Capsule reviews by D.L. Groover

The 39 Steps A.D. Players has one of its freshest, funniest productions in memory with Patrick Barlow's adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. This 2008 Tony-winner and Drama Desk award recipient for "unique theatrical experience" is just plain goofy — and that goofiness is its utter, unique charm. One of Hitchcock's best comedy/thrillers and his first truly international hit, the 1935 movie, loosely adapted by screenwriter Charles Bennett from the 1915 John Buchan novel, starred English matinee idol Robert Donat and radiantly blond Madeleine Carroll as dueling, unwitting partners in crime. Handcuffed together, the pair scramble over the Scottish moors looking for the criminal mastermind, eluding police and dodging suspicious Highlanders. Patrick Barlow reimagines the comedy/thriller as pure farce. A cast of four plays all the parts. Hitchcock's movie is there in plot, scenes and verbatim dialogue, but Barlow has added a great dollop of English panto and a generous seltzer spritz of Monty Python. We love the quick, blink-of-an-eye character changes that occur when a hat is doffed and another quickly put on, and the newspaper boy becomes a policeman and — hat change — back again to newsboy. Or when those boxes that represent the interior seats on a train instantly whoosh into the exterior of the train with our hero stranded outside over a looming gorge. Our hero flaps his own coattails in the wind. It's laugh-out-loud funny, no doubt about it. The play's a quirky homage to Hitchcock, but at its heart it's really an ode to theater. Protagonist Richard Hannay (a delightfully suave Kevin Dean as an oh-so-tweedy Englishman) seeks to clear his name for a murder he didn't commit and at the same time solve an international espionage plot, while the woman literally tied to him, A.D. Players newcomer Alexis German, thinks him daft and attempts to warn the police at every opportunity. They race through Scotland always one foot ahead of policemen who may in fact be bad guys. In one of the film's iconic and erotically charged scenes, the couple must spend the night cuffed together in the same bed at a rustic hotel, having signed in as honeymooning husband and wife to deflect suspicion. The film brims with cinematic sparkle and rustic characters out of Dickens, and all the heady sequences are reproduced onstage with comic inventiveness. But it's not just this movie that gets skewered. Many iconic Hitchcock films are referenced, either in the design (those crop dusters that menace Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Norman Bates's creepy Victorian house in Psycho) or mentioned somewhere as groan-inducing puns. The visual surprise is those super funny black-and-white background projections that pop up to fill in plot points or just be silly filler. No one is listed in the program as the film magician, but my hat's off to whoever it is. A.D. Players veterans Craig Griffin and Jeff McMorrough (both high-class Dickensian actors themselves) steal every scene they're in and have a hell of a fine time chewing the scenery as incompetent bobbies, a sweet innkeeper and his romantic wife; a pinched old farmer; a German spy; etc., etc. Through October 5. 2710 West Alabama, 713-526-2721. — DLG

Doubt, A Parable Did he or didn't he? That is the question that propels John Patrick Shanley's multiple award-winning play (Pulitzer, Tony, Drama Desk). Did Father Flynn, beloved parish priest and basketball coach at St. Nicholas Church and School, molest troubled student Donald? Did he get him drunk on altar wine in the rectory? Has he done this before? Exacting, conservative school principal Sister Aloysius certainly thinks so, and she will have none of it. In this heated production at Theatre Southwest, we never find out what really happened in the rectory, because certainty and circumstance collide and swirl and then go their separate mysterious ways in Shanley's provocative drama, confounding audiences as it always has. Is Sister Aloysius (Lisa Schofield) a heartless, cold-as-ice throwback to the Middle Ages, stomping with iron boots over creativity and caring, or is she the one true protector of her students, ripping out abuse in her school the only way she can, with innuendo, cunning and a stern eye. Is progressive Father Flynn (Bob Maddox) as noble and good as he professes? He pronounces his innocence as if written in stone, but refuses to answer Sister's most pointed questions, leaving her and us with a feeble "I cannot say." What exactly is he hiding? And what about his long, very clean fingernails? That can't be a sign of anything good. Does sweet innocent Sister James (Cassandra Austen), a first year teacher with fresh-faced ideals, really believe him, or has she been swayed — tainted, perhaps — by Aloysius's insinuations? And Mrs. Muller (Shatara Hale)? Donald's clear-eyed mother only wants her son to tough it out through June graduation when he'll be assured of getting into a good high school. What happened in the rectory with Father Flynn is no worse than being at home with a father who beats him for being "that way." What has precedence, Shanley argues persuasively, fact or emotion? Is Sister a monster, destroying an innocent man with nothing but her suspicion and fear because his hip new ways challenge her authority? Or is Flynn a serial predator who gets away with it because of the church's male power structure? One of Houston theater's best, Schofield never fails to delight and astonish. Paired with Bob Maddox (a frequent acting partner of Schofield's and another of Houston theater's finest), they turn Shanley's sparring into an edge-of-your-seat war of wits. Newcomer Austen is a dewy Sister James, a lamb unwittingly thrown into the lion's den. Through September 27. Theatre Southwest, 8944-A Clarkcrest. 713-661-9505. — DLG

