"10 Out of "12" is a 12, qualms about "The Qualms" and no glory for "Gloria"

"10 Out of 12" at The Soho Rep made me think about two great French films about filmmaking, "Day For Night" and "Irma Vep." If one really really loves movies then these two films cannot fail to captivate.  Well, I really really love theatre and Anne Washburn's engrossing new play at The Soho Rep had the same effect on me. Perhaps to have been a part of that world makes the experience that much richer, but not having been so should not detract from one's enjoyment of the play.

The play takes place during the long hours of the final tech rehearsal for a macabre unnamed historical play (think Poe, for example) at the Soho Rep.  We, the audience, are outfitted with a listening device and can hear all the backstage prattle from the stage crew, sometimes relevant to the production but often as mundane as a description of the sandwich brought for the long hours ahead. The actors go in an out of character in the stop-and-go rhythm of the rehearsal as the director and his assistant move through the audience and across the stage.

As the rehearsal progresses we see the subtle do-se-do of relationships among the cast and crew. Artistic temperaments flair up, accidents occur and the show does go on.

As is the norm for pretty much everything I have seen at The Soho Rep, the writing is risky, the performances are pitch-perfect and the direction is seamless.


As for "The Qualms" at Playwright's Horizons the new play by Bruce Norris of the Tony-winning "Clybourne Park" fame, apart from an exceptional performance by Jeremy Schamus, the play is derivative, a poor man's (or woman's) Pinter or Albee.  I was not a fan of "Clybourne Park" (been there, seen that) but I know I was in the minority so, I expect if you liked that, then "The Qualms will appeal to you as well.

Branden Jacob-Jenkins new play "Gloria" at The Vineyard Theatre is a disappointment as well. Readers of this blog will know that I was a huge fan of his play "An Octoroon" which I saw at The Soho Rep and then again at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn.  That play was audacious in the way it experimented with space and time and addressed race and class.  "Gloria" strives for much less.

I'm a Sucker for an Annie Baker Play

So I saw Annie Baker's "The Flick" at the Barrow Street Theatre last week and, as usual when I see one of her plays ("Circle Mirror Transformation" at Playwrites Horizons, her translation of "Uncle Vanya"at the Soho Rep), had the satisfaction of seeing exceptional theatre.  The play takes place in a Massachusettes movie theatre where three employees cycle between taking tickets, selling concessions, working the projector and, for the time they are on stage, cleaning the theatre.

Rose, Sam and Avery are a sad-sacky bunch.  Rose, played by Louise Krause, seems at first like a disaffected punk, all snarky and dark-humored.  Matthew Mayher's Sam is in his mid-thirties has no direction in life beyond pride in his current menial job.  Avery, the very fine young actor Aaron Clifton Moren, is a black college student and son of a university professer, whose psychological problems have caused him to take a hiatis from school.  As a film nut with a seemingly endless store of movie trivia on tap, he propels the action of the play forward.  Slowly, the characters reveal more about themselves and begin to connect as they metaphorically dance around each other. 

This is one of the last remaining movie theatres in Massachusettes that actually show films on celluloid which is what has attracted Avery to work here, sweeping popcorn off the floor and scraping gum off seats. But the new owner plans to digitilize and Avery will be left rudderless once more. Small dramas are played out over the course of the three plus hours but the play is really about so much: race, class, love, longing, loss and the inevitable march of time.

"The Flick" is three hours long and the theatre is small and not air-conditioned.  During much of the play there is silence on stage and what dialogue there is often fragmented as in real life. The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood makes a point in his review of saying that the play is difficult to sit through for some people; both times he saw it there were people who either walked out during the play or left at intermission. I only wish that the enormously tall, wide and fidgety man sitting in front of me had done so.

Putting Up My Shingle Again

Apologies for my long absence but life has been fairly chaotic recently. I'm back and had much to comment on.

April 13th was my second time at Irish Arts Center for Muldoon's Picnic.  The evening kicked off with the hilarious "I Haven't Seen The Movie But I've Read The Book" performed by Paul Muldoon and the Wayside Shrines. Also on the roster were the writer and memoirist Mary Karr, Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhanaill and Larry Kirwan of Black 47. 

