Calista Flockhart's Un-"Ally" Triumph

Calista Flockhart is back where she was before Ally McBeal made her the most weight-watched star on prime time.

The Fox star returned to her (deep) theater roots Thursday, with the opening of the unrelentingly dark Off-Broadway play, Bash. Not taking her Hollywood defection personally, the critics hailed the actress' second coming, if not her material.

A sampling of the raves:

"The theater-world veteran manages to be spellbinding while simply sitting at a table..." (USA Today)

"She is not afraid to put herself out on a limb..." (Associated Press)

"There is no false note, no striving for effect--just honest and assured acting." (New York Daily News)

"...Flockhart shows she hasn't lost her theatrical chops." (New York Post)

"...Delicious." (The New York Times)

Bash is a series of three one-act monologues by Neil LaBute, best known for the excruciating cinema of In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, which he also directed.

Flockhart appears in two of the three pieces, Medea Redux and Bash (A Gaggle of Saints). In Medea Redux, she plays a hollow-eyed, chain-smoking woman confessing to police about pulling a Medea (i.e., murdering her child). In A Gaggle of Saints, she carries on a dual monologue with Paul Rudd (The Object of My Affection) that devolves into Rudd offering his own confession--this one about a Central Park gay bashing.

Oklahoma, it ain't. (That goes double for Ally McBeal.)

"A schematic piece of twaddle," the Post flatly declared. Not all the reviews were as harsh on LaBute's text, but the consensus was: The performances, by Flockhart, Rudd and Ron Eldard (late of NBC's Men Behaving Badly), were better than the bleak stuff on the page.

The play is scheduled for a limited run at Manhattan's Douglas Fairbanks Theater, through July 14. After which, Flockhart can go back bopping around in Ally's pajamas.