I have seen "A Midsummer Night's Dream" more times than I can remember but each time brings something fresh.  The New York Classic Theatre's production which I saw this year in Carl Schurtz Park on the far Upper East Side delights.  The company does stellar productions of Shakespeare and occasionally other classics each summer in various parks around Manhattan and Brooklyn.  The conceit is that we, the audience, must move with the action from spot to spot in the park.  The most engaging aspect of this particular production are the "rude mechanicals" led by Nick Salamone's Peter Quince who are enlisted by Duke Theseus(the excellent Clay Storseth) to put on a production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," in particular Ian Gould who plays Bottom with enormous flair.  Another device in this production which works to great effect is having the mechanicals double as Titania's creep steam punk fairies.  But the highlight of the production was Montgomery Sutton as Francis Flute performing Thisbe with enormous, and I mean truly enormous, balloon breasts that prevented movement.  I thought I would burst my appendix laughing. On the negative side, I could have done without the seemingly arbitrary passages of the play that were set to music and Matt Mundy's Puck was a bit ADD for my taste. But all in all a very pleasing evening with the Bard.

On the flip side, "Coriolanus" at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey on the Drew University campus was a disappointment.  The production design, to begin with, was a mess, a mash up of everything from cheap Liberace suits to bathrobes with epaulettes standing in for military attire.  What were they thinking?  Well, I know what they were thinking because I stayed for the Q&A with actors.  They seemed to think that this made the productions "timeless." Hmmmm... The acting overall was quite good although I detest the casting of women in men's roles unless that is the intention of the production as in Phyllida Law's recent all female productions of "Henry VI" and " The Taming of the Shrew".  I find it distracting and it changes the tenor of the scenes. I must give a nod to Jacqueline Antaramian who was especially fine as Volumnia,  the helicopter mother of Caius Martius Coriolanus.  Greg Derelian is a very good actor but as Caius Martiuis  he looked too much like a character out of the "The Sopranos" for me to take him seriously.  Perhaps if the costumes had not been so ridiculous ....

"Privacy" by James Graham at the Public Theatre, is a bit of fluff about the invasion of privacy in the age of the internet, initially brought to our attention by the Edward Snowden who himself appears briefly on a screen at the end of the play. I think anyone who was shocked by the "revelations" in the play probably has not been following the news since Snowden became the most famous whistleblower in the world and most definitely has not see "Citizen Four" which shocked socks off anyone who saw it.  No, the subject matter of this play not longer has the power to be shocking but, as directed by Josie Rourke with a cast that includes Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, Rachel Dratch late of SNL and many many many Amazon boxes, it is charming and extremely good fun.

Misogyny turned upside down and going Incognito

The current production of "The Taming of the Shrew" at the Delacorte Theatre directed by Phyllida Lloyd is a curious one.  In her attempt to stand the play's obvious misogyny on it's head and make it relevant for today's audience, she had cast an all female version.  Unfortunately, "Shrew" is not as successful as her also all female "Henry VI" set in a women's prison in Scotland.  That production had gravitas.  Her "Shrew" is a bauble. There is a fine performance by Janet McTeer a Petrucio but for the most part the performances feel thrown off and slight.  The best aspect of the production has nothing to do with Shakespeare at all.  Lloyd frames the play with a beauty pageant hosted by Donald Trump.  Kate and Bianca are contestants, of course.  Then, interspersed with the action of the play, are vignettes delivered by a stand-up comic.  The humor is sexist but, delivered by a woman dressed as a man, is actually mocking the current climate of sexism and misogyny of Trump's campaign. Unfortunately, during the performance I attended, there were disgruntled audience members who shouted angrily at the comic with cries of "Misogyny!"  I guess they didn't get the joke.

