Misery
Broadhurst Theatre
Allegiance
Longacre Theatre
First Daughter Suite
Public Theater
Before Your Very Eyes
Public Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
Betsy Morgan, Barbara Walsh, and Caissie Levy as the Nixon women in First Daughter Suite
Photo by Joan Marcus
Misery and Allegiance dish up familiar thrills and emotions on Broadway, while First Daughter Suite and Before Your Very Eyes Off-Broadway at the Public Theater dare to be different. Even though the Off-Broadway ventures don’t entirely succeed, at least they provide fresh perspectives and innovative staging.
Stephen King’s 1987 blockbuster novel Misery takes the unusual step—for a nonmusical—of coming to the stage after the movie has already been filmed. You’ll recall the 1990 thriller, tautly directed by Rob Reiner. It told the neatly constructed tale of bestselling romance novelist Paul Sheldon being held hostage by devoted fan Annie Wilkes in her snowbound Colorado cabin after he breaks both legs in an auto accident. Annie just happens to be a trained nurse and obsessed with Misery, the heroine of Paul’s series of books. But she goes ballistic on her patient when she discovers he has killed off her idol in the latest book. Kathy Bates dominated the film and won an Oscar for her terrifying performance as the deranged captor, while James Caan had to settle for second-fiddle status as Paul. Similarly Laurie Metcalf holds center stage in a creepier limning than Bates’s, while Bruce Willis rarely rouses himself above a stupor. Granted he is confided to bed and reacting to Metcalf for the majority of the 90-minute intermissionless suspenser, but he only occasionally connects with the character’s desperate plight.
Metcalf, on the other hand, delves deeply into Annie’s complex motivations, slowly revealing her twisted psyche. At first she’s convincing as the admiring angel of mercy, girlishly excited that her favorite author is in her home. Then as her cherished romantic illusions are challenged, Metcalf gradually peels back the folksy veneer to expose the desperately lonely monster willing to maim and murder to maintain them.
Scriptwriter William Goldman delivers a pared-down version of his 1990 screenplay, maintaining the basic plot but forgoing the character-defining details. Paul Frears hands in a routine staging. With Willis failing to deliver much subtext, the chills are mainly supplied by David Korins’s ingenious revolving set and Michael Friedman’s Hitchcockian music. The movie’s most infamous scene in which Annie smashes Paul’s ankles with a sledgehammer is re-created with agonizing detail thanks to the special effects of Gregory Meeh. Metcalf delivers the blows and the audiences screams, but then laughs at her next line: “Oh, my God, I love you!” The scene encapsulates the difference between the screen and stage version. The former was truly terrifying, but the latter is just campy.
While Misery is a retread of a successful property, Allegiance takes on an unexpected subject for a musical, attempting out-of-the-Broadway-box storytelling but finally succumbing to convention. The tuner’s inspiration comes from the childhood experiences of Star Trek icon George Takei, who was interned along with his family during World War II when thousands of Japanese-Americans were treated as enemy aliens merely because of their race. The melodramatic book—a collaborative effort by Marc Acito, Lorenzo Thione, and Jay Kuo who also wrote the music and lyrics—follows the Kimura family members’ travails as they are forced to abandon their California farm and move to a relocation camp. This seldom-explored dark side of American history is a worthy topic, but Allegiance employs it for soap operatics with a corny flashback framing device featuring Takei as Sam, the now-elderly Kimura son receiving a secret envelope from a mysterious stranger.
Despite the hokey plot twists, Allegiance contains moving moments and original material. Kuo uses period musical idioms such as boogie-woogie and swing to interesting effect in clever pastiches, but too often he veers into generic Les Miz territory such as the obligatory power ballad for Lea Salonga as Kei, Sam’s determined sister. Stafford Arima’s staging is swift and proficient, with Donyale Werle’s sliding-screen sets and Darrel Maloney’s expressive projections aiding immensely. The cast works hard, with Salonga cementing her position as one of Broadway’s most powerful musical stars. Takei doubles as the older Sam and his own grandfather with compassion. Telly Leung is saddled with a one-dimensional hero role as the younger Sam but delivers a sturdy performance. Michael K. Lee and Katie Rose Clarke provide welcome comic spark in supporting roles.
Allegiance is at its most captivating when it departs from the expected Broadway template. Michael John LaChiusa’s First Daughter Suite at the Public doesn’t follow any of the standard rules. This quartet of mini-musicals employs unexpected music, clever lyrics, and imaginative premises. Like his 1993 First Lady Suite, the work explores the women—mothers and wives as well as daughters—near the president and how they react to national crises. LaChiusa’s score is refreshingly intricate and complex throughout, but the storylines for two of the pieces are relatively static. The vignettes centered on the Reagans and the Bushes are more ruminative than plot-driven. A dream sequence featuring the Ford and Carter women goes on a bit too long. Only the opening Nixon sequence, set during a White House wedding, is entirely successful. Barbara Walsh’s repressed Pat Nixon and Rachel Bay Jones’s sweet but steely Rosalyn Carter and Laura Bush stand out in an estimable all-female ensemble, directed by Kirsten Sanderson.
Before Your Very Eyes, another unconventional theater piece at the Public, also has a promising premise but fall short of being totally captivating. This Gob Squad creation features alternating casts of seven kids playing the clichés of growing up from punk teenagers to middle-aged failures to geriatric zombies. The highlights are provided by video interviews between the performers’ younger selves (filmed a few years ago) and their older alter egos. There are striking images such an irony-laden sequence with the youngsters dressed as menopausal wrecks lip-synching “Je Ne Regrette Rien.” But these bits and the admittedly haunting video interactions are not enough to sustain even a 70-minute running time.
November 20, 2015
A View From the Bridge
The Young Vic at the Lyceum Theatre
Incident at Vichy
Signature Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
This
year marks the centennial of Arthur Miller’s birth, and two of his
dramas are receiving strikingly different productions on and
Off-Broadway. A View From the Bridge,
one of his more popular works, is being given a radical
reinterpretation by Dutch director Ivo van Hove in a production
transferred from London’s Young Vic to the Lyceum. The less frequently
produced Incident at Vichy receives a more traditional staging from Michael Wilson at the Signature Theatre Company.
This is the fourth Broadway revival of View
since its 1955 debut as a one-act. Van Hove returns to the work’s
origins by presenting it without an intermission and emphasizing its
roots in Greek tragedy. As he has with his New York Theatre Workshop
productions of other American classics such as A Streetcar Named Desire and The Little Foxes,
the innovative director has stripped the play of any extraneous
elements such as props, representative scenery, or detailed costumes,
leaving only Miller’s raw themes of primeval passions and notions of
justice predating modern society.
Rather than a kitchen-sink re-creation of the play’s Red Hook,
Brooklyn setting, designer Jan Versweyveld has created a bare space
resembling a boxing ring with a huge cube hanging over it—a pit for a
battle between alpha males over sex and respect. Longshoreman Eddie
Carbone’s repressed incestuous longing for his niece Catherine sets off
an explosion when she falls in love with an illegal Italian immigrant
hiding in the Carbone apartment. In van Hove’s intimate staging, there
is nothing between the combatants apart from a single chair that is
briefly used as a symbol of power. The result of this minimalist
interpretation is a gut-churning journey into the darkest heart of
humanity, exploring the lengths the protagonist will go to in order to
follow his hidden passion and protect his wounded pride. Like John
Proctor, the farmer wrongfully labeled a witch in Miller’s The Crucible,
Eddie values his honor above all else, and when it’s tarnished he will
sacrifice everything—his family, his life—to get it back. “Give me back
my name,” he screams when he is accused of betraying the illegals in his
house.
As Eddie, Mark Strong makes this
moment particularly harrowing. Even though we know Eddie has done wrong,
Strong infuses him with such an unshakable power that we accept his
collision with tragedy. He wants to do good, but his buried attraction
for Catherine warps his sensibilities, and he goes outside all codes of
morality but his own. Strong does not make Eddie sympathetic, but he
does make him understandable. Like Strong, Nicola Walker, Phoebe Fox,
Russell Tovey, Michael Zegen, and especially Michael Gould as the
agonized attorney Alfieri who acts as a Greek chorus, are all
marvelously and simultaneously restrained and intense.
Van Hove does go somewhat over the top in his startlingly staged
climax (no spoilers, but let’s just say the actors need lots of towels
backstage when they’re finished), but he has created a primal theater
experience. You can imagine that the emotions it evokes are similar to
those felt by audiences in amphitheaters in Greece thousands of years
ago.
Though its themes are just as visceral as View’s, Incident at Vichy
is more cerebral. The 1964 one-act is set in an abandoned warehouse in
the titular French city during World War II (Jeff Cowie’s grubby set is
appropriately disheveled). As the play begins, a group of men
representing a cross-section of society from socialist electrician to
wealthy businessman silently wait. It’s gradually revealed they have
been picked up by the German occupying forces, and they suspect their
offense is being Jewish. The first whispers of death camps have begun to
circulate, and the terror grows as each one is called into an offstage
office for “racial examination.”
With another refugee crisis brewing, Incident
is especially relevant today, and though Michael Wilson’s traditional
production is dramatically sound, it does not quite overcome Miller’s
tendency to pontificate. The characters are just a tad too much like
representatives of political and social points of view rather than
people caught in a frightening historical moment. They debate each other
in complete sentences that often descend into melodrama (“Your heart is
conquered territory, mister!”).
Yet the large company makes the waiting game unbearably real as the
number of detainees slowly diminishes. Richard Thomas’s
conscience-stricken nobleman, Darren Pettie’s vigorous psychiatrist,
James Carpinello’s conflicted Nazi major, and Derek Smith’s
self-deluding actor are just a few of the indelible portraits in this
grim gallery.
We’ll be getting one more Miller drama next spring when van Hove directs a new production of The Crucible on Broadway. It should be fascinating to see what he does with it.
November 19, 2015
Tannhäuser
Metropolitan Opera
Reviewed by David Sheward
The Metropolitan Opera’s warhorse production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser
was given a magnificent recent rendition under the baton of maestro
James Levine. South African tenor Johan Botha strongly captured the
titular minstrel’s passionate struggle between the sensual and the
spiritual. But the heart of the production was provided by the two
female singers representing Tannhäuser’s opposite attractions. Soprano
Eva-Marie Westbrook conveyed the angelic purity of the saintly
noblewoman Elisabeth with rich, full tones. Mezzo Michelle DeYoung
embodied the essence of physical love as the goddess Venus, whose
alluring siren call to Tannhäuser to join her in the orgastic
underworld, populated by a lithesome chorus of beautiful dancers, made
the hero’s inner battle all the more believable. Peter Mattei’s Wolfram
was also memorable, as was the inspiring choral work, particularly
during the pilgrims’ procession.
At over four hours, Tannhäuser
can be too much for some audiences, but the right performers can make
it into a sublime operatic experience, as was the case here.
November 10, 2015
Judy
Page 73 at the New Ohio Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
In Judy,
Max Posner’s melancholy and moving new play from Page 73 at the New
Ohio Theatre, the future is pretty much like the present, only more so.
Relatives are friends in the Facebook sense—disembodied voices and
comments, images on screens, disconnected, fragile and lonely. We’re in
the year 2040 in the suburban basement of three adult siblings. One
nondescript set (designed with eerie minimalist accuracy by Arnulfo
Maldonado) serves as the single environment of this drifting trio.
Technology has shattered the psyches of Timothy, Tara, and Kris, who sit
alone at separate computer screens attempting to find comfort in
cyberspace.
Each has suffered a devastating loss. Timothy’s wife, the unseen Judy
of the title, has left him. Tara is launching a new religion through
the Internet to fill void of her sterile marriage to Saul (also
offstage) and to avoid dealing with her troubled adopted son Kalvin. The
eldest sibling, Kris, is still dealing with survivor guilt for living
through a mass murder at a nationwide chain of yoga studios 14 years
ago. (The event is referred to as “1-16” for the day it occurred in a
pointed echo of 9/11.) She finds temporary relief with Markus, a much
younger man who services the “System” that runs the web and power for
the entire community (though having a human technician make house calls
seems an inconsistent impossibility in Posner’s impersonal world).
Posner combines a wicked satiric sense with compassionate
observation. His characters are simultaneously ridiculous and pathetic.
In one hilariously sad scene, Timothy covers himself in Judy’s clothes,
sits a wheelchair used by his late parents, and attempts to communicate
with his distant teenage daughter Eloise by pretending to be a long-lost
twin brother, reasoning Eloise will open up to a stranger in a way she
wouldn’t with her authority-figure dad. Timothy’s clumsy efforts at
reaching out and Eloise’s confused but perceptive response are riotously
funny and touching.
Director Ken Rus Schmoll
skillfully combines these two strains in a subtle staging, and the cast
plays its absurdist aims straight, reacting seriously in a crazed
universe. Danny Wolohan is a desperately intense Timothy, Birgit Huppuch
a cool but frazzled Tara, and the incomparable Deirdre O’Connell’s
expressive features illuminate Kris’s pain. Marcel Spears is equally
eloquent in his emotional reactions as the sensitive Markus. Frenie
Acoba and Luka Kain display talent beyond their years as the struggling
kids Eloise and Kalvin.
At times Posner is too clever for his own good. He occasionally
points out his futuristic devices and themes too obviously, as in the
climactic seance scene where Eloise and Kalvin summon forth the spirits
of their grandparents. All societal changes are explained to the ghosts
(impersonated by Timothy and Kris) as if the author is saying, “See,
here’s the point I want to make about today’s tech advances blighting
human relationships.” Fortunately, Posner keeps a lid on this telling
rather than showing, and Judy is mostly an absorbing and scary peek into our future and an unflinching comment on the present.
September 17, 2015
Love & Money
Signature Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
A. R. Gurney is one of our most prolific playwrights. From the 1970s until now, in more than 50 shows—including The Dining Room, Love Letters, The Perfect Party, and The Cocktail Hour—he
has compassionately and humorously chronicled the diminishing fortunes,
both financial and psychological, of the WASP upper class as the
American population becomes a majority of minorities. This season alone
will see several productions of his works—including the 1995 Sylvia opening on Broadway next month and the new Love & Money
now at Signature Theatre Company. This slight piece incorporates
several of his favorite themes: the corrupting influence of wealth, the
encroachment of the lower class on the privileged, his love of Cole
Porter—referred to as the poet of the upper crust—the disappearance of
grace and class in our culture, and the theater as the last hope of
saving these qualities. But he fails to say anything new about these
elements or replay his familiar complaints in a fresh and arresting way.
Not only is Gurney repeating himself, he’s borrowing from others. The
main thrust of the plot is a direct lift from John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation
(Gurney even acknowledges this in the dialogue) with an
African-American con man attempting to charm his way into the good
graces and sizable purse of his white hostess. But the author gives that
true-life based story a less cynical twist.
Mega-rich dowager Cornelia Cunningham is about to donate all of her
money and property to various charities. She feels guilty over the
robber-baron tactics her late husband used to acquire their fortune and
how said filthy lucre contributed to the early deaths of both her
children. She is leaving just enough to live on in a retirement home and
for her ne’er-do-well two grandchildren not to starve. Just as she is
about to sign the papers finalizing her plans, an unknown third
grandchild appears on the horizon and, guess what, he’s downstairs
and—surprise—he’s black.
There’s very little tension or
suspense since the interloper’s story is obviously fake and all is
happily resolved very quickly. Gurney delivers a few pointed
observations on class divisions, but he’s made them all before in the
plays cited earlier. Even at 80 minutes, Love & Money
feels padded with several Porter songs inserted for the flimsiest of
excuses. (Cornelia has a player piano she wants to donate to the
Juilliard School, allowing barely motivated renditions of lovely curios
like “Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please” and “Get Out of Town.”)
Director Mark Lamos and his cast deliver a pleasant enough diversion.
Maureen Anderman adds spice to the too-saintly Cornelia. Joe Paulik
provides much needed pushback as her contrary young lawyer. Gabriel
Brown is attractive and energetic as the con man, but he fails to
compensate for the character’s arrogance with the necessary charisma.
It’s difficult to believe he would enchant the generous but intelligent
Cornelia. As the Juilliard student, Kahyun Kim has a lovely voice, but
there’s not much she can do with such a nothing role. She’s basically
there to sing. As Agnes, the no-nonsense Irish housekeeper, Pamela
Dunlap gives lessons on how to enliven a tiny part. She makes every one
of her lines count with sharp delivery and pointed intention. A play by
Gurney about Agnes might have been more interesting. At least it would
have been different.
September 12, 2015
John
Signature Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
The everyday and the cosmic are addressed in John, Annie Baker’s wonderfully weird new play at the Signature Center. As in her previous works—including The Aliens, Circle Mirror Transformation and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Flick—Baker
uses an ordinary setting such as the back porch of a summer snack
stand, a community-center acting class, or a rundown movie theater as a
platform to examine such profound issues as faith, love, and the human
condition. Through incomplete sentences inarticulately expressing
longings, prolonged pregnant pauses, and real-time stage action of
seemingly mundane tasks, she shows us what goes on underneath the
familiar surface. Her probing plays are never pretentious or obvious,
and they offer a rare glimpse into the souls and minds of amateur
musicians, waiters, ushers, etc.—people like you and me.
This time we’re in an aggressively cozy, knickknack-stuffed
bed-and-breakfast in Gettysburg, Pa., designed within an inch of its
kitschy life by Mimi Lien. The only guests are Elias and Jenny, a young
couple working through a rough patch. The eccentric innkeeper Mertis—but
you can call her Kitty—offers a sympathetic ear to each, inquires as to
their spiritual beliefs, and records her impressions of the sunsets in a
journal. There are also visits from Kitty’s mysterious blind friend
Genevieve. Oh, and the whole place may or may not be haunted.
All four are groping blindly,
either literally or figuratively, for a connection outside themselves.
Elias and Jenny fumble toward each other despite the barriers each
erects, then push each other away. Kitty seeks confirmation of someone
watching out for her and cherishes the beauty in nature and in her many
dolls and figurines. Like an ancient mystic, Genevieve recounts her
frightening past of spending time in an asylum when she believed she was
possessed by the spirit of her late husband, John. Significantly, Jenny
is also haunted by a man with the same name. It doesn’t sound like
enough material to fill more than three hours of playing time, but Baker
and her frequent director Sam Gold find the fascinating poetry in these
confused characters.
The admirable cast documents their search with compassion.
Christopher Abbott and Hong Chau are heartbreakingly real as the
distraught couple. The bond between them is solidly conveyed (watch
Chau’s enraptured face as Abbott tells her one of Elias’s improvised
ghost stories) and so is the seemingly unbridgeable gulf. The
baby-voiced Georgia Engel is the perfect embodiment of Kitty’s childlike
awe and her sage wisdom. Lois Smith is a chilling Genevieve. Her
shatteringly monologue describing the seven stages of madness delivered
directly to the audience right after the lights come up for intermission
will haunt me along with rest of this mesmerizing play.
August 16, 2015
Amazing Grace
Nederlander Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
During a recent early morning subway ride, a street preacher loudly burst into the traditional hymn Amazing Grace.
When she finished with the last verse, she told the entire car the
story of the song’s writer, John Newton, a reprobate 18th-century
English slave trader who had a religious conversion and became an
advocate for abolition. This impromptu performance was more interesting
and authentic than the new Broadway musical about Newton, which bears
the name of his most famous work. The subway preacher’s tale contained
messy and convincing details, while the melodramatic book by theater
neophyte Christopher Smith, who also wrote the music and lyrics, and the
more-experienced Arthur Giron is filled with enough clichés and neat
plot resolutions to stock a 1970s TV miniseries.
You have to admire Smith, a former Philadelphia police officer, for
following his dream and getting the show, his first professional writing
credit, onto the Main Stem. But his score is a generic retread of Les Miz
and Lloyd Webber, featuring simplistic rhymes and familiar melodies.
(There are a few African-influenced interpolations for the black
characters.) The book is also a stew of reliable tropes following the
rakish young Newton as he rebels against his imperious father, courts
the gracious Mary Catlett, has numerous adventures at sea with his loyal
retainer Thomas, and finally reconciles with dad—on the latter’s
deathbed, marries Mary over the objections of her buffoonish Army
suitor, frees all of his slaves, and leads the entire cast in the title
song (the sole distinctive one in the entire score).
Director Gabriel Barre does a
serviceable job of staging the action, supplying a thrilling first act
finale with Thomas appearing to rescue John from drowning by means of
flying harnesses. It’s an exciting effect, achieved with the aid of Ken
Billington and Paul Miller’s evocative aquatic lighting, but it’s the
only surprising moment in otherwise pedestrian production.
Josh Young as Newton and Erin Mackey as Mary display impressive
pipes, but the supporting cast steals center stage. As Thomas, Chuck
Cooper serves as narrator and provides a steely spine for this limp
spectacle. His rumbling bass injects real drama into “Nowhere Left to
Run,” Thomas’s indictment of Newton as he sells his friend into
servitude in Barbados. In a drippy reconciliation scene with the former
slaver rescuing Thomas, Cooper’s eloquent eyes and physical life convey
the inhuman cruelty the character has suffered far better than the
treacly words of Smith and Giron. As he did in Doctor Zhivago, another Les Miz
wannabe, Tom Hewitt lends a subtle gravity to the villain role, in this
case Newton’s rigid father. Harriett D. Foy is deliciously evil as the
treacherous Princess Peyai, an African royal selling her own people to
the likes of Newton. She gives a refreshingly nasty bite to these overly
earnest proceedings.
July 26, 2015
Shows for Days
Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center
Of Good Stock
Manhattan Theater Club at City Center
Reviewed by David Sheward
Though we’ve encountered their plot templates many times before, two Off-Broadway shows—Shows for Days at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse and Of Good Stock from MTC at City Center—provide vibrant evenings in the theater. Douglas Carter Beane’s Shows for Days
employs the reliable, semi-autobiographical memory-play framework
wherein the mature narrator recalls his youthful transition into
maturity with a domineering older woman playing a major role. Beane
recounts his induction into the world of stage make-believe at a
Pennsylvania community theater and the bizarre, fabulous creatures that
inhabit it.
The charming Michael Urie is the author’s stand-in Car, a 14-year-old
yearning to break free from the confines of small-town mentality who
encounters a larger world thanks to Irene, a bigger-than-life artistic
director of a storefront troupe attempting to bring Ionesco, Genet, and
Noël Coward to her 1970s suburban milieu. Since Irene is played by none
other than Patti LuPone, the reigning life force of Broadway, she
dominates the proceedings (even to the extent of relieving a texting
audience member of her cellphone at the performance attended). There are
many (purposefully) melodramatic machinations revolving around
backstage liaisons and keeping the tiny company alive as a wrecking ball
may destroy John Lee Beatty’s ramshackle set at any moment.
Young Car predictably becomes enchanted with the stage and gets his
heart broken before growing up and leaving for Broadway. Jerry Zaks
stages this theatrical lovefest with speed and zest, and Beane has a way
with snappy dialogue, as he did in several previous works—including the
musicals Xanadu and Lysistrata Jones , as well as And the Little Dog Laughed and The Nance
. He also clearly adores his bombastic amateurs played with vigor by
Urie, LuPone, Dale Soules, Lance Coadie Williams, and Zoe Winters, and
that goes a long way toward overcoming an overly familiar story.
Melissa Ross’s Of Good Stock
also uses shopworn setups, combining the trusted country-weekend
setting and trio-of-female-siblings trope for a retread of the
dysfunctional family play. Eldest sister Jess Stockton (hence the title,
get it?) is struggling with the aftereffects of a mastectomy as she
attempts to manage the lives of middle sister Amy and the youngest Celia
while distancing herself from supportive husband Fred. All three women
are still reeling from the destructive narcissism of their late father, a
famous author, and the early death of their mother. Amy is resentful
because of the perceived neglect of her parents and channels her anger
by obsessing over her upcoming wedding to shallow Josh.
Commitment-phobic Celia plans to move in with the simplistic,
good-natured Hunter, but she fears she’ll screw it up.
The women and their men gather for a summer weekend at their
childhood Cape Cod home (gorgeous set by Santo Loquasto), now owned by
Jess, and alcohol-fueled confrontations are the order of the day. How
many times have we seen this storyline before—from Chekhov’s trio
longing to go to Moscow to similar siblings depicted in Paul Zindel’s And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart , and Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig ?
Though her basic story offers nothing new, Ross’s lines are sharp and
well-observed, and the solid cast delivers strong performances under
Lynne Meadow’s assured direction. The playwright mocks her own reliance
on reliable formats. “I feel like I’m trapped in a bad chick flick,”
moans Jess, but thanks to Jennifer Mudge’s clear-eyed liming of this
tough-minded breast cancer patient, the line doesn’t come across as
ironic. Both Amy and Celia could have been obnoxious whiners, but Alicia
Silverstone and Heather Lind find their sweet centers. Kelly AuCoin,
Nate Miller, and Greg Keller are perfect foils as the men in their
lives.
These two shows take the dictum that we all learned in high-school
English—there are only about a dozen basic storylines in all of
literature—and show that us inventive and hardworking playwrights can
make them their own.
July 14, 2015
The Tempest
Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The importance of family and community is missing from the free Shakespeare in the Park’s first summer offering The Tempest.
The usually incisive Michael Greif delivers an imaginative production
with lots of flashing lights and crashing waves, but there is no firm
connection between Sam Waterston’s stern, magisterial Prospero and his
island community nor with the royal Milanese court from which the
character was exiled.
I didn’t believe the bland Cotter Smith as Antonio was a brother to
Prospero or that Juilliard student Francesca Carpanini as Miranda was a
precious daughter to him. They just seemed to be standing there as
Waterston held forth amidst Greif’s special effects. Only Chris
Perfetti’s ethereal Ariel establishes a son-like bond with this
otherwise detached magician. Without a vital reason for Prospero to be
restored to his dukedom or to see his daughter married to the prince
Ferdinand, this Tempest loses any gale force power.
June 28, 2015
Doctor Faustus
Classic Stage Company
Guards at the Taj
Atlantic Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
The devils have all the fun and the angels are pretty dull in Andrei Belgrader’s production of Doctor Faustus,
adapted by Belgrader and David Bridel from Christopher Marlowe’s play
now at Classic Stage Company. Derived from a German legend, this
late-16th-century morality tale concerns the bargain the titular scholar
strikes with Mephistopheles, first lieutenant of Lucifer. Faustus gets
infinite power and wisdom while he is alive, but after death Satan gets
his soul and he’s condemned to eternal damnation. Chris Noth, star of
TV’s Law & Order, Sex & the City, and The Good Wife,
cuts a handsome figure as Faustus with a dark beard and somber
Renaissance togs by costume designers Rita Ryack and Martin
Schnellinger, but he fails to summon up the necessary dramatic intensity
to make the hero’s inner conflict between faith and self-obsession
absorbing. He’s so quite and subdued, it’s difficult to hear him even in
the intimate CSC Off-Broadway theater as he rejects conventional
knowledge and thirsts for supernatural learning.
Then Zach Grenier, Noth’s Good Wife
castmate, enters as Mephistopheles, and things begin to pick up. His
demon is a bored, seen-it-all snitch, ready to manipulate the emotions
of others to gain his own ends—every workplace has one. He slyly seduces
Faustus like a skilled conman, making the sins of the flesh and the
godlike abilities at his command sound so tempting it’s no wonder his
mark gives in. The imbalance continues with the appearance of Faustus’s
clownish servants—Wagner, Robin, and Dick (goofy Walker Jones, Lucas
Caleb Rooney, and Ken Cheeseman)—who get a hold of their master’s spell
book and plan mischief of their own, usually involving audience
participation. At the performance attended, a woman willingly was drawn
from her front-row seat into the action. The bit stretched out
uncomfortably when she didn’t know what was expected of her, but she
gamely played along.
These interludes are staged by Belgrader with Marx Brother–level
zaniness and are quite funny at times, but they detract from Faustus’s
central dilemma and turn the show into a 16th-century version of Saturday Night Live.
It gets really weird when the Seven Deadly Sins break into a Bob
Fosse–type dance routine and sing “Welcome to Hell.” This is my kind of
party, but it’s not Marlowe’s examination of the human soul.
Rajiv Joseph’s new play Guards at the Taj at Atlantic Theatre Company takes place in roughly the same era as Faustus
and also has similar anachronisms. But unlike Belgrader’s production,
it offers a thoughtful and complex take on man’s relationship to power,
art, and beauty. The only two characters are imperial guards stationed
to protect the newly built Taj Mahal in 1648 Agra, India. Without giving
away too much of the brief plot—the show runs only 80 fascinating
minutes—they must carry out a brutal decree by the tyrannical emperor.
How they react to their nightmarish orders forms the meat of this
compelling two-hander. Dreamy Babur imagines futuristic inventions like
airplanes complete with seat belts and is crushed by the acts he must
commit in the name of duty. The more practical Humayun has pangs of
conscience but still carries the royal dictates out.
Like Indian versions of the tramps in Waiting for Godot,
with humor and pathos the two debate their powerlessness and their
place in an uncaring universe. Amy Morton delivers a tight, sparse
staging with marvelously specific performances by Arian Moayed as Babur
and Omar Metwally as Humayun.
June 22, 2015
Skylight
Golden Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
When playgoers walk into the Golden for the new revival of David Hare’s intimate 1996 drama Skylight,
they might think they’re walking into a squalid flat rather than a
theater. Designer Bob Crowley’s set is so suggestively detailed and
close to the audience, it feels as if we are eavesdropping on the
characters: Kyra and Tom, a pair of mismatched lovers coming together
after several years apart. The two are separated by age, class, and
political leanings. Hare’s crackling dialogue feels at times as if the
two are debating each other rather than talking, and Stephen Daldry’s
staging occasionally places them in obvious adversarial positions at
direct opposite sides of the stage. But the naturalistic performances of
Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy, both of whom starred in the hit London
production, melts the script’s cold social ambitions and ignites this
contentious reunion.
Hare seeks to combine the romantic with the political here. As in
most of his plays, he demonstrates that everyone’s personal lives are
inextricably bound with how the country they live in is governed. Tom is
a wildly successful restaurateur and hotel-owner. The much younger Kyra
worked for him as a waitress and manager and was his mistress until
Tom’s wife Ann found out about the affair. Kyra then abruptly left Tom’s
“bubble of money and good taste” to become a teacher of underprivileged
kids. Ann has since died of cancer and Tom has come to Kyra’s frigid,
miserable apartment to rekindle the relationship. But she resists,
claiming that she is no longer the young girl Tom knew and that her
values have changed. Tom’s desperate attempts to get her back form the
meat of the play, as the two wrangle over Britain’s social policies,
particularly those of the anti-welfare Thatcher regime, and the eternal
struggle between the haves and have-nots.
Apart from the occasional overly
didactic moment when we can hear Hare’s voice haranguing us, Daldry and
his company—which also includes an excellent Matthew Beard as Tom’s
drifting son Edward—make the play into a believable and heartbreaking
night spent with real people trying to find comfort in a cold, snowy
world. Nighy prowls the set like a caged panther, actually leaping into
the air at one point. Whereas Michael Gambon in the original New
York–London production smashed his way through the setting like a tank,
Nighy is a hyperanimated greyhound, sniffing his quarry’s lair for clues
to her new existence. He explodes with anger, sexual passion, and
energy. He exposes Tom’s pain as well as his egotism and charisma, so
that it’s perfectly creditable Kyra would be, and still is, attracted to
this blustering capitalist.
While Nighy is a raging tornado, Mulligan is a soft rain shower, but
hers is the more shaded performance. She gives subtle voice to Kyra’s
firmly held beliefs and conflicted desires, building in intensity
gradually and infrequently. But her most eloquent moments are silent.
When she listens, her whole body is involved, and when Kyra must decide
between Tom and her new life, the conflict is visible on her expressive
features. Plus, she cooks a mean spaghetti meal live on stage. Dinner
and a show, what more could you ask for?
April 16, 2015
The Mystery of Love & Sex
Lincoln Center Theater at Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Bathesheba Doran attempts to re-create the messiness of modern life and relations with her awkwardly titled, sometimes maddening, sometimes endearing play The Mystery of Love & Sex at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. At times it feels as if she’s created a cross-section of American society with four characters representing our divergent strains of race, class, religion, and sexuality and then mixing them up just to see what happens. She also indulges in over-the-top melodrama and plotting here and there with more than a little gratuitous nudity. But her work has its poignant observations and heartbreaking moments.
The arc of the play follows the up-and-down relationship of Caucasian Charlotte and African-American Jonny, childhood friends who may or may not become lovers when they live together in college. We open with the roommates hosting a bohemian dinner for Charlotte’s parents: Howard, who is a former New Yorker and secular Jew, and Lucinda, a modern Southern belle and lapsed Catholic. There are the predictable jokes about vegetarian vs. meat-inclusive diets, regional prejudices, youthful idealism, and middle-aged cynicism, but there are also unexpected and complex connections among this quartet. From this tense meal to an unconventional wedding, the swerving and overlapping paths the characters take are charted with humor and fascinating detail over five years. Each pair falls in and out of love and friendship, the younger generation clashes with the elder, and rifts are torn open and later healed.
Fortunately, the quirks and twists outweigh the clichés. A tearful confession of a gay affair could have morphed into a scene from an Afterschool Special, but Doran adds the humanizing, hilarious fact that one of the lovers is obsessed with vintage Aquaman comic books. There are similarly endearing vignettes involving a wedding dress sold and found on eBay, a tire swing, and the lack of dancing ability. It’s that kind of outlandish yet incredibly specific grace note that draws us in.
