The Bagel And The Rat

This highly regarded mystery, now released as a trade paperback, marks a strong beginning for first-time novelist Tana French. Set in the suburbs of Dublin, In the Woods is a multilayered story that combines the gritty worldliness of a police procedural with the eerie chills of a psychological thriller.

Detective Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must find a child-killer who has done his dirty work in the same woods where Ryan, twenty years before, was the sole survivor of a bloody incident that left him with a blanked-out memory. Looming on the horizon: the obliteration of the crime scene by a new highway.

Is the new murder related to the earlier disappearances? Are the anti-highway protesters involved? Will pursuing the case unlock Ryan's memory - and does he really want it unlocked? With both his sanity and his job on the line, this is much more than just another murder case for him, and French artfully maintains the dual layers of suspense.

In Detective Ryan's first-person narration, I detected hints that the author hadn't quite mastered the kind of literary voice one expects of a strapping male heterosexual policeman. There's no reason a sensitive guy can't also be a tough murder detective, but I found some of Ryan's observations and feelings - some of his adjectives, to be precise - a little on the feminine side. Reflecting on himself as a boy, Ryan observes, "that relentless child had never stopped spinning in crazy circles on a tire swing, scrambling over a wall after Peter's bright head, vanishing into the wood in a flash of brown legs and laughter."

However, the psychological depth and observational detail of French's writing bring the story vividly to life. Touches of humor keep the darkness at bay, too. Speaking of Cassie's arrival on the mostly-male murder squad, Ryan observes, "When she finally arrived, she was actually sort of an anticlimax. The lavishness of the rumors had left me with a mental picture of someone on the same TV-drama scale, with legs up to here and shampoo-ad hair and possibly a catsuit."

Cassie turns out to be nothing of the sort, but much more interesting, and the same is true of the book. A traditional mystery in some ways, it's also a thoroughly modern take on the genre, with memorable characters and settings, emotional highs and lows, and a climax that satisfies on some levels while leaving you frustrated on others. Any imperfections in the plot are more than balanced by the fine writing, especially considering this is a first novel. I'm looking forward to French's next book.

[Note: this article has also been published at Blogcritics.org and syndicated to Boston.com.]

One of the great things about being a writer is getting invited to all sorts of interesting events, including some that fall outside the categories you're used to. Like, say, an evening of lovely women taking off their clothes.

"Burlesque" originally meant a comedic, parodic style of variety show, of which striptease was only one element. Nowadays, although there is a serious "New Burlesque" movement out there somewhere, from my standpoint the non-titillating aspects seem to have dropped off, and we're left with striptease. That's the case, at least, in the burlesque shows I've seen in New York City.

The other night I had the pleasure of experiencing Revealed, a monthly show at Under St. Marks, a little theater at St. Marks Place and First Avenue (complete with bar) that I've started to think of as a home away from home. It's a warm, divey little spot, perfect for burlesque. In Revealed the artistes show more skin than in most shows, hence the title: yes, there's full nudity, and I for one approve, but the best part of the fun is in the gaudy creativity on display.

Costumes and props are important, of course. Ms. Tickle, who had the most fabulous getup, made her reverse striptease into one of the sexiest numbers, walking on stage totally naked and then putting on her costume ver-r-ry slowly. Miss Ruby Valentine had great fun with plush boas, Gigi La Femme spanked herself, and so on. Scenarios are a big part of it. Kobayashi Maru had the most inventive act. Not to give it away, I'll just say that her soundtrack came from a classic science fiction film, and unlike the other acts, it wasn't music.

The puritanical busybodies of times past and present have it all wrong. Nothing about the naked human body is corrupting or immoral; quite the opposite. Yes, there are depressing strip clubs out there and forms of pornography that take advantage of women, but in a burlesque striptease show the performers have all the power.

Striptease and raucous humor go naturally together. The engaging Bastard Keith is a jolly host (he's funny and he can sing, too!), but half the best lines are shouted out from the gonzo audience. If you'd like to be part of the gonzo, Revealed runs the third Wednesday of every month at 10 PM. Tickets are available online or call (212) 868-4444.

You can also get more information at the show's Myspace page, where you'll find links to the performers' individual pages. The fetching Creamy Stevens, for example, the "child of slaughterhouse workers" who hails "from some decayed hamlet in Washington State," "learned she loved to entertain through making children cry at the juvenile detention center where she spent most of her teens." Fictional biographies aside, everyone does seem to end up in New York eventually.

Amidst the ongoing destruction of what was once a funky, creative stew-pot of a way of life, tucked between the chain stores and rich-people-only developments that are taking over the city faster than you can say "My dog was electrocuted by a manhole cover!", places like Under St. Marks hosting shows like Revealed persist, giving hope for the creative energy and street life of the, um, naked city.

Photo credit: Photo of Gigi La Femme by Luke Ratray

A joyous noise erupts from this new two-CD release from keyboardist extraordinaire Chuck Leavell (Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Allman Brothers). The set opens appropriately with a Professor Longhair chestnut and motors on through Stones covers, standards, Leavell originals, and a lot more. The pianist has stepped out in front before, notably with his band Sea Level in the late 1970s, but his vocals, while pretty good, naturally tend to take a back seat to his playing, whether on studio recordings or on the road with the Stones and others.

This set was recorded last year, after the Stones’ “Bigger Bang” tour ended. Leavell gathered some top German musicians to back him up, and the result was captured in the live radio performance from which these nineteen tracks are taken.

While it’s always fun to hear a group of ace musicians rocking out on tunes like “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66″ and “Honky Tonk Women,” the highlights of Disc 1, for me, are the gently grooving jams “Living in a Dream” and “King Grand,” which date from the pianist’s Sea Level days. Saxophonist Lutz Häfner shines on the former, while Leavell’s piano wizardry kicks up the latter, with the band churning along like a perfectly oiled engine.

