The House of Blue Leaves

There's a show before the show in playwright John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves; for this Who Wants Cake? production, director Joe Bailey cleverly stashes it in the corner and gives it all the excitement of a preflight safety presentation. Whatever, guy, the atmosphere deadpans, as a flop-sweaty fellow plays piano with his fingers, sings with his mouth, and begs for adulation with every other molecule of his being. Instead, most of the Ringwald's listening audience — quite possibly the entire universe — is rolling its collective eyes at Artie Shaughnessy.

Played by Dave Davies, Artie is a zookeeper by day and a middling songwriter by night. Energized by his new lady love, the headstrong Bunny (Melissa Beckwith), he finally feels ready to take on the entertainment world with a handful of ditties and a dream (oh, and a lifelong tie to the biggest director in the film industry). Artie holds his Hollywood future with Bunny in front of him like a gem, but below the surface there is an undercurrent of feet-dragging, the source of which is Bananas (Lisa Jesswein), Artie's mentally ill wife. Given the play's 1965 setting, her treatment is inherently troubling: Artie force-feeds her pills whenever she emotes more than a groggy stupor, and Bunny talks about her like a piece of furniture even when she's in the room. But the primary strength of this production is in its veering tones; from a paper-thin blossoming infatuation set to music, to Looney Tunes–worthy chase scenes, to a vast sounding board of pathos, Bailey and company shift between and bleed together the disparate parts of a bleakly dark yet shimmering comedy.

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The Agony & the Agony

A play about a playwright who writes a play about a playwright, Nicky Silver's comedy The Agony & the Agony is a refracted, repeated-to-infinity glance through the looking glass. Yet this deviously funny piece is only occasionally deep and not at all challenging to follow. The Magenta Giraffe Theatre production, directed by Lisa Melinn, is an exhausting lap around absurdity that also manages to both reinforce and seriously question the notion that hell is other people.

The play's apartment setting is home to the gay man/straight woman marriage of Richard (Keith Kalinowski) and Lela (Connie Cowper), two theater artists of considerable drive, dubious talent, and poor prospects. Whatever leg up each partner expected from their mismatched union hasn't panned out, but now things are looking up for both of them at once. Richard has broken through a years-long dry spell and started writing again, but Lela needs him to make himself scarce so that she can entertain a big-shot producer and seduce her way into a coveted role. Much of the first act concerns the couple's wheedling and vitriol, steeped in Silver's hyperbolic verbal fireworks, but the early goings struggle to find traction — if the characters are engaged in a game of cruelty, the actors don't seem to agree on the rules. Further obstacles to Lela's casting-couch session are introduced, farce-style; first to interfere is her lover Chet (Dalibor Stolevski), who dumbly inserts his dimly pretty ambition into the scene, only to be followed by his trucker-mannered wretch of a companion (Molly McMahon). Also not to be discounted is the specter of infamous Nathan Leopold, Jr. (Jonathan Davidson), who is not at all happy to have his likeness invoked in Richard's self-referential new play. The first act is a zig-zagging build to a very full house, whose few jangling moments are amply countered by well-packaged, playful give and take.

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Jersey Show Season 1 (Abridged)

Thus far I've managed to avoid the MTV show-that-must-not-be-named, but only because I once lived for reality TV and am convinced that (in SAT parlance) The Bachelor is to Jersey Shore as candy is to heroin. But like any true American, I'm well aware of the show and its highly compensated stars, and like a good Rogue I've read recaps and watched clips in order to better understand the original comedy Jersey Show Season 1 (Abridged). Written by Lesley Braden-Phillips and Kathleen Lietz, directed by the latter, and currently occupying the opening Thursday-night time slot at Go Comedy!, this one-act spoof delivers on its title in an extremely literal manner.

The production begins with a string of talking-head confessionals introducing the viewer to the eight strangers picked to live in a Seaside Heights house and have their lives taped. For the uninitiated, the concept is exactly like The Real World, except with homogenous stereotypes who self-apply the label Guido. The season goes like this: gym, tan, laundry, shots, beach, club, hookups, Ron-Ron juice, fistfights, infidelity, hair gel. Except for one housemate who can't handle a part-time job at a T-shirt store and leaves the show, these enterprising underachievers have reached their ultimate goal of making spring break last forever. For added familiarity, a pair of veejay types (Jennifer Bloomer and John Nowaczyk) pipe in between the episodes with minor commentary on the action, expertly reproducing that shameful sucked-into-the-marathon feeling that best accompanies the pinnacle of trash TV.

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3 Guys, 1 Jar

Planet Ant Theatre's improvisational and theatrical worlds collide most visibly in biannual original plays earmarked as prizes for the winning teams of its Summer Colony Fest and Winter Colony Fest tournaments. As directed by Mike McGettigan, the current production of 3 Guys, 1 Jar, written by and starring the men of A.R.M., looks fondly on a world of shrugging listlessness and heroic ineptitude as it hilariously punishes people who try.

In the world of the play, the Guys were all laid off some months ago and are resigned to bowling and drinking the days away. Marv (Marv Anderson) provides the impetus for the plot, as some meager spark within inspires him to do something worthwhile with his time and energy. As it happens, a huge, empty plastic jar right in their lane beckons for donations to help a kid dying of nonspecific cancer, and the men have found their cause. McGettigan seems an especially apt fit for the troupe, as the ensuing madcap campaign to raise $28,000 and cure the boy benefits constantly from his signature: montages, insanely tangential conversations, and unbridled absurdity abound. Undoubtedly, the one-act show has very rough edges, but every misstep is countered by moments of fresh, startling humor.

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Richard III

Director Alison C. Vesely's concept for Richard III at the Hilberry Theatre is curious. Granted, this is hardly the first time a production has gone the self-aware theater-qua-theater route, and the initial beats featuring a crew member voicing cues and the decidedly pre-show performers filing in and preparing for the spectacle are both well-executed and thought-provoking. (One potential instigator for the choice is the double-, triple-, and quadruple-casting required of a script with a body count higher than the Hilberry's student roster, and costume designer Christa Koerner adds a nod to the artifice by clothing each actor in a base layer of black, over which other elements are swapped in.) What's curious about this carefully detailed backstage perspective is that it largely disappears after the first scene. Fortunately, the show beneath the concept, helmed by a powerhouse lead performance, succeeds without any added layers.

Shakespeare's history of England's King Richard III follows a physically deformed member of the royal lineage bent on grabbing his family's power with both hands and at any measure, primarily by bumping off everyone whose claim to the throne might threaten his own dubious one. In the title role, Edmund Alyn Jones is a fascinating villain, full of energy and conniving, eager to level with the audience that even he can hardly believe his successes. Showing both physical and emotional mastery of the role, Jones's Richard is a dragging, smirking, frighteningly intelligent monster, somehow as appealing as he is contemptible. His desperate hunger for power, and his even more desperate need to keep his tenuous power once obtained, makes for a satisfying arc and buoys a long two acts.

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