Best and Worst of 2017

There was so much good theatre this past year if you were lucky enough to catch any of it. Below are my top 10 in no particular order:

Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" at The Park Avenue Armory with Bobby Cannavale
Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia"  by PTP/NYC at the Atlantic Theatre
Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" on Broadway with Jake Gullenhaal and         Annaleigh Ashford
Bill T. Jones "A Letter to My Nephew" at BAM Harvey
Duncan MacMillan's "People, Places, Things" at St. Ann's Warehouse with Denise Gough
Jen Silverman's "The Moors" at The Playwright's Realm
Rachel Bonds' "Sundown, Yellow Moon" at Ars Nova
J.T. Rogers "Oslo" at the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center
Lucas Hnath's "A Doll's House Part 2" on Broadway with Chris Cooper and Laurie Metcalf
Heather Christian's "Animal Wisdom" at The Bushwick Starr

Honorable Mentions:

The Encore production of Lerner and Loewe's "Brigadoon" at City Center with Kelli O'Hara
Martin McDonagh's "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at BAM Harvey
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's "Cafe Muller and Right of Spring" at BAM Opera
Shakespeare in the Park's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"at the Delacorte with Annaleigh Ashford
Amy Herzog's "Mary Jane" at NYTW
Martin Zimmerman's "On the Exhale" at The Roundabout with Marin Ireland
Robert Lepage's "887" at BAM Harvey
David Harrower's "Knives in Hens" at 59E59
Gare St. Lazar Ireland's "The Beckett Trilogy" at Lincoln Center White Light Festival with Conor   Lovett
Manual Cinema's "Mementos Mori" at BAM Fisher.

I saw many, many more performances that I enjoyed in 2017 but I'm sticking to naming only the best of the best, although perhaps an extra honorable mention to Richard Nelson's "Illyria" at The Public Theatre is necessary.

My favorite emerging theatre companies at the moment are The Playwright's Realm, The Bushwick Starr and Ars Nova although they have had their share of misfires.  Last year I would have included Soho Rep but I was really put off by several recent productions and readings.

Unfortunately, some of the WORST theatre ever also happened in 2017.  Here are a few for your consideration:

Theatre de la Ville, Paris's production of Albert Camus's "State of Siege" at BAM Opera
Ayad Akhtar's "Junk" at  the Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center
Richard Maxwell's "Samara" at Soho Rep
Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen's "The Light Years" at Playwright's Horizons
Geoff Sobelle's "The Object Lesson" at NYTW
Lynn Nottage's "Sweat" on Broadway
Matthew Aucoin's "Crossing" at BAM Opera
Michael Yates' "The Rape of the Sabine Women by Grace P. Matthias" at the Playwright's Realm
Dominique Morriseau's "Pipeline" at the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center
Bryna Turner's "Bull in a China Shop" at the Claire Tow Theatre at Lincoln Center

December Blew in and Out

Much as I would like to report that I loved Ariane Mnouchkine's 3 1/2 hour "A Room in India" at the Park Avenue Armory, I cannot.  I am a great champion of her work with Theatre du Soleil having been blown away by the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides) at  her space outside of Paris, the Cartoucherie, in the early 90's and extremely moved by "Le Derniere Caravanserail" (about the immigrant crisis in Europe) at the Lincoln Center White Light Festival several years ago. But I found "A Room in India" to be shrieky and self-indulgent. Presumably it is autobiographical.  Although titled, "A Room in India" the room could have been anywhere.  It's really about the room in the mind of the creator and her central question "Of what worth is the theatre I am creating?" although once again she addresses the immigrant crisis. While normally I have had no problem, even enjoyed, the length Mnouchkine's productions, in this case I would have preferred some trimming, especially of the Indian dance sequences. There are enough ideas ping-ponging around during the play for several plays and it feels like everything get short shrift here. On a side note, the Indian pre-performance dinner was wonderful.

"Farmhouse/Whorehouse" at BAM Fisher is a one-woman show with Lily Taylor.  This "Artist Lecture," as it is called in the program, is by Suzanne Bocanegra and directed by Lee Sunday Evens takes us to the author's grandparent's farm in Texas which was across the road from the infamous "chicken farm" on which "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" was based. The story is interesting and well constructed although I could have done without the playwright feeding lines to Lily Taylor over a monitor throughout the play.  Taylor is a charming stage performer, something I did not expect having never been overly impressed by her film work.

