Woody Allen restored to his former glory

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Matt Landa (left) as Hepatitis and Matt Perry as Diabetes deliver in 'God.'

There was a time when postmodernism was clever rather than annoying, when packs of cigarettes cost 75 cents, and when Woody Allen's writing wasn't turgid with cynicism and self-hatred. That time was 1975, and the New Haven Theatre Company has revived it this weekend by bringing to the stage its dual production of God and Death, two Woody one-acts from Allen's 1975 book Without Feathers.

God and Death are vintage Allen: traditional boundaries of plot and performance are broken down at every turn, each historical reference or context is punctured with a playful anachronism, and there's a healthy dose of doom and death--but never enough to cause indigestion. To describe God as simply a play within a play doesn't do it justice--picture instead a play sitting at the center of a hall of mirrors. The premise seems simple at first: two ancient Greeks, Hepatitis (Matt Landa) and Diabetes (Matt Perry), are trying to come up with an end to the play Hepatitis is writing in which Diabetes is slated to play the lead role. But traditional expectations should be checked at the door. A good part of the cast starts out planted in the audience, emerging from their seats as the production slowly evolves into a theme park of theatrical irreverence.

God is chaos theory applied to the stage. By the middle of the show, Allen has been contacted by cell phone, a dispossessed Blanche Dubois of A Streetcar Named Desire has appeared onstage begging for a role in Hepatitis' play, and the Chorus (played masterfully by Siobhan Mitchell) has gotten high and hummed the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." What keeps the chaos in control is Allen's constant recourse to the pathetic, and the actors understand this well. When an onstage romance brews between Hepatitis and Doris Levine (Cynthia Jones), an alleged Yale philosophy major from Great Neck who has been plucked from the audience, Diabetes balks: "You're fictional, she's Jewish," he tells Hepatitis. "Do you know what the children would be like?"

"Have you ever made it with a fictional character before?" Hepatitis asks. "The closest I came was an Italian," Doris rejoins. It's early Allen at his best, and the Company delivers his rapid-fire, I-can't-resist-this lines with a canny sense of pacing and levity. They've also seen fit to update some of the jokes in terms of both time and place, but never fear, there's no harm done--the play is pliable and the changes well placed. The production's greatest flaw is an occasional lack of the range of tone God requires. Allen never stops raising the reflexive stakes, and at certain moments the cast falls short of the feverish pitch he demands simply because they've run out of room. To their credit, however, playing to a half-filled and somewhat unresponsive house on a Wednesday night is a formidable task, especially when the audience has the nasty habit of diminishing with the introduction of each new character.

All told, God is a pleasure to watch. It's an ensemble piece well-suited to this group of actors. This is the fourth production for the Company, made up of a low-key group of locals with various degrees of theater experience and founded by director Matthew Martin and Danielle McDuffee in 1997. It's an unorthodox group, and BAR's back room is an unorthodox performance space, but Martin has maximized its potential and the cast thrives as a result. The unpretentiousness of the production--actors clad in sheets and Tevas--makes every effect spectacular. Even machine-generated smoke drifting through the flowers hanging on BAR's dancefloor ceiling during the deus ex machina finale seems damn near poetic.

Death is slightly less successful, perhaps because this particular company is better suited for an ensemble piece, or perhaps because it's a bit of a letdown after the dynamism of God. It's a darker work: Kleinman (Landa) has been summoned in the middle of the night to join a group of citizens intent on hunting down a homicidal maniac. Problem is, no one will tell Kleinman his part in the plan, and as the night progresses the plan (and Kleinman's role in it) gets more complicated. It has a typical what-have-I-done-to-deserve-this structure, and Landa successfully maintains the neurotic jumpiness required to sustain the play without deteriorating into Branaghesque stammering and whining.

Toward the middle of Death, the Company's energy slackens and scatters a bit, and the actors fail to carry off some of the comic punches so easily delivered in God. Luckily, Mark Modzelewski is on hand as a de facto deus ex machina with his perfectly timed, supremely funny performance as the maniac, and the players regain their pace. It's a testament to the cast's ability to redeem itself and redeem a partially fallen Allen to his 1975 glory.

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