this week in theater

TAKE CARE

Brittane Rowe, Ashton Muñiz, Rachel Lin, and the rest of the Bats perform with the audience in TAKE CARE at the Flea Theater (photo by Bjorn Bolinder)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
Thursday – Sunday through January 25, $15-$35
866-811-4111
www.theflea.org

If edgy participatory theater is your thing, especially with a distinctly controversial political bent, then Take Care is the show for you. The world premiere by the Bats, the Flea Theater’s resident company of young actors, is an immersive production that essentially begins the moment you enter the building on White St. in TriBeCa. You will be led downstairs to the basement one at a time by a Bat to a folding chair, where you decide how much you want to participate – featured participants will be given solo responsibilities, group participants will always be accompanied by at least one other participant, and voyeurs will mostly stay in the background. For nearly fifty minutes, the Bats use the central motif of hurricane destruction to explore climate change and racism in contemporary America, interacting with audience members who might shout a racist slur, get doused by a hose, or share a personal story. Each participant receives a unique series of precisely timed instructions, and everyone has enough time to prepare for their involvement. (Several monitors around the room display a running clock, in addition to various related videos.) “Everything you do tonight is perfect and absolutely right,” Rebeca Rad assures the crowd near the start. “If you mess up, it’s right. If you’re late, it’s right. If you laugh or cry or sit down early, it’s the absolutely right thing to do.”

Written by Elastic City’s Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith and directed by Smith, the Flea’s new artistic director, Take Care is a vibrant, thought-provoking, and fun show, even if the links between hurricanes, global warming, segregation, civil rights, and individual identity are often quite a stretch. The eager, energetic cast, which consists of Tommy “Tsunami” Bernardi, Maki Borden, Rachel Lin, Ashton Muñiz, Derek Christopher Murphy, Rad Pereira, Brittane Rowe, Isabella Sazak, Ryan Stinnett, and Catherine Woodard, does an excellent job of keeping things moving (along with choreographer and understudy Ethan Hardy) and making sure the participants are kept busy, even though audience members might at times find themselves outside their comfort zones, which of course is part of the point. I asked to be a featured participant, and I ended up with a scary responsibility that had me agonizing for forty minutes and fifty seconds (it was scheduled for 40:50), as it sets in motion events that result in a rather potent open discussion. No matter which participant level you choose, Take Care will have you looking deep inside, facing some harsh realities about yourself as well as where America is as a country today. Smith calls the show “a perfect storm to expose the ways we take care of and neglect one another,” and it is indeed very much about both the individual and the collective and how we consider our fellow human beings. Each performance is significantly different, as it changes depending on the audience. It also has a major effect on the Bats themselves; the night we went, one of the actors broke down in tears at the conclusion, moved by the power of what had just happened. It’s not for everyone, but adventurous theatergoers should not hesitate to become part of what is going on in the Flea’s basement Thursday through Sunday nights through January 25.

COLIN QUINN: THE NEW YORK STORY

Colin Quinn explores the history and development of the New York character in one-man show (photo by Mike Lavoie)

Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 31, $25-$96
212-989-2020
www.colinquinnthenewyorkstory.com
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Colin Quinn likes to tackle big subjects. In 2010, the actor and comedian took Broadway audiences on a journey through the history of the world in Long Story Short. In 2013 at the Barrow Street Theatre, the gruff Brooklyn-born comic explored American history in Unconstitutional. In his latest seventy-five-minute one-man show, The New York Story, based on what he claims will be his only book, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, Quinn examines the development (and death) of the New York persona. “Our tourist attraction is the people. Nobody else had people like this,” he says near the start of the show. “Smoking cursing rude sarcastic pushy loud fast-talking outspoken. It’s not a pleasant personality but it was entertaining and honest.” Slowly ambling across Sara C. Walsh’s old-time set, which features a classic New York City stoop, a laundry line of drying clothing, stacks of wooden crates, and small flags from many nations, Quinn discusses the Indians, the Dutch, the British, the Germans, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans, and the blacks, not afraid to be politically incorrect as he details what each ethnicity, religion, and race contributed to New York City. He’s no stranger to edgy material: He hosted the politically oriented comic talk show Tough Crowd, was formerly the anchor of “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, has a recurring role on Girls, and played Amy Schumer’s father in Trainwreck. He can be wickedly funny about each group while respecting their individual heritages, but he’s also clearly upset about where we are today, seemingly drained of our uniqueness as New Yorkers. “First of all: positivity, inclusion, non-judgmentalism, those are all great qualities to have,” he points out. “But not in New York. This city was supposed to be the sanctuary city for the judgmental, the obnoxious, the non-positive. That’s the thing. And somewhere along the way we decided to appropriate the rest of the country’s positivity.”