"20th Century Blues" at The Pershing Square Signature Center by Susan Miller is essentially chick-lit for women in the over-60 bracket.  If you fit that category then you will find the two hours pleasant enough. Four women who met at a protest in the 70's have continued to meet every year to catch up and have their picture taken by the central character, a photographer.  Each character is a type that we know well and the play addresses all the issues we expect: marriage, divorce, career, children.  A niggling complaint was with a discussion of plastic surgery, as will happen when women of certain age and class get together.  Polly Draper in the central role claims to eschew it although her face lifts and other work are clearly evident. This is an example of middling play wasting the talents of a great director, in this case Emily Mann. The performance to note is that of Kathryn Grody, a veteran New York actor and Mandy Patinkin's wife. 

Bedlam, as always, strikes home with their production of "Peter Pan" at The Duke theatre. I wouldn't put it at the top of my list of Bedlam productions (the honors go to "Hamlet," "Sense and Sensibility," "Twelfth Night," and "What You Will" in that order) but the company is always inventive and pushing the boundaries with cross-dressing actors and sometimes overtly sexual insinuations.  This is not a "Peter Pan" for the young set.  Directed by company founder Eric Tucker who also plays
Father among a slew of other characters, the ensemble cast includes Bedlam regulars Edmund Lewis, Kelley Curran and Susannah Millonzi as well as newcomers to the company Zuzanna Szadkowski and Brad Heberlee(as Peter Pan).

Who am I to write a review of the Broadway production of "SpongeBob SquarePants," based on a popular cartoon I have maybe seen two episodes of?  I don't know what got into me (Perhaps because the book by Kyle Jarrow was directed by the experimental director Tina Landau and the songs by Steven Tyler, Cyndi Lauper and David Bowie were straight out of the 80's rock pantheon. Was this enough?) but I coerced my 21-year-old son into attending with me with an offer of Black Tap and off we went.  Ethan Slater is indeed a find for Broadway as the title character and the sets are Rube Goldberg fun.  I did get a little head-achey as the play went on but the Ziegfeld-inspired number performed in Act II by Gavin Lee as Squidward, "I'm Not a Loser," conjures up the great Tommy Tune.  Go for that.

An overhyped "Today Is My Birthday" at Home. Written by Susan Soon He Stanton and directed by the reliable Kip Fagan there is really not much to recommend here.  The main character Emily, who, by the way, does not have have a birthday during the course of the play, is portrayed by another downtown stalwart Jennifer Ikeda. I found no fault with the performances and was especially taken by Nadine Malouf who plays a distraught mom but the devise of having the characters only interact on the phone felt tired and there was nothing unique or special in this story of a young woman coming home after a failed relationship and career.

Playwrights Horizons finally delivers with "Mankind."  Perhaps not to everyone's taste, this futuristic tale of a society where there are no women is cleverly conceived and entertaining.  The premise is that men can get pregnant and are subject to the same societal dictates that women are now so, when one of the main characters get pregnant and wants to have an abortion, he and his partner are sent to prison.  However, when he gives birth to the first girl since the extinction of women he becomes a god to the new wave of male "feminists."  The play which was written and directed by the queer black playwright Robert O'Hara is broad but original and moving and addresses the question "Has man EVER been kind?".

End of November Days

I urge anyone who can sit for four hours and enjoy a play in Dutch to head over to BAM to see Ivo Van Hove's dramatic interpretation of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" which continues through the weekend.  I've gradually come around to Van Hove since first seeing his ghastly "Misanthrope" at NYTW.  But I have reluctantly attended his "The Crucible" and "A View From The Bridge" on Broadway and have grown to appreciate that he is operating on this planet. He is a master of using mixed media but also an intuitive director of actors, here a gorgeous group that includes the exquisite Halina Reijn as Dominique Francon and Ramsey Nasr as the doomed architect Howard Roark, also a gorgeous physical specimen.  Full disclosure: They both get naked... more than once. Like Ayn Rand or not, this is powerful drama of success, failure and personal responsibility.  But he will continue to strew garbage all over the stage when given the opportunity. 

