The play’s popularity has brought it for a second time to the Boston area, this time at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell (SpeakEasy Stage produced it last year).  If you don’t have a car, getting to Merrimack Rep probably sounds like a pain.  But I decided to make the trek, carless and all–and I am so glad I did.   Artistic Director Charles Towers brings unique vision to the play, and his strong cast lights up the stage, backdropped by an incredible set.  Talent marks Merrimack Rep’s production of The Seafarer, which is mostly hindered, strangely enough, by the Tony Award-nominated script. 

It is Christmas Eve in Dublin and James “Sharky” Harkin, after swearing off a debauched life of drinking, has moved back home to take care of his blind and aging brother Richard.   Over an evening of holiday revelry, freely flowing alcohol, and a Poker game with the highest of stakes, Sharky finds himself seeking redemption, and must contend with demons both inside and out in order to get it.

The Seafarer is a tale of mythic proportions, though it takes a long time to get there.  If I showed you my little Moleskine notebook (which I bought just to bring to shows and take notes), you’d see a whole page and a half of notes about the first act, and a whopping two notes for the second. This says a lot about the show’s arc; the first act, while skillfully performed, is really just boring.  Rather than attributing this to Merrimack Rep’s production, I have to blame it on the script itself.  While a little exposition is necessary in any play, McPherson spends nearly an entire act setting up the play’s central conflict.  A lot of amusing business occurs, and we are given strong hints about Sharky’s past in passing, but after nearly an hour of “business” I was definitely getting restless.  I actually wrote in my notebook, “What is this play about?” Towards the end of the first act, an event occurs that changes the very essence of what the play has been thus far, and from then on it charges boldly forward towards a chilling and powerful climax. The second act is entirely intoxicating and edge-of-your-seat gripping, powerfully written and powerfully performed by Merrimack Rep, and almost makes up for the blasé first act–almost. While the first act’s triviality is a lovely juxtaposition to the second act’s severity, it is not enough to forgive the grueling amount of time spent on minutiae.

Don’t get me wrong.  The play is wonderful, and absolutely deserves that Tony nomination. McPherson’s dialogue is clever and realistic, each of his characters speaking in his own distinct voice; some lines are so beautiful in their poetry it makes you want to weep. The play’s situation expertly straddles the line between tragedy and comedy. The Harkin brothers’ life is mildly upsetting and totally pitiful, but their antics are so ridiculous and so full of truth that you can’t help but laugh. When the play is at its darkest, there are several riotous moments, expertly placed, that give the audience a well-needed laugh. Even with this fantastic writing, McPherson leaves a lot of loose ends. Many elements are introduced in the first act that don’t get a big enough payoff at the end.  Then there’s the matter of that excruciatingly long first act.  But, I’ve spent too long on the script; this is not intended to be a critique of the play, but of Merrimack Rep’s performance of it.

The Seafarer calls for a cast of five strong male actors, each with a strong personality and a strong Irish accent.  Merrimack Rep’s line up of company veterans is more than up to the challenge. With incredible vocal and physical choices, each actor creates a totally complete character, marked by truthfulness and individuality.    Despite the characters’ shared accents, each one possesses a distinct voice, as well as distinguishing mannerisms.  Each character is his own man, and it is clear that the actors have down their homework.

In Sharky, David Adkins creates a simultaneously pitiful and wildly sympathetic protagonist. He swaggers about the stage with gentle laziness, speaking with a softening lilt in his voice. In his interactions with others, Adkins’ Sharky possesses an enduring patience that makes him immediately likable and able to relate to; it is clear that he’s just a guy trying to do the right thing in life, and who can’t relate to that?

Adkins’ chemistry with Gordon Joseph Weiss, who plays Sharky’s brother Richard Harkin, is extraordinary. Weiss’ wildness contrasts beautifully with Adkin’s weary demureness, and even through the characters’ constant fighting, the actors skillfully portray their strong brotherly love.

While Adkins leads the cast with tenderness, Weiss steals the show. This is not really a surprise; the character of Richard won The Seafarer‘s Broadway production a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor, so it’s clear that the character allows an actor to shine–and Weiss does shine. With wildly imaginative choices and stellar comedic timing, Weiss dominates the stage, filling the first act with hilarity and grounding the second in touching sincerity.

