The Bagel And The Rat

Books, many, piled haphazardly about the floor. A comfortable, well-worn armchair. A lamp.

Unrolled scrolls of rice paper form a striped backdrop. The incidental music is by Phillip Glass and is familiar – a little too familiar for comfort? You sense right away you're about to experience something peaceful, as theater goes. But you fear that it might also be saccharine.

Have no fear. Evan Brenner's one-man play, produced and directed by David Fuhrer, is a simple piece of theater, but not simple-minded. Mr. Brenner plainly and engagingly recites from the oldest Buddhist sutras, known as the Pali Canon, recounting the life of Siddhartha Gautama, who became forever known as the Buddha. He brings the characters alive, not histrionically, but through measured, focused, artful talk and movement.

The Baruch Performing Arts Center's Nagelberg Theater may be the most subterranean performance space in New York City. The staircases seem to take you down forever. (Magically, though, there's cell phone service – it's a very modern space indeed.) Its depth seems appropriate for the deep thoughts on stage. Yet there is an inherent discrepancy between the tension and catharsis we typically expect of Western drama, and the meditation and lack of goal-orientation that characterize Buddhism and its teachings.

And indeed as the play begins it feels more like storytelling than "drama"; but it slowly becomes suspenseful in spite of itself. Gautama does not take lightly his decision to leave behind his rich inheritance and "go forth" as a seeker of salvation. And after he has achieved Nirvana he continues to live in a warlike world, with followers, family – and the Devil periodically prodding him away from his path.

Hong Sooyeon's ghostly, effective lighting and the music cues assist Mr. Brenner in pushing the mood gently from dark to light, calm to questing. Yet despite a devastatingly violent turn of events, there is little sense of tragedy. After all, everything that lives must die.  And not everything must suffer; those who have little dust in their eyes may learn to achieve the cessation of suffering, and hence salvation.

And so there may be an affinity between theater and the Buddha's teachings after all. Seeing a well-made theater piece, we do let our sufferings cease, at least for a time. The talented Mr. Brenner's story-time piece blossoms into a humble, graceful, and worthwhile teaching. And a really nice way to spend an hour and half.

The Buddha Play runs through Nov. 1 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Tickets online or call (646) 312-4085.

‘Tis Pity She's a Whore, John Ford's blood-spattered incest/revenge drama from about 1630, certainly made an impression on me when I studied it in Professor Marjorie Garber's "Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama" class back in college – more, I think, for the graphic violence and gore than for the brother-sister love story. But over a quarter-century later I had yet to see a stage production of the once-banned, ever controversial play. So kudos to the Toy Box Theatre Company for its expert new production of this under-appreciated classic.

As befits the tiny stage of Teatro Iati, both cast and script have been reduced. Director Jonathan Barsness and his artistic team have cut an entire subplot, causing minor but noticeable injury to the play. On top of that, of the remaining characters, several actors play more than one, though quite deftly. Ford's humor, however, along with his audacious story and effervescent language, survive well. This is in just about every way a fit and flowing staging, thanks to superb direction, an ace production team, and a fine cast.

Ford doesn't tiptoe around his taboo subject. As the play opens, Giovanni, an intense young scholar and nobleman – fairly mild-mannered, as played by Andrew Krug – has just confessed his ardent love for his sister Annabella (Jessica Rothenberg) to the Friar (a very good Ron Bopst), his friend and former teacher. The shocked holy man counsels restraint and prayer, but Giovanni can't contain himself, goes home, and pleads his love. Annabella, though shocked as well, has, as it turns out, been harboring reciprocal feelings, and after much hesitation, they consummate. Mr. Krug and Ms. Rothenberg enact this pain-wracked yet joyful scene – one of the most stunning in English literature – with smoldering sensitivity and exquisite passion; I felt privileged to be in the theater, in their presence, at that moment.

If you're thinking to yourself, No good can come of this, congratulations. Annabella has a number of legitimate suitors, among whom her wealthy father Florio (Zenon Zeleniuch) is seeking to make the best choice, subject to Annabella's own preference (little does he know what that really is). Though he dallies with his friend Donado's (Mr. Bopst again) silly and foppish nephew Bergetto (the wonderful Michael Nathanson), he ultimately prefers the self-confident young nobleman Soranzo (the excellent, poised John Buxton). Bergetto, for his part, is too foolish and wayward to even woo properly, quite happy to divert his attentions to another young woman when one presents herself. This element of the story is one of the small, incompletely sutured wounds left by the cutting of the subplot. Fortunately, though, we get plenty of Bergetto, through whom Mr. Nathanson provides the play's comic relief in spades. His death scene is delightful.

