My recent theatre-going experiences included Simon Stephens' "Heisenberg"on Broadway, Peter Brooks "Battlefield" at BAM Harvey and Neil LaBute's showcase for Judith Light, MCC's "All The Ways to Say I Love You" at the Lucille Lortel.
Let me start with Simon Stephens' "Heisenberg," the standout of the lot (sorry, Peter Brook). I haven't seen his adaptation of Mark Haddon's "A Curious Case of the Dog in the NightTime" on Broadway but I did see his Young Vic "A Doll's House" at BAM two years ago and was not impressed. "Heisenberg," though, has made me a fan. The play is sharp, fast and emotionally moving in a way that few recent Broadway or off-Broadway plays have been. The part of the unstable and needy Georgie Burns is tailored for Mary-Louise Parker. Her work is deeper and more nuanced than I have seen before in her theatrical performances and gone is the blank vacuousness that embodies many of her film roles. Her performance is alive and tactile. We feel her very nerve endings and want so hard for her to find some sort of peace. And Denis Arndt ,who comes to Broadway for the first time in his 77 years as an actor, is smart and sexy (yes!) and makes us believe the improbable chemistry between these two lonely souls. Mark Brokaw directs the play with a few minimal pieces of multipurpose furniture and stark lighting but we move easily from a London train station, to butcher shop, to flat to Hackensack, New Jersey. I say, see it while you can.
Another play tailored for a specific actor is LaBute's one-woman play "All the Ways to Say I Love You," directed by Leigh Silverman. Judith Light,whose recent Broadway performance in "Other Desert Cities" was outstanding, has the task of making a pretty standard and unoriginal play move along and hold our interest for an hour. She is wonderful but no actor could have brought this play, about a sexually frustrated and unhappy high school teacher with a secret, home. The ending has a good punchy twist but it does not excuse the dull material of the play. Plus, I admit that I spent a good deal of the play distracted by her alarming thinness and wondering if she is battling some life-threatening disease.
Lastly, "Battlefield" at the BAM Harvey is good, solid Peter Brook. It is a condensed version of "The Mahabharata" an Indian opus (here adapted by Brook's collaborator screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, about the nature of human existence, war and destruction, and finding inner piece. That's a lot to cover in a mere 90 minutes. In Brook's first time around with "The Mahabharata", in the mid-1980's, took up 3 1/2 hours on stage and film. Perhaps it is shorter because Brook is now 91 has discovered that less is more? The play, with superb performances by an international cast of four and the on-stage presence of the musician Toshi Tsuchitori (also a frequent Brook collaborator), still feels slow, almost sleepy with it's dark lighting and even darker performers but, like all of Brook's work, it is thoughtful and ultimately illuminating.