The show, which begins with Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker” and concludes with Ace Frehley’s “Back in the New York Groove,” is directed by Jerry Seinfeld, who also helmed Long Story Short. It includes projections of city monuments and subway signs that are sometimes hard to make out, and Quinn often seems to be trying too hard to hit his mark instead of being more natural. But his verbal delivery is superb, speaking to the audience like he’s sharing a beer with us instead of lecturing like a professor, rambling through broken sentences as he uses his gruff Brooklyn Irish accent to expound on the state of the city he, and we, love. “The immigrants are the only ones who are still authentic,” Quinn explains. Amid all the laughs, the truth hurts. Tickets for the show are allocated geographically, from $56 for the Coney Island and Red Hook seats in the rear to, getting ever closer to the stage, $76 for Hell’s Kitchen and $96 for Washington Heights and Yonkers.

THESE PAPER BULLETS!

THESE PAPER BULLETS! mixes Shakespeare with the Fab Four at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 10, $75
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

These Paper Bullets!, Rolin Jones’s Yale Rep transport of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to swinging 1964 London, looks and sounds great. Jessica Ford’s Mary Quant-inspired Mod costumes feature polka dots, brightly colored miniskirts, and fashionable boots and shoes, while Billie Joe Armstrong’s Beatlesque songs offer a fun twist on the Fab Four’s musical style. Unfortunately, the rest of this overly silly frenetic farce is dreadfully unfunny, a Monty Python-like sketch that in this case goes on for a long, drab two hours. The Quartos — Ben (Justin Kirk), Claude (Bryan Fenkart), Balth (Lucas Papaelias), and Pedro (James Barry) — are England’s hottest band, making women swoon wherever they go. Claude has fallen for Twiggy-esque model Higgy (Ariana Venturi), the daughter of hotel owner Leo Messina (Stephen DeRosa), while Ben and fashion designer Bea (Nicole Parker) develop a kind of love-hate relationship. Everything threatens to come crumbling down when fired drummer Don Best (Adam O’Byrne), Pete’s brother, decides to exact revenge on the Quartos and their manager, Anton (Christopher Geary), with the help of reporter Boris (Andrew Musselman). Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is suspicious of the Quartos and their success, so Mr. Berry (Greg Stuhr) sends Mr. Cake (Tony Manna) and Mr. Urges (Brad Heberlee) undercover to find out what the band is really up to. The shenanigans are annoyingly detailed throughout by TV journalist Paulina Noble (Liz Wisan), including a ridiculous appearance by the queen (Geary). These Paper Bullets! is supposed to be a madcap romp melding Shakespearean iambic pentameter with the sheer glee of Richard Lester’s Beatles films, but it falls flat again and again, despite a game cast. Jackson Gay, who will be directing Much Ado About Nothing this spring at Cal Shakes, can’t make heads or tails of Jones’s nonsensical script (the two previously collaborated on The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and The Jammer, both at the Atlantic), getting a total of two chuckles out of me as the Bard and Beatles references zoom by at a groaning pace. In a nice touch, the Quartos perform such songs as “Give It All to You” and “Love Won’t Wait” on a rotating stage in the shape of a vinyl record; Green Day’s Armstrong, whose American Idiot ran on Broadway five years ago, knows his Mop Tops, but most of the rest of These Paper Bullets! shoots nothing but blanks, desperately in need of some real help.