Sarah Hankins, in a fine dual performance, actually gets two death scenes. She is the vampish Hippolita, the very model of the vengeful woman scorned (by Soranzo). She is also Annabella's tutor and confidante, Putana, who, in this version, is simply strangled rather than having her eyes gouged out. This change wasn't made to reduce the gore quotient; it's another artifact of the cuts that have been made in the text. Ms. Hankins dies fabulously both times, however. We are not cheated of her talents.

Just as Ms. Hankins easily negotiates two very different characters, the cast smoothly navigates Gian Marco Lo Forte's handsome, compressed but functional set (and manipulates it handily during the many scene changes). The production is a master class in efficient technical operations. The live three-man band, under the direction of the hirsute yet nimble bassist James Sparber and collectively known as Colonna Sonora, enhances the play's romantic, dark, and tragic moods with creepy and dramatic rock music, alternately insistent and haunting.

But the big discovery here is Ms. Rothenberg. With a scant New York resume, she is a product of Boston University's Conservatory Program, which has given us Michael Chiklis, Julianne Moore, Geena Davis, and Jason Alexander. After her spellbinding performance in this tricky and probably exhausting role, one imagines a similarly shining career for this newcomer. She is as beautiful as she is talented, and while in some roles that might be a distraction, here it adds a dimension, as one can easily identify with Giovanni's ardor. Yet through body language and makeup she transforms, heartbreakingly, into an ashen moral wreck, as the Friar's prediction – "death waits on thy lust – nears fulfillment.

Mr. Krug, for his part, while very good in the run-up, and very facile with the high-toned language of his flowery speeches, displays a certain lack of gravitas as the violent climax approaches. Hence his vengefulness feels less fully justified than the motives of the others. As a result, the violent, climactic scene seems oddly antiseptic – a bit of a let-down after the romance and humor and tension and darkness of the play to that point.

In the scheme of things, though, the production's flaws are vastly outweighed by its virtues. In fact, it's a must-see. ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore runs through Oct. 16 at Teatro Iati, 64 E. 4th St. Visit the Toy Box Theatre website for tickets.

Photo credits: 1) Teresa Olson. 2) Toy Box Theatre Company.

Last December the talented director Pat Diamond helmed an unusual, video-centric production of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. Now Mr. Diamond, an opera specialist, has brought a brash, colorful, operatic flair to his staging of A. Rey Pamatmat's new play Thunder Above, Deeps Below for Second Generation. Like Dido this is a story about abandonment, but it's no tragedy – Thunder Above is about redemption and rebirth as well as loss. It concerns three homeless teens in Chicago, who've all been left, one way or another, and their efforts to find a better way of life without sinking to violent crime or excessively dangerous behavior.

It's quite a sight, this play, with lavish costumes, grandiloquent sound design, and a spectacular set by Sandra Goldmark. It also boasts some very fine performances, led by Maureen Sebastian, who was so good as the swashbuckling hero of Soul Samurai back in February. This lady deserves a boost to Broadway.

The material here, however, is somewhat lacking, for two main reasons. First, the script veers from overly self-conscious poetics to cliched and unrealistic dialogue. After hearing Theresa's (Ms. Sebastian) story of being forced to abandon her baby, would a teenage Latino youth ask, "Is that why you're made of stone?" Would a sixteen-year-old homeless Filipino transsexual cry, "I won't be another trannie who dies helping his friend pull off some harebrained scheme!"? It's a testament to the skill of the actors who portray these roles (Rey Lucas and Jon Norman Schneider, respectively) that we are not thoroughly turned off by such dialogue. Rather, we grow to like and appreciate these characters, rooting for them to get to their Promised Land of San Francisco, just as we root for the production, which has many good elements, to reach the transcendent heights suggested by Ms. Goldmark's two-level, industrial-mythic set.

It never does, partly because it tries too hard to escape the base world of humanity. The play's second flaw is the way Mr. Pamatmat weaves a perplexing and unnecessary element of magic through the plot. The scenery may be operatic, but the characters aren't mythic heroes; in spite of their sometimes unrealistic dialogue, the cast makes them seem real to us. That's why we like them. Applying magic to point their way and solve their problems seems like cheating. The magic and mysticism center around the coffee shop manager/mother figure of Marisol (Phyllis Johnson, who does what she can with an awkward role). She sprinkles fairy dust in the kids' coffee. She dons an extravagant hooded robe to, Charon-like, row Theresa's lost boyfriend (a wild-eyed Darian Dauchan) across a mythic version of Lake Michigan to find her. (I'm not giving anything away; you spot right away that the hooded supernatural figure is Marisol in another guise.)

