Balladeer, The

Conceived and directed by Caden Manson (of Big Art Group), The Balladeer is a worthy candidate for cult status, unfolding like a downtown theater version of a midnight movie. An ambitious look at the tribulations of a confused group of high schoolers, the piece blends vulgarity, puppetry, ballads and nifty choreography into one brazen stew. For an alarmingly brief 45 minutes, the play manages to cover a lot of ground, but oddly, despite the obvious cleverness on stage, it still seems to come up short. Even given that Balladeer is a cutting-edge downtown show, it still feels ragged. Some scene changes seem to take too long, and a few of the repetitive characters used (a bizarre Euro-French ballerina who offers her love for "dirty dishes, and the mouse who eats from them," a male vocalist who sings a few sappy tunes) don't hit the mark.

Manson's superb staging and solid casting, though, more than compensate, and in a roundabout way, the play has some lovely exchanges amidst the flurry of "fucks" and "bitches" (also pretty funny, this play has many creative ways to spout obscenities). The play's strengths and weaknesses work against each other, but the end result has a surprising gravity, however slight.