"Incognito" at Manhattan Theatre Club is another effort from Nick Payne who wrote the excellent "Constellations."  Again he incorporates the physics of time and place into a play, but this time about the brain: memory, loss of, and the actual brain of Einstein.  Directed by Doug Hughes, the play asks a lot of questions: Why would a man married for 30 years murder his wife in his sleep? How can a person not remember from one moment to the next? Does the study of a human brain give us an information that we can play forward? The answer to all these questions is simply that we do not know, that we may never know. "Incognito," while thought-provoking and entertaining, doesn't have the focus of "Constellations," a two character play that applied string theory and quantum mechanics to endlessly fragment and refract the story of a relationship. Jack Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson's performances in that play were exquisite and more powerful than those of the current crop, with the exception of Charlie Cox who brilliantly embodies several characters over the course of the play including Henry, an amnesiac who remembers and longs for his wife Margaret but can't remember that he has seen her a moment before.  Heather Lind, Morgan Spector and Geneva Carr each slip in an out of various American and British accents effortlessly but I had a hard time keeping track of their various story lines. The play is "brain" food though and I recommend the 85 minutes in the dark.

http://nyti.ms/25fR3U3

A Tale of Two Plays

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

I didn't expect to enjoy the new play "Indian Summer" at Playwrights Horizons as much as I did.  I have been disappointed in their much touted productions by the current batch of hot young playwrights specifically Lucas Hnath's "The Christians," Anne Washburn's" Antlia Pneumatica" and Bruce Norris's "The Qualms."  Smartly directed by Carolyn Cantor, the Gregory S. Moss play takes place in the Newburyport, Massachusetts, a summer beach destination for the middle class from New York and Boston.  It revolves around the relationships between Daniel, a 16 year old misanthrope,  who has been dumped by his mother with his quirky step-grandfather for the summer, and a local girl named Izzy.  Daniel is played with great depth by Owen Campbell and Elise Kibler as the shrill townie Izzy is a revelation, shedding layers of her brittle onion skin to create a fully nuanced portrait of a young woman caught between the life she knows and her dreams.  Izzy shakes the adolescent Daniel out of his loneliness and misanthropy and he discovers love.  Jonathan Hadary is entertaining as Daniel's widowed step-grandfather George but his character is really a device to frame and move along the play.  And Joe Tippet as Jeremy, Izzy's doltish boyfriend, provides comic relief.  Don't expect Pinter or Albee (I know, I know, "Shut up already about Pinter and Albee.") but if you want an evening of light entertainment this is an option.

Unfortunately, it was a battle to make it through the first act of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins "War" at Lincoln Center's  Claire Tow Theatre.   "An Octoroon" at Soho was a brilliant theatrical experience but he has since disappointed with "Gloria" at the Vinyard theatre but which was, at least, watchable.  Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, she of the dreadful "Revolt, She Said" at Soho Rep this Spring and "Red Speedo" at NYTW, the play is formulaic, dull and not enhanced by the monologues spoken directly to the audience by the coma-induced central character while the other actors crawl ape-like around the stage.  Given that the playwright is "brown" and that at least one of the ape-approximators is a white actor, I guess I am not allowed to call this out at racist, but still...  I don't want to do the actors the disservice of naming them as I think it would be best that they move on without this blemish on their resumes.  Needless to say, even after a second glass of cheap pino grigio at intermission, I did not have the resolve to return for the second act.

Have I mentioned the lovely staged reading I saw of "Letters to Sala" at the Museum of Jewish Heritage?  The play by Arlene Hutton is based on the book "Sala's Gift" by Ann Kirshner (spoiler alert: Sala's daughter) and is a stage enactment of letters that Sala received and saved while in various work camps during the Holocaust.  The reading was well directed by Eric Nightengale and beautifully acted by a large cast. Sala who is well into her 90's is still alive.  Keep your eye out for a future production.


