I cannot stress enough how important it is to hasten to New York Theatre Workshop to see the current production "The House That Will Not Stand" a glorious retelling by playwright Marcus Gardley of Lorca's "House of Bernarda Alba" set in the New Orleans of the early 19th century. Liliana Blain-Cruz who directed Lucas Hnath's "Red Speedo" at NYTW and a cast of skilled and talented black actresses makes Lorca's play a commentary on the position and fate of black women in a post-Civil War South. I learned a term new to me, "placée," for free women of color who lived as wives of ethnic European men but were not legally recognized. Beartice Albans, as portrayed by Lynda Gravatt, is such a woman. She has lived in great comfort and raised three daughters but her "husband" has just died and the girls are eager to break out of the their very restricted life. The oldest, Agnes, has dreams of becoming a placée herself, something that her mother is dead-set against. All the actresses are excellent but Harriet Foy as the maid and yet-to-be-freed slave Makeda powerfully embodies black women and their story throughout time. This ensemble acting at it's best and it's marvelous to see an all female black cast show us how it should be done.
The much anticipated rock opera "This Ain't No Disco" from Stephen Trask creator of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and Peter Yanowitz of The Wallflowers at Atlantic Theater Company fails to hit the mark, any mark. The director, Darko Tresnjak, has some interesting work under his belt including the Tony award winning "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" on Broadway and "The Killers" with Michael Shannon at TFANA but seems to have lost his way here. Perhaps it's the material, the final days of Studio 54. But this musical doesn't fully embrace the hedonistic raunchiness of that time and place. The story lines are contemporary cliches: the young gay man at the mercy of a predatory older and successful and possibly in-the-closet boss, the struggling lesbian artists, the black single mother with dreams of becoming a music star. It's like Studio 54 as told by Walt Disney and with less imagination. But the real crime here is that the music isn't good enough. It's disco without the disco. Not good enough.
"The Saintliness of Margery Kempe" by John Wulp at The Duke on 42nd Street is a twist on a medieval morality play. Let's presume that one is even interested in such a play and then presume that one wants to spend two and a quarter hours in the company of even a stellar group of actors in such a play... As always, Andrus Nichols, late of the Bedlam Theatre Company, is divine as the bored medieval housewife who wants to shine and to that end makes it her business to become a saint. Jason O'Connell, another Bedlam regular is also excellent in a variety of roles but, alas, the play, under the direction of Austin Pendleton,is tedius.
The Potomac Theatre Project's twofer at The Atlantic Theater Stage II consists of Caryl Churchill's "The After-Dinner Joke" directed by Cheryl Faraone and Howard Barker's "The Possibilities" directed by Richard Romagnoli. PTP has mounted stellar productions of in the past including Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" last year, directed by Faraone, and Barker's "Scenes from an Execution" in 2015 (the last major performance by the great actress Jan Maxwell who retired directly after and, sadly, died earlier this year), directed by Romagnoli. But the current offerings are disappointing and amateurish. There a few performances that stand out but the overall effect is that of assembling a cast of student actors around a few excellent veteran actors. The 1977 Caryl Churchill play feels dated. In the 70's Churchill was still feeling her way to become the playwright who has given us the groundbreaking "Cloud Nine," "Mad Forest," "Top Girls" and most recently "Escaped Alone." I would have preferred to see Barker's "The Possibilities" decalogue in it's entirety instead of just the four short plays offered here and skipped the Churchill. Barker is an underproduced playwright in this country, one of the original Angry Young Men of British theatre and his often violent plays, even those written decades ago, still feel timely. There were echoes of his groundbreaking "Saved" in which a baby is stoned to death by disaffected and helpless working class youth in the very fine "Cypress Avenue" at the Public this year. At the time it shocked. It still does.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Monday, July 9, 2018
The Magnificent Carey Mulligan
Carey Mulligan is magnificent in the one woman show "Girls and Boys" at The Minetta Lane Theatre. Mulligan is simply "Woman." We listen as she recounts the story of how she met her husband on an Easy Jet line in Italy and her story progresses to their marriage, her career, her success, his failure, their children and so on. For much of the play Mulligan stands uncomfortably in what feels like a box on stage but these scenes are intercut with her in her apartment attending to her children. I wouldn't want to give out too many spoilers here because the shock we feel at the end is necessary to the experience but I will say that the subject matter of the play is something I would not be surprised to see Ken Loach take on. I'm still not big on one-person shows and this one could even have been judiciously cut but Mulligan commanded the stage and my attention for 90 minutes. This is the third time I've seen her on stage. Previously she made the emotionally fragile Nina in "The Seagull" live as a fully realized human being and her performance in David Hare's "Skylight" opposite Bill Neigh was heartbreaking. In her performances both in theatre and on film her intelligence and self-awareness are always evident. Props to the Set Designer Es Devlin, Video Designer Luke Halls and Lighting Designer Oliver Fenwick who transform the stage magically as the play goes on. The apartment is at first all ashy tones but as the play progresses bits of color are added: a toy, a piece of fruit, a pillow until the apartment becomes vibrant with color. I was surprised that the play was written by a man, Dennis Kelly, because "Woman" rings so true. Lindsey Turner masterfully directs as she did Rebecca Hall in "Machinal" several years ago. Magnificent, magical, masterful ... I think I've used up my alliteration quota for this piece.
