ACT

Through Aug 17. I'll do my best to keep this show's saucy little plot twist hidden snugly under the rug, so that when you see it (and you should see it--oh yes, you should) you'll be as pleasantly surprised and emotionally wounded as I was. I'm still rather conflicted. I have no trouble recommending this production, but trust me: Some of the feelings it rouses are complex.

I'd managed to somehow ignore or avoid any information about this Tony Award-winning show beforehand--ergo, I had no preconceptions going in. So up until the moment Martin--the forgetful, dowdy, middle-aged dad (Brian Kerwin)--finally got around to unleashing his sick secret, I was thinking, "Oh, terrific... another snoremaker about some dude's midlife crisis. I think I'll just blind myself with my fingernails...." But when the (filthy) cat was let out of the (filthy--and did I mention disturbing?) bag, my reluctant attention was swept up and held hostage for almost two unblinking hours.

Cynthia Mace smolders with fragile intensity as Martin's misused wife, Stevie, skating a sharp edge between a civilized, educated woman and a ferocious woman betrayed. She smashes the set, piece by piece, as her bewilderment turns to rage, then boils over into revenge. It was chilling and heartbreaking to behold. Ian Fraser wrestles believably with his character's own mores and values as the gay son Billy (what's a little bit of faggotry, compared to what the old man's been up to?), and Kerwin even somehow (somehow!) manages to evoke sympathy (and dare I say empathy?) for his dirty-bird character. I won't say much more for fear of giving too much away, but this is doubtlessly the most emotionally and sexually provocative show about goat-fucking ACT has ever produced. See it, and see if I'm wrong. ADRIAN RYAN

Blue/Orange

Intiman Theatre

Through Aug 24. Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange aspires to the ambiguity of a David Mamet play--Speed-the-Plow, or Oleanna--in which morality is relative and actions flit between the innocent and the loaded. In Blue/Orange, a debate over the condition of a psychiatric patient goes from jocular, professional consultation to heated exchange to professional meltdown, while the patient hovers between the disputing psychiatrists, very nearly a blank surface onto which the doctors project their theories and ambitions. Bruce (Ian Brennan)--jumpy, idealistic, politically correct--is quite sure that Christopher (Sylvester Foday Kamara) is a paranoid schizophrenic who has been misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder and as a result is about to be mistakenly released from the hospital. Robert (Laurence Ballard)--a garrulous, self-satisfied consultant who snaps from good-old-boy joviality to snarling rage with the shocking abruptness of a chow--has another theory, which is that there are cultural angles to consider, and that one man's insanity may be another man's racism--a theory which not coincidentally happens to be the crux of his dissertation.

It's an interesting premise, but the play is largely too consumed by its own outrage (at the British healthcare system, at inadvertent racism, at the arrogance of doctors) to develop narratively. In the first act the doctors don't do much more than mouth textbook theories; it's not until the second act--in a rather unexpectedly magnificent showdown--that they become characters. The nuances that would make this more dramatic than polemic are dispelled by heavy-handing Christopher's condition: the stage set featuring a net of squiggly lines inspired by the artwork of schizophrenics, a program packed with social-work-style information about mental illness and racial stigma. Letting doubt creep in about what may or may not be wrong with Christopher would have infused the debate with uneasiness about the assumptions made by the doctors in whose hands we helplessly find ourselves. EMILY HALL

Point Break Live!

The Little Theatre

Through Aug 10. After a week of hot anticipation for Point Break Live!, I'm sorry to say that the performance was disappointing. Codirectors Jaime Keeling and Jamie Hook have a wonderful vision--to transfer the ass-kicking energy of action movies onto the stage--but their play failed to achieve terminal velocity. Though the audience hooted, hollered, and seemed to love every minute of it, PBL struck me as just pretty okay.

A simple premise with some smart gimmicks, Point Break Live! features most of the surfing, skydiving, bank robbing, and gunfights of the 1991 original, starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. In an attempt to capture Keanu's vacant acting style, PBL stars a new unrehearsed hottie each night, with the clueless Keanu reading his lines off cue cards and being hustled around by production assistants--a method that provided the play's most hilarious moments.

Ironically, the show's dark horses gave the best performances. Twelve-year-old prodigy Maggie Brown played an excellent Tyler (Keanu's love interest), abusing her counterpart and swearing like a pint-sized sailor. Members of the local power-metal outfit Doomsday 1999 also gave fine performances as the surfers-cum-bank-robbers, howling, shooting, and dying with the requisite level of intensity. Everyone else seemed half-assed (or half crocked--there were plenty of Pabst cans floating across the stage). The comedy and action weren't as intense as they should have been, giving us just the tantalizing taste of unrealized potential.

Between good gags, clever use of film, and the evening's Keanu getting the stuffing knocked out of him, PBL is certainly worth seeing, even if it fails to fulfill its promise of live slapstick action comedy. I dearly hope local theatermakers pick up the gauntlet Keeling and Hook have dropped--learn from their successes and mistakes, and raise the bar for the next round. BRENDAN KILEY