Hello Again

Hello Again is the second adaptation of Schnitzler's La Ronde that I've seen. The first was The Blue Room, the play that earned boatloads of press because Nicole Kidman was naked in it for about three seconds. The basic idea of all three pieces is that we see ten couples in ten scenes. Each features one of the lovers from the previous scene. So A & B sleep together, then B & C, and so on until the last character introduced sleeps with character A. We have come full circle. As Gwyneth Paltrow noted on Glee this week, "Remember, whenever you have sex with someone, you're having sex with everyone they've ever had sex with. And everybody's got a random!" Here we get to connect the dots.

La Ronde used the structure to show off the fact that sexual mores can and do transcend class distinction. What's the line? Everyone is equal when their pants come off...something like that.The Blue Room had all of the characters played by the same two people, highlighting the ways individuals might enact several different personae. Hello Again's change to the structure (besides being a musical) is the shift the time frame across the decades of the 20th century, this time pointing to the timelessness of sex and romance. Some things never change. It's like the dirty version of Three Sisters!

Adding interest is that the Transport Group's production is given an environmental staging. The audience is arranged around eight tables that surround a bed. We, the audience, are warned not to put anything on the tables because they may be "active space." Oh yeah...you pretty much get acted ON in this production. Saying it's intimate doesn't really do it justice. In the first scene I was focused on The Whore (that's the actual character, not a judgment call) who was four inches from my face, thus missing the fact that The Soldier had removed his pants. There's no nudity quite like surprise in your face nudity. Having said that, it will sound really stupid to say that the nudity was actually not overdone or exploitative. But it's true. There were fleeting moments. It just so happened that one fleeted in my face. I just barely kept my "Zoinks" inside my head.

The real thrill of the intimate staging isn't being face to bare ass with a performer (though who's complaining?). It's that because this is all performed in a loft in Soho with the orchestra set to the side, there is no need for amplification. All music and all voices are presented unadorned. And there is really nothing more thrilling than hearing something performed entirely acoustically. yes, there were times when someone was across the room and facing away from me when I couldn't make a word or two out, but it's a sacrifice I more than happily bore given the incredible beauty of the sound overall.

My one issue with the piece itself (though it may have been the production's fault-I'm not sure) is that the fact that time periods were changing wasn't completely clear to me until we went from the Titanic sinking straight to a disco club and one of the characters remained the same age. It forced me to readjust abruptly and realize that everyone was portraying a more general than specific character. Which explained why they were all billed with names like "The Senator" or "The Actress," and only acquired actual names in their second scene. It worked. Quite well. And going back and listening to the recording from the 1993 cast at Lincoln Center, I was able to pick up on things I missed in the first few exchanges.

Is every couple as revealing and exciting as the others? No. But taken as a whole, it's a really remarkably cohesive evening given the nature of the storytelling. And the music! Holy crap. The music is STUNNING. It is at turns playful, sad, sweet, funny, and biting. The score is less about stand alone songs than a sort of recitative that continues the story forward while also commenting on the...ahem...action.

And the cast assembled is top notch. Rachel Bay Jones is killer in her two scenes as The Actress, gleefully bitchy to the lover who is writing a play for her before turning harrowingly needy with The Sentator, who she loves. The best pairing is offered by Blake Daniel, The Young Thing, and Jonathan Hammond, The Writer whose section feels urgent and lovely, two people whose deeper desires to connect are openly on display while at the same time, we're shown how that connection will never occur. Daniel has a sort of smug cockiness that seems unshakeable, making his quieter moments that much more potent. And Hammond has great fun with the sleazier side of The Writer's self-promotion before carefully keying us in to his own underlying desire for sweetness and sympathy. There really isn't a weak link in the cast which also includes Alan Campbell, Elizabeth Stanley, Bob Stillman, and the thrilling voice of Alexandra Silber--the rest of her is there too, but it's really her voice that stuns.

Lastly, getting this material and this cast in this close a space for $40 is a steal. It's a sultry stunner, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it. It's adult and sexual without being silly or blandly dirty. I imagine response will be mixed--nothing made it as clear about how uncomfortable some people were with the intimate staging as the too, too long beat of silence between the play's end and the applause beginning. I hope it gets the attention it deserves. It's one of the best shows I've seen in the past few months. Oh, but how ugly is that poster?!