You probably missed the Encores presentation of  Lerner & Loewe's "Brigadoon" at City Center earlier this month but let me tell you that it was blissful.  The story of a Scottish town that comes to life for one day every 100 years is ridiculous but to hear Kelli O'Hara sing is always a joy.  Patrick Wilson was a surprise in a role originally intended for Steven Pasquale (who made the ghastly mistake of taking the lead in "Junk" at Lincoln Center instead).  I only really know him as the closeted Mormon Joe Pitt in HBO's "Angels in America" and from a guest turn on the TV show "Girls," but he's actually a fine singer  and held his own with O'Hara. "Brigadoon" was directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon who comes from the ballet world.  Of course, the dancing is wonderful but Wheeldon, with this and with "American in Paris" on Broadway, is proving himself to be a real force on Broadway. 

"Hundred Days" at NYTW is probably a waste of your time if you're not a Millennial living in Williamsburg but, if you are, it's for you.  I actually quite like The Bengsons (Abigail and Shaun), having heard their edgy but still folky rock in the fabulous Ars Nova production of "Sundown, Yellow Moon" earlier this year, but their story is just not enough to merit a full length production even with Anne Kauffman's expert direction. Jo Lampert, a singer, musician and performer who was excellent in "New York Animals" at the New Ohio Theatre, brings everything she can to her limited role but it's not enough. "Hundred Days" not a play; it's a concert.  It'll be playing at NYTW through December 31 if you want to just kick back, close your eyes and listen to music for 90 minutes over the holidays.  You could do worse.

Annie B. Parson's Big Dance Theatre's amusing "17C" at BAM Harvey explores the writings of the 17th Century philanderer and diarist Samuel Pepys and his wife Bess through music, dance and Laugh-in type skits.  I haven't seen anything from Parson before but with this particular piece she comes across as a poor man's/woman's Pina Bausch.  Even so, I'll take it, but I wish she had given us more dance and less of the long tired monologue delivered by veteran downtown actor Paul Lazar or the repeating schtick with the two college girls working out their relationship via Pepys' diary.  Special mention to the costumes by Talla Dia and Karen Boyer, bits and pieces that bring to mind the 17th Century without making this a full blown costume drama.

November Is Packed!

Run to get tickets to see Denise Hough's electrifying performance  in "People, Places & Things" at St. Ann's Warehouse now through December 3rd.  Be prepared though; this is a tough look at addiction. Ms. Hough's Emma is an actress on a downward spiral due to her addiction to just about everything.  Duncan MacMillan's play comes to Brooklyn from a hugely successful run at the National Theatre in London. The play itself is pretty standard stuff but, as directed by Jeremy Herrin, and with a magic box of a set by Bunnie Christie it takes us on a surreal  journey down the rabbit hole (yes, the allusion to Alice in Wonderland is intended). The supporting cast is excellent, especially Nathaniel Martello-White as Mark, a recovering addict who becomes Emma's friend in rehab.

Another show not to miss is "Animal Wisdom" at The Bushwick Starr which was recently extended through December 9th.  Heather Christian's show is part revival meeting and part ghost story as well as a memoire of Ms. Christian's childhood experiences being raised in the deep South. Or, as the program notes state: "Heather talks to dead people, gets freaked out and writes music."  Under Mark Rosenblatt's direction "Animal Wisdom" seems so specific to Christian and her friends/musicians that one cannot imagine it performed by anyone else.  Hence, a good reason to catch it while you can in the intimate Bushwick Starr theatre.

Kate Hamill's "Pride and Prejudice" is not up to Bedlam's marvelous "Sense and Sensibility" but a step up from "Vanity Fair," both also adapted by Ms. Hamill and starring none other than ...   Still, the six actors portraying the multitude of characters from the timeless Austen book have a rollicking good time and take us along for the ride.   I only wish Hamill would have left the sneer behind in her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennett.  It does a disservice to Austen and her most famous creation. But the Primary Stages production directed by Amanda Dehnert on through December 19th is still a most enjoyable way to pass an evening.

