From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

I cannot stress enough how important it is to hasten to New York Theatre Workshop to see the current production "The House That Will Not Stand" a glorious retelling by playwright Marcus Gardley of Lorca's "House of Bernarda Alba" set in the New Orleans of the early 19th century.  Liliana Blain-Cruz who directed Lucas Hnath's "Red Speedo" at NYTW and a cast of skilled and talented black actresses makes Lorca's play a commentary on the position and fate of black women in a post-Civil War South. I learned a term new to me, "placée," for free women of color who lived as wives of ethnic European men but were not legally recognized.  Beartice Albans, as portrayed by Lynda Gravatt, is such a woman.   She has lived in great comfort and raised three daughters but her "husband" has just died and the girls are eager to break out of the their very restricted life.  The oldest, Agnes, has dreams of becoming a placée herself, something that her mother is dead-set against.  All the actresses are excellent but Harriet Foy as the maid and yet-to-be-freed slave Makeda powerfully embodies black women and their story throughout time.   This ensemble acting at it's best and it's marvelous to see an all female black cast show us how it should be done.

The much anticipated rock opera "This Ain't No Disco" from Stephen Trask creator of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and Peter Yanowitz of The Wallflowers at Atlantic Theater Company fails to hit the mark,  any mark.  The director, Darko Tresnjak, has some interesting work under his belt including the Tony award winning  "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" on Broadway and "The Killers" with Michael Shannon at TFANA but seems to have lost his way here.  Perhaps it's the material, the final days of Studio 54.  But this musical doesn't fully embrace the hedonistic raunchiness of that time and place.  The story lines are contemporary cliches: the young gay man at the mercy of  a predatory older and successful and possibly in-the-closet boss, the struggling lesbian artists, the black single mother with dreams of becoming a music star.  It's like Studio 54 as told by Walt Disney and with less imagination.  But the real crime here is that the music isn't good enough.  It's disco without the disco.  Not good enough.

"The Saintliness of Margery Kempe" by John Wulp at The Duke on 42nd Street is a twist on a medieval morality play. Let's presume that one is even interested in such a play and then presume that one wants to spend two and a quarter hours in the company of even a stellar group of actors in such a play... As always, Andrus Nichols, late of the Bedlam Theatre Company, is divine as the bored medieval housewife who wants to shine and to that end makes it her business to become a saint.  Jason O'Connell, another Bedlam regular is also excellent in a variety of roles but, alas, the play, under the direction of Austin Pendleton,is tedius.

The Potomac Theatre Project's twofer at The Atlantic Theater Stage II consists of Caryl Churchill's "The After-Dinner Joke" directed by Cheryl Faraone and Howard Barker's "The Possibilities" directed by Richard Romagnoli.  PTP has mounted stellar productions of in the past including Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" last year, directed by Faraone, and Barker's "Scenes from an Execution" in 2015 (the last major performance by the great actress Jan Maxwell who retired directly after and, sadly, died earlier this year), directed by Romagnoli.  But the current offerings are disappointing and amateurish.    There a few performances that stand out but the overall effect is that of assembling a cast of student actors around a few excellent veteran actors.  The 1977 Caryl Churchill play feels dated.  In the 70's Churchill was still feeling her way to become the playwright who has given us the groundbreaking "Cloud Nine," "Mad Forest," "Top Girls" and most recently "Escaped Alone."    I would have preferred to see Barker's "The Possibilities" decalogue in it's entirety instead of just the four short plays offered here and skipped the Churchill.  Barker is an underproduced playwright in this country, one of the original Angry Young Men of British theatre and his often violent plays, even those written decades ago, still feel timely. There were echoes of his groundbreaking "Saved" in which a baby is stoned to death by disaffected and helpless working class youth in the very fine "Cypress Avenue" at the Public this year. At the time it shocked.  It still does.

