The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois **

Based on my reaction to earlier plays by Adam Rapp (Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, The Hallway Trilogy, Red Light Winter), my expectations for his current play at Atlantic Stage 2 were low. To my great surprise, I found it both involving and touching. In Ellis (a superb William Apps), Rapp presents a man who has bipolar disease with psychosis, who has done some horrible things who commands both our fear and our compassion. When we meet him, he is nervously preparing to receive guests. His visitors turn out to be a pair of teenage girls, Monique (an irresistibly watchable Susan Heyward), a trash-talking 15-year old African-American girl and Catherine (Katherine Reis), a shy 13-year-old with asthma and IBS. Monique has “borrowed” her aunt’s driver’s license to drive Catherine to meet Ellis. We eventually learn who Catherine is and why she is there. The trio are joined by Barrett (Connor Barrett), who has enabled Ellis and Catherine to make contact online. Ellis’s attempt to hold it together falters, with frightening results. The visit concludes on a slightly hopeful note. Andromache Chalfant's generic apartment set is grimly realistic and Jessica Pabst’s costumes suit the characters well. The playwright directed with assurance. The play has some slow moments. If Heyward were not such a stage presence, I would have found her character an annoying cliche. Barrett’s role is a bit underwritten. Despite its shortcomings, the play succeeds in taking us to a place that we probably never wanted to go while getting us to care about someone we would rather dismiss. The audience reaction was quite mixed. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes; no intermission. NOTE. Avoid Row A; it’s behind row AA and not elevated.

brownsville song (b-side for tray) **

If good intentions and heartfelt sincerity were all it took to write a successful play, Kimber Lee (who apparently has an aversion to capital letters) would have hit the jackpot with her drama at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater. We know before the play begins that Tray (Sheldon Best), an 18-year-old black Brooklynite just finishing high school, is dead. The play opens with a grief-filled monologue by Tray’s grandma Lena (Lizan Mitchell) advising us that Tray’s life is worth far more than the few lines the newspaper will devote to his senseless death in a street shooting. After this strong start, the play moves backward and forward in time to describe Tray and the effects of his death on his grandmother, his beloved little half-sister Devine (Taliyah Whitaker), his long-estranged stepmother Merrell (Sun Mee Chomet) and, to a lesser extent, his friend Junior (Chris Myers). Unfortunately, the play begins to lose its course and ultimately resorts to some manipulative sentimentality. A few things puzzled me. What happened to Tray’s biological mother? Was the choice of an Asian-American actor to play Merrell an indication of his stepmother’s ethnicity or just a bit of nontraditional casting? (I concluded it was the former.) Some of the plot points stretched my willingness to suspend disbelief too far. Merrell’s reappearance, first as a tutor for Tray’s college admission essay, and then as a job applicant at the Starbuck’s where he is a barista, seemed too pat. The play’s sentimental but nonetheless wrenching ending reinforces our sense of tragic, senseless loss. The production is first-rate: the cast is very good, the set by Andromache Chalfant is excellent, the costumes by Dede M. Ayite are apt, the lighting by Jijoun Chang and the sound design by Asa Wember are effective and the direction by Patricia McGregor is assured. Would that the playwright had been able to maintain the high level of the play’s opening scene. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes, no intermission.

Sex with Strangers ***

When strong sexual attraction clashes with literary incompatibility, which will win out? How does a young person deal with the acute anxiety of being temporarily without access to the internet? How can we ever really know someone? These are some of the questions posed by Laura Eason’s entertaining two-character play at Second Stage. Olivia is a near-40 novelist turned teacher who was so traumatized by her first book’s lukewarm reception many years ago that she refuses to show anyone the manuscript of her second novel. Ethan is a 28-year-old hunk who has chronicled his sexual exploits in the blog after which the play is named and turned them into two e-books that spent 5 years on the Times best-seller list. They meet on a stormy winter night at a remote Michigan b&b where they both have come to work, Olivia on her novel and Ethan on the screenplay for his first book. This set-up has more than a touch of sitcom about it, but a sitcom with good dialog and literary ambitions. Fortunately for us, Olivia and Ethan are played by Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) and Billy Magnussen (Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike), two very appealing actors who have palpable chemistry. They have sex on the table, on the couch, in the bed — and that’s just in Act One. They are less compatible out of the sack. Ethan has read and admired Olivia’s first novel and pushes her to resume her writing career with his help. He longs to get past the image of his previous books and write something serious. Olivia cannot help wondering whether the bad boy persona in Ethan’s books is just a character or the actual person. Complications arise in the second act, many of them arising from the perils of the publishing world in the digital age. We have to take it on faith that both are talented writers. Andromache Chalfant’s sets are fine, particularly her set for Olivia’s apartment. Esosa’s costumes befit their characters. David Schwimmer’s direction is assured, although I did feel the sex scenes were longer than necessary. I found the characters to be more like constructs than real people, but the committed acting allayed my qualms. As summer entertainment, the play hits the mark as long as you don’t examine it too closely. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including intermission.

A Kid Like Jake ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
As the recipient of the prestigious Laurents-Hatcher prize for 2013, Daniel Pearle's new play arrives at LCT3's Claire Tow Theater with expectations high. By and large, these expectations have been met and its worthiness for an award is clear. This tale of a Manhattan couple, probably Upper West Siders, struggling through the process of getting their only child into a prestigious private school has a twist: Little Jake, whom we never meet, is obsessed with Cinderella and likes to dress up like a girl. Jake's mom Alex (Carla Gugino), who abandoned a career in dance for the law and then for full-time motherhood, is still emotionally fragile after a recent miscarriage. Her husband Greg (Peter Grosz) is a laid-back psychotherapist. They are not sure whether Jake's predilection for "gender-variant" play, with which they seem mostly comfortable, is an obstacle to admission or, as their counselor/friend Judy (Caroline Aaron) suggests, a selling point for a school to achieve diversity. The application process with its essays, testing, visits, interviews and strategizing places their marriage under tremendous pressure that eventually opens fissures that release a painful outpouring of raw emotion. The three lead actors are superb and the buildup to their catharsis is gripping. I have qualms about the penultimate scene with Alex and a nurse (Michelle Beck), but my reaction to the play as a whole is overwhelmingly positive. Andromache Chalfant's flexible set serves well as several locales. Jessica Wegener Shay's costumes do not call attention to themselves. Evan Cabnet's direction is assured. Running time: one hour, 45 minutes, no intermission. Note: I am told that the entire run is sold out, but watch for a possible extension. Incidentally, LCT3's marketing plan finally seems to be paying off -- the audience had a substantially higher percentage of young people than usual.