Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging

Daniel Talbott’s ‘Slipping’ is the first LA production for the NYC company

The Off-Broadway theatre community isn’t a geographical location as much as a mental one, a notion that Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has embraced wholeheartedly as it expands its base all the way from New York’s West Village to Hollywood.

Slipping, the well-received play written and directed by Daniel Talbott, runs at the Lillian Theatre through May 5, marking the first Los Angeles production for the Obie-winning New York company. The goal is for Rattlestick – a compendium of well-trained artists unafraid to explore truths in challenging, occasionally controversial works – to further the creative dialogue between its members and the entertainment community-at-large.

“Rattlestick is not only thrilled to bring some of its innovative New York productions to Los Angeles audiences,” says Rattlestick Artistic Director David Van Asselt, “but we are also seeking to collaborate and intercross with the remarkable entertainment communities in Los Angeles.”

This isn’t the first instance of Rattlestick spreading its wings. Just last summer, Talbott – one of Rattle stick’s literary managers – wrote Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait, which was performed at the American Conservatory Theatre’s Costume Shop in San Francisco. “Los Angeles is a vital city,” Van Asselt explained, “open to experimentation and full of creative mavericks. We are very interested in exploring that, opening up a line of communication, and seeing what’s possible.”

In transporting Slipping, Rattlestick has carried over one of its more storied homegrown productions. It is an unconventional but emotionally trenchant work about Eli (Seth Numrich), a malcontent gay teen adjusting to a new life in Iowa with his mother, Jan (Wendy vanden Heuvel) after enduring a tragedy back home in San Francisco. Each thread of hope of starting anew – embodied by naïve, confused shortstop Jake (MacLeod Andrews) – is entwined by paralyzing memories of a past love, Chris (Maxwell Hamilton), which haunt him.

One of the distinguishing characteristics between Slipping and other shows is just how clear-headed it is, even as it suggests a world of dualities. While Eli’s pain is portrayed in an elliptical fashion (Leigh Allen’s lighting and Janie Bullard’s sound design aid these transitions immeasurably), slowly letting the audience understand both how Eli’s tough outer shell was formed as well as how Jake might be able to crack it, Talbott empowers his characters, who each speak in dialogue that flirts with poetry while remaining both realistic and individually character-appropriate. The playwright also never condescends or punishes his characters for behavior that might appear cruel or self-serving. All four of his characters make believable choices that the audience intuits on a mental level, even if some of the motivations remain enigmatic in the moment. And the result is a work that looks at human folly at its most heartbreaking, but also amusing.

Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging

And at the preview performance I caught at the Lillian, Slipping gets the production Angelinos deserve. Talbott’s staging was taut while allowing plenty of space to let his actors perform their characters’ internal hopscotch. While Numrich and Andrews reprise their roles from the 2009 New York run, Brett Donaldson essayed the role of Eli at my performance, and the young actor had a kung fu grip on the teenager’s complexities. He’s brave enough to push against audience sympathy at all costs, trusting that the play itself will fill in more of the character’s inner hurt. In fact, Rattlestick’s family will only continue to increase out west, as Wyatt Fenner will take over the role of Eli for Numrich, himself a Rattlestick regular (and star of such Broadway shows as Golden Boy and War Horse) who departs for a West End revival of Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Kim Cattrall.

Though Slipping is, of course, no one-man show. Hamilton walks the line between sleazy tease and stunted teen as Chris, putting Eli in situations that feel simultaneously dangerous and exciting for the young man. Their scenes together illuminate the way human damage is both learned and taught. Meanwhile, Jake balances out the other side, depicting how clumsy but enticing young crushes can be, and Andrews is pure genius at contrasting the more fun, freer side of young love to contrast with the cost that Eli bears. Vanden Heuvel offers a master class in subtle nuance as Jan both grieves and recovers in her own way. John McDermott’s clever set design also shows how one’s home can be both a place of refuge and of demons.

Quirky, challenging, and full of riches, Slipping isn’t your typical traveling show. Which makes it all the more appealing a choice to help Rattlestick as it establishes a bicoastal presence.

“We’re excited to bring Slipping to the West Coast and believe Los Angeles audiences will really respond to this material,” Van Asselt said. “Talbott’s writing is vital, wise beyond its years and unafraid to give us characters who are fierce, passionate, and yet with an underlying core of honesty and sincerity in an age when jaded cynicism is de rigueur.”

For more information about Slipping, please go to http://www.rattlestick.org/rattlestick-la/

The Other Josh Cohen

This clever musical comedy, co-written by and co-starring performers David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, takes two differing looks at down-on-his luck New Yorker Josh Cohen. There is Past Josh (Rosen), reeling from a series of heartbreaks and an apartment break-in that has taken everything from him but a Neil Diamond CD he got for free, and Narrator Josh (Rossmer), nine months older than his former self, both of whom fill us in on his love and life woes, hilariously set to a very Diamond-like score.