In addition, Sam Gold’s precise direction and the weighty performances give the potentially soapy clashes heft and zaniness. Tony Shalhoub artfully modulates the prickliness he employed as the multiphobic TV sleuth Monk to create a lovable but grouchy Howard (ironically, Howard is the author of a successful series of detective novels). Diane Lane combines just the right amounts of mint julep and salt for a vibrant Lucinda. Gayle Rankin, who was a tenderly forlorn Fraulein Kost in the most recent Cabaret revival, brings that waifish yet street-smart quality to her Charlotte. Mamoudou Athie expresses Jonny’s conflicts about his race, sexuality, and religion without resorting to overheated emoting—a quality the playwright indulges in only occasionally in this largely satisfying work.
April 16, 2015
The Heidi Chronicles
Music Box Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
When The Heidi Chronicles
opened Off-Broadway in 1988 and then transferred to Broadway a year
later, it perfectly captured its historical moment. Wendy Wassterstein’s
bittersweet survey of one woman’s journey through social upheavals,
female empowerment, sexual revolutions, and the morning after evaluated
the impact of the feminist movement with equal measures of humanity,
humor, and sorrow. Heidi Holland, the heroine not unlike Wasserstein, is
in the generation between housewives and “have-it-all” superwomen. Born
at the end of the Baby Boom, she comes of age just as doors are being
broken down and women are forced to choose between family and careers
rather than opting for both. An art historian specializing in neglected
female painters, Heidi pursues her work passions, but the men in her
life are either emotionally unavailable or gay. Her women friends go on
different tracks, some forsaking ideals for money, others giving up
their dreams for husbands and kids. Heidi feels abandoned but ultimately
relies on herself for fulfillment, adopting a baby and looking to the
future with hope. Wasserstein, who died at 55 in 2006, detailed Heidi’s
trek with wit and compassion.
The issues still resonate, but the first Broadway revival of this
Pulitzer Prize winner feels somehow diminished. Perhaps it’s the
direction, by Pam MacKinnon, which tends toward the sitcom in some of
the more satiric scenes such as a 1970s consciousness-raising vignette
and is strangely muted in the big moments between Heidi and her
on-again, off-again romantic partner Scoop Rosenbaum, an obnoxious but
attractive magazine editor. Perhaps it’s the low-key lead performance by
Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men
fame. Moss overdoes Heidi’s fragile vulnerability and doesn’t endow her
with much of a backbone. She displays welcome rough edges during
Heidi’s quirky art lectures and totally nails her long monologue
summarizing the character’s sense of loss as she details the differences
between an idealized perfect woman and Heidi’s real, lonely life. But
other than these solo moments, the actor seems to vanish into the
background, allowing flashier supporting characters to dominate.
These include Bryce Pinkham’s
vibrant Peter Patrone, Heidi’s pediatrician gay best friend; Ali Ahn’s
mercurcial Susan who morphs from committed women’s legal advocate to
shallow TV exec; and Tracee Chimo’s quartet of cultural stereotypes
including a vapid talk-show hostess and a foul-mouthed radical lesbian.
Jason Biggs’s Scoop lacks the necessary charisma to explain why Heidi
would keep coming back to this creep who treats her pretty shabbily. He
looks too much like the kid from American Pie in an ill-fitting suit trying to appear grown up.
John Lee Beatty’s versatile sets and Jessica Pabst’s costumes
accurately place us in the right decades and locations, but these Chronicles just miss completely conveying the feel and impact of their times.
March 22, 2015
The World of Extreme Happiness
Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage I and
Big Love
Signature Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
The devastating effects of sexism are examined in two fascinating Off-Broadway productions. The playwrights’ styles vary, but each offers clear-eyed observations on how treating women as inferior can warp society. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s The World of Extreme Happiness at Manhattan Theatre Club takes place in contemporary China, and Charles Mee’s Big Love is set in an amalgam of the ancient and modern worlds. In the former a factory worker attempts to overcome her country’s crushing oppression of rural people in general and women specifically, while the latter updates a classic Greek play about captive brides rebelling against a patriarchal world. Though one depicts harsh reality and the other is based in myths, both resonate powerfully.
Cowhig’s vision of a brutal system is unsparingly honest. The play opens with an impoverished couple throwing their just-born child into the trash because she is female. But her survival is taken as a good omen, and she is named Sunny. Flash forward 20 years, and Sunny has joined a legion of country workers living in the big city to send money back home. With the new wave of capitalism and the absence of religion, self-help gurus promising wealth through repeated aphorisms flourish. With the aid of such a huckster named Mr. Destiny, Sunny attempts to rise above her degrading janitorial position by entering a contest to become a representative of her factory, introducing a flattering documentary film. The playwright inserts a secondary plot about the factory’s autocratic owner and his high-powered female vice-president, but this storyline is confusing and detracts from rather than enforces Sunny’s tale.
Despite this digression, the main thread is intense and harrowing, with inestimable aid from Jennifer Lim’s fierce performance in the lead role and Eric Ting’s tight direction. There is also essential support from Jo Mei as Sunny’s gullible co-worker Ming-Ming, who swallows Mr. Destiny’s silly formulas whole, and Telly Leung as Sunny’s brother Pete, who would rather perform the legend of the Monkey King in tea houses than tend his father’s prize pigeons. In one particularly incisive scene, Cowhig sums up the siblings’ limited options as they play a video game. Zombies ate their video avatars’ brains as they scheme to find a way out of their dead-end existence. The brief, powerful sequence encapsulates the lack of choices for Chinese workers, male and female.
While Charles Mee’s heroines in Big Love face a dilemma derived from an ancient Greek text, it’s no less desperate and immediate. Fifty sisters have fled from unwanted contracted marriages to their chauvinist cousins and seek refuge at the Italian villa of prominent businessman Piero. The runaway brides (represented by three onstage siblings) become like political refugees in the modern world as their prospective husbands (also a trio) show up and demand their expected nuptials. Amid the negotiations, all the characters—including Bella, Piero’s wise mother; Giuliano, his gay nephew; and Eleanor and Leo, a pair of fun-loving houseguests—ruminate on the nature of love, war, sex, and power. In between monologues and debates, there are appropriate musical numbers such as Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
It seems like an extravagant mess, but somehow it all works. Tina Landau’s masterfully paced and imaginative direction, along with Scott Zielinski’s cinematic lighting and Austin Switser’s art installation–like projections, manage to combine the bizarre with the real so that even the wild-party finale is anchored in solid ground. There is mayhem, but we know what’s happening and why, and most important we care about the outcome.
The company skillfully creates specific personages rather than archetypes with special kudos to Rebecca Naomi Jones as the main sister Lydia, Stacey Sargeant as the Amazonian Thyona, Libby Winters as Barbie doll-ish Olympia, Lynn Cohen as the sage Bella, and Preston Sadler as the lonely Giuliano.
Rasheeda Speaking
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
Between Riverside and Crazy
Second Stage Theatre
The Events
New York Theatre Workshop
Reviewed by David Sheward
Race matters, as US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently wrote. Some thought with the election of a black president in 2008, all our prejudices would magically disappear and America would become a post-racial utopia. A trio of current Off-Broadway plays painfully and incisively documents the real state of relations between majority and minority groups in our polarized land and the world at large.
The most blatantly allegorical of the three is Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s Rasheeda Speaking, presented by The New Group at the Signature Center. The seemingly placid reception area of a Windy City medical office becomes a battlefield of wills as the white surgeon Dr. Williams attempts to manipulate his easygoing Caucasian office manager Ilene into helping him get rid of her African-American co-worker Jaclyn. At first it seems as if the doctor is perfectly justified in wanting to terminate Jaclyn. She’s difficult to work with, rude to patients and a hypochondriac, claiming the workplace is filled with toxins shooting out of her computer screen.
But as we get to know the three combatants, our initial impressions are confounded. Ilene is not entirely the good-natured, friendly type she seemed, and the poisonous fumes Jaclyn feared—and we laugh about—are actually the odors of subtle racism. Jaclyn is not an innocent victim; she is guilty of some of the charges leveled against her, but in a devastating monologue (which explains the title) about the new forms of prejudice she encounters on her daily bus ride, her case for fighting to keep her job is made abundantly clear.
Though Dr. Williams sets the action in motion, the fight is mainly between Jaclyn and Ilene. Johnson draws both characters with skill and detail, making them symbols and flesh and blood. They come to blazing life in the powerhouse performances of multiple award-winners Tonya Pinkins and Dianne Wiest. Cynthia Nixon makes a smashing directorial debut, keeping the staging tight and fast.
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Between Riverside and Crazy, now at Second Stage after a previous run at the Atlantic Theater Company, is a lot messier than Johnson’s tidy piece, but then so is reality. Unlike Johnson, Guirgis leaves plenty of loose ends, as he did in previous vivid portraits of colorful New Yorkers who live on the edge such as The Motherfucker With the Hat, Our Lady of 121st Street, and Jesus Hopped the “A” Train. Walter Washington, known to everyone as Pops or Dad, is one of the author’s most compelling creations. A retired African-American cop, Walter presides over a makeshift family in his rent-controlled Riverside Drive apartment (kudos to Walt Spangler for designing the lived-in, revolving set). He’s alcoholic, demanding, selfish, and not above stretching the truth to get what he wants. But he’s also kind and compassionate. Crises are piled one on top of another as the city pressures him to settle a lawsuit, his health is in jeopardy, he may be evicted, and his wayward son must face crucial life decisions.
Riverside is sprawling, intense, funny, and harrowing, directed with equal helpings of broad antics, sentiment, and sharp focused interaction between characters by Austin Pendleton. It deals with race but a lot more, specifically Walter’s journey from self-imposed exile in his cushy apartment to coming to terms with his history. Veteran character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, whose last major New York turn was a brief cameo in the Denzel Washington–starring revival of A Raisin in the Sun, is dazzlingly defiant as Walter. At once lovable and prickly, Henderson can turn from teddy bear to grizzly on a dime. It’s an amazing lead performance in a journeyman career of fine supporting roles.
Though playwright David Greig and composer John Browne’s The Events, now at New York Theater Workshop after a world tour, is set in Britain, it addresses many of the issues raised by the two American plays considered here. Claire is a lesbian minister desperately trying to understand the senseless slaughter of members of her multicultural church choir by a racist gunman. This innovative staging by Ramin Gray employs a different local choir every night—The Village Light Opera Group was the group at the performance attended—and the play is enacted mostly by two actors: Neve McIntosh as Claire and Clifford Samuel as all the other characters including Claire’s partner Katrina and the assassin. Greig offers no clear answers as to the assailant’s motives but re-creates the barrage of media images and ideas hitting Claire as she searches for reasons behind an irrational act. “If he’s mad, then I can blame nature,” she declares. But there are no such easy solutions as Claire interviews politicians, journalists, and psychologists.
The principal players along with the guest choir, accompanied by pianist Magnus Gilljam, make a beautifully complicated symphony of conflicting emotions and ideas on our racially divided modern society—as do the works of Johnson and Guirgis.
Lady Be Good
Encores! at City Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
It’s 1924. Flappers are doing the Charleston, gin is flowing like water, and a piano that was once lifted by rope through a second story window of Morris Gershwin has led to the creation of the music that now defines the era. The instrument was intended for son Ira, but it was George on whom it took, and thanks to Encores’s unearthing of heretofore lost musical arrangements, we have the most complete rendition of the brothers’ first complete musical presented here, the first production of the beloved series’ 22nd season.
The content here, as Artistic Director Jack Viertel told the audience at this performance, is definitely not the thing. He quoted from Mark Twain’s introduction to Huckleberry Finn that anyone looking for a plot in it should be shot. But while the quote applies, the elements used by the musical’s book writers, Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, very much represent the period. Couples we know will end up together are put through contrived roadblocks; society highbrows throw impossibly lavish soirees; and subtly crafted laugh lines that should induce moans generate mirth. Lawyer J. Watterson Watkins (a delicious Douglas Sills), when called a quack by another character, indignantly answers, “Quacks are fake doctors. I’m a lawyer—I’m a shyster.”
But Encores is, was, and always will be about the music, and here it has the mother lode. The impossible-to-stop-humming title song, “Fascinating Rhythm,” “The Half of It, Dearie, Blues” (progenitor of Sondheim’s “Buddy’s Blues” from Follies), “I’d Rather Charleston” (and who wouldn’t while listening to it), “Hang On to Me,” which sets the tone right from the start, and the sublime “So Am I” are indispensable.
Even without the stellar cast of musical stalwarts assembled here, this score would resonate in all its glory. With these players, we’re in musical comedy heaven. Danny Gardner and Patti Murin are the siblings originated by Fred and Adele Astaire, and Erin Mackey and Colin Donnell play their respective eventual mates. And in keeping with the perennial star turns that virtually every show of the period inserted, we get one of the greats: Tommy Tune, tapping with the ensemble in a first-act number that explodes, then doing his own in the second (“Here’s my second-act specialty number,” he generously informs us).
This is the oldest show that Encores has brought back, but its spirit is as youthful as it was in its time.
February 5, 2015
Into the Woods
Roundabout Theatre Company/Fiasco Theater at the Laura Pels Theatre/Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
New World Stages Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Into the Woods
has probably become the musical for which Stephen Sondheim is best
known. In addition to the current Disney film version and innumerable
high school, college, and community theater productions, there have been
four NYC productions including the 1987 Broadway original (which should
have won the Tony Award for Best Musical over Phantom of the Opera). You would think with all these Woods
growing in Gotham (the latest was just two and a half years ago in
Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre), another iteration of the fairy-tale
mashup concocted by Sondheim and book-writer James Lapine would be
repetitive. Not so.
The current incarnation is a barebones staging from Fiasco Theatre
presented Off-Broadway by Roundabout Theater Company after a successful
run at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. It features 10 actors and
the musical director playing all the roles and the instruments, in the
style of John Doyle, whose productions of Sondheim’s Company, Sweeney Todd, and Passion
used a similar multitasking technique. Though the singing is not quite
up to NYC standards, the enchanting direction by Noah Brody and Ben
Steinfeld, who also appear in the cast, cleverly exploits its limited
means and ingeniously illuminates the show’s themes of the connections
between folk tales and family, community and growing up.
The small cast is like a group of enthusiastic kids gathered to
relate the complicated multiple storylines on set designer Derek
McLane’s simple yet evocative set. Ropes resembling piano wire suggest
the ominous forest all the characters venture into to make their wishes
comes true. Simple props become magical objects. A painting serves as
Cinderella’s distant father, a crocheted skein of yellow yarn is
transformed into Rapunzel’s luxurious locks, a ladder is Jack’s
beanstalk. Stripped of elaborate trappings, the relationships became
more intimate and believable. Even the orchestrations by Frank Galgano
and music director Matt Castle, employing such wonderful instruments as a
toy piano and a hotel-desk bell, are more elemental and denote
character.
I especially enjoyed Patrick Mulryan’s boyishly naïve Jack, Emily
Young’s doubling as the boisterous Red Ridinghood and the neurotic
Rapunzel, and Jennifer Mudge’s tough-as-nails Witch. Mudge also shows
the tender side of this frightening enchantress. These three also
possess the best voices in the company. Andy Grotelueschen steals a few
scenes as the cow Milky White. His “moos” speak volumes. He and
co-director Brody, two beefy guys, are a riot as Cinderella’s simpering
stepsisters.
Another Off-Broadway story-theater production is less successful. Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe,
from Canada’s Catalyst Theatre and previously presented at
Off-Broadway’s New Victory Theatre in a brief run, also uses a small
cast and scant scenery to tell its fanciful tale. Whereas Fiasco’s Woods
is endlessly inventive, writer-director-composer Jonathan Christenson’s
nightmarish biography of the macabre American author strikes the same
melancholy note over and over.
The conceit places Poe on a riverboat amid a troupe of actors who
play out the sad story of his life. He’s orphaned as a child, abandoned
by his adoptive parents, and drunken and broke as an adult. But there’s
very little about Poe’s works. We get an atmospheric rendering of “The
Raven,” complete with eerie papier-mâché re-creations of the titular
bird, but not much more. Almost all of the lengthy show is narrated by
ensemble members in verse that has the same rhythm. Not only are we
removed from the action, but it’s repetitive. Plus the creepy music is
recorded and relies too heavily on percussion. Only Bretta Gerecke’s
black-and-white picture-book costumes capture the imagination.
January 31, 2015
Les Contes d’Hoffman
Metropolitan Opera
Swan Lake
Mariinsky Theatre at BAM
Reviewed by David Sheward
Erin Morley as Olympia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
High culture is currently plentiful in New York with magnificent examples of opera and ballet. One takes a nonconventional approach, while the other adheres to the staging from the 19th century, but both quicken the pulse and stimulate the mind. The Metropolitan Opera presents a revival of Tony winner Bartlett Sher’s opulent interpretation of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman (Tales of Hoffman), while BAM hosts St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Ballet in a familiar yet brilliant rendering of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Hoffman is usually thought of as a lighter-than-air exercise when compared with weightier works such as Aida or Carmen, but Sher’s imaginative staging brings out the passion beneath the fluffy comedy and adds depth to Offenbach’s charming music. Based on a trio of stories by Hoffman, the opera depicts the author’s adventures in romance in respectively farcical, melodramatic, and tragic terms. With the aid of Michael Yeargen’s stunning sets, Catherine Zuber’s sumptuous costumes, and James F. Ingalls’s shimmering lighting, Sher creates three separate and fascinating worlds for each of the acts. First, Hoffman enters the sideshow of Dr. Spalanzani where the writer falls in love with the robot Olympia. Then he ventures into the autumnal mansion of Crespel to fall for the singer Antonia, and finally he glides through the decadent salon of the Venetian courtesan Giulietta, a luxurious den of iniquity resembling the milieu of Fellini’s Casanova.
Hoffman’s three loves are usually played by the same singer and tend to overshadow the male lead. Here they are sung by separate divas and the focus is on the connection between Vittorio Grigolo’s Hoffman and Kate Lindsey’s Nicklausse, his muse in the guise of a male companion. The amorous incidents now chart the development of a writer rather than just serve as attractive vocal set pieces. Yet they are still the latter: Grigolo employs his rich tenor to depict Hoffman’s anguish, and Lindsay’s mellow and warm mezzo soprano imparts Nicklausse’s compassion and wisdom. Of the three female leads, Erin Morley’s Olympia is the showiest, her lovely trills and scales speeding up and slowing as the mechanical doll’s engine alternately accelerates and stalls, but Hibla Gerzmava’s Antonia and Christine Rice’s Giulietta are equally captivating. Bass Thomas Hampson admirably fills the multiple roles of Hoffman’s nemesis in each episode.
While the Met’s Hoffman varies from the original staging, the Mariinsky Ballet’s presentation of Swan Lake is performed in its traditional version, employing the 1895 choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov from its first performance at the Mariinsky, with 1950 revisions by Konstantin Sergeyev. The beauty and majesty of this classic work are exquisitely rendered, maestro Valery Gergiev masterfully conducting at the performance attended. (There were a few protestors outside the BAM Howard Gilman Opera demonstrating against Gergiev’s support of Putin’s government.) Viktoria Tereshkina was demure elegance itself as Odette, the swan princess, but I preferred her as the seductive black swan Odile. She totally commanded the stage and made her bewitchment of the prince Siegfried (the charismatic Vladimir Shlyarov) a dance of gleeful manipulation. Andrei Yermakov made a dark and powerful Rothbart, the evil conjurer, and Vladislav Shumakov nearly stole the show as an athletic, joyful Joker.
January 19, 2015
Honeymoon in Vegas
Nederlander Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The first 30 minutes of Honeymoon in Vegas, based on the 1992 film comedy, are among the best in any musical now on Broadway. The amazing Rob McClure, who dazzled us a few seasons back with his title performance in the uneven Chaplin, opens the show with “I Love Betsy,” a peppy, funny number with zestful music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. With the aid of Gary Griffin’s sharp direction and Denis Jones’s engaging choreography, McClure establishes his character Jack, a schlubby but amiable guy about to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend of five years. Then we meet the lady in question (the sparkling Brynn O’Malley), and, in a clever flashback sequence, Jack’s late mother (the hilarious Nancy Opel), who extracted a deathbed promise from the hero never to marry. Despite his mom’s pull from the grave, Jack impulsively flies to Vegas with Betsy for a quickie wedding. (I guess they can both get time off from work without a problem.)
So far, so good. Conflict is introduced, comedy expectations are high, all’s right with the show. But then Tony Danza enters as high-stakes gambler Tommy Korman, and everything grinds to a halt. The slick Korman immediately falls in love with Betsy—she resembles his late wife—and schemes to steal her from the nebbishy Jack. Danza is not right for this important role, and it’s not just his quavering tenor, though that doesn’t help much. For the show to work, Korman must be an attractive shark. We’ve got to believe this charming, ruthless con artist will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and we’ve got to love him while he’s doing it. Danza is not that guy. Despite some gray hairs, he’s still that lovable lug from Taxi and Who’s the Boss, and he doesn’t possess the musical or dramatic skills to convince us otherwise.
Luckily we have McClure, who combines the zany timing of Nathan Lane and the boyish charm of Matthew Broderick. His Jack is one of the highlights of the season, and, if there is any justice, this performance will propel him to the front ranks of Broadway stars. His pliable features are like a roadmap of riotous reactions. From deadpan responses to expressions of pure joy when things are going Jack’s way to those of terror when they’re not, McClure’s mug runs the proverbial gamut. (He even gets laughs just by saying “Please don’t do that” to a spy sent by Tommy to seduce him.) Plus he dances with style and sings with feeling and power; there is nothing he can’t do.
It’s too bad Danza throws this Honeymoon off balance. There is so much to like here. The book by Andrew Bergman (who wrote the original screenplay) has genuine guffaws and is well-structured, while Brown’s score is among his best with memorable melodies and intricate lyrics (my favorites involved comparing the hookers in Vegas to those in Jersey City). David Josefberg is delightfully sleazy doubling as a smarmy singer and an Elvis impersonator. George Merrick, Catherine Ricafont, Matthew Saldivar, and Raymond J. Lee bring juice to smaller parts. Griffin’s direction, Anna Louizos’s sets, Brian Hemesath’s costumes, and Howell Binkley’s lighting are full of surprises. Amidst his high-caliber colleagues, Danza is strictly a lounge act and doesn’t belong in the big room.
January 15, 2015
Dying for It
Atlantic Theatre Company at the Linda Gross Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
Political satire is a rare commodity on American stages, so the Atlantic Theatre Company shows bravery and imagination in presenting Dying for It, British playwright Moria Buffini’s “free adaptation” of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 Russian comedy The Suicide. Too bad director Neil Pepe’s pacing is slow and choppy when it should move with the speed of a Marx Brothers farce. Buffini has made slimming alterations to the original, such as reducing the number of characters and confining the action to a single setting (designer Walt Spangler’s depressing but atmospheric apartment house), yet the show feels bloated.
Set in the early days of the Soviet Union when Stalin had recently seized power, Erdman’s dark play criticizes the new government for its oppression of the very masses it claims to have liberated. (The play was banned and the author exiled to Siberia. It was not performed in Russia until 1990, 20 years after Erdman’s death. A short-lived production starring Derek Jacobi played Broadway in 1978.)
Unemployed everyman Semyon Semyonovich finds no one will listen to his pleas for a decent life, until he threatens to kill himself. Representatives of every sector of society then pounce on him to espouse their cause in his suicide note. Intellectual Grand-Skubik demands Semyon declare his demise as a protest for academic freedom. Father Yelpidy wants to use the death as a call back to the church. Pretentious poet Victor Viktorovich aims to exploit Semyon for literary fame, while Kleopatra Maximovna fashions him into a martyr to romantic love. Of course the hero doesn’t do the deed, and supposed comic chaos ensues when the mob shows up expecting a noble corpse.
The central conceit is wickedly sharp, and there are many pointed and ironic observations about oppression and censorship—made even more relevant since the heinous terrorist acts against creative freedom just carried out in Paris—but the jabs are nestled between forced bits and clichéd shtick. The action picks up in the second act when Semyon is given a final blowout by the glamorous bar-owner Margarita Ivanovna, complete with original spirited music by Josh Schmidt, played by Nathan Dame and Andrew Mayer.
On the plus side, it’s always heartening to see an Off-Broadway show with a relatively large cast (there are 12 here), and each member has at least one funny bit. Joey Slotnick is an engaging schlemiel as Semyon, and Jeanine Serralles keeps his shrieking wife Masha from being too much of a shrew. Clea Lewis is delightfully daffy as the cloying Kleopatra, and Peter Maloney is appropriately devious and duplicitous as the drunken Father Yelpidy. I hope they all find work, unlike the unhappy Semyon, once the mildly amusing Dying for It expires at the end of its limited run.
January 11, 2015
Tamburlaine, Parts I and II
Theater for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center
The Invisible Hand
New York Theatre Workshop
Reviewed by David Sheward
Though the methods of warfare have changed over the centuries, the motives behind it have not. Power and theology have pushed mankind to bloodthirsty conquest from the dawn of time to the digital age. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that two works on the nature of bloody conflict and terrorism, written 400 years apart and now in Off-Broadway productions, are strikingly similar. Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (1587) and Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand (2013) chart the destructive course of international mayhem in separate eras. Both benefit from tight, well-oiled productions, though the modern play offers more insight into its combatants.
Tamburlaine is a brutish warlord rampaging through 14th century Europe and Asia, cutting through borders as if they were butter. His only goal is to triumph, savagely murdering the citizens of the countries he vanquishes and humiliating their monarchs. Unlike the tyrants created by Marlowe’s contemporary, Shakespeare, Tamburlaine has no Macbeth-like complexity; he is all bloodlust. Thus spending three and a half hours in his company might tend to be a bit repetitive: slash, burn, torture, repeat. Luckily, director Michael Boyd’s muscular and light-footed production for Theater for a New Audience, the first Tamburlaine in New York in more than 50 years, is so swift and ingenious, you hardly notice the lack of depth or the redundancy of the massacres.
John Douglas Thompson, one of the few New York–based stage actors to tackle the major roles in the classical repertoire, is irresistibly powerful in the title role. He is supported by a sturdy company of 19 actors vivifying more than 60 roles. Merritt Janson is Thompson’s equal in intensity as his paramour and then doubling as his male rival on the battlefield. Paul Lazar provides welcome comic relief as two feckless rulers and a jailer. Chukwudi Iwuji brings fire to a competing king, while Patrice Johnson Chevannes is full of blazing fury as his defeated empress. The entire company is like a well-drilled regiment expertly executing Boyd’s commands, but the play provides little insight into its bloodthirsty protagonist.
Akhtar’s contemporary play, now at New York Theatre Workshop, affords more-shaded views. The Invisible Hand chronicles extreme Islamic warriors who conquer cyberspace rather than battlefields. The plot is even more relevant now, given the recent computer barrage reportedly waged on behalf of North Korea to punish Sony Pictures for making a comic movie depicting a bungled assassination attempt on its ruler. An American banker is kidnapped by Pakistani extremists. He offers to pay off his ransom by earning a fortune on the stock market via the Internet. Thus begins a delicate dance of manipulation and maneuvering among the investor, his single-minded captor, and the Imam whose motives are not quite what they seem.
Akhatr’s Pulitzer-winning Disgraced, now on Broadway, exposes the religious and political intricacies that keep our modern international community from peaceful co-existence. He does the same here, examining the humanity behind the fanaticism. Not only is his banker a multidimensional creation but so is the complex Bashir, his jailer, to whom he teaches the tricks of the financial trade. Justin Kirk, Usman Ally, and Dariush Kashani give layered performances as the three ends of the power triangle, and Ken Rus Schmoll directs with precision. Special kudos to Riccardo Hernandez’s grim set and Tyler Micoleau’s stark lighting, which create the atmosphere of captivity with alarming specificity.
December 21, 2014
The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible
Marquis Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Yes, The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible is a big cheesy, glitzy, overproduced spectacle, more suitable for a Vegas casino than for a Broadway theater. But it’s still a load of fun. Seven international purveyors of legerdemain, each with a superhero-ish moniker such as The Trickster, The Inventor, and The Anti-Conjurer (whatever that is), offer two hours of family-friendly wonder. There are a few unnecessary elements such as a gigantic video screen offering close-ups of the acts, which are helpful in observing certain sleight-of-hand maneuvers, but the device serves more to distance the audience than to invite it closer. I also could have done without the goth chorus, costumed by Angela Aaron as if it was on its way to an after-hours club. But other than these minor quibbles, The Illusionists is an enchanting show.
The flamboyantly funny Jeff Hobson acts as a sort of emcee, introducing some of the acts and performing his own tricks, making eggs and cards disappear while stealing watches and carrying on like an uncloseted Liberace. (“I wrestled RuPaul to ground for these shoes,” he quips. “We both won.”) South Korean Yu Ho-Jin elegantly manipulates dozens of decks of cards, making them change their shapes and color and even turning them into a scarf. Adam Trent, billed as The Futurist, combines music, dance, and high-tech video. He opens the show with an amazing body switch I’m still baffled by. Equally stunning is Kevin James’s variation on the old saw-a-woman-in-half routine wherein James plays a mad scientist who accidentally splits an assistant in two and then moves the separate parts around the stage.
Dan Sperry seems to have set out to create a stage persona exactly the opposite of a traditional magician. Instead of a mature, mustachioed gent in top hat and tails, Sperry is a Marilyn Manson look-alike with white makeup, all-black garb, and long, stringy, pig-tailed hair. He sets a bizarre tone with a delightfully creepy bit of conjuring by seeming to pull a just-swallowed lifesaver out of his neck on a piece of dental floss, all to the lilting strains of “Clair de Lune.” He follows this gross-out with a mad version of Russian roulette involving a cowering audience member and a dazzling display involving doves.
Aaron Crow, a martial arts and weapons expert, is relegated to only one stunt involving two members of the audience, an engagement ring, and a laser beam arrow. It would have been fun to see more. Likewise, escapologist Andrew Basso has a sole major appearance, but it’s a doozy. He re-creates Houdini’s break-out from a full tank of water while handcuffed and suspended upside down. A digital clock counts off the seconds as we watch Basso struggle with his chains.
December 10, 2014
Tribute
Mike Nichols
by Jerry Beal
On a shocking day in 1937, novelist John O’Hara is reputed to have said, “George Gershwin died today, but I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.” A large part of the shock came from the composer’s age, 37. When Mike Nichols left us last week, he was 83. But the loss of this giant creates a similarly great chasm for a different reason: For the last half-century, the man and his work were not only omnipresent but his stamp was everywhere even when he was not. A Mike Nichols Production, regardless of the material, was a guarantee of quality, and as spoken by Linda Loman in his final theater production of Death of a Salesman, one always knew going in that “attention must be paid.”
In summer 1963, a comedy by a fledgling playwright, then-titled Nobody Loves Me, was in pre-Broadway tryout mode at the Bucks County Playhouse. Neil Simon was sure his play was a failure, but like everyone else, he hadn’t yet realized that his novice director had found his calling. “This is what I was meant to do,” thought Nichols. Indeed it was. The now-titled Barefoot in the Park not only brought Simon stardom and Nichols his first of nine Tony awards, it launched a relationship that brought the director four Tonys from Simon work alone. But what was also not yet obvious was that Nichols’s astonishing comic mind would also be able to bring to life the works of Anton Chekhov, Lillian Hellman, Harold Pinter, Trevor Griffiths, David Rabe, Tom Stoppard, and Tony Kushner, not to mention the more obvious Jules Feiffer and Eric Idle.
And in the process, that talent would help nurture indelible performances from among the greatest stage actors of our time. The cast of his 1973 production of Uncle Vanya alone reads like a who’s who of the profession: George C. Scott, Nicol Williamson, Lillian Gish, Julie Christie, Barnard Hughes. And who can forget the lines that formed hours and even the night before to get free tickets for his Central Park production of The Seagull with Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman—Oscar winners all, and each a veteran of Nichols productions.
The cast of the 1973 Uncle Vanya
After being lauded by a stream of actors over many episodes of Inside the Actors Studio, the master himself finally got to speak. And one of the nuggets he shared that night is perhaps the key to his greatness: What is this really about? That, he said, is the question he always asked himself, whether about a single scene or the entirety of the piece at hand. In looking at his complete oeuvre—film, television, and theater—the application of that question explains its consistent excellence. If one accepts that things come in threes, it is hard to argue against the trio of Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim, and Mike Nichols as the defining artists that have given American theater of the last 50 years its shape, its energy, and its value.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Metropolitan Opera
Reviewed by David Sheward
Dmitri Shostakovich’s rarely performed 1934 opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, is probably best known as the object of censorship in the former Soviet Union. After an unsigned Pravda review denounced it as elitist—some allege that Joseph Stalin turned music critic and wrote the scathing article—the work was banned in Russia for 30 years. But the daring piece is much more than an historical curiosity. Shostakovich’s modernist score offers intense wit and passion, as well as dynamic opportunities for the right cast. Graham Vick’s electric production for the Metropolitan Opera has such a stellar ensemble and doles out equal portions of sex, humor, and pathos. It also incorporates elements of Soviet-era imagery in the broad staging and Paul Brown’s cartoonish sets, which include huge propaganda-like images.
Vick transports the love-triangle story from the Tsarist 19th century to the 1950s, switching capitalist overlords for tyrannical bureaucrats. The central character, Katerina Ismailova, is now a bored housewife, staring at the TV and pulling snacks from a refrigerator with a glaring lightbulb, as her vapid husband, Zinovy, and his brutish father, Boris, run what appears to be an arms factory. Like many opera heroines, Katerina turns to a young lover, the laborer Sergei, and together they murder Boris and Zinovy. The killers are caught—on their wedding day—and sent off to Siberia to meet an unhappy fate (to put it mildly).
Shostakovich’s intense music full of trombone slides and crashing percussions conveys the seething turmoil the characters barely conceal. Vick further complements their sexual frenzy with a wild chorus acting out their inner torments and lustful yearnings. As Katarina complains of her domestic oppression, a crazed mob of women enters dressed by Brown (who also designed the costumes) in stylish wedding gowns, maniacally pushing vacuum cleaners and then mounting them like dogs in heat. After the killings, the same chorus enters—only, this time, their ranks are augmented by males in drag, and all are splattered with blood. Each frantically attempts to wash out the offending stains, much like the Shakespearean character of the title.