Finally, when Hector, feeling once more abandoned, cracks and threatens violence, it's Theresa who defuses the situation with her own very human grace; but it's Marisol who then lies him down and mumbo-jumbos him through some sort of mystical rebirth.

By the end, despite some amusing and touching scenes that brightened up the second act, I had begun to feel not just disengaged from the story, but uncomfortable with the character of Marisol. I had thought that in the era of President Barack Obama we might have grown past a reliance on that kind of "Magical Negro" character. The other main adult character, a rich man who wants to be Hector's "sugar daddy" while maintaining the outward life of a straight family man, seems by contrast satisfyingly real, in spite of a somewhat stiff performance by Rafael Jordan.

In short, this is an ambitious and very well done production that manifests several pleasures, but is hobbled by the flaws at its foundation.

Thunder Above, Deeps Below runs through Sept. 26 at the TBG Theatre, 312 W. 26 St., New York.

Photo: Maureen Sebastian as Theresa. Photo by Cory Weaver.

Henry V may be Shakespeare's most stirring history play, with its heroic king, powerful exhortations to the troops ("We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"), and lusty depiction of the Battle of Agincourt. At the same time, it contains a good deal of dense and difficult language, both high noble speech and slangy vernacular, as well as a fair amount of political detail that goes well beyond what a typical modern audience can be expected to find fascinating.

Director Rich Ferraioli has cut some of the politics, and some of the bantering, from his new Queens Players production at the Secret Theatre, focusing even more narrowly than does the play's full text on the character of the King. The small bit of bad news here is that we lose some of the vagabondish fun contained in some of those peripheral scenes. For example, while it's a clever touch in an American production to play Fluellen, the Welsh duke, as a southerner in a cowboy hat (complete with leeks) – and Sean MacBride Murray has fun with the role – the Irishman MacMorris isn't here, and though he may be a stereotype, he's Shakespeare's stereotype. Too, in an effort to keep the production down to two hours, some scenes that did make the cut go by almost too quickly to follow.

The good news begins with Danny Yoerges, a marvelous Henry. Any staging of Henry V needs a strong King, and especially a fairly traditional production like this one. Early in the proceedings, Yoerges seems stuck in an angry declamatory style, but his character fleshes out methodically, until by the time the young boys guarding the storehouse are killed by the fleeing French cavalry, Henry's seething, buttoned-up rage is thoroughly believable. Subsequently, after the battle is won, he transforms handily into Katherine's arch, bright-eyed wooer.

By a "traditional" production I mean the story is told straightforwardly, without extravagant sets and props, and, except for the cuts, in a form Shakespeare himself would probably recognize easily. The cast is very large, which makes for effective charging unto breaches. Casting the members of the French court as women, from King down to Herald, might in another production seem experimental or even outrageous, but after initially absorbing the conceit, one takes relatively little note of it, in large measure due to Jennifer Ewing's suitably regal performance as the French king. Jeni Ahlfeld is appropriately hot-headed at the Dauphin. (The Queen has been eliminated from the script, but she isn't missed.)

Luckily Mr. Ferraioli also cast women as the female characters: the Hostess (the former Mistress Quickly) in England; and in France, Meg Mark as a delightful and winsome Katherine and Jessica Renee Russell as a very funny Alice. The pair have a blast with the famous French-language scene where Alice teaches Katherine English words for various parts of the body. Ms. Mark is graceful, coy, funny and charming in the wooing scene as well.

Other performances of note include Thom Brown III as a very fine Chorus – mellifluous and stentorian, half Derek Jacobi, half Brad Oscar – and Jeff Burroughs as a fiery, biker-chained Pistol.

Henry V runs through Oct. 3 at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City, Queens.

One of the funniest shows in town right now is also one of the most searching. Joshua Conkel's MilkMilkLemonade is a rollicking, twisting, and twisted coming-of-age tale that's also, thanks to an excellent cast and Isaac Butler's boisterous, assured direction, pretty slick for an Off Off Broadway production.

The Management has become known as an edgy downtown group with notable depth. Their new production explores being gay in America, but specifically Middle America, and more precisely a chicken farm not far from the implied national nightmare succinctly summed up in the name "Mall Town, USA." Conkel's script feelingly and humorously explores the relationship between two schoolboys, one effeminate and (mostly) liking himself that way, the other so desperately fighting his homosexual urges that he lashes out in a number of ways: "setting stuff on fire," getting into fights at home and at school, and punching and kicking the air like Cuchulain battling the waves.