Seemingly fated for misfortune, a windfall comes to Josh in the form of a$56,000 check that arrives under mysterious circumstances. Should he take the money and run? The two Joshes ruminate over this while encountering a slew of characters, played by Hannah Elless and an especially delightful Kate Wetherhead (and occasional appearances by the show’s backing band), including neighboring lesbians and doddering Jewish mothers. Rossmer and Rosen, who wrote the show’s book, lyrics and music, have crafted a perfectly-paced feel-good musical that belies all the hard work that surely went into the show (director Ted Sperling also keeps this light show on its feet). Filling the small SoHo Playhouse, this laugh-a-minute show that proves that size doesn’t matter.

Through Nov. 11 at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Van Dam Street. (212) 352-3101. www.ovationtix.com.

Alicegraceanon

Photo by Jim Baldassare

Kara Lee Corthron’s Alicegraceanon, directed with verve by Kara-Lynn Vaeni, is an intriguing mash-up of three linked female characters of varying amounts of realism: Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s titular heroine (played by Teresa Avia Lin); Grace Slick (Carolyn Baeumler), Jefferson Airplane front woman and writer of “White Rabbit,” and Anonymous (Christina Pumariega), the author of the “Rabbit”-themed “Go Ask Alice” watershed novel.

Alicegraceanon plunges its three title heroines into a surrealistic limbo in which they object, and try to reject, the dominant male forces in their lives. For example, Alice is angry at paramour Charles Dogdson (Eric Clem) for airing their private relationship details. Vaeni’s topsy-turvy production has boundary issues – it sometimes feels more crazy than controlled, sometimes putting the audience too much on edge – and its leading ladies occasionally overact. Slick is arguably the play’s most interesting character, though Baeumler makes her more manic than the real one’s cool demeanor would have allowed. Still, it is to be given credit for its lofty ambitions and for its strong feminist ethic.

Irondale Center, 85 S. Oxford St. Through Nov. 9. www.irondale.org.

Follow

Photo by Hunter Canning

New York theatre artists Crystal Skillman and Daniel Talbott are among the most fearless storytellers around. Who else would shove ten audience members at a time into a small East Village apartment for the intimate tale Skillman’s new play, Follow, has to tell? It’s a fractured family reunion tale, in which brothers Josh (Jerry Matz) and Noah (Matthew Lewis) reunite at the deathbed of Lily, Noah’s offstage wife. Sidney (Addie Johnson), their estranged and troubled daughter, has also returned home.

Johnson, Lewis and Matz tell their tales, including long-harbored secrets and frustrations, in searing monologues delivered to the audience with great power. The riveting delivery helps overcome some of Skillman’s familiar plotting. The decision to stage these scenes along with glimpses into the lives of three other apartment dwellers is puzzling. Talbott’s staging is crisp enough that shortly into the piece we can figure out what it is going on, but I am not sure that it distracts more than it adds to the moving central story at Follow’s heart. But it is definitely a beating heart, and an experience I must recommend.

Fanfare, 100 E. 4th St. Through Nov. 3.

Photo by Daniel Talbott

This Thursday at 6pm, midtown’s Drama Book Shop will host a reading and book signing of Cino Nights: Plays from Rising Phoenix Rep, in honor of the publication of the first anthology of plays performed over the course of the last two years at Jimmy’s No. 43 in the East Village. The event, like all of the performances which it celebrates, is free and open to the public.

Cino Nights hearkens back to an era roughly half a century ago, when Off-Off-Broadway pioneers like John Guare, Robert Patrick, Lanford Wilson, William M. Hoffman, and Doric Wilson – the movement’s namesake – formed a collective that wrote, performed and produced no-frills theatre at the Caffe Cino. Cino Nights, founded by Rising Phoenix Repertory artistic director Daniel Talbott, honors that original scene by congregating an equally passionate group of creative types to write inventive, emotionally raw site-specific work for the Jimmy’s venue. All shows received only a week of rehearsal and then played for one night.

The current collection includes new plays by such vital New York writers as Mando Alvarado, Courtney Baron, Emily DeVoti, Jessica Dickey, Kristen Palmer, Gary Sunshine, Adam Szymkowicz, and Lucy Thurber; there will be readings from DeVoti’s, Palmer’s, Sunshine’s and Thurber’s plays. (The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. has published the work, which also includes a foreword by New Dramatists artistic director Todd London.)

At $19, this book is a steal. Having attended the majority of these Cino Nights performances, I can attest that as an artifact, this anthology is invaluable. These shows have been lightning in a bottle, featuring work by some of the finest and fiercest talent to be found in New York. Each performance has been a privilege to attend, and it’s safe to say that the actors share that sentiment with the audience. Performers have included Seth Numrich (of the Tony-sweeping War Horse) and (The Green Lantern, Rabbit Hole). Though the space is small and usually hot, and sometimes the odd insect or rodent can be spotted, Cino Nights is in many ways an oasis for all those called to the arts, a way of restoring the creative soul and working in a collaborative fashion uninfected by budgetary concerns or corporate stifling. Everyone works for free, doing it for love of the craft.

I hope there are more editions where Cino Nights came from, as there have been additional plays by exceedingly talented playwrights that should be preserved. But in the meantime, it’s thrilling to have this first book available. In honoring the past, Cino Nights has given a great present to modern indie theatre.

Cino Nights can also be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/Cino-Nights-Mano-Alvarado/dp/0979485266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340723793&sr=8-1&keywords=cino+nights