The Antipodes

C-

After being underwhelmed by Circle Mirror Transformation and angered by The Flick, I decided that Annie Baker was not a playwright I would ever appreciate. Then along came John, the first play of her Signature Theatre residency, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Now we have her second work for Signature, this strange piece that is essentially a fantasia on storytelling. I am beginning to think that John was a fluke, because I was once again disappointed. The set, by Laura Jellinek, is a conference room with grey carpet on the floor and walls, an enormous oval table surrounded by Aeron office chairs, a large oval light fixture overhead and a pile of colorful boxes of flavored soda water on the floor. The audience sits on the two long sides. Unfortunately, this configuration leads to at least three of the actors having their back to you for the entire play. When we arrive, a young man with a laptop is seated near one end of the table. He is soon joined by five men and a woman. Finally an older man, clearly the boss, arrives and sits at the head of the table. This is Sandy (Will Patton) who is in charge of the six writers around the table who are tasked with telling stories that will lead to the creation of an unspecified new project, perhaps a video game. Brian (Brian Miskell), the young man with the laptop, is there to transcribe their stories. Sandy emphasizes that anything goes in their stories, except for dwarves, elves and trolls. He induces them to tell about their first sexual experience, the worst thing that ever happened to them and their biggest regret. Dave (Josh Charles) and Danny M1 (Danny Mastrogiorno) dive right in. Adam (Phillip James Brannon) doesn’t have much to say until late in the play when he tells the longest, most fully developed story. Danny M2 (Danny McCarthy) has trouble getting into the spirit of things. Josh (Josh Hamilton) is troubled that he has yet to receive his ID badge or his paycheck. Eleanor (Emily Cass McDonnell) placidly knits most of the time. Sarah (Nicole Rodenburg), Sandy’s secretary with the affect of a Valley girl, pops in now and then to take lunch orders and announce the latest reason for Sandy’s absence. The passage of time is marked primarily by her changes of costume. Although storytelling is not part of her job, she tells one of the evening’s best tales. Some of their stories are raunchy, others gory and at least one, poetic. The stories that comprise most of the evening have no narrative arc that I could detect; nor do they really tell much about the characters who relate them. The relationships among the various writers go virtually unexplored. There are flashes of humor including a running joke about each writer having a different idea about how many kinds of stories there are. There’s a neat trick that I never figured out whereby food mysteriously appears on the table. What there is not is a cohesive plot or fully-developed characters. I suspect that the playwright had more fun coming up with ways to tease the audience than the audience has watching the play. Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves) directed. Running time: one hour 55 minutes; no intermission.

The Real Thing **

Let me confess right off that I wasn’t that impressed by Stoppard’s romantic comedy when I saw the 2000 Tony-awarded revival with Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle. However, that version was superior to the current revival at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater. I only attended out of curiosity to see Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal in their Broadway debuts. McGregor is fine as Henry, the Stoppard surrogate who writes plays that have more wit than heart. Gyllenhaal is equally good as Annie, Henry’s mistress in act one and wife in act two. They should have more chemistry together though. Cynthia Nixon as Henry’s first wife Charlotte and Josh Hamilton as Annie’s first husband Max are less successful. Director Sam Gold does not seem to have a firm grip on the material; his decision to interpolate songs of the period sung by the cast between scenes misfires. He seems to like sets that are wide and shallow. The set by David Zinn is almost as unattractive as the one for “Look Back in Anger,” another Roundabout production directed by Gold. For an allegedly well-made play, I found the second act to be a bit scattershot and its echoes of the play’s opening scene rather clumsy. I grew increasingly restless as the second act dragged on. If you crave Stoppard, you'll do better with Roundabout's other revival, "Indian Ink." Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.

Reasons To Be Happy ***

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Neil LaBute's seriocomedy, now in previews at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in an MCC production, revisits the four characters he introduced in "reasons to be pretty" three years later. However, familiarity with the earlier play is by no means a requirement for this one. The four are working stiffs; many of the scenes take place in the break room of the plant where three of them are or have been employed. Greg (Josh Hamilton), the one who has finished college and aspires to be a teacher, is nonconfrontational and commitment-shy in the extreme. Carly (Leslie Bibb), the pretty one, is a security guard and single mom, recently divorced from Kent (Fred Weller), the macho jock with anger-management issues. Steph (Jenna Fischer) is the not-as-pretty hair stylist who, although now married, suddenly has renewed feelings for ex-boyfriend Greg as soon as he takes up with her close friend Carly. Complications ensue. LaBute is a master at creating pitch-perfect dialog for awkward situations that is funny, vulgar, yet wise. He seems to regard his blue-collar characters with a mixture of sympathy and condescension. Their life is governed by the harsh buzzer at the factory and even the buzzing device at the restaurant announcing that their table is ready. Except for Greg, they hold book learning in low regard. Watching these four bounce off each other may not lead to anything profound, but I found it highly entertaining. Hamilton perfectly captures Greg's tentativeness, but does not display the charm that would make it more plausible for the two women to be so attracted to him. Weller plays Kent almost as a caricature, but it works. Fischer has some fine moments and Bibb was consistently fine. Neil Patel's scenic design has the stage platform painted in diagonal yellow and black stripes like a loading platform; his break room at the plant nails every detail. Sarah J. Holden's costumes befit the characters. LaBute's direction is assured, but the play might have been tightened up a bit if it had the benefit of another director's views. Running time: two hours, 10 minutes including intermission.

Medieval Play (Act One) [zero stars]

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It had to happen sooner or later -- encountering a play so bad that returning after intermission was unthinkable. Alas, today was the day and this was the play. It is hard to imagine that Kenneth Lonergan, author of "This Is Our Youth," "Lobby Hero" and the screenplay for "You Can Count on Me," is responsible for this pointless mess, now in previews at Signature Theatre.  His play "The Starry Messenger" last year was no great shakes, but it was a masterpiece by comparison. This one is allegedly a comedy about the misadventures of two 14th-century Breton knights, one idealistic (Josh Hamilton), the other cynical and not too bright (Tate Donovan). The melange of anachronisms, bodily function jokes, four-letter words and comic book violence might make a mildly amusing five-minute sketch on Saturday Night Live, but sitting through an hour and twenty minutes of it was painful. Staying for the remaining hour and twenty minutes would qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. Most depressing of all, judging from the laughter, there was a substantial minority of the audience who loved every minute of it. Also in the cast are Anthony Arkin, Heather Burns, Halley Feiffer, Kevin Geer, John Pankow and C.J. Wilson.The storybook sets by Walt Spangler and costumes by Michael Krass were far more amusing that any lines in the play. The swordfights were well-staged by J. David Brimmer. Lonergan directed his own play, so he has no one else to blame. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes including intermission.