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.
