Ah, January

Fiasco's "Twelfth Night" at CSC started out my year on a leaden foot. This is probably the most performed of all of Shakespeare's plays for the simple reason that it is almost impossible to ruin.  Well, it happened.  I am so unimpressed with this company that was born out of the Brown/Trinity MFA acting program.  In an interview in the program, the company founders, Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld,who also are co-directors of and actors in the play, state that they have been "heavily influenced by the work of Cicely Berry and Andrew Wade" who "opened our eyes to the purpose, structure, and rhythm of prose." Aside from the fact that Shakespeare ain't exactly prose, nowhere in the current production is this in evidence. One would think that classically trained actors, even in the U.S. would have more of feel for and understanding of the language of Shakespeare.  Instead, the actors, most notably Emily Young who plays Viola,  awkwardly gesticulate and punch out their words.  The only solace I found was in the musical interludes.  I plan to pass on this company's future productions.

But all is well in the world after seeing "Farinelli and the King" at the Belasco Theatre.  The play, written by Claire Van Kampen and directed by John Dove, is a sensory joy.  Mark Rylance has always been too hammy a theatre actor for me but the part of the manic-depressive Philippe V of Spain is tailor-made for him (quite literally as Ms. Van Kampen is his wife).  This is a character of great excess and Rylance plays it to the hilt.  Farinelli, the castrato who Queen Isabella introduces into his life to soothe his madness, is portrayed by the actor Sam Crane as well as two countertenors (there are no longer any castrati for obvious reasons), Iestyn Davies and James Hall.  The conceit works to perfection.  As the singer(s) Farinelli sings his gorgeous arias he is shadowed by the actor dressed as his twin.  Melody Grove as Isabella is the queen who loves her husband beyond imagination but is as seduced by Farinelli's voice as he is.  I last saw her as the title character in the "The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart" at the McKittrick Hotel where she masterfully held the stage. The production design is exquisite and the lighting draws us into the period.  I read somewhere that the production is lit exclusively by candlelight.  I don't know if this is true but have no reason to doubt it.

"The Children" directed by James Macdonald at the the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre is another British import. Lucy Kirkwood's post-apocalyptic play set in a cottage on Britain's east coast in the aftermath of nuclear disaster has already garnered her awards, most recently the U.K. Writer's Guild Award for Best Play.  The play which stars Ron Cook, Francesca Annis and Deborah Finley debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2016.  A couple, retired nuclear physicists played by Ron Cook and Deborah Finley are visited by a friend, Francesca Annis also a nuclear physicist, who they haven't seen in years.  As the play unfolds we begin to suspect the reason for her visit. No spoilers here but it's not a happy one.  The acting is what lifts the play above the material (which is good but perhaps overpraised).  I was especially pleased to see Deborah Findlay in another meaty role, having recently had the great fortune to see her in Caryl Churchill's "Escaped Alone" at BAM,  another play with a post-apocalyptic bent.

Best and Worst of 2017

There was so much good theatre this past year if you were lucky enough to catch any of it. Below are my top 10 in no particular order:

Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" at The Park Avenue Armory with Bobby Cannavale
Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia"  by PTP/NYC at the Atlantic Theatre
Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" on Broadway with Jake Gullenhaal and         Annaleigh Ashford
Bill T. Jones "A Letter to My Nephew" at BAM Harvey
Duncan MacMillan's "People, Places, Things" at St. Ann's Warehouse with Denise Gough
Jen Silverman's "The Moors" at The Playwright's Realm
Rachel Bonds' "Sundown, Yellow Moon" at Ars Nova
J.T. Rogers "Oslo" at the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center
Lucas Hnath's "A Doll's House Part 2" on Broadway with Chris Cooper and Laurie Metcalf
Heather Christian's "Animal Wisdom" at The Bushwick Starr

Honorable Mentions:

The Encore production of Lerner and Loewe's "Brigadoon" at City Center with Kelli O'Hara
Martin McDonagh's "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at BAM Harvey
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's "Cafe Muller and Right of Spring" at BAM Opera
Shakespeare in the Park's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"at the Delacorte with Annaleigh Ashford
Amy Herzog's "Mary Jane" at NYTW
Martin Zimmerman's "On the Exhale" at The Roundabout with Marin Ireland
Robert Lepage's "887" at BAM Harvey
David Harrower's "Knives in Hens" at 59E59
Gare St. Lazar Ireland's "The Beckett Trilogy" at Lincoln Center White Light Festival with Conor   Lovett
Manual Cinema's "Mementos Mori" at BAM Fisher.

I saw many, many more performances that I enjoyed in 2017 but I'm sticking to naming only the best of the best, although perhaps an extra honorable mention to Richard Nelson's "Illyria" at The Public Theatre is necessary.

My favorite emerging theatre companies at the moment are The Playwright's Realm, The Bushwick Starr and Ars Nova although they have had their share of misfires.  Last year I would have included Soho Rep but I was really put off by several recent productions and readings.

