devised by Alex Falberg, Arya Shahi, Ben Ferguson, Curtis Gillen, Daniel Weschler, Matt Nuernberger, Ryan Melia

Players Theare

Though The Nightmare Story, a new work by PigPen Theatre Company, may be short on plot, what it lacks in its actual story it makes up for in the method of its telling. Featuring an array of shadow-puppet tricks, the Nightmare Story combines an eerie sense of Tim Burton macabre with traditional Ukrainian storytelling practices.

The company is comprised of five Carnegie Mellon acting students, each of whom contributes uniquely to this strangely mesmerizing work about a young man whose mother suffers from a strange affliction, causing her nightmares to manifest themselves in the world around her while she lays unconscious, bedridden.

The slipshod plot hinges on the young man's finding a rare flower known to contain the cure for his mother's ailment. Despite this rather silly plot contrivance, however, the show, which clocks in at a little over an hour, features lively folk-inflected music (think Jose Gonzlaez, Sufjan Stevens, or Andrew Bird) and some rather thrilling theatrical effects.

There's no attempt made to hide the telling of the story. And the company that enacts The Nightmare Story is very much as important as the story itself. Thankfully, PigPen Theatre Company make this production worth seeing. In fact, I await what's yet to come from this merry band of actors.

Bottom Line: SEE IT

Remaining Shows: None remaining.

written and directed by Bob Sloan

Lucille Lortel Theatre

The reason to see Just in Time, a bioplay centered on the life of Hollywood actress Judy Holliday, is its central actress, Marina Squerciati, who breathes vivid, passionate life into her character, a film actress with a penchant for comedy whose life contained its fair share of trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, writer and director Bob Sloan's play doesn't quite match his leading actress's gifts. It's a fairly straightforward rundown of the actress's life, touching on the various stepping stones of her career (as receptionist, singer alongside Betty Comden and Alolph Green, Broadway star, and film actress).

As the evening progresses, we're told that Judy's true wish was to be remembered as a wife and mother. Though we get snippets of her tumultuous domestic life (her husband and son stayed behind in New York while she starred in pictures in Hollywood), however, her relationship with her husband is never sufficiently introduced, and his character remains a shadowy, elusive figure, unable to rouse our sympathies as audience members.

Fine support comes from Mary Gutzi as Judy's mother, as well as from Judy LeFrere and Adam Harrington as a rapidly changing succession of supporting characters.

At its core, Just in Time is another in a line of biographical plays about film subjects. It doesn't say much that we didn't already know about Judy Holliday from her Wikipedia page, but it does feature a can't-take-your-eyes-off her turn from Marina Squerciati (whose ditzy in-character laugh is infectious) that just barely makes this paint-by-numbers show worth seeing.

Bottom Line: SEE IT, with reservations

Remaining Shows: None remaining.

written by Rob Florence, directed by Dann Fink

Lucille Lortel Theatre

Hurricane Katrina is funny. I'll bet that's a sentence you never thought you'd see in print. In fact, the new play The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival seems to suggest that it will make light - perhaps even offensively so - of the now-historic hurricane; instead, it focuses on the small comedies that made life bearable for a number of Katrina suvivors deeply affected by the events in New Orleans and their direct aftermath.

Occasionally funny but more often than not undercut by a shock of sadness, the play, written by Rob Florence, focuses on five diverse survivors as they recall their experiences with Hurricane Katrina - the storm, its aftermath, the flooding, the evacuation, and the beginnings of recovery.

Lizan Mitchell plays the central role of Antoinette, a local bar owner who stays the course in New Orleans despite rising waters. Philip Hoffman plays a tour bus business owner who evacuates. Evander Duck is an evacuee whose family places him in a group home after deeming him a burden. Gary Cowling is an evacuee who leaves with his aging parents, and Maureen Silliman is a ferret owner whose neighbors help her in ways she never expected.

Their monologues overlap within the context of the production, but their stories, though united by Katrina, are still uniquely separate. Occasionally, the isolation of these stories seems a deficit to the production as a whole, which is monologue-heavy and, at ninety minutes, a bit overlong. Bravura acting from each of the five performers however, keeps the play - excuse the word - afloat. The play, as a whole, is worth a visit if only for their contributions.

Bottom Line: SEE IT

Remaining Shows: None remaining.

written by Arlene Hutton, directed by Beth Lincks and Lori Wolter Hudson

Players Theare

There isn't much action in Running, the latest play from Arlene Hutton, which focuses on two lonely souls in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Stephen, an unemployed architect, welcomes Emily into his home for the night. She's recently flown in from London, and, finding her hotel booking botched, thought to call the number of her old apartment, a group share that she'd lived in many years ago with Stephen's wife and, for a time, Stephen.

They barely know each other (Stephen's wife is their only real connection), and Stephen finds Emily an annoyance for the most part. She's needy, demanding, and emotionally volatile, breaking into tears as she reveals that she's left her philandering husband upon discovering nude photos of several woman in their flat.

As their evening together unfolds, each characters' secrets are slowly revealed, as is wont to occur in two-person dramas taking place in the course of one night. Seth Barrish imbues the character of Stephen with an impatient, thoughtful charm, and Lee Brock has all the high-strung mannerisms necessary to play a woman like Emily - emotionally insecure, a little over-the-hill, fearing that she's undesirable (a presumption that Stephen heartily refutes).

One wishes there were more depth in Hutton's script, which barely skims the surfaces of these two people's woes. The play's ending strikes a bum note of unearned optimism, and there are stretches of the play that sag and droop for the want of real drama. It's an enjoyable play, well-directed by Beth Lincks and Lori Wolter Hudson, but it never quite reaches the finish line it sets for itself.

Bottom Line: SEE IT, with reservations

Remaining Shows: 9/19 @ 5:30, 9/20 @ 7

written by Tom Jacobson, directed by Michael Michetti

Players Theare

The best show of my first week at the Fringe Encores was The Twentieth-Century Way, a new historical play by playwright Tom Jacobson chronicling the escapades of Warren (Robert Mammana), a vice squad officer in California, and a young actor, Brown (Will Bradley), who unwittingly begins to train under Warren, believing their interactions, at first, to be merely an audition for an acting gig.

Warren, it seems, has gotten into the vice squad as a way of earning money while cracking down on homosexuality, the fear of the day. The "twentieth-century way" (oral sex) is considered a threat to morality, and Warren lures men up to the point of imminent contact before marking their genitalia with a permanent marker and bringing them to supposed justice.

Brown quickly follows Warren - for money and for the thrill of the role-playing aspect of the task - learning the best methods of ensnarement as he hones his craft. The action of Jacobon's play fluidly crosscuts between Brown's audition for Warren, various seductions of their respective targets, their eventual participation in a criminal trial for one of their captures, and, finally, the present day and the actors inhabiting the roles of Warren and Brown themselves.

Eventually, their tasks become a competition as to who can one-up the other. Each actor plays the other's target at one time or another, giving we audience members the thrill of watching two fantastic actors using all the tricks up their sleeve to win one another (or screw one another) over.

In the end, we're asked whether actors can ever truly love. Is this cat-and-mouse game that Warren and Brown playing a way of hiding their love for one another? Or the embodiment of the fact that neither is truly ready for love, possibly never will be? Jacobson's play, which makes excellent use of historical material without belaboring the facts, is full of thrilling scenes that propel an audience expertly to its conclusion. Ninety minutes flew by; The Twentieth-Century Way is highly recommended.

Bottom Line: MUST SEE

Remaining Shows: 9/19 @ 8

For more information about the FringeNYC Encore Series, visit fringenyc-encores.com.

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