The rest of the cast is equally good. Jim Frangione’s Ivan is kind and genuine, likable despite his flaws, and Allyn Burrows’ Nicky defies the stereotype set up for him, proving a fun addition to the evening’s events.  As Mr. Lockhart, Mark Zeisler is powerful and unpredictable, deftly contrasting erratic movement with stillness, apathy with passion, and calm with rage to create a truly frightening individual.

As Zeisler utilizes contrasts in his characterization of Mr. Lockhart, so does director Charles Towers in his vision of the show. Barrages of sound end suddenly in silence; a stage full of movement falls suddenly still.  Towers uses these remarkable contrasts to highlight more subtle (and important) character interactions, a technique that results in breathtaking tableaus and gives the production an epic quality.  I may be making a mental leap here, but I can only assume that Towers coached his actors to incorporate contrast into their performances, which probably helped them to create such distinctive characters.  If this is true, Towers is a truly visionary director who understands the intricacies of the stage.

With his preoccupation with contrasts, however, Towers neglects a few basic staging rules. While Mr. Lockhart’s stillness is powerful, he spends most of the play standing or sitting in one position, his face poised in such a way that it is difficult for half of the audience to see him. I happened to be in that half of the audience; I didn’t think much of Zeisler as an actor for a good 10 minutes until he moved and I could suddenly see his face–what a difference! There are a few other details like this that detract from the play, but they are so minor that it’s not even worth it to mention them.

An incredible set caps this already wonderful production. As the audience enters the theatre, the stage stands curtainless to reveal a bare-bones basement apartment with stairs leading to an upper level.  Unidentified stains soil the cheap carpet; tattered furniture haphazardly decorates the room; a single portrait of Jesus Christ hangs on the otherwise bare wall; a tiny Tiffany lamp dangles out of place at the center of the ceiling.  Trash, mostly liquor bottles, litters the floor and furniture, and chairs stand about the space in no clear pattern, some having fallen (or been kicked) over.  A pitiful Christmas tree wilts on an end table.    Despite its sparseness, the set has clearly been designed and crafted with intricate detail.  It takes a temperate hand to make a room appear lived in without making it seem deliberately or falsely so, and  I have to give serious props to scene designer Bill Clarke for creating a realistic, truthful playing space.

The problems I had with the first act of Merrimack Rep’s The Seafarer prevented me when first asked from describing the play as “great.” After reviewing my notes and writing this review, I have to say that Charles Towers’ insight and his cast’s abilities really do make this production a great one. I’ll tell the truth; I wasn’t really considering heading back to the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in the near future, just because it is sort of a pain to get out there without a car, and none of the other plays this season immediately strike my fancy.  But my experience of The Seafarer makes me excited to see what else the company is capable of.  Also, they treated me like gold while I was there.  So, you’ll probably see me back.

You can catch The Seafarer through November 8th at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre.  Visit their website for more information or ticket purchases.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? tells the story of a night of reckoning.  Presumably taking place it real time, the play is a nonstop deluge of mind games, emotional torture, and freely flowing alcohol.   Part of Virginia Woolf’s brutality comes from the fact that there are no breaks. Though there are two merciful intermissions, once you’re in the play, you’re in the play: there are no scene changes, and no escape from the inevitable rush towards destruction.

I first experienced Virginia Woolf a couple of years ago while stage-managing an amateur production of it.  It’s important for me to note that without this particular production, I wouldn’t be involved in half of the wonderful things I am apart of today, and I wouldn’t know almost any of the people who are now most important to me.  Considering we were a ramshackle bunch of 20-somethings who had no idea what we were doing, the show itself was a wonderful success. Even so, the play’s ferocious brutality made the production one of the most difficult theatrical experiences of my life.  It had nothing to do with us; we were all friends, and while we were all struggling a little bit in our lives (as 20-somethings are prone to do) that would not have been enough to make us walk out of rehearsals as miserable as we almost always did. The question “Why are we even doing this play?” was often thrown around, and whether one or other of the actors would suddenly give up and quit was always a fear in my mind.  After analyzing the situation, I came to this conclusion: it was the play itself.  The play’s viciousness was infecting our lives, seeping into our cores and making the rehearsal process virtually backbreaking.

I only tell this story in order to really show you how awful this play is.  And the sick thing is: I love it. I love it because the play is so viscerally upsetting.  With only a few words (okay, a lot of words; remember, the thing is 3 hours long), Albee dramatizes humanity’s dark side with penetrating truthfulness.  Despite their outrageousness, Virginia Woolf’s plot and characters are disturbingly realistic, and it is this realism that makes the play so perfectly unendurable.