Eva-Marie Westbroek’s soaring soprano perfectly imparts Katerina’s desperate hunger for love and excitement as well as her crushing guilt for her crimes. Westbroek makes us feel sorry for this murderess or at least understand her actions. Even in Siberia, Katerina is betrayed, and her final act of vengeance is bloodcurdling. Frank van Aken is a dashing Sergei with a solid tenor. The rumbling bass of Anatoli Kotscherga, as the thuggish Boris, dominates the first act, as he mercilessly browbeats Katerina. Following his poisoning and a spectacular funeral scene with ascending angels and an endless parade of mourners, the stage is littered with bags of garbage, presumably to indicate the growing mountain of deceit and sin caused by Katerina and, by extension, the male-dominated society that warps her morality. Another stunning coup de théâtre in Vick’s intriguing production.
November 28, 2014
Side Show
St. James Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The current revival of Side Show
is a big improvement over the 1997 original. In that version, as
directed by Robert Longbottom, this true-life musical bio of the
conjoined Hilton sisters, circus curiosities who rose to fame in
vaudeville and brief film stardom, was a bare-bones affair. The set
consisted of a set of bleachers, and there were no elaborate costumes to
reproduce the Hiltons’s condition and that of their fellow “freaks” in
the carny show where they started. Bill Condon, the director and
screenwriter of the film version of Dreamgirls and the scripter for the movie Chicago,
uses his cinematic know-how with this totally revamped resurrection.
Now with the aid of David Rockwell’s midway-from-hell set, Paul
Tazewell’s lavish and evocative costumes, and the spooky lighting of
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, the world of the Hiltons is
frighteningly real—1930s glamour cheek by jowl with the gritty
sawdust-and-tinsel surroundings of the side show. Condon has
substantially rewritten Bill Russell’s book and lyricist Russell and
composer Henry Krieger have come up with several new tunes.
Condon’s staging is slick and inventive, giving the story a film-like
flow. The musical numbers, snappily choreographed by Anthony Van Laast,
evoke classic such shows as Chicago (a razzle-dazzle courtroom scene) and Follies
(a satiric “Loveland” pastiche complete with hearts, flowers, and
cupids). The story is more strongly told than in the original, and
Russell and Krieger’s soaring ballads are now complemented with sturdier
comedy and narrative pieces. But slow stretches remain, and the overall
tone is still too syrupy when it could have been vinegar sharp (as in
the HBO series Carnivàle).
Erin Davie and Emily Padgett meld together almost as one being as the
linked siblings, yet retain their individuality with Davie sweet and
demure as the shy Violet and Padgett brash and outgoing as the
flirtatious Daisy. When they harmonize on the gut-wrenching “Who Will
Love Me As I Am,” they melt even the hardest hearts. (This is one
instance when the sugar content is just right.) The male leads, Ryan
Silverman and Matthew Hydzik, are proficient but weaker than the ladies,
while David St. Louis gives a powerful accounting of Jake, the girls’
loyal African-American protector who has more than friendly affection
for Violet. Robert Joy is a hissable villain as the sideshow owner, and
Blair Ross and Don Richard make the most of ensemble roles.
November 23, 2014
The River
Circle in the Square
Lost Lake
Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center
Reviewed by David Sheward
On the surface, The River and Lost Lake have a great deal in common. Both are named for bodies of water; are set in rustic, remote cabins; sport small casts; and run about 90 minutes with no intermission. In addition, neither is a masterwork. But, on closer examination, they couldn’t be more different from each other. River is a Broadway commercial vehicle with London snob-appeal license plates driven by a Tony-winning star. Lake is a new play with a somewhat clichéd plot in a small Off-Broadway theater with two respected but not ballyhooed actors—despite one being an Oscar nominee—yet it’s the more satisfying evening of theater. River is pretentious and overblown, while Lake is truthful if flawed.
The River, the first play by Jez Butterworth after his triumphant transcontinental sensation Jerusalem, comes to us after a smash British production starring Dominic West, now with the charismatic Hugh Jackman as The Man—unnamed capitalized characters are always a sign of trouble—an outdoor enthusiast bringing his new girlfriend to his cabin for a weekend of fishing and lovemaking. After much poetic speechifying on the thrill of landing a trout (The Man compares his first catch to “the tongue of God”), rehashing of sex and swimming (they were both present so why retell everything?), The Woman discovers she’s only one in a chain of conquests. In a confusing, Pinteresque choice, The Other Woman, a previous or perhaps a future amour, also puts in several appearances, sometimes simultaneously with The Woman (got that?).
Butterworth layers on the polysyllabic blather with each of the three characters waxing all romantic about nature and relationships, but there’s very little substance here. Director Ian Rickson attempts to inject tension—Charles Balfour’s lighting helps out somewhat—but the playwright gives him little to work with. The Woman mentions seeing what seems to be a ghost. The Other Woman encounters another fisherman and The Man shows signs of jealousy, flashing a dangerous-looking fish-gutting knife. But that’s about it. All we’re left with at the end of this wisp of a play is a philanderer who likes to fish and fool around.
Jackman is in terrific shape, and his bulging biceps as well as his filleting skills are on display. Those qualities may be enough for a Cooking Channel show, but they don’t sustain an evening of theater. The magnetic Tony winner fails to dive deeply into this guy’s psyche, so all the attention is grabbed by Cush Jumbo, a sparkplug of dramatic energy, as The Woman. Laura Donnelly imbues The Other Woman with a quiet dignity. Both women manage to send a jolt of life into this otherwise moribund mackerel of a play.
Lost Lake at Manhattan Theatre Club is riddled with clichés, but at least it’s got more sizzle and juice than the pretentious River. We’re in a cabin again, but instead of allegory and poetry, playwright David Auburn (a Pulitzer winner for Proof), gives us gritty details and believable characters. The plot is your basic Total Strangers Become Unlikely Friends pattern, but Auburn’s frequent directing collaborator Daniel Sullivan and a cast of two—Tracie Thoms and Oscar nominee John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone)—give it the necessary verisimilitude to make us care about what happens.
Single mom Veronica rents a lakeside cottage from sketchy-looking Hogan for a week’s vacation away from the city with her two kids. At first it seems Hogan is a scummy perv, lurking around the property and living out of his truck. But it turns out he’s a well-meaning loser and Veronica, a recently-unemployed nurse, has many self-inflicted problems of her own. Of course, after revelations and a crisis, they become tentative pals over a couple of bottles of beer. Yes, it’s predictable but Thoms and Hawkes don’t condescend to the material, giving it an honesty that belies the familiar machinations. Hawkes is especially moving as the unlucky Hogan. His total breakdown after a series of bad turns is frighteningly raw in its nakedness. There’s a lot more going on at the Lake than in the River.
November 22, 2014
Sticks and Bones
The New Group
Lips Together, Teeth Apart
Second Stage
Reviewed by David Sheward
A pair of Off-Broadway revivals offers American theater’s response to two of the most difficult moments in our recent history: the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis. Both cataclysmic events forced average Americans to confront the “other.” In the early 1970s, a brutal foreign war was being fought in our living rooms, and veterans were bringing home its traumas. Twenty years later, a ravaging plague decimated a largely ignored segment of the population, and gay activists were demanding attention be paid. David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones (1971), from the New Group, and Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), at Second Stage, detail the mainstream reactions to these harrowing watershed moments in vastly different ways. Both deal with attempts to avoid unpleasant truths, but only one still resonates with the disturbing discord of its original setting.
Rabe’s play is a merciless cartoon of a typical stateside family—named for the characters on the ridiculously wholesome sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet —torn apart by the return of their eldest son, David, who is scarred psychologically and physically by his experiences in Nam. He is blind and accompanied by the specter of Zung, the Vietnamese girl he left behind, whom no one else can see. As his parents attempt to gloss over his damaged psyche with TV, snacks, and commercial-style chatter, David viciously attacks them verbally and with his walking stick. As this living-room war rages, Derek McLane’s Brady Bunch-style set is slowly transformed into an eerie battlefield by Peter Kaczorowski’s ghoulish lighting and Olivia Sebeksy’s grainy projections. It’s a nightmarish version of reality, directed with unflinching swagger by Scott Eliot. Bill Pullman delivers a frighteningly intense Ozzie. You can almost feel his jittery energy as he rapidly retreats into a fantasy vision of his youth to escape the intruder in his home. Holly Hunter’s Harriet is like a perky puppet performing a domestic dance of housekeeping to distract herself from David’s demons. Ben Schnetzer has the difficult task of humanizing the agonized David and he manages to ground the character’s dark poetry. Raviiv Ullman is hilariously oblivious as the guitar-strumming younger brother Rick, and Richard Chamblerlain, a veteran of the play’s era as TV’s Dr. Kildare, is like a stern figure from the past as a clueless priest.
It’s hard to believe now, but Sticks made it to Broadway after a run at the Public Theater and won the Tony Award for Best Play. It would have no place on today’s Disneyfied Broadway, where even most dramas have a warm and fuzzy side. This production has a slightly dated feel, and the play could stand cutting, but it still provides a frightening caricature of an America in upheaval.
McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart takes a more realistic route, apart from pretentious and extraneous Strange Interlude -ish interior monologues. The play follows two straight couples struggling through an awkward Fourth of July weekend at the Fire Island beach house one of them has inherited from her gay brother who has died of AIDS. As they attempt to ignore the reality of AIDS and the gay men surrounding them, the four deal—or fail to deal—with infidelity, illness, miscarriages, and despair. Two decades ago, this play seemed like a startlingly accurate snapshot of the way we lived then—anxious and horrified at the issues of mortality the health crisis raised—but now it seems melodramatic and forced. What a difference the right ensemble makes.
The original production at Manhattan Theatre Club boasted a powerhouse cast (Swoosie Kurtz, Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, Anthony Heald) who made the characters’ soapy troubles seem like the quintessence of the American and, by extension, human experience. Unfortunately, of the current company, only Tracee Chimo connects with the existential despair of the chatterbox Chloe who natters on about anything that comes into her head to keep the emptiness at bay. Peter Dubois’s direction overemphasizes the laughs instead of quietly playing up the couples’ desperation. As a result, the jokes aren’t funny, and the quarreling quartet come across as petty and bickering rather than misguided and lonely. Alexander Dodger designed a gorgeous beachfront set; too bad you won’t want to spend time with the occupants.
November 10, 2014
Allegro
Classic Stage Company
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
The first perhaps 20 minutes of this Classic Stage Company revival of Allegro distances its audiences from what is happening on the stage. It’s difficult to separate content from production, just as it apparently was when the show first appeared in 1947. Oscar Hammerstein, in his only work not based on existing material, created a highly personal, allegorical musical about the eternal pull between ideals and material drives. The entire cast serves as a Greek chorus throughout, commenting on and participating in the competing impulses in Joseph Taylor (Claybourne Elder), a small-town doctor who marries a girl (lovely Elizabeth A. Davis) who, though raised in the same place, is under the sway of her ambitious father for whom money, prominence, and position are the very values that Joe doesn’t share. In feel, the piece is almost a musicalized Our Town and establishes itself in a slow, low-keyed manner.
Here, director John Doyle uses his now-signature device of actors accompanying themselves, an intriguing approach. But unlike in Doyle’s marvelous Company, in which the music came mostly from those not singing, here the singers simultaneously play and sing, and for those initial moments, the method becomes a distraction, giving focus to the idea rather than the characters. As the story unfolds, however, as so often happens in the theater, magic arrives and the show takes flight. Magic arrives here when Joe sings “You Are Never Away” as he thinks of his imminent return home from medical school to his soon-to-be wife. From that point, the fluidity of the staging, and the strength of the story, music, and performances register, negating any issues with the simultaneity of singing and playing the music.
And lilting music it is. From the rousing title song and the bittersweet “The Gentleman Is a Dope” (a captivating Jane Pfitsch as Emily, whom Joe realizes is his true soul mate) to the haunting “Come Home Joe” finale, the score is indeed worthy of its revered creators. The virtues of the whole are given their due by a wonderful ensemble, including Doyle and Broadway veterans Malcom Gets as Joe Sr. and Alma Cuervo as Grandma Taylor. Making the show an intermissionless 90 minutes adds immeasurably to its effect.
November 10, 2014
The Real Thing
Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Sometimes a brilliant playwright and a brilliant director just aren’t the right combination. With the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of The Real Thing, the literary pyrotechnics of dramatist Tom Stoppard and the naturalistic flair of helmer Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation) don’t quiet go together. Stoppard’s 1982 hit examines the fine line between on and offstage love when Henry, a cerebral Stoppard-like author, finds his personal life paralleling his theatrical creations. The original Broadway production in 1984 (I didn’t see the premiere London version) by Mike Nichols was very clear in its delineation between “reality” and plays within plays. (There was a subsequent 2000 London-to-Broadway revival that struck a pleasing balance between the poles of truth and illusion.) But under Gold’s hand, that distinction is made blurry by the low-key performances, the single-unit set by David Zinn, and the company singing pop tunes of the 1960s between scenes. This may have been Gold’s intention—to show the messiness of love and how art and reality spill into each other. But it lessens the impact of Stoppard’s ironic theme of the sharp divide between Henry’s idealized world of witty repartee and the untidy nature of everyday life.
Despite the somewhat off-kilter staging, Stoppard’s dazzling wit and compassion shine through. He wrote the work as a rebuke to critics categorizing him as a playwright with a mind and no heart because of his focus on the intellectual in such works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, and Travesties. In The Real Thing, Henry embarks on an adulterous affair with Annie, an actor; ironically, his wife, Charlotte, is appearing in his play about infidelity opposite Max, Annie’s husband. In the second act, the tables are turned. Henry and Annie are now married. Now Annie cheats on Henry, and he is forced to deal with the same shattering betrayal about which he blithely joked. There are also brilliant observations on writing, theater, politics, and music.
Ewan McGregor captures Henry’s rapier-like intelligence, which he uses as a weapon when life gets too painful. The most stunning moment of the original production featured Jeremy Irons as a solitary Henry bereft of witticisms, breaking down and sobbing, “Please… don’t,” as he attempts to cope with Annie’s affair. Unfortunately, McGregor fails to elicit the same depth of despair, and the moment passes without much effect.
Maggie Gyllenhaal makes for an attractive, witty, Annie but she misses the warmth of the Broadway original Glenn Close, so when this charming creature steps out on two different husbands, she seems like a narcissist rather than a woman following her heart. Cynthia Nixon was in the original Broadway production as Debbie, the sexually precocious teenage daughter of Henry and Charlotte. Here she plays Charlotte and endows her with a wry cynicism, perhaps a trifle too arch though. Josh Hamilton convincingly conveys Max’s earnestness and sorrow, particularly in the brief scene when he loses Annie. Perhaps if there had been more such honest emotion, this would have been a “realer” Real Thing.
November 2, 2014
The Last Ship
Neil Simon Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The title of the new musical featuring a score by pop star Sting offers plenty of satirical opportunities: The Last Ship sinks, hits a reef, scuttles, etc. Fortunately, this vessel isn’t entirely unseaworthy. The score is catchy and moving, the staging by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello is imaginative and gritty, and Steven Hoggett’s choreography expresses character with quirky and unexpected movement, except when the actors are called upon to stomp their feet, which happens about every 10 minutes.
The main problem is the surprisingly soapy book by two pros—John Logan (Red) and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal). Perhaps their British (Logan) and American (Yorkey) sensibilities clashed, because this collaboration just doesn’t work. Derived from Sting’s concept album, the plot follows the “Oppressed Laborers Fight Back” template with a nod to the “Torn Between Two Lovers” trope. Just like the coal miners in Billy Elliot and the shoemakers in Kinky Boots, the inhabitants of Wallsend, a town in the north of England not unlike the one where Sting grew up, are in danger of losing their jobs. In this case, the town’s means of financial support, the shipyard, cannot compete with foreign rivals in Korea and Japan. Rather than find positions with the new salvaging company, the workers band together to illegally build one last ship and plan to sail it to the North Sea. What they will do there and how they will make this mad venture pay off is never made clear. Are they going to haul cargo, go fishing, or just take a pleasure cruise? Sting, Logan, and Yorkey forgot to include that little detail.
On the romantic end, prodigal son Gideon Fletcher picks this moment of crisis to return home after 15 years at sea after his dad dies and to reunite with his former sweetheart, barmaid Meg Dawson. Though Meg now is engaged to the reliable Arthur Millburn, who works for the salvage company, she still has feelings for Gideon. Who will Meg chose? Will the ship be built before dying Father Jim succumbs to cancer? And what about Meg’s 15-year-old son, Tom? Any guesses as to his paternity? There are so many tired twists and holes in the plot—Gideon couldn’t have written Meg a letter?—it’s hard to care for this beleaguered lot.
With the aid of Christopher Akerlind’s versatile lighting, Mantello and Hoggett stage this drivel with verve and punch. Even as we groan at each contrivance, we sigh in admiration at the ingenuity with which it’s executed in stage terms. There’s plenty to savor in Sting’s flavorful score, even though the context is overly familiar. Yes, we get the missed-opportunity ballad (“It’s Not the Same Moon”), the live-life-to-the-fullest rousing group number (“Show Some Respect”) and the father-son bonding moment (“The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance”). But they intoxicate with their direct charm.
Michael Esper makes for an unlikely Gideon, not especially charismatic or convincing as the object of a burning passion, but he intensely imparts the character’s anger at an abusive father and delivers the songs with a lovely, Sting-like smoky tenor. Rachel Tucker shows more fire as the conflicted Meg, while Aaron Lazar is stiff as Arthur, but he makes the most of the quiet love song “What Say You, Meg?” Jimmy Nail lends sturdy support as the shipyard foreman. Veteran musical character actor Fred Applegate wisely underplays the alcoholic, foul-mouthed Irish priest, but Sally Ann Triplett overdoes the foreman’s raucous wife.
Perhaps Sting’s name alone will be enough to keep this Ship sailing until Tony time, but with its poorly built hull and masthead, I predict rough seas ahead.
October 26, 2014
Off-Broadway Roundup I
Reviewed by David Sheward
While the fall is one of Broadway’s busiest times, Off-Broadway is equally crowded with openings. The current roster includes daring reinterpretations of familiar works, New York premieres of British and American plays from veteran and promising playwrights, and a musical featuring bedbugs and a Celine Dion impersonator (no kidding!).
The Dutch director Ivo Van Hove has delivered weird deconstructions in his productions for New York Theater Workshop. I’m still recovering from his derailing of A Streetcar Named Desire. But with his current staging of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, he takes the source material and skillfully reimagines it for the stage, delivering something new and exciting while respecting the original. First a six-hour TV mini-series and then a three-hour film, Scenes is a harrowing examination of the dysfunctional union between a professor and a divorce lawyer.
When the audience enters the NYTW, it is ushered into one of three small playing spaces. Three separate couples enact the marriage and breakup of Johan and Marianne at different stages, the playgoers moving from location to location until they’ve watched all of them. The dialogue from each leaks into the others, replicating how buried resentments and events from the past influence present actions. Then after a 30-minute intermission, the playing area is stripped bare and all six performers play the post-divorce sequences in a symphony of passion and anger.
Meanwhile at Roundabout Theatre’s Laura Pels venue, Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink gets a long-delayed New York premiere. In Carey Perloff’s sumptuous and elegant production, love and literature are given equal weight as an English poetess’s Indian sojourn is recounted by her loving sister decades later. As in Stoppard’s Arcadia, the events are played out in the past and through the lens of academic evaluation and memory for a fascinating double-vision. The regal Rosemary Harris is enchanting as always as the elderly sister, but the play belongs to Romola Garai and Firdous Bamji as the young writer and the Indian painter to whom she is attracted. There are slight resemblances to E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, but the work is much more than a tribute to that classic. Stoppard constructs an intriguing puzzle on the nature of poetry, colonialism, and mortality well worth your concentration and time.
At Playwrights Horizons, Robert O’Hara tackles equally sensitive issues of race, gender, and sexuality and how theater deals with all of them in his autobiographical collage Bootycandy. At first it seems he’s stringing together a collection of SNL-type sketches on being African-American and LGBT. Some work hilariously well and some don’t—a one-joke scene about a lesbian couple divorcing wears out its welcome quickly—but in the second act, they all come together to tell the difficult coming-of-age story of Sutter, who as a child is molested by an older man and as an adult vents his anger on a stranger. The comedy and tragedy overlap in an intense staging by O’Hara. The five-member ensemble plays many roles with savage wit and compassion. Lance Coadie Williams is particularly funny as a cross-dressing minister and (in drag) as Sutter’s sassy grandma who fakes senility to collect cash and sympathy from her grandson.
Billy Porter, the Tony-winning star of Kinky Boots, tackles similar material in his first play, While I Yet Live, at Primary Stages at the Duke Theatre. As in Bootycandy, the main character survives sexual assault from a trusted older man and faces rejection from his African-American family and community for his gay identity. But while O’Hara explores this complex theme in unconventional and startling ways, Porter goes for soap opera with melodrama and ghosts everywhere and the characters spouting Oprah-ish adages (“If you believe in nothing, you’ll fall for anything”) instead of talking to each other. Fortunately, S. Epatha Merkerson delivers a fiery and heartfelt performance as the protagonist’s disabled mother.
On the musical side, we have an enchanting charmer and an overblown dud. The former is Found at Atlantic Theatre Company and the latter is Bedbugs!!! at the ArcLight. Found is based on the books and magazines created by Davy Rothbart, which collect discarded or lost notes, lists, fliers, and letters. The material is bizarre, moving, and funny, offering brief, intriguing glimpses into people’s lives. Book-writers Hunter Bell and Lee Overtree (who also directs) frame the ephemera in the reality-based story of Davy’s creation of the magazines and his attempts to turn them into a TV show. There’s the conventional losing-your-soul-in-Hollywood spiel and romantic triangle nonsense, but the authors cleverly punctuate the action with relevant found notes (realized by Darrel Maloney’s marvelous projections) and Eli Bolin’s warmhearted score.
Bedbugs!!! could have been a lot funnier. It’s the kind of outrageous satire that can sometimes work, as in Little Shop of Horrors, Urinetown, and The Toxic Avenger, if there are characters with whom we can sympathize, even if they are caricatures. But conceivers Fred Sauter (book and lyrics) and Paul Leschen (music) and director Deborah Hurwitz opt for total exaggeration with no hint of verisimilitude. That’s fine for a 10-minute sketch but cannot sustain a two-hour musical. The flimsy plot centers on an invasion of NYC by mutant bedbugs with a Canadian singer not unlike Celine Dion serving as Gotham’s unlucky savior. Brian Charles Rooney in drag and fine voice as the Celine stand-in and Philip Heckman’s ingenious insect costumes are the high points of this otherwise forgettable frolic. Get out the Raid!
October 18, 2014
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Barrymore Theatre
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time shouldn’t work. Its protagonist, Christopher Boone, is a difficult young man to like. Incredibly brilliant at math and logic, yet suffering from a form of autism, the 15-year-old cannot comprehend human emotion and hates being touched. He screams and becomes violent whenever anyone does so. He’s also arrogant and selfish. Plus, the titular mystery—the canine of the title is killed and the falsely accused Christopher sets out to find the culprit—is solved at the end of the first act. As if that weren’t enough, there are a lot of math problems—which are not exactly the stuff of high drama. And let’s not forget the original Mark Haddon novel is all told in the first person from Christopher’s skewed perspective.
But just as she did with War Horse, director Marianne Elliott makes brilliant use of stagecraft to bring a seemingly untranslatable literary work to breathing, vital life in this stunning production from Britain’s National Theatre. Playwright Simon Stephens has surmounted the challenge of the source material by having Christopher adapt his journal as a play narrated by his teacher Siobhan, while Elliott employs Bunny Christie’s vast graph-paper-lined box of a set as if it were a blank sheet for Christopher to work out his emotional and mathematical dilemmas. With the invaluable aid of Paule Constable’s lighting, Finn Ross’s video design, and the soundscape created by Ian Dickinson for Autograph and Adrian Sutton’s original music, we journey into the complex world of a suburb seething with subtext and then to the urban madhouse known as London. And it’s all from Christopher’s point of view, so that his trip on the train and subway become a harrowing bombardment of sensations. The ingenious movement by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett for Frantic Assembly perfectly augments the intricate staging.
All this technical wizardry might overshadow the performances, but a powerful American cast proves equal to the efforts of the helmer and her design team. As Christopher, recent Juilliard graduate Alex Sharp does a magnificent job of carrying the show on his boyish shoulders. He masterfully conveys the teenager’s incisive intelligence, childlike neediness, and raging incomprehension at the bad behavior displayed by the grownups. We actually get to like this impossible adolescent. Ian Barford finds the deep love at the center of Christopher’s undemonstrative father, and Enid Graham makes for a sympathetic mother despite the character’s questionable actions. Francesca Faridany as Siobhan provides an anchor for the action, and Mercedes Herrero adds spice, doubling as a nasty neighbor and a vinegary headmistress.
As for the math problems, Elliott uses all the means at her disposal to create a spectacular post-curtain call coda about triangles. If you never thought you’d be cheering about equations, check out this curious and marvelous Incident.
Reviewed by David Sheward
October 14, 2014
The Country House
Manhattan Theatre Club at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
You would think with all the insider theatrical references flying around in Donald Margulies’s The Country House, at least one of the show-folk characters would say, “You know, this is just like being in a Chekhov play.” Clearly, Margulies, one of our finest playwrights, is deliberately citing the Russian master of middle-class ennui, but he doesn’t get far beyond the footnotes. Christopher Durang did a much more imaginative job of updating and Americanizing Chekhov by wildly satirizing him in the Tony-winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Margulies—who has more sharply observed the complexities of human relations in plays like Dinner With Friends, Time Stands Still, and Sight Unseen—settles for tired jokes about contemporary entertainment trends and wheezy melodramatic conflicts in this Manhattan Theatre Club production.
The plot is basically a mash-up of The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. Glamorous leading lady Anna Patterson (a luminous Blythe Danner) is playing hostess to a mob of overheated egos in her Berkshires country house during the summertime Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her daughter, also an actor, has recently died of cancer, and Anna’s grief is shared by her screw-up son Elliot (an intense Eric Lange); her smart-aleck granddaughter Susie (a refreshingly low-key Sarah Steele); and the dead woman’s husband and Susie’s father, Walter (a comic David Rasche), a wildly successful movie director. Just like in Vanya, the recently widowed Walter brings along a beautiful new girlfriend Nell (Kate Jennings Grant doing her best with a thankless role), also an actor, and the depressive Elliott is in love with her. Oh, did I mention Elliott, a failed actor, has decided to become a playwright and he wants everyone to participate in a reading of his first work which, of course, is self-indulgent dreck. Just like in The Seagull. After the disastrous reading, the dialogue for Elliott and Anna is almost verbatim from Constantine and Arkadina’s in the Chekhov original.
But it’s not totally a Russian rip-off. Margulies throws in a little Midwestern sex sizzle with a nod to William Inge’s Picnic in the form of hot TV actor Michael Astor (the dazzlingly attractive Daniel Sunjata) who just happens to need a place to sleep because his sublet is being fumigated. None of the women in Anna’s crowded home can keep their hands off Michael, including Anna.
Margulies attempts to add depth to these shallow whiners whose biggest problems seem to be not getting cast in a pilot. Much of his dialogue is snappy with lots of zingers aimed at the MTC subscription audiences. The crowd at the performance attended dutifully tittered over digs at matinee ladies, the state of Broadway, and guilty actors getting a shot of culture at the WTF and then returning to movies and TV for a fat paycheck. But it’s hard to care about these carbon-copy Chekhovites. Their every action is inspired by other plays rather than organic emotions.
Yet there are pleasures of a kind here. Director Daniel Sullivan provides his usual polished production. Danner’s silk-and-sandpaper alto is always welcome, and she finds a core of humanity in a thin character, just as she did in The Commons of Pensacola, another MTC production from last season. Steele wisely underplays Susie’s gloom, and Rasche garners some honest laughs as the brutally frank helmer defending his choice to abandon the stage for the more profitable world of screen-action franchises (though it is a bit hard to take when his character bitches about having to audition actors all day). Sunjata and Grant are at least pleasant to look at and struggle mightily to give dimension to their roles, as does Lange who is saddled with the irredeemably needy Elliot. John Lee Beatty’s cozy set makes you want to move right in, but only after the current tenants have vacated for the summer.
October 7, 2014
Love Letters
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
There has been a certain amount of carping about the revival of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, the charming 1988 Pulitzer finalist, which requires only two actors, little rehearsal time, and minimal design elements. (The only setting here is John Lee Beatty’s elegant wooden table, lit warmly by Peter Kaczorowski.) Gurney specifies that the performers read from scripts, so no memorization is involved and most productions including this one employ revolving casts so the stars have a relatively brief commitment of time. The complainers—and there aren’t many of them—are up in arms that such a minimalist show is still charging top Broadway prices. Yes, they have a point, but given the economics of the American commercial theater, the only question about a show should be is it worth the price of admission and your time? I can only answer based on the first company—Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow—and the response is an unqualified yes.
The premise is simplicity itself. The nearly five-decade relationship between two patricians, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace III, is detailed through their letters, postcards, and notes. From grade school to Ivy League universities to varying adult paths, Melissa and Andrew just miss their opportunity for fulfilling mutual love. Either through adolescent stubbornness, inconvenient circumstances, or rigid convention, a satisfying union is continually thwarted. Straight-arrow Andrew buys into the suburban dream and eventually becomes a respectable politician, while the wealthier and more troubled Melissa leads a more uninhibited life as an artist. But she is beset by martial problems and alcoholism. It may sound like a high-toned romance novel, but Gurney offers incisive social observations and deep character development, making his pair of mismatched lovers much more than stereotypical cocktail socialites.
As with all memorable drama, the most revealing details are little ones, like the offhand acknowledgement that Melissa’s stepfather sexually abused her (“He bothered me in bed if you must know” is her only mention of this shocking fact, which speaks volumes about her need to cover up unpleasantness.) Or take Andrew’s anger over the arbitrariness of his school’s crew team rotation without regard to ability. When he complains about it, his coach replies, “That’s life, Andy.” The small phrase encapsulates all the injustices and unfairness both characters encounter.
It’s no surprise that Dennehy, a double Tony winner for meaty performances in such heavyweight classics as Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, would bring dimension to Andrew’s struggle and final capitulation to conformism. Farrow is the real revelation here. Apart from benefits and readings, her last New York stage appearance was a limited Off-Broadway run of Fran’s Bed in 2005 and before that the slight Romantic Comedy on Broadway in 1980. Only in Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose did we see the full possibility of her talent. That is until now. She takes us through Melissa’s painful journey from spoiled rich girl to disillusioned woman desperately clinging to Andy, the one person who loves her. With the smallest gesture, vocal inflection, or merely by sitting silently, she can convey a lifetime of disappointment and longing.
It’s difficult to tell where director Gregory Mosher’s contribution begins and the cast’s ends, but it’s clear he helped modulate and balance these two sterling performances. Dennehy will play opposite Carol Burnett when Farrow leaves, then Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Stacy Keach, Diana Rigg, Martin Sheen, and Anjelica Huston will take over. Each will put his or her own unique stamp on Love Letters, but it’s hard to imagine they will better the opening company.
September 26, 2014
The Wayside Motor Inn
Signature Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center
Reviewed by David Sheward
A lonely salesman phones in his orders to a computer, longing to speak to a human being. A grandmother complains about the decline of personal service. A waitress advises a customer not to eat her employer’s food because it is filled with chemicals. Occupants of an anonymous motel attempt to reach out to each other as they go through painful life transitions but the speed of modern life prevents their connections. These may seem like contemporary figures voicing 2014 concerns, but they are characters from A.R. Gurney’s rarely seen 1977 play The Wayside Motor Inn, now in a precise and biting revival at Signature Theatre Company. As he has done with many of his other plays, the prolific Gurney examines the WASP upper middle class’s sense of displacement and alienation as they find themselves cast adrift in a society where they are no longer the top dogs. That’s just one concern of the nine guests and one employee of the Wayside. Each is facing a major life change and finds no comfort in each other or their bland surroundings.
Like Gurney’s long-running Off-Broadway hit The Dining Room, this play features multiple, unrelated plotlines playing out in a single setting. The generic motel room outside of Boston is designed with proper period blandness by Andrew Lieberman, lit with sensitivity by Tyler Micoleau. There are 10 characters enacting five stories. Each set of two characters—elderly husband and wife, father and son, estranged couple, amorous college kids, salesman and waitress possibly hooking up—act as if the others weren’t in the same room. If this sounds a bit confusing, it can be at first. As the play starts, a seemingly endless stream of guests enter the suite as if they were in an updated version of the famous stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’s classic A Night at the Opera. But Gurney and director Lila Neugebauer pace the action at just the right clip so that things don’t get too blurry.
The superb specificity in the acting also keeps the varying plot threads untangled. The most riveting moments are provided by Rebecca Henderson as Ruth, the divorced wife engaged in a pitched battle with Andy (a properly subtle Kelly AuCoin), her former husband, over who gets to keep the family stereo and the snapshots (remember this takes place in the pre-digital era.) As Ruth enters the room and confronts her ex-spouse, Henderson conveys volumes of anger, love, and longing in the stiff, sharp way she moves and talks. You can tell what’s going on underneath her veneer of civility, and when her emotions boil over as she snatches photos from her equally enraged ex-partner, it’s devastating.