On the whole, the best parts of Disk 1 are the songs you haven’t already heard a million times. It closes with the great old boogie-woogie number “(That Place) Down the Road a Piece,” which the Stones (and many others) have covered, and the beautiful “Alberta, Alberta,” which was reintroduced to millions in 1992 via Eric Clapton’s hugely successful MTV Unplugged album which featured Leavell prominently.

Disc 2 features his loving version of “Here Comes the Sun,” which sounds great except that it makes you miss hearing the harmony vocals you’re used to. Same with his otherwise rocking version of “Tumbling Dice,” which is nevertheless a great rendition. The keyboardist’s jazz fusion side is vented in his own “Tomato Jam” and “Blue Rose,” where the band shows it can match any American musicians at this smooth-but-tense style of music.

The thunderous “Compared to What” gets a well-deserved ovation from the crowd, and it’s no surprise that the set includes the Allmans’ famous instrumental “Jessica,” which perhaps more than anything else made Leavell the go-to keyboardist he remains so many years later. When he’s inspired, he can cut loose vocally too, as on “Statesboro Blues.”

Chuck Leavell may be a “musicians’ musician,” but there’s something for almost everyone here, and a lot of bang for your buck.

With their new theater piece, writer Robert Attenweiler and director Rachel Klein set out to combine the noirish flavor and tropes of the gangster genre with the circus/clown tradition. They’ve succeeded: All Kinds of Shifty Villains is an oddball play, but an entertaining one.

Fair warning: at the beginning, I hated the play. It began unpromisingly, with a musical number sung inaudibly by Precious Jones (Elizabeth Stewart), the story’s stereotypical femme fatale. Then, for the first couple of scenes, as we were introduced to philosophical tough-guy gumshoe Max Quarterhorse (Joe Stipek) and a batch of seedier types, I felt at sea, unable to fix on anything. Uneven acting didn’t help, and Stewart’s singing wasn’t the only thing hard to hear: some dialogue got swallowed by the Kraine Theater, thanks to certain actors’ lack of projection. (A rattling air conditioner didn’t help, but it wasn’t entirely to blame).

Gradually, though, the play won me over. It has two big things going for it: Attenweiler’s writing, and Klein’s funny, inventive, and occasionally eye-opening choreography - not as in dancing, but as in stylized and sometimes acrobatic movement, especially fight scenes and love scenes. Here much credit goes to the cast; standouts include Kari Warchock as Therese “Terry” Trueblood, Max’s loyal assistant, and Bret Haines, who plays the bearish half of a pair of lowlife brothers whom Max hits up for information. But the whole cast is good in this area. Together with the presence of a mysterious and vaguely sinister clown, the choreographed movement represents the circus element of this hybrid story.

As for the writing, it’s sharp and funny. “Will you be stepping into this sack of your own accord,” the brothers ask Terry as they kidnap her, “or must I produce a bludgeon?” Max, the detective, has just quit smoking, and his withdrawal symptoms take the form of hallucinations, which are sometimes amusingly acted out but often merely suggested by his absurd non sequiturs, which keep us enjoyably guessing. The suggestion of magic realism that comes from the evident lunacy mixes in interesting ways with the screwball comic action and Guy-Noirish set pieces, and holding it all together is Stipak, whose Max is a pretty strong focal point for the broad-ranging action. And he’s not the only nutcase in the house. “Something’s coming,” Max warns. “If it’s not what I think, at least it will be something else.”

So true, Max Quarterhorse. So true.

All Kinds of Shifty Villains runs Thursday-Sunday through June 28 at the Kraine Theater, 85 E. 4 St., NYC. Tickets online at Smarttix or call (212) 868-4444.

Strawbs got their start way back in 1964, as the Strawberry Hill Boys bluegrass band. They had success in the UK during the 1960s, undergoing several lineup changes but always led by singer-guitarist and main songwriter Dave Cousins. (Early on they worked with both Rick Wakeman and Sandy Denny). In the 70s the band moved away from its folk influences and towards a harder, progressive rock sound, achieving its greatest US and Canada success in that decade, with the Hero and Heroine and Ghosts albums.

Their set at BB Kings last night included "Round and Round," "Out in the Cold," and the dramatic "Autumn" suite, all from Hero and Heroine, and bang-up versions of "The River" and "Lay Down" from 1973's Bursting at the Seams. I especially enjoyed hearing the vintage synthesizer sounds from keyboardist John Hawken.

I was surprised at how well I remembered all these songs, considering the fact that I didn't own all the albums, and those I did own were on cassette and I hadn't listened to them in literally decades. Somehow all this Strawbs music snuck into my head back in the late 1970s when my world was green and new…

From Ghosts they did the sweet ballad "You and I (When We Were Young)" and perhaps my favorite Strawbs song, "Grace Darling," about the Victorian heroine of that name. Lead guitarist Dave Lambert sang a few of his contributions, including the rocker "Heartbreaker," and they reached back to 1972's Grave New World album for Cousins' "New World," another highlight of the set.

Songs from that era form the heart of a present-day Strawbs show, which is not surprising considering they're touring with the classic five-man lineup of that era. They do have a new album coming out this fall, however, and from it they played the socially conscious "The Call to Action" and the hooky title track, "The Broken-Hearted Bride," which featured powerful three-part harmonies. Though none of the Strawbs were ever what you'd call amazing singers, they sound wonderful together, and Dave Cousins' reedy, explosive, unmistakable voice hasn't changed much over the years.

He doesn't look too healthy, though. The rest of the band is fairly spry, but it can be a little difficult to watch Cousins from a seat near the stage. It's not that he isn't alert. The show went very smoothly, and when he once stumbled over some fast lyrics he laughed, muttered "Bollocks" (a word that's always hilariously pleasing to American audiences), and didn't lose a beat or bat an eye - but one somehow fears for him.