Publick Theatre chooses to emphasize this realism in their production of Virginia Woolf, a powerful choice in many ways.  Their set is the best example.  Upon entering the theatre, I feel like I am walking into the living room of a real house. Lamplight spills into the foyer through the heavy front door; an overstuffed couch and chair invite houseguests to sit; the bookshelves are lined with beautiful old books that any respectable college professor would own; lamps hang like stalactites from the ceiling, and serve as the majority of the onstage lighting. It’s easy to forget that this is a set.

It’s so realistic in fact that the sofa and chair face into the set instead of out at the audience.  The set designers made the right choice in terms of realism; since when have you seen living room seating that faces a wall?  However, with this choice comes a huge sacrifice. Much of the play’s action occurs in these seats, and as actors sit down (which they do almost as often as they stand), they become completely hidden from view. Gradually, a scene becomes a conversation between one actor and the back of a talking head. This would be a problem in any production, but especially in Virginia Woolf, with its agonizing rush towards impending doom, the fact that the audience can’t see the actors’ faces half of the time is a huge gash in the play’s momentum, as well as a debilitating energy suck.

The actors actually spend a lot of their time facing away from the audience. The production seems staged as if it were theatre-in-the-round—that is, with audience on all four sides—with actors frequently turning their backs to the audience. By ignoring these basic staging conventions, the production is almost entirely removed from the realm of the theatre and transported into an actual living room. While it enhances the realism of the set, this technique drastically cuts the audience out of the action of the play.  I can understand the decision to do this; the audience becomes like a fly on the wall, an awkward intruder into the night’s awful events.  However, even though I was in primo third row seats, I often felt completely removed from the play’s emotional immediacy.

The actors kept me actively engaged. With power and passion, founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company Tina Packer dominates the stage. Packer plays a surprising Martha, strutting confidently about in risqué clothes and commanding the action with bombastic authority, while simultaneously bearing secret, painful sensitivity that is devastating to watch. In many ways, Packer’s performance is too big for the play. While Virginia Woolf conjures the overwhelming passion of a Greek tragedy, it is still a modern production with its emphasis on realism, and Packer’s wild emotionality seems at times inappropriate to the production. I call tell she is a much better classical actor than she is a modern one.

Packer’s chemistry with costar Nigel Gore (George) is astounding.  George and Martha’s marriage is one of the most complicated relationships in modern literature, and Gore and Packer layer their performances with complexity.  They need only to exchange a glance and worlds of emotion ignite in their eyes, from desperate love to complete loathing.

Gore’s performance is mesmerizing. With intelligence and precision, he creates a magnificently complete character with a rich emotional life and distinctive physicality that is delightful to watch.   While Packer’s Martha is surprisingly sensitive, Gore’s George is unexpectedly powerful, more than an even match for Packer. This is not so apparent in the first act.  As George, Gore utilizes a quick monotone that, in the first act, not only gives him a simpering quality but also zaps the motivation out of his words; it sounds like he’s speaking because he likes the sound of his voice, not because he has anything important to say.  When he returns to the stage in act II, Gore’s words are suddenly full of subtext, and his presence has strengthened tenfold. Although he doesn’t appear to be doing anything differently, his speedy monotone is now incredibly effective and extremely empowering, giving him a leg up in his fight with Packer for control of the stage

As Nick and Honey, Kevin Kaine and Angie Jepson hold their own against Packer and Gore’s strength.  Kaine is the frightening epitome of youth, beauty, and potential, his confidence never wavering even as George and Martha use Nick as ammunition against each other, often at his expense.  Quick, natural reactions make Kaine’s performance incredibly entertaining. His descent into drunken defiance is hilariously realistic, especially as he allows Nick’s native Midwestern accent to gradually seep out.  Jepson’s physicality is startlingly impressive. As Honey is tossed about by the play’s other characters (sometimes literally), Jepson flails and flops about on the furniture, her movements stunningly natural and relaxed, truly embodying the drunken ragdoll Honey is.

While all four actors are superb, something about their performance surprised me.  I might only have noticed because I am intimately familiar with the script, but it appears that some actors do not completely know their lines.  This is made clear when characters are not cut off when they should be and the moment hangs, or when something a character says doesn’t make complete sense in response to what was previously said. The talented quartet does their best to make up for this oversight, but when the lack of memorization leaks into the play, it loses precious momentum that the actors must scramble to rebuild.