There’s also much to admire in Jon DeVries’s crotchety old codger on the brink of heart failure, Lizbeth Mackay’s overly solicitous spouse, Marc Kudisch’s bullying yet loving father, Will Pullen’s quietly rebellious son, David McElwee and Ismenia Mendes’s ambivalent young lovers, Jenn Lyon’s argumentative waitress, and Quincy Dunn-Baker’s lusty and isolated salesman. The variety and richness they and the playwright bring to these seemingly ordinary people belie the dullness of the motel-world setting.
September 7, 2014
Carousel
Glimmerglass Festiva
Reviewed by David Sheward
Carousel was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s follow-up to Oklahoma!, their first big hit as a team, and many regard the sophomore effort as the legendary duo’s finest work. Rodgers’s gorgeous melodies and Hammerstein’s intricate yet folksy lyrics combine to tell of the tragic marriage of Billy Bigelow, a bullying but attractive carnie, and Julie Jordan, a simple but strong-willed mill worker. The sentiment of unconditional love even if your husband is an abusive lout may be politically incorrect today, but the power of redemption as expressed by Billy’s transformation as a spirit and the sheer beauty of the evergreen score places the show in the pantheon of Broadway classics. The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., which began presenting musicals along with its usual fare of operas a few seasons back, delivers a technically proficient production of the 1945 work, but Charles Newell’s direction lacks the necessary passion.
The musical component of the evening is richly fulfilled by conductor Doug Peck and the vocal performances of the company. Handsome Ryan McKinny (who made for a smolderingly sexy Flying Dutchman at Glimmerglass last season), is a solid Billy with a smoky, dark baritone. His performance of the iconic soliloquy is a towering achievement of control and nuance. Andrea Carroll’s Julie has the right sweet soprano without being syrupy. Their duet of the memorable “If I Loved You” is enchanting to hear, but there is no chemical reaction between the two leads. So when Billy kills himself after a thwarted robbery attempt, there is no emotional wallop.
Almost immediately afterwards, Julie’s practical and compassionate cousin Nettie sings the always-uplifting “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to inspire the new widow to keep on “caring about what happens.” While Deborah Nansteel lends a musician-like purity to the standard, she doesn’t build to a moving climax. The song just finishes rather than soaring to a tear-inducing ending.
Newell adds to the lack of drama by double-casting Rebecca Finnegan as Mrs. Mullins, Billy’s hard-edged employer on the carousel, and the Heavenly Friend who guides Billy to the spirit world. While Finnegan is marvelous in both roles, creating totally separate characters, one appears right after the other, and costume designer Jessica Jahn has dressed them similarly, causing some confusion. The strongest presence is provided by Carolina M. Villaraos as Louise, Julie and Billy’s unhappy daughter. Performing Daniel Pelzig’s choreography (which appears strongly influenced by Agnes de Mille’s original steps), she conveys the teenager’s longing for love and guidance. In a moving duet with Andrew Harper as a heartless roustabout much like her father, she intensely expresses the frustrations of adolescence through movement. You can tell this Louise wants something, but she can’t name it yet.
Sharin Apostolou and Joe Shadday provide laughs as the secondary couple—the giddy Carrie Pipperidge and her beau, the righteous fisherman Enoch Snow—while Ben Edquist is a dark yet funny Jigger, Billy’s no-good sailor colleague, and Wynn Harmon brings a wry, dry wit to the Starkeeper.
This Carousel is a satisfying night for your ears, but the heart wants more.
July 25, 2014
When We Were Young and Unafraid
Manhattan Theatre Club at NY City Center Stage I
Reviewed by David Sheward
The title of Sarah Treem’s new play is ironic. The young characters are the most fearful, while the oldest one tempers her actions with caution based on scary previous experiences. Set at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the early 1970s, Treem’s insightful work examines the damaging effect of gender stereotyping on different generations and how those assigned roles force everyone, but especially women, to hide their true identities.
Even the setting serves a hidden agenda. We’re in the homey kitchen of a bed and breakfast on an island off the coast of Seattle (designed with attention to domestic detail by Scott Pask). The owner, no-nonsense former nurse Agnes (the magnificent Cherry Jones), does not allow guests here. That’s not just for reasons of privacy or professionalism. The inn also serves as a safe house for women escaping spousal abuse in an era before such establishments were commonplace or respectable, and the kitchen is the refugees’ entry point. One particular runaway, Mary Anne, a young Army bride (the subtle Zoe Kazan), and Hannah, a traveling African-American would-be revolutionary (the fiery Cherise Boothe) throw the house into disorder and upset Agnes’s delicate relationship with her 16-year-old daughter Penny (a brittle Morgan Saylor), a brainy girl who wants to attract boys and fit in with her classmates. There’s also Paul (a complex and pathetic Patch Darragh), a wimpy tourist licking his wounds from a recent divorce and seeking to escape the confusing sexual revolution taking over his home city of San Francisco.
Treem, whose small-screen credits include In Treatment and House of Cards, tends to indulge in TV-style melodramatics, such as having Hannah break in through the window when she has no reason to do so and endowing too many characters with deep, dark secrets revealed at exactly the right moment. But her observations are strong and her portraiture is honest. Under the sensitive direction of Pam MacKinnon, the cast paints in all the various shades of grey these people whose attitudes are anything but black-and-white.
As she did in the recent revival of The Glass Menagerie, Jones handily avoids the trap of making a protective mother a smothering monster. Nor is her Agnes a plaster saint. She can be flinty and harsh as well as compassionate. A closeted lesbian and abortion provider, Agnes has been through the sexual wars. Jones doesn’t display her battle scars, but you know they are there. Saylor (Homeland) makes an impressive stage debut, charting Penny’s rocky road through adolescence. Kazan again proves she’s one of our most intense performers, endowing Mary Anne with both street smarts and dangerous naïveté. Like Stella Kowalski in Streetcar, Mary Anne has spirit and intelligence, but she is still drawn to an abusive husband. Darragh and Boothe also find the conflicting emotions in their multidimensional roles in this finely tuned work displaying how the roles of women and men have changed and stayed the same.
At one point Hannah informs Agnes the Supreme Court has decided in favor of abortion rights in Roe vs. Wade, and that things are changing. “Yes, but they’ll change back,” Agnes replies. It’s a chilling moment in an evening full of them.
June 30, 2014
Much Ado About Nothing
The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
Though at it times it seems as though they are playing The Taming of the Shrew rather than Much Ado About Nothing, Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe make a perfect pair of battling would-be lovers in the Public Theater’s first production of the 52nd season of free Shakespeare in Central Park. Linklater is particularly intense as the confirmed bachelor Benedick, tricked into believing Rabe’s waspish Beatrice is smitten with him. Sporting a full beard which he later only partially shaves off, Linklater makes Benedick an easily provoked hothead, and he perfectly times his rants for maximum comic effect. Rabe calls to mind a young Katharine Hepburn or Jean Arthur in one of those dazzlingly witty 1940s movies, as she willfully rejects the manifestations of romantic love but then gradually warms to them. When the two get together the wit flashes, and at times director Jack O’Brien allows the decibel level to get slightly higher than it should, but the sparks of mutual attraction are real and glittering.
O’Brien has decided to take Shakespeare’s original setting as a cue for concept. Set designer John Lee Beatty has created a gorgeous Sicilian villa, complete with a vegetable garden, which serves as the single location, and costume designer Jane Greenwood dresses the cast in elegant early-20th-century clothes. The play opens with Italian dialogue, gradually seguing into the Bard’s immortal speeches. The director adds a hokey gimmick of moving a huge garden wall with the magic of music, but that’s the only sour note in an otherwise lyrical, enchanting production.
The supporting company is full of able comedians, both experienced and new to the scene. Brian Stokes Mitchell lends his hearty baritone to the virile captain Don Pedro, while Pedro Pascal is a devilishly attractive villain as his bastard brother Don John. As Beatrice’s distinguished uncle Leonato, John Glover gives equal weigh to the merry fooling in the plot to deceive his niece and Benedick and to the heartrending sorrow required when he must sham mourning for his daughter, Hero (a lovely Ismenia Mendes). Jack Cutmore-Scott endows Hero’s suitor Claudio with the appropriate dash and impetuosity.
The only segment of this zestful production that doesn’t quite work is the so-called comic relief. Perhaps because O’Brien has given the lead lovers a free hand to be as broad as they wish, the clownish types come across as exaggerated. John Pankow as the buffoonish constable Dogberry and Zoe Winters as the shrewish waiting gentlewoman Margaret are the worst offenders. But much of this Ado makes up for any deficiencies.
June 27, 2014
Macbeth
Park Avenue Armory
Reviewed by David Sheward
Part jousting tournament, part religious rite, Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh’s mammoth production of Macbeth, imported from England and now at the Park Avenue Armory for a brief run, is an overwhelming spectacle drawing the theatergoer into the ghoulish world of the play as few stagings can. It starts with the way you are brought to your seat: Patrons are divided into Scottish clans and marched into the cavernous space through set designer Christopher’s Oram’s blasted heath to one of two steep, stadium stands facing a narrow strip of playing space. At one end is a Stonehenge arrangement of rocks: the domain of the three witches. At the other is a massive altar adorned by hundreds of candles and early Christian mosaics. Lit like a nightmarish vision by Neil Austin, this is a setting for the battle between the otherworldly and the humane for the soul of Macbeth and all Scotland.
Battle is the operative word here. Ashford and Branagh do not shy away from the bloodier aspects of Shakespeare’s dark tale of ambition and immorality. Fight director Terry King’s skirmishes and clashes are so realistic, audience members in the first four rows are warned they may be splattered with mud and other base matter. I was convinced one combatant was literally getting his brains bashed in right in front of me by the ferocious Branagh as the titular Thane.
In addition to his martial and co-directing skills, Branagh delivers one of the most incisive and detailed portrayals of the role in recent memory. His Macbeth is a thoughtful leader, genuinely troubled by the grandiose predictions of the weird sisters. His transformation to murderous tyrant is a slow and deliberate one. He wisely plays down the theatrics because there are enough of them in his staging with Ashford. As Macbeth’s fiend-like queen, Alex Kingston (known in the US as Dr. River Song on Doctor Who) is almost as subtle, though she overemphasizes the lady’s two-faced protestations of innocence. Kingston demonstrates too much that Lady M. is acting when she feigns shock at the death of Duncan (spoiler alert if you did not take high school English). But her sleepwalking scene atop the rough-hewn altar is truly disturbing, as is her relentless needling of the character’s spouse when he pulls back from their plan to slaughter their monarch.
It’s also refreshing to have a huge cast so that the procession of Banquo’s successors to the throne and the movement of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane are truly massive. Richard Coyle is a passionate Macduff, Alexander Vlahos a noble Malcolm, and Charlie Cameron, Laura Elsworthy, and Anjana Vasan seem to actually fly as the witches in this supernatural Macbeth.
June 15, 2014
Time of My Life
Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
The wonder of a magic act is in our not understanding how it’s done. Alan Ayckbourn’s wonders far exceed his seemingly inexhaustible conjuring skills. But, after 77 plays, his work, for all its subtlety, insight, humor, and humanity, continues to amaze in its sheer craftsmanship. No playwright does what he does in constantly finding new theatrical ways to show us our foibles and follies.
The setting this time is a birthday dinner at a restaurant. The attendees are the birthday lady (Sarah Parks), her husband (Russell Dixon), their two sons (James Powell and Richard Stacey), daughter-in-law (Emily Pithon), and prospective daughter-in-law (Rachel Caffrey). The service is provided by an array of waiters, each played by ben porter. As happens in Ayckbourn’s world, the chosen event is the jumping-off point for past revelations and future developments.
Mother disapproves of Maureen as a match for her favored son Adam. Glyn, the son whom mother has never really loved, has a history of cheating on newly pregnant Stephanie. As parents Laura and Gerry try to sort out their different feelings about those respective situations, a long-past infidelity of Laura’s comes out, which leads to the denouement that in turn has ultimate cascading effects. As the evening proceeds, we are brought back to how each of the siblings’ relationships developed over time, including a hilarious and touching scene showing Adam and Maureen’s accidental first meeting. And at the center of everything is Laura and Gerry, who never leave the stage and whom we always see in the present. Time is very much an issue, both practically and metaphorically, for these people.
As unique as each Ayckbourn play is, some elements remain constant. Within seconds, sometimes all at once, we are brought from mirth to pathos, then back again. When Stephanie learns that Glyn is leaving her for another woman, the waiter gives her dessert choices, to all of which she nods yes amidst uncontrollable sighing, leading to a mound of pastry no one could possibly eat.
Ayckbourn’s verbal humor is effortless and character-driven, and this production is perfection in every way. The cast is universally brilliant, especially Caffrey, who earns prodigious laughs and sympathy. As director, Ayckbourn finds the rhythms of his writing to a fault, and he is served marvelously by a set and costumes that speak volumes about the world of these characters. The time of my life is an apt title for the play and description of the viewing experience.
June 10, 2014
The Killer
Theatre for a New Audience at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center
Reviewed by David Sheward
Though it was written in 1957 and is seldom performed, Eugene Ionesco’s bizarre and absurdist comedy The Killer is a shockingly accurate portrayal of our media-crazed, technology-obsessed society in 2014. Darko Tresnjak’s almost-slapstick production—featuring a sleek and idiomatic translation by critic-adapator Michael Feingold, now at Theater for a New Audience’s elegant Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn—at times has the zany and satiric feel of the best of Woody Allen’s movies. Indeed, Allen may have been influenced by the play in his 1991 feature Shadows and Fog, one of his unfairly ignored pieces.
The plotlines are somewhat similar. In both, a strange, Kafka-esque community is terrorized by an unidentified serial killer whom the hapless hero attempts to capture, only to find himself at the mercy of the fiend. In both works, the protagonist’s lame sleuthing and vain struggles against the irresistible forces of fate, represented by the faceless maniac, result in hilarious comedy.
Berenger, the schlubby everyman who also appears in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, A Stroll in the Air, and Exit the King, has found an idyllic neighborhood not far from the depressing slum where he resides. He’s all ready to move in, but a murderer is slashing his way through this paradise, and the police and government officials have given up trying to stop him. Berenger vows to bring this Jack the Ripper to justice, but he is frustrated by endless obstacles, until he finally confronts the villain and finds there is no stopping him. After trying to placate the monster in a lengthy monologue, pleading for decency and reason, our nebbishy hero shrugs his shoulders, accepts his death, and says “What can you do?”
Michael Shannon, who has enacted his fair share of brutal thugs in movies, plays the victim this time and makes Berenger a lovable but hopeless schlemiel. He’s particularly brilliant in the climactic monologue, which runs close to 10 minutes. Any actor who can hold an audience’s attention for that long with a speech full of repetitive appeals to a figure covered in shadows deserves a standing ovation. The eccentric Kristine Nielsen is screamingly funny as Berenger’s nosy concierge and a brainless political leader who resembles a cross between Sarah Palin and Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Evoking a creepy Charles Addams cartoon and Peter Lorre at his most sniveling, the riotous Paul Sparks plays Edward, a sickly friend of the hero who might be the killer.
At points, the action has an almost uncanny resemblance to our insane times. In the second of three acts, Berenger finds the murderer’s diary, and its depraved ravings could be those of any of the psychopathic shooters who have blasted their way through movie theaters and college campuses. An eerie chill went up my spine as I was laughing hysterically. That dual sensation is the mark of challenging theater.
June 7, 2014
The City of Conversation
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The title of Anthony Giardina’s witty and moving new play, at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse, is how Henry James described Washington, D.C., in a time of civility as opposing parties would break bread at elegant dinner parties to hammer out their differences. Giardina skillfully documents how the conversation between friendly rivals has descended into partisan stalemate. Chronicling the ugly divide in one prominent family from the Carter to the Obama administrations with style and irony, the playwright traces our national decline into polarized camps armed with talking points and demographics. Staged with precision by Doug Hughes and acted by a sturdy company of vets and newcomers, The City of Conversation is well-worth talking about and seeing.
The action revolves around liberal hostess Hester Ferris, the consort of a married senator. She deftly manipulates legislation between cocktails at her fashionable Georgetown mansion (tastefully designed by John Lee Beatty). But she seems to have met her match in Anna Fitzgerald, an ambitious, Reaganite graduate of London School of Economics who has set her cap on running D.C. and snagging Hester’s somewhat mediocre son Colin, also just matriculated from the same school and ready to rebel against mom. After Anna and Colin marry and as Anna’s star ascends, Hester continues work against her daughter-in-law’s policies, leading to a devastating family crisis that is resolved in the final act, set on the evening of Obama’s first inauguration.
Giardina skews his argument to the progressive side and reduces his conservative characters to bitter malcontents, but his theme of people and positions coming into conflict still registers strongly. When an elderly Hester is confronted with her estranged grandson Ethan, she doesn’t pull any punches in letting him know that political actions have personal consequences. But, she firmly avers, you should be able to connect with family and friends without sacrificing your principles.
It seems every time she draws a breath, Jan Maxwell gets nominated for an award, but she really is outstanding here. Hester could easily have become a domineering schemer in the mold of a Joan Crawford heroine, but Maxwell fully and believably delineates both her noble fortitude and her down-and-dirty calculating side. Watch as she sweet-talks a Kentucky senator and his wife after having slammed their state as backward in an earlier scene. She’s equally convincing playing up to and mocking them. Then she transforms into a still-vital but physically diminished old woman in the last scene, documenting the arc of this fascinating character’s life.
Kristen Bush provides the perfect counterweight as the equally driven Anna, while Michael Simpson gives life to the milquetoast Colin. He doubles as Colin’s gay son Ethan, and has been directed to play up the swishy stereotype more than a little. Beth Dixon endows the small role of Jean, Hester’s secretary-like sister, with a life’s worth of history, as does Maxwell and the author for all the personages in this meaty drama. It’s exciting to have a well-written play about ideas on or Off-Broadway, and no matter what your political persuasion, you’ll find much to relish in this one.
May 27, 2014
Casa Valentina
Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Broadway has given us plenty of musicals exploring the fluid nature of gender and the role of clothes in that sexual puzzle—from La Cage Aux Folles to Kinky Boots to the current revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. But there hasn’t been a serious Main Stem play about cross-dressing until Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina. The difference between this work and the tuners (the first two are also by Fierstein) is that the musical heroes are gay and the characters in Casa are heterosexual males who long to dress as women. The play is set in a pre-Stonewall Catskill vacation bungalow, based on an actual place, where the guests can indulge their sex switch in comfort and safety.
Fierstein, a pioneer in depicting gays onstage with his autobiographical Torch Song Trilogy, structures his script much like another landmark gay work: Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band. As in Boys, a diverse crew is gathered for a party-like event and the characters are a cross-sectional representation of their world. There’s the older generation reminiscing about corsets and petticoats, the pretty boy who is quite the ladies’ man in the traditional sense, the heavyset good-time “gal” hiding behind jokes, and the frightened novice who serves as a means for the hosts, Jonathon and his sympathetic wife, Rita (a “g.g.” or “genuine girl”), to explain the codes and by-laws of the cross-gendered society. Also like the Crawley work, a crisis is precipitated when the newcomer violently assaults one of the established patrons.
There is some rich characterization and even insight here, but Casa is too much like a social and political debate rather than an honest depiction of stigmatized people attempting to find solace and comfort with each other. The main talking point is provided by Charlotte, a manipulative crusader out to make transvestitism as acceptable as apple pie by means of declaring the group’s unquestionable straightness and scapegoating gays. When Fierstein has Charlotte declare, “In fifty years, cross-dressing will be as common as cigarette smoking while the homosexuals will be as reviled as they are now,” the author’s heavy irony practically drips. After the confab, the aforementioned physical dust-up, and a forced marital crack-up between Jonathon and Rita, the drama ends with a notable lack of resolution.
Fortunately, director Joe Mantello and a sterling cast bring out the humanity in these delegates to Fierstein’s debate club. Most brilliant is veteran character actor Reed Birney as the devious Charlotte. Decked out in costume designer Rita Ryack’s fashion-forward Channel suit, he is the most ladylike of the company because he’s the most comfortable in his/her own skin. Gabriel Ebert is touchingly awkward as the virgin cross-dresser, and Patrick Page (a notable villain in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas) is his usual commanding self as Jonathon the hotel owner, but he fails to find the woman in Valentina, his alter ego. Mare Winningham endows Rita with oodles of sympathy and almost leads her out of confusing forest of words the author has placed her in.
May 23, 2014
Act One
Lincoln Center Theater at Vivian Beaumont Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
The bulk of James Lapine’s stage version of Act One, Moss Hart’s beloved memoir of his early life in the theater, concerns the arduous trek of Once in a Lifetime, Hart’s first collaboration with George S. Kaufman and his first hit, on its way to Broadway in 1930. During much of the action, the partners are whittling down the bulky script to make their satiric story of Hollywood’s frantic adapting to the new-fangled talkies more focused. Ironically, Lapine, who also directs, could have used some of his characters’ advice. While it does capture Hart’s passion for the theater and offers many pleasures, the play is more than a tad long and rambling. It’s almost intermission by the time we get to the Lifetime saga. Plus, Lapine has installed two narrators—Hart as an older man (Tony Shalhoub), and a young man (Santino Fontana) who also partakes in the action—when one would have sufficed.
Much background is covered, including Hart’s impoverished childhood, early jobs at entertainment camps in the Catskills and offices of second-rate touring companies, acting with a legendary alcoholic, and his first stab at playwriting—a ridiculous melodrama called The Beloved Bandit. It’s all rich, funny, and enjoyable, especially as staged with verve by Lapine on Beowulf Boritt’s amazing, three-level, revolving set. But the script lacks the necessary tightness to get us to cheer for Moss’s big triumph when Lifetime finally turns into a smash after nearly closing out-of-town.
Despite the paunchiness of the plot, there is much to savor here—chiefly Shalhoub’s delightfully eccentric portrayal of Kaufman, which he plays in addition to the narrator and Hart’s brutish Cockney father. Reminiscent of Shalhoub’s turn as the defective detective Monk, Kaufman has an obsessive-compulsive aversion to being touched or any physical expressions of affection. The actor perfectly times these tics, as well as the odd playmaker’s sudden explosions of temper as when he barks at a pair of chattering matrons to take their seats before the curtain of his show goes up. He also subtly reveals his paternal affection for Hart, both as Kaufman and the gruff senior Hart.
Fontana has the less showy role as the younger version of Moss, but once he takes over from an even younger iteration (Matthew Schechter), he is almost never offstage and becomes the play’s central support. He delivers on this difficult assignment with aplomb, expressing the intense desire to succeed as well as the fear of failure.
Andrea Martin plays three key roles in Hart’s life: his narcissistic Aunt Kate who introduces him to theater, his first agent Frieda Fishbein, and Kaufman’s supportive wife Beatrice. Her Aunt Kate is the most memorable of this trio, a delusional woman capable of petty rudeness but also inspiring in her love of the stage.
The large cast features numerous tasty treats—including Chuck Cooper’s bitter, broken former star; Will LeBow’s fast-talking producer; Bob Stillman’s grand director; Mimi Lieber’s sympathetic mother; and Deborah Offner’s gossipy neighbor. If there were just a few less dishes, Act One would be the perfect feast.
May 18, 2014
Satchmo at the Waldorf
Westside Theatre
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
John Douglas Thompson. Remember the name. Or better yet, get yourself to the Westside Theatre so you can witness one of the great performances in a lifetime. Satchmo at the Waldorf, adapted by Terry Teachout from his biography of Louis Armstrong, takes place in the musician’s dressing room during his performances at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, four months before his death in July 1971. Establishing the event of a one-person show is always tricky; here, Armstrong simply addresses the audience as if we were there with him. As health fails him, he reviews his life and work, particularly and most important his relationship with Joe Glaser, an outsized character and mob-connected businessman who ultimately became his manager for 35 years. And as Thompson’s Armstrong recounts and describes, he becomes Glaser, then switches back to himself.
The actor’s Satchmo is not only spot-on vocally and physically, it is filled with both the publicly seen joy and the private anger and pain. When he is presented with the song “Hello Dolly” to record, for example, his reaction to the song would not be printable in a family magazine. He talks of the disdain he experienced from his fellow black musicians, especially Miles Davis, whom Thompson’s Armstrong also “becomes,” for what they perceived as Armstrong’s Uncle Tom–like clownish persona meant to appease the white world that adopted him. He also harps on his unending discontent with Glaser as one who, despite enabling him to become an icon, used him as a vehicle for his own unsavory monetary needs.
As remarkable and fulfilling as Thompson’s Armstrong is, his Glaser makes the performance monumental, thanks to the actor’s ability to inhabit someone so radically different not only from Armstrong but probably from himself as well. This Glaser is a fast-talking, volatile, street-smart conniver whose whole existence is predicated on making the deal and always being in control. Occasionally, the play seems a bit repetitive, and rather than have it end with Satchmo talking about how “What a Wonderful World” expressed much of his own attitude toward life despite his ever-present anguish, perhaps he should have switched-on his tape recorder, a central prop throughout, and walked offstage with the song playing as the embodiment of what made him special to us. But the show here is Thompson, and the man is something special indeed.
May 8, 2014
Irma La Douce
Encores! at NY City Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
As presented by Encores!, this musical is a totally unique creation and the epitome of old-style, late– Golden Age show-making. The original Irma La Douce premiered in Paris in 1956 and ran for four years. It then appeared in London with an English translation, directed by Peter Brook. David Merrick then acquired it for a New York production where its stars were again English. The cast here numbers 13; that of its Encores! predecessor, The Most Happy Fella, numbered 37. Of the 13, one is a female: the eponymous Irma. There is no subplot, only the central love affair, which is a mix of great warmth and mistaken-identity Marx Brothers–type farce. The orchestra, always sizable in keeping with the Encores mission of focusing on the music, here numbers 10 musicians, including an accordionist.
And yet, in describing the essence and feel of the show, one has to conclude that it is very much a product of its time. In it, boy meets, loses, then gets girl. Its music includes lilting ballads, including the inevitable eventual standard (“Our Language of Love”), rousing up-tempo numbers, highlighted by the showstopping “Dis-Donc.” Its chorus assumes various roles. Storytelling is straightforward, with a happy ending. The score is richly melodic but still within the tradition of letting the songs move the story along. The tone is simplicity, but all the elements of standard Broadway fare circa 1960 are there.
Elizabeth Seal won the Tony Award in 1961 for her Irma, despite competition from Julie Andrews, Carol Channing, and Nancy Walker. Jennifer Bowles does the job here and is more than up to the challenge; her singing, dancing, and acting capture the proverbial whore with the heart of gold. Rob McClure is a delight as her smitten suitor who soon becomes rabidly jealous—of himself. As our host, narrator, and quick-change artist, Malcolm Gets is solid. The remaining 10 gentlemen (Sam Bolen, Ben Crawford, Stephen DeRosa, Zachary James, Ken Krugman, Joseph Medeiros, Joseph Simeone, Manuel Stark, Chris Sullivan, and Caleb Teicher.) cavort wonderfully in doing the work usually handled by a much larger group of both genders. Despite the success of 2011’s Once, a show of this nature in today’s musical theater is not likely to receive future revivals. Thanks, therefore, to Encores! for allowing us a look back at this heralded but somewhat forgotten pleasure.
May 8, 2014
Violet
Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Sutton Foster proves she can do anything with her brilliantly grounded yet soaring performance in Violet, the 1997 musical that had a brief run Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and is making its Broadway debut in a Roundabout Theatre Company production. (This staging by Leigh Silverman is an expansion of her concert version at Encores! last year.) Foster has previously done perky ingénues in Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Drowsy Chaperone, spunky heroines in Shrek and Little Women, and a tough but soft-hearted hustler-showgirl in Anything Goes. But her Violet is a combination of all these women. She’s a determined yet vulnerable believer, traveling on a series of Greyhounds from her rural home in 1965 North Carolina to Tulsa, Okla., in search of the televangelist she believes will heal the scar on her face and make her beautiful. Along the way she meets a pair of GIs—the cocky Monty and the sensitive Flick—both of whom fall for her.
Foster captures Violet’s desperate yearning to be normal and her steely determination to stay in control. Her strong voice is the perfect instrument for the eclectic score by composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Brian Crawley, which offers a smorgasbord of sounds not usually heard on Broadway—rock, rhythm and blues, country and western, and gospel, energetically played by the onstage band.
Colin Donnell skillfully conveys Monty’s smug confidence as well as his insecurities, particularly in “Last Time I Came to Memphis.” In Flick’s solo number, “Let It Sing,” Joshua Henry creates an inspiring message of hope and compassion delivered to Violet. There are solid characterization and vibrant vocals from Emerson Steele as young Violet, Alexander Gemignani as Violet’s loving but stern father, Annie Golden as an eccentric fellow passenger, Rema Webb as a gospel singer, and Ben Davis as the flashy TV preacher.
Leigh Silverman’s staging re-creates the intimacy of the small-scale Encores! version with the large-scale excitement of a Broadway show. With the aid of Mark Barton’s versatile lighting, David Zinn’s atmospheric bus-station set allows us to be travelling one minute and in a juke joint the next. I loved the specific details such as the snack-food stand in the background, complete with a magazine rack. It’s the little touches that make this such a moving show about everyday people.
May 10, 2014
The Velocity of Autumn
Booth Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
There’s potential for a moving and realistic examination of old age and family dynamics in Eric Coble’s slender one-act The Velocity of Autumn, but the playwright opts for sitcom laughs and gimmicks instead. In this predictable two-hander, 79-year-old Alexandra (a reliable Estelle Parsons) has barricaded herself in her Brooklyn brownstone, threatening to blow herself and the whole block up with improvised Molotov cocktails if her interfering children don’t stop hounding her to move into a nursing home or at least get some live-in help. (Not an unreasonable request.) Her estranged, middle-aged gay son, Chris (Stephen Spinella doing the best he can), scales the family tree, sneaks in a conveniently unlocked window, and negotiates on behalf of his siblings who are all for calling the cops on Mom.
Over the next 90 minutes, the two of them joke, rake over past hurts, reveal their darkest fears, and, of course, reconnect. Molly Smith’s direction is perfunctory. But, with a pair of pros like these, there are pleasures offered, including Parsons’s laser-like timing and delivery of senior-moment gags. “You know you’re old when you start making sound effects for your body” is a typical zinger. Even though most are right out of The Golden Girls, she makes them sound like sparkling gems. Spinella exudes compassion and handily avoids oversentimentalizing Chris’s depression. Too bad their vehicle is so rickety. Due to a lack of Tony noms (though Parsons is up for Best Actress in a Play), the show has posted it closing notice for May 4.
April 29, 2014
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Circle in the Square
Reviewed by David Sheward
When attending a press preview of this production, I didn’t know that Audra McDonald would be attempting a re-creation of Billie Holiday’s distinctively scratchy and emotive voice. I had assumed she would be doing an interpretation, channeling her own smooth soprano into a jazz configuration. So when McDonald stepped onto set designer James Noone’s re-creation of a small nightclub stage in 1959 South Philadelphia and opened her mouth, I was shocked. The sounds that came out were not an approximation. There was that unique combination of honey and vinegar poured over barbed wire. There was the caress and the clawing. It was the voice I had heard on innumerable recordings plaintively crooning about love, betrayal, and loneliness. For the 90 minutes of this play with music, McDonald is Holiday.
Lanie Robertson’s 1986 script, previously presented Off-Broadway with Lonette McKee, is more than a bit unimaginative. In this script, based on a real-life club engagement three months before her death at age 43, the legendary singer pours out her entire life story as if she were narrating a film biography in between performing a dozen or so numbers, downing vodka shots, and shooting heroin offstage. McDonald interacts a bit with conductor-pianist Shelton Becton as accompanist Jimmy Powers, and a cute little dog makes a cameo, but this is largely a one-woman show. Director Lonny Price uses photos and props, gorgeously illuminated by lighting designer Robert Wierzel behind a scrim, to illustrate various incidents and characters in Holiday’s past.
Despite the predictable nature of the monologues, McDonald gives them as much blood and life as she gives her amazing musical performances. Both are staged with fluidity by Price. The actor moves around Noone’s set, creating the illusion of intimacy in the vast Circle in the Square. In her nonsinging moments, McDonald expertly captures Holiday’s unquenchable humor despite abusive treatment by racist whites and abusive boyfriends. Her casual mention of Holiday’s being raped at 10 and then joking about working in a bordello at 14 are devastating in their ease. Later, Holiday’s suppressed rage is triggered by certain songs, and McDonald unleashes it to heartbreaking effect in the harrowing “Strange Fruit,” a wail in protest of the too-common practice of lynching. She’s also yearningly bittersweet with “God Bless the Child,” raucously playful in “Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer),” and romantically pensive on “When a Woman Loves a Man.”
The elegant white gown, complete with long sleeves to conceal needle marks, designed by Esosa, completes this indelible portrait of one great artist by another.
April 18, 2014
The Realistic Joneses
Lyceum Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
“Words don’t do it for me anymore,” says John, one of four characters with the same last name in Will Eno’s absurdist comedy-drama The Realistic Joneses. Unfortunately, he could be describing this audience member as well as himself. Eno has a unique way with dialogue. Non-sequiturs pop out, interspersed with oddball observations and hilarious quips. But here, as with his earlier works such as Middletown and Oh, the Humanity, the people speaking them aren’t especially compelling and the action doesn’t add up to much.
The play, which marks Eno’s Broadway debut following its production at Yale Repertory Theatre, begins promisingly. In set designer’s David Zinn’s generic backyard setting, unhappy suburban couple Jennifer and Bob Jones meet equally miserable John and Pony Jones who have just moved in down the street. The playwright supplies them with sharp banter, expertly delivered by the all-star cast consisting of Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Marisa Tomei, and Michael C. Hall. (Letts is the only holdover from the Yale engagement; the other three star names were brought in presumably to boost the box office for this show, which, under normal circumstances, would be playing a limited run in an Off-Broadway company’s season.) “We moved here for the schools,” the newcomer Pony states. When asked if they have kids, she responds, “No. John just hates stupid children.” That’s the kind of off-kilter, quirky humor that punctuates the initial scene, directed with precision by Sam Gold. As the newbies are about to leave, a dead squirrel is found atop a garbage can. Perhaps a symbol of social decay or maybe just a sight gag.
