“The Liar” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

L to R: Patrick Halley as Cliton and Ethan Saks as Dorante in Kinetic Theatre’s THE LIAR Photo Rocky Raco, courtesy Kinetic Theatre Company.

In an age when our leaders play loose with the facts
What a lark to return to a play from the past
That takes joy in exposing the fibs of a liar
And does so while setting our laughter a-fire.

Ethan Saks plays Dorante, a great teller of fables
On whom pert Clarice and Lucrece turn the tables
(Erika Strasburg’s the former, Sarah Silk is the latter,
and all three young acteurs knocked the socks off your Tatler).

Erika Strasburg as Clarice and Sarah Silk as Lucrece in Kinetic Theatre’s THE LIAR. Photo by Rocky Raco, courtesy Kinetic Theatre Company.

He’s also “come-upped” by Geronte, his dear dad,
and Alcippe, an old friend, whom he makes very sad
When they catch him out on a lie that’s truly whopping –
And this leads to a moment – at least – of lie stopping.

There’s also Cliton, Dorante’s servant, whose quirk
Is compulsion to always be truthful, which works
Against him in wooing the maid Isabelle
(He blurts out the truth, and she gives him hell).

Isabelle has a twin, the priggish Sabine;
Philiste yearns for her, even though she’s quite mean.
(You must look below for the names of these actors,
Their phonemes won’t fit anapestic tetrameter!)

David Ives’ “translaptation” is a clever mashup game
Of modern and classic; Andrew Paul’s done the same
With souped-up Vivaldi behind the transitions,
Sly trendy shout-outs, and old/new appositions.

Kim Brown’s witty costumes take everyday Gap wear
Add lace and a cape and voila! we are there
In 1643, where fops fight in duel-ery
(albeit with 20th-c. light saber tomfoolery).

Ethan Saks as Dorante and Charlie Murphy as Alcippe in Kinetic Theatre’s THE LIAR. Photo by Rocky Raco, courtesy Kinetic Theatre Company.

Do I tax with my rhyme? I’m no Ives, I confess
His vocab’s prolific, he pairs with finesse
words like “cuff,” “love”, and “Pont-neuf,” and quite unexpectedly
invents new expressions – for instance: “lace-ectomy.”

I love plays in verse when they’re done really well
And the Kinetic production is just nonpareil.
The acting’s pitch-perfect, the staging’s sublime
Go see this rare show, you’ll have a great time!

David Ives’ The Liar, adapted from the comedy by Pierre Corneille; directed by Andrew Paul. In addition to Saks, Strasburg, and Silk, the first-rate ensemble includes Sam Tsoutsouvas as Geronte; Patrick Halley as Cliton; John Michnya as Philiste, Alcippe’s friend; Julianne Avolio as Isabelle/Sabine; and the unsurpassable Charlie Francis Murphy as Alcippe. The versatile scene design is by Gianni Downs; Angela Baughman’s sound design provides modern mashup not only for the transitions but also for a gloriously antic duelling scene (staged by fight choreographer Michael Petyak). Lighting, by Cat Wilson, and props, by Johnmichael Bohach, also play prominent roles in generating the production’s comedy.

“The Christians” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

Your Tatler encountered a lot of religion this past weekend – indeed, far more than she, as a secular humanist, is wont to do. And all of it was on our local stages: there was the irreverent and impious An Act of God at the Public on Thursday, the reverent and affirmative A Gathering of Sons at Pittsburgh Festival Opera on Friday, and finally, on Saturday, Lucas Hnath’s intelligent and deeply captivating play The Christians.

L to R: David Whalen and Mindy Woodhead. Photo by Rocky Raco, courtesy Kinetic Theatre

In many ways both An Act of God and The Christians address a similar fundamental problem at the root of all religion, which is that the texts that purport to contain God’s will must be read and interpreted by humans, who inevitably impose and project their own needs and wants and agendas into their interpretations. So who can really know what God wants? An Act of God cheekily tries to answer that question by imagining what message God might want to deliver to humanity in the 21st century were he to take form and visit us; The Christians tackles that question via the pastor of a modern American megachurch who has suddenly begun to doubt whether his evangelical faith has correctly interpreted the Bible’s teachings about the afterlife. And while The Christians is far more respectful in its depiction of Christians than An Act of God is in its representation of the deity, in the end it’s also far more devastating in its demonstration of the shaky foundations on which faith is built.