An import from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival "secret life of humans" is at the 59E59 theatre. Written by David Byrne and directed by Byrne and Kate Stanley, "secret life of humans" addresses the question of whether our species is capable of learning from our mistakes. It's not a brilliant work but has its interesting moments and the acting is all quite good, especially Olivia Hirst. The set and visual projections are clever but a little to busy for my taste.
Rounding out this post is "Fire in Dreamland" at the Public Theatre, written by Rinne Groff and directed by Marissa Wolf. It's a serviceable well-constructed play but not especially novel. Once again, as with "secret life of humans," the performances are all perfectly fine but not especially noteworthy. I have seen Rebecca Naomi Jones do better work in "Describe the Night" at the Atlantic Theatre and also on Broadway in "Passing Strange." It was not an unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours but there are better off-Broadway plays to be had at the moment like "Girls and Boys" and "Pass Over" at Lincoln Center.
An import from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival "secret life of humans" is at the 59E59 theatre. Written by David Byrne and directed by Byrne and Kate Stanley, "secret life of humans" addresses the question of whether our species is capable of learning from our mistakes. It's not a brilliant work but has its interesting moments and the acting is all quite good, especially Olivia Hirst. The set and visual projections are clever but a little to busy for my taste.
Rounding out this post is "Fire in Dreamland" at the Public Theatre, written by Rinne Groff and directed by Marissa Wolf. It's a serviceable well-constructed play but not especially novel. Once again, as with "secret life of humans," the performances are all perfectly fine but not especially noteworthy. I have seen Rebecca Naomi Jones do better work in "Describe the Night" at the Atlantic Theatre and also on Broadway in "Passing Strange." It was not an unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours but there are better off-Broadway plays to be had at the moment like "Girls and Boys" and "Pass Over" at Lincoln Center.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
The Elephant in the Room
I feel that I need to address the elephant in the room. In the few months I have seen several plays written, directed and acted by people of color. The elephant in the room, you need to ask? Well, in almost all instances the audience has been majority white, in one case all white. If you read my last blog post you will know already that I wasn't impressed with Jackie Sibbeles Drury's "Fairview" which specifically took aim at this phenomena by breaking the 4th wall and commanding the mostly white members of the audience to change places with the black actors on stage to their supposed discomfort. This actually had the opposite of the intended effect on me. I was just annoyed as the play I felt was just not good and the the playwright and her (white) director were challenging me, in effect saying that if I thought the play was bad it was only because as I, as a white person, didn't "get" the black experience.
But as Aeshea Harris's "Is God Is" made me cringe in my whiteness so did Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" which I just saw at the Claire Tow theatre at Lincoln Center. If, after either of these plays, the stage lights had been turned on the predominantly white audience I would have been turned to stone. The Steppenwolf production of "Pass Over," here directed by Danya Taymor, caught the eye of Spike Lee who directed a filmed version now streaming on Amazon Prime. But I expect the filmed version is missing the immediacy of the theatrical production. Two youngish black men trapped on their street for eternity (how could one not reference Beckett) by the gangs on one side and the police on the other. A white actor represents both the police and that do-goody white liberal(until he is not) offering them comfort and the possibility of an out. Could he be us? It's terrifying. Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood are both achingly good as Moses and Kitch. But how can we as white, middle class, educated possibly really understand. Seriously.
How can this problem be addressed? The New York theatre-going audience is primarily made up of white, middle class liberals like me but more and more of the plays presented off-Broadway are being written, acted and directed by people of color. What does it feel like for them presenting a play about their experiences as such to an audience that is a sea of pale faces? Do they wonder if we are even getting it? I don't know what the answer is.
But as Aeshea Harris's "Is God Is" made me cringe in my whiteness so did Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" which I just saw at the Claire Tow theatre at Lincoln Center. If, after either of these plays, the stage lights had been turned on the predominantly white audience I would have been turned to stone. The Steppenwolf production of "Pass Over," here directed by Danya Taymor, caught the eye of Spike Lee who directed a filmed version now streaming on Amazon Prime. But I expect the filmed version is missing the immediacy of the theatrical production. Two youngish black men trapped on their street for eternity (how could one not reference Beckett) by the gangs on one side and the police on the other. A white actor represents both the police and that do-goody white liberal(until he is not) offering them comfort and the possibility of an out. Could he be us? It's terrifying. Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood are both achingly good as Moses and Kitch. But how can we as white, middle class, educated possibly really understand. Seriously.