I wish I could be more laudatory about Rajiv Joseph's "Describe The Night" at The Atlantic Theatre Company.  I was a big fan of "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" on Broadway and "Guards at the Taj" which was also at The Atlantic, both tightly crafted and absorbing, but this fictionalized story of the Russian writer Isaac Babel is all over the place. This comes down in part to the direction by Giovanna Sardelli but the play itself is a massive undertaking for any director, spanning almost a century and following multiple interrelated characters. I don't know what the plays original intent was but somewhere along the line it became heavy with veiled allusions to Trump's presidency.  Fine performances from Danny Burstein as Babel,  Zach Grenier as the Stalinite officer who becomes Babel's unlikely friend and Tina Benko as his mad wife and Babel's lover keep it afloat. How much is fact and how much fiction we may never know even with the list of basic facts about Babel that are available on the way out of the theatre. Most impressive is the set by Tim Mackabee, a towering archive of secret Russian documents always ominously present.

In the "if you blinked, you missed them" category are "The Beckett Trilogy" at The Duke Theatre, "Knives in Hens" at Theatre 59E59, "State of Siege" at BAM Opera House and "Man to Man" at BAM Fisher.

The Beckett Trilogy had a three day run as part of Lincoln Center's white light festival and was a hot ticket. I managed to get a return on the day of the last performance and it was worth it to see Conor Lovett of Gare St. Lazare Ireland enact three monologues adapted from Beckett's "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable."  Of the three, all directed by Lovett's wife Judy Hegarty Lovett, "The Unnamable" came the closest to the feel of the great playwrights best works.  Lovett, along with his wife, has spent his career exploring and performing Beckett's work.  I think Beckett would have approved.

I caught "Knives in Hens" at the very end of its run spurred on by a great review in The New York Times.  I otherwise would have missed it not being a great fan of David Harrower whose "Blackbird" was overhyped and inferior.  This is an earlier play which took place somewhere in feudal Scotland in the early 1500's.  In its current staging director Paul Takacs places the story in the rural South of this country with a cast of three audaciously talented black actors: Robyn Kerr, Shane Taylor, Devin E. Haqq.  I was especially moved by the choreography of Yasmine Lee whose sensuous love-making moments frame the play.

There is really not much to say "State of Siege" at BAM Opera.  Adapted from Albert Camus's "The Plague" and directed by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota for Theatre de la Ville, Paris this  dark and quasi-operatic display was pretty dull aside from the impressive set by Yves Collet.

And there is even less to to recommend "Man to Man" at BAM Fisher, a one-woman show by Manfred Karge and directed by Bruce Guthrie & Scott Graham(it took two?) about a German woman who adopts the identity of her dead husband in order to survive to survive in Nazi Germany.  As with "Describe The Night," the play attempts to span several decades.  There is a lot of use  of visual gimmicks which feel too studied and Maggie Bain's accent is more Irish or Scottish than German.  Fail.

October Offerings

Reader, I walked out... Ayad Akhtar's newest offering, "Junk" at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, does not feel new at all.  The play, directed by Doug Hughes and starring the terrific musical actor Steven Pasquale, means to transport us back to the 80's junk bond madness.  Instead of transporting us, however, it mires us in a swamp of stagnant writing and direction.  I spent much of the first act bored with the action and observing the badly tailored suits the actors.  These "masters of the universe" would have been wearing beautifully fitted bespoke attire. That I had so much time to obsess on the suits is.. . well... you get where I'm going.   Last thought:  Steven Pasquale dropped out of the Encore's production of "Brigadoon" at City Center with Kelli O'Hara.  Mistake.

At the other end of the spectrum, Manual Cinema's "Mementos Mori" at BAM Fisher is delightful.  The small stage is awash in screens, lighting equipment and projectors, the kind used in schools in the 60's and 70's before the advent of computers and white boards.  The stage has the feel of a low-budget movie set gone wild.   Actors interact with the shadow puppets, cinematic techniques, sound and even live music played on stage by a trio of very talented and versatile musicians. At the start this shadow puppet mystery feels creaky and old fashioned but the company draws us into the fast paced story of love, loneliness and death.  More please.