Unfortunately, some of the WORST theatre ever also happened in 2017.  Here are a few for your consideration:

Theatre de la Ville, Paris's production of Albert Camus's "State of Siege" at BAM Opera
Ayad Akhtar's "Junk" at  the Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center
Richard Maxwell's "Samara" at Soho Rep
Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen's "The Light Years" at Playwright's Horizons
Geoff Sobelle's "The Object Lesson" at NYTW
Lynn Nottage's "Sweat" on Broadway
Matthew Aucoin's "Crossing" at BAM Opera
Michael Yates' "The Rape of the Sabine Women by Grace P. Matthias" at the Playwright's Realm
Dominique Morriseau's "Pipeline" at the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center
Bryna Turner's "Bull in a China Shop" at the Claire Tow Theatre at Lincoln Center

December Blew in and Out

Much as I would like to report that I loved Ariane Mnouchkine's 3 1/2 hour "A Room in India" at the Park Avenue Armory, I cannot.  I am a great champion of her work with Theatre du Soleil having been blown away by the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides) at  her space outside of Paris, the Cartoucherie, in the early 90's and extremely moved by "Le Derniere Caravanserail" (about the immigrant crisis in Europe) at the Lincoln Center White Light Festival several years ago. But I found "A Room in India" to be shrieky and self-indulgent. Presumably it is autobiographical.  Although titled, "A Room in India" the room could have been anywhere.  It's really about the room in the mind of the creator and her central question "Of what worth is the theatre I am creating?" although once again she addresses the immigrant crisis. While normally I have had no problem, even enjoyed, the length Mnouchkine's productions, in this case I would have preferred some trimming, especially of the Indian dance sequences. There are enough ideas ping-ponging around during the play for several plays and it feels like everything get short shrift here. On a side note, the Indian pre-performance dinner was wonderful.

"Farmhouse/Whorehouse" at BAM Fisher is a one-woman show with Lily Taylor.  This "Artist Lecture," as it is called in the program, is by Suzanne Bocanegra and directed by Lee Sunday Evens takes us to the author's grandparent's farm in Texas which was across the road from the infamous "chicken farm" on which "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" was based. The story is interesting and well constructed although I could have done without the playwright feeding lines to Lily Taylor over a monitor throughout the play.  Taylor is a charming stage performer, something I did not expect having never been overly impressed by her film work.

"20th Century Blues" at The Pershing Square Signature Center by Susan Miller is essentially chick-lit for women in the over-60 bracket.  If you fit that category then you will find the two hours pleasant enough. Four women who met at a protest in the 70's have continued to meet every year to catch up and have their picture taken by the central character, a photographer.  Each character is a type that we know well and the play addresses all the issues we expect: marriage, divorce, career, children.  A niggling complaint was with a discussion of plastic surgery, as will happen when women of certain age and class get together.  Polly Draper in the central role claims to eschew it although her face lifts and other work are clearly evident. This is an example of middling play wasting the talents of a great director, in this case Emily Mann. The performance to note is that of Kathryn Grody, a veteran New York actor and Mandy Patinkin's wife. 

Bedlam, as always, strikes home with their production of "Peter Pan" at The Duke theatre. I wouldn't put it at the top of my list of Bedlam productions (the honors go to "Hamlet," "Sense and Sensibility," "Twelfth Night," and "What You Will" in that order) but the company is always inventive and pushing the boundaries with cross-dressing actors and sometimes overtly sexual insinuations.  This is not a "Peter Pan" for the young set.  Directed by company founder Eric Tucker who also plays
Father among a slew of other characters, the ensemble cast includes Bedlam regulars Edmund Lewis, Kelley Curran and Susannah Millonzi as well as newcomers to the company Zuzanna Szadkowski and Brad Heberlee(as Peter Pan).

Who am I to write a review of the Broadway production of "SpongeBob SquarePants," based on a popular cartoon I have maybe seen two episodes of?  I don't know what got into me (Perhaps because the book by Kyle Jarrow was directed by the experimental director Tina Landau and the songs by Steven Tyler, Cyndi Lauper and David Bowie were straight out of the 80's rock pantheon. Was this enough?) but I coerced my 21-year-old son into attending with me with an offer of Black Tap and off we went.  Ethan Slater is indeed a find for Broadway as the title character and the sets are Rube Goldberg fun.  I did get a little head-achey as the play went on but the Ziegfeld-inspired number performed in Act II by Gavin Lee as Squidward, "I'm Not a Loser," conjures up the great Tommy Tune.  Go for that.

An overhyped "Today Is My Birthday" at Home. Written by Susan Soon He Stanton and directed by the reliable Kip Fagan there is really not much to recommend here.  The main character Emily, who, by the way, does not have have a birthday during the course of the play, is portrayed by another downtown stalwart Jennifer Ikeda. I found no fault with the performances and was especially taken by Nadine Malouf who plays a distraught mom but the devise of having the characters only interact on the phone felt tired and there was nothing unique or special in this story of a young woman coming home after a failed relationship and career.

Playwrights Horizons finally delivers with "Mankind."  Perhaps not to everyone's taste, this futuristic tale of a society where there are no women is cleverly conceived and entertaining.  The premise is that men can get pregnant and are subject to the same societal dictates that women are now so, when one of the main characters get pregnant and wants to have an abortion, he and his partner are sent to prison.  However, when he gives birth to the first girl since the extinction of women he becomes a god to the new wave of male "feminists."  The play which was written and directed by the queer black playwright Robert O'Hara is broad but original and moving and addresses the question "Has man EVER been kind?".