Reader, I walked out... Ayad Akhtar's newest offering, "Junk" at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, does not feel new at all. The play, directed by Doug Hughes and starring the terrific musical actor Steven Pasquale, means to transport us back to the 80's junk bond madness. Instead of transporting us, however, it mires us in a swamp of stagnant writing and direction. I spent much of the first act bored with the action and observing the badly tailored suits the actors. These "masters of the universe" would have been wearing beautifully fitted bespoke attire. That I had so much time to obsess on the suits is.. . well... you get where I'm going. Last thought: Steven Pasquale dropped out of the Encore's production of "Brigadoon" at City Center with Kelli O'Hara. Mistake.
At the other end of the spectrum, Manual Cinema's "Mementos Mori" at BAM Fisher is delightful. The small stage is awash in screens, lighting equipment and projectors, the kind used in schools in the 60's and 70's before the advent of computers and white boards. The stage has the feel of a low-budget movie set gone wild. Actors interact with the shadow puppets, cinematic techniques, sound and even live music played on stage by a trio of very talented and versatile musicians. At the start this shadow puppet mystery feels creaky and old fashioned but the company draws us into the fast paced story of love, loneliness and death. More please.
Then there is "Office Hour" by Julie Cho and directed by Neel Keller at The Public Theatre. Sue Jean Kim as Gina is superb as an adjunct professor of creative writing at a minor university who tries to connect to a student, played serviceably by Ki Hong Lee. However the framing of the play is tedious and unnecessary, beginning with two other adjunct teachers warning Gina to be careful of a withdrawn student in her class whose writing is violent and often shocking. Cho ought to have contained the play to the office hour of the title. "Office Hour" only truly comes alive when Cho plays out the possible scenarios that could happen during that hour between a professor and a possibly violent student alone in a room in an empty building. I'll leave those to your imagination. Cho weakens this with the final scene of the play, an encounter with one of the other adjuncts, a poor and necessary framing device.
"Illyria," also at The Public, written and directed by Richard Nelson (he, of the well acted but excruciatingly dull Apple and Gabriel plays) is divine. Nelson creates imaginary scenes between Joe Papp and a coterie of actors, directors and others as Papp tries to create what would become The Public Theater. The time is1958. We are behind the scenes as Papp and his motley crew which includes a young Colleen Dewhurst, composer David Amram and stage manager Bernie Gersten as they do battle with the city to keep Shakespeare free in Central Park, face down the House of Un-American Activities Committee and attempt to remain friends with each other. The play intentionally models itself on the mumble core movies of the 90's which is not necessarily the smartest move. I get the intent to create intimacy with quiet naturalistic dialogue but several of the older audience members at the performance I attended left mid-play because they couldn't hear (despite the flock of mikes hanging on threads over the actors head)s. But I liked it, I really did, especially the performance of the John Magaro as an extremely cranky and domineering Papp.
