Stagenotes: December 2007

DORIS TO DARLENE, A CAUTIONARY VALENTINE

This new play by the 2007 Kesselring-Award-winning Jordan Harrison is, according to the young playwright, "about three different love stories in three different times that are all linked together by a single song... None of the love stories could be described as functional, they're teetering on the edge of destruction." The first story revolves around "The Liebestod," written by Richard Wagner in the mid-1800s for his patron, the Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. The second, set in the 1960s, follows Vic Watts, a record producer (not unlike Phil Spector), who discovers a young pop singer, changes her name from Doris to Darlene, and takes Wagner's music and turns it into a pop hit. The third, set in the present, focuses on a teenager who is touched by the 1960s song, while in the midst of a relationship with his music teacher, a former opera singer.

The germ of the play was an actual song Phil Spector produced in 1966 for the Ronnettes called "When I Saw You." "Spector weaved a wall of violent sound from 'The Liebestod,' written for his opera Tristan and Isolde, quoting one of the most daunting composers in Western music," says Harrison, clearly in awe, adding, "He took a song, all about love and death, and turned it into a top-40 hit for a teenage girl to sing." Les Waters directs and Kirsten Childs wrote the music.

Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater, 416 W. 42nd St., (212) 279-4200. Previews Nov. 16, opens Dec. 11-23. Tues. -Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 & 7:30 p.m. $65.

THE BABY JESUS ONE-ACT JUBILEE: SECOND COMING

This collection of 12 holiday-themed one-act plays by well-known downtown playwrights could only be happening at The Brick Theater, notorious for the original concepts and brazen names they give their frequent festivals. In A Christmas Carol, by Jason Grote, whose recent 1001 received enthusiastic reviews, the playwright combines Dickens' traditional Scrooge story with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. In the one-act monologue Scrooge tries to recreate the story of the sentimental Christmas tale, but, "he's sort of incoherent -- he gets Dickens' story mixed up with Kafka's Country Doctor and a couple of Donald Barthelme short stories," says Grote, adding, "I've tried to weave these stories so some of the darkness comes out; it's whimsical, silly, surreal and dream-like." Some others to look for are Action Jesus by Qui Nguyen, the story of baby Jesus... with fights (!) and Marshmallow World by Marc Spitz, wherein a Jew from a very conservative family tries to cure his addiction to Christmas music.

The Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (212) 352-3101. Dec. 6-22, two separate programs, six plays each. The "Marys," Thurs. & Sat., 7 p.m.; Fri., 9 p.m. The "Josephs," Thurs. & Sat., 9 p.m.; Fri., 7 p.m. $10, $15.

NICE JEWISH GIRLS GONE BAD

Here's a holiday attraction to make you forget Santa and his elves: six funny women who mix comedy, music, dance and burlesque to provide an evening of badass entertainment. "It's like Faster, Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill in the Borscht Belt," says Susannah Pearlman (a.k.a The Goddess Pearlman), the show's creator and host. Pearlman started the raucous, vaudeville-like show five years ago and has been touring the country since. All of the performers have stand-up credits on popular cable shows, and in each show there are four comedy acts, a burlesque show and a group number that holds it all together. They update vintage Catskills skits with downtown references, pay homage to Paula Abdul and Barbra Streisand and work with a live Klezmer band onstage, "The Four Skins." Plus, there's a "Hasidic strip tease," in which two women, dressed as Hasidic men, take it off. "A Jewish girl on a stripper pole," extols Pearlman, "that's a dream come true."

The Zipper Factory, 336 W. 37th St., (212) 352-3101. Dec. 5, 6, 7, 13, 19, 21, 22 and 23, 9:30 p.m. Dec. 22 and 24, 7:30 p.m. $25.

NO DICE

The Nature Theater of Oklahoma (a young performance group that took its name from the last chapter of Kafka's first novel Amerika) was a big hit at January's Under The Radar Festival. With No Dice, here’s a chance to see a style of performance unlike anything else being done today. Conceived and directed by founders Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, the material for their four-hour-long show comes from 100 hours of taped phone conversations that Liska had with various members of the company (comprised of five actors), as well as his friends and family. "We take the conversations and, using traditional theater tropes, like accents, and costumes and melodramatic staging, we transform these mundane conversations into heightened theater."

Liska gave as an example the conversation he and I were having at the moment, except he suggested I might be wearing a 1920s flapper costume and he would be Zorro, I would have a Polish accent and he would have a Spanish one and we would "melodramatize" the conversation. "You might cry, Pavol might struggle," said Copper, "we take everything to the extreme." There is no written script and via iPods, the actors are fed dialogue and it’s up to them to deliver the lines as precisely as possible, including the stammers and pauses. "In the breakdown of the language, truth is revealed, and it is something new," says Liska.

SoHo Rep, 66 White St., (212) 868-4444. Previews Dec. 6, opens Dec. 8. Fri., Sat. and Sun., sandwiches and sodas served at 6:30 p.m., performance begins at 7 p.m. $25, 99 cents on Sunday.

THE CITY THAT CRIED WOLF

The City That Cried Wolf, a comedy by Brooks Reeves and directed by Dan Barnes and Leta Tremblay, combines a film noir murder mystery with familiar nursery rhyme characters. The scenario: A private detective is hired by a city councilman who thinks his wife is cheating on him. The detective follows the wife, a lounge singer and the femme fatale in the story. "Then, as in classic film noir, the detective falls in love with the wife," says Barnes, "and the councilman gets pushed out a window -- murdered." The detective, an ex-cop, is asked by the local police chief to investigate the councilman's homicide. "The twist in this story is that it's fused with the world of nursery rhyme," says Barnes. So the detective is Jack B. Nimble, the councilman is Humpty-Dumpty (who "had a great fall"), the wife/singer is Little Bo Peep and the female chief of police is Mother Goose. "That's the surface of the play," says Barnes, "but the underbelly is one of fear, because it's set in a world where wolves are roaming the streets." And it goes a little deeper than wolves who huff and puff and blow pigs' houses down. Jack is a "rabid wolf-hater," according to Barnes, but as the play goes on we see the wolves as "just other persons in the world," notes Barnes. "It's a comedy over all -- with puns, fun and abandon -- but in the end it has a point to make."

59E59Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., (212) 279-4200. Previews Dec. 5, opens Dec. 11- Dec. 30. Tues.-Fri., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 & 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 3:30 & 7:30 p.m. $20.