The whole of Hnath’s play takes place in the sanctuary of the megachurch that Pastor Paul (David Whalen) has devoted his life and work to building, and which scenic designer Johnmichael Bohach convincingly evokes with the sparest of architectural gestures: a large modern cross hanging above a raised, blue-carpeted dais, with a cross-shaped podium for the pastor and a semi-circle of seats on the floor of the stage for the audience, which takes on the role of the congregation. Screens on either side of the cross display misty images of sunrises, clouds, and nature (projections by Joe Spinogatti), along with quotes from the Bible and subtitles for Pastor Paul’s opening sermon, in which he makes a surprise announcement: after a confab with God while doing his business on the toilet, the good pastor has realized that he has been misinterpreting the Bible all these years. He has come to understand that there is, in fact, no hell; that God is all-forgiving and will admit all, believers and nonbelievers alike, to heaven; and that henceforth “we are no longer a congregation that believes in hell.”

Paul’s announcement has both immediate and far-reaching consequences, for him and for his church. The immediate fallout comes when his associate pastor Joshua (Joshua Elijah Reese) pushes back against this doctrinal shift and leaves the church, taking a handful of congregants with him. As time goes on, more and more members of the church take issue with the new doctrine, especially as the rift becomes complicated by issues of power, politics, and money, and in the end Pastor Paul is left with little more than his own increasing doubts.

Under Andrew Paul’s sensitive direction, Kinetic Theatre’s production has a magnetic energy, drawing in even those (like myself) who might instinctually distance themselves from squabbles over theological doctrine. The top-notch cast does an exceptional job of making all of the characters warm and likable, in particular David Whalen, who rightly avoids the temptation to portray Paul as unctuous and self-serving (the potential is there in the character). Whalen’s Paul comes across as kind and sincere, the kind of man you can imagine would inspire trust and deep respect among his congregants, and his relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, seems a genuine partnership. As Elizabeth, Mindy Woodhead morphs fascinatingly from what at first appears to be a smiling dummy into a fiercely intelligent doctrinal sparring partner. Reese brings conviction and passion to the role of Joshua, a man whose conversion to Christianity saved him from a life of both spiritual and material poverty, and Gayle Pazerski (as Jenny, one of his congregants) and Robert Haley (as Church Elder Jay) both bring a quiet urgency to their characters’ spiritual and emotional claims. Hnath unconventionally calls for microphones to be used for all of the dialogue, even during intimate scenes, and the cast makes good use of this device, which paradoxically allows for a more naturalistic mode of speaking even as it adds a layer of performativity to the character’s speech. At times the mics give the impression that we are listening in to their unvarnished thoughts; at others, they serve to reinforce the essential debate-like nature of the play.

The play itself does several things quite beautifully. To begin with, it takes seriously, and gives insight into, the kinds of exegetical questions with which Christians have to grapple as part of their belief system, and shows that faith is likely never as blind as it might appear to non-believers. In addition, the play is astonishingly fair-handed, allowing all sides of the dispute equal weight. In the beginning, it seems that Pastor Paul, as the spiritual and intellectual leader of the congregation, will have the upper hand, but his vision of an all-forgiving God is challenged not only by Joshua, but also  by the relatively naïve congregant Jenny, who challenges him, among other things, to explain how Hitler could possibly be in heaven. There are no straw arguments here, no ridiculing of belief: in fact – and especially given the rhetorical environment of our current political moment – what may be most refreshing about the arguments presented in this play is the deep respect with which the characters treat each other, even as they are feeling themselves compelled to reject a way of thinking as anathema.

Yet another thing this play does beautifully is to explore the barriers to opening oneself to doubt and change. For Elizabeth, the prospect of changing belief systems raises the possibility that her future self will look back and consider her present self stupid and ignorant; this idea is so repellent to her that she cannot even consider such radical change. Joshua, on the other hand, would like nothing more than to accept Paul’s vision of an afterlife that only contains heaven, if only it could provide him the same solace and moral guidance that present doctrine does.

