Global Crunch Comes Home

At Fells Point Corner Theater, Kathleen Barber's In the Shadow of Lushan skillfully turns the political turmoil of globalization into the personal crisis of one woman. Jo-Jo Banaker (Peggy Dorsey) valiantly defends her family-owned company against the conniving efforts of Caz (Mark Scharf), director of a rival company, to take over Banaker's by financial manipulations.
The battle between Jo-Jo and Caz inflames the entire staff of the tottering company. Chic (Richard Peck), the genial foreman, worries about the future of a middle-aged man who knows only the informal mom-and-pop environment of Banaker's. Frannie (Peggy Friedman), the faithful employee, cringes at the low-paying, low-skills job that await her if the company folds. Bobby (Vic Cheswick, Jr.) blames the company's turmoil on job-stealing immigrants, too visibly represented by a new mysterious worker, the Mexican Mateo (Michael Zemarel). As the business confrontation between Jo-Jo and Caz defrosts into chapters of romance, stalemate, and mutual admiration, the relationship among the employees deteriorates into mutual suspicion and desperate scapegoating. The opening company fun, where employees mock Japanese business "shame circles," turns into an angry knife assault.
The solid cast successfully gives the turmoil of globalization a human face. Foreign competition, price wars, illegal immigration, aging industries, and "Bidding Olympics" flow off the stage as the words and gestures of the increasingly angry and exhausted workers. At the center of the meltdown, Peggy Dorsey ably presents the charm of a successful executive comfortable in working in an old-fashioned family mode but uncertain in the cutthroat politics of the new world market. Slipping abruptly from adversarial to romantic partner, Mark Scharf is a sharp, sandpaperish foil to Dorsey's more maternal persona. Vic Cheswick is especially strong as the charming Bobby, who quickly turns from fun and games to xenophobia and attempted murder.
Josh Bristol's direction of the piece is serviceable, but the multiple exits and entrances seem interchangeable. The actors are often frozen into awkward positions, as when George (E. Martin Early) speaks into the back of Jo-Jo. The movements in the sudden romance scene and the sudden knife attack seem stilted. The nondescript set conveys the gray, metallic nature of the factory (and of the gloomy world economy looming just beyond the door), but its drabness only accentuates the halting character of the player's movements.
Barber's play marks a promising beginning for this year's Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Global economic conflict becomes intimate family anguish.

Thin Satire

Will Eno's Tragedy; tragedy is a compact satire on American television news. But even at seventy minutes in running length, the play becomes one weary joke.
The comedy's news team must wrestle with an astonishing piece of non-news: The sun has set and it is night. The avuncular anchorman (coolly played by Rich Espey) attempts to tease some news out of his clueless news team. Constance (Jessica Garrett in an offbeat performance) tries to drum up some local interest in reaction to the news, but there is little more to report than shifting fog and rain. In an edgier performance, the earnest John (Nathan Cooper) manages to snag a man-in-the-street (Michael Salconi) whose reactions amount to one-minute negatives. An increasingly deranged Michael (played with manic energy by Nathan Fulton) reports the political blather of the governor, unable to cope with the encircling gloom. As the non-news event progresses, the psychic nights of each baffled commentator emerge through the non-sequiter prose. Old resentments about distant parents and childhood names scratch the vacant journo-babble. But the existential huffing-puffing cannot redeem the one-note satire.
Under J. Buck Jabailly's capable direction, Eno's sketch is given a polished production. Set in a series of life-size boxes, the various news personalities suffer visual as well as psychological isolation as night (and the absurdist reactions to night) envelop them. Each character moves from fumbling, vacuous reportage to anxious self-disclosure and desperation. Even the box isolation begins to break down as Michael, the most unhinged of the commentators, walks right into the audience to deliver his valedictory on the mysterious governor. But despite the occasional fury and Beckett echoes, the play cannot overcome its SNL-sketch limits.