But nothing develops from there. We learn that both husbands suffer from the same rare neurological disease and it’s tearing the marriages apart. Jennifer and John flirt in the supermarket while, in parallel sequence, Bob and Pony stumble into a brief affair. This theme of dualism is rampant. The couples share a surname, a medical condition, and even furniture as the new guys acquire a cast-off lamp from their counterparts. The pairs are clearly meant to be mirror images of each other, but it’s not clear which are the “realistic” ones. Through all this confusion, the quirky quips keep coming, but they fail to illuminate the characters or their relations. “We’re just throwing words at each,” Jennifer complains at one point, and I couldn’t agree more.
Eno offers a vague glimpse of how people react to catastrophic illness in different ways—Bob with resignation, John with confusion—and the playwright seems to want to say something cosmic about the human condition. Too bad it doesn’t get anymore specific than that. The all-star quartet makes the rambling bearable—especially Tomei, who infuses the bewildered Pony with a caffeinated energy, turning on a dime from despair to hysterics. It’s one of the few highlights in this meandering muddle.
April 14, 2014
If/Then
Richard Rodgers Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp
Photo by Joan Marcus
Heaven knows Idina Menzel is talented enough to play two different roles
in a massive Broadway musical, but even she cannot save the bifurcated
and bipolar If/Then. The show is an artistic failure, but it will probably be a financial success; it’s selling out
thanks to Menzel’s Wicked and Frozen fans. (It’s also too long by a good 20
minutes.)
Borrowing heavily from the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow film Sliding Doors, this well-intentioned but ultimately befuddling and clichéd tuner
follows two different possible life-paths for Elizabeth, a 40-ish city
planner just moved to New York after 12 years of marriage in Arizona
ended in divorce. The action starts in Madison Park as the heroine must
chose between hanging out with impulsive and spunky new lesbian neighbor
Kate (the sparkling LaChanze) or attending a protest meeting with her
politically driven, bisexual college chum Lucas (the endearing Anthony
Rapp). The premise: Seemingly insignificant choices like this one can
alter your life. The script splits in two from there.
In one scenario,
the protagonist goes off with Kate, who rechristens her Lizzie, and she
finds the man of her dreams, a gorgeous doctor named Josh (the robust
but bland James Snyder). In the other she joins Lucas, who says she
should be known by the more serious moniker Beth—so we can tell them
apart, get it?—and is rewarded with a fulfilling government job but must
pay for it with unhappy love affairs. Oh, and she wears glasses as
Lizzie, to further help us differentiate between parallel plotlines.
Despite slick, clever staging by the always imaginative Michael Grief
(Menzel and Rapp’s helmer on Rent) and fun, quirky choreography by Larry
Keigwin, it’s often hard to tell what’s going on and even harder to
care. There are some memorable songs by the Next to Normal team of
composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey, as well as witty spoken
dialogue from Yorkey, but the musical seems to be saying you can either
have love or career, ladies, not both.
And then there is Menzel. She
is seldom offstage, and her powerful voice fills the Richard Rodgers. Her dramatic skills go far to add dimension to Lizzie and Beth, half
characters not even adding up to a single whole one. She runs the gamut
from comically flummoxed after sleeping with the wrong man (“What the
Fuck”) to coping with an avalanche of mixed emotions as her spouse must
leave her for a tour of duty in Iraq (“I Hate You”). It’s a colossal
performance that just might win her a second Tony and push the confused
and confusing If/Then into the profit zone.
April 9, 2014
The Most Happy Fella
New York City Center Encores! Off-Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
Laura Benanti and Shuler
Hensley
Photo by Joan Marcus
From his work in Hollywood (the songs “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,”) through his journey to Broadway (the musicals Where’s Charley and Guys and Dolls), few could have foreseen Frank Loesser’s impulse to create his own musical-theater opera. At the preshow seminar for this Encores production of The Most Happy Fella, Jo Sullivan, aka Mrs. Loesser, aka Rosabella in the original production, quoted him as calling the show “a musical with music.”
He certainly was not casting aspersions on existing or previous works in the canon, but he was merely expressing his goal of telling the story through an almost nonstop stream of music. Here, the songs are plentiful, the spoken dialogue minimal, and the sung dialogue frequent. The range of the music is almost impossible to comprehend. From some of the most breathtaking ballads ever written to two flat-out showstoppers, the inventiveness and the mix of Broadway and opera dazzles. All of this music is in the service of a story of unrequited love that transforms into a union that leaves not a dry eye in the theater.
The work on the stage at City Center is astonishing. As Tony Esposito, the aging vintner who seeks a mail-order bride, Shuler Hensley possesses a magnificent baritone and acting craft to create a luminous and heartbreaking man. Playing his much younger romantic object Amy, to whom he gives the name Rosabella, Laura Benanti is vulnerable and filled with the same longing as Tony. Cheyenne Jackson is Tony’s handsome foreman, whose photograph Tony sends in lieu of his own, and whose song expressing his own longing (“Joey, Joey, Joey”) is among the evening’s parade of highlights.
Heidi Blickenstaff (Cleo) and Jay Armstrong Johnson (Herman), the traditional and always necessary comic pair, create pandemonium in the audience with the roof-lifting “Big D.” The classic “Standing on the Corner” is executed to perfection by Johnson, Ryan Bauer-Walsh, Ward Billeisen, and Arlo Hill. All 37 performers filling the stage bring individual and collective voices to the production beyond anything else in the many years of Encores’s work. Given the size of the cast, the likelihood of a Broadway transfer would seem small. But, for those lucky enough to experience this masterpiece as presented in this production, the memories will remain.
April 2, 2014
Kung Fu
Signature Theatre Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
Kung Fu, David Henry Hwang’s new play about the late martial arts expert and actor Bruce Lee, is fairly standard bio-play fodder. There are father-son mash-ups and shattering of stereotypes. The main action follows Lee’s efforts to break out of Asian cliche casting, such as his submissive sidekick to TV’s The Green Hornet, to become a Hollywood action hero. But the real action stars of this production at Signature Theater Company are director Leigh Silverman and choreographer Sonya Tayeh. Employing the athletic talents of Cole Horibe in the title role and a cast of superb dancers, actors, and acrobats, this boilerplate drama becomes a dazzling circus of kicks, leaps, chops, and punches. It’s like a Quentin Tarantino film mixed with the Chinese Opera. Kudos also to Ben Stanton’s atmospheric lighting.
March 31, 2014
Mothers and Sons
John Golden Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The most affecting moments in Terrence McNally’s Mothers and Sons are silent. These take place when Tyne Daly as Katharine, a Dallas widow, is left alone in the gorgeous Upper West Side apartment of Cal, the lover of her late son Andre who died of AIDS 20 years earlier. Informing every movement and glance with volumes of subtext, Daly reveals Katharine’s gut-wrenching discomfort and yearning for some connection with her lost offspring. As she goes through old photographs, you can see the memories each one evokes on her subtly shifting features. But then she must speak one of McNally’s forced one-liners and the spell is broken.
That’s the trouble with this underdeveloped 90-minute piece: Daly’s acting is superb, but the dialogue and basic premise are arch and contrived. McNally deserves credit for addressing a relevant new issue: the impact of the rapidly changing attitudes toward gays. Katharine and Cal were characters in McNally’s brief sketch Andre’s Mother, part of a 1988 Off-Broadway revue called Urban Blight. The author later expanded it to a television play for which he won an Emmy. In the TV version, the two confront each other over the course of the men’s relationship. Katharine is unable to let go of her anger, blaming Cal for turning her son gay and later causing him to contract the disease associated with the “lifestyle.” In the short play, Katharine is silent and Cal rails at her for rejecting her dead son because of his sexuality. In this sequel, Cal is financially prosperous and happily married—make that perfectly married—to the much younger Will, a writer with a New Yorker short story to his credit. They have an aggressively cute 6-year-old son named Bud. Katharine makes an unexpected visit on the pretext of returning Andre’s diary to Cal, but her motives are never fully explained.
McNally gives us a lot of pointed social observation and a fair amount of sharp dialogue, but the four characters come across as representatives of political positions rather than fleshed-out human beings. In addition, their psychological backgrounds are too easily brought to the surface. Each adult is able to eloquently articulate his or her diagnosis, as if attending a therapy conference. Even little Bud is annoyingly adept at deciphering everyone’s agenda. It’s ironic that Katharine rejects the possibility of therapy since she seems intelligent enough to figure out the reasons for her rage.
By having his combatants blatantly state their positions, McNally condescends to his audience. He obviously broadcasts the conflicts rather than letting us figure them out for ourselves. Playwrights such as Donald Margulies (Dinner With Friends) and Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation) more accurately depict most human interactions by creating characters who attack their problems indirectly.
Director Sheryl Kaller moves the four actors around John Lee Beatty’s elegant setting with professional aplomb, but they still feel like participants in a debate. Fortunately, Daly convincingly conveys Katharine’s lifetime of hurt and yearning through telling, incomplete gestures such as the way she picks up a glass of scotch, decides not to drink it, and puts it down again. Frederick Weller’s Cal doesn’t reach this level of breathtaking verisimilitude, but he chronicles the man’s shattering sense of guilt over surviving the AIDS crisis and finding happiness. Bobby Steggert has a difficult time getting past Will’s politically correct smugness, but offers humor and bite. As Bud, Grayson Taylor makes for a startlingly self-possessed 6-year-old, but he seems too much like a poster child for gay families. And that’s what Mothers and Sons boils down to: a position paper rather than a realistic glimpse at how we live now.
March 29, 2014
Rocky
Winter Garden Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Rocky was never one of my favorite movies. When it came out in 1976, I found Sylvester Stallone’s story of a hard-luck Philadelphia boxer given a shot at the heavyweight title predictable and trite (and I’m from Philly). I was furious it won the Best Picture Oscar over All the President’s Men, and I never bothered to see any of the endless sequels. So imagine my shock when the musical version of the film, now on Broadway after premiering in Hamburg, Germany, had me cheering for the titular underdog to go the distance and kayo the bombastic champ.
This metamorphosis from schmaltzy to spectacular is largely due to director Alex Timbers, whose theatrical imagination has ignited such innovative productions as Peter and the Starcatcher, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Here Lies Love. Employing Christopher Barreca’s gritty sets, Dan Scully and Pablo N. Molina’s grimy video projections, and Christopher Akerlind’s versatile lighting, Timbers creates a fast-paced, heart-pounding, grown-up fairy tale.
The real charge arrives during the last 20 minutes of the show, when audience members in the first 20 rows are swiftly ushered on stage and Barreca’s massive boxing ring flies into the middle of the cavernous Winter Garden for the climactic bout. Unfortunately, patrons on the side sections must stand to view the match, expertly choreographed with ballet-like precision by Steven Hoggett and Kelly Devine. A Jumbotron with multiple TV screens descends, and all of a sudden we’re in a real match with video images and color commentary from two sportscasters high above the stage.
The score, by Ragtime veterans Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, has just the right amount of vinegar to keep it from getting too sugary. Likewise, the trim book by Stallone and Thomas Meehan wisely downplays sentiment and gets the story in fighting shape. But, on the negative side, the co-authors have spiffed up the schlubby characters. The dumb but full-of-heart Rocky, his mousy girlfriend Adrian, her self-destructive brother Paulie, the craggy manager Mickey—all become well-adjusted, likable winners too quickly. Even Terence Archie’s narcissistic champ, Apollo Creed, comes across as a generous guy.
In the title role, Andy Karl is handsomer in a glamour-boy way than the rough-edged Stallone, making him slightly unconvincing as a washed-up club fighter, but Karl overcomes his good looks and endows Rocky with streetwise charm and intense determination to claw his way out of Palookaville. This is probably one of the most demanding roles on Broadway: The actor must sing, dance, run (along with a chorus of Spider-Man-like doubles), and go 15 rounds. Karl gets a vigorous workout and emerges triumphant.
As Adrian, Margo Seibert transforms to a confident beauty a bit too easily, but she possesses a powerful, evocative voice. Dakin Matthews is appropriately crusty as Mickey, and Danny Mastrogiorgio gives Paulie needed acid, even though the script doesn’t allow him to pour on enough to make the character sting.
While this Rocky is an improvement over the film, I would have preferred just a pinch more spice. But then that final boxing scene makes up for any quibbles.
March 16, 2014
All the Way
Neil Simon Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The last time Robert Schenkkan had a play on Broadway, it was 20 years ago and covered two centuries of history. The Kentucky Cycle won the Tony, Pulitzer and just about every other major award, but similar, large-cast efforts are extremely rare for the Main Stem—that is unless they’re musicals. Now, Schenkkan is back, painting on a canvas almost as broad with an ambitious history lesson about the first year in office of President Lyndon Johnson. Kentucky was a critical, but not a commercial hit, but All the Way may land in the black, thanks largely to a dynamic Broadway debut from Bryan Cranston in the lead.
Fresh from his multiseason run on Breaking Bad, Cranston transforms himself into the arm-twisting, profanity-spouting chief executive who managed to ram a civil rights bill through a reluctant Congress and win re-election despite challenges from racist elements in his own party and the reactionary Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater. Thrusting his abdomen forward and twisting his features into an almost perpetual scowl, Cranston conveys Johnson’s relentless domination over allies and enemies alike. But he’s not all push and prod: The actor clearly relishes Johnson’s love of a good dirty story. Like a foul-mouthed Abe Lincoln, Cranston’s president dispenses outrageous, illustrative anecdotes with maximum effect, garnering audience guffaws and landing his point with precision.
Though Johnson is the engine of the play, this is not a solo effort. In addition to the ugly behind-the-scenes legislative machinations, Schenkkan gives us detailed tours of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its offshoots; J. Edgar Hoover’s shadowy FBI; and both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress. It may seem like Schenkkan has taken on too much material to fit into a single evening (The Kentucky Cycle ran six hours over two nights), but the thread is never lost and our attention never wavers.
Bill Rauch, artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival where the play premiered, deftly manipulates a cast of 20 around Christopher Acebo’s courtroom-like set. Shawn Sagady’s projections and Jane Cox’s lighting immeasurably aid in creating the numerous settings—from inside the White House to a crowded convention hotel room in Atlantic City to a lonely field where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered.
In addition to Cranston’s volcanic Johnson, the most memorable impressions are created by Brandon J. Dirden’s sonorous Martin Luther King, Betsy Aidem’s long-suffering first lady, John McMartin’s genteel but stubborn Southern senator, William Jackson Harper’s passionate Stokely Carmichael, and Eric Lenox Abrams’s fiery protestor.
Schenkkan is developing The Great Society, a sequel covering the early years of Johnson’s administration and the deepening Vietnam War, and scheduled for production at OSF this summer. If it’s anything like this robust, fascinating look at our recent politics, I can hardly wait to see it.
March 9, 2014
Love and Information
New York Theatre Workshop at the Minetta Lane Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Every time there’s a new play from Caryl Churchill, you can expect something different. From the gender-bending antics of Cloud 9 to the political and fantasy mash-ups of Mad Forest to the madness-in-verse of Serious Money, the works of this inventive British dramatist stretch our expectations of what a play can be and challenge our ideas about culture and social interaction. Her latest piece, Love and Information, now at the Minetta Lane Theatre in a production from New York Theatre Workshop, is no less daring and is perhaps the perfect play for these scattered, attention-deficit times.
Set in Miriam Buether’s narrow, graph paper-lined box of a set, the two-hour play consists of 50-odd unrelated vignettes, each running no more than a few minutes. The 15-member cast plays all manner of distracted modern citizens attempting to gain information, love, or some combination thereof. Two squealing teenagers battle over their idol’s favorite smell. A runaway wife returns to her unforgiving husband. A woman cannot cope with being in the country without Internet access. A wealthy couple quarrel over getting together with friends they each dislike for different reasons. A downsized executive angrily confronts his supervisor. One segment about a man having an affair with a virtual woman is a little too similar to Her (though the play premiered in London in 2012 before Her’s release).
The segments are grouped by numbers; a final extended segment is introduced with a mysterious plus sign. The groupings seem to reflect general themes such as secrets, language, memory, and emotions. In the final, plus-sign segment, a woman is quizzed by her boyfriend on arcane trivia. When he interrupts the cram session to tell her he loves her, she angrily demurs, “Don’t do that.” But she soon returns his affection in the middle of the questioning.
It’s difficult to grasp Churchill’s overall intention, as each of the mini-dramas is separate and unique. She appears to be saying that despite the 21st-century overload of data, the hunger for tenderness is the same as in the days of the telegraph and print newspaper. But the point is made early on, and, despite a marvelous cast and ingenious direction by James Macdonald, the rapid relay of scenes grows tedious after about 90 minutes. The effect is like binging on YouTube clips. Churchill could have cut 15 to 20 of the segments and gotten a tighter transmission of her point.
Macdonald surmounts the script’s challenges with amazing dexterity. Interspersed with Christopher Shutt’s eclectic sound score, the scenes are fluidly and quickly staged. The setting and actors appear and disappear like tricks in a magic act. The versatile company—which includes veterans Maria Tucci, Randy Danson, Karen Kandel, and John Procaccino, as well as newcomers Noah Galvin and Zoe Winters—conveys the complex emotions in a matter of seconds, sometimes with only a line or two of dialogue. Susannah Flood is particularly moving as the returning wife, pouring a lifetime of sorrow into a few moments. Too bad she gets lost in the onslaught of images.
February 20, 2014
The Tribute Artist
Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters
Reviewed by David Sheward
Any play that features the divine gender-bender Charles Busch quoting Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, Rosalind Russell in Picnic, and Bette Davis in Now Voyager starts out way ahead in my book. Yes, The Tribute Artist, the latest work from playwright-performer-diva Busch, has a few flaws, but it contains enough laughs, crazy plot twists, and gorgeous gowns worn by Busch to merit a visit.
Unlike many of his previous works such as The Divine Sister, Die Mommy Die, Psycho Beach Party, and the long-running Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Tribute Artist is set in a relatively realistic world rather than the bizarre Hollywood dreamscape Busch adores. Busch stars as Jimmy, an unemployed female impersonator, living in the Greenwich Village townhouse of Adriana, an elderly eccentric fashion designer. When Adriana dies, Jimmy disguises himself as her and, with the aid of his best friend and former fellow performer Rita, plots to sell the highly desirable property. But as Rita points out, whenever there’s a perfect scheme in the movies, there’s always one little detail the conspirators overlook that destroys their plan and sends them to the hoosegow.
That little detail arrives the form of Adriana’s alienated niece Christina (a subtle reference to Joan Crawford’s tattling daughter?) who claims the house as her own and moves in with her transgendered offspring Oliver, formerly Rachel. Matters get even more complicated when Oliver contacts Adriana’s old flame, the handsome and dangerous Rodney, and invites him over to get reacquainted. Madness naturally ensues as we discover that Jimmy is not the only one in the crazed household hiding a secret. Busch makes pointed insights about the masks people wear and changing identities amid the gags and movie references, while director Carl Andress keeps the action running smoothly without veering into slapstick. The plot gets too convoluted at times, and Mary Bacon allows Christina’s whining to become too one-note for too much of her screeching self-pitying speeches.
But as with any play written by and starring Busch, he is the center of attention and this time delivers a wildly funny turn. It’s not as exaggerated as his more over-the-top divas, but he admirably switches between the “real” Jimmy and his kooky version of Adriana. As Rita, Busch’s longtime co-star Julie Halston makes for a sharp-witted sidekick not unlike Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter. Cynthia Harris is martini-dry as the actual Adriana, Jonathan Walker gives Rodney the necessary rough edge, Keira Keeley is properly boyish as the transgendered Oliver, and, once she settles down, Mary Bacon is a sympathetic Christina.
Set designer Anna Louizos has created the perfect elegant townhouse, and Gregory Gale’s costumes are suitably chic and satiric, just like this fizzy, funny cocktail from one of our most beloved entertainers.
February 11, 2014
Bill W. and Dr. Bob
SoHo Playhouse
Reviewed by Simi Horwitz
Bill W. and Dr. Bob is strong theater for a broad-based audience, though a drama about the two men who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 will hit a special nerve with recovering alcoholics (or recovering drug abusers) who are well-versed in the movement’s history, tenets, and rituals. Indeed, the play opens with Bill Wilson (Patrick Boll) facing the audience to introduce himself, saying, “My name is Bill W. and I am an alcoholic,” and many theatergoers responding, “Hi Bill,” as if they’re attending an AA meeting. Dr. Bob Smith (Steve Brady) then greets the gathering and confesses, “Dr Bob, alcoholic, good to be here sober.” He, too, receives a collective salutation, “Hi, Bob.”
Co-written by husband and wife—doctor and psychologist—Sam Shem and Janet Surrey, the play recounts how the two long-term alcoholics met one night in Ohio and inadvertently launched the self-help movement. The high-functioning, high-IQ drunks discovered they were Vermont natives, admired William James, and had attended endless Temperance meetings in an effort to combat their alcoholism, and none of it worked. During that initial all-nighter, they shared their experiences and soon began to suspect that no one could help an alcoholic like another alcoholic who had been down the same road. They also concluded that, contrary to received wisdom, alcoholism was not a moral failing but a physical ailment, and the way to control it was through total sobriety that could be achieved only “one day at a time.” The two men forged an intense friendship as they attempted to spread the word, while battling their own demons and family crises. Each had hurt a loyal and loving wife (Denise Cormier, Anne Hedwall).
The script is earnest, but, given the topic and the goals of the creative team, perhaps that’s inevitable. Consider the authors’ stated mission: to “service the recovery community,” and to do “outreach to those who still suffer from substance abuse…and to educate about the myths of AA and other 12-step programs,” most notably the fact that AA is not a religious program but instead “spiritual.” The play has had an interesting journey during its seven-year existence. First mounted in New York at the New World Stages in 2007, it has been produced worldwide and has moved from functioning as a commercial venture to being funded entirely by tax-exempt donations made to a nonprofit, The Hazelden Foundation, a treatment center for alcoholics and drug abusers. The new business model is clearly working. Bill W. and Dr. Bob has been running at the SoHo Playhouse since July and is now slated to continue through the end of March.
Seth Gordon’s tight direction and the high level acting throughout, especially the performances of Boll and Brady, bring to life an evolving friendship between two strong-willed, complex human beings who without each other might literally have died on the street well before their time. Boll is every bit the swaggering stockbroker who celebrates success with booze and turns to the bottle with even greater ferocity in the face of failure. Brady’s Dr. Bob is an anguished secret drinker, hiding full, half-full, and empty bottles all over the house as he continues to treat patients and perform surgery, plastered. One of the most powerful moments occurs when he gets on his knees and begs his wife’s forgiveness. As part of the treatment, recovering alcoholics must “make amends” to those they have harmed.
In lesser hands the two women who play the wives could easily become shrewish caricatures. Instead, they are layered human beings who love their husbands. Cormier’s affection for Dr. Bob and her sense of helplessness are palpable. So too is Hedwall’s feeling that she is totally alone. Sarah Nealis and Michael Frederic are also impressive in multiple smaller roles, especially Frederic as a hospitalized boozer struggling with the idea of allowing Bill and Bob to help him. He is both funny and sad.
Though there are a few sluggish moments, for the most part the pacing is fast and the minimal set—designed to suggest a bar—is imaginative. The back wall is flanked with bottles, while the bar serves a dual function, flipping over to become a bed for scenes in which one is needed. This play tells an inspiring story that goes well beyond a tale of personal triumph to become a narrative about two lost souls who met almost accidentally, joined forces to experiment with an idea that had no precedent, and ultimately saved millions of lives.
February 4, 2014
Bronx Bombers
Circle in the Square
Reviewed by David Sheward
After covering football with Lombardi and basketball in Magic/Bird, playwright-director Eric Simonson steps up to the plate for baseball in his new work Bronx Bombers, now at Circle in the Square after an Off-Broadway run at Primary Stages earlier in the season. He hits a solid single, but gets caught off base while trying to steal home. If you’re a fan of the New York Yankees, this show is definitely for you, but if you’re not an aficionado of the national pastime, the second word of the title may be a bit too apt.
The play begins promisingly. In June 1977, coach Yogi Berra, the Yankees’ malaprop-spouting former catcher, is desperately attempting to heal a potentially fatal rift in his beloved ball club. During a game with their arch rivals, the Boston Red Sox, Yankee manager Billy Martin and star hitter Reggie Jackson have just had a dugout brawl in front of millions of fans. Berra has called the antagonists along with team captain Thurman Munson to his Beantown hotel suite to settle the matter calmly before it gets to the suits in the front office. Jackson is a phenomenally talented player, but he refuses to mold his personality and attitude to be a part of Martin’s team. He’s the reason the fans are showing up, so why should he conform to Martin’s restrictive playing schedule?
This is a meaty, fascinating set-up: a single room, fiery conflict, everybody with their own agenda. Somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose. Even if you’re not obsessed with baseball history, you want to know who’s gonna come out on top. But this is just the first scene of the first act. Immediately afterwards, Simonson takes a turn into The Twilight Zone. After the Boston sequence, we find ourselves in Berra’s bedroom in New Jersey where he and his wife, Carmen, are coping with a lawn full of potatoes (don’t ask) and worries over the team’s declining morale. Their dialogue is interrupted by the ghost of Babe Ruth. Then after intermission, Simonson springs a jock version of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls where, instead of feminist icons sharing a lunch with the heroine, Yogi and Carmen are hosting a dinner party with Yankee greats of the past and present.
Simonson briskly and evenly stages the action in the oval-shaped Circle in the Square, while the cast brings much energy and wit to the exercise. Peter Scolari wisely doesn’t condescend to Berra, honestly portraying his rough wisdom and delivering his mangled aphorisms with a straight face (“I may be nostalgic, but I don’t like to live in the past” is a prime example). C.J. Wilson has a bear-like charm as Babe Ruth, while Chris Henry Coffey is suavely cool as Joe DiMaggio. Francois Battiste skillfully captures Reggie Jackson’s swagger and the humble pride of Elston Howard, the Yankees’ first African-American player. Similarly Bill Dawes gets two totally different portrayals—the tired but reasonable Munson and the cocky Mickey Mantle.
There are plenty of anecdotes and much sports trivia, but the Martin-Jackson contretemps, the driving action of the first act, is never fully resolved. The play ends with a coda in 2008 as Berra attends the final ceremony before Yankee Stadium is torn down and we learn in passing that the antagonists patched up their differences. It’s an unsatisfying ending to a loose love letter to a New York institution. Maybe fervent Yankee fans will provide enough of an audience to keep the show running the bases for a few months, but don’t expect Bronx Bombers to last beyond the Tony Award playoffs.
February 6, 2014
Outside Mullingar
Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Romance is making a comeback on Broadway this season with a plethora of plays and musicals putting love matches at the forefront (First Date, The Bridges of Madison County, etc.). Perhaps the most Cupid-conscious work of all is John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, now at the Friedman Theater as part of Manhattan Theater Club’s 2013–14 season. Set in the rural Ireland of his ancestors and beautifully realized by John Lee Beatty’s sets and Mark McCullough’s lighting, it’s a tenderhearted, sharp-tongued comedy that combines the author’s trademark acidic edge with his softer, lyrical side as seen in his screenplay for Moonstruck. In that film, Nicholas Cage and Cher as a pair of mismatched loners stumble toward love, battling each other all the way. Here, Shanley creates two similar outcasts, both fast approaching middle age, reaching out toward each other but wary of the stings love can bring. It’s a heartbreaking and heartwarming valentine featuring some of the most moving acting and directing to be seen on Broadway in years.
Brian F. O’Byrne, the portrayer of isolated Irishmen in such plays as Shanley’s Doubt, Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West, and Conor McPherson’s Shining City, stars as Anthony Reilly, a dreamy chap who feels at home only in the fields of his family farm. Debra Messing (TV’s Will & Grace) is his neighbor Rosemary Muldoon. She has had a crush on Anthony ever since he pushed her when they were kids. Ostensibly, the plot device keeping them apart is a dispute over a strip of land overlapping their two properties, but the real sticking point is their own fears and stubbornness. There’s also Anthony’s crusty old dad (veteran character actor Peter Maloney), who’s thinking of leaving the farm to an American cousin, and Rosemary’s sage mother (Irish actor Dearbhla Molloy), who has just buried her husband at the start of the play and fears for her daughter’s future.
Shanley’s script is full of rich, Gaelic-flavored dialogue, mixing just the right amount of vinegary wit with the honey of poetic love talk. Director Doug Hughes perfectly balances the two elements. This is the kind of play where the characters can argue in colorful terms about seemingly trivial matters, such as Ireland’s boxing medals at the Bejing Olympics and the inconvenience of having to open two gates to get to one’s road home, yet they still discourse passionately on the nature of love, life, and mortality. “The middle is the best part,” says Aoife, Rosemary’s mother, of life. “The middle of anything is the heart of the thing.”
The four-person cast couldn’t be better. O’Byrne expertly limns the suppressed emotions of Anthony, a man unable to express or even identify his inner aches. Messing employs her expert comic timing to land Shanley’s devastatingly funny lines and wisely underplays Rosemary’s longing for her neighbor. Molloy is a warm and loving presence as Aoife. Maloney is wonderfully nasty as Anthony’s stone-hearted father. It’s all the more sob-inducing when his rough exterior cracks in a deathbed scene, which could easily have become overly sudsy. Maloney has been turning in consistently first-rate work on and Off-Broadway for decades, and it’s thrilling to see him in such a magnificent performance in this sweet Irish love letter.
January 26, 2014
Machinal
Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
A crowded subway car is the striking opening image of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s searing revival of Sophie Treadwell’s relatively obscure 1928 drama Machinal. (This is its first Broadway production in over 80 years, but there have been notable Off-Broadway and London stagings in the 1990s.) As Matthew Herbert’s jarring original score and Matt Tierney’s harsh sound design fills the audience’s ears, the curtain rises on a dark stage, and we gradually make out a mass of bodies costumed by Michael Krass in shades of grey. Jane Cox’s poetic lighting picks out the face of Rebecca Hall as the Young Girl, horrified by the relentless pace of modern city life. Suddenly she pushes her way out and Es Devlin’s box-like set revolves to an even more confining space—the stuffy office where the Young Girl works, filled with wage slaves who move and speak like automatons. This unforgettable beginning lasts only a few minutes, yet in Lyndsey Turner’s imaginative staging, it sets the tone for a frightening and riveting portrait of a woman trapped by social convention and economic necessity.
Inspired by the true story of Ruth Snyder, the first woman to be electrocuted for murder, Machinal follows the Young Woman, also identified as Helen Jones. Employed as a stenographer, she marries her dull boss because she has no other choices in the pre-feminist 1920s. Her husband, her doctor, even her own mother push her into a blank, meaningless existence, until she meets a virile drifter (played originally by Clark Gable in his Broadway debut) and they embark on a brief affair. After her lover lights out for Mexico, Helen can no longer stand her loveless marriage and murders her banal spouse by bashing him on the head while he sleeps.
Treadwell, a journalist as well as playwright, wrote the script in the sharp rat-a-tat staccato of tabloid news stories, including Helen’s stream-of-consciousness monologues. The bizarre style echoes the Expressionist style employed in Buchner’s Woyzeck, O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine. Turner creates the perfect staging for this nightmarish urban jungle with the large-for-Broadway cast playing the massive, faceless crowds crushing Helen. Even dancing couples and passers-by become menacing mobs as Devlin’s set revolves and Cox’s noirish lighting flashes by as if we were constantly looking in on that packed subway car of the first scene.
The Young Woman is something of a cipher, like Mr. Zero of The Adding Machine, caught in the merciless machinery of a changing America. But Hall, in her Broadway debut, brings her to intense life. From the initial panic-stricken dash to her slow walk toward the electric chair, Hall charts Helen’s futile struggle to escape male domination with passion and pathos. Michael Cumpsty, cast as a boring clod as he was in Roundabout’s The Winslow Boy earlier this season, properly makes the Husband into a collection of corporate clichés. Morgan Spector makes a muscular irresistible lover. Turner brilliantly has him be the only character who steps outside of the confining box representing the dark, mechanical world the Young Woman cannot escape.
January 19, 2014
The Night Alive
Donmar Warehouse at the Atlantic Theater Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
Many of Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s works such as The Weir, Shining City, St. Nicholas, and The Seafarer feature ghosts, vampires, and devils as metaphors for the forces of loneliness and bad luck that oppress his misbegotten characters. In his The Night Alive, now at the Atlantic Theater Company—in a spare and shattering production directed by the author from London’s Donmar Warehouse—there are no supernatural forces at play, only the demons of alienation and desolation besetting a group of downtrodden Dublin folk. There are no histrionics, tears, or melodrama here, just five believable people trying to cope with the bad hand life has dealt them.
The action revolves around Tommy, a middle-aged drifter, divorced from his wife, and estranged from his two children. His only asset is a van, which allows him to perform odd jobs with his loopy mate Doc, who is even more unsettled, having just been thrown out of his sister’s house. Tommy lives in a disheveled room in the house of his uncle Maurice, a gruff old man drowning himself in booze over his wife’s recent death. This dysfunctional, makeshift family is thrown into a chaotic whirlwind when Tommy rescues Aimee, a pathetic sometime prostitute, from her psychotic boyfriend Brian.
The Irish cast gives decidedly unflashy performances. Ciarán Hinds, who has been virile and commanding as Julius Caesar on the HBO series Rome and as Big Daddy in the last Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is almost unrecognizable as the unshaven, rootless Tommy. This is a guy you might pass on the street in any city and not give him a second thought. Hinds doesn’t wear Tommy’s sorrow on his sleeve, he covers it up with jokes and brash bravado. So when he bears his heart to Aimee in a brief plea for her to stay with him, it’s devastating. Likewise, Caoilfhionn Dunne doesn’t give us actress-y tears or screaming fits to demonstrate Aimee’s dodgy mental condition. She seems to be moving through a fog, which breaks only occasionally. It’s a frighteningly real depiction of a woman unable to connect and struggling to overcome her lack of affect.
