Notes on Love/Stories (or, But You Will Get Used To It)by Itamar Moses at The Flea Theater, performed by The Bats:
1. Inside the casting process - awfully good acting and directing (by Michelle Tattenbaum)
2. Office worker rejected - virtuoso performance by Maren Langdon.
3. Film buff and girl who just started living together - the angst and foibles of young relationships.
4. Moses is a funny contemporary writer of romantic encounters and relationships, and the deconstruction of a scene we have just seen shows the trickiness of his theatrical thinking -- really smart fun.
5. After play scene: A Pirandelloesque conversation between two actors.
6. Langdon brilliant as a Russian interpreter, but the room gets filled with smoke, and in this small theater, realism overcame comfort as I was distracted from the funny play by the smoke. Its theme was unrelated to the earlier scenes.
7. Another short play. I think here the author is too smart for himself and tries to show his intellectual insights and proficiency. He lost me in drivel about the skewed history of a couple provoked to silence. Therefore, near the end, the show didn't grow in intensity or interest -- it drooped. The monologue could have been left out with its logorrhea speculating on inner thoughts. Why alienate the audience near the finish? We're trapped while the author's boring remarks on writing are spoken by the poor actor (he was so long-winded, I began to hate him). I hope Itamar Moses is young and just doesn't know any better yet. He's really a bright, funny guy.
So here we have five really good, totally believable actors who communicate emotions and thoughts like a Broadway cast: John Russo, Felipe Bonilla, Laurel Holland, Michael Micalizzi and one with star potential, Maren Langdon -- not a weak link, and each gets to shine in the earlier sections of the show which are bright, smart, sophisticated and funny. Someone should have said, "Stop, Itamar! You've got a good show; quit when you're ahead.
