Two Class Acts *** B-

For the final offering at its White Street home before moving to a new theater four blocks south, The Flea is presenting a pair of one-act plays by A.R. Gurney. This is fitting because Gurney has written several plays for them over the last several years and will have one of the performing spaces in the new building named for him. The two plays are separately ticketed, but it is advisable to see them back to back on the same evening. (The Flea's ticket prices are so low that the cost ot the two plays together is less than one play at most theaters.) Both deal with college faculty who teach Greek literature. 

In Squash, which we must deduce is set in the 1970’s, professor Dan Proctor (Dan Amboyer) likes to unwind with a game of squash after work. One day he is accosted in the locker room by a student, Gerald Caskey (Rodney Richardson), who allegedly is there to turn in a term paper early. He then admits that he also wanted to see Dan naked. (Yes, there’s brief non-frontal male nudity and Dan’s body is worthy of a Praxiteles.) Gerald later comes to Dan’s office to complain about the low grade on his term paper and find out whether it was because of their locker room encounter. Meanwhile Dan’s wife Becky (Nicole Lowrance) begrudges the time Dan spends on squash rather than at home and wishes he would do more to improve his chances of getting tenure. Implausibly Dan goes to a bar recommended by Gerald, unaware that it is a gay bar. He comes to question his own sexuality and eventually approaches Gerald. However Gerald has made discoveries of his own.

For Ajax, the smaller downstairs theater has been converted to a classroom with student tables and a lectern. Each student table has a syllabus for “Intro to Classic Greek Drama” on it. Meg Tucker (Olivia Jampol, who alternates with Rachel Lin) is a failed actress who is filling in as an adjunct instructor for a professor on sabbatical. Her lesson plan is disrupted by the late arrival of Adam Feldman (Chris Tabet, who alternates with Ben Lorenz), an enthusiastic but willful student who insists on writing an adaptation of Sophocles’s Ajax instead of a term paper on Aeschylus. His retelling of the story through the prism of PTSD is a big success when it is staged at a small venue on campus. Adam has persuaded the reluctant Meg to play the role of mistress to his Ajax. The university decides to stage Adam’s play at their main theater to promote their image. At this point the play goes seriously off the rails. Adam keeps revising the play and eventually turns it into an allegory about the Israelis and the Palestinians. The consequences are predictable. In a “happy” ending, we learn that the play will find a home at an adventurous New York theater called The Flea. 

Both plays starts promisingly, but end disappointingly. The acting runs from fair to good, with Amboyer standing out. The immersive sets by Jason Sherwood are excellent. In Squash, the long rectangular space is divided into four square playing areas for the locker room, dining room, office and bar, with two rows of seats facing each other along the long walls. The costumes by Sky Switser are appropriate to the characters. Stafford Arrima’s fluid direction is admirable.

Neither play is top-drawer Gurney, but, for me at least, even second-drawer Gurney is enjoyable. Running time for the two plays together: two hours total, including the time between plays.

Smoke *

I guess I wasn’t paying close attention when I booked a ticket for Kim Davies’s new play now in previews at The Flea’s tiny downstairs theater. Their website clearly describes it as a “BDSM erotic power game” so I can’t claim I wasn't warned. Although I usually try to avoid “spoilers” on this blog, I think it only fair to warn you that, unless your idea of the erotic encompasses having sex with knives, this 75-minute play will be a tough slog. (I should also warn you that many cigarettes are smoked.) I know I would have fled halfway through the play had I been able to. John (Stephen Stout) plays a 31-year old would-be artist who is the intern of a famous photographer. Julie (Madeleine Bundy) is a spoiled college student who, conveniently, turns out to be his employer’s daughter. They meet in the kitchen of a home where a sex party is in progress. Their encounter eventually leads to the aforementioned sex scene. If there was a point to it, I missed it. The actors make a very attractive couple (although Stout has the worst haircut in New York) and perform their roles with conviction. Director Tom Costello keeps things moving. Andrew Diaz’s set is simple but effective. Beth Goldenberg’s costumes are apt. I find it offensive that The Flea is presenting this. Maybe I am a prude after all. In fairness, I should report that the audience, almost exclusively under 35, gave it enthusiastic applause.

The Recommendation ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Jonathan Caren's modern moral tale, first produced at the Old Globe in San Diego, takes on big themes, such as race, class, envy, friendship, loyalty, trustworthiness and ingratitude. The play, now at The Flea's tiny downstairs theater, is narrated by Iskinder Iudoku (James Fouhey), who, with his half-Ethiopian half-Caucasian parentage, doesn't know quite where he belongs. In his freshman year at Brown, his roommate is Aaron Feldman (Austin Trow), wealthy, popular, privileged, self-absorbed, whose sense of entitlement is boundless. He takes Iskinder under his wing, gives him a taste of the good life, and gets his father to write Iskinder a recommendation for law school. They both end up in LA, Iskinder at a white-shoe law firm and Aaron as a filmmaker's assistant. When Aaron is stopped by the police for a broken taillight, he is arrested on an outstanding warrant and thrown in jail where he meets Dwight Barnes (Barron B. Bass), a fast-talking second offender who offers Aaron protection in jail in return for his promise of legal assistance. Five years later, against Aaron's wishes, Iskinder has written an appeal that wins Dwight's release from prison. Iskinder's letter of recommendation helps Dwight land a job at Aaron's health club, where there is a final melodramatic confrontation. The play is flawed, especially in the over-formulaic second act, but it is ambitious, energetic and very well-performed. Caile Hevner Kemp's extremely simple set makes good use of the wide, shallow stage. Sydney Maresca's costumes are apt. Kel Haney's direction is fine. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes including intermission. 