Still, I'm glad I finally saw a band that meant a lot to me in days gone by - and, I realized, still does - but that I never got to see live before. You know how certain melodies or riffs get planted so deep in the roots of your consciousness that they recur in your mind for your whole life, unbidden? Several Strawbs melodies are like that for me.

Singer-songwriter-keyboardist Judith Owen opened, playing solo. A collaborator of Richard Thompson's, she won over the audience immediately with a half-Tori-Amos, half-jazzy version of "Smoke on the Water," and kept us tuned in with her funny and engaging stage personality and exquisite vocal delivery. Her original songs, like the jaunty "Creatures of Habit" and the bluesy "Walking the Dog," were all winners in their own ways. My fellow Blogcritics writer Holly Hughes reviewed Owen's new CD recently.

Scientist-playwright Carl Djerassi’s fourth play premiered in 2003 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (under the title Ego) but has not received an American production until now. I’m delighted to report that Redshift Productions’ new Off Broadway staging does absolute justice to this intelligent, witty, and very funny concoction of noir, psychodrama, and clowning.

Djerassi is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the inventor of the birth control pill. He’s one of our culture’s premiere crossover figures between the worlds of art and science. I figured I’d mention all that, since it’s what one does. But he is also, quite independently of any other accomplishments, a playwright of the first order.

In Three on a Couch Stephen Marx, a famous novelist, fakes his own death in order to read the obituaries and critical appreciations he knows will follow. More than that, he is inspired by the real-life Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa to create “heteronyms,” alter egos to publish works in different styles for an audience meant not to know that the books all come from the same brain.

Sadly for Stephen, his original self cannot disappear without leaving a very large loose end: his wife, the sultry Miriam, who is at least Stephen’s match in force of personality and wit. The action takes place in the office of Dr. Theodore Hofmann, Stephen’s Freudian psychoanalyst. Played with antic clowning by the wonderful Brad Frazier, Theo is the glue that holds the plot together, and that’s critical because the plot is tricky and a little bit shaky in one or two places - but that hardly matters.

The pleasures of this longish one-act play begin immediately, with Theo attempting some very funny stylized acrobatics between his stool and his analysand’s couch, where Stephen lies apparently asleep. This business symbolically suggests the shrink’s attempts to “reach” his difficult patient, but it also opens up Theo’s character to our amused and sympathetic eyes: he is himself a very troubled man.

His role as confidante to Stephen and Miriam, initially professional and then personal, serves superficially to grease the gears of their story, yet on another level the therapist’s inner life is the very subject of the play. He’s on stage for almost all of the action, and his pursuit of his craft, with all his peccadilloes and insecurities, is the intellectual heart and soul of the work, at least in this production, carefully directed by Elena Araoz, stunningly lit by Justin Townsend, and luxuriously costumed by Chloe Chapin.

Theo is both an iconic shrink and a shrinking violet. He knows the theories and techniques of psychoanalysis as well as anyone, but is incapable - at least with Stephen - of maintaining objectivity, of keeping his cool. Between sessions and meetings with the husband and wife, he repeatedly tries to persuade his answering machine that he is master of his domain, yet all it does is stare back at him with its single blinking red eye. No analyst could possibly function in this way in real life, but the entire play is consistently absurd, both larger and smaller than life. By the end Theo does achieve a surprising sort of catharsis aided by (of all things) Susan Zeeman Rogers’s simple but clever set design. We cheer him rather like we cheer Georges in Act I of Sunday in the Park with George, a character Theo oddly resembles in some ways.

Mark Pinter plays Stephen with a pomposity so hearty it’s believable, in the over-agitated way a Seinfeld character seems “real”; Lori Funk is equally larger than life as the vengeful wife. Lush and noirish, Arielle Edwards and David Thomas’s music and sound dance us from scene to scene and state of mind to state of mind. The director has her cast play brilliantly with the fourth wall; the action is speckled with telling details like Theo bending into the stage light to read a letter, Miriam violently batting her eyelashes for much too long, husband and wife pounding out all the lines of a dramatic private scene while looking only at the audience. All told, it’s a full-throated sounding out of the possibilities of live theater.

Given the story’s psychological setting, I could quibble with how certain motivations are explained. But this play, and this production, hardly leave room for such quibbles. Both are superior in every way.

Three on a Couch runs through June 22 at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St., NYC. For tickets visit the theater’s website or call (212) 691-1555.

Yes, I’ve been out of touch for a while - a vacation in Europe and some life changes (good ones, but ones which make blogging seem rather unimportant). But the ol’ critical brain likes to keep getting its exercise. And the new music keeps pouring into my mailbox, and some of it’s pretty darn good. So here you go:

The Stone Coyotes, VIII

Another year, another strong record from the Stone Coyotes. This one opens a little strangely, with the slightly hesitant "Tomorrow is Another Day." The rocking really starts with "Land of the Living," which has one of singer-guitarist Barbara Keith's trademark half-shouted choruses; in this one she brings it home with: "Through the Valley of Death I've been driven / Now I'm back in the land of the livin'." There's always been a stark naturalness to the Stone Coyotes' songwriting, which exactly matches their basic rock sound, and that combination is what makes them so good.

"Not Right Now" is a growly, crunchy rocker about mortality and music, while the softer side of Keith's songcraft makes an appearance in "The Lights of Home": "From gilded cities and crowded skies / To desolate highways that hypnotize / Rolling wheels sing a traveler's song / To the ones like us who've been gone too long." But the disc's best track may be "All for Angelina," a haunting blast about the scary and mystical side of love and fate. The absurdly obvious "Brand New Car" becomes infectious in spite of itself, and the cover of Merle Haggard's sad "Kern River" shows off the band's grasp of rock's country-and-western roots.

