Not every play has to be an elaborate singing-vampire musical. Some of the theater I've seen most recently has been on a noticeably smaller scale.
Last weekend, I attended Officer at Poor Mouth Theatre Company in the Bronx. Billed as a one-man show featuring Al Gonzales, it actually contained a surprise special guest about half-way through, but the tiny stage made it impossible to fit many more people up there than that.
There was a slightly larger cast in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library by Jenny Lyn Bader. The play, which stars Ella Kaille as a young Hannah Arndt, is mostly a two-hander where the philosopher faces off against a German police officer played by Brett Temple. However, Daniel Cantor showed up in the middle as a lawyer, adding a bit of variety to a play that is intentionally claustrophobic.
Of course, when your play is about what it's like to be detained in a jail cell by a Nazi government beginning to flex its muscle, claustrophobic is precisely what you want, so the small stage downstairs at 59E59 Theaters worked. A limited cast and stage are necessary when exploring enclosure, and how much more enclosed can you get then a jail cell, and one in Nazi Germany at that? Perhaps showing someone buried alive?
Well, in a manner of speaking, that is what's on stage in Grace McLean's musical In the Green. Last night, I saw a student production of the play at City College. It tells the story of how Hildegard of Bingen was mentored by the 12th-century anchorite Jutta von Sponheim, who had sealed herself up in a one-room shelter much like a tomb. The musical, which has songs titled "Death Ceremony" and "Burial" explores how the limits we place on ourselves can sometimes be freeing (though they can be dangerous, too, as the the play admits).
There is much to be said for small-cast plays, small performance spaces, and dramas that force the audience to confront uncomfortable truths with no place to run. This shouldn't be an excuse for not producing larger shows, but Officer, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, and In the Green all showcase the power there can be in being small.