Nuala Ni Dhomhanaill read her poems in Irish Gaelic paired with Muldoon's  translations.  Her mermaid poems are myth but such that she considers 'a basic, fundamental structuring of our (the Irish) reality, a narrative that we place on the chaos of sensation to make sense of our lives.'

Larry Kirwan read a passage about Rory Gallagher from his book "The History of Irish Music" and performed songs from "Transport," his musical about Irish women deported to Australia in 1846.  But it was his story about his recent visit to a community of Irish called Red Legs who haved lived on Barbados since the 17th Century, brought there as slaves for British planters, that resonated most profoundly. 

Mary Karr surprised with her rocking performance of "I Hate That Big Fat Bitch Who Had You First" which she wrote with Rodney Crowell and performed here with The Wayside Shrines.

But the unexpected visit of Larry Kirwan's 20-something son Rory (named no doubt for Rory Gallagher) performing a spoken word piece got the youth vote and was the highlight of the evening. 

I look forward to many more Muldoon's picnics.  They will resume in the Fall.  For more information you can visit  www.irishartscenter.org  or follow Irish Arts Center on Facebook.

I'll be back with observations about my beloved Soho Rep's readings from their current Writer/Director Lab, a mini-review of "An American In Paris", snarky comments about the new musical "Iowa" and "The Heidi Chronicals" and much, much more.

"Skylight" is Heaven

Seeing "Skylight" last week was heaven.  I've been an enormous fan of the playwright David Hare since I first saw "Teeth and Smiles" in London in 1975 (with Helen Mirren, no less).  A few years later, in New York, I was treated to Kate Nelligan's splendid performance in "Plenty" and, more recently, "The Vertical Hour" with Bill Nighy and Julianne Moore.   I can't say that I have loved every work by Mr. Hare, the screenplay for "The Hours" being high on my list of belly-flops, but when he sticks to theatre he is in my personal canon along with Rabe, Pinter, Albee and Stoppard.

At first I thought, "Oh, no!" when Bill Nighy entered, all nervous tics and jutting angles, but Carey Mulligan  grounded him with her still, solid performance. As they interacted his physical schtick fell away and we were in the moment with this couple who are forever intertwined despite the difference in their ages and political beliefs, beliefs that will never make it possible for the two to actually share a life.  It's painful to watch, but oh so exhilarating.

Mulligan's performance as Kyra is magnificent.  She continues in the line of fine actresses to perform Hare's work from Helen Mirren to Kate Nelligan to Blaire Brown and Julianne Moore.  I had not thought she had it in her based on her performance as Nina in "The Seagull" several years ago which I found wan and dull but she has matured as a stage actress and, based on this performance, can now be considered one of the finest actresses of her generation. 

Nighy is excellent once he loses his mannerisms and allows himself to become Tom.  Matthew Beard, as his son Edward, in two key scenes with Mulligan, is good as well.  But they owe the success of their performances to Mulligan who is fierce, smart and strong.

Bedlam's Twice Told "Twelfth Night"

I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Bedlam's "Twelfth Night" and its sister "What You Will" this past week.  Previously I had seen Bedlam's "Hamlet" and "Sense and Sensibility."  What sets this company apart, far apart, is that they perform with an extremely limited number of actors.  "Hamlet" was performed by three men and one woman, "Sense and Sensibility" by about eight(I don't remember the exact number) and the current "Twelfth Night" and "What You Will" by three men and two women playing mulitiple roles and crossing gender lines to do so. Both tellings of "Twelfth Night" are delightful and completely different stylistically.

 "Twelfth Night" deconstructs the play with the actors performing in their own clothes and without props aside from a long wooden table and a couple of chairs. They mingle with the audience before, during and after the performance and the telling of the play feels off-hand, almost casual.  Still, the audience is propelled along by the story and the frenetic energy of the ensemble.  Viola and Cesario are played in this version by Eric Tucker, the director and also one of the founders of the company.  Not so strange for a man to play Viola when one considers that in Shakespeare's day the female parts were played by boys.

"What You Will" is a more conventional, although stylized, interpretation of the play.  It opens with the actors, dressed entirely in white, emerging from under a large white sail (and closes with the same).  For the most part the women play the female roles and the men the male although Andrus Nichols, Bedlam's co-founder who plays Olivia here, does double up as Sir Toby who, in this version, is a woman.  The pacing is elegant and beautifully blocked to allow for the constant changes in character by the five actors.