While the wife-husband-and-son band overall sounds as good as ever, with bassist John Tibble having become very accomplished as a lead guitarist as well, Keith's vocals seem a little lighter than in the past. I hope this doesn't mean her energy is weakening; I am always looking forward to the next Stone Coyotes album. But there's a fatalistic tone to this one, summed up in the tense closer, "Grey Robe of the Rain": "I call to the sun in the sky / Dry the silver tear in my eye / I feel the dig of the chain / I wear the grey robe of the rain." In the final verse the singer attempts to defy fate: "still I refuse / To wither, to bend, to succumb to the pain / Someday I'll throw off the grey robe of the rain." It's an image from Longfellow, but it sounds a bit like Cuchulain fighting the waves.

Peter Bloom Band, Random Thoughts (from a paralyzed mind)

This is one of the more accomplished debuts I've heard in a while. Straddling the border between a singer-songwriter vibe and energetic arrangements verging on power-pop, the Toronto-based Bloom and his band put across his well-constructed, catchy melodies and emotionally charged lyrics with easygoing confidence. Best of all, there's a nice variety of feels from song to song, from head-nodding pop-rock to sensitive balladry, and the ten tracks are solid throughout - it's not a case of one or two standouts and a bunch of filler. Bloom's high, liquid tenor is very appealing - boyish yet with depth of feeling.

Josh Preston, Exit Sounds

Josh Preston's third disc has a haunting mechano-acoustic sound, smart lyrics, and melodies that are both soothing and hummable. Preston has a sharper sensibility than the typical singer-songwriter working in this laid-back mode, and this gives his songs appealing depths beneath their pretty surfaces. That doesn't mean he's going to rock you; to listen to the disc straight through, you'll want to be in a quite meditative mood.

Sugar Blue, Code Blue

If you're in the mood for some spankin' new funky blues - and how could you not be? - harmonica man Sugar Blue delivers with this free-flowing set of politically charged soul-busters. The disc is worth having just for the smooth and inspiring "Let It Go" and the strange, dreamy "I Don't Know Why." But from the funked-up "Krystalline" and the rocking "Bluesman" to the slow blues shuffle of "Bad Boys Heaven" (with a guest solo from Lurrie Bell) and the showy pop-jazz of the slightly weird "Walking Alone," Blue's inventive, wailing harmonica, his tense, straight-up vocals, his tight band, and his mastery of the whole constellation of blues-rooted styles cast a powerful and uplifting spell.

Possibly the most inspiring course I took in college was a study of W. B. Yeats. The professor, Jack Kelleher, was knowledgeable, but more important, he was passionate about the subject. But he had a severe stutter, and sometimes sitting in class listening to him lecture was a painful thing.

Professor Kelleher's stutter vanished when he recited the poetry. He even sang for us once or twice (some of Yeats's verse was written to go with traditional melodies). Reciting and singing he had no trace of a speech impediment. Later I learned that many stutterers don't stutter when they sing.

Last night's star-studded Our Time gala honoring Bill Withers brought this, and many other lessons about stutterers, home to a big happy audience of family, friends, and donors.  Our Time Theatre Company is a performing arts organization for kids who stutter. Most of us at some point in our lives have met someone who stutters, but stuttering kids who don't get emotional support often shut down and stay quiet, so we might not know when we see them. An estimated one percent of the population stutters.

Bill Withers is famous for his hits: "Lean On Me," "Ain't No Sunshine," "Lovely Day," "Use Me," and more. It turns out he also stuttered badly as a youngster. A lot of entertainment royalty turned out to honor him and to celebrate the achievements of Our Time. Providing "an artistic home for people who stutter," the organization has enabled and inspired many a kid to literally find their voices.

Some of the kids who took the stage to speak, emcee, recite, sing, or rap had mostly overcome their stutters, but many had not. Some had been in the Our Time program for years, but Our Time is not a therapist. To the contrary, it's a place where stutterers are given all the time they need to express their thoughts - hence the name "Our Time."  No one will interrupt them, finish their sentences, make fun of them, or assume they're stupid because they're slow to speak.

The love and energy on the stage proved what a good cause it was. The gala raised well over $200,000 for the organization. A whole bevy of stars took the stage together with the Our Time kids, performing songs of Bill Withers (who made a grand speech towards the end) along with songs and poems written by the kids. Rosie Perez, Ed Sherrin, Sam Waterston, Jesse L. Martin, Mandy Patinkin, Lauren Ambrose, Daryl Hall, Daphne Rubin-Vega, cast members from Spring Awakening, and other notables made appearances.

With all that, the most affecting thing was a rather humble and quiet speech made by a teenager named Andre Gillyard, who told a story - echoed by Bill Withers himself - of giving up, shutting down, just figuring he'd never amount to anything - and then having a fateful moment of discovery. 

For Gillyard, it was seeing something in the newspaper about Our Time, which has been active for seven years now. For Withers, many years earlier, it was meeting a local shopkeeper who simply showed patience and compassion. But look at that simple noun in the first sentence of the previous paragraph: "speech." Mr. Gillyard, a teenager with a still distinct stutter, made a moving and extremely well-written speech any high school valedictorian would have been proud of. He made a speech. We listened, we heard, we cheered. What more needs to be said?

Find out about Our Time's theater program, and their new summer camp, at their website or call (212) 414-9696.

PHOTOS:
1. Mandy Patinkin, Ed Sherrin, and Sam Waterston with Our Time kids
2. Bill Withers with Our Time kids and Spring Awakening cast members
3. Daryl Hall leads celebrities and Our Time kids in a rousing rendition of "Lean On Me"

Mortals Theater and Gray Lady Entertainment, Inc. are to be commended for giving these two obscure one-act plays by Arthur Kopit their first New York production. With strains of realism floating through absurdity, the plays document Kopit's early direction as a playwright. He became famous for other works, notably Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad and, later, Indians and Wings. These two one-acts, much less well known, carry the prevailing tenor of their Cold War milieu in interesting ways.

