Theatre in Review: 'Til Death (Abingdon Theatre)/The Jerusalem Syndrome (York Theatre) Some weeks, nothing goes right; for example, two new plays, opening just after Thanksgiving, made for back-to-back headscratchers, leaving one pondering the mysterious process by which some shows get produced. 'Til Death offers a promising dramatic situation and a couple of stars but fritters away its many opportunities. The Jerusalem Syndrome takes a bizarre, intriguing real-life phenomenon and subjects it to a hackneyed treatment that knocks all the interest out of it. Given how plays are usually workshopped to death these days, one must wonder: Did nobody notice these disqualifying flaws? 'Til Death quickly sketches a tense and all-too-familiar family crisis: Mary, a Southern California matron, is enduring her second, and final, bout of cancer; no longer up for a sustained fight, she wants only to die quietly. It's a choice that distresses her second husband, Michael, and not just because they're Roman Catholics. (Weirdly, Mary, who keeps a rosary at her bedside, wants to invite her parish priest for a farewell visit, a strange choice since she is about to flout the Church's prohibition on assisted suicide. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it's one of many developments that needs much more probing to be convincing.) When Lucy, Mary's spiky, aggrieved daughter, shows up with a package presumably obtained from the Hemlock Society, one expects 'Til Death to center on an argument about the right to die. But playwright Elizabeth Coplan puts this conflict on the back burner to focus on other issues. Next up is the matter of Mary's will, overseen by Lucy and her brother Jason (both of whom work in finance) and designed to financially protect Anne, the middle child, a struggling painter. Lucy becomes enraged when she discovers the existence of a new will that appears to disenfranchise Anne in favor of a local couple who have been overseeing Mary and Michael's finances. In a corollary subplot, Lucy is ready to go toe to toe with Michael, whom she deeply resents, for control of the house after Mary is gone. But this, too, goes by the boards, after Anne reveals a long-held secret about a sexual assault, which, confusingly, shows a side of Mary that doesn't jibe with the nice, loving woman we've seen all night long. By the time Jason, who has been mysteriously absent for several scenes, shows up in time for the dropping of yet another bombshell, 'Til Death has become a hopelessly confused enterprise. (This last shocker makes no sense; it would take a full-length play to explain how none of the children ever suspected it and to clarify Jason's hostile reaction, causing him to ream out Mary on her deathbed.) It's always a mystery when actors like Judy Kaye and Robert Cuccioli get involved in things like this, but their sheer professionalism is a balm in trying circumstances. Kaye charts her character's decline with unfailing honesty and Cuccioli, looking nowhere close to Michael's age of eighty, touchingly captures his habit of deflecting sorrow with corny jokes. Michael Lee Brown is sweet as Mary's uncomplicated, loving grandson. The rest of the cast gets thoroughly tangled up in the stop-and-start plot. It's all agony all the time, with Coplan swapping out crises like a three-card-monte dealer with a similar lack of payoff. Teresa L. Williams' design, a gray sandstone interior, is impressive, although it seems rather sterile and modern for Mary, who comes across as the chintz-and-ruffles type. Antonio Consuegra's costumes and Dawn Chiang's lighting are thoroughly professional contributions. Lisa Renkel's projections, which seemingly use digitally altered images of the cast, go a long way toward filling in the family's history for us, providing, for example, information about Mary's first husband and charting the progress of her illness. Sound designer Jesse Starr contributes some affecting musical interludes. Chad Austin's direction, however, is hamstrung by a script so awkwardly constructed that it never gets started. The authors of The Jerusalem Syndrome have glommed onto the strangest premise we've seen in some time. According to an article published in the National Library of Medicine, the syndrome of the title "is an acute psychotic state observed in tourists and pilgrims who visit Jerusalem. The main system of this disorder is identification with a character from the Bible and exhibiting behaviors which seem to be typical for this character." It apparently affects a few hundred people a year and most often clears itself up in a matter of weeks. There are probably many ways to treat this material dramatically but an airheaded, early-sixties-style musical is surely among the least fruitful. Nevertheless, librettists Laurence Holzman and the late Felicia Needleman deposit a planeload of stereotypes in Israel, where they crack wise and undergo supposedly hilarious bouts of mental illness. Phyllis, who is childless and stuck with a husband who can't stop taking business calls, suddenly decides she is Sarah of the Old Testament. It's her peculiar luck that Mickey, a soap opera star, is in the country to research a TV movie role, takes on the identity of Abraham and sets about trying to end her barrenness. Eddie, a feckless tour guide, is soon making like Moses, fearlessly leading his people. (Get it?) And Charles, a gay furniture designer has improbably inherited a piece of land across the street from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planning to convert the site into a gay resort fronted by a risqué statue. Following a fraught encounter with a priest who objects to the plan -- and after a mind-boggling number, complete with gospel choir, about his father issues -- Charles decides he is the son of God. The action is nonsensical, the gags are lazy and warmed over. Mrs. Lowenstein, an elderly female tourist, notes that her husband has "been faithful for 45 years, but he'd be faithful to a baboon if she made a good pot roast." When her husband complains about Eddie, she says, "You name one other tour guide who'd have gone to five different souvenir shops to find a Spongebob mezuzah for Jared's bedroom." He replies, "For this, I schlepped halfway around the world." Eddie, in the grip of his Moses delusion, is taken to a hospital where he says, "I'd feel a lot more comfortable at Mount Sinai." Charles has dueling Blessed Virgin Marys fussing over him. "Let me make you a bed of leaves," one of them says. "Listen," the one snaps. "I know just how he likes to be swaddled." For this, I schlepped to Theatre at St. Jeans. Meanwhile, Phyllis and Mickey teeter on the edge of sex, even as Rena, a nurse at the local mental ward and an avid reader of Soap Opera Digest, has carnal plans of her own for him. (You can tell how long the piece has been in development by the notion that soap stardom is a global phenomenon.) Eddie gets entangled with another mental case named Lynn, who, left at the altar by her fiancé, thinks she is God, the Father. And -- wait for it -- the specter of Charles running around town in Jesus drag threatens to cause an outbreak of peace in the Mideast, a borderline offensive notion at this fraught historical moment. No wonder he inspires songs (with occasionally catchy music by Kyle Rosen) with titles like "Weirdo in a Bed Sheet" and "For Christ's Sake." Watching The Jerusalem Syndrome, I found myself repeating the latter title like a mantra. It's not fun to see Farah Alvin, John Jellison, and Lenny Wolpe caught up in this silliness but they act like the pros they are. As Charles, Alan H. Green knows how to sell the most farkakte musical number. Josh Lamon lands some laughs as a psychiatrist trying to manage a ward filled with religious fanatics. And, in the role of Eddie, the show introduces Chandler Sinks, a fresh-of-out-college triple threat we'll surely be seeing again. The design credits -- James Morgan's scenery, Rob Denton's lighting, Josh Liebert's sound, Caite Hevner's projections, and Fan Zhang's costumes -- are all perfectly solid. Don Stephenson's slam-bang direction is probably the only way to handle this material. Of course, everyone sheds their delusions in time for the finale, except, possibly, for Charles, whose Messianic complex seemingly functions as a kind of gay conversion therapy. The only word for The Jerusalem Syndrome is unfortunate. In a program note, Holzman and Rosen insist that the current situation in Israel makes their musical more meaningful than ever; to my mind, that's about as realistic as imagining you are Moses. --David Barbour 
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