Belinda McKeon comes to the Irish Arts Center

I'm excited to be going to the Irish Arts Center on February 16th at 7:30 hear novelist and playwright Belinda McKeon read from her new book Tender, called "insanely beautiful" by Bustle.  Her debut novel Solace was voted Irish Book of the Year in 2011 and won the 2011 Faber Prize.  You may have read her essays in The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Yorker.  And she lives in Brooklyn, folks!

For more info go to http://www.irishartscenter.org//literature.html.

The Queen of American Theatre in The King and I, the incomparable Tricia Brown, more Sense and Sensibility and more Humans

First, can I say, is there any more exquisite voice out there in American Musical Theatre than that of Kelli  O'Hara?  She is sublime in Lincoln Center's production of the rather creaky musical "The King and I."  My heart goes out to the theatre goers who opt to attend on her days off.  The production is gorgeous.  Obviously no expense was spared.  But it did not the match the power of the 2010 production of "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center which also starred Ms. O'Hara and for which she ought to have received a Tony.  That production was socially and politically relevant in a way that the current production of "The King and I" is not.  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcgtPWebbm4 

Tricia Brown at BAM.  Wow.  This was the last chance to see three pieces Brown choreographed for a proscenium stage.  I'm not sure the exact reason for this although perhaps it has to do with expense. Brown is suffering from vascular dementia but her company continues to perform her exceptional work beautifully.  I especially liked Set and Reset from 1983 with visual presentation and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg and music by Laurie Anderson.  The dancers were fluid and precise in the their gloriously billowy black and white attire.   Present Tense from 2003 with visuals by the painter Elizabeth Murray and music by John Cage pleased as well. Pops of primary color came in the costumes matched against the giant Murray canvas at the back of the stage.  Less fluid than Set and Reset it showcased a precision of movement and the cohesiveness of the company as a whole.  I was less keen on Newark(Niweweorce) from 1987 with original sound orchestration by Peter Zummo (all fog horns and industrial machinery) and monochromatic visuals by Donald Judd.  The dancers in metallic gray unitards moved as cogs in a giant machine.   It lacked soul for me.

I was not as enamored by "The Humans" as the powers that be.   I thought the play, about a family spending a very painful Thanksgiving together, overflowing with revelations and TMI, was not as profound as it strove to be .  As with "Clybourne Park" by Bruce Norris which was also much lauded, I get the feeling that we, as a serious theatre-going community, are hoping to discover the next Albee or Pinter in these dark quasi-comic dramas focused on flawed familial relationships. Even the title of the play is trying to steer us toward feeling as if we will gain a deeper understanding of the human condition or, at the very least, question what we believe.  " The Humans" with it's excellent cast, especially the great Jayne Houdyshell and Reed Birney, tries so earnestly to be profound and that it's painful to leave the theatre at the end of the play without wanting to carry on thinking about it.  That's what Pinter and Albee do.  They make us think.  And we continue to think and try to understand long after we leave the theatre.  I would love to see Houdyshell and Birney in a revival of "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  That would be awesome!

Bedlam's "Sense and Sensibility" came through again though.  I missed Eric Tucker, the company's founder and director,  as Mrs. Jennings this time around but Gabra Zackman, a new addition to the cast, is sure to please all who did not see last year's production. I've written about the previous production here.  Don't miss it this time!

Muldoon's Picnic Coming Up

A heads up to run, not walk, to the Irish Arts Center 553 West 51st Street on Monday, February 8th at 7:30 for the next Muldoon's Picnic when his guests will include Salman Rushdie, Miracles of Modern Science and the Irish writer Glenn Patterson.  The following Muldoon's Picnic on March 14th will feature Laurie Anderson.  These delightful evenings are not to be missed.   http://www.irishartscenter.org

Back in the Groove

The new year has rung in and as you can see I have not created my new website.  For the time being I shall soldier on here.