A few other small problems litter the Publick’s Virginia Woolf.  Despite its efforts to be as realistic as possible, some decisions seem to run counter to this goal.  For example, though her performance is wonderful, Tina Packer performs in her native English accent, despite evidence in Martha’s past to suggest she has never lived in England, at least for an extended period.  The lighting design also disrupts the play’s realism.  The lighting itself is incredibly effective: most of the lights used in the show are built into the set in the form of lamps.  However, the light often shifts between dim and bright throughout the play while none of the actors seem to be adjusting it, seemingly at random.  This not only grates at the play’s realism, but also serves as a distraction, especially at intense moments.

Despite’s its several problems, I was definitely affected by the Publick Theatre’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.  The acting alone makes it worth seeing, and, although at times problematic, Diego Arciniegas’ direction showcases a unique perspective of the play. Virginia Woolf plays one more week at the Boston Center for the Arts; see the Publick Theatre’s website for more information.

This is where I shamefully admit that I have no knowledge of marketing or public relations.

Okay, maybe I should be a little nicer to myself: I have no formal knowledge of marketing or public relations.

I have never taken a business course in my life. I was an English major for two years at Boston University and was too busy reading Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and writing papers about the motifs Ibsen uses in A Doll’s House. During the 5 seconds I was considering a Communications major, I sat in on a Public Relations course and wanted to kill myself. So when I suddenly found myself in this new and intimidating role, I had to scramble. It’s been a lot of learning-by-doing, and while there have been a a lot a few bumps along the way, I am starting to feel pretty good about the work I’m doing for this company.

I’ve been Marketing and Public Relations Director for about 5 months now (wow… it seems much longer), and I have to say that the biggest learning experience for me has been this blog. I guess it’s just astounding to me how easy it’s been to connect with people via the Internet. I know; the Internet’s been around how long and I’m just figuring this out? I’ve known of the Internet’s capabilities, but I I’d never really experienced them before. I’ve written two posts here and already I’ve connected with several Boston theatre companies, including Theatre on Fire, the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, and the American Repertory Theatre–all through the magic of social media. A couple of posts on Twitter and suddenly my blog had 100 hits on its first day–and I have to say, I was one of those people who vehemently resisted Twitter at first, so I was pleasantly surprised when it helped me in this way.

I recently had a conversation via email with the Bill Bradshaw, General Manager of the Publick Theatre, which is one of the theatre companies in residence at the Boston Center for the Arts. Very daringly (perhaps too daringly?), I sent the company an email about my blog and inquired into the possibility of discount or comp tickets to their current production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Bill shot me an email back pretty quickly, and I am happy to report that he seemed delighted about the idea of creating a relationship. In his email, he mentioned that the Publick has recently been trying to push information about cheaper pricing options for students. Apparently, students can get 1/2 price rush tickets at the door the night of a performance, an opportunity that I was not aware of–and I’d been looking for it. If I didn’t know about this option, imagine how the student masses who hardly go to the theatre are fairing.

The arts community is a small one that is constantly aching for support. If you love the arts, there is a very easy way to help. Quit abusing the Mafia application on Facebook and mention your favorite theatre company in your status. Log into Twitter, do a search for your favorite play, and re-tweet anything anyone is saying about it. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the word can spread.

So here I am, doing my part: show up at the Boston Center for the Arts with cash in your hand and purchase 1/2 price student rush tix for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which is playing through Saturday, October 24th. I’ll be seeing the show tonight; check back soon for a review.

This is probably the best way to describe Theatre on Fire‘s production of Neil Labute’s bash: pressured. I really tried to think of another word–really, I spent a long time on it (I don’t even think you can use ‘pressured’ as an adjective, but you know what, this is my blog and I’ll make up words if I want to). But ‘pressured’ just feels right.

Let me try to explain what I mean.

