InterAct takes a power trip Off-Broadway

NEW YORK - Philadelphia's InterAct Theatre Company production of When We Go Upon the Sea, an intriguing world premiere in Center City this spring, has avoided the sea but taken to the road - Off-Broadway, where it's arrived at full throttle.

The new play by Lee Blessing (A Walk in the Woods) looks great on one of the stages at 59E59 Theaters, where, under Paul Meshejian's smart direction, it unfolds in a fluid 85 minutes of intensity flecked with punchy lines. This marks the first time Meshejian, a member of the People's Light & Theatre troupe for 22 years, has directed in New York.

The play itself has a history; it was a $10,000 40th-birthday surprise gift a few years back from the friends and family of Philadelphia public-relations agent Cari Feiler Bender - a commission in her name, which InterAct gave to Blessing to write the play. When We Go Upon the Sea is the second work to come out of InterAct's new-play program.

It's a fantasy with a provocative setup: We visit former president George W. Bush in a posh hotel suite in the Hague, on the night before he is to be tried for international war crimes. Much is impressive about the play - its natural feel, its pleasant examination of big issues and human nature - but Blessing's most notable achievement in When We Go Upon the Sea is that he never swims in polluted waters, and is never really at sea with bad Bush jokes or cheap shots.

In fact, the play has little to do with Bush directly, despite its set-up. "Instead," as Wendy Rosenfield wrote in an Inquirer review after the April opening at Center City's Adrienne Theatre, "it's about power and servitude, God and his absence, and what we allow to step in and fill the void." In all of this, Bush comes off as human, not a caricature, even when minor barbs fly.

"I was once the most powerful person in the world," Bush reminds the butler in his hotel room.

"You were?" the droll and sophisticated butler says.

"That's a surprise?" asks the startled Bush.

"No, no," the butler responds. "I only thought - well, Mr. Cheney . . . ."

The long night moves forward, with a woman on the scene and a vision of Bush that's more like our actual understanding of Bill Clinton. In fact, Blessing's play is at its finest when it explores power and failure in the same breath - which it does here with the identical cast that InterAct used in Philadephia: Conan McCarty as George; Peter Schmitz as the butler; and Kim Carson as the woman in the room.

Their acting is elegant, and the hotel set (Meghan Jones), costumes (Rosemarie McKelvey), background sounds of war and nature (Christopher Colucci), and lighting (Thom Weaver) keep drawing us further into the room with these characters as the play's 85 minutes progress. After that, the fantasy's over, but the exploration of the powerful, and of the rest of us, sticks.

Presented Off-Broadway by InterAct Theatre Company at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., New York, through July 3. Tickets: $35. Information: 212-753-5959 or www.59e59.org. EndText