Japanese Enchantment

Naoko Maeshiba's Paraffin is a kinetic wonder. Returning to Theatre Project this weekend, Maeshiba's performance troupe Kibism mesmerizes the viewer with one mysterious tableau after another. Employing mime, aerial movement, and muscular choreography, the various scenes evoke search, love, oppression, and death.
Three particularly haunting scenes remain in the memory. Wrapped in golden dresses and tissue-paper headdresses hiding the face, three women taunt three athletic men writhing in their dark suits. In a melancholic picnic pursued under the rain, three characters evoke the jealousies and shared memories of family life through the rhythmic movement of pot, bowls, and blanket. Evoking mechanical oppression, a troupe of white-uniformed technicians reduce a patient to a suffering object under the ballet of their probes and charts.
Far from narrative, the performance evokes the raw passions of fear and desire as the body is stretched to its physical and expressive limits. Presiding over the performance as a regal, expressive angel on a trapeze, Maeshiba develops a choreography remarkable for its energy and sculptural precision. Her movement is ably complemented by her electronic musical score and by Kel Millione's lighting design, which bathes the entire production in an ethereal golden light.

Cerebral Entertainment

One of the more offbeat theatrical offerings of the moment is Think Twice at Spotlighters. Directed by Rodney Bonds, the program is actually two one-act plays, Lecture with Cello by Robert Moulthrop and Sapiens! by Rich Espey. In each one-man play, a monologue explores the complexity behind some commonplace truths.
In Lecture with Cello a formally dressed musician gives a lecture on---you guessed it---a cello. The lesson gradually deteriorates into philosophical musings on the nature of truth and then into a furniture-throwing rant ignited by a lost passion. Employing the full gamut of emotions and gestures, Rodney Bonds astutely portrays the Chekhovian lecturer as he deteriorates before the audience's eyes and practically in the audience's lap. But running over an hour in length, the monologue's more metaphysical musings became tiring.
In Rich Espey's more accessible Sapiens! a young science teacher reacts in shock as some of his students challenge the theory of evolution. As the teacher seeks help from dialogues with other scientists, his wife, and memories from the past, the teacher slowly realizes that even many scientific "facts" rest on high probabilities and that certain truths about cosmic and human events might legitimately derive from religious or emotional premises. Like Bottom, Joshua Snowden winningly creates all the parts: Adam the teacher and all his imagined interlocutors. What began as a predictable tale of enlightened evolutionists vs. rabid creationists finally emerges as a cautionary tale on intellectual humility.
These two austere monologues are not standard summer fare but, directed and acted with incandescent passion, they are challenging, complementary explorations of the obscurity of truth, artistic or scientific.

Skin at the Strand

On Saturday evening at the Strand Theater, Playwrights Group of Baltimore presented "Skin in the Game," an anthology of short plays written by members of the Group. Different in style, each play pivots around the phrase "Skin in the Game," apparently coined by Warren Buffet to indicate passionate investment. A packed audience at the Strand witnessed staged readings of plays ranging from the melodramatic to the romantic to the fantasist.
Exploring the current recession, John Conley's "Leopard and Parcheesi" features a bankrupt middle-class couple facing exile in their run-down Poconos cabin. Alex Hewett and Rich Espey movingly portrayed the squabbling couple. Dwight Cook's "SIG Tea" presents two bickering gay friends discussing conquests and the perils of outing in a phone call. Richard Keller and Aaron Trent wittily depicted the sparring duo. In Peter Davis's "Undertow," a ruthless businessman (Kevin Griffin Moreno) unsuccessfully attempts to bulldoze his wife (Alex Hewett) and his professional assistant (Nancy Flores). Brent Englar's humorous "Plunge" celebrates an awkward triangle (Christopher Krysztofiak, Tiffany Mowry, Elizabeth Galuardi) trying to be part of the polar bear club: a group of hearty naturists who dive into the ocean in winter. In the enigmatic "Don't Be" by Ken Greller, two mismatched friends (Alex Scally and Richard Keller) struggle with a car that keeps getting smaller and a bag of other "issues." In LaRonika Thomas's piece of social realism, "J-ROTs," a group of African-American high school students (played with intensity by Mardee Bennett, Ayesis Clay, and Aaaron Trent) debate the controversial merits of dedicating their lives to military service.
Despite the diversity of genres, this anthology of plays indicates that realism and naturalism still remain the default button of American playwriting, even the most recent.