How can this problem be addressed? The New York theatre-going audience is primarily made up of white, middle class liberals like me but more and more of the plays presented off-Broadway are being written, acted and directed by people of color. What does it feel like for them presenting a play about their experiences as such to an audience that is a sea of pale faces? Do they wonder if we are even getting it? I don't know what the answer is.
Monday, June 18, 2018
Diving Into June
"Cyprus Avenue" is a chilling play. Something happens that I believe has only happened once before on stage, in Edward Bond's "Saved" from 1965. That play has seldom been mounted since because of the disturbing nature of an act of violence. There are some things that even a very sophisticated theatre-goer has trouble wrapping one's mind around. Stephen Rea is crushing as Eric, the Belfast protestant who has seemingly lost his mind and believes that his new granddaughter Mary Mae is Gerry Adams (the leader of Sinn Fein the Catholic Republican political organization often sited for it's terrorists acts). Dan Ireland's play is masterfully directed by Vicky Featherstone with superb performances from the entire cast. It's powerful and raw and I caution you not to go if you have a low threshold for violence but, that said, try not to miss it in it's limited run at the The Public Theatre.
Lauren Yee's "The Great Leap" at the Atlantic Theater Company is also a political play but much, much tamer. Directed by Taibi Magar who recently directed the outstanding "Is God Is" at Soho Rep, this play takes on the Cultural Revolution by way of a basketball game between an American college team and their Chinese counterparts with a son/father relationship thrown in for good measure. It's not a great play but Magar continues to impress me as a director and the performances from B.D. Wong and Ned Eisenberg as the coaches Wen Chang and Saul hold the play up. And while not terrible, Tony Aidan Vo the young Chinese-American player and Ali Ahn as his cousin are a little to showy for the the material.
I finally got around to seeing "The Band's Visit" the week before it won the Tony for Best New Musical. While I would not have necessarily put it in that category as it's a play with music rather than a musical, given the competition ("Spongebob Squarepants" for one) I'm not surprised it took the big prize. I was especially smitten with the song "Omar Sharif" which is sung by Katrina Lenk as Dina. She also came away with a Tony as did my favorite performer in the play Ari'el Stachel as the Egyptian musician who dispenses advice to a lovelorn Israeli. I'm not sure why Tony Shalhoub won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for Tewfiq the conductor of the Egyptian Orchestra since he talks his way through part of one song and that's it. I actually saw a different actor in the part, the very fine Dariush Kashani who I admired in both "Oslo" at Lincoln Center and "The Invidisible Hand" at NYTW. A shout out to David Yazbek and Itamar Moses who wrote the music and the book respectively and to the always fine director David Comer.
Elevator Repair Service's "Everyone's Fine With Virginia Woolf" at the Abrons Arts Center on the LES is serviceable. The company takes classics and turns them on their heads but have yet, for me, to have a production that measures up to their "Gatz," a seven hour 'reading' of "The Great Gatsby." For example, they were off the mark with their last production, "Measure for Measure" at the Public which was good fun but deteriorated into silliness at the expense of Shakespeare. Here they are obviously taking on Albee and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The director Kate Scelsa is an ERS regular who has performed in "Gatz," "The Sound and the Fury" and and others. Her "Virginia Woolf" lays it bare the subtext in Albee's play. The production opens brilliantly but eventually deteriorates into a bizarre free-for-all vampire story and slow journey to Hell led by a robot (why?) which basically wrecks everything they have set up before. This is disappointing because Vin Knight and Annie McNamara as George and Martha Washington really give Tracy Letts and Amy Ryan a run for their money.
"Fairview" is another disappointing production from Soho Rep who had redeemed themselves in my eyes with Aeshea Harris's brilliant "Is God Is" earlier this season. This is not the first time I have disagreed with Ben Brantley of The New York Times who wrote "You begin watching by feeling mildly amused, then uneasy, then annoyed, then unsettled." The only thing I felt was annoyed. This is a play about race and the playwright Jackie Sibbiles Drury wants us, the audience, to feel uncomfortable in our whiteness (those of us in the audience who are white) but she does not EARN this from us. It's a flawed play with equally flawed direction by Sarah Benson who is an excellent director when she has something of real worth to work with like Sarah Kane's "Saved" or Branden Jacobs-Jenkins "An Octoroon" but gets lost when directing messy not fully realized work like this. Such was also the case with her direction of the impossibly convoluted and disjointed Richard Maxwell play "Samara." Perhaps the play needed a black director as had "Is God Is," but I still think it would not have been enough. Plus I am getting really tired of second act climaxes where the actors wreck the stage. This is lazy writing/direction. Spoiler alert! The final moment of the play when the white members of the audience are ordered to come on stage and the black actors take their place in the audience felt forced. My discomfort was for the actors and the playwright not for my whiteness.