But much as this play succeeds in giving equal time and space to contradictory arguments and diverging points of view, in the end what it really accomplishes is a trenchant deconstruction of the relationship between faith, organized religion, and morality. What Pastor Paul discovers is that, convincing as his argument may be for an all-forgiving God, the fear of spending an eternity in hell is a much stronger motivator of expressions of faith such as tithing and church membership; for, as Jenny innocently points out, if everyone is saved no matter whether or what they believe, what’s the purpose of belonging to a church? What sets apart the faithful, if the faithless are saved as well? If God doesn’t punish sin, why be good?

The real chicken-and-egg question behind these queries, of course, is: does the church serve the belief system, or is it the belief system that serves the church? That’s a question the play leaves us to ponder, just as it leaves Paul and Elizabeth in a terrible yet wonderful state of radical uncertainty.

“The Hound of the Baskervilles” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

Take three inventive actors, trunks full of costumes, and a well-known story from the Sherlock Holmes canon, season liberally with Monty Python-esque humor, lace with a good dose of metatheatrical self-parody, whip it all into an energetic concoction of not-quite horror and suspense, and what have you got? The zany, playful, and at times downright silly Kinetic Theatre Company production of The Hound of the Baskervilles, currently running at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre.

L to R: James FitzGerald, Connor McCanlus, and David Whalen. Photo courtesy Kinetic Theatre Company.

The script, by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, roughly traces the contours of the Arthur Conan Doyle tale – there’s the mystery of whether or not a demonic hound is stalking the moors, chasing to their deaths successive generations of Baskerville heirs (all played by Connor McCanlus), solved, in nearly proper deductive fashion, by the “world’s greatest detective,” Sherlock Holmes (David Whalen). But not before Dr. Watson (James FitzGerald) – who’s hardly the brightest bulb on the tree – repeatedly mucks things up through a combination of carelessness, inattention, and downright befuddlement.

The three actors populate the stage with a dizzying array of colorful be-wigged, be-bearded, and be-hatted characters who zip on and off stage with frenetic energy; at times, they also play themselves (or some version of themselves) spooked by theatrical superstition and egging each other on. It’s all a bit chaotic, and it’s hard to see much connection between the play’s metatheatrical scenes and the Sherlock Holmes story, but there’s no point in being a killjoy and trying to find method in the madness. Director Andrew Paul proves himself an observant student of the Flying Circus, staging all matter of verbal and visual gag with deadpan seriousness, and his ensemble is fully up to the task. Whalen offers a nudge-nudge wink-wink parody of his own self-absorbed Sherlock, and also plays multiple other roles, including an eye-patched villain, the villain’s Spanish (or is it Italian?) wife, a mysterious bearded butler, and the butler’s daffy wife. McCanlus is suitably goofy as the “Canadian” Henry Baskerville (who speaks, unaccountably, with a Minnesota twang), and FitzGerald’s Dr. Watson is delightfully batty.

Horror is promised at the beginning of this show, but if you want to be scared, you’re in for a disappointment; if you’re looking for a couple of hours of frothy fun, Hound of the Baskervilles won’t let you down.

“Cock” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

The title of this play is a bit of a red herring. I suppose it’s meant to refer to what’s “between” John (Thomas Constantine Moore) and his two lovers – his boyfriend of many years, “M,” played by Ethan Hova, and the woman he’s recently met and fallen in love with, “W,” played by Erika Strasburg – but the play is not nearly as racy and rough, in language or attitude, as the word “cock” would conjure for the American imagination. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing: it’s a nice surprise to find that the play eschews in-yer-face explicitness, but unfortunately its title also risks turning off audience members who would otherwise be charmed and taken in by this smart, complicated, and riveting play about the complexities of coupling in a “post-identity politics” age.

Cock is, in fact, only very tangentially about what hangs between the legs of three of its four characters. More centrally, it’s about a young man’s struggle to make sense of who he is by trying to figure out what he wants from a relationship, both physically and emotionally. John is a strange character to place at the center of a drama, because unlike most dramatic characters – who are defined in terms of “what they want” and “the obstacles that keep them from getting what they want” – John seems immobilized by an incapacity to define his desires. He’s a gay man who suddenly finds himself in a sexual relationship with a woman, and his inability to choose between M and W becomes not only an existential crisis for him, but also a condemnation of the kind of identity-politics that insists on categorizing and pigeonholing people in terms of sexuality and sexual preference.