Theatre on Fire is in residence at the Charlestown Working Theater, a small, industrial-looking building on a residential section of Bunker Hill St. in Charlestown. The theater itself seemed to me like a dance hall built into what used to be a factory: an expansive wooden floor stretching wall to cement wall with one large wall jutting into the center of and cutting off the space. With a capacity of about 80, the space is large enough to be an average-sized black box, but the setup for bash is more limiting, and extremely surprising. As I said, the room is mildly large, but when we walked in, we found a tiny rectangular stage shoved completely into the back corner of the space with two sets of risers bordering the stage on two sides, essentially trapping the stage into its corner. As ToF Artistic Director Darren Evans told me after the show, the performance is “right in your lap,” and it is in this way that the space puts a large amount of physical pressure on the audience. The space is so small and the audience is so close to the extremely tenuous action onstage that any movement they might make, any sound they expel, is jarring; when a friend of mine cracked his knuckles on the other side of the row, I heard it. I was almost afraid to chew my gum. Because of this, the audience (or at least my friends and I) feels extremely pressured to stay perfectly still, even when everything inside of them is aching to jump up onto the stage and punch one of the actors, which almost all of my party, including myself, expressed the need to do at some points in the performance.

But more on that later.

My first foray into directing (for the Independent Drama Society, my growing theatre company) was with one of Neil Labute’s more popular plays, The Shape of Things. (It was made into a movie with Rachel Weiss and Paul Rudd… wasn’t very good, or so I hear. I’ve been meaning to get my cast together to watch it at some point; you may see a movie review on this blog sometime soon.) Labute’s work is absolutely delicious for actors and directors because it is laden with subtlety and difficult questions. It is also extremely shocking, which is always fun; it’s great when an actor drops a bomb and you can hear the audience’s little choked gasps or strangling silence. Later, Dave, who likes Labute, cynically described the playwright’s process as “sticking his hand into the shitter and pulling out shit”… which means that Labute pretty much writes about humanity’s worst sides. In my experience with Labute, this is mostly true–and it is certainly true for bash.

bash is a collection of three disturbing one-act plays, each ranging from a half-hour to about 45 minutes long, and each somehow having to do with death. Two of the one-acts are directly inspired by classic Greek plays, as reflected in their names–though ToF doesn’t name them in their program, and I won’t name them here to respect their desire to surprise the hell out you. Each one-act is a monologue, one of them two monologues going on simultaneously. If you are an actor or have any experience with speech memorization, you know that the prospect of a 45-minute-long monologue is downright terrifying, especially when that monologue is written to be as realistic and meandering as possible. I knew a little about the play beforehand, specifically about its monologue-nature, and being an actor myself, I was admittedly a little nervous for the actors I would see that evening; there is nothing more awful than watching an actor lose his lines onstage. But, as the performance began, my worries were completely forgotten.

The house lights go dark, and Billie Holiday’s cocoa voice filters through the black room. Footsteps echo through the space, and the lights dim up on the Young Man in business attire, seated onstage in a lonely chair and cradling a glass of water. Marc Harpin, a ToF newcomer, begins to speak in a twitchy, nervous manner to an invisible stranger, and doesn’t stop for 45 minutes–and my attention is completely glued.

While all four of bash‘s actors are good at what they do, Harpin is incredible. From the moment he steps onstage, he creates a realistic, intricately fleshed out character with distinct voice and mannerisms, and is completely mesmerizing to watch. The monologue is written in a vaguely rambling manner, the character often diverting from his course to compare some situation or another to a television show, or to qualify his verbiage with a side story that is completely unrelated to his main point. Harpin segways into each of these digressions with entrancing realism, as if he were thinking of these things instantaneously instead of recalling the words from a script. Although his story unfolds at an absolutely grueling pace, Harpin keeps the audience transfixed, waiting on the edge of their seats for the next punch. And believe me, there are several punches in this piece, all straight to the gut. Next to me, Dave begins breathing heavily and clutching my hand in a vice-like grip; my eyes begin to sting, as I’ve forgotten to blink. Remember when I said that we wanted to jump up an punch the actors during the show? This is one of those times. And even with that overwhelming desire in my chest, Harpin is still frighteningly realistic, and sympathetic, which is the most amazing thing for me considering the words coming out of his mouth. As the monologue ends and the lights go out, I can hear a sigh roll through the room as the audience collectively stop holding their breath, and we wildly applaud while Billie Holiday sings through the scene change.

