Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is Samuel Beckett’s most famous play. As a cultural reference point, it’s most often invoked because of its dense symbolism and avant-garde impermeability that encourages scholarly study. However, the script is billed as a tragicomedy, and the largely neutral dialogue can become extremely funny in expert hands. In the production currently at the Abreact, directors Adam Barnowski and Andrea Smith demonstrate that a play can sparkle with easy humor and simultaneously trigger and engage with a plethora of intellectual questions that run as deep as the artists and viewers care to dig.

Beckett’s allegorical style, the ubiquity of this play, and every possible contextual hint ensure it is no spoiler to assert that Godot does not appear. Still, true believers Vladimir (Stephen Blackwell) and Estragon (David Schoen) meet at the same depressing anti-landmark each evening — in part genuinely hoping that today will be the day, in part fearful that the one day they don’t make this appointment is the day that he will. In other locales and at other parts of the day, they speak of being beaten by anonymous passers-by and tuck away vegetables to eat; they may be persecuted, they are always close to starving. On stage, however, they wait with loyalty but not too much reverence, casting about for ways to pass the time and batting around unfulfilled plans to escape their obligation. Their complaints change little from one day to the next (the first and second act entail two consecutive evenings), and the company is similarly unaltered: each day, they make the acquaintance of Pozzo (Dave Davies) and his maltreated servant, Lucky (Lance Alan); each night, a Boy (Sarah Galloway) appears on Godot’s behalf to pass on excuses for today and promises for tomorrow.

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La Ronde

Despite the 1900 Vienna setting of Arthur Schnitzler’s century-old La Ronde, the play’s sexually frank subject matter easily connects with a contemporary audience. Infidelity, assault, one-night stands, manipulation, prostitution — stripped of nearly all other context, the human race was and is fairly teeming with dirty, dirty sex fiends. The strength of the production at the Abreact, directed by Frannie Shepherd-Bates, is in revealing the risqué to be uncannily familiar: as a group, Schnitzler’s characters form a ring of unconscionable deviants, but dissected into individual components, the human mating dance appears universally bumbling, practically mundane, and likely reminiscent of a viewer’s own travails.

The two-act play contains an even ten scenes and features a total of ten characters, ranging from gentry to starving artists. Put bluntly, what binds together these representatives of different classes and occupations is their genitals, and what they want to do with them. Each scene features two opposite-sex actors, one of whom spins off into the next two-person scene: imagine a lascivious game of “The Farmer in the Dell.” Lest I make it sound too gimmicky, Schnitzler’s masterful structure — in one fell swoop — provides commentary about the role of class and power in sex, gives each character dimension by use of often-contrasting scenarios, and wordlessly predates every health class lecture on the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Scenes take place in various public and private locales; designer Alan Batkiewicz’s pieced-together set elements and tattered backdrop evoke a seedy Victorian underworld, as well as a more thematic take with respect to airing dirty laundry, of which this show has plenty.

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The Hot Mess Chronicles 2

After last year's The Hot Mess Chronicles, a Viking funeral of sorts for its former Halloween mainstay, the Abreact comes back to the well this year with The Hot Mess Chronicles 2. This installment features four brand-new short plays, selected through a submissions process in collaboration with Planet Ant Theatre. The varied offerings are presented episodically by an ensemble cast of five, without a unifying theme or thread; this way, the show is able to be both harmlessly funny and soul-stirringly creepy, some to greater effect than others.

The production's first act is plainly its weakest, with two pieces full of quick, short scenes that require long, dark pauses to set up their sight gags and cutaways. "The ‘Screwed’ Tape Letters," an update of the adjacently named C.S. Lewis novel, concerns a minion new to Hell unable to claim the soul of a criminally boring human (Josh Campos and Brian Papandrea, respectively, who also penned the play). This interpretation doesn't add much perspective to the story, serving mostly as a vehicle for some running jokes and absurd-death gags; the highlight is James Nanys as a wasted, laid-back Satan, who’s somehow threatening even as he maintains a level of relaxation that rivals The Big Lebowski’s Dude. Next is "The Way to Win Over Annie" by Steven Blackwell, a romance told in flashbacks with a delicate Sarah Galloway as the title character, the seemingly heaven-sent girl. Whatever foreshadowing is inherent in the script is swallowed by extremely casual staging of the expository present-day scenes — the bleak and strangely funny ending is indeed a surprise, but sadly not of the should've-seen-it-coming variety. Director Mike McGettigan seems trapped in very literal staging for these two pieces; the lack of fluidity saps the scenes of polish and causes some unexpected drag.

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True West

Among many other intrigues, the Abreact's True West is a marvel of consumption. The theater uncharacteristically added a curtain speech prior to the performance; its message, in a nutshell: stuff goes flying, so watch out. In its claustrophobic standoff between two mismatched brothers, the production seems to accumulate more objects than it has space to strew them, making literal a major theme of playwright Sam Shepard's script — this kitchen ain't big enough for the both of us.

This Abreact tenth-season opener unveils a new layout for the theater in its second year at Lafayette Lofts, widening the stage and pushing the seating up close on three sides. (And by close, I mean don't-set-your-drink-there-it's-part-of-the-set close.) The current setting of an unremarkable kitchen comes alive by how frequently and easily its performers interact with it — because the space is so intimate that fakery is impossible, they open and consume cans of beer, turn on the coffee percolator, toast and butter bread, and take out their frustrations on a typewriter. How a theater comes up with the budget to furnish and replenish all these things is a wonder in itself. Yet the effect is well worth it, adding a gathering sense of danger to a zero-sum game that tests the tensile strength of the line between sibling rivalry and outright hatred.

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Calypso

It was in a moment of clarity that I came to appreciate the strongest element of local playwright Kelly Rossi's Calypso: a sly and successful misdirection that let the final plot developments hit me with full force. What made it less exciting was that I was in the car, halfway home from the Abreact, when it came to me. Far be it for me to criticize a play that encourages reflection after the fact, but in this case I wanted to go back and have the revelation in the moment, with time enough in the world of the show to let the realizations sink in.

The production is a whirlwind journey bent on immersing the viewer in its complex and guarded world, but with a running time of less than an hour, said immersion is almost akin to a dunk tank. Add to that the foreign subject matter — present-day witches and their influence and relation to the outside world — and Calypso can be a challenge to follow. Thus, from this capably acted and directed play, I emerged unclear on how much I had understood, and even less sure of how much I was intended to understand.

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