Thomas Constantine Moore as John. Photo courtesy Kinetic Theatre Company.

The play has a deliberately disorienting structure and style: playwright Mike Bartlett notes that it should be staged as if it were taking place in a cockfighting arena, and Johnmichael Bohach’s set offers a credible replica. A low wall encircles a floor covered in sawdust; distressed corrugated metal panels form the walls behind the audience risers, which surround the playing space, with bench seats up close for spectators who want to get intimate with the action. The space is otherwise devoid of all furniture and props, and the playing style it demands takes inspiration from the likes of director Ivo van Hove – that is, spare, stark, stripped to the essentials. A character says he’s going to sit down and then doesn’t; objects get mentioned, but they are neither seen nor mimed; W moans as John fingers her, but Moore is not even touching Strasburg. All that busy work of pretending and faking and imitating and indicating is abandoned as the actors focus on the presence of the thoughts and emotions expressed by the text. It’s thrilling and captivating.

It’s also, at first, rather confusing. This is a play that demands a little patience. The first section of the play offers glimpses, in snapshot-style, of John’s relationship with M, hopscotching forward in time; the second section fills in the gaps with John’s intervening relationship with W. Nicholas Erickson’s sound design provides buzzing bells and static-y radio to help jump-cut all these moments together, but the first two sections are hard to put together.

The payoff comes with the third section, when the warring lovers spar over John at a dinner party, to which M has invited his father, “F” (Sam Tsoutsouvas), as reinforcement. From this point on, metaphorically, John is the weakest bird in the cockfighting arena, pecked at from all sides by the other characters, all of whom have much more clearly defined wants and needs. At the same time, he’s also the “prize” the other birds are fighting over. That fight is both entertaining and horrifying. As M, Hova neatly treads the line between charmingly catty and manipulatively abusive; Strasburg wears an equally sharp set of spurs as the direct, winning, shoot-from-the-hip W. Director Andrew Paul is unafraid of letting his actors and audience stew in cringingly awkward moments: for example, when M and W finally realize that John has not yet chosen one of them over the other, there is a long, awful silence in which Thomas Constantine Moore masterfully embodies the anguish of his indecision, his face a grimace of shame, embarrassment, and self-disgust.

That anguished silence was, for me, the biggest takeaway from the play; in the end, although John finally makes a choice, it’s a paralyzing one – and one that reveals the universality of the contours of abusive relationships, no matter the gender of the abuser and victim. Although John’s waffling initiated the contest, he’s its ultimate victim: his bedraggled, scarred, and bloodied carcass is what gets left behind in the sawdust.

“Sherlock’s Last Case” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

I’ll admit, dearest readers, that I was a bit worried during the first twenty minutes or so of Sherlock’s Last Case. Not so much because the title made me anxious for Sherlock Holmes’s fate (although that is an anxiety you are expected to entertain as part of the play), but more because the play starts out looking like the kind of creaky drawing-room whodunit that’s generally a wee bit too lite for my tastes. But the play – written by Charles Marowitz in the late eighties – is all about misdirection, and director Andrew Paul follows Marowitz’s lead by regularly pulling the rug out from under his audience’s expectations. By somewhere in the middle of the first act, it’s clear that we’re in the midst of a play that refuses to take itself too seriously, deriving as much fun from mocking its own genre as it does from its plot turns.

Paul and company have gone to great lengths (including some sleight-of-hand in the program) to keep Marowitz’s plot twists a surprise, so I won’t spoil any of it for readers who have not yet seen the production. Suffice it to say that Holmes’s “last case” gives a prominent role to Dr. Watson, played here with virtuosity by Simon Bradbury. The casting of David Whalen in the role of Sherlock Holmes lends this production an added frisson of intertextual metacommentary for Pittsburgh theater insiders (who will recall that Whalen previously played Holmes in two productions with PICT in the very same venue). Rounding out the cast are Weston Blakesley as a befuddled cockney Inspector LeStrade, Susie McGregor-Laine as Holmes’s Scottish housekeeper, and Joanna Strapp as the mysterious visitor who sets the machinery of the plot in motion.

