Glenda Jackson in "Three Tall Women" is magnificent. Reason enough to see the current revival on Broadway at the Golden Theatre. Also, Albee. Directed by Joe Mantello (usually not his biggest fan having disliked intensely the recent critically acclaimed "The Humans" and "Blackbird") with recent Tony winner Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill (miscast IMHO), Albee's play soars on the the wings of Jackson's performance. "Three Tall Women" is Albee's letter to his mother, a wealthy socialite who adopted him as an infant but failed to nurture him and rejected him for being a homosexual. But this is not a harangue. It feels rather as if Albee understands and even admires his mother if at times she feels like the devil She's not a nice woman but does that matter? In the first act the 90 (or is it 91?) year-old A is confined to her room and attended by B, a health-care aide (Metcalf), and C, a young lawyer (Pill) who has been tasked with attending to her bills. In the second act Pill and Metcalf play A at earlier stages of her life with varying degrees of success. Metcalf is convincing but I didn't believe Pill in that role. It's hard for either of them, superb actors that they are, to measure up to Jackson even after her 22 year hiatus from the stage.
Bedlam's "Pygmalion" (on which "My Fair Lady" is based) is also not to miss although you will probably have to. The show closes after a very limited run at The Sheen Center on Bleecker street on April 22nd and is currently sold out. Bedlam is able to populate whole universes with 4, 5, 6 or 7 as they do here. Shaw was a genius at creating strong women characters, ones who don't need men to give them a feeling of self-worth and it is especially evident in the character of Eliza Doolittle, here played to perfection by Vaishnavi Sharma who appeared in two previous Bedlam productions, "The Seagull" and "Sense and Sensibility." Eric Tucker not only directs but is outstandingly irritating as Henry Higgins and Beldman regulars Edmund Lewis and Nigel Gore return to play Mrs Higgins and Henry Pickering respectively as well as a host of other characters. The newcomers to Bedlam are Annabel Capper as the exquisitely imperious Mrs. Pierce and Rajesh Bose as the unctuous but charming Alfred Doolittle. What a joyful production.
Then hasten to "My Fair Lady" at Lincoln Center to see Lauren Ambrose make the role of Eliza Doolittle her own. While watching "Pygmalian" I kept expecting the characters to burst into song at any moment. Here they do! Who knew that Lauren Ambrose had a voice to rival Kelli O'Hara's (who I must admit I had imagined in the role)? Norbert Leo Butz has a raucous and engaging turn as Alfred Doolittle; "Get Me To The Church On Time" is always a show-stopper. But every word, every song of this great musical is imprinted on our memories, those of us of a certain age, and it's thrilling to hear them sung to such perfection. Bartlett Sher, who it seems directs every musical at Lincoln Center (his "South Pacific" and "The King and I" were both extraordinary), has put together a marvelous company that includes, in addition to Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins, Diana Rigg as Mrs. Higgins, Allan Corduner as Colonel Pickering and newcomer Jordan Donica as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. There's nothing like a musical at Lincoln Center when it's done right.
You may have already missed seeing Billie Piper in "Yerma" at the Park Avenue Armory. Hers is a tour-de-force performance but the Lorca play doesn't really work as reinvented for yuppies in today's London. Lorca's "Yerma" is specific to a time and place (1934, Spain) when a woman's most important role in life was to be a mother. Her descent into madness is the result of her inner struggle with not being able to fill this role. Transposed to a yuppie professional woman in her 30's who has only just had the idea that to complete her life she must have a child when she has never wanted one before, does not like children and has no motherly instincts, it fails to make sense. "Her" as she is called in the current production simply wants something that she is unable to have. She goes mad for not being able to get what she wants but it's really not about having a child. She would have found something else to obsess on that would drive her over edge if having a child was taken out of the equation. She is spoiled and entitled and I had very little sympathy for her. However, the production, as directed by Simon Stone, is beautifully staged in a glass/plexiglass box with audience on both sides and the performances are all terrific.
The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Travesties" directed by Patrick Marber with Tom Hollander is a miss in my book. The revival of Stoppard's 1974 play about an English official, Henry Carr, in Zurich during WWI who has either real or imaginary encounters with James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin, all in Zurich at the time, misses the mark. The performances are uneven and the play never reaches the frenzied pitch it requires in order to embrace the absurdity of the subject.
Do you need to go to every Shakespeare production on in New York? Then you could do worse with Theatre for a New Audience's "The Winter's Tale" directed by Arin Arbus. See it, if only for Anatol Yusef's powerful Leontes, the jealous king who exiles his loving wife and condemns her newborn daughter to death but lives to regret it. Or better yet to see Antigonus, in Shakespeare's arguably most famous stage direction, "Exit, man pursued by a bear."