Best Plays of 2015

David Hare's "Skylight" on Broadway
Bedlam's "Twelfth Night" and "What You Will"
Branden Jacob-Jenkins's "An Octoroon" at Theatre for a New City
Anne Washburn's "10 out of 12"at The Soho Rep
Annie Baker's "The Flick" at The Barrow Street Theatre
Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" on Broadway
Brecht's Mother "Mother Courage" at CSC with Tonya Pinkins
RSC's "Wolf Hall" on Broadway
Nick Payne's "Constellations" on Broadway
Ibsen's "Ghosts" at BAM
Neil LaBute's "The Way We Get By" at The Second Stage
Ars Nova and The Soho Rep's "Futurity"
"Henry IV" at St. Ann's Warehouse
New York Classic Theatre's "The Taming of the Shrew" in Prospect Park

Worst of 2015

Lucas Hnaf's "The Christians" at Playwrights Horizons
Sam Shephard's "Fool For Love" on Broadway
Naomi Wallace's "Night is a Room" at Signature
Bruce Norris's "The Qualms" at Playwrights Horizons
Halley Peiffer's "I'm Going to Pray for You So Hard" at The Atlantic Theatre
The Druid Theatre's "The History Plays" at Lincoln Center
Mike Bartlett's "King Charles III" on Broadway
Branden Jacob-Jenkins's "Gloria" at The Vineyard Theatre
Jez Butterworth's "The River" at The Circle in the Square
Todd Allmond's "Iowa" at Playwrights Horizons
Wendy Wasserstein's "The Heidi Chronicles" on Broadway
Howard Barker's "Scenes from an Execution" at The Atlantic Theatre Company


Not Perfect But Pretty Good

 Billy Joe Armstrong's "These Paper Bullets" at The Atlantic Theatre Company
Abe Koogler's "The Kill Floor" at Lincoln Center
Rajiv Joseph's "Guards at the Taj" at The Atlantic Theatre Company
Bedlam's "New York Animals" at The Ohio Theatre
Ayad Akhtar's "The Invisible Hand"  at NYTW
Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" on Broadway
Christopher Wheeldon's "An American in Paris" on Broadway
Sophocles' "Antigone" at BAM


I also enjoyed several Muldoon's Picnics at the Irish Arts Center and stand-alone performances of "Three Men" by Michael Folie  and "The Dictator" by the Lebanese playwright Issam Mahfouz translated by Robert Myers.

The Fool, The Greek, The Christian and the Awesome Marin Ireland

It would seem, based on the reviews, that I am in the minority in observing that the current Broadway production of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love" is flat and that the stars, Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell lack even a modicum of chemistry.  I saw the brilliant 1983 Circle Rep production with Will Patton and Frances Fisher with requisite sexual fireworks.  Even Altman's not so great 1985 film version with Sam Shepard and Kim Basinger oozed a palpable erotic connection.   "So what went wrong here?" I ask myself.  Sam Rockwell is fine actor with a certain amount of sex appeal and Nina Arianda was a fabulously sensual being in "Venus in Fur" and had real pin-up girl appeal in the Broadway production of "Born Yesterday."  Perhaps the direction of Daniel Aukin is at fault which seems to have them playing off anyone but each other.  The only real chemistry in the play came in the scene between Eddie (Rockwell) and Martin (Tom Pelphry), May's sweet but dumb suitor.  Even the Old Man (Gordon Joseph Weiss) brought more immediacy to his role.  Rockwell and Arianda were oddly detached throughout. Perhaps an off night?


Ivo Van Hove's "Antigone"(translation by Anne Carson) which I saw at the BAM Harvey a couple of weeks ago was also problematic.  One of the great tragic dramas of all time, it wasn't exactly flat but it felt as though the tragedy was missing.  I have no complaints about the staging or design which was basically a scrim with dessert scenes projected on it and a large hole which closes at the end like an eclipse of the sun. The set itself was bare aside from a few risers and a(nother) hole in the center riser signifying a grave that rose and descended as needed.  Juliet Binoche was an outstanding Antigone and Patrick O'Kane as Kreon held the stage as the real center of the drama but I never felt the immediacy of the play nor the wrench in my gut that would have made it a tragedy.

Yesterday I saw "The Christians" at Playwrights Horizons, finally succumbing to the press and hoopla around the play and playwright, Lucas Hnath.  Again I was left curious unaffected.  Although well-acted and nicely staged by Les Waters, I didn't find the debate about whether Christianity requires the existence of a hell and satan nor the other questions of faith addressed in the context of the play especially original.  Nice singing though.

