A Close Call

Sometimes, sophomoric comedy is so intelligently silly that it can graduate to a higher class: junior wit. To wit, we give you Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy. Or, rather, Alana McNair and Kate Wilkinson give it to you — with everything except a pie in the face. These two young writers have penned an entertaining 75 minutes of nonsense. Their spoof of the Michael Douglas/Glenn Close thriller Fatal Attraction offers moments of inspired lunacy an overlay of mock Greek tragedy, complete with a very opinionated Greek Chorus.

A telltale conceit of the play is the naming of the characters after the actors who played them in the film. Thus, Corey Feldman is Michael Douglas. And how smart are McNair and Wilkinson? Smart enough to write themselves the roles of Glenn Close and Anne Archer, respectively. It was also wise of the women to team up with director Timothy Haskell, who recently directed a similar stage spoof of the cult movie Road House. The new show employs the same sort of low-tech gags that made the previous one a fresh piece of theatrical tomfoolery — e.g., stage blood is openly pumped out of a bag when Glenn Close slits her wrists. Throughout, the spirit is one of inclusiveness; the laughter comes from all of us being in on the joke.

Feldman is a very funny, bantam-weight version of Michael Douglas; his vocal impression and bared teeth combine to create an image that works. McNair’s Glenn Close is hilariously intense, while Wilkinson’s Anne Archer is a comic version of June Cleaver. In the role of Ellen Hamilton Latzen, the actress who played the daughter of Douglas and Archer in the movie, Aaron Haskell nearly steals the show. With childish zeal, he walks away with every scene he’s in. But what finally brings the comedy up a notch in sophistication is the Greek Chorus made up of Nick Arens, Sergio Lobito, Kellie Arens, and Ebony A. Cross. Tossing off lines culled from the ancients (Euripides) and the moderns (C.H. Fowler and W.H. DePuy, who wrote Home and Health and Home Economics), they bring a tongue-in-cheek satire to what was always a melodramatic cautionary tale.

The comedy flies, aided and abetted by Paul Smithyman’s cleverly open set, which allows free movement between Glenn Close’s apartment and the home(s) of Douglas/Archer. So, too, the lighting design by Tyler Micoleau always lets us know who and what we should be looking at amidst the fast-moving action on stage. Wendy Yang’s costumes are hilarious. Most shows don’t have a prop designer, but this one rightfully does, and that person’s noteworthy name is Faye Armon. One of the funniest sequences in the show is the climax, an extended comic fight scene; give credit here to fight director Rod Kinter. This take on Fatal Attraction is light, fast, and a lot of fun.

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Dive In to the Shallows

Adam Bock’s Swimming in the Shallows will probably be forever known as the play in which a guy falls in love with a shark. The series of scenes that have Nick (Michael Arden), a gay man with commitment issues, meeting and dating a mako shark (Logan Marshall-Green) manage to find a tone that lies safely somewhere between the surreal and the everyday. We laugh because their relationship is blatantly impossible but also because the writer, director, and actors make it so credible.

The potently creative Bock has written a comedy that’s about more than the guy and the shark. Those two characters are swimming in dangerous shallows together, but so are a young lesbian couple contemplating marriage (Rosemarie Dewitt and Susan Pourfar) and a heterosexual older couple (Mary Shultz and Murphy Guyer) whose relationship is crashing on the rocks. All of these characters yearn for something meaningful in their lives and will do almost anything to find it, whether it’s dating a shark, quitting smoking, or simplifying one’s life to the point of owning just eight objects.

Directed with verve by Trip Cullman, this production has a hip style that doesn’t steal focus from the play. It also features a brilliant set by David Korins; the aquarium in which the shark swims is a masterpiece of design that allows the director to stage the unreal in a realistic fashion, and it gives the actors a wonderful place in which to play. Catch Swimming in the Shallows if you can; the show is set to close on July 17.

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Ragtime: The True Musical of Musicals

The alignment of talent that created the Broadway production of Ragtime might be called celestial. Composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens were at the top of their game in writing the score, while the great Terrence McNally wrote the book based on the acclaimed novel by E. L. Doctorow. Then there was an A-list cast that included Marin Mazzie, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Audra MacDonald, to name just a few.

The show’s current revival at the Paper Mill Playhouse, which closes this weekend, is proof that Flaherty, Ahrens, and McNally created a musical for the ages. Indeed, it’s bracing to revisit this powerful piece after a Broadway season that largely consisted of musical theater fluff, and it’s to Paper Mill’s credit that it has mounted this excellent if somewhat scaled-down production.

Director Stafford Arima shows us that Ragtime doesn’t need stars to carry it, although this production has one in Rachel York, who gives a stellar performance as Mother. Shonn Wiley does standout work as Younger Brother, Neal Benari is a revelation as Tateh, and you will be rightfully impressed with Quentin Earl Darrington as the fierce and proud Coalhouse Walker, Jr. If he doesn’t have the charisma of Brian Stokes Mitchell, he certainly has the fire.

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