Taboo
On the Board
It happened Aug 25-26 only, but it's
intended to be the first in a series, so
presumably more will come in the future.

A scattershot evening of 11 writers and 12 vignettes, New Waves Radio's Taboo at On the Boards distinctly resembled the offing of a speedwriting theater festival. In these performing-arts marathons, everyone works from a thematic topic drawn at random, and is given something like 48 hours to write, cast, and rehearse a short play for the enjoyment of a late-night house, usually full of half-drunken college friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but usually each five- or 10-minute piece winds up being a long justification for a single punch line, which is fine for a crowd of half-drunken college friends. This quality--the devotion of a whole story to one joke--makes Taboo enjoyable, but not especially memorable.

To delve too deeply into Taboo's content would ruin the pieces' surprises, which are their strongest selling points. From the perverse influence the Cold Wars of parents have on their children to dumbass--I mean, romantic--Parisians looking for love, Taboo loosely organizes itself around the themes of the forbidden, or at least the unusual. Except for Todd Jefferson Moore's well-written laugher about two boys discussing death and leotards, and Chay Yew's inner monologue by a middle-aged Asian man in a Seattle bathhouse, the pieces get the most mileage from setting up and knocking down our expectations.

All the pieces were enjoyable, but none left lingering traces once the show ended. Taboo is polished, but, with very few exceptions, has no teeth, which (like television) isn't all that bad for passing the time. Ultimately, the performers were better than their material, whether hamming up their radio personae or getting down to the earnest bone. In fact, seeing them may have been more distracting than entertaining, eliminating radio's most powerful joy--total dependence on sound. Taboo really would be better heard and not seen. BRENDAN KILEY

 

Everything Not Forbidden Is Permitted (and Vice Versa)
Annex Theatre, 1916 Fourth Ave, 728-0933.
Two more performances: Sat Sept 2 and Fri Sept 8 at 11 pm; $5,
free if you see the prime-time show.

Continuing the vignette-mania, Annex's collection of short plays by Anne Washburn frolics in total contrast to Taboo, despite the parallel presence of a dumbass--I mean, romantic--Parisian. Rough-hewn, patchy, but ultimately good fun, Everything Not Forbidden Is Permitted (and Vice Versa) is a comfortable series of guffaw-friendly, though often poignant, bits and pieces: late-night theater at its pretty damn good, if not its best. Seven actors, four short plays, and three monologues cast around in the waters of the psyche; from the Nietzsche of company meetings to friends hyping themselves up for what looks like a "tough love"-type intervention, Washburn's bits and pieces play out so well because their humor and insight come as details of an unraveling story rather than central theses of theatrical term papers.

Everything Not Forbidden got off to a slow start, and performances occasionally wobbled (slow cue pick-ups, some uninspired delivery, what-do-I-do-with-my-hands syndrome), but the production kept on scrapping, and ended with a satisfying bang. Some lines were noticeably better written than delivered, though often redeemed by the fun everyone, including the audience, seemed to be having. Scott Plusquellec's thoughtful monologue on what happens in the mind of a workplace shooter (recounted in the first-person) walked perfectly between seriousness and satire. A strange meditation on death, bodies, and medicine delivered by four female cadavers, the haunting picture of The Surgery Patients offset its comedic companions well. Despite its slight blemishes, Everything Not Forbidden is an energetic romp, a gas for an hour of late-night art. BRENDAN KILEY

 

Betrayal
Chamber Theater, Oddfellows Hall, Fourth Floor,
915 E Pine, 568-0631. Thurs-Sat at 8; $12,
$10 student. Through Sept 9.

Harold Pinter's frequently produced tale of imploding, shattering alliances between two married couples is an excellent showcase for actors--as well as a chance to ruminate on the playwright's vision of adult humans as duplicitous, crummy freaks who wouldn't be able to behave morally even if they were paid millions by God himself. Theatre Paradox's production has some interesting touches; for example, an updated, present-day setting with sound cues between scenes that evoke world events circa the 1990s. Director Peter Burford has decided to set the long one-act play on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard rather than London, nicely circumventing the sometimes painful phenomenon of American actors approximating English accents. The change felt well-grounded and comfortable for the actors.

Shawn Hausmann portrays the childish Jerry as a kind of stupefied, slow-to-catch-on nerd, which is entertaining, though he and Carmen Elena Mitchell as the deceitful Emma seem to forget the possibilities Betrayal offers actors for employing self-mocking and self-irony. Ray Irwin, though, as Robert, has this depth worked out. His Robert is by turns confident, hearty, and sneering; after he discovers the affair between his best friend and wife, his angry responses visibly go subterranean, where we can barely see them oozing from beneath his wry, automatic exterior. Irwin most exploits the play's opportunity for stylized artifice in the characters and the chance, in this play as in many of Pinter's, to eschew "acting" (with a capital "A") in favor of something related to acting, but less earnest, more false, and more interesting. David Nocchetti as a second-generation Italian waiter is slyly inventive. The biggest problem with this production is the liberties director Burford takes with long pauses between the actors' speeches. Instead of helping shape and punctuate this interesting and still-timely play, they tend to make this production feel slow. Still, it's worth seeing for Irwin, and for the chilling sense of mistrust and slow, amorphous doom that this wonderful script imparts. STACEY LEVINE