In the Wabe

Open Circle Theater

Through April 15

Approximate cost to produce: $3,500.

This "absurdist re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" is an exercise in redundancy. Lewis Carroll's Alice stories are already episodic, hallucinatory, and tedious, but In the Wabe, by Aaron Allshouse, stretches them past the breaking point with two Alices, long runs of nonsense, further plot fragmentation, and an interspecies—though homosexual—kiss that ends in murder. It out-Carrolls Carroll and it doesn't work.

But there's no need to kick the playwright around. It's his first script and he's beaten us to the punch, using his program bio as an apologetic hedge against the entire production: "HOLY CRAP??!! I wrote this??!! I don't remember any of this shit. Why do I drink so much?" I know the feeling Mr. Allshouse, and I extend my deepest sympathies. BRENDAN KILEY

Cyrano de Bergerac

Seattle Shakespeare Company

Through April 9

Approximate cost to produce: $70,000.

If you love Cyrano de Bergerac and you go into this production of it with a generous attitude, it is possible to enjoy it vaguely, but you have to really love Cyrano and you have to be really generous. The main characters are: Roxane, who is "elegant, literary, and unmarried"; her cousin Cyrano, who is in love with Roxane, is incredibly witty, and has a huge nose; and Christian de Neuvilliette, who also loves Roxane, is a bumbling idiot, and is a stud. These two guys are so infatuated with her, so hard up, and so sure that neither stands a chance, given their respective failings, that they agree to help each other out. As Cyrano puts it: "I will be your wit, and you will be my beauty." Cyrano crouches in shadows and dictates the sweet nothings Christian repeats to Roxane, and writes letters to Roxane under Christian's name, and Roxane falls for it, but of course Cyrano is unhappy because he doesn't get any booty, and Christian is unhappy because it is not his mind Roxane loves. It's a great story.

The problem is Emily Grogan, who plays Roxane, and is terrible. ("She's unbelievably bad to the very end," as my date, a female poet, averred.) Scott Coopwood (as Cyrano) plays his part with brio, sometimes so much brio that he rushes lines he should take time with, and Nathan Smith (as Christian) is suitably studly and gets laughs. But Grogan—well, she has memorized all her lines, she says them in the right order, and she has lustrous hair. That she has a BFA in acting from Cornish is astonishing. Your heart goes out to the actors whose lines come between hers, and, unconvinced by the chemistry-free love triangle, your attention falls to other things, like the cheap set, the cheap props, the cheap costumes, and the spackle job around Coopwood's facial prosthetic. Sean Patrick Taylor (who is also in the cast) deserves praise for his original translation of Edmond Rostand's classic text, and for his helpful explanation, in the program, of the liberties he took. Director Stephanie Shine's program note, on the other hand, is an embarrassment. It reads as if it came from the mind of Christian de Neuvilliette. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

Salome

Straight-Edge Theatrics at Chamber Theater

Through April 1

Approximate cost to produce: $3,000.

Salome is set in the realm of beauty. It's a world lit by the moon, intoxicated by wine, and distorted by poetry. The characters are not physical beings, but heated points of sexual longing. The Page of Herodias sexually desires The Young Syrian; The Young Syrian desires Salome; Salome desires the imprisoned prophet Jokanaan; Jokanaan desires Nirvana. King Herod also desires Salome, his stepdaughter, and, like the others, the beam of his lust is never returned. Unfulfilled desire is the substance of the play.

Straight-Edge Theatrics' production of this rarely performed work of symbolist drama (originally composed in French by Oscar Wilde in 1891) begins by heading for artistic disaster: The play opens with the Young Syrian and two prison guards stumbling through Wilde's flowery language. The play is more a poem than anything else, and this poses a great challenge to actors who need psychological depth and content to make their characters believable and engaging. The words of the play are not there for the cast members or the plot but for their own sake, for their own beauty. "How good to see the moon!" says voluptuous Salome (Cristina Villareale), "She is like a little piece of money, a little silver flower. She is cold and chaste. I'm sure she is a virgin. She has the beauty of a virgin. Yes, she is a virgin." It's easier to dance to such words then it is to act them. Two performances, however, overcome this difficulty: Lee Howard, who plays Jokanaan (or John the Baptist), and Marcus Wolland, who plays King Herod. Howard convincingly brings to life the madness and passion of a prophet, and Wolland cools the poetry of his lines into the speech of an actual person who moves through the play in much the same way a man walks about a room clouded by incense smoke. CHARLES MUDEDE