From the Sublime to the Ridiculous and Back Again

Once again Marin Ireland blows up the stage, this time in "Blue Ridge" at the Atlantic Theatre.  The play itself by Abby Rosebrock is pretty good at addressing addiction and interpersonal relationships in a halfway house in Tennessee but we are thrown for a curve at the end which leaves us hanging because it is not addressed.  Up to this point the direction by Taibi Magar, who directed the suburb "Is God Is" at Soho Rep last year, nails it.  I'm not sure she knew exactly what to do with the ending here.  The performances are all rock solid, but it's Marin Ireland who rocks their world and breaks our heart as a woman so angry and yet so passionately caring.  I continue to feel that I would walk through fire to see her in anything. 

"About Alice"at TFNA is Calvin Trillin's gift to his late wife Alice Trillin.  As directed by Leonard Foglia, the sturdy Broadway director of weepies such as "On Golden Pond" and "The Gin Game," Jeffrey Bean and Carrie Paff embody Calvin and Alice Trillin decently but they are hardly as dynamic as the real people they portray.  I suggest you read Trillin's book of the same name instead.

"Minor Character" at the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre is yet another telling (there have been several recently) of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya," this time incorporating three different translations simultaneously. A shout out is due to the dramaturg Elliot B. Quick for his skillful work melding together the three translations. Presented by New Saloon and directed by Morgan Green, the production is equal parts Richard Forman, Elevator Repair Service, and Bedlam: wacky and experimental but still true to Chekhov's original.  The cast is uniformly excellent and up to the task but I must single out New Saloon member Madeline Wise who can currently be seen on the HBO comedy series "Crashing."

Also at The Public is "Sea Wall/A Life" which consists of two monologues given by Jake Gyllenhal and Tom Sturridge. Although I'm fond of the work of both actors who do an excellent job here, both monologues, by Simon Stephens ("Heisenberg") and Nick Payne ("Constellations") respectively, are slight  and don't delivere the desired punch I imagine the playwrights intended.  The subject of both is loss of a child.  I have seen this addressed to perfection three times in modern literature, in Ian McEwan's "A Child in Time," in Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter," and in the little know "The Disappearance: A Primer of Loss" by Genevieve Jurgensen.  Either play, directed by Carrie Cracknell whose recent heralded production of "A Doll's House" at The Royal Court was airlifted to BAM, might have been served better on their own in fleshed out full-length versions.  But certainly go for the nuanced and deeply felt performances. 

"Hurricane Diane" at NYTW is a hoot and a holler and pretty insubstantial overall but great fun to watch.  This new take on a Dionysus story, written by Madeline George and directed by the always reliable Leigh Silverman, is set in Monmouth County, New Jersey with a cast that includes the transgender actor Becca Blackwell as Diane (read Dionysus). The four suburban housewives whose lives will be disrupted by Diane during the course of the play are types: Kate Wetherhead as the mousy one, Michelle Beck as the black, career driven one, Danielle Skrassstad as the Guido Jersey Shore type and Mia Barron (recently of "The Wolves" at Playwright's Realm and as Joan Didion in "The White Album" at BAM) as Carol the uptight take-no prisoners focus of the play.  Diane,  a landscape gardener, sets out to seduce each of the women and create chaos in their front lawns as well as their lives.  Mission is predictably accomplished and the audience is greatly entertained.   

My favorite theatre-going experience so far this year has been the premier of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's 40 minute "Verklarte Nacht" at the Barishnikov Arts Center.  Dance, not theatre, but theatrical nonetheless.  For me De Keersmaeker embodies what is best in dance at the present time now that Pina Bausch has passed on to that great dance studio in the sky.  Think of her as Bausch with very little sense of humor.  Her work jolts, eviscerates and constantly surprises.  Her dancers are gorgeous to watch, beautifully trained, precise in their movements,and elegantly use the stage.  I especially liked Bostjan Antoncic, a Slovenian dancer who joined De Keersmaeker's company Rosas in 2005.  At first he comes off as being two big and brawny to be a dancer but slowly seduces us with the magic of his body and the fluidity of his movements.   This is not to take away from the other dancers, Cynthia Loemij who has been with Rosas since 1991 and Igor Shyshko, a Rosas member since 2000. What I liked best about De Keersmaeker's choreography in this piece were the moments when the dancers almost touch, moments that are electric.  I left the piece in a dreamlike state and have not been able to stop thinking about it.  Come back soon Anne Teresa!

