Backwards Through March

I saw Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," in a sense, backwards.   Two weeks ago my flight to New York from Berkeley was canceled so I didn't make it back in time for Part 1: Millennium Approaches although I did catch Part 2: Perestroika the next night. I was later able to snag a single ticket for Part 1 so, in a sense, I saw it backwards. As always with Kushner, I was blown away by the breadth of his intellect and the magnificence of his stagings.  For anyone who doesn't already know, the play addresses the issues of mortality, specifically with respect to the AIDs epidemic in the 80's when there was little hope for a cure. The acting, under the direction of Marianne Elliot, is tight. The revival comes to Broadway after a hugely successful sold-out run at The National Theatre in London. It should be no surprise that Elliot has directed several of the most original plays in recent times:  "Heisenberg," "The Curious Incident..." and "War Horse"  and I look forward to her upcoming revival of Sondheim's "Company." In keeping with the recent National productions of "War Horse" and Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials," Elliot makes great use of sophisticated puppetry for the Angel who was played by Amanda Lawrence in Millennium Approaches and by her understudy Glynis Bell in Perestroika, both wonderful.  It's hard to single out a performance above the others from this mostly British cast.  Everyone on Broadway appeared in the National Theatre production except for Lee Pace as Joe Pitt.  Seeing the plays backwards had a curious effect on me.  Performances that I didn't respond to in Perestroika moved me in Millennium, specifically Pace and James McArdle as Louis and Andrew Garfield's Prior Walter seemed to have more depth.  However, other performances I found more nuanced in Perestroika: Denis Gough's Harper Pitt,  Susan Brown in her incarnations as Mormon mother and Ethel Rosenberg, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the magnificent nurse/friend Belize, a part that Geoffrey Wright owned in the original production. But this was especially true of Nathan Lane who brought much of his schtick from "The Producers" to the character of Roy Cohn in Millennium Approaches and let it fall away in Perestroika. Ethel singing a Jewish lullaby to Cohn on his deathbed was always and will remain my favorite moment in the the play. 

The Vineyard Theatre Production of "Harry Clarke" which recently moved to the Minetta Lane Theatre is an absorbing and entertaining one-man show. I'm not big on one-man/woman shows but the play, by David Cale, about an accidental conman is fun and Billy Crudup delivers a stunner of a performance as the duplicitous and possibly sociopathic title character.  Leigh Silverman who helmed another recent excellent one person show with Marin Ireland, "On The Exhale," directs. You're in for a bumpy ride.

Go see "This Flat Earth" at Playwright's Horizons, a musing on the effects of a mass shooting in a suburban middle school. The playwright Lindsey Ferrentino is having a moment.  She has two plays running simultaneously ("Amy and the Orphans" is currently running at the Roundabout).  Directed by Rebecca Taichman who directed Paula Vogel's "Indecent," "This Flat Earth" supposes a school shooting in a middle school in a posh suburb on New York.  How timely.  The play was of course written before the Parkland shootings but after Sandy Hook and the countless others.   It's a play about a 13 year old girl and the end of innocence.  Ferrentino was herself inspired to write the play from her own experience as a naive 13 year old at the time of the attacks on the twin towers. The performances are all stellar, especially newcomer Ella Kennedy Davis as the 13 year old Julie.  I don't know how old the actress is but based on her still-developing body certainly no older than 14. She has talent well beyond her years. Watch for her in the future.

You can miss "The Lucky Ones" at Ars Nova unless, of course, you are a 30-something living in Williamsburg and nostalgic for "Hair" and "Godspell."  I was not a fan of The Bengsons recent autobiographical show "Hundred Days" at NYTW for some of the same reasons I could not respond to "The Lucky Ones," the self-indulgent naval-gazing for starters.  I have to say I'm a little disappointed with the fine director Anne Kauffman( "Sundown, Yellow Moon," "You Got Older," "Mary Jane") for hitching her star to their wagon. The pointless hippy dippy dance sequences only made this production worse in my opinion, Kauffman's idea or the Bengsons'?  Their music is not terrible though. Perhaps they should try to write about something other than their own personal experiences.

Wrapping up February

Edward Albee's "At Home At The Zoo:  Homelife & The Zoo Story" at Signature is a pretty perfect evening of theatre.  Directed by Lila Neugebauer, who directed the stellar "The Wolves" at The Playwright's Realm last year, and starring Robert Sean Leonard, Paul Sparks and the divine Katie Finneran, this is an evening of pure intellectual and artistic satisfaction.  The scenic design by Andrew Lieberman takes the Cy Twombly squiggles that serve as a backdrop for the exploration of a marriage in  "Homelife" and replicates them in the pattern of the park benches in the encounter between two strangers in "The Zoo Story."  Albee always forces us to dig deeper and to think more about our preconceived beliefs of who we are.   Signature is often hit or miss but they always get Albee right.  Bravo!

The latest offering from The Playwright's Realm is a bit of a miss although an enjoyable one.  Since their above-noted production of "The Wolves" and the equally impressive but less lauded "The Moors" their offerings have not been up to the mark.  In Don Nguyen's "Hello, From The Children of Planet Earth" a lesbian couple who are having trouble in their attempts to conceive contact a male classmate and friend of one of the women, now a NASA scientist keeping track of  the Voyager satellite, for help.  Jade King Carroll adeptly directs the able cast but the subject matter is pretty old-hat.  I feel like I've seen this play many times before.  The most interesting aspect of the production is the character Farthest Explorer portrayed here by Olivia Oguma who as Voyager 2 muses about the universe from their place in space.  I suppose there are parallels to be had to the situation on Earth but mainly I just enjoyed her performance.

"Hangmen" at Atlantic Theater Company is Martin McDonagh's latest, coming on the tail of his enormous success as writer/director the Academy Award nominated "Three Billboard Out of Ebbing, Missouri."  I wasn't a fan of the film but his plays, most recently the "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at BAM, are always powerful. "Hangmen," which had it's debut at The Royal Court Theatre in London, has retained it's director Matthew Dunster and much of the original cast including the mesmerizing and edgy Johnny Flynn as Mooney, a presumed rapist and murderer, and Mark Addy as Harry, one of the hangmen in question.   Ultimately the play is a Wild West story of vigilante justice, superb in it's telling.

The Soho Rep is finally back in their home space on Walker Street with "Is God Is" by Aleshea Harris.  The play is directed by Taibi Magar, who most recently directed the acclaimed "Underground Railroad Game" at Ars Nova.   Twin sisters who were badly burned in a fire set by their father are sent by their dying mother who they barely know to find him and murder him.  Dame-Jasmine Hughes and Alfie Fuller are terrifying as the sisters but then everyone in this gothic revenge play is pretty terrifying. I also couldn't stop feeling the influence of Sam Shepard throughout. Props to Soho Rep for producing a really fine play with black characters, a black playwright and a black director.  That's what I call making it real.  I'm back on board with Soho Rep!

I hate to end this blog post on a downer but Joshua Harmon's "Admissions" at Lincoln Center is a total fail in my book.  The subject is tired and the direction and acting do nothing to raise the material.  The son of the white admissions officer at an elite (but second-tier) prep school whose mantra is diversity is not accepted to the Ivy of his choice but his (half) black friend and classmate who has lower grades, test scores and fewer extra-curriculars has been.  Crisis for the privilaged white family!  Yawn.  The biggest problem with the play though,  directed by Daniel Aukin, is that there are no people of color in the cast.  Or the audience at the performance I attended.  I don't even know what to say about that...