The casts for both plays are completed by Edmund Lewis who interprets Malviolio in two very different ways, Tom O'Keefe who does the same with Feste, and Susannah Millonzi as Viola in "What You Will" and Olivia in "Twelfth Night." 

The company does play around a bit with Shakespeare's text but to good purpose and nothing of import is missing from either performance.

The two plays run through May 2nd at  the Dorothy Strelsin Theater, 312 West 36th Street.  Get your tickets soon because the theatre seats less than 100 people. Their website is theatrebedlam.org.

 

"Wolf Hall" is Howling Good

First I read the books.  Somewhat reluctantly, I admit.  I was worried "Wolf Hall" and it's sequal "Bring Up The Bodies" would read like pop history but to my relief they were enthralling and historically accurate.  At least I think they are.  In the current (the) Paris Review there is a long and engaging interview with the author of both books, Hilary Mantel in which she claims that they are indeed.  The books are narrated in the first person by Thomas Cromwell.   Mantel draws us in to the story the fictional story she has created within this context and the books are hard to put down. 

This past week I attended both parts of The Royal Shakespeare Company's "Wolf Hall" at the Winter Garden Theatre.   Ben Miles, last seen in New York in 2009 in "The Norman Conquests" but best know on this side of the pond as the handsome, not very bright womanizer in the British sitcom "Coupling," is Cromwell. 

Ben Miles is remarkable.  Since the books are a kind of interior monologue, as Cromwell (or as Anne calls him "Crumwheel") he commands the stage for the  entirety of the plays. Historically we know that Cromwell was a common man, the son of a blacksmith, who lifted himself up through his intelligence and shrewd business dealings to become Henry VIII's confident and chief advisor. Although Miles is not an especially large man, on stage he creates the aura of being a massive presence, both physically and intellectually. His Cromwell has the magnetism, present in the books, that draws both friends and enemies to him and the thick skin necessary to survive at court.  And everyone is a little in love with him, including Henry.

The performances are all pretty perfect. Nathaniel Parker is mercurial and imposing as Henry and Lydia Leonard the most devious Anne one would want to imagine.  I also especially liked Leah Brotherhead's layered and complicated Jane Seymour.  But the standout in Part I is John Ramm as the self-flagulating religious scholar, and eventually Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. More loses favor with Henry at the end of Part I when he refuses to accept Anne Boleyn as Henry's queen and as a result is headless in Part II. Our loss.

But it really Ben Miles' play, as it should be. 

"The Tallest Tree in the Forest"

I wish I could say that I loved "The Tallest Tree in the Forest" but I can't.  I wanted to.  A play about the great black actor and activist Paul Robeson, directed by Moises Kaufman, should be right up my alley.  Unfortunately I do not respond well to one-man/woman shows no matter how talented the actor, in this case Daniel Beaty. 

Beaty makes for a splendid Robeson.  He can sing.  He has a voice to match Robeson's own and the songs were pure bliss to listen to, accompanied as he is by a small group of excellent musicians on-stage throughout the two hour performance.  He can act, as he proves to us as he vocally cycles through multiple characters who touched on Robeson's life.  I wish he hadn't.  I wish he had stuck to being Robeson and had a few other actors to play these roles. I suppose one reason for this may be that Daniel Beaty is a good deal shorter than Robeson was and, as such, this would have presented some problems in casting.  But there were too many characters for him to play and it was confusing, many of them sounding too much alike.

The play is also too linear for my taste.  We get the full progression of Robeson's life from boy to husband to successful actor, singer and activist and on to his old age, alone and defeated.  But even with the seemingly detailed progression of his life important chunks are left out.  His work with O'Neill on "All God's Chillun Got Wings" is in but not the more important "The Emperor Jones," for example. 

What does work though is when he addresses Robeson's political beliefs:  his journey to The Soviet Union through war-time Berlin, his appearance before the House Un-American Activities and the ambiguity of his relationship with the Soviet Union once his Jewish friends there begin to be persecuted.  The moral dilemna for him is whether he can criticize the country where he, a black man, feels equal even as others are made to feel they are not. Now this is the play about Robeson I wanted to see.