"Cyprus Avenue" is a chilling play. Something happens that I believe has only happened once before on stage, in Edward Bond's "Saved" from 1965. That play has seldom been mounted since because of the disturbing nature of an act of violence. There are some things that even a very sophisticated theatre-goer has trouble wrapping one's mind around. Stephen Rea is crushing as Eric, the Belfast protestant who has seemingly lost his mind and believes that his new granddaughter Mary Mae is Gerry Adams (the leader of Sinn Fein the Catholic Republican political organization often sited for it's terrorists acts). Dan Ireland's play is masterfully directed by Vicky Featherstone with superb performances from the entire cast. It's powerful and raw and I caution you not to go if you have a low threshold for violence but, that said, try not to miss it in it's limited run at the The Public Theatre.
Lauren Yee's "The Great Leap" at the Atlantic Theater Company is also a political play but much, much tamer. Directed by Taibi Magar who recently directed the outstanding "Is God Is" at Soho Rep, this play takes on the Cultural Revolution by way of a basketball game between an American college team and their Chinese counterparts with a son/father relationship thrown in for good measure. It's not a great play but Magar continues to impress me as a director and the performances from B.D. Wong and Ned Eisenberg as the coaches Wen Chang and Saul hold the play up. And while not terrible, Tony Aidan Vo the young Chinese-American player and Ali Ahn as his cousin are a little to showy for the the material.
I finally got around to seeing "The Band's Visit" the week before it won the Tony for Best New Musical. While I would not have necessarily put it in that category as it's a play with music rather than a musical, given the competition ("Spongebob Squarepants" for one) I'm not surprised it took the big prize. I was especially smitten with the song "Omar Sharif" which is sung by Katrina Lenk as Dina. She also came away with a Tony as did my favorite performer in the play Ari'el Stachel as the Egyptian musician who dispenses advice to a lovelorn Israeli. I'm not sure why Tony Shalhoub won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for Tewfiq the conductor of the Egyptian Orchestra since he talks his way through part of one song and that's it. I actually saw a different actor in the part, the very fine Dariush Kashani who I admired in both "Oslo" at Lincoln Center and "The Invidisible Hand" at NYTW. A shout out to David Yazbek and Itamar Moses who wrote the music and the book respectively and to the always fine director David Comer.
Elevator Repair Service's "Everyone's Fine With Virginia Woolf" at the Abrons Arts Center on the LES is serviceable. The company takes classics and turns them on their heads but have yet, for me, to have a production that measures up to their "Gatz," a seven hour 'reading' of "The Great Gatsby." For example, they were off the mark with their last production, "Measure for Measure" at the Public which was good fun but deteriorated into silliness at the expense of Shakespeare. Here they are obviously taking on Albee and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The director Kate Scelsa is an ERS regular who has performed in "Gatz," "The Sound and the Fury" and and others. Her "Virginia Woolf" lays it bare the subtext in Albee's play. The production opens brilliantly but eventually deteriorates into a bizarre free-for-all vampire story and slow journey to Hell led by a robot (why?) which basically wrecks everything they have set up before. This is disappointing because Vin Knight and Annie McNamara as George and Martha Washington really give Tracy Letts and Amy Ryan a run for their money.
"Fairview" is another disappointing production from Soho Rep who had redeemed themselves in my eyes with Aeshea Harris's brilliant "Is God Is" earlier this season. This is not the first time I have disagreed with Ben Brantley of The New York Times who wrote "You begin watching by feeling mildly amused, then uneasy, then annoyed, then unsettled." The only thing I felt was annoyed. This is a play about race and the playwright Jackie Sibbiles Drury wants us, the audience, to feel uncomfortable in our whiteness (those of us in the audience who are white) but she does not EARN this from us. It's a flawed play with equally flawed direction by Sarah Benson who is an excellent director when she has something of real worth to work with like Sarah Kane's "Saved" or Branden Jacobs-Jenkins "An Octoroon" but gets lost when directing messy not fully realized work like this. Such was also the case with her direction of the impossibly convoluted and disjointed Richard Maxwell play "Samara." Perhaps the play needed a black director as had "Is God Is," but I still think it would not have been enough. Plus I am getting really tired of second act climaxes where the actors wreck the stage. This is lazy writing/direction. Spoiler alert! The final moment of the play when the white members of the audience are ordered to come on stage and the black actors take their place in the audience felt forced. My discomfort was for the actors and the playwright not for my whiteness.
Saving the best for last, the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia production of the Friedrich Schiller "Love and Intrigue" at BAM is dazzling. Where have I been? How did I not know about this company? Lev Dodin has adapted and directs a extremely pared down version of the original five hour play. At two hours and 15 minutes (no intermission) he still manages, according to the BAM program notes, to add text by Jean-Jaques Russo (as my theatre companion quipped, "You know, that philosopher from New Jersey") and Otto von Bismark. The two lovers, Ferdinand and Luise are starred crossed lovers, much like Romeo and Juliet but with a German duchy, the Duke's aristocratic consort and political intrigue thrown in. The production is stylized and there's a little too much walking, dancing and sliding across long wooden tables but the performances are clean and tight, the costumes exquisite and the set like I like it, almost bare... an empty space.
