Bodega Bay

Elisabeth Karlin’s play is an oddly comic hybrid of Flirting with Disaster and Winter’s Bone. Louise (Susan Louise O’Connor), is essentially an invisible woman, unattached and living in Staten Island with her brother Scottie (Brian McManamon) and whichever girlfriend he seems to have at the moment. We meet her as she has just bitten the bullet, opting to put her meth0addicted brother into a rehab clinic. But she meets funds, and sets out on a quest to find the mother who disappeared from their lives years earlier.

Bodega sends Louise’s Alice own the proverbial rabbit hole. With the help of a detective played by the wonderful Gerardo Rodriguez, Louise embarks on a cross-country trek to track down her mother, encountering a variety of eclectic ciphers who may possess clues as to her mother’s whereabouts, with a cast that also includes Peter Brouwer, Nancy Rodriguez, and Rae C. Wright essaying multiple roles, and director Sturgis Warner succeeds at always plugging deeper than caricature. Bodega is an oversize show for a theater as compact as the Abingdon – kudos to the cast for working within such a tight space and for never losing focus despite the distracting sound of plumbing coming from above. It’s the magnificent O’Connor, though, who carries Bodega and shades in all sorts of trepidation and joy as Louise learns more about herself. In the span of a mere two and a half hours, O’Connor transforms Louise from milquetoast to miracle worker. That’s quite a journey indeed.

Abingdon Theater, 312 36^th St. http://www.abingdontheatre.org/season/default.aspx. Through February 17.

Collision

I don’t pay much attention to pre-show hype. All the better to focus my review solely on what I what I see and not what was meant to be. But circumstance has made it nearly impossible to avoid the fact that Collision, Lyle Kessler’s new play being performed by The Amoralists at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, was intended to be more of a black comedy than the drama it now purports itself to be in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Either way, however, the show, directed by David Fofi and starring a superbly on point cast, offers plenty of commentary on the power of entitlement.

James Kautz is Grange and Nick Lawson is Bromley, two new university roommates, and it’s clear almost immediately that the seemingly laidback Grange knows just how to manipulate people into giving him what he wants, regardless of how little the end result may mean to him. Before long, Grange has bled his personality all over Alfred Schatz’s cleverly designed dorm room set and achieved guru status, amassing a small group of followers that include Bromley as well as sexually liberated fellow student Doe (Anna Stromberg) and philosophy professor Denton (Michael Cullen). Kessler’s commentary on the power of navel-gazing when it goes unchecked is astute and full of human comedy. Kautz is magnetic, dripping danger beneath Grange’s charismatic eagerness without being overly transparent – he recalls the young Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd. His co-stars also humanize what on the page could have been mere clay characters. It’s in the last twenty minutes, though, that the play sputters into something else that we might have seen coming but didn’t necessarily need. With a cast this good, Collision doesn’t need to end with a bang to end with a bang.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place. www.collisiontheplay.com. Through Feb. 17.

The Vandal

Hamish Linklater has already demonstrated a wide range as an actor on the stage and small screen but he now reveals potential as a playwright as well with The Vandal, which just opened at the Flea Theater. Well-structured but with a substantially disappointing payoff, Vandal, directed by Jim Simpson, recommends Linklater as a promising student but one perhaps not quite ready for his diploma.

An unnamed Kingston, NY, woman (Deirdre O’Connell) waits alone at a bus stop until an imposing teen (Noah Robbins) bugs her with questions and then asks her to buy him some beer at a liquor store run by Zach Grenier. The first few reveals of Vandal are promising, exciting even. The incisive way the three characters can see through one another suggest a palpable energy that runs through the Flea and sends it down a path that lets us know we are in for more than just a rehash of The Zoo Story. Eventually, however, all three of these enigmatic fellows turn out to be in support of a story full of trickery, and that’s a shame, because Simpson’s actors do such a sterling job of grounding their parts in realism. O’Connell aches with the weary reserve of a woman just trying to get through life untethered. Grenier’s no-nonsense combativeness belies a tender heart. And Robbins toes the line between invasive youngster and intriguing soul quite admirably.

Equally admirable is David M. Barber’s set design, making deceptive use of the small stage space and casting a different tone on each of Linklater’s scenes. But for a show that starts off so ominously, the final taste is a little easily digestible. Like the residue from Boy’s Cool Ranch Doritos, Vandal should linger a bit longer.

Flea Theater, 41 White Street. www.theflea.org. Through Feb. 17.

Photo by Carol Rosegg

Scarlett Johansson’s star turn in the recently-opened Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been garnering plenty of attention, but another small-statured star playing a desperate woman can be found Off-Broadway. That would be Emmy-winner America Ferrera (late of Ugly Betty), playing a struggling single woman crippled by the current economic crisis in Laura Marks’ Bethany, now playing at New York’s City Center Stage II.

Directed with an effectively realistic hand by Gayle Taylor Upchurch for Women’s Project Theater, the 2009-set Bethany features Ferrera as Crystal, a middle-class worker who has become homeless and sneaks into an abandoned house. She’s not totally alone, however, as she soon meets fellow squatter Gary (Tobias Segal). The two strike up an amicable, if tentative, living arrangement that enables the two of them to play house when Crystal’s not toiling at her day job selling cars at a struggling Saturn dealership. Crystal’s world shatters even further when she learns that the dealership is going to close.