The graceful, plastic, slightly Jim Carrey-ish Andy Phelan is a joy as Emory, who both embodies and explodes the stereotype of the boy who plays with dolls, dreams of singing and dancing on Broadway, and sometimes wishes he were a girl just to make things "easier." Elliot, the tough kid – coiled with rage, but at heart a romantic with a thing for tuxedos – is played wonderfully by the diminutive actress Jess Barbagallo. She's much shorter than Phelan, and the reverse-role height difference is a constant reminder that what's on the inside is what should matter. Elliot is bitterly ashamed of their sex play in Emory's barn, and it discomfits Emory too, in a different way; Nanna, his grandmother, is constantly trying to "cure" him of his effeminate ways, and his best friend and confidant is not a person at all but Linda (Jennifer Harder), an oversized chicken.

Linda's not a pretend friend, exactly. Though only Emory can understand her clucking, she's known to all, having attained semi-mythical status with the curious Elliot and become a thorn in the side of the impatient Nanna (Michael Cyril Creighton in hilarious drag). Nanna just wants to get her chickens processed and sold, while Emory wants to protect this special chicken from the jaws of the machine; in fact, he wants to grow up and turn the farm into a vegan paradise. How it all ends isn't terribly important; getting there is where the fun is, and there's an awful lot of it – a number of moments had the audience in such stitches the cast had to wait patiently for the laughter to fade.

Meredith Steinberg's energetic and funny choreography deserves mention, and the choices of music are spot-on – how can you not love a show that features "I've Never Been to Me"? And, while the whole cast shines, it wouldn't be fair to skip a mention of Nikole Beckwith, who plays a constantly terrified narrator/chorus figure in a black leotard. Among other things, she provides translations of Linda's chicken-speak in a deadly-funny synthesized-computer voice, plays a creepy evil twin, and dances the part of Elliot's beloved Barbie-type doll.

There's so much to recommend this show, so many show-stopping bits and scenes, that it was standing room only last night at the tiny UNDER St. Marks theater. (Beckwith and Harder's spider scene is not to be missed.) It runs only through Sept. 26, so get your tickets now.

Photos by John Alexander.

It’s often dangerous to generalize, but I feel secure in stating that the Irish are pretty good at writing drama. The Origin Theatre Company’s new evening of world-premiere one-person plays, collectively titled Spinning the Times, has done nothing to disabuse me of this happy prejudice.

Part of the Origin’s 1st Irish festival, the production brings together brief new works by five female playwrights. Though the writers all hail from Ireland, it is a highly international evening, and director M. Burke Walker seems to have chosen the order of presentation with care, as one might map out a world tour.

Rosemary Jenkinson’s The Lemon Tree takes place in a modern-day Belfast where violent echoes of the Troubles linger, and linger. Young Kenny likes to stir up mischief with his pals and harass the local Catholics, but he’s affected more than he’d like to admit by an encounter with an American relief worker drumming up aid for Palestinians in Gaza. As embodied by the lanky, magnetic, and deadly-focused Jerzy Gwiazdowski, who dominates the stage seemingly effortlessly, Kenny is not merely a fully realized creature, but bigger than life in that believable, language-soaked Irish way. Ms. Jenkinson has the exceptional storyteller’s talent of deriving large truths from small fictions. Her play is a compressed, polished marvel, practically a poem, with not a word out of place, nor, thanks to Mr. Gwiazdowski and the exquisitely skilled direction, an extraneous gesture.

From talk of Gaza, we move to the place itself, where in Lucy Caldwell’s wrenching The Luthier a young Palestinian violin repairman evokes his horrific childhood. The subtle and precise sound design (by Christian Frederickson),  lighting (Jonathan Spencer), and set design (Lex Liang) aid mightily, as music and rockets and the buzzing and dimming of stuttering electrical power transport us to the workshop where Dawood, partially protected from the war outside, studies his craft – and from which he slides us into the past, where as a child he lost his family and saw his friends die in an undeclared war he didn’t ask for.