LAZARUS

Michael C. Hall reprises David Bowie role from THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH in LAZARUS at NYTW (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 19, $129; Wednesday, January 20 benefit, $1,004 – $2,504
www.nytw.org

David Bowie’s resurrection after a long public absence continues with Lazarus, an intriguing, at times captivating, and often confusing musical drama at New York Theatre Workshop though January 20. A little over a decade ago, in June 2004, the iconoclastic British artist suffered a heart attack onstage and underwent emergency surgery. He stayed out of the limelight after that, making only rare appearances and not releasing a new record until 2013, The Next Day, declaring on the title track, “Here I am / Not quite dying / My body left to rot in a hollow tree / Its branches throwing shadows / On the gallows for me / And the next day / And the next / And another day.” But evidently with a renewed lust for life, Bowie has been very busy over the last few years, and he takes a fascinating look at his personal and professional past, present, and future in Lazarus, a multimedia collaboration with playwright Enda Walsh (Once, The Walworth Farce) and heavily in-demand director-of-the-moment Ivo van Hove (Scenes from a Marriage, A View from the Bridge). The show picks up some forty years after the end of The Man Who Fell to Earth, the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film in which Bowie portrayed Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who comes to Earth to collect water to save his planet. As the audience enters the theater, Newton (Michael C. Hall) is lying flat on the stage, as if dead. He eventually rises, met by his old friend Michael (Charlie Pollock) and his new assistant, Elly (Cristin Milioti). Newton is now a retired, reclusive, wealthy former businessman who stays at home drinking gin and eating Lucky Charms and Twinkies, watching a large television screen that broadcasts things going on in his head as he agonizes over his loneliness, his wife and daughter long gone from his life. “Don’t you remember the person you were? Your life outside,” Michael asks. “That was before,” Newton answers. “And it’s all gone?” Michael says. “Of course it’s gone,” Newton responds shortly before singing “Lazarus,” one of four new songs Bowie has written for the show. “Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen / I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen / Everybody knows me now / Look up here, man, I’m in danger / I’ve got nothing left to lose,” Hall sings in a strong Bowie accent. The music is performed live by a band in a glassed-in booth across the back of the stage, behind Jan Versweyveld’s apartment set, which features a refrigerator at the right (next to a record player on the floor with a pile of Bowie LPs), a bed at the left, and a large screen at the center. Newton is soon visited by a young girl (Sophia Anne Caruso) who he knows is a figment of his imagination, there to help him find purpose in his life, as well as hers. “You’re not dying, are you?” she asks. “A little bit every day. I’m a dying man who can’t die,” he says. “That’s a joke, right?” she replies. “Yes, not being able to die is a joke. A fucking terrible joke,” he states. Newton’s life is further complicated by three teenage girls (Krystina Alabado, Krista Pioppi, and Brynn Williams) who form a kind of Greek chorus, the mysterious Valentine (Michael Esper), Elly’s jealous husband, Zach (Bobby Moreno), and a couple madly in love, Maemi (Lynn Craig) and Ben (Nicholas Christopher).

Ivo van Hove’s LAZARUS uses David Bowie songs to explore love and loneliness (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

Lazarus was inspired by Walter Tevis’s 1963 science-fiction novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which Newton is described thusly: “He was human; but not, properly, a man. Also, man-like, he was susceptible to love, to fear, to intense physical pain and to self-pity.” Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Cabaret) embodies the character with a tender simplicity despite the craziness that Newton is experiencing. As the girl, Caruso again shows intelligence and instincts well beyond her fourteen years, as she did earlier in 2015 in Jennifer Haley’s The Nether. The music, consisting of new arrangements of Bowie classics and deep cuts, from 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World, 1971’s Hunky Dory, 1980’s Scary Monsters, and The Next Day, in addition to the four new songs, is a treat for Bowie fans, especially the Japanese and English “It’s No Game (Part 1),” Pollock’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” Hall’s “Where Are We Now?” and “Killing a Little Time,” and Caruso’s “Life on Mars.” In a soft, gentle version of “Changes,” Tony nominee Milioti (Once) sings “Turn and face the strange,” and strangeness is just what keeps this production from soaring into the stratosphere. Too much of Lazarus, which is about love and loss and making connections, is head-scratchingly opaque, particularly the use of the video monitor; Tal Yarden’s projections are occasionally poetic and visually striking but much more often bewildering, muddying the narrative with perplexing shots that could be memories, long-gone dreams and desires, or — well, by the time Alan Cumming appears onscreen, you can forget about trying to figure out what’s going on. But if you instead concentrate on Hall’s thrilling performance, the central relationship between Newton and the girl, and the outstanding musical numbers, Lazarus will lift you up, making you thankful that Bowie has returned to Earth to share his unique, and plenty strange, world view with us mere mortals again.