Saving the best for last, the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia production of the Friedrich Schiller "Love and Intrigue" at BAM is dazzling. Where have I been? How did I not know about this company? Lev Dodin has adapted and directs a extremely pared down version of the original five hour play. At two hours and 15 minutes (no intermission) he still manages, according to the BAM program notes, to add text by Jean-Jaques Russo (as my theatre companion quipped, "You know, that philosopher from New Jersey") and Otto von Bismark. The two lovers, Ferdinand and Luise are starred crossed lovers, much like Romeo and Juliet but with a German duchy, the Duke's aristocratic consort and political intrigue thrown in. The production is stylized and there's a little too much walking, dancing and sliding across long wooden tables but the performances are clean and tight, the costumes exquisite and the set like I like it, almost bare... an empty space.
Lauren Yee's "The Great Leap" at the Atlantic Theater Company is also a political play but much, much tamer. Directed by Taibi Magar who recently directed the outstanding "Is God Is" at Soho Rep, this play takes on the Cultural Revolution by way of a basketball game between an American college team and their Chinese counterparts with a son/father relationship thrown in for good measure. It's not a great play but Magar continues to impress me as a director and the performances from B.D. Wong and Ned Eisenberg as the coaches Wen Chang and Saul hold the play up. And while not terrible, Tony Aidan Vo the young Chinese-American player and Ali Ahn as his cousin are a little to showy for the the material.
I finally got around to seeing "The Band's Visit" the week before it won the Tony for Best New Musical. While I would not have necessarily put it in that category as it's a play with music rather than a musical, given the competition ("Spongebob Squarepants" for one) I'm not surprised it took the big prize. I was especially smitten with the song "Omar Sharif" which is sung by Katrina Lenk as Dina. She also came away with a Tony as did my favorite performer in the play Ari'el Stachel as the Egyptian musician who dispenses advice to a lovelorn Israeli. I'm not sure why Tony Shalhoub won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for Tewfiq the conductor of the Egyptian Orchestra since he talks his way through part of one song and that's it. I actually saw a different actor in the part, the very fine Dariush Kashani who I admired in both "Oslo" at Lincoln Center and "The Invidisible Hand" at NYTW. A shout out to David Yazbek and Itamar Moses who wrote the music and the book respectively and to the always fine director David Comer.
Elevator Repair Service's "Everyone's Fine With Virginia Woolf" at the Abrons Arts Center on the LES is serviceable. The company takes classics and turns them on their heads but have yet, for me, to have a production that measures up to their "Gatz," a seven hour 'reading' of "The Great Gatsby." For example, they were off the mark with their last production, "Measure for Measure" at the Public which was good fun but deteriorated into silliness at the expense of Shakespeare. Here they are obviously taking on Albee and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." The director Kate Scelsa is an ERS regular who has performed in "Gatz," "The Sound and the Fury" and and others. Her "Virginia Woolf" lays it bare the subtext in Albee's play. The production opens brilliantly but eventually deteriorates into a bizarre free-for-all vampire story and slow journey to Hell led by a robot (why?) which basically wrecks everything they have set up before. This is disappointing because Vin Knight and Annie McNamara as George and Martha Washington really give Tracy Letts and Amy Ryan a run for their money.
"Fairview" is another disappointing production from Soho Rep who had redeemed themselves in my eyes with Aeshea Harris's brilliant "Is God Is" earlier this season. This is not the first time I have disagreed with Ben Brantley of The New York Times who wrote "You begin watching by feeling mildly amused, then uneasy, then annoyed, then unsettled." The only thing I felt was annoyed. This is a play about race and the playwright Jackie Sibbiles Drury wants us, the audience, to feel uncomfortable in our whiteness (those of us in the audience who are white) but she does not EARN this from us. It's a flawed play with equally flawed direction by Sarah Benson who is an excellent director when she has something of real worth to work with like Sarah Kane's "Saved" or Branden Jacobs-Jenkins "An Octoroon" but gets lost when directing messy not fully realized work like this. Such was also the case with her direction of the impossibly convoluted and disjointed Richard Maxwell play "Samara." Perhaps the play needed a black director as had "Is God Is," but I still think it would not have been enough. Plus I am getting really tired of second act climaxes where the actors wreck the stage. This is lazy writing/direction. Spoiler alert! The final moment of the play when the white members of the audience are ordered to come on stage and the black actors take their place in the audience felt forced. My discomfort was for the actors and the playwright not for my whiteness.