The lights come up on Emma Goodman (Sue) and Michael Underhill (John), seated in chairs pushed far back against the walls of the stage. The setup is great: two attractive young actors dressed in attractive clothes telling an attractive story, neither acknowledging the other even as they relate the same events from differing perspectives in simultaneous monologue.  Individually, each actor plays the part of the over-privileged, self-involved, falsely religious, and critically unfair yuppie Christian stereotype that Labute has written as well as can be expected.  I don’t doubt that people like these characters do actually exist, but placing them beside the truthfulness that is Marc Harpin’s Young Man makes Sue and John appear vapid, unbelievable cardboard cutouts of people. Yes, their story is still viscerally upsetting in ways that I won’t reveal, but I found that I was not nearly as affected by it as I was by bash‘s other two pieces.  Having directed a Neil Labute play, I know that Labute sometimes writes intentionally one-dimensional characters.  In my production, I coaxed my actors to create depth in their characters where there apparently was none.  Maybe this was the wrong way to go about it; maybe the characters’ lack of depth adds to the cruelty of their stories.  Either way, Goodman and Underhill show no depth or any sort of interesting inner life, though they do a lovely job of portraying very pretty pictures.

Furthermore, Goodman and Underhill never seem to connect over the course of their time together onstage.  During their monologues, as written in the script, the two actors interrupt each other or pick up speaking where the other left off pretty frequently, an aspect that should have created a good flow between them. It could be the fact that they never interact, as the script does not appear to allow for any character interaction. It could be that they don’t know their lines as well as they should, as revealed by a few noticeable flubs. Whatever the case, the actors exchange no energy, and the piece suffers and drags because of it. Fortunately, Labute’s near demonic ability to craft devastating situations keeps the piece engaging and rage-instilling, not to mention Underhill’s frighteningly smug delivery and Goodman’s infuriating obliviousness.  Though I personally did not feel the urge to jump up on stage and attack Underhill, others in my party really had to work to calm themselves during the climax of his graphic monologue.

“Can I speak?” A cigarette sparks to life in the dim stage light, and finally it is Kate Donnelly’s turn.  Of the four-person cast, Donnelly is the only ToF veteran, which she proudly proclaims in her bio–pretty much the only thing she proclaims in her bio, which was disappointing for me because I immediately wanted to look up her performance history. As I said, Marc Harpin’s Young Man is incredibly strong; the lights come up and the character is there. When Donnelly’s Woman did not immediately pop out at me, I thought, well, they threw their strongest actor out at the top of the show, I guess it’s a great way to open. But, as Donnelly continued to speak, I found that I was inexplicably drawn to her, mysteriously intrigued. There was something about her performance that was intoxicating. Harpin’s Young Man is strongly characterized in his physical mannerisms, his loud, ticky behavior. As I watched Donnelly, I realized that her Young Woman is just as strong, only much more subtle. It’s the way she speaks with a slight Midwestern accent; it’s the rational, matter-of-fact way she describes shocking events; it’s the way she smokes like a chimney, like she smokes 3 packs a day and the cigarette has become an extension of her hand. Donnelly’s performance is incredibly organic, rich with intelligent choices. It is clear that she knows this character from the inside out, and is thus able to make effective spur-of-the-moment decisions that make her performance remarkably realistic. I don’t like to talk about specific goings on in a show to keep from spoiling readers, but this is so minor and it so greatly affected me that I have to mention it. Donnelly’s physical mannerisms, while subtle, are wildly effective. There is a moment during her monologue where she lazily begins to trace a finger over the tape recorder set on the table in front of her. And then, as natural as can be, as if the words had popped into her head just that moment, she says, “This thing is running out.”

Donnelly’s monologue was the only one of the three for which I did actually know the ending. That didn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat when she mercilessly dropped it on us with a stone-cold expression and rational tone. When she is done, the light flicks off, and the audience sits silent in the sudden darkness, unsure of whether applause is the appropriate response.

bash is not for everybody, which probably explains the relatively small turnout (or it could have been because it was a Thursday). It is not for people who love soaring musicals with sweeping sets and special effects. It is not for people who can’t deal with being shanked in the stomach several times over the course of an evening. It is, however, an absolute paradigm of acting, imaginative directing, and powerful script: a full package that theatre aficionados will love.

bash plays one more weekend: October 15th, 16th, and 17th at 8:00pm at the Charlestown Working Theatre, located at 442 Bunker Hill St. in Charlestown. Believe me, this is something you do not want to miss.