Upcoming:  Irish Arts Center will present a Pen, Paper, and Palate event "Eating for Health, Love, Sex, and Death" on May 31st at The Half King.  There will be an esteemed panel of writers including Joel Salatin (on health), Paula Butturini (on love), Giulia Melucci (on sex), and Jon McGoran (on death), moderated by Bill Yosses, the former White House Executive Pastry Chef. And on June 7th William Doyle will read from PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy at Irish Arts Center.  This is the paperback launch of his book, originally published in October 2015. For more info and tickets go to www.irishartscenter.org/.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

"American Psycho," based on the 25 year old best seller by Bret Easton Ellis, and directed by Rubert Goold whose most recent works on Broadway were "King Charles III" and "Enron," is one of the most joyously campy Broadway productions I have ever seen. I last saw Benjamin Walker in "Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson" at The Public where his beefy physique matched Jackson's grab-life-by-tail persona.  Here he has toned up and is all sharp edges.  The psychotic Patrick Bateman is about as far removed from the lusty young bounder Andrew Jackson as one can get.   Bateman is a serial killer disguised by day as a metrosexual Wall Street trader.  He is directionless, unhappy and, ultimately, empty.  The only way he can feel anything is in the act of killing.  The music by Duncan Sheik relies heavily on 90's dance music and the sets by Es Devlin (thankfully there is no rotating set here, something she has a penchant for) have the antiseptic feel of a high end minimalist hotel. The play is bloody, of course, and there are several entertaining performances but really the show is all Benjamin Walker who we can't tear our eyes off of.

Gillian Anderson is "A Streetcar Names Desire." Apart from her performance everything else falls away.  The production is not helped by the distracting slowly revolving stage which made me think that the set design was once again by Es Devlin who used this device in the recent "A Doll House" at BAM and "Machinal" on Broadway.  But no, this time we have Magda Willi to thank. The Young Vic production is directed by Benedict Andrews who brought the stunning production of "The Maids" with Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett to the Lincoln Center Festival last summer.  Gillian Anderson certainly has the chops to play the doomed and tragic Blanche.  This Blanche is beautiful and fierce, aware that she is self-deluding until the moment she loses everything.  The other performances, which I found decent but workmanlike, faded into the revolving woodwork.  Ben Foster's much touted literally apelike performance of Stanley hardly compares with Brando's memorable turn on screen (and on stage too, I expect).  He lacks the sex-appeal that makes us understand why Stella is so drawn to him and there was little real chemistry between him and Vanessa Kirby as Stella who is missing the earthiness of Kim Hunter.  Corey Johnson as Mitch was more effecting but I can never get Karl Malden out of my head.  But "Stop the set!  I want to get off."

The delightful new Anais Mitchell musical "Hadestown" at New York Theatre Workshop is a hot ticket.  I can see it going on to a lengthier run and becoming a moneymaker for NYTW. "Hadestown" was originally an album by Ms. Mitchell. I was there on opening night and the audience was packed with beautiful young people, presumably actors, who seemed to know all the words.   The direction by Rachel Chavkin ("Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812" and "Small Mouth Sounds") was precise and perfect.  This tale of Orpheus and Eurydice could easily have been reduced to a sloppy "Godspell" wanna-be but it is tighter, deeper.  I cannot single out a performance because they all were excellent. Damon Daunno as Orpheus has a voice so similar to the late Jeff Buckley's that it's chilling and the Brazilian actress Nabiyah Be as Eurydice may just be one of then most stunningly beautiful performers to grace the New York stage.  The chorus of singer/musicians, Lulu Fall, Shaina Taub and Jessie Shelton, all of whom I have seen recently off-Broadway in different productions, form a wonderful musical coven, each unique in her own way.  The voice of Patrick Page is a low rumble like the underworld Hades he is named for and it was delicious to see Amber Gray after her turn as the lead in Branden Jacob-Jenkins' "An Octoroon"  here as Persephone.  But Chris Sullivan's Hermes comes close to stealing the night as he prances around the stage, leading the unlucky lovers to their fate.  He is the emcee to end all emcees.  If you don't know the album, I suggest you get it as that will be easier than getting a ticket to the show.  Watch out "Hamilton!"

Thrilling Heights and Disappointments

I had the real pleasure to see David Tennant exercise his acting muscle as "Richard II" at BAM last week.  Those of you who know him only from his stint as the 7th(?) "Dr. Who"  and/or the widely acclaimed but somewhat disappointing British and American versions of "Broadchurch" on television, would have been amazed to see his transformation into probably the nuttiest king in the Shakespeare History plays. He devastates.  Is that a verb?  We watch as he morphs from a spoiled foppish king to one, who at his death, might have been a real power.   When, upon his return from battles in Ireland, he finds has been conquered by his cousin, the future Henry IV, he realizes for perhaps the first time that he is mortal: "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings..."