Jim Norton makes Maurice’s grief over his wife and disappointment over Tommy part of the man’s skin. He has accepted his sorry lot and only bemoans it when he has got a snootful. Michael McElhatton’s puppy-ish Doc is simultaneously lovable and infuriating. The guy is endearingly naïve, yet so clueless as to drive Tommy up the wall. Brian Gleeson is appropriately menacing as the dangerous Brian. He doesn’t telegraph the character’s psychosis, which makes it all the more scary.
Kudos to Soutra Gilmour’s grubby and gritty setting and costumes, Neil Austin’s moody lighting, and J. David Brimmer who has the unique program credit of “violence consultant.” The violence, like every other element of the production, is subdued and admirably lifelike.
December 21, 2013
The Commons of Pensacola
Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage I
Reviewed by David Sheward
The characters in Amanda Peet’s The Commons of Pensacola are pretty careless. They forget their cellphones and leave condom wrappers and stacks of cash lying around where anyone could find them and advance the plot. That unconvincing looseness is just one of the problems with this featherweight little number from Manhattan Theatre Club, now at the Off-Broadway City Center Stage I. Fortunately, Blythe Danner as a down-on-her-luck matron and Sarah Jessica Parker as her devastated daughter lend their considerable skills to packing meat on the bones of this flimsy carcass.
The paper-thin story takes places in the tiny Florida condo (set designer Santo Loquasto renders the tackiness to perfection) of Judith, the wife of a convicted Bernie Madoff–like financial swindler. It’s Thanksgiving, and she’s being visited by her elder daughter Becca, a failed actor, and Becca’s much-younger boyfriend, Gabe, an investigative journalist. That job description should tell you all you need to know about the oncoming conflict. Becca is hoping to jumpstart her career by co-starring in a reality TV show with her mother, to be produced by Gabe. The gimmick would be to go around begging forgiveness from the victims of Judith’s husband. Also on hand are Ali, Becca’s estranged sister, and Lizzy, Ali’s 16-year-old daughter whose sexual precociousness causes even more complications.
An esteemed actor, Peet gives the cast plenty of histrionic opportunities, particularly Parker as Becca, and the playwright has a few intriguing themes here, such as the conflict between the entitled wealthy and those they take advantage of. But Peet barely scratches the surface, settling for predictable soap opera. We don’t even know if Judith’s husband is in jail or dead, because his fate is never discussed. Plus, Peet has a tendency to go for clichéd dialogue and low-grade humor (she has a fondness for fart jokes). Unfortunately, the comparisons to Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s much richer film on the same subject, are inevitable and unflattering.
MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow gives the material the sharpest staging she can muster, avoiding the broadness that hampers the script. Danner’s patrician manner is slightly wrong for the ballsy Judith, but she makes it work. As noted, Parker has the juiciest role; Becca gets to go to pieces at least three times during the play’s mercifully swift 90 minutes. The Sex & the City star takes these moments and runs with them, creating a complex, shattered woman out of the scraps of Peet’s meager play. Ali Marsh has a satisfying ferocity as the furious Ali, determined to find hidden funds in Judith’s apartment. Michael Stahl-David is an attractive Gabe. The actor doesn’t minimize this taker’s greedy nature hidden behind platitudes about morality and being a vegan. Zoe Levin delivers a conflicted Lizzy, and Nilaja Sun gets a few good licks in as Judith’s feisty caregiver and housekeeper. Too bad Commons is all too common.
December 11, 2013
Little Miss Sunshine
Second Stage
Reviewed by David Sheward
It seemed like a perfect match: the edgy, off-center humor and compassion of songwriter William Finn and director–book author James Lapine (the Falsettos musicals, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, A New Brain) and the dark underdog losers of the 2006 hit indie film comedy Little Miss Sunshine. But the adaptors and the source material for this new Off-Broadway musical at Second Stage Theatre never quite get in synch.
In Michael Arndt’s original screenplay, the woebegone family of misfits on its way to a toddlers-and-tiaras beauty pageant in a wrecked minivan was made up of lovable, heartbroken losers. In this adaptation, the characters are just whiny. That’s probably because Lapine’s limp book truncates the story to fit in Finn’s lengthy generic songs about how bad they all feel about their empty lives. It’s like a CliffsNotes (with notes) edition of the movie. Even the famous hilarious scene where the family gets the grandfather’s corpse past a traffic cop is missing. One of the few new elements is an unfunny running gag about a dictatorial GPS device nicknamed Map Bitch (get it?) Lapine has a few clever staging tricks employing Beowulf Boritt’s ingenious set and projection design, but they can’t overcome the shortcomings of the book and score.
The cast has the unfortunate task of filling the shoes of the film’s Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, and Alan Arkin who won a Supporting Actor Oscar as the randy grandpa. Stephanie J. Block, Will Swenson, and Rory O’Malley are among our brightest musical comedy stars, but even they have a tough time with the comparisons. David Rasche relies on sitcom clichés in the grandfather role. In two smaller parts, Jennifer Sanchez has no memories to compete with, so she emerges unscathed and riotously funny as a nasty grief counselor and bubble-headed beauty queen. She’s one of the few bright spots in an otherwise failed screen-to-stage transfer.
December 3, 2013
All That Fall
59E59
Reviewed by David Sheward
Sound and visuals combine to create a unique fused portrait of a desolate yet comic world in the current revival of Samuel Beckett’s rarely performed All That Fall. The playwright conceived it as a radio play for the BBC’s Third Programme in 1957 and resisted many entreaties, including one from Laurence Olivier, to see it performed on stage. In a recent production from Dublin’s Pan Pan Theatre Company, performed a year ago at BAM, director Gavin Quinn had the audience seated in rocking chairs while recorded voices read the script. It was a fascinating and new way to experience radio and theater. In this current staging, previously presented in London, director Trevor Nunn has the intimate, Off-Broadway 59E59 space fitted out by designer Cherry Truluck like an old-fashioned recording studio with microphones dangling overhead and at the actors’ feet. The cast holds the scripts as if performing for the radio while Paul Groothuis’s soundscape creates their movements and that of their rural community, approaching trains and a torrential downpour.
The combination illuminates Beckett’s bleak vision of an isolated Irish town where the inhabitants soldier on with the business of life despite a lack of comprehension and purpose. Not much happens during the play’s 75 minutes. Arthritic, obese Maddie Rooney must trudge to the train station to meet her blind husband, Dan. Along the way, she meets various neighbors, each with his or her own tale of woe. When she finally arrives, the train is 15 minutes late and her husband refuses to tell Maddie why. On the long slog home, the couple is beset by rain and tormenting children. A little boy runs after them to return an item Dan left on the train. Maddie asks if he knows the reason for the delay. The boy reveals a small child fell from the train—a heartbreaking echo of an earlier revelation that the Rooneys had a child who died long ago—lightning crashes, the train roars, and the play is over.
The tragic circumstances are overlaid with comic moments, such as Maddie’s almost slapstick attempts to get in and out of automobiles and bicycles on her way to the station, and Dan’s deadpan dark pronouncements on the uselessness of existence. At one point, Dan quotes their minister praising God for his mercy, and the couple bursts into wild, sardonic laughter.
Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon, two of Britain’s finest actors, perfectly capture Beckett’s comic-tragic take on the universe, as the clownishly sad Rooneys. Both balance the raucous humor with the rending ache of man’s isolation. Atkins’s flute-like tones are beautifully balanced with Gambon’s deep bassoon as Maddie and Dan slowly trudge along on the dirt path home and through life.
November 24, 2013
Fun Home
Public Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
There have been numerous major musicals about gay men and their families—from La Cage Aux Folles to Falsettoes to the current Kinky Boots—but none with a lesbian at its center. That is until now. Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel’s autobiographical graphic novel, puts the spotlight on a gay woman and her coming-out story. This moving and insightful tuner deserves to be seen beyond its current limited Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater.
The compassionate book by Lisa Kron zigzags between the present and the past. An adult Alison looks back at her dysfunctional family, while two other actors play her as a child and a college student. The main thread of the narrative is Alison’s attempt to understand her secretive father, Bruce, a closeted English teacher who indulges in furtive affairs with men and boys while married to the long-suffering Helen, a former actor burying her ambitions in community theater. Bruce also runs a funeral home—the play’s title refers to the family’s nickname for the establishment—and he has a passion for restoring old houses. Not long after Alison comes to terms with her sexuality and comes out to her parents, Bruce commits suicide by stepping in front of an oncoming truck. The narrator-Alison is wracked with guilt, believing her openness about being gay forced her dad to confront his true nature. which he would have rather kept in the shadows.
The score features warm, sweet music by Jeanine Tesori and clever, character-defining lyrics by Kron—who has previously addressed gay identity and family connections in such plays as Well, In the Wake, and her memoir solo show 2.5 Minute Ride. The songs range from riotously funny (a 1970s rock-disco takeoff in which young Alison and her brothers rehearse a TV commercial for the funeral home) to achingly tender (Alison as a little girl and a young woman joyously making self-discoveries), and sometimes are both simultaneously (a parody of The Partridge Family in which everyone ironically warbles, “Everything’s gonna be all right”).
Sam Gold fluidly stages the action on David Zinn’s elegant revolving set with the grace and ease of memory, and the exquisite cast delivers all the heartbreaking layers of this conflicted clan. As the adult Alison, Beth Malone observes and lives the action with pain and depth. Alexandra Socha is delightfully awkward as the college-age Alison, charmingly fumbling as she makes her way to self-realization. As the child-stage version of the heroine, Sydney Lucas displays remarkable poise and insight for one so young.
The neglected mother Helen has only one solo number, but Judy Kuhn pours so much sorrow and subtext into it, the song becomes a three-minute play all by itself. The father’s inner struggle between conformism and personal happiness is etched on Michael Cerveris’s eloquent features and comes through in his masterful singing voice—a powerful performance in one of the best musicals, small-scale or Broadway-sized blockbuster, in recent years.
November 18, 2013
Domesticated
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
In his Pulitzer Prize–winning Clybourne Park—a satiric rethinking of A Raisin in the Sun—Bruce Norris turned liberal assumptions about race relations inside out. Now in Domesticated, he takes the same explosive approach to feminist and sexual issues. It’s a darkly funny, dangerous comedy, staged with a firecracker wit by Anna D. Shapiro that matches Norris’s and is sure to inspire plenty of after-theater arguments.
At first, the playwright appears to be covering familiar territory. We open on a common sight in our 24/7 news-cycle world: a male politician making a public apology for sexual indiscretion, his tight-lipped spouse by his side. It looks like we’re in for another Good Wife. But the caustic playwright leads us on a labyrinthine journey through this individual couple’s hellish marriage and the minefield that heterosexual connections in contemporary America have become.
Yes, disgraced office-holder Bill is something of a pig. Not only has he been caught consorting with prostitutes, but the latest one is in a coma—possibly because of his actions. The resultant negative publicity sends his entire life into a downward spiral. His wife, Judy; daughters Cassidy and Casey; and all the women in his life (almost all of the characters are female) berate him for the entire first act. In the second act, Bill gets to have his say, and his raw, blunt defense of his actions rips apart cherished beliefs and displays the human side of a political bogeyman. Norris adds another layer of irony by making Bill a gynecologist who returns to his former profession after resigning from public life, raising even more issues of male-female conflict.
Jeff Goldblum manages to make this lout understandable, if not sympathetic. In the first act, his silent reactions to the chaos surrounding him are timed with precision for maximum comic impact, and his outbursts in the second act are equally truthful and hilarious. Laurie Metcalf gives us a dozen gripping variations on the wronged wife, ranging from outraged defender of the home front to guilty accomplice in the wreck of her marriage. A cast of veterans skillfully juggles multiple roles. Especially memorable are Mia Barron as hypocritical lawyer, Karen Pittman as an Oprah-ish talk show host, and Mary Beth Peil as Bill’s imperious mother.
The title comes from a science project by the younger daughter. Between scenes, the girl (a marvelously deadpan Misha Seo) dryly delivers a series of nasty lectures on female domination in the natural world, males of certain species becoming thoroughly submissive. It’s a riotous commentary on the wrangling between men and women in the play. Domesticated totally lacks the tameness this title suggests. It’s fierce and wild, qualities sadly lacking in too many of the mild, safe shows now on our stages.
November 12, 2013
After Midnight
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Three decades ago, there was a seemingly endless parade on Broadway and off of plotless revues celebrating the magnificent heritage of African-American song and dance from the first half of the 20th century. One hit followed another—Ain’t Misbehavin’, Sophisticated Ladies, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Eubie, and Black and Blue, just to name a few. Now After Midnight, a new show for a new generation, evokes the music of Duke Ellington during his tenure at the Cotton Club, matching and even out-dazzling its predecessors.
Derived from a series of concerts presented by Encores! and Jazz at Lincoln Center, this production re-creates a typical lightning-paced floor show at the legendary Harlem nightspot where Ellington and his contemporaries would make jazz history nightly. Fluidly staged and choreographed in 90 breathless minutes by Warren Carlyle, the revue is packed with showstoppers—including flawless tap numbers, sassy blues, sensuous solo and group songs, thrilling orchestral breaks, and much more.
As mentioned, there is no story. The only element holding the material together is a “host” character, who occasionally joins in the merriment and recites Langston Hughes’s poetry to provide context. Dulé Hill, best known for his TV work but with numerous Broadway credits, fulfills his narrator chores with style and is a superb showman in his musical numbers such as a sprightly “I’ve Got the World on a String.” American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, billed as a “special guest star,” gives her unique silky spin to such classics as “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” and “Stormy Weather.” Adriane Lenox channels blues divas Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters in two sizzling and sardonic solos. Everett Bradley recalls Cab Calloway in several humorous specialty spots. Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, and Bryonha Marie Parham impress as a vocal trio and in individual turns.
On the dance side, Daniel J. Watts, Phillip Atmore, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and Jared Grimes are tops in taps, Julius “iGlide” Chisolm and Virgil “Lil’ O” Gadson elegantly contort their bodies like figures in a Max Fleischer cartoon, and Karine Plantadit moves like a flirtatious gazelle as a good-time seductress tempting various males, then playing the girl’s spirit in a mock-solemn funeral sequence. That latter is just one of Carlyle’s inspired dance vignettes. Others include “Peckin,” wherein the guys in the chorus are decked out in top hats, white tie and tails and move close together like cards in a deck, and “East St. Louis Toodleloo,” a naughty and fun depiction of a love triangle.
Indeed, After Midnight is such an embarrassment of riches, crammed into such a fast running time, you won’t want to leave after the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars orchestra finishes “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” the socko curtain-call number.
November 3, 2013
Two Boys
Metropolitan Opera
Reviewed by David Sheward
The Metropolitan Opera enters the digital age with Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, a somber and sad study of loneliness in cyberspace. Ironically, this piece revolving around Internet chat rooms is already somewhat of a period piece. The young woman sitting next to me giggled aloud and said “Remember that?” as the characters anonymously hooked up in the pre-Facebook-and-Twitter world of 2001. This was after I had to ask her to stop texting on her I-phone, BTW. Despite the antiquated technology, Two Boys resonates with a melancholy beauty as it depicts the universal yearning for a match in an isolated environment.
Derived from actual events, the plot begins like an episode of Prime Suspect. In a bleak industrial English city, Jake, a nerdy 13-year-old boy, has been stabbed by 16-year-old Brian. Detective Anne Strawson has been assigned the case, but she doesn’t want it. “No juveniles,” she sings. It’s revealed she gave up a baby for adoption and he would be the same age as Brian. During the investigation, the computer-illiterate Anne discovers that Brian is almost constantly online, “chatting” with a bizarre cast of characters—including Jake, who claims to have hacked into government files; Jake’s worldly teenage sister; the family’s menacing gardener, Peter; and a mysterious aunt Fiona, who might be a professional spy. As Anne is drawn into this seductive, shadowy world, we discover she is just as needy and alienated as Brian and Jake. She lives with an invalid mother, drinks too much, and never dates. Anyone with the slightest degree of familiarity with computers should be able to guess the outcome, but the work is still gripping in its compassionate portrayal of desperate souls seeking love—a staple of opera for centuries.
Muhly’s lyrical score parallels the drab world of harsh reality and the fantasy atmosphere of the Net, as does Bartlett Sher’s imaginative staging. When Brian enters the chat rooms, he’s in his bedroom, illuminated only by his laptop, while Michael Yeargan’s set opens up and dozens of chorus members appear, representing the other users seeking companionship. Dancers perform Hofesh Shechter’s intricate choreography, contorting their bodies in a desperate grasping for connection through the ether, while the singers vocalize cyberspeak pleas such as “Are u there?” and “What are u doin?” Playwright Craig Lucas’s libretto seamlessly combines these abbreviated messages, along with the incomplete sentences of everyday dialogue and poetic musings on the wispy nature of computer-inspired bonds. “Ghosts in the machine,” sings Detective Strawson as she contemplates the empty world of the two boys and the one she gave up.
In one particularly haunting sequence, reality and its computer equivalent overlap as the stabbing is played out with live actors and the video of the incident is simultaneously projected over them. The boys seem overwhelmed by their huge screen images, as if the digital world had consumed them.
Mezzo-soprano Alice Coote captures the sad ache of Alice’s isolation with her lovely tones. As Brian, Paul Appleby is a bit too mature to be entirely believable as a teenager, yet his soaring tenor conveys the insecure yearnings of this confused kid. Boy soprano Andrew Pulver is perfectly cast as the mysterious Jake, his sweet voice hiding the complex passions within.
This eerie and stunning new work, now in its American premiere after a previous production at the English National Opera, addresses gay adolescents, voyeurism, and the void of modern life. Hopefully, it will inspire more operas on contemporary themes.
October 31, 2013
The Snow Geese
Manhattan Theatre Club and MCC Theater at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
You could play a great game of Spot the Literary Reference at Sharr White’s new play, now in a joint Broadway production from Manhattan Theatre Club and MCC Theater. Of course, there’s the most obvious one: Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, not only for the similarity in titular water fowl imagery, but also for the theme of comforting delusions provided by conventional society and a loaded pistol waved around in Act One which must go off in Act Two. Then there’s a load of Chekhovian points. The family refusing to face their desperate financial situation and inevitably giving up their beloved estate recalls The Cherry Orchard. They all sit around talking about how bored they are and how everyone talks and never takes any action which echoes all of the Russian master’s other stage classics. The dreamy mother has more than a touch of Blanche DuBois and Mary Tyrone in her as she indulges in drug-induced fantasies of a cherished past featuring her recently deceased husband. The feckless elder son is like the heroes of Fitzgerald, full of charm and swagger, but empty inside. Take your pick for the younger son, straining to escape the nonrealistic confines of his upbringing: either Look Homeward, Angel or The Glass Menagerie.
This second-hand plotting is surprising coming from White, whose The Other Place, also presented by MTC and MCC in separate productions in previous seasons, was such an incisive and harrowing portrait of a woman losing her grip. Here the playwright has nothing new to say; the world is changing and the play’s family is ill equipped to cope with it. How many times have we heard that one? But at least he says it in an entertaining and compelling way. The dialogue is tangy and the plotting is involving, even if more than a trifle shopworn.
The setting is the Gaesling clan’s hunting lodge outside of Syracuse, N.Y., in 1917 as America enters World War I. The family is holding a final shooting party before eldest sibling Duncan is about to ship off to France. But, younger brother Arnold is struggling with the financial disaster left behind by the late profligate father Teddy. In addition to the main conflict between the distracted mother Elizabeth and the more pragmatic Arnold over money worries, there is Elizabeth’s ultra religious sister Clarissa and her doctor-husband, Max, whose practice has dried up in xenophobic reaction to his German background and accent. There’s also the new maid Viktorya, a formerly rich Ukrainian refugee fleeing the horrors of her homeland.
Director Daniel Sullivan delivers his usual tight, professional production with elegant period sets by John Lee Beatty and costumes by Jane Greenwood. Mary-Louise Parker seems lost as Elizabeth and finds a solid through-line only in a powerful confrontation with Arnold in which this overwhelmed widow defends her seemingly floundering attitude. Danny Burstein and Victoria Clark are impressive as Clarissa and Max. Brian Cross as Arnold carries the majority of the dramatic weight with admirable skill for his Broadway debut. Evan Jonigkeit is appropriately dashing and clueless as the shining but empty Duncan. Jessica Love adds texture to the displaced housemaid, and Christopher Innvar makes the most of his single scene as Teddy in a nostalgic flashback. With such talented cooks, too bad this goose is such an unimaginative meal.
October 25, 2013
A Time to Kill
Golden Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Turning A Time to Kill, the John Grisham page-turner and star-stuffed 1996 film, into a theatrical version was probably a sound financial decision. The box office may flourish based on the original author’s reputation as a bestselling tale spinner, but the results onstage are as shallow and showy as a below-average episode of a TV procedural.
The story is manipulative and melodramatic. In early-1980s Mississippi where racism stubbornly lingers, Carl Lee Hailey, an African-American, is on trial for deliberately gunning down the two white men who brutally raped his 10-year-old daughter. Small-time street lawyer Jake Brigance takes on Carl Lee’s case against ambitious district attorney Rufus R. Buckley who plans to use the resultant publicity to fuel a campaign for governor. Grisham and Rupert Holmes, the author of this adaptation, attempt to maneuver the audience into commiserating with Carl Lee, even though it’s clear he planned the crime and was not legally out of his mind as he carried it out, despite the insanity plea Jake enters. Grisham’s hook is placing his defendant in a seemingly impossible fix and then having the idealistic defense lawyer get him out of it through a clever legal technicality. There are also themes of racial injustice, but they’re given an easy once-over by Holmes, whose script resembles a screenplay with numerous short scenes and multiple locations facilitated by James Noone’s constantly revolving set.
Director Ethan McSweeny keeps the action moving, but, despite the obvious efforts of the authors and a large cast, the characters fail to generate any sympathy. All are calculating, with the possible exception of Jake, who seems to be a pawn of just about everyone else including Carl Lee. It doesn’t help that Sebastian Arcelus lacks charisma and that the strongest reason for casting him as Jake appears to be that he has a strong resemblance to Matthew McConaughey, who played the role in the movie. John Douglas Thompson, who has given impressive performances Off-Broadway as Macbeth, Othello, and O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, has searing dramatic moments as Carl Lee, while the magnificent Tonya Pinkins is reduced to standing to the side and looking stricken as Lee’s long-suffering wife.
Former senator Fred Dalton Thompson and Tom Skerritt, actors with mostly film and TV credits, are tentative in their respective roles of a folksy judge and Jake’s rascally alcoholic mentor, while reliable stage vets Patrick Page, John Procaccino, and Lee Sellars bring solidity and conviction to their supporting turns. Ashley Williams, in her Broadway debut as Jake’s Ivy League intern, comes across as an entitled brat.
If you’re bored with watching courtroom drama on TV and can afford to blow a couple hundred bucks, you might want to take in A Time to Kill, but, for anyone with higher standards, this show would more appropriately be called Killing Time.
October 22, 2013
Romeo and Juliet (CSC)
Classic Stage Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
This is a rare New York theatre season for Shakespeare lovers. There are so many productions of Willy the Shake’s canon, you’d think we were in London. But the first two major offerings in this Bardathon have proved disappointing. Not only one, but two stagings of Romeo and Juliet are, to quote another beloved classic, stale, flat, and unprofitable. The Classic Stage Company’s mounting of the star-crossed lovers’ tale is even more butchered and bland than its star-stuffed Broadway counterpart. Like the Main Stem version featuring movie heartthrob Orlando Bloom and Tony nominee Condola Rashad, director Tea Alagic’s Off-Broadway CSC version is given the contemporary treatment, and she borrows heavily from Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film retelling, the houses of Montague and Capulet recast as warring crime families.
Alagic layers on the Mafioso theme with such a heavy hand, and she adds on so many director’s concepts and gimmicks, the title teenagers’ central love story is totally lost. In the most glaringly inappropriate choice, she adds an incestuous affair between Lady Capulet and her nephew, a hot Tybalt, which distracts from the main pair. The script is cut with a machete, so we lose several beautiful passages of prose and plot, and Marsha Ginsberg’s set is so stripped down, Juliet has no balcony. Swords are eliminated, replaced with tiny, almost invisible switchblades. During the dueling scenes, antagonists smear each other with blobs of gooey stage blood rather than believably stabbing their opponents. In the ball sequence, costume designer Clint Ramos decks everyone out as if they were backup dancers for Miley Cyrus’s twerking number at the VMAs, and, for his first encounter with Juliet, Romeo wears a giant Winnie-the-Pooh head.
This last wardrobe malfunction could have worked with the teeny-boppers kidding around with the cartoon masks and then removing them to assume grownup roles as mature lovers. But Julian Cihi and Elizabeth Olsen remain giggling or wailing kiddies throughout the evening until their characters’ tragic end, staged with limp impact by Alagic. That’s unfortunate, because both young actors display promise, exhibiting strong diction and fine basic technique, but they just don’t have the chops to fully convey the journey from childish puppy affection to consuming passion.
Most of the cast is equally lost. At first T.R. Knight makes an intriguing Mercutio, but soon Knight becomes too jittery and manic. As the nurse, Daphne Rubin-Vega plays it too much for laughs and fails to make a vital connection with Olsen’s Juliet. David Garrison and Kathryn Meisle competently portray Alagic’s subtext for Lord and Lady Capulet (anger and jealousy over the mother’s affair with Tybalt). They were probably directed to play it that way, but it steals focus from the title lovers.
Only Daniel Davis as Friar Laurence imparts the devastation of young amour destroyed by blind hatred. The first moving moment in the entire production doesn’t arrive until nearly the end. As the friar is informed his letters to Romeo about Juliet’s faked death have not been delivered, the forthcoming tragedy is written all over Davis’s eloquent and tear-stained features. When Friar Laurence is the most compelling person on stage, you know something is terribly wrong.
October 16, 2013
A Night With Janis Joplin
Lyceum Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Gee, that Janis Joplin was a nice kid. That bland and incongruous statement about the troubled, sandpaper-voiced vocalist seems to be the subtext of A Night With Janis Joplin, the latest jukebox tribute to a rock icon to reach Broadway. Sanctioned by the late singer’s estate, Joplin concentrates on her intense performances and downplays her troubled, booze-and-drug-fueled offstage life, which ended with an overdose at age 27. A hybrid of concert re-creation and half-hearted bio, the book by Randy Johnson—who also perfunctorily directed—has Joplin belt out all of her signature tunes, reveal scraps of childhood and early adult memories, and make a few vague aphorisms about music in general and the blues in particular (“Music is everything, man.” “People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers to be alone.”) The most we learn about her nonsinging life is that she loved her mother and siblings; painted a lot; sang Broadway show tunes while cleaning her home in Port Arthur, Texas; and left there for San Francisco to pursue her rock and blues dreams as soon as she could. The demons that drove her to an early death are not even touched upon.
Fortunately, the title character is played by the amazing Mary Bridget Davies, who sounds remarkably like her subject and recaptures the volcanic emotional power of such classics as “Me and Bobby McGee” and “A Piece of My Heart.” In between Davies’s solos and monologues, a quartet of supremely talented singers who play a backup group, the Joplinaires, double as iconic warblers who served as Joplin’s inspiration and influences. Taprena Michelle Augustine is a gritty Bessie Smith, De’Adre Aziza channels the smooth tones of Odetta and Nina Simone, Allison Blackwell makes for a dynamic Aretha Franklin, and Nikki Kimbrough is a sassy Etta James. (One weird choice: Playing “Good King Wenceslas” as an intro to Rodgers and Hart’s “Little Girl Blue” left me baffled. Is it supposed to be Christmas?)
To be fair, Joplin does not purport to be full-fledged portrait. It only seeks to provide Joplin fans with a reasonable facsimile of her oceanic talent; and thanks to the dynamic Davies, a supercharged band, and music director Ross Seligman, it delivers. At the performance attended, baby boomers and youngsters alike rocked, screamed, and pumped their fists as it we were all in a marvelously seedy club in the late ’60s. If that’s your vibe, groove to it, baby.
October 15, 2013
Big Fish
Neil Simon Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Big Fish is an example of what I like to call benefit-of-the-doubt shows. These contain problems with the structure and storyline, but often have enough pizzazz and heart to merit a critical pass. In Big Fish’s case, the episodic, underdeveloped book by John August (based on Daniel Wallace’s novel and August’s screenplay for the 2003 Tim Burton–directed film version) is more than compensated for by the reliable Susan Stroman’s joyful and inventive staging and an amazing lead performance by Norbert Leo Butz. Along with a handful of others like Nathan Lane, Butz is fast becoming the kind of Broadway star who is little known outside the theater but who can transform an iffy proposition into a fun evening.
He first burst into the ranks of musical leading men in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as a charming con man, and he’s playing the same kind of lovable narcissist here. Edward Bloom is a Southern good-ol’-boy traveling salesman—though what he sells is never specified—who constantly grabs the spotlight by spinning fantastic tales populated with witches, mermaids, giants, and werewolves. He’s enchanting and entertaining, but Edward’s loose relationship with the truth causes a rift with his straitlaced son Will, a just-the-facts journalist about to become a father.
The arc of August’s book is Will’s quest to find the truth behind Edward’s fanciful stories when Edward is diagnosed with cancer. August fails to provide a strong enough reason for Will’s motivation; there’s a mysterious deed found among the family papers, but it’s not a powerful enough McGuffin to get us to care about it. Besides, Will must be a pretty poor reporter if he can’t ferret out the basic biographical facts about his own dad. Perhaps the show is set in the era before the Internet. As a result of the flimsy central plot, the evening becomes a series of loosely connected set pieces illustrating Edward’s exaggerated exploits. Fortunately, Stroman, one of Broadway’s most imaginative director-choreographers, executes them with her trademark flair. She’s backed up by Julian Crouch’s delightfully cartoonish sets, William Ivey Long’s spiffy costumes, and poetic projections by Benjamin Pearcy for 59 Productions. The most startling bit of staging is the simplest: a dancer with a flame-colored skirt in one of Edward’s fantasies becomes the campfire for a Boy Scout sleepover. The show is full of smart, gasp-inducing moments like that.
Andrew Lippa’s tuneful score is another asset. Though his lyrics are a bit simplistic, the music is rich and sweet, staying with the audience long after the curtain falls. “Time Stops,” a ravishingly beautiful duet between the young Edward and Sandra, his future wife, is particularly memorable.
But the biggest fish in this pond is Butz, who splashes and swims with grace, confidence, and charisma. Even when Edward is being a jerk, as when he steals attention at his son’s wedding, Butz manages to show this man’s joy for life and generous spirit. Bobby Steggert as Will and Kate Baldwin as Sandra have exquisite voices and do what they can with their underdrawn roles, as does the rest of the cast, but all are minnows in comparisons to Butz’s smiling, lovable catfish.
October 9, 2013
Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play
Playwrights Horizons
Reviewed by David Sheward
If American civilization disintegrates in a nuclear holocaust, what will remain? According to playwright Anne Washburn, scraps of pop culture will survive and be reformed into kitschy entertainment, the underlying theme of humanity triumphing over its own destruction. That’s the basic premise of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, now at Playwrights Horizons after a run at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company of Washington, D.C. Yet there’s much more here than this TV Guide-style summation. Washburn explores the capacity for art—whether low or high—to keep us going and reflect where we’ve been.
The play takes places after an unspecified disaster has wiped out most of the world’s population along with the electrical grid. The program lists the setting as “Near. Soon.” A group of drifters are sitting around a campfire trying to reconstruct the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons. That’s the one that satirizes Cape Fear, Martin Scorsese’s 1991 thriller with Sideshow Bob, bad boy Bart’s erudite nemesis standing in for the demonic Robert De Niro. The Scorsese film in turn is a remake of a 1962 feature, and the episode also contains references to Gilbert and Sullivan and another cult cinema classic, The Night of the Hunter. In the second act, set seven years later, this collection of strangers has formed a theatrical troupe performing Simpsons episodes along with recollected commercials and Top 40 medleys for a TV-deprived, increasingly lawless society.
The third act shoots ahead 75 more years and consists of a musical performance by a descendent of the second-act company in a weird, operetta-style mashup of all the Simpsons segments. The titular character, Homer’s craven boss at the nuclear power plant (played with hand-wringing relish by Sam Breslin Wright), becomes a radioactive supervillain representing all the terror that has poisoned the earth. Bart (a spunky Quincy Tyler Bernstine) is now a stand-in for beleaguered humanity bravely overcoming this grinning menace. In this bizarre, brilliant play, Washburn shows that by telling and retelling the same stories, distorted and reformed over time, art in general and theater in particular rejuvenates the human spirit. That’s a bit weighty and belies the seemingly trivial nature of much of the action. Yet, thanks to Steve Cosson’s simultaneously dark and hilarious staging and the unself-conscious performances of a tight ensemble, it somehow works.
The ridiculous importance the characters place on throwaway details—such as finding the exact shade of grease to put on Sideshow Bob’s face—is perfectly balanced with a horrifying realistic depiction of their desperate situation. One minute they are arguing over the correct reading of a punch line, and the next their lives are threatened by unseen marauders breaking into their makeshift theater.
Neil Patel’s ingenious set, Emily Rebholz’s time-tripping costumes, and Sam Hill’s mask and wig design create a scary, cobbled-together world like a cartoon-addict’s vision of the future.
