Quick-Hit Theater Review: The Wood

John Viscardi, Vladimir Versailles & Melanie Charles. (c)Sandra Coudert.

The Wood
By Dan Klores
Directed by David Bar Katz

Summary:
The life of  NY Daily News columnist Mike McAlary (John Viscardi), who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the 1997 rape of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima (Vladimir Versailles) by New York City police officers. The popular, and well-paid columnist, shaken by a news story that results in a massive lawsuit being brought against the paper, struggles with his editor (Thomas Kopache), professional jealousy aimed at him by friend and colleague Tommy (David Deblinger, who embodies the old newspaper reporter persona well) and  concern from his wife, Alice (Kim Director), who wants him to focus on his cancer treatments instead of chasing news leads. McAlary's quest for the wood -- a newspaper slang meaning the large banner headline on page one -- prevails, however, and a tip leads him to the hospital where he talks to traumatized Louima and his wife, Micheline (nicely portrayed by Melanie Charles).

Highlights:
McAlary is a good subject for a play -- an old-fashioned newsman who was relentless in his pursuit of the truth. John McDermott's set design incorporates hospital-room-divider curtains to make scene changes that keep us mindful of the cancer that slowly draws a veil over McAlary's life. Steve Channon provides projection design that further expands the curtains (and the use of newspaper clippings is a nice touch).

Lowlights:
Ironically, the script needs a good editor. Events play out of sequence, disrupting the plot. The rape is detailed in dialogue more than once, then we are forced to watch in an end-of-act-one scene that defies the "leave-them-wanting-more" axiom that usually takes us to intermission. The laborious script never is clear about whether our focus should be on McAlary as a journalist, as a husband or as a dying man (at times focus shifts to Louima as the prejudice-encountering immigrant who came here for a better life). There is no pyramid for this story, or even an inverted one, which as a journalist, McAlary would have liked. The actors try, but the pace is slow.

Christians might light to know:
Rape
Nudity
Graphic Violence

More information:
The Wood runs Off-Broadway through Oct. 9 at Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Place, NYC (off 7th Avenue South, between Perry and West 11th streets.) Tickets are available by calling 212-279-6200, or visit http://www.rattlestick.org/