Uptown/Downtown

Rod Serling lives in The Mystery Plays by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. There’s more than a touch of The Twilight Zone in the two gently interconnected tales that make up this entry in the “New Plays Uptown” series produced by Second Stage at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. Usually, the second of any pairing of plays will be the stronger, but these two one-acts need to be in this order and the first is substantially spookier — not to mention more original and complex — than the one that follows. Still, they work together as an evening of macabre theater that is satisfying in almost every facet of production.

Connie Grappo’s direction is alive with doorways, desks, and chairs in almost constant motion as scenes change with theatrical flair. S. Ryan Schmidt’s lighting design adds immeasurably to the otherworldly atmosphere created by the playwright and Amanda Walker’s costumes for both humans and ghosts are drop dead perfect. Finally (not to push the point), the dead-on acting makes the implausible entirely accessible. In particular, Gavin Creel is touching, funny, and oh so real as Joe Manning, an up-and-coming gay writer-director of horror films who meets the man of his dreams on a train destined for calamity. Leslie Lyles, in dual roles as both his agent and his mother, is delicious twice over.

The second play stars Heather Mazur and Peter Stadlen as siblings with a terrible bond between them. Here, the acting is solid but not so special that it can lift this less-than-inspired piece to a higher level. Nonetheless, the direction is as effective as in the first play, giving this tale of redemption a kinetic immediacy.

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Don’t Miss Julie

August Strindberg’s Miss Julie has been given a sensational makeover by translator Truda Stockenström and director Scott Schwartz. This tight, 90-minute production at the Cherry Lane Theatre is mesmerizing; the three-person cast carries the play with precision as Schwartz’s direction craftily moves the characters into on-stage positions that correspond to who’s literally up and who’s down in the power struggle between Miss Julie (Mimi Bilinski), her lower class rival Kristine (Opal Alladin), and the cock-of-the-walk Jean (Michael Aronov).

One particular reason why you should try to catch this show before it closes this weekend is Aronov’s sensational performance. He’s riveting as a man who’s in the process of re-inventing himself. You may see a precious few other performances this awesome during the course of the season but you won’t see anything better; Aronov is that good.

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Two Green Thumbs Down

Mark Giesser wrote How to Build a Better Tulip and all we can say is that we wish he had known how to build a better play. Suffice to say that no bulb blooms in this dreadful piece. Though actress Lois Nettleton tries to plant some talent in the barren soil of the production, the script is so overwritten that it made us wince. Nettleton has been hired to speak these lines but there’s no reason why you should pay to hear them; if there’s one play you can definitely skip this summer, here it is.

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Nightlife Notes

The jazz club Iridium, located on Broadway near 51st Street, is attempting to widen its constituency with a certain amount of cabaret programming. The venue seats upwards of 180 people and offers a full menu; its addition to the cabaret circuit, however tentatively, is happy news. Arthur Pompesello, late of the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, is booking the club’s cabaret talent. Among his first choices was Ludmilla Ilieva, who offered her classy, polished, entertaining act Do Re Milla (reviewed in this column last year). Proudly waving the cabaret flag, Ilieva helped pave the way for other cabaret performers to follow in this high-profile room.

Anthony Santelmo, Jr. has been performing in clubs for quite some time now but, somehow, we never caught up with him until we saw his new show in The Hideaway Room at Helen’s — and we were mightily impressed. Possessing a full, broad baritone voice and an engaging personality, Santelmo also displays terrific taste in his wide-ranging song selections. From the open-hearted romanticism of “Beyond Compare” (David Ross-Marshall Barer) to the darkly comic “Marjorie and the Gasman” (Michael Holland), this compelling artist has built his show on generally lesser-known but wonderful tunes. The act is not without its hiccups, but we saw the very first performance and we suspect that Santelmo will tighten and improve what is already a mostly delightful evening. Some of the highlights include a heroic performance of “Widescreen” (Rupert Holmes) and a winning rendition of “Little Luncheonette” (Francesca Blumenthal). Santelmo sings again at Helen’s on July 9 and 10 at 8pm.

The next time Phil Geoffrey Bond offers one of his “Friday Night Stories” at The Duplex, you should attend the tale. One of Bond’s most daring moves as the club’s booker has been to present his own dramatized and musicalized short story readings. These are evolving into sophisticated evenings of wry humor and standout musical performances by some of cabaret’s most talented people — and it turns out that Bond is a fine writer and a smartly understated actor.

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[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]