Ms.Caldwell illuminates moments that limn Dawood’s essential humanity against the inhumanity that surrounds him: as a child, crowding around a pilfered “porno” DVD with his friends; imagine that in this day in age, now all the New and popular sex videos are all at dosexvideo. As a young craftsman and music student, being transported by Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance”; as a physical being, lighting and snuffing the tin-can candles he must use when the power goes out. As played convincingly by Ethan Nova, Dawood spreads his mild, peaceful nature over the theater, so that when he relates violent events they strike us all the harder. Mr. Nova easily overcomes the slight handicap of not quite looking the part, brilliantly casting a soft, cold spell, then kicking us when we’re down.

Mr. Walker next gives us a welcome break with the funny, relatively breezy, but still absorbing Miracle Conway by Geraldine Aron. In this artful tale, the expert Rosemary Fine (Juno and the Paycock, The Abbey, The Gate) brings to life an everywoman who gets a job as an assistant to a famous songwriter. Spinning love fantasies, she concludes, with eminent sense, that something ought to be done about the man’s beautiful but annoying wife. By the time we find out, finally, where Miracle has actually ended up, we’re utterly charmed by the brazen, deluded creature, who frankly admits that “I always end up getting on people’s nerves.”

It was a pleasure to see again the marvelous Aysan Çelik, who nearly stole the Queen’s Company’s production of Twelfth Night last fall. Her vehicle here isn’t the best of the evening, however. With Rosalind Hazlett’s Gin in a Teacup we’ve arrived in the New World, where Nooshn, a young woman of Iranian extraction, waits for her sister in a bar/cafe in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Crazy Joe Gallo’s old turf is now a “frontier” neighborhood whose gentrification has been slowed by lack of subway access but which is nevertheless up-and-coming; it’s appropriate that the eccentric Nooshn, a vintage clothing enthusiast and blogger, has washed up in a place that’s still mostly possibility. But the piece, while well-written and performed, doesn’t leap off the page as the preceding stories do. It’s an amusing slice of an interesting life, with Ms. Çelik rousing our sympathies and cleverly conjuring up her old-fashioned mother and pushy, politically active sister, but it doesn’t quite take on the dimensionality that can elevate a one-person work from monologue to play.

The evening ends with the disappointing Fugue, in which neither Mr. Walker nor actor Mark Byrne is able to bring to life Belinda McKeon’s tale of emigration. That now-familiar sectarian violence has chased another young Irish Protestant across the ocean to New York, where it remains lodged in his mind even as he’s buffeted by unrelated vicissitudes of life in his new city.

Nevertheless, the best of this evening is outstanding and accounts for the bulk of it. Spinning the Times runs through Sept. 20 at 59E59 Theaters. Not taking a theater-heavy trip to Ireland anytime soon? Alas, neither am I. Fortunately, the Origin Theatre Company has brought some of the cream of the crop to New York audiences, who ought to jump at the chance to take it in, Troubles and all.

FringeNYC is here, this year with 201 shows over two weeks. That's right, 201 shows. I plunged right in, attending two full-length musicals last night.

The first seemed timely. With the parole of Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the Manson murders are back in the news, and with the concurrent 40th anniversary of Woodstock it seems an opportune moment to reexamine the values and the meaning of the hippie movement – seriously or otherwise. So what could be more appropriate than "A Musical Exploitation of the Most Far-Out Cult Murders of the Psychedelic Era"?

The word "exploitation," rather than "exploration," clues us in that this is not going to be a serious take on the Manson phenomenon, and that's just fine – I'm all for entertainment in poor taste, if it's funny or interesting. And the first few scenes of Willy Nilly do play as an amusing send-up of both the hippie generation and the "squares" who feared them.

Released from prison, a slightly fictionalized Manson ("Willy," played energetically by Avery Pearson), begins casting his spell on young women. Meanwhile a character representing the prosecutor and Manson chronicler Vincent Bugliosi (played smartly by the playwright and composer Trav. S. D.) narrates, deadpanning lines like "he begins to recruit his harem, one 'chick' at a time" – heavy accent on the "chick." This is crude but funny stuff.

Presented with such enjoyable silliness, we're primed for funny songs as well. The show's first disappointment, then, is that the lyrics are often hard to make out, thanks to unclear amplification and the high volume of the on-stage acid-rock band.

Soon bigger problems arise. Once Willy's harem is complete, the story follows the familiar outline of the Manson Family's march through communal living and music-industry disappointment towards gruesome mass murder. But it turns out, unsurprisingly, that creating a comic version of Manson eliminates any sense of menace from the character. For comedy to succeed, there must be something, on the surface or beneath, to make us uneasy in some way. In this production there's not a whiff of suspense or fear.