Johnmichael Bohach’s scene design helps set the self-referential tone of the play with oversized framed newspaper headlines that comically highlight the ridiculously convoluted cases Holmes has already solved (and provide satiric context for the ridiculously convoluted manner in which he ends up, er, overcoming the challenges of the case at hand). Like the production itself, Kim Brown’s Victorian costumes start off somewhere in the realm of historical realism and get gradually campier as the play itself does. Topping off the fun are Steve Tolin’s ingenious special effects, involving, at various points, massively foaming potions, exploding skeletons, and projectiles of fake blood.

“Dance of Death” at Kinetic Theatre Company

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Kinetic Theatre Company

August Strindberg had an (in)famously torturous relationship with women, and he is often thought of as one of theatre history’s great misogynists. Certainly, his portrayal of women in some of his naturalist plays – as in, for example, his rather meanspirited portrait of the haughty and hysterical aristocratic Julie in Miss Julie – accord with records, in his diaries, of his own experience of women as a source of sexual and psychological torment. But his works can also be read (perhaps only in retrospect) as evidence of his insight into the ways in which traditional gender roles impacted relations between the sexes and – in particular – created the conditions for terribly unhappy marriages.

This is certainly the case with his compelling, ahead-of-its-time, and infrequently produced Dance of Death (which he wrote in 1900). The story here is of Edgar (Sam Tsoutsouvas), a military captain stationed on a remote island, and Alice (Helena Ruoti), his wife of twenty-five years. When she was still young and attractive, Alice gave up what she believed was a thriving career as an actress to marry Edgar, and she holds that sacrifice – as well as their social and geographic isolation – against him. He, for his part, is a misanthropist who considers himself superior to everyone else (including his wife). Their relationship has been a long-running game of cat and mouse, each constantly maneuvering to be the cat instead of the mouse. As in the Tom and Jerry cartoon that comparison may conjure, Edgar and Alice are also utterly dependent on one another: their endlessly looping battle – punctuated by moments of tenderness and concern – gives their lives structure and meaning. When Alice’s cousin (and former lover) Kurt (Mark D. Staley) is stationed on the island as the garrison’s new quarantine officer, he sparks desires and jealousies that dangerously raise the stakes of their battle.

L to R: Sam Tsoutsouvas and Helena Ruoti.

You’d be correct if you are thinking right now that this sounds a lot like the setup and subject of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee was undoubtedly influenced by Strindberg’s exploration of the psychological complexity of married life when he wrote that play, and Conor McPherson’s excellent translation makes the comparison between Albee and his predecessor readily apparent. The language here is sharp and direct, shifting from bleak despair to dry humor in a manner that feels extremely contemporary and fresh. And while we can see some of Strindberg’s much-vaunted misogynism in his characterization of Alice – she can be a bit of a strident harpy, she’s duplicitous, and she uses her sexual allure to try to ensnare Kurt  – it is also clear that the play is interested in revealing how deeply trapped all three characters are by Victorian sexual morality and gender roles. Imprisoned by their marriage (quite literally – their home is a former military prison!), Alice and Edgar are like caged animals, ready to attack any perceived weakness in the other, but also terrified of being left to endure captivity on their own.

The detritus of past grievances that haunt this couple is metaphorized in Narelle Sissons’ set, which surrounds the audience with what feels like several attics full of assorted furniture and antiquated objects strewn and hung and piled about, much of it shrouded in plastic that glows in Cindy Limauro’s haunting lighting design. Audience seating, which surrounds the small living room in which the action plays out, is hard to distinguish from the furniture in the set, giving the impression that we are guests who have been invited in, only to be awkwardly subjected to witnessing this private war. Director Andrew Paul has made a smart choice in staging this play in such intimate proximity to the audience: any greater distance and it would be too easy for the action’s heat to dissipate before it reaches the audience. Attired in Julianne D’Errico’s beautiful period-specific costumes, which tellingly signal the class and status difference between the aging, downwardly mobile Edgar and the younger and much higher status Kurt, Tsoutsouvas, Ruoti, and Staley do a marvelous job of generating that heat, and their handling of the characters’ contradictory and unpredictable shifts in emotion and state of mind is adroit and spellbinding.