Photo By Joan Marcus

Several current Broadway shows would fit well on Cincinnati theater stages. For instance, The Scene (starring Tony Shaloub and Patricia Heaton) is tailor-made for a future run at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati.

One of the perks of giving yourself a New York City trip as a Christmas gift and staying in the theater district is you sometimes meet famous actors on the street. When we went to Second Stage for tickets to The Scene, its star, Tony Shaloub, was hanging outside the box office.

He seemed open to fans, so I introduced myself, gushed about his old flick Big Night and told him we were looking forward to the play. And, of course, I assured him I was a Monk fan.

"I think this will make you forget Mr. Monk," Shaloub slyly smiled. "It's very different. Much, much darker."

And he was right. Written by Theresa Rebeck (Bad Dates and co-author of the Pulitzer-nominated Omnium Gatherum), The Scene is a scathing, jet black comedy about fame, fulfillment, those who have "it," those who don't and the various insanities all that creates. It's set in Manhattan, but "the scene" is everywhere -- including, alas, Cincinnati.

Although the setup is a typical mid-life crisis scenario, the script is sharp, sort of a two-hour Showtime movie written for grownup theatergoers. Playing an unemployed actor supported by a wife who "procures talent" (i.e. books celebrity guests) for a TV talk show, Shaloub is as neurotic as he is in Monk but in far more realistic, self-destructive ways. Patricia Heaton, late of Everybody Loves Raymond, plays the wife. Both actors show why they have multiple Emmys.

Terrific as Shaloub and Heaton are, it's the actress Anna Camp, the sole carryover from the play's origins at last year's Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, who scorches the memory. She utterly embodies the role of Clea, a deceptively shallow clad-in-black clubgoer, the sort of hipper-than-thou, disaffected twentysomething who too frequently insinuates themselves into the driver's seat (or at least the co-pilot position) of contemporary culture. Like Hunter S. Thompson, Rebeck's evergreen thesis is that fear and loathing, not to mention whom you party or sleep with, fuel "the scene."

While in New York I saw two plays and two musicals, and I was pleased they ranged from good to brilliant. Equally pleasing was that all the shows reminded me of Cincinnati theater at its best. I even found myself picturing the shows being done by certain Cincinnati groups.

When Nathan Lane proved to be good but not great in the revival of Simon Grey's Butley, I imagined Cincinnati Shakespeare doing it. Just put Giles Davies in the title role, assign Rob Jansen the part of his protégé/boyfriend and let Bruce Cromer steal the second act as his nemesis Reg. Throw in a good director (aye, there's the rub...) and just hand them the CEAs right now.

The same sort of thoughts went through my mind when I saw Spring Awakening, which improbably (and wonderfully) marries Rock music to Frank Wedekind's 1891 play. The score isn't the only thing that throbs in this look at teenage angst and sexual repression, and it struck me as perfect fodder for the Know Theatre.

And The Scene? Tailor-made for Ensemble Theatre's strengths.

Sadly, though, these shows also reminded me that, more often than not, local theater doesn't achieve the heights it's capable of reaching. And I mention Shakespeare, Know and ETC because each has become a "player" in the local theater "scene."

(The other three primary venues -- Playhouse in the Park, CCM and the Broadway Series -- are rarefied creatures with rarefied funding and exist in different creative universes. They are another matter and not without challenges and problems of their own.)

Shakespeare, Know and ETC label themselves professional and have regular ticket prices of $20 or more. (That translates to roughly 50 New York bucks.) And each have been around long enough to have found stronger creative grounding. But their shows are hit-and-miss; none are delivering "the goods" as consistently as they should be.

The reasons for this are no doubt complex and too numerous to dissect here, but script choices are probably the biggest problem. Shakespeare sort of gets a pass on this as they mostly do classics, but I often leave the Know or ETC, which pride themselves on doing regional premieres, asking myself, "Why, of all things, did they choose to do this?"

We simply need better directors. Period. That said, the artistic directors of the three companies in question -- talented, visionary individuals for sure-- need to ask themselves this hard question: Am I really the right person to direct most of our shows every season?

Another problem might have to do with media coverage in Cincinnati. There are too few thoughtful voices covering local arts in general and local theater in particular.

For all practical purposes, there are basically just two critics on the local theater beat full-time. Both are polished pros who, combined, do a good job of covering the bases. But the inconvenient truths are that The Enquirer's Jackie Demaline has monumental conflicts of interest and CityBeat's Rick Pender is, forgive me, just too damn nice for "the scene's" own good.

If that sounds like I'm suggesting I deserve a gig, forget it. In less than two months I'm relocating, and my 30 years of seeing, writing about and occasionally making Cincinnati theater ends here.

I'm merely offering up one view of the scene. If Theresa Rebeck can do it, so can I. And so can you. ©