September 28, 2013
Romeo and Juliet
Richard Rodgers Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Fire is a repeated theme in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and director David Leveaux uses it in his contemporary Broadway staging of the timeless classic of star-crossed lovers, starring Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad. But that fire is employed sparingly and tamely. A few flames leap out of long poles at the opening and closing of each act, yet there’s no real danger. Sadly, the same can be said for the production. There are a few stray sparks—literally and metaphorically—but not the conflagration necessary to evoke the burning passion that consumes the doomed pair and overpowers the hatred of their respective houses.
Leveaux attempts to rev up that passion with superficial means. Romeo make his first entrance riding a motorcycle, and Leveaux casts the rival families with actors of different races: white for Romeo’s and African-American for Juliet’s. There are also balloons, a live dove, a giant bell, a cellist in one balcony and a percussionist in the other, and Shark-and-Jet knife fights. But these gimmicky touches can’t substitute for the missing ardor of the title lovers or the flatness of the staging. The chemistry between the leads and the racial tension is missing.
Bloom certainly looks the part of Romeo—curly black hair, eyes to die for, slim athletic build—but his performance is tepid. He doesn’t seem to be that excited about Juliet, and if the hero doesn’t care, why should we? Leveaux further undermines his Romeo’s opportunity for displaying vigor by cutting the climactic duel with Paris at Juliet’s tomb. A few minutes of stage time and some billable work time for the crew may have been saved, but this sequence is essential to demonstrate the protagonist’s transformation from a callow, rash youth to full-blooded adult ready to stop at nothing to be reunited with his (supposed) dead love.
Fortunately, Rashad redresses the balance with an intense, if rough interpretation of Juliet. She has trouble clearly delivering the Bard’s verse, but her intentions are there and strongly conveyed. The supporting cast is uneven. Brent Carver races through his lines as Friar Laurence. Christian Camargo is a mercurial Mercutio, setting off sizzling eruptions of fantasy during the Queen Mab speech and making us believe something is at stake during his dueling scenes (I would like to see what he would have done as Romeo). Jayne Houdyshell is a tart Nurse, while Chuck Cooper and Roslyn Ruff overemote as Juliet’s parents.
On the plus side, the original music by David Van Tieghem, who also serves as percussionist, is quite lovely. Too bad the production it accompanies is so muted.
September 20, 2013
Fetch
Clay, Make Man
New York Theatre Workshop
Reviewed by David Sheward
Can you imagine two more unlikely historical figures to form a
friendship than Muhammad Ali and Stepin Fetchit? One was the
unconquerable heavyweight boxing champion who kayoed African-American
stereotypes with brash aggressiveness, while the other perpetuated the
clichés of servility and laziness in dozens of Hollywood movies. But
playwright Will Power found a photo of the two men in a bookstore, did
copious research, and has constructed a powerful examination of race,
manhood, and identity in Fetch Clay, Make Man, now at the New York
Theatre Workshop after a previous production at the McCarter Theatre.
The time is May 1965 on the weekend leading up to Ali’s big match-up
with Sonny Liston to defend his title, with occasional flashbacks
surveying Fetchit’s rise and fall in Hollywood. Power imagines that the
cocky young boxer has summoned the older actor because the latter was
close friends with Jack Johnson, the legendary African-American champ
fictionally depicted in the boxing drama The Great White Hope. Ali wants
the secret of Johnson’s legendary, almost mystical “anchor punch,” and
he’s sure Fetchit has it locked inside his head. The actor has an agenda
as well: If he can publicize his connection to Ali, his moribund film
career could be resurrected. He might even convince the hot star of the
ring to make a movie with him.
Other players have games of their own. Brother Rashid, the bellicose
representative of the Nation of Islam, to which the former Cassius Clay
has recently converted, is intent on keeping their shining new athletic
icon on the straight and very narrow path, while Ali’s wife Sonji
wrestles with the restrictive Muslim entourage for access to her
husband. She also battles internally between the oppressive role placed
upon her by her new religion and her former free-spirited lifestyle.
Even the brash studio mogul William Fox, who appears only in Fetchit’s
flashbacks, has manipulations and machinations aplenty.
The sleek and energetic staging by Des McAnuff on Riccardo Hernandez’s
minimalist, boxing-ring set does much to alleviate the obviousness of
some of Power’s construction. Ali’s conflict with his wife is wrapped
up, and then the champ immediately demands Fetchit give him the secret
of Johnson’s irresistible punch. All of this takes places just minutes
before the big fight. It’s all bit too neat and tidy to fully deal with
the messy and complicated issues Power raises. Yet the playwright throws
a searing light on the nature of American celebrity and identity. Each
of the characters wears a mask in order to get what he or she wants, and
each actor powerfully conveys the assumed persona and the real person
beneath it.
K. Todd Freeman is a brilliantly sly Fetchit, whose real name was
Lincoln Perry and who was able to play the white man’s game and become
the first black millionaire in the movie business. You can see the
wheels turning in his head as he plays the clown when it suits him and
then almost imperceptibly becomes a lighting-fast hustler when
necessary. Ray Fisher has the physical attributes of the young Ali and
imparts his ferocious ego equally convincingly. The exciting new actor
also captures the little-boy insecurities inside the hulking boxer.
Nikki M. James delivers a fierce Sonji, John Earl Jelks a shark-like
Rashid, and Richard Masur a crafty Fox. The play is not quite a
knockout, but thanks to its director and cast, it’s a TKO.
September 13, 2013
Around the World in 80 Days
New Theater at 45th Street
Reviewed by David Sheward
Economics are forcing commercial Off-Broadway runs into near extinction. These days you need a gimmick like percussion (Stomp!), New Age hijinks (Blue Man Group), acrobatics (Fuerza Bruta), or parody (satires of Fifty Shades of Gray, Harry Potter, etc.) to sustain a show in New York’s smaller theaters. So you have to admire the producers of Around the World in 80 Days, a slick adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic 1872 adventure novel, for their pluck. Previously presented in a limited engagement at the Irish Repertory Theater in 2008, this stage version by Mark Brown shrinks Phileas Fogg’s epic attempt to girdle the globe and win a £20,000 bet into two and a half hours. The entire planet is contained in one set, and five actors play 39 characters.
Director Rachel Klein has given the proceedings a more circus-like atmosphere than that of the Irish Rep staging, with broader acting and clown-like costumes by Klein and Kae Burke. Some of the edge and wit of that previous edition is missing. Nevertheless, it’s a fun and fast-paced evening. Scenic designer Robert Andrew Kovach has created a Victorian funhouse extending into the small theater, the walls painted to resemble period scenes of exotic locations and bizarre modes of transportation. A huge clock suspended upstage left becomes a screen for projected images created by Kate Freer to accompany the story.
With a few simple props, the action shifts from Fogg’s stuffy club to the wilds of India to the snowbound Wild West. Josh Segarra makes for a properly poised Fogg; John Gregorio is a riotous Passepartout, Fogg’s enthusiastic French manservant; Vanessa Morosco (understudy for Shirine Rabb at the performance attended) is an attractive Aouda, the Indian princess the duo rescues; and Jimmy Ray Bennett and Stephen Guarino display versatility in multiple roles.
August 14, 2013
Oresteia
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Reviewed By David Sheward
Sergey Taneyev’s Oresteia is unfamiliar territory for the average operagoer. Rarely performed in its entirety since its 1895 premiere in Russia, the mammoth work is in its North American premiere, at Bard College’s SummerScape Festival. Unlike many other Russian works of the same period, this opera’s source material is Aeschylus’s Greek trilogy on the doomed House of Atreus rather than traditional Slavic tales. (Stravinsky and Strauss tackled the same legend several years later.) But given the stunning and invigorating staging by Thaddeus Strassberger, it’s surprising that no other company has taken up the challenge in more than a century.
Strassberger sets the action at the time of the opera’s composition and in the composer’s native land, drawing parallels between the interfamily murders of King Agamemnon’s bloodthirsty clan and the oppressive reign of the tsars. You’ll recall the basic plot from Classic 101: Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, only to be slaughtered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Then her son, Orestes, goaded by his sister Electra, murders his mother and her cohort in revenge. Orestes is hounded by the demonic Furies for this matricide and seeks aid from Apollo. The opera ends with a trial presided over by the goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athena.
Madeleine Boyd’s nightmarish set is crowded with a huge chorus of heavily babushkaed serfs, some of whom later morph into the zombie-like Furies. An ornately bejeweled Queen Clytemnestra (dazzling costumes by Mattie Ullrich) rules over them with an iron fist. When her son, Orestes, returns from exile to kill her, the servants rise up on his side—one of them even spits on her. Though the Communist revolution took place several decades after the opera’s completion, the production references to that cataclysmic event. In the climactic third act, Athena emerges like a beacon of socialist justice to declare an end to the cycle of violence and calls for an administration devoted to compassion as the Furies untwist themselves and become human comrades.
There are dozens of memorable touches, such as the maid constantly sleeping the corner and occasionally sipping from a flask, later to be shot as collateral damage in Orestes’s fury; Agamemnon’s ghost appearing in a mirror that his guilt-wracked wife smashes with a brick; and servants calmly serving breakfast to the doomed Clytemnestra as she chain smokes nervously.
All but one of the principal singers are native Russians; their facility with the language and powerful voices gives vibrant passion to the weighty material. Especially moving is Liuba Sokolova’s imperious Clytemnestra. Her dark, Slavic mezzo and detailed acting conveys this fiend-like queen’s journey from volcanic rage to hysterical psychosis. Mikhail Vekua displays an impressive tenor in the demanding role of Orestes. The silver-voiced Olga Tolkmit makes Electra into an impulsive teenager who quickly descends into madness. Maria Litke memorably doubles as the desperate Cassandra, Agamemnon’s trophy mistress, and Athena, the regal goddess who resolves all the loose ends of this enormous opera.
July 29, 2013
The World Goes ’Round
Bucks County Playhouse
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
Six plaintive notes from a clarinet. The same six again. Then the vamp, and the first words are sung: “Sometimes you’re happy, and sometimes you’re sad, but the world goes ’round.” And if you’re expecting to read a rational, thoughtful, and reasoned response to what follows on the stage of the legendary Bucks County Playhouse, you might want to stop right here. What follows those lyrics is an unconscionably joyous hour and 45 minutes that leaves you laughing, crying, dazzled, breathless, and thankful beyond words for the collaboration between these special performers and the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb.
This show, first produced in New York in 1991, is a compilation of songs from these two musical theater titans, who gave us, among other shows, Cabaret and Chicago, as well as a certain local anthem, “New York, New York.” The numbers alternate between rhythms and moods, and placement is astutely made based on story and theme, however different their original shows and contexts were. Thus, a young man’s plea to his girl, “Marry Me” (David Josefsberg), is followed by her expression of wondrous surprise at how it feels, “A Quiet Thing” (Michelle Aravena). “The Happy Time” (Tom Hewitt), in which the singer fondly recalls his true love recalling moments of shared happiness, prompts Emily Skinner’s take on the inadequacies of her own memory, “Colored Lights.”
The level of imagination in director Don Stephenson’s and choreographer Lorin Latarro’s staging is astounding. “Me and My Baby,” traditionally a vaudeville-style romantic duet, has the entire cast pushing toy strollers with their supposed unseen little ones and singing proudly for the first verse, then showing us the contents—the latest in hand-held technology—as they sing the second verse. “Sara Lee,” a paean to the goddess of boxed pastries, has the lovesick swain being stuffed with cake as he reaches the song’s climax. And, in “Arthur in the Afternoon,” the object of the lady’s affections is represented first by a black-shirted muscle-bound male, then by a second, and then by a female.
July 24, 2013
Pygmalion
Williamstown Theatre Festival
Reviewed by David Sheward
Anyone who has ever seen the film My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn—or a high-school or community theater production—is familiar with Henry Higgins, the arrogant phonetics expert, and Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl he transforms into a refined lady by improving her speech. Fewer are aware of the original play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s scathing 1912 comedy that emphasizes class conflict over romantic endings. In Pygmalion, after acquiring a newfound independence thanks to her superior elocution, Eliza strikes out on her own; in the musical, she returns to the domineering, immature Higgins.
In this smooth production at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts (also presented at San Diego’s Old Globe earlier this year with many of the same actors), director Nicolas Martin emphasizes the cultural divide between Higgins and Eliza and downplays their possible romantic connection because that was what Shaw wanted. The director makes it quite clear that Eliza winds up marrying the poor but socially superior wastrel Freddy Enysford Hill (he sings “On the Street Where You Live” in the tuner) by adding a short wedding scene at the play’s finish. But Martin leaves a trace of amorous regret, Eliza casting a forlorn glance at her former teacher as the lights dim.
The tension is beautifully played by Robert Sean Leonard and Heather Lind as Higgins and Eliza, but the still-youthful-at-44 Leonard fails to relish Higgins’s narcissistic nastiness. The actor delivers a dry, witty professor but not a truly memorable one. Lind, on the other hand, clearly enjoys Eliza’s guttersnipe-ish ways and frolics in her depiction of the girl’s fiery spirit. This makes her transformation to faux upper crust credible, though her Cockney is so thick and muddy at times as to be indecipherable.
This is a thoughtful staging, letting you chew on Shaw’s radical ideas about language, feminism, and social strata. The big laughs don’t arrive until the entrance of Don Lee Sparks as Eliza’s philosophically inclined, dust collector father. The actor is well-named as he lights comic fires, using Shaw’s brilliant witticisms, blasting middle-class morality and upper-class hypocrisy. Paxton Whitehead is a delightfully befuddled Colonel Pickering, and Maureen Anderman is an elegant Mrs. Higgins. Caitlin O’Connell is properly authoritarian as Higgins’s motherly housekeeper Mrs. Pearce. Leonard’s boyishness and the strictness of the maternal figures in Higgins’s life (Mrs. Higgins and Mrs. Pearce) further enforce the teacher’s immaturity and inability to form an adult relationship with Eliza, a fascinating strain from director Martin, one not brought out in most productions.
Alexander Dodge created a gorgeous revolving set, and the costumes by Gabriel Berry and Andrea Hood evoke the general period, but some of the hemlines on the ladies’ gowns are a bit short for 1912.
July 21, 2013
The Explorers Club
Manhattan Theatre Club at NY City Center Stage I
Reviewed by David Sheward
Mix a dash of Oscar Wilde with a generous serving of the Marx Brothers, stir in pratfalls and slamming doors, and you get The Explorers Club, Nell Benjamin’s perfectly intoxicating summertime cocktail, now available for imbibing courtesy of the talented theatrical bartenders at Manhattan Theatre Club. Benjamin (Legally Blonde: The Musical) combines myriad cultural stereotypes to create a wild comedy of clashing manners and mores, yet all the cartoonish characters retain their humanity. Yes, the zany goings-on are farcical and outlandish, but Benjamin keeps them honest within a bizarre framework.
The setting is the titular Victorian establishment, impeccably designed by Donyale Werle to conjure up visions of New Yorker cartoons and those Jules Verne–inspired adventure movies like Journey to the Center of the Earth. You can imagine it being the kind of place from which intrepid Britons set out on thrilling expeditions to lost cities. But the most dangerous element to cross into the stuffy lounge is not the blue-skinned native from such a godforsaken location, but the person who found him and brought him back to the club—Phyllida Spotte-Hume. As a female scientist being proposed for membership, she represents a devastating challenge to male-dominated British society.
Phyllida is not the only agent of change. Her aboriginal charge, nicknamed Luigi, slaps the queen in the face—his tribe’s form of greeting—and sets off an international incident. Meanwhile, one of the club’s more conservative members proposes that the 10 lost tribes of Israel wandered to Ireland and ignites another firestorm, this one involving the Irish furious at the suggestion that they migrate to Palestine. Meanwhile, clumsy but sincere botanist Lucius Fretway and dashingly handsome yet blindingly stupid adventurer Sir Harry Percy vie for Phyllida’s hand.
There is a hysterical piece of business where Luigi, disguised as the incompetent club barman, violently and rapidly throws full glasses at the scientists and not a drop of liquor is spilled. Director Marc Bruni executes a similarly amazing juggling act by keeping all the comic bits in the air. Benjamin’s razor-sharp satiric barbs are skillfully balanced with kooky observations on the chauvinistic attitudes of the members and a complex, inventive storyline. The cast couldn’t be better. As Lucius, the acrobatically gifted Lorenzo Pisoni evokes such cinematic scientific klutzes as Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby and Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve. It takes a really agile performer to appear clumsy while executing such intricate maneuvers as Pisoni does. He also gets across Lucius’s desperate insecurity and longing for Phyllida, a poised and sparkling Jennifer Westfeldt, who also appears in another surprise role. David Furr is rugged and oblivious as the blustery Harry, while John McMartin, Brian Avers, and Steven Boyer are amusingly dotty as the remaining members. Max Baker is properly pompous as a representative of Her Majesty’s government, Carson Elrod creates a completely credible savage Luigi, and Arnie Burton does much with two small roles: an Irish assassin and an aggrieved explorer returning to the club after surviving a hideous ordeal in Tibet. His re-enactment of the incident is just one of dozens of hilarious moments in this delightfully daffy show.
July 19, 2013
The Cradle Will Rock
New York City Center Encores! Off-Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
According to Steven Suskin’s invaluable book Opening Nights on Broadway, critical responses to the 1947 revival of this 1937 Marc Blitzstein work consisted of two raves, two favorables, two mixed, one unfavorable, and two pans. Brooks Atkinson in The Times called it “a blistering revival of the most vivid proletarian drama ever written in this country.” Robert Garland in the Journal-American wrote that all monied characters are portrayed as venal and vindictive, while the downtrodden are bright, honest, and forgiving. The form, the content, and the backdrop of this Depression-era piece help to explain the contradictory responses to it.
This politically charged allegory about unionization, labor, and management in the fictional Steeltown, U.S.A., populated by characters named Mr. Mister, Larry Foreman, Reverend Salvation, and Editor Daily, was shut down on its opening night by its creator, the Works Progress Administration, such was the fever pervading the country. Among other events, the Republic Steel plant outside of Chicago had been struck two weeks earlier, during which police gunfire killed four and injured 84. On opening night, after the WPA closed down the show, the show’s actors, musicians, and audience walked 20 blocks to another theater, where the performers, prohibited by their own union from appearing on stage, presented the show from the audience. Now, 76 years later, in a far different climate, composer Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie), in her first venture as producer of Encores! Off-Center, gives us this concert version.
First, the unquestionable plusses. Raul Esparza is one of the treasures of our theater; his entrance two-thirds of the way into the show as labor organizer Larry Foreman lifts the proceedings in a way that only a great stage actor can. He is amply assisted by another giant, Danny Burstein, as industrialist Mr. Mister; by the wonderful Judy Kuhn as Editor Daily, and Anika Noni Rose as Mrs. Mister and hooker Moll; and by a roof-raising eleven o’clock number, “Joe Worker,” courtesy of the aptly named Da’Vine Joy Randolph. The voices are exceptional, the energy is strong, and the writing comes from a place of deep commitment and integrity.
However, the book is very much a product of a very distinct time, which inevitably causes it to lose power today. It is deliberately constructed in broad, symbolic strokes, told unnaturalistically, in an uneasy mixture of burlesque and passion. And at least partly because of this form, Blitzstein seems intent on distancing us from feeling much for these archetypes.
Musically, the work is largely sung, and there is a sameness to it that adds to the distancing effect. These issues are exacerbated by director Sam Gold’s choices. This is clearly a concert; the cast sits in a row of chairs across the stage, dressed in tuxedos and elegant dresses. This allows the words and music to be heard, but at the expense of dramatic progression and storytelling through staging. And when Gold throws in physical choices, they tend to cloud the action and call attention to him. Two men portray the Mister children (brother and sister), then switch clothes for no apparent reason other than to attempt a moment of levity. A child actor plays three adult roles, likewise for no apparent reason. The use of hand mikes by the performers each time they speak further detracts from the production’s momentum. Perhaps budgetary constraints prevented general miking, but the standing downstage microphones would surely have sufficed, as they did when the actors used them.
Should The Cradle Will Rock be seen in modern times? With a chance to see performers of this caliber, presenting material of this nature and boldness, most certainly it should. However, be advised that this piece is very much an intriguing enigma, at once worthy and troubling.
July 10, 2013
Animal Crackers
Williamstown Theatre Festival
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
Can a 1928 musical farce with the slimmest of plots, held together by little but verbal and physical gymnastics, and first brought to life by the maniacal genius of the Marx Brothers, create any fireworks for an audience in 2013? If this first production of the summer from this venerable institution is any indication, the answer is an unmistakable yes.
With a cast of unfamiliar names other than the luminous Renee Elise Goldsberry, and directed by Henry Wishcamper, who also adapted the original, this company hits every right note and keeps all the comedic balls juggling in the air (book by George Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby).
The difficulties in activating a piece like this are enormous: The audience must be carried along by the inventiveness of the physical life, by the charm of the romantic interests, and by the timing and personalities of the designated clowns. Happily, those difficulties are surmounted here. Wishcamper, choreographer John Carrafa, and physical comedy director Paul Kalina bring a rich imagination to the proceedings. Goldsberry, playing art swindler Grace and onstage partner Adam Chanler-Berat as artist John supply the charm, along with the dancing romantic duo of Joey Sorge and Mara Davi. And in the Herculean task of essentially channeling Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, Joey Slotnick, Joanathan Brody, and Brad Aldous respectively all rise gloriously to the occasion.
The story, such as it is, rests on the substitution of a fake painting for a real one, followed by a mistaken replacement of the fake by another fake. All of course is happily resolved in the end, helped by a tuneful score. Integrated with the iconic “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” is the pearl “Why Am I So Romantic?” But the wit is everything here. From a Eugene O’Neill Strange Interlude moment, in which Groucho steps out of the scene to deliver an inner monologue, to a call for a flash (flashlight) that gets answered with a fish, a flask, a flute, and a frisk, to the immortal “I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know,” this is comic writing of the highest order.
I saw the show with my two children, ages 8 and 10, and my niece, 16. Each time the physical craziness kicked in, they erupted in laughter, and even when the verbal humor escaped them—e.g. Strange Interlude—the rhythm alone was enough to engage them. Timeless is timeless, and Animal Crackers remains a fixture under that heading.
July 3, 2013
The Comedy of Errors
The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
Shakespeare in 90 minutes? Yes, director Daniel Sullivan and a company of madcap actors and dancers manages to cram The Comedy of Errors, the Bard’s early adaptation of a Roman farce, into a madcap hour and a half for the first offering of the Public Theater’s free season at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. No intermission and judicious cutting leads to the brief running time and even allows for snazzy jitterbugging choreographed by Mimi Lieber.
This classic tale of two sets of identical twins causing confusion has seen a revival of interest in the last few years with productions set in contemporary London and a Caribbean playland, and adapted as a rap musical (The Bomb-Itty of Errors). Taking a reference from the Greek homeland of one set of twins (Syracuse), this production is set in 1940s upstate New York where Greyhound buses are substituted for ships and the Duke is replaced by a mafia boss. To add to the fun, the same actor plays a burly kitchen wench in drag.
The trick of this production and the challenge for Sullivan is having the lookalikes, twin masters and servants with same names separated at birth by a wreck at sea, played by the same actors. Lanky Hamish Linklater (the masters) is the timid, retiring Antipholus of Syracuse and the tough, roughnecked Antipholus of Ephesus, while an almost manic Jesse Tyler Ferguson (the servants) doubles as the goofy Dromio of Syracuse and his crude brother from Ephesus. Both these comic actors, who’ve achieved a degree of fame through TV sitcoms, demonstrate their theatrical chops by creating strongly distinctive personalities for their dual identities.
Sullivan skillfully creates the illusion they can be practically two places at the same time with his split-second staging. Toward the play’s end, the audience is just as dazzled as the characters when Linklater and Ferguson disappear into a convent onstage and then, moments later, emerge in the aisles of the Delacorte. Sullivan solves the final problem of having both sets of twins onstage simultaneously with an ingeniously simple device. He also offers a generous heaping of slapdash tomfoolery with pasta and pratfalls flying everywhere.
Emily Bergl channels tough dames like Jean Harlow as the shrewish wife of one of the masters, and Heidi Schreck finds the backbone in her shyer sister. Skipp Sudduth conveys both the avuncular, slightly threatening authority of the Duke and the ribald lustiness of the kitchen maid. Jonathan Hadary hilariously doubles as the woebegone father of the Antipholuses and a Freudian Doctor Pinch. De’Adre Aziza is a vampy Courtesan, and Becky Ann Baker makes the most of the brief but vital role of the Abbess who wraps up all the loose plot strings in this frothy, fizzy summertime treat.
June 26, 2013
Far From Heaven
Playwrights Horizons
Reviewed by David Sheward
For a few decades now, the biggest musical theater trend is transferring hit movies to the stage. It usually works with uplifting comedies, quite often when drag is involved (La Cage Aux Folles, Hairspray, this season’s Tony Best Musical Kinky Boots). But serious film dramas getting the musical treatment don’t always work. Far From Heaven, the 2002 indie weepie directed and written by Todd Haynes, has been made over by composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie, and book-writer Richard Greenberg. After a run at Williamstown Theatre Festival, the musical is now in an Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons. The results are competent but fail to convey the shattering emotions of the original.
Caucasian housewife Cathy Whitaker finds herself dealing with sexual and racial repression in 1957 suburban Connecticut when her husband, Frank, reveals his long-hidden gay yearnings and she is attracted to Raymond, her African-American gardener. The film relied on Haynes’s highly stylized direction to convey the Technicolor idealization of Cathy’s supposed blissful domestic milieu and the turmoil underneath it. Greenberg has basically lifted Haynes’s screenplay and added a few names from the period (Joe McCarthy, NY Times film critic Bosley Crowther) to provide unneeded context. Likewise, Frankel’s music is too often on the nose, giving Frank jarring jazz and Raymond slow blues and soul as their leitmotifs. Korie’s lyrics are equally obvious. This is something of a surprise because Frankel and Korie did such a brilliant job of translating another film laden with subtext (Grey Gardens) to the stage. But the source material for that show, a documentary, allowed more leeway for adaptation of which the book-writer (Doug Wright) took full advantage.
Here we are given the surface of the story without the broiling inner conflicts. In the film, the final scene finds a tragically bereft Cathy about to divorce Frank and bidding Raymond goodbye at the Hartford train station as he must leave the city because of their suspected but never consummated interracial romance. Julianne Moore as the movie Cathy was able to impart her stunning loss with a simple gesture of touching Raymond’s arm. Kelli O’Hara the stage Cathy has been given a soupy climactic aria that ends with her smiling, determined to overcome her woes and embracing her children with love and optimism. It’s not the same impact.
Director Michael Grief delivers a slick production, aided by Allen Moyer’s flexible set and Peter Nigrini’s projections (kudos also to Catherine Zuber’s period costumes and Kenneth Posner’s picture-postcard lighting). But like the book and score, the staging fails to delve beneath the glossy exterior. The silver-voiced O’Hara doesn’t fully convey Cathy’s interior war. The only moments when she connects with the material on a deeper level are the brief moments when Cathy practices happy expressions in the mirror before answering her door. Then we see the split between the artificial Betty Crocker image and the suffering real woman. Raymond has been made into a saint of intelligence and compassion, and Isiah Johnson cannot breathe life into him. Steve Pasquale delivers Frank’s anguish, but that’s all. We don’t see the façade of the loving father and husband, which would have given his story arc tension.
There are hints of wit and fire in Nancy Anderson’s Eve Arden-ish best friend, Quincy Tyler Bernstine’s sympathetic maid, Alma Cuervo’s nasty gossip, and Mary Stout and J.B. Adams in multiple roles, but this uneven show is far from dramatic heaven.
June 16, 2013
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Classic Stage Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
At first, Brian Kulick’s Classic Stage Company production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bertolt Brecht’s classic of downtrodden peasants overcoming the upper classes, is just a bit too precious. The audience enters set designer Tony Straiges’s disheveled environment suggesting an abandoned theater in Russia during one of its many political upheavals. The program describes the setting as “Ancient Grusinia but also perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union, when the hammer and the sickle were replaced by the Coca-Cola bottle.” The cast, playing a band of wandering actors, shuffles in speaking Russian, has a few comic mishaps with the lighting and sound, and then explains to the audience in heavily-accented English that the actors are presenting a fable of Grusha, a servant girl who impulsively adopts the baby abandoned by her wealthy mistress during a revolution. This reality-versus-illusion gambit appears to approximate Brecht’s famous alienation effect, wherein the viewers are made aware they are watching a play and are forced to consider the issues raised without sentiment for the characters.
Later in the play, audience members are recruited to play extras at a wedding scene and, in an embarrassing sing-along, moan the word oh in an exaggerated, “sad” Russian manner. Fortunately, these forced bits are kept to a minimum. When Grusha’s tale gets going, Kulick’s direction becomes engaging. After she has committed to adopting the baby and protecting it from marauding rebels, Grusha sacrifices everything for him, even her engagement to the soldier Simon. Following many adventures, she is forced to battle for her charge with the kid’s biological mother in a trial presided over by the peasant-made-magistrate Azdak. Even though the child is portrayed by a puppet, the emotions conveyed by the human cast create the Pinocchio-like illusion he is real.
The idiomatic translation by James and Tania Stern, along with pithy lyrics by the poet W.H. Auden and soulful original music by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), make the tale compelling. Things only slow down when Kulick interrupts with those audience-participation sequences.
The action is largely propelled by Elizabeth A. Davis, who lends Grusha a fierce intensity in spoken and sung scenes, as well as when she plays the violin. Christopher Lloyd endows the other main character, Azdak, with a rascally cunning, but the Taxi veteran appeared not to have mastered all the lines in this massive role, and his otherwise rich performance was marred by hesitancy. Mary Testa, Tom Riis Farrell, Jason Babinsky, Deb Radloff, and Alex Hurt have individual moments to shine in their multiple characterizations. This is an almost full and satisfying Circle, only broken when the director attempts to draw his own lines rather than allowing Brecht to complete it.
June 6, 2013
Murder Ballad
Union Square Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Continuing the trend exemplified by Here Lies Love and Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Murder Ballad experiments with environmental staging. Now in a commercial Off-Broadway engagement after a limited Manhattan Theatre Club run, this 90-minute rock musical places the actors amid the audience. Set designer Mark Wendland transforms the Union Square Theatre into a downtown club where the title act might happen at any moment. Patrons are seated on either side of a central playing area where even more audience members are placed at cabaret tables. The four-person cast belts out a tale of passion and jealousy on top of those tables, in the aisles, and all around us.
Julia Jordan—credited with conceived the show, authoring the book, and collaborating on the lyrics with composer Juliana Nash—has constructed an unremarkable story which would be better suited for an episode of Law & Order: SVU. Sara, a wild party girl, breaks up with her equally hedonistic boyfriend, club owner Tom. Drunkenly stumbling home, she bumps into NYU professor Michael who is as loving, steady, and unexciting as Tom was unpredictable, attractive, and dangerous. Flash forward a few years. Sara and Michael are married with a little girl, but Sara is getting bored and launches into a hot affair with old flame Tom. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize somebody’s gonna get bumped off. The gimmick is we don’t know who the perp or the vic will be. That’s perpetrator and victim to you non-L&O fans. There’s also a gorgeous, sexy female narrator commenting on the action. Without giving too much away, the ending is something of a gyp, relying on a device not introduced until the last minute.
The score is sung-through and the pulsating hard-rock songs, arranged and orchestrated with muscularity by Justin Levine, provide an adrenaline rush. Sound designer Leon Rothenberg amps up the volume so it feels as if we are in a Lower East Side booze-and-heavy-bass hangout. The trouble is Nash and Jordan’s lyrics are barely discernible for the first half of the show. Maybe it’s my aged ears, but it took a while to get used to high decibels. As noted, Trip Cullman’s staging pushes the action right in our faces and the four-person cast generates plenty of vocal and physical energy. Fortunately, we never see their figurative or literal sweat.
Will Swenson channels Tom’s egotistical, libidinal drive while Caissie Levy conveys Sara’s twisted battle between lust for Tom and affection for Michael. A robust John Ellison Conlee overcomes the challenge of keeping the decent Michael from being a wimp. Rebecca Naomi Jones infuses her utilitarian narrator role with strong purpose and delivers a shocking surprise at the end. Unfortunately, that surprise isn’t earned and shows what Murder Ballad is about—a gimmicky show. It’s a cool treat to pretend to be in a bar watching a passionate triangle unfold, but the emotions aren’t honest or conveyed in a new and revealing way, as they are in Here Lies Love and Natasha, Pierre.
May 30, 2013
Into the Woods
Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
“No One Is Alone” is the title of Stephen Sondheim’s glorious penultimate song in this show. But it is also the ideal description of the theatrical magic that is happening in Princeton between actors and audience, thanks to this reimagining by the Fiasco Theatre Company.
It starts with the set. Stretching across the back wall is a latticework of jeweled strings, with skeletal re-creations of musical instruments lining the side walls. A piano sits center stage, balanced on each side by a music stand, and costume pieces are set on stands or in boxes. The pianist (Matt Castle of John Doyle’s 2007 Broadway Company) enters and begins tuning a guitar at the piano; he is soon followed by the 10 other cast members. One of them, co-director Ben Steinfeld who plays the Baker, warns two patrons in the front that they are in the spittle zone, then assures the whole, suddenly quiet audience that it can keep talking because nothing is happening yet. Playfulness, musicality, and storytelling are thus established as the evening’s motifs.
What follows is a production of this most frequently performed Sondheim show influenced largely by the techniques of Story Theatre. Actors take turns narrating the story and play multiple roles, often changing in the blink of an eye with a mere vocal alteration or small costume piece. This method is particularly apt for a show like this, which deconstructs fairy tales as significantly darker than traditionally perceived. Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack of beanstalk fame are intertwined, along with the original characters of a childless baker and his wife. In the first act, each person, including the inevitable Witch, heads into the woods in pursuit of his or her strongest desire: a child, financial security, love. The extended title song parallels the first act ending of A Little Night Music in which the characters all express their feelings about the upcoming “Weekend in the Country.” By the end of Into the Woods’s first act, all these characters have achieved their goal—but not for long, because, in Act 2, life’s vagaries intervene, leading to fear, frustration, and death. The monster attacking all the characters is external and internal—echoes of The Fantasticks. The characters are left to ponder their paths, though Sondheim encourages them, and us, with the aforementioned “No One Is Alone” and the equally uplifting “Children Will Listen.”
