Cheers battle jeers in new play about the Trojan War (photo by John Dallas Phelps)
13th Street Theatre
50 West Thirteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
April 25-29, $20-$40
dressoffire.com
www.13thstreetrep.org
What, if anything, does an audience owe the actors in a play, especially in a work that might not quite be of the quality they expected? Once upon a time, eggs and rotten tomatoes were thrown by audience members who were none too pleased with what was happening onstage. Walking out is always an option, although it is more couth to at least wait for intermission. At a matinee of Dress of Fire, a new play written by Nina Kethevan and directed by Ioan Ardelean about the Trojan War that opened tonight at the 13th Street Theatre, two women sitting in front of me started laughing and could not stop through most of the first act, wondering out loud at times if the work was supposed to be funny. Late in the first act, during an expository soliloquy (of which there are many), one of the men sitting in a row close to the stage leaned over and asked the man next to him how he ever found this place, at which point the actress turned and addressed her next lines — loud, admonitory words — directly to them; the second man responded with a loud “Oy vey.” The play does have a bevy of head-scratching flaws, including very odd wardrobe choices: The men have pants on underneath their period costumes, and nearly all the characters wear contemporary footwear. The indefatigable Austin Pendleton’s name is printed large and above the title on the posters and ads, but Pendleton, a longtime favorite of mine, has a rather minor role, as King Priam, and he was not in his best form at the matinee I saw. Not everyone came back after intermission of the hundred-minute play, but most did, and there were even a few cheers during the curtain call. In today’s theater, there is just no room for blatant rudeness. “Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?” Malvolio asks Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. No respect indeed. And leave the eggs and tomatoes at home.