As entertainment for 21st century audiences, their merit is less certain. Chamber Music, which opens the evening, has aged the better of the two. Absurdity and insanity, its twin plot drivers, are always with us and never go out of style, though asylums like the one depicted have fallen somewhat out of favor. As in Ken Kesey's roughly contemporaneous One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the inmates of a loony bin noisily reverberate with the officially sanctioned craziness and violence of the "normal" world outside.

Eight women who think they are various important historical figures – one of whom, the play faintly suggests, might actually be Amelia Earhart – meet to consider their response to a perceived threat of an attack by the men's ward. Gaveled to a semblance of order by "Susan B. Anthony," the sulking, bickering group wades through their personal delusions to concoct together a series of increasingly insane plans. Here Kopit reflects Cold War paranoia much as Rod Serling did in many of his Twilight Zone teleplays, if more symbolically.

The precise identities the women have adopted (besides Anthony and Earhart, they are Gertrude Stein, Contanze Mozart, Joan of Arc, Queen Isabella of Spain, the explorer Osa Johnson, and the silent-film actress Pearl White) seem to matter less than the fact that they represent women who broke paternalistic molds. The roles do, however, encourage a batch of stirring performances, including Julianna Nelson's as the glamorous movie star and Laura Spaeth as Woman in Queenly Spanish Garb.

Was Kopit making the point that women who assert power are perceived as, in some sense, crazy? That message would have resonated more powerfully half a century ago than it does today, but as staged by director Robert F. Cole and acted by the talented company, the play's emotional weight — increased, rather than lightened, by the absurdity of the story – overwhelms whatever may be outmoded about it. The main theme is timeless: humanity's ugliness (as evidenced by repression, fear, and violence) coexists with the beauty that people can create and embody, from Mozart's heavenly music and Pearl White's heavenly body to Joan's purity of heart and Isabella's regal silence.

The second play, The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis, opens with the grouchy president of a country club belittling his wife over the phone with a series of misogynistic insults of the "take my wife, please" ilk. Later, after witnessing a sequence of directionless grousing, bickering, and bloviating, the mens' clubhouse literally crumbles around its helpless officers, as an unseen bevy of underwear-spurning women invade the mens' space with mad tennis skills and violent propensities. Resistance is futile - but are the women declaring their independence and value as human beings, or are they just out to destroy the safe, private world of the menfolk who've held them down? Kopit doesn't say.

Almost to a man, these fellows are unlikable and obnoxious. The sole exception is sad funnyman Max (the excellent Bill Krakauer), but he is obsequious and obsolete, and no one in this all-male group represents any positive aspect of manhood. General misanthropy, not misogyny, turns out to be the guiding vector of the play. With characters so unpleasant, the slow build of the action becomes a problem. Perhaps tighter direction would have helped, but I found the play overall to be unfocused and uninspiring.

That said, the friend who attended with me had the opposite reaction, finding it funnier and more compelling than Chamber Music, so your mileage may vary. The production continues at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York City through April 27. For reservations visit Theatermania or call (212) 352-3101.

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There are two compelling reasons to see the new production of Dirt at Under St. Marks. First: after this important play's current run, it's off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and who knows if or when it'll be back in New York. Second: Austrian-American actor Christopher John Domig's performance is one of those in which a play and an actor's work within the play seem inextricably bound.

Certainly, another actor could perform this one-man show, but while you're watching Domig, you can't imagine it. (Domig is actually responsible for having the play translated into English from the original German, in which the title is Dreck.)

Sad (Domig) is an illegal Iraqi immigrant working as a peddler in a western city. Paul Dvorak's potent translation suggests that the city is New York, but it could be anywhere in the West. Created by Austrian playwright Robert Schneider in the early 1990s in response to the first Iraq war, the character of Sad (short for Saddam) could be any alienated immigrant from a non-first-world country transplanted to any rich city.

On another level, though, Sad's monologue hits very specific targets. Domig's complete fusion with his character makes him a particular kind of Everyman, displaced and struggling, but induced to bottle up his anger and turn it against himself.

The monologue is punctuated by the phrase "I have no right to…" Sad feels he has no right to shout, to use public toilets, even to sit. "I'd never sit down on a park bench in this city."  Yet, in a tricky and sometimes scary game with the audience, he continually accuses himself of lying. Is his name even Saddam? "The truth is never elegant," he says, and though that may not always be the case for us, we accept – we know – that it is for him.

Whoever he is, he knows he cannot be loved, so he invites hatred and abuse instead because at least it's something. The blatant racism of Austria, circa 1992, may not have an exact corollary in New York City in 2008 – neither does the presence of public toilets, incidentally – but that's all the more reason to see the play now and explore this particular heart of darkness; it's easy to forget that it is always lurking.

The "story" is all interior to Sad's mind, yet the play feels as closely plotted as if it were a cleverly made, multi-character drama. The themes and repetitions in Schneider's language suggest a carefully constructed musical piece, a sonata or symphony. (The action is aided by subtle sound design by Greg Brostrom.) "My name is Sad, but I am not sad…"

When you leave the theater, you're thinking about the excellent performance and the fine writing, but after sleeping on it, you're left thinking, rather gloomily, about what it all means, and how startlingly relevant it remains even though it was written after a different and much smaller war.

Dirt runs through April 26 at Under St. Marks, NYC. Get tickets online or call (212) 868-4444.

Photo Credit: Jordan Craven

Shakespeare's history plays not only dramatized the lives and deaths of some of Britain's most legendary monarchs, they have also had some influence on the nature of those legends. The playwright's versions of the likes of Prince Hal and Richard III are eternally bound up with the real histories of the personages they represent.

Given Shakespeare's huge and unparalleled accomplishment, one wonders what he might have done with the character of Elizabeth I, who reigned during his own lifetime. Though the Queen gave her name to the theatrical movement of which Shakespeare was the greatest exemplar - Elizabethan drama - Shakespeare and his contemporaries naturally could not, for political reasons if nothing else, put her on stage. (Unless you count her christening in Henry VIII!)