The production that really won me over in recent weeks is at the tiny Claire Tow Theatre at Lincoln Center.  It's called "The Kill Floor" and is the professional debut of the playwright Abe Koogler who has had the great fortune to have Marin Ireland in his cast.  The play is solid and workmanlike and well-directed by Lila Neubegauer but Ireland brings everything up a notch as Andy, an ex-drug addict recently released from prison who is trying to reconnect with her teenage son B (Nicholas L. Ashe). The only work she can find is on the "kill floor" of an abattoir where working conditions are paralyzingly sub-human.   She faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles as she desperately tries to heal her relationship with her son and find a way to make connections to fill the lonely void in her life.  In a parallel story the son is struggling with his own loneliness and confusion about his sexual identity.  Marin Ireland is always so present in her roles that one forgets she is acting but, having seen her play such different characters as Steph in Neil LaBute's "Reasons to be Pretty," Marie Antionette in David Adjmi's play of that name at Soho Rep and Ellen in Lisa Krone's "In the Wake" at the Public Theatre, I can assure you that she has an outstanding range. I also recommend you see her in the  title role of the murderously hilarious 2008 independent film "The Understudy."







uer.

Muldoon's Rogue Oliphant Rosh Hashana

On Monday, September 14th,  I attended my third Muldoon's Picnic at the Irish Arts Center  which unfortunately fell on the first night of Rosh Hashana.  Attendance was down as a result.  Who would have thunk it?  It appears there are a lot more Irish Jews in New York than I had previously thought. My own children share both heritages but I have always felt they were fairly unique in that.  Is there a common bond because both cultures are carriers of the Tay-Sachs disease?  But I digress.

On the menu this past Monday were the Australian novelist Peter Carey, poet Maureen N. McClane, Bill Payne of Little Feat,  Muldoon's new band Rogue Oliphant (In the past he performed with the band Wayside Shrines and I believe that some of the members are the same) and, of course, the man himself, Paul Muldoon, who never ceases to entertain and astound with his spoken word poems.

Muldoon started the evening off backed by Rogue Oliphant with the rollicking and somewhat bawdy "Mrs. Oliphant"   Although the real Mrs. Oliphant was the Scottish Margaret Oliphant, a late 19th century writer of domestic realism and tales of the supernatural,  Muldoon's Mrs. Oliphant is presumably his own wife.

Maureen N. McClane read selections from her recent book of poems "This Blue."  My favorite line of her poetry from "This Blue":  The effort your life / requires exhausts me. / I am not kidding.”
She has also the author of a book and essays about troubadour history and so ended the first half of her program singing the troubadour ballad "Barbara Allen" accompanied on guitar by herself.

Peter Carey read from his novel "The True History of the Kelly Gang" which the Guardian just named in its definitive "100 best novels written in English."  Carey is an engaging reader but I would have preferred him to have read something new.

Less interesting, for me at least, was the musician Bill Payne who chatted us up a bit with information about Waco, Texas  from whence he hails, sang the song "Dust and Bones" written with his son Evan and recited one of his own poems.

I wasn't able to stay for the second half of the program and am sure I missed out on many more pleasures but I am looking forward to the next next Picnic which is coming up on October 12th and will feature novelist Colum McCann, poet Michael Dickman, fiddler Dan Trueman and others.  For more information go to http://www.irishartscenter.org

BAD, BETTER, BEST

I'm back from a late summer hiatus and ready to roll!

Let us begin with the worst and work our up.

"Mercury Fur"

I am almost never disappointed with Signature's productions (let us just forget about Kenneth Lonergan's "The Medieval Play" for the moment) so I was gobsmacked by the sheer awfulness of the current production of "Mercury Fur."  Written by the hot young British playwright and screenwriter of"The Reflecting Skin" Philip Ridley, the play, at 2 1/2 hours,  is at least 1 1/2 hours too long.  I found myself on clock watch (watch watch?) from about 20 minutes in.  And NO ESCAPE!  In my captivity,  with no intermission and in a space not much bigger than a black box theatre, I found myself passing time contemplating the occupants of the front row tatty armchairs across the stage from me, all of them large and oddly proportioned and several of them asleep for much of the play.

