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.