From Wish to Prayer

Single Carrot Theatre's lythe production of Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Tamberlake) lights up the harrowing but oddly humorous script by Sheila Callaghan. The tale of yet another dysfunctional family adds an unusual twist by turning the apartment that has witnessed the family's trauma into its own character, The Apartment (Brendan Ragan). The surviving family triangle has more than its quota of quirks. Mother Clara (Genevieve de Mahy) is a gourmet chef whose detailed dinner and even breakfast menus would make the winners of Top Chef blush. Daughter Janice (Giti Jabaily) is an 11-year old lost soul who has broken down into her private world of doll games, word games, and growling incantations. In the evening's wittiest performance, Courtney Weber plays Aunt Clara, the forlorn aunt whose life is devoted to the care of her 57 cats and stilted "girl talk" with her deranged niece. Providing further quirks are guest appearances by celebrities Justin Timberlake and Harrison Ford (both played by Elliott Rauh).
The energetic direction of Aldo Pantoja gives the production its pulsing, choreographed feel. Ragan's Apartment swings from the single rope that dominates the playing area; he leaps on ledges as he narrates the history of various tenants he has had to accommodate. Rauh complements the choreography with his athletic leaps and braggadocio imitations of the celebrities. As the play moves toward Christmas, with Clara trying to fulfill the strange Christmas list desires of Janice, the "family secret" that has caused the trauma comes into view. The father of the clan had died the previous Christmas in an accident related to the ragged apartment's rotting floors and dangerous electrical wires. A bit too neatly, Janice suddenly turns from curses to prayer as she recalls her deceased father over the votive candle her mother has given her for Christmas; Clara suddenly loses her anxiety and starts to coach her daughter on some group projects; even the aloof Aunt Barbara tries to patch up things with family by offering to move into a new apartment with them.
The script is not without its sentimentalities (cleverly disguised by its jagged structure) and the moral at the conclusion (Trust yourself; reach out; take reversal in stride) has the depth of a Hallmark card. But the energetic direction, physical gusto, and disciplined ensemble playing give the production its moving moments circling the emotions of loss as well as its dark humorous ones rooted in a family of sympathetic grotesques.

Ye Olde Casting Couch

Vagabond Players is currently presenting David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow in a taut and dynamic production. A vitriolic attack on the ethics of Hollywood, the play is Mamet's twist on that old standby for Hollywood corruption: the casting couch. A rapacious producer Bobby Gould (played by Dave Gamble), egged on by his sycophantic assistant Charlie Fox (played by Michael Leicht), places a bet on Gould's success in seducing the office's new temp Karen (played by Beverly Shannon) within twenty-four hours. The clock is also ticking because a film deal Fox is urging Gould to seal the next day could turn Fox at last into a co-producer and a wealthy man. The absurd sex-and-violence script for the deal seems to guarantee its cinematic success. But as the seduction proceeds, the hunter becomes the hunted. The determined and oddly mystical Karen manipulates Gould into endorsing her own existentialist film project and turning the conspirators Gould and Fox into violent opponents. The usual Mamet smorgasbord of obscenities, humiliation games, and physical violence rounds out the pessimistic fun.
Two actors stand out in the cast. Michael Leicht projects Fox's desperation from beginning to end. His only goal is to close the deal and rise higher in the crumbling Hollywood hierarchy. There is no other life except servile ambition for this anxious climber. Beverly Shannon gives a remarkable performance as Karen. In the first scene, the nervous temp is bewildered by her new work and apparently shocked at the office's foul language. The dewey-eyed novice seems to have walked out of a neighboring corn field. In the second scene, the object of seduction suddenly becomes the seducer. Clad in a sophisticated red Chinese blouse and tight slacks, Karen assertively recommends seduction as part of an apocalyptic world of radiation scares, failing banks, and natural catastrophes. By the third scene, dressed tightly in a black outfit and crisply barking orders to the bedazzled Gould, Karen now seems to have walked out of the Marquis de Sade's Justine. Shannon's arc of transformation of her mysterious character is the dramatic highlight of the evening. Dave Gamble provides a solid performance as the odious Gould, but the range of emotional expression seems limited. In the opening scene, his cynicism does not appears as smarmy as it could. In the closing scene, his confusion and rage seem oddly restrained.
Steve Goldklang's direction carefully builds the emotional arc of the play to its violent conclusion, even if the humor of the piece seems muted. The stark, geometric set design by Roy Steinman handsomely reduces the play to its emotional basics: plots for future deals (expressed by swaths of raw material and color) and plots for seduction (expressed by a simple leather couch).