The RSC brings "King Lear" to BAM Harvey director by the RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran and starring the inimitable Antony Sher in the title role. Sher's performance is idiosyncratic and engaging but the performance of the night is that of Pappa Essiedu at Edmond, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, solidly enacted by David Troughton. Essiedu is already making a name for himself at the RSC and one can see why here. His Edmond is a pure evil, a textbook sociopath. Sexy, smart and soooo laid back, he easily manipulates his father and his naive and trusting brother Edgar. His seduction of Goneril and Regan is smooth, effortless if you will. In his performance one can see a callous college frat boy chocking up his wins and sneering at the ease of it. In another stand-out performance, Antony Byrne brings a youthful buoyancy to the part of the older Earl of Kent, Lear's most loyal subject and protector. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast. Mimi Ndieweni's Cordelia is pretty much by the book, Nia Gwynne's Goneril is weak, Kelly Williams Regan is cartoonish and Oliver Johnston does not give Edgar/Mad Tom the complexity the role requires. Graham Turner as Fool also disappoints in a role that is usually a win-win. His performance is disjointed and one never feels his real despair over the banishment of Cordelia. But Essiedu's Edmond is more than reason enough to weather through the four hours at The Harvey.
The revival of Caryl Churchill's "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire" at NYTW forty years doesn't come together this time around. Directed by Rachel Chavkin a NYTW Usual Suspect and whose work I generally admire even when the material falls short, this "Light" fails to shine. Chavkin has assembled a motley crew of actors of various ability and training and it shows. An old trouper like Vinie Burrows who was a delight at 89 as Mustard Seed in last summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night's Dreams" is not matched in talent or ability by the other cast members with the exception of the height-challenged actor Matthew Jeffers who engages and delights in his various roles. Even Rob Campbell who is a regular in Churchill's plays disappoints. It feels almost as though he is saying "This is an amateurish production. What am I doing here? Why even try?" Evelyn Spahr in particular is appalling as she mugs her way through various roles in this period piece about the Civil War in England in 1642 led by Oliver Cromwell.
"Dance Nation" at Playwright's Horizons and directed by Lee Sunday Evans is Clare Barron's latest and, while I thought that her two previous plays "You Got Older" and "I'll Never Love Again" were superior, the risks she is willing to take like the cross generational casting of her teenaged protagonists, a devise she used to ever better effect in "I'll Never Love Again," have electrifying results. The play is searing in addressing the pain of female puberty and how that pain plays out later on in life. This is where her use of actresses of different ages to play the seven young dancers really clicks. Lucy Taylor the 40ish actress playing Ashlee alone on stage and spotlit, delivers a devastating monologue that carries her from her 13 year old self to the sexually unsure mature woman she has become. The monologue destroys... But everyone in the cast is excellent from Eboni Booth as the insecure Zuzu who is expected to fulfill her mother's dream to Dina Shihabi's Amina, the star dancer of the company who realizes that she must build a shell around herself if she wants to succeed. There's a moment at the beginning of the play that that is intentionally reminiscent of "A Chorus Line." The audience recognizes this and it brilliantly sets the stage for what is to come. Barron has the ability to mine other plays for bits that she makes her own. I continue to be astounded.
