Also this issue:

Tilted View
One Philadelphian's quest to bring a controversial piece of public art to our city.
-Robin Rice

Odd Fellows
-Jen Darr

BodyVox
-Janet Anderson

Louis Menand
-Sam Adams

tick tick ... Boom!
-Steve Cohen

Carmina Burana/Le Travail
-Janet Anderson

By the Bog of Cats ...
-Toby Zinman

The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?
-David Anthony Fox and Toby Zinman

February 20-26, 2003

theater

Three plays at Triangle Theater

by Toby Zinman

What a triumph for Jane Stojak's new Triangle Theater: three fine plays, all by famous playwrights. Each is interesting, clever and performed by mature actors who have complete command of their material.

The Marriage Play by Edward Albee stands about equidistant in time between his two splendid dramatic meditations on marriage, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from the '60s and The Goat, last year's huge hit. In the same spirit, The Marriage Play pits two middle-aged, highly articulate married people against each other, and Michael Horowitz and Charlotte Patton are pitch perfect.

Elegant, intimate and immensely fed up with each other's predictable schtick, he waxes eloquent, she mocks. He cheats, she tolerates. She cheats, he is wounded. Their conversation depends on timing and style, and with the ease and venom of well-seasoned opponents, they have at each other ("Do you try to vex me?" "Only when you really want me to"). Their refrain runs something like, "What do you mean?" "What do you mean what do I mean?" It's both utterly realistic and bizarrely stylized.

Husband and wife each gets a long monologue: Hers is honeymoon reminiscence, perhaps nostalgic, perhaps not -- Patton's ambiguity of tone (heartbroken? ironic?) never tips. As she finishes, he slings out, "Stop vamping, you wanton bitch." His monologue is filled with longing for his youthful beauty and charm, and Horowitz subtly modulates this through every stage from earnest passion to self-bemusement. The two actors have the difficult task of a big physical brawl -- slapping, knocking each other down, rolling around on the floor -- in a tiny playing space very close to the audience, but the illusion is never broken.

The final silent tableau is a testimony to the excellence of Ed Chemaly's direction; the two sit side by side on a cream-colored love seat, each in a shade of white shirt and black slacks; they face away from each other.

Don't miss this one.

The two one-acts are performed as one show (running time is about 75 minutes); they are both funny and very different from each other. A.R. Gurney's The Problem is about a scholarly husband (Dennis Smeltzer) and his apparently immensely pregnant wife (Tina Brock); the plot is too full of revelations to recount, since the surprises are the source of the fun. The actors' deadpan delivery of lines like, "Why haven't I made love to you in five years? Darn it, darn it, darn it," is superb.

Chekhov's The Proposal is noisy and hilarious. Ivan Vasilyevich (Yuri Astakhov) comes courting his neighbor, Natalya (Jane Stojak), whose father (William Spangler) is only too eager to marry off his middle-aged daughter. But before anybody can propose, the two have a furious fight over the ownership of a meadow, and then another over who's got the better hunting dog. After everybody shouts themselves red in the face and Ivan Vasilyevich faints, Natalya delivers the hilarious understatement: "I think we overreacted." Stojak's latest project is to produce all 11 Chekhov one-acts for next year's Fringe Festival: things to look forward to.

Triangle Theater is so-called because it's in a triangular "flatiron" building in Northern Liberties. The newly renovated space is remarkably comfortable, and there is no stinting on attention to detail; for each of the three plays, they replaced the paintings on the walls and the rugs on the floor. This is theater modest in everything but professionalism.

Through March 9, call for repertory schedule, 1220 N. Lawrence St., 215-763-0110