Saving the best for last, the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia production of the Friedrich Schiller "Love and Intrigue" at BAM is dazzling. Where have I been? How did I not know about this company? Lev Dodin has adapted and directs a extremely pared down version of the original five hour play. At two hours and 15 minutes (no intermission) he still manages, according to the BAM program notes, to add text by Jean-Jaques Russo (as my theatre companion quipped, "You know, that philosopher from New Jersey") and Otto von Bismark. The two lovers, Ferdinand and Luise are starred crossed lovers, much like Romeo and Juliet but with a German duchy, the Duke's aristocratic consort and political intrigue thrown in. The production is stylized and there's a little too much walking, dancing and sliding across long wooden tables but the performances are clean and tight, the costumes exquisite and the set like I like it, almost bare... an empty space.
Friday, May 25, 2018
A Splendid Marin Ireland
The splendid Marin Ireland almost made me love Tennessee Williams with her performance in The Transport Group's "Summer and Smoke" at CSC Rep. Her Alma, a Southern spinster who harbors feelings for her childhood friend and neighbor John, is staggering. Perhaps Williams intended Alma to be as fragile as Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie" or as delusional as Blanche in "Streetcar" but Ireland gives Alma a strength of character that is lacking in Williams other heroines. She has some of Stella's groundedness right up to the end when she finally gives in to the despair that she will never have her great love. I was taken by Nathan Darrow's John whose work I had previously not known. He was grand and a match for Ireland. Jack Cummings III, the Transport Groups co-founder and artistic director, directed this jewel of a production.
It was a long long long "Long Day's Journey Into Night" at the BAM Harvey. Lesley Manville's morphine-addicted Mary was one note and Rory Kennan's portrayal of Jamie as an ADHD young man barely out of adolescence distracting and annoying. Matthew Beard as Edmond was less so but seemed to be channeling Edgar G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney via Martin Scorsese with his accent throughout the play. I lay the fault for the disjointed performances at the feet of the director Richard Eyre (or SIR Richard Eyre as he is called in the program). Only Jeremy Irons was convincing as the parsimonious patriarch of the family, James Tyrone. And his is a marvelously complex and moving performance.The play is as close to autobiography as O'Neill got. I would say closer except that O'Neill's older brother had already died of alcohol by the time the events of the play take place. So taken in historical context Jamie is really a ghost which makes sense since his character never feels fully a part of the play. The string of monologues delivered by each of the characters feels like a tired theatrical device, one I'm sure that O'Neill would have worked out of the play if he had lived to see it produced. And are standing ovations now de rigueur for having sat through an extremely long play? Baaaah...
On a minor note, while in L.A. earlier this month I caught Amy Herzog's "Belleville" directed by Jenna Worsham at The Pasadena Playhouse. While I was not a huge fan of either "4,000 Miles" or "Mary Jane" at least the latter addressed with great delicacy and understanding the very real dilemna of having a severely handicapped child without unlimited resources. "Belleville" has little intrinsic value and, in fact, borders on the absurd. A young American couple in Paris obviously have marital issues but what it turns out to be behind their issues, at least on the husband's side, stretches the imagination. Although I am admirer of Thomas Sadoski's work (he was brilliant opposite Marin Ireland in Neil LaBute's "reasons to be pretty"), his character as written lacks credibility. Anna Camp is, however, at least to me, a revelation. She's a fine stage actress lost in a muddled production of a poorly conceived play. I also liked Moe Jeudy-Lamour who plays the enterprising very young Senegalese-French landlord and though I found the performance of Sharon Pierre-Louis who plays his strict Muslim wife unnecessarily wooden. A directorial note: If you're going to have a character slash his wrists in the bathroom don't keep tantalizing us with the possibility he will jump off the balcony.
It was a long long long "Long Day's Journey Into Night" at the BAM Harvey. Lesley Manville's morphine-addicted Mary was one note and Rory Kennan's portrayal of Jamie as an ADHD young man barely out of adolescence distracting and annoying. Matthew Beard as Edmond was less so but seemed to be channeling Edgar G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney via Martin Scorsese with his accent throughout the play. I lay the fault for the disjointed performances at the feet of the director Richard Eyre (or SIR Richard Eyre as he is called in the program). Only Jeremy Irons was convincing as the parsimonious patriarch of the family, James Tyrone. And his is a marvelously complex and moving performance.The play is as close to autobiography as O'Neill got. I would say closer except that O'Neill's older brother had already died of alcohol by the time the events of the play take place. So taken in historical context Jamie is really a ghost which makes sense since his character never feels fully a part of the play. The string of monologues delivered by each of the characters feels like a tired theatrical device, one I'm sure that O'Neill would have worked out of the play if he had lived to see it produced. And are standing ovations now de rigueur for having sat through an extremely long play? Baaaah...