The God Game Political plays have been around since the time of Aristophanes, but you won't find a breezier one than Suzanne Bradbeer's contemporary fairy tale, charming its way into the electorate via Stark Naked Theatre Company. A nicer bunch of politicos would be hard to find. When you think of politics, don't you automatically assume a knife in the back, an erupting scandal from decades ago causing present havoc, or at least a dalliance or two outside the home or inside the oval office? We've been conditioned to think the worst of any candidate, because they always do their best to live down to our expectations. So it's a surprise to discover Bradbeer's sweet literate people vying for our vote. What alternate universe have we been sucked into? Inside their tony Richmond, Virginia, townhouse, Tom and Lisa (Justin Doran and Kim Tobin-Lehl) celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. Tom is a charismatic Republican U.S. senator with national visibility, a clean heart and a 68 percent approval rating with his constituency. He loves his wife with abiding passion and would eagerly follow through on her provocative mid-day advances if he didn't have a constantly ringing cell phone. He's the real thing: stalwart, a war hero, smart, and above reproach. Wife Lisa is just as perfect. In charge of a women's shelter in downtown Richmond, she's socially committed, put together in all the right ways, smart, too, and is her husband's sounding board. Their marriage is ideal. Enter Matt (Philip Lehl). The couple's oldest friend and former lover of Tom's deceased brother, Matt is the political guru for far right Governor Jenkins, the Republican presidential nominee, but even his personal compromises in working for the governor haven't truly marred his intrinsic goodness. He comes bearing gifts: a floral bouquet for Lisa on her anniversary and to anoint Tom as Jenkins' vice presidential candidate. But Jenkins, and the forces behind him, are deeply faith-based. Tom is too decent to deceive. He doesn't believe in God. Oh, that's not a big issue, Matt assures him with a master politico's snaky charm, you just have to drop a few references to Jesus along the parade route. It's no big deal. That's when the drama begins. Lisa is a devout Christian, and lying about faith is a very big deal to her. The triangle fractures as the three discuss, ponder and threaten. Each has cogent arguments to make, laid out with precision and intelligence, and their back-and-forth is liberally sprinkled with personal intimacies which Bradbeer renders in insightful, often comic dialogue that flows with lively debate. Give these three pros the Congressional Record to read, they'd hold you spellbound. Under Jennifer Dean's sensitive apolitical direction, they infuse Bradbeer's probing wit with utter sincerity. Through September 20. Stark Naked Theatre at Studio 101, 1824 Spring Street. 713-866-6514. — DLG

Waiting for Othello and Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief The glories of Shakespeare run so deep that endless variations can be played on his themes and characters. Trebuchet Players, one of Houston's youngest theater companies, presents two one-acts that spin his great tragedy Othello. Waiting for Othello is a gleeful drunk, stumbling about like a sloshed frat boy; Desdemona, A Play about a Handkerchief, a serious feminist deconstruction, uses better-quality alcohol. Commissioned for Trebuchet from local playwright Bryan Maynard, Waiting flits all over, a Monty Python-esque skit in need of more substance. MORE? Huzzah!! Embedded inside Maynard's play is a drinking game. Every time a character says "Moor" or the homophone "more," the audience raises a beer toast. The "mores" come fast and furious, and the gradual ensuing buzz lightens the play. However, even the wonders of Saint Arnold Brewing Company can only do so much. It's Aaron Echegaray as Iago who gives this play its wings. He deepens his baritone into a Froggy the Gremlin croak and twists his body into a contorted limp. He scowls and plots, and hustles across the stage like a bad-tempered creepy-crawly. Set against Taylor Wildman's fey Cassio and Jonathan Moonen's college boy Rodrigo (and a drag serving wench straight out of John Cleese), Echegaray pops off the stage. Desdemona is an early work from distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (Baltimore Waltz, How I Learned to Drive, Civil War Christmas). Even so, it's full of mature stage technique as she takes the three women in Shakespeare's tragedy and compares and contrasts. It's a state-of-consciousness study intertwined with gender politics, class, feminism and erotic desire. The play takes place in Cyprus, before the newly married couple relocates to Venice. Desdemona (Tyrrell Woolbert in tony Noel Coward accent) is not the Bard's sweet bride but a closeted hussy who moonlights every Tuesday in the brothel where Bianca (Leighza Walker, with Cockney accent) plies her trade. Serving maid Emilia (Karen Schlag, using an Irish brogue thick as oatmeal), mired in her loveless marriage, hopes to wheedle a promotion for her husband Iago so she can use the money to flee. Short scenes loop back on themselves; time seems to bend as it moves inexorably forward. Wanting as much as she can, insatiable Desdemona takes Othello as a lover for the thrill of his "otherness." From the lower class, faithful Emilia can't wait to get out from under unfeeling Iago; rowdy Bianca finds love with Cassio but gets slapped down by Desdemona's drunken revelation. Female camaraderie can't hold fast against social norms or the striving of the heart. Vogel's one-act drags its feet a little, for we quickly lose sympathy for upper-crust Desdemona and her quest to be filled with the world, even if it's a nice metaphor for her constant tricking. The Bianca/Desdemona scenes pique our prurience with light S&M and lesbian frisson, but they seem tacked-on instead of intrinsic. We yearn to return to faithful, clear-eyed Emilia. She knows she's stuck — in society, in bed — plodding through life until her husband dies and she's free at last. Although these minor works, directed by Kathy Drum, spin Othello in ways Shakespeare never thought of, the pairing of frat-boy humor and feminist thesis doesn't send him spinning. He would appreciate the contemporary rethinking, although he said it all first. Through September 20. Trebuchet Players at Company OnStage, 536 Westbury Square, 318-423-0281. — DLG