CURTAIN UP! is upon us, and Friday night, September 29, 2006, 14 shows will be up and running in Buffalo. For many, the main event will be the big post-show downtown party. The party is not confined to one street or one bar. Every place downtown should be roaring. If you’re on the lookout for theater folk, you will find actors, directors, stage managers and their ilk aplenty at the Official Blossom Cohan Party at Laughlin’s, 333 Franklin Street at the northeast corner of Franklin and Tupper (one block west of Studio Arena Theatre). Blossom was the legendary publicist and historian for Studio Arena Theatre for more than 40 years, and she set the standard for making life a party. Friday night, we’ll try to live up to her legacy, so be sure to elect a designated driver. The official Blossom Cohan cocktail is the classic martini, but by 3 am, rye and soda will do fine.

The quality of the shows that have opened so far this season is exciting. Choices are diverse and abundant. If you can’t get tickets to a show on Friday, don’t worry about it. You can catch a show another night, and 8:30 on Curtain Up! night is the best possible time to get a dinner reservation at a downtown restaurant.

METAMORPHOSIS

Seeing the current New Phoenix Theatre production of Steven Berkoff’s stage version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis is like a trip back to the best days of the old Buffalo Ensemble Theatre. Robert Waterhouse, who has directed Metamorphosis, often worked with BET, which took on the likes of Genet, Cocteau, Strindberg and Ibsen. Like those plays of yore, this production is smart, bold, highly entertaining and ambitious in its production qualities.

The Kafka story, in which Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he’s inexplicably been transformed into a giant insect, is a scary but comical affair. In Mel Brooks’ 1968 film, The Producers, the bizarre Kafka plot is famously rejected when Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are hunting for the worst script in the world. Indeed, the plot would seem to be more literary than theatrical. Still, I have seen a children’s version (produced in Buffalo by Theater of Youth) and two productions of the script now being staged at the New Phoenix. Each handles Kafka’s nightmare vision with comedy.

This version springs from the imagination of a rather scary guy, Steven Berkoff, most widely known for playing screen villains. When Mikhail Baryshnikov starred as Gregor in the Broadway production back in 1989, I was recruited to interview Mr. Berkoff, because everyone else at the magazine for which I was writing was afraid of him. He had a reputation for abusing reporters, once even breaking a tape recorder, or so I was warned. Apparently, I asked no stupid questions, for we got on quite well. Mr. Berkoff uses great humor and an expressionistic vision to make flesh of Kafka’s metaphor of a man reduced to the status of insect by the demands of job and family.

Robert Waterhouse’s staging is remarkably faithful to Berkoff’s tightly scripted original. The acting is highly stylized and performed with balletic precision by a strong ensemble: Lenny Ziolkowski as Gregor; Richard Lambert as his father; Margo Davis as his mother; Candice Kogut as his sister Greta; and Ray Boucher in a tour de force showing as a nasty set of outsiders. In the expert hands of these actors, the unsentimental tale quickly unfolds and unravels as self-interest takes over any sense of humanity, even among the family. These characters are not so much metamorphosed as they are revealed, and in very unflattering ways.

Ziolkowski is especially compelling as Gregor, a role that requires him to grovel on the floor when he is not hanging from the ceiling. He plays the part with both physical and vocal dexterity, augmented by marvelously effective but uncredited recorded sound, emphasizing the fact that the family cannot understand the insect noises he makes. Davis does some of her best work, giving a brisk and beautifully defined performance in a role that allows her to exercise her skills in mime and comic caricature. Lambert gives an impressive performance as the father, who by degrees slips further and further into his own physical and spiritual dishevelment. Kogut, as Greta, the Marilyn of this Munster-esque family, plays the most complex character and does so with a winning combination of good-humor and sadness.

The set, by Franklin La Voie, echoes the original in its resemblance to a large jungle gym; and the production makes good use of the entire unconventional New Phoenix playing area. Lighting by Kurt Schneiderman is excellent, casting threatening shadows, and at times even a shadow puppet. La Voie has provided additional puppets which play two heads of Boucher’s three-headed boarder.

A score, composed and performed by Paul Kozlowski and Patrick Cain, impressively propels the evening, serving to the set the tone, to establish dramatic rhythm and to provide sound effects.

To be sure, an expressionistic production of Metamorphosis will not be to everyone’s taste. It is, however, expertly produced and performed in every detail. The production continues through October 14.

THE DODO BIRD

The best known of Emanuel Fried’s plays about working people, The Dodo Bird is the story of a passive man with an alcohol problem who is trying to stay sober until his daughter comes. In the play, the various forces in the Dodo’s life all come together, as adversaries toy with the man, taking bets to see if he can resist a drink, and then using various cruel tactics to influence the outcome.

This production, directed by Scott Behrend, has been staged at the new Road Less Traveled Theatre, located in the Market Arcade cinemas at 639 Main Street. The space is very comfortable for watching a play, and looks quite smart. Behrend’s handsome set is complemented by an excellent sound design by John Shotwell, lighting by John Rickus and costumes by Maura Price.

The cast is strong. Gerry Maher is perfection as the Dodo Bird. Jermaine Cooper creates a distinct and believable person as the bar tender. Greg Natale and Dan Walker make worthy combatants in the battle for the Dodo, though the subtleties of the rivalry are somewhat obscured by the viciousness. The Dodo is not quite as innocent as this production allows us to believe. His sin is weakness, and some form of weakness is the undoing of every tragic hero. Like many an alcoholic, the Dodo Bird has left a wide path of damage in his past. In his passivity, the seemingly benign fellow has become a pawn in certain power plays at the plant where he works, and has, consequently, wronged a co-worker who had often looked out for and protected him. The production continues through October 8.

THE MEMORY GARDEN

Emanuel Fried seems to be everywhere, which is an inspiration when you consider that the man is in his 90s. While his play, The Dodo Bird, is being performed at Road Less Traveled, Mr. Fried himself is across the street, starring in the world premiere of The Memory Garden, a play by Rebecca Ritchie presented by the Gerald Fried Theatre Company, at Alleyway Theatre’s Main Street Cabaret.

Appealingly performed by Fried and Rosalind Cramer, the play tells the story of a longtime couple who sort through their relationship as the wife slips into advanced stages of dementia. A successful but underappreciated landscape architect, she believes that she is reconstructing a garden behind the house. We soon realize that what we initially take as a theatrical metaphor, her miming of various objects and garden tools, is actually a symptom of her mental disease; her husband can’t see the objects either.

Using the complication of the character’s mental disorder, playwright Ritchie forces issues of the couple’s relationship into the open—how marriage requires sacrifice and compromise; how relationships test the boundaries of trust. At the center of it all, however, are the highly engaging performances by Fried and Cramer. The production plays through October 1.