THE GOLDEN BRIDE (DI GOLDENE KALE)

The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene inaugurates its new home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage with THE GOLDEN BRIDE (photo by Ben Moody)

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Tuesday-Wednesday and Thursday-Sunday through January 3, $40
866-811-4111
nytf.org
www.mjhnyc.org

The utterly delightful Yiddish operetta The Golden Bride returns to New York City at just the right time, a very tasty appetizer to the latest Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. But the work, known in Yiddish as Di Goldene Kale, is more than just a mere precursor to the award-winning 1964 musical and 1971 film about the Jewish experience in Tsarist Russia; it stands alone as an engaging celebration of shtetl life as it explores the hopes and dreams of its many charming characters. The operetta premiered in February 1923 at the two-thousand-seat Second Avenue Theater and ran for eighteen weeks before going on tour around America and the world; it was last performed in 1948 before disappearing into obscurity until musicologist, librarian, and editor Michael Ochs uncovered parts of the long-lost work while preparing an exhibition in 1992, then spent more than two decades putting it back together again. The new production kicks off the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s 101st season, the first in its cozy new 375-seat home in Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. In a small, close-knit Russian village, Goldele (Rachel Policar), an abandoned child raised by innkeepers Pinkhes (Bruce Rebold) and Toybe (Lisa Fishman), has suddenly come into a large inheritance at the death of her long-absent father, making her the most desirable woman in the shtetl. She is in love with Misha (Cameron Johnson), Pinkhes and Toybe’s handsome son, but she offers her hand in marriage to any man who can find her mother, who she is sure is still alive. Thus, cobbler Berke (Jeremy Weiss), choir singer Motke (Zachary Spiegel), and tailor Yankl (Adam Kaster) set off in a race with Misha to track down Goldele’s mother and marry the Golden Bride, who in the meantime is moving to America to live with her uncle Benjamin (Bob Ader), whose wealth has already turned the shtetl “upside-down,” as Pinches and Toybe exclaim, with the help of the chorus, “We’ll become as rich as Korach, / We’ll live, laugh, it’ll be a sensation. / The dear millionaire will be my guest, / The dear millionaire will be his guest, / I’ll give him kugel with tsimmes. / She’ll give him kugel with tsimmes.” However, Benjamin wants Goldele to marry his son, Jerome (Glenn Seven Allen), who just happens to be smitten with Khanele (Jillian Gottlieb), Pinkhes and Toybe’s daughter. “Don’t you know what I want? Come here, I’ll tell you. I want a kiss from your sweet little lips,” Jerome says to Khanele, who replies, “Oh, go away — it’s Sabbath already.” “You shouldn’t kiss on Sabbath?” Jerome asks, to which Khanele declares, “Certainly you shouldn’t. A lot you know about Judaism! Even a goy knows more than you.” In the second act, the action travels overseas to America, where everyone tries to establish their future, built on love and money.

The fully restored Yiddish theater favorite DI GOLDENE KALE kicks off the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s 101st season in a big, delightful way (photo by Ben Moody)

Performed in Yiddish with English and Russian supertitles, The Golden Bride is a complete and utter joy from start to finish. The music, by little-known Lithuanian composer Joseph Rumshinsky, who actually wrote nearly one hundred Yiddish operettas, is light and bouncy, while the lyrics, by Ukrainian-born Louis Gilrod, are endearing and playful. The libretto, written by Polish native Frieda Freiman but originally published under her husband’s name, is sweet and witty. “Listen to me, friends,” Misha says when defending his love of Goldele to her other suitors. “I have a cure for your loving hearts. Each of you take a large piece of wood and knock the foolishness out of your heads.” While there is no evidence that Fiddler on the Roof lyricist Sheldon Harnick and book writer Joseph Stein ever saw or read The Golden Bride or that Rumshinsky, Freiman, and Gilrod (who all moved to America from Eastern Europe between the ages of twelve and twenty-two) were influenced by the Sholom Aleichem stories that formed the basis of Fiddler, many intriguing similarities and coincidences abound between the two works, from dialogue (Jerome seriously asks Khanele, “Do you love me?” recalling what Tevye asks his wife, named, er, Golde) to subplots (matchmaker Kalmen goes through his little black book, trying to find husbands for several young women, including one named, er, Yente: “I have for you a bridegroom, a ‘waiter’ who washes ‘dishes,’ / He’s also a ‘salesman’ at Yonah Schimmel’s Knishes”) to the general depiction of shtetl life. However, Anatevka has a very different fate in store for its residents, as Fiddler is far more political and heartbreakingly realistic than Bride, although the latter did come out right before the Immigration Act of 1924 (aka the National Origins Act), which set a restrictive quota on immigration to the U.S. from Eastern Europe and Asia. The actors, most of whom don’t know Yiddish and so perform their parts phonetically, are excellent, led by Policar, who has major operatic chops, her voice echoing beautifully throughout the theater, and Johnson, with strong turns by Rebold, Fishman, Adam B. Shapiro offering comic relief as Kalmen and the women’s chorus/ensemble of Amy Laviolette, Tatiana Wechsler, Jessica Kennedy, Liza Miller, Isabel Nesti, and Alexis Semevolos. National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene artistic director Zalmen Mlotek conducts the fourteen-piece orchestra, situated behind the stage, while choreographer Merete Muenter makes clever use of the crowded set, which features a whimsical, homey design by John Dinning. To answer Jerome’s question, “Do you love me?” we say, yes, yes, we do love you!

