Little Women and Twenty-five Strangers

After a whirlwind weekend of theatre, I'm back to report on two shows which are running for one more weekend each.

The non-equity national tour of Little Women has found its way to its final stop in Flushing, Queens. There are reasons to go see it and reasons not to waste the time and money going all the way out to Flushing. If you caught the play on Broadway in its initial 2005 run starring Sutton Foster, you probably don't need to go back again. If you didn't and you're a big fan of Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, this is a good way to see the characters come passionately and humorously to musical life. If you have children and would like to introduce them to the theatre, this is a well-done production of a fairly tight show with some nice tunes for humming.

Finally, if you want to be able to say you saw Paige Faure in an astonishing star-turn before she was famous (and I don't think you'll have very long to say that), then it's definitely worth shelling out the thirty bucks and hopping on the 7 train. Faure handles the lead role of Jo March with grace and poise, even throughout the rambunctious shenanigans that characterize the role. Her progression through the three-years that the play takes place move seemlessly from go-getter adolescent to mature young woman, always accented by the ever-present wit. And when she sings, you can be sure that if there was anyone who should fill a role written for Sutton Foster, this is the performer. Other stand-out performances include Tabatha Skanes very funny and silver-voiced Amy, Stephen Lukas's heartfelt and sincere Laurie, and Jodi Lynne Sylvester's hilarious double-take as Aunt March and Mrs. Kirk.

On the island, Ten Grand Productions has brought award-winning playwright Matthew Fotis's play A Year in the Life of Twenty-five Strangers Living in a City by the Lake to the Algonquin Theatre for its New York premiere. Over the course of a year (one month per scene) twenty-five people who may have more in common than they'd think live out their lives, trying to make it from one New Year's party to the next. The play was a finalist for the 2005 Theatre Publicus Award for Dramatic Literature. It's an ambitious idea and a mostly admirable execution, though there are scenes where it feels like some characters get let out too soon or let off too easy. Still, the production is tightly directed by Shaun Colledge, who defied the original intent of the playwright by actually casting twenty-five actors where the script originally called for double- and triple-casting.

Colledge's staging has the cast entering for completely visable scene changes--the only times during the play when everyone is onstage together--giving us a reminder of the relationships between the characters, as well as foreshadowing things to come between characters we've not yet seen. This makes a play which could easily feel like a series of unrelated vignettes a cohesive whole.

Twenty-five actors in a play leaves room for many stand-out performances. Jennifer Bishop and Ben Rosenblatt offer an almost sickeningly sweet portrait of the youngest characters in the play, a pair of high school graduates in August going in different directions for college. Though the scene deals with honest emotions and real concerns, the end leaves us with a rather naive optimism that can make us feel that even if they do stick together and get married, they may end up like the June couple (David Stadler and Michele Rafic) trying to rekindle and long-since-gone flame in Paris. Still, Bishop and Rosenblatt's performances make you believe it can work, just as much as Stadler and Rafic's performances make you wish it could have been better.

November brings us performances by Chloe Cahill and Josh Hurley in a scene that deserves to be a little longer and explore the characters a little more. Both actors give honest performances that make us care about the people they embody, though the scene gives us little more than a moment of conflict and nothing for the audience to discover about the character or for the characters to discover about themselves. Aside from adding to the talley (for those keeping count of who's related to whom and in what way) the scene provides little insight or purpose in the play. It's the actors in the scene who make us care, and make us want to know more about the characters.

Other notable performances come from Edward Chin-Lyn, who somehow makes pigeons fascinating, Taylor Baugh, who gives a funny and honest portrait of everyone's mother, and Matthew Murumba, with a monologue that is certain to start popping up in auditions very soon.

If you have the time and money and wish to spend your weekend with some fascinating people doing fascinating things, take a look at Little Women and A Year in the Life of Twenty-five Strangers Living in a City by the Lake.

Little Women plays at Queens Theatre in the Park (www.queenstheatre.com) and A Year in the Life of Twenty-five Strangers Living in a City by the Lake plays at The Algonquin Theatre (www.tengrand.org). Both close on May 18th.