Lisa Wolpe is a gender-bending Shakespearean actress. Her one-person show "Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender," currently running in repertoire with her three-person condensed "Macbeth" at Here on Dominick Street in Lower Manhattan, is an ode to her father, Hans Max Joachim Wolpe, a Holocaust survivor and war hero born in Berlin who fought the Nazis with Canadian Winnipeg Rifles and committed suicide when she was 4. It is interspersed with monologues from the different Shakespearean roles she has played that resonate with her journey to contextualize how she was able to develop empathy for her dad and ultimately for herself. She takes us on a fascinating hour-long journey into her mind and we come away not only with an understanding of the complex person she is but perhaps even a greater appreciation of Shakespeare.
"Macbeth3" is a mad dash through the play we shall not name. With three actors, she manages to create an enormous cast of characters and. Wolpe herself is Macbeth but she also appears as one of the witches. Nick Salomone is delightfully unctuous as Lady Macbeth and as Satan is the embodiment of evil, imaginary flames seemingly licking his buff body. And Mary Hodges brilliantly shifts back and forth between a multitude of roles, Banquo, Duncan, MacDuff and, perhaps most exquisitely, the Porter. The set is a scrap yard which seems somehow to make complete sense.
After all that talk, it was almost a relief to switch off the noise for the revival of "Small Mouth Sounds" currently running at Signature Theatre. Ironically "Small Mouth Sounds" from the playwright and actress Bess Wohl began at Here as well. Directed by Rachel Chavkin, who most recently directed"Hadestown" at NYTW, it has a cast that includes Quincy Tyler Bernstine ("10 out of 12") and Zoe Winters ("An Octoroon," "Red Speedo"). The six characters are attending a weekend retreat at an Ashram somewhere in New England. The catch is that they must be silent. Over the course of the two hour play, they expose themselves to each other and to the audience without much verbal interaction so that by the end we feel we know them and their stories better than if they had been able to speak. Although entertaining, engaging, well-acted and well-directed, it felt contrived and never dipped too far below the surface. Wohl doesn't take us on the emotional journey that Clare Barron ("You Got Older"), Anne Washburn ("10 out of 12") or Annie Baker ("The Flick") have been able to. In other words, though delightful, it didn't leave with me anything to chew on.