Alex Hassell was excellent as well as the young king in "Henry V" although the play is all battle and not to everyone's taste. Henry V was the human king as opposed to Richard II's spoiled popinjay and Henry VI's brutish conqueror. In "Henry VI" parts 1 and 2 (which I did not see this time around having just seen Harriet Walter in Phyllida Lloyd's inventive all-female production at Saint Ann's Warehouse) Prince Hal matures from a feckless boy to the king he will become in "Henry V." He was the people's king and we finally get a taste of this in "Henry V" when he visits his dispirited men on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt in disguise.  He brings with him "a little touch of Harry in the night" and it is enough to lift them up to win one of the great military battles in English History.

Both productions from the RSC are well if not exactly imaginatively directed by Gregory Doran and the performances were all excellent except for a few scenes with a mumbling Jane Lapotaire as Queen Isobel in "Henry V" who unfortunately seems past her sell-by date. She fared slightly better as the Duchess of Gloucester in "Richard II."  Oliver Ford Davies was a curious but fine Chorus in "Henry V" shambling on an off the stage in professorial gear, a baggy sweater and glasses, which was not in keeping with the otherwise period aspect of the play.  And I did quite enjoy the Elizabethan music that framed both plays, especially the three Sopranos in "Richard II."

On a low note, Anne Washburn's "Antlia Pneumatica" (literally "Air Pump", don't ask) at Playwright's Horizons was a disappointment.  Washburn's "10 Out of 12" at Soho Rep was one of my top three favorite plays last year.  Unfortunately "Antlia Pneumatica,"  friends gathering at a country house to memorialize a dead friend as in "The Big Chill," seemed directionless.  I enjoyed the first half of the play because her characters are always so unique and wonderful and her dialogue is snappy but the play went nowhere really and the ending, or lack thereof, left the audience confused.  Perhaps that was her intention but for the purposes of this play it didn't cut it.   The performances were mostly excellent, especially Annie Parisse as Nina,  but Rob Campbell as Adrian, her one-time lover, wasn't able to deliver on the charisma that his character required. The character was also saddled with a bizarre Sam Shepard-like monologue that he couldn't quite finesse.

I'm afraid the "Revolt, She Said" by Alice Birch at the Soho Rep was a complete mess, a feministic harangue with, once again, a trashing of the stage.  Hellooooo???  Directors????  Find some other way to depict chaos please.  This is getting really old.

Ivo does Salem and Ed Harris is Buried

I think I'm going soft.  I'm starting to like Ivo Van Hove.  After his disastrous production of "The Misanthrope" at NYTW in 2007 I thought I couldn't be dragged to another play under his direction. But in 2012, as a member of BAM, I attended a dress rehearsal of  his modernistic interpretation of "The Roman Tragedies" of Shakespeare which I didn't hate. Last year I was willing to give his Antigone a try but was left baffled by his direction. Then, on the recommendation of several friends I saw his "A View From The Bridge" on Broadway.  I was almost blown away.  I say "almost" because I didn't like his cartoonish over-sexualization of the relationship between Eddie and his niece Katherine and I think he went over the top at the end with the symbolic gallons of red paint thrown about the stage.  But "The Crucible" is nearly perfect.  Except for the moment when he decides to have an evil wind blow trash all over the stage (where it remains for the rest of the play) the direction is tight.  Once again, he transports the production to more modern times. Many of the scenes take place in what looks like a classroom, the girls dressed like Catholic schoolgirls.  The sets, however, are minimal, as in his other productions.  I'm personally a fan of this approach to set design because it does not detract from the play and the acting.  The acting was exquisite.  If I were to single out any performances it would be those of Sophie Okonedo as Elizabeth Proctor,  Ben Whishaw as John Proctor, Ciaran Hinds as  Deputy Governor Danforth and Bill Camp as the Reverend John Hale.  Saoirse Ronan, who I think is an immensely like-able and talented young actress, is very good but she and the other girls are almost incidental to the play once events are set in motion.  O.K. Ivo, you have won me over.