The cast is pitch perfect and the quintessence of ensemble playing. Each member shines individually and collectively; particularly good are Emily Young as Red and Rapunzel, and, among the men, Andy Grotelueschen’s cow, wicked stepsister, and Prince.
At the New York premiere of Into the Woods, in 1987, reaction was divided, as it perhaps still is. But notwithstanding the musical’s faults, its power and richness are given full and even new life by this vigorous and sparkling effort.
May 27, 2013
I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers
Booth Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Bette Midler is one of the few performers in the modern world who can hold an audience without moving from a sitting position for 80 minutes. In this one-woman play, her return to Broadway after more than 30 years, that’s exactly what she does. And the character is a perfect fit: Sue Mengers, loud, unstoppable superagent to the stars who shot to the top of the Hollywood hierarchy in the 1970s. Mengers’s ballsy, steamroller personality matches Midler’s Divine Miss M, the performer’s public persona we all fondly remember from her blockbuster concerts. Both are foulmouthed, unpretentious, and endowed with perfect comic timing. At the performance attended, the audience howled at her every line (except for the old lady sitting behind me who loudly declared, “Disgusting,” after Midler as Mengers called Barbra Streisand the “c” word).
John Logan’s anecdote-laced script places the performer on a gorgeous sofa squarely in the middle of Scott Pask’s opulent Beverly Hills set. It’s hours before the high-powered guests arrive for yet another fabulous soiree, so Mengers kills time by telling the audience the story of her life. Through the magic of theater, we’ve managed to fit into her living room. One lucky patron is even invited onstage to play butler and bring the reclining star cigarettes and alcohol from a nearby breakfront. Midler sharply charts Mengers’s incredible journey from refugee from Hitler’s Germany to receptionist at William Morris to representative of such megastars as Gene Hackman, Ali MacGraw, Michael Caine, and Faye Dunaway.
Along the way, we learn Mengers’s rules for success as an agent. Among the precepts are “Know the Spouse,” which she illustrates with the cautionary tale of Steve McQueen ruining the career of his wife MacGraw. “What happened to Ali MacGraw’s career?” quips Mengers. “I’ll tell you in four words: that c—t Steve McQueen.” The jokes and stories are juicy and rich, and Midler caresses every consonant; listening is like gobbling a boxful of expensive chocolates.
Gradually, it’s revealed we’ve caught Mengers after her peak. She is not only waiting for her party guests but also anxiously watching the telephone for a call from her biggest client, Streisand, whom Mengers expects will join the growing list of those no longer in need of her representation. In a hubristic move, she placed two of her highest-flying clients, Streisand and Hackman, in a tremendous flop directed by Mengers’s husband. The defections started soon afterwards, and Mengers was no longer on the A-list. Not long after the action of the play, she retired from the biz and in 2011 died of cancer.
Midler not only zestfully delivers Logan’s zingers but also imparts the broken woman underneath the brassy exterior. Listen as her voice catches when Mengers recalls having to tell client Julie Harris she’s considered too old to play Mary Todd Lincoln in a TV movie. It’s difficult to tell where director Joe Mantello’s contribution picks up and Midler’s leaves off. Although the actor leaves the sofa only at the play’s melancholy conclusion, it’s never static, so that’s a tribute to Mantello’s craft as much as Midler’s showmanship. They make this a sinfully delicious showbiz meal you’ll want to devour despite the high calorie count.
May 25, 2013
Pippin
Music Box Theater
Reviewed by David Sheward
Andrea Martin and Matthew James Thomas
Photo by Joan Marcus
Pippin is the ultimate razzle-dazzle con job, but it’s a magnificently entertaining one. The story purports to advocate the joys of ordinary, workaday life, but only after stunning its audience with two and half hours of amazing theatricality. Bob Fosse, the director-choreographer of the original 1972 production, knew Roger O. Hirson’s wafer-thin book and Stephen Schwartz’s pleasant songs would not be enough to put over the slight story of a medieval prince seeking his identity. So he threw in every trick he knew to distract from the plot’s deficiencies. And it worked. Pippin ran for almost 2,000 performances, and Fosse won Tonys for his choreography and direction (the latter over Harold Prince for A Little Night Music).
Diane Paulus has the same idea for this amazing revival, previously presented at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where she serves as artistic director. With the collaboration of Gypsy Snider of the Canadian troupe Les 7 doigts de la main and set designer Scott Pask’s big-top environment, Paulus transforms Schwartz’s simple story, first conceived as a college show when the songwriter was a student at Carnegie Tech, into a Cirque du Soleil–type spectacle. The band of players enacting Pippin’s Candide-like voyage, memorably led by Ben Vereen in the first staging, is now a tribe of circus performers who are capable of astonishing, gravity-defying feats.
Vereen’s role of Leading Player is now taken by the slinky, sexy Patina Miller, who moves like a snake escaping from Eden and ready to take as many into hell as she can gather. Miller, who made a hit two seasons ago in Sister Act, commands the stage with her flexible limbs and electric eyes. Matthew James Thomas as the titular young hero has a devil of a time keeping up with her, but, with his sunny voice and adorable demeanor, he keeps the somewhat whiny character from falling into the trap of self-pity. Terrence Mann and Charlotte d’Amboise, married offstage, wrangle and grind deftly as Pippin’s overbearing father, the Emperor Charles, and sneaky, youthful stepmother, Fastrada. Rachel Bay Jones is charming and captivating as Catherine, the lonely widow who convinces Pippin to give up his idealistic quest for fulfillment and settle down on her farm. Jones manages to create a convincing character with clear goals (land her man) amid the slick staging.
But the show is totally stolen by Andrea Martin in the cameo role of Berthe, Pippin’s spry grandmother. The part was originally played by Irene Ryan of The Beverly Hillbillies, and she stopped the show with a sing-along of Schwartz’s peppy “No Time At All.” Martin goes her one better with an acrobatic routine you won’t believe. With only a few minutes of stage time, Martin conveys an unquenchable zest for life and conquers the audience with her warmth and impeccable timing. It’s a standout piece of a standout show, but don’t try to figure out what, if anything, is behind the tricks and the showmanship. Just sit back and enjoy the razzle-dazzle.
May 15, 2013
On Your Toes
Encores! at New York City Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
Midway through the first act of this Encores! revival, a Russian dance troupe preparing to perform the climactic classic “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” breaks into a tap-dance to the title tune. This number, followed soon by the aforementioned ballet, lifts the roof of the City Center and sends the show into the stratosphere of musical comedy heaven.
This 1936 effort, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s second after returning from an unrewarding sojourn in Hollywood, is a paean to and a sendup of classical ballet, in those days having come into vogue thanks to touring companies from Europe. The ostensible book attempts to mine the potential conflict between the traditional and the modern in dance, but it is really little more than an excuse for the feet to take over. Act One’s ballet finale “La Princese Zenobia,” the second act “Slaughter,” and the title number are the show here. And what a show these dancers put on! There are 25 of them plus two principals, Shonn Wiley and Irina Dvorovenko.
However, as completely fulfilling as all the movement is, there is of course the Rodgers and Hart score, and typically sublime it is. Besides the rousing title song, we get the incomparable “There’s a Small Hotel” sung by the young lovers (Wiley and Kelli Barrett), the acerbic “Too Good for the Married Man” (Christine Baranski and Walter Bobbie), “Glad to Be Unhappy” (Hart’s de facto personal anthem), and the haunting “Quiet Night.” And again, we get the iconic melodies of the Slaughter ballet, producing what is doubtless one of the landmarks of musical theater.
The great critic, teacher, and director Harold Clurman was known to believe that if you sat through a show patiently and long enough, something would eventually happen to reward your stay and your unflinching faith in theater. This On Your Toes is a validation of the master’s credo.
May 8, 2013
The Nance
Lincoln Center Theater at the Lyceum Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The emotional high point of this Douglas Carter Beane play is the lowest for its title character, Chauncey Miles, a comic specializing in effeminate stereotypes who is gay offstage as well. Late in the play, Chauncey has fallen on hard times. A puritanical city official has clamped down on his act in burlesque, Chauncey has driven away his adoring lover, and he is reduced to playing drag because that’s considered “masquerade” rather than lewd comedy depicting “depravity” like homosexuality. As Chauncey, Nathan Lane, dressed by Ann Roth as a tawdry stage version of an over-the-hill hooker, stands on John Lee Beatty’s marvelously sleazy evocation of a run-down grindhouse in 1937 Greenwich Village, and delivers hoary—pardon the pun—wisecracks on straight sex. A few about a Romeo deserting his character cause the pitiful performer to break down, but he gathers himself up and goes on with the act. What’s amazing about this scene is Lane is hilariously funny while he breaks our hearts.
It’s a stunning performance combining impeccable comic timing with intense pathos. Lane’s Chauncey believes the homophobic cant of the day. He sees himself as worthless and undeserving of love and the only way he can find it is to get the burlesque crowd, which includes gay patrons, to laugh at him. His much younger boyfriend, Ned, believes there’s nothing wrong with his sexuality, which sends Chauncey into the night seeking quick, anonymous tricks. The split eventually drives them apart, and Lane viscerally registers the loss, though Chauncey tries to hide it with gags and bravado.
That the core of Beane’s script: Chauncey’s struggle to maintain his gay identity on his own terms, limited and twisted as they are. The playwright sometimes lays it on a bit thick with the political overlay, having his characters represent points of view rather than complex emotions. “In 80 years, who’s gonna ask about how we pay for Social Security?” says Sylvie, one of Chauncey’s stripper co-workers with Communist sympathies. Here, as in a few other points, the playwright seems to be speaking rather than one of his creations.
But there are major compensations. Beane is brilliantly witty and knows how to write dialogue that’s simultaneously funny and moving. There’s also the fascinating device of employing burlesque sketches that comment on the real-life action. All these are smoothly and sensitively staged by Jack O’Brien on Beatty’s Edward Hopper-esque revolving set. Jonny Orsini is a sweet Ned, comfortable in his masculinity, yet eager to camp it up with a Tallulah Bankhead imitation. Lewis J. Stadlen as Efram, Chauncey’s straight stage partner, doesn’t shy away from his character’s repulsion to homosexuality and blends it with an appreciation for Chauncey as a talent and a person. Cady Huffman, Andrea Burns, and Jenni Barber earn laughs and admiration as they bump and strut as the strippers. But the engine that drives The Nance is Lane, and he guns it for all its worth.
May 6, 2013
The Big Knife
Roundabout Theatre Company at American Airlines Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
To cover a scene change during the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Big Knife, Clifford Odets’s 1948 cynical drama of Hollywood’s Golden Age, sound designer David Van Tieghem has created a marvelous audio parody of a typical period movie, headlined by the fictional protagonist, hot star Charlie Castle. It’s meant to be melodramatic, unlike the savagely realistic action of the play which chronicles Charlie’s struggle between his art and the soulless commerce of Tinseltown. This is a common theme in Odets, particularly in his earlier Golden Boy, revived earlier this season, in which the forces of refined classical music and brutal moneymaking battle within the compact frame of violinist-boxer Joe Bonaparte.
The trouble is the play is as hokey as any assembly-line flick churned out by Marcus Hoff, the tyrannical studio head who is Charlie’s main nemesis. Odets has many valid points about the box-office-driven nature of America’s film industry and the country in general, which are even more pertinent in today’s multimillion-dollar movie biz. But he cheapens his purist views with a stale-even-for-1948 plot gimmick.
Charlie is under pressure from Hoff to renew his contract for a hefty salary, but the actor, who yearns to make quality films, will be forced to perform Hoff’s dreck for 14 years. The star’s idealistic wife, Marian, threatens to leave him if he signs. That should be strong enough—the temptation of several millions versus starving for your art, with the love of a good woman thrown in. But Hoff blackmails Charlie with releasing the truth about a hit-and-run accident in which the actor caused the death of a child. When a gabby starlet with knowledge of the secret threatens to spill the beans, things get pretty ugly pretty quick. Charlie pompously compares himself to Macbeth and Hamlet, as Hoff and his minions involve their star and his wife in darker doings, finally ending with an over-the-top finish worthy of the schmaltzy Warner Bros. epic.
Fortunately, Doug Hughes’s production is tight and honest, gorgeously realized by John Lee Beatty’s elegant set and Catherine Zuber’s stylish costumes, and the cast plays the hokey plot truthfully. Bobby Cannavale and Marin Ireland underplay Charlie and Marian’s earnest integrity, but they cannot overcome Odets’s soapy excesses and contrived dialogue. “Could you ever know I yearned for a world of people to bring out the best in me,” Charlie proclaims toward the end. Who talks like that?
Given the delicious nastiness of Odets’s venom toward the movie industry, the villains get the choicest parts. Richard Kind dives into the Sam Goldwyn–like Hoff with relish. Reg Rogers is a slithering snake as Hoff’s henchman, the ironically named Smiley Coy. Brenda Wehle makes the gossip columnist Patty Benedict a fearsome force with a hatchet for a tongue. They do their best to sharpen this Knife, but it’s still got an old, dull blade.
April 28, 2013
Jekyll & Hyde
Marquis Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
Why revive Jekyll & Hyde, the hideous, overwrought 1997 musical based on the classic thriller? The only saving grace of the original production was the intense, sexy performance of Robert Cuccioli in the leading role. The music by Frank Wildhorn is generic, and the usually witty Leslie Bricusse’s book and lyrics are simplistic (Wildhorn and Steven Cuden also contributed to the lyrics). The show ran an astonishing 1,543 performances, mostly due to stunt replacement casting including David Hasselhoff, but it never turned a profit. So why bring it back if it was neither a financial nor an artistic success in the first place?
The new production does nothing to enhance the musical’s reputation. The raison d’être seems to be showing off the stars’ singing. It’s an example of the American Idol-ization of Broadway. Depth of story or characterization doesn’t mean a thing as long as the leads hit their money notes and hold them for at least 20 seconds. Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis as the titular split personality and Grammy nominee Deborah Cox as the luckless prostitute Lucy were obviously hired to draw undiscerning fans of their breathy pop-oriented voices. Maroulis screams his way through both characterizations, alternating between approximating Bricusse’s former writing partner Anthony Newley as Jekyll and a screechy Alice Cooper as Hyde. Cox at least has a decent sound, but her acting lacks dimension. And, if you thought the British accents in Kinky Boots were weak, they’re all over the map here. Maroulis sounds as if his dialect coach gave him a DVD of My Week With Marilyn and told the star to imitate Kenneth Branagh imitating Laurence Olivier, while Cox’s Cockney comes and goes.
The supporting company fares somewhat better. Teal Wicks makes a convincingly devoted Emma, Jekyll’s long-suffering fiancée, and Richard White lends solid support as her father. Brian Gallagher earns a few welcome laughs as a foppish victim of Hyde’s murderous rage. But Laird Mackintosh mugs up a storm both vocally and dramatically as Jekyll’s best friend. Ironically, the most consistent and strongest limning is done by James Judy in the tiny role of Poole, Jekyll’s loyal butler.
Director-choreographer Jeff Calhoun, who has done much more interesting work with Newsies and Grey Gardens, does a competent job, but no more. He tries too hard to inject scary thrills with Jeff Croiter’s nightmarish lighting and Daniel Brodie’s horror-film projections instead of trusting the story. You could watch American Idol and then American Horror Story for free on your DVR and get the same effect.
April 18, 2013
Matilda the Musical
Shubert Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
From
the moment you enter the Shubert Theater and take in Rob Howell’s
whimsical Scrabble tile–studded set, you know you’re in for a good time
at Matilda the Musical.
Based on Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book, this hit from London
offers a nasty, twisted, and totally joyful view of youngsters and the
adjustments they face on the path to adulthood. You see, little Matilda
is a genius, devouring dozens of books in a week, making up spellbinding
stories, and learning Russian in her spare time. But her horrible
parents are too absorbed in ballroom dancing and television to cherish
or even recognize her intellectual gifts. So they bundle her off to a
hideously oppressive school presided over by the terrifying headmistress
Miss Trunchbull, a fiend who makes Miss Hannigan of Annie
fame look like Mary Poppins. There, Matilda finds the ideal teacher in
the shy Miss Honey, who encourages her and whom the brilliant child
rescues from dire circumstances.
That’s the gist of this marvelously inventive musical, given a fun
and fast-paced staging by director Matthew Warchus and choreographer
Peter Darling. Book writer Dennis Kelly keeps Dahl’s cartoonish
sensibility in developing the outlandish characters and the bizarre
dimension they inhabit: a funhouse version of the real world where smart
little girls must find ways to stick up for themselves.
The score, by Australian comic-musician Tim Minchin, captures this
wacky flavor when it needs to (most of the time), but also expresses the
wistful sentiments of childhood games and friendship without getting
treacly. This duality is best exhibited in the opening number, “Miracle”
(as in “My mommy says I’m a miracle”), and the Act 2 paean to
innocence, “When I Grow Up.” In the former, spoiled brats smash one
another with cake and rampage in torn superhero costumes during a
nightmarish birthday party. In the latter, the same kids glide over the
audience on swings, sweetly warbling about a fantasized version of
maturity where they can do whatever they want, including watching
cartoons and eating candy all day. Warchus and Darling stage these
opposing views of kids with appropriate details—manic energy and mayhem
in “Miracle” and subtle simplicity in the “Grow Up.”
Four young actors alternate in the
role of Matilda. Milly Shapiro (at the show reviewed) is a pint-sized
Maggie Smith with the face of a Norwegian saga. This little dynamo
skillfully imparts the character’s dazzling intelligence and taste for
mischief, as well as her raging indignation at injustice. Her cry of
“That’s not right!” seems to reach out of the theater onto 44th Street.
Gabriel Ebert and Lesli Margherita are unabashedly and delightfully
vulgar as the uncaring parents. Lauren Ward as Miss Honey and Karen
Aldridge as Mrs. Phelps, a friendly librarian who craves Matilda’s
cliffhanging tales, are sweetly supportive.
But Bertie Carvel in drag as the grotesque Miss Trunchbull nearly
steals the show. Resembling the living gargoyle from a famous episode of
Jonny Quest
(Howell also designed the clever costumes), Carvel creates a monster
who still retains a touch of femininity. It’s a brilliantly funny
performance in one of the best musicals Broadway has seen in years.
April 16, 2013
The Mound Builders
Signature Theatre
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
“Attention must be paid.” Linda Loman’s exhortation on her husband’s behalf in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman may come from a particular context, but it applies in support of another of America’s foremost playwrights, Lanford Wilson. Poet, humanist, consummate artist, Wilson, in his command of language, creation of imagery, and, most important, precision and depth of characterization, never ceases to draw us to him, even when, as in this 1975 play, flaws appear and threaten to derail the journey. Fear not: This man of the theater and of the world will never let that happen.
In an odd sense, one can compare Wilson’s jumping-off point in this play—an archeological dig in Blue Shoals, Ill.—to Alfred Hitchcock’s MacGuffin. This was Hitchcock’s device for launching the plot; its contents and importance were never revealed. Similarly here, we never really discover what the searchers are looking for, or what particular historical significance it might have. We get suggestions and hints, but because of obstacles both natural and human, that’s all we get. What emerges, however, is a confluence of human needs, longings, joys, sorrows, and behavior, all brought forth by the event of the dig.
Wilson, particularly here, was not a writer with a great penchant for plot. His strengths and interests were language and people. Lisa Joyce’s pregnant Jean, a gynecologist married to the archeologist (Zachary Booth) obsessed with learning the secrets of these mound builders—the eponymous tribe under excavation—carries not only her unborn child but also a history of depression and confusion. The other lead archeologist (David Conrad) and his wife (Janie Brookshire) are hanging together by the slenderest of threads; she in turn is clearly involved with the owner (Will Rogers) of the land on which the dig is occurring. He is an unfulfilled outsider, inheritor of the land from his father, with plans to build a Holiday Inn with attendant shopping and an interstate highway. When he learns that the diggers have thwarted those plans, his response brings the play to a searing and unexpected climax. Also present is the drug-addicted sister (Danielle Skraastad) of the cuckolded archeologist, a formerly prolific writer who sees much of what the others, except Jean, cannot. As a writer of acute theatrical sensibility, Wilson succeeds here in tying all of his strands together in a totally satisfying way.
Flights of poetic moments interrupt the story’s flow, however, and often, particularly as voiced by the sister, those moments sound more author-generated than character-generated. Occasionally, one begins to wonder where the play is going. But again, in the hands of this craftsman and humanitarian, we are brought back to the world that Wilson strives to create. That world is aided immeasurably by Jo Bonny’s direction. The mise-en-scène moves seamlessly from scene to scene, with great theatricality. And the production is wonderfully abetted by the sound design of Darron West; with its original music and sound effects, a mood of strangeness and longing is continually evoked.
The Signature Theatre is an invaluable New York institution that specializes in excavating American plays; this play about that very topic is a fitting and welcome choice.
April 4, 2013
Lucky Guy
Broadhurst Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
It’s chaotic, it’s grandiose, there’s too much drinking, smoking, swearing, sensationalism. Jeez, it’s just too much altogether. But, like the crazed tabloid journalism era of the 1980s and ’90s that it depicts, the late Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy is a wild, satisfying ride full of danger and passion. It’s not a neat little package, attempting to get a point across about the state of modern media. There’s a throwaway line late in the second act about how print is dead, having been killed by TV, but it’s almost an afterthought.
This sprawling, episodic biography of the gutsy, gritty columnist Mike McAlary is a tribute to the kind of bare-knuckled reporting and the flawed lucky guy himself. Ephron’s frequent movie collaborator Tom Hanks makes his Broadway debut in the title role. Eschewing his nice-guy film image, Hanks tears into the red meat of the part with relish. From his first entrance when he directly asks an audience member, “This is New York. Who’s relaxed? Are you relaxed?” to a tearful speech for newsroom colleagues when McAlary wins a Pulitzer Prize, Hanks grabs us and never lets go. He may as well start dusting his shelf for a Tony Award to go alongside his two Oscars.
The play is a bit of a jumble, starting in a smoke-filled bar with a chorus of rough-edged reporters singing an Irish folk song and then telling McAlary’s story as he progresses from lowly reporter relegated to the wilds of Queens to the highest-paid columnist in the city. He grabs the front page but also gets into trouble on occasion. A false report about a rape victim results in a lawsuit, which nearly ruins his reputation. Characters frequently trade off narrator duties, interrupt each other to get their viewpoints in, and assume different personae (“You play Jimmy Breslin,” one editor shouts to a bartender).
Ephron reportedly intended it as a film or TV script, and that certainly shows the rapid pace and short scenes. Fortunately, director George C. Wolfe knows a thing or two about staging unwieldy scripts in a cinematic fashion. Remember Angels in America and Bring in ’da Noise…? Aided by David Rockwell’s fluid, suggestive sets and the black-and-white, in-your-face video projections of Batwin + Robin Productions, Wolfe gives Guy the necessary freight-train intensity. He also knows when to hit the brakes—as in an uncomfortable, heart-wrenching moment when McAlary interviews a ravaged Abner Louima (an understated Stephen Tyrone Williams) about being sodomized by rogue cops.
Despite Hanks’s megawatt movie-star status—he gets the only solo curtain call—this is not a one-man show. Rare for Broadway nonmusicals, the cast boasts 16 additional actors, many of whom are given moments to stand out. Courtney B. Vance is sandpaper and satin as an editor who loves McAlary but hates his excesses. Deirdre Lovejoy is foul-mouthed and funny as one of the few women in a man’s world. Danny Mastrogiorgio lends fire to a jealous colleague.
Playing McAlary’s alcoholic mentor, Peter Gerety makes his scenes with Hanks have such a relaxed authenticity, the two seem like just a couple of guys vigorously debating journalism after quite a few drinks rather than a pair of experienced actors on a Broadway stage. The only one who really gets lost in the mayhem is Maura Tierney as McAlary’s long-suffering wife, Alice. She is relegated to the role of occasionally complaining, but ultimately supportive spouse, one of the few dull characters in an otherwise explosive production.
April 5, 2013
It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman
Encores! at New York City Center
Reviewed by Jerry Beal
Encores! has done it again. This bastion of American musical theatre revivals in concert stagings—now in its 20th season of producing three to four pieces each year—flies high with this production. First staged in 1965, the show ran into the tongue-in-cheekiness of a new television upstart, Batman, and lasted just 129 performances. Thanks to a following that appreciated its wit and jaunty score, its cachet has never fully disappeared, and in this reincarnation its charms are clear and numerous.
A delicate and astute blend of camp and sincerity, Superman revels in its affection for its source material (music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, book by David Newman and Robert Benton based on the comic strip Superman). Clark Kent is still the unprepossessing and mild-mannered reporter with a yen for fellow reporter Lois Lane. She continues to pine for the unavailable “Man of Steel,” who wishes he could reveal his true self to her.
Into this familiar mix comes Max Mencken, the in-house lothario whose charms pale next to Superman’s prowess, and Abner Sedgwick, the mad—as in angry—scientist whose neglect by the Nobel Prize Committee has set him on the path to destroy Superman and thereby, in his mind, raise his own status. Add to the brew a very decent co-worker pining for Lois, a love-struck siren whose unrequited longings for Max cause her to make a pass at Clark, and an ensemble of regular folk with an ever-present and very human need for a hero, all assembled by director John Rando in a visually and tonally arresting creation, and Encores! continues to demonstrate its ability to bring our native art form’s past to a generation rooted in falling chandeliers and feline junkyards.
A cast of relatively unfamiliar Broadway performers glows under Rando’s staging and Rob Berman’s music direction. Edward Watts achieves a perfect blend of strength and loneliness as our hero. Jenny Powers brings out Lois’s similar ambivalence. David Pittu is the showstopping Sedgwick, Will Swensen does his best to channel the immortal Jack Cassidy as Max, and the two bring down the house as they share their villainous dreams in “You’ve Got What I Need.” Perhaps the show’s most known song, “You’ve Got Possibilities,” is given all its due by Alli Mauzey.
Once in a very rare while, the series comes a cropper, either because the material is problematic—On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Golden Boy—or because the production falters. But when, as in the past two years—Fiorello, Merrily We Roll Along, Pipe Dream, and now It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman—the combination of material and production meshes in every way, the value of this institution remains indisputable and incomparable.
March 26, 2013
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Cort Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
The new Broadway adaptation of Truman Capote’s beloved 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s breaks at least two cardinal rules of show business: 1) Never work with animals, and 2) Never try to re-create an iconic screen role on stage. It didn’t work for On the Waterfront or The Graduate. Here, the first maximum is only violated slightly. A feline named Vito Vincent is carried on during a party scene, pulls focus, and then leaps into the wings. He later reappears briefly and easily steals a climactic and tearful farewell sequence. The second infraction about icons is a bit more serious. All comparisons may be odious, but Audrey Hepburn owned the part of heartbreaking party girl Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards’s 1961 film version. Emilia Clarke of HBO’s Games of Thrones makes a game go of it, but fails to enchant or capture Holly’s vulnerability.
Richard Greenberg’s script may adhere more closely to the source material than Edwards’s movie, but it lacks the joy, fizz, and fun of the film and the wistful sadness and sweet nostalgia of Capote’s original. The novella takes place in World War II Manhattan where the dazzlingly attractive and effervescent Holly pursues millionaires and cocktails as a semi-prostitute, cadging $50 bills for cab fare and powder-room expenses. She represents the glamour and excitement of unbridled youth and unapologetic nonconformism, and is observed by a narrator—a stand-in for Capote—an aspiring writer whom she names Fred after her adored brother.
The story is a mood piece and character study, the shadowy Capote figure admiring Holly as a devilish friend or delightfully sinful sister. In the movie, the author becomes Paul, a definite heterosexual played by George Peppard, whose frustrating but finally successful romance with Holly gives the plot a much needed arc. In Greenberg’s version, the narrator is bisexual with leanings toward Holly and other young men. The connection between the two leads is unclear and unresolved, so we don’t really care what happens to them.
Cory Michael Smith handles the thankless narrator role with aplomb, though his honeysuckle-Southern accent comes and goes. There are a few bright spots in the large cast of Broadway veterans—including Suzanne Bertish who doubles up as a prudish, eccentric neighbor and a stern magazine editor; Lee Wilkof as a fast-taking agent; Tony Torn as an idiotic playboy; Murphy Guyer as Holly’s much older husband from her native Texas; and reliable George Wendt of Cheers fame as a sympathetic bartender.
Sean Mathias, who staged an earlier, unsuccessful Breakfast in London with Anna Friel, does a competent enough job of traffic management, but there’s no sizzle, sex, or spark in his staging. The original music and sound design of Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen are the only elements to succeed in re-creating a bygone era and weaving a spell of sophistication and charm so sadly lacking in the production as a whole.
March 23, 2013
Talley’s Folly
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
Reviewed by David Sheward
A common thread among America’s greatest playwrights is a compassionate view of our dreamers and outcasts. Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Lanford Wilson definitely belong in this class of poetic realists. In recent revivals, Broadway audiences have seen the sexual misfits of Williams’ Gothic Deep South (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Inge’s repressed Midwest (Picnic) howl out their frustrations. Now the Roundabout Theatre Company gives us Wilson’s sunnier but no less complex portrait of a conflicted nation through a seemingly simple love story in a captivating production at the Off-Broadway Laura Pels Theater. His Talley’s Folly was a huge hit for his home-base theater company, the dearly missed Circle Repertory Theatre, winning a Pulitzer Prize and running on and Off-Broadway in 1979 and ’80. You could argue that a large measure of the play’s initial success was due to the lead performance of Judd Hirsch, the star of a popular TV show (Taxi), but Michael Wilson’s sterling staging proves there is more to this enchanting valentine than juicy acting opportunities.
The setting is a ruined boathouse beautifully designed by Jeff Cowie and poetically lit by Rui Rita. It’s July 4, 1944, and Jewish-European immigrant Matt Friedman is preparing to propose to Sally Talley, the 30-ish daughter of a prominent family in a small Missouri town. (The Talleys are also featured in Lanford Wilson’s other exquisite plays Talley and Son and Fifth of July.) Both are lonely souls and don’t quite fit into the traditional American template of picket fences, apple pie, and nuclear families in a soon-to-be post-atomic age. Matt lost his entire family when he was a child, and Sally is the outcast of the Talleys—not only for her outspoken progressive views but also for an illness that has rendered her barren. These two reach out to each other in a gentle push-pull mating dance of attraction and fear. Matt tells us the play is a waltz, and that’s just how Michael Wilson directs it: slow, elegant, and lilting.
Danny Burstein is marvelous as the talkative Matt Friedman, slyly gaining the audience’s confidence in direct address, charming us and Sally with self-deprecating wit and unabashed sentiment. Sarah Paulson has the less showy role of Sally and therefore the greater acting challenge. She does not speak directly to us and must display Sally’s insecurities through subtle furtive side glances and halting speech. But both are proficient at hiding their characters’ fearful, bruised interiors with funny rapid patter and bravura bluster. When their defenses are finally down, we see these actors expose the quivering loners with a compassion equal to that of the playwright.
March 12, 2012
Passion
Classic Stage Company
Reviewed by David Sheward
Originally conceived as half of a double-bill of one-act musicals, Stephen Sondheim’s Passion seemed more of a brief chamber opera rather than a full-blown Broadway musical when it premiered in 1994. Director John Doyle, who has staged innovative interpretations of the legendary composer-lyricist’s Company and Sweeney Todd, gives the piece a more appropriately intimate setting at the Off-Broadway Classic Stage Company for this revival. Doyle also designed the spare setting—a bare platform with a few furnishings and props—which perfectly serves this slight story. In the original staging, Donna Murphy’s volcanic performance and Sondheim’s gorgeous music made up for the frailness of the story, but here the production is just as wispy.
Based on Ettore Scola’s film Passione D’Amore, James Lapine’s book follows the amorous trials of handsome Italian cavalryman Giorgio in a remote 19th century village. Separated from his lover, the married and beautiful Clara, he draws the borderline-obsessive attention of his commanding officer’s unattractive, invalid cousin Fosca. He initially rejects the manipulative, passive-aggressive Fosca, but gradually realizes her selfless affection is stronger than that of Clara who refuses to leave her husband and small son.
In the original production, the stunning Murphy was made over to be truly ugly. Here Judy Kuhn is just plain, so the conflict within Giorgio between judging love by appearance or spirit is not as powerful. However, Kuhn delivers a moving performance, dramatically and vocally, but she fails to match Murphy’s depth of complexity. Similarly Ryan Silverman has the voice to put across Giorgio’s songs, but the actor lacks the necessary passion—pardon the pun—to make us care about him. Melissa Errico makes a lovely Clara, but the role is tangential to the main thread. Veterans Stephen Borgadus, Tom Nelis, Jeffrey Denman, and Ken Krugman do their best in support.
Given Doyle’s previous productions of Sondheim shows in which all the characters played instruments, I expected Giorgio, Fosca and the whole regiment to be parading through the CSC space like a military band. He keeps the staging relatively free of such devices, with the exception of having the soldiers play all the roles—including female ones—in a flashback detailing Fosca’s disastrous marriage to a fake nobleman. Such ideas may have saved this Passion from the uninvolving staging. However, the score is beautifully played, so kudos to music director Rob Berman and orchestrator Jonathan Tunick who also worked on the original production.
March 3, 2013
The Madrid
Manhattan Theatre Club at NY City Center Stage I
Reviewed by David Sheward
Late in the second ac