The Vandal ***

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Actor Hamish Linklater's (School for Lies, Seminar) debut effort as a playwright is now at The Flea Theater. Deirdre O'Connell (Circle Mirror Transformation, In the Wake) plays a withdrawn woman waiting for a bus at a stop in Kingston, NY near a hospital and a cemetery. Noah Robbins (The Twenty-Seventh Man) portrays a loquacious, philosophical 17-year old boy who pesters her until she agrees to buy him beer at a nearby liquor store. The somewhat menacing man who owns the liquor store, played by Zach Grenier (33 Variations, The Good Wife), claims to be the boy's father. In each of four scenes in which the characters exchange self-protective lies, the woman appears with either the boy or the man. There is a big reveal near the end that changes your understanding of all that has preceded. The actors are all top-notch and the dialog flows effortlessly. Clearly Linklater has a love of words and a talent for giving actors a chance to shine. A lengthy monologue in praise of Cool Ranch Doritos may not sound enticing, but it drew applause. The set by David M. Barber is modest, but efficient. Claudia Brown's costumes are fine. Jim Simpson's direction is smooth. The play seems a bit slight and the ending a bit flat. Nevertheless, Linklater shows a lot of promise and I look forward to seeing his next effort. Running time: 75 minutes.

Heresy *

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Even as capable a playwright as A.R. Gurney can miss the mark occasionally, as he has with this lame parody at The Flea. It may have seemed a clever idea to transpose New Testament figures into a dystopian America of the near future, but it doesn't work for me. Joseph (Steve Mellor) and Mary (Annette O'Toole) have come to see Pontius (Reg E. Cathey), the prefect of the New American National Guard to plead for their son Chris, who has been arrested in the most recent in a long series of crackdowns. They are soon joined by Phyllis (Kathy Najimy), Pontius's ditsy wife; Pedro (Danny Rivera), the college roommate who betrayed Chris; and Lena -- short for Magdalena -- (Ariel Woodiwiss), a sex worker who has fallen for Chris. The proceedings are being transcribed by Pontius's aide Mark (Tommy Crawford), who has a way with words. Get the picture? It is always fun to see Najimy in action. Cathey gets a few laughs too, but most of the proceedings are leaden and lack bite. The play seemed far longer than its 85 minutes. Kate Foster's set makes a convincing meeting room for high government officials. Claudia Brown's costumes are amusing. The play was directed by Jim Simpson, The Flea's founder and artistic director.

Invasion! **

As I looked around the lobby at The Flea before the house opened for the Play Company's production of Jonas Hassen Khemri's hit play, I suspected I was in trouble. 75% of the audience looked under 30 and very downtown. My qualms proved to be justified. Rarely have I seen such a generational divide in an audience. The under-30's whooped and hollered at lines that barely drew a chuckle from me. A startling coup de theatre about five minutes into the play clearly caused less angst among the young people near me, who quickly recovered from the shock. Too bad this was the most interesting moment in the play, at least for me. The playwright, whose father is Tunisian and whose mother is Swedish, has written a shaggy-dog story/farce/cautionary tale revolving around issues of Middle Eastern identity in Western society. It has played to packed houses in Europe and had a well-received brief run in New York last winter. In it, the mysterious name Abulkasem becomes a repository of attitudes toward the exotic and the foreign. The appealing cast of four (Francis Benhamou, Nick Choksi, Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte and Bobby Moreno) excel at playing multiple roles. The play's title had no clear connection to anything that transpired. Some of the loosely linked scenes are much better than others. One scene about a biased translator mistranslating the words of a migrant worker starts strong, but goes on too long. Another scene about pretentious drama students totally misfires. Two scenes that give his and her versions of an encounter in a bar are amusing, but not closely tied to the play's theme. The device of introducing a panel of "experts" to bloviate about a mysterious possible terrorist seemed tired. Furthermore, the director, Erica Schmidt, was guilty of one of the worst sins on my list of theatrical pet peeves -- shining bright lights in the audience's eyes. Although I salute the Play Company for translating and staging international plays that might not make it to New York, in this case I admired the result more than I enjoyed it. Running time: 90 minutes without intermission.

Future Anxiety **

Lauren Haines' satire at The Flea imagines a grim future in which environmental depredation has taken its toll and 12 billion people are competing for ever-diminishing resources. The Chinese import American debtors as slave labor. A woman who "collects" people for deportation to China is too ashamed to admit her occupation to her friends. People who chose cryogenics return to a world far worse than the one they left and must undergo two years of reorientation as wards of the state. A rapacious businessman scours the world for traces of vanished plant species. A poet softens the heart of a stern Chinese guard. A homeless man gives survival tips. A possibly crazed leader recruits followers to build a spaceship to travel to a new planet where they can start over -- and destroy a new environment. The various plot lines alternate in short scenes. 23 members of the Bats, the Flea's talented resident company of young actors, form the cast. The results are uneven and the whole is somehow less than its parts. The direction by Jim Simpson is fluid and the set by Kyle Chepulis makes good use of a small budget. The highlight for me actually took place before the play even started -- there is 15 minutes of weird vocalization by an uncredited male that is hysterically funny. Running time: 80 minutes.

P.S. Alas, there were more people in the cast than in the audience.