Then there is "Office Hour" by Julie Cho and directed by Neel Keller at The Public Theatre.   Sue Jean Kim as Gina is superb as an adjunct professor of creative writing at a minor university who tries to connect to a student, played serviceably by Ki Hong Lee. However the framing of the play is tedious and unnecessary, beginning with two other adjunct teachers warning Gina to be careful of a withdrawn student in her class whose writing is violent and often shocking.  Cho ought to  have  contained the play to the office hour of the title.  "Office Hour" only truly comes alive when Cho plays out the possible scenarios that could happen during that hour between a professor and a possibly violent student alone in a room in an empty building.  I'll leave those to your imagination.  Cho weakens this with the final scene of the play, an encounter with one of the other adjuncts, a poor and necessary framing device.

"Illyria," also at The Public, written and directed by Richard Nelson (he, of the well acted but  excruciatingly dull Apple and Gabriel plays) is divine.  Nelson creates imaginary scenes between Joe Papp and a coterie of actors, directors and others as Papp tries to create what would become The Public Theater.  The time is1958.  We are behind the scenes as Papp and his motley crew which includes a young Colleen Dewhurst, composer David Amram and stage manager Bernie Gersten as they do battle with the city to keep Shakespeare free in Central Park, face down the House of Un-American Activities Committee and attempt to remain friends with each other.  The play intentionally models itself on the mumble core movies of the 90's which is not necessarily the smartest move.  I get the intent to create intimacy with quiet naturalistic dialogue but several of the older audience members at the performance I attended left mid-play because they couldn't hear (despite the flock of mikes hanging on threads over the actors head)s.  But I liked it, I really did, especially the performance of the John Magaro as an extremely cranky and domineering Papp. 



 
 

September is Dust

September flew by with nary a post from your truly.

Although I loved Simon Stephens' "Heisenberg" last year at MTC, his earlier play "On The Shores of the Wide World" now playing at The Atlantic Theatre Company is not in the same league.  That two character play was structurally tight and marvelously acted by Mary-Louise Parker and Denis Arndt. The problem with the Atlantic production may be that Neil Pepe, who has a history of directing Mamet, Guare and other specifically American playwrights, isn't able to capture the rhythms of this British playwright.  But he also has a sprawling multi-character landscape to cover. This lack of capture extends to the unevenness of the Manchester accents by the American cast, who are otherwise faultless.  The one stand-out performance comes from Tedra Milla's Sarah, the hyperactive girlfriend of Alex, the young man at the center of the play. Milla was excellent as #47 in Sarah DeLappe's "The Wolves" last year and she will appear in it again in the Lincoln Center revival of that play later this fall.  My other quibble with the play is the title which takes its name from a sonnet by Keats and really has nothing to do with anything except that I expect the playwright liked the sonnet and found a way to force it into the play. The play would have been more aptly titled "Manchester."

"Mary Jane" at NYTW is a powerful play about a single woman coping with raising a severely disabled child. Written by Amy Herzog whose previous play "4,000 Miles" at Lincoln Center was a bit wobbly, and directed by Anne Kauffman, the play is a complicated puzzle of connecting pieces.  Carrie Coon is heart-breaking as Mary Jane but each of the supporting cast delivers multiple jewel-like performances. The play will tear you apart but also give you hope in humanity.

The Elevator  Repair Service production of "Measure for Measure" at the Public is as unusual as what one expects from them.  They take classic works and twist them around, stand them on their heads and just generally have fun with them.  It would be hard to measure up to their seven hour reading of The Great Gatsby, "Gatz," and this doesn't, but I forgive them.  They make Shakespeare contemporary even if their line readings are sometimes hard to understand.  The essence of the play remains and it's a rollicking good time. A shout out to Scott Shepherd who was the narrator (reader?) in "Gatz" and here plays The Duke. 