What might have been a tight little one act with a bang of an ending is instead a long meandering talk-fest that ends in a whimper.  If I could have understood the mumblings and slurred speech of several of the characters my interest might possibly have been retained, although I doubt it.  Scott Elliott strikes again!  In glancing at the program afterward I saw that he had also directed "Russian Transport" for The New Group, another long and messy play that I actually WAS able to escape during intermission.  I guess he has learned his lesson with respect to intermissions.

The cast is young, very young.  This might not have been a problem is any of them actually knew how to act or, at least, act with each other.  Again, in glancing at the program, I noticed that few of them had any experience to speak of.  The exceptions were Paul Iacono as Lola, the transgender conscience of the play, Peter Mark Kendall as the Party Guest, wired to explode, and Emily Cass McDonnell as The Duchess, the sole female actor in the cast.  Ms. Cass McDonnell brought some humor with her on her arrival which was, unfortunately, more than mid-way through the play and too late to save it.

The play itself is a futuristic doomsday story of loneliness, disconnection and violence that has nothing new to to tell us.


"Scenes from an Execution"

I had high hopes for the Potomac Theatre Project's production of Howard Barker's "Scenes From An Execution"directed by Richard Romangnoli, not the least being because of it being the much-heralded final performance by Jan Maxwell, an actress I greatly admire, before she retires from the stage.  I adored her in Sondheim's "Follies" on Broadway and thought she came close to saving the vapid "City of Conversation" at Lincoln Center last year.  Retiring before she turns 60 seems extreme but she attributes it to a dearth of challenging and interesting parts for women of a certain age.

The 16th Century Venetian artist Galactia, however, is certainly a challenging and interested role.

Galactia, a fictional character based loosely on Artemisia Genteleschi,  an artist in the style of of Caravagio, is given a huge commission by the Venetian Republic to paint an epic narrative in celebration of the Republic's victory at sea over the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto. The coarse, lusty, bull-headed and politically incorrect Galactia manages in the course of the play to destroy her relationships with her lover, her daughters, the church and the Venetian powers-that-be but perhaps, astoundingly, not her artistic reputation.

Unfortunately Maxwell screeched her way though the play.  She entered at a fever pitch and never came down, even in a scene played completely in the dark.   The play is historically fascinating and written with humor, wit and remarkable command of language but there was no modulation or nuance in Ms. Maxwell's performance.  Having gone to see "Scenes From An Execution" out of respect for the actor I left less in awe of the actor but with a great admiration for the playwright.


"John"

Annie Baker, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

But, seriously, Annie Baker has not yet had a miss in my opinion.  "John" is currently having a run at Signature Theatre.  As with her other plays, "The Flick" (still on at The Barrow Street Theatre),  "Circle Mirror Transformation" (Playwright's Horizons), and her adaptation of "Uncle Vanya"(Soho Rep),  "John" is directed by Sam Gold.  There has been much written about their collaboration and it's a great one.  I would even speculate that it is hard to discern where the playwright ends and director begins.

The action takes place in an excruciatingly kitchy B&B in Gettysburg overseen by the dotty Mertis, played by Georgia Engel. A youngish couple, Jenny (Hong Chau) And Elias (Christopher Abbott), have stopped here on their way back to Brooklyn from a visit to Jenny's family in the mid-West. Elias wants to visit Gettysburg, Jenny doesn't, and both are taking a long look at their relationship. Elias visits Gettysburg and Jenny and Mertis are visited by Genevieve (Lois Smith).

As  they do in "The Flick," Annie Baker and Sam Gold make much of the silences, the spaces between words, in "John."  But isn't that like life?  There is so much to be said in the unsaying. As a result the play, like "The Flick" runs over 3 1/2 hours (WITH an intermission, I would like to add) but it is time well spent in the company of characters who are not exactly what them seem at the outset.

The actors are all outstanding. The war-horse Lois Smith, muse to likes of Sam Shepard and Tony Kushner and whose first film was East of Eden, is marvelous as the seemingly out of her mind and out of touch Genevieve.  The younger actors are good but it's really not their show. The star turn, if you want to call it that, comes from Georgia Engel, late of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show".  Baker and Gold cast her in "Uncle Vanya" as Nana and she made such an impression that Baker wrote "John" for her.

The John of the title is an enigma for much of the play. But see "John" and all will be revealed.