It's No Tony, But This Trophy Shines

The first thing that one notices when walking up the stairs and into the audience section of Theatre of the World, an East Village fixture used by the self-billed "experimental theater club" La MaMa for staging, is the minimalist nature of the space. Below twelve or so rows of black seats is the small, wooden stage, above which is perched a canvas. Taking up much of stage left is the piano, which alone composes much of the scenery. A single table and a handful of chairs, along with images projected onto the canvas round out the remainder of the set.

It's musical theater stripped down to its bare essentials, and the austere aesthetic works to sharpen, rather than detract, from La MaMa's amusing and touching new one-act, Trophy Wife. The program bills it as "based on Anton Chekhov's short story 'Anna on the Neck.'" Though playwright Mary Fulham has Americanized and modernized the world of Chekhov significantly-allusions to such places as Palm Springs abound-the adaptation is true to the distinctively bleak, Slavic timbre of the original. It features the added twist of an ironically delightful, jazzy score composed by ragtime virtuoso Terry Waldo.

The plot concerns itself primarily with one Anna Schmertz, née Pennington (Sharon Ann Farrell), who has just scored herself a new husband-the balding "third-rate businessman" Moe Schmerz (Brian P. Glover)-and with him, a steady source of income that will provide a free ride out of the privation of her father, the equally bald songwriter Peter Pennington (William Ryall). Or so she thinks. Her wedding dress is purchased on credit, and it soon becomes evident that Moe, in addition to being boring and morally fastidious, is no investment banker. His income is meager, and his stinginess only exacerbates Anna's misery as he treats her to an awkward social life and horrible opera seats in an abortive bid for social respectability. But not all is dark and depressing in the world: the piano pokes fun of Moe's romantic endeavors with sadistic glee, foreshadowing the jocose musical numbers still to come.

Then, seemingly out of Anna's imagination, there appears the solution to all of her problems: the aristocrat Arthur Randolph Howe (Michael Radar), who can best be described as the love-child of Han Solo and Jonathan Rhys Meyers' character in Match Point. Ineffably attracted to this supposed deus ex machina, she moves sadly then blithely through a series of episodes that crackle with wit and intensity: playing cards here, going to a ball there, breaking into song in entirely the same place. Quick interludes give the play an inexorable drive forward to its tragicomic conclusion, as Peter Pennington descends into alcoholism and launches into a musical gripe about the artist's life (all you do in life is "eat, sleep, shit, fuck, and die!") and old ladies twitter about, talking about nothing while playing their weekly game of bridge. Meanwhile, the projector-a mark of theatrical genius that embodies how Trophy Wife brilliantly avoids the artistic self-indulgence that too often marks other off-off-Broadway productions-hangs omnisciently over the action, displaying images of curtains opening and shutting, hands shuffling cards, and a really creepy and imaginative montage of eyes staring down at Anna during the penultimate ball scene, where her ravishing good looks and stunning dress finally earn her the societal attention that her vanity so implacably demanded.

Scarcely an hour after it begins, the madcap action culminates in a moment of raw fury, as the reality of her father's squalor intrudes upon Anna's thinly protected idyll. The actors freeze for a second in time and space, looked down upon and judged harshly by the suddenly blinding lights: the shit has hit the fan, but it's still stuck to its blades, forever on the verge of being sprayed all over the room. Then the theater darkens, the curtain drops, and those fortunate enough to be there that night burst into short but enthusiastic applause before heading out into the night and returning to their somewhat less dramatic, but far less entertaining, lives.