class whites (the second by Charles Mee, that overwrought sampler otherwise known as a playwright), which means that they are dull, pointless, smug, and overcooked.  Thought great music by Neptune and soundscapes by Can't.

Animals and Plants (Adam Rapp) -- The next installation in the American Repertory Theatre's championing of this playwright, whose Sonata last year impressed a lot of people (and is on its way to New York).  The play is basically Pinter's Dumbwaiter by way of Shepherd's Fool For Love, with a lot of talk and philosophizing by three people stuck in a hotel room during a snow storm waiting to do a drug deal with someone called The Burning Man. Goes nowhere with linguistic fusillades, and takes a long time to get there.

Bash (Neil LaBute) -- Subtitled "The Latterday Plays," LaBute tries to make these cheesy revelations of supposedly great evil speak to greater moral concerns (after all, he is a Mormon, and Mormon culture wafts all through the work), but it's clear that he is simply after the thrill (as he does in his movies) of writing nasty stuff and getting away with it being considered art by those in the know.  Good directing by Jeffrey Mousseau, artistic director of Coyote Theatre, and strong acting by Bill Mootos, Laura Latreille, and Scott Barrow.

Boston Theatre Works Unbound -- This is the third year of readings of "new works by emerging playwrights."  Featured are plays by Olga Humphries, Kent Brown, Lavonne Mueler, Michael Folie, and Jamie Pachino.  Later this spring, BTW will do a revised version of Emily Mann's Meshugah (based on the short story by I.B. Singer). Mann has been "playwright in residence" with BTW this year.  Next year, BTW will open its season with The Laramie Project.

The Cider House Rules, Part I (adapted by Peter Parnell) -- At Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, the rough-hewn production gets it all right. Even if you've read the book and seen the movie and know what happens, you'll still end up really caring about how the story plays out.

Crave (Sarah Kane) -- Sarah Kane committed suicide at the age of 28, and up until that time her plays garnered both scandalous and sympathetic attention, and she was lionessized as an enfant terrible. Crave is not a play in any usual sense of that word -- it is what was once called a "tone poem," a dream-making choral rendition of her breakdown and self-release.  The four actors of the Nora Theatre Company who presented the piece were very well directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue, who created corporeal images with the actors' bodies that fleshed in Kane's gunpowder-packed words. 

Curse of the Bambino (David Kruh and Steve Bergman) -- A new musical  commissioned by the Lyric Stage Company, based on the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth in 1920 to the New York Yankees. Ambitious music by Bergman, rambling story by Kruh, good performances, especially by J.H. Williston as the Babe -- but what if you're not from Boston and couldn't care less what happened in the 1986 World Series?

Edward II (Christopher Marlowe) -- A generally pedestrian production by Pet Brick of Marlowe's play about a king who values his same-sex lover more than the perquisites of power (or who values the perquisites of power to the extent that he can use them to lavish gifts upon his lover).  The performers tried their best to work against a directing style that had little sense of shape and nuance.

Emerald City (John Kuntz) -- This well-known Boston-based actor and playwright takes the framing story of The Wizard Of Oz and uses it to give four characters his standard stew of angst, pop culture references, and tender oddities. The second act consists almost entirely of four monologues, which brings any theatrical energy to a complete and utter halt.  (There is a funny take off on the "going off to see the wizard" song done as a parody of Petula Clark's Downtown.) The script reads less like a drama and more like a collection of bits designed to make us feel charmed, vulnerable, and smirking all at the same time. But kudos to Joe Antoun, artistic director of Centastage, for continuing to champion theatre by Boston-based writers.

Knock, Knock (Jules Feiffer) -- This play should have been retired a long time ago, say, 1977, the year after it premiered. Lyric West tried its best CPR on this, but not much breath after a lot of hugging.

Manifest (Brian Silberman) -- A generally energetic production of the oh-so-earnest script -- a script so earnest that Silberman forgets most of the time to be theatrical, relying upon the horror of his material to carry it off. (Many Holocaust-based works do this -- but there is nothing inherently theatric about genocide.) Hats off to Lesley Chapman, director and Theatre Cooperative artistic director, and the cast for bringing life to the play.

One Flea Spare (Naomi Wallace) -- It has always escaped me why this play has gathered such raves, but the New Repertory production was sharp to look at and listen to, even if the content is less cleverly ghoulish than Wallace would like it to appear.

Snakebit (David Marshall Grant) -- What can you say about a play by an actor about -- surprise! -- a self-absorbed actor? By turns deft and obnoxious, the SpeakEasy production featured a good performance by Robert Pemberton.

Trust (Gary Mitchell) -- Generally good acting about this hollowed-out Protestant family in Northern Ireland (one not troubled by the Troubles), but it ends up being pretty much standard dysfunctional family fare. A nice departure, though, for Sugan Theatre Company for doing a play by an Irish playwright who is not Catholic and is not doing Talmudic readings (to mix the images a little) of the present state of Northern Irish fratricide.

.© 2001 Michael Bettencourt

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