And so we bid farewell to 2018...

The hilarious one-man show "My Name is Gideon" was worth the trek to The Brick performance space in Williamsburg.  Normally, Gideon Irving does the show in peoples' living rooms and spends the night.  He has taken the show across Australia and now plans to take it across the U.S. on horseback.  Does he ride?  Well... he's a Jew from New York so ...  But he is holed up in Utah on a Mormon ranch, as I write, learning how to ride.  The show, a lifetime's work for this 32 year old, is a mix of song, magic, slapstick and narration with a grab-bag full of props, set pieces and musical instruments.  He engages the audience often and with the uncanny ability of not making this critic feel stupid while participating.  Still, most of the songs are his own and I longed to hear him burst into a Sondheim with his marvelous voice.

Heather Raffo's "Noura" directed by Joanna Settle at Playwright's Horizons is a Christmas tale of sorts.   A Christian Iraqi family in New York are celebrating the holiday, the wife Noura (echos of "A Doll House") yearning for the Iraq she knew, her doctor husband wanting to forget the past and their very assimilated teenage son happy playing video games.   Also present are  Noura's childhood Muslim best friend and a young woman recently arrived from Iraq who they are sponsoring.  There's a mystery at the heart of the play that is ultimately devastating for all. 

At BAM Steven Berkoff's "Greek," a retelling of Oedipus set in present day Tuffnell Park, North London, has become a delightfully strange opera composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage and adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore with a libretto by Berkoff. I have to give a nod to the bright modernist set by Johannes Schultz and the wacky costume design by Alex Lowde. But it's the four singers who do the work, each playing a variety of roles except for Alex Otterburn who has his hands full with Eddy (Oedipus).  They are by turns raunchy and affecting and all-together entertaining.  Turnage forges his own "operatic path between modernism and tradition, by means of a unique blend of jazz and classical styles."

"Strange Window: The Turn of the Screw" at BAM Harvey is unbelievably amateurish. Adapted from the novella by Henry James by James Gibbs and directed by Marianne Weems the Builder's Association production makes for an excruciatingly tedious evening at the theatre. While there are some interesting visual affects none of the actors are very good so it's hard to stay engaged. In addition, the multimedia show forces us to watch closeups of the actors onstage via huge screens which are not always in sync.  I suggest you see the 1961 Deborah Kerr film instead.

Another dud at the BAM Harvey is David Rousseve's homage to Billy Strayhorn which is neither interesting as a dance piece nor a memorial to Strayhorn.  I don't want to fault the dancers.  Their choreography is minimal and they are often forced into narration in order to move the story along, something dancers are not often equipped to do.  Rousseve also throws civil rights footage up on screens whenever possible.  Unfortunately his footage is often not from the periods he is portraying from Strayhorn's life on stage.  Strayhorn deserves a better hommage than this uneven and disjointed production offers.

Best for last: As with a glass of fine Kentucky Bourbon, Elaine May in Kenneth Lonergan's "The Waverly Gallery" at the Golden Theatre gives a performance to savor.  In her 80's Ms. May still has what it takes and then some.  She is the aging matriarch of a neurotic New York family who still runs a largely unsuccessful gallery just off Washington Square. I was reluctant to see the play having been less than awed by Lonergan's recent revival of "This Is Our Youth" on Broadway and "The Medieval Play" at he Signature.  However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to see May in what may be her last turn on the stage under the direction of the always fine Lila Neugebauer who most recently directed an outstanding production of Albee's "At Home at the Zoo" at the Signature.  The story is slight and on the surface not very interesting, an elderly woman slipping into senility is attended to by her grandson, daughter and son-in-law as well a young and seemingly untalented artist who talks her into a last show at the gallery and becomes her part-time care-taker.  It's an all star cast with Lucas Hedges, Joan Allen, David Cromer, and Michael Cera but, really, there is no play without May who hasn't lost any of her chops since her early days with Nichols and May so if you're lucky enough to snag a ticket while it's still on Broadway, do so.