Still, Elizabeth was one of the most fascinating, larger than life, legendary figures in all of English history, and although another Shakespeare hasn't come along, writers of subsequent eras have dramatized her countless times — from the opera stage to television and everywhere in between. Outlandish and magnificent, Elizabeth's famed persona has also attracted some of our greatest actresses to the role, especially in the screen era, beginning with Sarah Bernhardt in the 1911 silent film The Loves of Queen Elizabeth. Her broad legend has been able to encompass depictions of many kinds: gritty and tragic (Bette Davis, twice); vibrant and opulently sensual (Cate Blanchett in Shekhar Kapur's two spectacular films); grandly comic (Dame Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love); even ridiculous (Miranda Richardson in Blackadder, Series II).

Portraying Elizabeth on stage must be an even greater challenge. Stephanie Barton-Farcas, currently starring in Timothy Findley's new play Elizabeth Rex, proves she's fully up to it. Barton-Farcas is also the artistic director of Nicu's Spoon, which is presenting the New York premiere of this big, ambitious play. While Barton-Farcas may have absorbed nuances from some of the great screen performances of the past century, her Elizabeth is strong and distinct.

Playwright Timothy Findley took on an intriguing and challenging task with this play. The time is 1601. It's the night before the scheduled execution of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a former favorite of the Queen's, to whom she had been famously, romantically linked. To prevent rioting by Essex's supporters, a curfew is imposed, which (in Findley's conceit) traps Shakespeare (Scott Nogi) and some of his company in the royal barn for the night. The players have just performed Much Ado About Nothing for the Court and they begin Act I in post-performance hyperdrive, joking and prancing about, quaffing ale and getting bawdy with their cockney costume mistress (Rebecca Challis).

Through a bit of contrivance Findley has Her Majesty herself turn up in the barn, attended by a young lady of the court (Melanie Horton) and the elderly Lady Anne, Countess of Henslowe (played in grandly droll style - even while asleep - by Broadway veteran Merle Louise). All hell gets pent up, only to break loose gradually as Ned Lowenscroft (Michael DiGioia), a player who specializes in female roles and is dying of "the pox," refuses to pander to the Queen. Instead he engages her in a dangerous emotional game.

Lowenscroft is sure there's a woman somewhere inside the icon, despite her having remained pure and unmarried for the sake of England. The Queen takes up the flamboyant actor's gauntlet, challenging him to show "the man" inside his effeminate manner. The process by which these two marvelous characters wear down each others' enamel is the play's dramatic center.

The rest of the characters are mostly "character roles," and the excellent cast has a lot of fun with them. There's a weakness or two, but this ensemble piece is a good deal stronger than its weakest link. Bill Galarno presents a heartwarming aging jester, while Oliver Conant as the Falstaffian Luddy Beddoes reminded me of deep-voiced British actor Brian Blessed. Andrew Hutcheson, who was so good in the company's Richard III last year, does a nicely understated portrayal of the big Irish leading man Jack Edmund, who's just played Benedick for the Queen but won't bow to her. (Ireland figured importantly in Essex's rebellion.) Sammy Mena has a remarkable turn as a bear - a wonderfully conflicted creature, half feral howling, half fearful hiding.

But it is Barton-Farcas and DiGioia who keep things focused, and it's well that they are so good, because after the fast pace of Act I, Act II begins to bog down. I believe this lies with the direction and not the play itself. The structure seemed strong; it was the slow pace that bothered me. It's a long drama (for modern audiences, anyway), and playing it slowly nudged some scenes towards melodrama. The play has enough meat to it; there's no need to give the actors license to chew.

All in all, all's well that ends well (except for poor Essex, of course). Unlike in a Shakespeare history, no one here dies on stage, at least.  This substantial and rather difficult play uses Shakespeare's milieu to gamely confront matters of gender and sexuality. Nicu's Spoon proves an excellent utensil for the task.

At the Spoon Theater through April 19. Tickets online or call (866) 811-4111.

Recent years have witnessed some of the most nightmarish events you'll ever see on the TV news. The fates of some of the Western hostages taken by "insurgents" during the early years of the Iraq war would seem unlikely candidates for the musical stage.

Hostage Song defies those odds. Clay McLeod Chapman's taut script follows the travails of two hostages, Jennifer (Hanna Cheek) and Jim (Paul Thureen): cut off from their jobs and families, bound and blindfolded, they struggle towards a peculiar transcendence rooted in their utter degradation. It sounds crazy, but in the event it's touching, funny, gripping, and ultimately, yes, transcendent theater.

Kyle Jarrow's darkly powerful pop-rock songs do not always further the story as in a traditional musical. They illuminate the characters' states of mind and emotional history, but sometimes stand apart from the action. Given the Beckettian out-of-time feel of the hostages' closed world, this isn't, however, the flaw it would be in a different kind of story. And in other places, the songs do carry character development and some action; it is partially through song, for example, that Jennifer and Jim's developing feelings for each other, transference-based as they are, are shown to be nevertheless honest and true. Their extreme situation wrenches them into a space so unreal that erupting into song seems as sensible as anything else.

Hanna Cheek and Abe Goldfarb. Photo by Samantha Marble.
The Kraine Theater's good-sized stage gives visionary director Oliver Butler room to position the band on stage while leaving plenty of room for his captives to crawl about in the front. Butler's use of space is a subtle but important aspect of the play's power. So are Amanda Rehbein's set design and Sean Tribble's costumes. For example, while nearly all the action we see is interior to the characters - there is no graphic violence whatsoever - a simple costume change, from drab grey to orange jumpsuits, evokes what their captors are doing and what's going on in the wider world. The mere taking off of a cap turns a scary authoritarian figure into Jim's young son. A battered file cabinet lying on its side performs multiple duties as a prop that's both utilitarian and symbolic. Butler even uses to advantage the big difference in height between his leads.

