Theatre in Review: The Vandal (The Flea Theatre)We can now call Hamish Linklater a man of many parts. He long ago proved himself as a skilled high comedy technician in works as varied as Twelfth Night, The School for Lies, and Seminar. (He also demonstrated his neat way with a wisecrack on the TV series The New Adventures of Old Christine.) And in his first major New York production as a playwright, he instantly establishes that he is no mere dabbler at the writing game: The Vandal is a cunningly constructed tale; it is loaded with twists and is funny, touching, and creepy, sometimes all at once. "We're at the center of a triangle. Dying. Dead. Drunk." So says one of Linklater's characters, referring to the hospital, liquor store, and cemetery that surround and inform the action of The Vandal. The comment is uttered by the teenage boy who is the hypotenuse of the emotional triangle that forms the story's substructure. It begins on a freezing winter night in one of the outer boroughs. A woman is waiting for a bus when the boy shows up, full of sass and conversation -- not to mention a touch of seductiveness -- and, without any assistance, strikes up a conversation with her. The contrast between his faintly unhinged loquaciousness and her terse, barely-one-sentence replies, sets up an initial tension that isn't relieved when he asks her to buy him a beer from the liquor store down the block. On a whim, she grants his request; at the liquor store, however, she quickly finds herself locked in passive-aggressive verbal battle with the storekeeper, who probes her for much more information than that needed to purchase a six-pack of Budweiser. As it happens, she is holding back plenty; behind her façade is a set of nerves that have been stretched to the breaking point, and, under the man's prodding, the grisly details -- about her husband's death, their strange relationship with one of his nurses, and her current state of poverty -- come spilling out. Then, in the first of a series of curveballs, the man announces that she shouldn't be buying liquor for his son. About the rest of The Vandal, my lips are sealed, except to add a warning: Don't believe everything you hear, since Linklater is harboring an armada's worth of bombshells, up to and including a perfect shocker of a climax. This is a remarkably assured debut on all fronts. In addition to his skills as a yarn-spinner, the author deftly balances humor, sadness, and menace throughout; part of the hook of The Vandal is that, from minute to minute, you don't know if you'll be chuckling or gasping in surprise. It no doubt helps that the play is in the thoroughly professional hands of director Jim Simpson and a trio of New York's finest actors. Simpson is an especially canny man when it comes to casting. The role of the boy is a perfect fit for Noah Robbins, who is a whiz at playing the kind of adolescent who is overloaded with nervous energy. He works the boy's talking jags so deftly that it's easy to believe that the woman might get drawn into his orbit. Linklater is especially perceptive regarding the offhand way young people often talk about death and disaster, and Robbins picks up on this, creating a character who is equally callow, innocent, and manipulative. Zach Grenier's skeptical drawl and I've-seen-everything manner -- that glance could turn humans into stone -- make him an ideal choice for the storekeeper. His extended psychological fencing match with the woman crackles with tension, yet he also makes it clear that there's a lonely, mourning soul hidden underneath his steely exterior. Deirdre O'Connell is simply stunning as the woman, whether she is tersely fending off the boy's advances, unleashing a tsunami of rage at the storekeeper, or wandering drunkenly through the cemetery, defacing monuments with lipstick. As always, she finds layer upon layer of feeling in her character, and her work bristles with a subtle, understated wit. In addition, David M. Barber's clever, economical set design allows the action to move from bus stop to liquor store in seconds; a beautifully painted drop of a cemetery casts a spell of its own. Brian Aldous' lighting keeps the action focused, the better to allow Linklater's sleight-of-hand gamesmanship. Claudia Brown's costumes are right for each character, and Brandon Wolcott provides evocative music and scene-setting effects of buses arriving and departing. I suppose you could criticize The Vandal for being not much more than a gripping story, a kind of mini-thriller lacking in a larger social or emotional point of view. But how many first-time playwrights display this kind of skill? The program notes that Linklater has a couple more scripts in the pipeline. I, for one, can't wait to see them.--David Barbour 
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