Instead, director Jeff Lewonczyk festoons the stage with a big cast infused with manic energy; sight-gag props and colorful period costumes; and effective flower-power choreography (by Becky Byers and Mr. Lewonczyk). Certain comic turns, notably by Daryl Lathon and Mateo Moreno in multiple character roles, amuse and delight. But they sink quickly back into the overall purposelessness of the proceedings. The play aims to skewer the Sharon Tate-Roman Polanski circle as well, but with an instrument so blunt it only makes an ugly bruise, and by the time the Tate-LaBianca murders and the subsequent trial roll around the play has long since fallen apart. At the climax, intended (I think) to suggest the media frenzy around the trial, characters are desperately leaping about, even undressing, amidst a cacophony from the band – anything to find a way out.

Unfortunately, nothing can save this exercise in futile exuberance. Solid acting by many of the cast members, including Ms. Byers, Elizabeth Hope Williams, Adam Swiderski, Michael Criscuolo, and especially Hope Cartelli as Willy's original "old lady," can't save it. The band is fine, but it can't either. Nor can the vigorous, clever choreography, though it's the best thing about the show.

Better singing would have helped – it's generally mediocre – but not nearly enough. After the show I overheard one audience member saying that there were "not enough songs, but also too many songs." I know what he meant.

A better use of your musical dollar would be the flawed but enjoyable MoM, written and directed by Richard Caliban. In this "rock concert musical," five middle-aged suburban moms form a band for fun, only to be bludgeoned by unexpected success. The concert format, in which the women tell their raunchy tale through songs, narration, and just a couple of dramatic scenes, is both a strength and a weakness; it enables a direct connection with the audience, but the stage set, loaded with instruments and pedals, limits the possibilities for movement and drama.

Some of the cast members are musicians as well as actors, notably the always effervescent Stefanie Seskin, whom I know as the front person of the band Blue Number Nine. Yet as a band their musicianship is generally hesitant. (It would probably improve with more rehearsal.) This works fine for the first half of the show, when they are meant to be amateurs playing the local high school. When they become legitimate rock stars, though, supposedly playing stadiums, the not-a-real-band seams show too obviously.

What makes MoM an ultimately winning proposition are certain strong acting performances, especially from Ms. Seskin and the magnetic Jane Keitel, and the singing. Mr. Caliban can be prone to writing juvenile lyrics of the "some make us happy, some make us sad" ilk. But the hooks and punchlines are infectious and amusing (I won't give them away here), and the cast executes multi-part harmonies superbly. On a purely musical basis, then, there's much to enjoy in this show, and since it's loaded with songs, it's hard to go wrong.

FringeNYC runs through Aug. 29. Check the website for dates and times for these shows and the other 199.

Photo credit: Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors

Demonstrating that one is a triple threat in a theater the size of a closet sounds like a tough task. Kelly Samara, playwright, actor, and dancer – also choreographer, and creator of the music she dances to, which really makes her something like a quintuple threat – bravely gives it a go in her new one-woman show, and the result is a small triumph. Tense, gripping, funny, and surprisingly celebratory considering its subject, this hospital one-act is anything but maudlin, and hardly sentimental. Instead it's revealing, rough, and raging.

Dressed in an embarrassingly short hospital gown, Samara plays a hospital patient with an unspecified but worsening and apparently terminal illness. She breaks up a series of monologues with dance numbers that animate the violent psychology lurking behind the scenes.

To be precise, one of the scenes isn't exactly a monologue; in it she talks with an unseen, unheard friend whose chatty but emotion-fraught visit only underscores the gulf between the universe this long-term patient has both entered and created inside the hospital, and the forgetful outside world.

Wandering among various states – drugged, gossipy, fanciful, primally angry – Ms. Samara commands the space, developing her character with a mature, finely calibrated emotional control which lends weight to her script as well. The wordplay in the title isn't just a wee trick; it's an example of the play's wisely crafted language. "Amusement," she philosophizes, is just a cleaned-up word for "distraction." Common words take on entirely different casts when contemplated by a sickening patient confined to a hospital.

Ms. Samara trusts the audience to follow her, through words and movement, along her squirming evolution from impatience to eternal Patient. This trust makes the play an intensely satisfying experience (or "amusement"). So much so that the one time she doesn't trust us – when she concludes a monologue about iguanas and the difference between camouflage and invisibility by stating the obvious – is the one moment she disappoints a little.

As part of Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Summerfest 2009, Being Patient runs for three performances only, closing Friday Aug. 7. A powerful and well-tuned fusion of the many talents of a very crafty artist, it deserves further development and a longer run. In any case Kelly Samara has earned some significant attention.