Theatre in Review: The Revisionist (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre/Cherry Lane Theatre)Vanessa Redgrave? At the Cherry Lane? Really? Many have expressed their surprise that she is deigning to appear in a Rattlestick production at the storied Cherry Lane. I confess I was a little surprised myself. What's next, I wondered -- Maggie Smith at SoHo Playhouse? Judi Dench with the Wooster Group? In fact, that Redgrave is a smart cookie. In demand on Broadway and in film, like any real actress she goes where the best roles are, and in The Revisionist, playwright Jesse Eisenberg has given her a beaut. She is Maria, a widow living alone in a tiny apartment somewhere in Poland. Padding about in a sensible skirt, sensible shoes, and a sensible sweater -- all of them brown -- her hair scattered in every direction, her posture slightly bent, she is Mother Courage as a frumpy housefrau, going about her daily duties without wondering why she is alive. The one bright light in her life is her devotion to her distant American relatives. Greeting a young American cousin who needs a place to hole up and finish his novel, she cries happily, "I never wanted to die so much." Faced with David, this chilly, neurotic visitor (played by Eisenberg), her innocent attempts at forging a closer connection inevitably end in comic failure. She stubbornly, if genially, asserts that his first novel was written for children, despite his pained insistence that it is aimed at young adults. (Since it features a cast of talking bulls who are "representative of the oppressed populace under General Franco" and a birthday party that "is a metaphor for stunted growth," I think we can safely say it is suitable for nobody.) Further undermining David's self-confidence, Maria has framed his New York Times review and hung it in the living room; unfortunately, it was a pan. (She even asks him to sign it, reducing him to near apoplexy.) Completing the process of enervating her guest, she produces his high school graduation photo, which she keeps on the bedroom wall, along with photos of other American relations. Such efforts are made with the warmest of hearts, but David's self-absorption and inability to pick up emotional cues suggest that he may be suffering from a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome. ("I'm a bit inflexible at the moment," he admits at one point, but really he is all inflexibility, all the time.) He arrives late without explanation, refuses the roast chicken Maria has prepared for him (he's a vegetarian, and besides, he's tired), and rebuffs her offers to show him around the city. His condescension is automatic during a minor squabble about keeping up with one's family (she is in favor of it, he can't be bothered); he tells her, "That's kind of small minded; you have a limited perspective in some ways, which is understandable." Amazingly, she doesn't hit him with one of the many blunt objects to be found on John McDermott's set. There's little evidence that Eisenberg has anything more in mind than a funny-melancholic odd-couple sketch, a portrayal of loners linked by an accident of birth, and on those terms, The Revisionist is amusing and sometimes quietly heartbreaking. As a Jewish survivor of World War II and the Communist era, Maria has quite a story to tell, even if David's interest seems like the act of a writer, sniffing around for material.) In the wrong hands, David could be intolerable, but Eisenberg keeps him in an acute state of comic disarray, whether he is laboring to open his bedroom window to surreptitiously smoke a joint, struggling to hold down an unaccustomed shot of vodka, or being made to act out "Who's on First?", the classic Abbott and Costello routine, to Maria's not-entirely-comprehending delight. Redgrave is sublime throughout -- mangling the English language, waxing poetic about relatives she has never seen, and, horrified, facing her first meal of tofu. She has a casual, smiling way of doing battle with David -- "I kind of assumed I'd have the days to work, and we'd maybe run into each other at night," he says; "Well now we know it is a different situation," she replies -- that is irresistibly amusing. And when the time comes to talk about her war experiences -- the extermination of her loved ones and the Christian who provided her with shelter -- her quiet, precise, totally unsentimental recitation of the facts is thoroughly gripping. When she reveals her longest-held secret, Redgrave's handling of the speech is so scrupulously honest that it's only a little later that you realize how devastating it is. It's also a little hard to believe that Maria would so easily impart this information to David, which she does for reasons I can't reveal. In any case, this choice doesn't lead to a big confrontation, as you might expect. Eisenberg has little use for conventional dramaturgical clichés, and what he has written is the story of a relationship that never really happens; at the end, the characters are pretty much as they were at the beginning. As a result, for all its amusements and submerged emotion, The Revisionist can feel a little insubstantial at times. It doesn't help that Kip Fagan's direction is a little busy at times, making the actors bustle past certain emotional moments when it would be better to pause slightly and let them sink in. In any case, Redgrave and Eisenberg make the most of their opportunities, as does Dan Oreskes as a cab driver who shows up to shave Maria's legs, to David's horror. McDermott's set design neatly crams three rooms onto the small Cherry Lane stage and Matt Frey's lighting nicely suggests different times of day. Jessica Pabst's costumes look authentic -- ironically, the comparatively well-off David is the worse dresser -- and Bart Fasbender provides both evocative musical interludes and sound effects. And cheers to Redgrave for taking a chance on a new play by a young playwright at a time when so many stars prefer a Broadway production of an aged-in-wood classic. Once again, she proves that the victory belongs to the risk-takers.--David Barbour 
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