On a minor note, while in L.A. earlier this month I caught Amy Herzog's "Belleville" directed by Jenna Worsham at The Pasadena Playhouse. While I was not a huge fan of either "4,000 Miles" or "Mary Jane" at least the latter addressed with great delicacy and understanding the very real dilemna of having a severely handicapped child without unlimited resources. "Belleville" has little intrinsic value and, in fact, borders on the absurd. A young American couple in Paris obviously have marital issues but what it turns out to be behind their issues, at least on the husband's side, stretches the imagination. Although I am admirer of Thomas Sadoski's work (he was brilliant opposite Marin Ireland in Neil LaBute's "reasons to be pretty"), his character as written lacks credibility. Anna Camp is, however, at least to me, a revelation. She's a fine stage actress lost in a muddled production of a poorly conceived play. I also liked Moe Jeudy-Lamour who plays the enterprising very young Senegalese-French landlord and though I found the performance of Sharon Pierre-Louis who plays his strict Muslim wife unnecessarily wooden. A directorial note: If you're going to have a character slash his wrists in the bathroom don't keep tantalizing us with the possibility he will jump off the balcony.
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Storms of April
The RSC brings "King Lear" to BAM Harvey director by the RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran and starring the inimitable Antony Sher in the title role. Sher's performance is idiosyncratic and engaging but the performance of the night is that of Pappa Essiedu at Edmond, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, solidly enacted by David Troughton. Essiedu is already making a name for himself at the RSC and one can see why here. His Edmond is a pure evil, a textbook sociopath. Sexy, smart and soooo laid back, he easily manipulates his father and his naive and trusting brother Edgar. His seduction of Goneril and Regan is smooth, effortless if you will. In his performance one can see a callous college frat boy chocking up his wins and sneering at the ease of it. In another stand-out performance, Antony Byrne brings a youthful buoyancy to the part of the older Earl of Kent, Lear's most loyal subject and protector. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast. Mimi Ndieweni's Cordelia is pretty much by the book, Nia Gwynne's Goneril is weak, Kelly Williams Regan is cartoonish and Oliver Johnston does not give Edgar/Mad Tom the complexity the role requires. Graham Turner as Fool also disappoints in a role that is usually a win-win. His performance is disjointed and one never feels his real despair over the banishment of Cordelia. But Essiedu's Edmond is more than reason enough to weather through the four hours at The Harvey.
The revival of Caryl Churchill's "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire" at NYTW forty years doesn't come together this time around. Directed by Rachel Chavkin a NYTW Usual Suspect and whose work I generally admire even when the material falls short, this "Light" fails to shine. Chavkin has assembled a motley crew of actors of various ability and training and it shows. An old trouper like Vinie Burrows who was a delight at 89 as Mustard Seed in last summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night's Dreams" is not matched in talent or ability by the other cast members with the exception of the height-challenged actor Matthew Jeffers who engages and delights in his various roles. Even Rob Campbell who is a regular in Churchill's plays disappoints. It feels almost as though he is saying "This is an amateurish production. What am I doing here? Why even try?" Evelyn Spahr in particular is appalling as she mugs her way through various roles in this period piece about the Civil War in England in 1642 led by Oliver Cromwell.
"Dance Nation" at Playwright's Horizons and directed by Lee Sunday Evans is Clare Barron's latest and, while I thought that her two previous plays "You Got Older" and "I'll Never Love Again" were superior, the risks she is willing to take like the cross generational casting of her teenaged protagonists, a devise she used to ever better effect in "I'll Never Love Again," have electrifying results. The play is searing in addressing the pain of female puberty and how that pain plays out later on in life. This is where her use of actresses of different ages to play the seven young dancers really clicks. Lucy Taylor the 40ish actress playing Ashlee alone on stage and spotlit, delivers a devastating monologue that carries her from her 13 year old self to the sexually unsure mature woman she has become. The monologue destroys... But everyone in the cast is excellent from Eboni Booth as the insecure Zuzu who is expected to fulfill her mother's dream to Dina Shihabi's Amina, the star dancer of the company who realizes that she must build a shell around herself if she wants to succeed. There's a moment at the beginning of the play that that is intentionally reminiscent of "A Chorus Line." The audience recognizes this and it brilliantly sets the stage for what is to come. Barron has the ability to mine other plays for bits that she makes her own. I continue to be astounded.
The revival of Caryl Churchill's "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire" at NYTW forty years doesn't come together this time around. Directed by Rachel Chavkin a NYTW Usual Suspect and whose work I generally admire even when the material falls short, this "Light" fails to shine. Chavkin has assembled a motley crew of actors of various ability and training and it shows. An old trouper like Vinie Burrows who was a delight at 89 as Mustard Seed in last summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night's Dreams" is not matched in talent or ability by the other cast members with the exception of the height-challenged actor Matthew Jeffers who engages and delights in his various roles. Even Rob Campbell who is a regular in Churchill's plays disappoints. It feels almost as though he is saying "This is an amateurish production. What am I doing here? Why even try?" Evelyn Spahr in particular is appalling as she mugs her way through various roles in this period piece about the Civil War in England in 1642 led by Oliver Cromwell.