I am not what you would call a “clubber”; I don’t like crowds, or high-heeled shoes, or standing for long periods of time… Pretty much I can dance for about 30 minutes before a combination of boredom and exhaustion sets in. So when I went to the A.R.T.’s box office the morning of the show to purchase their usual day-of discount tickets, I was surprised and admittedly a little nervous to discover that there were no actual seats available for that night’s performance. There are only a limited number of cabaret-style tables in the theater, and those were sold out. Until the end of November. Yeah. Our only option for that evening was dance floor. My immediate thought was: ok, let’s go see The Superheroine Monologues. But, after a boring conversation that you don’t really need to read about, somehow, reluctantly, I walked out of there with a ticket to stand on the Donkey Show dance floor.

I guess I should explain, first, what The Donkey Show is. The American Repertory Theatre’s website says, “The Donkey Show tells the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream through the great 70s anthems, including ‘We are Family,’ ‘I Love the Nightlife,’ ‘Car Wash,’ ‘Ring My Bell,’ and ‘Last Dance.’ The enchanted forest of Shakespeare’s classic comedy becomes the glittered world of retro disco as the lovers escape from their real lives to experience a night of dream, abandon, and fantasy.” In laymen’s terms, The Donkey Show is an interactive performance based on Midsummer and set in a 70’s club atmosphere. Let me repeat: an interactive performance. The show happens all around the audience, who are apparently a part of the show itself.

This is a great description, but if you haven’t been to a show like this before (are there other shows like this?), it’s very unclear. I tried to get a better picture of what The Donkey Show would be from people who had already seen it. Theatre enthusiasts told me that the show was falsely advertised, that the show wasn’t Midsummer in any way, shape, or form, and that I shouldn’t go expecting to see a modernized Shakespeare. Others told me that it didn’t matter that Midsummer was mostly nowhere to be found; Donkey Show was the best show they’d seen in a long time. Either way, whenever I asked somebody about it, they usually prefaced their response with something like, “I’m not really sure how to describe it.”

As the day drew on and the performance neared, I grew nervous. Did I really want to do this? How much did I really want to stand on a dance floor surrounded by sweaty people and pounding music with too much bass, feeling self-conscious and uncomfortable in my too-high-heels? If I wanted to go to a club, I would go to a club. But I’d already bought the tickets, and I mean, it would, I assumed, in some way, be theatre. Right? Maybe? I psyched myself up for the event, parading under the banner that this would be the first show in my new theatre-seeing regimen, and by the time we showed up at the theatre, I was excited…however superficially.

Once we got to the door, my excitement became real.

You can hear the music down the block. Funky strobe light spills into the street, lighting up the night. As you wait in line, you may be greeted by crazy disco characters, such as Dr. Wheelgood, a pretty boy in glittery glasses and shiny pants who rollerskates way better than you did when you were a kid–or Mr. Oberon, the sleazy club owner, clad in a white pinstripe suit, a matching white-blond mustache obscuring his deceptively feminine face. When you reach the front of the line, a bare-chested bouncer demands your ID, which he raises his oversized aviators to check, claps a brightly colored wristband on your arm, and ushers you into a room lit exclusively by blacklight where an A.R.T. employee discreetly takes your ticket–and that is the only hint they give that this is actually a theatre. Otherwise, as far as you’re concerned, this is Club Oberon, a spiraling, swinging time warp disco trip.

We checked our coats (for a slightly inordinate price, but I can’t really complain that much, as tickets were pretty inexpensive) and entered the “club.” The first thing that I have to address is that Donkey Show is showing at a space formerly known as the Zero Arrow Theater. I saw Trojan Barbie here last season; it was a theatre with a smallish house and a malleable stage, great for technical experimentation. But it was, overall, a typical theater with stadium seating overlooking a stage. When we walked into the space, I turned to Dave and asked, “Is this the same place where we saw Trojan Barbie?” The seats have all been removed; a long, full-service bar lines the back wall; two platforms rise up on the left and right sides of the space where lucky patrons receive table service; a second, smaller bar rounds the space’s right side (yes, that’s right, two bars), underneath a high platform where the DJ overlooks the floor; a narrow stage adorns front of the room, backed by luscious red velvet curtains and a sign proclaiming the club’s name in huge, glittering letters: OBERON.

We got to the theatre club around 7:40pm for an 8:00pm show, and at that point, the scant crowd was spread thin around the sides of the dance floor. At the center were two large silver blocks, and on those two large silver blocks were some of the prettiest men I’ve ever seen. Gorgeous and built, the four “fairies” (probably an apt description), clad in next to nothing and covered in glitter, danced wildly to the music, moving about the crowd and dragging unsuspecting patrons up onto the cubes to groove with them. Dr. Wheelgood (or Puck, for Shakespeare fans) spun about the space.