"It'll never be another Rent," my theatergoing companion remarked, but she meant because of the subject matter, not the music. Another Rent is certainly not what Chapman and Jarrow meant to create here. It is, however, remarkable that within the show's horrific framework the time-honored threads of good theater vibrate strongly. The main characters' families are called forth. Played, in imaginative and imaginary scenes, by the solid supporting cast, they deepen our understanding of the fragile human beings Cheek and Thureen create so vividly for us. A relationship, almost a romance, develops. Though its central events are "ripped from the headlines," every other aspect of this production is blatantly artificial. The result, through the magic of art, is something forceful, disturbing, and hyper-real.

Hostage Song runs through April 26 at the Kraine Theater, 85 E. 4th St., NYC. Tickets available online or call (212) 868-4444.

Took a walk over to the Hudson River today, and lo and behold, what do we discover right behind Chelsea Piers but a huge modern steel-hulled three-masted clipper ship, the Stad Amsterdam, moored there for a corporate event and open to the public. All we had to do to board the ship was to sign a waiver that we wouldn’t sue in the event of falling overboard or being murdered by pirates. They even offered us drinks on board.

The ship is a beautiful mixture of old and new, with gigantic masts and sails, all the modern technological trimmings, in pristine condition (it’s only eight years old) and wood, wood, wood everywhere. And wood trim. The inside is like a restaurant. It’s available for parties and events - although you’d have to be in the right part of the world at the right time to book it.

It’s from Amsterdam, and it plies the seas of the world, spending April and May on the East Coast of the US. Right now you can see it - just hike over to Chelsea Piers and walk around back of the ol’ driving range.

On the way back you can check out Frank Gehry’s IAC Building. This is one of the few pieces of newfangled New York architecture that doesn’t look out of place - because the place it’s in is an old seafaring district that didn’t have any architectural identity to begin with. The IAC Building is perfect right where it is - in its own space, making its statement without ruining anything else.

Most singer-songwriters wouldn't start off a CD with a strange, more or less wordless, seven-minute space oddity of toy piano and the ambient sounds of a shopping mall. But Rachel Taylor Brown isn't like most singer-songwriters, and Half Hours with the Lower Creatures isn't like most CDs.

That opening track, "Hemocult/I Care About You," may chirp and plink like the soundtrack to a trippy video from the 1960s, but it's the right introduction to the unique sonic world that's encompassed in this plastic disc like a weird playground in a snow globe. Brown and co-producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman have twisted and woven Brown's off-kilter songs (and "songs") into a forceful and intriguing suite that uses some of the conventions of rock and pop - from the Beatles to PJ Harvey, from Laurie Anderson to noise-rock - but in unexpected combinations that somehow always make a kind of sense.

It's like a Sergeant Pepper for a decade lacking in hope. The theme of sacrifice predominates, introduced in the first real song, "You're Alright Sorla One (The Sell)": "you're alright of course you'll feel a little pain / you're alright everything is gonna change / i could wish a different kind of story."

The story that follows isn't different, it's unpleasantly familiar, but observed through Brown's unique artistic lens. "This hurts me more than it hurts you," says Abraham in "Abraham and Isaac (The Whack)." Someone is always feeling pain. In "Passion (The Goad)" it's Jesus. In "Mette in Madagascar (The Mission)" it's the singer, quietly fuming at a missionary's smug righteousness.

In "B.S. (Beautiful Savior) (The War)" and "Another Dead Soldier in Fallujah (Waste)" the victims are obvious, but Brown turbocharges her attack on the Iraq War by tying war motives and imagery to religious themes.

Musical colors also recur from song to song. The last long song, "Vireo," has obscure lyrics about the title bird, but the music grows spacier by the minute until it harks back to the opening track. It's followed by the sparse, beatless "This is a Song (Sorry)" in which, finally, the singer herself becomes the aggressor; but all she can do to vent her anger is to hurt someone she loves: "this is a song for someone i love i kicked in the gut i punched in the / eye this is a song for someone i love, this is a / song for didn't deserve it this is a song for better than i…"

That, right there, is the poetry of 21st century disillusionment. Just in case you were looking for it.

Hear extended samples and purchase CD or MP3s.

This edition of Creatures of New York is devoted to one very large creature. Distantly related to the Great Blue Heron and the Whooping Crane, the Huge Honking Crane can be found in many cities throughout the world. In light of the recent crane failures in New York and in Miami, it’s nice to see one of these creatures in good health, doing its thing. Despite a few highly publicized incidents, the Great Honking Crane is not endangered.

Here’s the base of a crane recently spotted in the wilds of West 15th St.

Here is the payload: a brand new water tank, which the crane is preparing to feed to its young. (The cranelings, perched on a nearby roof, are not visible.)

The crane begins lifting the water tank high, high up towards the sky.

The water tank rises higher.

Having lifted the water tank all the way into the sky, the crane gracefully swings it towards its final position.

Coming about, the crane lowers the tank towards the rooftop, where the hungry cranelings wait to guide it into position.

I know we’re living in Internet time, but this pic goes all the way back to last weekend (I know, shocking), at the John Scarpulla recording session at Tom White’s studio in Middleburgh, near Cobleskill, NY, in the Catskills region. That’s John with the guitar, and you can see me on the right through the glass, looking intently at his fingers to make sure I’m playing the right note.

I’ve been in a lot of recording studios, but this was probably the first one with horses outside. Here’s one of Tom’s beauties.

Cobleskill’s a nice upstate town with a pretty happening arts community (and some really nice Victorian houses).

On the way back to the city, we stopped at this other little house, which is also kind of nice. (For scale, note the tiny figure of Elisa in the white hat, lower left.)

Back in the Apple, Soul of the Blues featured Carol Thomas, in her first real gig after having her baby, and (pictured) Speedo’s Billy Rose Band.