(The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and the Museum of Jewish Heritage have teamed up to provide free shuttle bus service to and from Columbus Circle for each performance. NYTF is also offering a free fifteen-minute Yiddish lesson and history of Yiddish theater forty-five minutes before each show. And on December 26 at 8:00, the museum will host “Dreaming in Yiddish: The Fourth Annual Adrienne Cooper Memorial Concert,” with Frank London, Sarah Gordon, Michael Winograd, and Joshua Dolgin presenting an evening of music from the 1999 album In Love and in Struggle: The Musical Legacy of the Jewish Labor Bund.)

STEVE

Close friends gather for a birthday party that goes awry in STEVE (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 3, $25-$95
www.thenewgroup.org
www.signaturetheatre.org

Be sure to arrive early for the world premiere of the New Group’s Steve, which has been extended at the Pershing Square Signature Center through January 3. As you enter the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, the cast is already onstage, singing American standards and show tunes. (The music coordinator is Emmy-nominated writer, actor, musician, and radio host Seth Rudetsky.) It sets up a warm camaraderie that is about to be torn apart once the play itself begins. It’s Steven’s (Matt McGrath) birthday, and he and his friends are gathering at a Manhattan restaurant to celebrate. He’s there first with Carrie (Ashlie Atkinson), a large, gregarious lesbian with terminal cancer, something Steven refuses to acknowledge. “Dying sucks,” Carrie says. “You’re not dying,” Steven instantly responds. They are soon joined by Steven’s longtime partner, Stephen (Malcolm Gets), with whom he is raising a son, and another couple, their friends Matt (Mario Cantone) and Brian (Jerry Dixon). As the waiter, a flirty Argentine dancer named Esteban (Francisco Pryor Garat), quotes Twyla Tharp, the snark flies as the group trashes Broadway shows, movies, and celebrities, saving particularly choice bits for Mame, the Spanish version of West Side Story, Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald, and Evita. “Esteban, you’ll have to forgive Stephen,” Steven says, “as he comes from a generation that fetishizes the lesser musicals of the early eighties.” The party takes a tense, nasty turn when birthday boy Steven reveals to everyone that Stephen and Brian have been secretly sexting each other. The narrative gets more interesting when debut full-length playwright Mark Gerrard and director Cynthia Nixon then present a different version of the same scene; initially, Steven had publicly admonished the electronic affair between Stephen and Brian, whereas in the alternate take, Steven proceeds with similar anger and frustration but without explicitly explaining why he is so upset. Yet another Steve becomes part of the fray when it is later learned that Brian and Matt are involved in a special relationship with trainer Steve, whom every man froths over at the gym. Despite the various issues, the friends and lovers try to make it through some tough times, all the while delivering a fast-paced patter of snide, exquisitely cynical comments. It’s hard not to enjoy the barbed banter even as you’re aware that the play depicts a nearly endless array of stereotypical images of modern gay life in New York City.