The room began to fill. More characters appeared, including a young disco couple who traipsed about the room bickering with one another. The guy (also with a deceptively feminine face) flirted with me; the girl, claiming that the guy was her boyfriend, whispered in my ear, “I’m watching you,” before she danced away, pointing back and forth from me to her eyes. To my surprise (I had no idea what to expect, remember?) much of the crowd had come out in their 70′s best: I saw men in low-buttoned shirts and tight pants, girls in knee-high boots and tie-dye skirts… Dave and I played “Guess Who the Actors Are”–which is a lot harder than it sounds. Turns out the only way to really tell the actors from the audience, besides that general actor-energy, is to see who is wearing a wristband. 8:00 came and went without us noticing; we were busy taking in the atmosphere, intensely watching everything around us to make sure we didn’t miss a thing. And, of course, dancing.

At around 8:15, what was a dance party shifted seamlessly into a performance. It became clear who the actors were when their microphones popped on and spotlights began to follow them around the room. From the DJ’s platform, Mr. Oberon welcomed us to his club. Then Tytania appeared. If you know anything about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you know that Titania, the Fairy Queen, is one of the sexiest characters in Shakespeare. Her disco counterpart was no different. Butterflies adorned her chest; tiny, spandex shorts rounded her hips; shocking red hair flowed to her lower back. She commanded the fairies with a flick of her hand, and soon she was floating around the room, soaring like the butterflies on her almost non-existent costume, singing familiar 70′s pop songs that had everyone in the room screaming with delight.

And the show unfolded around us in this fashion, actors moving easily through the space (with the help of the fairies, who acted as crowd control–I was manhandled by them several times), sometimes appearing high above us in the catwalk that circled the space, sometimes being around the room on the silver blocks by the fairies, sometimes even using the stage—but really, there was no bad spot in the house. The action happened everywhere, within us, above us… And so much was happening at any given moment that I found myself gazing around the whole room, trying to take it all in with eyes that just weren’t big enough, absolutely overwhelmed—in the best possible way. The show was an interactive whirlwind of wild energy and sexuality, each spectacle upping the outrageousness of the ones before until a grin–and a layer of glitter–was permanently set on my face.

Later, when describing the show to a friend, Dave used the word “karaoke,” which I initially rejected–but then, after thinking about it for a bit, I realized that that’s pretty much what Donkey Show is: disco-fied characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream singing 70′s karaoke woven together by a loose story. In fact, at first glance, it seems that Donkey Show is completely unoriginal: it’s someone else’s story with someone else’s characters singing someone else’s songs in someone else’s stereotype of an era long past. But this is what makes The Donkey Show so brilliant: it breathes new life into old things, bringing together and engaging an extremely eclectic modern audience, from college freshmen to senior citizens; from clubbers by nature to people with two left feet; from theater lovers to people who have never set foot in a theater in their lives. At the end of the night, the DJ invites everyone to stay and dance until the club closes. I looked around and saw college girls dancing near older couples and gay boys getting down with conservative looking gentlemen in 70’s suits. A man who was probably in his 50’s whipped off his spandex shirt to expose his bulging stomach, much to the chagrin of his wife. It was magic.

To clarify, while I had a marvelous time, The Donkey Show is not what I would call “good theatre.” The actors have an abundance of energy and acrobatic ability; they know how to command a crowd and milk a moment for all it is worth. I do not, however, think of them as good singers. While they do a pretty good job of maintaining a sense of pitch while throwing themselves all over the space, presence and humor characterize the actors’ performances, not impressive vocal talent. I’m a singer myself, and am usually pretty snobby about the voices I hear in musicals. But, I was not bothered by Donkey Show’s singers. The Donkey Show is not about parading its actors’ abilities. It is about engaging a wide audience, and most of all, it is about having fun, for both audience and actor alike.

If you’re in town for the weekend and want to have a good time, skip the downtown club scene and the North End restaurants. Head over to Cambridge for a little “adult entertainment.” Despite your theatre experience, you’ll laugh and dance the entire night.

The Donkey Show is playing at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon Performance Space, located at 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. For more information, visit the A.R.T.’s website.