Further downtown at The Flea's new theatre is "Inanimate."  Courtney Ulrich directs a dextrous young cast, who all come out of The Flea's acting program.  Nick Robideau's adventurous and somewhat experimental play is about a young woman who loves inanimate objects.  Apparently this is a thing.    Lacy Allen makes Erica's proclivity for inanimate objects believable and the supporting cast plays multiple roles from the Dunkin' Donuts neon sign that she is in love with and an Oxo can opener to the actual human beings in her life who love her.

The revivals of "Cafe Muller" and "The Rite of Spring" presented by the Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch at the BAM Opera House is missing Pina (who died two years ago) and the humor the company that she amassed over the years brought to her work.  While I am happy that her work continues to live on, the young dancers in these revivals, many of whom probably never worked with her, are lacking the quirkiness and humor necessary to take the works to the next level.

I'd also like to mention Bill T. Jones excellent "Letter to My Nephew" at BAM Harvey, a dance piece that delivers on a visceral level.  Jones is an angry gay, black man as well as a citizen of the world.  "Letter to My Nephew" addresses racism, homophobia, gentrification, natural disasters and the recent killings in Las Vegas through dance, song and multi-media projections. The dancing is exquisite.  The message is powerful. A brave piece.

I was disappointed in Maira Kalman and John Heginbotham's multi-media "The Principles of Uncertainty" based on her blog of the same name for The New Yorker at BAM Fisher.  Too much Dance Heginbotham, too little Maira Kalman.

But it was Matthew Aucoin's opera "Crossing" at the BAM Opera House that almost made me want to weep at it's awfulness.  Directed by Diane Paulus, "Crossing" is based on Walt Whitman's diaries from his time nursing soldiers during the Civil War. The theme of the opera comes from Whitman's poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry": "What is it, then, between us?"  Whitman's sexuality is widely speculated about and Aucoin takes the opportunity to create a love story between middle-aged Whitman and one of the wounded young soldiers.  Instead of leading us to a greater understanding of Whitman and his sexuallity, he comes across as a creepy pedophile.  The music I can't comment on, not having enough understanding of opera.

From A Male Perspective

I'm having very mixed feelings about The Playwright's Realm production "The Rape of the Sabine Women, By Grace B. Matthias" at the Duke.  My first reservation is that it is a play about rape told from a woman's point of view by a man, playwright Michael Yates Crowley (no, it was not written by Grace B. Matthias ,who is in point of fact the actual teenage victim of the rape in the play).  Now, I'm not saying that a man shouldn't have the right to tell a story from a woman's point of view but it's hard to image how a feminist audience will take to a man presuming that he knows whereof he speaks/writes when it comes to rape.

What is missing from the play is the actual rape.  We see the events leading up to it but not the actual rape so we are, in effect, left to figure out for ourselves what the circumstances of the rape actually are. It's a bit muddy.  Yes, it's described but that's not enough. We are left to wonder which I think is opening the door to misinterpretation. Would a woman have told the story differently? Yes, I think so, because a woman, especially one who has been a victim of rape herself, would know that it needed to be shown not told.  And although Grace appears in a state of semi-shock throughout the play it's unclear whether this was her state before the rape or because of the rape. We don't really get a real sense of how the rape itself has affected her except for her fascination with firemen and the desire to become one in order to put out fires. I get the heavy-handed metaphor but am not sure if it is entirely appropriate. She doesn't display anger or pain beyond shock. She even believes that she will marry one of her rapists.   Her rapists are high school football stars on whom the hopes and dreams of the community hangs and so her story is pushed under the carpet because it upsets a balance.  But theirs is only a gentle negation of what has happened to her.  In reality, wouldn't she have been ostracized by this same community?

The most interesting aspect of the play is the use of a painting of The Rape of the Sabine Women that Grace and her classmates are studying in school and how the characters from the painting come alive embodied by Grace's classmates, including her rapists.  The best line in the play is uttered by the raped Sabine woman who married her rapist when she says to Grace, "But you have no cattle.  Why would he marry you?"

All in all, the ensemble acting is well done as is the direction by Tyne Rafaeli.  But this production doesn't have the power and scope of The Playwright's Realm recent production of "The Wolves" by Sarah DeLappe which is being revived at Lincoln Center this fall which addresses some of the same issues and in which Susannah Perkins who plays Grace has a much more developed role. Go see that instead.