Hay Fever

The Hilberry season begins with Hay Fever, playwright Noël Coward's over-the-top story of an eccentric family whose only delight bigger than deriding each other seems to be deriding each other's friends and acquaintances. Director David J. Magidson presents most of this production at face value, focusing on character and relationship rather than fine-tuning comic bits; the result is a well-crafted comedy that swells with potential to really let the laughs fly.

The entire play takes place in the country home of the Bliss family: novelist and father David (Alan Ball), retired stage diva and mother Judith (Samantha Rosentrater), lackadaisical fop Simon (Andrew Papa), and snitty princess Sorel (Sarah Hymes). The children are awful because their parents are awful — the entire family thinks itself somehow evolved beyond the kind of horrible politeness other people put themselves through. And yet each of the four has quietly invited someone to the house for the weekend; unsurprisingly, they soon lose interest in their respective guests and then tire of the prospect of hosting altogether. It's proof positive that a comedy of manners can still bring the former in the total absence of the latter.

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boom

Oh, Craigslist. Just look at what you've done.

As the instigating event of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom, a vague online personal ad brings Jo (Jaye Stellini) to Jules's (Jeffery J. Steger) bomb-shelter basement laboratory/apartment seeking anonymous sex. (Red flags, anyone?) Indeed, what happens goes well beyond any convention of boy meets girl: Jules, believing a comet is about to wipe out the human race, seals them together in the lab, hoping to convince Jo to be the Eve to his Adam. As each worst-case scenario is somehow trumped by an even worse one, this Breathe Art Theatre Project comedy (directed by Diane Hill) cleanly cycles through genres with each added piece of context, from opposites-attract first date to threatening hostage situation to animals refusing to mate in captivity to abject post-apocalyptic hopelessness. For that's the really funny thing about Jules's catastrophic prediction…he was right.

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Blue Door

Tanya Barfield's script for Blue Door is beyond ambitious, taking on themes of race and identity in concert with issues of ancestry and origin. As presented, it's enough material for two entirely separate plays, yet Barfield comes out with a highly distilled ninety-minute powerhouse. Cemented by intense performances and Suzi Regan's thoughtful direction, the Williamston Theatre's production is a luminous mingling of personal identity with personal history, and the case of a man who desperately wants to cut one off from the other.

Lewis (Rico Bruce Wade) is an accomplished academic and professor who wants to stop being seen as a black man and be just a man. At the play's outset, his refusal to attend the Million-Man March has turned out to be the last straw that ends his marriage. This in turn plunges him into one bleak and sleepless night, his head swirling with liquor and thoughts — the latter taking physical form in actor Julian Gant, who appears as Lewis's brother, Rex, as well as their grandfather, Jesse, and great-grandfather, Simon. Gant's varied characters inform the past Lewis doesn't care to acknowledge: his ancestors' upbringings as slaves, their emancipation and subsequent struggle to exercise their freedoms, and the continuing (even increasing) danger of being black in the murderous deep South. Lewis, meanwhile, is disgusted that the reviews of his book all qualified him as a black mathematician, as though his work has been assigned some kind of handicap; however, what Lewis sees as his desire for parity, Rex labels as assimilation. The brothers' different approaches to honoring their forefathers' struggle for equality is a fascinating exploration of how, and whether, race should play a part in one's self-perception.

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Play it Again, Sam

Actor Tommy Simon has an unmistakable Woody Allen–esque quality. Distinctive voice, nervous streak a mile wide, little skinny guy with glasses...he can naturally turn on what the legendary playwright and filmmaker has made into a calling card. And here, with Magenta Giraffe Theatre and director Frannie Shepherd-Bates, Simon takes a stab at the classic Allen protagonist in the legend's own Play it Again, Sam. Casting a Woody Allen type for an Allen play seems like a slam dunk, but it carries considerable risk: the actor's innate similarities to the iconic original cannot help but invite comparison, which may leave the viewer wondering whether this is merely mimicry. Having seen Simon's work before, I was able to discern and appreciate the actor's own fresh (if often reminiscent) take on the character of Allan Felix. Many of the choices worked in their own right, adding a flurry of activity and energy to Allen's usual subdued pacing and hand-wringing, yet I couldn't help thinking that a few moments might have gone better were they done Allen's way.

Certain themes and scenarios loom large in the playwright's body of work, and this one is no exception, despite dating back to 1969: here's a real loser of a man, with equally high and low opinions of himself, obsessed with sex, in a New York setting. Recently divorced but longtime head case Allan is adrift in the first act, enlisting the help of best friend Dick (Stephen Blackwell) and Dick's wife, Linda (Jaclyn Strez), to provide emotional support and, even better, an attractive woman to fill the void in his life. The man is an utter mess, in no shape to meet anyone, which is proven in an overblown slapstick scene in which Simon's trying too hard tries too hard. Dick's officious inattention to anything but work makes him live up to his name, and sets the stage for Allan to loosen up and be himself in Linda's company. The story blossoms along with the affection between Allan and Linda, which goes exactly as one would expect, given the source. Surprises are few, but the real draw of this production is the skewed self-damning perspective and sharply awkward dialogue for which the writer is known.

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Sonia Flew

The Performance Network opens its season with a difficult perspective on political conflict, the children compelled to fight for their countries, and the parents who think they know better. However, the David Wolber–directed Sonia Flew doesn't feel like propaganda; instead, it presents two beautifully sad family portraits that make the political very personal indeed.

Playwright Melinda Lopez's intriguing structure presents challenges that pay off handsomely in this production. The first act introduces a contemporary family preparing to celebrate the holidays just months after 9/11. Son Zak (Russ Schwartz) confidently defends his revelation that he is leaving college to enlist in the military, which upsets no one more than his mother, Sonia (Milica Govich). Although its members are at odds, this family certainly feels like a cohesive unit, and the ensuing dinner-table battle sets the stakes high. Zak alludes to Sonia's own origins in Cuba and the circumstances of her departure, which she swears she will never talk about — until the second act, set in 1961 Havana, with the same cast switching roles to depict the flight of young Sonia (Christina L. Flynn), part of a real movement known as Operation Pedro Pan.

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