Oslo ***

Playwright J.T. Rogers is certainly not reluctant to take on complicated geopolitical topics. His 2011 play at Lincoln Center Theater, “Blood and Gifts,” was about American policy in Afghanistan. Now he is back at the Mitzi E. Newhouse with “Oslo,” an ambitious look at the story behind the secret negotiations that led to the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993. Happily, several people associated with that production have also returned: director Bartlett Sher, set designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer Catherine Zuber and actors Jefferson Mays and Michael Aronov. The story revolves around Terje Red-Larsen (Mays), director of a Norwegian think tank devoted to applied social sciences, and his wife Mona Juul (Jennifer Ehle), an official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, who come up with the idea of initiating and facilitating secret “back door” talks between two representatives of the PLO and a pair of economics professors from Haifa who, officially at least, have no ties with the Israeli government. Larsen and Juul have to win over the Norwegian foreign minister (T. Ryder Smith) and his deputy (Daniel Jenkins) to their risky efforts. The initial meetings between the PLO officials (Anthony Aziz and Dariush Kashani) and the Israelis (Daniel Oreskes and, doubling roles, Jenkins) are prickly, but they soon begin to make progress, lending support to Larsen’s theory that private, personal, incremental negotiations might succeed where public, impersonal, comprehensive talks have failed. The Israeli professors are eventually joined by and then supplanted by Uri Savir (Aronov,) Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Joel Singer (Joseph Siravo), an attorney. We also meet the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Bellin (Adam Dannheiser) and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Oreskes, also doubling). There are several other minor characters for a total cast of 14 actors in 21 roles. There are many complications and obstacles along the way. A play with three acts is a rarity today. The first act is intricately structured while the second act is more straightforward. The final act loses some steam in summarizing many of the events that have occurred since 1993. The cast is consistently strong, the simple but attractive set is enhanced by unobtrusive projections (by 59 Productions), the costumes are excellent and the direction is smooth. Be prepared to concentrate on a complex narrative for three hours. I found the end result more admirable than enjoyable. I kept thinking that it would make a fine miniseries. Running time: 3 hours, including intermission.

Hir **

This play by downtown performance artist Taylor Mac, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, might be called a kitchen sink drama, but the sink is filled with dirty dishes and the drama is covered by a thick layer of absurdist comedy. This semi-autobiographical play presents a family living on the edge in Stockton, California. Paige (the always wonderful Kristine Nielsen), the mother, is getting her revenge on her stroke-diminished husband Arnold (Daniel Orestes) for the years of abuse he subjected her and her children to by dressing him up in women’s clothes, clown wig and makeup and keeping him overmedicated. Teen-age daughter Maxine has become Max (Tom Phelan), a transgendered young man sporting a scruffy beard. Paige is home schooling Max to protect hir (the transgender pronoun) from bullying. Paige is convinced that a new golden age is arising where gender fluidity is the norm and patriarchal power is a thing of the past. Early in the play older son Isaac (a strong Cameron Scoggins) returns home after three years in a Marine mortuary unit in Afghanistan. He is shocked by what he finds — a cluttered home worthy of the Collyer brothers, a barely coherent father, a sister turned brother and a newly assertive mother. This is not the comforting home he hoped to return to. A power struggle between Isaac and Paige ensues. The play’s frequently hilarious moments do not hide the underlying sadness. Paige’s philosophy seemed half-baked and its presentation, repetitious. A certain amount of chaos is necessary to the play, but there was too much for my taste. Any play that offers Kristine Nielsen a starring role is worth seeing in my book, but this play puts that to the test. David Zinn’s set is a cluttered wonder. Gabriel Berry’s costumes suit their characters well. Director Niegel Smith’s direction is assured. Running time: one hour 50 minutes including intermission.

The Twenty-Seventh Man **

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I might have liked Nathan Englander's adaptation of his own short story, now in previews at the Public Theater, better if I had not read the story when it first appeared.  In it, we meet four Jewish writers in a Russian jail. As part of Stalin's purge of Jewish intellectuals, 27 Yiddish writers have been rounded up and imprisoned. All are established authors except for one innocent young man who writes but has never been published. His inclusion, the apparent result of a bureaucratic error, must somehow be justified by the prison head. Yevgeny Zunser (Ron Rifkin) is a very old writer, once revered, now neglected. Moishe Bretzky (Daniel Oreskes) is an alcoholic sensualist who voluntarily gave up the chance to live abroad. Vasily Korinsky (Chip Zien) has been Stalin's loyal toady and thinks that will protect him. Pinchas Pelovits (Noah Robbins) is the young innocent whose greatest joy is to write something every day. Byron Jennings plays the "agent in charge" and Happy Anderson is a guard. The older writers bicker about their literary reputations while Pinchas, lacking pen and paper, commits to memory his final story and recites it for his cellmates. For me, the tale was far more powerful on the page than on the stage. Somehow the characters seemed less vivid in the flesh than they were in my imagination. The unevenness of the acting is a problem. Rifkin and Zien are very good, Oreskes and Jennings are alright, but Robbins is woefully inadequate in the difficult role of Pinchas. The simple sets by Michael McCarty are effective. With one exception, Katherine Roth's costumes are fine: Bretzky does not look nearly unkempt enough. Barry Edelstein's direction is unobtrusive. I suspect that the play will work better for those unfamiliar with the story. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes without intermission.

Russian Transport **

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An immigrant family struggling to achieve the good life in Brooklyn is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a relative from the old country.  No, I'm not talking about "A View from the Bridge." In this New Group production,  the family are Russian Jews living in Sheepshead Bay and the arriving relative is the wife's younger brother Boris (Morgan Spector.) Misha, the hen-pecked husband (Daniel Oreskes), runs a struggling car service. When she is not bullying her family, domineering wife Diana (Janeane Garofolo) works in a store. Son Alex (Raviv Ullman), still in high school, drives for his father, works in a mobile phone store, and deals a few drugs on the side. He is unrelentingly nasty to his younger sister Mira (Sarah Steele), who dreams of attending a summer program in Florence and must be the first 14-year-old girl in history uninterested in getting her first bra or wearing makeup. Even before Boris arrived, I was not looking forward to spending 2 1/2 hours with these unpleasant people. Diana's brother Boris is a sinisterly seductive sociopath who immediately sets out to corrupt Alex and Mira. He enlists Alex as an initially unwitting driver to transport newly-arrived Russian girls to mysterious locations. He turns on the charm with Mira and shows her his gun. (No, Freudians, an actual gun.) The family members have at each other for 2 1/2 hours, as various secrets are revealed. Playwright Erika Sheffer is not adept at telling a story clearly. At intermission, people around me were arguing about what exactly happened in the final scene of Act One. There is another scene near the end of the play that takes place so quickly and in such darkness that it wasn't clear what actually transpired. Director Scott Elliott shares some of the blame here. The actors are excellent with the exception of Garofolo, who struggles a bit with the Russian accent. Spector is an absolutely chilling Boris. Steele and Ullman are both fine, but I thought that she looked older than her brother, not three years younger. Oreskes deftly avoids stereotype. The two-level set by Derek McLane captures Diana's concept of good taste. I am surprised by the mostly positive reviews the play received. The audience was far less enthusiastic.