In David Mamet’s “The Cryptogram,” a young boy refuses to go to bed, pestering his mother about the whereabouts of father. She continually puts him off with the help of a family friend, who hangs out in the living room like a long-lost uncle. But daddy, it is soon revealed, is never coming home. Seems he has other pursuits to explore, which also include other women. It’s not a bad play, exploring the way we dance around unpleasant subjects, but it comes with a major obstacle for any director: where do you find an eight-year-old kid who can manage Mamet’s overlapping dialogue? It seems an impossible task, judging by the most recent revival by The Journeymen, directed by Frank Pullen. Mamet, done poorly, is like nails on a chalkboard. Eecchh. (Nina Metz.)

This production is now closed.

Chekhov never said that a box cutter introduced in the first act should wind up in someone’s jugular, but maybe he would have been driven to such extremes if he’d spent enough time trapped in the soulless exurban setting of Angus Maclachlan’s “The Radiant Abyss.” Maclachlan’s play begins with sex, ends with violence, and in between devotes a fair amount of histrionic speechifying to religious fundamentalism and the general decline of the world into anarchy. The antiheroic saga of security guard Steve Enloe (Eric Burgher) three-timing his ditzy and overworked girlfriend Ina (Whitney Schaffer) with manipulative property manager Erin (Carolyn Klein) and an unseen fifteen-year-old, “The Radiant Abyss” leavens its Mamet lite with murky suggestions about a new church encroaching upon Erin’s strip-mall fiefdom. Director Darrell Cox keeps the pace moving swiftly in Profile Theatre’s production, while Klein blends a chilly authority with barely suppressed rage in her portrayal of Erin. But the play is hampered by its essential silliness and the casual brutality of its characters. Its labored attempts at shock deliver only a muted impression, because the action on stage, for all its brand-name efforts at realism, never achieves more than a passing resemblance to the behavior of real people. (John Beer) 

This production is now closed.

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P. G. Wodehouse’s comic novels present a kind of mirror image of David Mamet’s universe: their characters end up hopelessly entangled within webs of deception and intrigue as each pursues an object of great desire. But pursuing an English prize pig leads to much happier results than “American Buffalo.” Wodehouse’s inspired silliness gets a lively staging by City Lit Theater, in an adaptation by Page Hearn. Though the device of actors momentarily stepping out of character to narrate is ungainly, the company manages to make a formidable maze of subplots and counterplots, featuring an American heiress, a jilted detective, a temporarily jilted detective novelist, dieting nobles and butlers, and the drunken pigman Wellbeloved, eminently clear. Don Bender turns in a bravura performance as Galahad Threepwood: a whirlwind of quick pivots and thrusts, Bender embodies the serpentine complexity of Galahad’s scheme-filled mind. He leads a sharp and agile ensemble, deftly switching between doubled and tripled roles with enviable ease. Martha Adrienne’s direction keeps the action at a giddy pace. As the script’s knowing nods to “The Importance of Being Earnest” underline, “Pigs Have Wings” secures its place in the pantheon of madcap English comedy with assurance. (John Beer)

This production is now closed.