Meanwhile the Kings County Blues Band played what was probably its last gig at the Baggot Inn, which is sadly slated to close. Here’s me on bass, with Jeremy Kaplan on drums and Allan Spielman on keyboards. I’ve been hanging out at the Baggot Inn since the 80s, when it was the Sun Mountain Cafe. It was the first place I got regular gigs after I moved back to New York post-college. A dive then, it’s since had a great makeover and has lately been one of the nicest live-music watering holes in the city. Very sorry to see it go.

Big names go a long way. Multiple-Oscar winner Ethan Coen is so big right now, especially after No Country for Old Men, that success has seemed almost a foregone conclusion for his Off-Broadway debut as a playwright. (Foregone in New York, anyway, where we especially love our Coen Brothers for living here and not in Hollywood.) With F. Murray Abraham and Mark Linn-Baker heading up the cast, the play would have had to have been quite bad to fail.

Almost an Evening is a triptych of short, funny plays that deal with deep matters in a consciously shallow manner. Together they constitute an enjoyable but very slight "almost evening" of theater that, without the big names attached, probably wouldn't have had the legs to move from its original Atlantic Theater Company home to its new, larger Bleecker Street home.

In Waiting, a nebbish-everyman (Joey Slotnick) waits, and waits, through a comic version of a bureaucratic nightmare. Slow-paced, it feels like a 78-rpm Monty Python sketch played at 33 1/3, with a tiny plot like those old-fashioned multi-panel New Yorker cartoons.

In the closing play, Debate, the primal, foul-mouthed God Who Judges (Abraham) and the buttoned-up God Who Loves (Linn-Baker) "debate" sin and man's relationship to God. Absurdities ensue, some silly, some clever. Abraham's thundering Jehovah is hilarious, like George Carlin in his prime but even rougher. It's a real treat seeing these two masterful actors spar. Not much of a play, though. Which is not to imply that it claims to be. Far from it, as the later scenes make clear.

In terms of stagecraft, the middle piece, Four Benches, is the best. Unlike the other two, which play quite smoothly, it is written and directed awkwardly. It's sketchlike. A central scene is too long. But, though funny, its humor depends less on "business" and more on character, and it has a touch of of the dark quality that pulses through the Coen Brothers' films.

It's a fairly simple story of a disenchanted British spy (the superb Tim Hopper) searching for more meaning in his life. There's a real plot involving characters with some depth. It's a truism, with an emphasis on the "true," that a character growing and changing before us is what really draws us into a drama. Or a comedy, for that matter. Even if that change is practically all that happens, theater happens.

Almost An Evening runs through June 1 at The Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street.

Photo Credits: Photos by Doug Hamilton. 1. Mark Linn-Baker and F. Murray Abraham in Debate 2. J.R. Horne in Four Benches

It hasn’t been all sitting in dark rooms reviewing CDs and plays. There’s also wandering around looking at art. Today we checked out the Pool Art Fair at the famous Chelsea Hotel. I’d never been in the Chelsea before except to see the lobby, so this was a good opportunity to wander its hallowed halls and see where the art is made. (Thanks to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York for the tip.) It was just like a neighborhood studio tour, except all in one building. Here’s Elisa dashing along a corridor, anxious to see yet more art.

We were particularly taken with Grant Haffner’s paintings of country roads and power lines. Here’s his “Leaving Mecox.”

This one isn’t meant to be art, but I thought it made a good photo. I call it “Stairway to Nowhere.”

Back in the lobby we fought through a crowd of French tourists to get this shot of the shiny old phonebooths. Then, faster than a speeding bullet, we zoomed out.

The artful television director Tony Palmer set his video footage of Tangerine Dream's 1975 Coventry Cathedral concert to music from the band's Ricochet album, for broadcast on the BBC. Since then the video has been available in poor quality bootlegs, but now here it is in a new DVD release.

Combining psychedelic effects with the cathedral's own architectural and artistic imagery, Palmer created an extended music video for a band whose performances, at that time, consisted of expressionless manipulation of analog synthesizers. The three musicians had a seemingly uncanny ability to build on each others' sounds in a live setting to create semi-improvisatory music of a kind that we no longer hear in this all-digital age.

In 1975, analog synthesizers hadn't been compressed into digital simulators within two-dimensional, soulless-looking electronic keyboards. Rather, they were big, sometimes huge banks of patch bays and "black boxes" manually linked together to create sound effects. This video is a good opportunity to witness how such instruments were played. Most likely, no concert of this nature will ever be performed again, by anyone.

On the video, however, the musicians' actions on keyboards and knobs don't match the music. How could they? The music is from an album that had nothing directly to do with this concert (though it was recorded at around the same time). This video is neither more nor less than an extended, psychedelic music video of a very cool (and important) band. It is not, however, what a lot of TD fans - an extremely devoted bunch - were expecting. The full title is Tony Palmer's Film of Tangerine Dream Live at Coventry Cathedral 1975. Technically, that's exactly what it is. But it led many fans to think that this was actually a film of the concert, with live sound, and it's not that at all.

At 27 minutes, with no extras and $26.98 on Amazon, it's overpriced, too, no matter what you call it and however enjoyable it may be on its own terms. Even Tangerine Dream completists might want to consider renting this first, or buying a used copy.

Celebrity blogger Dawn Olsen (of Glosslip) and I attended a preview of investigative journalist Ian Halperin’s new documentary, His Highness Hollywood, at the National Arts Club last night. Unfortunately a technical problem interrupted the film and we ended up settling for an earlier cut, which was still rough around the edges, but it was still quite amusing - and not just amusing, for in addition to skewering the easy target of Hollywood wannabe-stars, Halperin penetrates the scary world of Scientology.

In attendance was celebrity biographer Andrew Morton, here discussing his new Tom Cruise bio with Dawn. (Hence the Scientology connection.)

Here’s Ian Halperin introducing the film:

And just for fun, here’s Dawn and me in one of those trying-to-take-a-picture-of-yourself photos. Goofy charm, or just plain silly? You decide.