As options get scarcer and scarcer, desperation increases. What is most impressive about Marks, a recent graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program, however, are the choices that this writer makes around a sobering situation. Crystal’s straits may be dire, but her characters manage to imbue each of her scenes with a very human sense of humor that never feels like a reach or unearned, particular Emily Ackerman’s Shannon, Crystal’s fatigued-by-life boss, and Ken Marks (the husband of the playwright) as Charlie, a potential customer who peppers the play with motivational mini-monologues asserting such aphorisms as “We all have the power to manifest our own reality.”

But Crystal’s reality is bleak, and as Bethany ups her personal stakes, the play emerges more and more as a clever character study rather than a social commentary. Stripped of creature comforts and of dignity, both Gary and Crystal are animals doing their best to survive. Trying to convince a social worker (a fantastic Myra Lucretia Taylor) that she’s stable and solvent, Crystal buys a few household products and passes Gary off as a plumber. And just when she has curried audience favor by falling victim to Charlie’s own petty power games, Marks the playwright pulls the rug out from under us by showing just how connivingly resourceful Crystal can be when pushed. This is a play where actions are secondarily important to reactions, and Ferrera proves herself to have excellent stage instincts.

If there is one area that feels a little too simplistic, it is Marks’ portrayal of squatting itself, which gets short shrift. The idea that someone could really walk into an empty house, still powered by electricity, and go undiscovered, feels false and unexplored. In fact, it’s a little too farcical for a play as grounded in naturalism as it is by a great cast (that is also a reason why a climactic encounter feels too pantomimed to really work in Upchurch’s current staging). Segal, less manic than he has been in past performances, succeeds in making Gary a cipher but one with an accessible moral code. Marks the actor devilishly devours both his monologues and his scenes opposite Ferrara. And as Crystal, Ferrera takes great care to show just how smart and foolish someone can be at the same time. Luckily, that’s a tightrope neither Marks nor Upchurch have much trouble navigating.

Bethany

New York City Center Stage II, 131 West 55th Street. www.nycitycenter.org. Through Feb. 17.

Off Broadway
59E59 Theaters: Just completing its popular “Brits Off Broadway” series Jan. 3, this up-and-coming arts complex has three productions waiting in the wings: Rough Sketch (opens Jan. 17), The Man in Room 306 (opens Jan. 20) and Happy Now? (opens Feb. 9). Want cutting-edge theater imported from all over the world? Interested in previewing shows that have gigs at the International Edinburgh Fringe Festival? Prefer fresh contemporary works to retooled classics? This theater is your best bet. 59 E. 59th St., 212-753-5959.

Sean McGinley (back) and Stephen Rea in Ages of the Moon. Photo by Ros Kavanagh

Ages of the Moon: Playwright Sam Shepard, who mythologized the American West for us, returns to New York with a new dark comedy opening Jan. 27. Following its world premiere at the Abbey Theater in Dublin, Ireland, the original cast—Stephen Rea and Sean McGinley—reprise their roles in the current production. The plot has Shepard’s fingerprints all over it: Old friends reflect on 50 years of friendship and rivalry—and then all hell breaks loose. Armageddon or not, this drama is likely to get your blood racing. Atlantic Theater Company, 336 W. 20th St., 212-279-4200.

Gilbert & Sullivan Fest at City Center: The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players return to City Center through Jan. 17 with four old chestnuts: H.M.S. Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and Ruddigore. The company brings contemporary energy and traditional respect to Gilbert & Sullivan’s works. West 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-581-1212.

Lie of the Mind: Another Shepard play? Yes, Shepard diehards won’t want to miss this revival, first staged in 1985. This drama, opening Feb. 18, is set in the gritty American West, and alternates the stories of two dysfunctional families whose homes are ripped apart by spousal abuse. Eerily, both families meet up in a remote cabin. Ethan Hawke directs; Laurie Metcalf, Marin Ireland and Josh Hamilton are in the cast. Theater Row, 410 W. 42nd St., 212-279-4200.

Cabaret
Café Carlyle: Tony award-winner Elaine Stritch opened the 2010 season with her new solo show, At Home at The Carlyle: Elaine Stritch Singin’ Sondheim—One Song at a Time. Recently dubbed by a British writer as “Broadway’s last first lady,” she is sure to please on an intimate stage with some musical gems from Sondheim’s canon. Remember her tour-de-force performance of Elaine Stritch at Liberty on Broadway in 2002? She can take the most ordinary yarn or song, and spin it into theatrical gold. 35 E. 76th St., 212-744-1600.

Feinstein’s Regency: Michael Feinstein still makes regular appearances at his namesake club. But when keeping a low profile, he invites the crème de la crème to perform at his supper club. Tyne Daly, Betty Buckley, Chubby Checker (making his debut!) and Jane Krakowski are all in the line-up for 2010. The American Song Book is the bible at Feinstein’s, so expect Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter and plenty of showbiz melodies. You always leave humming a classic. 540 Park Ave., 212-339-4095.