"Dance Nation" at Playwright's Horizons and directed by Lee Sunday Evans is Clare Barron's latest and, while I thought that her two previous plays "You Got Older" and "I'll Never Love Again" were superior, the risks she is willing to take like the cross generational casting of her teenaged protagonists, a devise she used to ever better effect in "I'll Never Love Again," have electrifying results. The play is searing in addressing the pain of female puberty and how that pain plays out later on in life. This is where her use of actresses of different ages to play the seven young dancers really clicks. Lucy Taylor the 40ish actress playing Ashlee alone on stage and spotlit, delivers a devastating monologue that carries her from her 13 year old self to the sexually unsure mature woman she has become. The monologue destroys... But everyone in the cast is excellent from Eboni Booth as the insecure Zuzu who is expected to fulfill her mother's dream to Dina Shihabi's Amina, the star dancer of the company who realizes that she must build a shell around herself if she wants to succeed. There's a moment at the beginning of the play that that is intentionally reminiscent of "A Chorus Line." The audience recognizes this and it brilliantly sets the stage for what is to come. Barron has the ability to mine other plays for bits that she makes her own. I continue to be astounded.
Monday, April 9, 2018
April Is Not The Cruelest Month
Glenda Jackson in "Three Tall Women" is magnificent. Reason enough to see the current revival on Broadway at the Golden Theatre. Also, Albee. Directed by Joe Mantello (usually not his biggest fan having disliked intensely the recent critically acclaimed "The Humans" and "Blackbird") with recent Tony winner Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill (miscast IMHO), Albee's play soars on the the wings of Jackson's performance. "Three Tall Women" is Albee's letter to his mother, a wealthy socialite who adopted him as an infant but failed to nurture him and rejected him for being a homosexual. But this is not a harangue. It feels rather as if Albee understands and even admires his mother if at times she feels like the devil She's not a nice woman but does that matter? In the first act the 90 (or is it 91?) year-old A is confined to her room and attended by B, a health-care aide (Metcalf), and C, a young lawyer (Pill) who has been tasked with attending to her bills. In the second act Pill and Metcalf play A at earlier stages of her life with varying degrees of success. Metcalf is convincing but I didn't believe Pill in that role. It's hard for either of them, superb actors that they are, to measure up to Jackson even after her 22 year hiatus from the stage.
Bedlam's "Pygmalion" (on which "My Fair Lady" is based) is also not to miss although you will probably have to. The show closes after a very limited run at The Sheen Center on Bleecker street on April 22nd and is currently sold out. Bedlam is able to populate whole universes with 4, 5, 6 or 7 as they do here. Shaw was a genius at creating strong women characters, ones who don't need men to give them a feeling of self-worth and it is especially evident in the character of Eliza Doolittle, here played to perfection by Vaishnavi Sharma who appeared in two previous Bedlam productions, "The Seagull" and "Sense and Sensibility." Eric Tucker not only directs but is outstandingly irritating as Henry Higgins and Beldman regulars Edmund Lewis and Nigel Gore return to play Mrs Higgins and Henry Pickering respectively as well as a host of other characters. The newcomers to Bedlam are Annabel Capper as the exquisitely imperious Mrs. Pierce and Rajesh Bose as the unctuous but charming Alfred Doolittle. What a joyful production.
Then hasten to "My Fair Lady" at Lincoln Center to see Lauren Ambrose make the role of Eliza Doolittle her own. While watching "Pygmalian" I kept expecting the characters to burst into song at any moment. Here they do! Who knew that Lauren Ambrose had a voice to rival Kelli O'Hara's (who I must admit I had imagined in the role)? Norbert Leo Butz has a raucous and engaging turn as Alfred Doolittle; "Get Me To The Church On Time" is always a show-stopper. But every word, every song of this great musical is imprinted on our memories, those of us of a certain age, and it's thrilling to hear them sung to such perfection. Bartlett Sher, who it seems directs every musical at Lincoln Center (his "South Pacific" and "The King and I" were both extraordinary), has put together a marvelous company that includes, in addition to Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins, Diana Rigg as Mrs. Higgins, Allan Corduner as Colonel Pickering and newcomer Jordan Donica as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. There's nothing like a musical at Lincoln Center when it's done right.
You may have already missed seeing Billie Piper in "Yerma" at the Park Avenue Armory. Hers is a tour-de-force performance but the Lorca play doesn't really work as reinvented for yuppies in today's London. Lorca's "Yerma" is specific to a time and place (1934, Spain) when a woman's most important role in life was to be a mother. Her descent into madness is the result of her inner struggle with not being able to fill this role. Transposed to a yuppie professional woman in her 30's who has only just had the idea that to complete her life she must have a child when she has never wanted one before, does not like children and has no motherly instincts, it fails to make sense. "Her" as she is called in the current production simply wants something that she is unable to have. She goes mad for not being able to get what she wants but it's really not about having a child. She would have found something else to obsess on that would drive her over edge if having a child was taken out of the equation. She is spoiled and entitled and I had very little sympathy for her. However, the production, as directed by Simon Stone, is beautifully staged in a glass/plexiglass box with audience on both sides and the performances are all terrific.