On the heals of this I attended The New Group's revival of Sam Shepard's 1978 play "Buried Child" with Ed Harris as the patriarch Dodge.  Fortunately for us, Dodge is on stage for the entirety of the play but the play is a mess and some of the performances are major league fails.  Amy Madigan is wooden as Dodge's narcissistic wife Halie and Taissa Farmiga's shrill Shelly is genuinely embarrassing to watch. Neither actress knows how to connect on stage.  They deliver their lines to the air.  But Ed Harris can always draw me in and he is brilliant at Shepard's long rambling monologues, no wonder since he has been acting Shepard since in the beginning of his own career.

I saw again Julian Sands' "A Celebration of Harold Pinter" directed by John Malcovich at The Irish Rep which was well worth seeing for a second time although The Irish Rep is in a temporary space and the current venue did not do the piece any favors.  The play is a mix of Pinter's poems, essays and Sands' own recollections.  The first time I saw it was in a dark room where Sands was spotlit as he moved around the stage, shifting from one one poem or recollection to another.  In the current space which feels like a school auditorium the house lights were on throughout and there was no distance from Sands/Pinter.  I felt it diminished the performance.

I'm also delighted to say that I was fortunate enough to have tickets to the David Bowie Tribute at Carnegie Hall on March 31st.  The all star line-up included Ricky Lee Jones, Anne Wilson from Heart, Debbie Harry, Sean Lennon and Jacob Dylan, but the highlight of the night for me was Michael Stipe and Karen Elson's quietly eerie rendition of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes."

Laurie Anderson Crashes Muldoon's Picnic

To see Laurie Anderson perform in such an intimate setting is a joy.  I have only ever seen her before from way up or back in big venues such as the BAM Opera House (Moby Dick) or the Rose Theatre at Lincoln Center.  She appeared smaller than I had thought but her music and words were so much more powerful in that small space. Accompanying herself on electric violin she began with a humorous story about a correspondence she had as a 12 year old with then Senator Jack Kennedy but moved on to recounting a stay with an Amish family in Pennsylvania with a chilling ending about how we teach children to trade affection for favors.

Also appearing were the poet Timothy Donnelly, musician Mark Mulcahy frontman of the bands Miracle Legion and Polaris and Cait O'Riordan founding member and bass player for the London-Irish band The Pogues.  And, of course, Paul Muldoon and his house band Rogue Oliphant.

Muldoon was curiously absent for most of the evening, although he did begin with one of his spoken word poems, this time with some awkward rhymes(which he acknowledged).

Tim Donnelly began with the poem Malamute published in The New Yorker and ended with his ode to Diet Mountain Dew also recently in The New Yorker, both humorous and clever and delivered as spoken word. But I was more struck by his sweet ode to love called The New Intelligence from his book The Cloud Corporation: 

"I love that when I call you on the long drab days practicality
 keeps one of us away from the other that I am calling
 a person so beautiful to me that she has seen my awkwardness
 on the actual sidewalk but she still answers anyway."

A bearlike, bearded Mark Mulcahy performed two soft and dreamy songs about his mother, Esther, on his mind because it was her birthday.  "It's for the Best" were his mother's words after the death of his father.  Cait O'Riordan sang a rousing version of "Kitty Ricketts" accompanied by Mulcahy and Rogue Oliphant who also had the opportunity to play a couple of their own songs.

Laurie Anderson returned with a dark, cautionary piece where she changed her voice electronically to become Donald Trump.  She then joined in with the rest of the musicians for a final number, a duet  that Muldoon had written for O'Riordan and Mulcahy.

Although there were shouts of "Encore! Encore!" from the audience, it was a wrap.

I encourage you to attend the next Muldoon's Picnic on Monday, April 11th, 7:30 when Book Prize-winning Author Anne Enright, A.M. Homes and Pulitizer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa will be performing.  But book early!  This Monday's Picnic was sold out!

http://irishartscenter.org/literature/muldoons_picnic_4_11_16.html