Matt (Mario Cantone) and Steven (Matt McGrath) discuss life, love, and loss in New Group world premiere STEVE (photo by Monique Carboni)

Matt (Mario Cantone) and Steven (Matt McGrath) discuss life, love, and loss in New Group world premiere (photo by Monique Carboni)

At one point, Carrie remembers how Stephen and Steven met, when the former would come to watch the latter perform as a singing waiter. “It was genius,” she says. “A love letter written in slow motion with the Broadway Song Book.” That thought can also be applied to Steve itself, although it moves at a swift, rhythmic clip and might be more deliciously decadent than outright genius. The excellent cast clearly is having a blast together, and that mood is infectious, although most of the characters end up being not very likable, doing not very likable things. But Carrie’s zest for life and her acceptance of her fate are energizing, wonderfully portrayed by a defiantly positive and upbeat Atkinson (Fat Pig), while Matt’s adorably childlike joie de vivre infuses the proceedings with sheer glee, as the cute and cuddly Cantone (Sex and the City, Laugh Whore) revels in being the comic relief. Most important, Gerrard (Andy Cohen Has a Big D***) and Nixon (Rasheeda Speaking, MotherStruck) succeed in making the audience feel like a part of this extended twenty-first-century family, from the bouncy singing at the beginning through all the bittersweet trials and tribulations to the heartfelt finale on Fire Island.

NIGHT IS A ROOM

Marcus (Bill Heck) and Liana (Dagmara Dominczyk) face some shocking changes in brilliant play by Naomi Wallace (photo by T Charles Erickson)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 20, $35-$85
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Naomi Wallace’s Night Is a Room is a brilliantly conceived drama that is as poetic as it is shocking. In modern-day Leeds, England, Liana (Dagmara Dominczyk) has tracked down her husband’s birth mother, Doré (Ann Dowd), and wants her to have a surprise reunion with Marcus (Bill Heck) for his fortieth birthday. A stylish and successful marketing account executive, Liana manages it all; she even brings festive party balloons for Doré, blowing a few up as they talk in Doré’s small garden. Doré gave up Marcus, who she called Jonathan, when she was fifteen; she is a plain, frumpy woman who speaks in disconnected non sequiturs, takes everything very literally, and has apparently lived a rather droll, boring life. “So. What do you enjoy? In your spare time?” Liana asks. Doré, who cleans houses, responds, “I like to do Sudoku at the back of the newspaper those little squares all waiting for me imagine someone thinks it up everyday maybe a computer I don’t know but there they are for me I’ve always been good at numbers I skip the news it’s gossip mostly grubby isn’t it?” A moment later she says, “The lottery numbers each week I like to add them up then divide them by the day of the week as fast as I can and then times them by the month I can look at a number any long number and break it down quicker than you can crack an egg do you like eggs?” It takes a while for Liana to convince Doré to meet with Marcus/Jonathan, but they finally agree to the reunion. The second act takes place in Liana and Marcus’s living room, where the couple is in the midst of some hot and heavy sexual activity as they await Doré’s arrival. Liana and Marcus, who have a daughter working at the Art Institute of Chicago, are redecorating their home. But a whole lot more than the décor is about to change.

Doré (Ann Dowd) is in for some rather strange goings-on in NIGHT IS A ROOM (photo by T Charles Erickson)

What happens next makes it impossible to discuss the plot any further, built as it is around a head-shaking, jaw-dropping twist that will have some members of the audience considering leaving at intermission and others scanning their brains, wondering just where things can possibly go in the third act. But sticking around is a necessity, as the surprises keep coming as two of the characters become mired in a spectacular, unpredictable verbal face-off, even if the denouement is a bit too pat. Night Is a Room concludes Wallace’s (The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East, One Flea Spare) three-play Signature residency, which began with And I and Silence and continued with The Liquid Plain; all three works take their titles from poems — Silence from Emily Dickinson, Plain from Phillis Wheatley, and Night from William Carlos Williams’s “Complaint” (“Night is a room / darkened for lovers / through the jalousies the sun / has sent one golden needle!”). Night has a lyrical elegance to it, despite, or maybe even because of, the subject matter. Heck (Cabaret, The Orphans’ Home Cycle) is fine as Marcus, but the play belongs to Dominczyk (Closer, The Violet Hour) and longtime character actor Dowd (Compliance, Candida), who are exceptional together, their rapport utterly fascinating in light of their shifting relationship. Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Bill Rauch (All the Way, The Clean House) helms the production with an innate intelligence and a subtle beauty, letting the tension build and the story unfold at just the right momentum. Rachel Hauck’s three sets all focus on chairs, perhaps to encourage the audience to remain seated and not leave. Night Is a Room is one of the strangest, most challenging family dramas you’re ever likely to see, and it’s also one of the most rewarding if you allow yourself to get swept away in its unique and memorable world.