The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Travesties" directed by Patrick Marber with Tom Hollander is a miss in my book. The revival of Stoppard's 1974 play about an English official, Henry Carr, in Zurich during WWI who has either real or imaginary encounters with James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin, all in Zurich at the time, misses the mark. The performances are uneven and the play never reaches the frenzied pitch it requires in order to embrace the absurdity of the subject.
Do you need to go to every Shakespeare production on in New York? Then you could do worse with Theatre for a New Audience's "The Winter's Tale" directed by Arin Arbus. See it, if only for Anatol Yusef's powerful Leontes, the jealous king who exiles his loving wife and condemns her newborn daughter to death but lives to regret it. Or better yet to see Antigonus, in Shakespeare's arguably most famous stage direction, "Exit, man pursued by a bear."
Bedlam's "Pygmalion" (on which "My Fair Lady" is based) is also not to miss although you will probably have to. The show closes after a very limited run at The Sheen Center on Bleecker street on April 22nd and is currently sold out. Bedlam is able to populate whole universes with 4, 5, 6 or 7 as they do here. Shaw was a genius at creating strong women characters, ones who don't need men to give them a feeling of self-worth and it is especially evident in the character of Eliza Doolittle, here played to perfection by Vaishnavi Sharma who appeared in two previous Bedlam productions, "The Seagull" and "Sense and Sensibility." Eric Tucker not only directs but is outstandingly irritating as Henry Higgins and Beldman regulars Edmund Lewis and Nigel Gore return to play Mrs Higgins and Henry Pickering respectively as well as a host of other characters. The newcomers to Bedlam are Annabel Capper as the exquisitely imperious Mrs. Pierce and Rajesh Bose as the unctuous but charming Alfred Doolittle. What a joyful production.
Then hasten to "My Fair Lady" at Lincoln Center to see Lauren Ambrose make the role of Eliza Doolittle her own. While watching "Pygmalian" I kept expecting the characters to burst into song at any moment. Here they do! Who knew that Lauren Ambrose had a voice to rival Kelli O'Hara's (who I must admit I had imagined in the role)? Norbert Leo Butz has a raucous and engaging turn as Alfred Doolittle; "Get Me To The Church On Time" is always a show-stopper. But every word, every song of this great musical is imprinted on our memories, those of us of a certain age, and it's thrilling to hear them sung to such perfection. Bartlett Sher, who it seems directs every musical at Lincoln Center (his "South Pacific" and "The King and I" were both extraordinary), has put together a marvelous company that includes, in addition to Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins, Diana Rigg as Mrs. Higgins, Allan Corduner as Colonel Pickering and newcomer Jordan Donica as Freddy Eynsford-Hill. There's nothing like a musical at Lincoln Center when it's done right.
You may have already missed seeing Billie Piper in "Yerma" at the Park Avenue Armory. Hers is a tour-de-force performance but the Lorca play doesn't really work as reinvented for yuppies in today's London. Lorca's "Yerma" is specific to a time and place (1934, Spain) when a woman's most important role in life was to be a mother. Her descent into madness is the result of her inner struggle with not being able to fill this role. Transposed to a yuppie professional woman in her 30's who has only just had the idea that to complete her life she must have a child when she has never wanted one before, does not like children and has no motherly instincts, it fails to make sense. "Her" as she is called in the current production simply wants something that she is unable to have. She goes mad for not being able to get what she wants but it's really not about having a child. She would have found something else to obsess on that would drive her over edge if having a child was taken out of the equation. She is spoiled and entitled and I had very little sympathy for her. However, the production, as directed by Simon Stone, is beautifully staged in a glass/plexiglass box with audience on both sides and the performances are all terrific.
The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Travesties" directed by Patrick Marber with Tom Hollander is a miss in my book. The revival of Stoppard's 1974 play about an English official, Henry Carr, in Zurich during WWI who has either real or imaginary encounters with James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin, all in Zurich at the time, misses the mark. The performances are uneven and the play never reaches the frenzied pitch it requires in order to embrace the absurdity of the subject.
Do you need to go to every Shakespeare production on in New York? Then you could do worse with Theatre for a New Audience's "The Winter's Tale" directed by Arin Arbus. See it, if only for Anatol Yusef's powerful Leontes, the jealous king who exiles his loving wife and condemns her newborn daughter to death but lives to regret it. Or better yet to see Antigonus, in Shakespeare's arguably most famous stage direction, "Exit, man pursued by a bear."
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