The Magnificent Carey Mulligan

Carey Mulligan is magnificent in the one woman show "Girls and Boys" at The Minetta Lane Theatre.  Mulligan is simply "Woman." We listen as she recounts the story of how she met her husband on an Easy Jet line in Italy and her story progresses to their marriage, her career, her success, his failure, their children and so on.  For much of the play Mulligan stands uncomfortably in what feels like a box on stage but these scenes are intercut with her in her apartment attending to her children.  I wouldn't want to give out too many spoilers here because the shock we feel at the end is necessary to the experience but I will say that the subject matter of the play is something I would not be surprised to see Ken Loach take on.  I'm still not big on one-person shows and this one could even have been judiciously cut but Mulligan commanded the stage and my attention for 90 minutes. This is the third time I've seen her on stage.  Previously she made the emotionally fragile Nina in "The Seagull" live as a fully realized human being and her performance in David Hare's "Skylight" opposite Bill Neigh was heartbreaking.  In her performances both in theatre and on film her intelligence and self-awareness are always evident.  Props to the Set Designer Es Devlin, Video Designer Luke Halls and Lighting Designer Oliver Fenwick who transform the stage magically as the play goes on.  The apartment is at first all ashy tones but as the play progresses bits of color are added: a toy, a piece of fruit, a pillow until the apartment becomes vibrant with color.  I was surprised that the play was written by a man, Dennis Kelly, because "Woman" rings so true.   Lindsey Turner masterfully directs as she did Rebecca Hall in "Machinal" several years ago.   Magnificent, magical, masterful ... I think I've used up my alliteration quota for this piece.

An import from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival "secret life of humans" is at the 59E59 theatre. Written by David Byrne and directed by Byrne and Kate Stanley,  "secret life of humans" addresses the question of whether our species is capable of learning from our mistakes.  It's not a brilliant work but has its interesting moments and the acting is all quite good, especially Olivia Hirst.  The set and visual projections are clever but a little to busy for my taste.

Rounding out this post is "Fire in Dreamland" at the Public Theatre, written by Rinne Groff and directed by Marissa Wolf.  It's a serviceable well-constructed play but not especially novel.  Once again, as with "secret life of humans," the performances are all perfectly fine but not especially noteworthy. I have seen Rebecca Naomi Jones do better work in "Describe the Night" at the Atlantic Theatre and also on Broadway in "Passing Strange." It was not an unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours but there are better off-Broadway plays to be had at the moment like "Girls and Boys" and "Pass Over" at Lincoln Center.

The Elephant in the Room

I feel that I need to address the elephant in the room.  In the few months I have seen several plays written, directed and acted by people of color.  The elephant in the room, you need to ask?  Well, in almost all instances the audience has been majority white, in one case all white.  If you read my last blog post you will know already that I wasn't impressed with Jackie Sibbeles Drury's "Fairview" which specifically took aim at this phenomena by breaking the 4th wall and commanding the mostly white members of the audience to change places with the black actors on stage to their supposed discomfort. This actually had the opposite of the intended effect on me.  I was just annoyed as the play I felt was just not good and the the playwright and her (white) director were challenging me, in effect saying that if I thought the play was bad it was only because as I, as a white person, didn't "get" the black experience. 

But as Aeshea Harris's "Is God Is" made me cringe in my whiteness so did Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" which I just saw at the Claire Tow theatre at Lincoln Center.  If, after either of these plays, the stage lights had been turned on the predominantly white audience I would have been turned to stone.  The Steppenwolf production of "Pass Over,"  here directed by Danya Taymor, caught the eye of Spike Lee who directed a filmed version now streaming on Amazon Prime.  But I expect the filmed version is missing the immediacy of the theatrical production.  Two youngish black men trapped on their street for eternity (how could one not reference Beckett) by the gangs on one side and the police on the other. A white actor represents both the police and that do-goody white liberal(until he is not) offering them comfort and the possibility of an out.  Could he be us?  It's terrifying.  Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood are both achingly good as Moses and Kitch.  But how can we as white, middle class, educated possibly really understand. Seriously.

How can this problem be addressed?  The New York theatre-going audience is primarily made up of white, middle class liberals like me but more and more of the plays presented off-Broadway are being written, acted and directed by people of color.  What does it feel like for them presenting a play about their experiences as such to an audience that is a sea of pale faces? Do they wonder if we are even getting it?  I don't know what the answer is.